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THE WORLD OF MATTER
AND
THE SPIRIT OF MAN

The World of Matter
AND
The Spirit of Man
LATEST DISCOURSES OF RELIGION
BY
THEODORE PARKER

EDITED WITH NOTES
BY
GEORGE WILLIS COOKE

BOSTON
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION
25 Beacon Street

Copyright, 1907
American Unitarian Association

Presswork bt The University Press, Cambridge, 17. 8. A.

EDITOR'S PREFACE
The lecture and the sermons contained in the pres
ent volume have not appeared in any previous Amer
ican edition of Theodore Parker's writings. The six
sermons on " The Revelation of God in the World of
Matter and Mind," and the two on " The Theological
and Philosophical Development of New England"
have never before been in print. That on " Ec
clesiastical Institutions and Religious Consciousness,"
that on "The Delights of Piety," and the four on
" The Biblical, Ecclesiastical and Philosophical No
tion of God " were printed in the reports of the Long-
wood Progressive Friends for 1855 and 1858. The
lecture on " Transcendentalism " was printed as a
tract in 1876, by the Free Religious Association. The
sermon on " Beauty in the World of Matter " ap
peared in pamphlet form in 1859. Miss Cobbe in
cluded in her edition of Parker's works the Longwood
sermons of 1855 and that last mentioned. Of the six
teen pieces in this volume, therefore, eight have not
before appeared in print, and the others have not
previously found place in any American volume.
In editing this volume I have attempted to give
Parker's sermons in as faithful a manner as possible.
The six sermons from which the volume is named have
been carefully revised by Mr. Rufus Leighton (who
reported them from Mr. Parker's lips), with the aid
of his own notes and the author's manuscripts. The .
circumstances attending the writing, delivery, and
printing of each sermon will be found detailed in the
appended Notes. iii

iv EDITOR'S PREFACE
The six sermons on " The Revelation of God in the
World of Matter and the Spirit of Man " were among
the last which Parker wrote. He devoted to them
much careful preparation. They were repeated at the
request of the Music Hall congregation in the last
months of 1857 and the first of 1858 ; and the preacher
planned to revise and publish them. He regarded
these sermons as the most important he had given to
his congregation in Boston, and the most satisfactory
statement of his later opinions he had been able to
produce. After his death they were prepared for pub
lication under the direction of Mrs. Parker, but they
were not given to the public.
These sermons indicate clearly the remarkable de
gree to which Parker kept abreast of the growing
knowledge and thought of his day, and even much in
advance of them. He welcomed every phase of the
scientific advance being made around him, and he hailed
with enthusiasm the labors of Darwin, which came im
perfectly to his knowledge in the last months of his
life. No theist of 1858 could have anticipated more
completely than he the reconstruction of theological
opinions resulting from the theory of evolution.
I may venture to think that nothing has yet been
written which shows so complete an acceptance of man's
relations to the universe, and yet so profound a piety,
as some of the sermons contained in this volume.
G. W. C.

CONTENTS PAGE
I. Transcendentalism ...... 1 ^
II. Ecclesiastical Institutions and Re
ligious Consciousness .... 39
III. The Biblical Ecclesiastical and Phil
osophical Notion of God ... 97 VY ^
1. Conception of God in the Bible . . 99
2. The Ecclesiastical Conception of God 121
S. The Natural and Philosophical Idea of
God  144-
4. The Soul's Normal Delight in God . 167 ~
TV. The Delights of Piety .... 187
V. Beauty in the World of Matter . 207 - -
VI. God's Revelation in Matter and Mind 229 J
1. Innermost Facts of Religious Con
sciousness  231
2. God in the World of Matter . . 250
3. God in the World of Man . . .267
4. God in the Relation between Matter
and Man  286
5. The World of Matter and the Spirit of
Man  307
6. Relation of God and Man . . .329
VII. Theological and Philosophical De
velopment of New England . . 349
Notes  397

TRANSCENDENTALISM
The will is father to the deed, but the thought and
sentiment are father and mother of the will. Nothing
seems more impotent than a thought, it has neither
hands nor feet, — but nothing proves so powerful. The
thought turns out a thing; its vice or virtue becomes
manners, habits, laws, institutions; the abstraction be
comes concrete; the most universal proposition is the
most particular; and in the end it is the abstract
thinker who is the most practical man and sets mills
a-running and ships to sail.
A change- of ideas made all the difference between
Catholic and Protestant, monarchical and democratic.
You see that all things are first an idea in the mind,
then a fact out of the mind. The architect, the
farmer, the railroad-calculator, the founder of empires,
has his temple, his farm, his railroad, or his empire,
in his head as an idea before it is a fact in the world,
As the thought is the thing becomes. Every idea bears
fruit after its kind, — the good, good; the bad, bad.
Some few hundred years ago John Huss, Luther, Lord
Bacon, Descartes said, We will not be ruled by author
ity in the church or the school, but by common sense
and reason. That was nothing but an idea ; but out of
it has come the Protestant Reformation, the English
Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revo
lution, the cycle of Revolutions that fill up the year
1848. Yes, all the learned societies of Europe, all the
Protestant churches, ail the liberal governments, — of
I— 1 1

2 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Holland, England, France, Germany, America, — have
come of that idea. The old fellows in Galileo's time
would not look through his telescope lest it should de-
.-:x stroy the authorized theory of vision ; they knew what
they were about. So have all the old fellows known
ever since who refuse to look through a new telescope,
or even at it, but only talk against it. Once the Egyp
tian sculptors copied men into stone with their feet
joined and their hands fixed to their sides. The copy
indicated the immutableness of things in Egypt, where
a mummy was the type of a man. A Greek sculptor
separated the feet, as in life, illegally taking a live
man for his type. The sculptor lost his head, for the
government saw a revolution of the empire in this de
parture from the authorized type of man. Such is the
power of ideas. The first question to ask of a civilized
nation is, How do they think? what is their philosophy?
Now it is the design of philosophy to explain the
phenomena of the universe by showing their order,
connection, cause, law, use and meaning. These phe
nomena are of two kinds or forms, as they belong to
the material world — facts of observation ; and as they
belong to the spiritual world — facts of consciousness :
facts without, and facts within. From these two forms
of phenomena or facts there come two grand divisions
of philosophy: the philosophy of outward things, —
physics; the philosophy of inward things, — meta
physics. In the material world, to us, there are only facts.
Man carries something thither, to wit, ideas. Thus
the world has quite a different look; for he finds the
facts without have a certain relation to the ideas
within. The world is one thing to Newton's dog Dia-

TRANSCENDENTALISM 3
mond, quite another to Newton himself. The dog saw
only the facts and some of their uses ; the philosopher
saw therein the reflected image of his own ideas, —
saw order, connection, cause, law and meaning, as well
as use.
Now in the pursuit of philosophy there are two meth
ods which may be followed, namely, the deductive and
the inductive.
I. By the deductive the philosopher takes a certain
maxim or principle, assumes it as a fact and therefrom
deduces certain other maxims or principles as con
clusions, as facts. But in the conclusions there must
be nothing which is not in the primary fact else the
conclusion does not conclude. All pure science is of
this character — geometry, algebra, arithmetic. 1 + 1
= 2 is a maxim, let us suppose: 1000 -f- 1000 = 2000
is one deduction from it ; 25 X 25 = 625, another de
duction. Thus the philosopher must be certain of the
fact he starts from, of the method he goes by, and the
conclusion he stops at is made sure of beforehand.
The difficulty is that the philosopher often assumes
his first fact, takes a fancy for a fact; then, though
the method be right, the conclusion is wrong. For in
stance, Aristotle assumed this proposition, — the matter
of the sun is incorruptible ; thence he deduced this fact,
that the sun does not change, that its light and heat
are constant quantities. The conclusion did not agree
with observation, the theory with the facts. His first
fact was not proved, could not be, was disproved. But
when Galileo looked at the sun with a telescope he saw
spots on the sun, movable spots. Aristotle's first fact
turned out a fancy, so all conclusion from it. The
Koran is written by the infallible inspiration of God,
the Pope is infallible, the King can do no wrong, the

4 MATTER AND SPIRIT
People are always right, — these are assumptions. If
taken as truths, you see the conclusions which may be
deduced therefrom, — which have been. There is in
God somewhat not wholly good, is an assumption which
lies at the bottom of a good deal of theology, whence
conclusions quite obvious are logically deduced, — 1,
Manicheism, God and the devil; 2, God and an evil
never to be overcome. God is absolute good is another
assumption from which the opposite deductions are to
be made. The method of deduction is of the greatest
value and cannot be dispensed with.
II. By the inductive method the philosopher takes
facts, puts them together after a certain order, seen in
nature or devised in his own mind, and tries to find a
more comprehensive fact common to many facts, i.e.,
what is called a law, which applies to many facts and
so is a general law, or to all facts and so is a universal
law. In the deductive method you pass from a uni
versal fact to a particular fact; in the inductive, from
the particular to the general. In the deductive proc
ess there is nothing in the conclusion which was not
first in the premises; by the inductive something new
is added at every step. The philosopher is sifting in
his own conjecture or thought in order to get at a
general idea which takes in all the particular facts in
the case and explains them. When this general idea
and the facts correspond the induction is correct. But
it is as easy to arrive at a false conclusion by the in
ductive process as to assume a false maxim from which
to make deductions. A physician's apprentice once
visited his master's patient and found him dead, and
reported the case accordingly. " What killed him ? "
said the old doctor. " He died of eating a horse."
" Eating a horse ! " expostulated the man of experi-

TRANSCENDENTALISM 5
ence; "impossible! how do you know that?" "He
did," said the inductive son of iEsculapius, " for I
saw the saddle and bridle under the bed." Another,
but a grown-up doctor, once gave a sick blacksmith a
certain medicine ; he recovered. " Post hoc, ergo prop
ter hoc," said the doctor, and tried the same drug on
the next sick man, who was a shoemaker. The shoe
maker died, and the doctor wrote down his induction:
" This drug will cure all sick blacksmiths, but kill all
sick shoemakers. (Rule for phosphorus.)."
The inductive method is also indispensable in all the
sciences which depend on observation or experiment.
The process of induction is as follows: After a num
ber of facts is collected, the philosopher looks for some
one fact common to all and explanatory thereof. To
obtain this he assumes a fact as a law, and applies it to
the facts before him. This is an hypothesis. If it
correspond to the facts, the hypothesis is true. Two
great forms of error are noticeable in the history of
philosophy: 1, the assumption of false maxims, whence
deductions are to be made, — the assumption of no-fact
for a fact; 2, the making of false inductions from
actual facts. In the first, a falsehood is assumed, and
then falsehood deduced from it; in the second, from a
truth falsehood is induced, and this new falsehood is
taken as the basis whence other falsehoods are deduced.
Pythagoras declared the sun was the centre of the
planets which revolved about it; that was an hy
pothesis, — guess-work, and no more. He could not
compare the hypothesis with facts, so his hypothesis
could not be proved or disproved. But long after
wards others made the comparison and confirmed the
hypothesis. Kepler wished to find out what ratio the
time of a planet's revolution bears to its distance from

6 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the sun. He formed an hypothesis, — " The time is
proportionable to the distance." No, that did not
agree with the facts. " To the square of the dis
tance? " No. " To the cube of the distance? " No.
" The square of the time to the cube of the distance? "
This he found to be the case, and so he established his
celebrated law, — Kepler's third law. But he exam
ined only a few planets: how should he know the law
was universal? He could not learn that by induction.
That would only follow from this postulate, " The
action of nature is always uniform," which is not an
induction, nor a deduction, but an assumption. The
inductive method alone never establishes a universal
law, for it cannot transcend the particular facts in
the hands of the philosopher. The axioms of mathe
matics are not learned by inductions, but assumed out
right as self-evident. " Kepler's third law is universal
of all bodies moving about a centre," — now there are
three processes by which that conclusion is arrived at:
1. The process of induction, by which the law is proved
general and to apply to all the cases investigated.
2. A process of deduction from the doctrine or axiom,
that the action of nature is always uniform. 3. That
maxim is obtained by a previous process of assumption
from some source or another.
Such is the problem of philosophy, to explain the
facts of the universe; such the two departments of
philosophy, physics and metaphysics; such the two
methods of inquiry, deductive and inductive; such are
the two forms of error, — the assumption of a false
fact as the starting-point of deduction, the induction of
a false fact by the inductive process. Now these meth
ods are of use in each department of philosophy, indis
pensable in each, in physics and in metaphysics.

TRANSCENDENTALISM 7
This is the problem of metaphysics, — to explain the
facts of human consciousness. In metaphysics there
are and have long been two schools of philosophers.
The first is the sensational school. Its most impor
tant metaphysical doctrine is this : There is nothing in
the intellect which was not first in the senses. Here
"intellect" means the whole intellectual, moral, af-
fectional and religious consciousness of man. The
philosophers of this school claim to have reached this
conclusion legitimately by the inductive method. It
was at first an hypothesis; but after analyzing the
facts of consciousness, interrogating all the ideas and
sentiments and sensations of man, they say the hy
pothesis is proved by the most careful induction. They
appeal to it as a principle, as a maxim, from which
other things are deduced. They say that experience
by one or more of the senses is the ultimate appeal in
philosophy: all that I know is of sensational origin;
the senses are the windows which let in all the light I
have; the senses afford a sensation. I reflect upon
this, and by reflection transform a sensation into an
idea. An idea, therefore, is a transformed sensation.
A school in metaphysics soon becomes a school in
physics, in politics, ethics, religion. The sensational
school has been long enough in existence to assert itself
in each of the four great forms of human action. Let
us see what it amounts to.
I. In physics. 1. It does not afford us a certainty
of the existence of the outward world. The sensa
tionalist believes it, not on account of his sensational
philosophy, but in spite of it; not by his philosophy,
but by his common sense : he does not philosophically
know it. While I am awake the senses give me various
sensations, and I refer the sensations to an object out

8 MATTER AND SPIRIT
of me, and so perceive its existence. But while I am
asleep the senses give me various sensations, and for
the time I refer the sensations to an object out of me,
and so perceive its existence, — but when I awake it
seems a dream. Now, if the senses deceive me in sleep,
why not when awake? How can I know philosoph
ically the existence of the material world? With only
the sensational philosophy I cannot ! I can only know
the facts of consciousness. I cannot pass from ideas
to things, from psychology to ontology. Indeed there
is no ontology, and I am certain only of my own con
sciousness. Bishop Berkeley, a thorough sensational
ist, comes up with the inductive method in his hand,
and annihilates the outward material world, annihilates
mankind, leaves me nothing but my own consciousness,
and no consciousness of any certainty there. Dr.
Priestley, a thorough sensationalist, comes up with the
same inductive method in his hand, and annihilates the
spiritual world, annihilates the soul. Berkeley, with
illogical charity, left me the soul as an existence, but
stripped me of matter; I was certain I had a soul, not
at all sure of my body. Priestley, as illogically, left
me the body as an existei.ce, but stripped me of the
soul. Both of these gentlemen I see were entirely in
the right, if their general maxim be granted ; and so,
between the two, I am left pretty much without soul or
sense! Soul and body are philosophically hurled out
of existence!
2. From its hypothetical world sensationalism pro
ceeds to the laws of matter ; but it cannot logically get
beyond its facts. Newton says, " Gravitation pre
vails, — its power diminishing as the square of the dis
tance increases between two bodies, so far as I have
seen." " Is it so where you have not seen? " Newton

TRANSCENDENTALISM 9
don't know; he cannot pass from a general law to a
universal law. As the existence of the world is hy
pothetical, so the universality of laws of the world is
only hypothetical universality. The Jesuits who edited
the Prinicipia were wise men when they published them
as an hypothesis, r
The sensational philosophy has prevailed chiefly in
England ; that is the home of its ablest representatives,
— Bacon, Locke. See the effect. England turns her
attention to sciences that depend chiefly on observa
tion, on experiment, — botany, chemistry, the descrip
tive part of astronomy, zoology, geology. England
makes observations on the tides, on variations of the
magnetic needle, on the stars; fits out exploring ex
peditions; learns the facts; looks after the sources of
the Nile, the Niger; hunts up the North Pole; tests
the strength of iron, wood, gunpowder; makes im
provements in all the arts, in mechanics. But in meta
physics she does nothing; in the higher departments
of physics — making comprehensive generalizations —
she does little. Even in mathematics, after Newton,
for a hundred years England fell behind the rest of
Europe. She is great at experiment, little at pure
thinking. The sensational philosophy has no idea of cause, ex
cept that of empirical connection in time and place ; no
idea of substance, only of body, or form of substance ;
no ontology, but phenomenology. It refers all ques
tions — say of the planets about the sun — to an out
ward force: when they were made, God, standing out
side, gave them a push and set them a-going; or else
their motion is the result of a fortuitous concourse of
atoms, a blind fate. Neither conclusion is a philo
sophical conclusion, each an hypothesis. Its physics

10 MATTER AND SPIRIT
are mere materialism ; hence it delights in the atomistic
theory of nature and repels the dynamic theory of
matter. The sensationalist's physics appear well in a
celebrated book, " The Vestiges of the Natural His
tory of Creation." The book has many valuable
things in it, but the philosophy of its physics is an
unavoidable result of sensationalism. There is noth
ing but materialism in his world. All is material, ef
fects material, causes material, his God material, — ¦
not surpassing the physical universe, but co-extensive
therewith. In zoology life is the result of organiza
tion, but is an immanent life. In anthropology the
mind is the result of organization, but is an imma
nent mind; in theology God is the result of organiza
tion, but is an immanent God. Life does not transcend
organization, nor does mind, nor God. All is matter.
II. In politics. Sensationalism knows nothing of ab
solute right, absolute justice; only of historical right,
historical justice. " There is nothing in the intellect
which was not first in the senses." The senses by
which we learn of justice and right are hearing and
seeing. Do I reflect, and so get a righter right and
juster justice than I have seen or heard of, it does me
no good, for " nothing is in the intellect which was
not in the senses." Thus absolute justice is only a
whim, a no-thing, a dream. Men that talk of abso
lute justice, absolute right, are visionary men.
In politics, sensationalism knows nothing of ideas,
only of facts ; " the only lamp by which its feet are
guided is the lamp of experience." All its facts are
truths of observation, not of necessity. " There is no
right but might," is the political philosophy of sensa
tionalism. It may be the might of a king, of an aris
tocracy, of a democracy, the might of passions, the

TRANSCENDENTALISM 11
might of intellect, the might of muscle, — it has a
right to what it will. It appeals always to human his
tory, not human nature. Now human history shows
what has been, not what should be or will be. To rea
son about war it looks not to the natural justice, only
to the cost and present consequences. To reason about
free trade or protection, it looks not to the natural
justice or right of mankind, but only to the present
expediency of the thing. Political expediency is the
only right or justice it knows in its politics. So it
always looks back, and says " it worked well at Barce
lona or Venice," or " did not work well." It loves to
cite precedents out of history, not laws out of nature.
It claims a thing not as a human right, but as an his
torical privilege received by Magna Charta or the
Constitution; as if a right were more of a right be
cause time-honored and written on parchment; or
less, because just claimed and for the first time and by
a single man. The sensationalist has no confidence in
ideas, so asks for facts to hold on to and to guide him
in his blindness. Said a governor in America, " The
right of suffrage is universal." " How can that be,"
said a sensationalist, " when the Constitution of the
state declares that certain persons shall not vote?"
He knew no rights before they became constitutional,
no rights but vested rights, — perhaps none but " vru-
vested." The sensationalists in politics divide into two parties,
each with the doctrine that in politics " might makes
right." One party favors the despotism of the few, —
is an oligarchy; or of the one, — is a monarchy.
Hence the doctrine is, " The king can do no wrong."
All power is his; he may delegate it to the people as
a privilege; it is not theirs by right, by nature, and

12 MATTER AND SPIRIT
his as a trust. He has a right to make any laws he
will, not merely any just laws. The people must pay
passive obedience to the king, he has eminent domain
over them. The celebrated Thomas Hobbes is the best
representative of this party, and has one great merit,
— of telling what he thought.
The other party favors the despotism of the many,
¦ — is a democracy. The doctrine is, " The people can
do no wrong." The majority of the people have the
right to make any laws they will, not merely any just
laws; and the minority must obey, right or wrong.
You must not censure the measures of the majority,
you afford " aid and comfort to the enemy." The
state has absolute domain over the citizen, the majority
over the minority; this holds good of the voters, and
of any political party in the nation. For the majority
has power of its own right, for its own behoof; not
in trust, and for the good of all and each! The aim
of sensational politics is the greatest good of the great
est number; this may be obtained by sacrificing the
greatest good of the lesser number, — by sacrificing
any individual, — or sacrificing absolute good. In
No-man's-land this party prevails: the dark-haired
men, over forty million, — the red-haired, only three
million five hundred thousand, — the dark-haired en
slave the red-haired for the greatest good of the great
est number. But in a hundred years the red-haired
men are most numerous, and turn round and enslave
the black-haired.
Thomas Paine is a good representative of this party ;
so is Marat, Robespierre, the author of the " Systeme
de la Nature." 1 In the old French Revolution you
see the legitimate consequence of this doctrine, that
might makes right, that there is no absolute justice,

TRANSCENDENTALISM 13
in the violence, the murder, the wholesale assassination.
The nation did to masses, and in the name of democ
racy, what all kings had done to the nation and in the
name of monarchy, — sought the greatest good of the
controlling power at the sacrifice of an opponent. It
is the same maxim which in cold blood hangs a single
culprit, enslaves three million negroes, and butchers
thousands of men as in the September massacres. The
sensational philosophy established the theory that
might makes right, — and the mad passions of a soli
tary despot, or a million-headed mob, made it a fact.
Commonly the two parties unite by a compromise, and
then it consults not the greatest good of its king alone,
as in a brutal, pure monarchy; not of the greatest
number, as in a pure and brutal democracy; but the
greatest good of a class, — the nobility and gentry in
England, the landed proprietors and rich burghers in
Switzerland, the slaveholders in South Carolina. Vol
taire is a good representative of this type of sensa
tional politics, not to come nearer home. In peaceful
times England shares the defect of the sensational
school in politics. Her legislation is empirical; great
ideas do not run through her laws ; she loves a precedent
better than a principle ; appeals to an accidental fact
of human history, not an essential fact of human na
ture which is prophetic. Hence legislative politics is
not a great science which puts the facts of human con
sciousness into a state, making natural justice common
law; nothing but a poor dealing with precedents, a
sort of national housekeeping and not very thrifty
housekeeping. In our own nation you see another
example of the same, — result of the same sensational
philosophy. There is no right, says Mr. Calhoun,2
but might; the white man has that, so the black man

14 MATTER AND SPntIT
is his political prey. And Mr. Polk tells us that Ver
mont, under the Constitution, has the same right to
establish slavery as Georgia to abolish it.
III. In ethics. Ethics are the morals of the indi
vidual ; politics of the mass. The sensationalist knows
no first truths in morals ; the source of maxims in mor
als is experience; in experience there is no absolute
right. Absolute justice, absolute right, were never in
the senses, so not in the intellect ; only whimsies, words
in the mouth. The will is not free, but wholly con
ditioned, in bondage; character made always for you,
not by you. The intellect is a smooth table ; the moral
power a smooth table ; and experience writes there what
she will, and what she writes is law of morality. Mor
ality is expediency, nothing more; nothing is good of
itself, right of itself, just of itself, — but only because
it produces agreeable consequences, which are agreeable
sensations. Dr. Paley is a good example of the sensa
tional moralist. I ask him "What is right, just?"
He says, " There are no such things ; they are the
names to stand for what works well in the long run."
" How shall I know what to do in a matter of morals?
by referring to a moral sense?" "Not at all: only
by common sense, by observation, by experience, by
learning what works well in the long run; by human
history, not human nature. To make a complete code
of morals by sensationalism you must take the history
of mankind, and find what has worked well, and follow
that because it worked well." " But human history
only tells what has been and worked well, not what is
right. I want what is right ! " He answers, " It is
pretty much the same thing." " But suppose the first
men endowed with faculties perfectly developed, would
they know what to do?" "Not at all. Instinct

TRANSCENDENTALISM 15
would tell the beast antecedent to experience, but man
has no moral instinct, must learn only by actual trial."
" Well," say I, " let alone that matter, let us come to
details. What is honesty? " " It is the best policy."
" Why must I tell the truth, keep my word, be chaste,
temperate? " " For the sake of the reward, the respect
of your fellows, the happiness of a long life and heaven
at last. On the whole God pays well for virtue ; though
slow pay, he is sure." " But suppose the devil paid the
better pay? " " Then serve him, for the end is not the
service, but the pay. Virtue, and by virtue I mean all
moral excellence, is not a good in itself, but good as
producing some other good." " Why should I be vir
tuous? " " For the sake of the reward." " But vice
has its rewards, they are present and not future, im
mediate and certain, not merely contingent and me
diate. I should think them greater than the reward of
virtue." Then vice to you is virtue, for it pays best»
The sensational philosophy knows no conscience to
sound in the man's ears the stern word, Thou oughtest
so to do, come what will come !
In politics might makes right, so in morals. Suc
cess is the touchstone ; the might of obtaining the re
ward the right of doing the deed. Bentham represents
the sensational morals of politics ; Paley of ethics. Both
are Epicureans. The sensationalist and the Epicurean
agree in this, — enjoyment is the touchstone of virtue
and determines what is good, what bad, what indiffer
ent: this is the generic agreement. Heathen Epicurus
spoke only of enjoyment in this life; Christian Arch-
.deacon Paley — and a very orcAdeacon — spoke of
enjoyment also in the next: this is the specific differ
ence. In either case virtue ceases to be virtue, for it
is only a bargain.

16 MATTER AND SPIRIT
There is a school of sensationalists who turn off and
say, " Oh, you cannot answer the moral questions and
tell what is right, just, fair, good. We must settle
that by revelation." That, of course, only adjourns
the question and puts the decision on men who received
the revelation or God who made it. They do not meet
the philosopher's question; they assume that the dif
ference between right and wrong is not knowable by
human faculties, and, if there be any difference between
right and wrong, there is no faculty in man which nat
urally loves right and abhors wrong, still less any fac
ulty which can find out what is right, what wrong. So
all moral questions are to be decided by authority, be
cause somebody said so; not by reference to facts of
consciousness, but to phenomena of history. Of course
the moral law is not a law which is of me, rules in me
and by me; only one put on me, which rules over me!
Can any lofty virtue grow out of this theory? any
heroism? Verily not. Regulus did not ask a reward
for his virtue; if so, he made but a bargain, and who
would honor him more than a desperate trader who
made a good speculation ? There is something in man
which scoffs at expediency ; which will do right, justice,
truth, though hell itself should gape and bid him hold
his peace ; the morality which anticipates history, loves
the right for itself. Of this Epicurus knew nothing,
Paley nothing, Bentham nothing, sensationalism noth
ing. Sensationalism takes its standard of political
virtue from the House of Commons ; of right from the
Constitution and common law; of commercial virtue
from the board of brokers at their best, and the old
bankrupt law ; or virtue in general from the most com
fortable classes of society, from human history, not
human nature; and knows nothing more. The virtue

TRANSCENDENTALISM 17
of a Regulus, of a Socrates, of a Christ, it knows not.
See the practical effect of this. " A young man goes
into trade. Experience meets him with the sensation
alist morals in its hand, and says, " ' Caveat emptor, Let
the buyer look to it, not you ; ' you must be righteous,
young man, but not righteous overmuch ; you must tell
the truth to all who have the right to ask you, and when
and where they have a right to ask you, — otherwise
you may lie. The mistake is not in lying, or deceit;
but in lying and deceiving to your own disadvantage.
You must not set up a private conscience of your own
in your trade, you will lose the confidence of respecta
ble people. You must have a code of morals which
works well and produces agreeable sensations in the
long run. To learn the true morals of business you
must not ask conscience, that is a whim and very un-
philosophical. You must ask, How did Mr. Smith
make his money? He cheated, and so did Mr. Brown
and Mr. Jones, and they cheat all round. Then you
must do the same, only be careful not to cheat so as to
' hurt your usefulness ' and ' injure your reputation.' "
Shall I show the practical effects of this, not on very
young men, in politics? It would hurt men's feelings,
and I have no time for that.
TV. In religion. Sensationalism must have a philoso
phy of religion, a theology ; let us see what theology.
There are two parties; one goes by philosophy, the
other mistrusts philosophy.
1. The first thing in theology is to know God. The
idea of God is the touchstone of a theologian. Now to
know the existence of God is to beficertain thereof as of
my own existence. " Nothing in the intellect which
was not first in the senses," says sensationalism ; " all
comes by sensational experience and reflection thereon."
1—2

18 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Sensationalism — does that give us the idea of God?
I ask the sensationalist, " Does the sensational eye see
God?" "No." " The ear hear him? " "No." "Do
the organs of sense touch or taste him? " " No."
" How then do you get the idea of God? " " By in
duction from facts of observation a posteriori. The
senses deal with finite things; I reflect on them, put
them all together I assume that they have cause; then
by the inductive method I find out the character of that
cause : that is God." Then I say, " But the senses deal
with only finite things, so you must infer only a finite
maker, else the induction is imperfect. So you have
but a finite God. Then these finite things, measured
only by my experience, are imperfect things. Look at
disorders in the frame of nature ; the sufferings of ani
mals, the miseries of men; here are seeming imperfec
tions which the sensational philosopher staggers at.
But to go on with this induction: from an imperfect
work you must infer an imperfect author. So the God
of sensationalism is not only finite, but imperfect even
at that. But am I certain of the existence of the finite
and imperfect God? The existence of the outward
world is only an hypothesis, its laws hypothetical; all
that depends on that or them is but an hypothesis, —
the truth of your faculties, the forms of matter only
an hypothesis: so the existence of God is not a cer
tainty; he is but our hypothetical God. But a hy
pothetical God is no God at all, not the living God : an
imperfect God is no God at all, not the true God: a
finite God is no God at all, not the absolute God. But
this hypothetical, finite, imperfect God, where is he?
In matter? No. In spirit? No. Does he act in
matter or spirit? No, only now and then he did act
by miracle; he is outside of the world of matter and

TRANSCENDENTALISM 19
spirit. Then he is a non-resident, an absentee. A
non-resident God is no God at all, not the all-present
God." The above is the theory on which Mr. Hume con
structs his notion of God with the sensational philoso
phy, the inductive method; and he arrives at the hy
pothesis of a God, of a finite God, of an imperfect God,
of a non-resident God. Beyond that the sensational
philosophy as philosophy cannot go.
But another party comes out of the same school to
treat of religious matters ; they give their philosophy a
vacation, and to prove the existence of God they go
back to tradition, and say, " Once God revealed himself
to the senses of men; they heard him, they saw him,
they felt him ; so to them the existence of God was not
an induction, but a fact of observation ; they told it to
others, through whom it comes to us; we can say it is
not a fact of observation but a fact of testimony."
"Well," I ask, "are you certain then?" "Yes."
" Quite sure ? Let me look. The man to whom God
revealed himself may have been mistaken ; it may have
been a dream, or a whim of his own, perhaps a fib; at
any rate, he was not philosophically certain of the ex
istence of the outward world in general; how could he
be of anything that took place in it? Next, the evi
dence which relates the transaction is not wholly re
liable : how do I know the books which tell of it tell the
truth, that they were not fabricated to deceive me?
All that rests on testimony is a little uncertain if it took
place one or two thousand years ago; especially if I
know nothing about the persons who testify or of that
whereof they testify ; still more so if it be a thing, as
you say, unphilosophical and even supernatural."
So, then, the men who give a vacation to their

20 MATTER AND SPIRIT
philosophy have slurred the philosophical argument for
a historical, the theological for the mythological, and
have gained nothing except the tradition of God. By
this process we are as far from the infinite God as be
fore, and have only arrived at the same point where
the philosophy left us.
The English Deists and the Socinians and others
have approached religion with the sensational philoso
phy in their hands ; we are to learn of God philosoph
ically only by induction. And such is their God. They
tell us that God is not knowable ; the existence of God
is not a certainty to us ; it is a probability, a credibility,
a possibility, — a certainty to none. You ask of sensa
tionalism, the greatest question, " Is there a God? "
Answer: "Probably." "What is his character?"
" Finite, imperfect." " Can I trust him? " " If we
consult tradition it is creditable; if philosophy, possi
ble." 2. The next great question in theology is that of the
immortality of the soul. That is a universal hope of
mankind; what does it rest on? Can I know my im
mortality? Here are two wings of the sensational
school. The first says, " No, you cannot know it ; it is
not true. Mind, soul, are two words to designate the
result of organization. Man is not a mind, not a soul,
not a free will. Man is a body, with blood, brains,
nerves — nothing more ; the organization gone, all is
gone." Now that is sound, logical, consistent; that
was the conclusion of Hume, of many of the English
Deists, and of many French philosophers in the last
century; they looked the fact in the face. But mor
tality, annihilation, is rather an ugly fact to look fairly
in the face; but Mr. Hume and others have done it,
and died brave with the sensational philosophy.

TRANSCENDENTALISM 21
The other wing of the sensational school gives its
philosophy another vacation, rests the matter not on
philosophy but history ; not on the theological but the
mythological argument; on authority of tradition as
serting a phenomenon of human history, they try to
establish the immortality of man by a single precedent,
a universal law by the tradition of a single, empirical,
contingent phenomenon.
But I ask the sensational philosopher, " Is immortal
ity certain? " " No." " Probable? " " No." " Credi
ble? " "No." "Possible?" "Barely." I ask the
traditional division, "Is immortality certain?" "No,
it is left uncertain to try your faith." " Is it prob
able? " " Yes, there is one witness in six thousand
years, one out of ten million times ten million." " Well,
suppose it is probable ; is immortality, if it be sure to
be a good thing, for me, for mankind?" "Not at
all! There is nothing in the nature of man, nothing
in the nature of the world, nothing in the nature of
God to make you sure immortality will prove a bless
ing to mankind in general, to yourself in special ! "
3. That is not quite all. Sensationalism does not
allow freedom of the will; I say not, absolute free
dom — that belongs only to God, — but it allows no
freedom of the will. See the result: all will is God's,
all willing therefore is equally divine, and the worst
vice of Pantheism follows. " But what is the will of
God, is that free? " " Not at all; man is limited by
the organization of his body, God by the organization
of the universe." So God is not absolute God, not
absolutely free; and as man's will is necessitated by
God's, so God's will by the universe of matter; and
only a boundless fate and pitiless encircles man and
God.

22 MATTER AND SPIRIT
This is the philosophy of sensationalism; such its
doctrine in physics, politics, ethics, religion. It leads
to boundless uncertainty. Berkeley resolves the uni
verse into subjective ideas; no sensationalist knows a
law in physics to be universal. Hobbes and Bentham
and Condillac in politics know of no right but might;
Priestley denies the spirituality of man, Collins and
Edwards his liberty; Dodwell affirms the materiality. of
the soul, and the mortality of all men not baptized ;
Mandeville directly, and others indirectly, deny all nat
ural distinction between virtue and vice; Archdeacon
Paley knows no motive but expediency.
The materialist is puzzled with the existence of mat
ter; finds its laws general, not universal. The sensa
tional philosophy meets the politician and tells him
through Rousseau 3 and others, " Society has no divine
original, only the social compact; there is no natural
justice, natural right; no right, but might; no greater
good than the greatest good of the greatest number,
and for that you may sacrifice all you will; to defend
a constitution is better than to defend justice." In
morals the sensational philosophy meets the young man
and tells him all is uncertain ; he had better be content
with things as they are, himself as he is; to protest
against a popular wrong is foolish, to make money by
it, or ease, or power, is a part of wisdom; only the
fool is wise above what is written. It meets the young
minister with its proposition that the existence of God is
not a certainty, nor the immortality of the soul; that
religion is only traditions of the elders and the keeping
of a form. It says to him, " Look there, Dr. Hum
drum has got the tallest pulpit and the quietest pews,
the fattest living and the cosiest nook in all the land;
how do you think he won it? Why, by letting well-

TRANSCENDENTALISM 23
enough alone ; he never meddles with sin ; it would break
his heart to hurt a sinner's feelings, — he might lose a
parishioner ; he never dreams to make the world better,
or better off. Go thou and do likewise."
I come now to the other school. This is distin
guished by its chief metaphysical doctrine, that there is
in the intellect (or consciousness), something that never
was in the senses, to wit, the intellect (or conscious
ness) itself; that man has faculties which transcend the
senses; faculties which give him ideas and intuitions
that transcend sensational experience; ideas whose
origin is not from sensation, nor their proof from sen
sation. This is the transcendental school. They
maintain that themind (meaning thereby all which is
not sense) is not a smooth tablet on which sensation
writes its experience, but is a living principle which of
itself originates ideas when the senses present the oc
casion f that, as there is a body with certain senses, so
there is a soul or mind with certain powers which give
the man sentiments and ideas. This school maintains
that it is a fact of consciousness itself that there is in
the intellect somewhat that was not first in the senses ;
and also that they have analyzed consciousness, and by
the inductive method established the conclusion that
there is a consciousness that never was sensation, never
could be; that our knowledge is in part a priori; that
we know, 1, certain truths of necessity; 2, certain
truths of intuition, or spontaneous consciousness; 3,
certain truths of demonstration, a voluntary conscious
ness ; all of these truths not dependent on sensation for
cause, origin, or proof. Facts of observation, sensa
tional experience, it has in common with the other
school.

U MATTER AND SPIRIT
Transcendentalism, also, reports itself in the four
great departments of human activity — in physics, poli
tics, jethics, religion.
I. In physics it starts with the maxim that the senses
acquaint us actually with body, and therefrom the
mind gives us the idea of substance, answering to an
objective reality. Thus is the certainty of the material
world made sure of. Then a priori it admits the uni
formity of the action of nature ; and its laws are a
priori known to be universal, and not general alone.
These two doctrines it finds as maxims resulting from
the nature of man, facts given. Then it sets out with
other maxims, first truths, which are facts of necessity,
known to be such without experience. All the first
truths of mathematics are of this character, e.g., that
the whole is greater than a part. From these, by the
deductive method, it comes at other facts, — facts of
demonstration; these also are transcendental, that is,
transcend the senses, transcend the facts of observa
tion. For example, the three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right angles, — that is universally true ;
it is a fact of demonstration, and is a deduction from
a first truth which is self-evident, a fact of necessity.
But here the fact of demonstration transcends the fact
of experience, philosophy is truer than sensation. The
whole matter of geometry is transcendental.
Transcendentalism does not take a few facts out of
human history and say they are above nature ; all that
appears in nature it looks on as natural, not super
natural, not subternatural ; so the distinction between
natural and supernatural does not appear. By this
means philosophy is often in advance of observation ;
e.g., Newton's law of gravitation, Kepler's third law,
the theory that a diamond might be burned, and

TRANSCENDENTALISM 25
Berkeley's theory of vision, — these are interpretations
of nature, but also anticipations of nature, as all true
philosophy must be. Those men, however, did not
philosophically know it to be so. So by an actual law
of nature, not only are known facts explained, but the
unknown anticipated.
Evils have come from the transcendental method in
physics ; men have scorned observation, have taken but
a few facts from which to learn universal laws, and so
failed of getting what is universal, even general. They
have tried to divine the constitution of the world, to do
without sensational experience in matters where knowl
edge depends on that and that is the sine qua non. The
generalizations of the transcendental naturalists have
been often hasty; they attempt to determine what na
ture shall be, not to learn what nature is. Thus a fa
mous philosopher said there are only seven primary
planets in the solar system, and from the nature of
things, a priori known, it is impossible there should be
more. He had intelligence in advance of the mail ; but
the mail did not confirm, for six months afterwards Dr.
Piazzi discovered one of the asteroids; and in a few
years three more were found, and now several more
have been discovered, not to mention the new planet
Neptune. Many of the statements of Schelling in
physics are of this same character.
II. In politics, transcendentalism starts not from ex
perience alone, but from consciousness ; not merely from
human history, but also from human nature. It does
not so much quote precedents, contingent facts of ex
perience, as ideas, necessary facts of consciousness. It
only quotes the precedent to obtain or illustrate the
idea. It appeals to a natural justice, natural right;
absolute justice, absolute right. Now the source and

26 MATTER AND SPIRIT
original of this justice and right it finds in God — the
conscience of God; the channel through which we re
ceive this justice and right is our own moral sense, our
conscience, which is our consciousness of the conscience
of God. This conscience in politics and in ethics trans
cends experience, and a priori tells us of the just, the
right, the good, the fair ; not the relatively right alone,
but absolute right also. As it transcends experience,
so it anticipates history; and the ideal justice of con
science is juster than the empirical and contingent jus
tice actually exercised at Washington or at Athens, as
the ideal circle is rounder than one the stone-cutter
scratches on his rough seal. In transcendental poli
tics the question of expediency is always subordinate
to the question of natural right; it asks not merely
about the cost of a war, but its natural justice. It
aims to organize the ideals of man's moral and social
nature into political institutions ; to have a government
which shall completely represent the facts of man's so
cial consciousness so far as his nature is now developed.
But as this development is progressive, so must govern
ment be ; yet not progressive by revolution, by violence ;
but by harmonious development, progressive by growth.
The transcendental politician does not merely interpret
history, and look back to Magna Charta and the Con
stitution; but into human nature, through to divine
nature ; and so anticipates history, and in man and God
finds the origin and primary source of all just policy,
all right legislation. So looking he transcends his
tory. For example, the great political idea of America, the
idea of the Declaration of Independence, is a composite
idea made up of three simple ones : 1. Each man is en
dowed with certain unalienable rights. 2. In respect

TRANSCENDENTALISM 27
of these rights all men are equal. 3. A government is
to protect each man in the entire and actual enjoyment
of all the unalienable rights. Now the first two ideas
represent ontological facts, facts of human conscious
ness; they are facts of necessity. The third is an
idea derived from the two others, is a synthetic judg
ment a priori; it was not learned from sensational ex
perience ; there never was a government which did this,
nor is there now. Each of the other ideas transcended
history : every unalienable right has been alienated, still
is; no two men have been actually equal in actual
rights. Yet the idea is true, capable of proof by hu
man nature, not of verification by experience; as true
as the proposition that three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right angles; but no more capable of a
sensational proof than that. The American Revolu
tion, with American history since, is an attempt to prove
by experience this transcendental proposition, to organ
ize the transcendental idea of politics. The idea de
mands for its organization a democracy — a govern
ment of all, for all, and by all ; a government by nat
ural justice, by legislation that is divine as much as a
true astronomy is divine, legislation which enacts law
representing a fact of the universe, a resolution of
God. All human history said, " That cannot be." Human
nature said, " It can, must, shall." The authors of
the American Revolution, as well as the fathers of New
England, were trans cendentalists to that extent.
America had such faith in the idea that she made the
experiment in part. She will not quite give up yet. But
there is so much of the sensational philosophy in her
politics that in half the land the attempt is not made
at all, the composite idea is denied, each of the simple

28 MATTER AND SPIRIT
ideas is also denied; and in the other half it is but
poorly made.
In France men have an idea yet more transcendental ;
to the intellectual idea of liberty, and the moral idea of
equality, they add the religious idea of fraternity, and
so put politics and all legislation on a basis divine and
incontestable as the truths of mathematics. They say
that rights and duties are before all human laws and
above all human laws. America says, " The Consti
tution of the United States is above the President, the
Supreme Court above Congress." France says, " The
Constitution of the Universe is above the Constitution
of France." Forty million people say that. It tran
scends experience. The grandest thing a nation ever
said in history.
The transcendental politician does not say that might
makes right, but that there is an immutable morality
for nations as for men. Legislation must represent
that, or the law is not binding on any man. By birth
man is a citizen of the universe, subject to God; no
oath of allegiance, no king, no parliament, no congress,
no people, can absolve him from his natural fealty
thereto, and alienate a man born to the rights, born to
the duties, of a citizen of God's universe. Society, gov
ernment, politics come not from a social compact which
men made and may unmake, but from a social nature
of God's making; a nation is to be self -ruled by jus
tice. In a monarchy, the king holds power as a trust,
not a right: in a democracy, the people have it as a
right, the majority as a trust; but the minority have
lost no right, can alienate none, delegate none beyond
power of ultimate recall. A nation has a right to make
just laws, binding because just. Justice is the point
common to one man and the world of men, the balance-

TRANSCENDENTALISM 29
point. A nation is to seek the greatest good of all, not
of the greatest number ; not to violate the constitution
of the universe, not sacrifice the minority to the majors
ity, nor one single man to the whole. But over all hu
man law God alone has eminent domain.
Here too is a danger: the transcendental politician
may seek to ignore the past, and scorn its lessons ; may
take his own personal whims for oracles of human na
ture ; and so he may take counsel from the selfishness
of lazy men against the selfishness of active men, coun
sel from the selfishness of poor men against the selfish
ness of rich men, and think he hears the voice of jus
tice, or the reverse, as himself is rich or poor, active or
idle; there is danger that he be rash and question as
hastily in politics as in physics, and reckon without his
host, to find that the scot is not free when the day of
reckoning comes.
III. In ethics. Transcendentalism affirms that man
has moral faculties which lead him to justice and right,
and by his own nature can find out what is right and
just, and can know it and be certain of it. Right is to
be done come what will come. I am not answerable for
the consequences of doing right, only of not doing it,
only of doing wrong. The conscience of each man is
to him the moral standard; so to mankind is the con
science of the race. In morals conscience is complete
and reliable as the eye for colors, the ear for sounds,
the touch and taste for their purposes. While experi
ence shows what has been or is, conscience shows what
should be and shall.
Transcendental ethics look not to the consequences of
virtue, in this life or the next, as motive, therefore, to
lead men to virtue. That is itself a good, an absolute
good, to be loved not for what it brings, but is. It

80 MATTER AND SPIRIT
represents the even poise or balance-point between in
dividual and social development. To know what is
right, I need not ask what is the current practice, what
say the Revised Statutes, what said holy men of old,
but what says conscience? what, God? The common
practice, the Revised Statutes, the holy men of old are
helps, not masters. I am to be co-ordinate with jus
tice. Conscience transcends experience, and not only ex
plains but anticipates that, and the transcendental sys
tem of morals is to be founded on human nature and
absolute justice.
I am to respect my own nature and be an individual
man, — your nature and be a social man. Truth is to
be told and asked, justice done and demanded, right
claimed and allowed, affection felt and received. The
will of man is free; not absolutely free as God's, but
partially free, and capable of progress to yet higher
degrees of freedom.
Do you ask an example of a transcendental moralist?
A scheme of morals was once taught to mankind wholly
transcendental, the only such scheme that I know. In
that was no alloy of expediency, no deference to experi
ence, no crouching behind a fact of human history to
hide from ideas of human nature; a scheme of morals
which demands that you be you — I, I ; balances in
dividualism and socialism on the central point of jus
tice ; which puts natural right, natural duty, before all
institutions, all laws, all traditions. You will pardon
me for mentioning the name of Jesus of Nazareth in
a lecture. But the whole of human history did not
justify his ethics; only human nature did that. He
brew ethics, faulty in detail, were worse in method and
principle, referring all to an outward command, not

TRANSCENDENTALISM 31
an inward law. Heathen ethics less faulty in detail,
not less in principles, referred all to experience and
expediency, knew only what was, and what worked well
here or there; not what ought to be, and worked well
anywhere and forever. He transcended that, taught
what should be, must, shall, and forever.
The danger is that the transcendental moralist shall
too much abhor the actual rules of morality; where
much is bad and ill-founded, shall deem all worthless.
Danger, too, that he take a transient impulse, personal
and fugitive, for a universal law ; follow a passion for
a principle, and come to naught; surrender his man
hood, his free will to his unreflecting instinct, become
subordinate thereto. Men that are transcendental-mad
we have all seen in morals; to be transcendental-wise,
sober, is another thing. The notion that every impulse
is to be followed, every instinct totally obeyed, will put
man among the beasts, not angels.
IV. In religion. Transcendentalism admits a re
ligious faculty, element, or nature in man, as it admits
a moral, intellectual and sensational faculty, — that
man by nature is a religious being as well as moral, in
tellectual, sensational ; that this religious faculty is ade
quate to its purposes and wants, as much so as the oth
ers, as the eye acquainting us with light ; and that this
faculty is the source of religious emotions, of the senti
ments of adoration, worship. Through this we have
consciousness of God as through the senses consciousness
of matter. In connection with reason it gives us the
primary ideas of religion, ideas which transcend ex
perience. Now the transcendental philosophy legitimates the
ideas of religion by reference to human nature. Some
of them it finds truths of necessity, which cannot be

32 MATTER AND SPIRIT
conceived of as false or unreal without violence to rea
son ; some it finds are truths of consciousness, — of
spontaneous consciousness, or intuition ; some, truths of
voluntary consciousness, or demonstration, inductive or
deductive. Such ideas, capable of this legitimation,
transcend experience, require and admit no further
proof; as true before experience as after; true before
time, after time, eternally; absolutely true. On that
rock transcendentalism founds religion, sees its founda
tion, and doubts no more of religious truths than of
the truths of mathematics. All the truths of religion
it finds can be verified in consciousness to-day, what
cannot is not religion. But it does not neglect experi
ence. In human history it finds confirmations, illustra
tions, of the ideas of human nature, for history repre
sents the attempt of mankind to develop human nature.
So then as transcendentalism in philosophy legitimates
religion by a reference to truths of necessity, to truths
of consciousness, it illustrates religion by facts of ob
servation, facts of testimony.
By sensationalism religious faith is a belief, more or
less strange, in a probability, a credibility, a possibil
ity. By transcendentalism religious faith is the nor
mal action of the whole spiritual nature of man, which
gives him certain knowledge of a certainty not yet at
tainable by experience ; where understanding ends, faith
begins, and out-travels the understanding. Religion
is natural to man, is justice, piety — free justice, free
piety, free thought. The form thereof should fit the
individual; hence there will be a unity of substance,
diversity of form. So a transcendental religion de
mands a transcendental theology.
1. The transcendental philosophy appears in its doc
trine of God. The idea of God is a fact given in the

TRANSCENDENTALISM 33
consciousness of man ; consciousness of the infinite is
the condition of a consciousness of the finite. I learn
of a Tmite thing by sensation, I get an idea thereof ;
at the same time the idea of the infinite unfolds in me.
I am not conscious of my own existence except as a
finite existence, that is, as a dependent existence; and
the idea of the infinite, of God on whom I depend, comes
at the same time as the logical correlative of a knowl
edge of myself. So the existence of God is a cer
tainty ; I am as certain of that as of my own existence.
Indeed without that knowledge I know nothing. Of
this I am certain, — I am ; but of this as certain, — God
is ; for if I am, and am finite and dependent, then this
presupposes the infinite and independent. So the idea
of God is a priori; rests on facts of necessity, on facts
of consciousness. Then transcendentalism uses the other mode, the
a posteriori. Starting with the infinite, it finds signs
and proofs of him everywhere, and gains evidence of
God's existence in the limits of sensational observation ;
the thing refers to its maker, the thought to the mind,
the effect to the cause, the created to the creator, the
finite to the infinite; at the end of my arms are two
major prophets, ten minor prophets, each of them
pointing the transcendental philosopher to the infinite
God, of which he has consciousness without the logical
process of induction.
Then the character of God as given in the idea of
him, given in consciousness, — that represents God as a
being, not with the limitations of impersonality (that
is to confound God with matter) ; not with the limita
tions of personality (that confounds him with man) ;
but God with no limitations, infinite, absolute; looked
at from sensation, infinite power; from thought, in-
1—3

34 MATTER AND SPIRIT
finite intellect ; from the moral sense, infinite conscience ;
from the emotional, infinite affection; from the re
ligious, infinite soul ; from all truth, the whole human
nature names him Infinite Father!
God is immanent in matter, so it is ; immanent in
spirit, so it is. He acts also as God in matter and
spirit, acts perfectly; laws of matter or of spirit are
modes of God's acting, being; as God is perfect, so"
the mode of his action is perfect and unchangeable.
Therefore, as God is ever in matter and spirit, and
where God is is wholly God active, so no intervention is
possible. God cannot come where he already is, so no
miracle is possible. A miracle a parte humana is a vio
lation of what is a law to man ; a miracle to God — a
parte divind — is a violation of what is law to God : the
most extraordinary things that have been seem miracles
a parte humana, — laws, a parte divind. But though
God is immanent in matter and in spirit, he yet tran
scends both matter and spirit, has no limitations. In
deed all perfection of immanence and transcendence
belong to him, — the perfection of existence, infinite
being ; the perfection of space, immensity ; the perfec
tion of time, eternity; of power, all-mightiness; of
mind, all-knowingness ; of affection, all-lovingness ; of
will, absolute freedom, absolute justice, absolute right.
His providence is not merely general, but universal,
so special in each thing. Hence the universe partakes
of his perfection, is a perfect universe for the end he
made it for.
2. The doctrine of the soul. This teaches that man
by pature is immortal. This doctrine it legitimates: 1.
By reference to facts of consciousness that men feel in
general; in the heart it finds the longing after immor
tality, in the mind the idea of immortality, in religious

TRANSCENDENTALISM 85
consciousness the faith in immortality, in human nature
altogether the strong confidence and continued trust
therein. 2. It refers also to the nature of God, and
reasons thus: God is all-powerful and can do the best;
all-wise, and can know it; all-good, and must will it;
immortality is the best, therefore it is. All this an
ticipates experience a priori. 3. It refers to the gen
eral arrangements of the world, where everything gets
ripe, matures, but man. In the history of mankind
it finds confirmation of this doctrine, for every rude
race and all civilized tribes have been certain of im
mortality ; but here and there are men, sad and unfor
tunate, who have not by the mind legitimated the facts
of spontaneous consciousness, whose nature the sensa
tional philosophy has made blind, and they doubt or
deny what nature spontaneously affirms.
The nature of God being such, he immanent and
active in matter and spirit; the nature of man such,
so provided with faculties to love the true, the just,
the fair, the good, — it follows that man is capable of
inspiration from God, communion with God; not in
raptures, not by miracle, but by the sober use of all his
faculties, moral, intellectual, affectional, religious. The
condition thereof is this, the faithful use of human
nature, the coincidence of mail's will with God's. In
spiration is proportionate to the man's quantity of
being, made up of a constant and a variable, his quan
tity of gifts, his quantity of faithful use. In this way
transcendentalism can legitimate the highest inspira
tion, and explain the genius of God's noblest son, not
as monstrous, but natural. In religion as in all things
else there has been a progressive development of man
kind. The world is a school, prophets, saints, saviours,
men more eminently gifted and faithful, and so most

36 MATTER AND SPHUT
eminently inspired, — they are the school-masters to
lead men up to God.
There is danger in this matter also lest the tran
scendental religionist should despise the past and its
sober teachings, should take a fancy personal and fugi
tive for a fact of universal consciousness, embrace a
cloud for an angel, and miserably perish. It is not for
man to transcend his faculties, to be above himself,
above reason, conscience, affection, religious trust. It
is easy to turn off from these and be out of reason, con
science, affection, religion — beside himself. Madmen
in religion are not rare, enthusiasts, fanatics.
The sensational philosophy, with all its evils, has done
the world great service. It has stood up for the body,
for common sense, protested against spiritual tyranny,
against the spiritualism of the middle ages which
thought the senses wicked and the material world pro
fane. To sensationalism we are indebted for the great
advance of mankind in physical science, in discovery,
arts, mechanics, and for many improvements in govern
ment. Some of its men are great names, — Bacon,
Locke, Newton. Let us do them no dishonor ; they saw
what they could, told it; they saw not all things that
are, saw some which are not. In our day no one of
them would be content with the philosophy they all
agreed in then. Hobbes and Hume have done us ser
vice; the Socinians, Priestley, Collins, Berkeley, Dod
well, Mandeville, Edwards. To take the good and
leave the ill is our part; but the doubts which this
philosophy raises, the doubt of Hume, the doubt of
Hobbes, of the English Deists in general, do not get
answered by this philosophy. For this we have weap
ons forged by other hands, tempered in another spring.

TRANSCENDENTALISM 37
Transcendentalism has a work to do, to show that
physics, politics, ethics, religion rest on facts of neces
sity, facts of intuition, facts of demonstration, and
have their witness and confirmation in facts of observa
tion. It is the work of transcendentalism to give us
politics which represent God's thought of a state, —
the whole world, each man free ; to give us morals which
leave the man a complete individual, no chord rent from
the human harp, — yet complete in his social character,
no string discordant in the social choir ; to give us reli
gion worthy of God and man, — free goodness, free
piety, free thought. That is not to be done by talking
at random, not by idleness, not by railing at authority,
calumniating the past or the present ; not by idle brains
with open mouth, who outrage common sense; but by
diligent toil, brave discipline, patience to wait, patience
to work. Nothing""come% of nothing, foolishness of
fools; but something from something, wise thought
from thinking men ; and of the wise thought comes a
lovely deed, life, laws, institutions for mankind.
The problem of transcendental philosophy is no less
than this, to revise the experience of mankind and try
its teachings by the nature of mankind ; to test ethics
by conscience, science by reason; to try the creeds of
the churches, the constitutions of the states by the con
stitution of the universe; to reverse what is wrong,
supply what is wanting, and command the just. To
do this in a nation like ours, blinded still by the sensa
tional philosophy, devoted chiefly to material interests,
its politics guided by the madness of party more than
sober reason ; to do this in a race like the Anglo-Saxon,
which has an obstinate leaning to a sensational philoso
phy, which loves facts of experience, not ideas of con
sciousness, and believes not in the First-Fair, First-

38 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Perfect, First-Good, is no light work; not to be taken
in hand by such as cannot bear the strife of tongues,
the toil, the heat, the war of thought ; not to be accom
plished by a single man, however well-born and well-
bred ; not by a single age and race. It has little of
history behind, for this philosophy is young. It looks
to a future, a future to be made; a church whose creed
is truth, whose worship love; a society full of industry
and abundance, full of wisdom, virtue, and the poetry
of life ; a state with unity among all, with freedom for
each; a church without tyranny, a society without
ignorance, want, or crime, a state without oppression ;
yes, a world with no war among the nations to consume
the work of their hands, and no restrictive policy to
hinder the welfare of mankind. That is the human
dream of the transcendental philosophy. Shall it ever
become a fact? History says, No ; human nature says,
Yes.

II

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS AND RE
LIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS
Religion is one of the most important of the concerns
of man. It comes from the deepest and most powerful
of all our spiritual faculties. More than any one ele
ment of consciousness it helps mould the character of
the individual and the nation. The ideas we form of
God, of man, of the relation between them, of the mode
of learning our religious duty, and of our final con
dition in the future world — these affect all the con
cerns of the nation. For they found institutions which
shape the politics, the business, and the literature of
the people, so ultimately determining their condition
for weal and woe. The theology of Spain is one of
the prime causes of her ruin ; American slavery not only
has one of its roots in the selfishness of the planter
and the politician, but also another under the meeting
house, where it is watered by the eaves-droppings of
the popular theology. At the opening of a new place
for religious meetings, which is already consecrated
thereunto by your presence and the prayer of your
heart, I ask your attention to some thoughts on the rela
tion between the theological institutions and the reli
gious consciousness of the American people.
In the historical progress of many thousand years,
out of material nature man has developed all the visible
property of the ten hundred million inhabitants of
earth. Thence come the pastures, farms, and gardens;
the houses, markets, temples, roads of earth, wood,
39

40 MATTER AND SPIRIT
stone, or iron ; the towns and cities, the forts and fleets ;
all the tools of industry or destruction ; the instruments
for use; the ornaments for beauty. All these are
of human creation — thoughts organized in things.
Man's mind is their father; the world of matter is the
mother thereof. God made us spirit ; he gives us mat
ter, and thence have we made all these things which
constitute the world of art.
This world of art, thought organized in matter, con
tains at present two parts: First, What we inherit
— our traditional part ; and second, What we create —
our original part. The traditional requires to be
looked over anew. Some of it is of present value and
will last longer, perhaps for ever; some of it is no
more fit for present use, but must be left to perish,
the new and better taking its place. When Xerxes
invaded Europe draw-bows were his best weapons of
attack, his arrows darkened the air of Thermopylae;
now the allied armies at Sebastopol have not a bow
string in all their scientific camp. Once a hatchet of
stone was mankind's best tool for creative industry ; now
axes of steel have driven the tomahawk out of all
markets. All this world of art shares the progress of man;
becomes greater in quantity, nicer in quality. It is
amenable to perpetual improvement; is revised con
tinually, the good kept, the useless left to perish.
Time winnows all harvests with rugged breath — great
clouds of chaff go flying all abroad, while the useful
grain is thankfully gathered up. The highway of
history is marked by works abandoned, tools that have
served out their time, superseded, disbanded, left alone.
This all men agree to. None refuses bread because
his father once fed on acorns and beech-nuts; no

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 41
woman disdains to ride well-clad in a railroad car,
because her mothers only walked, and that barefoot
and naked. And what an odds between the savage's
world of art and yours to-day ; between this " Indian
country " of 1555, and the Pennsylvania of 1855 ! All
this difference comes from the civilized thought mixed
with the savage world of matter. The advance is pro
gression by experiment, wherein many attempts fail.
Of all the inventions recorded in the Patent Office, how
few are adopted into permanent use! the rest are
winnowed off as chaff. But without the straw there
could have been no corn.
In his historic progress, out of human nature man
develops feelings, thoughts, and actions, and thence
forms institutions, art, languages, laws, sciences, states,
societies, and the like. All these together make up the
world of institutions. A machine is a contrivance of
thought organized in matter; an institution a contri
vance of thought organized in man. Of each there are
many forms.
All the feelings, all the thoughts, all the actions,
with all the manifold institutions of these thousand
million men now on earth, have grown out of human
nature, and correspond to the degree of man's pro
gressive culture thereof; just as all the vegetation of
the earth has grown out of its soil, and represents its
climate, the richness of the ground and the advance
of the season, all varying continually. Since the world
was created all vegetation has been domestic develop
ment, not foreign importation; not a camomile flower,
not an apple-seed has been brought in from abroad or
could have been. These institutions have come partly
from the instincts of men acting blindly, not knowing

42 MATTER AND SPIRIT
whither they went ; partly also from deliberate affection
and conscious will, men setting a purpose and then
devising means for that end. But all these institutions
are of human origin, as much so as the machines ; the
family and the state not less than the axe of stone or
iron, the farm or the railroad.
In our world of institutions there are also two parts
— the inherited, and the newly created. Each par
takes of the character of the age whence it came. The
traditional must be revised ; some of it is good for the
present, nay, for all time ; some must be left to perish.
The original will be winnowed in the same way by such
as come after us. Once the polygamous family of the
savage, with his captive wives whom force subordinated
to him but no mutual love conjoined, was the best
domestic institution of mankind. A military despotism
was once the best tool man had devised for political
work. Where are such things now? Human history
is marked by the institutions cast off and left behind.
What once is borne as the banner in front of humanity,
the symbol of its purpose and the gathering point of
its heroes, is one day thrown down in the dust as a
worthless rag, and trodden by the rear-guard, nay, by
the very stragglers of mankind. How many " settled
opinions " of philosophers have perished ; how much
" immortal literature " has gone to the ground ; while
laws of Medes and Persians have been repealed by the
supreme court of time, and become obsolete and for
gotten by humanity. You may trace man's path
through time as space by what he abandons. Ancient
arrows and pestles are turned up by the farmer's
plough, ancient policies and philosophies by the spade
of the scholar; forms of the family or of the state
successively built up out of human nature and sue-

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 43
cessively crumbling down. In two thousand years the
most progressive portion of the Anglo-Saxon tribe has
left behind it absolute monarchy, limited monarchy,
and aristocracy. In thirty or forty thousand years
how much has the human race passed by! All these
institutions, like the machines of the world of art, are
amenable to perpetual improvement, subject to con
tinual revision in the progressive development of man
kind. You and I are not ashamed of a democracy be
cause our fathers once swore allegiance to William the
Conqueror, or patiently bore the yoke of Henry VIII.
What a difference between the savage's world of
institutions and that of the civilized man ; between this
" Indian country " of 1555, and the Pennsylvania of
to-day, with your world of institutions, arts, sciences,
literature — domestic, social, and political customs.
But all of this comes out of human nature, one attempt
made after the other, many failing. Here also the
advance is through progression by experiment. Look
over the seventy volumes of statutes of the British
realm — through the history of medicine or machinery
— see how much has become worthless, obsolete, and
worn-out: laws lying there like spent bullets flattened
out and rusted through; engines exploded long ago;
medicines which humanity no longer swallows down;
these are the potsherds and arrow-heads which mark the
track of mankind. Half the weeds of our fields were
brought here as herbs indispensable to man.
In an institution the chief thing to look at is the idea
it represents, the primordial thought; for that is the
human mould in which the human substance of the insti
tution is cast, and as the sheep are filled "according to
their pasture," so the institution is like the idea which

44 MATTER AND SPIRIT
controls its shape. In thought you melt away all the
matter of the solar system, conceiving of the sun and
planets as mere mathematic points of force, and by
this abstraction you can easier understand the mechan
ism of the heavens. In like manner, from institutions
you may dissolve away the men who form them or
are formed thereby, and consider only the ideas they
represent, and by this abstraction the easier and better
understand the mechanism of humanity.
In all nations above the mere naked wild man, you
find sentiments, ideas, and actions, which have come
from the religious element in human nature. Let the
word religion stand here for the service and worship
which man pays to his conception of God, whatever
that may be. Theology is the science of religion.
The intellect, reflecting on facts of religious conscious
ness, or on observations thereof in others, produces
theology, just as it produces science from facts of
consciousness and from facts of observation in the
material world. The ideas which men form on what
pertains to relio-ion get organized into peculiar
forms. Let me call them ecclesiastical institutions. They
are different in the various nations, and vary in the
same nation with its condition and culture. For, as
the products of vegetation are not the same in any
two zones, or counties, but follow the geographical
peculiarities of climate, position, soil, and the like, so
the ecclesiastical institutions — a product of the reli
gious element — in form and substance depend upon
the ethnographic peculiarities of the race, the tribe,
and nation, and vary with the degree of civilization
and general culture. So the theological ideas of
various nations, with the ecclesiastical institutions

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 45
thence arising, differ as much as the faunas and floras
of various countries.
These ecclesiastical institutions, including therein
all the emotions, ideas, and actions they embody, are
of human origin. They are the contrivances which
man makes for his purpose, his machinery of religion ;
the substance and the form are alike human. But as
the object of religious reverence is divine, not human,
so it comes to be alleged that these institutions come
down straightway from God. Astronomy deals with
the stars, and navigation with the deep: shall it then
be said that Newton's Principia and Blunt's Coast
Pilot came miraculous, the one from the heavens and
the other from the sea ? It were not more absurd. It
does not appear that any foreign element of thought
has been added to man's consciousness since the first
creation. There is perpetual development from within,
no importation from another sphere. As the world
of material nature was fashioned as a perfect means
for a perfect purpose, so the world of human nature
is equally adequate for its Creator's design, neither
getting nor needing additions from any foreign
source. All that is in human consciousness originated
there, from man's contact with his surroundings, and
from himself.
There is one great idea common to all ecclesiastical
institutions: the idea of God, the divine above the
human. All nations, above the wild man, agree in
this point — There is a God; but differ in the char
acter and conduct they ascribe to him. They agree
as to his being, and differ as to his being this or that.
For, as the plants of Nova Zembla differ from those
of Sumatra, npt less do the theological ideas of the

46 MATTER AND SPIRIT
savage differ from those of the civilized and enlight
ened. There are zones of religious as of material
vegetation, arctic and tropical.
In ecclesiastical institutions there is something which
is general human, and belongs to all forms of religion
coining from nations in that stage of development;
and also something else peculiar to the particular
people. So all men agree in what makes them men,
but differ in what makes one John and the other
James. In the last four or five thousand years there
have been seven great forms of religion, or ecclesiasti
cal institutions, in the world, — the Vedantic, Old
Indian of South Asia; the Hebrew; the Classic, Greek
and Roman; the Zoroastrian; the Buddhistic; the
Christian ; and the Mahometan, which have had a wide
and deep influence on the welfare of mankind. They
all have some things in common, while in others they
widely differ.
The religious element — call it the soul — begins
its activity with emotions, mere feelings; these lead
to thoughts, and they to actions; and thus, little by
little, ecclesiastical institutions get formed, the human
instrument or machinery for expressing the idea, em
bodying the action, and thus attaining the object of
the religious emotion. These institutions, like all
others, are of gradual formation. Their influence,
for good or ill, depends on the character of the idea
embodied therein, and on their fitness for the special
nation who accepts it. It is machinery in the human
mill. When an ecclesiastical institution is fixed, and
incapable of progressive amendment to suit the ad
vancing consciousness of the people, it is a curse; and
the nation which continually submits to it is first

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 47
hindered and finally destroyed thereby. But while
nations perish, mankind still survives; as the ocean
endures for ever, while wave after wave rises succes
sive and successive falls. If Spain be spiritually dead
— the once noble tree killed by clipping its limbs,
and girdling its trunk, and boring into its root — •
other trees spring out of the procreant earth and grow
to mighty columns of green beauty. A living and
progressive nation is continually altering its ecclesias
tic institutions, as it improves its other machinery,
industrial or political. Thus three thousand years
ago the ecclesiastic institutions of the Teutonic people
represented the old pagan ideas of divinity, and suited
the worship of Thor, Odin, or Hertha; the Teutons
outgrew this form of religion, and accepted the Roman
Christian ideas, with the Roman Christian institu
tions; these were at length passed by, and now most
of the Teutons have accepted the German Christian
ideas with the corresponding institutions, and are pre
paring for another progressive step.
Now in our present ecclesiastical institutions there
is an inherited and a newly-created part ; the old must
be revised, for while it contains what is true, and,
therefore, permanently good and fair, it has also
things good for once but not good for ever, and others
not good at all. What fits must be kept, the rest cast
off. For the ecclesiastical institutions, like all other
human contrivances, are amenable to perpetual im
provement, and must be made to represent the total
development of the nation which accepts and retains
them. There are now three great ecclesiastical institutions
which occupy the civilized and half -civilized parts of

48 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the world, — the Buddhistic, the Christian, the Ma
hometan. These represent the three great world-
sects into which the foremost nations are now divided.
The Christian is made up of Hebrew, Zoroastrian, and
classic elements; it contains also some things derived
from Jesus of Nazareth, and many more from Paul
of Tarsus, who systematized what Jesus begun; and
yet others, added from various sources since his time.
There are two things which pass under the name
of " Christianity." One is natural piety and morality
— the love of God and the keeping of his command
ments; I will here call this the Christian religion.
The other is a scheme of theological doctrines and
opinions which from time to time have accumulated,
and are now brought down to us with numerous ecclesi
astical ceremonies; I will call this the Christian the
ology, though in many important matters it differs
widely from the recorded doctrines and opinions of
Jesus himself.
It is this theology which shapes the ecclesiastical
institutions of Christendom; it is the idea whereof
they are the embodiment, the substance to which they
are the form. When priests and ministers speak of
" Christianity " they commonly mean the " Christian
theology," not the " Christian religion." Men who
believe this theology and comply with its circumja
cent ceremonies are called " Christians ; " not such as
have merely the " Christian religion," who are called
only "amiable men," "deists," "infidels," and the
like. To be " converted " is to accept this theology
with its ceremonies. When it is said, " Christianity
frees the slave, elevates woman, humanizes man, saves
the soul," the meaning is that this is done by the
Christian theology.

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 49
^ Now to understand the good and ill of these institu
tions, their relation to the religious consciousness of
the American people, and their consequent influence
on our present condition and future development,
let us look at some of the chief ideas therein — that
is, at some of the great theological doctrines of Chris
tendom itself. To do this I will treat of Christen
dom as a whole, looking only at the great bulk of
Christians, and neglecting certain small and excep
tional bodies who reject more or less of those ideas,
and whose power is only infinitesimal. For I do not
care to inquire after the fate of each single bucketful
of water ladled out to moisten a lady's rose-bush, but
to learn the general direction and current of the great
stream of influence which comes from these institu
tions. Dissolving away all accidental matter, I will look
only at some substantive ideas which are qualitatively
common to all Christendom after making the excep
tions above referred to. I omit also many excellent
doctrines which the Christian has in common with the
other world-sects, and some peculiar to itself, and ask
your attention to the five great false ideas of this
theology which are embodied in the ecclesiastical institu
tions of Christendom.
I. Of the false idea of God. — The ecclesiastical
idea of God represents him as deficient in all the great
essentials of Deity except eternal self -existence. He
is imperfect in power, in wisdom, in justice, in benevo
lence, and in holiness — fidelity to himself.
1. Imperfect in power. — He cannot accomplish
his purpose; the devil, his perpetual enemy, routs him
in every great battle, and at last will fill an immense
1—4

50 MATTER AND SPIRIT
hell with the damned, the pick and flower of all the
world, who stream thither in vast crowds, overflowing
the broad way to destruction, while the narrow road
which leads the elect to salvation is thinly dotted
" with here and there a traveller."
2. Imperfect in wisdom. — He does not know how
his own contrivance will work until set a-going; and
then its wheels do not run in human history as in the
divine head. Thus the " Fall " of Adam is as much
a surprise to God as to man; only the serpent under
stood it beforehand. The wickedness of the human
race, both before and after the " flood," is an aston
ishment to God, who repented that he had made man,
the work proving so defective and even pernicious.
God learns by experiments, whereof many turn out
failures; so he must destroy his work and try again,
not always succeeding the second or third time — nor
even in the end.
3. Imperfect in justice. — He often violates the
moral sense which he has put into human nature, is
deceitful and intensely cruel: witness the command to
Abraham for sacrificing Isaac, to Moses to butcher the
Canaanites ; witness the triumph of the " Lamb " in
the book of Revelation, with his oriental army of two
hundred million cavalry, destroying a third part of
the human race in one quarter of the world, and the
rest of his military servants in the western quarter,
in one campaign making a spot of blood on the ground
two hundred miles in its shortest diameter and thirty-
six inches deep.
All this is represented, not as an incident in the his
torical development of man, or as instrumental to
some advantage for any one, but only as a voluntary
purpose in the consciousness of God, an end in it-

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 51
self, the calculated achievement of his spontaneous
providence. 4. Imperfect in his benevolence. — For while he
loves some he hates more, and continually creates men
fore-doomed to eternal damnation. He is a jealous
God, and gives " salvation " in the stingiest way.
Nay, voluntarily and on purpose, he created the devil,
who is now a being absolutely evil. Of course he cre
ated him out of the absolute evil which was in himself ;
there could be no other source for this material, for
God's nature is a terminality of beginning as well as
his purpose a finality of ending — from an evil motive,
for an evil purpose, and as an appropriate means
thereunto. The devil is not merely a mistake and a failure, but
an intended marplot of the universe, a premeditated
contradiction. This fly in the ointment of the apothe
cary does no good in heaven, earth, or hell, and is de
vised and intended for no good, helping neither any
benevolent purpose of God, nor the development of
man. 5. Imperfect in his holiness. — He does not keep
the integrity of his consciousness, but wilfully vio
lates his own better feelings. Thus he miraculously
hardens Pharaoh's heart, bewildering his counsels;
sends an evil spirit to Saul, and stealthily excites
David to number the people of Israel that he might
take vengeance upon them, thus deceiving with inspira
tion! It is plain that no Christian sect conceives of God
as infinitely perfect in power, wisdom, justice, benevo
lence, and holiness. In their general description they
all claim absolute perfection for their notion of Deity ;
in their specific details of character and conduct they

52 MATTER AND SPIRIT
all deny it. The idea of the infinitely perfect God is
foreign to the Christian theology.
II. Of the false idea of man. — Man was created
" in the image and likeness of God," but so badly
made that he became an easy prey to the devil. His
first step was a " fall," which so damaged his " na
ture " that ever since it has been " corrupt ; " his
action, even his thoughts " only evil continually."
His body is damaged, and unnaturally mortal, at
present not even living out a tithe of the original
years of even fallen man ; his mind — and he cannot
distinguish between truth and error, unless a miracle
intervene, nor always then; his conscience — he does
not know good from evil; his heart — which is per
verse and desperately wicked ; his soul — that of itself
would neither love nor even know God, or its own
immortality. He is " depraved," if not " totally " —
which is the instantial opinion of Christendom — at
least " generally " and " effectually," so that he is
substantially good for nothing; in his flesh and his
spirit there is " no good thing ! " He is immortal, so
much the worse for him! What avails it to increase
the quantity of human life while the quality is so bad
and the ultimate ruin made sure of beforehand?
Damnation alone waits for the souls of the mass of
men. He can find out nothing certain about God ; all
the holy men who taught new religious truth to man
kind did not actively learn the truth as men, but only
passively received it from God, as bare pipes through
which his " Revelation " flowed forth : they did not
normally find out a truth, but God miraculously gave
them a commandment.
All the rest of God's works are " perfect ; " they

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 53
turn out as he meant, and are adequate means for his
purposes ; but man is a failure — this wheel does not
run well in the universal mill, nor accomplish the pur
pose it was intended for! Nay, with all manner of
watching and mending, and lubricating with miracles,
it works very ill, and God is sorry he made man on
the earth, and it grieves him at his heart! Man's
hand is perfect, his eye, his foot — the nervous system
is complete and perfect as the solar system; but his
" nature," his " heart," is evil, and only evil, and that
continually !
III. Of the false idea of the relation be
tween God and man. — There is an antagonism
between the two, total and eternal — their " natures "
irreconcilably conflicting; depraved man at variance
with imperfect God! History is chiefly the record
of this mutual hostility and conflict, the story of man's
rebellion and God's vengeance therefor! Nay, the
earth is a monument of the never-ending battle; the
earthquakes and whirlwinds of its great elements, the
thorns and thistles of vegetation, the strife of beasts
of prey, and the " minor note " of the birds, all are
alike the consequence and the memorial of this prime
val but perpetual falling out between man and God.
Eternity will repeat the antagonism, for as God once
swept off procreant mankind by a transient flood of
water, sparing but eight from a world of men, so at
last he will ruin the majority of the whole human
race in a permanent deluge of fire, wherein the million
generations of men, each millions of millions strong,
shall " perish everlastingly," in never-ending fiery rot,
while he and the devil alone shall take delight in this
flaming massacre, this funeral pile of humanity, where

54 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the worm of agony dieth not in the fire of his wrath,
which is not quenched for ever and ever. So perish
able earth and ever-enduring hell are alike mementoes
of this antagonistic relation ; and God and his enemy,
the Creator and the destroyer, are made one in their
delight over the torment of the human race; the devil
gladdened that they fall and are " lost " from heaven,
God rejoicing that they are damned and " found " in
hell! All the rest of man's history is but an exception;
sin, misery, damnation are instantial, the general rule.
A golden thread of divine grace runs through the
human web, whereon are strung a few pearls of great
price — patriarchs and prophets, saints and the elect
— a fleck of white in a whole field of sackcloth, which
" poor human nature " continually weaves up, and
dyes Egyptian black in the gall of inherited sin, the
colour fast set and bitten in by the necessitated guilt
of the individual.
In the ecclesiastical conception of God there is a
deep back-ground of evil. Now and then the myste
rious cloud is miraculously lifted and lets men see the
mountain summits of anger, vengeance, jealousy, and
hate, and imagine the whole chain of malignity, Andes
and Himmalayas of wrath, hid underneath the veil.
There is not a book in the Bible which justifies the
inference that God loves his children who die in wick
edness, or that his hell is for the welfare of its mel
ancholy inmates, only for the vengeance of their
Creator. Out of this dark mass of evil in himself he created
the devil — absolutely evil — and hell; both to last
for ever, each a finality. The devil is also a child
of God, but not acknowledged — turned off, an out-

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 55
lying member of the Divine family, the Ishmael of the
universe, his hand against God, God's against him.
But after this mass of evil is subtracted and embodied
in the devil, it is plain that evil still preponderates in
the theological conception of God: for he does not
bring the human race to a close, but still goes on
creating new children of wrath, bowed down with the
" sin " of " Adam's fall," before their birth doomed
to eternal wretchedness. He might pardon, but he
will not; stop creation, but he keeps the world going
on, spawning whole shoals of, people wherewith to
fatten in hell! He might at least annihilate the
damned; but even that were too merciful for his vin
dictive wrath; they must writhe in their agony for
ever and ever!
Yet, though evil so far preponderates in the ecclesi
astical idea of God, as shown in his conduct, some
humane mercy is also ascribed to him, with corre
sponding acts. He wishes to save a few brands from
the burning of the world, to give some other men
glimpses of a prospect of escape from ruin. So he
prepares a scheme of " redemption " for a few —
exceptions to the ruin of the rest.
IV. Of the false idea of inspiration. — God
communicated certain doctrines to various men, doc
trines of revelation. They were not found out by the
normal action of the various human faculties — intel
lectual, moral, affectional, and religious — for then
they would be of human origin, and, like other opin
ions, amenable to mankind ; but they were miraculously
given by God himself to men in an abnormal passivity
of their various human faculties ; and are, accordingly,
of divine origin, not at all amenable to mankind.

56 MATTER AND SPIRIT
They are foreign plants miraculously brought from
heaven and set out in our niggardly human soil. In
spiration takes place in this manner: the Spirit of
God takes transient or continuous possession of a
special person and acts through him; so the action is
God's, and not man's — God the artist, man the tool.
The doctrines thus miraculously communicated are
infallible and authoritative, the standard measure of
religion and morality. They are also a finality ; when
the revelation is once ended, nothing is ever to be added
thereto, nought taken away. Revelation to one man
is binding on all, thus words uttered by a half -civilized
Hebrew, many centuries ago, in a state of ecstasy,
or dream, or fit of wrath, must now be taken for the
infallible oracles of God, by a man born with the high
est genius and furnished with the most ample culture
which the human race can bestow. He must accept
every doctrine of revelation, though in direct variance
with the noblest instincts of human nature and the
demonstrations of human science. These doctrines of
revelation, thus actively communicated by God and
passively received by some man, are to be accounted as
the primitive source of theological ideas, the fountain
of all our knowledge of God and what pertains to
religion; human reflection and imagination may only
develop, but must not transcend, what lies latent in
these seeds of knowledge!
V. Of the false idea of salvation. — In conse
quence of the misstep and " fall " of Adam, God is
permanently angry with the human race and inclined
to damn all men to eternal torment. But his wrath
has been somewhat mitigated, appeased and diverted
from certain persons in this manner ; the Divine Being

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 57
is composed of three undivided personalities, who are
equal in all respects. The second person, called the
Son, though eternal and self-subsistent, as much as
the first person, the Father — by his own will and con
sent becomes a man, " incarnated " in Jesus of Naz
areth, " the only begotten Son of God," " born of a
virgin," with no other human parent. He takes on
himself all the wrath which God the Father felt for
mankind, is crucified, and thus one undivided third
part of the unchangeable and eternal God dies, yet
the sum total of Godhead is not diminished by this
temporary subtraction, but comes to life again and
rises from the dead. The " sufferings " of the Son
are an " infinite expiation " and " satisfaction " to
God for the sins of men, who may thus escape from
hell by his " vicarious atonement." His " merits "
are transferred to their account, and they may advance
to heaven through his " imputed righteousness," the
" divine condition " of salvation. But men receive
this divine salvation — deliverance from hell by vica
rious atonement, and admission to heaven by imputed
righteousness — on certain terms, the " human condi
tion " of salvation. And the terms are such that, of
all who have hitherto lived, the " saved " are a most
pitiful fraction compared to the " lost ! " Hell is
roomy and crowded, while heaven is narrow, but with
many mansions all unoccupied! The great mass of
men, before their birth, are doomed to eternal torment,
whence no act of theirs can set them free. The whole
" scheme of redemption," with the doctrines of revela
tion, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of
one undivided third part of the Godhead, salvation by
Christ, has no other result but to save a handful,
gleaned miraculously from the earthly field, while the

58 MATTER AND SPIRIT
great bulk of the human harvest, grown in so many
centuries and reaped down by death, is shooked up by
the devil for the threshing-floor of hell, where he and
his angels shall flail at them for ever and ever, and
winnow them with a fiery tempest of wrath, which lasts
throughout all eternity.
These five false ideas are common to the three great
parties into which the Christian sect is divided — to
the Greek church, the Latin church, and the German
church. They all share the idea of an imperfect God ;
of a depraved and almost worthless human nature;
of a relation of perpetual antagonism between God the
Creator and man his work; of a miraculous inspira
tion, limited to a few persons ; of a vicarious salvation,
which helps only a few, while it leaves the great major
ity of mankind to perish for ever. These five false
ideas are the chief thing in these ecclesiastical institu
tions, which take thence their peculiar form and special
activity. Omit, for the present, the specialties of the Greek
church, which does not now influence the destinies of
America, and consider, for a moment, the peculiar doc
trine of the Latin and German churches, the other
two-thirds of Christendom. To the above five points
common to all Christendom, the Latin or Roman Cath
olic church adds these two ideas.
I. The Roman church — that is, practically, the
clergy thereof — are the sole depositary of the miracu
lous revelation, and are still miraculously and infalli
bly inspired. They alone have, in its fulness, the
traditional part of the ecclesiastical institution, as well
oral as written; they alone can produce the original
part, which is only a development of the germ in the

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 59
old. Thus they, and they alone, can interpret the
divine ideas of revelation and administer the divine
institutions thence arising. They continue the state
of inspiration, miraculously preserving the old, mirac
ulously developing the new.
The Roman church — that is, practically, its clergy
— is the exclusive steward of this " salvation by
Christ," appointed as the agent of God with a special
power of attorney from him to do all matters and
things which he might do were he actually resident
on the earth, whence he has now withdrawn and se
ceded. The Roman church is to dictate the terms on
which this salvation shall be served out to nations and
individual persons; to bind or loose in doctrine, ad
vancing men to heaven, or relegating them to hell.
She is the actual vicegerent and representative of God
on earth, substantially is God.
In virtue of these two ideas, the Roman church
determines the doctrines to be believed and the deeds
to be done as a condition of salvation. She is a
finality, is the norm of faith and works. Conformity
therewith is the exclusive condition of present favor
and final acceptance with God. There must be no
ultimate free spiritual individuality in religious mat
ters, no private judgment in theology, as she is God's
vicar to determine theological thought and religious
action, for each individual taking the place of mind
and conscience, heart and soul; and as the human
faculties are " totally depraved," and she " infallibly
inspired," it is a great gain for the human race to
have their spiritual work done for them by so compe
tent a hand.
The Roman church claims to be a divine institution,
not at all human in origin, function, or responsibility,

60 MATTER AND SPIRIT
but wholly of God ; and even to him amenable only as
a part of himself, an expansion of the Godhead. No
amount of contradiction in the Catholic doctrines, or of
wickedness in the infallible heads of the church, dimin
ishes the divinity of the institution. She is one and
indivisible, with absolute unity of doctrinal substance
and practical form; no sects can be allowed, no his
torical progress in doctrine, for the ultimatum was
attained at the very beginning. Accordingly the
function of the Catholic priest is to administer the
miraculous revelation, to dictate with authority the
doctrines to be believed, the work to be done, and to
communicate the vicarious salvation.
II. The German or Protestant church, entertaining
these five false ideas common to Christendom, rejects
the two subsidiary which are proper only to the Roman
church, and develops this, which is her own peculiar
and distinctive opinion: The Scriptures of the Old
and New Testament are the sole depository of the
miraculous revelation; they determine the doctrines to
be believed, the works to be done, the conditions of
salvation. They are the finality, the norm of faith
and works. Conformity with them is the indispen
sable condition of present favor and final acceptance
with God. Men must take the Bible as master; it is
divine in origin, function, and responsibility; nay, it
is only an expansion of God. To the Catholic the
Latin church is God, deity embodied in the priesthood;
to the Protestant the Bible is God, deity bound up in
a collection of books. The Bible contains all that
man needs in theological matters, now and hereafter,
all he can ever get, for it is not only God's word, but
his last word, his last will and testament, for though

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 61
living elsewhere he is now seceded and deceased from
all direct communication with man. There is no in
spiration now; it is all ended, the stream run dry.
The Bible is signed, sealed, and delivered as and for
the last will and testament of Almighty God.
But as there is no miraculous expounder of the
miraculous revelation, every man may and must inter
pret the Bible for himself. This is the weak part of
this ecclesiastical institution considered as a finality:
each man has the right of private judgment, to deter
mine the canon, what is Scripture ; and the interpreta
tion, what Scripture means. There may be individ
uality of opinion in religion as elsewhere. Within
the lids of the Bible there is room for speculation.
Nay, logically, the authority of the Bible itself is to
be proved to the satisfaction of the individual before
he accepts it as his master. Hence there can be no
unity of doctrine or of form with the Protestants;
and at the beginning the Teutonic individualism clove
the new church into many parties, each having the
general opinions of Protestantism and the special
notions of Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and so
forth. The function of the Protestant minister is to admin
ister the Bible, which contains the miraculous balm
of salvation for the sin of depraved human nature ; he
must set forth the most important parts of the Bible,
the doctrines, which are the essential and medicative
substance of this balm. Hence come the efforts to dis
tribute the Bible — the word of God — and doctrinal
tracts, which contain the extract of Bible, the quintes
sence of the word of God. For as the strength of
Samson lay not in his bones, and muscles, and sinews,
but only in his hair, so the efficient and salvatory power

62 MATTER AND SPIRIT
of the Bible lies not in those beautiful parts which
teach natural piety and natural morality, but only in
its theological doctrines, especially in those five false
ideas above set forth, which theological chemistry dis
tils therefrom.
In both the Catholic and the Protestant churches
all the fundamental theological doctrines are taught
on external authority ; the last appeal for the accept
ance of doctrines is not to the consciousness of the
individual believer pronouncing them just and true,
but to the miraculous revelation declaring them divine
commands; not to the Spirit of God now in me, but
what is alleged to have been the Spirit of God in some
man long since dead and gone. Science rests on facts
of consciousness and facts of observation, it is there
fore " profane ; " theology on the " said-so " of some
body, often of an anonymous writer in a rude and
uncertain age, and is " Divine." One has the evidence
of human nature in us, and the world of matter out
of us, and so roots into consciousness and observation ;
the other comes from the dictation of a minister or
a priest, who dogmatizes at will about man, God,
and the most important of all human concerns, and
does not root into our spontaneous or reflected con
sciousness, and like doctrines of philosophy grow
thence, but is only grasped by the will and thereby is
retained. In the Catholic church I ask, " What is truth ; what
is religion? " I am sent to the opinion of the Cath
olic church, which I must believe, not because it is true
— for that would imply that I can myself determine
what is true — but because the infallible church says
it must be believed. So, as evidence of a theological

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 63
doctrine — the existence of God, the immortality of
the soul — I have the word of a Roman priest !
In the Protestant church I ask the same question,
and am sent to the opinion of somebody in the New
Testament or the Old. I am told to believe the doc
trine, not because it is true, conformable to my own
nature, but because it is written in the infallible Scrip
tures. And as evidence for a theological doctrine —
the nature of God, or man, or daily duty — I have the
word of somebody in the Bible!
Thus in both divisions of the Western church the
free spirit of humanity is shut out, and we are referred
to an outward standard, not one within mankind. I
ask the Catholics, " How do you know your church is
infallible?" and the Protestant, "What is the proof
of the divinity and inf allibleness of your Bible ? " but
neither has any valid argument to offer ; each assumes
the chief point on which all else depends, and puts a
master on the neck of mankind. The inquirer is not
to ask, " What is true, conformable to the instincts
and reflections of human nature ? " only, " What is
ecclesiastical and of the church? or, What is Scrip
tural and of the Bible ? " Thus the outside caprice
of some man, often of some unknown man, is made
to take precedence of the facts of the universe. God
is postponed and a priest preferred.
What is yet worse, in both the Latin and the Ger
man church, much more stress is laid on the Christian
theology than on the Christian religion. Natural
piety, natural morality — the religion of human nature
— is thought good for nothing; stigmatized as
" deism," " infidelity," which " saves nobody," " good
to live with, not to die by." Religion is accessory,
theology principal.

64 MATTER AND SPIRIT
In the Christian theology there are doctrines, good
and bad, much older than Jesus, things from him and
his time, many from a later date. The Christian
church was the residuary legatee of the institutions it
slew, or which perished without such foreign aid. It
retained many of the best things of Hebrew and
heathen antiquity ; one thing it left out of its treasury,
free individuality of spirit, freedom in philosophy,
freedom in religion. Yet it was this which made the
moralists, poets, and philosophers of the heathen insti
tutions, the prophets and psalmists of the Hebrew in
stitutions; yes, it made Jesus and his apostles. The
church kept the child's swaddling bands, the fictitious
likeness of father and mother, the gossip of nurses,
and the little cradle, but it shook out the live baby ; it
kept the wonderful draught of fishes which toilsome
mankind had caught, called it " miraculous," and then
forbid all persons to cast net or angle in the great
deep of humanity, whence it had been taken. Here
after that ocean must be shunned as a dead sea; and
fishes therein must be held blasphemous, and burned
with the fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
There is one great scheme of theology common to
the Christian sects; it was gradually formed in the
dark and middle ages, and contains both good and
evil. It was a growth out of human nature, perhaps
as unavoidable, under the circumstances, as the par
ticular schemes of agriculture, or politics of that time,
coming as the feudal system, as alchemy, and astrol
ogy, and other experiments of man. Of course the
ecclesiastical institutions are no more supernatural
than the pattern of merchant-ships, or the constitution
of the republic of San Marino. Mistakes in the form
of religion — feelings, opinions, actions — are no

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 65
more surprising than mistakes in the form of the fam
ily or the community; false ideas in theology not
more astonishing than in philosophy or business, which
are all attempts at progress, and advance by experi
ment. But these ecclesiastical institutions are forced
on man as " divine," of " miraculous origin." The
Catholic priest says, " The church is all glorious, not
a spot or blemish on her," and " out of the church is
no salvation." The Protestant minister says, " The
Scriptures are all divine, no human wrinkle in the di
vine leaves, where inspiration yet flutters, and wherein
revelation is written; out of the Bible there is no
salvation ! " It is easy to be mistaken ; it is also not
difficult to deceive others, at least to make the at
tempt. Is this innocent error, or pernicious decep
tion? The clergy are the most learned body in
Christendom; are they also the most stupid? Men
will answer this question as they must. The church
and the state are ruled by men tempted alike, perhaps
equally honest. There is wicked legislation, wicked
doctrinization ; good also in both kinds.
These ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom
contain much good; but their worst things rest on
the same " divine revelation," and claim the same " su
pernatural authority." The same " revelation " gives
us God, and the dreadful malignity of God; a little
spot of heaven it gives us and then crowds humanity
down into its bottomless hell, roaring with that infer
nal sea's immeasurable taunt at our endless agony.
The same fountain gives us a little brook of sweet
fair water, enough for a household, and then drowns
the world in a deluge of hell-fire.
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link; if the
rest be of iron, and one joint only be of straw, when
1—5

66 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the weight is put on the chain snaps in its weakest
part. With these notorious faults in it, the " mi
raculous communication from God," its " infallible
revelation," the " authoritative rule," is good for noth
ing ; its " hell " destroys its " heaven," and the malig
nant and foolish character it ascribes to God makes
its testimony as to the existence of God utterly worth
less. The chain which let down God to our sight
breaks off at the link of devil. Allow me to take the
chain to pieces, and use the good sound metal, either
in its present form when thus serviceable, or as old
iron to be heated afresh and wrought into new shapes
for use or beauty, it is of great worth. The links of
sand and straw may go for what they are worth, the
magazine of iron serves our purpose. But if we must
use it as a chain, it is not only good for nothing,
holding no weight, but still worse than nothing, fail
ing when we rely on it most, and, beside that, falling
upon our heads.
But what can stand against the spirit of man
kind? Chain the wind! Let me see you! It blow-
eth where it listeth. In the sixteenth century the
free-thinkers of Europe, who were only the head of a
column of doubt which reached across the dark ages,
attacked the infallibility of the Romish church.
Down went the outer wall, and through its wide breach
all North Germany, Scandinavia, Anglo- Saxondom,
with half Holland and Switzerland, marched forth to
new fields. In vain did atheistic Rome let off her
mock lightnings and stage thunders . at Luther and
Calvin; the Latin herd of bulls went down before the
terrible charge of Teutonic horse, led by such cham
pions as Gustavus and Cromwell. The whole camp
of Christian theology was in confusion.

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 67
Other free-thinkers followed; the Socinians, with
their coadjutors, attacked the Trinity. " God is
one," said they, "not triple; Jesus is not Jehovah;
the Son not the Father. God cannot be born, be a
baby, a boy, a man, and then die. It is not in the
Bible ; if it were, we would believe it ; we renounce the
Trinity." So there rose up the Unitarians; not very
numerous, but powerful through their arguments and
character. In turn the Trinitarians screamed their
maledictions. " You are no followers of Jesus, not
Christians ; you have denied the Lord that bought you.
God not die ! Did not God the Father * make bare
his red right arm, and on Calvary stab through and
kill his only begotten Son? ' Without God mani
fested in Christ, we should not know any God at all.
You are Atheists ! " But a new breach was made in
the mediasval wall of Christendom, and other men
marched forth. The whole citadel of theology was
again in peril.
Then kind-hearted men, free-thinking further yet,
said, " There can be no such thing as eternal dam
nation; God is not a devil, he is a Father; there is no
future torment at all, or if any, it is correction in love,
not revenge in hate. Listen to all these blessed beati
tudes of Old Testament and New ; eternal hell is not in
the Bible: if it were we should believe it." A great
outcry was made against these lovers of mankind.
"What! give up hell; our own eternal hell?" ex
claimed the damnationists. " You have taken away
our Lord, and we know not where you have laid him ;
there can be no religion if eternal torment do not
scare depraved man out of his senses." Still this de
nial went on and multiplied, and a third great breach
was made in the battled wall, while all the ecclesiasti-

68 MATTER AND SPIRIT
cal institutions shook as hell was wrenched away from
underneath that corner of the church.
These breaches cannot be filled up; the German
Protestant goes not back to the " Infallible Roman
church ; " the Unitarian has consulted his " carnal
reason," and no longer believes that the eternal God
once lay, newly born, a baby in the arms of his vir
gin mother, and was fed from her bosom; the Uni-
versalist returns no more to the " doctrine of devils,"
'but refuses to worship a God who would damn even
a New England stealer of men. Who can annul a
fact? The charmed wall of Christian theology is clo
ven through in three places. Shall mankind build
up the breach? It were as easy to reverse the motion
of the great rivers of the continent, and make the At
lantic ascend the St. Lawrence, climb up the steep
of Niagara, and empty its vast volume into the Lake
of the Woods.
But in the great body of the Christian church this
old theology still prevails. The Catholics outnum
ber the Protestants as three to two, all the Celto-Ro-
manic nations yet cleave to the Latin church, and are
shut up in the clenched fist of the Pope. With the
greater part of the Protestants hell and the Trinity
are still treasured in their " creed." Even the Uni
tarians and Universalists cleave to " salvation by
Christ," which means nothing in theology unless
Christ be a God-man to save, and there be also " a
dreadful fiery hell " of eternal duration, and wrath
of God kept for ever, which we are to be saved from:
they cleave to external authority, and will not credit
the immortality of the soul, or the obligations of duty,
unless they find it written in the Bible and confirmed
by " miracles." So in theology they know no ulti-

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 69
mate God but of paper, which they worship instead of
the infinite cause of providence of the universe, who
confronts us ever, go we where we may. Accordingly
they also accept the old " revelation " as the Ultima
Thule of religion, spurn the thought of new inspira
tion good as the old, and count it blasphemy to sup
pose there ever can be another man as wise and reli
gious as Jesus of Nazareth! So the littlest of sects
must have their defenders of the faith to hoot out
" Infidel," " Deist," and put a fence high as the Ro
man wall about the little, transient, thin-soiled sum
mer garden of cooling fruits. In each sect of Prot
estantism it is still a heresy to believe theologic truth
because it is true, or to hope for progress beyond the
ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom.
But a movement more important than that of Lu
ther has long been going forward. Men deny all
these five false ideas, and undermine the foundation
of the Christian theology, the miraculous revelation
itself. Here come the " Deists " of the seventeenth
and other centuries, and the powerful mockers from
various ages, who, though sitting in the seat of the
scornful, have yet done mankind great service with
the terrible arrows of their wit. Here also come the
philosophers of many a wiser school, material and
transcendental. In the seventeenth century, in the age of Bacon,
Milton, Newton, Locke, out of the midst of the uned
ucated peasantry of England, there rose up a man
gifted with great genius for religion, its emotions and
its ideas, and taught truths whose size and beauty
amazed the thoughtful world. At one step George
Fox went centuries in advance of Christendom. He

70 MATTER AND SPIRIT
felt that the ecclesiastical institutions of his time were
not final ; that " Christianity " itself is not God's last
word and dying confession; that the spirit of God in
us must not be driven out to let in the word of some
other man, for God in the soul is greater than all Bi
bles out of it. He did not comprehend his own great
sentiments ; yet here and there his emotion broke forth
into noble doctrines. But the age was too early; he
and his friends turned back to the ecclesiastical insti
tutions of the time, and also worshipped the stocks
and stones of an alleged revelation, grieving away
the free spirit of God which comes like new morning
to all risen souls ; yea, to all the slumbering and such
as will not wake. " Oppression maketh wise men
mad," and the attractions of the Christian theology
may easily draw even a great man from the self-sub-
sistency of pure human religion. It is
" The most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain."
The succeeding Quakers were still more easily satis
fied with the poor ideas which the Christian theology
offered of God, of man, of their relation, of miracu
lous and finished inspiration, and salvation by an
other's blood; they contented themselves with making
broad their phylacteries, with enlarging the borders
of their garments, and being called of men " thee "
and " thou." But while listening for the echo of
footsteps taken thousands of years gone by, they
heeded not the beauteous Presence then and there
passing before them, and not far from each. No
wonder their prophetic blossom fell idle, and they
brought no fruit to perfection. But the rise of such
men as John Woolman, Job Scott, Elias Hicks, and a

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 71
few others, as well men as women, showed that the
ashes which a Christian theology raked over Fox and
Nayler, and Barclay and Penn, could not smother the
seeds of fire which God planted in human nature, and
with the fresh breath of inspiration quickens to new
and fair religious life. How vain to worship an idol!
" Thou, Thou alone art everlasting, and the blessed spirits
Which thou includest as the sea her waves."
All along, in all the ages of populous mankind, there
have risen up sons of the spirit who scorned the lit
tle theologies of Hebrew, or heathen, or Christian
churches, left such farthing candles under the priest's
bushel or the couch of a nun, and in the light of God's
morning went forth amid the grass and the flowers of
nature, catching the song of earliest birds, and, like
the newly risen sun, serving and praising God by
their free, joyous life of daily duty. When shall
we close the lists and seek truth no more? When hu
manity gives up the ghost. The loving of the maiden
is beautiful and joyous as the wedlock of the bride.
Noble German Luther 1 said, " If God would stand
before me, truth in his right hand, search for truth
in the left, and say, ' Choose, Martin, which thou
wilt,' I would bow me down at his left hand and say,
' Oh ! Father, give me search after truth ; though I
wander and fall into many an error, I will journey
ever forward and upward unto thee ! ' "
Now all the sects in America share these false ideas,
and rest them on a basis which they pretend is divine.
They know only an imperfect God, a depraved man
kind, and an antagonistic relation between the two;
no revelation but one miraculous, unnatural, and long

72 MATTER AND SPIRIT
since ended ; no safety but the vicarious " salvation by
Christ!" The function of the " Christian minister " is not
to educate the mind and conscience and heart and
soul of the people; not to learn and teach absolute
truth, justice, loveliness, and self-subsistent holiness,
but to administer the alleged revelation — of the Bi
ble or the church — and bend and twist " our fallen
human nature " into the shape demanded by the
ecclesiastical institutions. He must bow him down
before the old inspiration, not also for himself win
and receive the new. The thirty thousand Christian
ministers of the United States do not aim to produce
natural religion, natural morality in men, the largest
development of manhood and womanhood ; but to make
them partakers of the vicarious salvation, to rid them
of human nature, the " natural heart," and appease
the wrath of God. Prayer is to humanize the deity,
not to elevate and develop man. Thus religion, the
most powerful of all emotions in man, is turned away
from its natural function and disfigures our life; it
smutches the face with cowardice and unwomanly
terror, and makes us go stooping and feeble, with eyes
which dare not look up, and hearts that quiver and
quail at the name of eternity, or its God! Hence
the ministers of Christianity are no more powerful for
good works. Some of them are able men, educated
at great cost, no class of men so bookish and aca
demic; a few are devoted, self-denying men; the ma
jority chose their calling with an unselfish love for
it ; some of them would lay down their lives for man
kind. But while they consider it is their function
not to provide for men's bodies by teaching us how to
live a natural life of industry, temperance and thrift,

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 73
full of strength, truth, and comeliness; not to edu
cate men's minds, developing the intellectual power
to know truth and beauty, and handsomely report and
apply the same; not to unfold the conscience so that
we shall both know and keep the natural law which
God enacts in the constitution of man; not to bring
out the affections till we love each other in all the
forms of human endearment — filial, connubial, paren
tal, affiliated, friendly, and philanthropic; not to cul
tivate the soul so that we shall know the real God by
heart — not merely trembling beneath a fabled deity
imported from some foreign consciousness and piled
upon us — and taste, and see, and feel his infinite
perfection, till we also partake of his excellence and
become one with him, inspired by his truth, justice,
and love, communing with him in all noble life, and
having no fear, but serving with continual growth of
our being to absolute love and absolute truth; — while
they do none of these things, but as their chief and
instantial function seek to administer what at best
were only a foreign, old, and finished inspiration, if it
could be even that ; and communicate a salvation alleged
to be wrought out by one who died two thousand years
ago; while for ultimate authority they appeal, not to
the spirit of God within me now, in my own mind and
conscience, heart and soul, not even to that spirit out
side of me in the green and transient beauty of this
earthly spring or the perennial loveliness of the heavj
ens whose spring is eternal, but to an old revelation,
impossible to verify, made, it is said, to men long
since dead, of whom I know little, and that not wholly
to their credit as teachers of truth, full of errors ob
vious not less than manifold; while they appeal to
low motives in me, to mean and selfish fear, now brib-

74 MATTER AND SPIRIT
ing with heaven, now scaring with hell, bewildering
history with capricious fable, and philosophy with
shameful theologic myths, preaching up an imperfect
God who hates and will damn all his creatures save
a scanty few, they seldom the noblest, and thunder
forth all this mad volley against a heart which they
declare totally depraved, incapable of any good
thing, fertile only of evil, how can they succeed in
elevating mankind to the dignity of human nature?
True, there are noble men in all the churches, noble
ministers in every sect, but they work for a vain pur
pose, counting it their business to " pacify God," who
yet needs no appeasing; they would save men from
the fabulous " wrath to come," not from the real evils
of want, ignorance, vice, oppression, and abnormal
conduct in all its thousand forms ; they tell us to get
rid of human nature, not to avoid the errors of hu
man experiment, not to develop this noblest creation
of God to its commensurate destination. They tell
us that the manliest of all the Greek and Roman he
roes, patriots, philosophers, and bards, the women
whose beautiful souls bloomed into natural piety, the
millions of common people faithful to all which God
gave them, must " perish everlasting ; " and even
the magnanimous saints of the Hebrew or the Chris
tian age were not such by their nature born in them,
or their voluntary use of it, but a " miracle of grace "
wrought in their passive substance by the Almighty
Artist; that character saves no man; only Christ can
" redeem ! " It is not large, self-reliant manhood
which ministers ask to make us " Christians," but the
acceptance of another's action in place of my own.
You read of " conversions," thickly following in these
days: generally it does not mean the education of the

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 75
man, but how often only that he has learnt a new
trick of whining, or of believing something which
he cannot even credit when in full possession of him
self ! Jesus of Nazareth is one of the last men who
could be " converted " to this " Christianity " of our
times! What a heretic that great magnificent soul
would be to our ecclesiastical institutions ! A mission
ary of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in
Foreign Parts writes from the Crimea : " The soldier
is very childlike in some things ; he has been so long
accustomed to obey that he has not been allowed to
form notions or have opinions, and thus he is in a fit
state to receive the good news, the glad tidings of
salvation; he receives it in simplicity." So in his
highest condition the Christian is only a suckling
on the miraculous bosom of the church! Must then
the sons of the church be only continual babies?
No doubt the ecclesiastical institutions of Christen
dom are the greatest obstacle now in the way of man's
progress, retarding and perverting the intellectual,
moral, affectional, and religious development of the
human race. Still, they are not able to destroy the
instinct for progress, and in America hold back the
tide of improvement. While the Christian sects have
been building up this dark theology of unreason,
there has been a great growth of philosophy and
religion. See what a forest of science and literature
has sprung up outside of the churches, and in spite
of the mildew of their breath.
All over Christendom thoughtful men have broken
with the ecclesiastical traditions. They find there is
no such imperfect and dreadful God! no such totally
depraved man as the church pretends; no such an-

76 MATTER AND SPIRIT
tagonism between the divine and human nature; no
such miraculous revelation, or vicarious salvation;
that there is no infallible church, nor infallible Bible;
no Trinity, no incarnation, no eternal hell, no mir
acle; that the history of man's religious development
is no more mysterious than the history of his agricul
ture or astronomy: nay, that all the great steps are
forward and upward, this ghastly theology itself one
of the manifold experiments of humanity, in our tri
umphant march — a stumble, but forward.
Some of these are philosophers — men of science,
of metaphysics — who have profoundly studied the
world of matter and of man, and become familiar
with human history. Some are philanthropists; they
labor for the oppressed and perishing; take the part
of the laity against the priesthood; of the people
against the tyrant; of woman against man, who holds
her down by force; of the slave against his master;
of him that suffers wrong against whoso does the
wrong. They seek to spread knowledge, industry,
temperance, riches, health, beauty, and long life, and
purity, and every human virtue amongst all men.
They would promote peace between nations, and found
society on cooperative industry, not on mutual selfish
antagonism. All these men have broken with the ecclesiasti
cal institutions, Catholic and Protestant. They ask
not its heaven, nor tremble at its hell. There is a
great body of thinking men in America and Eng
land, who have outgrown the mediaeval theology; they
are not " in a fit state to receive the good news, the
glad tidings of salvation," for they have been accus
tomed " to form notions and have opinions " of their
own. Over these the church has lost its ancient

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 77
power. Some of them wander away into speculative
atheism, disgusted with the very name of religion.
Do you marvel at it? Remember what has been of
fered them in that name! Many stop this side of
that extreme, but yet have no conscious religion.
Full of pious feeling, rich in moral conduct, and in
hope for mankind, they are religious without belief
in God, and hopeful with no expectation of a future
heaven. I look with great pain on the men whom the Chris-
tion theology has driven away from religion; they are
the confessors and martyrs of the church of the fu
ture. Saints of denial, their fidelity drove them forth
from institutions which could not satisfy the thought
ful man. They found no rest, " in wandering mazes
lost." They went on the forlorn hope of mankind,
to storm the castle of despair ; they perish in the ditch,
crushed by the wall they overthrow. In a better age
they would go first and foremost in building up the
great temple of piety. Now they only prepare for
its foundation, and never see its blessed walls; Sime
ons who die without the consolation!
But how much more do I mourn over the less manly
fate of such as accept these institutions, and are be
numbed by the narcotics of the church, till all their
manhood is paralyzed, and they lie there, coffined in
their pews, which rest on crumbling graves, stifled
with the miasma thereof, swathed about with the
mummy-cloths of a theology that is Egyptian in its
darkness if not in age, and burthened with a torpor,
profound, heavy, and similar to death, were it not
visited with fear, that dreadful nightmare which
haunts the church! It is better that doubt deprive
us of sleep, rather than belief take all our life away.

78 MATTER AND SPIRIT
For what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole
world of theology, and lose the integrity of his own
consciousness; or what shall a man get in exchange
for his soul? The name " Christian ; " the title " or
thodox ! "
I know ministers chide at this as " a material age."
Never was one so spiritual before. There was never
so much action of the highest faculties in man; never
so much wise thought, such science, such metaphysics,
such history, such beautiful creations of intellectual
magnificence. There was never so much morality;
such keeping of the natural laws of God; never so
much benevolence amongst men, nor so much piety;
reverence for truth, justice, love, and holiness; never
so much love for the infinite God. But this spiritual
activity does not put its new wine in the old leath
ern bottles of the church. So the church thinks
it fit only for the devil's sacrament! It builds no
pyramids, nor parthenons, nor cathedrals of St. Pe
ter, " indulging " a hemisphere on purchased wicked
ness that it may pile up sandstone and marble in the
name of God. It does not engage in a crusade
against brother men in the name of him whose early
word was, " Love your neighbor as yourself," and his
latest, "Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do ! " No colonies are founded in the name
of religion, because the nations which swarm forth
into new hives have conquered the oppressive church
and now can enjoy their religion at home. The
Puritan builds him his meeting-house in old Eng
land ; the Quaker need not " bear his testimony " by
leaving the grave of his mother; the Waldenses may
fill all the valleys of the Alps, with none to molest
or make them afraid. We exaggerate the religious-

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 79
ness of past times and underrate our own. The mil
lions who went to the Holy Land in the dark ages,
with the red cross on their shoulders, to fight the
Saracen, had as little of true religion as the filibus
ters 2 who would pillage Cuba and Mexico ; or the
mob who crowded to the funeral of Bill Poole3 in
New York. Once ignorant men honestly affirmed the
popular theology; now man enlightened denies it and
spurns it away.
Reverence for God sends men to study nature,
his undoubted Scriptures ; the world of matter his Old
Testament, the world of man his New. There was
never such a profound and wide-spread love of truth,
and seach after it. Look at Germany and France,
which lead in the world's science, literature, and art;
look at England and America, following with our
slower Saxon brain, our heavier and more material
feet! See how in those perennial diagrams of fire
men study the thought of God demonstrated in the
geometric science of the sky, or in the deeper heaven
of man's nature watch the course of those human
stars for ever wheeling round the central orb, which
is unseen though felt through all our history!
The religious spirit of this age shows itself in the
attempt to found better political institutions, which
shall insure unity of action to millions, and yet de
stroy the personal freedom of no man. Look back
a few hundred years, — what were all the six cru
sades to the American and French Revolutions — to
the year of revolutions4 so recently passed by?
What was the pretended discovery of the true cross,
of the tomb of Jesus, of the lance which pierced his
side, compared with the attempts to abolish slavery,
war, pauperism, ignorance, drunkenness! One was

80 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the search for a piece of wood, or iron, or stone; the
other an attempt to elevate man to the image of
God. It was an act of piety to build the cathedrals
of Europe. What is it to build up such communities
of men as the new free states of America, — Iowa,
Wisconsin, Minnesota? Are the mechanical inventions
of this age to pass for nothing! Now the gospel of
mind is preached to matter, material elements have
heard the word with joy; and in this new pentecost,
earth, air, fire, water, lightning, have received the
Holy Ghost, and are baptized with thought, obedient
to the heavenly vision; they become servants of the
church of humanity, and are ministers to promote the
true salvation of mankind — clothing the naked, giv
ing bread to the poor, and education to the thought
ful and the heedless.
See what reform of laws goes on continual; what
pains are taken to defend the most exposed classes of
mankind. Down must fall the gallows, type of a
malignant God; the Sun of Righteousness must shine
into the dungeon ; j ails must no more be savage tor
ture-chambers, but civil hospitals to heal the sickly
man; crime must become amenable to correction which
would bless, not subject only to vengeance which
would but burn and kill ;. drunkenness must end, and
American democracy forges her sharpest, heaviest
axe, grinds it to rough and dreadful edge, then smites
it down upon that beast with seven ghastly heads,
and seventy times as many ample-tined horns all red
with murder; drunkenness must die. Pauperism must
lay off its rags, no longer sitting in the dirt of Dives'
gate with no attendance save the dogs', unasked; but
the science of the age shall heal the beggar of his
poverty, which is the destruction of the poor. The

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 81
lame must walk, the public finding crutch; the blind
must see with foreign eyes, germane not alien; the
deaf must hear with other sense which human science
gives; and in his fingers the dumb man finds a
tongue, and yet no miracle. In his right mind the
lunatic sits clothed. The harlot, seduced by passion
once, or scourged by want, must now be wooed back
to comely womanhood once more; the nun, no longer
in idle dreams worshipping the " Virgin Mother of
God," reclaims these hard-entreated sisters of men,
daughters and victims, the clean hand washing that
so deeply polluted. Children derelict of their parents
— wrecks of drunkenness, ignorance, and crime —
must find fathers and mothers in the public lap.
Nay, the poor fool, whom in " the ages of faith "
kings and popes mocked at, who, rigged with motley
cap and bells, went a hideous jest, the companion of
apes, in theologic and monarchic courts, and even in
the humane Bible was pointed at with dreadful hoot-
ings, in the new democracy must now be lifted up to
the dignity of man. Even the abortions of humanity
must be respected and beloved. Walls of partition
fall away from between us ; the patient philanthropist
knows no race but the human, no class but of men and
women. The Turk must not be oppressed, though
the unity of Christendom be broke to rescue him ; and
now the foremost nations of the Latin and the Teu
tonic church join hands to help the Mahometan
against the Christian of Russia.5 " The Jews are
the slaves of the church," said St. Thomas Aquinas,
" which can dispose of their goods." Now the Jew
must have the same rights as the Christian, for these
depend on human nature itself. Wars must cease;
the fetters fall from the limbs of the slave ; if Chris-
1—6

82 MATTER AND SPIRIT
tian theology chain him, the chain will drag down the
unmanly church. The savage must be fed with the
science of the civilized. Woman must be the equal
of man, rejoicing in the same ecclesiastic, political,
social, domestic, and individual rights, commensurate
with her duties and her nature; and so the garden
wherein God put the choicest human mold and
planted the divinest seeds of heaven, long trodden
under foot and made the common-shore of ambition
and of lust, must now bring forth its natural flowers
of humanity, whose fragrance is the breath of God,
and their fruit for the healing of the nations.
Behold the great philanthropies of our time! But
in this work — the greatest work of the most noble
age — the servants of the ecclesiastical institutions
can do little in their professional capacity. As reli
gious men, they may do much ; as " theological minis
ters," how little! True, there are noble ministers,
worthiest followers of Jesus of Nazareth; nay, lead
ers far in advance of that Son of God, in the nine
teenth century venturing where he never trod, nor
could not step so long ago, who engage in all these
noble deeds of humanity. But they are heretics,
really, if not all plain to see! The mass of minis
ters, what do they care for the bondage of the slave,
the degraded position of woman, for the vices of the
age, which cheat man of his birthright? They can
quote theology to prove them all virtues. It is their
function to "baptize" men, or babies rather, to
" convert " them to the popular theology, admit them
to the church, to a dispensation of wine and bread in
the meeting-house, and bury their bodies when dead;
not to humanize and elevate them to great manhood.

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 83
With those five false theological ideas, what can thirty
thousand ministers do? What they do! I find no
peculiar fault with them; I pity far more than I
blame, for I know too well how ecclesiastical educa
tion blinds the eye with thick bandages of old preju
dice, and then is called " teaching man to see with
the Spirit." The ecclesiastical minister is to alter the
disposition of God, not that of man. He is to deal
with the " original sin " inherited from " Adam," not
the actual offenses against natural law which originate
with you and me. He is to help a few men out of
hell; it is not lust, drunkenness, gaming, violence,
idleness, theft, murder — vices of passion; it is not
pride, vanity, covetousness, ambition, deceit, cruelty,
and lust for power and all the other vices of calcula
tion, which cast men down; they are damned for the
taint of Adam, " the fault of our general human na
ture," not for our personal misconduct as Emily and
James. Adam's sin is the Cerberus of the Christian
mythology; there in hades he crouches, keenly scent
ing the " guilt " of the " unredeemed," and with piti
less baying hounds them off to hell. The ecclesiastical
minister is to help express a few lean and hungry souls
to heaven ; but the ticket demanded at that slow-yield
ing gate is not the golden branch plucked from the
tree of life, planted, indeed, by God, but watered,
tended, husbanded by us, radiant with youthful flow
ers, and rich with manly fruit of every virtuous sort;
no, it is a certificate of " baptism," of " conversion "
to the opinion of the Catholics or the Quakers, or
other little sect, or that he is tattooed all over with
some 'man's ancient whim ; no healthy spot of natural
skin left whole. Adamitic virtue is not welcome there,
" salvation is by Christ." Not a sect in the Chris-

84 MATTER AND SPIRIT
tian world proclaims " salvation " by character, by
honest efforts to do a man's best; not one demands
the moral development of all the faculties as the great
work of life, and the service of God! Each sect is
termagant to war against the fictitious sin of Adam;
not one is strongly militant to fight against the inci
dental errors of our historic development, the great
vices which lay waste the sons and daughters of men.
They can compass sea and land to make one proselyte,
and then teach him that there is " no higher law."
" American slavery is a divine institution," and " the
fugitive slave bill is worthy of the church of Christ."
" According to their pasture so are they filled." Can
you expect better work from such tools? Who
would cut down the woods of Nebraska with an Indian
axe of stone? What if you had only the industrial
tools of the Pennsylvania red man three hundred years
ago? How would your harvests look? Where would
your cities shine?
I say there was never so much normal action of the
higher faculties in man; but there is no ecclesiastical
institution which can organize and direct this action,
or even encourage it. In the churches of America, Mr.
Polk and Mr. Webster are counted better Christians
than George Washington or Benjamin Franklin. No
philanthropist ranks so high as the authors of the
fugitive slave bill. Slavery is " orthodox," " Chris
tian." Aye, is of the Christian theology! There is
no popular theology, no science of religion to go forth
in advance of the age, with its great idea of God and
of man, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night,
leading us out of the house of bondage, through red
seas and sandy deserts, to the land of promise. The
Hebrew church, which brought Israel up out of

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 85
Egypt, perished in Jerusalem; the Buddhistic poorly
feeds the half-civilized millions of Asia. The Ma
hometan church, which once led the Semites to such
wide victory, has twice been broken by the dreadful
Teutonic arm, and now sees her crescent in its last
quarter; its silver light is too feeble for nations to
walk by on the path of science, letters, or noble manly
life, and the morning comes on apace. The once
powerful church, so badly misnamed, which honors
only the Christ of fiction, not yet the Jesus of fact,
with her triple crown of nationalities — Greek, Latin,
German — no longer sits the heir of all the ages, and
the queen of civilization. Twice the ministers of this
ecclesiastical institution have led the movements of
the Western world. Once, when they felt the warm
breath of that great Hebrew Peasant — a poor
woman's child, cradled among the oxen at Bethlehem
— and walking by the evening splendor reflected from
his genius just gone down, all filled and inspired by
the womanly comeliness and manly sublimity of his
life, the apostles and martyrs — two by two, they
wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they
found no city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty, their
soul fainted not, but went from one kingdom to an
other people, few in number and strangers in it, de
spised and rejected of men — they led the world with
their austere piety and victorious confidence in God.
Once again the Christian clergy, richly endowed, with
studious men in their well-fed ranks, had a monopoly
of superior education; they alone kept alive the torch
of science, once lighted by that spark which Greek
Prometheus had brought down from God; their gar
den alone escaped the barbaric flood, the new deluge,
which so wasted all the world besides, and therein

86 MATTER AND SPIRIT
many a choice plant of ancient husbandry still grew,
enriching its literary bloom with all the sweetness and
mysterious meaning of ancient times; yea, new plants
therein sprung up, by spontaneous generation from
the all-quickening life of nature. Then the fathers
and doctors — wide-browed, their tall heads worn
with thought — they led the world ; and as a symbol
of their intellectual mastery, straightway sprang up
new organizations of matter, the vast cathedrals of
the Western world, those flowers of stone, the hang
ing gardens of the Latin church, which still amaze
the world, whereto the elements seemed moving 'neath
the orphic impulse of creative mind. Then, too, came
forth those priestly companies of monks and nuns —
the master mind new organized in mortal men, un
armed and armed the most — who tyrannized over ty
rants, and ruled the world by hope and fear, with
tragic witchery of thought.
But that Teutonic giant who smote the Roman
state, and doubly smote Mohamet's power, has also
broke the Latin church. For three hundred years no
great and world-compelling thinker is her son. Now
she is a widow. No other church assumes her ancient
and imperial rank. The printing press has slain the
Pope. Since Luther spoiled the ecclesiastic charm, —
still more, since the American and French Revolution
wrenched in twain so many a yoke, the Christian
church has ceased to lead the religious feelings and
philosophic thoughts of men, which whoso rules, hold
ing the heart and head of Christendom, perforce con
trols the civilization of mankind, and guides the col
umn, and directs the march. The more than apostolic
piety, which evangelizes its beatitudes of philanthropy
to suffering mankind; the orphic intellect which far

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 87
outgoes the mediaeval mind, and thinks into being rail
roads, factories, steam-ships, electric telegraphs, and
crystal palaces of mechanic art, or builds up vast
commonwealths of men — this is not " divine," or of
theologic thought, but natural " carnal reason," " re
bellious and profane " — the Christian religion, no
doubt, but not Christian theology at all.
The ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom are
now to enlightened Europe and America what the
Hebrew theology was to the thoughtful Israelites,
when " all Jerusalem went out " to John the Baptist ;
yea, what the classic mythology was in Rome and
Athens when Paul of Tarsus set thitherward his manly
feet. Now, as then, the more enlightened soothsayers
dare not in public look each other in the face, lest the
spontaneous laugh betray the calculated cheat; now,
as then, the ecclesiastic institution builds tombs to old
prophets, while it stones the new; sustains man-steal
ing, passes fugitive slave bills, whitens its neckcloth,
devours widows' houses, and for a pretense makes long
prayers. Now, the Sadducee has " renounced the
world," and joined the Pharisaic church! Why not?
It costs him naught; it is a church of theology, and
its " religion has nothing to do with politics ; " noth
ing with trade; nothing with life.
All the great world-sects have done service to man
kind ; each of the three still living — Buddhistic, Chris
tian, Mohametan — is of value still. Not a Chris
tian sect but has yet some work to do; rears a little
herb, else neglected, or picks a crumb which falls
from mankind's table, whence even the fragments
must be gathered up and nothing lost. The dreadful
theology I have spoken of; nay, the five false ideas
therein, though the most ghastly errors of human con-

88 MATTER AND SPIRIT
sciousness, have still been of service to the world. He
maketh the wrath of man to praise him! What grim
laws of our fathers' day went before the humane legis
lation of their sons! What wars once reddened the
land where now but peaceful cities stand! Produc
tive industry ; the slave is father of that swarthy queen !
Astrology and alchemy were once the sciences which
filled the ablest heads of Europe. Without these there
had been no Leibnitz and Newton, no Humboldt and
La Place. Let us do no injustice to the wild-man, with
out garments for his limbs, or language for his baby
thoughts. Abraham, in the mystic story, could faith
fully offer up his son a human sacrifice to his concep
tion of a blood-devouring deity. Let us honor an
cient fidelity ; when mankind was a child he thought as
a child ! Nay, let us be patient with men whom defect
of nature, or the perversion of their schooling, makes
fit to think such sacrifice could ever be commanded by
the God who made the world. Chide not the slow
march of the red man in the woods, his captive wife
bearing his burthens on her feeble back; mock not at
his little cockle of bark which barely skims a stream,
while our railroad train, on our iron tracks, a town of
people in its arms, drives through the land with more
than windy speed; or, while our ship, propelled by
steam, can bear a burthen of many a hundred tons, and
front all the fierceness of the Atlantic sea. By the
errors of our fathers, yea, brothers, let us, in all humil
ity, be taught.
Allow all the service which the Christian church
has done — nay, more, still does; yet her day of
power is long since gone by. The open and pro
fessed atheism of a few scientific men, who think
they think there is no God; the wide-spread doubt

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 89
of thoughtful men, who are not certain of any
conscious mind which plans the world and so in
sures the destination of mankind; the half -ac
knowledged distrust of immortality; the American
politician's scornful denial of any law of God above
the lowest lusts of the profligate or the most cruel cal
culations of the madly ambitious, and the American
ministers' cowardly assent thereto; the fact that all
reformers who mean the people's good find readiest and
longest-continued opposition from the church; the
added fact that great masses of sober, thoughtful,
moral and religious men and women — farmers, trad
ers, mechanics, scholars too — have no faith in the
popular theology, attend meeting only on sufferance,
while the minister himself has no confidence in the
" foolishness of his preaching," which is not weighty
with argument, but only heavy with routine, knows not
what to say, and abandons speech on all which touches
daily life or a nation's work ; — all this shows that the
ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom do not, nay,
cannot lead the religious man who could know God and
love him too; cannot even scare the trader in wicked
ness who has set his heart on pleasure, office, gold, and
power, nor fright the glutton from his beastly lust!
The established church of France and England dares
not rebuke a governmental sin. In the land of Luther
the king is the minister, a German Pope ecclesiastic, all
free speech flies even from his colleges, and dwells with
" Atheists." The British Bishops are less religious
than the " Manchester school of politicians " in the
House of Commons; are ever at war with human na
ture. In 1850, and ever since, you saw how deep this
rottenness had forced its way into the American
churches. Even the Senate was outdone in practical

90 MATTER AND SPIRIT
atheism; it was the pulpit would send its mother into
bondage for ever ! 6
But what then? Truth has not perished!
"The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sybils told,
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world has never lost."

No doubt these are times of great danger, and those
who have always leaned on the crutch of authority will
find it hard to stand when that crutch is broken. But
the child must sometime walk alone, or never be a man.
It is by experiment that mankind learns to walk. Let
us rejoice in the day when humanity assumes the manly
dress! One day these ecclesiastical institutions must
be left behind us, like so many others long since passed
by; and man, through thousand perils, will fare forth
to his land of promise, and thence to another yet more
fair! In briefest words, this is what we want : To develop
the religious faculty with the same freedom as the
intellectual in science, literature, and business. This
must be done individually, each one by himself seek
ing inspiration from the soul of the world, the infinite
father, infinite mother ; and socially not less — men
coming together to quicken each other as iron sharp-
eneth iron — for the genius of one man, one woman,
will kindle ten, yea, ten million, and, at last, the world
of men, as a single candle will light a thousand if
tipped itself with fire. We must avoid the Roman

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 91
error, not count a church infallible; the German error,
not worship a book ; the mistake of the whole Christian
sect, who take Jesus of Nazareth for a finality, as
Master, not Servant, sacrifice the development of the
race to reverence one great lofty man, and worship as
God what they should love as a brother, and as men
should have long since outgrown. Thus only shall we
get the good of the Catholic and Protestant churches,
of the Hebrew and the Christian Bible; thus only
learn the life of Jesus — come to God as he came, face
to face, with no mediator, nor need of attorneys and
go-betweens. Who shall plead to God for me? doth
not he know? Though a prodigal, come back from
riotous living, my substance spent, shoved away by
swine from their husks which I would fain fill myself
withal, shame-faced and sorrow-stained, conscious that
I am not worthy to be called a son, asking only a serv
ant's bread, I know that the infinite Father sees me a
great way off, and the infinite Mother will fall on my
neck, enfolding me to the all-bounteous bosom whence
I came. Yea, my elder brothers shall take part in the
joy over one sinner that repents, because the lost is
found again and the dead come home alive!
These are the ideas which will be written on the ban
ner of some future church, and borne as the oriflamme
of nations of progressive friends marching out of
Egypt to lands of promise ever new : — There is a God
of infinite perfection, perfectly powerful, wise, just,
loving, and holy, the perfect cause and providence of
all that is; he creates from a perfect motive, of perfect
material, for a perfect purpose, as a perfect means;
the absolute religion is the service of this God by the
normal use, discipline, and development of every limb
of the body, every faculty of the spirit, and all power

92 MATTER AND SPIRIT
which we possess. We may make a paradise of peace
ful industry, and find an immortal Eden too.
Friends and brethren! this day is a marked one in
my life. Fourteen years ago, the 19th of May, 1841,
I preached an ordination sermon in Boston, " A Dis
course of the Transient and Permanent in Christian
ity." It was the first " ordination sermon " I ever
preached; the first separate document I ever published
with my own name. It cost me my reputation in the
" Christian Church ; " even the Unitarian ministers,
who are themselves reckoned but the tail of heresy, de
nounced me as " no Christian," an " Infidel." They
did what they could to effect my ruin; denied me all
friendly intercourse, dropped me from committees of
their liberal college, in public places refused my hand
extended as before in friendly salutation; mocked at
me in their solemn meetings ; struck my name out of
their Almanac, the only Unitarian form of excommuni
cation; and in every journal, almost every pulpit, de
nounced the young man who thought the God who
creates earth and heaven had never spoken miraculously
in Hebrew words bidding Abraham kill his only son
and burn him for a sacrifice, and that Jesus of Naza
reth was not a finality in the historical development of
mankind. Scarce a Protestant meeting-house in Amer
ica, not a single theological newspaper, I think, but
blew its trumpet with notes of alarm and denunciation.
Behold ! said they, behold a minister thinking for him
self afresh on religion! actually thinking! and believ
ing his thoughts ! and telling his own convictions ! He
tells us God is not dead! that the Bible is not his last
word ; that he inspires men now as much as ever, even
more so. Surely this man is an " Infidel," a " Deist,"

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 93
nay, an " Atheist." Down with him ! Nay, one ven
erable orthodox minister, still living, published a letter
calling on the authorities of the commonwealth to send
this young " blasphemer " to the state's prison for
three years, according to law in such case made and
provided ! 7
So went it with ministers and at Boston. Some of
them were honest; theology had blinded their eyes.
But other men and women gathered about me, a few at
first — some of them ministers — upheld my hands
and strengthened my heart, and in their consciousness
I saw reflected the facts of my own. Now there are
thousands, and voices from distant lands, speaking
with other tongues, come o'er the sea with words of
lofty cheer. No man in his day of trial had ever
heartier, nobler friends — women and men.
Since that, my first attempt, I have had no part in
any such ecclesiastical ceremony for fourteen years.
Now you, all strangers to my voice, have asked me to
come more than three hundred miles to rejoice with
progressive friends in the first opening of this new
commodious house. The lines have fallen to you in
pleasant places. May the spirit of God filling houses
made with hands, and transcending the heaven of
heavens, dwell with you and bless you for ever and
ever. May you -" aloft ascending, breathe in worlds

To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil,
All strength, all terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form;
Jehovah — with his thunder, and the choir
Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones —
Them pass you unalarmed. Not chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out

94 MATTER AND SPIRIT
By help of dreams, can breed such hope and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our minds — into the mind of man."
"Beauty — a living presence of the earth,
Surpassing the most fair ideal forms
Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed
From earth's materials — waits upon your steps;
Pitches your tents before you as you move,
An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves
Elysian, fortunate fields — like those of old
Sought in th' Atlantic main — why should they be
A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
— I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation ; and by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures." — " May your life
Express the image of a better time,
More wise desires and simpler manners; nurse
Your heart in genuine freedom: — all pure thoughts
Be with you; so shall your unfailing love
Guide, and support, and cheer you to the end."
What an admirable opportunity to build up new ec
clesiastical institutions with the idea of the infinite per
fection of God, and absolute religion, the natural serv
ice of the actual God, normal life the sacrament!
Here is complete freedom to think as we will, and build
our human fabric never so high; no law of man for
bids. How intelligent are the men of all these North
ern states ; the women the best instructed in the world.
What is elsewhere not common, temperance and indus
try, the body's piety, insures us bread. No foreign
foe affrights; at home no tyrant sucks the nation's

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS 95
strength and lies a nightmare on her breast. And
how firm are the wide foundations of the democratic
commonwealth ! How swiftly riches accumulate ! What
material beauty adorns the affluent land. The wind is
not freer than the mind to think, and speak with iron
lips, and lightning for its tongue. There are five-and-
twenty millions of men, one-fortieth of the world's
great family, cradled in a single nest. Oh that there
were a church to brood them with not unworthy wings,
warm them with sentiments of love and trust in God,
feed them with truth, and lead them forth a joyous
flock to occupy the land with blessed human life.
What opportunities, and what a waste of them!
Has any nation more deserved rebuke? A democracy,
and every eighth man a slave! Jesus the god of the
church, and not a sect that dares call slavery a sin!
The most prominent sects defending it as " patriar
chal," even " Christian." Shame on us ; the actual
Jesus of history we have forgot, worshipping only the
fictitious Christ, not Hebrew Mary's Son! There are
thirty thousand ministers in the land ; what if they all
preached natural religion — piety, morality, — and
natural theology, the philosophy of that religion!
What a world it would soon become ! There are more
than forty thousand congregations in the one-and-
thirty states ; what if they all were penetrated with the
idea of God's infinite perfection, his perfect power,
wisdom, justice, holiness, and love; sought normal in
spiration from the soul of all, in whom we live, and
move, and have our being; who lives, and moves, and
has his being in the world of matter and of mind, yet
far transcending both ; and served him by aspirations
after great, magnanimous, and manly life! One day
it will be so ; and these great truths will, like the early

96 MATTER AND SPIRIT
light, move around the world waking a morning psalm
of beauty in the material heaven above and earth be
neath; and from all animated things, and chief of all
from spiritual man, persuading forth a conscious
hymn of adoration, thanks, and trust, and love,
wherein, with well-accordant voice, island shall call to
island, and continent respond to continent, and mortal
with the immortal go quiring on the eternal and aspir
ing harmony ! " Nearer, my God, to Thee !
Nearer to Thed!
E'en though it be
A cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, —
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee! '

Ill

THE BIBLICAL, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PHIL
OSOPHICAL NOTION OF GOD
1. Conception of God in the Bible
2. The Ecclesiastical Conception of God.
3. The Natural and Philosophical Idea of God
4. The Soul's Normal Delight in God

1-7 97

CONCEPTION OF GOD IN THE BIBLE
For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire. — Deut. iv, 24.
God is love. — I John iv, 16.
In the human race nothing is ever still ; the stream
of humanity rolls continually forward, change follow
ing change; nation succeeds to nation, theology to
theology, thought to thought. Taken as a whole, this
change is a progress, an ascent from the lower and
ruder to the higher and more comprehensive. Indi
viduals die, special families pass off, nations go under;
and a whole race, like the American Indians, may per
ish, and their very blood be dried up from the ground ;
yet still mankind survives, and all the material or
spiritual good achieved by any race, nation, family, in
dividual, reverts at last to mankind, who not only has
eminent domain over the earth but is likewise heir at
history of Moses, of the Heraclides, of Egypt, and of
the American Indians. So of much that slips out from
the decaying hand of the individual or the race, noth
ing is ever lost to humanity ; much is outgrown, nought
wasted. The milk-teeth of the baby are as necessary
as the meat-teeth, the biters and grinders of the adult
man. Little Ikie Newton had a top and a hoop ; spin
ning and trundling were as needful to the boy as math
ematical rules of calculation to the great and world-
renowned Sir Isaac. The progress of mankind is con-
tinous and onward, as much subject to a natural law of
development as our growth from babyhood to adult
life.
99

100 MATTER AND SPIRIT
You see this change and progress in all departments
of human activity, in religion and theology, as distinct
as in spinning and weaving. Theological ideas are in
struments for making character, as carpenters' tools
for making houses. Take the long sweep of four thou
sand years that history runs over, and the improve
ment in theological ideas is as remarkable as the change
in carpenters' tools. You see this progress especially
in the conception of God, and in the worship that is
paid to him conformable to that conception. Here the
change is continuous, and the progress is full of en
couragement for the future.
What unlikeness in the conceptions of God which
Christian men have to-day! The notion of God set
forth in certain churches differs from yours and mine
more than Moloch differ from Jehovah. Certainly the
God which some ministers scare their congregations
withal, is to me only a devil — a devil who has no ex
istence, and never appears out of the theological grave
yard, where this ghost of buried superstitions " walks "
from time to time to frighten men into the momentary
panic of a revival.
The Bible has become the sacred book of all Chris
tendom. It is not only valued for its worth, which is
certainly very great, but still more for its fancied au
thority — because it is thought to be a revelation,
made directly and miraculously by God, to certain men
whom he inspired with the doctrine it contains. Now,
God must know himself, and that perfectly, and if he
make a revelation thereof, he must portray himself ex
actly as he is. So it is maintained in all Christendom,
tKat to learn the character of God, you are not to go
to the world of matter, or to the world of man, but
only to revelation, which mirrors back to you his exact

GOD IN THE BIBLE 101
image and likeness ; giving you God, the whole of God,
and nothing but God. Accordingly, it is said that the
conception of God is the same in all parts of the Bible,
howsoever old or new, without variableness or shadow
of turning.
But when you come to look at the Bible itself, and
study it part by part, and then put the results of your
study into a whole, you find a remarkable difference in
regard to the character of God himself, that depends
on the general civilization and enlightenment of the
times and the writers; the further you go back, the
ruder all things become. Take the whole of Greek lit
erature, from Homer, eleven hundred years before
Christ, to Anna Comnena, eleven hundred years after
him, and there is a great change in the poetic represen
tations of God. The same thing happens in the books
of the Bible. They extend over twelve or thirteen
hundred years ; it may be, perhaps, fourteen hundred.
Perhaps Genesis is the oldest book, and the Fourth
Gospel the newest. What a difference between the God
in Genesis and that in the Fourth Gospel! Can any
thoughtful man conceive that these two conflicting and
various notions of God, could ever have come from the
same source? Let any one of you read through the
book of Genesis, and then the Fourth Gospel, and you
will be astonished at the diversity, nay, the hostility
even, between the God in the old book and the new one.
Then, and at some subsequent time, look at the various
books between the two, and you see what different no
tions of the Divine Being there are in this " infallible
miraculous revelation of God."
Let us look at this great matter in some details, and
to see just what the facts are; and to make the whole

102 MATTER AND SPIRIT
matter as clear as noonday light, divide the Bible into
its three great parts, the Old Testament, the Apocry
pha, and the New Testament. In the Old Testament,
Genesis may perhaps have been written in its present
form, about a thousand years before Christ, though
some scholars put it a few hundreds of years nearer
our own time; at any rate it seems to have been com
piled from ancient documents, some of them, per
haps, existing thirteen or fourteen hundred years
before the birth of Christ, though others are
clearly later. The book of Daniel, a spurious
work, was evidently written between 170 and 160
years before Christ. In the Apocrypha, the book of
Ecclesiasticus is, perhaps, the oldest work, and seems
to have been written about 180 years before the birth
of Jesus. The latest book is the Wisdom of Solomon,
of uncertain date. In the New Testament, Paul's
Epistle to the Galatians is the oldest, and was perhaps
written 58 or 60 years after Christ; the Fourth Gos
pel, I think, is the last, and was written, perhaps, 120
or 140 years after Christ. There are seventy books
in the canonical and apocryphal Bible. With the ex
ception of fourteen prophets, Ezra, Nehemiah, David
and Asaph — the two authors of some thirty or forty,
perhaps fifty of the Psalms, — we know the name of
no writer of the nine-and-thirty books of the Old Tes
tament. Of the Apocrypha we know the name of the
writer of the book of Ecclesiasticus, of him no more;
of others not even that. In the New Testament it
seems clear that Paul wrote the Epistle to the Gala
tians, that to the Romans, the two to the Corinthians ;
but I doubt if we are certain who wrote any other of
its twenty-seven books! Here, then, out of seventy
biblical books, containing the writings of more than

GOD IN THE BIBLE 103
one hundred authors, we know the names of fourteen
Hebrew prophets, two psalmists, two other writers in
the Old Testament, one in the Apocrypha, one in the
New Testament — twenty men! This fact that we
know so little of the authorship of the biblical books is
fatal to their authority as a standard of faith, but it
does not in the smallest degree affect their value as re
ligious documents, or as signs of the times when they
were written. I don't care who made the vane on the
steeple, if it tell which way the wind blows — that is
all I want.
I don't know who reared these handsome flowers;
it matters not; their beauty and fragrance tell their
own story.1 We know the time the documents came
from, and they are monuments of the various ages,
though we know not who made or put them to
gether. Now look at the conception of God in the first and
last of these three divisions. Of course, in the brevity
of a morning's sermon I can only select the most re
markable and characteristic things. I shall begin with
the oldest part of the Old Testament, and end with the
latest part of the New.
I. At first, it seems, the Hebrews believed in many
gods, and no effort of the wisest and best men could
keep the nation from falling back to idolatry for cen
turies. It was not until after the Babylonian captivity,
which began in 586 B. C, and ended about eighty
years later, that the Israelites renounced their idolatry ;
then contact with monotheistic and civilized people cor
rected this vice.
At first, in the Bible, Jehovah appears as one God
amongst others, and seems to have his council of gods

104 MATTER AND SPIRIT
about him. Next he is the special God of the descend
ants of Jacob, and called the God of Israel. By and
by he is represented as stronger than any of the other
gods ; he can beat them in battle, though sometimes he
gets worsted.
Finally he is the only God, and has regard for all
nations, though he still takes special care of the He
brews, who are his chosen people. The book of Job,
I think, is the only one in the Old Testament which
makes it appear that God cares for all men alike, and
this seems to be the only book in the Old Testament
which was not written by a Jew. I think it is one of
the latest books in that collection.
Now, see what character is ascribed to God in the
earliest documents of the Bible. The first five books
of Moses are the oldest ; they contain the most rude and
urtspiritual ideas of God. He is represented as a very
limited and imperfect being. He makes the world in
six days, part by part, one thing at a time, as a me
chanic does his work. He makes man out of dust, in
" his own image and likeness," breathes into him, and
he becomes a living soul. God looks on the world,
when he has finished it, and is pleased with his work,
" and behold it was very good." But he is tired with
his week's work, rests on the seventh day, and " was re
freshed." The next week he looks at his work, to see
how it goes on, and he finds that he must mend it a
little. All animals rejoice in their mates, but thought
ful Adam wanders lone ; he must have his Eve. So God
puts him into a deep sleep, takes one of his ribs, makes
a woman of it, and the next morning there is a help
meet for him. But the new man and woman behave
rather badly. God comes down and walks in the gar
den in the cool of the day, calls Adam and Eve, in-

GOD IN THE BIBLE 105
quires into their behavior, chides them for their mis
conduct; and, in consequence of their wrong deed, he
is very angry with all things, and curses the serpent,
curses Eve, curses Adam, and even the ground. The
man and woman have tasted of the tree of knowledge,
and he turns them out of the garden of Eden lest they
should also eat of the tree of life, and thereby live for
ever. By and by God repents that he made man, and
" it grieved him at his heart," they behave so badly ; so
in his wrath he sweeps off all mankind, except eight
persons; but after the flood is over, Noah offers a
burnt offering, and God smells the sweet savor and is
pacified, and says he will not again curse the ground;
and he will never destroy the human race a second time.
To know what happens, he must go from place to
place: thus he understands that the people are build
ing a tower, and comes near enough to look at it, and,
not liking the undertaking, he says, " Go to now, let
us go down and confound their language, that they
may not understand one another's speech : " he scatters
them abroad, and they cannot build the tower, which
was to reach up to heaven. Afterwards he hears bad
news from Sodom and Gomorrah, that " their sin is
grievous." He does not quite credit the tidings, and
says, " I will go down now, and see whether they have
done altogether according to the cry of it, which is
come unto me, and if not, I will know." He talks with
Abraham, who pleads for sparing the wicked city, beats
Abraham in argument, and, " as soon as he had left
communing with Abraham," " the Lord went his way."
God appears to men visibly — to Adam, Noah, Ab
raham, Jacob, and to Moses. He talks with all those
persons in the most familiar way, in the Hebrew
tongue : " The Lord talked to Moses face to face, as a

106 MATTER AND SPIRIT
man speaketh with his brother." He makes a bargain
with Abraham, then with Jacob and his children. It
is solemnly ratified, for good and sufficient considera
tion on both sides. It is for value received. God con
veys a great quantity of land to Abraham and his pos
terity, and guarantees the title ; they are to circumcise
all their male children eight days after birth; that is
the jocular tenure by which they hold Palestine. God
swears that he will keep his covenant, and though some
times sorely tempted to break it, he yet adheres to the
oath: • " And though he promise to his loss,
He makes the promise good."
He dines with Abraham, coming in unexpected one
day. Abraham kills a calf, " tender and good." Sarah
makes cakes of fine meal, extemporaneously baked on
the hearth. Butter and milk are set forth, and God,
with two attendants, makes his dinner !
While Moses was travelling from Midian to Egypt,
the Lord met him at a tavern, and " sought to kill
him ; " but Moses's wife circumcised her son before
God's eyes, so God let the " bloody husband " go.
He is partial, hates the heathen, takes good care of
the Jews, not because they deserve it, but because he
will not break his covenant. He is jealous ; he writes it
with his own finger in the ten commandments : " I,
the Lord thy God, am a jealous God;" and again,
" Jehovah, his name is jealous." He is vain also, and
longs for the admiration of the heathen; and is dis
suaded by Moses from destroying the Israelites when
they had provoked him, lest the Egyptians should hear
of it, and his fame should suffer.
Look at this account of one of God's transactions in

GOD IN THE BIBLE 107
Numbers xiv. " And the Lord said unto Moses, How
long will this people provoke me? And how long will
it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have
showed among them? I will smite them with the pesti
lence, and disinherit them., and will make of thee a
greater nation, and mightier than they." And Moses
replied : " Then the Egyptians shall hear it, and they
will tell it to the inhabitants of the land ; " they will
say, " Because the Lord was not able to bring the peo
ple into the land which he sware unto them, therefore
he hath slain them in the wilderness ; " " Pardon, I be
seech thee, the iniquity of this people ! " So, lest the
Gentiles should think him weak, Jehovah lets the He
brews off for a time, and instead of destroying millions
of men at once, he spreads their ruin over several years.
" In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there
they shall die!"
He is capricious, revengeful, exceedingly ill-tem
pered; he has fierce wrath and cruelty; he is angry
even with the Hebrews, and one day says to Moses,
" Take all the heads of the people (that is the leading
men, the citizens of eminent gravity), and hang them
up before the Lord against the sun."
Once God is angry with the people who murmur
against Moses, and says to him, " Get you up from
among this congregation, that I may consume them as
in a moment ! " Moses is more merciful than his God ;
he must appease this Deity, who is " a consuming fire."
So he tells Aaron, " Take a censer, and put fire therein
from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly
unto the congregation, and make an atonement for
them : for there is wrath gone out from the Lord ; the
plague is begun ! " Aaron does so, and the plague was
stayed, though not till the fury of the Lord had killed

108 MATTER AND SPIRIT
fourteen thousand and seven hundred men! (Numb.
xvi, 41—50). God hates some of the nations with re
lentless wrath; Abraham interferes, pleading for
Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses for the Israelites, but no
body cares for the rest of the people, or burns incense
for them, and so God says, " I will utterly put out the
remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." All the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the
Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites, are to be
rooted out — seven nations, each of which was more
numerous than the Hebrews : " Thou shalt smite them,
and utterly destroy them ; thou shalt make no covenant
with them, nor show mercy unto them," saith the Lord.
The Canaanites and Moabites were kindred of the He
brews, of the same ethnologic tribe, but they could not
enter into the congregation of the Lord unto the tenth
generation !
This God — powerful, terrible, partial, jealous,
often ill-tempered, wrathful, cruel, bloody — is to be
worshipped with sacrifice, the blood of bulls and goats,
with costly spectacles by the priesthood, who sacrifice
to him in a special place, at particular times ; and God
gives the most minute directions how all this shall be
done, but he is not to be served in any other way, at
any other place.
Such seems to have been the conception of God with
the leading minds of the Hebrews at the beginning of
their national existence, or at the later day when the
early books were deceitfully compiled. Now see how
much they outgrew it at a later day.
The highest Old Testament idea of God you find in
the Proverbs and the later Psalms, which were written
only four or five hundred years after the promulgation
of those extraordinary documents which I have just

GOD IN THE BIBLE 109
quoted. In these God is represented as all-wise, and
always present everywhere. You all remember that ex
quisite Psalm, the cxxxixth, " Whither shall I go from
thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? "
There God is unchangeable ; his eyes are in every place,
beholding the evil and the good; no thought can be
withheld from him. What grand and beautiful con
ceptions of God are there in Psalms ciii, civ, cvii! So
in almost the whole of that admirable collection, which
is the prayer-book of Christendom to-day, and will be
till some man with greater poetic genius, united with
the tenderest piety, such as poets seldom feel, shall
come, and, in the language of earth, sing the songs of
the Infinite God.
There is a great change also in the manner of wor
ship. At first it was a mere external act — offering
sacrifice, a bull, a goat, a lamb; nay, God commands
Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and the father is about to
comply, but the Deity changes his own mind and pre
vents the killing of the boy. Listen to this from Psalm
li, and see what a change there is : " Have mercy upon
me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness, accord
ing unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out
my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Create in me a
clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within
me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take
not thy Holy Spirit from me. For thou desirest not
sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in
burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt
not despise."
Look at this from Hosea : " I desire mercy and not
sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt-

110 MATTER AND SPIRIT
offering." Or this of Micah: "What doth the Lord
require of thee, but to do justly and love mercy, and
walk humbly with thy God? " What a progress from
the early times ! But even to the last book of the Old
Testament there is the same wrath of God. The world
has seen no such cursing as that of the Jews in the
name of Jehovah. Take the cixth Psalm, and I will
defy the hardest of you to wish worse and crueller
things than the author imprecates against his enemies:
— " Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan
stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let
him be condemned ; and let his prayer become sin. Let
his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg ; let
them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath ; and let the
stranger spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend
mercy unto him; neither let there be any to favor his
fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off; and
in the generation following let their name be blotted
out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered
with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be
blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually,
that he may cut off the memory of them from the
earth. ... As he clothed himself with cursing
like as with a garment, so let it come into his bowels
like water, and like oil into his bones," vs. 6-15, 18. I
quote these because they are seldom read, while the
devout and holy portions of the Psalms are familiar to
all men.
In Bibles which have laid on the pulpit for fifty
years, and those read in private from generation to
generation, the best parts are worn out with contin-

GOD IN THE BIBLE 111
ous use, while the evil passages are still fresh and
new. I think no Old Testament Jew ever got beyond this :
" Was not Esau Jacob's brother ? saith the Lord : yet I
loved Jacob and hated Esau," (Mal. i, 2, 3). A
Psalmist speaks of God as pursuing his enemies with
wrath " like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of
wine." The Lord God of Israel says to his people, " I
myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand,
and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and
in great wrath." " I have set my face against this city
for evil and not for good." If they do not repent, his
" fury will go forth like fire, and burn that none can
quench it ; " and " this house shall become a desola
tion." Here is a terrible picture of the Hebrew God,
sketched by the hand of a great master some time after
the Babylonian captivity. There had been a great
battle between the Edomites and Hebrews; God comes
back as a conqueror, the people see him, and the fol
lowing dialogue takes place:
People: — Who is this that cometh from Edom?
In scarlet garments from Bozrah?
This that is glorious in his apparel,
Proud in the greatness of his strength?
Jehovah: — I that proclaim deliverance,
And am mighty to save.
People: — Wherefore is thine apparel red,
And thy garments like those of one that treadeth
the wine-vat?
Jehovah: — I have trodden the wine-vat alone,
And of the nations there was none with me.
And I trod them in mine anger,
And I trampled them in my fury,

112 MATTER AND SPIRIT
So that their life-blood was sprinkled upon my
garments,
And I have stained all my apparel.
For the day of vengeance was in my heart —
I trod down the nations in my anger;
I crushed them in my fury,
And spilled their blood upon the ground." *

" Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,"
says the proverb ; it is not less true of nations than of
men. The religious, but idolatrous Jews met a mono
theistic people in their captivity in Babylon, and came
back with better ideas. Yet much of the old theological
evil lingered still. Ezra, Nehemiah, and the author of
the book of Daniel, devout men, intensely bigoted, knew
only " the great and dreadful God ; " that is the name
the last of them calls Jehovah. But from the first five
books of the Old Testament to the Proverbs and later
Psalms there is great progress.
II. You come to the New Testament, and here you
do not find much literary excellence in the writers.
Wild flowers of exquisite beauty spring up around the
feet of Jesus; only in the Revelation do you find any
thing which indicates a large talent for literature,
neither the nature which is born in the man of genius,
nor the art which comes from exquisite culture. The
Fourth Gospel was writ, apparently, by some Alexan
drian Greek, a man of nice philosophic culture and
fancy. Paul had great power of deductive logic. A
grand poetic imagination appears in that remarkable
book, the Apocalypse. But, taken as a whole, in re
spect to literary art, the New Testament is greatly
inferior to the best parts of the Apocrypha and Old
* Dr. Noyes' translation.

GOD IN THE BD3LE 113
Testament. It compares with Job, the Psalms, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom of Solomon,
as the works of the early Quakers compare with
Hooker, Taylor, Herbert, Cudworth and Milton; and
yet, spite of the lack of culture, literary art, and poetic
genius, in the New Testament as in Fox, Nayler, Penn,
and other early Quakers, there is a spirit not to be
found in the well-born and learned writers who went
before. 1. In the New Testament, look first at the concep
tion which Jesus has of God. I shall take it only from
the first three Gospels. In that according to Matthew
I think we have his early notion of God. He calls him
Father. The same word is now and then applied to
God in the Old Testament, but there I think it means
only Father to the Jews, not to other nations. But
it seems that some of the Greeks and Jews in Jesus's
own time applied it to him, as if he were the father of
all men. As Jesus makes the Lord's Prayer out of the
litanies which were current in his time, so he uses the
common name for the Deity in the common sense. With
him God alone is good, and our Father which is in
heaven is perfect. " He maketh his sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and
on the unjust." He pities and forgives the penitent,
as in that remarkable story of the Prodigal Son. With
what tender love does Jesus say, " There is joy in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over
ninety and nine just persons, who need no repentance."
Such noble thoughts come out in that time as " shines
a good deed in a naughty world." But what becomes
of the impenitent wicked? God has no love for them;
they shall go into everlasting punishment. So along
side of God there is a devil, and to the left hand of
1—8

114 MATTER AND SPIRIT
heaven, there is a dreadful, fiery, endless hell, whither
a broad way leads down, and the wide gates stand
ever open, and many there be who go in thereat.
At first Jesus limited his teachings to the Jews; he
would not take the children's bread and give it unto
the dogs; he declared that not a jot or title of the
Mosaic ceremonial law should ever fail ; he told his dis
ciples to keep all that the Scribes and Pharisees com
manded, because they sat in Moses's seat. But by-and-
by he nobly breaks with Judaism, violates the ritual
law, puts his new wine into new bottles. With admira
ble depth of intuitive sight he sums up religion in one
word, Love — love to God with all the heart, and to
one's neighbor as himself. Fear of God seldom ap
pears in the words of Jesus. Fear is the religion of
the Old Testament. Mercy is better than sacrifice.
Men go up to heaven for righteousness and philan
thropy, and no question is asked about creed or form.
Other men go down to hell for ungodliness; and no
straining at a gnat would ever save him who would
swallow down a whole camel of iniquity. Human liter
ature cannot show a dearer example of tenderness to a
penitent wicked man than you see in the story of the
Prodigal Son, which yet the first Evangelist rejected,
and two others left without mention.
All nationality disappears before Jesus. His model
man is a Samaritan. We hear that word commonly
used, and do not understand that the Jews hated a
Samaritan as the old New England Federalists hated a
Jacobin, as the British used to hate a Frenchman, or as
a Southern slaveholder hates a Black Republican 2
to-day. Depend upon it, it created as much sensation
amongst men who heard it when Jesus told this story
of the Good Samaritan, as it would in Virginia to have

GOD IN THE BIBLE 115
some one represent a Negro as superior to all the
" first families " of the state, on account of some great
charity that he had done.
I do not find that Jesus altered the common idea of
God which he found. He was too intent on practical
righteousness to attend to that. Besides, he was cut
off when but about thirty years of age; had he lived
longer, it may be that he would have reformed the pop
ular notion of God; for there are some things in the
words that drop like honey from his lips which to me
indicate a religious feeling far beyond his thought.
2. In the writings of Paul you find more speculation
about God than with Jesus, for Paul was mainly a
theological man, as Jesus was mainly a pious and phil
anthropic man. Jesus could start a great religious
movement; Paul could make a theology out of his
hints, and found a sect. But the most important char
acteristic of Paul's idea of God is this: God's wrath
was against all ungodliness in Jew or Gentile, and he
was as accessible to Gentile as to Jew. Nationality
vanishes, all men are one in Christ Jesus, God is God
to all, to punish the wicked and reward the righteous
who have faith in Christ ; the Jews are as wicked as the
rest of mankind, and are to be equally saved by faith
in Christ, and by that alone. Paul's Christ is not the
Jesus of history, but a mythological being he conjured
up from his own fancy. He says that the invisible God
is clearly made known by the visible material world,
and conscience announces God's law to the Gentiles as
effectually as revelation declares it to the Jews. That
is a great improvement on the Old Testament idea of
God, as presented even in the Psalms.
3. In the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle at
tributed to John — both incorrectly attributed to him

116 MATTER AND SPIRIT
— the idea of God goes higher than elsewhere in the
New Testament. God is mainly love. He dwells in
the souls of men who love each other and love him, and
is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, not only in
Jerusalem, but anywhere and everywhere. Perfect
love casteth out fear.
This God has an only-begotten Son, to whom he has
given the spirit without measure, put all things under
his hand ; he who believes on the son shall have everlast
ing life, but he who does not believe on the son shall not
see life. Christ's commandment is that they love one
another, and to those God will give another comforter,
the Spirit of Truth, who shall abide with believers for
ever; nay, Christ will manifest himself to them. But
this God has created a devil, who will send all unbe
lievers into endless torment.
Thus ends the last book of the New Testament.
What a change from Genesis to the Fourth Gospel.
What a difference between the God who eats veal and
fresh bread with Abraham, and commands him to make
a burnt offering of his own son, who conveys all Pales
tine on such a jocular tenure, and the God whom no
man hath seen at any time ; who is spirit and is to be
worshipped in spirit and in truth ; who is love, and who
dwells with all loving and believing souls ! There are I
know not how many hundred years between the two —
what a series of revolutions! what vast progress of
mankind had filled up that brief period of time !
But the idea of God which you gather from the
Bible is quite unsatisfactory to a thoughtful and
deeply religious man to-day. In the Old Testament
there is no God who loves the Gentiles; he made the
world for the Jews; all others are only servants 

GOD IN THE BIBLE 117
means, not ends. This being so, the Hebrew thought
himself the only favorite of God; his patriotism be
came intense contempt for all other nations — was a
part of his religion. In the New Testament, the God
whom even Jesus sets before mankind has no love for
the wicked ; there is no providence for them ; at the last
judgment he sends them all to hell, bottomless, endless,
without hope; their worm dieth not, their fire is not
quenched ; no Lazarus from Abraham's bosom will ever
give Dives a single drop of water to cool his tongue,
tormented in that flame. Jesus tells of God, also of
the devil ; of heaven, with its eternal blessedness await
ing every righteous man, and of the eternal torment
not less open and waiting for every one who dies im
penitent. Paul narrows still more this love of God to
wards men; it includes only such as have faith in
Christ; no man is to be saved who does not believe in
Paul's idea of Christ. The author of the Apocalypse
constricts it still further yet; he would cast out Paul
from heaven ; Paul is called a " liar," " of the syna
gogue of Satan," and other similar names. The
Fourth Gospel limits salvation to such as believe the
author's theory of Christ, that he was a God, and the
only-begotten Son of God, an idea which none of the
three Evangelists, nor Paul, nor James, nor Simon
Peter, seems ever to have entertained. I think that
Jesus never held such a doctrine as what Paul and the
writer of the Fourth Gospel makes indispensable to sal
vation. To the Jews every Gentile seemed an outcast from
God's providence. To the early followers of Jesus all
unbelievers were also outcasts ; " he that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall
be damned." I find no adequate reason for thinking

118 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Jesus ever spoke these words, found only in the doubt
ful addition to the second canonical Gospel. Yet there
seems evidence enough to show that Jesus himself really
taught that ghastly doctrine, that a great wickedness
unrepented of entailed eternal damnation on an immor
tal soul. Paul says human love never fails, it suffers
long and is kind, yet both he and the man whom he half
worshipped, teach that God has no love for the wicked
man who dies in his impenitence; endless misery is his
only destination. Neither in the Old Testament nor in
the New do you find the God of infinite perfection, in
finite power, wisdom, justice, love; it is always a limited
God, a deity with imperfect wisdom, justice, love; God
with a devil beside him, the created fiend getting the
victory over his creator ! The Bible does not know that
Infinite God, who is immanent in the world of matter
and man, and also lives in these flowers, in yonder
stars, in every drop of blood in our veins; who works
everywhere by law, a constant mode of operation of nat
ural power in matter and in man. It is never the dear
God who is responsible for the welfare of all and each,
a Father so tender that he loves the wickedest of men
as no mortal mother can love her only child. Does
this surprise you? When mankind was a child, he
thought as a child, and understood as a child ; when he
becomes a man he will put away childish things.
How full of encouragement is the fact of such a
growth in man's conception of God, and his mode of
serving him! In the beginning of Hebrew history,
great power, great self-esteem, and great destructive-
ness, are the chief qualities that men ascribe to God.
Abraham would serve him by sacrificing Isaac ; Joshua,
a great Hebrew filibuster, by the butchery of whole
nations of men, sparing the cattle, which he might keep

GOD IN THE BIBLE 119
as property, but not the women and children. This
was counted service of God, and imputed to such ma
rauders for righteousness. In the notion of God set
forth in the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle as
cribed to John, it is love which preponderates, and by
love only are men to serve God. With Jesus it is only
goodness which admits men to the kingdom of heaven,
and there is no question asked about the nation, creed,
or form; but this sweet benediction is pronounced:
" Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my
brethren, ye did it unto me; " " Come, ye blessed, in
herit the kingdom prepared for you from the founda
tion of the world ! "
Shall you and I stop where the New Testament did?
We cannot, if we would, and it is impious to try.
What if Moses had been content with the Egyptian
chaos of a deity, " where every clove of garlic was a
god ; " what if Jesus had never broke with the narrow
bounds of Judiasm ; what if Paul had been content with
" such as were Apostles before him," and had stuck at
new moons, full moons, circumcision and other abomina
tions, which neither he nor his fathers were able to bear ;
where would have been the Christian church, and where
the progress of mankind ? No we shall not stop ! It
would be contraray to the spirit of Moses, and still
more contrary to the spirit of Jesus, to attempt to ar
rest the theological and religious progress of mankind.
God in Genesis represents the conception of the
babyhood of humanity. Manhood demands a different
conception. All round us lies the world of matter,
this vast world above us and about us and beneath; it
proclaims the God of nature; flower speaking unto
flower, star quiring unto star; a God who is resident
therein, his law never broke. In us is a world of con-

120 MATTER AND SPIRIT
sciousness, and as that mirror is made clearer by civil
ization, I look down and behold the natural idea of God,
infinite cause and providence, father and mother to all
that are. Into our reverent souls God will come as the
morning light into the bosom of the opening rose.
Just in proportion as we are faithful, we shall be in
spired therewith, and shall frame " conceptions equal
to the soul's desires," and then in our practice keep
those " heights which the soul is competent to win."

2
ECCLESIASTICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD
The great and dreadful God. — Daniel, ix, 4.
Our Father which art in heaven.— Matthew vi, 9.
In the Religion of civilized man there are three
things: piety, the love of God, the sentimental part;
morality, obedience to God's natural laws, the practical
part ; and theology, thoughts about God and man and
their relation, the intellectual part. The theology
will have great influence on the piety and the morality,
a true theology helping the normal development of re
ligion, which a false theology hinders. There are two
methods of creating a theology, — a scheme of doctrines
about God and man, and the relation between them,
viz. : the Ecclesiastical and the Philosophical.
The various sects which make up the Christian
church pursue the ecclesiastical method. They take
the Bible for a miraculous and infallible revelation
from God, in all matters containing the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and thence de
rive their doctrines, — Catholic, Protestant, Trinita
rian, Unitarian, Damnationist or Salvationist. Of
course they follow that method in forming the eccle
siastical conception of God, in which the Christian sects
mainly agree. They take the whole of the Bible, from
Genesis to the Fourth Gospel, as God's miraculous affi
davit; they gather together all which it says about
God, and from that make up the ecclesiastical concep
tion as a finality. The Biblical sayings are taken for
God's deposition as to the facts of his nature, char-
121

122 MATTER AND SPIRIT
acter, plan, modes of operation — God's word, his last
word ; they are a finality, all the evidence in the case ;
nothing is to be added thereto, and naught taken thence
away. Accordingly the statement of a writer in the
half -savage age of a ferocious people is just as val
uable, true, and obligatory for all time, as that of a re
fined, enlightened, religious man in a civilized age and
nation ; for they are all equally God's testimony in the
case, his miraculous deposition; God puts himself on
his voir dire, and it is of no consequence which justice
of revelation records the affidavit of the divine depo
nent. The deposition is alike perfect and complete,
whether attested by an anonymous and half-civilized
Hebrew filibuster, or by a refined and religious Chris
tian philosopher. The statement that God ate veal at
Abraham's, or that he sought to kill Moses in a tavern,
is just as true and important as this, that " God is
love." It is said in the Old Testament that the Lord is
a " consuming fire ; " he is " angry with the wicked
every day," and keeps his anger forever ; that he hates
Esau; that he gives cruel commands, like that in the
thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, forbidding all re
ligious progress; that he orders the butchery of mil
lions of innocent men, including women and children;
that he comes back from the destruction of Edom red
with blood, as described in the sixty-third chapter of
Isaiah. In the New Testament he is called Father; it
is said that he is love, that he goes out and meets the
returning prodigal a great ways off, and welcomes him
with large rejoicing.
Now, say the churches, all these statements are true,
and the Christian believer must accept them all. Rea
son is not to sift and cross-examine the Biblical testi
mony, rejecting this as false and including that as

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 123
true; for the whole of this evidence and each part of it
is God's affidavit, and does not require a cross-examin
ing, sifting, amending. We are not to reconcile it to
us, but us to it ; and if it conflict with reason and con
science, we should give them up. All the Bible, says
this theory, is the inspired Word of God, and one part
is just as much inspired as another, for there are no
degrees of inspiration therein ; each statement by itself
is perfect, and the whole complete. The test of in
spiration is not in man ; it is not truth for things reason
able, nor justice for things moral, nor love for things
affectional. The test is wholly outside of man; it is a
miracle — that is, the report of a miracle ; and so what
contradicts the universal human conscience is to be ac
cepted just as readily as what agrees with the moral
instinct and reflection of all human kind. In the third
century Tertullian, a hot-headed African bishop, said,
" I believe, because it is impossible ; " that is, the thing
cannot be, and therefore I believe it is ! It has been a
maxim in ecclesiastical theology ever since; without it
both transubstantiation and the trinity would fall to
the ground, with many a doctrine more. I think Lord
Bacon was an unbeliever in the popular ecclesiastical
doctrines of his time; he would derive all science from
the observation of nature and reflection thereon ; but he
left this maxim to have eminent domain in theology!
It was enough for him to break utterly with the phi
losophy of the schools, he would not also quarrel against
the theology of the churches ; thereby he lost his scien
tific character, but kept his ecclesiastical reputation.
Joshua, the son of Nun, was a Hebrew filibuster,
with a half -civilized troop of ferocious men following
him; he conquered a country, butchered the men,
women, and children ; and he gives us such a picture of

124 MATTER AND SPIRIT
God as you might expect from a Pequot Indian in the
days of our fathers. It is taught in the churches that
Joshua's statement about God is just as trustworthy as
the sublime words in the New Testament, ascribed to
John or Jesus ; and far more valuable than the deepest
intuitions, and the grandest generalizations of the most
cultivated, best educated, and most religious of men
to-day! The Christian churches do not derive their
conception of God from the world of observation about
us, or the world of consciousness within us, but from
the " Book of Revelation," as they call that collection
from the works of some hundred writers, mostly anony
mous, and all from remote ages ; and they tell us that
the teachings of Joshua are of as much value as the
teachings of Jesus himself, far more than those of
Fenelon or Channing.
Now from such facts, and by such a method, the
Christian sects have formed their notion of God, which
is common to the Greek, the Latin, and the Teutonic
churches; only a few sects have departed therefrom,
and as they are but insignificant in numbers, and have
had scarcely any influence in forming the ecclesiastical
conception of God, so I shall omit all reference to them
and their opinions.
To-day I shall not speak of the ecclesiastical arith
metic of God, only the ethics thereof; not of God ac
cording to the category of number, the quantitative dis
tribution of Deity into personalities ; only of the char
acter of God by the category of substance, the quali
tative kind of Deity, for that is still the same, whether
conceived of in one person, in three, or in three mil
lion, just as the qualitative force of an army of three
hundred thousand soldiers is still the same, whether you
count it as one corps or as three.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 125
Look beneath the mere words of theology, at the
things which they mean, and you find in general that
the ecclesiastical conception of God does not include
Infinite Perfection. It embraces all the true and good
things from the most religious and enlightened writers
of the Bible, but it also contains all the ill and false
things which were uttered by the most rude and fero
cious; one is counted just as true and valuable as the
other. Accordingly God is really represented as a
limited being, exceedingly imperfect, having all the
contradictions which you find between Genesis and the
Fourth Gospel; he is not infinite in any one attribute.
I know the theological language predicates infinite per
fection, but the theological facts affirm exceeding im
perfection. Look at this in several details.
1. God is not represented as omnipresent. When
the theologian says, " God is everywhere," he does not
mean that God is everywhere always, as he is anywhere
sometimes ; not that he is at this minute present in this
meeting-house, and in the air which my hand clasps,
as he was in the Hebrew Holy of Holies when Solomon
ended his inauguration prayer, as he always is in some
place called the heaven of heavens. There are degrees
of the divine presence ; he is more there and less here.
Some spots he occupies by his essence, others only po
tentially. He was creationally present with all his per
sonal essence at the making of the world, but only prov
identially present with his instrumental power, not his
personal essence, at the governing of the world. Thus
the Queen of England, by her power, is present in all
Great Britain and the British possession, while by her
person she occupies only a single apartment of the pal
ace of St. James in London, sitting in only one chair
at a time. So it is taught that God must intervene

126 MATTER AND SPIRIT
miraculously to do his work, must come into a place
where he was not before, and which he will vacate soon.
So the actual, personal, essential and complete presence
of God is the very rarest exception in all places save
heaven. He is instantial only in heaven, exceptional
everywhere else. He is not universally immanent, re
siding in all matter, all spirit, at every time, working
according to law, by a constant mode of operation and
in all the powers of the matter and man, which are de
rived from him and are not possible without him ; but
he comes in occasionally and works by miracle. He is
a non-resident God, who is present in a certain place
vicariously, by attorney, and only on great occasions
comes there in his proper person. That is the eccle
siastical notion of omnipresence.
2. He is not all-powerful, except in the ideal heaven
which he permanently occupies by his complete and
personal presence. On earth he is restricted by man,
who thwarts his plans every day and grieves his heart,
and still more by the devil, who continually thwarts his
creator. I know the ecclesiastical doctrine says that
God is omnipotent, but ecclesiastical history represents
him as trying to make the Hebrews an obedient people,
and never effecting it; as continually worrying over
that little fraction of mankind, " rising up early and
speaking " to them, but the crooked would not be made
straight. Nay, he is unable to keep the Christian
church without spot or wrinkle for a single generation,
charm he never so wisely ; but Paul fell out with such as
were apostles before him, and the seamless ecclesiastical
coat is roughly rent in twain betwixt the two !
3. He is not all-wise. He does not know how his
own creation will work. He finished the world, and
found that his one man, running alone, did not pros-

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 127
per; it was necessary to make a woman, to help him;
she was an afterthought. Her first step ruins the man
she was meant to serve; and God is surprised at the
disobedience. He must alter things to meet this unex
pected emergency; he grows wiser and wiser by con
tinual experiment.
4. He is not all-righteous. He does great wrong to
the Egyptians, for he hardens Pharaoh's heart, so that
he may have an excuse for putting the king and peo
ple to death. He does injustice to the Canaanites,
whom he butchers by Joshua; he provides a punish
ment altogether disproportionate to the offenses of men,
and will make them suffer forever for the sin committed
by their mythological ancestor, six thousand years be
fore you and I were born ; he creates souls by the mil
lion, only to make them perish everlastingly. In the
whole course of human history, you cannot find a ty
rant, murderer, kidnapper, who is so unjust as God is
represented by the ecclesiastical theology.
5. He is not all-loving. Of the people before
Christ, he loved none but Jews ; he gave no other any
revelation, and without that, they must perish everlast
ingly! Since Jesus he loves none but Christians, and
will save no more; the present heathen are to die the
second death; and of Christians he loves none but
church-members. Nay, the Catholics will have it, that
he hates everybody out of the Roman church, while
the stricter Protestants retaliate this favor upon the
Catholics themselves. Nay, they deny salvation to all
Unitarians and Universalists, to the one because they
declare that the man Jesus was not God the creator;
and to the other because they say that God the Father
is not bad enough to damn any man forever and ever.
You remember that scarcely was Dr. Channing cold in

128 MATTER AND SPIRIT
his Coffin, before orthodox newspapers rung with intelli
gence that he was doubtless then suffering the pangs of
eternal damnation, because he had " denied the Lord
that bought him." You know the damnation pro
nounced on old Dr. Ballou, simply because he said men
were brethren, and the God of earth and heaven is too
good-hearted to create anybody for the purpose of
crunching him into hell forever and ever. According
to some strict sectarians, God loves none but the elect —
an exceedingly small number. It has been the doctrine
of the Christian church for fifteen or sixteen hundred
years that God will reject from heaven all babies newly-
born who die without baptism; the sprinkling of in
fants was designed to save these little ones, who, as
Jesus thought, needed no salvation, but were already of
the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, to save the souls
of children ready to perish without ecclesiastical bap
tism, the Catholic church mercifully allows doctors,
nurses, midwives, servants, anybody, to baptize a child
newly born, by throwing water in its face in the name
of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and that saves the
little thing. But the doctrine of infant damnation fol
lows logically from the first principles of the ecclesias
tical theology. " He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be
damned ! "
6. He is not all-holy, perfectly faithful to himself.
He is capricious and variable; men can wheedle him
into their favorite plans ; now by penitence or a certain
belief, they can induce God to remove the consequences
of their wicked deeds ; and the effects of a long life of
wickedness will all at once be miraculously wiped clean
off from the man's character ; he will take the blackest
of sinners and wash him white in the blood of the lamb,

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 129
and " in five minutes he shall be made as good a Chris
tian as he could become by fifty years of the most per
fect piety and morality." Since God is thus change
able, men think they can alter his plan by their words,
can induce him to send rain when they want it, or to
" stay the bottles of heaven " at their request, to check
disease, to curse a bad man, or to prevent and confound
the intellect of a thinking man. Hence comes the
strange phenomenon which you sometimes see of a na
tion assembling in the churches, and asking God to
crush to the ground another people at war with them ;
two years ago you saw Englishmen bending their knees
in the name of Christ, to ask God to blast the Russians
at Sebastopol, and the Russians bending their knees
and in the same name asking God to sink the British
ships in the depths of the Black Sea !
Put all these things together — God is not repre
sented as a perfect creating cause, who makes all things
right at first ; nor a perfect preserving providence, who
administers all things well, and will bring all out right
at last. Even his essential presence is only an excep
tion in the world, here for a moment, and then long
withdrawn. According to the ecclesiastical conception,
God transcends man in power and wisdom, but is im
mensely inferior to the average of men in justice and
benevolence; nay, in hate and malignity he transcends
the very worst man that the very worst man could con
ceive of in his heart !
I. Now, this idea of God is not adequate to the pur
poses of science. To explain the world of matter, the
naturalist wants a sufficient power which is always
there, acting by a constant mode of operation ; not ir
regular, vanishing, acting by fits and starts ; but con-
1—9

180 MATTER AND SPIRIT
tinuous, certain, reliable; an intelligent power which
acts by law, not caprice and miracle. No other God
is adequate cause of the universe, or of its action for a
single hour.
But the Christian church knows no such God, for all
the Biblical depositions concerning him, all the pre
tended affidavits whence it has made its conception of
God, came from men who had no thought of a general
law of matter or of mind, and no notion of a God who
acted by a constant mode of operation, and who was
the indwelling cause of providence of all things that
are. Just so far as any scientific thinker departs from
that limited idea of God, who comes and goes and works
by miracle, so far does he depart from the ecclesiastical
theology of Christendom. The actual facts of the uni
verse are not reconcilable with what the ecclesiastical
theology teaches about God. This has become appar
ent, step by step, in the last three centuries.
Galileo reported the facts of astronomic nature just
as they were. The Roman church must silence her phi
losopher, or else revolutionize her notion of God. Had
not she God's own affidavit that he stopped the sun and
moon a whole day, to give Joshua time for butchery of
men, women, and children? Would she allow a philoso
pher to contradict her with nothing but the universe
on his side? He must swear the earth stands still.
" And yet it does move though ! "
Geologists relate the facts of the universe as they
find them in the crust of the earth. The churches com
plain that these facts are inconsistent with the story in
Genesis. " We have," say they, " God's deposition
that he made the universe in six days, rested on the
seventh, and was refreshed ! What is the testimony of
the rocks and the stars, to the anonymous record on

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 131
parchment, or the printed English Bible?" So the
geologist also has a bad name in the churches, many
equivocate, and some lie.
For the history of the heavens and earth, theologians
would rely on the word of a man whose name even they
know nothing of, and reject the testimony of the uni
verse itself, where the footprints of the Creator are yet
so plain and deeply set. Zoologists find evidence, as
they think, that the human race has had several distinct
centres of origination, that men were created in many
places; and a great outcry is at once raised. Such
facts are inconsistent with the ecclesiastical idea of
God! So, to learn the structure of the heavens, the
earth, or of mankind, you must not go to the heavens,
the earth, or mankind; you must go to the Book of
Genesis, and if the facts of the universe contradict the
anonymous record therein, then you must break with
the universe and agree with the minister, for the actual
testimony of things is worth nothing in comparison
with the words of a Hebrew writer whom nobody
knows !
The great obstacle to the advancement of science,
nay, to the diffusion of knowledge, is not the poverty of
mankind, not the lack of industry, talent, genius
amongst men of science ; but it is the ecclesiastical con
ception of God. Not a step can be taken in astronomy,
geology, zoology, but it separates a man from that no
tion. The ecclesiastical conception of God being thus
utterly inadequate to the purposes of science, philo
sophic men turn off from the theology of Christendom ;
and some, it is said, become atheists. Look at the sci
entific men of England, France, and Germany for
proof of this. In America there is no considerable
class of scientific and learned men, who stand close to-

132 MATTER AND SPIRIT
gether, write books for each other, and so make a little
public of their own; so here the scientific man does
not stand in a little green-house of philosophy as in
Europe, where he is sheltered from public opinion, lives
freely, and expands his flowers in an atmosphere con
genial to his natural growth, but he is exposed to all
the rude blasts of the press, the parlor, and the meet
ing-house; so is he more cautious than his congeners
and equivalents in Europe, and does not commonly tell
what he thinks; nay, sometimes tells what he does not
think, lest he should lose his public reputation amongst
bigoted men! To this there are some very honorable
exceptions ; scientific men who do not count it a part
of their business to prop up a popular error, but who
know society has a right to demand that they tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But
if you will take the hundred foremost men of science
in all Christendom who are not ministers, I do not
think that ten of them have any belief in the common
ecclesiastical conception of God. Some have better,
nay, a true idea of God, but dare not divulge it; and
some, alas ! seem to have no notion at all. Accordingly,
men of science turn from theology ; some become athe
ists, and all lose much from lack of a satisfactory idea
of God. You all know what clerical complaints are
made of the infidelity and atheism of scientific men.
Three hundred years ago the church suspected doctors,
and invented this proverb : — " As many doctors, so
many atheists," because the doctors knew facts irrecon
cilable with the ecclesiastical theology. I think the
charge of atheism grossly unjust, when it is brought
against the great body of scientific men ; but where it
is true, it ought to be remembered that in the last two
hundred and fifty years the Christian church has had

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 133
no idea of God adequate to the purposes of science, and
fit for a philosopher to accept ; and if it be so, will you
blame the philosopher for rejecting what would only
disturb his processes? The cause of the philosopher's
atheism often lies at the church's door, and not in the
scholar's study.
II. But this ecclesiastical conception of God is as in
adequate to the purposes of religion as of science. In
religious consciousness we all want a God whom we can
absolutely rely upon ; who is always at hand, not merely
separate and one side from the world of matter or the
world of man. We want a deity who acts now, and is
the Infinite God, who desires the best of possible things
for each man, who knows the best of possible things,
and has will and power to bring about the best of possi
ble things, and that for all persons. We want a God
all-powerful, all-wise, all- just, all-loving, all-faithful;
a perfect creator; a perfect provider, who will be just
to each of his children. I put it to each one of you —
thoughtf ulest or least-thinking — is there one of you
who will be content with a God who does not come up
to your highest conception of power, wisdom, justice,
love, and holiness? Not one of you will be content to
rely on less ! You must falsify your nature before you
can do it. But according to the ecclesiastical concep
tion, God is the most capricious, unjust, unreliable of
all possible beings. Look at this old and venerable
doctrine of eternal damnation, believed by all the
Christian sects, save the Universalists, Unitarians, and
Spiritualists — not yet a sect — who make at the most
some four or five millions out of the two hundred and
fifty or sixty millions of Christendom. This is the
doctrine : — God is angry with mankind, and will burn

134 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the greater part of them in hell, forever and ever.
Why is " his wrath so hot against us ? "
1. The Jews are God's ancient covenant people;
with them he made a bargain, sworn to on both sides:
it was for a good and sufficient consideration, value re
ceived by each party; he commanded them to observe
the Mosaic form of religion forever; if any prophet
shall come, working never so many miracles, and teach
them a different conception of God, they must put him
to death, and all his followers, with their wives, their
children, and their cattle. — Deut. xiii. But now all
these " chosen people " are to be damned forever be
cause they do not believe the theology of Paul and
Jesus, whom the divine law commands the Jews to slay
with the edge of the sword for teaching that theology.
So God commands the Jews to kill every man among
them who shall teach the Christian doctrine, and yet
will damn them for not believing it.
2. The heathen also are to be damned because they
have no faith in Christ, no belief in the popular the
ology of the Catholic or Protestant sects. But that
theology is unreasonable, and thoughtful, unprejudiced
men cannot believe it ; besides that, the greater part of
the heathens never heard of such doctrines, or of
Christ ; still God will damn them, millions by millions,
to eternal torment, because they have not believed what
was never preached to them, what they never heard they
must believe. Three hundred years ago Spanish
Jesuits preached the doctrine of eternal damnation to
the heathen at Japan, who asked of the missionaries,
"Is it possible that God will damn men forever?"
" Certainly, without doubt," was the reply. " And if
a man dies who has not heard of these things before,
will God damn him forever?" "Yes," was the an-

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 135
swer. The whole multitude fell on their faces and
wept bitterly and long, and would not believe it. Do
you blame them for casting those priests from the
island, and saying, " Let the salt sea separate us from
the Christian world forever."
3. Then the Christians themselves are not certain of
their salvation. The Catholics are the majority, and
they say God will damn all the Protestants ; the Prot
estants say the same of the Catholics. The ecclesi
astical idea of God in both represents him as ready
enough to damn either ; and if the first principle of the
Catholic church be true, no Protestant can be saved;
and if the first principle of the Protestant church be
true, then every Catholic is sure of damnation and
nought besides.
See how the Protestants dispose of one another.
(1.) All "unconverted" and positively wicked men
are to be damned ; God has no love for them, only hate.
(2.) All " unconverted " men, not positively wicked;
they have no salvation in them; they may be the most
pious men in the world, the most moral men, but their
own religion cannot save them. They must have
" faith," — that is, belief in the ecclesiastical theology
— and be church-members ; that is, they must believe as
Dr. Banbaby believes, and be voted into some little
company called a church, at the Old South or the New
North, or some other conventicle.
(3.) New-born babies not baptized must be shut out
from the kingdom of heaven, if not included in the
kingdom of hell; such has been the doctrine of the
Christian church from the time of Justin Martyr, who
I think first broached it seventeen hundred years ago,
and it follows with unavoidable logic from the ecclesi
astical notion of God and the ecclesiastical method of

136 MATTER AND SPIRIT
salvation. So Jesus must have made a great mistake
when he took babies in his arms, and blessed them, and
said, " Suffer little children to come unto me, and for
bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven ; "
— he ought to have said, " Suffer baptized children to
come unto me," etc.
Now what confidence can you have in such a God, so
unjust, so unloving, so cruel, and so malignant? I
just now said that God is represented as transcending
men in hate and malignity. Look at the matter care
fully, narrowing the thing down to the smallest point.
Suppose there are now a thousand million persons on
the earth, and that only one shall be damned ; and sup
pose that some day a hundred years hence, all the nine
hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and nine
thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine of us are gath
ered in the kingdom of heaven, enjoying all the blessed
ness that divine love can bestow on the vast faculties of
man, still further enhanced by the first taste of immor
tal life ; suppose that intelligence is brought to all and
each of us that one man is miserable, languishing in
eternal fire, to be there forever ; suppose we are told
that a globe of sand, big as this earth, hangs there
before his comprehensive eye, and once in a thousand
years a single atom is loosened and falls off, and he
shall suffer the cruelest torment till, grain by grain,
millennium after millennium, that whole globe is con
sumed and passed away; and yet then he shall be no
nearer the end of his agony than when he first felt the
smart. Suppose we are told it was the worst man of
all the earth, that it was a murderer, a violator of vir
gins, a pirate, a kidnapper, a traitorous wretch, who,
in the name of democracy sought to establish a despot-

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 137
ism in America, to crush out the fairest hopes of polit
ical freedom which the sun ever shone upon ; or even if
it was an ecclesiastical hypocrite, with an athestic heart,
believing in no God, and loving no man, who, for the
sake of power and ambition, sought to make men trem
ble at the ugly phantom of a wrathful deity, and laid
his unclean hands on the soul of man, and made that a
source of terrible agony to mankind! When you are
told that this man is plunged into hell for all time, is
there a man who would not cry out against the hideous
wrong, and scorn heaven offered by such a deity ? No !
there is no murderer, no pirate, no violator of virgins,
no New England kidnapper, no betrayer of his nation,
no ecclesiastical hypocrite even, who would not reject
it with scorn, and revolt against the injustice. But
the ecclesiastical doctrine represents God as thus damn
ing not one man, but millions of millions of men, the
great majority of mankind, nine hundred and ninety-
nine out of every thousand, and those, too, often the
best, certainly the wisest and most loving and pious
men! Do you wonder then, that thoughtful men,
moral men, affectional men, and religious men turn off
with scorn from this conception of God ? I wonder not
at all. The fact that the majority have not done so
only shows how immensely powerful is this great re
ligious instinct, which God meant should be queen
within us.
Let me do no injustice. I admit the many excellent
qualities ascribed to God in the popular theology ; but
remember this, that as much as the noblest words of the
New Testament add to the conception of God in the
worst parts of the Old Testament, just so much also do
the savage notions from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy, from the baser Psalms,

138 MATTER AND SPIRIT
and the Prophets, take away from the Father who is
in heaven, the spirit who is to be worshipped in spirit
and in truth ! In this " alligation alternate " one
chapter of the Old Testament can adulterate and spoil
all the blessed oracles of the New. Jesus is set off
against Joshua; the whole of the Fourth Gospel, the
Sermon on the Mount, and many a blessed parable, is
nullified by a scrap from some ancient Jew who thought
God was a consuming fire !
The form of religion demanded of men, in accord
ance with the ecclesiastical conception of God, certainly
has many good things, but it is not natural piety for its
emotional part, the aboriginal love of God ; nor natural
theology for its intellectual part, the natural idea of
God ; nor natural morality for its practical part, the
normal use of every human faculty; but it is just the
opposite of these; it has a sentiment against nature,
thought against nature, practice against nature. In
place of love to God, with trust and hope, and most joy
ous of all emotions possible to man, it puts fear of God,
with doubt, and dread, and despair, the most miserable
of all emotions ; and in place of love to men, to all men,
according as they need and we are able, it puts love
only for your own little household of faith, and hate
for all who cannot accept your opinions ; for out of the
ecclesiastical conception of God comes not only the
superstition which darkens man's face, clouds his mind,
obscures his conscience, and brutalizes his heart, but
also the persecution which reddens his hand with a
brother's blood. The same spirit is in Boston to-day
that in the middle ages was in Italy and Spain. Why
does not it burn men now, as once it did in Italy, Spain,
and in Oxford? It only lacks the power; the wish and

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 139
will are still the same. It lacks the axe and faggot,
not the malignant will to smite and burn. Once it had
the headsman at its command, who smote and silenced
men ; now it can only pray, not kill.
Such being the ecclesiastical conception of God, such
the ecclesiastical religion, I do not wonder it has so
small good influence on mankind. Men of science, not
clerical, turn off from such a God, and such a form of
religion. They are less wise and less happy ; their sci
ence is the more imperfect, because they do not know
the Infinite God of the universe, the absolute religion.
With reverence for a great mind, do I turn the grand
studious pages of La Place and von Humboldt, but
not without mourning the absence of that religious
knowledge of God, and that intimate trust in him,
which else would have planted their scientific garden
with still grander beauty. I do not wonder that men
of politics turn off from ecclesiastical religion, and are
not warned from wickedness by its admonition, nor
guided to justice and philanthropy by its counsels.
Look at the politicians of America, England, France,
all Christendom, and can you show me a single man of
them in a high place who believes in the ecclesiastical
conception of God, and in public dares appeal to the
religious nature of man, and there expect to find justi
fication of a great thought or a noble plan? No!
when such politicians evoke the religious spirit, it is
only to make men believe that it is a religious duty to
obey any tyrant who seeks to plunder a nation, to si
lence the press of France, to crush out the life from
prostrate Italy and Spain, to send Americans kidnap
ping in Pennsylvania or New England. The great
men of science have broke with the ecclesiastical notion

140 MATTER AND SPIRIT
of God ; men of great moral sense will have nothing to
do with a deity so unjust; while the affectional and re
ligious men, whose " primal virtues shine aloft as
stars," whose deeds are " charities that heal, and soothe,
and bless " the weary sons of men, they turn off with
disgust from the ecclesiastical God, whose chief quali
ties are self-esteem, vanity, and destructiveness. One
of the most enlightened writers of the New Testament
says, " God is love." " Yes," says the ecclesiastical
theologian, " but he is also a consuming fire ; he gives
all his love to the Christians who have faith in Christ,
and turns all his wrath against the non-Christians who
have no faith in Christ. He that believeth and is bap
tized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be
damned." If a man accepts this notion of God, he can never be
certain of his own welfare hereafter; he may hope, he
cannot be sure, for salvation does not depend on a
faithful use of talents or opportunities; but on right
belief and right ritual. And when neither the intuitive
nor the reflective faculties afford any test, who knows
if his belief is right? The Jews are to be rejected for
their faith in Moses and the Prophets. The Fourth
Gospel makes Jesus say that all before him " were
thieves and robbers ; " — I think he never said it. Paul
repudiated Peter, if not also James and John; he was
a dissembler, and they only " seemed to be somewhat ; "
while the author of the book of Revelation thrusts Paul
out of heaven, consigning him to the synagogue of
Satan. Now if Paul and Peter and James and John
did not know what faith in Christ meant, and could not
agree to live in the same church, and sit in the same
heaven, can you and I be sure of admittance there?
While the ecclesiastical conception of God is thus in-

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 141
adequate to a thoughtful man's religion, we are yet
told that we must never reform this notion ! There is
a manifest progress in the conception of God in the
Biblical books ; but in the Christian church we are told
that there must be no further step ; we must stop with
Joshua. " Fear hath torment," says that anonymous,
deep-hearted religious writer of the New Testament,
seventeen hundred years ago ; but " perfect love casts
out fear." We are told we must not cast it out, but
must have a notion of God, which we must fear!
Shame on us! Mankind has made a mistake. We
took a false step at the beginning. The dream which
a half -savage Jew had of God we take for God's affi
davit of his own character. We do not look on the
world of matter and mind, to gather thence a natural
idea of God, only at the statements of certain men who
wrote seventeen hundred or three thousand years ago,
men who did well enough for their time, not ours.
All round us lie the evidences against the ecclesiasti
cal conception of God, within us are they yet more dis
tinct. The great mistake of the Christian church is its
conception of God. Once it was the best the nations
could either form or accept. To-day it is not worth
while to try to receive it. It is inadequate for science,
either the philosophy of matter or man, explaining
neither the condition, the history, nor yet the origin
of one or the other. It is unfit for religion ; for piety,
its sentimental part; theology, its intellectual part;
morality, its practical part. I cannot love an imper
fect God; I cannot serve an imperfect God with per
fect morality.
There will be no great and sufficient revival of reli
gion till this conception be corrected. Atheism is no
relief, indifference cannot afford any comfort, and be-

142 MATTER AND SPIRIT
lief makes the matter worse. The churches complain
of the atheism of science; their false notion of God
made it atheistic. You and I mourn at the wickedness
of men in power ; is there any thing in the ecclesiastical
religion to scare a tyrant or a traitor ? In high Ameri
can office mean men live low and wicked lives, abusing
the people's trust, and then at last, when the instincts
of lust, of passion, and of ambition fail them, they
whine out a few penitent words to a priest, on their
death beds, with their last breath making investment
for their future reputation on earth, and also in the
Christian church! For this mouthful of wind do they
pass for better Christians than a whole life of eighty
years of philanthropy gave Franklin the reputation
for. Thus selfish and deceitful men are counted for
saints by the Christian clergy, while the magnificent
integrity of Franklin and Washington never gave them
a high place in any Christian church! You weep at
the poverty of life in the American church — thirty
thousand ministers with right of visitation and search
on all mankind, and no more to show for it! A re
vival of religion going on over the whole land — and a
revival of the slave trade at the same time, and neither
hindering the other! You mourn at the poverty of
life in the churches of America, but the church of
Christendom is no better — nay, I think the church in
the free states of America is its better part ; the Chris
tian church abroad strikes hands with every tyrant, it
treads down mankind, nor will it be ever checked, while
it has such a false conception of God.
Under us is the earth, every particle of it immanent
with God; over us are the heavens, where every star
sparkles with deity ; within us are the heavens and the

THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOD 143
earth of human consciousness, a grander revelation of
deity in yet higher form. These are all of them a two
fold testimony against the ecclesiastical conception
of God. Not one of them has a whisper of testimony
in favor of atheism; all are crowded with evidence of
the Infinite God, — first good, first perfect, and first
fair, Father and Mother to you and me, to all that
were, that are, shall be, leading us to life everlasting.

3
NATURAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL IDEA OF
GOD
Perfect love casteth out fear. — 1 John iv, 18.
The religious element is so strong that it always will
act both in its instinctive and its reflective form, for
though here and there an eccentric man neglect or treat
it with scorn, no race of men ever does so; nay, no
nation, no little tribe, no considerable company of men.
There are a thousand devotees who give up all to the
religious faculty where there is not a single atheist who
sacrifices that to something besides. Like the two
other great primal instincts — the hunger for bread,
which keeps the individual alive, and the hunger for
posterity, which perpetuates mankind — this hunger
for God is not to be put down. Here and there an in
dividual man neglects the one or the other, the instinct
of food, of kind, of religion ; but the human race nor
does, nor can. In mankind instinctive nature is
stronger than capricious will. Whimsy alters the cut
of Ahab's beard, or the shape of Jezebel's ringlets;
but the beard itself grows on Ahab's cheek and chin,
will he or nill he; and Jezebel's head is herbaged all
over with curls, growing while she sleeps.
Soon as man outgrows the wild state of infancy,
where he first appeared, in his primitive sense of de
pendence he has always felt his need of God, as in his
instinctive perception he has always felt the being of
God reflected therein, and formed some notion of God,
better or worse. Go where you will, you find that men
know God. The notions they form of him vary from
144

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 145
land to land, from age to age. They are the test of
the people's civilization; how rude with the savage!
how comprehensive with the enlightened, thoughtful,
religious man ! But no nation is without them, or with
out a sense of obligation towards God or the practice
of some form of service of him.
The notion men form of God, and the corresponding
service they pay, are both proportionate to the people's
civilization. The Indian Massasoit's conception of
God, two hundred and fifty years ago, fitted him as well
as ours fits us. Let us never forget this, nor think that
we are proportionately more favored than our fathers
were. Little baby Jimmy in Pennsylvania, some sev
enty years ago, was as much pleased with a penny
trumpet, which worried his aunts and uncles, as Presi
dent Buchanan now is with the presidency of the
United States and power to scare all Democrats into
obedience. To us our fathers in 858 are barbarians,
and we wonder how they stood it in the world, so poorly
furnished and provisioned as they were. You will be
barbarians to your sons and daughters in 2858, and
they will wonder how you continued to live and have
a good time of it. Yet you and I think life is decent
and worth having. Milk and a cradle are as good for
babies as meat and railroad engines for men. Small
things suit little folks. So is it in religion as all else
besides. I love to read the religious stories of rude
nations — the Hebrews, the Philistines, the New Eng
land Indians. The Iroquois thought there were three
spirits, the spirit of beans, of squashes, and of Indian
corn, and these made an agricultural trinity, three be-
nificent persons in one rude conception of a Mohawk
God. Such a notion served their souls as well as the
stone tomahawk and snow-shoe their hands and feet.
I— 10

146 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Let us never forget that each age is as sufficient to it
self as any other age, the first as the last. The im
mense progress between the two is also the law of God,
who has so furnished men that they shall find satisfac
tion for their wants, when they are babies of savage
wildness and when they are grown men of civilization.
From the beginning of human history there has been
a continual progress of man's conception of God. It
did not begin with Jacob, Isaac and Abraham; it will
not end with you and me. Yesterday I mentioned some
of the facts of this progress in the Bible, and pointed
out the Jehovah of the Pentateuch eating veal with
Abraham and Sarah, wrestling with Jacob, trying to
kill Moses and not bringing it to pass ; I showed the
odds between that conception of God and " Our Father
who art in heaven," which filled up the consciousness of
Jesus, and the God who is perfect love, which abode in
the consciousness of another great man. This prog
ress is observable in all other people, in the literature
of every nation.
Religious progress cannot be wholly prevented; it
may be hindered and kept back for a time. This is the
mischief, men form an ecclesiastical organization, and
take such a conception of God as satisfies them at the
time, stereotype it, and declare all men shall believe
that forever. They say, " This is a finality ; there
shall never be any other idea of God but this same, no
progress hereafter." Then priests are made in the
image of that deity, and they misshape whole commu
nities of men and women; and especially do they lay
their plastic hand on the pliant matter of the child, and
mismould him into deformed and unnatural shapes.
What an absurdity ! In 1780, in a little town of Con
necticut, Blacksmith Beecher, grim all over with soot,

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 147
leather-aproned, his sleeves rolled above his elbows,
with great, bare, hairy arms, was forging axes " dull
as a hoe," and hoes " blunt as a beetle," yet the best
that men had in Connecticut in those days. What if
the Connecticut lumberers and farmers had come to
gether, and put it into their Saybrook Platform, that
to the end of time all men should chop with Beecher's
axes and dig with Beecher's hoes, and he who took
an imperfection therefrom, his name should be taken
from the lamb's book of life, and he who should add
an improvement thereto, the seven last plagues should
be added unto him! We all see the absurdity of such
a thing. In 1830, in Boston, Minister Beecher, grim with
Calvinism, surpliced from his shoulders to his feet,
Geneva-banded, white-choked, a stalwart and valiant-
minded son of the old blacksmith, was making a the
ology — notions of man, of God, and of the relation
between them. His theological forge was in full blast
in Hanover Street, then in Bowdoin Street, and he
wrought stoutly thereat, he striking while his parish
blew. But his opinions were no more a finality than
his father's axes and hoes.3 Let Blacksmith Beecher,
grim with soot, and Minister Beecher, grim with theol
ogy, hammer out the best tools they can make, — axes,
hoes, doctrines, sermons, and thank God if their work
be of any service at that time ; but let neither the black
smith over his forge, his triphammer going, nor the
minister over his pulpit, his Bible getting quoted, ever
say to mankind, " Stop, gentlemen ! thus far and no
farther ! I am the end of human history, the last mile
stone on the Lord's highway of progress; stop here,
use my weapon, and die with it in your hand, or your
soul." Depend upon it mankind will not heed such

148 MATTER AND SPIRIT
men, they will pass them by ; whoso obstructs the path
will be, trddden down. Progress is the law of God.
At an early age the Christian church accepted the
ecclesiastical method of theology, namely, that every
word between the lids of the Bible is given by God's
miraculous and infallible inspiration, which contains
the religious truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth; and to get doctrines, men must make a de
coction of Bible, and only of Bible, for that is the
unique herb out of which wholesome doctrines can be
brewed. By that method it formed its conception of
God. First, it fixed the ethical substance of God's
character, the quality of God, with all the contradic
tions which you find in the Old Testament and the
New. Next it fixed the arithmetical form of God's
character, the quantitative distribution into three per
sons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, alike in their God
head, diverse in their function. Thus the capability to
produce was in the Father ; the capacity of being pro
duced was in the Son ; the capacity of being proceeded
from was in the Father and the Son, and the capability
of proceeding was in the Holy Ghost. These are the
differentia of the total Godhead. All that was fixed
well-nigh fifteen hundred years ago.
Since that time there have been three great move
ments within the Christian church. First, an attempt
to centralize ecclesiastical power in the bishop of Rome ;
that was the papal movement. Next was the attempt
to explain the ecclesiastical doctrines by human reason,
not to alter but expound and demonstrate by intellect
what was accepted by faith ; that was the scholastic
movement. Then came at last the attempt to decen
tralize ecclesiastical power, and bring back from the

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 149
Roman bishop to the common people what he had
filched thence away; that was the Protestant move
ment. It split the Western world in twain, following
the ethnological line of cleavage ; and since that there is
a Roman church with a pope, and a Teutonic church
with a people. But the papists and their opponents
the laists, the scholastics and their enemies the dogma-
tists), the Protestants and Catholics, all accepted the
ecclesiastical method of theology, and so the ecclesias
tical notion of God. So within the borders of the
Christian church, from the council at Nice in 325 to
the council at North Woburn in 1857, there has been
no revision of the conception of God, no improvement
thereof. Protestant and Catholic, scholastic and dog
matist, laist and papist, agree in the ethical substances
of God and in the arithmetical form. The Athana-
sian creed set forth both ; in the fourth century it was
appointed to be read in the churches. What is called
the " Apostles' Creed " has little apostolic in it save
its name ; yet it has been held orthodox for sixteen hun
dred and fifty years. All this time there has been no
progress in the ecclesiastical conception of God, as set
forth in the great sects of the Christian church; the
same creed which answered for the third century suf
fices the church to-day. So long as the church holds
to this ecclesiastical method of theology there can be
no progress in the notion of God, for only Biblical
plants may be put into the ecclesiastical caldron, and
from them all only that conception can be distilled,
though it may be flavored a little, diversely here and
there, to suit the taste of special persons.
But shall mankind stop? We cannot, if we would.
We can stereotype a creed and hire men to read it, or
scare, or coax them ; but a new truth from God shines

150 MATTER AND SPIRIT
straight down through creed and congregation, as that
sunlight through the sky. In the last four hundred
years what a mighty development has there been of
human knowledge ! In three hundred and sixty years
the geographic world has doubled ; and what a develop
ment in astronomy, chemistry, botany, zoology; in
mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, history ! How com
prehensive is science now! But there has been no de
velopment in the church's conception of God. The
ecclesiastical God knows nothing of modern science —
chemistry, geology, astronomy; even the geographic
extent of the earth is foreign thereto ; neither Jehovah
nor the ecclesiastical trinity ever heard of Australia, of
the Friendly Islands, nor even of the continent of
America. The ecclesiastical conception of God was
formed before the discovery of America, before modern
science was possible. The two are not to be reconciled.
Which shall yield, the fact of science, or the fiction of
theology ?
Outside of the orthodox Christian church there has
been a great development of the conception of God, a
revision of it more or less complete, certainly a great
improvement. Thus the Unitarians rejected the Trini
tarian arithmetic, and said, " God is one nature in one
person." The Universalists rejected the devilish ele
ment and said, " God is love all over, and is not hate
anywhere." Once it seemed as if these two sects would
make a revolution in the church's notion of God: but
alas ! the Unitarians and Universalists both accept the
ecclesiastical method of theology, and when they ap
peal to the miraculous and infallible Bible in support
of their more reasonable and religious notion of God,
they are always beaten in that court where Genesis is
of as much value as the four Gospels, and murderous

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 151
Joshua as great a theological authority as beneficent
Jesus. So when they rely on the Bible, these sects are
defeated, and draw back toward the old church with
its belief of a ferocious deity ; this explains the condi
tion and character of these two valuable sects. Ac
cordingly, little good has come from their movement,
once so hopeful. They would change measures and
doctrines, but they would not alter the principle which
controls the measure, nor the method whereby the doc
trines are made ; and so these sects leaven only a little
of the whole lump ; they do not create that great fer
mentation which is necessary to make the whole church
take a new form. How much depends on the first prin
ciple, and the right method!
Now, by the philosophic method, a man takes the
facts of instinctive and reflective consciousness within
him, and the facts of observation without, and thence
forms his idea of God. He will be helped by the
labors of such as have gone before him, and will re
fuse to be hindered by the errors of the greatest men.
He will take the good things about God in this blessed
Bible, because they are good, but not a single ill thing
will he take because it is in the Bible. " God is love,"
says a writer in the New Testament, and our thought
ful man will accept that; but he will not feel obliged
to accept that other statement, in the Old Testament,
that " God is a consuming fire ; " or yet a kindred one
in the New Testament, " These shall go away into ever
lasting punishment," " prepared for the devil and his
angels." He will understand and believe that " He
that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God ; " but he
will not assent to this, which the Christian Church
teaches, " He that believeth and is baptized shall be

152 MATTER AND SPIRIT
saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." Be
cause he accepts the good and true of the Bible, he
will not fall down and accept the false and ill ; for the
ultimate standard of appeal will not be to a book writ
with pens, as a minister interprets it, but to the facts
of the universe, as the human mind interprets them.
In philosophic men the reflective element prevails;
but I do not think they often have much intuitive power
to perceive religious truths directly, by the primal
human instinct ; nor do I think that they in the wisest
way observe the innermost activities of the human soul.
Poets like Shakespeare observe the play of human pas
sion and ambition better than metaphysicians like
Berkeley and Hume, better than moralists like Butler
and Paley. Commonly, I think, men and women of
simple religious feeling furnish the facts which men of
great thoughtful genius work up into philosophic
theology. It is but rarely that any man has a genius
for instinctive intuition, and also for philosophic gener
alization therefrom. Such a man, when he comes, fills
the whole sky, from the nadir of special primitive re
ligious emotion up to the zenith of universal philo
sophic thought. You and I need not wait for such
men, but thankfully take the truth, part by part, here
a little and there a little, and accept the service of
whoso can help, but taking no man for master —
neither Calvin, nor Luther, nor Paul, nor John, nor
Moses, nor Jesus — open our soul to the Infinite God,
who is sure to come in without bell, book, or candle.
When a man pursues this natural, philosophic
method of theology, takes his facts from consciousness
in his own world, and observation in the world of mat
ter, then he arrives at the philosophical idea of the

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 153
God of Infinite Perfection. That God has all the qual
ities of complete and perfect being; he has infinite
power to do, infinite mind to know, infinite conscience
to will the right, infinite affection to love, infinite holi
ness to be faithful to his affections, conscience, mind,
power. He has being without limitation, absolute be
ing ; he is present in all space, at all times ; everywhere
always, as much as sometimes anywhere. He fills all
spirit, not less than all matter, yet is not limited by
either, transcending both, being alike the materiality of
matter, and the spirituality of spirit — that is, the sub
stantiality which is the ground of each, and which sur
passes and comprehends all. He is perfect cause and
perfect providence, creating all things from a perfect
motive, of a perfect material, for a perfect purpose,
and as a perfect means, and to a perfect end. So, of
all conceivable worlds he makes the best possible, of all
conceivable degrees of welfare he provides the best in
kind and the greatest in bulk, not only for all as a
whole, but for each as an individual, for Jesus of Naz
areth who is faithful, for Judas Iscariot who turns
traitor. There is no absolute evil in the world, either
for the whole as all, nor for any one as part.
That is the philosophic idea of God and of his rela
tion to the universe. To-day I state it short, for I have
dwelt on it often before, and perhaps at some other
time I shall take up the idea part by part, and speak of
God as infinite power, then as infinite wisdom, then as
infinite justice, as infinite love, infinite integrity, and
so on.
I think this idea of God as infinite perfection, per
fect power, wisdom, justice, love, holiness, is the grand
est thought which has ever come into mortal mind. It
is the highest result of human civilization. Let no

154 MATTER AND SPIRIT
man claim it as his original thought ; it is the result of
all mankind's religious experience. It lay latent in
human nature once, a mere instinctive religious feeling.
At length it becomes a bright particular thought in
some great mind; and one day will be the universal
thought in all minds, and will displace all other notions
of God — Hindoo, Egyptian, Hebrew, Classic, Chris
tian, Mahometan, just as the true theory of astron
omy, which actually explains the stars, displaced the
Ptolemaic and all the other theories which were only
approximate; just as the iron axe displaced the toma
hawk of stone.
The evidence of this God is in manjs consciousness
and in the world of matter likewise outside of him.
When the idea is presented to a thoughtful man, he at
once says, " Yes, God is infinite perfection, power, wis
dom, justice, holiness, love," for human nature is too
strong for his theologic prejudice. To prove there is
such a being as Jehovah, who met Moses 111 a tavern
between Midian and Egypt some thirty-three hundred
years ago, and vainly tried to kill him, you must know
Hebrew, and understand the antiquities of the Jews,
know who wrote the book of Exodus, where he got his
facts, what he meant by his words, what authority he
rested on ; and when you have made that investigation
the story will turn out to be wind, and none the better
because Hebrew wind thirty-three hundred years old;
and after all that, you do not come to a fact of the
universe, but only the fiction of a story-teller. But to
prove the infinite perfection of God, you have the facts
in your own nature; you are to sit down beside that
primeval well and draw for yourself, and drinking
thence, you shall thirst no longer for heathen Abana
and Pharpar, the rivers of Gentile Damascus, nor for

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 155
the Hebrew Jordan itself, for you shall find there is a
well of living water within you, springing up to ever
lasting life ; and as you drink, the scales of theologic
leprosy fall off from your eyes, and you stand there a
clean man, full of the primitive, aboriginal vigor of
humanity. As you look down into that depth of con
sciousness do you behold the eternal and immutable
Idea of the infinitely perfect God forever mirrored
there. This depends on no subjective peculiarities of
the individual, but on the objective forces of the uni
verse. So, by its name to distinguish it from all other
notions of God, I will call this the philosophical or
natural idea of God; it seems to me a fact given in
humanity itself, a self-evident truth of spiritual con
sciousness, something we discover in the universe, not
something we invent and project thereon. So, while I
name the other conceptions of God, I call this the idea
of God — the philosophical idea, because derived by
that method — the natural, because it corresponds to
nature. To this men will also add conceptions of their
own invention, which partake of the subjective pecu
liarity of John or Jane.
I. This idea of God is adequate to the purposes of
science. First of all things the philosopher wants an
adequate cause for the facts of the universe, both the
world of matter out of him, and the world of spirit in
him. He is to explain facts by showing their mode of
operation, and tracing them back to the cause — to
the proximate cause first, to the ultimate cause at last.
Now, as I showed before, the ecclesiastical conception
of God furnishes no adequate cause for the facts of
the universe. To the theologian it is cause sufficient
for Noah's flood, for the ark, for the downfall of Jer-

156 MATTER AND SPIRIT
icho when the rams'-horns blew, for the standing still
of the sun and moon while a Hebrew army slew their
victims ; it explains such things as are not authenticated
facts of history, but only anonymous fictions of my
thology. It is no adequate cause for the earth under our
feet, for the heavens over our head, and, least of all,
for this earth and heaven of human consciousness with
in us. The ecclesiastical God is sufficient cause for the
Westminster Catechism, for baptism by sprinkling or
plunging, for belief in eternal damnation, for admis
sion to Dr. Banbaby's Church; but it does not ex
plain a mother's love for her wicked, profligate girl;
nor David's wailing over his worthless, handsome boy:
" O Absalom, my son ! my son Absalom. ! would God
that I had died for thee ! " — there is no fact in the
ecclesiastical God's consciousness which corresponds to
that. It is not cause for such a man as Socrates, or
Franklin, nor such women as Miss Dix and Miss Night
ingale, and others not less noble, only less known. It
explains Pharaoh's dream about fat and lean kine ; the
story of Elisha's cursing the children who cried after
him, " Go up, thou bald head, go," and of the two she-
bears out of the woods who tore two and forty of those
children to atoms in divine and bearish wrath; but it
does not explain the life of such a man as Jesus of
Nazareth, nor his lament, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! "
It does not account for that grandest of human tri
umphs, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do." To explain such characters the ecclesiastical
conception of God is no more adequate cause than the
penny-trumpet in a little boy's mouth is sufficient to
explain the world of music which Beethoven dreamed
into thought and then poured forth, gladdening the
earth with such sweet melody. Read the book of Gene-

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 157
sis, then read Newton's Principia, Humboldt's Kosmos,
nay, any college manual of chemistry, and ask if the
theologic God is cause adequate to the chemic composi
tion of a single flower ! Nay, read the stories in Gene
sis, or the sermons in Jonathan Edwards, and then in
some starry night look up to the sky, and ask if that
form of deity could have conceived the heavens ? You
see at once how insufficient it is.
But the God of infinite perfection is adequate cause
for all the facts in the universe. In the world of matter
you find power resident on the spot, mind resident on
the spot, a plan everywhere, things working to
gether in order. The world of matter is a " team of
little atomies," thing yoked to thing, and skilfully are
they drove afield by that Almighty One whose thought
ful road is everywhere. All is orderly, never a break in
the line of continuity. In the fossil animals which per
ished a million of years ago you find proximate forma
tions which point to man ; nay, yet further back in the
structure of the earth, the fashion of the solar system
itself, do we find finger-posts which indicate the road to
humanity, distinctly pointing unto man. There is law
always, a constant mode of operation, never a miracle;
no chemist, geologist, astronomer, can show proof of
the " intervention of God ; " but the power, mind, law,
constant mode of operation, these show the presence of
God always, everywhere, ordering all things " by num
ber and measure and weight." The chemist analyzes
matter into some sixty primitive substances, oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and the rest; but of all
that " team of atomies " not a single brute creature
ever thinks a thought ! it is in God that the mind re
sides, in him is the power and the plan. Mr. Whewell,
a theological man indeed, but yet also, I think, cer-

158 MATTER AND SPIRIT
tainly one of the ablest and most dispassionate men of
science in these days, writes a book against the Plural
ity of Worlds, and declares there is no conscious life
analogous to man's in any planet, in sun, or moon, or
star ; it is a dead world up there ; the sun is a dead sun,
the moon is dead as brass, and there is no life in any
star. Why so? It is not consistent with the ecclesias
tical notion of God; the book of miraculous revelation
never gives us a hint of a living thing in sun or moon
or star; the plan of atonement applies only to the
earth, it cannot reach an inch beyond the atmosphere,
which extends about fifty-two miles from the surface!
Mr. Whewell is right — a plurality of worlds is wholly
inconsistent with the ecclesiastical God; there is no
record that such a thought ever crossed the mind of
Moses, Jesus, Paul or John, that it ever occurred to
Hebrew Jehovah or Christian Trinity. But it is not
inconsistent with the infinite god, and the philosopher
who believes in him will not correct the facts of nature
by the fictions of Genesis. To him, how different the
world of matter appears, one grand act of creative
power, which is everywhere active at all times.
Then, when this idea is accepted no philosopher will
be bid to look for a miracle, and called an " infidel "
because he finds only law — law in the botanic growth
of plants, law in the chemic composition of minerals,
law in the mechanic structure of the earth, the sun,
the solar system, the universe itself. Then there will
be no atheistic Lagranges and La Places to deny all
God, because they do not find the phantom which theo
logians bid them seek, and because their telescope bores
through the spot where the New Jerusalem was said to
be and finds but blank celestial space ! From the scheme
of matter and of mind no brilliant Schelling, no cau-

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 159
tious, erudite von Buch, no comprehensive, magnificent,
generous, and thousand-minded von Humboldt shall
ever omit the cause and providence of matter and of
mind! Then, too, how different will the great complex
world of human history appear! Men will study it
without hindrance, asking only for facts, for the law
of the facts, and the human meaning of the law. They
will find no miracle in man's religious history, but a
continual development of a faculty common to all man
kind, a gradual progress in religious feeling, religious
thought, religious act; no savage nation without con
sciousness of God, a sense of dependence, obligation,
gratitude; aye, and trust in him, and something of
love fojr him " even in savage bosoms " — all this
proportionate to the people's civilization. The
philosopher will find God in all human history, in
the gradual elevation of mankind from the low state
of the wild man, to higher and higher types of ex
cellence. Jehovah is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;
he inspires only Jews, them not much. He hates Esau,
and butchers the Canaanites. To the Gentiles he is
not a loving God, but a hating devil. The ecclesiastical
God is a redeemer only to the redeemed — a handful
of men, rather mean men too, I fear, most of them.
What is he to babies dying unbaptized? What to the
wicked whom death cuts down in their unrepented
naughtiness ? He is not God, but a " consuming fire ; "
he is " the devil and his angels " to such ; not the God
of love, but a " great and dreadful God," who laughs
when their fear cometh, and crushes Sodom and Go
morrah under his fiery hail; and, all bloody with bat
tle, tramples populous Idumea under foot, as a Bac-

160 MATTER AND SPIRIT
chanalian treads the wine-press full of purple-blooded
grapes !
With the philosophical idea, there is a God for all
nations, for all men, inspiring liberal Greece and pru
dent Rome not less than pious Judea — a God for babies
sprinkled, and for babies all unsmooched by priestly
hands ; a God for Jacob and Esau, Jew and Gentile ; a
God to whom mankind is dear, Father and Mother to
the human race! Then you can explain human his
tory : the diverse talents of Egyptian, Hindoo, Persian,
Hebrew, Greek, Teuton, Celt, American, these are vari
ous gifts, which imply no partial love on the part of
him who makes yon oak a summer green, yon pine a
winter green; You find the Infinite God in human his
tory, as in the world of matter ; for as the plan of ma
terial combination, mineral,, vegetable, animal, did not
reside in any one of the sixty primitive substances, nor
in the world of minerals, plants, animals, but in God,
who is the thoughtful substance to these unthinking
forms — so the plan of human history is not in Abra
ham, Isaac, Jacob ; it is not in the whole world of men,
but in the Infinite God, who is the providence that
shapes our ends to some grand purpose which we know
not of. Thus the true idea of God is adequate to the
purposes of science both of matter and man.
II. This idea of God is also adequate to the purposes
of religion. For that I want not merely a cause suffi
cient to my intellect, but much more. I want a God I
can trust and have absolute confidence in, so that I am
sure of him. Now the savage may confide in a God of
blood, a partial God, who loves Jacob and hates Esau ;
an inconstant and irregular God, who works by fits and
starts, who is absent now for a long time, and then

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 161
comes in with miraculous pomp, signs, and wonders.
A malignant man may be content for a moment with
his vengeful deity, who hates the wicked and will tor
ment them forever ; but soon as a man is considerably
enlightened in his mind, conscience, heart and soul,
soon as he comprehends the power that is everywhere
always, active and acting for good, then that savage
deity is not enough for him. He wants not only in
finite ability, — power of force to do, power of mind to
plan, and will to execute, but also power of conscience
to will right, and the infinite power of affection to love
all men and all things, using this energy of will, mind,
force, for the welfare of each man — nay, of every
mote that peoples this little leaf. That quality is not
in the ecclesiastical God ; here it is in the true God of
earth and heaven and human consciousness. He is per
fect creating cause, making all things of the best pos
sible material, from the best possible motives, for the
best possible purpose, and as the best possible means to
achieve that purpose. He is perfect conserving provi
dence, who is as perfectly, completely and essentially
present in this little rosebud which I hold in my hand,
as he was when, as the Biblical poet has it, " the morn
ing stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy," at the creation of the earth, just
springing into new-born stellar life. He administers
all things by the perfect method, with the best of
means, and will secure the best of ends for you and me,
for each man, saint and sinner, for the poor widow who
supplicates and the unjust judge who fears not God,
neither regards man.
By the ecclesiastical notion there is absolute evil in
God, a dark deep background, out of which comes evil
in the nature of things ; and hence comes the total de-
I— 11

162 MATTER AND SPIRIT
pravity of man, hence the wrath of God, enlivening
forever the fire of hell, which no deluge of human tears
and blood can ever quench. So the evil in the world is
eternal, not reconciled, not atoned for ; it cannot be re
moved, neither in this life nor that to come, because it
is an essential part of God. Nine hundred and ninety-
nine men out of a thousand are sinners, and their sin
is eternal, not to be removed ; so their agony has no
end. Trace it back logically to its ultimate cause, and
it is all God's fault. So every sin not repented of that
you and I commit, is not only perpetual wretchedness
for us, but likewise an eternal blot on the character of
the ecclesiastical God. Under the parlor windows of
his little heaven, where the elect loll on their couches
and look out, indolently touching their harps of gold,
there lies the immeasurable sink of hell, where the
devils, those unclean beasts of the infernal world, wal
low continually, rending the souls of men, while the
reek of their agony ascends up forever and ever!
But by the true and philosophic or natural idea of
God, all the evil of the world is something incident to
man's development, and no more permanent than the
stumbling of a child who learns to walk, or his scrawl
ing letters when he first essays to write. It will be out
grown, and not a particle of it or its consequences shall
cleave permanent to mankind. This is true of the in
dividual wrongs which you and I commit; and likewise
of such vast wickedness as war, political oppression,
and the hypocrisy of priesthoods. These are blots in
mankind's writing-book, which we make in learning to
copy out God's eternal rule of right in fair round let
ters, so clear that he may read who runs. The very
pain the error gives is remedial, not revengeful; it is
medicine to cure and save and bless, not poison to kill

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 163
and torture with eternal smart. Here then is a God
you can trust — power, wisdom, will, justice also, and
likewise love. What quality is there a man can ask
for that is not in the Infinite, Perfect God?
Then there will be a form of religion adapted to rep
resent such an idea of God. It will conform to Man's
nature, his body and soul, doing justice to every part,
for as God made man with such faculties as would best
serve his own great end, so it is clear that it is man's
duty to use these faculties in their natural way, for
their normal purpose. God did not make man with
something redundant to be cut off, or lacking some
thing to be sought elsewhere and tied on; he gave us
such faculties as are fit for our work.
1. See the effect this idea has on piety. A natural
religious instinct inclines us to love God. If we have
an idea of him which suits that faculty, then the soul
loves God as the eye loves light, the ear sound, as the
mind loves truth, use and beauty, the conscience jus
tice, and the affections men and women. The hungry
religious faculty seeks for itself bread, finds it, and is
filled with strength and delight. If it find it not, then
we are tortured by fear, that ugly raven which preys
on the dissatisfied heart of man. Now the Infinite God
is the object of entire and complete satisfaction to the
soul. You want perfect power for your reverence, per
fect wisdom for your intellect, perfect justice for your
conscience, perfect love for your affections, perfect in
tegrity for your soul : and here they all are in the in
finitely perfect God. So piety will be complete in all
its parts, and perfect too in each. I cannot love a
wicked man as a good man, nor a foolish and unjust
man as one wise and just; no more can I love a foolish

164 MATTER AND SPIRIT
God, nor an unjust God, nor a hating God. In pro
portion as I am wise, just, humane, shall I hate such a
God, and repudiate the shameful thought. But the
perfect God — I cannot help loving him just in pro
portion to my excellence. He made me so. I put it to
the consciousness of every one of you, is it not so?
When God is thus presented as infinitely perfect, can
you refrain from loving him with your intellect, your
conscience, heart and soul? No more than the healthy
eye can fail to enjoy the light; no more than the hun
gry, healthy appetite can help rejoicing in its natural
food, the maiden in her lover, or the bridegroom in his
bride !
2. Not less does this idea of God affect morality, the
other part of religion. I find certain ideal rules of con
duct writ on my body and in my spirit. By inward
and outward experience gradually I learn these rules
— the laws of God, enacted by him into my flesh and
soul. I shall try to keep these laws; I know they are
his commandment. I shall turn every faculty to its
special work. My general piety, the love of God, shall
come out in my normal daily work, in temperance and
chastity, the piety of the body; in knowledge of the
true, the useful, the beautiful, the piety of the intel
lect ; in justice for all men, the piety of the conscience ;
in affection for all in their various relations to me, in
love for my friend, kindred, wife and child, which is
the piety of the heart ; yes, it will appear in continual
trust, in absolute reliance on the Infinite God, which is
the great total generic piety of the soul.
Then religion will not be away off, one side of my
life, separate from my daily duty as brother, sister,
son, father, mother ; not apart from my work as black
smith, governor, shoemaker, minister, nurse, seamstress,

THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOD 165
baby-tender, cook, editor, judge, or whatever I may be ;
but the soul of piety will make religion in all these
things. It will not be an exception in my life, con
densed into a single moment of morning or of evening
prayer; it will be the instance of my life, spread as
daylight over all my work.
One day this idea of God will shine in human con
sciousness, and all the rude conceptions which now pre
vail will vanish as Moloch, Baal, Zeus, Jupiter, Odin,
and Thor have faded out from the religion of all live
mankind. To-day nobody prays to nor swears by these
names, whereunto millions of men once fell prostrate
and poured out such sacrificial blood. One day the
God of Infinite Perfection shall be felt and known by
all mankind ! Then no bigot, ignorant as a beast, shall
essay to rebuke thoughtful men where he knows noth
ing and they know much. No longer shall priests —
ill-born to little talent, ill-bred to superstition, igno
rance and bad manners — thrust their anointed stupid
ity in between man and God; no longer shall fanati
cism pinch the forehead of the people; no longer shall
it mutilate the fair body of man, nor practise yet more
odious emasculation on the soul. Religion shall not
mildew and rot the fruit of manhood, nor blast the
bloom of youth, nor nip the baby bud ; but the strong
est force in our nature shall warm and electrify the
whole plant of humanity, helping the baby bud swell
into youthful bloom, and ripen into manly fruit,
golden and glorious amid the sheltering leaves of hu
man life. To youth, religion shall give a rosier flush
of healthy joy; to maid and man shall it bring
strength, more stalwart and a lovelier beauty, cheering
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166 MATTER AND SPIRIT
life; and it shall set its kingliest diadem, a crown of
heavenly stars, on the experienced brow of age.
To-day "all Christendom is Christian." Why? It
has the ecclesiastical method, the ecclesiastical concep
tion of God, a mode of salvation by another man's re
ligion, not our own. Let me do no injustice. It has.
the best form of religion the world has devised yet on
any large scale, which has done great service; but in
all Christendom ecclesiastical Christianity hinders no
war, it breaks no tyrant's rod, it never liberates a slave,
emancipates no woman, shuts up no drunkery, removes
no cause of ignorance, poverty, or crime, cherishes the
gallows ; it is no bar to the politician's ambition, all
reckless of the natural rights of man; it never checks
a pope or priest in his hypocrisy. Every monster is
sure to have this ecclesiastical form of religion on his
side, and when Napoleon or President Buchanan wishes
to do a special wicked deed, he bends his public knees
and supplicates his ecclesiastic God, the name in which
all evil begins.
But the true idea of God, the religion which is to
come of it, which is love of that God and keeping all
his commandments, will work such a revolution in man's
affairs as Luther, nor Moses, nor yet mightiest Jesus
ever wrought. God everywhere, infinite wisdom, jus
tice, love, and integrity, religion in all life, over the
anvil, in the pulpit, beside the cradle, on the throne —
what a new world shall that make, when the great
river of God runs in the channel he made for it, singing
melodies as it runs, and sending the spray up from its
bosom to fertilize whole continents, which shall break
out into flowers, that ripen into fruit, the very leaves
for the healing of the nations!

THE SOUL'S NORMAL DELIGHT IN GOD
" I will behold thy face in righteousness : I shall be satis
fied, when I awake, with thy likeness." — Ps. xvii, 15.
If a man be sure of the infinite perfection of God,
the natural object of desire for all his nobler faculties,
what tranquillity and delight is there for him ; not spas
modic and violent, but equable and continuous ! Then
the strongest of all the human powers finds what most
of all it needs; and the highest, the greatest of all
human delights peoples the consciousness with this
holy family of love. I do not wonder that all men are
not rich — it is not possible ; nor famous — that, too,
is beyond the reach of all save one in a million, even if
each were so foolish as to wish he had a great name al
ways rattling behind him, filling his ears with dust and
silly noise. It is not to be supposed that all men will
pre-eminently be wise, or witty; nay, not even learned.
It does not astonish me that no more try for such
things, though feeling yet their charm. But I am
amazed that any one should be content to trudge along
through life without a good culture of the religious
faculty. I should of all things hate to be poor in piety
and mortality. Above all things I would know God
and live in tranquil gladsomeness with him.
When a little boy, I used to hear ministers preach
that the natural man did not love God ; but I was sure
the natural boy did. They said that religion was
something man naturally turned off from and avoided,
and only the Holy Ghost could catch and bring him
167

168 MATTER AND SPIRIT
painful back. I confess I was filled with wonder, for
to my young experience it seemed as natural for a man,
at least a boy, to worship God, to love God, to trust in
him, and feel a delight in him, as it was for my father's
bees to get wax and honey from the yellow blossoms of
the willow or the elm — the first flowers of the late
northern Spring — or to revel in the lilacs which hung
over the bee-house, or rejoice in the white clover of
New England, that, beautifying the fields all around,
wooed those little bridegrooms to it's fragrant and
sweet breast. No theological education and gray-
bearded experience with mankind makes me now won
der less when I hear the old calumny repeated for the
thousandth time.
Look all the world over, and see how man delights in
God ! These roses do not unveil and disclose their fair
bosoms to the sun more naturally than spontaneous
man opens his soul to God and welcomes the great star,
shedding infinite daylight therein. Men with fire sac
rificing their sons unto Moloch, or Jehovah, men
crushed before the car of Juggernaut, men in convents,
women emaciated to nuns, crowds of men in Philadel
phia, New York, Berlin, and London, thrilled with
bristling horror at the terrible phantom which some
bony Calvinist calls out of his dark imagination to
scare them withal, these testify of the necessity man
feels to turn his face towards God; and if he find not
the true, then will he fasten on some cheating substi
tute. If there be no God that he can love, then he
crouches down beneath the conception of some God of
damnation, and is horrified with fear. The soul, like
the mouth, goes ever, and must be fed, if not on what
it would, then at least on the best it finds.
Mankind takes great delight in its religious con-

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 169
sciousness. With what joy did Egypt build up its
pyramids, and from a mountain Brahmanic Indians
hew their rock-cut temples out ! The wondrous archi
tecture of the Ionian Greeks in many a marble town,
the fantastic mosques of the Mahometans, the ara
besques of Moslem piety, the amazing churches of the
mediaeval Christians — all these were built with solemn
joy! Not without delight did laborious men express
the nation's gloomy religious consciousness in these
things. Phoenicians worshipping Melkarth, Siamese
prostrate before their great idol of a silver Buddha,
Nootka Sound Indians all a rainy day sitting on the
eaves of their god-house and drumming with the naked
feet, Catholics on Easter Sunday, kneeling by thou
sands before St. Peter's that the Pope may say " Peace
be with you ! " Protestants crowding to a camp-meet
ing or a revival — all these are witnesses to this great
religious instinct, stronger than all outward force,
which moves them toward the divine.
I think my own life has not been lacking in happi
ness of a high character. I have swam in clear sweet
waters all my days ; and if sometimes they were a little
cold, and the stream ran adverse and something rough,
it was never too strong to be breasted and swam
through. From the days of earliest boyhood, when I
went " stumbling through the grass," " as merry as a
May bee," up to the gray-bearded manhood of this
time, there is none but has left me honey in the hive of
memory, that I now feed on for present delight. When
I recall the years of boyhood, youth, early manhood, I
am filled with a sense of sweetness, and wonder that
such little things can make a mortal so exceeding rich !
But I must confess that the chiefest of all my delights
is still the religious. This is the lowest down, the in-

170 MATTER AND SPIRIT
wardest of all; it is likewise highest up. What de
light have I in my consciousness of God, the certainty
of his protection, of his infinite love ! There is an In
finite Father — nay, Infinite Mother is the dearer and
more precious name — who takes a special care of me,
and has made this world, with its vast forces, to serve
and bless me, an Elias chariot on which I shall ride to
heaven — nay, am riding that way all the time ! God
loves me as my natural mother never did, nor could,
nor can even now with the added beatitudes of well-
nigh two score years in heaven. I stand on the top of
the world — all the stars shine for me. But he loves
just as well the little boy, black as my coat, born this
hour insome wigwam of South Africa, and will take
just as special care thereof, and has made the universe
a chariot of fire to translate that little black Elias to
heaven withal; he also stands on the top of the world
and has a life-estate in the sun and moon and every
star. Nay, God takes just as good care of the mouse
which gnaws the grocer's cheese to-day, nor never for
a moment neglects the little aphis now sucking this
leaf ; nor the parasitic animalcule which feeds on the
aphis, the atomy of an atomy. They also stand on the
top of the world, this great celestial sphere whereof
God is both centre and circumference. Consciousness
of that God, the cause and providence of all the world,
it fills me with such delight as all the world besides can
never give ! I wonder any one who ever opened half an
eye inwardly, could dream that religion is unnatural to
man, that piety is not welcome to our innermost as are
these roses welcome to the spring. For what I say of
me is also true of you, if not of each, why, certainly,
of most — 'tis true of man, if not of men.
In great Italian towns, all winter long, you shall see

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 171
men and women, too old, perhaps, for work, yet not
quite poor enough for professional beggary, wrinkled
as Egyptian mummies ; they crawl out of their hovels ,
and creep through the cold darkness of the lanes they
live in, and, screened from the wind under the wall of
some great church, palace, or monastery, they nestle
all day in the yellow sunshine of the sky, so happy in
that light which gives them also necessary warmth do
those venerable babies seem, blest by that great star
which shines forever on them, though six and ninety
million miles away! In New England or Pennsyl
vania, when the spring thaws out the farm-house, and,
speck by speck, the dry earth appears green with
healthy grass, and the fresh smell of the ground, such
as you find it at no other time, comes up a wholesome
breath, some pale, little tall girl, toddling about the
narrow kitchen all winter long, looking thin and
peaked, comes out to revel in the sunshine and the new
grass. The breath of the ground is the inspiration of
health to her; the eye, dim and sunken just now, ere
long glows like the morning star in that young heaven,
and the pale cheek has the bloom of the ruddy clover
in it too. By-and-bye, the mother, careful and trou
bled about many things, tells the neighbors at meeting
on Sunday, " O, Jinnie's quite another girl now the
spring's come from what she was in February and
March. The winter went hard with her, poor thing;
I and her father begun to think she'd melt away before
the snow did ! I think she'll get along nicely now ! "
What the sun is to the sickly girl whom winter pent up
in the narrow house, and to the lazzaroni at Naples,
whose poverty allows him no nearer fire and light, that
is the religious consciousness to you and me ; yes, to
all men in all lands, in every age save the rudest of all.

172 MATTER AND SPntIT
I do not see how any one can live without it ; I think
none ever does. As the body on the material world, so
the soul must live on God, that universal motherly
bosom to warm and feed mankind. All over the world
do you find the sweet and holy flower of piety spring
ing out of the ground of humanity, common as grass
on the earth, or stars above it. Early literature is full
of religion. Man's first psalm is of God; so little
babies first of all things say mamma, papa. Theology
is the oldest of all science — this queen mother of many
knowledges. Amid all the babble of shrewd, noisy
tongues, this language of heaven, spoken in a still
small voice, is yet understood of all mankind. Civilized
people have their Bibles, — Chinese, Indian, Persian,
Hebrew, Christian, Mahometan, writ with pens, but
yet thought-inspired of God. The savage also has his
Bible, far older, yet not writ with pens. Mr. Cartier,
who went among the North American Indians in the
sixteenth century, says : " A day seldom passes with an
elderly Indian, or others who are esteemed wise and
good, in which a blessing is not asked or thanks re
turned to the Giver of all life, sometimes audibly, but
most generally in the devotional language of the
heart." Another missionary amongst them says, when
the Indian party broke up their winter encampment,
they went to the spring which had furnished them
water, and thanked the Great Spirit who had pre
served them in health and safety, and supplied their
wants. " You then witness the silent but deeply im
pressive communion which the unsophisticated native of
the forest holds with his Creator."
"Every human heart is human,
And even in savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings,

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 173
For the good they comprehend not;
And the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness,
And are lifted up and strengthened."
Do not think that God knows only such as " know
Christ," or Moses. He is no respecter of persons. The
footsteps of religion, you see them in the dew of the
world's early morning; they are deeply set in the
primeval rock of human history. How multitudinous
are the conceptions of God, all meant to satisfy the
soul which longs for him ! The appetite for food, the
instinct for dress, how many experiments they make!
Humanity could not dispense with one of them.
"The lively Grecian in a land of hills,
Rivers and fertile plains and sounding shores,"
" Could find commodious place for every God." " In despite
Of the gross fictions chanted in the streets
By wandering rhapsodists, and in contempt
Of doubt and Mind denial, hourly urged
Amid the wrangling schools, a spirit hung,
Beautiful vision, o'er thy towns and farms,
Statues and temples and memorial tombs;
And emanations were perceived; and acts
Of immortality, in nature's course,
Exemplified by mysteries that were felt
As bonds on grave philosopher imposed
And armed warrior; and in every grove
A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed,
When piety more awful had relaxed."
"And doubtless sometimes a thought arose
Of life continuous, being unimpaired:
That hath been, is, and where it was and is,
Then shall endure — existence unexposed
To the blind walk of mortal accident;
From diminution safe, and weakening age,
While man grows old and dwindles and decays;
And countless generations of mankind
Depart, and leave no vestige where they trod."

174 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Trust me, none is wholly without God in the world.
Even in the wickedest of men there must be yet some
line of light lying along their horizon, where the great
heavenly sun, unseen, unknown, refracts his rays in the
dense air, and stooping down, touches with fire the
edge of their little kingdom of earth; at least some
little northern light of superstition, which is also a
dawn, flickers in their cold, cloudy sky; else in their
Arctic winter, even piratical murderers or manstealing
dogs would go mad at feeling such Egyptian darkness,
and would die outright.
But yet there are, certainly, great differences among
men in respect to their internal consciousness of re
ligion. In our great towns there are millionaires ; also
are there paupers, beggars there. What an odds be
tween these devotees of money! So are there likewise
paupers of religious consciousness, clad with but a few
rags of pious experience, rudely stitched with an oath
or a momentary aspiration, pasted together here and
there with religious fear — a covering all too scant —
and through the loops and rents of this spiritual rai
ment the bitter winds of life blow in upon the smart
ing soul. There are also great capitalists of religion,
millionaires of piety and morality, whose long life in
dustriously spent in holy feeling, holy thinking, holy
work, has given them a great real and personal estate
of religion, whence they have now a daily income of
spiritual delight. This triumph of the soul you often
find in men of no outward distinction, sometimes fur
nished with but little learning — the religious their
only spiritual wealth. But the highest religious de
light is not found in these monsters of piety, only in
well-proportioned characters, when all the faculties
are fully grown and trained up well. For the religious

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 175
is a mixture likewise of all other joys, and, like manna,
" hath the taste of all in it."
It is not fair to expect much religious experience in
the child. Reverence for the all-in-all, gratitude for
his genial providence, the disposition to trust this Di
vine Mother, and to keep the laws of conscience, that
is all we should commonly look for at an early age.
The fair fruits of religion come only at a later day, not
in April or May, but only in September and October.
Nay, there are winter-fruits of religion, which are not
fully ripe till the trees bloom again, and the grand
father of fourscore years, sees the little plants flower
ing under his shadow; not till then, perhaps, are the
great rich winter pears of religion fully perfect in
their luscious ripeness.
Yet the religious disposition is a blessed thing, even
in childhood. How it inclines the little boy or girl to
veneration and gratitude — virtues, which in the child
are what good breeding is in the full-grown gentleman,
giving a certain air of noble birth and well-bred su
periority. There is a Jacob's ladder for our young
pilgrim, whereon he goes up from his earthly mother,
who manages the little room he sleeps in, to the dear
Heavenly Mother, who never slumbers nor sleeps, who
is never careful and troubled about any thing, but yet
cares continually for the great housekeeping of all the
world, giving likewise to her beloved even in their sleep.
In the child it is only the faint twilight, the beginnings
of religion which you take notice of, like the voice of
the bluebird, and the Phoebe, coming early in March,
but only as a prelude to that whole summer of joyous
song, which, when the air is delicate, will ere long glad
den and beautify the procreant nest.

176 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Painful is it to see a child whose religious culture has
been neglected ; the heavenly germ attempting growth,
but checked by weeds, which no motherly hand plucks
up or turns away. More painful to see it forced to
unnatural hot-bed growth, to be succeeded by helpless
imbecility at last. Worse still to find the young soul
cursed with false doctrines, which film over the eye till
it cannot see the Sun of Righteousness rising with such
healing in his beams, and make life a great dark day,
hideous with fear and devils, and amazed with the roar
of greedy hell! Such ill-entreated souls often grow
idiotic in their religious sense, or else, therein stark
mad and penned up in churches and other asylums,
mope and gibber in their hideous bereavement, thinking
" man is totally depraved," and God a great ugly devil,
an almighty cat, who worries his living prey, torment
ing them before their time, and will forever tear them
to pieces in the never-ending agony of hell ! It is ter
rible to hear the sermons, hymns, and prayers, which
these unfortunates wail out in their religious folly or
delirium. To cause one of these little ones to offend
in that way, it were better that a millstone were hanged
about the father or the mother's neck, and they were
drowned in the depths of the sea. I say it is but the
beginning of religion that we find in the tender age ;
twilight or sunrise, seldom more. The time of piety
is not yet. Blame not the little tree; in due season
it will litter the ground with purple figs.
In later years you see the flowers of religion, you
taste the fruit of its gladdening consciousness of God.
In early manhood there are temptations of instinctive
passion, which clamors for its object, and cares but
little with what its hungry maw is fed. In later man-

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 177
hood, there are temptations of ambition, a subtler and
more deceitful peril. I know nothing but religion that
is commonly able to defend us from either; this is
strong enough for each, for both together.
Young Esau is hungry ; the pottage is savory. De
sire from within leagues with occasion from without.
" No other eye is on me," quoth he. His pulses throb ;
the lightning, the earthquake, the fire of passion, pass
with swift tumultuous roar along his consciousness.
But the nice ear of conscience listens to the still, small
voice of duty, " Remember now thy Creator in the
days of thy youth." He turns him off from her snare,
charm she never so wisely, and if he fail of the pottage,
he is not poisoned with the wild-gourds stirred therein ;
with chaste hand he keeps his birthright of integrity.
" Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his ways ? " asks
young Esau, but from his religious soul the answer
straightway comes : " By taking heed to the law of
duty, clearly writ and plain to read." He drinks clean
water out of his sweet spring, and thirsts no more for
the tepid tanks of vice, dirty and defiling. His nat
ural passion is directed by its natural master, and what
is so often the foe of youth becomes his ally and invig
orating friend.
In a later day more dangerous lusts invade the
maturer man. Jonas is alone in his place of business
now. It is late; all the clerks have gone home, the
shutters are closed, the fire smoulders low in the grate.
The gas is thriftily turned down; by the dim light I
cannot see whether the counting-room opens into fac
tory, grocery, haberdashery, warehouse, or bank. 1
but distinctly see the desk — symbolic furniture for
all the five, with many more — and an anxious man
heavy with long-continued doubt. It is the man of
1—12

178 MATTER AND SPIRIT
business in his temptation — nay, his agony and
bloody sweat. Not Jesus in the New Testament leg
end was more sorely tempted of another devil.
" Shall I attempt this plan? " quoth he. What it is
appears not — importing Coolies, or African slaves,
cheating the government or the people — this only is
clear, he intends some great wrong to other men. " I
can do it — 'twill certainly succeed — no man shall
find it out. Then wealth is mine — that is nobility in
a democracy ; with it comes the power, the respecta
bility and the honor it bestows." They flit before
him — a great city house wheels into line; a great
country house follows, flanked with wide lawns and
costly gardens — a whole world of beauty. He sees
such visionary entertainments, new flocks of wealthy
friends, obsequious clergymen, communing at any
table where success breaks the bread and fills the cup,
no matter if but shewbread and wine of iniquity. He
tastes the admiration of men who worship any coin,
and care not if it bear the laureled head of liberty,
a northern fair-faced maid, or only a southern vulture
swooping down upon its human prey. He anticipates
the wealthy marriage of his modest girls. He sees
posts of ambition close at hand, and all so easy for
mounting up to if he be but winged with gold. " All
this will I give thee, yea, and much more," says the
tempter, " for they are mine, and where I will I be
stow them. I, Mammon, dwell with honor; glory is
mine, and respectability; my fault is better than vir
tue. The love of riches is the beginning of wisdom.
Money crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the
streets, How long, ye honest ones, will ye love sim
plicity? .Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell
safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. Did any

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 179
ever trust in wealth and was confounded? Look
about you: how did Mr. Shortweight gain his mil
lions? Yet what honor he lived in! Colleges named
him doctor of laws, and not banker. In funeral ser
mons ministers put him among the saints. Come thou
and do likewise. Money answereth all things, and is
imputed unto men for righteousness ! "
" Shall I also climb that popular ladder? " asks tor
tured Jonas. But presently it seems as if his mother's
form bent over him. It is the same sweet face which
was once so often pressed to his, as she stilled his
aching flesh and kissed his little griefs away. His
ear tingles warm again, as if that mouth, long silent
now, breathed into it her oft-repeated word, " Only
the right is acceptable with God." " Get you behind
me, devils all," cries he. They vanish into the cold
ashes of his grate, while the fair angel that we name
religion, disguised in his mother's saintly shape, comes
back and ministers to him. He goes home a strong
man; but dreams that night that he was shipwrecked,
and in the wildest storm his mother came and trod
the waters under her, and brought him safe to land.
Then turns he, and dreams again that he was falling,
falling, falling through the dark, never so long and
far away, and that same strong-winged angel swept
between him and the ground, and bore him off unhurt,
repeating with its sweet motherly voice:
" Only the Right is acceptable with God ! "
He wakes for honest toil and manly duty, with its
dear and tranquil joys; and all day long that holy
Psalm keeps quiring in his heart:
" Only the Right is acceptable with God ! "

180 MATTER AND SPIRIT
How soothing is religion in sorrow ! It is her only
boy: Rachel could not save him. The girls were
thinned out one by one. Sickness made them only
dearer. Death plucked them, flower after flower.
When he shook the family bush, how sadly did those
white roses cast their petals on the wind ! The corner
of the village grave-yard seems snowed all over with
mementoes of what has been. The father, too, is gone
now. In sleep her arms fold together, but only on
emptiness, as love calls up the dear figure to cheat and
avoid her grasp. Poor Rachel! all alone now! and
dreams add their visionary, woe to the live sorrows of
the waking day. Now the last one lies there, straight
ened after death, a red rose put in his hand. It is the
room he was born in. Her bridal chamber once is his
funeral chamber now — the beginning of her hopes,
the end of her disappointments — a porch only to so
many graves. How fair he looks, the brown hair
clustered round his brow. Since death, in the dead
boy she sees the father's face come out more fair, just
as he looked when she was eight and Robert ten, and
they gathered chestnuts in the woods, he alone with
her and she alone with him; he bearing the little sack
their mutual hands had filled, when neither knew nor
di earned those little trodden paths would lead to mar
riage, and their mutual hand fill many, a sack of joys
and sorrows too. In the same face she sees her lover
and her child — both dead now. That handsome bud
will never be a flower. No maiden shall salute those
cheeks with the first stealthy modest kiss of heavenly
love. The real present and the ideal future meet there,
and Rachel sits between, the point common to both; a
wife without a husband, a mother with no child. Poor
Rachel! Is there any consolation? She feels the In-

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 181
finite Father is with her, he loves her husband better
than she loved him, when passion melted the twain to
one; loves the child better than she loved her lost one,
her only one — her boy. The Infinite Father is with
her. In her early love she looked to him and was not
ashamed. That day-star of piety gleamed white in
the roseate flush of her maiden love ; through the throb
bing joy of her bridal she looked up to the Infinite
One, Father of bridegroom and of bride. When one
by one those little sprigs pushed out from the married
boughs, Rachel remembered him who never forgets us in
our heedlessness, thankful for the old life continued, the
new life lent. Does she now forget the Rock whence
our earthly houses be hewed out and builded up?
The neighbors look on the surface of her life — how
disturbed it is, the great deep all broken up! But
underneath it all, below the troubled depth of her
sorrow, there is a deeper deep whereto she goes down.
It is all still there, and, face to face, she communes
with him who will be with us in deep waters. In the
ecstasy of grief she finds that settled joy of heart
which transcends all other joys. She looks into another
world and sees her white rosebuds, and the last, the
red, open in the light of heaven and flower out to fairer
maiden and manly beauty than earth knows of in tem
perate or in tropic lands ! while amid those dear ones
the mortal father, immortal now, who went before his
boy, walks like a gardener among his plants, and
makes ready also a place for her ! " Thy will, not
mine be done ; it is well with the child." She needs no
other prayer. The comforter has come, that same
comforter who was in the beginning and cheered the
hearts of millions before the name of Jesus was eVer
spoke on land or sea. Poor Rachel, is it? Then who,

182 MATTER AND SPIRIT
I ask, is rich? Henceforth she has a charmed life,
her smiles fewer but serener and more heartfelt. The
air is cool and delicate about her; the endemics of the
ground can stir no fever in that tranquil blood. Her
great sorrow has seemed a great religion, which fills
her with stillness. A wife without a husband, a mother
without a living child, is she alone, think you? The
Infinite Father is with her, in her, and she also in him.
Call not that lonely which is so densely populate with
God. How the winds blow on the surface, at the human
level ; with what wrathful sweep tread those posters of
the sea and land! Go a few furlongs up, and you
have left the whirlwind behind you; you are above the
thunder, and beneath your feet the harmless light
nings flash unheard away; all the noises of Sebastopol
and Waterloo roll by and leave no mark on the most
delicate ear. Even the earthquake is not felt in that
calm deep of the upper air ! On the sea, go down not
many rods,
" The water is calm and still below,
For the winds and waves are noiseless there,
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless field of upper air.
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the wave his own."
How old and gray-headed Mr. Grandfather is.
At Boston, in 1783, he heard the bells ring for peace,
which meant also independence. His thoughtful
mother, not without prayers, watched his cradle at the
beginning of the storm of revolution. Now he is old,
very old. He has been out on the sea of life and done

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 183
business in its great waters. Many a proud wave has
gone over him. But he got through. Children and
children's children are the crown of triumph for his
old age. Yet he is more religious than old. He
stoops a little now, and sometimes slumbers in his chair.
The mists of the valley which all must tread lie spread
out before him, white with the moonlight of old age.
Of a pleasant day he sallies forth, staff in hand, this
QSdipus, who has met the sphynx of time and solved
the great riddle of life, and he wonders " where the
old people are ? " How young the world looks to his
experienced eyes! He lifts his hat to some venerable
man whom he saw christened in the meeting-house so
long ago that the ink has turned brown on the yellow
paper in the parish book. There is a funeral to-day
of a white-haired woman, old, very old. Mr. Grand
father remembers her as a chubby little rosy-cheeked
maiden, with black hair, and eyes so full of fun, just
getting into her teens when he was but half-way there.
Now he reads on the silver plate, " Aged XCIV."
" Ninty-four? " quoth he, " a great age. Yes, I
knew she was about that! A great age. Fourscore
and fourteen! Six more, and it is a hundred." He
remembers the green-gages she used to give him out of
her father's great garden ; now it is built all over with
huge granite stores, four stories high, and the pear
trees and plums which Mr. Blackstone brought over
from England have followed their planter long since.
He remembers her wedding — seventy-six years ago
last July, boy of twelve that he was. On the plain
table of those " good old times ' he set a china bowl
of white lilies, which he swam for in Hammond's Pond
that morning, to honor his pretty cousin's marriage
with. It was the first time they ever had such flowers

184 MATTER AND SPIRIT
at a Puritan wedding ; but the minister liked it, so did
cousin Lucy, but the new cousin thought only of her
who made him so happy. " Now she is clad for
another change," quoth Mr. Grandfather, as he lays
his last gift of blossoms on her coffin ; " always a little
before me, never long; born seven years first, wed
twelve years before me. We shall meet again before
long. This is the last of earth for you ; soon it will be
for me. Well, I am content. ' Shock of corn fully
ripe ' — let the dear Father come and take of his plant
ing, at the great harvest home. To die is also gain."
That night Mr. Grandfather tarries late in his sit
ting-room, when the rest are gone to bed. He slept a
little after supper in his great arm chair, and is quite
wakeful now. The old clock stands there; it tells the
hours of human time ; nay, with delicate hand it marks
even the seconds, just as life itself will always do. It
reports likewise the days of the month and of the week,
the shape of the moon ; on the top of all is a ship at
sea, rising and falling by wheel work, as if driven by
the wind and tossed. Mr. Grandfather looks into his
wood fire, and then all the long voyage of his past life
comes pictured to him from his cradle to cousin Lucy's
funeral. There are sad things to look on, which bring
back a tear; he did not know it till it fell hot on his
hand and made him start. There are joyous things
also, which set his heart throbbing as when he was a
bridegroom. Nay, there are wrong things which he
did, repented of, and outgrew so long ago that they
seem merely historical, like the sins of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob; yet he remembers the lesson they taught.
His boyish loves return — father and mother, children
— nay, children's children. The wife of his heart,
reverently buried years ago, comes back in bridal gar-

THE SOUL'S DELIGHT IN GOD 185
ments, then sits at the new cradle. Then another
funeral rushes on his sight : " Lover and friend thou
puttest far from me, and mine acquaintance into dark
ness," quoth he. " Nay, nay, not into darkness ; say
rather into marvellous light! My time is not far off.
How long, O Lord? How soon? Speak, Lord, for
thy servant heareth." The old clock strikes twelve;
the first day of another month comes into its place,
and the new moon lifts its silver rim to tell below what
heavenly life goes on above. " Soon shall I behold thy
face in righteousness, and I shall be satisfied, when I
awake, with thy likeness."
I wonder any man can be content to live without
the joyous consciousness of God; without this how any
one can hear the griefs of time, I know not, nor cannot
even dream. I would be certain that my little ven
ture is insured at the provident office of the Infinite
God ; then shall I fear no shipwreck, but steer my per
sonal craft as best I may, certain of a harbor; and
though it be at the bottom of the sea, I am safe landed
in heaven. If I have well done my part, and where or
when it may, I am sure the voyage will turn out for
tunate. O young men and young women ; men and women no
longer young! It is not enough to be brave and
thoughtful ; not enough to be moral also, and friendly
each to each. You have a faculty which makes
another world for you, the world of God. There is a
joy which is not in wisdom, with all its science and its
art of beauty and of use ; nor yet in morality, with its
grand works of justice; nay, nor yet even in the sweet
felicity of loving men and being loved in turn by them ;
there is a life within the veil of the temple; it is the

186 MATTER AND SPDIIT
life with God, the innermost delight of human con
sciousness. Animated by that your wisdom shall be
greater, more true your science, and more fair your
art; your morality more firm and sure, your love to
men more joyous and abiding, your whole character
made useful, and beautiful exceedingly.

IV
THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY
We are all connected with the world of matter, with
the world of man, and with the world of God. In
each of these spheres we have duties to do, rights to en-
joy, which are consequent on the duties done. Our ex
istence first, and next our welfare, depends on doing
the duties and enjoying the rights. Thereof we may
do much, and enjoy much, or do little and enjoy no
more. The quantity of our threefold happiness will
depend on the amount of duties done, and of the rights
enjoyed; but the quality of the happiness is also
largely within our control; and we may derive our
habitual delight from any one of these three sources —
the material, the human, and the divine; or we may
draw from all of these. We may content ourselves
with the lowest quality of human delights, or we may
reach up and get the highest and dearest quality
thereof. Religion, in its wide sense, includes a man's re
lation to all three — to the world of matter, the world
of man, and the world of God; it regulates a man's
duties and rights, and consequent enjoyments, in all
these three spheres of human consciousness — for re
ligion, in the large sense of that word, is the service
of God with every limb of the body, with every faculty
of the spirit, with every power we possess over matter
or over man.
But there is a purely subjective and internal part of
religion, which is the heart of the whole of it, and
187,

188 MATTER AND SPIRIT
whence its streams of life are sent forth ! I mean
piety. At first, piety includes directly only man's
relation to the world of God, and controls and regulates
the duties thereof, the rights therein, and the enjoy
ment therefrom.. But the roots of all other human
relations, of all the rest of religion, strike down into
this, and are not only steadied and supported, but
they are nourished thereby. So all of religion, in its
concretest form, comes ultimately out of this internal
element which I call piety.
By piety, I mean the normal action of the strictly
religious faculty — the soul — considered as purely
internal and subjective. It is our consciousness of God,
our feeling of the world of God, and of all which be
longs thereto.
This piety is a feeling which, at first, seems to be
simple, and not capable of being analyzed and decom
posed into other elements. But when you look at the
matter a moment, you see it must be attended by the
idea of God, and, as a condition of complete and per
fect piety, that idea must be the true idea — of God
considered as infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite
justice, infinite holiness, and infinite love — for if you
think, as many do, that God is not perfect, but is an
ugly devil, it is plain that your feeling towards God,
and your internal experience of God, must be exactly
the opposite of what it will be if you consider him as
infinitely perfect in power, wisdom, justice, affection,
and holiness. In the state of complete and perfect
piety, the spirit of man embraces into one unity of con
sciousness several elements, namely, first, an idea of
God, a conception of him as infinite; next, the feeling
of perfect love for God, of perfect trust in him, and of
tranquillity and rest with God; and, as a third thing,

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 189
the complete will to serve God by a way that corre
sponds to his nature, and to your nature likewise.
Then, as a consequent result of these three things,
there comes this — a supreme delight and rejoicing in
God! It seems to me that these things make up a com
plete and perfect piety, normal and total. So it in
cludes a great thought — the idea of infinite God; a
great feeling — absolute love and trust in God ; and a
great will — the resolution to serve him by the means
which he has provided. These things are separated by
reflection, and may be analytically examined ; for pur
poses of philosophy and understanding, it is neces
sary to do this ; but for purposes of pure piety and re
ligion it is not necessary; but we conceive of this as
one simple thing not decomposable. This composite
consciousness we call piety, and define it commonly
by its chief and largest element which enters there
into, the love of God — for the feeling of God implies
the idea of him as lovely, and leads unavoidably to the
resolution to serve him by the means that he has pro
vided. Now, this piety is distinguished from three ab
normal forms of action of the religious faculty.
It is distinguished, first, from superstition; that is,
the action of man's religious faculty combined with
the false idea of God, namely, that he is not lovely and
beautiful, but fearful and ugly. Accordingly the
superstitious man thinks that God must be feared first
of all ; and the internal worship of God is accordingly,
with that man, fear, and nothing but fear. Then he
thinks that outwardly God must be served by some
mode of action that is deformed and ugly, and violates
the native instincts of man ; that he must be served by

190 MATTER AND SPIRIT
mutilation, in old times, of the body, and in our times,
of the spirit — now of the intellect, then of the con
science, then of the affections, or of the religious
faculty itself. This is a very common idea of God
and a very common idea of religion. God is thought
to be ugly, and religion of course is ugly ! Supersti
tion is fear before God, and when I speak of piety and
its delights, I do not speak of superstition and any
delight connected with that.
Then, next, piety is distinguished from fanaticism.
That is the action of the religious faculty attended by
the idea that God is not only fearful and ugly, but
that he is malignant also, and hates certain men. Ac
cordingly, the notion follows that God is to be served
by cruelty to other men, by depriving them of rights
which we value ourselves and do not wish to be deprived
of. Fanaticism is hate before God, as superstition is
fear before him. Fanaticism is a far greater evil than
superstition, but in our day it is far less common. Ex
amples of fanaticism you find in the Spanish Catholics,
who built the Inquisition, to persecute alike Catholic
and Protestant, Mahometan and Jew; in the Protes
tants, who drove the fathers of New England and
Pennsylvania from England and Holland to this the
American wilderness; examples of it do you find in
the Puritan fathers themselves, who persecuted Quak
ers and Baptists, and put them to death. Nay, Quak
ers themselves, though sinning less than other Chris
tians, have yet sometimes been guilty of this offence.
This form of piety is, thirdly, distinguished from
mysticism. Mysticism is the action of the religious
element, attended by the idea that man is nothing, and
that God designs to crush him down, not into non-re-

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 191
sistance, but into mere passivity ; that the religious ac
tion is all God asks for, and that is to be purely in
ternal. So, according to the mystic, God is to be
served not with all the faculties he has given, but only
with this religious faculty, acting to produce emotions
of reverence, trust, love, and the rest. Mysticism is
sloth before God, as superstition is fear, and fanaticism
is hate before God. It exists still in some of the
churches, which cultivate only emotions of reverence,
of trust, of love, and the like, but never let the love
of God come out of the heart in the shape of the love
of man.
In superstition and fanaticism there is not a great
idea, but a mean and false one; not a great sentiment
of love to God, but a mean one of fear before him,
and of hate towards men. But both of these do excite
a great will, and accordingly superstitious men, and
still more fanatical men, have always been distinguished
for an immensity of will. In mysticism there may, be
a great idea and a great sentiment; there cannot be a
great will. Complete and perfect piety unites all
three, — the great thought, of the infinity of God ; the
great feeling, of absolute love for him ; and the great
will, the resolution to serve him.
I have thought it necessary at the outset to make
this distinction between true piety and superstition,
fanaticism and mysticism, for two reasons. First, the
religious faculties in action are as liable to mistake an
error as the hand or the foot, or any faculty that we
possess; and we should therefore guard against mis
takes which have already been made, and into which
ourselves are liable to fall. Then, secondly, I make
this distinction and dwell up«n it because each of these

192 MATTER AND SPIRIT
three things is often set up as piety itself, and a man
is told he can have no real piety in one church without
superstition; in another, without fanaticism; and in a
third, without mysticism.
Now real piety is the safeguard of all other forms
of happiness; it is the greatest of human joys. Our
delight in the world of God far transcends all our de
light in the world of matter or in the world of man. If
I am sure of God, sure of his infinite power, wisdom,
justice, love, and holiness, then I am sure of everything
else. I know that he has planned all things wisely, and
will finally bring out all things well. Then I have a
foundation on which I can build other things, and
build securely. Then the universe — the world of mat
ter and the world of man — looks permanent ; I can
rely on it. But without this certainty of God, I am not
sure of anything; uncertainty hedges me in on every
side. Now I doubt, then I fear, next I despair; for
if all things depend on chance, as the atheist says —
the blind action of blind forces — then there is no se
curity that anything is planned wisely or will turn out
well ; and if they depend on an imperfect God, change
able, wilful, capricious, as the popular theology
teaches, then there is the same lack of certainty, and I
am not sure that God planned wisely or provides well.
If they depend on an ugly and malignant God, as so
many persons still teach, and some believe, — "why,
there is no hope; that is fear — yes, despair! In my
nature there is a great demand for happiness, for im
mortality, for heaven. Logically, according to the
light of nature, that demand, which comes of my con
stitution, implies the promise to pay ; but if I am not
sure of God, then I have only the promise to pay in

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 193
my nature, but there is no endorser on the note; there
is no security lodged as collateral for payment, and I
cannot trust the promisor. This misfortune is a very
deep one, and it is felt also in all the popular churches
that are about us.
Thus my, consciousness of God colours all the other
facts of consciousness; my world of matter and my
world of man take their complexion from my world of
God. This is not theory alone, it is plain fact; you
see examples of it everywhere. My consciousness of
God comes into every relation that I have in life — to
my business, to my pleasure, to my affection. Go into
rigid Calvinistic churches; look at the faces of men,
listen to their prayers, read their hymns, see what
passages are selected from the Bible; then go with
these men to their homes, and see how their children
are brought up in fear, in trembling, and with dread
of God, — counting religion as something unnatural, —
and see how a mistake in the idea of God comes out and
colors all the man's life. Then, to go to the opposite
extreme, take the atheistic party which has risen up in
our times, read their books, and see them declare that
the idea of immortality is the greatest curse left for
mankind, — not the common idea, but any idea of im
mortality, — hear them proclaim that the great func
tion of the philosopher is to re-establish the flesh in its
domineering over the spirit of man, and you see how
their absence of the idea of God colors their conscious
ness and penetrates into every relation.
But if I know the infinite God, then I know that he
is perfect cause and perfect providence, and that he
makes and administers the world of matter from per
fect motives, df perfect material, for a perfect pur
pose, and as a perfect means thereto, and that the
1—13

(
194 MATTER AND SPIRIT
perfect motive is love, the desire to bless everything
that he makes ; then I am sure that the end is foreseen
and provided for, that all the action of the universe,
whether right or wrong, of the great universe as a
whole, and of you and me, the little atoms which com
pose it, of each nation, community, family, and indi
vidual — I am sure that all this has been foreseen and
provided for and so administered by the Infinite God
that there shall be no absolute evil befalling the great
est genius or the humblest idiot; that no mote which
peoples the sun's beams, that no mortal man, whether
he be Judas the betrayer or Jesus the crucified, shall
fail of never-ending bliss at last. Discipline there is,
and must be, but only as means to the noblest and most
joyous end. This I say I am sure of, for it follows
logically from the very, idea of the infinite perfect
God. Nay, the religious instinct anticipates induction,
and declares this with the spontaneous womanly logic
of human nature itself.
Now to any man who thinks, this is a matter of the
very utmost importance ; to one who does not think, it is
of no consequence at all. But if a man thinks, earn
est and deep, this conclusion is the most vital. When
I am satisfied on this point, then I can enjoy the world
of matter and the world of man, and I can apply the
human means which are in my power to the human end
which I wish to bring to pass. I have then no doubt
of the final result, no fear of that; I am concerned
about to-day and to-morrow, about my doing my duty
and my brother doing his; I am not at all concerned
about eternity, and about God doing God's duty.
I confess I wonder that every man who lives does
not have this confidence and enjoy it; it seems so nat
ural, and is so instinctive also, and it squares so com-

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 195
pletely with the very highest science which man at
tains to ; and then as you think about it, why, the infi
nite perfection of God springs into your eye at once, —
so that I wonder that any man who thinks at all does
not come to this conclusion, that God is infinitely per
fect, perfect cause and perfect providence, and made
all and superintends all from a perfect motive, for a
perfect purpose, and as a perfect means, and will ulti
mately bless everything that he has created. And yet,
natural as this is, instinctively as we get at it, philo
sophical as it certainly is, there is no sect of Christians
or un-Christians which has laid this down as its great
corner-stone. There is not, as I have said before, a
single sect of men in this whole globe of land which
declares consistently the infinite perfection of God;
even the Unitarians, in their " creed " recently promul
gated, though they say they believe the absolute per
fection of God, yet do not understand what it means,
and do not venture to say that no man shall be ever
lastingly damned; they wish it may be so, they dare
not think it surely is so. That of course implies that
they wish what God is not good enough to wish; and
of course implies that they are better in their wishes
than God in his wishes, and accordingly, that they are
nearer to infinite perfection than God himself. And
yet the Unitarians have less of this than any other
sect in Christendom. You go into any other church, —
I will except in a large measure the Universalist church,
— and you are frightened with the ghastly image of
God which is gibbeted before you in horror.
But, in addition to this sense of permanent security,
the piety I speak of furnishes the highest, the deepest,
and the most intimate delight which mortal man knows

196 MATTER AND SPIRIT
or can know here on the earth. I am very far from
denying the value of other forms of delight, even of
those which come wholly from the world of matter.
Every sense has its function, and that function is at
tended with pleasure, with joy. All these natural and
normal delights ought to be enjoyed by every man; it
is a sullenness toward God not to rejoice and thus ap
preciate his beautiful world when we can. St. Bernard
walked all day, six or seven hundred years ago, by the
shores of the Lake of Geneva, with one of the most
glorious prospects in the whole world before him —
mountain, lake, river, clouds, gardens, everything to
bless the eye — and that monk never saw a thing all
day long. He was thinking about the Trinity, and
when he reached home some one spoke to him of the
beauty he must have seen ; and the austere, sour-hearted
monk said he had seen nothing. He thought it was a
merit, and his chroniclers record it in his praise. It al
ways seemed to me rather impious in the stout-hearted
man, a proud fling at God, which Voltaire would have
been ashamed of. Mr. Beecher, with more wholesome
piety, says in his poetic way, " The sweet-brier is coun
try cousin to the rose." There is a touch of religious
recognition in all his love of nature, which to me seems
more truly pious than the proud flights and profound
thoughts in the seven hundred and forty-four letters
of St. Bernard, and all his sharp and acute, and rather
glorious sermons too. To me it always seemed irrever
ent in that great man that he boasted that he only eat
his dinner, but never tasted it, as if his mouth were
a mill and no more ; it was certainly a fling at the good
God, though the saint meant it otherwise. That great
soul which made an ox's crib at Bethlehem holy ground,
and the central point of many a pilgrimage, never

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 197
flouted at God's world in that sort. He saw a lesson in
the flight of the raven ; in the savorless salt there was
a sermon; there is a beatitude in the dry grass of the
baking-kettle of a poor woman in the company going
up to Jerusalem to hear him preach; and the great
eyes which saw God so clearly dwelt with pleasure on
the lilies of the valley, and said, " Suffer little children
to come unto me and forbid them not."
God made the world of matter exceeding beautiful,
and meant it should be rejoiced in by these senses of
ours: at these five doors what a world of loveliness
comes in and brushes against the sides with its gar
ment, and leaves the sign of God's presence on our
doorposts and lintels. Think you God made the world
so fair, every flower a sister to a star, and did not
mean men's eyes to see, and men's hearts to take a
sacrament thereat? Our daily bread is a delight which
begins in babyhood, and only ends when the Infinite
Mother folds us to her arms and gives us the bread
which does not perish in the using. The humblest
senses have their pleasure. The fly feeding on a berry
crushed by accident on a bush, lets one a good way
into the mystery of God's providence. The sights in
nature, the sounds thereof, — they are all means of de
light. I am sometimes astonished to see how full of
happiness a single day may be made, and that at the
very cheapest rate, by the sights which come to the eye,
and the sounds to the ear, at no cost but opening and
listening. These are sacraments by which man com
munes with God. It is surely, churlish to turn away
from the table which he spreads before every man. It
is a painful sight and a sad thought to remember how
many men there are in this Christian land of ours, and
still more in others, who are debarred from this pleas-

198 MATTER AND SPIRIT
ure. We think it a sad thing, and it surely is, that
every man should not have a Bible in his house, and
power to read it; and great-hearted Christians make
large sacrifices to put the words of Esaias, and Amos,
and Paul, and Jesus into the hands of every man. But
should we not also be ashamed that the greater, di
viner Scriptures of God are not in every Christian's
understanding, before his eye, and in his conscious
ness ! That also is a reproach.
Then come those higher delights from the use of the
senses and the mind better cultivated; from the beauty
of nature and art, and common life. I cannot now
dwell at length on our delight in the world of men, only
recall to your memory what every man experiences, —
the joy of affection, of love in all its forms, connubial,
parental, filial, related, friendly, and all that. It seems
to me that ascetic preachers often undervalue this.
And I remember to have heard a man of a good deal of
power too, declare that a man's love for his garden, his
house, his ox, his horse, his wife, and his children, was
all nonsense and absurdity ; nay, " a sin " in the eyes
of God, and just as he loved these things the more, he
loved God the less; and if he loved him supremely, he
would care for nothing but God! I do not value at a
low rate the happiness which comes from the union of
the world of matter with the world of man, from our
industry, its process and its results. I wish every
earnest man knew what satisfaction there is in putting
your human nature upon material nature, and making
it take your image — now a form of use, then a form
of beauty. I do not think we make account enough of
this, or set sufficient store by this source of delight.
To put human nature upon material nature, in the

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 199
shape of a grand statue or a grand picture — every
body thinks that is a great delight; but so it is to put
human nature upon material nature in the form of a
shoe, or a shirt, or a carriage, or a house, or a stock
ing, or a loaf of bread, or a nail, a farm, a garden, or
a steam engine, or anything you will ; there is the same
triumph of mind over matter in the one case as in the
other, and when we get a little wiser we shall see what
a real joy is in this, and at one end of society there will
be no idleness and shirking, and at the other no drudg
ery and being crushed by, excess of toil. God made
man to live with matter, and made them both so that
there should be good neighbourhood between the two,
and man should get delight from the contact. God
made men so that they might live with each other, and
get deeper, dearer, and truer delight from that in
timacy. Do not think, I say, that I undervalue either
of these forms of well-being. Let a man have all that
he can get of both, and communicate in both kinds
through this sacrament, with thankfulness of heart.
But I must say that I think the delight which comes
from the world of God, the joys of piety as a normal
consciousness and experience of God, a great way sur
pass all these other delights I have just named. Yes,
compared with the others, this is what womanhood is
compared with girlhood or babyhood. I say, this from
my own experience ; but it is not my experience alone, —
every deep-hearted saint who rejoiced in the world of
matter and the world of man, and then took fast hold
on the world of God, tells us the same thing. What
brave words have come to us from Jesus of Nazareth,
from Paul of Tarsus, from Thomas a. Kempis, and
William Law, and Isaac Watts, and that great stout
hearted man whose foot was so deep in the world of

200 MATTER AND SPIRIT
matter, whose hands went so largely into the world of
men, and whose soul took hold so strongly on the world
of God — Martin Luther : what brave words these have
left us of their experience in. the world of God. Nay,
how full of the deepest and richest experience of this
kind were the lives of the saints of the Quaker church !
What joy had Fox, and Nayler, and Penn, and Wool-
man, and Scott, and all those pious souls — women and
men, who learned to lie low in the hand of God, and re
joice in their consciousness of him and the visitations of
the eternal love !
What exquisite delights they, are which make up our
experience and enjoyment of God! The aspect of
beauty in every form is always a joy — in the shape
and color of a blade of grass, a nut, a fly's wing, a
pearl found in a mussel of a New Hampshire brook.
What higher delight is there in the beauty of the hu
man form ! Beauty is made up of these four things —
completeness as a whole, perfection of the parts, fitness
of each part for its function, and correspondence with
the faculties of man. These four things make up the
statics and dynamics of beauty. Now, looked at with
the intellectual and esthetic part of human conscious
ness, God is absolute beauty. He is the beauty of be
ing, self-existence; the beauty of power, almightiness ;
of intellect, all-knowingness ; of conscience, all-right
eousness; of affection, all-lovingness ; of the soul, all-
holiness; in a word, he is the absolute, the altogether
beautiful. As men take delight in mere sensuous love
liness of beautiful things, a rose, a lily, a dewdrop, a
sunset, a statue or a star, or man's or woman's hand
some face, all heedless of their use; so a contemplative
man may take rapturous joy in the absolute beauty of
God — infinitely attractive to every spiritual faculty of

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 201
man — having that fourfold loveliness, completeness
as a whole, perfection of parts, fitness of function, and
adaptation to our human nature.
But this beauty of God is a source of delight to few
men ; it cannot be relished without a great development
of the religious faculty, and also a profound culture of
the intellectual and esthetic faculties; and besides, is
somewhat too abstruse and transcendental in its nature
for the busy world of men, who want something they
can grasp with a thicker and hotter hand. I mention
it, and dwell upon it, because it lies so much out of the
way of common preaching, and because also it is real
and lies within the reach of every man who can culti
vate his understanding and his religious faculty. But
I pass briefly over this, because to many, men it seems
as moonshine when compared with the clear daylight of
other forms of religious joy.
Then there is this feeling of security and trust in
God. I feel God not as a King, power alone, but as a
Father ; yea, as a Mother, and I know that God loves me
with tenderest affection, that he loves every human soul
with all of his infinite power, wisdom, justice, love, and
holiness. Now it is a delight to be beloved by any
one ; the affection which a cat, or dog, or horse, or ox
feels for a man is a delight to that man ; to know that
some human being holds you in esteem, in affection,
watches for you and watches over you, and takes de
light in your well-being — why, what a joy that is!
Everybody knows it. I speak not now of the active af
fection which loves back again, but of the passivity of
spirit which only joys in being loved by other men.
Yet in receiving such love from mortal man there is
often this hindrance — the man often wishes it to be
exclusive to him alone ; for he thinks his friend has so

202 MATTER AND SPIRIT
little affection that he wants it all, and would break
other men's pitchers which are let down to the finite,
private well of his friend's affection ; so there is a strife
between the herdsmen of Abraham and of Lot, a quarrel
which troubles the well, and breaks the pitchers, and
muddies the water itself. But as the affection of the
Infinite God is boundless, not to be exhausted, as from
the very nature of God he must have infinite love, so
no man need be jealous of him and fearful we shall not
get our share, because publicans and sinners enter into
the joy of their Lord. When the elder brother comes
near the house of the Infinite God, he hears the music
and dancing, and is not wroth, but falls on his brother's
neck and kisses him, and finds himself in the finding of
the lost, and lives anew in the living of the dead.
I know the delight of being loved, for I have sunned
myself in the affection of father and mother, and
brother and sister, and wife and relative; and if any
body knows the beauty and blessedness of friendship,
I think that I do, for I have sounded its depths and
tasted its joy. But the love that I have received from
mortal men, from father and mother, wife, and relative,
and friend — it is but little, nay, it is nothing, com
pared to the still and calm delight which I feel from
consciousness of being loved by the Infinite God. My
mortal friends love me, perhaps, through their weak
ness; they, are not good enough to love a better man;
God loves me for his strength, for his infinity. They
are exclusive, perhaps loving others the less from loving
me the more; but God includes all, the heathen, the
Hebrew, the Mahometan, the atheist, and the Chris
tian; nay, Cain, Iscariot, the kidnapper, are all folded
in the arms of the Infinite Mother, who will not suffer
absolute evil to come to the least or the worst of these,

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 203
but so tempers the mechanism of humanity that all shall
come to the table of blessedness at last! Death itself
is no limit. God's love is eternal also, providing retri
bution for all I do ; but pain is medicine. What is not
delight is discipline, the avenue to nobler joy.
Feeling a consciousness of this divine love for me,
knowing that it is joined with infinite power, wisdom,
justice, and holiness, that it is perfect cause to plan
and perfect providence to administer — why, all the
sorrows and sufferings of life, how easily they are
borne! I writhe in mortal agony, but my, Father's
arms are round me — the agony is still. I am not rec
ognized by the world, my little merit is not acknowl
edged, not appreciated, it is so small; but God recog
nizes and appreciates it, and smiles down on the little
good I do, and it is not lost. Nobody feels for me
or with me; but the great God sympathizes with me.
I have his infinite power and his infinite love heeding
me every moment. I am tormented by the loss of
friends — father, mother, wife, child ; my dearest of
the nearest are gone; but the Infinite Mother folds me
to her bosom, and her tenderness wipes the tears from
my eyes ; I fall asleep in the Infinite arms, remembering
that no harm has happened to those who are taken, and
there is a place in store for the one that is left. I
know that no evils are absolute and lasting; nay, be
fore the creation of the world, all the errors, the mis
takes, and the sins which you, or I, or the human race,
would commit, were foreseen by the Infinite Father,
were provided for long before they came to pass, and
shall, all of them, be rounded off at last into a whole of
infinite bliss, infinite love towards each child that he has
created, towards Cain, towards Iscariot, the kidnapper,
and the victims of a world of cruelty and wrong.

204 THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY
I can look on the world's suffering and sorrow, on
the wars and slavery, the poverty, drunkenness, and
crime, the dreadful want which pines in cities, the vice
we pile up in jails to perish in malignant rot, the more
vicious vice which builds those jails; I can look on all
the sad heart-break of mankind, and I know it will be
all overruled by the Creator in his machinery of the
world so that infinite good shall come at last. Of all
the world's suffering and transgression, none came by
superhuman chance, and so is a world accident; none
by superhuman malignity, and is a world curse. The
history of man is the calculated consequence of the fac
ulties God put in man, known beforehand to the infinite
cause, provided by the infinite providence, and made to
serve his purpose of eternal love.
Then there comes the rising up of all my spirit in one
great act of gratitude, reverence, and trust, one great
feeling of love to God, and this fills me with unbounded
delight. Passive to receive God's love, I am active to
return it with love again. I just now spoke of the de
light of being loved by mortal men! and then of the
intimate joy of conscious love received from God! But
as our highest joy is of action, and not merely of re
ceiving, as it is more blessed to give affection than to
receive even that, so the joy which a man feels from
his conscious love of the Infinite God far surpasses
even the delight which he has from being loved by the
Father. My affection for my earthly friends is checked by
the limitations of their character: thus far and no far
ther is the rule,
" For the fondest, the fairest, the truest that met,
Man still found the need to forgive and forget."

THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY 205
But as God is infinitely perfect, absolutely lovable, so
there is no limit without to my power of loving him,
and my affection grows with the love of God which it
feeds upon, and becomes greater, wider, deeper, nicer in
its refinement, and brings a greater and greater acces
sion of delight.
Then I have in God the sense of security, of per
manent welfare which it brings ; this imparts a steadi
ness to the action of all the faculties ; it gives energy,
vigor, quickness to the intellect, strengthens the will,
sharpens the conscience, widens the heart, blesses with
its own beatitude every faculty that I possess. My
delight in God increases each special joy in the things
of matter or in the persons of men; I love the world
the more, because I know it is God's world, even as a
dry leaf given by a lover is dearer than all pearls from
whoso loves us not! I love my proper business bet
ter, by fire-side and street-side, in market and in shop,
because I know that it is the way of serving God,
bringing about his divine end by my human means. I
love my brothers and sisters, my father and mother,
wife and child, far more, because my heart is filled with
reverence and love to God.
In the sunshine of life, every human joy, is made
more joyous by this delight in God. When these fail,
when health is gone, when my eye is dim, when my es
tate slips through my hands, and my good name be
comes a dishonor, when death takes the nearest and
dearest of my friends, then my consciousness of God
comes out, a great light in my darkness, and a very
present help in my time of trouble. In wet weather in
the spring, every hill abounds with water, the brooks
run over in their affluence, and all the hill-sides and
plains are green; but, when week after week there is

206 MATTER AND SPIRIT
no dew nor rain, and month after month the heavens
impart no germinative moisture to the ground, the little
streams dry up, the surface springs are choked with
heat and dust, then we go to the well that is bored into
the primeval rock, embosomed in the mountain, and
drink cool sweet water that never fails.
This delight is for you and me, and every one of us ;
and when we have this pure abstract enjoyment, which
comes of piety, in our soul, then the love of God will
run over into morality, into love of men in every form !
and, in addition to these dear delights of piety, we
shall have the joys of philanthropy, of justice, of wis
dom, and of all human consciousness in its thousand
forms !

BEAUTY IN THE WORLD OF MATTER
All things are double, and he hath made nothing imperfect.
— Ecclesiasticus xlii, 24.
Late at night of a Saturday the milliner's girl
shuts up the close-pent shop, and, through such dark
ness as the city allows, walks to her home in the nar
row street. All day long, and all the week, she has been
busy with bonnets and caps, crowns and fronts, capes
and lace and ribbons; with gauze, muslin, tape, wire,
bows, and artificial flowers; with fits and misfits, bear
ings and unbearings, fixings and unfixings, tryings on
and takings off ; with looking in the glass at " nods,
becks, and wreathed smiles," — till now the poor girl's
head swims with the heat of the day and the bad air of
the shop, and her heart aches with weary loneliness.
Now, thankful for the coming Sunday, she sits down
in her little back chamber, opens the blinds, and looks
out at the western sky, taking a long breath. Over
her head what a spectacle! In the western horizon
there yet linger some streaks of day; a pale red hue,
toned up with a little saffron-colored light, lies over
Brighton and Cambridge and Watertown, — a reflec
tion it seems from the great sea of day which tosses
there far below the horizon, where the people are yet
at their work ; for with them it is still the hot, bustling
Saturday afternoon, and the welcome night has not yet
reached them, putting her children to bed with her
cradle hymn, — 207

208 MATTER AND SPIRIT
"Hush, my child, lie still and slumber;
Holy angels guard thy bed;
Heavenly blessings without number
Hover o'er thy infant head!"
One lamp of heavenly light pours its divine beauty
into the room. What a handsome thing it is, that
evening star! No wonder men used to worship it as a
goddess, at once queen of beauty and of love, thinking
while unkindly ice tipped the sphere and bounded the
Arctic and Antarctic realm, that she ruled into one
those two temperate zones of an ideal world, and even
the tropic belt between the two. Well, God forgive
the poor heathens! they might have worshipped some
thing meaner than that " bright particular star," full
of such significance; many a Christian has gone fur
ther, and done worse, whom may God also pity and
bless! If Kathie's eyes were bright enough, she could
see that this interior star has now the shape of the new
moon, and is getting fuller every night. But_what_a
blessed influence both of beauty and of love it pours
into that little hired . chamber j Then all about the
heavens there is such wealth of stars of all sizes, all
colors, — steel-gray, sapphire, emerald, ruby, white,
yellow, — each one " a beauty and a mystery. ! "
"Twinkle, twinkle, little star" (quoth she),
" How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!"
What a sight it is ! yet God charges nothing for the
spectacle ; the eye is the only ticket of admission ; com
monly it is also a season-ticket given for a lifetime, only.
now and then it is lost, and the darkened soul looks
out no more, but only listens for those other stars,

BEAUTY IN MATTER 209
which also rise and set in the audible deep, for the ear
likewise has its celestial hemisphere and kingdom of
heaven. But those stars the poor maiden looks at be
long to nobody; the heavens are God's guest-chamber,
he lets in all that will.
Our maiden knows a few of the chief lights — great
hot Sirius, the three in Orion's belt, the north star, the
pointers, and some of those others " which outwatch
the bear," and never set.
Well, poor tired girl, here is one thing to be had
without money. God's costliest stars to you come
cheap as wishing! All night long this beauty broods
over the sleeping town, — a hanging garden, not Baby
lonian, but heavenly, whereof the roses are eternal, and
thornless also. How large and beautiful they seem as
you stand in dismal lanes and your eyes do not fail of
looking upwards, full of womanly reproach as you
look at them from amid the riot and uproar and de
bauchery of wicked men. Yet they cost nothing —
everybody's stars. The dew of their influence comes
upon her, noiseless and soft and imperceptible, and lulls
her wearied limbs.
" Oh sleep ! it is a blessed thing
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mother God the praise be given!
She sent the blessed sleep from heaven
Which slid into her soul."
At one touch of this wonder-working hand the maiden's
brain triumphs over her mere muscles, her mind over
the tired flesh; the material sky is transfigured into
the spiritual heaven, and the bud of beauty opens into
the flower of love. Now she walks, dreamy, in the
kingdom of God. What a world of tropic luxuriance
springs up around her ! — fairer than artists paint,
1—14

210 MATTER AND SPIRIT
her young " Imagination bodies forth the forms of
things unseen," nor needs a poet's pen to give those
" airy nothings a local habitation and a name." No
garden of Eden did poet ever describe so fair, for God
" giveth to his beloved even in their sleep " more than
most wakeful artists can reconstruct when " the med
dling intellect misshapes the forms of things." What
a kingdom of heaven she walks in; the poor tired
maiden from the shop now become the new Eve in
this paradise of dreams! But forms of earth still
tenant there. It is still the daily life, but now all
glorified: sleep and love are the Moses and_ Elias who
work this real and not miraculous transfiguration.
The little close-pent shop is a cathedral now, vaster
than St. Peter's, richer too than all Genoese marbles in
its vari-colored decoration : the furniture and merchan
dise are transubstantiated to arches, columns, statues,
pictures. Ribbons stretch into fair galleries from pil
lar to pillar, lighter and more graceful than Cologne
or Strasburg can boast in their architectural romance,
writ in poetic stone, and the poor tape of the shop is
now a stairway climbing round a column of the transept
and winding into the dome far out of sight, till the
mind, outrunning that other disciple the eye, takes
wings to follow its aerial romp, which ends only in the
light of day streaming in at the top and coloring
the walls, storied all over with the pictured glory of
heavenly scenes. The counter has become the choir and
chancel; the desk is the great high altar. The roar
of the street — where market-wagons, drays, omni
buses, coaches, carts, gigs, mix in one continuous up
roar from morn till eve — is now subdued into music
sweeter and sublimer too than the pope ever heard in his
Sistine chapel, nay, though he were composed for by

BEAUTY IN MATTER 211
Beethoven and Mozart, and-sung to and aided by all
the great masters of heroic song, from old Timotheus,
who " raised a mortal to the skies," to St. Cecilia, who
" drew an angel down." What manly and womanly
voices sing forth the psalm of everlasting life, while the
spheral melody of heaven is the organ-chant which
they all follow! A visionary lover comes forth, — his
form a manly fact, seen daily from the window of her
shop, his love a maidenly dream of many a natural
and waking hour. He comes from the high altar ; it is
the desire of all nations, the savior himself, the sec
ond Adam, the king of glory. He leads her through
this church of love, built of sleep and beauty, takes her
within the vail to the holy of holies, where dwells the
Eternal ; therein, that which is in part is done away, and
the mortal maid and immortal lover are made one for
ever and ever.
Sleep on, O maiden ! and take thy rest till the morn
ing star usurp the evening's place ; nay, till the sexton
toll his bell for Sunday prayers ! I will not wake thee
forth from such a dream, but thank the dear God who
watches over those who rise early and sit up late, who
giveth to his beloved even in their sleep !
Late on the same Saturday night, Jeremiah Well-
todo, senior partner of the firm of Welltodo & Co., a
wealthy grocer, now waxing a little old, shuts up his
ledger and puts it in the great iron safe of his count
ing-room. He is tired with the week's work, yet it is
not quite done. The rest of the servants of the shop
have long since retired to their several homes. He
closes the street door — the shutters were let down long
ago — and walks toward home. The street is mainly
still, save the rumble of a belated omnibus creeping

212 MATTER AND SPIRIT
along, and a tired hackman takes off his last fare ; for
it is late Saturday night, nay, it is almost Sunday
morning now, — the two twilights come near each other
at this season, — and the red which the young milliner
saw has faded out before the deep, dark blue of mid
night; the clouds which held up the handsome colors
for her to look at, have fallen now and are dropped on
meadows newly mown. How they, will jewel the grass
there to-morrow morning !
Mr. Welltodo's work is not quite done, business pur
sues him still. " Sugars are rising," quoth he, " and
my stock is getting light. Flour is falling, the new
harvest is coming in pretty heavy, opens rich. What
a great flour country the West is. Well, I'll think of
that to-morrow. Dr. Banbaby won't interrupt me
much, except with the hymns. I do like music. How
it touches the heart! That will do for devotion. I
wish the Dr. didn't make such theological prayers, fit
only, for the assembly of divines at Westminster who
are dead and gone, thank God! I wish some of their
works had followed them long ago. Well, in sermon
time I can think of the flour and the sugar. Good
night, Mr. Business, no more talk with you till to
morrow at eleven o'clock."
" What a lucky dog Jacob is, that partner of mine !
— smart fellow too ! went up to Charlemont at four
o'clock, on the Fitchburg railroad, — bad stock that, —
to see his mother ; that won't be the first one he stops to
see ; somebody else waiting for him — not quite so old.
Mother not first this time. Well, I suppose it is all
right, I used to do just so. Did not forget poor dear
old mother; only thought of somebody else then, just at
that time thought of dear little Jeannie, so I did,
couldn't help it. Mother said nothing about it, she

BEAUTY IN MATTER 213
knew, always will be so, always was; one generation
goeth away, and another generation cometh, but love
remaineth for ever. Well, sugar's rising, flour getting
low — think of that to-morrow. How my business
chases me!"
But the wind from the country, hills comes into town,
its arms full of the scents of many a clover-field, where
the haymaker with his scythe has just swept up those
crumbs which fall from God's table, and stored them
as oxen's bread for next winter; but the wind gleans
after him, and in advance brings to town the breath
of the new-mown hay. It fans his hot temples, shak
ing his hair, now getting gray a little prematurely,
and to his experienced memory it tells all the story of
summer, and how the farmer is getting on. " What a
strange thing the wind is," said he, " seventy-five per
cent, nitrogen, twenty-four per cent, oxygen, and one
per cent, aqueous vapor flavored with carbonic acid!
What a strange horse to run so swift, long-backed it is
too, carrying so many sounds and odors ! What a
handsome thing the wind is — to the mind I mean.
Look there, how it tosses the boughs of this elm tree,
and makes the gas light flicker as it passes by! See
there, how gracefully these long, pendulous limbs sway
to and fro in the night! How it patters in the leaves
of that great elm tree up at the old place ! "
He lifts his hat, half to enjoy the coolness, half also
in reverence for the dear God whose wind it is which
brings the country in to him, and he fares homeward.
All the children are a-bed, and as Jane Welltodo,
thriftiest of kind mothers, has taken the " last stitch in
time," on the last garment of little Chubby Cheeks,
whose blue eyes were all covered up with handsome sleep
when she looked at him two hours ago, the good woman

214 MATTER AND SPIRIT
lifts her spectacles, and wonders why. father does not
come home. " Business ! business ! it makes me half a
widow; it will kill the good man. His hair is gray
now, at fifty-five ; it is not age, only business. ' Care
to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt.' Killing himself
with business! But he's a good soul, sends home all
the young folks ; lets Mr. Haskell go off courting, ' to
see his mother,' I think he calls it."
Just then the pass-key rattled in the door, the bolt
was shot into its place, and Mr. Welltodo ran into his
parlor. " To-morrow," cries he, " let us go out to
the old place. You and I will ride in the chaise, and
take Bobbie. Edward can go in the carryall, and take
Matilda Jane and the rest of the family. He will like
to deliver his piece to the trees before he speaks it on
commencement day. College wears on Edward, studies
too hard. Let him run out to grass a little up at
Gove's Corner, 'twill do him good. I want a little
smell of the country, so you do. How red your eyes
are! 'Twill do us all good."
So they agree, and both think of the mothers that
bore them, and of their own early days in tiie little
country town, poor days, and yet how rich. They re
member the little school-house and the mill, the meeting
house and the singing school they went to once, when
music was not the most important business they at
tended to. Going separate, and coming home to
gether; first two, next one, and finally many, in this
wonderful human arithmetic !
The next morning before the first bell rung, they
were at the old place where his father lived once, and
his brother now; her father lives yet the other side of
the hill, near the meeting-house. They will go there
in the afternoon.

BEAUTY IN MATTER 215
What green beauty there is all around! How
handsome is the white clover which the city horse greed
ily fills his mouth withal, as Mr. Welltodo and brother
'Zekiel lead the good-natured creature to the barn!
The grocer follows the example, and has a head of
clover in his mouth also, — sweeter than the cloves he
put there yesterday. How delicate the leaf is, how
nicely framed together! No city jeweller unites metals
with such nice economy of material, or fits them with
such accuracy of joint. What well-finished tracery on
the leaf! Nay, the honey-bee who has been feeding
thereon flies off in a graceful curve, and on wings of
what beauty ! How handsome the old elm tree is ; how
lovely, the outline of its great round top ! " That tree
would weigh forty tons," says Mr. Welltodo, " 89,600
pounds; yet it seems to weigh nothing at all. There!
that robin flies right through it as if it were but a
green cloud. How attractive the color, such a repose
for the eye! Dear little bits o'babie is never cradled
so soft as my eye reposes on that mass of green. But
how pleasantly the color of the ash-gray bark con
trasts with the grass beneath, the boughs above!
Look there, how handsomely; the great branches part off
from the trunk, and then divide into smaller limbs, then
into boughs, into twigs and spray! How the pendu
lous limbs hang down, and swing in the wind, trailing
clouds of greenness close to the ground! Look at the
leaves, how well made they are ! There is cabinet work
for you! What joining! How well the colors
match ! See where the fire-hangbird has built a nest in
one of those pendulous twigs, — just as it used to be
fifty years ago! Dr. Smith's squirrels will never reach
that! What a pretty piece of civil or military en
gineering it was to put such a dainty nest in such a

216 MATTER AND SPIRIT
well-fortified place! How curiously it is made too!
Such a nice covering! But here is the father; the
mother is in the nest, brooding the little ones — rather
late though. Did not marry, early, I suppose; could
not get ready !
" To choose securely choose in May,
The leaves in autumn fall away."
This is good counsel to bird or man, I suppose. That
is right, old fellow! go and carry your wife her break
fast, — or dinner, I suppose it is. But what a blaze
of beauty he is, newly kindled there in the boughs! a
piece of a rainbow, or a bit of the morning, which
got entangled in the tree and torn off. How he sings !
— Grisi does not touch that ; no, nor Swedish Jenny
Lind, with all the Bobolinks of New England in her
Swedish throat, as I used to think. Not up to that,
not she! Then, too, the very caterpillar he has just
caught and now let fall at my feet, — what a hand
some thing that is ! What eyes, what stripes of black
on his sides, and spots of crimson on his back, what
horns tipped with fire on his head ! What a rich God
it must be who can afford to dress a worm in such mag
nificence, — a Joseph's coat for a caterpillar ! But
next summer he will have a yet fairer coat, as he comes
out of his minority with his new freedom suit on, and
will flutter by all the flowers, himself an animate flower
with wings. Butterflies are only masculine flowers,
which have fallen in love, and so fly wooing to their
quiet feminine mates. Let him go! I am glad the
Oriole did not dine on such a meal as that. What a
glutton, to eat up a Solomon's Song of loveliness!
which was not only a canticle but a prophecy likewise
¦ — of messianic beauty for next year.

BEAUTY IN MATTER 217
" There is a hornets' nest, — a young hornets' nest.
I used to be afraid of hornets ; now I will let you alone,
Mr. Stingabee! Look there! city joiners and masons
don't build so well in Boston as this country carpenter,
who is hod-carrier, architect, and mason, and puts up
his summer-house of papier-mache under the great limb
of the elm. There is a piece of conscientious work!
done by the job too, — so he works Sundays, — but done
faithfully. What an overseer the good God is ! But
no, Mr. Hornet, your little striped head didn't plan that
house ; not an artist, only a tool in another hand ! "
In the mill-pond close at hand he sees the water lilies
are all out. How handsomely they lie there, withdraw
ing the green coverlets lined with white, and turned up
with pink, wherein they wrapped themselves up yester
day at noon! What a power of white and saffron
color within their cups! How they breathe their
breath into his face, as if he and they were little child
ren ! and are they not of the same Father, who cradles
the lily and the man with equal love? The arrowhead
and the pickerel-weed blossom there, and tall flags grow
out of the soft ground, with cardinals redder than
Roman Lambruschini. The buttonball is in its glory,
swarmed about with little insects, promoting the mar
riage of the flowers. The swamp honeysuckle has put
on its white raiment also, as if to welcome the world,
and stands there a candidate for all honors. How
handsome is this vegetable tribe who live about the
pond! Nay, under his feet is the little pale-blue for
get-me-not. Once he used of a Sunday to fold it up
in a letter signed I know you never will, and send it to
the dear little maiden, now mother of his tall boys and
comely girls. She liked the letter all the more because
it contained the handwriting of her lover and her God,

218 MATTER AND SPIRIT
— a two in one without mystery. She has the letter
now, laid away somewhere, and her granddaughter
years hence will come upon it and understand nothing.
Like Eliot's Indian Bible, nobody, can read it now.
No; there must be a resurrection of the spirit to read
what the spirit wrote, — in Bible leaves, in flower leaves.
There is the cymbidium he used to send on the same
errand, saying, " God meant it for my Arethusa."
Hard by is the kitchen garden; the pumpkin vine,
disdaining narrow limits, has climbed over the wall, and
puts forth its great yellow flowers. In one of them
is a huge bee tumbling about; he does not know it is
Sunday, does not hear the bell now tolling its last jow
for meeting ; does not care what the selectmen are talk
ing of outside the meeting-house, while within the old
ladies are fanning themselves, or eating green caraway
seeds, or opening their smelling-bottles, in the great
square pews, where on high seats are perched the little
uncomfortable children, whose legs do not touch the
floor; he cares nothing for all that, nor whether the
minister finds a whole new Bible or an old half Bible;
he is buzzing and humming and fussing about in the
blossom, powdered all over with the flower dust; now
he flies off to another, marrying the dioecious blossoms,
the thoughtless priest of nature that he is, who does
manifold work while seeking honey, for his subterranean
hive. Our grocer knows him well. " What a well-
built creature that is," quoth he ; " how well-burnished
is his coat of mail, how nicely it fits, how delicate are
those strong wings of his! Sebastopol is not so well
armed for offence and defence. What an apparatus
for suction ! the steam fire-engine rusting out in the city
stables is not so well contrived for that, though it did
cost the city ten thousand dollars and that famous visit

BEAUTY IN MATTER 219
to Cincinnati. But why all this wealth of beauty? Is
not use enough, or is God so rich that he can dress up
an humble bee in such fine clothes? so benevolent that
he will not be content with doing: less ? "
On the other side, the pasture comes close down to
the pond: some of the cows stand there in the water,
protecting their limbs from the flies ; others lie ruminant
in the shadow of an oak tree. Wild roses come close
down to the lilies, and these distant relatives, but near
neighbors and good friends, meet in the water, the
one looking down and reflected, where the other lies low
and looks up. Spiraeas and sweetbriers are about the
wall, where also the raspberries are now getting ripe;
andromedas shake their little white bells, all musical
with loveliness; the elder-bush is also in blossom, its
white flowers grateful to the eye, as to the manifold
insects living and loving in its hospitable breast. How
clean is the trunk of the basswood ; how large and hand
some its leaves; how full it is of flowers! to which the
bees, " with musical delight,
For their sweet gold repair."
A little further off the chestnut trees, also in their late
bloom, dot the woods with unexpected beauty, — look
ing afar off like white roses sprinkled in the grass.
How well their great round tops contrast with the tall
pines further up on the hill ! The grouping of plants
is admirable as the several beauty of each. Nature
never combines the inappropriate, nor makes a vulgar
match. There are no misalliances in that wedlock.
How lovely is the shadow of the oak, as it lies there
half on land, half in the water! The swallow stoops
on the wing, dips her bill, and then flies off to her popu-

220 MATTER AND SPIRIT
lous nest in the rafters of the barn; how curiously she
clings there, braced by her stiff tail, and wakes up the
little ones to fill their mouths ! and then comes such twit
tering as reminds the city horse of his own colthood in
the far-off pastures of Vermont.
"Ah me," says the grocer, " what a world of use
here is! see the ground, how rich the clover is! time it
was cut, too, — running into the ground every day.
How the corn comes out! Earth full of moisture, air
full of heat, country never looked finer! How the
Indian corn, that Mississippi of grain, rolls out that
long stream of green leaves; it will tassel this very
week! What a fine water power the pond is! only ten
foot fall, and yet it is stronger than all the king's oxen,
turns 'Zekiel's mill just as it used to father's, sawing
in winter and spring, and grinding all the year through ;
now it does more yet, for he has put the water to 'pren
tice, and taught it many a trade. How big the trees
are! that great pasture white oak, twenty feet in cir
cumference, — Captain McKay would give two hun
dred dollars for it, take it where it stands, here ; it has
only one leg to stand on, but so many knees! That
hill-side where the cows are, what admirable pasture it
is, early and late ! see the white clover — a little lime
brought that out ! what a growth of timber further up !
What a useful world it is ! what a deal of engineering it
took to put it together ! only to run such a world after
it was set up must take an Infinite Providence. It is
a continual creation, as I told Dr. Banbaby; but he
could not understand it, for * it was not in the Bible,' no
part of revelation ; ' continued creation is a contradic
tion in the adjective;' — well, well, it is an agreement
in the substantive, a fact of nature if not a word of
theology. What a useful world! But what a power

BEAUTY IN MATTER 221
of beauty there is too! How handsome the clover is!
— Miss Moolly Cow, you don't care anything about
that; it is grass to you, to the bee it is honey; it is
loveliness also to my eyes. The Indian corn — a Mis
sissippi of use is it? Why, it is the loveliest Amazon
that ever ran in all this green world of grains! That
millpond grinds use for brother 'Zekiel all day long,
makes him a rich man. But what beauty runs over the
dam, year out, year in, and comes dripping down from
those mosses, on the stones : how much more of it lies
there in the pond to feed the lilies, handsome babies on
that handsome breast, — and serve as looking-glasses
for the clouds all day, the stars all night ! This makes
all the neighbours rich, if they will only hold up their
dish when it rains wealth of handsomeness. Beauty is
all grist, — no toll taker out for grinding that.
Mill-pond is useful and beautiful at the same time, a
servant and a sister. How that little cat's paw of
wind rumples its dress, and those
'Little breezes dusk and shiver,'
just as Matilda Jane read it to me in Tennyson last
Sunday, afternoon, when her mother was hearing Dr
Banbaby preach on the ' Fall of man.' What an eye
that Tennyson has! — he sees the fact, daguerrotypes
it into Words. If I were a poet, I would sit right down
before nature and paint her just as she is, that is
the way Tennyson does. So did Shakespeare — did
not put nature's hair into papers, liked the original curl,
so did I, so does God. There, it is all gone now, just
as still as before! I used to fish here, — but I only
caught the outline of the hills, and the shadows of the
trees. How those great round clouds come and look
down there, and see their own face ! What ! don't you

MATTER AND SPIRIT
like it, that you must change it so fast? Well, you
keep your beauty, if you do change your shape. What
sunny colors ! It is Sunday all the time to the clouds
and the pond. How all the hills are reflected in it ! and
see the linden tree, and the great oak, and the white-
faced cow, the house, the wall and the sweetbriers on it ;
and underneath all are clouds ! so the last is made first,
and the first last. Mr. Church, who painted that Andes
picture at the Athenaum, could not come up to this, not
he, no, if he had Titian to help him ! Look at the re
flection of that great oak tree! Worth two hundred
dollars for use is it? Captain McKay shan't have it;
no, not for a thousand dollars ! No, no, dear old tree !
Grandfather who was shot at Lexington used to tell
grandmother, and she told everybody of it, that it was
a large, full-grown tree, when his great-great-grand
father built the first log-house in town. Underneath
that he first took his pack off his shoulders, and his hat
from his head, and stood up straight, and offered his
prayer of thanksgiving to God. ' Ebenezer,' said he,
' hitherto hath the Lord helped us,' and he called his
first son by that name — Ebenezer Welltodo. Here the
old pilgrim buried Rachel, his first daughter, a tall girl,
they say, but delicate. She died when she was only
fifteen, — died the first year of their settlement, came
over from England. But the garden rose could not
stand the rough winters of those times, faded and died.
The old pilgrim — he was only thirty-six or eight then,
though — buried that rosebud under the great oak.
When he was digging the grave, a woodpecker came
and walked round on the trunk of the tree, and tapped
it with his bill, and then stood close to his head and
looked at him with great red eyes. He never had seen
such a woodpecker before, nor any wild creature so

BEAUTY IN MATTER 223
tame, and called it a bird of paradise sent to tell him
that his daughter was safe in the promised land. So
he finished her grave, and lined it with green twigs
which the oak-pruner had cut off from the tree, and cov
ered her young body with the same — they had no
other coffin — and filled it up with earth, and planted a
wild-rose bush there for headstone. So this Rachel,
like the other, was buried under a tree, and this Jacob
also had his oak of weeping. I don't know how it is,
but there has been a woodpecker in some of the great
dead limbs ever since. Dear old oak! if there be
' tongues in trees,' what stories you could tell ! You
are as fair to the memory as to the eye. You shall
never go to the mill ; — too beautiful for use, you build
what is worth more than ships, for there is a heart in
you! " Look there, where the old barn stood ! how the ivy
and wild grape vine have come and covered up the rock,
casting a handsome veil over what man left bare and
ugly. So it is on all the roadsides betwixt here and
town. One day the railroad embankments will be also
green and lovely. First come weeds — a sort of rough
great coat, then grass, then flowers also. So- is it with
all our destructiveness. Nature walks backward, and
from her own shoulders casts the garment of material
beauty on the human shame of Waterloo and Balaklava,
and all the battlefields of earth. See how the rock is
covered with vegetation, houseleek here, celandine there,
and saxifrage — how early it comes out, close to the
snow; while mosses and lichens grow everywhere!
Beauty pastures even on the rocks — God feeding it
out of the clouds ; He holds forth a cup, and every lit
tle moss comes and drinks out of it and is filled with
Ufe.

MATTER AND SPIRIT
" What does it all mean ? Is God so liberal, that,
after drawing use for the customers at his universe of
a shop, he lets the tap run awhile merely for the beauty
of the stream ? Use costs us hard work, but the beauty
of nature costs nothing. He throws it in as I do the
twine and paper with a pound of cheese. No ; for that
I get pay for in another way. He gives it, just as I
gave little Rosanna Murphy, the Irish girl with the
drunken father who went to the house of correction for
beating his family — thank God I don't sell rum — ¦*¦
just as I gave Rosie an orange last Friday when she
came to buy the saltfish. That is it, he gives it in.
' Don't charge anything for that,' as I told her poor
little Rosie, who had been crying for her good-for-noth
ing father : ' We don't ask anything for that. I give
it to you that you may be a good girl and happy, and
know there is somebody richer than you who takes an
interest in you, to let you know somebody loves you.'
How she dried her tears and did thank me !
" Well, it must be a good God who makes such a
world as this, and when we only pay, for the dry saltfish
of use — often with tears in our eyes — pats us on the
head, flings in this orange of beauty and makes no
charge, ' so that you may be a good girl and happy,
and know that somebody takes an interest in you, that
you have a friend in the world ! '
" ' Comes of nothing,' does it? ' No plan in the
world, no thought,' is there? 'The fool hath said in
his heart, there is no God,' — that is, because he is a
fool. He must be a fool to think so, a natural born
fool, a fool in four letters. Well, I pity him ; so does
God. Poor fool, he could not help thinking so. I do
not believe in Dr. Banbaby's God, — a great, ugly devil,
sending Elias and two bears — miraculous she-bears —

BEAUTY IN MATTER
to kill, and ' carry off to hell,' forty-two babies who
laughed at his bald head. I don't believe in such a
devilish God as that ! it is worse than the fool's no-God.
But there is wisdom and power somewhere! Think of
all this, — sermon on the mount, sermon on the hill,
sermon in the pond, in the oak tree — a dear good ser-
mon that is, — sermon in the wild-rose and the lily !
Yes, that swallow twitters away a whole one Hundred
and Nineteenth Psalm of praise to God. How all
nature breaks forth into voice as soon as you listen ! I
don't blame her, I would if I could. Sing away there,
fire-hangbird ! buzz away there, humble bee in the
pumpkin blossom ! there is an Infinite Goodness some
where ! You don't know it, but you grow out of it, all
of you ! The world itself is but one little moss, drink
ing from the cup God holds in his hand. Ah me ! if the
Rev. Banbaby would come out here and read God's
fresh hand-writing, and not blear his eyes so continually
over the black print of John Calvin and the Synod of
Dort; if he would study St. Nature only half as much
as St. Revelation, he would never have preached that
sermon on the ' Damnation of the Unbaptized,' and de
clared that all such were lost, and especially infants, on
whom God visits the sins of their parents for ever and
ever, — which he did let fly on the Sunday after poor
widow Faithful lost her only child, a dear little boy of
fifteen months. No wonder she went crazy the next
week, and I took her to Worcester !
" This must be the meaning of it all, — it is a revela
tion of God's love. That is what it is. Consider the
lilies of the pond, — they all teach this: If God so
clothe the lilies in brother Jacob's mill-pond, watch
over them, ripen their seed thus curiously under water,
sow it there, and keep the race as lasting as the stars,
1—15

226 MATTER AND SPDIIT
will he not much rather bless every soul of saint or sin
ner, O Rev. Banbaby? Oh, foolish congregations of
self-denying men, who think you must believe in all the
clerical nonsense and bad-sense which ministers preach
at you! where are your eyes, where are your hearts,
where are your souls, that you make such a fuss about?
' Why this longing, this for ever sighing
For such doctrines ghastly, hateful, grim, —
While the beautiful, all around thee lying,
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?
Would'st thou listen to its gentle teaching,
All that restless longing it would still, —
Flower and pond and laden bee are teaching,
Thy own sphere with natural work to fill.' "
Mr. Welltodo is right; that is the meaning of it all.
Love sums it up : " All things are double " — use this,
beauty that, Old Testament and New Testament are
thus bound up in the same volume of nature. What a
revelation of God's goodness this world of beauty is!
How it comes to the tired young milliner, soothes her
weariness, quickens her imagination, and then laps her
in the arms of sleep, till all is joyous, blessed rest ! No,
in that rest she longs for another tranquility, — the
soul's rest in the infinite perfections of God.
How this mundane beauty comes to the calculating
man, lifts him above his " sugars " and his " flours "
he meant to spend all Sunday in thinking over; and
shows him the heavenly meaning in this life of ours !
What a revelation it is of the cause and providence of
all this world ! God gives us use ! " giveth liberally."
You might expect it. But that is not enough for him.
He adds another world, which feeds and cheers the
superior faculties. There is use for need and virtue,
beauty also as overplus and for delight. We ask corn

BEAUTY IN MATTER 227
for bread; God makes it handsome and it feeds the
mind. It seems to me as if he could not give enough
to satisfy his own benevolence. How he spreads a table
with all that is needful for material wants, and then
gives this beauty as a musical benediction to the feast,
— a grace before and after meat ! To a thoughtful
man, how the sight of this wakens emotions of reverence,
love, and trust! Who can doubt the casual goodness
which makes the fairness?
Men tell about " miracles," which prove " the great
ness of the Lord" and " his goodness too ; " that he
was once angry with mankind, and sent a flood, which
killed all the living things on earth from the lowest
plant up to the highest man, save only eight men and
women and a troop of inferior animals, whom he kept
in a great box, which floated for a whole year on this
ocean of murder, and then let out the ancestors of all
things that now live upon the earth; that he miracu
lously confounded the speech of men building a city,
and they fled asunder, leaving their abortive work ; that
he miraculously plagued Egypt with grotesque and aw
ful torments, and by miracle led Israel through a sea of
waters closing on their foes, and into a sea of sand,
which eat up one generation of the Israelites themselves ;
nay, that by the ministration of one Hebrew man con
tinued miracles were wrought for forty years ; and then,
yet more wonderful, by another, at whose word water
was changed to wine, the bread of five sufficed five
thousand men, the wanting limb came strong again, the
dead returned to life, — nay, at his death, that the very
sun stood still, and darkness filled the heavens at high
noonday, while the rocks were rent, the graves stood
wide, and buried saints came back to light and life.
Believe it not ! To me such tales are ghastly as Egyp-

228 MATTER AND SPIRIT
tian idols and Hindoo images of God, mixing incongru
ous limbs of beast and bird and man. In this little leaf
there is more divinity than in all those monstrous
legends, writ in letters or carved out in stone. But the
daily, wonder of nature, which is no miracle, — that is
the actual revelation of God's power and goodness, a
diamond of love set in the gold of beauty.
Look all about you ! What a ring of handsomeness
surrounds the town! What a heaven of loveliness is
arched over us! See how earth, air, and water are
turning into bread ! Out of the ground what daily use
and beauty grow ! Think of the thousand million men
on earth ; the million millions of beasts, bird, fish, insect !
They all hang on the breasts of heaven, and are fed by
the motherly bounty of infinite perfection. This is a
clover blossom at one end of the stalk, — at the other
end is God. Yes, all rests in him, flowers out of him,
lives by him, leads us to him. All this material beauty,
of nature is but one rose on the bosom of deity, over
looked by the infinite loveliness which is alike its cause
and providence. Yea, the universe of matter is a rev
elation of him, — of his power in its strength, of his wis
dom in its plan and law, of his love and his loveliness in
that perfume of the world which we call beauty.
Earth beneath and heaven above are greater and lesser
prophets, gospel and epistle, and all unite in one grand
Psalm, " Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace,
and goodwill to men."

VI
GOD'S REVELATION IN MATTER AND MIND
1. Religious Consciousness
2. God in the World op Matter
3. God in the World op Man
4. God in the Relation Between Matter and
Man
5. The World op Matter and the Spirit op
Man
6. Relation op Man and God.

229

THE INNERMOST FACTS OF RELIGIOUS
CONSCIOUSNESS
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel
after him, and find him, though he be not far from any one
of us. — Acts xvii, 27.
Every animal has instinct suited to its nature, work
and duty ; thus the young turtle and duck betake them
to the water as soon as they are born, the egg yet cling
ing to the creature's back; the newborn mosquito flies
from the sharded envelop, his watery cradle, and tries
his thin wings in the air; and straightway do all these
seek their food. These young animals do this not as
an experiment, not by an act of will. Instinct is older
than experiment, it is stronger than will. It is a power
executing tfuTpIan of some other mind, which is not
personal to fhe turtle, duck or mosquito, which thinks
for them, not merely by them. It is a general and un
conscious gravitation, as it were, of the animal towards
what is needful for his natural work and ultimate des
tination. All animals have this power of instinct,
which becomes before knowledge and will, and with
them takes the place of religion and conscience.
Man has a natural work and ultimate destination
higher than the beasts about him. His whole being is
more complicated. Hence he has a variety of instincts
which come before knowledge and will, and at first take
the place of religion and conscience. They are adequate
to this work. Here and there an individual man may
resist them, but they overpower the mass of men. By
a force which is not personal and voluntary, depending
on our will, but impersonal and involuntary, wholly
231

232 MATTER AND SPIRIT
independent of our caprice, do they lead us on towards
our ultimate destination. This assured control of in
stinctive nature over personal will gives a steadiness to
human action spite of individual caprice. Susan and
Abijah may fast the next ten days; but mankind will
eat breakfast, dinner and supper. The human race can
violate no instincts. Abelard and Eloisa may go into
the convent and nunnery ; but mankind can neither take
nor keep monastic vows, no more than the Gulf of St.
Lawerence could run up the river over Niagara and
travel that road to Lake Superior. Some of these in
stincts tend only to nourish the material excellency of
man, to provide food, defence, shelter, and the perpetua
tion of the race. These man has in common with the
mosquito, duck and turtle. But as man is both mate
rial and spiritual by nature as he has work both for
time and eternity, and an ultimate destination for
heaven, as well as a present destination on earth, so in
him there are instincts not personal nor needed else
where. These are commensurate with his complex
nature, his various works and ultimate destination.
They connect him with the material and spiritual world.
Thereby he enters into relations with forms of existence
not known to the animals.
Among the faculties peculiarly human there is the
religious instinct. I mean that original disposition of
human nature which inclines a man to the Power which
is over all, to fear or reverence, trust and love that
Power. This religious instinct is in all men. Like
other faculties it appears in various degrees, here
strong, there weak. In kind it is alike in all, in quan
tity diverse in each. Like all other spiritual instincts, — ¦
intellectual, moral or affectional, — it is feeblest in the

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 233
lowest form of civilization, hardly perceptible in the
wild man or the baby ; weak in the savage or the child,
but strong in the enlightened nature and the full-grown
man. This religious instinct is as certain in its action as
the appetite for food; and though Susan and Abijah
may control it by their individual caprice, yet it leads
nations and mankind to recognize a Power in them and
yet above them. Hence there is as much regularity in
the religious history of mankind as in the course of
the Gulf Stream or the zodiacal lights, the mutations of
the moon or the eclipse of the sun. Individual caprice
in religion is to the religious development of mankind
no more than the foam of the shore is to the weight of
the ocean, an infinitesimal which disturbs nor wind nor
tide. William and Harriet may deny God, and flout
at religion ; but mankind can no more be an atheist than
a monk. Nay, you shall find a nation without bread
as soon as without a God.
From this primitive religious instinct has come the
world of internal religion, which consists of religious
feeling, thought and will; and this creates the outer
world of religion — theologies, rituals, forms, cere
monies, temples, churches, all round the world. These
grow out of mankind as naturally and unavoidably as
the flora and fauna from the ground. In the legend
ary Genesis of creation, in Hebrew speech, God says,
" Let the earth bring forth grass," and the earth
brought forth grass. In the actual Genesis of history,
in the instinct and reflection of human nature, God says,
" Let mankind bring forth forms of religion," and it
is so. Signs of religious life appear early in the history of
mankind, as of the individual. As soon as man has any

MATTER AND SPIRIT
personal self-consciousness, and feels " I am a me" he
has also religious consciousness, and feels this conscious
ness of a Power about him everywhere, within him at all
times, and yet above him. This religious consciousness
of mankind has had a growth in righteousness as certain
and continuous as that of yonder elm ; it has been so, is,
will be. There are individual exceptions, but mankind
is one great instance of regular and continuous reli
gious growth.
, To understand this religious consciousness, and to
use its vast forces for our own development and perfec
tion, let us look its facts carefully in the face, and
know its great features. To do this carefully and per
fectly, take both the method of the natural philosopher,
who looks on things in large masses, gathers from a
wide field of observation, and by many facts connects
what is exceptional, extra or deficient, in a single case;
and take also the method of the metaphysician, who
studies the facts of his own individual consciousness,
and gathers his knowledge from that little walled-
garden of private experiences. The one method will
fit the religious consciousness of mankind as shown in
the great facts of the world's religious history, the
other the rehgious consciousness of the individual,
Susan or Abijah, with their personal caprices and in
dividuality of character; but the last helps you under
stand the first, as by the experience of your own sight
you comprehend the theory of vision, which is formed
on a world of facts you never experienced.
Take the human race in all times past and present,
and consider it as one great being, a single human
nature, continuous in many million human persons;
call this mankind. Study human history as the per
sonal being thereof, and learn the innermost facts of

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 235
man's religious consciousness. They are these three:
(1), a feeling of weakness, sinfulness, dependence
on somewhat; (2), a feeling after what we may depend
on, and a finding of God; (3), a desire of union with
God, and a struggle after it.
These are the three innermost facts of the religious
consciousness. Look at them a moment in detail.
Mankind was created wild; men, as other diamonds,
in the rough. Civilization is the highest work of man,
not the original gift of God; it is mankind's wages,
not God's bequest; human income, not divine capital.
The cause and power only are given by God in human
nature; by the development and use and enjoyment
thereof do we attain the result. When this baby man
first comes to consciousness, he finds himself surrounded
by forces mightier than he. Wild beasts overmaster
him, summer burns him, winter freezes, the storm wets.
There are violent things which make him tremble — the
hurricane and the thunder, volcano and earthquake.
Hunger bows him together. Pestilence comes on him
like a lion. Day and night are swifter and stronger
than he; the ground, the sun and stars seem old, while
he is of yesterday ; yet they are forever young while
human hair turns white, and whole generations come and
go, and go and come. In the midst of these things our
savage feels weak. They are master, he servant. He
fears and trembles. He is not his own cause; things
without direct and control him; they give him birth
without his foreknowledge or consent, and finish his
life against his will. He feels his dependence on some
what. See how the baby comes to consciousness of its body,
and learns to distinguish between the me of the body

236 MATTER AND SPIRIT
and the not-me of the body. So at a later, date he be
comes conscious of the soul or the entity of his being,
and learns to distinguish between the me of the soul
and the not-me of the soul, the me and something other.
This is the first fact of religious experience.
He longs for something he can flee to and rest in.
He fears the evil about him, — wild beasts, thunder,
storm, pestilence, death ; but with self-consciousness his
religious instinct wakens, and he feels there is a Power
stronger than these forces, something he can rely on,
flee to, trust in, and be safe. He does not know it yet,
only feels it by instinct, yearns after it, turns towards
it as the young turtle to the water, as the fly to the air.
Oh, that he could find this something, and be at home
with it, getting deliverance from his fear ! So he must
account to his mind for what his religious instinct hints
to him. He must know what he relies on as well as
feel it. Then comes the search after God, the long
struggle of mankind to find an idea of that Power
which controls him, a conception equal to his soul's
desire and need. The longing soul goes wooing for
its mate. At first it is not God man finds; it is the
divine rather than deity; I mean a vague Power, not
conceived of as a person. For in the formation of
the solar system there was first a huge nebulous mass,
without form and void, which at length separated into
concentric, whirling rings, which at last condensed into
planets, moon and sun; so this object of religious feel
ing appears to mankind first as an indirect mass of
superhuman power before it gets separated into distinct
conceptions, which men call Brahma, Jehovah or Lord.
This indefinite object of religious feeling let me call the
divine. Out of this mass of superhuman power man
makes his conception of God. In doing this he is con-

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 237
trolled by the special ethnological disposition of his
tribe or race ; by the degree of civilization it has reached,
and also by the aspect of nature, the material world
about him. When the northern winter starves him with
hunger and cold, or when the tropic heat scares him
with its thunder and ligtning, with tornado and pesti
lence, or when earthquakes and volcanoes disturb the
peace of the world, then this religious consciousness of
the savage takes the form of fear, and the conception
of God is terrible. But if the sky, be mild, the forces
of nature friendly; if the world smiles on him, his re
ligious consciousness reflects the smile, and his concep
tion of God is more lovely. So the conception of God
always depenjlsjm^rj^Jorces :
(1), on the ethnological disposition of the people;
(2), on the degree of development which man's facul
ties have reached; and (3), on the aspects of nature
which surround him.
In the history of mankind's search after God, while
he is separating the divine into definite deities, you
notice three distinct forms of conception he arrives at
and rests in for a time :
(1), God conceived of as the forces of nature; (2),
God conceived of as the forces of man; (3), God con
ceived of as neither nature nor yet man, but as infinite
perfection, which includes each, the matter of nature
and the spirit of man, and transcends both. All actual
or possible conceptions of God may be classed under
one or other of these three heads, for man has but the
three categories wherein to class the divine, — Matter,
Spirit, Infinity. But the three pass into each other, by
invisible shades, similar at the circumference, where
this combines with that, though they are utterly unlike
at the centre.

238 MATTER AND SPIRIT
In the first, man takes the most dangerous beasts for
God. They are objects of worship. Thus, in India
the lion and tiger, in Egypt the crocodile, in South
Africa the lion and boa constrictor, in Siberia the bear,
have all been held as God. The brute enemies of man
are typified as God.
Subtle and crafty animals, or such as are mysterious
in their instincts, their movements or modes of life, are
thought divine. Thus the cat, the snake, the beetle, the
stork, become sacred objects of religious worship.
Then the useful animals come in for their place, and
the cow and bull are transformed into beneficent deities.
The great forces of nature are thought God, — the
thunder, lightning, wind, fire, the volcano, the earth
quake. The great objects of nature which have a continuous
power, some vast forest, some great river, the holy
Rhine, Nile, Ganges; some mountains, Olympus, Cau
casus ; the sea, the earth, the sun, the moon, and " those
five other wandering fires," the daily or the nightly
heaven. But as no one of these is God, and as only the fact
can ultimately content man, so he gradually outgrows
each of these conceptions, and travels further in his re
ligious pilgrimage, whereof each step is a needful part,
and every fall is found an experience which is helpful.
The beastly deity was once a triumph of religious
thought. I look over a missionary museum of idols as
a collection of farm tools of ages past.
At length God is conceived of as a man, a personal
God with human qualities enlarged and extended wide.
At first it is a man mixed with beasts, whereof the
Egyptian idols still present the proofs. Soon it is man
without the beast.

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 239
It is a cruel man, with great powers of self-will, " a
man of war." Moloch, Mars, Ares, Thor are ex
amples. God is regarded as almighty human power
and wrath.
Then it is a wise man, with power of knowledge, God
as all-knowing mind. This is a great advance above
the brute force of the step below.
Then it is a moral man, with power of justice, a firm
unbending law. God is also retributive justice. This
is another great step, from the wise man made God to
the conscience raised to deity.
Then it is an affectional man, with power of benevo
lence. God is all-blessing love. Here, too, is a great
step, to Introduce love into the composition of deity.
But all these are necessarily limited. Personality is
being with a limitation; not the wide sky, but a bag
ful of air, no more. In the nature of the beast or of
the world we find no adequate representation of God.
Even the natural revelation conceived as a unit of force
was not God enough to answer the need of thoughtful
man. No more is the spirit of man an Adequate repre
sentation of God. So in all these ideas of God in
human form, in the six great historic forms of religion
among civilized men, the conception of God is found
inadequate to human needs, for there are limitations to
the excellence ascribed to God. His power of will is
hindered by caprice; his power of knowledge by the
uncertainty of human conduct; his power of justice by
selfishness, which breaks its own law ; his power of love
by hate. The present prevailing conception of God
in religious history is God in the form of man ; inspired
man, as Moses, Prophets, Apostles; transfigured men,
as angels, spirits; God-man, as Christ, very God and
very man; or God-woman, as the Virgin Mary. Each

240 MATTER AND SPIRIT
one of these conceptions has its faults, and though men
call it perfect as a whole, in detail you see it is not so.
These conceptions become unsatisfactory; they are
fluctuating, not fixed; man revises his statutes, and his
idea of God, both amenable to perpetual improvement.
At length the idea of God in the form of man is left
behind, and the soul conceives of God as Infinite Per
fection. He has not the limit of brute matter, matter
which is only static or dynamic force; nor the limit of
animated beasts, which are matter vitalized, matter and
something more; nor with the limitations of man, who
though animal and something more, spiritual as well
as material power, is yet spirit with limitations. Men
conceive of God, not with the limitations of impersonal
ity, which is below man, nor with the limits of human
personality; but as Absolute Being, whose nature em
braces all perfections men can conceive, and yet tran
scends that conceived perfection. He must have the
perfection of being and of power and of mind, — all
knowledge, not knowing by proofs as we know, but with
out proofs; of conscience, perfect knowledge of right;
of will, perfect freedom; of affection, perfect love;
of religion, perfect integrity. God must feel right,
know right, will right, do right. Personal ourselves, we
must use the help of personality to express what we
know transcends the limits of personality.
Thus we have developed the second of these innermost
facts of religious consciousness, and step by step
attained the knowledge of God. If the civilized man
stands high on the ladder, let him remember each step
is on the shoulders of a man ; and you and I are further
up than Moses or Buddha, Paul or Jesus, because we
come later, and stand on their heads in this mighty

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 241
pyramid of human history, half of whose height is hid
below the ground. As the philosopher who perfects a
Crystal Palace J is dependent on the rude men who may
a thousand years gone by have begun to clear wood,
to pile stone into walls, or to work iron ; and on all the
geometers who thought out the laws of structure, the
quantitative relations of things ; and the architects who
builded wigwam or cathedral, so he who to-day from
his lofty idea of God as infinite power, wisdom, justice,
love, integrity, depends on all the men of great reli
gious thought from Calvin back to Moses, and on the
millions of men and women of great religious feeling,
who furnished the combined material for the theologian's
thought. So much for the second great fact of re
ligious consciousness.
The third great fact is the desire of union with God,
to be on good terms with the deity, to do God's will,
and to be at one with him, your individual string tuned
to the general concord of his melody. After man has
found a conception of God equal to his soul's desire, he
yearns for intimate union with that deity. So he does
deeds suited to the will of his special conception of God.
High above him is the God he worships, to whom he
submits all his pleasures and his purposes. The service
man pays is proportionate to the character of his deity.
Here it is revenge, there it is forgiveness. Abraham
sacrifices Isaac, the good Samaritan heals a wounded
stranger. From his desire of union with God come all forms of
worship. The sacrifices of old time were made to
Jehovah by the Hebrews or to Zeus by the Greeks.
Was it thought that a man had a limb or a member
which God did not like, it was cut off. Thence also
1—16

242 MATTER AND SPIRIT
came the creeds of nations. Hence priestly men whose
business was to appease God, and make him propitious
to the special worshipper. Hence all the temples, con
vents, nunneries of the world. If God was thought
cruel, the means of pleasing him were found in cruelty
towards those who were deemed to be his enemies.
Hence came the cruel persecutions of the Christians by
the Pagans, of the Jews by the Christians, by the Catho
lics of the Protestants, by the Protestants of the Catho
lics, by the Mormons of the Christians, and by the
Christians of the Mormons. Rut. if God be thought
friendly, wise, just, loving, then must we seek to find
the way to him by the development of our nature by
morality and piety, wisdom, justice, love, humanity,
integrity; i. e., by the normal use of all the faculties
he gives. Each age helps the next, as the next genera
tion of merchants will learn wisdom by means of the
commercial crisis in the midst of which those of to-day
are now struggling. So it is with this third great fact
of religious consciousness.
Now, as you look over human history there is a re
markable unity in it. All nations become conscious of
weakness, dependence. All seek after and find a con
ception of God which is suited to their experience of
nature and observation thereof, to their ethnological
disposition, to their degree of development of faculties.
All seek union with God in ways suited to their idea of
him. Each nation and age thinks it is contented with
its idea of God and its form of religion; the savage
not less than the civilized, the Jew than the Christian.
But no progressive age or nation is content; all are
seeking for what is newer and better. There is a con
tinual growth of religious consciousness. The concep-

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 243
tion of God rises from beastial or material force to
human power, from brute caprice to love which em
braces all men ; it rises from the limitations of personal
humanity, to unlimited infinite perfection. There is the
same progress in the idea of union with God. Man
passes from the sacrifice left on a rock for a lion or a
tiger; from the Hebrew mutilation of the body or the
Christian mutilation of mind, conscience, heart and soul,
up to the highest development of love and good-will.
Abraham would save his soul by the sacrifice of his
only son; Jesus of Nazareth by dying would save
others. Let us not scorn the humble steps of the staircase of
humanity. Every idol which Caucasian, Mongol,
Malay, American, Ethiopian ever formed or fancied
has been a help in mankind's religious development, a
groping after God. These are mile-stones along the
human path, which show how far man had got at that
time. Extinct forms of religion are the cast-off clothes
which man leaves behind him, because he has outgrown
them or else outworn. At Washington, in the Library,
of Congress, you see the books which George Washing
ton used at school. So in history, the records of the
past, you find the old forms of religion. So all the
theologies, — Brahmin, Buddhist, Classic, Hebrew,
Christian, Catholic, Protestant, Calvinistic, Lutheran,
Trinitarian, Unitarian, — are steps on that pilgrimage.
The Hebrew groped after God, and held up the Old
Testament as the only image of him who dwelleth not
in temples. Of him they would make no likeness save
in word, nor speak his name lest the Gentiles should
learn it, and find the way to his divine favor. The
Greeks groped after God, and found the divine image
broken into many fragments. So the East Indian, so

244 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the Catholic, so the Protestant. Mankind needs the
gift of all of these contributions to progress, nay, the
least of them. All forms of religion are attempts at
union with God; the rude to bring God down, the re
fined to raise man up. Sacrifices, priests, processions,
pilgrimages, psalms and hymns, and other religious
acts, in all the thousand languages of the earth, are but
attempts to woo the presence of the Divine, entreating
him, with all the handsome names of human speech.
Man draws his bow at a venture! How many experi
ments, but not one in forty hits the mark ; yet mankind
did its best, and not a single shot has been in vain or
could be spared. How long the baby tries to walk!
From birth to manhood it is more than twice ten tedious
years, and yet this individual life is but three score
years and ten. Mankind is to live forever in eternity,
and so can afford a long babyhood. Man hopes for
union with God here, and still more hereafter. All
the idolatries of the Tartar, Hottentot, New Hol
lander, are attempts at it; the best which the place,
the nation, the culture would allow. Mutilation of
one's own body was for this; for this the persecu
tion of other men. For this the monk went to his
grim convent, for this the nun shut herself up within
her ugly cell enclosed by walls of stone, not by
arms of husband and daughter and son; for this the
hermit went naked, fed on water-cresses, dwelt in a
hollow rock ; for this the fires of Smithfield reeked with
human flesh; for this the branch of yonder elm groaned
with a Quaker woman whom our fathers hanged there
once. For this in many a land the Catholic lies down
and worships a bit of bread when a Latin priest cries
out, "Behold your God;" for this in old India the
Buddhist throws him before the idol car,2 and has

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 245
his body crushed to death, amid applauding crowds;
for this in New England the Calvinist bows him before
his grim and awful God, rejoices in the hell which he
thinks shall sunder you and me, and has his humanity,
crushed out of his soul. It is union with God they
seek. When America inducts into office her thirty
thousand ministers, it is thus she reads the ecclesiastical
contract : " Lo, I am weak, lead me to the Rock that is
higher than I. Help me to know my God, to serve
him, win his love, be one with him." This is what the
church means. Spiritualism is a groping after God.
"Oh, ye spirits of just men made perfect, or righteous
men rising upwards, come tell us of God, and how to be
one with him." Even atheism, the spiritual atheism of
honest men, is a struggle for the same thing; it is a
protest against the unrighteous idea of God which our
theology offers. It comes from an inspiration of reli
gious consciousness, as often as from the want of such
inspiration. Such is the teaching of mankind.
The individual man goes through the same. These
three things are the innermost facts of our religious
consciousness. You and I are mankind in little, and
a cup of water gives the same horizon as the Atlantic
sea. You and I feel the same weakness and depend
ence amid strong things which overmaster, the same
desire to know God, the same yearning to be at one with
him. Hence are groanings that cannot be uttered.
Each thoughtful man has been oppressed with his
own weakness. How powerless seems the individual
man ; in childhood, how dependent on the care of father
and mother; in youth, on guardians and teachers; in
manhood, how circumstances turn us about! How
much depends on what at first seems accident or fate!
Our bodily, condition, strength, health, beauty; our

246 MATTER AND SPIRIT
weakness, sickness, disability, dates back to ancestors we
never saw. Our education, social position, domestic
prosperity, depend on others whom we cannot control.
No one is his own cause. There is a providence. Do
you not feel this dependence in prosperity? I speak
in a town which not long since was so blown with wealth
that its leading merchants, lawyers, physicians, priests,
denied there was any Higher Law. Politics depend
only on politicians, trade on merchants ; neither is avail
able to seek ought else. When one man stole your let
ters from the mail, runs off with your railroad or
another pockets your factories, and uses ninety thou
sand of your dollars to bribe representatives and sena
tors withal; when a panic sweeps off the earnings of
your life, the uncertainty of business makes us feel the
dependence of our nature; still more when death
darkens our window with his wings and leads off father,
mother, lover, beloved, husband, wife, child, dear one.
We all of us seek to know the Power which orders it
all. Our religious instinct, like that of mankind, tells
you and me it is a design, not chance; not blind fate,
but a Father's power. So we all inquire what is God.
We would find him out unto perfection. Hence the
effort to obtain a true conception of God, an idea which
corresponds to the facts of observation without, of
consciousness within. We go to the Bible, to the Cath
olic church, to Trinitarianism, Unitarianism, Mormon-
ism, — " Show us the true Father," cry we. The
Spiritualists would invoke the dead, — " Come back,
Moses, Elias, Abraham; come back, Calvin, Sweden-
borg, Channing, Paul ; tell us what is God and of what
character." On the small scale as the great, the an
swer which contents us depends on our individual dis
positions, our degree of culture, and on our surround-

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 247
ings. To many men nothing is presented but the grim
and ugly conception of God which the popular theology
affords, almighty power combined with almighty
wrath. They either turn off to atheism for relief or
else settle down into supreme fear of their almighty
devil, the soul choked in the grasp of an awful hand.
Happy is he who finds an idea of God which answers
to the world without, adequate to the purposes of sci
ence; the world within, adequate to the needs of daily
inward life! If the idea of Infinite Perfection comes
to the soul, how glad we are! what growth it helps of
every faculty!
How we seek for union with God, here and hereafter !
For this the Hebrew circumcises his newborn boy; for
this the Christian dips or sprinkles his child; for this
the Sunday school; for this the Christian's prayer, the
attempt at revivals of religion, four-days meetings,
camp-meetings; for this the agony of individual per
sons, the cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner," or
the groanings which cannot be uttered. For this men
join the churches, and try to believe the various creeds,
listen to the wailing music of the Catholic church, to
the groans and sighs of the organ at Harlem or Fri-
burg, hear the Methodist hymn and join in the en
thusiasm it expresses in a great congregation. Do not
all of us long for union with God, to think his thought,
to will his law, to feel, to trust, to enjoy his love, yes,
to live it now and forever !
With different degrees of force will men feel their
dependence on a Power more than human; some not
until adversity has laid them low. I will welcome the
fall if it help me fly. We shall not all be content with
the same idea of God or the same mode of union with

248 MATTER AND SPIRIT
him. The choice will depend on our character, that on
our natures, gifts, and the circumstances about us.
The Chief Justice of Massachusetts had a slave woman
before him' the other day. Massachusetts said to her,
" This moment you are free ; you may continue so,
and your children not yet alive will be all free-born.
You may make yourself again a slave, then your chil
dren will be also slaves, so born, so 'bred, cattle, not
men ! choose as you will ! " She chose slavery, bond
age for herself, bondage for her children not yet born !
It is so in religion. Preach to one man a God of
Infinite Perfection, and a religion which is piety and
morality, the service of God by freedom of mind, free
dom of conscience, freedom of affection, freedom of
soul, he does not like it ; he wants fear not love, a devil
for God and bondage to outward authority of another's
caprice; not natural freedom, but slavery of mind,
slavery of conscience, slavery of heart and soul. The
world is wide, let each feed where he finds his bread.
Let each be faithful to his own soul. We may well
believe that in all ages
" Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened."
When a man finds an idea of God which answers all
the needs of his present consciousness, and offers sup
ply for future wants which come of what he feeds and
grows upon; when he finds a mode of religion which
encourages the natural and normal action of every

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 249
limb of his body; when in the innermost of his re
ligious consciousness this God reveals himself as the
cause and providence of you and me and all that is ;
and this mode of religion goes before and above him,
an ideal whose guiding shadow leads him all the day,
whose compassing fire encamps about him all the night,
its presence, too, a rereward betwixt him and the
ancient ills of some Egyptian darkness and bondage
he has left behind, then what joy is his, what tran
quillity and peace, and rest for the soul! It opens us
a path through deep waters ; it leads us across the wil
derness, gives us bread from heaven, bread of life,
water from the Rock, living water; we hunger and
thirst no more, but in the strength thereof we journey
on our three-score years and ten,
"And by the vision splendid
Are on the way attended."

GOD IN THE WORLD OF MATTER
The heavens declare the glory of God. — Psalm xix, 1.
I ask your attention to some thoughts on the signs
and proofs of God found in the world of matter. I
assume only two things at the outset: first, that the
world of matter exists; secondly, that the faculties of
man may be trusted to tell us the truth. Take the
world of matter as far as understood now, and from
the facts of the universe what can we learn about God?
Let us look with no prejudice and see what we find in
the world of matter.
Everywhere we find a vast power, and an ability to
produce material effects. The world is not a dead
thing. You find not only a deed done, a form formed ;
but also a doer doing, a form forming. Look at some
details of this power. For convenience let us put this
power into three forms — power of motion, of vegeta
tion, and of animation.
What a power of motion there is in the world!
Nothing is still. What we call rest is but the equi
librium or balance of many motions. On a large scale,
see this in the planets revolving round the sun, in the
winds, in the Waters. On a small scale, see it in the
rust of metals, in the growth and decay of wood, in
the crumbling of stone, which is occasioned only by
the motion of particles, as day and night, as summer
and winter, by the motion of the earth.
How many forms of this motion there are! At
traction causes the movement of bodies, as bulk to bulk,
250

GOD IN MATTER 251
gross weight to gross weight. Here the quantity alone
is effective, not the quality. Attraction, on a large
scale, makes the sun and planets gravitate together,
grouping Neptune and Mercury, and all the orbs be
tween, into the solar system ; a whole with a certain
unity of static and dynamic power. On a small scale,
it makes the atoms of water cohere into a spheral drop,
another whole with a certain unity of static and
dynamic force. This is quantitative attraction. The
qualitative, which we call affinity, is the attraction of
like to like. Gravitation musters all sorts of forces
into the great army of the world, forever on the march,
its little companies, platoons, and files of matter coher
ing well. What various elements make up this earthen
regiment, wherein we are also getting trained ! But af
finity joins in yet closer wedlock like-minded things,
though in this chemical, as in the human marriage, op-
posites often come together to make a richer whole.
What power of motion is there also in heat, light,
electricity ! Put all these together — motion caused by
attraction, bulk drawing bulk by affinity, congenial
atom in chemical union wooing and wedding each
its own, by heat, light, electricity, and what a power
of motion there is in the world! These fivefold forms
go on continually, and never cease. They compose the
material basis of all higher things, which rest thereon
and grow. All these most diverse powers of motion —
attraction, affinity, heat, light, electricity3 — agree in
this, that they are dead motion; they produce com
bination, not growth. The sulphate of copper which
effloresces on the outside of the electric battery, or the
common salt which effloresces on the outside of the
housewife's earthen jar of butter, is each a dead power
— chemical, not botanic, made, not grown. The

252 MATTER AND SPIRIT
quartz crystal found in some New Hampshire rock has
no growth in it. The particles came together by at
traction, affinity, heat, electricity. The solar system
is a work of mechanical attraction, not growth; a fos
sil, not a flower.
But higher than this five-fold power of motion is the
power of vegetation — botanic growth. Here is mo
tion, but differing in kind from what is caused by at
traction, affinity, light, heat, electricity. The atoms
of dust which float in the air are matter, nothing more ;
the housewife's flower of salt is matter crystallized —
matter plus organization. The humblest lichen which
grows on the damp wall of a city house is more, is mat
ter botanized — organization plus growth. They pro
duce the mask of vegetation, while the little lichen or
the huge baobab tree 4 shows us the face. What a
power of vegetation is there in the world! It covers
the land; it lines the bottom of the shallow sea. Its
great glory is in the gorgeous paradise of the tropics,
whence it fades off towards either pole, where there are
snow and ice, only chemic or mechanical flowers of mo
tion, not cactuses and Amazonian lilies. How vast
this power of vegetation is ! What wondrous forms it
turns to, and what a mighty function is fulfils, pro
viding food for all things higher than vegetables, which
live thereon !
Animation is another form of power ; as much above
vegetation as that is above mere motion. An animal
is a plant, and something more. A crystal is matter
organized; a plant, matter botanized; an animal, mat
ter vitalized. What power of animation there is in the
world! It peoples the land; it crowds the sea full of
its fertile spawn. It pushes its handsome branches
into the air, which hums with insects, and twitters with

GOD IN MATTER 253
birds. What various forms this animation assumes!
radiates, mollusks, articulates, vertebrates, or into
whatsoever states of life naturalists may divide this
great kingdom of animated nature. So much for the
fact of power in these three forms of motion, of vege
tation, and of animation.
Note this general fact common to these three forms ;
the power is resident on the spot. It is not something
foreign, which comes in from abroad, and acts spas
modically ; it is something resident, " to the manor
born," settled on the spot. Power of motion is in the
moving bodies ; power of attraction is in the sun and in
Neptune and all the intervening orbs which gravitate
to the solar system ; it is in the particles of water which
cohere to a special system of particles. Power of affinity
is in the atom of hydrogen and in the atom of oxygen
which unite. Power of heat is in the fire, the central
earth and the sun. Power of light is in the rays un
dulating throughout all space. Power of electricity is
in the spark which occupies the ground, the water, and
the air, and in the things they enfold. This fivefold
power of motion is not a force which comes in ca
pricious, and capricious goes ; it is a permanent settler,
present always in its proper home. The power of vege
tation is in the plant and its conditions of growth, not
something outside of the plant and its conditions of
growth. So the power of animation is in the animals
and their conditions. The power of life is in the things
that live. It is not a non-resident power which comes
in from without and acts by fits and starts. It is per
manently settled in the radiates, mollusks, articulates,
and vertebrates. This threefold power which I speak
of, whereof the world is full, is an immanent power,.

254 MATTER AND SPIRIT
residing on the spot. You find it nowhere else. There
is no power of motion except in things movable; no
power of vegetation except in things vegetable ; no
power of animation except in things animal. Matter
is the nest of power; that is, that combination of cir
cumstances and conditions necessary to the thing's be
ing. So far then, all we have gathered from the universe
is the presence of power, ability to produce effects in
three forms — power of motion, of vegetation, of ani
mation. This power is the first thing that strikes the
looker on.
Now, as we look further, we find that all these_fqrms
of power have a certain regularity, _ Motion is so, and
not otherwise. There is a law of motion, a constant
mode of operation for all moving things. On a still
day, the acorn drops from the bough, and falls straight
to the ground, one rod the first second, three rods the
second second, five rods the third, and so on, — falling
with accelerated velocity. This law of accelerated ve
locity prevails always and everywhere. A single force
makes a thing move in a straight line, several in a curved
line ; and the same forces combining at the same angle
always produce the same curve. This applies to the
apple that little Johnny throws to his little cousin
Susey, and to the bombs with which the British shelled
Sebastopol and Delhi; to the vast sweep of Neptune
round the central sun ; and to the comet's nightly range.
This law of motion is universal in all space which man
studies; it is constant in all time, past and present.
The gunner knows just where his shell will strike, the as
tronomer knows just where the planet Neptune was on
the tenth of January, a million years ago; he knows

GOD IN MATTER 255
where it will be the next tenth of January, or a million
years hence. Even the comets, which at first seem to be
nothing but vagabonds — " vagrants of the skies " —
in their eccentric course, are presently found to have a
beaten track, and to observe a constant law of motion,
which never changes. There is a corresponding law
for every form of motion. The attraction of two
things lessens as the square of their distance greatens.
This rule is likewise universal, in all space and time.
So affinity has its laws. Things combine in differ
ent proportions. Every housewife knows that a quart
of boiling water will dissolve so many ounces of sugar,
and no coaxing, nor scolding, nor praying, will make
it take up one pennyweight more ; and when it cools, it
drops part of what it took when hot. The chemist
knows that one pound of hydrogen will unite with eight
pounds of oxygen, and make nine pounds of water ; but
if he puts one and a half pounds of hydrogen to eight
of oxygen, the oxygen takes its fill from the one pound,
and leaves the other half pound mechanically adjacent,
not chemically mixed.
The same is true of each other form of power —
heat, light, electricity. Each has its constant law, that
never changes. The power of vegetation has likewise
its laws, its constant mode of operation. In the growth
of a pine tree by the process of vegetation, the mineral
matter of the earth, air, water is changed into a plant.
The pine assimilates the substance of the earth, but
each plant must have its own special nest of circum
stances or it does not grow. Vegetation takes place
only under certain conditions, in certain states of earth,
air, water, under certain conditions of attraction, affin
ity, heat, light, electricity. There is a range of attrac
tion, and temperature, and light. A greater attraction

256 MATTER AND SPIRIT
between the sun and Jupiter would not allow a plant
to grow. No plant on earth will live at a hundred and
fifty degrees of heat, or at the zero point of cold.
Mosses will not grow with too much sunshine or too
little. Each special kind of plant must have its special
place. There is a special law by which the lichen grows
on the damp wall of a city house, and the baobab tree
builds up its mighty form. Every country boy who
has to drive the cows to pasture knows that certain
mosses grow only on the north side of a tree, and in
the darkest night he can feel the four quarters of the
heavens by putting his hands round a tree, and finding
where the great mosses grow. He knows that mush
rooms, toadstools, and other fungi grow only, about
decaying substances. Every woodchopper knows that
the north side of a pasture-oak contains the compact-
est wood, and is the hardest to cut. Each zone of tem
perature has its special kind of plants ; nay, every con
tinent and island has its peculiar flora. So vegetation
is dependent on conditions, on the attraction of the
earth, on the state of the ground, air, heat, light, elec
tricity. These constant modes of operation of the
vegetative power are known because we find them al
ways kept. There is a special law by which each plant
is governed, from the lichen which grows on the damp
wall of a city house, building up its little evanescency,
to the baobab tree growing its huge and lasting frame,
— the constant mode of operation of botanic growth.
So is it with the power of animation. It has its
law, its constant mode of operation. Plants grow out
of the mineral world ; it is their bed and board, the gen
eral nest of growth. All animals live on the vegetable
world, or on such as feed thereon; no animal lives on

GOD IN MATTER 257
the mineral world. Each class of animals has its own
special condition, its special nest of circumstances.
This loves only, the land, the water would be. fatal;
that only the water, air and land would drown the fish.
Each climate has its peculiar animal, each animal its
special habits of action, which are just as certain and
regular as the motion of an acorn falling in a right
line, with accelerated velocity, to the ground. The
beast's organization determines what food it shall live
on. In the prophet's ideal world of peace, it is said
that " the lion shall eat straw like the ox." It was
good Hebrew poetry, and was meant for that and noth
ing more. The lion can no more live by eating grass
than the ox by eating lions. Ox and lion must take
each what his organization demands, when he stands
at God's table, and say nothing about it for conscience

So there is a constant mode of operation whereby
each animal builds up its frame, the law of animate life.
This law resides in the nature of the thing; it is the
constant mode of operation of its power. The law of
motion is in the nature and structure of things that
move. The law of attraction, affinity, heat, light, elec
tricity is in the special bodies subject thereto. So the
law of vegetation is in vegetables and plants and their
conditions; and the law of animation is in the animals,
— radiates, mollusks, articulates, vertebrates. In
either case, it is not something outside, which comes in
for a time, and acts by fits and starts ; it is something
that is always present there — just as solidity is in
things solid, extension in things extended, divisibility in
things divisible. The law of motion is in moving
things, the law of vegetation is in growing things, the
law of animation is in living things.
1—17

258 MATTER AND SPIRIT
So far, the world of matter reveals to us power and
also law — not power acting capriciously, but acting
regularly, by constant modes of operation. There is
a plan in all these things — motion, vegetation, anima
tion ; not only for a plan for each, in its separate action,
but for all, in their joint activity. The power of mo
tion in its five forms — attraction, affinity, heat, light,
electricity, — is a condition of the power of vegetation ;
without it no growth would be possible ; take away from
the world of matter either of these five modes of mo
tion, and not a plant could be produced. Vegetation
is the condition of the power of animation, without it
not an animal could exist. Matter, moving by attrac
tion, affinity, heat, light, electricity, is the nest for
vegetation ; matter moving, and vegetation are the nest
for animals. The world ofrnatter is the nest of forms,
and power the nest of law..
The fact that this power of motion, vegetation, ani
mation, acts in these constant modes of operation, after
plans so regular, so universal, serves a purpose, shows
that there is, likewise, intelligence in this world of mat
ter, a something which knows and wills. It is not brute
force, acting without knowledge and will ; but an intelli
gent power, working by means well understood, con
tinually directed to certain ends, which were meant to
take place.
This intelligence let us call by the name of Mind, —
by which I mean power ofknowledge and will; mind
which knows withoTTt" process of thought, will which
decides without hesitation or choice; not mind and will
with human limitations, but absolute mind and will. The
evidences of this mind are to be seen on every hand ; on
a large scale in the structuraljplan of the solar system,

GOD IN MATTER 259
with Neptune far off and Mercury close at hand, with
many an intervening planet moving in rhythmic order
round the sun. There is mind in this structural plan
of the whole solar system, for every orb moves forever
in its calculated track, which is shaped by the joint
action of the sun and every planet, all of which act con
stantly by the law of motion and its constant mode of
operation. ¦ Each revolves once a year 5 about the sun,
and turns each day about its own centre of weight, al
ways in the exactest order, never varying. This two
fold motion produces effects which never fail, which are
incident to the power of vegetation and the power of
animation. You see the same evidence of mind in the structure
of the earth, in its complicated form, the inevitable
product of many certain forces ; in the arrangement of
its great divisions of matter into air, water, land, in
the special composition of each of these, and the fitness
of each for its special function. And on a small scale
you see the same power of mind, with knowledge and
will, in the formation of crystals, the growth of plants,
and the insects which live thereon.
Study the leaf of an orange tree, — what wisdom is
displayed in its structure; how admirable its architec
ture; what nice framework, what exquisite finish; how
intelligently are the elements combined in its chem
istry, how the power of vegetation assimilates the par
ticles of earth, air, water, whereby it grows into a
plant! What a function the leaf has to perform —
this little mason, building up the stem of the tree, and
getting ready the substance of its flower and fruit!
See the nice apparatus by which the plant breathes and
gets its food! No city government can get a steam
fire-engine to pump water with such economy as this

260 MATTER AND SPIRIT
little " Miles Greenwood " 6 uses to keep itself always
fired up, in good repair, and ready for action. Look
at the aphis which has its world on this little leaf!
See with what intelligence the same power of mind has
used the power of life to fashion this minute creature ;
what organs he has to satisfy his individual wants ;
what power to perpetuate his race, wherewith he takes
hold on eternity, forward and backward! Behind him
he has a line of ancestors reaching beyond Noah,
"Methuselah and Adam. Study his internal structure;
how wonderful the means which conspire to form his in
sect life ! No municipal government is carried on with
such wisdom. How admirable must be that constitution
which gives unity of action to all his members, all work
ing as one, and secures variety of action to each, indi
vidual freedom for each special member! It is so
everywhere in the world of matter.
Now turn over that great volume wherein for many
million years the Daily Journal and Evening Tran
script 7 of the world appear, each leaf bound in stone,
study this Old Testament of ages past, when no man
trod on the earth, and on every page, in every line, in
each letter, do you find the same mind, power of knowl
edge and power of will. That power is constant in all
time which this great earthen book keeps record of, and
it is continuous in all space whereof its annals tell. The
more comprehensively things are studied on a great scale
the more vast this mind appears in its far-reaching
scope of time and space. The more minutely things are
inquired after on a small scale, the more delicate ap
pears this power of mind in its action. The solar system
is not too big for this mind to grasp and hold, nor the
eye of an aphis too small for it to finish off and pro
vide for, as well as for fhe sun, that great eye of all

GOD IN MATTER 261
these spheres, and also lamp and fire-place for so many
worlds all full of motion, growth and life.
This mind is not a non-resident, which comes and
goes, now here and now elsewhere, which acts by ca
price, by fits and starts ; it is mind always on the spot,
resident in things, not outside of things; active also
in things. It is not mind afar off or idle, out ever-
present mind, ever active in the solar system, — in the
earth, in the air, in tne water, in the quartz crystal that
sparkles on a lady's finger, in the orange leaf at your
parlor window, in the aphis that feeds thereon. It is
not mind condensed, concentrated into a single spot or
one minute; but diffused through all space, through
every point, likewise, of time that we are acquainted
with. Now this mind, this power of knowledge and will, is
not limited by any actual form of things. The seed
knows nothing of the orange tree which thence shall
grow; the aphis knows nothing of its posterity, there
is no genealogical society to look up his ancestors ; but
this njM provides for all, transcends the actual form.
The plant transcends the seed, the aphis transcends his
ancestors. So the solar system is no limit; the doer
doing continually transcends the thing done. And yet
it is a very remarkable fact that this mind never
seems experimenting, and thereby growing wiser. It
is true you notice progress in the results of mind, in
the deed done. Thus there is a continual ascending
grader — first brute matter, an atom; then matter or
ganized, as in the crystal; then matter botanized, as in
the plant ; then matter vitalized, as in the animal. And
so there is a progress in the deed done; but the lowest
is just as complete as the, highest in its way, an atom
as a crystal, a plant as an animal. The structural

MATTER AND SPIRIT
plan of the lowest creature is just as perfect as the
structural plan of the highest mammal; the details
of a joint in a snow-flea's leg are finished with just as
much care as the fiery atmosphere which surrounds the
sun; that snow-flea's relation to his circumstances was
cared for just as much as the sun's to the solar system
he irradiates. There is no mark of the apprentice
hand, no experiment which fails; the end seems known
before as well as at the last. The rocks contain the
annals of the world of matter for many a million years,
all writ in the same hand-writing; but there is no mark
which shows that a single letter was ever written wrong,
and then erased and the right one put instead. So,
though there be perpetual progress in the deed done,
which indicates a plan, there is never any progress in
the comprehension of the deed, there is none in the doer
doing; each work-piece is also a master-piece, the first
not less than the last.
So far, the world of matter shows power, law, mind.
Looking farther still, in the world of animals you find
signs of benevolence, in their relations to the world of
matter and to each other; but this power of benevo
lence is not very obvious at first sight. To the rude,
uninstructed man it is not very obvious, and to the
most scientific man there are still many things in the
world of matter which he cannot clear up and reconcile
with benevolence. Thus, there is much material vio
lence. In polar lands winter is horrid with frost; in
tropic, summer is terrible with heat; and all the way
between the air is often vexed with storms. There are
thunder, lightning, earthquakes, volcanoes, now and
and then a famine ; great geological convulsions destroy
whole faunas and floras of animated and vegetable life.

GOD IN MATTER 263
This power is_directed by a mind which can destroy as
well as create. Men's ferax, men's vorax. Then there
is much animal violence. Each animal has his foe, his
foreign enemy who springs on him from without; his
domestic insurgent, who lodges in his skin and in his
vitals. There are beasts of prey, birds of prey, fishes
of prey, animals which devour live animals. It is so
in all departments, — radiates, mollusks, articulates, ver
tebrates ; it has always been so, as far back as geologic
record tells. Constructive and destructive forces march
side by side, and the solid crust of the earth is the
graveyard of millions of creatures, perished long ago.
I do not jittempt to deny these exceptions. Sometimes
the destructive powers in nature seem to preponderate,
and accordingly men bow before an evil God ; and I do
not wonder that even now the difficulty is not quite
cleared up by science, and that the popular belief still
is that there is absolute evil in the material world. But
this let me say, that on the whole, as far as the world is
understood, the power of benevolence seems immensely
to preponderate; and not a single thing has ever been
found which any philosopher has ventured to say was
wrong, or did more harm than good. Earthquakes,
volcanoes, hurricanes, tigers, lions, rattlesnakes, vipers
— nobody has ever pretended that theyjiid more harm
than j£oodj_the leaning of science is quite the other way,
to suspect that what we call evil is good in reality, only
not comprehended yet. There is no one thing found in
the world on which a philosopher can put his finger
and say, " It came from ill-will." That he leaves to
theologians. The naturalist finds no devil anywhere;
it is the theologian who finds him everywhere.
What, then, does the world of matter tell us of, thus
far? Power, law, mind. They are certain everywhere,

264 MATTER AND SPIRIT
at all times, power resident in the world of matter, law
resident in the world of matter, mind residing there —
three forms of God. Benevolence, also, but not so
sure. I do not wish to claim anything which is unjust.
Lam not responsible for matter, nor for the proofs of
God's character in the material world. I put down
what I find, and only what I find.
You will tell me, " Men of science, greatly your su
periors in everything, — students of nature, like
Lalande, Laplace, von Baer, and Ehrenberg — have
found no God in the world of matter ; " and you will
ask me why they found it not, and when they did not
find it, why I dare say God is there. Here is my an
swer. The popular theology told them God has one
special personal form, exists in one special, limited spot,
whence he rarely intervenes — coming into the world
of matter by miracle ; that he was present at the crea
tion of a world, of a new species, or a new geological
epoch, and then withdrew and condensed his omnipres
ence into some special spot. The two astronomers said
— " Our far-reaching glass penetrates wide space ; we
find no special form of God. There is no spot which
we cannot look straight through. If there is any such
God as you tell us of he must be behind the most dis
tant nebulous spot seen in the constellation of Orion."
The two naturalists said, " We have unrolled the stone-
writ annals of the past, and they record no vestige of
your God. There are ' vestiges of creation,' but not a
single foot-print of. your deity in the ' old red sand
stone,' a billion of insect corpses in a cubic inch of
slate, but not a mark of your God."
Let me ask the astronomers and the naturalists, " Do
you find power? " " Power, immense, immanent power
in every spot." " Do you find law? " " Law univer-

GOD IN MATTER 265
sal, a constant mode of operation that never fails.
Ubi potestas, ibi lex — where power, there is also law."
" Do you find mind ? " " Mind ? The world is full of
mind — power of force directed in constant modes of
operation, by power of thought and will, to purposes
calculated beforehand by knowledge that never fails, —
mind's causal power, ever creating; mind's providen
tial power, preserving forever, that we find everywhere.
Our telescopic eye beholds no spot but power, law, mind
are there. We find no insect corpses so small but
power, law, mind — causal, providential, continual —
lodge therein. ' Vestiges of creation ! ' — they are the
tracks of power, law, mind, stamped into the rock of
ages in all times 'past."
" Do you find benevolence? " " Good-will we also
find preponderating. No proof of ill-will; here with
the microscope, there with our far-seeing telescopic-
glass, nor now, nor then, nor here, nor there. All we
understand is good, and only good. But there is evil
which we do not comprehend. One day perhaps we
shall, and find that also good ! "
That is the answer which they give. See the works
of these men, and you will find they answer all these
questions. I have only, translated their speech into
yours and mine.
The world of matter is the only .witness for God
which I put on oath to-day. This testifies of power,
law, mind — these everywhere. But there are sad faces
in this great family of living things which make men
tremble. The heavens thunder, man fears, and falls
down and worships the power, law, mind, which the
world of matter tells him of. Alas! he kneels on the
lamb's bones which some wolf gnawed the day before,

266 MATTER AND SPIRIT
and beneath him is a rock which records some geologic
convulsion which ages ago swept off millions of living
things. He trembles still, and turns off elsewhere for
a world of love. Take the world of matter for what
it is, not what it is not — love preponderates as a mil
lion over one.
The whole universe of matter is a great mundane
psalm to celebrate the reign of power, law, mind. Fly
through the solar system from remotest Neptune to the
sun — power, law, mind, attend your every flight.
Study each planet, it is still the same — power, law,
mind. Ask any little orange leaf, ask the aphis that
feeds thereon, ask the insect corpses lying by millions
in the peat ashes of the farmer's fire, the remains of
mollusks which gave up the ghost millions of years be
fore man trod the globe, they all with united voice an
swer still the same — power, law, mind. In all the
space from Neptune to the sun, in all the time from
the silicious shell to the orange leaf of to-day, there is
no failure of that power, no break of that law, no ces
sation in its constant mode of operation, no single error
of that mind whereof all space is here, all time is now.
So the world is witness to continuous power, never-fail
ing law, to mind that is everywhere; is witness to that
ever-present Power which men call God. Look up and
reverence; bow down and trust!

GOD IN THE WORLD OF MAN
For the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of
God. — 1 Corihthians ii, 10.
Last Sunday we looked at the world of matter, to
induce thence proofs of God, his being and character;
and found therein power, law and mind directing that
power, by means of that law, and its constant mode of
operation, to certain purposes, which were never ill-
willed, and in which benevolence preponderated.
Power, law, mind, we found imminent in the world of
matter ; not transient anywhere, but everywhere always.
Proofs of benevolence we did not find so uniform in time
and space, but yet preponderant; much not under
stood, but nothing ill-willed. From the world of mat
ter we could induce a God of power, law, mind, and
partial benevolence. In all time and space we found
the powerful and wise God, the benevolence preponder
ant, but not so sure.
Let us look next at the proofs of God in the world
of spirit, the world of man; and as we took the facts
of observation to show us what the nature of matter
tells us of God therein, let us now take the facts of
consciousness to show what the nature of man tells us
of God herein.
An atom is matter and no more, existence in its plain
est form ; a crystal is matter and something more, mat
ter organized, material atoms plus organization; a
plant is organized material atoms and something more,
matter botanized, organization plus growth ; an animal
267

268 MATTER AND SPIRIT
is botanized organization and something more, matter
vitalized, a plant plus life; a man is a vitalized plant
and something more, matter spiritualized, an animal
plus humanity. Now the material part of man, his
body, is subject to all the conditions of other matter;
it has the property, of the atoms which compose it, of
the crystals which form therein, and is subject to the
laws of motion, vegetation, and animation. Therein,
from the facts of observation, you find proofs of God,
of power, law, mind, and partial benevolence, but they
are the same in kind as what you gather from the world
external to us ; while, if you take the spiritual part of
man, in which he differs from the world of matter, and
examine that, studying the facts of observation which
you see in other men, and the facts of consciousness
which you feel in yourself, you may learn what the
world of matter does not teach. The world of matter
is one witness to testify of God; the world of spirit is
another. Listen to the evidence from the facts of con
sciousness in your own experience and the experience
of mankind.
To begin, we must know what is me, and what is not-
me. The philosophic term me expresses what I am,
and the term not-me expresses everything else. The.
baby does not at first distinguish between his own body
and the world of matter about him; he thinks that the
bosom that feeds him is as much a part of himself as
the mouth that embraces it, that the sun is his eye, a
part of himself, as much as the eye, not understand
ing that the light is a foreign substance impinging
thereon. By and by he begins to perceive the limits
of his material personality, and separate the me of the
body from the not-me of the body. You and I do not
remember this process, but every thoughtful mother

GOD IN MAN 269
has observed it in her child. He feels the rubber ring,
the cradle quilt, which give back no response to his
touch. With little thoughtfulness he grasps his foot ;
then there is a twofold sensation of touch in his passive
foot and active hand, and he laughs at the discovery.
He is perambulating the borders of his little municipal
ity. " The body, that is me," he concludes ; " the rub
ber ring, the cradle quilt, they are not me." At a later
age we do the same with the part of us which is not
material. After determining the body's limits, we at
first confound the me of the spirit with the not-me of
the spirit, the spiritual things about us. Thus we some
times claim as ours what is foreign, and yet oftener
think that foreign and from without which is only a
part of ourselves, a shadow of our spiritual personality ;
for as the body is surrounded with material things,
sensible to touch, taste, smell, the eye and the ear, so
is our spirit girt about by things conceivable to the
mind, the conscience, the heart and the soul; by,
thoughts, ideas and spiritual influences, call them what
you will. At first we do not clearly discern the bounds
where we end and other spiritual things begin, and so
we must make experiments to separate the spiritual me
and the spiritual not-me. Some of you, perhaps, re
member when this process began in your consciousness ;
perhaps it is not quite over with any one of us; parts
of other men's consciousness lap over on ours, and we
mistake their thoughts for our own, mistaking our
reputation, what others think of us, for our character,
what we are ; and the reason is that we have not drawn
the lines between our spiritual province and theirs.
But here we commonly make a mistake just the oppo
site of the child's error. In babyhood we claim too
much for our body, and in manhood often too little for

270 MATTER AND SPIRIT
our spirit ; and what is the result of our action we some
times take for the invention of a foreign thing. The
ghost-seer really looks at his own fancy, but he thinks
he sees a murdered man risen from the grave. Martin
Luther threw his inkstand at the visible devil, and it
hit Martin's own whim. Jehovah appeared to Jacob in
a dream ; that was Jacob's story ; Jacob dreamed that
Jehovah appeared to him, and that was the fact. St.
Theresa and St. Brigitta think certain wise or foolish
things, and then say, " The Virgin Mary, Jesus of
Nazareth or the Lord God came and told them to us."
There was no fact in the statement; it was only their
foolish whim. Job Scott, with an audience of a thou
sand men, sits in his chair, waiting for the holy ghost
to come ; an hour goes by, and no ghost appears ; at
length he springs to his feet and pours out his tide of
speech; he says it is the holy ghost speaking through
him, but it is only Job Scott saying what George Fox,
and William Penn and James Naylor said a hundred
years ago, and what he has himself repeated a hun
dred times before, when the mood was on him and his
genius brought it back.
We all make this kind of mistake, and that fre
quently; and I take it no man ever completely sepa
rates the me of the spirit from the not-me. We give
outness to much which is really only inward in us, and
hence comes the immense difference amongst men in
matters of opinion. Much, too, of our idea of God
is purely subjective, and comes from the worshipper's
consciousness alone, and not from any fact of God. In
the religious books of the six great world-sects, — Brah-
manic, Buddhistic, Hebrew, Classic, Christian, and Ma
hometan, what different notions of God do you find!
Three-fourths of what they teach comes from the

GOD IN MAN 271
writers' defect; they confounded their own faults
and imperfections with the facts of God. Thus the
Old Testament makes God say, " Jacob have I loved,
and Esau have I hated." This saying comes from no
fact in God ; he is not at war with Esau ; it comes from
the prophet's hatred of the Arabians, the national ene
mies of the Jews, and he put those words into Jehovah's
mouth. But the Arabian prophet would have put dif
ferent words into his God's mouth, and he would have
been represented as saying, " Esau have I loved, and
Jacob have I hated ; " when the fact was that the per
fect God hated neither, but loved both the hairy and
the smooth man.
The popular idea of the devil represents no fact in
the nature of matter or in the nature of man, only the
subjective feeling or thought of men who are not very
wise nor benevolent. The council of orthodox ministers
at North Woburn,8 who refused to ordain a man as
minister because he did not believe in the eternal damna
tion of babies newly born, think that God is a great,
monstrous, ugly devil; but that idea represents no fact
of the universe, only, an ordained whim of the coun
cil. Now, as men do not know how far their spiritual
personality reaches, and take their own follies or dreams
for miraculous communications of truth, and thence
make deductions, it comes to pass that in all these six
great forms of religion God has been regarded as a
limited being, imperfect, and often represented as ugly
and malicious. Accordingly, men with great humane
instincts or higher reflection refuse to accept such an
idea of God, and suffer bitter consequences; once in
quisitors burned them alive at Toledo or Madrid as

272 MATTER AND SPIRIT
atheists; now other inquisitors at North Woburn can
only refuse to ordain them as ministers, not burn them
at the stake. Other men finding that the God of the
inquisitors has no existence, declare that there is no
God at all.
Thus men undertake to get an idea of God from
the world of matter, and thence infer an almighty be
ing, who carefully plans out his work, does it, then
withdraws, goes about something else ; but now and then
returns to look after his work, to improve it, add this
or take that away, to mend it, to tighten a nut or oil
a bearing. That is about the idea of God which is
taught by the common run of writers, from Paley to
Agassiz. They, do not introduce you to the power and
mind ever present in the world of matter, acting by
constant modes of operation which transcend the pres
ent fact, i The reason is, these men confound their per
sonality with God, and put their limits on him; and
from the world of matter brought back only what they
carried there. I say this not to reproach the men who
do this, but only to explain the fact and warn against
the error.
The same fault is still more common with men who
take all their facts from their own consciousness. I
have read no writer whose idea of God is not affected
by his own character. It is not possible it should be
otherwise, for our idea of God is the result of our whole
character ; and as no two of us feel alike, I take it no
two can have exactly the same idea of God. Your and
my idea of God is the measure of our growth, and
I shows how much we have become. Yet there is some-
I thing in our idea of God which corresponds to the fact
of God. Last Sunday I spoke only of what is in the
world of matter, — power, law, mind. I hope now to

GOD IN MAN 273
give no whim of mine, but only such facts of God as are
to be got from human consciousness.
We are conscious of a feeling of dependence, and
also an object upon which we depend, which at first is
not distinctly understood, only felt, vaguely perceived
by the instinctive observation of the religious faculty,
the soul, which does not know at first how much is out
ward divine, and how much is personal soul. But at
length by repeated observation and experiment of his
mind, using the facts which the soul at first instinctively
made known, man comprehends the divine object, knows
how it affects his soul, finds out the constant mode of
operation thereof, its effects, analyses that vague divine
which the soul at first takes notice of, separates it from
all else as a distinct divinity, and learns some of the
phenomena thereof, and does this by his mind, using
the facts which the soul at first made known, and thus
at last knows by reflective philosophy what at first he
only felt by instinct.
Divide man's spiritual powers into these four, the
intellectual, the moral, the affectional, and the religious.
Now, each of these begins its action spontaneously, on
its own individual account, without our will, fore
thought, or "even foresight. Call that action in
stinctive, and the faculty thus acting call instinct.
This instinct is as various as the faculties themselves,
and so there are intellectual, moral, affectional, and
religious instincts.
Now, our first spiritual act is a feeling of limitation,
and so dependence, a general spiritual act. The first
act of the religious faculty is a feeling of somewhat
that we depend on, a feeling of God, a special act of
the religious faculty. The first act of the intellect,
1—18

274 MATTER AND SPIRIT
combined with the religious faculty, is the feeling that
God is perfect, adequate to support what depends
thereon. Each of these feelings is spontaneous, not
caused by will alone; it is the intuition of the instinct,
not an hypothesis of imagination, nor induction of
reason. As the general spiritual faculty in its first
instinctive activity gives us a primal feeling of depend
ence, and as the special religious faculty gives us its
primal insinctive feeling of God, so also, combining
therewith, does the intellectual faculty give us instinct
ively the feeling of God's perfection. In the logic of
facts the feeling of God whom we depend upon implies
the perfection of that God whom we depend upon,
and in the psychology of intellectual consciousness one
follows the other, stroke by stroke.
This is a very nice matter, and should not therefore
be trusted to the psychological analysis of the private
consciousness of a single man, who may easily be mis
taken. But is not this the experience of you all? In
your present reflective consciousness of God you con
ceive thereof as complete and perfect, and have a more
or less definite idea of what qualities should make up
that complete and perfect character. But take the
earliest feeling of God that you can remember, and did
you not even then feel him to be perfect, though you
had no distinct conception of the special qualities which
that perfection involved? If you had, it would not
content you now ; for as the child is less than the man
so are the qualities which make up the child's con
sciousness of God less than what make up the man's
consciousness of God. This perfection of God is com
mon to the child's instinctive feeling of God and the
man's reflective idea of God.
Starting with this instinctive feeling that God is

GOD IN MAN 275
perfect, what comes of it? I am conscious of a power
in me which is not me ; I live and am, but am not the
cause of my life and being. In my body I find forces
whichr I do not control; my heart beats, my blood
flows; I do not cause it nor regulate it, nor can I
prevent it. I breathe without thought; all day while
I work, all night while I sleep, a current of air comes
in and goes out, fanning the fires which warm my little
earthen house; and that red sea of life ebbs and flows
in every inlet of my body ten or twenty times a min
ute. There is a power of life in my body; I did not
cause it; it is beyond my power, not subject to my
caprice. It is a causal and providential power dwell
ing in me while I live. I reflect on this power of life
in my body beyond my control, and I see it is part of
the power of God, which is not only immanent in all
the material world without me, but in every particle
of my bones and flesh and blood. Now, as the intel
lectual instinct combining with the religious gave me
the consciousness of God as perfect, I develop this idea
of power under that category of perfection, and I come
at last to this, that God is Infinite Power, Infinite
Cause, Infinite Providence. There is no limitation
thereof; it is power embodied. No other idea of God
will satisfy my instinct or my reflection, for my nature
demands the perfection of God.
In the part of me which is not body I find other
forces; spiritual faculties, which I do not control, but
which control me. Look at these, under each of the
four divisions of man's spiritual faculties. First of
the mind; I must think, know, believe; but if I think
what I will, I know and believe only what I must ; I can
not believe that to be true which I know to be false. I

276 MATTER AND SPIRIT
know that one and one are two ; I cannot believe it three ;
I can control my tongue and call it three, my pen and
write it three, but not my mind and believe it so. It is
mine to think or think not. Here a certain latitude is
left to my personal caprice, but the mode of thinking
has been laid out for me. I find there are certain laws
of mind, constant modes of operation for the thinking
force, and they are superior to my personal will ; I did
not make them, cannot unmake them ; they control me,
and I have no control over them. That power- which
I find in my body I find also in my mind; as in my
consciousness of body I find a rational world which is
not me, so in my mental consciousness I find a mind
which is not me, cause and providence to me no doubt.
So I conceive of God as power of mind which is wis
dom ; and as the intellectual and religious instinct gave
me the feeling of perfection in God, I develop this
idea of God as mind after that category, and I come
to this conclusion, that he is complete and perfect
Mind; there is no limitation thereof; it is wisdom un
bounded, infinite wisdom, knowing what has been, what
is, and what will be, complete and perfect power to
invent, organize and administer. So God is Infinite
Wisdom; no other idea of God will satisfy my mind.
Is it not so with each of you? Admit the idea of
mental imperfection in the deity, and you reject him
at once ; he is no more the perfect God to us.
I not only feel a mind in me which is not me, and
feel dependent on that perfect and complete mind; but
I feel accountable for my own conduct. I not only
know things as true or false, fair or foul, useful or
useless; but also as right or wrong. I am drawn to
certain things as right, repelled from certain things as
wrong; I have not only mental consciousness of the

GOD IN MAN 277
true, the beautiful, and the expedient; but moral con
sciousness of the right, and the solemn word I ought_
comes to my lips. It is not " I must," the word of
necessity ; nor " I would," the word of desire ; but " I
should," " I ought," the word of conscience, which is
the motive to do right, and of will, the power to do
right. Certain things seem right, and so obligatory
on me. This depends not on my personal caprice; I
cannot make right wrong, nor wrong right. There is
a moral power in me, which is me, the power to know
right and do duty; but there is another moral power
in me which is more than me, independent of me, which
controls my moral consciousness, makes me know right,
though it does not constrain my will and make me
do right. This is the Higher Law, a statute enacted ;
and it is also the Higher Law Giver, a perpetual stat
ute in the process of everlasting enactment. Here,
then, is another quality of God. He must be moral
power, as well as mental; the divine conscience which
knows the absolute right, the divine will which com
mands the absolute right. Reflecting thereon, I de
velop that idea likewise to its uttermost; and I find
that God is complete and perfect moral power, infinite
justice, which knows the right, wills right, does right,
is right. Nothing short of that infinite justice will
satisfy my moral consciousness. A God who is just
on all days but two, the day of man's fall from Para
dise, and the day of his condemnation into eternal tor
ment, is not the God for my moral consciousness; a
God who is just to all save one single baby, whom the
council of orthodox ministers at North Woburn is so
anxious to damn, is not God enough for my moral
consciousness. Can any one of you accept an idea of
God who is not infinite justice, to know right, will

278 MATTER AND SPIRIT
right, do right, be right, at all times, in every place,
to each man and each worm? Surely, not one!
I find not only a mental and a moral faculty in me,
but an affectional faculty also. I stand in diverse re
lations to men. Some I hate, some I am indifferent
to, some I love. I hate these because they offend and
do me harm; I revenge the wrong they have done or
scare them off from what they would do. It is only
through fear, and for self-defence, that I hate my
foe, — lion or murderer. I bear no ill-will to the rat
tlesnake in South Africa, only to the one in my path;
and I feel no hatred to the pirate on the outermost
ring of the planet Saturn, if pirate there be there. I
am indifferent to men who stand in no relation to me,
active or passive; they need not me, I need not them.
Te Lee lives in Hong To in the Ming district, on the
Yellow river in China. His father has bought him a
wife. It is nothing to me how long her eyes are, or
how obliquely set, or how short her feet. I can do
nothing for Te Lee, he can do no more for me than
the painted man on a tea-cup. I am indifferent to
their marriage lot. But if I hear that my neighbor,
Mr. Lovegold, aided by the British government, has
grown rich by forcing opium on the Chinese, that the
drug has found its way to Hong To, and that Te
Lee has fallen a victim to the vice it engendered there,
he is no longer indifferent to me. I pity him and his
long-eyed wife, whose short feet do not allow her to
provide for her newborn baby; I pity the little thing
left by the Yellow river to perish, and would help them
if I could ; and my heart of mercy reaches out to them
twelve thousand miles away, while my arm of help can
not reach a yard.

GOD IN MAN 279
I love such as come into pleasant relations with me;
some I depend on for service or guidance, others de
pend on me. So I love them in various degrees. Oth
ers I regard for no service given or taken, drawn to
wards them by affectional gravitation, and those I love
with great outgoings of the heart, which has also
thence its great income. Love is not merely grateful
to repay or helpful to get. It
"wanders at its own sweet will,"
and must go where it sends itself. As my power of
affection enlarges, I love more men, each with a larger
quantity and nicer quality of love. As a baby I love
my mother, father, and nurse; then relatives and
schoolmates; when a man I include my town, nation,
Christendom, perhaps mankind. By and by my love
runs over to wicked men, to the heathen and savage
slave-trader in Africa, and to the Christian civilized
slave-trader in South Carolina. When I am great
hearted enough, and fully grown in affection, I turn
round and love my enemies, revengeful wrath giving
place to benevolent mercy; and I feed the man who
once sought to murder me. My wrath and power of
hate was only given me for self-defence, and when I
need it not it goes to sleep. So I have a new element
which must enter into my conception of God. He
must be affectionate; the God of power, wisdom, jus
tice, must be likewise a God of love. I develop this
idea of divine affection. Can God hate me? He has
no need to hate. I would not harm him if I could, and
I could not if I would. He is almighty, and I have
but little power. His almightiness is infinitely near,
to help me; my weakness is infinitely far off from
troubling God. He has no motive to hate me, to hate

280 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the worst of men ; for the worst of men is either a mad
man or a fool, and could God hate either a lunatic or
an idiot? The thought is blasphemy! If God can
not hate any, can he be indifferent to any? Certainly
not. I may, be indifferent to men who stand in no re
lation to me, but God is related to all ; his infinite pres
ence fills and surrounds all; as Infinite Cause he cre
ates all; as Infinite Providence works with all, in all.
What power I have is derived straightway from God,
and I derive my very existence this moment, and all
moments, from him. I am weak, he made me so. I
depend on him, he gives me the faculty whereby I
recognize my dependence. He cannot be indifferent
to me. It is plain from his nature that he must love
me and desire my welfare. I may be the ablest or the
feeblest-minded man, the best or the wickedest, still
he must love me and wish my welfare; for neither the
weakness of my. nature nor the wickedness of my life
can change the character of God or change his dis
position, any more than a fly on Neptune's farthest
moon could arouse my feeble spite. Nothing can
change his affection.
I develop the affectional element of my idea of God;
I lay aside all the personal limitations which make me
indifferent to Te Lee, and wrathful against a lion or
a murderer, all human limitations which set bounds to
man's love for man ; and I find that God must be com
plete and perfect affection, infinite affection, that he
must regard me with all his infinite power of love, and
not me alone, but every me that is or was or ever shall
be; he must love each with all his energy and power.
Will any other idea of God satisfy your affection? If
he should hate only one out of ten hundred millions, he
would not be the perfect God of love, and you could

GOD IN MAN 281
not have faith in him. Could you ask God to hate
and damn your worst enemies? No man could do it.
It is only perfect love in God which satisfies this hu
man heart of hearts.
Now, take the several elements of the divine which
we gather from human consciousness — infinite power,
infinite wisdom, infinite justice, infinite love — and put
them into one being, and call that being Infinite God.
I am as certain of his existence as of my own; every
fact of my consciousness involves the existence of God.
Am I conscious of myself as a fact, a deed done?
That consciousness at once takes me back to the provi
dential cause of this deed done. Am I conscious of
myself as a factor, a deed doing? That consciousness
takes me back to causal providence, which is power,
wisdom, justice, love, the Infinite Doer, whose power
is in me as well as about me. I study the facts of ob
servation in the world of matter, and I find power, law,
mind, ever present in every part of space. Shall I
say God is matter? Nay, I know not the essence of
matter, only its phenomena and some of its properties;
and the properties of matter are not God. I know no
matter but body, and material body has the limit of
space, with its here and there, while Infinite God must
transcend space and be everywhere. Matter may be
an attribute of God, eternal as God, its essence coes- |
sential with God; but matter is not God.
Shall I say that God is spirit? I know not the es
sence of spirit, only its properties and phenomena ; and
the properties of spirit are not God. I know no spirit
but the human spirit, and that has the limit of time,
with its now and then ; and Infinite God must transcend
time and space, and be everywhere as ever here. Hu
man spirit is limited in power, wisdom, justice, love,

282 MATTER AND SPIRIT
while God is not only infinitely present in time and
space, every then is now to him, and every there to him
an eternal here; and he is also infinite power, wisdom,
justice, and love. So I do not conceive of God as the
materiality of impersonal matter, or as the spirituality
of personal man; but as that substantiality which un
derlies the essence of matter and spirit, occupies both,
every point of each, and at the same time transcends
all. Is there an outward fact which corresponds to God?
If I can trust my own consciousness, it must be so;
for I am as certain of God as of my own conscious
ness. The eye is not more cognizant of light, nor
the mind more cognizant of truth, than in my whole
consciousness I am cognizant of God. Am I sure that
God corresponds to my idea of him? He is the per
fect being, the infinite being; and it is only primary
qualities of infinite perfection that I have ascribed to
him. If I attribute to God any imperfection, any lack
of justice, power, wisdom, love, then that comes of
my consciousness, not God's character; it is my finite
dream of God's infinite fact. Infinite perfection as an
idea in me has its cause as fact in the world about me
and the world within me, and any imperfection must
be in my conception of God, not in him. My charac
ter is the measure of my power to conceive of him, it
is not the measure of God's fact, only my idea of
God's fact. The boy's God is not the God of the man.
A larger mind, conscience, heart, and soul recognizes
other qualities of the Infinite. The higher I go up
on my finite mountain of human privilege, the more I
shall see of that infinite divinity which folds it con
tinually in light and shade.
Such are the proofs of God which I find in my pri-

GOD IN MAN
vate consciousness, in the metaphysicians' psychological
way. With this experience, and its resulting Infinite
God, I go to my nation or mankind, and with the
naturalist's method I look over human history; and I
find facts of observation to match my facts of con
sciousness, for mankind does in large what I do in
little, and has also the feeling of God's perfection, and
struggles for an idea which shall combine all the ele
ments of perfection, none of imperfection. So every
people has its idea of God, which is the result of its
history and the measure of its civilization. With the
wild man and the savage, this idea is very rude. Then
it becomes more elevated, then more. First, mere force
contents man in his God; then a little mind is added;
then more, and more yet; then justice is put there,
then love.
Mankind continually revises its idea of God, because
it has the feeling that God is perfection; and as it
develops the feeling into an idea, the new result must
be added to the divine being. Successively does Israel
leave behind him the gods of Laban which Rachel
stole, the gods of Egypt, the gold calf which Aaron
made, the Canaanite and Philistine gods, and worships
Jehovah, who loved Jacob and hated Esau. By and
by he transcends that idea of God, and worships one
who loves Jacob and Esau, too. So the Unitarian and
the Universalist leave behind the trinity, that Cerberus
of God, growling forever round his endless hell, and
mankind fares on, asking for higher and higher ideas
of God.
I put it to you, individually, and I put it at this
minute to the Jew, Gentile, Christian, Mohametan, to all
thoughtful mankind, Will anything content you less
than the Infinite God, of perfect power, perfect wis-

284 MATTER AND SPIRIT
dom, perfect justice, perfect love? And m all the
tongues of earth does mankind answer, No !
Yea, with great groanings which cannot be ut
tered, the ten hundred millions of mankind cry out,
" Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us ! Give us
the infinite perfection of God ! Sure of that, of
all else are we likewise sure." In our own con
sciousness lies the evidence. To boy or savage the
childish instinct gives a vague divine, but manly
thought to manly men demonstrates the perfect
God. To this high end the Bibles of all the nations have
helped, writ in many a tongue — Vedas, Classics,
Zendavestas, Old Testament, New Testament, Koran;
nay, the idols help which Rachel stole, and the Canaan
ites or Philistines set up. The great philosophers have
also helped mankind to an appreciation of the true
idea of God; those who wrote out the principles of na
ture, the mechanics of the sky, or revealed the won
ders long hidden in a bit of stone; they whose micro
scopic study is the human mind or whose telescope
sweeps the whole sphere of man's past history, they
who give us the metaphysical principles of human na
ture and write the celestial mechanics of man's devel
opment; they, too, who break in pieces the idols men
have created, who destroy man's superstitious rever
ence for the Bibles of the nations, even they who mock
at the hideous ugliness of the popular theology's idea
of God. All these have helped mankind to the com
prehension of the dear God who is infinite power, wis
dom, justice, love and holiness, infinite cause and provi
dence, father and mother to every worm, to every
child, to Jesus who speaks the world's great truth,
to Peter who denied him, to Iscariot who betrayed, and

GOD IN MAN 285
to those other Peters and Iscariots who still crucify
him afresh and put him to open shame.
The world of matter is witness to God. With one
loud voice the flowers below and the stars above pro
claim to us power, wisdom, law. This little rose, in
its cloth of gold, whispers to us benevolence; yonder
sun whispers benevolence. But the world of spirit,
the world of consciousness, tells us not only of power,
law, mind, but of justice also, and of love. Matter
gives us a God immense of power, law, thought; and
mind gives us the Infinite God of justice likewise, and
of love. " Here rest we,
Nor need, nor can we any farther go."

GOD IN THE RELATION BETWEEN MATTER
AND MAN
Thou hast ordered all things by number, and measure, and
weight. — Wisdom of Solomon, xi, 20.
I ask your attention to some thoughts on the evi
dences of God which are found in the relation between
the World of matter and the world of man. The con
clusion reached in the two preceding sermons was the
evidence of a being who is infinite perfection; having
the perfection of existence, which is self -existence, —
absolute, eternal being; the perfection of power, which
is almightiness; the perfection of mind, which is all-
knowingness ; the perfection of conscience, which is all-
righteousness ; the perfection of the heart, which is
all-lovingness ; the perfection of the soul, which is all-
holiness; God immanent in matter and in man, and yet
transcending alike matter and man, and the idea that
man forms of him.
Now, the infinite God must be perfect in his crea
tion and in his providence. That is to say, his motive
must be perfect, a desire to bless; the universe, which
is his work, must be a perfect manifestation of that
motive. So far as the universe, at any one time, is
a^m^^t^ajaje^d^an instrumentality of mediation, it
mustbetne most perfect of all conceivable means ; and
so far as the universe at any one time is an end, a final
ity of purpose, it must be a perfect end. Of all con
ceivable ends it must be the best possible, a perfect
realization of the desire to bless. This must be true of
the universe taken as a whole, true of each of the two
286

MATTER AND MAN 287
great parts thereof, the world of matter and the world
of man, and true also of the relation between them.
The infinite perfection of God cannot be inductively
proved by a study of the facts of observation in the
world of matter, for there is but small part of this
world of matter which we know, and a small part which
we thoroughly comprehend; and beside, if we knew it
all, and comprehended it all, as that is finite, we could
not thus induce the infinite perfection of its cause and
its providence. But in the world of man, by an intui
tion of our own spirit, and as a fact of consciousness,
do we find that infinite perfection, which is first an in
stinctive feeling, as I think, involved in the innermost
fact of religious consciousness, but at length a philo
sophical idea, developed out of the substance of that
instinctive feeling which involved it. So it not only is,
at last, a demonstration of reflective science, but like
wise at first an intuition of spontaneous instinct. As
that is so, so the perfection of the universe, of its two
parts, and of their mutual relation, cannot be induc
tively proved by the study of facts of observation in
matter, or of consciousness in man, because as yet we
know but little of the universe, and comprehend that
little but poorly, and are still more embarrassed by
lack of knowledge and comprehension when we come
to study the relation between the two; and therefore
we must deduce the perfection of the universe from
the perfection of its author; for it is not possible that
an infinitely perfect God should make a world which
was not the best possible of all worlds which are con
ceivable. Accordingly, starting from the infinite perfection
of God, who must desire the best of all possible things,
must know the best of possible things, must will the

288 MATTER AND SPIRIT
best of possible things, and must accomplish the best
of possible things, at the last, this deduction follows:
The world of matter in its nature must be perfect;
that is, it must have come from a perfect motive, a
desire to bless in the highest degree; it must be a per
fect means adequate to its purpose, and also it must
be a perfect end, a realization of that desire to bless.
In the same way it follows that the world of man in
its nature must be likewise perfect, in the benevolence
of its motive, the adequacy of its means, the success
of its end. And this is true likewise of the relation be
tween the world of matter and the world of man; that
relation must likewise be perfect in its motive, perfect
as a means, and perfect likewise as an end. This con
clusion of the perfection of the universe is a transcend
ent truth, not dependent on your observation or mine,
not to be disturbed by any facts which seem to con
tradict it; but it is deduced straightway from the idea
of the infinite perfection of God which is given in
our consciousness. And after we have attained the
knowledge of God as infinite perfection, either by in
stinct, as many, or by reflective demonstration, as a
few, then we are so sure of its transcendent truth, that
if we find any facts which seem to conflict therewith,
we doubt if we have understood them aright, our
knowledge of God's infinite perfection being so much
more certain than our comprehension of famine, storm,
earthquake, pestilence, and other seeming evils. This
conclusion of the perfection of the universe follows
directly from the perfection of God, and it will be
admitted by every thoughtful man who has mind
enough to comprehend it, excepting those who have
gone astray through education in that vicious theology
wherein most men, if not born, are at least bred.

MATTER AND MAN 289
But certain as is this perfection of the universe
thus deduced, I do not like to rest the relation be
tween the world of matter and of man on this deductive
and transcendent truth ; for we want not only to know
that this relation is perfect, but to know how it is per
fect. So in what follows I shall neglect that tran
scendent deductive conclusion altogether, and look di
rectly at facts as they are, and see what character of
God they point to and hint at.
The universe is the revelation of '_God _jn matter^ as
our idea of him is the revelation of God in human con
sciousness. In this way I asked you to look at the
world of matter and the world of man, each by itself.
Now let us look at the two in their mutual relation.
Man is of two parts, matter and spirit ; he is an ani
mal and also an animal and something more. Now, as
an animate body, he stands in a material relation to the
world of matter; and as a human spirit he stands in a
spiritual relation to the world of matter. For conveni
ence, I will divide this sermon into two, and speak first of
the world of matter as related to man's body, and here
after of the world of matter as related to man's spirit.
To make all clear, let us divide this cosmic universe,
the world of matter, into two parts — the astronomic
world, which is all the universe, except this earth, and
the telluric world, which is the earth itself. Look first
at the relation of man's body to the astronomic world.
The earth is one of many bodies, — sun, planets,
moons, comets, which make up the solar system; that
is one of many solar systems, which make up the astral
system; and that one of many astral systems which
make up the astronomic system, the whole universe of
matter. Now of the solar system we have much exact
1—19

290 MATTER AND SPIRIT
and certain knowledge; of the astral system, less; and
of the astronomic system, our knowledge is chiefly de
ductive, by mathematics, or inferential, by imagina
tion ; but in all parts of the astronomic world, great or
little, so far as we have gone, we find power, law,
mind. But as its immediate influence on our bodies is
so slight, I shall pass over its relation thereto, and
look now only at that part of it which we call the solar
system. Our body stands in constant relation to that. For
most things, we depend upon the earth; but for two,
light and heat, we look elsewhere. Our heat comes
from the sun wholly, with the exception of what we
gather from the earth's central fire. The sun and
moon afford us almost all our light, and as what she
gives is borrowed from him, I shall set her contribu
tion down to his account. Man cannot live without
this solar light and heat. See the arrangement by
which the two are furnished him, and in their present
proportions. A planet revolving about the sun in an
elliptical orbit, and rotating on its own axis, draws
other bodies to itself, with an attraction which dimin
ishes as the square of the distance increases ; so at a cer
tain distance on its outer or inner side the attraction
of a planet ends, and that of some other body begins.
So each planet has what may be called its attractional
orbit. I mean a certain ring of space on each side of
its track through the sky, where its influence prevails
over other planets. The relation between the width of
the planet's attractional orbit, and the time of that
plane's rotation around its axis is uniform throughout
the solar system. The square of the number of days
in a planet's year always bears the same proportion
to the cube of its attractional orbit's diameter. This

MATTER AND MAN 291
applies to the earth ; the width of its attractional orbit
not only determines the length of its year, but de
termines the number of times it shall turn round, and
the number of days and nights it shall have in a year ;
and on these two facts, the earth's distance from the
sun, and the length of day and night, depend the
quantity of light and heat which we receive, and like
wise the distribution of daylight and dark.
Now there is an exact harmony, between man's body
and the amount of heat and light received by the earth
in its present position. If the size of the earth's orbit
were much changed, that harmony would be broken up.
If it had the width of one of the exterior planets, say
Jupiter, we should perish from lack of light and heat ;
if it had the narrowness of one of the interior planets,
say Venus, we should perish from excess of light and
heat. So, if the size remained the same, and the shape
were altered, we should be equally ruined. If its orbit
were like a comet's, the earth now near the sun, and
then removed to a great distance, the extremes of heat
and cold would destroy our life. The same is true
with regard to the harmony between's man's body and
the diurnal change of light and darkness. If the
earth revolved twice in twenty-four hours, man would
perish through the swift return of day, and night.
If but once in forty-eight hours, he would perish by
the tardiness of their return. Nor is that all. The
weight of our bodies and the strength of our bone and
muscle depend on the earth's attraction, and that is
affected by the swiftness of its rotation. If it turned
twice on its axis in twenty-four hours, our bodies
would be unwieldly through lightness, and the air so
thin we could not live by breathing it; if it revolved
but once in forty-eight hours, our bodies would be so

292 MATTER AND SPIRIT
unwieldly heavy, that we could hardly creep; no
mother could hold her baby; our flesh would break
our bones; and the air would become so dense that we
could not breathe it in. Man's body stands in per
fectly harmonious relation with the annual quantity of
heat and light, with its distribution in summer and
winter, with the swift rotation of the earth and the
moon, with the earth's attractive force which holds him
down, and with the thickness of the air he breathes
and lives upon; and all these things and this har
monious relation depend directly on the swiftness of
the earth's rotation, and that on the width of her at
tractional orbit, that on the balance of forces between
the earth and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn,
Herschel, Neptune, Jupiter; it depends on the struc
tural character of the whole solar system which was
fixed millions of millions of years before man ever
trod the globe. The ease and grace with which a
dancer whirls or a child runs and leaps or a man walks,
the healthy condition of your eye, rejoicing in the
light, the vitality of every breath you draw, depend
thus intimately on the structural character of the
solar system; our existence is involved in the width of
the attractional orbit of the earth, and that is so in
timately woven up with the whole solar system that
they all work together to support our little life. So
much for the relation of man's body to the astronomic
world. Now, see some facts in the relation of man's body to
the telluric world. For all beside heat and light we
depend on the earth alone. The solid earth is robed
in an invisible atmosphere, which has remarkable prop
erties, and remarkable functions to fulfil. First it

MATTER AND MAN 293
lets in the solar and astral light which, falling per
pendicularly, white-robed, goes straightway to its
calorific and actinic work,9 or, falling at an angle, it
lingers by the way, and robes the earth in its morning
and evening magnificence. Then this air lets in the
sun's heat, and prevents the earth's from escaping, and
so it is a mantle wrapped about the shoulders of the
world to keep it warm. It thus helps to furnish these
two conditions for the existence of vegetation and ani
mation, heat and light. It also directly supplies the
breath by, which all plants grow and all animals live,
for with their little mouths always dumb in the vege
table world, and sometimes voiceless in the animals, do
both suck the breasts of heaven, and take in the means
of life. Besides it carries sound to the ear of man, and
attractive or repulsive odors to the sense of smell, here
guiding to his bliss, there warning from his bane.
Heat, light, breath, sound, smell, are indispensable
to the human kind ; and for all these five we depend
upon air, which is perfectly suited to perform the five
fold function. Air is chemically composed of seventy-
six per cent, of nitrogen, twenty-three per cent, of
oxygen, one per cent, of aqueous vapor, and there is
a little touch of carbonic acid. Now, of the sixty ele
ments 10 that make up the earth there are no other
four that could perform this fivefold function which
the air is given to perform, and there is no other com
bination of these four elements which could perform it.
Man depends on the earth for four other needed
things — food ; shelter against the elements and wild
beasts, consisting of a fixed covering, — call it a house,
and a movable covering, — call it a garment ; medi
cine, to heal him when he is sick or wounded ; and tools
wherewith to procure him food, shelter and healing

294 MATTER AND SPIRIT
medicine. See man's relation to the earth in respect of
these four things.
The earth, world of matter, is composed of three
parts; the inorganic, which let us call the mineral
world, the vegetable, and the animal. The mineral
elements are the food of vegetables, vegetables the food
of animals, and both animals and vegetables the food
of man. There is such a sympathy between man and
the elements about him that his food comes spontane
ously, by nature, or else may be produced by human
art and time in every place where the conditions of air,
light, heat and moisture make it possible for man to
dwell. From the earth, then, man derives his food;
but the general power of the earth to produce food
depends on the structural character of the globe, the
distribution of its water, land, air, heat, light, the
electricity therein, and on the chemical character of the
soil. The mineral matter must be there as food for
vegetation; plants must assimilate that mineral matter,
and therefore must have the requisite conditions of
heat, light, and electricity; animals must appropriate
the plants and furnish food for man. Mankind can
not live by vegetable matter alone, for though here
and there a single individual may do so, nor suffer
much, when you try the experiment with a people, gen
eration after generation, that people dwindles and at
length will perish. So strike the beasts out of exist
ence and man will die. Human life rides on the
beastly back, the animal lives on the plant, the plant
on the mineral, and that depends on the great telluric
chemistry by which the elements are mixed on so large
a scale; and so this flesh and these bones of ours are
intimately connected with the physical geography of
the earth and the chemical structure of the great globe

MATTER AND MAN 295
itself. Were these conditions otherwise man could not
live or be created.
That is not all. Man lives by food, which must
perform two functions. Partly it turns to blood, and
helps build up the tissues of the body and repair their
daily waste; let me call this the nitrogenic part.
Partly, our food turns to fuel, and keeps up the vital
warmth; this call the carbonic part. Each day it
takes some eleven ounces of charcoal to keep this hu
man engine fired up with active life. Now in high
latitudes, the air about us is much colder than our
bodies, and we need more food for fuel than in hot
climates, where the air is more nearly of the tem
perature of the body. Now the human food which
cold climates produce, both vegetable and animal, what
comes spontaneously, and what is won by toil, contains
more carbon than the food of hot tropical lands. The
natural appetite of man follows the same rule; in
arctic cold man desires fat, flesh and vegetable oils,
while in tropic climates he favors nitrogenic food, and
the date, the palm, and the plantain supply his de
sires. In Greenland the Esquimaux feeds on the seal,
which furnishes the fat his appetite relishes, the train
oil which his frozen body needs. In Bengal the Hindoo
feeds through preference on rice, which contains less
oil than any other grain which grows, and which he
in his tropic climate does not need. Now Greenland
bears the seal as naturally as India does rice; each de
pends on the climate, that on the shape and inclina
tion of the earth, those on the general structure of the
solar system. Alter the relations a little, let seals
abound in India, and rice and similar food be wanting,
man would dwindle, and in a few generations die out;
or, from Greenland take the seals and let rice abound,

296 MATTER AND SPIRIT
mankind's life would presently cease there; but the
very structure of the earth, the chemistry of its soil,
the temperature of its air and water, the amount of
electricity and light, require seals in Greenland and
rice in India. The fat dinner of the Esquimaux and
the Hindoo's thin vegetable diet alike depend on the as
tronomic relation of the earth to the solar system.
In this way the relation is fixed between man's body
and the food he feeds on.
Man wants shelter, a fixed house, and a movable
garment. For the wild man there are holes in the
slaty, the granitic or the limestone rock, and there are
trees, whose shadow protects him from heat and great
trunks from cold, and whose branches afford him a
resting place safe from the tiger and the wolf; and
therein the New Guinea mother, with her baby in her
arms, roosts throughout the night; no New England
crow can house him better in our northern pine.
When our wild man has got a little advanced and be
come a savage, he digs him a burrow in the earth, and
his child is born in a grave; the hospitable earth being
a cradle for new life, and not less a tomb for age
and death ; or with sticks builds him a wigwam, hut, or
kraal. Out of the clay, pit, the forest, the mountain,
the marble quarry, or the mine, enlightened man builds
him his house or palace, comfortable for use, elegant
for beauty. But the hole in the rock which the wild
man finds, the ground which he digs, depends on the
geological structure of the globe ; the hollow tree which
took the old Sicilian in, the breadth of the boughs
which hold the New Guinea mother up, depend on the
law of vegetation whereby the trunk grows and the
branches spread. And so the wood, brick, stone, mar-

MATTER AND MAN 297
ble or iron, which the enlightened man uses for his
dwelling, depend on the very structure of the earth,
its central heat and its position in the solar system,
with such an attractional orbit, and such a rotation,
day by day.
So it is with the movable house which clothes our
limbs. The wild man went naked as a worm. As soon
as he needed nature offered him clothes, the vegetable
its leaves, the animal its skin or fur. Look at this
clothed congregation, and see whence all this vast ar
ray of handsome dress has been gathered up! Part
of it came from the backs of fur-clad, arctic beasts,
which only, polar cold can bear; the linen grew up
from the cool temperate soil; tropic heat furnished the
cotton ; and the little silk-worm has spun the substance
of appropriate trees, which change their leaves to cov
ering for the Adams and Eves of civilization. Vari
ous colors, which more than imitate the rainbow, have
been gathered from the mineral, vegetable and animal
worlds ; and all these depend directly on the structural
character of the globe itself. As the rainbow is the
child of the sun and cloud, nursed by lightning, waited
on by gravitation, and girted into handsome shape by
the spheric globe itself, so yonder bonnet, the triumph
of the milliner's art and the wearer's taste, is daughter
of vegetation and animation, grand-child of the min
eral world, which dowers it with such handsome hues,
and in strict geologic descent, traces its aristocratic
lineage back to the earth's attractional orbit, and the
constitution of the solar system. A little change in
that far-off ancestry, and there could not be a bonnet
in Boston to-day, more than a woman to wear it, or a
young man to look delighted on.
Man wants medicine to heal what ails. Look at this

298 MATTER AND SPIRIT
need. The earth bears things fit for food and shelter,
but also things unfit for either use. Man is finite and
yet progressive; his development is by experience, and
in that he may err, making mistake by the instinctive
and spontaneous action of his faculties, or still more
by his voluntary act; he may dwell in places not fit
for health, feed on food not meant for him; he wan
ders more than any other animal, and encounters more
peril, feeds on more various food, experiments in all
directions, and is constantly running into difficulty ; so
more than all other animals is he exposed to causes
which would destroy the individual or the race. But
on the other hand, to balance this dangerous peculiar
ity, more than all other animals he has power to ac
commodate himself to circumstances. If his mind is
the most curious, his will the most obstinate and ag
gressive, and accordingly his body the most venture
some on earth, and so exposed to danger, yet his body
is of all others most pliant. He can live in the equator
of heat, and at the poles. Yet spite of this, so ven
turesome is he, man overleaps the bound, and more
than any other animal is obnoxious to disease. Now
against this there is a strange provision. Man, I
think, is the only medicating animal. They tell stories
of the toad, who furnishes himself with medicine for
his bodily ills; I fear this is the poet's fiction, not the
naturalist's fact.
So provision is made for medicine. There are vari
ous poisons, — animal, vegetable and mineral, which are
not food, but medicine. This quickens the action of
the digestive powers, that retards it. One irritates the
stomach or skin, the other quickens the action of the
nerves. In the juice of the grape, the apple, of every
fruit, in the hollow of the southern cane, in the seed

MATTER AND MAN 299
of every cereal grass which grows between the equi
noctial and the arctic line, there is a substance whence
a fiery liquor can be made, of wondrous medicative
power. In the bulb which holds the poppy's seed
there is a sovereign balm, which takes away the smart
of the wound and laps the sufferer in elysian dreams;
and in a little mineral there is a precious power to
steal away the sense of pain and make the flesh sense
less as wood to the surgeon's medicative hand. The
relation between these things and the sick body is just
as nice as that between man's flesh and his food and
shelter. So a margin of oscillation is left for man's
body, and if it swing away too far, such is its power of
accommodation it is not lost, and swings back ; there is
a power of medication in the world of matter to carry it
back if it swings too far beyond the line of oscillation.
Now, all these medicines, like man's food and shelter,
depend on the constitution of the earth. They are in
timately connected with its place in the solar system.
A change of the diameter of the earth's attractional
orbit, and all these things would cease to be.
Then, man needs tools. At first, his only instru
ment is his body ; his hand to grasp his food, his teeth
to grind it. With these he begins his warfare against
matter; but the world of matter furnishes him with
weapons against itself. A stone is a harder fist, a
stick is a longer arm, a horse is swifter legs. To the
wild man the savage barbarian is civilized. The world
of matter furnishes tools to procure for man food, shel
ter, medicine. There are beasts to till the field, tread
the grain, turn the mill, and to furnish food, — milk
for babes, meat for men. There are beasts to tend
the flocks, the house; to carry burdens, slow, as the

300 MATTER AND SPIRIT
ox and the ass ; swift, as the dromedary, the horse, the
carrier dove. There are animals to spin the silken
thread. The sheep lends man his parchment, the
goose his pen. There is fire, and the school of metals,
which he masters and trains to work. There is glass
to arm the sight for science's telescopic research or
microscopic observation. There are winds which turn
man's mill and winnow his grain; there is water, a
road when still, when moving, spinner, miller, sawyer,
weaver, joiner, smith. There is steam to carry man's
burdens; lightning to bear his thought. All these
tools, from the chip of stone to the electric telegraph,
depend on the structural character of the earth. Take
away wood, iron, the ox, and the horse, how different
were human history ! An earth can be conceived that
should not bear a single tool for irtan ; his fist could not
be hardened, nor his arm lengthened. Aud what
would man then be? Only a wild man; for the tool
is the lever by which man takes a pry, as it were, over
one part of matter, and lifts up the other, and makes
it serve him.
Study the world of matter, and there are many
things whose use we know not now. Study man's
body, and it has not a material need but what is
wanted, is waiting there for him. It is so with the
primitive wild man, who needs but food and shelter;
so with the philosopher in London or Paris, who wants
the microscope, telescope, bridges, railroads, electric
telegraphs, balloons to sail the sky, a Great Eastern u
to fly upon the sea. It is so with the barbarian, the
civilized, and all the way between. How things are
related together in this great cosmic world! The as
tronomic system is nest for each astral system, the
astral for the solar system, that for the earth. Here

MATTER AND MAN 301
mineral matter is nest for vegetation, both for anima
tion, all three are needed nest for man. There is
air for his lungs, food for his stomach, light for his
eye, heat for his body, sheltering house and dress, each
for use, and beauty too; tools for his hand, a wonder
ful array of them, from the wild man's artificial fist
of stone up to the great Leviathan, which, with winged
speed, takes the wealth of an island and bears it across
the sea; aye, to the electric fire which sends its certain
word under the sea from London to New Orleans and
back again,12 " ere that Leviathan can swim a league."
All these four things, — food, shelter, medicine, and
tools, are to be had by thought and toil, the only
money taken at God's great counter of the world.
But man's muscle requires the toil, man's mind de
mands the thought ; he needs toil and thought to disci
pline his own body and mind, he needs them also for
what they bring, and God has established a most per
fect relation between the thought and toil which man
needs, and the needed things which, they, and they
alone, produce. In cold lands man needs more work of
thought and toil than in warmer regions, and more
of both is required to produce the things his body
needs for food, shelter, medicine, and tools.
So far, then, we have perfect harmony in the rela
tion between matter and man. But there are disturb
ing elements in the world. In the world of animation
there are aggressive beasts, from the invading lion to
the parasite and vermin, which invade man's home and
body and prey on him ; in the vegetable world, there are
poisons that destroy human limb and life; in the world
of inorganic matter there are storms, hurricanes, light
ning, thunder, pestilence that rides on the air, death

302 MATTER AND SPIRIT
following behind; there are tempests on the water
which drown the sailor, deluges which flood the lands
man's field and house. Poison metals are in the mine;
the great central fire of the earth breaks out in a vol
cano or earthquake, which desolates whole provinces;
sickness and death untimely show that man and his
circumstances do not always fit. All animals are mor
tal, man most of all. But such is the preponderant
weight of the perfect adaptation of matter and man,
that where there seems to be a break, the analogy of
the whole would force us to conclude that we do not
comprehend that special part wherein that fitness seems
to fail.
And the fact that there is pain in the world of man,
which, while it serves the race, has no compensating
benefit for the sufferer here, is a clear indication that
pain has another function for the part of man which is
not material, but spiritual. It points to a hereafter,
and one for beasts, not less than man; for as here on
earth man's body seems to have been brought to its
present condition, and made the fitting habitation for
a master mind by many transmigrations through in
ferior beasts, which keep him company still and attend
his march, so, I doubt not, it will be in that other
world; and you and I may think, like the Indian, that
" Admitted to that equal sky
Our faithful dog shall bear us company."
Take mankind as a whole, the world of matter as
a whole, their relation is perfect in all we understand.
Nature to man is a perfect nest, and we cannot conceive
of a world of matter that should fit man better in any
particular, and that in all stages of his existence,
from primitive wildness up to the culture of to-day.

MATTER AND MAN
Do not think man alone is looked after by the world of
matter. Nature is mother to every child, and not a
stepdame to anyone; every animal — vertebrate, mol-
lusk, articulate, radiate — is placed not only in the
same harmonious relation to the world of matter, but is
just as much an object of protection as imperial man.
The oyster has his little nest of conditions and cir
cumstances which is just as adequate for him as this
vast telluric, solar, astral, astronomic world which fits
the physical and spiritual frame of man.
Put all these things together, and what character
of God do you thence induce? Everywhere do you
find power, law, mind; and benevolence is so predomi
nate that you believe it to exist where you cannot per
ceive it. And when ghastly facts like the storm, earth
quake, pestilence or famine stand before you, you say,
" Surely this has a meaning which we do not know."
And when you come to study these apparent evils and
their relation to the earth and man, just as you under
stand that, you find they also are serviceable to the
human race and could not be dispensed with; and
what the individual suffers uncompensated here he
shall find his account for elsewhere at a future time.
See on how vast a scale this mind has planned in
time and space. This room is eighty-five feet wide.
It would take five hundred thousand rooms like this to
reach across the centre of the earth, and twenty-four
thousand of the earth's diameter to reach across her
orbit. If Neptune be the farthest planet from the
sun, it would take more than thirty diameters of the
earth's orbit to reach across the solar system from side
to side. Such immense distances we do not easily
grasp; but if a railroad engine travelled one hundred

304 MATTER AND SPIRIT
miles an hour, it would take more than five hundred
years to travel that space. And that vast space is
nothing to the distance to the nearest star, which is
more than nineteen million millions of miles away ; and
that distance is a dot compared to the distance of the
remotest nebula.
You and I are related to the earth, which is our
nest. The mind which fashioned it made room for
you and me therein. The earth is related to the solar
system, so mighty wide. The mind which planned
that made room for the earth. The solar system is
related to the astral system, whereof Sirius is our next
neighbor. The mind which planned that system made
room for the solar system, for unity of plan runs
through the astronomic system of the universe, and
appears in every part; in the vast conception of the
universe of space, through the astral system, the solar
system, and the earth itself, its water and land, its
power of motion, vegetation, animation ; and then man,
who stands in such intimate relation with it all that
were the solar system other than it is man could not
be. Thus far off in space did the divine mind, using
the power of matter, by a constant mode of operation,
work for this beneficial result.
My little sermon lasts an hour. The average age of
this audience is perhaps some forty years; perhaps
the human race has been on the earth a thousand times
as long.13 Well, forty thousand years is not so large
a proportion of this earth's existence as my hour's
sermon is of mankind's existence. But, as Sirius is
far from the earth in space, so far from you and me
in time is the beginning of the material history of the
earth, which the geologist finds written in the sacred
codex of the world — the Old Testament of God, writ-

MATTER AND MAN 305
ten by him in tables of real stone. Yet, in that far
time, many millions of millions of years away, was
mind controlling the power of matter, by a constant
mode of operation to this end, to man, — and his rela
tion to matter was provided then. The size and shape
of the earth's attractional orbit was then fixed; the
time of day and night, the constitution of the air,
which lets the solar heat and light come in ; the provi
sion for food, shelter, medicine and tools, was all so
fixed that it was sure to come, each in its proper time,
— the stone fist for the wild man, and for the enlight
ened the electric telegraph which runs beneath the
sea. In all that space and time there is no cessation of
power, law, mind, whereof its records tell; God im
manent always, not once withdrawn. And in that
mighty space, that immense of time, there is not the
record of a single miracle or departure from law.
God, ever present, never intervenes ; acting ever by
law a miracle becomes needless, and also impossible.
Look at all this in its vast greatness in time and space,
then consider the delicacy of that providence, and see
how nicely the eye is fitted to light; and how this
mighty space and this immense time are so with deli
cacy filled up; and then, if it is power, law, mind,
which moves our astonishment at first, the deeper sec
ond thought is the love which animates that mind to
use that power, and by that law achieve the blessing
which the motive of God at first desired — the blessing
for you and me and every living thing. Forego that
transcendent truth of the perfection of the relation of
matter and man, which I deduce from the idea of God
as infinite perfection, and the very fact of that rela
tion leads us to infer, not only power, law, mind, but
1—20

306 MATTER AND SPIRIT
that dear love which sends the sun so sweetly round
the world —
" From seeing evil still educing good,
And better thence again, in infinite progression."

5
THE WORLD OF MATTER AND THE SPIRIT
OF MAN
For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures propor-
tionably the maker of them is seen. — Wisdom of Solomon,
xiv, 5.
Last Sunday we looked at the relation of the world
of matter to man's body, and the evidences of God's
character contained in that relation. Let us look
now at the relation of the world of matter to man's
spirit, which like his body is closely related thereto.
Look first at some of the facts of this spiritual rela
tion, and to understand the matter clearly, divide man's
faculties into these four — the intellectual, the moral,
the affectional, and the religious, and see how the world
of matter stands related to each.
Man depends on the telluric world for food, for
shelter — including house, garment, warmth, orna
ment, — for medicine, and for tools. These do not
come to him spontaneously, with no effort of his, as do
light, heat, breath, sound, smell, which the air of its
own accord provides for him. They depend on the
exercise of man's volitional powers, on work, which is
of two parts, toil and thought, both of which are
necessary to man's bodily life. There must be art,
which is the use of means for an end; and science,
which is the knowledge of principles, of universal laws.
Toil, tending to art, thought, producing science, are
indispensable to man's progress, or even his welfare;
without some humble form of both it is not possible for
man to possess a tool, medicine, shelter, or even food.
Now while the world of matter is fashioned so that it
307

308 MATTER AND SPIRIT
furnishes man what he needs on these conditions, the
nature of man is such that his thinking faculty grows
stronger by every natural thought, and his power of
work increases by all natural toil. Here man differs
from the beasts. I will not say that he differs alto
gether in his spiritual faculty from the beasts, for as
I cannot explain the facts of consciousness which I
feel in me on the supposition that I am nothing but
bones, brains, nerves, blood and the like, no more can
I explain the facts of observation which I see in the
horse, the dog, the elephant, or the crow, on the sup
position that these creatures are merely blood, bones,
nerves, and brains; but they differ from man in this,
that they are stationary in power of toil and thought;
the last can work no more and enjoy no more than the
first; while you and I are progressive in our toil and
thought, and in the enjoyment that we find in the art
and science that come from both.
See how man by toil and thought grows up. First
the wild man lives on what spontaneous nature allows
him, the fruits which grow over his head, the roots
which grow under his feet, and what the waters offer
of their own accord; but he must learn where these
things can be found, and that demands observation, at
tention, memory, and travel from place to place. He
must seek refuge from the storm, or hide him from
the great beasts which would else devour him; and to
do this he must think a little. Instinctive hunger com
pels the elemental thought; even the wild man must
have a little wisdom to season his food; he makes his
poor wild mind serve his body, and by. doing this age
after age, he grows up to a higher stage of develop
ment. Then, next, the savage man, which he has grown
up to, is a hunter; he does not wait for nature to pro-

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 309
vide for him, he goes out and runs down his own prey,
and though the Hon, the tiger, the anaconda, and the
bear are more than a match for his brute body, the bull
stronger, and the deer swifter than he, yet, under the
tutelage of hunger and fear, he studies in the primary
school of nature, where his lesson is only to gather what
this school dame spontaneously throws down for him.
At length he graduates thence, and goes on to higher
lessons, and runs out to catch what nature sets on foot
before him. The knowledge he gains is power to trap
the bull never so strong, to catch the deer never so
swift ; no bird is too airy in its flight, no fish too slip
pery in its ooze, for him to catch and hold ; and, armed
with bow and arrow, he is soon master of the tiger, the
lion, the anaconda, and the bear. By this form of toil
and thought he grows up higher still; our savage be
comes a barbarian, and cultivates the ground, no longer
waiting for nature's spontaneous and too uncertain
bread; no longer a mere hunter feeding on what he
catches in the woods, he tames and domesticates the
animals, who serve him with their flesh, fleece, skin,
watchfulness, speed and strength. The barbarian has
become a herdsman and farmer. But his work must
be in thought as well as toil, not only an art but a sci
ence ; and so by the discipline of this great polytechnic
institution of the material world he grows up higher
and higher to the successive stages of half civilized,
civilized, enlightened, and so on. Now, man's ability
to pass from that state of primitive wildness in which
he was cradled, and ascend to the enlightened condition
of New England to-day, depends on the fact that there
is a harmonious relation between man's mind and the
world of matter. Material nature is so adapted to the
necessity of the wild man that he has food and shelter

310 MATTER AND SPIRIT
only on condition of toil and thought ; and the amount
of toil and thought requisite to secure him food and
shelter is, in all climes save the arctic, just enough to
develop his body, and mind, and to raise him to higher
and higher degrees of civilization ; so by that adapta
tion the wild man becomes the savage, the savage be
comes the barbarian, the barbarian becomes half civil
ized, civilized, enlightened, and so on.
Now the relation which secures this human progress
depends not only on the spiritual powers of man, but
on the material powers of nature, on the world of ani
mation, vegetation, mineralization; that depends on the
structure of the earth, the distribution of its three great
parts, land, water, air, on heat, attraction, affinity,
light, electricity; these depend on the length of the
day and night ; that depends on the width of the earth's
attractional orbit; that on the form of the solar sys
tem; that on the astral system, whereof it is part, and
that probably depends on the great astronomic sys
tem, the vast cosmic universe itself. So a little change
far off in the remotest nebula, which the astronomer can
discover with his glass, might have made it impossible
for man to develop his mind here, and advance from
age to age.
But this relation of matter to man's mind is so im
portant I do not like to leave it with these few gen
eral remarks, which some of you may question, because
they depend on facts so remote from the experience of
us all, familiar only to be reading of the fewest few.
So look at some of the. details on a smaller scale, at con
crete facts which come close home to every man's ex
perience, and which no man can dispute who has an
eye or any thought.

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 311
Man's intellectual faculties may be distributed into
these three — the undemanding, the practical power,
which seeks economic use ascend ; the imagination or
poetic £>pwer, which seeks ideal beauty as end ; and rea
son, the philosophic power, which seeks scientific trutn as
end.. Look at the relation of the world of matter to
each of these three faculties here in New England.
First of the understanding. The business of almost
every man and woman is to obtain food, shelter, medi
cine, and tools to help acquire these three things; di
rectly or remotely the understanding of all men is de
voted to this business; industry would acquire these,
and charity distribute to whoso could not else obtain
them. Now not only does the world of matter con
tain the substances necessary to feed, clothe, shelter,
heal and serve us, on condition of toil and thought,
but it furnishes them in such a way that the effort to
procure them continually educates, strengthens and re
fines the people's understanding; toil becomes more and
more elevating, thought strengthens the faculty to
think, and there takes place that increase of welfare
which we call progress. See how much more power
we have over the material world than our fathers had
only two hundred years ago, as appears in the present
superiority of food, shelter, medicine and tools. Two
hundred years ago the newly settled Saxon, dependent
on the savage soil of New England, fared on the rudest
food, the precarious products of the chase, the spon
taneous wealth of the seas; they had no fruit but a
few berries, some nuts which the stingy, soil afforded;
their farming gave them Indian corn, pumpkins, beans,
artichokes; some little of the European grains which
a thousand years ago our Teutonic fathers brought
from the central lands of Asia, and which since have

312 MATTER AND SPIRIT
been distributed in civilized lands all round the world.
Such was the food of 1658, often scanty in bulk, al
ways coarse in kind. Consider the food of New Eng
land now; the grains, the fruit, the flesh, the produce
of many a clime. So it is with the shelter. Their
homes were extremely rude, open and thin, hot in sum
mer, too cold in winter. The few which are left from
the old time show how slender was our fathers' power
over the world of matter ; yet our fathers had a stronger
tendency to grandeur than have their sons to-day.
They were ill-clad, and in 1658, half the men who as
sembled for religious service on the last Sunday in
January were half dressed in leather; and yet there
were more towns in New England than there were pairs
of boots; there was not an umbrella, nor a water-proof
coat, nor a water-proof shoe in all the land. How
slender" was the stock of cotton, linen, woolen goods.
Yet our ill-clad mothers were dressier than we. The
women of 1658 went to such extremes with their poor
finery that not only the preachers scourged them with
terrible whips out of the Old Testament, but the Great
and General Court made laws to restrict the women's
" wide-spread ruffs." How rude was the art of the
surgeon, the dentist, the doctor, and how painful were
the remedies for bodily ills, and though applied with
such heroic vigor by the Samsons and Goliaths of the
art medicative, they were powerless against the dysen
tery, the fever, the smallpox, and other terrible mala
dies, which were inferred to the wrath of God ; and the
patient was left with his minister to face disease, with
no aid save fasting and prayer. Contrast their condi
tion with ours, and see what a vast improvement has
taken place ; consider the food of New England to-day,
its variety and abundance; the more comfortable and

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 313
elegant houses in which men are sheltered; the great
advance which has been made in the medical art; see
what has been accomplished by vaccination, by, the
power of ether ! The average life of New England men
is longer now than it was two hundred years ago ; more
babies will be children, more children youths, more
youths will be men and women, and they will live more
years. The same progress is seen in regard to the
tools of every description, for the farmer, joiner, smith,
spinner, weaver, seamstress. Look at the many instru
ments which lighten the farmer's work of ploughing,
sowing, threshing, winnowing ; at the machines for saw
ing, planing, turning, doing all manner of cabinet and
carpenter's work; see how the river becomes a black
smith, spinner, weaver; look at the sewing machine,
which is many a " Dorcas society " done in iron and
wood ! Now whence comes it that man has such greater
power over matter as is shown in his superior mode of
feeding, sheltering, healing and serving himself? There
has been no change in the world of matter, in any of its
powers; but man's understanding has been directed to
economic use, seeking food, shelter, medicine, tools ; and
such is the relation between that understanding and the
world of matter which it acts upon, that the understand
ing continually grows more and more, and acquires
gi eater and greater control over this subject-world of
matter. By this harmonious relation the power of New
England's thought and toil has been so much greatened
in two hundred years that ten thousand working-men of
all sorts, working with the tools of 1858, can in an
hour do more than ten thousand men in 1658 could have
done with their tools in fifteen hours. I think two
thousand babies which shall be born in Massachusetts
this year will live as long as twenty-five hundred babies

314 MATTER AND SPIRIT
born in Massachusetts two hundred years ago. This
progressive development of the understanding, with its
consequent dominion over the world of matter, and the
increase of working power dependent thereon, with its
lengthening out of human life, comes from that har
monious relation which is established between this world
of matter without us and this understanding throned
within the human brain.
Now the world of matter affects likewise the imagina
tion ; it offers us beauty. How handsome are the com
mon things about us ! The trees,
" Their bole and branch, their lesser boughs and spray,
Now leafless, pencilled on the wintry sky" —
or the summer trees, with their leaves and flowers, or
their autumnal jewels of fruit, — how fair they are!
Look at the grasses whereon so many cattle feed, at the
grains, which are man's bread; and note their hand
some color and attractive shape. Walnuts, acorns, ap
ples, grapes, the peach, the pear, cherries, plums, cran
berries from the meadow, chestnuts from the wood —
how handsome is all the family, bearing their recom
mendation in their very face! The commonest vege
tables, — cabbages, potatoes, onions, crooked squashes,
have a certain homely beauty, which to man is grace
before his meat. Nothing common is unclean. Then
there is the sun all day; the light, shifting clouds,
which the winds pile into such curious forms ; all night
the stars, the moon walking in brightness through the
sky, — how beautiful these things are! Then what
morning splendor waits upon and ushers in the day,
and attends his departure when his work is done ! The
world of matter — what a handsome nest it is ! How

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 315
our eye cradles itself in every lovely, rose; and all the
earth blossoms once each year!
How shape and color fit our fancy, and stars so far
off that their distance is inconceivable, impinge their
handsome light on every open eye ! What delight these
things give us, a joy above that of mere use! Even
the rudest boy in Cove street looks up at the stars,
and learns to wonder and rejoice, and is inly fed. Set
him down on the seashore next summer, and how the
beauty of its sight and sound will steal into his rude
untutored heart as the long waves roll toward the land,
comb over and break with " the ocean tide's immeasur
able laugh!" With what joy will he gather up the
refuse which the sea casts upon the shore, — the bright
colored weeds, the curiously-twisted shells, the nicely col
ored pebbles, worn into so fair and elliptical a shape and
polished off so smooth. Thus material nature comes
close tojhe imaginationj)f_ mankind, .even injhe_rudest
child. No North American savage but felt his heart
IeafTafTthe bright sparkling water of the river, or the
sunny lake, or the sublime majesty of the New Hamp
shire mountains ; and in the handsome names which he
gave them has he left a monument of the intimate re
lation Detweerf his imagination and the world of mat^
ter, which He"leiX'jz[fi& recognized. _ This passing de-
light innaltire's beauty helps refine and elevate airmen.
The boy who puts a dandelion in his button-hole, the
girl who stains her cheek with wild strawberries in
June, — seeking not only to satisfy her mouth with their
sweetness, but to ornament her face with their beauty, —
are both flying upward on these handsome wings.
But man is so in love with the transient beauty of
nature that he captures it, and seeks to hold it forever.
He puts the sound of nature into music, which he re-

316 MATTER AND SPIRIT
cords in the human voice or in wooden or metallic in
struments ; he paints and carves out loveliness on canvas
and in wood and stone. Patriarchal Jacob is in love
with the rainbow, and so puts its colors into Joseph's
coat to keep nature's beauty, while he also clothes hand
some Rachel's first-born and longed-for boy. Thought
commands toil, and bids it preserve the precarious but
precious beauty which the world of matter so lavishly
spreads out on earth in flowers, or scatters over the
" spangled heavens " in stars. Man is uplifted and
made better by this effort. When you find an Ojibway
Indian with one stone copying the form of a blackbird
upon another, depend upon it he is setting up a guide-
board whose finger points upward to civilization, and
the tribe of Ojibways will travel that way. Thus
closely following the male arts of use come the feminine^
arts of beauty — painting, sculpture, architecture,
music, and poetry. " They weave and twine the
heavenly roses in the earthly life ; they knit the gladden
ing bond of love which makes us blessed, and with the
chaste veil of the graces, watchful, with holy hand, they
shelter the eternal fire of delicate feelings." So nice is
the relation between_the_wqrld_of matter arid -man's irnj
agination that beauty, which is our next of kin on the
materiaT side, helps us up continually, takes us to
school, softens our manners, and will not let mankind
be wild. The first house man ever entered was a hole in
the rock, and the first he ever built was a burrow
scooped put of the ground. Look at your dwellings
now, at the Crystal Palace, the Senate house at Wash
ington, at these fair walls, so grateful to the eye, so
welcome to the voice of man! Man's first dress, what
a scant and homely patch it was! Look at the orna
mental fabrics which clothe Adam and Eve to-day in

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 317
such glory as Solomon never put on ! Consider the art
of music, which condenses all nature's melodious sounds !
Man's first voice was a cry ; to-day that wild shriek is
an anthem of melody, a chain of " linked sweetness long
drawn out." Consider the art of the painter and the
sculptor, who in superficial colors, or in solid metal or
stone, preserves some noble countenance for many an
age; and a thousand years hence eyes not opened now
shall look thereon, and be strengthened and gladdened.
From this intimate relation of the world of matter to
man's imagination come the great sculptors, painters,
architects and musicians, yea, the great poets, — Shake
speare, Milton, and their fair brotherhood and sister
hood of congenial souls — softening the manners of
man, and inspiring his heart, all round the many-peo
pled globe.
Now see on how nice an arrangement this relation
rests. Matter furnishes food, shelter, medicine, tools;
ancl ffie pursuit of these educates the understanding,
which man did not ask for, and wisdom which he did
not hope to have is thereby thrown in. But along with
food, shelter, medicine, tools, which man must have,
there is beauty also, which is food for thejmagination,
shelter, medicine and tools for subtler needs. This
gives also a higher education to a nobler faculty.
Beauty does not seem requisite to the understanding
alone, it is not valuable to man's mere body, certainly it
does not seem necessary to the world of matter itself;
but it is a requisite to the imagination, and this thread
of beauty, whose shape and color so witches us, runs
through all the cosmic web ; it is tied in with"the subtle
laws of animation, vegetation, motion; it is woven up
with attraction, affinity, heat, light, electricity; it is
connected into the disposition of the three great parts

318 MATTER AND SPIRIT
of the earth, — air, water, land, complicated with the
special chemical character of each; it depends on the
structural form of the earth, that on the solar system
itself. So when you rejoice in a musical sound, in the
sight of flowers, in the bloom on a maiden's cheek,
when you look at a charcoal sketch or a bronze statue,
when you read a drama of Shakespeare, or listen to an
essay of Emerson — then remember that the relation be
tween matter and mind, which made these things pos
sible, depends on the structure of the solar system, and
was provided for millions of millions of years before
there was a man-child born into the world. So much
for matter's relations to the imagination.
Now the world of matter jostles the reason or philo
sophic power. We would know the law of things, the
constant mode of operation, the causes of things. We
would not only have use for the understanding seek
ing food, shelter, medicine and tools, not only, beauty
for the imagination building up music, poetry, architec
ture, sculpture, painting; but the nature of man re
quires truth for the reason, which seeks for science and
builds up philosophy. Now the world of matter is so
related to man's reason that presently the science comes.
At first the variety of nature puzzles the rude man,
all seems confusion; but soon it is found that there is
order in this confusion. The perpetual return of day
and night, summer and winter, flower-time and seed
time, impresses man with the regularity of the world of
matter. He finds there is law everywhere, a constant
mode of operation, and a plan for all. He looks at the
moon, her beauty drawing his savage eye. At first its
changes seem inconsistent, but soon he finds the change
is regular; in four weeks each shape it has assumed is

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 319
repeated ; and every few years all forms of eclipse come
back again. He sees there are stars wandering amid
the other stars, but presently finds there are limits to
their wanderings, that there is a law which directs their
course, and their movements are regular. Nature
rouses the instinct of causality in man, he learns a lit
tle of nature's law, is strengthened by that knowledge,
and impelled to look for more, and finds constantly
more even than he hoped for. Thus for convenient use
he studies the surface of the ground, which necessity
compels him to divide into farm-lots, garden-lots, and
spots for building; and at length the great science of
geometry is born, the child of reason and the ground.
He looks at the stars and behold, the science of as
tronomy is born, daughter of reason and the heavens!
Fed with facts by the mother, and with ideas by the
father, what a stately queen has she grown up to be!
So from the study of the earth come geography and
geology, and from the study of the plants and animals
come botany and zoology. Reason grows by what it
feeds on. What an odds between the philosophical
power of New England to-day and New England two
hundred years ago ! Still more, note the difference be
tween the reason of mankind to-day, and that of man
kind four thousand years ago. This growth comes
from the fit relation which exists between the world of
matter and this mighty reason which is enthroned in
man. The law of the world of matter is knowable by
man; and when his thought knows that, the world of
matter is manageable by his toil, and he can use its
forces to serve his end.
This power of science jlepends not only on i the ^mind^
itself, "but on the nice relation between that and the
world of "matter outside. What if this world of mat-

MATTER AND SPIRIT
ter were — as the rninisters oftentimes tell us it is — a
bundle of incoherent things, no constant law in force
therein, God intervening by capricious miracle to turn
a stick into a snake, water to blood, dust to flies and
creeping things, mud to frogs, and ashes to a plague
on beasts and men ; what if he sent miraculous darkness
which could be felt, to revenge him on some handful of
wicked men ; what if by miracle he opened the sea and
let a nation through, and then poured the waters back
on its advancing foe ; what if the rocks became water,
and the heavens rained bread for forty years ; what if
at a magic touch the sun and moon stood still all day
and let a filibustering troop destroy their foe; what if
iron swam at some man's command, or the shadow on
the dial-plate went back for half a day ; what if a whale
engulfed a disobedient prophet who fled from God's
higher law, and kept him three days shut up, till he
made a great poetic psalm; what if a son were born
with no human father and could by miracle walk on the
waves as on dry land, change water into wine, feed five
thousand men with five little barley loaves, and have in
reserve twelve baskets full of broken bread; what if
he could still the winds and the waters with a word, re
buke disease, restore the lame and the blind at a touch,
and wake the dead with " Lazarus, come forth ! "
Why! science_woulcl i_not__be possible, there would be
nothing but stupid wonder and amazement, andjnstead
of the grand spectacle of a universe, with Jaw every
where, thought waking reason everywhere, and stirring
Newton to write the Frincipia of natural science, Lin-
nasus to describe the systems of plants, Laplace to
cipher out the mechanics of the sky, Kant to unfold
the metaphysics of man and the philosophy of human
history, and the masterly intellect of Cuvier to classify

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 321
the animal kingdom, mankind thereby growing wiser
and still more powerful — this we should not have, we
should have no great Leviathan to sail the sea, but
instead we should have a priest's world of capricious
chaos, some prophet going up to heaven on his own
garment, some witch careering on a broom, and man
vulgarly staring as in a farmer's yard a calf stands
gaping at some new barn door. What is the world of
monkish legend, the world of the Arabian Nights En
tertainments, the world of the Catholic church, the
world of the Calvinistic church, or of the popular the
ology of our times compared with the grand world
which God has made it — stars millions of millions of
miles away looking down on these flowers at my side,
and all the way between law, order, never once a mir
acle ; and all this so wondrously and tenderly related to
man's mind !
The world of matter is not less closely related to the
moral progress of mankind. There is a provision to
satisry the wants of every creature; there is food for
beast and man, and delight for every living thing.
This arrangement shows a principle of justice, which
is in the ground, the water, the air, in daylight and
darkness. Such is the sympathetic relation between the
creating power, which makes the summer water spawn
with fish, the summer air to hum with insects, and the
providing power, which day by day fills the air and
water with their food, that before we know we feel the
two are one; and when we recognize the even-handed
justice of the outer world, which contents our con
science, we see that the world of matter, with its mo
tion, vegetation, and animation, is a perfect world.
Then the order and regularity of nature hint to us
1—21

322 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the certainty of a law, a motive, a purpose, which are all
perfect. Nothing depends on caprice, there is nothing
chimerical; we feel a certain moral satisfaction and se
curity. The world of matter we find is nest for the
conscience not less than the intellect.
While at work in the world, finding for the body its
food, shelter, medicine and tools, we are brought into
complicated relations with other men who are seeking
the same things with equal appetite. In our conscience
we find a moral law, like what prevails always in nature,
which the spirit of nature contains, — the conscience
which sees right, and the will which would do right. I
am not dreaming when I tell of the moral effect of
nature. So the affections have their relation to the world of
matter. We have a fondness for the beauty, of nature,
which is not merely of imagination, but of feeling as
well. Thus we love certain spots of earth above all
others, — great trees, tall mountains, some sunny nook
with a certain outlook to the sea; some great particu
lar star is dear to us. So the lily, the rose, the violet
are objects of affection, even to savage men. The civil
ized man takes these with him all over the world and
plants them where he goes, affection putting a girdle of
plants about the earth.
What a tender feeling the Puritan fathers .had
for the lilac, the primrose, the sun-flower and the
marigold, which they brought with them from their
homes ; dear friends once, poor relations of the wealthy
garden now! It is not only the imagination which
is pleased at the sight of pitcher plants, ladies' slip
pers, wild roses, water lilies, fringed gentians; it is
affection quite as much.

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 323
" The heart with pleasure thrills,
And dances with the daffodils."
But the animals are more nearly related to man's
affections. Early the dog joins man, and is perhaps
the only beast who voluntarily puts himself under his
protection. Thus he became man's companion, the
earliest living tool with which he masters other beasts.
A mutual affection comes up between the two which is
older than science or the art of beauty. Each helps
civilize the other, for man must somewhat tame his own
passion before he can domesticate the cat, the dog, the
mule, or the cow. A certain affection joins man to the
swine, the sheep, the ox, the ass, the horse, the camel,
and the elephant. They are beasts of service, but ob
jects of affection also. No driver feels to his engine as
the man does to his horse. I value a sewing-machine, I
admire a picture, but I love a horse or a dog.
But I must say a word of the relation of the world of
matter to the religious faculty. Alexander von Hum
boldt — the ministers call him an atheist — says, " We
find even amongst the most savage nations a certain
vague, terror-stricken sense of the all-powerful unity
of the natural forces and of the existence of an invisi
ble spiritual essence manifested in those forces ; and we
may trace here the existence of a bond of union linking
together the visible world and that higher spiritual
world which escapes the grasp of the senses."
The general aspect of nature, with its vast power
and constant law, has a direct influence to waken rever
ence and something of awe. The sublinjity of the
ocean, the motion of all life in the earth^ the grandeur
of the mountain, the wide plain and great river, fill ali
thoughtful men with vague, dreamy, longings toward

324 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the great cause and providence which creates them all,
and fills them all with wondrous life. So the thought
of the great trees, the wide-spread forest, house and
home for such worlds of life, the bright wild flower,
the common grass and grain, food for beast and man —
all waken religious feelings in the best and worst of us
all. Still more, perhaps, the sun, moon and stars come
home to our consciousness, and stir the feelings infinite.
Nature speaks thus to all men, in all lands, in every
stage of culture, highest and humblest. This is the
reason why the rude man worships the objects of na
ture first, and makes gods of them, — sun, moon or
stars, the ocean, mountain, land, rock or tree, beast or
bird. This is the rude beginning of mankind's out
ward religion, which represents the innermost fact of
religious consciousness; these poor material things are
the lowly rounds in the ladder which mankind travels
on, till we come to a knowledge of the infinite God, who
transcends all form, all space, all time. The great and
unusual phenomena of nature affect the religious feel
ings with exceeding power, such as an eclipse of the
sun or moon, the appearance of comets, that " from
their horrid hair shake pestilence and war," an earth
quake, a storm, thunder and lightning. To you and
me these things are not troublesome ; but to the wild
man, the savage, or the half civilized, they bring great
fear and dread, and thereby waken the religious feel
ing, which thence slowly tends on to its ultimate work
of peace and joy and love. This terror before the vio
lence of nature is exceedingly valuable to the savage
man, and it plays the same part in the history of his
religion that want has played in the history of his toil
and thought. It directs faculty to its function. Once
nothing but hunger and fear would make man toil and

THE SPIRIT OF MAN 325
think; then, in his rudeness, nothing but the violent
aspect of the world would rouse his soul from its savage
lethargy; then storm and earthquake, thunder and
lightning, were the prophets which spake to man. To
the rude the teacher must also be rude. But this fear
tormenting man so, he presently studies nature to see
if there be cause for fear, and the knowledge which he
gains thereby is real joy.
Well did a great Roman poet, two thousand years
ago — copying a greater poet, whose reason surpassed
even his mighty imagination — say, " Happy is he who
can understand the true causes of things, and tramples
underneath his feet all fear, inexorable fate, and the
roar of angry hell." At length men find that the
eclipse or the comet was not harmful, that the storm
came not in wrath, that the earthquake tells nothing
of an angry God, only of a globe not finished yet,
that the thunder and lightning are beneficent, that the
power of the earth, the round ocean, and the living air,
are full of love. The law of nature leads man to be
hold the lawgiver, and the benevolence which he finds in
the vast majority of cases makes him certain he shall
find it when he understands those cases which he knows
not yet. He goes from " nature up to nature's God ; "
and when he knows the earth, its air, water, land, its
powers of motion, vegetation, animation, knows the
solar system, which maintains for earth its place, knows
the astral system which furnishes earth its spot, when
he looks on the unresolved nebulae, which may perhaps
be another astral system, so far away that it looks like
dust of stars scattered in some corner of the sky, —
then does his soul run over with love for that dear God
who established such relation between the cosmic uni
verse and the astral system, between that and the solar

326 MATTER AND SPIRIT
system, between that and the earth, between the earth
and his body and spirit, his mind and conscience, heart
and soul ; and then he turns and loves that God with all
his understanding, with all his heart and strength ; na
ture from without leagues with spirit from within, and
constrains him thus.
To gather to one knot the several threads loose-scat
tered in the former sermons and in this — the world of
matter is a perfect nest for man's body, as far as we
understand, and if some few hairs seem to fret his
flesh, the conclusion is that they also have a service
to perform, and fret it for his good. Then the world
of matter is also a perfect nest for man's spirit, fitting
its every part. This fitness to flesh or spirit is not ac
cident nor caprice, nor brought about by interference,
by transient miracle; it is fixed in the constitution of
matter, and in the constitution of the human spirit; in
the special character of the earth ; in the distribution of
air, water, land; in the chemical composition of each
of these; in the power of motion through its fivefold
forms, by attraction, affinity, heat, light and electricity ;
in the power of vegetation and animation; in the struc
tural character of the earth, which depends on the solar
system, that on the astral, and that on the great cosmic
universe itself, — and all this relation between man's
soul, its tenderest faculty, and the world of matter, was
arranged millions of millions of years before the solar
system itself began. Throughout that universe of
space and time do we find ever power, law, mind; and
what we know we know is good, and what we know not
we think is good.
What then is God^s character?. Let the relation of
matter to man's spirit tell. There is such loving kind-

THE SPIRIT OF MAN
ness as motive to creation, such wisdom and justice to
fix the purpose and plan of creation, such power to
serve as means to that purpose, that matter fits the
mind of man, fits his conscience, his affection and his
soul, so that it feeds, educates, strengthens, refines and
blesses every spiritual faculty. If it did this only for
the wild man or the savage, then the world of matter
would be but a cradle, a primary school for the body,
but no house and college for the civilized man; and
then the wild man would be always wild, the baby
would never be a boy. If it did this only for the en
lightened man, then the world of matter would be house
and college only for the scholar when full grown, not
cradle and primary school to train him up. In either
case, it were well nigh useless, and you might have your
doubt of God. But now the world of matter is spirit
ual nest for the wild man, for the savage, for the bar
barian, for the most enlightened man of to-day ; nay,
multiply our enlightenment of to-day by the enlighten
ment of to-day, and enlarge it never so much, still the
world of matter is nest for man's spirit, carried to never
so high degrees of strength and refinement. The God
who makes it all is power, law, mind, is also justice, and
also love ! How vast the power, how thoughtful the
mighty mind, how comprehensive the justice, how far-
reaching that endless love, which fills the universal
space, the eternal time, with such a plan, which works
for you and me, and, while it takes in this universe of
space, this immensity of time, and provides for all, —
the wild man, the savage, for all the millions that have
been, are, and shall be, never neglects a single mote
that peoples the sun's beams ! This is the God which
is told of by the relation between man's spirit and the
material world; and in sight of it the spirit of man

328 MATTER AND SPIRIT
looks up and worships, and adores; and he opens his
heart, and loves, and trusts — My God, my Father,
and my Mother too !

6
RELATION OF GOD AND MAN
Besides this he gave them knowledge and the law of life
for an heritage. — Ecclesiasticus xvii, 11.
In the last four sermons we have looked at the evi
dences of God in the world of matter and the world of
man, and in the relation between the world of matter
and man's body and spirit. I propose to-day to com
plete this series of sermons, and so ask your attention
to some thoughts on the relation between God and man.
I shall speak first of the causal and providential re
lation of God to man, the relation on the part of God,
who is infinite cause and providence to finite and de
pendent man; next, of the mode of operation in which
that cause and providence works; and finally, of the
feeling which man will naturally have to God in con
sequence of this relation.
First, of God's causal and providential relation to
man. The infinite perfection of God we derive from
our own consciousness ; partly, I think, from that spon
taneous action of the intellectual, moral, affectional and
religious faculties which we call instinct; partly, also,
from that voluntary action thereof which we name re
flection, whereby the intellect deliberately works up to
philosophy what it gathers as fact. Here I start from
the infinite perfection of God.
He stands related to us in two ways ; first as the cre
ative cause which brings us into being, either directly or
remotely; second, as the conservative providence which
329

330 MATTER AND SPIRIT
regulates the world and takes care that all goes right.
These two, the causal and the providential, bringing us
into being, then taking care of us while we exist, com
prise the entire relation between us on God's part.
Now from the idea of God's infinite perfection, by
logical deduction it follows that God's relation to man,
causal and providential, must be perfect. That is, the
infinite God, with perfect love to wish the best, with
perfect wisdom to know the best, with perfect power
to do the best, must have created man solely for the
purpose of conferring on him the greatest amount of
possible welfare which man's nature could possibly re
ceive. You see at once that this follows unavoidably —
for no other purpose could be consistent with infinite
power, wisdom and love. It would not be possible for
a God infinite in love to create man for the purpose
of making him as miserable as possible ; only a devil of
perfect hate could do that. Nor would it be possible
for such a God to create man less happy than he could
create him ; he could only do that through not wishing
men to be so happy as he could make them to be, and
that would be in consequence of God's not being perfect
in love to men. So from the idea of God's infinite per
fection it follows that the divine purpose of creation
must be to confer the greatest possible welfare on each
created thing. This must be true of his relation to
mankind as a whole, in the entire existence thereof, and
also true of his relation to each individual, — for as
the loving motive is qualitatively infinite, so quantita
tively it takes in Jesus, Judas, Peter, James, and John,
every living man. Suppose there were a thousand
million men on earth to-day. The love which desires
the greatest possible welfare for 999,999,999, and
either through hate or indifference omits the millionth,

GOD AND MAN 331
is not perfect love; but as God is infinitely perfect in
all qualities, so must he equally desire the welfare of
each and all. In this reasoning there can be no mis
take as to God's motive and purpose ; the motive must
be absolute love, the purpose absolute welfare.
Now God is not only infinitely loving to wish welfare,
but also infinitely wise to know welfare, and infinitely
powerful to achieve it. Accordingly he must provide
means perfectly adequate to his perfect purpose. Cre
ating and providing, that is, inventing, organizing and
administering the universe of matter and of man, he
must make them fit to accomplish just what he wishes.
God's ideal of desire in creation must be God's actual
of attainment in creation ; it is so on the whole, so in
each part; the world of matter is just what God meant
it to be, the world of man is just what God meant it to
be, and the relation between the two just what God
meant it to be. There is no antagonism to work out
side of God, and make confusion and contradiction in
the universe, and thwart him by sowing tares amongst
his wheat, for therein God is the only inventor, or
ganizer and administrator, and so there is no external
difficulty in the way of achieving his purpose. There
is no antagonism of desire or will inside of God, to
make confusion and contradiction in God's own con
sciousness and thwart his benevolence by conflicting
motives of ill-will, and accordingly there is no internal
difficulty in the way of his executing his purpose. To
will is present with him, and how to do he also finds a
way, with no hindrance from within or without to pre
vent his universe from being a perfect means to a per
fect end. So then, not only does this causal provi
dence of the infinite God aim at the greatest possible
welfare for each man, but also provides a means to

MATTER AND SPIRIT
achieve that end. This is true of mankind in the whole,
true of each special person; no man can be neglected
by the perfect love, wisdom and power of God. If the
means be adequate to secure the welfare of 999,999,999
persons, and through weakness fail to secure it for the
millionth, then the means are not infinitely perfect, and
not possible for the infinitely perfect God to create.
All this follows unmistakably; there is no fault in this
logic, and if you watch the process, step by step, you
are as sure of each step as that one and one make two.
But by reasoning in this general way and from facts
of consciousness, either spontaneous, of instinct, or re
flective, of philosophy, we learn only the benevolence
of the purpose, the sufficiency of the means, the cer
tainty of the end; but we learn nothing about the
method by which the means are worked, and the man
ner in which the end is attainable; for these we must
look elsewhere.
So consider the next point, namely, the mode of
operation by which the infinite God works, and see in
what method and manner he executes his purpose.
Here it is not facts of instinctive or of reflective con
sciousness alone we are to look at, but facts of observa
tion in the world of matter ; and to avoid perplexity and
confusion, I shall refer chiefly to those facts which I
have mentioned in the four preceding sermons.
So far as we know the universe there is a plan in it, —
regularity, order, force as acting for a purpose. This
appears in all parts, in the silicious shells which you find
by millions in a handful of peat ashes from a farmer's
fire, in the structure of the vast solar system itself. So
far as we know, not only is there a plan for each thing,
but a unity of plan for the whole, all parts working

GOD AND MAN 333
harmoniously together, the astral system with the solar
system, the solar system with the earth, the earth with
man, the world of matter affording what is needful to
his automatic powers, — warmth, light, breath, sound,
smell; and for his voluntative powers affording food,
shelter, medicine and tools. There is a perfect har
mony of relation between each smallest or largest plant
and the air, water, earth, heat, light, electricity; but
this harmonious relation depends on the gravitation at
the earth's surface, that in part on the swiftness of
its rotation, the length of day and night, that on the
width of the earth's attractional orbit, and that on the
general structure of the solar system; so the plan
reaches through the whole solar system, and takes in
the little green fucus on the outside of yonder wall.
Such unity of purpose is there in so vast a plan, so
widely extended throughout space.
Now this plan has a vast extent in time as well as
space; it occupies all known time, in all known space,
space universal and time immense. Things are got
ready for man whose use does not appear till millions of
years have passed away. See how slowly the child
grows up from a puny baby, an impotent mass of pulpy
substance, to a man. But that is only the smallest part
of his history. Long series of animals preceded him,
— radiates, articulates, mollusks, vertebrates, all slop
ing up to him, and they all pointed to him with the si
lent finger of prophecy, and before he is born he goes
through the forms of several animals lower than him
self, nay, sometimes comes into this world with the
mother mask of the inferior animals upon him, here with
a hair lip, there with web fingers or toes, or the gills
of a frog; and the German physicians say that every
five thousandth man is born with the marks of a fish's

MATTER AND SPIRIT
gills upon his neck, which every baby has at a certain
stage of its foetal progress. Man comes therefore at
the end of a long series of animals, who are forerun
ners of this messiah, voices crying in the wilderness,
" The kingdom of man is at hand ! Prepare his ways,
and make his paths straight ! " One day I make no
doubt it will be understood that man could not have
existed without the help of these inferior animals, more
than our tools of steel could have existed without our
ancestors' tools of wood and bone and rock, wherewith
the tool-making process began. In nature there is
nothing by leaps, everything gradually slopes up to
its perfection. But the world of vegetation must pre
cede the world of animals which feed thereon, and the
mineral or inorganic world must come before the world
of plants which feed on it ; and the special structure of
the minerals depends on the structure of the solar sys
tem itself. So then, in all the time from the first or
ganization of the solar system, when it was nothing
but a huge mass of dim nebulous vapor down to this
minute, there has been a unity of plan, all forces work
ing together for a definite purpose, and man came at
the end thereof. Let me take two plain and obvious
examples. Many million years ago huge plants grew
on the earth in immense numbers; they were destroyed
in the great geological catastrophies which followed,
and masses of matter were piled upon them ; by intense
heat from below and immense pressure from above these
plants were changed into coal; by subsequent convul
sions they were changed in their positions and so
brought to light. This coal seemed useless for any
purpose ; but as man becomes civilized he wants warmth
in his house and heat to soften the metals and make
them pliant and coal supplies his necessity. At the.

GOD AND MAN 335
touch of coal obstinate iron becomes as pliant as a
thread and man binds it as he will. Enlightened man
wants power to turn his mill and bear his produce over
land and sea, and coal furnishes it. Child of fire and
water, the steam-engine is born to pass over land and
ocean without rest, and to serve him also while it stands
and waits. See what service coal performs; it smelts
iron, which turns to a thousand tools for all the arts of
peace or war ; it is a railroad on the land, a ship on the
water, a wire-road through the sky or underneath the
sea whereon man's thought travels swift almost as the
light. To-day there are six thousand mills in England
driven by steam, which occupy the toil of nearly five
million men. Nay, half the handsome dresses of this
congregation were woven up by coal, and all have been
taken on its sooty shoulders and borne unsoiled from
place to place. It warms our houses, bakes our bread,
and is the most efficient minister of our civilization ;
and yet it was provided for at least ten million years
ago and invested with all its wondrous properties. In
the great states of Kentucky and Tennessee the coal
formation is so rich that it is computed there are a
million tons to every, square mile of land; and two tons
of coal has got more physical power than a common
man can develop in himself from the time he is 16 till
he is 65 ; I mean two tons of coal would turn a grind
stone more times than a man in his whole life could do.
What an immense provision for future toil, and so for
future civilization is laid up under those states; man
has but to bring it to the surface. Now such unity of
plan is there in this world of time that ten million years
ago this power of work and civilization was stored
away to remain till man should need it. Strike coal
from existence and you see how much of our present

336 MATTER AND SPIRIT
civilization would perish along with it. Sulphur, car
bon, hydrogen are as old as the solar system; none of
them has changed in property or power. Unite them
in a certain way, and you have an ether which makes
the flesh insensible to pain and the surgeon cuts our
limbs as wood and we feel it not. Now this power to
stupify the sense of pain was provided for at least a
million years ago, though it was not brought to light
till the genius of a Boston chemist 1 4 disclosed it to
mankind a few years ago. What unity of plan is
there all this time! No miracle conferred. a new prop
erty on these three substances, but when genius brought
them together there was the power which God provided
so long ago.
In the universe all is done according to law, by the
regular and orderly action of the forces thereof; there
is a constant mode of operation which never changes.
This is so with the power of motion, in all its five forms
of attraction, affinity, heat, light and electricity; and
so with the powers of vegetation and animation.
Nothing_Js done by human magic, .nothing by divine
miracle. Things come about slowly as it seems to us,
but orderly. Religious poets tell us that God said in
Hebrew speech, " Let the earth be ! " and it was forth
with. " Let the waters bring forth fish, the air fowls,
and the earth cattle and creeping things ! " and it was
done. But when you consult the record of the earth
itself you find that the six days' miracle of the_poet.
were millions of years' work of the divine forces of the
universe and never a miracle. These forces are always
adequate to do their work and to achieve the divine pur
pose with no miraculous help, no intervention on God's
part, no new creation of forces, and in that immense

GOD AND MAN 337
book of space whose leaves date back through such vast
periods of time, there is not a single miracle recorded;
not once does it appear that God intervened and
changed the normal action of any single thing. So
from observation youfind as fact what from conscious
ness you developed likewise as idea.
Destruction also takes place. In times past there
have been great convulsions of the elements whereby
things which suited one condition were destroyed to give
place to things which suited a new condition. Thus
the plants which became coal and the animals which fed
thereon were destroyed after they had done their work,
just as the snow melts in spring and the snowflakes
perish, with it ; just as you and I shall die when we have
served out the time God enlisted us for. Earthquakes
and volcanoes still perform their destructive work ; thus
a storm may destroy beasts and men, lightning strike
them down or a tornado whirl them away; death fol
lows on the steps of life; pain is never far from any
one of us, sometimes a constant companion. These
things trouble men at first, but when carefully looked at
and understood they present no difficulty. The pain
we suffer is just enough to make us preserve our life
or limbs; without it not a child would grow up with a
finger, a tooth, or an eye. Death is no evil; it is a
ripening, a finishing and passing off; no more an evil
than birth, but like it one step more, a step upward
and forward. This is true of the death of John and
Sally, true likewise of the death of a race of animals,
whose huge bones or tiny shells we find laid between the
leaves of this great stone book. When the race of
saurians a million years ago had done their work, it
was proper that the race should die. A storm is the
regular action of natural forces, as much so as the sun's
1—22

338 MATTER AND SPIRIT
rise or the opening of a rose. Volcanoes and earth
quakes are equally orderly, and no doubt are as be
neficent in the motive which causes them to be, as in
the purpose which they serve. A certain economy is
noticeable in the divine plan ; there is a, maximum of re
sult, with a minimum of force, for nothing is wasted in
this world. This is true in regard to pain. The girl
on skates at first stumbles and hurts herself just enough
to make her take care. Pain is the school-master to
bring us to soundness and health. The forms of death
most common to every creature below man are the
easiest. Rapacious animals seize their prey and shake
it to death. As you and I look on and see a terrier
dog thus treat his prey we think it is a horrid mode of
death ; but not many years since an experiment was per
formed which shows it is not so; a lion seized Dr. Liv
ingstone in South Africa, and treated him as a terrier
does a rat, until attacked by, another man, when he
dropped the missionary; and the doctor says he felt
no pain, only a half-dreamy consciousness such as in
duced by taking chloroform or ether. This fact shows
very plainly the motive in the divine being which ap
pointed for animals, the dog, the bear, and the cat
tribe, this mode of putting their prey to death. The
large emmets feed on the small emmets; the great ant
gives chloroform to the little one before he rends him
limb from limb, and the benumbed ant suffers no pain.
These facts point to a divine benevolence thus admin
istering the economy of things, even the smallest things.
In the midst of this alternate construction and de
struction, new life and death, there is a regular ascend
ing development in the world of matter, a constant
tendency upward to higher and higher forms of things.
First there is mere mineral matter with only its power

GOD AND MAN 339
of motion in its five forms ; and if the philosophic the
ory of Laplace be true, even there, there is a remark
able progress in the formation of this mineral matter
which the solar system has gone through. First it is
a mass of thin vapor; then this matter condenses, and
rotates slowly about itself; then the matter breaks into
consecutive rings, one separating after another; then
the rings condense into spheres, each rotating about its
own axis and revolving likewise about the central mass ;
some of them are possessed of rings surrounding them
selves, which subsequently break and condense into
moons; at length each takes the form of the various
planets, from Neptune to Mercury. This earth goes
through several geological phases, passing gradually
to higher and higher forms of motion.
Then there is vegetable matter with its power of
growth. The earliest plants appear to have been quite
rude and simple in their structure, closely allied to the
mineral forms of crystallization ; and from these hum
ble efforts there is a constant sloping up to the mighty
baobab tree. Then comes animal life, with its various
means of power; then human life, with its power of
conscious toil and thought, and its ability thereby to
make the forces of the earth serve man for food, shelter,
medicine and tools.
This ascending progress seems to be the general rule
in the universe, things beginning in their lowest and
humblest forms, and gradually going higher and
higher, and becoming more complex. In the animals
below man this progress goes on by the creation of new
kinds of animals, each with higher functions than the
other, for there is progress for the individual from
birth onward in all animals, but no progress in the

MATTER AND SPIRIT
species, from the first bear to the last bear. So there
could be only the biography, of a particular bear, trac
ing his development" from birth to complete and full-
grown bearhood, and then his decline and death; but
there can be no history of the bear kind, for there is no
progressive development of beardom, no rise and prog
ress, no decline and fall; their number may fluctuate,
their character is always the same. But in the case of
man, progress is not merely by the creation of new
kinds of men, each higher than the last, but by the de
velopment of the whole through successive stages of
primitive wildness, savagedom, barbarism, half -civiliza
tion, and the civilized and enlightened state. In John
and Sally there is an individual progress from baby
hood to maturity, and death, whereafter the progress
begins again and goes on forever through new stages
we know little of, perhaps nothing. Their children will
start from a little higher elevation to begin with, and
go a little further up than the point their father and
mother attained. The next generation is always an
improvement on the former; it starts if not with im
proved faculties, at least with improved opportunities
and additional speed, which practically amount to the
same thing. The beasts can transmit nothing but their
body, while this generation will bequeath to its succes
sors not only its improved bodily organization, but
likewise the result of all the toil and thought which we
have inherited from our fathers, and all which we have
added to that inheritance. With England and Russia
there is national progress from the rude condition of
two thousand years ago up to this day, and this will
go on I know not how long. At length these nations,
I suppose, will decline and perish, but the new nations
which shall take their place, in the year 5858 or 2858,

GOD AND MAN 041
will start with a higher civilization, perhaps with better
faculties, certainly with better tools and opportunities,
and go still further on. Now with mankind there is a
human progress from wildness to barbarism, civiliza
tion, and so on, and as the human race never dies, like
John and Sally, and England and Russia, that prog
ress is continual, and all the intellectual, moral, affec
tional and religious excellence brought out by John
and Sally, by England and Russia, at their death falls
to the inheritance of mankind, which is the residuary
legatee and heir at law of all who die, and which takes
possession of all individual and national value. In this
progress three things are noticeable, — the development
of faculties, intellectual, moral, affectional and reli
gious ; the acquisition of increased power over the ma
terial world to control the motion, vegetation, and ani
mation of the earth, and therewith feed, shelter, heal
and serve mankind the more ; and the gathering of men
into larger and larger companies, where all have a cer
tain joint unity of action, and each preserves personal
freedom, so that each loses nothing and every one gains
from all.
Now this progress is brought about by the forces
which are in matter and man, and the harmonious rela
tion between the two; and as this human and material
power always exists, and as their relation is always per
fect, so the progressive development of mankind is a
constant fact, the resultant of all men's various toil and
thought. As the motions of that nebulous mass, just
referred to, its attraction, its separation into concen
tric rings, their condensation and formation into plan
ets, are a part of the plan of the solar system, and
therefore not a movement is lost, so all the world of

342 MATTER AND SPIRIT
mankind tends to the progressive development of man s
faculties, the acquisition of greater power over mate
rial forces, and the attainment of a higher social and
individual welfare for each and all, and this progress is
just as sure to go on as the planet Neptune is to move
about the sun, or as babies to be born from year to
year. In the world of matter there is no individual
will, no individual experiment, no disturbing force oc
curs there, and so there is never a mistake. You can
calculate the place of the sixth moon of Saturn with in
fallible certainty, for the forces which control it are
known and appreciable. But man has a certain
amount of freedom; part of his conduct depends on
persona! caprice ; he must make progress by experi-
ments,*wliicrr may fail, many will fail, and pain attend
the failure. This pain forbids the repetition of the
failure. Johnny puts his finger into the fire ; the pain
is such that he does not repeat the experiment. Russia
puts her finger into Moldavia,15 and is hurt thereby,
and will not try the experiment again. In the long
run, this pain for the individual mistake is adequate
correction, and at last will help us to that welfare which
we seek.
Now the! ideal condition and character, which both
men and nations feel so far above their actual attain
ment, the ceaseless experiments they make to realize
that ideal, the pain which follows any failure, the joy
which comes of their success, and the mighty instinct
of progress in all the leading races of mankind, show
that man is to have an immense duration here, corre
sponding to that vast amount of time the earth has
been in getting ready for him. When you look over
the whole of human history and know man's successful
development from the wild to the enlightened state, it

GOD AND MAN 343
is quite plain that we are on the march towards a
glorious triumph of civilization for mankind on earth,
as well as for the individual man beyond the earth, and
this is no more likely to fail than the sun is to drop
out of the heavens, for this progressive development of
man depends on forces which are as constant as gravi
tation, and which can never fail unless human nature
or material nature should fail. The world of matter is
nest for man in his wild state, so fitted that it stirs him
to the next stage above it, and that to the enlightened
state, which is likewise a nest to stimulate him still
more ; and when our children shall have advanced so
far that the nineteenth century after Christ shall seem
to them as the nineteenth century before Christ seems
to us, depend upon it the world of matter will still
stimulate man to take fresh steps in his ever-ascending
march. So far then we are sure of two things on God's part
in his relation to us, — that the infinite God acts from
a perfect motive, to confer the highest possible welfare
on each man, and by the perfect means which are en
tirely adequate to that great end; next, that this will
be brought about by the constant mode of operation of
the forces of matter and man; that the arrangement
is made at vast distances of time and space, and all the
conditions of the material and human world are formed
and provided for and made subservient to that great
end, even pain itself is minister to that welfare. On
man's part we are also sure of the personal immortality
provided for by the infinite perfection of God.
Now what are the feelings that man will naturally
have towards God from knowing this infinitely perfect
character, this progressive development by means of

344 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the harmonious relation between man and matter, and
the constant mode of operation of the forces therein?
First of all there comes a feeling of absolute trust, a
reliance on the dear Father and Mother of us and all
the world of life. The innermost primitive fact of in
stinctive religious consciousness is the sense of depend
ence, a feeling of want which only a God can supply ;
but the innermost ultimate fact of reflective religious
consciousness is the idea of the infinitely perfect God,
who works from love as motive, for man's highest pos
sible welfare as purpose, with all the powers of the
universe as means, by their constant mode of opera
tion as method, and who will achieve infinite welfare for
each and all as his end. As by animal instinct the
newborn baby seeks with instinctive mouth for the
mother's breast, so by spiritual instinct man seeks after
God with great hungering of the spirit; and as the
baby is fed and satisfied with that natural food thus
providentially furnished for its baby mouth, the means
of life and growth, so is the hungry soul fed and sat
isfied with the infinite God, and hangs thereon and lives
and grows, not without access of unexpected strength.
God's infinite perfection satisfies the soul's desire, both
the instinctive and reflective want, and as soon as we
know this ever-live divinity we drop all less ideas and
have no other God before him, nor make us any graven
image or likeness of anything in the heavens above, or
the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, but
bow down and worship that. Then the Gods of the
churches, with their intervention, their miracle, their
special love, their private hate, and endless hell, are seen
to be but idols, which are nothing, while we worship in
our turn the real God who is. We feel entire confi
dence in him. We are sure of God; he is all that we

GOD AND MAN 345
could wish, far more, for he transcends our instinctive
feeling and our reflective thought. I know that the in
finite God loves me more than my mortal father and
mother ever could, and desires my welfare as much more
than they as his infinite power is above their little
ness ! He loves me better than I myself ; I may forget
myself, the infinite God will never forget me; I may
try reckless experiments with myself, but God never
will, nor suffer mine to reach their maddest result. I
may stretch out my hands against my own life ; he will
restrain my hands so that I cannot take it; a mother's
hand holds and checks me with her gentle, " Thus far,
my child, and no farther ! "
I say I am sure of God ; sure of his motive, which is
love ; sure of his purpose, which is the greatest welfare
possible for me to receive; sure of his means, the pow
ers of the universe of matter and of spirit, fit for their
work, aye, all the powers of omnipotence, the all-wise,
all- just, all-loving God; sure of the method, the con
stant mode of operation of all these powers, material
and spiritual ; and sure of the end, absolute welfare for
myself, for all mankind, sure to be as blessed as I can
bear, secure of infinite progress for ever and ever. If
I am prosperous, what additional delight comes from
my thought of God and trust in him, the infinite
Father, the infinite Mother. As more than gold or dia
monds do I value a brown leaf by a dear hand choicely
laid to mark some precious word in a book, marking at
the same time some yet more precious passage in my
life, so do I value the little talent I have, the slender
excellence, a brown leaf laid in to mark my page in the
world's great book where it stands written that with
shovel or broom I clean the streets of the town, or with

346 MATTER AND SPIRIT
pen and paper I seek to clean the theological air of the
world. I remember that this power comes from God
and how grand and glorious then appears my humble
life, its little talent, my slender excellence laid there be
tween the storied pages of the book of God. If I am
unprosperous, my fortune broken, my good name gone,
my health decayed, if my dear ones crumble and moul
der away in the slow fire of time, and I am left
alone, sick, friendless, poor and old, — still bright
within the clear heaven of my consciousness shines the
eternal light of God, and I am never alone, I am rich
and strong and young with hopeful life. Let my na
tion decline, like Italy or Spain, the queen debauched
by her vices dying of hopeless decay, and let it be en
slaved, like Africa, too cowardly to clutch the tyrant's
throat, — still I can look this in the face with sad se
renity and say, " Thou God knowest that good shall
come out of this evil, to the tyrant who desires to en
slave, and to the victim who dares not smite and kill."
Then there is a desire to be in harmony with the
infinitely perfect God, not only to know God by, feel
ing and thought, in the instinctive emotion and philo
sophic reflection, but also to be at one with him, my life
in unison with his life, as the sunshine or the rain is in
unison with the world. So I shall seek to use every
limb of my body and every faculty of my spirit in its
normal way, and for its normal work. I shall edu
cate my mind and conscience and heart and soul to the
highest possible degree, cutting nothing off sacrament-
ally, trying nothing on superstitiously, but using them
for the highest possible work. Hence I shall toil and
think, partly for myself, partly for other men, for my
nation, for mankind. I shall submit to no wickedness
which I can overcome; if a tyrant assail me, I shall

GOD AND MAN 347
kill the tyrant. I shall ask no miracle to help me, only
the constant mode of operation of the natural powers
of matter and man. The might which slaughters the
victim's oppressor is one of the means God has given to
put tyrants down. I cannot fail to love the infinite
being who is above and within me, for to my mind he
is the ideal wisdom and beauty, to my conscience the
ideal justice and will, to my heart the ideal affection,
and to my soul the ideal integrity, the absolute God,
perfect, good, just, and fair, the God who is in mat
ter and spirit, and yet transcends them both with his
infinity. He is the supreme God of desire to every.
faculty. So I love God as I can no other being, —
father, mother, wife, child; my love to him transcends
them all ; it is reverence, it is gratitude, it is adoration,
it is trust ; my will melts into his, and the two are one.
All selfishness is gone, and in the life of God within my
consciousness do I find my own higher life. We have
our special times for feeling this love, our several ways
for expressing it; unhappy is that man or woman who
tattles thereof, foaming at the mouth in some noisy
conference, as in a village dog barks to dog, making
night hideous with cannibal uproar; but blessed is he
whose noiseless piety sweetens his daily toil, filling the
house with the odor of that ointment; thrice blessed
when it comes out in the character of the men whose
holy lives, glittering with good deeds, adorn the land
they also serve and heal and bless. In our sorrow for
evils we cannot hinder, in our suffering for the pain
and wickedness of other men, in our remorse at wrong
deeds ourselves have done, — how sweetly comes this
piety, joining us to the true and loving and living God.
Then what joyous tranquillity comes in, what rest and
peace for the soul. I do not wish to change the mind

348 MATTER AND SPIRIT
of God, nor the world of matter, nor the nature of man,
nor alter the relation between them ; but I conform my
self to them. I deserve success, though I may not find
it here and now ; still I aspire upwards for perfection
higher and higher yet, sure that I shall reach it at the
last, and all mankind shall journey with me in that as
cending march. What is there more for man to ask?
Dear Father and Mother in heaven and on earth, sure
of thee, of all else am I also sure !
A poet of our own, a man of science not less, looking
on the empty wreck of a chambered nautilus, and ap
plying to his ear the convolutions of that smooth-
lipped shell, sung out the natural piety it whispered to
his soul: —
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no
more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn !
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton Blew from wreathed horn!
While on my ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that
sings:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll !
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine out-grown shell by life's unresting sea!

VII
THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL DE
VELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
1.
As he thinketh in his heart, so is he. — Provebbs xxiii, 7.
I ask your attention to a discourse of the condition
of Boston and New England in relation to the funda
mental principles of morals, with the causes therefor.
Thoroughly to appreciate the moral condition of our
town and New England, let us look at some prelimi
naries. First, the bulk of New Englanders are of Anglo-
Saxon origin, and accordingly they share the five lead
ing peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon tribe, — its in
vasive and aggressive disposition ; its exclusive nation
ality, hostility to other tribes of men ; its intense mate
rialism, and an unideal, unpoetic character; its great
administrative power in practical business of all depart
ments, agriculture, and politics ; and its remarkable love
of individual liberty, which is practically modified by
decorum and love of law and order. That is the first
thing, — the ethnological origin of the greater part of
the people.
Next, New England was at first a collection of re
ligious colonies. Men came here with religious mo
tives ; not so much to accumulate money, as to worship
God in their own way ; they could make money at home,
or wherever they might be cast; they could not pray
as they liked ; the sky of England was not high enough
349

350 MATTER AND SPIRIT
for the Puritan steeple. This religious origin has
marked New England hitherto, and will distinguish her
and her descendants for centuries to come. She is the
daughter of a great idea, and the mother of yet
greater ; a stern daughter, a severe mother, but of chil
dren fairer and larger than herself — " forty, but
kindly." It was the most spiritual part of the old
Anglo-Saxons which came over, the least materialistic,
the most ideal, the most devout; a little maddened by
oppression, no doubt, but fired too with great thoughts
of duty to God and the destination before man. That
is the next peculiarity, — it was a religious colony.
These religious Anglo-Saxons were on a continent
fenced with an Atlantic ditch three thousand miles
wide, and so separated from the old retarding influ
ences of the European continent. That is the third
thing. Next, several other tribes here mixed their blood with
the Anglo-Saxon; to wit, the Saxon-Scotch, a closely
allied tribe, and the Scotch-Irish, only one step further
removed. These added a new ethnological element to
the constitution of the people, and so laid the founda
tion for wider sympathies and higher and nobler civili
zation than could be achieved by the Anglo-Saxon
alone. Marriage between near relations depraves the
stock ; and it is as true of great tribes of nations as of
cousin Edward and cousin Jane.
Two hundred years ago such men, some fifty or
seventy thousand strong, found themselves in New
England, — a wilderness before them, a sea behind.
They had the best tools and machines of the past, the
best institutions which were then known,— a repre
sentative form of government, and a congregational

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 351
form of religion, then the most advanced of all. None
so much scourged man with fear; none so teased him
with longing hopes, none was so fitted to the then con
dition of these most spiritual Anglo-Saxons on the edge
of the ocean. On the little isthmus of time the Puritan
stood there, a great wide hell on his left hand, and a
little, straight, narrow heaven on the other. Here was
Jesus and the Holy Ghost inviting heavenward; there
the devil, with witches, wizards, demons and chimeras
dire, " shapes hot from Tartarus," allured or drove to
darkness and utter death. Here he was in the woods,
with his Bible in one hand to fend off the devil, with
his working tools in the other to keep material want at
a distance, and his firelock of war leaned in the thicket,
never far behind him.
Now all this ought to be borne in mind in order to
appreciate our material condition to-day; for, letting
alone all who have come to New England within the
last fifteen years, nine-tenths of the remainder of the
people of New England are descended from that body
of pilgrims ; — and it is a fact of which we are suffi
ciently proud. We have reason to be proud, and the
pride is sufficient.
Now almost all the ideas, and consequently all the in
stitutions, set up in America, which are noble and we
call American institutions, have come out of New Eng
land. Massachusetts is the mother state of American
ideas, and on her platform, which is set up at New
York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, any plat
form of great moral principles, there you see the foot
prints of Massachusett's feet ; and so all over the coun
try, — in California and in Pennsylvania, and states
between. One great idea, however, which came early to
New England, was not of American growth, the idea

352 MATTER AND SPIRIT
of free, unbounded religious toleration. The men who
settled Plymouth learned it from the Hollanders, who
extended it to them and to everybody else, for in the
beginning of the seventeenth century there lived to
gether harmoniously Catholics and Protestants of every
variety. The Anglo-Saxon had no such thought in
his mind, and in America the Dutch who settled New
York and the Germans who built up Pennsylvania set
the same thought a-going; and the Anglo-Saxon pres
ently learned to copy and carry it out. Toleration
was a foreign scion grafted on the Puritan crab stock;
and it took kindly in that tree, and grew famous shoots.
The Puritan had no philosophy. At first he tried
to make his religious instincts and his Scriptural tra
ditions serve instead, but it would not do; even the
Puritan must think and account to himself of God, of
man, and the relation between them. He must do it
with his own thought; he must have his plan of the
universe, must be a philosopher. This is one great vir
tue of Calvinism, that it turns a man in upon himself,
and makes him think. By and by, of course, it makes
him think a great ways beyond John Calvin; but it
always leads men to thought, breeds metaphysicians;
and I know not what would have made the Anglo-
Saxon man here in the wilderness think as he did think,
except Calvinism.
So far as he attained philosophy distinct from Cal
vinism, it was what is known to scholars as the sensa
tional philosophy, — that scheme which declares that
man has this mode of acquiring knowledge: first, by
the senses, — seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tast
ing, and so on ; next by reflection on matter which the
senses afford him ; and that is all. So, says this sensa
tional scheme of philosophy, there is nothing in a man's

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 353
mind which was not first in his senses ; there are no in
nate ideas, there is no power to produce innate ideas.
This scheme of philosophy, which I have dwelt on many
times before, suited the materialistic tendency of the
Anglo-Saxon, his unideal character, — because he eas
ily feels sure of what he touches and handles, not
sure of what he touches with his soul, and handles
only with his intellect. This sensational philosophy is
the " original sin " of the Anglo-Saxon people ; it ap
pears in Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Paley, and Hume, who
have been the greatest thinkers of this tribe. It ap
pears not less in Jonathan Edwards, strangely mixed
up with notions gathered from another source.
Now the Puritan did not like this philosophy; he
could not legitimate his religion by it. Still it was the
best he had, all he had. Beside it was the supernatural
miraculous revelation, which was one thing; on the
other side was this sensational philosophy. So if the
Puritan broke with his supernaturalism, his miraculous
tradition, he only joined himself to this sensational phi
losophy. If he got a broader field, it was on a lower
plane. Before the Puritan, the Anglo-Saxon, could
extricate himself from this difficulty, several things
must come to his help.
In the course of a hundred and twenty-five years, say
from 1650 to 1775, three new helps came into the
American experience. First, the works of the great
continental writers on the laws of nature and of na
tions, such men as Grotius, Puppendorff, and their suc
cessors. These men treated of the natural rights of
nations. That speculation led men to think of the nat
ural rights of individuals, and to declare the " natural
and essential rights of men." 1 But here let me say,
1—23

354 MATTER AND SPIRIT
that is a phrase not two hundred years old in any hu
man speech; I cannot trace it distinctly back quite a
hundred years; for the first time I find it, it is in the
mouth of James Otis in Faneuil Hall, preached as
the gospel of the incipient democracy of the people of
this town.
Next, the works of the French free-thinkers came to
America, — men who started with the sensational phi
losophy, and by logic severer than the English carried
it out to its legitimate conclusion, and swept away a
great deal of rubbish, and also a great deal that the
human race could not afford to part with. Such men
were Voltaire, Helvetius, and their followers. These
works produced a profound influence on some of the
greatest thinkers of America, on Dr. Franklin, Dr.
Rush, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and George
Washington, — the last of whom had little philosophy,
being busy with practical things; but who seems to
have shared the opinions of these great French think
ers, both their good and ill.
Thirdly, the most spiritual, and yet more radical,
thinkers of France, who did not follow the materialistic
school of England, had a deeper influence. Here come
the writings of Rousseau, whose footsteps are deeply
set in America, alongside of those of his illustrious fel
low citizen of Geneva. No foreigners have produced
such an influence in America as these two citizens of
Swiss Geneva, John Calvin and Jean Jaques Rousseau.
It is a strange spectacle, — the two men as radically
different as two could well be, but both dropping their
penny of contribution into the alms-box of America,
both producing great effects.
These three new sources of help changed the ideas of
America, and soon as a fair opportunity appeared new

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 355
institutions must necessarily spring from the new ideas.
But before the American Revolution there was no
American thing common to the twelve colonies, no more
than now between Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Sco
tia, and the British West Indies. They all united in a
common love for England, which was the common cradle
and crown. Fear of the French in the North and
Northwest made them still more dependent on England ;
but when that fear was removed by the cession of Can
ada, and the colonies needed England no longer for de
fense, her attempts to oppress the colonies destroyed
the feeling of respect and love for her, and the spiritual
bond was hkewise rent asunder. The new ideas derived
from these three sources, and the old unconquerable in
stinct for individual liberty, these made it easy for the
colonies to separate from their mother country. You
see the foot-prints of these three in the Declaration of
Independence itself, and in the great state papers that
preceded and followed it.
While the war proceeded there was a rapid growth
of ideas in America, partly helped by the new French
thought which came with Lafayette, — who was the
champion of philosophy as well as the rights of men in
America, and who reported what he could not have in
vented, — and partly helped by the domestic thinking;
for in a revolution the whole people becomes metaphys
ical and falls back on first principles and thinks rapidly,
and deeply too. The same thing took place in France
in 1789 and in 1848; the same kind of revolution is
going on in England at this day. Great national ca
lamities produce this result. The colonies were held by
outward pressure while the war lasted, and after it the
Union was organized on the material instincts of the

356 MATTER AND SPIRIT
people ; the North wanted union for industry and com
merce, the South for defense against foreign foes and
domestic slaves. The Revolution removed a great many
causes which had hindered the moral development of the
American people, and it left us free and independent,
giving us therefore the prime condition of the moral
development of any people; namely, — that it depend
on itself, not on a foreign power. It made us our own
masters. But it left one permanent source of demoral
izing influence, the institution of slavery, which neces
sarily must corrupt the whole nation so long as it re
mains. Few men looked on it in that light then; with
the history of eighty years behind us anybody can see
it to-day. The separation made, the union agreed upon, Amer
ica went on, developing old and new ideas into institu
tions. For the next fifty, years they took three forms.
They must always take the same three, namely,- — theo
logical, political, social. First see what happened in
the theological way. The understanding enlightened
by philosophy protested against a theology which was at
variance with human reason; a theological revolution
took place, the child of these new ideas. Two new
sects sprang into being, the Unitarians and the Univer
salists. One said the trinity is not in the Bible; the
other said there is no hell between Genesis and Revela
tion. Both Unitarian and Universalist clung to the
main doctrines of the old theology ; both rested on the
theology of the Bible ; miraculous revelation they rested
upon, vicarious salvation they looked forward to; but
they broke with the trinity and with hell. The old
church reacted against both, and smote them with its
two-edged sword, so far as its aged arm could wield
that. But all the sects felt the influence of that revolu-

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 357
tion. The pj^ujarjlieology — ice formed in the dark
ages — was melting under the fierce, democratic sun of
America^ and the stream of humanity broke it to pieces
and carried great lumps far out to sea. Harvard Col
lege went over to free thought, and was on the side of
progress and humanity, strange as it may seem, and
one of the very foremost clergymen was by her chosen
public professor of theology. Even Harvard College
— moved in the stream of time as the world glides by, as
it is now — broke with the old tradition.
Still there was no new foundation for morals, there
was no new philosophy. The sensational took a
stronger hold. On the one side was the sensational
philosophy, which did not admit of disinterested virtue ;
on the other hand was the old supernatural tradition,
miraculous authority; there was nothing between the
two. What of human consciousness did not come from
sensationalism was either declared to be a whimsy or else
to be a matter of revelation, which man received through
miraculous communication from God. Religion must
rest on a miraculous tradition ; politics, science, busi
ness, must rest on human philosophy. These two
barques, the old traditional ship of the church, the sen
sational philosophy of the human understanding, these
were all. In the old church barque was total depravity,
an angry God, vicarious redemption, eternal damna
tion, and the devil. In the other was freedom of
thought, a limited virtue, no disinterested benevolence,
no certainty of immortality. There were man — - to
carry out this figure — floating about on rafts ill-
joined, struggling as they could; and here and there a
stout swimmer, depending on his own arms, struck off
alone. That was the state of things brought about in
the theological world.

358 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Politically there was a continual advance of the peo
ple, the magistrate becoming less and less, the mass of
the people more and more. Less reverence was paid to
the hat of the magistrate. Let me give an example.
When John Hancock was chosen first governor, the
office of governor of Massachusetts was deemed so im
portant that the parish church wherein he worshipped
partitioned off his pew from the rest, and put a green
curtain a foot and a half high all around the top, in
order to screen the governor from the vulgar eyes of
the rest of mankind. That was the reverence paid to
the governor in 1780 or earlier. Then when Samuel
Adams, a poor man, became governor, a coach must be
given him by his wealthy friends. Now the governor
sits anywhere on the platform at meetings or in a pew
not distinguished from others; he rides from his house
in the country to his business in town, not in a coach
given by his friends, but in an omnibus with the rest
of men. It would have amazed our fathers, — that fa
miliarity of the governor with the people; and they
would have said " The people cannot be ruled, for the
governor strikes hands with common men." All that
has absolutely passed away. Presently laws became
milder, suffrage was universal, the individual was more
respected. Compare the state constitutions made during the
largest half of the Revolutionary War with the
amendments added since. Slavery disappeared from
New England, all feudalism vanished. The people
with slow, but irresistible logic, were carrying out
their first principles. But still a vicious theology, and
an insufficient philosophy, retarded the political devel
opment of the people. If you think wrong about God
or man, the vicious thought deforms all the rest of

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 359
your thinking. You can never escape the consequences
of a first principle.
A similar change went on socially. The old notion of
distinguished birth sat on the hills of Boston and looked
longingly towards England, till its brain grew be
wildered; and the devil cast out from the swine entered
in, and it ran violently down a steep place and perished
in the Atlantic, beyond hope of recovery. Reverence
for money took its place. The question ceased to be
asked " How much pertaining to this man is dead and
buried ? " and this other question was asked, " What is
there belonging to him which is alive and above
ground?" Only the antiquary asked after his father
and mother ; the practical man asked, " What talents
has the man got in him? " Industrial democracy took
the place of the old theocratic and military aristocracy.
The career was open to talent, and the question was not
asked, " Is this man the son of a runner? " but, " What
feet has he here to run on himself? " Still the vicious
theology and inadequate philosophy hindered our so
cial development.
So things went on for fifty years, and during that
time great changes were silently taking place. Revo
lution is a continual epidemic in America. I mean to
say that is regular growth with us, which in Europe
would be called a revolution. A change took place in
our forms of industry which brought other changes with
it. At first New England cultivated her poor soil, and
took fish. Her exports were cattle from her soil, tim
ber from her forests, and fish from her waters. Her
manufactures were but little, though always surpassing
those of the rest of the nation. Commerce was the only
calling by which great fortunes could be accumulated.

360 MATTER AND SPIRIT
The farmers were poor, the manufacturers not rich.
Men with small means took to making " New England
Notions " — paper, hats, iron ware, wooden ware and the
like. There was no great accumulation of men or capi
tal engaged in manufactures. The mechanics wrought
each for himself. There was developed a great in
dividuality of thought, a great freedom of character, a
very stout manhood, not very much money. Boston
was the centre of commerce ; all the great fortunes were
here. She was called the " Athens of America " — a
commercial Athens, with a strong love for literature, not
much for science. Philadelphia was the city of science,
where Dr. Franklin and Dr. Rush kindled a scientific
spirit. Boston was the town for letters. Here the
ablest men, who had obtained the superior culture, —
what colleges can give — went to some literary profes
sion, were doctors, lawyers, ministers, writers, or politi
cians ; they did not go to commerce or manufactures.
After a time the general policy of America changed;
for the South, who always hated the more prosperous
North, sought to ruin our commerce by building up a
protective tariff, — a work partly, patriotic, wishing
well to the nation ; partly malignant, wishing ill to New
England. But the New Englander kept his commer
cial action as before, but turned also to manufactures.
Education had been widely diffused by the most blessed
of our New England institutions, — the free school;
and while the South, uneducated and idle, was import
ing slaves from abroad or breeding them at home, the
thoughtful brain of New England created new forces
out of the powers of nature; wind, water, fire, steam,
electricity, became our servants. There is not a brook
which runs down hill but turns a wheel. In the city
the carpenter's chips do his own planing and sawing.

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 361
Nay, the baker buys coal-dust and turns it into a power
which drives a mill, which in three minutes converts
soft dough into hard and excellent ship-bread. New
England grew richer by manufactures than by com
merce. It was educated labor, free labor, which opened
the broad lands of New York and the North West Ter
ritory, and relieved us from our ungrateful agriculture,
and turned our thrifty hand to the mechanic arts. The
tariff secured us a market at home ; railroads and steam
boats gave a new impetus to activity. The population
crowded into towns, shortening their lives, increasing
their wealth. Capitalists turned their attention from
commerce to manufactures ; great corporations wrought
with joint money, — great companies with allied
strength; there was an organization of dollars, and an
organization of men. Great fortunes were accumu
lated, not only by commerce, but by manufactures also.
The " Athens of America," which had been the mother
city of commerce, became also the metropolis of me
chanic art; and as a consequence Boston has rapidly
increased to a hundred and sixty or seventy thousand
men, while Worcester, Springfield, Lynn, Lowell, Law
rence, Manchester, and a hundred smaller towns, count
their children by thousands. Improved machinery
enables one man in his life to do more and accumulate
more than five or six in past times in their life. This
increased the amount of wealth in all New England.
The houses, streets, food, carriages, the halls in which
men meet for debate or worship, the school books, the
musical instruments, the whole aspect of the people, —
all shows this wide distribution and rapid increase of
riches. However, whilst many wrought in the employment
of the few, as in manufacturing corporations, the

MATTER AND SPIRIT
employer began to dictate to the operatives their the
ology, — what they should think about God, and their
politics, — how they should vote. The overseer wished
to set a pattern of theology, as well as for weaving, and
to -do the voting for the mill. The head of New Eng
land began to be a little turned by money. But our
nature we cannot get rid of; the religious origin of
New England still came up ; a good deal of the old con
science was left, the old respect for individuality. The
ablest men, however, who got the best education, no
longer went to the professions or to literature; they
turned their attention to business, and sought for
money, only nothing else.
Once the pulpit, with its Bible, ruled ,New England,
and everybody saw who the ruler was. It was a man
with an old-fashioned hat, a wig, a staid, sober, re
spectable man. What he said on Sunday he was an
swerable for all the week. Everybody knew him. By
and by the counting room, with its money, ruled New
England; and the editor, with his anonymous criticism,
advice, prophecy, often with his anonymous lie. There
is this difference between being ruled by ministers and
being ruled by editors — I recommend being ruled by
neither — the minister stands in a place where he can
be seen, and he is known, and is answerable for his
opinion. The editor is anonymous; and we are ruled by
some penny-a-liner, whose opinion, were he seen in
the broad day, no man would respect. It is often so, not
always. All other professions became tributary to the
mercantile ; the lawyer, doctor, minister, the men of sci
ence and letters have become the cherubim and seraphim
and the three archangels who stood before the golden
throne of the merchant, and continually cried, " Holy,
holy, holy is the Almighty Dollar ! "

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 363
So things went on, and so came to pass in some fifty
years. Take it all in all, it was a very great step of
progress. Then sundry new elements got introduced
to the consciousness of New England. A great devel
opment of science began to take place, — the study of
material nature. Franklin began it, English books
stimulated us to it, men with a natural tendency to
geology, botany, astronomy, stirred the mind of New
England in that direction. Literature began to be
looked upon as an ornament, not a necessity; and men
said it was only the fringe upon the garment of hu
manity. Suppose it is; if Homer, Dante, Shake
speare, Milton, are but fringes, if Liebnitz, Newton,
Bacon, Kant, are but tassels — what do you suppose
the great garment is, whereof these are only fringes
and tassels? I rejoice in the application of science and
the study thereof. In 1832 Dr. Spurzheim brought to
America Gall's system of phrenology. It came at a
time when the old traditional Calvinistic metaphysics
had lost its power, and no comprehensive scheme of
philosophy had taken its place. It coincided admi
rably with the sensational philosophy, which was the
basis on which our superior education had rested — one
step in the carrying out of that philosophy. It was
brought by a man of great intellectual power, of re
markable philanthropy, of the most beautiful charac
ter and attractive disposition; and it gave a new im
pulse to the study of man's body, and of the material
conditions on which life, health, happiness, and public
and private virtue depend; and it was of very great
service, for it caused attention to be drawn to the causes
pf sickness, crime, and vice, to the conditions of hu
man health, long life, virtue and the like; and a great
many valuable institutions are to be traced directly to

364 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the fertile brain of that great-hearted German who
brought another man's thought here. At a later day,
within ten years, another very distinguished man, Mr.
Agassiz, has come to give a further stimulus to this
study of science. One day these two minds are to have
a great influence in our development in America.
But a more spiritual philosophy began to take the
place of the sensational, one not founded at all on the
traditional claims of miraculous revelation, but on the
spiritual nature of man himself. Here are the forces
which aided in that great work : — the writings of
Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Wordsworth ; of Cousin, who so
eloquently reports the thoughts of the great German
thinkers; and still more the great German thinkers
themselves, who are philosophers, theologians, his
torians, and Biblical critics. The old spiritual authors
of England were reprinted here — though out of the
market for a hundred years, — such as Ralph Cudworth
and other spiritual thinkers from the bosom of the sev
enteenth century in England. So there rose a new
school of metaphysical philosophy, and it agreed with
the theological sects in this — There is a spiritual ele
ment in man! It differed from them by declaring that
that spiritual element in man was not miraculous in its
origin and development, but went normally to its work.
While the church said " The Holy Ghost only is di
vine," these philosophers said " The Holy Spirit is also
human." Here belong the writings of Dr. Channing,
and, still more metaphysical, the masterly speakings
and writings of Mr. Emerson. Here was a powerful
force, that of ideas. It took a strong hold on man's
mind, and its new activity appeared in the theological,
the political, and the social forms as never before.

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 365
The old theology was rejected. Science annihilated
the old theological earth ; down went the theological
heaven — every astronomer saw straight through it.
Biblical criticism showed that the Bible was like other
books — with good in it, to be accepted ; evil in it, not
to be taken. History showed that religion sprang up
all around, that it was not the monopoly of the Jew
nor the Christian; but was shared universally by the
human race. Metaphysics demonstrated the religious
and moral element in man, as imperishable as the in
tellectual or the affectional. Theology was no longer
a mysterious science; it was like all other schemes of
thought, amenable to human nature ; and the theology
of the churches was sent back to learn its lesson again,
which it had so imperfectly boggled over. The truth
of a doctrine was to be looked at, and not its Scriptural
character only.
In the present century there have appeared in Amer
ica two great ministers, who have had a remarkable in
fluence. One was William Ellery Channing, who be
longed to these more spiritual men, though he still
clung to authority. He struck at the Samson of the
ecclesiastical organizations, and brought down the
trinity. The other was Hosea Ballou, a man who
rested on the sensational philosophy, ancT wrought a
work more important, deeper, and more widely extended
even than Channing. Dr. Channing had a better
philosophy and training, but whilst he brought down
the trinitarian Samson, Father Ballou threw his stone
into the Goliath of the church, into the doctrine of eter
nal damnation, and the giant lay there, his head cut
off. Both of these rested on a miraculous authority.
But other men now go beyond them, and they are
not content with the old Unitarian denial, they take hu-

366 MATTER AND SPIRIT
man nature as their scripture, and teach positive doc
trines respecting God and man, and the relation be
tween them. The two old boats which I just spoke of
would not hold half the passengers ; so a new one is put
upon the line, with a new and more spiritual philoso
phy. All doctrines are to be discussed on the plane of
human nature. A new positive theology begins to ap
pear, with doctrines based on human nature, legitimated
on human reason, which approve themselves to the
moral, the affectional and the religious sense. A deeper
and wider scheme of morals springs out of the spiritual
and moral nature of man, and new duties are recom
mended, — not in the name of selfishness, as the sensa
tional philosophy taught, not in the name of revela
tion, as the old church scheme taught; but in the name
of man. A new idea^of^God, wholly strange to the
churches hitherto, is developed, of Godas infinitely .per-_
feet ; of religion as the normal use of every faculty of
the body and spirit, every power we possess, of mo
rality as a fact, not of revelation, but of consciousness,
here intuitive, demonstrative there; the eternal life be
ginning now, religion not only to prepare for the fu
ture heaven, but making a present heaven now and
here. The cloud of mystery rolls up from the the
ological fold, and there is left the beautiful arena of
human life spread out before the human eye. Here is
a revolution in theology greater than that wrought by
Luther, greater than that of Jesus himself, — for the
pole is shifted from the old theology to the nature of
man, wherein God permanently incarnates and reveals.
his truth.
The new idea must take political form also. All men
are of one race, human ; distinction of color is noth-

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 367
ing; all are of one humanity, and distinction of na
tionality is gone. The question is not asked, " Where
was a man born?" but, "Was he actually born
anywhere? " If so, if born at all, he is born to human
nature, with all the natural, essential and inalienable
rights of humanity. Privileges are personal accidents ;
rights are of human nature, and exceptional privi
lege must give place to universal right. Then woman
kind is the equal of mankind, — diverse but equivalent ;
she has the same natural rights as man. Their
spheres may be different, their bodily and mental or
ganizations are dissimilar, but her individual freedom
is equal to his, his to hers. So she must have the same
social, political, ecclesiastical rights as man. Thus the
new philosophy will affect all the relations of people
with people, government with government, class with
class. The same ideas must affect society. Work is the
coin in which everything is bought and sold, the con
sideration which mankind is to pay for what it wishes to
get. In God's great shop, the universe of matter, man
kind is to earn its own living; and so each man
and woman. If not, then the living is at the expense
of mankind. So work is to be the honorable business
of each, and whoso is the most useful in the highest de
partments of service is the most honorable man ; he who
does the most good for mankind is the noble man, the
object of reverence and veneration. All social institu
tions are amenable to men, men now living. A demo
cratic Rhadamanthus is to sit in judgment on all insti
tutions of the past. Society as a whole owes duties to
each person. It is the military duty of the whole to
defend the parts, so recognized in times of feudal vio
lence; but in our industrial democracy, society owes

368 MATTER AND SPIRIT
each person the means of life, on condition of such work
as that person can perform. Hence grow up the alms
houses of New England, — monuments of our benevo
lence, showing how far we have got on; monuments
also of our lack of skill to organize men so that they
shall feed themselves. Then there must be schools for
all, — for each child not only has the right to military
defence from violence, and personal defence from
starvation, but also the right to a defence from igno
rance, a right to such education as society can afford.
Everything is gradual; first the right is only conceded
to boys; the girls, as being of the inferior class, did
not require it; then it is granted to the girls; then
more and more, and so on indefinitely. Then jails
must be places of correction, amendment and love, not
of torment ; the gallows must come down ; imprisonment
for debt must disappear ; the state must open a kind
eye to every discharged convict. Pains mustbe taken
to prevent pauperism, ignorance, crime, drunkenness —
which costs us more than all the fires and shipwrecks
of property in all New England ; this, which is to New
England what slavery is to the south, must be checked,
prevented and finally put down. The science of the
age must be applied to life, to educate the mind, con
science, affections, and religious power, and make us
comfortable, healthy, rich, virtuous, manly, happy.
Even the old churches leave off for a time making1 such
a fuss about the soul, and take care of the poor man's
body, and all the denominations have gone to work in
this humane direction. It is very curious to see how
the transcendentalist, with his ideas and metaphysics,
gathered from the study of the soul, and the physiolo
gist, with his ideas and facts, gathered from the study
of the body, work side by side at their great task of

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 369
love. Both are right ; the physiologist learned the gos
pel from the body, as the metaphysician from the soul,
and both preach the same gospel. So the phrenologist
and the transcendentalist, wide as heaven and earth
asunder, walk arm and arm through the streets of com
mon life, and labor for the welfare of common human
ity. Then attempts are made to reconstruct society on
the principle of co-operative industry. New ideas of
marriage spring from the new philosophy.
All these things look revolutionary. But it is revo
lution after a peaceful sort, in the spirit of the Sermon
on the Mount. " Well," you say, " they come from
Christianity." Very well, they come from the Chris
tian religion, no doubt, not the Christian theology.
The Christian religion, — it is human religion, love of
God and love of man : the Christian theology, — that
is Catholicism, Protestantism, Trinitarianism, Uni-
tarianism, Universalism. These great ideas never came
from that. They come from the great soul of human
nature, animated and inspired by the Infinite God, out
of which came the voice of prophets old, sibyls, poets,
philosophers; from the bosom that bore Jesus of
Nazareth, — child of God, son of man also.
Now you never excite one pole of the human battery
but the other is also roused. In the last ten years in
New England there has been a great development of
selfish opposition to all these humane movements of the
age. Call that opposition Hunkerism; call the op
ponents Hunkers, — who are of three denominations,
the hunkers of theology, of politics and of society?
Boston is the metropolis of hunkerism. Its suburbs, — -
Roxbury, Cambridge, Salem — are the tools of Bos
ton, Boston their head; they do as it bids. Then its
1—24

370 MATTER AND SPIRIT
vassal towns — Lowell, Lawrence, and a few others —
are under overseers, and of course do as they are bid,
or have continued to do so until by a spasmodic effort
they freed themselves. Talk about the Catholics vot
ing as the bishop tells ! reproach the Catholics for it !
You and I do the same thing. There are a great many
bishops who have never had a cross on their bosom, nor a
mitre on their head, who appeal not to the authority of
the Pope at Rome, but to the Almighty Dollar, a pope
much nearer home. Boston has been controlled by, a
few capitalists, lawyers and other managers, who told
the editors what to say and the preachers what to think.
Once Boston was liberal in theology, politics and social
matters. Do not forget that underneath the Boston
of 1850 and '55 there is a buried Boston of 1750, '65,
'75; the Boston of James Otis and Samuel Adams un-'
derlies the Boston of Marshall Tukey.2 The Boston
of Belknap and Channing, who reached up towards the
infinite God, is fifty years older than the Boston of
Nehemiah Adams,3 who defends the institution of
slavery. We must remember this. How came it so?
In 1830 Boston had sixty thousand inhabitants ; now it
has more than a hundred and sixty thousand. Many
came from the country, able-bodied and able-headed
men. They brought the Calvinistic theology with
them, the illiberal theology which still broods over the
hills and country towns. So there was an importation
of theological hunkerism, which changed the character
of the town. The illiberal denominations have grown
apace, the liberal have been checked, within thirty
years. Even the Unitarian churches have caught the
malaria, and are worse than those who deceived them.
The baneful influences of that material philosophy and
ethics which destroy, here show themselves. While the

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 371
theological movement was only denial, many men en
tered into the new boat and became Unitarians and
Universalists; but by and by, when new duty was de
manded, they were offended, and said, " We left the
old in order to escape from religion, but you demand it
of us. Mr. Minister, you have killed your own devil,
you cannot scare us any longer," — the man appealed
to miraculous authority — " your theology would not
hold the devil, the trinity and eternal torment, and
there is nothing plainer in the Bible than those things."
That was the answer made by these men. In addition to
that the culture of taste took the place of the culture of
the soul and conscience. Beauty of dress, of speech, of
house, coach, furniture, — this was put before the aus
tere piety of womanhood and manhood; and conven
tional manners, very beautiful, made all men equally
respectable, as a handsome dress is designed to make
all men and women equally fair; and as dress is the
vicarious atonement whereby ugliness hopes for salva
tion, so conventional manners were the atonement
whereby vice hoped to appear as well as virtue. It
takes place in all matters. Besides, money drew men
away. Money, with social respectability, which is its
consequence, was the great object of life. Moreover,
the old source of permanent demoralization continued
to corrupt the general government and its officers, and
hence the merchants, editors, and of course the pul
pits. So there grew up a mighty harvest of hunker
ism. The reactionaries feared, as they knew no re
ligion but that and the trinity, lest the people should
lose all religion. Nobody feared for himself, each for
his neighbor. Thence came hypocritical defences of
the Bible by men who denied its universal truths, but
who stood up and defended its letter. Hence came the

372 MATTER AND SPIRIT
hatred of Channing, hence the attacks on Emerson —
who has preached the gospel of humanity in words as
fair as they are likewise true. Then they trembled at
the application of the Christian religion to slavery.
They wished to apply Christian theology to it till they
turned dark in the face ; they must never touch it with
one of the fingers of the Christian religion. Hence
the honor bestowed on every man in this city who loves
slavery.4 They hated the revision and amendment of
the laws, and hence wished to retain the ugliest features
of our old constitution, — imprisonment for debt, the
gallows and the like. They were afraid lest property,
should be brought in peril as in Europe, forgetting
that in Europe property stands on the wrong end of
the pyramid. There is only one kind of property in
America in any peril; that is property in man; every
thing else is safe, for it has a broad foundation. Most
of all they are afraid of woman's emancipation ; and so
attempt to smother woman with kisses. No high school
for girls ! " There are so many pupils we cannot have
a school, (that was the reason given)5 and the more
woman knows the less valuable she will be, and the less
contented with her present condition. Educate a man,
it improves his condition ; but a woman only scolds and
scowls." That was the statement. Men were afraid
of Channing before he died, and cursed him by their
Gods, because, taking his high ideas of humanity, he
said, " There must be no drunkenness, pauperism must
be done away with, we must free the slave." This is
the cause of the hostility to Mr. Emerson and every
brave, earnest minister who stands up his whole length
and preaches the Christian religion, not the theology in
that abused name.
That is the state of things in Boston, in New Eng-

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 373
land, this day. On the one side is presented as an ideal
such a form of religion, such a deep and wide philoso
phy, as the world never saw nor dreamed of; such a
philanthropy as knows no race, counts it the duty of
genius to enlighten the common mind with science and
piety, to heal and soothe and bless the sorrows of the
suffering world, with a theology as broad as human
nature, an idea of God as absolutely perfect, of man
as the noblest child of God ; with a magnificent future
before him, to be wrought out by his own toil.
On the other side is the old theology, with its miracu
lous revelation, its vicarious salvation; the old philoso
phy, with nothing in the mind which was not first in
the senses ; the old politics, hostility between people and
people ; the old form of religion, with its angry God, its
man totally depraved, its human history, full of ca
price, without purpose and without meaning.
These are the two antipodes between which we stand.
Between these you and I are to shape our lives and
form our characters. It is under these influences that
you are to train up your children. Which will you
serve? What do you wish to be? If you want the
mere honor of men, to be put into office by Whigs,
Democrats, Know Nothings; if you wish to be shame
fully and monstrously rich, and have a very easy time
and feed fat only your flesh, — it is plain what you are
to do. You are to strike hands with all that is old,
to believe as little as you can, pretend as much as possi
ble, and live a mean and tawdry life. Verily, I say
unto a young man, if he tries that, he shall have his
reward. I have been so long an observer and have seen
so many spectacles of this, that I could give great coun
sel, and tell the widest, straightest road to what I call
the devil, to the ruin of manhood.

374 MATTER AND SPIRIT
But if you wish to have a reasonable competence for
reasonable work, an abundance for abundant work, a
superfluity for extraordinary work, if you wish to be
men and women, with God's image bright in you, and
the same inspiration which flowered and bloomed so
fragrantly into Jesus of Nazareth, and prophets and
sibyls and poets of old times, — there is another thing
to be done. Then you are to ask in your own soul,
What is truest, what is sweetest, fairest, the most pleas
ing to God? and live it out in your life. You shall
have what you need here, and hereafter the Infinite
Mother's hand shall be laid upon you, — Come, my be
loved son, inherit the good things prepared for you !

Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit. — Matthew vii,
17. Last Sunday I said something of the condition of
Boston and New England in respect to the fundamental
principles of morals, aiming to show what were the
great intellectual forces which had wrought hitherto in
the development of this people who have settled New
England and have had such a wide influence on the rest
of the country. To-day I ask your attention to con
sider some of the present and ultimate consequences of
this state of things. At present the condition is rather
painful in many particulars.
Here are four great educational forces in the land
which help form the character of the people; namely,
the ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by
the churches, with their theology, with their ministers
and other persons who control the organization in the
name of religion. Next is the political action of the
people, represented by the state, federal or local, with
its congresses, constitutions, laws, courts, offices, and
so on. Third is the literary action of the people, rep
resented by the press, the newspapers, quarterlies,
monthlies, books, all sorts of things that get printed.
Fourth, there is the industrial action, represented by
business, agriculture, fishing, mining, manufactures,
buying and selling, all forms of work not political,
ecclesiastical or literary.
See the effect of this state of things on the ec
clesiastical action, — for this, though subtle, is the most
powerful of all ; and if a mark is made in the church,
375

376 MATTER AND SPIRIT
it is presently made everywhere else, for goqd_qr ill.
Not many years ago the ministers were the ruling class
of New England, and they long continued the most
powerful class, using their influence as other men do,
sometimes well, sometimes ill. They took the initiative
in all measures that pertained to the church, or meant
to do so, and in some other measures. The power which
they exercised then came naturally enough, for the
ablest men and best educated went to that calling.
They had almost a monopoly of superior education,
and all the early colleges founded in New England
were dedicated to Christ and the church, not to business
and what they called the world. And when you select
the ablest men out of the community and give them the
best education the community can afford, and put them
in a place where they speak to men in the name of
conscience and God twice every week, you see that they
presently become exceedingly powerful. What added
to their influence was this : — there were no newspapers,
or but few, not many books, scarcely any public meet
ings, save on Sunday and church days, when only the
ministers spoke; there were no lectures save what the
minister gave and on theological subjects. Accord
ingly, the ministers became and continued the leading
body of men. At first sight it seems a little strange
that whilst the ablest men went to this calling, got the
best education, had the widest swing, none to molest or
make them afraid, — it seems a little surprising at first
that none of the great ideas which have made America
what it is came out of the minister's mouth. It is not
surprising when you bestow a second thought on the
matter, and remember that the minister was busy with
his theology, not so much with piety or morality, not
with science, the science of life, — but with appeasing

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 377
the wrath of God, with preparing man not to live
here, but hereafter.
At that time there was not much doubt. Everybody
was supposed to believe in the existence of the devil, in
eternal damnation, in the doctrine of the trinity, and
all the great church doctrines. A hundred years ago
men selected the biggest tree in all the New England
woods as the pillar for the meeting-house; they took
great pains with the seasoning of the timber, to hew
and groove and carve it into the proper shape, and then
were long in putting it in place, and had it stand on a
broad foundation, plumb and perpendicular. Then it
stood a good while, and held up something; but now
things have changed, and scarcely any tree is thought
too little for that purpose, scarce any preparation and
seasoning too small and short. Business has the first
pick of the New England woods, the tallest trees, — if
not the soundest, at least the stoutest; then politics
gleans after it; next science and literature cull what
suits them ; and finally the churchy comes in for the
leavings. _ There are exceptional men of power who go
into the pulpit, but the general rule is what I state.
Once the head of the college said to the half-dozen
ablest men in the class, " You must become ministers ;
the Lord wants you, the church needs you, — come ! "
and they went. Now the friends of the young man
say, " You have too much talent for the ministry ; you
had better buy and sell, be a machinist, engineer, sailor,
merchant, farmer, blacksmith." What an odds!
Beside that, the means of education are now widely
spread, through schools and colleges. Lectures on the
most important matters get delivered by the ablest
thinkers that New England bears, and who have the

878 MATTER AND SPIRIT
most astonishing power of speech wherein to set forth
their thought. Newspapers go everywhere; we have
more elaborate journals of our own, of science and let
ters, and the five ablest from old England are reprinted
here and go everywhere. Business forces the people to
think; and the consequence is a very wonderful en
lightenment of the understanding of the people. The
minister is no longer the ablest man by nature or cul
ture, and where everything is left free his position be
comes less and less authoritative. He cannot en
force his words by his own authority : he no longer dares
say, " I say the thing is so, and therefore you must
believe it!" If he does say, "I say it is so!" when
the minister is not a man powerful by nature or cul
ture, or training to long thought, who is there that sub
mits to his dictation ? No man.
With the general enlightenment there comes doubt
of the theological doctrines of the trinity, of hell, and
of the infallible Scripture. The minister said at first,
" All morality and religion depend on the miraculous
revelation. Beside that there is nothing but the ma
terialistic philosophy," the sensational, which I spoke
of last Sunday, — " and that," quoth he, " does not
justify religion, not even morality, not a belief in the
immortality of man's soul." He says, " If you leave the
miraculous Bible aside, then the mind of man is noth
ing but a refuge of lies, and you land you know not
where, and you are sure to perish."
But the old theology, was weakened. Men would not
accept the miraculous revelation they had been bred
to, and outside of that there was no foundation for
religion and morality which they assented to. Calvin
ism frightened men into some reverence for the law of

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 379
God which was laid down in the Bible and forced them
to believe that it was laid down nowhere else. But
when the Unitarian and the Universalist wrenched the
two-edged sword of the trinity and hell from the hand of
Calvinism, then men began to doubt whether the Bible
— which had taught as revelation the trinity and eter
nal damnation — was a good authority or an absolute
refuge for anything whatsoever. So these men who
moved out of the Calvinistic meeting-house went over
to the shop of the sensational morals, as taught by Mr.
Paley, and there everything was for sale, and virtue
wasT;Ke doing certain things for the sake of happi
ness here, if you could get it, and the certainty of
happiness hereafter; it was not doing what was right
because it was right and in obedience to the great God
whose word right is. Last Sunday I spoke of the sen
sational philosophy, and showed its beginning and what
it led to. Mr. Paley incorporated into a book, admir
ably written, the morals which come of this. That was
made the text book of morals in almost all the colleges
and high schools and other seminaries of education in
New England ; and the pernicious influence of the thing
is as apparent to-day, to a man who looks for such
things, as the pavements in the streets, or the bricks
in the houses. From that state of things there follows
a profound demoralization of the three great educa
tional forces, the ecclesiastical, the political and the lit
erary action of the leading sects, the leading parties,
the leading literature, commercial or political, yes, of
the great merchants also, merchant traders and mer
chant manufacturers. Worship of the almighty dollar
is taking the place of worship of the Calvinjstic God.
Let me show how this demoralization appears.
I said last Sunday that at the formation of the

380 MATTER AND SPIRIT
American Constitution, one source of permanent de
moralization was left, — slavery. That is a denial of
the first principle of American politics, the equality of
all men is their natural right ; a denial also of the first
principle of Christian religion, which is to love your
neighbor as yourself; not of the Christian theology,
which is salvation without works. It is a denial of the
first principle of human morality, which says render
to all their due, justice to every, man. For the last
thirty years this institution of slavery has been the
touch-stone to prove the character of institutions and
men. The slaveholders wished to extend it ; it was sup
posed to be for their pecuniary and political interest to
do so, a part of the worship of the dollar. But as
slavery was a violation of the natural law of God and
the principles of the Christian religion, of natural mor
ality and Christianity — so far as that is religion, —
these must be shoved aside. So the leading politicians
declared, " There is no law of God above the statute
of the land." Then as a second thing, " Religion has
nothing to do with politics." The leading men of busi
ness added a third dogma, " Religion has nothing to
do with business." The political and commercial jour
nals added a fourth oracle, " Religion has nothing to
do with the press, or literature, or science." Such
declarations as these would not have been possible a
hundred years ago, when the old Calvinistic theology
was in full force. What if men had said these things
under the guns of such marksmen as Edwards and
Hopkins, who had the artillery of Calvinism at
their command. When men believed there was a devil
and felt sure of eternal damnation, nobody dared say
there was no higher law of God. What makes it worse
is, the leading sects of Christians fell in with this four-

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 381
fold iniquity. Sometimes they silently acquiesced, and
let the falsehood go, nobody opposing it; sometimes
they protected these doctrines openly, and very often
laid down principles which led to this conclusion, know
ing very well what they did as they uttered it. So there
followed a profound demoralization of the great theo
logical sects ; of the great parties, with their politicians,
their courts, their judges, their offices; a great demor
alization of the leading journals and much other lit
erature; and likewise of the leading men of business.
It is painful to say this, and it may sound harsh; but
I doubt if in the last five years you could have found
anywhere in the least civilized parts of Christendom
these four modes of action more deeply demoralized
than they have been here.
Two things show this demoralization with painful
fidelity. When the fugitive slave bill passed Congress
in 1850, though everybody who had a thought in his
head and a heart in his bosom knew it was unconstitu
tional, and every simplest man knew it was at variance
with God's constitution of the universe, yet the chief
sects said not one word against it. The chief leaders of
these sects said, " Men must obey the law, — conscience
say what it may — the statute must be kept ! " I do
not know how many men declared there was nothing in
Christianity which was hostile to American slavery, or
hostile to the fugitive slave bill ; they meant there was
nothing in what they called the Christian theology hos
tile to it ; but they were understood to mean, and meant
to be understood to mean, there was nothing in the
Christian religion. It is painful to refer to the exam
ples of those men whom I have so often held up before
you in this place; their words and conduct is familiar

382 MATTER AND SPLRIT
enough. When men were kidnapped at New York and
Boston, prominent ministers in their pulpits lifted up
their hands, and in prayer thanked God that that wicked
deed had been done. You know the conduct of the
courts, federal and state, of the leading newspapers,
commercial and political, the leading merchants of New
York and Boston, of the leading colleges throughout
New England. That is one of the two things proving
the point.
Next, when Mr. Webster died, more than a hundred
and fifty sermons were printed which represented him
as a model Christian, a man after God's own heart.
The profligacy of his private life, surpassed only by the
utter demoralization of the latter part of his public ca
reer, did not take down one jot or title of the perfect
Christian character ascribed to him in these produc
tions. Dr. Franklin has a bad reputation in the Amer
ican churches ; Dr. Channing had this benediction from
orthodox newspapers when he died — that doubtless he
went to the place of eternal torment to punish him for
the sin of denying that Jesus of Nazareth was the Je
hovah who had existed forever and ever, and who made
earth and heaven. But Mr. Webster was placed by the
American church in the niche of sainthood far higher
than was claimed for Franklin or Channing, or all the
philanthropists who have blessed the land. These facts
prove the profound demoralization of these four
forces. We had relied on the American church to rebuke the
sin of the nation ; but no church was ever falser, I think,
than the American in 1850, '51 and '52. I confess this
amazed me, this growth of what I call hunkerism ; but
what I said last Sunday traces very clearly the growth
of that plant to the seed deposited in the soil, and I am

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 383
now astonished that I was astonished then, and wonder
that I did not see what is now so clear in cause, process
and result. Pardon me that I understood my calling
so ill, and had observed so poorly, not seeing the con
sequence in the cause, and the fruit in the seed.
That is the present consequence of this state of
things. But the ultimate consequence of this state,
the influence of the introduction of these new ideas
of God, of man, and of the relation between the two, —
that is likewise clear enough. It is easy to foresee
what the results will be a hundred years hence, or a
thousand; it is not hard to foresee what they will be
fifty, or twenty-five years hence. All those great truths
which I mentioned last Sunday will incarnate them
selves in new institutions, new tools for forming a
higher mode of human character, and so prepare for a
wider diffusion of human welfare of a nobler quality.
I mean to say there is now in process of formation a
higher ideal of manly and womanly character than was
ever set afloat before the vision of men, and in due time
it will produce an actual character corresponding to
itself. See how in two hundred years other great truths
in the bosom of New England have gendered institu
tions like themselves. They have produced a church
without a bishop, a state without a king, a community
without a lord, a family without a slave. Two hundred
years ago, nay, one hundred years ago, it was a dream
only but no fact anywhere. These new truths will have
a similar victory ; each one is bound to triumph. There
will be a period of strife where the new truth contends
with the old error, then a period of victory of the new
truth. Then there will be another period of new truths

384 MATTER AND SPIRIT
fighting against the errors which you and I cannot see ;
new truths which our poor eyes cannot get vision of
will come above the horizon, a higher ideal than we
dream of take the place of ours, to spread itself into
actuals, ever greater, ever new. It may seem a little
bold to state this so confidently, a little rash to under
take to demonstrate it by ideas alone. See then how
it is illustrated in facts which have already, been and
which we are sure of.
See it first in theological matters. At first there
was no toleration at all in New England. Boston
hanged five Quakers, one of them a woman, nailed up
the door of the Baptist meeting-house, drummed Epis
copalians out of town, drove Ann Hutchinson from the
colony, because the woman dared to think higher than
any of the ministers was able to go. You and I are
rather more dangerous than Quakers, Baptists, Episco
palians, and Ann Hutchinson; but there is nobody to
molest nor make us afraid ; toleration is absolute. The
speculative atheist may come and teach his speculative
atheism, just as the practical atheist is at liberty to
practice his. At first the Bible must not be read in any
New England pulpit. " Our Father " must not be re
peated in the pulpit's prayer, — three-quarters of an
hour long ; the minister might wander all over creation
in his prayer, and into any little nook of private gossip
or particular sin, but never pass into that Garden of
Eden of prayer which wejcall the Lord's Prayer. Now
a man reads the Bible from the pulpit, prays as he has
the spirit, quotes what he likes from Bible or Koran.
Once it was a capital offence in Massachusetts to deny
the trinity, and for a long time a Universalist was not
allowed his oath in court, and he was thrust out of what
is called respectable society; it was not thought decent

RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 385
to doubt eternal damnation; the law of Massachusetts
threatened the gallows to anybody who should deny
the divine origin of any book of the New Testament
or the Old. Now the two hundred Universalist min
isters in Massachusetts and the three or four hundred
in New England, are powerful enough to wring a Doc
tor of Divinity from the hard hands of the most con
servative college in New England. A Cambridge pro
fessor of Harvard University declares in public print
that there is not a line in the Old or New Testament
that can be considered the word of God.6
Who disbelieve in the existence of the devil, who hate
the doctrine of eternal damnation, and all those other
peculiar doctrines of the Calvinistic theology? What is
more, these are the most religious men in the orthodox
churches, who love God the most sincerely, and men
with the deepest, heartiest piety. In theology, the party
with a new truth has always carried the day. It is not a
hundred years since lads coming to Boston to serve an
apprenticeship had this written in their indentures,
" The boy is not to be allowed to attend the preach
ing of Dr. Mayhew," 7 — the stoutest and ablest minister
that trod the soil of New England for a hundred years.
Dr. Mayhew was the father of the Unitarians, and
never saw the children born after his death. Soon as
the Unitarian sect deserved empire it took it ; and when
the Unitarian minister has no more to say, the sceptre
very properly passes into the hands of other men. I
said last Sunday that illiberalism had come to town and
prevails. Wait a little while and see what else illib
eralism comes to. It will pass away. There has been
a great theological battle fought, and the new truth
has gained the victory. No ten Orthodox ministers who
1—25

386 MATTER AND SPIRIT
have lived in the United States ever produced such a
wide, deep, and lasting influence as Dr. Channing and
Hosea Ballou; no ten have made a mark so deep as
either of these two men — one by Unitarianism, the
other with the doctrine of eternal salvation at the last
for all men.
A great progress likewise appears politically. At
first only church-members could vote; next only free
holders ; then only whoso had sixty pounds. Now every
man who is out of jail and out of the almshouse may
vote. You see plainly what will become of the claim
of woman to vote. It once sounded as ridiculous to
allow any man to vote who was not a freeholder as now
for a woman to say she will not be taxed unless rep
resented. In the time of the Revolution there was a
British party who went for British measures, — social
rank and aristocracy. The old governor of the colony
had never heard of that " brace of Adamses." If he
had lived long enough, he would have seen where they
went to, and who they took along with them. But the
Tories went to the bottom, while the Patriots swam.
After the Revolution another party closely akin wanted
a more arbitrary government; some wanted a strong
central government, others a limited monarchy; others
an aristocracy, some a president for life, with a senate
chosen for life, the president to appoint the governors
of the several states, each governor to have an abso
lute veto on any laws passed by the general court.
What a state of things that would have been! How
these men hated the popular vote, election by the peo
ple ! One of the prominent men of Massachusetts said
publicly he would trust an appointment to office to
luck, rather than to a vote of the people. Said this
man, one of the wisest and most respectable, " I would

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 387
rather take at random the tallest or the shortest, the
oldest or the youngest, the fattest or the leanest, the
brownest or the fairest, rather than trust to the popular
election for a governor, senate, representatives to Con
gress, or selectmen in my own town." These were
the men of property and standing who said this. But
the tories after the Revolution walked the same plank
which the tories before the Revolution had trod.
There must be not an aristocracy, but a democracy ; a
government of all the people, of course; but by all
the people, for all the people, — that is, a progressive
democracy. Every year the people got more and more
power. It is seventy-five years since the Constitution
of Massachusetts was formed; in every twenty-five
years see what a great advance has been made, — the
people getting more and more power, and holding it
in their hands.
Socially the same progress has been attained. At
first there was a distinction between gentle and simple ;
only the gentleman had the title of Mr. Gentility
rested on an immovable foundation of rock — descent
from a famous family. Now it rests on a movable
basis, on money, on office, — things attainable by all.
Once birth from a distinguished family was the vicari
ous atonement for want of manhood, and distin
guished birth made all men equally honorable and re
spectable. Now it is money which accomphshes all
this, which has this advantage over birth, that it can
be acquired by every individual — whereas a man born
once, being born forever, could not rectify that matter.
Now the object is to acquire, as once it was to inherit.
All the families in New England, prominent for money
to-day, were poor in the last generation ; three-quarters
of them were poor in this generation. They are

388 MATTER AND SPIRIT
ashamed of the fact, no doubt; they should be proud
that their respectability, based on money, was so re
cently won, won by commerce, by manufactures and
by hard toil. A great social warfare has gone on all
along, and the new truths carried the day, — not in
every skirmish, possibly not in every great battle, but
in every campaign. See what a change, for example,
has taken place in the amusements of the people. Not
long ago the popular sports were shooting live ani
mals ; men shot turkeys in winter, and boys blackbirds
in spring; it was the greatest sport. Now that has
given away to musical concerts, the opera and the like.
There are those before me who remember the whip
ping-post in Boston and Worcester. Some of you
have seen men branded with a red-hot iron, others
whose ears were cropped by the order of the Boston
court. Imprisonment for debt — how common it was
but a very few years ago ! There was more hanging
in Massachusetts when she had only forty thousand
children, than now, when she has a thousand thou
sand. Schools for girls are of recent birth. Hospitals,
asylums for all denominations of the unfortunate, have
come in my time, within the memory of what are called
middle-aged men. Here too was a battle ; but victory
has always perched on the banners of the faithful and
true. Christian theology comes off beaten in every
fight; Christian religion triumphs out of every skir
mish. Once baptism was provided at the public cost
of Boston, and it was requisite for entrance to the
town meeting, as nobody could vote without his cer
tificate of baptism and church-membership. Now
vaccination is provided by the town, and no one goes
into the public school without being fortified against

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 389
the smallpox; and though Boston has all Cochituate8
at its disposal, it gives baptism to no child of man.
All this demonstrates what human nature plainly
foretells. The future will be like the past, — and that
is a progress. Each new truth will produce new in
stitutions to bless mankind with more manly and
womanly virtue. It is not at all difficult, therefore, to
see what will follow ultimately. In New England we
have not so good institutions for training scholars as
in France, England, or Germany; we cannot educate
artists and musicians so well as Europe. Accordingly,
scholarly and artistic men must wander abroad for
their highest culture. This is no reproach; we are
too young as yet to provide the apparatus for making
finished scholars, painters, sculptors and musicians.
But we have the best institutions in the world for edu
cating the mass of mankind. Accordingly, while in
ferior to Europe in science and art, while we must im
port beauty and demonstration from abroad, — we
have yet got the mass of the people better educated
in their understanding than any other mass of men
in the whole world. What makes this more important
is that this is true not only of the men, but of the
women also. In the old European countries the great
body of the women pass most of their life toiling in
the field, and they get very little culture of the higher
faculties, even of the understanding. Here this is in
verted. But in order to do justice to this theme, I
should need a whole sermon, and not merely a para
graph. Then too, while this fourfold demoralization
of the pulpit, politics, business, and the political and
commercial press of the country, has been going on,
there has been a progressive moralization of the whole

390 MATTER AND SPIRIT
people. The legislation of New England shows it,
and all those institutions which I have just spoken of
have been achieved in spite of that four-fold evil in
fluence. At one end of society — I call it the extreme
left — there is a body of men with very little property,
education or morality, very far behind the rest. At
the other end — which I will call the extreme right —
is another body of men with a good deal of money,
intellectual culture, conventional manners, good taste,
but with very little of moral and religious develop
ment. One is the extreme left, the other the extreme
right ; one makes the fugitive slave bill, the other is
the " marshal's guard " which enforces it. But the
great body of the people, the centre of our American
line, is composed mainly of men who love truth and
justice, and who have a moral development a little in
advance of their intellectual.
Now the first result of the popular education of the
people and this great expansion of the means of en
lightenment and power to use it- with complete freedom,
is the rapid increase of riches, the multiplication of
the means of doing much work in little time, and the
consequent increase and wide diffusion of wealth.
That is a beautiful spectacle. The thinking head is
the best machine in the world, the father of all other
machines. The next result is this increase of intellect,
which will help produce higher forms of character,
and so higher forms of life. And here is a mighty
future before us. The old theological institution must
perish; I mean what is false in it, those five ideas, of
God, of man, of the relation between them, of inspira
tion and salvation; — they must go where pope and
pagan have long since gone. There is a great battle
now going on. There are two parties, — men of prog-

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 391
ress, with new ideas, and the desire for more and bet
ter; reactionaries, who cling to the old and refuse to
advance the way others go. Once the Unitarians and
Universalists belonged to the movement party, and
they have done great service. But they have now
danced out their music; they occupy the floor, and
are trying to dance the old figure backwards, but
forbid all new music and new steps. But men have
been born in the Unitarian and Universalist house who
have left it and built another house of their own.
Every denomination has new men, new ideas. Doubt
peers into the most orthodox meeting-house. All the
old pulpits trodden by theological feet are yet worm-
eaten with new inquiries. Some only doubt the old,
and get nothing new to take its place; but most men
find some comfort in the new theology which comes
from human nature, and in passing from the old house
they do not step out of doors, but into the new house
built on the imperishable rock of human nature.
Between these two parties there is a strife. A crack
runs through all the churches of New England, — not
broad yet, but very deep, and getting wide. The new
party press on, often with many faults, lack of rever
ence, scorn of the past, neglect of excellent things in
the old ; — it is so easy to renounce all when a part is
bad, to push the Bible aside, to refuse to be instructed
by the truth which it contains because there is error in
it ! But the old theology seeks to go back further and
further. In old England the most spiritual part of it
went to Puseyism, thence to Romanism. In New
England the Unitarians go back to Orthodoxy, but it
only widens the breach. Each army rallies about its
special banner. Not long since it was the Unitarians'

392 MATTER AND SPIRIT
boast that they had no denominational creed; now it
is their boast that they have one — one of the weakest
and poorest of all creeds which have been made, a
qualified belief in next to nothing.9 Once it was their
boast, and the Universalists' also, that they took only
piety and morality for the essentials of Christianity;
now a belief in the miraculous authority of the Bible
seems to be their sine qua non. This reactive tendency
is most strong in the great centres of commerce,
strongest of all in the churches of commerce, and with
men who have done the very least for this world.
They who do nothing for actual righteousness must
have the word on their lips ; they do well therefore to
preach at least imputed righteousness. This belief in
the old is the veil let down over the face of Mammon.
While the worshipper sees writ thereon in golden let
ters, Savior, Redeemer, Christ, Miracle, Atonement,
Bible, Salvation, — he does not see that it is Mammon
behind it which he is worshipping. This new ortho
doxy is the incense which the Unitarian and Univer
salist high priest of commerce is offering to the golden
calf set up in the church of commerce, in the great
metropolis of commerce. When hypocrites do this let
it be laughed at and pointed at; but when done by
earnest, reverent and self-denying men, let us respect
their motive while we practice not their measure.
Just now the ministers of the north have lost favor
in respect to the great sins of the age, and especially
in respect to slavery. I suppose also that they feel a
little remorse. What must be done? They must
make some amend. So the Unitarian must have
prayer meetings like the Orthodox. The prayer meet
ing corresponds with the Orthodox idea ; it is false and
at variance with the Unitarian idea; but if the Uni-

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
tarian will not practice morality, he must pray for
spirituality. The Orthodox, who are in a similar con
dition, seek to recover their ground by the Bible.
Twenty or twenty-five years ago a great storm of re
vival swept over all the North, with disastrous effects,
as I think. I watched it carefully in Boston in 1831
and '32, and since that I have seen the uprooted trees
in many parts of New England. Now the experiment
is repeated, and theological newspapers report great
revivals in the churches — the Lord pouring out his
holy spirit, accessions, baptisms, and the like. They
do not report any increase of brotherly love, any
growth of honesty, of intelligence, of charity, of per
sonal purity, — because it is not human righteousness
which they aim to revive ; it is only to lay hold of the
imputed righteousness; not to make earth heaven, but
to carry more persons the other side. But this revival
will not succeed now as before, for the popular belief
in this is weakened, by the general enlightenment of
the people, through the study of literature, history,
science, and still more by what is called the spiritual
manifestations, — for if a man can make miracles in
his own house he can scarcely be expected to place
much reliance on those imported from the other side
of the flood. This cholera of revivals will doubtless
come again and again, but like the Asiatic will be
weaker each time, will involve fewer people in its de
struction, as men learn how to escape it. This the
ology is doomed to perish; the next twenty-five years
will make a mightier change in it than the last fifty
have done.
Now the question is not between the old theology
and no faith, no belief in immortality or the providence

394 MATTER AND SPIRIT
of God; the question is between the old and new one,
which gives you a loftier idea of God and man, of
man's duty and destination, not only hereafter but
here. When God is represented as lovely, immortality
attractive, duty natural, and religion reasonable, you
will not find that men will turn away from it at all.
The Christian theology is sure to go to pieces; the
Christian religion will last forever and ever, — because
it is human religion built on this imperishable founda
tion which God has laid in the nature of man himself.
Then there will follow great changes in man's material
and social condition. There will be a yet greater
abundance of wealth, created by honest industry, more
widely diffused abroad than ever before. A wider
scheme of education will diffuse the ideas of the most
enlightened men far more widely than now, and much
better culture of the mass of the people will take place ;
schools, libraries, lectures, reading-rooms, galleries of
pictures and sculpture, and concerts, will be multiplied
and produce their beautiful influence everywhere.
These will help enlighten, refine and elevate the great
mass of men, who are already so much enlightened in
their understanding. Then the superior education of
a select class of the people will be vastly different from
what it is now, — not barely of the understanding, but
of the affections, the conscience and the religious power
also. The old sensational philosophy has made its
mark on our culture: the higher spiritual philosophy
is likewise to produce its sweet and blessed influence.
This increase of wealth and of wisdom, the diffusion
of science, directed by the greater morality and reli
gion of the people, will go to produce other institu
tions which will ensure to all men the conditions of
wealth, long life, sobriety, manliness and womanliness.

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 395
Drunkenness, it is plain, is doomed also to perish; it
will be long doubtless before we furnish ourselves with
the best possible means of annihilating it. Slavery
must be abolished. The elevation of woman is sure to
follow, and this is the greatest practical reformation
before the people; and when she is recognized as the
equivalent of man in her individual, social, political,
domestic and ecclesiastical rights, most beautiful re
sults will follow : that dreadful vice of cities will end, —
for like slavery it rests on the idea that its victim is an
inferior being; and what a change in society, in the
state and in the church, when the feminine element
walks side by side with the masculine! Then what
new beauty, new force, will there be in the commu
nity, — for men and women will be not only better
bred, but also better born.
Then a reconstruction of society will follow. Co
operative industry must one day take the place of
selfish antagonism. Such a society will follow as Jesus
of Nazareth had a forefeeling of, one which shines
through his Sermon on the Mount, yes, through the
poetic hopes of mankind for many an age, prophesy
ing the good time coming.
A great battle is to be fought. It is to be fought
here at least in New England, for here the two ex
tremes meet in closest contact, in sternest strife. It
is a noble opportunity offered to you and me. No
doubt it is a period of great danger; liberty may be
come license, neglect of the old form may lead to
abandonment of the universal substance. The vice,
that will be transient; the gain will be forever. The
opportunity for noble life was never so attractive as
now. What contributions to humanity you and I may

396 MATTER AND SPIRIT
make! Every truth that any man utters is eternal;
nay, every excellence of character, of actions, of feel
ing, which we bring to light, — it will last forever; it
is not barely the private property of Hannah and
William, but it spreads abroad from one man to an
other, until at last, like the grass on the ground, or
the air above it, it will go round the whole world. You
and I, when we die, carry to heaven in our spirits'
breath the flavor of the fruit we have planted, reared
and fed on ; but its seed remains here to be the parent
of forests yet to be born.
To-day is the seventeenth of June. Eighty years
ago this hour our fathers crossed their swords with a
great and mighty empire. They were defeated in that
fight. Look now, and see the pillar of stone which
points to heaven and chronicles our fathers' deeds on
the spot once wet with their defeated blood. But see
the triumph of the truth which brought our fathers
there, and on this day can any man doubt of the tri
umph of our principles? There are millions behind
us; we can leave for them theological institutions full
of great truths — the God of infinite perfection, man
with a glorious nature and commensurate destination;
we can leave a state based on justice; a society full of
industry, temperance, purity, noble manhood; and a
church of natural religion, worshipping the Infinite
God by the normal use of every limb of the body,
every faculty of the spirit, every portion of power we
possess over matter, over mind. This is sure to come !
You and I are not called upon to be martyrs for this
cause, only called upon to be evangelists and apostles,
to receive our blessing as we go on, and leave it mani
fold to those who shall follow in our path.

NOTES

NOTES
TRANSCENDENTALISM
It is not known when this lecture was written, nor is
it known where or how often it was delivered. It was
published in pamphlet form (24mo, 39 pages) about
February 1, 1876, by the Free Religious Association,
Boston. It was No. 4 of the " Free Religious Tracts "
issued at that time. The " preliminary note " was
probably written by William Channing Gannett, editor
of the series, and was as follows : —
" Who were the ' New England Transcendentalists,'
and what was the new wine that filled them full of its
enthusiasm, a generation ago? Ralph Waldo Emer
son, George Ripley, Mr. Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Theo
dore Parker and the rest, — many of our fathers can
name their names, but it might be harder to answer the
other question and tell what they believed. No one can
tell that better than Theodore Parker himself, who was
the Paul of the movement, — its most doctrinal inter
preter, its systematic theologian, its most ardent mis
sionary. Much of him that would be welcomed by the
world lies buried in the hieroglyphics of his manuscript,
only readable by, eyes that learned to love him in his
life-time. This essay on transcendentalism in contrast
with sensationalism, now for the first time printed, has
been rescued from the burial, because it is so clear-cut
an account of the two great rival philosophies as viewed
by the band of which he was the champion ; a champion
not blind to the dangers of his own nor to the good
achieved by the opposite system, but so thorough-going
in his loyalty that even Bishop Berkeley and Jonathan
Edwards stand to him for arch-sensationalists.
399

400 MATTER AND SPIRIT
" Save a few slight amendments or omissions where
some sentence is imperfect in the manuscript or past
finding out, the lecture is printed as written in 1850
or thereabouts, with all the time-marks left in; the ref
erence, for instance, to the politics then reigning in
the North and South. As plain a time-mark, too, is
the necessary estimate of the sensational philosophy by
its earlier and barer, not its more recent and deepening
statement. Probably a tract presenting the beliefs of
this new school of sensationalism will also be issued
by the Free Religious Association."
The reference here is to the philosophy growing out
of Darwinism and the theory of evolution. Parker's
relations to this later sensationalism will be mentioned
in these notes in considering his sermons on the reve
lations of matter and mind. The promised tract on
the newer sensationalism was not published by the Free
Religious Association.
Page 12, note 1. " Systeme de la natur " was writ
ten by Baron Paul H. T. Holbach, and published
anonymously in 1770. It has been called the " Bible
of Naturalism."
Page 13, note 2. Calhoun rejected the theory of
natural rights, also equality of all men, and the social
contract. He said that liberty is a privilege, also that
the negro is at the lowest point in the scale of human
beings. Another of his assertions, in Congress, was
that no Southern man will submit to perform menial
duties. He likewise declared that " there has never yet
existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one por
tion of the community did not, in point of fact, live
on the labor of the other." Dr. Cooper of South Caro
lina, a disciple of Calhoun, in his " Political Econ
omy," said: " The universal law of nature is force.
By this law the lower animals are subdued to man, and
the same law governs the relations between men."
Page 22, note 3. This statement is not wholly true

NOTES 401
in regard to Rousseau, whose religion had many strik
ing resemblances to that of Parker. Rousseau claimed
to know God and to be assured of immortality because
these truths were indelibly stamped on his heart. He
appealed to the sentiment of the divine as in itself a
revelation. In the " Savoyard Vicar " he wrote, " Let
us consult the inner light." He was in part, at least,
a transcendentalist. He gave power to feeling rather
than to intuition, in this differing from Parker. His
teaching, as passed on to Kant, Schleiermacher, and
others, reached Parker in a largely modified form ; and
yet both men placed a great emphasis on sentiment as
a basis for religious truth.
ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS AND RELIGIOUS
CONSCIOUSNESS
This sermon was written in May, 1854, and was
preached at that time. It was also preached May 19,
1855, at the opening of the Progressive Friends' Meet
ing House at Longwood, Penn. It was printed in the
" Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of
Progressive Friends held at Longwood, near Kennett
Square, Chester County, fifth month, 1855." In that
pamphlet it appeared with this title : " A Discourse
on the Relation between Ecclesiastical Institutions and
the Religious Consciousness of the American People.
Delivered at the First Opening of the Progressive
Friends' Meeting House, at Longwood." It has not
appeared in any American edition of Parker's works,
but was printed in the third volume of Miss Cobbe's
edition, entitled " Discourses of Theology."
At the opening of the Meeting-House at Longwood
Joseph A. Dugdale participated, and Oliver Johnson
made a brief statement of the causes which led to the
erection of the house. After singing by the Hutchin
son family, Parker was introduced. " For more than
1—26

402 MATTER AND SPIRIT
two hours," says the official report, " he held the close
and unwearied attention of the assembly." It is also
stated that his discourse was " replete with great truths
eloquently expressed."
The " Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive
Friends " was a result of the anti-slavery agitation, and
especially, of the organization of the American Anti-
slavery Society in Philadelphia during the year 1833.
The Kennett Monthly Meeting and the Western Quar
terly Meeting of the Hicksite or Unitarian division of
the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting heard anti-slavery lec
turers, and a partial separation began in 1845. The
other reforms agitating the liberal men and women of
that day also obtained a large hearing. The result
was that in 1853 a call was issued for " a general reli
gious conference with the view to the establishment of
a Yearly Meeting in Pennsylvania " on a broader basis.
The purpose of the conference was set forth in the
call : —
" The various religious denominations in the land are
arrayed against the progressive spirit of the age, and
by their very structure, assumptions and regulations,
cannot occupy a co-operative position, because they
impose fetters upon freedom of speech and of con
science, by requiring a slavish conformity in matters
of abstract faith and sectarian discipline. This has
led and is leading to extensive secessions from such or
ganizations in all parts of the country, leaving the se-
ceders generally in a scattered and isolated condition,
whose talents, influence and means might be profitably
concentrated for the advancement of the world-embrac
ing cause of human brotherhood, and who are yearning
for some form of association at once simple, free and
attractive. . . .
" The Society of Friends has been a theatre of agita
tion for years, growing out of ecclesiastical domination
on the one hand, and the demand for practical right-

NOTES 403
eousness on the other; a domination entirely at vari
ance with the spirit of primitive Quakerism, seeking
to suppress free thought and to exclude from member
ship those whose lives are without blemish, whose ex
ample in word and deed is as a burning and shining
light, and who are seeking to know and do the will of
God at whatever sacrifice ; a domination which has been
deemed so intolerable that in the States of New York,
Ohio and Michigan Yearly Meetings have been formed,
two of which have taken the name of Congregational
Friends, and two others that of Progressive Friends,
and which invite to membership ' all those who look to
God as a Universal Father and who regard as one
brotherhood the whole family of man? "
The call expressed the belief that " a society may
be formed recognizing the progressive element which
will divorce religion from technical theology." The
first meeting was held at the Meeting-House in Old
Kennett, May 22, 1853. It was successful, largely at
tended, and the necessary organization was effected.
In 1854, after the meeting had been in session for two
days, the house was closed against the Progressive
Friends, and the gathering then assembled in a neigh
boring hall. The result was that in 1855 a new meet
ing-house was erected and dedicated. It took the name
of Longwood from that of an adjacent farm, on a part
of which the house was erected. The call for this year
defined clearly the purposes and the spirit which actu
ated the builders in the opening of a new house of
worship. " The chief characteristic of the Progressive Friends,
by which they are distinguished from nearly every other
religious society, is seen in the fact, that they prescribe
no system of theological belief as a test of member
ship, but invite to equal co-operation all who regard
mankind as one brotherhood, and who acknowledge the
duty of showing their faith in God, not by assenting

404 MATTER AND SPIRIT
to the lifeless propositions of a man-made creed, but
by lives of personal purity and a hearty devotion to
the welfare of their fellow-men. Slavery, intemper
ance, war, capital punishment, the denial of the equal
rights of woman, oppression in all its forms, ignorance,
superstition, priestcraft and ecclesiastical domination
— these, and such as these, are the evils and sins which
they feel constrained to assail by every rightful and
legitimate weapon; while they seek to promote every
virtue that can adorn humanity, and to foster those im
mutable principles of justice, mercy and love, which
alone can secure the peace, progress and happiness of
all the children of God. To all those whose hearts in
cline them to engage in a work so transcendently im
portant and sublime, we say, Come and aid us by your
sympathies, aspirations and counsels, and by the con
secration thereto of your noblest powers."
At the Longwood Yearly Meeting addresses were
given by prominent anti-slavery and reform speakers.
Garrison attended several sessions and took an active
part. Such reformers as Lucretia Mott were deeply.
interested. Most of the more radical Unitarians
preached at one or more of the meetings. Correspond
ence with the Michigan, Ohio and Indiana Yearly Meet
ings continued until the opening of the Civil War ; and
also with local meetings at Waterloo and North Col
lins, New York. The most prominent of the clerks in
charge of the arrangement and management of the
meetings were Oliver Johnson, Richard A. Dugdale,
Charles D. B. Mills, Rev. Charles G. Ames, and Rev.
Frederick A. Hinckley, at succeeding periods.
At these meetings it was the custom for many years
for the clerks to present a " declaration of sentiments,"
setting forth the general purposes of the meetings and
the attitude of the Progressive Friends towards the
religious and social life of the time. This was followed
by " testimonials," prepared by a special committee,

NOTES 405
which briefly discussed current questions in the light
of the convictions of those present. These questions
were usually of a practical nature, though such topics
as Spiritualism and sectarianism, religion and spiritual
culture were considered. Other topics were slavery,
caste, marriage, education in its various phases, tem
perance, tobacco, treatment of criminals, capital punish
ment, amusements, kindness to animals, parentage,
claims of children, peace, war, Indians, labor and capi
tal, Sunday, observance, and many others. Both the
declaration of sentiments and the testimonials were dis
cussed at length, and the meeting made such changes
in them as brought them into conformity with the opin
ions of those present, as expressed by a general vote
on their adoption as " the sense of the meeting."
Parker attached himself warmly to the Progressive
Friends at Longwood. He was invited to attend the
meeting of 1853, as were Garrison, Samuel J. May,
Gerrit Smith, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cassius
M. Clay, and others. In reply to the invitation Parker
sent the following letter: Boston, 2d May, 1853.
" Dear Friends: I rejoice in your movement for real
religion. It seems strange that men make such a mys
tery of religion, when itself is so simple. There is
only one religion in the world; it consists of two ele
ments, namely: Piety, the love of God, the poetic
element, purely internal ; and Morality, the keeping of
the natural laws of God for body and soul, in all de
partments of human life.
" There are various helps to the acquisition of this
one religion, and various hindrances with the name of
helps — bad machinery which men have set up to man
ufacture religion withal, and various theories about re
ligion — various theologies, still there is only one reli
gion. Of this the Jew has some, the Hindu, Moham-

406 MATTER AND SPIRIT
metan, Idolater, Christian, each has some. No sect
has all; no race of men is wholly destitute of religion.
" The great error of all the Christian sects at the
present day, I take it, is this: 1st, they start with
the idea of an imperfect God, a God who is jealous,
selfish, revengeful and destructive, who is a tyrant, and
made the world from a mean motive, and hence a mean
purpose; 2d, they start with the notion that this im
perfect God has made a miraculous revelation of him
self in time (and that revelation is contained in the
Church, as the Catholics say, or in the Bible, as the
Protestants say), which is to bind all the human race
forever, and is the ultimate standard of appeal in all
matters of religion (and philosophy, some say). Then
out of these two notions they construct a scheme of
theology, which is at variance with the best principles
of human nature, and teach it in the name of God and
religion. " If I understand it, the Progressive Friends will
start with the idea of the infinite perfection of God,
that he is perfect in power, in wisdom, in justice, in
love, and in holiness. Then they, will take the Bible
for what it is worth, and develop religion in a natural
way out of their own souls. I rejoice in your move
ment, and I wish I could be present with you on the
22d, but it is quite impossible, so you will please accept
my best wishes, and believe me truly yours,
" Theodore Parker."
Joseph A. Dugdale, for the committee.

At the Longwood meeting of 1859 it was reported
that Parker was critically ill in Italy, and the follow
ing letter was thereupon addressed to him as an ex
pression of affection and appreciation :

NOTES 407
" To our well-beloved Friend and Fellow-Laborer in the
cause of Truth and Righteousness, Theodore Parker,
the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive
Friends sendeth greeting.
" As we are about to close our Seventh Annual Con
vocation, our hearts turn with loving tenderness to thee.
We remember with gratitude how thy presence cheered
us in former years, and how the words of truth that fell
from thy lips were as sunlight and dew upon our hearts,
enlightening our minds and quickening us to more
earnest labor in the cause of humanity. We cannot
deny ourselves the pleasure of sending to thee across
the ocean a message of sympathy and affection; of
heartfelt regret for the illness which has compelled thee
to suspend thy public labors, and of hope for thy
speedy and complete recovery. The earnest prayer of
our hearts is, that the voice which has so often blessed
us may not be long silent, but be again lifted up with
new power in behalf of truth and righteousness.
" Signed by direction and on behalf of the Meeting,
1st of sixth month, 1859.
" Joseph A. Dugdale,
" Elizabeth Jackson,
" Oliver Johnson,
Clerks."
This kindly and sympathetic greeting elicited a re
sponsive reply:
Montreux, Switzerland, 25th of ninth month, 1859.
" To the Progressive Friends in Pennsylvania —
Dear Friends, — Your kindly letter of the first of sixth
month, signed by your clerks, Joseph A. Dugdale,
Elizabeth Jackson, and Oliver Johnson — persons well
known and highly esteemed — reached me but yester
day, for it was long delayed in Paris. Let me now,
from a full heart, thank you for your generous expres-

408 MATTER AND SPIRIT
sion of such sympathy and regard. In these times,
when a difference of theological opinions so often hin
ders all feeling of human brotherhood, your words
come to me full of sweetness and encouragement. How
pleasant it is to find religion without bigotry ; devotion
to God with no hatred of his children!
" Once I intended and promised to speak also to each
of the other congregations of Progressive Friends ; but
now I think you will never again hear my voice in your
yearly meetings; for even if I somewhat recover my
health, it seems I must hereafter address men only with
the pen, and no longer also with the living word. Yet
I trust I shall never fail, with what powers I have, to
help forward the cause of truth and righteousness, so
dear to you all.
" I kept sacred the anniversary of your last meeting
with devout gratitude for the opportunity I twice had
of preaching before you what to me is far more dear
than this earthly, mortal life, for the friendly recep
tion my words found amongst you, and the cheering
talk I had with many of you in private. The faces
of the men and women I value so much came up before
me and peopled the solitude of the ocean. I was, when
sailing through, comparing their human loveliness with
the else mere material beauty of the. sea. This year
I could not gather with you at the yearly meeting ; yet
was I present in spirit, and joined in your spoken or
silent prayer for the truth which shall make all men
free, and for the love that shall add its most precious
blessings to all human kind.
" Long may the spirit of truth and love, the spirit
of religion, live in your hearts, shedding its gladness
and its beauty on your daily lives, while it keeps your
feet in the paths of righteousness, and strengthens your
hands for every duty which God demands of you. Be
lieve me faithfully, " Your friend,
" Theodore Parker."

NOTES 409
Page, 71, note 1. This saying about search for
truth is wrongly attributed to Luther. It is in Les-
sing's Wolfenbiittel Fragments, the essay entitled
" Eine Duplix." It will be found in his Sammtliche
Schriften, Berlin, 1784-1824, vol. 6, p. 147. See also
Sime's " Lessing," vol. 2, p. 206, and Helen Zim-
mern's " Life and Works of Lessing," p. 361.
Page, 79, note 2. Narcisco Lopez, a South Ameri
can by birth, arranged three invasions of Cuba, in
August, 1849, May, 1850, and August, 1851. He
landed in May, with 300 men from the slave-holding
states, and was driven out by government troops. The
third expedition was the boldest and the most disas
trous. Crittenden's band was captured and shot.
That led by Lopez was surprised, and he was executed
by garrote. Cuban buccaneering was popular in New
Orleans and throughout the Gulf region so long as
there remained a shadow of a hope that the game which
brought in Texas would be played over. Cuba was
not the only neighboring soil where suspicious watch
was kept upon the aggrandizing spirit of the United
States. In Mexico and in Central America there was
good reason to fear aggression from this lawless and
half rebellious Southern element. Of filibustering ex
peditions and lone star associations we heard enough
in the next decade, and the gift of a grave was the
usual end of them. — James Schouler, History of the
United States, vol. 5, pp. 215-219.
Page 79, note 3. Bill Poole kept an eating-house at
the corner of Broadway and Howard street, New York.
On the evening of February 24, 1855, he was assaulted
at Stanwix Hall, a Broadway saloon, and murdered.
He had a great public funeral attended by, thousands,
and much excitement followed. He seems to have been
" a ward heeler," and it was asserted that he was killed
by an organized conspiracy for political reasons, in
order that the control of the police might be secured

410 MATTER AND SPIRIT
for party purposes. The agitation found its way to
Albany, and the police force was reorganized.
Page 79, note 4- Revolutions took place in Ger
many, France and other European countries in the year
1848. Page 81, note 5. The Crimean war was being
largely reported in the newspapers during the early
months of 1855.
Page 90, note 6. The reference here is to Dr. Or-
ville Dewey, a prominent Unitarian minister settled
in New York. Parker frequently, condemned Dewey
for his words, which were probably wrongly reported;
but Parker would accept no qualifications. In his bi
ography of Parker John W. Chadwick says on page
256, " Dr. Dewey's remark was one of those which
Parker never tired of worrying. He insisted on its
grossest form, and wrote in his journal that Dewey
would have done what he said. This showed his ig
norance of the man, whose unfortunate expression was
simply an hyperbole caught up to express Dr. Dewey's
sense of the evils that would attend a disruption of the
Union." In the Autobiography and Letters of Dewey,
page 129, Chadwick also says : " I doubt if Garrison
or Parker had a keener sense than his of the enormity
of human slavery."
Much testimony can be presented to show that the
American churches were largely friendly to slavery or
not opposed to it. This can be found in S. J. May's
Reminiscences and in Parker Pillsbury's The Church as
it is. In his Anti-Slavery Days James Freeman Clarke
says on pages 107 and 111 : " The great political
parties were both opposed to the anti-slavery movement ;
a large part of the church and the leading theologians
were also opposed to it."
Page 93, note 7. Such a letter was published in one
of the Boston papers, and was put into his scrap-book
by Parker. It was an expression of the real religious

NOTES 411
attitude of the time on the part of many excellent per
sons. THE NOTION OF GOD
In May, 1858, Parker preached four sermons at
Longwood, Pa. They were preached at Music Hall
during the preceding months of that year, and were
printed in the " Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Yearly
Meeting of Progressive Friends, including Four Ser
mons by Theodore Parker. New York, Oliver John
son, 1858." They were published separately in
pamphlet form with this title-page : " The Biblical,
the Ecclesiastical, and the Philosophical Notion of
God, and the Soul's Normal Delight in Him. Four
Sermons, preached in the Yearly Meeting of Progres
sive Friends, at Longwood, Pa., May 30th and 31st,
1858. By Theodore Parker, Minister of the
XXVIIIth Congregational Society in Boston. New
York, John F. Trow, Printer, 1858."
These sermons were received with much favor at
Longwood. The clerks for that year were Joseph A.
Dugdale and Oliver Johnson. They say of the first
sermon, in the " Proceedings," that it " commanded the
fixed and earnest attention of the whole assembly."
" He was listened to with heartfelt pleasure by a
crowded audience," they report of the last sermon.
He prefaced the first sermon with a brief statement
of his purpose in the whole course. " Some years ago
I spoke to you ' Of the Relation between Ecclesiastical
Institutions and the Religious Consciousness of the
American People.' I am now here again to speak on
great and kindred themes. You have no authoritative
Scriptures; your Bible is the universe, the world of
matter your Old Testament, the world of man the New.
In both there are revelations every day, for that canon
is not closed, nor ever will be. With the catholic spirit
of universal religion one of your clerks has just read

412 MATTER AND SPIRIT
from the Scriptures of the Chinese, the Hindus, the
Persians, the Mohametans, the Hebrews, and the
Christians. There is one material nature about us all,
one human nature in us all, one Divine nature, one In
finite God above us all, immanent in each, near to the
Buddhist and the Christian, equally loving to all. He
is no respecter of sects more than of persons. I wish
to speak of the notions men have of God, and of the
effect thereof. So, if your business allow and your
patience will endure so much, I will preach four ser
mons: I. Of the Progressive Development of the Concep
tion of God in the books of the Bible.
II. Of the Ecclesiastical Conception of God, and its
Relation to the Scientific and Religious Wants of the
Age. III. Of the Natural or Philosophical Idea of God,
and its Relation to the Scientific and Religious Wants
of the Age.
IV. Of the Soul's Normal Delight in the Infinite
God. These are all great themes, of interest to mankind —
not least, I think, to Progressive Friends."
Frothingham speaks of these as " remarkable dis
courses." Of the first one Chadwick says it " suggests
that his mind was already, suffering from the depletion
of his physical strength. It is below the level of his
knowledge of Old Testament studies, while at the same
time it indicates what a transposition of values there
has been since Parker's time." Chadwick says of the
third sermon : " This is one of the loftiest expres
sions of the faith that was in him. By ' philosophical '
in his title he means ' rational ' ; so generally."
Page 103, note 1. Parker was the first minister in
the United States to have flowers placed on the pulpit.
In his Life of Parker O. B. Frothingham says, page
242: "A vase of flowers stood on his pulpit — the

NOTES 413
wild flowers in their season, cultivated flowers always —
placed there by friends in the parish. Their beauty
and fragrance crept into sermon and prayer. Having
thus served in the worship of the morning, they went
in the afternoon to the chambers of the sorrowing and
the sick to fulfill the other divine duty of love. His
love for wild flowers was almost a passion ; he watched
for their annual return and knew where, for miles
around, he should find their first blooming."
Page 114, note 2. Black Republican (or Black
Abolition) was the name given to the Republican party
by its pro-slavery opponents from its organization in
1856 to the close of the Civil War, owing to its refusal
to sanction the admission of slavery into any state
where it did not previously exist. In the South in
1858 and immediately following a Black Republican
was " regarded as identical with a rabid and malignant
abolitionist." See Macy, Political Parties in the
United States.
Page 14.7, note 3. Dr. Lyman Beecher was pastor
of the Hanover street church in Boston from 1826 to
1832, and was very active in reviving the Calvinistic
teachings of an earlier period. He was zealous in the
revival agitations of the time, with which the name of
Nettleton is prominently associated.
THE DELIGHTS OF PIETY
This sermon was preached at Music Hall in Novem
ber, 1853, and was repeated at Longwood in 1855 at
the meeting of Progressive Friends, one week later than
the preceding one on " Ecclesiastical Institutions and
Religious Consciousness." It was printed in the " Pro
ceedings " of that year, with the title : " A Sermon
of the Delights of Piety, delivered at the opening ses
sion of the Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends,
held at Longwood (near Kennett Square), Chester

414 MATTER AND SPIRIT
County, Pa., on First Day morning, 20th of Fifth
month, 1855." At this meeting Parker was made
chairman of the committee on correspondence, and he
took part in discussing an essay on amusements read
by Oliver Johnson, and also one on the evils arising
from the use of tobacco.
This sermon has not before appeared in any Ameri
can volume, but it was included by Miss Cobbe in the
third volume of her edition, entitled " Discourses of
Theology." BEAUTY IN THE WORLD OF MATTER
This sermon was printed as a 16mo pamphlet, 24
pages, with the following title-page : " A Sermon for
Midsummer Day. Beauty Jn the world of Matter^con-
sidered as a Revelation of God, by Rev. Theodore
Parker, Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational
Society. Preached at the Music Hall, on Sunday,
July 15, 1855. With Prefatory Letter from Mr.
Parker at Santa Cruz. Boston, Published by the
Fraternity, 1859." It appeared in the third volume,
" Discourses of Theology," of Frances Power Cobbe's
" Collected Works of Theodore Parker," 1863. The
" prefatory letter " is given here in full :
In the summer of 1855 I preached a series of dis
courses treating in an abstract and metaphysical way
certain great matters, which required some severity of
attention to master, or even comprehend. When it was
nearly finished the weather became exceedingly warm,
and it seemed to me not quite fit to lay heavy burthens
on the minds of men to be borne in the heat of such
days. Surely the wise minister will not change the
blessed day of rest into a day of torment for the body
as well as the soul. So, taking the hint alike from the
season and the handsome things it brought forth so
abundantly, I paused a little in my course of abstrac-

NOTES 415
tions, and, taking a theme which was sure to require
none but spontaneous attention from any audience, I
preached " Of the Lesson of Beauty, — a Sermon for
Midsummer Day." The unusual form of the discourse
may easily be objected to, and declared unfit to be
preached from the pulpit ; but I think the listeners then
found it fit to be heard in the pews: and now, when
thousands of miles from home, and compelled to be si
lent, I hope the readers will equally accept the lesson
which the Infinite Teacher offers us all in the facts
of nature, whence I have tried to translate it into plain
human speech.
Had I written the sermon in this fair-skied island
of the Holy Cross, the lesson would have been the same,
but the illustrations had been quite different. The
same truth had ridden forth in like queenly sort, but
in another chariot. Here it seems to me to be always
midsummer, the weather is so genial by day and night.
How clear the skies are ! how brilliant the sun ! It does
not seem to go down and set, but rather to fall down
and disappear, so suddenly, in this low latitude, does
darkness take the place of day. But what a night
it is, how quick the nobler stars come out, how large
they look! The sun is scarcely out of sight, and not
only the planets — Jupiter and Mars — appear, but
the larger fixed stars, as Sirius and Arcturus, with
handsome attendance, have kindled a new day ; then all
the lesser sons of heaven, the " common people of the
skies," rush into the field with democratic swiftness, and
yet without indecorous haste. The Great Bear seems
like a constellation of twinkling moons. Here, too, are
stars I never saw before; on the Southern Cross beauty
is for ever " lifted up " for the benediction of the
world, and thereby the Father draws the eyes of even
savage men and foplings of the street. When the new
moon is only a day old, it is plain she carries the old
one in her arms. Now she has not been gibbous quite

416 MATTER AND SPIRIT
two days, but yet the printer could read this letter by
her light, walking in brightness such as northern eyes
behold not. Even now the clouds are colored as by
day, only with less brilliant hues, yet quite equal to the
day-clouds of a New England winter.
The vegetation astonishes a northern lover of na
ture, all is so strange. Save the rose, here, is not a
tree, not a shrub, an herb, nor a weed which I have ever
seen growing naturally before. The flora is a conser
vatory turned out of doors. Our oaks and elms are
replaced by tamarinds, cocoa-nuts, mahoganies, and
mountain-palms; our apple and pear trees by the sap-
podilla, the banana, the orange, and the breadfruit ; our
sweet-scented locust has many a thorny cousin here, but
all strangers to me. While the minister, in his surplice,
is reading the Episcopal litany, the oleanders, tall as
the eaves of his meeting-house, not admitted to the
church, solicited by the wind, bend down and reach in
through the window — which needs no glass to hedge
the flock from cold — and interrupt the artificial service
with their natural lesson of beauty, not only for that
day, but for all days of the human year. Huge " silk-
cotton trees," and " Guinea tamarinds," mainly leafless
now, diversify the landscape with their queer and fan
tastic look. The hills are mantled with sugar-cane,
whose joints contain a sovereign juice, the island's
wealth, — where power and sweetness float together for
human good or ill; all the estates run with vegetable
honey now, as the windmills crush the wealthy crop.
The " pride of Barbadoes " opens its gorgeous bloom
at the top of all the hedges ; the false ipecacuanha —
a ghastly beauty not less than a ghastly cure — grows
by the road-side, with a certain lurid, poisonous look,
as have many of her asclepian kindred. There is
beauty all around, at least gorgeousness. Even the
fish are many-coloured, and look like flowers of the sea,
so brilliant and so various are their hues.

NOTES 417
You are amazed at the wealth of life in these tropic
lands. The ground, the air, the water, are all ani
mated ; a dead fruit is quickly transfigured to new life,
so soon do insects translate the decaying elements to a
higher form of existence.
But after all it seems to me that nature here is not
so nearly related to man as at home ; vegetation has an
unkindly look; you suspect these meretricious flowers,
and keep aloof from the acacias and cactuses, and would
have an honest homely apple-tree rather than all the
prickly pears in all these islands which Columbus named
after the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne. Perhaps
this may be prejudice and narrow-mindedness on my,
part, I only tell what appears.
In our cold northern lands we get tired of the win
ter; a longing for spring affects our literature, and
has its influence on the character of all northern civili
zation. Here it is perpetual summer, and nobody
longs for what all enjoy. The absence of grass is not
pleasing to one who lives where it comes " creeping,
creeping, creeping everywhere." Who would like to
be buried under ugly sedges, their solid stems growing
a foot apart and six feet high, and never wet with
dew? Grass-clad earth " unto our flesh is kind," and
the sods of a New England valley will one day be
sweet to us all.
But here as elsewhere the lesson of beauty is con
tinual, and the same which is offered in New England.
Large-hearted Mr. Welltodo might spend his Sunday
as profitably in Friedriksstad as in his native town,
for the divine in nature looks out everywhere, and
means Love in torrid zones or frigid.
" Then looke, who list thy gazefull eyes to feed
With sight of that is faire, looke on the frame
Of this wyde universe, and therein reed
The endlesse kinds of creatures which by name
1—27

418 MATTER AND SPIRIT
Thou canst not count, much less their nature's aime ;
All which are made with wondrous wise respect,
And all with admirable beautie deckt."
" T P "
" Friedriksstad, Santa Cruz, March 15, 1859."
GOD'S REVELATION IN MATTER AND MIND
In the spring of 1854 Parker preached a series of
sermons on the revelation of God in nature and man.
He returned to the subject in various forms, and in
November and December, 1857, he preached a series
of six sermons dealing especially with this favorite topic
of his later years. It is evident he had gradually for
mulated his conclusions until he hoped to produce a
popular and yet a systematic interpretation of the
problems involved. In his " Life and Correspondence
of Theodore Parker," vol. 2, p. 424, John Weiss gives
the list of sermons as at first preached, as follows :
No. 880. The Progress of True Theological Ideas.
Part i. Historical.
No. 881. The same. Part ii. Conjectural.
No. 885. The Progress of God in the World of
Matter. No. 889. The Evidence of God in the Relations be
tween the World of Matter and of Mind. Part i.
No. 890. The same. Part ii.
The impression made by these sermons was such that
he was requested to repeat them, which he did in Janu
ary and February, 1858. It would appear that they
were then largely rewritten and given in the more sys
tematic form in which they appear in this volume. It
is in part doubtful whether Parker intended to include
in this series the sermon on the innermost facts of reli
gious consciousness, and yet in his own note-book re
cording his sermons preached it is listed as No. i. of
this series. It has been thought best, therefore, to give

NOTES 419
it the place assigned it, as introductory to the five
succeeding sermons, which form a systematic course.
In writing to George Ripley from St. Thomas, May
13, 1859, concerning his ' Experience as a Minister,'
Parker added : " I don't know that I have published
anything more important this long time, though I
preached a series of sermons on the ' Testimony of the
World of Matter to the Existence and Character of
God ' in 1857-8, which I think the ablest I ever wrote.
I wish I could live long enough to print them ; each was
an hour and a quarter long (hard, abstruse matter)
and I did not preach more than two-thirds of the MS.
I have not much instinctive love of life, but just now
I should like a year or two more to finish up some things
not half done. Still I am ready anytime, and have
never had a minute of sadness at the thought of pass
ing to the immortals."
On June 2, writing from Radley's Hotel, London,
to Frances Power Cobbe, he returns to the subject, after
mentioning his hope of recovery : " I have many
things half ready for the press which none beside me
could print. In special, I have a short volume of ser
mons on the ' Evidence of God found in the World of
Matter and of Mind ' ; they were preached in 1858.
I like them better than anything I have done before.
Each was about an hour and a quarter in the delivery,
and what was spoken could be recalled from the notes
of the phonographer who daguerreotyped all my words.
But I did not preach more than half of what my brief
contained. The unpreached matter will be lost without
me ; hard to write it out. Besides, I have volumes more
in that state."
Once again he wrote of these sermons to an intimate
friend, this time addressing Professor Edward Desor
from Rome, February 24, 1860. "Here in Rome I
am out of the way of all books, except the Lives of
the Saints, etc. But yet I learn of Mr. Darwin's work

420 MATTER AND SPIRIT
on ' Principles of Selection in Natural History.' It is
one of the most important works the British have lately
contributed to science. He does not believe in Agas-
siz's foolish notion of an interposition of God when a
new form of lizard makes its appearance on the earth.
Indeed, a God who only works by fits and starts is no
God at all. Science wants a God that is a constant
force and a constant intelligence, immanent in every
particle of matter. The old theological idea of God
is as worthless for science as it is for religion. I
should like to live long enough to finish and print a
course of sermons I preached in 1858, on ' The Testi
mony of Matter and Mind to the Existence and Char
acter of God.' It certainly is the most important thing
I have done in my life; but is left not fit for publica
tion. If I don't do the work some one else will; a
little later, but perhaps better."
In 1862 Mrs. Parker proposed to publish this series
of sermons, and they were copied by Mr. Rufus Leigh-
ton, who reported many of Parker's sermons and
published several of them. In a letter to her, dated
Washington, November, 1862, he wrote: "The five
sermons which I send were put into this present shape
some time since. You will recollect that at the time
of their delivery abstracts of four of them appeared in
the ' Atlas and Bee.' Mr. Yerrington and I volun
tarily prepared them and procured their publication at
the time. I knew how much Mr. Parker thought of
these sermons, as he had spoken to me of them, and in
a note which he wrote me on the 21st January, 1859,
he mentioned two or three books which he meant to pub
lish at some time if he should get well, and among them
the one you propose to bring out. His other works
had just then come into my hands from Little, Brown
& Co. Thinking that at some future time I might have
the satisfaction of publishing this book for him during
the winter I took the abstracts as printed, and from

NOTES 421
my notes filled them out, and also copied the last ser
mon of the six ; and as they now stand they are almost
or quite word for word as delivered from the pulpit.
Since you wrote to me I have looked them over care
fully again. Some of the pages look a little confused,
but I think they are all so plain that a printer would
not have the least difficulty in making them out. I
am exceedingly glad that these sermons are to be pub
lished, as they certainly will be a valuable addition to
what has heen said on the subject by others, and I
think they will meet with a good reception, especially
in England, and on the Continent."
This plan for publication was not carried out, and
the copies made by Mr. Leighton passed to Parker's
literary executor. They have now been revised by Mr.
Leighton for the present volume, Parker's MSS. being
used for this purpose. As far as possible, therefore,
they present not only what Parker wrote, but what he
said in addition on the delivery of the sermons.
This series has often been mentioned by Parker's
friends and hearers as " the Darwin sermons." It is
evident from his letter to Professor Desor that Parker
had not read Darwin's book on " The Origin of Spe
cies," the first edition of which was published on No
vember 24, 1859. It is possible, however, that he did
read Darwin's summary of his views, which, together
with Wallace's paper on variation, was read before the
Linnaean Society, July 1, 1858, and printed in the
Journal of that society about the first of October, the
same year. He is more likely to have read the articles
in the English reviews, where the " Origin " received
large attention. Especially noteworthy was an ex
tended outline of Darwin's argument published in the
" Times " for December 26, 1859, written by Huxley,
who also had an article on the book in " Macmillan's
Magazine " for December, 1859. Another friendly
summary and review was that by W. B. Carpenter in

422 MATTER AND SPIRIT
the " National Review " for January, 1860. It is evi
dent Parker appreciated such conception of the book
as could be obtained in that manner.
These dates indicate that the Linnaean Society pub
lication is the only one that could have influenced
Parker in the preparation of this series of sermons.
The sermons themselves indicate that he did not grasp
the idea of natural selection, and that he must have
been influenced by older forms of the theory of evo
lution. That he was a strong believer in evolution these
sermons prove, but he was indebted probably to Goethe,
Robert Chambers in the " Vestiges of Creation," and
other writers who were feeling their way to the trans
mutation conception of origins. It should not be for
gotten, however, that the idea of progress, of a funda
mental law of evolution in the physical, organic and
human world, was very, generally accepted by such
men as Emerson, Parker, Thoreau, and many others.
It was intimately associated with the reform tendencies
of that period, and was regarded as the justification
for the reforms then proposed.
The titles of these sermons are here given in full as
they appear in Parker's manuscripts, together with the
dates of their final delivery: —
1. The Innermost Facts of Religious Conscious
ness. December 6, 1857.
2. Evidences of God in the World of Matter.
January 10, 1858.
3. Evidences of God in the World of Man. Jan
uary 17, 1858.
4. Evidences of God in the Relation Between the
World of Matter and the World of Man. January
24, 1858.
5. Evidences of God in the Relation Between the
World of Matter and the Spirit of Man. January
81, 1858.

NOTES 423
6. The Relation between God and Man. February
7, 1858. J'
Page 24.1, note 1. The Crystal Palace, so-called be
cause it was largely built of glass, was erected at
Hyde Park, London, in 1851, for the World's Fair
opened that year.
Page 244, note 2. The reference is to Juggernaut
or Jagannath, whose temple is at Puri, a town of
Orissa. This temple is devoted to Vishnu in the form
of Jagannath, who is a people's god, and has the char-
arteristics of Krishna. One of the festivals of the
god is called Rath jattra or car festival, and in the
rush of devotees by accident persons are sometimes
crushed. No one is thrown under the car as a part
of the ceremonies. The god is not Buddhist, but Vish-
nuistic. Page 251, note 3. The laws of energy were new
in 1858 and Parker gave the latest information of that
time. The hst of forces manifested in the conservation
of energy has now been extended to include kinetic and
gravitation energies, heat, energy of elasticity, and co-
hesian, chemical, electrical, magnetic, and radiant ener
gies. Page 252, note 4- The baobab tree, usually known
as Adansonia, grows in tropical Africa, is often re
garded as the largest tree in the world, reaching a
diameter of 20 feet.
Page 259, note 5. Here Parker must refer to the
day of each planet or its time of revolution on its
axis ; not to the earth's day, as his expression seems to
indicate. Page 260, note 6. Miles Greenwood was the name
of a fire-engine in Boston.
Page 260, note 7. The Journal and Transcript
were leading morning and evening newspapers in Bos
ton in 1858, as they now are.
Page 271, note 8. The Congregational church of

424 MATTER AND SPmiT
North Woburn was formed in 1846. In 1857 Alpheus
S. Nickerson, a student at Andover, was called, but the
council was not able to advise his settlement on the
grounds mentioned. In 1858 another council or
dained him, but did not secure him a legal settlement,
and he soon withdrew.
Page 293, note 9. Caloric and actinic are old chem
ical terms now Httle used. Caloric is heat-force, not
used in old sense of a subtle imponderable fluid. Ac
tinic rays are vibrations too rapid to affect the eye,
mostly used of photographic processes.
Page 293, note 10. The number of definitely de
termined elements is now 78.
Page 300, note 11. The Great Eastern was built
1853—58, and was the largest that had then been
launched. It is mentioned on page 301 as the great
Leviathan, from the fabulous creature described in the
Jewish scriptures.
Page 301, note 12. The Atlantic cable was first
opened August 17, 1858, from Ireland to Newfound
land; and the reference to New Orleans only indicated
the wide reach of its communications.
Page 304, n°te 13. The present estimate of man's
age varies from 250,000 to 300,000 years.
Page 336, note 14. Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist of
Hartford, extracted teeth with the use of nitrous oxide.
He communicated his discovery to Dr. William T. G.
Morton, a dentist of Boston, who made use of sulphuric
ether. He made known the results of his experiments
to Dr. J. C. Warren, a leading surgeon of Boston.
On October 16, 1846, ether was used by Dr. Warren
at the Massachusetts General Hospital in a surgical
case with complete success. The discovery was soon
made known throughout the world.
Page 342, note 15. Russia attempted to make Mol
davia and Wallachia its mere dependencies as result
of a treaty of 1829 with Turkey. This was one of

NOTES 425
the causes of the Crimean war, but the treaty of Paris
in 1856 changed their relations; and in 1859-61 these
two countries were joined to make the principality of
Roumania, which, with the addition of Dobrudja, was
made a kingdom in 1878.
THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOP
MENT OF NEW ENGLAND
These two sermons are placed here because in con
siderable degree they supplement the historical facts
presented in the lecture on " Transcendentalism."
In Parker's manuscript, as prepared for the press, evi
dently under his direction, they bear this title in full : —
" The Moral Condition of Boston and New England ;
the Causes of that Condition, and its Present and Ulti
mate Consequences, considered in two sermons, preached
at the Music Hall on the 10th and 17th of June, 1855."
These sermons are almost wholly unlike that on " The
Moral Condition of Boston," preached at the Melodeon,
February 11, 1849, and published in " Speeches, Ad
dresses, and Occasional Sermons," 1851. The title has
been changed for this volume to make it more exactly
descriptive of the contents.
Page 353, note 1. The " rights of men " were de
fined by John Locke in his second treatise on Govern
ment. This^ Parker seems to have known, but it evi
dently did not come within the scope of his definition.
Probably he did not know " A Vindication of the Gov
ernment of New England Churches," by John Wise,
minister in Ipswich, now the town of Essex. Wise's
book was published in 1717, and contained as definite
a statement of natural rights as that given by Otis or
any revolutionary leader. " Man's external personal,
natural liberty," Wise wrote, " antecedent to all human
parts or alliances, must also be considered ; and so every
man must be conceived to be perfectly in his own

426 MATTER AND SPIRIT
power and disposal, and not to be controlled by the
authority of any other."
Page 370, note 2. Francis Tukey was U. S. mar
shal at the time of the Antony Burns rendition. Col.
T. W. Higginson, in his " Cheerful Yesterdays " calls
him " a dark, handsome, picturesque man, said to pride
himself on a certain Napoleon look."
Page 370, note 3. Nehemiah Adams, 1806-1878,
was a Congregational minister in Cambridge and Bos
ton. He spent a winter in Georgia, and published " A
South Side View of Slavery," 1854, in which he praised
the effect of slavery on religious character. He was
often spoken of as " Southside Adams."
Page 372, note 4- The attitude of ministers in re
gard to the anti-slavery and other reforms is fully de
scribed in Samuel J. May's " Recollections of Our Anti-
Slavery Conflict." In that work it is shown that many
clergymen of all denominations were opposed to every
reform movement of the day. Details and names are
given. Page 372, note 5. Josiah Quincy was the second
mayor of Boston, 1823-1828. " The only innovation
which was attempted in his time upon the old customs
of the town was an experimental High School for girls,
which had a brief trial of a year or two, and was then
abandoned. The suggestion of the establishment of a
school for the education of girls to as advanced a point
as that of boys in the Latin and High Schools was
one that naturally commended itself to the general pub
lic, and the experiment was fairly tried under the mas
tership of Mr. Ebenezer Bailey, a teacher of great ex
perience and skill. In one sense it only succeeded too
well. The number of candidates fit for admission was
entirely beyond the capacity of the school-house at the
start, with the prospect of growing still larger every
year. And in one important respect the plan was
found not to work as its projectors had expected it

NOTES 427
would. The majority of the girls who could pass the
preliminary examination were found to come from the
wealthier classes, who could purchase for them instruction
or were competent to afford it themselves. More than
half the candidates came from private schools. With
out going into the details of the question, the practical
objections to the scheme seemed insuperable, and it was
abandoned. This conclusion of the whole matter gave
rise to great discontent, and brought much obloquy
upon Mr. Quincy, who was known to regard the plan
as impracticable, although the city government as a
body, consented to the final action." — Life of Josiah
Quincy of Massachusetts, by his son Edmund Quincy;
Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1868.
Page 385, note 6. This seems to have been Prof.
George R. Noyes, who held the chair of Hebrew in the
Harvard Divinity School for many years.
Page 385, note 7. Jonathan Mayhew was the min
ister of the West Church in Boston from 1747 to his
death in 1766. He was the real founder of the Uni
tarian movement in the United States, and was care
fully avoided by the other ministers of Boston on ac
count of his radical opinions.
Page 389, note 8. The Cochituate reservoir brought
water into Boston for the first time in 1848.
Page 392, note 9. A " creed," prepared by the sec
retary and directors of the American Unitarian Asso
ciation, was presented at the annual meeting in 1853,
and published in the Quarterly Journal for October,
1853, volume I. pp. 44-49. See Parker's " Friendly
Letter to the Executive Committee of the American
Unitarian Association." In the report of the Associa
tion an attempt was made to defend the Unitarian body
against the charge of infidelity and rationalism made
by the orthodox. The teachings of the transcendental-
ists and radicals had been attributed to all Unitarians,
and the leaders of the Association felt that it was time

428 MATTER AND SPIRIT
to define explicitly the position they occupied. There
fore they said : " We desire, in a denominational capac
ity, to assert our profound belief in the divine origin,
the divine authority, the divine sanctions of the re
ligion of Jesus Christ. This is the basis of our asso
ciated action. We desire openly to declare our belief
as a denomination, so far as it can be officially repre
sented by the American Unitarian Association, that
God, moved by his own love, did raise up Jesus to aid
in our redemption from sin, did by him pour a fresh
flood of purifying life through the withered veins of
humanity and along the corrupted channels of the
world, and is, by his religion, forever sweeping the na
tions with regenerating gales from heaven, and visiting
the hearts of men with celestial solicitations. We re
ceive the teachings of Christ, separated from all for
eign admixtures and later accretions, as infallible truth
from God." John W. Chadwick rightly said this is
" the most curious, not to say amusing, document in
our denominational archives." See Cooke's Unitarian-
ism in America, pp. 156-157.

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