a CoUtgt in i

Gift of
Mrs. Charles H. Merrill
1924 ¦

NATURE

THE SUPEMATUBAL

TOGETHER CONSTITUTING

THE ONE SYSTEM OF GOD.

BY-HORACE BUSHNELL.

HEW EDITION.

NEW YOKE:
CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., 654 BROADWAY.
1867.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New York.

ripct

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

As the naturalistic theories and destructive criticisms of the
Gospels are becoming more popularized aud obtaining a wider
circulation, a cheaper edition of this treatise appears to be called
for. ^Ih. this form, accordingly, it is now submitted to the pub
lic; in the hope that it --may reach another class of readers, and
extend the range of whatever good effects-it maybe expected to
produce. A good many critical notices and reviews — the greater part
of them sufficiently favorable — have been bestowed upou this trea
tise ; and in those which have been less favorable, I have met with *
nothing that has at all shaken my confidence in. the argument.
On the contrary, it seems rather to have come out experimentally
proved. The objections it has thus far encountered have all come
from the believing side, and not from the side of the adversaries —
representing, simply, points of dissatisfaction, that arise from my
not managing the subject matter of the question according to the
prepossessions or favorite modes of the objectors. I am not aware
that any single notice of my argument has ever been put forth on
the side of naturalism — whether because it has been too little or
too much respected, or because it is the manner of the writers on
this side to take by assumption just what I am here concerned to
disprove, I will not undertake to say ; probably, however, the last

IV PKEFACE.
mentioned is the true reason. They have come, in fact, to look
upon this prior question, the question of the possibility, or possible
credibility, of what is supernatural, as being virtually given up to
them — they have it even as by concession ; for though they
know the supernatural verity of the Gospels to be still abundantly
affirmed, they have learned to look for no argument that is not
under a previous doom of failure, and so to assume, in quiet as
surance, the final closing up of the question.
I think there was never any school of writers before, who
could take so much by assumption, with so little misgiving ; part
ly because we have trained them to it, by a certain habit of im-
potency which they have learned to appreciate, and partly be
cause- an immensely overgrown personal conceit is required, to set
any man to the taking down of the Lord Jesus by criticism. Other
forms of disbelief, or denial, have drawn their argument from
generally accepted premises ; but the critical deniers take new
premises by assertion, or by a supposed sharpness of insight not
given to other men. This is true, in a remarkable degree, of
Hennel, and Parker, and Strauss, but more especially still of M.
Renan, in his late*brilliant work on the Life of Jesus. The mir
acles of Christ are dismissed by him, with scarcely a show of dis
cussion, over and above the simple regret expressed, tbat some
committee could not have been raised, to report upon them, and
perhaps to have them repeated ! Beginning in this very superla
tive key of confidence, he tosses the four Evangelists away to the
right aud the left, by the dashing cavalry assault of his judgments,
and, rescuing Jesus from them, takes Him into the particular pat
ronage of his own finer and more qualified appreciation ! I recol
lect no example of opinionative wisdom more amazing, or more

PREFACE. V
nearly sublime. It is the authority of M. Renan against the
authority of Christ, aud the critic carries the day 1
Probably nothing can ever stop this kind of extravagance, but
to let it have its way, and go on to the point of exhaustion. The
audacity of it has a certain spice of interest, but the din it makes,
by long hammering on our reverence, will grow wearisome enough
probably, even before it has lost breath and can no farther go.
Meantime it is none the less to be regretted that we give so good
occasion for this kind of assumption, by setting ourselves in just
the position that is weakest for assault, and most incapable of de
fence — a complete surrender, in fact, only not running up the flag.
Thus we let everything turn, how often, upon the credit of
the poor Evangelists, without allowing the Master himself to fur
nish any chief part of the story, by the really astonishing self-evi
dence of His character.
We make up an issue for inspiration so stringently close and
verbal, that we take the short end of the lever ourselves, and give
the long end to our adversaries ; consenting that if we fail on syl
lables, they shall have their own way about chapters and books.
We assert the supernatural in a way too fantastic and ghostly
to admit a possible defence, and then, if an assault breaks through,
where there is, in fact, no line to break, we expect by some re-
ductio ad absurdum, or fetch of negation keenly put, to maintain
what never can or even ought to be maintained by any but the
broadest and most positive methods of doctrine.
We define miracles to be suspensions of the laws of nature, and
make it impossible, gratis, from that time forth, to offer an argu
ment for them, which any bravely rational person, or mind well
grounded in science, can ever be expected to admit.

VI PREFACE.
And then we come in finally, in due course, to surrender, in
fact, the credibility of anything supernatural or miraculous, by re
nouncing the credibility of any such thing occurring now. The
credibility of all such wonders we think is according to the ratio
of their distance ; which is the same as to admit that they are, in
fact, credible nowhere.
I do not complain, at this point, of the disrespect this volume
has encountered with some, on the score of its fourteenth chapter
— "Miracles and Spiritual Gifts not Discontinued." I understood
as well beforehand as now, at what cost it was to be inserted, and
I thank God that I was able to stand by the Main Question at the
point where it really turns — my fidelity in which has been duly
appreciated by several of the most competent critics. We can
never put a stop to the bold assumption which takes for granted
the incredibility of supernatural inspirations and miracles, till we
dare to bring down the question of fact, and have it for at least an
open question now. Our timidity here loses everything. If the
followers of Christ had courage to assert that, as Elias was a man
of like passions with us, so we are men of like passions with him,
and that God is the same God that He was, giving us the same foot
ing with himself; if we could stand up squarely to the doctrine that
God answers prayer in just the same way that he did of old ; if we
could even rejoice in the confidence that Stephen Grellet, and
John Woolman, and Gilbert Tennent, and a long roll of the Scots
Worthies, had their revelations outside of the canon, just as truly
as Paul and John inside, and that possibly there have been as
good ecstasies in our day, as they had in theirs, putting the disci
ple in as proper doubt whether he was in the body or out of the
body ; if we could say with Luther, " How often has it happened,

PREFACE. VU
and still does, that devils have been driven out in the name of
Christ, also, by the calling of his name and prayer, that the sick
have been healed ! " — holding generally such a ground as this, we
should no more be offended, as now, every few days, by another
and still another denier ofthe Gospels, beginning at an assumption
which really takes everything for granted that is at issue between
us. What I advanced on this subject, in the chapter referred to,
was not designed as an avowal of my fixed belief in any of the
particular facts there recited, but simply to show how we are
living always od the confines, so to speak, between the natural
and the supernatural, and that whoever will have his eyes opea
will see matters enough occurring, which it may not be the noblest
candor, or eren the truest intelligence, to set down as cases only
of illusion. I am not ignorant that in opening this gate of heaven
so long shut, we should make room for illusions and delusions
without number. And so, in fact, does Christianity itself. What
kind of religion would it be that, to keep out the fact of delusion,
should forbid even the possibility of delusion ? A full half the
value of our Christian experience lies iu the fact, that we can be
enthusiasts, visionaries, fanatics, false prophets, or wild mystics,
and notwithstanding learn how not to be. On the other hand,
may God save us from a gospel that will keep us back from such
kind of flightiness by giving us no air to breathe, lest we some
time fly away in it ! How many miserable and really foolish
delusions are the result of our private judgment, or intellectual
liberty ! Why not stifle also this ? No ; the very thing we most
want, in these times, is that kind of reverence and open docility
that looks for great and divine things, glorious incomings of God- -

Vill PREFACE.
gifts, and wonders, and powers from on high — occurring now
( Nothing but the liberty of believing much will save us from be
lieving nothing. And if, to save us from the mischance of believ
ing too much, we are forbidden to believe anything, or any but
some old thing, let us not wonder if there come about us swarms
of unbelievers that reject the old things too,
H. B.
May, 1864,

PREFACE.

The treatise here presented to the public was written, as regards
the matter of it, some years ago. It has been ready for the press
more than two years, and has been kept back, by the limitations I
am under, which have forbidden my assuming the small additional
care of its publication. It need hardly be said that the subject
has been carefully studied, as any subject rightfully should be,
that raises, for discussion, the great question of the age.
Scientifically measured, the argument of the treatise is rathei
an hypothesis for the matters in question, than a positive theory of
tliem. And yet. like every hypothesis, that gathers in, accommo
dates, and assimilates, all the facts of the subject, it gives, in that
one test, the most satisfactory and convincing evidence of its prac
tical truth. Any view which takes in easily, all the facts of a sub
ject, must be substantially true. Even the highest and most diffi
cult questions of science are determined in this manner. While it
is easy therefore to raise an attack, at this or that particular point,
call it an assumption, or a mere caprice of invention, or a paradox,
or a dialectically demonstrable error, there will yet remain, alter
all such particular denials, the fact that here is a wide hypothesis
of the world, and the great problem of life, and sin, and super
natural redemption, and Christ, and a christly Providence, and a
divinely certified history, and of superhuman gifts entered into tho

IV PEEFACR.
world, and finally of God as related to all, which liquidates these
stupendous facts, in issue between Christians and unbelievers, and
gives a rational account of them. And so the points that were
assaulted, and perhaps seemed to be carried, by the skirmishes of
detail, will be seen, by one who grasps the whole in which they
are comprehended, to be still not carried, but to have the.r reason
certified by the more general solution of which they are a part.
One who flies at mere points of detail, regardless of the whole to
which they belong, can do nothing with a subject like this. The
points themselves are intelligible only in a way of comprehension,
or as being seen in the whole to which they are subordinate.
It will be observed that the words of scripture are often cited,
and its doctrines referred to, in the argument. But this is never
done as producing a divine authority on the subject in question.
It is very obvious that an argument, which undertakes to settle the
truth of scripture history, should not draw on that history for its
proofs. The citations in question are sometimes designed to correct
mistakes, which are held by believers themselves, and are a great
impediment to the easy solution of scripture difficulties; some
times they are offered as furnishing conceptions of subjects, ..«._,
are difficult to be raised in any other manner ; sometimes they are
presented because they are clear enough, in their superiority, to
stand by their own self-evidence and contribute their aid, in that
manner, to the general progress of the argument.
I regret the accidental loss of a few references that could not
be recovered, without too much labor. h. b.

CONTENTS, CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY — QUESTION STATED.
Mankind naturally predisposed to believe in supernatural facts, 13. Ideolo
gists spring up, whom the Greeks called Sophists, 14. The Roman!
had their Sophists also, 15. And now the turn of Christianity is come,
16. The naturalism of our day reduces Christianity to a myth, in the
same way, 17. This issue is precipitated by modern science, 19. With
tokens, on all sides, adverse to Christianity, 21. First, we have the athe
istic school of Mr. Hume, 22. Next, Pantheism, 23. Next, the Phys-
icalists, represented by Phrenology, 23. The naturalistic characters of
Unitarianism, 24. The Assooiationists, 24. The Magnetic necromancy,
25. The classes mostly occupied with the material laws and forces, 25.
Modern politics, 26. The popular literature, 28. Evangelical teachers
fall into naturalism, without being aware of it, 28. But we undertake
no issue with science, 29. Our object is to find a legitimate place for the
supernatural, as included in the system of God, 31. And this, with an
ultimate reference to the authentication of the gospel history, 32
CHAPTER II.
DEFINITIONS — NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
Nature defined, 36. The supernatural defined, 37. Do not design uo
limit, or deny the propriety of other uses, 38. Definition makes us su
pernatural beings ourselves, 42. Our supernatural action illustrated, 43.
We operate supernaturally, by making new conjunctions of causes, 45.
Not acted on ourselves, by causes that are efficient through us, 46. Not
scale-beams, in our will, as governed necessarily by the strongest mo
tive, 47. In wrong, we consciously follow the weakest motive, 49. The
other functions of the soul, exterior to the will, are a nature, 51. Atlan
tic Monthly on executive limitations of power, 53. And yet we are con
scious, none the less, of liberty, 55. Self-determination indestructible, 56.
Hence the honor we put on heroes and martyrs, 57. If we aot supernat
urally, why not also God? 59. Not enough that God acts in the causes
of nature, 60.

CHAPTER III.
VATUHE IS NOT THE SYSTEM OP GOD — THINGS AND POWERS, HOW RELATED.
Nature oppresses our mind, at first, by her magnitudes, 64. Men, after all,
demand something supernatural, 66. Hence the appetite we discover,
for the demonstrations of necromancy, 67. Shelly, the atheist, makes a
mythology, 67. The defect of our new literature, that it has and yields
no inspiration, 63. The agreement of so many modes of naturalism,
signifies nothing, because they have no agreement among themselves. 7ft
1*

VI CONTENTS.
Familiarized to the subordination of causes in nature, that we may not
be disturbed by tha same fact in religion, 72. Strauss takes note of this
feet when denying the possibility of miracles, 74. Geology shows that
God thus subordinates nature, on a large scale, 76. In the creatior
of so many new races, in place of the extinct races, 77. He crea
ted their germs, 78. But man must have been created in maturity, 79.
The development theory inverts all the laws of organic and inorganic
substance, 81. The aspect of nature indicates interruptive and clashing
forces, that are not in the merely mineral causes, 83. Distinction of
Things and Powers, 84. Both fully contrasted, 86. Nature not the uni
verse, 86. A subordinate part or member of the great universal sys
tem, 87. The principal interest and significance of the universe is in the
powers, 89." CHAPTER IT.
PROBLEM OP EXISTENCE, AS RELATED TO THE FACT OP SIN.
The world of nature, a tool-house for the practice and moral training of
powers, 91. Their training, a training of consent, which supposes a
power of non-consent, i. e. sin, 92. Possibility of evil necessarily in
volved, 93. No limitation of omnipotence, 94. Why, then, does God
create with such a possibihty ? 95. May be God's plan to establish in
hohness, in despite of wrong, 96. No breach of unity involved in his
plan, 98. The real problem of existence is character, or the perfection
of liberty, 99. Which require a trial in society, 100. And this an em
bodiment in matter, 101. Will the powers break loose from God, as they
may? 103. God desires no such result, 104. When it comes, no sur
prise upon His plan, or annihilation of it, 105. Illustrated by the found
ing of a school, 105. No causes of sin, only conditions privative, 107.
What is meant by the term, 109. First condition privative — defect of
knowledge, 110. Have all categorical, but no experimental knowledge,
111. The subject guilty, as having the former, without the latter, 114.
Second condition privative — unacquainted with law, and therefore un
qualified for hberty, 117. A kind of prior necessity, therefore, that ho
be passed through a twofold economy, 119. Discover this twofold econ
omy in other matters, 120. A third condition privative, as regards social
exposure to the irruptions of bad powers, 123. This fact admitted by
the necromancers, 125. Sin then can not be accounted for, 128. No
validity in the objection, that God has been able to educate angels with
out sin, 129. Proof-text in Jude explained by Faber, 130. No objec
tion lies, that sin is made a necessary means of good, 133. The exist
ence of Satan explained, or conceived, 134. The supremacy of God not
diminished, but increased, by an eternal purpose to reduce the bad possi
bility, 137. CHAPTER V.
THE PACT OP SIN.
AH natiralism begins with some professed, or tacitly assumed, denial of ths
feet of sin, 142. On this point, Mr. Parker is ambiguous, 143. Fouriei
charges all evil against society, 145. Dr. Strauss, ah against the individ
ual, and none against society, 146. The popular, pantheistic literature
denies the feet of sin, 143. Appeal to observation for evidence, 149

CONTENTS. VU
We blame ourselves, as jvrong-doers, 151. Our demonstrations show us
to be exercised by tha a jnsciousness of sin, 154. We act on the suppo
sition that sin is ever to be expected, dreaded, provided against, 156.
Forgiveness supposes the fact, 159. So the pleasure we take in satiro, 160.
So the feeling of sublimity in the tragic sentiment, 161. Solutions of
fered by naturalists, insufficient and futile, 162. They call it "misdirec
tion," but it is self-miadirection, therefore sin, 163.

CHAPTER VI.
THE CONSEQUENCES OP SIN.
Sin has two forces, a spiritual and a dynamic, 165. By the latter as a
power of disturbance among causes, it raises storms of retribution agains*
itself, 166. It also makes new conjunctions of causes, that are destruct
ive and disorderly, 169. So that nature answers to it with groans, 170.
Thus it is with all the four great departments of life, and first, with the
soul, or with souls, 172. No law or function is discontinued, but all its
functions are become irregular and discordant, 173. Similar effects in
the body, or in bodies, 174. Hence disease, and, to some extent, certainly,
mortality itself, 176, Society is disordered by inheritance, through the
principle of organic unity involved in propagation, 177. Objection con
sidered, that God, in this way, does not give us a fair opportunity, 178.
Two modes of production possible ; by propagation, and by the direct cre
ation of each man, 179. The mode by propagation, with all its disad
vantages of hereditary corruption, shown to be greatly preferable, 179.
And yet, in this manner, society becomes organically disordered, 183.
Similar effects of mischief in the material worid, 186. Not true that
nature, as we know it, represents the beauty of God, 187. Swedenborg
holds that God creates through man, 188. And somehow it is clear that
the creation becomes a type of man, as truly as of God, 189. Battle
of the ants, 191. Deformities generally, consequences of sin, 191. Not
true that they are introduced to make contrasts for beauty, 193.

CHAPTER VII.
ANTICD7ATIVE CONSEQUENCES.
We find disorder, prey, deformity, in the world, before man's arrival — what
account shall be made of such a fact ? 194. There are two modes of
consequences, the subsequent, which are physical effects, and the antici-
pative, which respect the same facts before the time, 196. Propose now
the question of the anticipative consequences, 198. Evil beings in tho
world, before the arrival of man ; how far disorders in it may be due to
the effect of their sin, 199. Anticipative consequences just as truly con
sequences, as those which come after, 200. Intelligence must give to
kens beforehand of what it perceives, 201. Agassiz and Dana — premed
itations and prophetic types, 202. Such anticipative tokens necessary, lo
show that God understands his empire beforehand, 205. The more im
pressive, that they are fresh creations, to a great extent, as shown by Mr.
Agassiz, 207. Misshapen forms shown by Hugh Miller to increase, as tha
era of man approaches — as in the serpent race and many kinds of fishes,
208. God will moderate the pride of science, thus, by the facts of
science, 210. The world as truly a conaius, as an existing (act. 211

V1U CONTENTS.
The Pantheistic naturalism gives a different account of these deformi
ties, 211. Which account neither meets our want, nor oven explains the
facts, 212. Sin is seen to be a very great fact, as it must be, if it is any
thing, 214. Objection considered, that there was never, in this view,
any real kosmos at all, 215. Unnature is the grand res-alt of sin, 216
The bad miracle has transformed the world, 218.

CHAPTER VIII.
NO REMEDY IN DEVELOPMENT, OR SELF-REFORMATION.
Iwo rival gospels, 221. The first, which is development, or the progress
of the race, will-not restore the fall of sin, 221. No race begins at the
savage stato, and in that state there is no root of progress, 223. All the
advanced races appear, more or less distinctly, to have had visitations of
supernatural influence, 225. If there is a law of progress, why are so
many races degraded or extirpated ? 226. The first stage of man is a
crude state,, and the advanced and savage races are equally distant from
it, 227. Geology shows that God does not mend all disasters by devel
opment, 227. Healing is not development, 228. Generally associated
with supernatural power, of which it is the type, 230. No one dares, in
fact, to practically trust the development principle, whether in the state
or in the family, 232. The second rival gospel proposes self-reformation
or self-culture, with as little ground of hope, 234. No will-practice, or
ethical observance, can mend the disorder of souls, 235. These can not
restore harmony, 236. Nor liberty, 236. The only sufficient help, or
reliance, is God, 237. There is really no speculative difficulty in the dis
abilities of sin, 238. Even Plato denies the possibility of virtue, by any
mere human force, 241. Seneca, Ovid, Zenophanes, to the same effect, 244.
Plato, Strabo, Pliny, all indicate a want of some supernatural light, or rev
elation, 245. The conversion of Clement shows the fact in practical ex
hibition, 246.

CHAPTER IX.
THE SUPERNATURAL COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE AND SUBJECT TO FIXED
LAWS.
fhe world is a thing, into which all the powers may rightfully act them
selves, 250. Children at the play of ball, a good image of this higher truth,
251. Not the true doctrine of a supernatural agency, that God acts
through nature, 254. Did not so act in producing the new races of ge
ology, 254. Office of nature, as being designed to mediate the effects im
plied in duties and wrongs, 255. Nature the constant, and the super
natural, the variable agency, 257. God really governs the world, and by
a supernatural method, 258. Without this he has no liberty in nature,
more than if it were a tomb, 259. Manifestly we want a God living and
acting now, 260. And yet all this action ofGod, supposes no contraven
tion of laws, 261. Eeasons why this is inadmissible, 261. Several kinds
of law, but all agree in supposing the character of uniformity, 262. Thus
we have natural law and moral law, but God's supernatural action not
determined by these, is submitted always to the law of his end, 264.
His end being always the same, he will be as exactly submitted to it aa
nature tc her laws, 266. No returning here into the same circle as u.

CONTENTS. IX
aature, but a perpetually onward motion, 266. What occurs but ones
here, is done by a fixed law, 269. Many of the laws of the Spirit we
know, 270. The idea of superiority in nature, as being uniform cor
rected. 271. Also, the impression of a superior magnitude is nature,
273.

CHAPTER X.
THE CHARACTER OF JESUS FORBIDS HIS POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION WITH MEN.
The superhuman personality of Christ ia fully attested by hia character, 277.
Aud the description verifies itself, 277. Represented as beginning with
a perfect childhood, 278. Which childhood is described naturally, and
without exaggerations of fancy, 280. Represented always as an inno
cent being, yet with no loss of force, 283 His piety is unrepentant, yet
successfully maintained, 285. He united characters which men are never
able to unite perfectly, 286. His amazing pretensions ore sustained so as
never even to shock the skeptic, 288. Excels as truly in the passive vir
tues, 292. Bears the common trials, in a faultless manner of patience, 293.
His passion, sis regards the time, and the intensity, is not human, 295.
His undertaking to organize, on earth, a kingdom of God, is superhu
man, 298. His plan is universal in time, 300. He takes rank with the
poor, and begins with them for hia material, 301. Becoming the head
thus of a class, he never awakens a partisan feeling, 304. Hia teachings
are perfectly original and independent, 306. He teaches by no human or
philosophic methods, 308. He never veers to catch the assent of multi
tudes, 308. He is comprehensive, in the widest sense, 309. He ia per
fectly clear of superstition in a superstitious age, 311. He is no liberal,
yet shows a perfect charity, 312. The simplicity of his teaching is perfect,
314. His morality is not artificial or artiatic, 316. He is never anxious
for his success, 317. He impresses his superiority and hia real greatness
the more deeply, the more familiarly he is known, 318. Did any such
character exist, or is it a myth, or a human invention? 323. Is the char
acter sinless ? 324. Mr. Parker and Mr. Henuel think him imperfect, 326.
Answer of Milton to one of their accusations, 329. How great a matter
that one such character has lived in. our world, 331.

CHAPTER XI.
CHRIST PERFORMED MIRACLES.
Miracles do not prove the gospel, but the problem itself is to prove the
miracles, 333. General assumption of the skeptics, that miracles are in
credible — Spinoza, Hume, Strauss, Parker, 334 Miracles defined, 335.
What miracle is not, 337. Some concessions noted of the deniers of
miracles — Hennel, 339. Also of Dr. Strauss, 340. His solution of tha
immediate and the mediate action of God, 341. Proofs — That the super
natural action of man involves all the difficulties, 345. That sin is near
in appearance to a miracle, 346. That nature, assumed to be perfect and
not to be interruptel by God, is in fact become unnature already, 348.
That without something equivalent, the restoration of man is impossir
ble, 348. That nature was never designed to be the complete empire of
God, 349. That if God has ever done any thing he may as well do a
niracle now, 350. Then He is shown, even bv science, to hive performed

t CONTENTS.
miracles, 350. But the great proof is J&sup himself, having power,
without suspending any law of nature, 351. On an errand high enougfc
to justify miracles, 353. It is also significant that the deniers can mak?
no account of the history, which is at all rational — Strauss, 355. Mr.
Parker concedes the fact that Christ himself is a miracle, 357. Objection
— why not also maintain the ecclesiastical miracles? 359. That accord
ing to our definition there may be false miracles, 360. That if they are
credible in a former age, they also should be now, 361. That miracles
are demonstration of force, 363. But we rest in Jesus the chief mira
cle, 365.

CHAPTER XII.
WATER-MARKS IN THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
Fhe most convincing evidence, that which is already on hand, as in water
mark, undiscovered, 367. Principal evidence of the kind, the two econo
mies, letter and spirit, as being inherently necessary, 368. Overlooked
by our philosophers, 369. More nearly discerned by the heathen, 370.
Once thought of as necessary, the necessity is seen, 372. Scriptures an
ticipate all human wisdom here, 373. And, in this precedence, we dis
cover that they are not of man, 375. Another strong proof in the gos
pels, not commonly observed, that the supernatural fact of the incarna
tion is so perfectly and systematically carried out, 376. There ia no such
concinnity of facts in any of the mythological supernaturalisms, 376. It
appears in a multitude of points, as in the name, gospel, 377. In the
name, salvation, 378. In salvation by faith, 379. In justification by
faith, 381. In the setting up of a kingdom of God on earth, 384. In
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and his works, as related to Christ
and his, 385. In the doctrine of spiritual regeneration, 388. In the
sacred mystery of the Trinity, 391. Hence Napoleon, Hennel, and oth-
ors, express their admiration of the compactness and firm order of Chris
tianity, 396. Whence came this close, internal adaptation of parts in a
matter essentially miraculous ? 397. Only rational supposition, that the
fabric is all of God, as it pretends to be, 399. May see in Mormonism,
Mohammedanism, and Romanism, what man can do in compounding su
pernatural^ 400.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE WORLD IS GOVERNED SUPERNATURALLY, IN THE INTEREST CF CHRIS
TIANITY.
There is but one God, who, governing the world, must do it ooincidently
with what he is doing in Christ, 405. And this Christ himself boldly
affirms, 406. Two kinds of Providence, the natural and supernatural —
nature the fixed term between us and God, 407. And then there is a vari
able mode, in which we come into reciprocal relation with God — this is
the supernatural, 408. And in this field, God rules for Christianity's sake,
409. The evidences are, first, that things do not take place as they
should, if the effects of sin were left to the endless propagation of causes,
411. Hence then, while the great teachers of the world and their schools
disappear, Christianity remains, 412. Itself an institution, in the very

CONTENTS. XI
current of the flood, 414. A second evidence, that the events of tha
world show a divine hand, even that of Christ bearing rule, 415. The
Jewish dispersion, the Greek philosophy already waning, the Greek
tongue every where, the Roman Empire universal, a state of general
peace, and so the way of Christ is made ready, 417. So with the events
that followed, 418. But what of the dark ages, and other adverse facts?
421. Enough that this mystery of iniquity must work, till tbe gospel is
proved out, 422. Some events confessedly dark, and yet they might be
turned to wear a look of advantage, if only we could fathom their
import, 425. A third evidence, iu the spiritual changes wrought in
men — difficult to change a character, 428. The casea of Paul, Augustine,
and others, 431. The changes are facts; if Christianity did not work
them, a supernatural Providence did, for Christianity's sake, 434. Not
changed by their own ideas, 436. Not by theologic preconceptions — case
of •>¦ short-witted person — Brainard's conjurer, &c, 437. More satisfac
tory to conceive these results to be wrought by the Holy Spirit, which
comes to Really the same thing, 440. How the critics venture, with
great defect of modeaty, to show the subjects of such changes, that they
misconceive their experience, 443.
CHAPTER XIV.
MIRACLES AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS ARE NOT DISCONTINUED.
.f miracles are inherently incredible, nothing is gained by thrusting tneiu
back and cutting them short in time, 447. The closing up of the canon,
no reason of discontinuance, 448. Certainly not discontinued, for this
reason, in the days of Chrysoatom, 448. There have been suspensions,
here and there, but no discontinuance, 449. Does not follow that they
will occur, in later times, in the exact way of the former times, 450.
The reason of miraclea, in that oacillation toward extremes, which be
longs to the state of sin, 452. First, we swing toward reason, order,
uniformity; next, toward fanaticism, 453. Hence almost every appear
ance of supernatural gifts, that we can trace, has come*to its end in some
kind of excess, 455. Why it is that lying wonders are generally con
temporaneous, 456. The first thing impressed by investigation here, that
miracles could not have ceaaed at any given date — no such date can be
found, which they do not pass over, 460. Newman and the ecclesiastical
miracles, 460. Miracles of the "Scots Worthies," 461. Les Trembleurs
des Cevennes, or French prophets, 462. Les Convulsionnaires de Saint
Medard, 462. George Fox's miracles, and those of the Friends, 463.
Abundance of such facts in our own time, as in premonitions, answers to
prayer, healings, tongues, of the MacDonalds and the followers of Irving,
467. Case of Miss Fancourt, 467. Not true that the verdict of the
thinking men of our day is to decide such a question, 468. The thinking
men can make nothing of Joan of Arc, of Cromwell, and many other
well-attested characters, 472. But why do we only hear of such at a
distance ? — why not meet the persons, see the facts ? 474. We do — Cap
tain Tonnt's dream, 475. The testing of prayer by a physician, 477.
Appear to have had the tongues in H  , and other gifts, 478. Case of
healing by an English disciple, 479. Case of a diaeased cripple made
whole, 483. The visit of a prophet, 486. Obliged to admit that, while
such gifts are wholly credible, they are not so easily beheved by on?
whose mi id is preoccupied by a contrary habit of expectation, 491.

XII CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XV.
CONCLUSION STATED — USES AND RESULTS.
Argument recapitulated, 493. It does not settle, or at all move the ques
tion of inspiration, but sets the mind in a position to believe inspiration
easily, 495. The mythical hypothesis virtually removed, without any
direct answer, 496. Have not proved all the miracles, but miracles — let
every one discuss the particular questions for himself, 497. Objection
that every thing is thus surrendered, 498. Relation of the argument to
Mr. Parker's, 499. Particularly to his view of natural inspiration, 501.
The argument, if carried, will also affect the estimate held of natural the
ology, or modify the place given it, 505. And preserve the positive in
stitutions by showing a rational basis for their authority, 509. And
correct that false ambition of philanthropy, which dispenses with Chris
tianity as the regenerative institution of God, 512. And restore the true
apostolic idea :>f preaching, 514. And require intellectual and moral
philosophy to raise the great problem of existence, and recognize the fact
of sin and supernatural redemption, 516. Aji, last of all, will give to
faith icii Christian ex-cenence is»t solid basis on which they may be ex
pected to unioia greater results, 52b.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY-QUESTION STATED
In tlie remoter and more primitive ages of the world,
sometimes called mythologic, it will be observed that man
kind, whether by reason of some native instinct as yet
uncorrupted, or some native weakness yet uneradicated,
are abundantly disposed to believe in things supernatural.
Thus it was in the extinct religions of Egypt, Phoenicia,
Greece, and Eome ; and thus also it still is in the existing
mythologic religions of the East. Under this apparently
primitive habit of mind, we find men readiest, in fact, to
believe in that which exceeds the terms of mere nature ;
in deities and apparitions of deities, that fill the heavens
and earth with their sublime turmoil ; in fates and furies ;
in nymphs and graces ; in signs, and oracles, and incanta
tions; in "gorgons and chimeras dire." Their gods are
charioteering in the sun, presiding in the mountain tops,
rising out of the foam of the sea, breathing inspirations
in the gas that issues from caves and rocky fissures, loos
ing their rage in the storms, plotting against each other
in the intrigues of courts, mixing in battles to give
success to their own people or defeat the people of
some rival deity. All departments and regions of the
world are full of their miraculous activity. Above
ground, they are managing the thunders; distilling in
showers, or settling in dews; ripening or blasting the
harvests ; breathing health, or poisoning the air with pesti
lential infections. In the ground they stir up volcanio
fires, and wrestle in earthquakes that shake down citiea.
2

14 THE GREEK SOPHISTS
In the deep world underground, they receive the ghosts ci
departed men, and preside in Tartarean majesty over the
realms of the shades. The unity of reason was nothing
to these Gentiles. They had little thought of nature as
an existing scheme of order and law. Every thing waa
supernatural. The universe itself, in all its parts, was
only a vast theater in which the gods and demigods were
acting their parts.
But there sprung up, at length, among the Greeks, some
four or five centuries before the time of Christ, a class of
speculative neologists and rationalizing critics, called Soph
ists, who began to put these wild myths of religion to the
test of argument. If we may trust the description of
Plato, they were generally men without much character,
either as respects piety or even good morals ; a conceited
race of Illuminati, who more often scoffed than argued
against the sacred things of their religion. Still it was no
difficult thing for them to shake, most effectually, the con
fidence of the people in schemes of religion so intensely
mythical. And it was done the more easily that the more
moderate and sober minded of the Sophists did not pro
pose to overthrow and obliterate the popular religion, but
only to resolve the mythic tales and deities into certain
great facts and powers of nature ; and so, as they pretended,
to find a more sober and rational ground of support for
their religious convictions. In this manner we are in
formed that one of their number, Eumerus, a Cyrenian,
" resolved the whole doctrine concerning the gods into a
history of nature." *
The religion of the Eomans, at a later period, under
went a similar process, and became an idle myth, having
* Neander, Vol. I., p. 6.

AND THEIR TIMES. 15
no earnest significance and as little practical authority iD
the convictions of the people. And, when Christ came,
the Sadducees were practicing on the Jewish faith in much
the same way. As philosophy entered, religion was fall
ing everywhere before its rationalizing processes. It was
poetry on one side and dialectics on the other ; and the
dialectics were, in this case, more than a match for the
poetry, — as they ever must be, until their real weakness
and the cheat of their pretensions are discovered. What
the Christian father, Justin Martyr, says of the Sophists
of his time, was doubtless a sufficiently accurate account
of the others in times previous, and may be taken as a
faithful picture of the small residuum of religious convic
tion left by them all. "They seek," he says, "to con
vince us that the divinity extends his care to the grea*
whole and to the several kinds, but not to me and to you,
not to men as individuals. Hence it is useless to pray to
him ; for every thing occurs according to the unchange
able law of an endless cycle."*
Or, we may take the declaration of Pliny, from the side
of the heathen philosophy itself, though many were not
ready to go the same length, preferring to retain religion,
which they oftener called superstition, as a good instru
ment for the state and useful as a restraint upon the com
mon people. He says : — " All religion is the offspring of
necessity, weakness, and fear. What God is, if in truth
he be any thing distinct from the world, it is beyond the
compass of man's understanding to know." f
Thus, between the destructive processes of reason enter
ing on one side to demolish, and Christianity on the other
* Neander, Vol. I., p. 9. + Neander, Vol. I., p. 10.

16 THE CHRISTIAN SOPHISTS,
to offer itself as a substitute, the old mythologic religions
fell, and were completely swept away.
And now, at last, the further question comes, viz.,
whether Christianity itself is also, in its turn, to experi
ence the same fate, and be exterminated by the same or a
closely similar process? Is it now to be found that Chris
tianity is only another form of myth, and is it so to be re
solved into the mere "history of nature," as the other re
ligions were before it ? Is it now to be discovered that the
prophecy and miracle of the Old Testament, and all the
formally historic matters even of the gospels and epistles
of the New, are reducible to mere natural occurrences,
"under the unchangeable laws of an endless cycle?"
Is this process now to end in the discovery, beyond
which there can be no other, that God himself is, in
truth, nothing "distinct from the world? "
This is the new infidelity: not that rampant, crude-
minded, and malignant scoffing which, in a former age,
undertook to rid the world of all religion ; on the contrary,
it puts on the air and speaks in the character of a genuine
scholarship and philosophy. It simply undertakes, if we
can trust its professions, to interpret and apply to th'e facia
of scripture the true laws of historic criticism. It more
generally speaks in the name of religion, and does not
commonly refuse even the more distinctive name of Chris
tianity.. Coming thus in shapes of professed deference to
revealed religion, many persons appear to be scarcely
aware of the questions it is raising, the modes of thought
it is generating, and the general progress toward mere
naturalism it is beginning to set in motion. Many, also,
are the more effectually blinded to the tendency of the

OR NATURALIZING CRITICS. 17
times, that so many really true opinions and so many right
sentiments, honorable to God and religion, are connected
with the pernicious and false method by which it is, in one
way or another, extinguishing the faith of religion in the
world. It proposes to make a science of religion, and
what can be more plausible than to have religion become
a science ?
It finds a religious sentiment in all men, which, in one
view, is a truth. It finds a revelation of God in all things,
which also is a truth. It discovers a universal inspiration
of God in human souls ; which, if it be taken to meau
that they are inherently related to God, and that God, in
the normal state, would be an illuminating, all-moving
presence in them, is likewise a truth. It rejoices also in
the discovery of great and good men, raised up in all
times to be seers and prophets of God ; which, again, is
not impossible, if we take into account the possibility of a
really supernatural training or illumination, outside of the
Jewish cultus ; as in the case of Jethro, Job, and Cornelius,
including probably Socrates and many others like him,
who were mwardly taught of God and regenerated by the
private mission of his Spirit.
But exactly this the new infidelity can not allow. All
pretenses of a supernatural revelation, inspiration, or ex
perience, it rejects ; finding a religion, beside which ther?
is no other, within the terms of mere nature itself; a uni
versal, philosophic, scientific religion. In this it luxuri
ates, expressing many very good and truly sublime sent'
ments ; sentiments of love, and brotherhood, and worship
quoting scripture, when it is convenient, as it quotes tt.-i
Orphic hymns, or the Homeric and Sybilline verses, an-3
testifying the profoundest admiration to Jesus Christ, ic

18 PRESENT TENDENCIES,
common with Numa, Plato, Zoroaster, Confucius, Moham
med, and others ; and perhaps allowing that he is, on the
whole, the highest and most inspired character that haa
ever yet appeared in the world. All this, on the level of
mere nature, without miracle, or incarnation, or resurrec
tion, or new-creation, or any thing above nature. Such
representations are only historic myths, covering perhaps
real truths, but, as regards the historic form, incredible.
Nothing supernatural is to be admitted. Eedemption it
self, considered as a plan to raise man up out of thraldom,
under the corrupted action of nature, — rolling back its
currents and bursting its constraints, — is a fiction. There
is no such thraldom, no such deliverance, and so far Chris
tianity is a mistake ; a mistake, that is, in every thing that
constitutes its grandeur as a plan of salvation for the
world. We have heard abundantly of these and such like aber
rations from the christian truth in Germany, and also in
the literary metropolis of our own country. But we have
not imagined any general tendency, it may be, in this
direction, as a peculiarity of our times. If so, we have a
discovery to make ; for, though it may not be true that
any large proportion of the men of our times have dis
tinctly and consciously accepted this form of unbelief, yet
the number of such is rapidly increasing, and, what is
worse, the number of those who are really in it, without
knowing it, is greater and more rapidly increasing still.
The current is this way, and the multitudes or masses of
the age are falling into it. Let us take our survey of the
forms of doubt or denial that are converging on this com
mon center and uniting, as a common force, against the
faith of any thing supernatural, and so against the possi

CREATED BY SCIENCE, 19
bility, in fact, qf Christianity as a gospel of salvation to
the world.

From the first moment or birth-time of modern science,
if we could fix the moment, it has been clear that Chris
tianity must ultimately come into a grand issue of life and
death with it, or with the tendencies embodied in its pro
gress. Not that Christianity has any conflict with tho
facts of science, or they with it. On the contrary, since
both it and nature have their common root and harmony
in God, Christianity is the natural foster-mother of science,
and science the certain handmaid of Christianity. And
both together, when rightly conceived, must constitute one
complete system of knowledge. But the difficulty is here;
that we see things only in a partial manner, and that the
two great modes of thought, or intellectual methods, that
of Christianity in the supernatural department of God's
plan, and that of science in the natural, are so different
that a collision is inevitable and a struggle necessary to
the final liquidation of the- account between them ; or,
what is the same, necessary to a proper settlement of the
conditions of harmony.
Thus, from the time of Galileo's and Newton's discove
ries, down to the present moment of discovery and research
in geological science, we have seen the Christian teach
ers stickling for the letter of the Christian documents and
alarmed for their safety, and fighting, inch by inch and
with solemn pertinacity, the plainest, most indisputable or
even demonstrable facts. On the other side, the side of
science, multitudes, especially of the mere dilettanti, have
been boasting, almost every month, some discovery thai
was to make a fatal breach upon revealed religion.

20 OR THE MEiHOD OF SCIENCE.
And a much greater danger to religion is to be appre
hended from science than this, viz., the danger that comes
from what may be called a bondage under the method of
science, — as if nothing could ba true, save as it is proved
by the scientific method. Whereas, the method of all tha
higher truths of religion is different, being the method of
faith ; a verification by the heart, and not by the notions
of the head.
Busied in nature, and profoundly engrossed with her
phenomena, confident of the uniformity of her laws,
charmed with the opening wonders revealed in her pro
cesses, armed with manifold powers contributed to the
advancement of commerce and the arts by the discovery
of her secrets, and pressing onward still in the inquest,
with an eagerness stimulated by rivalry and the expecta
tion of greater wonders yet to be revealed, — occupied in
this manner, not only does the mind of scientific men but
of the age itself become fastened to, and glued down upon,
nature; conceiving that nature, as a frame of physical
order, is itself the system of God ; unable to imagine any
thing higher and more general to which it is subordinate.
Imprisoned, in this manner, by the terms and the method
of nature, the tendency is to find the whole system of God
included under its laws ; and then it is only a part of the
same assumption that we are incredulous in regard to any
modification, or seeming interruption of their activity,
from causes included in the supernatural agency of per
sons, or in those agencies of God himself that complete
the unity and true system of his reign. And so it comes tc
pass that, while the physical order called nature is perhaps
only a single and very subordinate term of that universal
divine system, a mere pebble chafing in the ocean-bed of

THE REVISION PREPARING. 21
its eternity, we refuse to believe that this pebble can be
acted on at all from without, requiring all events and
changes in it to take place under the laws of acting it has
inwardly in itself. There is no incarnation therefore, no
miracle, no redemptive grace, or experience; for God's
system is nature, and it is incredible that the laws of
nature should be interrupted ; all which is certainly true,
if there be no higher, more inclusive system under which
it may take place systematically, as a result even of sys
tem itself.
And exactly this must be the understanding of mankind,
at some future time, when the account between Christianity
and nature shall have been fully liquidated. When that
point is reached, it will be seen that the real system of God
includes two parts, a natural and a supernatural, and it
will no more be incredible that one should act upon the
other, than that one planet or particle in the department
of nature should act upon and modify the action of another.
But we are not yet ready for a discovery so difficult to be
made. Thus far the tendency is visible, on every side, to
believe in nature simply, and in Christianity only so far as
it conforms to nature and finds shelter under its laws. And
the mind of the christian world is becoming, every day,
more and more saturated with this propensity to natural
ism ; gravitating, as it were, by some fixed law, though
imperceptibly or unconsciously, toward a virtual and real
unbehef in Christianity itself; for the Christianity that is
become a part only of nature, or is classified under nature,
is Christianity extinct. That we may see how far the mind
of an age is infected by this naturalizing tendency, let us
note a few of the thousand and one forms in which it
appears.

22 ATHEISM NATURALISTIC, OF COURSE.
First we have the relics of the old school of denial and
atheism, headed most conspicuously by Mr. Hume and the
French philosophers. All atheists are naturalists of neces
sity. And atheism there will be in the world as long as
sin is in it. If the doctrine dies out as argument, it will
remain as a perverse and scoffing spirit. Or it will be re
produced in the dress of a new philosophy. Dying out as
a negation of Hobbes or Hume, it will reappear in the
positive and stolidly physical pretendership of Comte,
But, whatever shape or want of shape it takes, destructive
or positive, — a doctrine or a scoffing, a thought of the head
or a distemper of the passions, — it will of course regard a
supernatural faith as the essence of all unreason.
Still it can not be said that the negations of Mr. Hume
are gone by,' as long as they are assumed and practically
held as fundamental truths, by many professed teachers
of Christianity ; for it is remarkable that our most recent
and most thorough-going school of naturalists, or natural
izing critics in the Christian scriptures, really place it as
the beginning and first principle of criticism, that no
miracle is credible, or possible. This they take by assump
tion, as a point to be no longer debated, after the famous
argument of Hume. The works of Strauss, Hennel, New
man, Froude, Fox, Parker, all more or less distinguished
for their ability, as for their virtual annihilation of the
gospels, are together rested on this basis. They are not
all atheists; perhaps none of them will admit that distinc
tion; some of them even claim to be superlatively chris
tian. But the assault upon Christianity, in which they
agree, is the one from which the greatest harm is now to
be expected, and that, in great part, for the reason that
they do not acknowledge the true genealogy of their doc

PANTHEISTS AND PHRENOLOGISTS. 23
trine, and that, hovering over the gulf that separates athe
ism from Christianity, they take away faith from one, with
out exposing the baldness and forbidding sterility of the
other. They have many apologies too, in the unhappy
incumbrances thrown upon the christian truth by its de
fenders, which makes the danger greater still.
Next we have the school or schools of pantheists ; who
identify God and nature, regarding the world itself and its
history as a necessary development of God, or the con
sciousness of God. Of course there is no power out of
nature and above it to work a miracle ; consequently no
revelation that is more than a development of nature.
Next in order comes the large and vaguely-defined body
of physicalists, who, without pretending to deny Chris
tianity, value themselves on finding all the laws of obliga
tion, whether moral or religious, in the laws of the body
and the world. The phrenologists are a leading school in
this class, and may be taken as an example of the others.
Human actions are the results of organization. Laws of
duty are only laws of penalty or benefit, inwrought in the
physical order of the world ; and Combe " On the Con
stitution of Man " is the real gospel, of which Christianity
is only a less philosophic version. Thousands of persons
who have no thought of rejecting Christianity are sliding
continually into this scheme, speaking and reasoning every
hour about matters of duty, in a way that supposes Chris
tianity to be only an interpreter of the ethics of nature,
and resolving duty itself, or even salvation, into mere pru
dence, or skill; — a learning to walk among things, so as
not to lose one's balance and fall or be hurt; cr, when it
is lost, finding how to recover and stand up again.
CloseJy related to these, or else included among them.

24 ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF UNITARIANS.
we are to reckon, with some exceptions, the very intelli
gent, influential body of Unitarian teachers of Christianity.
Maintaining, as they have done with great earnestness, the
truth of the scripture miracles, they furnish a singular and
striking illustration of the extent to which a people may
be slid away from their speculative tenet, by the practical
drift of what may be called their working scheme. Deny
ing human depravity, the need of a supernatural grace
also vanishes, and they set forth a religion of ethics, instead
of a gospel to faith. Their word is practically, not re
generation, but self-culture. There is a good seed in us,
and we ought to make it grow ourselves. The gospel
proposes salvation ; a better name is development. Christ
is a good teacher or interpreter of nature, and only so a
redeemer. God, they say, has arranged the very scheme
of the world so as to punish sin and reward virtue ; there
fore, any such hope of forgiveness as expects to be deliv
ered of the natural effects of sin by a supernatural and
regenerative experience, is vain; because it implies the
failure of God's justice and the overturning of a natural
law. Whoever is, delivered of sin, must be delivered by
such a life as finally brings the great law of justice on his
side. To be justified freely by grace is impossible.*
Again, the myriad schools of Associationists take it as
a fundamental assumption, whether consciously or uncon
sciously, that human nature belongs to the general order
of nature, as it comes from God, and that nothing is want
ing to the full perfection of man's happiness, but to have
society organized according to nature, that is scientifically.
No new-creation ofthe soul in good, proceeding from a point
above nature, is needed or to be expected. The propensi-
* Dewey's Sermon on Retribution

ASSOCIATIONISTS AND MAGNETIST3. 25
ties and passions of men are all right now ; " attractions
are proportioned to destinies " in them, as in the planets.
What is wanted, therefore, is not the supernatural redemp
tion of man, but only a scientific reorganization of
society. Next we have the magnetists or seers of electricity,
opening other spheres and conditions of being by electric
impacts, and. preparing a religion out of the revelations of
natural clairvoyance and scientific necromancy; the more
confident of the absurdity of the christian supernaturalism,
or the plan of redemption by Christ, that they have been so
mightily illuminated by the magnetic revelations. They are
greatly elated also by other and more superlative discove
ries, in the planets and third heavens and the two superior
states ; boasting a more perfect and fuller opening of the
other world than even Christianity has been able to make.
Again it will be observed that almost any class of men,
whose calling occupies them much with matter and its
laws, have always, and now more than ever, a tendency to
merely naturalistic views of religion. This is true of phy
sicians. Continually occupied with the phenomena of the
body, and its effects on the mind, they are likely, without
denying Christianity, to reduce it practically to a form of
naturalism. So of the large and generally intelligent class
of mechanics. Having it for the occupation and principal
study of life to adjust applications of the great laws of
chemistry and dynamics, and exercised but little in sub
jects and fields of thought external to mere nature, they
very many of them come to be practical unbelievers in
every thing but nature. They beheve in cause and effect,
and are likely to be just as much more skeptical in regard
to any higher and better faith. Active-minded, ingenious.

26 MATERIAL ENGAGEMENTS.
and sharp, but restricted in the range of their exercise,
they surrender themselves, in great numbers, to a feeling
of unreality in every thing but nature.
Again the tendency of modern politics, regarded a&
concerned, with popular liberty, is in the same direction.
Civil government is grounded, as the people are every day
informed by their leaders, with airs of assumed statesman
ship, in a social compact; a pure fiction, assumed to
account for whole worlds of fact ; for every body knows
that no such compact was ever formed, or ever supposed
to be, by any people in the world. It has the advantage,
nevertheless, of accounting for the political state, atheisti-
cally, under mere nature; and is, therefore, the more
readily accepted, though it really accounts for nothing.
For if every subject in the civil state were in it as a real
contractor, joining and subscribing the contract himself,
what is there even then to bind him to his contract, save
that, in the last degree, he is bound by the authority of
God and the sanctions of religion. Besides there never
can be, in this view, any such thing as legislation, but
only an extended process of contracting; for legislation
is the enactment of laws, and laws have a morally binding
authority on men, not as contractors, but as subjects. It
seems to be supposed that this doctrine of a social compact
has some natural agreement with popular institutions,
where laws are enacted by a major vote; whereas the
major supposes a minor, non-assenting vote ; and as this
minor vote has been always a fact, from first to last, the
compact theory fails, after all, to show how majorities get
a right to govern that is better, even theoretically, than
the right of any single autocrat. There is, m fact, no con
ceivable basis of civil authority and law, which does not

POLITICS AND PROGRESS. 27
recognizs the state, as being, in this form or in that, a crea
tion of Providence and, as Prqvidence manages the worid
m. the interest of redemption, a fact supernatural ; which
does not recognize the state as God's minister in the super
natural works and ends of his administration — appointed
by him to regulate the tempers, restrain the passions, re
dress the wrongs, shield the persons, and so to conserve
the order of a fallen race, existing only for those higher
aims which he is prosecuting in their history. Still we
are contriving, always, how to get some ground of civil
order that separates it wholly from God. A social com
pact, popular sovereignty, the will of the people, any
thing that has an atheistic jingle in the sound and stops in
the plane of mere nature best satisfies us. We renounce;
in this manner, our true historic foster-mother, religion,
taking for the oracle and patron saint of our politics Jean
Jacques Eousseau. And the result is that the immense
drill of our political life, more far-reaching and powerful
than the pulpit, or education, or any protest of argument,
operates continually and with mournful certainty against
the supernatural faith of Christianity. Hence too it is that
we hear so much of commerce, travel, liberty, and the
natural spread of great inventions, as causes that are start
ing new ideas, and must finally emancipate and raise all
the nations of mankind. In which it seems to be sup
posed that there is even a law of self-redemption in society
itself. As if these external signs or incidents of progress
were its causes also ; or as if they were themselves un
caused by the supernatural and quickening power of Christ
Whether Christianity can finally survive this death-damp
of naturalism in our political and social ideas, remains to
be seen.

*28 REIGNING LITERATURE.
I have only to add, partly as a result of all these
causes, and partly as a joint cause with them, that the
popular literature of the times is becoming generally satur
ated with naturalistic sentiments of religion. The litera
ture of no other age of the world was ever more religious in
the form, only the religion of it is, for the most part, rather
a substitute for Christianity than a tribute to its honor ; —
a piracy on it, as regards the beautiful and sublime pre
cepts of ethics it teaches, but a scorner only the more
plausible of whatever is necessary to its highest authority,
as a gift from God to the world. It praises Christ, as great
or greatest among the heroes; finds a God in the all,
whom it magnifies in imposing pictures of sublimity ; re
joices in the conceit of an essential divinity in the soul
and its imaginations; dramatizes culture, sentiment, and
philanthropy ; and these, inflated with an airy scorn of all
that implies redemption, it offers to the world, and
especially to the younger class of the world, as a more
captivating and plausible religion.
To pursue the enumeration further is unnecessary.
What we mean by«a discussion of the supernatural truth
of Christianity is now sufficiently plain. We undertake
the argument from a solemn conviction of its necessity,
and because we see that the more direct arguments and
appeals of religion are losing their power over the public
mind and conscience. This is true especially of the young,
who pass into life under the combined action of so many
causes, conspiring to infuse a distrust of whatever is super
natural in religion. Persons farther on in life are out of
the reach of these new influences, and, unless their atten
tion is specially called to the fact, have little suspicion of
what is going on in the mind of the rising classes of the

ORTHODOXY NO SB-CURITY 29
world, — more and more saturated every day with this in
sidious form of unbelief. And yet we all, with perhaps
the exception of a few who are too far on to suffer it, are
more or less infected with the same tendency. Like an
atmosphere, it begins to envelope the common mind of the
world. We frequently detect its influence in the practical
difficulties of the young members of the churches, who do
not even suspect the true cause themselves. Indeed, there
is nothing more common than to hear arguments advanced
and illustrations offered, by the most evangelical preachers,
that have no force or meaning, save what they get from
the current naturalism of the day. We have even heard
a distinguished and carefully orthodox preacher deliver a
discourse; the very doctrine of which was inevitable, un
qualified naturalism. Logically taken and carried out to
its proper result, Christianity could have had no ground
of standing left, — so little did the preacher himself under
stand the true scope of his doctrine, or the mischief that
was beginning to infect his conceptions of the christian
truth. In the review we have now sketched, it may easily bo
seen on what one point the hostile squadrons of unbelief
ore marching. Never before, since the inauguration of
Christianity in our world, has any so general and moment
ous issue been made with it as this which now engages
and gathers to itself, in so many ways, the opposing forces
of human thought and society. Before all these combina
tions the gospel must stand, if it stands ; and against all
these must triumph, if it triumphs. Either it must yield,
or they must finally coalesce and become its supporters.
Do we undertake then, with a presumptuous and oven
3*

SO WHAT WE DO NOT ATTEMPT,
preposterous confidence, to overturn all the science, argu
ment, influence of the modern age, and so to vindicate
the supernaturalism of Christianity ? By no means. We
do not conceive that any so heavy task is laid upon us.
On the contrary, we regard all these adverse powers as
being, in another view, just so many friendly powers,
every one of which has some contribution to make for the
firmer settlement and the higher completeness of the chris
tian faith. They are not in pure error, but there is a dis
coverable and valuable truth for us, maintained by every
one, if only it were adequately conceived and set, as it will
be, in its fit place and connection. Mr. Hume's argu-
meat, for example, contains a great and sublime truth;
viz., that nothing ever did or will take place out of sys
tem, or apart from law — not even miracles themselves,
which must, in some higher view, be as truly under law
and system as the motions even of the stars. Pantheism
has a great truth, and is even wanted, as a balance of rec
tification to the common error that places God afar off,
outside of his works or above, in some unimagined alti
tude. No doubt there is a truth somewhere in spiritism
which will yet accrue to the benefit of Christianity, or, at
least, to an important rectification of our conceptions of
man. So of all the other schools and modes of naturalism
that I have named. I have no jealousy of science, or any
fear, whether of its facts or its arguments. For God, we
may be certain, is in no real disagreement with himself.
It is only a matter of course that, until the gTeat account
between Christianity and science is liquidated, there should
be an appearance of collision, or disagreement, which does
not really exist. As little do we propose to go into a des
ultory battle with the manifold schemes of naturalism

AND WHAT WE DO, 31
above described ; still less to undertake a reconciliation of
each or any of them with the christian truth. What I
propose is simply this ; to find a legitimate place for the super
natural in the system of God, and show it as a necessary part
of the divine system itself.
If I am successful, I shall make out an argument for the
supernatural in Christianity that will save these two con
ditions: — First, the rigid unity of the system of God;
secondly, the fact that every thing takes place under fixed
laws. I shall make out a conception both of nature and
of supernatural redemption by- Jesus Christ, the incar
nate Word of God, which exactly meets the magnificent
outline- view of God's universal plan, given by the great
apostle to the Gentiles, — "And He is before all things, and
by Him [in Him, it should be,] all things consist." Chris
tianity, in other words, is not an afterthought of God, but
a forethought. It even antedates the worid of nature, and
is "before all things," — "before the foundation of the
world." Instead of coming into the world, as being no
part of the system, or to interrupt and violate the system
of things, they all consist, come together into system, in
Christ, as the center of unity and the head of the universal
plan. The world was made to include Christianity ; under
that becomes a proper and complete frame of order; to
that crystalizes, in all its appointments, events, and expe
riences ; in that has the design or final cause revealed, by
which all its distributions, laws, and historic changes are
determined and systematized. All which is beautifully
and even sublimely expressed in the single word "consist"
a word that literally signifies standing together ; as when
many parts coalesce in a common whole. Hence it is the
more to be regretted that the translators, in the rendering

82 TO FORTIFY
" by him," instead of the more literal and exact rendering
"in him," have so far confused the significance and
obscured the beauty of a passage that, properly translated,
is so remarkable for the transcendent, philosophic sub-
imity of its import.
The same truth is declared more circumstantially and aa
much less succinctly in the gospel of John. "All things
are made by Him, and without Him [i. e., apart from Him
as the formal cause or regulative idea of the plan,] was
not any thing made that was made." Or to the same
effect, — " He was in the world," — " he came unto his own,"
affirming that he was here before he came as the son of
Mary; and that, when he came, he came not as an intruder,
defiant of all previous order in nature, but as coming unto
" his own," to fulfill the creative idea centered in his per
son, and to complete the original order of the plan.
Such is the general object of the treatise I now under
take ; and, if I am able, in this manner, to obtain a solid,
intellectual footing for the supernatural, evincing not only
the compatibility, Jbut the essentially complementary rela
tion of nature and the supernatural, as terms included, ab
origine, in the unity of God's plan, or system, I shall, of
course, produce a conviction, as much more decided and
solid, of those great practical truths, which belong to the
supernatural side of Christianity; such as incarnation,
regeneration, justification by faith, divine guidance, and
prayer ; — truths which are now held so feebly, and in »
manner so timid and partial, as to rob them of their genu
ine power. Any thing which displaces the present jeal
ousy of what is supernatural, or abolishes the timidity of
faith, must, as we may readily see, be an important contri-

CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 33
bution to christian experience and the practical life of
religion. Nothing do we need so deeply as a new inau
guration of faith ; or, perhaps I should rather say, a rein.-
auguration of the apostolic faith, and the spirit which dis
tinguished the apostolic age. And yet a reinauguration
of this must, in some very important sense, be a new
inauguration ; for it can be accomplished only by some
victory over naturalism, that prepares a rational founda
tion for the supernatural — such as was not wanted, and
was, therefore, impossible to be prepared, in the first age
of the church.
It is scarcely necessary to add that, while I am looking
with interest to the emboldening of faith in the great
truths of holy experience, I have a particular looking in my
argument toward the authentication of the christian scrip
tures, in a way that avoids the inherent difficulties of the
question of a punctually infallible and verbal inspiration.
These difficulties, I feel constrained to admit, are insuper
able ; for, when the divine authority of the scriptures is
made to depend thus on the question of their most rigid,
strictest, most punctual infallibility, they are made, in fact,
to stand or fall by mere minima and not by any thing
principal in them, or their inspiration. And' then what
ever smallest doubt can be raised, at any most trivial
point, suffices to imperil every thing, and the main ques
tion is taken at the greatest possible disadvantage. The
argument so stated must inevitably be lost ; as, in fact, it
always is. For it has even to be given up, at the outset,
by concessions that leave it nothing on which to stand
For no sturdiest advocate of a verbal and punctual inspir
ation can refuse to admit variations of copy, and the prob
able or possible mistake *>f this or that manuscript, in a

34 TO ESTABLISH
transfer of names and numerals. It is equally difficult
to withhold the admission, here and there, of a possible
interpolation, or that words have crept into the text
that were once in the margin. Starting, then, with a
definition of infallibility, fallibility is at once and so far
admitted. After all, the words, syllables, iotas of the
book are coming into question, — the infallibility is logi
cally at an end even by the supposition. The moment
we begin to ask what manuscript we shall follow? what
words and numerals correct? what interpolations extir
pate? we have possibly a large work on hand, and
where is the limit? Shall we stop short of giving up
1 John, v., 7, or shall we go a "large stride beyond,
and give up the first chapters of Matthew and Luke?
We are also obliged to admit that the canon was not
made by men infallibly guided by the Spirit; and then
the possibility appears to logically follow that, despite of
any power they had to the contrary, some book may have
been let into the canon which, with many good things,
has some specks of error in it. Besides, if the question
is thrown back upon us, at this point, we are obliged to ad
mit, and do, as a familiar point of orthodoxy, that our own
polarities are disturbed, our judgment discolored, by sin;
so that, if the book is infallible, the sense of it as infallible
is not and can not be in us ; how then can we affirm it,
or maintain it, in any such manner of strictness and exact
perception? We could not even sustain the infallibility
of God in this manner ; i. e. because we are able to know it,
item by item, as comprehending in ourselves a complete
sense of his infallibility. We establish God's infallibility
only by a constructive use of generals, the particulars o*

THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 35
which are conceived by us only in the faintest, most par-
ial manner.
Now these difficulties, met in establishing a close and
punctual infallibility, are rather logical than real, and
originate, not in any defect of the scriptures, but in a state
ment which puts us in a condition to make nothing of a
good cause, — a condition to be inevitably worsted. Indeed
there is no better proof of a divine force and authority in
the scriptures, able to affirm and always affirming itself in
its own right, even to the end of the world, than that they
continue to hold their ground so firmly, when the speculat
ive issue joined in their behalf has been so badly chosen and,
if we speak of what is true logically, so uniformly lost.
I see no way to gain the verdict which, in fact, they
have hitherto gained for themselves, but to change our
method and begin at another point, just where they
themselves begin ; to let go the minima and lay hold of
the principals ; — those great, outstanding verities, in which
they lay their foundations, and by which they assert them
selves. As long as the advocates of strict, infallible
inspiration are so manifestly tangled and lost in the trivi
alities they contend for, these portentous advances of
naturalism will continue. And, as many are beginning
already, with no fictitious, concern, to imagine that Chris
tianity is now being put upon its last trial, — whether to
stand or not they hardly dare be confident, — why should
they be farther discouraged by adhering to a mode of trial
which, in being lost, really decides nothing. Let the
church of God, and all the friends of revelation, as a
word of the Lord to faith, turn their thoughts upon an
issue more intelligent and significant, and one that can be
certainly sustained.

CHAPTER II.
DEFINITIONS-NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
In order to the intelligent prosecution of our subject
we need, first of all, to settle on the true import of cer
tain words and phrases, by the undistinguishing and con
fused use of which, more than by any other cause, the
unbelieving habit of our time has been silently and im
perceptibly determined. They are such as these : — " na
ture," "the system of nature," "the laws of nature,
"universal nature," "the supernatural," and the like
The first and last named, "nature" and the "supernatu
ral," most need our attention; for, if these are carefully
distinguished, the others will scarcely fail to yield us their
true meaning.
The Latin etymology of the word nature, presents the
true force of the term, clear of all ambiguity. The na
ture \natura\ of a thing is the future participle of its
being or becoming*— its about-to-be, or its aboutto-come-to-
pass, — and the radical idea is, that there is, in the thing
whose nature we speak of, or in the whole of things called
nature, an about-to-be, a definite futurition, a fixed law of
coming to pass, such that, given the thing, or whole of
things, all the rest will follow by an inherent necessity.
In this view, nature, sometimes called "universal nature,"
and sometimes "the system of nature," is that created
realm of being or substance which has an acting, a going
on or process from within itself, under and by its own
laws. Or, if we say, with some, that the laws are but an
other name for the immediate actuating power of God,

NATURE DEFINED. 87
still it makes no difference, in any other respect, with our
conception of the system. It is yet as if the laws, the pow
ers, the actings, were inherent in the substances, and wero
by them determined. It is still to our scientific separated
from our religious contemplation, a chain of causes and
effects, or a scheme of orderly succession, determined from
within the scheme itself.
Having settled, thus, our conception of nature, our con
ception of the supernatural corresponds. That is super
natural, whatever it be, that is either not in the chain of
natural cause and effect, or which acts on the chain of
cause and effect, in nature, from without the chain. Thus
if any event transpires in the bosom, or upon the platform
of what is called nature, which is not from nature itself, or
is varied from the process nature would execute by her
own laws, that is supernatural, by whatever power it is
wrought. Suppose, for example, (which we may, for illus
tration's sake, even though it can not be,) that there were
another system of nature incommunicably separate from
ours, some "famous continent of universe," like that on
which Bunyan stumbled, " as he walked through many
regions and countries ;" if, then, this other universe were
swung up side by side with ours, great disturbance would
result, and the disturbance would be, to us, supernatural,
because from without our system of nature ; for, though
the laws of our system are acting, still, in the disturbance,
they are not, by the supposition, acting in their own sys
tem, or conditions, but by an action that is varied by the
forces and reciprocal actings of the other. So if the pro
cesses, combinations, and results of our system of nature
are interrupted, or varied by the action, whether of God,
or angels, or men, so as to bring to pass what would not

38 ALSO THE SUPERNATURAL.
come to pass in it by its own internal action, under tha
laws of mere cause and effect, the variations are, in like
manner, supernatural. And exactly this we expect to
show : viz., that God has, in fact, erected another and high
er system, that of spiritual being and government, for
which nature exists ; a system not under the law of cause
and effect, but ruled and marshaled under other kinds of
laws and able continually to act upon, or vary the action of
the processes of nature. If, accordingly, we speak of sys
tem, this spiritual realm or department is much more prop
erly called a system than the natural, because it is closer to
God, higher in its consequence, and contains in itself the
ends, or final causes, for which the other exists and to which
the other is made to be subservient. There is, however, a
constant action and reaction between the two, and, strictly
speaking, they are both together, taken as one, the true sys
tem of God ; for a system, in the most proper and philo
sophic sense of the word, is a complete and absolute whole,
which can not be taken as a part or fraction of any thing.
We do not mean, of course, by these definitions, or dis
tinctions of the natural and supernatural, to assume the
impropriety of the great multitude of expressions, in
which these words are more loosely employed. They may
well enough be so employed ; the convenience of speech
requires it ; but it is only the more necessary, on that ac
count, that we thoroughly understand ourselves when we
use them in this manner.
Thus we sometimes speak of " the system of nature,"
using the word nature in a loose and general way, as com
prising all created existence. But if we accommodate
ourselves in this manner, it behooves us to see that we do
not, in using such a term, slide into a false philosophy

LOOSER USES, 39
which overturns all obligation, by assuming the real uni
versality of cause and effect, and the subjection of human
actions to that law. It may be true that men are only
things, determinable under the same conditions of causality,
but it will be soon enough to assert that fact, when it is
ascertained by particular inquiry ; which inquiry is much
more likely to result in the impression that the phrase,
" system of nature," understood in this manner as imply
ing that human actions are determined by mechanical laws,
is much as if one were to speak of the " system of the
school-house," as supporting the inference that the same
kind of frame-work that holds the timbers together, is
also to mortise and pin fast the moral order of the school.
In the same manner, we sometimes say "universal na
ture," when we only catch up the term to denote the whole
creation or universe, without deciding any thing in regard
to the possible universality of nature properly defined.
To this, again, there is no objection, if we are only care
ful not to slide into the opinion that natural laws and
causes comprehend every thing ; as multitudes do, without
thought, iu simply yielding to the force of such a term.
The word "Nature" again, is currently used in our
modern literature as the name of a Universal Power ; be it
an eternal fate, or an eternal system of matter reigning by
its necessary laws, or an eternal God who is the All, and
is, in fact, nowise different from a system of matter. Nature
undergoes, in this manner, a kind of literary apotheosis,
and receives the mock honors of a dilettanti worship.
And the new nature-religion is the more valued, be
cause both the god and the worship, being creatures of the
reigning school of letters, are supposed to be of a more
superlative and less common quality. But, though some

40 PERMISSIBLE WITH CAUTION.
thing is here said of religion, with a religious air, the
word nature, it will be found, is used in exact accordance
still with its rigid and proper meaning, as denoting that
which has its fixed laws of coming to pass within itself.
The only abuse consists in the assumed universal extent
of nature, by which it becomes a fate, an all-devouring
abyss of necessity, in which God, and man, and all free
beings are virtually swallowed up. If it should happen
that nature proper has no such extent ; but is, instead, a
comparatively limited and meager fraction of the true uni
verse, the new religion would appear to have but a very
shallow foundation, and to be, in fact, a fraud, as pitiful
as it is airy and pretentious.
We also speak of a nature in free beings, and count
upon it as a motive, cause, or ground of certainty, in re
spect of their actions. Thus we assign the nature of God,
and the nature of man, as reasons of choice and roots of
character, representing that it is "the nature of God" to
be holy, or (it may be,) "the nature of man to do wrong."
Nor is there any objection to this use of the word "nature,"
taken as popular Janguage. There is, doubtless, in God,
as a free intelligence, a constitution, having fixed laws,
answering exactly to our definition of nature. That there
is a proper and true nature in man we certainly know ; for
all the laws of thought, memory, association, feeling, in
the human soul are as fixed as the laws of the heavenly
bodies. It is only the will that is not under the law of
cause and effect ; and the other functions are, by their laws,
subordinated, in a degree, to the uses of the will and its
directing sovereignty over their changes and processes.
And yet the will, calling these others a nature, is in turn
solicited and drawn by them, just as the expressions alluded

LOOSER USES PERMISSIBLE. 41
to imply, save that they have, in fact, no causative agency
on the will at all. They are the will's reasons, that in
view of which it acts; so that, with a given nature, it may/
be expected, with a certain qualified degree of confidence,
to act thus or thus ; but they are never causes on the will,-
and the choices of the will are never their effects. There
fore, when we say that it is "the nature of man to do
this," the language is to be understood in a secondary,
tropical sense, and not as when we say that it is the nature
of fire to burn or water to freeze.
As little would I be understood to insist that the term
supernatural is always to be used in the exact sense I have
given it. Had the word been commonly used in this close,
sharply-defined meaning, much of our present unbelief, or
misbelief, would have been obviated ; for these aberra
tions result almost universally from our use of this word
in a manner so indefinite and so little intelligent. Instead
of regarding the supernatural as that which acts on the
chain of cause and effect in nature from without the chain,
and adhering to that sense of the term, wo use it, very
commonly, in a kind of ghostly, marveling sense, as if
relating to some apparition, or visional wonder, or it may
be to some desultory, unsystematizable action, whether of
angels or of God. Such uses of the word are permissible
enough by dictionary laws, but they make the word an
offense to all who are any way inclined to the rationalizing
habit. On the other hand, there are many who claim to
be acknowledged as adherents of a supernatural faith, with
as little definite understanding. Believing in a God supe
rior to nature, acting from behind and through her laws,
they suppose that they are, of course, to be classed as be
lievers in a supernatural being and religion. But the
A*

42 DISTINCTION SEEN,
genuine supernaturalism of Christianity signifies a great
deal more than this; viz., that God is acting from without
ou the lines of cause and effect in our fallen world and
our disordered humanity, to produce what, by no mere
laws of nature, will ever come to pass. Christianity,
therefore, is supernatural, not because it acts through the
laws of nature, limited by, and doing the work of, the
laws ; but because it acts regeneratively and new-creative-
ly to repair the damage which those laws, in their penal
action, would otherwise perpetuate. Its very distinction,
as a redemptive agency, lies in the fact that it enters into
nature, in this regenerative and rigidly supernatural way,
to reverse and restore the lapsed condition of sinners.
But the real import of our distinction between nature
and the supernatural, however accurately stated in words,
will not fully appear, till we show it in the concrete ; for
it does not yet appear that there is, in fact, any such thing
known as the supernatural agency defined, or that there
are in esse any beings, or classes of beings, who are distin
guished by the exercise of such an agency. That what we
have defined as nature truly exists will not be doubted,
but that there is any being or power in the universe, who
acts, or can act upon the chain of cause and effect in nature
from without the chain, many will doubt and some will
strenuously deny. Indeed the great difficulty heretofore
encountered, in establishing the' faith of a supernatural
agency, has been due to the fact that we have made a
ghost of it ; discussing it as if it were a marvel of super
stition, and no definite and credible reality. Whereas, it
will appear, as we confront our difficulty more thought
fully and take its full force, that the moment we begin to

IN THE WORLD OF FACT. 43
conceive ourselves rightly, we become ourselves supernat
ural. It is no longer necessary to go hunting after mar
vels, apparitions, suspensions of the laws of nature, to
find the supernatural ; it meets us in what is least trans
cendent and most familiar, even in ourselves. In our
selves we discover a tier of existences that are above na
ture and, in all their most ordinary actions, are doing their
will upon it. The very idea of our personality is that of
a being not under the law of cause and effect, a being su
pernatural. This one point clearly apprehended, all the
difficulties of our subject are at once relieved, if not abso-
lutely and completely removed.
If any one is startled or shocked by what appears to be
the extravagance of this position, let him recur to our
definition; viz., that nature is that world of substance,
whose laws are laws of cause and effect, and whose events
transpire, in orderly succession, under those laws ; the su
pernatural is that range of substance, if any such there
be, that acts upon the chain of cause and effect in nature
from without the chain, producing, thus, results that, by
mere nature, could not come to pass. It is not said, be it
observed, as is sometimes done, that the supernatural im
plies a suspension of the laws of nature, a causing them,
for the time, not to be-— that, perhaps, is never done — it is
only said that we, as powers, not in the line of cause and
effect, can set the causes in nature at work, in new combi
nations otherwise never occurring, and produce, by our
action upon nature, results which she, as nature, could
never produce by her own internal acting.
Illustrations are at hand without number. Thus, na
ture, for example, never made a pistol, or gunpowder, or
palled a trigger ; all which being done, or procured to be

41 SUPERNATURAL ACTION
done, by the criminal, in his, act of murder, he is hung for
what is rightly called his unnatural deed. So of things
not criminal; nature never built a house, or modeled a
ship, or fitted a coat, or invented a steam-engine, or wrote
a book, or framed a constitution. These are all events
that spring out of human liberty, acting in and upon the
realm of cause and effect, to produce results and combina
tions, which mere cause and effect could not; and, at some
point of the process in each, we shall be found coming
down upon nature, by an act of sovereignty just as per
emptory and mysterious as that which is discovered in a
miracle, only that a miracle is a similar coming down upon
it from another and higher being, and not from ourselves.
Thus, for example, in the firing of the pistol, we find ma
terials brought together and compounded for making an
explosive gas, an arrangement prepared to strike a fire into
the substance compounded, an arm pulled back to strike
the fire, muscles contracted to pull back the arm, a nerv
ous telegraph running down from the brain, by which some
order has been sent to contract the muscles; and then,
having come to the end of the chain of natural causes, the
jury ask, who sent the mandate down upon the nervous
telegraph, ordering the said contraction? And, having
found, as their true answer, that the arraigned criminal did
it, they offer this as their verdict, and on the strength of
the verdict he is hung. He had, in other words, a power
to set in order a line of causes and effects, existing element
ally in nature, and then, by a sentence of his will, to start
the line, doing his unnatural deed of murder. If it be
inquired how he was able to command the nervous tele
graph in this manner, we can not tell, any more than we
can show the manner of a miracle. The same is true in

FAMILIAR. 45
regard to all our most common actions. If one simply
lifts a weight, overcoming, thus far, the great law of grav
ity, we may trace the act mechanically back in the same
way ; and if we do it, we shall come, at last, to the man
acting in his personal arbitrament, and shall find him send
ing down his mandate to the arm, summoning its contrac
tions and sentencing the weight to rise. In which, as we
perceive, he has just so much of power given him to vary
the incidents and actings of nature as determined by her
own laws — so much, that is, of power supernatural.
And so all the combinations we make in the harnessing
of nature's powers imply, in the last degree, thoughts,
mandates of will, that are, at some point, peremptory over
the motions by which we handle, and move, and shape,
and combine the substances and causes of the worid.
And to what extent we may go on to alter, in this man
ner, the composition of the world, few persons appear to
consider. For example, it is not absurd to imagine the
human race, at some future time, when the population
and the works of industry are vastly increased, kindling
so many fires, by putting wood and coal in contact with
fire, as to burn up or fatally vitiate the world's atmosphere.
That the condition of nature will, in fact, be so far changed
by human agency, is probably not to be feared. We
only say that human agency, in its power over nature,
holds, or may well enough be imagined to hold, the sover
eignty of the process. Meantime, it is even probable, as
a matter of fact, that infections and pestilential diseases
invading, every now and then, some order of vegetable or
animal life, are referable, in the last degree, to something
done upon the world by man. For indeed we shall show,
before we have done, that the scheme of nature itself

46 THE WILL IS NOT
is a scheme unstrung and mistimed, to a very great de-
gree, by man's agency in it, so as to be rather unnature,
after all, than nature; and, for just that reason, demanding
of God, even for system's sake, in the highest range of
that term, miracle and redemption.
Suffice it, for the present, simply to clear, as well as we
are able, this main point, the fact of a properly supernat
ural power in man. Thus, some one, going back to the
act by which the pistol was fired, will imagine, after all,
that the murderer's act in the firing was itself caused in
him by some condition back of what we call his choice, as
truly as the explosion of the powder was caused by the
fire. Then, why not blame the powder, we answer, as
readily as the man — which most juries would have some
difficulty in doing, though none at all in blaming the
man? The nature of the objection is purely imaginary,
as, in fact, the common sense, if we should not rather say
the common consciousness of the word decides ; for we are
all conscious of acting from ourselves, uncaused in our ac
tion. The murderer knows within himself that he did the
deed, and that nothing else did it through him. So his
consciousness testifies — so the consciousness of every man
revising his actions — and no real philosopher will ever
undertake to substitute the verdict of consciousness, by
another, which he has arrived at only by speculation, or a
logical practice in words. The sentence of consciousness
is final. Hence the absurd and really blamable ingenuity of those
would-be philosophers who, not content with the clear,
indisputable report of consciousness in such a case, go on
to ask whether the wrong-doer of any kind was not act
ing, in his wrong, under motives and determined by

A SCALE-BEAM. 47
the strongest motives, and, since he is a being made to
act in this manner, whether, after all, he really acted
himself, any more than other natural substances do
when they yield to the strongest cause ? Doubtless he
acted under motives, and probably enough he felt
beside that half his crime was in his motive, being that
which his own bad heart supplied. The matter of the
strongest motive is more doubtful ; but, if it be true, in
every case, that the wrong-doer chooses what to him is the
strongest motive, it by no means follows that he acts in the
way of a scale-beam, swayed by the heaviest weight;
for the strength of the motive may consciously be derived,
in great part, from what his own perversity puts into it;
and, what is more, he may be as fully conscious that he
acts, in every case, from himself, in pure self-determina
tion, as he would be if he acted for no motive at all. Con
sciously he is not a scale-beam, or any passive thing, but a
self-determining agent; and if he looks out always for the
strongest motive, he still as truly acts from his own person
al arbitrament as if he were always pursuing the weakest.
It does not, however, appear, from any evidence we can
discover, that human action is determined uniformly by
the strongest motive. That is the doctrine of Edwards, in
his famous treatise on the will,* but as far as there is any
* The fortunes of this Treatise, in the world of morals and religion, have
been quite as remarkable as the puzzle it has raised in the world of letters.
The immediate object of the writer was gained, and the faith of God's eternal
government, assailed by a erazy scheme of liberty which brought in open
question the divine foreknowledge and the proper self-understanding of
God ia his plan, was effectually vindicated. So far the argument availed to
servo the genuine purposes of religion. But, from that day to this, passing
over to the side opposite, it has been turned more and more disastrously
against tbe christian truth, and even against the first principles of mora)

48 NOT DETERMINED BY
appearance of force in his argument, it consists iu the
inference drawn, or judgment passed, after any act of
choice, that the inducing motive must have been the
strongest because it prevailed. Whereas, appealing to his
simple consciousness, he would have found that he had
never a thought of the superior strength of the motive
chosen, before the choice ; and that, when he ascertained the
fact of its superiority, it was only by an inference or specu
lative judgment drawn from the choice — just as some
harvester, noting the heavy perspiration that drenches his
body in the field, will judge from such a.sign that he must
be dissolving with heat ; when the real sense of his body,
wiser and truer than his logic, is that he is being cooled.
And what, moreover, if it should happen that Edwards,
iu his inference, is only carrying over into the world of
mind a judgment formed in the world of matter; subjecting
human souls to the analogy of scale-beams, and conclud
ing that, since nature yields to the strongest force, the
supernatural must do the same. Meantime, what is the
consciousness testifying? Here is the whole question.
There is no place here for a volume, or even for the
obligation. Priestly was an implicit believer in the doctrine, holding it as the
foundation principle of a scheme of necessity which could hardly be said to
leave a real placo for duty in the world. And now, in our own day, it has
descended to the level of the subterranean infidelity, and become a familiar
and standing argument with almost every moral outcast, who has thought
enough in him to know that he is annoyed by the distinctions of virtue.
Having turned philosopher on just this point and shown that we are all gov
erned by the strongest motive, he asks, with an air of triumph, where, then,
is the place for blame ? What do we all but just what we are made t:> do 1
Could Edwards return to look on the uses now made of his argumer/t, his
Baintly spirit might possibly be stirred with some doubts of its validity.
Compare the able statement of this subject by Harris. — (Primeval Man.
100 Sec VI.

THE STRONGEST MOTIVE. 49
amount of a syllogism. Find what the consciousness test
ifies and that, all tricks of argument apart, is the truth.
Taking, then, this simple issue, the verdict.^re^arg^u^e'
sure is against the doctrine of Edwards ; viz^, that, in all
wrong, or blamable action, we consciously take the weakest
motive and most worthless ; and, partly for that reason,
blame our own folly and perversity. It may be that the
good rejected stands superior only before our rational con
victions, while the enticement followed stirs more actively
our lusts and passions. Still we know, and believe, and
deeply feel, at the time, — we even shudder it may be in the
choice, at the sense of our own perversity — that we are
choosing the worst and meanest thing, casting away the
gold and grasping after the dirt. Probably a good many
crude-minded persons, little capable of reporting the true
verdict of their consciousness, would answer immediately,
after any such act of choice, that they made it because the
motive was strongest ; for every most vulgar mind is so
far under the great law of dynamics as to judge that
whatever force prevails must be the strongest. Besides,
how could he be a reasonable being if he chose the weak
est motive ; therefore it must be that he chose the strongest.
So it stands, not as any report of consciousness, but simply
as a must be of the logical understanding. Whereas, the
real sin of the choice was exactly this and nothing else,
that the wrong-doer followed after the weakest and worst,
and did not act as a reasonable being should; and that is
what his consciousness, if he could get far back enough
into the sense of the moment, would report. Nor does
it vary at all the conclusion that a wrong-doer chooses
the weakest motive, to imagine, with many loose-minded
teachers, that the right is only postponed, and the wrong
5

50 ' THE WILL NOT UNDER
chosen for the moment, with a view to secure the double
benefit, both of the right and the wrong ; for the real ques
tion, at the time, is, in every such case, whether it is wisest,
best, and every way most advantageous, to make the
delay and try for the double benefit ; and no man ever yet
believed that it was. Never was there a case of wrong
or sinful choice, in which the agent believed that he was
really choosing the strongest, or weightiest and most valu
able motive.*
So far, then, is man from being any proper item of
*A certain class of theologians may, perhaps, imagine that such a view
of choice takes away the ground of the Divine foreknowledge. How can
God foreknow what choices men may form, when, for aught that ap
pears, they as often choose against the strongest motive as with it?
He could not foreknow any thing, we answer, under such conditions, if he
were obliged to find out future things, as the astronomers make out almanacs,
by computation. But he is a being, not who computes, but who, by the
eternal necessity even of his nature, intuits every thing. His foreknowledge
does not depend on his will, or the adjustment of motives to make us will
thus or thus, but he foreknows every thing first conditionally, in the world
of possibility, before he creates, or determines any thing to be, in the world
of fact. Otherwise, all his purposes would be grounded in ignorance, not in
wisdom, and his knowledge would consist in following after his will, to learn
what his will has blindly determined. This is not the scripture doctrine,
whieh grounds all the purposes of God in his wisdom ; that is, in what he per
ceives by his eternal intuitive foreknowledge of what is contained in all possi
ble systems and combinations before creation — ''whomhe did foreknow, them
he also did predestinate " — " elect, according to the foreknowledge of God."
If, then, God foreknows, or intuitively knows, all that is in the possible sys
tem and the possible man, without calculation, h» can have little difficulty,
after that, in foreknowing the actual man, who is nothing but the possible
in the world of possibles, set on foot and become actual in the world of ac
tuals. So far, therefore, as the doctrine of Edwards was contrived to sup
port the certainty of God's foreknowledge, and lay a basis for the systematic
government of the world and the universal sovereignty of God's purposes,
it appears to be quite unnecessary. -y > jy^ '

CAUSE AND EFFECT. 51
nature. He is under no law of cause and effect in hia
choices. He stands out clear and sovereign as a being
supernatural, and his definition is that he is an original
power, acting, not in the line of causality, but from him
self. He is not independent of nature in the sense of
being separated from it in his action, but he is in it, envi
roned by it, acting through it, partially sovereign over it,
always sovereign as regards his self-determination, and.
only not completely sovereign as regards executing all
that he wills in it. In certain parts or departments of the
soul itself, such as memory, appetite, passion, attention,
imagination, association, disposition, the will-power in him
is held in contact, so to speak, with conditions and quali
ties Jhat are dominated partly by laws of cause and effect ;
for these faculties are partly governed by their own laws,
and partly submitted to his governing will by their own
laws ; so that when he will exercise any control over them,
or turn them about to serve his purpose, he can do it, in a
qualified sense and degree, by operating through their
laws. As far as they are concerned, he is pure nature,
and he is only a power superior to cause and effect at the
particular point of volition where his liberty culminates,
and where the administration he is to maintain over his
whole nature centers.
It is also a part of the same general view that, as all
functions of the soul but the will are a nature, and are
only qualifiedly subjected to the will by their laws, the will,
without ever being restricted in its self-determination, will
often be restricted, as regards executive force to perform
what it wills. In this matter of executive force or capaci
ty, we are under physiological and cerebral limitations;
'imitations of association, want, condition ; limitations of

62 EXECUTIVE FORCE
miseducated thought, perverted sensibility, prejudice, su
perstition, a second nature of evil habit and passion; by
which, plainly enough, our capacity of doing or becoming
is greatly reduced. This, in fact, is the grand, all-condi
tioning truth of Christianity itself; viz., that man has no
ability, in himself and by merely acting in himself, to
become right and perfect ; and that, hence, without some
extension to him from without and above, some approach
and ministration that is supernatural, he can never become
what his own ideals require. And therefore it is the more
remarkable that so many are ready, in all ages, to take up
the notion, and are even doing it now, as a fresh discovery,
that these stringent limitations on our capacity take away
the hberty of our will. As if the question of executive
force, the ability to make or become, had any thing to do
with our self-determining liberty! At the point of the
will itself we may still be as free, as truly original and
self-active, as if we could do or execute all that we would ;
otherwise, freedom would be impossible, except on the
condition of being omnipotent ; and even then, as in due
time we shall see, would be environed by many insuper
able necessities. As long ago as when Paul found it pres
ent with him to will, but could not find how to perform,
this distinction between volitional self-determination and ex
ecutive capacity began to be recognized, and has been re
cognized and stated, in every subsequent age, till now. No
one is held, even for a moment, to a bad and wrong self-
determination, simply because he has not the executivo
force to will himself into an angel, or because he can not
become, unhelped, and at once, all that he would He ia
therefore still a fair subject of blame ; partly because ho
has narrowed his capacities, or possibilities, of doing or be-

UNDER LIMITATIONS. 63
coming, by his fonner sin, and partly because he consci
ously does not will the right and struggle after God now ;
which he is under perfect obligation to do, because the terms
of duty are absolute or unconditional; and, if possible, still
more perfect because he has helps of grace and favor put
in his reach, to be laid hold of, which, if he accepts them,
will infallibly medicate the disabilities he is under.
That mankind, as being under sin, are under limitations
of executive ability, unable to do and become all that is re
quired of them by their highest ideals of thought, is then
no new doctrine. Christianity is based in the fact of such a
disability, and affirms it constantly as a fact that creates no
infringement of responsibility and personal liberty at all,
as regards the particular sphere of the will itself. And
therefore it will not be expected of any Christian that he
will be greatly impressed by what are sometimes offered
now as original and peremptory decisions against human
liberty, grounded in the fact that man is not omnipotent — -
not able to do or become, what he is able to think.
Thus we have the following, offered as a final disposal of
the question of liberty, by a very brilliant, entertaining,
and often very acute writer: — " Do you want an image of
the human will, or the self-determining principle, as com
pared with its prearranged and impossible restrictions?
A drop of water imprisoned in a crystal ; you may see
such a one in any mineralogical collection. One httle par
tide in the crystalline prism of the solid universe. * "*
The chief planes of its inclosing solid are of course organ
ization, education, condition. Organization may reduce
the will to nothing, as in some idiots; arid, from this
zero, the scale mounts upward, by slight gradations.
Education is only second to nature. Imagine all the

64 SELF-DETERMINATION STILL
infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to changa
places ! Condition does less, but " Give me neither pov
erty nor riches " was the prayer of Agur, and with good
reason. If there is any improvement in modern theology,
it is in getting out of the region of pure abstractions, and
taking these every-day forces into account." *
It may have been a fault of the former times that, in
judgments of human character and conduct, no sufficient
allowance was made for these "every-day forces" and
others which might be named , if so, let the mistake be
corrected ; but to imagine that the freedom, or self-deter
mining liberty of the human will is to be settled by any
such external references, even starts the suspicion that the
idea itself of the will has not yet arrived. So when the
doctrine is located as being a something in "the region of
pure abstractions," because it is not found by some scalpel
inspection, or out-door hunt in the social conditipns of life.
What can be further off from all abstractions than the im
mediate, hving, central, all-dominating consciousness of our
own self-activity? Is consciousness an abstraction? Is
any thing further off from abstractions, or more impossible
to be classed with them ? On the contrary, the very con
ceit here allowed, that a great question of consciousness
may be settled by external processes of deduction, and by
generalizations that do not once touch the fact, is only an
attempt to make an abstraction of it. And yet, after it is
done and seems to be finally disposed of in that manner,
after the discovery is fully made out that our self-determin
ing will is only "a drop of water imprisoned in a crystal,
one little particle in the crystalline prism of the solid
universe," who is there, not excepting the just now very
^1) * Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1858, p. 464.

A FACT OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 55
much humbled discoverer himself, who does not know,
every day of his life, and does not show, a thousand times
a day, that he has the sense in him of something difierent?
Even if he does no more than humorously dub himself
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, it will be sufficiently plain
that his autocracy is a much more considerable figure with
him than a drop of water in a crystal. He most evidently
imagines some presiding and determining mind at the
Tabb, that is much more of a reality and much less of an
abstraction. And so it will be found universally that, however
strongly drawn the supposed disadvantages and hin
drances to virtue may be, there is, in every mind, a large
and positive consciousness of being master of its own
choices and responsible for them. A translation from
Boston to Timbuctoo will not anywise alter the fact.
There was never a man, however miseducated, or sup
pressed by his necessities, or corrupted by bad associations,
or misled by base examples, who had not still his moral
convictions, and did not blame himself in wrongs commit
ted. So firm, and full, and indestructible is this inborn,
moral autocracy of the soul, that, as certainly in Timbuc
too as in Boston, it takes upon itself the sentence of wrong,
and no matter what inducements there may have been, no
matter how brutalized the practices in which it had been
trained, recognizes still the sovereignty of right, and
blames itself in every known deviation from it. His
judgment of what particular things are necessary to fulfill
the great idea of right may be coarse, and, as we should
say, mistaken ; but he acknowledges, in the deepest con
victions of his nature, that nothing done against the
eternal, necessary law of right can be justified. The fact

56 HENCE ALL GREATNESS
that his wild nature is so nearly untamable to right, or
that being or becoming the perfect good he thinks, is so
far off from his capacity, so nearly impossible under his
executive limitations, is really nothing. Still he must,
and does, condemn the bad liberty allowed in every
conscious wrong.
Self-determination, therefore, as respects the mere will
as a power of volition, is essentially indestructible. And
it is this gift of power, this originative liberty, consti
tuting, as it does, the central attribute of all personality,
that gives us impressions of what is personal in character,
so different from those which we derive from any thing
natural. Hence, for example, it is that we look on the
nobler demonstrations of character in man, with a feeling
so different from any that can be connected with mere
cause and effect. In every friend we distinguish "some
thing more than a distillation of natural causes; a free,
faithful soul, that, having a power to betray, stays fast in
the integrity of love and sacrifice. We rejoice in heroic
souls, and in every hero we discover a majestic spirit, how
far transcending the merely instinctive and necessary
actings of animal and vegetable life. He stands out in
the flood of the world's causes, strong in his resolve, not
knowing, in a just fight, how to yield, but protesting,
with Coriolanus, — Let the Volsces
Plow Rome and harrow Italy, I'll never
Be such a gosling as to obey instinct, but sta'jd,
As if a man was author of himself,
And knew no other kin.
Hence the honor we so profusely yield to the martyrs,
who are God's heroes ; able, as in freedom, to yield their

IN CHARACTER. 57
flesh up in the fires of testimony, and sing themselves
away in the smoke of their consuming bodies. Were
thej'' a part only of nature, and held to this by the law
of cause aud effect in nature, we should have as much
reason to honor their christian fortitude, as we have to
honor the combustion of a fire ; even that which kindled
their faggots : — as much and not more.
Such is the sense we have of all great character in men.
We look upon them, not as wheels that are turned by
natural causes, yielding their natural effects, as the flour
is yielded by a mill, but what we call their character is
the majestic proprium of their personality, that which
they yield as the fruit of their glorious self-hood and im
mortal hberty. What, otherwise, can those triumphal
arches mean, arranged for the father of his country, now
on his way to be inaugurated as its First Magistrate?
what those processions of women, strewing the way with
flowers? what the thundering shouts of men, seconding
their voices by the boom of cannon posted on every hill?
Why this thrill of emotion just now running electrically
through so many millions of hearts toward this single
man? It is the reverence they feel, and can not fitly ex
press, to personal greatness and heroic merit in a great
cause. Were our Washington conceived in that cause of
good and great action, by which he became the deliverer
" of his country, to be the mere distillation of natural causes,
who of us would allow himself to be thrilled with any such
sentiments of reverence and personal homage? It is no
mere wheel, no link in a chain, that stirs our blood in this
manner; but it is a man, the sense we have of a man, rising
out of the level of things, great above all things, great as be
ing himself. Here it is, in demonstrations like these, thai

58 WE OURSELVES, THEN
we meet the spontaneous verdict of mankind, apart from iM
theories, and quibbles, and sophistries of argument, testify
ing that man is a creature out of mere nature — a free cause
in himself — great, therefore, in the majesty of great virtues
and heroic acts.
The same is true, as we may safely assume, in regard
to all the other orders and realms of spiritual existence ;
to angels good and bad, seraphim, principalities, and
powers in heavenly places. They are all supernatural,
and it is in them, as belonging to this higher class of ex
istences, that God beholds the final causes, the uses, and
the grand systematizing ideas of his universal plan. Na
ture, as comprehending the domain of cause and effect, is
only the platform on which he establishes his kingdom as
a kingdom of minds, or persons, every one of whom has
power to act upon it, and, to some extent, greater or less,
to be sovereign over it. So that, after all which has been
done by the sensuous littleness, the shallow pride, and
the idolatry of science, to make a total .universe, or even a
God, of nature, still it is nothing but the carpet on which
we children have our play, and which we may only use
according to its design, or may cut, and burn, and tear at
will. The true system of God centers still in us, and not
in it; in our management, our final glory and completeness
of being as persons, not in the set figures of the carpet
we so eagerly admire and call it science to ravel.
Finding, now, in this manner, that we ourselves are
supernatural creatures, and that the' supernatural, instead
of being some distant, ghostly affair, is familiar to us as
our own most familiar action ; also, that nature, as a realm
of cause and effect, is made to be acted on from without

ARE SUPERNATURAL AGENTS 59
by us and all moral beings — thus to be the environment of
our life, the instrument of our activity, the medium of
our right or wrong doing toward each other, and so the
school of our trial — a further question rises ; viz., what
shall we think of God's relations to nature ? If it be
nothing incredible that we should act on the chain of
cause and effect in nature, is it more incredible that God
should thus act? Strange as it may seem, this is the
grand offense of supernaturalism, the supposing that God
can act on nature from without; on the chain of cause and
effect in nature from without the chain of connection, by
wliich natural consequences are propagated — exactly that
which we ourselves are doing as the most familiar thing in
our lives ! It involves, too, as we can see at a glance, and
shall hereafter show more fully, no disruption, by us, of
the laws of nature, but only a new combination of its
elements and forces, and need not any more involve such
a disruption by Him. Nor can any one show that a mira
cle of Christ, the raising, for example, of Lazarus, in
volves any thing more than that nature is prepared to be
acted on by a divine power, just as it is to be acted on by
a human, in the making of gunpowder, or the making and
charging of a fire-arm. For, though there seems to be an
immense difference in the grade of the results accom
pUshed, it is only a difference which ought to appear, re
garding the grade of the two agents by whom they are
wrought. How different the power of two men, creatures
though they be of the same order; a Newton, for exam
ple, a Watt, a Fulton ; and some wild Patagonian or stunted
Esquimaux. So, if there be angels, seraphim, thrones,
dominions, all in ascending scales of endowment abovo
one another, they will, of course, have powers supernaty

60 SO ALSO IS GOD,
ral, or capacities to act on the Hues of causes in nature,
that correspond with their natural quantity and degree.
What wonder, then, is it, in the case of Jesus Christ, that
oe reveals a power over nature, appropriate to the scale of
his being and the inherent supremacy of his divine
person. Aud yet, it will not do, our philosophers tell us, to ad
mit any such thing as a miracle, or that any thing does,
or can, take place by a divine power, which nature itself
does not bring to pass ! God, in other words, can not be
supposed to act on the line of cause and effect in nature ,
for nature is the universe, and the law of universal order
makes a perfect system. Hence a great many of our nat
uralists, who admit the existence of God, and do not mean
to identify his substance with nature, and call him the
Creator, and honor him, at least in words, as the Governor
of all things, do yet insist that it must be unphilosophical
to suppose any present action of God, save what is acted
in and through the preordained system of nature. The
author of the "Vestiges of Creation, for example, (p. 118,)
looks on cause and effect as being the eternal will of God,
and nature as th§ all-comprehensive order of his Provi
dence, beside which, or apart from which, he does, and
can be supposed to do, nothing. A great many who call
themselves Christian believers, really hold the same thing,
and can suffer nothing different. Nature, to such, in
cludes man. God and nature, then, are the all of exist
ence, and there is no acting of God upon nature ; for that
would be supernaturalism. He may be the originative
.ource of nature ; he may even be the immediate, all-im-
fTelling will, of which cause and effect are the symptoms ;
that is he may have made, and may actuate the machine,

OTHERWISE A NULLITY, 61
m that fated, foredoomed way which cause and effect de
scribes, but he must not act upon the machine-system out
side of the foredoomed way ; if he does, he will disturb
the immutable laws ! In fact, he has no liberty of doing
any thing, but just to keep agoing the everlasting trundle
of the machine. He can not even act upon his works,
save as giving and maintaining the natural law of his
works ; which law is a limit upon Him, as truly as a bond
of order upon them. He is incrusted and shut in by his
own ordinances. Nature is the god above God, and he
can not cross her confines. His ends are all in nature ;
for, outside of nature, and beyond, there is nothing but
Himself. He is only a great mechanic, who has made a
great machine for the sake of the machine, having his
work all done long ages ago. Moral government is out
of the question- — there is no government but the predes
tined rolling of the machine. If a man sins, the sin is
only the play of cause and effect ; that is, of the machine.
If he repents, the same is true — sin, repentance, love,
hope, joy, are all developments of cause and effect ; that
is, of the machine. If a soul gives itself to God in love,
the love is but a grinding-out of some wheel he has set
turning, or it may be turns, in the scheme of nature. If I
look up to him and call him Father, he can only pity the
conceit of my filial feeling, knowing that it is attributable
to nothing but the run of mere necessary cause and effect
in me, and is no more, in fact, from me, than the rising of
a mist or cloud is from some buoyant freedom in its par
ticles. If I look up to him for help and deliverance, He
can only hand me over to cause and effect, of which I
am a link myself, and bid me stay in my place to be
what I am made to be. He can touch me by no
6

62 A BEING ENTOMBED
extension of sympathy, and I must even break through
nature (as He Himself can not,) to obtain a look of recog
nition. How miserable a desert is existence, both to Him
and to us, under such conditions — to Him, because of
his character; to us, because of our wants. To be
thus entombed in his works, to have no scope for his
virtues, no field for his perfections, no ends to seek,
no liberty to act, save in the mechanical way of mere
causality — what could more effectually turn his goodness
into a well-spring of baffled desires and defeated sympa
thies, and make His glory itself a baptism of sorrow.
Meantime the supposition is, to us, a mockery, against
which all our deepest wants and highest personal affini
ties are raised up, as it were, in mutinous protest. If
there is nothing but God and nature, and God Himself
has no relations to nature, save just to fill it and keep
it on its way, then, being ourselves a part of nature, we
are only a link, each one, in a chain let down into a well,
where nothing else can ever touch us but the next link
above ! 0, it is horrible ! Our soul freezes at the
thought I We want, we must have, something better — a
social footing, a personal, and free, and flexible, and
conscious relation with our God ; that he should cross
over to us, or bring us over the dark Styx of nature
unto Himself, to love Him, to obtain His recognition,
to receive His manifestation, to walk in His guidance,
and be raised to that higher footing of social under
standing and spiritual concourse with Him, where our
inborn affinities find their center and rest. And what
we earnestly want, we know that we shall assuredly
find. The prophecy is in us, and whether we call

IN HIS WORKS. 63
ourselves prophets or not, we shall certainly go on to
publish it. It is the inevitable, first fact of natural convic
tion with us. Do we not know, each one, that he is
more than a thing or a wheel, and, being consciously
a man, a spirit, a creature supernatural, will he
hesitate to claim a place with such, and claim for such
a plate ?

CHAPTER III.
NATURE IS NOT THE SYSTEM OF GOD. -THINGS AND POW
ERS, HOW RELATED.
God is expressed but not measured by his works;
least of all, by the substances and laws included under the
general term, nature. And yet, how liable are we, over
powered, as we often are, and oppressed by the magni
tudes of nature, to suffer the impression that there can be
nothing separate and superior, beyond nature. The
eager mind of science, for example, sallying forth on
excursions of thought into the vast abysses of worlds, dis
covering tracks of light that must have been shooting
downward and away from their sources, even for millions
of ages, to have now arrived at their mark ; and then dis
covering also that, by such a reach of computation, it
has not penetrated to the center, but only reached the
margin or outmost shore of the vast fire-ocean, whose
particles are astronomic worlds, falls back spent, and,
having, as it were, no spring left for another trial, or the
endeavor of a stronger flight, surrenders, overmastered
and helpless, crushed into silence. At such an hour, it
is any thing but a wonder that nature is taken for the all,
the veritable system of God ; beyond which, or collateral
with which, there is nothing. For so long a time is
science imposed upon by nature, not instructed by it ; as
if there could be nothing greater than distance, measure,
quantity, and show, nothing higher than the formal plati
tude of things. But the healthy, living mind will, soonei
or later, recover itself. It will spring up out of this pros
tration before nature, to imagine other things, which eye

NATURAL MAGNITUDES OPPRESSIVE. 65
hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor science computed. It
will discover fires, even in itself, that . flame above the
stars. It will break over and through the narrow con
fines of stellar organization, to conceive a spiritual Kos-
mos, or divine system, which contains, and uses, and is
only shadowed in the faintest manner by, the prodigious
trivialities of external substance. Indeed, I think all
minds unsophisticated by science, or not disempowered
by external magnitudes, will conceive God as a being
whose fundamental plan, whose purpose, end, and system
are nowise measured by that which lies in dimension,
even though the dimensions be measureless. They will
say with Zophar still,— "The measure thereof is longer
than the earth and broader than the sea." And the real,
proper universe of God, that which is to God the final
cause of all things, will be to them a realm so far trans
cending the outward immensity, both in quantity and
kind, that this latter will be scarcely more than some
outer gate of approach, or eyelet of observation.
What I propose, then, in the present chapter, coinci-
dently with the strain of remark here indulged, is to
undertake a negative, showing (what, in fact, is decisive
upon the whole question,) that the surrender of so many
minds to nature and her magnitudes is premature and
weak ; that nature plainly is not, and can not be, the proper
and complete system of God ; or, if we speak no more of
God, of the universe.
It would seem that any really thoughtful person, when
about to surrender himself to nature, in the manner just
described, must be detained by a simple glance at the
manifest yearning of the human race, in all ages and
6*

66 HUMAN NATURE CRAVES
nations, for something supernatural. Their affinity for
objects supernatural is far more evident, as a matter of
history, than for objects scientific and natural. Instead of
reducing their gods and religions to the terms of nature,
they have peopled nature with gods, and turned even their
agriculture into a concert, or concurrence, with the un
seen powers and their ministries. Witness, in this view,
the immense array of mythologic and formally unrational
religions, extinct or still existing, that have been accepted
by the populations of the world. Notice in particular
also, that, when the keen dialectics of the polished Greeks
and Eomans had cut away the foundations of their re
ligions, instead of lapsing into the cold no-religion of the
Sophists, the cultivated mind of their scholars and
philosophers passed straight by the boasted reason, to lay
hold of Christianity ; and Christianity, more rational but
in no degree less supernatural than the religions over
turned, was accepted as the common faith. And what is
not less remarkable, Christianity itself, as if not supernat
ural enough, was corrupted by the addition of still new
wonders pertaining to the virgin, the priesthood, the sac
raments, and even the bones of the saints; indicated all,
and some of them (such as that Mary is the Mother of
God,) generated even, by dialectic processes. And so it
ever has been. Men can as well subsist in a vacuum, or
on a mere metallic earth, attended by no vegetable or ani
mal products, as they can stay content with mere cause
aud effect, and the endless cycle of nature. They may
drive themselves into it, for the moment, by their specula
tions ; but the desert is too dry, and the air too thin — they
can not stay. Accordingly, we find that just now, when
the propensities to mere naturalism are so manifold and

A SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 67
eager, they are yet instigated in their eagerness itself by
an impulse that scorns all the boundaries of mere knowl
edge and reason ; that is, by an appetite for things of faith,
or a hope of yet fresher miracles and greater mysteries —
gazing after the Boreal crown of Fourier, and the thaw
ing out of the poles under the heat of so great felicity to
come ; or watching at the gate of some third heaven to be
opened by the magnetic passes, or the solemn incantations
of the magic circles ; expecting an irruption of demons,
in the name of science, more fantastic than even that
which plagued the world in the days of Christ, and which
so many critics, in the name also of science, were just
now laboring most intently to weed out of the gospel his
tory. True, the magnetic revelations are said to be in
the way of nature ; no matter for that, if only they are
wonderful enough ; all the better, indeed, if they give us
things supernatural to enjoy and live in, without the
name. Only we must have mysteries, and believe, and
take wings, and fly clear of the dull level of comprehen
sible cause and substance, somehow. Such is man, such
are we all.
We are Hke the poet Shelley, who, after he had sunk
into blank atheism, as regards religion, could not stay con
tent, but began forthwith to people his brain and the
worid with griffins, and gorgons, and animated rings, and
fiery serpents, and spirits of water and wind, and became,
in fact, the most mythologic of all modern poets; only
that he made his mythologic machinery himself, out of
the delirious shapes exhaled from the deep atheistic hunger
of his soul. And the- new Mormon faith, or fanaticism,
that strangest phenomenon of our times — what is it, in
fact, but a breaking loose by the human soul, pressed

68 SHELLEY'S MYTHOLOGY.
down by ignorance and unbelief together, to find some
element of miracle and mystery, in which it may ranga
and feed its insatiable appetite; a raw and truculent im
posture of supernaturalism, dug up out of the earth but
yesterday, which, just because it is not under reason
and is held by no stays of opinion, kindles the fires
of the soul's eternity to a pitch of fierceness and a
really devastating energy. And were the existing faith
of powers unseen and worlds above the world of science
blotted out, leaving us shut down under atheism, or mere
nature, and gasping in the dull vacuum it makes, I verily
believe that we should instantly begin to burst up all into
Mormonism, or some other newly invented faith, no better
authenticated. Into this same gasping state, iu fact, we are thrown by
our new school of naturalistic literature, and we can easily
distinguish, in the conscious discontent that nullifies
both our pleasure and praise, the fact of some transcend
ent, inborn affinity, by which we are linked to things
above the range of mere nature. Who is a finer master
of English than Mr. Emerson? Who offers fresher
thoughts, in shapes of beauty more fascinating? Intoxi
cated by his brilliant creations, the reader thinks, for the
time, that he is getting inspired. And yet, when he has
closed the essay or the volume, he is surprised to find — •
who has ever failed to notice it? — that he is disabled
instead, di§empowered, reduced in tone. ' He has no great
thought or purpose in him ; and the force or capacity for
it seems to be gone. Surely, it is a wonderfully clear
atmosphere that he is in, and vet it is somehow mephitic !
How could it be otherwise ? As it is a first principle that
water will not rise above its own level, what better reason

EMERSON'S BRAMINISM. 69
is there to expect tnat a creed which disowns duty and
turns achievement into a conceit of destiny, will bring to
man those great thoughts, and breathe upon Jiim in those
gales of impulse, which are necessary to the empowered
state, whether of thought or of action. Grazing in the
field of nature is not enough for a being whose deepest
affinities lay hold of the supernatural, and reach after
God. Airy and beautiful the field may be, shown by so
great a master; full of goodly prospects and fascinating
images ; but, without a living God, and objects of faith,
and terms of duty, it is a pasture only — nothmg more.
Hence the unreadiness, the almost aching incapacity felt
to undertake any thing or become any thing, by one who
has taken lessons at this school. Nature is the all, and
nature will do every thing, whether we will or no. Call
it duty, greatness, heroism, still it is hers, and she will
have more of it when she pleases. If, then, nature does
not set him on also, and do all in him, there is an end;
what can he expect to do in the name of duty, faith,
sacrifice, and high resolve, when nature is not in the plan?
What better, indeed, is there left him, or more efficient,
than just to think beautiful thoughts, if he can, and sur
render himself to the luxury of watching the play of his
own reflective egoism? Given Brama for a god and
a religion, what is left us more certainly than that we our
selves become Asiatics? Such kind of infiuence would
turn the race to pismires, if only we could stay content in
it, as happily we can not ; for, if we chance to find our
pleasure in it for an hour, a doom as strong as eternity in
us compels us finally to spurn it, as a brilliant inanity.
But we are going further with our point than we
intended. Admitting the universal tendency of the race

70 THE HOST IN OPPOSITION
in past ages, to a faith in things supernatural, it may be
imagined by some that, as we advance in culture, we
must finally reach a stage, where reason will enforce a
different demand; they may even return upon us the
list we gave, in our introductory chapter, of the parties
now conspiring the overthrow of a supernatural faith,
requiring us to accept them as proofs that the more
advanced stage of culture is now about to be reached. In
that case, it is enough to answer that the naturalizing
habit of our times is clearly no indication of any such
new stage .of advancement, but only a phase of social tend
ency once before displayed in the negative and destruct
ive era of the Greek and Eoman religions ; also that the
grand conspiracy, exhibited in our own time, signifies
much less than it would, if, after all, there were any real
agreement among the parties. Thus it will be found that,
while they seem to agree in the assumption that nature
includes every thing, aud also to show by their imposing
air of concert that in this way the world must needs grav
itate, there is yet, if we scan them more carefully, no such
agreement as indicates any solid merit in their opinion, or
even such as may properly entitle them to respect.
Thus we find, first of all, a threefold distribution
among them that sets them in as many schools, or tiers
between which there is almost nothing in common • one
section or school maintaining that nature is God, another
that it is originally the work of God, and a third that
there is no God. If nature itself is God, then plainly
God is not the Creator of nature by his own sovereign
act ; and if there is no God, then he is neither nature not
its Creator. Their agreement, therefore, includes noth
ing but a point of denial xespecting the supernatural

ALSO CONTRADICT EACH OTHER. 71
maintained for wholly opposite and contradictory reasons.
So, as regards religion itself; to some it is a natural effect
or growth in souls, and in that view a fact that evinces
the real sublimity of nature ; while to others it is itself a
matter only of contempt, a creation of priestly artifice, or
an excrescence of blind superstition. One, again, believes
in the personality, responsibility, and immortality of souls,
finding a moral government in nature, and even what he
calls a gospel; another, that man is a mere link in the
chain of causalities, like the insects, responsibility a
fiction, eternity a fond illusion ; and still another that,
being a mere link in the chain of causalities, he will yet
forever be, and be happy in the consciousness that he is.
The contrarieties, in short, are endless, and accordingly
the weight of their apparent concert, when set against the
general vote and appetite of the race for something super
natural, is wholly insignificant. If it be a token of
advancing culture, it certainly is not any token that a
wiser age of reason or scientific understanding is yet
reached; and the grand major vote of the race, for a
supernatural faith, is nowise weakened by it. Still it is a
fact, the universal fact of history, that man is a creature
of faith, and can not rest in mere nature and natural caus
ality. Nothing will content him in the faith that nature
is the all, or universal system of being..
But the indications we discover within the realm of
nature, or of cause and effect, are more striking even
than those which we discover in the demonstrations of our
own history. We have spoken of a system supernatural,
superior to the system of nature, and subordinating
always the latter to itself; understanding, however, that

72 NATURE ITSELF OFFERS TYPES
both together, in the truest and most proper sense, consti
tute the real universal system of God. Now, as if to
show us the possibility, and familiarize to us the fact of a
subordination thus of one system and its laws to the uses
and superior behests of another, we have, in the domain
of nature herself, two grand systems of chemistry, or chem
ical force and action ; one of which comes down upon the
other, always from without, to dominate over it, decompos
ing substances which the other has composed, producing
substances which the other could not. We speak here, it
will be understood, of what is called inorganic chemistry,
and vital chemistry, the chemistry of matter out of life or
below it, and of that which is in it and by it. The lives
that construct and organize the bodies they inhabit, are
the highest forms of nature, and are set in nature as types
of a yet higher order of existence ; viz., spirit, or free
intelligence. They are immaterial, having neither weight
nor dimensions of their own ; and what is yet closer to
mind, they act by no dynamic force, or impulsion, but
from themselves ; coming down upon matter, as architects
and chemists, to do their own will, as it were, upon the
raw matter and'the dead chemistry of the world. We
say not that they have in truth a will ; they only have a
certain plastic instinct, by which their dominating chemis
try is actuated, and their architectural forms are supplico
We have thus a world immaterial within the boundaries
of cause and effect ; for the plastic instinct has causes of
action in itself, and acts under a necessity as absolute as
the inorganic forces. It belongs to nature, and not to the
supernatural, because it is really in the chain of cause and
effect, and is only a quasi power. The manner of work
ing, in these plastic chemistries, no science can dis

OF SUPERNATURAL AGENCY. 78
cover and their products no science can imitate.
Elements that are united by the laws of matter they will
somehow resolve and separate, and elements which no
laws of matter have ever united, they will bring into a mys
tic union, congenial to their own forms and uses. Thus,
in place of the few distinct substances we should have,
were the earth left to its pure metallic state, invaded by
none of these myrmidons of life and the chemistries they
bring with them, we have, provided for our use, immense
varieties of substances which can not even be recount
ed — woods, meats, bones, oils, wools, furs, grains, gums,
spices, sweets, the fruits, the medicines, the grasses, the
flowers, the odors — representatives all of so many lives,
working in the clay, to produce what none but their exter
nal chemistry, entering into the clay in silent sovereignty,
can summon it to yield. They are types in nature of the
supernatural and its power to subordinate the laws of na
ture. They come as God's mute prophets, throwing down
their rods upon the ground, as Moses did, that we may
see their quickening and believe. We do believe that
they contain a higher tier of chemical forces, superior to
the lower tier of forces in the dead matter, and we are
nowise shocked by the miracle, when we see them quicken
the dead matter into life, and work it by their magic pow
er into substances, whose affinities were not inherent in
the matter, but in the subtle chemists of vitality by
whom they were fashioned.
Nothing is better understood, for example, than that
the three elements of the sugar principle have no discov
erable affinity by which they unite, and that no utmost
art of science has ever been able, under the inorganic
laws of matter, to unite them. They never do unite, save
1

74 AS DR. STRAUSS HIMSELF
by the imposed chemistry of the sugar-making lives
And so it is of all vegetable and animal substan ces. They
exist because the system of vital chemistries is gifted
with a qualified sovereignty over the system of inor
ganic chemistry. And it would seem as if it was the
special design of God, in this triumph of the lives over
the mineral order and its laws, to accustom us to the fact
of a subordination of causes, and make us so familiar with
it as to start no skepticism in us, when the sublimer fact
of a supernatural agency in the affairs of the world is dis
covered or revealed. For, if the secret workings, the dis
solvings, distillations, absorptions, conversions, composi
tions, continually going on about us and within, could be
definitely shown, there is not any thing in all the mytholo
gies of the race, the doings of the gods, the tricks of fairies,
the spells and transformations of the wizard powers, that
can even approach the real wonders of fact here displayed.
And yet we apprehend no breach or suspension of the
laws of dead matter in the manifest subordination they
•suffer; on the contrary, we suppose that the dead mat
ter is thus subordinated, in a certain sense, through and
by its own laws. As little reason have we to apprehend
a breach upon the laws of nature in one of Christ's mira
cles. Whatever yields to him, yields by its own laws,
and not otherwise. So significant is the lesson given us
by these myrmidons of life, that are filling the world with
their activity, preparing it to their uses, and transforming
it — otherwise a desert — into a frame of habitable order
and beauty.
It is remarkable that even Dr. Strauss takes note of
this same peculiarity observable in the works of nature.
'It ia tme," he says, "that single facts and groups

CANDIDLY ADMITS. 75
of facts, with their conditions and processes of change,
are not so circumscribed as to be unsusceptible of ex
ternal influence; for the action of one existence or
kingdom in nature trenches on that of another; human
freedom controls natural development, and material laws
react on human freedom. Nevertheless, the totality of
finite things forms a vast circle, which, except that it owes
its existence and laws to a superior power, suffers no
intrusion from without. This conviction is so much a
habit of thought with the modern worid, that in actual
life the belief in a supernatural manifestation, an immedi
ate divine agency, is at once attributed to ignorance or
imposture."* But, what if it should happen that above
this "totality of things" there is a grand totality superior
to things ? Wherein is it more incredible that this higher
totality should exert a subordinating "external influence"
on the whole of things, than that "one kingdom in nature
trenches on another ? " Why may not men, angels, God,
subordinate and act upon the whole of what is properly
called nature ? and what are all the organific powers in
nature doing but giving us a type of the truth, to make it
familiar ? And then how little avails the really low ap
peal from such a testimony to the current unbeliefs and
crudities of a superficial, coarse-minded, unthinking
world? It is not these which can convict such opin
ions of "ignorance or imposture." Had this writer,
on the contrary, observed that the subordination of one
kingdom of nature and its laws to the action of anoth
er, covers all the difficulties of the question of miracles,
he could have had some better title to the name of n
philosopher, - — ' - - •--

*Xife of Jesus, Vol. I, p. I?l.

76* GEOLOGY FURNISHES
Meantime, while we are familiarized, in this manner,
with the subordination of one system of laws and forces
to another ; and prepared to admit the possibility, if we
should not rather say forewarned of the actual existence
of, another system above nature subordinating that; we
also meet with arguments incorporated in the works of
nature, that have a sturdier significance, rising up, as it
were, to confront those coarse and truculent forms of skepti
cism on which, probably, the finer tokens just referred to
would be lost. The atheist denies the existence of any
being or power above nature ; the pantheist does the
same — only adding that nature is God, and entitled in
some sense to the honor of religion. Now, to show the
existence of a God supernatural, a God so far separated
from nature and superior to it as to act on the chain of
natural cause and effect from without the chain, the new
science of geology comes forward, lays open her stone
registers, and points us to the very times and places where
the creative hand of God was inserted into the world, to
people it with creatures of life. Thus it is an accepted or
established fact in ge°l°g7) that our planet was, at some
remote period, in a molten or fluid state, by reason of the
intense heat of its matter. Emerging from this state by a
gradual cooling process, there could of course be no seeds
in it and no vestiges or germs of animal life. It is only
a vast cinder, in fact, just now a little cooled on the sur
face, but still red hot within. And yet the registers show,
beyond the possibility even of a doubt, that the cinder
was, in due time and somehow, peopled with creatures of
life. Whence came they or the germs of which they
sprung ? Out of the fire, or out of the cindei ? The fire
would exterminate them all in a minute of time, and it

ANOTHER KIND OF PROOF. 77

•

will be difficult to imagine that the cinder, the mere me
tallic matter of the worid, has any power to resolve itself,
under its material laws, into reproductive and articulated
forms of hfe.
Again, these ancient registers of rock record the fact that,
here and there, some vast fiery cataclysm broke loose, sub
merging and exterminating a great part of the living tribes
of the world, after which came forth new races of occu
pants, more numerous and many of them higher and more
perfect in their forms of organization. Whence came
these? By what power ever discovered in nature were
they invented, composed, articulated, and set breathing in
the air and darting through the waters of the world ?
Finally man appears, last and most perfect of all the
living forms; for, while so many successive orders and
types of living creatures, vegetable and animal, show us
their remains in the grand museum of the rocks, no ves
tige, or bone, or sign of man has ever yet been discovered
there. Therefore here, again, the question returns,
whence came the lordly occupant? Where was he con
ceived ? In what alembic of nature was he distilled? By
what conjunction of material causes was he raised up to
look before and after, and be the investigator of all
causes? Having now these facts of new production before us,
wc are obliged to admit some power out of nature and
above it, which, by acting on the course of nature, started
the new forms of organized life, or fashioned the germs
out of which they sprung. To enter on a formal discussion
of the theory, so ambitiously attempted by some of the
naturalists, by which they are ascribed to the laws of
mere nature or to natural development, would carry mc

78 IT REFUTES
farther into the polemics of geology and zoology than the
limits of my present argument will suffer. I will only
notice two or three of the principal points of this devel
opment theory, in which it is opposed by insurmountable
facts.* First of all, it- requires us to believe that the original
germs of organic life may be and were developed out of
matter by its inorganic forces. If so, why are no new
germs developed now ? and why have we no well-attested
facts of the kind? Some few pretended facts we have,
but they aie too loosely made out to be entitled, for a mo
ment, to our serious belief. Never yet has it been shown
that any one germ of vegetable, or animal life, has been
developed by the existing laws of nature, without some
egg or germ previously supplied to start the process. Be
sides, it is inconceivable that there is a power in the metal
lic and earthy substances, or atoms, however cunningly
assisted by electricity, to generate a seed or egg. If we
ourselves can not even so much as cast a bullet without a
mold, how can these dead atoms and blind electric cur
rents, without apy matrix, or even governing type, weave
the filaments and cast the living shape of an acorn, or any
smallest seed ? There can be no softer credulity than the
kepticism which, to escape the need of a creative miracle,
esorts to such a faith as this.
But, supposing it possible, or credible, that certain germs
)f life may have been generated by the inorganic forces,
* Whoever wishes to see this subject handled more scientifically and in a
3iost masterly manner, may consult the " Essay on Classification " prefixed
«o the great work of Mr. Agassiz on Natural History, where the conceit
that our animal and vegetable races were started in their several eras by
physical agencies, without a creative Intelligence, is exploded so as to b«
forever incapable of resuming even a pretense of reason.

THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 79
the development scheme has it still on hand to account
for the existence of man. That he is thus composed in
full size and maturity is impossible ; he must be produced,
if at all, in the state of infancy. Two suppositions, then,
are possible, and only two ; and we find the speculations
of the school vibrating apparently between them. First,
that there is a slow process of advance in order, through
which the lowest forms of life gradually develope those
which are higher and more perfect, and finally culminate
in man. Or, secondly, that there is a power in all vital
natures, by which, at distant but proper intervals, they
suddenly produce some order of being higher than they,
much as we often see in those examples of propagation
which we denominate, most unphilosophically, lusus natu-
r<x, and that so, as the last and highest lusus, if that were
a scientific conception, man appears ; being, in fact, the
crown, or complete fulfillment, of that type of perfection
which pertains to all, even the lowest, forms of life. In
one view the progress is a regular gradation ; in the other
it is a progress by leaps or stages.
As regards the former, it is a fatal objection that no
such plastic, gradual movement of progress can be traced
in the records of the geologic eras. All the orders, and
genera, and species, maintain their immovable distinctions ;
and no trace can any where be discovered, whether there or
in the now living races, of organic forms that are interme
diate and transitional. Tokens may be traced in the
rocks of a transitional development in some given kind or
species, as of the gradual process by which a frog is devel
oped; but there is no trace of organized being midway
between the frog and the horse, or of any insect o?
fish, on its way to become a frog. Besides, it is wholly

80 IT REFUTES
inconceivable that there should be in rerum natura any
kind of creature that is midway, or transitional, between
the oviparous and mammal orders. Still further, if man is
the terminal of a slow and plastic movement, or advance,
what has become of the forms next to man, just a little
short of man? They are not among the living, nor
among the dead. No trace of -any such forms has ever
been discovered by science. The monkey race have been
set up as candidates for this honor. But, to say nothing
of the degraded consciousness that can allow any creature
of language, duty, and reason, to speak of his near affinity
with these creatures, what one of them is there that could
ever raise a human infant ? And if none, there ought to
be some intermediate race, yet closer to humanity, that
can do it. Where is this intermediate race ?
Just this, too, is the difficulty we encounter in the sec
ond form of the theory. * There neither is nor can be any
middle position between humanity and no humanity. If
the child, for child there must be, is human, the mother
and father must either be human or else mere animals.
If they have not merely the power of using means to
ends, but the necessary ideas, truth, right, cause, space
time, and also the faculty of language, that is of receiving
the inner sense of symbols, which is the infallible test of
intelligence, [intus lego,] then they are human ; otherwise
they are animals. No matter, then, how high they may
be in their order; their human child is a different form of
being, with which, in one view, they have nothing in com
mon. And he is, by the supposition, born a child ; the
son of an animal, but yet a human child, And then the
question rises, what animal is there, existing or conceiv
able, what accident, or power in nature, that can nurse or

THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 81
shelter from death, that feeblest and most helpless of all
creatures, a human infant ? Neither do we find, as a mat
ter of fact, that the animal races advance in their nursing
and protecting capacity, accordingly as they advance in
the scale of organization. The nearest approach to that
kind of tending and protective capacity, necessary to the
raising of a human infant, any where discernible in the
animal races, is found in the marsupial animals ; which are
yet far inferior, as regards both intelligence and organiza
tion, to the races of dogs, elephants, and monkeys. Nay,
the young salmon, hatched in the motherhood of the river,
being cradled in the soft waters, and having a small sack of
food attached underneath, to support the first weeks of their
infancy, are much better off in their nursing than these
most advanced races. Any theory, in short, which throws
a human child on the care of an animal parentage, is
too nearly absurd to require refutation.
But there is a scientific reason against this whole theory
of development, which appears to be irresistible ; viz., that
it inverts the order of causes, and makes exactly that which
distinguishes the fact of death, the author and cause of life.
For it is precisely the wonder, as was just now shown, of
the living creatures, or vital powers, that, instead of being
under the laws of mineral substances, they are continually
triumphing over them. Never do they fall under and
submit to them, till they die, and this is death. Thus,
when a little nodule of living matter, called an acorn, is
placed in the ground, it takes occasion, so- to speak, from
its new conditions, begins to quicken, opens its ducts,
starts its pumps into action, sets at work its own wondrous
powers of chemistry, and labors on through whole cen
turies, composing and building on new lengths of wood.

82 IT IS REFUTED TOO
till it has raised into the sky, against gravity and the laws
of dead chemistry, a ponderous mass of many tons weight ;
there to stand, waving in triumph over the vanquished
chemists of the ground, and against the raging' storms of
ages ; never to yield the victory till the life grows old by
exhaustion. Having come now to the limit of its own
vital nature, the tree dies ; whereupon the laws of inor
ganic matter, over which it had triumphed, fall at work
upon it, in their turn, to dissolve it ; and, between them
and gravity, pulling it down upon the ground, it is disin
tegrated and reduced to inorganic dust. Now what the
theory in question proposes is, that this same living nodule
was originally developed, organized, and gifted with life,
by the laws of dead matter, — laws that have themselves
been vanquished, as regards their force, by its dominating
sovereignty, and never have been able to do any thing
more than to dissolve it after it was dead.
We are brought, then, to the conclusion, which no inge
nuity of man can escape, that the successive races of liv
ing forms discovered by geology are fresh creations,, by a
power out of nature and above it acting on nature ; which,
it will be remembered, is our definition of supernatural
ism itself. And this plainly is no mere indication, but an
absolute proof, that nature is not the complete system of
God. Indeed, we may say, what might well enough be
clear beforehand, that, if man is not from eternity, as
geology proves beyond a question, then to imagine that
mere dead earth, acted on by its chemical and electric
forces, should itself originate sense, perception, thought,
reason, conscience, heroism, and genius, is to assert, in the
name of science, what is more extravagant than all the
miracles even of the Hindoo mythology.

BY OTHER REASONS. 83
Theie is yet another view of nature, at once closer at
hand and more familiar, which demands a great deal more
of attention than it has received, from those who include
all existence in the term. I speak of the conflicting and
mutually destructive elements known to be comprised in
it. In one view, it appears to be a glorious aud complete
system of order ; in another, a confused mixture of tumult
and battle. One set of powers is continually destroying
what another is, with equal persistency, creating ; and the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.
If then system is that which stands iu the unity of reason,
by what right are we able to call nature a system ? That
it is a system, or more properly part of a system, I do not
question ; for the subjective unity of reason is an instinct
io powerful in our nature, or so nearly sovereign over it,
ihat we can never expel the faith of such unity, 'even
when it is objectively undiscoverable. What I here insist
upon is, that nature, granting the most that can be said of
it as a system, is manifestly no complete system in itself.
On the contrary, it takes on appearances, in all its mani
festations, that indicate the action in it and upon it of
powers extraneous. It seems to be no complete thing in
itself, otherwise it would flow in courses of order and
harmony, without any such turbulence of conflict and
mutual destruction as we now see. We even look upon it
as a realm played upon by forces of mischief, mixed up
somehow with the disorders of disobedient powers, or, at
least, penally accommodated to their state of sin, as it was
originally subordinated to their uses. Mest certain it is
that, if cause and effect are universal, and in that view a
complete universal system, such as our pantheistic ana
other naturalizing writers pretend, — subject to no outside

84 DISTINCTION RAISED
action, subordinate to no other and higher tiers of exist
ence, — there could be no aspects of strife and tumult in the
plan; all, in such a case, must represent the necessary
harmony and order of the system ; flowing together on,
down the easy track of its silent, smooth eternity. As it
is, then, we have manifestly no sufficient right to speak of
system at all, in the proper and true meaning of the term,
till we bring into the account existences above nature,
such as have it in their way to will, and war, and bring in
disorder, presupposing thus a plan that includes possibili
ties of strife and conflict. And then, when we speak of
system, it will be in the sense of the apostle, when, passing
above the mere platitudes of things, he rises, iu the man •
ner already described, to the contemplation of invisible
dominions and powers, and of Christ, their everlasting
head, and says inclusively of all created beings in heaven
and in earth, — "For in him all things consist." In this
word "consist" [standing together,] we have the essential
and highest conception of system. Here is opened a
glimpse of the true system of God ; any thing less, oi
lower, or different, is only a fiction of science, and no
truth. But we come to a point more positive and decisive ; viz.,
that we do positively know existences that can not be in
cluded in nature, but constitute a higher range, empowered
to act upon it. This higher range we are ourselves, as
already shown by our definition of nature and the super
natural in the last chapter. By that definition we are now
prepared to assume and formally assign the grand two
fold distinction of things and persons, or things and powers.
All free intelligences, it was shown, the created and the

BETWEEN POWERS AND THINGS. 85
uncreated, are, as being free, essentially supernatural in
their action; having all, in the matter of their will, a
power transcending cause and effect in nature, by which
they are able to act on the lines and vary the combinations
of natural causalities. They differ, in short, from every
thing that classes under the term nature, in the fact that
they act from themselves, uncaused in their action. They
are powers, not things ; the radical idea of a power being
that of an agent, or force, which acts from itself, uncaused,
initiating trains of effect that flow from itself.
Of the two great classes, therefore, named in our distri
bution, one comprehends all beings that are able to origin
ate new trains of effects, — these are the Powers ; and the
other is made up of such as can only propagate effects un
der certain fixed laws,— these are Things. At the head
of one class we conceive is God, as Lord of Hosts ; who,
in virtue of his all-originating power as Creator, is called
the First Cause ; having round him innumerable orders of
intelligence which, though caused to exist by Him, are as
truly first causes in their action as He, — starting all their
trains of consequences in the same manner. In the other
class, we have the immense catalogue of what are called
the natural .sciences, — the astronomical bodies, the imma
terial forces, the fluids and solids of the world, the ele
ments and atoms of chemistry, the dynamics of life and
instinct, — in all of which, what are called causes are only
propagations of effects under and by fixed laws. Hence
they are second causes only ; that is, causes whose causa
tions are determined by others back of them ; never, in
any sense, originative, or first causes. The completeness
of the distribution will be yet more clear, and the im
mense abyss of distance between the two orders, or
8

86 POWERS ARE
classes, more visibly impassable, if we add such points of
contrast as the following: —
Powers, acting in liberty, are capable of a double
action, — to do, or not to do, (God, for example, in creat
ing, man in sinning;) things can act only in one way,
viz., as their law determines.
Powers are perfectible only by exercise, after they are
made ; things are perfect as made.
Powers are perfected, or established in their law, only
by a schooling of their consent ; things are under a law
mechanical at the first, having no consent.
Powers can violate the present or nearest harmony,
moving disorder in it; things are incapable of disorder,
save as they are disordered by the malign action of
powers. Powers, governed by the absolute force or fiat of omni
potence, would in that fact be uncreated and cease ; things
exist and act only in and by the impulsion of that fiat.
We have thus drawn out and set before us two distinct
orders and degrees of being, which, together, constitute
the real universe. So perfectly diverse are they in kind,
that no common terms of law or principle can, for one
moment, be imagined to include them both ; they can be
one system only in some higher and broader sense, which
subordinates one to the other, or both to the same final
causes. One thing is thus made clear ; viz., that nature is
not, in any proper sense, the universe. We know that it
is not, because we find another kind of existence in our
selves, which consciously does not fall within the terms of
nature. Probably the disciples of naturalism will make
answer to this course of argument, by complaining that
we gain our point thus easily by means of our definition

THE PRINCIPAL MAGNITUDES. 87
which definition is arbitrary, — drawing a distinction be'
tween nature and the supernatural, or between things and
powers, that is not usual. Whether it be usual or not is
not the question, but whether it is grounded in reality and
witnessed immediately by our own consciousness. If it
has been the prime sophism of the naturalists, to assume
the universality of nature, and still more if they have
carried the assumption so far as to hold, in fact and even
formally, that men are only things, — under the same laws
of eternal necessity with things, and equally incapable of
obligation, thus a part of the system of universal nature, —
we certainly have as good a right to raise definitions, that
meet the truth of consciousness, as they to overlook and
hide them, in plain defiance of consciousness. There may
be something fatal in such definitions, but there certainly
is nothing arbitrary.
Eeceiving it now as a truth sufficiently established that
nature, or the realm of things, is not the system of the
universe, that there is beside a realm of powers, it is dif
ficult to close the survey taken, without glancing, for a
moment, at the relative weight and consequence of the
two realms. When such a question is raised, there are
many who will have it as their feeling, whether they say
it in words or not, that the world of things preponderates
in magnitude ; for what are we doing, a great part of us,
whether men of action or men of science, but chasing the
shows of our senses, and magnifying their import, by the
stimulation of our egregious idolatry ? Arid yet it would
seem that any most extempore glance at the world of
powers would suffice to correct us, and set the realm of
things, vast as it is, in a very humble place. First, we
recognize in the grand inventory our own human raee

88 NATURE ONLY A FIELD
We call them persons, spirits, souls, minds, intelligences,
free agents, and we see them moving out from nature and
above it, consciously superior; streaming into it in cur
rents of causality from themselves ; subduing it, develop
ing or detecting its secret laws, harnessing its forces, and
using it as the pliant instrument of their will ; first causes
all, in a sense, and springs of action, side by side with the
Creator, whose miniatures they are, whose footsteps they
distinguish, and whose recognition they naturally aspire
to. Next adjacent to these we have the intelligent powers
of the astronomic worlds, and all the outlying populations
of the sky ; so numerous that we shall best conceive their
number, not by counting the stars and increasing the
census obtained by some factor or multiplier greater than
the mind can definitely grasp, but by imagining the stellar
spaces of infinity itself interfused and filled with their
prodigious tides of life and motion. All these, like us,
are creatures of admiration, science, will, and duty ; able
to search out the invisible in the visible, and find the foot
steps of God in his works. Then again, also, we recog
nize a vast and^ gloriously populated realm of angels and
departed spirits, who, when they are sent, minister, unseen,
about us ; mixed, we know not how, in the surroundings
of our state, with unsaintly and demoniacal powers of
mischief, not sent nor suffered even to come, save when
they are attracted by the low affinities we offer as open
gates to their coming. To which, also, we are to add
those unknown, dimly-imagined orders of intelligences, of
which we are notified in the terms of revelation, — seraphim,
living creatures, thrones, authorities, dominions, princi
palities, and powers.
Now all these living armies or hosts of God, and God

FOR THE POWERS, 89
the Lord of Hosts, capable of character, society, duty,
love, — creators all, in a sense, of things that otherwise
could never be, first causes all of their own acts and
doings, able to adorn what is and contrive what is not,
and carry up the worlds themselves in ascending scales of
improvement, — can we look on these and imagine that
nature includes the principal sum and constitutes the real
system of being ? Are not these other forms of being the
transcendent forms, and if we will inventory the universe,
are they not all, in fact, that gives it an assignable value ?
If God Himself be a real existence, what is he, by the
supposition, but the major term of all existence, — the all-
containing substance, a being so great that we scarcely
need refer to the free populations just named, to sink all
that is below Him, and is called nature, into comparative
insignificance. But, when we regard Him as the Uncre
ated Power at the head of his immense family of powers,
all systematized or sought to be systematized, all perfect
in good or else to be perfected under one law, viz., the
eternal, necessary, immutable law of right,- — a law which
he first of all accepts himself, in which his own character
of beauty and truth and even his felicity is based, and
which therefore he ordains for all, to be the condition of
their character, as of his own, building nature itself to it,
as a field of exercise and trial ; then do we, for once, catch
a true glimpse of the significance of nature. It is no
more that universe the philosophers speak of; it is raised
in dignity by the relation it fills, and, for a like reason,
sunk in quantity to comparative nothingness. Its dis
tances no longer occupy us, its magnitudes appall us no
more, the astronomic splendors are tinsel ; nothing is solid.
or great, or high, but those transcendent powers whose
8*

90 AND THEIR EXERCISE.
eternities are the main substances of the worlds. Nature,
in short, is only stage, field, medium, vehicle, for the uni
verse; that is, for God and his powers. These are the
real magnitudes ; because they contain, at once, the import
and the final causes, or last ends, of all created substance.
The grand, universal, invisible system of God, therefore,
is a system that centralizes itself in these, subordinating
all mere things, and having them for its instruments. For
the serving and training of these, he loosens the bands of
Orion and tempers the sweet influences of Pleiades ; spread
ing out the heavens themselves, not for the heavens'
sakes, but as a tent for these to dwell in. Is it any thing
new that the tent is a thing less solid and of meaner con-
sequence than the occupant?

CHAPTER IV.
PROBLEM OE EXISTENCE, AS RELATED TO THE IACT OP
EVIL.
We have reached a summit now, where a wider pros
pect opens, and God's true system begins to reveal its out
lines. Nature, intelligently defined, is not, as we have
seen, that system, but only a subordinate and humble
member of it. The principal existences are not the things
or magnitudes which science has for its subjects, but those
everlasting populations of powers that inhabit the realm
of things and do their will upon it. The real universe
invests, or takes in nature, even as the blooming and suc
culent peach gathers its fruity parts, its fibers, veins and
circulating juices, about the n'at or stone. Scientifically
speaking, both parts together constitute the real unity of
the peach. But, if any one should claim this distinction
for the stone, because of its stability and because it is a
point of inherence and a basis of reaction for the vascular
and fleshy parts, it would be a good and sufficient reply
that, practically, or as regarding considerations of value,
the fruity part is all ; and that, when we name the peach,
we commonly do not so much as think of the stone, either
as being or not being included. So it is with cause and
effect, laws and instincts, all that we call nature ; it is not
the system of God, and is really no co-ordinate part of his
universe, considered as related to the powers that have
their society in it and get their reactions from it. They
are the universe, practically, themselves; only having na
ture as their field and the tool-house of their instrument
ations.

92 POWFjSS not manageable
Eegarding them now as powers, and so as the grand
reality of God's universal system, let us consider more
carefully what their relations are to the natural forces and
the general order of the system. They can not, by the
supposition, be operated under, laws of causation, or be, in
any sense, included in the order of nature. As little
admissible is it, supposing the strict originality of their
actions, and regarding them as properly first causes each
of his own, that they are subject to any direct control, or
impulsion of omnipotence. We set no limits, when we
thus speak, to omnipotence ; we only say that omnipotence
is forpe, and that nothing in the nature of force is appli
cable to the immediate direction, or determination of pow
ers. At a remove one or more degrees distant, force may
concern itself in the adjustment of means, influences, and
motivities related to choice ; or, by spiritual permeations,
it may temper and sway that side of the soul which is
under the control of laws, and so may raise motivities of
thought and feeling within the soul itself; but the will,
the man himself as a power, is manageable only in a
moral way ; that is, by authority, truth, justice, beauty,
that which supposes obligation or command. And this,
again, supposes a consenting obedience, and this a power
of non-consent, without which the consent were insignifi
cant. Which power of non-consent, it will be observed, is
a power also of deviation or disobedience, and no one can
show beforehand that, having such a power, the subject
will not sometime use it.
So far the possibility of evil appears to be necessarily
involved in the existence of a realm of powers ; whether
it shall also be a fact, depends on other considerations yet
to be named. One of the most valued and most triumph

BY OMNIPOTENCE." 93
antly asserted arguments of our new school of Sophists is
dismissed, in this manner, at the outset. God they say is
omnipotent, and, being omnipotent, he can, of course, do
all things. If therefore he chooses to have no sin or
disobedience, there will be no sin or disobedience ; and if
we fall on what is sin to us, it will only be a form of good
to Him, and would be also to us, if we could see far
enough to comprehend the good. The argument is well
enough, in case men are things only and not powers ; but
if God made them to be powers, they are, by the supposi
tion, to act as being uncaused in their action, which ex
cludes any control of them by God's omnipotent force,
and then what becomes of the argument ? Omnipotence
may be exerted, as we just said, one degree farther off, or
in that department of the soul which is under conditions
of nature ; but it does not folio w that any changes of view,
feeling, motive, wrought in this manner, will certainly
suffice to keep any being in the right, when he is so far a
power that he can even choose the weakest and most
worthless motive — as we consciously do in every wrong
act of our lives.
We dismiss, in the same short manner, the sweeping
inferences a certain crude-minded class of theologians are
accustomed to draw from the omnipotence of God. They
take the word omnipotence in the same undiscerning and
coarse way ; as if it followed indubitably, that a being
omnipotent can do every thing he really wishes to have
done ; and then the conclusion is not far off that God, for
some inscrutable reason, wants sin, wants misery — else
why do they exist ? — therefore that the existence of siu
and misery supposes no real breach of order, and that.
when they come, they fall into the regular train of God's

94 WHICH IS YET NO LIMITATION
ideal harmony, as exactly as any of the heavenly motions,
or chemical attractions. All such idolaters of the force-
principle in God will, of course, be abundantly shocked
by what appears to be a limit on the sway, or sufficiency of
their idol. And yet, even they will be advancing un
consciously, every day of their lives, something which
implies a limitation as real as any they complain of. Thus,
how often will they say, without suspecting any such
implication, that God could not forgive sin without a ran
som, and could not provide a ransom, save by the incar
nate life and death of his Son. Why not, if he is omnip
otent ? Can not omnipotence do every thing ? This very
question, indeed, of the seeming limitation of God's
omnipotence, implied in the sacrifice of Christ, was the
precise difficulty which Anselm, in his famous treatise,
undertook to solve. He states it thus: — "To show for
what necessity and cause God, who is omnipotent, should
have assumed the littleness and weakness of human na
ture, for the sake of its renewal;"* or, as he had just
been saying,f how he did this to restore the world, when,
for aught that appears, "he might have done it merely by
his will."
The difficulty was real, no doubt, to a certain class of
minds, in his time ; but to another class, inthralled by no
such crudities in respect to force, it never was, or could be,
any difficulty at all. As little room for question is there
in our doctrine, when we say that a realm of powers is
not, by the supposition, to be governed as a realm of
things, that is, by direct omnipotence; for we mean by
omnipotence, not power, in the sense of influence, or
moral impression, but mere executive force ; we mean that
* Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. XI, p. 131. f lb., p. 136

OF OMNIPOTENCE. 95
God, as being omnipotent, is in force to do all that fore*
can do — this and nothing more. But force has no rela
tion to the doing of many things. It can overturn mount
ains, roll back the. sea, or open a way through it; but
manifestly it has nothing to do in the direct impulsion of
a soul; for a soul is a power, capable of character and
responsibility, as being clear of all causation and acting by
its own free self-impulsion. Therefore, to say that pow
ers, or free agents, can not be swayed absolutely by
omnipotent force, is only to deny the applicability of
such force, not to place it under limitation. It might as
well be called a limitation of the force of an army, to say
that it can not compute an eclipse, or write an epic; or that
of an earthquake, to say that it can not shake a demonstra
tion of Euclid.
The doctrine I am stating involves, in fact, no limita
tion of the power of God at all. It only shows that the
reason of God's empire excludes, at a certain point, the
absolute dominion of force. Nor is it any thing new,
more than in the question of Anselm above referred to,
that the force of God consents to the sovereignty of his
eternal reason, and the counsel of wisdom in his purposes.
But it will be peremptorily required of us, at. this point,
to answer another question ; viz., why God should have
created a realm of powers, or free agents, if they must
needs be capable, in this manner, of wrong and misery ?
Without acknowledging, for one moment, that I am re
sponsible for the answer of any such question, and deny
ing explicitly the right of any mortal to disallow or dis
credit any act of God, because he can not comprehend the
reasons of it, I will simply say, in reply, that it is enough
for me to be allowed the simple hypothesis that God

96 IK A KINGDOM OF POWERS,
preferred to have powers and not things only ; because he
loves character and, apart from this, cares not for all the
mere things that can be piled in the infinitude of space
itself, even though they be diamonds ; because, in bestow
ing on a creature the perilous capacity of character, he
bestows the highest possibility of wealth and glory; a
capacity to know, to love, to enjoy, to be consciously great
and blessed in the participation of his own divinity and
character. For if all the orbs of heaven were so many
solid Kohinoors, glittering eternally in the sun, what were
they, either to themselves or to Him ; or, if they should
roll eternally, undisturbed in the balance of their attrac
tions, what were they to each other ? Is it any impeach
ment of God that he did not care to reign over an empire
of stones ? If he has deliberately chosen a kind of em
pire not to be ruled by force, if he has deliberately set his
children beyond that kinel of control, that they may be
governed by truth, reason, love, want, fear, and the like,
acting through their consent ; if we find them able to act
even against the will of God, as stones and vegetables can
not, what more is necessary to vindicate his goodness, than
to suggest that he has given them, possibly, a capacity to
break allegiance, in order that there may be a meaning
and a glory in allegiance, when they choose it ?
There is, then, such a thing inherent in the system of
powers as a possibility of wrong ; for, given the possibility
of right, we have the possibility of wrong. And it may,
for aught that appears, be the very plan itself of God. tc
establish his powers in the right, by allowing them an ex
periment of the wrong, in which to school their liberty
bringing them up again out of its bitterness, by a deliver-

EVIL INHERENTLY POSSIBLE. 97
ing process, to shun it with an intelligent and forever fixed
abhorrence afterward. And then, if this should be his
plan, what an immense complication of acts, events, pro
cesses, contrarieties, and caprices, must be involved in it;
Nature, considered as the mere run of cause and effect, is
simple as a jewsharp. But here we have a grand concilium,
or republic of wills, acting each for himself, and in that
capacity to be trained, governed, turned about and about,
and finally brought up into the harmony of a consenting
choice and a common love and character. The system
will be one that systematizes the caprices and discords of
innumerable wills, and works results of order, through
endless complications of disorder ; having, in this fact, its
real wisdom and magnificence. Thus how meager an
affair to thought were our American republic, if it were <¦
nothing but the run of causes in the climate and soil, and
the mere physiology of the men ; but, when it is consid
ered as containing so many wills, acting all from them
selves, incomputable in their action because they are un
caused in it ; reducing so many mixtures of contrarieties
and discords to a beautiful resultant order and social unity;
striving still on, by the force of its organic nisus, toward a
condition of historic greatness hitherto unknown to the
world — considered thus, how truly sublime and wonderful
a creation does it appear to be. And yet there are many
who can not imagine that God has any system or law, in
his great republic of freedom, if there be any discord, any
contrariety, any infringement of his mandates, any dis
turbance of nature ; or indeed if he does not really impel
and do every thing himself, by his own immediate and
absolute causation. Whereas, if they could rise above the
feeble conceit by which they make the force of God their
9

98 THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE
idol, they would see that, possibly, it may be the highest
point of grandeur in his system, that it systematizes
powers transcending nature, and even disorders in the field
of nature itself.
Or, if it be objected that the admission or fact of such
disorders annihilates the unity of God's empire, leaving it
in a fragmentary, cloven state, which excludes the scien
tific idea of a proper universe, it is a good and sufficient
answer that God's unities are all, in the last degree, unities
of end, or counsel as related to end ; consisting never in a
perfect concert of parts, or elements, but in a comprehens
ive order that takes up and tempers to its own purposes
many antagonisms. What, in fact, is the order of heaven,
or even the atomic order of particles, but a resultant of the
eternal strife by which they are instigated? What then
if the powers are able to break loose, and do, from obliga
tion; when the system or plan of God is made large
enough to include such a breaking loose, and deep enough
in counsel, from the beginning, to handle it in terms of
sovereign order. The higher unity is not gone because
discord has come in points below, and would not be, even
if the discord were eternal. Still it remains, comprehends
every thing, moving still on its ends, as little diverted or
disturbed, as if the powers all came to wed themselves to
it in loving obedience. There is a real universe now as
before, because the universal nisus of the plan remains,
and because the regulative order that comprehends so
great irregularity retains its integrity unbroken, its equi
librium undisturbed.
If now we raise the question more distinctly, what ia
the great problem of existence, as regards the order pf

A TRAINING INTO PERFECTION. ftft
powers, or the human race as being such, it is not difficult
to answer, following out the view thus far presented, that
it is our perfection ; the perfection, that is, of our liberty,
the schooling of our choice, or consent, as powers, so that
we may be fully established in harmony with God's will
and character ; unified with Him in his will, glorified with
Him in the glory of his character, and so perfected with
Him in his eternal beatitude. Persons or powers are crea
tures, we have seen, who act, not by causality, but by
consent; they must, therefore, be set in conditions that
invite consent, and treated also in a manner that permits
the caprices of liberty. It is also a remarkable distinction,
we have noted, that they are creatures perfectible only
after they are made, while mere natural quantities and
objects are perfect as made. Just here, accordingly, the
grand problem of their life and of the world begins.
They are to be trained, formed, furnished, perfected; and
to this end are to be carried through just such scenes, ex
periences, changes, trials, variations, operations, as will
best serve their spiritual perfection and their final fruition
of each other and of God. If there are necessary perils
in such a trial of their liberty, then they are to be set upon
the course of such perils. Nor will it make any difference
if the perils are such as breed the greatest speculative dif
Acuities. God does not frame his empire to suit and sat
isfy our speculations, but for our practical profit ; to bring
us up into His own excellence, and establish us eternally
in the participation of his character. On this subject there
would seem to be very little room for doubt. The scrip
ture revelation proposes this view of life, our own observ
ation confirms it, and besides there is really no other in
which even our philosophy can comfortably rest.

100 WHICH TRAINING, AS BEING FOR,
But this training of consent, this perfecting of liberty
in the issues of character, it will help us at this early
point to observe, is nothing different from a preparation
for society and a drill-practice in the principles of society;
that is, in truth, in purity, in justice, in patience, forgive
ness, love, all the self-renouncing and beneficent virtues.
Accordingly the course of training will itself be social ; a
trial under, in, and by society. The powers will be
thrown together in terms of duty as being terms of society,
and in terms of society as being terms of duty. Morality
and the law of religion respect society and the condition
of social well-being, which is the grand felicity of powers,
Things have no society, or capacity of social relations. In
mere nature, considered as a scheme of cause and effect,
there is nothing social, any more than there is in the mem
bers of a steam-engine. And if we really believe that we
ourselves are only wheels, in the play of au all-compre
hending causation, it should be the end even of the feeling
of society in us. Love, benefit, sympathy, injury, hatred,
thanks, blame, character, worship, faith, — all that consti
tutes the reahty of society, whether of men with God or
of men with each other, belongs to the fact that we are
consciously powers. Strip us of this, let all these fruits
be regarded as mere dynamic results, under the head of
natural philosophy, and they will change, at once, to be
mere tricks, or impostures of natural magic. Our disci
pline, therefore, is to be such as our supernatural and
social quality requires, the discipline of society. Since it
is for. society, it must be in and by society. We accord
ingly shall have a training as powers among other powers,
such as will qualify us for a place of eternal unity and
harmony with them under God, the central and First

MUST BE IN, SOCIETY. 101
Power ; so to be set by Him in a consolidated, everlasting
kingdom of righteousness, and truth, and love, and peace.
And thus it is that we find ourselves embodied in matter,
to act as powers upon, for, with, and, if we will, against
each other, in all the endless complications of look, word,
act, art, force, and persuasion; in the family and in the
state, or two and two upon each other ; in marriage, frater
nity, neighborhood, friendship, trade, association, protec
tion, hospitality, instruction, sympathy; or, if we will, in
frauds, enmities, oppressions, cruelties, and mutual tempta
tions, — great men moving the age they live in by their
eloquence ; or shaping the ages to come by their institu
tions ; or corrupting the world's moral atmosphere by their
bad thoughts, their fashions and vices; or tearing and des
olating all things by irruptions of war, to win a throne of
empire, or the honors of victors and heroes. By all these
methods do we come into society, and begin to act, each
one, upon the trains of cause and effect in nature; thus
upon each other, from our own point of liberty. And ac
cordingly society is, in all its vast complications, an ap
pointment — we can not escape it. We can only say what
kind of experience it shall be as regards the fruits of char
acter in us. Meantime God is reigning over it, socially
related Himself to each member, governing and training
that member through his own liberty. Life, thus ordered,
is a magnificent scheme to bring out the value of law and
teach the necessity of right as the only conservating prin
ciple of order and happiness ; teaching the more power
fully that it teaches, if so it must, by disorder and sorrow.
And nature, it will be observed, is the universal medium
by or through which the training is accomplished. The
Dowers act on each other, by acting on the lines of cause

102 AND SOCIETY IS CARRIED OK
and effect in nature; starting thus new trains of events
and consequences, by which they affect each other, in ways
of injury or blessing. They speak and set the air in mo
tion, as it otherwise would not move ; and so the obedient
air, played on by their sovereignty, becomes the vehicle
of words that communicate innumerable stings, insults,
flatteries, seductions, threats; or tones of comfort, love
and blessing. So of all the other elements, solid, fluid, or
aerial — they are medial as between che powers. The
whole play of commerce in society is through nature, and
is in fact a playing on the causes and objects of nature by
supernatural agents. All doings and misdoings are, in
this view, a kind of discourse in the terms of nature, by
which these supernatural agents, viz., men, answer to each
other, or to God, in society. Their blasphemies and pray
ers and songs and threats, their looks and gestures, their
dress and manners, their injuries and alms, their blows and
barricades and bullets and bombs, these and such like are
society, the grand conversation by which our social disci
pline is carried on. And it is all a supernatural transaction.
As a conversation in words is not reducible to mere natural
causation, no more is that conversation in bullets and bombs
that we call a battle. Nature could as well talk, as com
pound her forces in cartridges and fire them with a lev
eled aim. Her activity in all these exchanges, or me
dial transactions, that are carried on so briskly, is only the
activity of the powers through her, and is, in fact, super
natural. They start all these nimble couriers and set them
flying back and forth, by the right they have to come
down upon nature and act themselves into it. To a cer
tain extent, they are inserted into nature and conditioned
by it. They live in nature and are of it, up to the point of

THROUGH NATURE. 103
their will, but there they emerge into qualified sovereignty
Without this inherence in nature they would have no me
dia of action, no common terms of order, interest, or trial,
and no such basis of reaction as would make the conse
quences of their action ascertainable, or intelligible ; with
out this sovereignty they would not be responsible. Hence
God's way has been, in all ages, and doubtless in all worlds,
to set his supernatural agents in the closest connection with
nature, there to have their action and there to perceive its
effects on themselves and others. Even the miracles of Je
sus are set as deep in nature as possible ; showing the wine
of Cana to be made out of water, and not out of nothing;
the multitude of the loaves out of seven, not out of none;
that so the mind, being fastened to something already ex
istent, may see the miracle as a process ; whereas, without
a something in nature to begin with, there could be no
process, and therefore nothing to observe.
How far this range of society extends, whether nature
is not, by some inherent necessity, a medium open to the
commerce of all the powers of all worlds, involving, in
that manner, a perilous exposure to demoniacal irruptions,
till moral defenses and safeguards are prepared against
them, are questions not to be answered here ; but we shall
recur to them shortly in another place.
It has been already intimated, or shown as a possible
thing, that the race, regarded as an order of powers, may
break loose from God's control and fall into sin. Will
they so break loose ? Eegarding them simply as made
and set forth on the course of training necessary to their
establishment in holy virtue, will they retain their inno
cence? Have we any reason to think, and if so whal

104 PROBABILITY OF EVIL,
reason to think, that they will drop their allegiance an J
try the experiment of evil ?
It is very certain that God desires no such result
When it takes place, it will be against His will and against
every attribute of his infinitely beneficent and pure char
acter. It will only be true that he has created moral and
accountable beings with this peril incident, rather than to
create only nature and natural things ; having it in view,
as the glorious last end of his plan, finally to clear us of
sin by passing us, since we will descend to it, completely
through it. He will have given us, or, at least, the orig
inal new-created progenitors, a constituently perfect mold ;
so that, taken simply as forms of being, apart from any
character begun by action, they are in that exact harmony
and perfection that, without or before deliberation, spon
taneously runs to good ; organically ready, with all heav
enly affinities in play, to break out in a perfect song. So
far they are innocent and holy by creation, or by the
simple fact of their constituent perfection in the image of
their Maker ; only there is no sufficient strength, or secu
rity in their holiness, because there is no deliberative ele
ment in it. Deliberation, when it comes, as come it must,
will be the inevitable fall of it ; and then, when the side of
counsel in them is sufficiently instructed by that fall and
the bitter sorrow it yields, and the holy freedom is restored,
it may be or become an eternally enduring principle.
Spontaneity in good, without counsel, is weak; counsel
and deliberative choice, without spontaneity, are only a
character begun ; issued in spontaneity, they are the solid
reahty of everlasting good. Still it will not, even then,
be true that God has contrived their sin, as a means of the
ulterior good, though it may be true that they, by their

AGAINST THE WILL OF GOD. 105
Knowledge of it as being only evil, will be intelligently
fixed, forever afterward, in their abhorrence of it. Nor,
if we speak of sin as permitted in this view by God, will
it be any otherwise permitted, than as not being prevented,
either by the non-creation, or by the uncreating of the race.
It may appear to some that such a view of God's rela
tions to sin excludes the fact, or faith of an eternal plan,
showing God to be, in fact, the victim of sin; having
neither power to withstand it, nor any system of purposes
able to include and manage it. On this subject of fore-
ordination or predetermined plan, there is a great deal of
very crude and confused speculation. If there be any
truth which every Christian ought to assume, as evident
beyond all question, it is that God has some eternal plan
that includes every thing, and puts every thing in its
place. That He "foreordains whatsoever comes to pass " is
only another version of the same truth. Nor is there any
the least difficulty in distinguishing the entire consistency of
this with all that we have said concerning God's relations
to the existence of evil — no difficulty, in fact, which does
not occur in phrasing the conduct and doings even of men.
Suppose, for example, that some person, actuated by a
desire to benefit, or bless society, takes it in hand to estab
lish and endow a school of public charity. In such a case,
he will go into a careful consideration of all the possible
plans of organization, with a view to select the best. In
order to make the case entirely parallel, suppose him to
have a complete intuition of these plans, or possibilities — ¦
A, B, and C, &c, on to the end of the alphabet ; so that,
given each plan, or possibility, with all its features and
appointments, he can see precisely what will follow — all
the good, all the mischief, that will be incurred by every

106 GOD STILL GOVERNS
child that will ever attend the school. Foi, in each of
these plans or possibles, there are mischiefs incident ; and
there will be children attendant, who, by reason of no
fault of the school, but only by their perverse abuse of it,
will there be ruined. The benefactor and founder, having
thus discovered that a certain plan, D, combines the great
est amount of good results and the smallest of bad ones,
the question rises whether he shall adopt that plan ? By
the supposition he must, for it is the best possible. And
yet, by adopting that plan, he perceives that he will make
certain also every particular one of the mischiefs that will
be suffered by the abuse of it, and so the ruin of every
child that will be ruined under it. As long as the plan is
only a possible, a thing of contemplation, no mischiefs are
suffered, no child is ruined ; but the moment he decides to
make the plan actual, or set the school on foot, he decides,
makes certain, or, in that sense, foreordinates, all the par
ticular bad conduct and all the particular undoing there
to be wrought, as intuitively seen by him beforehand.
Nothing of this would come to pass if the school, D, were
not founded ; and, in simply deciding on the plan, with a
perfect perception of what will take place under it, he
decides the bad results as well as the good, though in
senses entirely different. The bad are not from him, nor
from any thing he has introduced, or appointed; but
wholly from the abuses of his beneficence practiced by
others whom he undertook to bless. The good is all from
"him, being that for which he established the school. Both
are knowingly made certain, or foreordained by his act.
Iu this illustration it is not difficult to distinguish the
true relation of God to the existence of evil. In selecting
the best possible plan among the millions of possibles

BY AN ETERNAL PLAN. 107
open to his contemplation, and deciding to set on foot, or
actualize that particular universe, he also made certain all
the evils, or mischiefs seen to be connected with it. But
they are not from him because they are, in this indirect
manner, made certain, or foreordinated by him. It is
hardly right to say that they are permitted by him. They
come in only as necessary evils that environ the best plan
possible. Such are the relations of God to the existence
of evil. If it comes, it is not from Him, any more than
the ruin of certain children in the school, just supposed,
are from the benevolent founder. And yet He is not dis
appointed, or frustrated. Still He governs with a plan, a
perfect and eternal plan, which comprehends, in its exact
date and place, every thing which every wrong-doing and
revolting spirit will do, even to the end of the world.
Thus far we have spoken of God's relations to the ex
istence of evil, or its possible prevention. We pass over
now to the side of his subjects ; and there we shall find
reason, as regards their self-retention, to believe that the
certainty of their sin is originally involved in their spiritual
training as powers. Made organically perfect, set as full in
God's harmony as they can be, in the mold of their con
stitution, surrounded by as many things as possible to
allure them to ways of obedience and keep them from the
seductions of sin, we shall discover still that, given the
fact of their begun existence, and their trial as persons or
powers, they are in a condition privative that involves
theh» certain lapse into evil.
If the language I employ in speaking of this matter is
peculiar, it is because I am speaking with caution and
carefully endeavoring to find terms that will convey the

108 EVIL FROM A CONDITION PRIVATIVE,
right, separated from any false, impression. I speak of a
"condition privative," it will be observed; not of any
positive ground, or cause, or necessity; for, if there were
any natural necessity for sin, it would not be sin. If it
were caused, as all simply natural events are caused : or,
what is the same, if it were a natural effect, it would not
be sin. We might as well blame the running of the
rivers, in such a case, as the wrong doing of men ; for
what we may call their wrong doing is, after all, nothing
but the run of causes hid in their person, as gravity is hid
in the running waters. If we could show a positive
ground for sin ; that man, for example, is a being whose
nature it is to choose the strongest motive, as of a scale-
beam to be turned by the heaviest weight, and that the
strongest motive, arranged to operate on men, is the
motive to do evil, that in fact would be the denial of sin,
or even of its possibility ; indeed it is so urged by the
disciples of naturalism on every side. So again if we
could, in a way of positive philosophy, account for the
existence of evil — exactly what multitudes even of chris
tian believers set themselves to do, not observing that, if
they could execute their endeavor, they could also make
as good answer for evil, on the judgment-day of the
world — if, I say, we could properly and positively account
for evil, in this manner, it would not be evil any longer.
When we speak of accounting for any thing, we suppose
a discovery of first principles to which it may be referred ;
but sin can be referred to no first principles, it is simply
the act of a power that spurns all inductives back of the
doer's will, and asserts itself, apart from all first principles,
or even against them. Therefore, to avoid all these false
implications, and present the simple truth of fact, I speak

NOT FROM A GROUND POSITIVE. 109
of a "condition privative;" by which I mean a moral
state that is only inchoate, or incomplete, lacking some
thing not yet reached, which is necessary to the probablo
rejection of evil. Thus an infant child runs directly
toward, and will, in fact, run into, the fire ; not because of
any necessity upon him, but simply because he is in a
condition privative, as regards the experience needed to
prevent him. I said also "involves the certain lapse into
evil" — not "produces," "infers," "makes necessary."
There is no connection of science or law between the sub
ject and predicate, such that, one being given, the other
holds by natural consequence; and yet this condition
privative "involves," according to our way of apprehend
ing it, a certain conviction or expectation of the event
stated. Thus we often attain to expectations concerning
the conduct of men, as fixed as those which we hold con
cerning natural events, where the connection of cause and
consequence is absolute. We become acquainted, as we
say, with a certain person ; we learn how he works in his
freedom, or how, as a power acting from himself, he is
wont to carry himself in given conditions ; and finally we
attain to a sense of him so intimate that, given almost any
particular occasion, or transaction, touching his interest,
we have an expectation, or confidence regarding what he
will do, about as fixed as we have in the connections of nat
ural events. The particular thing done to him " involves,"
in our apprehension, as the certain fact, that he will do a
particular thing consequent. And yet we have no concep
tion that he is determined, in such matters, by any causa
tion, or law of necessary connection; the certainty we
feel is the certainty, not of a thing, but of a power in the
sovereign determination of his liberty. In this and na
10

110 OUR NECESSARY DEFECT
other sense do we speak of a condition privative, that
involves a certain lapse into evil.
Having distinguished, in this careful manner, the true
import of the terms employed, it now remains to look for
that condition privative on which so much depends. And
we shall discover it in three particulars.
1. In the necessary defect of knowledge and consequent
weakness of a free person, or power, considered as having
just begun to be. We must not imagine, because he is a
power, able in his action to set himself above all natural
causes and act originatively as from himself, that he is
therefore strong. On the contrary, even though he begins
in the full maturity of his person, having a constitution
set in perfect harmony with the divine order and truth, he
is the weakest, most unperfect of beings. The stones of
the world are strong in their destiny, because it stands in
God, under laws of causation fixed by Him. But free
agents are weak because they are free ; left to act originat
ively, held fast by no superior determination, bound to no
sure destiny ; save as they are trained into character, in
and through ¦their experience.
Our argument forbids that we should assume the truth
of the human genesis reported in scripture history; for
that is commonly denied by naturalism. I may not even
assume that we are descended of a common stock. But
this, at least, is certain, that we each began to be, and
therefore we may the more properly take the case of Ad
am for an example; because, not being corrupted by any
causes back of him, as we most certainly are, and, making
a beginning in the full maturity of his powers, he may be
supposed, to have had some advantages for standing fast
in the right, which we have not.

OF KNOWLEDGE. Ill
As we look upon him, raising the question whether he
has moral strength to stand, we observe, first of all, that
oeing in a perfect form of harmony, uncorrupted, clean,
in one word, a complete integer, he must of course be
spontaneous to good, and can never fall from it until his
spontaneity is interrupted by some reflective exercise of
contrivance or deliberative judgment. But this will come
to pass, without fail, in a very short time ; because he is
not only spontaneous to good, but is also a reflective and
deliberative being. And then what shall become of his
integrity? Entering still further into his case, as we raise this ques
tion, we perceive that he holds a place, or point, in his ac
tion, between two distinct ranges of thought and motivity ;
between necessary ideas on one hand, and knowledges or
judgments drawn from experience, on the other. In the
first place, being a man, he has necessarily developed in
his consciousness the law of right. He thinks the right,
and, in thinking it, feels himself eternally bound by it.
We may call it an idea in him, or a law, or a category of
his being. He would not be a man without it; for it is
only in connection with this, and other necessary ideas,
that he ranges above the animals. Animals have no ne
cessary ideas ; these, especially such as are moral, are the
necessary and peculiar furniture of man. What could a
man do in the matter of justice, inquiring after it, deter
mining what it is, if the idea of justice were not first de
veloped, as a standard thought or idea, in his mind?
Who would set himself on inquiries after true things and
judgments, if the idea of truth were not in him, as a regu
lative thought, or category of his nature? Thus it is, by
our idea of right, that we are set to the conceiving, oz

112 OUR NECESSARY DEFECT
thought of duty, as well as placed under obligation itself,
and we could not so much as raise the question of virtue
or morality, if we were not first configured to iis law, and
set in action as being consciously under it. Herein, too,
we are specially resembled to God; for, by this same idea
of right, necessary, immutable, eternal, it is that He is
placed in obligation, and it is by His ready and perfect
homage to this that His glorious character is built. And
this law is absolute or unconditional to Him as to us, to us
as to Him. No matter what may befall, or not befall us,
on the empirical side of our life. No impediment, no
threat, or fear, or force can excuse us ; least of all can any
mere condition privative, such as ignorance, inexperience,
or the want of opposing motive. Simply to have thought
the right, is to be under obligation to it, without any mo
tive or hope in the world of experience, and despite of all
opposing motives there. Even if the worlds fall on us,
we must do the right.
Pass over now from the absolute or ideal side of our
existence, to the contingent, or empirical. Here we are,
dealing with# effects, consequences, facts; trying our
strength in attempts; computing, comparing, judging,
learning how to handle things, and how they will handle
us. And by this kind of experience we get all the furni
ture of our mind and character, save what we have as it
were concreated in us, iu those necessary ideas of which
we have spoken, and which are presupposed in all expe
rience. What now, reverting to the case of Adam, as a
just begun existence, is the amount of his experimental,
empirical, or historic knowledge? The knowledges we
here inquire after, it will be observed, are such as are got
ten historically, one by one, and one after another, under

OF KNOWLEDGE. 113
conditions of time ; by seeing, doing, suffering, comparing,
distinguishing, remembering, and other like operations.
A man's knowledge here is represented, of course, by
what he has been through, and felt, and thought. What
then can he know, at the first moment of his being, when,
by the supposition, he has never had a thought, or an ex
perience ; or, if we take him at a point an hour or a day
later, none but that of a single hour or day ? Being a per
fectly disposed creature, the first man sets off, we will say,
in a spontaneous obedience to the right, which is the abso
lute law of his nature and is in him originally, by the ne
cessary conditions of his nature. But there comes up
shortly a question regarding some act, confessedly not
right, or some act which, being forbidden, violates his
sense of right. No matter what it is, he can be as prop
erly and will be as effectually tested, by adhering to the
sense of obligation, in withholding from an apple forbid
den, as in any thing else. Here then he stands upon the
verge of experimental wrong, debating the choice. What
it is in its idea, or obligatory principle, he knows ; but what
it is in the experience of its fruits or consequences he
knows not. The discord, bitterness, remorse, and inward
hell of wrong are hidden, as yet, from his view. Bf mi
natory words have been used, pronouncing death upon
him in case of disobedience, some degree of apprehension
may have been awakened in him anticipatively, under the
natural efficacy of manner and expression, which, even
prior to any culture of experience, have a certain degree of
power. But how little will this amount to in a way of
guard or security for his virtue ; for he is a knowing crea
ture still ; wanting therefore to know, and, if it were not
for this noble instinct of knowledge, would not be a man
10*

114 OUR NECESSARY PERIL
What then is this wrong he is debating, what does it signi
fy ? He does not ask whether it will bring him evil or good ;
for what these are, experimentally, he does not know.
Enough that here is some great secret of knowledge to be
opened; how can he abstain, how refuse to break through
the mask of this unknown something, and know 1 He is
tempted thus, we perceive, not by something positive,
placed in his way, but by a mere condition privative, a per
plexing defect of knowledge incident to the fact of his
merely begun existence.
Doubtless it will be urged that no such wrong would ever
be debated, if some positive desire of the nature were not
first excited, some constitutional susceptibility, or want,
drawn out in longing for its object. Even so, precisely
that we have allowed ; for what is the desire of knowledge
itself but a positive and most powerful instinct of the soul.
Only the more clear is it that, if the desired knowledge
were already in possession, the temptation itself would be
over. So if some bodily appetite were excited; how trivi
al and contemptible were this, or any proposed pleasure,
if only the tsemendous evil and woe of the wrong were
already known, as it will be after years of struggle and
suffering in it. The grand peril therefore is still seen to be
of a privative and not of a positive nature. There must
be positive impulses to be governed, or else there could
not be a man, and the peril is that there is yet no experi
mental knowledge on hand, and can be none, sufficient to
protect and guard the process.
And yet the man is guilty if he makes the fatal choice.
Even if the strongest motive were that way, he is yet a
being able to choose against the strongest, and he consci
ously knows that he ought. In any view, he is noi

UNDER SUCH DEFECT. 115
obliged to choose the wrong, more than a child is obliged
to thrust his hand into the blaze of a lamp, the experience
of which is unknown. The cases are, in fact, strongly
analogous, save that the wrong-doer knows beforehand,
as the child certainly does not, that the act is wrong
or criminal; a consideration by which he conscious
ly ought to be restrained, be the consequences what they
may. And yet, who can expect that he will forever be
restrained, never breaking over this mysterious line to
make the bad experiment, or try what is in this unknown
something eternally before his eyes I If we rightly re
member, the false prophet somewhere represents the diffi
culty of a certain course of virtue, by that of crossing the
fiery gulf of hell upon a hair. Possibly our first man
may cross upon this hair and keep his balance till he is
completely over, but who will expect him to do it? He
may look upon the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
(rightly is it named,) and pass it by. He can do it; there
is a real possibility as there is a real obligation ; but Adam,
we are told, did not, neither is there any the least proba
bility that any other of mankind, with all his advantages,
ever would.
If it should be apprehended by any that a condition pri
vative, connected as it plainly is with such perils, quite
takes away the guilt of sin, that, I answer, is by the sup
position impossible. It really takes away nothing. The
right and only true statement is, that the guilt of sin is not
as greatly enhanced as it would be, if all the knowledge
needful to the strength of virtue were supplied. We dif
fer in this matter from those naturalistic philosophers, who
reduce all human wrong to weakness, and obliterate, in
that manner, all the distinctions of good and evil. We

116 WHICH PERIL DOES NOT
really excuse nothing; we only do not condemn as severely
as if the eternal and absolute obligation of right, revealed
in every human bosom, were more thoroughly fortified by
prudential and empiric knowledge.
It may also be objected, as contrary to all experience,
as well as to the nature of sin itself, that sin should impart
strength, or increase the capacity of virtue. What in
fact does it bring, but bondage, disability, and death?
Even so — this is the knowledge of sin, and no one is the
more capable of holiness on account of it. It is the very
point indeed of this knowledge that it knows disability,
helplessness, despair. And exactly this it is that prepares
the possibility of a new creation. Impotence discovered
is the capacity of redemption. And then, when a soul
has been truly regenerated and set in union with God, its
bad experience will be the condition of its everlasting
stability and strength.
It will naturally enough be objected, again, by some,
who hold the principle of disinterested and absolute vir
tue here assumed, that no mere defect of empirical knowl
edge — the knowledge of prudence or self-interest — creates
a condition privative as regards the security of virtue; —
what need of experience to enforce obligations that are
perfect, apart from all consequences? If one is loving
God, as he ought, simply for his own excellence or beauty,
and living by the inspiration of that excellence, what mat
ter is it whether he knows the practical bitterness, the woe,
the hell of sin, and understands the penal sanctions of re
ward and penalty set against it, or not? Is he going to
fall out of his love and his inspired liberty, because he is
not sufficiently shut in to it by fears and apprehended
miseries! There is an appearance of force in the objec-

EXCUSE OUR SIN. 117
tion, and yet it is only an appearance. For, in the first
place, it is not assumed that Adam, or any other man, put
to the trial of a right life, is weak in his spontaneous obe
dience, because he is not sufficiently held to it by the pru
dential motives of fear and known destruction; but be
cause his curiosity, as a knowing creature, is provoked, or
will be, by not so much as knowing what the motives are,
in a word, by the profound mystery that overhangs the
question of wrong itself. Indeed he does not even so
much as know what it will do, whether it will raise
to some unknown pitch of greatness in power and intelli
gence or not. In the next place, it is not assumed that
the prudential motives of reward and penalty will ever
recover any fallen spirit from his defections and bring him
into the inspired, free state of love. The office of such
means and motives is wholly negative; viz., to arrest the
bad soul in its evil and bring it to a stand of self-renun
ciation, where the higher motives of the divine excellence
and love may kindle it. In the third place, it is not as
sumed that, when souls are recovered from evil, and finally
established in holy liberty, which is the problem of their
trial, they are made safe for the coming eternity by know
ing how dreadfully they will be scorched by evil, in case
they relapse ; but their safety is that, having been dread
fully scorched already by it, they have thoroughly proved
what is in it, and extirpated all the fascinations of its
mystery. 2. It is another condition privative, as regards the mor
al perfection of powers, that they require an empirical
training, or course of government, to get them established
m the absolute law of duty, and that this empirical train

118 INHERENT NEED ALSO
ing must probably have a certain adverse effect for a time,
before it can mature its better results. The eternal idea
of justice makes no one just; that of truth makes no one
true; that of beauty makes no soul beautiful. So the
eternal law of right makes no one righteous. All these
standard ideas require a process or drill, in the field of
experience, in order to become matured into characters, or
to fashion character in the molds they supply. And this
process, or drill-practice, will require two economies or
courses; the first of which will be always a failure, taken.
in itself, but will furnish, nevertheless, a necessary ground
for the second, by which its effects will be converted into
benefits ; and then the result— a holy character — will be
one of course that presupposes both.
The first named course, or economy, is that of law;
which is called, even in scripture, the letter that killeth.
The law absolute, of which we just now spoke, is a mere-
\y necessary idea; commanding us, from eternity, as it did
the great Creator himself — do right — making no specifica
tions and applying no motives, save what are contained in
its own absolute excellence and authority. But the receiv
ing it in that manner, which is the only manner in which it
can be truly received, supposes a mind and temper already
configured to it, so as to be in it in mere love and the
spontaneous homage that enthrones it because of its ex
cellence, and God because he represents its excellence.
Here, therefore, is the problem, how to produce this prac
tical configuration. And it is executed thus : — God, as a
power aud a force extraneous, undertakes for it, first of all,
to enforce it empirically, by motives extraneous; those of
reward and fear, profit and loss. He takes the law abso
lute down into the world of prudence, re-enacting it there

OF THE LETTER THAT KILLETH, 119
and preparing to train us into it, by a drill-practice under
sanctions. In one view, the sanctions added are inappro
priate; for they are opposite to all spontaneity, being ap
peals to interest, and so far calls that draw the soul away
from the more inspiring considerations of inherent excel
lence. The subject is lifted by no inspiration. He is
down under the law, at the best, trying to come up to it
by willing, punctuatim et seriatim, what particular things
are required in the specifications made by it. If we could
suppose the law thus enforced to be perfectly observed
under this pressure of prudential sanctions, it would only
make a dry, punctilious and painfully apprehensive kind
of virtue, without liberty, or dignity. The more probable
result is an habitual and wearisome selfishness; for, as long
as the mind is occupied by these empirical and extraneous
sanctions, it is held to the consideration of self-interest
only ; and the motives it is all the while canvassing, are
such as the worst mind can feel, as well as that which is
truly upright. And yet there is a benefit preparing in
this first, or legal economy, which is indispensable; viz.
this, that it gives adhesiveness to the law, which otherwise,
as being merely ideal, we might lightly dismiss ; that the
friction it creates, like some mordant in the dying process,
Bets in the law and fastens it practically, or as an experi
mental reality ; that the woes of penalty wage a battle for
it, in which the soul is continually worsted and so broken
in; that it develops in short a whole body of moral
judgments and convictions, that wind the soul about as
cord3 of detention, till finally the law to be enforced be
comes an experimental verity fully established, Just
here the soul begins to feel a dreadful coil of thraldom
round it To get away from the law is impossible ; for it is

120 AS A STAGE
hedged about with fire. To keep it is impossible; for the
struggle is only a heaving under self-interested motive, to
get clear of a state whose bane is selfishness. What it
means, the subject can not find. He is in a condition of
bitter thraldom; his sin appears to be sin even, more than
ever; and the whole discipline he is under seems only to
minister the knowledge of sin; he groans, as it were, un
der a body of sin and death that he can not heave.
And so he is made ready for the second economy, that of
liberating grace and redemption. For now, in Christ, the
law returns, a person, clothed in all personal beauty, and
offers itself to the choice, even as a friend and deliverer; so
that, being taken with love to Christ, and drawing near at
his call in holy trust, the bondman is surprised to find that
he is loving the law as the perfect law of liberty ; which
was the point to be gained or carried. And so, what be
gan, as a necessary idea, is wrought into a character and
become eternal fact. The whole operation, it will be ob
served, supposes a condition privative in the subject, such
that he suffers, at first, a kind of repulsion by the law, and
is only won tp it by embracing the goodness of it in a per
sonal friend and deliverer.
And something like this double administration of law
and liberty we distinguish, in many of the matters even
of our worldly life. No exactness of drill makes an army
efficient or invincible, till it is fired by some free impulse
from the leader, or the cause; and yet the wearisome and
tedious drill is a previous condition, without which this
latter were impossible. No great work of genius was ever
written in the way of work, or before the wings were
lifted by some gale of inspiration; which gale, again, would
never have begun to blow, had not the windows of thought

OF TRANSITION 121
and the chambers of light and beauty within been opened,
by years of patient toil and study. The artist plods on
wearily, drudging in the details of his art, till finally the
inspiration takes him and, from that point onward, his
hand is moved by his subject, with no conscious drudgery
or labor. In the family, we meet a much closer and
equally instructive analogy. The young child is over
taken first by the discipline of the house, in a form of
law ; commanded, forbidden, sent, interdicted, all in a way
of authority, and to that authority is added something
which compels respect. If he is a ductile and gentle child,
he will be generally obedient; but the examples are few in
which the child will not sometimes be openly restive, or
even stiffen himself in willful disobedience. In any case,
it will be law, not coinciding always with the child's wish
es, or his opinions of pleasure and advantage ; and there
will be a sense of constraint, more or less irksome, as if
the authority felt were repugnant and contrary to the de
sired happiness. By and by, however, authority changes
its aspect and becomes lovely. The habit of obedience,
the experience had of parental fidelity and tenderness, and
the discovery made of absurdity and hidden mischief in
the things interdicted, as it seemed arbitrarily, gradually
abolishes the sense of law and substitutes a control not
felt before, the control of personal love and respect. So
that, finally, the man of thirty will carefully and rever
ently anticipate the minutest wishes of a parent, and, if that
can be called obedience, will obey him; when, as a child
of three, he could barely endure his authority, and sub
mitted to it only because it was duty enforced.
Such is the analogy of common life. Law and liberty
are the two grand terms under which it is passed— law
11

122 TO SPIRITUAI LIBERTY.
first and liberty afterward. And with all this corresponda
what is said, in the New Testament, of law as related to
gospel. It is said, in one view, of the laborious ritual of
Moses; yet, by this historic reference, it is designed to
lead the mind back into a more general and deeper truth.
It is called "the letter that killeth," as related to "the
spirit that giveth life." It is said to have its value in the
devslopment of knowledge; for by the law is "the knowl
edge of sin" — "that sin by the commandment might be
come exceeding sinful." It is bondage introducing and
preparing liberty. "The law gendereth to bondage,"
but the gospel, 'Jerusalem that is above, is free.'" "If
there had been a law that could have given life, verily
righteousness should have been by the law;" but that was
impossible. "It is the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ,"
and then, having embraced him, he becomes a new inspir
ation in our love, after which we no more need "to be
under a schoolmaster." "The law made nothing perfect,
but the bringing in of a better hope did."
There is reason to suspect that many will reject what I
am here advancing. They will do it, of course, for the
simple reason that they know no other kind of virtue but
that which is legal, having therefore, in their conscious
ness, nothing which answers to the liberty of the Spirit.
To them, what I have here said will have an appearance
of cant. Exactly contrary to which, I affirm it as the only
competent philosophy, perceiving, I think, as clearly as I
perceive any thing, that the conjunction discovered in
Christianity of these two ministrations is not any casual
or accidental matter — as if men had somehow fallen un
der law, and God was constrained, afterward, to do some
thing for them — on the contrary that the whole manage

A THIRD LIABILITY 123
ment is from before the foundation of the world, having
respect to a grand antecedent necessity, involved in the
perfecting of virtue. God never proposed to perfect a
character in men by mere legal obedience. But he insti
tuted law originally, no doubt, as a first stage, preparatory
to a second ; both of which were to be kept on foot to
gether, and both of which are blended, in one way or an
other, probably, in the training of all holy minds in all
worlds. 3. There appears to be yet another condition privative,
as regards our security against sin, in the social relation of
powers and their trial in and through that relation ; viz.,
that they are, at first, exposed to invasions of malign in
fluence from each other, which can nowise be effectually
prevented, save as they are finally fortified by the defenses
of character. In this view, if I am right, a great part of
the problem of existence must consist in what may be
called the fencing of powers ; that is, by assorting and sep
arating the good from the bad, and rendering one class ii -
accessible to the arts and annoyances of the other.
The individual, as we have seen, is to be perfected for
society ; and, for that reason, he must needs have his trial
in and through society. A still wider truth appears to be
that the perfect society thus preparing is to be one and
universal, comprehending the righteous populations of all
worlds and ages ; for the terms of duty and religion are
in their nature universal ; and for this reason it appears
also to be necessary, that the trial and training should be
in some open field of activity common to a ll the powers.
Accordingly, as we are made with social, and, if I may
vise the term, commercial natures; having inlets of sympa

124 TO INVASION,
thy and impression, by which we may feel one another;
capacities to receive and give, to wrong, to offend, to com
fort, to strengthen, to seduce, and betray one another; so
there is an antecedent probability that the terms of social
exposure will involve some possibility of access, on the
part of beings unseen, that are not of our race. Indeed,
if it should happen that spirits are impossible to be sorted
and fenced apart by walls of matter, or gulfs of distance,
or abysses of emptiness, something Hke this would seem
to be necessarily involved, till they are sorted and the
gates of commerce are shut fast, by the repulsions of con
trary affinities. And accordingly, till this takes place,
there must be exposures to good and malign influence,
more numerous than we can definitely mark or distinguish.
With this corresponds, it will be observed, all that is
said in the scriptures of the activity of ministering angels
engaged to confirm and comfort us, the insidious arts of a
bad spirit to accomplish our fall, and the manifold entice
ments and malignant possessions of evil demons generally.
But I advert to these representations, it will be observed,
not in a wayof,assuming their authenticity, for that is for
bidden by the nature of my argument. I only cite them
as offering conceptions to our mind, or imagination, that
may be necessary to a full comprehension of what is in
cluded in the subject.
Many will object most sturdily and peremptorily, I am
well aware, to the possibility of enticements and arts, prac
ticed by unseen agents, to draw us off from our fidelity lo
God; alledging that such an exposure impeaches the
fatherhood of God, and virtually destroys our responsi
bility. But what if it should happen to be involved, as
;he necessary condition of any properly social existence'1

AT A GREAT DISADVANTAGE, 125
And it might as. well be urged that every temptation is an
impeachment of God, which comes from sources unseen,
being an approach that takes us off our guard, and upsets
the balance, possibly, of our judgments, just when we are
most implicitly confiding in them. Allowing such an ob
jection therefore, responsibility would be impossible; for
who of us was ever able to see distinctly, by what avenues
all ofhis temptations or enticements came? Besides, say
ing nothing of bad spirits, by how many methods, by air,
look, sympathy, do we produce immediate impressions in
each other, whose sources are never noted or suspected;
conveying sentiments, drawing to this or that, fascinating,
magnetizing, playing upon one another, by methods as
subtle and secret, as if the mischief came from powers cf
darkness. And yet we never imagine that such entice
ments encroach at all on the grounds of our just responsi
bility; and all for the manifest reason that it never mat
ters whence our enticements come, or by what arts the
color of our judgments is varied and their equilibrium
disturbed; still we know, in all cases, that the wrong is
wrong, and knowing that is enough to complete our re
sponsibility. I am well aware of the modern tendency to resolve
what is said on this subject in the scripture into figures of
speech, excluding all idea of a literal intermeddling of
bad spirits. But that there are bad spirits, there is no
more reason to doubt, than that there are bad men, (who
are in fact bad spirits,) and as little that the bad spirits are
spirits of mischief, and will act in character, according to
their opportunity. As regards the possession by foul spir
its, it has been maintained, by many of. the sturdiest sup
porters of revelation, and by reference to the words era
11*

126 FROM THE ASSAULTS
ployed in one or two cases by the evangelists themselves,
that they were only diseases regarded in that light. Oth
ers have assumed the necessary absurdity of these posses
sions without argument; and still others have made them
a subjeci of much scoffing and profane ridicule. For
the last half-century, and contemporaneously with our
modern advances in science, there has been a general
gravitation of opinion, regarding this and many other
points, toward the doctrine of the Sadducees. Which.
makes it only the more remarkable, that now, at last, a
considerable sect of our modern Sadducees themselves,
who systematically reject the faith of any thing supernat
ural, are contributing what aid they can to restore the
precise faith of the New Testament, respecting foul spirits.
They do not call their spiritual visitors devils, or their de-
monized mediums possessed persons. But the low man
ners of their spirits and the lying oracles which it is agreed
that some of them give, and the power they display of
acting on the lines of cause and effect in nature, when
thumping under tables, jolting stoves, and floating men
and women through the upper spaces of rooms, proves
them to be, if they are any thing, supernatural beings;
leaving no appreciable distinction between them and the
demoniacal irruptions of scripture. For though there be
some talk of electricity and science, and a show of reduc
ing the new discovered commerce to laws of calculable
recurrence, it is much more likely to be estabhshed by
their experiments, as a universal fact, that whatever being,
of whatever woild, opens himself to the visitation, or in
vites the presence of powers, indiscriminately as respects
their character, whether it be under some thin show of
scientific practice or not, will assuredly have the commerce

OF BAD SPIRITS. 127
invited! Far enough is it from being either impossible,
or incredible, and exactly this is what our new school of
charlatanism suggests, that immense multitudes of powers,
interfused, in their self-active liberty, through all the
abysses and worlds of nature, have it as the battle-field
of their good or malign activity, doing in it and upon it,
as the scriptures testify, acts supernatural that extend to
us. This being true, what shall be expected, but that
where there is any thing congenial in temper or character
to set open the soul, and nothing of antipathy to repel;
or where any one, through a licentious curiosity, a fool
ish conceit of science, or a bad faith in powers of ne
cromancy, calls on spirits to come, no matter from what
world — in such a case what shall follow, but that troops of
malign powers rush in upon their victim, to practice their
arts in him at will. I know nothing at all personally of
these new mysteries ; but if a man, as Townsend and many
others testify, can magnetize his patient, even at the dis
tance of miles, it should not seem incredible that foul spir
its can magnetize also. This indeed was soon discovered
in the power of spirits to come into mediums, and make
them write and speak their oracles. It is also a curious
coincidence that no one, as we are told, can be magnetized,
or become a medium, or even be duly enlightened by a
medium, who is uncongenial in his affinities, or maintains
any quality of antipathy in his will, or temper, or charac
ter; for then the commerce sought is impossible. Beside
it is remarkable that the persons who dabble most freely
in this kind of commerce, are seen, as a general fact, to
run down in their virtue, lose their sense of principles,
and become addled, by their familiarity with the powers
of mischief.

128 CONCLUSION REACHED.
In these references to bad spirits, and the matter of do
monology in general, I do not assume to have established
any very decisive conclusion ; for the scripture representa
tions can not be assumed as true, and the new demons of
science I know nothing about, except by report. This
only is made clear; that the suggestion of a condition pri
vative in men, as regards their defense against the irrup
tion of other powers, is one that can not be disproved by
any facts within the compass of our knowledge. And
since other powers doubtless exist, both good and
bad, who are being sorted and fenced apart by the con
trary affinities of character, nothing can be more con
sonant to reason than that there must be exposures to
unseen mischief in our trial, till these eternal fences
are raised.
We find then — this is the result of our search — that sm
can nowise be accounted for ; there are no positive grounds,
or principles back of it, whence it may have come. We only
discover conditions privative, that are involved, as neces
sary incidents in the begun existence and trial of powers.
These conditions privative are in the nature of perils, and
while they excuse nothing, for the law of duty is always
plain, they are yet drawn so close to the soul and open
their gulfs, on either hand, so deep, that our expectation cf
the fall is really as pressing as if it were determined by
some law that annihilates liberty. Liberty we know is not
annihilated. And yet we say, looking on the state of man
made perilous, in this manner, by liberty, that we can not
expect him to stand.
Some persons, who are accustomed to receive the ser p-
tures with great reverence and whose feeling therefor*1 \t

THE CASE OF GOOD ANGELS 129
the more entitled to respect, may be disturbed by the
apprehension, that we violate what they take for an evi
dently scriptural truth concerning the good angels. These
are finite beings, and had a begun existence, and yet we are
taught, as it will be urged, that they have .never fallen ;
showing, a complete possibility of creating free beings, or
powers that will never sin ; — at which point our doctrine
is seen to come into open and direct conflict with the
scriptures. I have no pleasure, certainly, in raising a conflict with
any opinion not absolutely corrupt, when it has been so
long held, and with such unquestioning deference, by
multitudes of christian believers. But I am obliged, by
the terms of my argument, to make a revision of the evi
dences by which this opinion is sustained. • In the Ante-
Copernican conceptions of the universe, such an opinion
was more likely to be taken up than now ; and it seems to
be a relic of false interpretation then introduced. I find
no clear evidence of any such opinion in the christian
scriptures. They do affirm the existence of good angels,
who, for aught that appears, have all been passed through
and brought up out of a fall, as the redeemed of mankind
will be. They affirm the existence also of bad angels,
who certainly have not been kept from the experiment or
choice of evil. A significant intimation is supposed to be
found in the text, — " To the intent that now, unto the
principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be
known, by the church, the manifold wisdom of God " — as
if here, for the first time, they were to be instructed, by
the fact of human redemption. But every thing mani
festly turns here on the epithet " manifold," [iroXuwoixiXos-,]
which, in fact, means only diversified, not something new

130 AFFORDS NO VALID
and strange ; yielding us a hint, rather, which runs exactly
contrary to the common opinion ; viz., that the heavenly
powers discover, only through the church of our world,
another plan of grace and mercy unfolded, different from
their own. In respect to the " new song," so often referred
to in this connection, it is sufficient to say that it is joined
by beings not of our race, and is abundantly new as
related to a work of redemption among men ; different in
form and manner, as in sphere, from any other.
But the principal or hinge text on this subject is the
6th verse of Jude's epistle, — "And the angels that kept
not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath
reserved, &c," — leaving the implication, it is supposed,
that other angels have kept their first estate, and stood
fast in obedience. But this, it has been shown by Mr.
Faber, in a full and somewhat overdone discussion,* is a
totally mistaken conception of the passage. The term
"angels," he has shown, refers to the "sons of God,"
whose apostasy is set forth in the 6th chapter of Genesis.
The term apx'i, rendered " first estate," as denoting a moral
condition, has. no such meaning in any known example.
It signifies rather a principate, or principality, and the rep
resentation is, that certain persons of the Sethite, or church
people, growing lewd and dissolute in their life, went over
to the corrupt Cainites and joined them in their vices.
This also is implied in the phrase "left their own habita
tion," [ouojoipiov,] their domicil, or native place and coun
try ; language entirely malapropos, when referred to celes
tial beings. Besides their crime was not angfclic — the
"going after strange flesh" — and, what is yet more string
ent, their crime is defined by a comparison which shows
* Three Dispensations, Vol. I., pp. 344-431.

OR SCRIPTURAL OBJECTION. 13]
exactly what it was — "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah,
and the cities about them, in like manner, giving
themselves over to fornication and going after strange
flesh/' &c. And finally, to render this interpretation yet
more certain, it is shown that Josephus, in speaking of the
" sons of God " in Genesis, calls them angels, and uses the
same, word [apx'ij principality, in describing their apos
tasy. On the whole, it does not appear that there is any
vestige of authority, in Scripture, for the opinion that the
good angels are beings that have never sinned.
Contrary to this, there are many passages that, without
being severely pressed, might be made to indicate the fact
that they are all redeemed spirits. Thus, where the desire
of "angels to look into these things" is spoken of, an
indication is given, not that they are unacquainted with
any such fact as redemption, but of the contrary fact, that
this appetite is whetted by their experience. Why should
they be so eager to look into a matter wholly unknown?
So when the angels break into the sky, at the advent of
Christ, crying "Peace on earth," they seem -to know, in
their deepest heart's feeling already, what this "peace"
signifies. It is remarkable also that the one only text of
scripture that could fairly be insisted on, as a direct and
formal declaration of scripture on this point, is that of the
apostle, when, extolling the universal headship of Christ,
he says what appears to be directly contrary to all these
assumptions, — "By him to reconcile all things unto him
self, whether they be things on earth, or things in
heaven." Falling back then upon our own first principles, as re
quired by the tenor of our argument, we find that angels,
Hke men, are, by the supposition, finite beings. If finite,

132 NOT implied' THAT SIN
then are they beings who think in succession, one thitg
after another, as we do. If so, then there was a point in
the early date, or first hours of their existence, when they
had thought little and had little experience, and of course
knew as little as they had thought. And so, given the-
fact of their finite and begun existence, it seems to follow,
as a conclusion, that they were in the same weakness, oi
condition privative, with us. What then can we judge
bat that, probably, there is some ground-principle, or law,
common both to them and to us, that involves them in the
same fortunes with us, and requires a method of training
and redemption analagous to that which is ordained for
men ? God, as we all agree, is a being who works by
system — with a glorious variety and yet by system — and
it would be singular for his plan to break down in some
little department like ours, and go straight forward to its
mark, in other and better-contrived parts of his creation.
How much better and more consonant also to our feehng
to suppose that there is some antecedent necessity, inhe
rent in the conception of finite and begun existences, that,
in their training as powers, they should be passed through
the double experience of evil and good, fall and redemp
tion. At the same time I am not anxious to carry my argu
ment so far ; and I readily concede that it might be pre
sumptuous to insist on such a conclusion, as being one of
the known truths. I only ask that a similar concession
be allowed, on the other side, as regards an opinion cer
tainly not authenticated by scripture ; for, when that is
taken out of the way, as being a scriptural objection to
my argument, I have no longer any concern with it. It
may not be amiss to add, further, that what I have

IS ANY MEANS OF GOOD. 133
here advanced, in a somewhat positive form, concerning
sin, I value mostly as an hypothesis. Indeed what wo
want, to clear cur difficulties here, is not so much a doc
trine, as to find that some rational hypothesis is possi
ble. And my object is sufficiently gained when that is
admitted. If it should be objected that my doctrine, or hypothesis
here, is only another version of the scheme that accounts
for sin as being the necessary means of the greatest good,
it is enough to answer that I see no great reason to be
concerned for it, even if it were. Still I do not perceive
that it proposes to account for sin as being a means of any
thing. It makes much of the knowledge of sin, or of its
bitter consequences, and especially of the want of that
knowledge, save as it is gotten by the bad experience it
self. But the knowledge of sin is, in fact, knowing — that
is the precise point of it— that it is the means of nothing
good, that it is evil in all its tendencies, relations, opera
tions, and results, and will never bring any thing good to
any being. If then the knowing of sin to be the possible
means of no good is itself a means of good, wherein does
it appear that I am reproducing the doctrine that sin is the
necessary means of the greatest good ? Because, it may
be answered, sin, as a fact of consciousness, is by the sup
position the necessary means of the knowledge of sin.
But that, I reply, is a trick of argument practiced on the
word means. Undoubtedly sin, as a fact of consciousness,
is the necessary subject of the knowledge of sin. If it
were affirmed that the knowledge of certain sunken rocks,
in the track of some voyage, is necessary to a safe passage,
how easy to show, by just the argument here employed, that,
since the rocks are a necessary means of the knowledge of

134 THE TRUE CONCEPTION
uhe rocks, the rocks are therefore, and by necessary conse
quence, the necessary means of a safe passage !
There is still another point, the existence of Satan, or
the devil, and the account to be made of him, which is
always intruded upon discussions of this nature, and can
not well be avoided. God, we have seen, might create a
realm of things and have it stand firm in its order; but,
if He creates a realm of powers, a prior and eternal cer
tainty confronts Him, of their outbreak in evil. And at
just this point, we are able, it may be, to form some just
or not impossible conception of the diabolical personality.
According to the Manichees or disciples of Zoroaster, a
doctrine virtually accepted by many philosophers, two
principles have existed together from eternity, one of
which is the cause of good and the other of evil ; and by
this short process they make out their account of evil.
With sufficient modifications, their account is probably true.
Thus if their good principle, called God by us, is taken as
a being, and their bad principle as only a condition pri
vative ; one as a positive and real cause, the other as a bad
possibility that environs God from eternity, waiting to be
come a fact and certain to become a fact, whenever the
opportunity is given, it is even so. And then it follows
that, the moment God creates a realm of powers, the bad
possibility as certainly becomes a bad actuality, a Satan, or
devil, in esse; not a bad omnipresence over against God,
and His equal — that is a monstrous and horrible concep
tion — but an outbreaking evil, or empire of evil in created
spirits, according to their order. For Satan, or the devil,
taken in the singular, is not the name of any particular
person, neither is it a personation merely of temptation

OF SATAN OR THE DEVIL. 135
<»r impersonal evil, as many insist ; for there is really no
such thing as impersonal evil in the sense of moral evil :
out the name is a name that generalizes bad persons or
spirits, with their bad thoughts and characters, many in
one. That there is any single one of them who, by dis
tinction or pre-eminence, is called Satan, or devil, is
wholly improbable. The name is one taken up by the
imagination to designate or embody, in a conception the
mind can most easily wield, the all or total of bad minds
and powers. Even as Davenport, the ablest theologian
of all the New England Fathers, represents, in his Cate ¦
chism; answering carefully the question, — "What is the
devil?" — thus: "The multitude of apostate angels which,
by pride, and blasphemy against God, and malice against
man, became liars and murderers, by tempting him to that
sin." There is also a further reason for this general unifying
of the bad powers in one, or under one conception, in the
fact that evil, once beginning to exist, inevitably becomes
organic, and constructs a kind of principate or kingdom
opposite to God. It is with all bad spirits, doubtless, as
with us. Power is taken by the strongest, and weakness
falls into a subordinate place of servility and abjectness.
Pride organizes caste, and dominates in the sphere of fash •
ion. Corrupt opinions, false judgments, bad manners, and
a general body of conventionalisms that represent the
motherhood of sin, come into vogue and reign. And so,
doubtless, every where and in all worlds, sin has it in its
nature to organize, mount into the ascendant above God
and truth, and reign in a kingdom opposite to God. And,
in this view, evil is fitly represented in the scripture as or
ganizing itself under Satan, or the devil, or the prince est

136 THE TRUE CONCEPTION
this world, or the prince of the power of the air; — no pu
ling fiction of superstition, as many fancy, but, rightly
conceived, a grand, massive, portentous, and even tremen
dous reality. For though it be true that no such bad om
nipresence is intended in the term Satan as some appear to
fancy, there is represented in it an organization of bad
mind, thought, and power, that is none the less impel lal as
regards resistance.
At just this point many fall into the easy mistake of
supposing that the bad organization finds its head in a
particular person or spirit, who has all other bad spirits
submissive and loyal under his will, and is called Satan as
being their king. But they press the analogy too far,
overlooking the fact that evil is as truly and eternally an
archy as organization. It is much better to understand,
as in reference to bad spirits, what we know holds good in
respect to the organic force of evil here among men. Evil
is a hell of oppositions, riots, usurpations, in itself, and
bears a front of organization only as against good. It
never made a chief that it would not shortly dethrone,
never set up any royal Nimrod or family of Nimrods it
would not sometime betray, or expel. That the organic
force of evil therefore has ever settled the eternal suprema
cy of some one spirit called devil, or Satan, is against the
known nature of evil. There is no such order, allegiance,
loyalty, faith, in evil as that. The stability of Satan and
his empire consists, not in the force of some personal chief
tainship, but in the fixed array of all bad minds, and even
of anarchy itself, against what is good.
As regards the naming process by which this devil, or
Satan, is prepared, we may easily instruct ourselves by
other analogies; such, for example, as "the man of sin,''

OF SATAN OR THE DEVIL. 137
and "anti-christ." These are the names, evidently, of
no particular person. "The man of sin" is in fact all the
men of sin, or the spirit that works in them ; for the con
ception is that, as Christ has brought forth a gospel, so it
is inevitable that sin will foul that gospel in the handling,
and be a mystery of iniquity upon" it. And this mystery
of iniquity, as Paul saw, was already beginning to work,
as work it must, till it is taken out of the way. And this
working is to be the revelation of evil through the gospel,
and of the gospel through evil. It includes the dogmatic
usurpation, the priestly assumptions, the mock sacraments,
and all the church idols, brought in as improvements—
every thing contributed to, and interwoven with, the gos
pel, by sin as a miracle of iniquity. When that process is
carried through, the gospel will be understood ; not before.
It is also noticeable that what the devil, or Satan, is to God
as a spirit, that also anti-christ is to Christ, the incarnate
God-man. Anti-christ is, in fact, the devil of Christianity,
as Satan is the devil of the Creation and Providence. Aa
the devil too is singled out and made eminent by the defi
nite article, so is anti-christ spoken of in the singular as
one person. And then, again, as there are many devils
spoken of, so also it is declared that "now there are many
anti-christs." Satan then is a bad possibility, eternally existing prior
to the world's creation, becoming, or'emerging there into,
a bad actuality — which it is the problem of Jehovah's gov
ernment to master. For it has been the plan of God, in
the creation and training of the powers, so to bring them
on, as to finally vanquish the bad possibility or necessity
that environed Him before the worlds were made ; so lo
create and subjugate, or, by his love, regenerate the ba I

138 god's plan not broken up,
powers loosened by his act of creation, as to have them in
eternal dominion. And precisely here is He seen in the
grandeur of his attitude. We might yield to some opin
ion of his weakness, when pondering the dark fatality by
which he is encompassed in the matter of evil ; but when
we see his plan distinctly laid, as a fowler's when he sets
his net; that he is disappointed by nothing, and that all
his counsels unfold in their appointed time and order, as
when a general marches on his army in a course of vic
tory; that he sets good empire against evil empire, and,
without high words against his adversary, calmly proceeds
to accomplish a system of order that comprehends the sub
jugation of disorder, what majesty and grandeur invest
his person! Nothing which he could have done by om
nipotence, no silent peace of compulsion, no unconsenting
order of things, made fast by his absolute will, could have
given any such impression of his greatness and glory, as
this loosening of the possibility of evil, in the purpose
finally to turn it about by his counsel and transform it by
his gordness and patience. What significance and sub
limity is tljere, holding such a view, in the extatic words
of Christ, when just about to finish his work — "I beheld
Satan as lightning fall from heaven I" Nor any the less
when his prophet testifies after him — "And the great
dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world." "Now is come
salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our Lord and
of his Christ."
That salvation, strength, and kingdom, be it also ob
served, are not patches of mending laid upon the rent gar
ment of a broken plan, but issues and culminations of tha
eternal plan itself. The cross of redemption is no after

BUT REACHING ON TO VICTORY. 139
thought, but is itself the grand all-dominating idea around
which the eternal system of God crystalizes; Jesus Christ,
the " appointed heir of all things " — " the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world." Here stands out the final end
or cause of all things, here emerge the powers made strong
and glorious. Weak, at first, unperfect, incomplete, they
are now completed and glorified — complete in him, who
is the head of all principality and power.

CHAPTER V.

THE JACT OF SIN

We have been discussing the question of evil as a
question of possibility, probability, prospect; we now
come down to the question of fact — is it, or is it not a fact
that sin exists?
But in passing to this question, it appears to be required
of us to state the object we have in it, and also to indicate,
in advance, at the stage we have now reached, the course
or drift of our argument. We propose then to show, first
of all, the fact of sin. This being established, we shall next
go into a computation or inspection of the effects of sin,
and show that it is followed and must be by a general dis
turbance or collapse of nature; what we call nature being,
in fact, a state of unnature induced by the penal or retri
butive action of causes provoked by sin. Hence, unless
disorder and frustration are to be eternal, a second higher
movement is required, having force to restore the lapse of
nature; wliich higher movement is the supernatural work
of grace and redemption. In this view the unity itself of
the system of God comprehends, it will be seen, two ranges
of existence and operative force ; nature and the supernat
ural; both complementary to each other; while the latter,
comprising the powers, and all divine agencies exerted in
their restoration, and containing all the last ends and high
est workings and only perfect results of God's plan, is, by
the supposition, chief above the other; having that to
serve its uses, and be the organ of its exercise. The crea
tion therefore is made for Christianity, and without that,

THE FACT OF SIN. 141
as a kingdom supernatural, the kingdom of nature is only
an absurd and fragmentary existence, having no signifi
cance or end. The argument will lead me, of course, to
an examination of some of the supernatural facts, or sup
posed facts, of Christianity.
I am well aware of the necessary obscurity of this state
ment, but as it is offered rather to indicate the course, than
to convey any sufficient impression, of the argument pro
posed, I hope it may at least satisfy the purpose in
tended. I begin then with the question, whether it is a real and
proper fact that sin exists? In discussing this question, I
abstain altogether from any close theologic definition of
sin. Undoubtedly there is a something called sin in the
christian writings, which is not action, or wrong-doing;
something not included in the Pelagian definitions of sin,
as commonly presented. But my argument requires me
to look no farther at present than to this, which is the
simplest conception of the subject; inquiring whether
there is any such thing in the world as properly blamable
action? Is there a transgression of right, or of law, a
positive disobedience to God — any thing that rationally
connects with remorse, or carries the sense of guilt as a gen
uine reality? Of course it is implied that the transgressor
does what no mere thing, nothing in the line of cause and
effect, can do — acts against God; or, what is nowise differ
ent, against the constituent harmony of things issued from
the will of God. Hence the bad con;cience, the sense of
guilt or blame; that the wrong-doer recognizes in the act
something from himself, that is not from any mere princi
ple of nature, not from God, contrary to God.
Tt appears, in one view, to be quite idle to raise thu

142 THE FACT OF SIN
question Why should we undertake the serious discus
sion of a question that every man has settled; why argue
for a fact that every man acknowledges? It would indeed
be quite nugatory, if all mankind could definitely see
what they acknowledge. But they do not, and, what
is more, many are abundantly ingenious to escape doing
it. In fact all the naturalism of our day begins just here,
in the denial, or disguised disallowance of this self-evident
and every where visible fact, the existence of sin. Some
times, where no such denial is intended or thought of, it
is yet virtually made, in the assumption of some theory, or
supposed principle of philosophy, which, legitimately car
ried out, conducts and will conduct other minds also to the
formal denial, both of the fact of sin, and of that respon
sibility which is its necessary precondition. We have
thus a large class holding the condition of implicit natural
ism, who assert what amounts to a denial of responsibility,
and so of the possibility of sin, without denying formally
the fact, or conceiving that any truth of Christianity as a
supernatural religion is brought in question. Of these
we may ciie, as a prominent instance and example, the
phrenologists, who are many of them disciples and earnest
advocates of the Christian doctrine. Still it is not diffi
cult to see that, if human actions are nothing but results
brought to pass or determined, by the ratios of so many
quantities of brain at given points under the skull, then
are they no more fit subjects of reward, or blame, than the
motions of the stars, determined also by their quantities of
matter. Therefore some phrenologists add the conception
of a higher nature than the pulpy quantities ; a person, a
free-will power, presiding over them and only using them
as its incentives and instruments, bit never mechanically

OFTEN DENIED UNDESIGNEDLY. 143
determined by them. This takes phrenology out of the
conditions of naturalism and, for just the same reason, and
in the same breath, renders sin a possibility ; otherwise the
science, however fondly accepted as the ally of Christianity,
(a sorry kind of ally at the best,) is only a tacit and im
plicit form of naturalism, that virtually excludes the faith
of Christianity.
On the other hand, we have met with advocates of natu
ralism, who have not been quite able to deny the existence
of sin, or who even assert the fact in ways of doubtful sig
nificance. Thus Mr. Parker, in his "Discourses of Beli
gion," having it for his main object to disprove the credi
bility of miracles and of every thing supernatural in
Christianity, still admits in words the existence of sin.
He even accounts it one of the merits of Calvinistic and
Lutheran orthodoxy that it "shows (we quote his own
language,) the hatefulness of sin and the terrible evils it
brings upon the world;"* and, what is yet more decisive,
he represents it as being one of the faults of the moderate
school of Protestants, that "they reflect too little on the
evil that comes from violating the law of God."f And yet
the whole matter of supernaturalism, which he is discussing,
hinges on precisely this and nothing else; viz., the question
whether there is any such thing as a real "violation ofthe
law of God," any "hatefulness in sin," any "terrible evils
brought on the world" by means of it. For to violate
the law of God is itself an act supernatural, out of the
order of nature, and against the order of nature, as truly
even as a miracle, else it is nothing. The very sin of the
sin is that it is against God, and every thing that eomes
from God; the acting of a soul, or power, against the con-
* Discourses of Rehgion, p. 453. fIdem> P- 465

144 AMBIGUOUS DOCTRINE
stituent frame of nature and its internal harmony;
followed therefore, as in due time, we shall show, by a
real disorder of nature, which nothing but a supernatu
ral agency of redemption can ever effectually repair.
Of this, the fundamental fact on which, in reality, the
whole question he is discussing turns, he takes no manner
of notice. Admitting the existence of sin, his specula
tions still go on their way, as if it were a fact of no sig
nificance in regard to-his argument. If he had sounded
the question of sin more deeply, ascertaining what it is
and what it involves, he might well enough have spared
himself the labor of his book. He either would never
have written it at all, or else he would have denied the
existence of sin altogether, as being only a necessary con
dition of the supernatural.
And we are the more confirmed in the opinion that his
denial of supernaturalism begins in a state of mental am
biguity respecting sin, from the fact that exactly this am
biguity is manifested in his work itself. Thus, when
speaking of the wrongs and the oppressive inequalities
discovered in the distributions of society, he refers them,
if we understand him rightly, to causes in human nature,
not to the will, in its abuse or breach of nature. He
says, — "We find the root of all in man himself. In him
is the same perplexing antithesis which we meet in all his
works. These conflicting things existed as ideas in him,
before they took their present concrete shape. Discordant
causes [in his nature we understand,] have produced
effects not harmonious. Out of man these institutions
have grown; out of his passions or his judgment, his
senses or his soul. Taken together they are the exponent
which indicates the character and degree of development

OF MR. PARKiR. 145
the race has now attained."* Out of his passions or his
judgment, his senses or his soul ! Whence then did they
come? for this appears to be a little ambiguous. And
what if it should happen that they came out of neither —
out of nb ground, or cause in nature whatever, but out of
the will as a power transcending nature. If these bitter
wrongs of society, such as war, slavery, and the like,
which Mr. Parker has so often denounced in terms so
nearly violent, kindling, as it were, a hell of words in
which to burn them before the time; if these bitter wrongs
are nothing but developments of "discordant causes" in hu
man nature, then wherein are they to be blamed ? " Viola
tions of the law of God ! " do God's own causes violate his
law? Bringing "terrible evils' on the world! " how upon
the world, when God himself has put the evils in it, as truly
as he has put the legs of a frog in the tadpole out of which
it grows. " Hatefulness of sin ! " Is the mere develop
ment of God's own constituted works and causes hateful ?
Is the dog-star morally hateful because it rises in July?
But the advocates of naturalism are commonly more
thorough and consistent ; not consistent with each other,
that is too much to be expected, but consistent with them
selves, in trying each to find some way of disallowing sin,
or so far explaining it away, as to reduce it within the
terms of mere cause and effect in nature. Thus, for
example, Fourier conceives that what we call sin, by a
kind of misnomer, is predicable only of society, not of the
individual man. Considered as creatures of God, all men,
as truly as the first man before sin, have and continue
always to have a right and perfect nature, in the same
manner as the stars. He accordingly assumes it as the
Discourses of Religion, p. 12.

146 ASSUMPTION OF FOURIER.
fundamental principle of the new science that, — " Man's
attractions," like theirs, "are proportioned to his destin
ies ; " so that, by means of his passions, he will even
gravitate naturally toward the condition of order ano
well-being, with the same infallible certainty as they. It
only happens that society is not fitly organized, and that
produces all the mischief. There really is no sin, apart
from the fact that men have not had the science to organ
ize society rightly. He does not appear to notice the fact
that if these human stars, called men, are all harmoniously
tempered and set in a perfect balance of inward attrac
tions, by them to be swayed under the laws of cause and
effect, that fact is organization, the very harmony of the
spheres itself. And then the assumption that society is
not fitly organized, or badly disorganized, is simply
absurd; not less absurd the hope that man is going to
scheme it into organization himself. Doubtless society is
badly enough organized, but we have no place for the fact
and can have none till we look on men as powers, not
under cause and effect ; capable, in that manner, of sin,
and liable to it ; through the bad experiment of it, to be
trained up into character, which is itself the completed
organization of felicity. Under this view bad organiza-.
tion, or disorganization, is possible, because sin is possible;
and will be a fact, as certainly as sin is a fact — otherwise
neither possible, nor a fact.
But as we are dismissing, in this mannerr the in
consequent and baseless theory of Fourier, there comes
up, on the other side, exactly opposite to him, the very
celebrated theologian of naturalism, Dr. Strauss, who in
verts the main point of Fourier, charging all the misdo
ings and miseries of the human state, commonly called

DENIAL OF DR. STRAUSS. 147
sins, on the individual, leaving society blameless and jven
perfect. Finding the word sin asserting a rightful place in
human language, he is not so unphilosophical as to insist on
its being cast out ; on the contrary, he even speaks of " the
sinfulness of human nature;" but by this he understands
only that individuals must needs suffer so much of per
sonal mischief and defect, in a way of carrying on the
historic development of the race. In this view he says, —
" Humanity \i. e. taken as a whole,] is the sinless exist
ence ; for the course of its development is a blameless one :
pollution cleaves to the individuals only, and does not
touch the race and its history." " Sinful human nature "
turns out, in this manner, to be the "smless existence."
The individuals whom we call " sinners " and regard as
under "pollution" are yet seen to be "blameless" sinners;
so ingeniously "polluted" that the pollution which infects
all the individuals does not once touch the race 1 If there
be any miracle in supernaturalism more wonderful than
this, let us be informed where it is. The truth appears to
be that Dr. Strauss could not formally deny the fact of
sin, and yet had no place for it. He threw it, therefore,
into a limbo of -ambiguities, where he could recognize it
as a fact, and yet make nothing of it.
Still there is so much of ingenuity in this method of
getting rid of sin, the absurdity of it is disguised under so
fine a show of philosophy, that much weaker and less cul
tivated men than Dr. Strauss anticipated him in it, and,
without knowing, as well as he, what their wise saying
meant, were as greatly pleased as he with the plausible air
of it. Pope rhymes it thus, a hundred ways, that, —
" Respecting man, whatever -wrong we call
M.i.y, must be right, as relative to all."

148 THE POPULAR LITERATURE.
The popular literature of our time, represented by such
writers as Carlyle and Emerson, is in a similar vein; not
always denying sin, for to lose it would be to lose the spice
and spirit of half their representations of humanity ; but
contriving rather to exalt and glorify it, by placing both
it and virtue upon the common footing of a natural use
and necessity. Glorifying also themselves in the plausi
ble audacity of their offense; for it is one of the frequgni
infirmities of literature that it courts effect by taking on
the airs of licentiousness.
But this kind of originality has now come to its limit
or point of reaction; for, when licentiousness becomes a
theory, regularly asserted, and formally vindicated, it is
then no better than truth. The poetry is gone, and it dies
of its own flatness. Thus we have seen a volume recently
issued from the American press, the formal purpose of
which is to show, even as a christian fact, the blameless-
ness of sin ; nay more, that the main object of Jesus Christ
in his mission of love, is to disabuse the world of the im
posture, deliver it of the terrible nightmare of sin. Not
to deliver it of sin itself — that is a mistake— but to deliver
it of the conviction of sin, as an illusive and baleful mis
take, gendered by the superstition of the world! If any
thing can be taken for a certain proof that mankind
are infatuated by some strange illusion, such as sin alone
may breed, it would seem to be the fact itself that they are
able to impose upon themselves and one another, by these
feeble perversities that, despite of all the best known,
best attested facts of life, contrive to put on still the air?
of science and maintain the pretences of reason.
Passing on from these oppositions of science, falsely so

APPEAL TO OBSERVATION. 149
called, let us refer to some of the formal proofs that sin is
an existing fact. Scripture authority is out of the ques
tion, which wc do not regret; for the practical and palpa
ble evidences that meet us in the simple inspection of hu- .
manity itself are abundantly sufficient.
The question here, it will be observed, is not whether
men are totally depraved, or depraved at all ; nor whether
they sin continually; but simply whether they do actual
ly sin? — whether, in fact, sin exists? Nor is it implied
that all sins are equally blamable ; for, beyond a question,
great numbers of persons are steeped in contaminating in
fluences from their earliest childhood, and pass into life
under the heaviest loads of moral disadvantage. Kegard-
ing their acts, nothing is sin to such, but what they do as
sin. The object we have in view is sufficiently answered
by the adequate proof of a single sin; for the argument of
naturalism goes the length of denying all sin, even the
possibility of sin ; so that if one man is able, as a power,
to break out of nature and do a sin against it, the whole
theory is dissolved. The power of liberty that can do one
sin, can do more ; and if only one man has it, he must
either be a miracle himself, or else other men can do the
same. We begin with an appeal to observation, alledging as a
fact that we do, by inevitable necessity, impute blame to
acts of injury done us by others. We can as easily avoid
making a shadow in the sun, as we can avoid a sentiment
of blame, when we are designedly injured by a fellow
man. We do it, not as a pettish child may pelt a thistle
on which he has trodden, not in any dispossessed state or
momentary fit of anger, but even after years of roflectior.
13*

150 APPEAL TO OBSERVATION.
have passed away ; nay, after we have bathed the wrcng
done us, for so long a time, in the cleansing waters of for
giveness. Still we condemn the wrong and must, as long
as we exist ; our forgiveness itself implies that we do ; for
what is there to be forgiven, if there be nothing that we
condemn ? Thus, if there be two partners in trade, and
one of them absconds with all the profits and funds of the
establishment, leaving the other, with his family, victims to
the common liabilities, and to a necessary doom, for life, of
poverty ; by what art can either he, or they, ever manage
to eradicate their sense of wrong, or the blame they im
pute to the perfidious man whose crime has been the de-
spoiler of their life ? They may forgive him, they may fol
low him with their prayers to the hour of his last breath, but
they will pray as for a guilty man, whose crime is the bit
terness of his life, as it has been the burden of theirs.
Suppose now they turn philosophers and make the dis
covery that there is no sin, that all actions take place un
der the necessary law of cause and effect, and manage to
smooth over, with this fine apology, all the crimes they
hear of in the world ; still that one man that robbed them
of their all — how stubborn a fact is he, how unreduci
ble to their theory! His very name means all that sin
ever means, and they can as easily tear out their own
heart-strings, as they can empty that name of the blame it
signifies. Or suppose a man writes a book, the precise object of
which is to show that there is, and can be no such thing
as sin. and then that his work is assaulted, as he thinks,
with unfair representations and malicious constructions,
what will you more certainly see, than that he is out im
mediately against his accusers, in the most violent denun-

APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS. 151
ciations of their bigotry, and the wicked untruths of their
criticism. Now, if the book was true, if there is no sin
that is blamable, what have they done to be so bitterly
blamed? What they have done is simply natural, and is
no more to be condemned than a frosty night. It will no
wise diminish the force of our supposition to add that it
might well enough be given as historic fact. In which,
also, we may see how certainly every man's rational and
moral instincts will triumph, after all, over his theories and
formal arguments, when he undertakes to deny or dis
prove the fact of sin.
We go farther. So confident are we in this matter that,
if there be any man living who undertakes to be consist
ent in the denial of sin, setting it down however firmly, as
a point of will, never to blame any injury done to others
or to himself, we will engage, in case he is able to spend
four waking hours without any single thought or feeling
of blame as against any human creature, to admit the
truth of his doctrine.
We have another proof, in the fact that we as positively
and necessarily blame ourselves ; not in every thing — my
argument does not require me to go that length — enough
that we do it on particular occasions, distinctly noted and
remembered. And here we are bold to affirm that every
person of a mature age, and in his right mind, remembers
turns, or crises in his life, where he met the question of
wrong face to face, and by a hard inward struggle broke
through the sacred convictions of duty that rose up to
fence him back. It was some new sin to which he had not
become familiar, so much worse perhaps in degree as to be
the entrance to him consciously of a new stage of guilt

152 APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS.
He remembers how it shook his srul and even his body,
how he shrunk in guilty anticipation from the new step
of wrong; the sublime misgiving that seized -him, the
awkward and but half-possessed manner in which it was
taken, and then afterward, perhaps even after years have
passed away, how, in some quiet hour of the day or wake
ful hour of night, as the recollection of that deed — not a
public crime, but a wrong, or an act of vice — returned
upon him, the blood rushed back for the moment on his
fluttering heart, the pores of his skin opened, and a kind
of agony of shame and self-condemnation, in one word,
of remorse, seized his whole person. This is the conscious
ness, the guilty pang, of sin ; every man knows what it is
We have also observed this peculiarity in such experi
ences; that it makes no difference at all what temptations
we were under ; we probably enough do not even think
of them; our soul appears to scorn apology, as if some
higher nature within, speaking out of its eternity, were
asserting its violated rights, chastising the insult done to
its inborn affinities with immutable order and divinity,
and refusing to be farther humbled by the low pleadings
of excuse and disingenuous guilt. To say, at such a time,
the woman tempted me, I was weak, I was beguiled, I
was compelled by fear and overcome, signifies nothing.
The wrong was understood, and that suffices.
Nor is it only in these times of conscious compunction
that we are seen to blame ourselves as transgressors. We
do it tacitly or unconsciously, in ways that are even more
striking. Thus it may be seen that large assemblies of
men, not the worst of their species, not the ignorant or the
broken spirited victims of depression, not the felons or
outcasts of society, but the most intelligent, most honest

APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS. 15t>-
and honorable, and generally most exemplary as regards
their conduct, will come together once in seven days, and
sit down to the exposure and charge of their sin, without
even a thought of offense or insult. And what is more,
that kind of preaching which probes them most faithfully,
and most disturbs their consciences, will most invite their
attendance, if only there is no violence, or fanaticism in
the manner. Any sober and rational exposure of their
sin, however piercing, they will submit to, take it as theii
privilege, and pay for it cheerfully, year by year ! Why
now is this? Simply because they are sinners and know
the charge to be true. Were they charged in this manner
with being thieves, pickpockets, or assassins, all husbands
and wives arraigned as false, all children as parricides, all
citizens as perjurers and traitors, all merchants and bank
ers as dishonest and fraudulent dealers, they would in
stantly repel the charge ; their indignation could not be
restrained for a moment. Nor is it any thing to say that
they have been educated into the faith that they are trans
gressors, living in the guilt of sin, and submit to the charge
as to one of their superstitions. It is not as being a dog
ma that the charge has any reality to them; indeed they
often repel it as such and deny it. It has never any pow
er, till it is wielded in such a manner as to stir the con
sciousness, and draw out thence a fresh verdict of convic
tion. We do then blame ourselves. It is one of the most real
and tremendous facts of our consciousness; which, if a
man will seek to explain away, by resolving it into cause
and effect, it will yet remain, defying and scorning" all his
arguments. He knows that he himself did the sin, and no
cause back of himself. It is a fact, self-pronounced in h U

154 OUR INDICATIONS SHOW
consciousness, and of which he can no more divest him
self than lie can stay the consciousness of his existence
Chloroform may rid him of it, but not argument.
Again, it is a fact constantly perceived that, where
men do not occupy themselves with thoughts of blame,
or conscious admissions of guilt, they are yet exercised in
ways that imply it, and prove it only the more convinc
ingly. The moment we look out upou the race, and
take note of mankind, as revealed in their most super
ficial demonstrations, we discover that they are out of rest,
plagued by the foul demon of guilt. A malefactor aspect
invests their conduct. Not by altars only of sacrifice,
smoking under every sky; not by pilgrimages, abstinenc
es, vigils, flagellations of the body, self-immolations, and
other voluntary tortures; not by the giving way even of
natural affection before this dreadful horror of the mind,
yielding up the children of the body to pacify the sins of
the soul — not by these misdirected expedients and pains
of guilt alone do we discover its existence, but by others,
more silent and convincing.
Take, for a single example, the remarkable fact of a uni
versal shyness of God — a fact conceded by society, and
made the basis even of a common law of politeness.
Why is this, why is it accepted as a universal law of po
liteness, never to obtrude upon others the subject of re
ligion, or of God and the soul, without some previous
intimation or discovery that the subject will not be un
welcome. Because it is presumed not to be welcome. Il
is no£ because God and the soul are questionable realities —
we love to converse of things unreal, or imaginary, as well
as of those which are real. It is not because, being real,

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN. 155
they are matters about which there are many different
opinions — so there are about politics, literature, philoso
phy, science, art, and almost every other subject. It is
not because, being real, God is not the loftiest, purest and,
in himself, most ennobling, most inspiring, most radiant
subject of communication; his government the richest
fountain of wisdom ; and the soul an interest to itself that
dwarfs all others. Neither is it because a population of
pure, angelic intelligences, occupying this same world of
ours, and immersed in similar employments, would not
meet the vision of God in all his works, and would not
hasten to refresh themselves in these transcendent themes.
The only and true explanation is that God and the soul
are themes that move disturbance. They suggest blame,
they lacerate, in this manner, the comfort of the mind.
So well understood is it that mankind are shy of God,
and that humanity is itself the sign of a bad conscience,
that it is tacitly voted and becomes an accepted law of
politeness, never to approach this one proscribed subject,
without a previous discovery that it can be done without
offense. Nor is it any excuse or clearance of the sign, to say that
manifestly such subjects ought not to be promiscuously
spoken of in all places and circles. This we admit. Still
the question is, why they may not? And the only an
swer is, that which we have given; that men are under a
subtle and tacit, but damning sense of blame, and can not
bear, on all occasions, or any where but in the public as
semblies of religion, to have subjects introduced that re
mind them of it, and stir again the guilt of their conscience.
There would never be any such places or occasions, in a
population of sinless beings.

156 WE ACT ON THE ASSUMPTION
Is this tacit blame then, that appears to haunt toe world
and drive it from its rest, a mere fiction? Are we still
under cause and effect, as truly as a river flowing toward
the ocean, only not able ourselves to discover the fact?
Bitter hardship, that we can not be allowed the placidity
of the river!
We have yet another proof, in the fact that mankind
are seen to be acting universally on the assumption, that
wrong is done, or is likely to be done in the world. Every
man of business, having only ordinary intelligence, as
sumes it as a point of natural discretion, that he is beset
with wrong-doers, who will take every advantage and
seize every opportunity, and holds it as a first maxim tc
trust no man, till he has somehow given a title to confi
dence. Not that men are generally weak, and prone to
what is miscalled wrong, by reason of their natural infirmi
ty. Contrary to this, it is the very point of his concern,
that they are so capable and so ready to be wicked in the
use of their capacity. The smallest part of his concern is
to look out for such as may fail him by their lack of ener
gy or talent, and these are a class by themselves. To
guard against the others is his principal study, and they
are so many, so greedy, and plausible, and false, and hasten
to the prey by so many methods, that his only safety is in
the presumption that every man will take advantage and
do him a wrong if he can.
So, in what is called family government, every thing is
set upon a footing that anticipates wrong. Otherwise we
might exist in a family state and never hear or think of
a government as pertaining to it, any more than we now
do of a government in the garden, to preside over the

THAT WRONGS ARE A GREAT PERIL 157
conduct of the flowers. Indeed, if there is no danger of
wrong-doing in children, the forming of perverse tempers,
the indulgence of wicked passions, the breaking down, by
wills unchastened, of all sacred principles, why not suffer
tnem to unfold naturally, as the fiowers do ; for even in
experience and neglect will as certainly blossom into vir
tue, if virtue it can be called, as they into their own
odors and colors. Contrary to this, we assume the need of
government, that is of authority, command, correction,
that the beginnings of evil may be checked, and principles
of virtue established. Doubtless there is such a thing as
unrighteous and barbarous severity practiced in the name
of government; still there must be government; for what
ever parent undertakes to act on the assumption that the
misdoing will be only mistake, or inexperience, and no
intended or blamable wrong, (as we understand some are
now doing, in order to justify their theories,) will assured
ly find that something comes to pass, in the history of
their children, that is a great deal more like wrong than
they could wish!
Why, again, do we organize the civil state, why fence
about society with laws, enforcing them by severe and
even sanguinary punishments? If there is no blamable
wrong in the world or danger of any, why so careful to
defend ourselves against what our laws, by a mistake, cal]
wrongs, or crimes ; such as frauds, forgeries, robberies, vi
olations of liberty, character and chastity, murders, assas
sinations? Why these manifold acts of penal legislation
against wrong-doing, if wrong, as a matter of blame, is
out of the question, or if nothing has ever occurred in
the world to suggest the fact, and discover the danger of
wrong? The asswer to all this will be, that what we
14

158 TO OUR EXISTENCE.
call wrong, in this manner, is public evil, and must b«
restrained, but still is not really blamable, because it
takes place under law^ of nature, and by natural neces
sity. Are we then expecting, in this manner, to punish
and put a stop to the laws of nature? and so to perforin
by legislation, the miracles we deny in our arguments?
What means this array of courts, constables, and marshals,
the grated prisons, the hurdles and scaffolds, the solemn
farce of trials and penal sentences? Are they simply
barriers or institutes of defense, in which we array causes
against the harmful action of other causes, as the Hol
landers raise dykes against the sea? Then why do we
call this " 'criminal laioV and why has it never occurred
to the Hollanders to conceive that their dykes are raised
against the criminal misdoings of the sea?
Besides we are afraid even of the law ; trying, by every
method possible, to invent checks and balances against usur
pations and abuses of power ; so to make power responsi
ble, and to hedge about even our tribunals ofjustice by pe
nal enactments against bribery; connivance, and arbitrary
contempt of law ; as if wanting still some defense against
even our defenders, and the more terrible wrongs they
are like to perpetrate, in the abuse of those powers which
have been committed to their hands. And then, again,
when the people, groaning for long years under the mis
rule of a tyrant, rise up against him, instigated by the woea
they have suffered, and pluck him down from his throne,
bring him to solemn trial and sentence him to die, do they
lay no blame on. his head, or do they only cut off the thing,
as the blameless impediment to their rights and liberties?
We perceive, in this manner, how the whole superstruct
ure of the civil order rests on the conviction that sin is in

FORGIVENESS SUPPOSES SIN. 159
the world. We assume it as a fact, the terrible fact, of hu
man existence. No one doubts it, save here and there
some busy Sophist, who thinks to hold his theories against
all fact and experience, and against the spontaneous, practi
cal judgments of the race — protected, while he does it, in
the very liberty of his mind, and the life of his body, by laws
that, under his theories, might as well set themselves to
forbid the fermentation of substances, or to arraign and
punish the poisonous growth of vegetables.
We have still another class of proofs, that are more sub
tle and closer to what may be called the latent sense of the
soul; and, for just-that reason, as much more convincing,
when once they are brought into the light; we speak of
certain sentiments that appear to be universal, and the
natural validity of which we never suspect.
Take, for a first example, the sentiment or virtue of for
giveness. Does any one doubt the reality of forgiveness?
does any one refuse to commend forgiveness as a necessary
and even noble virtue? Forgiveness to what? Forgive
ness to cause and effect, forgiveness to the weather, for
giveness to the mildew, or the fly that brings the blasted
harvest? No! forgiveness to wrong, blamable and guilty
wrong. Forgiveness and wrong are relative terms. If
there is nothing to blame — there is nothing to forgive.
One of two things, then, must be true; either that there
has been some blamable wrong in the world, or else that the
forgiveness we think of, speak of, inculcate, and commend,
is a baseless phantom, out of all reality, as destitute of
dignity and beauty as of solidity and truth. Indeed, there
is no place in human language for the word, any more
than for the naming of a sixth seiise that does not exist

160 SATIRE AND TRAGEDY
The pleasure we take in satire, may be cited as another
example. This pleasure consists in cauterizing, or seeing
cauterized by wit, the perverse follies, the abortive pride,
or the absurd airs and manners of such as morally de
serve this kind of treatment. Satire supposes a free and re
sponsible subject, who might be seriously blamed, but can be
more efficiently treated by this lighter method, which, in
stead of denouncing the guilt, plays off the absurdities, and
mocks the sorry figure, of sin. Satire supposes demerit, or a
blamable defect of virtue ; and, where the mark is too high
to be reached by rebuke or civil indictment, even crime
may be fitly chastised by it. The point to be distinctly
noted is, that there is no place for satire, and we
have no sympathy with it, except where there is, or is sup
posed to be, some kind of moral delinquency or ill desert.
No poet thinks to satirize the sea, or a snow storm, or a
club foot, or a monkey, or a fool. But he takes a man, a
sinning man, who has deformed himself by his excesses,
perversities, or crimes, and against him invokes the terri
ble Nemesis of wit and satire. Begarding him simply as
a thing, under the laws of cause and effect, we should have
as little satisfaction or pleasure in the infliction, as if it
were laid upon a falling body.
We have yet another and sublimer illustration, in the
abysses of the tragic sentiment — that which imparts an
interest so profound to human history, to the novel and
the_ drama, and even to the crucifixion of Jesus himself.
The staple matter of emotion, all that so profoundly moves
our feeling in these records of fact and fiction, is that here
we look upon the conflict of good and bad powers, the
glory and suffering of one, the hellish art and malice of
the other, followed or not followed by the sublime vindica

SUPPOSE THE FACT OF SIN. 161
tions of providential justice. It is the war, actual or im
agined, of beauty and deformity, good and evil, in their
higher examples. In this view, we have a deeper sense
of awe, a vaster movement of feeling, in the contempla
tion of a man, a mere human creature, in a character de-
mohized by passion, than we have in the rage of the sea, or
the bursting fire-storm of a volcano ; because we regard
him as a power- — a bad will doing battle with God and the
world. Be it a Macbeth, an Othello, a Bichard, a Faust,
a Napoleon, or only the Jew Fagin, we follow him to his
end, quivering as under some bad spell, only then to breathe
again with freedom, when the storm of his destiny is over,
and the wild, fiery mystery that struggled in his passion is
solved. But suppose it were to come to us, in the heat
of our tragic exaltation, as a real conviction, that these
characters are, after all, only natural effects, mere frictions
of things, acting from no free power in themselves ; forth
with, at the instant, every feeling of interest vanishes, and
we care no more for their petty tumults than we do for the
effervescence of a salt, or the skim that mantles a pool.
All tragic movement ceases when the powers make their
exit ; for, if now we call them men, they yet are only
things, like Lion, Wall, and Moonshine, left to fill the
stage with their absurd mockeries. What means it now
for the Lady Macbeth to be crying to the blood, — " Out,
damned spot ! " if there is no longer any such thing as a
damned spot of guilt in her murderous soul. Expunge
the faith of that, and the rage of her remorse turns at once
to comedy — that, and nothing more.
Now, in these and other like sentiments, constantly
brought into play, spontaneous, clear of all affectation,
never questioned as absurdities or fictions, we encounter
14*

162 MISDIRECTION, NO TRUE
some of the sublimest, most irresistible evidences that men
are capable of sin and are in it. If it is not so, then it is
very clear that all the deepest sentiments of the human
bosom are only impostures of natural weakness, destitute
of dignity as of truth.
It remains to add that the objections offered to disprove
the existence of sin, and the solutions of what is called sin,
advanced by the naturalists, are insufficient and futile, and
even imply the fact itself. Most of these have been
already answered in the course of our argument — such as
that the acting of a creature against God is inconceivable ;
for such a capacity was shown to be included in the very
conception of a free agent, or power ; — that if God really
desires no sin, he has all force to prevent it ; for a power,
it was shown, is not immediately controllable by force ; —
that sin supposes a breach of God's system ; for his sys
tem is a system, we have seen, not of things, but of pow
ers, and maintains the organic nisus of its aim as perfectly
among the discords it has undertaken to reduce and
assimilate, as if no act of discord had occurred. Mean
time it will be seen that the notion of evil, most commonly
advanced by the naturalizing skeptics, is one that really in
volves and admits the guilt of sin, even though advanced to
clear it of the element of guilt. "Misdirection!1 is the word
they apply — they call it misdirection — and in this, or
something answering to this, they universally agree. Even
where there is only a partially developed system of natu
ralism, and the existence of sin is not formally denied, a
certain affinity for this word will be discovered. Thus
Mr. Parker, speaking of piracy, war, and the slave trade,
Buggests that these and similar evils are wrongs that come

SYNONYM OF SIN. 163
of the "abuse, misdirection, and disease of human na-
cure."* This word misdirection has the advantage that it
slips ail recognition of blame or responsibility, because it
brings into view no real agency or responsible agent.
And hence it becomes a favorite word, and is formally
proposed by many advocates of naturalism, as the philo
sophic synonym of sin.
Be it so then, put it down as agreed, that sin is misdi
rection, and that so far there is a real something in it.
Then comes the question, who is it, what is it, that misdi
rects? Is the misdirection, of God? That will not be
said. Mr. Parker uses also, it will be observed, the term
"disease." Will it then be said that piracy, war, and the
slave trade are the misdirections only of disease, as when
the hand of a lunatic, misdirected by a pressure on the
brain, takes the life of his friend ! Was it only for such
innocent misdirection as this that Mr. Parker inveighed so
bitterly against the great statesman of New England,
as having bowed himself to slavery ? Was it then the mis
direction of cause and effect, in the constituent principles
of human nature ? This indeed appears to be intimated in
another place, when it is declared that, — "Discordant
causes have produced effects not harmonious."f Is the
boasted system then of nature a discordant, blundering,
misdirecting system ? If so, it should not be wholly in
credible that nature may sometime blunder into a miracle.
Is it then given us, for our privilege, to look over the sad
inventory of the world's history, the corruptions of truth
and religion, the bloody persecutions, the massacres of the
good, the revolutions against oppressions and oppressors,
and the combinations of power to crush them, if success-
?D.Beoursos of Religion, p. 13. f Discourses of Religion, p. 12

164 MISDIRECTION, NOT SIN.
ful, caste, slavery and the slave trade, piracy and war
tramping in blood over desolated cities and empires— can
we look on these and have it as our soft impeachment to
say, that they are only the misdirections of discordant
causes in human nature? That has never been the senso
of mankind, and never can be. There is no account to
be made of these misdirections, till we bring into view
man as he is ; a power capable of misdirecting himself and
guilty in it, because he does it, swayed by no causes in or
out of himself, but by his own self-determining will.
Doubtless there is abundance of misdirection; almost
every thing we know is misdirected, the world is full of it,
the whole creation groaneth in the sorrows, wrongs, pun
ishments, and pains of it. And then we have it as the
true account of all, that man is the grand misdirector.
He turns God's world into a hell of misdirection, and that
is his sin. Apart from this, any such thing as misdirec
tion is inconceivable. Nature yields no such thing ; and,
if man is a part only of nature, under her necessary laws '
of cause and effect, there will be as little place for misdi
rection in his activities, as there is in the laws of chemistry,
or even of the solar system. The plea of misdirection,
therefore, is itself a concession of the fact of sin, which
fact we now assume to be sufficiently established to sup
port and be a sure foundation for our future argument

CHAPTER VI.
UE CONSEQUENCES 01 SIN.
It is very evident that, if sin is a fact, it must be fol
lowed by important consequences ; for, as it has a moral
significance considered in the aspect of blameworthiness,
guilt, penal desert, and remorse, so also it has a dynamic
force, considered as acting on the physical order and
sphere of nature ; in the contact and surrounding of which,
its transgressions take effect. In one view, it is the fall
of virtue; in the other, it is the disorder and penal dislo
cation both of the soul and of the world. As crime, it
demolishes the sacred and supernatural interests of charac
ter ; as a force, operating through and among the retribu
tive causes arranged for the vindication of God's law, it is
the disruption of nature, a shock of disorder and pain that
unsettles the apparent harmony of things, and reduces the
world to a state of imperfect, or questionable beauty.
What I now propose, then, is the investigation of sin
regarded in the latter of these two aspects ; or to show
what consequences it operates or provokes, in the field of
nature. It is not to be supposed that sin has power to annul or
discontinue any one of the laws of nature. The same
laws are in action after the sin, or under it, as before.
And yet, these laws continuing the same, it is conceivable
that sin may effect what is really, and to no small extent,
a new resolution or combination, which is, to the ideally
perfect state of nature, what disorder is to order, deformity
to beauty, pain to peace. This, of course, it will do, if at

166 SIN PROVOKES
all, by a force exerted in the material world, and through
the laws of nature.
At the point of his will, man is a force, we have seen,
outside of nature ; a being supernatural, because he is able
to act on the chain of cause and effect in nature from
without the chain. It follows then, of course, that by act
ing in this manner upou nature, he can vary the action
of nature from what would be its action, were there no
such thing as a force external to the scheme. Nature, in
deed, is submitted to him, as we have seen, for this very
purpose ; to be varied in its action by his action, to receive
and return his action, so to be the field and medium of his
exercise. Thus it is a favorite doctrine of our times, that the laws
of the world are retributive ; so that every sin or depart
ure from virtue will be faithfully and relentlessly punished.
The very world, we say, is a moral economy, and is so
arranged, under its laws, that retribution follows at the
heels of all sin. And by thi3 fact of retribution, we mean
that disease, pain, sorrow, deformity, weakness, disappoint
ment, defeat* all sorts of groanings, all sizes and shapes of
misery, wait upon wrong-doers, and,, when challenged by
their sin, come forth to handle them with their rugged
and powerful discipline. We conceive that, in this Way,
the aspects of human society and the world, are to a
considerable degree, determined. But we do not always
observe that nature is, by the supposition, just so far
displayed under a variation of disorder and disease. First
appear the wrongs to be chastised, which are not in
cluded in the causations of nature, otherwise they were
blameless ; then the laws of nature, met by these provo
cations, commence a retributive action, such as nature.

RETRIBUTIVE CONSEQUENCES. 167
unprovoked, would never display. The sin has fallen
into nature as a grain of sand into the eye — and as the eye
is the same organ that it was before, having the same laws,
and is yet so far changed as to be an organ of pain rather
than of sight, so it is with the laws of nature, in their penal
and retributive action now begun. Sin, therefore, is, by
the supposition, such a force as may suffice, in a society
and world of sin, to vary the combinations, and display a
new resolution of the activities, of nature. The laws remain,
but they are met and provoked by a new ingredient not
included in nature; and so the whole field of nature, other
wise a realm of harmony, and peace, and beauty, takes a
look of discord, and, with many traces of its original glory
left, displays the tokens also of a prison and a hospital.
Thus far we have spoken of the power there is in sin to
provoke a different action of natural causes. It also has
a direct action upon nature to produce other conjunctions
of causes, and so, other results. The laws all continue
their action as before, but the sin committed varies the
combinations subject to their action, and in that manner
the order of their working. Indeed, we have seen that
nature is, to a certain extent, submitted by her laws to the
action of free supernatural agents; which implies that
her action can be varied by their sovereignty without dis
placing the laws, nay in virtue rather of the submission
they are appointed to enforce. I thrust my hand, for ex
ample, into the fire, producing thus a new conjunction of
causes, viz., fire and the tissues of the hand; and the result
corresponds — a state of suffering ar d partial disorganiza
tion. In doing this, I have acted only through the laws
of nature— the nervous cord has carried down my man
date to the muscles of the arm, the muscles have contracted

168 SIN ALSO PRODUCES
- obediently to the mandate, the fire has done its part, the
merves of sensation have brought back their report, all in
due order, but the result is a pain or loss of the injured
member, as opposite to any thing mere nature would have
wrought by her own combinations, as if it were the fruit '
of a miracle. So it is with all the crimes of violence, rob
bery, murder, assassination. The knife in the assassin's
hand is a knife, doing what a knife should, by the laws
which determine its properties. The heart of the victim is
a heart, beating on, subject to its laws, and, when it is
pierced, driving out the blood from his opened side, as cer
tainly as it before drove the living flood through the cir
culations of the body. But the thrust of the knife, which
is from the assassin's will, makes a conjunction which
nature, by her laws alone, would never make, and by
force pf this the victim dies. In like manner, a poison
administered acts by its own laws in the body of the
victim, which body also acts according to its laws, and
the result ensuing is death ; which death is attributable,
not to the scheme of nature, but to a false conjunction of
substances that was brought to pass wickedly, by a human
will. In all these cases, the results of pain, disorder, and
death are properly said to be unnatural ; being, in a sense,
violations of nature. The scheme of nature included no
such results. They are disorders and dislocations made
by the misconj unction or abuse of causes in the scheme
of nature. And the same will be true of all the events
that follow, in the vast complications and chains of causes,
to the end of the world. Whatever mischief, or unnatural
result is thus brought to pass by sin, will be the first link
of -an endless ciain of results not included in the scheme

NEW CONJUNCTIONS OF CAUSES. 169
of nature, and so the beginning of an ever-widening circle
of disturbance. And this is the true account of evil.
But it will occur to some, that all human activities, the
good as well as the bad, are producing new conjunctions
of causes that otherwise would not exist. Mere nature
will never set a wheel to the water-fall, or adjust the sub
stances that compose a house or a steamboat. How then
does it appear that the results of sin are called dislocations
or disorders, or regarded as unnatural, with any greater
propriety than the results of virtuous industry and all
right action? Because, we answer, the scheme of nature
is adjusted for uses, not for abuses ; for improvement, cul
ture, comfort, and advancing productiveness ; not for de
struction or corruption. Therefore, it consists with the
scheme of nature that water-wheels, houses, and steam
boats should be built ; for all the substances and powers
of nature are given to be harnessed for service, and when
they are, it is no dislocation, but only a fulfilling of the
natural order.
We come, also, to the same result by another and differ
ent process ; viz., by considering what sin is in its relation
to God and his works. In its moral conception, it is an
act against God, or the will and authority of God. And,
since God is every where consistent with himself, setting
all his creations in harmony with his principles, it is of
course an act against the physical order, as truly as against
the moral and spiritual. Taken as a dynamic, therefore,
it wars with the scheme of nature, and fills it with the
turmoil of its disorders and perversities. Or, if we take
the concrete, speaking of the sinner himself, he is a sub
stance, in a world of substances, acting as he was not made
to act. He was not made to sin, and the world was not
15

170 SIN THE ACTING OF A SUBSTANCE, MAN,
made to help him sin. The mind of God being wholly
against sin, the cast of every world and substance is re
pugnant to sin. Tho transgressor, therefore, is a free power
acting against God morally, and physically against the
cast of every world and substance of God — acting in, or
among the worlds and substances, as he was not made to act.
This, too, is the sentence of consciousness. The wrong
doer says within himself, — " I was not made to act thus,
no laws of cause and effect, acting through me, did the
deed. I did it myself, therefore am I guilty. Had I been
made for the sin, it had been no sin, but only a fulfillment
of the ends included in my substance." And how terribly
is this verdict certified by the discovery that the world
refuses to bless him, and that all he does upon it is a work
of deformity, shame, and disorder. The very substances
of the world answer, as it were, in groans, to the violations
of his guilty practice.
Suppose, then, what all natural philosophers assv-me,
that nature, considered as a realm of cause and effect, is a
perfect system of order ; what must take place in that sys
tem, when some one substance, no matter what, begins tc
act as it was not made to act ? What can follow, but some
general disturbance of the ideal harmony of the system
itself? It will be as if some wheel or member in a watch,
had been touched by a magnet and began to have an
action, thus, not intended by the maker; every other
wheel and member will be affected by the vice of the one.
Or it will be as if some planet, or star, taking its own way,
were to set itself on acting as it was not made to act; in
stantly the shock of disorder is felt by every other mem
ber of the system. Or we may draw au illustration, closer
to probabiUty, from the vital forms of physiology. A

AS HE WAS NOT MADE TO ACT. 171
vital creature is a kind of unit, or little universe, fashioned
bythe life. Thus an egg is a complete vital system, having
all its vessels, ducts, fluids, quantities, and qualities, ar
ranged to meet the action of the embryonic germ. Sup
pose, now, in the process of incubation, that some small
speck, or point of matter, under the shell, should begin, as
the germ quickens, to act as it was not made to act, or
against the internal harmony of the process going on,
what must be the result? Either a disease, manifestly, that
stops the process, or else a deformity ; a chick without a
wing, or with one too many, or in some way imperfectly
organized. What then must follow, when a whole order
of substances called men, having an immense power over
the lines of causes in the world, not only begin, but for thou
sands of years continue, and that on so large a scale that
history itself is scarcely more than a record of the fact, to
act as they were not made to act? We have only to raise
this question, to see that the scheme of nature is marred,
corrupted, dislocated by innumerable disturbances and
disorders. Her laws all continue, but her conjunctions
of causes are unnatural. Immense transformations are
wrought, which represent, on a large scale, the repugnant,
disorderly fact of sin. Indeed what we call nature must
be rather a condition of unnature ; apostolically represented,
a whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together
with man, in the disorder consequent on his sin.
The conclusion at which we thus arrive is one that will
be practically verified by inspection. Let us undertake
then a brief survey of the great departments of human
existence and the world, and discover, as far as we are
able, the' extent of the evil consequences wrought by
sin.

172 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
We begin with the soul or with souls. The soul, in ita
normal state, including the will or supernatural power, to
gether with the involuntary powers subordinated to it by
their laws, is an instrument tuned by the key-note of the
conscience, viz. right, to sound harmoniously with it; or
it is a fluid, we may say, whose form, or law of crystalli
zation is the conscience. And then it follows that, if
the will breaks into revolt, the instrument is mistuned in
every string, the fluid shaken becomes a shapeless, opaque
mass, without unity or crystalline order. Or, if we resort
to the analogies of vital phenomena, which are still closer,
a revolted will is to the soul, or in it, what a foreign un
reducible substance is in the vital and vascular system of
the egg, or (to repeat an illustration,) what a grain of sand
is in the eye — the soul has become a weeping organ, not
an organ simply of sight. Given the fact of sin, the fact
of a fatal breach in the normal state, or constitutional or
der of the soul, follows of necessity. And exactly this
wc shall see, if we look in upon its secret chambers and
watch the motions of sins in the confused ferment they
raise — the perceptions discolored, the judgments unable to
hold their scales steadily because of the fierce gusts of
passion, the thoughts huddling by in crowds of wild sug
gestion, the imagination haunted by ugly and disgustful
shapes, the appetites contesting with reason, the senses
victorious over faith, anger blowing the overheated fires
of malice, low jealousies sulking in dark angles of the
soul, and envies baser still, hiding under the skim of ita
green -mantled pools— all the powers that should be strung
in harmony, loosened from each other, and brewing in hope
less and helpless confusion ; the conscience meantime thun
dering wrathfully above and shooting down hot bolts of

IN SOULS. 173
judgment, and the pallid fears hurrying wildly about
with their brimstone torches — these are the motions of
sins, the Tartarean landscape of the soul and its disorders,
wher self-government is gone and the constituent integ
rity ii dissolved. We can not call it the natural state of
man, nature disowns it. No one that looks in upon the
ferment of its morbid, contesting, rasping, restive, uncon
trollable action can imagine, for a moment, that he looks
upon the sweet, primal order of life and nature. No name
sufficiently describes it, unless we coin a name and call
it a condition of unnature.
Not that any law of the soul's nature is discontinued, or
that any capacity which makes one a proper man is taken
away by the bad inheritance, as appears to be the view of
some theologians ; every function of thought and feeling
remains, every mental law continues to run ; the disorder
is that of functions abused and laws of operation provoked
to a penal and retributive action, by the misdoings of an
evil will. Though it is become, in this manner, a weep
ing organ, as we just now intimated, still it is an organ of
sight ; only it sees through tears. And the profound re
ality of the disorder appears in the fact that the will by
which it was wrought can not, unassisted, repair it. To
do this, in fact, is much the same kind of impossibility —
the phrenologists will say precisely the same — as for a
man who has disorganized his brain by over-exertion, or
by steeping it in opium, or drenching it in alcohol, to take
hold, by his will, of the millions of ducts and fibers woven
together in the mysterious net-work of its substance, and
bring them all back into the spontaneous order of health
and spiritual integrity.
Noi it is one thing to break or shatter an organization,
15*

174 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
and a very different tc restore it. Almost any one can
break an egg, but not all the chemists in the world can
make one whole, or restore even so much as the slightest
fracture of the shell. As little can a man will back, into
order and tune, this fearfully vast and delicate complica
tion of faculties ; which indeed he can not even conceive,
except in the crudest manner, by the study of a life.
It is important also, considering the moral reaction; ! of
the body, and especially the great fact of a propagation
of the species, to notice the disorganizing effect of sin, in
the body. Body and soul, as long as they subsist in their
organized state, are a strict unity. The abuses of one are
abuses also of the other, the disturbances and diseases of
one disturb and disease the other. The fortunes of the
body must, in this way, follow the fortunes of the soul,
whose organ it is. Sin has all its working too in the work
ing of the brain. To think an evil thought, indulge a
wicked purpose or passion, will, in this view, be much as
if the sin had brought in a grain of sand and lodged it in
the tissues of the brain. What then must be the effect,
when every path in its curious net- work of intelligence is
traveled, year by year, by the insulting myriads of sinning
thought, hardened by the tramp of their feet, and dusted
by their smoky trail.
But we are speaking theoretically. If we turn to prac
tical evidences, or matters of fact, we shall see plainly
enough that what should follow, in the effects of sin upon
the body, actually does follow. How the vices of the ap
petites and passions terminate in diseases and a final disor
ganization of the body, is well understood. The false con
junction made by intemperfte drink, deluging the tissues

IN THE BODY. 175
of the body with its liquid poisons, and reducing the body
to a loathsome wreck, is not peculiar to that vice. The
condition of sin is a condition of general intemperance.
It takes away the power of self-government, loosens the
passions, and makes even the natural appetite for food an in
stigator of excess. Indeed, how many of the sufferings and
infirmities even of persons called virtuous, are known by
all intelligent physicians to be only the groaning of the
body under loads habitually imposed, by the untempered
and really diseased voracity of their appetites. And if we
could trace all the secret actions of causes, how faithfully
would the fevers, the rheumatisms, the neuralgic and hy
pochondriacal torments, all the grim looking woes of dys
pepsia, be seen to follow the unregulated license of this
kind of sin. Nor is any thing better understood than
that whatever vice of the mind — wounded pride, unregu
lated ambition, hatred, covetousness, fear, inordinate care
— throws the mind out of rest, throws the body out of rest
also. Thus it is that sin, in all its forms, becomes a pow
er of bodily disturbance, shattering the nerves, inflaming
the tissues, distempering the secretions, and brewing e
general ferment of disease. In one view, the body is a
kind of perpetual crystallization, and the crystal of true
health can not form itself under sin, because the body has,
within, a perpetual agitating cause, which forbids the pro
cess. If then, looking round upon the great field of hu
manity, and noting the almost universal working of dis
ease, in so many forms and varieties that they can not be
named or counted, we sometimes exclaim with a sigh, what
a hospital the world is ! we must be dull spectators, if we
stop at this, and do not also connect the remembrance that
sin is in the world; a gangrene of the mind, poisoning ab

176 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
the roots of health and making visible its woes, by so
many woes of bodily disease and death.
The particular question, whether bodily mortality has
entered the world by sin, we will not discuss. That is
principally a scripture question, and the word of scrip
ture is not to be assumed in my argument. There obvi
ously might have been a mode of translation to the second
hfe, that should have none of the painful and revolting
incidents which constitute the essential reality of death.
We do moreover know that a very considerable share of
the diseases and deaths of our race are the natural effects
of sin or wrong-doing. There is great reason also to sus
pect, so devastating is the power of moral evil, that the
infections and deadly plagues of the world are somehow
generated by this cause. They seem to have their spring
in some new virus of death, and this new virus must
have been somewhere and somehow distilled, or generated.
We can not refer them to mineral causes, or vegetable, or
animal, which are nearly invariable, and they seem, as they
begin their spread at some given locality, to have a hu
manly personal origin. That the virus of a poisonous
and deadly contagion has been generated by human vices,
we know, as a familiar fact of history ; which makes it the
more probable that other pestilential contagions have been
generated in the deteriorated populations and sweltering
vices of the East, whence our plagues are mostly derived.
On this point we assert nothing as a truth positively dis
covered; we only design, by these references, to suggest
the possible (and, to us, probable,) extent and power of
that ferment, brewed by the instigations of sin, in the dis
eased populations of the world. What we suggest re
specting the virus of the world's plagues may be true, oi

IN SOCIETY. 177
it may not; this at least is shown beyond all question, that
sin is a wide-spreading, dreadful power of bodily distem
per and disorganization, which is the point of principal
consequence to our argument.
Passing now to society and the disorganizing effects of
sin there to appear, we see, at a glance, that if the soul
and body are both distempered and reduced to a state of
unnature, the great interest of society must suffer in a
correspondent manner and degree. Considered as a growth
or propagation, humanity is, in some very important sense,
an organic whole. If the races are not all descended of a
single pair, but of several or even many pairs, as is now
strenuously asserted by some, both on grounds of science
and of scripture interpretation, still it makes no difference
as regards the matter of their practical and properly relig
ious unity. The genus humanity is still a single genus
comprehending the races, and we know from geology that
they had a begun existence. That they also sinned, at the
beginning, is as clear, from the considerations already ad
vanced, as if they had been one. Whence it follows that
descendants of the sinning pair, or pairs, born of natures
thrown out of harmony and corrupted by sin, could not, on
principles of physiology, apart from scripture teachings,
be unaffected by the distempers of their parentage. They
must be constituently injured, or depravated. It is not
even supposable that organic natures, injured and disord
ered, as we have seen that human bodies are by sin, should
propagate their life in a progeny unmarred and perfect.
If we speak of sin as action, their children may be inno
cent, and so far may reveal the loveliness of innocence; — •
still the crystalline order is broken ; the passions, tempers,

178 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
appetites, are not in the proportions of harmony and rea
son; the balance of original health is gone by anticipation;
and a distempered action is begun, whose affinities sort
with evil rather than with good. It is as if, by their own
sin, they had just so far distempered their organization.
Thus far the fruit of sin is in them. And this the scrip
tures, in a certain popular, comprehensive way, sometimes
call "sin;" because it is a condition of depravation that
may well enough be taken as the root of a guilty, sinning
life. They do not undertake to settle metaphysically the
point where personal guilt commences, but only suit their
convenience in a comprehensive term that designates the
race as sinners; passing by those speculative questions
that only divert attention from the salvation provided for
a world of sinners. The doctrine of physiology there
fore is the doctrine of original sin, and we are held to in
evitable orthodoxy by it, even if the scriptures are cast
away. But if the laws of propagation contain the fact, in this
manner, of an organic depravation of humanity or human
society, under sin once broken loose, many will apprehend in
such a fact, some ground of impeachment against God ; as if
he had set us on our trial, under terms of the sorest disadvan
tage. If we start, they ask, under conditions of hereditary
damage, with natures depravated and affinities already dis
tempered by the sin of progenitors, as truly as if we had
commenced the bad hfe ourselves, what is our bad life
when we begin it, but the natural issue of our hopeless,
misbegotten constitution? It is no sufficient answer to say
that no blame attaches to the mere depravation supposed,
whether it be called sin or by any other name; it shocks
them to hear it even suggested, that a good being like

IN SOCIETY. 179
God can have set us forth in our trial, under such immense
disadvantages. Probably enough they assail the doc
trine of inherited depravity, in terms of fiery denuncia
tion, whether taken as a dogma set up by theologians, or
as being affirmed by christian revelation itself; not ob
serving that it is the inevitable fact also of human histo
ry; and, admitting the fact of sin, a necessary deduction
even of physiological science.
Now so far from admitting the supposed disadvantage
incurred by this organic depravation of the race, or the
mode of existence to which it pertains as a natural inci
dent, we are led to an opinion exactly opposite. Indeed
there appears to be no other way possible, in wliich the
race could have been set forth on their trial, with as good
chances of a successful and happy issue.
Thus, taking it for granted, that God is to create a
moral population, or a population of free intelligences,
that, having a begun existence, are to be educated into, and
finally established in, good, there were obviously two
methods possible. They might always be created outright
in full volume, like so many Adams, only to exist inde
pendently and apart from all reproductive arrangements,
or they might be introduced, as we are, in the frail and
barely initiated existence of the infantile state, each genera
tion born of the preceding, and altogether composing a
rigidly constituent organic unity of races.
In the former case they would have the advantage of a
perfectly uncorrupted nature, and, if that .be any advant
age, of a full maturity in what may be called the raw sta
ple of their functions. But such advantages amount to
ecarcely more than the opportunity of a greater and more
tremendous peril; for, being all, by supposition, under

180 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
the same conditions privative with the first man of scrip
ture,* they would as certainly do the same things, de
scending to the same bad experiment, to be involved in
the same consequent fall and disorder. They would only
be more strictly original in their depravation, having it as
the fruit of their own guilty choices.
And then, as regards all mitigating and restoring influ
ences, the comparative disadvantage would be immense.
Self-centered now, every man in his sin, and having no
ligatures of race and family and family affection to bind
them together, the selfishness of their fall would be un
qualified, softened by no mitigations. Spiritual love they
can not understand, because they never have felt the natu
ral love of sex, family, and kindred, by which, under con
ditions of propagation, a kind of inevitable, first-stage vir
tue is instituted; such as mitigates the severities of sin,
softens the sentiments to a social, tender play, and offers
to the mind a type, every where present, of the beauty and
true joy of a disinterested, spiritual benevolence. They
compose, instead, a burly prison-gang of probationers,
linked together by no ties of consanguinity, reflecting no
traces of family likeness, bent to each other's and God's
love by no dear memories. Society there is none. Law
is impossible. Society and law suppose conditions of or
ganic unity already prepared. Every man for himself, is
the grand maxim of life; for all are atoms together, in the
medley of the common selfishness; only the old atoms
have an immense advantage over the young ones fresh ar
rived ; for these new comers of probation, come of course
to the prey, having no guardians or protectors, and no
tender sentiments of care and kindred prepared to shelter
* Chapter IV, p. 111.

IN SOCIETY. 181
them and smooth their way. Besides, the world into
which they come must have been already fouled and dis
ordered by the sin of the prior populations, and must
therefore be a frame of being, wholly inappropriate to their
new-created innocence; or else, if not thus disordered,
must have been a casement of iron, too rigid and impas
sive to receive any injury from sin, and therefore incapa
ble of any retributive discipline returned upon it. There
is, in short, no condition of trial which, after all, is seen to
be so utterly forbidding and hopeless as just this state of
Adamic innocence, independence, and maturity of faculty,
which many are so ready to require of God, as the only
method of promise and fair advantage, in the beginning
of a responsible life.
How different the condition realized where men are
propagated as a race or races. Then are they linked to
gether by a necessary, constituent, anticipative love.
Moved by this love, the progenitors are immediately set to
a work of care and benefaction, beautifully opposite to the
proper selfishness of their sin. The delicate and tender
oeing received to their embrace, circulates their blood,
will bear their name, and is looked upon, even by then
selfishness, as a multiplied and dearer self. They are even
made to feel, in a lower and more rudimental way, what
joy there is in a disinterested love ; and they pour out
their fondness, in ways that even try their invention, insti
gated by the compulsory bliss of sacrifice. They want
the best things too for their child, even his virtue ; and
probably enough his religious virtue ; for they dread the
bitter woes of wrong-doing. This is true, at least, of all
but such as have fallen below nature in their vices, and
ceased to hear her voice. They even undertake to be a
1(5

182 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
providence, and do for their child all which the lore ol
God, even till now rejected, has been seeking to do foi
themselves; commanding him away from wrong, and
warning him faithfully of its dangers. Besides it is a
great point, in the scheme of propagated life, that the child
learns how to be grown, so to speak, into, and exist in,
another will ; which is an immense advantage to the relig
ious nurture, even where the parental character is not
good. He is not like a population of untutored, unregu
lated Adams, who have just come to the finding of a man's
will in them, and do not know how to use it, least of all
how to sink it obediently in the sovereign will and author
ity of God. The child's will grew in authority, and he comes
out gently, in the reverence of a subordinated habit, to
choose the way of obedience, having his religious con
science configured and trained, by a kind of family con
science, previously developed. There is almost no family
therefore — none except the very worst and most de
praved — in which the rule of the house is not a great
spiritual benefit, and a means even of religious virtue.
How much more, where the odor of a heavenly piety fills
the house and sanctifies the atmosphere of life itself. In
stead of being set forth as an overgrown man, issued from
the Creator's hand to make the tremendous choice, undi
rected by experience, he is gently inducted, as it were, by
choices of parents before his own, into the habit and
accepted practice of all holy obedience ; growing up in the
nurture of their grace, as truly as of their natural affec
tion. Furthermore, as corruption or depravation is propa
gated, under well-known laws of physiology, what are we
to think but that a regenerate life may be also propaga
ted; and that so the scripture truth of a sanctification

IN SOCIETY. 183
from the womb may sometime cease to be a thing remark
able and become a»commonly expected fact? And then,
if a point should finally be reached, under the sublime
palingennesia of redemption, when christian faith, together
with its fruits of nurture and sanctified propagation, should
be nearly or quite universal, and the world, which is now
in its infancy, should roll on, millions of ages after, train
ing its immense populations for the skies, how magnificent
ly preponderant the advantages of the plan of propagation,
which at first we thought could be only a plan to set us
out in the wrong, and sacrifice our virtue by anticipation.
This comparison, which might otherwise seem to be a
digression, will effectually remove those false impressions
so generally prevalent concerning God's equity in the fact
of natural corruption; and if this be done, a chief impedi
ment to all right conceptions of the human state, as affect
ed by sin, will be removed. In this manner, wholly apart
from the scriptures, instructed only by the laws of physi
ology, we discover the certain truth of an organic fall or
social lapse in the race; we find humanity broken, disor
dered, plunged into unnature by sin ; but dark and fearful
as the state may be, there is nothing in it unhopeful, noth
ing to accuse. We are only where we should be, each by
his own act, if we were created independently; with im
mense advantages added to mitigate the hopelessness of
our disorder.
It is very true that, under these physiological terms of
propagation, society falls or goes down as a unit, and evil
becomes, in a sense, organic in the earth. The bad in
heritance passes, and fears, frauds, crimes against property,
eharacter and life, abuses of power, oppressions of the
weak, persecutions ofthe good, piracies, wars of revolt, and-'

1«4 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
wars of conquest, are the staple of the world's bitter histo
ry. All that Mr. Fourier has said of society, in its practi
cal operation, is true ; it is a pitiless and dreadful power,
as fallen society should be. And yet it is a condition of
existence far less dreadful than it would be, if the orgawio
force of natural affinities and affections were not operative
still, in- the desolations of evil, to produce institutions, con
struct nations,* and establish a condition of qualified
unity and protection. Otherwise, or existing only as
separate units, in no terms of consanguinity, we should,
probably, fall into a state of utter non-organization, or,
what is the same, of universal prey. The grand woe of
society, therefore, is not, as this new prophet of science
teaches, the bad organization of society ; but that good or
ganization, originally beautiful and beneficent, can only
mitigate, but can not shut away, the evils by which it is
infested. The line of propagation is, in one view, the line
of transmission by which evil passes; but it is, at the same
time, a sure spring of solidarity and organific power, by
which all the principal checks and mitigations of evil,
save those which are brought in with the grace of super
natural redemption, are supplied. Otherwise the state of
evil, untransmitted and purely original in all, would make
a hell of anarchy, unendurable and final.
Nothing, in this view, could be more superficial than
Mr. Fourier's conception of the woes of society. Ignoring,
at the outset, the existence of sin, and assuming that every
man comes from the hand of his Maker in a state that
represents the Maker's integrity, even as the stars do, he
lays it down as a fundamental maxim of science, that all
* The word iUelf represents nf on V,. face the common life of a common
toot, or parentage.

IN SOCIETY. 185
cue passions and appetites of the race are like gravity
itself, instincts that reach after order — in his own rather
pretentious and extra scientific language, that "attractions
are proportioned to destinies." The attractions of the
worlds of matter adjust their positions; so the perfect
order of the heavens. So the attractions of men, to
wit, their lusts, appetites, passions, will adjust the perfect
order of society. Why, then, do they not? Because of
social mal-organization. And, with so many impulses
or passions gravitating all toward order, whence came the
mal-organization? — why are not the heavens, too, mal-
organized, and with as good right ? But I refer to these
insane theories of social science, not for any purpose of
argument against them, but simply to get light and shade
for my subject. The woe of society is deeper and more
difficult; not to be mended by artificial reconstructions
apart from all ties of consanguinity, not by contracts of
good will and mutual service, not by bonds of interest and
licenses of passion. It lies, first of all, in the fall of man
himself, which includes the fall of passion; a fall which is
mitigated even compulsorily by the organific power of
consanguinity, but can, by no human wisdom, or skill, or
3ombination, be restored. Organization will do what it
can, it will be more or less bad as it is more or less per
verted by injustice, or misdirected and baffled by the
instigations of selfishness and the bad affinities and de-
monized passions of sin.
It now remains to carry our inquest one step farther.
[f sin has power, taken as a dynamic, to affect the soul,
the body, and society, in the manner already indicated,
reducing all these departments of nature to a state un

186 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
natural, it should not be incredible that it may also have
power to produce a like disorder in the material or physi
cal world. The immense power of the human will over
the physical substances of the world and the conjunctions
of its causes, is seldom adequately conceived. Almost
every thing, up to the moon, is capable of being some
how varied or affected by it. Being a force supernatural,
it is continually playing itself into the chemistries and
external combinations of matter, converting shapes, re
ducing or increasing quantities, transferring positions,
framing and dismembering conjunctions, turning poisons
into medicines, aud reducing fruits to poisons, till at
length scarcely any thing is left in its properly natural
state. Some of these changes, which it is the toil of
human life to produce, are beneficent; and a multitude of
others represent, alas ! too faithfully, the prime distinction
of sin ; the acting of a power against God, or as it was not
made to act. Could we only bring together into a com
plete inventory all the new structures, compositions, in
ventions, shapes, qualities, already produced by man,
which are, in fact, the furniture only of his sin — means of
self-indulgence, instruments of violence, shows of pride,
instigations of appetite, incitements and institutes of cor
rupt pleasure — all the leprosies and leper-houses of vice, the
prisons of oppression, the hospitals and battle fields of
war, we should see a face put on the world which God
never gave it, and which only represents the bad conver
sion it has suffered, under the immense and ever-indus
trious perversities of sin.
But we must carry our search to a point that is deeper
and more significant. In what is called nature, we find
a large admixture of signs or objects, which certainly do

IN THE NATURAL WORLD. 187
not belong to an ideal state of beauty, and do not, there
fore, represent the mind of God, whence they are supposed
to come. The fact is patent every where, and yet the
superficial and hasty multitudes appear to take it for
granted, that all the creations of God are beautiful of
course. They either assume it as a necessary point of
reverence, or deduce it as a point of reason, that whatever
comes from God represents the thought of God; being
cast in the mold of his thought, which is divine beauty
itself. Not 'only do the poets and poetasters in prose go
the round of nature, sentimentalizing among her dews and
flowers, and paying their worship at her shrine, as if the
world were a gospel even of beauty ; but our philosophers
often teach it as a first principle, and our natural theolo
gians assume it also in their arguments, that the forms of
things must represent the perfect forms of the Divine
thought, by which they were fashioned. It would seem
that such a conceit might be dissipated by a smgle glance
of revision; for God is the infinite beauty, and who can
imagine, looking on this or that half dry and prosy scene
of nature, that it represents the infinite beauty? The fact
of creation argues no such thing. For what if it should
happen to have been a part of God's design in the work to *
represent, not himself only as the pure and Perfect One,
the immutable throne of law and universal order, but
quite as truly, and in immediate proximity, to represent
man to himself; that he may see both what he is for, and
what he is, and struggle up out of one into the other.
Then, or in that view, it would be the perfection of the
world, taken in its moral adaptations, that it is not perfect,
and does not answer to the beauty of the creative mind,
save under the large qualification specified.

188 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
And exactly this appears to be the true conception of
the physical world. What does it mean, for example, that
the vital organizations are contmually seen to be attempt
ing products which they can not finish? Thus a fruit
tree covers itself with an immense profusion of blos
soms, that drop, and do not set in fruit. And then, of
those fruits which are set, an immense number fall, strew
ing the ground with deaths — tokens all of an abortive at
tempt in nature, if we call it nature, to execute more than
she can finish. And this we see in all the growths of the
world — they lay out more than they can perform. Is this
the ideal perfection of nature, or is there some touch of
unnature and disorder in it? Is God, the Creator, repre
sented in this? Does he put himself before us in this
manner, as a being who attempts more fruits than he can
produce? or is there a hint in it, for man, of what may come
to pass in himself? an image under which he may conceive
himself and fitly represent himself in language? a token,
also, and proof of that most real abortion, to which he may
bring even his immortal nature, despite of all the saving
mercies of Go,d?
Swedenborg and his followers have a way of represent
ing, I believe, that God creates the world through man,
by which they understand that what we call the creation,
is a purely gerundive matter — God's perpetual act — and
that he holds the work to onan, at every stage, so as
to represent him always at his present point, and act upon
him fitly to his present taste. Not far off is Jonathan
Edward's conception of God's upholding of the universe —
it is in fact a perpetual reproduction; the creation, so called,
being to His person, what the image in a mirror is to the
person before it, from whom it proceeds and bv whom it

IN THE NATURAL WORLD. 189
is sustained. Indeed this latter conception runs into the
other, and becomes identical with it, as soon as we take in
the fact, that God is always being and becoming to man,
both in counsel and feeling, what is most exactly fit to
man's character and want; for, in that view, God's image,
otherwise called his creation, will be all the while receiv
ing a color from man, and will so far be configured to him.
Accordingly, we look, in either view, to see the Kosmos or
outward frame of things held to man, linked to his for
tunes to rise and fall with him, and so, under certain
limitations, to give him back his doings and represent him
to himself — representing God, in fact, the more adequately
that it does.
The doctrine of types in the physical world, to represent
conditions of character and changes of fortune in the
spiritual, is only another conception of the same gen
eral truth. And this doctrine of types we know to be
true in part; for language itself is possible only in virtue
of the fact that physical types are provided, as bases of
words, having each a natural fitness to represent some
spiritual truth of human life; which is in fact the princi
pal use and significance of language. Whence also it
follows that if human life is disordered, perverted, re
duced to a condition of unnature by sin, there must also
be provided; as the necessary condition of language, types
that represent so great a change ; which is equivalent to
saying that the fortunes of the outer world must, to some
very great extent, follow the fortunes of the occupant and
groan with him in his disorders.
Or we are brought to a conclusion essentially the same,
by considering the complete and perfect unity of natural
causes; how they form a dynamic whole, resting in an ev

190 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
act balance of mutual relationship, so that if any world,
or particle, starts from its orbit, or position, every other
world and particle feels the change. What then must fol
low when the given force or substance man, begins and
for long ages continues to act as he was not made
to act; out of character, against God, refusing place, and
breaking out on every side from the general scheme of
unity and harmony, in which the creation was to be com
prehended? What can his human disorder be, but a prop
agating cause of disorder? what his deformity within, but
a soul of deformity without, in the surroundings of the
field he occupies?
And this again is but another version of the fact that
the final causes of things are moral ; the arrangement be
ing that natural causes shall react upon all wrong-doing,
in retributive diseases, discords, and pains, to correct and
chasten the wrong; which, indeed, is the same thing as to
say that the world was made to share the fortunes of man,
and fall with him in his fall.
Whichever of these views we take, for at bottom they
all coalesce in the same conclusion, we see, at a glance,
that, given the fact of sin, what we call nature can be no
mere embodiment of God's beauty and the eternal order
of His mind, but must be, to some wide extent, a realm of
deformity and abortion; groaning with the discords of sm
and keeping company with it in the guilty pains of its
apostasy. Even as the apostle says, meaning doubtless
all which his words most naturally signify — "For tho
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.''
We need not therefore scruple to allow and also to main
tain the j udgment, that many things we meet are not beau
tiful; we should rather look for many that are not. Thug

IN THE NATURAL WORLT 191
we have growths in the briars and thorns that do not rep
resent the beauty and benignity of God; but under his
appointment take on their spiny ferocity from man, whose
surroundings they are, and whose fortunes they are made ¦
to participate. The same may be said of loathsome and
disgusting animals. Or we may take the pismire race for
an example— a race of military vermin, who fight pitched
battles and sometimes make slaves of their captives; rep
resenting nothing surely in God, save his purpose to re
flect, in keenest mockery, the warlike chivalry and glory
of man. It was our fortune once to see a battle of these
insect heroes. On a square rod of ground it raged for two
whole days, a braver field than Marathon, or Waterloo,
covered with the dead and dying, and with fierce enemies
rolled in the dust, still fighting on in a deadly grapple of
halves, after the slender connection of their middle part
had been completely severed in the encounter. That these
creatures image God in their fight, can not be supposed,
save as God may reveal, by a figure so powerful, the
sense he has of what we call our glory, the bloody glory
of our sin.
Under the same principle that the world is linked to
man and required to represent him to himself, we are
probably to account for the many and wide-spread to
kens of deformity round us in the visible objects of
nature. Whoever may once set his thought to this kind
of inquiry, will be amazed by the constant recurrence of
deformities, or things which lack the beauties of form.
After all the fine sentimentalities, lavished by rote and
without discriminating thought on the works and pro
cesses of nature, he will be surprised to find that the world
Js not as truly a realm of beauty, as of beauty flecked by

192 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN,
injury. The growths are carbijncled and diseased, and
the children have it for a play to fetch a perfect leaf.
Fogs and storms blur the glory of the sky, and foul days,
rightly so called, interspace the bright and fair. The earth
itself displays vast deserts swept by the horrid simoom ;
muddy rivers, with their fenny shores, tenanted by hide
ous alligators; swamps and morasses, spreading out in
provinces of quagmire, and reeking in the steam of death.
In the kingdom of life, disgusting and loathsome objects
appear,. too numerous to be recounted; such as worms and
the myriads of base vermin, deformed animals, dwarfs,
idiots, leprosies, and the rot of cities swept by the plague;
history itself depicting the mushrooms sprouting in the
bodies of the unburied dead, and the jackals howling in
the chambers, at their dreadful repast. Even more sig
nificant still is the fact, because it is a fact that concerns
the honor even of our personal organism, that no living
man or woman is ever found to be a faultless model of
beauty and proportion. When the sculptor will fashion
a perfect form, he is obliged to glean for it, picking out
the several parts of beauty from a hundred mal-propor-
tioned, blemished bodies iu actual life. And what js yet
more striking, full three-fourths of the living races of men
are so ugly, or so far divested of beauty in their mold,
that no sculptor would ever think of drawing on them for
a single feature!
This word deformity, which is properly a word of sight,
may be used too in its largest and most inclusive import,
to cover all the ground of the senses, together with a whole
family of words in de or dis, that indicate a relation of dis
junction — the dis-gusts ofthe taste and the smell; the dis-
easement, or pain of the sensibility ; the dis-cords and the

IN THE NATURAL WORLD. ' 193
unmelodious note! that storm the offended ear of musics —
the manifold braytag, cawing, screeching, yelling sounds,
such as would be lew in a farce, but are issued still from
as many badly-voiced pipes in the great organ of nature.
And then besides we have dis-tempers, dis-proportions, dis
tortions, dis-orders, de-rangements, answering all, shall we
say, to the dis-location of our inward harmony, and, reveal
ing in that manner the desolating effects of our sin.
If it should be urged that all these deformities and dis
cords are necessary contrasts, to enliven the beauty and
highten the music of nature, it is enough to answer that
pain is as necessary to joy, eternal pain to eternal joy; or
better still, because the analogy is closer and more exact,
that moral deformity is just as necessary in God to the suffi
cient impression of His moral beauty. Though, if we
take them all together in their moral import and uses —
the abortions, the deformed growths and landscapes, and
the strange jargon of sounds — regarding them as prepared
by the Almighty Father, fitly to insphere a creature super
natural whom he is correcting in his sins and training
unto Himself, then do they rise into real dignity and reveal
a truly divine magnificence. This, we say, is indeed the
tremendous beauty of God; and the strange, wild jargon
of the world, shattered thus by sin, becomes to us a mys
terious, transcendent hymn. Still it is deformity, jargon,
death, and the only winning side of it is, that it answers
to the woe, and meets the want of our sin.
17

CHAPTER VII.
ANTICIPATIVE CONSEQUENCES
In the account offered of the consequences cf tfin, we
have spoken of these consequences as effecta transpiring
under laws, and so as matters post in respect; to the fact of
sin. The result stated coincides, in all but the positive or
inflictive form, with the original curse denounced oil man's
apostasy, as represented in the Adami.o history or sin-
myth, as some would call it, of the ancient scriptures.
That primal curse, it is conceived, penetrates the very
ground as a doom of sterility, covers it with thorns and
thistles and all manner of weeds to be subdued by labor,
makes it weariness to live, brings in death with its armies
of pains and terrors to hunt us out of life, and so unpara-
dises the world. Call it then a myth, disallow the notion
of a positive infliction as being unphilosophical ; still the
luatter of the change, or general world-lapse asserted in it,
is one of the grandest, most massive, best-attested truths
included in human knowledge. It is just that which
ought to be true, under the conditions, and which we have
found, by inspection also, to be true as a matter of fact.
Still there is a difficulty, or a great and hitherto insuffi
ciently explored question, that remains. It is the question
of date or time; for when we speak, as in the previous
chapter, of the consequences of sin, we seem to imply that.
upon, or after the fact of sin, the physical order of the
world, affected by the shock, underwent a great change
that amounted to a fall; becoming, from that point on
ward, a realm of deformity and discord, as before it was

TWO KINDS OF CONSEQUENCES. 195
not, aud displaying, in all its sceneries and combinations,
the tokens of a broken constitution. All which, it will
readily occur to any one, can not, in that form, be true.
For the sturdy facts of science rise up to confront us in
such representations, testifying that death, and prey, and
deformed objects, and hideous monsters, were in the world
long before the arrival of man. Nay, the rocks open their
tombs and show us that older curses than the curse, older
consequences ante-dating sin, had already set their marks
on the world and had even made it, more than once, an
Aceldama of the living races.
"I need scarce say," remarks Hugh Miller, "that the
paleontologist finds no trace in nature of that golden age
of the world, of which the poets delighted to sing, when
all creatures' lived together in unbroken peace, and war and
bloodshed were unknown. Ever since animal life began
upon our planet, there have existed, in all the departments
of being, carnivorous classes, who could not live but by
the death of their neighbors; and who were armed, in con
sequence, for their destruction, like the butcher with his
knife and the angler with his hook and spear."* This being
true, the paradisaic history, as commonly understood, is still
farther off from a possible verification, unless we suppose the
curse to be there reported as a fact subsequent, though
latently incorporate before, because it is there discovered,
and plainly could not be conceived, at that time, as the
facts of future science may require.
For the true solution of this apparent collision between
geologic revelations and the paradisaic history, lies in the
fact which many have not considered, that there are two
modes of consequence, or two kinds of consequences ; those
* Testimony of the Rocks, p, 99.

196 WHAT EVIL CONSEQUENCES
which come as effects under physical causes, and have
their time as events subsequent; and those which come
anticipatively, or before the facts whose consequences they
are, because of intellectual conditions, or because intelli
gence, affected by such facts, apprehended before the
time, could not act as being ignorant of them. These two
modes of consequence, and particularly the latter, now
demand our attention.
As regards the former — the consequences of suffering
and dislocation that follow sin, as effects in time subse
quent — there is happily not much requiring to be said; for
the truth on that subject is familiar, and is in fact over
much insisted on by the modern teachers. Only it hap
pens that, while they so frequently make a gospel of the
mere retributive principle thus arrayed against evil, they
do also contrive to narrow the bad consequences of sin to
a range so restricted, and to results of mischief so nearly
trivia], that really nothing is involved in disobedience, ex
cept in cases of extreme viciousness and moral abandon
ment. They do^not conceive such a thing as the real dis
solution of the primal order and harmony even of the
soul, and the ceasing to be any longer a complete integer,
when it drops its moral integrity. What I have so
abundantly shown in the previous chapter, they do not
allow themselves to see — that any beginning, or outbreak
of sin carries with it the inevitable fact of a shock to the
general state of order; starting trains of penal and retri
butive consequences, which have no assignable limit, and
which none but a supernatural and divine agency can re
verse. Any thing entering into God's world, or falling
out in it, that is against his will, breaks of course the

ARE SUBSEQUENT IN TIME. 197
crystalline order, and how far the fracture will go no one
can tell.
When, therefore, we meet any given token of lapse, or
disorder, it may not be clear to us, on mere inspection,
how it came in, whether among the subsequent or the an
ticipative consequences of sin. Thorns and thistles — did
they take on their spiny and savage armor before the sin
of man, or after? Possibly after. No man can tell be
forehand how far such a beginning of disobedience and
apostasy from God might penetrate the fabric, and poison
the substance, and so determine the form of growths in the
world ; for, in a scheme of perfect reason, any violation of
wrong travels fast and far, and no one can guess how far.
But if the geologist, opening the hidden registers of the
world finds, the portrait, or even the indisputable analogon
of a thistle in the stone, that is the end of the inquiry.
The substance then of what I would desire to say on
this particular point is that, without some conviction of
evil and pain following after sin as its necessary effect,
there could be no such thing as a practically real moral
government in the world. That such evil and pain do
follow, with inevitable certainty, even as all effects follow
after their causes, we perceive and almost universally ad
mit ; for they are distinguishable in all the four great de
partments of being — the body, the soul, society, and the
world. And since it is theoretically true that, in any per
fect system of being, the disturbance of a particle disturbs
the whole, we are to admit, without difficulty, and as it were
by intellectual requirement, that evils most remote, deep
est, widest, and most comprehensive, may be effects, or in
evitable sequents of human transgression. On this point
onr faith should prooerly be shocked by nothing; for it is

198 PRE-EXISTING EVILS, HOW FAR
a fact visible beforehand, all time apart, that sin must
be a grand, all-penetrating sacrament of woe to the world
that contains it. And we shall most naturally take all
the evils we meet to be the dynamical effects of sin, till we
find them penetrating also the pre- Adamite conditions of
being, and setting their type in the registers of the geo
logic ages.
We come now to the matter of the anticipative conse
quences ; where it will be required of us to speak more
carefully and to dwell longer.
And here the first thing to be noted, as respects the
consequences of sin in our particular world, is that the
subsequent effects of the sin of other beings might very
well bring in disorders here that anticipate the arrival of
man. There had been other moral beings in existence
doubtless before the creation of man. So, in fact, the
scriptures themselves testify. They also testify that some
such were evil and, as we are left to judge, fixed in a
reprobate character, by long courses of evil. As they are
shown to have had access to our world, after we came in
as a race to possess it, so doubtless they had been visitors
and travelers in it, if we may so speak, during all the long
geologic eras that preceded our coming — hovering it may
be in the smoke and steam, or watching for congenial
sounds and sights among the crashing masses and grind
ing layers, even before the huge monsters began to wallow
in the ooze of the waters, or the giant birds to stalk
along the hardening shores. What they did, in this or
that geologic layer of the worid, we of course know not.
As little do we know in what numbers they appeared, or
by wh:-t deeds of violence and wrong they disfigured tho

REJTERRIBLE TO OLDER . POPULATIONS. 199
existing order. We do not even know that the suc
cessive extinctions of so many animal races, and the
deformities found in so many of the now existing races,
were not somehow referrible to the audacity of their
wrongs and the bitter woe of their iniquities. As already
intimated,* the fencing of spirits may be an essentially
moral affair — such that having, by their very nature, the
freedom originally of the physical universe, the universe
might well be visited by all such myrmidons of evil and,
being so visited, might show, as a necessary consequence,
the tokens of their evil contact or inhabitation. Indeed it
might well enough show such tokens of their sin in worlds
they had never visited ; for the universe, as we have seen,
is a whole, and a shock to any part of that whole must
have its effects of some kind, in every other. How far
the solidarity of the universe and its fortunes extends, or
how many things it embraces, we certainly do not know,
and are therefore not qualified to assume that "the whole
creation" does not necessarily feel the touch of every
bad mind and act, and suffer some consequent disorder
in every part. Finding then tokens of deformity and
prey, and objects of disgust appearing in the world, long
ages before it was inhabited by man, we are not hastily to
infer that these are not actual consequences of sin. They
may be such, in the strictest terms of retributive causality,
though not as related to the sins of man. Preceding that,
by long ages of time, they may yet be subsequent and pe
nal effects, as related to older, vaster, outlying populations
of sinners that had visited, or sent the shock of their sin
into the world, before the human race appeared.
It is not proposed, however, to account for all tho pre-
? Chapter TV., pp. 123-128.

200 CONSEQUENCES PREVIOUS,
viously existing marks of evil in the world, in tins manner.
It is most agreeable not to do it. For we shall easily con
vince ourselves that vast realms of consequences, and
these as real as any, precede and, in rational order, ought
to precede, their grounds, or occasions. Indeed it is
the peculiar distinction of consequences mediated by in
telligence, that they generally go before, and prepare the
coming of events to which they relate. Whoever plants
a state, erects a prison, or makes the prison to be a neces
sary part of his plan ; which prison, though it be erected
before any case of felony occurs, is just as truly a conse
quence of the felonies to be, as if it were erected afterward,
or were a natural result of such felonies. All the machin
ery of discipline in a school, or an army, is prepared by
intelligence, perceiving beforehand the certain want of
discipline hereafter to appear, and is just as truly a conse
quence of the want, as if it were created by the want
itself, without any mediation of intelligence.
So also any commander, who is managing a campaign,
and has gotten hold of the intended plan of his enemy,
will be utterly unable to project a plan for himself, or even
to order the manceuvers of a day, so as not to show a look
ing at the secret he has gained, and also to prepare in
numerable things, that are, in some sense, consequences
of it. What then shall we look for, since God's whole
plan of government is, in some highest view, a campaign
agamst sin, and is from the beginning projected as such,
but that all the turnings of his counsels and shapings of
his creations, should have some discoverable reference to
it? And how, in that case, could they be more truly and
rigidly consequences of it ? Indeed all consequences post,
are, in fact, anticipative first, and are, as really existent, ir

MEDIATED BY INTELLIGENCE. 201
tno laws ordained by intelligence to bring them to pass, as
thay are in their actual occurrence in time, afterward. It
is by no fiction therefore, and as little by any fetch of
ingenuity, that we speak of anticipative consequences ; for
they are the unfailing distinction of every plan ordered
by intelligence ; every system or scheme, comprehended
in the molds of reason, will disclose, in the remotest and
most subtle beginnings, marks that relate to events future,
and even to issues most remote.
This too, so far from being any subject of wonder, is
even a kind of necessary incident of intelligence. For
every thing that comes into the view of intelligence, must
also pass into the plans of intelligence. How can any in
telligent being frame a plan, so as to make no account of
what is really in his knowledge ? Or how could the all-
knowing God arrange a scheme of providential order, just
as if he did not know the coming fact of sin, eternally
present to his knowledge? Mind works under conditions
of unity, and, above all, Perfect Mind. What God has
eternally in view, therefore, as the certain fact of sin, that
fact about which all highest counsel in his government
must revolve, and upon the due management of which all
most eventful and beneficent issues in his kingdom depend,
must pervade his most ancient beginnings and crop ou1
in all the layers and eras of his process, from the first
chapter of creative movement, onward. As certainly as
sin is to be encountered in "his plan, its marks and conse
quences will be appearing anticipatively, and all the grand
arrangements and cycles of time will be somehow prelud
ing its approach, and the dire encounter to be maintained
with it. To create and govern a world, through long eras
rf time, and great physical revulsions, yet never discover

202 PREMEDITATION OF GOD,
to our view any token that he apprehends the grand cata
clysm of sin that is approaching, till after the fact is come,
he must be much less than a wise, all-perceiving Mind
Much room would be left for the doubt, whether he is any
mind at all ; for it is the way of mind to weave all coun
sel aud order into a web of visible unity.
It accords also with this general view of the subject, as
related to mind, that our most qualified teachers in science
discover so many tokens of premeditation, or anticipative
thought, in the earlier types and creations of the world.
"Premeditation prior to creation"* — this is the grand,
intellectual fact which Mr. Agassiz verifies with a con
fidence so calmly scientific, in his late introduction to the
study of Natural History. All sciences, he shows, are
in things because the creator's premeditative thought is
there ; every first thing accordingly shows some premedit
ative token of every last. "Enough has-been already
said," he remarks, "to show that the leading thought
which runs through the successions of all organized
beings, in past ages, is manifested again in new combina
tions, in th'e phases of the development of living repre
sentatives of tnese different types. It exhibits every
where the working of the same creative Mind, through all
time, and upon the whole surface of the globe." f He
passes directly on, accordingly, in his next section, to
speak of the " Prophetic Types among Animals," discov
ering, in the earher types of animated being, what reads
" like a prophecy " of all the types to come after. " There
are entire families," he says, "among the representatives
_of okbr periods, of nearly every class of animals, which,
w>. the state of their perfect development, exemphfy such
?Essay on Classification, p. 9. fib., p. 116

DISCOVERED IN THE FACTS OF SCIENCE; 203
prophetic relations, and afford, within the limits of the
animal kingdom, at least, the most unexpected evidence
that the plan of the whole creation had been maturely
considered, long before it was executed." * All this, it will
be observed, by the mere dry light of reason and of posi
tive science, apart from any consideration of a service to
be rendered to revealed religion.
Prof. Dana, in like manner, though with a somewhat dif
ferent purpose, observes, in " the survey of geological facts,
a remarkable oneness of system, binding together, in a
single plan or scheme, the successive events or creations,
from the earliest coral or shell-fish to man." f The whole
geologic series or progress constitutes, in this manner, he
maintains, " One grand history, with the creation of man,
the last act in the drama of creation."
The point of conviction reached by these great masters
of science, and stated thus in terms of the truest intellec
tual insight, is still not the end of all reason as pertaining
to the subject in question. If we speak of "prophetic
types " fulfilled or perfected by future creations, there will,
in the same manner, be types also that have their fulfill
ment after all creations are ended ; in the spiritual state of
men, and the remotest issues and last ends of human exist
ence. And as all that God ordains or previously creates,
will have some respect to these last ends, and the condi
tions of trial and bad experience through which they are
to be reached, it is even probable that, if we had a perfect i
insight of any humblest thing, be it only a mollusc, or an \
insect, we should find some subtle type or reference in it, /
to the grandest and most radical facts of the spiritual his- i
tory of the universe. For the premeditation of God and
•Essay on. Classification p 117. fNew Englander, Vol. XVX., p. 96.

204 WHICH PREMEDITATION
the intellectual unity of his thought comprehend moro
than any mere matter of species, or frame of geological
order; viz., that for which all species and all facts of
science and all objects of scientific study exist.
So also, if we speak with Prof. Dana of a "remarkable
oneness of system," geology is, in real fact, no system of
God, except as we say it by accommodation, which doubt
less he would also admit ; for there is but one system and
can be only one, as there is but one systematizing mind,
and one last end, about which the inferior combinations,
sometimes called systems, revolve. When, therefore, it is
remarked that God's one system visibly comprehends all the
creation, from coral and shell-fish up to man, why not also,
we ask, to something farther? — to what man will do, and
what will be done upon him and for him, and finally to all
that he will become ? when God's last end, that in which
all system centers, and for which it works, is finally con
summated. And what can we look for, in this view, but
that God's premeditations about sin, the images it raises,
the counsel it requires, the deaths and abortions it works,
and the new-creations it necessitates, will be coming into
view, in all the immense, ante-dated eras and mighty revo
lutions of the geologic process. By the mere unity of
God's intellectual system, they ought to appear, and, when
they do, they will as truly be consequences of sin as if
they were mere physical effects, subsequent in time to the
facts. There is also another account to be made of these an
ticipative consequences of sin ; viz., that they are neces
sary for great and important uses, in the economy of life,
as a spiritual concern. Were there no tokens of death,
deformity, prey, and abortion in the geologic eras, previ-

IS UNIVERSAL. 205
ous to man's arrival, and were it left us to believe that just
then and there discord broke loose, and the whole frame
of paradisaic order was shaken to the fall, we might im
agine that God was overtaken by some shock for which
he was not prepared, and that the world fell out of his
hands by some oversight, which probably enough he can
never effectually repair. But with so many tokens of an
ticipative recognition found laboring, and heard groaning,
through so many eras of deaths and hard convulsions, prior
to the sin they represent, we see, every one of us, in our
state of wrong-doing and denial of God, that He under
stands his work from the beginning, is taken by no sur
prise, meets no shock for which He is unprepared, and
holds every part of his kingdom, even from the founda
tion of the world, in fit connection with the tragic history
of sin and salvation afterward to be transacted in it. In
part, we see the world reduced to unnature, infected
with disease, shaken by discord, marred by deformity,
subsequently to the fact of sin, just as it must be by the
retributive action of causes, or by the false conjunctions
produced by the wrongs and abuses of sin. For the rest,
it was anticipatively disordered for the sake of order, or
in terms of necessary unity and counsel, as pertaining to
the Governing Mind; displaying thus, in clearer and
diviner evidence, the eternal insight and all-comprehend
ing intelligence of His appointments. For, in being set
with types all through and from times most ancient, of
suffering and deformity, prefiguring, in that manner, the
being whose sublime struggles are to have it for their field,
and showing him, when he arrives, how Eternal Fore
thought has been always shaping it to the mold of his
fortunes — thus and thus only could he be fitly assured, in
18

206 GEOLOGIC TYPES
the wild chaos of sin, of any such Counsel, or Power, as
can bring him, safely through.
How magnificent also is the whole course of geology, or
the geologic eras and changes, taken as related to the fu
ture great catastrophe of man, and the new-creating, super
natural grace of his redemption. It is as if, standing on
some high summit, we could see the great primordial
world rolling down through gulfs and fiery cataclysms,
where all the living races die; thence to emerge, again and
again, when- the Almighty fiat calls it forth, a new crea
tion, covered with fresh populations ; passing thus, througt
a kind of geologic eternity, in so many chapters of deaths,
and of darting, frisking, singing life; inaugurating sc
many successive geologic mornings, over the smoothed
graves of the previous extinct races; and preluding in this
manner the strange world-history of sin and redemption,
wherein all the grandest issues of existence lie. This
whole tossing, rending, recomposing process, that we call
geology, symbolizes evidently, as in highest reason it
should, the grand spiritual catastrophe, and christian new-
creation of man; which, both together, comprehend the
problem of mind1, and so the final causes or last ends of all
God's works. What we see, is the beginning conversing
with the end, and Eternal Forethought reaching across the
tottering mountains and boiling seas, to unite beginning
and end together. So that we may hear the grinding lay
ers of the rocks singing harshly —
Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree —
and all the long eras of desolation, and refitted bloom and
beauty, represented in the registers of the world, are but
the epic in stone, of man's great history, before the time.

OF SIN AND REDEMPTION. 207
And of this we are the more impressed, in the fact so
powerfully shown by Mr. Agassiz, that the successive new
populations of the geologic eras are, beyond a question
fresh creations of God, summoned into being by his act,
and fashioned in the molds of his thought; impossible to
be created or fashioned, by any existing laws and forces
in nature. He does not say distinctly that they are super
natural creations, he might not so understand the word, as
to be clear of all disrespect -in regard to it, but the fresh
act of creation which he affirms and even scientifically
proves, exactly answers to our definition of the supernat
ural, as being the action of some agent on the conditions
of nature from without those conditions, and so as to pro
duce results which the laws of cause and effect in nature
could not produce. What a consideration then is it that
the great question of the supernatural, which is now put
in issue, and upon which depends even the faith of Chris
tianity, as a grand supernatural movement of God on the
world, is settled, over and over again, and the verdict as
many times recorded in the rocks of the world !
In these great anticipative facts of the world, it is very
nearly impossible to resist the conviction of the eternal
and original subserviency even of its solid material struc
ture to religion, and especially to Christianity. And ex
actly this ought to be true, if the Christ and his religion
be such, and so related to the creation, as we suppose him
to be. All God's most ancient works are of course to be
found thus in the interest of Christianity, answering to it
from their distant past, types of its coming in the distant
future, one with it in design, as being issues of the same
Eternal Mind.
Tt is difficult also to resist the conviction of a use more

208 DEFORMITIES INCREASE,
specific and pointed than those to which we have referred
Thus, in respect to misshapen monsters and deformed
growths, it is a remarkable fact that, as the layers of ge
ology rise, and creatures are produced that stand higher in
the scale cf organic perfection, the number of deformities
and retrograde shapes is multiplied. This fact has been
strikingly exhibited by Hugh Miller, in refutation of the
development theory. It permits another use taken as a
moral type of human history. Thus the serpent race
makes no appearance, he observes, till we ascend to the
tertiary formation, and there it wriggles out into being,
comtemporaneously with the more stately and perfect
order of mammalia. When the mammoth stalks
abroad as the gigantic lord of the new creation, the ser
pent creeps out with him, on his belly, with his bag of
poison hid under the roots of his feeble teeth, spinning
out three or four hundred lengths of vertebrae, and having
his four rudimental legs blanketed under his skin; a
mean, abortive creature, whom the angry motherhood of
nature would not go on to finish, but shook from her lap
before the legs were done, muttering, ominously, "cursed art
thou for man's sake above all cattle; upon thy belly shalt
thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the clays of thy life," —
powerful type of man, the poison of his sin, the degrada
tion of his beauty under it, the possible abortion of his
noble capacities and divine instincts !
It is also shown by Miller, in the same manner, that the
fishes lost ground, or grew deformed in organization, as
the human era drew nigh* Begarding man as the highest
form of organization, having a head, neck, two hands, and
two feet — the latter answered by the four legs of the beasts,
?Footprints of the Creator, pp. 183-191.

AS THE HUMAN ERA APPROACHES 209
the two wings and legs of the birds, and the four fins of the
fishes— every creature will be most perfect in form, when his
parts are adjusted most nearly according tothe human analo
gies ; and it is found that all the first fishes were actually in
this type of agreement. In the second formation, the for
ward fins are found to have slid up, not seldom, and stuck
themselves close upon the head, leaving no neck; much
as if a man were to appear with his arms fastened to his
head, close behind his ears. In a later formation, both fins,
representing hands and feet, have mounted into the same
position ; and, as if this were uncomfortable, some races
have dropped a pair altogether. Then, next, in the chalk
formation, where the nearest vicinage to man is attained,
appears the remarkable order that includes the plaice, tur-
bot, halibut, and flounder; the two latter of which are fa
miliar in our American waters. They have the four fins
stuck close upon the head. They are capsized so as to
swim on the flat side. The mouth is twisted so as to ac
commodate their false position. The two sides of the jaw
do not match, one being much larger and having three or
four times as many teeth as the other. The backbone is
lateral, occupying one side of the body. One eye is fixed
in the middle of the forehead, and the other, which is much
smaller, is thrust out upon one of the side promontories
of the face.
What now does this strange process of deformity, chroni
cled in the rocks of the world, signify? What but that
God is preparing the field for its occupant; setting it with
types of obliquity that shall match, and faithfully figure to
man the obliquity and deformity of his sin ? Now then he at
last appears, the lord of the creation, a being supernatural,
elothed in God's image, a power to be trained up to greafr

210 USES OF SUCH DEFORMITIES.
ness and glory- — only he will find his way to the magnifi
cent destiny of character appointed him, by struggling on,
through falls, disorders, and perishing abortions, and de
formities of misdoing, that implicate the whole creation,
causing it to groan and travail with him in his trial.
It will signify much to such a being, and especially in
the advanced ages of time, when he seems to be conquering
• the world by his sciences, to find that, as the creation of God
was rising in order, and higher forms of life were appear
ing, in a series to be consummated or crowned by the ap
pearing of man, tokens also of retrogradation, abortion,
defect, deformity, were also beginning to appear; as if to
foretoken the moral history he will begin, and the humilia
tions through which he will require to be led. Coming in
originally as lord and occupant to have dominion, and
taking possession of it finally in the higher dominion of
science, a most strange, powerfully humbling lesson meets
him, exactly suited to his want, and one that ought to
moderate all undue conceit of science, in him, and temper
him to that teachable state of inquiry that allows the no
bler and diviner truths of Christianity to visit his heart.
What does it mean — let any student of nature answer —
what does it mean that a Perfect Mind, whose very thoughts
are beauty, generates in the same era and side by side with
man, such outrageous deformities as we see, for example, in
the halibut species ? Here is a deep lesson, worthy of much
study. There is plainly no account to be made of such ap
pearances, or facts, till we bring inthe sovereignty of moral
ideas, and assume the necessity of moral types and lessons.
On the whole, as the result of this inquiry into the
anticipative consequences of sin, we most naturally take
np the conviction, that the worid, or what we call the ere

PANTHEISTIC VIEW OF THEM 211
ation, is not so much a completed fact as a conatus, strug
gling up concomitantly with the powers that are doing
battle in it for a character; falling with them in their fall
rising with them or to rise, to a condition, finally, of com
plete order and beauty. There is much to be said for such
an expectation, and it appears to be just what is held up
in the promise of a new heavens and earth, wherein dwell
eth righteousness.
The pantheistic form of naturalism, it is well known
makes a very different account of the abortions and de
formities of the world, and also of its future possibilities.
It assumes, for a fact, that nature is an incomplete or par
tially developed form of being, going on toward perfec
tion, under laws of development, contained in itself; there
fore necessarily plunging into mischances, and producing
uncomely, or unperfect fruits. Accordingly God, who is
in fact the all of nature, is a tardy but sublime Naturus,
who is sometime about to be, if he can attain to a more
complete consciousness in his children, and be cleared of
the blundering process of development by which necessity is
at work to shape him into order. Meantime, we ourselves
are blundering on with him, they suppose, undergoing a like
development. What we called sin, before we became phi
losophers, we now call development, and excuse ourselves
from all blame in it, because we are only parts of nature,
subject to her laws; parts, that is, of God, and subject to
the eternal fate that rules him.
That a soul, pressed down by the great questions of ex
istence, should sometime reel into this gulf, is scarcely a
subject of wonder; but no healthy, manly soul, none but
one that is hag-ridden by the dark and spectral difficul
ties of the world, will long stay in it. There is in tha

212 PANTHEISTIC VIEW OF THEM,
scheme, at first view, a certain imposing air of lational
magnificence — it includes so much, it handles even God
and his mystery so coolly, and clears the question of evil
by a solution so easy.
But after all it is not cleared. We have called our con
sciousness a fool, it is true, in reporting such a thing aa
sin, and have taken the police of our souls into custody to
escape the conviction of it, and still the sin is here — in us
and around us. We can not act our part, for any two
hours of our life, without assuming its reality. What then
becomes of our great philosophy, when, amusing itself thus
in its lofty airs of reason, it is yet confronted every mo
ment by the plain, simple denial and even scorn of our
consciousness? With this too comes the argument of our woe. The
air of such a creed is too thin to support our life. There
is no object meeting us to fill our want, there is no mean
ing, or heart, in the mute, dead All ; nothing in existence
to give it significance, or inspire any great act or senti
ment. We live in a disabled, stunted subjectivity. The
inspiration of faith is replaced by the impotence of con
ceit. The world is a blunder, consciousness is a lie, the
dark things of sin are developments, and the All is a Uni
versal Mockery. And then what remains but to go back
and set up again the great first truth, which no mortal can
spare- for a day, that whatever is wanted, is — therefore God,
the Living God shall be our faith ; for Him we want, as
the complemental good, without which existence is but a
name for starvation.
How many things too are there in the world, after all,
that can nowise be accounted for by this pantheistic
theory. If the disorders and deformities of nature are God

UNREASONABLE AND UNSATISFACTORY. 213
in partial development, how is it conceivable that any
being in a state so raw, could ever have organized such
complicated structures — human bodies for example — ¦
where the design is so evident, the parts so many and
delicate, the offices so manifold, the unity so perfect.
It is inconceivable that any power — call it God, or nature,
or by whatever name — capable of constructing an organiza
tion so wonderful, should still be struggling up into order,
through such grotesque and misbegotten shapes as are here
accounted for, by the necessary imperfection of its, or his
development; composing first the glorious order of the
astronomic mechanism, then faltering afterward in the
absurd composition of a flounder; able to fashion a crea
ture of reason, but not to stand the criticism of reason;
able to start new races of living creatures in the successive
eras of geology, but having yet no will to start any thing,
apart from the control of fate. And what can such a doc
trine make of Jesus Christ, what place does it provide in
the world for such a being? If nature can develop noth
ing perfect; if, by reason of inherent defect, it must needs
develop itself in blunders of abortion, deformity, and pain ;
will it still suffice, to form the mind, fashion the beauty,
finish the character of a Jesus?
But I am assuming here a superiority and perfection of
order in the character of Jesus, that may not be admitted
by the pantheist, and as the question is hereafter to be dis
cussed, and will be made a point of consequence in the
argument, I desist for the present; only requiring it of
such as look for a God in development, to answer how
their blind force, called nature, staggering on through tho
disorders, abortions, and deformities of so many ages, and
even falling into retrogradations as remarkable as its im-

214 THE IMMENSE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIN,
provements, can be imagined to have produced such a sou.
and character as that of Jesus ; a being, whether perfect
or not, so high, so peculiar, original, pure, wise, great in
goodness ?
In this and the preceding chapter, we have now traced
the consequences of sin : there the consequences that must
needs follow it, as effects their causes, showing what results
of mischief and disorder it reveals in the soul, the body,
society, and the world ; here accounting for a large display
of correspondent facts in the geologic history precedent,
or before the arrival of man, showing that they still are
as truly consequences of the fact of sin as the others,
being only just those marks that God's intelligence, plan
ning the world and shaping it, even from eternity, to the
uses and issues of a trial comprehending sin, must needs
display. Sin, it will be seen, is, in this view, a very great,
world-transforming, world-uncreating fact, and no such
mere casualty, or matter by the way, as the superficial
naturalism, or half naturalistic Christianity of our time
supposes. It is that central fact, about which the whole
creation of God and the ordering of his providential and
moral government, revolves. The impression of many
appears to be, that sin is this or that particular act of
wrong, which men sometimes do, but which most men do
not, unless at distant intervals ; and who can imagine that
any thing very serious depends on these rather exceptional
misdeeds, when, on the whole, the account is balanced by
so many shows of virtue ? The triviality and shallowness
of such conceptions are hardly to be spoken cf with
patience. It is not seen that when a man even begins to
sin he must needs cast away the principle, first, rd all

IS THUS DISCOVERED. 215
holy obedience, and go down, thus, into a general lapse
of condition, to be a soul broken loose from principle
and separated from the inspirations of God. Only a very
little philosophy too, conceiving the fact that sin is the
acting of a substance, man, as he was not made to act,
must suffice to the discovery that, in a system, or scheme
of perfect order, it will start a ferment of discord among
causes, that will propagate itself in every direction, carry
ing wide-spread desolation into the remotest circles. The
whole solidarity of being in the creation, physical and
spiritual, is necessarily penetrated by it and configured to
it. Character, causes, things prior and post, all that God
embraces in the final causes of existence, someTiow feel
it, and the whole creation groans and travails for the pain
of it. The true Kosmos, in the highest and most per
fectly ideal sense of that term, does not exist. Nature is
become unnature, and stopping at the point reached,
which of course we do not, we must even say that the
creation of God is a failure.
But there is an objection to be anticipated here which
requires our attention, before we dismiss this part of our
subject. It is that no proper Kosmos, no crystalline order
of nature, according to the view stated in this chapter, has
ever yet existed. For, if we speak of the state of unna
ture as a consequence of sin, that state of unnature haa
existed, in part, or as far as it should, anticipatively,
through all the precedent eras and geologic processes of
the world. The true ideal system of nature, therefore, haa
never existed, and there was never any such condition, or
chime of order to fall from, or to shatter by sin, as we aro
trying all the while to suppose. All which is certainly
true, if we must go entirely back of God's purposes and

216 THE KOSMOS STILL EXISTS.
beyond them to find it ; for what we have been tracing aa
the anticipative consequences of sin is nothing but the
working of his ancient counsel concerning it. But the
real truth is that nature, original and true nature, has ex
isted and does now exist ; for, if we call our present state,
as we truly should, a condition of unnature, we mean by
it nothing more than that the causes included in pure
nature are working now more or less retributively, pain
fully, diseasedly, and so as to create a state of dislocation
in the outward harmonies ; a state of incapacity and bond
age in the spiritual aspirations of the soul. Nature is un
nature, when her causes are acting retributively — they are
not, in such cases, discontinued, or thrown out of their
law ; but they act, in their law and under it, as perfectly
and systematically as ever. The unnaturalness of our pres
ent state under sin consists, not in the fact that nature is
gone by, or is broken up, but only in the fact that her causes
are all at work on the contrary ingredient, sin. It is as if
a good and healthy stomach were at work upon a stone, to
digest it — still it is acting by its own laws and powers, as
truly as if the stone were meat, though its acting is only
a throe of distress. Were every thing, indeed, now rolling
on, in sweetest bonds of harmony, according to the
pure ideal of what we call nature, nothing of bad conse
quence or penal and retributive action any where appear
ing in it, no disorder of sin visible any where as a fact
of anticipation, still nature would not be more truly extant
than now ; for the disorder and unnature we speak of are
really order and nature chastising the false fact, sin;
which process of chastisement and groaning we call unna
ture, only because it does not answer, thus far, to the ideal
working of the scheme, disturbed by no such enemy

NATURE.AS A WHOLE, 217
of God and all good as it has here met. Nor does it make
any the least difference, except with some speculative
wordsman, grubbing under space and time, whether death
and prey and other like consequences of sin began to
work, before the arrival here of man, or only after. If
God's Whole Plan respects the fact of sin before the fact,
the scheme of nature was none the less real or perfect,
because of the unnature working anticipatively in it, any
more than it follows that the unnature subsequent has dis
continued nature, whose retaliatory action it really is, and
nothing more.
[Jnnature then — this is our conclusion — a far-reaching,
all-comprehensive state of unnature, is the consequence of
sin. It mars the body, the soul, society, the world, all
time before and after. What an argument then have we,
and especially from the ante-dated tokens of evil, for the
belief that God's original plan comprehends a rising side,
an economy supernatural, that shall complement the dis
order and fall of nature, having power to roll back its cur
rents of penal misery and bring out souls, into the estab
lished liberty and beauty of holiness. How manifest is it
in the world's birth, that God, from the first, designs
it for a second birth; some grand palingennesia that shall
raise the fall of nature and make existence fruitful. It
has been a great fault, as was just now intimated, that we
have made so little of sin. It is either nothing, or else it
is a great deal more than it is conceived to be by the mul
titude who admit its existence. The mental and moral
philosophers make nothing of it, going on to construct
their sciences, so called, precisely as if the soul had re
ceived no shock of detriment; and even the most ortho
dox theologians do scarcely more than score it with guilty
19

218 BECOME UNNATURE.
conviction, regarding it seldom as a dynamic force, and
then with a comprehension too restricted to allow any
true impression, of its import. Hence, in great part, the
general incredulity in regard to the supernatural facts of
Christianity. There can be nothing supernatural, we think,
because it would violate the integrity of nature. The in
tegrity of nature ! What but a world of unnature has it
become already? And what has sent these hard pangs
into it and through it but a supernatural force, even the
human will ; for this, we have seen, is a power supernat
ural, as truly as God, though not equal in degree ; able to
act on the lines of causes and vary their conjunctions from
without, even as He is represented in the christian truth to
do. Hence the disorder and disease; hence the groan
ing and travailing in pain together of the whole creation —
it is all the supernatural work, the bad miracle of sin.
No other name will fitly name it. Indeed, if there should
be, somewhere in the universe, a race of beings that have
never sinned, and they should have it set before them, in
all its consequences to the physical .order of things, they
would look upon it, we suspect, as a miraculous agency,
exerted in God's universe opposite to himself. And they
would begin, we fear, to say with Mr. Hume, unless they
were better philosophers than he, that such a miracle is
wholly incredible; that the confidence they have in the
beneficent, harmonious action of nature, is too strong to be
broken by any possible testimony to such doings. There
fore this tremendous, all-revolutionizing miracle must be a
fiction. Of course it is not a miracle. It is only a fact super
natural, a grand assault of man's supernatural agency upon
the world, We shall speak more definitely of miracles

IS THERE TO BE A REMEDY? 219
hereafter. For the present, we only say that the super
natural agency of God in the world's redemption, is now
shown to be most clearly wanted; and we do not perceive
wherein it is more incredible that God should act, in his
way, upon the lines of natural causes, than that we should
do it, in ours. Of course he will act with a higher sover
eignty, worthy of himself. His divine supernatural power
will be divine, our human will be hunu,n. If we have
broken or clouded the crystal and can nc ,i restore its trans
parency, he can. If we bring defornv.iy, he will bring
beauty. If we die, he will bid us live. Will he do this?
That is now the question that remains.

CHAPTER VIII.
SO KEMEDY IN DEVELOPMENT, OB SELF-KEPORMATION
We are now at the point of catastrophe in God's plan,
where it is next in order to look about for some remedial
agency, or dispensation, that shall restore the lapse and
bring out those results of order and happiness, that were
proposed by God, as we must believe, in his act of crea
tion. Are we then shut up to nature and the hope that
she will surmount her own catastrophe, or may we believe
that her inherent weakness will be complemented by a su
pernatural and divine movement, that shall organize a new
economy of life?
The former is the ground taken by all the naturalizing
classes of our time. Nothing can take place, they say,
which is not operated under and by the laws of nature.
To believe that any thing can take place which is from
without, or from above the laws of nature, is unphilosoph
ical and savors pf credulity. That there is such a thiug
as misdirection they will admit, and some will admit also
the fact of sin ; and it will be agreed by them all that, in
consequence either of misdirection, or of sin, there are
a great many apparent disasters and disorders in the world,
or especially in human society, that want some kind of
remedy. Our present object is to look into their princi
pal remedies, or grounds of expected restoration, and try
what virtue there is in them. They are two, or presented
under two distinct forms, both of which may be taken as
rival gospels opposite to Christianity.
By the class who formally reject, or ignore Christianity

NO REMEDY IN DEVELOPMENT. 221
development is regarded as the universal panacea — all the
apparent evils of the world are to be cured by develop
ment. The class who professedly teach and believe the chris
tian gospel, reducing it still to a mere scheme of ethics, or
natural virtue, rely more on the individual will to be ex
erted in self-government, self-culture, and the doing of
justice, mercy, and other good works.
Of these rival gospels, both from within the terms of
nature, I will now speak, in their order.
I. Of development, or as it is often phrased, the natural
progress of the race. ,
The world is just now taken, as never before, with ideas
of progress. The human., race, it is conceived, exists un
der laws of progress. The philosophers, or would-be phi
losophers, have even undertaken to reduce the laws of
progress to a scientific statement. They conceive that, all
the advanced races of mankind began at the level of the
savage state, and have been set forward to their present
pitch of culture, civilization, wealth, and liberty, by laws
of development in mere nature. The multitude go sifter
them, embracing the welcome idea of progress only the
more enthusiastically, that they are so much taken with
the new word development, conceiving that there is great
science in it, or, at least, some unknown kind of power.
If there are any evils, or bitter woes in society, develop
ment is going to cure them ; for the laws of development
are at work to produce progress, and they will as certainly
do it, as the laws of matter will determine its motions.
All crime and sin are going finally to be cured in this
manner, aud character is going finally to blossom, on the
broken stock of nature, even as flowers are developed out
19*

222 THE TRUE DEVELOPMENT
of stocks not broken, and roots not poisoned by disease,
Finding thus a gospel of progress iu the world itself and
the mere laws of existence, what need of any such anti
quated mythology as the christian gospel brings us? Or,
if the argument is not openly stated in this manner, still
it is virtually adopted; for how many that suppose Chris
tianity to be true, still have it only as a thing by the way, a
straw floating down this flood and passing on with us, to see
the brave work human progress is doing. If it is npt
called a myth or wild tradition, still the really trusted gos
pel is phrenology, chemistry, and the other new sciences,
with their grand economic creations, such as telegraphs,
railroads, steamboats, and the like — (not omitting the new
and better bible discovered in the oracles of necromancy;)
and these are going at last to raise the world, no thanks
to Christianity, into a state of universal brotherhood and
felicity ! The lowest charlatans and some of the most culti
vated savans hold much the same language, and trust in
the same gospel of development.
Now that there is, or should be such a thing as devel
opment, we certainly admit. All the human faculties are
capable of development by exercise or training, and every
human being will, of necessity, be developed to a certain
degree, both in mind and body, by the growth of years
and the necessary struggles of life. But that human so
ciety was ever carried forward, by a single shade, in the
matter of religious virtue, under mere laws of natural de
velopment, we utterly deny. It is even a fair subject of
doubt whether any nation, or race of men, was ever ad
vanced in civilization by inherent laws of progress. Cer
tain it is that no individual was ever cleared of sin by de
velopment, or restored even proximately to the state of

INCLUDES REGENERATION. "*223
• primal ordir and uprightness; equally so that the vast, far-
spreading, organic woes of the world are forever immedi
cable by any such remedy.
In one. view, it may be rightly said that the whole ob
ject of God, in our training, is to develop in us a charac
ter of eternal uprightness ; developing also, in that man
ner, as a necessary consequence, grand possibilities of so
cial order and well beiug; though, when we thus speak, we
include the fact of sin and the engagement with it of a
supernatural grace, to lift up the otherwise remediless fall
of nature. But this, if we must have the word, is chris
tian development; a development accomplished, by carry
ing us across and up out of the gulf of unnature, where
the hope of all progress and character was ended. We
are developed, in this sense, by and through an experience
of that state of wrong, whose woe it is that it is the fall of
nature and, in that sense, the end of all development.
But this, it will be seen, is not the popular doctrine of
progress, which assumes the fact of a progress in right
lines, without any call for supernatural interference, with
out any regenerative or new-creative process. There may
be hard throes of suffering experience and bitter struggles
with individual and social evils, but time, it is supposed,
will teach, and experience redeem, and so the great battle
of natural development will lead to final victory. In this
manner, progress, it is supposed, will at last cure all the
evils which we have been recapitulating as the fruit and fall
of sin. That such a hope is groundless we will now under
take to show.
Consider, first, the savage state, whence it is continually
assumed that history and civilization spring. The doctrine
is that all the advanced nations of mankind began as sav

224 THE SAVAGE RACES
ages, and that all the peoples of the world now existing,
are on their way up, out of the savage state, into civiliza
tion and a state of social virtue. Contrary to this, no sav
age race of the world has ever been raised into civilization,
least of all, into a state of virtue, by mere natural devel
opment. All which is evident by just that which distin
guishes the savage state; for it is the principal and, in fact,
only comprehensive distinction of the savage races, that
they are such as have fallen below progress, living on from
age to age without progress, and sometimes quite dying
out; for the simple reason that there is no sufficient capac
ity of progress left, to perpetuate their life, in proximity
with more advanced races. They are beings, or races
physiologically run down, or become effete, under sin;
fallen at last below progress, below society, become a herd
no longer capable of public organization, and a true, social
life. It signifies nothing for such races to ask more time;
time can do nothing for them better than extermination.
It is well, if even a gospel and a faith above nature can
now get such hold of them as to raise them. They are, in
fact, just as far off from the original unpracticed, unde
veloped state of "nature, as the most advanced races; and,
as David said over the child — "I shall go to him but he
shall not return to me," so it is possible for the living and
advanced races to go downward, but never for these dead
ones, unassisted, to rise. We have proofs enough that,
peoples advanced in culture may become savages, but no
solitary example of a race of savages that have risen to a
civilized state, by mere development. And the real fact
is, that we may much better assert a law of natural dete
rioration, than a law of natural progress; for, apart from
Borne influence or aid of a supernatural kind, the deterio-

MAKE NO PROGRESS. 225
ration of society, under the penal mischiefs of sin, would
be universal. By the supposition it should be so ; for, as
all society is under sin, it is of course suffering the retri
butive action of penal causes, and as all discord propagates
only greater discord and can not propagate harmony, it
follows that the run of society under sin must be down
ward, from bad to worse, unless interrupted by some re
medial agency from without.
It is somewhat difficult to test our particular opinion on
this subject by actual examples ; for we can not common
ly trace the unhistoric and subtle methods, in which any
race of men may have been impregnated with new possi
bilities; sometimes by other religions, with which they
are made conversant by commerce and travel ; sometimes
by sporadic and supernatural revelations; traces of which
are discernible, not only in the extra-Jewish examples
cf Jethro, Job, and Cornelius, but in the literature of
all the cultivated races, and sometimes, here and there, in
the demonstrations even of the wild races. That the old
Pelasgic race was raised, by a mere natural progress, to the
high pitch of culture displayed by the Greek civilization,
we have no reason whatever to believe. Their literature,
from Hesiod downward, is sprinkled with too many traces
of sentiment derived from the Jewish and Egyptian relig
ions, to suffer the opinion that they are a nation thus ad
vanced, by the simple motherhood of nature. The Boman
civilization was, in fact, a propagation of the Greek, with
the advantage of a right infusion from her serious and
venerable fathers, who, like Numa, communed with invis
ible powers in retired groves and silent grottos. The
Teutonic race, often named as an example of natural de
velopment, is known to have been set forward by the

226 THE SAVAGE IS NOT A FRESH,
civilizations it conquered and its early conversion to the
Christian faith. Meantime how many great and powerful
races have become extinct. We look for the Ninevites
with as little hope as for Ninus himself. The Assyrians,
Babylonians, and Medes are also vanished. The Egyp
tians, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Eomans, once the great
powers of history and civilization, are extinct. The
Aztec race, run down to such a state of incapacity as not
even to understand their own monuments, or know by
whom they were built, we rightly call savages, and look
upon as having just now come to their vanishing point.
What now does it mean that so many races, empires,
languages of the world, have become extinct? Is this a
token of infallible development? Do we see in this the
proof that all the evil and sin of the world are going, at
last, to be surmounted and cleared by the inevitable law of
progress ? What would our new prophets of development
say, if they were told, when exulting so confidently in the
glorious future of their own and all other nations, that a day
will certainly be reached, when the Anglo-American race
is become an extinct race, Washington a contested locality,
and the Constitution of the United States a hopeless search
of the world's antiquarians. Distant as such an expecta
tion may be from our thoughts, and contrary as it may be
to the illimitable progress of which we hear so often, it is
only that which has happened a hundred times already,
and, Christianity apart, may as well happen again.
We have spoken of the evident falsity of the supposi
tion, that all the advancement of the worid begins at an
originally savage state ; that being, in fact, no first, but an
old and decayed state rather, where long ages of deterio
ration under sin have finally extirpated the original possi-

BUT AN OLD STATE. 227
bilities of advancement. The first stage of human so
ciety was simply a stage of crudity, or crude capacity,
and was not more remote from the state of high
civilization than it was from the low, decrepid, ani- .
malized condition which we now designate by the term
savage. All races begin together at the state of simple
being, or crude capacity, and only make the fatal leap of
siu together. After that they separate, some ascending,
led up by their holy seers and lawgivers, and others, not
having or not giving heed to such, going down the scale
of penal deteriorations to become savages. A full half
the globe is peopled thus by tribes which are either
reduced to the savage condition, or else are far on their
way toward it ; humbled in capacity, physically deterio
rated, and that, to such a degree, that the springs of recu
perative force appear to be quite gone. Considering now
the certain fact, that all these had their beginning in a
simply crude state, having the same high possibilities and,
affinities, which the races had that are now most advanced,
what are we to think of mere development ? This advant
age or condition of crude possibility they had, many thou
sands of years ago, and the result is what we see. Having
run down thus miserably under the boasted gospel of
natural progress, what hope is there in this gospel for the
final restoration of all things ?
It is fatally opposed too by the geologic analogies.
Here it stands, the settled verdict of science itself, that the
successive eras of vegetable and animal life have not been
introduced, by any law of' progress, or by any mere devel
opment of nature and her forces. The attempts that have
been made to show this are even pitiable failures. They
ask us. in fact, to believe greater miracles in the name of

228 THE HEALING FUNCTION,
development than any we encounter in the gospel history
Thus, we have displayed in the new creations of the rocks
themselves, a standing type of that moral new crea
tion, by which the distempered and fallen races of the
world are to be raised up. Lest we should think any
such divine intervention incredible, and try to find some
better hope for man in the gospel of development, we are
here familiarized with the fact, that no such law of devel
opment has been able to carry on the geologic progress of
the planet, and that God has been wont, in all-its ancient
depopulations, to insert new germs of life creatively, and
people it with living creatures fresh from his hand.
Again it is a consideration scarcely less impressive, that
God has managed to insert into the physiological history
of animals and vegetables an always-present, living type
of the process itself, by which, as transcending all mere
development, his supernatural remedy operates; so that
we may see it, as it were, with our eyes, and become famil
iar with it. I refer to that wondrous, inexplicable fune
tion of healing, discovered in the restoration or repair of
animals and vegetables, that are wounded or sick. When
a tree, for example, is hacked, or bruised, a strange nurs
ing process forthwith begins, by which the wound is
healed. A new bark is formed on the edges of the
wound, by what method no art of man can trace, the
dead matter is thrown off, and a growth inward narrows
the breach, till finally the two margins meet and the tis
sues interweave, and not even a scar is left. So in all the
flesh wounds of animals, and the fractures even of bones.
So too in regard to all diseases not terminating mortally ;
they pass a crisis, where the healing^ function, whatever it
be, triumphs over the poison of the disease and a recovery

NO MODE OF DEVELOPMENT. 229
follows, in which the whole flesh and fiber appear even
to be produced anew.
Here then is a healing power, whose working we can no
way trace, and one that, if we look at the causes of disin
tegration present, appears even to accomplish what is im
possible. Eegarding the body as a machine — and taken a3
a merely material organization what is it more?— it is
plainly impossible for it to heal, in this manner, and repair
itself. The disordered watch can never run itself into
good repair. In machines, disorder can only propagate
and aggravate disorder, till they become a wreck. The
physicians and physiologists call the strange healing func
tion the vis medicatrix; as if it were some gentle, feminine
nurse, hidden from the sight, whose office it is to expel the
poisons, knit the fractures, and heal the wounds of bodies.
And as names often settle the profoundest questions, so it
appears to be commonly taken for granted here, that the
healing accomplished is wrought by a nursing function
thus named, as one of the inherent properties of vital sub
stances. It may be so or it may not; for the whole ques
tion is one that is involved in the profoundest mystery.
The healing property may be one of the incidents of life
itself, or it may,be a distinct power whose office it is to be
the guard and medicating nurse of life, or it may be the
working of a grand supernatural economy set in closest
vicinage to nature, to be the physical, visible, always-pres
ent token of a like supernatural economy in the matters
of character and the soul. But whatever view we take of
this healing power in physiology, or whatever account we .
make of it, these two points are clear.
First that the healing accomplished is no fact of devel
opment. There is no difficulty in seeing how existing
20

280 THE HEALING FUNCTION
tissues and organs may create extensions within their own
vascular sphere, and this is development. But where a new
skin or bark is to be created, or a new interlocking made of
parts that are sundered, the ducts and vesicles that might act
in development, being parted and open at their ends, want
mending themselves. Thus, when the parts of a fractured
bone are knit together, and we see them reaching after each
other, as it were, across a chasm, where there are no vessels
to bridge it or carry across the lines of connection, devel
opment might well enough make the parts longer, but how
could it make them unite across the fracture, by which they
are separated? The development of a tree, wounded by
some violence, would only enlarge the wound, just in pro
portion to the enlargement of the surface which the bark
should cover. A fevered body does not cure itself by de
velopment. As little can we imagine that the restored
health and volume of the body is created by the develop
ment of the fever. No shade of countenance therefore is
given to the hope that human development, under the re
tributive woes of sin, will be any sufficient cure of its dis
orders, or will set the fallen subjects of it forward, in a
Durse of social progress.
This also, secondly, is equally clear, that, as the myste
rious healing of bodies yields the development theory no
token of favor, it is only a more impressive type, on that
account, of some grand restorative economy, by which the
condition of unnature in souls and the world, is to be su-
pernaturally regenerated — just such a type as, regarding
the relations of matter to mind, and of things natural to
things spiritual, we might expect to find incorporated, in
some large and systematic way, in the visible objects and
processes of the world. And how much does the healing

NOT DEVELOPMENT. 231
of bodies signify, when associated thus with the grand
elemental disorder and breakage of sin! What is it, in
fact, but a kind of glorious, every where visible sacrament,
that tokens life, and hope, and healing invisible, for all the
retributive woes and bleeding lacerations of our guilty, fall
en state, as a race apostate from God.
Hence too probably the fact that transactions of healing
are so closely connected, the world over, with sentiments
of religion. Perhaps the fact is due, in part, to some la
tent association that connects diseases with sin and, to
much the same extent,' connects the hope of healing with
some possibility of a divine medication. However this
may be, the mystery of healing, as we are constituted,
stands in close affinity with God and the faith of his su
pernatural operation. Thus it was that the priests both of
the Egyptians and the Greeks were their physicians, and
that their precepts and prescripts of healing were kept in
their temples. Esculapius too, the god of medicine, had
his own altars and priests. At a latter period, the Essenes
and the christian monks, accounted by some to be their
successors, had their pious explorations of diseases and
the sacred powers of remedies ; reducing medicine itself to
a function of religion. Later still, Paracelsus himself be
gan the restoration of medicine, as a kind of chemical the-
osophy. And as Christianity itself classes healings among
the spiritual gifts, and calls the elders of the church to
pray for the sick; so we find that some of our Indian
tribes have traditions of one whom, as related to the Great
Spirit, they call the Uncle, and who came into the world
by a mysterious advent, long ages ago, and instituted tho
"Grand Medicine," which is, in fact, their religion.
Tt is difficult to resist the impression, in such demon-

232 WE HAVE NO FAITH
stations as these, of some very profound connection be
tween the healing of bodies and the faith of a supernat
ural grace of healing for the disorders of souls. Else why
this persistent tendency in men's opinions of healing, to
associate the fevered body and the leprous mind, and seek
tlie medication of both, in the common rites of religion.
But there is a shorter argument with the scheme that
proposes to find a remedy for all the ills of character and
society, in what it calls a more complete development. It
is this : that no one ever dares practically to act on the faith
of such a doctrine, whether in the state or the family. The
civil law is, in fact, and to a very great extent, a restraint
on development, and has its merit in the fact that it is.
It forbids men to unfold themselves freely, in their base
passions and criminal instigations, and deters them from
it. Were it not for the state, protecting itself by such
means against development, society would be quite dis
solved. What we discover in families is even more re
markable. There are multitudes of parents that believe,
as they suppose, with all their hearts, in the good day
coming through the progress of human development.
And as part of the same general faith, their views of edu
cation make it to consist simply in educing or developing
just what is in the child's nature. But they do not act on
that principle in the house, and dare not; though probably
enough they are never aware of the fact. They maintain
a family regimen that consists, to a great degree, not in
development but in repression. To let the child have his
way and act himself out freely, without restraint, is no
part of their plan. Probably it never occurs to them as a
rational possibility. Just contrary to this, they lay theii
foundations in a restriction of natural development; hoping

IN DEVELOPMENT. 233
in that manner to extirpate unruly and base instigations,
and form a habit in the child of doing better things than
he would most naturally do. And it is remarkable that,
in the fulfilling of their office, which is so far an office of
repression, they are acting as a force supernatural. Ac
cording to our definition, it will be remembered that hu
man wills are strictly supernatural in their action, and the
child, we here discover, spends all the first years of his
life under the regulative and repressive action of such
wills. He is in them, in fact, more truly than he is in na
ture, and the house is a little jreation made for him by
their keeping. He is handled in infancy as they direct, fed
as they direct when he begins to ask for food, clothed as they
direct, commanded, limited, forbidden, repressed, and so is
finally grown up to an age of self-regulation. The pro
cess may be called his development, but the most remark
able thing in it is that it is a restraint of development.
Why this restraint ? If development is going to be the gos
pel ofthe world's redemption, what makes it wise, in the
common sense of the world, to restrain that gospel? Are
the ills of society and the world going to be cured too
soon? If development can do all that is promised, why
not' give it a hearty godspeed every where, and let every
human creature, old and young, act out what is in him, in
the speediest, most unrestricted manner possible ? A glance
in this direction is sufficient to show us that all we hear of
inevitable progress, and the necessary laws of develop
ment, is hollow and deceitful. It is not development but
new creation that can bring us the remedies we look for
Nature has powers and capabilities that want development.
Beduced to real unnature (which is her present state,) she
also has disordered passions, base instigations, greedy ip
20*

234 SELF-REFORMATION,
petites, ferocious animosities, propensities to cunning and
falsehood, which want no development, and which, if they
are developed, unrestrained, annihilate all chance of pro
gress, and even forbid the existence of society. Mere de
velopment therefore promises nothing.
We come now —
II. To the other rival gospel, that which proposes to
dispense with all supernatural aids, and to restore the dis
orders and the fallen character of sin, by a self-cultivated,
or self-originated virtue.
Expectation is here rested on the human will, which, in
our view, may be done, it will be said, with greater rea
son, since we make it, even by definition, a supernatural
power. But there are different orders or degrees, it must
be observed, of supernatural power; the human, the an
gelic, the divine; which all are alike in the fact that the
will acts from itself, uncaused in its action, but very un
like as regards potency, or the extent of their efficacy.
What we are endeavoring, in our argument, to show, is
the fact of a divine supernatural agency concerned in the
upraising or redemption of man. But if man can raise
himself, by his own will, that is, by his humanly super
natural force, then plainly there is no need of a divine in
tervention from without and above nature, to regenerate
his fallen state. Still it will not be denied by the class of
teachers most forward in maintaining this form of natu
ralism, that all rehgious virtue is dependent, in a certain
sense, on the concourse and spiritual helping of God;
Only that concourse and helping, it will be said, belongs
to the scheme of nature, and never undertakes to help us
out of the retributive woes and disorders of nature; for
nature is the system of God, including all he does or can

WO SUFFICIENT HOPE. 235
rationally be expected to do. To imagine that such a
mode of piety, or religious virtue, should be maintained
by the human will, would be less extravagant if there were
no sin, no consequent woes and disorders; though even
then it would be the faith of a God imprisoned, or en
tombed, in the inexorable laws of nature ; with whom the
soul could aspire to no real converse and could have no
social sympathy, more than with a wall. Before this un
bending prisoner of fate, this nature-God, this dead wall,
he might go on to dress up a character and fashion a mere
ly ethical virtue ; cultivating truth, honesty, justice, tem
perance, kindness, piling up acts of merit, and doing legal
works of charity; but to call this character religious, how
ever plausible the show it makes, is only an abuse of the
term. Beligious character is not legal. It is an inspira
tion — the Life of God in the Soul of Man ; and no such
life can ever quicken a soul except in the faith of a Living
God, which herb is manifestly wanting. Not even the
pure angels could subsist in such a style of virtue ; for it
is the strength and beatitude of their holiness, that it is no
will-work in them, but an eternal, immediate inspiration
of God. Consciously it is not theirs, but the inbreathing
life of their Father.
But this ethical gospel, this religion acted as in panto
mime, becomes even more insipid and absurd, when the
fact of sin, with all its consequences of distemper and dis
order, is admitted. Now the problem is to find by what
power the original harmony of nature can be reconstructed,
and its currents of penal disaster turned back. Can the
human will do this ? That it can act upon the ccurses
of nature we know, — sin itself indeed is the staring and
incontrovertible proof that it can. But it does not follow

236 SELF-RESTORATION
as we have said already, that the power which has broken
an egg, or shivered a crystal, can mend it. That is a thing
more difficult, and demands a higher power.
Consider simply the change that is needed to restore
the lapsed integrity of a soul. Its original spontaneity to
good is gone, its silver cord of harmony is broken, the
sweet order of life is turned into a tumult of inward bit
terness, its very laws are become its tormentors. All its
curious, multiform, scarcely conceivable functions, submit
ted by its laws to the will, are now contesting always
with each other and are wholly intractable to its sover
eignty. And still it is expected of the will, that it is
going to gather them all up into the primal order, and
reconstruct their shattered unity ! Why, it were easier, a
thousand fold, for man's will to gather all the birds of the
sky into martial order, and march them as a squadron
through the tempests of the air! Manifestly none but
God can restore the lapsed order of the soul. He alone
can reconstruct the crystalline unity. Which, if He does,
it will imply an acting on those lines of causes in its nature,
by whose penal efficacy it is distempered; and that is, by
the supposition, a supernatural operation.
Besides, the work is really not done, till the subject is
restored to a virtue whose essence is Uberty. And how
is man, by his mere will, to start the flow of liberty ? He
may do this and do that, and keep doing this and that,
carefully, punctiliously, suffering no slackness. But it
will be work, work only, and the play of liberty will
never come. He can never reach the true liberty till an
inspiration takes him, and the new birth of God's Spirit
makes him a son. The light he manufactures will be
darkness, or at best a pale phosphorescence, till Christ is

rs impossible. 237
revealed within. His self-culture may fashion a picture
with many marks of grace, but the quickening of God
alone can make it live. If he relish his work in a degree,
it will be the relish of conceit, not the living fountain of a
heavenly joy, bursting up from unseen depths within. He
will advance fitfully, eccentrically, and without balance,
making a grimace here, while he fashions a beauty there ;
for there is no balance of order and proportion till his
faith is rested in God, and his life flows out from the
divine plenitude and perfection. Meantime his ideals will
grow faster than his attainments, and if he is not wholly
drunk up in conceit, he will be only the more afflicted
and baffled, the greater his pertinacity. 0, if there be
any kind of life most sad, and deepest in the scale of pity,
it is the dry, cold impotence of one, who is honestly set to
the work of his own self-redemption!
Do we then affirm, it will be asked, the absolute inab
ity of a man to do and become what is right before God i
That is the christian doctrine, and there is none that is
more obviously true. Wherein, then, it may also be
asked, is there any ground of blame for continuance in
sin ? Because, we answer, there is a Living God engaged
to help us, and inviting always our acceptance of his help.
Nor is this any mere gracious ability, such as constitutes
the joy of some and the offense of others. No created
being, of any world, not even the new-formed man be
fore his fall, nor the glorified saint, nor the spotless angel,
had ever any possibility of holiness, except in the embrace
of God This is the normal condition of all souls, that
they be filled with God, acted by God, holding their will
in his, irradiated always by his all-supporting life. Just
this it is that constitutes the radical idea of religion, and

238 self-restoration
differs it from a mere ethical virtue. God is the prima
necessity of all religious virtue, and is only more em-
Dhatically so to beings under sin. The necessity is con
stituent, not penal; it becomes penal only when communi
cations originally given to the fallen, but now cast away
by their sin, require to be restored.
There is really no difficulty in this question of disability
under sin, save that which is created by the fogs of unin
telligent speculation. It is taken extensively, as if it
were a question regarding man's inherent, independent
-ability, when in fact he has no such ability to any thing.
Can he obey God, or not ? is he able to do God's will, or
not? is the question raised; and it is understood and dis
cussed as being a question that turns on the absolute
quantities of the mari^ and not in any respect on relative
aids and conditions without ; much as if the question were
whether he has weight, apart from all relative weights or
attractions ? or whether he can stand alone, apart from any
thing to stand upon ? or whether he has power to live a
year, apart from all food and light and shelter and air ?
The true question of ability is different. It is this:
whether the subject is able to rise into a holy life, taken
as insphered in God, and all the attractive, transforming,
and supporting influences of the grace of God ? Apart
from this, he certainly is not able. By mere working on
himself and manipulating, as it were, his body of sin and
death, he can do just nothing in the way of self-perfec
tion; and, if he could even do every thing, as regards
self-transformation, there would be no religious character
in the result, any more than if his works were done before
the moon. Beligious character is God in the soul, and
without that all pretenses of religious virtue are, in fact,

is impossible. 239
atheistic. Such is the disability of a fallen man, taken as
acting on himself; and the condition of an angel, acting
in that manner, is no better ; for he could not begin to act
thus, without being himself fallen, at the instant. But if
the question be what a man has power to do, taken in the
surroundings of divine truth and mercy, which in fact
include the co-operating grace of the divine Spirit, the
true answer is that he can do all things. He has, at every
moment, a complete power as respects doing what God
requires of him at that moment, and is responsible accord
ing to his power. And yet, when we say a complete
power, we mean, not so much that he is going even then
to do something himself, as that he is going to have some
thing done within, by the quickening and transforming
power of his divine Lord, in whom he trusts. His power
is to set himself before power, open his nature to the rule
of power, and so to live. Even as we may say that a
tree has power to live and grow, not by acting on itself
and willing to grow, but as it is ministered unto by its
natural surroundings, the soil, the sun, the dew, the air.
It has only to offer itself openly and receptively to these,
and by their force to grow.
Where, then, it may be asked, is the significance of
free will, which we have even shown to be a power su
pernatural? If the disordered soul can not restore itself,
or by diUgent self-culture regain the loss it has made by
sin, wherein lies the advantage of such a power, and
where the responsibility to a life of holy virtue? Our
answer is, that by the freedom of the will we understand
simply its freedom as a volitional function; but mere
volitions, taken by themselves, involve no capacity to
regenerate, or constitute, a character. Holy virtue is not

240 restoration possible,
an act, or compilation of acts taken merely as volitions,
but it is a new state or status rather, a right disposedness,
whence new action may flow. And no mere volitional
exercise can change the state or disposedness of the soul,
without concurrent help and grace. We can will any
thing, but the execution may not follow. To will may
be present, but how to perform, it may be difficult to find,
— difficult, that is, when simply acting in and upon our
selves; never difficult, never possible to fail in doing,
when acting before and toward a Divine Helper, trustfully
appealed to. And this is the power of the will, as regards
our moral recovery. It may so offer itself and the sub
ordinate capacities to God, that God shall have the whole
man open to his dominion, and be able to ingenerate in
him a new, divine state, or principle of action; while,
taken as a governing, cultivating, and perfecting power in
itself, it has no such capacity whatsoever. And this is
the only rational and true verdict. Say what we may of
the will as a strictly self-determining power, raise what
distinctions we may as regards the kinds of ability, such
as natural and* moral, antecedent and subsequent, we have
no ability at all, of any kind, to regenerate our own state,
or restore our own disorders. Salvation is by faith, or
there is none.
There is then, we conclude, no hope of a restoration of
society, or of a religious upraising of man, except in a super
natural and divine operation. Progress under sin, by laws
of natural development, is a fiction — there is no hope of
progress, apart from the regenerative and quickening
power of a grace that transcends mere natural condi
tions and causes. As little room is there to expect that

ONLY BY THE GRACE OF GOD. 241
men will be able to heal their own spiritual maladies and
cultivate themselves into heaven's order, by a merely eth
ical regimen maintained in the plane of nature. The only
remedy for the human state, under sin, is that which comes
into nature, as the revelation of a divine force.
Suppose now there might be found some great and pro
found thinker, who has never come under the impress of
Christianity, or even heard of such a thing as a plan of
supernatural redemption ; a man of the highest culture,
least under the power of superstition; a free-thinker as
regards the religion of his country and times ; and sup
pose that he, by the mere force of his own thought,
struggling with the great problem of humanity, society,
and progress, should be found to rest his hope deliberately
on some supernatural remedy, as the only sufficient rem
edy for the world; giving forth a testimony that has been
audited and accepted by the greatest and best minds of
all subsequent ages; revealing, as it were, a Christianity
before the time, as far as the want of it and the fact of
some such operative power are concerned ; how unlikely
will it be that some new science of development, or some
more rational gospel of self-culture, has just nqw dis
covered the essential weakness or childishness of a super
natural faith. Precisely such a witness we have in the
great Plato, seconded by the coincident testimony of
many others, only less conspicuous than he.
Beginning at the base note of human depravity, he
says, " I have heard from the wise men that we are now
dead, and that the body is our sepulcher."* Again he
says, " The prime evil is inborn in souls ;" " it is implanted
in men to sin."f Again, "The nature of mankind
* Gorgias, fol. 493. -(-Leg., p. 131.
91

242 THE SAME IS HELD,
is greatly degenerated and depraved, all manner cf dis
orders infest human nature, and men, being impotent, are
torn in pieces by their lusts, as by so many wild horses."*
He also speaks of an " evil nature," "an evil in nature,"
"a disease in nature," "a destruction of harmony in the
soul," and much more to the same effect. Then again,
tracing the origin of this diseased state, he says, " That
in times past, the divine nature flourished in men ; but, at
length, being mixed with mortal custom, it fell into ruin ;
hence an inundation of evils in the race."f Again, " The
cause of corruption is from our parents, so that we never
relinquish their evil way, or escape the blemish of their
evil habit.":]:
Inquiring now for the remedy which is able to restore
and re-establish the virtue lost, he discusses at large
the question, whether virtue can be taught, and delibe
rately concludes that it can be produced by no mere teach
ing. He says, "If, in this whole disputation, we have
rightly conceived the case, virtue is .acquired, neither by
nature's force, nor by any institutes of discipline or
teaching, but it comes to those that have it, by a certain
divine appointment [or inspiration,] over and above the
mind's own force or exertion."§ He also adds that, if we
could be dressed up into a show of virtue by teaching, it
would be the same as "to be adorned with a shadow,
whereas virtue is a thing real and solid," — rooted, that is,
in the heart's inmost life. The same conviction is ex
pressed in a different form when he says, "That after
the golden age, the universe, by reason of that confusion
that came upon it, would have been quite dissolved, had
not God again taken it upon him to sit at the helm and

? Politicus, p. 274. f Critiaa, p. 400. | Tiroaeug, 103. § Mono.. 89.

EVEN BY THE WISEST HEATHENS. 243
govern the world, and restore its disordered and almost
disjointed parts to their primeval order."* And accord
antly with such a conviction, he recommends a faith in
divine help and supernatural guidance, and says, "he
who prayeth to God, and trusteth in his good favor, shall
do well."f Again, " God is the beginning and end of all
being, and whoever follows his guidance shall be happy. "%
And that he means, by this, to commend a faith in super
natural aid, is evident when he says, in his Timasus, "that
beatitude, or spiritual liberty, is only to have the demon,"
that is, the good spirit, "dwelling in us," alluding probably
to the remarkable declaration of his teacher, Socrates,
" that a certain demon, or good spirit, had followed him
even from his childhood, with his good suggestion or
influence, signifying what he should do."§ He brings in
Socrates also maintaining this remarkable dialogue with
his pupil, Alcibiades: "Dost thou know by what means
thou mayest avoid the "inordinate motions of thy mind?"
He answers, "Yes." Soe. "How?" Al. "If thou will,
Socrates." Soe. "Thou speakest not rightly." Ji. "How
then must I speak?" Soe. "Say, if God will,"| &c.
Here then, we have a man rising up out of heathenism,
one of the greatest of mankind, testifying his conviction
of the disability and ruin of human nature, and his confi
dence in some supernatural aid, as the only hope of the
world — all this instructed by his own consciousness, and by
so many years of philosophic study, in the great problem
of humanity and human progress. For no teacher, ever.
of our modern time, is more intent on the possibility of
some better ideal state of the world and society than he.
*Politicus, 251. f Epinom., 980. % Leg., 115.
gTheages, 128. || Aloib., 135.

244 THEY ARE OPPRESSED
In this problem, indeed, it may even be said that he worn
out his life.
Seneca speaks quite despairingly of our possible recov
ery by any means. He says, " Our corrupt nature has drunk
in such deep draughts, of iniquity, which are so far incor
porated in its very bowels, that you can not remove it,
save by tearing them out." And yet he conceives, in
the faintest manner, some possibility of supernatural aid.
"No man is able to clear himself, let some one give him a
hand, let some one lead him out"*— as if asking for some
Christ unknown, to come and bring the soul forth from its
thralldom. He also says, as if he were writing out another Vllth
chapter of the Eomans, "What is it, Lucilius, that, when
we set ourselves in one way, draws us another, and when
we desire to avoid any course, drives us into it? What is
it that so wrestles with our mind, allowing us never to set
tle any good resolution once for all?"f
And Ovid also joins in the same confession — " If I could,
I would be more sane. But some unknown force drags me
against my will. Desire draws me one way, conviction an
other. I see the better and approve, the worse I follow."^
"0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver?" is the
sigh that interprets and fitly concludes their confession.
Passages in great number could be cited from other an
cient writers, in which they express the same conviction ,
that man can never be raised out of his sin, by any mere
natural force. But these are points of opinion. We pre
fer to add, as being more significant, some illustrations
also of the practical longing they had for the appearance
of some divine helper, and the manifestation of God in
*Ep., 52. fEp., 52. { Metam, vii. : 18.

BY THE UNCERTAINTIES OF TRUTH. 245
some gracious revelation of his presence. In illus
trations of this kind, we shall see exactly what would be
our own condition, if these supernatural manifestations,
denied by so many in our times, were taken away, and we
were really set back, as we require ourselves to be, in the
proper darkness of nature. It was a continual source of
misery to the most enlightened of the pagan scholars and
philosophers that, whatever they seemed to discover, or to
establish by the light of natural reason, was yet never dis
covered, never established, but was still overhung by a
cloud of uncertainty. Thus we hear Xenophanes closing
off his work on Nature, in these words — "No man has
discovered any certainty, nor will discover it, concerning
the gods, and what I say of the universe. For if he ut
tered what is even most perfect, still he does not know it,
but conjecture hangs over all."
Oppressed by this feeling of uncertainty, they were only
goaded the more painfully in their search after the real
meaning of life, and waited, with a longing only the more
hungry, for some revelation of divine things, if haply it
might sometime be given. Thus Plato, speaking in his
Phsedo of the soul, and its destiny, says — -"It appears to me
that, to know them clearly in the present life, is either im
possible, or very difficult; on the other hand, not to test
what has been said of them in every possible way, not to
investigate the whole matter, and exhaust upon it every
effort, is the part of a very weak man. For we ought, in
respect to these things, either to learn from others how
they stand, or to discover them for ourselves ; or, if both
these are impossible, then, taking the best of human rea
sonings, that which appears the best supported, and em
barking on that, as one who risks himself on a raft, so to
21*

246 AND TESTIFY THEIR LONG.'NG
sail through life — unless one could be carried more safely,
or with less risk, on a secret conveyance, or some Divine
Logos." What a condition of hunger for knowledge! — a
great and mighty soul, prying at the gates of light, to force
them open, catching the faintest gleams of truth or opin
ion, and committing his all tenderly to them as to a slen
der raft upon the sea, only venting, with a sigh, the mys
terious hint of a Divine Logos, who will possibly come to
him within, and be a surer light, a safer guide. And this
dim hint of a better revelation is ventured more boldly in
his Alcibiades, when he says — "We must wait patiently
until some one, either a god or some inspired man, teach
us our moral and religious duties and, as Pallas in Homer
did to Diomede, remove the darkness from our eyes." How
little incredible was it to him, the highest philosophic in
tellect the world has ever seen, that some incarnate mes
senger of God, or teacher supernaturally sent, may some
time come to enlighten the world! What in fact does he
tell us, but that he is waitmg for Jesus the Christ !
At a later period, or about the time of Christ, when the
faith of the ancient religion or mythology had become
more nearly extinct, the struggle of souls, shut up to the
mere darkness of nature and reason, became more sad and
painful. Strabo, for example, falling back on the religion of
Moses, received from him a faith in one Supreme Essence,
who he thought should be worshiped without images in
sacred groves; and there, he said, "the devout should lay
themselves down to sleep, and expect signs from God in
dreams."* Not daring to look, for any waking experience
of God supernaturally revealed in the soul, he must still
indulge the hope that the Eternal will, at least, come to it
* Lib. XVI. Chap. 2.

FOR A SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 247
tn the land of sleep and dreams. Poor Pliny, confessing
too the wretched hunger of his soul, saw no lelief to it
better than suicide. "It is difficult," he writes, "to say
whether it might not be better for men to be wholly with
out religion, than to have one of this kind [viz., that of
his country,] which is a reproach to its object. The vani
ty of man, and his insatiable longing after existence, have
led him also to dream of a life after death. . A being full
of contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures,
since the other creatures have no wants transcending the
bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and wants
that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. Among
these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed on
man is the power to take his own life."* Scarcely less
sad is the desperation of the pagan Cecilius, represented
in the dialogue of Minutius Felix, as maintaining that,
without any reasonable evidence for the old religion, they
must yet chng to it as a tradition; for he felt that they
must have some semblance of a religion, some opinion of
a supernatural care and a converse of Deity with men.
"How much better is it," he said, "to receive just what
our fathers have told us, to worship the gods they
taught us to reverence, even before we could have any true
knowledge of them, to allow ourselves no right of private
judgment, but to believe our ancestors who, in the infan
cy of mankind, near the birth of the world, were even
considered worthy of having the gods for their friends."
What a strait is this for an intelligent being to be in —
holding fast, by his will, upon the belief of a supernatural
approach of the gods, in times gone by, without any pres
ent evidence! * Hist. Nat., Lib. VH.

248 IN ALL WHICH, THEY ARE
It is a very fine thing for many, saturated as they are
with christian truth, and all but oppressed with the evi
dences of a new creating grace and gospel, to invent spec
ulative difficulties, and finally take it up as wisdom or the
better reason, to believe in nothing but mere nature, and
her laws. But the recoil of the soul from such negations
will come after, and it will be terrible quite beyond their con
ception. We see this in the facts just stated, and yet more
affectingly in the history of Clement the Eoman, and of his
conversion. He tells how he was harrassed from his child
hood, by questions which paganism could not help him to
answer ; such as relate to his being and immortality, the
origin of the world and its continuance, when it began,
when it will end, and whither his present life is to carry
him. "Incessantly haunted," he says, "by such thoughts
as these, which came I knew not whence, I was sorely
troubled, so that I grew pale and emaciated. * * * I
resorted to the schools of the philosophers, hoping to find
some certain foundation. I saw nothing but the piling up
and tearing down of theories. Thus was I driven to
and fro, by the different representations, and forced to
conclude that things appear, not as they are in them
selves, but as they happen to be presented on this or that
side. I was made dizzier than ever, and from the bottom
of my heart, sighed for deliverance."* Then he tells how
he resolved to visit Egypt, the land of mysteries and ap
paritions, there to hunt up some magician who could
summon a spirit for him from the other world; for he
thought, if he could see a spirit, that would settle the ques
tion of immortaUty, and give him a fixed point of truth.
But in this unhappy state, inquiring, distressed, agitated, he
*Neander's Hist., Vol. L, pp. 32-33.

WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 249
fell in with a christian gospel, heard it preached, there dis
covered what his soul had been aching so long and bitterly
to find, and there he found rest.
These illustrations from history show us most effectu
ally how little of true science there is, after all, in those
who boast the laws of progress, or a gospel of self-culti
vation, as more rational and hopeful than a gospel of faith.
After all, they may see that, when left to the proper dark
ness of nature, it is no such rational and luminous state as
they thought, but a night of gloom, a longing vacancy, a
hunger insupportable. Nature has no promise for society,
least of all, any remedy for sin.

CHAPTER IX.
IHE SUPEItNATUKAL COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE AND
SUBJECT TO FIXED LAWS
If, as we have shown, there is no hope for man, or human
society, under sin, save in the supernatural in'terposition of
God, we are led to inquire, in the next place, what rational
objection there may be to such an interposition ? And we
find two objections alledged. First, that any such inter
ference of supernatural agency is incompatible with the
order of nature. Secondly, that the supernatural agency
supposed, is itself dispensed without law, and contrary, in
that view, to reason. Of these I will speak in their order.
And —
I. I undertake to show that the supernatural divine
agency, required to provide an efficacious remedy for sin,
is wholly compatible with nature ; involving no breach of
her laws, or disturbance of their systematic action.
I have already shown that nature is not, in any proper
and complete sense, the system of God, but is in fact a
subordinate member only, of a higher and virtually super
natural system, to whose uses it is subject. It is, in fact,
a Thing ; while the real kingdom of God is a kingdom of
Powers, Himself the Eegal Power. Both He and they
are continually using the Thing, and pouring their activity
into it, as the medial point of their relationship ; and this,
in a way, we now propose to show, that is nowise incom
patible with its laws ; for the very sufficient reason that,
by these laws, it is originally submitted to their activity.
Not even what we call the distemper and disorder of

COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE. 251
wrong supposes any overturning of those laws ; it is only
a result of mischief, produced by throwing in that which
provokes their penal consequences. In the same manner,
it will be seen that not .even miracles, wrought by a super
natural divine agency, necessarily imply any removal, or
suspension of such laws ; for nature is subjected, by her
laws, both to God's activity and to ours, to be thus acted
on, and varied iu her operation, by the new combinations
or conjunctions of causes, we are able to produce. Ac
cordingly every result produced, in this manner, whether
by God or by men, represents nature supernaturally acted
on, not nature overturned; that is, it is natural in one
view, in another supernatural ; natural as coming to pass
under and by the laws of nature ; supernatural as coming
to pass by new conjunctions of causes, which are made by
the action of wills upon nature.
What an immense action upon nature are we ourselves
seen to have, as a race, when we consider the multifarious
wheels and engines we have put at work, the heavy bur
dens we carry round the globe in our ships, the structures
we raise, the cultivation we practice. We make the world,
in fact, another world. All of which is referrible to a force
supernatural, in the last degree. Nature, unapplied or
^uncombined by our wills, could do no such thing. Wills
only have this power, and wills are supernatural. If now
we have a power so immense over the world, as we see in
all our works and wonders of contrivance, is it credible
that God can have no way of access to nature, no power
at all over nature? Is he the only will excluded from a
sovereignty over it?
To illustrate this point yet farther, we will suppose
a company of youth or children, engaged in playing at

252 THE SUPERNATURAL
ball. The ball is an inert spherical substance, that will
Ue on the ground forever, unless it is raised by some cause
out of itself, and will never act, save as it is acted on. It
has a certain tenacity of parts and an elastic body, but no
power in itself to move. Nevertheless we see it flying
through the air in lively play, smitten, caught, thrown- -
the central object and instrument of what is called a game ;
that is of a social strife between the players. It is, for the
time, a medium of commerce, in the lively battle of its
motions, between so many contesting agents. But the
motions it has in the air, we observe, represent so many
arms throwing it by its weight, or driving it by its elas
ticity. So far its play is natural only. Then, if we in
quire what moves the arms, we discover that it is done by
the sudden contraction of muscles, acting under purely
mechanical principles, and this is natural. If now we
push our inquiry still farther, asking why the muscles
contracted thus and thus, we discover that this also hap
pened, by reason of mandates sent down to them on the
nervous cord, which, again, was equally natural. But if
we go still farther and ask what originated or caused the
wills to originate the mandates, the true answer is, that it
was the wills themselves, acting by no causation, able to
act or not ; so that, if some one or more of the players is
a truant from school, or from home, transgressing, in the
play, a direct order of restriction, he wiU know that he is
doing wrong and blame himself for the wrong he does,
simply because it is an immediate, irresistible conviction
of his mind, that he is impelled to his disobedience by no
cause whatever. Doubtless he has ends, reasons, motives,
but these are no causes of his act ; for he knows that he
could and ought to have resisted them all Here then we

COMPATIBLE WITH NATURE. 253
finally arrive at a power supernatural, moving all the
hands and bats of the players. The ball is at one end of
so many chains of causes, and the free wills of the players
at the other. The ball would never have stirred but for
the arms, nor these but for the contractions of the muscles,
nor these contracted but for the mandates sent down to
them, which mandates, in the last degree, are the peremp
tory acts of so many free wills, or powers, that act super
naturally, from no causation. Just here then rises the
question, if the play is thus carried on by causes which,"
in the last degree, are supernatural, is there any overturn ¦
ing or disorder of nature impUed in it ? Manifestly not ;
and for the simple reason that the bats, and arms, and
hands, and muscles, are by their very laws subordinated,
as chains of causes, to the supernatural power that wields
then^ The play is natural therefore, as being through
and by those subordinated agents ; and supernatural, as
being from that power. We have no thought of a miracle
in the case, or of any implied overturning of nature
which is shocking to our faith. On the contrary, the
event is so common, so remote from any thing extraordi
nary, that we are very likely to look upon it as a trans
action, wholly in the world of natural cause and effect.
We come now to the application. Nature is to God
and his spiritual and free creatures, what the ball is to the
players. In one view, we may regard the Almighty
Euler of the world as the sensorium and active brain of
the world; having an immediate power of action through
every member and every line of causes in it; able, in
that manner, to maintain a constant living agency in its
events, without really infringing its order, or obstructing
and suspending its laws in any instance. Nature is phanl
22

254 THE SUPERNATURAL
thus to him, as the body of the players to them; q,nd
as the natural order of their body is not violated by the
mandates they put upon it, so there is full opportunity for
God to do his wonders of power and redemption in the
earth, without violating any condition of natural order
and system whatever. His access to all the lines of
causes in nature may be as truly normal as that which
the soul has, at that secret point of the brain where it
delivers its mandates to the body.
We are speaking here, it will be observed, not of God's
possible activity, as being the activity of nature. That is
a different conception. What we now say is, that, sup
posing all the forces and laws of nature to continue for
ever, there is also room for the perpetual acting of God
upon the lines of causes in nature, doing his will super
naturally in it, or upon it, just as we do, and yet ia» per
fect compatibility with the laws and the settled order of
nature. He may as well act Himself into the world as
we, and nature will as little be overturned by his action
as by ours. Nor will it create any difficulty that He acts
like Himself, and in ways proportionate to his infinite
majesty. That nature is in fact submitted to his action, as to
ours, in the manner supposed, is evident from the report
of science itself. For when the geologists show that new
races of animal and vegetable life have taken a begin
ning, at successive points in the history of the creation,
that whole realms of living creatures disappear again and
again, to be succeeded by others fresh from the hand of
God, what does it signify but that the atoms and ele
mental forces of nature are so related to God, that they
do, by their own laws, submit themselves to his will,

COMPATIBLE AVITH NATURE. 255
flowing into new combinations, and composing thus new
germs of life? These successive repopulations of tne
rocks were not produced by so many overturnings of
i. ature — that is too extravagant for belief, and stands in
no harmony with what we know of God. On the con
trary, every element of force and every atom of matter
concerned in these new births of life, was acting, we are
to believe, in its moment of new combination, precisely
as, according to its inherent properties and laws, it ever
had done and ever will do. It was only instigated by a
divine force not in its natural laws ; and in the quickening
of that, yielding itself up, by these laws, to organize and
live. Nor was the visitation of Mary, glorious and sacred
as the mystery was, a transaction at all different in prin
ciple, or one that involved, in fact, any violation of nature
not involved in the other just named. So also when we
discover the world, or human race, groaning under the
penal disorders and bondage of sin, the deliverance of
those disorders by a supernatural power involves no over
turning of the causes at work, or the laws by which they
work, but only that these causes are, by their laws, sub
mitted to the will and supernatural action of God, so that
he can arrange new conjunctions, and accomplish, in that
manner, results of deliverance. Indeed, a physician does
precisely the same thing in principle, when, appealing as
he thinks to the laws of substances, he brings them into
combinations that are from himself, and places them in
connections to exert a healing force.
It will farther assist our conceptions and modify our
impressions of this subject, if we inquire briefly into the
office and probable use of whafr is called nature. That
nature is not appointed as any final end of God, we have

256 NATURE IS ADJUSTED
before shown. It is only ordained, as we then intimated,
to be played upon by the powers ; that is, by God himself
and all free agents under him. Instead of being the ver
itable system or universe of God, as in our sensuality, or
scientific conceit, we make it, we may call it more truly
the ball or medial substance occupied by so many players;
that is, by the spiritual universe under God as the Lord of
Eosts. There could be no commerce of so many players
in the game referred to, without some medium or medial
instrument ; and the instrument needed to be a constant,
invariable substance, as regards shape, weight, size, elas
ticity, inertia, and all the natural properties pertaining to
it. If the baU changed weight, color, density, shape,
every moment, no skill could be acquired or evinced in
the use of it ; there would be no real test in the game,
and no social commerce of play in the parties using it.
Therefore it needed to be, so far, a constant quantity. So,
demonstrably, there needs to be, between us and God,
and between us and one another, some constant quantity,
so that we can act upon each other, trace the effects of our
practice and that of others, learn the mind of God, the
misery and baseness of wrong, the worth of principles,
and the blessedness of virtue, from what we experience ;
attaining thus to such a degree of wisdom, that we can
set our life on a footing of success and divine approba
tion. What we call nature is this constant quantity inter
posed between us and God, and between us and each
other — the great ball, in using which, our life battle is
played. Or, considering the grand immensity of planetary
worlds, careering through the fields of light, all these, we
may say, rolling eternally onward in their rounds of
order, bearing their wondrous furniture with them, such

TO RECEIVE THE SUPERNATURAL. 257
as ,-cience discovers, and weaving their interminable lines
of causes, are the ball of exercise, in which, and by
which, God is training and teaching the spiritual hosts
of his empire. They are set in a system of immutable
order and constancy for this reason ; but with the design,
beforehand, that all the free beings or powers shall play
their activity on them and into them, and that He, too,
by the free insertion of his, may turn them about by his
counsel, and so make himself and his counsel open to the
commerce of his children.
So far, therefore, from discovering any thing undigni
fied or superstitious in the admission of a supernatural
agency and government of God in the world, it is, in fact,
the only worthy and exalted conception. It no more
humbles the world or deranges the scientific order of it
to let God act upon it, than to let man do the same ; as
we certainly know that he does, without any thought of
overturning its laws. On the other hand, to imagine, in
the way of dignifying the world, that God must let it
alone and simply see it go, is only to confess that it was
made for no such glorious intent as we have supposed.
To serve this intent, two things manifestly are want
ed, and one as truly as the other; viz., nature and
the supernatural, an invariable, scientific order, and a
pliant submission of that order to the sovereignty and
uses of wills, human and divine, without any infringement
of its constancy. For if nature were to be violated and
tossed about by capricious overturnings of her laws, there
would be an end of all confidence and exact intelligence.
And if it could not be used, or set in new conjunctions,
by God and his children, it would be a wall, a catacomb,
and nothing more. And yet this latter is the world of

258 NO RESTRICTION THEREFORE
scientific naturalism, a world that might well enough
answer for the housing of manakins, but not for the exer
cise of living men. It would seem to be enough to for
ever dissipate any such unbelieving tendencies, simply to
have caught, for once, the difference between the constancy
of causes separated from uses, and the constancy of causes
limbered and subjected to the uses of eternal freedom and
intelligence. That is the world of causation, this of relig
ion ; that a dumb-bell exercise for arms that are dumb
bells themselves, this a living order, set in the contact
and consecrated to the uses of spirit; that a world
as being a world, this a grand gymnasium of powers
whom God is training for society and commerce with
himself. Furthermore, it is plain that, if there is no supernatural
agency of God permissible or credible in the world, then
there is practically no government over it. It makes no
difference, touching the point here in question, whether
we regard nature as being literally a machine, wound up
to run by its own causes apart from God, or whether we
regard- the causes and laws as being themselves the imme
diate action of God, always present to them and in them.
For if he is present thus, only as the soul of its causes
or the will operating in its laws, then that presence, if
restricted, as naturalism requires, to the mere run of
nature, and allowed no liberty of help in the disorders
of evil, is scarcely better than the presence of Ixion
at his wheel. If we speak of God, the Almighty, he is a
being mortgaged for eternity to the round of nature ; a
grim idol for science to worship, but no Father to weak
ness or Bedeemer to faith.
Or if we imagine that God has so planned the world

upon god's liberty. 259
of nature that, running on by its own inherent laws and
causes, it will always, by a pre-established harmony,
bring just the events to pass that are wanted ; soothe the
sorrows, comfort the repentances, hear the prayers, redress
the wrongs, chastise the crimes of his subjects; still it is
with our faith practically as if it were living in a mill,
and not as if it were concerned, hour by hour, with the
living God. God is really not accessible. We have
access only to the mill we are in, with joy to feel it run
ning ! There is no such reciprocity between us and God
as to answer the wants of our hearts, or the necessities of
our moral training.
Besides, if it be maintained that nature is the proper
universe of God, and that no conception is admissible of
powers outside of nature acting upon it, to vary the
action it would otherwise have by itself, then follows the
very shocking consequence that, since the creation, God
has had and can hereafter have no work of liberty to do.
Nature is his monument, and not his garment. Not only
are miracles out of the question, but counsel and action
also. He is under a scientific embargo, neither hearing
nor helping his children, nor indeed giving any signs of
recognition. And the reason is worse, if possible, and
more chilling than the fact; viz., that if he should stir,
he would move something that science requires to be let
alone ! A great many christians are confused and chilled
by a difficulty resembled to this, feeling, when they go to
God in worship or prayer, that nothing can reasonably bo
expected of him, because reason allows him to do nothing.
It is as if he were one of those spent meteors to which
the Indians offer sacrifice — a hard, cold rock of iron,
whi-=h they worship for the noise it made a long time ago,

260 THE SUPERNATURAL DISPENSED
when it fell from the sky, and not because it is likely e J ci
to make even a noise again.
Just here, the view we are advancing is seen to have
au immense practical as well as speculative consequence.
It finds how to conceive God in a state of as great activity
now, as he was when he made the world — always active
from eternity to eternity. Every work of. his hand is
pliant still to his counsel. He is doing something, able to
do all we want. In all events and changes he has a pres
ent concern. He turns about not the clouds only, but all
the wheels of nature, by his ever-living power and gov
ernment. He is an Agent, as much more real than Na
ture, as he is wider in his reach and more sovereign. He
can produce variant results through invariable causes,
and so can make the world of things keep company with
the variant demands of want, weakness, wickedness, and
merit; of love, truth, justice, and holy sujDplication, in
his children. It is no longer as if, at some given point in
the solitude of his eternity, he waked up and created the
worlds, since which time he has neither done nor can
ever be expected to do any thing more, because it is the
right now of the laws of nature to do every thing unin
terrupted. Contrary to this, he is the Living God, and
cau as readily meet us and bend himself and his works
to our condition or request, as a man, without any in
fringement of his body, can bend it to his uses. Nature
is seen to be subjected to his constant agency by its laws
themselves, which laws he has never to suspend, but only
to employ, having the great realm of nature flexible as a
hand, to his will forever. Now he is no more fenced
away from us by nature, no more closeted behind it, to
sleep away his deaf and idle eternitv ; bui he is with us

BY FIXED LAWS. 261
tb-id about us, filling all things with his potent eneigy and
fatherly counsel. He maintains a relationship as real and
practical with us, as we have with each other.
II. I undertake, in opposition to the objection which
supposes that the supernatural agency of God is itself sub
ject to no law, or system, to show that it is regulated and
dispensed by immutable and fixed laws. As intelligent
creatures, we can have no comfort under a condition ruled
by no law or system, and conformed to no principles of in
telligence. We instinctively demand that every thing in
God's plan shall stand in the strict unity of reason, even
as the old astronomers strive to comprehend the heavenly
bodies and their motions, in the figures of geometry and
the fixed proportions of arithmetic. This high instinct of
our nature God, we may be sure, will never violate.
1. Since God has inserted in our nature this instinctive
opinion of law, as necessary to the honor of his govern
ment and the comfort of our reason under it, we have, in
the fact, a very certain proof that his government will be
such as sto meet our respect, and satisfy the yearnings of
our intelligence.
2. The fact that nature is a realm, organized under fixed
laws, is itself the best and most satisfactory evidence that
such is the manner of God also in things supernatural.
Who that simply looks on the heavenly worlds, for exam
ple, can suffer a doubt afterward, that God will do every
thing in terms of law and strict systematic unity.
3. Since God is the sovereign intelligence, the Perfect
Reason, he will himself have an affinity for law and sys
tematic unity, as much stronger than we, as he is higher
in order than we, and broader in thp comprehension of his

262 THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS
understanding. Hence it is impossible to believe that, in
any thing, even the smallest, he will deviate from rules of
universal application — least of all in the highest order of
his works, even such as he displays in the grace of out
redemption. 4. The moral and religions need we have of such a faith
makes it indispensable. To let go of such a faith, or lose
it, is to plunge at once into superstition. If any christian,
the most devout, believes in a miracle, or a providence
that is done outside of all system and law, he is so far
on the way to polytheism. The unity of God always per
ishes, when the unity of order and law is lost. And we
may as well believe in one God, acting on or against an
other, as in the same God acting outside of all fixed laws
and terms of immutable order. Indeed I suppose it was in
just this way that polytheism began. The transition is
easy and natural, from a superstitious belief in one God
who acts without system, to a belief in many who will
much more naturally do the same.
But the main difficulty here, is not to establish a reason
able conviction that the supernatural works of God must
be dispensed by fixed laws ; it is to find how this may
be, or be intelligently conceived. And here lies the main
stress of our present inquiry.
To open the way then to a just and clear conception of
the great fact stated, it will be necessary to enter into some
important distinctions concerning law, or what is properly
meant by the word law.
The word is used with many varieties of meaning, but
always, and in all its varieties, having one element that is
constant, viz., the opinion had of its uniformity ; as that, in
exactly the same circumstances, it will always and forever

AND ORDERS OF LAWS. 263
do, bring to pass, direct, or command precisely ike same
thing. Without this no law is ever regarded as a law.
Observing this fundamental fact, we notice the distinc
tion next of natural and moral law. Natural law is the
law by which any kind of being or thing is made to act
invariably, thus or thus, in virtue of terms inherent in
itself; as when any body of matter gravitates by reason
of its matter, and according to the quantity of its matter.
Moral law pertains never to a thing, or to any substance
in the chain of cause and effect, but only to a free intelli
gence, or self-active power. Its rule is authority, not force.
It commands, but does not actuate or determine. It speaks
to assent or choice, inviting action, but operating nothing
apart from choice. It imposes obligation, leaving the sub
ject to obey or not, clear of any enforcement, save that of
conviction beforehand, and penalty afterward.
It will be seen at once that God's supernatural works in
Christ and the Spirit are not reducible under either of
these two kinds of law, the natural or the moral. To a
certain extent God's nature will be a law to his action,
even as ours is a necessary law to us. Thus, if we are in
telligent, our intelligent nature will manifest effects of in
telligence. If we form necessary ideas of figure, space,
time, truth, right, justice, there will be something in our
action that reveals these ideas. In like manner, if we are
free agents, it is made impossible for us, by a fixed law of
nature, to act as mere things, under the law of cause and
effect. So, if God is infinite in his nature, then it is a fixed
law of his nature that he shall indicate infinity in his ac
tion, and if he has geometric ideas, that his works shall,
by a necessary consequence, have some fixed relation to
the laws of geometry ; such as we discover in their spheres,

264 THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS
and orbits, and projectile curves, and in the subtle trian-
gulations of light. Thus it is rightly affirmed by the
gTeat Hooker, that "the being of God is a kind of law to
his working."* And so far does he carry this opinion as
to hint the probable necessity that God, being both one
and three, an essential unity and a threefold personality,
there will, of course, be something in his works corres
pondent with his nature.
So again if we speak of the law moral, that is a law as
completely sovereign over God as it is over us. It is the
eternal, necessary law of right, or of love; a law that he
acknowledges with a ready and full assent forever; that
which determines the immutable order, and purity, and
glory of his character. And then, of course, the law ac
cepted in his own character, will be the law published to
his subjects to be the rule of theirs. Moral law then, by
the free consent of God, shapes the divine character, and
so the character and ends of his government.
But though natural law and moral law have much to
do, as here discovered, in determining and molding all the
conduct of God, we do not immediately conceive what is
meant by the fact, that the supernatural works of God are
dispensed by fixed laws, till we bring into view a third
kind of law, viz., the law of one's end, or the law which
one's reason imposes in the way of attaining his end.
Moral law, we have said, shapes the character of God,
and that determines his end. Since he is a morally perfect
being in his character, moral perfection or holiness will be
the last end of his being, that for which he creates and
rules; for, if he were to value holiness only as the meana
of some other end, such as happiness, then he would even
* Ecclesiastical Polity, Vol. I., p. 12.

AND ORDERS OF LAWS. 265
disrespect holiness, rating it only as a convenience ; which
is not the character of a holy being, but only an impos
ture in the name of such a character. Eegarding holiness
then as God's last end, his world-plan will be gathered
round the end proposed, to fulfill it, and all his counsels
will crystallize into order and system, subject to that end.
For this nature will exist, in all her vast machinery of
causes and laws ; to this all the miracles and supernatural
works of redemption will bring their contributions. Hav
ing this for his end, and the supernatural as means to his
end, the divine reason will of course order all under fixed
laws of reason, which laws will.be so exact and universal
as to make a perfect system.
How this may result, we can see from a simple reference
to ourselves. Thus, if a man undertakes to be honest,
having that for an end, then it will be seen that his end so
far becomes a law to all his actions; that is, a law self-
imposed, one which his reason prescribes, and which, in
accepting his end, he freely accepts. So if a man's end is
to be rich, we shall see that his end is a law to his whole
life-plan, or at least so far a law that it fails only where
his reason or judgment falls short of a perfect perception.
Or we may take a case more exact and palpable, the case
of a player at the game of chess. The end he proposes is
to win the game, and that end, subordinating his reason
or skill, will become a law to every move he makes on the
diagram, except where his skill is at fault, or his under
standing short of comprehension. If now we suppose
him to be gifted with a perfect skill, or an albperceiving
reason, it will result that every move made will be deter
mined with such exactness and uniformity, that, if he were
to play the game over a million of times, he vonld never,
oa

266 god's laws, in the supernatural,
in a single case, move differently, in exactly the same cir
cumstances. Here then is what we mean by affirming that all God'a
supernatural acts, providences, and works, supernatural
though they be, will yet be dispensed, in all cases, by immu
table, universal, and fixed laws. It will be so because
his end never varies and his reason is perfect. Therefore
his world-plan, though comprehending the supernatural,
will be an exact and perfect system of order, centered in
the eternal unity of reason about his last end. There
will be nothing desultory in it, nothing irregular, nothing
so particular as to happen apart from rule and universal
counsel. The order of the heavens, and the angles of the
Ught will not be more perfect, because the reason of the
supernatural is equally precise and clear. The same
work will always be done, in the same circumstances,
without a semblance of variation. Even as the dial,
under the laws of nature, will make the same shadow, at
the same hour, for an eternal succession of days, so the
good gift and perfect from above will come down from
the Father of lights, punctual and true in its order, as
from one whose counsel is perfect, and with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning. Order, everlast
ing order, reigns where least we look for it, and where the
unthinking and crude mind of superstition would deem it
even a merit, that God had broken loose from his eternity
of law, to bless the world at will.
But how is it conceivable, some one may ask, that such
works as are comprehended in the range of human re
demption should take place, systematically, under fixed
laws ? To this, we answer that it is not necessary to such
tt conviction that we should be able to conceive how these

are shaped by his ends. 267
operate, or what they are. All we weed is to find the
possible and probable fact ; which having found, we can
as little doubt, or dismiss the conviction of some presiding
law, as we can the faith of universal laws in nature, where
we do not know the laws, or can not discover the secret
of their action. For example, we know, in general, what
is the law of miracles; viz., that they are wrought as
attestations of a divine mission in those by whom they
are wrought; but their particular occasions, times, and
properties, why wrought by this and not by another, why
at one time, or in one age, and not in succeeding ages, we
may not be able to discover. The law is beyond our
investigation, but that there is a law, and that exactly the
same miracles will be wrought, if wrought at all, in ex
actly the same conditions, or spiritual connections, even
to eternity, we have no more room to doubt, than we have
to question God's intelligence. For, if God's end is the
same, he can never deviate or omit to do exactly the same
things, in exactly the same circumstances, without some
defect of intelligence. Either now, or before, he must
confess to a mistake. If he is perfect in wisdom now, he
was not then ; if then, he is not now. But when we say
"exactly the same circumstances," it is important for us
•uo notice the extent of the qualification; for this will
bring into view a great principle of distinction be
tween the natural and the supernatural, apart from which
the extraordinary and apparently desultory manifestations
of the latter can not be understood. Nature is a machine,
compounded of wheels and moved by steady powers.
Hence it goes in rounds or cycles, returning again and
again into itself, producing, thus, seasons, months, and
years; repeating its dews, and showers, and storms, and

268 they operate as laws,
varied temperatures ; in the same circumstances, or times,
doing much the same things. But it is not so in the
affairs of a mind, a'society, or an age. There the motion
is never in circles, but onward, eternally onward. Noth
ing is ever repeated. No mind or spirit can reproduce a
yesterday. No age, the age or even year that is past.
The combinations of circumstances may have a certain
analogy, but they are never the same, or even nearly so.
If they are near enough to require a repetition, by the
Saviour, of his miracle of the loaves, they will yet be so
far different as to require a difference in the miracle
And where the outward conditions appear to be exactly
the same, the inward states and spiritual connections may
be so various as to take away all resemblance ; requiring
Paul to raise a Publius out of his fever at Malta, and
leave a Trophimus sick at Miletum. We have no argu
ment against uniformity and law in such diversities ; for,
in reality, there is no recurrence of circumstances and condi
tions such as, at first view, might be supposed. So, if mir
acles appear in one age and not in another, it is because
the world is jnoving on in a right line, reproducing no
conditions and circumstances of the past, but, by condi
tions, always new, is demanding a treatment correspond-
ently new. Hence, while the course of nature is a round
of repetitions, the course of the supernatural repeats
nothing, and for that reason takes an aspect of variety
that appears even to exclude the fact of law. But it is so
only in appearance. God's perfect wisdom still requires
the same things to be done in the same circumstances ;
and, when not the same, as nearly the same as the cir
cumstances are nearly resembled. Every thing transpires
in the uniformity of law.

WITH ETERNAL UNIFORMITY. 269
Thus we may assert as confidently, as if it occurred a
hundred times a day, that a supernatural event, never
known to occur but once, takes place under an immutable
and really universal law; such, for example, as the great,
world-astounding miracle of the incarnation. In exactly
the same conditions, if they were to occur a million of
times in the universe, (which may or may not be a vio
lent supposition,) precisely the same miracle also would
recur, and that with as great certainty as the natural law
of gravity will cause a stone to fall, when for the mil-
Uonth time its support is taken away. Living here upon
this ant-hill, which we call the world, and seeing only the
yard of space and the day of time our field occupies, we
are likely to judge that an event which never occurred
but once since the world began, must be an event apart
from all order and system ; even as a savage, but a little
more childish than we, might imagine that some new
deity is breaking into the world, when he sees the air
stone faU, because he never saw the like before. Indeed,
we have only to look into the appearings of the Jehovah
angel, previous to the incarnate appearing of the Word,
noting all the approaches and gradual preparations of the
event, to see how certainly God has a way and a law for
it, and wiU not bring it to pass till the law decrees it and
the fullness of time is come, Could we look into the his
tory, too, of the innumerable other worlds God has com
prehended in his reign, what a lesson might we thence
derive from events counterpart to this of the incarnation,
varied only to meet the varied conditions of their want,
character, and destiny. Though we may not be able,
creatures of a day, to unfold the law of this grand mira
cle, and reduce it to a formula of science, how little reason
23*

270 THEY ARE OFTEN AS WELL KNOWN
have we, in our inability, to question the fact of such a
law. Besides, it is a fact that the laws of a great many of
God's supernatural works are made known, or discovered
to us. Thus God dispenses the Holy Spirit by fixed laws.
Prayer, also, is heard by laws as definite as the laws of
equiUbrium in forces. And what is called the doctrine
of the Spirit and the doctrine of prayer, as given in the
scriptures, is, in fact, nothing more nor less than the un
folding to us, if we could so regard it, of the laws of the
Spirit and the laws of prayer, as pertaining to the super
natural kingdom of God. Indeed, there is wanting now,
for the more intelligent guidance of christian disciples, to
consolidate their faith and save them from the extrava
gances of fanaticism, a practical treatise on the laws of
prayer, of spiritual gifts, and of the dispensation of the
Holy Spirit generally. These two great powers, the
hearing of prayer and the dispensing of the Spirit, are
like the waterfalls and winds of nature, to which we set
our wheels and lift our sails, and so, by their known laws,
take advantage of their efficacy. A crystal, or gem, that
is being distilled and shaped in the secret depths of the
world, is not shaped by laws as well understood as the
law of the Spirit of life, when it molds the secret order
and beauty of a soul.
Our conclusion therefore is, that all God's works, even
such as are most distinctly supernatural, are determined
by fixed laws. This is true of aU supernatural events,
with the single exception of the bad and wicked actions
of men. And these are out of all terms of law, not be
cause they are supernatural, but only because they are
bad. Indeed, it is a somewhat singular and even curioua

AS THE LAWS OF NATURE. 271
fact, that while so great jealousy is felt in oui time, of
miracles and all immediate spiritual operations of God, as
being so many violations of order and fixed law in the
universe, the only known events in the world, of which
that is really true, are the bad actions of bad men, or of
bad spirits generally. These are not subject to any fixed
laws; they consent to no law. They are determined, nei
ther by the laws of causality, nor by the laws of a good
end; which are laws of reason, truth, and beneficence.
They have no agreement with the world, or with God, or
even with the constituent well-being of the doers them
selves. All that can be apprehended of miracles is true
of them and even more. Their damning miracle is every
where, and the confusion they make is real. If those per
sons who are so ready to apprehend some destruction, or
implied destruction of law in the faith of miracles, would
turn their thoughts upon these real disorders, and con:
ceive them as the only known facts in our world that have
no subjection to law, they would have a good point of be
ginning for the cure of their skepticism generaUy
It can not be necessary to pursue this topic farther.
But it may be well to notice, before we drop the subject,
one or two false impressions very commonly entertained
by the natural philosophers and poets of nature, whose
skepticism is oftener grounded in such impressions than in
formal arguments. They are greatly impressed by the
immutable reign of order and law in nature, deeming it
the highest point of sublimity, in all the known manifest
ations of God. Not seldom indeed is this point magnified
by them, in terms of admiration, that reflect a certain con
tempt on the christian ideas of God; as if it were possible

272 god's highest work
only to an overeasy credulity, to imagine that God will
descend from his high position of law, to do such things
as the preaching and praying disciples of Christianity ex
pect of Him. Gazing into the sky, and beholding the
eternal, changeless roll of the worlds, every orb in the
track, where the astrologers of Babylon and Egypt saw it
long ages ago, never to vary or falter in the longer ages to
come — image, how sublime, they exclaim, of the divine
greatness ! Greater and sublimer still, that the same un-
deviating rule of law is equally conspicuous in the small
est things; that in every salt and pebble there is a little
astronomy of atoms whose laws are as old as the stars,
and whose constancy is a reflection of theirs! No, -the
wonder of God's way is not here, but it is that he can
make constancy flexible to so many myriads of uses, and
the uses themselves— aU but the abuses — a system of or
tier and law, as complete and perfect as that of the stars
Constancy, as a mere post, or position, has no dignity
The true dignity and miracle of order is constancy mad*,
flexible to use and expression. Sir Charles BeU had uo
such thought as that he could magnify the beauty of God's
way in the hand, by simply showing the curious articula
tions by wliich itis mechanically strengthened in its gripe;
the chief wonder, the real miracle of beauty in the in
strument, as he well understood, lies in its flexibility, its
ready submission to so many and such endlessly varied
uses. Let us not be taken by the mere stability of nature,
because it compliments our vanity by the easy understand
ing it permits. Magnitudes, weights, distances, regulari
ties, are not the highest symbols of God's creative dignity
The glory, the true sublimity of God's architectural wis
dom is that, whUe his work stands fast in immutable or-

IS NOT THE WORLD OF NATURE, 273
der, it bends so gracefully to the humblest things, without
damage or fracture, pliant to all free action, both His and
ours; receiving the common play of our liberty, and be
coming always a fluent medium of reciprocal action be
tween us; to Him a hand showing his handy work, or
even a tongue which day unto day uttereth speech, and
night unto night showeth forth knowledge of Him; to us
the ground of our works, the instrument of our choices,
and yet, in the order, all, of a perfect counsel and of laws
as immutable as his throne. In this rests the doctrine of
faith, the doctrine that justifies prayer, enables the disciple
to believe that God can notice him, and move among
causes to help him ; raising him thus into a state of ennobled
consciousness, how superior to the low mechanical skepti
cism which thinks itself dignified in the discovery that
God, incrusted in the stiffness of his scientific order, has
no longer any power to bend himself to man.
The other point alluded to has reference to the compar
ative estimate of nature and the supernatural. Unexer
cised in the great world of christian thought, uninitiated
by years of holy experience in its deep mysteries, the nat
ural philosopher and poet very commonly look upon the
supernatural, or what is the same, Christianity, as com
prised of a few stray facts, or ghostly wonders, much less
credible than they might be, and turn away, with a kind
of pity, from a field so narrow, to what they call a broad
er and more satisfactory teaching; that of the great school
of nature. Here is variety they say, beauty, magnifi
cence, greatness, and a sound, consistent order, worthy of
God. This, they imagine, is the true revelation,
How little do such minds conceive what the worid of
supernatural fact comprises. Go to nature for the great

274 AND THE HIGHEST SUBJECTS
and quickening thoughts, the wonders and broad truths
Call nature the grand revelation ! Is it more to go to na
ture and know it, than to know God ? Are there deepei
depths in nature, higher subUmities, thoughts more capti
vating and glorious? In the mineral and vegetable shapes
are there finer themes than in the life of Jesus? In the
storms and gorgeous pilings of the clouds, are there man
ifestations of greatness and beauty more impressive than
in the tragic sceneries of the cross? Nature is the realm
of things, the supernatural is the realm of powers. There
the spinning worlds return into their circles and keep re
turning. Here the grand life-empire of mind, society,
truth, liberty, and holy government spreads itself in the
view, unfolding always in changes vast, various, and di
vinely beneficent. There we have a Georgic, or a hymn
of the seasons; here an epic that sings a lost Paradise.
There God made the wheels of his chariot and set them
rolUng. Here he rides forth in it, leading his host after
Him; vast in counsel, wonderful in working; preparing
and marshaling all for a victory in good and blessing;
fashioning in beauty, composing in spiritual order, and so
gathering in the immense populations of the worlds, to be
one realm — angels, archangels, seraphim, thrones, domin
ions, principaUties, powers, and saints of mankind — all to
find, in his works of guidance and new-creating grace, a
volume of wisdom, which it -will be the riches of their
eternity to study.
Thus we conceive, alas ! too feebly, the true scale of dig
nity in God's two realms. In one the order is superficial
and palpable. In the other it is deep as eternity, mysteri
ous and vast as the counsel that comprehends eternity, in
its development. StUl it is counsel, it is order, it is truth

ARE NOT THOSE OF SCIENCE. 275
and reason. Even as the Eevelation of John contrives, in
so many ways, to intimate, by the using of exact numbers
for those which are not; in the seven angels, and seven
trumpets, and seven vials ; in the four beasts, and four and
twenty elders ; in the hundred, forty, and four thousand of
them that are sealed; in the city, the new Jerusalem, that
is foursquare, having its hight, length, and breadth equal ;
with twelve gates, tended by twelve angels, resting on
twelve foundations, that are twelve manner of precious
stones — by such images, and under such exact notations
of arithmetic, does this man of vision put us on conceiv
ing, as we best can, the glorious and exact society God is
reconstructing out of the fallen powers. We shall see it
to be all in law; settled in such terms of order, that all
counsel, act, and joy, both his and ours, will be in terms
of everlasting truth and reason, a realm as much more
wonderful than nature, as liberties of mind are more diffi
cult to master than material quantities.

CHAPTER X.
THE CHARACTER OE JESUS PORBIJS HIS POSSIBLE
CLASSIFICATION WITH M3N.
The need of a supernatural, divine ministration, tc
restore the disorders of sin, is now shown ; also that such
a ministration is compatible with the order of nature, and,
being in that view a rational possibility, that it may well
be assumed as a probable expectation. In this manner
we are brought directly up to confront the main question —
Is the exigency met by the fact ? is the supernatural divine
ministration actually set up, and shown to be by adequate
evidence ?
Here we raise a question, for the first time, that puts
the christian scriptures in issue ; for it is the grand pecu
liarity of these sacred writings, that they deal in super
natural events and transactions, and show the fact of a
celestial institution finally erected on earth, in the person
of Jesus Christ, which is called the kingdom of God or
of heaven, and is in fact a perpetual, supernatural dispens
atory of healing and salvation for the race. Christianity
is, in this view, no mere scheme of doctrine, or of ethical
practice, but is instead a kind of miracle, a power out of
nature and above, descending into it ; a historically super
natural movement on the world, that is visibly entered
into it, and organized to be an institution in the person of
Jesus Christ. He therefore is the central figure and
power, and with him the entire fabric either stands or
falls. To this central figure, then, we now turn ourselves;

THE GOSPEL HISTORY, HOW USED. 277
and, as no proof beside the light is necessary to show tha(.
the sun shines, so we shall find that Jesus proves himself
by his own self-evidence. The simple inspection of his
life and character will suffice to show that he can not be
classified with mankind, (man though he be,) any more
than what we call his miracles can be classified with mere
natural events. The simple demonstrations of his life
and spirit are the sufficient attestation of his own profes
sion, when he says — "I am from above" — "I came down
from heaven."
Let us not be misunderstood. We do not assume the
truth of the narrative by which the manner and facts of
the life of Jesus are reported to us ; for ' this, by the sup
position, is the matter in question. We only assume the
representations themselves, as being just what they are,
and discover their necessary truth in the transcendent,
wondrously self-evident picture of divine excellence and
beauty presented in them. We take up the account of
Ghrist, in the New Testament, just as we would any other
ancient writing, or as if it were a manuscript just brought
to light in some ancient library. We open the book, and
discover in it four distinct biographies of a certain remark
able character, called Jesus Christ. He is miraculously
born of Mary, a virgin of Galilee, and declares, himself,
without scruple, that he came out from God. Finding
the supposed history made up, in great part, of his mighty
acts, and not being disposed to believe in miracles and
marvels, we should soon dismiss the book as a tissue of
absurdities too extravagant for belief, were we not struck
with the sense of something very peculiar in the character
of this remarkable person. Having our attention arrested
thus by the impression made on our respect, we are put
24

278 THE LIFE OF JESUS BEGINS
on inquiry, and the more we study it the more wonder
ful, as a character, it appears. And before we have done,
it becomes, in fact, the chief wonder of the story ; lifting
all the other wonders into order and intelligent proportion
round it, and making one compact and glorious wonder
of the whole picture — a picture shining in its own clear
sunlight upon us, as the truest of all truths— Jesus, the
Divine Word, coming out from God, to be incarnate with
us, and be the vehicle of God and salvation to the race.
On the single question, therefore, of the more than
human character of Jesus, we propose, in perfect confi
dence, to rest a principal argument for Christianity as a
supernatural institution ; for, if there be in Jesus a char
acter which is not human, then has something broken into
the world that is not of it, and the spell of unbelief is
broken. Not that Christianity might not be a supernatural insti
tution, if Jesus were only a man ; for many prophets and
holy men, as we believe, have brought forth to the world
communications that are not from themselves, but were
received by inspirations from God. There are several
grades, too, of the supernatural, as already intimated;
the supernatural human, the supernatural prophetic, the
supernatural demonic and angelic, the supernatural divine.
Christ, we shall see, is the supernatural manifested in the
highest grade or order ; viz., the divine.
We observe, then, as a first peculiarity at the root of
his character, that he begins life with a perfect youth.
His chUdhood is an unspotted, and, withal, a kind of ce
lestial flower. The notion of a superhuman or celestial
childhood, ths most difficult of aU things to be conceived,

WITH A PERFECT CHILDHOOD. 279
is yet successfully drawn by a few simple touches. He
is announced beforehand as "that Holy Thing;" a beau
tiful and powerful stroke to raise our expectation to the
level of a nature so mysterious. In his childhood, every
body loves him. Using words of external description, he
is shown growing up in favor with God and man, a child
so lovely and beautiful that heaven and earth appear to
smile upon him together. So, when it is added that the
child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom,
and, more than all, that the grace or beautifying power of
God was upon him, we look, as on the unfolding of a
sacred flower, and seem to scent afragrance wafted on us
from other worlds. Then, at the age of twelve, he is
found among the great learned men of the day, the doc
tors of the temple, hearing what they say and asking
them questions. And this, without any word that indi
cates forwardness or pertness in the child's manner, such
as some Christian Eabbi, or silly and credulous devotee,
would certainly have added. The doctors are not offended,
as by a child too forward or wanting in modesty, they are
only amazed that such a degree of understanding can
dwell in one so young and simple. His mother finds him
there among them, and begins to expostulate with him.
Eis reply is very strange ; it must, she is sure, have some
deep meaning that corresponds with his mysterious birth,
and the sense he has ever given her of a something
strangely peculiar in his ways ; and she goes home keep
ing his saying in her heart, and guessing vainly what his
thought may be. Mysterious, holy secret, which this
mother hides in her bosom, that her holy thing, her child
whom she has watched, during the twelve years of his
celestial chUdhood, now begins to speak of being "about

280 HIS PEEFECT CHILDHOOD
his Father's business," in words of dark enigma, which
she can not fathom.
Now we do not say, observe, that there is one word of
truth in these touzhes of narration. We only say that,
whether they be fact or fiction, here is given the sketch
of a perfect and sacred childhood— not of a simple, lovely,
ingenuous, and properly human childhood, such as the
poets love to sketch — but of a sacred and celestial child
hood. In this respect, the early character of Jesus Is a
picture that stands by itself. In no other case, that we
remember, has it ever entered the mind of a biographer,
in drawing a character, to represent it as beginning with
a spotless childhood. The childhood of the great human
characters, if given at all, is commonly represented, ac
cording to the uniform truth, as being more or less con
trary to the manner of their mature age ; and never as
being strictly one with it, except in those cases of inferior
eminence where the kind of distinction attained to is that
of some mere prodigy, and not a character of greatness
in action, or of moral excellence. In all the higher
ranges of character, the excellence portrayed is never the
simple unfolding of a harmonious and perfect beauty
contained in the germ of childhood, but it is a character
formed by a process of rectification, in which many follies
are mended and distempers removed ; in which confidence
is checked by defeat, passion moderated by reason, smart
ness sobered by experience. Commonly a certain pleas
ure is taken in showing how the many wayward sallies
of the boy are, at length, reduced by discipline to the char
acter of wisdom, justice, and public heroism so much
admired. Besides, if any writer, of almost any age, will under

GENUINELY DESCRIBED. 281
take to describe, not merely a spotless, but a superhuman
or celestial childhood, not having the reality before him,
he must be somewhat more than human himself, if he
does not pile together a mass of clumsy exaggerations,
and draw and overdraw, till neither heaven nor earth
can find any verisimilitude in the picture.
Neither let us omit to notice what ideas the Eabbis and
learned doctors of this age were able, in fact, to furnish,
when setting forth a remarkable childhood. Thus Jose
phus, drawing on the teachings of the Eabbis, tells how
the infant Moses, when the king of Egypt took him out
of his daughter's arms, and playfully put the diadem on
his head, threw it pettishly down and stamped on it.
And when Moses was three years old, he tells us that the
child had grown so tall, and exhibited such a wonderful
beauty of countenance, that people were obliged, as it
were, to stop and look at him as he was carried along the
road, and were held fast by the wonder, gazing till he was
out of sight. See, too, what work is made of the child
hood of Jesus himself, in the Apocryphal gospels. These
are written by men of so nearly the same era, that we
may discover, in their embellishments, what kind of a
chUdhood it was in the mere invention of the time to
make out. WhUe the gospels explicitly say that Jesus
wrought no miracles till his public ministry began, and
that he made his beginning in the miracle of Cana, these
are ambitious to make him a great prodigy in his child
hood. They tell how, on one occasion, he pursued, iu
his anger, the other children, who refused to play with
him, and turned them into kids; how, on another, when
a child accidentally ran against him, he was angry, and
kiUed him by his mere word ; how, on another, Jesus had
04*

282 DISTINGUISHED FROM MEN
a dispute with .his teacher over the alphabet, and when
the teacher struck him, how he crushed him, withered hia
arm, and threw him down dead. Finally, Joseph tells
Mary that they must keep him within doors ; for every
body perishes against whom he is excited. His mother
sends him to the well for water, and, having broken his
pitcher, he brings the water in his cloak. He goes into a
dyer's shop, when the dyer is out, and throws all the
cloths he finds into a vat of one color, but, when they are
taken out, behold, they are all dyed of the precise color
that was ordered. He commands a palm-tree to stoop
down and let him pluck the fruit, and it obeys. When
he is carried down into Egypt, all the idols fall down
wherever he passes, and the lions and leopards gather
round him in a harmless company. This the Gospel of
the Infancy gives, as a picture of the wonderful childhood
of Jesus. How unlike that holy flower of paradise, in
the true gospels, which a few simple touches make to
bloom in beautiful self-evidence before us !
Passing now, to the character of Jesus in his maturity,
we discover, at once, that there is an element in it which
distinguishes it from all human characters, viz., innocence.
By this we mean, not that he is actually sinless ; that wUl
be denied, and therefore must not here be assumed. We
mean that, viewed externally, he is a perfectly harmless
being, actuated by no destructive passions, gentle to infe
riors, doing ill or injury to none. The figure of a Lamb,
which never was, or could be, applied to any of the great
human characters, without an implication of weakness
fatal to all respect, is yet, with no such effect, applied to
him. We associate weakness with innocence, aod the

BY HIS INNOCENCE. 283
association is so powerful, that no humau writer would
undertake to sketch a great character on the basis of inno
cence, or would even think it possible. We predicate
innocence of infancy, but to be a perfectly harmless? guile
less man, never doing Ul even for a moment, we consider
to be the same as to be a man destitute of spirit and
manly force. But Christ accomplished the impossible.
Appearing in all the grandeur and majesty of a superhu
man manhood, he is able still to unite the impression of
innocence, with no apparent diminution of his sublimity.
It is, in fact, the distinctive glory of his character, that it
seems to be the natural unfolding of a divine innocence-^
a pure celestial childhood, amplified by growth. We feel
the power of this strange combination, but we have so
great difficulty in conceiving it, or holding our minds to
the conception, that we sometimes subside or descend to
the human level, and empty the character of Jesus of the
strange element unawares. We read, for example, his
terrible denunciations against the Pharisees, and are
shocked by the violent, fierce sound they have on our
mortal lips ; not perceiving that the offense is in us, and
not in him. We should suffer no such revulsion, did we
only conceive them bursting out, as words of indignant
grief, from the surcharged bosom of innocence ; for there
is nothing so bitter as the offense that innocence feels,
when stung by hypocrisy and a sense of cruelty to the
poor. So, when he drives the money-changers from the
temple, we are likely to leave out the only element that
saves him from a look of violence and passion. Whereas
it is the very point of the story, not that he, as by mere
force, can drive so many men, but that so many are seen
retiring before the moral power of one — a mysterious

284 HIS RELIGIOUS CHARACTER
being, in whose face and form the indignant flush of inno
cence reveals a tremendous feeling, they can no (rise com
prehend, much less are able to resist.
Accustomed to no such demonstrations of vigor and
decision in the innocent human characters, and having it
as our way to set them down, without farther considera
tion, as "Incapable and shallow innocents," —
we turn the indignant fire of Jesus into a fire of malig
nity ; whereas it should rather be conceived that Jesus here
reveals his divinity, by what so powerfully distinguishes
God himself, when he clothes his goodness in the tempests
and thunders of nature. Decisive, great, and strong,
Christ is yet all this, even the more sublimely, that he
is invested, withal, in the lovely, but humanly feeble
garb of innocence. And that this is the true conception,
is clear, in the fact that no one ever thinks of him as
weak, and no one fails to be somehow impressed with a
sense of innocence by his life; when his enemies are
called to show what evil or harm he hath done, they can
specify nothing, save that he has offended their bigotry.
Even Pilate, when he gives him up, confesses that he
finds nothing in him to blame, and, shuddering with ap
prehensions he can not subdue, washes his hands to be
clear of the innocent blood ! Thus he dies, a being holy,
harmless, undefiled. And when he hangs, a bruised
flower drooping on his cross, and the sun above is dark,
and the earth beneath shudders with pain, what have we
in this funeral grief of the worlds, but a fit honor paid
to the sad majesty of his divine innocence.
We pass now to his religious character, which we shall

IS WITHOUT REPENTANCE. 285
discover, has the remarkable distinction that it proceeds
from a point exactly opposite to that which is the root, or
radical element in the religious character of men. Human
piety begins with repentance. It is the effort of a being,
implicated in wrong and writhing under the stings of
guilt, to come unto God. The most righteous, or even
self-righteous, men blend expressions of sorrow and vows
of new obedience with their exercises. But Christ, in the
character given him, never acknowledges sin. It is the
grand peculiarity of his piety, that he never regrets any
thing that he has done or been; expresses, nowhere, a
single feeling of compunction, or the least sense of un
worthiness. On the contrary, he boldly challenges his
accusers, in the question — Which of you convinceth me
of sin ? and even declares, at the close of his life, in a
solemn appeal to God, that he has given to men, unsullied,
the glory divine that was deposited in him.
Now the question is not whether Christ was, in fact,
the faultless being, assumed, in his religious character. All
we have to notice here is that he makes the assumption,
makes it not only in words, but in the very tenor of his
exercises themselves, and that by this fact his piety is
radically distinguished from all human piety. And no
mere human creature, it is certain, could hold such a
religious attitude, without shortly displaying faults that
would cover him with derision, or excesses and delinquen
cies that would even disgust his friends. Piety without
one dash of repentance, one ingenuous confession of
wrong, one tear, one look of contrition, one request to
heaven for pardon — let any one of mankind try this kind
of piety, and see how long it will be ere his righteousness
will- prove itself to be the most impudent conceit ! how

286 HE UNITES OPPOSITES,
long before his passions, sobered by no contrition, hia
pride kept down by no repentance, will tempt him into
absurdities that will turn his pretenses to mockery ! No
sooner does any one of us begin to be self-righteous, than
he begins to fall into outward sins that shame his conceit,
But, in the case of Jesus, no such disaster follows. Begin
ning with an impenitent, or unrepentant piety, he holds it
to the end, and brings no visible stain upon it.
Now, one of two things must be true. He was either
sinless, or he was not. If sinless, what greater, more pal
pable exception to the law of human development, than
that a perfect and stainless being has for once lived in the
flesh ! If not, which is the supposition required of those
who deny every thing above the range of human devel
opment, then we have a man taking up a religion without
repentance, a religion not human, but celestial, a stylo of
piety never taught him in his childhood, and never con
ceived or attempted among men — more than this, a style
of piety, withal, wholly unsuited to his real character as
a sinner, holding it as a figment of insufferable presump
tion to the end of life, and that in a way of such unfalter
ing grace and beauty, as to command the universal hom
age of the human race ! Could there be a wider deviation
from all we know of mere human development ?
He was also able perfectly to unite elements of charac
ter, that others find the greatest difficulty in uniting, how
ever unevenly and partially. He is never said to have
laughed, and yet he never produces the impression of aus
terity, moroseness, sadness, or even of being unhappy
On the contrary, he is described as one that appears to be
commonly filled with a sacred joy; "rejoicing in spirit,"

AS NO HUMAN SAINT EVER DOES. 287
and leaving to his disciples, in the hour of his departure,
the bequest of his joy — " that they might have my joy
fulfilled in themselves." We could not long endure a
human being whose' face was never moved by laughter,
or relaxed by a gladdening smile. What sympathy could
we have with one who appears, in this manner, to have
no human heart ? We could not even trust him. And
yet we have sympathy with Christ; for there is some
where in him an ocean of deep joy, and we see that he is,
in fact, only burdened with his sympathy for us to such a
degree, that his mighty life is overcast and oppressed by
the charge he has undertaken. His lot is the lot of pri
vation, he has no powerful friends, he has not even where
to lay his head. No human being could appear in such a
guise, without occupying us much with the sense of his
affliction. We should be descending to him, as it were,
in pity. But we never pity Christ, never think of him
as struggling with the disadvantages of a lower level, to
rise above it. In fact, he does not allow up, after all, to
think much of his privations. We think of him more as
a being of mighty resources, proving himself, only the
more sublimely, that he is in the guise of destitution.
He is the most unworldly of beings, having no desire at
all for what the earth can give, impossible to be caught
with any longing for its benefits, impassible even to its
charms, and yet there is no ascetic sourness or repugnance,
no misanthropic distaste in his manner; as if he were
bracing himself against the world to keep it off. The
more closely he is drawn to other worlds, the more fresh
and susceptible is he to the humanities of this. The little
chUd is an image of gladness, which his heart leaps forth
to embrace. The wedding and the feast and the funera.

288 HIS ASTONISHING PRETENSIONS
have all their cord of sympathy in his bosom. At the
wedding he is clothed in congratulation, at the feast in
doctrine, at the funeral in tears ; but no miser was ever
drawn to his money, with a stronger desire, than he to
worlds above the world. Men undertake to be spiritual,
and they become ascetic ; or, endeavoring to hold a liberal
view of the comforts and pleasures of society, they are
soon buried in the world, and slaves to its fashions; or,
holding a scrupulous watch to keep out every particular
, sin, they become legal, and fall out of liberty ; or, charmed
with the noble and heavenly liberty, they run to negli
gence and irresponsible living; so the earnest become
violent, the fervent fanatical and censorious, the gentle
waver, the firm turn bigots, the liberal grow lax, the be
nevolent ostentatious. Poor human infirmity can hold
nothing steady. Where the pivot of righteousness is
1 broken, the scales must needs slide off their balance.
Indeed, it is one of the most difficult things which a cul
tivated christian can attempt, only to sketch a theoretic
view of character, in its true justness and proportion, so
that a little more study, or a little more self-experience,
will not require him to modify it. And yet the character
of Christ is never modified, even by a shade of rectifica
tion. It is one and the same throughout. He makes no
improvements, prunes no extravagances, returns from no
eccentricities. The balance of his character is never dis-
{ turbed, or readjusted, and the astounding assumption on
which it is based is never shaken, even by a suspicion
that he falters in it.
There is yet another point related to this, in which tho
attitude of Jesus is even more distinct from any that was

ARE FULLY SUPPORTED. 289
ever taken by man, and is yet triumphantly sustained. 1
speak of the astonishing pretensions asserted concerning
his person. Similar pretensions have sometimes been as
sumed by maniacs, or insane persons, but never, so far as
I know, by persons in the proper exercise of their reason.
Certain it is that no mere man could take the same atti
tude of supremacy toward the race, and inherent affinity or
oneness with God, without fatally shocking the confidence
of the world by his effrontery. Imagine a human crea
ture saying to the world — "I came forth from the Father"
— "ye are from beneath, I am from above;" facing all the
intelligence and even the philosophy of the world, and
saying, in bold assurance— " behold, a greater than Solo
mon is here" — " I am the light of the world" — " the way,
the truth, and jhe life ;" publishing to all peoples and re-
Ugions — " No man cometh to the Father, but by me ;"
promising openly in his death — "I will draw all men
unto me;" addressing the Infinite Majesty, and testifying
— "I have glorified thee on the earth;" calling to the
human race — •" Come unto me," " follow me ;" laying his
hand upon all the dearest and most intimate affections of
life, and demanding a precedent love- — "he that loveth
father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."
Was there ever displayed an example of effrontery and
spiritual conceit so preposterous ? Was there ever a man
that darod put himself on the world in such pretensions ?
—as if all light was in him, as if to follow him and be
worthy of him was to be the conclusive or chief excel
lence of mankind! What but mockery and disgust does
he challenge as the certain reward of his audacity ! But
no one is offended with Jesus on this account, and what
is a sure test of his success, it is remarkable that, of all
25

290 HIS ASTON. SHING PRETENSIONS
the readers of the gospel, it probably never even occurs
to one in a hundred thousand, to blame his conceit, or
the egregious vanity of his pretensions.
Nor is there any thing disputable in these pretensions,
least of all, any trace of myth or fabulous tradition.
They enter into the very web of his ministry, so that if
they are extracted and nothing left transcending mere hu
manity, nothing at all is left. Indeed there is a tacit as
sumption, continually maintained, that far exceeds the
range of these formal pretensions. He says — ' I and the
Father that sent me." What figure would a man present
in such language — I and the Father? He goes even be
yond this, and apparently without any thought of excess
or presumption, classing himself with the infinite Majesty
in a common plural, he says — "We will come unto him,
and make our abode with him." Imagine any, the great
est and hohest of mankind, any prophet, or apostle, saying
we, of himself and the Great Jehovah! What a concep
tion did he give us concerning himself, when he assumed
the necessity of such information as this — "my Father is
greater than I;" and above all, when he calls himself, as
he often does,4n a tone of condescension — "the Son of
Man." See him also on the top of Olivet, looking down
on the guUty city and weeping words of compassion like
these — imagine some man weeping over London or !New
York, in the Uke — "How often would I have gathered
thy children together as a hen doth gather her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!" See him also in the
supper, instituting a rite of remembrance for himself, a
scorned, outcast man, and saying — "this is my body" —
"this do in remembrance of me."
I have dwelt thus on the transcendent pretensions ol

ARE FULLY SUPPORTED. 291
Jesus, because there is an argument here for his super-hu
manity, which can not be resisted. For eighteen hundred
years, these prodigious assumptions have been published
and preached to a world that is quick to lay hold of con
ceit, and bring down the lofty airs of pretenders, and yet,
during all this time, whole nations of people, composing
as well the learned and powerful as the ignorant and hum
ble, have paid their homage to the name of Jesus, detect
ing never any disagreement between his merits and his
pretensions, offended never by any thought of his extrav
agance. In which we have absolute proof that he practi
cally maintains his amazing assumptions! Indeed it will
even be found that, in the common apprehension of the
race, he maintains the merit of a most peculiar modesty,
producing no conviction more distinctly, than that of his
intense lowliness and humility. His worth is seen to be
so great, his authority so high, his spirit so celestial, that
instead of being offended by his pretensions, we take the
impression, of one in whom it is even a condescension to
breathe our air. I say not that his friends and followers
take this impression, it is received as naturally and irre
sistibly by unbelievers. I do not recollect any skeptic, or
infidel who has even thought to accuse hun as a conceited
person, or to assault him in this, the weakest and absurd-
est, if not the strongest and holiest, point of his character.
Come now, all ye that tell us in your wisdom of the
mere natural humanity of Jesus, and help us to find how
it is, thathe is only a natural development of the human;
select your best and wisest character; take the range, if
you will, of all the great philosophers and saints, and
choose out one that is most competent ; or if, perchance:
«ome one of you may imagine that he is himself about

292 HE EXCELS IN THE PASSIVE,
upon a level with Jesus, (as we hear that some of you do,)
let him come forward in this trial and say — "follow me" —
"be worthy of me" — "I am the light ofthe world" — "ye
are from beneath, I am from above" — "behold a greater
than Solomon is here;" take ou all these transcendent as
sumptions, and see how soon your glory will be sifted out
of you by the detective gaze, and darkened by the con
tempt of mankind! Why not; is not the challenge fair?
Do you not tell us that you can say as divine things as
he? Is it not in you too, of course, to do what is human?
are you not in the front rank of human developments? do
you not rejoice in the power to rectify many mistakes
and errors in the words of Jesus? Give us then this one
experiment, and see if it does not prove to you a truth that
is of some consequence; viz., that you are a man, and
that Jesus Christ is — more.
But there is also a passive side to the character of Je
sus, which is equally peculiar and which also demands
our attention. I recollect no really great character in his
tory, excepting such as may have been formed under
Christianity, that can properly be said to have united the
passive virtues, or to have considered them any essential
part of a finished character. Socrates comes the nearest
to such an impression, and therefore most resembles Christ
in the submissiveness of his death. It does not appear,
however, that his mind had taken this turn previously to
his trial, and the submission he makes to the public sen
tence is, in fact, a refusal only to escape from the prison
surreptitiously ; which he does, partly because he thinks
it the duty of every good citizen not to break the laws.
and partly, if we judge from his manner, because he ia

AS IN THE ACTIVE VIRTUES. 293
detained by a subtle pride, as if it were something unwor
thy of a grave philosopher, to be stealing away, as a fugi
tive, from the laws and tribunals of his country. The
Stoics indeed have it for one of their great principles, that
the true wisdom of life consists in a passive power, viz., in
being able to bear suffering rightly. But they mean by
this the bearing of suffering so as not to feel it; a steeling of
the mind against sensibUity, and a raising of the will into
such power as to drive back the pangs of life, or shake
them off. But this, in fact, contains no allowance of pas
sive virtue at all ; on the contrary, it is an attempt so to
exalt the active powers, as to even exclude every sort of
passion, or passivity. And Stoicism corresponds, in this
respect, with the general sentiment of the world's great
characters. They are such as like to see things in the he
roic vein, to see spirit and courage breasting themselves
against wrong, and, where the evil can not be escaped by
resistance, dying in a manner of defiance. Indeed it has
been the impression of the world generally, that patience,
gentleness, readiness to suffer wrong without resistance, is
but another name for weakness.
But Christ, in opposition to all such impressions, man
ages to connect these non-resisting and gentle passivities
with a character of the severest grandeur and majesty;
and, what is more, convinces us that no truly great char
acter can exist without them.
Observe him, first, in what may be called the common
trials of existence. For if you will put a character to the
severest of all tests, see whether it can bear, without fal
tering, the little, common ills and hindrances of life.
Many a man will go to his martyrdom, with a spirit of
firmness and heroic composure, whom a little weariness 01
2f>*

294 HE IS NEVER DISCOMPOSED
nervous exhaustion, some silly prejudice, or capricious
opposition, would, for the moment, throw into a fit of vex
ation, or ill-nature. Great occasions rally great principles,
and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is
even above itself. But trials that make no occasion at all,
leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own
disposition. And here precisely is the superhuman glory
of Christ as a character, that he is just as perfect, exhibits
just as great a spirit, in little trials as in great ones. In
all the history of his life, we are not able to detect the
faintest indication that he slips or falters. And this is
the more remarkable, that he is prosecuting so great a
work, with so great enthusiasm; counting it his meat and
drink, and pouring into it all the energies of his life. For
, when men have great works on hand, their very enthusi-
\ asm runs to impatience. When thwarted or unreasonably
hindered, their soul strikes fire against the obstacles they
meet, they worry themselves at every hindrance, every
disappointment, and break out in stormy and fanatical
violence. But Jesus, for some reason, is just as even, just
as serene, in all his petty vexations, and hindrances, as if
he had nothing on hand to do. A kind of sacred patience
invests him every where. Having no element of crude
wUl mixed with his work, he is able, in all trial and oppo
sition, to hold a condition of serenity above the clouds,
and let them sail under him, without ever obscuring the
sun. He is poor, and hungry, and weary, and despised,
insulted by his enemies, deserted by his friends, but never
disheartened, never fretted or ruffled. You see, meantime,
that he is no stoic; he visibly feels every such ill as his
deUcate and sensitive nature must, but he has some sacred
and sovereign good present, to mingle with his painn,

BY HINDRANCES AND TRIALS. 295
which, as it were naturally and without any self- watching,
aUays them. He does not seem to rule his temper, but
rather to have none ; for temper, in the sense of passion,
is a fury that follows the will, as the lightnings follow the
disturbing forces of the winds among the clouds, and ac
cordingly where there is no self-will to roll up the clouds
and hurl them through the sky, the lightnings hold their
equUibrium and are as though they were not.
As regards what is called pre-eminently his passion, the
scene of martyrdom that closes his life, it is easy to distin
guish a character in it which separates it from all mere
human martyrdoms. Thus, it will be observed, that his
agony, the scene in which his suffering is bitterest and
most evident, is, on human principles, wholly misplaced.
It comes before the time, when as yet there is no arrest,
and no human prospect that there will be any. He is at
large to go where he pleases, and in perfect outward safety.
His disciples have just been gathered round him in a scene
of more than family tenderness and affection. Indeed it is
but a very few hours since that he was coming into the city,
at the head of a vast procession, followed by loud acclama
tions, and attended by such honors as may fitly celebrate the
inaugural of a king. Yet here, with no bad sign apparent,
we see him plunged into a scene of deepest distress, and
racked, in his feeling, with a more than mortal agony.
Coming out of this, assured and comforted, he is shortly
arrested, brought to trial, and crucified ; where, if there be
any thing questionable in his manner, it is in the fact that
he is even more composed than some would have him to
be, not even stooping to defend himself or vindicate his in
nocence. And when he dies, it is not as when the mar
tyrs die. They die for what they have said, and remain-

296 HIS AGONY NOT HUMAN.
ing sUent will not recant. He dies for what he has act
fiaid, and stUl is silent.
By the misplacing of his agony thus, and the strango
silence he observes when the real hour of agony is come,
we are put entirely at fault on natural principles. But it
was not for him to wait, as being only a man, till he is
arrested and the hand of death is before him, then to be
nerved by the occasion to a show of victory. He that
was before Abraham, must also be before his occasions.
In a time of safety, in a cool hour of retirement, unac
countably to his friends, he falls into a dreadful contest
and struggle of mind; coming out of it, finally, to go
through his most horrible tragedy of crucifixion, with the
serenity of a spectator!
Why now this so great intensity of sorrow? why this
agony? Was there not something unmanly in it, some
thing unworthy of a really great soul? Take him to be
only a man, and there probably was; nay, if he were a
woman, the same might be said. But this one thing is
clear, that no one of mankind, whether man or woman,
ever had the sensibUity to suffer so intensely; even show
ing the body, for the mere struggle and pain of the mind,
exuding and dripping with blood. Evidently there is
something mysterious here; which mystery is vehicle to
our feeUng, and rightfully may be, of something divine.
What, we begin to ask, should be the power of a superhu
man sensibUity ? and how far should the human vehicle
shake under such a power? How too should an innocent
and pure spirit be exercised, when about to suffer, in hia
own person, the greatest wrong ever committed?
Besides there is a vicarious spirit in love; all love in
serts itself vicariously into the sufferings and woes and, in

HIS PASSION A MYSTERY. 297
a certain sense, the sins of others, taking them on itself as
a burden. How then, if perchance Jesus should be di
vine, an embodiment of God's love in the world — how
should he feel, and by what signs of feeling manifest his
sensibility, when a fallen race are just about to do the
damning sin that crowns their guilty history ; to crucify
the only perfect being that ever came into the world ; to
crucify even him, the messenger and representative to them
of the love of God, the deliverer who has taken their case
and cause upon him! Whosoever duly ponders these
questions, will find that he is lea away, more and more,
from any supposition of the mere mortality of Jesus.
What he looks upon, he will more and more distinctly see-
to be the pathology of a superhuman anguish. It stands,
he will perceive, in no mortal key. It will be to him the
anguish, visibly, not of any pusillanimous feeling, but of
holy character itself; nay, of a mysteriously transcendent,
or somehow divine, character.
But why did he not defend his cause and justify his in
flocence in the trial? Partly because he had the wisdom
to see that there really was and could be no trial, and that
one who undertakes to plead with a mob, only mocks his
own virtue, throwing words into the air that is already
filled with the clamors of prejudice. To plead innocence
in such a case, is only to make a protestation, such as indi
cates fear, and is really unworthy of a great and composed
spirit. A man would have done it, but Jesus did not.
Besides, there was a plea of innocence, in the manner of
Jesus and the few very significant words that he dropped,
that had an effect on the mind of Pilate, more searching
and powerful than any formal protestations. And the
more we study the conduct of Jesus during the whole

298 HIS UNDERTAKING
scene, the more shall we be satisfied that he said enough ;
the more admire the mysterious composure, the wisdom,
the self-possession, and the superhuman patience of the
sufferer. It was visibly the death scene of a transcendent
love. He dies not as a man, but rather as some one might,
who is mysteriously more and higher. So thought aloud
the hard-faced soldier — " Truly this was the Son of God."
As if he had said — -"I have seen men die — this is not a
man. They call him Son of God — he cau not be less."
Can he be less to us ?
But Christ shows himself to be a superhuman character,
not in the personal traits only, exhibited in his life, but
even more sublimely in the undertakings, works, and
teachings by which he proved his Messiahship.
Consider then the reach of his undertaking ; which, if
he was only a man, shows him to have been $ie most ex
travagant and even wUdest of all human enthusiasts. Con
trary to every religious prejudice of his nation and even
of his time, contrary to the comparatively narrow and ex
clusive religion of Moses itself and to all his training
under it, he undertakes to organize a kingdom of God, or
kingdom of heaven on earth. His purpose includes a new
moral creation ofthe race — not ofthe Jews only and of men,
proselyted to their covenant, but of the whole human
race. He declared thus, at an early date in his ministry,
that many shall come from ihe east and the west and sit
down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the king
dom of God ; that the field is the world ; and that God so
loves the world, as to give for it his only begotten Son,
He also declared that his gospel shall be published to
all nations, and gave his apostles their commission, tn

IS NOT HUMAN. 299
go into all the world and publish his gospel to every
creature. Here then we have the grand idea of his mission- -it is
to new-create the human race and restore it to God, in the
unity of a spiritual kingdom. And upon this single fact,
Beinhard erects a complete argument for his extra-human
character; going into a formal review of all the great
founders of states and most celebrated lawgivers, the great
heroes and defenders of nations, all the wise kings and
statesmen, aU the philosophers, all the prophet founders of
religions, and discovering as a fact that no such thought
as this, or nearly proximate to this, had ever before been
taken up by any living character in history ; showing also
how it had happened to every other great character, how
ever liberalized by culture, to be limited in some way to
the interest of his own people, or empire, and set in oppo
sition, or antagonism, more or less decidedly, to the rest of
the world. But to Jesus alone, the simple Galilean car
penter, it happens otherwise; that, having never seen a
map of the world in his whole life, or heard the name of
half the great nations on it, he undertakes, coming out
of his shop, a scheme as much vaster and more diffi
cult than that of Alexander, as it proposes more and what
is more divinely benevolent ! This thought of a universal
kingdom, cemented in God — why, the immense Eoman
Empire of his day, constructed by so many ages of war
and conquest, is a bauble in comparison, both as regards
the extent and the cost! And yet the rustic tradesman of
Galilee propounds even this for his errand, and that in a
way of assurance, as simple and quiet, as if the immenso
reach of his plan were, in fact, a matter to him of no. con
sideration.

800 BUT HIS CONFIDENCE
Nor is this all, there is included in his plan, what, to any
mere man, would be yet more remote from the possible
confidence of his frailty ; it is a plan as universal in time,
as it is in the scope of its objects. It does not expect to
be realized in a life-time, or even in many centuries to
come. He calls it, understandingly, his grain of mus
tard seed; which, however, is to grow, he declares, and
overshadow the whole earth. But the courage of Jesus,
counting a thousand years to be only a single day, is equal
to the run of his work. He sees a rock of stability, where
men see only frailty and weakness. Peter himself, the im
pulsive and always unreliable Peter, turns into rock and
becomes a great foundation, as he looks upon him. "On
this rock," he says, "I will build my church, and the gates
of heU shall not prevail against it." His expectation too
reaches boldly out beyond his own death ; that in fact is to
be the seed of his great empire — " except a corn of wheat
fall into the ground and die, it abideth," he says, " alone."
And if we wUl see with what confidence and courage he
adheres to his plan, when the time of his death approach
es — how far he is from giving it up as lost, or as an ex
ploded vision ef his youthful enthusiasm — we have only
to observe his last interview with the two sisters of Beth
any, in whose hospitality he was so often comforted.
When the box of precious ointment is broken upon his
head, which Judas reproves as a useless expense, he dis
covers a sad propriety, or even prophecy, in what the
woman has done, as connected with his death, now at
hand. But it does not touch his courage, we per
ceive, or the confidence of his plan, or even cast a shade
on his prospect. " Let her alone. She hath done what
she could. She is come aforehand to anoint my body to

NEVER FALTERS. 301
the burying. VerUy I say unto you, wheresoever this
gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this
also that this woman hath done shall be told for a memo
rial of her." Such was the sublime confidence he had in
a plan that was to run through all future ages, and would
scarcely begin to show its fruit during his own life time.
Is this great idea then, which no man ever before con
ceived, the raising of the whole human race to God, a plan
sustained with such evenness of courage, and a confidence
of the world's future so far transcending any human ex
ample — is this a human development? Begard the be
nevolence of it, the universality of it, the religious grand
eur of it, as a work readjusting the relations of God and
his government with men — the cost, the length of time it
will cover, and the far off date of its completion — is it in
this scale that a Nazarene carpenter, a poor uneducated
villager, lays out his plans and graduates the confidence
of his undertakings? There have been great enthusiasts
in the world, and they have shown their infirmity by luna
tic airs, appropriate to their extravagance. But it is not
human, we may safely affirm, to lay out projects transcend
ing all human ability, like this of Jesus, and which can
not be completed in many thousands of years, doing it in
all the airs of sobriety, entering on the performance with
out parade, and yielding life. to it firmly as the inaugural
of its triumph. No human creature sits quietly down to
a perpetual project, one that proposes to be executed, only
at the end, or final harvest of the world. That is not
human, but divine.
Passing now to what is more interior in his ministry,
taken as a revelation of his character, we are struck with
26

302 HIS EXPECTATION
another distinction ; viz., that he takes rank with the poor.
and grounds all the immense expectations of his cause on
a beginning made with the lowly and dejected classes of
the world. He was born to the lot of the poor. His
manners, tastes, and intellectual attainments, however,
visibly outgrew his condition, and that in such a degree
that, if he had been a mere human character, he must
have suffered some painful distaste for the kind of society
in which he lived. The great, as we perceive, flocked to
hear him, and sometimes came even by night to receive
his instructions. He saw the highest circles of society and
influence open to him, if he only* desired to enter them.
And, if he was a properly human character, what virtuous,
but rising young man would have had a thought of im
propriety, in accepting the elevation within his reach ; con
sidering it as the proper reward of his industry and the •
merit of his character — not to speak of the contempt for
his humble origin, and his humble associates, which every
upstart person of only ordinary virtue is so commonly
seen to manifest. Still he adheres to the poor, and makes
them the object of his ministry. And what is more pecu
liar, he visibly has a kind of interest in their society,
which is wanting in that of the higher classes ; perceiving,
apparently, that they have a certain aptitude for receiving
right impressions, which the others have not. They are
not the wise and prudent, filled with the conceit of learn
ing and station, but they are the ingenuous babes of
poverty, open to conviction, prepared, by their humble
lot, to receive thoughts and doctrines in advance of their
age. Therefore he loves the poor, aud, without descend
ing to their low manners, he delights to be identified with
them. He is more assiduous in their service than other

IS IN THE POOR. 303
men have been in serving the great. He goes about on
foot, teaching them and healing their sick ; occupying his
great and elevated mind, for whole years, with details of
labor and care, which the nurse of no hospital had ever
laid upon him — insanities, blind eyes, fevers, fluxes, lep
rosies, and sores. His patients are all below his level
and unable to repay him, even by a breath of congenial
sympathy ; and nothing supports him but the conscious
ness of good which attends his labors.
Meantime, consider what contempt for the poor had
hitherto prevaUed, among all the great statesmen and phil
anthropists of the world. The poor were not society, or
any part of society. They were only the conveniences
and drudges of society ; appendages of luxury and state,
tools of ambition, material to be used in the wars. No
man who had taken up the idea of some great change or
reform in society, no philosopher who had conceived the
notion of building up an ideal state or republic, ever
thought of beginning with the poor. Influence was seen
to reside in the higher classes, and the only hope of reach
ing the world, by any scheme of social regeneration, was
to begin with them, and through them operate its results.
But Christ, if we call him a philosopher, and, if he is only
a man, we can call him by no higher name, was the poor
man's phUosopher ; the first and only one that had ever
appeared. Seeing the higher circles open to him, and
tempted to imagine that, if he could once get footing for his
doctrine among the influential and the great, he shoula
thus secure his triumph more easily, he had yet no such
thought. He laid his foundations, as it were, below all
influence, and, as men would judge, threw himself away,
A.nd precisely here did he display a wisdom and a charac

304 HE BECOMES THEIR PATRON,
ter totally in advance of his age. Eighteen centuries have
passed away, and we now seem just beginning to under
stand the transcendent depth of this feature in his mission
and his character. We appear to be just waking up to it
as a discovery, that the blessing and upraising of the
masses are the fundamental interest of society — a discov
ery, however, which is only a proof that the life of Jesus
has; at length, begun to penetrate society and public his
tory. It is precisely this which is working so many and
great changes in our times, giving liberty and right to the
enslaved many, seeking their education, encouraging their
efforts by new and better hopes, producing an aversion to
war, which has been the fatal source of their misery and
depression, and opening, as we hope, a new era of comfort,
light, and virtue in the world. It is as if some higher and
better thought had visited our race — which higher thought
is in the life of Jesus. The schools of all the philosophers
are gone, hundreds of years ago, and all their visions have
died away into thin air ; but the poor man's philosopher
still lives, bringing up his poor to liberty, light, and char
acter and drawing the nations on to a brighter and better
day. At the same time, the more than human character ol
Jesus is displayed also in the fact that, identifying himself
thus with the poor, he is yet able to do it, without elicit
ing any feelings of partisanship in them. To one who
will be at the pains to reflect a Uttle, nothing will seem
more difficult than this ; to become the patron of a class,
a down-trodden and despised class, without rallying in
them a feeUng of intense malignity. And that for the
reason, partly, that no patron, however just or magnan-

BUT WILL NOT HAVE THEM PARTISAN S. 305
imous, is ever quite able to suppress the feelings of a par
tisan in himself. A little ambition, pricked on by a little
abuse, a faint desire of popularity playing over the face
of his benevolence, and tempting him to loosen a little of
ill-nature, as tinder to the passions of his sect — something
of this kind is sure to kindle some fire of malignity in his
clients. Besides, men love to be partisans. Even Paul and
Apollos and Peter had their sects, or schools, glorying in
one against another. With all their efforts, they could
not suppress a weakness so contemptible. But no such
feeling could ever get footing under Christ. If his disci
ples had forbidden one to heal in the name of Jesus, be
cause he followed not with them, he gently rebuked them,
and made them feel that he had larger views than to suffer
any such folly. As the friend of the poor and oppressed
class, he set himself openly against their enemies, and chas
tised them as oppressors, with the most terrible rebukes.
He exposed the absurdity of their doctrine, and silenced
them in argument ; he launched his thunderbolts against
their base hypocrisies ; but it does not appear that the pop
ulace ever testified their pleasure, Cven by a cheer, or
gave vent to any angry emotion under cover of his lead
ership. For there was something still, in the manner and
air of Jesus, which made them feel it to be inappropriate,
and even made it impossible. It was as if some being
were here, taking their part, whom it were even an irrev
erence to applaud, much more to second by any partisan
clamor. They would as soon have thought of cheering
the angel in the sun, or of rallying under him as the head
of their faction. On one occasion, when he had fed the
multitudes by a miracle, he saw that their national super-

306 THE PERFECT ORIGINALITY
stitr.ons were excited, and that, regarding him as the Mes
siah predicted in the scriptures, they were about to take
him by force and make him their king ; but this was a
national feeling, not the feeling of a class. Its root was
superstition, not hatred. His triumphal entry into Jeru
salem, attended by the acclamations of the multitude, if
this be not one of the fables or myths, which our modern
criticism rejects, is yet no demonstration of popular fac
tion, or party animosity. Bobbing it of its mystical and
miraculous character, as the inaugural of the Messiah, it
has no real signification. In a few hours, after all, these
hosannas are hushed. Jesus is alone and forsaken, and
the very multitudes he might seem to have enlisted, are
crying, " Crucify him !" On the whole, it can not be said
that Jesus was ever popular. He was followed, at times,
by great multitudes of people, whose love of the marvel
ous worked on their superstitions, to draw them after him.
They came also to be cured of their diseases. They knew
him as their friend. But there was yet something in him
that forbade their low and malignant feelings gathering
into a conflagration round him. He presents, indeed, an
instance that stands alone in history, as God at the sum
mit of the worlds, where a person has identified himself
with a class, without creating a faction, and without be
coming a popular character.
Consider him next as a teacher; his method and man
ner, and the other characteristics of his excellence, apart
from his doctrine. That wUl be distinctly considered in
another place.
First of all, we notice the perfect originality and inde
pendence of his teaching. We have a great many men

OF HIS TEACHING. 307
who are original, in the sense of being originators, within
a certain boundary of educated thought. But the origin-
aUty of Christ is uneducated. That he draws nothing
from the stores of learning, can be seen at a glance. The
impression we have in reading his instructions, justifies
to the letter, the language of his cotemporaries, when
they say, "this man hath never learned." There is nothing
in any of his aUusions, or forms of speech, that indicates
learning. Indeed, there is nothing in him that belongs
to his age or country — no one opinion, or taste, or preju
dice. The attempts that have been made, in a way of
establishing his mere natural manhood, to show that he
borrowed his sentiments from the Persians and the eastern
forms of religion, or that he had been intimate with the
Essenes and borrowed from them, or that he must have
been acquainted with the schools and religions of Egypt,
deriving his doctrine from them — all attempts of the kind
have so palpably faUed, as not even to require a deliberate
answer. If he is simply a man, as we hear, then he is
most certainly a new and singular kind of man, never
before heard of, one who visibly is quite as great a miracle
in tbe world as if he were not a man. We can see for
ourselves, in the simple directness and freedom of his
teachings, that whatever he advances is from himself.
Shakspeare, for instance, whom we name as being proba
bly the most creative and original spirit the world has
ever produced, one of the class, too, that are called self-
made men, is yet tinged, in all his works, with human
learning. His glory is, indeed, that so much of what ia
great in history and historic character, lives and appears
in his dramatic creations. He is the high-priest, we some
times hear, of human nature. But Christ, understanding

808 NO DIALECTICS, NO ART.
human nature so as to address it more skillfully than he,
derives no help from historic examples. He is the high-
priest, rather, of the divine nature, speaking as one that
has come out from God, and has nothing to borrow from
the world. It is not to be detected, by any sign, that the
human sphere in which he moved imparted any thing to
him. His teachings are just as full of divine nature, aa
Shakspeare's of human.
Neither does he teach by the human methods. He
does not speculate about God, as a school professor, draw
ing out conclusions by a practice on words, and deeming
that the way of proof; he does not buUd up a frame of
evidence from below, by some constructive process, such
as the philosophers delight in ; but he simply speaks of
God and spiritual things as one who has come out from
Him, to tell us what he knows. And his simple telling
brings us the reality ; proves it to us in its own sublime
self-evidence ; awakens even the consciousness of it in our
own bosom ; so that formal arguments or dialectic proofs
offend us by their coldness, and seem, in fact, to be only
opaque substances set between us and the light. Indeed,
he makes even the world luminous by Ifis words — fills it
with an immediate and new sense of God, which nothing
has ever been able to expel. The incense of the upper
world is brought out, in his garments, and flows abroad,
as a perfume, on the poisoned air.
At the same time, he never reveals the infirmity so
commonly shown by human teachers, when they veer a
little from their point, or turn their doctrine off by shades
of variation, to catch the assent of multitudes. He never
conforms to an expectation, even of his friends. When
they look to find a great prophet in him, he offers nothing

HIS COMPREHENSIVENESS IS PERFECT. 309
in the modes of the prophets. When they ask for places
of distinction in his kingdom, he rebukes their folly, and
tells them he has nothing to give, but a share in his re
proaches and his poverty. When they look to see him
take the sword as the Great Messiah of their nation,
caUing the people to his standard, he tells them he is no
warrior and no king, but only a messenger of love to lost
men ; one that has come to minister and die, but not to
set up or restore the kingdom. Every expectation that
rises up to greet him, is repulsed ; and yet, so great is the
power of his manner, that multitudes are held fast, and
can not yield their confidence. Enveloped as he is in the
darkest mystery, they trust him still; going after him,
hanging on his words, as if detained by some charmed
influence, which they can not shake off or resist. Never
was there a teacher that so uniformly baffled every ex
pectation of his followers, never one that was followed so
persistently. Again, the singular balance of character displayed in
the teachings of Jesus, indicates an exemption from the
standing infirmity of human nature. Human opinions
are formed under a law that seems to be universal. First,
two opposite extremes are thrown up, in two opposite
leaders or parties; then a third party enters, trying to
find what truth they both are endeavoring to vindicate,
and settle thus a view of the subject, that includes the
truth and clears the one-sided extremes, which opposing
words or figures, not yet measured in their force, had pro
duced. It results, in this manner, that no man, even tht,
broadest in his apprehensions, is ever at the point of equi
librium as regards all subjects. Even the ripest of us are
continually falling into some extreme, and losing our bal

310 HE IS CLEAR
ancet afterward to be corrected by some other who dis
covers our error, or that of our school.
But Christ was of no school or party, and never went
to any extreme — words could never turn him to a one
sided view of any thing. This is the remarkable fact
that distinguishes him from any ether known teacher of
the world. Having nothing to work out in a word-
process, but every thing clear in the simple intuition of
his superhuman intelligence, he never pushes himself to
any human eccentricity. It does not even appear that he
is trying, as we do, to balance opposites and clear extrav
agances, but he does it, as one who can not imagine a one
sided view of any thing. He is never a radical, never a
conservative. He will not allow his disciples to deny him
before kings and governors, he will not let them re
nounce their allegiance to Caesar. He exposes the oppres
sions of the Pharisees in Moses' seat, but, encouraging no
factious resistance, says — "do as they command you."
His position as a reformer was universal — according to
his principles almost nothing, whether in church or state,
or in social life, was right — and yet he is thrown into nc
antagonism against the world. How a man will do, when
he engages only in some one reform, acting from his own
human force; the fuming, storming phrenzy, the holy
rage and tragic smoke of his violence, how he kindles
against opposition, grows bitter and restive because of
delay, and finaUy comes to maturity in a character thor
oughly detestable — all this we know. But Christ, with
all the world upon his hands, and a reform to be carried
in almost every thing, is yet as quiet and cordial, and as
Uttle in the attitude of bitterness or impatience, as if all
hearts were with him, or the work already done : so per-

OF ALL SUPERSTITION. 811
feet is the balance of his feeling, so intuitively moderated
is it by a wisdom not human.
We can not stay to sketch a full outline of this partic
ular and sublime excellence, as it was displayed in hia
life. It wUl be seen as clearly in a single comparison or
contrast, as in many, or in a more extended inquiry.
Take, then, for an example, what may be observed in hi8
open repugnance to all superstition, combined with his
equal repugnance to what is commonly praised as a mode
of liberality. He Uved in a superstitious age and among
a superstitious people. He was a person of low educa
tion, and nothing, as we know, clings to the uneducated
mind with the tenacity of a superstition. Lord Bacon,
for example, a man certainly of the very highest intellect
ual training, was yet infested by superstitions too childish
to be named with respect, and which clung to him, despite
of all his philosophy, even to his death. But Christ, with
no learned culture at all, comes forth out of Galilee, as
perfectly clean of all the superstitions of his time, as if
he had been a disciple, from his childhood, of Hume or
Strauss. "You children of superstition think," he says,
" that those GalUeans, whose blood Pilate mingled with
their sacrifices, and those eighteen upon whom the tower
in Siloam fell, must have been monsters, to suffer such
things. I tell you, nay; but except ye repent, ye shall
all likewise perish." To another company he says — "You
imagine, in your Pharisaic and legal morality, that the
Sabbath of Moses stands in the letter; but I tell you that
the Sabbath is made for man, and not man for the Sab
bath; little honor, therefore, do you pay to God, when
you teach that it is not lawful to do good on this day,
Your washings are a great point, you tithe herbs and

/312 HE IS NO LIBERALIST.
Beeds with a sanctimonious fidelity, would it not be as
well for you teachers of the law, to have some respect to
the weightier matters of justice, faith, and benevolence?"
Thus, while Socrates, one of the greatest and purest of
human souls, a man who has attained to many worthy
conceptions of God, hidden from his idolatrous country
men, is constrained to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, the
uneducated Jesus lives and dies superior to every super
stition of his time ; believing nothing because it is be
lieved, respecting nothing because it is sanctified by cus
tom and by human observance. Even in the closing
scene of his life, we see his learned and priestly assailants
refusing to go into the judgment-hall of Caiaphas, lest
they should be ceremonially defiled and disqualified for
the feast ; though detained by no scruple at all as regards
the instigation of a murder! While he, on the other hand,
pitying their delusions, prays for them from his cross —
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
And yet Christ is no liberal, never takes the ground or
boasts the distinction of a liberal among his countrymen,
because it is not a part of his infirmity,- in discovering an
error here, to fly to an excess there. His ground is char
ity, not liberality ; and the two are as wide apart in their
practical implications, as adhering to all truth and being
loose in all. Charity holds fast the minutest atoms of
truth, as being precious and divine, offended by even so
much as a thought of laxity. Liberality loosens the terms
of truth ; permitting easily and with careless magnanimity
variations from it; consenting, as it were, in its own sov
ereignty, to overlook or allow them ; and subsiding thus, ere
long, into a licentious indifference to all truth, and a gen
eral defect of responsibility in regard to it. Charity ex

HIS SIMPLICITY IS PERFECT. 813
tends allowance to men ; liberality, to falsities themselves.
Charity takes the truth to be sacred and immovable ; lib
erality allows it to be marred and maimed at pleasure.
How different the manner of Jesus in this respect from
that unreverent, feeble laxity, that lets the errors be as
good as the truths, and takes it for a sign of intellectual
eminence, that one can be floated comfortably in the
abysses of liberalism. "Judge not," he says, in holy
charity, "that ye be not judged;" and again, in holy ex
actness, "whosoever shall break, or teach to break, one
of these least commandments, shall be least in the king
dom of God;" in the same way, "he that is not with us,
is against us;" and again, "he that is not against us, is
for us ;" in the same way also, " ye tithe mint, anise, and
cummin ;" and again, " these things ought ye to have done,
and not to leave the other undone;" once more, too, in
the same way, " he that is without sin, let him cast the
first stone;" and again, "go, and sin no more." So mag
nificent and sublime, so plainly divine, is the balance of
Jesus. Nothing throws him off the center on whiclf
truth rests; no prejudice, no opposition, no attempt to
right a mistake, or rectify a delusion, or reform a practice.
If this be human, I do not know, for one, what it is to be
human. Again, it is a remarkable and even superhuman dis
tinction of Jesus, that, whUe he is advancing doctrines so
far transcending all deductions of philosophy, and opening
mysteries that defy all human powers of expUcation, he
is yet able to set his teachings in a form of simplicity,
that accommodates all classes of minds. And this, for the
reason that he speaks directly to men's convictions them
selves, without and apart from any learned and curious

314 HE IS INTELLIGIBLE
elaboration, such as the uncultivated can not follow. No
one of the great writers of antiquity had even pro
pounded, as yet, a doctrine of virtue which the multitude
could understand. It was taught as being to xaXov, [the
fair,] or to -rpsirov, [the becoming,] or something of that
nature, as distant from all their apprehensions, and as des
titute of motive power, as if it were a doctrine of mineral
ogy. Considered as a gift to the world at large, it was
the gift of a stone, not of bread. But Jesus tells them di
rectly, in a manner level to their understanding, what
they want, what they must do and be, to inherit eternal
life, and their inmost convictions answer to his words.
Besides, his doctrine is not so much a doctrine as a biog
raphy, a personal power, a truth all motivity, a love walk
ing the earth in the proximity of a mortal fellowship.
He only speaks what goes forth as a feeling and a power
in his life, breathing into all hearts. To be capable of his
doctrine, only requires that the hearer be a human creat-
rre, wanting to know the truth.
CaU him then, who wUl, a man, a human teacher;
what human teacher ever came down thus upon the
soul of the race, as a beam of light from the skies —
pure light, shining directly into the visual orb of the
mind, a light for all that live, a full transparent day, in
which truth bathes the spirit as an element. Others
talk and speculate about truth, and those who can may
follow; but Jesus is the truth, and lives it, and, if he
is a mere human teacher, he is the first who was ever
able to find a form for truth, at all adequate to the
world's uses. And yet the truths he teaches out -reach
aU the doctrines of all the philosophers of the world.
He excels them, a hundred fold more, in the scope and

TO ALL CLASSES. 815
grandeui of his doctrine, than he does in his simplicity
itself. Is this human or is it plainly divine? If you will see
what is human, or what the wisdom of humanity would
ordain, it is this — exactly what the subtle and accom
plished Celsus, the great adversary of Christianity in its
original promulgation, alledges for one of his principal
arguments against it. "Woolen manufacturers," he says,
"shoemakers, and curriers, the most uneducated and boor
ish of men are zealous advocates of this religion ; men who
can not open their mouths before the learned, and who
only try to gain over the women and children in fam
ilies."* And again, what is only the same objection, un
der a different form, assuming that religion, like a philoso
phy, must be for the learned, he says, "He must be void
of understanding, who can believe that Greeks and barba
rians, in Asia, Europe, and Lybia — all nations to the ends
of the earth — can unite in one and the same religious doc-
trine."f So also, Plato says, "it is not easy to find the
Father and Creator of all existence, and when he is found
it is impossible to make him known to all.":J: "But ex
actly this, says Justin Martyr, "is what our Christ has ef
fected by his power." And Tertullian also, glorying in
the simplicity of the gospel, as already proved to be a
truly divine excellence, says, "Every christian artisan
has found God, and points him out to thee, and, in fact,
shows thee every thing which is sought for in God, al
though Plato maintains that the creator of the world is not
easily found, and that, when he is found, he can not
be made known to all."§ Here then, we have Christ
?Neander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. 19. f lb., p. 33.
t Timaeus. § Neander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. 19

816 HIS MORALITY
against Census, and Christ against Plato. Those agree in
assuming that we have a God, whom only the great can
mount high enough in argument to know. Christ reveals
a God whom the humblest artisan can teach, and all
mankind embrace, with a faith that unifies them all.
Again, the morality of Jesus has a practical superiority
to that of all human teachers, in the fact that it is not an
artistic, or theoretically elaborated scheme, but one that is
propounded in precepts that carry their own evidence, and
are, in fact, great spiritual laws ordained by God, in the
throne of religion. He did not draw long arguments to
settle what the summum bonum is, and then produce a
scheme of ethics to correspond. He did not go into the
vexed question, what is the foundation of virtue? and
hang a system upon his answer. Nothing falls into an ar
tistic shape, as when Plato or Socrates asks what kind of
action is beautiful action? reducing the principles of
morality to a form as difficult for the uncultivated, as the
art of sculpture itself. Yet, Christ excels them all in the
beauty of his precepts, without once appearing to consider
their beauty. He simply comes forth telling us, from God,
what to do, without deducing any thing in a critical way ;
and yet, while nothing has ever yet been settled by the
critics and theorizing philosophers, that could stand fast
and compel the assent of the race, even for a year, the
morality of Christ is about as firmly seated in the convic
tions of men, as the law of gravity in their bodies.
He comes into the world full of all moral beauty, as
God of physical ; and as God was not obliged to set him
self to a course of aesthetic study, when he created the
forms and landscapes of the world, so Christ comes to
1 his rules, by no critical practice in words. He open3 his

IS NOT ARTISTIC. 317
lips, and the creative glory of his mind pours itself forth
in Uving precepts — Do to others as ye would that others
should do to you — Blessed are the peacemakers — Smitten
upon one cheek, turn the other — Besist not evil — For
give your enemies — Do good to them that hate you — Lend
not, hoping to receive — Beceive the truth as little children.
Omitting all the deep spiritual doctrines he taught, and
taking all the human teachers on their own ground, the
ground of preceptive morality, they are seen at once, to
be meager and cold; little artistic inventions, gleams of
high conceptions caught by study, having about the same
relation to the christian morality, that a statue has to the
flexibility, the self-active force, and flushing warmth of-
man, as he goes forth in the image of his Creator, to be
the reflection of His beauty and the living instrument of
his will. Indeed, it is the very distinction of Jesus that
he teaches, not a verbal, but an original, vital, and divine
morality. He does not dress up a moral picture and ask
you to observe its beauty, he only tells you how to Uve ;
and the most beautiful characters the world has ever seen,
have been those who received and lived his precepts with
out once conceiving their beauty.
Once more it is a high distinction of Christ's character,
as seen in his teachings, that he is never anxious for the
success of his doctrine. Fully conscious of the fact that
the world is against him, scoffed at, despised, hated, alone
too in his cause, and without partisans that have any pub
lic influence, no man has ever been able to detect in him the
least anxiety for the final success of his doctrine. He is
never jealous of contradiction. When his friends display
their dullness and incapacity, or even when they forsake
>iim, he is never ruffled or disturbed. He rests on hia

318 NE ER ANXIOUS FOR SUCCESS.
words, with a composure as majestic as if he were sitting
ou the circle of the heavens. Now the consciousness of
truth, we are not about to deny, has an effect of this na
ture in every truly great mind. But wnen has it had an
effect so complete? What human teacher, what great phi
losopher has not shown some traces of anxiety for his
school, that indicated his weakness; some pride in his
friends, some dislike of his enemies, some traces of wound
ed ambition, when disputed or denied ? But here is a lone
man, a humble, uneducated man, never schooled into the
elegant fiction of an assumed composure, or practiced in
the conventional dignities of manners, and yet, finding all
the world against him, the world does not rest on its axle
more firmly than he upon his doctrine. Questioned by
PUate what he means by truth, it is enough to answer —
"He that is of the truth heareth my voice." If this be
human, no other man of the race, we are sure, has ever
dignified humanity by a like example.
Such is Christ as a teacher. When has the world seen a
phenomenon like this ; a lonely uninstructed youth, coming
forth amid the .moral darkness of Galilee, even more dis
tinct from his age, and from every thing around him, than
a Plato would be rising up alone in some wild tribe in
Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world,
and maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-
evidence of his Ufe and doctrine ! Does he this by the force
of mere human talent or genius? If so, it is time that
we begin to look to genius for miracles ; for there is really
no greater miracle.
There is yet one other and more inclusive distinction of
the character of Jesus, which must not be omitted, and

THE MORE FAMILIARLY KNOWN, 319
which sets him off more widely from all the mere men of
the race, just because it raises a contrast which is, at once,
total and experimental. Human characters are always
reduced in their eminence, and the impressions of awe
they have raised, by a closer and more complete acquaint
ance. Weakness and blemish are discovered by familiar
ity; admiration lets in qualifiers; on approach, the halo
dims a little. But it was not so with Christ. With his
disciples, in closest terms of intercourse, for three whole
years; their brother, friend, teacher, monitor, guest, fellow-
traveler; seen by them under all the conditions of public
ministry, and private society, where the ambition of show,
or the pride of power, or the ill-nature provoked by an
noyance, or the vanity drawn out by confidence, would
most certainly be reducing him to the criticism even of
persons most unsophisticated, he is yet visibly raising their
sense of his degree and quality; becoming a greater won
der, and holier mystery, and gathering to his person feel
ings of reverence and awe, at once more general and more
sacred. FamUiarity operates a kind of apotheosis, and the
man becomes divinity, in simply being known. At first,
he is the Son of Mary and the Nazarene carpenter. Next,
he is heard speaking with authority, as contrasted even
with the Scribes. Next, he is conceived by some to be
certainly Elias, or some one of the prophets, returned in
power to the world. Peter takes him up, at that point, as
being certainly the Christ, the great, mysterious Messiah ;
only not so great that he is not able to reprove him, when
he begins to talk of being killed by his enemies; protest
ing — "be it far from thee Lord." But the next we see of
the once bold apostle, he is beckoning to another, at the
table, to whisper the Lord and ask who it is that is going

320 THE DEEPER THE REVERENCE
to betray him; unable himself to so much as invade the
sacred ear of his Master with the audible and open ques
tion. Then, shortly after, when he comes out of the hall
of Caiaphas, flushed and flurried with his threefold lie, and
his base hypocrisy of cursing, what do we see but that,
simply catching the great master's eye, his heart breaks
down, riven with insupportable anguish, and is utterly dis
solved in childish tears. And so it will be discovered in all
the disciples, that Christ is more separated from them, and
holds them in deeper awe, the closer he comes to them and
the more perfectly they know him. The same too is true
of his enemies. At first, they look on him only as some
new fanatic, that has come to turn the heads of the peo
ple. Next, they want to know whence he drew his opin
ions, and his singular accomplishments in the matter of
public address; not being, as all that knew him testify, an
educated man. Next, they send out a company to arrest
him, and, when they hear him speak, they are so deeply
impressed that they dare not do it, but go back, under a
kind of invincible awe, testifying — "never man spake like
this man." Afterward, to break some fancied spell there
may be in him, they hire one of his own friends to betray
him; and even then, when they are come directly before
him and hear him speak, they are in such tremor of appre
hension, lest he should suddenly annihilate them, that they
reel incontinently backward and are pitched on the ground.
Pilate trembles visibly before him, and the more because of
his sUence and his wonderful submission. And then, when
ihe fatal deed is done, what do we see but that the multi
tude, awed by some dread mystery in the person of the cru
cified, return home smiting on their breasts for anguish, in
the sense of what their infatuated and gtulty rage has done.

IN WHICH HE IS nELD. 321
The most conspicuous matter therefore, in the history
of Jesus, is, that what holds true, in all our experience
of men, is inverted in him. He grows sacred, peculiar,
wonderful, divine, as acquaintance reveals him. At first
he is only a man, as the senses report him to be; knowl
edge, observation, familiarity, raise him into the God
man. He grows pure and perfect, more than mortal in
wisdom, a being enveloped in sacred mystery, a friend- to
be loved in awe — dies into awe, and a sorrow that con
tains the element of worship ! And exactly this appears
in the history, without any token of art, or even apparent
consciousness that it does appear — appears because it is
true. Probably no one of the evangelists, ever so much
as noticed this remarkable inversion of what holds good
respecting men, in the life and character of Jesus. Is this
character human, or is it plainly divine?
We have now sketched some of the principal distinc
tions of the superhuman character of Jesus. We have
seen him unfolding as a flower, from the germ of a perfect
youth; growing up to enter into great scenes and have his
part in great trials; harmonious in all with himself and
truth, a miracle of celestial beauty. He is a Lamb in in
nocence, a God in dignity; revealing an impenitent but
faultless piety, such as no mortal ever attempted, such as,
to the highest of mortals, is inherently impossible. He
advances the most extravagant pretensions, without any
show of conceit, or even seeming fault of modesty. He
Buffers without affectation of composure and without re
straint of pride, suffers as no mortal sensibility can, and
where, to mortal view, there was no reason for pain at all;
giving us not only an example of gentleness and patienco

322 SUCH A CHARACTER
in all the small trials of life, but reveaUng the depths even
of the passive virtues of God, in his agony and the
patience of his suffering love. He undertakes also a plan,
universal in extent, perpetual in time; viz., to unite all
nations in a kingdom of righteousness under God; laying
his foundations in the hearts of the poor, as no great teach
er had ever done before, and yet without creating ever a
faction, or stirring one partisan feeling in his foUowers.
In his teachings he is perfectly original, distinct from his
age and from all ages ; never warped by the expectation
of his friends ; always in a balance of truth, swayed by no
excesses, running to no oppositions or extremes ; clear of
all superstition, and equally clear of all liberalism ; pre
senting the highest doctrines in the lowest and simplest
forms ; establishing a pure, universal morality, never be
fore established ; and, with all his intense devotion to the
truth, never anxious, perceptibly, for the success of his
doctrine. Finally, to sum up all in one, he grows more
great, and wise, and sacred, the more he is known — needs,
in fact, to be known, to have his perfection seen. And
this, we say, is Jesus, the Christ; manifestly not human,
not of our world — some being who has burst into it,
and is not of it. Call him for the present, that "holy
thing" and say, "by this we believe that thou earnest from
God." Not to say that we are dissatisfied with this sketch,
would be almost an irreverence of itself, to the subject of
it. Who can satisfy himself with any thing that he can say
of Jesus Christ? We have seen, how many pictures of
the sacred person of Jesus, by the first masters; but not
one, among them all, that did not rebuke the weakness
which could dare attempt an impossible subject. So of

DIP ACTUALLY EXIST. 823
the character of Jesus. It is necessary, for the holy inter
est of truth, that we should explore it, as we are best
able; but what are human thoughts and human concep
tions, on a subject that dwarfs all thought and immediately
outgrows whatever is conceived. And yet,, for the rea
son that we have failed, we seem also to have succeeded.
For the more impossible it is found to be, to grasp the
character and set it forth, the more clearly is it seen to be
above our range — a miracle and a mystery.
Two questions now remain which our argument requires
to be answered. And the first is this — did any such char
acter, as this we have been tracing, actually exist ? Ad
mitting that the character, whether it be fact or fiction, is
such as we have seen it to be, two suppositions are open,
either that such a character actually lived, and was possi
ble to be described, because it furnished the matter of the
picture, itself; or else, that Jesus, being a merely human
character as he lived, was adorned or set off in this man
ner, by the exaggerations of fancy, and fable, and wild tra
dition afterward. In the former alternative, we have the
insuperable difficulty of believing, that any so perfect and
glorious character was ever attained to by a mortal. If
Christ was a merely natural man, then was he under all
the conditions privative, as regards the security of his vir
tue, that we have discovered in man. He was a new-cre
ated being, as such to be perfected in a character of stead
fast holiness, only by the experiment of evil and redemp
tion from it. We can believe any miracle,, therefore, more
easily than that Christ was a man, and yet a perfect char
acter, such as here is given. In the latter alternative, we
have four different writers, widely distinguished in their

824 HE WAS AN ACTUALLY
style and mental habit — inferior persons, all, as regards
their accomplishments, and none of them remarkable for
gifts of genius — contributing their parts, and coalescing thua
in the representation of a character perfectly harmonious
with itself and, withal, a character whose ideal no poet
had been able to create, no philosopher, by the profound
est effort of thought, to conceive and set forth to the
world. What is more, these four writers are, by the sup
position, children all of credulity, retailing the absurd gos
sip and the fabulous stories of an age of marvels, and yet,
by some accident, they are found to have conceived and
sketched the only perfect character known to mankind.
To believe this, requires a more credulous age than these
writers ever saw. We fall back then upon our conclu
sion, and there we rest. Such was the real historic char
acter of Jesus. Thus he lived, and the character is possi
ble to be conceived, because it was actualized in a living
3xample. The only solution is that which is given by
Jesus himself, when he says — "I came forth from the Fa
ther, and am come into the world."
The second question is this; whether this character is
to be conceived as an actually existing, sinless character in
the world. That it is I maintain, because the character
can no otherwise be accounted for in its known excellences.
How was it that a simple-minded peasant of Galilee, was
able to put himself in advance, in this manner, of all hu
man teaching and excellence ; unfolding a character so pe
culiar in its combinations, and so plainly impossible to any
mere man of the race? Because his soul was filled with
internal beauty and purity, having no spot, or stain, dis
torted by no obliquity of view or feeling, Lapsing there
fore into no eccentricity or deformity. We can make out

SINLESS CHARACTER. 325
ao account of him so easy to believe, as that he was sin
less; indeed, we can make no other account of him at
all. He realized what are, humanly speaking, impossibil
ities ; for his soul was warped aud weakened by no hu
man infirmities, doing all in a way of ease and natural
ness, just because it is easy for clear waters to flow from a
pure spring. To believe that Jesus got up these high con
ceptions artistically, and then acted them, in spite of the
conscious disturbance of his internal harmony, and the
conscious clouding of his internal purity by sin, would in
volve a degree of credulity and a want of perception, as re
gards the laws of the soul and their necessary action un
der sin, so lamentable as to be a proper subject of pity.
We could sooner believe all the fables of the Talmud.
Besides, if Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious of sin
as aU sinners are, and therefore was a hypocrite in the
whole fabric of his character ; realizing so much of divine
beauty in it, maintaining the show of such unfaltering har
mony and celestial grace, and doing all this with a mind
confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true vir
tues ! Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be
itself the greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.
Furthermore, if Jesus was a sinner, then he was, oJ
course, a fallen being;, down under the bondage, distorted
by the perversity of sin and its desolating effects, as men
are. The root therefore of aU his beauty is guilt. Evil
has broken loose in him, he is held fast under evU. Bad
thoughts are streaming through his soul in bad succes
sions; his tempers have lost their tune; his affections
have been touched by leprosy ; remorse scowls upon his
heart; his views have lost their balance and contracted ob
liquity ; in a word, he is fallen. Is it then such a being, ono

326 SPECIFICATIONS AGAINST IT
wno has been touched, in this manner, by the demonio
epell of evU — is it he that is unfolding such a character?
What then do our critics in the school of naturalism
say of this character of Christ? Of course they are
obliged to say many handsome and almost saintly things
of it. Mr. Parker says of him, that — "He unites in him
self the sublimest precepts and divinest practices, thus
more than realizing the dream of prophets and sages;
rises free from all prejudice of his age, nation, or sect;
gives free range to the spirit of God, in his breast; sets
aside the law, sacred and true — honored as it was, its
forms, its sacrifice, its temple, its priests; puts away the
doctors of the law, subtle, irrefragable, and pours out a
doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as Heaven, and
true as God."* Again — as if to challenge for his doc
trine, the distinction of a really superhuman excellence —
" Try him as we try other teachers. They deliver their
word, find a few waiting for the consolation who accept
the new tidings, follow the new method, and soon go be
yond their teacher, though less mighty minds than he.
Thous;h humble men, we see what Socrates and Luther
never saw. But eighteen centuries have past, since the
Sun of humanity rose so high in Jesus; what man, what
sect has mastered his thought, comprehended his method,
and so fully applied it to life!"f
Mr. Hennel, who writes in a colder mood, bat has, on
the whole, produced the ablest of aU the arguments yet of
fered on this side, speaks more cautiously. He says —
"Whilst no human character, in the history of the world,
can be brought to mind, which, in proportion as it could
be closely examined, did not present some defects, dis*
?Discourses of Religion, p. 294. t^-> P- 303.

BY PARKER AND HENNEL. 327
qualifying it for being the emblem of moral perfection, wo
can rest, with least check or sense of incongruity, on the
imperfectly known character of Jesus of Nazareth."*
But the intimation here is that the character is not per
fect ; it is only one in which the sense of perfection suffers
" least check." And where is the fault charged ? Why,
it is discovered that Jesus cursed a fig-tree, in which he is
seen to be both angry and unreasonable. He denounced
the Pharisees in terms of bitter animosity. He also drove
the money-changers out of the temple with a scourge of
rods, in which he is even betrayed into an act of physical
violence. These and such like specks of fault are discov
ered, as they think, in the life of Jesus. So graceless in
our conceit, have we of this age grown, that we can think
it a point of scholariy dignity and reason to spot the only
perfect beauty that has ever graced our world, with such
discovered blemishes as these ! As if sin could ever need
to be made out against a real sinner, in this small way
of special pleading; or as if it were ever the way of sin
to err in single particles or homeopathic quantities
of wrong! A more just sensibility would denounce this
malignant style of criticism, as a heartless and really low-
minded pleasure in letting down the honors of goodness.
In justice to Mr. Parker, it must be admitted that he
does not actually charge these points of history as faults,
or blemishes in the character of Jesus. And yet, in
justice also, it must be added that he does compose
a section under the heading — " The Negative Side, or the
Limitations of Jesus" — where these, with other like mat
ters, are thrown in by insinuation, as possible charges
sometimes advanced by others. For himself, he alledgea
* Inquiry, p. 461.

328 THE MANLIER OPINION
nothing positive, but that Jesus was under the populal
delusion of his time, in respect to devUs or demoniacal
possessions, and that he was mistaken in some of his ref
erences to the Old Testament. What now is to be
thought of such material, brought forward under such a
heading, to flaw such a character ! Is it sure that Christ
was mistaken in his beUef of the foul spirits ? Is it cer
tain that a sufficient mode of interpretation will not clear
his references of mistake ? And so, when it is suggested,
at second hand, that his invective is too fierce against the
Pharisees, is there no escape, but to acknowledge .that,
"considering his youth, it was a venial error?" Or, if
there be no charge but this, " at all affecting the moral
and religious character of Jesus," should not a just rever
ence to one whose life is so nearly faultless, constrain us
to look for some more favorable construction, that takes
the soUtary blemish away ? Is it true that invective is a
necessary token of Ul-nature? Are there no occasions
where even holiness will be most forward in it ? And
when a single man stands out alone, facing a whole living
order and caste, that rule the time — oppressors of the
poor, hypocrites and pretenders in religion, corrupters of
all truth and faith, under the names of learning and relig
ion — is the malediction, the woe, that he hurls against
them, to be taken as a fault of violence and unregulated
passion ; or, considering what amount of force and public
influence he dares to confront and set in deadly enmity
against his person, is he rather to be accepted as God's
champion, in the honors of a great and genuinely heroic
spirit? Considering how fond the world is of invective, how
ready to admire the rhetoric of sharp words, how manv

OF MILTON. 329
speakers study to exiel in the fine art of excoriation, how
many reformers are applauded in vehement attacks on
character, and win a great repute of fearlessness, just be
cause of their severity, when, in fact, there is nothing to
fear — when possibly the subject is a dead man, not yet
buried — it is really a most striking tribute to the moro
than human character of Jesus, that we are found
to be so apprehensive respecting him in particular,
lest his plain, unstudied, unrhetorical severities on this or
that occasion, may imply some possible defect, or " venial
error," in him. Why this special sensibility to fault in
him ? save that, by his beautiful and perfect life, he has
raised our conceptions so high as to make, what we might
applaud in a man, a possible blemish in his divine ex
cellence ?
The glorious old reformer and blind poet of Puritan
ism — vindicator of a free commonwealth and a free, un- '
prelatical religion — holds, in our view, a far worthier and
manlier conception of what Christ does, in this example,
and of what is due to all the usurpations of titled conceit
and oppression in the world. With truly refreshing ve
hemence, he writes — "For in times of opposition, when
against new heresies arising, or old corruptions to be re
formed, this cool, impassionate mUdness of positive wis
dom is not enough to damp and astonish the proud resist
ance of carnal and false doctors, then (that I may have
leave to soar awhUe, as the poets use,) Zeal, whose sub
stance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends
his fiery chariot, drawn by two blazing meteors figured
Uke beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiac
yields, resembling those four which Ezekiel and St. John
saw, the one visaged like a lion, to express power, high

330 THE CHANGE, SUCH A CHARACTER
authority, and indignation, the other of man, to cast de
rision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers — ¦
with them the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely
the slack reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates
and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising
their stiff necks under his flaming wheels. Thus did the
true prophets of old combat with the false ; thus Christ,
himself the fountain of meekness, found acrimony enough
to be stUl galling and vexing the prelatical Pharisees.
But ye wUl say, these had immediate warrant from God
to be thus bitter; and I say, so much the plainer is it
found that there may be a sanctified bitterness agamst the
enemies of the truth."*
And what other conception had Christ himself of the
meaning and import of his conduct iu the matter in ques
tion ? He felt a zeal within him, answering to Milton's
picture, which could not, must not, be repressed. He
knew it would be blamed, or set in charge -against him,
by false critics and uncharitable doubters — and he said,
" The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up." And still it
was, when rightly viewed, only a necessary outburst of
that indignant fire, which is kindled in the sweet bosom
of innocence, by the insolence of hypocrisy and oppres
sion. I conclude, then, (1.) that Christ actually lived and bore
the real character ascribed to him -in the history. And
(2.) that he was a sinless character. How far off is he
now from any possible classification in the genus human
ity ! Having reached this point, we are ready to pass, in
the next chapter, to the christian miracles, and show that
Christ, being himself the greatest of all miracles, in his
* Apology for Smectymnus, Sect. I.

HAS MADE IN OUR WORLD,
own person, did, in perfect consistency, and without i
ing any greater difficulty, work miracles.
But before we drop a theme like this, let us note more
distinctly the significance of this glorious advent, and
have our congratulations in it. This one perfect charac
ter has come into our world, and lived in it ; filling all
the molds of action, all the terms of duty and love, with
his own divine manners, works, and charities. AU the
conditions of our life are raised thus, by the meaning he
has shown to be in them, and the grace he has put upon
them. The world itself is changed, and is no more the
same that it was ; it has never been the same, since Jesus
left it. The air is charged with heavenly odors, and a
kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds, is
wafted on us in its breath. Let the dark ages come, let
society roll backward and churches perish in whole re
gions of the earth, let infidelity deny, and, what is worse,
let spurious piety dishonor the truth ; ' still there is a some
thing here that was not, and a something that has immor
tality in it. Still our confidence remains unshaken, that
Christ and his all-quickening life are in the world, as fixed
elements, and will be to the end of time ; for Christianity
is not so much the advent of a better doctrine, as of a per- /
feet character ; and how can a perfect character, once en
tered into life and history, be separated and finally expelled?
It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky,
separating and expunging one of the colors, than to get the
character of Jesus, which is the real gospel, out of the
world. Look ye hither, meantime, all ye blinded and
fallen of mankind, a better nature is among you, a pure
heart, out of some pure world, is come into your prison,

332 IS RADICAL AND FINAL.
and walks it with you. Do you require of us to show wno
he is, and definitely to expound his person? We may
not be able. Enough to know that he is not of us — some
strange being out of nature and above it, whose name is
Wonderful. Enough that sin has never touched his hal
lowed nature, and that he is a friend. In him dawns a
hope — purity has not come into our world, except to pu
rify. Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins
of the world ! Light breaks in, peace settles on the air,
lo ! the prison walls are giving way — rise, let us go.

CHAPTER XI.
CHRIST PERFORMED MIRACLES.
It used to be the. practice of theologians, to cite tha
miracles of Christ as proofs of his doctrine, and even of
the gospel history ; not observing that the conditions of
the question are entirely changed since the days of the
first witnesses. To the cotemporaries and attendants on
the ministry of Jesus, he might well enough be approved
of God, by miracles and signs; for, being themselves
eye-witnesses, they could easily be sure of the facts. But
to those who saw them not, to us who have heard of them
only by the report of history, they can never be cited as
proofs, because the main thing to be settled, with us, is
the verity of the facts themselves. The gospel history,
instead of being attested to us by the miracles, has them
father as a heavy burden resting on its own credibility.
Doubtless it is true that, if such a being as Christ were to
tome into the world, on such an errand as the gospel re
ports, we should look to see him verify his mission by
miracles, and without the miracles we should suspect the
authenticity of his pretensions. As far, therefore, as the
miracles sort with the person of Christ and his mission, as
set forth in his gospels, there is a harmony of parts in the
history, that is one of the evidences of its truth. It is
even a necessary evidence, yet scarcely a sufficient evi
dence by itself. We still require to be certified that the
miracles reported are facts. This done, Christianity, as a
supernatural revelation of God, is established. Until
then, the miracles are, it must be admitted, a subtraction

334 MODES OF DOUBT, OR DENIAL
from its rational evidence ; even though the subject mat
ter of the history be incomplete, and so far wanting in
rational evidence, without them.
The ground taken against the Christian miracles, by
Spinoza, in which he is followed by Mr. Parker, is this :
that they dishonor God, as involving the opinion that his
great revelation in nature is insufficient, and needs after
ward to be amended, and that, in doing it by miracles, he
is conceived to overturn his own laws, and break up the
order of his work.
Hume was an atheist, and, of course, had nothing to
say of God, or the confusion of his plan. Assuming that
we know nothing save by experience, he argued that we
know by experience the fallibility of all testimony, and
the uniformity of the laws of nature. Hence that no
amount of testimony can justify our belief in a miracle;
for we have, and must have, a stronger faith in the uni
formity of the laws of nature, than we can have in any
testimony. Assisted in this skeptical tendency by modern science,
which has set the laws of nature, for the time, in such
prominence, as to operate a real suppression of thought
in the spiritual direction, Dr. Strauss assumes the incredi-
bUity of miracles, without much care for the argument,
and bases on that assumption his deliberate and powerful
assault upon the gospel history.
Against these and similar modes of denial, which dis
tinguish the naturalistic tendencies of our time, we now
undertake, assisted by the material already prepared, i
the preceding chapters, to establish the fact of the Chris
tian miracles. Our argument will not prove every one
of them, or, in fact, any particular one ; for the question

MIRACLES DEFINED. 835
will still be open, for such as choose to engage in it,
whether this, or that, or some of them, are not to be dis
credited for particular reasons, which display the mistake
or credulity of the narrators. We shall only show that
Christ wrought miracles, which is the great point in issue.
Let us endeavor, then, first of all, as a matter on which
every thing depends, to settle what is to be understood by
a miracle, or what a miracle is.
We have raised a clear distinction already between na
ture and the supernatural ; viz., that nature is the chain
of cause and effect — that coming to pass which is deter-
unined by the laws of cause and effect in things. The
supernatural is that which acts on the chain of cause and
effect, from without the chain; not being caused in its
action, but acting from itself, under no conditions of pre
vious causality. The distinction of nature and the super
natural is the distinction, in fact, between propagations of
causality and original causality, between things and powers.
In this view, man, as a power, together with all created
spirits, good and bad, is a supernatural being co-ordinate
with God, in so far as he acts freely and morally. If he
moves but a limb in his freedom, he acts on the lines of
cause and effect in nature ; and if, in moving that limb,
he has committed a murder, we blame him for it, and
bring him to a felon's punishment; simply because he
was not caused to do the deed, by any efficient cause back
of him, but did it of himself; or, as the common law has
it, "by malice aforethought."
But we do not call these free moral actions of man,
miracles, because they are common, and because there is
no attribute of wonder connected with them. What then

336 THREE ELEMENTS INCLUDED.
is a miracle? It is a supernatural act, an act, that is
which operates on the chain of cause and effect in nature,
from without the chain, producing, in the sphere of the
senses, some event that moves our wonder, and evinces
the presence of a more than human_jgoyer. Observe
three points. (1.) It is by some action upon, not in, tho
Une of cause and effect; (2.) it is in the sphere of the
senses, for, though the regeneration of a soul may require
as great power as the raising of Lazarus, it is yet no
proper miracle, because it is no sign to the senses ; (3.) it
must be understood to evince a superhuman power, other-
"wise feats of jugglery and magic would be miracles. We
.commonly suppose, in miracles, a deific power, though
sometimes we refer them to a subordinate, angelic, or de
moniacal power; as when we speak of signs and lying
wonders, that are wrought by no divine agency. The
word miracle, which is a Latin diminutive, properly de
notes .some limited or isolated fact, that we wonder at. It
/takes the diminutive form probably because it relates to
something parceled off from the whole of nature, which,
in that view,.is small, or partial. The scripture uses sev
eral terms or names to denote such events, calling them
"signs," "wonders," "powers;" and once, #apa<Jo£a, trans
lated " strange things."
To make our definition yet more exact, or to clear il
yet farther of ambiguity, let us add the following nega
tives. 1. A miracle is not, as our definition itself implies, any
wonderful event developed under the laws of nature, or
of natural causation. Some religious teachers have taken
this ground, suggesting that nature was originally planned,
or preformed, so as to bring out these particular surprises,

FOUR MISCONCEPTIONS CORRECTED. 337
at the points where they occur. Doubtless God's original
scheme, taken as a whole, was so planned, or preformed;
but that scheme included more than mere nature, viz., all
supernatural agencies and events, and even his own
works, or actions, in the higher, vaster field of the super
natural. But it is a very different thing to imagine that
nature is every thing, and that the surprises are all devel
opments of nature.
2. A miracle is no event that transpires singly, or apart
from system ; for the real system of God is not nature, as
we have seen, but that vaster whole of government and
order, including spirits, of which nature is only a very
subordinate and comparatively insignificant member. In
this higher view, a miracle is in such a sense part of the
integral system of God, that it would be no perfect system
without the miracle. Hence all that is said against mira
cles, as a disruption of order in God's kingdom — there
fore incredible and dishonorable to God — is without
foundation. 3. A miracle is no contradiction of our experience. It
is only an event that exceeds the reach of our experience.
We have a certain experience of what is called nature and
the order of nature. But what will be the effect, in the
field of nature, when the supernatural order meets it, or
streams into it, we can not tell; our experience here is
limited to the results or effects that may be wrought, by
our own supernatural agency. What the supernatural di
vine, or angehc, or demonic agency may be able to do in
it, we know not. Therefore, aU that is alledged by Mr.
Hume falls to the, ground. It maybe more difficult to
believe, or more difficult to prove such facts, wrought by
such agencies : but not because they are contrary, in any
29

338 ADMISSIONS MADE
proper sense, to our experience. They are only more
strange to our experience.
4. A miracle is no suspension, or violation, of the laws
of nature. Here is the point where the advocates of
miracles have so fatally weakened their cause by too large
a statement. The laws of nature are subordinated to mir
acles, but they are not suspended, or discontinued by them.
If I raise my arm, I subordinate the law of gravity and pro
duce a result against the force of gravity, but the law, or
the force, is not discontinued. On the contrary it is act
ing still, at every moment, as uniformly as if it held the
arm to its place. All the vital agencies maintain a chem
istry of their own, that subordinates the laws of inorganic
chemistry. Nothing is more familiar to us, than the fact
of a subordination of natural laws. It is the great game
of life, also, to conquer nature and make it what, of it
self, by its own laws of cause and effect, it is not. We
raised the supposition, on a former occasion, of another
physical universe, separated from the existing universe,
and placed beyond a gulf, across which no one effect
ever travels. If now that other universe were swung up
side by side with this, it would instantly change all the
action of this — not by suspending its laws, but by an ac
tion that subordinates and varies its action. So the realm
of spirits is a realm that is permitted, or empowered to
come down upon this other, which is called nature, and
play its activity upon it, according to the plan God has
before adjusted ; but this activity suspends no law, breaks
no bond of system. Nature stands fast, with all her terms
of cause and effect, as before, a constant quantity, inter
posed by God to be a medium between supernatural
beings, in their relative actions. They are to haye their

BY OPPOSERS OF MIRACLES. 339
exercise in it, and upon it, and so, by their activity, they
are to make a moral acquaintance with each other ; men with
men, all created spirits with all, God with creatures, creat
ures with God ; acquaintance also with the need of laws
by the wrongs they suffer, and with their own bad mind
by seeing what wrongs they do — so by their whole ex
perience to be trained, corrected, assimilated in love, and
finished in holy virtue. There is no more a suspen
sion of the laws of nature, when God acts, than when we
do ; for nature is, by her very laws, subjected to his and
our uses, to be swayed, and modified, and made a sign-lan
guage, so to speak, of mutual acquaintance between us.
By these four negatives, distinctly premised, we seem
to have cleared the faith of miracles of all needless incum
brances, and, in that way, to have cut off the principal ob
jections urged against their credibility. Before proceed
ing, however, to inquire after the more positive proofs of
the christian miracles, it may be well to glance at the po
sitions taken, by some of the principal advocates of natu
ralism, and especially to the admissions they are sometimes
oonstrained to make.
Thus it is conceded by Mr. Hennel that — "It seems be
yond the power of intellect to decide a priori, whether
a miraculous revelation, or instruction through nature
alone, be more suitable to the character of God."* There
is then no inherent absurdity in the supposition, that God,
as the spring of scientific unity and order in his works,
should yet perform miracles. Whatever doubts we suffer
of their reality must be grounded in defects of historio
evidence. This is a large concession.
* Inquiry, p. 96.

840 ADMISSIONS MADE
Coincidently with this, Mr. Parker admits, that " there
is no antecedent objection" to miracles, if only they are
wrought "in conformity with some law out of our reach."*
And exactly this is true of all supernatural divine agency,
as we have abundantly shown — only the laws of God's su
pernatural agency are laws of reason, or such as respect
his last end, and the best way of compassing that end ;
which laws are yet so stable and so exactly universal, that
he will always do exactly the same things, in exactly the
same circumstances or conditions.
The admissions of Dr. Strauss are even more remark
able. We have already referred to his admission that one
"kingdom in nature may intrench on another," and that
" human freedom " may, in this way, modify "natural devel-
opment."f Ask the question accordingly, wherein is it
less credible that the freedom of God may do as much?
and we have, as the necessary answer, what contains the
whole doctrine of miracles. Doubtless it will be added
that man belongs to "the totality of things" and that God
does not; that man is in "the vast circle" of nature and
natural laws, and that God is not. But the answer, we
reply, is grounded in an assumption, as regards man, that
is justified by no evidence, and is contradicted even, by
the evidence of consciousness, Man, as a being of free
will, is no part of nature at all, no arc in the circle of na
ture. He belongs, we have abundantly shown, to a high
er kingdom and order; having it for his prime distinction
that he acts supernaturally, acts upon the circle of nature
from without, and never as being determined by the caus
alities of nature. All the free intelligences of the uni-
* Discourses of Religion, pp. 269-70. -fLife oi J»sus, Vol. I., p. 72

BY OPPOSERS OF MIRACLES. 341
verse are acting on the circle of nature, in this manner,
and why then may not God Himself?
But we have another concession that is even more to
our purpose. Adverting to the fact that the ancient peo
ples, especially of the East, begin at God, and see all
changes take their spring in his immediate agency, while
the moderns begin at things, and see all changes come to
pass, under natural laws, he distinctly rejects the latter, as
being, by itself, any complete and sufficient view of the
subject. "It must be confessed," he says, "on nearer in
vestigation, that this modern explanation, although it
does not exactly deny the existence of God, yet puts aside
the idea of Him, as the ancient view did the idea of the
world. For this is, as it has often been well remarked,
no longer a God and Creator, but a mere finite Artist, who
acts immediately upon his work, only during its first pro
duction, and then leaves it to itself; who becomes exclud
ed with his full energy from one particular sphere of
existence."* There is then, he admits, no validity in the modern
opinion, which assumes that all things take place by force
of second causes, and without an immediate divine agency.
Indeed he explicitly acknowledges, on the next page, that
"our idea of God requires an immediate, and our idea of
the world a mediate divine operation." He only man
ages to quite take away the value of the admission, by
raising the question, how to combine, or settle the relative
adjustment of the mediate and immediate operation, and by
so conducting the process as to come out in the conclusion,
that "God acts upon the world as a whole, immediately;
but on each part, only by means of his action on every
Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 72.
on*

342 ADMISSIONS MADE
other part," that is to say, "by the laws of jLature." AmJ
so miracles are excluded.
But there is a mistake here, first in his premises, and
next in his conclusion. It is not true that our "idea of
the world" requires us to hold the faith of a merely "me
diate" action of God upon it. Exactly contrary to this,
the idea of the world, taken as disordered by sin, demands
his immediate action. It is not only necessary, in order to
realize the idea of God, or make room for his practical ex
istence, that we conceive him to have some kind of imme
diate action, but the world, under its disorders, asks for it,
and waits for the restoring grace of it. It is very true
that if the world, as an organized frame of scientific or
der, under second causes, were in no way disturbed by our
immediate action upon it, there would seem to be no de
mand or even place for an immediate operation of God.
Why should the watchmaker turn the hands of his watch
directly by the key, when he has made them to go mediate
ly by the spring? But this is not any true statement of the
question; the world is in no such state of primal and ideal
order. Making^due account of sin, as our philosophers,
alas ! never do, we have a condition that, for order's sake,
asks an intervention of God's supernatural and powerful
hand. The world, in fact, was made, -including man, as a
thing necessarily unperfect; made to want, thus, interven
tions and immediate operations, to carry it on and bring it
out, in the final realization of its perfected ends. Even as
a watch, being no infallible machine, is submitted to exter
nal action, by means of the regulator; aud as, without a
regulator prepared for the immediate touch of some hand,
it would be no manageable or serviceable thing, so it is the
particular merit of nature, that it is originally ordered to

BY OPPOSERS OF MIRACLES. 348
receive the touch of free-wUl forces from without; first of
such as are human, and then, as the only sufficient power
of conservation, of such as are divine.
The error referred to, in the conclusion at which Dr.
Strauss arrives in his analysis, is too obvious to require a
particular refutation. Enough that any one but a mere
words-man, will find some difficulty in conceiving how
God should act "immediately on the whole" ofthe world,
without acting immediately on some one, or all of the
parts. Acting in, or upon some one wheel of a watch,
the whole action of the watch will be affected ; so when
every wheel is acted on; but what is that immediate ac
tion upon the whole of a watch, that does not immediately
act on any one of the parts? Besides, the argument by
which all particular action is excluded, would require
that God should never have begun to act immediately
any where. Creation is thus phUosophically impossible.
God, therefore, has had nothing to do, but to be chained
to the wheel from eternity, acting immediately on some
eternal whole that is self-existent as He; allowed to be
gin nothing, vary no part or particle, held by a doom
to his eternal totality. Is it this which "the idea of
God" requires, this by which our idea of God is fulfilled?
On this particular question, however, of an immediate
and a mediate divine agency, we are not disposed to spend
a great deal ofj time. We strongly suspect there is a
sophism in the question, much as if the inquiry were
whether God, who is above time, acts in this tense or
the other? All that we can say with confidence on this
subject, appears to be that, so far as we can see. it is nec
essary for us, under conditions of time, to hold the twc
conceptions, of a nature set on foot in some past time

344 THE MEDIATE AND IMMEDIATE,
and a divine force, acting supernaturally upon it now
and that God so distributes his action or plan, as to giva
us what wiU thus accommodate our finite conditions.
Nature, practically viewed and wholly apart from specu
lation, is a kind of third quantity between us and God, to
be reciprocally acted on ; so that we can see what we are
doing toward Him, and what he is doing toward us. It
is words to the great life-talk of duty, a medium of ac
tion and reaction that interprets to us the divine relation
ship in which we stand. Laying hold of nature by her laws
and causes, to build, produce, possess, and also to frame a
scientific knowledge, we get a footing and a basi-i of re
action for our freedom. If we descend into sin, we set
the causes of nature in courses of retributive action, and
this reveals what is in our sin. Then, as God will redeem
us, we are able to see a force entered into nature, which
is not nature's force. One may be as truly a divine force
as the other, but they are yet so ordered as to be relative
forces to our apprehension, acting one upon, or into, tho
other. In all christian experience, and in times of pray
er, we get a divine help, entered into our state, which w<5
apprehend distinctly, and with a conscious intelligence,
as we could not, if all divine agency were homogeneous.
But while we need, so manifestly, to think God's agency
in this manner, under a twofold distribution, it is by no
means certain that he, from his hight of eternity, classi
fies his action, under our finite categories of tense and
relative casuahty. It is very certain, as we have already
shown, that nature is not, to Him, the universal system.
All his doings, whether past or present, mediate or imme
diate, rest in law3 of reason, determined by his end, and
it is in these, sot in the physical laws magnified by sc*

POSSIBLY A HUMAN DISTINCTION. 345
ence, that he beholds the real system of his universe. . In
this view, nature may be to him a kind of continuous
creation, coalescing, as it flows from his will, in a com
mon stream with his supernatural action, and crystallizing
with it, in the unity of his end. Enough that, to us, a
conception of his work is given, which better meets our
finite conditions. Enough that we may call it natural and
supernatural ; cause and effect, and miracle ; mediate and
immediate; and that so, without any real error, we may
have our human want accommodated. The twofold dis
tinction is permitted as a practically valid form of thought,
without which we could have no sense of relationship
with God, under the experience of life; and, without
which, nothing done by him, as prior to our sin, in the
way of judicial arrangement, or posterior, in the way of
recovery, could ever be intelligible.
Having noted some of the admissions of the natural
izing teachers, we will now proceed to adduce some proofs
of the christian miracles; or rather to gather up the
proofs already supplied, by the course of our argument
itself. 1. We have seen that man himself acts supernaturally,
in all his free accountable actions. That is, he acts upon
the chain of cause and effect in nature, uncaused himself,
in his action. This is no miracle, but it involves all the
speculative difficulties encountered in miracles. These are l
nothing but acts, every way similar to ours, of God or
superhuman agents, on the lines of causes in nature; only
different in effect or degree, as they are different beings
from us. We have only to suppose that nature is, by
her very laws, submitted to them as to us, and that is the

346 ARGUMENTS FOR
end of all difficulty. We may wonder at their manifest
ations, and not at our own ; but our wonder alters nothing,
creates no derangement of nature, any more than if we
were so familiar with such doings, as to experience no won
der at all. If the sun darkens, or the earth shudders
with Christ in his death, that sympathy of nature is just
as appropriate for him, as it is for us, that our skin should
blush, or our eye distill its tears, when our guUt is upon
us, or our repentances dissolve us. It is not cause
and effect that blushes, or that weeps, but it is that
cause and effect are touched by sentiments which connect
with our freedom. Nature blushes and weeps, because
she was originally submitted, so far, to our freedom, or
made to be touched by our actions; but she could not even
to eternity raise a blush, or a tear of contrition, if we did
not command her.
2. Consider how near the fact of sin, which is the act
of a supernatural human agency, approaches to the rank
of a miracle. Sin, as we have shown in a previous chap
ter, is the acting of a free being as he was not made to act ;
for, if it were the acting of a being under laws of cause
and effect established by God, then it would be no sin.
God made sin possible, just as he made all lying wonders
possible, but he never made it a fact, never set any thing
in his plan to harmonize with it. Therefore it enters the
world as a forbidden fact, against every thing that God
has ordained. And then what follows? A general disrup
tion of every thing that belongs to the original paradisaic
u-der of the creation. The soul itself begins, at the first
moment, to feel the terrible action of it, and becomes a
crazed and disorderedrpower. The crystal form of the
spirit is broken, and it is become an opaque element, a liv-

MIRACLES. 847
sng malformation. The conscience is battered and tram
pled in its throne. The successions of the thoughts are
become disorderly and wild ; the tempers are out of tune ;
the passions kindle into guilty fires, and burn with a con
suming heat ; the imagination is a hell of painful, ugly
phantoms ; the body a diseased thing, scarred by deform
ity. Society is out of joint, and even the physical worid
itself, as we have shown, is marred iu every part by abor
tions, deformities visible, and discords audible, so as no
more to represent the perfect beauty of its author. What
devil now of confusion has thrown a magnificent creature,
and a realm of glorious natural order, into so great confu
sion? Where are those sovereign laws of beauty and
order which they tell us nothing can disturb ? We care
not to call sin a miracle. We only say that no one mira
cle, nor all miracles, ever heard of or reported, can be im
agined to have wrought a thousandth part of the disturb
ance actually wrought by sin, the sin of mankind. Who
ever then has yielded to the really shallow dogma of ra
tionalism, which teaches that cause and effect in nature must
have their way, fulfilling causes of ideal harmony, and
forever excluding the possibUity of a miracle, need not go
far to find a corrective. Let it be distinctly noted then —
3. That what we call nature, and what .the mere natu
ralists are so bold to assume can not be mended or altered
by any interference of miracle, does in fact no longer ex
ist. Sin has so far unmade the world that the divine order
is broken. The laws are all in action as at the first, never
discontinued, or annihUated, but the false fact or lying
wonder of sin, has made false conjunctions of causes, and
set the currents of causality in a kind of malign activity,
which displaces forever the proper order of nature. It ia

348 ARGUMENTS FOR
with nature as with a watch in which some wheel haa
been made eccentric, in its motions, by abuse. The whole
machine is in disorder, though no one part is wanting. It
is no longer a watch, or time-keeper, but a jumble of use
less and absurd motions. So nature, under sin, is no lon
ger nature, but a condition of unnature. Yet this it
is that our scientific naturalism assumes to be the perfect
order ; which not even God may touch by a miracle, with
out a breach of its integrity! It is nature, they say,
and God, who is the God of nature, will not, can not
touch it, without either consenting to its original im
perfection, or producing a general wreck of its perfection.
Why, the perfection of it is gone long ages ago ! From
the moment, when a substance or power located in it, viz.
man, began to act as he was not made to act, that is to sin,
it has been a disordered fabric of necessity. No longer
does it represent only the beautiful mind of its author, but
quite as often the shame, and discord, and deformity con
sequent upon sin. And no man, we are sure, who regards
it for a moment, will have any the least apprehension that
a miracle wrought in it, by its author, can be any thing
but a hopeful sign for its systematic integrity. That he
would never work a miracle in nature proper, as it came
from his hands, we are quite willing to admit, but since
nature is gone, fallen with man in the bad experiment of
evU, and since it was originally designed to be acted on,
both by man and by Himself, in a process of training that
carries him through a fall, and brings him out in redemp
tion, we see nothing to discourage the faith of miracles,
but much to prove the contrary. This brings us to
speak —
•±. Of the fact that, without a putting forth of the di

MIRACLES. 349
vine power, in some action sovereign as miracle, there
can be no reconstruction of the proper order of na
ture, no recovery of the broken state of man. The laws
of nature, without him and within, are now running per
versely, as laws of sin and death. The crystalline order
of souls and of the world is broken, and it is plain, at
a glance, that nobeing but God, the Almighty, can avail
to restore the disturbance. The laws have no power of
self-rectification, any more than the laws of a disordered
machine have power to cure the disorder by running. As
certainly therefore as sinners are to be restored, as certain
ly, that is, as that all God's ends in the world and human
existence are not to fail, there will be, must be, miracles,
or puttings forth, at least, of a divinely supernatural
power. Every thing in the whole creation is groaning and
travailing in expectation of so great a redemption. The
very plan was originally, as we have shown, to bring out
the grand results of spiritual order and character intended,
by means of a double administration ; that is by the crea
tion and the new-creation, the creation disordered by sin,
the new-creation raised up and glorified by grace and its
miracles. Go back then a moment —
5. To things precedent and see what considerations and
facts may be gathered there. First, we discover, what the
naturalists and men chiefly occupied with matters of sci
ence so generally overlook, the fact that nature never was,
and never was designed to be, the whole empire of God ;
that the final ends of God are not contained in nature at
all, and that it was appointed by Him to be only a means
to his ends, a mere field for the training of his chUdren.
In this view spiritual creatures, creatures supernatural, com
pose the real body and substance of his empire, and to these
30

350 ARGUMENTS FOR
nature was to be subjected, by these to be played upon in
the great life-battle of their trial — disordered by them aud
restored by Himself. Accordingly it is not implied that
the divine system is, in any degree, marred or broken by
his miracles. On the contrary, every thing done by Him,
will be done as fulfilling that system. There is no change,
no reconsideration, no breach of unity, but a doing of pre
cisely that which was set down to be done at the first. He
proceeds, in fact, by laws predetermined, in his miracles
themselves ; of course by a perfect and orderly system.
Observe, again, the fact that God has either never done
or can do any thing, or else that he may as well be sup
posed to do a miracle now. To create any thing that was
not, to set any plan on foot that was not on foot, was itself
a miracle that involved all the difficulties of a miracle sub
sequent. To create a scheme called nature and retire to
see it run, is itself a miracle, and we may just as well sup
pose that he continues to work, as that he so began. He
has either never done any thing, or else he may do some
thing now. There is no way to escape the faith of mira
cles and hold the faith of a personal God and Creator. It
is only pantheism, or, what is not far different, atheism.
that can rationally and consistently maintain the impossi
bility of miracles. Any religion too absolute to allow the
faith of miracles, is a religion whose God never did any
thing, and is therefore no God.
Again, it is discovered and proved, by science itself,
that God has performed, at least, one miracle, or class of
miracles, in the world, previous to the date of human
existence. We speak of the great geological discovery
that new races of animals and plants have, at different
times, been created, and finaUy man himself. The mere

MIRACLES. 851
metallic earth, which, at one time, was the all of nature,
did not make or sprout up into any form of life. That
would be a greater miracle, done by nature, than the rais
ing of Lazarus — as great as if the earth had raised him,
yea, as great as if the earth had invented and shaped him,
and breathed intelligence into him. Here then is proved
to us, out of the infallible registers of the rocks, that God
has sometime wrought a miracle upon nature. And, as
we said just now, one miracle proved, decides the ques
tion ; for there may as well be a thousand as one. We
pass now —
6. To the subject of our last chapter, where we meet a
proof that concludes all argument. We there showed,
by a full and critical examination of the character of
Jesus, that he is plainly not a human character, and can
not be rightly classed in the genus humanity ; also, that
the character is not an invention, but that such a person
must have lived, else he could not be described ; also, that
being such, in external description, he must have been,
what he himself claimed to be, a sinless being. Here,
then, is a being who has broken into the world, and is not
of it ; one who has come out from God, and is even an ex
pression to us of the complete beauty of God — such as
he should be, if he actually was, what he is affirmed to
be, the Eternal Word of the Father incarnate. Did he
work miracles? this now is the question that waits for
our decision— did he work miracles ? By the supposition,
be is superhuman. By the supposition, too, he is in the
world as a miracle. Agreeing that the laws of nature
wiU not be suspended, any more than they are by our
own supernatural action, wUl they yet be so suDordmated
to his power, as to permit the performance of signs and

352 THE GRAND ARGUMENT,
wonders, in which we may recognize a superhuman force?
Since he is shown to be a superhuman being, manifestly
nature will have a relation to him, under and by her own
laws, such as accords with his superhuman quality, and it
will be very singular if he does not do superhuman
things ; nay, it is even philosophically incredible that he
should not. An organ is a certain instrument, curiously
framed or adjusted in its parts, and prepared to yield
itself to any force which touches the keys. An animal
runs back and forth across the key-board, and produces a
jarring, disagreeable jumble of sounds. Thereupon he
begins to reason, and convinces himself that it is the na
ture of the instrument to make such sounds, and no other.
But a skillful player comes to the instrument, as a higher
presence, endowed with a super-animal sense and skill.
He strikes the keys, and all melodious and heavenly
sounds roll out upon the enchanted air. Will the animal
now go on to reason that this is impossible, incredible,
because it violates the nature of the instrument, and is
contrary to his own experience ? Perhaps he may, and
men may sometimes not be wiser than he. But the player
himself, and all that can think it possible for him to do
what the animal can not, will have no doubt that the
music is made by the same laws that made the jargon.
Just so Christ, to whose will or touch our mundane sys
tem is pliant as to ours, may be able to execute results
through its very laws, subordinated to him, which to ua
are impossible. Nay, it would be itself a contradiction
of all order and fit relation, if he could not. To suppose
that a being out of humanity will be shut up within all
the limitations of humanity, is incredible and contrary to
reason. The very laws of nature themselves, having him

THAT CHRIST IS A MIRACLE. 353
present to them, as a new agent and higher first term,
would require the development of new consequences and
incidents in the nature of wonders. Being a miracle him
self, it would be the greatest of all miracles if he did not
work miracles.
Let it be farther noted, as a consideration important to
the argument, that Christ is here on an errand high
enough to justify his appearing, and also of a nature to
exclude any suspicion that he is going to overthrow the
order of God's works. He declares that he has come out
from God, to be a restorer of sin, a regenerator of all
things, a new moral creator of the world ; thus to do a
work that is, at once, the hope of all order, and the
greatest of all miracles. Were he simply juggling with
our curiosity, in the performance of idle and useless won
ders, doing it for money, or to show what is of no conse
quence; as that he is a priest, or has the power of second
sight, or that the sun shines, or that he is right in assert
ing some insignificant opinion, it is allowed that we
should have no right to believe in him. But he tells us,
on the contrary, that he is come out from God, to set up
the kingdom of God, and fulfill the highest ends of the
divine goodness in the creation of the world itself; and
the dignity of his work, certified by the dignity also of
his character, sets aU things in proportion, and commends
him to our confidence in all the wonders he performs.
But our human supernatural action, it will be suggested,
is through the body, while the raising of Lazarus dis
penses with all natural media and instruments. And yet,
as our body is a part of nature, it will be seen that we act
upon the body as being itself nature, without media be
tween it and our wUl, in the same manner. The relation-

854 AND OUGHT THEREFORE
ship existing between different orders of being and natuivj,
may also vary according to their degree. On this subject
we know nothing. We can not even say, that, to such a
being as Christ incarnate in it, the whole realm of physi
cal existence was not present as a sensorium, quickened
by his life. Mere ignorance is not competent here to hold
an objection. If we can not see how Christ could work
his miracles, or send his will into things around him,
there is nothing singular in the fact. There are many
things that we can not understand.
Nor shall we apprehend in his miracles any disruptior
of law ; for we shall see that he is executing that true
system, above nature and more comprehensive, which is
itself the basis of all stability, and contains the real im
port of all things. Dwelling from eternity in this higher
system himself, and having it centered in his person
wheeling and subordinating thus all physical instruments
as doubtless he may, to serve those better ends in which
all order lies, it will not be in us, when he comes forth
from the Father, on the Father's errand, to forbid that he
shall work in tiie prerogatives of the Father. Visibly not
one of us, but a visitant who has come out from a realm
of spiritual majesty, back of the sensuous orb on which
our moth-eyes dwell as in congenial dimness and obscurity
of Ught, what shall we think when we see diseases fly
before him, and bUndness letting fall the scales of ob
scured vision, and death retreating from its prey, but that
the seeming disruption of our retributive state under sin,
is made to let in mercy and order from above. For, if
man has buried himself in sense, and married all sense to
sin, which sin is itself the soul of all disorder, can it be
to us a frightful thing that he lays his hand upon the per-

TO WORK MIRACLES. 355
verted causalities, and says, "thou art made whole?'' If
the bad empire, the bitter unnature, of our sin, is some
where touched by his healing power, must we apprehend
some fatal shock of disorder? If, by his miraculous
force, some crevice is made iu the senses, to let in the
Ught of heaven's peace and order, must we tremble lest
the scientific laws are shaken, and the scientific causes
violated ? Better is it to say — " this beginning of miracles
did Jesus make in GaUlee, and manifested forth his glory,
and we believe in him." Glory breaks in through his
incarnate person, to chase away the darkness. In him,
peace and order descend to rebuUd the realnybelow, they
have maintained above. Sin, the damned miracle and
misery of the groaning creation, yields to the stronger
miracle of Jesus and his works, and the great good minds
of this and the upper worlds behold integrity and rest
returning, and the peace of universal empire secure. Out
of the disorder that was, rises order ; out of chaos, beauty.
Amen ! Alleluia ! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth !
Once more, it is a powerful evidence for the historic
verity of the Christian miracles, that their deniers can
make no account of them, as reported in the christian nar
ratives, which is rational or even credible. Dr. Strauss
maintains that they are myths or legendary tales, that
grew up out of the story-telling and marveling habit of
the disciples of Christ, within the first thirty years after
their Master's death, at which time many of the eye-wit
nesses of the miracles were still living. That such a con
version of history into fable should have taken place in
the traditions of a much longer period of time, is not im
possible. But he is compelled to shorten his time in this
manner, as it would seem, because there is no allusion

356 NO OTHER ACCOUNT
made in the- gospels to the fall of Jerusalem as an accom
plished fact. For, had they been written after the over
throw by Titus, it is inconceivable that his name should
not have been mentioned in those chapters of the gospels
that foretell the overthrow, and also that the shocking
scenes ofthe siege, should not have been even too distinctly
described. On the supposition, too, that the first age of
discipleship was fertile enough in the mythical tendency, to
have generated so many miraculous stories, within the short
period of thirty years, this grand catastrophe of the na
tion must have been set off with a profuse garnish of
fictions, and Christ himself, coming in the clouds of heaven
to be the avenger of the cross, must have had such prom
inence in the transaction, as to quite leave the Eoman
commander in the shade. Hence the necessity that so
short a time should be fixed. And thus we are required
to believe that all these myths were developed and re
corded in the lifetime of the eye-witnesses of Christ's
ministry, and some of them recorded by eye-witnesses
themselves. The faith of miracles, we think, would be
somewhat easier than this. And still the difficulty is
farther increased by the fact that the epistles, the genuine
ness of which is indisputable, present exactly the same
Christ, and refer to the same miracles, in a manner clear
of all pretense of myth or extravagance.
But the mythologic hypothesis of this critic breaks
down more fatally, if possible, in the necessary implica
tion, that four common men are able to preserve such a
character as that of Christ, whUe loading down the history
thus, with so many mythical wonders that are the garb of
their very grotesque and childish credulity. By what
accident, we are compelled to ask, was an age of myths

OF THE MIRACLES 357
and fables able to develop and set forth the only concep
tion of a perfect character ever known in our world?
Were these four mythologic dreamers, believing their
own dreams and ail others beside, the men to produce the
perfect character of Jesus and a system of teachings that
transcend all other teachings ever given to the race ? If
there be a greater miracle, or a tax on human credulity
more severe, we know not where it is. Nothing is so dif
ficult, all human literature testifies, as to draw a character,
and keep it in its living proportions. How much more to
draw a perfect character, and not discolor it fatally by
marks from the imperfection of the biographer. How is
it, then, that four humble men, in an age of marvels and
Eabbinical exaggerations, have done it — done what none,
not even the wisest and greatest of mankind, have ever
been able to do?
So far, even Mr. Parker concedes the right of my argu
ment. "Measure," he says, "the religious doctrine of
Jesus by that of the time and place he lived in, or that
of any time and any place. Yes, by the doctrine of eter
nal truth. Consider what a work his words and deeds
have wrought in the world. Eemember that the greatest
minds have seen no farther, and added nothing to the doc
trine of religion; that the richest hearts have felt no
deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment of religion;
have set no loftier aim, no truer method than his, of per
fect love to God and man. Measure him by the shadow
he has cast into the world — no, by the light he has shed
upon it. Shall we be told such a man never lived ? the
whole story is a lie? Suppose that Plato and Newton
never lived. But who did their wonders, and thought
their thought? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton.

358 IS TENABLE.
What man could have fabricated a Jesus ? None but a
Jesus."* Exactly so. And yet, in the middle of the very para
graph from which these words are gleaned, Mr. Parker
says, " We can learn few facts about Jesus ; " also, that in
certain things — to wit, his miracles, we suppose — " Hercules
was his equal, and Yishnu his superior." Few facts about
Jesus ! all the miracles recited of him, as destitute of cred-
ibUity as the stories of Hercules and Vishnu ! And yet
these evangelists, retaUing so many absurd fictions and so
much childish gossip, have been able to give us a doctrine
upon which the world has never advanced, a character so
deep that the richest hearts have felt nothing deeper, and
added nothing to the sentiment of it. They have done,
that is, the difficult thing, and broken down under the
easy ! preserved, in the life and discourses of Jesus, what
exceeds aU human philosophy, all mortal beauty, and yet
have not been able to recite the simplest facts ! Is it so
that any intelligent critic will reason ? Suppose, if it
please, that they are not infallible in their narrative, for
we have not proved them to be. Still, as we would trust a
carrier who has brought us a case of the rarest diamonds,
set in the frailest and most delicate tissues, proving at
once his capacity and his honest fidelity to his trust, so
much more will we trust these simple men, who have
given us the perfect life of Jesus, discolored by no stain
from their own fond prejudices and weaker infirmities.
Nor, if this carrier may have once stumbled at our
door, when bringing us some bundle of meaner con
sequence, do we set him down, after bringing us the
casket safely, as one wlo is unreliable in these common
?Life of Jesus, p. 363

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 359
errands. No more can we set down our evangelists, as
unreliable in matters of fact, after they have brought us
the glorious, self-evidencing character of Jesus, even
though, to suppose the worst, they should be suspected,
once or twice, of mistake, in the external facts of his
ministry. But there are objections to be considered.
First objection. That if the miracles of Christ are to
be believed, why not those also of Hercules and Vishnu,
and the ecclesiastical miracles of the Papal church ? Un
doubtedly they must be, if they are wrought by such a
character as Jesus, engaged in such a work. But it is
rather too much to insist that, because we take good
money, we ought therefore in consistency to take counter
feit money. If it be said that the Popish miracles are as
well attested as those of Jesus, we have made nothing at
all, let it be observed, of the mere testimony of witnesses.
We have proved the witnesses by that which stands in
glorious self-evidence before us, and not the miracles by
the mere testimony of the witnesses. We will believe
the miracles also of Hercules, when Hercules is seen, by
the holy beauty of his perfect character, to have certainly
come out from God. So, too, we might well enough
agree to believe the miracles, of the apocryphal gospels,
that, for example, of the Infancy of Jesus, could the
writer only manage to give us the character of that in
fancy, without reducing it to a disgusting picture of pet-
tishness and passion. Until then, we must discover, in
what is called his gospel, how certain it is that the pen
which gives us only myths and marvels, for the facts of a
perfect history, wUl give us, for a perfect character, what ia
wilder still and more absurd.

360 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
Second objection. That, according to our definition,
there may be false miracles. That is certainly the doc
trine of scripture. Neither is there any thing essentially
incredible in it. They are wrought, of course, by no con
currence of divine power, but only by such power as be
longs to the grade of the spirit by whom they are
wrought — by "him whose coming is with signs and lying
wonders," "by the spirits of devils, working miracles."
According to our definition, any invisible spirit, who can
do what is superhuman, can do a miracle. That there are
invisible spirits, we have no doubt, and what kind of ac
cess they may have to nature, in what manner qualified
or restrained, we do not know. But it will never be diffi
cult to distinguish their prodigies and freaks of mischief
from any divine operation. Their character will be evi
dent in their works, and no one that loves the divine truth
will ever be taken by their impostures. We express no
opinion of the utterances and other demonstrations which
many are accepting in our times, as the effusions of spirits
— they are beyond our range of acquaintance. We say
that if these things are really done, or communicated, by
spirits, then they are miracles, bad miracles, of course;
and thus we have it established as a curious phenomenon,
that the men who are boasting their rejection of all divine
miracles, are themselves deepest in the faith of those
which are wrought by demons. Nor is it impossible that
God has suffered this late irruption of lying spirits, to be
1 at once the punishment and the rectification of that shal
low unbelief which distinguishes our age— thus to shame
the absurd folly of what is here called science, and bring
us back to a true faith in the spiritual realities and powers
of a supernatural kingdom.

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 861
Third objection. That if miracles are credible in any
particular time or age, that, for example, of the New Tes
tament, they must be now and always credible. To this
we answer that they are now and always credible. But it
does not follow that they are now and always a fact
That must depend upon historic evidence. The scriptures
nowhere teach, what is often assumed, the final discontinu
ance of miracles, and it is much to be regretted that such
an assumption is so commonly made, for when it is taken
for an authorized doctrine, that God will no more allow
any real miracle to be wrought, since the apostolic times,
. it renders even the New Testament miracles just so much
more difficult to be believed. There is no certain proof
that miracles have not been wrought in every age of the
christian church. There is certainly a supernatural and
divine causality streaming into the lives and blending
with the faith of all good men, and there is no reason to
doubt that it may sometimes issue in premonitions, results
of guidance and healing, endowments of force, answers to
prayer that closely approach, in many cases, if they do not
exactly meet, our definition of miracles.
We answer again that if miracles have been discontin
ued, even for a thousand years, they may yet be revived
in such varieties of form, as a different age may re
quire. They will be revived without fail, whenever the
ancient reason may return, or any new contingency mav
occur, demanding their instrumentality.
And yet, again, we answer that there may have been
good and sufficient reasons why the more palpable mira
cles of the apostolic age could not be continued, or must
needs be interspaced by agencies of a more sUent charac
ter. It may have been that they rould by and by cor-
Sl

362 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
rupt the impressions and ideas even of religkin, setting
men to look after signs and prodigies with their eye?, in
ducing a contempt of every thing else, and so, instead of
attesting God to men, making them unspiritual and even
incapable of faith. Traces of this mischief begin to ap
pear even in the times of the apostles themselves. There
fore, when the fire is kindled, the smoke, it may be, ceas
es; or rather it becomes transparent, so that we do not so
readily see it, though it is there. Christianity, it is very
obvious, inaugurates the faith of a supernatural agency in
the world. It is either supernatural or it is a nullity.
Hence, to inaugurate such a faith, it must needs make its
entry into the world, through the fact of a divine incarna
tion and other miracles. In these we have the pole of
thought, opposite to nature, set before us in distinct exhibi
tion. And then the problem is, having the two poles of
nature and the supernatural presented, that we be trained
to apprehend them conjunctively, or as working together
in silent terms of order. For, if the miracles continue in
their palpable and staring forms of wonder, and take their
footing as a permanent institution, they will breed a sens
uous, desultory state of mind, opposite to all sobriety and
all genuine intelligence. The invalid will now pray to be
healed by pure miracle, and will never learn or be taught
how to pray, in a manner that contemplates a unifying
of tbe supernatural force with nature and the system of
natural causes. At a certain point the miracles were need-"
ed as the polar signs of a new force, but, for the reason sug
gested, it appears to be necessary, also, that they should not
be continuous ; otherwise the supernatural will never b»
thought into any terms of order, as a force conjoined witli
nature in our common experience, but wUl only insti

OBJECTION'S CONSIDERED. 363
gate a wUd, eccentric temper, closely akin to unreason,
and to all practical delusion. And yet there may be
times, even to the end of the world, when some outburst
of the miraculous force of God will be needed to break
up a lethargy of unbelief and sensuous dullness, equally
unreasoning and delusory.
Fourth objection. That whatever may be true of mir
acles in other respects, they are only demonstrations of
force; therefore, having in themselves no moral quality,
there is no rational, or valuable, or even proper place for
them in a gospel, considered as a new-creating grace for
the world. To this we answer that it is a thing of no sec
ondary importance for a sinner, down under sin, and held
fast in its bitter terms of bondage, to see that God has en
tered into his case with a force that is adequate. These
mighty works of Jesus, which have been done and duly
certified, are fit expressions to us of the fact that he can
do for us all that we want. Doubtless it is a great and
difficult thing to regenerate a fallen nature ; no person, re
ally awake to his miserable and dreadful bondage, ever
thought otherwise. But he that touched the blind eyes
and commanded the leprosy away, he that trod the sea, and
raised the dead, and burst the bars of death himself, can
tame the passions, sweeten the bitter affections, regenerate
the inbred diseases, and roll back all the storms of the
mind. Assured in this manner by his miracles, they be
come arguments of trust, a storehouse of powerful images,
that invigorate courage and stimulate hope. Broken
as we are by our sorrow, cast down as we are by our
guUtiness, ashamed, and weak and ready to despair, we
can yet venture a hope that our great soul-miracle may bo
done ; that, if we can but touch the hem of Christ's gar

364 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
ment, a virtue will go out of him to heal us. In all dark
days and darker struggles of the mind, in all outward
disasters, and amid all storms upon the sea of life, we can
yet descry him treading the billows and hear him saying,
"It is I, be not afraid." And le'st we should believe the
miracles faintly, for there is a busy infidel lurking always
in our hearts to cheat us of our faith, when he can not rea
son it away, the character of Jesus is ever shining with
and through them, in clear self-evidence, leaving them
never to stand as raw wonders only of might, but covering
them with glory, as tokens of a heavenly love, and acts
that only suit the proportions of his personal greatness and
majesty. There are many in our day, as we know, who, without
making any speculative point of the objection we are dis
cussing, have so far yielded to the current misbelief as to
profess, with a certain air of self-compliment, that they are
quite content to accept the spirit of Jesus ; and let the mir
acles go for what they are worth. Little figure will they
make as christians in that kind of gospel. They will not
in fact, receive the spirit of Jesus; for that unabridged is
itself the Grand Miracle of Christianity, about which all
the others play as scintillations only of the central fire.
StUl less will they believe that Jesus can do any thing in
them which their sin requires. They will only compli
ment his beauty, imitate or ape his ways in a feeble lift
ing of themselves, but that he can roll back the currents
of nature, loosened by the disorders of sin, and raise them
to a new birth in holiness, they will not believe. No such
watery gospel of imitation, separated from grace, will have
any living power in their life, or set them in any bond of
u nity with God. Nothing but to say — ' ' Jesus of Nazareth

CHRIST THE TRUE EVIDENCE. 865
a man approved of God by miracles and signs which God
did by him" — can draw the soul to faith and open it to the
power of a supernatural and new-creative mercy.
We come back then, in closing, to the grand first prin
ciple of evidence, and there we rest. The character and
doctrine of Jesus are the sun that holds all the minor orbs
of revelation to their places, and pours a sovereign self-
evidencing light into all religious knowledge. We have
been debating much, and ranging over a wide field, in
chase of the many phantoms of doubt and false argument,
still we have not far to go for light, if only we could cease
debating and sit down to see. It is no ingenious fetches
of argument that we want; no external testimony, gath
ered here and there from the records of past ages, suffices
to end our doubts ; but it is the new sense opened in us
by Jesus himself — a sense deeper than words and more im
mediate than inference — of the miraculous grandeur of his
life ; a glorious agreement felt between his works and his
person, such that his miracles themselves are proved to us
in our feeling, believed in by that inward testimony. On
this inward testimony we are willing to stake every thing,
even the life that now is, and that which is to come. If
the miracles, if revelation itself, can not stand upon the
superhuman character of Jesus, then let it faU. If that
character does not contain all truth and centralize all truth
in itself, then let there be no truth. If there is any thing
worthy of belief not found in this, we may well consent
to live and die without it. Before this sovereign Ught,
streaming out from God, the deep questions, and dark sur
mises, and doubts unresolved, which make a night so
gloomy and terrible about us, hurry away to their native
abyss. God. who commanded the Ught to shine out ol
31*

866 IN H/M WE REST.
darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ. This it is that has conquered the assaults of doubt
and false learning in all past ages, and wUl in all ages to
come. No argument against the sun wUl drive it from
the sky. No mole-eyed skepticism, dazzled by its bright
ness, can turn away the shining it refuses to look upon.
.And they who long after God, wUl be ever turning their
eyes thitherward, and either with reason, or without reason,
or, 'if need be, against manifold impediments of reason,
wiU see and believe.

CHAPTER III.
(VATER -MARKS IN THE CHRISTIAN DOOIRINE
There is no kind of evidence that is so convincing or
it received with so great satisfaction, as that which, after
long and doubtful search, is suddenly discovered to have
all the while been on hand, incorporated, though unob
served, in the very subject matter of inquiry. Thus, for
example, a suit upon a note of hand had long been pend
ing in one of the courts of our commonwealth, payment
of which was resisted, on the ground that it was and must
be a forgery, no such note having ever been- given. But
the difficulty was, in the trial, to make out any conclusive
evidence of what the defending party knew to be the
truth. His counsel was, in fact, despairing utterly ot
success; but it happened that, just as he was about
closing his plea, having the note in his hand, and bringing
it up, in the motion of his hand, so that the Ught struck
through, his eye caught the glimpse of a mark in the pa
per. He stopped, held it up deliberately to the Ught, and
behold the name, in water-mark, of a company that had
begun the manufacture of paper after the date of the in
strument ! Here was evidence, without going far to seek
it — evidence enough to turn the plaintiff forthwith into a
felon, and consign him, as it did, to a felon's punishment.
Just so there is, we now propose to show, a certain
divine water-mark in the christian doctrine, which, wheth
er we see it or not, is there, waiting, at all times, to be
seen, and to give to all who will look for it, indubitable
proof of its supernatural and divine origin.

368 A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANIT Y.
And, first of all, we select for an example, or principal
instance, the grand comprehensive distinction of the chris
tian system, viz., the assumption it every where makes of
a necessarily twofold economy in the training of souls.
This assumption, or assumed necessity, appears and reap
pears on almost every page of the New Testament. The
two economies are "two covenants;" two ministrations;
"a ministration of condemnation," and a " ministration of
righteousness;" "law and grace;" "bondage and lib
erty;" "the letter that kiUeth, and the spirit that giveth
life;" "the law that makes nothing perfect;" and
" charity which is the bond of perfectness."
We have spoken already* of this twofold process in the
training of a soul, and shown the privative condition it is
necessarily in, till it has passed through the first stage or
economy, and come forth in the second. Our object here,
in recurring to the subject, is different; viz., to show the
remarkable advantage Christianity, or the christian gospel
has, in the positive and deliberate recognition of a truth
so plainly fundamental, and one that, as soon as it is defi
nitely stated, inevitably verifies itself and becomes an im
movable conviction in every thoughtful mind. Christian
ity is just here quite alone ; alone, that is, in the deepest
and most radical of all conceptions that pertain to the dis
cipline of virtue ; alone, that is, in perceiving beforehand
the necessary duality of the process, and conforming itself
deliberately to what is required, in the preparation of a
grand dual economy. In this fact all the human phUoso
phers are left behind. For, while the christian scriptures
are so forward, and full, and explicit, in asserting the two
testaments, and displaying their relative use and powe-,
?Chapter IV., p. 117.

THE DUAL ECONOMY OF VIRTUE. 369
throwing themselves out boldly on their doctrine, iu the
noble confidence of truth, the philosophers do not appear
as yet, even to have had their attention attracted to tho
question. Such of them as were educated under Chris
tianity, appear to have regarded its manfold representa
tions of letter and spirit, law and grace, a ministration
of condemnation and a ministration of righteousness, as
the unmeaning jingle or pious cant only of revelation;
entitled, in that view, to no philosophic respect. Indeed
it is not a little remarkable, that some of the heathen phi
losophers appear to have approached the christian doctrine
more closely than they.
Our christian philosophers, so called — christian, not be
cause they teach any thing that deserves the name, but
because they are born in christian countries — commonly
begin with man as being simply a conscious intelligence,
conceiving him to be in his proper normal state, and to
have, in that view, certain susceptibUities to virtue; a
conscience, a free will, a power of doing good, and receiv
ing injury. Then, ignoring, as a fact of no consequence,
the abnormal and diseased state of sin, they go on to build
up their schemes of ethical practice; showing what the
foundations of virtue may be, and upon those foundations
erecting their codes of observance. But as they never al
low themselves to look on the fact of depravity, and the
consequent state of psychological disorder, so they never
trouble themselves about any such superlative notions of
virtuous living, as respect the perfection and final beati»
tude of the soul. Their concern is simply to determine
the authority of what is called virtue, and show the mat
ters of good behavior that are binding on men, in the
relations of domestic, social, and public life. They incul-

370 THE DUAL ECONOMY OF VIRTUE

eate nothing but legalities. It is virtue enough to do tho
right things, no matter whether they are done grudgingly
and by hard constraint, or willingly, cheerfully, and
gladly, as the spontaneous tribute of a full and ready
heart ; no matter, indeed, whether it be only the doing of
some right things, such as concern human society, leaving
out the duties owed to God, or whether it include all duty
and so the possibihty of a principle ! Meager, sad-look
ing impostures, these ethical schemes, that bear the name
of philosophy !
But the heathen philosophers, as we have already inti
mated, often do better. It is not any part of philosophy
with them, to steer wide of the truths of Christianity,
and ignore all the great questions of revealed religion.
Their ignorance of Christianity delivers them of any
such feeble and absurd jealousy. Accordingly they go
directly into the great and solemn problems of human
existence, with a free mind, and a universal aim. They
take up the question of evil. They recognize, in the full
est manner, as we have shown already, the depravity of
human nature, and the state of general distemper pro
duced by sin. They recognize also the sense of bondage
encountered by every soul, in its endeavors to resume self-
government, and re-establish the harmony of virtue.
They go farther, they conceive a new and higher state of
possible assimilation to God, or the gods, which they cel
ebrate as the liberty of virtue. Thus Plato shows that
"the more conformed the soul is to the Divine WUl, so
much the more perfect and free it is."* Even Aristotle
recognizes the necessity of freedom in virtuous exercises,
as being the only sufficient ground of stability in them,
*Leg. 4.

A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 371
'' because blessed souls live and dwell always in such ex
ercises, without tediousness or staleness of mind."* Epic-
tetus, in like manner, shows that " submitting the mind
to the mind that governs all things, as good citizens to
the law, is perfect liberty."f And Seneca coincides with
all such testimonies, in the declaration " that it is a great
and free mind that has given itself up to God." It could
also be shown, by abundant citations, that they even dis
allowed the name of virtue to any merely legal or con
strained practice. Having advanced so far, in the right
direction, we almost look to see them taking up the im
pression of some necessary twofold process, in the grand
economy of virtue. But they are in a limitation. The
assimUation to God, in which they rest their hope of lib
erty, or the complete state of virtue, is not prepared by a
gospel and a new, supernatural, and redemptive move
ment, but only, as they conceive, by an application of
their minds to God. "The phUosopher," says Plato,
' " conversing with what is divine and excellent, becomes,
as far as what is human may, divine and excellent."^:
Again, "Assimilation to God, in righteousness and holi
ness, is the result of wisdom or philosophy."§ They had
no conception, therefore, of two ministrations, and could
not be expected, under a scheme of truth so deficient, to
take up the yet deeper conception of a necessarily two
fold process, in the economy of virtue. As the christian
philosophers have never taken the hint of this antecedent
necessity, from the manifold declarations of the scripture,
so these others have fallen short of it, because they had
nothing to yield them such a hint.
And yet how easy it seems, having the hint of it onco
* Eth., L. L, C. 10. f In Arrian, 1:2. J Repur,. § Theatet

872 THE DUAL ECONOMY 05 VIRTUE,
given, to verify this necessity ! Though no one of the
phUosophers was ever able to take up such a conception,
it requires no philosopher, when it is once given, but only
a thoughtful man, to perceive the certain truth of it. If
(1.) there is to be a moral regimen set up in souls, it must
begin with law, or imposed obligation ; no matter whether it
be only pronounced in the conscience, or outwardly aiso in
a revelation. Again, (2.) it is equally plain that mere law
can bring nothing to perfection. The experiment of dis
obedience will be tried. The very motive it supplies to
virtue, viz., retribution, makes the virtue wearisome, and
a burden certain to be cast off. It has no motivity that
generates liberty ; on the contrary, the motivity it has, ap
pealing only to interest, detains from liberty. And yet,
(3.) the law, it is equally manifest, will be a necessary
condition, or first stage in the process of holy training.
It wUl impress the sense of law, as a condition of well-
being. It will also develop the knowledge of sin — what it
is, and does, and deserves. And the bondage it creates,
or which is created under it, the hopelessness, the death,
will prepare the want of a deliverer. The regimen of ab
stract law, again, (4.) is, in this view, seen to be inherently
faulty, even though the precept be perfect ; hence that noth
ing but a personal homage, or faith in a divine person —
whose character and life, embraced in love, suppose the
embrace of all law — can finally bring in its principle, and
estabUsh it in the liberty of an eternal and celestial love.
See, then, how distinctly all this and more is said in
the Christian documents. Hold them up to the light, and
let the divine water-mark, or inwrought signature of God,
appear ! Whence comes it that these gospels and epistles,
clothed in no pomp of philosophy, and decked with no

A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 373
literary pretensions, so far transcend all the philosophy of
all ages, opening up deeper truths regarding the great
problem of human existence, than have any where else
been discovered to the thought of man ? They tell us, iu
the utmost simplicity of man jer, and with no air of dis
covery, that God has two ministrations for us, letter and
spirit, law and grace. As regards the first, they tell us
that it is a fundamental and first fact in God's economy,
no jot or tittle of which can ever fail — a perfect law, and
so the basis, or formal idea, of all perfection. Yet, as an
abstraction, commanded by authority, and enforced by
power, it makes nothing perfect. It is only a schoolmas
ter, that sets the training on foot, and brings it on a single
stage. It is more unfortunate, however, than most school
masters, for the stage it prepares is one of loss and defeat,
and not of gain — ordained to be unto life, it is found to
be unto death. It is a ministration of condemnation. It
is the letter that killeth. It entered that the offense might
abound. Weak through the flesh, it accomplishes noth
ing but a state of bondage, and the loosing of retributive
causes that set the whole creation groaning and travailing
in pain together. And all this, we perceive, was under
stood as well at the beginning as afterward. For, if there
had been a law given that could have given life, then
verily righteousness should have been 'by the law. But
that was inherently impossible, and the impossibUity is
recognized from the first. The legal state was instituted,
not as a finality, but as a first stage in the process of
training ; to develop the sense of guilt and spiritual want,
to beget a knowledge of sin, its exceeding sinfulness, and
the insupportable bondage it creates. And then appears
in the person of the incarnate Eedeemer a new and
32

374 THE DUAL ECONOMY OF VIRTUE,
higher ministration, designed, from the foundation of tha
world, to complement, or even in superseding, to establish
the other. Now he hath obtained a more exceUent
ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better
covenant, which was established upon better promises.
For, if that first covenant had been faultless, then should
no place have been sought for the second. Now it is no
more a question of works ; there never could have been a
rational expectation of human perfection on that basis;
but it is a question of simple faith. The righteousness
of God without, or apart from the law, is now manifested,
even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus
Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe. What
we call our virtue now is no more a will-work, or a some
thing done according to law, but it is a continuous and
living ingeneration of God, who has thus become a divine
impulse of- quickening in us, and so the life of our
life. Therefore now we are free. Embracing the person
of Christ, and yielding the homage of our hearts to him,
we do, in fact, resume the law, in our deliverance from its
bondage. We keep his commandments, because we ad
here to his persbn, and we enter thus into a liberty that
fulfills all law, the liberty of love. There is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made
us free from the law of sin and death. For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God,
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness
of the law [i. e., of the precept,] might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Tho
oondage now is gone. The stage of Uberty is come. This

A DISTINCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 375
is the Spirit that giveth life. This is the ministration of
righteousness. And if the ministration of condemnation
be glorious, much more doth the ministration of righteous
ness exceed in glory.
This exposition of the two ministrations .we have given
as nearly as possible in the language of scripture. Not
to be struck by the magnificence of the thought, would
argue great duUness. All known speculations of philos
ophy regarding the moral economy of human life, sink
into littleness and utter incompetency by the side of it.
A very curious question, then, it is, whence came this
doctrine, and what should have set any writer, or any
christian school of writers, on the conception of it ? Why
does it appear in the scriptures of the New Testament.
and nowhere else? It has, at first, a canting sound, it
wears a strange, peculiar air, and comes to us in strange,
half-mystic words — "letter" and "spirit," "law" and
"grace," two "covenants," two "testaments," two "min
istrations " — but it grows under inspection, fills itself out
in the sublimity of its reasons, and finally stands confessed
as the only adequate, the only true and real philosophy.
It is no crude suggestion, or new thought half discovered.
It is fully wrought out ; all the points are stated. Every
thing is set in complete working order ; yet with no pa
rade of science or of definition, and, as it were, no con
sciousness of the transcendent superiority it reveals.
Whence, then, came it? that is the question. And thefe
is but one answer. We could sooner believe that Plato's
dialogues were written by some wild herdsman of Scythia,
than that this grand distinctive doctrine of the scripture
is of human invention. It bears the eternal watcr-ma?fc
of divinity, and that ends all inquiry.

576 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
We pass on now to observe another most impressive
distinction of Christianity, in what may be called the
grouping of its ideas; and especially the fact that they
group themselves in such beautiful order and harmony
about the grand, supernatural fact of the incarnation.
That it is a fact supernatural in its form, will not be de
nied; this indeed is one of the chief grounds of impeach
ment against the gospels. It will also be agreed, that if
any such divine movement is reaUy inaugurated in the
world, there needs to be also a whole system of ideas and
doctrines, springing forth and grouping themselves in or
der round it. Otherwise we have no sufficient instrument
ation, for our human use or handling of so great a fact, and
our personal appropriation of it — no fit medium of thought
respecting it.
Here then we discover, again, upon a large scale, the
secret evidence of a higher presence in the gospel. To
frame such a fitting of ideas and doctrines, by human in
vention, out of the materials of natural sagacity and rea
son, we may fairly say is impossible. There have been as
many as hine avatars or incarnations, the Bramins tell us,
of their god Vishnu ; and multitudes of incarnations can be
cited, from the various pagan mythologies ; but when has
there been developed, round the pretended supernatural
fact, any scheme of ideas or truths, internally agreeing with
it and having their roots of life in it? It is a very easy
thing, we may admit, to imagine a supernatural fact, an
incarnation for example, but to fit it with a range of doc
trines and holy ideas, such as will connect it with human
experience and make it practical, is what no mortal wis
dom was ever able to do. Thus, if there were given the
fact of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, or his miraculous

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 377.
birth as the Son of Mary, there is no philosopher of man-
Kind who could invent, around that central fact, a system
of ideas and doctrines that would not, by their wild ex
travagance, and also by their manifest want of any vital
agreement or coherence with it, turn it into mockery.
Much less could he form a vehicle of doctrine, that would
make that central fact a power, in the practical life, and
dovetail it into the experience of mankind.
But all this we shall see accomplished, in'the easiest and
most natural manner possible in the christian doctrine.
And this is the line of our argument; that all the capital
points or ideas of Christianity, frame into the supernatu
ral, on one hand, in such beautiful order and facility, and
without any strain of contrivance or logical adaptation;
and into human experience, on the other, in a way so con
sonant to the dignity of reason, and the wants and disa-
bUities of sin, that the signature of God is plainly legible
in the documents. The examples to be eited are numer
ous, and we set them forth under numerical notations.
1. The new religion, or that of the divine advent, is
called a gospel. Why a gospel more than a wisdom, or
philosophy, or doctrine? These, and such like, are the
names assumed by all the world's great teachers; but it
occurs to none of them to call their utterance, whatever it
be, good news or a gospel. Whence the distinction? It
grows out of the simple fact that they offer a doctrine
drawn out of premises in nature, and the contents of natu
ral reason, a doctrine which, being in those premises, is
already given, and only waits to be deduced. Whereas,
Christ comes into the world from without, and above it,
and brings in with him new premises, not here before.
He is therefore proclaimed as news, good news — "behold
32*

378 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to aU
people." Christ also conceives himself and his woik
in the same manner — "Go ye into all the world and preach
the gospel to every creature." His apostles all follow tes
tifying the fact, as new tidings — "God was in Christ re
conciling the world unto himself." If it should be said
that the work of Christ is called a gospel by mere natural
suggestion, because it is a real communication from an
other world to this, we care not to object, because the
term is thus accounted for in a way that supposes the fact
of a supernatural mission ; though, if the supposed mis
sion were a fact given, it is doubtful whether any human
skill, left to itself, would ever suit the fact with a name
that so exactly corresponds with its peculiarity, as a fact
appearing in the world, but not of it. It would be called
by any other name, probably, as soon as by the name gos
pel, and if some name in great repute with men were at
hand, such as would mark it with a special honor, prob
ably sooner. But suppose there were no supernatural fact
at all in the case, and that all we find of that character in
the work were reducible to myth, or quite explained away
by a rationalistic interpretation. Whence, in that view,
will the name gospel come? If there is no supernatural
fact at all, nor any thing more than a pretense of it, who
is going to handle even that fiction so nicely, as to fit it
with the very peculiar name, gospel ?
2. We have another of the radical notions of this gos
pel presented iu the word salvation. The work is called a
salvation. The incarnate Word is named Jesus, by antic
ipation; because he will save the people from their sins.
He declares finally, that he came to seek and to save, and
his work is published, after he is gone, as the grace of

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 379
God that bringeth salvation. Meantime no human teacher
has ever come to men with any thing called by that name.
The human teachers come with disquisitions, theories, phi
losophies, pedagogies, schemes of reformation, ideal repub
lics, doctrines of association. But they, none of them,
speak of salvation. And that, for the simple reason, that
they have not conceived the state of unnature under sin,
as a really lost or undone state, requiring a supernatural
and divine interposition to restore the ruin suffered. This
is the point distinctly conceived by Christianity, and there
fore it is called a salvation. Plato saw distinctly enough
the depravity of human nature, and his doctrine of virtue,
we have seen, was that it can be formed in the soul, only
by a divine communication. It is therefore only the more
impressive, as a contrast, that, having these two elements
of Christianity on hand, he nowhere conceives the virtue
wrought to be a salvation. After all, the state of sin is not
to him a practically lost state, but the transition to virtue,
slurred by indistinctness, is virtually regarded as a growth,
or advance, on the footing of nature; not a rescue from
nature by a power above nature; therefore not a salvation.
3. The doctrine of this salvation makes it a salvation,
by faith; in which we have another ruling idea of the
scheme that coincides with its supernatural facts and char
acter. Christianity differs from all philosophies and ethic
al doctrines of men, in the fact that it rests aU virtue in
faith; exactly as it should, if it be a grace imported into
nature from without, an advent in the world of one who
is from above. Such a salvation lies not within the prem
ises of natural fact and reason ; it is not therefore a mat
ter of science, or of logical deduction. It makes its ad
dress, therefore, not to reason, but to faith. Beason may

880 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
be allowed to have a tribunitial veto against it, provided
the doctrine is certainly proved to be contrary to reason.
but it can not be receive I by isason. It is only received,
when faith comes, laden with sin and fettered by its iron
bondage, to rest herself, in holy trust, on the transcendent
fact of such an appearing, and to find by experiment that
it is, in sacred reality and power, what it assumes to be.
It finds the new premise true, proves it to be true, intuits
it, in and by the immediate experience of the mind. The
new salvation is by faith, because it is a supernatural sal
vation; for whatever virtue the plan ministers must be
in and by the receiver's faith, practically trusting soul and
spirit to the fact of such a Saviour and salvation.
There is much quarreling with the New Testament on
this ground. It becomes an offense because it requires
faith. Where is the merit of mere believing, that it should
be made the necessary condition of salvation? In one
view there is none, we answer, and it is not required be
cause there is any. There is no merit in trusting a phy
sician, but it may be a matter of some consequence that
his medicines be taken; as they wUl not be, without some
kind of faith In him. So it is a matter of consequence that
the christian grace be accepted, as it certainly will not be,
unless the soul is practically trusted to it, and the giver.
If there is to be a healing, a new ingeneration of life and
holy virtue, it can never be, save by the efficacy of a su
pernatural remedy. Believing in that remedy is the same
thing as coming into its power; and, therefore, on this
faith the gospel hangs salvation. It could not be other
wise. If Christianity, being supernatural, offered salvation
on any other terms than faith, the offer would even be ab
surd, havmg no agreement with the grace offered. That

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 881
lt hangs salvation on this condition, indicates a thorough
insight of its own nature, and the more ready the shallow
wit of man is to find fault with such a condition, as hu
miliating or insulting to reason, the more evidently it is
not from man, but from a superior and superhuman source.
Begarding faith, in this manner, as having its value, not
in its own merit, but in what it receives, we would not be
understood to represent it as an optional matter, without
any positive obligation. It is a duty binding on every
moral being, to believe and practically receive every thing
that is true ; and this on the principle that mind, honestly
used, will distinguish all important truth. Doubtless one
may become so entangled by the ingenious sophistries of
sin, or so darkened by its baleful shadow, that he can not
in a moment find, or finding, can not embrace the truth.
In such a case, the blame must rest upon his guilty past,
and the mental distortion he has created, by his former
abuse of truth, until such time as he can recover his sight.
And this he may do rapidly, if only, trusting in God, he I
will take into practice, for medicine, every single truth he
is able to find. All his unbeliefs and misbeliefs will be
certainly cleared in this manner. And therefore Christ
requires it of him, that they shall be; throwing his salva
tion even upon his belief of the truth.
4. Justification by faith is another distinctive point of
the christian gospel. And this includes two principal
matters combined; that the transgressor, believing, has a
righteousness generated in him, which is not built up un
der the law, by his own practice ; and that something has
been done to compensate the law, violated by his past of
fenses, and save it in honor, when his sin is forgiven.
As to the former, the righteousness ingenerated, the

382 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
manner is sufficiently indi sated, when it is called tha
righteousness that is of God by faith, unto and upon all
them that believe. It is unto and upon such only as be
lieve; because, as we just now said, speaking of salvation,
it is only by faith that the soul is so trusted to, and depos
ited in, the supernatural grace of God, as to be invested
with his righteousness, or assimilated to it. Besides it
will be observed that this is called justification, partly be
cause the natural laws of retributive justice, which are
penally chastising the sinner, holding him fast in the
meshes of inextricable disorder and woe, can be contro
verted, or turned aside, only by a power supernatural aad
divine. As to the latter point concerned, the implied compensa
tion to law, in the supposed free justification, it is not that
something is done to be a spectacle before unknown worlds,
or something to square up a legal account of pains and
penalties, according to some small scheme of book-keeping
philosophy, but it is simply this; that, as there must be
i two stages of discipline to carry on the world — viz., letter
and spirit, law and grace — the introduction of pardon, or
the universal* and free remission of sins, must be so pre
pared, as not to do away with the law stage that is prece
dent, but must let them both exist together, to act
concurrently on the world. And this is done by the obe
dience of Christ, obedience unto death. Who can say 01
think that God yields up his law, in the forgiveness
of sins, when the Word incarnate, having it on him as a
bond of love, the same that our human sin has broken,
renders up his life to it, and bows to the awful passion
of the cross, that he may fulfill its requirements. Mag
nified and made honorable, by such a contribution of re-

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 383
spect, no free remission or removal of penalties running
against us, can be felt to shake its authority.
It is hardly necessary to suggest the fact, that Christian
ity is radically distinguished, in this matter of justifica
tion, from the philosophies and the known religions. They
see nothing in sin, or its penal disorders that requires a
distinctly supernatural remedy; or, when they are re
moved, any apparent infringement of law and justice.
They only think to make men better by something done
upon the natural footing ; which, if they can do, they
have no farther concern. They have no such conception
of a twofold economy of God as makes it a matter of
consequence to see that, when he forgives, the law is saved
to the world and kept on foot, as an element of training
'ind discipline. If they speak of pardon, it is no such
pardon as partakes a judicial character. Or if they speak
of expiation, offering up their children, it may be, to buy
the release of their sin, it is the passions of their God they
seek to arrest, and not his desecrated authority they will
sanctify. They have no care for law, and no suspicion
that their God has any. They have no conception of any
such solemn relations between their sin and the eternal
government of the world, as creates a difficulty in the way
of releasing their punishment. No difficulty is appre
hended, save in the ill-nature of their God ; and they ex
peet to appease him by giving him pains enough, and
gory bodies enough of the innocent, to satisfy him. But
the christian truth is deeper in its reasons, and has a more
benign character. It comes into the world as a divine ad
vent, to fulfill a second stage in the moral economy of ho
liness. As the law begins with nature, so this finishes
with supernatural grace. A3 one binds, the other liber

884 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
ates; as one kills, the other makes alive ; and yet so tern
pered are they both, that they are kept in perpetual action
together. Let the philosophers and human teachers show
us that they have some comprehension of the great prob
lem of life, and of God's relation to it, equally compre
hensive in its breadth, and deep in its reasons.
5. It is another of the grand distinctions of Christianity
that it sets up a kingdom of God on earth. It is called
" the kingdom of God " or " of heaven " because the or
ganic force by which so many wills and finally all man
kind are to be gathered into unity, is not in nature, but
comes down out of heaven, in the person of Christ the
king. It is very natural that the different political organ
izations of the world should be employed figuratively, as
terms of representation, in matters not political. Thus
we have theoretic commonwealths, and ideal repubUcs.
Truth is conceived as an empire. In the natural sci
ences we have what are called three kingdoms, the ani
mal, and vegetable, and mineral. But here we have,
what is not elsewhere conceived, a supernatural kingdom
in souls, the kingdom of God ; a real, living polity, organ
ized by a real king, and swayed and propagated by the
powers of truth and love, centered in his divine person.
Jesus coming into the world, as the incarnate Word of
God, brings a new force with him, entering into souls as
the advent of a new divine power. In him therefore
begins, of course, a new organization, the kingdom of
God in souls — righteousness, and peace, and joy in the
Holy Ghost. This accordingly is the great thought of
Christianity — the kingdom of God ; the implanting of a
divine rule in lost men, and the gathering in, at last, of
all people and kindreds of the earth, into a vast^

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 385
universal order of peace and truth under Christ the
anointed king.
The fact grows out of the incarnation, so that when
Jesus is about to appear, the kingdom of heaven is at
hand. No other religion, no priest or seer, no avatar of
deity, has ever raised such a conception. It is the peculiar
thought or fact of Christianity. And yet, daring as the
proposition is, so extravagant that no mere man could
make it without a charge of lunacy, Christ undertakes it —
Christ, the Nazarene carpenter — and what is more, as
sumes the dominion and makes his kingdom good. And
yet, if he could not make it good, his incarnation could not
stand, as an accepted fact. So closely interwoven are these
two, the incarnate appearing, and the kingdom of God.
6. The Holy Spirit also is a christian conception, stand
ing in profound agreement with the supernatural fact of
the gospel. As Christ, incarnate, is a supernatural em
bodiment, or manifestation localized in space, so the Holy
Spirit is a supernatural indwelling force, by which Christ
is perpetuated in the world, universalized in all localities,
and brought nigh to every being, in every place. And
that there may be no mistake regarding the supernatural
character of his agency, he is represented as being inau
gurated by external signs, and by gifts of utterance and
healing, that transcend all human power. He is not to
be confounded, in this respect, with conceptions often ta-
cen up by the eastern sages and philosophers, that are
analogous in form, but really suppose, in their minds, no
agency of God, save that which is implied in his omni
present dominion over nature. " God, they conceived, per
meates or passes through all things,"* and they caUed him
* Cud. II, 498.
33

386 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
in this view, *' the divine spirit."* Thus Apuleius says,
that "nothing is so excellent, or great in power, as to be
content with ite own nature alone, void of the divine
aid or influence." Philoponus, with our very point of
need in his eye, calls what should be the Spirit, simply a
Providence. "Though the soul be lapsed into a preter
natural or unnatural state, still it is yet not neglected by
Providence, but has a constant care taken of it, in order to
its recovery."f Seneca distinctly conceives a divine
spirit, active in us, and yet this spirit dwindles into a min
ister only of natural retribution. "The sacred spirit
dwells in us, observer of our evil things, guardian of
our good, and he treats us as we treat him.":]: None of
these conceptions really meet the case of a supernatural
religion. This demands a Spirit engaged to deliver and
competent to deliver from the lapse of nature, by acting
on the fallen subject, and separating him from the re
tributive action of natural causes; dwelling in him thus,
holding him up, guiding him on, extricating his liberty,
and witnessing in him, as a divine revelation to his con
sciousness. There is also a profound necessity for the Holy Spirit,
thus conceived, in the miraculous advent of Christ itself.
Christ and the Spirit are complementary forces, and, both
together, constitute a complete whole; such a kind of
whole as no man, or myth, or accident ever invented.
There was an inherent necessity that whatever supernat
ural movement, for the regeneration of man, might be un
dertaken, should include, both a moral, and an efficient
agency; one before the understanding, and the other back
of it, in the secret springs of the disordered nature; a di-
* De Mundo, 68, f Proem in Aristotlo de Anima. X Ep., 41,

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE 387
vine object clothed in beauty, and love, and justice, to be
a mold into which the soul may be formed, the type of
a divine life in which it may consentingly be crystallized;
an efficient grace, working within the soul, preparing it to
will and to do, and rolling back the currents of retribu
tive causes in it, opening it to the power of its glorious
exemplar, and drawing it ever into that, and a life pro
ceeding from it. Without the former before the mind,
whatever is done within, by efficiency, would be only a work
of repair, a something executed, of whose way or method
we should know as little as we do of health restored by
hidden causes. The change would be merely physical,
not any change of character at all, more than when the
secretions of the body are changed. Without the latter —
the efficient working — the model set before us in the di
vine beauty of Christ and his death, would find us dulled
in understanding, blurred in perception, and held fast in
the penal bondage of our sins; approving the good before
us only faintly, desiring it coldly, endeavoring after it, if
at all, impotently, even as a bird might try to rise whose
wings are cut.
Such is the profound agreement of Christ and the Holy
Spirit. One is naught without the other. Given then the
fact of the incarnation, and of Christ's human appearing,
by whom was this remarkable counterpart or complement
to his appearing invented? Who, in other words, con
trived the day of pentecost? Was it a man? was it sever
al men of only common faith? or was it done by the loose
gossip of a wondering and credulous age? The history
says that Christ himself gave the Spirit, by direct promise ;
declaring that it was expedient now for him to retire from
before the eyes, that the Spirit might come, and taking hia

888 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
exemplar into men's bosoms, in every place, all over tha
world, shew it to them there. Who but Christ and
he, the eternal Son of God, ever generated this concep
tion? 7. The doctrine of spiritual regeneration, propounded
in the gospel, is another point, where it meets, at once,
our human state and the fact of a supernatural economy.
This truth of regeneration supposes a loss out of human
nature, of the seed-principle of a good and holy life;
such that the subject has really no good in his character,
and never can by himself generate, or set himself in, the
principle of good. He can do many good things, such as
men call good, according to the standard of ethics or of
human custom (which is the world's law of virtue,) and
may fitly enough be praised, for the comely parts that
make up the figure of his life. But these comelinesses are
a virtue of items, mere will- works that proceed from no
seed-principle of good. Sometimes even the worldly-
minded teachers of Christianity take up with this kind
of virtue, and form their estimates of character, by in
specting the atoms collected in the life. Some things
done, they say, are good, and some are bad — the good
things ought to be increased, and the bad reduced. They
see, of course, no radical defect back of the particulars
noted, and therefore no need of a radical change in the
life. It is the things done that make the character, and
not the principle, or want of it, that gives character to the
things. Their gospel is even more shallow than a pagan's
philosophy. According to Seneca, who penetrates the
real ground- work of human character — " all sins are in
all men, but do not appear in each man. He that hath
one sin, hath all. We say that all men are intemperate,

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 389
avaricious, luxurious, malign — not that these sins appear
in all, but because they may be, yea, are, in all, though
latent."* Nothing is more rational ; for, if nothing is
done from any right principle, then nothing done is right,
and there is no seed of right-doing in us. The doings
may be kept up by our wUl, without any seed-principle,
bo attentively and punctUiously as even to become tastes;
but tastes are not inspirations, and the only true virtue
of man is that which he does from God, in the inspiration
of a divine Uberty. Separated from God, he is a monster,
and not a proper man, however plausible the show he
makes. And this is the effect of sin. It alienates the
subject from the life of God. Under sin, he is no more
conscious of God, as in his normal state he was and must
be. He is therefore uncentralized by it, dead at the core.
The seed-principle of eternal life and beauty and order is
gone. He centers in himself, gravitates downward into,
collapses in, himself; and he could as easily leap out of
the malstrom, as set himself in the true liberty and seed-
principle of holiness.
It is therefore declared, as the necessary condition of
our salvation, that we must be born again, born not of
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God. And this great change is the beginning and
spring of all true heavenly virtue, because it is the revela
tion of God in the soul. Now the soul is conscious of God
again. Now it monies in the line of the divine movement,
which is moving in the Spirit ; which, again, is the inspi
ration of liberty. All this, of course, not without consent
in the subject, probably not without some deep and vio
lent struggles on his part, to make way for the divine
*Ep., 50.
33*

390 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
revelation. He must offer up himself to the divine will,
and to all the approaches of the divine love ; and this
includes much — a removal of all obstructions, a renuncia
tion of self, a free commitment of all things to Christ,
and a. pliant, unequivocal, and humble faith in him. But
none of these are, by themselves, regeneration. That is
of God, and is, in fact, the soul's assumption, or resump
tion, by God. To say that it is a change of the soul's
love, is only another version of the same truth ; for the
love is changed by the entering in 6*f God and his love,
into the soul's faith. For love is of God, and every one
that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. Old things
are passed away, and all things are become new; because
God is revealed within, changing, of course, the principle
of all action, and the meaning of all experience. That
this new revelation is supernatural, coinciding, in every
thing said of it, with the grand central fact of the incarna
tion, need not be shown. Enough that it is the initiation
of a sinner and alien into the kingdom of God — except a
man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.
8. The christian doctrine of Providence coincides, also,
with the fact of* a supernatural work in the redemption of
mankind. It assumes, without misgiving, the bold con
ception of a supernatural Providence, under which the
world itself is ruled in the interest of Christianity ; a con
ception that will be verified in the next or following chap
ter, and therefore need not be discussed here. Nothing
more is necessary to our present purpose, than just to call
attention to the remarkable fact that this myth, this mar
vel cf superstition, this gossip of miracle, that we call
Christianity, dares to claim the government of the world
(as in real consistency it should,) in its interest, and, what

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 891
is more, history, as we shall see, audits the claim, and
makes it good.
9. We name, as another point of the christian doctrine,
strangely and surprisingly coincident with tho supernatu
ral idea of the plan, introduced by the incarnate appear
ing of Christ, the Trinity of God. I say, strangely and
surprisingly coincident, because the last thing that would
occur to any human being, in the exercise of his natural
wisdom, would be the introduction of a new, or modified
conception of God, to accommodate the new fact of a
gospel. And yet, exactly this is what we discover in the
matter of that gospel ; and, what is more, having the fact
before us, we can easily enough distinguish a practical
reason for it, in the requisite instrumental use, or handling
of that gospel ; or, what is no wise different, in the prac
tical adjustment of our relations to God, under the two
fold conditions of nature and grace, in which he is now
set before us.
We can not here go into the learning of this great
question. Suffice it to say, that the Old Testament scrip
tures contain the rudiments of a trinity, and that the Pla
tonic, Alexandrian, and Christian trinities are either sug
gested by, or developed from these rudiments. That the
Old Testament scriptures are prior in date, even by hund
reds of years, to the writings of Plato, is not to be denied.
The east was full of traditions from these scriptures, and
he himself, a traveler in those parts, professed that he de
rived many things from the traditions of the " Barbarians."
It can not therefore be charged that the Christian trinity,
as given by Christ, in the baptismal formula, was origin
ally a product of natural reason, and was transferred
from Plato's theosophy. No trinity was ever suggested

892 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
by mere thought, or generated by mere natural reason,
Eeason takes the road of unity, and the conception of a
triad comes out, if at all, from the process of a supernat
ural revelation. Thus came the Christian trinity, as a
fact historically developed ; first in the Almighty CreatoT
and Father, the Jehovah-angel or Word of the Lord, and
the Holy Spirit, of the Old Testament; then in the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the New. It is a concep
tion generated by supernatural transactions, and is needed
to accommodate the uses of a supernatural salvation.
Thus, if there were but one economy, or ministration
of God, known to us, viz., that of nature, we should
never need, and, in fact, should never have, any concep
tion of the divine being, save that which is named by the
terms God, the Almighty, the Creator, and others, con
formed to the notion of the divine unity. But, having
fallen into a state of retributive disorder, from which we
can be deUvered only by a supernatural salvation, we are
obliged to adjust ourselves toward God as filling two
economies, and that requires a new machinery of thought.
If now we have only the single term God, we must speak
of God as dealing with God, or of the grace-force of God, as
delivering from the nature-force of God; If the work
includes an incarnation, as we suppose it must, then it
must be God sending God into the world ; and, if it
includes a renovating, new-revealing agency within, then
we can only go to God to give us God, and ask of God to
roll back the retributive causations of God, that are fast
ening their penal bondage on us. All which, we may
see, is a method too clumsy and confused to serve, at all,
the practical uses of the salvation provided. There is, in
Bhort, no inteUectual machinery, in a close theoretic mon

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 393
othcism, for any such thing as a work of grace, or super
natural redemption. In the Christian trinity, this want is
supplied. First, we have the Father, setting God before
us as the author and ground of all natural things and
causes. Then we have the Son and the Spirit, which
represent what God may do, acting on the Unes of causes
in nature ; one as coming into nature from without, to be
incarnate in it, the other as working internally in the
power of the Son, to dispense to the soul what he ad
dressed outwardly to human thought, and configure the soul
to him, as an exemplar embraced by its faith. Then,
putting our trust in the Son, as coming down from God,
offering himself before God, going up to Him, interceding
before Him, reigning with Him, by Him accepted, honored,
glorified; invoking also God and Christ to send down
the Spirit, and let him be the power of a new indwelling
life, breathing health into our diseases, and rolling back tho
penal currents of justice to free us of our sin, we are able to
act ourselves before the new salvation, so as to receive the
full force of it. Having these instruments of thought and
feeling and faith toward God, and suffering no foolish
quibbles of speculative logic to plague us, asking never
how many Gods there are ? nor how it is possible for one
to send another, act before another, reconcile us to an
other? but, assured that God is one eternally, however
multiform our conceptions of his working, how lively
and full and blessed is the converse we get, through these
living personations, so pliant to our use as finite men, so
gloriously accommodated to the twofold economy of our
salvation as sinners ! Is this now a conception gotten up
bv man, upon his natural level ? Is there any phUosophic,
theosophic, or mythologic mark upon it?

394 NO OTHER SUPERNATURAL RELIGION
We have thus brought into review as many as nine
of the principal facts and prominent articles of Chris
tianity, and find them crystallizing into a perfectly har
monious and orderly system, round the one central fact
of a supernatural rehgion, initiated in the incarnate ap
pearing of Christ. His work is called a gospel on this
account, precisely as it should be, and yet by no human
suggestion would be. It is also called a salvation, differ
ing from all theosophies and mythologies, in the fact that
it is a supernatural restorative force, and, in that view, the
only real salvation ever known. It brings the salvation
also to faith and hangs it on faith, as by the conditions of
the case it must, and as no other known scheme of virtue
does. It justifies also by faith, communicating, in this
manner, the righteousness of God and preparing acquittal
in a way that keeps the law in full force, as the nature-
side and necessary element of human training. A king
dom of God, or of heaven, is erected by it on earth ; in
which we see, by the name itself, that the reigning force
of the new kingdom is not of nature, but from without
and above the world. The Holy Spirit is inaugurated as
a conception or the divine working, different from that
which is included in the laws of nature, and delivering
from the retributive action of those laws. This deliver
ance, connected with a renovated principle of life in the soul,
it calls regeneration, conceiving, in a way peculiar to itself,
that, without the change thus denominated,-as a second
birth, or newly regenerated life, there is and can be no seed-
principle of heavenly virtue. Here too is proposed, for the
first time in the world, a properly supernatural Providence ;
that is, a Providence which governs the world, in the i.i-
terest of salvation, or regenerated holiness. Accordantly

INTELLECTUALLY COMPLETE. 395
also with such a conception of God, as presiding over a
double administration of law and grace, nature and the
supernatural, the divine unity is reproduced as trinity ; in
which, whatever may be thought of other trinities, Chris
tianity holds, at least, the honorable distinction of being
the only doctrine that conceives a trinity, in and through,
and practically operative with, a double economy of
divine government.
Is there not something remarkable in this general con
sent of the christian names, facts, ideas, and doctrines?
and the more remarkable that it appears in matters where
we should least look for it, if left to ourselves and the
natural processes of our thoughts? And still the list
might be indefinitely extended. Thus preaching is to be
the means of propagation for this gospel, and what but a
supernatural gift to the world could ever be heralded or
preached? Prophesying in the Spirit is a supernatural ut
terance. The ministry are conceived to be set apart by
the Holy Spirit, which is true of no other class of teachers,
on the footing of reason, or of natural science. Spiritual
gifts belong to a plan transcending nature. The sacraments
are consecrated vehicles of grace and power. Visions
and revelations are from above. The resurrection of the
dead is not of nature. The history of the original propa
gation of Christianity, taken as a whole, is in fact a
miraculous process, and nothing less. In short the whole
fabric of the christian institution — thought, name, office,
fact, and doctrine-centers, we discover, in the one grand (
idea of a supernatural movement on the world. There is
nothing eccentric, that will not fall into the general aim
of the plan, and chime with it ; no fantastic matter that is
unreducible, as we should expect, if human wisdom only

896 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME
had undertaken the devising and the adjustment of the
parts. As Napoleon noticed, with an impression of won
der, "one thing follows another like the ranks of a celes
tial army." He knew what an army was, and the order
of a well-set discipline, but he finds a higher, even
celestial order, which his phalanx is a thing too loose to
represent, in the gloriously compacted truths of a heaven-
born, supernatural faith.
Even Mr. Hennel admits a correspondent impression of
the compact unity, and the admirable working order ol
the christian plan ; admitting, strangely enough, that it ex
cels aU other fruits of human learning and philosophy in
this respect, and yet conceiving that, with all its high pre
tensions of a supernatural origin, and the undeniably
supernatural guise in which it stands, it is itself a strictly
human product! He says, "Christianity has presented
to the world a system of moral excellence. It ha3
led forth the principles of humanity and benevolence
from the recesses of the schools and groves, and com
pelled them to take an active part in the affairs of life.
It has consolidated the moral and religious sentiments into
a more definite, influential form than had before existed,
and thereby constituted an engine that has worked power
fully toward humanizing and civilizing the world."*
Moral and religious sentiments ! as if it were only a com
pact of these and such like human qualities, when it is
talking all the while of the incarnation, of faith, of justi
fication, of the better covenant, of regeneration, of the resur
rection of the dead, and commanding its apostles to preach
the trinity of God ! Are these staple matters of Christianity
sur "moral and religious sentiments?" "Consolidated''''
?Inquiry, p. 48.

CAN NOT BE OF MAN. 897
also they are "into a more definite and influential form !"
Is it in such lofty aud transcendent spiritualities as these
which are named, that our mere human notions are wont
to get consolidated? And why could not the philoso
phers, such men as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, and
Seneca, consolidate such human notions as well, or to as
good effect, as the rude fishermen of Galilee ? And yet
what is there of solidity, in giving to these mere natural
things or sentiments, a form so fantastical and flighty,
and calling them by names to which no human thought
can reach? Doubtless Christianity is "more influen
tial," but it is so, because it is so truly unsolid, so spir
itual, and so visibly superior to the world, and to all those
dull imbecilities sometimes called religious sentiments.
God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself — that
is influential, that is power !
And now the question is, whence comes this super
natural, world-transcending institute, erected among us,
in so many tokens of a perfect intelligence ? _ Whence
this more than logical, this organic unity in things so re
mote, and to mere human thought undiscoverable ; for if
it be possible that human thought should stumble on a
fiction so magnificent, it certainly could not frame it into
order, and offer it as a truth of salvation.
In adjusting our answer to this question, it is important,
first of all, to observe that the christian truth has obviously
nothing of the form of a scheme thought out by the
natural understanding. It is not metaphysical or deduct
ive. It proposes itself to faith, under laws of expres
sion, and is plainly seen to be no product of mental analy
sis, or constructive logic. It has the form not of some
thing generated by, but of something offered lo, the world
34

898 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME
It comes down into history, as it represents, from a point
above history ; standing out in symbols of fact and ex
pression, that are to report and verify themselves. It is,
in form, a something to be believed, not a something rea
soned — incarnation, love, miracle, a calling of God after
men, a communication of the divine nature. Admitting,
as we safely enough may, for the present, that criticism
discovers tokens of human activity and frailty in the
record, still the operative system stands forth in its own
simple confidence, in its own heavenly form, as a gospel
to the world, and as such it reveals the solid unity, the
glorious depth of harmony and self-understanding, we
have discovered in its doctrine. It speaks as if it never
had a thought of system, and yet reveals a reach of system
wider 'than all human philosophy.
But this will be denied, and still it will be maintained
that this unconscious, inartificial fabric is a work of art.
That, if we know any thing of what is in man, is impos
sible. If the scheme were down upon the footing of na
ture, as on the face it declares it is not, then it might not
be difficult to admit that human skUl, or even the silent
process of human history, as in the case of the English
common law, should shape it into a system of apparent
order >and scientific unity. But being a scheme supernat
ural, not even the first facts or premises were included
in our knowledge, as derived from our natural expe
rience, and required therefore to be invented by us ; and to
suppose that our human faculties, breaking over the con
fines in this manner of all knowledge, could there build
up, in the cloud-land of unknown, merely imagined fact, a
sober, thoroughly coherent scheme of truth and renovat
ing life, adjusting 1he infinite to the finite, law to mercy,

CAN NOT EE OF MAN. 399
discord and death to liberty and salvation, and setting all
its grand array of facts, names, doctrines, and powers in a
frame of solid and compact unity — such a supposition is
too extravagant to be rationally entertained. It is sup
posing that we are able to build, in the realm of fiction it
self, a vaster and more solid economy of intellectual and
practical truth, than has ever yet been built on the basis
of experience.
Three suppositions may be raised in regard to the mat
ter in question; viz., that the work is all of man; that it
is partly of man ; and that it is all of God. The first of
these we have discussed already; for, if such a work
could not be invented, much less could it be accomplished
by the hap-hazard process of myth and wild tradition.
The second, which supposes, some central point of a su
pernatural plan being given— the fact, for example, of the
incarnation — that this fact was wrought up by the human
understanding, through a course of active development,
into the complete scheme and perfect unity we have de
scribed, need not be particularly discussed, because it
allows the fact of a supernatural root and beginning,
which is the principal matter in question.
The third supposition is the only one that is rationally
tenable ; viz., that this grand out-birth of a new divine
economy, called the gospel, is, in fact, supernatural, and
stands in the compact order of a complete intellectual
unity, because it was given by a comprehending mind
equal to the reach of the plan. Not that every thing
written, or advanced in the canonical books of the New
Testament, is historic fact, or infallible truth — our present
supposition does not reach so far as that, but leaves a
space to be filled up by other kinds of argument- -ii

400 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME
simply supposes that all such prominent ideas, tokens,
facts, and doctrines as we have named — that is, every
thing which goes to shape the new economy, as being
integral to it — is brought into knowledge and published
to the world supernaturally. And the proof is that al
ready given ; viz., that the consent of so many parts and
tokens in one central fact and design, can not otherwise
be accounted for, and is otherwise truly impossible.
The human understanding may frame a theory out of
data, or phenomena, supplied by experience; it may
scheme out a system or hypothesis, regarding -matters
known, that is coherent, and stands in the complete unity
of reason ; but it is a very different thing to make up a
supernatural kosmos of fact, doctrine, idea, relatively
consistent, and converging, all, on the common point of a
spiritual renovation of souls. That, we may affirm with
entire confidence, is not within the compass of any human
power. Of this, too, we have abundant evidence, besides that
which rests in any mere judgment of human capacity.
The whole religious and mythologic history of the world
is such evidence. In the first place, every pagan religion,
* every mythology, is in form a supernatural machinery ; a
i fact which Mr. Parker and others who endeavor to reduce
Christianity to a common footing with such mythologies,
\ and so to a mere product of nature, have strangely over
i looked. In the next place, what one of these pagan su
\ pernaturalisms has ever proposed the problem of salva
tion, or the deliverance of man from sin and the restora
I tion of his divine consciousness? — the only real problem
manifestly, that requires to be supernaturally solved
Again, what one of these mythologies proposes to erect

CAN NOT BE OF MAN. 401
tho kingdom of God among men, or has any consistent
and concentrated action bearing on that one result, or
indeed on any other ? What one of them, we may ask,
even proposes a pure morality ? So plainly impossible is
it for man, or human history, to develop any intelligent
and rationally harmonious scheme of supernaturalism.
And yet we have more convincing proofs even than
these. See what figure is made by Mormonism, Moham
medanism, and the Eomish Church, all of which begin
with supernatural conceptions, or data, furnished by
Christianity. If we will ascertain what it is in man to do,
in the way of composing supernatural verities, see what
additions or amendments these have furnished. The new
faith of Mormon pretends to be christian still, only it is a
more complete and finished form of the christian truth.
But the ungodly and profane mummeries it has added, in
the new revelations of the book, the new priesthood, and
the new sainthood, all of which are boasted and accepted
as improvements, it is very plain are only mockeries of
all the practical aims of the gospel, and of the virtues it
came to restore. Mohammedanism, borrowing from the
Christian scriptures, proposes for its aim, to perfect in men
a heavenly virtue. But the doctrine of fatalism it estab
lishes, forbids, at the outset, every struggle after such
heavenly virtue, and the sensual paradise it promises,
generates, as far as it goes, a habit opposite to every thing
iu the nature of that virtue.
But these, it will be said, are not, in any proper sense,
developments of the Christian supernaturaUsm, at which
they begin ; but tricks of knavery, or ravings of fanati-
eism. Pass then to the Eomish Church, and see what the
venerable, slow-moving wisdom of ages can do. Here
34*

402 THIS COMPLETED SCHEME
we meet the councils, age after age, in their high delib*
erations. All the learning of the world, for many hund
reds of years, is here concentrated. Heretical additions
are here carefully scented, and promptly burnt out by the
fires of purification. All determinations pass by debate,
and sometimes by the debates of ages. The history is a
process slow and laborious, like that which generates the
common or the civil law ; and the result is even called a
development of Christianity. What then do we find?
Is the glorious order and regenerative unity of the gospel,
as a power of salvation, preserved and augmented, or is
it overlaid and stifled, by a mass of antichristian inven
tions and corrupt traditions, that have really no agree
ment with it? And yet they are all introduced to give
it greater effect. The exorcisms were to expel devils; but
the solemn trifling of the ceremony only turned the disci
ple away from faith, to look after powers of magic. The
amulets were to be pledges, on the person, of God's keep
ing and defense, against devils and all disasters ; but these
were accepted as charms also of magic. The sacrament
itself of Christ's body and blood, ordained to be the ve
hide and sign" of a co-operative grace to the recipient,
must needs be farther intensified in its power, and, to this
end, was transmuted into the very substance of Christ, by
a perpetual miracle ; which miracle, again, was taken as
another feat of priestly magic, and watched as a pious
incantation by the receiver. Celibacy and monastic re
tirement were to beget a higher and more superlative
virtue ; turning out, instead, to be only the scandal and
disgust of the world. Pictures were added, to assist the
mind in conceiving things high and remote; operating,
instead, as a stricture upon it, and chaining it down to a

CAW NOT BE OF MAN. 403
Qew antiohristian idolatry. Ascetic practices were added,
to chasten the soul and refine its spiritual fires; only
kindling, instead, the fires of a new fanaticism. The way
to Christ would be more easy, it was conceived, if his
mother could be invoked to present the cause of the sup
pliant ; and lo ! Christianity becomes no more a gospel of
life, but a fantastic scheme of Mariolatry. A vicar of
Christ was wanted, many thought, to represent him on
earth, and be a visible mark for their faith ; but the vicar
displaced the principal, becoming a mark, instead, of su
perstitious homage, and a receiver of deific honors.
And thus'11 we have a proof irresistible of what man
can do, in the way of thinking out, or dressing up, a
scheme of supernatural truth. Four or five common
persons, without learning or culture, assisted by one
other distinguished by higher advantages, have pre
sented, we have seen, such a scheme. All the parts they
have set in harmony with each other, and made them
crystallize into the perfect unity of the plan. But hero
we find all the great minds of the church, the learned, the
wise, the prudent, and even the good, slowly elaborating
their additions, or, as some will say, tbeir developments,
of the doctrine handed down to them, and producing just
that which has no agreement whatever with its genuine
import and the real movement it proposes — -joining, as
the classic poet says, a " horse's neck to a man's head,"
and expanding the simple, life-giving truth, into such the
atrical pomps and scholastic wisdoms, that a cap and beUs
would scarcely be a less appropriate honor.
What, then, have we to do, after such a reference as
this, but to gather up all these prominent facts, ideas,
names, and doctrines, which we have seer coalesce so pep

404 THE SCHEME NOT OF MAN.
fectly in the central fact of a supernatural grace foi
the world, composing, when taken together, the total
frame-work and complete virtuality of the gospel, and
say that, in this secret and every where present water
mark, we read the signature of God. None but Ho
could have organized this heavenly kosmos that we call
the gospeL

CHAPTER Xiii.
THE WOULD IS GOVERNED SUPERNATURAL!? IN TIIE
INTEREST OE CHRISTIANITY.
Christianity, as planted by Christ, is a divine institute
iu the world, the particular design of which is to act re-
medially, as against the mischiefs introduced by sin, and
propagated by the retributive causes of nature. The Holy
Spirit also is, by the supposition, a divine force or deific
agency inaugurated in the world, to carry on, through al
the coming ages, this same new-creating work. Now, as
there is but one divine being or God, who is entered thus
into so great a work, with tokens of feeling so impressive
ly indicated, it follows by a very short inference, if in
deed by any inference at all, that the one God of the
world, governing it always accordantly with Himself, must
govern it in the interest of Christianity. Christianity,
plainly, is either nothing to Him, or else it is more than
any secondary thing; the hinge of his counsel, the mis
sion of his love, the grand, all-inclusive, and eternal aim
of his purposes. And if this be true, he will not govern
the world in a way that forgets or overlooks Christianity,
but will govern it rather for Christianity's sake; which,
again, is the same as to say that he will govern it by a su
pernatural regimen, even as Christianity itself is a super
natural institution.
Exactly thi', too, is the assumption of Christ himself.
He openly claims the government of the world, as being
in his interest, or at the disposal of his cause and king
dom; saying — "all power is given unto me in heaven and

406 THE TWO KINDS
in eartn." He is also declared r.y his apostle to have " as
cended on high, leading captivity captive," that he might
be a dispenser of divine gifts in this manner; "for God
hath set him at his own right hand, in the heavenly places,
far above all principality and power, and hath put all
things under his feet, that he might be head over all things
to the Church." He also publishes, himself, a doctrine of
prayer that supposes the same thing; or that, if any one
will ask in his name, or as abiding in him and doing his
will, he shall have his petition — guidance, light, deliver
ance, healing of the sick, support against enemies,
power to work, patience to suffer — every thing that sup
poses the government to be enlisted, as a supernatural
Providence, in the furtherance of his christian welfare.
Indeed we shall not sufficiently understand the christian
ideas of Providence, till we conceive it to be a twofold
scheme of order and divine dispensation. Nature, in the
first place, is a kind of Providence, being so adjusted as to
meet all the future uses it can, as nature, meet. But it
requires little insight, to perceive that it can not meet those
uses that suppose a need of deliverance from nature.
Manifestly nature can not rescue from the disorders, pro
duced by a retributive action of her own causes. And if
all God's action were included in the operations of nature,
nothing plainly could ever be done for man, as regards the
wants of his sin, the cries of his repentance, or the strug
gles of his faith. Nature can throw him, and trample
him, by her retributive causes, but she has no help to give
him in rising, or rolling back her causes.
On this subject of Providence, there is much of unreg
ulated thought and crude speculation. Thus it is a greatly
debated question, whether there is a special, or only a gen-

OF PROVIDENCE. 407
ena Providence? For it is conceived, by a certain class,
that God has a special meaning or design, in some few
things of their experience, and not in others. This plain
ly is a faith of credulity, and one that accommodates God
to the measures of human ignorance. Another class, who
assume to be more philosophic, holding a general, and de
nying a special Providence, only substitute an absurdity
for a superstition; for what is a general Providence, that
comprehends no special Providence, but a generality made
up of no particulars-, that is, made out of nothing? The
only intelligent conception is, that every event is special,
one as truly as another; for nothing comes to pass in God's
world without some particular meaning or design. And
so the general Providence is perfect, because the special is
somplete. And yet even this is no sufficient conception of Provi
dence. There is yet, after all, a real truth associated with
the specialty view just stated, and covered, in part, by the
scanty garb in which it is dressed; viz., that God is more
warmly reciprocal with us and the struggles of our faith, in
some things than in others — more reciprocal, that is, and
closer to our want, and warmer to our feeling, in his su
pernatural Providence, than he is in his natural.
The truth will be set in a more definite light, if we con
ceive, first of all, that nature is a kind of constant quan
tity and fixed term between us and God. It needed to be
so, for many reasons. We could not even keep our feet if
the ground had no stable quality. We could do nothing
in the way of industry, attain to no exercise of power;
there would be no law, no science, nothing to meet our in
telligence ; we could not act responsibly toward each other
without some constant, calculable, or known medium

408 PROVIDENCE NATURAL
between us. We could apprehend no retributive force in
nature, waiting by the laws of obligation, to be their sanc
tion. Even God himself would be a vague and desultory
phantom, if he were not represented to us by the fixed
laws and the orderly enduring processes of nature. With
out these, even the light and shade of his supernatural
manifestation would be insignificant — just as the living
play of a countenance would signify nothing, if it had no
Unes of repose at which the play begins, and into which it
returns. But, while such is nature, it is yet, as we have seen, sub
mitted, by its very laws, both to our supernatural action,
and to that of God. As we act our liberty in it and upon
it," never suspending or defrauding, even for a moment,
any one of its laws, so it would be singular, if He could
not do the same, and that upon a scale correspondent with
the magnificence of his attributes. So, in mUlions of
ways, at every minute, the courses of things may be
touched by his will, and turned about, as the holy Poet
says of the cloud, "to do whatsoever he commandeth
upon the face of the earth." By means of the constant
element between us and God — limbered, though constant,
to our common action — we are set in terms of reciprocity
as living persons or powers, and are found acting, as to
ward each other, in a perpetual dialogue of parts. Taken
thus, in the whole comprehension of its import, our world
is nothing but a vast, special, supernatural, reciprocal
Providence, in which our God is reigning as an ever-pres
ent, ever-mindful counselor and guide and friend, a Ee-
deemer of our sin, a hearer of our prayers. It is not that
he, long time ag >, put causes at work to meet our wants,
and answer our prayers, but that he worketh hitherto

AND SUPERNATURAl 409
He is no dead majesty, but a living; and, if we want a
special Providence, he is special enough to give us his re
cognition. He will even teach us how to pray, correcting
our petitions to make them meet his counsel, and giving
us desires, leveled to the exact aim of his purposes; even
as the eagle teaches her young how to set their wings, and
rest them on the air in flight. Not that he means, when
speaking of things "agreeable to his will," that we are
merely to come, guessing at things already fixed, and try
ing to suit our petition to the motion of the wheel as it
rolls, sliding it carefully in, at the right place, but that he
will have us pray as in power ; for it is agreeable to his J
will that we have power with God, and prevaU — power to
come and lay our hand on his, as his is laid on the world's
causes, and, by the suit of our want, emboldened by the
acquaintanceship of our faith, to move that hand. And
to just this end, as Christ himself teaches, all things in
heaven and earth are submitted pliantly to him, so that,
without shock or miracle, he can, if he will, turn them to
his friendly and gracious purposes. The world and its
affairs are so to become coefficients only of his gospel.
Such is the conception Christianity holds of Providence,
or the providential government of the world — it is super
natural, it is christly,. and is to be relied upon ever, as a
power operating for Christianity in the earth. Is the con
ception true, is it borne out by sufficient proofs? This, I
shall now undertake to show.
Let us note, in passing, however, as a fact introductory(
that just such a government, as respects the mode, would
be wanted and really required, apart from any fall of sin;
or work of deliverance from it. For, if there be only na
ture, with her constant quantities and endlessly propaga-
85

410 APART FROM SIN, WE WANT
ted causes, if there be nc divine supernatural agency in
the world, then there is no conceivable footing of society,
or social relationship with God left us. Nature, in such a
scheme, is only a machine, and that machine is all that we
have contact with. And if we should maintain our up
rightness, holding on in ways of unfaltering obedience,
we shall none the less want to know God, and have our
society with him. But we get no terms of society in a
machine, we can not seek unto a wall. Acting supernat
urally ourselves, we need also to be supernaturally met
and acted on. Without this, we have no terms of reci
procity with God more than with a volcano, or a tide of
the sea. Society between us there is none. Society is rig
idly definable, as being a supernatural commerce between
parties acting supernaturally. As between us and God, it
is a doing and receiving ; if we do not sin, a righteousness
looking up to God in confidence, and a smile of approval
looking down to commend and bless. But if there be no
such thing as a divine supernatural agency, then is no such
footing of society conceivable. We exist as a solitary
party. Nature is our cage, and the nearest approach we get
to a recognition, is to find that we are shut up in it. Is it so ?
Do any of us think it is so? Did we really believe it, what
could our existence be but a conscious defeat and mock
ery, a longing that is objectless, a breathing without air?
But our state is not a state of sinless obedience. We
have set the retributive causes of nature against us, and
Christianity undertakes to be our deliverer. And the
claim now is, that the government of the world is super
naturally administered, so as to work with it. We al
ledge, then, in evidence —
I, That facts do not take place here, Ia human society,

A GOVERNMENT NOT MECHANICAL. 411
government, and the church, as they should, if events
were left to the mere causalities of nature, and were no
way controllable by a supernatural ministration of divine
government, or by some genuinely Christian providence,
in the management of human affairs.
The fact of sin is palpable, and is shown by evidences
not to be questioned. What shock of disorder it must
have given, or has in fact given, to the mundane kosmos,
in all its parts, we have also shown. Taking now the
supposition that there is nothing else but nature, and
nature a scheme of universal cause and effect, that is, a
machine, propagating its activities by its own organic
laws, we ought to see no improvement, no advance, but a
regular running down rather from bad to worse, and a
final disappearance of all vestiges of order. Society and
human capacity ought to sink away, universally, toward
barbarism, and nature itself to grow weaker, more sterile,
deeper in deformity and confusion. So it ought to be —
speculatively viewed, or according to conditions of scien
tific order and law, nothing else could be. And yet we
are just now taken with such confidence of progress in
our human history, as to imagine that progress is even a
prime law of natural development itself. In which we
are doubtless right as regards the general fact of progress,
(it is no fact as regards the savage races,) but are only the
more strangely blind to the higher fact, which that prog
ress indicates ; viz., the regenerative action of supernatu
ral forces, that, in spite of the downward tendency of
mere nature under sin, are creating always a new heavens
and earth, out of the ruins of the former beauty, and
making even the losing experiences of evil, conditions of
spiritual and social progress. Plainly no such progress

412 THINGS DO NOT TAKE PLACE
ever ought to be, or ever would be made, apart from the
supernatural causes which are its spring.
But there is a more deliberate way of testing this point,
and a method of inquest that reaches farther. We turn
ourselves to the courses and the grand events of human
history, all that we include in the providential history of
the world — the wars, diplomacies, emigrations, revolutions,
persecutions, discoveries, and scientific developments of
the world — and we are immediately met by the appearance
of some wonderful consent or understanding, between
Christianity and the providential courses of things.
Christianity is, in form, the supernatural kingdom and
working of God in the earth. It begins with a supernat
ural advent of divinity, and closes with a supernatural
exit of divinity; and the divine visitant, thus entered
into the world and going out from it, is himself a divine
miracle in his own person ; his works are miracles, and
his doctrine quite as truly, and the whole transaction,
taken as a movement on the world, or in it, lhat is not of
it, supposes in fact a new and superior kind of adminis
tration, instituted by God Himself. Accordingly, if it be
true that Goa is in such a work, having all the highest
and fast ends of existence rested in it, he ought to govern
the world, as we have already said, for it, and so as to
forward this as the main interest included in it.
Now whatever may be true, as respects the positive and
direct evidence of such a fact, this, at least, is a matter
that will strike any one as being truly remarkable, and,
moreover, as being quite unaccountable, except on the
ground of its truth, that Christianity has never been ex
terminated, but still lives, and even holds a reigning
power at the head of all learning, art commerce, society.

AS THEY OUGHT UNDER MERE NATURE. 413
polity, and political dominion in the earth. Pythagoras,
Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Aristotle, Seneca, all these great
founders and law-givers in the world of philosophy are
gone ; the Academy and the Porch and all the schools
that were gathered by the wisdom and the mighty and
beautiful thought of these first minds of the world, are
scattered; but Jesus, the unlettered rustic, lives, and his
simple words, distinguished by no literary pretensions,
and recorded only in the simplest and most fragmentary
way, by the unlettered men that caught them, live also.
Studied in deepest reverence, and expounded by all the
richest, nicest learning of the world, and fed on by the
praying souls of the faithful in all walks and conditions
of Ufe, they are continually gathering new followers, and
composing a larger school, to which no inclosures of
Academy or Porch, nothing but kingdoms and conti
nents, can think to give their name. Why now is it,
that time and the world's government conspire so power
fully with Jesus, and not with such a great and deeply
cultured soul as Plato? Why with Christianity, and not
with any proudest school of human opinion? All the
mere human teachers are much closer to nature certainly
than Jesus was, and if the world's government is wholly
natural, or in the interest of nature, it would seem to be
a very plain inference that what belongs to nature will be
most easily perpetuated. Why should a government, in
the interest of nature, concur to enthrone and crown what
is really supernatural ?
Besides, nature, as we have seen, is a power acting
retributively, in a process of self-chastisement and deteri
oration naturally endless, and upon this falling flood, or
into it, Christianity settles, to grapple with its -mad causa
35*

414 THINGS DO NOT TAKE PLACE
tions, and roll them back, and hush their elemental war,
by iis words of peace ; how then is it, that a new, super
natural dispensation, which arrays itself, at all points,
against nature and its penal disorders, erects upon the
unsteady waters of so fickle and wUd a sea, the only
institution that for the last eighteen hundred years has
been able to chaUenge the honors of permanence ? If
there be no power but nature, no government superior tc
the interest of nature, it certainly ought not to be so. On
the contrary, whatever pretends to be supernatural, ought
to die soonest, and show the greatest frailty — even as tho
pouring waters of .Niagara may well enough keep en over
the rapids, down the fatal leap, and no cessation make,
even for millions of years ; whereas, the slender, light-
trimmed vessel, that sets her sails for the ascent of those
same rapids, ought not to stem them by one inch, and
least of all, to become an institution in them, stiffly and
steadily breasting the current for ages. And yet, if
there were some Higher Providence governing those falls
in the interest of the vessel, and not, as nature would, the
vessel in the interest of the falls, then plainly it would no
longer be absurd, for that same frail craft to become an
institution even, half way down the final leap itself.
If it be suggested that other religions, such, for exam
ple, as Buddhism and Mohammedanism, are also super
natural in their form, and have survived, one of them a
third longer, and the other two-thirds as long, as Chris
tianity, it is enough to reply, as regards the latter, that
aU the forces of reality it had were stolen from Christian
ity, and that, in spite of these, it is now just upon the
death; and, as regards the former, that while its machine
ries are in form supernatural, it really undertakes to do

AS THEY OUGHT UNDER MERE NATURE. 415
nothing, as against the lapse and disability of nature, but
rather settles into the same disorder with it, and takes a
show of perpetuity, because it flows with the current, and
wins a kind of permanence which is only another name
for the disability it creates. This is true of all the false
religions ; they belong to nature, and become constituent
elements in that hell of disabUity which nature makes out
of sin. Christianity rises, and raises its adherent races
with it. These others fall, and finally die, when their ad
herent races die out of the world, assisting and hastening
that event, each in its own way. When, therefore, we con
sider that Christianity goes directly into a conflict with
nature, calling nature death, and engaging to combat the
death by its regenerative power, and that still, after so
many centuries, it holds on victorious, what shall we
infer, with greater certainty, than that the government of
the world is with it, in its interest, engaged to give it suc
cess ? Without or apart from this fact, it plainly couid
not have held its ground, even for a single year. No!
Christianity stands, and will, because the God of Chris
tianity is the God of the world. The kingdom is not
moved, and can not be, as it certainly should under a
mere providence of natural causes, and that for the mani
fest reason, that ill power in heaven and in earth is given
into the hands of the king. And this brings us to a —
II. Argument which is more general and more positive,
viz. this ; that, if we could make a perfectly intelligent
survey of the great world's history itself, and see how its
principal events are turned, we should only discover the
same thing on a larger scale ; that the world itself is gov
erned in the interest of Christianity, or the supernatural
grace and kingdom of Jesus Christ. We plainly can noi

416 PREPARATION OF
undertake any such review, for the reason that no human
insight is equal to the task ; but if we just glance along the
inventory, so to speak, of the matters of this history, re
calling chapters by their titles, and only having in mind
the relation of so many things to the central figure, Christ
and his kingdom, we shall find that, in his glorious per
son, we get the key by which their mystery and meaning
are solved, their practical harmony expounded.
Thus we have the Jewish dispersion, before Christ, in
all the principal cities of tho world, and the establishment
there of the synagogue worship ; so that, when the apos
tles go abroad with their message, they have places in
wliich to speak made ready, assemblies gathered, and what
is more than aU, minds prepared by Jewish symbols and
associations, to receive the meaning of the new gospel, as
related to a first dispensation of law; without which, as
we have seen, its true place in God's economy is undis
covered; without which too, it is bolted into the world,
separately from all historic connections, and from all the
evidences to be shown for it, by its fulfillment of ideas hid
in ancient rites aud forms.
Next we ofeserve that philosophy had just now culmi
nated among the Greeks and Eomans, and was giving way
as a force that is spent. The Sophists had run it into the
ground. Faith in it was gone, and with that, all faith too
in the gods of their religion. In this manner a deep and
painful hunger was prepared, and multitudes of the most
thoughtful minds were actually groping after the very
food which Christ was to bring.
At this time too the Greek tongue, which, for ages to
come, was to be the general vehicle of thought and com
merce between the peoples of the world, had become, to s

THE WORLD FOR CHRIST. 417
great extent, the vernacular of the country, and a Gentile
speech or medium was thus made ready, to receive and
convey the grace that is given to the Gentiles.
The Eomans too are now masters of the country, and
the Eoman Empire, of which it is become an integral part,
is well nigh universal. When Christ therefore is crucified,
it is, as it should be, the public act of the world, decreed
by the Boman procurator in the name of the worid.
There is also now a more open state of society between the
nations and races of mankind than was ever known before ;
because they are all, in fact, one empire. The apostles
therefore may well enough go into all the world, as they
are bidden, because the pass of a Eoman citizen is good in
all the world.
It has also been noted as a remarkable fact, that when
the Incarnate Word appears, it is a time of general peace ;
and it is remarkable, not only as a matter of poetic fitness,
or esthetic propriety, but still more, in the deeper and more
cogent sense of a practical necessity; for if Christ had
come, in the tumult of a time of war, his glorious, but
gentle, appeal of truth and love would have been utterly
drowned and lost. In the din of so great noise and pas
sion, who could feel his want of a salvation? who be at
tracted by the beauty of a character? who descend to a
cross to look for the Incarnate Word, and catch his mourn
ful testimony ?
Take now these familiar facts, and what are they all but
a visible preparation of human history for Christ, showing
on how vast a- scale the world is managed in the interest
of Christ and his supernatural advent? Why else, too, do
they all concur in time, when they might as well have
happened centuries apart? Whence comes it that, when

418 THE SUBSEQUENT HISTORY
human history has been brewing in so great a ferment, for
so many ages, all these great preparations should just now
be ready, calling for the king with their common voice and
saying — "the fullness of time is come"?
As it was with the events that preceded and prepared
the gospel, so it has been with those which followed its
publication. They give us their true sense and guage of
power, in the fact that they inaugurate a new era, called
the christian era. And what are we to see in the simple
Anno Domini of our dates and superscriptions, but that,
for some reason, the great world-history has been bending
itself to the lowly person of Jesus, from the hour of his
miraculous advent onward through so many centuries of
time. The christian era! a new formation, speaking geo
logically, in the domain of human life and society!
Christ, who is called by many the impossible, the incredi
ble person, the gospeled carpenter raised into a mythic
divinity — to him it is that the great world has so long
bent itself, and dated its history from his year ! So clearly
is it signified, that the government of the world is waiting
on Christianity, and working in its interest, and is thus, in
highest virtuality, a supernatural kingdom.
The events themselves of the new era indicate the same
thing. First, we hear Porphyry and other assailants of
the gospel complaining, strangely, that their gods are grown
dumb, refusing any more to heal, or give oracles. The
Jewish unbelievers are smitten next with a token of dis
couragement even more appalling, in the terrible siege and
dreadful overthrow of their Holy city ; in which they are
shown, as convincingly as possible, that God has brought
their ancient specialty of theocratic rule and distinction
to a full end — -just that which even prophecy had foretold

IS MANAGET; FOR CHRIST. 419
as the inaugural of a universal religion. Aftei long and
bitter persecutions, Constantine is finally enrolled as a
convert, and Christianity takes the ascendant above all the
gods of the empire. Trie northern hordes begin to pour
down the Alps, overrunning the distracted and worn-out
civilizations of the empire, and conquering, in fact, a relig
ion, by which they are themselves to be tamed and so
cially regenerated. The false prophet appears, propagating
his new dispensation by the fierce apostleship of arms, and
the world is to be shown what is the value of a triune
grace and gospel, by a grand collateral experiment, in
which both trinity and grace are wanting. The crusaders
follow in successive repetitions of defeat and disaster; as
if God's purpose were to stamp it on the christian sense
of the nations, that Christianity is forbidden by the eter
nal proprieties of its mission, to strengthen itself by any
victories but those of peace. The discovery of the mar
iner's compass leads off the discoveries of Vasco de Gama
and Columbus. Printing is invented, and the age of learn
ing revived. This prepares the great Beformation of relig
ion; for it, Luther; and for Luther, God so musters forces,
as to give him always civil protection, keeping him in for
tress, and compelling even the combined fury of kings and
kingdoms to pass by harmless. Tho Puritans are driven
out of England, to plant their gospel of liberty and light
On the shores of a new world. Cromwell breaks down
the monarchy, to inaugurate, in England, religious tolera
tion ; so to regenerate the laws and political liberties of the
English nation. The American Bevolution, followed by
the federal constitution, fulfills the christian aim of Puri
tanism, and lays all claims and titles of legitimacy at the
feet of human liberty and progress. The wars of NajDol eon

420 THE SUBSEQUENT HISTORY
foUow, by which the oppressive dynasties of Europe are
broken up or shattered, to let in the light of a new age of
improvement. The revelations of christian science, mean
time, are uncovering and transfoiming the world, tenfola-
ing its forces and uses, and all that constitutes its value, in
a single generation. The grand commercial apostleship of
steam and telegraph, hurrying the intercourse and short
ening the distances of the ends of the world, fixes the su
periority of the christian nations, and prepares the speedy
sovereignty of the christian ideas.
What now do we distinguish in these facts, but an out
standing, world-wide proof of the truth we just now stated,
that the government of the world is in the interest of
Christianity, and so far is itself a really continuous su
pernatural administration? These events are a kind of
providential procession that we see, marching on to
accomplish the one given result, the universal and final
ascendancy of Jesus Christ. They march, too, in the
beat of time, preserving their right order, and appearing,
each, just when it is wanted, not before or after. When
has it ever been seen that the government of the world was
conspiring, ill this large historic way, across the distance
of remote ages, with any merely natural man, his teach
ings, or plans, or work? Whatever else may be true, this
at least is plain, that between Christianity as a fabric all-
Bupernatural, concerned for nothing but to do a supernat
ural work, and the world as mere nature, suffering noth
ing above nature to be, there ought to be, and indeed
never could be any such concurrence. Besides, the progress
indicated by these facts, is plainly impossible on the foot
ing of mere nature; for nature, under sin, becomes, we
have seen, a grand destructive causality rather, such aa,

IS MANAGED FOR CHRIST. 421
running by its own mechanical laws, can of couise breed
no result of self-restoration, but must run itself down
ward, instead, into a worse and more fatal deterioration.
But it will be imagined by some, that these are facts
which we obtain by gleaning; that, meantime, there is an
abundanee equally copious of adverse facts, such as have
no concurrence with the gospel of Christ, but seem, in
stead, to offer only hindrance. What account, for exam
ple, can we make, of the dark ages so called, and of the
confessedly base corruptions that have been allowed to
overrun Christianity, as a doctrine of faith and salvation ?
To this I answer, that, by this question, rightly viewed,
is opened one of the most fruitful and convincing chapters
of christian evidence; showing, as no other does, that
Christianity is upheld by nothing but the fact, that the
government of the world is with it. What could follow,
but a corruption of Christianity, at the beginning, from
our very belief in it ? for by our faith we bring ourselves
to it, as a contribution ; contributing, of course, our
misbegotten opinions, our confused passions, our habits
prejudices, weaknesses of every kind, and so infusing
our poison, more or less hurtfully, into that which saves
us ; even as the patient wUl communicate his plague to
his physician, or the bad wine give its smell to the jar
into which it is poured. The disciple will as certainly
give his form to Christianity, when he preaches it, or
commends it, as he will receive a regenerated life from it.
The new gospel, accordingly — it could not be otherwise —
wUl go into a grand process of corruption, at first, such
as will perchance be called improvement, and the prob
lem of history will be, to settle and discriminate the truth,
by winnowing out the forms of human error and corrup-

422

THE DARK AGES

tion from it. Without some process of this kind, it coidd
never be seen what really belongs to the gospel, and what
to the unwisdom and unbelief of those in whom it dwells.
As the gospel was revealed to sin, so there was a different
kind of necessity that the gospel should be revealed ex
perimentally through sin. Man, the beUever, must, in
other words, be allowed to try his hand upon it, and make
it his gospel — make it wiser by his philosophy, stronger
by his regal patronage, more conspicuous and stately by
the paraphernalia of forms and the robed officials he may
dress up for its due embodiment.
This is that mystery of iniquity that an apostle saw,
even in his time, beginning to work ; which he said must
work, till it should be taken out of the way. This is
that faUing away first, that must come, the man of sin
that must be revealed. * It is not the papacy exactly, but
that which made the papacy ; viz., faith, not able, without
a severe schooling, to mind the distinction between a sub
jection to and a supervision of the gospel ; for, in becoming
responsible for it as a servant, what will the new believer
more certainly do than take it in charge, patronize it,
mend it, that is, disfigure and hide it ? And there will
be no limit to this wrong. Unable to stay content with
the humble guise and the simple doctrine of the cross, he
wUl exalt himself unwittingly above what is called God
in the work, and wUl go on to be so grand a supervisor,
that finally, as his sins are added to the forwardness of his
service, we shall begin to see that he has contributed his
whole self, and even taken God's seat, in his preposterous
ambition ; becoming first the minister, then the vicar, and
last of all, to give a true name, the usurper of God's authority.
Christianity is now in his charge, and is not improved by

ACCOUNTED FOR. 423
his additions. Disappointment follows; this compels a
reconsideration, this a reformation, and so the true gospel
is finally restored, with its reasons only certified, by
the human abuse through which it has passed, and the
lines of contrast drawn by so many miserable corruptions,
Thus, at a very early period, we hear such men as
Justin and Clement of Alexandria, proposing to give the
christian doctrine the . dress of a philosophy, and find
them earnestly at work to accomplish a point of so great
consequence, imagining that so it will be more able to
command the respect of the learned, and will better sat
isfy the want of the worid. The work goes on, tUl, at
last, some centuries of dialectic industry may be said to
have completely finished all that could be done, when lo !
the beautiful, life-giving truths of Christ, offered by him
to faith, are converted into a dry, scholastic jingle, ad
dressed to speculative reason, without value even to that,
and as easily rejected as embraced. Monasticism and
vows of celibacy are added in the same way, to give
Christianity, in certain special examples, the advantage of
a more superlative virtue than God had planned for, in
the practical relations of life ; finally to result in corrup
tions too monstrous ever to have been gendered in those
relations. Constantine, having become a disciple, must
needs contribute not his person only, but all the power of
his throne, to the gospel, expecting in that manner to
make it partake of his imperial pre-eminence, and become
strong by a strength thus contributed. Uniting it, in this
manner, to the state, he not only stays the woes of perse
cution, but he lifts the church into a rark of political as
cendancy ; which is the same as to say that he dooms it,
for awe to come, to be the mother of all unholy arts and

424 THE D^tK AGES
oppressions, and the source of unspeakable public miseries
Gregory the Great can find no rest to his prayers, till the
church is consolidated under the acknowledged primacy
of St. Peter ; and when it is done, he may fitly rest in his
prayers, having made the church such an organ of abuses,
oppressions, and religious woes, as the world had never
seen before, and never will see again. Images and pic
tures are at length set up in the holy places, under the
fair pretense that they are needed to represent the spirit
ual truths of religion to the eye, and so to accommodate
the apprehension of weak and ignorant minds. And
then, finally, behold ! as the fruit of so great an improve
ment, whole nations of people worshiping the images,
and before them, transformed into nations of idolaters !
So the mystery works, and so the true gospel is becom
ing distinguished from the false, the gospel of the Son of
God from man's gospel of additions, improvements, and
airy conceits. As Christ revealed his gospel by commu
nication, so "here it is revealed again, as it needs must be,
by the light and shade of historical experiment ; settled,
or adjusted, or practically defined, by use and abuse.
These facts appear to be entirely adverse to Christianity.
They are so, and, in that, have their value. That the
government of the world, therefore, has passed by on the
other side, and let Christianity fall in these facts, we are
not to suppose. Being a gift to human liberty, it could
not otherwise be established. When the experiment is
finished, then the Divine Word will burst up into a second
eoming, through the human incrustations, consuming by
his breath and destroying by his brightness, the accumu
lated wisdoms and pomps of his mistaken foUowers. In
all these losing agencies, there is yet no loss. The dark

ACCOUNTED FOR. 425
'1
ages we speak of are yet in no backward motion. StiU
the march of Christian history is onward. If these bad
impediments were not already raised, why, then they
were yet to be raised. Just so far on its way to the state
of universal dominion, is the gospel and supernatural
kingdom of Jesus Christ.
StiU there have been events, it must be admitted, in
what is called Christian history, which are darker and
more difficult of solution. They appear, at first view, to
have no place under a scheme of providential govern
ment, such as we are now supposing. And yet, if we
could hold a longer reach of times, and seize the connec
tions of history with a broader grasp of intelligence, they
mij;ht fall into place and become as transparent, under
such a scheme, as any other. As it is, we can only sug
gest possibilities, and start guesses, and rest till our facul
ties grow to the dimensions of the subjects. What does
it mean, for example, that the Jesuits and the Council of
Trent were able to stop, or set a limit to, the Befornu.tion
of the church? We can not answer, and probably shall
never know. like all evil, it may be referrible to the
necessary scope of human liberty. Or it may be that the
Eeformation itself was a thing too incomplete and partial
to be allowed a sweep of universal triumph. It might
have been a great disaster to the religion of Christ, to be
resolved into a mere Eeformationism, and left confronted
bv no antagonistic force. Why, again, was it, or how,
that the churches of Northern Africa were allowed to be
overrun by barbarians, and finally, in the loss of their
faith, to give way utterly, and fall into extinction, before
a barbarous religion ? Was it that occasional examples
of loss and retrocession must be suffered, in order to the
36*

426 ADVERSE FACTS
enforcement of a just responsibUity for the gospel in. its
adherents and followers, otherwise ready to assume that,
having God for its author, it will take care of itself?
This we can not answer, but we can without difficulty
imagine it to be so. Why, again, were the French Hu
guenots, the religious hope and glory of their time, suf
fered to be butchered or expelled the kingdom ? Was it
that so many great and noble men might endanger again
the simplicity of the truth, and could only give their most
valuable testimony for Christ by their death or exile ? Or
was it that Calvinism7 itself, preparing, at this time, to es
tablish a new type of individualism under its doctrine of
an electing and special grace, and so to inaugurate a new
state of ecclesiastical and civil liberty, might have stiff
ened, having God's decrees all with it, into a form of
christian absolutism too closely resembled to the faith of
Mohammed, and must needs be tempered therefore, in
this manner, by the experience of a predestinating coun
sel opposite, shaking even it to its fall? Or, if we ask
why it is that so great decay of faith is suffered in Ger
many and in the Christian world generally, at the present
time ? why it is that learning is turned against the gospel,
to explain it away, or reduce it to the terms of nature and
speculative reason? the question may be dark to many,
and may seem to admit no satisfactory answer. Still, to
any one who has thought deeply, it will be something to
ask whether it was possible for the principle of faith ever
to be set in its true post of honor, till the relations of na
ture and the supernatural are settled by a thorough dis
cussion, such as brings every truth of Christianity into
question ?
On the whole, we discover nothing in any of these dark-

PROBABLY CONSISTENT. 427
est and most adverse facts of history, to shake our convic
tion that the world is governed, as we said at the begin
ning, in the interest of the incarnation or supernatural
advent of Jesus Christ. Almost all the great staple
events of history reveal this fact, in forms of palpable
evidence, and if in some it seems to be less plain, there
yet is nothing in them to dislodge our faith, even for a
moment. Besides, we have always before us the one ma
jestic fact, that Christianity still lives. The church, being
a supernatural institution, all history bends to it, and it
proves its sublime peculiarity in the fact, that it is forever
indestructible by time and its changes. The schools of
Pythagoras, and all the great teachers after him, have
flourished for a day, and vanished — tokens, all, of the
necessary frailty of mere natural wisdom — but the church
of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene teacher, stands from age to
age. It began with a feeble knot of disciples, it has
spread itself over a vast field or kingdom, including in
its ample scope all the foremost nations and peoples of the
world. Persecution has not crushed it, power has not
beaten it back, time has not abated its force, and, what is
most wonderful of all, the abuses and treasons of its own
friends have never shaken its stability. Mohammedan
ism, punctually served and to the letter, by the bigoted
fidelity of its adherents, grows old and dies in a much
shorter time. Christianity, betrayed, corrupted, made to
be the instrument of unutterable woes, by its disciples, is
yet forbidden to die. God will not let the dissensions, the
treasons, the unutterable and abominable profiigacies, that
are mortal to the life of other institutions, have any power
of death upon it; upholding it visibly Himself, and
showing by that sign, as he could by nothing else, tb^

428 THE INTERNAL GOVERNMENT
the settled purpose of his will is to establish it as tho
universal religion.
But the government of the world includes, in its largest
view, the interior history of souls. Before we arrive at-
Christianity, therefore, what we there call the domain of
the Spirit, and of spiritual experience, is to be classed un
der providential history. We cite, therefore, in this con
nection, III. As a distinct argument, the spiritual changes
wrought in men, and the testimony given by the subjects of
such changes. Nothing is better attested, than the fact, that
men of our race, whether under Christianity, or without
any knowledge of its truths, do undergo changes of char
acter and life, that can no way be accounted for, without
some reference to a supernatural power, such as Chris
tianity affirms in the doctrine of the Spirit. The subjects
themselves, can nowise account for the change, except by
the supposition of a divine agency in them, superior to
tlie laws of natural development, and also to any force of
wUl they could themselves exert on their own dispositions,
and the moral habit of their previous life.
To change* the type of a character, and above all, to do
it in such a manner, that, from and after a given date, it
shall be confessedly different, more widely different than
if a thief were to become suddenly honest, a licentious
man suddenly and delicately pure, a violent gentle, a
cowardly heroic — this, it wiU be agreed, is a thing most
difficult to be accomplished. Many will even declare it to
be impossible ; nothing more is possible, they will say,
than for the subjects to set their will to a reformation,
which doubtless they may do, at any given moment, but,
in doing it, how far off are the/ still from any change of

OF SOULS IS WITH CHRIST. 429
character; persisting against what struggles of perverse
habit, heaving spasmodically under what loads of corrup
tion, ready to fall again, how easily, back into what has
all the while been and still is their character. But if they
do, perchance, succeed in finally changing any thing, how
slowly must the change be wrought. Even as one habit
gives way to another, by a long and wearisome reiteration
of practice. Exactly so it is, we admit, with all changes
in mere natural character, all improvements in the plane
of the natural life. If there is no force but mere will,
acting in this plane, to change us, there can be no sudden
reverse of character ; no reverse at all, which is more rad
ical than what the phrenologists give us to expect, when
they set us on courses of practice, to increase or diminish,
given lobes of brain under the bony casement of the skull.
Whoever undertakes any such improvement of his char
acter, in a bad point, doing it by his will, we expect to
see relapse and fall back. We have a way indeed of say
ing, " it is in him," when a bad man is repressing his par
ticular sin; by which we mean to intimate our convic
tion, that what is in him will assuredly come out and
show itself, even more flagrantly than ever. Thus we
reason, and we are right in it, if no account be made of
faith and the influence of a supernatural power.
Thus it was that Celsus reasoned, utterly denying the
credibUity of any sudden change of character from bad to
good, such as the christians spoke of ; for, not being in
the faith of Christ, ho had no conception of the super
natural efficacy embodied in his plan of salvation He
says, "those who are disposed by nature to vice, and
accustomed to it, can not be transformed by punishment,
much less by mercy ; for to transform nature is a matte?

430 THE INTERNAL GOVERNMENT
of extreme difficulty." He did not understand, alas.
what "mercy" is. But Origen does. Having it revealed
in him, by his own holy experience, he -replies, how
beautifully, "When we see the doctrine Celsus calls fool
ish, operate, as with magical power, when we see how it
brings a multitude, at once, from a life of lawless excesses
to a well regulated one, from unrighteousness to goodness,
from timidity to such strength of principle, that, for the
sake of religion, they despise even death, have we not
good reason for admiring the power of this doctrine."*
The picture given by Justin Martyr corresponds ; at
once proving itself by its own beauty, and revealing the
hand of the divine Spirit, by whom it is wrought. "We,
wbo once were slaves to lust, now delight in purity of
morals ; we, who once prized riches and possessions above
all things, now contribute what we have to the common
use ; we, who once hated and murdered each other, and,
on account of our differences, would not have a common
hearth with those of the same tribe, now live in common
with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to
persuade those who hate us unjustly, that, living accord
ing to the admirable counsels of Christ, they may enjoy
a good hope of obtaining the same blessings with our
selves, from God the ruler of us all."f
That changes such as these are sometimes wrought m
men and societies of men, under the gospel of Christ, wo
certainly know. There is almost no one who has not,
sometime, witnessed such examples. And yet, where com
munities are taken, the results will be so far mixed by
cases of spurious faith, of hypocrisy, of backsliding, and
apostasy, as to blur and sadly confuse the evidence dis-
?Neander's Mem. Christ Life, p. 11. f lb., p. 61.

OF SOULS IS WITH CHRIST. 431
played. Our best and least ambiguous examples of spir
itual-renovation, therefore, will be found in the case of in
dividual persons.
The case of Paul is familial, and it is remarkable that
no other ancient human character comes to us attested, in
its genuineness, by such evidence. Whatever the learned
critics say, or assume to show, concerning the gospels,
there is certainly no myth in the epistles. When they
come to these, their theory breaks down, their occupation
is gone. That such a man as Pliny lived, and such a man
as Cicero, is not as well attested, or shown by as good
evidence, as that Paul the apostle lived, wrote the epis
tles ascribed to him, and bore the double character, first,
of a persecutor and fierce enemy of the cross, then, by
the grace of God revealed in him, that of a preacher of
the cross; sacrificing af things, enduring all pains and
severities, for the name of Christ, his Master. This
change, he tells us, was a change supernaturally wrought,
gives us the day and the hour, on which his bad career
was stopped, and shows himself to us and all the worid,
from that moment onward, to be another man. From a
most bitter and relentless persecutor, he has become a be
liever in Christ, the most powerful, and chief advocate of
his gospel. A profound selfevidence verifies the man and
the change, and the divine life in him is not less visible.
His own account of the change, which he testifies openly
in every place, is that, "by the grace of God," he is what
he is — "new-created in Christ Jesus unto good works."
And of such examples the church is full, in all ages.
By some wondrous Providence in souls, if we do not ac
cept the christian mystery of the Spirit, a stream of new-
creative power from God is entering into men's hearts

432 THE INTERNAL GOVERNMENT
transforming their lives, and with this one uniform result,
that, if Christianity is a fiction or a myth, it makes them,
as certainly its friends and disciples, as it makes them
better and more akin to God.
Augustine, for example, was, before his conversion, a
less violent and bloody man than Paul, had far less pre
tense of virtue, and a much feebler sense of principle, and
was in fact a really less hopeful person, as regards the
prospect of his becoming a holy character. And yet,
from a given moment, onward, which moment is exactly
specified in his "Confessions," he becomes another charac
ter. Neither can it be said that he was turned about thus
suddenly by some fit of superstition. He was not a super
stitious character, but a loose, free-thinking, sensual per
son, whose habit was opposed to the spiritualities in every
form. His own account of his conversion is, that it waa
the prayers ofhis saintly mother which took hold of him,
drawing down upon him, from above, that divine influ
ence and grace, by which his life was so remarkably
changed. We can see too, for ourselves, in his whoie
subsequent life, his action, his temper, his great and massive
thoughts, his burning contemplations, that he is lifted above
his natural force, to be a man above himself. The rhetori
cian is gone, and the apostle has taken his place.
The conversion of Eaymond Lull, of Col. Gardiner, of
John Newton, of Dr Nelson, and of hundreds whom we
know, as our living contemporaries in the church, corres
ponds. The number is so great in fact, examples of the
kind so famUiar, that any attempt to specify names must
be insignificant. A great many supposed changes of the
kind turn out, as we admit, to have no sound reality and
are followed by no correspondent change of life. It would

OF SOULS IS WITH CHRIST. 433
be so as a matter of course ; just as there will be spurious
examples of honesty, honor, and courage. But the
spurious no more disproves the true in one case, than in
the other. The question is simply this, whether, in given
cases, we do not see men entered, more or less suddenly,
by what is called their conversion, into another and differ
ent kind of life ; the violent becoming gentle, the deceit
ful true, the covetous unworldly and liberal, the selfish
benevolent and self-denying, profanity changed to prayer,
drunkenness to sobriety, revenge to long-suffering, blood-
thirstiness to love and compassion ; the subject becoming
thus, in truth, from that time onward, a Confessedly new
man, in all these his several habits and relations ? We
are all familiar, certainly, with such examples. They are
among the most prominent and impressive facts, in the in
terior, personal history of mankind. And they are so
well attested, in myriads of cases, by the practical results
of the Ufe, as to make the unbelief which denies their
verity, or classes them as examples of spiritual illusion, a
prejudice that amounts to weakness, or supposes a real in
capacity for evidence.
Now in these changes of spiritual experience, called con
versions, the christian word, and the truths of the life of
Jesus, are commonly supposed to have an important instru
mentality. The subjects uniformly say it, in the confessions
they witness. ^ They suppose that God, revealed in Christ,
is so, by a transmission inward, revealed in their conscious
ness. But if Christ was only a simple, natural man, and
if all which is reported of him in the gospels, transcend
ing the supposition of his simple humanity, is wUd ex
cess, or legendary exaggeration, the account which refers
these inward changes or conversions to Christ, can hardly
37

434 MEN ARE NOT CONVERTED
be true. That any mere illusion should be followed, ag6
after age, by such wondrous and manifestly real changes,
making human souls visibly akin to God, is not to be
supposed. That would be to account for the soundest
and profoundest facts of human history, by referring them
to causes most purely fanciful, and doctrines wide of all
true intelligence.
Here then we find ourselves, with these facts on our
hands, without any christian truth to account for them.
For when we have dismissed the gospels, or thrown them
aside as unreliable, or incredible, these facts are not anni-
hUated. These converts, these transformed men — the
grandest truths, and most quickening powers, and most
glorious characters, in human history — are still left, living
and blooming and blessing their times, for all these
eighteen centuries. They certainly are no fictions, or
myths, or fables of tradition. They testify, all, that they
are consciously transformed by some divine power. A
kind of gospel is in them. God has wrought in them, if
Christianity has not. Only it is remarkable that when
they are so transformed by His inner visitation, they im
mediately declare for Christ, and cleave to him with ine
radicable affection. We seem thus, in fact, to discover
that, as we are casting Christianity away, the government
of the world is turning the inmost heart of the repenting
and holy toward it, and giving, in that manner, indispu
table evidence that it is itself willing, whether we are so
or not, to serve in the interest of Christianity.
It does not appear to have been as carefully considered
as it should be,' by the disciples of naturalism, in what
manner these converts, and the testimony they give, is to
be disposed of, For, in our view, they are even a more

BY NATURE OR BY SELF-WILL. 435
Intractable subject to handle, than the gospels them
selves. To deny the reality of their change, and reduce
their whole life and experience to a matter of illusion,
requires a degree of effrontery and personal conceit, that
\iould repel any critic of only ordinary intelligence. For
in these Christian myriads, are grouped almost all the
greatest scholars, philosophers, aud lawgivers, the most
revered and stateliest names, the most beautiful and holi
est characters of Christendom.
It can not be said that these conversions are, in any
sense, natural, or produced by natural causes, in the feel
ing and condition of the subjects. Their affinities are aU
visibly transcendent, and their life itself is, in one view, a
kind of protest againt nature and withdrawment from it.
They are not changed, in this manner, by their own
mere wUl. Whoever believes that a mortal man can take
hold of the moral jargon, into which his thoughts and
passions are cast by sin, willing himself back, item by
item, into peace and harmony and the ennobled conscious
ness of good, ought to be able to believe in Christianity
much more easily. A bad man may reduce, or hold in
check, the evil instigations of his habit, by his mere will ;
he may even drag himself into positive acts of duty and
observance, and become a sturdy legalist in the practices
of virtue; but to bring himself out into a luminous, joy
ous, and spontaneous virtue, and make himself free in
good, as having the principle installed in his heart, is a
different thing. Nothing, in short, is wider of aU rational
belief, than, that the converted men or disciples of Chris
tianity could make the beginning, act the part, fashion
the character, kindle the fires, and conquer the elevations,
visibly displayed in their life doing it by their human wfll

486 THEY ARE NOT CONVERTED
But there is a certain inspiration, it may said, that flows
into men, from the ideas they assume. Thus, it may be
conceived, that the supposed convert, iu these remarkable
transformations of life and character, received, first, a the
ological preconception, that a change thus and thus de
scribed is necessary to his salvation; and then, having his
imagination powerfully excited, by the struggles of sup
posed guUt and danger he is in, he conceives at last, that
the change required is actually passed upon him ; where
upon he is set forward in high impulse, into a new style
of life, correspondent with the auspicious hallucination that
has triumphed over his sin. And this is really the most
plausible account tbat can be made of these changes in
the interior history of souls, which does not suppose them
to be referrible to a supernatural divine agency or Prov
idence. But what kind of mind is it that can be satisfied with
one of its wise inventions, when, to account for the high
est and divinest range of fact in man's spiritual history,
it supposes whole myriads of the strongest minds, and
noblest characters, to have been inspired with so much
goodness all their lives long, by a hallucination ?
In the next place, we are led to inquire, why it is that
men pass no such crisis of inspiration in other matters ?
Whence comes it, that, having formed some preconception
of honesty, truth, purity, wisdom, art, the auspicious hal
lucination that is to shape their transformation does not
suddenly take them up, as here, and carry them forward
into the inspired liberty? Why do not men become
heroes, poets, lawgivers, in this manner ? Have they not
thoughts enough of being thus distinguished ? and are not
such kind of thoughts, in them, commonly hallucinations?

BY THEIR PRECONCEPTIONS. 437
But it is not true, in a very great multitude of
cases, that any such preconception has been taken up.
What thought had Paul, on the way to Damascus, of
being converted to Christ as the necessary condition of
his salvation? As little had Augustine, till his mind
was opened from within to such a thought. Besides, we
have multitudes of cases in our own time, where any
such manner of accounting for the change of character
actually wrought is plainly inadequate ; cases, for exam
ple, where there is too little of personal vigor to carry
out any preconception, even if a beginning were made in
that manner. Thus a ministerial acquaintance, whose
name is before the nation and' the world, as a public
name, had living in the place where he was pastor,
a short- witted person, generaUy taken for an idiot, who,
in addition to his natural disadvantages, was deep in
the vices of profanity and drunkenness. At a time of
general attention to the things of religion, this forlorn
being came to him to inquire the way of salvation. The
first impulse of prudence was to put him off, as being
incapable of religious experience, and as one who would
only turn it into mockery by his absurdities. On farther
consideration, it was found to be rather a duty to give
him even the greater attention, according to the propor
tion of his want. In a few days, it became a subject of
mirth, with all the Ught-minded class of the community,
that this man was a convert. The christian people looked
on him with pity, and were silent ; they had no hope of
him. But from that hour to this— and many years have
now passed away — he has never faltered in his course,
never yielded so much as an inch to his vicious habits.
His constancy and consistency are even as much superioi
37*

438 IN MANY CASES
to that of other disciples, as his simplicity is greater than
theirs. He is always in his place. He has worn out two
or three bibles, for he had before learned to read a little,
and now put himself to the task in earnest. He gets a
few dollars of earnings, which he does not want, and goes
to his pastor, requesting him to apply it to some good use,
which he does not know how to select. When asked by
his friends — for that is the general wonder — how it is that
his old habits of profanity and drunkenness have never
once gotten advantage of him, his uniform reply is,
" Why, I have seen Jesus !" The critic of naturalism
can not, of course, admit any such mystic notion as that
—Jesus was a man, and, if he is any thing now, he is still
a man. WUl he account for such a character, initiated by
a sudden change, by supposing a preconception that
shapes it, and maintains it against infirmities so great, for
such a course of years? There is a much deeper and
more adequate philosophy in the subject himself. Take
his own account of it, and the fact is possible ; take this
other, and it is not.
There are multitudes of cases also, in every age, where
heathens who have never heard of Christ, or of any terms
of salvation at all, and sometimes even the rudest of hea
thens, are passed into a manifestly new character, by a
change correspondent, in every respect, with what is called
conversion under the gospel. And if God, as we main
tain, is reigning supernaturally over the world and in it, to
establish and complete the kingdom of his Son, what shall
we look for but to find sporadic cases of conversion, or
spiritual illumination, even among the heathen peoples,
before the knowledge of Christ is received?
Socrates is best conceived in this manner, and, according

THERE ARE NO PRECONCEPTIONS. 439
to his own impressions, he was guided supernaturally, by
a secret grace and ministry, in whose fetching he received
all that most distinguished his personal history. Clement
of Eome, as we have already observed, was a man myste
riously led, as by some divine impulse, and appears
to have come into the spirit of a new-born life, before he
had even heard of Christ. In him, therefore, his heart in
stantly rested, finding there the grace that he wanted, and
the divine beauty that he already longed for.
And what forbids that we include in the reckoning ex
amples of a class more wild, where it is impossible to sus
pect any distemper of the experience, under preconceptions
imposed, either by phUosophy pr by the gospel — such, for
example, as the strange devotee discovered by Brainard,
among the children of the forest, and called by him "the
conjurer." "He said," so Brainard represents, "that God
had taught him his religion, and he wanted to find others
who would join heartily with him in it. He believed God
had some good people somewhere, who felt as he did. He
had not always felt as now, but had formerly been like
the rest of the Indians tUl about four years before that
time. Then his heart, he said, was much distressed, so that
he could not live among the Indians, but got away into
the woods and lived alone there for months. At length,
he said, God comforted his heart, and showed him what
he should do, and since that time he had known God, and
tried to serve him, and loved all men, be they who they
would, so as he never did before."
Brainard was also told by the Indians, "that he opposed
their drinking strong liquor with all his power, and that
if, at any time, he could not dissuade them from it, he
would leave them, and go crying into the woods. He was

440 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT
looked upon and derided, among most of tha In
dians, as a precise zealot, who made a needless noise
about religious matters. There was something in his
temper and disposition which looked more like true
religion, than any I have ever observed among other
heathens."* In the same manner, a forlorn woman, discovered by
one of our missionaries, in the depths of Central Africa,
is reported by him to have broken out, in the most affect
ing demonstrations of joy, when Christ was presented to
her mind, saying: ,"0, that is he who has come to me so
often in my prayers. I could not find who he was !"
And if God holds any terms of society and reciprocal feel
ing with our race, what should we more naturally expect,
than that he wijl always be revealed, in this manner, to
such as earnestly seek the right, and give play to their in
born, though distracted, affinities, longing and searching,
if haply they may find Him? But if God is revealed
thus tenderly, even to minds in the darkness of heathen
ism, it is plain as it can be, that the great, internal changes
of character we are discussing, are not to be accounted
for by the preconceptions that are taken up and become
operative in the subjects.
After all, this question is more naturally and satisfacto
rily handled, in the more ordinary form ; viz., as a ques
tion of christian experience; what it is, whether it sup
poses, necessarily, a supernatural power, and what is the
real significance of the testimony given by so many wit
nesses for Christ? For the work of the Spirit, which is
the christian conception, is but another name, as already
intimated, for that supernatural Providence or government
? Memoir, p. 114-5.

IS GOVERNMENT IN SOULS. 441
of the world in souls, which, we are endeavoring to show
is dispensed in the interest of Christianity.
Thus we have vast crowds of witnesses, rising up in
every age, who testify, out of their own consciousness, to
the work of the Spirit, and the new-creating power of Je
sus, who, by the Spirit, is revealed, in their hearts. In
nothing do they consent with a more hymn-like harmony
than in the testimony that their inward transformation is
a divine work — a new revelation of God, by the Spirit, in
their human consciousness. They are such men too as
the world are most wont to believe, on all other subjects.
Neither has any one a particle of evidence to set against
their testimony. All which the stiffest unbeliever can al
ledge against them, is that he himself has no such con
sciousness, or has found no such discovery verified to his
particular experience. They testify, on their part, with
one voice, to a truth positive, and the whole opposing
world can offer nothing, on its part, against their testi
mony, but the simple negative fact of having in them
selves no such experience.
Meantime, their very word itself conveys a look of veri
similitude, and makes a show of God, so necessary^ to us,
and so honorable to Him, that it challenges the spontane
ous faith of every ingenuous and thoughtful soul. We
never hear any single man of them speak of his better
life as a development, or a something merely unfolded in
him, by natural laws. No preacher preaches, no martyr
goes to the fires iu that vein. But they aU talk of their
faith, and. of what God gives to their faith; the conscious
impotence of all their struggles with themselves, and the
easy victory they find in God; how they are borne up as
on eagle's wings, their wonderful light, their peace, the

442 THIS IS THE WITNESS
love they could not have to their enemies, but now, by
Christ revealed within, are able to exercise, unstinted and
free. Consciously they are not living in the plane of na
ture, they do and suffer things which nature can as little
do, as she can raise the dead. They conquer their fears,
God helping their faith. Pride, passion, habit, they sub
due iu the same manner. Beligious prejudices also, ani
mosities of race, the contempt of learning, and the bigotry
of schools melt away in them, leaving a character that is
visibly a new creation. Even the skeptic who has como
to such a state of intellectual disease, that he can no lon
ger find how to believe any thing, is filled and flooded
with the light of God, in Christ and the Spirit, as soon as
he can heartily ask it, with a will to be taught. And so
we have a vast cloud of witnesses, testifying in all ages, to
the reality of a supernatural grace, which is the root and
power of all their works, and the hidden spring of their
unspeakable joys. They know it to be so; for they con
sciously get their impulse wholly from without any terms
of power in themselves, or of causality in nature. They
could as easily believe that they make the rain in their
own cisterns, as that their holy experiences are not from
God Himself. So do they all testify with one voice — Paul,
Clement, Origen, St. Bernard, Huss, Gerson, Luther, Fene
lon, Baxter, Flavel, Doddridge, Wesley, Edwards, Brain
ard, Taylor, all the innumerable host of believers that
have entered into rest, whether it be the persecuted saint
of the first age, driven home in his chariot of blood, or
the saint who died but yesterday in the arms of his family.
They live in the common consciousness of a power super
natural, saying— "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
Nothing, in short, would violate, or in real truth obliter-

CF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS. 448
ate, so much of the christian history, as to qualify it down
to the mere terms of natural development. Indeed it
would be the virtual expurgation from it of all the saints
of God, whatever they have done, or been, or said.
Holding the subject in this form, our critics of the natu
ralistic school commonly turn their account of the matter,
in some such way as this. They say to Paul, Luther,
Knox, Edwards, and, in fact, the whole church of God:
"we do you full credit, as being made just as much better
men as you say you are, and as being exercised subject
ively, in just the way you think you are. You are only
mistaken, as we have now discovered, in respect to the
manner and grounds of your experience. You have
prayed and thought you were heard, you have believed
and thought your success was a gift of faith, you have
been strengthened against fears and pains of death — all
you that have been martyrs — others have been strength
ened in their times of temptation, and you all think it was
God who bore you up by the immediate gift of Himself;
but we are able now to tell you that you were, so far, mis
taken. There is a law of nature, by which all these things
come to pass, and it is so fixed that nature will help you
always, or even inspire you, just according to what you
do. All this which you think comes from God, by a re
generative dispensation, is the development of nature, by
a generative." There would seem to be a rather remarkable defect of
modesty in this assumption, of which it can not be sup
posed that its authors are themselves aware. It not only
shows the whole church of God, that their conceptions of
christian experience are mistaken, but it corrects them in
precisely that which they testify, in the philosophic me1 hod

444 THIS IS THE WITNESS
itself. This, they say, we find by experiment. It is not
our speculation, it is not any theoretic interpretation put on
our experience, but it is our experience itself. When they
say that God consciously strengthens them in their day
of trial, gives them what to say, hears their prayers,
keeps them in peace by the testimony that they please
Him, fills them day and night with his fullness, and our
modern critic runs to them to mend their phraseology, and
shows them how to come at the same things in a more
rational way, even by letting the divinity that is in them
already have a free development, according to natural
laws, it would not be strange if they should answer with
a sigh, "Ah dear child, we can not get on thus; for all
that bread on which we feed is manna that we gather, and
not a loaf that is hid in our nature. Turn us down thus
upon nature for a gospel, and our wings are cut. All
that we know of God and divine things, we know by
stretching upward and away from nature, and believing
in God, as in Christ revealed. Every success we get,
every joy we reach, comes of rejecting just that method,
by which thou proposest to regulate our experience. May
it not be that what thou hast discovered by reason, has
kept thee from faith, and that still thou needest some one
to teach thee, what be the first principles of the doctrine
of Christ?"
What we find then as the result of our inquiry is, that
the government of the world shows the same hand which
appears in the character and work of Jesus. In the first
place, we discover that nothing takes place in the world
that ought to take place, and even must take place, if the
government and supreme law of things were confined to

OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS. 445
mere nature and her processes. Next, we find that the
issues of wars and discoveries, the migrations, diploma
cies, and great historic eras of races and nations, the extinc
tions and revivals of learning, and the persecutions and
corruptions, not less than the reformations of churches,
are all so modulated by the suporintending government of
the world, as to perpetuate the gospel of Christ, and, as far
as we can see, to insure its ultimate triumph. Then pass
ing into the interior history of souls, which, after all, is the
chief field of God's government in the earth, we meet vast
myriads of witnesses in all the walks of life, and in all the
past ages, who profess to know God in the witness of their
internal life and show, by tokens manifold and clear, that
they are raised above themselves, in all that makes the
character of their life. To sum up all in one brief ex
pression, we have found a New Testament in the govern
ment of the world. It penetrates all depths of matter,
heaves in the roll of the sea, administers back of the
thrones, tempers the courses of history, restraining re
mainders and excesses of wrath, overturning, conserving,
restoring, healing, and reaffirming thus, in all the grand
affairs of human life, without and within, just what Christ
the Word declares, when ascending to reign- — All power is
given unto me in heaven and in earth. What, in fact, do
we see with our eyes, but that the scheme of the four goe
Dels is the scheme of universal government itself?
38

CHAPTER XIV.
KIRACIES ANI. SPIRITUAL GIFTS NOT DISCONTINUED.
If the world is managed supernaturally, or as being ii
the interest of Christianity, which is the doctrine main
tained in the last chapter, a subordinate and vastly infe
rior, though, to many, much more pressing question, re
mains to be settled ; viz., what has become of the miracles
and supernatural gifts of the gospel era? These were
associated historically with the planting of Christianity.
By such tokens Christ authenticated his mission, giving
the Uke signs to his apostles, to be the authentication of
theirs. What, then, it is peremptorily required of us to
answer, has become of these miracles, these tongues, gifts
of healing, prophecies? what, also, of the dreams, pre
sentiments, visits of angels? what of judgments falling
visibly on the head of daring and sacrilegious crimes?
what of possessions, magic, sorcery, necromancy? H
these once were facts, why should they not be now ? If
they are incredible now, when were they less so ? Does
a fact become rational and possible by being carried back
Jnto other centuries of time ? Is it given us to see that
Christianity throws itself out boldly on its facts, in these
matters, or does it come in the shy and cautious manner
some appear to suppose, asserting a few miracles and
half-mythologic marvels that occurred in the romantic
ages of history, where no investigation can reach them;
adding, to escape all demand of such now in terms of
present evidence, that they are discontinued, because

THE CANON IS CLOSED, 447
the canon is closed, and there is no longer any use for
them? Such a disposal of the question, it must be seen, wears
a suspicious look. If miracles are inherently incredible,
which is the impression at the root of our modern unbe
lief, evidently nothing is gained by thrusting them back
into remote ages of time. If, on the other hand, they are
inherently credible, why treat them as if they were not?
raising ingenious and forced hypotheses to account for
their non-occurrence ? Christianity, it is true, is, in some
sense, a complete organization, a work done that wants
nothing added to finish it ; but it does not follow that the
canon of scripture is closed — that is a naked and violent
assumption, supported by no word of scripture, and justi
fied by no inference from the complete organization of
the gospel. For stUl, even according to Christ's own
thought, it was a complete mustard seed only; which,
though it is complete as a seed, so that no additions can
be made to it, has yet, nevertheless, much to do in the
way of growth, and no one can be sure that other books
of scripture may not some time be necessary for that.
We do not even know that a new dispensation, or many
such, may not be required to unfold this seed, and make
it the full-grown tree. It may not be so. I have no
present suspicion that any such new contributions, or va
rieties of ministration, are needed. But it is better not to
assume that of which we have and can have no possible
evidence; least of all are we called to do it, when tho
assumption itself is evidently made for a purpose, and
wears a look of suspicion that weakens the respect of
really important truths.
As little does it follow that, if the canon of scripture ia

448 BUT IT DOES NOT FOLLOW
closed up, there is no longer any use, or place, for mira
cles and spiritual gifts. That is a conclusion taken by a
mere act of judgment, when plainly no judgment of man
is able to penetrate the secrets and grasp the economic
reasons of God's empire, with sufficient insight, to affirm
any thing on a subject so deep and difficult. There may
certainly be reasons for such miracles and gifts of the
Spirit, apart from any authentication of new books of
scripture. Indeed, they might possibly be wanted even
the more, to break up the monotony likely to follow,
when revelations have ceased, and the word of scripture
is forever closed up; wanted also possibly to lift the
church out of the abysses of a mere second-hand religion,
keeping it alive and open to the reaUties of God's imme
diate visitation.
And yet, for these and such like reasons, it is very
commonly assumed, and has been since the days of Chry
sostom, that miracles and all simUar externalities of divine
power have been discontinued. It is not observed that
the date itself is contradicted by the reasons ; for no book
of scripture had then been written for at least two hund
red and fifty years ; though the miracles had never come,
as a matter of fact, to any supposed vanishing point, tUl
that time. But, that miracles continued for two hundred
and fifty years after there was no reason for them, is no
great obstruction to a theory of the fact and the reasons,
after it has once gained acceptance. Hence there is
almost nothing, known to be derived from the scripture
itself, which is affirmed more positively, or with a more
settled air of authority, than this discontinuance of mira
cles and spiritual gifts. Possibly some may even take it
as a heresy and a great scandal to the cause of truth, to

TF.AT THE GIFTS ARE DISCONTINUED. 449
suggest a possibility of mistake in the assumption. Nay,
there are probably many christian teachers who would
even think it a disorder in God's realm itself, if now, in
these modern times, these days of science, the well-gradu
ated uniformity of things were to be disturbed by an
irruption of miraculous demonstrations. It would upset
many whole chapters of theory.
At the same time, there are classes of teachers and dis
ciples, now and then, who spring up raising the question
whether miracles are not restored, or some time to be re
stored? Even Archbishop Tillotson was of opinion that
they probably enough might be, in the case of an attempt
to publish the gospel among heathen nations* But in
all these cases, the point is virtually conceded that mira
cles have been discontinued ; whereas the truer and more
rational question is, whether they have not always re
mained, as in the apostolic age ? Of .course there have
been cessations, here and there, just as there have been
cessations of faith and decays of holy living ; just as there
are cessations of spiritual influence, for the same reason ;
though no one supposes, on that account, that the work
of the Holy Spirit has been discontinued, and requires to
be reinstituted, in order to be an existing fact. There is
no likelihood that a miraculous dispensation would be re
stored, after being quite passed by and lost. But there
may be casual suspensions and reappearances, some
times in one place, and sometimes in another, that are
quite consistent with the conviction that the dispensa
tion is perpetual, never withdrawn, and never to be with
drawn. And this, on very deliberate and careful search, appears
? Works, Vol.X.,p. 230.
38*

450 THESE MERE PRODIGIES
to be the true opinion. We are able too, it wUl be seen, to
verify this opinion by abundant facts. Of course it is
not implied, if we assert the continuance of these super
natural demonstrations in all ages, that they wUl, in oui
time, be mere repetitions, or formal continuations, of those
which distinguished the apostolic age ; it must be enough
that such works appear, in forms adapted to our particular
time and stage of advancement. Many persons demand
that Christianity shall do precisely the same things which
it did, or claims to have done, in the first times ; not ob
serving that the doing of a given thing is commonly a
good reason why it should not be done again, and that
the great law of adaptation, which is a first law of reason,
wUl always require that there should be a change of ad
ministration, correspondent with our changes of state or
condition. No one ever charges it as a defect of evidence
for the supernatural gift of the decalogue, that God has
not continued, since that day, to give decalogues from
every hill. On the contrary, when Christ appears, taking
away, in some sense, the first covenant, that he may estab
lish the second, we recognize a degree of evidence for
both, in the fact itself that there is a show of progress in
the transition. This progress of manner and kind we
want in things supernatural, as well as in things natural ;
else, if God were forever to repeat his old works, in their
old forms, we should have a dull time of existence.
What, then, if it should appear that our prophesyings,
interpretations, healings, and other such gifts, have so far
disguised their form, as to be sometimes recognized only
with difficulty ? Instead of discovering an objection to
Christianity in the fact, what have we in it, possibly, but
a confirmation of its rational evidence? And yet it i»

ARE NOT CHRISTIANITY. 451
chiefiy remarkable, that the forms of the gifts are con
tinued with so little apparent variation.
It is very obvious, or ought to be, beforehand, that
these prodigies are not Christianity ; the substance is not
in them ; they are only signs and tokens of the substance.
Their propagation, therefore, is no principal interest of
Christianity, and the living power of Christianity is never
to be tested by their frequency, or the impressiveness of
their operations. There may evidently be too many of
them, as well as too few. As .soon as they begin to be
taken for things principal, or for the real substance, they
become idols and hindrances to faith. When the world
that ought to be repenting is taken up with staring, the j
sobriety of faith is lost in the gossip of credulity. And
then, instead of a solid, ever-during reign of Provi
dence, that is governing the world in the interest of
Christianity, we should have a glittering fire-work round
us, that really governs nothing, has no power to regener
ate souls, or strengthen the kingdom of Christ in the
earth. Indeed, we actually see this folly beginning, in a
very short time, to get possession of men's minds, and
find the apostles, on that account, contending most delib
erately against it.* It was a great evil that so many were
more ready to figure in the gifts, or go after and admire
the gifts, than to Uve by faith, and walk with Christ, and
bear fruits meet for repentance.
It is our impression, to speak frankly, that the party of
discontinuance, and the party of restoration, and the party
also of denial, who make so much of the fact that these
prodigies are gone by, and are even conceded to be now
incredible, do all concur in a partial misconception of
* 1 Cor., xii-xv.

452 USES AND LAWS
their place in God's economy, and of their relative im
portance to it. To distinguish truly their office, we need
to consider the two opposite extremes of character to
which they are related. We are never to look at God's
means, as being perfect or not, in themselves; they are
good only 'as medicine for a fevered and disordered nature
in man, requiring also to be increased, or withdrawn, ac
cording to the oscillations of that imperfect and disjointed
nature, as it swings to this or that opposite of excess.
To see how these gifts operate, or what place they fill,
let us suppose it to be an accepted fact that God is reign
ing in a grand supernatural scheme of order, and govern
ing the world, externally and in souls, for Christianity's
sake; let it be understood and asserted that, even in
things supernatural, God rules by eternal and fixed laws ;
and it will not be long, before the sottish habit of remain
ing sin, will begin to settle even christian souls into a stu
por of intellectual fatality. Does not every thing continue
as it was from the beginning? Prayer becomes a kind of
dumb-bell exercise, good as exercise, but never to be an
swered. The word is good to be exegetically handled,
but there is no light of interpretation in souls, more im
mediate ; all truth is to be second-hand truth, never a
vital beam of God's own light. To subside into sacra
ments, that are only priestly manipulations, is now easy.
The drill of repetitions it is more readily hoped wUl
wear into the rock, than that grace wUl dissolve it. A
church- worship is easily taken for piety. Or, if there be
no external change of the modes of religion, it is itself
lowered and disempowered, as much as if a lower and
more earthly form were chosen. All the possibilities are
narrowed and shrunk away. Expectation is gone— God

OF SUCH GIFTS. '453
is too far off, too much imprisoned by laws, to allow ex
pectation from Him. The Christian world has been grav
itating, visibly, more and more, toward this vanishing
point of faith, for whole centuries, and especially since
the modern era of science began to shape the thoughts of
men by only scientific methods. Eeligion has fallen into
the domain of the mere understanding, and so it has be
come a kind of wisdom not to believe much, therefore to
expect as little.
Now it is this descent to mere rationality that makes
an occasion for the signs and wonders of the Spirit. The
unbelieving and false spirit in half-sanctified minds, con
verts order into immobility, laws into lethargy, and the
piety that ought to be strong because God is great, grows
torpid and weak under his greatness. Let him now break
forth in miracle and holy gifts, let it be seen that he is
still the living God, in the midst of his dead people, and
they wUl be quickened to a resurrection by the sight.
Now they see that God can do something still, and has
his liberty. He can hear prayers, he can help them tri
umph in dark hours, their bosom sins he can help them
master, all his promises in the scripture he can fulfill, and
they go to him with great expectations. They see, in
these gifts, that the scripture stands, that the graces, and
works, and holy fruits of the apostolic age, are also for
them. It is as if they had now a proof experimental of
the resources embodied in the Christian plan. The Living
God, immediately revealed, and not historically only, be
gets a feeling of present Ufe and power, and religion is no
more a tradition, a second-hand Ught, but a grace of God
unto salvation, operative now.
But it will shortly begin tobe discovered, now, that tbo

454 USES AND LAWS
sin-spirit is weak on the opposite side, and runs to tho
opposite excess. Before, it went back to the understand
ing, to nature, and to general unbelief. Now it rushes on
to fanaticism, and has even a pride in believing things
really incredible. It does not follow, because one heals
the sick, or speaks with tongues, that he is therefore clear
of hi3 moral infirmities, as a fallen man. He is taken
with the stare of multitudes, gives way to a subtle
ambition, magnifies overmuch his particular gift, runs
into shows of conceit, grows impatient of contradiction,
and loosens the rage of passion — by that, driving himself
into even wild excesses both of opinion and practice — and
finally coming to a full end, as one burnt up in the fierce
ness of his own heat. As before, without the miracles
and the gifts', religion went down to extinction, under the
wear of mere routine, so now the miracles and the gifts
have issued in a wild Corinthianism, which whole chapters
of apostolic lecture can hardly reduce to sobriety. And
the result is, that now all the supernatural demonstrations
are brought into disrespect, and a process begins of oscil
lation backward, to the ordinary and regular ; then toward
rationalism again, unbelief, and spiritual impotence.
Now, between these two kinds of excess, the church is
always swinging, and by a kind of moral necessity must
be. It is not that God's administration is irregular and
desultory, but that such is the unsteadiness and unreliable-
ness of our poor disjointed humanity The oscillation
back toward order and reason, is commonly longer and
more gradual ; that toward miracles and gifts, shorter and
sharper, because there is more heat and celerity in it, and
less time is requisite to bring it to its limit.
It need hardly be observed that every outbreak of

OF THE GIFTS. 455
supposed miracle and supernatural demonstration has
run its career in just this manner. It has begun with a
most fervent seeking unto God, and a remarkable single
ness of devotion to Christ. The mighty works appeared
as revelatiots of divine power, scarcely expected by
the subjects themselves, and there was no excess, except
as the ideas and maxims of a non-expectant piety in the
church, were scandalized by such displays of God. But
there was no sufficient balance in the moral infirmities of a
state of sin, to keep down the passions, and hold in check
the wUdness of conceit, and the consequence was, that
the subjects, unable to distinguish what was from God,
and what from themselves, took their thoughts for oracles,
and their fancies for visions, and very shortly ran the
Irue work of God in them, into the ground. So it has
been hitherto, and so it probably will be, till fome age or
state is reached, where men are sufficiently modulated
and sobered by truth, to have the heavenly gifts in terms
of heavenly order, and be fired with all highest mount
ings of love, without setting on fire also the course of na
ture, in their corrupted hearts and bodies. Then the oscil
lations, of which we have spoken, will cease, the ordinary
and regular life will be raised up to meet the extraordi
nary, and become a state of immediate divine knowledge
and experience. Then the extraordinary, the miracles
and gifts, will lose out their explosive violence, and be
come the steady, calculable quantities of a really godly
life. That is the true kingdom of God, fulfilled in its idea —
His tabernacle pitched with men, Life is new an open
state of first-hand experience, full of God, where the young
men see visions, and the old men dream dreams, without
becoming either visionary or dreamy in their excesses

456 WHY THE LYING WONDERS
where feeling and reason coalesce, and the dear humility
of love chastens all the flaming victories of faith and
prayer. It has been a very common thing with christian teach
ers, and even with the writers of deliberate history, to
discredit all appearances of supernatural wonders, such
as miracles and spiritual gifts, because they make so bad
a figure in the end. Whereas the true, and only true test
of them is their beginning. We may as well test the
opposite oscillation in this manner, and because it ends in
the state of unbelief and all impotence — a religion without
life and sanctifying power — have it as our conclusion that
the convictions of order and holy regularity, which it set
up at the beginning, are a dismal and cold illusion, dis
honored by its fruits. It is, doubtless, true that, as men
judge, the excesses of fanaticism are less respectable than
the excesses of deadness and immobility. It is so, be
cause the common vote of the world is on that side, mak
ing it always a most creditable thing to live in such dead
ness to God and all holy things, as answers no one of the
intelligent uses of life. But whoever ponders thought
fully the question, will find ample room to doubt, which
is really widest of a just respect, the excesses of fanaticism
and false fire, or the comatose and dull impotence of a
religion that worships God without expectation.
It may occur to some, to raise the question, why it is,
that the lying wonders of necromancy, and magic, and
demoniacal possessions, are wont to be grouped contem
poraneously with the true wonders of prophecy and di
vine gifts. The answer is readily supplied by the general
solution of the subject here offered. The two kinds
probably, are not strictly contemporaneous, and it is very

ARE ATTENDANT. > 457
likely that the bad wonders will precede the others; even
as they seem to do just at this particular crisis. For, after
all the facts and functions of religion are reduced to a
second-hand character — a reported history, a contrived and
reasoned dogma, a drill of observances, where no fire
burns, and no glimpses into eternity are opened by
visions and revelations of the Lord, or where no God ap
pears to be found, who is nigh enough to support ex
pectation in his worshipers — then, at length, even the outer j
people of unbelief begin to ache in the sense of vacuity, *
and there, not unlikely, the pain is first felt. Their relig
ious and supernatural instincts have been so long defraud
ed, that it would be a kind of satisfaction to get the silence
broken, if only by some vision of a ghost — any thing to
show or set open the world unknown. They would even
go hunting, with Clement, for some one to raise them a
spirit. Hence the strange zeal observable in the new
sorcery of our day. Why, it shows the other world
as a living fact ! proves immortality ! does more than any
gospel ever did to certify us of these things! But the
secret of this greedy, undistinguishing haste of delusion
is the sharpness of the -previous appetite ; and that was
caused by the abstinence of long privation. We had so
far come into the kingdom of nullities — calling it the
kingdom of God — we had become so rational, and
gotten even God's own liberty into such close terms of
natural order, that the immediate, living realities of re
ligion, or religious experience, were under a doom of sup
pression. It was as if there were no atmosphere to
breathe, and the minds most remote from the impressions
and associations of piety, naturally enough felt the hunger
first. Which hunger, alas ! they are thinking to feed, by
39

458 SPORADIC CASES, DOUBTLESS,
a superstitious trust, in the badly written, silly oracles ot
our new-discovered, scientific necromancy. But the church,
also, or christian discipleship, begins of course to ache with
the same kind of pain, feeling after some way out of the
dullness of a second-hand faith, and the dryness of a
merely reasoned gospel, and many of the most longing,
most expectant souls, are seen waiting for some livelier,
more apostolic demonstrations. They are tired,, beyond
bearing, of the mere school forms and defined notions ;
they want some kind of faith that shows God in living
commerce with men, such as he vouchsafed them in the
former times. And if we can trust their report, they are
not wholly disappointed. Probably enough, therefore,
there may just now be coming forth a more distinct and
widely-attested dispensation of gifts and miracles, than
has been witnessed for centuries. If so, it will raise great
expectations of the speedy and last triumph of holiness
in the earth. But these expectations may be delayed.
By and by the subjects of the gifts, or those who think
to go beyond them, may begin to approach the bad ex
treme on this side. Ambition may stimulate pretense,
and the false Jieat of passion. Then come wUd excesses ;
then a general collapse, in which the wonders cease.
And perhaps only this may be gained; that the
sense of something more immediate than a religion of
second causes has been burned into christian souls,
which it will take a century or two to exhaust. How
ever, as the sense of laws becomes more pervasively
fixed in human thought, it is aUowed us to believe that,
as the gifts are themselves dispensed by fixed laws, the
church will gradually come to be in them in that manner,
and hold them in the even way of intelligence,

IN ALL THE PAST AGES. 459
Holding this general view of miracles, and supernat
ural gifts, it should not surprise us to find sporadic casea
reported here and there, in this or that age of the world ;
as little, to fall on periods in the church history, where,
large bodies of disciples, driven out into exile, or perse
cuted and hunted in their own country, are brought so
close to God, and opened so completely to his Spirit, as
to become prophets, and doers of mighty works. It may
not be true in any age of the world, and probably is not,
that such gifts are absolutely discontinued; so that no
supernatural wonder of any kind takes place. Such won
ders will vary their form ; but in some form, scriptural or
providential, ancient or new, social or only personal, they
could be distinguished probably by any one, having a
sufficient knowledge of facts.
What is wanted, therefore, on this subject, in order to
any sufficient impression, is a full, consecutive inventory
of the supernatural events, or phenomena of the world.
There is reason to suspect that many would, in that case,
be greatly surprised by the commonness of the instances
Could they be collected and chronicled, in their real
multitude, what is now felt to be their strangeness would
quite vanish away, and possibly they would even seem to
recur, much as in the more ancient times of the world.
But jao such revision of history is possible. The material
is accessible only in the most partial manner, and, if it
were all at hand, could not be managed, or even be
summed up, in such a recapitulation as cur present limits
will permit.
The first thing arrived at, by any one who prosecutes
this kind of inquiry, apart from all prepossessions and
saws of tradition, -vill certainly be, that the clumsy as

460 SUCH GIFTS APPEAR
sumption commonly held, of a cessation of the original^
apostolic gifts, at about some given date, is forever ex
ploded; for, as in fact they never consented to be
stayed or concluded by any given time, so in history
they persist in running by all time, till finally the investi
gator, unable to set down any date after which they
were not, comes into the discovery that the stream is a
river, flowing continuously through all ages, and always
to flow. He could not give us the wonders of Ignatius,
Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Ireneus, Tertul
lian, Origen, and there declare the point of cessation to
be reached. He would not come down to Cyprian, or
Augustine, and settle it there, or down to Paul the Her
mit, and settle it there. The dreams of Huss, the proph
esyings of Luther, and Fox, and Archbishop Usher, the
ecstasies of Xavier, with innumerable other wonders, and
visitations of God, in the saints of the church, during all
the intervening ages, bridge the gulf between us and the
ancient times, and bring us to a question of miracles and
gifts, as a question of our own day and time. Such
demonstrations became more nearly frivolous, when every
thing was frivolous, and more visibly infected with super
stition, when the church itself fell under the shadow of
this baleful power; but, though the evidences of super
natural facts were correspondently diminished, there was
never any sufficient reason for the conclusion that they
were quite gone by and finally discontinued.
It has been a subject of wonder, that Mr. Newman,
with all his remarkable powers as a writer, and a man of
genius, should venture ou the deliberate attempt to
vindicate the authenticity of the church miracles. And,
probably enough, it is a fair subject of wonder, consider

TN ALL AGES. 461
mg that his purpose required him to vindicate as well
those which are trivial and ridiculous as those which weaT
the dignity of truth and reason. His argument must, of
course, break down, under such a load of absurdities ; but
it does not follow that a more discriminative argument,
unencumbered by church restrictions, would not fare
differently. Descending now to the times we call modern, the times,
for example, subsequent to the Beformation, nothing is
easier, exactly contrary to the very common impression,
than to show that the same kind of prodigies are current
here, in the last three, as in the first three centuries of the
church. Whoever has read that christian classic "The
Scots Worthies" has followed a stream of prophecies, and
healings, and visible judgments, and specific answers to
prayer, and discernments of spirits, corresponding, at all
points, with the gifts and wonders of the apostolic age.
" And the men that figure in these gifts and powers, are
the great names of the heroic age of religion in their
country — Wishart, Knox, Erskine, Craig, Davidson,
Simpson, Welch, Guthrie, Blair, Welwood, Cameron, Car
gill, and Peden. And it is a curious fact, in regard to
this great subject, that, while we believe so little, and
deny so much, and hold so many opposite assumptions,
this same book of Howie, that chronicles in beautiful
simplicity more gifts and wonders than all of Irving's,
is pubUshed by one of the largest and most conservative
bodies of Christians in our country, and is read by thou
sands, young and old, with eager delight. Is it that we
like miracles and supernatural wonders, so far off that wo
need not, or that we can, believe them ?
At a later period, on the repeal of the edict of Nantz.
39*

462 THEY APPEAR SUBSEQUENTLY
and in the persecutions that foUowed, a large body of
the Protestant or Eeformed disciples, called Huguenots,
hunted by their pursuers, fled to the mountains of Ce-
vennes. Some of them also escaped to England and
other Protestant countries. Among these unhappy peo
ple the miraculous gifts were developed, and by them
were more or less widely disseminated abroad. They had
tongues and interpretations of tongues. They had healings,
and the discerning of spirits. They prophesied in the Spirit.
Intelligent persons went out from Paris, to hear, observe,
and make inquiry, and these people were much discussed as
"Les Trembleurs des Cevennes." In England they were
also discussed, as the "French Prophets," and the fire
they kindled in England, caught among some of the
English disciples, and burned for many years.*
About forty years after this appearing of the gifts
among the Huguenots, a very simUar development ap
peared among the Cathohc or Jansenist population of Paris.
Cures began to be wrought at the tomb of Saint Medard,
and particularly of persons afflicted with convulsions.
And, as the Jansenisis were, at this time, under persecu
tion at the hands of the Jesuits, and bearing witness, as
they believed, for the truth of Christ, it is not wonderful
that they began to be exercised, much as the Hugue
nots of the Cevennes had been. They had the gift of
tongues, the discerning of spirits, and the gift of prophe-
sying. These were called "Convulsionnaires de Saint
Medard," because of the extatic state into which they
Beemed to be raised, f
The sect of Friends, from George Fox downward, have
* Morning Wateh, Vol. IV.,. p. 383. \ lb., Vol. IV., p. 386.

TO THE REFORMATION. 463
had it as a principle, to expect gifts, revelations, discern-
ings of spirits, and indeed a complete divine movement,
Thus Fox, over and above his many revelations, wrought,
as multitudes believed, works of healing in the sick.
. Take the following references from the Index of his
"Journal," as affording, in the briefest form, a conception
of the wonders he was supposed, and supposed himself to
have wrought; "Miracles wrought by the power of God —
The lame made whole — The diseased restored — A distracted
woman healed — A great man given over by physicians re
stored — Speaks to a sick man in Maryland, who was raised
up by the Lord's power — Prays the Lord to rebuke J. C's
infirmity, and the Lord by his power soon gave him ease.'"
Led on thus by Fox, the Friends have always claimed
the continuance of the original gifts of the Spirit in the
apostohc age, and have looked for them, we may almost
say, in the ordinary course of their christian demonstra
tions. We are not surprised, therefore, to find such a
man of policy and incomparable shrewdness as Isaac T.
Hopper, believing as firmly in the prophetic gifts of his
friend, Arthur Howell, as in those of Isaiah, or Paul.
This Howell was a preacher and leather currier in PhUa
delphia, a man of perfect integrity in all the business of
his life, and also a most gentle and benignant soul, in
all his intercourse and society with men. One Sunday
morning, on his way to Germantown, he met a funeral pro
cession, when, knowing nothing of tho deceased, " it was
suddenly revealed to him," so says the history, "that the
occupant of the coffin before him was a woman, whoso
life had been saddened by the suspicion of a crime which
she never committed. The impression became strong on
his mind, that she wished him to make certain statements

464 THESE GIFTS APPEAR
at her funeral. When the customary services were fin
ished, Arthur Howell rose and asked permission to speak.
"I did not know the deceased even by name," said he,
"but it is given me to say that she suffered much, and un
justly. Her neighbors generally suspected her of a crime -
that she did not commit; and, in a few weeks from this
time, it will be clearly made manifest that she was inno
cent. A few hours before her death, she talked on this
subject with the clergyman who attended upon her, and
who is now present; and it is now given me to declare
the communication she made to him on that occasion."
He then proceeded to relate the particulars of the inter
view ; to which the clergyman listened with evident aston
ishment. When the communication was finished, he said,
"I do not know who this man is, or how he has obtained
information on this subject ; but certain it is, that he has
repeated, word for word, a conversation which I supposed
was known only to myself and the deceased."* The ex
planation came, it is added, in exact accordance with
Howell's promise.
We are brought down, thus, to our own age and time — •
is it credible that the apostolic gifts and all the original
wonders of the church are extant, or in real bestowment,
even now? My argument does not imperatively require
it of me to go this length, and say that they are. It is only
a Uttle better sustained on the supposition that they are.
I am weU aware, at the same time, that a sober recapitu
lation of what appear to be the facts of the question, will
appear to many to be even a kind of weakness. Enough
that, consciously to myself, it requires a much stronger
balance of equilibrium, and a much firmer intellectual jus-
* Life of Isaac T. Hopper, pp. 258-60.

IN OUR OWN TIME. 465
rice, saying nothing of the necessary courage, to report
these facts, without any protestations of dissent or dis
credit, than it would to toss them by, with derision, in
compliance with the mere conventional notions, and cur
rent judgments of the times. I shall therefore dare to re
port as true, facts which, neither I, nor any body else, has
even so much as a tolerable show of reason for denying
or treating with lightness.
How many cases of definite answers to prayers, such as
are reported in the cases of Stilling, Franke, and others,
are brought to our knowledge, every week in the year.
Cases of definite premonition are reported so familiarly
and circumstantially, as to make a considerable item in
the newspaper literature of our time. Prophecies of good
men, or sometimes of poets and other literary men, are so
often and particularly fulfilled, as to be the common won
der of the merely curious, who profess no faith in their
verity, as communications from God. Dreams are reported,
how often, foreshadowing facts, in a manner so peculiar, as
to forbid any supposition of accident, under conditions of
chance. The state of trance is exemplified in Flavel and
Tennent, and indeed hundreds of others, as remarkably as
in Paul, in his vision of the third heaven. Cases are re
ported in every community, where the defiant wrath of
blasphemy has been suddenly struck down, as by some
bolt of invisible judgment; others, where a slowly coming
retribution has so exactly retaliated the shape of a sin, as
to raise the impression, that nothing but some directing
wiU of God can account for the correspondence. A great
sensation was made in the christian world, only a few
years ago, by the recurrence of tongues, healings, prophe
cies, and other gifts, both in London, as connected with

466 THESE GIFTS APPEAR
the preaching of Mr. Irving, and at Port Glasgow in Scot
land, in the more humble but not less respectable demon
strations of the two MacDonalds. The question has been
very summarily disposed of, and the conclusion has been
generally taken, that these reported cases of spiritual gifts
were unworthy of credit — mere hallucinations of the par
ties concerned. On a deliberate revision of the question,
I am induced to admit, and, since I have it, to express,
a very different impression. These MacDonalds, for ex
ample, are men of unimpeachable character, one of them.
as will be seen, from the cogent articles he wrote, remon
strating against the new churchism taken up at length by
Mr. Irving, a man of great calmness, and remarkably
well poised in the balance of his understanding. And
yet this man is not only gifted with a power of heal
ing the sick, but he is overtaken unexpectedly with the
strange gift of tongues ; viz., an extatic utterance, in words
and sounds, which neither he, nor any that hear him, un
derstand. Now there is nothing in this apparent gibber
ish, that could any how become a temptation to the enthu
siast or the pretender. It seems, at first view, to be an
exercise so wide of intelligence, as to create no impression
of respect. And for just that reason it has the stronger
evidence when it occurs; for, notwithstanding all that is
said by the commentators about tongues imparted for the
\ preaching of the gospel, I have found no one of all the
l reported cases of tongues, in which the tongue was intelli-
/ gible, either to the speaker or the hearers, except as it was
I made so by a supernatural interpretation — which accords
1 exactly, also, with what is said of tongues in the New
\ Testament. And yet, on second thought, they have all
the greater dignity and propriety, for just the reason that

IN OUR OWN TIME 467
they require another gift to make them intelligible. For
this gift of tongues, representing the Divine Spirit as play
ing the vocal organs of a man, which are the delivering
powers of intelligence in his organization, is designed to
be a symbol to the world of the possibility and fact of a
divine access to the soul, and a divine operation in it — a
symbol more expressive, in fact, than any other could be.
And then it is the more exactly appropriate in its adapt
ation, that it wants another gift in the hearer, exactly cor
respondent, to understand it or give the interpretation.
For so it is with all revelations of the Spirit, they are not
only uttered or penned by inspiration, but they want a
light of the Spirit in the receiver, to really apprehend their
power. Not even the prophets understood their visions.
Besides, there is, I know not what, sublimity in this gift
of tongues, as related to the great mystery of language;
suggesting, possibly, that all our tongues are from the
Eternal Word, in souls; there being, in his intelligent
nature as Word, milUons doubtless of possible tongues, that
are as real to him as the spoken tongues of the world.
Tongues were also spoken every week in London, and
there was much discussion there of the case, in particular,
of Miss Fancourt as a case of healing. She was a crip
ple, reduced to a bed-ridden state, by a curve of the
spine, and the painful disorder of almost all the joints of
her body. She had been lying for two years on a couch,
padded and curved, to suit her distorted form. Her
family belonged to the established church, and she was
herself a deeply christian person. A christian friend, who
had been greatly interested in her behalf, called one eve
ning, when the subject of miraculous healing was dis
cussed. The friend, Mr. Graves, was a believer in suet

468 OPINIONS OF THINKING MEN
gifts, but Mr. Fancourt, the father, a genuinely christian
person, was not. After a time, he disappeared, and
during his absence from the room, Mr. G. arose, as Miss
F. supposed, to take his leave. But instead of the "good
night " she expected, he commanded her to stand on her
feet and walk. Forthwith she rose up, stood, walked, was
clear of her pains, took on all the characters of a well
person, and so continued. A great discussion was raised
immediately in the public journals, and particularly be
tween the Morning Watch and the Christian Observer ; in
which the Observer took precisely the ground of Mr. Hume,
as respects the credibUity of miracles performed now ; insist
ing that, henceforth, since the scripture time, "we must ad
mit any solution rather than a miracle." Little wonder is
it that we have difficulty in sustaining the historic facts of
Christianity, when the most christian, most evangeUc
teachers, assume, so readily, the utter incredibility of any
such gifts and wonders as the gospels report, and as they
themselves have it for a righteousness to believe.
But the doubt will be thrust upon us here, at the out
set, as we come down to our own times — and it might as
well be discussed here, before we proceed to other cases in
hand — whether such things are really credible now, or en
titled to even so much as the respectful consideration of
thinking men. And I make no question that the class
called thinking men, in our age, will be ready, with few
exceptions, to reject, in the gross, and without hesitation,
all such pretended facts. They are the Ulusions, it will be
said, of ignorant minds, weakened by superstition, heated
by religious enthusiasm ; stories that are published, it may
be, with honest intentions, but which any philosopher
wUl dismiss without a moment's consideration.

HAVE LITTLE AUTHORITY HERE. 469
But whoever is ready, in this manner, I reply, to erect
the thinking men of an age, mto a tribunal of authori
tative judgment on such questions, has studied history to
little purpose. There certainly is such a thing as religious
delusion, or a faith of ignorance, in the world, and the
humbler class of people are somewhat more exposed to
this kind of infirmity. But their demonstrations have
never been as eccentric, or their mistakes as contagious,
or as difficult to rectify, as those of the thinking class. In
matters of thought and opinion, there is no end either to
the new crudities generated, or the newer criticisms by
which they are extirpated. New types of thought sway
the successive ages. One school, or system, expels an
other. Nothing rests, nothing gets a final form, in which
it either can or ought to stand. The thinking and
educated class of minds, too, are less capable of many
truths, because they are so generally preoccupied, wit
tingly or unwittingly, by a contrary fashion, and have
such an implicit faith in what the learned world pretends
just then to have settled. On which account, our
Saviour himself was obliged to seek his adherents, and
raise up his apostles, among the ingenuous and humble
poor, saying — I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. The
wise and prudent knew so much, as even to be incapable
of faith in him; and if there had been no other class
but these learned gentlemen, these thinking men of their
time, he would scarcely have left a follower. But the
fishermen, the b>abes of poverty, were less preoccupied,
and capable of better things. And for just this reason,
abating their greater exposure to fantastic and extrava-
40

470 OPINIONS OF THINKING MEN
gant delusions, it wUl be found, as a matter of fact, that
the gospel of Christ has been more genuinely and
evenly held, among this class, than it has among the
professors and learned disciples. They testify one faith,
and live one common life of grace, in all ages.
In view of considerations like these, how much does it
signify, that the thinking men of our time are so ready
to pronounce on the incredibUity, or even inadmissibUity,
of the supernatural facts just referred to? Nothing, it
may be, but simply this; that the human mind, as edu
cated mind, is just now at the point of religious apogee;
where it is occupied, or preoccupied by nature, and can not
think it rational to suppose that God does any thing
longer, which exceeds the causalities of nature. Is there,
m this, any proper ground of assurance, that, within fifty
years from this time, it wiU not be set in a position to re
gard the faith of supernatural facts, as being even neces
sary to the rationality, and the complete system of the
universe ? If, as I have shown, by the argument here con
structed, we act supernaturally ourselves, and if the fact
of sin supposes a higher ground of unity in God's plan
than is comprehended in mere nature, what less ought we
to expect, than that, when the thinking mind of the world
has finally worn a way through nature, ceasing to be ham
pered and shut in by it as now, it wUl strike into a broad
er field, and be as ready to believe these supernatural
facts, as it is at present to reject them ? Indeed," there is
a kind of law in skepticism itself, that must finaUy bring
it back from its denial of a supernatural revelation, to a
nearty and hungry embrace of it ; for, no longer staggered
Dy the supposition, as thousands now are, that the scrip
tures represent a dispensation gone by, which is hence-

HAVE LITTLE AUTHORITY HERE. 471
forth incredible, it will finaUy discover that they may be
rationally believed, for just the reason that God is doing
simUar wonders now. And as certainly as no human soul
can rest in mere negation, or, what is no better, in nature
as the only medium and symbol of religion, this discovery
will be made. There are, in fact, two roads into this faith,
the direct road, and the indirect or round about road of
doubt and denial. One is taken by the humble, godly
souls, whose only want it is to find their Lord, and walk
with him ; these go straight in, to his seat, know him in
his private testimony, and the glorious induement of his
power. The others, wanting only to find him scientifi
cally, begin at nature, jealous of all but nature. They
go round and round their idol, looking to find a Creator,
and Christianity, and a present living God, in it, and, afteT
they have torn their feet long enough, in beating through
the briars of scientific reason, they wUl finally come in,
as laggards, weary and sore, and join themselves to the
Uttle ones of faith, saying truly, "this, after all, is rea
son; to beUeve the scriptures, just because the God
of the scriptures is the God of to-day; as conversable
now as ever, working as mightily, redeeming as glori
ously ; to believe in the supernatural, too, because we be
lieve in nature; which, without and apart from this neces
sary complement, were only a worthless abortion, a frac
tion whose integer is lost."
It is also a matter worthy of particular note, when we
are faUing into the impression, that a verdict of the think
ing men of our time, is entitled to authority on such a
question as this, that we have so many characters in
history which they can no way interpret, and which are
\n fact impossible to exist, under their theory. How

472 THEY MAKE NO GOOD ACCOUNT
awkwardly do they handle such characters, and how
poorly do they get on in their attempts to solve, or eveu
to conceive them. Joan of Arc, for instance — who has
not observed the strange figure of imbecility made by
the modern school of literary unbeUef, in the attempt to
find a place for any such character? They can do nothing
with her. In their view, she is impossible. And yet she
has a place in history, and enters into the public life of
the French nation, as a determining cause of great events,
in the same manner as Charlemagne, or any celebrated
commander. She is a phenomenon, for which naturalism
has no account, and which, under that kind of philosophy,
had no right to happen. It can say that she was a prod
igy of straw got up by the leaders, who sought in that
manner to retrieve the desperate state of their cause ; or,
that she was insane ; or that she was romantic ; or that
she was a nervous and flighty girl, doing she scarce knew
what ; or, finally, that she is a myth, and no real person
age. And yet the history laughs at all such wisdom,
showing us a character real and true, that refuses to be
explained by any such feeble inventions in the plane of
nature, and can* be nowise comprehended in that manner.
She begins to be intelligible only when she is classed with
Deborah, as a chieftain called out from the retirement of
her sex, by the election of God, and prepared, supernatu
rally, iu the place of secret vision.
The same thing, in general, may be said of the inter
preters of CromweU. Nothing can be made of him as a
mere natural man. Hume and Clarendon call him a re
Ugious hypocrite; as if a hypocrite could be a hero I
Lamartine, simply because he believes in a light which is
not church light, calls him a fanatic. Carlyle is wiser

OF KNOWN HISTORIC CHARACTERS. 478
and, as far as possible, contrives to let him report himself:
but as soon as he chances to loosen his own self-retention,
for a moment, and let us see the man through his panthe
istic glasses, a strange letting down will be observed, how
ever slight or casual the glimpse taken- — it is Cromwell by
moonlight, and not the real hero. He ceases to be in
spired, and begins to phosphoresce. He is no more a
battle-axe, swung bythe Lord Almighty, but one that lays
on automatically, with force enough to make us think
that he is. He is great in his faith, only it turns out that
his faith, meeting no real object, is, though he thinks it
not, a merely subjective impulse. Known to be a stout
predestinarian, he is fitly shown to be a thunder
shock in battle, as by the momentum of God's eternal
will in his person ; only it is recollected that predestina
tion, by God, is more philosophically phrased by the
single word destiny ; a force without will, or counsel, or
end. He is great in power, therefore, invincible, irresisti
ble, as being set on by the universal Nobody. Is this
Cromwell? No genuine Cromwell is found, till he is
shown by the side of Moses, a man who takes power as a
burden set upon him by God, and wields it only the more
sternly and faithfully, as power; a man "not eloquent,"
but "slow of speech," coming down out of the mount,
where God has taught him, to be the leader, liberator,
and lawgiver of his people. This is the view of Crom
well toward which historic criticism runs more and more
distinctly, and when, at some future day, our literature
has gotten over the shallows of naturalism,, and dares to
speak of faith, this will be the Cromwell shown. He
may not be counted a man equal to Moses, but all that ia
most distinctive and greatest in his life wUl as certainly
40*

474 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
be referred to a supernatural and divine movement in
him. And how many characters are there in the history of
our modern world, who can as Uttle be conceived on the
footing of mere nature, as these. Savonarola, the "fanatic"
of history, will emerge, not unUkely, clad in the honors
of a prophet. So of Columbus, Fenelon, Fox, Franke, and
a thousand others, who walked, consciously or uncon
sciously, by a supernatural instigation — they were nothing,
it will be seen, save by the secret inspiration that bore
them on. And how many of God's little ones, living and
dying in obscurity, have yet done as great wonders in
His name, as if they had been teachers and heroes.
But why is it, some wUl ask, that we have only to hear
of these things, and do not see them? Why must we
know them only through a degree of distance that takes
away knowledge? But the truth is not exactly so. We
come a great deal closer to them than we think. Having
had this great question of supernatural fact upon my
hands now for a number, of years, in a determination also
to be concluded by no mere conventionalities, to observe,
inquire, listen, and judge, I have been surprised to find
how many things were coming to my knowledge and
acquaintance, that most persons take it for granted are
utterly incredible, except in what they call the age of
miracles and apostohc gifts ; that is, in the first three cen
turies of the church. Indeed, they are become so famil
iar, after only a few years of attention thus directed, and
without inquiring after them, that their unfamiliar and
strange look is gone; they even appear to belong, more or
less commonly, to the church and the general economy of
the Spirit.

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 475
I will instance, first of all, a case not so clearly re
ligious, but explicable in no way, by the mere causalities
of nature. As I sat by the fire, one stormy November
night, in a hotel parlor, in the Napa Valley of California,
there came in a most venerable and benignant looking
person, with his wife, taking their seats in the circle.
The stranger, as I afterward learned, was Captain Yount,
a man who came over into California, as a trapper, more
than forty years ago. Here he has lived, apart from the
great world and its questions, acquiring an immense landed
estate, and becoming a kind of acknowledged patriarch
in the country. His tall, manly person, and his gracious,
paternal look, as totally unsophisticated in the expression,
as if he had never heard of a phUosophic doubt or ques
tion in his life, marked him as the true patriarch. The
conversation turned, I know not how, on spiritism and
the modern necromancy, and he discovered a degree of
inclination to believe in the reported mysteries. Hia
wife, a much younger and apparently christian person,
intimated that probably he was predisposed to this kind
of faith, by a very peculiar experience of his own, and
evidently desired that he might be drawn out by some
intelligent discussion of his queries.
At my request, he gave me his story. About six or
seven years previous, in a mid- winter's night, .he had a
dream, in which he saw what appeared to be a company of
emigrants, arrested by the snows of the mountains, and
perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very
cast of the scenery, marked by a huge perpendicular front
of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what ap
peared to be tree tops, rising out of deep gulfs of snow ;
he distinguished the very features of the persons, and tho

476 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
look of their particular distress. He woke, profoundly
impressed with the distinctness and apparent reality of his
dream. At length he fell asleep, and dreamed exactly the
same dream again. In the morning he could not expel
it from his mind. Falling in, shortly, with an old hunter
comrade, he told him the story, and was only the more
deeply impressed, by his recognizing, without hesitation,
the scenery of the dream. This comrade came over the
Sierra, by the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a spot
in the pass answered exactly to his description. By this,
the unsophisticated patriarch was decided. He immedi
ately collected a company of men, with mules and blank
ets, and all necessary provisions. The neighbors were
laughing, meantime, at his credulity. "No matter," said
he, "I am able to do this, and I will, for I verily believe
that the fact is according to my dream." The men were
sent into the mountains, one hundred and fifty miles dis
tant, directly to the Carson Valley Pass. And there they
found the company, in exactly the condition of the dream,
and brought in the remnant alive.
A gentleman present said, "you need have no doubt
of this ; for we Californians all know the facts, and the
names of the families brought in, who now look upon
our venerable friend as a kind of saviour. These names
he gave, and the places where they reside, and I found,
afterward, that the California people were ready, every
where, to second his testimony.
Nothing could be more natural, than for the good-
hearted patriarch himself to add, that the brightest thing
in his life, and that which gave him greatest joy, was his
simple faith in that dream. I thought also I could see in
that joy, the gUmmer of a true christian love and life,

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 47l
into which, unawares to himself, he had really been en
tered by that faith. Let any one attempt now to account
for the coincidences of that dream, by mere natural causali
ties, and he will be glad enough to ease his labor, by the
acknowledgment of a supernatural Providence.
I fell in also, in that new world, with a different
and more directly christian example, in the case of an
acquaintance, whom I had known for the last twenty
years; an educated man, in successful practice as a physi
cian ; a man who makes no affectations of piety, and puts
on no airs of sanctimony; living always in a kind of jovial
element, and serving every body but himself. He laughs
at the current incredulity of men, respecting prayer, and
relates many instances, out of his own experience, to show
— for that is his doctrine — that God will certainly hear
every man's prayer, if only he is honest in it. Among
others, he gave the following:— He had hired his little
house, of one room, in a new trading town that was plant
ed last year, agreeing to give a rent for it of ten dollars
per month. At length, on the day preceding the rent day,
he found that he had nothing in hand to meet the pay
ment, and could not see at all whence the money was to
come. Consulting with his wife, they agreed that prayer,
so often tried, was their only hope. They went, accord
ingly to prayer, and found assurance that their want should
be supplied. That was the end of their trouble, and there
they rested, dismissing farther concern. But the mornmg
came, and the money did not. The rent owner made his
appearance earlier than usual. As he entered the door,
their hearts began to sink, whispering that now, for
once, they must give it up, and allow that prayer had
failed. But, before the demand was made, a neighbor

478 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
coming in, called out the untimely visitor, engaging him
in conversation, a few minutes, at the door. Meantime a
stranger came in, saying, "Dr.  1 owe you ten dollars,
for attending me in a fever, at' such a time, and here is the
money." He could muster no recollection, either of the
man or of the service, but was willing to be convinced, and
so had the money in hand, after all, when the demand was
made. When Stilling and Franke recite their multitudes
of specific answers to prayer, their reports are very hast
ily discredited by many, because of their strangeness.
But I have heard so many examples, personally, of the
kind just cited, that I begin to think they are even com
mon. Nothing is farther off from the christian expectation
of our New England communities, than the gift of tongues.
So distant is their practical habit from any beUef in the
possible occurrence, that not even the question occurs to
their thought. And yet, a very near christian friend, intel
ligent in the highest degree, and perfectly reliable to me
as my right hand, who was present at a rather private,
social gathering of christian disciples, assembled to con
verse and pray together, as in reference to some of tho
higher possibilities of christian sanctification, relates that,
after one of the brethren had been speaking, in a strain
of discouraging self- accusation, another present shortly
rose, with a strangely beaming look, and, fixing his eye
on the confessing brother, broke out in a discourse of
sounds, wholly unintelligible, though apparently a true
language, accompanying the utterances with a very strange
and peculiarly impressive gesture, such as he never made
at any other time; coming finally to a kind of pause,
and commencing again, as if at the same point, to go over

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 479
in EngUsh, with exactly the same gestures, what had just
been said. It appeared to be an interpretation, and the
matter of it was, a beautifully emphatic utterance of the
great principle of self-renunciati©n, by which the desired
victory over self is to be obtained. There had been no
conversation respecting gifts of any kind, and no ref
erence to their possibUity. The circle were astounded
by the demonstration, not knowing what to make of
it. The instinct of prudence threw them on observing
a general silence, and it is a curious fact that the public
in H  have never, to this hour, been startled by so
much as a rumor of the gift of tongues, neither has the
name of the speaker been associated with so much as a
surmise of the real or supposed fact, by which he would
be, perhaps, unenviably distinguished. It has been a
great trial to him, it is said, to submit himself to this
demonstration ; which has recurred several times.
I have heard also of as many as three distinct cases of
healing near at hand; one where a father whose nearly
grown-up daughter, supposed to be near to death, under
the ravages of a brain fever, was permitted, in answer
to his prayers, to see her rise up almost immediately, and
the next day walking forth completely well; one where a
bad and dangerous swelling was immediately cured; an
other where a sick man was restored, when life was
despaired of by his family.
In addition to these more domestic examples, I became
acquninted, about two years ago, in a distant part of the
world, with an English gentleman, whose faith in the gift
of healing had been established by his own personal ex
ercise of it. He was a man whose connections and culture,
whose well-formed, tall, and robust looking person, whose

480 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
beautifully simple and humble manners, and whose blame
less, universally respected life among strangers not of tha
same faith, and knowing him only by his virtues and the
sacrifices he was making for his opinions, were so many
conspiring tokens winning him a character of confidence,
that excluded any rational distrust of his representations.
He gave me a full account, in manuscript, of some of the
cases in which the healing power appeared to be given him,
with liberty to use them, as may best serve the convenience
of my present subject.
It became a question with him, soon after his conver
sion, whether, as he had been healed spiritually, he ought
not also to expect and receive the healing of his body by
the same faith; for he had then been an invalid for a long
time, with only a slender hope of recovery. After a hard
struggle of mind, he was able, dismissing all his prescribed
remedies, to throw himself on God, and was immediately
and permanently made whole.
At length, one of his children, whom he had with him,
away from home, was taken ill with a scarlet fever. And
"now the question was," I give his own words, "what
was to be dorfe? The Lord had indeed healed my own
sicknesses, but would he heal my son? I conferred with
a brother in the Lord, who, having no faith in Christ's heal
ing power, urged me to send instantly for the doctor, and
dispatched his groom on horseback to fetch him. Before
the doctor arrived, my mind was filled with revelation on
the subject. I saw that I had fallen into a snare, by turn
ing away from the Lord's healing hand, to lean on medical
skill. I felt grievously condemned in my conscience. A
fear also fell on me, that if I persevered in this unbeliev
ing course, my son would die, as his eldest brother had.

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 481
The symptoms in both were precisely similar. The doc
tor arrived. My son, he said, was suffering from a scarlet
fever, and medicine should be sent immediately. While
he stood prescribing, I resolved to withdraw the child, and
cast him on the Lord. And when he was gone, I called
the nurse and told her to take the child into the nursery
and lay him on the bed. I then fell on my knees confess
ing the sin I had committed against the Lord's healing
power. I also prayed most earnestly that it would please
my Heavenly Father to forgive my sin, and to show that
he forgave it, by causing the fever to be rebuked. I re
ceived a. mighty conviction that my prayer was heard,
and I arose and went to the nursery, at the end of a long
passage, to see what the Lord had done, and on opening
the door, to my astonishment, the boy was sitting up in
his bed, and on seeing me cried out, 'I am quite well and
want to have my dinner.' In an hour he was dressed,
and well, and eating his dinner; and when the physic ar
rived it was cast out of the window. Next morning the
doctor returned, and on meeting me at the garden gate,
he said, 'I hope your son is no worse!' 'He is very well,
I thank you,' said I, in reply. 'What can you mean,' re
joined the doctor. 'I will tell you, come in and sit down.'
I then told him all that had occurred, at which he fairly
gasped with surprise. 'May I see your son,' he asked.
' Certainly, doctor, but I see that you do not believe.' We
proceeded up stairs, and my son was playing with his
brother, on the floor. The doctor felt his pulse and said,
'Yes, the fever is gone.' Finding also a fine, healthy
surface on his tongue, he added, 'Yes, he is quite well, I
suppose it was the crisis of hir, disease!'"
Another of the cases which he reports, shows more ftiUy
4)

482 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
the working of his own mind, on the instant of healing.
It was the case of a poor man's chUd, who had heard
him advocate the faith of healing, and, now that the phy
sician, after attending him for many months of illness,
had given the little patient up, saying that he could do no
more, the parents sent for him, in their extremity, to
come and heal their son. He replied to the father, "My
dear friend, I can not heal your son, I can do nothing to
help him. All that I can do is to ask you to kneel down
and pray with me, to Christ, that we may know what is
his will in this matter." "He immediately knelt down with
me, and," the written account continues, " my prayer was a
reminding of the Lord Jesus Christ of his mercy to the
sick, when he was on the earth, and that he never sent
any sick away, unhealed. I then presented the petition
of the father and mother, that their son might be healed,
and besought the Lord to show what his will was in the
case. Whilst I was making the supplication, it was re
vealed to me, through the Holy Spirit, that I was to lay
hands on the boy, and receiving, at the time, great faith to
do so, I arose and, not wishing to be observed by the fa
ther, I laid my hand on the lad's head, and said in a low
tone of voice — 'I lay my hand on thee in the name of
Jesus Christ.' In an instant I saw color rush into his
pale cheeks, and it seemed as if a glow of health was giv
en, insomuch that I said involuntarily, 'I think your son
will recover.' I then hastily left the room. In less than
an hour, the mother came to my house and insisted on
seeing me, to tell me the wonderful things that had hap
pened to her son. The result was that the boy was about
the next day."
The other cases narrated by him. are scarcely less re

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 483
markable. At the same time, he admits, with character
istic ingenuousness, that no such gift has been vouchsafed
him now, for a number of years, and that most of the ex
pectations he had in connection with the apostolic wonder,
thus restored, have been disappointed. What God's design
was, in the gift thus temporarily bestowed, is a profound
myst vry to him, and he submits himself calmly in it to the
better, though inscrutable wisdom of God. Probably
enough, the reason of his gift was exhausted in affording,
to these truths of faith, that evidence which is necessary
to their just equilibrium.
I have hesitated much whether to speak of a case that,
in all its varied stages, has been under my own personal
inspection, and I am decided by the consideration that,
while it shows no healing, by a gift, it does show, only the
more convincingly, a supernatural grace of healing entered
into the faith of the subject herself. She is an intelligent,
well-educated young woman, of a more than commonly
strong and somewhat restive natural temperament, the
daughter of a christian man, living in rather depressed cir
cumstances, but profoundly respected for his character.
Eleven years ago this daughter, who before had begun to
show symptoms of disease, in a considerable distortion ofthe
spine, became a great sufferer in the still worse complica
tions of a hip disease. I have never looked on such
scenes of distress in any other case, and hope I may never
witness such again. Several times she was given up by
her physicians, and her death was expected daily; I
should hardly tell the whole truth, if I did not say, longed
for, even more constantly. After about two years, how
ever, her disease took a more quiet shape, and the suffer
ing was greatly diminished. Thus she lav for nine long

484 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
years of helplessness, with both feet drawn up under her,
and one. of them so close that it was difficult to get in a
thickness of cloth under the knee, to prevent inflamma
tion. The physicians agreed that there was nothing
more to be done, and that she must wait her time ; which,
after a while, she had learned to do, with the sweetest pa
tience and equanimity. Every impulse in her restive na
ture was now tamed to God's will, and she blessed the
hand which was pressing her so close to the divine friend
ship. If inquired of, at any time, whether she would like
to get well, she uniformly answered, "No;" adding that
she was afraid she might not stand fast, but might turn
away from her fidelity, in which she was now so pro
foundly peaceful and happy.
But it occurred to her finally that, if God could restore
her, he might also keep her, and the question arose
whether she ought not to trust Him. At last, she was
beginning to think it might be her duty to believe in God's
healing as well as keeping, and in that manner to pray.
Having some attack of acute disease, a physician was
called in, and, after the attack was quelled, he began to
give some hc^peful answers to her queries about the possi
bility bf a restoration of her limbs. Shortly before this,
too, her father, who was visited with a great accumulation
of trials, went through an awful struggle with God's jus
tice, rising up against him in agonies of accusation. But
he was quelled and comforted, and filled, as the result,
with all divinest peace. And shortly after that, he had a
dream, which presented his daughter as well, completely
healed, before him. But it raised no expectation, either
then or afterward, and he does not refer to it now as hav
ing had any connection at all wfth the subsequent facts — -

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 485
he does not much confide in dreams. But his daughter
was beginning now to believe that she might be made
well, and really set herself to it as her settled faith ; and
he himself was allowing, often, the thought that possibly
it might somehow be otherwise with her. J Bemedies were
not discarded, but applied faithfully and perseveringly.
The problem was, how to use natural causes with a
faith in supernatural helps. In a short time the limbs
were brought down, one of them to touch the floor, then
both, then she stood, and next she walked. I knew the
change that was going on, but, not having seen her for
some weeks, I was none the less surprised, when walking
in a neighboring street, to see her skipping down a high
flight of steps, with scarcely a perceptible token of lame
ness. Ask her family now what this means, and by what
power it has come to pass, and they answer promptly,
"by the power of God." She herself says the same, an
swering out of her own consciousness. She believes that
her physician has done well, and that God sent him to bo
a minister to her faith, but she declares that she has all
the whUe felt the vigor coming into her by and through
her faith, and that, when she first stood, she consciously
stood by a divine power, and could no more have stood
without the sense of it, or the day before it came, than
she could have supported the world. This protestation
of hers I feel bound to honor ; though very well aware
that the case may be turned, by saying that the second
causes appealed to wrought the cure. But is it not more
philosophical, a great deal, to take the inward testimony
of the subject, and see the higher consciousness of her
faith struggUng with the remedies, and contributing a
force superior, in fact, to all remedies? Indeed, I have a
41*

486 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
pecuUar satisfaction in the facts of this case, just because
the natural and supernatural are so rationally and soundly
combined. The problem of their possible concurrence is
evenly held, and there is time enough occupied, in the
cure, to show a process. " Go to the pool of Siloam, and
wash " — even Christ himself used nature as a means, to
provoke the necessary faith, when nature had, in fact, no
virtue in itself.
I cite only one more witness ; a man who carries the
manner and supports the office of a prophet, though with
out claiming the repute of it himself. He is a fugitive
from slavery, whose name I had barely heard, but whose
character and life have been known to many in our com
munity, for the last twenty years. He called at my door,
about the time I was sketching the outline of this chapter,
requesting an interview. As I entered the room, it was
quite evident that he was struggling with a good deal of
mental agitation, though his manner was firm, and even
dignified. He said immediately, that he had come to me
" with a message from de Lord." I replied, that I was
glad if he had any so good thing as that for me, and hoped
he would deliver it faithfully. He told me, in terms of
great delicacy, and with a seriousness that excluded all
appearance of a design to win his way by flattery, that he
had conceived the greatest personal interest in me, be
cause, in hearing me once or twice, he had discovered
that God was teaching me, and discovering Himself to me
in a way that was specially hopeful ; and that, for this
very reason, he had been suffering the greatest personal
burdens of feeUng on my account. For more than a year
he had been praying for me, and sometimes in the night,
because of his apprehension that I had made a false step

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 487
and been disobedient to the heavenly vision. During all
this time, he had been struggling also with the question,
whether he might come and see me, and testify his con
cern for me ? One must be a very poor christian, not to
be deeply touched by such a discovery — one of the hum
blest of God's children, a stranger, trembling and watch
ing for him, in his place of obscurity, and daring, only
with the greatest difficulty, to come and disburden his
heart. I asked him to explain, and not to suffer any feeling of
constraint. In a manner of the greatest deference possi
ble, and with a most singularly beautiful skill, he went
on, gathering round his point, and keeping it all the while
concealed, as he was nearing it, straightening up his tall,
manly form, dropping out his Africanisms, rising in the
port of his language, beaming with a look of intelligence
and spiritual beauty, all in a manner to second his pro
phetic formulas — "The Lord said to me " thus and thus ;
"The Lord has sent me to say;" till I also, as I gazed
upon him, was obliged internally to confess, "verily,
Nathan the prophet has come again!" It was really a
scene such as any painter might look a long time to find — ¦
such dignity in one so humble ; expression so lofty, and
yet so gentle and respectful ; the air of a prophet so com
manding and positive, and yet in such divine authority,
as to allow no sense of forwardness or presumption.
It came out, finally, as the burden of the message, that
on a certain occasion, and in reference to a certain public,
matter, I had undertaken that which could not but with
draw me from God's teaching, and was certain to obscure
the revelations otherwise ready and waiting to be made.
"Yes," I replied, "but there was nothing wrong in what

488 SUCH FACTS ARE ABUNDANT
I undertook to set forward. It brought no scandal on
religion. It concerned, you will admit, the real benefit
of the public, in all future times." "Ah, yes," he an
swered, "it was well enough to be done, but it was not
for you. God had other and better things for you. He
was calling you to Himself, and it was yours to go with
Him, not to be laboring in things more properly belong
ing to other men." I had given him the plea, by which,
drawing on my natural judgment, I had justified myself
in going into the engagement in question. Indeed, to
have had any scruple on this account, I have no doubt,
would be commonly considered, by intelligent persons, to be
even a weakness. And yet, I am obliged to confess to a
strong, and even prevalent impression, that my humble
brother was right. For the real stress of his message lay,
not so much in the particular instance referred to, as in
that more general infirmity or mistake, which the instance
might be used to represent ; viz., the tendency of every
most earnest soul to be diverted from its aims, by things
external. His spiritual perceptions were deep enough to
lay hold of a general infirmity, which was only the more
impressively corrected by a particular example, and, in
this manner, his piercing words of love were answered by
the settled assent of my christian consciousness.
I thanked him for his message, and even looked upon
him with a kind of reverence as we parted. I found, on
inquiry, that he was a man without blame, industrious,
pure, a husband and father, faithful to his office, and
always in the same high key of christian living. But
the people of his color, knowing him well, and having
nothing to say against him, could yet offer no opinion at
all concerning him. He was plainly enough a strange

TO BELIEVE WHAT IS CREDIBLE 491
lived in the apostolic times. And they are not the noisy,
violent class, who delight in the bodily exercises that
profit little, mistaking the fumes of passion for the reve
lations of God, but they are, for the most part, such as
walk in silence, and dwell in the shades of obscurity.
A.nd that man has lived to little purpose, who has not
learned that what the great world pities, and its teachers
disallow, even though mixed with tokens of weakness, is
many times deepest in truth, and closest to the real sub
limities of life and religion.
That I may not leave a wrong impression, or an
impression that is not according to truth, I feel obliged
to add, in concluding this chapter, that I do not
seem to be as positive and full in my faith on this
subject as I ought to be, and as my arguments them
selves may seem to indicate. As regards the general
truth that supernatural facts, such as healings, tongues,
and other gifts may as well be manifested now as
at any former time, and that there has never been a
formal discontinuance, I am perfectly satisfied. I know
no proof to the contrary that appears to me to have
a straw's weight. And yet, when I come to the ques
tion of being in such gifts, or of receiving into easy
credit those who appear to be, I acknowledge that,
for some reason, either because of some latent subjection
to the conventionalities of philosophy, or to the worse
conventionalities of sin, belief does not follow, save in
a somewhat faltering and equivocal way. Arguments
for the possibility are good, but evidences for the fact do /
not correspond. But there is nothing peculiar in this ; it
is even so with many great questions of God and immor-

492 SLOW TO BELIEVE.
tality. The arguments are good and clear, but, for some
reason, they do not make faith, and we are still surprised
to find, in our practice, that we only doubtfully believe.
To beUeve these supernatural things, in the form of par
ticular facts, is certainly difficult; and how conscious
are we, as we set ourselves to the questions, of the
weakness of our vacillations! Pardon us, Lord, that
when we make so much of mere credibilities and ra-
tionaUties of opinion, we are yet so slow to believe,
that what we have shown to be credible and rational, ia
actuaUy coming to pass.

IN OUR OWN TIMES. 489
being to them ; they could make nothing of him. The
most they could say was, that he is always the same.
I have since visited him, in his little shop, and drawn
out of him the story of his life. He became a Christian
about the time of his arrival at manhood, and gives a very
clear and beautiful account of his conversion. And the
Lord, he says, told him, at that time, that he should be
free, soul and body. To which he answered, "Yea Lord,
I know it." ' A promise that was afterward fulfilled in a
very strange and wonderful deliverance. I observed that,
in the account he gave me, he was continually saying, in
the manner of the prophets, "the Lord said," and "the
Lord commanded," and "the Lord promised, "and I called
his attention to the fact, asking — what do you mean
by this? Do you hear words audibly spoken? "Oh
no." "What then? Do you think what appears to
be said to you, and call that the saying of the
Lord?" "Yes, I think it— but that is not all." "How
then do you know that it is any thing more than  -'s
thought?" "Well, I know it, I feel it to be not from me,
and I can tell you things that show it to be so ;" reciting
facts, which, if they are true, prove beyond a question
the certainty of some Ulumination not of himself "Why
then," I asked, "does God teach you in this manner and
not me ? I feel a strong conviction, sometimes, that I am
in the will, I know not how, and the directing counsel of
God, but I could never say, as you do, 'the Lord said
thus to me.' " "Ah," said he, "but you have the means—
you can read as I can not, you have great learning. But
I am a poor, ignorant child, and God does with me just
as he can." Whatever may be thought of his revelations,
none, I think, will deny him, in his reply, the credit r f a

490 AND STILL WE ARE SLOW
true phUosophy. What can be worthier of God than to
be the guide of this faithful, and otherwise dejected man.
making up for his privations of ignorance, by the fuller
and more open vision of Himself?
And yet I should leave a wrong impression, were
I not to say, that this christian fugitive, this un
lettered body servant, now, of Christ, as once of his
earthly master, is deep in the wisdom of the scriptures,
quotes them continually with a remarkable eloquence
and propriety, and with a degree of insight which
many of the best educated preachers might envy.
He also believes that God has healed the sick, in
many instances, in immediate connection with his
prayers, giving the names and particulars without
scruple. Such now are the kinds of religious exercises and
demonstrations that are still extant, even in our own time,
in certain walks of society. In that humbler stratum of
life, where the conventionalities and carnal judgments of
the world have less power, there are characters blooming
in the holiest type of christian love and beauty, who talk,
and pray, and, *as they think, operate apostolically, as if
God were all to them that he ever was to the church, in
the days of her primitive grace. And it is much to know
that, while the higher tiers of the wise and prudent are
assuming, so confidently, the absolute discontinuance of
aU apostoUc gifts, there are yet, in every age, great num
bers of godly souls, and especially in the lower ranges of
life, to whom the conventionalities of opinion are nothing,
and the walk with God every thing, who dare to claim an
open state with Him ; to pray with the same expectation,
.and to speak of faith in the same manner, as if they had

THE VERITY OF THE GOSPELS. 495
verity, which only appear, when it is held up in a light to
show them and which, as being latent in this manner,
could not be of man. We have also shown that the world
itself is governed in the interest of Christianity, and that
supernatural facts are occurring now, or have never been
finally discontinued. It may be too much to claim that
we have unanswerably established the fact of miracles
performed in our time — it is more exact to say, that we
have shown the assumption of their non-performance, of
which so much is made by many critics, to be groundless,
and that their continuance, which may be asserted with
sufficient reason, they can no way disprove.
What now is the precise bearing of all this on the his
toric verity and the supernatural origin of the gospels, or
of the christian revelation generally? As regards the
matter of an exact verbal inspiration, nothing directly;
that is a question waived, or kept out of sight; and yet
the mind is brought to a landing place, where, without
being perplexed by impossible definitions, and strained
arguments in their behalf, it will acquiesce, as it were,
naturally, in the fact of a general, undefined inspiration,
having no longer any quarrel to maintain, because the
conditions of quarrel are taken away. The question of
inspired verity is not left, by our argument, in any such
position, as when it is held that the moral ideas and spirit
ual truths only of the scriptures are infallibly given, and
their historic matter left to be disposed of as it may; for
the great, commanding, principal facts are shown to be
historically true. If any debate is to be had, it must be
regarding certain subordinate and particular facts, that are
questioned, because of some specially suspicious indica
tions, that stumble belief, And little stress is likely to be

496 THE ARGUMENT ESTABLISHES
laid on these, because the working plan of Christianity, aa
a regenerative, supernatural grace, is now on foot as a ver
ity already established; so that the mind is set on a high
er plane of thought, than when it only admits a Christian
ity qualified, or about to be qualified, down to a mere doc
trine of nature and natural development, and is prepared,
in that manner, to be stumbled by the smallest difficulties.
The mythical origin of the gospels is, in this manner,
refuted, without any particular notice of its proofs, by a
process farther back and more summary. To untwist,
one by one, its perverse ingenuities, and wade through its
mires of false . learning, will be necessary to no one who
has found a Christ among men, impossible to be classed
with men ; doing his miracles, and erecting, on the earth,
his supernatural kingdom. Not even Dr. Strauss would
ever have undertaken this kind of argument, if he had not
first assumed the incredibiUty of any thing supernatural ; in
which assumption, after all, the main plausibUity of his
argument consists.
It is very true that we have not proved the historic ver
ity of aU the miracles. We have only shown that Christ
was a miracle Bimself, in his own person, and performed
miracles. Whether he performed this or that miracle, ex
actly as related, may yet be questioned. Some of the facts
reported as miracles, looking only at the form of the lan
guage, may be otherwise explained; as, for example, the
disturbing of the water by the angel in the pool of Be
thesda; where it may have been the writer's intention,
only to give the current faith or impression of the time.
If any one chooses to deny the cursing of the fig-tree, be
cause it was an act of ill-nature, he can take that low view
of the transaction ; only he is likely, when confronted witb

CHAPTER XV.
CONCLUSION STATED-USES AND RESULTS.
The course of argument proposed in this treatise is now
completed. It only remains to state, as definitely as may
be, how far it goes, or in what way and degree it estab
lishes the main point in issue; and also to gather up some
of the remote and subordinate results that appear to be
involved in it.
It was undertaken, mainly, to establish the credibility
and historic fact of what is supernatural in the christian
gospels. The problem was, in fact, to frame an argument
that, on one hand, will virtually settle the question of a
mythical origin of the gospels, without going into a direct
controversy on that footing, where the points made are too
many and loose to allow any very decisive result; also to
frame an argument that, avoiding, on the other, the issue
of infallible inspiration, which involves insuperable diffi
culties in the statement, wUl yet virtually gain all that is
sought for the christian revelation under that issue; viz.,
a genuine, comprehensive faith in its supernatural origin
as a gift of God to man.
The argument presented turns principally on two facts ;>
viz., the fact that we act supernaturally ourselves, which j
God and other created spirits may as well do as we; and j
the fact of sin, which is both a fact of universal observa
tion and of universal consciousness. On the ground of
these two facts, it has been shown, first, that nature is not
the proper system of God, but only an inferior, subordin
ate, and merely instrumental part, and, in that sense, a part

494 THE ARGUMENT ESTABLISHES
complemental to the grand supernatural empire, in which
the real system of God is centered ; secondly, that what ia
commonly caUed nature is no such integer of order and
harmony as is commonly assumed, but is, in fact, a condi
tion of unnature, being a scheme of causalities disordered
by sin, and set on courses of retributive action that imply
perpetual misdirection; so that, apart from a coeternal
factor of supernatural redemption, what the naturalists
regard as the real totality, or system of nature, is not
only become a whole that groaneth and travaileth
in pain together, but must inevitably continue to groan,
till relief and deliverance are brought, by some force su
pernatural that is equal to the occasion.
A supernatural work of redemption becomes, in this
view, a kind of intellectual necessity; because otherwise
the integrity and real unity of counsel, in a proper frame
of order, appear to be wanting. The strongest possible
presumption is raised, in this manner, for just such a work
as Christianity undertakes and declares to be undertaken —
as it should be— from before the foundation of the world ;
a work that is no afterthought, but enters into the origin
al unity of the *great scheme of existence itself. When
Christ appears, therefore, we take up the record of his life,
and show that he is not only a supernatural person, as all
men are, but a supernatural person in the still higher de
gree of being also superhuman ; that he has come into
our world as not being of it, that his character can be no
wise classed with human characters; in short, that he is a
living, self-evidencing miracle in his person. Then, that
he should perform miracles, is scarcely less than a neces
sary consequence. We also show that Christianity, as a
plan of supernatural grace, contains hidden marks of

THE VERITY OF THE GOSPELS 497
the suggestion that it was done, as an eloquent exhibition
of the great moral truth, that God will blast every tred
that bears no fruit — a truth which could not be as impress-
ively taught in words — to feel the lowness and perversity
of his construction too sensibly, to find much comfort in
it. The miraculous nativity of Jesus may be questioned,
by any one who can see nothing in it but an extravagance
shocking to reason, or a myth, in the semblance of narra
tive, that displaces any supposition of historic verity in the
fact. But, given the fact that an incarnation is wanted, that
Christ is declared to be the Word incarnate, and shown,
by his character, to have come into the worid as not being
of it, what more can be needed than to put the objector
on the question, in what other manner, a real incarna
tion of the divine in the human could be accomplished,
that should be as close to human feeling, and as strictly
historic, in its introduction, as this of the miraculous na
tivity? And if the objector will but let his imagination
rise to the real pitch of the subject, it will be strange, if
he does not even begin to feel himself kindled, with Mary,
in her song of triumph, and accept the whole history, as
one transcendently beautiful and sublime. In the same
manner, any one is at Uberty still, as far as our argument
is concerned, to speak of discrepancies between the gos
pels, or between the Acts of the Apostles and the Epis
tles, but now that Christ, and his miracles, and his super
natural kingdom, are seen standing forth, as facts already
established, facts which can not be shaken by any mere
discrepancies in the narrative, he is much more like
ly to accept these apparent disagreements, in matters triv
ial, as confirmations of the christian truth, and use them as
commendations of it to our confidence.
42*

498 THE ARGUMENT ESTABLISHES
But it may be objected, contrary to this, by some over-
strenuous, or overpunctual believer, that our argument,
which stops short of proving every thing, leaves a gate
opened tc every sort of looseness ; that, as the issue is here
qualified, a war begun on each particular fact will, finally
cut off, iu detail, all that seemed to be established in the
general ; so that nothing wUl, in fact, be left. I think oth
erwise. The difficulty never has been to establish this or
that miracle, but to establish any miracle at all, or the
credibility of any. One miracle proved, or the credibility
of one, is virtually an end of all debate, for the back of
skepticism is there broken. Besides, the argument we in
stitute puts the doubter in a new and advanced position.
He has veri tied Christ, the grand, central wonder, the dis
order and fall of nature, the need of a supernatural grace
and power, even to complete the intelligent unity of God's
plan, and, what is more, the fact that he himself exists in a
heavenly, supernatural kingdom, where he meets, on every
side, the manifested love and reconciling grace of God.
The atmosphere of doubt and debate is already cleared.
To break loose now, on some particular miracle, or ques
tion of fact, is impossible. Even if he gain his point, he
is the loser; for he only mars the glory of a faith that is
already established, and spots with blemish the rehgion
that already has a right to his faith. He does not break
Christianity down, he only makes it a faith less welcome
and clear. In such a position, he will naturaUy prefer
to have the gospel of his faith , strong as it may be ;
holding always a presumption against the suggestions
of doubt, and allowing to all the minor points of diffi
culty, that favorable construction by which they will bo
cleared.

THE VERITY OF THE GOSPELS. 499
On the whole, we seem to make out, by our argument,
a vindication of the supernatural truth of the gospels,
that is. not only sufficient, but practically complete, and,
besides, one that has many advantages. We go into no
debate about the canon, which is likely to issue in a man
ner that is not really convincing ; we start no claim of
verbal inspiration, such as takes away the confidence and
establishes the rational disrespect of the skeptic, before
the argument is begun ; we sharpen no point of infalli-
biUty down, so as to prick and fasten each particular iota
of the book, afterward to concede variations of copy,
defects of style, mistakes in numerals, and as many other
little discrepancies as we must. But we try to establish,
by a process that is intelligent and worthy of respect, the
historic outposts, Christ and his miracles, and with these,
also, the grand working-plan of a supernatural grace and
salvation. After this, the mind will gravitate, as of
course, toward a general, inclusive, comprehensive faith,
and we shall find no language that so fitly expresses our
conviction, as to say — All scripture is given by inspira
tion of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
corree*ion, for instruction in righteousness.
Superficially viewed, there is a certain parallelism be
tween this argument for the supernatural in religion, and
that of Mr. Parker and the naturalistic school generally
against it, and it is possible that some will be perverse
enough to accuse me of a similar treatment of revelation.
I will never condescend to widen, purposely, or for rea
sons pontic and prudential, the distance between-me and
another who has offended the christian public. But it
may show the method of my argument more exactly, if I
Bketch a brief comparison — just as I have been referring

500 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD
heretofore to Mr. Parker, to get light and shade for my
subject, without raising any special controversy with him.
Mr. Parker undertakes to frame a rational view of re
ligion, that sets it on the footing of nature. I have un
dertaken to frame a rational view of religion, that com
prehends nature and the supernatural, as coeternal factora
in the universal system of God.
He maintains the complete universality of natural laws,
and refuses to believe in a miracle, because it is a suspen
sion of the laws of nature. I believe, as firmly, in the
universality of laws, but not of natural laws ; maintain
ing that the human will itself is regulated by no laws of
natural causality, and has power even to act upon the
lines of cause and effect in nature. God, of course, may
do the same ; which, if he do it, is a miracle. Not a mir
acle because the laws of nature are suspended ; for they
are not, but are only varied in their action by the inter
vention of a power external, as when we vary their
results ourselves. Yet still there is a law for the inter
vention of God, viz., the law of his end; which, though
it be no term of nature, but a rule of intelligence and
rational sovereignty, would require Him to perfown the
same miracle again, a thousand times over, in exactly
the same conditions. To define a miracle, therefore, to
be a suspension of the laws of nature, is irrational and
wholly below the subject. With Mr. Parker, I believe
in no such miracle. And yet, in the result of this argu
ment, I am brought to accept all the miracles of Christ,
whUe he rejects them all.
Mr. Parker takes up the admission, so frequently and
gratuitously made, that miracles and all supernatural gifts
have been discontinued, and are now no longer credible,

OF NATURALISM. 501
and presses the inference that, being now incredible, they
never were any less so ; that pushing them back, in time.
is only a trick to get their incredibility so far off that we
shall not feel it, and that the only ingenuous conclusion is
that, not occurring now, they never did occur. It is cer
tainly a very remarkable turn, as I think any one must
admit, that supernatural facts, being credible down to
some certain year of the world's almanac, then begin to
be incredible ; incredible in their very nature, so that any
one who pretends to believe in them is, of course, to be
set down as an enthusiast, or a charlatan. Mr. Parker
takes the assumption tendered, and reasons from it. I
reject the assumption, and his inferences with it.
Mr. Parker has much to say of inspiration. He be
lieves that every man will be inspired under fixed laws
of nature, just according to his goodness. In maintaining
that all God's supernatural works, which include inspira
tions, of course, are ordered by fixed laws, I may seem to
coincide. But the fixed laws of intelligence or counsel,
the laws of reason as related to his end, are a very differ
ent matter from the fixed laws of causality in nature.
Besides, if we look at the question with christian eyes,
there appears to be a little inversion of method in the
doctrine that, if men will be good, they shall be rewarded
by a consequent inspiration. It would be as much more
rational, as it is more christian, to put the inspiration in
advance of the goodness, and say that men will be good
accordingly as God inspires them. Not even this will
hold, however, for God no doubt exerts an inspiring force
iu men, to make them good, which tkey may even fatally
obstruct by their perversity. The true doctrine of inspi
ration can not be stated in any such summary manner

502 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD
AU inspirations are acts of divine sovereignty, under laws
of reason which regulate that sovereignty. And then
there are two modes of inspiration, one that is concerned
to re-establish the normal state of being, or the state cf
divine consciousness, in which the soul, as a free spirit,
comes to abide and live in the divine movement, and is
kept, strengthened, guided, exalted, by the inward revela
tion of God ; where it may be truly said that the soul is
inspired, accordingly as it yields itself conformably to
God's will, and trustfully to the inspiring grace. The
other mode of inspiration may be called the inspiration
of use ; where the doctrine is, that God inspires men, ac
cording to the use he will make of them. And here the
kinds, or qualities, are as many as the .uses.. He inspires
the shepherd, Amos, not to write Isaiah's prophecy, but
the prophecy of Amos. He inspires Bezaleel to devise
cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in
brass, and in cutting of stones, and Moses to be the leader
and lawgiver of his people. He will give the same man
a variable inspiration, setting Paul, for example, in one
mood of power, when he lays his scorching rebuke on the
head of the Corinthians, and in a very different, when he
chants, in the fifteenth chapter, his sublime lyric on the
resurrection. It is doubtless true, also, that, as God has a
place and a use for every man, so he has an inspiration
for him ; adding honor thus, and comfort, and capacity,
to every employment. The degree also of this inspira
tion may be supposed to have some fixed relation to the
faith and faithfulness of the subject; though it is difficult
to say what we mean by degrees, where the kinds are and
must be different. The doctrine of Mr. Parker wholly
ignores or disallows this inspiration of use, and recognizes

OF NATURALISM. 508
nothing but the inspiration of character. If a prophet,
tberefore, writes a book of scripture, with a higher inspi
ration than another man has, who writes nothing, it is
because he is a better man. Let all men be good then,
and all will be able to write as good books as he. A
very convenient and short way of letting down the honors
of scripture ; but it may be that God wants only a few men
for this particular use, or to write books of scripture ; aa
he wanted only one to be a Moses, and one to be a Bezaleel.
And if this be so, it is very certain that he will inspire as
many as he wants, for the uses wanted, and no more. It
may be that, as he never wants another Moses, so he never
wants another book of scripture written, and it may be
that he does. Should he ever want another, he will be
able to qualify his man ; if not, no other will be quali
fied. Meantime, it must be enough that he will have his
own counsel, and- will aid and qualify all men for the uses
he appoints. On this ground, it is no such offense to rea
son, to suppose that God has inspired particular men to
have a part in the written revelation of his will, as Mr.
Parker thinks it to be, and the air of confidence he as
sumes, when setting forth the conditions, under which all
men may have as good or the same inspiration as the wri
ters of scripture, indicates rather a want of due considera
tion, than a philosophic superiority. God conducts things
to their uses by laws of causality ; spirits to their uses, by
inspirations; and, as the different kinds of things, ponder
able and imponderable, solid and fluid, elastic and inelas
tic, organic and inorganic, are kept to their uses by differ
ent kinds of laws, so it is but rational to believe that God
will prepare men to their different places and use3, by dif
ferent kinds of inspiration.

504 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD
I make no apology, then, for any look of parallelism
that may be observed, between the shaping of my argu
ment and that of Mr. Parker. On the contrary, I prefer
to recognize the fact, thus far indicated, that he is pressed
by the real difficulties of the question, and conceives intel-
Ugently many of the points that must appear, in any gen
uinely intellectual solution. It has sometimes seemed to
me that, with all his aversion to supernaturalism, he
might as well be satisfied with the general solution I have
given, upon the footing of supernaturalism, as with his
owu upon the footing of nature. Had he sufficiently
weighed certain questions that are fundamental, but
which he virtually ignores ; had he determined what is
the exact definition of the supernatural, as related to na
ture, and, in that manner, come upon the fact that we act
supernaturally ourselves ; had he also brought his mind
closely enough to the great question of sin, to expel all
ambiguity concerning it — holding the fact of sin as posi
tively, in the field of criticism, as he does when he attacks
slavery as a reformer, and tracing that fact to its legiti
mate results — I see not how he could have escaped a differ
ent conclusion. Instead of making nature the kingdom
of God, he would have made it the instrument only, or
mere field of the kingdom ; a theater in which the powers
of the kingdom have their parts. Instead of looking for
inspiration by the laws of nature, which, if the word has
any meaning deeper than semblance, is even absurd, he
would have seen it to be a fact supernatural. He would
have found a place for prayer, better than a dumb-bell
exercise before the terms of natural causality and conse
quence. His remorseless fidelity to a mistaken argument
would not have compelled him to rob the christian scrip

OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. 505
tures of their glorious distinction, as a revelation cf God.
He would not have been obliged to spot the divine beauty
of Christ, to reduce him to his own human level, or to
shock his own better sense and that of the world, by giv
ing out the expectation that other and better Christs will
yet be developed, by the progress of his sinful race.
Faith he would have discovered, as the sister of reason ;
grace, as the medicine of nature. In a word, he would
have been a christian in his doctrine, which now he is
not ; for, if there be any sufficient, infallible, and always
applicable distinction, that separates a christian from one
who is not, it is the faith, practicaUy held, of a supernat
ural grace or religion. There is no vestige of christian
life in the working-plan of nature. Christianity exists
only to have a remedial action upon the contents and con
ditions of nature. That is development ; this is regenera
tion. No one fatally departs from Christianity, who rests
the struggles of holy character on help supernatural from i
God. No one really is in it, however plausible the sem
blance of his approach to it, who rests in the terms of
morality, or self-culture, or self-magnetizing practice.
If the argument we have traced should be found to have
established a solid conviction of truth, in the supernatural
facts and powers of Christianity, it will go far to invert
the relative opinion of nature and faith in all christian be
lievers, and must therefore work important changes in many
things pertaining to the interests of the christian truth. It
must vary the estimate, for example, that is currently held
of natural theology. It is even a principal distinction of
our modern Christianity, that it has submitted itself, so
implicitly, to the dominating ideas and fashions of tbe new
43

506 HOW RELATED TO THE METHOD
religion, science, or supposed science, that passes by ims
name. It is a kind of revised Christianity, a gospel that
is preached in the method, set up in the plane, satur
ated with the spirit, and even, where it is not suspect
ed, compounded of the matter, of the science. The
christian schools begin with natural theology, because it
is conceived to be fundamental, and the young men
are long in disabusing themselves of their mistake ; for
any thing which can be proved for rehgion out of nature,
and in the field of natural reason, is conceived to be spe
cially solid, and impossible to be doubted longer. AU
which I call a mistake, however, not because of any
positive mischief in deductions of this kind. The evU
suffered is due, not so much to what our natural theology
does, as to what it requires to be left undone ; or, to be
more explicit, to the fact that it requires all supernatural
evidences to give way to it, as being themselves a more
questionable kind of verity ; even as the ill-favored and
lean kine of Pharaoh's dream devoured those which were
better. The opposite pole is represented here by Dr.
Henry More, who builds his argument for the existence of
God, to a considerable degree, on the basis of supernatural
facts; such as dreams, prophecies, premonitions, visions,
revelations, and the like — a curious and striking evidence,
when viewed in contrast with our present conceptions, of
the change of mental position that may be wrought in tho
thinking world, in a comparatively brief space of time.
The modern advances in science compelled the change,
and it could not be resisted. Neither was it desirable that
it should be; for, when the new theology of nature is once
qualified, by restoring the other pole ofthe subject, whioh
belongs more distinctly to Christianity, it will be found to.

OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. 507
have expelled multitudes of superstitious and unUlumin-
ated vagaries, necessary to be expelled, before it was pos
sible to hold the supernatural evidences, in the manner of
true intelligence necessary to their genuine effect. Then
the two worlds of evidences are seen to be complementary
to each other, and the argument for God, the christian
God, is complete as never before.
The evil in our present stage of thought, is that nat
ural theology has the whole ground to itself, and the God
established, is not a being who meets the conditions of
Christianity at all. We get, of course, no proofs out of
nature, that go farther than to prove a God of nature, least
of aU do we get any that show him to be acting super
naturally, to restore the disorders of nature. What we
discover is a God, who institutes, is revealed by, and, as
many wUl suspect, is the causes of nature. A latent pan
theism lurks in the argument. Calling the God we prove
a personal being, and meaning it in good faith, we yet
find ourselves living before causes, and looking for conse
quences. We only half believe in prayer. We expect
to be delivered of sin, by a long course of duty and self-
reformation, that will finally pacify the offended laws ol
nature, and bring them on our side again. That God will
do any thing for us Himself, or hold any terms of real
society with us, we but faintly believe. That used to
be the opinion of ancient times, but the world, we
imagine, is now growing more philosophical. The result
is that, professing Christianity, in the most orthodox man
ner, we live, in natural theology, half way on the road to \
pantheism. Even the incarnation and the miracles of j
Jesus drop into a virtually dead faith, becoming forms.
in place of living and life-giving realities.

508 HOW RELATED TO
And the reason is, that our God, derived from nature,
is a monosyllable only, or at best a mechanical first cause,
and no such being as the soul wants, or, as Christian
ity supposes, in its doctrines of regenerated life, and in
all its supernatural machineries. Besting here, there
fore, or allowing ourselves to be retained by what we
call our natural theology, Christianity dies out on our
hands, for the want of a christian God. And, according
ly, it is a remarkable fact, even of history, that we have
lost faith in God, just in proportion to the industry we
have spent in proving his existence, by the natural evi
dences. First, because the God we prove does not meet
our living wants, being only a name for causes, or a
God of causes ; secondly, because, in turning to Christian
ity for help, we have rather to turn away from the God
we have proved, than toward Him. We may seem to
have established the fact of God's existence, but if God is
gained, Christianity is lost !
There is no relief to this mischief, but to conceive, at
the beginning, that nature is but a fraction of the com
plete system of God, and no integer; that the true, living
God, beautifully expressed in a small way in nature, is a
vastly superior being still, who holds the worlds of nature
in his hands, and acts upon them as the Eectifier, Eedeem-
er, Eegenerator, and is even more visibly, convincingly,
and gloriously expressed in Christianity than he is in the
worlds. Show Him at the head of the great kingdom
of minds, compassionate to sin, conversant with sinners,
a hearer of prayer, an illuminator of experience, a deliverer
from the retributions of nature, the glorious new-creator
of all the most glorious characters in the world. Display
the self-evidencing tokens of his feeling and work, as the

THE POSITIVE INSTITUTIONS. 509
God supernatural — God in Christ, reconciling the world
unto himself. There is more convincing evidence for
God, in the life and passion of Jesus, than in all the me
chanical adaptations of the worlds. The God of the Bible
and the Church, the God that rules the worid in the inter
est of Christ and salvation, manifested in the divine
beauty, and the mighty works and heroic sufferings of
his saints — this is the God that speaks to our true wants.
Provoke such wants, and let him speak. This kind of
evidence restores the equilibrium of the mere natural evi
dences, makes the God established a person, the true
living God, and the supernatural facts of Christianity are
sustained aud not discredited by our belief in Him.
It does not appear to be suspected that our modern
tendencies to pantheism are at all related to our over
doing in the matter of natural theology, but it will by
and by be discovered, that we were greatly imposed
upon by our zeal, and took our ingenuity, in this kind of
proof-building, for a good deal more than it was worth.
Never is God conceived to be really personal, tUl he is
shown outside of nature, acting upon nature, even as we
do ourselves. The proofs we seek are genuine, only when
they correspond, and show us what wants to be shown.
It is also a matter of consequence in our argument,
as related to the wants of the age, that it provides a place
for the positive institutions of religion, and prepares a
rational basis for their authority. It is frequently re
marked that, for some reason, these positive institutions
are falling rapidly into disrespect, as if destined finally to
be quite lost, or sunk in oblivion. Various reasons are
assigned for this fact, which amount to nothing more defi
43*

610 HOW RELATED TO
nite, than that such is the spirit of the times. The true
reason is the growth and pervading influence of natural
ism, which not only does not want, but excludes such in
stitutions. This doctrine assumed, they are theoretically
impossible. As the word institution itself indicates, they
are supernatural creations ; that is, something set up an the
World of nature, not developments out of nature. Be
sides, it is the manner and temper of naturaUsm, to be
impatient of any thing, not established in terms of natural
reason, and spurn it as having no sufficient authority.
Accordingly it will be seen, that, as we grow more
naturahstic, just in the same proportion do these institu
tions lose their hold of us. What have we to do with
the church — can we not be as good christians out of
the church as in it? What signify the sacraments, even
if they were distinctly appointed by Christ? they can not
save us, and we can well enough be saved without them.
And what is a holy day but a needless restriction, when
one time ought to be as holy as another ? So too of the
Bible ; that, as related to nature, is a positive institution.
And so again of Christianity itself, which began to be in
stituted in the ^ncient ritual, and was finished, or fully
completed, when the higher sense of that ritual was dis
played, in the terms of the christian salvation. It was set
up on the world, by a God who is not imprisoned in it,
but is acting on it from without, to rescue it from the ac
tion of its disordered causalities. What are all these pre
tended institutions of God, but incumbrances and en
croachments on our Uberty? And what necessary use do
they serve ? They are, I answer, what body is to soul.
All vital or vitaUzing powers are organific, and live by
means of their embodiment. These institutions are the

THE POSITIVE INSTITUTIONS. 511
body of religious organization, the conditions, in that
manner, of religious power and perpetuity. Cast away
this body, and religion is a disembodied ghost only,
flitting across the world, but never resting in it. Truth
becomes a vagrant. Worship has no time or seat.
Preachers have no calling or commission. And the no-
church, no-observance people, come into the world to
merely wear out and die, without faith, without holy vir
tue, without great sentiments to conserve society, or illu
minate the night of their virtual atheism. If we talk of
an " Absolute Beligion," that is going to abide and reign
without institutions, it will reign as Absolute Vacuity.
However eloquently preached, for the time, and however
promising the show it makes, by works of reform and
social philanthropy, it will be seen to organize nothing,
and, when once its aim is accomplished in the extinction
of all that Christianity organizes, it wUl simply cease to
work, as all poison does, when the subject is dead.
That Christianity will utterly die, however, for this oi
any other cause, we are not to believe. But the tendency
of our time is one that must be finally arrested, by one oi
the other of these two methods: by restoring a distinct
and properly intelligent faith in the supernatural reign of
Christ, such as I have here undertaken to set forth, or else
by a blind recoU, such as mere vacuity and the pains of
vagrancy will instigate. In the first and true method, we
shall have the positive institutions, holding them in re
spect, and observing them in practice, because we conceive
a God who is not waiting for the development of nature,
but working to regenerate nature, by what he can erect
upon it and do in it. But if religion gets no body and no
organized state, by this rational and true method, then it

t)12 HOW RELATED TO
wUl have them by a worse; for, when we have gone
loose for a long time, in this kind of dissipation, and
scattered the body of religion as fine dust on the winds,
there wUl finally come a reaction, a painful want of forms,
observances, and organizations, and a greedy, irrational
hurrying back to the church that offers such a bountiful
supply. The Absolute Beligion that excludes a church,
wUl conduct us back to the Absolute Church, and there,
as disappointed victims of one, we shall go in, to be
busied and fooled by observances and sacraments of the
other, losing out our intelligence, and even God's light
itself, under an immense overgrowth of institutions which
He did not appoint, and which have really no agreement
with His truth.
The conception we have raised of Christian ity, as a
regenerative work and institution of God, separates it, by
a wide chasm, from any mere scheme of philanthropy or
social reform. As to reforms that begin at the out
side, and stop at the rectification of the outward conduct,
they may be beneficial or they may not. There is a de
gree of vice, and consequent misery, that, for the time,
incapacitates the subject for the reception of truth and
the christian influences. There are also external wrongs
and disorders of sin, that only represent to men the
inward state of their hearts; holding up the glass in
which they may see themselves ; and it is no genuine in
terest of Christianity to get these smoothed away. It is
even a great part of God's wisdom, in casting the plan of
our Ufe, that he has set us in conditions to bring out the
evU that is in us. For it is by this medley, that we make,
of wrongs, fears, pains of the mind, and pains of the

MATTERS OF SOCIAL REFORM. 513
body, all the woes of all shapes and sizes that follow at
tho heels of our sin — by these it is that he dislodges our
perversity, and draws us to Himself. If, therefore, by a
grand comprehensive sweep of reform, we could get all
the misdoings, that we call sins, out of sight, and the sin
of the spirit, as a state separated from the consciousness
of God, shut in, so as nowhere to appear, it would be
the greatest imaginable misfortune. We should have a
race acting paradisaically in their behavior, when they
have no principle of good in their life. It is very true that
no mere reform is likely to reach this point ; for it is very
certain that men will do sins enough, or "have vices
enough to represent and shame their sin. And yet the
merely naturalistic reformers go to just this task; thai
task, that is, of an external purgation of the world. This
is their religion, and they take on often such airs, in
what they imagine to be the superior philanthropy,
or the superior fidelity and boldness of their course,
that they seem even to be holding out a challenge
to Christianity to come and try, if it can do as much
as they! Are they not going to take care of the
progress of society? Are they not also going finally
to get all the evils of life away? Christianity under
takes no" such thing— unless by undertaking more. It
goes only a certain way in the matter of reforms ; viz.,
far enough to show its true interest in every thing hu
man, and especially far enough to get those vices and
sins in hospital, which, as they continue to rage, take
away self-possession, abate the force of reason, and dis
qualify the subject for the gospel. But it has a quiet per
ception of the folly and absurdity of any plan, which ex
pects to smooth up the world in its sin, or its alienation

514 HOW RELATED TO
from God. Back of sins, it recognizes sin; back of the
acts, a state which they express and represent. This
it regenerates ; and so, working outward from the inmost
center, it proposes to reform every thing.
Great reforms are certainly wanted. No christian there
fore will dishonor the faith of a supernatural remedy in
Christ, by taking refuge behind it, and avoiding, in that
manner, his responsibilities — how is he going to regenerate
all the sin of the world, when he dare not speak of the sins ?
On the other hand, he will not be intimidated by the outcry
of the reformers, that upbraid his christian slowness, or
beguiled by their pretentious airs, when they make it a
religion, or even a more superlative religion, to be doing
such prodigious things for society. Their appeal is to
public opinion, not to God. They make their own
gospel as they go, and have undertaken, themselves, to
do such things for the world, that men will say, "behold
Christianity was a failure !" The force too by which
they operate is in their will, and this strikes fire into the
nitrous element of their passions, the moment they en
counter resistance. They grow hot and violent. Denun
ciation becomes tbeir element, and, as numbers are added,
they run to a genuine fanaticism. No christian has any
place on this level. As far as he undertakes to co-operate
in reforms, he must do it as one who stays above with
Christ, and works with him ; retaining his passions, by
not loosing his will ; mixing his reproofs with his prayers,
and moderating his ambition by resting his cause, in the
"nighty power of God.
lb admit, in its full force, the reality of our christian,
&i' supernatural relations to God, would also very certainly

THE MANNER OF PREACHING, 515
result in a more apostolic manner of preaching. For
preaching deals appropriately in the supernatural, pub
lishing to guilty souls what has come into the world from
above the world — Christ and his salvation. We ask, how
often, with real sadness, whence the remarkable impetence
of preaching in our time ? It is because we coneoct our
gospels too much in the laboratories of our understand
ing; because we preach too many disquisitions, fand look for
effects correspondent only with the natural forces exerted.
True preaching is a testimony ; it offers, not things rea
soned, in any principal degree, but things given, supernat
ural things, testifying them as being in their power, by an
utterance which they fill and inspire. It brings new premi
ses, which, of course, no argument can create, and, therefore,
speaks to faith. And, what is most of a-U peculiar, it as
sumes the fact, in men, of a religious mature, higher than
a merely thinking nature, which, if it. ©an be duly awak
ened, cleaves to Christ and his saltation with am almost
irresistible affinity. This religious nature is a capacity for
the supernatural; that is, for the divinely supernatural; in
other words, it is that quality by -which we become insoir-
able creatures, permeable by GodfeJife^as a crystal by the
light, permeable in a sense that na, other creature is. In
deed, the great problem of the- gospel is, in one view, to
inspire us again, at a point w-he$fr we are uninspired; to
permeate us again by the divia© -nature, and make us con
scious again of God. In this-viw, it assumes to speak as
to a want, and what a want it- is, that a capacity even for
God, in the soul, stands empty! And hence it is that so
many infidels have been converted under preaching, that
went directly by their doubtsf only bringing up the mighty,
themes of God and salvation, and throwing them in as,

616 HOW RELATED TO
torches into the dark, blank cavern of their empty heart.
They are not put upon their reason, but the burning glow
of their inborn affinities for the divine are kindled, and
the blaze of these overtops their speculations, and scorched
them down by its glare. Doubtless there are times and
occasions, where something may be gained by raising a
trial before the understanding. But there may also be
something lost, even in cases where that kind of issue is
fairly gained. Many a time nothing is wanting, but to
speak as to a soul already hungry and thirsty ; or, if not
consciously so, ready to hunger and thirst, as soon as the
bread and water of life are presented. If the problem is
to get souls under sin inspired again, which it certainly
is, then it is required that the preacher shall drop lectur
ing on religion and preach it; testify it, prophesy it, speak
to faith as being in faith, bring inspiration as being in
spired, and so become the vehicle, in his own person,
of the power he will communicate; that he may truly be
get in the gospel such as will be saved by it. No man is
a preacher, because he has something like, or about a gos
pel, in his head. He really preaches only when his persor<
is the living embediment, the inspired organ of the gos
pel; in that manner no mere human power, but the
demonstration of a christly and divine power. It is in
this manner that preaching has had, in former times, ef
fects so remarkable. At present, we are almost all under
the power, more or less, of the age in which we live. In.
fected with naturalism ourselves and having hearers that
are so, we can hardly find what account tc make of our
barrenness. It is also a matter of consequence to be anticipated, ie a

INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 517
just aud full establishment of supernatural verities, that
intellectual and moral phUosophy are destined, in this
way, to be finally christianized ; and so, that all science
will, at last, be melted into unity with the religion of
Christ. Our professors of philosophy leave it to the the
ologians to settle the question whether man is a sinner or
not, and go on to assume that he is in the normal state of
his being, acting precisely according to his nature ; when,
if the theologians chance to doubt any of their conclu
sions, the reply is, that they do not understand philosophy.
Now it is either true that man is a sinner, or it is not.
If he is not a sinner, then he exists normally, and what he is .
in his action, he is in his nature, and a great many questions
will be settled accordingly. On the other hand, if he is a
sinner, acting against God, acting as he was not made to
act, then he is, by the supposition, a disordered nature, a
being in the state of unnature. Any phUosophy therefore
which does not recognize the fact, but deduces his nature
from his present demonstrations, must be wholly at
fault. And how different any phUosophy of man must be,
which ignores the fact of sin, from one that does not, may
be easily seen. Let the subject be the relation of our
powers and capacities to our ideals. One who makes no
account of sin, will say, develop the capacities and you
have the ideals — he wUl even infer the capacities from the
ideals. But to one who duly recognizes sin, there is
nothing so sad, as the fact that the mind flowers into
ideals that it can not reach, conceiving a beauty, a per
fectly crystalUne order, when it can as little drag itself
into this beauty, this crystalline order, as it could a shat
tered firmament. 44

518 HOW RELATED TO
Or, let the subject be, what is the nature of virtue, or,
more particularly, whether self-love is the determining
motive in all virtue? Taking it for granted that, what
men do they are made to do, and finding that the
common world of men are actuated by self-love in their
virtue, the inference is that such is the maimer of all vir
tue ; it is what men do for fear, for gain, or for some mat
ter of mere self-interest; in which virtue and vice are ex
actly alike. But one who recognizes the fact of sin,
immediately suspects that the self-love power enters into
men's virtue, thus largely, because they are sinners. In
, the highest, the truly divine virtue, he looks for a sponta-
j neous or inspired movement, where the good is followed
because it is good, the right because it is right, God be
cause He is God. And the conclusion is, that what the
other calls virtue, is only a form of sin.
Or again, the question may be, what is the perfect state
of man ? Ignoring the fact of sin, the conclusion will be
that he is perfected, in squaring himself by the rules
of virtue ; he is consummated, that is, in the matter of
ethics. But where sin is taken into account, it will be
recollected that men, as commonly observed, are out of
place aud out of the true line of experience; that they
have departed from God, and that their properly religious
nature is detained by sin, or closed up. To be completely
filled with God and perfected in the eternal movement of
God, in a word, to be conscious of God, and dwell in the
divine impulse, or inspiration — that is the perfect state.
He has found, in other words, that man is just what he
most entirely omitted to be, or perhaps never once
thought of in his fallen life, an inspirable creature, hav
ing, in that fact, the real summit, the grandeur, and glorv

INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 51&
of his being. He culminates in God, not in any rules of
ethics. His goodness is not the perfect drill he submits
to, and tries to observe, but it is the freedom of a sponta
neous, inspired, and truly divine beauty.
How different a thing must it be, to philosophize about
a substance that acts according to its nature, and about
one that acts in contradiction both of its nature and its
God! Doubtless the latter is a much higher form of
being than the other; for it can not be a thing, it can
be nothing less than a power, glorious and transcendent ;
and therefore it is that man, contemplated at just this
point of sin, rises to a pitch of tragic sublimity and
grandeur, as nowhere else. Why then should our philos
ophy refuse to look at him, just where his real stature is
revealed ? When this fact of sin is referred back to the
ologians, and declared, either with or without a sneer, to
be in their province, a much greater compliment is paid
them than is commonly thought. It is giving them up
all that belongs to man's real greatness, and claiming the
husk that is left.
This separation of intellectual and moral philosophy
from the great religious problem of our existence, the
fact of sin, and the want of salvation, is the more remark
able, that it is a descent from the more dignified and no
bler conceptions of the ancient heathen masters. It is
unnatural, and even unintelligent. How can philosophy,
dealing with a supernatural subject, stand off from the
facts of his supernatural history ? Endeavoring to stay
by nature, and magnify the natural history, it only takes
a brick for Babylon, and gives a science of the brick.
There is to be a speedy revision of this false method. No
real philosopher can long ignore the supernatural. Be-

520 HOW RELATED TO
ligion then takes held of philosophy, aud sets it to the
study of her problems. All natural science will follow,
setting itself in affinity with things supernatural. The
philosophies are then baptized, in being simply inducted
into a just conception of the one system of God. Now
the young minds trained in such studies are not led
away, but led directly up to Christ and the glorious truth
of his mission. That mission is become the pole star of
learning, and how great the change that must follow !
Once more it appears to be an important consequence
of the argument we have instituted, that, in assigning the
supernatural a definite place, and a firm, intellectual
ground, it contributes a valuable aid to christian experi
ence. There is a feeling widely prevalent that when we
talk of faith, we are covering up the want of intelligence;
that when we speak of the supernatural, we meau some
thing ghostly, supplied by the imagination, and verified
only by our superstitions ; that when we name the matter
of religious experience, we suppose a driveling, and, as it
were, forced submission of the soul, to what a rational
philosophy must'of course reject. All such impressions
will, I trust, be removed, as unworthy and really unjust,
by the argument I have now presented.
It finds a place for the supernatural in the scheme of
existence itself; showing that we ourselves are supernat
ural agents as really, only not in the same degree of pow
er, as Christ in his miracles. It gets a footing, in this
manner, for supernatural facts and agencies, among the
known realities. More than this, it shows that nature ia
not, by itself, any complete whole or real universe, but is
in fact only a scaffolding, the smallest, humblest part of

CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 521
the intellectual whole, or system of God's empire; while,
on the other hand, the supernatural side of his plan, con
cerned with free intelligences, their government and re
demption, and the building of them into a temple of eter
nal Love and Beauty round himself, comprises all the real
and last ends of his throne.
Every thing is thus made read y for the best advances in
religious experience. For there is a close relation, scarcely
different from identity, between faith and what is called
expedience ; and both are terms that have a fixed refer
ence to the fact, that Christ and Christianity are supernat
ural bestowments. If they could be reasoned out of
premises already in the mind, they would not require
faith. But Christ comes into the world from without, to
bestow himself by a presentation. He is a new premise,
that could not be reasoned, but must first be, and then
can be received only by faith. When he is so received, or
appropriated, he is, of course, experienced or known by ex
periment; in that manner verified — he that believeth hath
the witness in himself. The manner, therefore, of this di
vine experience, called faith, is strictly Baconian. And the
result is an experimental knowledge of God, or an experi
mental acquaintance with God, in the reception of his su
pernatural communications. Which knowledge, again, or
acquaintance, is, in fact, a revelation within, a divine
manifestation, a restored consciousness of God ; or we may
call it peace, joy, strength, a growth into the divine purity
—it is any and all these together. And it should not be
strange that, in such a participation of God, we are lifted,
empowered, assimilated, or finally glorified.
It will be admitted that what is properly called religious
experience runs low iu our time. Even the phrase itself
44*

522 HOW RELATED TO
is carefully eschewed, by many, as a term of cant, that
lacks, or is suspected of lacking, any basis of intelligence.
We learn to be familiar with the phrase "philosophic con
sciousness," and speak with satisfaction of "cultivating
the philosophic consciousness," but religious experience
belongs to a lower class of people, who can not ascend to
so high a matter. One pertains to a rational culture, the
other is a relic of pietism, now gone by, with all but the
feebler minds. No fact presents the intellectual habit of
our time in a more pitiable light. To get experience of
ourselves, or a practical consciousness of our own little
subjectivity, we account to be something of importance;
but to recover, unfold, grow into, and become ennobled
by the consciousness of God, united to Him as the all-suf
ficient object and fullness of our life — this, we think, is
something related to weakness ! And to this folly we are
shrunk by the wretched conceit of our naturalism. What
if it should happen to be true, that we are all inherently
related to God, having our summits of thought, power,
quality, greatness in Him, made to be conscious of Him
as of ourselves, and in that nobler consciousness to live ?
What if this too should happen to be the truth waiting our
embrace, at the point of littleness and mere self-con
sciousness sharpened by our sin ! How sorry the picture '
we make, when we figure it in this manner, as the super
lative wisdom, to have a cultivated power of self-reflection,
and only another name for weakness to speak of religious
experience ! If I am right in the matter of my argument,
a very different impression is justified. Mere naturaUsm
it shows, in fact, to be a fraud against nature. It soundly
authenticates the grand supernatural verities of the gospel
and of christian experience, showing that, without them,

CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 523
there is no rational unity, even in what we call the
universe. The utmost confidence may now be felt, in all the ex
pectations and exploits of faith; in prayer, in divine guid
ance, in the cares of a supernatural Providence, in all the
heavenly gifts. Clear of all reserve the disciple may
go to his calling, as one detained by no misgivings, or lurk
ing suspicions. And his success wUl be according to his
confidence. Weakened by no foolish suspicion of being
at fault, intellectually, he will go on manfully and boldly,
instructed always by his experience, and advancing al
ways upon it ; removing greater mountains, as he gets more
faith ; and giving all men to see, who chance to observe him,
what power and luster there is in a life thus hid with Christ
in God. Verily, such it is that we want, as the preachers !
and pastors and saints of our time ; men, whose strength is
the joy of the Lord; men who dwell in the secret place of
the Most High ; men who walk in glorious liberty, living
no more to themselves, but to Christ who bought them ;
preaching Christ by their example, their prayers, their
prophesyings, and witnessing by the blessed fruits of their
faith, to its ennobling verity and greatness.
The argument we have traced, prepares also a yet far
ther contribution to christian experience, in bringing more
distinctly forward, the question of a possible discovery
and statement of the laws of the supernatural. How
great a change has been wrought in the creative and pro
ductive processes of human industry, by a scientific dis
covery of the laws of nature. The address we make to
nature, and the forces of nature, is now intelligent, and
our productive powers are as much greater, as the forces
we harness are stronger and more obedient. The world

524 HOW RELATED TO
itself is quite another world, displaying new and vastly
higher possibilities. What now is wanted, in the domain
of christian experience, is a similar development of the
laws of the supernatural; when a correspondent change
will be observed in the productive forces and the progress
ive conquests of the spiritual life. When these laws are
once developed, the men of the kingdom will see it, as
never before, to be a kingdom, and will know exactly by
what process to be advanced and established in it. It
will be as when alchemy gave way to chemistry, astrolo
gy to astronomic computations, the divining-rod and other
saws and superstitions of mining to the intelligent pros
pecting of geologic science, agriculture in the times of the
moon to agriculture in the terms of experimental and
scientific guidance. Not that any science of supernatural
things, or things of religious experience, is possible to be
created, that shall prove itself in the same manner, to the
mere natural judgment or intellect. It must be a science,
if we use that term, that pertains to the higher realm of
the Spirit. It must, therefore, stand in term3 of analogy
and figure, which can fully unfold their meaning only to
minds enlightened', in a degree, by holy experience. It
must be a contribution to faith, of the laws by which it
may address itself to the supernatural forces of grace, and
the manifestations of God. In the initial points of faith,
it must approve itself to the mere intelligence; in points
farther on, it must approve itself, more and more, to spir
itual insight, in its advanced stages. Hitherto there has
been a large mixture of superstition in religious experi
ence. Proposing to get on by application, it has yet
trusted more to heat than to light. It has looked fol
visions and revelations without law. It has been a kine

CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 525
of spiritual alchemy, taken by wonderful surprises, and
blown up as often by fanatical explosions. The progress
it has made has been fantastic, and it has finally reached
the abiding place of order and sobriety, only by a long
course of eccentricities and blindfold experiments. There
has even been a kind of impression, that God himself is
irregular, and, in some good sense, capricious in his super
natural gifts, therefore to be reached by no certain method,
but only by a sort of adventure, that will some time
chance to find Him. How different the fortunes of relig
ious experience, when it is regarded — which, in some fu
ture time, it will be — as a coming unto God bythe laws that
regulate His bestowments ; when the world of His super
natural kingdom is conceived to be as truly under laws,
as the world of nature, and these laws, accurately distin
guished, enable the disciple to address himself accurately
to the powers of grace, as now to the forces of nature.
Our argument favors such an expectation. It brings
the supernatural into the grand, fore-ordinated circle of
existence, and makes it even a central part of that stu
pendous whole, or integer, which we call the universe.
It also conceives that God works by laws in the supernat
ural, in the incarnation and the miracles of Jesus, in his
sacrifice and death, in the mission of the Spirit and all
spiritual gifts. Indeed, there is no being but a bad one, a
sinner, that is not punctually and exactly determined by
some law. Not even the atoms of a crystal are more ex
actly set by law, than the thoughts and choices of a per
fect mind. And though it be not any law of physical
necessity, such as we discover in the causalities of nature,
it is none the less a law of unalterable and undeviating
control. In God Himself, it is the law by which, as pre-

526 HOW RELATED TO
siding over the thoughts, the ends, and the determinations
of his perfect mind, the laws of nature were themselves
conceived and appointed — the higher law of his goodness
and his moral reason. Neither let it be imagined that
this higher tier of law, which governs God, in his super
natural dispensations, is to us inaccessible or undiscernible.
As the fall of an apple showed to Newton's eye the law
that presides over the remotest worlds of the physical
universe, so we shall find, not seldom, in the most familiar
principles of duty and sentiments of religion, things in
ourselves, that infallibly interpret Him. A large infer
ence may be also derived from the admitted fact of his per
fection ; for, while nothing definite or certain can be pred
icated of imperfection, in a subject unknown as ¦ regards
its law, the exact, ideal perfection of God, like that of the
astronomic order, suffers a large and free deduction re
specting all his tempers, ends, and methods. Much also
may be gathered from the general economy of the super
natural, as displayed in the work and counsel of human
redemption. Much is given by express revelation ; for,
though it is not common to regard, as definite and fixed
laws of divine action, or bestowment, the familiar rules
by which our approach to God is regulated in the scrip
ture, they do yet suppose that he is regulated himself by
terms correspondent. The rule — to him that hath shall be
given — first be reconciled to thy brother — if two of you
shall agree as touching any thing — if our heart condemn
us not — if a man hate his brother — as we forgive them
that trespass against us — if ye keep my commandment —
if ye search for me with all the heart — all these conditions
of prayer, and terms of approach to God, are, in a yet
higher view, laws of the Spirit, supposing that God's gifts

CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 527
themselves are dispensable only in terms that correspond.
And besides all these, a large discovery also can be made
of things supernatural and their laws, by our own expe
rience ; for, as he that loveth, knoweth God, so the whole
life of faith is an experience and spiritual discovery of
God. And no discovery of natural science is more valid.
Nor is there any thing in which a ripe christian can do
more for experimental religion, than in giving to the help
of such as will seek after God, a treatise drawn from all
these sources, on the laws of God's supernatural kingdom
- — the kingdom of grace and salvation. No other contri
bution to the truth of Christ is so much needed, or prom
ises results of so great moment. First, that which is nat
ural, afterward that which is spiritual. It was necessary
to this higher kind of progress, that the discoveries of
natural science should precede, and raise the expectation
of laws here also to be verified. And when it is done, as it
will not be in any brief space of time, the world may begin
to think of a general consummation at hand. Faith will
now grow solid, and overtop the temples of reason with
its grandeur. Beligious experience, conceived and proved
to be the revelation of God, will become a general embod
iment of the divine in human history, fulfilling the idea
of the incarnation, never till then completely intelligible.
There will be order without constraint, and liberty with
out fanaticism. The desultory will give place to the reg
ular, and a kind of holy skill will distinguish all the ap
proaches of men to God, and all the works they do in his
name. The power of christian piety will be as much
greater than now, as it knows how to connect more cer
tainly, and more in the manner of science, with the re
sources of God.

528 HOW RELATED TO EXPERIENCE.
Until then the highest and even truest principles of
christian experience, are likely to involve some danger of
fanaticism. I can not be sure that persons wUl not
appear who, professing to lay hold of points advanced in
this treatise, use them fanatically, as the fuel of their strange
(ire. Fanaticism can certainly find a shelter under it,
and gather out of it many pretexts for. extravagance
and delusion; even as it has done in all ages, out of
Christianity itself; but I cherish a degree of confidence,
that what I have advanced will be a contribution rather
to the intelligence, than to the delusions, of the christian
world. It has been my endeavor, to put honor on faith —
to restore, if possible, the genuine, apostolic faith. I have
even wished, shall I dare to say, hoped, that I might do some
thing to inaugurate that faith in the field of modern sci
ence, and claim for it there that respect to which, in the
sublimity of its reasons, it is entitled. And great will
be the day when faith, laying hold of science and rising
into intellectual majesty with it, is acknowledged in the
glorious sisterhood of a common purpose, and both lead
in the realms they occupy, reconciled to God, cleared of
the disorders an€ woes of sin, to set them in that final
unity which represents the eternal Headship of Christ