Studies of Christianity; Or, Timely Thoughts for Religious Thinkers

Chapter 8

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The essence, then, of the scheme of redemption, in the view of our author, seems to be this: that the Divine nature entered humanity to open the Fatherliness of G.o.d by living the life of perfect Sonship; and that, having awakened that life in us by this its visible realization, he sustains it by the inner presence of his Spirit. It is one of the obvious consequences of this doctrine, that no exclusive or exceptional value is to be ascribed to the _death_ of Christ. It is simply the final and crowning expression of the same filial mind which is the continuous essence of his whole existence upon earth. Nor does the theory attach importance to any _sufferings_ of Christ, as such; but only as media and measures of moral expression. Had men sinned _as spirits_, his reconciling work would not have involved death at all: but since in our const.i.tution mortality is "the wages of sin," his response to the Divine mind in regard to sin would have been incomplete, had he not honored this law and tasted its realization. Not to lose sight of the main features of the doctrine in pursuit of details, we must pa.s.s without notice many curious and subtle thoughts of our author on this part of his subject. Indeed, everywhere the reader who has patience with the entangled style will find deep hints and delicate turns of reflection. But we must withdraw to a little distance from his system, and endeavor to look at it as a whole; fixing attention especially on the central point of all,--the _mediatorial provision_, which replaces the penal "satisfaction" of the elder Calvinism, and the "exhibition of rectoral justice" of the modern divines.

Instead of an infinite punishment endured or represented, the theory offers us an infinite _repentance_ performed. Repentance for what?--for human sin. Repentance by whom?--by Him "who knew no sin."

Is this a thing that can be? Is vicarious contrition at all more conceivable than vicarious retribution? It is surely one and the same difficulty that meets them both. On what ground is the transfer of either moral qualities or their effects regarded by our author as impossible?--because at variance with our consciousness of the personal and inalienable nature of sin. But not less is this truth contradicted when we say that the guilt may be incurred by one person, and the availing repentance take place in another. Nor can any imagination of Christ"s state of mind identify it with penitence. Mr.

Campbell himself describes it (p. 135) as having "all the elements of a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin of man--a perfect sorrow--a perfect contrition,--all the elements of such a repentance, and that in absolute perfection--all--_excepting the personal consciousness of sin_." This exception, however, contains just the essential element of the whole. Penitence without any personal consciousness of sin is a contradiction in terms; and the requisition of the Divine law is, that _the sinner_ shall turn from the evil of his heart, not that the righteous shall make confession for him. The entire moral value of contrition belongs to it as the sign of inner change of character from prior evil to succeeding good; and it admits of no transplantation from the identical personality which has been the seat of the evil and is the candidate for the good.

Further, it seems a paradox to say, with our author, that true repentance is impossible to man, who alone needs it; and can be realized only by the Son of G.o.d, in whom there is no room for it. It would indeed be a hopeless realm to live in, which should annex to all sins both an imperative demand and an absolute disqualification for adequate contrition, and first open the fountain of availing tears in holy natures that have none to shed. It is, in truth, of the very essence of repentance to have its seat in mixed and imperfect moral beings: and our author lays upon it quite an arbitrary requisition, when he insists that, to pa.s.s as adequate, it must contain a perfect appreciation of the sin deplored,--a view of it coincident with that of G.o.d. Under such an aspect as this it could never have appeared to us, though we had remained guiltless of it, and recoiled from it: and we can hardly be required to reach, in the rebound of recovery, a point beyond the station which would have prevented the fall. Many errors in theology arise from applying absolute conceptions to relative conditions, and forgetting that religion, as realized in us, is a life, a movement, a progress, and not an ultimate limit of perfection. Repentance is a transitional state, to which it is absurd to apply an infinite criterion: it is a change from the worse to the better mind, and cannot need the resources or belong to the experience of the best. To p.r.o.nounce it impossible to the wandering and fallen, and make it the exclusive function of the All-holy, implies the strangest metamorphosis of its meaning.

But how, it may be asked, could a paradox so violent find favor with an author everywhere intent on the exclusion of fiction from Christian theology? To refer a moral act to the _wrong personality_, to toss about a solemn change like penitence between guilty and innocent, as if its particular seat were a matter of indifference, is so serious an error, that it could never enter a mind like Mr. Campbell"s, unless under some plausible disguise. Can we find the shape under which it has recommended itself to his approval?

The sentiment ascribed to the Son of G.o.d in regard to sin,--wanting as it does the essential penitential element of personal compunction,--is simple sorrow for others" guilt, founded on perfect apprehension of its nature. But this att.i.tude of soul in him awakens the conscience of his disciples, and is reproduced in them by fellowship. Spread into their consciousness, it is no longer clear of the immediate presence of sin, but, falling in with it, a.s.sumes the missing element, and becomes repentance. When the Christian sense of evil, which ever partakes of true contrition, is thus contemplated as a transmigration of the Mediator"s own spirit into the soul, the two are so identified in thought, that what is true only of the human effect is referred to the Divine cause; and the moral sorrow of Christ is regarded as _potentially_ equivalent to repentance, because that is _actually_ the form of the corresponding phenomenon in us. If this, however, _explains_ our author"s position, it hardly _justifies_ it.

Intercession for others in their guilt may _move them_ to remorse for their own, but is a fact of quite different nature. As attributes and expressions of character, the two phenomena are not to be confounded; and as affecting our relation to G.o.d, there is the obvious and admitted distinction, that intercession avails not for those who remain impenitent, and would not be needed for the spontaneously penitent. The sorrowful expostulations of the Son of G.o.d have only so far a reconciling effect as they become the medium, in the hearts of men, of an awakened contrition, aspiration, and faith. We cannot conceive them to have _immediately_ altered--as repentance _does_--the personal relation between G.o.d and the transgressors of His will; else the change would be a change in the Divine sentiment whilst its objects still remained unchanged. The effect _waits_ for its development in souls melted and renewed. And thus the atoning sorrow of Christ becomes simply a provision for a healing penitence in men.

The ascription of "repentance" to Christ is curious in another point of view. It arises from a blending together of _his_ consciousness and _his disciples"_; from slurring the lines of personality between them; from regarding their spiritual state as an organic extension of his, and his as the vital root of theirs. In his endeavor to recommend it to us, our author instinctively runs into abstract expressions in speaking of mankind; fusing down concrete men into "_humanity_"; referring to the Mediator as "G.o.d in _humanity_"; and so, dealing with our nature as if it were a single existence, carrying or turning up all its individuals as partial phenomena of one essence. On the other hand, in our endeavor to correct his doctrine, we have had to lay stress on the inalienable and separate character of all particular persons, taken one by one; to insist on the solitude of each responsible agent, and the impa.s.sable barriers which forbid the transference of moral attributes from mind to mind. Which of these two modes of conception is the truer? For according as we incline to the one or the other,--according as we treat _humanity_ as the organic unit of which individual samples of mankind are numerical accidents, or take each man as an integer, of which the race is a multiple,--shall we lean towards mediatorial or towards direct religion.

We are firmly convinced that _no_ doctrine of _mediation_--in the strict sense implying transactions with G.o.d on behalf of men, _as well as_ in the opposite direction--can be harmonized with the modern _individualism_; and that it is precisely in the attempt to unite these incompatibles, that the forensic fictions to which Mr. Campbell objects, and the moral fiction in his own theory to which we object, have had their origin. They are mere artificial devices to compensate the loss of that realistic mode of conception in which alone a true atoning doctrine can rest in peace. So long as you contemplate the Redeemer as a detached person, not less insulated in his integrity of being than angel from archangel or from man, the difficulty will remain insuperable of making his moral acts avail for _other human individuals_, unless by a fict.i.tious transference, against which conscience protests. Punishment by subst.i.tute, righteousness by deputy, vicarious repentance, are notions at variance with the fundamental postulates of the Moral Sense: and in the attempt to defend them we are liable to lose the solemn, living, face-to-face reality of the strife within us, and to weave around us a web of legal and formal relations, as little like any heart-felt veracity as a chancery decree to a law of nature. In proportion as the soul is pierced with a sharper contrition, and attains a deeper and clearer insight into her own unfaithful disorder, will the inherent impossibility of any foreign exchange of righteousness become apparent, and the desire to be shielded from punishment will pa.s.s away: nor is the conscience truly awakened which does not rather rush into the arms of its just anguish than start back and fly away. And the more you hold up to view the holiness of Christ, the darker will the personal past appear to grow; for self-reproach will say: "Yes, I see him as the holy Son of G.o.d; the guiltier am I that the vision did not keep me from my sin." Talk to such a one of Christ"s transactions on our behalf, as "_federal head_" of a redeemed people; and his misery will take no notice of the cold pretence, unless to think, "Whatever engagements he made for me, I have broken them all." In short, while Christ is regarded simply as an historical individual, with the chasm of an incommunicable personality between him and us, no ingenuity can construct, except from the ruins of moral law, any other bridge of mediation than the suasion of natural reverence, by which his image pa.s.ses into the heart of faith.

It is otherwise when we break through the restraints of the modern individualism, and strive to enter into that literal identification of Christ with Christians which is so frequent with St. Paul. If, instead of saying that Christ _had_ our human nature, we could put our thought into this form,--"He _was_ (and _is_) our human nature,"--if we could suppose our type of being not merely represented in him as a sample, but concentrated in him as a whole,--we should read its essentials and destination in his biography: his predicates would be its predicates: and in his sorrows and sanct.i.ty it might undergo purification. Humanity thus made into a person would then be the corresponding fact to Deity embodied in a person: both would be _Incarnations_,--essential Manhood and essential G.o.dhead,--co-present in the same manifested life. In the ordinary conception of the doctrine of two natures, Christ is represented, we believe, as _a_ man; in the mode of thought to which we now refer, he appears as _Man_. The difficulties which arise in the attempt to carry out this form of thinking are evident enough, even to those who know nothing of the Parmenides of Plato. Indeed, they are rendered so obtrusive by our modern habits of mind, that even a momentary seizure, for mere purposes of interpretation, of that older intellectual posture, scarcely remains possible to us. The apprehension of it, however, is indispensable to one who would appreciate the mediatorial theology of Christendom,--a theology which never could have sprung up if our present conceptualist and nominalist notions had always prevailed, and which, ever since their ascendency in Europe, has been driven to deplorable shifts of self-justification. The parallel between the first and second Adam, the fall and the restoration, the death incurred and the life recovered, acquire new meaning for those who thus think,--that as the incidents of Adam"s existence become _generic_ by _descent_, so the incidents of Christ"s existence are generic by _diffusion_; that if in the one we see humanity at head-quarters in _time_, in the other we see it at head-quarters in _comprehension_; so that, like an atmosphere which, purified at nucleus, has the taint drawn off from its margin, our nature is freed from its sickliness in him. It becomes intelligible to us in what sense we are to take refuge in him as our including term, to find in him an epitome of our true existence, to die (even to have died) with him, to suffer with him, to be risen with him, to dwell above in him. On the a.s.sumption of such a union, his life ceases to be an individual biography; what is manifested in him personally, becomes true of us universally; and it is as if we were all--like special examples in a general rule, or undeveloped truths in a parent principle--virtually present in his dealings with evil and with G.o.d. It is evident, that in this view his mediation has no chasm to cross, no foreign region to enter, but is an inseparable predicate of his own personal acts. The facility of conception afforded by this method is betrayed by Mr. Campbell"s resort to an a.n.a.logous hypothesis as a mere ill.u.s.trative help to the mind. Witness the following striking pa.s.sage:--

"That we may fully realize what manner of equivalent to the dishonor done to the law and name of G.o.d by sin an adequate repentance and sorrow for sin must be, and how far more truly than any penal infliction such repentance and confession must satisfy Divine justice, let us suppose that all the sin of humanity has been committed by one human spirit, on whom is acc.u.mulated this immeasurable amount of guilt; and let us suppose this spirit, loaded with all this guilt, to pa.s.s out of sin into holiness, and to become filled with the light of G.o.d, becoming perfectly righteous with G.o.d"s own righteousness,--such a change, were such a change possible, would imply in the spirit so changed a perfect condemnation of the past of its own existence, and an absolute and perfect repentance, a confession of its sin commensurate with its evil. If the sense of personal ident.i.ty remained, it must be so. Now, let us contemplate this repentance with reference to the guilt of such a spirit, and the question of pardon for its past sin and admission now to the light of G.o.d"s favor. Shall this repentance be accepted as an atonement, and, the past sin being thus confessed, shall the Divine favor flow out on that present perfect righteousness which thus condemns the past, or shall that repentance be declared inadequate? Shall the present perfect righteousness be rejected on account of the past sin, so absolutely and perfectly repented of? and shall Divine justice still demand adequate punishment for the past sin, and refuse to the present righteousness adequate acknowledgment,--the favor which, in respect of its own nature, belongs to it? It appears to me impossible to give any but one answer to these questions. We feel that such a repentance as we are supposing would, in such a case, be the true and proper satisfaction to offended justice. Now, with the difference of personal ident.i.ty, the case I have supposed is the actual case of Christ, the holy one of G.o.d, bearing the sins of all men on his spirit,--in Luther"s words, "the one sinner,"--and meeting the cry of these sins for judgment, and the wrath due to them, absorbing and exhausting that Divine wrath in that adequate confession and perfect response on the part of man which was possible only to the infinite and eternal righteousness in humanity."--p. 143.

The case which our author here presents as an aid to the imagination was to Luther the literal reality; to whom, accordingly, Christ was "the one sinner," _without_ "the difference of personal ident.i.ty,"

which is here so innocently slipped in, as if it were of no consequence. Christ, in the Reformer"s view, _was_ humanity, _our_ humanity; and the grand function and triumph of faith is to feel ourselves included in him, to merge our individuality, sins and all, in his comprehending manhood and atoning obedience. Hence the stress which Luther lays on "the well-applying the p.r.o.noun" _our_, in the phrase, "who gave himself for our sins"; "that this one syllable being believed may swallow up all thy sins." The effect of this realism on the theology of Luther has not been sufficiently remarked. We believe it to be the key to much that is obscure in his writings, and the secret source of his antipathy to the Calvinistic type of the Reformation. Absorption of Manhood into Christ,--distribution of G.o.dhead into humanity,--these were the correlative parts of his objective belief,--Atonement and Eucharistic Real Presence: and neither in themselves nor in their correspondence can they be appreciated, without standing with him at the point of view which we have endeavored to indicate.

Whether mediatorial religion shall continue to include in its scheme some provision for _dealing with G.o.d on behalf of men_, will mainly depend on the successful revival or the final abandonment of the old realistic modes of thought. Mr. Campbell"s compromise with them, taking refuge with them for ill.u.s.tration while disowning them in substance, answers no logical or theological purpose at all. If he follows out the natural tendencies and affinities of his faith, he must rest exclusively at last in the other half of the doctrine, which exhibits the _dealing with man on behalf of G.o.d_. In this best sense mediatorial religion is imperishable, and imperishably identified with Christianity. The Son of G.o.d, at once above our life and in our life, morally divine and circ.u.mstantially human, mediates for us between the self so hard to escape, and the Infinite so hopeless to reach; and draws us out of our mournful darkness without losing us in excess of light. He opens to us the moral and spiritual mysteries of our existence, appealing to a consciousness in us that was asleep before.

And though he leaves whole worlds of thought approachable only by silent wonder, yet his own walk of heavenly communion, his words of grace and works of power, his strife of divine sorrow, his cross of self-sacrifice, his reappearance behind the veil of life eternal, fix on him such holy trust and love, that, where we are denied the a.s.surance of knowledge, we attain the repose of faith.

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.

It is at all times difficult, even for the wisest, to describe aright the tendencies of the age in which they live, and lay down its bearings on the great chart of human affairs. Our own sensations can give us no notice whither we are going; and the infinite life-stream on which we ride, restless as it is with the surface-waves of innumerable events, reports nothing of the mighty current that sweeps us on, except by faint and silent intimations legible only to the skilled interpreter of heaven. It is something, however, to have the feeling _that we are moving_, and to be awake and looking out; and perhaps there never was a period in which this consciousness was more diffused throughout society than in our own. No one can look up and around at the religious and social phenomena of Christendom, without the persuasion that we are entering a new hemisphere of the world"s history,--a persuasion corroborated even by those who disclaim it, and who insist on still steering by lights of tradition now sinking into the mists of the receding horizon. Wherever we turn our eye, we discover some symptom of an impending revolution in the forms of Christian faith. The gross materialism and absolute unbelief diffused for the first time among vast ma.s.ses of our population; the fast-spreading (and, as it appears to us, morbid) dislike to look steadily at anything miraculous; the extensive renunciation, even among the religious cla.s.ses on the Continent, of historical Christianity; the schisms and ever-new peculiarities which are weakening all sects, and, like seedlings of the Reformation, are obscuring the species, by multiplying the varieties, of opinion; the revived controversies, penetrating all the great political questions of the age, between the ecclesiastical and civil powers,--are not the only indications of approaching theological change. That very conservatism and recoil upon the high doctrine of an elder time, which is manifest in every section of the Christian world, is a confession by contrast of the same thing. For opinion does not turn round and retreat into the past, till it has lost its natural shelter in the present, and dreads some merciless storm in the future. The outward strength which the older churches of our country seem to be acquiring arises from the rallying of alarm and the herding together of trembling sympathies; and though fear may unite men against external a.s.saults upon inst.i.tutions, it cannot stop the decay of inward doubt.

It would seem as if Christianity was threatened by the mental activity which it has itself created; as if the intellectual weapons which have been forged and tempered by its skill were treacherously turned against its life. It is vain, however, to strike a power that is immortal; nothing will fall but the bodily form cast for a season around the imperishable spirit.

Protestantism, with all its blessings, has after all greatly disfigured Christianity, by constructing it into a rigid metaphysical form, and setting it up on a narrow pedestal of antiquarian proof;--by destroying its infinite character through definitions, and developing it dogmatically rather than spiritually;--by treating it, not as an ideal glory around the life of man, but a logical incision into the psychology of G.o.d. The wreck of systems framed under this false conception will but leave the pure spirit of our religion in the enjoyment of a more sacred homage;--you may dash the image, but you cannot touch the G.o.d.

In the following remarks we shall seek to make this evident;--to show what principles of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular, may be p.r.o.nounced safe from the shocks of doubt. In times of consternation and uncertainty, it behooves each one to look within him for the heart of courage, and around him for the place of shelter, and to single out, amid countless points of danger, some refuge immutable and eternal. With this view, we propose to trace an outline of Christian truths which we consider secure and durable as our very nature;--a chain of granite points rising, like the rock of ages, above the shifting seas of human opinion. In doing so, we shall be simply delineating Unitarian Christianity, according to our conception of it;--expounding it, not as a barren negation, but as a scheme of positive religion; exhibiting both its characteristic faiths, and something of the modes of thought by which they are reached.

I. In the _first_ place, WE HAVE FAITH in the _Moral Perceptions of Man_. The conscience with which he is endowed enables him to appreciate the distinction between right and wrong; to understand the meaning of "_ought_," and "_ought not_"; to love and revere whatever is great and excellent in character, to abhor the mean and base; and to feel that in the contrast between these we have the highest order of differences by which mind can be separated from mind. And on this consciousness,--the basis of our whole responsible existence,--no suspicion is to be cast; no lamentation over its fallibility, no hint of possible delusion, is to pa.s.s unrebuked; it is worthy of absolute reliance as the authoritative oracle of our nature, supreme over all its faculties,--ent.i.tled to use sense, memory, understanding, to register its decrees, without a moment"s license to dispute them. That Justice, Mercy, and Truth are good and venerable, is no matter of doubtful opinion, in which peradventure an error may be hid;--is not even a thing of certain inference, recommended to us by the force of evidence;--is not an empirical judgment, depending on the pleasurableness of these qualities, and capable of reversal, if, under some tyrant sway, they were to be rendered sources of misery. The approval which we award to them is quite distinct from a.s.sent to a scientific probability; the excellence which we ascribe to them is not identical with their command of happiness, but altogether transcends this, precedes it, and survives it; the obligation they lay upon us is not the consequence of positive law, human or divine, or in any way the creature of superior will; for all free-will must itself possess a moral quality,--can never stir without exercising it,--and cannot therefore give rise to that which is a prior condition of its own activity. And if (to pursue the thought suggested above) we could be s.n.a.t.c.hed away to some distant world, some out-province of the universe, abandoned by G.o.d"s blessed sway to the absolutism of demons, where selfishness and sensuality, and hate and falsehood, were protected and enjoined by public law, it is clear that, by such emigration, our interests only, and not our duties, would be reversed; and that to rebel and perish were n.o.bler than to comply and live. The discernment of moral distinctions, then, belongs to the very highest order of certainties; it has its seat in our deepest reason, among the primitive strata of thought, on which the depositions of knowledge, and the acc.u.mulations of judgment, and the surface growths of opinion, all repose. As experience in the past has not taught it, experience in the future cannot _unteach_ it. The difference between good and evil we cannot conceive to be merely relative, and incidental to our point of view,--variable with the locality and the cla.s.s in which a being happens to rest,--an optical caprice of the atmosphere in which we live;--but rather a property of the very light itself, found everywhere out of the region of absolute night; or, at least, a natural impression, belonging to that perceptive eye of the soul, through which alone we can look out, as through a gla.s.s, upon all beings and all worlds; and if any one will say that the gla.s.s is colored, it is, at all events, the tint of nature, shed on it by the ineffaceable art of the Creator. The modes in which we think of moral qualities are not terrestrial peculiarities of idea, like foreign prejudices; the terms in which we speak of them are not untranslatable provincial idioms, vulgarities of our planetary dialect, but are familiar, like the symbols of a divine science, to every tribe of souls, belonging to the language of the universe, and standing defined in the vocabulary of G.o.d. The laws of right are more necessarily universal than the physical laws of force; and if the same agency of gravitation that governs the rain-drop determines the evolutions of the sky, and the Principia of Newton would be no less intelligible and true on the ring of Saturn than in the libraries of this earth,--yet more certain is it that the principles of moral excellence, truly expounded for the smallest sphere of responsibility, hold good, by mere extension, for the largest, and that those sentiments of conscience which may give order and beauty to the life of a child, const.i.tute the blessedness of immortals, and penetrate the administration of G.o.d. This is what we intend, when we insist on implicit faith in the moral perceptions of man. They are to be a.s.sumed by us as the fixed station, the grand heliocentric position, whence our survey of the spiritual universe must be made, and our system of religion constructed. Whatever else may move, here, as in creation"s centre of gravity, we take our everlasting stand. Whatever else be doubtful, these are to be simply trusted. The force of certainty by which nature and G.o.d give them to the conscience exceeds any by which, either through the understanding or through external supernatural communication, they might _seem_ to be drawn away. No revelation could persuade me that what I revere as just, and good, and holy, is _not venerable_, any more than it could convince me that the midnight heavens are not sublime.

There is nothing to move us from this position, in the objection, that different men have different ideas of right and wrong, and that the heroic deeds of one lat.i.tude are regarded as the crimes of another. This moral discrepancy is, in the first place, infinitely small in proportion to the moral agreement of mankind, so that it is even difficult to find many striking examples of it; and when the subject is mentioned, everybody expects to hear the self-immolation of the Indian widow, and other superst.i.tions of the Ganges, adduced as the standing ill.u.s.trations. What, after all, are these eccentricities of the moral sense, compared with the scale of its common consent? As well might you deny the existence of an atmosphere, because you have found the air exhausted from a pump! Where is the nation or the individual, without the rudiments, however imperfectly unfolded, of the same great ideas of duty which we possess ourselves?--where the language, in which there are no terms to denote good and evil,--the just, the brave, the merciful?--where the tribe so barbarous as not to listen, with earnest eye, to the story of the good Samaritan? And if such there were, should we not call them a people but little human (_inhuman_), and deem them, not the specimens, but the outlaws of our nature? Moreover, the variances of moral judgment are usually only apparent and external. The action which one man p.r.o.nounces wrong and another right, is not the same, except upon the lips: enter the minds of the two disputants, and you will find that it is only half taken into the view of each, and presents to them its opposite hemispheres; no wonder that it shows the darkness of guilt to the one, and the sunshine of virtue to the other.

And accordingly, these differences actually vanish as the faculty of conscience unfolds itself, and the scope of the mind is enlarged. Like the discrepancies in the ideas which men have of beauty, they exist princ.i.p.ally between the uncultivated and the refined: and the well-developed perceptions of the best in all ages and countries visibly agree. Nay, while yet the discordance lasts, it introduces no real doubt: for heaven has established a moral subordination among men, which reveals the real truth of our own nature. Do we not always see, that the lower conscience bows before the higher;--that the heart, without light or heat itself, may be pierced, as with a flash, by a sentiment darted from a loftier soul, and own it to be from above;--that, simply by this natural allegiance of the lesser to the n.o.bler, cla.s.ses and nations and sects are raised in dignity and moral greatness;--that they, and they only, have had any grand and sublime existence in the history of the world, who have been gifted with power to create a new religion,--a fresh development of what is holy and divine;--and that every one so endowed has always gathered around him the mult.i.tudes ever praying to be lifted above the level of their life, and blessing the benefactor who wakes up the consciousness of their higher nature? And if so, the general _direction_ of the moral sentiment is the same, however its intensity may vary: and the irregular indications which it gives are not due to any inherent vacillation, but to the disturbing causes which deflect it from the celestial line of simplicity and truth.

We keep our foot, then, on this primitive foundation,--faith in the moral perceptions of man. We say, that we know what we mean, when we affirm that a being is just, pure, disinterested, merciful; that these terms describe one particular kind of character, and one only; that they have the same sense to whomsoever they are applied, and are not to be juggled with, so as to denote quite opposite forms of action and disposition, according as our discourse may be of heaven or of earth; that whenever they lose their ordinary and intelligible signification, they become senseless; and that what would be wrong and odious in any one moral agent, can be, under similar relations, right and lovely in no other. These positions, which we take to be fundamental, are in direct contradiction to the theological maxims with which most churches begin;--viz. that human nature is so depraved that its conscience has lost its discernment, sees everything through a corrupted medium, and deserves no trust; that it may surrender its convictions to anything which can bring fair historical evidence of its being a revelation;--in other words, that it may be right to throw away our ideas of right, and, in obedience to antiquarian witnesses, suppose it holy in G.o.d to design and execute a scheme which it would be a crime in man to imitate. These principles are defended by the a.s.sertion, that the relations of the Divine and the human being are so different as to destroy all the a.n.a.logies of character between them.

The only tendency, both of this defence and of the principles themselves, is to absolute scepticism;--to _atheistical scepticism_, inasmuch as our propositions respecting G.o.d, if not true in the plain human sense, are to us true in no other, and represent _nothing_; to _moral scepticism_, inasmuch as, the sentiments of conscience being exposed to distrust, and all its language rendered unsettled, the very ground on which human character must plant itself is loosened; the rock of duty melts into water beneath our feet, and we are cast into the waves of impulse and caprice.

II. We have Faith in the _Moral Perfection of G.o.d_. This indeed is a plain consequence of our reliance on the natural sentiments of duty.

For it is not, we apprehend, by our logical, but by our moral faculty, that we have our knowledge of G.o.d; and he who most confides in the instructor will learn the sacred lesson best. That one whom we may call the Holiest rules the universe, is no discovery made by the intellect in its excursions, but a revelation found by the conscience on retiring into itself; and though we may reason in defence of this great truth, and these reasonings, when constructed, may look convincing enough, they are not, we conceive, the source, but rather the effect, of our belief,--not the forethought which actually precedes and introduces the Faith, but the afterthought by which Faith seeks to make a friend and an intimate of the understanding. Does any one hesitate to admit this, and think that our conceptions of the Divine character are inferences regularly drawn from observation,--not indeed observation on the mere physical arrangements, but on the moral phenomena, of our world,--from the traces of a regard to character in the administration of human life? We will not at present dispute the conclusion; but, observing that the premises which furnish it are certain _moral_ experiences, we remark that the very power of receiving and appreciating these, of knowing what they are worth, belongs not to our scientific faculty, but to our sense of justice and of right. On a being dest.i.tute of this they would make no impression; and in precise proportion to the intensity of this feeling will be the vividness and force of their persuasion. And is it not plain _in fact_, that it is far from being the clear and acute intellect, but rather the pure and transparent heart, that best discerns G.o.d? How many strong and sagacious judgments, of coolest capacity for the just estimate of argument, never attain to any deep conviction of a perfect Deity! Nay, how much does scepticism on this great matter seem to be proportioned, not to the obtuseness, but rather to the subtlety and searchingness of the mere understanding? But when was it ever known that the singularly pure and simple heart, the earnest and aspiring conscience, the lofty and disinterested soul, had no faith in the "First fair and the First good"? Philosophy at its ease, apart from the real responsibilities and strong battle of life, loses its diviner sympathies, and lapses into the scrupulosity of doubt, and from the centre of comfort weeps over the miseries of earth, and the questionable benevolence of heaven; while the practically tried and struggling, with moral force growing beneath the pressure of crushing toil, look up with a refreshing trust, and with worn and bleeding feet pant happily along to the abodes of everlasting love. The moral victor, flushed with triumph over temptation, feels that G.o.d is on his side, and that the spirit of the universe is in sympathy with his joy.

Never did any one spend himself in the service of man, and yet despair of the benignity of G.o.d. Our faith, then, in the Divine perfection, forms and disengages itself from the deeps of conscience: and the Holiest that broods over us solemnly rises--the awful spirit of eternity--from the ocean of our moral nature.

It is in conformity with this doctrine of the _moral_ origin of our belief in the first principles of religion, that to every man his G.o.d is _his best and highest_, the embodiment of that which the believer himself conceives to be the greatest. The image which he forms of that Being may indeed be gross and terrible; and others may be shocked, and exclaim that he trusts, not in a Divinity, but in a Fiend: but will the worshipper himself perceive and acknowledge this?--will he not indignantly deny it?--will he not eagerly vindicate the perfection of the Deity he serves? He can do no otherwise; for he discerns nothing more sublime, and cannot be convinced that _that_ is low which stands at the summit of his thoughts. This uniform phenomenon in the history of religion could not exist, if human faith were an inference of intellectual origin. There would be nothing _then_ to prevent some men, in their reasonings on the probable character of G.o.d, from a.s.signing to that character a place _beneath_ their own conceptions of what is most excellent; and amid the infinite varieties of speculation, many forms of this opinion would undoubtedly arise. Let any one, then, who dissents from the account which we have given, ask himself this question: Why is it, that to discover a blemish in a divinity is the same thing as to renounce faith in him; and that, even in pagan times, to _a.s.sail the character_ of the G.o.ds was the constant mark of an _unbelieving_ age? Is it not clear that, by a constraining necessity of our being, we are compelled to regard the G.o.dlike and the perfect as identical, and to look to heaven through the eye of our moral nature? The Intellect alone, like the telescope waiting for an observer, is quite blind to the celestial things above it,--a dead mechanism dipped in night,--ready to serve as the dioptric gla.s.s, spreading the images of light from the Infinite on the tender and living retina of Conscience.

If, then, there is no discernment of Deity except through our moral sense, the importance of confiding in the perceptions of that sense,--of rendering our consciousness of them vivid and distinct,--and the corresponding mischief of distrusting and repudiating these our appointed instructors,--become evident. Faith in the human conscience is necessary to faith in the Divine perfection: and _this_ again is the needful prelude to the belief in any special revelation. For, unless we are first a.s.sured of the truth and excellence of G.o.d, we cannot tell that his communications may not deceive us, giving us false notices of things, and agitating us with illusory hopes and fears. This might be apprehended from a Being of undetermined benevolence and integrity: and that this idea of a _mendacious revelation_ has never seriously entered the minds of men, is a strong proof of their natural and necessary faith in the rect.i.tude and goodness of the Divine Administrator of creation. This Moral Perfection of G.o.d being a.s.sumed as a postulate in the very idea of a Revelation, no system of religion which contradicts it can be admitted as credible _on any terms_.

Now the whole scheme of Redemption, as it is represented in the popular theology, appears to us to fall under this condemnation. Under the _names_ of Justice, Sanct.i.ty, Mercy, it ascribes to the All-perfect a course of sentiment and of practice which--it is undeniable--no other moral agent, placed in a.n.a.logous relations, could adopt without the deepest guilt. The Holiness of G.o.d, so often adduced to justify the severities of this scheme, we would yield to no one in earnestly maintaining; believing, as we do, that his abhorrence of moral evil is absolute and everlasting, his resistance to it real and true, and his love of excellence simply infinite as his nature. But purity of mind does not express itself by implacable vengeance against the impure, or oblige its possessor to engage himself in physically smiting them,--much less limit him through all eternity to this mode of administration.

Rather does it incline away from a treatment which too often adds only torment, and removes no guilt,--which makes no advance towards the blessed dispositions it loves,--which fevers and parches instead of cooling and melting the pa.s.sions of a culprit nature. It is a coa.r.s.e and wretched error to suppose that anguish is a specific for sin, to the incessant infliction of which the Sinless is bound. G.o.d never departs indeed from his devotion to the laws of goodness, and his design of calling wider and wider virtue into existence: but he pursues them with the fertility of his infinite free-will;--now by the severities of his displeasure,--now by the openness of his forgiveness,--now by the solicitations of his love. His purpose, as one whose perfection is not merely spotless, but active and productive, cannot be, as some Christians seem to say, the penal publication of his personal offence against the insulters of his law, but the spread and cultivation throughout his spiritual universe of pure and high affections: and whenever the new germs of these appear in the garden of the Lord, no vernal sunshine or summer dews can more gently cherish the bursting flower, than does his mercy foster the fair and early growth. The a.s.sertion that G.o.d cannot pardon and recall to goodness till he has expended his tortures upon the evil, seems to us a plain denial of his moral excellence. Theologians speak as if there were some crime, or at least some weakness, in the clemency which freely receives a repentant creature into favor; as if the mercy which exacts no penalty, when penalty is no longer needed, were an amiable imbecility of human nature, which only a loose-principled and unholy being can exercise! as if absolute unforgiveness were the perfection of sanct.i.ty! True, this is disclaimed in words; and the Eternal Father is called merciful, for remitting the sinner"s doom and transferring the burden of his guilt to a victim divine and pure. But surely this disclaimer is more insulting to our moral sense than the accusation. For, either this transference of righteousness and guilt is a mere figure of speech, denoting only that, from the death on Calvary, G.o.d took chronological occasion to pa.s.s his own spontaneous pardon, and set up the cross to _mark the date_ of his volition; or else, if the vicariousness be not this mere pretence, it describes an outrage upon the first principles of rect.i.tude, a reckless disregard of all moral considerations, from the thought of which we are astonished that all good men do not recoil.

We press once more the question which has never been answered: How is the alleged immorality of letting off the sinner mended by the added crime of penally crushing the Sinless? Of what man--of what angel--could such a thing be reported, without raising a cry of indignant shame from the universal human heart? What should we think of a judge who should discharge the felons from the prisons of a city, because some n.o.ble and generous citizen offered himself to the executioner instead? And if this would be barbarity below, it cannot be holiness above. Moral excellence and beauty, we repeat, are no local growths, changing their species with every clime; nor are the poisonous weeds of this outer region the chosen adornments of paradise. The principles of Justice and Right embrace all beings and all times, and, like the indestructible conception of s.p.a.ce, attach themselves to our contemplation of objects within the remotest infinitude. It is no more possible that what would be evil in man should be good in G.o.d, than that a circle on earth should be a square in heaven. Having faith, then, in the absolute perfection of our Creator, we dare ascribe to Him nothing which revolts the secret conscience He has given us.

III. The relation which thus subsists between the human conscience and the Divine excellence leads us to avow, in the next place, a FAITH in the _strictly Divine and Inspired Character of our own highest Desires and best Affections_. We do not mean by this, that these affections are of miraculous origin; that their appearance breaks through any regular law; or that they do not belong to our own nature so as to form an integrant part of its history; or that they do not arise spontaneously within it, but require to be precipitated upon it from without. They are as much properties of our own minds, as our selfishness and sin: we are _conscious_ of them, and so they cannot but be parts of our personality.[25] But in admitting them to be _human_, I do not deny that they are _divine_: in regarding them as indigenous to our created spirit, I do not treat them as foreign to the Creator"s; nor is there any inconsistency in believing them to be simultaneously domesticated with both. That which is _included within_ the mind of man, is not _therefore excluded from_ the mind of _G.o.d_; much less is it true that occurrences agreeable to the order of nature are, by that circ.u.mstance, disqualified from being held the immediate products of the Heavenly Will. The Supreme Cause, so far from being shut out by his own secondary causes and natural laws, has now at least no residence, no activity, no existence, except within them; He covers, penetrates, fills them; thinks, speaks, executes, through them, as the media of his volition: and _His_ energy and _theirs_ not only _may coincide_, but even _must coalesce_. He is not to be brought down from his universal dominion to the rank of _one of_ the physical causes active in creation, doing that only which the others have left undone. Will any one stand with me by the midnight sea, and, because the tides in the deep below hang upon the moon in the heavens above, forbid me to hear in their sweep the very voice of G.o.d, and tell me that, while they roll untired on, He sleeps through the silent vault around me? It is by the law of gravitation that the planets find an unerring track in the desert s.p.a.ce; and is it false, then, that He "leadeth them forth with his finger," and bids us note, in pledge of his punctuality, that "not one faileth"? Is there any error in ascribing the very same event at one time to gravitation, at another to G.o.d? Certainly not; for this is but one of the forms of his personal activity. And it is the same in the world of Mind; its natural laws do not exclude, but, on the contrary, include, the direct Divine agency: and though _my_ thought, or hope, or love, cannot be _yours_, they may yet be G.o.d"s; not emanations from the G.o.d without us, but inspirations of the G.o.d within. Why should we start to think that there is a part of us which is divine?--why image to ourselves a distant, external, contemplative G.o.d, seeing all things and touching nothing, gazing on the unconscious evolutions of things, as the retired Mechanist of nature?--why enthrone Him in the inertness of dead s.p.a.ce, without even a sacred function there, and exclude Him from the tried, and tempted, and ever-trembling soul of Man? If we found Him not at home in the secret places of strife and sorrow, vainly should we wander to seek Him in the colder regions of nature abroad.

We have no sympathy with any system which denies the doctrine of a Holy Spirit; which discerns nothing divine in the higher experiences of human nature; which owns no black abyss and no heavenly heights in the soul of man, but only a flat, common, midway region, neither very foul nor very fair,--well enough for the streets of traffic, but without a mount of vision and of prayer. Nothing n.o.ble, nothing great, has ever come from a faith which did not deeply reverence the soul, and stand in awe of it as the seat of G.o.d"s own dwelling, the presence-chamber of his sanct.i.ty,--the focus of that infinite whispering-gallery which the universe spreads around us.

Nor can we doubt at what point of our own nature we must stand, in order to hear the voice and feel the inspiration of the Eternal. The pure in heart--each in proportion to his purity--see Him. Our Conscience, our Moral Perceptions, as we have seen, are our only revealers of G.o.d. In proportion to their clearness do we discern Him; and behind the clouds that obscure them, He becomes dim, and vanishes away. The aspirations of duty, the love of excellence, the disinterested and holy affections, of which every good heart is conscious, const.i.tute our affinity with Him,--by which we know Him, as like knows like: they are the expression of his mind, the pencil of rays by which He paints his image on our spiritual nature. G.o.d is related to our soul, like the sun in a stormy sky to the windowed cells in which mortals live; and as we sit at our work in the chamber of conscience or of love, the burst of brilliancy or the sudden gloom within reports to us the clear-shining or the cloud of the heaven without. Nor can any philosophy, falsely so called, permanently expel this conviction from the Christian heart. Every devout and earnest mind naturally feels that its selfishness and sin are of the earth, earthy,--the most offensive of all att.i.tudes to G.o.d,--the infatuated turning of the back to Him: and, on the other hand, welcomes the fresh glow of pure Resolve, the heart-felt sob of Penitence, the glorious Courage that slays Temptation at his feet,--each as the gracious gift of a divine strength, and the authentic voice of the Inspirer, G.o.d. By this natural faith (natural, however, only to the Christian mind) we are prepared to abide; and, with the Apostle Paul, to own ourselves, not without deep awe, the very temple of the Holiest.

IV. We have said, that in the Conscience and Moral Affections we have our _only_ revealers of G.o.d. Let it be understood that we mean our only _internal_ revealers of Him; the only faculty of our nature capable of furnishing us with the idea and belief of Him, with any perception of his character, and allegiance to his will. We mean to state that, without this faculty, the bare intellect, the mere scientific and reasoning power, could make no way towards the knowledge of divine realities; could never, by any system of helps whatsoever, be trained or guided into this knowledge, any more than, in the absence of the proper sense, the _ear_ of the blind can be taught _to see_; and that nature, life, history, miracle, notwithstanding their most sedulous discipline, would leave us utterly in the dark about religion, except so far as they addressed themselves to our consciousness of what is holy, just, beautiful, and great. But we do _not_ mean to state that the Moral Sense can stand alone, dispense with all outward instruction, and supply a man with a natural religion ready made. Nor do we mean that the every-day experience of man, and the ordinary providence of G.o.d, are enough, without special revelation, to lead us to heavenly truth. And we are therefore prepared to advance another step, and to say, that, while regarding the human conscience as the only inward revealer of G.o.d, we have FAITH in CHRIST as _his perfect and transcendent outward revelation_. We conceive that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died, not to _persuade_ the Father, not to _appease_ the Father, not to make a sanguinary _purchase_ from the Father, but simply to "_show_ us the Father"; to leave upon the human heart a new, deep, vivid impression of what G.o.d is in himself, and of what he designs for his creature, man; to become, in short, the accepted interpreter of heaven and life. And this he achieved, in the only way of which we can conceive as practicable, by a new disclosure in his own person of all that is holy and G.o.dlike in character,--startling the human soul with the sudden apparition of a being diviner far than it had yet beheld, and lifting its faith at once into quite another and purer region. If it be true, as we have ventured to affirm, that to every man his G.o.d is his _best_, you can by no means give to his faith a _higher G.o.d_, till you have given to his heart a _better best_,--till you have touched him with a profounder sense of sanct.i.ty and excellence, and purified and enlarged the perceptions of his conscience. Nor can you do _this_, except by presenting him with n.o.bler models, with the living form of a fairer and sublimer goodness, visibly transcending every object of his previous reverence. No verbal teaching, no didactic rules, can transform any man"s moral taste, and place before his mental view a lovelier and truer image of perfection: as well might you hope, by definition, and precept, and book-wisdom, to train an artist with a soul like Raffaelle, or an eye like Claude. But only give the glorious model to the mind, _produce_ the most finished excellence and harmony, and our instinctive sympathy with goodness feels and discerns it instantly, and, though unable to conceive it inventively beforehand, recognizes it reverently afterwards. And so Christ, standing in solitary greatness, and invested with unapproachable sanct.i.ty, opens at once the eye of conscience to perceive and know the pure and holy G.o.d, the Father that dwelt in him and made him so full of truth and grace. Him that rules in heaven we can in no wise believe to be _less perfect_ than that which is most divine on earth; of anything _more perfect_ than the meek yet majestic Jesus, no heart can ever dream.

And, accordingly, ever since he visited our earth with blessing, the soul of Christendom has worshipped a G.o.d resembling him,--a G.o.d of whom he was the image and impersonation;--and, _therefore, not_ the G.o.d of which philosophy dreams,--a mere Infinite physical Force, without spirituality, without love, chiefly engaged in whirling the fly-wheel of nature, and sustaining the material order of the heavens, and weaving in the secret workshop of creation new textures of life and beauty; _not_ the G.o.d of which natural theology speaks, the mere chief of ingenious mechanicians, more optical, and dynamical, and architectural, than our most skilful engineers,--a cold intellectual Being, in the severe immensity and immutability of whose mind all warm emotions are absorbed and dissolved; _not_ the G.o.d of Calvinism, creating a race with certain foresight of the eternal d.a.m.nation of the many, and against the few refusing to relax his frown except at the spectacle of blood;--but the Infinite Spirit, so holy, so affectionate, so pitiful, whom Jesus felt to be in him as his Inspirer; who pa.s.ses by no wounds of sin or sorrow; who stills the winds and waves of terror, to the perishing that call on him in faith; who stops the procession of our grief, and bids bereaved affection weep no more, but wait upon the voice that even the dead obey; who scathes the hypocrite with the lightning of conviction, and permits the penitent to wash his feet with tears; who reckons most his own the gentlest follower, that rests the head and turns up the trustful eye on him; and bends that look of piercing love upon the guilty which best rebukes the guilt. Jesus has given us a faith never held before, and still too much obscured, in the _affectionateness_ of the Great Ruler; has made Him our own domestic G.o.d, whose ample home encircles all, leaving not the solitary, the sinner, or the sad without a place in the mansions of his house; has wrapped us in the Divine immensity without fear, and bid us claim the warm sun in heaven as our Paternal hearth, and the vault of the pure sky as our protecting roof.

We have spoken of Christ"s personal representation, in his own character and practical life, of the spirit of the Divine Mind, and have explained how in this way we believe that he has "shown us the Father." This, however, is not all. His _direct teachings_, perfectly in harmony with his life, confirm and extend its lessons; and we listen, with venerating faith, to his inimitable exposition of all divine truth. Purity of soul makes the most wonderful discoveries in heavenly things, and is indeed the pellucid atmosphere through which the remoter lights of G.o.d are "spiritually discerned." As we have said, the knowledge of him which any mind (be it of man or of angel) may possess, is just proportioned to its sanct.i.ty: and our Messiah, having the very highest sanct.i.ty, was enabled to speak with the highest and most authoritative knowledge, and was inspired to be our infallible guide, not perhaps in trivial questions of literary interpretation, or scientific fact, or historical expectation, but in all the deep and solemn relations on which our sanctification and immortal blessedness depend. And both to his person and to his teachings do the miracles of his life, the tragedy of his crucifixion, and the glory of his resurrection, articulately call the attention of all ages, as with the voice of G.o.d. In every way we discern in Christ the transcendent revelation of the Most High. We are told, that this is to _dishonor Christ_. We think it, however, a more glorious honor to him, to be thus indissolubly folded within the intimacy of the Father"s love, than to be blasted by the tempest of his wrath; nor could we ever trust and venerate a G.o.d who--like the barbarians in the judgment-hall--could smite that meek lamb of heaven with one rude blow of vengeance.

V. But we hasten to observe, finally, that WE HAVE FAITH in HUMAN IMMORTALITY, as exemplified in the heavenly life to which Jesus ascended. To a.s.sure us of this great truth, it were enough that Jesus a.s.sumed and taught it; that it was his great postulate, essential to the development of his own character, and to all his views of the purposes of life,--an integrant part of his insight into human responsibility and his version of human duty. For if _he_ did not teach the reality of G.o.d in this matter, sure we are that none else has ever done so; and most of all, that the sceptics who doubt the heavenly futurity have no claim to take his place as our instructors.

For if this hope were a delusion, _who_ would the mistaken be? Will any one tell me, that the voluptuary, who, from abandonment to the body, cannot imagine the perpetuity of the spirit;--that the selfish, who, looking at the meanness of his own nature, sees nothing worth immortalizing;--that the contented Epicurean, who, in prudent quietude of sense and sympathy, finds adequate satisfaction in this mortal life;--that the cold speculator, who looks at the fouler side of human nature, and, showing us on its features the pallor of sensualism or the hard lines of guilt, deems it less fit for the duration of the angel than for the extinction of the brute;--that these men are _right_; while Christ, who walked without despair through the deepest haunts of sin, with faith that succ.u.mbed not to wretchedness and wrong, but stood up and conquered them; who embraced our whole nature in his love, and displayed it in its perfectness; who lived and died in its utmost service, with prayers and tears and blood; to whom our most binding affections cling almost with worship as the holiest glory of our world;--that _he_ could be under a delusion _here_?--that when, sinking in trustful death, he laid his meek head to rest on the bosom of the Father, he was cast off, and dropped on the cold clod?--that he sobbed into the Infinite by night with a vain love that met no answer?--that G.o.d rather takes part in his providence with the mean-souled, the cynic, the morbid, the selfish? There _is_ no greater impossibility than this, on which evidence can fall back. Nay, we confess that, even apart from his doctrine, the mere mortal history of Christ would have settled with us the question of futurity. For the great essential to this belief is a sufficiently elevated estimate of human nature: no man will ever deny its immortality who has a deep impression of its capacity for so great a destiny. And this impression is so vividly given by the life of Jesus,--he presents an image of the soul so grand, so divine,--as utterly to dwarf all the dimensions of its present career, and to necessitate a heaven for its reception. At all events, it is allowable to feel this, when we see that this natural sequel was actually and perceptibly appended; that this "Holy One of G.o.d could not see corruption," but rose, above the reach of mortal ill, to the world where now he welcomes the souls of the sainted dead. That other life we take to be a scene for the mind"s ampler and ampler development, apart from those animal and selfish elements which now deform and degrade it by their excess. And this alone, if there were nothing else, would render it a life of awful retribution. For to the wicked, what is this loss of "the natural man," but total bereavement and utter death of joy?--what to the good, but a glad and sacred birth?--to the one, a Promethean exile on a mid-rock in the ocean of night, under the bite of a remorse that gnaws impalpably, felt always, but never seen,--to the other, a welcome to the loving homes of the blest, amid the sunshine of the everlasting hills? Yet precisely because we believe in Retribution, do we trust in Restoration. The very abhorrence with which a man"s better mind ever looks upon his worse, while it inflicts his punishment, begins his cure: and we can never allow that G.o.d will suspend this natural law impressed by himself on our spiritual const.i.tution, merely in order to stop the process of moral recovery, and specially enable him to maintain the eternity of torment and of sin. And so, beyond the dark close of life rise before us the awful contrasts of retribution; and in the farther distance, the dim but glorious vision of a purified, redeemed, and progressive universe of souls.

Here, then, are our Five Points of Christianity, considered as a system of positive religious doctrine, viz.:--1st. The truth of the Moral Perceptions in man,--not, as the degenerate churches of our day teach, their pravity and blindness; 2dly. The Moral Perfection of the character of G.o.d,--in opposition to the doctrine of his Arbitrary Decrees and Absolute Self-will; 3dly. The Natural awakening of the Divine Spirit within us,--rather than its Preternatural communication from without; 4thly. Christ, the pure Image and highest Revelation of the Eternal Father,--not his Victim and his Contrast; 5thly. A universal Immortality after the model of Christ"s heavenly life; an immortality not of capricious and select salvation, with unimaginable torment as the general lot, but, for all, a life of spiritual development, of retribution, of restoration.

To the _Moral_ doctrine which, in our view, the Gospel conjoins with this religious system, it is impossible for us at present to advert.

Suffice to say that, with Paul, we exclaim, "not _Law_, but _Love_":--love to G.o.d, to Christ, not simply for what they have done for us, but chiefly for what they are in themselves;--nothing like the narrow-hearted grat.i.tude for an exclusive salvation, but a _moral_ affection awakened by their holiness, rect.i.tude, truth, and mercy,--by the sublimity and spirituality of their designs, and the sanct.i.ty and fidelity of their execution:

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