Part 2 (1/2)

We linger over the pages fro to end our grateful task of love But one quotation more must be the last With it we cohts for religious thinkers, to the candid and affectionate inquirers within all sects, confident that, so far as the work obtains a fit reception, it will exert that purifying, liberalizing, and sanctifying pohich is the genuine influence of Christ

CHRISTIANITY AND SECTARIAN THEOLOGY

The sectarian state of theology in this country cannot but be regarded as eminently unnatural Its cold and hard ministrations are entirely alien to the wants of the popular mind, which, except under the discipline of artificial influences, is always nant exclusiveness is a perversion of the natural veneration of the human heart, which, except where it is interfered with by narrow and selfish syste that lives, but in love to the invisible objects of trust and hope Its disputatious trifling is an insult to the sanctity of conscience, which, except where it is betrayed into oblivion of its delicate and holy office, supplicates of religion, not a new ferocity of doght It is the temper of sectarianism to seize on every deformity of every creed, and exhibit this caricature to the world's gaze and aversion It is the spirit of the soul's natural piety to alight on whatever is beautiful and touching in every faith, and take there its secret draught of pure and fresh ees of poetry and pathos in a systeive them permanence; and even the wild fictions which have endeared Romanism to the hearts of so nificence The fundaion to the minds of his fellow-men should be, that all that has ever been extensively venerated redients that are venerable If, in the spirit of sectarianis in it but absurdity, it only proves that he does not see it all; it ht, that awes the iination, or touches the affections, or moves the conscience; and those who receive it neither will nor should abandon it, till so is substituted, not onlyto these higher faculties of soul Hence, a rigid accuracy and logical penetration oferror, are not the only qualities needed by the religious refors, a quick perception of the great and beautiful, a proaze through their eyes at the objects which they love, he will find the instruician may sit eternally in the centre of his own circle of correct ideas, and preach demonstrably the folly of the world's superstitions; yet he will never affect the thoughts of any but ards the fine tissue of es round the objects which he so harshly handles; and has yet to learn the art of preserving its fabric uni more worthy for it to foster and adore

As, then, it is to the ion chiefly attaches itself, as it is by these that the want of it is ly felt, so is it to these that its ministrations should be, for thethe evidences of creeds, let teachers be conducting them to their applications Let their respective resources of feeling and conception be unfolded before the soul of y they can inspire, what purity of nity of principle erect, what toils of philanthropy sustain Thus would arise a new criterion of judg systems; for that systeence and virtue Thus would the deeper devotional wants of society be no longera few captious, verbal, and precise forms of belief

Thus, too, would the alienation which repels sect fro syh intellect and excellence approach and stand invoices of disputants hushed in the stillness of reverence! Who does not feel the refreshment, when some stream of pure poetry, like Heber's, winds into the desert of theology! when soh its dull at, float from a distance on its heavy silence!

Such, then, are the objects which should be contemplated by those who, in the present tiious sentiy as an intellectual pursuit; secondly, the better application of religion as a moral influence Both these objects are directly or indirectly proed to advocate It aids the first, by the distribution of many a work, the production of such y fro union and sy those whose first principles are in direct contradiction to all that is sectarian, and who desire only to e from all that enfeebles, and the heart from all that narrows it The triumph of its doctrines would be, not the ascendency of one sect, but the harmony of all Let but the diversities which separate Christians retire, and the truths which they all profess to love advance to prominence, and, whatever may become of party names, our aims are fulfilled, and our satisfaction is complete When faith in the paternity of God shall have kindled an affectionate and lofty devotion; when the vision of immortality, imparted by Christ's resurrection, shall have created that spirit of duty which was the holiest inspiration of his life; when the sincere recognition of human brotherhood shall have supplanted all exclusive institutions, and banded society together under the vow of ress, our ill be done, our reward before us, and our little cohtened and benevolent men

The day is yet distant, and can be won only by the toil of earnest and faithful ht solace to see that the tendencies of Providence are towards its accelerated approach And however dispiriting may sometimes be the variety and conflicts of human sentiment,--however remote the dissonance of controversy from that harmony of hich would seeh this very process that the great ends of improvement are to be attained Hereafter it will be seen, enerates knowledge Like the ethereal waves, whose inconceivable rapidity and number are said to impart the sensation of vision, the undulations of opinion are speeding on to produce the perception of truth They are the infinitely complex and delicate movements of that universal Huht

To the fit and numerous readers e trust they will find, these papers are now submitted, in the earnest hope that the author will at no distant day follow thereat subject,--the components and developments of Christianity

W R A

STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY

If unity be the character of truth, no generation was ever so far gone in errors as our own: nor is the weariness surprising, hich statesmen and philosophers turn away fro the heavens, apply themselves to found and adorn the politics of this world But the confusion of tongues is too positive and obtrusive a fact to be escaped by mere retreat: it bids defiance to polite evasion: it pursues life into every public place and private haunt; invades the hoislature; and, besides the problems which it fails to solve, constitutes in itself a new one, not undeserving the closest study and reflection To the believers in doctrinal finality, who iine the whole sacred econo of every question, down to the very basis of religious faith,either failure on the presuns of God or a traitorous perversity on even the ht of men And not a whit better is the conclusion of a conceited illu the human mind to the sciences of induction, despises all faith as false alike; or, conscious at least of its own incoent scepticise can be taken on pious dog into the cant of an eclectic neutrality or an ih-otries of the present on behalf of sickly negations in the future The world is better left in the hands of the poorest interpreter of Paul, and ustine and Pascal, than transferred to the dialectic of Proclus or the ion de l'Humanite_”[1] There are those, however, who deny that we are left to any such alternative; who cannot conceive that human aspirations after divine reality shall for ever pine and sigh in vain; who contend that objective truth in reference to ely attained;--and who, accordingly, despairing of neither philosophy nor Christianity, require only the free intercommunion of the two to appreciate the contradictions of the present without foregoing the hope of greater unity in the future The controversies of the hour are but ill understood by one who rees thee brahich, with only the sound of vulgar noise, erned place in the unfolding of modern civilization; and not till their place is cos thenificance be apprehended, and all anger at their clamorous littleness be lost in hope of their ulterior issues

Regarded froland, at first sight aeleanic principle of order, and many salient points of pro that there is a natural correspondence between the genius of a people and the fors its oants and aspirations, colors its own ideal, and interprets best that part of life and the universe hich it is in sympathy John Knox would have been misplaced in Athens, and Tanler could not have lived on the moralism of Kant No doubt the ultimate seat of human faith lies deep down below the special propensities of individuals or tribes,--in a consciousness and faculty coages itself in a concrete shape, its type and color will be affected by the strata of thought and feeling through which it e to an exhaustive classification, we find four chief teies and scepticisms of civilized Europe: the quest of physical _order_, the sense of _right_, the instinct of _beauty_, and the consciousness of te the will off its feet Variously blended in the characters of average persons, these tendencies are liable to separate their intensities, and severally doreat force and periods of special action or reaction Were each left to itself to form its own unaided creed, the doctrine of mere Science would be _atheistic_; of Conscience, _theistic_; of Art, _pantheistic_; of Passion, _sacrificial_ The evidence of this distribution of tendencies is equally conclusive, whether we look to its rational ground or to its historical exemplification; and a feords on each head will suffice to clear and justify it

Notwithstanding soy as a necessary extension of natural philosophy, it is plain that the maxims, which are ultiion; that the final appeal of the two is carried to different faculties; and that the scope and sphere of the oneany conception from the other The assu but _pheno as the possible object of rational thought And as ”pheno_ faculties, whatever refuses to put in an appearance in _their_ court is nonsuited as an unreality And again, physical knowledge has accomplished its aim, as soon as it can predict all the successions that lie within its field of time and space; and nowhere in this system of series, nor in the calculated forces which yield it to the view, does any divine _Person_ look in upon the mind Whoever, by the restraints of a hypothetical necessity, detains his intellect _within_ nature, debars himself _ipso facto_ fronizes no reserve of _super_natural possibilities, hidden in a Mind of which the actual universe is but the finite expression We do not, of course, intend to affirious belief;--so preposterous an assertion would be confuted by a manifold experience;--but only that, where the canons of inductive knowledge are invested with unconditional universality, and are logically carried out as valid for all thought, they shut the door upon the sources of faith It is the old battle, of which history supplies such abundant illustration; which brought Paroras upon the lists at opposite ends on the field of philosophy; which Bacon profoundly avoided by assigning separate eion; but which histhe realm left sacred by him Uneasy relations have always subsisted in Christendoators of nature and the trustees of the faith: the ns of unequivocal aversion, the attitude of polite indifference to the Church; and in their turn watched with the jealous eye of sacerdotal vigilance It is no untrue instinct that has hitherto maintained thee which for a hearty and intelligent reverence for each other is an achieveher philosophy than we yet possess

As Science pays hoe to the _force of nature_, so Conscience enthrones the _law of right_ The conscious subject of ation feels himself under a rule neither self-in and coercive;--neither a home invention nor an outward necessity;--a rule invisible, authoritative, awful; carrying with it an _alternative_ irreducible to the linear dyna felt but by a free iven but by another He is aware that his will follows a call of duty not at all as his body adapts itself to the force of gravitation; and as within him the conscientious obedience wholly differs from the corporeal, so in the universe of realities beyond hiislation differ from the natural, and express the will of a person, not a s No ethical conceptions are possible at all,--except as floating shreds of unattached thought,--without a religious background; and the sense of responsibility, the agony of sha and vindication in a supreme holiness that rules the world Nor can any one be penetrated with the distinction between right and wrong, without recognizing it as valid for all free beings, and incapable of local or arbitrary change His feeling insists on its pernition and omnipresent sway; and this unity in the Moral Law carries hiislator Theism is thus the indispensable postulate of conscience,--its objective counterpart and justification, without which its inspirations would be illusions, and its veracities themselves a lie To adduce historical proofs of this conjunction is at once difficult and superfluous in a world whose theisotten that Socrates, in whoion culminated, avowedly based his reform on the substitution of moral for physical studies It is undeniable too that, in spite of their fatalism, the monotheistic Mohammedans have been surpassed by few nations in their sense of truth and fidelity; and that wherever the same type of belief has been approached by Christian sects, the heresy has been said to arise froerated estimate of the moral law

Art, we have said, is _pantheistic_ Its aim, often unconsciously present, is to read off the _expressiveness_ of things, and find what it is which they would speak with their silent look To its perceptions, form, color, sound, motion, have a soul within thee, by flinging itself into the nificance, a secondbeneath the artist's loving gaze,eye; communes with hirace or ht and opposite of spiritual energies, it becomes to him their pliant ht, the brilliant palette for the spread of in He melts the barrier away that hides from mere sense and intellect the interior sentilance of syes thees a leaden landscape and picks out the freshest s_ universe, ever striving to show him a divine beauty that lurks within and presses to the surface; and he stands before a curtain only half opaque, watching the lights and shadows thrown on it froht Not that the interpretation is by any means self-evident, or accessible except to the apprehensive instinct of sy, no object in creation, could ever represent co is lost fro short of the ideal, can give it only to one for whom a hint suffices This conception of the world as an incarnate divineness does not, we are well aware, amount to pantheism, unless it become all-comprehensive, so as to take in not simply physical nature, but the human life and will; and there are nu where to draw the lines of philosophical distinction, or by the natural force of _ination But so far forth as the tendency operates, it substitutes for the theistic reverence for a Holy _Will_ the pantheistic recognition of a Creative _Beauty_, and presents God to the mind less as the prototype of Conscience than as the apotheosis of Genius The spontaneity of poetic action is supposed to illustrate His procedure better than the preferential decisions of the ood and fair is referred not so much to deliberate plan as to the eternal interfusion and circulation, through the great whole, of a Divine Essence, which flings off the universe and its history as a ion of art, is proved by the literature of every creative period, Greek, Italian, or Teutonic; and negatively by the coes and nations that have most intensified at once the Unity and the Personality of God Beauty was the Bible of Athens; and Plato, its devoutest and most comprehensive expounder, shows everywhere, in his metaphysics, his morals, and his myths, the mould into which its faith inevitably falls

In _passionate and impulsive_ natures there is a self-contradiction which ious tendency peculiarly difficult to describe

They are not less conscious than others of moral distinctions, and own the sacred authority of the better invitation over the worse Indeed, when surprised into a fall, their remorse shares the vehemence of all their emotions, and from the black shadohich they sit, the sanctity of the lahich they have violated looks ineffably bright; and they speak of its holy requireislator, in such fervid tone, that whatever else they er, the perfection of God's character, you feel assured, and the obligations of human morality, are secure of reverential maintenance Yet the truth is precisely the reverse At the very moment that the law of duty is thus loftily extolled, it is on the point of total subversion; lifted to a height precarious and unreal, it overbalances on the other side and disappears For the very sa to feel the claiood, makes them weak to obey it Their personality wants solidity; and an atmosphere of tempestuous affections sweeps over it like a hurricane on water They can do nothing from out of their own resolves, and are for ever drawn or driven from the fortress they were not to surrender What remains for them, solicited thus by forces which are an over that they no sooner confess how they _ought_ to obey, than they declare that they _cannot_ obey? The thing is a contradiction; but it all the better for this expresses what _they_ are: with their centre of gravity in the wrong place, they cannot but hold the truth in unstable equilibrium Repose on contradiction is, however, impossible; and the necessary result of these co-existent feelings of obligation and incapacity is a _substitute_ for obedience The resort to _sacrifice_ which thus arose expressed no more, prior to the Christian era, than the sentiive”; and afforded but a fictitious relief to the laboring spirit It acknowledged and attested the incompetency of the will, but made no use of the excess of the emotions It was the Pauline doctrine of faith which first turned this great power to account; and virtually said, ”Are you in slavery because you cannot e your affections?

turn their trust and enthusiase_ you, and you shall be free” The soul that falls in love with iion of ineffectual strife, and spontaneously offers what could never be extorted fro resolve This is the truth which underlies the sacrificial doctrine in Christian tih inspirations_; and its very nature indicates its birth from impassioned temperaments, and its affinity with their special wants The vicarious sacrifice is a iance of heart; which minds of this class would hardly yield without an intense appeal to their _gratitude_; but which, if really awakened by a clear and tranquil ravitation of self