[Libro] Thomas de Quincey Theological Essays and other papers.pdf

7/27/2019 [Libro] Thomas de Quincey Theological Essays and other papers.pdf

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: irof/Wiiill'li


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DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS.


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THOMAS DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS.

CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, ANDSUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. With Portrait. Price 75 cents.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS. Price 75 cents.MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. Price 75 cents.THE CAESARS. Price 75 cents.LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 2 Vols. Price $L50.NARRATIVE AND MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 2 Vols.

Price $1.50.

ESSAYS ON THE POETS, &c. 1 Vol. IGino. 75 cents.HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS. 2 Vols. 16mo.

Price $1.50.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES. 1 Vol. 16mo. 75 cents.ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS, &c. 2 Vols.

16mo. Price $1.50.LETTERS TO A Y'OUNG MAN, &c. 1 vol. 16mo.

Price 75 cents.THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS. 2

Vols. 16mo. Price $1.50.


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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS

AND OTHER PAPERS.

BY

THOMAS DE QUINCEY,ADTHOa OP

' CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,' ETC. ETC.

IN TWO VOLUMES.VOL. I.

BOSTON:TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS.

MDCCCLIV.


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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1654, byTiCKNOR, RED, AND FlELDS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

boston:Thurston, Torry, & Emerson, Printers.


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CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICALMOVEMENT 1PROTESTANTISM 63ON THE SUPPOSED SCRIPTURAL EXPRESSIONFOR ETERNITY 12r

JUDAS ISCARIOT 147ON HUME'S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES . . 179CASUISTRY 203GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS 273


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ON CHRISTIAx^ITY,AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT.

[1846.]

Forces, which are illimitable in their compass ofeffect, are often, for the same reason, obscure and un-traceable in the steps of their movement. Growth, forinstance, animal or vegetable, what eye can arrest itseternal increments ? The hour-hand of a watch, whocan detect the separate fluxions of its advance ? Judg-ing by the past, and the change which is registeredbetween that and the present, we know that it must beawake ; judging by the immediate appearances, weshould say that it was always asleep. Gravitation,again, that works without holiday for ever, and searchesevery corner of the universe, what intellect can followit to its fountains ? And yet, shyer than gravitation,'less to be counted than the fluxions of sun-dials,stealthier than the growth of a forest, are the footstepsof Christianity amongst the political workings of man.Nothing, that the heart of man values, is so secret;nothing is so potent.

1


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2 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANIt is because Clu-istianity works so secretly, that it

works so potently; it is because Christianity burrowsand hides itself, that it towers above the clouds ; andhence partly it is that its working comes to be misap-prehended, or even lost out of sight. It is dark to eyestouched with the films of human frailty : but it is' dark with excessive bright.' ^ Hence it has happenedsometimes that minds of the highest order have enteredinto enmity with the Christian faith, have arraigned itas a curse to man, and have fought against it evenupon Christian impulses, (impulses of benignity thatcould not have had a birth except in Christianity.)All comes from the labyrinthine intricacy in which thesocial action of Christianity involves itself to the eyeof a contemporary. Simplicity the most absolute isreconcilable with intricacy the most elaborate. Theweather how simple would appear the laws of itsoscillations, if we stood at their centre and yet, be-cause we do not, to this hour the weather is a mystery.Human health how transparent is its economy underordinary circumstances abstinence and cleanliness,labor and rest, these simple laws, observed in justproportions, laws that may be engrossed upon a fingernail, are sufficient, on the whole, to maintain theequilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once thatequilibrium is disturbed, where is the science often-times deep enough to rectify the unfathomable watch-work .'' Even the simplicities of^ planetary motions donot escape distortion : nor is it easy to be convincedthat the distortion is in the eye which beholds, not inthe object beheld. Let a planet be wheeling withheavenly science, upon arches of divine geometry


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OF POLITICAL MOVEiMENT. S

suddenly, to us, it shall appear unaccountably retro-grade ; flying when none pursues; and unweaving itsown work. Let this planet in its utmost elongationstravel out of sight, and for us its course will becomeincoherent : bepause our sight is feeble, the beautifulcurve of the planet shall be dislocated into segments,by a parenthesis of darkness ; because our earth is inno true centre, the disorder of parallax shall troublethe laws of light; and, because we ourselves arewandering, the heavens shall seem fickle.

Exactly in the predicament of such a planet isChristianity : its motions are intermingled with othermotions; crossed and thwarted, eclipsed and disguised,by counter-motions in man himself, and by disturbancesthat man cannot overrule. Upon lines that are direct,upon curves that are circuitous, Christianity is ad-vancing for ever ; but from our imperfect vision, orfrom our imperfect opportunities for applying evensuch a vision, we cannot trace it continuously. Welose it, we regain it ; we see it doubtfully, we see itinterruptedly ; we see it in collision, we see it in com-bination ; in collision with darkness that confounds, incombination with cross lights that perplex. And thisin part is irremediable ; so that no finite intellect willever retrace the total curve upon v.hich Christianityhas moved, any more than eyes that are incarnate willever see God.

But part of this difficulty in unweaving the maze,has its source in a misconception of the originalmachinery by which Christianity moved, and of theinitial principle which constituted its differential power.In books, at least, I have observed one capital blunder


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4 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANupon the relations which Christianity bears to Pagan-ism : and out of tliat one mistake, grows a liability toothers, upon the possible relations of Christianity to thetotal drama of this world. I will endeavor to explainmy views. And the reader, who takes any interest inthe subject, will not need to fear that the explanationshould prove tedious ; for the mere want of space, w\\[put me under a coercion to move rapidly over theground; I cannot be ditTusc; and, as regards quality,he will find in this paper little of what is scattered overthe surface of books.

I begin with this question : What do people meanin a Christian land by the word ' religion 7 ' Mypurpose is not to propound any metaphysical pro-blem ; I wish only, in the plainest possible sense,to ask, and to have an answer, upon this one pointhow much is understood by that obscure term,- ' re-ligion,' when used by a Christian ? Only I am punc-tilious upon one demand, viz., that the answer shall becomprehensive. We are apt in such cases to answerelliptically, omitting, because silently presuming asunderstood between us, whatever seems obvious. Toprevent that, we will suppose the question to be pro-posed by an emissary from some remote planet,who, knowing as yet absolutely nothing of us and ourintellectual differences, must insist (as / insist) uponabsolute precision, so that nothing essential shall bewanting, and nothing shall be redundant.

What, then, is religion.^ Decomposed into its ele-ments, as they are found in Christianity, how manypoicers for acting on the heart of man, does, by possi-bility, this great agency include ? According to my


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 5own view, four.^ I will state them, and numberthem.

1st. A form of worship, a ciiltus.2dly. An idea of God ; and (pointing the analysis to

Christianity in particular) an idea not purified merelyfrom ancient pollutions, but recast and absolutely bornagain.

3dly. An idea of the relation which man occupiesto God : and of this idea also, when Christianity is thereligion concerned, it must be said, that it is so entirelyremodelled, as in no respect to resemble any elementin any other religion. Thus far we are reminded ofthe poet's expression, ' Pure religion breathing house-hold laws ;' that is, not teaching such laws, not formallyprescribing a new economy of life, so much as iu'spiring it indirectly through a new atmosphere sur-rounding all objects with new attributes. But there isalso in Christianity,

4thly. A doctrinal part, a part directly and explicitlyoccupied with teaching; and this divides into twogreat sections, a, A system of ethics so absolutely newas to be untranslatable * into either of the classicallanguages ; and, /3, A system of mysteries ; as, forinstance, the mystery of the Trinity, of the DivineIncarnation, of the Atonement, of the Resurrection,and others.

Here are great elements ; and now let me ask, howmany of these are found in the Heathen religion ofGreece and Rome } This is an important questionit being my object to show that no religion but theChristian, and precisely through some one or two of


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b ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANits differential elements, could have been un organ ofpolilical movement.

Most divines wlio anywhere glance at tliis ques^lion,are here found in, what seems to me, the deepest oferrors. Great theologians are they, and eminent phi-losophers, who have presumed that (as a matter ofcourse) all religions, however false, are introductory tosome scheme of morality, however imperfect. Theygrant you that the morality is oftentimes unsound;but still, they think that some morality there must havebeen, or else for what purpose was the religion ? ThisI pronounce error.

All the moral theories of antiquity were utterly dis-joined from religion. But this fallacy of a dogmaticor doctrinal part in Paganism is born out of Anachron-ism. It is the anachronism of unconsciously reflectingback upon the ancient religions of* darkness, and as ifessential to all religions, features that naver weresuspected as possible, until they had been revealed inChristianity.^ Religion, in the eye of a Pagan, had nomore relation to morals, than it had to ship-building ortrigonometry. But, then, why was religion honoredamonfjst Pagans ? How did it ever arise ? What wasits object.' Object it had no object; if by this youmean ulterior object. Pagan religion arose in nomotive, but in an impulse. Pagan religion aimed atno distant prize ahead : it fled from a danger iminedi-ately behind. The gods of the Pagans were wickednatures; but they were natures to be feared, and to bepropitiated ; for they were fierce, and they weremoody, and (as regarded man who had no wings) theywere powerful. Once accredited as facts, the Pagan


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. /gods could not be regarded as other than terrific factsand thus it was, that in terror, blind terror, as againstpower in the hands of divine wickedness, arose theancient religions of Paganism. Because the gods werewicked, man was religious; because Olympus wascruel, earth trembled ; because the divine beings werethe most lawless, of Thugs, the human being becamethe most abject of sycophants.Had the religions of Paganism arisen teleologicallythat is, with a view to certain purposes, to certain finalcauses ahead ; had they grown out of /oru?arc?-lookingviews, contemplating, for instance, the furthering ofcivilization, or contemplating some interests in a worldbeyond the present, there would probably have arisen,concurrently, a section in all such religions, dedicatedto positive instruction. There would have been adoctrinal part. There might have been interwovenwith the ritual or worship, a system of economics, or acode of civil prudence, or a code of health, or a theoryof morals, or even a secret revelation of mysteriousrelations between man and the Deity : all whichexisted in Judaism. But, as the case stood, this wasimpossible. The gods were mere odious facts, likescorpions or rattlesnakes, having no moral aspectswhatever ; public nuisances ; and bearing no relationto man but that of capricious tyrants. First arisingupon a basis of terror, these gods never subsequentlyenlarged that basis ; nor sought to enlarge it. Allantiquity contains no hint of a possibility that lovecould arise, as by any ray mingling with the senti-ments in a human creature towards a Divine one ;not even sycophants ever pretended to love thegods.


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8 OM CHKISTIANlTi' AS AN ORGANUnder this original peculiarity of Paganism, there

arose two consequences, which I will mark by theGreek letters and /3. The latter I will notice in itsorder, first calling the reader's attention to the conse-quencp marked a, which is this: In the full andprofoundest sense of the word believe, the paganscould not be said to believe in any gods : but, in theordinary sense, they did, and do, and must believe, inall gods. As this proposition will startle some readers,and is yet closely involved in the main truth which Iam now pressing, viz. the meaning and effect of asimple cuUus, as distinguished from a high doctrinalreligion, let us seek an illustration from our Indianempire. The Christian missionaries from home, whenfirst opening their views to Hindoos, describe them-selves as laboring to prove that Christianity is a truereligion, and as either asserting, or leaving it to beinferred, that, on that assumption, the Hindoo religionis a false one. But the poor Hindoo never dreamedof doubting that the Christian was a true religion ; norwill he at all infer, from your religion being true, thathis own must be false. Both are true, he thinks : allreligions are true ; all gods are true gods ; and all areequally true. Neither can he understand what youmean by a false religion, or how a religion could befalse ; and he is perfectly right. Wherever religionsconsist only of a worship, as the Hindoo religion does,there can be no competition amongst them as to truth.That would be an absurdity, not less nor other than itwould be for a Prussian to denounce the Austrianemperor, or an Austrian to denounce the Prussianking, as a false sovereign. False How false } In

Jl


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. what sense false ? Surely not as non-existing. Butat least, (the reader will reply,) if the religions con-tradict each other, one of them must be false. Yes;but that is impossible. Two religions cannot contradicteach other, where both contain only a cultus : theycould come into collision only by means of a doctrinal,or directly affirmative part, like those of Christianityand Mahometanism. But this part is what no idolatrousreligion ever had, or will have. The reader must notunderstand me to mean that, merely as a compromiseof courtesy, two professors of different idolatries wouldagree to recognise each other. Not at all. The truthof one does not imply the falsehood of the other.Both are true as facts : neither can be false, in anyhigher sense, because neither makes any pretence totruth doctrinal.

This distinction between a religion having merely aworship, and a religion having also a body of doctrinaltruth, is familiar to the Mahometans ; and they conveythe distinction by a very appropriate expression. Thosemajestic religions, (as they esteem thcin,) which riseabove the mere pomps and tympanies of ceremonialworship, they denominate ' I'eligions of the look.'There are, of such religions, three, viz., Judaism,Christianity, and Islamism. The 6rst builds upon theLaw and the Prophets ; or, perhaps, sufficiently upoathe Pentateuch ; the second upon the Gospel ; the lastupon the Koran. No other religion can be said to restupon a book; or to need a book; or even to admit ofa book. For we must not be duped by the case wherea lawgiver attempts to connect his own human instituteswith the venerable sanctions of a national religion, or


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10 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANthe case where a learned antiquary unfolds historicallythe record of a vast mythology. Heaps of such cases,(both law and mythological records,) survive in theSanscrit, and in other pagan languages. But these arebooks which build upon the religion, not books uponwhich the religion is built. If a religion consists onlyof a ceremonial worship, in that case there can be noopening for a book ; because the forms and detailspublish themselves daily, in the celebration of theworship, and are traditionally preserved, from age toage, without dependence on a book. But, if a religionhas a doctrine, this implies a revelation or messagefrom Heaven, which cannot, in any other way, securethe transmission of -this message to future generations,than by causing it to be registered in a book. Abook, therefore, will be convertible with a doctrinalreligion: no book, no doctrine; and, again, no doc-trine, no book.Upon these principles, we^ may understand that

second consequence (marked fi) which has perplexedmany men, viz., why it is that the Hindoos, in our owntimes; but, equally, why it is that the Greek andRoman idolaters of antiquity, never proselytized; no,nor could have viewed such an attempt as rational.Naturally, if a religion is doctrinal, any truth which itpossesses, as a secret deposit consigned to its keepingby a revelation, must be equally valid for one man asfor another, without regard to race or nation. For adoctrinal religion, therefore, to proselytize, is no morethan a duty of consistent humanity. You, the profes-sors of that religion, possess the medicinal fountains.You will not diminish your own share by imparting to


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OF POLITICAL MOVEBIENT. 11Others. What churlishness, if you should grudge toothers a health which does not interfere with your own Christians, therefore, Mahometans, and Jews originally,in proportion as they were sincere and conscientious,have always invited, or even forced, the unbelieving totheir own faith : nothing but accidents of situation,local or political, have disturbed this effort. But, onthe other hand, for a mere ' cult us' to attempt conver-sions, is nonsense. An ancient Roman could have hadno motive for bringing you over to the worship ofJupiter Capitolinus ; nor you any motive for going.* Surely, poor man,' he would have said, 'you havesome god of your own, who will be quite as good fort/our countrymen as Jupiter for mine. But, if youhave not, really I am sorry for your case ; and avery odd case it is : but I don't see how it could beimproved by talking nonsense. You cannot bene-ficially, you cannot rationally, worship a tutelaryRoman deity, unless in the character of a Roman ;and a Roman you may become, legally and politically.Being such, you will participate in all advantages, ifany there are, of our national religion ; and, withoutneeding a process of conversion, either in substance orin form. Ipso facto, and without any separate clioicoof your own, on becoming a Roman citizen, you be-come a party to the Roman worship.' For an idola-trous religion to proselytize, would, therefore, be notonly useless but unintelligible.Now, having explained that point, which is a great

step towards the final object of my paper, viz., theinvestigation of the reason why Christianity is, whichno pagan religion ever has been, an organ of political


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12 ON CHKISTIANITY AS AN OKGANmovement, I will go on to review rapidly those fourconstituents of a religion, as they are realized inChristianity, for the purpose of contrasting them withthe false shadows, or even blank negations, of theseconstituents in pagan idolatries.

First, then, as to the Cultus, or form of the nationalworship : In our Christian ritual I recognise theseseparate acts ; viz. A, an act of Praise ; B, an act ofThanksgiving ; C, an act of Confession ; D, an act ofPrayer. In A, we commemorate with adoration thegeneral perfections of the Deity. There, all of ushave an equal interest. In B, we commemorate withthankfulness those special qualities of the Deity, orthose special manifestations of them, by which we, theindividual worshippers, have recently benefited. In C,by upright confession, we deprecate. In D, we pray,or ask for the things which we need. Now, in thecultus of the ancient pagans, B and C (the second actand the third) were wanting altogether. No thanks-giving ever ascended, on his own account, from thelips of an individual ; and the state thanksgiving for atriumph of the national armies, was but a mode ofostentatiously publishing the news. As to C, it isscarcely necessary to say that this was wanting, whenI mention that penitential feelings were unknownamongst the ancients, and had no name , for pmii-tenlia^ means regret, not penitence; and me pcenitetImjiis facti, means, ' I rue this act in its consequences,'not ' I repent of this act for its moral nature.' A andD, the first act and the last, appear to be presentbut are so most imperfectly. When ' God is praisedaright,' praised by means of such deeds or such


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 13attributes as express a divine nature, we recognise onegreat function of a national worship, not otherwise.This, however, we must overlook and pardon, as beinga fault essential to the religion : the poor creatures didthe best they could to praise their god, lying under thecurse of gods so thoroughly depraved. But in D, thecase is different. Strictly speaking, the ancients neverprayed ; and it may be doubted whether D approachesso near to what ice mean by prayer, as even by amockery. You read of preces, of ?', &c. and youare desirous to believe that pagan supplications werenot always corrupt. It is too shocking to suppose, inthinking of nations idolatrous yet noble, that never anypure act of approach to the heavens took place on thepart of man ; that always the intercourse was corruptalways doubly corrupt; that eternally the god wasbought, and the votary was sold. Oh, weariness ofman's spirit before that unresting mercenariness inhigh places, which neither, when his race clamoredfor 'justice, nor when it languished for pity, wouldlisten without hire How gladly would man turnaway from his false rapacious divinities to the godlikehuman heart, that so often would yield pardon before itwas asked, and for the thousandth time that would givewithout a bribe In strict propriety, as my readerknows, the classical Latin word for a prayer is voluinit was a case of contract; of mercantile contract; ofthat contract which the Roman law expressed by theformula Do ul des. Vainly you came before thealtars with empty hands. ' But 7ny hands are pure.'Pure, indeed would reply the scoffuig god, let me seewhat they contain. It was exactly what you daily


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14 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN OKGANread in morning papers, viz.: that, in order toappear etTectually before that Olympus in London,which rains rarities upon us poor abject creatures inthe provinces, you must enclose 'an order on the Post-Office or a reference.' It is true that a man did notalways register his iwf.um, (the particular offeringwhich he vowed on the condition of receiving what heasked,) at the moment of asking. Ajax, for instance,prays for light in the ' Iliad,' and he does not then andthere give either an order or a reference. Bui you aremuch mistaken, if you fancy that even light was to behad gratis. It would be ' carried to account.' Ajaxwould be ' debited' with that ' advance.'

Yet, when it occurs to a man that, in this Do ut des,the general Do was either a temple or a sacrifice,naturally it occurs to ask what was a sacrifice ? I amafraid that the dark murderous nature of the pagangods is here made apparent. Modern readers, whohave had no particular reason for reflecting on thenature and management of a sacrifice, totally miscon-ceive it. They have a vague notion that the slaugh-tered animal was roasted, served up on the altars as abanquet to the gods ; that these gods by some repre-sentative ceremony ' made believe' to eat it; and thatfinally, (as dishes that had now become hallowed todivine use,) the several joints were disposed of in somemysterious manner : burned, suppose, or buried underthe altars, or committed to the secret keeping of rivers.Nothing of the sort: when a man made a sacrifice, themeaning was, that he gave a dinner. And not onlywas every sacrifice a dinner party, but every dinnerparty v/as a sacrifice. This was strictly so in the good


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 15old ferocious times of paganism, as may be seen inthe Iliad : it was not said, ' Agamemnon has a dinnerparty to-day,' but 'Agamemnon sacrifices to Apollo.'Even in Rome, to the last days of paganism, it isprobable that some slight memorial continued to con-nect the dinner party [ccewa] with a divine sacrificeand ihence partly arose the sanctity of the hospitableboard ; but to the east of the Mediterranean the fullritual of a sacrifice must have been preserved in allbanquets, long after it had faded to a form in the lesssuperstitious West. This we may learn from thatpoint of casuistry treated by St. Paul, whether aChristian might lawfully cat of things offered to idols.The question was most urgent ; because a Christiancould not accept an invitation to dine with a Grecianfellow-citizen who still adhered to paganism, loithouteating things offered to idols; the whole banquetwas dedicated to an idol. If he would not take that,he must continue impransus. Consequently, the ques-tion virtually amounted to this : Were the Christians toseparate themselves altogether from those whose in-terests were in so many ways entangled with theirown, on the single consideration that these personswere heathens ? To refuse their hospitalities^ teas toseparate, and with a hostile expression of feeling.That would be to throw hindrances in the way ofChristianity : the religion could not spread rapidlyunder such repulsive prejudices ; and dangers, that itbecame un-Christian to provoke, would thus multiplyagainst the infant faith. This being so, and as thegods were really the only parties invited who gotnothing at all of the banquet, it becomes a question of


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16 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANsome interest, what did they get ? They weremerely mocked, if they had no compensatory interestin the dinner For surely it was an inconceivablemode of honoring Jupiter, that you and I should eat apiece of roast beef, leaving to the god's share only themockery of a Barmecide invitation, assigning him achair which every body knew that he would never fill,and a plate which might as well have been filled withwarm water ? Jupiter got somethings be assured ; andwhat ivas it? This it was, the luxury of inhalingthe groans, the fleeting breath, the palpitations, theagonies, of the dying victim. This was the darkinterest which the wretches of Olympus had in humaninvitations to dinner: and it is too certain, upon com-paring facts and dates, that, when left to their ownchoice, the gods had a preference for vian as thevictim. All things concur to show, that precisely asyou ascend above civilization, which continually in-creased the limitations upon the gods of Olympus,precisely as you go back to that gloomy state in whichtheir true propensities had power to reveal themselves,was man the genuine victim for them, and the dyinganguish of man the best 'nidor' that ascended fromearthlji banquets to their nostrils. Their stern eyessmiled darkly upon the throbbings of tortured flesh, asin Moloch's ears dwelt like music the sound of infants'wailings.

Secondly, as to the birth of a new idea respectingthe nature of God : It may not have occurred toevery reader, but none will perhaps object to it, whenonce suggested to his consideration, that as is thegod of any nation, such will be that nation. God,


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' OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 17however falsely conceived of by man, even thoughsplintered into fragments by Polytheism, or disfiguredby the darkest mythologies, is still the greatest of allobjects offered to human contemplation. ]\Ian, whenthrown upon his own delusions, may have raised himself,or may have adopted from others, the very falsest ofideals, as the true image and reflection of what he callsgod. In his lowest condition of darkness, terror maybe the moulding principle for spiritual conceptionspower, the engrossing attribute which he ascribes tohis deity; and this power may be hideously capricious,or associated with vindictive cruelty. It may evenhappen, that his standard of what is highest in thedivinity should be capable of falling greatly belowwhat an enlightened mind would figure to itself aslowest in man. A more shocking monument, indeed,there cannot be than this, of the infinity by which manmay descend below his own capacities of grandeurthe gods, in some systems of religion, have been suchand so monstrous by excesses of wickedness, as toinsure, if annually one hour of periodical eclipseshould have left them at the mercy of man, a generalrush from their own worshippers for strangling themas mad dogs. Hypocrisy, the cringing of sycophants,and the credulities of fear, united to conceal thismisotheism ; but we may be sure that it was widelydiffused through the sincerities of the human heart.An intense desire for kicking Jupiter, or for hanginghim, if found convenient, must have lurked in thehonorable Roman heart, before the sincerity of humannature could have extorted upon the Roman stage apublic declaration, that their supreme gods were


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18 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANcapable of enormities which a poor, unpretendinghuman creature [homuncio] would have disdained.Many times the ideal of the divine nature, as adoptedby pagan races, fell under the contempt, not only ofmen superior to the national superstition, but of menpartaking in that superstition. Yet, with all thosedrawbacks, an ideal zoas an ideal. The being setupfor adoration as god, was such upon the whole to theworshipper ; since, if there had been any higher modeof excellence conceivable for him^ that higher modewould have virtually become his deity. It cannot bedoubted, therefore, that the nature of the nationaldivinities indicated the qualities which ranked highestin the national estimation ; and that being contemplatedcontinually in the spirit of veneration, these qualitiesmust have worked an extensive conformity to theirown standard. The mythology sanctioned by theritual of public worship, the features of moral nature inthe gods distributed through that mythology, and some-times commemorated by gleams in that ritual, dom-ineered over the popular heart, even in those casesW'here the religion had been a derivative religion, andnot originally moulded by impulses breathing from thenative disposition. So that, upon the whole, such aswere the gods of a nation, such was the nation : giventhe particular idolatry, it became possible to decipherthe character of the idolaters. Where Moloch wasworshipped, the people would naturally be found cruelwhei'e the Paphian Venus, it could not be expectedthat they should escape the taint of a voluptuouseffeminacy.

Against this principle, there could have been no


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 19room for demur, were it not through that inveterateprejudice besieging the modern mind, as though allreligion, however false, implied some scheme of moralsconnected with it. However imperfectly discharged,one function even of tlie pagan priest (it is supposed)must have been to guide, to counsel, to exhort, as ateacher of morals. And, had that been so, the practi-cal precepts, and the moral commentary coming aftereven the grossest forms of worship, or the most revolt-ing mythological legends, might have operated toneutralize their horrors, or even to allegorize theminto better meanings. Lord Bacon, as a trial of skill,has attempted something of that sort in his ' Wisdomof the Ancients.' But all this is modern refinement,either in the spirit of playful ingenuity or of ignorance.I have said sufficiently that there was no doctrinalpart in the religion of the pagans. There was acultus, or ceremonial worship : that constituted thesum total of religion, in the idea of a pagan. Therewas a necessity, for the sake of guarding its traditionalusages, and upholding and supporting its pomp, thatofficial persons should preside in this cultus : that con-stituted the duty of the priest. Beyond this ritual ofpublic worship, there was nothing at all ; nothing tobelieve, nothing to understand. A set of legendarytales undoubtedly there was, connected with the mytho-logic history of each separate deity. But in whatsense you understood these, or whether you were at allacquainted with them, was a matter of indifference tothe priests ; since many of these legends were variouslyrelated,^and some had apparently been propagated inridicule of the gods, rather than in their honor.


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20 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANWith Christianity a new scene was opened. In this

religion the cullus, or form of worship, was not eventhe primary business, far less was it the exclusivebusiness. The worship flowed as a direct consequencefrom the new idea exposed of the divine nature, andfrom the new idea of man's relations to this nature.Here were suddenly unmasked great doctrines, truthspositive and directly avowed : whereas, in Pagan formsof religion, any notices which then were, or seemed tobe, of circumstances surrounding the gods, relatedonly to matters of fact or accident, such as that aparticular god was the son or the nephew of someother god ; a truth, if it were a truth, wholly imper-tinent to any interest of man.As there are some important truths, dimly perceived

or not at all, lurking in the idea of God, an idea toovast to be navigable as yet by the human understanding,yet here and there to be coasted, I wish at this pointto direct the reader's attention upon a passage whichhe may happen to remember in Sir Isaac Newton : thepassage occurs at the end of the ' Optics ; ' and theexact expressions I do not remember ; but the sense iswhat I am going to state : Sir Isaac is speaking ofGod ; and he takes occasion to say, that God is notgood, but goodness; is not holy, but holiness; is notinfinite, but infinity. This, I apprehend, will havestruck many readers as merely a rhetorical bravura ;sublime, perhaps, and fitted to exalt the feeling of aweconnected with so unapproachable a mystery, but oth-erwise not throwing any new light upon the darkness ofthe idea as a problem before the intellect. Yet indi-rectly perhaps it does, when brought out into its latent


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 21sense by placing it in juxtaposition with paganism. Ifa philosophic theist, who is also a Christian, or who{not being a Christian,) has yet by his birth and breed-ing become saturated with Christian ideas and feelings,'''attempts to realize the idea of supreme Deity, he be-comes aware of a double and contradictory movementin his own mind whilst striving towards that result. Hedemands, in the first place, something in the highestdegree generic ; and yet again in the opposite direc-tion, something in the highest degree individual ; hedemands on the one path, a vast ideality, and yet onthe other, in union with a determinate personality. Hemust not surrender himself to the first impulse, else heis betrayed into a mere anima mundi ; he must notsurrender himself to the second, else he is betrayed intosomething merely human. This difficult antagonism,of what is most and what is least generic, must bemaintained, otherwise the idea, the possible idea, ofthat august unveilihg which takes place in the Judaico-Christian God, is absolutely in clouds. Now, thisantagonism utterly collapses in paganism. And toa philosophic apprehension, this peculiarity of theheathen gods is more shocking and fearful than whatat first sight had seemed most so. When a manpauses for the purpose of attentively reviewing thePantheon of Greece and Rome, what strikes him atthe first with most depth of impression and with mosthorror is, the wickedness of this Pantheon. And heobserves with surprise, that this wickedness, which isat a furnace-heat in the superior gods, becomes fainterand paler as you descend. Amongst the semi-dehies,such as the Oreads or Dryads, the Nereids or Naiads,


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22 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN OBGANhe feels not at all ofTended. Tbc odor of corruptiori,the sccva mcyliUis, has by this time exhaled. The up-roar of eternal outrage has ceased. And these gentledivinities, if too human and too beset with infirmities,are not impure, and not vexed with ugly appethcs, norinstinct of quarrel : they are tranquil as are the hillsand the forests ; passionless as are the seas and thefountains which they tenant. But, when he ascends tothe dii majorum gentium, to those twelve gods of thesupreme house, who may be called in respect of rank,the Paladins of the classical Pantheon, secret horrorcomes over him at the thought that demons, reflectingthe worst aspects of brutal races, ever could have leviedworship from his own. It is true they do so no longeras regards our planet. But what has been apparentlymay be. God made the Greeks and Romans of oneblood with himself; he cannot deny that intellectuallythe Greeks he cannot deny that morally the Romans were amongst the foremost of human races ; and hetrembles in thinking that abominations, whose smokeascended through so many ages to the supreme heavens,may, or might, so far as human resistance is concerned,again become the law for the noblest of his species. Adeep feeling, it is true, exists latently in human beingsof something perishable in evil. Whatsoever is foundedin wickedness, according to a deep misgiving dispersedamongst men, must be tainted with corruption. Theremight seem consolation ; but a man who reflects is notquite so sure of that. As a commonplace resoundingin schools, it may be justly current amongst us, thatwhat is evil by nature or by origin must be transient.But that may be because evil in all human things is


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT, 23partial, is heterogeneous ; evil mixed with good ; andthe two natures, by their mutual enmity, must enter intoa collision, which may possibly guarantee the finaldestruction of the whole compound. Such a resultmay not threaten a nature that is purely and totallyevil, that is homogeneously evil. Dark natures theremay be, whose essence is evil, that may have an abidingroot in the system of the universe not less awfully ex-empt from change than the mysterious foundations ofGod.

This is dreadful. Wickedness that is immeasurable,in connection with power that is superhuman, appalsthe imagination. Yet this is a combination that mighteasily have been conceived ; and a wicked god stillcommands a mode of reverence. But that feature ofthe pagan pantheon, which I am contrasting with this,viz., that no pagan deity is an abstraction but a vileconcrete, impresses myself with a subtler sense of hor-ror ; because it blends the hateful with a mode of theludicrous. For the sake of explaining myself to thenon-philosophic reader, I beg him to consider what isthe sort of feeling with which he regards an ancientriver-god, or the presiding nymph of a fountain. Theimpression which he receives is pretty much like thatfrom the monumental figure of some allegoric being,such as Faith or Hope, Fame or Truth. He hardlybelieves that the most superstitious Grecian seriouslybelieved in such a being as a distinct personality. Hefeels convinced that the sort of personal existence as-cribed to such an abstraction, as well as the humanshape, arc merely modes of representing and drawinginto unity a variety of phenomena and agencies that


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24 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANseem one., by means of their unintcrmitting continuity,and because they tend to one common purpose. Now,from sucli a symbolic god as this, let him pass to Jupi-ter or Mercury, and instantly he becomes aware of arevolting individuality. He sees before him the oppo-site pole of deity. The river-god had too little of aconcrete character. Jupiter has nothing else. In Ju-piter you read no incarnation of any abstract qualitywhatever : he represents nothing whatever in the meta-physics of the universe. Except for the accident of hispower, he is merely a man. He has a character, thatis, a tendency or determination to this quality or that,in excess ; whereas a nature truly divine must be inequilihrio as to all qualities, and comprehend them all,in the way that a genus comprehends the subordinatespecies. He has even a personal history : he haspassed through certain adventures, faced certain dan-gers, and survived hostilities that, at one time, weredoubtful in their issue. No trace, in short, appears, inany Grecian god, of the generic. Whereas we, in ourChristian ideas of God, unconsciously, and withoutthinking of Sir Isaac Newton, realize Sir Isaac'sconceptions. We think of him as having a sort ofallegoric generality, liberated from the bonds of theindividual ; and yet, also, as the most awful amongnatures, having a conscious personality. He is diffusedthrough all things, present eveiywhere, and yet notthe less present locally. He is at a distance unap-proachable by finite creatures ; and yet, without anycontradiction, (as the profound St. Paul observes,) ' notvery far ' from every one of us. And I will venture tosay, that many a poor old woman has, by virtue of her


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 25Christian inoculation, Sir Isaac's great idea lurking inher mind : as for instance, in relation to any of God'sattributes ; suppose holiness or happiness, she feels,(though analytically she could not explain,) that God isnot holy or is not happy by way of participation, afterthe manner of other beings : that is, he does not drawhappiness from a fountain separate and external tohimself, and common to other creatures, he drawingmore and they drawing less ; but that he himself is thefountain ; that no other being can have the least pro-portion of either one or the other but by drawing fromthat fountain ; that as to all other good gifts, that as tolife itself, they are, in man, not on any separate tenure,not primarily, but derivatively, and only in so far asGod enters into the nature of man ; that ' we live andmove ' only so far and so long as the incomprehensibleunion takes place between the human spirit and thefontal abyss of the divine. In short, here, and hereonly, is found the outermost expansion, the centrifugal,of the TO catholic, united with the innermost centripetalof the personal consciousness. Had, therefore, thepagan gods been less detestable, neither impure normalignant, they could not have won a salutary venera-tion being so merely concrete individuals.

Next, it must have degraded the gods, (and havemade them instruments of degradation for man,) thatthey were, one and all, incarnations ; not, as even theChristian God is, for a transitoiy moment and for aneternal purpose ; but essentially and by overruling ne-cessity. The Greeks could not conceive of spirituality.Neither can ice, metaphysically, assign the conditionsof the spiritual ; but, practically, we all feel and repre-


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26 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANsent to our own minds the agencies of God, as liberatedfrom bonds of space and time, of flesh and of resistance.This the Greeks could not feel, could not represent.And the only advantage which the gods 'enjoyed overthe worm and the grub was, that they, (or at least thePaladins amongst them the twelve supreme gods,)could pass, fluently, from one incarnation to another.

Thirdly. Out of that essential bondage to flesh arosea dreadful suspicion of something worse : in what rela-tion did the pagan gods stand to the abominable phe-nomenon of death ? It is not by uttering pompousflatteries of ever-living and aii^qoTug cut, &c., that a poetcould intercept the searching jealousies of human pene-tration. These are merely oriental forms of compli-ment. And here, by the way, as elsewhere, we findPlato vehemently confuted : for it was the undue exal-tation of the gods, and not their degradation, whichmust be ascribed to the frauds of poets. Tradition,and no poetic tradition, absolutely pointed to the graveof more gods than one. But waiving all that as liableto dispute, one thing we know, from the ancients them-selves, as open to no question, that all the gods werehor7i ; were born infants ; passed through the stages ofhelplessness and growth ; from all which the inferencewas but too fatally obvious. Besides, there were grand-fathers, and even great-grandfathers in the Pantheon ;some of these were confessedly superannuated ; nay,some had disappeared. Even men, who knew butlittle of Olympian records, knew this, at least, for cer-tain, that more than one dynasty of gods had passedover the golden stage of Olympus, had made their exit,and were hurrying onward to oblivion. It was matter


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 27of notoriety, also, that all these gods were and hadbeen liable to the taint of sorrow for the death of theirearthly children, (as the Homeric Jupiter for Sarpedon,Thetis for Achilles, Calliope, in Euripides, for herblooming Rhesus ;) all were liable to fear: all to phys-ical pain ; all to anxiety ; all to the indefinite menacesof a danger^ not measurable. Lookins; backwards orlooking forwards, the gods beheld enemies that attackedtheir existence, or modes of decay, (known and un-known.) which gnawed at their roots. All this I takethe trouble to insist upon : not as though it could beworth any man's trouble, at this day, to expose (on itsown account) the frailty of the Pantheon, but with aview to the closer estimate of the Divine idea amongstmen ; and by way of contrast to the power of that ideaunder Christianity : since I contend that, such as is theGod of every people, such, in the corresponding fea-tures of character, will be that people. If the god (likeMoloch) is fierce, the people will be cruel ; if (like 'Typhon) a destroying energy, the people will begloomy ; if (like the Paphian Venus) libidinous, thepeople will be voluptuously effeminate. When thegods are perishable, man cannot have the grandeurs ofhis nature developed : when the shadow of death sitsupon the highest of what man represents to himself ascelestial, essential blight will sit for ever upon humanaspirations. One thing only remains to be added onthis subject : Why were not the ancients more pro-foundly afflicted by the treacherous gleams of mortalityin their gods? How was it that they could forget, for amoment, a revelation so full of misery ? Since not onlythe character of man partly depended upon the quality


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28 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANof his god, but also and a fortiori^ his destiny upon thedestiny of his god. But the reason of his indifferenceto the divine mortality was because, at any rate, thepagan man's connection with the gods terminated at hisown death. Even selfish men would reconcile them-selves to an earthquake, which should swallow up allthe world ; and the most unreasonable man has pro-fessed his readiness, at all times, to die with a dyinguniverse mundo secum pereunte, mori.

But, thirdly, the gods being such, in what rela-tion to them did man stand ? It is a fact hidden fromthe mass of the ancients themselves, but sufficientlyattested, that there was an ancient and secret enmitybetween the whole family of the gods and the humanrace. This is confessed by Herodotus as a persuasionspread through some of the nations amongst which hetravelled : there was a sort of truce, indeed, betweenthe parties ; temples, whh their religious services, andtheir votive offerings, recorded this truce. But belowall these appearances lay deadly enmity, to be explainedonly by one who should know the mysterious historyof both parties from the eldest times. It is extraordi-nary, however, that Herodotus should rely, for thisaccount, upon the belief of distant nations, when thesame belief was so deeply recorded amongst his owncountrymen in the sublime story of Prometheus.Much 9 of the sufferings endured by Prometheus wason account of man, whom he had befriended ; and,hy befriending, had defeated the malignity of Jove.According to some, man was even created by Pro-metheus : but no accounts, until lying Platonic philos-

I


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 29ophers arose, in far later times, represented man ascreated by Jupiter.Now let us turn to Christianity ; pursuing it throughthe functions which it exercises in common with Pa-ganism, and also through those which it exercises sepa-rately and incommunicably.

I. As to the Idea of God, how great was thechasm dividing the Hebrew God from all gods of idol-atrous birth, and with what starry grandeur this revela-tion of Supreme deity must have wheeled upwards intothe field of human contemplation, when first surmount-ing the steams of earth-born heathenism, I need notimpress upon any Christian audience. To their know-ledge little could be added. Yet to knoio is not alwaysto feel : and without a correspondent depth of feeling,there is in moral cases no effectual knowledge. Notthe understanding is sufficient upon such ground, butthat which the Scriptures in their profound philosophyentitle the ' understanding heart.' And perhaps fewreaders will have adequately appreciated the prodi-gious change effected in the theatre of the human spirit,by the transition, sudden as the explosion of light, in theHebrew cosmogony, when, from the caprice of a fleshlygod, in one hour man mounted to a justice that knewno shadov/ of change ; from cruelty, mounted to a lovewhich was inexhaustible ; from gleams of essential evil,to a holiness that could not be fathomed ; from a powerand a knowledge, under limitations so merely and ob-viously i human, to the same agencies lying underneathcreation, as a root below a plant. Not less awful inpower was the transition from the limitations of .^paceand time to ubiquity and eternity, from the familiar to


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30 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANthe mysterious, from the incarnate to the spiritual.These enormous transitions were fitted to work changesof answering magnitude in the human spirit. Thereader can hardly make any mistake as to this. Hemust concede the changes. What he will be likely tomisconceive, unless he has reflected, is the immen-sity of these changes. And another mistake, which heis even more likely to make, is this : he will imaginethat a new idea, even though the idea of an object sovast as God, cannot become the ground of any revolu-tion more than intellectual cannot revolutionize themoral and active principles in man, consequently can-not lay the gi'ound of any political movement. Weshall see. But next, that is,

II. Secondly, as to the idea of man's relation to God,this, were it capable of disjunction, would be even moreof a revolutionary idea than the idea of God. But theone idea is enlinked with the other. In Paganism, asI have said, the higher you ascend towards the originalfountains of the religion, the more you leave behindthe frauds, forgeries, and treacheries of philosophy ; somuch the more clearly you descry the odious truththat man stood in the relation of a superior to his gods,as respected all moral qualities of any value, but in therelation of an inferior as respected physical power.This was a position of the two parties fatal, by itself, toall grandeur of moral aspirations. Whatever was goodor corrigibly bad, man saw associated with weakness ;and power was sealed and guaranteed to absolute wick-edness. The evil disposition in man to worship suc-cess, was strengthened by this mode of superiority inthe gods. Merit was disjoined from prosperity. Even


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OF rOLITICAL MOVEMENT. 31merit of a lower class, merit in things morally indiffer-ent, was not so decidedly on the side of the gods asto reconcile man to the reasonableness of their yoke.They were compelled to acquiesce in a governmentwhich they did not regard as just. The gods werestronger, but not much ; they had the unfair advantageof standing over the heads of men, and of wings forflight or for manoeuvring. Yet even so, it was clearlythe opinion of Homer's age, that, in a fair fight, thegods might have been found liable to defeat. Thegods again were generally beautiful : but not more sothan the elite of mankind ; else why did these gods,both male and female, continually persecute our racewith their odious love t which love, be it observed,uniformly brought ruin upon its objects. Intellectuallythe gods were undoubtedly below men. They pre-tended to no great works in philosophy, in legislation,or in the fine arts, except only that, as to one of thesearts, viz. poetry, a single god vaunted himself greatlyin simple ages. But he attempted neither a tragedynor an epic poem. Even in what he did attempt, it isworth while to follow his career. His literary fate waswhat might have been expected. After the Persianwar, the reputation of his verses rapidly decayed.Wits arose in Athens, who laughed so furiously at hisstyle and his metre, in the Delphic oracles, that atlength some echoes of their scoffing began to reachDelphi ; upon which the god and his inspired ministersbecame sulky, and finally took refuge in prose, as theonly shelter they could think of from the caustic venomof Athenian malice.These were the miserable relations of man to the


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32 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANPagan gods. Every thing, which it is worth doing atall, man could do better. Now it is some feature ofalleviation in a servile coiulition, if the lord appears bynatural endowments superior to his slave ; or at leastit embhters the degradation of slavery, if he does 7iot.Greatly, therefore, must human interests have suffered,had this jealous approximation of the two parties beenthe sole feature noticeable in the relations betweenthem. But there was a worse. There was an originalenmity between man and the Pantheon; not the sort ofenmity which we Christians ascribe to our God ; thatis but a figure of speech : and even there is a deriva-tive enmity ; an enmity founded on something in mansuhsequent to his creation, and having a I'ansom annexedto it. But the. enmity of the heathen gods was original that is, to the very nature of man, and as thoughman had in some stage of his career been their rivalwhich indeed he was, if we adopt Milton's hypothesisof the gods as ruined angels, and of man as created tosupply the vacancy thus arising in heaven.Now, from this dreadful scheme of relations, between

the human and divine, under Paganism, turn to the re-lations under Christianity. It is remarkable that evenhere, according to a doctrine current amongst many ofthe elder divines, man was naturally superior to therace of beings immediately ranking above him. JeremyTaylor notices the obscure tradition, that the angelicorder was, by original constitution, inferior to man ;but this original precedency had been reversed for thepresent, by the fact that man, in his higher nature, wasmorally ruined, whereas the angelic race had not for-feited the perfection of their nature, though otherwise


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 33an inferior nature. Waiving a question so inscrutableas this, we know, at least, that no allegiance or homageis required from man towards this doubtfully superiorrace. And when man first finds himself called upon topay tributes of this nature as to a being inimitably hissuperior, he is at the same moment taught by a revela-tion that this awful superior is the same who createdhim, and that in a sense more than figurative, he him-self is the child of God. There stand the two relations,'as declared in Paganism and in Christianity, bothprobably true. In the former, man is the essentialenemy of the gods, though sheltered by some conven-tional arrangement ; in the latter, he is the son of God.In his own image God made him : and the very centralprinciple of his religion is, that God for a great purposeassumed his own human nature ; a mode of incarnationwhich could not be conceivable, unless through somedivine principle common to the two natures, and form-ing the nexus between them.

With these materials it is, and others resemblingthese, that Christianity has carried forward the work ofhuman progression. The ethics of Christianity it was, new ethics and unintelligible, in a degree as yet butlittle understood, to the old pagan nations, which fur-nished the rudder, or guidance, for a human revolution ;but the mysteries of Christianity it was, new Eleu-sinian shows, presenting God under a new form andaspect, presenting man under a new relation to God,which furnished the oars and sails, the moving forces,for the advance of this revolution.

It was my intention to have shown how this greatidea of man's relation to God, connected with the pre-

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34 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANvious idea of God, had first caused the state of slaveryto be regarded as an evil. Next, I proposed to showhow charitable institutions, not one of which existed inpagan ages, hospitals, and asylums of all classes, hadarisen under the same idea brooding over man fromage to age. Thirdly, I should have attempted to show,that from the same mighty influence had grown up asocial influence of woman, which did not exist in paganages, and will hereafter be applied to greater purposes.But, for want of room, I confine myself to saying a fewwords on war, and the mode in which it will be extin-guished by Christianity.War. This is amongst the foremost of questions

that concern human progress, and it is one which, ofall great questions, (the question of slavery not ex-cepted, nor even the question of the fi\ave-trade,) hastravelled forward the most rapidly into public favor.Thirty years ago, there was hardly a breath stirringagainst war, as the sole natural resource of nationalanger or national competition. Hardly did a wish rise,at intervals, in that direction, or even a protesting sigh,over the calamities of war. And if here and there acontemplative author uttered such a sigh, it was in thespirit of mere hopeless sorrow, that mourned over anevil apparently as inalienable from man as hunger, asdeath, as the frailty of human expectations. Cowper,about sixty years ago, had said,

' War is a. game whicli, were their subjects wise,Kings would not play at.'

But Cowper would not have said this, had he notbeen nearly related to the Whig house of Panshanger.


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 35Every Whig thought it a duty occasionally to lookfiercely at kings, saying 'D , who's afraid?'pretty much as a regular John Bull, in the lowerclasses, expresses his independence by defying thepeerage, ' A lord do you say ? what care I for alord ? I value a lord no more than a button top ;whilst, in fact, he secretly reveres a lord as beingusually amongst the most ancient of landed proprietors,and, secondly, amongst the richest. The scourge ofkingship was what Cowper glanced at, rather than thescourge of war ; and in any case the condition whichhe annexed to his suggestion of relief, is too remote tofurnish much consolation for cynics like myself, or thereader. If war is to cease only when subjects becomewise, we need not contract the scale of our cannon-founderies until the millennium. Sixty years ago,therefore, the abolition of war looked as unprosperousa speculation as Dr. Darwin's scheme for improvingour British climate by hauling out all the icebergs fromthe polar basin in seasons when the wind sate fair forthe tropics ; by which means these wretched annoyersof our peace would soon find themselves in quarterstoo hot to hold them, and would disappear as rapidlyas sugar-candy in children's mouths. Others, however,inclined rather to the Ancient Mariner's scheme, byshooting an albatross :

' 'T-was right, said tliey, such birds to shoot,That bring the frost and snow.'

Scarcely more hopeless than these crusades againstfrost, were any of the serious plans which had thenbeen proposed for the extirpation of war. St. Pierre


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36 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANcontributed ' so7i petite possible' to this desirable end,in the shape of an essay towards the idea of a perpetualpeace ; Kant, the great professor of Kosnigsberg, sub-scribed to the same benevolent scheme his little essayunder the same title ; and others in England subscribeda guinea each to the fund for the suppression of war.These efforts, one and all, spent their fire as vainly asDarwin spent his wrath against the icebergs : the ice-bergs are as big and as cold as ever ; and war is still,like a basking snake, ready to rear his horrid crest onthe least rustling in the forests.

But in quarters more powerful than either purses ofgold or scholastic reveries, there has, since the days ofKant and Cowper, begun to gather a menacing thunder-cloud against war. The nations, or at least the greatleading nations, are beginning to set their faces againstit. War, it is felt, comes under the denunciation ofChristianity, by the havoc which it causes amongstthose who bear God's image ; of political economy, byits destruction of property and human labor ; of rationallogic, by the frequent absurdity of its pretexts. Thewrong, which is put forth as the ostensible ground ofthe particular war, is oftentimes not of a nature to beredressed by war, or is even forgotten in the course ofthe war ; and, secondly, the war prevents anothercourse which might have redressed the wrong : viz.,temperate negotiation, or neutral arbitration. Thesethings were always true, and, indeed, heretofore moreflagrantly true : but the difference, in favor of our owntimes, is, that they are now felt to be true. Formerly,the truths were seen, but not felt : they were inopera-tive truths, lifeless, and unvalued. Now, on the other


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT, 37hand, in England, America, France, societies are risingfor making war upon war ; and it is a striking proof ofthe progress made by such societies, that, some twoyears ago, a deputation from one of them being pre-sented to King Louis Philippe, received from himnot the sort of vague answer which might have been ex-pected, but a sincere one, expressed in very encourag-ing words. ^' Ominous to himself this might have beenthought by the superstitious, who should happen torecollect the sequel to a French king, of the very ear-liest movement in this direction : the great (but to thishour mysterious) design of Henry IV. in 1610, wassupposed by many to be a plan of this very nature, forenforcing a general and permanent peace on Christen-dom, by means of an armed intervention ; and nosooner had it partially transpired through traitorousevidence, or through angry suspicion, than his ownassassination followed.

Shall I offend the reader by doubting, after all,whether war is not an evil still destined to survivethrough several centuries ? Great progress has alreadybeen made. In the two leading nations of the earth,war can no longer be made with the levity which pro-voked Cowper's words two generations back. Franceis too ready to fight for mere bubbles of what she callsglory. But neither in France nor England could a warnow be undertaken without a warrant from the popularvoice. This is a great step in advance ; but the finalstep for its extinction will be taken by a new andChristian code of international law. This cannot beconsummated until Christian philosophy shall havetraversed the earth, and reorganized the structure ofsociety.


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38 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANBut, finally, and (as regards extent, though not -as

regards intensity of effect) far beyond all other politicalpowers of Christianity, is the power, the demiurgicpower of this religion over the kingdoms of humanopinion. Did it ever strike the reader, that the Greeksand Romans, although so frantically republican, and,in so7ne of their institutions, so democratic, yet, on theother hand, never developed the idea of representativegovernment, either as applied to legislation or to ad-ministration ? The elective principle was widely usedamongst them. Nay, the nicer casuistries of this prin-ciple had been latterly discussed. The separate advan-tages of open or of secret voting, had been the subjectof keen dispute in t)ie political circles of Rome ; andthe art was well understood of disturbing the naturalcourse of the public suffrage, by varying the modes ofcombining the voters under the different forms of theComitia. Public authority and jurisdiction were createdand modified by the elective principle ; but never wasthis principle applied to the creation or direction ofpublic opinion. The senate of Rome, for instance,like our own sovereign, represented the national ma-jesty, and, to a certain degree, continued to do so forcenturies after this majesty had received a more imme-diate representative in the person of the reigningCcEsar. The senate, like our own sovereign, repre-sented the grandeur of the nation, the hospitality of thenation to illustrious strangers, and the gratitude of thenation in the distribution of honors. For the senatecontinued to be the fountain of honors, even to Csesarhimself: the titles of Germanicus, Britannicus, Dalma-ticus, &c. (which may be viewed as peerages,) the


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 39privilege of precedency, the privilege of wearing alaurel diadem, &c. (which may be viewed as the Gar-ter, Bath, Thistle,) all were honors conferred by thesenate. But the senate, no more than our own sove-reign ever represented, by any one act or function, thepublic opinion. How was this ? Strange, indeed, thatso mighty a secret as that of delegating public opinionsto the custody of elect representatives, a secret whichhas changed the face of the world, should have beenmissed by nations applying so vast an energy to thewhole theory of public administration. But the truth,however paradoxical, is, that in Greece and Rome nobody of public opinions existed that could have fur-nished a standing ground for adverse parties, or thatconsequently could have required to be represented.In all the dissensions of Rome, from the secessions ofthe Plebs to the factions of the Gracchi, of Marius andSylla, of Cajsar and Pompey ; in all the caastg of theGrecian republics, the contest could no more be de-scribed as a contest of opinion, than could the feuds ofour buccaneers in the seventeenth century, when part-ing company, or fighting for opposite principles ofdividing the general booty. One faction has, anothersought to have, a preponderant share of power : butthese struggles never look the shape, even in pretence,of differences that moved tlirough the conflict of prin-ciples. The case was alwaj-s the simple one of powermatched against power, faction against faction, usageagainst innovation. It was not that the patricians de-luded themselves by any speculative views into therefusal of intermarriages with the plebeians : it was notas upon any opinion that they maintained the contest,


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40 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGAN(such as at this day divides ourselves from the Frenchupon the question of opinion with regard to the socialrank of literar}' men) but simply as upon a fact : theyappealed to evidences not to speculations ; to usage,not to argument. They were in possession, and foughtagainst change, not as inconsistent with a theory, butas hostility to an interest. In the contest of Ctesarwith the oligarchic knavery of Cicero, Cato, and Pom-pey, no possible exercise of representative functions(had the people possessed them) could have been ap-plied beneficially to the settlement of the question atissue. Law, and the abuses of law, good statutes andevil customs, had equally thrown the public power intoa settlement fatal to the public welfare. Not any decayof public virtue, but increase of poverty amongst theinferior citizens, had thrown the suffrages, and conse-quently the honors and powers of the state, into thehands of some forty or fifty houses, rich enough tobribe, and bribing systematically. Caesar, undertakingto correct a state of disease which would else haveconvulsed the republic every third year by civil war,knew that no arguments could be available against acompetition of mere interests. The remedy lay, notthrough opposition speeches in the senate, or from therostra, not through pamphlets or journals, butthrough a course of intense cudgelling. This he hap-pily accomplished ; and by that means restored Romefor centuries, not to the aspiring condition which sheonce held, but to an immunity from annual carnage,and in other respects to a condition of prosperitywhich, if less than during her piopular state, wasgreater than any else attainable after that popular state


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 41had become impossible, from changes in the composi-tion of society.Here, and in all other critical periods of ancient re-publics, we shall find that opinions did not exist as thegrounds offend, nor could by any dexterity have beenapplied to the settlement of feuds. Whereas, on theother hand, with ourselves for centuries, and latterlywith the French, no public contest has arisen, or doesnow exist, without fighting its way through every stageof advance by appeals to public opinion. If, for in-stance, an improved tone of public feeling calls for agradual mitigation of army punishments, the quarrelbecomes instantly an intellectual one : and much infor-mation is brought forward, which throws light uponhuman nature generally. But in Rome, such a discus-sion would have been stopped summarily, as interferingwith the discretional power of the Pra^torium. To takethe vitis, or cane, from the hands of the centurion, wasa perilous change ; but, perilous or not, must be com-mitted to the judgment of the particular imperator, orof his legatus. The executive business of the Romanexchequer, again, could not have been made the sub-ject of public discussion ; not only because no sufficientmaterial for judgment could, under the want of a publicpress, have been gathered, except from the parties in-terested in all its abuses, but also because these parties(a faction amongst the equestrian order) could haveeffectually overthrown any counter-faction formedamongst parties not personally ajfected by the question.The Roman institution of cUentda which iiad out-lived its early uses does any body imagine that thiswas open to investigation .'' The influence of murder-


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42 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANous riots would easily have been brought to bear uponit, but not the light of public opinion. Even if publicopinion could liave been evoked in those days, ortrained to combined action, insuperable difficultieswould have arisen in adjusting its force to the necessi-ties of the Roman provinces and allies. Any arrange-ment that was practicable, would have obtained aninfluence for these parties, either dangerous to thesupreme section of the empire, or else nugatory foreach of themselves. It is a separate consideration,that through total defect of cheap instruments forcommunication, whether personally or in the way ofthought, public opinion must always have moved in thedark : what I chiefly assert is, that the feuds bearing atall upon public interests, never did turn, or could haveturned, upon any collation of opinions. And two thingsmust strengthen the reader's conviction upon this point,viz. first, that no public meetings (such as with uscarry on the weight of public business throughout theempire) were ever called in Rome ; secondly, that inthe regular and ' official ' meetings of the people, nosocial interest was ever discussed, but only some polit-ical interest.Now, on the other hand, amongst ourselves, every

question, that is large enough to engage public interest,though it should begin as a mere comparison of strengthwith strength, almost immediately travels forward intoa comparison of right witli rights, or of duty with duty.A mere fiscal question of restraint upon importationfrom this or that particular quarter, passes into a ques-tion of colonial rights. Arrangements of conveniencefor the management of the pauper, or the debtor, or


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 43the criminal, or the war-captive, become the occasionsof profound investigations into the rights of personsoccupying those relations. Sanatory ordinances forthe protection of public health ; such as quarantine,fever hospitals, draining, vaccination, &c., connectthemselves, in the earliest stages of their discussion,with the general consideration of the duties which thestate owes to its subjects. If education is to be pro-moted by public counsels, every step of the inquiryapplies itself to the consideration of the knowledge tobe communicated, and of the limhs within which anysection of religious partisanship can be safely author-ized to interfere. If coercion, beyond the warrant ofthe ordinary law, is to be applied as a remedy for localoutrages, a tumult of opinions arises instantly, as to theoriginal causes of the evil, as to the sufficiency of thesubsisting laws to meet its pressure, and as to themodes of connecting enlarged powers in the magistratewith the minimum of offence to the general rights of thesubject.

Everywhere, in short, some question of duty andresponsibility arises to face us in any the smallest pub-lic interest that can become the subject of public opin-ion. Questions, in fact, that fall short of this dignity ;questions that concern public convenience only, and donot wear any moral aspect, such as the bullion question,never do become subjects of public opinion. It cannotbe said in which direction lies the bias of public opin-ion. In the very possibility of interesting the publicjudgment, is involved the certainty of wearing somerelation to moral principles. Hence the ardor of ourpublic disputes ; for no man views, without concern, a


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44 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGANgreat moral principle darkened by party motives, orplaced in risk by accident : hence the dignity and ben-efit of our public disputes ; hence, also, their ultimaterelation to the Christian faith. We do not, indeed, inthese days, as did our homely ancestors in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, cite texts of Scripture asthemes for senatorial commentary or exegesis ; but thevirtual reference to scriptural principles is now a thou-sand times more frequent. The great principles ofChristian morality are now so interwoven with ourhabits of thinking, that we appeal to them no longer asscriptural authorities, but as the natural suggestions ofa sound judgment. For instance, in the case of anywrong offered to the Hindoo races, now so entirely de-pendent upon our wisdom and justice, we British '2immediately, by our solemnity of investigation, testifyour sense of the deep responsibility to India with whichour Indian supremacy has invested us. We make nomention of the Christian oracles. Yet where, then,have we learned this doctrine of far-stretching respon-sibility ? In all pagan systems of morality, there is thevaguest and slightest appreciation of such relations asconnect us with our colonies. But, from the profoundphilosophy of Scripture, we have learned that no rela-'tions whatever, not even those of property, can connectus with even a brute animal, but that we contract con-current obligations of justice and mercy.

In this age, then, public interests move and prospertlirough conflicts of opinion. Secondly, as I have en-deavored to show, public opinion cannot settle, power-fully, upon any question that is not essentially a moralquestion. And, thirdly, in all moral questions, we, of


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OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 45Christian nations, are compelled, by habit and training,as well as other causes, to derive our first principles,consciously or not, from the Scriptures. It is, there-fore, through the doctrinalily of our religion that wederive arms for all moral questions ; and it is as moralquestions that any political disputes much affect us.The daily conduct, therefore, of all great political in-terests, throws us unconsciously upon the first principleswhich we all derive from Christianity. And, in thisrespect, we are more advantageously placed, by a verynoticeable distinction, than the professors of the twoother doctrinal religions. The Koran having piratedmany sentiments from the Jewish and the Christiansystems, could not but offer some rudiments of moraljudgment ; yet, because so much of these rudiments isstolen, the whole is incoherent, and does not form asystem of ethics. In Judaism, again, the special andinsulated situation of the Jews has unavoidably im-pressed an exclusive bias upon its principles. In bothcodes the rules are often of restricted and narrow ap-plication. But, in the Christian Scriptures, the rulesare so comprehensive and large as uniformly to furnishthe major proposition of a syllogism ; whilst the partic-ular act under discussion, wearing, perhaps, somemodern name, naturally is not directly mentioned : andto bring this, in the minor proposition, under the prin-ciple contained in tiic major, is a task left to the judg-ment of the inquirer in each particular case. Some-thing is here intrusted to individual understanding;whereas in the Koran, from the circumstantiality of therule, you are obliged mechanically to rest in the letterof the precept. The Christian Scriptures, therefore,


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46 ON CHRISTIANITY AS AN ORGAN, ETC.not only teach, but train the mind to habits of self-teaching in all moral questions, by enforcing more orless of activity in applying the rule ; that is, in sub-suming the given case proposed under the scripturalprinciple.Hence it is certain, and has been repeatedly illus-

trated, that whilst the Christian faith, in collision withothers, would inevitably rouse to the most active fer-mentation of minds, the Mahometan (as also doctrinalbut unsystematical) would have the same effect, inkind, but far feebler in degree ; and an idolatrousreligion would have no such effect at all. Agreeablyto this scale, some years ago, a sect of reforming orfanatical Mahometans, in Bengal, ^3 commenced a per-secution of the surrounding Hindoos. At length, a re-action took place on the part of the idolaters, but inwhat temper ? Bitter enough, and so far alarming asto call down a government interference with troopsand artillery, but yet with no signs of religious retalia-tion. That was a principle of movement which theHindoos could not understand : their retaliation wassimply to the personal violence they had suffered.Such is the inertia of a mere cultus. And, in the otherextreme, if we Christians, in our intercourse with bothHindoos and Mahometans, were not sternly reined upby the vigilance of the local governments, no long timewould pass before all India would be incurably con-vulsed by disorganizing feuds.


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NOTES.

Note 1. Page 2. Davk with excessive bright.' Paradise Lost. Book lU.

Note 2. Page 4.' That obscure term ; ' i. e. not obscure as regards the use

of the term, or its present value, but as regards its original gen-esis, or what in civil law is called the dedudio. Under whatangle, under what aspect, or relation, to the field which it con-cerns did the term religion originally come forward ? The gen-eral field, overlooked by religion, is the ground which lies betweenthe spirit of man and the supernatural world. At present, underthe humblest conception of religion, the human spirit is supposedto be interested in such a field by the conscience and the nobleraffections But I suspect that originally these great facultieswere absolutely excluded from the point of view. Probably therelation between spiritual terrors and man's power of propitia-tion, was tlie problem to which the word religion formed theanswer. Pieligion meant apparently, in the infancies of the va-rious idolatries, that latreia, or service of sycophantic fear, bywhich, as the most approved method of approach, man was ableto conciliate the favor, or to buy off the malice of supernaturalpowers. In all Pagan nations, it is probable that religion would,on the whole, be a degrading influence ; although I see, even foriuch nations, two cases, at the least, where the uses of a religionwould be indispensable; viz. for the sanction of oaths, and as a


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48 CHRISTIANITY.channel for gratitude not pointing to a human object. If so, theanswer is easy : religion was degrading : but heavier degradationswould have arisen from irreligion. The noblest of all idolatrouspeoples, viz. the Romans, have left deeply scored in their veryuse of their word religio, their testimony to the degradationwrought by any religion that Paganism could yield. Rarely in-deed is this word employed, by a Latin autlior, in speaking of anindividual, without more or less of sneer. Reading that word,in a Latin book, we all try it and ring it, as a petty shopkeeperrings a half-crown,, before we venture to receive it as offered ingood flith and loyalty. Even the Greeks are nearly in the sameun:uoui, when they wish to speak of religiosity in a spirit ofserious praise. Some circuitous form, commending the correct-ness of a man, .Tfoi ru 6^ia, in respect of divine things, becomesI'equisite; for all the direct terms, expressing the religious tem-per, are preoccupied by a taint of scorn. The word omoc, meanspious, not as regards the gods, but as regards the dead; andeven ir-af^t;?, though not used sneeringly, is a world short of ourword 'religious.' This condition of language we need not won-der at : the language of life must naturally receive, as in amirror, the realities of life. Difficult it is to maintain a justequipoise in any moral habits, but in none so much as in habitsof religious demeanor under a Pagan [that is, a degrading]religion. To be a coward, is base : to be a sycophant, is base :but to be a sycophant in the service of cowardice, is the perfectionof baseness : and yet this was the brief analysis of a desoteeamongst the ancient Romans. Now, considering that the wordreligion is originally Roman, [probably from the Etruscan,] itseenis probable that it presented the idea of religion under someone of its bad aspects. Coleridge must quite have forgotten thisPaganism of the word, when he suggested as a plausible idea,that originally it had presented religion under the aspect of acoercion or restraint. Morality having been viewed as the primerestraint or obligation I'esting upon man, then Coleridge thoughtthat religion might have been viewed as a religatio, a reiteratedrestraint, or secondary obligation. This is ingenious, but it willnot do. It is cracked in the ring. Perhaps as many as threeobjections might be mustered to such a derivation : but the last of


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NOTES. 49the three is conclusive. The ancients never did view moralityas a mode of obligation : I affirm this peremptorily; and with themore emphasis, because there are great consequences suspendedupon that question.

Note 3. Page 5.' Four : ' there are six, in one sense, of religion : viz. 5thly,

corresponding moral affections; Gthli/,o, suitable life. But thisapplies to religion as subjectively possessed by a man, not toreligion as objectively contemplated.

Note 4. Page 5.' Untranslatable.^ This is not generally perceived. On the

contrary, people are ready to say, ' Why, so far from it, thevery earliest language in which the Gospels appeared, exceptingonly St. Matthew's, was the Greek.' Yes, reader ; but whatGreek? Had not the Greeks been, for a long time, colonizingSyria under princes of Grecian blood, had not the Greek lan-guage (as a lingua Hellenistica) become steeped in Hebrewideas, no door of communication could have been opened be-tween the new world of Christian feelin

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