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By Miss
L. R. J.
“The ends and objects of religion are,” you say, “as
effectually reached by the efforts of reason as by
the power of faith.” But what is meant by “the ends
and objects of religion?” My own definition of these
words,—and it is one in which I think you would
agree with me,—is this: To teach us to serve God
truly and faithfully, in thought, word, and deed; in
love and gratefulness of spirit, for that in his
mercy He has surrounded us with blessings for which
we can make no other return; in awe and reverence,
for his power and wisdom fill the universe, which He
has created, and can with a breath destroy;—and not
merely in professions of love and reverence, but in
the earnest endeavour to guide our outward actions
so that they may be the expression of our inward
convictions; in obedience to the commands which he
has given for our guidance, and the silent monitor
which dwelled in our hearts, shaping our daily
duties in relation to our fellow-men and him who is
our common Father;—in word, which will include all
other words, religion teaches that “Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy might, and thy neighbour
as thyself.”
And for thyself religion provides rest for the
wearied spirit, tempest-tossed as thou mayest be,
shattered, almost wrecked, upon the hidden rocks,
and dangerous shores where the winds of fate have
cast thee; strength to the feeble spirit, striving
in vain to free its heavenly pinions from the dews
of earth, which, alas! have power to impede the
flight even of the most untiring; energy to the
indolent spirit, which lives, if life it may be
called, in Dead Sea waters, dark and pestilential,
where bright sunbeams come not, nor the glad
habitants of unpolluted waters, to sport in its
gloomy depths.
Can Reason do these things? Powerful, I know, is
that godlike quality which distinguishes man, the
favourite of creation; but great and dazzling as I
acknowledge its gifts to be, I must believe that it
is <<556>>only with the brilliant, the imposing, and
the material of our earthly existence that reason
has to do and that there is an inner temple, a holy
of holies, where are kept the most precious things,
at the portal of which Reason must step aside as a
thing unclean, must retreat from the sacred
entrance, and purify herself with fire, and cast
from her the garments of pride and self-sufficiency
wherewith she is enveloped, ere ever she dare, with
humble mien and eyes cast down, to brave the
presence of a Power before which her boasted works
are but as a wall of thistle-down to oppose a
hurricane.
Reason!—our friend, our companion, our willing and
faithful servant gratitude forbid that I should
slander thee. If I had no other cause, for this,
that I remember what thou art, and by whom given;
but I do mean to say, that in my opinion thou art
nothing more than a hewer of wood and a drawer of
water; not that I mean to upbraid thee with it,—no,
I maintain the dignity of labour, and think thine an
honourable vocation, only not the highest; and since
thy worshippers will not hear me, I appeal to
thyself. Now listen: Would it not be much better,
instead of striving to sit in high places and judge
the people, for which office thou art by nature
unfit, modestly and with humility to fill the post
for which thou art so well adapted? One born on the
top of a monument might possibly not be affected on
looking down, but he who has just ascended from the
nether world grows dizzy with the elevation; his
whirling brain no longer furnishes him its vigorous
arguments, its just conclusions. Of what use at that
moment are its varied arguments, its native talent?
Happy is he if a strong arm or more practised nerves
come between him and destruction. Once thou hast
tried the ascent, and thou still blushest to
remember how men, drunk with new-found
liberty,—Frenchmen, gay, kind, social beings they
are called, when sober, seeing that all things
around them were being remodelled , thought it best
to take upon themselves the formation of a new
worship; Religion they thought had gone—
emigrated,—for they had never known religion except
in her holiday dress; they thought that she dwelt
only in consecrated walls, her companions only
priests in surplices, her only food
<<557>>the
sacraments; and, when they made war on these, they
thought they had vanquished Religion, and called on
thee to ascend her vacant throne. Thou too wert
intoxicated with the noise—the tumult around thee,
and not knowing what thou didst, compliedst.
And then didst thou find it an easy task to sway
that human menagerie, broken loose from their
keepers, hungry and hideous, seeking whom they might
devour? Alas! it is to a dark page in history that
we must look for our answer; and when we read how
the streets of Paris ran with human blood, and see
how, from the first moderate and just demands of the
oppressed people, the avalanche of the popular
passions, in rolling on, gathered each day fresh
strength and fury, until it successively crushed
king, aristocrats, and moderate reformers; and when
we hear that the actors in these scenes announced
themselves as called to the work in the name of
Reason, we may well suspect this goddess of theirs
to be no true object of worship, firm and immutable,
but rather an automaton figure, working cleverly and
usefully in its appointed sphere, but itself
requiring a watchful eye for its guidance, lest the
machinery run down, or some wheel slipping from its
appointed place, impair the whole;—in short, it
needs the hand of the Maker.
You will tell me of the omnipotence of human
thought,—you will point to the splendid results of
human wisdom and ingenuity, and, reviewing the
progress of the arts and sciences, comparing our own
times with ages gone by, you will say, “Behold what
man has done for the world we live in!” See how on
barren rocks he has created a fruitful soil, which
bears for him rich food and costly apparel; for on
yonder plain the dark smoke of mills and factories
ascends, a monumental column, in his honour; there,
muscles and sinews of iron labour day and night to
weave his cloth and grind his corn; the spirit that
impels them, water from the river, hot and angry
from the contact of the flaming coal beneath; and
that, too, has been rifled from its dark bed far
beneath the surface, and compelled by prying man to
tell of its first burial and transformation. And
when his own wants are supplied, and he would
dispose of the surplus, he will engage, “for a
consideration,” the electric fluid to travel to his
shipping-port and back in a few minutes, and bring
him the prices <<558>>current; if these seem to him
good, he can call to the wooden wagons for which he
has prepared an iron road, and they take his burthens and fly with them toward the ocean,
traversing in their course tunnels bored through
solid rocks and under rivers, and over bridges of
fairy workmanship, spanning frightful chasms, but
safely bearing those who try their strength. Arrived
at the ocean, the winds of heaven, like attendant
spirits, spread the white sails and impel the good
ship on its path, or the white steam throbs, like
blood from the heart, through every vein, and the
time is numbered in days ere the shores of another
hemisphere greet the view.
“Oh, wonderful mind of man!” we may exclaim, as on
every side some fresh proof of its power demands our
attention, “can there be a limit to thy progress?"
By the strength of his own unaided intellect, man,
one of the weakest and most defenceless of created
animals, has not only subjected the mighty monarchs
of the plain and forest to his will, but the very
elements must bow before him, and call him master.
Old Earth must yield up for him her hidden stores of
gems and precious metals, must resolve herself into
her original elements, and submit to see her
children borne away, that in the tortures of the
laboratory and furnace may be extorted from them the
secrets of their birth and relationship. What avails
it that the glittering ore and the massive rock lie
far below the surface? Science bids them stand forth
that she may take the census, and each, as its name
is called, must tell of its age, its dwelling-place,
connexions and occupations. “What!” says the
self-complacent geologist; “tell me that the world
is not yet six thousand years old! Moses and the
book of Genesis may be quoted by the unenlightened,
but these fossils tell a different tale.”
The chemist has cunningly extracted from mineral and
plant each healing juice and powder, and thinks, as
he analyses the poisonous atmosphere of the
hospital, “With such wonderful progress as the
science of healing has lately made, it would seem
not impossible that, at some future day, it may be
brought to such perfection that man may cease to
die; for what may we not hope, with such powers as
magnetism, galvanism, electricity, in
<<559>>our hands? If
now, in the very dawn of our knowledge concerning
them, we have reason to conjecture their connexion
with the mysterious principle of life, why may it
not be that, since we have eaten of the tree of
knowledge, we may eat also of the tree of life, and
live for ever? If anatomy and chemistry, in their
researches, have noted the organization and
composition of the human body, so that the frame,
with all its apparatus of joints, sinews, and
muscles, is as plain to the one as any other piece
of mechanism might be; while the other has analyzed
the blood which gives life to the system, the air
that fills the lungs, and the brain from which
proceeds the will that moves the whole: why may not
man in time become himself a Creator,) and, from the
original clay, form a second Adam?”
Such, as I have faintly portrayed them, are some of
the gifts of Reason to man; such the wonderful
facility with which he can, by her aid, supply his
every earthly want, can expand and improve his
sphere of thought and action, until, to eyes which
know no other than earthly light, he seems, indeed,
a being, omnipotent and self-sufficing. So have
thought those material philosophers, who say, “Prove
to me that there is a God in heaven—a life after
death—that the book in which believers find guidance
and consolation is, indeed, the work of
inspiration.”
In
return to whom I would say, “Annihilate for me one
particle of the matter which has formed a portion of
the globe ever since its first formation; restore me
the blade of grass that you have stripped from its
stalk; tell me, why does food sustain animal life,
or water quench fire?” and if to do these things
exceeds your power, acknowledge that there are
things which must be believed without proof, and
that you, with all your boasted knowledge of the
laws of Nature, can only give the proximate causes
of the most every-day phenomena; and, on pursuing
your inquiries, find yourself constantly checked by
the discovery of something, which you must
acknowledge to be beyond your comprehension.
And so we find that the true philosopher, he who has
penetrated most deeply the mysteries of creation;
who has progressed beyond the point where the rules
of matter have sway, and finds that there is
everywhere a spirit which eludes
<<560>>his grasp,
as it has done that of all who have worked before
him,—is the first to acknowledge the inefficiency of
human reason, and to repose his trust in the
Omnipotent Spirit to whom all nature points him. It
is only to him who has trifled with science that it
brings disbelief; so that it seems to me, that human
minds, like the planets, move in circles; and, as he
who has been satiated with the most artistic music,
comes at length to relish the most simple melody; as
the votary of dissipation finds, at last, all but
the most natural enjoyments insipid: so the
philosopher, who has travelled over the whole course
of human knowledge, returns at last to the point
from which, as a child, he started, finding that
knowledge can give nothing of greater worth than the
simple trust of his infancy; feeling that the proper
attitude for finite man is one of humility, and that
only in unhesitating obedience to a Power, to which
he is, with or without his consent, compelled to bow
his will, can there be for him any true greatness;
and only when Science is content to ally itself to
Religion, and work in her cause, is it a desirable
object of pursuit; knowledge ill-applied is much
worse than useless.
Be
satisfied, then, to apply the powers of your mind to
the uses for which they were given, and believe that
the utmost you can do is to work with such materials
as the great Architect has provided for us, his
workmen in his temple. Of the circumstances by which
we are surrounded, we may erect for ourselves
dwellings to conduce to our comfort and earthly
happiness; but woe to the faithless servant, if he
appropriate to himself the things which he holds in
trust for the house of God. Human reason, how can it
be thought a sufficient guide, when we see the
errors into which the wisest are liable to fall?
when we think over all the evils that exist in the
world?—systems of worship, in which human lives are
sacrificed to false gods; where cruelty and revenge
are as strongly inculcated, as kindness and
forbearance in the Book which bears within itself
proofs of its divinity? We may believe that God, in
his mercy, will judge the heathen according to the
light that has been given them; but do not tell me
that reason is a sufficient guide in religious duty,
while there still ascends, in distant lauds, the cry
of the <<561>>Hindoo widow,—the groan of the crushed
victim beneath the car of Juggernaut,—the chant of
savages in their feasts, where their conquered
enemies form the banquet. Do not say that if there
had never been a revelation of God’s will to man,
society would have formed, for its own protection,
such laws as He has given us.
What was the virtue of the ancient Spartans?
Temperance in the mode of life, and courage in
battle: for the rest, if a child was weak or
unhealthy, it was to be killed, for its life could
be f no use to the public or itself. “The old men
attended the diversions of the youths and often
suggested some occasion of dispute or quarrel, so
that they might observe the spirit of each, and his
firmness in battle.” Even theft was practised, so
that they might learn to rob the enemy without
detection. Excellent training for a nation of
warriors; but, of the real duties of life, Lycurgus
had only the ideas of a heathen, and could teach his
countrymen no better.
What instances of mistaken political government do
we not see even in our own day, which yet seem, to
those who wield it, just and reasonable! The despot,
who has never heard questioned his right to dispose
of his subjects as seems best to him, would think
the motto “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”
utterly unreasonable. You could not persuade the
owner of slaves that he was doing wrong, in holding
in subjection the property which he inherited from
his father; nor could you convince the abolitionist
that he was unreasonable to expect him to do so. How
many social evils cry out in our midst, while each
and all have their supporters, who firmly and
conscientiously believe their cause to be the right!
What is the meaning of political parties, classes in
society, sects in religion, if our own reason is
sufficient to show us the right? Is it not rather
true, that Reason is always an uncertain, often an
erring guide? that even in things which we are best
able to comprehend, there is a difference in the
circumstances and disposition of every human being;
which leads him to see things from a different point
of view from his fellows? that though this immense
mass of opinions, serving to correct one another,
greatly advances the improvement of the common mind,
it also renders it impossible that opinion, upon
<<562>>any one subject of speculation or action,
should ever be fixed or permanent?
But who would be willing to rest his hope for future
happiness upon a power which he knows to be
fluctuating and inconstant? Who, among men, is not
liable to change his opinions? to see error in what
has once appeared to him the only right course? to
grieve over the mistakes of yesterday, and commit
fresh errors to-day, to be again repented of on the
morrow?
This, as far as it concerns our mere earthly
affairs, though seemingly an evil, is, it appears to
me, a wise provision, by which our interest in
things of this world is maintained; for if, on
coming into the world, we brought with us all our
ideas and habits ready formed, how insipid would the
monotony of life soon become! May we not believe
that, foreseeing this, the Creator, on that account,
gave to man that thirst after knowledge, that
propensity to seek the cause of the effects which he
sees around him, and to combine the materials which
nature furnishes into new forms, to add to his
comfort, and to charm him by their variety, which we
name intellect, education, invention? But that He,
in giving him an immortal soul, whose earthly life
is but as the beginning, and endowing him for its
preservation with the power to distinguish between
good and evil, did not think this instinct of
goodness sufficient safeguard,—that He foresaw how
temptation and false instruction would speak louder
than the voice of conscience, seems evident from the
fact of his giving, through inspired men, and once
in still nearer communication with his children,
laws for the direction of that faculty.
And thus, it seems to me, that there can be no
sufficient religion without firm belief in
revelation. It is not sufficient, that from a
contemplation of nature, you come to the conclusion
that there is a God. You might, in your reasoning,
have formed a different opinion. Minds, which in
their time were extolled as the greatest and wisest
of their age, and whose influence is still felt in
their writings, have been led by their philosophy to
ascribe this machine of a world to a lucky accident.
It is no fault of yours that you did not agree with
them; it is owing, partly to difference in your
position; chiefly, perhaps, to your
<<563>>natural
disposition. They were cold, hard, material
philosophers; you, perhaps, worshipping the
beautiful in nature, have mistaken poetry for
religion. It is not sufficient that you have found
the Omnipotent to be possessed of the attributes of
perfect justice and mercy. You, perhaps, have lived
a calm and happy life; have never seen the hand of
death bear from your side the loved one; or known
the blasting of your most cherished hopes; felt
poverty, sickness, and misery, with their
temptations to revolt, while summer friends deserted
you, and the proud, passing by, scoffed at your
despair. Others, who have known these things,
acknowledge the Deity but as a tyrant to be feared,
not as a parent to be served with the heart; and why
should we be surprised at this? Is not the earth
indeed filled with sorrows and oppressions? Is it
strange that he should think so, when we look abroad
and see how the good man often spends his days in
sorrow, and his nights in weeping; while the wicked
flourishes, to all appearance, honoured and happy?
(To be continued.) |
