. 
 
 
 UCSB LIBRARY
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM; 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE BEREAN INSTITUTE, 
 IN THE 
 
 BROADWAY TABERNACLE, 
 
 NEW-YORK, JAN. 20, 1843; 
 WITH 
 
 FOUR DISCOURSES, 
 
 Upon the same general topic, 
 DELIVERED IN NEW-YORK AND BROOKLYN. 
 
 BY REV. E. H. CHAPIN, 
 
 Charlestown, Mass. 
 
 NE W-YORK: 
 
 C. L. STICKNEY, 130 FULTON STREET. 
 
 1843.
 
 [Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by 
 
 C.L. STICKNEY, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
 of New-York.]
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE only reason that is offered for the publication 
 of this work, is, that it discusses questions of imme- 
 diate interest to our country and our age questions 
 which are connected with the great Principle of RE- 
 FORM. The Lecture, and the Discourses which fol- 
 low it, will be found to discuss this principle, more or 
 less. They were originally delivered without any 
 reference to each other, but in the order in which they 
 are arranged in this volume, will be found to present 
 something like a connected series. The Lecture dis- 
 cusses the main doctrine of Reform, as it is agitated 
 in our day. The first Discourse and those that suc- 
 ceed it, take a Christian view of Reform, which, as is 
 hinted in the Lecture, is directly based upon the 
 Gospel. The first Discourse presents the Moral and 
 Benevolent Associations of our day as the great point 
 of union for all the Christian forces. The second 
 exhibits and condemns that spirit of Intolerance which
 
 opposes this union. The third maintains that the 
 law of Christianity in each individual soul, is the 
 only guaranty of the success of these Associations, and 
 represents them as auxiliary to a higher end the cul- 
 ture of the individual man. The last* Discourse 
 endeavors to show the manner in which Christianity 
 proceeds to effect this great work. 
 
 Enough, if this Book may accomplish its share of 
 good, and aid, though very humbly, in the up-build- 
 ing of God's kingdom upon the earth and in the human 
 soul. To that end may His blessing rest upon it. 
 
 E.H.C. 
 
 CHARLESTOWN, Mass., Feb. 1843. 
 
 * It was the original design to publish only the Lecture, and the 
 four Discourses which immediately follow ; but in the progress of the 
 work, it was found there would be room, in the first allotted size of 
 the book, for another Discourse, so the fifth has been added, which 
 is designed to carry out the subject still farther, and show what is 
 the Great Law, that shall elevate and purify the soul of each man 
 and thus bring about the END of all true Reforms.
 
 THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 THE most potent word of the present day 
 the word that is most significant in its meaning, 
 and extensive in its influence is REFORM. 
 Often abused, often misapprehended, the deli- 
 rium of the monomaniac, the mock-word of the 
 ignorant and the heartless ; yet, in some sense, 
 every mouth utters it, and every soul is thrilled 
 by it. It is spoken fearfully by the timid 
 Conservative, who crouches in the shadows of 
 the Past, or arrogantly assumes that all goodness 
 is enshrined at the altar where he worships. It 
 blisters the lips of the narrow Fanatic who, 
 vaunting boisterously of freedom, is the slave of 
 a deformed idea. It is discussed by indolent, 
 good-natured men, who philosophize in easy 
 chairs, and, sitting at their tables of abundance, 
 fervently hope that no one starves. And it 
 gushes up from free, strong souls, whose feet 
 upon the mountains bring messages of joy, who 
 have wrought in the night-time with Faith and 
 Prayer, and who, looking forth upon earth's 
 wide millions, bid them take courage and rejoice 
 for yonder kindles the rising day. 
 1
 
 6 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 But now, let us consider seriously, what is the 
 Idea that lurks under this word Reform. Is it a 
 legitimate Idea an Idea founded in the nature 
 of things ? And, again, what is Reform ? Is it 
 a principle which as Philanthropists and Chris- 
 tians, we can adopt, and strive, and hope for ? 
 The discussion of these questions, will furnish 
 what we have to say at this time, upon THE 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 And the first thing that I shall advance, is 
 the fact that Reform, if not an innate, is at 
 least an indwelling principle in the soul of 
 every man. There lies there a presentiment, 
 often dim and unheeded, it may be, yet a 
 presentiment of something better, an idea of a 
 greater good to be obtained, which renders 
 him dissatisfied with his present state, and 
 urges him to seek another. I have used a 
 word here which I wish to convey a precise 
 meaning. Presentiment ; not a hope only, not 
 a mere wish, not a phantasy ; but a revelation 
 of what lies beyond us, given in glimpses suffi- 
 cient to show us that something is there. We 
 may not say that the soul first reaches out after 
 that this might be a self-created delusion ; but 
 that first reaches out to the soul, and so it is a 
 prophecy a shadow, it may be, yet a shadow of 
 things to come, a shadow that falls from actual
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 7 
 
 and external objects. And, I say, this seems to 
 be, universally, an indwelling principle in the 
 human soul. Your primitive man, who seeks 
 to clothe his nakedness, though it be in the un- 
 dressed skin of the wild beast that he has just 
 torn from his lair, or to build him a shelter, 
 though it is only a bark hut, he acts upon this 
 idea of Reform. It seems a wide interval be- 
 tween such a condition and our refinement and 
 civilization, yet every stage of that interval has 
 been passed through gradually. But why should 
 man take the first step, without this idea of 
 something better, this presentiment of a practical 
 good ? And when the first step was taken, why 
 would men take the second, and the third, and 
 so on, without a repetition of the idea? And 
 how would men keep progressing, if this idea 
 were not in constant action, ever urging them 
 forward ? If human progress is a truth, that 
 progress is according to a /ato, as much as the 
 march of the waters, or the evolution of geolo- 
 gical changes is according to a law. And this 
 law is found in the idea of improvement in other 
 words, in the principle of Reform. If as a race 
 of beings we are made to progress, how can we 
 do so unless we alter existing institutions, and 
 seize upon new and better ? If every custom, or 
 opinion, is suffered to remain precisely where it
 
 8 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 is now, we shall be stationary ; or, rather, we 
 shall retrograde, we shall grow woTse for the 
 spring of health is action, and our life becomes 
 tainted and stagnant if we do not move. 
 
 Moreover : this principle of Reform accounts 
 to me for many of the evils that lie around us. 
 The vegetable world is limited in its develope- 
 ment, and soon arrives at perfection. But in 
 the world of mind it is not so. No perfect unin- 
 spired man has yet appeared on the face of the 
 earth. No perfect state of society has yet ex- 
 isted, save in the dreams of Plato and Sir Thomas 
 More. And what we have received has been 
 all conflict, uncertainty, darkness mingled with 
 light, the evolution of a better state of things 
 only after a painful struggle and then, perhaps, 
 a retrograde movement, or a stationary period, 
 which has discouraged men who trusted in the 
 good and the true, and given occasion for others 
 to say " there is no such thing as human pro- 
 gress." But this has 'all been wisely ordered. 
 The tree has grown up at once to a perfect tree, 
 because beyond its own mere being there was 
 no ulterior object to secure. But for man there 
 is an ulterior object to secure, beyond his mere 
 existence. He is not only to be but to knoiv 
 not only to obey laws, but to become " a law 
 unto himself," and he can only do this by ea>
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 9 
 
 pericnce and by labor. So he must have some- 
 thing to undergo, he must have something to 
 overcome. If that which he needs comes di- 
 rectly to his hand, he makes no effort to get it, 
 and therefore no strength is developed in him. 
 If there is no obstacle to overcome, no danger to 
 brave, then there will be no self-confidence, 
 which depends upon our consciousness of pos- 
 sessing powers, with which we cannot become 
 acquainted until something occurs to call them 
 into exercise. So it is well that man is not 
 made perfect, but that he should grow to perfec- 
 tion. He finds the good, by passing through the 
 evil, and appreciates it. The weak sinews be- 
 come strong by their conflict with difficulties. 
 Hope is born in the long night of watching and 
 tears. Faith visits us in defeat and disappoint- 
 ment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty, 
 and the crumbling tombstones of mortality. 
 
 But you perceive that the key which explains 
 all these hieroglyphics of evil, is the principle of 
 Reform. If the world of mind, if man and so- 
 ciety, grew up in each age as they did in the 
 preceding ages, exhibiting the invariable same- 
 ness and the limited developement of the trees 
 of the forest, then our individual and social evils 
 would be inexplicable. We might well ask 
 " why was not the moral world created perfect
 
 10 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 after its kind, as the vegetable world is created 
 perfect after its kind ?" But now, the enigma 
 is solved. There is given to man a principle of 
 Reform. He is made to learn, to knoiv, and to 
 progress. He is not merely to be, like the 
 zoophyte and the oyster, of which we can say 
 that they have sense, and that is all ; but he is 
 to do, to create, to enjoy. Poor earth-worm as 
 he now seems, he is to become a UNIT in God's 
 world, as distinct and as complete as a star. 
 From this denied organism, writhing with pain, 
 marred by passion, heel-trampled and neck- 
 yoked, are to be developed by labor, by battle, 
 by prayer, an ever-growing Intelligence, and a 
 quenchless Love, that shall mean something and 
 possess something in the boundless universe of 
 the Deity, when the trees may no longer grow, 
 nor the rivers run, nor the stars shine, because 
 they shall have fulfilled their mission and passed 
 away. 
 
 This principle of Reform, then, is a legitimate 
 principle, because it is that which urges men to 
 contend with existing evils, which evils appear 
 to exist, as one great object at least, for the pur- 
 pose of creating energy and virtue for the pur- 
 pose of exciting ideas and establishing principles, 
 which, if not all immediately practical and useful, 
 are necessary to the developement of the perfect
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 11 
 
 man. Accordingly, we find whenever Reforms 
 are agitated, that great questions are always 
 raised, discussion is held upon the most vital 
 interests of humanity, the distinction between 
 right and wrong is clearly brought out, men 
 throw themselves back upon principles, they 
 abandon temporal institutions for eternal ideas, 
 they go behind the formal letter to the living 
 spirit. All of which is by no means unaccom- 
 panied with evil. We shall have vagaries 
 enough. Optimism and Ultraism ; theories spun 
 with hairs ; schemes of primeval innocence that 
 provide not even a fig-leaf; speculations that 
 look gorgeous and symmetrical, but that shall 
 vanish when we seek to touch them " wn-miracu- 
 lously enough," as Carlyle would say, because 
 they are made out of cloud-land, and glitter with 
 the prismatic colors of fancy. Yet all this goes 
 to establish what I have said ; that there is a 
 legitimate function for the principle of Reform, 
 which is the great idea that urges us to contend 
 with existing evils, and to seek a good that as 
 yet lies beyond us ; and these very evils exist 
 in order that the good may be suggested. And 
 when men are roused by them to action, they 
 will, naturally, discuss the right and the wrong 
 of things, and very naturally go too far, and 
 entertain crude notions ; and, by the law of re-
 
 12 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 action, pass from one extreme to the other. It 
 is a natural consequence that the opposition, the 
 ultraism, and the indifference, to which I alluded 
 in the commencement as being rife in our age, 
 should now prevail. Owing, as I think, to the 
 diffusion of knowledge, to a better perception of 
 Christianity, and to the quick communion of 
 thought that abounds, the present age is what it 
 is peculiarly an age of Reform. And as it is 
 now, it has always been in the world's history. 
 Wherever Reform has been agitated, there al- 
 ways have been those who have set themselves 
 against it as the fruitful germ of all evil those 
 who have perverted it, and carried it into the 
 worst excesses and those who have stood lazily 
 by, and wished it well, without moving one 
 pampered limb to aid the w r ork. But our's, I 
 say, is peculiarly an age of Reform an age of 
 far-reaching, intense effort. Never so has the 
 great cause of humanity been pleaded never so 
 have men looked below the formal, the time- 
 serving, the vestments of things, to central and 
 primary ideas. Never with such bold and con- 
 fident hands have men laid hold of existing in- 
 stitutions ; and though, with the true that will 
 stand amid all the shaking, I believe that much 
 that is false must yet stand for some time also, 
 still I think that glorious and beneficial results
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 13 
 
 will grow out of this mighty agitation. And lam 
 not afraid because of the evils that accompany 
 these things, for I know that they naturally ap- 
 pear ; they are the concomitants of every period 
 of Reform. I know that ultraism and passion, and 
 sensuality and selfishness, are mixed up in all 
 this commotion. I know it is likely if some 
 proposed Reforms were realized in their present 
 shape, we should have a Pandemonium, instead 
 of an Eden. I know that mere abstractionists, 
 as they sow in dreams, will reap shadows. I 
 know that it is idle to suppose that every man 
 who broaches something novel has therefore got 
 something good, or that every little clamorous 
 clique is formidable, and based upon some im- 
 portant idea. But I say, once more, these are 
 the attendants of every Reformation, and with 
 all their fermentation and all their shams, they 
 prove that a great reality is working at the bot- 
 tom ; they could not be, did not that reality 
 exist. Of all the great Reforms of our day, I 
 know hardly of one, that, freed from the imper- 
 fections of individual judgment, and reduced to 
 its fundamental idea, is not based on righteous- 
 ness and truth. 
 
 Thus we see the legitimacy of Reform. It is 
 not a sin, like anarchy it is not a delusion, like 
 fanaticism. It belongs to the nature of things.
 
 14 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 It is likely to urge its claims and to agitate 
 society, so long as evil and imperfection exist. 
 The only difficulty is to define Reform to as- 
 certain its true limits, its legitimate work. The 
 veriest Conservative in the world may say 
 " Well, I believe in Reform ;" but the movement 
 that is taking place never happens to be the Re- 
 form that he believes in. The wildest schemer 
 answers that he goes " for nothing but Reform ;" 
 although he brandishes his torch over a magazine 
 that at the first explosion will blow up him and 
 thousands more, and shatter, perhaps, the whole 
 framework of society. 
 
 We are led, then, at this point, to discuss our 
 second question What is Reform? I answer 
 to this, that Reform comprises both the ideas of 
 purification and of advancement. Purification 
 implies a restoration to a normal condition, or a 
 remodeling of what we already have but not 
 the addition of any thing new. In order to purify, 
 we may have to go back, instead of forward 
 back to a primitive state of things, and instead 
 of increasing our possessions may have to reduce 
 their number. But this alone does not include 
 the whole principle of Reform, since there must 
 be not only an abolition of what is wrong, but 
 advancement advancement in what is right, and 
 true, and good. We must ever acknowledge the
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 15 
 
 stern necessity of circumstances. These con- 
 stantly bind our attention to present wants and 
 future requirements, and are ever placing man 
 and society in new positions. We may avail 
 ourselves of experience, but we cannot go back 
 into the Past to act. This earth will carry us 
 and our's along with it, as it moves in its enor- 
 mous orbit. And we are carried forward as 
 much in time as in space. We leave the old 
 landmarks of history, and come into the new 
 fields of experiment into a sphere that calls for 
 new action. It may be true, then, that in some 
 instances we must go back, but we go back only 
 for principles; we must look around us, and look 
 forward, for the application of those principles. 
 We do well to strip off encumbrances, our cor- 
 ruptions and absurdities, and get back to the 
 naked truth, since that always remains the same 
 but, when we arrive at that truth, we shall 
 find that it needs to be applied to new circum- 
 stances. We may find the self-same truth our 
 fathers used a truth that we have forgotten, or 
 have never known ; but we cannot act upon 
 that truth just as our fathers did. The primitive 
 state of man may have been a state much more 
 innocent than that in which we are now living, 
 but if we reform our present condition, strip it 
 of its vices and perversions, we cannot live in
 
 16 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 all things just as the men in the primitive state 
 lived. Purification, then, inasmuch as it implies 
 only an abolition of existing evils, or a restora- 
 tion to primitive truths, does not comprehend 
 the whole principle of Reform. 
 
 Another idea, then, comes in here the idea 
 of advancement, growth, progress. We must 
 purify but we must also increase, we must abolish 
 but we must also build up, we must repent of 
 wrong but we must also grow in righteousness. 
 We know not all truth yet. Our fathers did not 
 know all truth. The top of their Babel was not 
 half so high as one of God's own mountains, and 
 we can scarcely see beyond Sirius, or, at best, 
 some dim nebula that hang upon the threshold 
 of the firmament. New manifestations burst 
 upon us almost every day. In the hallowed 
 light of memory lies the truth of the past, but 
 our eyes look into that gleaming vista that opens 
 through the horizon before us, and we hear the 
 voices of Prophecy saying " Forward ! For- 
 ward ! much is yet to be revealed." And if we 
 would have a true Reform, I say, we must seize 
 the new truths as they come and apply them, 
 as much as we would preserve the old truths 
 and apply them. Man and society need not 
 only to be purified, they need to progress ; and 
 that is the true Reform, which, purging them
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM, 17 
 
 from mighty and hoary evils, impels them for- 
 ward with glorious developements. 
 
 We see, then, that in every true Reform, there 
 is a conservative and a radical element a resto- 
 rative and a progressive principle. Of course, 
 then, the strict Conservative and the strict Radi- 
 cal are both wrong he who would cling to 
 everything, and he who would uproot every- 
 thing. 
 
 My objection to the strict CONSERVATIVE is, 
 not that he holds back in the tide of Reform, but 
 that he holds on to all things just as they are 
 and not merely to the good that is in all things. 
 He loves existing institutions because they hap- 
 pen to exist, and for no other reason. He loves 
 old customs because they are old, and he is very 
 comfortable under them. Too often when we 
 come to analyze his conservatism, the whole 
 reason of it is found in sheer, downright selfish- 
 ness. He hates to be disturbed. If the move- 
 ment prevails he must move too, and he dislikes 
 the exertion and the sacrifice. He has got a 
 snug corner of the world, and ample means to 
 live, and surely, he thinks, the world is well 
 enough as it is. It is natural that he should think 
 so. But the poor bondman, who labors in blood 
 and tears, thinks that the world is not well 
 enough as it is, and it is evident that there must 
 2
 
 18 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 be some other criteria than the convenience of 
 one man,. or of one class of men. 
 
 Or, if the Conservative is not selfish, he is an 
 alarmist, and as much deluded as the veriest 
 fanatic. He exercises no discrimination. Every 
 plan that is proposed to alter existing institutions, 
 to him looks heretical and dangerous, hecause 
 he will not set himself to work candidly to in- 
 vestigate the matter, but sees through his preju- 
 dices, and acts from his old habits of thinking. 
 At the mere mention of the word Reform, vague 
 ideas of unsettlement and confusion rush upon 
 him; he sees all things in chaos nothing but 
 licentiousness and destruction, blood and flame ; 
 and, honestly scared, no doubt, he vociferates 
 from the very depths of his lungs " Great is 
 Diana of the Ephesians !" This, you perceive, 
 is all clamor and assumption. There is no idea 
 either of purification, or of advancement. All 
 things must remain as they are, for they are as 
 good as they can be. And, moreover, there is 
 evidently but little knowledge of, and therefore 
 no confidence in, the Truth. The strict Conser- 
 vative says that Truth is in danger. It is the 
 idlest fear in the world. It plainly indicates no 
 intimacy with the Truth. He who has com- 
 muned with great principles, knows that they 
 are everlasting, and that nothing can shake them
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 19 
 
 from their orbits. He may deplore the licen- 
 tiousness that stalks abroad in the name of 
 Liberty. He may wonder at the delusion that 
 runs through the multitude like a contagious 
 disease. He may mourn over the licentiousness 
 and the sin that must take place ere the world 
 shall secure the right and the good at the bitter 
 draught that men must drink ere they find the 
 pearl of experience that lies at the bottom. But 
 he has no fear for the truth. They who are 
 alarmed, lest the world should be turned upside 
 down, have but little reverence, and little faith. 
 They fear man, more than they trust Omnipo- 
 tence. The world turned upside down ! Why, 
 the world is hung upon a balance. Man cannot 
 move it. With all his engines, with all his 
 subtle inventions, he cannot move it a hair's 
 breadth. And this, because it depends not upon 
 mechanical forces, not upon the law of gravity 
 but because God hung it there ! 
 
 My objection, then, to the strict Conservative 
 is, that he allows no movement, either forward 
 by way of advancement^ nor backward by way 
 of purification; but wants all things to remain 
 as they are, which nature will not permit, since 
 by her laws all things move in some way, either 
 in growth, or decline. And I object to the 
 Conservative, because with all his fears for
 
 20 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 Goodness and Truth, he evidently knows but 
 little of either, else he would exercise more dis- 
 crimination, and while clinging to the good would 
 let the bad go, and thus be a Reformer and, 
 also, he would be willing to trust truth in every 
 encounter, knowing it to be eternal and omni- 
 potent. I object to the Conservative, because 
 he has no faith in progress he too often acts 
 from a selfish motive he consults not his reason, 
 but his fears. 
 
 The Conservative sometimes employs ingeni- 
 ous arguments to defend his position. But I 
 deem them fallacious. He says, that he is will- 
 ing to grant that society is somewhat out of joint, 
 but, he asks " how do I know that you will 
 better these things ? Your experiments," he 
 says, " may be dangerous. It is a fearful thing 
 to tamper with the existing order. Your medi- 
 cine may prove but a quack nostrum, and that 
 which you give to cure may only aggravate the 
 disease." To this I answer, that we must act in 
 such cases as we do in other matters. Because 
 we sometimes fail, we do not therefore hesitate 
 to make other experiments. Everything good 
 and great is wrought in such trials it is a law 
 of our being. In this matter of Reform we must 
 trust reason and common sense. We must be- 
 lieve our eyes and hands and intellects. We
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 21 
 
 may be assured of the correctness of a principle, 
 of the truth and right of a plan, if we will. We 
 can tell whether the bridge that shall cross the 
 stream is safe or not. If it is made of straw it 
 evidently is not if made of wood, or stone, or 
 iron, it probably is. The old quibble raised by 
 Hume, as to how we know whether an article 
 presented to us is what it appears to be, is more 
 ingenious than sound ; if we halted upon it we 
 should soon stop the machinery of practical life. 
 Although we may be often cheated by the false 
 and the vile, we intuitively know the true and 
 the right for the true and the right will be re- 
 cognized and found to be the same the wide 
 world over. Experience furnishes us with many 
 criteria, and reason will supply many more. 
 We must not be rash ; we must not adopt every- 
 thing as it comes, but compare, reflect, examine 
 and fear not the result. And is it not better 
 even to move at a m/c, than not to move at all ? 
 This Conservative argument was as valid count- 
 less ages back, as it is now. And if men had 
 heeded it, the race would be now where it was 
 countless ages ago. But they did not heed it. 
 They took a step forward a step at a time, to 
 be sure but still a step forward, even though it 
 was in the untried path of experiment. I do 
 not like the legitimate bearings of this argument. 
 2*
 
 22 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 It will do as well for the Grand Turk as for the 
 professed Republican it will serve the* high 
 Tories of England, as well as any Conservative 
 in this country. Enough, that reason decides 
 after calm reflection. Enough, that all that in- 
 tuitively recognizes the Good and the True, ap- 
 peals in our bosoms. Enough, if we have these, 
 to venture forward, even hazarding by experi- 
 ment the issue which, at the worst, can produce 
 evils scarcely more aggravated than those which 
 already exist. 
 
 " But," says the Conservative, " I have no 
 faith in this doctrine of Human Progress. It is 
 a chimera ; to speak more coarsely but point- 
 edly, it is a humbug. The race, to be sure, 
 seems to advance at some points but at other 
 points it has retrograded ; and I do not know, 
 after the account is figured up, and the balance 
 struck, but that it is best to let all things remain 
 pretty much as they are." Now Jet us clearly 
 understand what is meant by Human Progress. 
 It must be distinctly separated from the doctrine 
 of Human Perfectibility- That men in this world 
 will ever be, in all respects, perfect, is one doc- 
 trine and that men will pass from lower degrees 
 of excellence up to higher, and maintain their 
 advantage, is another doctrine. This last is the 
 doctrine of Human Progress. That our age holds
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 23 
 
 an amount of refinement and civilization that 
 preceding ages did not have, seems evident. 
 We may not see minutely how this operation of 
 human progress goes on we may not be able to 
 trace the transfusion of the good and the true 
 through every particle and member. But we 
 see the grand result. " So the great ocean comes 
 on imperceptibly. Men build their huts at the 
 foot of some huge mountain, and till the green 
 fields that spread out before them thinking 
 nothing so permanent. But, by and by, other 
 men come thaffway, and the green fields are all 
 gone. The summer fruit has long since been 
 gathered. Where the husbandman found his 
 wealth, the fisher draws his support where the 
 sickles whispered to the bending corn, the ships 
 of war go sheeting by and the old mountain 
 has become a grey and wave-beaten crag, a 
 landmark to the distant mariner, and a turret 
 where the sea-bird screams. 
 
 But this was accomplished imperceptibly. One 
 generation may not have witnessed the advance- 
 ment of the waters another may have passed 
 away without noting it ; but slowly they kept 
 advancing. And by and by, all men saw it saw 
 the grand result, though they did not mark each 
 successive operation. So with human progress. 
 One age may scarcely perceive it, and another
 
 24 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 may die without faith in it; but we must take 
 some distant period that is not too closely blended 
 with our time, and compare that with the pre- 
 sent, and in the grand result we shall discover 
 that there has been human progress. 
 A Still, some may say, "Yes, there has been 
 progress, but not over the whole world there 
 have been salient points, but also retreating 
 angles, and when you speak of human progress 
 you must appeal to the world at large say, has 
 that advanced ?" I answer, that in the world, 
 somewhere, there has been a constant tendency 
 to advancement. Even the dark times have been 
 seasons of fruition the middle ages nourished 
 and prepared glorious elements of human refor-r 
 mation. If one nation has lost the thread of 
 advancement, another has taken it up and so 
 the work has gone forward ; if not in the race, 
 as a whole, at any one time, yet in the race some- 
 where. But the race is fundamentally the same, 
 and what may be predicated of a portion of man- 
 kind as belonging essentially to humanity, may 
 be predicated of the whole, and so "in the ad- 
 vancement of a portion of the race, the whole 
 becomes hopeful. The capacity of the race for 
 progress has been demonstrated. Is that capacity 
 never to be gratified ? Though the period never 
 has been that all the race were at the same time
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 25 
 
 on the same level who shall say that the time 
 never will come ? That it never can come ? 
 Who shall say, so long as the capacity exists, 
 how quick the transfusion of what is excellent 
 in one portion may be made through the whole ? 
 A victory over the formal Asiatic, grim and 
 bloody as it is, may be one agent of .such trans- 
 fusion. A triumph of machinery may help to 
 accomplish it. The steam-car may carry truth 
 and light over drifted deserts and frozen moun- 
 tains. The march of opinion, aided by circum- 
 stances, may penetrate to lands that never knew 
 the commerce of Phoenicia, or the wisdom of 
 Athens where Alexander never ventured with 
 his hosts, and where Caesar turned back his 
 eagles. This is the main point not universal 
 progress, but human progress- not progress every- 
 where^ but progress somewhere. Grant but that, 
 and all humanity becomes hopeful grant but 
 the capacity, and the doctrine is practicable let 
 the law be in operation only at one point, still it 
 is a laic, and as such is to be heeded and acted 
 upon. Old notions may die, but new notions 
 shall spring up. Let the principle be at work, 
 and no one can limit the result. It may take a 
 longer sweep of ages than have yet passed over 
 mankind, to bring all nations to the same point 
 of advancement ; some nations, now here and
 
 26 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 DOW there, may always be in advance of others, 
 yet if the others advance also, the great law will 
 be in operation. And no people shall have lived 
 or died in vain. Into the deepest sepulchres of 
 the Old and the Past a new life shall be kindled, 
 showing that they have not waited so long for 
 nothing. Dim Mero will shout freedom from 
 beyond the fountains of the Nile, and the stony 
 lips of the Sphynx shall preach the Gospel ! 
 
 At least, let me say to the Conservative, that 
 if there is progress where he stands, he is bound 
 to act upon that progress. His croaking is of no 
 worth at all his action may at least accomplish 
 some present good. Grant that, in the end, it 
 shall come to naught. Now it is progress, now 
 it is improvement. Let him strive to promote 
 that improvement. Enough, that the age in 
 which he lives, and the people with whom he 
 is associated, are asking for light. Let him 
 admit the light, and not speculate, as to whether 
 the light will go out ages after he is dead. Let 
 him not peer through all the corners of the earth, 
 and point to all the sleeping nations as an argu- 
 ment why his own should sleep also. 
 
 With this I dismiss the Conservative and his 
 arguments, and pass to consider the strict RADI- 
 CAL, who, I say, is also wrong. He who wages 
 war with all existing institutions, is as bad as
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 27 
 
 he who holds on to all existing institutions 
 perhaps worse. There is always some good to 
 be preserved. To think otherwise, is to calum- 
 niate the past, and deny the Agency of Provi- 
 dence. In order to reform, it is not necessary 
 nor practicable, to level all existing institutions 
 to the dust at one stroke, and drive the plough- 
 share over them. If they do not actually think 
 so, there are some men who speak as if they 
 owed nothing to the Past or the Present as if 
 these were naught but hindrances to human pro- 
 gress. But if I understand progress, it is the 
 gradual passage from one condition to another, 
 each link in the chain being necessary to the 
 consummation. If human nature grows, it must 
 have something to grow out of, and therefore it 
 is indebted to that something. Your Reform 
 will not create itself, nor will it be born mature, 
 nor can it be produced in the impalpable air. 
 You must use what exists in order to build up 
 what shall be. If you strike away every vestige 
 of the past and the present, upon what will you 
 stand for the future ? No no you cannot get 
 out of the world in order to move the world. 
 You must stand upon this old firm earth just as 
 it is, and try to make it better. The plant that 
 shall blossom unto an immortal flowering, must 
 assimilate to itself elements that have been win-
 
 28 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 nowed in the storms and changes of the Past. 
 The harvest of human effort, and hope, and 
 prayer, will spring up in the furrows of by-gone 
 revelations, out from the embers of sin, and the 
 ashes of martyrdom, and the soil of blood-soaked 
 battle-fields. 
 
 To the strict Radical I object, moreover, that 
 if he does not actually seek thus to destroy at 
 once all existing organizations, he often does 
 what amounts to the same thing. He attempts 
 to introduce principles and institutions that are 
 impracticable, because they are fitted for an en- 
 tirely different state of things, for an advanced 
 era of humanity, for a golden age, a time of per- 
 fection. But between our present state and such 
 an elevated condition, a wide space intervenes. 
 Every inch of ground, between this point and 
 that, is to be trodden gradually. His Reform is 
 impalpable, because it does not connect with what 
 has gone before we cannot reach it from where 
 we stand and if we would advance to it, we 
 have nothing to advance upon. It is premature, 
 and, not regarding the Past and the Present, is 
 the same as if it rejected them. I think that 
 many radicals are of this class. There are some, 
 I presume, who disgrace every attempted Re- 
 form who seek to overturn all things in order 
 that they may gratify their revenge and their
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 29 
 
 lusts. But these are vile men, who do not listen 
 to reason. But, I say, many are of the class to 
 which I just alluded. They are virtuous but 
 dreamy. They speculate too much. Their phi- 
 losophy may be very good, but they want com- 
 mon sense. Their logic is sound so long as we 
 confine it to abstract principles, but it cannot 
 stand the ordeal of stubborn facts. We may 
 hope for the future, but we must act in the pre- 
 sent. We cannot forestall nature, nor renovate 
 society by steam. 
 
 Again ; your Radical is frequently a mere 
 grumbler. His sole function, in that case, seems 
 to be, finding fault. He has a shrewd wit, per- 
 haps, and cultivates a sharp satire, which are often 
 effectual, and sometimes amusing. It makes us 
 laugh when he shakes some respectable old rot- 
 tenness, or when decently-clothed sin winces at 
 his punctures. But, after all, this is an unamiable 
 and unprofitable function. It is the easiest thing 
 in the world to find fault. It requires no great 
 power to pull down, or to pick in pieces. He 
 who takes away without giving something in- 
 stead, performs no grateful office. If you take 
 from a poor man his ragged cloak, and give him 
 no other clothing, he will hardly call you his 
 benefactor. Now the true Reformer not only 
 removes the bad he gives us something better. 
 3
 
 30 FHILOSOPHr OF REFORM. 
 
 He has not only " a torch for burning, but a 
 hammer for building." At least he will have 
 pity for the evils that he cannot help, and while 
 he bears them with meek humility, will ever 
 look forward with hope and faith. The fault- 
 finding Radical knows not the true spirit of Re- 
 form. This seeks to build up, to develope, 
 knowing that in this way evil is best destroyed. 
 It will not pluck the crutch from the cripple 
 but will seek to heal his lameness. It will not 
 undermine the faith of childhood's simple hymn, 
 but will anoint its lips, and teach its faltering 
 voice to flow in deep and sweet hosannas. 
 
 But, let me say further, the Radical often 
 manifests a bad spirit. He talks much of phi- 
 lanthropy with his lips, but his heart cherishes 
 bitterness. He speaks of reason and kindness, 
 but as often vociferates and declaims. He com- 
 plains of persecution, but is very intolerant. He 
 is boastfully confident of the strength of his 
 opinions, but frets and fumes if any one opposes 
 him. He professes to love the race, but de- 
 nounces the world, because it misunderstands or 
 will not believe him. He is as busy, and as 
 spiteful, as a wasp. This is not the spirit of 
 the true Reformer. He is calm and mild, mighty 
 against sin, hurling burning truths at every 
 wrong, but still preserving, amid it all, a loving
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 31 
 
 heart. He is fearless and unfaltering he presses 
 right on with his mission ; but he does not court 
 persecution, or pray for martyrdom. He is con- 
 tented to let Truth bide its time, and is careful 
 that he does not injure it by rashness and im- 
 propriety, as much as by sluggishness or denial. 
 He will not be angry if men do not believe him 
 at the first announcement. He is contented if 
 he may only preach the truth, for he knows that 
 once scattered abroad it can never die. It may 
 not blossom until long after he is dead but what 
 of that ? The summer rains and winter snows 
 shall work for it; and, long after his voice is 
 hushed, and his eye dark, his very dust shall 
 nourish it for it will blossom at last ! Such is 
 the true Reformer. You see that the rash and 
 angry Radical differs in much from him. 
 
 I find, then, in strict Radicalism, as many ob- 
 jections as I do in strict Conservatism. The one 
 holds on to all things, the other would destroy 
 all things the one will not move at all, the 
 other moves too fast the one is too complacent, 
 the other too dissatisfied the one denounces all 
 who go from him, the other is angry with all 
 who will not come to him. 
 
 But now between all this there is a middle 
 course, in which a true Radicalism and a true 
 Conservatism combine. There is such a thing
 
 32 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 as REFORM. We have seen that it is a legiti- 
 mate principle ever working in the souls of men. 
 The errors and woes with which we are sur- 
 rounded, are not meant to abide. This reign of 
 blood and violence, is it destined to last for ever ? 
 These shams that appear on dusty parchment, in 
 feudal distinctions, and legal wrongs, shall they 
 not one day dissolve and pass away ? Absolute 
 Conservatism is false to our better nature, to our 
 hopes and our capacities. But this true Reform 
 works by a law of nature, and, like all nature's 
 laws is not to be accelerated, or counterfeited. 
 Slowly must the work go on yet it will go on. 
 It is life, it is reality dreams and speculations 
 are not it. The GOOD, the Good alone, it labors 
 to secure the Good that is in the past, the 
 Good that is in the future. It labors to remove 
 evil by purification, and by advancement. It 
 holds on to the hallowed that has gone before 
 it reaches out to the true that is to come. The 
 spirit of true Reform, neither too fast, nor too 
 slow, both conservative and progressive, may be 
 described, with a slight alteration, in the words 
 of Goethe. 
 
 " Like as a star 
 That maketh not haste, 
 That taketh not rest, 
 Is it ever fulfilling 
 Its God-given best."
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 33 
 
 Thus, my friends, I have given you some 
 crude ideas upon the PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 I thought it would not be uninteresting, nor un- 
 profitable, to analyze somewhat, that about which 
 so much is said in our day concerning which so 
 many exaggerated hopes and groundless fears are 
 entertained. Let us not be anarchists let 
 us not be alarmists. Let us be REFORMERS 
 that is upbuilders ; neither absolute Conserva- 
 tives, nor absolute Radicals, but laborers for the 
 Good wherever we find it having faith in Re- 
 form. Let us not suppose that our age can do 
 everything, or that men are about to become 
 perfect. Neither let us fear that the world will 
 be turned upside down, nor deem that all things 
 are best as they are. Let us have our harness 
 on, ready when the trumpet sounds to do the 
 best we can for the Right, the Good, and the 
 True. 
 
 But having thus decided for the legitimacy of 
 Reform, I must not pause without asserting the 
 ground on which my faith in its success is founded. 
 The great Element of Reform is not born of hu- 
 man wisdom ; it does not draw its life from human 
 organizations. I find it only in CHRISTIANITY. 
 " Thy Kingdom come !" There is a sublime 
 and pregnant burden in this Prayer. It is the 
 aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the
 
 34 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 
 
 spirit of Reform. For what is the significance 
 of this Prayer ? It is a petition that all holy in- 
 fluences would penetrate and subdue and dwell 
 in the heart of man, until he shall think, and 
 speak, and do good from the very necessity of 
 his being. So would the institutions of error 
 and wrong crumble and pass away. So would 
 sin die out from the earth. And the human 
 soul, living in harmony with the Divine Will, 
 this earth would become like Heaven. This 
 Kingdom of God upon earth is no unsubstantial- 
 ity it covers no narrow field. It is the perfection 
 and the meaning of that which we see, however 
 dim and distant, in all true Reforms. When it 
 comes, the rage of war shall cease, the inequali- 
 ties of rank shall vanish, the chains of the slave 
 will be broken, and the feet of the oppressor will 
 rest on the neck of his fellow no longer. And 
 the din and the clamor that have rocked society 
 for ages, and the woes that have heaved its heart 
 so long, will be no more. These will all pass 
 away, and be still like the night and the storm, 
 when the summer-morning descends upon the 
 mountains, the vallies, and the sea. 
 
 It is too late for Reformers to sneer at Chr" 
 tianity it is foolishness for them to reject 
 In it are enshrined our faith in human progrt 
 our confidence in Reform. It is indissolub.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF REFORM. 35 
 
 connected with all that is hopeful, spiritual, ca- 
 pable in man. That men have misunderstood it 
 and perverted it, is true. But it is also true that 
 the noblest efforts for human melioration have 
 come out of it have been based upon it. Is it 
 not so ? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep 
 the sleep of the Just, who took your conduct 
 from the line of Christian Philosophy come 
 from your tombs, and answer!" Come Howard, 
 from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the 
 lazar-house, and show us what Philanthropy can 
 do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come 
 Eliott, from the thick forest where the red-man 
 listens to the Word of Life come Penn, from 
 thy sweet counsel and weaponless victory ; and 
 show us what Christian Zeal and Christian Love 
 can accomplish with the rudest barbarism and 
 the fiercest hearts. Come Raikes, from thy la- 
 bors with the ignorant and the poor, and show 
 us with what an eye this Faith regards the low- 
 est and least of our race, and how diligently it 
 labors, not for the body, not for the rank, but 
 for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of 
 immortality. And ye, who are a great number 
 ye nameless ones who have done good in 
 your narrower spheres, content to forego renown 
 on earth ; and, seeking your Reward in the Rec- 
 ord on High, come and tell us how kindly a spirit,
 
 36 PHILOSOPHY OP REFORM. 
 
 how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage, 
 the Religion ye professed can breathe into the 
 poor, the humble, and the weak. 
 
 Go forth, then, Spirit of Christianity, to thy 
 great work of REFORM ! The Pastbears witness 
 to thee in the blood of thy martyrs, and the ashes 
 of thy saints and heroes. The Present is hope- 
 ful because of thee. The Future shall acknow- 
 ledge thy omnipotence !
 
 DISCOURSES. 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 THE TRUE GROUND OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 
 Preached in the Bleecker street Church, New York, 
 Sabbath morning, January 15th, 1843. 
 
 Pure religion and undented before God and the Father, 
 is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, 
 and to keep himself unspotted from the world. 
 
 JAMES i. 27. 
 
 OUR time is distinguished for its moral and 
 Benevolent asssociations. Some of these are 
 distinct and sectarian. To them I have now no 
 reference. Others are Catholic and Philanthro- 
 pic in their character. These assume a peculiar 
 interest. In this interest consists not alone the fact 
 that they are developements of the present age. 
 Here we might ground some cheering hopes, and 
 indulge in many pleasing speculations. It is a great 
 truth that bursts upon us in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury, that the condition of humanity, taken in the 
 mass, is more hopeful than ever it was before. 
 The wave of human experience, that has rolled
 
 38 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 through so many night-like ages, bearing upon 
 its bosom blood and weapons and chains, is fast 
 gliding now in blessed light that bursts through 
 the rifts of the breaking clouds, and issues far 
 up in the serene heaven. 
 
 But, I say, these associations assume an inter- 
 est to us, not only from the indications which 
 they present of human developement and human 
 progress, but because below them seems to lie 
 this fact that, in these associations Christians 
 find a common ground^ and a common ground of 
 wide extent too, to meet upon. Is it not an inter- 
 esting question to ask What will be the effect 
 of the Philanthropic movements of our day, in 
 bringing together Christian hearts, and in secu- 
 ring Peace and Union to the Christian Church ? 
 
 Let us look a little at the interesting aspect 
 which these associations present. The funda- 
 mental principle upon which they rest is PRAC- 
 TICAL BENEVOLENCE. Now this is something 
 plain and tangible. The Presbyterian takes his 
 Bible, and cannot find therein the Doctrine of 
 Universal Salvation he thinks he discovers, 
 instead, the doctrine of Endless Misery, and 
 may verily believe he does God service, by 
 proclaiming his brother a grievous heretic, and 
 excluding him from the Communion Table. But 
 he goes out on Anniversary day, to the Prison
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 39 
 
 Discipline Society, or the Temperance associa- 
 tion, and lo ! there he meets the Universalist, 
 and sits side by side with him, and unites with 
 him in cordial, energetic action. The Unitarian 
 cannot find the mystery of the Trinity in the 
 Record, nor can the Methodist, or the Baptist, 
 discover any thing less than the Supreme God- 
 Head of Jesus ; but the Anniversary comes 
 round, and lo ! Unitarian and Methodist, and 
 Baptist and Quaker, they are all there, speaking, 
 voting, working, like men and like brothers. 
 Now here is something not altogether meaning- 
 less and uninteresting. It is plain that each of 
 these men being a Bible reader and a Bible dis- 
 ciple, each has found something there that brings 
 him to the Anniversary, and that bring them to- 
 gether. What is it? Why the Injunction of 
 PRACTICAL BENEVOLENCE the great Law of 
 Love to man breathing all through the Gospel, 
 seen in every lineament of Jesus, and discovered 
 in that Precept which says "Visit the father- 
 less and widows in their affliction." 
 
 Here, then, I say, is a common ground of 
 Christian Union, and a ground of no mean extent. 
 The field is as broad as the world the ties of 
 unity are as strong as the affections of the human 
 heart. We cannot all believe the same thing 
 we cannot all worship in the same form ; but
 
 40 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 we know what charity is, and what human 
 brotherhood is, and what, in its Essence, Chris- 
 tianity is and it is a great thing to hold so much 
 in common. 
 
 Now a union of Christians on a common ground 
 of Faith, never has taken place, and probably 
 never will take place. It has been tried. It 
 has made many hypocrites, and many formalists, 
 and induced much ignorance and superstition. 
 The Romish hierarchy tried this the union of 
 the Church on the ground of a common Faith. 
 The Reformation exploded that idea. It will 
 never be attempted again. Of course, I do not 
 mean here that there is no one article of belief 
 or that there are not articles in which all will 
 agree. From the necessity of things Christians 
 must believe in God and in Christ. But when 
 I allude to the ground of Faith, I refer to the 
 sectarian points. I do not think that men will 
 ever come together upon one Creed-platform, if 
 that platform contains exclusively the views of 
 any one sect, or the peculiar views of all the sects. 
 I do not think that all men will ever be, specula- 
 tively, Presbyterians, or Methodists, or Baptists, 
 or Unitarians, or Universalists. In heart, in action, 
 they may be all that is good in all these systems. 
 But they will never, probably, unite on one 
 ground of Faith. We shall never have a Catho-
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 4l 
 
 lie Church so far as belief is concerned a Church 
 whose creed shall be alike for the young and for 
 the old, for the untutored and for the enlightened 
 mind, for the mind of the nineteenth and the mind 
 of the twenty-ninth century. Is it not time that 
 we had given up this idea ? 
 
 But, you may say "if this is so, why preach 
 at all your peculiar views ?" For this reason, 
 to be sure that we believe those views to be 
 true, and hope to make them widely prevalent. 
 But this is a different thing from excluding all 
 from the Christian name who will not adopt our 
 views this is a different thing from making our 
 views essential, absolutely essential to the Chris- 
 tian character. Now this has been the fault of 
 the sects. They have made their peculiar views 
 of Christian doctrine essential to Christian cha- 
 racter have denied men the Christian name and 
 Christian communion, and called them heretics 
 and infidels, because they did not adopt their 
 views. And, I ask, is it not time that we gave 
 up this practice of un-christianizing all men who 
 cannot adopt our peculiar articles of Faith ? Is 
 it not time that we looked for some broader, 
 deeper principle of union than any one set of 
 tenets? The chain is too scanty, the links are 
 too few it cannot embrace all the tongues and 
 tribes and kindreds of true Christendom. The 
 4
 
 42 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 bond must spring from the heart, not from the 
 brain must be a bond of practice, not of secta- 
 rian Faith must live in the affections, not the 
 reason. 
 
 I am not too sanguine. I know how bitter 
 the opposition to all this is. I know what a 
 firm seat bigotry and ignorance yet have in the 
 human soul. It is enough to make one cry out, 
 not with indignation, but with pain, at the miser- 
 able narrowness of some of our Christians, It 
 was some time since, that I looked over a Reli- 
 gious paper, in which was given an account of 
 Revivals, and once or twice it was mentioned 
 that such a man was " a profane man, a Univer- 
 salist" " a drunken man, a Universalist ;" or 
 something equivalent. Thus Universalism was 
 classed with profaneness and drunkenness, as if 
 these are its necessary adjuncts. Now this is 
 very narrow. We will call it ignorance, but 
 surely we ought not to boast much of our " age 
 of light," if such ignorance is widely extended. 
 It ought to be known, if it is not known, that 
 there is no necessary connection between Uni- 
 versalism and drunkenness and profaneness. 
 Why, a man may believe God is his Father and 
 Benefactor that he is bound to Love Him by 
 the dearest and holiest ties ; I say, it is possible 
 that a man should believe thus, and yet not pro-
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 43 
 
 fane God's Name why should he ? A man 
 may believe that Intemperance mars and crushes 
 the physical, intellectual and moral man, bring- 
 ing ruin, sorrow and death, and yet, although 
 believing in the final salvation of all men, not be 
 a drunkard why should he ? What necessary 
 connection is there between the belief in the 
 final salvation of all men, and drunkenness ? 
 Oh ! it is petty, I had almost said it is vile this 
 low, narrow estimate of Religious opinions, and 
 Religious men. What if I should indite an arti- 
 cle, and say such a man is a deacon in the 
 Church, a sharper and a Baptist such a man is 
 a selfish, hard-dealing man and a Presbyterian 
 such a man is a licentious man and a Methodist; 
 classing these terms together as matters of course ? 
 The whole community would feel outraged, and 
 cry against it. But would it be any worse in 
 this case, than it is in the other ? Have there 
 been profane and drunken Universalists? Very 
 likely. So also have there been cheating Bap- 
 tists, and selfish Presbyterians, and licentious 
 Methodists. But what of that ? Am I prepared 
 to say that they were sharpers, or misers, or 
 rakes, just because they were Baptists, or Pres- 
 byterians, or Methodists ? No ! far be it from 
 me to detract from the good character that many, 
 who live in consistency with their views, bear.
 
 44 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 Now I know that there is a great deal of just 
 such narrowness as this which I have illustrated, 
 existing in the Christian Church. I know that 
 in some sections an almost impenetrable veil, 
 thicker than the wall between Jew and Gentile, 
 hangs dark and unpromising among the sects. 
 But, although things work gradually, there is 
 always reason to hope and to be strong, when a 
 good principle once gets foot-hold in the world. 
 A true principle never dies. A grain of seed, 
 sown in truth and holiness, will spring up to fru- 
 ition though it may be long, long ere it shall 
 flower in its beauty, or spread its green leaves to 
 the sun. Therefore, I have hope for Christian 
 union from the benevolent movements of the 
 day. They bring men of very discordant theo- 
 logies together, in very harmonious and very 
 extensive action. And though they may not, by 
 any means, develope all of Religion, they reveal, 
 in glimpses, much of what true Religion, true 
 Christianity, is. And so we find that in true 
 Practical Religion we can unite, though not in 
 speculative tenets, And this will help men to 
 know each other better to see more and more 
 of one another to find how much of good, deep, 
 Aearf-Religion there is in all, and to find that it 
 will make sweet music enough in Heaven, up 
 among the harps and the Angels, though the tide
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 45 
 
 of song to God and the Lamb comes mingling 
 from the lips of Presbyterian and Methodist and 
 Baptist and Universalist. And so, by and by, 
 there will be less misrepresentation, less abuse, 
 more respectful treatment towards one another; 
 and, gradually, men will find that in Practical 
 Religion in visiting the fatherless and widows 
 in their affliction, and in keeping themselves un- 
 spotted from the world there is a bond of union 
 deep as the soul, wide as the race, beautiful like 
 Heaven, holy like Christ. And one will say to 
 another " my brother, I have sinned against 
 thee. I thought in the little parchment creed 
 that my fathers gave me was the test of true 
 Religion and I called thee hard names. But 
 now, I have learned my error. I see that Chris- 
 tianity is not a dogma but a life. Come, and 
 here, where our Master's broken Body and his 
 shed Blood are manifested by not inappropriate 
 emblems of his rent and divided Church, here 
 we will commune together, as we hope to when 
 we see him Glorified, and behold in each other 
 the same lovely Image." 
 
 My friends, I said I am not sanguine, and 
 therefore I only speculate upon what will be a 
 very natural effect of the associated benevolent 
 action of the day. In these organizations, as I 
 
 have already remarked, we get glimpses of much 
 4*
 
 46 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 of what Christianity really is. Now men, in all 
 ages of the Church, have been prone to seal up 
 the Religion of the Gospel in articles and forms. 
 The controversy has all been about these. One 
 of the first discussions in the Christian Church 
 was about circumcision, about Jewish forms. 
 But Christ did not come to announce to men 
 that they must be circumcised, or abstain from 
 such and such meats. He came to shed abroad 
 in men's hearts the Kingdom of Heaven, which 
 *' is not meat or drink, but righteousness, and 
 joy, and peace in the Holy Ghost." Men have 
 sought to make Christianity depend upon the 
 belief that a wafer was actually Christ's Body 
 that the Pope was infallible. Men have sought 
 to make Christianity hinge upon the point that 
 Christ is very God and very man-* that Endless 
 Misery is the Revealed Will of God respecting 
 a portion of the human race that Baptism is es- 
 sential to Salvation. And so they have sat down 
 at separate tables, and have cast angry glances at 
 each other, and thundered long and loud from 
 the pulpits, and met each other coldly in the 
 streets, and filled newspapers and pamphlets, 
 yea, books and libraries, with controversial abuse. 
 But is all this Christianity ? No more than the 
 raiment is the body, or the meat the life. Chris- 
 tianity is a Life, and every devout and loving
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 47 
 
 heart has felt it, no matter what its name, or 
 sect. Men have not evinced their Christianity 
 when sitting in a certain Church, or worshipping 
 in a certain form, or holding to articles of Faith 
 with the head merely. The old heathens could 
 do all this; and what better, therefore, are we 
 than they ? What peculiarity was there in Chris- 
 tianity, if this was all that it came to teach ? 
 But when men have gone out and visited the 
 fatherless, when they have resisted the tempta- 
 tions and overcome the sins of the world, then 
 have they manifested Christianity then' have 
 they shown what it is. 
 
 This being so, it will be seen at a glance, that 
 all sects have, in fact, acknowledged fundamental 
 Christianity. There has never been a sect that 
 has denied the necessity and the beauty of a 
 life of holiness and goodness. There has never 
 been a sect that has not seen that Christ is the 
 Teacher of Holiness and Goodness. If, then, all 
 sects practice that Holiness and Goodness, will 
 they not meet on one common ground? And, I 
 ask, are not the movements of the present day 
 fast tending to develope this fact that all sects be- 
 lieve in what is truly vital and practical in Chris- 
 tianity? I think so. Here for the poor inebriate 
 here for the bond-slave here for the cruelly- 
 treated criminal here for the suffering poor ;
 
 48 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 we can act, and hope, and pray together. And 
 do not think that there is no Religion in this. It 
 has been the fallacy of men, that they have too 
 lightly prized this every-day, practical Good- 
 ness. But such was the way that Jesus lived 
 in every-day, practical Goodness. Men have 
 been prone to limit Religion to the Church, to 
 the Closet, to Reading, Meditation, and Retire- 
 ment and to think too little of taking hold of 
 the evils of humanity, of visiting the fatherless 
 and widows in their affliction of cherishing a 
 loving heart and manifesting a loving life. But 
 the age is correcting this error. The dark clouds 
 of strife and smoke are breaking away. Far 
 through the opening vista of rent devices and 
 broken symbols, like the heaving billows of a 
 mighty sea, the tide of Christian Philanthropy is 
 rolling on. Men of all sects are there. The 
 Catholic is there with his Crucifix pressed to his 
 bosom. The Methodist comes on, singing the 
 sweet hymns of Wesley. The Baptist brings 
 his robe of immersion. The Presbyterian stands 
 upright, as his iron fathers did of old, to pray in 
 simple reverence and freedom. The Universal- 
 ist chants his anthem of restoration and holiness. 
 But they stand shoulder to shoulder. They all 
 point upward, earnestly upward, to that great 
 Banner which waves over all whose device is
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 49 
 
 the Crucified Jesus whose inscription all over 
 in letters of blessed light is his last Command 
 " Love one another y" is the spirit of his pure 
 and undefiled Religion " Visit the fatherless and 
 widoivs in their affliction, keep yourselves unspot- 
 ted from the world.' J 
 
 Thus, I say, my friends, in the benevolent 
 associations of the day, we discover a glowing 
 hopefulness, and the kindlings of a grand and 
 cheering truth. We may see, that not only do 
 they promise well for man for the lowly, and 
 desolate, and down-trodden ; but they reveal the 
 true ground of Christian Union, which is not a 
 unity of Faith, but a unity of heart and life a 
 practical unity. And, viewed in this light, are 
 not the benevolent movements of the age indeed 
 encouraging ? Do they not call for the Blessings 
 and Prayers of all good men ? 
 
 With two or three remarks, I will close this 
 subject. And, 
 
 First ; I have not been recommending a mere 
 outward, dry-husk morality. " Pure Religion^ 
 the Text says " Pure Religion, and undefiled 
 before God and the Father is this ." I know 
 there is a form of morality, an outward, decent 
 aspect of living, while to all devout feeling, and 
 to all true, inward life, the heart is a stranger. 
 But I understand this to describe an ardent love
 
 50 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 to man a zealous philanthropic action for human 
 relief and human improvement. And not only 
 so. I understand it to demand a freedom from 
 sinful desires and sinful conduct a keeping un- 
 spotted from the evil of the world. The whole 
 requirement in the Text, then, is nothing less 
 than loving man with a heart sanctified by love 
 to God a soul growing and developing in right- 
 eousness. So it is no dead, worldly matter. It 
 is spirit, and it is life. I know there is no gloomy 
 mystery about it. It is a calm, consistent, bene- 
 volent living. It will make a man feel that to 
 be Religious, he must carry his Religion out 
 must apply it. These, it would seem, are too 
 often sowing their Religion only for another 
 world, feeling that in this they have nothing 
 particular to do. It is a mistake. We have 
 souls here as much as we shall have hereafter. 
 This is one sphere of the soul's action, the ves- 
 tibule, it is true, of grander and higher realities, 
 but still, I say, one sphere of the soul's action 
 this every-day world. Go out, then visit 
 the fatherless and widows in their affliction do 
 good, absolute, practical good, simple and ordi- 
 nary as the work may seem ; and keep yourselves 
 unspotted from the world. This is Practical 
 Christianity the Christianity which all sects 
 have acknowledged, and the ground whereon
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 51 
 
 they will finally meet, if they meet at all nay, 
 the ground, whereon, even now, in some degree, 
 they are coming together. 
 
 Again ; I have not spoken thus because I 
 value lightly doctrinal views, or would sacrifice, 
 or compromise mine. No, I value them too 
 highly. They make this great and shifting order 
 of things too harmonious and cheerful, for me 
 to give them up, and they seem too intimately 
 connected with the welfare of man for me to 
 keep them back. And, at the risk of being 
 called dogmatic, I must say that I think these 
 are the views that will tend to bring about the 
 wished for state of things, that are calculated to 
 make men value practical Christianity, and feel 
 the importance of true morality, and the signi- 
 ficance of human brotherhood. These principles 
 may not be acknowledged, they may not be un- 
 derstood, but, I think, like leaven they are to 
 some extent working in the hearts of all Chris- 
 tians. And under their influence Christian 
 sects may finally come together, not in specula- 
 tive Faiths, not by the sacrifice of opinion, but 
 in heart, in love, in action as all the disciples 
 of Christ should. Peter may think circumcision 
 necessary, and Paul count it of little worth ; and 
 yet both may be good disciples of Jesus, and 
 entitled to seats at the Table of the Common
 
 52 THE TRUE GROUND 
 
 Master. Can we believe that the Church is al- 
 ways to be rent asunder, and agitated by internal 
 conflicts ? After it has passed through this 
 phase for a time, may it not come out, beautiful 
 in the robe of Practical Religion, with the sym- 
 bol of primeval brotherhood upon its bosom, 
 with love in its eye, and peace on its brow ? 
 Oh ! here, after all, may be the ground whereon 
 God has ordained that Christian union shall take 
 place the ground of Practical Benevolence, 
 good-will to men. We can all unite here. Let 
 us hope and pray for this union. We may not 
 see it. We may be called heretics all our days, 
 and bear the brand of odium, and be denied the 
 Christian Name. But hope still for that consum- 
 mation. Hope still that the time shall come, 
 when Christianity shall take the place of Secta- 
 rianism, and the Gospel as it was ushered in by 
 Angels, shall be responded to, by the hearts of 
 its children " Glory to God in the Highest : 
 on earth, peace, good-will towards men !" 
 
 And, finally, let us consider, my friends, the 
 force which the text has upon us. It tells us 
 what Religion is. It is not a curious treatise, 
 this Text a fragment of abstract Philosophy, it 
 is of personal and vital interest. It tells us to 
 be pure and undefiled; it tells you and me to 
 visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction ;
 
 OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 53 
 
 it tells you and me to keep ourselves unspotted 
 from the world. Let us heed it. Let us act 
 upon it ; and so come into the company of all the 
 sainted and the just, who with conflicting views 
 of doctrine, have had but one great element of 
 Practice indwelling Religion.
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 Preached in the Orchard street Church, Neiv York, 
 Sabbath afternoon, January 15th, 1843. 
 
 Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. 
 
 LUKE ix. 55. 
 
 AMONG the many topics appropriate to our 
 times, I select for the present occasion, the sub- 
 ject of INTOLERANCE. It appears to me that this 
 sentiment is somewhat rife among us, and it 
 seems to be the sentiment rebuked in the Text 
 " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are 
 of." You recollect the circumstances. Jesus 
 was journeying towards Jerusalem. In the 
 course of his travel he came to a village of the 
 Samaritans. They did not receive him. They 
 were hostile towards the Jews, and the spirit of 
 Intolerance exhibited itself. For, why would 
 they not receive Christ ? For no other reason 
 than simply because his face was set to go to 
 Jerusalem, the city of those with whom they 
 were at strife. Here, I say, was the spirit of 
 Intolerance. But it did not end here. The
 
 INTOLERANCE. 55 
 
 disciples, James and John, caught the flame, 
 and they broke out " Lord, wilt thou that we 
 command fire to come down from heaven, and 
 consume them, as Elias did ?" But they ad- 
 dressed a Being now in whom such an earthly 
 and unholy passion could not dwell. " Ye know 
 not what manner of spirit ye are of," said he ; 
 " For the Son of Man is not come to destroy 
 men's lives, but to save them." And calmly he 
 went on to another village. 
 
 But this rebuke was not alone for that group 
 on the road to Jerusalem. Wherever man is 
 bitter and revengeful against his erring or dis- 
 senting brother, no matter how eminent his 
 standing, how ardent his professions, how com- 
 mendable his zeal, this suggestion comes to him 
 with all its force ; " Ye know not what manner 
 of spirit ye are of." It is, doubtless, a rebuke 
 that needs to be heeded in this age. We do not 
 hang Quakers, we do not exile Baptists, we rear 
 no Inquisition, we sharpen no martyr-stakes 
 but these are only forms. The spirit of Intole- 
 rance may live, though the power of advancing 
 Freedom and Christianity may deprive it of its 
 faggot and its axe. The wrong sentiment, the 
 deep, bad motive, these are what Christianity 
 aims at. Away down into the caverns of the 
 human heart, it looks with its piercing eye ; and
 
 56 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 if a chafed and hostile feeling is there, it is 
 enough for its rebuke and its discipline. The 
 red lightning did not come down from heaven, 
 according to the impulses of the Disciples, and 
 therefore no outward evil was accomplished. 
 But the bad spirit was alive the bitter, revenge- 
 ful motive ; and Christ saw it and reproved it. 
 Now, then, because I see different sects allowed 
 the rights of conscience, because Churches of 
 every name point their glittering spires to heaven, 
 because opinions are freely broached, and topics 
 openly discussed, and loud professions of philan- 
 thropy and busy movings of zeal are all around 
 me, I am not therefore convinced that there is no 
 Intolerance. I say, the form of Intolerance may 
 be different it may not be the Papal Interdict, 
 the thumb-screw, or the rack, but it may lie in 
 Jesuitical arts, in whispered calumnies, in slan- 
 derous words, in angry, violent philippics. In 
 short, as it has come to be the peculiarity of the 
 age not to war with weapons of steel, nor to at- 
 tack with physical force, so much as to speak 
 through arguments, pamphlets, books and moral 
 influences ; so as the sword and the torch were 
 used by Intolerance in that past age, when the 
 sword and the torch were fashionable this age 
 may see intolerance clothed in the meek gar- 
 ments of modern Christian professors, peeping
 
 INTOLERANCE. 57 
 
 out from " highly respectable and virtuous" cir- 
 cles, and speaking in the anger of the impatient 
 conservative, or the zeal of the enthusiastic re- 
 former. Let me, then, speak of Intolerance as 
 something still existing, and therefore as some- 
 thing of which it is still appropriate to speak. 
 
 I. Of Religious Intolerance. If this spirit of 
 intolerance is unamiable any where, especially is 
 it when found in connection with the Name of 
 Christ. And yet I know of no sphere where it 
 seems rooted so deep, or where it kindles so 
 high, as upon the subject of Religion. This 
 excommunication for a difference of opinion, this 
 perfect hatred that seems, at least, to exist not 
 only towards opinions but wiew, this dividing of 
 the Church of Jesus into hostile sects is it like 
 a manifestation of that Teacher, who came to 
 gather men to a knowledge of one Father to 
 the fold of one Shepherd ? And yet, where will 
 you find more bitter warfare than that which is 
 waged for Religious Doctrines ? Where see 
 more ridicule and aspersion than in the columns 
 of the Religious newspaper? Where find more 
 coldness or alienation than among Chiistians of 
 different views ? Now there must be some cause 
 for this Intolerance. And it appears to me that 
 it may arise in part, at least, from a misconcep- 
 tion, and this misconception seems founded on 
 5*
 
 58 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 the idea that a particular Belief is essential to 
 Christian Character. Now I wish to be under- 
 stood upon this point. All must agree that Faith 
 in Christ is absolutely necessary to entitle a man 
 to the name of Christian. But within this avowal 
 of Christian Faith how wide may be the diver- 
 sity of knowledge, of reasoning power, of dispo- 
 sition ! These may all lead to different views 
 of the Savior's Doctrines, and to different per- 
 ceptions as to what are and what are not his 
 Teachings. And yet I affirm that no one can 
 truly see Christ, and drink in the Influence of 
 his Character, and not be a Christian at heart. 
 And there is no one sect in the ample field of 
 Christendom, that has not Christian Truth enough 
 to kindle Christian Life in its members. Let 
 me say again by way of explanation, that I do 
 not wish men to be indifferent to doctrines, or to 
 sectarian views. In the glow of generous and 
 truly Christian feeling, men will often say 
 " Well, it makes no difference about doctrines, 
 provided the heart is right." It does make a dif- 
 ference and the difference is just as 'wide as 
 the gap between Truth and Error. It makes 
 this difference that the soul that imbibes an 
 erroneous instead of a true doctrine, is less 
 happy, and less advanced in its true life, than it 
 might be. Still, there is truth at the bottom of
 
 INTOLERANCE. 59 
 
 the expression " It makes no difference what a 
 man believes ;" and it lies at the point at which 
 I am now arriving. The meaning of it is this 
 that the Truth is worth but little unless it pro- 
 duce its fruits, and, if it produce its fruits, this is 
 the chief end ; and there is a conviction in say- 
 ing this, that in all sects there is Truth enough 
 to produce good fruits. And I say so too. In 
 every Christian denomination, there is enough of 
 vital, kindling Christianity to make good hearts. 
 No one can sit at the foot of the Cross, as a 
 devoted, earnest disciple, and not feel the light 
 that rays out from it moving upon his soul. No 
 one can take the simple Christian Law of Love to 
 God, and love to man, and go by its guidance, 
 and yet be an immoral man. No one can stand 
 by that cleft rock, and that irradiated Tomb, 
 and not believe that Religion appeals to some- 
 thing deeper than time and sense, to which we 
 must awake, and for which we must strive. 
 These are indisputable Facts, first principles, 
 that are tacitly admitted by all who assume the 
 Christian name. But, I say, this matter is not 
 virtually thus regarded by many sects. A man's 
 variation in Christian Belief, is looked upon as 
 a token of depreciated moral and Religious cha- 
 racter. The unworthiness of such a disciple to 
 approach the Communion Table is asserted upon
 
 60 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 no other ground, and his probable moral conduct 
 is traced to and linked with his Faith and his 
 faith, often, not as it really is, but as men see it 
 with their eyes, colored as they may be by igno- 
 rance and prejudice. This, then, I repeat, would 
 seem to be one cause of the spirit of Intolerance 
 that prevails among various Christian denomina- 
 tions. 
 
 Again ; we may trace this intolerant spirit 
 back to the idea, that a man is actually to blame 
 for being in error that if he is in error he knows 
 it all the while, and only persists in it from a 
 perverse and wicked disposition. Hence, men 
 are denounced for teaching such and such doc- 
 trines, are scolded at and sneered at but not 
 reasoned with, or pitied. If the gross assump- 
 tion that I am right and you are wrong be admit- 
 ted, without entering into the merits of the case, 
 still, I know not why I should abuse, or denounce 
 you. Surely, you may think you are right, and 
 if it be a delusion to think so, still, it demands 
 a labor of love, an effort of reason not a display 
 of intolerance. But how men will knit their 
 brows, and vent their bitterness at the name of 
 a heretic ! A Heretic ! Why, one would think, 
 from the common sentiment, that a heretic was 
 one who had not only unchristianized but un- 
 manned himself one going forth on purpose to
 
 INTOLERANCE. 61 
 
 destroy and pollute, laying sacreligious hands on 
 the holiest things from a spirit of sheer malignity 
 and wickedness, and opposing himself to the re- 
 ceived Faith from a scornful and sinful spirit. 
 But now it is possible that a heretic may be a 
 very different person from all this. He may be 
 a meek seeker for Truth, blinded, perhaps, but 
 sincere ; he may be a man who has studied and 
 thought, and who in conscience can not adopt 
 the received ideas ; he may be a man who 
 nourishes all the Religious affections, who drinks 
 Religion with a keener thirst, and from purer 
 springs or thinks he does because he has 
 thrown by what seemed to him impediments in 
 the way to the Fountain-head impediments to 
 him, although to you they may be sacred articles 
 of Faith. A heretic may be such a man as this, 
 and surely he is not to be denounced and abused 
 for all these peculiarities. And look ye, who 
 burning with intolerance, would almost call down 
 fire from heaven upon him, he may be, after all, 
 farther advanced in Divine Truth and Divine 
 Life than you, with all your faith, ancient and 
 wide-spread as it is. Such a thing, I say, is 
 possible. 
 
 But while intolerance like this would seem 
 to fasten more particularly upon the Orthodox 
 than upon the heretic sects upon the con-
 
 62 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 servative rather than the Reforming Religionist, 
 it may be found with the latter, as well as with 
 the former and I think it will be found there 
 in our day. The Samaritans in refusing to re- 
 ceive Jesus exhibited Intolerance, but the Dis- 
 ciples, in their turn, manifested the very senti- 
 ment that excited them. How common this is ! 
 The spirit we denounce, we oppose in the very 
 same spirit. The boasting Liberal approaches 
 the village of the Orthodox Samaritan, but he 
 will have none of him, because his face is set in 
 a suspicious direction. " What an intolerant 
 bigot," exclaims the liberal, " Oh ! that I could 
 call down fire from heaven." Nay, but tell me, 
 my friend, is there not more than one of you who 
 is intolerant now ? I deprecate persecution for 
 heresy, then but I equally deprecate the spirit 
 in which the heretic deals out his accusations 
 of " superstitious," " bigoted," " timid" and 
 " time-serving." I want no man abused because 
 he rejects the Miracles, but I do not want him 
 to abuse me because I hold to them. I affirm 
 that it is unjust for the Orthodox professor to 
 un-christianize the Universalist, but I maintain 
 that it is just as wrong for the Universalist to 
 call the Orthodox a hypocrite, or a dupe. And, 
 I say, such a spirit as is manifested in the last- 
 named illustration, is too rife in our day.
 
 INTOLERANCE. 63 
 
 Such, then, is Religious Intolerance. I would 
 that it were done away with. This is the union 
 of Christians that I ask for. Not an identity of 
 doctrine, not an indifference to articles of belief, 
 not a worshipping in one place or one form but 
 a recognition of the great common humanity, of 
 the right of opinion, of the oneness of the Christ- 
 like Image seen through many human forms. 
 Alas ! we shall never have this sentiment, as the 
 tide of thought and feeling runs at present. We 
 shall never have this sentiment, until we rise to 
 more intimate Communion with that One who 
 could Bless even while men cursed, could heal 
 while they smote, could Pray for them when 
 they pierced ; and even when turned from their 
 homes and denied their hospitality, could say to 
 those who breathed the bitterness of vengeance 
 in his behalf " Ye know not what manner of 
 spirit ye are of the Son of Man is not come to 
 destroy men's lives, but to save them." 
 
 II. Again ; I would allude to the spirit of 
 Intolerance, as connected with our Philanthropic 
 and Moral Reforms. Men may proclaim their 
 love for their fellows, may be zealous in forming 
 associations, may boast how consistently they 
 stand upon the great Christian platform ; but I 
 would say to them it is not only the work thou 
 doest, but the spirit in which thou workest, that
 
 64 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 will determine upon what platform you stand. 
 The Christian Idea has been in the world a long 
 time, but alas ! too little has the Christian Idea 
 been suffered to accomplish. " A grain of 
 wheat," said the Savior, " must first fall into 
 the ground and die" beautifully alluding to 
 himself, but also giving an emblem of the fate of 
 his Doctrine. That too has been buried buried 
 not so much beneath persecutions, as beneath 
 corruptions. Free and glorious from the martyr's 
 ashes and the martyr's blood, sprung the green 
 harvest of the Church ; but when instead of the 
 Martyr we had the Priest, instead of the sandalled 
 Apostle the mitred Hierarch, then the Church 
 became worldly, and the germ of Truth had to 
 lie beneath the feet of the luxurious and the 
 bigoted, until its fruit sprung forth again in 
 some lowly and despised Reformer, that must 
 also die ere he could give it life and diffusion. 
 This has been the fate of the Christian Idea. It 
 has not been carried out in the Christian spirit, 
 and it could not develope without that. Men 
 have met Pagan Relics with Christian Relics, 
 heretic armies with Christian armies, ejection 
 from Samaritan villages with Christian invoca- 
 tions of fire from heaven. " Ye know not what 
 manner of spirit ye are of" may not this be 
 said to some even at this day, whose idea may
 
 INTOLERANCE. 65 
 
 be true, whose premises may be right, but whose 
 instruments are carnal and deadly ? 
 
 Take the Temperance Reform. Is an Intole- 
 rant spirit right in this cause ? You say yon 
 man is a debased and polluted drunkard you 
 deem that rigid measures are the best for him. 
 Nay but, my friend, what induced you in the 
 first place to plead for Temperance ? A love of 
 your race, you say your heart bled to see the 
 miseries wrought by intoxication. But is this 
 the end of your tenderness ? Have you no mantle 
 of Charity to cast over those tottering, blighted 
 limbs ? Have you nothing of the spirit of Him 
 who could seek the healing of the moral leper 
 covered all over with sin ? Have you nothing 
 of the love that can find something of the common 
 man in that ruined clay, some tire that was 
 kindled at a mother's breast in that hard heart, 
 some chord almost but not quite dead ? Ay, 
 you can find this in the drunkard, but you can 
 have no patience with him who deals out the 
 liquid fire, and puts it to his parched lips. Nay, 
 even here, I plead for tolerance tolerance with 
 the man, I speak not of his business. I ask no 
 thunders of the law to smite that dealer, detestable 
 as is his traffic. He too is a man, and, believe 
 me, reason, the power of conscience, the law of 
 love and right, shall touch even him. Forbear 
 6
 
 66 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 thy fulminations of wrath. Perhaps he sees not 
 even yet the force of thy argument. Perhaps 
 the words that shall pierce his heart are already 
 winging their way. But, at all events, be not 
 intolerant. Trust reason, love, Christianity 
 these are the only agents for such a Reform. 
 
 I pass into the Anti-Slavery meeting. Here, 
 I discover, is agitated a great truth the natural 
 equality of all men the right of the poorest and 
 lowest to be free, to breathe God's air upon 
 what hill-top he will, to follow His sunshine 
 around the earth if he list the wrong of holding 
 him in bondage, of putting him by force to do 
 another's work. But the Idea and the spirit, at 
 times, seem widely separated. The quondam 
 Philanthropist now seems to struggle for words 
 to express his sense not merely of the traffic but 
 of the men who acknowledge it. They are 
 hounds and murderers, he says- hard hearted and 
 brutally wicked. I would say to him Friend, 
 this is not the legitimate spirit of thy Reform. 
 Have some pity even for the slave-holder. Do 
 not ever paint him as such a grim, ferocious 
 monster. He too is a man. He may not have 
 reasoned as far as thou. Many things may stand 
 between him and the light. Be not so violent 
 and sweeping in thy charges. His position may 
 be the result of wrong reasoning, not of moral
 
 INTOLERANCE. 67 
 
 obliquity. I have sat at the table of the slave- 
 holder. I found him open and generous. 1 have 
 slept beneath his roof with no fears of murder 
 by him. I have been in the bosom of his family 
 I found there tender and beautiful affections, 
 the sunshine of love, and the sentiments of chas- 
 tity and reverence. I have opened the Records 
 of our country's fame and his name was upon 
 them. There are places of red battle for human 
 rights, his blood stained them. Thou mistakest 
 thy work when thou callest him dog, murderer, 
 monster. Conscience compels thee to speak the 
 Truth, thou sayest ay, but conscience does not 
 compel thee to speak vindictively, and without 
 discrimination. Thy true work is to love, to 
 reason, to strive with moral suasion not to spit 
 out words of Philanthrophy in drops of fire not 
 to cry, " Human Brotherhood ! and cursed be all 
 who do not say so with me." 
 
 Thus, then, in our Philanthropic Reforms, let 
 there be no intolerance. To those who cherish 
 it, Christianity says " Ye know not what man- 
 ner of spirit ye are of." 
 
 There is, however, another class who cannot 
 brook the mention of Reform, or Reformers. 
 To them such things are disagreeable. They 
 feel pretty much as the sluggard does, when one 
 somewhat rudely, with determined hands, says
 
 68 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 to him " sleep no more, it is time to rise." 
 They think that the world is well enough as it 
 is, and that no good can come of striving to alter 
 present circumstances. This they say, because 
 they are quite comfortable, and that, to them, is 
 enough. But they must remember that there 
 are many others in the world they have innu- 
 merable brethren. These cry out against cold 
 and hunger and moral deprivation, and there 
 must be Reform. Those to whom Reform is an 
 alarming cry, are ready to exclaim against every 
 Reformer, as a low annihilator, a house-breaker, 
 or a highway-robber somebody who is bent 
 upon disturbing order and introducing anarchy, 
 upon uprooting society and giving reins to licen- 
 tiousness in short, as a very suspicious and 
 fearful character. This too is intolerance. Lis- 
 ten to all the Reformer has to say. Seek not to 
 prevent discussion, or to shut out petition. Ac- 
 cept what is reasonable, reject what is false, and 
 fear not that Truth shall ever be destroyed. 
 But, to denounce without hearing, to abuse be- 
 cause he touches some selfish chord, to call him 
 fanatic and licentious, this is Intolerance if ye 
 do so, " Ye know not what spirit ye are of." 
 
 III. I would allude to one more manifestation 
 of the spirit of Intolerance. I mean the manner 
 in which we too often treat criminals and wrong-
 
 INTOLERANCE. 69 
 
 doers. The Crime, I maintain, is to be abhorred 
 and destroyed. But not so the Criminal. He 
 is a man he has a soul the sympathies of our 
 nature are not dead in him. I know, sometimes 
 it would almost seem so. It would seem as if 
 every spark of generous or virtuous fire that once 
 may have burned in that heart, must long since 
 have smouldered into obscene ashes. That 
 gore-stained hand, that scarred brow, that lip all 
 convulsed with derisive laughter, or twitching 
 with hate and fiery scorn " Oh ! here is one to 
 be crushed," you say, " loathed, blotted from 
 existence, with all the terrors of the law, strong 
 and bloody, heaped upon him." Not so I af- 
 firm again, not so. Take that criminal, shut 
 him up that he harm not his fellows, and then 
 labor with him for a nobler end than destruction 
 reformation. It is man -like to crush and de- 
 stroy it is Christ-like to purify and build up. 
 There is some hope for the most depraved. 
 And if we were not so intolerant, thought more 
 of the criminal as a man, thought more of reform- 
 ation than revenge, we should smite upon that 
 iron heart with words of love, patiently, uuwea- 
 riedly, until we should find some pulse of good 
 throbbing yet, perhaps, with the mystic beatings 
 which it learned in some departed mother's arms. 
 Holy memories of childhood shall rush upon that 
 6*
 
 70 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 long-shrouded soul voices of early innocence 
 shall ring like Sabbath Church-bells long forgot- 
 ten, calling him back to innocence and to peace. 
 Such things have been. Can they not be again ? 
 At all events, I say, be not so intolerant towards 
 the Criminal. Separate him more, in your mind, 
 from his crime. Think of the associations which 
 may have surrounded him from his younger days. 
 Think of the want in which he was born, the 
 vice into which he was baptized. Oh ! it is the 
 true Christian work to Reform. Christ died for 
 all for the very murderer at his Cross. Who 
 says any man is hopeless, utterly degraded, fit 
 only to be destroyed ? He falters from the con- 
 fidence of Christ. His revenge gets the better 
 of his reason. He knows not what spirit he is 
 of. 
 
 Let us not be intolerant, then, even to the 
 Criminal. Let us secure ourselves and him from 
 any more harm. Let us inflict a righteous retri- 
 bution. But let us look upon the matter from a 
 Christian point of view. 
 
 But, thus far, we have spoken of Criminals 
 men amenable to the severest retributions of the 
 law men whose deeds are of the blackest die. 
 I pass from these to speak of the conduct of So- 
 ciety too often exhibited towards those who step 
 aside from the path of virtue, under various cir-
 
 INTOLERANCE. 71 
 
 cumstances. Let the offender be one who has 
 been lured to ruin by villanous art and sinful 
 fascination. How soon 
 
 " The sharp scorn of men 
 
 On her once bright and stately head is cast!" 
 
 How quick the expanded brow gathers into a 
 frown ! How soon the gentle mood of friendship 
 is changed to unmingled loathing and contempt ! 
 Is all this right ? Shall we never listen to the 
 pleadings of charity ? Who can read that heart 1 
 Who can trace its weary, fearful struggles ? 
 Who knows the depth of the sharp agony that is 
 preying upon it now ? Rejected, scorned, driven 
 from the light of home paternal lips open to 
 discard maternal hands raised to curse hope 
 withered in its spring-time affection repelled 
 and driven freezing to its fountain the sanctity 
 of woman's sisterhood averted the sneer of 
 men quivering like sharp lightning on his face. 
 Oh ! is there no room for mercy here no hand 
 of pity stretched out to restore no Christian 
 love that will yet seek to save ? 
 
 Again ; some hitherto respected member of 
 Society commits a wrong. How prone are we 
 to jump at conclusions ! How eager to denounce ! 
 There may be some palliation. At least, there is 
 but the frailty of our common manhood. You 
 and I had originally no patent of virtue in dis-
 
 72 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 tinctjon from the man who to day has fallen. 
 Go back to his earliest temptation. See the first 
 moment when it fastens upon him. See the first 
 moment when that seemingly impregnable honor, 
 yields to the subtle assault or the vigorous attack. 
 Mark that rich treasure self -respect , as it dies 
 out from the soul, long before the keen eyes of 
 the uncharitable world detect a flaw. See the 
 resolution and the struggle, the momentary vic- 
 tory and the relapse the victim of sin, now 
 nerved by old feelings of virtue, struggling " like 
 a strong swimmer with his agony" and his shame 
 now listless and hopeless, like one who has 
 gone too far to repent. And when the overt act 
 is committed, and the staring world sees all, it 
 overlooks the struggle, overlooks the temptation, 
 it forgets the common frailty it sees only the 
 vice ; and with an indignant feeling, as though 
 its immaculate virtue were insulted / it cries out 
 -T-" Hunt him and hang him /" I say this is In- 
 tolerance. I mean this disposition to show 
 judgment without mercy, this relish for detect- 
 ing faults, this lack of pity, this blind fury of 
 reyenge that as often does wrong as does the 
 weak mercy that forgoes all. When we thus 
 feel, truly is it, that we know not what spirit 
 we are of. 
 
 I shall say nothing further at present upon
 
 INTOLERANCE. 73 
 
 this subject of Intolerance. I have spoken only 
 for Christian Love, only for Justice. I have not 
 been pleading for error, for wrong-doing, for 
 crime but only that we should regard the com- 
 mon manhood that lies behind all error, and 
 wrong-doing, and crime. Upon this manhood 
 let us ever look, as upon something which con- 
 tains a common element with ourselves, some- 
 thing to love, to labor and to pray for. How 
 shall we do this ? My friends, we must sit at 
 the Feet of Christ, and drink in his great Law 
 of Love. We cannot draw this Love from or- 
 ganizations, we cannot create it by associations 
 we must derive it from Christ, and then carry 
 it into our associations. Men do not go to Christ 
 for it, they go into associations without it, and 
 hence the intolerance that abounds in the most 
 professedly Philanthrophic movements. 
 
 Christianity is against intolerance. She goes 
 forth to conquest, yea to certain conquest, though 
 the consummation may seem long delayed. But 
 in going forth she rejects the torch and the axe, 
 relying upon the omnipotence of Truth and 
 Love. She has a battle to fight, a revolution to 
 accomplish but in fighting that battle she uses 
 no carnal weapons, she invokes not the aid of 
 War, cruel and vengeful War, that tramples its 
 purple wine-press whose red clusters are human
 
 74 INTOLERANCE- 
 
 hearts. She trusts the intrinsic Goodness of her 
 cause, and the all-subduing power of her influ- 
 ence, .^nd when that revolution is accomplish- 
 ed, the first will be last and the last first. She 
 win pass by the sepulchres of Conquerors and 
 Kings, to re-build and re-garnish the Tombs of 
 the Prophets she will pass by the bigot in mitre 
 and in lawn, and elevate the poor widow who 
 h.as labored contentedly in her sphere cherishing 
 the flowers of holiness in her bosom. And she 
 will abolish this war of creeds, and she will still 
 this angry controversy. And she will gather the 
 children of men into one great Temple, whose 
 worship shall be Holiness, whose Creed shall be 
 Love, whose dome shall open up into the illimit- 
 able universe of God. But ere this great work 
 shall be accomplished, as one of the first condi- 
 tions of its accomplishment, Intolerance, deep- 
 rooted, bitter Intolerance must be eradicated 
 from the hearts of men. Hearer, it must be 
 eradicated from your heart and mine ere we are 
 Christians indeed, ere \ye are fitted for the ele- 
 ments and the association of Heaven.
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE HUM\N 
 SOUL. 
 
 Preached in the Elizabeth street Church, JVew York, 
 Sabbath evening, January 15/A, 1843. 
 
 Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the 
 prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 
 
 MATTHEW v. 17. 
 
 THUS sublimely did Jesus proclaim his own 
 Mission. " I am not come to destroy, but to 
 FULFIL." I do not pretend that in interpreting 
 these Words as I do, I present their whole ap- 
 plication, but their scope includes the special 
 point upon which I propose to dwell, and it is 
 this. Christ came to raise men above the ne- 
 cessity of outward Laws and arbitrary institutions, 
 and make them a Law to themselves, living 
 from a spiritual perception and a Divine Life in 
 their own souls, and so in accordance with the 
 Law of God, which Law is, in other words, the 
 only mode of the soul's perfection its Holiness 
 and welfare. This is not proclaiming that all 
 outward Laws are wrong, that all arbitrary in- 
 stitutions are falsehoods. They have had a good
 
 76 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 mission to perform. They have been restrictive 
 and suggestive. The law that tells me I shall 
 not steal, and if I do steal my right hand shall 
 be cut off, may be a good law, in its season. 
 There is a time when man's intellect is limited, 
 when his moral sentiments are undeveloped, and 
 in order to prevent him from doing wrong, the 
 first lesson that he can learn is, that he will re- 
 ceive injury, if he does steal. Now to pause 
 with this, and to look upon it from the Christian 
 point of view, makes the Law often very meagre 
 and very ignoble. All that it has done thus far 
 is to excite a selfish fear. The man will not 
 steal, because, if he does steal, he will receive 
 hurt. Why it is wrong to steal, he does not 
 know, and the disposition to steal is in his heart. 
 But there stands the Law and the penalty. 
 Thou shalt not steal"" if thou dost steal thou 
 losest thy right hand." And he pauses and de- 
 sists from his purpose. But now he may be led 
 to take another step, and ask " Why should I 
 not steal ? Why do this law and this penalty 
 exist ? I know they do exist, but the mere fact 
 of their existence is not satisfactory. I see 
 things existing in the material world, but there 
 is a reason for their existence." This will na- 
 turally lead him to inquire into the nature and 
 the reason of right and wrong, and then he may
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 77 
 
 desist from stealing, from other motives than the 
 mere fear of losing his right hand. So you see 
 this law, and laws of a like character, may be 
 good in their places they restrain men from 
 doing wrong they are suggestive of moral dis- 
 tinctions. So with many institutions. Take, 
 for instance, the Mosaic Ritual. Its ceremonies 
 were suggestive, were premonitory. They led 
 the dark idolator, and the passion-blinded Jew, 
 up to a Perception of the Oneness of the Deity, 
 and by material Symbols prepared them for 
 spiritual realities. To have introduced them, at 
 once, into the broad Dispensation of Christianity, 
 would have been a violent transition, unlike any 
 other Process of the Creator, who in His uni- 
 verse brings forth first the blade, then the ear, 
 after that the full corn in the ear. Shall we say, 
 then, that the connecting links, the preparatory 
 steps, were unnecessary and false ? Every Law 
 that restrains men from wrong, or suggests the 
 right ; every institution that opens up a clearer 
 perception of the reality of things, is good in its 
 place. Christ's Dispensation does not contradict 
 them, does not repudiate them, but it supersedes 
 them rather it absorbs them as the ocean ab- 
 sorbs the countless water-drops, the rivulets and 
 streams that have flowed through many sections 
 absorbs them all in its boundless bosom, and, 
 7
 
 78 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 accomplishing what these lesser streams in their 
 several localities could not do, rocks navies, 
 transports rich merchandise, and heaves its bles- 
 sings upon a thousand shores. These Laws and 
 these institutions are false, and false only, when 
 men undertake to perpetuate them to hind 
 them around the soul when it has out-grown 
 them to invest them with an abiding sanctity 
 when the occasion for them has passed away. 
 Each atom of good in them shall live for ever, 
 but it has passed into a higher organization. 
 Seek not now the Law of the acorn, it has be- 
 come absorbed in the Law of the oak anon, 
 the law of the oak has become the law of wind 
 and vapor, of soil and sunshine, and these are 
 embraced in some more comprehensive princi- 
 ple. So goes on the process in the natural 
 world. We progress from lesser laws that are 
 good in their departments, up to some greater 
 Law that comprehends these. Light is one law 
 and heat is another. The Philosopher looks to 
 see if both are not effects of a single cause 
 Electricity, perhaps, and electricity may be the 
 effect of Magnetism, or vice-versa; and, by and 
 by, men may come to see that all the multiform 
 changes of nature hang upon one single cause 
 which cause is itself, what ? The first manifes- 
 tation of that Intelligence who speaks and it is
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 79 
 
 done, who commands and it stands fast. But 
 if men ever arrive at such an elevation as to dis- 
 cover the great agent that is the controlling law 
 of the material universe, shall they say that it 
 destroys these lesser laws of Magnetism, electri- 
 city, light, heat ? Will it make them false ? 
 No it will confirm them it will show their 
 highest relations it will not destroy, it will 
 fulfil them. Do you not now understand how 
 it was, that although Christ came to break Sym- 
 bols and to abolish Rites, and to introduce a new 
 Dispensation, he came not to destroy but to 
 fulfil ? 
 
 And do you not now see also the point upon 
 which I am laboring the Work of Christianity 
 in the human soul ? That it aims to raise man 
 above his dependence upon human laws and 
 outward institutions, to intimate relationship with 
 God, and to direct action from His own Spirit, 
 if I may say so, indwelling in the soul 1 Human 
 Laws and outward Institutions, I have said, are 
 restrictive and suggestive but they are not 
 creative. They may prevent from doing wrong, 
 they may suggest the right but they cannot 
 create the good disposition from which all con- 
 sistent virtue emanates, and without which we 
 shall ever be inclined to do wrong, and have but 
 fitful glimpses of the right. The existence of
 
 80 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 laws is an evidence of human imperfection. If 
 every man was " a law to himself," after the 
 fashion of Christianity, there would be no need 
 for legislators and enactments. If men had no dis- 
 position to murder, there would be no need for 
 a law concerning murder. Laws are made as 
 crimes and wrongs appear. The promulgation 
 of a new edict is the token of a new manifesta- 
 tion of evil. The nation that has occasion for 
 the least laws is the most advanced in true civi- 
 lization. A land that should require no prisons 
 and no magistrates, would be the happiest land 
 on the face of the earth, because we should find 
 there a community whose members do right for 
 righteousness' sake whose acts not alone, but 
 whose disposition is to do good. The reason why 
 we should tremble at the removal of all penalties, 
 and the abolition of all laws, would be because 
 we know men have wrong dispositions, and these 
 would change the license to anarchy instead of 
 freedom. Human laws, then, plainly mark the 
 existence of evil inclinations on the part of men, 
 and the danger that is apprehended from these. 
 These laws, at least directly, make no man any 
 better. They are the rocky headlands, and the 
 careful breastworks, that shield from the fury 
 of the impetuous waves not the eternal lights 
 that stream long and far over the troubled waters,
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOU!,. 81 
 
 to guide the wanderer and confirm the doubting. 
 They appeal almost wholly to selfish principles. 
 The good citizen is anxious for the preservation 
 of the laws, because without them his life and 
 his property are insecure many a bad man may 
 keep the laws, but it is because if he break them 
 he will suffer. So, I say, these laws are good in 
 their season. For one I am far from recom- 
 mending their abolition. However highly I may 
 estimate human nature I am not romantic, and 
 whatever schemes I may indulge for human im- 
 provement I would not be Utopian. There 
 must be a great work accomplished in the souls 
 of men before we abolish all laws, but that is a 
 work that the laws can never perform. Until 
 the flame of evil desire is quenched in the hu- 
 man heart ; until the taint of sin, ages old, run- 
 ing deep and vital through the springs of action 
 is removed, like the leper-spot, by the power of 
 Christ, there will be crimes to punish, and 
 wrongs to legislate for, the wide world over in 
 every stage of civilization, and under every form 
 of government. The attempt to do away with 
 bloody penalties and harsh laws is only made by 
 a community in which is the consciousness that 
 men have outgrown them that they do more 
 evil than good, by encouraging the very spirit 
 that they should repress, and that laws which 
 7*
 
 82 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 maintain more intimate relations to the springs 
 of crime and afford more pungent motives, are to 
 be preferred to those the only characteristics of 
 which is their severity. One of the ideas of our 
 age is that of moral suasion, and in its place it is 
 a noble idea. But it may also be erroneously 
 estimated- It would not do to strip away all 
 penalties, without any regard to the dispositions 
 of men. There must be an appeal made to 
 man's intellect and his heart, and when these can 
 be influenced, then a reform will be accomplished 
 and a check will be given to sin, better than all 
 enactments or rigors can secure. This I under- 
 stand to be the true aim of Moral Suasion to 
 influence the intellect and the heart to appeal 
 to motives ; which it is deemed is a far more effi- 
 cient preventive of crime than the mere blow 
 which is returned for a blow. But with what 
 agencies shall moral suasion work upon the 
 heart ? I answer, with the precepts and influ- 
 ences of Christianity. 
 
 Thus, then, we are brought to this funda- 
 mental truth,' that in order to prevent crime and 
 evil action, we must alter the dispositions of 
 men ; that human laws and penalties cannot 
 reach these ; that the best efforts for Reform 
 aim at these, and that moral suasion is efficacious 
 only as it controls the intellect and the heart.
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. S3 
 
 Everywhere we turn for a higher Principle than 
 we find in human institutions we seek an Ele- 
 ment that shall penetrate the heart, that shall 
 control and guide the disposition. This is the 
 great want of society in its aspects of crime and 
 shame and wrong. You may utter your pen- 
 alties from the Tribunals of the Magistrate in 
 tones of thunder, you may soak scaffolds with 
 human blood, you may rear walls of impregnable 
 granite that shall frown in the very midst of 
 busy life, you may plead for Peace, and Tem- 
 perance, and Chastity but until man's affec- 
 twns are altered, until his soul yields to that 
 gushing influence that is the spirit of the Pre- 
 cept " Love God and man," War will stalk 
 abroad with its havoc, red-handed Murder will 
 seek its victims at noon-day, Inebriety will 
 stagger through the crowded streets, and impu- 
 dent Sin will open its doors in the very face of 
 virtue. 
 
 You boast of your Reforms but sound not 
 your trumpet of victory too soon. There is a 
 mightier work to be accomplished than that 
 which binds men together in associations, or 
 makes them enthusiastic in great causes and 
 pledges them to its support. Associations per- 
 form a good office. They awaken men from 
 selfishness, draw them together by revealing the
 
 84 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 common bond of humanity, and in their great 
 agitation of sympathies reveal the practical phases 
 of the doctrine of human brotherhood. But they 
 do not occupy the highest point in true civiliza- 
 tion. They are but the medium ground that 
 leads to better things. They aim every asso- 
 ciation that has a true idea aims to produce a 
 free and a safe individualism; to make each mem- 
 ber of the human family feel that he is a maw, 
 and to know what depends upon that fact, the 
 responsibility that hangs upon it, the dignity 
 that belongs to it, the Great Law above all laws, 
 the law of our spiritual being, that is to be obeyed. 
 You should wish to make the drunkard a sober 
 man, not because his neighbor is sober, not be- 
 cause it is popular to be sober, but because it is 
 right because that law of right is binding upon 
 him, individually because he is bound to be 
 sober, if all men beside were reeling with their 
 wine-cups to destruction. So with all Reforms. 
 Their true end is accomplished only when they 
 make each man feel his individual responsibility 
 feel that for and from himself alone he is to 
 stand or fall feel that there is a Great Law 
 which he, he is always and everywhere bound 
 to obey, let the world move as it will, because 
 he is a man. This, I say, is the true end of 
 Reforms ; and it is to be feared that in the pro-
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 85 
 
 minence which we give to the principle of Asso- 
 ciation, we lose sight of it, or under-estimate it. 
 I say, then, we must not rest upon our armor, 
 furl our standards, and sound our clarion of tri- 
 umph, until men are not only reformed outwardly 
 but inwardly not as masses but as individuals. 
 And, therefore, there is yet a great work to do. 
 Oh ! strip off the veil that the sunny light of day 
 and the decencies of society cast upon human 
 life. Look in upon its million beating hearts. 
 Read the corrupt desire that lurks below the 
 smooth address. See the smouldering flame of 
 passion whose outward manifestation is covered 
 by a smile. Go behind the masked faces that 
 crowd the public streets, and see the hideous 
 thoughts that creep and nestle there all un- 
 checked. See the ferocious hate, the salacious 
 wish, the selfish narrowness, the unyielding 
 pride, that flit like dark spectres across, or fan 
 with untiring wings their embers in the soul. 
 Here, oh ! Legislator, are the sources of crime 
 can thy nicely-adjusted Law that decrees so much 
 penalty for so much overt action, reach these, the 
 main-springs of it all ? Here, oh ! Reformer, is 
 the life of the evils at which thou art aiming. This 
 painted mask of Folly, this ancient custom of 
 Sin, this shameless harlotry of Vice, thou mayest 
 repress to-day ; but to-morrow they will be all
 
 86 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 abroad again, in some new shape, under some 
 trickery of human wit, some garment of moral 
 sanctity perhaps but they will be all abroad, 
 because the heart will throw out its tenants. 
 Could you drain the sea ? From its thousand 
 brine-springs, from its arteries that reach to the 
 heart of great mountains, from its gurgling caves, 
 that pierce to the centre of the earth, a new ocean 
 would ever rush unconquered and inexhaustible. 
 But if sin thus lurks everywhere around us, 
 what shall we say of that dark mass, that in 
 dens and cellars, in peopled cities, lies matted 
 together, steeped in vice and loathsome with 
 crime ? They were cradled in sin. They have 
 always breathed tainted air. What light has 
 reached them, has come dim and straggling 
 through the murky atmosphere of their being, 
 and this has been almost wholly quenched by 
 the necessities of poverty, the hardening influ- 
 ences of association and example, and the excesses 
 of gross and bestial sensuality. Thousands, mil- 
 lions are there in this condition, seething toge- 
 ther in sin, brooding over dark and fearful 
 thoughts, feeding on the very offal of wickedness, 
 clothed in the very rags of moral destitution. 
 And what a vast work is to be accomplished in 
 them ! When you have made your rules con- 
 cerning pauperism, and decreed your laws against
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 87 
 
 crime, and organized your societies for the sup- 
 pression of vice, your power to affect this mass 
 has not reached skin-deep, unless you have in- 
 troduced elements that shall penetrate to the 
 Will, and that shall elevate and guide the Affec- 
 tions. Ere the true work is accomplished, each 
 one of that enormous multitude is to be raised to 
 a consciousness of his responsibility, to a sense of 
 his dignity. In that furnace of all vile passions 
 that burns with a roaring flame in his heart, is 
 to be kindled the fire of love and of devotion. 
 His whole moral atmosphere is to be renovated. 
 He who in his pursuit of evil hardly pauses for 
 the barred dungeon, or the fearful gallows, is to 
 be raised to such a height that if there were not 
 a prison, or a gibbet, or a law in the land, he 
 would not commit a wrong any more than he 
 would cut off his right hand, pluck out his right 
 eye, or take for his drink a draught of burning 
 coals. 
 
 Here then, in this mysterious nature within 
 us, upon the throne of this Will, in the home of 
 these Affections, is to be the great reformation. 
 Without that, all laws, all associations, are futile 
 and shallow. When we look thus deeply into 
 the human heart, into this tossing sea of passions, 
 these clamorous interests, these stormy, unbridled 
 lusts how insignificant do our prison-walls seem,
 
 88 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 how impotent our " act to amend an act entitled 
 an act !" As though by cunning shifting, and 
 adjustment to every new sin, we thereby pre- 
 vented sin ! Why our very laws themselves, 
 how are they abused ! made a cloak for the 
 very iniquity they were meant to crush made 
 a dagger for the very innocence they were or- 
 dained to shield. Under the sanction of the law, 
 Fraud plays its juggling tricks under the sanc- 
 tion of the law, wealth tramples upon honest 
 poverty under the sanction of the law impu- 
 dent libertinism ruins unprotected virtue, and 
 crime goes unpunished, and innocence suffers. 
 And until we rise to that Law that is above all 
 laws, when men shall do right for righteousness' 
 sake, and love the Good for itself alone when 
 at midnight, or in the desert, or on the lonely 
 sea, he will deal fairly with his brother from 
 pure motives, and live a virtuous life from the 
 dictates of a virtuous heart ; until a revolution 
 like this takes place, I say, we must expect to 
 find transgression and evil in the world. The 
 Will and the Affections, what shall control these ? 
 The human WILL, headlong and irresistible it 
 has broken down barriers of eternal rock, and 
 swept over deserts of frozen ice, and bridged 
 torrents, and felled forests ; and what it is in the 
 material world, it is in the moral, a principle
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 89 
 
 that halts at no obstacle and that moves in all 
 things as the inner impulse dictates. The human 
 AFFECTIONS, strong and unquenchable, how 
 will they cling to whatever they cherish ! If 
 they worship Mammon, what danger shall deter 
 them what wide sea or dreary waste shall pre- 
 vent nay, at what crime will they revolt ? If 
 they seek for Fame, who shall stand between 
 them and it ? What height so dizzy that they 
 will turn back what gulf so deep that they will 
 shrink ? If their hunt is for Pleasure, they care 
 not for all its stings. They will drain the wine- 
 cup though its drops are molten fire ; and even 
 when they see the ruin approaching and hear 
 the hoarse murmurs of the storm, they will sacri- 
 fice all to the bliss of the moment and recklessly 
 melt into the charmed delusion. 
 
 I have thus endeavored to unfold to you the 
 Great Work that is to be performed, ere that at 
 which the laws aim, and which Reformers seek 
 for is accomplished the abolition of wrong and 
 sin from human society. I have endeavored to 
 unveil, to some extent, the human soul as its 
 circumstances actually are at this moment, all 
 around and within us, among high and low, rich 
 and poor; and have shown you the fearful 
 sources of iniquity lying in the main-springs of 
 all action the Affections and the Will. 
 8
 
 90 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 And now, I ask, if that System which should 
 come into the world, having for one of its objects 
 the elevation of the soul to such a degree of 
 goodness and moral strength, as to destroy the 
 will and the disposition to sin, I ask if that Sys- 
 tem is not worthy of being heralded by Angels 
 of being announced in a Chorus of Glory to 
 God in the Highest, of Peace and Good-Will to 
 men ? Yes, Glory to God in the Highest ! 
 Glory to Him in the Great Design, and the Tri- 
 umphant Means of accomplishing such a work ! 
 Glory to Him that must result from the consum- 
 mation of manhood purified from its sins, ele- 
 vated above its sensuality, living the true and 
 Divine life ! And on earth, Peace to men ! 
 Peace after the stormy warfare of passion and 
 guilt. Peace by the old shrines of martyrdom 
 and on the fields of ancient battle. Peace in 
 the haunts of secret crime, and the homes of 
 shameless transgression. Peace where clanked 
 the prisoner's chain, and where groaned the 
 doomsman's axe. Peace where rose the sobs of 
 injured innocence and the pleadings of trampled, 
 bleeding humanity. Peace in the individual 
 soul, where all is in harmony with God, and 
 where the end of human laws and outward insti- 
 tutions is not destroyed but fulfilled fulfilled in 
 the highest and the deepest sense.
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 91 
 
 And such a work, I say, Christianity came to 
 accomplish. Here lies an explanation of its glo- 
 rious Prophecies and its blessed anticipations. 
 In this consummation shall the valley be exalted 
 and the mountain be brought low. In this shall 
 the lamb lie down with the lion, and the leopard 
 with the kid. In this shall the wilderness and 
 the solitary place be glad, and the desert bud 
 and blossom as the rose. 
 
 Christianity is not anarchy is not opposed to 
 human institutions ; it is above them, the great 
 Fountain from which they derive their sanctity 
 and their vigor. It does not aim, with rash hand, 
 to abolish all human laws at once. To do this 
 would be commencing with the outward and 
 proceeding to the imcard. But as long as the 
 inward is wrong, the outward will be needed as 
 a support and a protection. To strip away the 
 outward first, then, would be to leave society 
 and man exposed to all the violence of unbridled 
 passion and fearless sin. But Christianity com- 
 mences with the inward. It lays the deepest 
 stress upon the regulation of every motive. It 
 says a man that hates his brother is tainted with 
 murder, and he who offends in one point of law is 
 guilty of all. And when it has moulded the 
 disposition, and renovated the heart and infused 
 into it its spirit, then the outward law will not
 
 92 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 be destroyed, but it will melt away of itself 
 the necessity for it will be gone, its end will be 
 reached, it will not be destroyed, it will be ful- 
 filled. So long as there is need for the law, 
 then, maintain the law ; but remember this 
 whenever there is such need, there is also needed 
 something else. Christianity is needed the 
 right affections, the good Will are needed. He 
 is needed, who when he comes, comes to elevate 
 man above the necessity for outward laws comes 
 not to bring anarchy but freedom, not violence 
 but love comes not to destroy but to fulfil. 
 
 My friends, it is but lately that we celebrated 
 the anniversary of the Advent of Christ and 
 Christianity. And it seemed peculiarly appro- 
 priate that the commemoration of that Event 
 should fall, as it did, upon the Sabbath ! Christ- 
 mas upon the Sabbath ! Thus the memorial of 
 Christ's Birth was blended with the Associations 
 of his Death. On that day, the Angels who sat 
 by his Tomb, were in the company of those who 
 proclaimed his Advent. Through the flash of 
 his Resurrection morning shone the star that hung 
 over his Manger. The Annunciation " Unto us 
 is born a Prince and a Savior," mingled with 
 the triumphant Anthem, " He is risen." 
 
 But now what is this Christmas that we cele- 
 brate ? Is it an historical Advent merely that it
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 93 
 
 proclaims, or is it an experimental Advent also? 
 Is it confined to a peculiar day and season of the 
 year, or is it for all souls, at all seasons ? " I 
 travail in birth again," said the Apostle Paul, 
 " Until Christ be formed in you." What a depth 
 of meaning is here ! This is the true Advent of 
 Christ. Oh ! to every soul is it Christmas morn- 
 ing when Christ is thus formed within it when 
 his spirit enters as its Teacher and Guide. Then 
 a chorus of Angels is heard. Then light breaks 
 in like that which hung over Euphrata. Then 
 all that is good in human laws and outward insti- 
 tutions is fulfilled, for we become a law unto 
 ourselves. 
 
 Hearer, this is an individual work back of 
 the renovation of society lies the renovation of 
 individuals. It is a work of high and solemn, 
 the highest, the most solemn responsibility. Let 
 each one give heed to it ! 
 
 8*
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Preached in Brooklyn, L. I., January 17th, 1843. 
 
 Speaking the truth in love 
 
 EPHESIANS iv. 15. 
 
 HERE we have the matter and the manner ot 
 the Gospel, the letter and the spirit. This is 
 the great element of hope for man ; upon this 
 Principle " The Truth spoken in Love," de- 
 pend the progress and the regeneration of the 
 race. What a sublime and beautiful apposition ! 
 TRUTH and LOVE. Shrouded in murky shadows, 
 or resting beneath the uncertain and tremulous 
 midnight, or waking from its fitful slumbers to 
 catch the gray glimpses of the morning, the 
 world has long waited for these two orbs of light 
 and power. Lo ! yonder they rise together in 
 the Constellation of the Cross. 
 
 The world, my friends, is full of falsehoods. 
 You will understand not merely deceits of the 
 tongue, not only acts of purposed and barefaced 
 deception, but frauds that lie deeper than these,
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 95 
 
 and appear in more varied manifestations. In 
 the customs, the laws, the polity, the religion of 
 the world, in social and individual elements, in 
 doctrines and practices, in hopes and pleasures, 
 in a thousand familiar and novel things, there 
 lurk falsehoods. Whatever deludes and cheats 
 men, whatever human error, or passion, or sin 
 has built up and established in the place of truth, 
 is a falsehood. The desire that you will often 
 see a man hugging to his bosom, cherishing 
 through sunshine and storm, sacrificing honor 
 and health and virtue for it, that desire, I say, 
 although he may not think so, is a falsehood it 
 would be better for him that he were halt and 
 maimed without it, for only without it can he 
 enter into life it would be better for him if it 
 were plucked up by the roots, although his very 
 heart-strings have grown around it. The white- 
 faced sanctimoniousness that often passes you in 
 the streets, that has so many Religious icords 
 and so few Religious deeds, that " with one hand 
 puts a penny in the purse of chanty, and with 
 the other takes a shilling out," that smooth and 
 decent thing is a living lie, and, if it were a day 
 of revelation, would have " falsehood" written on 
 its frontlet, and on the borders of its garments, 
 and on its broad phylacteries. The fashionable 
 round of life the gilding of society with its
 
 96 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 polished and adamantine etiquette, its gauzy 
 virtue, its respectable moralities, its hollow pro- 
 fessions of friendship, its ghastly smiles of wel- 
 come, what is it when you strip off its rind 
 when you lay bare its reality ? Deep in the 
 dust and ashes of its hollow heart lies the black 
 core of falsehood. The Charity of men of the 
 world, your donors whose names are printed in 
 newspaper lists, whose gifts shine and sparkle 
 to the world that the left hand may know what 
 the right hand doeth what is this ? In that 
 wan face which pleads in vain beneath the pelting 
 storm for a miserable pittance in that neglected 
 benefactor of other days, who sits amid the deso- 
 late memories of ingratitude, sick and poor in 
 that pleading debtor who looks in vain to that 
 inexorable brow in the hire of the laborers who 
 have reaped down his fields, and whose wages 
 are of him kept back by fraud ; in all these 
 aspects I read the utter baseness of his Charity, 
 and know that his assumed benevolence is false- 
 hood. 
 
 But these may seem matters of secondary im- 
 portance. I mention them, however, in order 
 that you may see with what a complexity of de- 
 ception your ordinary life, your daily walks, are 
 surrounded. Strike what to your eyes may seem 
 most fair out in this busy mart of humanity, it
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 
 
 is quite likely that it will ring hollow to the 
 blow press it somewhat hard, and it may crum- 
 ble to ashes. " The whole creation groaneth 
 and travaileth together until now." Why is it 
 so ? It is a fair, nay, it is a most beautiful 
 world. There is no nook so covered with Lap- 
 land ice, there is no waste so desolate with drift- 
 ing sand, that it will not reveal to the curious 
 eye some trait of Beneficence, some delightful 
 arrangement of Wisdom. From the sheeted 
 cataract to the drop of dew, from the cloud that 
 melts in a breath of air to the mountain that is 
 wet with the baptism of a million rains, through 
 every order and every part, we are constrained 
 to say " it is indeed a beautiful world." And 
 who seems more fitted to enjoy all this than man 
 this creature of godlike mould and cunning 
 workmanship, this being of mighty thoughts and 
 all-embracing sympathies, this living soul of ex- 
 haustless powers and infinite aspirations ? And 
 yet of all beings, who so unhappy, who so short 
 as he ? It is not the rock that really travails, it 
 is not the river that groans, it is not the beast of 
 the field that sighs under this bondage of corrup- 
 tion. That cry of wo comes from man it bursts 
 from his troubled, laboring heart and if to him 
 the outer world moans and struggles it only does 
 so in seeming ; he interprets its dumb and me-
 
 98 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 chanical agencies by his own intense sufferings. 
 But now what is the cause of this awful and 
 sometimes almost doubtful conflict ? I answer, 
 man is bowed down and crushed and penetrated 
 by falsehoods ! These have left their scars 
 wherever he has trodden they rise up in moun- 
 tain-masses between him and the sun. 
 
 Yes, my friends, these wars, these tyrannies, 
 these superstitions, these frauds and murders, 
 this abuse of the image of God by man, these 
 hatreds and strivings and deeds of silence are all 
 falsehoods ; and men are deluded, crushed, bowed 
 down with links of iron by crimes and sins that 
 are ages old, hoary, yet strong and cruel. Thus 
 is it with the individual, thus is it with the race 
 thus does it appear to him who looks around 
 him with a scrutinizing eye, or abroad upon the 
 wide world of humanity. 
 
 But must this always be so ? Something is 
 needed to make man happy something to give 
 him deliverance, and perfection, and life. If we 
 have a Father, if He cares for us, we may be 
 sure that He has given or that He will give the 
 means for this deliverance and perfection and 
 life. Hearer, He has given it He has given 
 the Truth. Man is surrounded with falsehoods 
 this is one view of things, it is the view which 
 we have been taking. But it is, so far, only a
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 99 
 
 partial view. We must look upon the economy 
 of things in another and a more cheering aspect. 
 It has been said, that near the spot where the 
 deadly serpent lurks is found the herb that cures 
 his bite. Is it not so in every scale of events ? Is 
 there not an antidote for the bane does not light 
 lie around the darkness where sin abounded 
 does not Grace superabound ? The world is full 
 of falsehood, is it not also full of Truth ? If man 
 is weak enough to be entangled by the one, is 
 he not strong enough to lay hold of and to wield 
 the other ? Yes, it is even so. Nothing is 
 hopelessly lost. Through various phases, as the 
 race needs, appears the Truth ; it is mightier than 
 the falsehood, it shall prevail. Upon the degraded 
 brow of ignorance falls the light of knowledge, 
 through the ranks of enslaved nations and over 
 their thrones of despotism, strides young and 
 victorious liberty, and far above this error-bound 
 and sinful world, far above its scepticism, and its 
 tears, rise Calvary and the Cross, and hard by it 
 is the Tomb in the rock the gateway of the 
 future and the immortal. 
 
 The Principle, then, which shall deliver us is 
 Truth, and it has been given us. It is revealed 
 in nature. Whatever is wrong in society or in 
 individual action is artificial is produced by 
 man is not established in the natural economy
 
 100 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of things. The laws of nature can not be abolish- 
 ed. If there were a wrong, then, incorporated 
 into these laws if there were a falsehood woven 
 into this unceasing mechanism, how sad would 
 it be for us ! But, as we penetrate to these 
 laws as we strip off the veils that have hidden 
 its rare secrets from our ignorance and our error,, 
 as we come into communion with its intimate 
 life, we find nothing that is wrong, nothing that 
 is hurtful in nature, nothing but evinces the 
 operation of a Power working with tissues of 
 light and darkness, in the womb of the earth and 
 abroad through the everlasting heavens, for the 
 best ends. And when man does wrong, when 
 he sins against his capacity, when he falsifies hi& 
 destiny, nature rebukes him and beautiful les- 
 sons she reads to him from the waters, the earth 
 and the stars. Yes the truth is revealed in 
 nature. But the difficulty is that we are too 
 dim-eyed to read all its Scripture we are a pro- 
 gressive race and can know but part at a time, 
 and we need some higher Revelation. 
 
 But we are not left to nature. The truth is 
 revealed in reason and in conscience. There is 
 in man an intuitive power. Nature is not to 
 him what it is to the beast. It is not a broad 
 meadow to graze in, a collection of hills and val- 
 leys to skip upon ; indeed over its elements he
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 101 
 
 has not so much dominion as the mere animal. 
 He can not cleave its air like the soaring bird 
 or breast its waters like the fish. And yet, to 
 him, nature has a use that it has not to the eagle 
 and the lion. It speaks to something in him of 
 something beyond it. He recognizes in himself 
 a sympathy with that which produced the order, 
 and beauty, and power of nature with that of 
 which these are only the manifestations. He 
 acknowledges intuitively, I say, a Power above 
 nature, from which all right and good and true 
 creations emanate a Power that is Goodness 
 and Righteousness and Truth. And the same 
 intuitive faculty discerns the Right, the Good 
 and the True when they are presented to it, 
 amid all the falsehoods with which we are en- 
 girdled. And man has in him, moreover, a power 
 which speaks out for right and against wrong. 
 When he has violated an obligation, when he 
 has sinned against a lawful requirement, when 
 he has turned his back upon the light that he 
 might do a deed of darkness, there has spoken 
 " a still, small voice" in the depth of his soul 
 with a power more awful than thunder. It is so 
 the wide world over. It is woven into man's 
 spiritual constitution. Without it he would cease 
 to be man more than if he was deprived of his 
 upright position, or his eyes, or his hands. And 
 9
 
 102 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 in these two elements of Reason and Conscience, 
 I say, the Truth is revealed. 
 
 But Reason and Conscience have not been 
 found sufficient teachers of the Truth. They 
 have either not taught all the Truth that man 
 needs, or else have not had power to impress 
 him with all they taught. A higher Revelation 
 has been given. It came with the direct Sanc- 
 tion of Heaven, to the world-wide humanity. 
 It came from a region beyond this rigid materi- 
 ality it came from beyond earth and the tomb. 
 It came not in thunder, nor in waves of red 
 lightning from the mountain-cloud. The earth- 
 quake did not cradle it it was not born in the 
 whirlwind. It came not in parchment laws, nor 
 in an ordered priesthood. It is true, Angels 
 heralded its birth but their song was sweet 
 and kind, such as the desolate rejoice to hear, 
 such as the mourner listens to with gladness. 
 Angels heralded its Birth but its Birth itself 
 was no gorgeous event. That Truth eame not 
 in a Voice, not in an Institution, but in a LIFE 
 a meek and lowly LIFE. The World hardly 
 looked for this, the old, falsehood-bound World, 
 swathed around with superstition, leaning upon 
 its sword, scarred by its vengeful conflicts, giv- 
 ing ever and anon a hollow laugh of scepticism 
 as to all faith and all virtue, and then moaning
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 103 
 
 like a very woman over the mystery of the dead 
 the World, under whose power men were 
 bound, hardly expected to find the Truth in this 
 shape, in the Life of an humble, coarse-clad Man, 
 proclaiming doctrines that rebuked alike the 
 oppressions of the tyrant and the superstition of 
 the Slave that below the purple robe of the 
 Monarch and the ragged tunic of the beggar, 
 laid bare the same precious soul, that amid the 
 clangor of revenge and hate breathed his Pre- 
 cepts of Mercy and Peace, and called upon all 
 men as wanderers, as prodigals, as seekers of the 
 vile and the transitory, to return home to their 
 Father's house. Yes, my friends, the Truth 
 that we need to deliver us from the thraldom of 
 so many falsehoods, has been revealed in a sin- 
 gle Life. It came to the world and the world 
 knew it not. When men were looking for a 
 Deliverer, it came to deliver, but not with sword 
 and banner. It robed itself with no purple ma- 
 jesty, it took no high seat in the synagogue. 
 But it went out among the lowly and the poor, 
 it mingled' with fishermen and publicans. It 
 brought no forms, it set up no complicated ordi- 
 nances. It made the green heath a shrine as 
 holy as the decorated temple, and the broken 
 prayer of the penitent heart a richer offering 
 than gold or spices. It made no distinction be-
 
 104 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 tween men save that of goodness, it set no value 
 on any thing that man possessed except his soul. 
 In place of earthly riches, it opened to the race 
 a treasure beyond the skies in place of earthly 
 triumphs, it led the way to a heavenly victory. 
 It wrote no huge volumes, it framed no specific 
 laws. Justice, Humility, Mercy, Truth, Love, 
 Meekness, and kindred virtues, it patiently 
 taught these to the world sowed them, precious 
 seed, in the few hearts that would receive, and 
 calmly went its way, its way of toil and suffer- 
 ing and death. Few and faint were the gleams 
 of light that broke upon that LIFE full of sor- 
 rows was it, smitten and afflicted. The poor 
 gathered around it and blessed it the suffering 
 uttered broken hosannas in its path. But few 
 plaudits went after it, no trains of splendid 
 triumph followed it. Darkness closed around 
 its latter days. In rapid succession came trials 
 upon it. Friendless was the man who was the 
 friend of all men. Thorned was the brow that 
 was ever lighted with benignity and love. The 
 hands that were always open for the doing of 
 good were pierced with cruel torture ; and the 
 lips that could quiver in their last agony with 
 Forgivenesss, quivered with the death of the 
 Cross. And so he lived, and so he died. True, 
 a sublime triumph followed but few saw it.
 
 THE MISSION OP CHRISTIANITV. 105 
 
 It was made no occasion of display, no source of 
 sudden wonder that should convert the world 
 with a stroke. The rock-bound Tomb burst open, 
 and he arose with Death's pale garland in his 
 triumphant hand. But it was only revealed to 
 a few. As he had lived above the time, calmly 
 trusting not to terror, not to force, not to excite- 
 ment but to simple Truth, to do the work he 
 wished, so he rose. He left it for ignorant fish- 
 ermen and rude peasants to proclaim it to the 
 world, and went to the home from whence that 
 Truth came. 
 
 So, my friends, that Life was not like that 
 which so many have honored. It was not the 
 life of a Warrior, quivering through blood and 
 flame. It was not the life of a Philosopher, 
 starry with intellect. It was not the Life of a 
 Law-Giver, enrolled in the polity of nations. 
 And yet, no Life has had such an influence upon 
 the world as that Life no Life ever shall. It 
 has been the source of life to others. It has 
 gone through dark ages of the world's history, 
 tempering the passions of men with its spirit of 
 meekness, and guiding the erring with its hand 
 of pity. And in the darkest hour, when its very 
 name has been used to cover monstrous perver- 
 sion and abominable sin, it has shone, the only 
 light the world had. In the bosom of a perse- 
 9*
 
 106 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 cuting Church, it has still asserted its great Doc- 
 trine of human Brotherhood. In the midst of 
 licentiousness and sensuality, it has made its 
 themes the highest ideals of the artist. And 
 when all around seemed hemmed in Avith im- 
 passable barriers and gloomy shadows, one bright 
 spot has opened like an avenue to fairer hopes 
 an avenue through the Tomb whence he ascend- 
 ed. That Life, that Life of Christ! It has 
 achieved unspeakable victories-^-victories which 
 mailed hand and armed host never could have 
 accomplished. It overturned the marble gods 
 of Greece. It plucked dominion from the throne 
 of the Caesars. It tamed the rude barbarian, as 
 he stood exulting amid the ruins of ancient civi- 
 lization it carried its meliorating power into 
 the very heart of the Middle-Ages it spoke in 
 the grand Doctrines of the Reformation it 
 came with the Pilgrims through the stormy 
 ocean of December it is in the van, far in the 
 van of the noblest efforts and the best hopes of 
 the present age. That Life of Christ! Not 
 alone has it been the guiding Light of nations. 
 Not alone has it wrought in Grand Reforms. 
 It has risen like a star on the night of individual 
 sin and sorrow. It has spoken in tenderness 
 to the broken heart. It has guided the straying 
 to the Fold of Peace. It has been the Stay
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 107 
 
 of the Poor when all else hath broken, and it 
 hath been remembered when all other memories 
 have failed. 
 
 And now my friends, what was that Life that 
 it should thus be above all other lives ? that it 
 should thus enlighten and Bless the world ? It 
 was a Revelation of the Truth of the Truth in 
 Love. Yet, it was not merely may I not say, 
 chiefly the Doctrine Jesus Taught ? it was the 
 Life he lived, that marks the peculiarity of the 
 Founder of Christianity, that makes him indeed 
 the Great Teacher. That Life was a Life of 
 Truth. Is Benevolence a Truth ? Is it opposed 
 to the falsehood of uncharitableness and selfish- 
 ness ? Behold there living Benevolence, see it 
 manifested in the healing of the withered limb, 
 the opening of the blinded eye. Is Meekness a 
 Truth ? Is it opposed to the arrogance and 
 pride that lift up the head and swell the heart ? 
 See there living Meekness, in him who refused 
 even to be called Good, who, though pronounced 
 excellent from the heaven of heavens, bore the 
 same humility alike when he rode upon out- 
 spread palms, or stood amid the insults of Roman 
 soldiery. Is Forgiveness a Truth ? Is it opposed 
 to the Revenge that burns to the marrow of the 
 bones, and the unrelenting vindictiveness that 
 taunts its victim in the very agonies of dying
 
 108 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 torture ? Behold there such Forgiveness as the 
 world has never seen, bursting from him who is 
 streaming with blood for those who had pierced 
 him. 
 
 My friends, dp you not see that Christianity 
 is a Life, that the Life of Christ is Christianity ? 
 There, embodied in one individual is the Truth 
 that the world needs the world, so bound and 
 penetrated with falsehoods. But that Life was 
 not the Truth alone. The Truth ! it might have 
 broken upon the ears of a guilty world, in tones 
 of thunder it might have been revealed in a 
 stern messenger, who come only to rebuke and to 
 compel. But it did not so come. Oh ! no. It 
 came in LOVE. It came with a Father's Voice 
 to wandering, erring children. All that had 
 power to convince, was united with all that had 
 power to win. The human heart has been so 
 constituted, that in order to a cheerful obedience 
 to duty it must love that duty. You may speak 
 the truth to yon wretched outcast. But you 
 speak it, perhaps, in a harsh tone you speak it 
 with a virtue awfully severe. But he is steeled 
 against that. He has learned no other doctrine. 
 He has experienced from the world harsh treat- 
 ment, and he has lived a harsh life in return. 
 He has so often bared his bosom to the storm that 
 it has become callous. But now, if you spoke
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 
 
 that same truth in love if you speak it with a 
 manner that shows that you sincerely feel for 
 him, that you still sympathize with him beneath 
 all his wretchedness and all his scars, he is not 
 ready for that the voice is new and delightful, 
 it sounds to him like his mother's voice heard in 
 days of childhood ; he has met no one since in 
 the hard and selfish world, that has cared for 
 him, until now. And he opens his heart to the 
 truth because it comes in love it comes to him 
 not merely as a subject, but as a child. 
 
 Now such we deem to be the characteristic 
 of Christianity. It speaks the Truth, but it 
 also speaks it in Love. It cares for men. It 
 seeks not only their obedience, but their affec- 
 tions. Other religions have not done so. They 
 have sought to appal and to bind. To make men 
 good, not to make good men. As though good- 
 ness were something extraneous, that can be 
 forced upon the heart, instead of a genial power 
 that of itself opens and enters the heart. Men 
 have made virtue severe and Religion awful. And 
 from the same, or from similar principles, have 
 proceeded the wrongs of government, of laws, 
 of institutions the wrongs between man and 
 man the falsehoods of society, of individual life. 
 Religion having been exhibited as not desirable 
 in itself, men have been pronounced by nature
 
 110 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 alien from Religion as creatures that must be 
 driven into obedience as selfish beings ready 
 to break from virtue at the least opportunity. 
 So Despotism has set up its plea to rule men 
 with a rod of iron. So rigid laws and awful 
 penalties have been instituted. So man has 
 grown distrustful of man, has held communion 
 with hate and fear rather than love. So men 
 have placed Religion on the outside and kept 
 a rotten observance. So man has been brought 
 to think of a verity that there is some good in 
 sin, and thus to hug to his bosom a deceitful lie. 
 I have not time to enter into an analysis to 
 show the very legitimate evolution of all these 
 evils from the lack of confidence in, or from the 
 the ignorance of Lovefrom the lack of iden- 
 tifying Religion and virtue with Goodness. But 
 I am convinced that what the world has needed, 
 and what it still needs, jn order to its deliver- 
 ance from the falsehoods under which it groans, 
 is not only Truth, but Truth uttered in the spirit 
 of Love. And this, I say, it will find in the Life 
 of Christ. There is the Truth spoken mani- 
 fested in Love. What was the cause of Christ's 
 coming ? We have it plainly declared " He 
 so Loved the world that He sent His only-be- 
 gotten Son." In Will, in Purpose, He who 
 sent and he who was Sent were One. So it
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. Ill 
 
 was in Love that Christ came. It was Love that 
 moved in all his Actions, that prompted all his 
 Preachings, that breathed in all his Prayers, that 
 carried him through that suffering Life, that bore 
 him through that painful Death. Christ's Life 
 was the Truth manifested in Love. To speak 
 the Truth in Love, is the mission of Christianity. 
 
 We have, then, arrived at these results. We 
 have seen that the world is filled with falsehoods, 
 for such are the errors and the sins under which 
 it labors both in individual and in social life 
 immediately around us, and abroad through the 
 nations of the earth. We have seen, again, that 
 the agent of deliverance from those errors and 
 sins has been given that agent being the Truth, 
 revealed in nature, revealed in reason and con- 
 science, but more perfectly and effectually em- 
 bodied in the Life of Jesus Christ its life and 
 its efficiency subsisting not only on account of the 
 fulness but because of the spirit of the Reve- 
 lation, that spirit being Love. 
 
 And now, as we look around us at the sins 
 and the errors that prevail in individual action 
 and in society as we look abroad upon ihe 
 world, lying under superstitions, tyrannies, and 
 all abominations, are we not constrained to ask, 
 Why is it so ? The answer is ready the Truth 
 has not been spoken in Love to the extent that
 
 112 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is required. The Life of Christ, with its mani- 
 festations and its influences, should be brought to 
 bear more upon the hearts of men. That Life 
 has been long in the world, and yet how little 
 of its Mission is accomplished ! How have men 
 misinterpreted and neglected it ! And has not 
 the neglect often been the result of the misin- 
 terpretation ? Yes, Christians themselves have 
 not understood as they ought the Life of the 
 Master. Partially, the Truth perhaps, has been 
 spoken. But it has been uttered coldly and ab- 
 stractly, veiled in dogmas, encumbered with 
 mysteries, linked with errors and abuses, patron- 
 ized by bigotry, fanaticism, and superstition. 
 Men have not spoken it in its simplicity, in its 
 freedom above all, they have not let it gush 
 from hearts warm and melting with Love. And 
 here has been a fruitful source of the comparative 
 inefficiency of Christianity its comparative in- 
 efficiency, I say and J mean by this its ineffi- 
 ciency compared with its own capacity, not with 
 the operation of other systems. 
 
 But the age looks brighter, as if it had fallen 
 in the small hours that precede the morning. 
 Christianity is beginning to be better understood. 
 Men discover now that it is not a meagre secta- 
 rianism. That it is quite probable that John 
 and Peter and Paul were not veritable Baptists,
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 113 
 
 or Methodists, or Universalists, in the sectarian 
 acceptation of these terms that we are not to 
 clip their creed to suit the corners of our notions ; 
 but that we are to draw our Faith, and not merely 
 our Faith but our action, from the deep, exhaust- 
 less fountains of the Truth which they spoke in 
 Love. It is beginning to be seen that Christian- 
 ity is no one thing, one set form but that it is 
 all true things. It is a gift of Charity, it is a 
 Prayer, it is a Temperance Reformation, it is a 
 Common-School Education, it is a martyr's sa- 
 crifice for the right, it speaks in the amenities 
 of every-day life, it murmurs with notes of omen 
 under shameful abuses and ancient thrones, it 
 is in the best strains of the poet, the deepest 
 thought of the philosopher, the noblest aspiration 
 of the philanthropist it is each, it is all of these ; 
 and still it is something more. It is the consum- 
 mation of human nature linked with the Divine. 
 It is the perfection of the human soul, ripe with 
 all virtues, redeemed from all falsehood, holding 
 the Troth in Love, erect and free yet subject to 
 Christ and to God. 
 
 Now there are two parties in our day, as in 
 some sense there always have been. The one 
 is conservative, timid, distrustful. At the first 
 announcement of a novel doctrine, it takes the 
 alarm and vociferates " The Faith of our Fa- 
 10
 
 114 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 thers ! The Faith of our Fathers ! Oh ! for 
 the good old order and habits of the Past." It 
 thus evinces that it has no idea of more Truth 
 that it has no faith in progress that it thinks 
 all virtue and all right to consist in what it under- 
 stands to be virtuous and right. Truth breaks 
 in every day from the heavens, gleams from the 
 bowels of the earth, opens to the farthest mind 
 and the keenest eye, emanates ever with a more 
 sublime beauty from the Life of Christ but still 
 this cry rings out, " Keep the Faith of our Fa- 
 thers !" Our Fathers ! We can not wear their 
 garments, we can not preserve their features, 
 neither can we think their thoughts, nor prevent 
 the sun that goes over us from shining upon new 
 days. The Faith of our Fathers needs not our 
 propping. If it is all true, it will, it must stand. 
 If anything false is in it let us stand clear of the 
 rubbish that will surely be shaken from it in the 
 march of opinion. Not the Faith of the Fathers, 
 but " The TRUTH" the Truth as it is in nature, 
 the Truth as it is in reason and in conscience, 
 above all and comprehensive of all the Truth 
 as it is in Christ ; this is the cry of the second 
 party, which is the Progress Party, the advancing 
 Party, the Party that has Faith in the ultimate 
 triumph of Goodness, hope for man, confidence 
 in the power of Love, belief in the developement
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 115 
 
 and perfection of the race. The first-named 
 Party, the Conservative Party, is very zealous 
 for old institutions, thinks it had policy to give 
 too much power to the masses, holds on to the 
 old bloody penalties, is suspicious of these new 
 reforms that talk so loudly of Love and Progress. 
 The second Party, the Progress Party, trusts 
 man because God made him, spurns the old dust- 
 worn parchments that men call Law and Right, 
 reads this Law and this Right in the world- 
 embracing Gospel, throws by the chain the rack 
 and the gibbet, and unfurls to the winds of heaven 
 the banner of Truth and Love, confident that the 
 world will one day follow it. The Conservative 
 party, one would think, might at least preserve 
 pity for the degradation that it can not help, and 
 would sorrow when something dashes the hopes 
 that are entertained of man's advancement. But 
 it is not so. It seems to have a selfish interest 
 at stake. It has taken its stand, and it has a 
 pride of discernment that it would maintain. It 
 has pronounced these hopes fallacious, these 
 opinions licentious, these doctrines heretical, 
 and it cares more for victory than for truth. So, 
 if there is any slip if here and there love seems 
 to fail, or a man abandons his principles, or 
 falsifies their influence ; if here and there a noble 
 effort is unsuccessful, or a fanatic overacts the
 
 116 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 truth then there is such a shout that its old 
 towers rock again, and its grim pictures on the 
 wall and its mouldering parchments, seem to 
 shake with laughter. So far from desponding, 
 this party often has gleams of the most confident 
 hope ; and when, for a time, as is now the case 
 in England, there seems a retrograde movement 
 when some gifted but distrustful minds, dis- 
 gusted and sick with the ultraisms and fanaticisms 
 that accompany the progressive spirit, swing 
 away back to the old grounds then, I say, there 
 comes a gleam of confident hope for this Party, 
 and it fancies that " the good, old times are com- 
 ing back.' 1 But this is a mistake. The light 
 that shines upon its worn altars is indeed a rising 
 light, but the Conservative is sitting with his 
 back to the sun expecting it to come from that 
 quarter of the heavens to which he is looking, 
 when it shines from that point from which he 
 has averted his head. 
 
 I will not limit either of these parties to the 
 advocates of any one system, or of any sect. In 
 all sects there are men who sympathize with 
 both parties, sometimes unconsciously. But 
 while I do not thus restrict the operation of 
 these two principles, still it seems to me that 
 the latter, the progressive principle, the hopeful 
 principle, the principle that looks with a genial
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 117 
 
 eye upon the aspects of things, and waits and 
 labors for the triumph of Love, is found chiefly 
 in the ranks of what is termed Liberal Christi- 
 anity. Yes, this seems peculiarly the Mission 
 of Liberal Christianity to break from the errors 
 of ages, to be free yet obedient, to be true yet to 
 love. Speaking the Truth in Love, is the Mis- 
 sion of Liberal Christianity. It has, then, a 
 great, a hopeful Mission. It has the Element 
 which the world needs, for which it is waiting. 
 Oh ! how long it has waited. By its old and 
 blood-dimmed altars, beneath its galling chains, 
 bound in its fearful wickedness, penetrated to its 
 very core with sin how does it wait for the 
 Truth to be spoken in Love ! Who shall speak 
 thus ? Every one who has the Truth who 
 loves God, and who loves man. In your sphere 
 of action hearer, in your opportunities and capa- 
 city, you are called upon to speak it. Be pre- 
 pared, by truly loving God and man, to speak it. 
 
 10*
 
 DISCOURSE V, 
 
 THE LAW OF CHRISTIAINTY IN THE HUMAN 
 SOUL. 
 
 And every one that loveth, is born of God, and 
 
 knoweth God. I. John iv. 7. 
 
 IN one of these discourses I have spoken of 
 the Work of Christianity in the human soul, 
 showing that it raises man above the necessity 
 for outward laws and institutions. I would re- 
 mark now that the great pre-requisite to such a 
 disposition as will insure this state, is, if I may 
 so speak, the action of man in unison with God. 
 But, in order to produce this harmony of the hu- 
 man with the Divine Will, it is necessary to 
 know God, and in order to know Him, it is 
 necessary to expand our affections and elevate 
 our aims in one word, to be born of Him. But 
 there is yet to be considered the great Element 
 that quickens this moral life and vigor in the 
 soul. This is in fact the LAW of Christianity 
 only the work of which we have been consider- 
 ing. What, then, is that Element that shall 
 awaken us from selfish and sensual pursuits 
 from indifference and sin, and excite in us a
 
 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 119 
 
 high standard of right, a self-sacrificing spirit, 
 broad views and lofty aims ? 
 
 I answer, that Element is LOVE. The simple 
 alphabet of the whole matter is LOVE. The 
 Text consisting of but a few brief words, is rich 
 with the unction of Religion, and lays open with 
 one stroke, all that is great and real in philoso- 
 phy. The proud intellect, searching after God, 
 can not find him out. That He /s, it may know. 
 What He is, it can not discover. Its last analysis 
 stops far short of the great reality, and baffled 
 and perplexed it is forced to acknowledge a 
 mystery that comes in every breath of wind, 
 quivers in every leaf, and sparkles in every star. 
 It is forced to acknowledge its ignoranee and, 
 if it would know God, must bow down like the 
 little child and love. 
 
 Each man projects his own idea of God. But, 
 it is plain, if that idea is a false one he shuts out 
 the Deity from his view, and worships in error. 
 Nations and individuals have done this. They 
 have deified the worst passions of the human 
 heart. God has been regarded as dark and 
 vengeful, because dark and vengeful sentiments 
 were in their own souls. Until Christianity 
 came, men did not know God. Altars were red 
 with blood, and flamed with sacrifice. Religion 
 was made an instrument of crushing power or of
 
 120 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 paralyzing terror. Man felt in his own heart the 
 agitation of strong and cruel passions, and he ex- 
 tended these to infinity, and made a God, or gods, 
 before whom he bowed in superstitious terror. 
 I speak more particularly now, of those to whom 
 no Revelation, so far as we know, came. And 
 even with the Jews, the FATHER was not fully 
 revealed. So much for those nations in whom 
 the sentiments were developed rather than the 
 intellect. If we turn to the versatile and intel- 
 lectual Greek, still we find not the true concep- 
 tion of God. The hand of genius could mould 
 the marble into a beautiful likeness of grace and 
 power and human symmetry but still the con- 
 ception was voluptuous or earthly. We had the 
 languishing Venus, or the manly Appolo, or the 
 brawny Hercules. But there was none of that 
 rapt spirituality that glows in the face of a Catho- 
 lic Saint, or that benignant Love that has been 
 transmitted to us in pictures of our Savior. As 
 to their philosophic idea of God, some few minds, 
 here and there, may possibly have risen to a true 
 conception ; but with more it was a mysterious 
 and intelligent Force, or a Being to whom they 
 could never rise with the sublimity of the ancient 
 Hebrew. God was not truly known, until Christ 
 came. It needed an embodied manifestation of 
 the Deity, and we have it in Jesus. Behind the
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 121 
 
 Intelligent Force of old Philosophers behind 
 the sublime Omnipotence that the Hebrew ac- 
 knowledged Christ points us to a FATHER, and 
 Christianity bases its appeals to our confidence, 
 on the fact that it is a Revelation that satisfies 
 the best affections of the human heart. Thus it 
 is peculiarly a Religion of the affections ; not 
 of the passions, but of the benevolent and tender 
 emotions that quiver, at times, in the hardest 
 hearts, and are never utterly quenched in the 
 roughest collisions with the world. I say, these 
 emotions are in the heart, though they are not 
 always acted upon, nor carried out in consistent 
 and efficient works. Therefore it is that men, 
 although they have had the Christian Revelation, 
 yet entertain erroneous ideas of God. Still, 
 with many, God is not the Father but the Sove- 
 reign not the Merciful but the Vengeful. Is 
 not this owing to the fact that these sentiments 
 are uppermost in their own hearts, and have 
 become sanctified by usage? Why is it that 
 views of God so contrary to the Christian Reve- 
 lation should prevail ? Do we not find the cause 
 in the fact that Christians, as a body, have not 
 and do not love as they ought ? Take Ecclesias- 
 tical history, open it, and read its pages all 
 smeared with blood and cruelty. Read the long 
 conflicts of dispute, the denunciations and the
 
 122 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 executions, the doom of heretics and martyrs. 
 See men who have come out from Pagan error, 
 emulating Pagan cruelty. And can you expect 
 a lofty conception of the Deity in such a state of 
 things ? Come down to the present day take 
 the selfishness, the angry, vengeful sentiments, 
 the sensual and narrow ideas that prevail ; and 
 tell me if you would not expect that contracted 
 and partial views of God should prevail also ? 
 This is the great practical point. In order to 
 know God, men must Love Love as Christ 
 Loved, who was the brightest manifestation of 
 God. They must grow in Love, and they will 
 grow in Knowledge. 
 
 To perceive that God is Love, and therefore 
 that the idea of Him that is projected by a Loving 
 soul is the true idea, surely requires no demon- 
 stration. All around us is that Love manifested 
 in the garniture of the heavens, speaking in the 
 still, green woods, gushing in streams from the 
 mountain, and breathing in the rejoicing winds. 
 All nature, like one great organ set to, melody, 
 utters it with many notes that peal and swell 
 into a sublime anthem, louder than the noise of 
 many waters. But we have seen that it has not 
 been left to nature alone to make this manifesta- 
 tion. Christ makes it, and in him G od is revealed 
 the clearest to us. It has been beautifully said
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 123 
 
 that " Nature gives us the scale, but Christ the 
 Spirit of the Deity." Nature, with its extent 
 and its grandeur, with its vast and varied works, 
 with its far-reaching compass in which the mind 
 becomes lost and bewildered, with its colossal 
 dimensions, and its irresistible forces ; nature 
 helps to form in us some dim notion of the Power 
 and the Infinity of the Being who made it. But 
 Jesus shows us ivhat that Being is who made 
 nature who is its Pervading Soul. Nature 
 displays God's Attributes, Christ reveals His 
 Essence. Yes, that Being who rolls the fearful 
 mass of worlds along, and speaks in terrible 
 thunder, and decrees in swift lightning, and ex- 
 hibits His Power in the up-tossed ocean, and His 
 Greatness in the mountain and the star ; that 
 Being is Kind, like him who healed the sick 
 Tender, like him who wept for Lazarus Bene- 
 volent, like him who went about doing good 
 Gentle, like him who laid his hand on the heads 
 of little children Forgiving, like him who 
 Prayed upon the Cross. " Nature gives us the 
 scale, Christ the Spirit of the Deity ;" and from 
 this do we know that he whose idea of God 
 springs from a loving spirit, knows God in so 
 far as he loves. 
 
 We know a great artist by his work but the 
 more we sympathize with him who is seen through
 
 124 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 his work, the better we shall know him. Through 
 the sculptured marble, breathes the undying 
 spirit of genius. In every lineament it is im- 
 pressed. But the man without genius looks 
 upon it, and calls it beautiful, perhaps thinks 
 it a nice imitation dwells upon the naturalness 
 of a finger, or an eye and passes on. But the 
 man of genius comes there, and makes it a study. 
 He sees in the whole the great spirit of a master. 
 In some unnoticed curve he detects it he traces 
 long nights of thought, and painful toil, and tri- 
 umphant success, in some minute member, or in 
 the attitude of some unregarded limb. And as 
 he looks upon it, his own genius catches fire. 
 He communes with that artist with that artist's 
 spirit whose body, long ages ago, has moulder- 
 ed in his grave ; and he goes forth himself to 
 throw out some royal creation of the soul. There 
 is something more needed, then, than a mere 
 perception of the work of that artist, to know 
 him. There must be sympathy with him a 
 congeniality with the spirit that breathes through 
 that chiselled stone. 
 
 So, my friends, using the comparison reverent- 
 ly, we may say that we know the Great Creator 
 as we imbibe His Spirit. The mere philosopher 
 looks only upon the outward work. He notices 
 the wise adjustments, the beautiful order, and is
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 125 
 
 satisfied that the world had a Maker. But he 
 knows not the Maker, because he has none of His 
 Spirit. Nature is not half so full a revelation 
 to him, as to the shepherd, who, in the night- 
 watch, sees a tireless Benignity burning in all 
 the stars, and, as his soul rises in adoration to 
 that Goodness, feels that God is very near to 
 him. The Bigot recognizes in Christ a Mani- 
 festation of God. Even he must feel that there 
 is something Divine in that unwearied Kindness, 
 and that quenchless Mercy but he loves not. 
 Dark and bitter feelings are in his heart there- 
 fore, dark and bitter notions rise and cloud his 
 perception, and God is hid behind a veil. But 
 the humble Publican detects in that Forgiving 
 Mercy that has pardoned his sins, something of 
 the Nature of God ; and the filial love enkindled 
 in his soul reveals to him the Father. 
 
 But, moreover, we may exhaust the genius of 
 the human artist. We may rise to the percep- 
 tion of higher genius than his. But we cannot 
 exhaust our knowledge of God. The finite must 
 ever find something beyond it and above it in the 
 Infinite. The more we love, the more we shall 
 know of it but we may increase in love for 
 countless ages, and while the more we shall 
 know, more will lie beyond us to be known. 
 How far are men from exhausting, so to speak, 
 11
 
 126 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the mind of Christ ! As we love we know more 
 of it. We may say that Christ is revealed to the 
 men of this age, with a Beauty and a Power 
 scarcely ever before apprehended. Hence it is, 
 that men now turn so much to the Internal Evi- 
 dences for Christianity , especially to the Evidence 
 exhibited in Christ himself. Why is this ? Be- 
 cause the spirit of Love is more prevalent than 
 it was, glowing in noble Reforms, and breaking 
 out in schemes of human melioration. As we 
 love we progress in knowledge of Christ, and, 
 through him, in knowledge of God. Christ has 
 always been the same, but he has not always 
 been apprehended in the same degree hence, 
 the errors and mal-practices of Christians. 
 But the moment men begin to perceive some- 
 thing incumbent upon them as Christians, be- 
 side sectarian disputes and war for forms and 
 creeds the moment men seize the philan- 
 thropic spirit of the Gospel, and carry it out 
 that moment they begin to apprehend Chris- 
 tianity better, and Christ, and God. They rise 
 then, from selfishness to philanthropy, from 
 sensuality to spiritual life, from low motives 
 of expediency to unshaken adherence to the 
 Good, the Right and the True, from worldli- 
 ness to devotion and faith and so become 
 Born of God. Then they begin to Know Him
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 127 
 
 to see, that He is not Power merely, or In- 
 telligence merely, or a Sovereign merely ; but 
 that He is Love. Then they are incited to 
 to act in concert with Him to love the Good 
 for its own sake to live from the Right and 
 the Holy, as the highest elements and forms 
 of existence ; and then, they need not human 
 laws, or outward institutions they "become 
 laws unto themselves." " For every one that 
 Loveth, is Born of God, and Knoweth God." 
 
 Thus, my friends, we have traced out this 
 great Law of Christianity in the human soul, 
 and indicated its operation. Does it not, at 
 once, mark Christianity as a peculiar, a Di- 
 vine Religion 1 Thus it came, uttering no 
 forms, entering into no details but giving to 
 the world a great PRINCIPLE, a Principle that 
 must do for all times and all lands, for all 
 classes and developements of men a Principle 
 that acted upon and carried out, must banish 
 wrong from the earth, and sin must raise 
 man to a knowledge of God, to harmony, in 
 all his action, with the Divine Will the high- 
 est point to which he can be raised, yet the 
 point to which he is called by all the dispensa- 
 tions of God that surround him, by the Like- 
 ness in which he was formed, by the capacities 
 of his nature, by the Mandate " Be ye per*
 
 128 THE LAW OP CHRISTIANITY 
 
 feet, even as your Father who is in heaven is 
 Perfect." 
 
 But alas ! my friends, we are far back from 
 this consummation. How few are they who 
 even comprehend the ideas of our best Re- 
 forms ! We wonder that men will resist the 
 appeals that these make. " How can they be 
 deaf to reason and to benevolence," we say. 
 " How can they be blind to palpable facts !" 
 But we do not go far enough in our considera- 
 tion we do not look deep enough. Men do 
 not comprehend the spirit of these Reforms, 
 because they do not know God. They do not 
 Love, and, therefore, they have wrong concep- 
 tions of Him. Here is the point. You may trace 
 back the opposition to these Reforms, to man's 
 Religious notions. If they do not see God aright, 
 they do not see the economy of His Government 
 right, they do not look upon man aright. Hence, 
 these schemes of human melioration, this confi- 
 dence in the power of love,'this appeal to the af- 
 fections, is to them all unintelligible. They have 
 not got on so far. To them retaliatory penal- 
 ties and severe laws, and arbitrary institutions, 
 seem right, because their ideas, of these spring 
 from their fundamental conceptions of God. 
 A great work is yet to be wrought in them. 
 Their dispositions are to be wholly changed.
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 129 
 
 They are to be taught to love then will they 
 be born of God then will they know Him 
 then will they act as He Acts, for the good of 
 all, even of the unthankful and the evil act in 
 Love act in the spirit of universal benevo- 
 lence. 
 
 Moreover : we must not, in our Eeforms, 
 endeavor to forestall the gradual progress of 
 the soul. We must not remove all restraints 
 from the criminally-disposed, nor from the 
 licentious and the passionate for the very 
 reason that they are criminally-disposed, and 
 licentious and passionate. They must first be 
 taught to Love the desire to do wrong must 
 
 o o 
 
 be eradicated from their hearts they must be 
 Born of God and must know God. Then no 
 restraints will be needed. Then human laws 
 will be superfluous. 
 
 Look again, at the Religion too common, 
 even in Christendom. What a narrow and 
 low principle it is ! A system of selfish con- 
 sideration, in which so much reward is to be 
 rendered, for so much good performed and 
 so much punishment meted out for so much 
 bad conduct. There is hardly any conception 
 of the fact that Goodness is to be loved for its 
 own sake that the white-robe and the palm- 
 crown intrinsically belong to it, and are not 
 11*
 
 130 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 outward and material things. Men do not seem 
 to realize that it is the sinful desire the low, 
 corrupt ideal that is wrong, that brings its 
 own punishment with it ; and that the very 
 existence of these material and selfish notions 
 of reward and punishment, marks the indwell- 
 ing of such a desire, of such an ideal. Hence, 
 we hear men say " If there was no hell, I 
 would give full licence to sin" " If this, or 
 that person goes to heaven, it is no heaven for 
 me." How little do they know of the spirit 
 of true Religion ! If there was no hell you 
 would commit sin T Why do you not thrust 
 your hand into the scorching flame 1 Plainly 
 because in the very act there is torment, and 
 you have no desire to suffer it. So is it with 
 sin. In the very act of sin you suffer and are 
 degraded. You do not wish to go to heaven, 
 if this or that person is there 1 Do you not 
 know that it would not be heaven if you were 
 there with such a disposition 1 Low and nar- 
 row, Oh ! my friend, are your ideas of Reli- 
 gion, which is the spontaneous offspring of 
 Love the operation of the Law of Christian- 
 ity in the human soul. It is living Holy and 
 Good and Pure for the very sake of these 
 things living a saintly life, or dying a mar- 
 tyr's death, content to know and be at one
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 131 
 
 with God feeling that outward deprivation is 
 not the greatest evil, that punishment is a light 
 matter compared with sin, that Heaven is 
 where the pure and loving heart is, for then 
 Christ is there, and God. 
 
 From these ideas of Religion that issue from 
 a lack of love, we have the formal hypocrite. 
 How smooth he lives in the glare of the world 
 how hideous are the inmates of his heart, 
 could you uncover that heart ! He is content 
 \vithforms. No thirst is in him for real good, 
 and therefore he seeks not the Living Spring, 
 but is content to drink from the shallow, muddy 
 pool of outward observance, and to confine the 
 whole of his Religion to ceremony. He does 
 not feel Religion to be a Life, to be the highest 
 Life, to be a union with God. How should 
 he 1 he does not know God. How should he 
 know God 1 he has never been Born of Him. 
 How should he be Born of Him 1 he has never 
 Loved. 
 
 Hence, too, we have the Bigot, the stern- 
 faced, bitter-souled Bigot. He claims to be 
 Religious. Where in him are the tender mer- 
 cies of Religion! Hear him denounce and 
 doom. Hear him rave and vent his spite. And 
 yet, he claims to be Religious. Religious ! 
 the Religious man should imitate God, as far
 
 132 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 as may be. But does that Bigot imitate God 1 
 We shudder at the thought ! Is he like that 
 Christ that Meek and Loving Christ 1 What 
 a comparison ! And yet he must be like Christ, 
 ere he is Religious, truly Religious. Then he 
 must be changed. Yes changed indeed. This 
 bitterness must all be quenched. This vengeful 
 heart must grow soft. A new element, as it 
 were, mnst be kindled in his nature. He must 
 Love. Then he will be Born of God. Then 
 he will know Him. Then he will act in union 
 with Him. And what an altered man he will 
 be then ! All kindly now, so lately full of 
 wrath that once-curling lip now pleading with 
 mercy's words that once-flashing eye now 
 raining pitying tears ! That narrow soul, mad 
 with the love of sect and dooming all beyond 
 its rigid pale, now almost bursting its bounds 
 to clasp all men as brethren, and lead them to 
 their Father and their God. 
 
 Once more : Behold the indifference to Re 
 ligious life, and to spiritual interests that 
 abounds ! Here is a great evil. If men do not 
 run wild with fanaticism, or become savage 
 with bigotry, or live in gross and hypocritical 
 formality, or with narrow and sensual notions 
 of religious things, they are prone to be apa- 
 thetic as to all Religion, To them it is a dull
 
 IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 133 
 
 and gloomy name an old, trite word a super- 
 stitious whim an unwelcome and disagreeable 
 thought. How can it be so 1 Religion ! 
 the communion of the soul with God its 
 highest life and its greatest consolation its 
 guide in doubt, its support in sorrow, its hope 
 in death, its " calm sunshine and joy" in all 
 this fluctuating and transitory world the no- 
 blest developement of its being. Why, one 
 would think that men would leap to it, and 
 bind it to their hearts, and love it and guard it, 
 as their richest treasure. Alas ! it is not so. 
 Men do not Love. Yes, they love but they 
 love their worldly treasures love earth and 
 time and sense love the indulgence of desire, 
 and the excitement of passion love the body 
 and its gauds love gain and pleasure and 
 fame ; but feel no throbbing for the soul's 
 life. To them Heaven is no reality, and God 
 no present Father. They are both far off and 
 unseen ; while earth and its joys can be grasped, 
 and these, they virtually deem, are enough. 
 They must learn to Love. Learn to look apon 
 this outer world, and see what is behind all its 
 varied and beautiful creations. A changeless, 
 tireless Love is there a Goodness that is 
 inexhaustible a Providence that never sleeps. 
 They must learn to look at Christ and study
 
 134 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 his Character, beautiful in its Gentleness, un- 
 wearied in its self-sacrifice, sealing its Love 
 for man with Blood Innocent Blood. They 
 must consider these until Love is kindled in 
 their hearts, and then they will be Born of 
 God, and then they will know Him, and then 
 their own souls will throb to His Goodness 
 and move in harmony with His Will. Then 
 this indifference will disappear, this cold- 
 ness will melt, this sensuality will be sha- 
 ken off, this sin will die and men will be in- 
 deed, the Children of God. 
 
 When shall that time come 1 Hearer, when 
 shall it come to your soul, and to mine 1 The 
 work may go on in our souls to-day, if we will 
 only Love Love God, love men, love all good- 
 ness, earnestly, constantly, sincerely. Is there 
 nothing that calls for this Love 1 Oh ! every 
 thing calls for it, if we will only anoint our eyes 
 and see if we will only unstop our ears and 
 hear. From the Providences of life, our Father 
 calls us from the agony of the Cross, our Sa- 
 vior urges us. We are called, we are urged 
 to do what 1 To suffer and sorrow 1 To part 
 with any thing that is truly precious and 
 good"? No : only to Love. A child can com- 
 ply with this requirement a man can do no 
 more. Only to Love, To Love Him Who
 
 Ifc THE HUMAN SOUL. 135 
 
 has so long loved us to Love Him who 
 Avatches over us when we sleep, Who keeps us 
 while we wake to Love HIM ; and for what 
 end 1 For His Good 1 He needeth not our 
 offerings. We are called and urged to Love 
 Him, for our own good to Love Him that we 
 may be Born of Him that we may know Him. 
 Hearer, this is thy great end. Wealth avails 
 thee nothing here, learning is powerless, honors 
 and lustres pale and die. But to rich and poor, 
 to the happy and the desolate, to all men as 
 Children of One great Father, a Blessed Privi- 
 lege is given even to be perfect as he is Per- 
 fect. Who will not heed this privilege 1 This 
 is Religion, this is wealth and honor, this is 
 knowledge. Experience teaches it, nature re- 
 veals it, Christ proclaims it, Heaven flings 
 back its flashing gates and repeats it He that 
 Loveth, is Born of God, and knoweth God. 
 
 Have we yet material ideas of Heaven do 
 we dwell chiefly on its crystal splendor, its 
 green palms and its golden streets" 1 Let us 
 remember that Heaven is purity and spirituali- 
 ty and holiness pervaded by Love. 
 
 'Love is the grace that keeps its power 
 In all the Courts above ; 
 
 There Faith and Hope are known no more, 
 But saints forever LOVE.
 
 136 THE LAW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Yes Hope having its best anticipations reali- 
 zed need not pass the radiant gates. Faith that 
 glowed brightest in the hour of desolation, and 
 that soared heavenward from the memorials of 
 death and change, Faith shall be dissolved in 
 vision. But Love can never pass away. It is 
 the element of Eternal Life. Even here we 
 may breathe and commence its immortality. 
 He that Loveth, is Born of God, and knoweth 
 God."
 
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