' ^ 1 "1 i 1, i 1 1 1 1 ■ 1 , 1 ' "'[^ ^ '-''''''Ml i ^ ^ i ' i -II ) \ ^ LIBRARY OF THK University^of California. Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. Received October, 1894. ^Accessions No .Oj^ / '7^ . Class No . ^ u //^/: #• LECTURES BY JOHN C. LORD, D. D. LECTURES ON THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION ▲RD GOVERNMENT, AND OTHER SUBJECTS. BY JOHN C. LORD, D. D. BUFFALO: GEO. H. DERBY AND CO 185L ^"^ Of THU*^^ ;UFI7BRSIT7] / Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by GEO. H. DERBY & Co., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York. ^7^7^ STEAM PRESS OF JEWETT, THOMAS & CO OFFICERS AND MEMBERS OF THE YOUNG Mt^S'S ASSOCIATION OF THE CITY OF BUFFALO. THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. As most of the Lectures contained in this volume were delivered before the Young Men's Association of this city, there seems a peculiar propriety in dedicating them to those, at whose request they were prepared, and be- fore whom they were first presented. I do not intend by this dedication to imply, that your opinions in relation to the subjects considered in this work, conform to my my own. Many views maintained in these Lectures run counter to the popular sentiment of the day, and in regard to some of them, I stand, perhaps, alone. There is a tendency in this country to over-ride all inde- VI DE ICATION. pendence of thought and action by the tyranny of pub- lic opinion, which is not always manufactured by those most competent to decide the grave questions which demand research, argument, and reason, for their settle- ment, rather than majorities. I have never bent the knee to this god of our American idolatry, and I never will. That you have had the Hberality, the independence, and the courage to give me a hearing from time to time, in the vindication of old-fashioned and unpopular opinions, demands from me this expression of regard. JOHN C. LORD. CONTENTS LECTURE I. — On the Progress of Civilization and Government ; delivered before the Young Men's Asso- ciation of BuflEJalo, Dec. 14, 1846, 9 LECTURE IL— On the Influence of Christianity upon Civilization ; delivered before the Young Men's Asso- ciation of BuflEalo, Feb. 11, 1847, 41 LECTURE III.— The Star Aldebaran ; delivered before the Youngj Men's Association of Bulfelo, Feb. 14, 1848, 77 LECTURE rV.— The Land of Ophir, from whence Solo- mon brought Gold ; delivered before the Young Men's Association, Feb. 1849, 105 LECTURE v.— The Immateriality and Natural Immor- tality of the Soul ; delivered before the Literary Societies of Western Reserve College, Aug. 27, 1839, 139 LECTURE VI.— The Connection of Science and Reli- gion, with some remarks upon the Free School System ; delivered at the opening of the Geneseo Academy, Oct 1849, 167 LECTURE VII.— The Supernatural Element of Christi- anity ; delivered before the Society of Christian Rc- ih, at Hamilton College, 1845. (An extract.) 195 ^^ Of Tnm"^^ USIVBRSITT] LECTUEE I. THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION AND GOVERNMENT. It is a common opinion in regard to civilization, that it is the result of the progress of mankind from an original state of barbarism. It was the philosophy of the older forms of Atheism, that nature, producing at the first the lower forms of life, gradually perfects her work from the vegetable to the animal, from the monkey to the man. This system, maintained by the Epicurean Philosophers among the ancients, has been defended in modem times by Gassendi, Hobbes, the French school of Encyclope- dists, and by Darwin and Lamark ; and though the re- searches of the Geologists in modern times have disproved the dogma that organic life is the result of a series of proceeees in which nature gradually improves her work, for all forms of life exhibited in the fossil seem to be perfect in their kind, and no hybrids are foimd indicating 1 10 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION the passage from a lower to a higher form of life, yet has this philosophy been recently reproduced by the au- thor of the "Vestiges of Creation," who attempts to establish the mechanical theory of the universe. With- out entering upon an argument against this philosophy, without recapitulating the facts which overthrow it, or showing the inconclusiveness of the deductions of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," from the more than equivocal premises which he assumes, without going back to demonstrate the identity of this system with that ot Anaximander of the Ionian school, who taught that man was originally a j&sh, and gradually reached his per- fect development, we may yet notice how the popular idea of human progression seems to have grown out of this mechanical theory of existence. Not that any considerable number of those who suppose barbarism to have been the original condition of man, believe or teach this mechanical theory of being, which is alike contradicted by revelation and a sound philosophy ; and yet the affinity of this popular sentiment with the atheistic philosophy, is too remarkable to pass unno- ticed. Goverament, no less than Civihzation, is common- ly thought to have arisen from the advance of man- kind from the condition of savages, under this law of progression. What was at first rude, imperfect and pa- triarchal in government, has come at last to be matured, and systematized, and perfected. AND GOVERNMENT. 11 Rousseau and Volney represent man, says Dr. Wise- man, as the " mutum et turpe pecus " of the ancients, thrown, according to the words of the latter, as it were, by chance, on a confused and savage land — an orphan abandoned by the unknown hand that had produced him, and left to discover the first elements of social life, the first rudiments of civilization and government Even the religious teacher has caught the popular fal- lacy, and asserts it to be a law of humanity, that the physical always precedes the moral. From the vene- rable retreats of Yale is heard the following language from one who professes to be a teacher of Christianity, who has been honored with the degree of a Doctor of Sacred Theology : " Religion is physical in its first ten- dencies, a thing of outward doing — a lamb burned on on an altar of turf, and rolling up its smoke into the heavens — a gorgeous priesthood — a temple covered with a kingdom's gold, and shining afar in barbaric splendor. Well is it if the sun and stars of heaven do not look down upon a nation of prostrate worshipers. Nay, it is well if the hands do not fashion their own god, and bake them into consistency in fires of their own kindling. But in later ages, God is a Spirit — religion takes a cha- racter of intellectual simplicity and enthrones itself on the summits of reason. It is now wholly Spiritual — a power in the Soul." This is a somewhat startling propo- sition, in whatever gorgeous language it may be clothed. 12 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION and teaches, if it teaches any thing, that Christianity itself is evolved by the progress of man, who at first is an idolater, adoring the host of heaven, and bowing down in temples covered with gold, to the images his own hands have made, and worshiping in his infancy and necessary ignorance, the material and physical, while, by the law of progress, he comes at last to worship God as a Spirit, and " enthrones religion on the summits of reason." This theory is an offshoot of the same philoso- phy, and puts Christianity in the same category with civilization and government, as the result of human pro- gress, rather than divine revelation — making the physical precede the moral in religion as barbarism is made to precede civilization, and as anarchy and brute force are imagined to be the forerunners of government and law. A desire to find analogies where none are to be found, the love of generalization, the wish to adopt principles of universal application, which, in elucidating the theory of civihzation and government, might bring them within the influence of an universal law, which should make their progress of society like the growth of plants, and give to the race in the aggregate the same advance from infancy to maturity which characterizes the individual, has no doubt led many to adopt this theory of progress. Besides, it is a pleasant reflection for every generation that they are wiser and better than their predecessors. The progress of the age, the march of intelligence, the AND GOVERNMENT. 18 advantages of those who are so fortunate as to Kve in the nineteenth century, are stereotyped expressions of this sentiment, thrown out from the press, and uttered at the bar and in the pulpit Every pseudo philosopher tickles his fancy with the pleasing idea, considering him- self a living evidence of the progress of the age, and only regretful that he could not have lived a little later to behold the fall of ancient prejudices, the overthrow of the religious principle, and the resti-aints of Christianity, at the root of the tree of which he thinks he himself has already laid the axe. It seems a pity to disturb the complacency of men who suppose they are enlightening the world with new philosophies, or wound a vanity so preposterous that it ceases to be offensive, and only remains ridiculous. Yet a very slight examination will show that every modem phase of philosophy has its prototype of many thou- sand years* standing ; that sages in Greece taught the system of Berkley and Hume more than twenty centu- ries since, and that every form of modem materialism is found in substance in the ancient schools of philosophy. Even the author of the " Vestiges of Creation," to use the language of an able reviewer, " lands as without any disguise in the sty of Epicurus." The fact is, there is nothing radically new either in truth or in error; there may be new modes of illustration, new forms of speech, new channels for the old stream to run in — cunning de- 14 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION vices to bring out in disguise an exploded system. There may be also new methods of presenting old truths, as well as old errors, in a more attractive form, but a practised observer will find that in human philosophies, there is nothing new under the sun ; that every modern system is but a reproduction ; that every new theory is really old ; that all pretended advances are but traveling over a well-beaten road ; that every fancied creation is an old face in a new dress. We all remember the beautiful lines, " Truth, crush'd to earth, will rise again, The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies amid her worshipers." There is more poetry than truth in the last lines, for, however error may die amid her worshipers, she is sure to have a speedy resurrection. Dying in one age, she revives in another, and, like the fabled Hydra, no sooner is one head cut off than another appears. It would be an exceedingly interesting investigation to trace through the successive generations of mankind the same philosophies, appearing under new forms, and with various claims to originality ; to mark how the mind is ever working in well-worn channels of thought, ever reproducing the old, which it yet supposes new, — for we do not alledge that the men of one generation are the servile imitators of a former, but that they come to the same conclusions and adopt the same theories as their AND GOVERNMENT. 16 predecessors, even where they are unacquainted with the researches and dogmas of the older Philosophers. The philosophy of every age is a part of its civilization, and enters largely into its principles of government ; and so far as the identity of the philosophy of one age with that of another is made evident, we find an argument against the popular idea of progress — the fallacy of which we hope to be able to expose. Civilization may be defined to be that condition of man in which is implied the highest development of his intellectual powers, manifested in philosophy, poetry, oratory, painting, statuary, and architecture, together with that knowledge of mechanics and agriculture, which enables him to surround himself with the comforts and elegancies of life — ^which increases population, and gives existence to commerce and employment to the capital which it creates. It is not a question of morals and re- ligion, for the highest forms of civilization have been co- existent with the grossest polytheism, the most debasing idolatry, and with an awfully corrupt state of morals, while a semi-civilized people, like the Jews, maintained a pure theism, possessing a true revelation of the Will of God, whom they worshiped as a Spirit^ in spirit and in truth. Civilization dMes not imply either sound morality or true religion, and, if Christianity may be necessary to restore to barbarians a lost civilizarion, as experience would seem to demonstrate, yet a high state of civiliza- 16 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION tion may exist and has existed, where religion was but an aggregation of absurd fables, and morality but a name. Where in profane history is the evidence to sustain the common notion, that civilization is the result of the advance of man from a state of barbarism? that law, order, and government, are but exponents of human progress? The first great Empire to which profane history directs our attention, is the Chaldean — the first that may properly be styled universal, of which history gives any notice — extending its sway over the wealthiest and most populous portions of the globe. Some authors, as Ctesias, give the Chaldean Empire a duration of thir- teen hundred years, while Herodotus limits it to five hundred and twenty. Callisthenes, a Philospher, who followed Alexander the Great, in his Asiatic conquests, says, that the Babylonians reckoned themselves to be of nineteen hundred and three years standing, which would make the foundation of their Empire to have been laid one hundred and fifteen years after the flood, according to the Scriptural Chronology. Though the history of the Chaldean Empire is in some respects obscure, yet enough is known, to establish beyond controversy the fact of a high civilization. Semiramis, by whom Babylon was greatly enlarged and beautified, ^ployed in this work two millions of men, selected from the provinces of her vast Empire ; and it is only necessary to remind you of her walls sixty miles in circumference, of the thickness of AND GOVERNMENT. 17 eighty-seven feet, of the height of three hundred and fifty, in the form of an exact square, each side fifteen miles in length ; of her one hundred brazen gates ; of the lake and canals made to regulate the flow of the Euphrates ; of her hanging gardens; of her magnificent Palaces; of the Temple of the God Belus — all works of such surpassing magnificence, says a historian, as scarcely to be compre- hended. So far as architecture and the arts are signs of civilization, we find them in higher perfection in the first than in the last ages, among the most ancient rather than the most modern. That learning flourished, we learn from the study of the stars in the plain of Babylon by the sages of Chaldea, though they had not the true astronomy ; neither had the Greeks, who are our masters in poetry, oratory, and the arts, as very likely the Chal- deans were, though we are not so fortunate as to possess their records, swallowed up as they are in the remorseless sea of time. If we have gained in the discovery of the power of steam, we may set against it the acknowledged fact that many mechanical powers known to the ancients are lost to us. The French engkieers, the ablest in Eu- rope, were unable to remove a monument a few rods to the sea, which the Egyptians brought from quarries hun- dreds of miles from the place of its erection. Many authors, whose opinions are worthy of respect, believe that the Egyptians knew and availed themselves of the power of steam. What shall we say of Egypt — whose 1* 18 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION magnificent monuments are the wonder of every age ? What shall we say of a people whose Pyramids and Temples have survived the historic records of their founders — the vastness, durability, and magnificence of whose monuments shame the puny efforts of the moderns? What shall we say of a nation who have left their hand- writing upon the everlasting mountains — the lines of whose artificial rivers are yet visible — whose marvelous hieroglyphics, but just beginning to be read, point us to the earliest profane records of our race — whose knowledge of the mechanical powers excites the astonishment and baffles the research of the most scien- tific of our engineers ? Shall we call them barbarians ? We may do so now, indeed, for the degraded Egyp- tian has been sunk, for many centuries, in the lowest barbarism. But the progress has been downward, from civilization to barbarism. This is true of the Chaldean, and of all the great Empires of antiquity, the territories of which are occupied now by a comparatively barbarous people. Civilization, we believe, was the original condi- tion of mankind, while barbarism is the law of progress. Should it be replied to this, that the basis of the present population of Europe is to be found in the inundation of the barbarous tribes who swept over the Empire of Rome in her decline; we reply, that the present in- habitants of Europe are the descendants of a mixed people — the barbarian intermarried with the people he AND GOVERNMENT. IQ subjected, and received their religion and laws, and that religion was Christianity, which, we have already said, has proved her divine origin, and the capability which she possesses of restoring and preserving a receding civilization. Christianity revives a decaying civilization, and places it on a sure foundation. This is evident from its in- fluence upon the nations of Europe, after the subversion of the Roman Empire. It is exhibiting its influence in this respect^ in the isles of the sea at the present day. Did time permit^ and did it fall in with the plan of this lecture, we might show that the Gtospel is designed and adapted, by its Divine Author, to restore the original blessings of civilization, as well as the hope of another and a better life to our race. The advocates of the doctrine of human progress ought to remember that our models of statuary are dug out of the ruins of Athens and Rome ; that our architecture is but an im- perfect imitation of the glorious edifices of antiquity; that our masters in poetry and oratory flourished from twenty to thirty centuries since ; and that our historians are flattered when they are thought to resemble or imitate Herodotus and Xenophon, Tacitus and Livy. So far as the development of intellectual power is con- cemed, the ancients are our superiors. In the inven- tions by which the elements are subjugated to the human will, by which the lightnings of heaven are ;uiri7BRsiTrl 09* 4rT^'^^: 20 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION drawn harmlessly to the earth, or made the vehicles of human thought, passing with the speed of an angel's flight over states and continents, we have progTessed beyond them. But our advance is accompanied with a corresponding loss, which leaves the question of our supremacy open to discussion and subject to doubt Besides, it is a remarkable fact, that in those parts of the world occupied now by barbarous and savage in- habitants, without the arts, without a written language, without either the comforts or the elegancies of life, the remains of a former civilization are almost universally discernible. Our countryman, Stephens, has made us acquainted with the mysterious monuments of a past race, in the deserted forests and savannahs of Central America, over which the indolent Indian, and the almost equally de- graded half-breed, stalk without interest in, or admiration of, these grand remains of their predecessors. These monuments are unique in their kind, bearing a faint resemblance to the Egyptian statuary and architecture, and yet differing in so many particulars as to make it certain they were a different people. Traces of a former state of comparative civilization are discovered through- out North America, and it cannot be doubted that our Indians are the descendants of those who, by the down- ward law of progress, have lost the civilization of their fathers7;7-:for we cannot conceive a whole people to have AND GOVERNMENT. 21 been entirely exterminated. Neither war, famine, nor pestilence ever utterly destroyed a population. More- over, the very same process is being repeated in South America The civilization introduced by the Spaniards, ig rapidly degenerating into barbarism. Our papers are filled with details of Mexico, which show us that, at best, she is but a semi-civilized state, rapidly deteriorating. A recent traveler in Peru, a scientific German, Dr. TscHUDi, asserts, that population is diminishing and de- teriorating. Lima, which contained in 1810, 87,000 inhabitants, contained in 1842, but 53,000. Dr. T. tells us of a Peruvian Minister of War, who knew neither the population nor the area of his country, and who ob- stinately maintained that Portugal was the Eastern boundary of Peru! Another Peruvian, high in place, was heard to give an exact account of how Frederick the Great had driven Napoleon out of Russia! There seems, says our author, a total want of national charac- ter about the Peruvians. "Add to what has been already shown of their cruel and sensual propensities, the fact that their habitations, with the exception of two rooms in which their visits are received, bear more re- semblance, for cleanliness and order, to stables than to human dwellings, and it will be acknowledged that not a little of the savage seems to have rubbed off upon the Peruvian." In this downward progress, thus declared by an eye witness, how long will it be before the monu- 22 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION merits of Pizarro, the world-famous Cathedral, com- menced by him, and which was ninety years in com- pleting, and the other memorials of Spanish magnificence and civilization, will stand like the ruined columns and broken arches, and mutilated sculptures discovered by Stephens, among a race of barbarians, who, without a remembrance of their former greatness, shall gaze, like the Indian, in stupid wonder upon the ruins that serve only to mark the flight of centuries. Of government, which is intimately connected with civilization, it may be said, that all the forms that now exist were anciently known. We find the monarchical, the aristocratic, and the democratic modes of govern- ment prevailing in the remotest antiquity ; and, setting aside the mild and beneficent influence of Christianity, establisliing a higher standard of morals, and amelio- rating the severity of law, we have no reason to doubt that government was anciently as well understood, and, perhaps, as well administered, as in modern times. Can any man point out the particulars in which progress has been made, either in the matter or form of government, independent of the above mentioned influence of the Christian religion? Can it be shown, from a reliable source, that the science of government is better under- stood by the moderns than it was by the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, or the Romans? Should it be rephed, that the civilization and govern- AND GOVERNMBNT. 38 ment of the ancient Empires were inferior to the modem in the more general diffusion of intelligence, and the better protection of the masses — we answer, that more is assumed on this subject than can be proved. It is in- ferred, that the gigantic monuments of ancient civilization were the result of the ambition and oppression of the rulers of a people who, themselves, had no sympathy with those vast undertaking-s. We do not altogether credit this assumption ; and, while it must be admitted that ancient civilization, as it approached its fall, was characterized by luxury and eflfeminacy, and by the increased poverty and oppression of the lower classes, of which the Roman Empire in the Augustan age is an example, yet do we not find a parallel in modern times? Compare the merry England of Elizabeth's reign with the same Eng- land at the present time, and, while the advance of empire, the increase of wealth and population, are mani- fest, can any observing man fail to see that the lower classes have become paupers, and that the masses in Gb'eat Britain are inferior in physical development to their predecessors, while ignorance, destitution, and vice are frightfully prevalent Whole districts are reported, where a majority of the people are deplorably ignorant One half the adult population of England are unable to write their names; and the subversion of this great Empire is, undoubtedly, more likely to occur from the increasing degradation of the lower classes, than from 24 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION all other causes combined. Great Britain slumbers on the same volcano that overwhelmed her predecessors ; and, amid the glorification of progress, of the increase of wealth and commerce, of the diffusion of knowledge by the press, of the miracles of steam, and the advance of civihzation, her standng population cry for bread, her yeomanry are disappearing, desperate poverty and misery front, menacingly, the enormous capital of the rich, and the pillars of government, law and civilization, are tottering under the same weight which has crushed every Empire, from the Chaldean to the Roman. But does not Sacred History bear the same testimony ? Without attempting to speak " ex cathedra/* we may, at least, look into these ancient records, in a philosophic, if not in a religious spirit — records, which alone furnish us with details of the origin and early history of our race. Not only do the Sacred Scriptures assert, that man came from the hands of his Maker in the full per- fection of his powers, made in the moral and intellectual image of God ; but they teach us that, after the apos- tacy, he remained in a civilized, and not in a savage state. Among the immediate descendants of Adam, were the inventor of the harp and the organ, and the first artificer in brass and iron. In that old world be- fore the flood, there were, as we are told by the in- spired historian, " Giants of old, men of renown." Giants they naight well become, in knowledge and the arts, as AND GOVERNMENT. 26 well as in wickedness, who lived so long, and filled the earth with violence. Intellectual development does not depend upon moral character, of which a host of exam- ples will at once occur to you. The ocean roars over the monuments of the primitive race, overwhelming alike at the command of God, "when the fountains of the gi-eat deep were broken up," the memorials of their guilt and their greatness. " Deep calleth imto deep," as the sea sounds an un- changing requiem over the sepulchre of the Old World, concealing from every eye, save His with whom the darkness and the light are alike, a magnificence which may as far have surpassed that of Egypt, as the temples of Thebes outrival all subsequent efforts of power and art The ships of modem generations, it may be, pass heedlessly over the wreck of a civilization, a magnifi- cence, a glory, which the world has known but once, and will never know again — the details of which will remain hidden until the day when ocean shall cease her flow and silence her solemn anthem, and yield up her mementos of the past, at the command of Him whose vcHce is " mightier than the noise of many waters." Take the Book of Job as a monument of ancient civilization — a book the oldest in the world, the date of whose composition is but a few generations after the flood — and where can we find a drama more finished, language more sublime, philosophy more profound, re- 26 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION ligion more spiritual, poetry more magnificent in imagery and diction ? Critics admit that passages in this book have never been surpassed. Charles James Fox, whose partialities were not of a religious cast, declared that he learned more eloquence from the Book of Job than from all others. As a specimen of ancient poetry, and a proof of primitive civilization, we notice the following passages, selected from among others of equal beauty: "Hast thou given the horse streng-th? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? The glory of his nos- trils is terrible. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; he saith among the trum- pets, ha! ha! He smelleth the battle afar, the thunder of the captains and the shouting." In another place, where God speaks to Job from the whirlwind : " Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Hast thou walked in search of the depth? Have the gates of Death been open to thee, or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? Where is the way where light dwelleth, and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?" And in this examination it ought not to be forgotten, that poetry and the fine arts are far higher proofe of the power of the human intellect, "of the divinity that stirs within us," than the invention of metal type or the manufacture of a steam engine. In AND GOVERNMENT. 27 utility, in the uses of wealth, the latter may outrank the former; as proof of liigh intellectual culture, they are immeasurably inferior. Besides, the art of printing, of which we boast so much, was known centuries before it was invented in Europe, by the Chinese, whose civilization two thousand years ago was more perfect than now. But let us look farther down the line of sacred his- tory. What shall we say of the Jewish polity? A people, indeed, not exhibiting, at their exodus out of Egypt, where they had long been slaves, a high civiliza- tion, yet possessing a Lawgiver like Moses — a law, in the ten commandments, of universal application, of un- blemished purity and holiness, from which nothing can be taken, to which nothing has been added in forty centuries of alledged progress. We have not time to look at the details of their mu- nicipal law ; it is enough to say, that it stands confessed the most perfect which the world has seen, and every jurist knows, or ought to know, that every modem code has borrowed, more or less, from the Jewish economy. Of all forms of government, it has been thought to be the most perfect " The form of the Hebrew govern- ment," says Home, "was unquestionably democratic; its acting head admitted of a change, both as to the name and nature of the oflfice, which was sometimes exercised by the High Priest, sometimes by Judges or 28 PROGRESS OP CIVILIZATION Prophets, and there were times when they were with- out a general head.'* Every tribe had its own chief magistrate, local government, and judicial tribunals, from which an appeal lay to the Sanhedrim, or Supe- rior Council of the nation. There is a resemblance, which you cannot fail to notice, in the Jewish division of tribes, with their allotted boundaries and local juris- dictions, to our confederation of States. If we claim, as we may, that our form of government prevents the central power from falling to pieces with its own weight, by combining the advantages and security of a local or state administration over a comparatively small territory with the strength of a great Empire, composed of nu- merous States, joined in an indissoluble confederacy; we have only to add, that this form of union is no novelty of our own time, but is as old as the Jewish pohty, and had its prototype in the world's history three thousand years since. Even the private police laws of the Jews, as they are termed by Michaelis, contain the germs of universal prin- ciples, and many of their regulations have succeeded in the practice of civilized nations to this day. Prof Pal- frey, of Cambridge, asserts, that there are four leading objects contemplated in that minute system of regula- tions, which to the careless reader often appears perplex- ing and useless. 1st. To preserve the people from idola- try. 2d. To promote habits of cleanliness by minute AND GOVERNMENT. 29 health laws. 3d. To establish uniformity of customs — a thing of primary importance to the Jews. 4th. To make religious obligation a subject always present and a motive always operative. The civil code of the Jews maintained the rights of parents and magistrates, and guarded the rights of property and person; secured the liberty of the citizen, and protected the slave from violence and abuse ; affording a shield of defence to this degraded class far beyond what is secured by any of the Christian Slave States in this Union, in the nineteenth century. The Jewish system punished mayhem and other personal in- juries by the lex talionis, practically the most effective in the prevention of personal violence. Time will not allow us to review at large this splendid monument of divine wisdom and ancient jurisprudence and government, yet we ought not to pass over in silence the Jewish law of entails. The modem laws of entails, in those countries where it prevails, is designed to preserve in famiHes enor- mous possessions, and enable the rich and the noble to lock up estate after estate in the line of their descendants, to the end of time, or the overthrow of the government The Jewish law of entail was aptly devised to prevent the undue accumulation of property by leading families or grasping speculators. Its provisions were as follows: Every Jewish family had an allotted inheritance in the 8

" says our author, "totally dissent; for hitherto the experience of several thousand years does not afford us a single example of spontaneous develop- ment in any speech. At whatever period we meet a language, we find it complete, as to its essential quali- ties" With this agrees Baron Von Humboldt, a master in the science of languages. "Language," says Dr. Wiseman, " in its essential features, is as perfect in the oldest as in the latest writers;" and this he confirms by examples which will readily occur to you, by a compa- rison of Homer with the later Greek poets — the earlier fragments of Hebrew with the later ; and if modem ex- amples are sought* we have only to compare Chaucer with Wordsworth, and Dante with the modern ItaUan poeta " Were there any such thing as natural develop- ment in languages," says our author, "surely so many ages must have produced it in the instances quoted ; but so far from this being the case, the earlier stages of a language are often the most perfect.'* How singularly 2 94 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATIOI? does this testimony coincide with what we have seen to be true in regard to civilization, of which language may- be termed the index. We have seen that the earliest nations possessed a high civilization ; that in most departments of learning and art they furnish our acknowledged masters; that where the most debased savages now roam are found the vestiges of a highly cultivated state — We have seen that history furnishes us with no evidence of a people sunk in barbarism, rising unaided, and by their own efforts and natural progress, to a civiKzed condition ; and we confidently believe that no one fact sustains the dogma of natural progress. But it may be said, to what end is all this? " Cui bono?'' what is to be gained by exposing an error, harmless in its nature and flattering to our self-esteem ? We reply that it is not a harmless error. The theory of progress contradicts the history of man — is an offshoot of an Atheistic philosophy, and tends to the most injurious results. What are the modern social sys- tems proposed for our adoption, but exponents of this idea of progress? Do they not hold up man as the victim of a social order which he received from antiquity, and which he has sadly outgrown in his progress ? Do not Fourierism and Owenism, and other kindred sys- tems, attribute all the poverty, vice and misery in the world to the present existing social system, rather than to human depravity? Do they not promulgate the AND GOVERNMENT. 36 idea that the masses are victimized by holding on to worn-out systems of civilization, religion, and govern- ment? They mean this or they mean nothing, by what they say; and what is this but a practical infer- ence from the law of progress, which places one gene- ration so much in advance of another, that they need new systems of philosophy, a new social order, a new di- vision of property, new arrangements of labor, and a new gospel? Every thing must be revolutionized — every landmark removed — every barrier which God has reared against the assaults of human pride, ferocity, self- ishness and lust, broken down. They invade the sanc- tity of the first great relation of divine appointment, which is the foundation of families and government, and declare that marriage is both a monopoly and a tyranny ; that the worst passions of our nature would cease to be criminal if they were indulged in without restraint — they think with David Hume, that adultery would cease to be thought a crime if it were commonly practised. Fourierism aims a deadly blow at religion, law and civili- zation, under the pretence of progress — an easy progress indeed, once entered upon, leading to perdition — ^the *' facilis descensus Avemi*' of the Roman poet In reli- gion this idea of progress is sapping the foundation of Christianity. In government the same theory is pushing •iberty to the very verge of anarchy, and laying the axe of destruction, which is called, for the occasion, reform 36 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION and progress, to the foundations upon which rest the sacred rights of person and property. Principles are in their nature immutable. Truth like God, is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. The nature and effects of virtue and vice are identical in every age. Man in the nineteenth century is but the same moral, rational, accountable being that he was in the first — subject to the same law, exhibiting the same intelligence, needing the same restraints, exposed to the same dangers, governed by the same general laws, and bound to the same social order under which God placed him at the beginning. These pretended reformations are so many assaults upon virtue and religion — so many attacks upon law and liberty — under the pretence of a larger liberty, which is only licentiousness, misrule and anarchy. Possibly the savage hordes, who now roam among the monuments of a former civilization, have been the victims of the same quackery which at this day threatens our institutions. Possibly it was the larger liberty which led on to their final ruin. The case of na- tions in this respect may be likened to that of the unfor- tunate man, who, dying, directed the following epitaph to be inscribed on his tomb : " I was well, I would be bet- ter ; I took medicine, and here I am." The people of the United States have more to fear from the new gospels of pretended reformers and the prescriptions of political quacks, than from all other infflc- AND GOVERNMENT. 37 tions. He is the true friend of his country who waras her of the danger of " pride, fullness of bread, and abun- dance of idleness" — who points out in the dim light of the past, the shoals and quicksands upon which the mightiest nations have made shipwreck — who seeks to dispel rather than inflate that pride which swells with foolish notions of pre-eminence — that folly which is confi- dent in the midst of dangers. Whatever advance may- be made in extending the field of our observation, prin- ciples must forever remain the same — the bases of civili- zation and government, of morals and religion, are in the nature of things imchangeable. Man may enlarge his sphere of action, but he cannot add to the intellectual powers conferred upon him by his Creator; he cannot change the social order — for marriage and the family relation are of divine appomtment; he cannot relieve himself from the obligations of law or from his duty to God ; he cannot invent new gospels for successive gene- rations. The Earth-bom may war with the Heaven- bom, but must suffer the same defeat which over- whelmed the &bled Titans in their contest with the gods. The theory of a progressive civilization from natural causes, independent of the supernatural influences of Christianity, however it may please the vanity of every age, is destitute of facts — a baseless fabric — an unsup- ported hypothesis, contradicted by every page of human 38 PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION history. It is an offshoot of the philosophy which ger- minates the animal from the vegetable, and perfects man from a fish or a monkey, by a process of nature, through cycles of time which make the Mosaic chronology but a unit in an infinite series. Indian tables, Chinese calcu- lations, Egyptian Zodiacs, and the lava of volcanoes, have been dragooned into the service of men, who have an insane passion to establish an enormous age for the world. The detection of old mistakes have only made room for others — every bursting bubble has its suc- cessors. Calculations in which the whole question at issue is assumed are constantly made and put forth with un- blushing impudence as conclusive demonstrations. Like Brydone's estimate of the age of the world, by the assumed time it takes to decompose lava to soil, which, unfortunately for infidelity, was demolished by the proof which Herculaneum afibrded, are a multitude of other theories which have followed — fair examples of philo- sophic speculation and the anxiety of a class of learned men to falsify the Sacred Records — to make man a pro- gressive animal, whose powers are the result of time, practice and experience — to resolve God into nature, and creation into a kind of blind efibrt of a blind and irra- tional power, to perfect its rude beginnings. If any man prefers this "darkening of counsel by words without wisdom," to the consistent and authenticated records of Ain) GOVERNMENT. 89 the Bible, fortified as they are by the narration of pro- fane history, and by the conclusions of true science, he is, of course, at hberty to enjoy his opinion, and even to indulge in the fancy of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," that Ufe may be produced by artificial means ; but that such notions have any basis except in the wishes and imaginations of men, who can never be at ease whUe God is worshiped, we deny ; that they are Ukely to exert a permanent influence, we beUeve impossible. Like the ignis fatuus, these theories appear and disappear, bewil- dering from time to time a few careless travelers, but in- capable of imitating the radiance or suppl3ring the place of those fixed stars which guide the traveler over the trackless wilderness or on the stormy ocean ; which point always and unerringly to the beginning and the end, and, while revolving in their vast circuits, making melody for the ear of God, do not disdain to adorn our night, but cast a sure light upon the darkness in which, rejecting them, the skeptic wanders forever in the misty regions of speculation and doubt, " ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the trutL" LECTURE II. INFLUENCE OP CHRISTIANITY UPON CIVILIZATION. In a former Lecture, delivered in this place upon the Progress of Civilization and Government, the attempt was made to establish the position that civilization was the original condition of mankind. Nor was this position sustained upon any theoretical basis — but by a reference to facts, after the inductive method, from historic records, both sacred and profane. Perhaps no strenuous objection would have been made to this as a simple proposition, but for the inference which was suggested from the pre- mises, to wit, the fallacy of the popular idea of the ad- Tance of man by a natural law of development from a rude and barbarous state to the perfection of wisdom and knowledge, and the attempt to show that civiliza- tion in the nineteenth century compared with the civili- zation of the earliest ages, does not sustain the common 2* 42 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY notion of progress. But objections of various kinds have been suggested whicb are entitled to consideration, and among them it has been alledged that the influence of Christianity upon modern civilization has not been allowed its proper weight. Within the Umits of a single lecture, it was, of course, impossible to consider all the bearings of so great a subject, or to show at large the influence of Christianity upon civilization and govern- ment — which, indeed, was not properly the topic to which our attention was called on that occasion. The former lecture presented the question of Comparative Civilization; it is the design of this to show the con- nection between Christianity and Civilization — in doing which it will be necessary to look into the history of both, and perhaps to notice again some positions taken in the former discussion, which, in view of the importance of the subject, it is hoped will not be thought impertinent Before, however, proceeding to the examination of this question, some objections ought to be noticed which are of a genera] character, and do not lie within the line of our argument this evening. It has been suggested that in the previous discussion, in which it was attempted to be shown that modern civilization does not possess the superiority claimed for it over the ancient, that the speaker was hardly in earnest, or, at least, was express- ing an extreme opinion, which had nothing more to re- commend it than its novelty. If the opinion is a singu- UPON CIVILIZATION. 43 lar one, it is at least sincerely entertained, and is not to be met by the ad captandum argument, that the general sentiment is the other way — for any popular fal- lacy may be thus upheld ia the face of argument and demonstration. Truth is not determined by majorities ; the heathen maxim, " vox populi, vox Dei," is false, as are many popular opinions which are maintained by the egotism they flatter, not only without proof but against it Besides, upon the question of comparative civiliza- tion, the verdict of the learned world is recorded, in seve- ral important particulars, in favor of the ancients — they concede to their predecessors the palm in regard to most of the great departments which constitute the indicia of civilization, — no reasonably well-informed man will deny that in poetry, oratory, and the fine arts, the ancients are our acknowledged masters and models. Nor is the doubtful merit of novelty due to this discussion ; the idea of a natural law of progression — the notion that many of the great principles of morality, law and govern- ment, are but newly discovered, and that we have be- come as gods, in comparison with former generations, has been rebuked by world-famous men, and exposed in some of the ablest treatises in the English language. Said that profound and comprehensive statesman and philosopher, Edmund Burke, speaking upon this very subject: "We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made in mo- 44 INFLUENCE OF CHRI8TIANITT rality, nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our pre- sumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity." Can it be possible, says one, in reply to our posi- tion, that we are retrograding? As though the bare query were a sufficient answer to the whole argument, pro- bably an ample answer for the popular mind in every age and among every people, in whatever stage of decay or however tottering upon the verge of ruin; and yet an answer wholly insufficient, a mere petitio principii, op rather, like the answer of the Ephesian populace to the preaching of the Apostles, who, in reply to the Gospel which brought their idolatry into contempt, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians." When no better argument can be urged against a proposition, than its want of popularity, we may infer, that it stands upon a founda- tion which can only be assailed by appeals to pride, prejudice or passion. We ventured to suggest, on a former occasion, that many popular impressions in regard to the degradation of the masses under the old civilizations were unfounded in fact Since then, Mr. Gliddon, our former Consul in Egypt, in a lecture recently delivered in the city of New UPON CIVILIZATION. 45 York, has fully confirmed this opinion. The conclusion of Mr. Gliddon's lecture, says a reporter, was an eloquent ex- position and defence of the objects of the pyramids, and a refutation of the charge that they were but monuments of oppression. " It was maintained that they were built by a free and civilized race — monuments of art and power, intended to do for their founders wh^ books 'do for us ; that only a good kmg^KMbv law eqjtitled to sepulture with^MiiflflflMH|^HKthe population of Egypt didVEphJ^, nipntl^^gfijl^ year were unemployed, their labor on these woi4re?w*s of great benefit to the people ; that while the good might thus be rewarded, the guilty might be punished; that they were evidences of im- mense wealth and a surplus population — proud monu- ments of architectural knowledge and wise legislation." The question of comparative civilization is one of fact. The world is at least six thousand years old, as even the opponents of Moses admit; and of forty centuries we have, with more or less particularity, the history; and this from two independent sources — the one professing to reach back to the Creation, and to be written by the finger of God — the other, the record of profane history, confirming, in an obscure and traditionary way, the sa- cred narrative of the origin of things; and for the last three thousand years, when the stream begins to run with tolerable clearness, absolutely corresponding with it in all the particulars where they testify of the same things. 46 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY When we contrast the civilization of ancient and modern times, the subject is not to be disposed of with a laugh, or by advancing a theory of progress. It is not to be decided by a presumption of superiority, or by appeals to popular opinion, but by a rigid examination of facts — by an impartial comparison of claims — by contrasting the monuments of intellectual development — of govern- ment, law and civihzation, of one age, with those of an- other, and weighing the sum of the testimonyjfe- the equal balances of truth. It is not an obscure and perplexed question, where we are compelled to resoi-t to first princi- ples or to receive equivocal or secondary testimony ; we are not even confined to the written records of which we have spoken. The memorials of the ancient generations of our race are graven on the everlasting rocks, and writ- ten with a pen of iron on the imperishable monuments by which time marks the flight of centuries. Out of the heaps of rubbish, which have long covered Babylon the magnificent from all inspection, have been brought, at length, forms of unrivalled beauty, to bear testimony to the civihzation of Chaldea. An Assyrian Museum has the past year been founded in the most pohshed capitol of Europe, and voices from the Euphrates are heard on the banks of the Seine, which, silent since the days of Nimrod, have now broken the repose of ages. From the ancient Nineveh the winged lions of her exquisite sculpture have unfolded their long-closed wings, UPON CIVILIZATION. 47 and gaze scornfully down on Venice and the statuary of Saint Mark. On the plain of the Nile the temples and pjramids of Egypt yet lift their undiminished fronts to heaven in solitary grandeur, proclaiming a civilization not only anterior, but superior, to that of Greece and Rome. Out of the Catacombs of the Nile come voices from the solemn chambers of the dead, bearing witness to long- lost arts, by which human dust was immortalized — of a splendor of sepulture never since imitated — of genera- tions of the dead — untouched by decay — unaltered by the tomb. In what place is there wanting memorials and witnesses of the past ? On the mountains of Cau- casus — in the sculptured caverns of Hindoostan — from Tadmor of the desert — from the plain of Asia, the cradle of the race — from the dark forests of the new world, looking down upon the mysterious statuary of South America, we find the witnesses of the power, the wealth, and the civilization of the primitive generations of men. On the other hand, we hve in the present We are ourselves witnesses of the triumphs of the human intellect in the nineteenth century ; we aid in erecting the monu- ments which are to tell the story of our civilization to future generations ; we know the inventions by which the modems have compelled the elemental Titians to do their will With what candor we may, we must decide whether there is any thing to warrant the high tone of superiority we have assumed — whether there is rea- 48 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY sonable ground for us to conclude that we are the giants and the ancients the dwarfs, and that man has come from a base and earthly origin — the miserable progeny of an ape or a fish — through ages of progress, now for the first time, to the fullness of his manhood and the perfection of his wisdom. And so of the connection between Christianity, Civilization, and Government, we have no occasion to theorize. The field of observation is before us. We have nothing to do with speculation or hypo- thesis. We are to collect and compare facts, upon the rigid method of the inductive philosophy ; we are to hear the testimony from the voices that broke the stillness of the desert from the rugged top of Sinai, when God spake, amid blackness, and darkness, and tempest, to the still small voice of Him who spake as never man spake, but of whom it was predicted, that He should neither strive nor cry nor lift up his voice in the streets — whose word distills as the midnight dews, falling without notice, yet gratefully, upon the parched and thirsty earth. Here, too, we must go back to the beginning ; for Christianity is but an extension of the system which commenced with the creation of man — the continuation of an economy as old as time. To show the influence of Christianity upon civilization and government, we must go to the world before the Flood, and trace onward and downward, his- torically, the course of human affairs. The creation of man, in the perfection of his nature and faculties, will UPON CIVILIZATION. 49 be admitted to be the testimony of sacred history, even by those who dispute its authority. It will also be con- ceded by all, that the same record bears unequivocal evidence of the existence of a universal civilization at the time of the founding of Babylon. This is the language of the Inspired Historian: Gen. xi. 1, 4. "And the whole earth was of one language and one speech ; and it came to pass as they journeyed from the East they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there ; and they said one to another, go to, let us make brick and bum them thoroughly ; and they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar; and they said, go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven ; and let us make a name, lest we be scat- tered abroad upon the fece of the whole earth." From this place as a common centre, God scattered them by a miraculous interposition, which account has been shown, in the face of infidel scorn, by the ablest Ethnographers of the age, to agree with the present state of language, and to be the only reasonable explanation of its primary diversities. That language was a divine gift, and pos- sessed originally in its perfection, is the testimony of the Sacred Scriptures — for God commanded Adam to name an the inferior creatures : " And whatsoever," says the Inspired Historian, " Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof" A mere child, or one im- perfectly possessed of language, coidd not have done this. 50 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Hence we think that language, both spoken and written, was the immediate gift of God. A gTeat controversy has been maintained by learned men on this subject. It has been urged by Simon, Condillac, and Dr. Adam Smith, that language was progressive — an invention gTadually perfected, which agTees with the theory of a progressive civilization — ^while Delaney, Warburton, and Dr. Stanhope Smith, contend that language was matter of direct and special revelation ; and urge many conside- rations, independent of the Scriptures, to prove that language written and spoken, was originally perfect and complete. It is enough for our purpose, to show that this is the testimony of the sacred records which establish, as far as theu* authority can do so, the fact of the original dignity and perfection of our race. After the apostacy, man, fallen from the moral image of his Creator, yet retained the intellectual powers and faculties conferred upon him ; and notices of existing civilization immediately subsequent to the fall, among the posterity of Cain, are foimd in Genesis, where we learn that they cultivated music and were artificers in the metals, which is inconsistent with the idea of a primitive barbarism. Christianity had its de- velopment in the world before the flood ; and the Gospel promise was uttered in the ears of our first parents, as they fled from Eden by the light of the flaming sword of the Cherubim waving against their re-entrance to Paradise. UPON GOVERNMENT. 51 Abel, Seth, Enocli and Noah were preachers of right- eousness. Now, in the first dawn of Christianity upon the darkness of the apostacy, we discover, what we shall have occasion more fully to see as we pass down the tide of time, that true religion was not friendly to the ex- cessive civihzation and refinement, to the lust of power and greatness which began immediately to characterize our fallen race, who would be as gods the moment they lost the moral image of the true God. We think we shall be able to maintain by the facts of History, as well as the recorded principles of Christianity, that the Gospel is not favorable to the kind of civilization which has ever characterized the great States of ancient and modern times, and which has hastened the downfall of Empires, as they have been filled with " pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness." We think it may be shown that the popular idea that Christianity induces the kind of civihzation of which men in general are ambitious, or has been the developing principle of the manufacturing and commercial spirit of the age, is a hbel on the Gospel, which has always taught men moderation in their desires, simplicity in their habits, economy in their expenditures ; restraining their appetites for luxury and wealth, by set- ting before them the hopes of another and better fife, and teaching them that they are pilgrims and stran- gers, who have no abiding place or continuing city in time. 62 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY It is a great delusion, that excessive devotion to the fine arts, the love of pomp and magnificence, the lust of wealth and dominion, and the subservience of the ele- ments to the ends of accumulation, are the fruits of Christianity. This wisdom is not from above; it is in- deed a kind of wisdom, but it is of the earth, earthy. Christianity teaches a nobler civifization — a cultivation of the moral nature — the restoration of the religious prin- ciple; it opens the avenues of goodness, rather than greatness, to human ambition ; it treats the love of money as the root of all evil, and would employ the wealth with which we float our navies, send forth our armies, build our palaces, and buy our paintings and sculpture, to open the prison doors, to preach dehverance to the captive, and restore the blessings of a Christian and rural civili- zation to those who dwell in darkness. To make Chris- tianity the great agent in European or American civifi- zation, is a slander upon the Gospel, like that which infidels cast upon the Church, when they make her bear the reproach of all the crimes, the wars, and the mas- sacres which have been'perpetrated in the name of refi- gion. But this idea will be more fully developed as we pass along in the fine of our testimony. From the brief record of the world before the flood, we learn that it was not until the corruption of true refigion, that the mingled offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men, of the church and world, became mighty men and men UPON CiVlLIZATIOlf. 63 of renown. It contains, we think, no doubtful intimation that while the Church was pure, the manners of those under her influence were primitive and simple — their desires moderate — their civilization of such a character as Grospel precepts would be likely to induce — every man dwelling under his own \ine and fig-tree, and content \vith such things as he had, living in peace and charity with all, and envious of none — possessing the comforts and perhaps some of the elegancies of Ufe — but all in mode- ration. On the other hand, when the barriers of Chris- tianity were broken down, when worldly principles and policy prevailed in the Church, then avarice, ambition, the lust of wealth, and the pride of life, and the desire of conquest, took possession of the heart; and warriors and heroes shine in history, the tyrants and butchers of the age, who are styled, in the brief narrative, " giants of old, men of renown ;" and thus, at last, the earth was filled with violence, and the waters of the deluge swept away the monuments of the primitive civilization. We are too much in the habit of confounding intel- lectual and moral development, and of making the one dependent upon the other. We overlook the fact that a fiend may possess the ability of a seraph, and that intel- lectual greatness may co-exist with deep moral debase- ment The fallen angels are still styled principalities and powers; and men may possess an intellectual grandeur without religious principle or moral cultivation. But let 'V^ OF THr"^ IJHri7ERSJT7l 64 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY US look at the world after the flood. We find them, according to the scripture narrative, building a capital city to concentrate their power and their civilization, contemn- ing the simplicity of the patriarchal government and agri- cultural hfe, just at the period when they were ready to rebel again against the authority of God, who had com- manded them to divide and possess the earth, and to defy his power by a vain effort to reach the heavens with their towers, the tradition of which is found in pagan mytho- logy. From this great centre of civilization, God scat- tered them over the earth ; and here we have an expla- nation of the subsequent history of mankind, and an answer to the most plausible argument ever urged in favor of a progressive civilization. It is triumphantly asked if Greece and Rome, and other nations, did not progress from an inferior civilization ; and hence it is in- ferred that civilization is the result of a law of progress. Now we shall find that Profane History fully confirms the narration of Sacred Scripture, showing that civiliza- tion was colonized, not created. We have seen that pro- fane and sacred history agree in making Babylon the first seat of Empire — the monuments at this moment exhibiting in Paris show that this civilization was of the highest order.* We learn that the dispersion took * Since this Lecture was delivered, the researches of Layard under the patronage of the English government, have thrown new light on the subject of Assyrian Antiquities, and have thus justified the anticipations suggested by the first specimens exhibited in Europe. UPON CIVILIZATION. 65 place at this point from sacred records, and from profane history we perceive the earliest and most renowned nations in the vicinity of Babylon. Those who removed to a great distance, scattering over the face of the earth, fell into barbarism, from which they have never been recovered, and never can be, but by foreign aid and the influence of Christianity, or the same revelation which Gbd gave to man at the beginning with a written lan- guage, and civilization — all of which they have lost To them Christianity restores the original blessings of reli- gion, language and ci\T[lization ; and it is a fact worthy of notice, that this office belongs to her alone — as the instance cannot be found of a barbarous people recovered, save by the Grospel, which carries back in its train the original gifts divinely bestowed upon men, hope- lessly and irrecoverably lost, save by this divine instru- mentality, to more than half the inhabitants of the globe. Here, we apprehend, is the origin of barbarism. Colo- nies go out from the centre of civilization; at a great distance, they encounter the hardships incident to all emigration; they resort to the chase for subsistence; they gradually lose the knowledge of the arts they brought with them ; they have no intercourse with the people from whom they emigrated ; they continue to sink lower and lower in ignorance, until they become absolute barbarians, enveloped in gross ignorance, without a re- membrance of their former civilization. 56 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Nor ought we to overlook the fact that there is a ten- dency to degeneration in man, from the corruption of his moral nature, which, while it does not necessarily pre- vent his intellectual development, yet affects his social condition, and, in the absence of stimulating causes to in- dustry and effort, drags him down to barbarism. Re- move a people at a great distance from the centre of civiHzation — from the stimulus of competition and the in- fluence of example — and how soon will they come to de- light in the wild independence of savage life. Remove the outward pressure of industry — the necessity of la- bor — the rivalry of neighboring states — the reproach of a better condition — the example of greater wealth, security and comfort — exciting them to competition — and how soon will any colony, acting under the tendencies of hu- man selfishness and indolence, without the motives which are drawn from a pure faith, sink into barbarism, from which their redemption by any mere human instru- mentality is hopeless. To overlook the tendency to de- terioration, is to overlook the testimony of all experience* A modern historian, Alison, alledges, that the depravity of human nature, is an element that cannot be overlooked in the history of nations ; and it is the remark of a politi- cal writer, that the mistakes of statesmen, and the blun- ders of theorists are attributable mainly to the leaving this element out of their calculations. The theory of human perfectibility of course denies this tendency, and omits UPON CHM8TIANITT. 57 all consideration of its commanding influences, and wholly disregards or denies the testimony of the scriptures of man's moral depravity, though corroborated by every page of human history. The dreamers of our time who would break down the barriers of government and the social system, overlook in like manner this feature of hu- man character, and charge upon those restraining influ- ences of divine appointment, which hold in check the ele- ments of destruction, the evils which, without them, would blaze out in a flame of consuming fire. Even the most savage nations have retained, (and we think it a proof of their original civilization,) a form of government, and the family and social relations which are necessary to the ex- istence of society in its rudest forms. They have lost their civilization under certain adverse influences; but they have never been able to throw off" entirely the barriers which God at the beginning erected against the dissolu- tion of society, from the downward tendency of human selfishness and passion which, unrestrained, would de- populate the world. Take a map of the ancient world and you will see that the barbarous nations are those, in general, farthest re- moved from the centre of civiUzatioh, while all the great seats of power and art are in the vicinage of Babylon. Put your finger on the map at Babylon and look to the left, or westwardly, and on nearly the same parallel of latitude, and but a few himdred miles distant you will 3 68 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY find Eg}^pt ; a little to the north of Egypt, and on the west coast of the Mediterranean you will see the ancient Phoe- nicia, and Tyre, its capital ; between the two, Canaan or Palestine. Look to the right from Babylon on the map, or eastwardly, and you find Persia and Hindoostan. Near at hand and a little to the north is Nineveh, that ancient city, while Asia Mnor, one of the earliest settled portions of the globe, is a little to the north-west. Now, is it not obvious that the colonies who first settled Egypt, Phoeni- cia and Pei-sia, could easily transfer the civilization of Babylon to these new seats of Empire ? and though at first, in the difficulties of a new settlement and colony^ always, says one, nursed at the shaggy breast of difficulty, they might neglect the fine arts and other indicia of a high civilization, and so have the appearance for a time of a semi-civilized people, yet so soon as they had ad- vanced in wealth, sending back for the civilization they left behind them, and which they had but partially lost, owing to the pressure of external circumstances. This will be farther seen by examining the testimony of pro- fane history, and following the course of civilization on the map of the ancient world. Egypt and Phoenicia have at leng-th become new centres of civilization — the one emulating the magnificence of Babylon in her Pyramids and Temples, the other rival- ing her in wealth and vexing the Mediterranean with her merchantmen — for the merchants of Tyre were Princes. UPON CIVILIZATION. 5d From Egypt and Phcenicia civilization travels with colo- nies to Carthage on the African side of the Mediterranean, and to Greece on the European side of the same sea, and thence westwardly, in process of time, to Rome — the his- tory of which will more fully illustrate our position. A colony from Troy enter Italy. Rome is founded. A warlike and hardy people, not ignorant of civilization, but struggling for a time for existence, and afterwards for imi- versal empire ; yet as soon as circumstances admitted, we find the Romans sending their young men to Greece for education, and transferring the civilization of Athens to the banks of the Tiber — just as our own forefathers, colo- nizing the inhospitable Atlantic coast, presented the ap- pearance of a half barbarous people, living in log huts, and with but few of the comforts, and none of the elegan- cies of life — ^yet, so soon as the forest was leveled, the Indian tribes driven back, and the means of living se- cured, transferring the civilization of England to the barbarous shores of North America. This, we believe, is the true history of civilization, shown both from profane and sacred records; and it abundantly proves that it has not been created — has re- sulted from no law of progress — but has journeyed from a common centre, to which in every instance may be traced historically, all the civilization on the globe at this day. A reference to the map will show that ancient civilization was mainly confined to the temperate zone— 60 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY was included in a few parallels of latitude — passing west- ward from Babylon by easy stages and upon accessible routes, along the shores of the Mediterranean sea, and eastward from the same point, and generally along the same parallels, to Persia, to Hindoostan and China ; while a similar reference to the map and to profane history will show that, as a general rule, the nations who first fell into barbarism — as the Scythians at the north, and the Afri- can race at the south — were at a distance from the centres of civilization, and were deprived by natural barriers of the constant intercourse which led civilization from Baby- lon to Egypt — from Egypt to Phoenicia — from Phoenicia to Greece — from Greece to Rome — from Rome over all Europe — and from thence to the New World. The ap- parent progress of nations then, is not a real one ; it is but a transfer — a colonization of civilization ; and the instance, we contend, is wanting of a people whose civilization is indigenom. You can, every where, trace the tree to the parent stock — the stream to the fountain; and we are driven back step by step to Babylon and Eden, and to the truth that civilization was the original condition of man. And we have before attempted to show, that its early monuments are fully equal, if not superior to those of modern times ; and that the idea of a law of develop- ment and progress from barbarism to civilization is against all testimony, both of sacred and profane history, and is simply a popular delusion. UPON CIVILIZATION. 61 The importance of this subject will excuse this appa- rent digression from the main topic — for the issue in the whole discussion lies in the history of ci\ilization — and in in this question, whether as a matter of fact it has sprung up by a law of development and progress, and grown out of infancy and barbarism, or whether it be the ori- ginal condition of man — a gift from his Creator — which, m the divine purpose, under certain favorable circum- stances, has been preserved and perpetuated — transferred and colonized — while, under other and unfavorable con- ditions, it has been lost by that large portion of mankind who are confessedly barbarians. Now we do not care in this matter to stand upon the authority of Revelation; we would simply for this purpose and for the present, prefer to use the sacred records as though they had been recently discovered and stood upon the same ground with profane history, and to any candid mind the question might be safely submitted: are not these new-found records abundantly confirmed by the traditions of all nations — by the map of the world — ^by the ancient monu- ments of civilization scattered over the face of the earth, and by all the known records of our race ? The question of comparative civilization is not exactly identical with the one under consideration, and must rest, as we have Been, upon the testimony in the case ; yet it may be safely affirmed upon general principles, that if man came* in his intellectual perfection, from the hands of God, 62 INFLUENCI OF CHRISTIANITY endowed with reason and understanding — receiving the gift of language, civilization, and the arts, from his Ma- ker — then the assumption that he is in the process of an indefinite progression, is false, in regard to the species, whatever may be true of the individual To return to the influence of Christianity upon civili- zation — we notice that the first example after the flood of the direct influence of religion upon ci^dHzation and government, is found in the history of the Hebrews. We have the laws and the literature of this remarkable people. The earliest profane historians speak of Moses as the law-giver of the Jews, and it has been thought that some of the principles of then* jurisprudence were borrowed by Pagan legislators. It has already been ob- served that Christianity is but the continuance in another form of the same economy which God gave to Moses, and hence the examination of the influence of Judaism upon the Hebrews is pertinent to our inquiry. The Israelites were of course familiar with the civilization of Egypt, where they were in bondage four hundred years ; yet tlie civilization, induced by the economy of Moses, was of a very different character. The government and social condition of the Hebrews were far superior to those of Egypt, but their civilization, upon the ordinary standard of judgment, would be thought inferior. And here, perhaps, in this early period of history, we may dis- cover the true influence of Christianity upon civilization UPON CIVILIZATION. 63 and government While it secures the rights of person and property, upon the great principles of the second table o( the law ; while it promotes freedom in govern- ment, purity in legislation, and equity in jurisprudence ; while it serves to scatter the religious darkness arising from ignorance and superstition, and to elevate the lower classes, it by no means tends to what I have ventured to call an ezc^sive civilization. We' find the government and jurisprudence of the Hebrews admirable models in every age and to every people. We find their social condition vastly in advance of the surrounding nations — but their religion repressed instead of advancing the civi- lization of Egypt They were not encouraged to con- gregate in cities, or build, in imitation of their neighbors, those monuments which should defy the assaults of time to impair, or barbarism to deface. The land was allotted equally to each family, who were to possess their inheritance in perpetuity, subject to cer- tain conditions. The Israehtes were not ignorant of the arts, as the workmanship of the tabernacle demonstrates ; but they were not distinguished for their cultivation. An example in modem times of the influence of Chris- tianity in promoting the social condition, good govern- ment, and general intelligence among a people, and a high standard of morality, in contrast with a higher civiliza- tion, and an inferior moral development, in a neighboring •tate, may be seen by a comparison between France and 64 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Scotland. The former is acknowledged to be the most highly ciyilized state in Europe, and of course in the world. This is claimed by M. Guizot, and cannot be de- nied — using the term civilization in its ordinary and popu- lar sense. Yet this pre-eminence is not the result of Christianity, which has within half a century been pub- licly discarded by the French people, and exercises now less influence upon the great mass of mind in France, than in any other nominally Christian nation. With some exceptions, religion in France is the mere pageant and tool of the state — the people are essentially skeptical and irreligious. Yet France is distinguished above all other nations for taste, refinement, the cultivation of the fine arts, and a high civilization. Scotland, on the other hand, is distinguished for the general diff"usion of intelli- gence among the masses — for the sobriety and morality of its population — and outranks in the moral element, all the nations of Europe. This was virtually confessed by the communication addressed by the French govern- ment, and, if I mistake not, by Louis Philippe, King of the French, a few years ago, to the celebrated Dr. Chal- mers, seeking information in regard to the causes of the high moral elevation of Scotland. Yet Scotland is not distinguished for a high civilization. Philosophers and divines — world-famous — are hers ; but she has few Sa- vans — few monuments of architectural skill, and little renown in the arts ; yet in no nation in the world, has UPON CIVILIZATION. 66 the spirit of a primitive Christianity been more manifest than in Scotland, the Exodus of whose church from the mere shadow of dictation by the government, at the expense of all men ordinarily hold most dear, is an abun- dant proof of the earnestness and truthfulness of the religious principle in the Scottish heart Christianity is taught, not tolerated, in the common schools of Scotland, and made the basis of education, no less than morals. Here then we see in the nineteenth century, the same influence which operated upon the Hebrews, four thousand years since, producing the same results. What Israel and Egypt were among the an- cients, Scotland and France are among the moderns ; the one demonstrating the proper influence of the religious principle — the other, of mere intellectual development ; the one exhibiting government and civilization, modified by Christianity — the other, as they exist and are perpetuated under mere human influences. It does not fall directly within the scope of our inquiry to notice at large the advantages of these two forms of civilization. It will be enough to suggest that France, with all her civilization, maintains with forty thousand bayonets, a government which is ever quaking on the verge of revolution ; that her monarch's life has been repeatedly attempted ; that it is a common opinion in Europe that the death of Louis' Phillippe will open the flood-gates of disorder in France, and perhaps provoke a general war ; and that, in all the 3* 66 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY elements of true greatness, she is inferior to that poor and barren Scotland, who sends forth her sons over the whole world, living epistles of the great truth that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The French Savan is excavating the ruins of Babylon, under the patronage of his government, and sending to Paris the glorious monuments of primitive civilization, which, he owns, are without a rival ; — the Scottish missionary and scholar is a wanderer among the habitations of cruelty in the dark places of earth, preaching the everlasting Gospel. If the work of the former is commendable, and we do not deny it, that of the latter is glorious and sublime. If to disclose on the one hand the long concealed monuments of Chaldean civilization — to exhibit in Paris the winged hons of Nineveh — be worthy the patronage of a government and the praise of France ; to restore, on the other, to the long darkened and oppressed, the hght of a lost civilization, the principles of a free government, and the hope of an endless life, is worthy the patronage of the world and the applause of mankind. Upon a former occasion, we noticed the influence of Christianity in ameliorating the severity of law, and in restoring the decayed civilization of the Roman Empire. M. Guizot in his well known treatise on European Civilization, makes Christianity a prominent element in what he calls its development; yet he considers this influence incidental and not direct He says, and says UPON CIVILIZATION. (J7 truly, " Christianity was in no way addressed to the social condition of man; it distinctly disclaimed all interference with it. It commanded the slave to obey his master ; it attacked none of the great evils — none of the gross acts of injustice by which the social system of that day was disfigured ; yet who but will acknowledge that Christianity has been one of the greatest promoters of ciWlization ? and wherefore, because it has changed the interior condition of man, his opinions, his senti- ments — because it has regenerated his moral, his intel- lectual character.'* In addition to what this author has said, it may be further urged, that Christianity did not attack the social system, because, notwithstanding its abuses, it had the same divine origin with itself. It did not attack governments, because governments were or- dained of God. It did not profess to teach civilization, for the world possessed the civilization which was origi- nally the gift of God. Of the corruptions which had overwhelmed them all, it sought a remedy in individual regeneration — in the recovery of the man from the do- minion of sin, and in preparing the way for the gradual abatement of evils, which were so interwoven with the structure of society and government that they could not be violently removed, without danger of destruction to the whole fabric. The influence of Christianity is upon the moral condition of man ; and this, in civilized states, affects, I *.bink, not the -natter but the manner of bis 68 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY civilization — ^while it incidentally and gradually works an improvement in government, establishes law, and se- cures the rights of person and property. It also re&trains that mere external civilization, which concentrates the means of a nation in magnificent monuments, and makes wealth the minister of luxury, and pride, and ostentation, rather than of goodness. We may as well remark at this place, that, while M. Guizot appears, in his work, to maintain the idea of progress, and speaks of civilization as in its infancy, yet his facts, it is apprehended, no where warrant this conclusion, unless he intends simply the moral progTess of man, which he includes in his defini- tion of civilization. We believe in a moral progress, se- cured by the divine purpose and power — that the influ- ence of the Gospel is eventually to break every yoke, and let every captive go free. Of ancient civilization he thus speaks : "When we look at the civilizations which have pre- ceded that of modern Europe, whether in Asia or else- where, including even those of Greece and Rome, it is impossible not to be struck with the unity of character which reigns among them. Each appears as though it had emanated from a single fact — from a single idea." Now, we contend that the European civilization, of which this distinguished author treats, is made up of ele- ments previously existing; indeed, these elements, com- mingled, constitute, by his own showing, modern civiliza- rrpoK CIVILIZATION. 69 tion. The unity of character, which M. Guizot discovers in ancient civilization, we contend, runs through its whole history, proving our position — that civilization was the original condition of man ; that government and so- ciety are of divine constitution, and in their great cha- racteristics, essentially the same, in every age, resulting from no law of progress or development, but that all their divei-sified streams, however they may vary in magnitude, or at whatever distance they may appear, can be historically traced back to the same fountain. Civilization, in its intellectual developments, is much the same in every age — as man is intellectually the jHune ; he may seek different fields in one age, and excel in different departments. If the ancients are our mas- ters in Poetr}^ Oratory, History, and the Arts, we may be superior to them in the mechanical inventions. But the exhibitions of genius and intellectual power are as manifest in the early as in the later ages ; and the reason is obvious — man was created with the same intel- lectual powers that he now possesses, and the social order, government, a written language, and civilization, were original and divinely bestowed upon him. On the other hand — civilization, in its moral development, is af- fected by the moral state of a community. Does a false religion prevail ? — its effects will be seen, not necessarily in the loss of civilization, but in the general corruption of manners — in the oppression, perhaps, of the lower 70 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITT classes — ^in the luxury and wickedness of a corrupt aris- tocracy. Does Christianity shed its divine influence upon a people? — it promotes good government, equal laws; it teaches men to do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with God ; but we cannot see that it adds to the previously existing stimulus, by which the seas are vexed with commerce, the elements subdued to the human will, and power, territory, and wealth, acquired and increased. We are not disposed then to deny that the Christian religion exerts an influence upon modern civilization ; but that it originated it» or is responsible for its prominent developments, we beheve to be false. Has the Christian religion driven the poor children of England from the green fields which their hardy and gallant fathers tilled, and condemned them to the fearful imprisonment of a cotton factory, to be tortured by a steam demon ? Has Christianity contrived the multiplication of machinery, which has taken bread from the mouths of the poor, to bestow enormous fortunes upon the rich ? Is the money- loving, grasping, selfish spirit of modern civilization, nur- tured upon the bosom of our pure faith ? I know, in- deed, it is possible, in the language of a poet, " to steal the Hvery of heaven to serve the devil in ;" and no one can more abhor the hypocrisy, which, with holy faces and religious professions, covers deceit and dishonesty. But the question is not of the detestable sin of hypocrisy, or trPOW CIVILIZATION. 71 whether Christianity is not fearfully abused in being made literally to " cover a multitude of sins," but whether she is responsible for our modern civilization; whether our Christianity and our civilization can be properly joined together so as to predicate the permanency and security of the latter upon the divine promise to the former. Any person who carefully reads the New Testa- ment must see that our civilization would receive a shock in any community, the large majority of whom were thoroughly imbued with its sentiments. The Puritans, perhaps, were as fully possessed of the religious spirit as any class of men since the Apostolic day, but our civili- zation mocks at the simplicity of their manners and the severity of their morals. Where is the people at this time, if we except Scotland, where the prevalence of per- sonal religion is such as to give a predominance to the religious element in their civilization ? Besides, it is evi- dent» that, what is commonly called the progress of civilization, is really its decay, and is but the ripeness of falling fruit The history of the world shows, that civilization tends to excess, unrestrained by the moral elements, and passes away from its original seats to new centres, and is transferred from among a weak and effeminate people to flourish anew in a virgin soil. From Babylon, Egypt, and Phoenicia, it traveled to Rome and Carthage, and was always in its highest perfection in that stage, in the history of these great Empires, when 72 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY it appeared to be in its infancy, and when industry, economy and courage were connected with arts and com- merce. With wealth, luxury, and excessive civilization, begins the process of decay. Even Guizot admits, that the period of the greatest apparent civilization is often the period of decay. " No one, for example, will deny," says this author, " that there are communities in which the social state of man is better than in others, which yet will be pronounced by the unanimous voice of mankind, to be superior in point of civilization." Guizot instances Rome in the days of the Republic, at the close of the second Punic war, and Rome in the Augustan age, in illustration of this truth. " The first period," he says, " was the moment of her greatest virtues, when she was rapidly advancing to the empire of the world — the latter was the period of her highest civilization and her decline. He instances, also, France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as superior in civilization, yet inferior in social order, to England and Holland, which agrees with the view we have taken of Scotland in contrast with France. We might add to this statement an explanation of the case not noticed by Guizot and which illustrates the influ- ence of Christianity upon civilization, the fact, that a far purer faith prevailed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in Holland and England, than in France ; which proves what we have before urged, that Christianity UPON CIVILIZATION. ^S exercises a more direct influence upon government and social order than upon civilization, which it restrains rather than stimulates. Need I remind you of the history of the nations that have flourished and fallen, to prove that the increase of wealth, luxury, population, and commerce, all indicia of a high civilization, are so far from being foundations of security, that they are, and ever have been, the precur- sors of the ruin of nations ? This proves the divine ori- gin of that religion, which, placing bounds to the desires of men, restraining ambition, repressing pride, and incul- cating the lesson of labor and frugality, opposes the ten- dency to an excessive and ruinous civilization, in which the debasement of the lower classes, the effeminacy, miscalled refinement, and selfishness of the higher orders, come to sap the foundations of public virtue and national security. The increase of wealth, population, commerce, and territory, instead of sustaining imaginary theories of progress and perfectibility, lead us back in the light of history and experience to the uniform causes of national corruption and ruin. Do I speak without proofs ? Go, visit the marsh where Babylon once sat, the glory of nations ! Go, read the lessons recorded on the broken arches of the hundred gates of Thebes ! Visit, Marius- like, the ruins of Carthage ! gaze upon the fishermen's nets hung out to dry, where the merchant-princes of Tyre once trafficked with the worid 1 Let Persepolis, or 74 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Palmyra, or Alexandria, or Athens, utter their testimony ! Or, if you want a crowning demonstration, visit Rome and gaze upon the shrunken spectre that haunts the places of her departed glory ! Nor has it escaped the attention of our wiser and more reflecting statesmen, that there is danger even in this young country, with its vast resources for supplying the wants of an increasing population, and its great po- litical advantage in possessing an agricultural population, having a stake in the soil and in the institutions of the country, and counterbalancing in the comparative am- plicity of agricultural life, those ulcers upon the body- politic, our large cities, which, boasting of their refine- ment, wealth and civilization, are nevertheless filled with elements of destruction — that we are exposed to the evils which follow in the very train of our rapid ad- vance. These warnings, recorded from the lips of our wisest and best men, are founded upon profound obser- vation — the admission of the corruption of human na- ture — the tendency of great prosperity, and the results of extended territory, vast population, and increasing wealth, in every age of the world, and upon all those nations whose wrecks He scattered on the shores of time. There is danger as well as folly in shutting our eyes to the lessons of experience, in the constant glorification of ourselves, our age, our institutions, our inventions, oui progress, as though genius, wisdom, truth, and know- UPON CIVILIZATION. 15 ledge, were now, for the first time, manifested, and our philosophy, our scholarship, our civilization, was the Eu- reka after which our half-savage predecessors sought in vain, and which we, having found, are like the Greek geometrician, crying out our discovery in the streets. The Greek was excusable, for he had made a discovery ; but for an age really so barren of great names, of pro- found scholarship, of artistical excellence — for an age distinguished mainly for the worship of Mammon, to vaunt itself against the giants of old, to talk about pro- gress, and human perfectibility, and man, in the nine- teenth century ! there is no excuse, unless we plead igno- rance of the great men and the great facts of History. If money be the chief good — if the inventions which save labor and increase capital are the highest manifesta- tions of human intellect — if persevering self-glorification be a proof of real merit — then this generation may claim to have passed beyond the boundaries of its predeces- sors — then have we a right to look scornfully down upon the learning, the civilization, and the wisdom of the past Besides, it is not learning, or civilization, or the know- ledge of this world, that can elevate man to that high po- sition, which, assuming to have attained, he ever finds has eluded his grasp, and which is not to be won by earthly weapons or human wisdom. That the day will come when the voices heard by the Shepherds in the plains of Galilee proclaiming, " Peace 16 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. on earth, and good will to men," shall break upon the ear of every child of Adam, in every dark spot on the globe, is a hope justified by the promise of Him who has given to his Son the heathen for an inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. What wealth, and civilization, and commerce, cannot do for man, Christianity can do. The Star of Bethlehem shining on amid a darkness that might be felt, or amid me- teors which have dazzled only to destroy, is to become a Sun of Righteousness to our fallen world, chasing away the night of centuries, extinguishing all other lights in the blaze of its meridian glory, and then restored to the moral image of his Maker, man shall walk once more in Eden, and the voices of earth shall mingle again with the anthems of heaven, as when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy ! LECTURE III. THE STAR ALDEBARAN This is a fixed star of the first magnitude, situated in the eye of Taurus. It is the largest star of the group, and with four others in the face of Taurus, composes the Hyades ; it is commonly called the Bull's Eye. The Hy- ades is a cluster of stars situated about eleven degrees south-east from the Pleiades, consisting chiefly of small stars, so arranged as to form a figure like the letter V. " At the left," says an astronomer, " on the top of the letter is a star of the first magnitude, called Aldebaran, which is distinguished from most of the other stars, by its ruddy appearance." PaUlicium is another name of this star; and the usual cognomen of Aldebaran is supposed to be of Arabic origin. The parallex of this star is not known, and of course its distance from us cannot be determined, that it is immense and almost beyond the power of num- bers to compute, is obvious from the ascertained distances of those fixed stars which are more within the range of 78 THE STAR ALDEBABAN. our observation. The distance of sixty-one Cygni is found to be about five hundred and ninety-two thousand times that of the earth from the sun, and light traveling at the rate of one hundred and two thousand miles in a second is more than nine years in passing from this star to our planet Vast as this distance is, there are observa- ble stars, and Aldebaran is probably one of them, who are, perhaps, a hundred times farther from us, and from whom the passage of fight to the earth may be reckoned by centuries. But it is no part of our design to enter upon the details of the vast subject of Astronomy. There are those here far more competent to such a task than the speaker — some of whom have won a degree of de- served celebrity in this department of science. The star Aldeharan is simply our motto; we use it as some preachers improve passages of Holy Writ, merely by way of accommodation. This is a convenient mode when one is desirous of having no very close connection between his text and his sermon, of hanging a great variety of topics upon the thread of his discourse, fike beads of dif- ferent sizes and material, strung without form or order. But though we intend to be discursive, we hope not to be tedious. The star Aldebaran is not so comprehensive a topic as the one selected by an old author, who wrote in Latin, and who entitled his book, " De Omnibus rebus et quibusdara afiis," — " concerning all things and some others," — which at least was giving his readers fair warn- THE STAR ALDEBARA17. 70 ing of the Herculean task they were about to enter upon. Some may condemn us as presumptive in selecting so high a theme. What can he tell us of this star, upon whom no man has laid the measure, or stretched a line iip(m it ? Will the wings of his imagination carry him over that impassable solitude of space that separates the Earth from Aldebaran — will not his pinions. melt like those of Icarus before he has fairly taken his departure from this planet ? With the writer of the aforesaid book upon " all things and some others," we may fall into the condemnation of unpardonable presumption. On the other hand it will be said, that the topic is unworthy this enlightened age, in which there is so much to admire and applaud — that a man is a fool to talk about any other stars than those which began to shine in the nineteenth century, and before whom Aldebaran and all the ancient lights must " pale their ineflfectual fires." What pre- sumption is this, says one, to bring before us an insignifi- cant star, whose twinkling is only noticed by a few Tisionaries, who are behind the intelligence of the age, unmindful of those glories which have newly risen to to drive away the darkness of antiquity. What utility is there, says another, in discussions about stars ? — what money is there to be made out of such investigations ? — what impetus can be given to that progress which is the glory of the modern generations, and the shame by con- trast of the past ? How can any man have the face to 80 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. leave the beaten track of glorification, to go into the for- bidden paths of ancient and forgotten things ? How much better those themes whose popularity is as exhaustless as is the appetite of the vanity to which they minister — which are sure of success — which never fail of that ap- plause which the law of reciprocity demands, agreeably to the Scotch proverb, " some thing for some thing," or " flatter me and I'll flatter you." But, notwithstanding these anticipated criticisms, we hope that our star will meet with favor — that Aldebaran being a fixed star, may be allowed to shine without the aid of borrowed fight We have no expectation of shining as a bright and par- ticular star, and desire no greater encomium than the usage demands. We ask no brighter coloring for Palifi- cium pictures from the press than that which is used at every sitting and for the common portrait, which, in the poetic and elegant phraseology of the West, " is as large as fife and twice as natural." We hope the antiquity of Aldebaran will be excused, for he has continued to shine while many lesser though apparently brighter lights have gone out Many a Meteor has startled the nations and fified the horizon with light» which has only left behind it darkness more intense ; but Aldebaran began to shine when the " morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." From that day to this, with uniform and steady lustre he has looked out upon the mutations of human affairs. Upon THB STAR ALOEBARAN. SI Eden, the garden of God, shone the eye of Taurus, and upon the primitive and happy pair who sat by the tree of life, and saw its silver leaves glimmer in the rays of Palilicium. He looked pitifully out upon the ruins of the fell and saw those generations who filled the Earth with violence. The light of this star gleamed upon the waters that swept away the inhabitants of the old world, and covered the earth as with a garment Upon Alde- baran and his constellation, Noah and his household gazed from the Ark with hope — seeing that God had not dis- turbed the heavenly bodies — the stars yet shone in their courses, though he had smitten the earth with a curse. His rays played scornfully upon the towers of Babel, which sought to lift themselves among the stars, and and were thunder-smitten. He looked into the eyes of the star-gazers, who, in the plains of Chaldea, first sought to mark the laws of the heavenly bodies and to map their courses. Upon that night of fear, when the Angel of the Lord smote the first-bom of Egypt, in every house, looked out Aldebaran. His beams fell upon that com- pany who wandered through the wilderness and heard the voice of God from the precipices of Sinai. Upon the Shepherds who watched by night in Gallilee and heard the annunciation of a Saviour's birth, beamed Aldeba- ran — ^his eye rested upon the Sepulchre of the Lord of Life, and upon the Roman guards that watched its por- tals. He saw the wolf-nurtured founders of ancient 4 92 THE BTAR ALDEBARAN. Rome, and shone upon the Kingdom, the Republic, and the Emph-e. His light was reflected from the Pagan altars, and from the Christian temples of the Eternal City. Her Kings and Consuls, her Dictators and Tri- bunes, her Senators and Emperors, passed in succession before Aldebaran. He saw her rise and fall, and the broken fragments of her empire, out of which the modern kingdoms of Eiirope came, and he shines on with the same calm and holy light which beamed from him at the beginning. Think not the less kindly of Alde- baran for his age ; if he has made no progress he has at least lost none of his pristine glory. If he does not glow the more and shine the brighter in view of the amazing advances of the nineteenth century, think what an apology he has before whom so many generations, with the same bright hopes, the same fond anticipations, the same expectations of progress and the same certainty of success, have passed and been broken on the rock- bound shores of time. Consider how he is bewildered in his conclusions by his experience of the past — not perceiving, as we do, that our pride has any better foun- dation or our progress any more certain result than that of other ages, whose expectations have perished, and over the broken monuments of whose magnificence, Aldebaran now shines as he did in their day of promise and glory. Perhaps the stars are offended because we have de- parted from the faith of their ancient votaries. We THE STAR ALDEBARAN. 83 hold up to scorn the pursuits of the old Astrologer who saw, or fancied he saw, connections infinite in the uni- verse — who, ignorant of the subUme discovery of modem times, that men are bom imder bumps, beUeved that they were born under stars, and watched the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies and marked those wliich were pre- dominant in the house of life. He cast a horoscope of the heavens (the benighted man) instead of drawing a chart of the head. If Mars was in the ascendant, he predicted the characteristic of fiery courage for the child born under the influence of the blood-red planet, while, with a wisdom which excites astonishment among the heavenly bodies, the moderns predict combativeness from a particular protuberance of the brain. Nor" should it be forgotten that our Aldebaran has a red and fiery ap- pearance, like Mars, and is, possibly, a vehement and pas- sionate star, and the more readily angered to see the As- trologer driven from his tower, his Astrolabe broken, his lofty conceptions ridiculed, his high imaginings of con- nections between the inmiortal soul of man and the glo- rious orbs that preside over his birth, cast down before the earthly and sensual speculations of modem philoso- phy. Possibly he has incited the other stars to join in a conspiracy not to honor this gifted and remarkable, this unsurpassed and unsurpassable age, with any extraordi- nary degree of shining, or unusual commotion, on ac- count of this dishonor cast upon the ancient votaries of lUi 84 THE STAR ALDBBARAN. the heavenly host. The stars have the presumption to think that the old delusion was more pardonable than the new — more honorable to them and more agreeable to the analogies and connections of the universe. They have the hardihood to believe, that there are higher signifi- cances in them than magnitude, motion, and distance, and that God created and suspended them in space, not only that they might be measured, their motions ascertained, their revolutions counted, and their distances observed, but to teach great moral lessons of the being and glory of him who made them, and of the immutability and ac- countability of the creatures who are able to survey and comprehend them ; and the foolish stars think, that even judicial astrology, fanciful as it was, and false in its appli- cation, was yet a nobler and more excusable error than some of the philosophies of this enlightened generation. Possibly the stars, bhnded by ancient prejudices, have an idea that the old exploded Alchemy, the parent of our modern Chemistry, is not without a counterpart in our times, which, we know, thanks to our freedom from all prejudices, are the days of progress and perfection. It is highly probable that Aldebaran, that old fashioned Star, has a notion that the search after the philosopher's stone — the effort to transmute the metals to gold, based upon a true philosophy that all metals and all forms of matter, having a common basis, being resolved by fire into certain gases, and failing only because our chemistry is THE STAR ALDEBARAN. 85 not as perfect as that of nature — was as respectable a pursuit as that which seeks to demonstrate a universal animal attraction, which transmutes souls and passes them out of their own natural bodies into those of others. He might argue, if stars reason, that the partial success which has attended the efforts of the French chemists to form diamonds from carbon, proves that the attempt of the Alchemist to manufacture metals, was not really so absurd as this enlightened age imagines ; or, at least, is no more ridiculous than some things which characterize a generation which so easily discover the mote in the eye of the former generations without perceiving the beam in their own. If our Star has such notions, it certainly is an explanation of his extraordinary equanimity, in view of our progress, and an apology for him and the other stars for not holding a jubilee over the nineteenth century. • Besides, the stars are prejudiced in favor of that old Gospel, the proclamation of which they heard in that hour of sorrow when condemnation, depravity and death became the sad inheritance of our race. They heard its annunciation in that day of doom ; they saw its light break upon the darkness ; they have watched its course and progress through successive dispensations for more than six thousand years, and they believe in it yet ! They do not see, with its, that whatever is old, is necessa. rily false, and whatever is novel, is, for that cause, to be received as true. With the suspicion common to age — THE STAR ALDEBARAN. and they are old enough to be in their dotage — they re- gard the new gospels which we discover^ to be the fore- runners of a gTand political and philosophical millenium, with little favor; they think the old is better, and will finally work its divinely predicted end. They have seen a great many failures of similar inventions in their long watch as sentinels of the sky, and they foolishly conclude that those of our projection are no better. Unhappy stars, who, because they have themselves made no ad- vances, but shine with the same hght and revolve in the same orbits as at the beginning ; who, for the reason that they see no law of progress in that vast mechanism of Almighty God, in the natural universe, which moves in the same order, obeys the same laws, and fulfills the same gTand end as in the day when GOD said, " let there be Ught, and light was ;" who, because the Creator has endowed the diflferent orders of his creatures with powers which distinguish them as angels or men — as greater or lesser lights are known among the heavenly bodies, and as one star diflfereth from another star in glory — conclude, that men are likely to continue men^ while in the body, characterized in every age by similar powers, and wholly unable to usurp the thrones of the Cherubim. Because they have never seen a star leave the orbit for which it was made, to pass into another, or a planet become a suu, they reject the doctrine of pro- gress, and with an inconclusive reasoning, marvelous in THE STAR ALDKBARAJf. 87 OUT eyes, they judge that the men of the mneteenth cen- tury are of like passions and of like intellectual endow- ments with those of former generations, whose passage over the stage of life they have marked for so many ages. But while the benighted stars have watched, and the red eye of Aldebaran has been looking out upon the generations of men, what human eyes have marked the constellations and returned the gaze of Taui'us ? Who was it in Arabia, that, seeking the cool night to traverse the burning desert* inflamed by the sun, and charmed with the aspect of the great Star in the Hyades, gave him the poetic and magnificent name of Aldebaran ? How many travelers in that cloudless and arid climate have watched for the appearance of this Star, and hailed him and his fel- lows with joy — as Southey makes his pilgrim in the de- sert exclaim, " How beautiful is night ! See what a balmy freshness fills the air- How beautiful is night]!" In the plains of Arabia, in the days of the Patriarch Job, within a few centuries after the flood, men looking at the stars, heard voices from the heavenly host — " Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus and his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?" Some of the 88 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. Arabians saw God in the stars, and said, "He com- mandeth the sun and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars, which alone spreadeth out the heavens — which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south." Others in that early and primi- tive age, profanely worshiped the host of Heaven, " kiss- ing their hands" to the moon, walking in her brightness, and adoring the stars, shining in their courses. Our Star is named in the ancient and sacred book of Job, whose Chimah and Chesil are Taurus and Scorpio; and Dr. Hales reckons the time of Job by the allusion made to Al- debaran and his position. Distinguished among his fel- lows, the chief in his constellation, how many eyes in every generation have watched Aldebaran. Some, in the igno- rant yet beautiful simplicity of the child who fancied the stars were openings to let glimpses of the heavenly glory through; others, in the dawn of science, perceiving something of the truth, observing the revolutions and motions of the heavenly bodies, and though ignorant of the true astronomy, yet conjecturing what is now demon- strated, that all "are but parts of one stupendous whole," perverted the great and just idea of mutual influences and dependencies to the uses of judicial Astrology, which, though false in its details, was still a gTand and poetic imagination, which had its foundation in truth. How many eyes, who have watched the stars, have since, it may be, fathomed their mysteries, having been clothed THE STAR ALDEBARAN. 89 upon with the spiritual body and permitted to inspect the universe 'as we now survey the planet we inhabit As it is now demonstrated that thought may be commu- nicated upon the lightning's wing, as messengers swifter than those creations of the great dramatist, who, at their master's bidding, "Trode the ooze of the salt deep, And TSJi upon the sharp wind of the north," and " Put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes," are now performing the business of men, and passing their messages without the perceptible passage of time — the doctrine of a spiritual state and a spiritual body ought no longer to appear incredible to the most skep- tical philosophers. A glimpse of the powers of the world to come seems to be given us in this mysterious agency, which breaks over the barriers of time and space, and is not amenable to the laws which ordinarily regu- late all material things. As in the gradations of creature existence there are links connecting the diflferent orders of being, from an insect to an angel, so there may be between the material and spiritual world — ^between the natural body and the spiritual body — between the life that now is and the Ufe to come — an agency which, while belonging to the one, manifests something of the powers of the other. Who can, with any consistency, impeach the doctrine, that the soul in another life may 4* 90 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. be clothed upon with an organization, in which it shall pass with a rapidity exceeding that of light, seeing that it can employ an agent here whose motion is independent of time — ^whose speed is unlimited by space ? It would be no unfounded and visionary, speculation, then, if there were no warrant from Sacred Scripture, which would transport in another organization to this distant Star, those who in time gazed into the eye of Taurus, in the watches of the night, desirous to know the secrets of that glorious galaxy, "Forever singing as they shine, ♦ The hand that made us is divine.' " To them Aldebaran is now seen a glorious sun, around whom revolves a vast planetary system — a world, filled with life, to whose inhabitants our planet is invisible, and who behold the sun of our system a twinkling star adorning their night, as ours is illuminated by the Hyades, in that beautiful system of reciprocity and mutual dependence which characterizes the material universe, and is analogous to that great law of love that binds all intelligences in the moral government of God. Perhaps those to whose vision the secrets of Aldebaran have been exposed, have found this law unbroken there, and discovered in that great world a race who have never been corrupted by the mad ambition to become as gods, knowing good and evil — who have never been bewildered by proclamations of a law of progress from that arch rebel who is " King over all the children of THE STAR ALDEBARAN. 91 pride," that " Coyering Cherub" who once sat " amid the stones of fire," but fell from his high estate, because he would be higher, and now, " Prince of the fallen, around him sweep The billows of the burning deep." Perhaps the temptation, "ye shall be as gods," and "ye shall not surely die," was resisted in Aldebaran, whose simple inhabitants yet rejoice in their original holiness, content with their Eden, and knowing neither sin, sor- row, or death. We may suppose that they who now with angel's flight pass roimd the mighty orb, which was once seen by them as a twinkling star, behold an unbroken law and a perpetuated paradise. They survey an innocent world, creatures uncontaminated by sin, hap- piness unmingled with the alloy of transgression. No curse has entered there — no cry of violence is heard — no voice of brother's blood ascending to the heavens, calling for vengeance. No warring elements contend for mastery — emblems of the unruly passions they are com- missioned to chastise — no ministers of death, pale-visaged and remorseless, pursuing with hot haste the fellen and condemned — whose life, for their sins, is made as a vapor, and whose " days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle." The king of terrors has no dominion where sin has had no entrance, and the shadow of his fearful power has never fiillen on Aldebaran. Those who dwell in that fortunate world know nothing of evil, and have no more thought 92 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. of becoming gods than has Aldebaran himself of leaving his sphere to revolve in the eccentric orbit of a comet. Pride, passion, envy, and revenge, are unknown ; covetousness, ambition, and cruelty, are words not found in their language ; and having fulfilled their day in peace and happiness, they pass from that form of life which confines them to their particular world, to become citi- zens of the universe — as Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and " was not, for God took him." So in the unfallen worlds, the change from the first and inferior form of Hfe to the second and superior, may be without pain, surprise, or fear. In the entire frame- work of the universe there are two manifest designs, two dis- tinct ends : the one is found in the isolated world, intended for the first form of life and observation to the rational creatures, in which they are confined by the impassable barrier of an atmosphere, and from which they cannot escape, but by a radical change in their mode of life, by passing from an animal and natural into a spiritual body, subject to different laws; the other is seen in the entire system, designed for the second and higher order of hfe, in which, released from its former and limited organization, the soul enters upon the Universe, and becomes a citizen of the commonwealth of the entire material creation, and is at Hberty, unless prevented for transgTession, to range over the whole, and to inspect it with the same freedom with which a single planet or world was surveyed in the THE STAR ALDEBARAN. 93 first and inferior form of existence. We think that this is indicated in the structure of the Universe ; and that, knowing that our world, and all single and particular worlds were made for the inspection of rational creatures, we are bound to infer, that all suns and systems in the ascending series, to the whole vast and to us infinite creation, which is yet one in the correspondence and de- pendence of its parts and the unity of its plan, are de- signed to be seen and comprehended, surveyed and examined, in a higher form of hfe. To doubt this is to disregard the ob^^ous analogy which is presented by our own position and powers, in respect to our world and the present existence. Has God made planets to be in- habited by rational creatures, who are capable of survey- ing and mapping its parts, calculating its powers, of mea- suring its dimensions, of enjoying and admiring its beau- ties — and has he not made the entire system for the same purpose, to be seen and known in a higher form of life, as its parts are in an inferior ? Is there really any thing incredible or even difficult in this, on philosophical principles ? Are there not changes in the lower forms of life and within our own inspection, as marked and marvelous ? The water-worm, that, in its dark and slimy bed, apprehends only the few inches of sand in which it makes its circuit, and the few shells which lie within its observation, having fulfilled its first mode of organic life, rises to the surface, casts off its skin, which it leaves a 94 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. dead thing floating on the water, and rises into the atmo- sphere, and looks upon the sun, still an insect indeed, but an insect now with wings, beautifully appareled and capable of a flight and of a survey, which, by contrast with its former condition, is as remarkable as a transfer from a planet to a universe. But, it is time to forbear, for some of you may suspect me of a design to preach, rather than philosophize — a thing unpardonable before a literary association and when dealing with so fanciful a subject as a Star. Yet we must be allowed to magnify Aldebaran, that he may shine among the other stars which have attracted your attention, and won so much deserved applause. "Every man for himself," is the motto of our world, whatever is the maxim of the Aldcbaranites ; of course, every man for his own star — to do the best he can to make it twinkle among its fellows. Besides, have not progress, self-reliance, self-improvement, and other matters of glori- fication, been the great themes of the winter, ably urged, powerfully vindicated ; so that those of the contrary opinion, hide their diminished heads, vdth the sole con- solation that if the doctrine of progress be true, they belong to the movement, and if self-reliance be the grand secret of success, they have only to put a good face on affairs, and make up by a commendable self-esteem, for the slights and neglects of the public. By the law of pro- gress, ought not the new invariably to surpass the o/c?, THX STAR ALDEBARAN. 95 and should not the last lecture be always reckoned the best ? While upon the popular principle of self-reliance, is not a man justified in standing to his own opinions, right or wrong, if all the world were against him ? But as one popular fallacy sometimes destroys another, we would respectfully suggest, that some future lecturer take up the subject of the omnipotence of public senti- ment It would be easy to show in the first place, that majorities are always right; and, secondly, that they should always rule ; and, thirdly, that he who refuses to follow their lead, ought to be forthwith hung up, being worthy of death, as a terror to evil doers, unless, indeed, that long desired law, abolishing the death penalty, shoidd be enacted, which is to constitute the crowning demonstration of our progress. The lecturer might show that all the responsibilities of indi^ddual opinion are avoided by adherance to majorities — all the trouble of thinking, and all the odium of singularity. He might add, that the age of heroes and prophets has passed — that in the progress of human aflfairs, it had come to be seen that the only just dominion is that of public sentiment, and that the multiplication of cyphers, whose product was formerly thought to be nothing, is now demonstrated to give a grand sum total, in the new arithmetic ; or, in other words, while the individual (by the supposition) is a mere cypher, whose opinions are of no importance, the judgments of individuals in the aQore ffate are the per- ©»• 96 THE STAR ALDEBABAK. fection of wisdom and knowledge. But is self-reliance compatible with a proper submission to popular opinion ? Is it not swallowed up as were the little serpents of the Egyptian sorcerers by the serpent rod of the new pro- phet, whose name is LEGION? But if there are Philosophers in Aldebaran — ^which is highly probable — ^if literary associations and lectures are established in that distant orb — it is possible that their views might differ altogether from ours on the subject of self-reliance. In their ignorance and simplicity, they might give utterance to such sentiments as the follow- ing: — "We are happy in having escaped the fate of the apostate angels who fell from their high estate, as it has been revealed to us, by the sin of pride, forgetting their dependence upon God, in whom all creatures Uve and move and have their being — they set up for themselves and lost their thrones in heaven ; it is intimated in our Scriptures, also, that in an obscure and distant world, a similar ruin resulted from a similar cause. Beware, then, ye dwellers of Aldebaran, of a like presumption. Trust not in yourselves, but in Him who made you. Rely not upon your own wisdom, but upon His, whose understanding is infinite. Glory not in your own strength, for there is no power but of God. In your most arduous efforts seek His aid, without whom we can do nothing, and who, when we work in this necessary dependence of the creature upon the Creator, works in us to will THE STAR ALDKBARAW. 97 and to do, so that we can do all things through the divine assistance. The security of all the innocent and holy is in their felt dependence; the misery of all fallen beings is their self-reliance. In this ignorant and simple way, it may be the Philosophers of our Star speak to their admiring, because unenlightened congregations. It is a remarkable fact, that there is an old Book in our world which contains similar antiquated sentiments, which says, among other things, that, "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool ;" and it is upon record that a stalwart old fenactic, by name Oliver Cromwell, who believed in this book, told his soldiers on the eve of a great battle, which he won, as he strangely enough did the most he fought, "to put their trust in God and keep their powder dry," placing self-reliance in a secondary and inferior position, while our progressive philosophy has made it the first, if not the sole means of success. But no better light has beamed on Aldebaran, no new philosophies, no social systems of human invention; they go along the old beaten track of duty, and obedience, and dependence, and if ever our rare inventions enable us to communicate with this unfortunate world, (and who can limit our pro- gress?) we ought at once to send missionaries to its be- nighted inhabitants that they, like us, may become as gods, knowing good and evil. We might transfer to them po- litical apostles from the extremes of both our great par- ties without any irreparable loss to ourselves, who should teach them the principles of progressive democracy. 98 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. We might also spare without great damage to our world, a few of those renowned discoverers who invent new gospels every year, to instruct the Aldebaranites in the mystery of a progressive religion and to inform their ignorance in regard to the causes of apostacy and trans- gression, resulting not from sin, as their musty old books declare, but from the defective social systems under which God placed angels and men — a remedy for which, thanks to our progress, has now been discovered. In fact, we might colonize a portion of our pohtical and religious re- formers and of our progressive pliilosophers, with high advantage to ourselves, whatever might be the result to Aldebaran, and as charity begins at home, their exodus as missionaries from us would wear a highly philanthro- pic and benevolent aspect Possibly this scheme might result in annexation, as did the early emigration of a band of Reformers to Texas, and if Aldebaran should prove refractory and our means of communication would enable us to transport the munitions of war, we might reform them as we have the Mexicans, by the eloquence of cannon, and convince them by the gentle persuasives of powder and ball, and enlighten their darkened understandings with bombs and burnings. Unhappily it is not demonstrable that these desirable results can be immediately accomplished, or that our communications with Aldebaran will be speedily opened THE STAR ALDEBARAN. 99 One hates to question any thing in the line of progress, but candor compels us to say that there are difl&culties of distance and atmosphere to be overcome, which lead us to conclude that this achievement will be reserved for a future, and, of course^ a more enUghtened generation. But unconscious of these machinations against the peace and prosperity of his inhabitants, Aldebaran shines on, happy in his comparative ignorance of our remark- able world, esteeming us only as one of the lesser hghts, made to revolve around and depend upon those great luminaries, who, with himself are centres of systems — suns, in whose light and heat the inferior planets rejoice. Perhaps Aldebaran and the other Stars, if they were fully advised of our improvements and advances, and could be made to appreciate them, would say to the Earth as the Cedars of Lebanon are represented in the Scriptures to have said to the bramble : " Come thou, and reign over us," to which, with the briar, we might be supposed to make the magnificent reply : " Come, and put your trust under my shadow." But other than fanciful or satirical thoughts are sug- gested by the night-watchers — those glorious sentinels who indicate the vast and yet undiscovered army who lie back of them in the profound depths of space. How immeasurable is that Omnipotence which fash- ioned these vast bodies — which communicates and con- tinues their motions — which holds them in their courses 100 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. — which works their grand and complicated mechanism without disruption, disorder, or confusion. What contrasts of permanency and continuance with change and decay, arise in the mind from the contempla- tion of the fixed stars from this world of ours ! The red eye of Taurus, that looked out upon the fresh-wrought capstones of the greatest of the Egyptian Pyramids, raised to their lofty position amid the voices of shouting millions, which, hke the noise of many waters, celebrated the completion of a monument which was to perpetuate the fame of their king and the glory of his subjects — now shines upon its time-worn summit with the same lustre, though the name of the monarch is forgotten, and the dust of the people by whose labor it was erected, has covered and concealed its base. The beams of Aldebaran rested upon the towers of Babylon in her day of pride, and gleamed on the gigan- tic image in the plain of Dura, to whom all nations and tongues were commanded to do homage by the proud Prince, who filled the throne of the first Universal Monarchy ; the same star now glistens on the waters of the Euphrates, which have long since buried beneath their marshes the last memorial of the golden city which sat queen among the nations. That race of giants, who founded the hundred-gated Thebes, ages before the wing of the Eoman Eagle was fledged for conquest — who built the temples which Homer THE STAR ALDEBARAN. 101 celebrated, which mock the efforts of succeeding gene- rations — who designed and elevated that wonderful statue of Memnon, which the morning sun made vocal — who wrought the mysterious and massive features of the Sphinx—saw Aldebaran gild their yet unrivalled monu- ments of art, genius, and mechanical power; — their pigmy successors, barbarous and hunger smitten, wander by the light of the same star among ruins, the grandeur of which has hardly been impaired by the flight of thirty centuries — for Memnon and the Sphinxes still keep watch and ward over "Thebais Hecatompylos." The soldier who watched by night upon the walls of Tyre, the ancient Mistress of the Sea, when Alexander was thundeiing at her gates, saw the beams of Alde- baran cast upon the fleets and armies, which girt, in their deadly embrace, the Emporium of the Commerce of the East, "whose merchants were princes;" — no wall, no sentinel, no towers or ships, or hostile legions, sees Pa- lilicium now ; he shines on a bare rock where a few poor fishermen spread their nets to dry. Upon a collection of rude huts on an island in the Seine, and still ruder fortifications of the wild Gauls, looked the Star Aldebaran two thousand years ago — now the same light rests upon a city of a million of souls, to which the civilization, the arts the literature, and the profligacy of Athens and Corinth have been transferred, and flourish with somethmg hke their pristine vigor. 102 THE STAR ALDEBARAN. Upon Druidical rites and human sacrifices shone Pali- licium once, in a distant and petty isle of the Northern Atlantic, which the imperial Caesars thought hardly worth their conquest — upon the same spot the modern Babylon now rears her Christian Temples, sending her fleets to every sea, her colonies to every continent — the Star of Dominion rests upon the ancient Brittannia soon to dawn upon the dwelling-place of her sons in the New World, for, "Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." Less than four centuries since, upon the bleak inhos- pitable coasts of an unknown continent, roamed a few savage hunters and warriors in the wilderness, who thought the stars shone to light the brave and virtuous Indians to the happy hunting fields in the sky. That wilderness is now occupied by the teeming millions of a vast confederacy of States, before whom the forests and their tenants have disappeared — ^who have leveled the mountains and filled up the valleys — ^who have chosen their emblems from the heavenly host and spangled their banner with stars. That banner now visits every sea and floats triumphantly over conquered cities, contin- ually adding new States to that Galaxy, which symbo- hzes a power that already casts the dawning light of its destined pre-eminence upon the startled monarchies of the Old World. And the flattered night- watchers follow the star-spangled banner with earnest gaze along its destined path of conquest ; and Aldebaran gazes out on all those changes with the same calm and conscious smile. THE STAR ALDSBARAN. 103 And over the ruins of the new Dominions shall Pali- licium shine; upon their broken power and departed glory shall the eye of Aldebaran gaze ; and this young Empire, like its eagle emblem, spreading its wings for conquest, shall fall, like its predecessors, in the paths of progress, and be broken forever, and the pitiful stars shall look down upon the wreck of our glory, and say, alas, alas, how art thou fallen, O son of the morning, and made thy bed in the dust, and become like to those that have gone before thee into the sides of the pit! Thy grave, O Hearer, shall Aldebaran watch, when the fire of thine eye is quenched, when the bloom on thy cheek has faded, and guard the portals of thy grave until the day when the Master of Life shall cast down the throne and break {he dominion of death. Thy spirit will soon leave its house of clay, and pass out upon the universe — and, perchance, to this distant Star thou mayest wing thine uninterrupted way ; and bethink thee, as thou survey est its glories, that its light is resting upon the remote planet of thy birth, and glistening upon the marble that aflfection has reared to thy memory, over the deserted and decaying tabernacle that once enshrined thy soul, and which is again to receive it when raised a spiritual and incorruptible body by that word of power, that from emptiness and nothingness, from darkness and chaos, summoned at the beginning, matter and motion, light and life. 104. THE STAR ALDiiiBARAN. What an image of immutability and eternity is a fixed Star, pointing us to a future and endless existence — -to another and a better life ; a light-house of the skies, di- recting the mariner on the ocean of hfe to a haven of eternal rest ; a window in the heavens, revealing glimpses of a glory which eye hath not seen, which ear hath not heard ; an orh, the magnitude of which teaches that true and divinely appointed progress which consists in the expectation of, and the preparations for, another and higher organization, when the walls of our earthly house shall be broken ; an eye beholding all things, pene- trating the secrets of night, apt emblem of that Omni- science with whom the darkness and the light are alike ! Happy will it be for us if we learn the lessons which are taught by the heavenly Host. Fortunate will the speaker to-night esteem himself if Aldebaran meets with your favor, and is allowed to take a humble place behind those stars of the first magnitude which have shone upon this congregation from evening to evening in this place, from whom if our Star differs, it is with all respect. None will be offended who are lovers of truth, which is always more readily elicited by discussion, and, if any are dis- turbed by our comparatively feeble and unequal advocacy of old fashioned opinions, they will only manifest their own want of confidence in the popular dogmas which they uphold. LECTURE IV THE LAND OF OPHIR, FROM WHENCE SOLOMON BROUGHT GOLD. A GREAT diversity of opinion has existed among the learned, in regard to the locality of Ophir, from whence king Solomon obtained gold. No satisfactory clue to its position has been found, either in sacred or profane history. Some writers, reasoning from the etymology of the word, which is said to signify dusty have applied the term " Ophir" to almost] every spot where gold dust has been found in abundance. Others have rested their conclusions upon a comparison of the Hebrew word Ophir with names in diflferent countries, having a similar sound; as, for instance, the port of Aphir in Arabia, mentioned by Arrian. By a transposition of the Hebrew letters, among other conjectures, Ophir has been made synonymous with Peru, in South America. The fol- lowing countries have bcon buggcstwi by different au- 5 106 THE LAND Of OPHIR. thors : Melindah, on the coast of Africa, Angola, Car- thage, St. Domingo, Mexico, New Giiinea, Urphe, an island in the Red Sea, and Ormus, in the Persian Gult Bochart has argued for Ceylon, anciently called Tapro- bana; Lipenius, relying on the authority of Josephus and others, makes Ophir, the golden land, to include all the countries bounded by the Eastern seas — from Cey- lon to the Indian Archipelago. That Ophir was situated at a great distance from India, may be proved from the time taken by the fleet of Solomon to make the voyage. "Every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold," is the brief record of this ancient voyage in which the king of Tyre, the friend and ally of Solo- mon, was concerned. " Hiram sent Solomon," says the inspired Historian, " ships and servants that had know- ledge of the sea, and they went with the servants of Solo- mon to Ophir, and took thence four hundred and fifty talents of gold and brought them to King Solomon." Tyre was at this time the mistress of the sea, the com- mercial metropolis of the world. The aid of her expe- rienced mariners may have been necessary to the accom- plishment of the plans of the Hebrew monarch, as Palestine was never a maritime country; but the pas- sages quoted throw all the light on the subject which is furnished in the Scriptures, and to the imagination is left the filling up of the details of the history of the voyage to Ophir. What seas did these old mariners traverse ? THE LAND OF OPHIR. 107 What coasts before unknown did they survey ? Upon what spice-scented islands did they repose, in their long and weary voyage ? What new and varied forms of life appeared, till then unknown ? What storms were encoun- tered upon the untraversed oceans, over which they sailed without compass or chart? How many vessels went down on the return of that Hebrew-Tyrian fleet, broken by the seas and the length of the way, and hang now suspended in those unfathomable depths which pre- serve and retain un decayed the deposits of the past — the yellow ore undimmed, still glistening from the open seams of the wrecks, around which play the monsters of the deep with fixed inquisitive gaze — while reposing there in his last sleep, the Hebrew mariner, his form untouched by time or change, seems yet to guard the treasure which he brought out of Ophir, though the dark-eyed daughter of Abraham, who looked out of the lattice for her sea-faring lover in vain, has been dust for thirty centuries ? With what glad feet did those who escaped the perils of this voyage of years, press the soil of Judea? With what rapture did they gaze once more upon the vine-clad hills and fertile valleys of the land of promise? What joyful greetings of friends and households? What "moving accidents by flood and field " for all inquirers ? What marvels of the Land of Ophir filled all ears ? What crowds accompanied the rich freights borne from the port of £zion-Gebcr to Jcru< 108 THE LAND OF OPHIR. salem, the city of peace, to adorn the temple of the living God, whose golden roofs, flashing back the morning sun- light, or reflecting the evening rays, should be a per- petual memorial of that daring voyage, and of Ophir, the golden land, whose treasures had enriched the country of the Prophets and the city of the King of kings ? With these suggestions of the imagination, what au- gust memories of an early civilization, the monuments of whose grandeur yet survive to mock the efforts of the moderns — of an ancient dispensation of that holy faith, which, above the ruins of Judaism, still lives in all the vigor and beauty of its perpetual youth, arise before us, like giant shadows of the olden time ! The voyage to Ophir recalls the day when Solomon, the most mag- nificent as well as the wisest of monarchs, swayed a sceptre which extended over the most fertile and popu- lous portions of Asia Minor — when Tyre was the Mart of nations, at whose fairs were found the merchants of all lands — where came the Queen of Sheba to hear the wisdom of Solomon and survey the glories of that temple, the fame of which had gone out to the ends of the earth. That glory has departed. Judgment-smitten Ues the city of the great king, the prey of every spoiler. Fire has consumed that gorgeous temple. The gold of Ophir which adorned its cornices, is buried beneath those sacred foundations, which, first profaned by the Chaldean and THE LAND OF OPHIR. 109 afterwards by the Roman, are burthened now with the third "abomination of desolation set up in the holy- place," the Mosque of Omar — where, on the Hill of Zion, the Turk has erected the altars of the false prophet of Mecca. But, above this ocean of ruin, shining out like a star over the changes and destructions of earth, the wis- dom of Solomon survives ; and, radiant with divine light, exerts a wider influence now than when uttered from the throne of Da\id. After the lapse of ninety generations, the Proverbs of the Wise Man are translated into almost every language of the globe we inhabit, and are reve- rently read by more than two hundred millions of our race. The time has now come when new speculations in regard to Ophir, the gold-bearing land, are naturally sug- gested by new discoveries which seem to realize the dreams of Pinoza and his associates, of the Dorado which ever fled before them, mocking their expectation, like the fabled waters of Tantalus. The golden land for which the Spanish soldier, half knight and half robber, ravaged a continent in vain, is found at last, not by the Spaniard or his mongrel and degenerate descendants, but by the sons of the yeomen who settled the northern por- tions of the continent, whose motive in abandoning their homes in Europe was neither the lust of gold or of con- quest The children of the English Puritan reap the rich harvest, in search of which the Castilian adventurer 110 THE LAND OF OPHIR. bartered faith and honor, and failed at last God has visited the iniquities of the fathers upon the children. Spain Ues a wreck among the nations who once trembled at her power. The Spanish colonies on this continent are monuments of the divine indignation. The curse pronounced upon the man who should rebuild the walls of Jericho, has been fulfilled in the case of the Spaniard and his empire in the south. " He shall lay the founda- tions thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son he shall set up the gates of it." The descendants of the conscientious and self-denying Puritans have van- quished Mexico with greater facihty than that with which Cortes destroyed the Empire of Montezuma, and have found and possessed in the North, Cahfornia, the true Dorado, which the Castilian ever sought in vain, in the South. May we not claim that California is the ancient Ophir, without exciting a smile, when learned and discreet men have attempted to trace the route of the Hebrew-Tynan fleet of Solomon to the coasts of Peru on the shores of St. Domingo ? May we not protect our theme from ridi- cule behind the gravity of the ancients, whose theories are more fanciful and more improbable than any we intend to advance ? If renowned scholars and geogra- phers have made the fleet of the great king pass the stormy Cape of Southern Africa to reach the eastern coast of the New World, may we not be allowed to sail THE LAND OF OPHIR. Ill them coast-wise, according to the practice of the early navigators, to the western shore ? An inspection of the Biap of the world will show the most incredulous that such a route exists. From the ancient port of Ezion-Geber upon the eastern arm of the Red Sea, the ships of Solo- mon pass into the Sea or Gulf of Arabia; they coast along the well known shores of the Arabian Peninsula — thence along the western coast of the old Hindoostan, to Cape Comorin, passing which they enter into the Bay of Bengal — thence along the eastern shore of Hindoostan and the "western coast of the Burman Empire — thence among the numerous and populous islands lying south- eastwardly of the Bay of Bengal to the Chinese Sea. Coasting along the shores of China, the fleet now sail northwardly, and pass into the sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, and finally reach the sea of Kamschatka; they continue northwardly until, from their decks, the coast of North America is visible, separated from Asia at Bhe- ling's Straits by but a few miles, and, perhaps, then united — for it has been a common opinion that the two continents were formerly connected at this point, and that the sea has made a breach now forming the Straits which divide them With the ships once on the western coast of North America, we have no difficulty in giving them an easy passage to California, where they may be supposed to have disembarked to procure their cargo of gold. In all this route the fleet have rarely been out of 112 THE LAND OF OPHIR. sight of land — have been exposed to no hazardous navi- gation, if we except in the vicinity of Bhering's Straits, and this might have been avoided by crossing to this continent somewhat south of this point, where they would hardly be for twenty-four hours without one coast or the other in view. Among the numerous theories advanced, we think this the best, for we have for the most part a coasting voyage, with no difficult navigation, along popu- lous and fertile countries, where the ships could be supplied, with a period of three years to accomplish it, to a land where gold is known to exist in sufficient abun- dance to verify the statement of the immense supply obtained for the use of the Temple at Jerusalem. If we have not made out a good case, as lawyers say, we have at least presented a better one than our prede- cessors in this path of investigation, or rather of fanciful theorizing, for, seriously, the time is too remote, the re- corded facts too few, and the basis of inquiry too narrow, to render it possible to arrive at any very satisfactory re- sults. The shadow of a remote antiquity rests upon this ancient voyage ; three thousand years separate our era from that of Solomon ; the sands of the sea have long since buried the town and port from which the Hebrew and Tyrian mariners set their sails to the breeze ; its site is sought in vain by the traveler along the shores of the Red Sea, from which commerce and the arts have passed westward by a law, the constant operation of which has THE LAND OF OPHIR. 113 rolled the tide of our population over the Rocky Moun- tains. Judea is a desert now, not worth the gold upon the cornices of its far-famed temple ; the city where the Roman Eagle in the day of its decay and judgment gathered around a milUon of souls, devoted as a Holo- caust upon the altars of divine retribution, presents no token of its former grandeur. A preternatural shadow rests upon the land where Prophets, Martyrs, and Apos- tles sleep. A crime at which the heavens grew dark is not yet expiated ; but oracles were uttered there which constitute the basis of our faith and our civilization. It is still the land of promise and prophecy, whose august memories survive its predicted doom. The aged Jew goes there to die ; the Christian crosses seas and deserts to gaze with reverence upon the places where God con- versed with men and manifested the powers of the world to come ; even the followers of Mahomet esteem it a holy land- Humbled in the dust, Judea is destined to survive her spoilers and to receive once more her scattered tribes, who, from the distant places of their banishment, still look with undying affection toward the sacred city — still wait with unabated confidence the day, when the moun- tain of the Lord's house shall again be estabhshed — when the wilderness shall become as Eden and the Law shall go forth from Jerusalem. Whether the auriferous region on the western shores of this continent is the country visited by the fleet of Solo- s' '■^V*. 114 THE LAND OF OPHIR. mon, is not of easy decision, one thing alone is clear — it is the Ophir of our day — the Dorado of the New World — escaping for more than two centuries the obser- vation of its occupants, so far as any available discovery of its wealth was concerned — to fall into the possession at last of those colonists who had ploughed the valleys and disemboweled the mountains of the North for other purposes than the discovery of gold. By a compen- sating Providence, California has been given to the people who were called to labor among the granite hills of New England — to the men who were appointed to recover the eastern coast of this continent, which had cast off the chains of a remote civiUzation, whose broken monu- ments were covered by forests, the rings of whose vast trunks indicated the growth of ages — to the laborers who have overcome obstacles which seemed insurmount- able — who have made the "wilderness and the solitary place glad for them" — who have yoked every stream and cataract to their mill-wheels — who have vexed every river with the paddles of their steam vessels — who have united the great northern lakes with the ocean, and given in wedlock to Neptune the coy Nymphs of the pure waters of the northern forests. The sturdy wood- men who have broken upon the apparently impassable soHtudes of a vast continent, with a rifle in one hand and an axe in the other, ever pressing forward to an unin- habited wilderness — ever leaving behind them fruitful THE LAND OF OPHIR. 115 fields and smiling han^ests — the artizan and agriculturist eating their bread from a hard- won soil in the sweat of their faces, have been compensated in the Divine Provi- dence Tvdth the golden Ophir, for which Spain sent forth her chivalry and poured out her best blood on the soil of Mexico, in her wars with the Aztecs. The hard-handed sons of labor received a double com- pensation, first of toil rewarded, of freedom secured, of power attained, of a vast and increasing population, of fleets and armies, of cities and villages, of wealth and commerce, and then the long sought Ophir, though not by them. El Dorado, the golden land, whose inexhaust- ible stores should enrich its possessors, and supply the world with a circulating mediunL The ancient Prophets represent the Most High as compensating the people who had executed his purposes, though ignorant of their commission, much more may we notice the rewards which the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of nations has poured into the lap of the descendants of these men who knew, in part at least* their mission, when they landed "on the bleak New England shore," who felt that they were chosen to invade the wilderness, to plant a nation whose inheritance of truth and freedom should outweigh ail the gold and silver in mountain or mine, who foresaw as the reward of their privations, an enlightened and Christian people, spreading themselves over a continent, the doors of which they were content to open at the 116 THE LAND OF OPHIR. price of blood, for war, pestilence, and famine, stood senti- nels at the gate of American Colonization, and our fathers encountered greater trials than the wolf-nurtured founders of Rome. In the settlement of the western portions of the New World, Poetry and Romance have a place with the stern realities of toil, peril, and privation. We often wonder at the perseverance of that army of borderers who ever remain upon the frontiers of civilization, who ever press forward upon the wilderness, as population and the arts advance, leaving the results of countless perils, the fruits of indescribable hardships, to their successors. We over- look the fact that every man has in him the elements which in their highest development constitute the Poet and the Hero. Who knows what grand conceptions fill the mind of the rude borderer, as he gazes upon some virgin landscape of the forest or prairie, now first pressed by the foot of a white man — what high poetic thoughts, to which he could no more give utterance than he could create a world ? Who can tell with what feelings of exultation, like those of a hero and conqueror, he en- ters upon new domains, which he possesses both by the right of discovery and conquest ? Who can say, that he encounters fewer perils than the soldier in the battle- field in his conflicts with wild beasts and savage men ? Who can tell the poetic imaginings which fire the soul of the hardy adventurer as he penetrates the primitive THE LAND OP OPHIR. 117 forests, under the arches of the grand old trees, planted by the hand of God, before the keels of the Spanish ad- venturers touched the shores of the New World ? With what eager anticipation he presses forward to the new scenes which ever break upon his view. Here a lake em- bosomed in the wilderness, there a mountain whose jag- ged and untrodden precipices still mark the convulsive throes by which it was upheaved and made to rise among the stars — anon the sound of a cataract rushing down the rocks, poured from the diadem of snow which crowns its lofty summit, watering the vale below, upon which rests the ancient volcano, like an image of terror upon a pedestal of beauty — like the skeleton of a giant erect amid a garden of flowers. The enthusiast of the woods opens the pages of an unwritten poem more glorious and sublime than the Epics of Homer or Milton — exciting the imagination and arousing the activities of the soul more than the highest efforts of genius. Who that has not experienced can describe the fascination of that life, which revels in a wild independence, which, though surrounded by perils, is unfettered by fear — which finds in danger that powerful excitement which knows no ennui — that constant activity which feels no fatigue — which hardens the muscles hke steel — which calls out all the resources of the borderer, enabling him to add the wood-craft and wiles of the Indian to the superior strength and intelli- gence of the white man ? Monarch for the time of all 118 THE LAND OF OPHIR. he surveys, he dreams in his domains like a Poet, while defending them like a Hero. No wonder he disclaims the efteminacy and dependence of a high civihzation, and presses onward to the wilderness from its approach. These men have given us the continent over which our population are spreading themselves. Unknown and unhonored, they have been the pioneers of our advance and have broken down barriers before which mere in- dustry and labor stand appalled, which could have been surmounted only by that heroism which rejoices in danger and rises with the difficulties which surround its path. Without this Forest Chivalry, the English Colonists would never have extended themselves beyond the strip of coast which they first occupied. It is easy for us, surrounded by all the soft appliances of a high civilization, to boast of our progress, of the rapid increase of our population and territory — but it would be diffi- cult to show our connection with the results about which this perpetual glorification is kept up. The truth is, the hardihood and heroism of the founders of our empire, are unappreciated by those who enjoy the fruits of their labors ; they are even ridiculed by a would-be aristocracy, who, aping the manners of the Old World and running- after the foreign authors and sprigs of nobility, who con- descend to visit and abuse us, have about the same re- gard for the Titans of the Wilderness, that Dives, clad in purple and fine hnen, had for Lazarus, who sat at his gate. THE LAND OF OPHIR. 119 The heroic men who have broken in upon the forest and extended our donainion to the Pacific, have never trumpeted their deeds ; they have rarely told the story of their trials and suflferings in the ears of their ungrate- ful countrymen. Now and then a scholar, like the gal- lant Fremont, gives us an insight of the manner in which a continent is conquered, but with a modesty which is a marvel to those who sit at " home at ease," and boast of battles which they never fought* of conquests which they never made. Many of our brethren who are extending our borders and breaking over the barriers of nature, are utterly in- capable of author-craft They can neither vindicate their manners or morals from the ridicule of wits or the caricatures of novelists. The ancients who deified Her- cules, would have made them demi-gods; but, like the Philistines, we make sport with the Sampsons of the wilderness ; and it is well they are not tied to the pillars of our civilization, which they might handle as rudely as did the blind Hebrew the Temple of Dagon. When the mission of these men is fulfilled, when, as a body, they sliall have disappeared from the scene of action, posterity will do them justice — their exploits will form the themes of Poets and Historians, in the Augustan age of our hte- rature. There is a premonition of this result in the Eu- logy of Daniel Boone, the prototype of his class, uttered 120 THE LAKD OF OPHIR. by one of the most gifted of English Poets. He speaks thus of the Pioneer of Kentucky : *' He left behind a name For which raen vainly decimate the throng, Not only famous but of that good fame, Without which glory 's but a tavern song. ******* He was not all alone ;— around him grew A sylvan tribe of children of the chase, Whose young unwaken'd world was ever new. ******* And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they •, Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions. Because their thoughts had never been the prey Of care or gain -, — the green woods were their portions ; No sinking spirits told them they grew gray- No fashion made them apes of her distortions. Simple, they were not savage -, and their riflei Though very true, were not yet used for trifles." The speaker has in his possession, in an ancient Magazine, a letter written by Daniel Boone, in which he gives a simple and modest account of the settlement of the dark and bloody ground, of the perils he had himself en- countered, of the captivities he had endured, closing with this serious and striking thought, that he had been "an instrument ordained to settle the wilderness" — a thought common to conquerors, from Attila to Napoleon — the one styling himself the Scourge of God, the other the Child of Destiny. For ever, in heroic minds, there seem to be a consciousness that they are but working out the designs of Providence and accomplishing purposes hid- THE LAND OF OPHIR. 121 den from themselves in the inscrutable counsels of infi- nite wisdom. In all the great revolutions which con- stitute the epochs of history, the immediate and obvious residts are the mere accessories of those great ends which, escaping the attention of the mass of mankind, are dimly perceived by genius, and always clearly appre- hended by faitL Not only the ends but the agents of the great movements of society are often concealed from the generation of immediate spectators. Time, which at length unfolds the Divine purpose, reveals also the true hero, while the simulacrums and shams which have usurped the thrones of Principalities and Powers sink into unregretted and hopeless oblivion. The idea that the Pioneers who press upon the wil- derness or who enter upon the new domains acquired by the United States, are, as a body, a reckless and law- less company, is without foundation. It is true, they have neither schools, court-houses, or penitentiaries — these things are out of the question in their condition — yet crime is rare among them, and still more rarely escapes punishment They know nothing of the new phi- losophy which makes a felon more unfortunate than guilty; they allow no pleas of insanity to impede the course of justice — no allegation of a mal-organized brain to extenuate guilt; their sympathies are not expended upon the murderer rather than his victim ; they are not imbued with that popular sentimentalism which seeks to 122 TfTE LAND OF OPHIR. excuse and palliate the guilt and modify the penalty of red-handed murder, leaving the blood of the slain, un- noticed by men, to appeal for judgment to Him "who will by no means clear the guilty." Woe to the felon upon whose track is the American borderer! — an avenger of blood is behind him, who knows no fatigue, who is as fixed and unwavering in his purpc^e as a messenger of fate. Woe to the assassin before a self-impanneled jury of American foresters ! No he will help him — no elo- quence prevail; no false plea can confuse the clear con- ceptions or arrest the just judgment of a frontier court. No justification is intended in these remarks of the self-constituted courts who take the administration of law out of the hands of the authorized tribunals. But where such tribunals do not and cannot exist, it is a high proof of the law-abiding character of our population, that when on the borders of civihzation, or thrown sud- denly in unorganized masses together, as in California, they are a "law unto themselves," and execute judg- ment on offenders with a celerity and certainty unknown in the more advanced states of society. It ought to be understood, however, that the alarming tendency to a relaxation of our criminal jurisprudence, the pleas that a false and dangerous philosophy, which, pretending to be both humane and decent, is simply jacq? binical and infidel — is constantly affording to guilty the continual efforts to take from the magistrate the sword di- THE LAND OF OPHIR. 123 yinely bestowed, and to violate that ordinance of the Supreme Lawgiver — " whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed" — has a tendency to destroy all respect for the administration of law, and to lead men from a sense of natural justice, to lay hands on the as- sassin, who, red with the blood of his victim, laughs at a judicial trial Our law-makers may look for such results, if they continue to weaken the secuiities of Hfe and pro- perty, for society will, in the end, be driven to protect itself and to execute judgment in defiance of law. In the occupation of the newly found Ophir, where over the remains of the old Spanish civilization, an army of American adventurers are spreading themselves, the evils which were anticipated have not greatly prevailed. Out of the cities crime is rare, and is no where more cer- tainly punished. The Sabbath is less desecrated by labor than in the Atlantic States. A constitution, remarkably conservative in its character, has been adopted, and instead of being a paradise for rogues, California is likely to prove their purgatory. Even those who were restive here under the restraints of law, order, and religion, appear there to feel their necessity, and are led by the hazards and privations of their condition, to appreciate institutions which were unprized in the bosom of civilization. The wild spirits that disdained restraint at home, have seen and felt the responsibilities of their new condition ; as the law-makers of a great Empire, they hav6 124 THE LAND OF OPHIR. shown their Anglo Saxon blood, and their Puritan train- ing by a liberal support of the institutions of religion and learning, which they have commenced endowing like their progenitors, on the eastern shores of this continent, before erecting houses for themselves, and while literally dwelling in tents. But, leaving the vindication of the men, who, under a kind of divine impulse or afflatus, have broken in upon the forests and deserts of this vast continent, to other times and abler hands, let us notice the manner in which the modern Ophir has been possessed by us, and the result, which are hkely to flow from the founding of a new State on the Pacific coast. In the history of colonization and discover)", what fact more astonishing can be adduced than that, the rich deposits of California remained undiscovered by the Spaniard, who, for more than two centuries, has had it in possession, and who came to this continent in the pursuit of gold ? That in the mountains on the western coast of North and South America, whose deposits of treasure seem providentially intended to stimulate emigration, and accomplish the settlement of this portion of the New World, the richest spot, the true Ophir of the whole, should remain undiscovered by its gold-hunting occupants, until they had relinquished the sovereignty and ceded thic territory to the Sons of the Pilgrims, is one of those startling providences, which compel the most careless and THE LAND OF OPHIR. 126 skeptical to acknowledge the hand of the Supreme Ruler. Until the time had come when this treasure could be made avjdlable — until the men were found and trained to whom Grod had allotted this inheritance — no eye was suffered to behold, no hand permitted to grasp the inexhaustible wealth, mixed in the soil, over which the Spaniard had passed for six generations. In his possession, California and its wealth would have been worse than wasted ; the fate of Mexico and Peru would have overtaken the new found Ophir ; a half Pagan and altogether barbarous people would have increased the darkness brooding over the western coast of North America, and bordering Asia with her teeming millions — would have looked with contempt upon a Christianity as superstitious as Boodhism upon a civilization inferior to that of her own Celestial Empire. As it is, if, by some miraculous exodus, a Christian and civiUzed nation had been suddenly transported into the heart of Asia, the result could not be more certain or immediate than that which must be effected by the occupation of California, upon those vast and populous regions, which have hitherto been separated from European civilization and Christianity, by a dangerous navigation, over a distance of twenty-five thousand miles. China with, at least, one third of the population of the globe is now a Mghboring nation; the junks of the Celestial Empire 126 THE LAND OF OPHIR. have already appeared in the port of San Francisco— Chinese cooks and carpenters are seen at every corner of the streets, and are thought to number about three hundred of the population. Siam and Burmah, Cochin China and Japan, with Australasia and the islands upon the Equator, are at the doors of the United States. Even Hindoostan, with its population of two hundred millions, is now accessible by a comparatively short and safe voyage from California. The long sought and earnestly desired passage to the Indies, is at length found, not by the Arctic Ocean, but by the settlement of California, as a free American State. New York and Canton are soon to be in a juxta-position, like that of New York and Liverpool, for it cannot be doubted that an accessible route across the Continent will soon connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts; under one government, in possession of a people who have shown themselves equal to the greatest undertakings, it cannot be long before the vast territory between New York and San Francisco will be penetrated by railroads and intersected by canals, connecting, perhaps, the head waters of the Missouri with the sources of the Columbia. The child is born that shall live to see this consummation, which is to change the routes of commerce and give to this Union the advantages of that trade with the Indies which made the ancient Tyre the mistress of the sea, which afterwards enriched Alexandria, and THE LAND Of OPHIR. 127 which, in modem times, has successively given wealth to Venice and Amsterdam, and is now building up the overgrown Metropolis of England. The gold which has drawn a population to the Pacific in one year that in half a century would not have been found there under the ordinary stimulants of coloniza- tion, is not, after all, the substantial reward which is to be reaped by the sudden birth of a new State beyond the Rocky Mountains. Oregon which borders California, will be filled with agriculturists to supply their south - em neighbors ; portions of the modern Ophir are fertile, and it is thought that the whole country.may be rendered productive by irrigation. The curse of the Spanish colo- nies is not likely to fall upon a people who have been disciplined by labor, who know that wealth can be se- cured by other means than digging gold — who can cal- culate with unerring sagacity the precise moment when agriculture and commerce will become more profitable than mining. A greater end will be secured than the transmutation of all the ledges of the Rocky Moun- tains into gold and silver — a free Christian State will spread themselves along the Pacific coast, changing not only the course of commerce, but placing the United States in a central position between Europe and Asia, a position more commanding than any ever occupied by the Great Empires of ancient or modem times. When (he western coast of this continent is filled like the east- 128 THE LAND OF OPHIR. ern, with an active and industrious population, when the heart of this vast country is divided into free States of our Union, connected by railroads and canals, we shall have Europe on one side and Asia on the other, with the commerce of both, and the channels of communica- tion between them — and the gold of our Ophir will be as the small dust of the balance in comparison with the advantages arising from the settlement of Cahfornia, The great political problem, the long agitated question, how enlargement can be made coincident with security — has been solved for the first time in the nineteenth cen- tury, and by the union of the American States. The old empires fell to pieces by their own weight and were destroyed by extension : like "giant spectres" haunting the present time, they point us to the wrecks of their greatness, which lie scattered along the line of by-gone centuries. In the admirable distribution of powers between the state and general governments, which, in regard to all that is national, unites as one, our whole population, and in respect to that which is local and internal, divides them into dis- tinct and numerous sovereignties, safety and strength are secured rather than diminished by increase and enlarge- ment The central States will never allow a separation which cuts them off from the sea and degrades them to the position of provinces of the governments on the coast ; they will say to the waves of discontent and disunion, "thus far shalt thou come and no farther." It is the THE LAND OF OPHIR. 129 number and strength of these States that nowliold to- gether this Confederacy, amid the heart-burnings and timiults engendered by the Slave Question, which would long since have divided the North and South but for the constant addition of new States, which have been bonds of strength to the confederacy and pledges of its perpe- tuity. A doom like that of Uzzah will overtake those who, imder the pretence of steadying and securing, pro- fenely touch the ark of the union of the American States. The disunionist is not only a traitor to his coun- try, but to humanity itself — aiming a blow at the land of his birth and the government to which he owes alle- giance. He is guilty of high treason against his race, who in the several places of their bondage and from every wall (rf their captivity, have still a hope to cheer them in the permanence of our institutions, in the perpetuity of our Union. Shall that flag fail from the sea, whose stars and stripes in every bay and river of the globe, are symbols of hope to the Nations ? Shall that dominion be broken, which is the sole asylum of the unnumbered exiles who flee from political oppression ? Shall that Republic be dismembered which throws the ^gis of its protec- tion over the vanquished patriots of Europe, who escape firom the axe and the gibbet — — — " Powrer at tpho$* bounds Stops and calls back her baffled houads" f 130 THE LAND OF OPHIR. May Heaven avert such a consummation, and write upon the Union of these States, "esto perpetua." But passing from political considerations and the calcu- lations of commerce, wealth, and population, let us turn to the higher interests of our common humanity; let us consider the moral influences destined to be exerted by the settlement of this continent ; let us notice the gTeat ends which the Divine Providence is about to accomplish in this rapid movement of our population westward to California — the golden land. When the northern portions of the new world were first settled, two widely differing races of men were brought together by the will of God, to occupy the terri- tory provided for them — the English Puritan and the African Negro. The former, after a desperate conflict with political and ecclesiastical despotism, and a partial triumph over both, was compelled at last, by the stern hand of persecution, to expatriate himself to the wilder- ness of North America ; — the latter was stolen from his barbarous home, himself the most stupid of barbarians, and forced by the British government, upon their colonies on this continent. The one had been trained and disci- plined in a severe school for generations, to fit him to found an empire on the basis of civil and religious liberty — the other had been a servant of servants, in all his generations. The two extremes of the human family were thus brought together — the most enlightened and THE LAND OF OPHIR. 131 the most ignorant ; those who had been in training for two centuries for the work of human regeneration, and those who presented the lowest point of depression of which our nature is capable, and were thought by some to occupy a middle place between animals and men. The purpose for which these two races — the antipodes of human nature — were driven to this continent — the one by persecution, the other by piracy — begins already to appear. The one is destined to bear to the most be- nighted portion of the earth — to barbarous Africa — the Christian rehgion with the English language, literature, and laws — the other to introduce through the gates of the Pacific the same gifts to semi-civilized and pagan Asia. The African, christianized and civilized, even in his ser- vile condition, is now colonizing back to Africa, and proving his natural equality with his more fortunate brethren, by founding Free States, in imitation of our own on the west- em coast of that great continent, in which civil and reli- gious hberty are secured, and order and law prevail as fully aer in the land where, from a bondage of nearly two hun- dred years, he has commenced his exodus. After the lapse of ages of degradation, a Free African State at length appears — the herald of a brighter day for that benighted and oppressed continent Along a coast, haunted but yes- terday by the slave-trader and his floating hells, the flag of Liberia waves in the breeze ; the thunder of her cannon startles the man-stealer, who, driven from his haimts, is 132 THE LAND OF OPHIR. lighted in his flight by the blaze of his burning prisons. The naked NegTO from the interior gazes with wonder upon civilized and Christian men of his own color, and asks, as the greatest of favors, the pri\Tilege of surren- dering his territory, and being received under the juris- diction of those who appear to him as gods — the story of whose prowess, the history of whose work of libera- tion, he carries back ^with him to distant tribes, who receive the message with a joy like that of the Shepherds of Galilee, when voices from heaven proclaimed the ad- vent of Him whose mission was "peace on earth and good will to men." But while the descendants of Ham return to the East from the place appointed for them, and from among the people who were to qualify them for the mission of re- generation to Africa, their Anglo-Saxon master and teacher is urged westward by providential incentives, which have no parallel in history, and which have brought him at last to the Pacific Ocean, the terminus of western migTation. Over the Rocky Mountains the tide of population has been driven as by the hand of God. What if the remains of the dead strew the way — what if this solemn path of Divine appointment be baptized in blood and tears — what though the cry of the mourner is mingling with the voice of triumph and conquest — what though with Herculean labor, with suf- ferings greater than those endured by his progenitors on THE LAKD OF OPHIR. 133 the eastern coast — the emigrant forces his way over desert and mountain, to his heritage in the West ! Is he not fulfilling his destiny? Are not the ends secured greater than all the sacrifices made ? Shall not the soli- tary place be glad for them and the desert become as the garden of the Lord ? When was any great enterprise accomplished without pain and peril ? When were nations colonized without eating the bread of affiction and drinking from the cup of tears ? What birth of Empires without throes that have shaken the earth as when a mountain has been upheaved by the fires of a volcano ? What great refor- mation has made its way along a path of flowers and by rivers of quietude? What important end has, in the Divine Providence, been accomplished without heroic sacrifices, without sufiferings so intense that their recital has made the ears of men to tingle ? Is it not a part of the settled arrangement of the Supreme Governor that the toil and travail of all the efforts of individuals or the movements of society, shall be conunensurate with the value of the end to be obtained by them ? Was it not so in the work of human redemption ? Was it not so in the progress of Christianity in the first three centuries ? Was it not so in the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- tury? The work of human regeneration is a cross- bearing work, and its path a blood-stained track. The Christian Missiooary falls at the threshold of the enter- 134 THE LAND OF OPHIR. prise for which he has forsaken the home of his youth and the graves of his fathers. The movements of nations in their appointed agencies in the work of human re- demption are like the progress of Israel to Canaan, through a Red Sea and over the burning sands of a weary desert The Christianized African returns to Africa where Ham has his perpetual inheritance; he has no farther mission westward, and no part in the settlement of tke Pacific coast All the legislation in the world cannot send him there, or keep him here, or divert him from his destined path. There is a view of this subject which elevates it above the questions which are now agitating this Republic, and exciting the North and South to an antagonism which threatens the dissolution of the Union. It is not the boon of emancipation which the Negro needs in his pre- sent circumstances ; this is to give him a stone when he asks for bread. If it could be shown that the imme- diate abolition of Slavery would necessarily elevate the descendant of Ham, the questions now agitated would be of paramount importance. But is there any such demon- stration in the condition of the Negro at the North, or in the present social state and prospects of the inhabitants of Hayti? The grand inquiry is this, — how shall the colored race be elevated? The limiting of the bounda- ries of slavery, and even emancipation itself, however de- THE LAND OF OPHIR. 135 arable in regard to the white race, are nothing to the black man, unless he obtains a social equality. It mat- ters little to him whether he is a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, under the forn* of slavery or freedom, the iron which enters his soul is in neither case removed. While he is separated by color and caste from the white man he must occupy the position of a menial While im- der the shadow of the superior race he must continue in a servile condition, unless the races amalgamate— a consum- mation which is not to be expected — which is against nature, and would tend more to degrade the Anglo- Saxon than to elevate the African. The only method for the permanent elevation of the Negro is colonization — a method which is indicated by all the providences of Qod toward this oppressed race, and which falls in with that Divine purpose of which we have spoken, which is to restore them to Africa as the regenerators of a conti- nent Was the present position of things in Liberia un- derstood by the colored man of the north, he would fly there on the wings of the ^vind. Slavery itself will eventually fall before the moral power of this demon- stration of the Negro's capability for freedom and free institutions. The Colonies on the coast of Africa, when in the full tide of success, and when the clouds of pre- judice shall be removed which blind so many eyes, will accomplish more toward the emancipation of the Negro than all the vituperation of ultra men — more than all 136 THE LAND OF OPHIR. legislation, and more than all other arguments will it persuade the South that the set time of African redemp- tion has come and of the opening of doors to let the cap- tive go free. The descendant of Ham, who yet retains the color which the burning sun of Africa imprinted on his ancestors, is destined to go back to his people with the light of Christianity and civilization. On the other hand, the free American emigrant goes to the golden land because he has a work there, the beginning of which is seen, but of which few have perceived the end; in- cited by the discovery of gold, the love of enterprise, the opening of a passage to the Indies, he regards not yet, perhaps, the moral results of his mission ; he knows not now the true reason of his journey or why it is, that in such hot haste he has been urged across the continent The regeneration of Asia is, we think, the great moral end to be accomplished ; for this^ Ophir has been hidden until the time had come and the men were ready ; for this, the Anglo-Saxon has been driven westward by irre- sistible influences until the West looks into the East — until the Star of Christianity and civilization, in its west- ward course, shines into the old places of wealth, popu- lation, and commerce. The once barbarous descendants of Japheth, receiving from the East the gospel and civi- lization, bear them half around the globe and back to the cradle of the race, to the ancient abodes of power, com- merce, and art In this extraordinary impulse toward THE LAND OF OPHIR. 137 the land of gold, the modern Ophu-, the ends of that Eternal Providence which is over all, are receiving their accomplishment The word of Grod goes with the wave of emigration — the Christian Missionary proclaims the everlasting Gospel on the coast of the Pacific — astonished Asia gazes upon the new State brought to the doors of her mightiest nations — China, Japan, Burmah, and Siam, awake from the slumber of centuries to hail the light which beams upon them from this new Empire of the West Upon the stagnant waters of the heritage of Shem, there rolls through the gates of California that living, restless, purifying, and revolutionizing flood, which has borne the children of Japheth over untrodden con- tinents — above mountains deemed inaccessible — over difficulties reckoned insuperable — through obstacles part- ing before them Hke the Red Sea before the Hebrews — to fulfill that august prediction uttered four thousand years ago by the antediluvian patriarch, — "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." The handful of com which was cast upon this conti- nent has covered the tops of the mountains and begins "to shake like Lebanon." The child thrown out of Europe in infancy and weakness, into the wilderness of North America, has become a Giant — whose feet cover the continent — whose arms extend across the Atlantic on the one side to Europe, and over the Pacific to Asia on 6* ^^ OF THr"^, ujri7BRsiTrl 186 THE LAND OF OPHIR. the other. The Tree planted in the bleak North by Faith and Freedom, watered by the tears of the pilgrims and anointed with their blood, now overshadows nations and tongues hke that seen in vision by the Chaldean king, which symbolized the first and greatest of monarchies — the people who were driven out of the old world as the Hebrews from the house of bondage, have, like their prototypes, become as the stars of heaven for mul- titude, as the sands of the sea-shore innumerable — they have founded a mightier Empire than that of Solomon, and found a richer Ophir than that from which the Hebrew-Tyrian fleet brought treasure for the temple of the Living God. LECTURE V. THE IMMATERIALITY AND NATURAL IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.* The union of mind and matter, of soul and body, the nature and terms of their connection, their respective qualities and relations, and their comparitive duration, are topics of the deepest interest No apology can be necessary for introducing, at a time and in a place Uke this, before Societies whose object is mental and moral culture, and in the presence of those whose business it is to communicate and receiye knowledge, a subject which, standing intimately and equally connected with physical and metaphysical science, must be deeply inte- resting to the student; while, from its importance in morals and rehgion, its influence upon our hope of immortality and our faith in the unseen world, it would * DcliTered before the Literary Societiefl of Western Reserve College, !■ lOi. 140 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. naturally engage and secure the attention of the most promiscuous congregation. Whether mind is the mere result of a material or- ganization, and of course itself material and naturally- perishable, or whether it is superadded immaterial and immortal — are questions which were agitated in the an- cient schools of literature. Both Plato and Cicero dis- coursed eloquently upon the immortality of the soul ; the poetry and philosophy of the ancients alike furnish eyi- dence of the interest with which the subject was by them regarded. Notwithstanding the popular belief of the immortality of the soul, and the reasoning of the most profound of the Grecian philosophers, and the most elo- quent of the Roman orators, it cannot be denied, that the ancient theories of being were for the most part based upon a gross materiahsm. One of the earliest and most prevalent systems of philosophy regarded matter as eternal, upon the principle that nothing can proceed from nothing. Some philosophers of this school considered matter intelligent in its parts, but unintelligent as a whole ; others held that it is intelligent as a whole, but unintelligent in its parts. Another ancient hypothesis which has maintained its ground to modem times, and may be found in the specu- lations of Spinoza and the poetry of Pope, taught, that both matter and mind are an emanation or enlargement of the Creator. This theory substantially deifies matter, IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 141 and is exhibited by the celebrated author of the Essay on Man, in these hnes — ■**'AII are but parts of one stupendous whole. Whose body nature is, and God the soul." Pythagoras is supposed to have been the founder of this scheme of philosophy, which prevailed extensively among the ancients, and is the basis of the two great systems of religion found in the East, Brahmism and Boodhism. A third system, made famous in modern times by Berkley, Bishop of Cloyne, and which illustrates the tendency of the human mind to extremes, denied the existence of matter, on the ground, that ideas alone con- stitute being, and that we beheld in the forms around us not real substances, but ideal, as men survey things that are not, in dreams. Pyrrho, among the ancients, denied the existence of matter, in the most literal manner ; and even Plato thought it possible that life might partake of the nature of dreams, in which nothing is real but our sensations. Among the ancient philosophers, the question of the immateriality and immortality of the soul was never con- sidered as settled ; it was a doubtful and contested point, though always in some form received by the mass of the people, whose feith was probably the result of tradition. Under the light of a full revelation of the spirituality and immateriality of the soul in the Sacred Scriptures, it might naturally be supposed that the question would 142 IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. cease to be a disputed one, but this is far from being the fact The opposition to this great truth, while it is more covert, is also more bitter and violent, than in the schools of Paganism. It comes up in new shapes, under artful disguises, intended to quiet the moral and religious feehngs and principles, while aiming a blow at a truth fundamental to all religion, and the basis of all accounta- bility. To the proud, the profligate, and the covetous, in the hght of the Bible, there is more of fear than hope in the promise of immortahty; hence, such are interested in refuting it; — while the natural tendency to material- ism, which arises from our connection with the external world, is, in all ages, the same ; and this may account for the pecuhar hostility and bitterness manifested by modern objectors, who, in addition to the light of nature, are favored with the express testimony of God. In the an- cient schools, it was considered a philosophical question ; it is now regarded in its moral aspects, and consequently enlists the prejudices and passions of the disputants. There is another reason why the question of the natu- ral immortahty of the soul continues to be a mooted one ; and this is, the influence in our day of a shallow but popular philosophy in relation to being, which maintains that all that is mysterious and difiicult in existence, can be fully elucidated when the ancient prejudices and su- perstitions of men no longer oppose the light of science. The wise men of this school are ready to exclaim, " Eu- IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 143 reka," at every real or fancied discovery of second causes, as though they were approximating to a full explanation of the mystery of existence. They suppose if they can establish the materiality of mind, and give it a " local habitation and a name," and exhibit its qualities and pro- perties, as the results of local organization, that the great problem of being is solved, and all difficulties forever re- moved. No such result would follow if modern materialism could be satisfactorily established; it would rather in- crease than remove the difficulties which beset us in the department of Ontology. Is the mystery of hfe solved, when we are told that the soul is the product of matter, and that mind is the result of the size and development of certain portions of the brain ? If we grant all that is asked in that system, which is the "ultima Thule" of materialism, by which the mind is not only made to depend upon a material organization, and is surveyed and mapped JO that by the admeasurement of the brain, the affections, passions, and intellectual powers, are determined by num- ber and quality, by measure and size, in what respect is the philosophy of being made easy ? It reduces, indeed, the philosophy of mind to the science of numbers, and the laws of magnitude and proportion ; but it is no ex- tion of the mystery of existence were its truth ad- We consider the immateriality of the soul established, 144 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. from the well known and oft repeated argument derived from the fact, that the powers and properties of mind are essentially different from those of matter. We know substances only by their properties. Matter is tangible, divisible, and inert — mind is neither. Matter is unintel- ligent in its parts, and in all its combinations, multiplied and diversified as they are, by the advanced state of phy- sical science. Matter does not even possess the power of originating the lowest forms of life, for it has been shown that the animalcule which were once thought to be generated by the decomposition and fermentation of various substances, are propagated from the egg, and their kinds perpetuated by the same laws and in the same manner as other portions of the animal creation There is no affinity or likeness whatever between reflec- tion, memory, reason, and judgment, and the known pro- perties of matter. Hence the conclusion that they have nothing in common, being totally diverse in essence, and united in man for a special purpose by omnipotent power. That we are endued with capacities for enjoyment and suffering, that we are possessed of thought, feeling, memory, and conscience, is proof that we shall continue to retain and exercise them, unless it can be shown that natural death is the destruction of the mental powers. We can only know what death is, from its conse- quences, which are the loss of animal life and the disso- IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 146 lution of the body back to its original elements ; but as the mind is not divisible, or a compound of decomposable substances, there seems to be no evidence that any such loss or change, does or can take place with respect to the soul The exhibition of its powers is no longer before our observation ; but is this proof of annihilation? This is not the fate of the matter of which the body is composed, for that is only resolved into its original elements. What reason, then, have we to conclude that the mental powers are destroyed ? What evidence have we that ceasing to be exhibited in our sight, the soul ex- ists no where ? We have witnessed the death and decom- position of the body; but who has seen the soul die? We have assisted to lay the lifeless form in the tomb ; but who has aided to commit to the dark and narrow house the spirit, with its afifections, memories, and hopes ? What traveler has returned from his wanderings over creation and through the vast regions of space, with the melancholy report that he could find no evidence of the existence of mind, and that with powers to understand and appreciate the extent and grandeur of the entire universe, the soul was annihilated the moment its fetters were removed, looking out for an instant, and through an imperfect medium, upon the design, and order, and glory of the material things created for its inspection, and then extinguished forever. We have evidence, also, that the soul acts, when the 14d IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. ordinary functions of the body are suspended. Every one is familiar with the activity of the mind during the hours when the senses are locked in slumber, and all external objects absent. It is then that the soul creates a world of its own, and roams at large in an existence purely ideal. But a stronger evidence of the independence of the mental faculties is derived from those well established cases of trance, when the suspension of sensation has been so evident and entire that the ablest physicians have pronounced the patient dead, yet after the unex- pected reanimation of the body the individual has fur- nished ample testimony of the continued activity of the soul. In some cases, persons of whose decease there remained no doubt, have been conscious of all that tran- spired around them, even of the dehberations in regard to their own interment. This was estabhshed in a cele- brated judicial trial in France, in the case of a lady entombed, whose extraordinary recovery, and the ro- mantic affection by whose instrumentality it was accom- phshed, together with the legal questions which arose in connection with it, gave great publicity to the whole transaction. In other cases the soul appears to take its departure from its clay tenement, and roams elsewhere, unconscious of the circumstances which surround the deserted body, sensible of its departure from it, and of holding converse with distant objects. IMMORTAUTY OF THE SOUL. 147 In the case of the Rev. William Tennant, of New Jersey, a man of learning and piety, and of unquestioned yeracity, there were all the tokens of death, and his body was kept out of the grave beyond the usual time only by the urgency of a friend. At the time of bis re- animation a large circle of friends were present for the purpose of attending his funeral. After his recovery from apparent "death, he solenmly affirmed that he had been conscious of the period when the soul left the body, and of its return ; that he had looked upon the eternal world, and, with the apostle Paul, had heard things which he thought it not lawful to utter. He averred that his return to the body was with reluctance, and ac- companied with excessive pain. It was a remarkable feature in the case of Tennant, that he had lost all recollection of the learned languages with which he had been familiar, and for some time could neither read nor write his mother tongue. This was undoubtedly an ex- traordinary case, but, if believed, establishes most clearly the inmiateriality of the soul, and its power of acting in- dependently of animal organization, and indeed while ab- sent from the body, as a superadded independent essence. Another fact which establishes the independence of mind, both of matter and time, is the amazing ra- pidity of its action and succession, which are totally inconsistent with the notion of a precedent movement of the organs. Many will recollect having in their dreams -.'ii^. 148 IMMORTALITY OF THE BOUL. passed through a multitude of events, and experienced a variety of changes, which, if real, would properiy belong to a series of years, and yet it has all transpired in the mind in a few moments of time ; and though the events have not in fact occurred, the mental action and suc- cession are as real as if they had ; the mind has actually gone through a series of suffering and enjojmient, although the sources of its ideas are imaginary. A sound will sometimes produce a dream and also awaken the individual, and in an instant a long mental succession will have occurred wholly inconsistent with the idea of any corresponding organic action, and even of the notion of time. A noise in an adjoining room suggested a dream and at the same moment awakened the individual, who, in the brief moment, dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier, joined his regiment, deserted afterwards, been next apprehended and carried back; afterwards tried by a court martial, condemned, and carried out for execution. After the usual preparations a gun was fired, and he awoke with the report, which was the sound from the vicinity which had suggested the dream. Is not this inconsistent with the notion of any correspondent physical action of the brain, which, if the real origin of thought or even its necessary medium, must from necessity act pari passu with the intellect, which it originates or developes ? Does it not exhibit the soul as acting independent of time, and, of course. IMMORTALITV OF THE SOUL. 140 of the action of any material agent, which must, by a known law, be measured by time ? How often is the remark made, that one man lives longer in one year than another in seventy — which is true in an intellectual and moral sense. One man may feel, suffer and enjoy more in one day, than another in one year. This kind of suc- cession is independent of time, and is, perhaps, charac- teristic of the unseen world; for we cannot avoid the conclusion that some kind of succession is incident to all created intelligences. Days, months, and years, are reckoned from planetary revolutions; but we can con- ceiye nothing like this of that which is purely imma- terial — of intelligence divested of a material organization ; hence we have in the incomprehensible activity of the soul an evidence of its immateriality, its independence, and a presentiment of its future state. Without the light of revelation, the notion of an imma- terial organization, of a spiritual body, has almost uni- versally obtained The shades of departed spirits, which occupy so prominent a place in the poetry of the most refined periods of Greece and Rome, as well as in the harsh and warlike verse of the northern Barbarians, were but the symbols of the popular belief Nor is the same evidence wanting now of the power and natural tendency of the mind to form the idea of a " spiritual body," in the absence of all revelation on the subject Without intending in any measure to indorse 160 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. the superstitious fancies which are formed, both in Pagan and Christian lands, in regard to spirits and ghosts, yet an argument of no small importance is derived from the tendency of the mind to form the idea of intelligence di- vested of a material body — a most extraordinary fact, if the soul be the product of matter, or necessarily de- veloped through an animal economy. It is also worthy of remark, that mind, independent of time, is only partially limited by matter and space. We pass in idea beyond the precincts of one planet — We go from system to sys- tem, from sun to sun, throughout the extended universe of God. We travel over the creation in an instant. Space does not hold and confine thought — it passes be- yond the works of God and surveys the regions " Where eldest night And Chaos, ancestors of nature, hold Eternal anarchy." This illimitable range, it is true, is but the survey of thought; the soul is, to a great extent, confined and bound in its clay tabernacle, and it is one proof of its natural immortahty, that this is felt Man is surrounded by walls which he continually endeavors to overleap. His natural antagonists are time and space ; and to over- come the clogs with which matter restrains him, is the constant aim of his inventions. To increase the rapidity of his motion, to overleap the space which separates him from different places and objects, he tortures the elements, IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 161 and by the powerful action of fire and water in the generation of steam, attacks the barriers of nature. Strange, indeed, if the soul is the product of 'matter, that it should maintain a perpetual war with its parent, and should so often prove the victor ! That the soul is often sensible of the restraints of the physical organization with which it is connected, is a most unaccountable fact, if it is the product of such an organization. Who has not felt his thoughts fettered, and his soul, yet active and vigorous, compelled to a cessation from its pursuits by the frailty of the body ? We have sentence of death in our members, but not^ in the same sense, in the soul. The, seeds of disease are planted in the animal nature. Pain, fatigue, and sickness, furnish constant admonition that the night is at hand when the material form shall return to the dust ; but whDe the soul sympathizes and is wearied with the suffering body, does it furnish any evi- dence of its own approaching dissolution ? If the mind is dependent upon a material organization for its existence, or even for its development, there must be a uniform de- cay of its powers, after the maturity of the animal frame. There would necessarily be an exact correspondence be- tween the producing cause and its effect in all circum- stances, as in the case of machinery, where the motion and action of the thousand wheels always exactly correspond with the moving power. This is a principle too familliar to be questioned. If this exact agreement and correspond- 162 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. ence cannot be established, materialism falls to the ground. It is an issue which materialists must meet, however anxious to avoid it, by diverting the attention of the public to the frivolous details of particular developments of the brain. They have no right to take the main question as granted ; they have been suffered too long to confine the argument to minute and trifling details ; we should bring them back to the main question and compel their atten- tion to the true issue — whether there is such a corres- pondence between the organization which is claimed to be the origin of mind and the mind itself, as must neces- sarily exist between a moving and its subordinate power — between cause and effect. We confidently affirm as a matter of fact, that, notwithstanding the sympathy be- tween body and soul, there is no agreement or corres- pondence in their action which indicates the production of mind, from any part of the organization of the material frame, but, on the contrary, that there is that diversity and disagreement in their states, which establishes the immateriality of the mind. Will any physiologist ven- ture to deny that the intellectual powers are often dis- eased and weak, when the body is in health and the functions of all its various organs in full and perfect ac- tion ? That the mind is frequently vigorous and active even in the hour of death ? It is not denied that there exists a powerful sympathy between body and mind, but it is the sympathy of connection and union, not of cause IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 153 and eflfect; besides, the character of this mental action is such as to show the natural superiority and independence of the soul; for mental suffering always prostrates the physical powers, while organic disease does not always, or often, weaken the intellect The animal nature is, not unusually, prematurely worn out by the action of mind, and death is often the consequence of its extraordinary development and powerful excitement This would never happen if ma- terialism be true, for the stream cannot rise above the fountain. It often has been urged and reiterated by materialists, that the intellectual faculties are uniformly enfeebled by old age ; and this is beUeved by many who have never taken the trouble to ascertain the truth by personal ob- servation. We venture to assert, that in a very large majority of cases, the mental powers are sound and unim- paired in aged persons. Accurate observation will, in most cases, show, that the allegation is founded on a mere prejudice, arising from the fact* that persons rendered infirm by years do not take the interest in passing events that they once did — the senses are blunted by age, and the memory of recent facts has become feeble. That the &culty of memory is not impaired, is obvious from the minute recollections of the aged, with regard to persons and objects with which they were famiUar at an early age. Nor is it always easy to draw out the man of many 1 154 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. years; but silence and contemplation are no marks of mental weakness; and he who is careful to know the truth, and will use the proper effort to ascertain the real state of the mental powers of the aged, will find, for the most part, that they are as vigorous and active as at any period of hfe. I speak from personal observation, when I alledge that individuals of great age, accompanied with many and painful infirmities of body, do possess a vigor of intellect wholly inconsistent with the theory of mate- rialism. They are not fitted, it is true, for the active du- ties of life, but this is the result of the decay, not of the mental, but the animal powers. Every one accustomed to observe the state of those afflicted with lingering sick- ness, cannot fail to have remarked the activity and vigor of the mind, which seems to be sometimes sharpened by the weakness of the body, and especially by the change from the full habit of perfect health to the attenuation of disease. Even in the hour of mortal agony, when the dark wing of the angel of death has cast its shadow upon the clay tabernacle, when sight and hearing are gone, and every pulsation of the heart seems to be the last, the soul has been known to give evidence of undiminished power. Such cases are rare because we are not often permitted to know what passes in the solemn moment of departure, when the soul, like a bird escaping from its cage, is fluttering at the avenue of its dismissal. But one such fact is a fatal blow to materialism ; for if the soul does IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 155 not sicken, languish, and die, "vvith the organization which is claimed as its origin, it is independent of that organi- zation. If its powers are exercised in the article of death, it survives the shock ; for, if intelligence, thought, memory and hope, are in full exercise at the moment of the suspension of animal powers which precedes dissolu- tion, it is folly to talk of physical developments as the origin and seat of mind. " Cessata causa cessat effectus" is a maxim older than that gross form of modern mate- rialism, called Phrenology. Nor is the mind dependent upon the perfection of a material organization. This is often taken for granted, but remains to be proved. Perfectly formed persons are often idiots, and the most deformed dwarfs, like Esop, have been celebrated for vigor and acuteness of intellect Certain statements have been confidently put forth, accompanied by engravings, exhibiting a pecuhar con- formation of the head as the occasion of idiocy. It is easy to make a man look like a fool in a picture, another thing to show the living subject We make an issue of fact with materialists on this point We aflfirm that a majority of those unhappy persons who have never possessed, or are deprived of reason in the providence of God, are perfectly formed persons, not marked by any peculiar formation of the head, and, least of all, by that low, declining forehead of which so many pictures are seen, and so few living specimens exhibited. The truth 156 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. is, they cannot be found. It is a thing in which for once materialists have condescended to entertain the ideal, and amuse the pubHc with fancies rather than facts. Nor does intelligence depend absolutely upon the size or per- fection of any single organ. Though the brain, from which proceeds all sensation, cannot be materially affected without the loss of life, and injuries inflicted upon it do sometimes affect the reason, yet it is by no means true, that any connection has been established which proves that the brain is even the seat of the soul. It is a disputed point, and hkely to remain so, from the great diversity of phenomena on the subject. The question yet hes open, notwithstanding the attempts of modern materialists to make partitions of the prominences of the brain among the affections, passions, and intellectual powers. Even the argument from the volume of the brain has been shown to be worthless ; for Dr. Good has given us a catalogue of several animals, in whom this organ is larger in proportion to their size than in man. And we are told by Dr. Bostick, that the size of an organ is no indication of the degree of its powers. Nor is the reason always affected by the most violent disorders of this organ. A patient of the well known Dr. Abercrombie, retained his faculties in the dying hour, whose brain was afterwards found to be suffused with a pound of water. It is also worthy of remark, that man does not possess a superiority in any of the senses ; his sight is not so acute, IMMORTAUTY OF THE SOUL. 167 his hearing not so perfect* nor his taste so exquisite, as they are found to exist in a multitude of animals. On the principles of materialists, those animal organizations which possess the most considerable volume of brain, together with the greatest perfection in those senses which are the inlets of knowledge, ought to exhibit a mental superiority to man ! The inomateriality of mind may be established also by the diflference which is observable between reason and mstinct Reason in man is capable of unlimited im- provement It has been developing its resources from the creation to the present time, while instinct in animals is marked by no such progress, being incapable of advance, and existing in the young animal in the same perfection as at the later periods of its existence. In- stinct is infallible, certain and involuntary in its action — reason the reverse. Instinct is not acquired by education, but is inherent ; not communicated by instruction or lost by neglect — calling for no exercise of choice, and involving neither praise or blame; evidently designed to secure with certainty the enjoyments suitable to a brief exist- ence. But man is endowed with powers capable of end- less improvement* indicative of immortality; his choice goes iai to determine both his character and condition, and the freedom of his will constitutes his accountability. Is this extraordinary diversity between reason and instinct indicated by a comparison of the organs of men and 156 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. animals ? This is not pretended, for materialists assert that the ferocity and wickedness of man result from an organization of the brain, hke that of the lion and tiger. With a strange blindness to its results upon their system, they place reason and instinct upon the same foundation, and make the same cause result in opposite efiFects. Their grand object, we think, is to destroy at once the expectation of immortality and remove the restraints of moral accountability. We have been told by some of their lecturers, that bad men are not properly wicked — only dangerous; and that a cruel and savage temper is predicable of an organization like that which leads the tiger to seek his prey, upon the principles of his physical constitution. A system which teaches such a sentiment is contrary to the evidence of consciousness, confounds all distinctions of virtue and vice, and destroys all sense of obligation, all notions of obedience to laws and govern- ment, and leaves men without hindrance to consult their animal propensities with the brute races. This exceeds the worst systems of the most debauched periods. It is what the ancient Atheists did not dream of accomplishing^ The position carried to its legitimate results would de- stroy the institution of marriage, justify the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, make all law tyranny and all punishment injustice. It is not possible to go beyond this, in the process of degrading human nature. It is the bottom of the pit, found at length, down which infi- IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 159 delity would thrust all order, law and religion, and pos- sesses at least this doubtful merit, that there is nothing beyond it, as an apology for unbelief or as a justifi- cation of transgression. We do not mean to be un- derstood that all, or a majority of those who have lis- tened favorably to the specious details of modern mate- rialism, have perceived or are prepared to acquiesce in its results. The leaders know well that it will not do to shock pubhc sentiment with these outrageous conclu- sions until retreat is impossible. The absolute physical necessity which is the inevitable result of this system, should be faithfully exhibited by those who watch th€ signs of the times; the mask should be torn from this mystery of iniquity, its sophistry detected, and its conse- quences exposed. Especially should our young men who go out from our seminaries, be prepared to meet this shallow but popular philosophy, which is Uke to prove one of the most powerful auxiliaries to the innovating spirit of the age, in its attacks upon long established truths in philosophy, morals, and religion. It may be urged that we have nothing to do with consequences, that facts must determine the controversy. We should be content with this: "fiat jmiitia, mat coe- lunif" is an old and just maxim. What then is the sys- tem, and what the facts by which it is supported ? This boasted scheme, so much urged upon the attention of the public, which seeks admittance to our halls of learn- 160 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. ing and our temples of faith, is but the revival of the ancient materialism, in a new and most offensive shape. Its advocates assert, with the old materialists, that the brain is the originating cause of intellect ; and they have gone a step beyond their predecessors in furnishing every faculty, passion, and propensity, with a particular organ, which is at once the cause and the index of mind and its properties. The soul is weighed, measured and divided, and mental philosophy reduced to number and quantity. They have not yet succeeded in procuring the indorsement of any learned body in Europe or America, and, with some few exceptions, the system is in the hands of itinerating and self-elected professors. This is not said for the purpose of prejudicing the argument, but because the advocates of Phrenology are accustomed to alledge that the learned European world have received and favored their system, which is by no means the fact. It is undoubtedly true that many hold this system in a way to divest it of its most glaring errors. Such consider the development of the brain as merely indicative of the character of the man, exhibiting his vir- tues and vices as they have been fixed by his own choice. This view, of course, leaves the question of morals un- touched; but we must be allowed to remark that this is not Phrenology, or any thing else ; for what is meant by the assertion, that the passions and affections of the mind previously existing and acting, are merely indicated IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 161 by the size and appearance of an organ, as anger is indi- cated by the expression of the countenance? The countenance, especially the eye, was evidently designed as the index of the soul, not by size, but by expression; but where is the proof that mind is capable of producing the eflfects of size and form, and of enlarging and dimin- ishing a particular organ ? This is to make the organ the result of mental action; it is to give a new and extraordinary faculty to the soul — that of producing, or at least increasing, the bulk of matter — a thing incon- ceivable. It is by representations like these, that the sys- tem is imposed upon those who would reject it with abhorrence, if they perceived its true tendency ; but in- dications are not wanting, that many of its advocates and self-elected professors are ready to urge its legitimate results. We have been told from the lecturer's desk, and from the press, that Phrenology is to change all systems of education, law, and government It has been said and reiterated, that bad men are not to be treated as criminal, only confined as dangerous; that merchants are to choose their clerks, husbands their wives, and young men their friends, by the certain test of the phy- sical conformation of the brain, rather than the uncertain tests of conduct and character. It has been boastingly said, that, if the Bible is opposed to Phrenology, it must {aU. ; and infideUty already numbers the standard works 1* 162 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. of Phrenology in a list of publications furnished by one of her leading journals in Boston. In addition to what has already been said, we assert that Phrenology is opposed to the testimony of our con- sciousness. God has so constituted man that he is con- scious of the commission of sin, when he indulges in the exercise of bad passions, or violates the relations which bind him to society. Like the lion and tiger, men often prey upon the weak and defenceless, but they are sen- sible that they violate their moral obligations, and are worthy of punishment ; but no such distinctions of right and wrong are made by those ferocious animals whose instincts lead them always to fulfill the design of their existence. Now, a system which gives the soul and its qualities, reason and its attributes, no higher or other foundation than the same physical structure which deter- mines instinct in animals, and which, in its pubhcations, exhibits in juxta position the heads of men and brutes to confirm such a theory, is unworthy of serious refutation. A theory like this makes all restraint a violation of the first law of nature, and would overthrow all law and government ; it would prostrate the halls of learning and the altars of faith, and leave men at liberty to follow those propensities which are "evil, and only evil, and that con- tinually." It has been said that we are approaching this Millenium of Materialism ; but it will be a second reign of terror, and God grant it may not happen in our day. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 163 But we are told of numerous instances of the detection of character by the examination of the head. Who have been the judges of the accuracy of the Phrenologist's details of character ? Himself and the subject of his in- spection. The presumption of the one and the vanity of the other, are an ample solution of phrenological success ■in the determination of the prevailing habits and propen- sities. The truth is, if numberless failures and multipUed mistakes prove any thing, there is abundant evidence of the falsehood of the pretensions of Phrenology. The ablest professors have given diflferent accounts of the same head, not recognizing their subject at the second inspection ; and in the absence of personal acquaintance, and without a view of the countenance, which is, to some extent, an index of the mind, phrenological observations are the merest guess work. Nothing can be more vague, uncertain, and unsatisfactory, than the charts of cha- racter which are issued for a consideration to guide their ^rtunate possessors, who, after all, can only judge of their accuracy by what they knew of themselves before — information, one would think, of no great value. It may be that fiiith in this science, so called, is sometimes excited by the vanity of exhibiting the chart of a good head, which is at once a certificate of intellect and cha- racter — and cheap enough, if good for any thing, which we must be permitted to doubt. There is also a natu- ral love of the marvelous, which makes men credulous of 164 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. those pretensions which promise revelations of character and fortune, which has distinguished every age of the world and almost every condition in human hfe. It is not our intention to wound the feelings of any one ; we are aware that men of worth and talent are inclined to favor Phrenology, but may we not be allowed to entreat such to pause before committing themselves to a system which, however specious, leads to the grossest mate- rialism, and which, however explained and modified by good men, is a terrible engine in the hands of the wicked ? We hope, and venture to predict, that Phrenology will prove but one of the passing folhes of the age, and that some in this assembly will live to see it laid in the tomb, where judicial astrology, animal magnetism, metallic tractoration, and the theory of the philosopher's stone, repose in unbroken silence, without the hope of a future resurrection. Finally, the immateriality and immortahty of the soul are fundamental truths which should be taught and de- fended in every system of education, as they are in every formula of religion. They are first principles, upon which the educated young men who are to form the character of the age, may repose with entire conviction and un- wavering faith. It is one thing to be bigoted to certain opinions, because they are our own, and another to hold steadfastly to first truths and settled principles. The young men of this day are exceedingly exposed to be IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 166 misled by the innovating and disorganizing spirit which is infecting many of our seminaries of learning and re- ligion. It is your duty to be open to conviction, and nothing is to be rejected or received, for the single reason that it is new ; but it is no mark of vigor of thought or liberality of sentiment, to be driven about by " every wind of doctrine." There are facts and principles which lie at the foundation of all reasoning, established by the almost universal assent of mankind, by the voice of con- science, and the word of God ; whatever is opposed to them is necessarily false, and will never agitate a well balanced mind. Among these are the immateriality and natural immortality of the souL To impeach these truths is to render education comparatively valueless — to re- move the restraints of sin and the incentives to virtue and piety — to contradict the sure word of promise, and cause the angel of hope to spread his golden pinions in flight from a dark and desolate world. But these truths, and those connected with them in the revelation of God, have met the opposition, and defeated the malice of "giants of old, men of renown," and are not likely to fall beneath the assaults of the infidel schools of the nineteenth century. The Gospel of the Son of God, re- vealing life and immortality, will make its way by the power of the Eternal Spirit, over the graves of false sys- tems of philosophy and faith, until man shall be redeemed from the thraldom of error and sin, and the anthems of 166 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. heaven declare the triumphs of the Cross in words once heard by the prophet in vision — " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, The whole earth is full of His GLORY." LECTURE VI THE CONNECTION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. Upon an occasion like the present, there is but one topic which could suggest itself either to the speaker or the audience, as appropriate to the circumstances under which we are convened. But the subject of Education, naturally before us at this time, is one which, in its most comprehensive sense, includes the physical, intellectual, and moral development of man, embraces the vast range of science, the arts, philosophy, morals, and religion, and involves, in its full discussion, the fortunes and hopes of our race in time, and their destiny in the world to come. You will not expect me, at this time, to present this subject in all its bearings; and there is a single topic which is forcibly suggested by the recent change in the • Ddivend at the opening of Geneteo Academy, Oct., 1849. 168 THE CONNECTION OF administration of the Institution of learning whose re- organization and recommencement has assembled us to- day, to which I shall confine your attention in this brief Address. The connection of reUgion and learning, the fact that Education necessarily involves the idea of rehgious instruction and moral training, and that science and phi- losophy are only valuable as they are sanctified by faith, and can only flourish as they are united to Christianity, are themes suitable to this occasion, and which may properly introduce to the public an Institution professedly organized on Christian principles, and subject to the oversight and direction of the Presbyterian church. So various are the views entertained in regard to the subject of Education, so many attempts are made in this country to divorce science from faith, and such a variety of false and untenable positions are assumed, by those high in place and influence, in regard to the true design and proper mode of Education, that it will be necessary to commence our discussion with certain general prin- ciples, which, once established, will, it is believed, settle the question in all unprejudiced minds; and where they do not convince, inay at least, perhaps, silence those who have sought to put asunder things which, in their o^vn nature and by Divine appointment, are in- separable. It win not be denied that man is dis- tinguished from the inferior races by the capacity of edu- cation. There is no spontaneous development of his SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 169 mental powers — no instance has ever occurred in which his intellectual faculties have been evolved, or in which his mental perceptions have become clear and dis- tinct, without Education. All the powers that appertain to man as a moral, accountable and rational being, must be drawn out — educed — or educated. The things in which he is perfected without education, are those which he has in common with the inferior races. The animal nature, which, with them, he possesses, gains nothing in its proportion or vigor by education or civilization. The wild Indian who roams the wilderness and lives by the chase, is a model of the perfection of the mere animal organization, better developed under the rude train- ing of nature, than when cradled in all the soft ap- pliances of art That in man which most resembles the natural instinct of animals, is far more perfect in savage than in civilized life. Every sense is more acute and active. Something almost hke the mysterious power which enables the wild beast to follow his prey, or pursue a desired course with undeviating accuracy, or like that which teaches the bird of passage to take its flight across a continent without chart or compass, is seen in those tribes who roam over plains and forests, without any certain dwelling place, and without the first rudiments of education. Yet the difference between the most highly cultivated and educated, and the most sarage and barbarous of men, is not nearly so great as iro THE CONNECTION OF that which separates the lowest and most miserable spe- cimens of mankind from the highest among the inferior orders of life, guided simply by instinct. There is no condition of our humanity so degraded by ignorance or darkened by sin, but that the proofs of its original ele- vation and amazing capability are at hand. To the idea of God, and of an invisible world, which is almost if not entirely universal, man, in his rudest state, recognizes the original relations in which the Creator bound the human family; marriage, in some form, exists — govern- ment of some kind is maintained — while some general principles of rectitude, some universal distinctions of right and wrong, some just ideas of virtue and vice, of truth and falsehood, prevail. But not only is man seen to be a moral and accountable being, in whatever place or con- dition he is found, but his intellectual powers are so far developed as to show that he belongs to the brotherhood of the human family, and only needs education to place him upon the level of his most favored brethren. The Greenlander, who is reckoned among the most debased and ignorant of savages, living in a dreary climate, which is an apt emblem of his condition, has exhibited the in- ventive and reasoning powers of our common humanity, in the construction of a vessel which excites the ad- miration and defies the competition of civilized and edu- cated men. Compelled by his necessities, he has con- structed a boat, without wood, iron, or cordage, of the SCIENCE AND RELIGION. I7l bones and skins of the amphibious animals on whom he subsists, with which he navigates the boisterous seas of the North, and rides out storms which would founder our best constructed Ufe-boats. This admirable vessel the Greenlander alone can navigate — pursuing his prey in the stormy watei-s that girt his frozen soil, in tempests and amid dangers which would appall the heart of the stoutest seaman — when capsized, recovering himself by a stroke of his oar, restoring to its proper position his life- boat, which, overturning, can neither fill or sink. The necessities of the rudest states have called out, in some form, the inventive faculties of the most uncouth bar- barians. The religious principle, the capability of moral distinctions, the rudiments of marriage and government, the exercise of the intellectual and inventive faculties, however the extent be limited, separates the most de- based savage from the most sagacious animal by an im- passable gulf. The Une of separation between reason and instinct is abundantly manifest All attempts to confound two things 80 entirely diverse, if not opposite, have proved signal failures. The slightest examination will show that they are without likeness or analogy. Instinct is in- fallible in its dictates and conclusions; reason, though a higher faculty, is fallible in both. Instinct guides the animal invariably to the precise end of his being; rea- son, in man, forms an insufficient guide to truth, holiness. 1^2 THE CONNECTION OF and happiness. Instinct admits of no improvement, and never advances; it is made no wiser by age, no more safe by experience. It is in one generation what it was at the beginning; and in the young animal what it is in the old. Reason is capable of an enlargement which has no known boundaries, and requires age and expe- rience for its development, and differs in the extent of its researches and the justness of its conclusions in different ages and among different generations. Instinct cannot be educated; it admits of no enlargement — is benefited by no training or example. The bird of pas- sage, taken from the nest, separated from its kind, when feathered and at Hberty, takes its flight, in its appointed time, through the " vast illimitable air," without guide or director, without compass or chart, over seas and con- tinents, to its appointed place. The young Raven will build the mechanical nest peculiar to its kind without instruction or example. But Education is absolutely essential to reason. Without instruction, guidance, and example, there is and can be no development of its powers. The inventive faculty which characterizes rea- son is wanting in instinct. Whatever has been instanced in animals as resembling reason, may in general be re- ferred to their imitative powers; and there is, in the most sagacious of the irrational tribes, but the shadow of those high faculties which distinguishes man, as made in the image of God. SCIENCE AND RELIQION. l73 It may be said that the capacity of Education dis- tinguishes man from all the inferior orders of being. The powers conferred on him by his Creator, can only be developed by instruction. The soul, without know- ledge, is what the natural universe would be without light ; or like gold concealed in the earth, or un wrought from the alloy, with which it is mixed, in the mine. That Education is the cause of the superiority of one race or one generation over another, is manifest from the ascertained capability of elevation which has been de- monstrated in respect to the most debased and degraded of those who bear the impress of our common humanity. Education, in its large and comprehensive sense, marks the diversity in the moral states of men, from the most abject Heathenism to the highest Christian civilization. It is the mission of Christianity to disciple, teach, or edu- cate all nations. To go into all the world and instruct all men, was the final injunction of the Saviour to his disciples. This Divine knowledge has ever been the sole basis of the elevation of the Heathen. No barbarous people have ever received the arts of ci\ilized life or our philosophy, science, and laws, who have not first been educated in our Christianity. This proves that the de- based condition of the Pagan world is the result of moral causes, of false systems of religion and ethics, which must be overthrown, before civilization, science, and the arts, can be introduced. It is a great mistake to suppose that 174 THE CONNECTION OF any original superiority of races, on the one hand, or natu- ral inferiority of intellect, on the other, has occasioned the existing diversity in the conditions of mankind. There is no physical or moral debasement among men which does not readily yield to Education, giving to this term its widest scope. The degradation of ages disappears before the simple process of Christian teaching. Children taken from the bosom of Paganism and educated in our own country in Christian families, have developed like others in the same family, and have sometimes exhibited superior mental and moral powers. The cases of the celebrated Sampson Occom, one of the Aborigines of our own continent, and that of Phillis Wheatly, brought from the coast of Guinea, at the age of nine years, and educated in Boston, are in point. An inconceivable amount of non- sense on the subject of races and the natural inferiority of one to another, is every year uttered and published without contradiction. Yet a single example of a Hea- then child from the coast of Africa, developing all the powers and qualities which characterize the most gifted among the Anglo-Saxon race, is a perfect refutation of all the idle philosophies which, on this subject of races, are full of " great swelling words of vanity." With the cause that produces debasement and barbarism, the effect will cease. The unity of the human family, their common descent and common natural gifts, will be mani- fest when the same education of the heart and the intel- SCIENCE AND RELIGION. l75 lect shall become universal. When the light of the Grospel shall shine in every habitation of cruelty, then, and not till then, shall the wilderness aijd the solitary place be glad for them, and the desert blossom as the rose; then, joy and gladness shall be found therein; ** thanksgiving and the voice of melody." Nor will the statement of the significant fact be out of place in this connection, that the elevation of the uneducated and de- graded in masses and nations, has only been sought on moral grounds, by moral means and among Christian men. Whence orig'mated the idea of universal edu- cation? Who opened the doors of knowledge to the poor? Who have sought to carry the light of science with a true philosophy and the blessings of civilization, to the ignorant, the degraded, and the down-trodden nations of the earth? Has infidelity moved in this matter? Have the scientific combined to effect this object? Have the philosophers, so called, subscribed money, or built ships, or furnished men, to dispel the darkness of centuries? Alas, no ! Whatever Education in the arts and sciences, in civilization and philosophy, the benighted tribes of earth are receiving, is from the efforts of the Christian church. The work is prosecuted by Christian men and women, who, with their lives in their hands, have gone forth to proclaim the Everlasting Gospel in the islands of the sea and in the ends of the earth. But let us look at this subject a little more closely, and l76 THE CONNECTION OF see if we do not discover in the very constitution of man, the necessity of the union of learning and religion in any system of sound Education; let us mark in him that which is the proper subject and object of Education, and then decide whether morals can safely be divorced from science, and whether it is possible, in any system of in- struction, to leave out the element of religious faith ? No one, unless an Atheist, will deny that man is a moral being; or, in other words, that he is the proper subject of law and government; that he has duties to discharge and obligations to fulfill. By the constitution of his nature, he is compelled to make moral distinctions ; by the faculty of conscience, he is constrained to judge his own conduct, and to acquit or condemn himself In the relations of parents and children, of husbands and wives, of governments and subjects, of citizens and neighbors, there are a thousand duties to be performed which are connected with the welfare of society, families, and individuals. The acquisition of knowledge is of no value to him who does not discharge the appropriate duties of life, and is an injury to community, because it puts arms into the hands of an enemy. Knowledge, hke wealth, is simply an element of power; its possession does not necessarily imply either wisdom or virtue. Knowledge is increased power, to do good or evil. Not- withstanding this obvious truth, it still continues a popu- lar fallacy, of which it seems almost impossible to dis- SCIENCE AND RELIGION. l77 abuse the public mind, that there is some mysterious tendency in mere intellectual training towards virtue and goodness, in the absence of any education of the moral nature. Now, this is contrary both to reason and experience. What tendency exists in the knowledge that the sum of the squares of the two legs in a right-angled triangle, is equal to the square of the hypothenuse, to make a man deny himself his lusts, his pride, his pas- sions ? How does the knowledge that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen gases, influence him to be an obedient child, a virtuous man, or a good citizen ? The angels who kept not their first estate, were not inferior in knowledge to those who remained steadfast in their allegiance. It was the " Covering Cherub that sat amid the stones of fire," who drew away that third part of heaven, " who left their own habitation and are reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Among the philosophers and moralists of the ancients, who were without the knowledge of the true faith, without the purifying influence of the Gospel, per- sonal purity was rare; the feeble restraints of Poly- theism continued to exert an influence among the com- mon people — the " profanum vulgus" of the Latin Poet, long after the demoralization of the more intellectual classes, who, ceasmg to reverence the gods, had come to mock at the obligations of religion and morality. Education, civilization, and refinement,jf^i^Betia^js^jxf 8 ^'^ Of thm"^^ 178 THE CONNECTION OF the knowledge of God, and the revelation of his will, while they led to the detection of the fables of Poly- theism, gave them nothing in its place, and served to corrupt the public morals, and to hasten the decay of the State. Should it be said, that with us, educated men as a class, are morally superior to others, it may be replied, that the proposed divorce between religion and learning has not yet been accomplished — the sepa- ration is no where so complete as to exhibit its inevi- table results. A generation, at least, must pass away, before the absolute inefficiency of mere intellectual train- ino' to the formation of moral character can be demon- o strated in our experience — before the popular fallacy which now bewilders the community, will have worked out its mischievous consequences. The fact which must be conceded, that man possesses a moral as well as an intellectual nature, proves that both should be educated. If either is neglected, it should be the latter, because the proper performance of moral duties is of far higher moment than the mere possession of knowledge, whether we consider the interests of society and government or of the individual. The discharge of the various duties of life, is a matter of almost infinitely more importance than the exhibition of intellectual culti- vation. Of what consequence is it that a man should be able to measure the distance of the earth from the sun — that he should know all the powers and qualities of mat- SCIENCE AND RELIGION. l79 ter, — if his passions are unsubdued — if his heart is un- reformed — if his principles are corrupt? What parent would consider any amount of knowledge a compensation for the depraved character of his child ? If his son was a liar and a cheat, his possession of all the knowledge in the world, would fail to satisfy or reconcile the unhappy father. What husband would overlook the infidelity of his wife, on account of her accomplishments? What Government would be content to have Philosophers, Mathematicians, Geologists, and Chemists, instead of good citizens, and subjects, obedient to the Laws ? The education then of the moral nature of man is not only necessary, but it is the GRAND NECESSITY. This is still more obvious when we consider the corrup- tion of his moral nature, an element which enters largely into this question, and the neglect of which, says an emi- nent historian, has been the great mistake of all theorists in government, and, we may add, the capital error of almost all modem systems of Education. But with- out entering at this time upon Ae Scriptural doctrine of the corruption of the moral nature of man, it is enough to say, that the admission that he is a moral and account- able being, establishes the necessity of a religious edu- cation. For if the intellect runs to waste without education, much more the moral nature, which, like the earth without cultivation, will only yield "tiioms and thistles." 180 THE CONNECTION OF But the objector, granting the general position which lie cannot well deny, will still contend that a man may- be educated for the performance of his moral duties without the element of religious faith. He argues that morals may be taught when there is no system of reli- gion — that the performance of social and relative duties may be enjoined and secured without theological instruc- tion. A proposition more utterly destitute of truth was never in any place or at any time enounced, yet repeated so often, that multitudes believe it to be an axiom. Re- ligion and morality can be no more divorced than cause and effect The religious principle is the ground of all moral obligation, and it would be as easy to erect a building without a foundation, as to sustain a system of morals without the basis of religious faith. " Law," says Blackstone, " is a rule of right action, prescribed by a superior powerJ^ With the acknow- ledgment or denial of the being and government of a Supreme Power, stand or fall the sanctions which en- force the duties enjoined" by every code of ethics. With- out this, all law is despotism, all government tyranny. Hobbes' theory of a conventional morality is an ab- surdity. Without the recognition of a Supreme Law, the judgment or legislation of a majority in any community, is no more binding than are the fallible, private opinions of tlie individuals of which it is composed. Without the sanctions of religion, morahty is a mere name, an ex- SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 181 pression of human and uncertain opinions, which is without authority, leaving every man to consult only his own de- sires. The notion that Grovemment is a compact, in which the subject surrenders certain natural rights in order to secure the protection of law, has no foundation in form or fact Every man comes into the world the subject of law and government The consent of the citizen to this imaginary compact is never asked or given. Whether it be a Despotism, or a Hmited Monarchy, a Republic, an Aristocracy, or a Democracy, the principle is the same. Every one bom in the territory owes allegiance to the government We do not deny the right in the body of subjects to change the mode of government, for this is not essential to its existence, but the fact of government and its incidents, among which is the natural allegiance of the subject, is not an affair of choice, consent, or change. Government is a divine constitution, deriving its general powers from the authority of God, though subject, as to its Twocfe, to the will of the people. This is strikingly illustrated in the change of the free form of the Hebrew commonwealth, by the demand of the peo- ple for a king, who was given them with a Divine intima- tion, that their choice, though a bad one, was allowed. This resulted in no substantial alterations either in the civil or religious laws of the Hebrews; and the fact may be noticed in regard to all revolutions, that they are accomplished in general without material 182 THE CONNECTION OF changes in the statutes which protect the rights of persons or property. A Repubhc may take the place of a despotism without any change of organic law; it is|but a better administration of the great principles recognized by all governments, but hable to be perverted and abused by an arbitrary and irresponsible executive. As governments are ordained of God, and men are subject to them, independently of any choice or consent on their part, so they are the subjects of moral law; and all ques- tions of duty as connected with society and government, are referable ultimately to the Law of God. The exist- ence and authority of the Supreme Governor are the bases upon which rest both the fact and the character of moral obligation. Hence the idea of teaching morahty without religion is an absurdity. But it will be urged that the being and government of God may be made the basis of a Moral Education, without the recognition of any system of rehgion. But how religious instruction can be communicated except upon some received system, we are at a loss to conceive* As a matter of fact, all rehgious teaching, whether true or false, is conveyed upon the basis of some well known theology, as Mohammedanism, the various systems of Polytheism, or Christianity. A vast majority of our popu- lation beheve that God, his attributes and government, are only fully and truly revealed in the Sacred Scrip- tures. The world is full of evidence that men by nature SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 183 "know not God;" and though "the invisible things" of him are seen by the things that are made, "even his eternal power and Godhead," yet this alone does not prevent men from " worshiping and serving the creature more than the Creator;" without a revelation of his will ^* they become vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart is darkened." What Reason, unaided by Reve- lation, can do, has been tested by sixty centuries of ex- perience by untold numbers of oiu* race, of whom six hundred millions are living witnesses. There can be no answer to such demonstrations ; Paganism, with its re- sults, is a perfect and perpetual answer to all the argu- ments for natxiral religion. No man can be foolish enough to imagine that, bom and nurtured under the influence of Polytheism, he would have been any thing better than a stupid idolater. But a practical objection, apparently of a formidable character, is urged against a strictly Christian Education. It is demanded what form of Christianity shall be adopted as the ground of instruction among the various sects who own the Christian naame. Under our plan of government^ and with our poUtical institutions, how can our public schools be placed upon any foundation of Christian faith ? In reply, we remark, in the first place, that all our higher Seminaries of learning are now, and always have been denominational — or, to use the very term in which the objector rejoices, sectarian. No im- 184 THE CONNECTION OF portant College or Uniyersity in this country has ever been sustained on any other principle. Institutions founded on the latitudinarian plan contended for, have either failed altogether or have been compelled to adopt a religious basis. Even where the strictly reUgious cha- racter of a College has been modified by a departure from the orthodox faith, as in the case of Harvard, its sectarian character has continued unchanged. Cam- bridge is as decidedly Socinian in its character as it was formerly Orthodox. The endowments of the pious Harvard and his associates have been grossly perverted ; the gospel proclaimed there is another gospel than that which they received. But Unitarianism is called by its adherents a system of Christian doctrine, and is at least as sectarian as any other. The collegiate institutions which have succeeded in the United States, have been founded by the piety of individuals or the endowments of churches, and are under ecclesiastical supervision. Al- most every important College in this country is, in fact and form, an Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, or Presby- terian institution. The State has occasionally aided the various Seminaries founded and endowed by the church — distributing her aid among the various denomi- nations of Christians. No practical evil has in any way resulted. The government has been committed to no- thing but the cause of Education. The people have sent their sons to be educated in accordance with their reli- SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 186 gious or other preferences, while a sound and decided Christian influence has in general pervaded all our higher institutions of learning. Christianity has not merely been tolerated but taught, and thousands of students have received their first decided religious impressions at the college where they have graduated. A system that has been found so important to the success, if not essential to the existence, of the higher schools, might, by parity of reasoning, be presumed to be the best in all cases; but the State having assumed the work of Education in the primary schools, it is contended that no religious system can be introduced in this department We concede the existence of this difficulty, and have only to reply, that we do not admit the right of the Govern- ment to assume to educate the children of the citizen. Except in cases where the parent is incapacitated from performing the duty which God has committed to him, the assumption is an infringement upon his personal, political and religious liberty. What right has the Government to undertake the education of the children of those who are able and willing to train up their own households? Was government in this free country established with reference to such an object? May not the State as well attempt to dictate one faith as to as- sume the office of instruction, which implies the foiming of the faith and morals as well as the cultivation of the intellect ? What an engine of oppression and corruption 8* 186 THE CONNECTION OF such a system might become in the hands of ambitious and designing men in the administration of the Govern- ment? How long will it be before the State, having furnished at a vast expense all the facilities of primary- education, will pass a law enforcing the attendance of all the children ? IS'o right is more sacred than that of the parent to educate his own children in his own way. No duty is more strictly enjoined upon the Christian father in the Sacred Scriptures, than that he should " bring up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." It will do for despotic governments, who have a religion estabUshed by law, to assume the office of Education ; but for a Free Government, tolerating all forms of faith, and sustaining none, to do this, is an at- tempt upon the liberty of the citizen, and a public, open, avowed dissociation of religion and learning, of morals and education — things which God hath joined, and which it is both impious and ruinous to put asunder. It is indeed contended that some kind of religious in- struction is conveyed, some general or common Chris- tianity taught, in our common schools. But how this can be honestly done, in view of those rights of con- science with which the State is pledged not to interfere, is not seen. The Jew rejects the New Testament, and is offended if his children are instructed out of it; the Roman Catholic prohibits the reading of either the Old or New Testament; the Quaker objects to prayer; the SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 187 Socinian objects to the doctrine of human depravity and a vicarious atonement for human redemption ; the Uni- versalist denies the doctrine of a future judgment and "perdition of ungodly men." When we have gone through with the catalogue of opinions from all quarters, what common Christianity have we left? More than this, what common principles of Christian morality re- main untouched in the vast array of objections from Jews, Deists, and Atheists, as well as from those who profess to receive the Gospel as a Revelation from God ? The Government cannot establish a school and sufler any religious or moral principles to be taught there without infringing upon some person's rights of con- science. From the necessity of the case, the State may provide for the education of the poor and destitute ; but beyond this she passes her legitimate office. The funds devoted to Education should be distributed among pri- mary schools, on the same principle that colleges and academies are now aided, and communities, and churches, or individuals, found and regulate and govern the lower, as they now do the higher institutions of learning. In the rural districts, two things have, in past time, modified the evils of the system, under the old law. Where the population was homogeneous in a school dis- trict, they were enabled to manage their affairs in their own way, and in a religious community the school had a religious character. Thirty jrears since, the writer of 188 THE CONNECTION OF this Address, was taught the Assembly's Catechism in one of the common schools of this State. Again — the equality in the condition of the people in the rural pa- rishes, prevented, and still prevents, the monstrous evils which attend the free school system in our cities and populous towns. The commingling of the children of all classes is the avowed object of the present free school system. The fusion of society which Socialism and Fourierism are attempting in regard to adults, is sought to be accomplished in respect to children in the State Schools, where the experiment is far more dangerous from the unformed habits and character of the juvenile population. It will not be denied that there are multi- tudes of children in our large cities, and more or less in every district of every populous town, who are trained in the haunts of vice — pigmies in size, but giants in sin, who have imbibed their knowledge of evil \^ ith the first utterance of language, and with whom blasphemy and obscenity are household words. These children, upon our free school system, are introduced to the com- panionship of others carefully and religiously trained, upon whom such an influence must, in the nature of the case, be most deplorable. It is in city schools also that all attempts of judicious and pious teachers to introduce prayer or the reading of the Scriptures, are most jea- lously watched and promptly resisted. What a system is this for the education of immortal souls ! Without God, SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 189 without Christianity, without prayer, and, worse than all, introducing among the comparatively pui-e and virtuous, the precocious vagrants who have been trained in the purlieus of crime, in the very sinks of the pit, whose breath is contagion, and whose presence brings a moral pestilence into a crowded congregation of young children, who have been before kept from the knowledge of sin, but among whom it now comes as when in the Garden of Eden the Arch-tempter poisoned the ear of Eve. That the depraved and abandoned portion of the popu- lation demand attention, is not denied; but that they should be allowed to mingle, as adults or children, in the society of those comparatively innocent, is an out- rage upon common sense and common morality. Be- sides, it is not possible to reduce society to the dead level of Socialism ; and if it were possible, it is not de- sirable. A dreary and stagnant marsh would be the re- sult of leveling all those inequalities of condition which occur from the ordinations of the Divine Providence, or from the diversity in intellect, character, and habits, which exist among men. It is high time that the truth was spoken on this sub- ject, at whatever risk of odium or abuse from men who are engaged in perpetual jubilations over the free school system. Those who bestow or enjoy the patronage of the plan, are of course pledged to it, and may be expected to cry out with the silver shrine-makers of 190 THE CONNECTION OF Ephesus, who, when their gains were endangered by an Apostle, cried out, " about the space of two hours, * Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' " It is time, if possible, to convince those sincere but mistaken men of their error, who think that when they have taxed themselves and their neighbors to build costly edifices and secure teachers of more than ordinary attainments, and when the}'- have gathered together in one place all the children of the different wards or districts, however diverse in character, station, or habits — they have done the work, and are entitled to be considered the benefactors of man- kind. Do such men suppose that, by fusing the mass together, the pure metal will destroy the alloy, instead of being corrupted by it? This is contrary to all the conclusions of reason, revelation, and experience. It is said that sectarianism will be destroyed by this process of instruction. This is probable ; for the system tends to the destruction of all rehgion; and if this end is ac- complished, the desired consequence is sure to follow, and we shall soon be as Httle sectarian as the French population during the reign of terror. We contend that the primary schools should be on the same foundation as the higher — that every religious denomination should establish and sustain schools of their own. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church have repeatedly urged the establishment of Pa- rochial Schools upon their congregations. The Episcopal SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 191 Church is said to have always defended this principle, and some of her ablest Bishops have recently urged this subject upon the attention of their Dioceses. It would seem to be a clear proposition, about which Christians could not disagree, that every believing parent is bound to give his children a strictly and thoroughly religious Education. To talk about educating a child religiously at home and intellectually at school, is the most trans- parent sophistry ; it is to do in one place what is imme- diately undone at another. Besides, the Christian pa- rent is bound as much to secure the religious training of his children at school as at home ; the principle is the same. It is an old legal maxim, that what a man does by another he does by himself, and every teacher stands in loco parentis, by the election of the parent. « Grod has committed the education of the child to the parent, and not to the State, and every Christian is bound to educate his child in those views of the Gospel which he himself conscientiously receives, at least substantially; for the agreement in the views of the evangelical denominations is such as to imply no inconsistency in their patronage of each other's institutions. In endeavoring to apply the principles which were stated in the former part of this Lecture, to the primary as well as the higher schools, no disparagement has been in- tended of the officers or teachers of the free schools. Our controversy is not with them, but with the system. How- 192 THE CONNECTION OF ever capable or faithful they may be, however desirous to communicate religious instruction, it is evident that their hands are tied, and that when they do their duty in this department, they violate both the letter and spirit of the system, under which they are engaged. It is important not only that the principles should be stated on which the inseparable union of learning and religion is based, but that they be applied faithfully, at whatever hazard of misconstruction. It has become a solemn duty, however difficult, to expose popular fal- lacies, and to press upon Christians the duty of training their children in their own faith. The education of the masses was first taught by Christianity. The ancients had not the most distant conception of it, either as a duty or a necessity. The Church first assumed this office, and the unhappy union of Church and State in the old world first introduced the action of governments in a matter where, as lawyers say, they had no original jurisdiction. In this country, where this unfortunate union does not exist, the attempt of the State to assume the office of Education is vastly more mischievous; for no religion in form or fact, is, or can be, connected with her schools, and Christianity is threatened with destruc- tion by her own ofispring. That this Seminary, the opening of which has con- vened us to-day, may meet the expectations of all evan- gelical Christians — that it may prove a blessmg to this SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 193 community and to tlie church which has it particularly in charge — that pure and healthful influences, Uke waters from the river of God, may go forth from it to fertilize and refresh our moral wastes — ^is the desire and prayer of those who have it in charge, and of the members of the Synod under whose supervision its affairs are hence- forth to be administered. LECTURE VII. THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT OF CHRISTIANITY* In the nineteenth century the grand hindrance to the Gospel is to be found in the perversion, obscuration or open denial of the Supernatural Element of Christianity. The philosophy of Locke and his followers, and of Hobbes and Bentham, who have superadded the utilitarian scheme to the materialism of the former, are thought by their admirers, to have dischanted the universe of the spiritual and supernatural. There is no longer a "di- vinity which stirs within us," or without us. The innate and ideal are consigned to the tomb of the Capulets ; and the mine and the cotton factory are the divinities of mountain and rivulet Of the effect upon the fine arts, this is not the time or place to speak ; it is enough to say that this philosophy is more grossly material than the * Bztraet ftom a Lecture delivered at Hamilton College 196 THE SUPERIfATURAL ELEMENT polytheistic, which, though it could not elevate man re- ligiously, at least preserved his reverence for the super- natural — his conceptions of the ideal — and gave to the world those miracles of art — or, to use the words of one of our own poets, "Those forms of beauty seen no more, Yet once to art's rapt vision given, Oh, yet the enamored Sun delays. And pries through fount and crumbling fane, To win to him adoring gaze. Those children of tlie sky again!" , While we have rejected the falsehoods and supersti- tions of Paganism, we seem to have forgotten the clear revelation in the Scriptures of Truth of the existence and delegated providence of angels over the destinies of men ; rejecting the error of the heathen world, we have aban- doned the fact of which their worship of demons was but the perversion. In removing the " wood, hay and stubble," we have sought to undermine the foundation upon which the superstructure of error rested, and abhorrent of demi-gods, we either neglect or deny the truth, " that He maketh his angels winds. His messengers a flame of fire." The sentiment which Shakspeare puts in the mouth of Hamlet — " There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreampt of in our philosophy," is more applicable to this, than to the age of Elizabeth ; for to our philosophy nothing difficult or mysterious re- OF CHRISTIANITY. 197 mams ; all things are known, all mysteries are fathomed ; the material universe is a vast engine of which the pro- pelling power may yet be called God, for want of a better term, and because of ancient prejudices. A cal- culation of physical advantages, and how much can be made out of it, is the philosophy of the universe, and taste and imagination, the ideal and the beautiful, are sacri- ficed with the religious sentiment, upon the remorseless altars of Materialism. Nor is the degradation of our mental philosophy less apparent. The soul itself has come to be measured and mapped, divided and subdi- vided — its powers and faculties identified with the pro- tuberances of the brain, subjected to a physical law and an organic development The metaphysician has turned surveyor, and with the head for his field, and his fingers for his instruments, he ascertains the powers and facul- ties of mind in general, and the characteristics of each individual The modern philosophy has buried the di- viner's rod — the arts of magic and the wonders of witch- craft — in a common grave ; but, as has been well said, the somnambulist is put in the place of the soothsayer. The absurdity is nothing if it be not predicated of super- natural powers, and nothing is incredible if it can be assumed of man himself, and referred to a physical law. The magnetic slumber, is said by those who ridicule witchcraft, to give to man the ability of revealing the past, if not the future — of being where his body is not — 198 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT of vision without the use of the eye — of discovering and removing diseases which baffle the skill of the physician, so that powers once predicated of fallen spirits sink into insignificance, in view of these pretensions. What was once attributed to the agency of the powers of darkness is now assumed to belong to the natural, but recently discovered, attributes of man himself; and we are gravely told of laws and physical conditions developed by Ani- mal Magnetism, which enable him to see things past, present, and to come. The superstitions of past ages were but the excrescences of truth ; and of the extent of the agency of fallen spirits we are ignorant; but when man clothes himself with powers evidently supernatural, and even arrogates the possession of Divine attributes by a physical law, there is an end of sober argument — human arrogance can go no farther than to assert, or human credulity than to believe such claims. The faith in witchcraft and demonology of barbarous nations is reputable, compared Avith this monstrous conception of our times. Our philosophy explains every thing ; it knows nothing of the wonderful or supernatural ; it professes to pene- trate the secrets of nature, and in its theological field to declare the counsels of God. It answers in the affirma- tive the solemn questions proposed by Jehovah, " Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked in search of the depth? Have the gates of OF CHRISTIANITY. 199 death been opened to thee, or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death ? Where is the way where light dwelleth, and as for darkness, where is the place thereof? Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? Declare, if thou hast understanding," But none of these things trouble the Materialist, who can answer equally well the question proposed by the Holy Spirit, "Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven?" "Can man by searching find out God ?" The popular theology of the day is deeply infected with this philosophy. It proposes to solve the mystery which has been " hid for ages;" undertakes to explain the things in the Scriptures " hard to be understood ;" offers to our faith the positive demonstrations of science, and declares the moral as well as the material universe to be now delivered from the supernatural and mystical ; while those who cannot run to the same excess of riot, are thought to be behind the intelligence of the age, and yet in bondage to a bigoted spirit and an antiquated faith. Christianity is presented as a progressive system, capable of new de- velopments, and able to keep pace with the extraordinary advance of the present age, and containing nothing con- trary to its philosophy. To accomplish this, of course, the supeniatural element of Christianity must be dis- posed of; and though to the German Neology and its interpretations of Scripture, the leap is too great to be taken at once, yet the indications of relationship are too plain to be mistaken. 200 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT But what is the tendency of this growing rationahsm upon the practical Christianity of the age, and the influ- ence and progress of the Gospel at home and abroad? The decay of religious reverence may be mentioned as one result. Much of the preaching of the day is di- vested of that solemnity in manner and matter which should characterize the message of one who stands be- tween the living and the dead, as an Ambassador for Christ, to proclaim the powers of the world to come. The doctrines of the Bible are discussed philosophically rather than scripturally. With a text too often taken as a mere motto, the preacher seeks to prove his position analogically, or by divesting his doctrine of mystery, or by the fitness of things, and by frequent appeals to the prejudices rather than to the consciences of his hearers. It is sometimes deemed the highest evidence of abihty in the preacher to successfully contradict his text in his ser- mon, and to show that its true meaning is absolutely op- posed to its plain and obvious signification. It has not unfrequently been argued from the pulpit that a sound morahty demands a particular interpretation of certain passages of Scripture ; and certain ultra views in some of the reformations of the day have been based upon this principle, which saps the foundation of revealed religion, by bringing the Bible to the test of a pre-con- ceived^opinion, and destroying its authority, as' the su- preme standard of our faith and practice. Does not the OF CHRISTIANITY. 201 language of some of the conventions assembled for the purpose of breaking the bonds of the slave indicate their want of confidence in the Gospel ? It has been recently said by a distinguished advocate of the rights of man, in substance, that if the Gospel tolerates the relation of master and slave, the Gospel must be abandoned, and the Christian Church threatened that if they do not so interpret the word of Gt)d as to make it denounce the relation in the abstract, and make its immediate abandon- ment a term of communion, that Christianity must give place to a better system of morality. This is an extreme case, and an infidel opinion, but demonstrates the final result of exalting reason above the Word of God. This want of reverence is also perceivable in the prayers of many who come into the presence of the King of kings with an evident lack of godly fear, who address themselves to the Divine Majesty as though they were conversing with an equal, and with a brazen confidence rather argue than ask, rather demand than pray. The building consecrated to the worship of God is frequently dese- crated by harangues on every topic, from men of every character; and a want of reverence is often indicated in the deportment of tliose who are assembled in the sanctu- ary — they hear the messenger of God, if they condescend to listen at all, as they would a political orator, and treat his discussion as though it were a debate, and ** consider not tliat they do evil," though a voice from 6 202 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT the Holy Spirit is in their ears, " Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to pay the sacrifice of fools." An increasing irreverence manifested toward the Bible, the Ministry and the Ordinances, is abundantly indicative of the ten- dency to divest the doctrines of revelation of mystery — the ordinances of sacredness — the ministry of respect — and the Word of the Ufe-giving power of the " Spirit that quickeneth." A more conclusive evidence of the fact that the Super- natural Element of the Gospel is practically overlooked, undervalued or denied, is to be found in the significant silence which is, for the most part, observed in relation to the doctrine of angels. That we are surrounded by an economy of spiritual being, which, though not the object of our senses, is yet exerting upon human affairs a di- rect and universal influence, is a clearly revealed truth. Our Lord expressly teaches that good angels are minis- tering spirits, that they are active, and interested in the fortunes of men, and rejoice in their holy habitations over one sinner that repenteth. " Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you, that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Fa- ther which is in Heaven," is the testimony of the God- Man Mediator, who has told us also that the soul of Laza- rus was carried by angels to Abraham's bosom ; and Paul declares that the Apostles were made spectacles to OF CHRISTIANITY. 203 angels and men. On the other hand, we are connected with the fallen angels in the Sacred Scriptures, not only by our apostacy in Adam, but by the continued do- minion of the god of this world over the children of diso- bedience. The adversary of souls as a roaring lion yet seeks whom he may destroy, and apostate angels are his servants and agents to draw men down to perdition. They are styled, in the New Testament, principalities and powers, whom Christ is said by the Apostle to have spoiled, in his triumph over death and hell. The war- fere of the Christian is said to be with evil spirits in high places, and against him thrones and dominions, principali- ties and powers, are continually arrayed — the manner of whose influence is a profound mystery, as is the action of the Holy Spirit, and good angels, while the fact is per- fectly intelligible, and the revelation of it too plain to be misunderstood- But how much influence do these important and awful truths exert upon the church and the world at the present time? How many professing Christians have reference to them in their prayers, and watch against the wiles of evil spirits ? How many ministers habitu- ally present these truths as momentous — as deeply con- cerning the question of salvation? How often is the solemn motive urged upon men that they are surrounded with a cloud of witnesses, and that opposing host of angels contend for the soul of man in this valley of de- 204 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT cision ? Not that these truths are obliterated from our confessions of faith, or directly denied by any evangelical denomination, but their power is gone — no practical in- terest is manifested in them — no considerable influence do they exert. How few venture in the face of the shal- low materialism of the day to urge upon the consciences of men the existence and influence of the spiritual economy ? How many are bold enough to tell a generation, wise in their own conceit, that a spiritual body is, to a true phi- losophy, no greater marvel than a natural body, and that the existence of superior intelligences, diff'erently consti- tuted from man, is taught by the extent of the universe ; inasmuch as God, who obviously made our planet for human inspection, has doubtless created Powers and Principalities who are able to survey a universe and com- pass the vast distances which to us are " impassable soli- tudes of space ?" Do Christians in general act as though they stood on high 'vantage ground on this subject, and were able to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men ? Do they value as they ought the power of these truths in their own experience ? Is not the faith once delivered to the saints accommodated to the Sadducean philosophy which denies both angel and spirit ? No man can read the Bible without perceiving that the existence and influ- ence of good and evil angels is plainly revealed; and what must be the result of the silence of the Church upon the world — will they not despise, and wonder, and ish? OF CHRISTIANITY. 205 The demi-gods of polytheism were derived from the tra- dition of the revelation of the doctrine of angels. The an- cient Pagans acknowledged that every man had both a good and evil genius, or angel, to whose suggestions he was continually exposed. How did the first Missionaries of the Cross meet the errors of Paganism? Did they deny or conceal the true doctrine of angels ? No : they proclaimed to the Pagan world, "ye worship devils, and not God ; you have exalted fallen angels in your temples ; you have listened to the suggestions and been led cap- tive at the will of the spirits who kept not their first estate, and who are leading you down to the depths of hell. They never denied that polytheism had its spirit- ual agencies at work, though they demonstrated that they were the agencies of evil angels — of Thrones and Dominions — ^who were cast out of Heaven. May it not be true that^ in the propagation of the Gospel in the dark places of the earth, something of the power and directness of the primitive method of attack upon idolatry is wanting ? Has not the leaven of our perni- cious philosophy affected the great work of Foreign Mis- sions, by weakening the supernatural element of the faith ? The soul of man is so constituted that he has, by nature, a dim consciousness or instinct of the world of spirits. The most ignorant savages have a dread of un- seen powers, and acknowledge an unseen world; their worst superstitions are but corruptions of revealed truths, 206 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT of which some innate apprehension in the soul of man is every where manifest — and in this are entitled to more respect than a philosophy which never had a ray of spiritual light, and is both earthly and sensual. Have we not failed to show the Pagan world the connection between their errors and the original revelation of God to man, and too often confounded what is true and what is false in their systems, in a common condemnation ? When the apostle Paul, upon Mars Hill, proclaimed to the idolatrous Athenians the doctrine of Jesus, and the resurrection of the dead, he selected an altar on which was this inscription, "To the Unknown God." " Him," said the apostle, " whom ye ignorantly worship, I declare unto you." He quoted among the Heathen the acknowledgment of their own poets, and evidently sought to convince them that the Gospel was a more full and perfect revelation of many truths held by them in igno- rance and superstition. The symbol of salvation is univer- sal in the sacrificial rite ; and it is an interesting fact that the innocent victim which, in the Pagan sacrifice, is of- fered for the guilty, the Paschal Lamb of the Jews, and the broken body and blood shed, signified in the Sacra- mental Symbols of the Christian, are signs remarkably similar, and declarative of the same truths. Was there no design in the Divine wisdom in exhibiting the doctrine of redemption, in the beginning, to Adam, Abel, and Noah, afterwards to Moses and the Hebrews, and in the last OP CHRISTIANITY. 20 V dispensation, to the Apostles and Primitive Church, by emblems, the exact agreement of which is obvious by a universal language, the signs of which should every where be found, and might be every where improved by the Heralds of the Cross? Should not the Christian Missionary say to the Pagan worshiper, " Him whom ye ignorantly show forth in your sacrifice I declare unto you — I present you the key of your own system — the explanation of your own rites, which, perverted and ut- terly corrupted by your superstitions, are yet founded upon everlasting truths, of which I bring you the original revelation. I do not deny that you worship realities ; I acknowledge that they are Thrones and Powers before which you prostrate yourself, but they are fallen princi- palities, who have usurped in our apostate world the homage which belongs only to the true God." Were the true scriptural doctrine of the agency of angels revived and presented as in the first centuries of Christianity, might we not hope to encounter less oppo- sition, and weaken the prejudices in the Pagan mind that Christians believe neither in angel or spirit There is a depth and power in these truths which would give to our Christianity both at home and abroad an element in which it is now greatly deficient, restore to its proper place a doctrine which is prominent on the pages of reve- lation, and give to the Gospel its true character as an exponent of " the powers of the world to come." If the 208 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT missionaries of Rome have corrupted the truth to win the Heathen to a new form of demon worship, shall Pro- testants be driven into the opposite error, and abandon the just influence which a proper presentation of the doctrine of angels would not fail to give to those who proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ in the dark places of the earth ? But the Supernatural Element of Christianity is found eminently in the work of the Holy Ghost. It is the dispensation of the Spirit which gives power and efficacy to the outward and visible instrumentalities of the Gospel. No doctrine is more insisted upon — no truth more frequently exhibited — in the revelation of Him who knows man, and the tendency of his depraved na- ture to materialism, than this — that "the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power." We are constantly warned in the Sacred Scriptures against substituting the image for the reality — the shadow for the substance — the symbol for the thing signified — the letter for the Spirit We are taught that it is the office of the Holy Ghost to reprove the world of sin, of righteosness, and of judgment. Those who enter the kingdom of God are said to be born " not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." " It is the Spirit that quicke'neth, the flesh profiteth nothing" — is the testimony of the Redeemer himself, who, in his last words to his disciples, recorded in the Gospel of John, expressly as- OF CHtilSTIANITY. 209 cribes the whole work of conversion, regeneration and sanctification to the Holy Spirit. "Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart 1 will send Him unto you ; and when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, of right- eousness and of j udgment I have many thing-s to siiy unto you ; but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth ; and He will show you things to come. He shell glorify me, for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." John xvi, 7, 14. But it is unneces- sary to multiply passages to show that the entire work of man's recovery, from the first serious convictions which disturb his carnal security to the final and perfect sanctification of the believer, in the hour and article of death, is attributed solely to the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul declares to the Corinthian Church, that his speech and his preaching were " not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power;" that their faith might not stand in^the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. This work of the Holy Spirit is supernatural, extra- ordinary, and efficient; the abiding and present evidence of the presence of God in the Church. It is to the Christian Church what the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, was to the Jewish — the perpetual super- 210 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT natural testimony of the Gospel — the voice from the Excellent Glory — the Shekinah of the new dispensa- tion — which was to remain after the inferior work of miracles should disappear. It was declared by the apostle Paul that the gift of tongues should cease ; that prophecy should fail, and knowledge should vanish away ; but the greater office of the Holy Ghost was to remain — the living energy and Divine attestation and seal of the Gospel. The Church are directed to diligently use the means of God's appointment, with the distinct under- standing that the power by which they are made effectual, is not inherent, but superadded — not ordinary and uniform in its actings, but extraordinary, that the power might be seen to be of God, when the times of re- freshing should come from His presence — not uncertain, but effectual — not natural, in the common connection of means and ends, causes and effects, or by ascertained laws — but supernatural, beyond our cognizance or ap- prehension as to the mode of the Divine operation, wliich is likened to the creation of material things when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, bring- ing order out of confusion and light out of darkness, " when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The work of the Holy Ghost is the Divine supernatural attestation of Christianity, which, without it, is without a living energy, a present attestation, or a positive efficiency. The highest con- OF CHRISTIANITY. 211 ceivable motives are indeed presented, and all necessary truth revealed, but there is no adaptation in the human heart to receive it, until prepared by the Spirit, until the the good seed falls on good ground ; for the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Upon this fundamental doctrine of the Gospel the in- fluence of the philosophy of our age is manifest. The ingenuity of gifted minds has been taxed to the utmost to explain the work of the Holy Ghost, and destroy its character, as a supernatural and efficient operation upon the soul. One has taught that the action of the Divine Spirit is upon the truth rather than the heart — as though truth could receive a new attribute; another has con- tended that He works by a uniform law, in connection with means, and that the process of regeneration has at last come to be understood and explained ; another pro- claims that regeneration is not the direct work of the Holy Ghost, but of the individual renewed, who is simply brought by the Spirit's presentation of motives to a change of purpose. The influence of these and similar views has been to exalt the means at the expense of the power — to give to men and measures, to eloquence, motives and truth, the glory which belongs to God only. The faith of the Church is made to stand in the wisdom of men rather than in the power of God ; and though the doctrine is 212 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT not abandoned, it has been rapidly losing its power. Do Christians, when they enter the sanctuary and hsten to the Word, realize the presence of the Holy Ghost — " looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life ?" Do they consider with reverence and godly fear the presence and action of a supernatural, omnipotent agent, able to turn the hearts of the children of men as the rivers of waters are turned, who can, in answer lo their prayers, make the flesh of those who hear to creep with terrors of the world to come? Do they teach their children to wait with awe in the place — consecrated indeed, by no splendor of art, ornamented by no costly architecture, dazzling the eye by no idolatrous images of the invisible and spiritual, but made dreadful by the presence of the Eternal Spirit — none other than the house of God, the very gate of Heaven? Does the Believer realize as he ought that he has come "unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company OF ANGELS, to the general assembly and church of the first born, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect ?" Is the unrenewed hearer made to feel the awful so- lemnity with which he should listen to the message of the Gospel, where the Eternal Spirit is present to confirm the word, " if God perad venture will give him repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth/' OF CHRISTJANITY. 213 Have these considerations their proper weight and in- fluence ? Our Puritan and Presbyterian fathers could listen to sermons of two hours' length, and wish they w^ere longer. They did not weary in the service of the sanctuary, or make their posture in the house of God a matter of ease and luxury. They were, indeed, fed with marrow and fcitness, and not with the husks of a vain philosophy; and they had faith and patience to digest the food which angels eat Confidence, in the darkest hour, in the pro- mise and presence of the Holy Spirit, and their solemn deportment, their reverent attendance upon the word and ordinances, their unwavering orthodoxy, and their strict morahty and non-conformity to the world — are strangely in contrast with the laxity in doctrine and morals which is increasingly characteristic of the present age. But the grand difficulty is found in the philosophy which recognizes nothing as sacred, denies the powers of the invisible world, gives to man the attributes of angels, and makes the limits of knowledge synonymous with the boundaries of its own sensual vision. Having robbed nature of the presence of the Divinity — having dethroned the Lawgiver in the discovery and analysis of the prin- ciples of his government — having subjected the soul to material and mechanical laws, and promulgated a grosser materialism than the polytheist who imaged forth the unseen in visible (urms, and gave a voice and a deity to 214 THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT all things in nature, — this philosophy, as a final effort, seeks to deprive Christianity of its supernatural ele- ment — to subject it to ordinary laws — to account for its progress and power on natural principles, ascertained and common causes, and the skillful adjustment of means to ends; and, having taken the Holy Spirit out of the Gospel, is content to give it the first place in the Ethical Systems of the world, at least until a better is discovered. On the other hand, an extravagant Transcendentalism seeks to gTaft a pseudo spiritual scheme upon the meagre faith of the Socinian churches of New England ; and as a desperate defence, a last resort against the progress of Materiahsm, is received by many in Orthodox connections, who do not perceive in it the revival of the doctrines of Spinoza, in which God is in every thing, and every thing in God. The ultra Transcendentalist comes by another road to the same result as the Materialist — the one leveling down, the other levehng up; the one denying altogether the spiritual and supernatural, the other acknowledging nothing else; the one deifying human nature by rejecting all that is above it, the other by making every man a partaker of the Divine reason and an incarnation of the Divine nature. The one scheme is abhorrent of mystery, the other of all beside; the first reduces all thing's to mathematical demonstration, and applies to all existences the compass and the square — the second rejoices in speculations profoundly unintel- OF CHRISTIANITY. 215 ligible, and determines all material forms to be "such stuff as dreams are made of." Thus ever, the wisdom of this world rushes from one extreme to the other, regardless of the Divine philosophy which teaches that the material and spiritual are equally real ; that " there is a natural body and a spiritual body" — a hfe that now is and a life to come — things which are visible and mate- rial — things which are unseen and supernatural ; a natu- ral life and a spiritual life, both the creation of the Father of Spirits, who hath given to the different economies in his creation, " a body as it hath pleased him ; and to every seed his own body." The Transcendental philosophy, how- ever, is not likely to captivate the Anglo-Saxon mind. It is Teutonic in its origin, and will flourish only in Germany, where infidelity is itself mystical. Yet in truth this shadow and semblance of a true spiritual system is more attractive than the utter barrenness of Materialism. THE END. f . ^p 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days prior to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. NUV2 3197159 -CTLD ,,M;7?.on» «^ (P65728l0)476-lA-32 ^^^"^g;jfeg^**''"* YB 45295