Library Notes

by A. P. Russell

"We ought," says the author of Ecce Homo, "to be just as tolerant of an imperfect creed as we are of an imperfect practice. Everything which can be urged in excuse for the latter may also be pleaded for the former. If the way to Christian action is beset by corrupt habits and misleading passions, the path to Christian truth is overgrown with prejudices, and strewn with fallen theories and rotting systems which hide it from our view. It is quite as hard to think rightly as to act rightly, or even to feel rightly. And as all allow that an error is a less culpable thing than a crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous that it should be more severely punished; it is monstrous that Christ, who was called the friend of publicans and sinners, should be represented as the pitiless enemy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could men have been guilty of such an inconsistency? By speaking of what they do not understand. Men in general do not understand or appreciate the difficulty of finding truth. All men must act, and therefore all men learn in some degree how difficult it is to act rightly. The consequence is that all men can make excuse for those who fail to act rightly. But all men are not compelled to make an independent search for truth, and those who voluntarily undertake to do so are always few. To the world at large it seems quite easy to find truth, and inexcusable to miss it. And no wonder! For by finding truth they mean only learning by rote the maxims current among them." "Maxims and first principles," says Pascal, "are subject to revolutions; and we are to go to chronology for the epochs of right and wrong. A very humorsome justice this, which is bounded by a river or a mountain: orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other." "Let there," begs the Spanish President Castelar, "be no more accursed races on the earth. Let every one act according to his conscience, and communicate freely with his God. Let thought be only corrected by the contradiction of thought. Let error be an infirmity, and not a crime. Let us agree in acknowledging that opinions sometimes take possession of our understandings quite independent of our will or desire. Let us be so just as to be enabled to see even to what degree each race has contributed to the universal education of humanity."

"Every new idea," says a writer in The Quarterly Review, "creates an enthusiasm in the minds of those who have first grasped it, which renders them incapable of viewing it in its true proportions to the sum total of knowledge. It is in their eyes no new denizen of the world of facts, but a heaven-sent ruler of it, to which all previously recognized truths must be made to bow. As time goes on, truer views obtain. The new principle ceases to be regarded either as a pestilent delusion or as a key to all mysteries. Its application comes to be better defined and its value more reasonably appreciated, when both idolators and iconoclasts have passed away, and a new generation begins to take stock of its intellectual inheritance."

"The truth," said Goethe, "must be repeated over and over again, because error is repeatedly preached among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses. In periodicals and cyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere, in fact, error prevails, and is quite easy in the feeling that it has quite a majority on its side." "Public opinion, of which we hear so much," said a writer in Blackwood, long ago, "is never anything else than the reëcho of the thought of a few great men half a century before. It takes that time for ideas to flow down from the elevated to the inferior level. The great never adopt, they only originate. Their chief efforts are always made in opposition to the prevailing opinions by which they are surrounded. Thence it is that a powerful mind is always uneasy when it is not in the minority on any subject which excites general attention." "If you discover a truth," says an unknown author, "you are persecuted by an infinite number of people who gain their living from the error you oppose, saying that this error itself is the truth, and that the greatest error is that which tends to destroy it." "There arose no small stir" at Ephesus on account of Paul's preaching. "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth: moreover, ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are made with hands. So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

Thomas Aikenhead, a student of eighteen, was hanged at Edinburgh, in 1697, for having uttered, says Macaulay, in his History, free opinions about the Trinity and some of the books of the Bible. His offense was construed as blasphemy under an old Scotch statute, which was strained for the purpose of convicting him. After his sentence he recanted, and begged a short respite to make his peace with God. This the privy council declined to grant, unless the Edinburgh clergy would intercede for him; but so far were they from seconding his petition, that they actually demanded that his execution should not be delayed. "Imagine, if you can," says Froude, in one of his essays, "a person being now put to death for a speculative theological opinion. You feel at once that, in the most bigoted country in the world, such a thing has become impossible; and the impossibility is the measure of the alteration which we have all undergone. The formulas remain as they were, on either side,—the very same formulas which were once supposed to require these detestable murders. But we have learned to know each other better. The cords which bind together the brotherhood of mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We do not any more fly apart or become enemies because, here and there, in one strand out of so many, there are still unsound places."

It was in the Star Chamber (during the reign of Charles I., after Christ, sixteen hundred and thirty-seven years) that Leighton, a clergyman, for coarse invectives against prelacy and prelates, received the sentence by which he was severely whipped in public, was put in the pillory, had one ear cut off, one side of his nose slit, and one cheek branded with the letters S. S., to denote that he was a sower of sedition. "On that day week," says Laud (then Archbishop of Canterbury), who instigated the prosecution, "the sores upon his back, ear, nose, and face being not cured, he was whipped again at the pillory, and there had the remainder of his sentence executed upon him, by cutting off the other ear, slitting the other side of his nose, and branding the other cheek." He was, in addition, degraded from his ministry, fined ten thousand pounds, and ordered to be retained in confinement for life.

"There is a violent zeal," says Fénelon, "that we must correct; it thinks it can change the whole world, it would reform everything, it would subject every one to its laws. The origin of this zeal is disgraceful. The defects of our neighbor interfere with our own; our vanity is wounded by that of another; our own haughtiness finds our neighbor's ridiculous and insupportable; our restlessness is rebuked by the sluggishness and indolence of this person; our gloom is disturbed by the gayety and frivolities of that person, and our heedlessness by the shrewdness and address of another. If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbors' weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity. We therefore make our weakness pass for strength, elevate it to a virtue and call it zeal; an imaginary and often hypocritical zeal. For is it not surprising to see how tranquil we are about the errors of others when they do not trouble us, and how soon this wonderful zeal kindles against those who excite our jealousy, or weary our patience?" "We reprove our friends' faults," said Wycherley, "more out of pride than love or charity; not so much to correct them as to make them believe we are ourselves without them." Simonides satirizes the same infirmity in a fable, to be found in the treasures of Athenæus:—

With his claw the snake surprising,
Thus the crab kept moralizing:—
"Out on sidelong turns and graces,
Straight's the word for honest paces!"

It was Dean Swift who said, "We have just enough of religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another." "Your business," said Hunt, "is to preach love to your neighbor, to kick him to bits, and to thank God for the contradiction." "The falsehood that the tongue commits," said Landor, "is slight in comparison with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next neighbor; if, professing that the rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in his word, that, in regard to worldly weal, I need take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what would be necessary though I quite distrusted both his providence and his veracity; if, professing that 'he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,' I question the Lord's security, and haggle with him about the amount of the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship: how, when God hates liars, and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter?" In one of his chapters on the Study of Sociology, Herbert Spencer remarks that "it would clear up our ideas about many things, if we distinctly recognized the truth that we have two religions." These two religions Mr. Spencer designates as the "religion of amity" and the "religion of enmity." "Of course," he says, "I don't mean that these are both called religions. Here I am not speaking of names; I am speaking simply of things. Nowadays men do not pay the same nominal homage to the religion of enmity that they do to the religion of amity—the religion of amity occupies the place of honor. But the real homage is paid in large measure, if not in the larger measure, to the religion of enmity. The religion of enmity nearly all men actually believe. The religion of amity most of them merely believe they believe." "The Church of Rome," said F. W. Robertson, in his sermon on The Tongue, "hurls her thunders against Protestants of every denomination; the Calvinist scarcely recognizes the Arminian as a Christian; he who considers himself as the true Anglican excludes from the church of Christ all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy; every minister and congregation has its small circle, beyond which all are heretics; nay, even among that sect which is most lax as to the dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old school denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school. Sisters of Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan; ministers of the gospel fling the thunder-bolts of the Lord; ignorant hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit; boys, girls, and women shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same life-battle—and all this because they have been taught to look upon him as an enemy of God." "Particular churches and sects," says Sir Thomas Browne, "usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the keys against each other; and thus we go to heaven against each others' wills, conceits, and opinions." "The church of the future," in the opinion of Father Hyacinthe, "will know nothing of such divisions, such discordances, and she will uphold the freedom of theologies and the diversity of rites in the unity of one faith and of one worship." "As soon," said Goethe, "as the pure doctrine and love of Christ are comprehended in their true nature, and have become a vital principle, we shall feel ourselves as human beings, great and free, and not attach especial importance to a degree more or less in the outward forms of religion: besides, we shall all gradually advance from a Christianity of words and faith to a Christianity of feeling and action." "Could we," said Dean Young, "but once descend from our high pretenses of religion to the humility that only makes men religious, could we but once prefer Christianity itself before the several factions that bear its name, our differences would sink of themselves; and it would appear to us that there is more religion in not contending than there is in the matter we contend about." "Do you remember," asks the author of The Eclipse of Faith, "the passage in Woodstock, in which our old favorite represents the Episcopalian Rochecliffe and the Presbyterian Holdenough meeting unexpectedly in prison, after many years of separation, during which one had thought the other dead? How sincerely glad they were, and how pleasantly they talked; when, lo! an unhappy reference to 'the bishopric of Titus' gradually abated the fervor of their charity, and inflamed that of their zeal, even till they at last separated in mutual dudgeon, and sat glowering at each other in their distant corners with looks in which the 'Episcopalian' and 'Presbyterian' were much more evident than the 'Christian:' and so they persevered till the sudden summons to them and their fellow-prisoners, to prepare for instant execution, dissolved as with a charm the anger they had felt, and 'Forgive me, O my brother,' and 'I have sinned against thee, my brother,' broke from their lips as they took what they thought would be a last farewell." "I sometimes," says Froude, "in impatient moments, wish the laity would treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once treated their seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel without knowing what they were quarreling about. As the principals were being led up to their places, one of them whispered to the other, 'If you will shoot your second, I will shoot mine.'"

Benjamin Lay, a violent enthusiast and harsh reformer—contemporary with John Woolman—was, it is said, well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three persons—himself and two other enthusiasts, assisted by Dr. Franklin. But on their first meeting at the doctor's house, the three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each other.