An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible

by Catharine Esther Beecher

That part of this system which relates to man's duties and best interests in this life, without reference to a future state, has been more harmoniously evolved by the wise and good of all ages and nations than any other. Thus, in the teachings of Confucius, Zoroaster, Gaudama, Solon, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and the Antonines, who are among the chief heathen sages, we can find nearly all the moral duties of man, to himself and to his fellow-man, which are to be found in the Bible. It is true that there are diversities and deficiencies in all; but a large body of pure morality could be made up from their united teachings. The account given of the system of Boodhism in a previous chapter is one illustration of this fact.

But, while it is comparatively easy for the good and wise heathen to reason out what is best for man in this life, as taught by experience, the grand failure is in motives which will secure obedience to the rules of virtue. “We see the right and yet the wrong pursue,” has been the universal lament of humanity.

The character of the Creator, as “the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow unto anger, of great kindness;” “who doth not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men;” who “like as a father pitieth his children;” who is “a father of the fatherless and a judge of the widow;” “a God without iniquity, just and right;” “a judge of the fatherless and the poor;” who “shall judge the world with righteousness;” “a righteous God, who trieth the heart and the reins;” who “will regard the prayer of the [pg 241] destitute;” who “knoweth the wants of the heart;” “who knoweth our down-sitting and up-rising, and is acquainted with all our ways;” who is “a righteous Lord who loveth righteousness;” “whose judgments are all right;” whose “word is right;” whose “word is truth from the beginning;” who is “plenteous in mercy and truth;” such a character as this, as it is recorded in the Jewish sacred books, was never evolved or set forth by the wisest and best sages of all the earth, unaided by these writings.

That such a Being regards our race with long-suffering compassion, and came himself to earth, by his teachings, example and self-sacrificing love, to save us from sin, this was never even imagined by any of the heathen sages of earth.

The power of motive, secured by a belief in the omnipresence, sympathy and love of such a God, never was attained by the unaided reasoning of any human being.

The fact that the soul survives the dissolution of the body, and that the good go where they are happy, and the wicked where they are punished, has been more or less clearly evolved by the heathen world. In some nations, as for example the followers of Boodhism, this doctrine is quite definite and distinct, but with most heathen nations all their notions on this subject are dim, shadowy and unpractical.

It is those nations alone, who have had access to the Bible, who have ever attained the powerful motives which are found in the system of common sense. And yet, as has been shown, these influences have been, to a great extent, nullified by a contradictory system.

It is claimed, that the system of common sense is the one on which the revelations of the Creator, contained in the Bible, are founded. This being so, those who are most developed in their reasoning powers, and who also yield the most reverence to the Bible, are those who are most powerfully protected against the pernicious tendencies of the antagonistic system of Augustine.

Thus, a system which is antagonistic to reason and common sense, has, by ecclesiastical authority and perversion, been fastened most firmly on that class of minds who bring all their cultivated powers to its defense, while at the same time the very cultivation of these powers, and their reverence for the Bible, tend to the destruction of the same system. We consequently find the strongest defenders, and the strongest antagonists of the Augustinian system, in those sects who were educated within its entrenchments.

If common sense and the Bible are to conquer this false system, it must be done by those whose common sense and reverence for the Bible are most effective and most prominent. And yet this class of persons are the ones, who would the most vigorously apply their energies in the defense of a system in which they have been trained from infancy, and which is sustained by all the power of public sentiment, and church organization. This being premised, the tendencies of the two antagonistic systems will now be set forth.