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

by Catharine Esther Beecher

It has been shown that the leading theologians have ceased to defend this dogma, that the pastors of churches are practically evading it, that the educators of the young are throwing it aside, and that the people in all directions are rejecting it.

This process of eliminating the Augustinian system from the system of common sense and the Bible, with which, for ages, it has been entwined, thus far has gone on as the result chiefly of the development of the intellectual and moral nature of all classes, but especially of the common people. A period has now arrived in which the question has become so far an intelligible and a practical one, that the two great principles of society indicated by the words conservatism and progress are arranging and accumulating antagonistic forces for an open and decided manifestation on this great question. What will be the precise nature of this manifestation no human mind can predict. But the distinctive principles of the two parties furnish some data for anticipating some future results, as they may occur in the several classes referred to in preceding chapters under the following heads:

What Theologians will do?

In attempting to indicate the probable future course of theologians, it is important to notice the relative positions of persons trained to sustain a system of doctrines, and of those who seek for truth and duty without any such commitment.

Most theologians grow up from infancy under a system of doctrines inculcated both from the pulpit and in the family. This enlists all the strong and inveterate influences of early education in its favor. Next, the collegiate pulpit instructions and associations all favor the same system. Next, the theological school brings the young under the direct training of the most acute minds, whose express business it is to teach all methods of supporting and defending that system. Here the young minister is taught how to construct his sermons so as most effectually to bring the popular mind under its control, and so as to most effectively oppose all antagonistic sects and teachings.

Finally, the office of a clergyman involves such ecclesiastical relations as subjects a man to constant espionage, and to ecclesiastical discipline and ejection if he adopts any views that would essentially modify the system in which he is trained.

If, therefore, any theologian or pastor finds himself doubting as to any doctrine, he perceives that it is so interlocked with the system of which it is a part that he is at once brought face to face with the question, Shall I give up the whole system in which I was educated, all the lectures and sermons framed on that system, all my ecclesiastical connections, my professional character and my salary?

It is as if a man should find himself in some emergency upholding by a single timber a portion of a building which so interlocks with every other portion that he can not let it go without throwing down the only house that can shelter himself and all he holds dear. In such a case a man must come to a decision as to whether the piece of timber ought to be removed, and when and how it should be done, with an anxiety, deliberation and forecast that would be inappropriate to a man who finds only a disconnected stick of timber in his way. This illustrates the relative position and difficulties of theologians in contrast with those which impede the common people in the search after truth and duty.

In this view of the case it would be unreasonable to expect that theologians as a class, though among the wisest and best of men, are to be leaders in any great or sudden change in religious opinions. On the contrary, it is to be anticipated that they will be the most earnest, energetic, and at the same time honest, defenders of time-honored religious dogmas, which it is their professional business to uphold. Nor is it any implication of their talents, learning, honesty or piety to suppose that they will be among the last to perceive the fallacies and evils involved in whatever system they defend.

Yet there are considerations which indicate that the experience of the past is not to be the exact image of the future. The progress of mind is as distinctly marked among theologians as it is among any class of society, and this being toward the system of common sense, involves the waning of the dogmatic spirit of infallibility and the increase of that humble and [pg 348] teachable spirit, which is alike the mark of true philosophy and of Christianity.