Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

The first is, that the great and leading aim of all Christian organization should be to train new-born minds aright, and that it is the special office of the ministry to influence the educators of the race to the right performance of this, their chief duty.

In doing this, it is to be assumed that the end for which we are made is "to glorify God" by obedience to those laws by which "the most happiness with the least evil" is to be secured to His vast eternal empire.

That, at the first birth of a child, it is "impossible, in the nature of things," for it to feel and act for the happiness of others till it has learned to know what gives pleasure and pain to self, and to understand that there are other beings who can thus enjoy and suffer; so that a child, by its very nature, is at first obliged to be selfish in the exercise of faculties which, in reference to the great whole, are perfect.

That the "second birth" is the sudden or the gradual entrance into a life in which the will of the Creator is to control the self-will of the creature; while, under the influence of love and gratitude to Him, and guided by "faith" in his teachings, living chiefly for the great commonwealth takes the place of living chiefly for self. For this, the supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit is promised to all who seek it; and, without this aid, success is hopeless. But the grand instrumentality is the right training of parents and teachers.

Then, in reference to that great change of character which wrongly-educated mind must pass in order to gain eternal life, there are three modes of expression in the Bible in regard to that, viz., "love to God," "faith in Jesus Christ," and "repentance."

According to all uses of these terms, in practical matters, love is nothing which does not include obedience or conformity of will and action to the being loved. Faith, or belief, is nothing unless it includes its fruits of obedience. Repentance is nothing unless it includes ceasing to do evil.

Obedience to the laws of God, physical, social, moral, and religious, is the grand, indispensable requisite. Now, when any person is so engaged in striving to obey all these laws that it is the first interest of the mind, then there is a "new heart;" and so great is the change from the life of self-indulgence and disobedience to one of such earnest desire and efforts to obey God, that it is properly expressed by the terms "born again" and "created anew."

The contrasted theory is, that the chief end of man is "to glorify God," without, perhaps, any very definite ideas of what this signifies; that our whole race comes into life with dwarfed and ruined moral powers, so that it is as impossible, before a "second birth," to feel and act right, as it is for a corrupt tree to bear good fruit, or a bitter fountain to send forth sweet waters; and that the great end of Christian organizations is to secure and administer certain appointed methods by which God re-creates these diseased minds. Thus all training, all instructions, all good habits, are nothing as having any fitness toward either preparing a child for eternal happiness, or inducing God to re-create its mind. For it is "unconditional election," and not any foreseen act, either of parent or child, that decides their eternal destiny.

Can any minister preach without assuming one of these two theories as the very foundation-principle of his ministrations? And is this matter any the less a practical one to all the laity?

During the period in which the author has been engaged as a practical laborer in the field of education, her chief earthly reliance has been on the counsel, sympathy, and co-operation of her own sex; and in closing a work especially dedicated to them, a few parting words may be permitted.