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

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Instead of being able to meet their religious teachers with the assumption that all which they have felt to be contrary to reason, to common sense, and to common honesty is not contained in the Sacred Writings, many have gradually drawn off to the religion of reason and nature, and left the Bible to theologians and the Church.

At the same time, there has been a new development of philanthropy, in which those who either repudiate the Bible as of any binding authority, or disallow its commonly-accepted teachings, are as prominent and earnest in works of benevolence as the most orthodox of any sect. To these are added religious teachers, who set forth the morality and benevolence demanded in the Bible as obligatory, and as satisfactorily deducible from the light of nature, so that no revelation is needful to make them more so. Meantime, in popular forms and by popular writers, all the most plausible and startling difficulties that oppose the claims of the Bible are widely disseminated, while little is done to counteract these influences.

Another class of religionists has also arisen, that numbers probably its hundreds of thousands, the Spiritualists, who rest their faith on a new species of so-called revelations, which ordinarily clash with the accepted teachings of the Bible, and by vast numbers are received as of superior authority.

Meantime the press and public lectures are extensively supplanting the pulpit as organs of moral and religious influence over large portions of the community, while a large part of the most popular speakers and writers avowedly reject the Bible as of any binding authority in deciding moral and religious questions.

At the same time, there has arisen a freedom of investigation, and an aversion to all traditional or conservative bonds, such as probably never before was so universal and dominant in this nation, especially among those religiously educated.

All these influences have combined to place the Bible, and the systems of theology that claim to be educed from it, in entirely new relations. Nothing now is safe on the ground of tradition, or of authority, or of the reverence that belongs to age, learning, genius, or experience. Every thing in religion, as well as other matters, is to stand on its own claims, and not by any factitious supports.

In this state of the public mind, the following considerations have had influence in leading to the presentation of the views contained in this volume.

It is the distinctive maxim of Protestant Christianity that "every person is to be his own interpreter of the revelations of God contained in the Bible, responsible only to his Maker." This, of course, implies the practicability of a proper qualification for this duty in every individual, so that no person shall necessarily be dependent on other minds for a correct knowledge of all that relates to his own duty and dangers.

It is manifest that the Creator designed that woman should have the leading position as the educator of mind, especially at that period when the habits and principles of life are formed. This being so, it is clear that it was designed that she should be qualified to gain by her own independent powers all that is revealed by God that will aid her in this great work.

The theological theories referred to, as seemingly opposing the moral sense and common sense of mankind, are those that relate to the foundation principle on which the training of mind is to start. They involve the most practical questions of every-day life, both as to individual responsibility and to the education of the young.