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

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Such thoughts were banished by the force of a strong will, and I continued to hold on to the Bible as a revelation from God, and to His claims as being wise, and just, and good. My renewed decision was, "There is some dreadful mistake somewhere; but I will take God's word and trust it, do the best I can, and wait till all is made clear."

In the later periods of life, a mode of religious training has come repeatedly under my observation, to which a brief reference will here be made. I have known children, no more favorably endowed than myself, and some of them less so, whose parents were no more earnest and faithful than mine, though on a different theory.

These children were first trained to prompt, unquestioning, and universal obedience to their parents' commands, almost such as is required by their Creator to his fixed and unalterable laws. At the same time they were treated with the greatest tenderness and sympathy, and as soon as they could understand the reasons for parental requirements, these reasons were given, but always with the understanding that implicit obedience must often be rendered without understanding the reasons. When these habits of confiding and affectionate obedience were formed, then they were taught that Jesus Christ was the Maker, Friend, and Father of all, who loved all his children as these parents loved their little ones, only more and better; that He created them to be happy, rejoiced to see them so, and was always sorry for them in every trouble.

They were taught that there are right ways and wrong ways of seeking to be happy; that Jesus Christ came into this world to teach us what are these right and wrong ways, and that His instructions are written in the Bible; that it is very difficult to feel and act right in all things; that, when children try to do so, the Savior is pleased with them, and, though they see him not, is present with them to help them; that, when they fail, and feel or act wrong, he is grieved, as their parents are, and as ready to forgive and help them, when they too are sorry, and continue to try to do right in all things; that they are Christians just so far as they succeed in obeying Christ, and that, the more they try, the more help they will have, and the better they will succeed.

Thus these children grew up with the feeling that whenever they did any thing that was kind, honest, honorable, just, and self-denying, they were pleasing, not only their parents, but their best and ever-present Friend. Under such a course, the varied duties of religion and of social and domestic life were gradually not only explained, but enforced, both by parental authority and example, till a character and habits were formed that were far more consistent with the New Testament exhibitions of Christian life than is often seen among mature Christians.

Without at present expressing any other opinion in regard to this method, I am strong in the belief that if this course had been pursued with me in childhood, very different mental habits would have been the result, and that the Christian life would have begun and progressed probably before the severe discipline of sorrow came, and certainly after it had been experienced.

At the same time, there is a deep conviction that many of my young pupils, who turned away from religion as uninviting, severe, and unintelligible, would, by another method, have been easily led into the true paths of pleasantness and peace.

I wish now to exhibit the influence of one doctrine (which I claim to be that of reason as truly as of revelation) on a mind like mine. I have stated something of that hopeful, elastic, and happy temperament that seemed to make sorrow so indispensable to the development of my noblest powers. But the earthly sorrow, time and new interests would have remedied ere youth had passed. But that awful doctrine of THE ETERNAL, IRREMEDIABLE LOSS OF THE SOUL, so ground into my spirit by years of effort, of which this was the mainspring, has been the grand motive power of my whole life ever since. If I could in any way have satisfied myself that a time would come, however distant, when all sufferers would be repaid by eternal ages of bliss, and all the guilty, however long their period of purgation, would at last be pure and happy forever, I should have returned to life and its enjoyments with fresh zest after such a period of privation. But I could not gain any such assurance without the Bible, but rather the reverse; while all the life and teachings of Christ and the Apostles seemed entirely based on the assumption that our whole race were in awful danger, that some were to be saved and some were to be lost forever, and that the great end for which Christ lived, and for which his followers are to live, is to SAVE AS MANY AS POSSIBLE from this awful doom.

Indeed, I could not see how any one could feel any respect for the teachings of Christ when such terrible things were uttered by him, if there was no just reason thus to terrify and alarm mankind. Times without number, I went over the New Testament to see if I could find any honest way of escaping that doctrine, and always ending with a deeper and more awful conviction of its reality. The result was, that while, for the first year, I was driven to such mental effort and suffering to save myself, as soon as the least hope dawned that I was safe, all that was kindly and sympathizing in my nature led me to renewed efforts to save others.

After such a lesson of inability, both in my own case and that of such dear friends, no words can express the ineffable pity, sympathy, and almost horror with which I looked on the world around me. And when young and happy minds, such as once was my own, came under my training, I never felt any need of being "waked up," as some Christian people seemed to do. It only seemed to me I could never sleep. There never has been an hour for thirty years when a moment's consideration of this awful doctrine would not drive away every temptation to earthly ambition, or any longings for earthly good of any sort for myself. Many times, when, by the presentation of such an awful theme, I have brought the young to me with tears and willing docility, and when, to the question "What can we do to be saved?" my shut-up heart was ready to exclaim "Nothing," I have been so burdened and worn as to be obliged to pray to forget, and to take every lawful mode to turn my thoughts to other less exciting themes. It was at such times I understood for what the love of the comic was implanted, and if all Christians should feel as I do, what might be the legitimate use of works of fiction, the drama, and the dance. In such a case, and properly regulated, they would be needful and only beneficial alteratives.