LECTURE VII.
OF THE DIVINE WISDOM AS MANIFESTED IN THE REALM OF TRUTH, AND OF THE CONFLICT OF THE AGE WITH ERROR.
GOD is a spirit of truth; and in the realm of truth, therefore, the divine order, and the law of wisdom which reigns therein, shines forth with an especial clearness—with a higher degree of evidence or greater perspicuity than even in the region of nature, which for us is for the most part half-dark, or at the very best but a chiaro-oscuro—a mixture of light and darkness. But man, formed out of the dust of the earth, placed, as it were, in the very center of nature, as its first-born son or its earthly lord, is in this respect himself a natural being. Even in his susceptibility for higher and divine truth, man is tied to and is dependent on a similar and collateral grade of development in the life of nature, which can in no case be violently broken, nor a step in it arbitrarily overleaped, without involving the most disastrous consequences as the penalty of so unnatural a course. Even in education there reigns a similar law of gradual development according to the natural progression of the different ages of life. With the boy of good and natural abilities, who shows an aptness and willingness to learn when knowledge is presented to his mind, and implanted in a true and living form, the teacher’s first care is to improve this disposition, and to strengthen and to foster it, and, by furnishing it with the due measure and the right quality of intellectual culture, gradually to develop its powers. At this age the moral part of education will wisely confine itself to laying a foundation of good habits, to the careful exclusion of all evil communication and the deadly contagion of wicked example. In the soft and yielding character of the child there can scarcely be as yet any question about principles or sentiments. But the case is very different with youth. If at this time of life the moral character be not carefully formed simultaneously with its scientific cultivation, then is the good season irreparably lost, and rarely, if ever, can the deficiency be afterward supplied. For when this stage of intellectual and moral culture is once passed, when the mind has begun at last to move with greater freedom and to mature itself, the young man is at once admitted to the full light of science, or enters into the busy course of active life, to be there brought to the touchstone of experience.
And a similar series of gradation may be observed on a larger scale in the historical succession and development of the ages of the world. For such is, in every case, the gradual expansion of man’s consciousness, as he is at present constituted. His senses must be first excited and expanded; then, and then only, with any good result, can the soul be led to the good and divine, which, however, not content to dismiss them after the first look of wonder and amazement, it must rather dwell upon with the full and deep feelings of admiration and reverence; until at last, being wholly filled with them, it derives from their inspiration a new stimulus and excitement, and thereby is forever and permanently directed to the true end and aim of existence. And now at last can the free spirit apprehend aright the divine truth, and, in the spirit of this knowledge, act with vital energy, conformably to that position in God’s great world which has been assigned and allotted to him.
And this order can not be transgressed with impunity. None of its intermediate steps can be overleaped without involving the most fearful consequences. If the senses be not first of all excited and expanded, then will it be lost labor to attempt to win and fortify the heart, or to turn the soul toward the never-setting sun of divine truth. And, accordingly, how many attempts, both on a large and a small scale, at the moral regeneration of mankind have totally failed even for want of the first step of a forerunning light and previous illumination, by which the observation should have been roused, the senses stimulated, and the eye opened. But when, on the contrary, the full light is imparted to or gained by the mind, while the soul still remains enveloped in darkness and fast wedded to its evil habits, without attaining to a higher exaltation, then, indeed, the result is equally grievous, though different from that which follows from the mistake of overleaping at the first step. It has an effect; it does not remain without an influence. So long as the moral part of man is wholly neglected, and is either left rude and barbarous, or suffered to become degenerate, then science works indeed, but only as a destroying element. In so bad a soil the true knowledge is ever transformed into false, and the more profoundly it is apprehended—the more vividly and vigorously it is pursued—the more fatally, perniciously, and destructively does it work. The examples and the proofs of the injurious consequences of too rapid and premature development of scientific enlightenment amid a general prevalence of moral depravity, and the subversion of those principles which are the foundation of national existence and prosperity, might easily be found at no great distance from our own age. And they admit also of being demonstrated as clearly and convincingly by earlier instances from the history of the Greeks and Romans. The production of these proofs, however, would carry us beyond our present limits, and the truth they would establish is not, moreover, the end to which our present disquisitions are directed. The theme of this Lecture is the course observed by eternal wisdom, or the divine order in the realm of truth. My object is to call your attention to the care with which Providence observes a gradual progression in its mental development of the human race, lovingly suiting and adapting itself to the weakness and finiteness of humanity, and to the imperfection of earthly creatures, according to that principle of divine condescension, so often mentioned already, which, throughout the divine operations in the world, and His influence on man, is distinctly visible.
Thus, then, in the knowledge immediately imparted to man by a higher providence we may discern a preliminary period—a previous illumination, in order to reopen the eye of man, which heathenism had blinded to the truth, that it might be able to see and discern God. This first step of revelation was little more than a preparation for the future; but the second was, or has been, an illumination of the soul—a vital renewal of it—a total conversion of it from the state of darkness to the Everlasting Light and the Sun of Righteousness. But in this living development of the highest life, which is even the divine light of the Spirit, the third and last step (which indeed commences in and is involved in the second, even as it also had its germ in the first) is the full enlightenment of the spirit or mind. And accordingly this full revelation is in Scripture itself, as being the close and completion of the whole, expressly described, and named the last time.
Before attempting, however, to point out the divine order in the education of the human race, by the gradual revelation of truth, two general and preliminary remarks seem called for. I observe, then, first of all, that when we speak of sense, soul, and spirit, as the successive terms in the growing capacity of the human consciousness for a higher knowledge and heavenly training, and for truth in general, but more especially for divine truth, then the general sense of truth, which such an hypothesis supposes, and which indeed is its essential foundation, must be understood as comprising all those other particular species, branches, or departments which we have already enumerated. I mean the common sense of sound reason. For that susceptibility for the impressions of nature, and the understanding, which, as I said before, constitute the sense for the revelation of spirit, or the spirit of revelation—whether written or historical—are alike comprised in that one and common sense for truth. Or perhaps we may rather say, that by their joint operations they form it; while, however, in its special application, now this now that constituent preponderates—or perhaps that this one and universal sense for truth is called into action, and made to co-operate now in this direction and now in that. Moreover, that internal concurrence and assent of the will, which I have endeavored to show is the proper sense in man for God and for divine things, belongs also, as an essential and element of its constitution, to this general sense for truth. For that the opposite fault of self-will and obstinacy is in the highest degree a hinderance of good, even in the acquisition of knowledge and the recognition of truth, is found by experience in the earliest essays of education. But not only in the elementary principles of learning, but even in the most highly-finished and elaborate systems of metaphysical ideas, constructed by the profoundest thinkers and philosophers, does this spirit of negation and contradiction show itself, and prove the greatest obstacle to truth and the most fruitful source of error.
The second remark which we have to make before entering upon the immediate subject of our Lecture refers to the natural progression of the living development of the human consciousness. This gradation, we would observe, holds good, and is applicable, not merely to the moral education of man, but also to the intellectual improvement of man’s capacity, as at present constituted, for all higher and divine verities. But, however true this may be, where the general sense for truth is not from the first open and full of light, where the soul is not already perfectly free and pure; yet on the other hand there is nothing against—on the contrary, every thing favors the supposition, that the earliest revelation imparted to mankind—the illumination which was given to the first man, and bestowed upon him as his heavenly inheritance on earth, was a full and perfect enlightenment of his mind [geist]. For his senses were open and clear, his soul as yet incorrupt, pure, and free. Both were directed to God, and being one with and at unison with nature, were keenly alive to and deeply impressed by every token of God’s glory and majesty in creation. It is quite an error to assume, or, rather, to fancy, that this state of purity and innocence was a state of ignorance like that of the child or of the wild man. The tree of life was given to him entirely and without reserve, as also dominion over the earth, whose first-made living creatures the Lord subjected to his dominion, bringing them before him to call and to name them. The knowledge of death was indeed designedly withheld from him, as also the existence of the evil spirits, even because it was exactly therein that his trial and probation were to consist. And so both are perfectly reconcilable: that height of knowledge in the clearest light of nature, which the sacred traditions of all primitive nations so positively and unanimously assign to the first man, is in nowise inconsistent with that ignorance of death which is no less expressly ascribed to him. Moreover, had man but preserved and kept alive in his heart this feeling of God, he would immediately have recognized his enemy, and even thereby have triumphed over him, and become the redeemer of nature, instead of requiring, now that he has failed in that his high destination, a Redeemer for his own fallen race. This first revelation, therefore, was, we may well assume, in the beginning as it will also be in the end, a full enlightenment of the spirit of man, but which, however, was soon darkened by his disobedience and fall. This, too, is the shape which the matter assumes in the legendary history of all the primeval nations of antiquity, and these are the threads of light which in the labyrinthine confusion of legends, symbols, and tongues of earliest heathendom, carry us safely out of its mazes and back to the clear starting-point of the pure and undefiled revelation of God. It were not difficult to show how, through the first two millenniums and a half, or five-and-twenty centuries, a higher providence and divine guidance was ever quietly carrying on these luminous threads of original truth, and from time to time renewing them. But this history of the human mind in the primeval world, however highly attractive, would take us out of our proper limits. Upon the eclipse of man’s soul, when spiritual darkness universally prevailed, the senses originally open to a higher light were closed against it. His better perceptions were overwhelmed or buried beneath a chaos of true and false or half-true images and symbols. Then it was that the natural law of spiritual development commenced in its full force. It followed the progression already described. In the first term the numbed and deadened sense had to be awakened and quickened again, and in its second the soul renewed, purified, and converted, before either could become susceptible of the full and perfect illumination of the Spirit. To trace this natural law in the human consciousness and in the divine education of mankind, and to ascertain the progressive steps in the divine revelations, expressly given and designed to effect that gradual development, is the object of the present Lecture.
The first step or term thereof was the selection of a single people to be the schoolmaster of the whole human race.[37] When the heathenish mass of legends or myths and symbols had reached the height of confusion, and the evil had become otherwise incurable, one nation was chosen and set apart by God as His instrument in opening the eyes of men to the abyss of error in which the whole world was plunged, and to direct their looks exclusively to the future. Many prophets were sent to the chosen people, and it was at first guided and ruled by none but prophets. And, perhaps, we can not form a more correct notion of the character and history of this people, so peculiarly distinguished from all the other nations of the ancient world, than by thinking of it absolutely and in its destination as the prophetic people exclusively intended to point to a distant future, and whose leading ideas and inmost feelings were to be attached to, and to look far into, a remote futurity. Three strokes or words, at most, comprise the highly-simple revelation of the first stage—the first ray of light at the beginning—in which, however, lies contained the hidden key and solution for the chaos of legends, and all the enigmas of the primitive world and of primeval history. But this brief and simple revelation was accompanied with a strict line of demarcation between the Gentiles and the chosen people, who were separated from all the heathen nations by customs and laws, while a long ray of hope reached far into the distant future. This point of light at the beginning was, however, but little considered and ill-understood; the line of demarcation, too, was often transgressed upon the slightest pretext and most ordinary temptations. And when at last it was more strictly kept, it was observed, not in its spirit, but in the letter; and, in consequence, even that high and lofty-hope which irradiated it was totally misunderstood, being interpreted, in a narrow spirit of national exclusiveness, of a temporal Redeemer, and a political redemption from the yoke of the Roman oppressor. This delusion, and the extreme ingratitude with which, consequently, the Light that came into the world was, on the whole, received by those to whom It was in the first place communicated, has been often painted in the darkest colors of indignant censure by the stern pen of history. The stiffneckedness of the Jews has been a fruitful theme for virtuous indignation. But, for my part, I hardly know whether, in this respect, a different and more favorable sentence can be passed on the generations which have witnessed the subsequent steps of divine revelation in its further development. Full time was allowed to the prophetic people to develop itself; and, after the lapse of twenty-fire centuries, which make up the first age of the world, a millennium and a half was allowed to this initiatory step of revelation. And now, at length, after forty centuries of preparation and hope, when the long, dark winter of the olden idolatry was over, the historical development of the human race reached its culminating point, and with the vernal solstice [Fruhling’s-Solstitium] of this new manifestation commenced the second term in this series of revelation or of the divine education of the human race. Even from its very first opening, every thing characterizes this second term of development as not intended for a complete and final revelation of spirit and knowledge. Promising, and reserving to the future that final manifestation, it forms, in this respect, a marked contrast to the highly-cultivated science of the Greeks, which, however, in spite of its high pretensions, did but become continually more and more sensuous in its character. The immediate object of this second enlightenment of the whole human race was to be a total conversion of the soul from its previous earthly darkness to the everlasting light and the one and only Sun of Truth, and thereby to effect a complete renewal of life, and a reformation of all its habits, customs, and institutions. This alone did God require; and glorious, and noble, and deeply-touching was the conflict in which this wholly new but heaven-descended sentiment had to engage with the opposing spirit of the old world.
But men soon relapsed into their former discord; and it is now our painful task to point out the rise and growth of this dissension through the succeeding eras of history. For thus only—by considering, in every period, man’s relation, or, rather, his opposition, to the divine revelation—is it possible, amid the rapid progress of the widening disagreement, to trace the divine order which rules amid the anarchy of mind, and to follow it along its path of light up to its appointed end, and to its close and conclusion.
In the first three or four centuries of Christianity, this spirit of opposition showed itself in two different forms. In the one, the new and simple faith was first of all perverted into a chaos of philosophical fictions of an old Asiatic character.[38] In the other, a secret and half infidelity hid itself behind a veil of words,[39] against which the faith must defend itself behind an outwork of words also; and in this period of history, a subtile and refined logomachy first of all attained to a great and lasting importance for mankind. In this dispute, the simple foundation of the faith was indeed maintained and defended, in its purity and integrity, against all hostile attacks; but the first-love lost much of its freshness and ardor. Consequently the new life, which sprung up with the new faith, was unable to fulfill the hopes which at its first rise men had reasonably entertained of it, and, by reforming the corrupt civilization of the old Roman world, to renew it entirely in God. Accordingly, an alien and purely physical element had to be associated with it. The northern nations were called in to infuse fresh energy into the worn-out races of England.