February 11th.
This morning I went to church, with a full intention of being pious; but it did not succeed. Everything was too cold, dry, and unæsthetic. I am an advocate for a more imaginative worship, though it be addressed rather more to the senses. If we did but follow Nature, we should find her the best instructress in religion, as in other things. Is it not by her most magnificent and sublime spectacles that she awakens our hearts to emotions of piety? by the painting of her sunsets, by the music of the rolling deep, by the forms of her mountains and her rocks? Be not wiser, my brethren, than him who created all these wonders, and formed the human heart to feel them; but imitate him, according to the measure of your feeble powers.
But on this matter I should preach to deaf ears, except to yours, dear Julia; they have long listened, with me, to the heavenly song of the spheres, which ceaselessly resounds in the eternal, beautiful creation, if men did not stop their ears with the cotton of positive dogmas and traditions, through which they cannot hear it.[45]
The sermon too which I heard, though prepared beforehand, and read, was stony and unprofitable. Preachers would do much more good if they would lay aside the old mechanical custom of taking texts only out of the Bible, and take them from local life and circumstances, and from human society as it now exists; if they would rather seek to foster the in-dwelling poetical religion, than the mere spirit of dogma; if they would treat morality not only as the Commanded, but as the Beautiful and the Useful,—the Necessary, indeed, to the happiness of the individual, and of society. If more pains were taken to instruct the working-man from the pulpit,—to form him to think instead of to believe,—crime would soon become less frequent; he would begin to feel a real interest in what he heard,—a positive want of the church and of the sermon, for his own guidance and information: whereas he now attends them mechanically and without reflection, or from some motives equally unprofitable. The laws of the land, too, and not the Ten Commandments alone, should be declared and expounded to the people from the pulpit;—they should be made perfectly conversant with them, and with the grounds of them; for, to use the words of Christ, how many sin without knowing what they do![46]
The best practical receipt for a universal morality is, without doubt, to ask oneself whether an action, or course of action, if adopted by every man, would be useful or injurious to society. In the first case, it is of course good,—in the second, bad. Had Governments, and those upon whom devolves the sacred and neglected duty of instructing the people, habituated them to the constant application of this test or measure of conduct, and then demonstrated to them, directly, ‘ad oculos,’ the inevitable, ultimate reaction of evil conduct on themselves, they would, in the course of a few years, have improved not only the morality of the country, but its physical condition and commercial prosperity; whereas the ordinary priestly wisdom, which sets faith, authority, and dogma above everything, has left mankind in the same state for centuries,—if indeed it have not made them worse.
It would, perhaps, do no harm occasionally to choose teachers who have been converted to virtue by experience of the evil consequences of vice (as, for instance, the late Werner,) and who are therefore best informed on the subject. Not only is there more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine just men, but such a man is more firm in his convictions and perceptions, and generally more zealous in reclaiming others, as the examples of many holy men prove.
Above all, in every well-organized society all clergymen, be they of what persuasion they may, must, in my opinion, be paid by fixed salary, and not be permitted to take money for every separate consolation of real, or ceremony of conventional, religion;—a meanness which necessarily destroys all true reverence for the priest, and which must degrade him in his own eyes, if he have any delicacy. It is really dreadful to see the poor man stick his two groschen behind the altar for the holy elements he has just received; or crowd a fee into the reverend gentleman’s hand when his child is christened, just as if he were giving him a shilling to drink. But when we hear the parson storm and scold from the pulpit, because his offerings and tithes decrease; when we hear him announce such a falling-off in his revenues as a proof of the decline of religion; then, indeed, we feel distinctly why there are so many parsons, and what they themselves regard as their true and proper vocation. Soldiers naturally love war, and in like manner priests love religion,—for their own advantage. But patriots love war only as a means of obtaining freedom; and philosophers, religion only for its beauty and its truth.
That is the difference.—But, as the author of the Zillah so truly says, “Establishments endure longer than opinions; the church outlasts the faith which founded it; and if a priesthood has once succeeded in interweaving itself with the institutions of the country, it may continue to subsist and to flourish long after its forms of worship is regarded with aversion and contempt.”
The afternoon was more satisfactory.—I climbed the hills around the town, and at last crept up to the top of a windmill in order to see the whole panorama of Brighton. The wind turned the sails of the mill with such force that the whole building rocked like a ship. The miller’s lad, who had shown me the way up, went to a flourbin and took out a telescope. Spite of its soft bed, it was unhappily broken. I was however well satisfied with the general view, enlivened as it was by hundreds of fishing-boats which seemed struggling with the storm, and hastened back with the sinking sun to my social duties.
The party at Count F——’s was small but interesting; it was rendered so in the first place by the host himself; then by a lady celebrated for her beauty; and lastly, by a former well-known leader of ‘ton’ in Paris. In his youth he played a considerable part there, and was at the same time constantly implicated in political affairs. He now passes a great part of the year in England, probably still not without political views. He is one of that sort of men, daily becoming more rare, who live in great style, one knows not how; contrive to acquire a sort of authority everywhere, one knows not why; and under whom one always expects to find something mysterious, one knows not wherefore. —— is very agreeable, at least when he chooses: he narrates admirably, and has forgotten nothing of his eventful life which can give zest to his conversation. For adventurers of this high order, whose consummate knowledge of the world affords continual matter for admiration, (though generally employed only to make dupes,) the French character is better suited than any other. Their agreeableness in society smooths their way; and their not over warm hearts and œconomical understandings, (if I may use the expression,) admirably enable them to keep all the ground they have won, and to maintain a firm footing on it for ever.