James Russell Lowell, A Biography; vol. 1/2

by Horace Elisha Scudder

“JOHN.

“All things that make us happy incline us also to be grateful, and I would rather enlarge than lessen the number of these. Morose and callous recluses have persuaded men that religion is a prude, and have forced her to lengthen her face, and contract her brows to suit the character. They have laid out a gloomy turnpike to heaven, upon which they and their heirs and assigns are privileged to levy tolls, and have set up guide-boards to make us believe that all other roads lead in quite an opposite direction. The pleasanter they are, the more dangerous. For my part, I am satisfied that I am upon the right path so long as I can see anything to make me happier, anything to make me love man, and therefore God, the more. I would stamp God’s name, and not Satan’s, upon every innocent pleasure, upon every legitimate gratification of sense, and God would be the better served for it. In what has Satan deserved so well of us, that we should set aside such first-fruits for him? Christianity differs not more widely from Plato than from the Puritans.

“PHILIP.

“The church needs reforming now as much as in Luther’s time, and sells her indulgences as readily. There are altars to which the slaveholder is admitted, while the Unitarian would be put forth as unclean. If it be God’s altar, both have a right there,—the sinner most of all,—but let him not go unrebuked. We hire our religion by the quarter, and if it tells any disagreeable truths, we dismiss it, for we did not pay it for such service as this. Christ scourged the sellers of doves out of the temple; we invite the sellers of men and women in. We have few such preachers now as Nathan was. They preach against sin in the abstract, shooting their arrows into the woundless air. Let sin wrap itself in superfine broadcloth, and put its name on charitable subscription papers, and it is safe. We bandy compliments with it, instead of saying sternly ‘Get thee behind me!’ The Devil might listen to some preaching I have heard without getting his appetite spoiled. There is a great deal of time and money expended to make men believe that this one or that one will be damned, and to scare or wheedle them into good Calvinists or Episcopalians; but very little pains is taken to make them good Christians....

“JOHN.

“It has never been a safe thing to breathe a whisper against the church, least of all in this country, where it has no prop from the state, but is founded only on the love, or, if you will have it so, the prejudices of the people. Religion has come to be esteemed synonymous with the church; there are few minds clear enough to separate it from the building erected for its convenience and shelter. It is this which has made our Christianity external, a task-ceremony to be gone through with, and not a principle of life itself. The church has been looked on too much in the light of a machine, which only needs a little oil, now and then, on its joints and axles, to make it run glibly and perform all its functions without grating or creaking. Nothing that we can say will be of much service. The reformers must come from her own bosom; and there are many devout souls among her own priests now, who would lay down their lives to purify her. The names of infidel and heretic are the San benitos in which we dress offenders in the nineteenth century, and a bigoted public opinion furnishes the fagots and applies the match! The very cross itself, to which the sacred right of private judgment fled for sanctuary, has been turned into a whipping post. Doubtless, there are no nations on the earth so wicked as those which profess Christianity; and the blame may be laid in great measure at the door of the church, which has always sought temporal power, and has chosen rather to lean upon the arm of flesh than upon that of God. The church has corrupted Christianity. She has decked her person and embroidered her garments with the spoils of pagan altars, and has built her temples of blocks which paganism has squared ready to her hand. We are still Huns and Vandals, and Saxons and Celts, at heart. We have carved a cross upon our altars, but the smoke of our sacrifice goes up to Thor and Odin still. Lately I read in the newspapers a toast given at a military festival, by one of those who claim to be the earthly representatives of the Prince of Peace. England and France send out the cannon and the bayonet, upon missionary enterprises, to India and Africa, and our modern Eliots and Brainerds among the red men are of the same persuasive metal.

“PHILIP.

“Well, well, let us hope for change. There are signs of it; there has been a growling of thunder round the horizon for many days. We are like the people in countries subject to earthquakes, who crowd into the churches for safety, but find that their sacred walls are as fragile as other works of human hands. Nay, the very massiveness of their architecture makes their destruction more sudden and their fall more dangerous. You and I have become convinced of this. Both of us, having certain reforms at heart, and believing them to be of vital interest to mankind, turned first to the church as the nearest helper under God. We have been disappointed. Let us not waste our time in throwing stones at its insensible doors. As you have said, the reformers must come from within. The prejudice of position is so strong that all her servants will unite against an exoteric assailant, melting up, if need be, the holy vessels for bullets, and using the leaves of the holy book itself for wadding. But I will never enter a church from which a prayer goes up for the prosperous only, or for the unfortunate among the oppressors, and not for the oppressed and fallen; as if God had ordained our pride of caste and our distinctions of color, and as if Christ had forgotten those that are in bonds. We are bid to imitate God; let us in this also follow his example, whose only revenge upon error is the giving success to truth, and but strive more cheerfully for the triumph of what we believe to be right. Let us, above all things, imitate him in ascribing what we see of wrong-doing to blindness and error, rather than to wilful sin. The Devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers, and dreads nothing so much as their charity and patience. The scourge is better upon our backs than in our hands.

“JOHN.

“When the air grows thick and heavy, and the clouds gather in the moral atmosphere, the tall steeples of the church are apt to attract the lightning first. Its pride and love of high places are the most fatal of conductors. That small upper room, in which the disciples were first gathered, would always be safe enough.”