Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

SECTION III.
ENTHUSIASTIC PERVERSIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE INFLUENCE.

A sentiment natural to the human mind, leads it to entertain and to dwell with pleasure upon the belief of the stability and permanence of the material world. Whether we view the multiform ranks of organized and animated beings which cover the earth, or examine the occult processes of nature, or look upwards, and contemplate distant worlds, the regularity with which the great machine of the visible creation effects its revolutions inspires a deep emotion of delight. This feeling brings with it involuntarily the supposition of extended duration; nor is it without extreme difficulty that we can separate the idea of so vast a combination of causes and effects, moving forward with unfailing precision, from the thought, if not of eternity, yet of unnumbered ages gone by, and yet to come. While these natural impressions occupy the mind, a strange revulsion of feeling takes place, if suddenly it be recollected that the massy pillars of creation, with its towering superstructure, and its high-wrought embellishments, and its innumerable tenants, are absolutely destitute of intrinsic permanency, and that the stupendous frame, with its nice and mighty movements, is incessantly issued anew from the fount of being. Apart from the divine volition, perpetually active, there can be no title to existence; and in the moment which should succeed to the cessation of the efficient will of the First Cause, all creatures must fall back to utter dissolution.

Reason as well as faith justifies this doctrine, and demands that we deny independency to whatever is created; devoutly confessing that God is "all in all." In him by whom they were formed, "all things consist:" in him all "live and move and have their being." He is the author and giver of life; and in the strictest sense it may be affirmed that every day is a day of creation, not less than that on which "the morning stars" uttered their earliest shout of joyous wonder: every moment during the lapse of ages, the word of power is pronounced from the height of the Eternal Throne—"Let there be light" and life. This belief constitutes the basement-principle of all religion, and is the sentiment from which piety must take its spring. The notion of independency and of eternity, suggested by the regular movements of nature, are thus thrown off from the surface of the visible world, and go to enhance our impressions of the glories of him who alone is eternal, unchangeable and independent.

But it is certain that the conditions of existence, not less than its matter and form, are from God. In truth, the notions of being, and of well-being, are not to be distinguished in reference to the divine causation; for each of his works is perfect, both in model and in movement. There can be therefore no particle of virtue or of happiness in the universe, any more than of bare existence, of which God is not the author. Neither Scripture nor philosophy permits exceptions or distinctions to be made; for if we attribute to the Creator the organ, we must also attribute to him its functions, and its health too, which is only the perfection of its functions. And thus also, if the soul, with its complex apparatus of reason, and moral sentiment, and appetite, be the handiwork of God, so is its healthful action. But the healthful action of the soul consists in love to God, and free subjection to his will. Virtue is nothing else in its substance, nothing else in its cause. As in him we live and move and have our being, so also it is he who "worketh in us to will and to do" whatever is pleasing to himself. Whether we take the safe and ready method of acquiescing in the obvious sense of a multitude of Scriptures, or pursue the laborious deductions of abstract reasoning, the same conclusion is attained, that, in the present world, and in every other where virtue and happiness are found, virtue and happiness are emanations of the divine blessedness and purity.

But if this efflux of the divine nature belongs to the original constitution of intelligent beings, and is the permanent and only source of all goodness and felicity, it must be intimately fitted to the movements of mind, and must harmonize perfectly with its mechanism; just as perfectly as the creative influence harmonizes with the mechanism and movements of animal life.

Whatever is vigorous and healthful in the one kind of existence, or holy and happy in the other, is of God, whose power and goodness are, throughout the universe, the natural, not the supernatural cause of whatever is not evil. It were then a strange supposition to imagine that this impartation of virtue and happiness may be perceptible to the subject of it, like the access of a foreign and extraordinary influence; or that while the creative agency is altogether undistinguishable amid the movements of animal and intellectual life, the spiritual agency which conveys the warmth and activity of virtue to the soul, is otherwise than inscrutable in its mode of operation. As the one kind of divine energy does not display its presence by convulsive or capricious irregularities, but by the unnoticed vigor and promptitude of the functions of life; so the other energy cannot, without irreverence, be thought of as making itself felt by præter-natural impulses, or sensible shocks upon the intellectual system; but must rather be imagined as an equable pulse of life, throbbing from within, and diffusing softness, sensibility and force through the soul.

It is indeed true that if death or torpor has long held the moral powers in a state of suspended action, the returning principle of life, while working its way in contrariety to such a derangement of the system, may make itself felt otherwise than where no similar obstruction has to be overcome; yet will it only be perceived by its collision with the evils that have usurped the heart; not by its own spontaneous movements. These are, in truth, the foreign and disturbing influences; it is these that make themselves known by their abrupt and capricious activity, by their convulsive or feverish force. Meanwhile the heavenly emanation which heals, cleanses, and blesses the spirit is still, and constant, and transparent, as "a well of water springing up unto eternal life."

Nevertheless, from the accidents of the position in which we are placed, the divine influence may appear under an aspect immensely unlike that in which we should view it if our prospect of the intelligent universe were more extended than it is. Thus the sad tenant of a dungeon, who has spent the days of many years alive in the darkness of the tomb, thinks far otherwise of the light of the sun, as he watches the pencil ray that traverses his prison wall, than those do who walk abroad amid the splendors of the summer's noon. Or we may imagine a world of once animated beings to be lying in the coldness and corruption of death, and we may suppose that the creative power returns and reanimates some among the dead, restoring them instantaneously to the warmth, and vigor, and enjoyments of life. The spectator of this partial resurrection, who had long contemplated nothing but the dismal stillness and corruption of the universal death, might, in his glad amazement, forget that the death of so many, not the life of the few, is anomalous, and strange, and contrary to the order of nature. The miracle, if so he will term it, is nothing more—nothing else, than what is every instant taking place throughout the wide realms of happy existence. The life-giving energy whose beams of expansive beneficence had been for a while, and in this world of death, intercepted or withdrawn, has returned with a kindling revulsion to its wonted channel; and now moves on in copious tranquillity. The dead may indeed still outnumber the living; nevertheless it is the condition of the former, not that of the latter, that is extraordinary; and the return to life, how amazing soever it may seem, could with no propriety be called supernatural.

The language of Scripture, when it asserts the momentous doctrine of the renovation of the soul by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, employs figurative terms which, while they give the utmost possible force to the truth so conveyed, indicate clearly the congruity of the change so effected with the original construction of human nature. The return to virtue and happiness is termed a resurrection to life; or it is a new birth; or it is the opening of the eyes of the blind, or the unstopping the ears of the deaf; or it is the springing up of a fountain of purity; or it is a gale of heaven, neither seen nor known but by its effects; or it is the growth and fructification of the grain; or it is the abode of a guest in the home of a friend, or the residence of the Deity in his temple. Each of these emblems, and all others used in the Scriptures in reference to the same subject, combines the double idea of a change—great, definite, and absolute—and of a change from disorder, corruption, derangement, to a natural and permanent condition: they are all manifestly chosen with the intention of excluding the idea of a miraculous or semi-miraculous intervention of power. On the one hand, it is evident that a change of moral dispositions, so entire as to be properly symbolized by calling it a new birth, or a resurrection to life, must be much more than a self-effected reformation; for if it were nothing more, these figures would be preposterous, unnecessary, and delusive. But on the other hand, this change must be perfectly in harmony with the physical and intellectual constitution of human nature, or the same figures would be devoid of propriety and significance.

But a doctrine of divine influence like this, though so full of promise and of comfort to the aspirant after true virtue, offers nothing to those who desire transitory excitements, and who look for visible displays of supernatural power; and therefore it does not satisfy the religious enthusiast. Not content to be the recipient of an invigorating and purifying emanation, which, unseen and unperceived, elevates the debased affections, and fixes them on the Supreme Excellence; nor satisfied to know that, under this healing influence, the inveteracy of evil dispositions is broken up, and a real advance made in virtue, he asks some sensible evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and would fain so dissect his own consciousness as to bring the presence of the Divine agent under palpable examination. Or he seeks for some such extraordinary turbulence of emotion as may seem unquestionably to surpass the powers and course of nature. Fraught with these wishes, he continually gazes upon the variable surface of his own feelings, in unquiet expectation of a supernatural troubling of the waters. The silent rise of the wellspring of purity and peace he neither heeds nor values; for nothing less than the eddies and sallies of religious passion can assure him that he is, "born from above."