Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

A delusive notion of this kind at once diverts attention from the cultivation and practice of the virtues, and becomes a fermenting principle of frothy agitations, that either work themselves off in the sourness of an uncharitable temper, or are followed by physical melancholies; or perhaps by such a relaxation of the moral sentiments as leaves the heart exposed to the seductions of vicious pleasure. Thus the religious life, instead of being a sunshine of augmenting peace and hope, is made up of an alternation of ecstasies and despondencies; or worse, of devotional fervors and of sensual indulgences. The same error naturally brings with it a habit of referring to other, and to much less satisfactory tests of Christian character than the influence of religion upon the temper and conduct. So it happens that practical morality, from being slighted as the only valid credential of profession, comes, too often, to be thought of as something which, though it may be well in its way, is a separable adjunct of true piety.

The rate of general feeling that exists at any time in a community measures the height to which the exorbitances of enthusiasm may attain; thus in times of peculiar excitement a perverted notion of Divine influence is seen to ripen into the most fearful excesses. In such seasons it is not enough that the presence of the Holy Spirit should be indicated by unusual commotions of the mind; but convulsions of the body also are demanded in proof of the heavenly agency. Extravagance becomes gluttonous of marvels; religion is transmuted into pantomime; delirium and hypocrisy, often found to be good friends, take their turns of triumph; while humility, meekness, and sincerity, are trodden down in the rout of impious confusion. Deplorable excesses of this kind happily are infrequent, and never of long continuance; but it has happened more than once in the history of Christianity that the habit of grimace in religion, having established itself in an hour of fanatical agitation, and become associated, perhaps, with momentous truths, as well as with the distinguishing tenets of a sect, has long survived the warmth of feeling in which it originated, and whence it might derive some apology, and has passed down from father to son, a hideous mask of formality, worshipped by the weak, and loathed, though not discarded, by the sincere. Meanwhile an hereditary or a studied agitation of the voice and muscles, ludicrous, if it were not distressing to be seen, is made to represent before the world the sacred and solemn truth, a truth essential to Christianity, that the Spirit of God dwells in the hearts of Christians! Whatever special interpretation may be given to our Lord's awful announcement concerning the sin against the Holy Ghost, an announcement which stands out as an anomaly in the midst of his declarations of mercy, every devout mind must regard it as shedding, if we might say so, a penumbra of warning around the doctrine of divine influence, and will admit an apprehension lest he should, by any perversion of that doctrine, approach the precincts of so tremendous a guilt, or become liable to the charge of giving occasion in others to unpardonable blasphemies.

If it be true that the agency of the Holy Spirit in renovating the heart is perfectly congruous with the natural movements of the mind, both in its animal and intellectual constitution, it is implied that whatever natural means of suasion, or of rational conviction, are proper to rectify the motives of mankind, will be employed as concomitant, or second causes of the change. These exterior and ordinary means of amendment are, in fact, only certain parts of the entire machinery of human nature; nor can it be believed that its Author holds in light esteem his own wisdom of contrivance; or is at any time obliged to break up or to contemn the mechanism which he has pronounced to be "very good." That there actually exists no such intention and no such necessity, is declared by the very mode and form of revealed religion; for this revelation consists of the common materials of moral influence—argument, history, poetry, eloquence. The same divine authentication of the natural modes of influence, is contained in the establishment of the Christian ministry, and in the warrant given to parental instruction. These institutions concur to proclaim the great law of the spiritual world, that the heavenly grace which reforms the soul operates constantly in conjunction with second causes and ordinary means. In an accommodated, yet legitimate sense of the words, it may be affirmed of every such cause, that the "powers that be are of God;" there is no power but of his ordaining; and "whosoever resisteth (or would supersede) the power, resisteth the ordinance of God."

No one can doubt the possibility, abstractedly, of the immediate agency of the Omnipotent Spirit of Grace, without the intervention of means; nor does any one doubt the power of God to support human life without aliment; for "man liveth not by bread alone." But in neither case does he adopt this mode of independent operation: on the contrary, the Divine conduct, wherever we can trace it, is seen to approve much more the settled arrangements of wisdom, than the bare exertions of power. The treasures of that wisdom are surely never exhausted, nor can a case arise in which an immediate effort of Omnipotence becomes necessary merely to supply the lack of instruments. Nor does the vindication of the honors of Sovereign Grace need any such interpositions; for the absolute necessity of an efficient power above that which resides in the natural means of suasion is abundantly proved, on the one hand, by the frequent inefficacy of these means, when employed under the most favorable circumstances; and on the other, by the efficacy, as frequent, of means apparently inadequate to the production of the happy changes which result from them. It is not only affirmed by Scripture, but established by experience, that "neither he that planteth, nor he that watereth, is anything;" and at the same time it is affirmed by the one, and established by the other, that, apart from the planting and the watering of the husbandman, God, ordinarily, giveth no increase.

No persuasion or instruction, we are assured, can of itself, in any one instance, avail to penetrate the deathlike indifference of the human mind towards spiritual objects; but when once this torpor is removed by inscrutable grace, then the very feeblest and most inadequate means are sufficient for effecting the renovation of the heart. A single phrase, speaking of judgment to come, lisped by a child, has proved itself of power to awaken the soul from the slumber of the sensual life, if, when the sound falls on the ear, the spirit has been quickened from above. In such a case it were an error to affirm that the change of character was effected independently of external means; for though they were disguised under a semblance of extreme feebleness, and were such as might be easily overlooked or forgotten, they had in themselves the substantial powers of the highest eloquence; and what might have been added to the momentous truth, so feebly announced, would have been little more than embellishment; like the embroideries and embossments of the warrior's garniture, which add nothing to the vigor of his arm.

Two causes seem to have operated in maintaining the notion that divine influence is often dissociated from concurrent means of suasion; the first of these is an ill-judged but excusable jealousy on the part of pious persons for the honor of Sovereign Grace; and is a mere reaction upon orthodoxy, from the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies such persons have thought it necessary, for the safety of a most important doctrine, not merely to assert the supremacy of the ultimate agent; but to disparage, as much as possible, all intermediate instruments. The second of these causes is the imaginary difficulty felt by those who, having unadvisedly plunged into the depths of metaphysical theology, when they should have busied themselves only with the plain things of religion, fail in every attempt to adjust their notions of divine aid and human responsibility; and, therefore, if they would be zealous for the honor due to the first, think themselves obliged almost to nullify the second. If any such difficulty actually exists, it should be made to rest upon the operations of nature, where it meets us not less than in the precincts of theology; and the husbandman should desist from his toils until schoolmen have demonstrated to him the rationale of the combined operations of first and second causes. Or if such a demonstration must not be waited for, and if the husbandman is to commit the precious grain to the earth, and to use all his skill and industry in favoring the inscrutable process of nature, then let the theologian pursue a parallel course, content to know, that while the Scriptures affirm in the clearest manner whatever may enhance our ideas of the necessity and sovereignty of divine grace, they nowhere give intimation of a suspended or halved responsibility on the part of man; but, on the contrary, use, without scruple, language which implies that the spiritual welfare of those who are taught depends on the zeal and labors of the teacher, as truly as the temporal welfare of children depends on the industry of a father. The practical consequences of such speculative confusions are seen in the frightful apathy and culpable negligence of some instructors and parents, who, because a metaphysical problem, which ought never to have been heard of beyond the walls of colleges, obstructs their understandings, have acquired the habit of gazing with indifference upon the profaneness and immoralities of those whom their diligence might have retained in the path of piety and virtue.

Another capital perversion remains to complete the enthusiastic abuse of the doctrine of divine influence; and this is the supposition that those heavenly communications to the soul which form a permanent constituent of the Christian dispensation, are not always confined to the matter or to the rule of Scripture, and that the favored subject of this teaching, at least when he has made considerable advances in the divine life, is led on a higher path of instruction, where the written revelation of the will of God may be neglected or scorned. This bold delusion assumes two forms: the first is that of the tranquil contemplatist, the whole of whose religion is inarticulate and vague, and who neglects or rejects the Scripture, not so much because he is averse to its truths, as because the mistiness of his sentiments abhors whatever is distinct, and definite, and fixed. To read a plain narrative of intelligible facts, and to derive practical instruction therefrom, implies a state of mind essentially different from that which he finds it necessary to his factitious happiness to maintain: before he can thus read his Bible in childlike simplicity he must forsake the religion of dreams, and open his eyes to the world of realities; in a word he must cease to be an enthusiast.

The other form of this delusion should excite pity rather than provoke rebuke; and calls for the skill of the physician, more than for the instructions of the theologian. The limits of insanity have not yet been ascertained; perhaps it has none; and certainly there are facts that favor the belief that the interval between common weakness of judgment and outrageous madness is filled up by an insensible gradation of absurdity, nowhere admitting of a line of absolute separation. Where, for example, shall we pause, and separate the sane from the insane, among those who believe themselves to be favored perpetually with special, particular, and ultra-scriptural revelations from heaven? The most modest enthusiast of this class, and the most daring visionary, stand together on the same ground of outlawry from common sense and scriptural authority; and though their several offences against truth and sobriety may be of greater or less amount, they must both be dealt with on the same principle; for both have alike excluded themselves from the benefit of appeal to the only authorities known among the sane part of mankind, namely, reason and Scripture: those who reject both, surrender themselves over to pity—or compulsion.

It would manifestly be better that men should be left to the darkness and wanderings of unassisted reason, than that they should receive the immediate instructions of heaven, unless they possess at the same time a public and fixed rule to which all such supernatural instructions are to be conformed, and by which they are to be discriminated; for the errors of reason, how great soever they may be, carry with them no weight of divine authority; but if the doctrine of divine communications be admitted, and admitted without reference to a public and permanent standard of truth, then every extravagance of impiety may claim a heavenly origin; and who shall venture to rebuke even the most pestilent error; for how shall the reprover assure himself that he is not fighting against God?

It has already been affirmed that enthusiasm, far from being necessarily or invariably connected with fervor or feeling, is often seen to exist, in its wildest excesses, conjoined with the most frigid style of religious sentiment. Thus, for example, the three egregious perversions of the doctrine of divine influence, which have been described in the preceding pages, are maintained, and have been professed and defended during several generations, by a sect remarkable, if not for the chilliness, at least for the stillness of its piety, and its contempt of the natural expressions of devotional feeling; and even for a peculiar shrewdness of good sense in matters of worldly interest. But the incongruities of human nature are immense and incalculable; or it would not be seen that general intelligence, and amiable manners, and Christian benevolence, are often linked with errors which, if viewed abstractedly, might seem as if they could belong only to minds that were lost to wisdom and piety.