Nothing, then, can be much more precise than the line which forms the boundary between the legitimate and an enthusiastic feeling on the subject of prophecy. Is a prediction couched in symbol? is it entangled among perplexing anachronisms? is it studded with points of special reference? We then recognize the hand of Heaven in the art of its construction; and we know that it is so moulded as to admit and invite the manifold diversities of ingenious explication and that, therefore, even the true explication must, until the day of solution, stand undistinguished in a crowd of plausible errors. But for a man to proclaim himself the champion of a particular hypothesis, and to employ it as he might an explicit prediction, is to affront the Spirit of prophecy by contemning the chosen style of his announcements. And what shall be said of the audacity of one who, with no other commission in his hand than such as any man may please to frame for himself, usurps the awful style of the seer, pronounces the doom of nations, hurls thunders at thrones, and worse than this, puts the credit of Christianity at pawn in the hand of infidelity, to be lost beyond recovery, if not redeemed on a day specified by the fanatic for the verification of his word!
The agitation which has recently taken place on the subject of prophecy, may, perhaps, ere long, subside, and the church may again acquiesce in its old sobrieties of opinion.[3] And yet a different and a better result of the existing controversy seems not altogether improbable; for when enthusiasm has raved itself into exhaustion, and has received from time the refutation of its precocious hopes; and when, on the other side, prosing mediocrity has uttered all its saws, and has fallen back into its own slumber of contented ignorance, then the spirit of research and of legitimate curiosity, which no doubt has been diffused among not a few intelligent students of Scripture, may bring on a calm, learned, and productive discussion of the many great questions that belong to the undeveloped destiny of man. And it may be believed that the issue of such discussions will take its place among the means that shall concur to usher in a brighter age of Christianity.
Not indeed as if any fundamental principle of religion remained to be discovered; for the spiritual church has, in every age, possessed the substance of truth, under the promised teaching of the Spirit of truth. But, obviously, there are many subjects, more or less clearly revealed in the Scriptures, upon which serious errors maybe entertained, consistently with genuine, and even exalted piety: they do indeed belong to the entire faith of a Christian, but they form no part of its basis; they may be detached or disfigured without great peril to the stability of the structure. Almost all opinions relating to the unseen world, and to the future providence of God on earth, are of this extrinsic or subordinate character; and, as a matter of fact, pious and cautious men have, on subjects of this kind, held notions so incompatibly dissimilar, that the one or the other must have been utterly erroneous. But the detection of error always opens a vista of hope to the diligence of inquiry; and with the mistakes of our predecessors before us for our warning, and with a highly improved state of Biblical learning for our aid, it may fairly be anticipated that a devout and industrious reconsideration of the evidence of Scripture will yet achieve some important improvements in the opinions of the church on these difficult and obscure subjects.
Nevertheless, though an expectation of this kind may seem reasonable, there is, on the other hand some ground to imagine that the accomplishment of the inscrutable designs of the Divine Providence may require that the pious should henceforth, as heretofore, continue to entertain not only imperfect, but very mistaken notions of the unseen and the future worlds. Well-founded hopes and erroneous interpretations have been linked together in the history of the church in all ages, even from that hour of fallacious exultation when the mother of a murderer exclaimed—"I have gotten the man from the Lord," the man who should "break the serpent's head." Neither the discharge of present duties, nor the exercise of right affections, nor a substantial preparation for taking a part in the glory that is to be revealed, is perhaps at all necessarily connected with just anticipations of the unknown futurity. Thus, when the infant wakes into the light of this world, every organ presently assumes its destined function: the heaving bosom confesses the fitness of the material it inhales to support the new style of existence; and the senses admit the first impressions of the external world with a sort of anticipated familiarity; and though utterly untaught in the scenes upon which it has so suddenly entered, and inexperienced in the orders of the place where it must ere long act its part, yet it is truly "meet to be a partaker of the inheritance" of life. And thus, too, a real meetness for his birth into the future life may belong to the Christian, though he be utterly ignorant of its circumstances and conditions. But the functions of that new life have been long in a hidden play of preparation for full activity. He has waited in the coil of mortality only for the moment when he should inspire the ether of the upper world, and behold the light of eternal day, and hear the voices of new companions, and taste of the immortal fruit, and drink of the river of life; and then, after perhaps a short season of nursing in the arms of the elder members of the family above, he will take his place in the service and orders of the heavenly house; nor ever have room to regret the ignorances of his mortal state.
The study of those parts of Scripture which relate to futurity should therefore be undertaken with zeal, inspired by a reasonable hope of successful research; and at the same time with the modesty and resignation which must spring from a not unreasonable supposition that all such researches may be fruitless. So long as this modesty is preserved, there will be no danger of enthusiastic excitements, whatever may be the opinions which we are led to entertain.
It must be evident to every calm mind, that the discussion of questions confessedly so obscure, and upon which the evidence of Scripture is limited and of uncertain explication, is ordinarily improper to the pulpit. The several points of the catholic faith afford themes enough for public instruction. But matters of learned debate are extraneous to that faith: they are no ingredients in the bread of life, which is the only article committed to the hands of the teacher for distribution among the multitude. What are the private and hypothetical opinions of a public functionary to those whom he is to teach the principles of the common Christianity? And if these doubtful opinions implicate inquiries which the unlearned can never prosecute, a species of imposition is implied in the attempt to urge them upon simple hearers. It is truly a sorry triumph that he obtains who wins by declamation and violence the voices of a crowd in favor of opinions which men of learning and modesty neither defend nor impugn but with diffidence. The press is the proper organ of abstruse controversy.
[3] Written in 1828.
SECTION VI.
ENTHUSIASTIC PERVERSIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE.
No species of enthusiasm, perhaps, is more extensively prevalent, and certainly none clings more tenaciously to the mind that has once entertained it, and none produces more practical mischief, than that which is founded on an abuse of the doctrine of a particular Providence. It is by the fortuities of life that the religious enthusiast is deluded. Chance, under a guise stolen from piety, is his divinity. He believes, and he believes justly, that every seeming fortuity is under the absolute control of the divine hand; but in virtue of the peculiar interest he supposes himself to have on high, he is tempted to think that these contingencies are very much at his command. This belief naturally inclines him to pay more regard to the unusual, than to the common course of events. In contemplating God as the disposer of chances, he becomes forgetful of him who is the governor of the world by known and permanent laws. All the honor which he does to one of the divine attributes, is in fact stolen from the reverence due to another; but he should remember that "the Lord abhorreth robbery for offering."