Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

Nor is this direct and obvious kind of influence the only one of which some plain indications are to be discerned; and without at all following the uncertain track of adventurous speculation, it may fairly be surmised that the same law of interminable connection, a law of moral gravitation, stretches far beyond the limits of the human family, and actually holds in union the great community of intelligent beings. Instances of connection immensely remote, and yet very real, might be adduced in abundance: the influence of history upon the character and conduct of successive generations is of this kind. Whatever imparts force or intensity to human motives, and by this means actually determines the course of life, may assuredly claim for itself the title and respect due to an efficient cause, and must be deemed to exert an impulsive power over the mind. Now the records of history, how long soever may have been the line of transmission which has brought them to our times, fraught as they are with instances applicable to all the occasions of real life, do thus, in a very perceptible degree, affect the sentiments and mould the characters of mankind; nor will any one speak slightingly of this species of causation who has compared the intellectual condition of nations rich in history with that of a people wholly destitute of the memorials of past ages. The story of the courage, or constancy, or wisdom of the men of a distant time becomes, in a greater or a less degree, a subsidiary cause of the conduct of the men of each succeeding generation. Thus the few individuals in every age to whom it has happened to live, and act, and speak under the focus of the speculum of history, did actually live, and labor, and suffer for the benefit of mankind in all future times; just as truly as a father toils for the advantage of his family. And if the whole amount of the influence which has in fact flowed from the example of the wise, the brave, and the good, could have been placed in prophetic vision before them, while in the midst of their arduous course, would not these worthies contentedly and gladly have purchased so immense a wealth of moral power at the price of their personal sufferings?

Here, then, as a plain matter of fact, is an instance of boundless causation, connecting certain individuals with myriads of their species, from age to age, and forever. It is an instance, we say, and not more: for the voice of history is but a preluding flourish to that voluminous revelation which shall be made, in the great day of consummation, of all that has been acted and suffered upon earth's surface. In that day, when the books of universal history are opened and read, it shall doubtless be found that no particle has been lost of aught that might serve to authenticate the maxims of eternal wisdom, or to vindicate the righteous government of God. And all shall be written anew, as "with a pen of iron on the rock forever," and shall stand forth as an imperishable lesson of warning or incitement to after-comers on the theatre of existence.

Whatever degree of solidity may be attributed to considerations of this kind, they are at least sufficiently supported by analogies to give them a decided advantage over those petulant cavils wherewith we are prone to arraign the particular dispensations of Providence towards ourselves. Are such dispensations, when seen in small portions, mysterious and perplexing? How can they be otherwise if, in their completed measurements, they are to spread over the creation, and in their issues, to endure forever?

The common phrase—"a mysterious dispensation of Providence," when used as most often it is, contains the very substance of enthusiasm; and yet, it must be confessed, of a venial enthusiasm; for the occasions which draw it forth are of a kind that may be admitted to palliate a hasty impropriety of language. To call any event that does not break in upon the known and established order of natural causes—mysterious, is virtually to assume a previous knowledge of the intentions of the Supreme Ruler; for it is to say that his proceedings have baffled our calculations; and in fact it is only when we have formed anticipations of what ought to have been the course of events that we are tempted by sudden reverses to employ so improperly this indefinite expression. All the dispensations of Divine Providence, taken together, may, with perfect propriety, be termed mysterious; since all alike are governed by reasons that are hidden and inscrutable: but it is the height of presumption so to designate some of them in distinction from others. For example; a man eminently gifted by nature for important and peculiar services, and trained to perform them by a long and arduous discipline, and now just entering upon the course of successful beneficence, and perhaps actually holding in his hand the welfare of a family or a province, or an empire, is suddenly smitten to the earth by disease or accident. Sad ruin of a rare machinery of intellectual and moral power! But while the thoughtless may deplore for an hour the irreparable loss they have sustained, the thoughtful few muse rather than weep; and in order to conceal from themselves the irreverence of their own repinings, exclaim—'How mysterious are the ways of heaven!' Yes; but in the present instance, what is mysterious? Not that human life should at all periods be liable to disease, or the human frame be always vulnerable; for these are conditions inseparable from the present constitution of our nature; and it is clear that nothing less than a perpetual miracle could exempt any one class of mankind from the common contingencies of physical life. The supposition of any such constant and manifest interposition, rendering a certain description of persons intactible by harm; would be impious as well as absurd. Nothing could suggest to a sane mind an idea of this sort, if it did not gain admittance in the train of those eager forecastings of the ways of God in which persons much addicted to religious meditation are prone to indulge, and which, though they may afford pleasure for a moment, are usually purchased at the cost of relapses into gloomy, or worse than gloomy discontents.

There is a striking incongruity in the fact that the propensity to apply the equivocal term, mysterious, to sudden and afflictive events, like the one just specified, is indulged almost exclusively by the very persons whose professed principles furnish them with a sufficient explanation of such dispensations. If the present state were thought to comprise the beginning and the end of the human system, and if, at the same time, this system be attributed to the Supreme Intelligence, then indeed the prodigious waste and destruction which is continually taking place, not only of the germs of life, but of the rarest and of the most excellent specimens of divine art, is a solecism that must baffle every attempt at explanation. Let then the deist, who knows of nothing beyond death, talk of the mysteries of Providence; but let not the Christian, who is taught to think little of the present, and much of the future, use language of this sort.

A popular misunderstanding of the language of Scripture relative to the future state, has, perhaps, had great influence in enhancing the gloom and perplexity with which Christians are wont to think and speak of sudden and afflictive visitations of Providence.

Heaven—the ultimate and perfected condition of human nature, is thought of amidst the toils of life, as an elysium of quiescent bliss, exempt, if not from action, at least from the necessity of action. Meanwhile every one feels that the ruling tendency and the uniform intention of all the arrangements of the present state, and of almost all its casualties, is to generate and to cherish habits of strenuous exertion. Inertness, not less than vice, stamps upon its victim the seal of perdition. The whole order of nature, and all the institutions of society, and the ordinary course of events, and the explicit will of God, as declared in his word, concur in opposing that propensity to rest which belongs to the human mind, and combine to necessitate submission to the hard, yet salutary conditions under which alone the most extreme evils may be held in abeyance, and any degree of happiness enjoyed. A task and duty is to be fulfilled, in discharging which the want of energy is punished even more immediately and more severely than the want of virtuous motives.

Here, then, is visible a great and serious incongruity between matter of fact, and the common anticipations of the future state: it deserves inquiry, therefore, whether these anticipations are really founded on the evidence of Scripture; or whether they are not rather the mere suggestions of a sickly spiritual luxuriousness. This is not the place for pursuing such an inquiry; but it may be observed, in passing, that those glimpses of the supernal world which we catch from the Scriptures have in them, certainly, quite as much of the character of history as of poetry, and impart the idea—not that there is less of business in heaven than on earth, but more. Unquestionably, the felicity of those beings of a higher order, to whose agency frequent allusions are made by the inspired writers, is not incompatible with the assiduities of a strenuous ministry, to be discharged, according to the best ability of each, in actual and arduous contention with formidable, and perhaps sometimes successful opposition. A poetic notion of angelic agency, having in it nothing substantial, nothing necessary, nothing difficult, and which consists only in an unreal show of action and movement, and in which the result would be precisely the same apart from the accompaniment of a swarm of butterfly youths, must be spurned by reason, as it is unwarranted by Scripture. Scripture does not affirm or imply that the plenitude of divine power is at all in more immediate exercise in the higher world than in this: on the contrary, the revelation so distinctly made of a countless array of intelligent and vigorous agents, designated usually by an epithet of martial signification, precludes such an idea. Why a commission of subalterns? why an attendance of celestials upon the flight of the bolt of omnipotence? That bolt, when actually flung, needs no coadjutor!

But if there be a real and necessary, not merely a shadowy agency in heaven as well as on earth; and if human nature is destined to act its part in such an economy, then its constitution, and the severe training it undergoes, are at once explained; and then, also, the removal of individuals in the very prime of their fitness for useful labor ceases to be impenetrably mysterious. This excellent mechanism of matter and mind, which, beyond any other of his works, declares the wisdom of the Creator, and which, under his guidance, is now passing the season of its first preparation, shall stand up anew from the dust of dissolution, and then, with freshened powers, and with a store of hard-earned practical wisdom for its guidance, shall essay new labors—we say not perplexities and perils—in the service of God, who by such instruments chooses to accomplish his designs of beneficence. That so prodigious a waste of the highest qualities should take place as is implied in the notions which many Christians entertain of the future state, is indeed hard to imagine. The mind of man, formed as it is to be more tenacious of its active habits than even of its moral dispositions, is, in the present state, trained (often at an immense cost of suffering) to the exercise of skill, of forethought, of courage, of patience; and ought it not to be inferred, unless positive evidence contradicts the supposition, that this system of education bears some relation of fitness to the state for which it is an initiation? Shall not the very same qualities which here are so sedulously fashioned and finished, be actually needed and used in that future world of perfection? Surely the idea is inadmissible that an instrument wrought up, at so much expense, to a polished fitness for service, is destined to be suspended forever on the palace walls of heaven, as a glittering bauble, no more to make proof of its temper!

A pious, but needless jealousy, lest the honor due to him "who worketh all in all" should be in any degree compromised, has perhaps had influence in concealing from the eyes of Christians the importance attributed in the Scriptures to subordinate agency; and thus, by a natural consequence, has impoverished and enfeebled our ideas of the heavenly state. But assuredly it is only while encompassed by the dimness and errors of the present life that there can be any danger of attributing to the creature the glory due to the Creator. When once with open eye that "excellent glory" has been contemplated, then shall it be understood that the divine wisdom is incomparably more honored by the skilful and faithful performances, and by the cheerful toils of agents who have been fashioned and fitted for service, than it could be by the bare exertions of irresistible power: and then, when the absolute dependence of creatures is thoroughly felt, may the beautiful orders of the heavenly hierarchy—rising, and still rising towards perfection—be seen and admired without hazard of forgetting him who alone is absolutely perfect, and who is the only fountain and first cause of whatever is excellent.