Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

Natural benevolence is prone to claim the liberty and the merit that belong to pure spontaneity, and spurns the idea of duty or necessity. This claim might be allowed if the free emotions of kindness were sufficiently common, and sufficiently vigorous, to meet the large and constant demand of want and misery. But the contrary is the fact; and if it were not that an authoritative requisition, backed by the most solemn sanctions, laid its hand upon the sources of eleemosynary aid, the revenues of mercy would be slender indeed. Even the few who act from the impulse of the noblest motives, are urged on and sustained in their course of beneficence by a latent recollection that, though they move freely in advancing, they have no real liberty to draw back. If the entire amount of advantage which has accrued to the necessitous from the influence of Christianity could be computed, it would, no doubt, be found, that by far the larger share has been contributed, not by the few who might have done the same without impulsion, but by the many whose selfishness could never have been broken up except by the most peremptory appeals. To ensure, therefore, its large purpose of good-will to man, the law of Christ spreads out its claims very far beyond the circle of mere pity, or natural kindness; and in the most absolute terms demands, for the use of the poor, the ignorant, the wretched, (and demands from every one who names the name of Christ) the whole residue of talent, wealth, time, that may remain after primary claims have been satisfied. On this ground, when the zeal of self-denying benevolence has laid down its last mite, it does not deem itself to have exceeded the extent of Christian duty; but cheerfully assents to that rule of computing service which affirms that, "when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants; having performed only what we were commanded."

Manifestly, for the purpose of giving the highest possible force and solemnity to that sense of obligation which impels the Christian to abound in every good work, the ostensible proof of religious sincerity, to be adduced in the momentous procedures of the last judgment, is made to consist in the fact of a life of beneficence. Those, and those only, shall inherit the prepared blessedness, who shall be found to have nourished, and clothed, and visited the Lord to his representatives—the poor. The "cursed" are those who have grudged the cost of mercy.

And it is not only true that the funds of charity have been, in every age, immensely augmented by these strong representations, and have far exceeded the amount which spontaneous compassion would ever have contributed, but the very character of beneficence has been new-modelled by them. In the mind of every well-instructed Christian, a feeling compounded of a compunctious sense of inadequate performance, and a solemn sense of the extent of the divine requirements, repugnates and subdues those self-gratulations, those giddy deliriums, and that vain ambition, which beset a course of active and successful beneficence. This remarkable arrangement of the Christian ethics, by which the largest possible contributions and the utmost possible exertions are demanded in a tone of comprehensive authority, seems, besides its other uses, particularly intended to quash the natural enthusiasm of active zeal. It is a strong antagonist principle in the mechanism of motives, ensuring an equilibrium, however great may be the intensity of action. We are thus taught that, as there can be no supererogation in works of mercy, so neither can there be exultation. Nothing, it is manifest, but humility, becomes a servant who, at the best, barely acquits his duty.

Let it, for example, have been given to a man to receive superior mental endowments, force of understanding, solidity of judgment, and richness of imagination, command of language, and graces of utterance; a soul fraught with expansive kindness, and not more kind than courageous; and let him, thus furnished by nature, have enjoyed the advantages of rank, and wealth, and secular influence; and let it have been his lot, in the prime of life, to be stationed just on the fortunate centre of peculiar opportunities; and then let it have happened that a fourth part of the human family, cruelly maltreated, stood as clients at his door, imploring help; and let him in the very teeth of ferocious selfishness, have achieved deliverance for these suffering millions, and have given a deadly blow to the Moloch of blood and rapacity: and let him have been lifted to the heavens on the loud acclamations of all civilized nations, and blessed amid the sighs and joys of the ransomed poor, and his name diffused, like a charm, through every barbarous dialect of a continent. Let all this signal felicity have belonged to the lot of a Christian—a Christian well taught in the principles of his religion; nevertheless, in the midst of his honest joy, he will find place rather for humiliation than for that vain excitement and exultation wherewith a man of merely natural benevolence would not fail, in like circumstances, to be intoxicated. Without at all allowing the exaggerations of an affected humility, the triumphant philanthropist confesses that he is nothing, and, far from deeming himself to have surpassed the requirements of the law of Christ, feels that he has done less than his duty.

Christian philanthropy, thus boldly and solidly based on a sense of unlimited obligation, acquires a character essentially differing from that of spontaneous kindness; and while, as a source of relief to the wretched, it is rendered immensely more copious, is, at the same time, secured against the flatteries of self-love, and the excesses of enthusiasm, by the solemn sanctions of an unbounded responsibility.

III. A nice balancing of motives is obtained from an opposite quarter in the Christian doctrine, of—The rewardableness of works of mercy. This doctrine, than which no article of religion stands out more prominently on the surface of the New Testament, having been early abused, to the hurt of the fundamentals of piety, has, in the modern Church, been almost lost sight of, and fallen into disuse, or has even become liable to obloquy; so that to insist upon it plainly has incurred a charge of Pelagianism, or of Romanism, or of some such error. This misunderstanding must be dispelled before Christian philanthropy can revive in full force.

Amidst the awful reserve which envelops the announcement of a future life by our Lord and his ministers, three ideas, continually incurring, are to be gathered with sufficient clearness from their hasty allusions. The first is, that the future life will be the fruit of the present, as if by a natural sequence of cause and effect. "Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap." The second is, that the future harvest, though of like species and quality with the seed, will be immensely disproportioned to it in amount. "The things seen are temporal; but the things unseen are eternal;" and the sufferings of the present time are to be followed by "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;" and those who have been "faithful over a few things, will have rule over many." The third is, that though the disparity between the present reward and the future recompense will be vast and incalculable, yet will there obtain a most exact rule of correspondence between the one and the other, so that, from the hands of the "righteous Judge" every man will receive "severally, according as his work has been." Nor shall even, "a cup of cold water," given in Christian love, be omitted in that accurate account; the giver shall "by no means lose his reward."

Such are the explicit and intelligible engagements of him whose commands are never far separated from his promises. It cannot then be deemed a becoming part of Christian temper to indulge a scrupulous hesitation in accepting and in acting upon the faith of these declarations. And as there is no real incompatibility or clashing of motives in the Christian system, any delicacy that may be felt, as if the hope of reward might interfere with a due sense of obligation to sovereign grace, must spring from an obscured and faulty perception of scriptural doctrines. The intelligent Christian, on the contrary, when, in simplicity of heart, he calculates upon the promises of Heaven; and when, with a distinct reckoning of the "great gain" of such an investment, he "lays up for himself treasures that cannot fail;" is, at the same time, taught and impelled by the strongest emotions of the heart, to connect his hope of recompense with his hope of pardon. And when the one class of ideas is thus linked to the other, he perceives that the economy which establishes a system of rewards for present services can be nothing else than an arbitrary arrangement of sovereign goodness, resolving itself altogether into the grace of the mediatorial scheme. The retribution, how accurately soever it may be measured out according to the work performed, must, in its whole amount, be still a pure gratuity; not less so than is the gift of immortal life, conferred without probation upon the aborigines of heaven. The zealous and faithful servant who enters upon his reward after a long term of labor, and the infant of a day, who flits at once from the womb to the skies, alike receive the boon of endless bliss in virtue of their relationship to the second Adam, "the Lord from heaven." Nevertheless, this boon shall conspicuously appear, in the one case, to be the apportioned wages of service, an exact recompense, measured, and weighed, and doled out in due discharge of an explicit engagement; while in the other, it can be nothing but a sovereign bestowment.

But it is manifest that this doctrine of future recompense, when held in connection with the fundamental principles of Christianity—justification by faith, tends directly to allay and disperse those excitements which naturally spring up with the zeal of active benevolence. The series or order of sentiments is this:—

The Christian philanthropist, if well instructed, dares not affect indifference to the promised reward, or pretend to be more disinterested than were the Apostles, who labored, "knowing that in due time they should reap." He cannot think himself free to overlook a motive distinctly held out before him in the Scriptures: to do so were an impious arrogance. And yet, if he does accept the promise of recompense, and takes it up as an inducement to diligence, he is compelled by a sense of the manifold imperfections of his services, to fall back constantly upon the divine mercies as they are assured to transgressors in Christ. These humbling sentiments utterly refuse to cohere with the complacencies of a selfish and vain-glorious philanthropy, and necessitate a subdued tone of feeling. Thus the very height and expansion of the Christian's hopes send the root of humility deep and wide; the more his bosom heaves with the hope of "the exceeding great reward," the more is it quelled by the consciousness of demerit. The counterpoise of opposing sentiments is so managed, that elevation cannot take place on the one side without an equal depression on the other; and by the counteraction of antagonist principles the emotions of zeal may reach the highest possible point, while full provision is made for correcting the vertigo of enthusiasm.