Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

But if there were room to imagine that the first spread of Christianity was owing rather to an accidental conjuncture of favoring circumstances than to its real power over the human mind, or if it might be thought that any such peculiar virtue was all spent and exhausted in its first expansive effort, then it is natural to look to the next occasion on which the opinions of mankind were put in fermentation, and to watch in what manner the system of the Bible then rode over the high billows of political, religious, and intellectual commotion. It was a fair trial for Christianity, and a trial essentially different from its first, when, in the fifteenth century, after having been corrupted in every part to a state of loathsome ulceration, it had to contend for existence, and to work its own renovation, at the moment of the most extraordinary expansion of the human intellect that has ever happened. At that moment, when the splendid literature of the ancient world started from its tomb, and kindled a blaze of universal admiration; at that moment, when the first beams of sound philosophy broke over the nations; and when the revival of the useful arts gave at once elasticity to the minds of the million, and a check of practical influence to the minds of the few; at the moment when the necromancy of the press came into play to expose and explode necromancy of every other kind; and when the discovery of new continents, and of a new path to the old, tended to supplant a taste of whatever is visionary, by imparting a vivid taste for what is substantial; at such a time, which seemed to leave no chance of continued existence to aught that was not in its nature vigorous, might it not confidently have been said—This must be the crisis of Christianity? if it be not inwardly sound, if it have not a true hold of human nature, if it be a thing of feebleness and dotage, fit only for cells, and cowls, and the precincts of spiritual despotism; if it be not adapted to the world of action, if it have no sympathy with the feelings of men—of freemen; nothing can save it: no power of princes, no devices of priests, will avail to rear it anew, and to replace it in the veneration of the people; at least not in any country where has been felt the refreshing gale of intellectual life. The result of this crisis need not be narrated.

It may even be doubted, had not Christianity been fraught with power, if all the influence of kings, or craft of priests, could have upheld it in any part of Europe, after the revival of learning; and certainly not in those countries which received, at one and the same time, the invigoration of political liberty, of science, and of commerce.

Whether the religion for which the reformers suffered, "was from heaven or of men," is not our question; but whether it is not a religion of robust constitution, framed to endure, and to spread, and to vanquish the hearts of men? With the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in view, it is asked if Christianity be a system that must always lean upon ignorance, and craft, and despotism, and which, when those rotten stays are removed, must fail and be seen no more?

Yet another species of trial was in store to give proof of the indestructibility and victorious power of Christianity. It remained to be seen whether, when the agitations, political and moral, that were consequent upon the great schism which had taken place in Europe had subsided, and when the season of slumber and exhaustion came on, and when human reason, strengthened and refined by physical science, and elegant literature, should awake fully to the consciousness of its powers; whether then the religion of the Bible could retain its hold of the nations; or at least of those of them that enjoyed, without limit, the happy influences of political liberty, and intellectual light. This was a sort of probation which Christianity had never before passed through.

And what were the omens under which it entered upon the new trial of its strength? Were the friends of Christianity at that moment of portentous conflict awake, and vigilant, and stout-hearted, and thoroughly armed to repel assaults? The very reverse was the fact; for at the instant when the atheistical conspiracy made its long-concerted, well-advised and consentaneous attack, there was scarcely a pulse of life left in the Christian body, in any one of the Protestant states. The old superstitions had crawled back into many of their ancient corners. In other quarters the spirit of protestation against those superstitions had breathed itself away in trivial wranglings, or had given place to infidelity—infidelity aggravated by stalled hypocrisy. The Church of England, the chief prop of modern Christianity, was then, to a great extent, torpid, and fainting under the incubus, either of false doctrine, or of a secular spirit; at least it seemed incapable of the effort which the peril of the time demanded: few indeed of her sons were panoplied, and sound-hearted, as champions in such a cause should be. Within a part only of a small body of Dissenters, (for a part was smitten with the plague of heresy) and that part in great measure disqualified from free and energetic action by rigidities, and scruples, and divisions, was contained almost all the religious life and fervor anywhere to be found in Christendom.

Meanwhile the infidel machinators had chosen their ground at leisure, and were wrought to the highest pitch of energy by a confident, and, as it might seem, a well-founded hope of success. They were backed by the secret wishes, or the undissembled cheerings of almost the entire body of educated men throughout Europe. They used the only language then common to the civilized world, and a language which might be imagined to have been framed and finished designedly to accomplish the demolition of whatever was grave and venerated; a language, beyond any other, of raillery, of insinuation, and of sophistry; a language of polished missiles, whose temper could penetrate not only the cloak of imposture, but the shield of truth.

At the same portentous moment the shocks and upheavings of political commotion opened a thousand fissures in the ancient structure of moral and religious sentiment; and the enemies of Christianity, surprised by unexpected success, rushed forward to achieve, as they thought, an easy triumph. The firmest and the wisest friends of old opinions desponded, and many believed that a few years would see Atheism the universal doctrine of the western nations, as well as military despotism the only form of government.

It is difficult to imagine a single advantage that was lacking to the promoters of infidelity, or a single circumstance of peril and ill-omen that was not present to deepen the gloom of the friends of religion. The actual issue of that signal crisis is before our eyes in the freshness of a recent event. Christianity—we ask not whether for the benefit or the injury of the world—has triumphed; the mere fact is all that concerns our argument. But shall it be said, or if said, believed, that the late resurrection of the religion of the Bible has been managed in the cabinets of monarchs? Have kings and emperors given this turn to public opinion, which now compels infidelity to hide its shame behind the very mask of hypocrisy that it had so lately torn from the face of the priest? To come home to facts with which all must be familiar: Has there not been heard, within the last few years, from the most enlightened, the most sober-minded, and the freest people of Europe, a firm, articulate, spontaneous, and cordial expression of preference, and of enhanced veneration towards Christianity? Again, then, we ask—not if this religion be true, but if it have not, even beneath our own observation, given proof of indestructible vigor?

The spread of the English stock, and language, and literature, over the North American continent, has afforded a distinct and very significant indication of the power of Christianity to retain its hold of the human mind, and of its aptness to run hand-in-hand with civilization, even when unaided by those secular succors to which its enemies in malice, and some of its friends in over-caution, are prone to attribute too much importance. The tendency of republicanism, which obviously has some strong affinity with infidelity, and the connection of the colonies, at the moment of their revolt, with France, and the prevalence of a peculiarly eager and uncorrected commercial temper, and the absence of every sort and semblance of restraint upon opinion, were concurrent circumstances, belonging to the infancy of the American Union, of a kind which put to the severest test the instrinsic power of Christianity, in retaining its hold of the human mind. Could infidel experimenters have wished for conditions more equitable, under which to try the respective forces of the opposing systems?

And what has been the issue? It is true that infidelity holds still its ground in the United States, as in Europe; and there, as in Europe, keeps company with whatever is debauched, sordid, oppressive, reckless, ruffian-like. But at the same time Christianity, has gained rather than lost ground, and shows itself there in a style of as much fervor and zeal as in England; and perhaps, even it has the advantage in these respects. Wherever, on that continent, good order and intelligence are spreading, there also the religion of the Bible spreads. And if it be probable that the English race, and language, and institutions, will, in a century, pervade its deserts, all appearances favor the belief that the edifices of Christian worship will bless every landscape of the present wilderness that shall then "blossom as the rose."