Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

In witnessing, first, the entreaties, and supplications, and tears of a convicted, condemned, and repentant malefactor, prostrate at the feet of his sovereign, and then the exuberance of his joy and gratitude in receiving pardon and life, no one would so absurdly misuse language as to call the intensity and fervor of the criminal's feelings enthusiastical: for, however strong, or even ungovernable those emotions may be, they are perfectly congruous with the occasion: they spring from no illusion; but are fully justified by the momentous turn that has taken place in his affairs: in the past hour he contemplated nothing but the horrors of a violent, an ignominious, and a deserved death; but now life, with its delights, is before him. It is true that all men in the same circumstances would not undergo the same intensity of emotion: but all, unless obdurate in wickedness, must experience feelings of the same quality. And thus, so long are the real circumstances under which every human being stands in the court of the Supreme Judge are clearly understood, and duly felt, enthusiasm finds no place; all is real; nothing illusory. But when once these unutterably important facts are forgotten or obscured, then, by necessity every enhancement of religious feeling is a step on the ascent of enthusiasm; and it becomes a matter of very little practical consequence, whether the deluded pietist be the worshipper of some system of abstract rationalism or of tawdry images and rotten relics; though the latter error of the two is perhaps preferable, inasmuch as a warm-hearted fervor is always better than frozen pride.

One commanding subject pervades the Scriptures, and rises to view on every page: this recurring theme, towards which all instructions and histories tend, is the great and anxious question of condemnation or acquittal at the bar of God, when the irreversible sentence shall come to be pronounced. "How shall man be just with God?" is the inquiry ever and again urged upon the conscience of him who reads the Bible with a humble and teachable desire to find therein the way of life. In subserviency to this leading intention, the themes which run through the sacred writings, and which distinguish those writings by an immense dissimilarity from all the remains of polytheistic literature, are those of guilt, shame, contrition, love, joy, gratitude, and affectionate obedience. And moreover, in conformity with this same intention, the Divine Being is revealed—if not exclusively, yet chiefly—as the party in the great controversy which sin has occasioned. The intercourse, therefore, which is opened between heaven and earth is almost confined to the momentous transactions of reconciliation and renewed friendship. When the Hearer of prayer invites interlocution with man, it is not, as perhaps in Eden, for the purposes of free and discursive converse, but for conference on a special business. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Almighty, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

The same speciality of purpose and limitation of subject is plainly implied in the appointment of a Mediator and Advocate; for although the establishment of this happy medium of approach authorizes and encourages even a boldness of access to the throne of the heavenly grace, it not less evidently imposes a restriction or peculiarity upon the intercourse between God and man. As the Intercessor exercises his office to obtain the bestowment of the benefits secured to mankind by his vicarious sufferings, the suppliant must surely have those benefits especially in view. The work and office of the Mediator, and the desires and petitions of the client, are correlatives. "No man," said the Saviour, "cometh unto the Father but by me." It follows then, naturally, that those who thus come to the Father should keep in constant remembrance the great intention of the mediatorial scheme, which is nothing else than to reconcile transgressors to the offended Majesty of heaven. But this unalterable condition of all devotional services contains a manifest and efficacious provision against enthusiastical excitements; for the emotions of shame and penitence, and of joy in receiving the assurance of pardon, are not of the class with which the imagination has near affinity, and, in a well-ordered mind, they may rise to their highest pitch without either disturbing the powers of reason, or infringing the most perfect inward serenity, or outward decorum. In a word, it may be confidently affirmed that no man becomes an enthusiast in religion, until he has forgotten that he is a transgressor—a transgressor reconciled to God by mediation.

But when, either by the refinements of rationalism—a gross misnomer—or by superstitious corruptions, the central facts of Christianity have become obscured, no middle ground remains between the apathy of formality and the extravagance of enthusiasm. The substance of religion is gone, and its ceremonial only remains—remains to disgust the intelligent, and to delude the simple. This momentous principle is strikingly displayed in the construction of the Romish worship. That false system assumes the great business of pardon and reconciliation with God to be a transaction that belongs only to priestly negotiation; and as forgiveness has its price, and the priest is at once the appraiser of the offence, and the receiver of the mulct, it would be an intrusion upon his function, an interference that must derange his balances, for the transgressor to act on his own behalf, or ever to inquire what passes between the authorized agent of mercy, and the court of heaven. No room, then, is left in this system for the great and central subject of all devotional exercises. The doctrine of pardon having been cut off from worship, worship becomes unsubstantial. The expiatory death and availing intercession of the Son of God are taken within the rail of sacerdotal usurpation; and of necessity, if Jesus Christ is at all to be set forth "crucified before the people," it can only be as an object of dramatic exhibition. This is the secret of the popish magnificence of worship. Music, and painting, and pantomime, and a tinsel declamation, must do their several parts to disguise the subduction of the essentials of devotion. The laity, having nothing to transact with God, must be amused and beguiled, "lest haply the gospel of his grace" should enter the heart, and so the trading intervention of the priest be superseded.

The great purpose of the Romish worship, which is to preclude all genuine feelings by substituting the enthusiasm of the imagination, is accomplished, it must be confessed, with consummate skill, and a just knowledge of the human mind. The end proposed will, manifestly, be best attained when the emotions which spring from the imagination are made to resemble as nearly as possible those that belong to the heart. The nicest imitation will be the most successful in this machinery of delusion. Hence it is, that while all those means of excitement are employed which quicken the physical sensibilities, the deeper sensibilities of the soul are also addressed, and yet always by the intervention of dramatic or poetic images. A plain and undisguised appeal to the heart is unknown to the system.

If it be for a moment forgotten, that in every bell, bowl, and vest of the Romish service there is hid a device against the liberty and welfare of mankind, and that its gold, and pearls, and fine linen are the deckings of eternal ruin; and if this apparatus of worship be compared with the impurities and the cruelties of the old polytheistic rites, great praise may seem due to its contrivers. Nothing in Christianity that might subserve the purposes of dramatic effect has been overlooked; and even the most difficult parts of the materials have been wrought into keeping. The humiliations and poverty which shroud the glory of the principal personage, and the horrors of his death; as well as the awful beauty and compassionate advocacy of the virgin mother, the queen of heaven; the stern dignity of the twelve; the marvels of miraculous power; the heroism of the martyrs; the mortifications of the saints; the punishment of the enemies of the church; the practices of devils; the intercession and tutelary cares of the blessed; the sorrows of the nether world, and the glories of the upper;—all these materials of poetic and scenic effect have been elaborated by the genius and taste of the Italian artists, until a spectacle has been got up which leaves the most splendid shows of the ancient idol-worship of Greece and Rome at a vast distance of inferiority.[2]

But of what avail is all this sumptuous apparatus in promoting either genuine piety or purity of manners? History and existing facts leave no obscurity on the question; for the atrocity of crime, and the foulness of licentiousness, have ever kept pace with the perfection of the Romish service. Those nations upon whose manners it has worked its proper influence with the fullest effect, have been the most irreligious and the most debauched. Splendid rites and odious vices have dwelt in peace under the same consecrated roofs; and the actors and spectators of these sacred pantomimes have been wont to rush together from the solemn pomps of worship, to the chambers of filthy sin.

The substitution of poetic enthusiasm for genuine piety may, however, take place apart from the decorations of the Romish service; but the means employed must be of a more intellectual cast: eloquence must take the labor on itself, and must subject the doctrines of Scripture to a process of refinement which shall deposit whatever is substantial and affecting, and retain only what is magnific, pathetic, or sublime. And yet the principles of protestantism, and, in some respects, the national temper, and certainly the style and spirit, of the devotional services of the English Church, all discourage the attempt to hold forth the subjects of evangelical teaching in the gorgeous colors of an artificial oratory. And if the evidence of facts were listened to, such attempts would never be made by those who honestly desire to discharge the momentous duties of the Christian ministry in the manner most conducive to the welfare of their hearers. A blaze of emotion, having the semblance of piety, may be kindled by descriptive and impassioned harangues, such as those that are heard, on festival days, from French and Italian pulpits; but it will be found that the Divine Spirit, without whose agency the heart is never permanently affected, refuses to become a party in any such theatric exercises; these emotions will therefore subside without leaving a vestige of salutary influence.

Yet is there perhaps a lawful, though limited range open, in the pulpit, to the powers of descriptive eloquence. The preacher may safely embellish all those subsidiary topics that are not included within the circle of the primary principles on which the religious affections are built; for in addressing the imagination on these accessory points, he does not incur the danger of founding piety altogether upon illusions. The great and beautiful in nature, and perhaps the natural attributes of the Deity, and the episodes of sacred history, and the diversities of human character, and the scenes of social life, and the secular interests of mankind, may, by their incidental connection with more important themes furnish the means of awakening attention, and of varying the sameness of theological discourse. Or even if no unquestionable plea of utility could be urged in recommendation of such divertisements, at the worst they are not chargeable with the desecration of fundamental doctrines; nor do they generate delusion where delusion must be fatal. But it is not so with the principal matters of the preacher's message to his fellow-men, which can hardly be touched by the pencil of poetic or dramatic eloquence without incurring a hazard of the highest kind, inasmuch as the excitement so engendered more often totally excludes than merely impairs genuine feelings.

If the taste of an audience be quickened and cultivated, nothing is more easy to the teacher, or more agreeable to the taught, than a transition from the sphere of spiritual feeling to the regions of poetic excitement. Intellect is put in movement by the change; conscience is lulled; the weight that may have rested on the heart is upborne, and a state of animal elasticity induced, which, so long as it continues, dispels the sadness of earthly cares. Let it be supposed that the subject of discourse is that one which, of all others, should be the most solemnly affecting to those who admit the truth of Christianity—the awful process of the last judgment. The speaker, we will believe, intends nothing but to inspire a salutary alarm; and with this view he essays his utmost command of language, while he describes the sudden waning of the morning sun, the blackening of the heavens, the decadence of the stars, the growing thunders of coming wrath, the clang of the trumpet, whose notes break the slumbers of the dead, the crash of the pillars of earth, the bursting forth of the treasures of fire, and the solving of all things in the fervent heat. Then the bright appearance of the Judge, encircled by the splendors of the court of heaven; the convoked assemblage of witnesses from all worlds, filling the concave of the skies. Then the dense masses of the family of man, crowding the area of the great tribunal; the separation of the multitude; the irreversible sentence, the departure of the doomed, the triumphant ascent of the ransomed.