I. In the first place, We have faith in the Moral Perceptions of Man. The conscience with which he is endowed enables him to appreciate the distinction between right and wrong; to understand the meaning of "ought," and "ought not"; to love and revere whatever is great and excellent in character, to abhor the mean and base; and to feel that in the contrast between these we have the highest order of differences by which mind can be separated from mind. And on this consciousness,—the basis of our whole responsible existence,—no suspicion is to be cast; no lamentation over its fallibility, no hint of possible delusion, is to pass unrebuked; it is worthy of absolute reliance as the authoritative oracle of our nature, supreme over all its faculties,—entitled to use sense, memory, understanding, to register its decrees, without a moment's license to dispute them. That Justice, Mercy, and Truth are good and venerable, is no matter of doubtful opinion, in which peradventure an error may be hid;—is not even a thing of certain inference, recommended to us by the force of evidence;—is not an empirical judgment, depending on the pleasurableness of these qualities, and capable of reversal, if, under some tyrant sway, they were to be rendered sources of misery. The approval which we award to them is quite distinct from assent to a scientific probability; the excellence which we ascribe to them is not identical with their command of happiness, but altogether transcends this, precedes it, and survives it; the obligation they lay upon us is not the consequence of positive law, human or divine, or in any way the creature of superior will; for all free-will must itself possess a moral quality,—can never stir without exercising it,—and cannot therefore give rise to that which is a prior condition of its own activity. And if (to pursue the thought suggested above) we could be snatched away to some distant world, some out-province of the universe, abandoned by God's blessed sway to the absolutism of demons, where selfishness and sensuality, and hate and falsehood, were protected and enjoined by public law, it is clear that, by such emigration, our interests only, and not our duties, would be reversed; and that to rebel and perish were nobler than to comply and live. The discernment of moral distinctions, then, belongs to the very highest order of certainties; it has its seat in our deepest reason, among the primitive strata of thought, on which the depositions of knowledge, and the accumulations of judgment, and the surface growths of opinion, all repose. As experience in the past has not taught it, experience in the future cannot unteach it. The difference between good and evil we cannot conceive to be merely relative, and incidental to our point of view,—variable with the locality and the class in which a being happens to rest,—an optical caprice of the atmosphere in which we live;—but rather a property of the very light itself, found everywhere out of the region of absolute night; or, at least, a natural impression, belonging to that perceptive eye of the soul, through which alone we can look out, as through a glass, upon all beings and all worlds; and if any one will say that the glass is colored, it is, at all events, the tint of nature, shed on it by the ineffaceable art of the Creator. The modes in which we think of moral qualities are not terrestrial peculiarities of idea, like foreign prejudices; the terms in which we speak of them are not untranslatable provincial idioms, vulgarities of our planetary dialect, but are familiar, like the symbols of a divine science, to every tribe of souls, belonging to the language of the universe, and standing defined in the vocabulary of God. The laws of right are more necessarily universal than the physical laws of force; and if the same agency of gravitation that governs the rain-drop determines the evolutions of the sky, and the Principia of Newton would be no less intelligible and true on the ring of Saturn than in the libraries of this earth,—yet more certain is it that the principles of moral excellence, truly expounded for the smallest sphere of responsibility, hold good, by mere extension, for the largest, and that those sentiments of conscience which may give order and beauty to the life of a child, constitute the blessedness of immortals, and penetrate the administration of God. This is what we intend, when we insist on implicit faith in the moral perceptions of man. They are to be assumed by us as the fixed station, the grand heliocentric position, whence our survey of the spiritual universe must be made, and our system of religion constructed. Whatever else may move, here, as in creation's centre of gravity, we take our everlasting stand. Whatever else be doubtful, these are to be simply trusted. The force of certainty by which nature and God give them to the conscience exceeds any by which, either through the understanding or through external supernatural communication, they might seem to be drawn away. No revelation could persuade me that what I revere as just, and good, and holy, is not venerable, any more than it could convince me that the midnight heavens are not sublime.
There is nothing to move us from this position, in the objection, that different men have different ideas of right and wrong, and that the heroic deeds of one latitude are regarded as the crimes of another. This moral discrepancy is, in the first place, infinitely small in proportion to the moral agreement of mankind, so that it is even difficult to find many striking examples of it; and when the subject is mentioned, everybody expects to hear the self-immolation of the Indian widow, and other superstitions of the Ganges, adduced as the standing illustrations. What, after all, are these eccentricities of the moral sense, compared with the scale of its common consent? As well might you deny the existence of an atmosphere, because you have found the air exhausted from a pump! Where is the nation or the individual, without the rudiments, however imperfectly unfolded, of the same great ideas of duty which we possess ourselves?—where the language, in which there are no terms to denote good and evil,—the just, the brave, the merciful?—where the tribe so barbarous as not to listen, with earnest eye, to the story of the good Samaritan? And if such there were, should we not call them a people but little human (inhuman), and deem them, not the specimens, but the outlaws of our nature? Moreover, the variances of moral judgment are usually only apparent and external. The action which one man pronounces wrong and another right, is not the same, except upon the lips: enter the minds of the two disputants, and you will find that it is only half taken into the view of each, and presents to them its opposite hemispheres; no wonder that it shows the darkness of guilt to the one, and the sunshine of virtue to the other. And accordingly, these differences actually vanish as the faculty of conscience unfolds itself, and the scope of the mind is enlarged. Like the discrepancies in the ideas which men have of beauty, they exist principally between the uncultivated and the refined: and the well-developed perceptions of the best in all ages and countries visibly agree. Nay, while yet the discordance lasts, it introduces no real doubt: for heaven has established a moral subordination among men, which reveals the real truth of our own nature. Do we not always see, that the lower conscience bows before the higher;—that the heart, without light or heat itself, may be pierced, as with a flash, by a sentiment darted from a loftier soul, and own it to be from above;—that, simply by this natural allegiance of the lesser to the nobler, classes and nations and sects are raised in dignity and moral greatness;—that they, and they only, have had any grand and sublime existence in the history of the world, who have been gifted with power to create a new religion,—a fresh development of what is holy and divine;—and that every one so endowed has always gathered around him the multitudes ever praying to be lifted above the level of their life, and blessing the benefactor who wakes up the consciousness of their higher nature? And if so, the general direction of the moral sentiment is the same, however its intensity may vary: and the irregular indications which it gives are not due to any inherent vacillation, but to the disturbing causes which deflect it from the celestial line of simplicity and truth.
We keep our foot, then, on this primitive foundation,—faith in the moral perceptions of man. We say, that we know what we mean, when we affirm that a being is just, pure, disinterested, merciful; that these terms describe one particular kind of character, and one only; that they have the same sense to whomsoever they are applied, and are not to be juggled with, so as to denote quite opposite forms of action and disposition, according as our discourse may be of heaven or of earth; that whenever they lose their ordinary and intelligible signification, they become senseless; and that what would be wrong and odious in any one moral agent, can be, under similar relations, right and lovely in no other. These positions, which we take to be fundamental, are in direct contradiction to the theological maxims with which most churches begin;—viz. that human nature is so depraved that its conscience has lost its discernment, sees everything through a corrupted medium, and deserves no trust; that it may surrender its convictions to anything which can bring fair historical evidence of its being a revelation;—in other words, that it may be right to throw away our ideas of right, and, in obedience to antiquarian witnesses, suppose it holy in God to design and execute a scheme which it would be a crime in man to imitate. These principles are defended by the assertion, that the relations of the Divine and the human being are so different as to destroy all the analogies of character between them. The only tendency, both of this defence and of the principles themselves, is to absolute scepticism;—to atheistical scepticism, inasmuch as our propositions respecting God, if not true in the plain human sense, are to us true in no other, and represent nothing; to moral scepticism, inasmuch as, the sentiments of conscience being exposed to distrust, and all its language rendered unsettled, the very ground on which human character must plant itself is loosened; the rock of duty melts into water beneath our feet, and we are cast into the waves of impulse and caprice.
II. We have Faith in the Moral Perfection of God. This indeed is a plain consequence of our reliance on the natural sentiments of duty. For it is not, we apprehend, by our logical, but by our moral faculty, that we have our knowledge of God; and he who most confides in the instructor will learn the sacred lesson best. That one whom we may call the Holiest rules the universe, is no discovery made by the intellect in its excursions, but a revelation found by the conscience on retiring into itself; and though we may reason in defence of this great truth, and these reasonings, when constructed, may look convincing enough, they are not, we conceive, the source, but rather the effect, of our belief,—not the forethought which actually precedes and introduces the Faith, but the afterthought by which Faith seeks to make a friend and an intimate of the understanding. Does any one hesitate to admit this, and think that our conceptions of the Divine character are inferences regularly drawn from observation,—not indeed observation on the mere physical arrangements, but on the moral phenomena, of our world,—from the traces of a regard to character in the administration of human life? We will not at present dispute the conclusion; but, observing that the premises which furnish it are certain moral experiences, we remark that the very power of receiving and appreciating these, of knowing what they are worth, belongs not to our scientific faculty, but to our sense of justice and of right. On a being destitute of this they would make no impression; and in precise proportion to the intensity of this feeling will be the vividness and force of their persuasion. And is it not plain in fact, that it is far from being the clear and acute intellect, but rather the pure and transparent heart, that best discerns God? How many strong and sagacious judgments, of coolest capacity for the just estimate of argument, never attain to any deep conviction of a perfect Deity! Nay, how much does scepticism on this great matter seem to be proportioned, not to the obtuseness, but rather to the subtlety and searchingness of the mere understanding? But when was it ever known that the singularly pure and simple heart, the earnest and aspiring conscience, the lofty and disinterested soul, had no faith in the "First fair and the First good"? Philosophy at its ease, apart from the real responsibilities and strong battle of life, loses its diviner sympathies, and lapses into the scrupulosity of doubt, and from the centre of comfort weeps over the miseries of earth, and the questionable benevolence of heaven; while the practically tried and struggling, with moral force growing beneath the pressure of crushing toil, look up with a refreshing trust, and with worn and bleeding feet pant happily along to the abodes of everlasting love. The moral victor, flushed with triumph over temptation, feels that God is on his side, and that the spirit of the universe is in sympathy with his joy. Never did any one spend himself in the service of man, and yet despair of the benignity of God. Our faith, then, in the Divine perfection, forms and disengages itself from the deeps of conscience: and the Holiest that broods over us solemnly rises—the awful spirit of eternity—from the ocean of our moral nature.
It is in conformity with this doctrine of the moral origin of our belief in the first principles of religion, that to every man his God is his best and highest, the embodiment of that which the believer himself conceives to be the greatest. The image which he forms of that Being may indeed be gross and terrible; and others may be shocked, and exclaim that he trusts, not in a Divinity, but in a Fiend: but will the worshipper himself perceive and acknowledge this?—will he not indignantly deny it?—will he not eagerly vindicate the perfection of the Deity he serves? He can do no otherwise; for he discerns nothing more sublime, and cannot be convinced that that is low which stands at the summit of his thoughts. This uniform phenomenon in the history of religion could not exist, if human faith were an inference of intellectual origin. There would be nothing then to prevent some men, in their reasonings on the probable character of God, from assigning to that character a place beneath their own conceptions of what is most excellent; and amid the infinite varieties of speculation, many forms of this opinion would undoubtedly arise. Let any one, then, who dissents from the account which we have given, ask himself this question: Why is it, that to discover a blemish in a divinity is the same thing as to renounce faith in him; and that, even in pagan times, to assail the character of the gods was the constant mark of an unbelieving age? Is it not clear that, by a constraining necessity of our being, we are compelled to regard the godlike and the perfect as identical, and to look to heaven through the eye of our moral nature? The Intellect alone, like the telescope waiting for an observer, is quite blind to the celestial things above it,—a dead mechanism dipped in night,—ready to serve as the dioptric glass, spreading the images of light from the Infinite on the tender and living retina of Conscience.
If, then, there is no discernment of Deity except through our moral sense, the importance of confiding in the perceptions of that sense,—of rendering our consciousness of them vivid and distinct,—and the corresponding mischief of distrusting and repudiating these our appointed instructors,—become evident. Faith in the human conscience is necessary to faith in the Divine perfection: and this again is the needful prelude to the belief in any special revelation. For, unless we are first assured of the truth and excellence of God, we cannot tell that his communications may not deceive us, giving us false notices of things, and agitating us with illusory hopes and fears. This might be apprehended from a Being of undetermined benevolence and integrity: and that this idea of a mendacious revelation has never seriously entered the minds of men, is a strong proof of their natural and necessary faith in the rectitude and goodness of the Divine Administrator of creation. This Moral Perfection of God being assumed as a postulate in the very idea of a Revelation, no system of religion which contradicts it can be admitted as credible on any terms.
Now the whole scheme of Redemption, as it is represented in the popular theology, appears to us to fall under this condemnation. Under the names of Justice, Sanctity, Mercy, it ascribes to the All-perfect a course of sentiment and of practice which—it is undeniable—no other moral agent, placed in analogous relations, could adopt without the deepest guilt. The Holiness of God, so often adduced to justify the severities of this scheme, we would yield to no one in earnestly maintaining; believing, as we do, that his abhorrence of moral evil is absolute and everlasting, his resistance to it real and true, and his love of excellence simply infinite as his nature. But purity of mind does not express itself by implacable vengeance against the impure, or oblige its possessor to engage himself in physically smiting them,—much less limit him through all eternity to this mode of administration. Rather does it incline away from a treatment which too often adds only torment, and removes no guilt,—which makes no advance towards the blessed dispositions it loves,—which fevers and parches instead of cooling and melting the passions of a culprit nature. It is a coarse and wretched error to suppose that anguish is a specific for sin, to the incessant infliction of which the Sinless is bound. God never departs indeed from his devotion to the laws of goodness, and his design of calling wider and wider virtue into existence: but he pursues them with the fertility of his infinite free-will;—now by the severities of his displeasure,—now by the openness of his forgiveness,—now by the solicitations of his love. His purpose, as one whose perfection is not merely spotless, but active and productive, cannot be, as some Christians seem to say, the penal publication of his personal offence against the insulters of his law, but the spread and cultivation throughout his spiritual universe of pure and high affections: and whenever the new germs of these appear in the garden of the Lord, no vernal sunshine or summer dews can more gently cherish the bursting flower, than does his mercy foster the fair and early growth. The assertion that God cannot pardon and recall to goodness till he has expended his tortures upon the evil, seems to us a plain denial of his moral excellence. Theologians speak as if there were some crime, or at least some weakness, in the clemency which freely receives a repentant creature into favor; as if the mercy which exacts no penalty, when penalty is no longer needed, were an amiable imbecility of human nature, which only a loose-principled and unholy being can exercise! as if absolute unforgiveness were the perfection of sanctity! True, this is disclaimed in words; and the Eternal Father is called merciful, for remitting the sinner's doom and transferring the burden of his guilt to a victim divine and pure. But surely this disclaimer is more insulting to our moral sense than the accusation. For, either this transference of righteousness and guilt is a mere figure of speech, denoting only that, from the death on Calvary, God took chronological occasion to pass his own spontaneous pardon, and set up the cross to mark the date of his volition; or else, if the vicariousness be not this mere pretence, it describes an outrage upon the first principles of rectitude, a reckless disregard of all moral considerations, from the thought of which we are astonished that all good men do not recoil.
We press once more the question which has never been answered: How is the alleged immorality of letting off the sinner mended by the added crime of penally crushing the Sinless? Of what man—of what angel—could such a thing be reported, without raising a cry of indignant shame from the universal human heart? What should we think of a judge who should discharge the felons from the prisons of a city, because some noble and generous citizen offered himself to the executioner instead? And if this would be barbarity below, it cannot be holiness above. Moral excellence and beauty, we repeat, are no local growths, changing their species with every clime; nor are the poisonous weeds of this outer region the chosen adornments of paradise. The principles of Justice and Right embrace all beings and all times, and, like the indestructible conception of space, attach themselves to our contemplation of objects within the remotest infinitude. It is no more possible that what would be evil in man should be good in God, than that a circle on earth should be a square in heaven. Having faith, then, in the absolute perfection of our Creator, we dare ascribe to Him nothing which revolts the secret conscience He has given us.