"But how is it, when this same solemn averment comes from the lips of those who deny that postulate, and who scorn to recognize the voice of God in the Book? It is just thus; and those whom it concerns so to do, owe it to the world and to themselves to make the ingenuous avowal.
"In the first place, the style and the very terms employed by these writers in enouncing the fact of the martyrdom they are undergoing, are all a flagrant plagiarism, and nothing better! A claim, in behalf of the Gospel, must be made of what is its own, and which these writers, without leave asked, have appropriated. As to every word and phrase upon which the significance of this their profession turns, it must be given up, leaving them in possession of so much only of the meaning of such phrases as would have been intelligible to Plutarch, to Porphyry, and to M. Aurelius. A surrender must be made of the words Conscience, and Truth, and Righteousness, and Sin; and, alas! modern unbelievers must be challenged to give me back that one awe-fraught Name which they (must I not plainly say so?) have stolen out of the Book; when they have frankly made this large surrender, we may return to them the το θειον of classical antiquity.
"Yet this plagiarism, as to terms, is the smaller part of that invasion of rights with which the same persons are chargeable. It is reasonable, and it is what a good man must do, to suffer anything rather than deny a persuasion, which is such that he could not, if he would, cast it off. So it was with the early Christian martyrs; their persuasion of the truth of the Gospel had become part of themselves; it was faith absolute, in the fullest sense of the word. The same degree of irresistible persuasion attaches to the conclusions of mathematical or physical science; but it can never belong to an opinion, or to an undefined abstract belief. A man may indeed choose to die rather than contradict his personal persuasion of the truth of an opinion; but in doing so he has no right to take to himself the martyr's style. So to speak is to exhibit, not constancy, but opinionativeness, or an overweening confidence in his own reasoning faculty.
"Polycarp could not have refused to die when the only alternative was to blaspheme Christ, his Lord; but Plutarch could not have been required to suffer in attestation of his opinion,—good as it was,—that the poets have done ill in attributing the passions and the perturbations of human nature to the immortal gods; nor Seneca, in behalf of those astronomical and meteorological theories with which he entertains himself and his friend Lucilius.
"When those who, after rejecting Christianity, talk of suffering for the 'truth of God,' and speak as if they were conscience-bound 'toward God,' they must know that they not only borrow a language which they are not entitled to avail themselves of, but that they invade a ground of religious belief whereon they can establish for themselves no right of standing. They may indeed profess what opinion they please as to the Divine attributes; but they cannot need to be told that which the misgivings of their own hearts so often whisper to them, that all such opinions are, at the very best, open to debate, and must always be indeterminate, and that at this time their own possession of the opinion which just now they happen to cling to, is, in the last degree, precarious. How then can martyrdom be transacted among those whose treading is upon the fleecy clouds of undemonstrable religious feeling?"—pp. 92-94
If, being orthodox, you die at the stake, you are a martyr; if, being heretic,—why, then you are a man burnt;—a doctrine which Robert Hall compressed within the narrowest compass, when he said, "It is the saint which makes the martyr, not the martyr the saint." This is the very Gospel of intolerance; and whoever preaches it may feel assured that he can lend no help in any worthy "Restoration of Belief"; for he is himself infected with the most profound and penetrating of scepticisms,—scepticisms of moral realities. The rule, "that we may not lie to God, nor deny before men our inward conviction in matters of religion," is, in our author's view, the gift and glory of Christianity. Be it so. This rule either holds for all men at all times, or it does not; if there be persons who, notwithstanding it, may lie to God, and deny their inward conviction, then the Scriptures, in communicating it, have revealed no universal principle of duty, no obligation having its seat in the nature of things and the constitution of the human soul, but a mere sectional by-law, an arbitrary precept for the security and good ordering of one exclusive community. Then must we talk of it no more so exceedingly proudly, as if it were a hidden truth revealed, a latent beauty opened; it is no part of the holy legislation of the universe, but a statutory enactment under which we fall, or from which we escape, as we pass in or out at the door of a certain historical belief. Need we say that this side of the alternative strips Christianity of every pretension to be a moral revelation at all? If, to take the other side, the rule in question does hold for all men, then it is no less binding on Mr. Newman and Mr. Greg than on our author; and in bowing to its authority and owning its sanctity, they render a homage as devoutly true as his, only different in this, that, while they feel no disturbance from his kneeling in the sanctuary at their side, he cannot be at peace till he has sprung to his feet and hurled them from the place. They are guilty of "plagiarism" forsooth! And in what? In knowing their duty, without knowing where they learned it! O shame upon this greediness, that would turn moral truth itself, and struggling aspiration, into a property! As if Christ were one to stand upon the copyright of revelation, and, unless his name were in the title-page, would suffer neither thought nor prayer to dedicate itself to God! Our author, as public prosecutor in the Supreme Court, demands that the defendants shall empty themselves out of every earnest sentiment, and surrender back the words conscience, and truth, and righteousness, and sin, and God, "as stolen from the Book"! What then was "the Book" given for, but that it might freely furnish these?—and how better can it fulfil its end, than by opening for them a sacred welcome wherever the things are which they disclose? Let their spirit breathe where it listeth; it will not be less a Holy Spirit that we know not "whence it cometh": nor let it be forgot how old a feature of evangelic blessing it is, that "he that was healed wist not who it was." As "the Book" does not, by its presence, create the facts which it reveals, so neither does its absence or rejection destroy them. Conscience, as an element of human nature, does not come or go,—God, as reality in the universe, does not live or perish,—according as the Bible is kept in the pocket or laid upon the shelf; even if their first witness were in Scripture, they themselves are in the world,—as active, as near, as certain, in the transactions of to-day, as in the affairs of distant history. Scientific truth, once well ascertained, can take care of itself, without being everywhere attended by the report of its first discovery; it is in the safe keeping of the objects on which it writes a new meaning, and the phenomena amid which it introduces a fresh symmetry. And moral truth, when once embodied and revealed, is not less independent of its earliest expression; it finds its response in human consciousness, its reflection from human life, and weaves itself up into the very fabric of many souls, whose pattern bears no motto of its origin. Thus "revelation"—just in proportion as it is revelation, and tells us what is cognate to ourselves, and bound up with the realities around us—passes of necessity into "natural religion"; and precisely according to the measure in which it does so, will it acquire strength and permanence, and dispense with evidence by merging into self-evidence. Did it awaken in us no confirming experience, did it nowhere link itself with the visible system of things,—then, solving nothing, glorifying nothing, missed by all the moving indices of nature and Providence, it would sit apart, and become incredible. That could hardly be a truth at all, which, after roaming the world and searching the soul for eighteen centuries, has found no natural ground on which to rest, and must wander as an ipse dixit still. And if natural ground it has acquired, that is surely a proper basis for its present support; it may innocently cease to be held on mere authority; the very "plagiarism" so vehemently denounced is rather the fulfilment than the destruction of the faith, for it is only that men no longer resort to an oracle for things which the oracle has enabled them to see for themselves.
Our Christian advocate, however, is not content with reserving to his side the sole power of discerning the duty of religious veracity; he further claims the sole right to practise it. He teaches that it is not binding on all men at all times; and that its obligation is in any case conditional on the "initial postulate, that Christianity is from heaven." He thinks, apparently, that the duty is not so much revealed as constituted by the Gospel, so as to have no existence beyond the pale. We can collect from his words two considerations, under whose influence he seems to pronounce this strange judgment. He evidently assumes that the duty of veracious profession is contingent partly on the object-matter of belief; partly on the degree of evidence. If my faith is directed towards a Person, then, he implies, there is treachery, even blasphemy, in denying it; but if not, my disclaimer gives no one any title to complain, and I cannot be expected to die on behalf of a proposition. Polycarp must not renounce Christ, his Lord; but Plutarch might very properly recant, without at all altering, his judgment against the poets, for ascribing passions to the gods. Is it so, indeed? Then there is no harm in a lie, unless some one is betrayed or insulted by it besides the hearers whom we deceive,—and we may report as falsely as we please our persuasion about things, provided we are true to our sentiments about persons? With full recollection of the questionable verdicts, on problems of veracity, which are given by Xenophon and Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, we doubt whether any Pagan moralist can be quoted in favor of a doctrine so unworthy as this. The author seems to imagine that the obligation to speak the truth is a mere duty of personal affection; and that in the absence of this element, its claims altogether disappear. Identifying falsehood with detraction and ingratitude, he concludes that, since an abstract theory is insensible to what people say about it, and can have no services owing to it, it may be blamelessly repudiated by those who really believe it. This is tantamount to an expunging of veracity from the list of human duties altogether; for it gives importance to what is purely accidental, and slights what is alone essential to it. The conditions of a lie, in all its full-blown wickedness, are quite complete, when there is a person to speak it, a person to hear it, and a social state to be the theatre of the deception; should there be also a person spoken of, that is a circumstance in no way requisite to constitute the guilt, but a supplementary condition, flinging in a new element of pravity, and turning falsehood into faithlessness. The introduction of this additional person into the case may doubtless render the offence much more flagrant, especially if he be one who has acknowledged claims on gratitude and reverence. Calumny and perfidy are justly held in deeper abhorrence than equivocation unstained with malignity. But to be unaffected by the criminality till it kindles with this diabolical glare, and not even to believe in it unless it smells sulphurous and burns red, betrays a perception too much accustomed to melodramatic contrasts of representation to appreciate the more delicate tints and finer moral lights of the real and open day. And so far from the glory of martyrdom being heightened by the presence of deep personal affection as its inspiration, this very circumstance renders the act a less arduous sacrifice; just as to fall in the hot blood of battle may need less heroism of will, than to die under the knife upon the surgeon's table. In proportion as the denial of Christ in the hour of trial would be the more intolerable blasphemy, must the temptation to it be less overwhelming, and the merit of a good confession less amazing. And those who, in matters touching no such deep affection, can yet be true,—those who, in simple clearness of conscience, can dispense, if need be, with the help of enthusiasm, and so shut their lips against a lie, that not the searing iron can open them,—those who do not want a grand occasion, but just as certainly use the smallest, to fling back the thing that is not,—have assuredly a soul of higher prowess and more severely proved fidelity to God. And it is a heartless thing to turn round upon these men, and taunt them with having no one at whose feet to lay their offering, and no popular sympathy to redeem their uprightness from the imputation of conceit.
There is, however, another consideration which weighs with our author in granting to "modern unbelievers" a dispensation from the duty of religious veracity. They have only a "personal persuasion" resting on precarious grounds, and not the certitude attaching to "the conclusions of mathematical and physical science"; and it would be folly to suffer on behalf of "undemonstrable religious feeling"! Are we then to lay it down as a canon in ethics, that intensity of assurance is the measure of our obligation to speak the truth,—so that we are to state our certainties correctly, but may tell lies about our doubts? If so, scrupulous fidelity is incumbent on us only within the limits of deductive science and of immediate personal observation; and in the great sphere of human affairs, in matters of historical, moral, and political judgment, nay, in the incipient stage of all knowledge, we may say and unsay, may play fast and loose with our convictions, according as the favor or the fear of men hangs over us. Newton was bound to stand by his "Principia"; but Locke might have renounced his treatise on Government and taken his oath to the divine rights of kings! Were he indeed to refuse so easy a compliance, it would be a great reflection upon his modesty; for if a man, on being threatened with death, will not belie his own persuasion of probable truth, he is chargeable with "overweening confidence in his own reasoning faculty"! It is happy for the world that it does not always except the morals of the Church, but brings an unperverted feeling to correct the twisted logic of belief. "Opinion," a wise man has said, "is but knowledge in the making"; and how little knowledge would get made, if opinion were emptied of its conscience, and looked on itself as an egotism rather than a trust! If there is one fruit of intellectual culture which more than another dignifies and ennobles it, it is the scrupulous reverence it trains for the smallest reality, its watchfulness for the earliest promise of truth, its tender care of every stamen in the blossoming of thought, from whose flower-dust the seed of a richer futurity may grow. To cut against this fine veracious sense with the weapons of unappreciating sarcasm, and crush its objects into the ground as weeds with the heel of orthodox scorn, is a feat which can advance the step of Christian evidence only by betraying the Christian ethics. Our author has entangled himself in the metaphor indicated by the word "martyrdom"; he thinks of the confessor as bearing witness to something,—which is indeed quite true; and supposes that the things to which he bears witness must be the facts or doctrines held by him; and this is not true at all. For that which we attest in the hour of persecution is simply our own state of mind; our belief, and not the object believed. We are required to utter words, or to perform acts, that shall give report of our persuasion; this persuasion is a fact in our personal psychology about which there is no ambiguity; which, as a presence in our consciousness, is wholly unaffected by the question how it got there, and by what logical tenure it holds its seat. Whether we have demonstrated it into the mind or fetched it thither in a dream, whether we had it yesterday or shall continue to have it to-morrow, are matters in no way altering the fact that it is there; and if we say "No" to it, while conscious of a "Yes," the sin is neither greater when the belief concerns the properties of a geometric solid, nor less when it touches some indeterminate problem of metaphysics. The logical ground of our judgments is various without end,—perception, testimony, reasoning, in every possible combination. But the persuasion, once attained, is a simple phenomenon, whose affirmation, or denial, being always positively true, cannot change its moral complexion with every shade in the evidence now left behind. It is plain that, in our author's favorite case of martyrdom, no testimony could be borne by the Christian to anything but his own conviction. Polycarp and Cyprian could only answer in the face of death, that they were Christians; it was not "on behalf of" any outward fact, but simply because they would not belie their inward belief, that they laid down their lives. And had Plutarch been dragged before some anthropomorphist inquisition, and been called on publicly to declare his belief that the immortal gods were well and truly painted by the poets as having passions like mankind, the lie to which he was tempted would have been precisely of the same kind; and had it passed his lips, would have made him despicable as an apostate. He had no power, nor had the Church confessor, over the truth or evidence of his opinion; neither of them had any witness, in the strict sense, to bear; but both might veraciously scorn to deny a fact unambiguously present to their self-knowledge. If the heathen's firmness is an example of "overweening confidence in his own reasoning faculty," by what favoring difference does the Christian's escape the same imputation? That his faith is "absolute," his persuasion "irresistible," so far from furnishing a vindication, only avows the fact that his "confidence" is intense; whether it be "overweening" too, must depend on the proportion between the certitude he feels and the grounds of just assurance he possesses. But at all events it is a confidence—in this case as in the other—undeniably reposed "in his own reasoning faculty." How else could any belief—except a groundless belief—reach the convert's mind at all? It is vain to pretend that the receivers of an historic doctrine plant their reliance piously on God, while its rejecters proudly trust themselves. There is no less subjective action of the mind on the positive side than on the negative; and on the soundness of that action does the worth of the result in either instance depend. The evidence on both sides comes into the same court of criticism; and pleading and counter-pleading must ask a hearing from the same judicial intelligence. If our author refers the Gospels to the first century, and his opponents to the second; if he finds a miracle in the gift of tongues, they a delusion; if he thinks that the reasoning out of the Old Testament in the New is exegetically and logically sound, they that it is in both respects unsound;—is he not concerned with the same topics, conducting the same processes, liable to the same mistaken estimates, as they? How then can he flatter himself that the same thing is believed on one tenure, and disbelieved on quite another? How affect, even while playing the advocate, to be raised above the contingencies of the "reasoning faculty," and entitled to rebuke its pride? How renounce it for himself, appeal to it for your assent, abuse it for your dissent, in the wayward course of two or three pages?
Our author stands, therefore, in spite of every effort to escape it, on the same logical ground as his opponents; and they, notwithstanding his objection to their companionship, are on the same footing of religious obligation with himself. He is offended to find such a one as Mr. Newman on the same sacred pavement, and to overhear from unbelieving lips the genuine tones of prayer; and, thanking God, apprises men that he "is not as this publican." He prosecutes for trespass all who, after rejecting his Christianity, can dare to profess allegiance to the "truth of God," and "speak as if they were conscience-bound towards God." Are they then not so bound? Has no one a conscience except the approved historical believer? Is it not in others also a Divine voice,—a Holy Spirit,—which to resist and stifle were the true and only "Infidelity"? Surely the faith in God, and the earnest acceptance of the laws of duty as the expression of his authority, are not forbidden to men who cannot assume the disciple's style. These sentiments, so far from waiting on revelation for their possibility, are the pre-requisite conditions of all revelation, the state of mind to which it speaks, the secret power by which it finds us out; and if men cannot be "conscience-bound towards God" before and without Christianity, never can they become so after it and with it. It does not take us up as atheists and brutes, and supply us with the faculties as well as the substance of faith; else were there no medium of suasion across the boundary of unbelief;—but it appeals to us as knowing much and aspiring to more,—as already before the face, only shrinking from the clear look of God,—as feeling the divine restraint upon us of justice, purity, and truth, but unable, without some emancipating power, to turn it into freedom and joy. This spirit of profound sympathy, not of arrogant insult, towards the highest faiths and affections of our nature, we recognize in the portraiture and teachings of Jesus Christ; and when we find one who, like our author, instead of rejoicing that the sacred embers of nature are yet warm, instead of kneeling over them to fan them with a breath of reverence into a flame, flings them with scattering scorn on the damp ground of his own moral scepticism to show how little they will burn,—we see reversed in the "Restorer of Belief" the divine temper of the "Author of Faith." Such a teacher will vainly endeavor to recover by severity of warning the influence he forfeits by want of sympathy. He cannot frighten men like Parker, Newman, Greg, by appealing to fancied "misgivings of their own hearts" respecting the precariousness of their convictions, and uttering dismal prophecies about yawning gulfs; which, however alarming as a shudder of rhetoric, can disturb no quiet trust in reality. Let us hear the words, however:—