An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance

by John Foster

Section V.

The most serious form of the evil caused by a want of mental improvement, is that which is exposed to us in its consequences with respect to the most important concern of all, Religion. This has been briefly adverted to in a former part of these descriptive observations. But the subject seems to merit a more amplified illustration, and may be of sufficient interest to excuse some appearance of repetition. The special view in which we wish to place it, is that of the inaptitude of uncultivated minds for receiving religious instruction.—But first, a slight estimate may be attempted of the actual state of religious notions among our uneducated population.

Some notion of such a concern, something different in their consciousness from the absolute negation of the idea, something that faintly responds to the terms which would be used by a person conversing with them, in the way of questioning them on the subject, may be presumed to exist in the minds of all who are advanced a considerable way into youth, or come to mature age, in a country where all are familiar with several of the principal terms of theology, and have the monitory spectacle of edifices for religious use, on spots appointed also for the interment of the dead. If this sort of measured caution in the assumption seem bordering on the ridiculous, we would recommend those who would smile at it to make some little experiments. Let them insinuate themselves into the company of some of the innumerable rustics who have grown up destitute of everything worth calling education; or of the equally ill-fated beings in the alleys, precincts, and lower employments of towns. With due management to avoid the abruptness and judicial formality, which, would preclude a communicative disposition, they might take occasion to introduce remarks tending, without the express form of questions in the first instance, to draw out the thoughts of some of these persons respecting God, Jesus Christ, the human soul, the invisible world. And the answers would often put them to a stand to conceive, under what suspension of the laws of rational existence the utterers could have been passing so many years in the world. These answers might dispel, as by a sudden shock, the easy and contented assurance, if so unknowing a notion had been entertained, that almost all the people must, in one way or another, have become decently apprized of a few first principles of religion; that this could not have failed to be the case in what was expressly constituted a great Christian community, with an obligation upon it, that none of its members should be left destitute of the most essential requisite to their well-being. This agreeable assurance would vanish, like a dream interrupted, at the spectacle thus presented, of persons only not quite as devoid of those first principles, after living eighteen, thirty, forty, or twice forty years, under the superintendence of that community, as if they had been the aboriginal rovers of the American forests, or natives of unvisited coral-built spots in the ocean. If these examiners were to prosecute the investigation widely, and with an effect on their sentiments correspondent to the enlarging disclosure of facts, they could find themselves fallen into a very altered estimate of this our Christian tract of the earth. A fancied sunshine, spread over it before, would have faded away. From appearing to them, according to an accustomed notion, peculiarly auspicious, as if almost by some virtue of its climate, to the growth of religious intelligence in the minds of the people, it might come to be regarded as favorable to the development of all things rather than that. Plants and trees, the diversity of animal forms and powers, the human frame, the features enlarging or enlarged to manhood in the younger persons looked at by the supposed examiner while answering his questions, with their passions also, and prevailing dispositions,—see how all things can unfold themselves in our territory, and grow and enlarge to their completeness,—except the ideas of the human soul relating to the Almighty, and to the grand purpose of its own existence!

The supposed answers would in many instances betray, that any thought of God at all was of very rare occurrence, the idea having never become strongly associated with anything beheld in the whole creation. We should think it probable, as we have said before, that with many, while in health, weeks or months often pass away without this idea being once so presented as to fix the mind in attention to it for one moment of time. If they could be set to any such task as that of retracing, at the end of the days or the weeks, the course of their thoughts, to recollect what particulars in the series had struck the most forcibly and stayed the longest, it may be suspected that this idea, thus impressively apprehended, would be as rare a recollection as that of having seen a splendid meteor. Yet during that space of time, their thoughts, such as they were, shall have run through thousands of changes; and even the name of God may have been pronounced by them a multitude of times, in jocularity or imprecation. Thus there is a broad easy way to atheism through thoughtless ignorance, as well as a narrow and difficult one through subtle speculation.

But that idea of God which has, by some means, found its way into their understandings, to abide there so nearly in silence and oblivion,—what is it, when some direct call does really evoke it? It is generally a gross approximation of the conception of the Infinite Being to the likeness of man. If what they have heard of his being a Spirit, has indeed some little effect in prevention of the total debasement of the idea, it prevents it rather by confusion than by magnificence. It may somewhat restrain and baffle the tendency of the imagination to a direct degrading definition; but it does so by a dissolution of the idea as into an attenuated cloud. And ever and anon, this cloudy diffusion is again drawing in, and shaping itself toward an image, vast perhaps, and spectral, portentous across the firmament, but in some near analogy to the human mode of personality.

The divine attribute which is apprehended by them with most of an impression of reality, is a certain vastness of power. But, through the grossness of their intellectual atmosphere, this appears to them in the character of something prodigiously huge, rather than sublimely glorious.—As considered in his quality of moral judicial Governor, God is regarded by some of them as more disposed, than there is any reasonable cause, to be displeased with what is done in this world. But the far greater number have no prevailing sentiment that he takes any very vigilant account or concern. [Footnote: Some have no very distinct impression the one way or the other. Not very long since, a friend of the writer, in one of the midland counties, fell into talk, on a Sunday, with a man who had been in some very plain violation of the consecrated character of the day. He seriously animadverted on this, adding, Don't you think God will be displeased at and punish such conduct? or words to that effect. The man, after a moment's consideration, answered, with unaffected cool simplicity, exactly thus: "That's according as how a takes it."

Numerous anecdotes of the same cast have been more recently heard; and among them that of a conversation with a thoughtless man, of worthless character, not in the lowest condition in society, and then consciously near death. The religious visitor represented to him the serious and alarming situation of a man on the point of going from a sinful life into the presence of God as a Judge. The man, with a sort of general acknowledgment that it was so, yet hoped that God would not be severe with him. But the visitor anxiously pressed upon him the consideration that God is a just Being, and judges by a holy law: to which at last the answer was, with little emotion, "Then God and I must fight it out as well as we can." The phrase, in his use of it, did not mean anything of the nature of a hostile contest, but simply the settling of an affair, which he thought might be done without any great danger or trouble.] And even those who entertain the more ungracious apprehension, have it not in sufficient force to make them, once in whole months, deliberately think it worth while to care what he may disapprove.]

The notions that should answer to the doctrine of a Providence, are a confusion of some crude idea of a divine superintendence, with stronger fancies and impressions of luck and chance; a confusion of them not unaptly exemplified in a grave and well-meaning sentiment heard from a man in a temporal condition to be envied by many of his neighbors, "Providence must take its chance." And these are still further, and most uncouthly, confounded by the admixture of the ancient heathen notion of fate, reduced from its philosophy to its dregs. In many instances, however, this last obtains such a predominance, as to lessen the confusion, and withal to preclude, in a great measure, the sense of accountableness. In neither of these rude states of the understanding, (that which confounds Providence and chance, and that which sinks in dull acquiescence to something obscurely imagined like fate,) is there any serious admission, at least during the enjoyment of health, of the duty or advantage of prayer.

The supposed examiner may endeavor to possess himself of the notions concerning the Redeemer of the world. They would be found, in numerous instances, amounting literally to no more than, that Jesus Christ was a worthy kind of person, (the word has actually been "gentleman," in more than one instance that we have heard from unquestionable testimony,) who once, somewhere, (these national Christians had never in their lives, thought of inquiring when or where,) did a great deal of good, and was very ill used by bad people. The people now, they think, bad as they may be, would not do so in the like case. Some of these persons may occasionally have been at church; and are just aware that his name often recurs in its services; they never considered why; but they have a vague impression of its repetition having some kind of virtue, perhaps rather in the nature of a spell.—The names of the four evangelists are by some held literally and technically available for such a use.