In whatever way, then, you define this hypothesis, it directly denies the personal character and personal identity of sin, and thus enfeebles the most essential element comprehended in the sentiment of responsibility. The practical result will inevitably be, a system of false views and fictitious feelings, with respect both to our own characters, and to those of our fellow-men. That which can be vicariously incurred, or vicariously removed, cannot be guilt; cannot therefore, be sincerely felt as such; can awaken no true shame and self-reproach, and draw forth no burning tears when we meet the eye of God. It is a shocking mockery to call sorrow for an ancestor’s sin by the name of penitence, and to confound the perception (or, as it is termed, ‘application,’) of Christ’s holiness with the personal peace of conscience: the one can be nothing else than moral disapprobation, attended by the sense of personal injury; the other, moral approval, attended by the sense of personal benefit: and mean and confused must be the sentiments of duty in a mind which can mistake these for the private griefs of contrition, and the serenity of a self-forgetful will. Only counterfeit emotions, and self-judgments half sincere, can consistently arise from a faith which mystifies the primitive ideas of moral excellence, and destroys all distinct perception of its nature. It is always with danger that we turn away from the natural hand-writing of God upon the conscience: from heedless eyes the divine symbols fade away; unless, indeed, in some preternatural awakening of our sight, they blaze forth once again, to tell us that the kingdom of true greatness hath departed from us. Let each consider his own life as an indivisible unit of responsibility, no less complete, no less free, no less invested with solemn and solitary power, than if he dwelt, and always had dwelt, in the universe alone with God. There is confided to him, the sole rule of a vast and immortal world within; whose order can be preserved or violated, whose peace secured or sacrificed, by no foreign influence. We cannot, by ancestral or historical relations, renounce our own free-will, or escape one iota of its awful trusts. No faith which fails to keep this truth distinct and prominent, no faith which shuffles with the sinner’s moral identity, contains the requisites of a “doctrine according to godliness.” It must pervert, moreover, our estimates of others’ characters, no less than of our own. If guilt can be hereditary,—guilt meriting infinite and indiscriminate punishment,—it must be universal: and whether we see it or not, we must believe it to exist, with no appreciable variation of degree, in every human heart. Thus it becomes a prime duty to regard every thing in life, except its wretchedness, every thing in human nature, except its displays of foulness and of ruin, as a delusion and a cheat. We strongly protest against this miserable distrust of our best and truest perceptions. We maintain the intelligible and appreciable character of all moral qualities, in opposition to all schemes which make distinction between natural and theological excellence, and which propose imaginary standards of right, different from those that recommend themselves to a discerning conscience. Sin is no mysterious thing, no physical poison, no taint in the blood, which may lurk venomously within us, giving no symptom, and exciting no consciousness, of its presence. However insidious in its approaches, and subtle in its manifestations, vigilance only is needed to detect it: its stealthiness affords, indeed, a sound reason for circumspection; but not for superstitious horror at its possible existence, without discoverable trace, in ourselves or others. To look on the spectacle of vice, and not feel abhorrence, indicates a depraved state of sentiment:—to look on the spectacle of virtue, and believe it sin, to witness all the outward expressions of goodness and suspect interior corruption, to be invited by natural emotion to moral admiration, and, by theological stimulants, to galvanise the heart into loathing (or even “pity”) instead, implies a falsehood of conscience no less malignant. Let me not be told that, in thus speaking, we assign too high a value to mere external moralities, which are but treacherous indications of character, and may be the visible fruit of various and dubious motives. We never cease to teach, that no Epicurean respectabilities, no conformity with conventional rules of order, can satisfy the claims, or afford any of the peace of duty, unless they be the native growth of a perceptive, devout, and loving heart:—that it is not in the hand which executes, but in the soul which devises and aspires, in the secret will which makes sacrifice of self, in the conscience which grapples with temptations and overmasters fears, that true and immortal virtue dwells; since acts are evanescent, while the affections are eternal. But it is monstrous to infer from this superficial character of outward morality, that there is probably no substratum of genuine goodness. Nay, it is a mean and degrading scepticism which distrusts, without assignable cause, the reality of any of the symptoms of excellence; is tempted by theories of divinity to insinuate that they are an empty semblance; and plies its pious ingenuity to blacken the great human heart. He that is pledged to make out a case against mankind at large, must find of difficult attainment that charity that “hopeth all things and believeth all things.” How blunted must be the delicacy of moral perception, where the gradations of excellence are swept away into the dark abyss of universal depravity! and to effect this reduction of all minds to the same level, what vehement distortion, what wretched sophistries, what devotional scandal and romance, must become habitual! How much less place for delusion and insincerity is there, when we maintain a reverential faith in the natural moral sentiments, repress no generous admiration, disbelieve no genuine expression of disinterestedness and integrity, and instead of whining over guilt, dare to bless God with a manly voice, for all varieties of noble virtue!
Thus does the habit of tracing sin beyond the individual will to a progenitor, spread confusion over the moral perceptions, by mystifying the nature of guilt, and destroying that feeling of its personal character and identity which belongs to the Christian sentiment of responsibility.
By a different and directer method the same tendency operates, when we refer our temptations to the agency of the Devil, rather than to our descent from Adam. An invisible power, foreign to ourselves, is held chargeable, to an undefined extent, with the evil of our own wills; and the conscience can as ill bear the present distribution, as the past transmission of its guilt. It is said indeed, that man is not “less culpable, because Satan seduces him, and blinds his mind” since there is no power on earth or hell to compel him to transgress; that he is a willing captive, and no more to be excused than when a human accomplice entices him to crime, without (it is admitted) relieving him of any portion of his criminality.[[566]] But the cases are obviously not parallel. Man stands up before his fellow man, equal with equal; his weapons are fairly measured against his danger, by the great Arbiter himself; and therefore is he summoned to close with his temptations, and condemned as a traitor if he yields or flies. And should it ever be otherwise,—should the feeble-minded and inexperienced be misled by the cunning of the strong-headed and practised seducer, the instinctive justice of mankind mitigates its sentence, and commiserates the fall. With how much greater force, then, must this palliation be felt, when the Tempter is admitted to be “possessed of capacity and power immensely surpassing ours,”[[567]]—a “master-spirit” of majestic intellect, with whom we are as an infant in the giant’s grasp! With such a being, the broken energy, the purblind vigilance, of a fallen man, can hardly be expected to cope; at least they will be induced, in so plausible a case, to esteem themselves unfairly matched against so exalted a competitor. While it were earnestly to be desired that the wretched conscience should be allowed no evasion, and for awhile no alleviation, under the condemning sentence of its memory and its God,—this doctrine calls up, inevitably and reasonably, the feeling of a divided criminality, of which the weaker nature has the smaller share.
These tendencies, so far as they have been truly stated, must continue to act, so long as we trace the evil that is in us to any foreign agent. Hence it appears impossible to defend the doctrine of Philosophical Necessity,—which presents God to us as the author of sin and suffering,—from the same charge of invading the sense of personal responsibility. Not that we are for a moment to sanction the vulgar error which confounds this scheme, in its theoretical structure and practical effects, with the system of fatalism; or to imagine, that an abdication of all free-will, and a total indifference to moral distinctions, would be its proper and consistent results. Though, however, it leaves room for individual pursuit, and motive to individual perfection, one of its chief and most vaunted features undoubtedly is, the encouragement which it affords to the passive virtues: and it will be found, I greatly fear, that it is their passiveness, more than their virtuousness, which puts them under the protection of this doctrine. Doubtless, he who can look on all men as the instruments of heaven, and recognize in their mutual injuries and crimes the chosen methods of the Divine government, must learn submission to many a triumph of wrong, and consider anger against the profligate and oppressor as insubordination against God. He who is haunted by the immutability of things, and feels himself locked in with the universal mechanism, will chafe himself with no rash spirit of resistance, nor vainly thrust his hand against the fly-wheel of nature. He who believes that all things are right, that absolute evil does not exist, that whatever men may be, and whatever they may do, nothing could possibly be better, must needs discover that his own wishes are no criterion of good, and look with a contented eye over the whole surface of the past, as well as a serene trust on the prospect of the future. Nor can there be any self-exaggeration in a mind conscious of possessing but an infinitesimal fraction of the universal power,—and even that little wielded and directed by an uncontrollable sovereignty, that turns the hearts of men whithersoever it pleaseth. Complacency with every lot, resignation to all events, forbearance under injury, an equal tenderness for all men, and the lowliest attitude before God, are the unquestionable results of this religious philosophy. But all this is attained by a process which, I would submit, the moralist is bound to regard as illegitimate;—by an appeal to external mechanical necessity, rendering any thing but these states of mind intellectually improper; not by any considerations of duty, or any perception of their intrinsic obligation. The whole efficacy of the system is negative, not positive. It prostrates and destroys the turbulent elements of our nature, and its quietude is the residue left by their exhaustion: it crumbles beneath us the heights of passion, and deposits us upon a placid level beneath the infinite expanse. Its characteristic dispositions are reached by the sacrifice of the feelings which are distinctively moral:—the feelings, that is, of which right and wrong acts and propensities are the appropriate objects;—the feelings of approbation and aversion, which recognize merit and demerit, and impel to praise and blame. The Necessarian sees, neither in himself nor others, any good or ill desert to justify such feelings: he regards natural and moral qualities in the same light,—contemplating benevolence as a species of health, and selfishness as akin to disease: if he utters censure or applause, it is not from an impulse in himself, but for an effect upon their object. In his love to men moral distinctions have no place; for as their sins justify no alienation, their virtues give no claim to admiration: he loves them apart from the perceptions of conscience,—without veneration,—without praise,—by the mere force of the sympathies which take interest in sentient beings as capable of happiness and misery:—loves them, may we not say, because there is no cause for hate; resentment, impatience, disgust, being out of place towards creatures who are what they were meant to be, nothing remains but to include them in his complacency. Nor does the humility which this system inculcates, bear the true and Christian stamp. It is not the irrepressible aspiration after moral perfection, the pursuit of an image in the conscience infinitely beautiful and great, the devoted worship of the holy, good, and true, which draw forth tears of contrition for the past, and dwarf the attainments of the present, though reckoning their thousand victories; but it is rather a sense of physical and mental insignificance, which annihilates all worth except such as we may derive from sharing the regards of God: it is not a perception of want of merit in our character, but a consciousness of incapacity for it in our nature.
And who could fairly realize the fundamental idea of this scheme, without losing all confidence in his own moral convictions, and constantly distrusting his best feelings as delusions? For does he not believe, that whatever is brought to pass is absolutely right and best, and that any different view of it is an illusion incident to our human point of sight? The optimist casts his eye over the past, and can see no blot upon the retrospect: yet does it contain innumerable things,—woes and crimes the most deplorable,—which, ere they happened, were repugnant to his worthiest desires, and to be encountered by the most strenuous resistance of duty. Is he then to look at these objects, up to the last moment of the present, as utterly evil; and from the first moment of the past, as indisputably best? Is he to set up a two-faced sentiment, gazing with mutable and discriminative expression on things approaching, but with unvaried complacency on things departed? Is it possible, that actions and characters can change their complexion by mere migration in time? or was it altogether a mistake to think so ill of the iniquities which, having been summoned into existence, must always have appeared eligible in the view of God? These perplexities must perpetually arise to a mind which uses two standards of good; the moral, which approves the right; and the eventual, which reveres the past. The latter incessantly contradicts the former, and insinuates that it is a blind guide, aiming at that which the All-wise will refuses to achieve. And thus our theorist, in so far as he is true to his principles, would lapse into scepticism of his moral judgments; into a hesitating veneration for the oracles of duty; a suspicion that they may inculcate provisional superstitions, rather than eternal truths. It must be difficult to unite pious acquiescence in the guilt of others, with uncompromising resistance to our own.
In short, the contemplations presented by this doctrine do not appear to be favourable to active excellence: rising too far, and embracing too much, they quit the contact of this green earth, and lose sight of the interval between the quiet vales where virtue walks, and the giddy heights it may not tread. The soul, rendered conscious more of the immensity around it, than of the obligations upon it, lies still, without a passion, without a fear,—venturing an approach to the benignity more than to the energy of God. Perhaps it is the tendency of all systems which most amply spread forth the Divine Infinitude, to be less occupied with the conception of the Divine Holiness: perhaps the mind intensely occupied with the idea of one solitary Power, absorbing all subordinate agencies, and willing every change that renders space or time perceptible, has all its strongest impulses, both moral and sympathetic, suppressed in the abyss of mystery; and the distinction between different beings and different acts appears, in so vast a view, too trivial to be worthy of deep emotion and resolute volition. Certain it is, that the oriental religions which have encouraged this sublimity of devotion and self-annihilation in the Deity, have not been remarkable for the formation of a sound and vigorous type of moral character. Indeed we have seen that God himself, the supreme centre of reverence, no longer remains, under the Necessarian representation, a really holy object of thought. If we are to admit no possibility of resisting his will, and proclaiming him the Only Cause, to drown all other powers in his immensity, it becomes impossible to feel that he has any paramount regard to moral distinctions: he cannot share our feelings towards human guilt, for it is his work: he objects to no amount of vice, provided it issues in enjoyment: and not one libertine, or traitor, or murderer, could his purposes have spared. To reconcile us to this dreadful thought, we are reminded of his benevolence, which will bring all things to a glorious result. But how can we discern any sanctity in a benevolence so indiscriminating in its instruments? Must all our various apprehensions of God, the supremely good and supremely fair, shrink into this one, of ultimate-happiness Maker, by no means fastidious in his application of means, but secure of producing the end? Must the harmony of the Divine perfections lapse into this dull monotone? It can hardly be well for our conscience to worship a Being whom we could not imitate without guilt: or, if it be said, that we may imitate his ultimate aim, though not his intermediate methods,—what is this but to admit that our moral sympathies with him must be postponed to the end of time?
This system, then, like others which trace sin to causes beyond the individual will, does not appear to foster that deep reverence for moral distinctions, and sense of personal responsibility, which eminently characterize practical Christianity. It is favourable indeed to the passive virtues, which occupy their due place in the morality of the Gospel: but in producing them, appeals to considerations discouraging to the active spirit of moral resistance and moral aggression.
To all this, however, an objector might urge the following reply:—“Human conduct is not influenced by such considerations as you have supposed. It matters little what men may think about the origin of their guilt, if they make no mistake about its consequences: let them only be sure that it will be punished in the end, and they may please themselves with speculating about its beginning. Every one will fly an inevitable suffering, whether self-incurred or induced by foreign causes: and if he clearly sees the penal sentence, he will shun the sin, just as much when he imagines that others have involved him in it, as when he conceives that he alone has brought it on himself. In short, the will neither is nor can be determined by anything but the prospect of pleasure or pain; and so long as consequences of this kind depend on his decisions, a man will feel himself accountable. The sense of responsibility can never be weakened by any system which, like those just noticed, retain the doctrine of future retribution.”
This statement assumes that self-regarding motives, promises of happiness, and threats of misery, are the sole powers for operating on human character.
(2.) In reply, I submit as a second distinguishing feature of practical Christianity, that it makes no great, certainly no exclusive, appeal to the prudential feelings, as instruments of duty; treats them as morally incapable of so sacred a work; and relies, chiefly and characteristically, on affections of the heart, which no motives of reward and punishment can have the smallest tendency to excite.