How puerile are these metaphysical subtleties, when employed upon moral truths![56] What a monster would man become on the system of the fatalists! What is that system worth, the consequences of which cannot be admitted? If we act under the inevitable empire of fatalism, why is he who proclaims this doctrine, indignant at the thought of crime? Does he contemplate Socrates and his executioners with the same approbation?—Will he regard with the same feeling Antoninus dictating pious lessons to his son, and Nero assassinating his mother? Will he estimate as alike meritorious a persecuted Christian praying for his enemies, and the monarch ordering the massacre of St Bartholomew? Do such contrasts offend us? And why? According to the system of fatalism, the good ought to inspire us with less interest than the wicked. A blind fatality awards to the virtuous that pure pleasure, that is inseparably connected with good actions. They receive a high reward without any merit; while the others are a prey to remorse, and the incessant object of public hatred and abhorrence. If they are innocent, as on the principles of fatalism they must be, how ought we to mourn over them, and pity them! What purpose can these doctrines serve? He who advocates them, is conscious of impulses to do good, and deliberates upon alternatives in the courses which honor and duty call him to pursue. His principles, then, are contradicted by the voice of his own heart. When he has committed a fault, it declares to him that he might have chosen a contrary part.—When he has done a virtuous action, it inspires emotions of joy, which render him conscious that he is a free agent. This voice within is anterior to all reasoning, and as incapable of being invalidated as any other consciousness. Inexhaustible emotions of satisfaction spring from religious hopes. Reanimated by them, I no longer see tears without consolation, nor fear an eternal adieu.—The tomb, though a fearful, is but a frail barrier, which separates us from those real joys, of which the pleasures of a fugitive existence are but the shadow.
Never would men have exchanged their natural convictions, their internal aspirations, their instinctive hopes of immortality, for the lurid and deceptive glare of infidelity, if religious views had not been disfigured by being combined with the grossest errors and prejudices. Of these, there are two which every good man ought to strive to eradicate from all minds, and if it were possible, to purge from the earth.
The first causes us to behold in the divinity a menacing and implacable judge, constantly eager to execute vengeance. Monstrous conception! Revolting error! Infancy and old age, the two extremes of earthly existence, which from their feebleness, call for our most soothing cares, are those most persecuted with this vile and fierce prejudice. A cruel superstition has selected these terrific ideas, these horrible images, with which to besiege the bed of death, to light up the scene of agony—of parting and trembling apprehensions—with the flames of perdition. My bosom swells with mingled emotions, when I see any one attempting to darken the feeble and docile reason of a child with these sinister views. Pursued even in his dreams by these terrible menaces, before he knows the meaning of crime, he has already felt its torments. Astonishing infatuation! It is in this aspect that gloomy religionists have presented the compassionate and sustaining hope of the gospel. Instead of inspiring sweet and consoling ideas, they have succeeded in filling innocence with remorse.
The other prejudice is intolerance, or that spirit which causes us to view all persons guilty, whose faith is different from ours. While religion enjoins it upon us to cover the faults of our kind with a veil of indulgence, intolerance teaches us to transform their opinions into crimes. Religion rears asylums for the unfortunate.—Intolerance prepares scaffolds for all whom she chooses to denominate heretics. The one invokes ministers of charity, and the other, executioners. The one wipes away tears, and the other sheds blood.
Intolerance without power is simply ridiculous; but becomes most odious when armed with authority. The cry of humanity is ‘Peace with all men.’ If any were excepted, it should be the intolerant. Even they merit no severer punishment, than the inflictions of their own fury. They may attain to deliverance from remorse in their confident delirium, and may count their crimes as virtues, through the influence of self-blindness. But this strange obliquity of the understanding, this horrible intoxication, repels happiness. Joy and peace must fly the soul, of which this spirit has taken possession.
In another life, the measure of our felicity in the mansions of the just, will be the happiness we have created for the beings around us in this fleeting existence. A religious man constantly strives to render this, our terrestrial sojourn, more like the abode towards which his thoughts are elevated. His constant occupation is to mitigate suffering, banish prejudice and hatred, and calm the fury of party. All his relations are those of peace and love. Intolerant men! Who, of your number, will hope to hear it said of him in the retribution of the just, ‘much has been forgiven him, because he has loved much?’
[LETTER XXIII.]
OF THE RAPIDITY OF LIFE.
In considering the different ages of life, the first sentiment I feel, is gratitude for the variety of pleasures, destined for us by nature. Thrice happy for us, if we knew how to taste the charms of all the situations through which we pass! Instead of this, we first regret infancy, then youth, then mature age. The happy period is always that which is no more.
It is a great folly to sadden the present, in looking back upon the past, as though it had been darkened by no shadow of a cloud. The sorrows which nature sends us in infancy, resemble spring showers, the traces of which are effaced by a passing breeze. The pains and alarms of each age have been chiefly the work of men. Who cannot remember the violent palpitations which he felt, when, exposed to the searching eye of his companions, he went forward to excuse his not having prepared his task, his translation or theme, at school? I have seen situations more perilous, since that time, but no misfortunes have awakened more bitterness, than the preference granted by the professor to the theme of another over mine. The beautiful age, for a frivolous being, is youth; for the ambitious, maturity; for the recluse, old age; for a reasonable man, each age: for heaven has reserved peculiar pleasures for each.