Cannot the power which sustains, without budging from the spot, my personal vitality, sustain and nourish the immediate conscience of which that vitality makes me aware? I cannot hurt my health, nor tell a lie, nor commit a fraud, nor strike my brother, nor leave the beggar in the ditch, nor parade my superiorities, without knowing it by direct intimation. My pains are its rebukes, my delights its sympathies, my hopes its suggestions, my sacrifices its impost, my heavenly longings its apology for haunting me forever. There is a power in which I live and move and have my being, in which I eat, drink, breathe, sleep, wake, love and hate, marry, and protect a home. Is it incapable of sustaining all my functions of true religion on the spot as well as these? Do I have these without a mediator, and must I travel for the rest? When I undertake to breathe by tradition it will be time for me to get a sense of God in the same way.
The Dignity of Human Nature must be our watchword; of human nature, not of human character. For human nature denotes the capacities of man, what he ought to be and shall be, not what he is. Human character expresses only the undeveloped condition of man, and is therefore not to be taken as a final stand. This doctrine does not belong to a sect or a church, but to all mankind. It assumes an entirely new conception of the basis of religious faith; it makes a new beginning; it starts a new system; it exactly reverses the ancient order of thought, and builds up from a completely original foundation.
The weightiest objections proceed from the undeveloped character of man. For example, the common saying that conscience is crude, confused, either does not exist at all, or erects inconsistent standards of right and wrong. But if a high criterion of morality is established, as it is, it has an educating and sustaining power. Every saint attests it; all the bibles of the world voice it; revelation owes to it its authority. Great souls do but raise the common level on which common souls tread; as the discovery of the ancient pavements in the Forum at Rome opens to ordinary feet the way that statesmen and heroes went. When I was in Salem, a young man who was very much addicted to drink, being remonstrated with, urged that he could not help it, that he was born so, just as another was born to praise and pray. His appetite for ardent spirits was just as natural to him as the preacher's appetite for spiritual things. His argument could not be refuted, but I always thought that in his hours of reflection, if he had any, he must have despised himself. At all events, the outside observer would class him with a lower order of humanity; the fixed rule of conscience being a universal judge.
Again, the slowness of moral advance is flung in our teeth; the stubbornness of vice and evil. But we must give time for improvement and cultivation. All good things must wait—coal, petroleum, gas, electricity; the fertilizing qualities of guano were known and announced a full generation before the industrial world acted on the discovery; now millions of dollars are made by its importation. We are so used to thinking of the globe as round, and of men as living at the antipodes just as we live here, that we cannot believe that once it was deemed impossible for human creatures to live with their heads downward and their feet upward, and to walk like flies upon a ceiling. None but hopelessly crazy or foolish people were supposed to entertain such a notion. So the time will come when it shall be as natural for men to do right as to breathe; when all kinds of injustice, cruelty, and tyranny will be instinctively abandoned. When that time does come, men will be unable to believe that the ages ever were when men could make brutes of themselves or brutally treat each other. An eminent divine, commenting on a passage in Matthew, xviii., 15—"Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between him and thee alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican,"—said: "This is equivalent to saying, 'You must begin all over again; must start fresh from the beginning.'" This was very bad exegesis, but it was excellent morality; even the "heathen man and the publican" holds in his bosom all the possibilities of human nature; and we are bound to believe that in time the like of him may be saintly.
The decline of faith in religion, the passion for material things—money, fame, luxury,—is often cited as a proof that man is going downward; but may not this be a simple return to honesty and a rudimental integrity; a disposition to depend on one's self, and not on any mediator or redeemer? Let us build then in hope and faith, for, after all, these are the great architects. A listener to an eminent divine once said that when he got up to speak a radiance seemed to grow round his head; the great walls of a temple seemed to rise above him; the audience was composed of all nations, all sorts and conditions of men, and a choir of seraphs made the music; and yet this man spoke in a small, low-browed hall to a scanty audience, and the hymns were badly sung by a voluntary company. Such power has a great conviction; and when a deep conviction like that is extended and confirmed, the visible church will match the invisible, and shepherds will again hear the songs of angels.
XVII.
CONFESSIONS.
The course of spiritual advance is traced with difficulty and hesitation. It is the most obscure phase of the general problem of progress, which is almost insoluble. There are so many currents and counter-currents; so many tributaries; so many swift torrents and still bays; so many times the stream seems moving in the opposite direction—it is not surprising if some have concluded that there was no progress at all, that we only moved in a circle, went over the same ground again and again, and even marched backwards; what some counted gain others counted loss. A keen examination suggests that on the whole advance has been made, allowance being conceded for many a turn and variation.
The law of evolution may be considered established, but the method of evolution is hidden. The law of hereditary descent may be admitted, and yet the lines of hereditary descent are by no means obvious. Tendencies may even run in parallel lines, may aid each other, may confuse each other, may neutralize each other, may go very far or lie close at hand, and in any individual instance it is almost impossible to find how they work.