1103. On calling on a bigoted, self-styled disciple of Christ to show me anyone who put the precepts of Christ into practice, the reply was, “We rely on his merits.” “That is all you do,” said I. “In common with others of your tenets, you make the blood of Christ a fund on which every sinner may draw in proportion as he has confidence in its detersive influence.”
1104. I am supported in some of the views above presented, by a communication from a believer in revelation, under the signature of Bosanquet, to the Baltimore Church Times, for June 15, 1848. I will quote a portion of this communication, which is as follows:
1105. “But the want of faith is more open and direct than this, and it is the more obvious and pointed upon religious subjects. The Bible is boldly and practically denied in every particular. No class or body of men believe and obey it, and strange as it may seem, it is by no nation, or people, or churches, or sects of men, less implicitly believed and followed than by those very people and sections of the church who talk so much about it. There are no persons less obedient to the plain sense and mandates of the written word of God, than those who most speak of and uphold it as the sole authority and standard, and reject all assistance from the history of the church and what is spoken against as tradition. Every class of persons reject some portion or other of the sacred Scriptures. If you talk to some of temporal honour and rewards, and the observance of a day of rest, and the patriarchs, they will say, Oh! that is the Old Testament, and is abrogated. If you speak to others of good works, they will say, Oh! that is only in the Gospels, and the Epistles carry us much beyond that, and are superior to it. Unitarians, again, receive a Bible of their own; that is, just so many passages are excluded as will suit their own belief and purpose. Others, of numerous sects, dwell each upon some half dozen chapters, or passages, or phrases, or words of Scripture, of the Epistles especially, and dwell upon them idolatrously and devotedly, to the exclusion of all the rest, so far as the authority of Scripture is concerned, from belief and practice.
1106. This is even in the religious world—the thinking and reasoning world. Let us now turn our observation to the world itself; to the working and practical.
1107. The Bible is denied in every particular. Men do not believe that we are really to be Christians; that we are to imitate our Lord. They do not believe that the world could possibly go on if all men were to act upon pure Christian motives, and up to a perfect Christian rule: if they were to forgive and forget injuries; if they were not to resent an affront; if they were to give to people because they asked them: if they were to lend money without looking for interest; if we were all to give up luxuries, and style, and costly furniture and equipage; if we, our cattle and servants, were strictly to observe the day of rest. How many are there among us who believe that ‘the tree of knowledge’ is not an absolute good? or that we ought to receive the gospel with the simplicity of little children. Who believes that we ought to honour our father and mother, and our sovereign? Who is there that acts up to the precept that we ought not to judge others in their character? How many are there who appear to believe that it is not right to be anxious about the future; that riches are not a good thing; that the entrance into heaven is easier to the poor man; that we ought to return a tenth to God; that we would bring a blessing to give freely and largely to the poor; that children are a blessing and a gift from the Lord, and that the man is happy who has his quiver full of them? It is evident that in all these points the Bible is disbelieved and is practically denied, and does not control or guide us in our habits and principles of life and society.
1108. Still less do we believe that the public measures, the laws, and government of the state, and the intercourse with other nations, ought to be, or can be, carried on and conducted upon Christian principles. What number or classes of persons believe that righteousness exalteth a nation? that we are punished according to the national sins of the people, and for the sins of the rulers? and that if wicked and irreligious men preside over our councils, we shall as a nation suffer the penalties of it? or that the conscience of the government is the conscience of the people, and that our rulers are bound to take the first care for the pure religion and morals of the country; and that, if they do so, their righteousness will bring down a blessing upon the nation?
1109. To come again to more direct practice, and to our own habits of life. Who is there who thinks first what is right, and according to the pattern of Christ, and after the will of God, in what he is about to do, and not what is wise and expedient? Who seeks first the kingdom of God, and God’s rule of righteousness, and trusts that all temporal good consequences will follow upon it? Who is there who thinks and abides only by the rule of what is right and commanded? We may almost answer in the words of Scripture, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one!’ Who believes in and trusts to the assistance and suggestions of the Spirit in his designs and undertakings, and believes, and acts, and writes, and thinks, as believing that the most useful and important and influential suggestions of our thoughts and invention come to our mind by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, more than by our own cleverness, and exertion, and memory, and prays for divine help upon commencing every task, or writing, or undertaking accordingly? Who forbears strictly and endeavours to expel at once all thought and every suggestion of the mind in worldly matters on a Sunday, with confidence and faith that the same and more useful thought will be supplied on the succeeding week-days, and that the unqualified dedication and sanctification of the Lord’s day will make the labour of the six days more effectual and fruitful than would be that of the seven? Who would believe now that a sabbatical year would not necessarily be impracticable and ruinous, or that a populous country could exist under such a rule, or that it would not produce a debasing and demoralizing idleness?”
1110. Let not the reader infer that these admissions come from a free-thinker. The following remarks will prove the writer one of the faithful, in the sense in which this epithet argues a mind chained down by abject enthralment, to put any constructions on facts but that which is subversive of educational prejudice: “All the evils of which the existence is admitted are due to our narrowing down our reception of truths and facts to the limits of reason—of our own more or less shallow individual reason.”
1111. Now to me it seems that the nominal profession of a faith in facts which are absurd and contradictory, and professed reverence for precepts which are as utterly impracticable as unwise in the abstract, induces this monstrous incompatibility of the actual morality of Christendom with the professions of Christians and doctrines of Christianity.
1112. Our submission to scriptural authority is not to be governed by our own reason, but by that of persons who lived many ages ago, originally assumed to be inspired by God, upon human testimony; which in the case of Spiritualism, or any other than the one in point, is treated as mere chaff.