Let us now recur to the other or natural standard, and look at the manifestation of piety in the form of morality. Last Sunday I spoke of our moral condition; and it appeared that morals were in a low state here when compared with the ideal morals of Christianity. Now as the outward deed is but the manifestation of the inward life, and objective humanity the index of subjective divinity, so the low state of morals proves a low state of piety; if the heart of this town was right towards God, then would its hand also be right towards man. I am one of those who for long years have lamented the want of vital piety in this people. We not only do not realize spiritual things, but we do not make them our ideals. I see proofs of this want of piety in the low morals of trade, of the public press; in poverty, intemperance, and crime; in the vices and social wrongs touched on the last Sunday. I judge the tree by its fruit. But it is not on this ground that the ecclesiastical complaint is based. Men who make so much ado about the absence of piety, do not appeal for proof thereof to the great vices and prominent sins of the times; they see no sign of that in our trade and our politics; in the misery that festers in putrid lanes, one day to breed a pestilence, which it were even cheaper to hinder now, than cure at a later time; nobody mentions as proof the Mexican War, the political dishonesty of officers, the rapacity of office-seekers, the servility of men who will tamely suffer the most sacred rights of three millions of men to be trodden into the dust. Matters which concern millions of men came up before your Congress; the great Senator of Massachusetts loitered away the time of the session here in Boston, managing a lawsuit for a few thousand dollars, and no fault was publicly found with such neglect of public duty; but men see no lack of piety indicated by this fact, and others like it; they find signs of that lack in empty pews, in a deserted communion-table, in the fact that children, though brought up to reverence truth and justice, to love man and to love God, are not baptized with water; or in the fact that Unitarianism or Trinitarianism is on the decline! How many wailings have we all heard or read, because the Puritan churches of Boston have not kept the faith of their grim founders; what lamentations at the rising up of a sect which refuses the doctrine of the Trinity, or at the appearance of a few men who, neglecting the common props of Christianity, rest it, for its basis, on the nature of man and the nature of God: though almost all the eminent philanthropy of the day is connected with these men, yet they are still called "Infidel," and reviled on all hands!
The state of things mentioned in the last sermon does indicate a want of piety, a deep and a great want. I do not see signs of that in the debt and decay of churches, in absence from meetings, in doubt of theological dogmas, in neglect of forms and ceremonies which once were of great value; but I do see it in the low morals of trade, of the press; in the popular vices. On a national scale I see it in the depravity of political parties, in the wicked war we have just fought, in the slavery we still tolerate and support. Yes, as I look on the churches of this city, I see a want of piety in the midst of us. If eminent piety were in them, and allowed to follow its natural bent, it would come out of them in the form of eminent humanity; they would lead in the philanthropies of this day, where they hardly follow. In this condition of the churches I see a most signal proof of the low estate of piety; they do not manifest a love of truth, which is the piety of the intellect; nor a love of justice, which is the piety of the moral sense; nor a love of love, which is the piety of the affections; nor a love of God as the Infinite Father of all men, which is the total piety of the whole soul. For lack of this internal divinity there is a lack of external humanity. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? This is what I complain of, what I mourn over.
The clergymen of this city are most of them sincere men, I doubt not; some of them men of a superior culture; many of them laborious men; most, perhaps all of them, deeply interested in the welfare of the churches, and the promotion of piety. But how many of them are marked and known for their philanthropy, distinguished for their zeal in putting down any of the major sins of our day, zealous in any work of reform? I fear I can count them all on the fingers of a single hand; yet there are enough to bewail the departure of monastic forms, and of the theology which led men in the dimness of a darker age, but cannot shine in the rising light of this. I find no fault with these men; I blame them not; it is their profession which so blinds their eyes. They are as wise and as valiant as the churches let them be. What sect in all this land ever cared about temperance, education, peace betwixt nations, or even the freedom of all men in our own, so much as this sect cares for the baptizing of children with water, and that for the baptizing of men; this for the doctrine of the Trinity, and all for the infallibility of the Bible? Do you ask the sects to engage in the work of extirpating concrete wrong? It is in vain; each reformer tries it—the mild sects answer, "I pray thee have me excused;" the sterner sects reply with awful speech. A distinguished theological journal of another city thinks the philanthropies of this day are hostile to piety, and declares that true spiritual Christianity never prevails where men think slavery is a sin. A distinguished minister of a highly respectable sect declares the temperance societies unchristian, and even atheistical. He reasons thus: The church is an instrument appointed by God and Christ, to overcome all forms of wrong, intemperance among the rest; to neglect this instrument and devise another, a temperance society, to wit, is to abandon the institutions of God and Christ, and so it is unchristian and atheistical. In other words, here is intemperance, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, in our way; there is an old wooden beetle, which has done great service of old time, and is said to have been made by God's own hand; men smite therewith the stone or smite it not; still it lies there a stone of stumbling and a stone of shame; other men approach, and with a sledge-hammer of well-tempered steel smite the rock, and break off piece after piece, smoothing the rough impracticable way; they call on men to come to their aid, with such weapons as they will. But our minister bids them beware; the beetle is "of the Lord," the iron which breaks the rock in pieces is an unchristian and atheistical instrument. Yet was this minister an earnest, a pious, and a self-denying man, who sincerely sought the good of men. He had been taught to know no piety but in the church's form. I would not do dishonor to the churches; they have done great service, they still do much; I would only ask them to be worthy of their Christian name. They educate men a little, and allow them to approach emancipation, but never to be free and go alone.
I see much to complain of in the condition of piety; yet nothing to be alarmed at. When I look back, it seems worse still, far worse. There has not been "A decline of piety" in Boston of late years. Religion is not sick. Last Sunday, I spoke of the great progress made in morality within fifty years; I said it was an immense progress within two hundred years. Now, there cannot be such a progress in the outward manifestation without a corresponding and previous development of the inward principle. Morality cannot grow without piety more than an oak without water, earth, sun, and air. Let me go back one hundred years; see what a difference between the religious aspect of things then and now! certainly there has been a great growth in spirituality since that day. I am not to judge men's hearts; I may take their outward lives as the test and measure of their inward piety. Will you say the outward life never completely comes up to that? It does so as completely now as then. Compare the toleration of these times with those; compare the intelligence of the community; the temperance, sobriety, chastity, virtue in general. Look at what is now done in a municipal way by towns and States for mankind; see the better provision made for the poor, for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, for the insane, even for the idiot; see what is done for the education of the people—in schools, academies, colleges, and by public lectures; what is done for the criminal to prevent the growth of crime. See what an amelioration of the penal laws; how men are saved and restored to society, who had once been wholly lost. See what is done by philanthropy still more eminent, which the town and State have not yet overtaken and enacted into law; by the various societies for reform—those for temperance, for peace, for the discipline of prisons, for the discharged convicts, for freeing the slave. See this Anti-slavery party, which, in twenty years, has become so powerful throughout all the Northern States, so strong that it cannot be howled down, and men begin to find it hardly safe to howl over it; a party which only waits the time to lift up its million arms, and hurl the hateful institution of slavery out of the land! All these humane movements come from a divine piety in the soul of man. A tree which bears such fruits is not a dead tree; is not wholly to be despaired of; is not yet in a "decline," and past all hope of recovery. Is the age wanting in piety, which makes such efforts as these? Yes, you will say, because it does no more. I agree to this, but it is rich in piety compared to other times. Ours is an age of faith; not of mere belief in the commandments of men, but of faith in the nature of man and the commandments of God.
This prevailing and contagious complaint about the decline of religion is not one of the new things of our time. In the beginning of the last century, Dr. Colman, first minister of the church in Brattle street, lamented in small capitals over the general decline of piety:—"The venerable name of religion and of the church is made a sham pretence for the worst of villanies, for uncharitableness and unnatural oppression of the pious and the peaceable;" "the perilous times are come, wherein men are lovers only of their own selves." "Ah, calamitous day," says he, "into which we are fallen, and into which the sins of our infatuated age have brought us!" He looks back to the founders of New England; they "were rich in faith, and heirs of a better world," "men of whom the world was not worthy;" "they laid in a stock of prayers for us which have brought down many blessings on us already." Samuel Willard bewailed "the checkered state of the gospel church;" it was "in every respect a gloomy day, and covered with thick clouds."
We retire yet further back, to the end of the seventeenth century; a hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, Dr. Increase Mather, not only in his own pulpit, but also at "the great and Thursday lecture," lamented over "the degeneracy and departing glory of New England." He complained that there was a neglect of the Sabbath, of the ordinances, and of family worship; he groaned at the lax discipline of the churches, and looked, says another, "as fearfully on the growing charity as on the growing vices of the age." He called the existing generation "an unconverted generation." "Atheism and profaneness," says he, "have come to a prodigious height;" "God will visit" for these things; "God is about to open the windows of heaven, and pour down the cataracts of His wrath ere this generation ... is passed away." If a comet appeared in the sky, it was to admonish men of the visitation, and make "the haughty daughters of Zion reform their pride of apparel." "The world is full of unbelief" (that is, in the malignant aspect and disastrous influence of comets), "but there is an awful Scripture for them that do profanely condemn such signal works!"
One of the present and well-known indications of the decline of piety, that is often thought a modern luxury, and ridiculously denounced in the pulpit, which has done its part in fostering the enjoyment, was practised to an extent that alarmed the prim shepherds of the New England flock in earlier days. The same Dr. Mather preached a series of sermons "tending to promote the power of godliness," and concludes the whole with a discourse "Of sleeping at sermons," and says: "To sleep in the public worship of God is a thing too frequently and easily practised; it is a great and a dangerous evil." "Sleeping at a sermon is a greater sin than speaking an idle word. Therefore, if men must be called to account for idle words, much more for this!" "Gospel sermons are among the most precious talents which any in this world have conferred upon them. But what a sad account will be given concerning those sermons which have been slept away! As light as thou makest of it now, it may be conscience will roar for it upon a death-bed!" "Verily, there is many a soul that will find this to be a dismal thought at the day of judgment, when he shall remember so many sermons I might have heard for my everlasting benefit, but I slighted and slept them all away. Therefore consider, if men allow themselves in this evil their souls are in danger to perish." "It is true that a godly man may be subject unto this as well as unto other infirmities; but he doth not allow himself therein." "The name of the glorious God is greatly prophaned by this inadvertency." "The support of the evangelical ministry is ... discouraged." He thought the character of the pulpit was not sufficient explanation of this phenomenon, and adds, in his supernatural way, "Satan is the external cause of this evil;" "he had rather have men wakeful at any time than at sermon time." The good man mentions, by way of example, a man who "had not slept a wink at a sermon for more than twenty years together," and also, but by way of warning, the unlucky youth in the Acts who slept at Paul's long sermon, and fell out of the window, and "was taken up dead." Sleeping was "adding something of our own to the worship of God;" "when Nadab and Abihu did so, there went out fire from the Lord and consumed them to death." "The holy God hath not been a little displeased for this sin." "It is not punished by men, but therefore the Lord himself will visit for it." "Tears of blood will trickle down thy dry and damned cheeks forever and ever, because thou mayest not be so happy as to hear one sermon, or to have one offer of grace more throughout the never-ending dayes of eternity." Other men denounced their "Wo to sleepy sinners," and issued their "Proposals for the revival of dying religion."
Dr. Mather thought there was "A deluge of prophaneness," and bid men "be much in mourning and humiliation that God's bottle may be filled with tears." He thought piety was going out because surplices were coming in; it was wicked to "consecrate a church;" keeping Christmas was "like the idolatry of the calf." The common-prayer, an organ, a musical instrument in a church, was "not of God." Such things were to our worthy fathers in the ministry what temperance and anti-slavery societies are to many of their sons—an "abomination," "unchristian and atheistic!" The introduction of "regular singing" was an indication to some that "all religion is to cease;" "we might as well go over to Popery at once." Inoculation for the smallpox was as vehemently and ably opposed as the modern attempt to abolish the gallows; it was "a trusting more to the machinations of men than to the all-wise providence of God."
"When the enchantments of this world," says the ecclesiastical historian, "caused the rising generation more sensibly to neglect the primitive designs and interests of religion propounded by their fathers; a change in the tenor of the divine dispensation towards this country was quickly the matter of every one's observation." "Our wheat and our pease fell under an unaccountable blast." "We were visited with multiplied shipwrecks;" "pestilential sicknesses did sometimes become epidemic among us." "Indians cruelly butchered many hundreds of our inhabitants, and scattered whole towns with miserable ruins." "The serious people throughout the land were awakened by these intimations of divine displeasure to inquire into the causes and matters of the controversie." Accordingly, 1679, a synod was convened at Boston, to "inquire into the causes of the Lord's controversie with his New England people," who determined the matter.[1]