Doctor Arnold says it is necessary for the highest development of the soul that it should have somewhere an object of entire reverence enthroned above all possibility of doubt or criticism. Now a radically democratic system, like that of New England, at once sweeps all factitious reliances of this kind from the soul. No crown, no court, no nobility, no ritual, no hierarchy,—the beautiful principles of reverence and loyalty might have died out of the American heart, had not these men by their religious teachings upborne it as on eagles' wings to the footstool of the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible. Hence we see why what was commonly called among them the "Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty" acquired so prominent a place in their preaching and their hearts. They were men of deep reverence and profound loyalty of nature, from whom every lower object for the repose of these qualities had been torn away,—who concentrated on God alone those sentiments of faith and fealty which in other lands are divided with Church and King. Hence, more than that of any other clergy, their preaching contemplated God as King and Ruler. Submission to him without condition, without limit, they both preached and practised. Unconditional submission was as constantly on their lips God-ward as it was sparingly uttered man-ward.
No picture of the "good parson" that was ever drawn could exceed in beauty that of the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock, whose life and manners had that indescribable beauty, completeness, and sacredness, which religion sometimes gives when shining out through a peculiarly congenial natural temperament,—yet we must confess we are as much interested and impressed with its effects in those wilder and more erratic temperaments, such as Bellamy, Backus, and Moody, where genius and passion were so combined as to lead to many inconsistencies. This book is a record of how manfully many such men battled with themselves, repairing the faults of their hasty and passionate hours by the true and honest humility of their better ones, so that, as one has said of our Pilgrim Fathers, we feel that they may have been endeared to God even by their faults.
The pastoral labors of these ministers were abounding. Two and sometimes three services on the Sabbath, and a weekly lecture, were only the beginning of their labors. Multitudes of them held circuit meetings, to the number of two or three a week, in the outskirts of their parishes; besides which they labored conversationally from house to house with individuals.
Gradual, indefinite, insensible amelioration of character was not by any means the only or the highest aim of their preaching. They sought to make religion as definite and as real to men as their daily affairs, and to bring them, as respects their spiritual history, to crises as marked and decided as those to which men are brought in temporal matters. They must become Christians now, today; the change must be immediate, all-pervading, thorough.
Such a style of preaching, from men of such power, could not be without corresponding results, especially as it was based always upon strong logical appeals to the understanding. From it resulted, from time to time, periods which are marked in these narratives as revivals of religion,—seasons in which the cumulative force of the instructions and power of the pastor, recognized by that gracious assistance on which he always depended, reached a point of outward development that affected the whole social atmosphere, and brought him into intimate and confidential knowledge of the spiritual struggles of his flock. The preaching of the pastor was then attuned and modified to these disclosures, and his metaphysical system shaped and adapted to what he perceived to be the real wants and weaknesses of the soul. Hence arose modifications of theology,—often interfering with received theory, just as a judicious physician's clinical practice varies from the book. Many of the theological disputes which have agitated New England have arisen in the honest effort to reconcile accepted forms of faith with the observed phenomena and real needs of the soul in its struggles heavenward.
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A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE KANSAS USURPATION.
If it had been the avowed intention of the dominant party in this country to disgust the people by a long and systematic course of wrong-doing,—if it had wished to prove that it was indissolubly wedded to injustice, inconsistency, and error, it could not have chosen a better method of doing so than it has actually pursued, in the entire management of the Kansas question. From the beginning to the end, that has been both a blunder and a crime. Nothing more atrocious,—nothing more perverse,—nothing more foolish, as a matter of policy,—and we might add, but for the seriousness of the subject, nothing more ludicrous,—has occurred in our history, than the attempt, which has now been persisted in for several years, to force the evils of Slavery upon a people who cannot and will not endure them.
We say, to force the evils of slavery upon an unwilling people,—because such has been and is the only end of this protracted endeavor. The authors of the scheme have scarcely shown the ordinary cunning of rogues, which conceals its ulterior purposes. Disdaining the advice of Mrs. Peachum to her daughter Polly, to be "somewhat nice" in her deviations from virtue, they have advanced bravely and flagrantly to their nefarious object. They have been reckless, defiant, aggressive; but, unfortunately for them, they have not been sagacious. The thin disguise of principle under which they masked their designs at the outset—as it were a bit of oiled paper—was soon torn away; the plot betrayed its inherent wickedness from step to step; the instruments selected to execute it have one after another abandoned the task, as quite impracticable for any honest mortal; and now these whilom advocates of "Popular Sovereignty" stand exposed to the scorn and derision of the country, as nothing less than what their opponents all along declared them to be,—the sworn champions of Slavery-Extension. All the movements and changes of their external policy find their explication in the single phrase, the actual and the political advancement of the interests of Slavery.
It is humiliating to an American citizen to cast his eyes back, even for a moment, to the history of this Kansas plot,—humiliating in many ways; but in none more so than in the revelation it makes of the depth and extent of party-servility in the Northern mind. Throughout the proceedings of the "Democracy" towards the unhappy settlers of Kansas, it is difficult to place the finger on a single act of large, just, or generous policy; every step in it appears to have developed some new outrage or some new fraud; and yet, every step in it has also elicited new shouts of approval from the echoing lieges and bondmen of "the Party." We should willingly, therefore, turn away from the theme, but that we believe the end is not yet come; a review of its past may instruct us as to its future. For it is not always true, as Coleridge says, that experience, like the stern-lights of a ship, illuminates only the track it has left; the lights may be hung upon the bows, and the spectator be enabled to discern, by means of them, no less, the way in which it is going.