"As I look abroad in the community, I see two extreme types of religious faith. One is represented in the Roman Church, the great principle of authority. That church has been, and, I think, will always be, the grandest and the greatest embodiment of Christianity in social life. It is worthy of profound respect; and I, for one, yield it profound respect. It took an infidel, Auguste Comte, to portray fairly the service done to the world by the Christian Church—the great Catholic Church—of the middle ages; and we radicals are false to our principles, if we do not do homage to every thing that is great and good and serviceable in its season, even although we think its day of usefulness may have passed. The fundamental principle of the Roman Church is authority, pure and simple. The theology of Rome carries that principle out to the extremest degree. Its hierarchy embodies it in an institution; and, from beginning to end, from centre to periphery, the Roman Catholic Church is consistent with itself in the development of that one idea in spiritual and social and ecclesiastical life.
"At the other pole of human thought and experience, I see a very few persons—indeed, so few that I might, perhaps, almost count them on the fingers of one hand—who plant themselves on the principle of liberty alone; who want nothing else; who stand without dogma, without creed, without priesthood, without Bible, without Christ, without any thing but the Almighty God working in their hearts. These two principles of authority and freedom have thus worked out for themselves, at last, consistent expression. Here are the two extremes—Romish Christianity and free religion; and between these two extremes we see a compromise, Protestant Christianity—the compromise between Catholicism and free religion. Every compromise is weak, because it contains conflicting elements. Protestant Christianity is like the image with head of gold and feet of clay. It cannot stand for ever. Either Christianity, as embodied in the Roman Church, is right, or else free religion is right. Have we not learned yet to give up these combinations of opposites, contraries, and incompatibles? Has the war taught us nothing? Are we still trying to make some chimerical mixture, some impossible union of freedom and slavery? I trust not. For my own part, I stand pledged to liberty, pure and simple; and I have come to view all compromises alike, and to cast them utterly away, whether they clothe themselves in the garments of Geneva, or in the last expression of Dr. Bellows and the Unitarian Church." (Pp. 32-33.)
Mr. Abbott is not quite exact in his phraseology, and does not state the Catholic principle correctly. The principle on which the church rests, and out of which grow all her doctrines and precepts, is not authority, but the mystery of the Incarnation, or the assumption of human nature by the Word. Nor is he himself quite honest according to his own test of honesty. To be consistent with himself, he must reject not only the term Christian, but also the term religion, and put the alternative, Either Catholicity or no religion. The word religion—from religare—means either intensively to bind more firmly, or iteratively, to bind again, to bind man morally to God as his last end, in addition to his being physically bound to God as his first cause. Free religion is a contradiction in terms, as much so as free bondage. Religion is always a bond, a law that binds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson differs from Mr. Abbott, and would retain the name Christian, though without the reality. We quote a long passage from his not very remarkable speech, out of deference to his rank as one of the originators of the movement:
"We have had, not long since, presented to us by Max Müller a valuable paragraph from St. Augustine, not at all extraordinary in itself, but only as coming from that eminent father in the church, and at that age in which St. Augustine writes: 'That which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist from the planting of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already subsisted, began to be called Christianity.' I believe that not only Christianity is as old as the creation—not only every sentiment and precept of Christianity can be paralleled in other religious writings—but more, that a man of religious susceptibility, and one at the same time conversant with many men—say a much travelled man—can find the same idea in numberless conversations. The religious find religion wherever they associate. When I find in people narrow religion, I find also in them narrow reading.
"I object, of course, to the claim of miraculous dispensation—certainly not to the doctrine of Christianity. This claim impairs, to my mind, the soundness of him who makes it, and indisposes us to his communion. This comes the wrong way; it comes from without, not within. This positive, historical, authoritative scheme is not consistent with our experience or our expectations. It is something not in nature, it is contrary to that law of nature which all wise men recognized, namely, never to require a larger cause than is necessary to the effect. George Fox, the Quaker, said that, though he read of Christ and God, he knew them only from the like spirit in his own soul. We want all the aids to our moral training. We cannot spare the vision nor the virtue of the saints; but let it be by pure sympathy, not with any personal or official claim. If you are childish and exhibit your saint as a worker of wonders, a thaumaturgist, I am repelled. That claim takes his teachings out of logic and out of nature, and permits official and arbitrary senses to be grafted on the teachings. It is the praise of our New Testament that its teachings go to the honor and benefit of humanity—that no better lesson has been taught or incarnated. Let it stand, beautiful and wholesome, with whatever is most like it in the teaching and practice of men; but do not attempt to elevate it out of humanity by saying, 'This was not a man,' for then you confound it with the fables of every popular religion; and my distrust of the story makes me distrust the doctrine as soon as it differs from my own belief. Whoever thinks a story gains by the prodigious, by adding something out of nature, robs it more than he adds. It is no longer an example, a model; no longer a heart-stirring hero, but an exhibition, a wonder, an anomaly, removed out of the range of influence with thoughtful men." (Pp. 42-44.)
Mr. Emerson cannot be very deeply read in patristic literature, if he is obliged to go to Max Müller for a quotation from St. Augustine, and he proves by his deductions from the language of this great doctor and father that he knows little of the Catholic Church. St. Augustine was a Catholic, and taught that, though times vary, faith does not vary, and that as believed the patriarchs so believe we, only they believed in the Christ who was to come, and we in the Christ who has come; and the church teaches through her doctors that there has been only one revelation, that this was made, in substance, to our first parents in the garden. She teaches us that Christianity is not only as old, but even older than creation; for creation with all it contains was created in reference to Christ the Incarnate Word, and consequently Christianity, founded in the Incarnation, is really the supreme law according to which the universe was created and exists. It precedes all other religions, and the various heathen or pagan religions and mythologies are only traditions, corruptions, perversions, or travesties of it. To the question, "How is the church catholic?" the very child's catechism answers, "Because she subsists in all ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all truth." How otherwise could she be Catholic?
That "every sentiment [doctrine?] and precept of Christianity can be paralleled in other religious writings" (religions, for Christianity is not a writing) may be true in part, if taken separately and in an unchristian sense; but certainly not as a connected and self-consistent system, in its unity and integrity. But suppose it, what then? It would only prove that all religions have retained more or less of the primitive revelation, which all men held in common before the Gentile apostasy and the dispersion of the race consequent on the attempt to build the Tower of Babel; not that all religions have had a common origin in human nature. What we actually find in pagan religions and mythologies that is like Christianity, is no more than we should expect on the supposition of a primitive revelation held out of unity, and interpreted by pride, folly, and ignorance, the characteristics of every pagan people. But Mr. Emerson is true to the old doctrine which he chanted years ago in The Dial:
"Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below—
The canticles of love and woe."
Nothing can roll out of the heart of nature but nature itself; and hence, in order to derive Christianity from within, Mr. Emerson eliminates whatever is supernatural and external and reduces it to simple nature, which every man from the beginning to the end of the world carries within him, and of which he cannot divest himself. He unchristianizes Christianity, makes it an element of human nature, confounds it with the natural laws of the physicists, and then tells us it is as old as creation, which is about as much as telling us man is as old as—man, or nature is as old as—nature. Well may Mr. Emerson be called the Sage of Concord, and be listened to as an oracle.
All the speakers, with three exceptions, seemed anxious to have it understood that the Free Religious Association has some great affirmative truth which is destined to redeem and save the world. Colonel Higginson, the successor of Theodore Parker, tells us with great earnestness:
"If this movement of ours means any thing, it means not a little petty denial, not a little criticism, not a textual discussion, not a sum in addition or subtraction, like Bishop Colenso's books, not a bit of historical analysis, like Strauss or Renan. These are trivial things; these do not touch people; these do not reach the universal heart. The universe needs an affirmation, not a denial; and the religious movement that has not for its centre the assertion of something, would be condemned already to degenerate into a sect by the time it had the misfortune to get fairly born." (P. 58.)