But if it be indeed true, that except the affections of the soul be supremely fixed on God; that unless it be the leading and governing desire and primary pursuit to possess his favour and promote his glory, we are considered as having transferred our fealty to an usurper, and as being in fact revolters from our lawful sovereign; if this be indeed the Scripture doctrine, all the several attachments which have been lately enumerated, of the different classes of society, wherever they interest the affections, and possess the soul in any such measure of strength as deserves to be called predominance, are but so many varied expressions of disloyalty. God requires to set up his throne in the heart, and to reign in it without a rival: if he be kept out of his right, it matters not by what competitor. The revolt may be more avowed or more secret; it may be the treason of deliberate preference, or of inconsiderate levity; we may be the subjects of a more or of a less creditable master; we may be employed in services more gross or more refined: but whether the slaves of avarice, of sensuality, of dissipation, of sloth, or the votaries of ambition, of taste, or of fashion; whether supremely governed by vanity and self-love, by the desire of literary fame or of military glory, we are alike estranged from the dominion of our rightful sovereign. Let not this seem a harsh position; it can appear so only from not adverting to what was shewn to be the essential nature of true Religion. He who bowed the knee to the god of medicine or of eloquence, was no less an idolater than the worshipper of the deified patrons of lewdness or of theft. In the several cases which have been specified, the external acts indeed are different; but in principle the disaffection is the same; and unless we return to our allegiance, we must expect the title, and prepare to meet the punishment, of rebels on that tremendous day, when all false colours shall be done away, and (there being no longer any room for the evasions of worldly sophistry, or the smooth plausibilities of worldly language) “that which is often highly esteemed amongst men, shall appear to have been abomination in the sight of God.”
These fundamental truths seem vanished from the mind, and it follows of course, that every thing is viewed less and less through a religious medium. To speak no longer of instances wherein we ourselves are concerned, and wherein the unconquerable power of indulged appetite may be supposed to beguile our better judgment, or force us on in defiance of it; not to insist on the motives by which the conduct of men is determined, often avowedly, in what are to themselves the most important incidents of life; what are the judgments which they form in the case of others? Idleness, profusion, thoughtlessness, and dissipation, the misapplication of time or of talents, the trifling away of life in frivolous occupations or unprofitable studies; all these things we may regret in those around us, in the view of their temporal effects; but they are not considered in a religious connection, or lamented as endangering everlasting happiness. Excessive vanity and inordinate ambition are spoken of as weaknesses rather than as sins; even covetousness itself, though a hateful passion, yet, if not extreme, scarcely presents the face of Irreligion. Is some friend, or even some common acquaintance sick, or has some accident befallen him? How solicitously do we inquire after him, how tenderly do we visit him, how much perhaps do we regret that he has not better advice, how apt are we to prescribe for him, and how should we reproach ourselves, if we were to neglect any means in our power of contributing to his recovery! But “the mind diseased” is neglected and forgotten—“that is not our affair; we hope (we do not perhaps really believe) that here it is well with him.” The truth is, we have no solicitude about his spiritual interest. Here he is treated like the unfortunate traveller in the Gospel; we look upon him; we see but too well his sad condition, but (Priest and Levite alike) we pass by on the other side, and leave him to the officious tenderness of some poor despised Samaritan.
Nay, take the case of our very children, when our hearts being most interested to promote their happiness, we must be supposed most desirous of determining on right principles, and where therefore the real standard of our deliberate judgments may be indisputably ascertained: in their education and marriage, in the choice of their professions, in our comparative consideration and judgment of the different parts of their several characters, how little do we reflect that they are immortal beings! Health, learning, credit, the amiable and agreeable qualities, above all, fortune and success in life, are taken, and not unjustly taken, into the account; but how small a share in forming our opinions is allowed to the probable effect which may be produced on their eternal interests! Indeed the subjects of our mutual inquiries, and congratulations, and condolences, prove but too plainly what considerations are in these cases uppermost in our thoughts.
Such are the fatal and widely spreading effects, which but too naturally follow from the admission of the grand fundamental error before mentioned, that of not considering Religion as a principle of universal application and command. Robbed of its best energies, Religion now takes the form of a cold compilation of restraints and prohibitions. It is looked upon simply as a set of penal statutes; these, though wise and reasonable, are however, so far as they extend, abridgments of our natural liberty, and nothing which comes to us in this shape is extremely acceptable:
Atqui nolint occidere quemquam, posse volunt.
Considering moreover, that the matter of them is not in general very palatable, and that the partiality of every man where his own cause is in question, will be likely to make him construe them liberally in his own favour, we might beforehand have formed a tolerable judgment of the manner in which they are actually treated. Sometimes we attend to the words rather than to the spirit of Scripture injunctions, overlooking the principle they involve, which a better acquaintance with the word of God would have clearly taught us to infer from them. At others, “the spirit of an injunction is all;” and this we contrive to collect so dexterously, as thereby to relax or annul the strictness of the terms. “Whatever is not expressly forbidden cannot be very criminal; whatever is not positively enjoined, cannot be indispensably necessary—If we do not offend against the laws, what more can be expected from us?—The persons to whom the strict precepts of the Gospel were given, were in very different circumstances from those in which we are placed. The injunctions were drawn rather tighter than is quite necessary, in order to allow for a little relaxation in practice. The expressions of the sacred Writers are figurative; the Eastern style is confessedly hyperbolical.”
By these and other such dishonest shifts (by which however we seldom deceive ourselves, except it be in thinking that we deceive others) the pure but strong morality of the word of God is explained away, and its too rigid canons are softened down, with as much dexterity as is exhibited by those who practise a logic of the same complexion, in order to escape from the obligations of human statutes. Like Swift’s unfortunate Brothers[74], we are sometimes put to difficulties, but our ingenuity is little inferior to their’s. If totidem verbis[75] will not serve our turn, try totidem syllabis; if totidem syllabis fail, try totidem literis: then there is in our case, as well as in theirs, “an allegorical sense” to be adverted to; and if every other resource fail us, we come at last to the same conclusion as the Brothers adopted, that after all, those rigorous clauses require some allowance, and a favourable interpretation, and ought to be understood “cum grano salis.”
But when the law both in its spirit and its letter is obstinate and incorrigible, what we cannot bend to our purpose we must break—“Our sins we hope are of the smaller order; a little harmless gallantry, a little innocent jollity, a few foolish expletives which we use from the mere force of habit, meaning nothing by them; a little warmth of colouring and licence of expression; a few freedoms of speech in the gaiety of our hearts, which, though not perhaps strictly correct, none but the over-rigid would think of treating any otherwise than as venial infirmities, and in which very grave and religious men will often take their share, when they may throw off their state, and relax without impropriety. We serve an all-merciful Being, who knows the frailty of our nature, the number and strength of our temptations, and will not be extreme to mark what is done amiss. Even the less lenient judicatures of human institution concede somewhat to the weakness of man. It is an established maxim—‘De minimis non curat lex.’ We hope we are not worse than the generality. All men are imperfect. We own we have our infirmities; we confess it is so; we wish we were better, and trust as we grow older we shall become so; we are ready to acknowledge that we must be indebted for our admission into a future state of happiness, not to our own merit, but to the clemency of God, and the mercy of our Redeemer.”
But let not this language be mistaken for that of true Christian humiliation, of which it is the very essence to feel the burden of sin, and to long to be released from it: nor let two things be confounded, than which none can be more fundamentally different, the allowed want of universality in our determination, and our endeavour to obey the will of God, and that defective accomplishment of our purposes, which even the best of men will too often find reason to deplore. In the persons of whom we have been now speaking, the unconcern with which they can amuse themselves upon the borders of sin, and the easy familiarity with which they can actually dally with it in its less offensive shapes, shew plainly that, distinctly from its consequences, it is by no means the object of their aversion; that there is no love of holiness as such; no endeavour to acquire it, no care to prepare the soul for the reception of this divine principle, and to expel or keep under whatever might be likely to obstruct its entrance, or dispute its sovereignty.
It is indeed a most lamentable consequence of the practice of regarding Religion as a compilation of statutes, and not as an internal principle, that it soon comes to be considered as being conversant about external actions rather than about habits of mind. This sentiment sometimes has even the hardiness to insinuate and maintain itself under the guise of extraordinary concern for practical Religion; but it soon discovers the falsehood of this pretension, and betrays its real nature. The expedient indeed of attaining to superiority in practice, by not wasting any of the attention on the internal principles from which alone practice can flow, is about as reasonable, and will answer about as well, as the œconomy of the architect, who should account it mere prodigality to expend any of his materials in laying foundations, from an idea that they might be more usefully applied to the raising of the superstructure. We know what would be the fate of such an edifice.