The first lesson is, to learn how much of human wisdom is but folly: the second, that it is not yet all folly, but a good deal of it genuine wisdom. And he will be most likely to unite these in the habit of thinking soberly, who first moderates his estimate of human power and wisdom, by marking how far their utmost flights had failed to anticipate, what has proved the power of God and the wisdom of God to the world's renovation. Such is the best preparation for still learning, how much that wears the appearance of wisdom and science unsubstantial. This best teaches so to reason soberly and conscientiously, as not to run into licentiousness the liberty of thinking. Religious zeal indeed has hitherto been little enough tempered with discretion; but no other zeal has glowed so intensely, without still more disastrous consequences, in setting the world on fire.
It is yet a consideration in point, that, as in all undertakings hope of success best stimulates and sustains exertion; so the hope, that the world's disorders will yet be cured, is best furnished by the faith, which recognizes a Sovereign ordering and disposing all, bringing light out of darkness; making the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder thereof pledged to restrain. Judging from history and appearances, the philanthropist may often doubt, whether the race be not destined still to go a ceaseless round; ever exchanging one delusion for another, but no real progress.
As it was in character for the prophetess of Apollo, it complain: "My youth was by my tears corroded, My sole familiar was my pain; Each coming ill my heart foreboded, And felt at first—in vain." So the philosophic prophet may lament, that he anticipates so much more clearly, what ought to be, than what will be; that he finds the increase of knowledge, beyond the general sense of the age, to be but the increase of sorrow. But the religious insight into futurity saves from such anguish, by the hope which gilds and realizes the future: hope for the race, armed with a higher assurance than philosophy can work out, that and right and peace shall reign triumphant; and personal hope, inasmuch as, however dark the prospect for earth's races may be, the individual has a future, whose joy is his strength.
9. And this habitual reference of the government of earth to its Supreme Ruler, is not more necessary to the hope, that sustains endurance, than to the patience which bides the time, in opposition to the indecent, passionate haste, which defeats its own end. "He that believeth shall not make haste." There is much fruitless haste to bring the world to rights, for want of a lively belief in a sovereign controlling Power; whose wisdom, whose goodness, whose resources, whose interest, to bring the world to order and happiness, infinitely transcend ours. Thus is missed the conclusion, if He can endure to see the stream of evil flow on age after age; then discretion would set some bounds to our zeal, to see all evil rectified. And the clearer this conclusion is the result of faith, the surer the bounds will be just such, as to save from losing all by a headlong precipitancy.
In short, that habit of mind equally ready to accept the right and the true, whether it come with a suspicious air of novelty and singularity, or whether as old and vulgar it be scouted for being behind the age— that habit which neither yields to discouragements, nor favors the fool-hardy haste, which calculates neither time nor its own strength; which discriminates, when to "contend earnestly," and when to "let them alone," the dogged adherents to falsehood and wrong, to the teachings of time and circumstances, their conscience and their God, till every plant which he hath not planted be rooted up by these mightier energies—the habit, realizing all the good of the radical, in proving all things, and all the glory of the conservative, in holding fast what is good;—this habit, so favorable to human progress, but involving so rare a combination of seemingly opposite qualities, as scarcely to be accounted for on all apparent influences, has been well described, as a "life hid with Christ in God." And truly has it been remarked, in view of the general result of ordinary tendencies and influences in forming one-sided characters, that becoming as a little child, expresses no less fittingly the conditions of entering the kingdom of nature, and thinking with the wise, than of entering the kingdom of heaven, and worshipping with the holy.
Of the spiritual more grievously than of the intellectual life is it true, that, "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." Here emphatically does the individual labor hardly, to digest into his life the conclusions of reason and conscience, in advance of the average understanding of the age. Professor Lyell, speaking of the Millerite phrenzy, and how some men of pretty sound mind were carried away with it, remarks to this effect: "Religious delusion is like a famine fever, which attacks first the hungry and emaciated, but in its progress cuts down many of the well-fed and robust."
So it is. So strong are our tendencies to one tone, that the Christian, in setting to his worldly desires the bounds which his religion exacts, feels to be exercising a self-denial—yielding the temporal to the eternal. He scarce seems to himself to be acting the part of true worldly wisdom. In reading the life of Dr. Payson, it is obviously manifest, that his deeply spiritual views were not inwrought harmoniously into his life's web, as would have been, if he had carried along with him a whole community.
The materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the quixotism of the crusades. Each has but expressed a stage in the progress of thought; and neither measures the mature life of the soul. It is not so certain to sight, what will be next grasped by this reaching onward to the things before; whether a better reconcilement of the life that now is with that which is to come, or whether a vaporing, misty sentimentalism is to be the spirit of the next age. There are not wanting indications, that the materialism of this age is to be followed by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices. It is not uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau, the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and progress so taught to be the law of individual man, that, whether going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the gallows, his tendencies are still and forever upward.
We need better evidence than sight can afford, to say,—
"O no! a thousand cheerful omens give
Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh:
He who has tamed the elements, shall not live
The slave of his own passions; he whose eye
Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky,
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span
The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high,
In God's magnificent works his will shall scan;
And love and peace shall make their paradise with man."
*Bryant