Twelve sermons : delivered at Antioch College

Front matter

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Preface

The Twelve Sermons constituting this volume, were written and delivered while Mr. Mann was President of Antioch College. The Facultv of the College retained the privilege of preaching in their own hands, and either officiated alternately, or agreed upon inviting other clergymen, or perchance laymen, from abroad, to take their places.

The Editor has added to the Sermons the Meditations that were found in the manuscripts, and which, though not read, undoubtedly formed the basis of the prayers accompanying the Sermons.

The careful revising hand of the Author would doubtless have given these Sermons to the world, if be had ever published them, in a more perfect form, and with the addition of much that was spoken extemporaneously when delivered ; but they will be valuable as they are, it is hoped, to those who loved to listen to his teachings.

Contents

I. God's Beino, the Foundation of Human Dutt, . . 11

II. God's Character, the Law op Hcjman Duty, . . 33

m. God's Law, the Principle of Spiritual Liberty, . 55

I. God's Being The Foundation Of Human Duty

In Ithe new and almost parental relation in which I stand to young men and young women, I propose to deKver a series of Discourses on various subjects pertaining to Human Duty, and particularly designed to show that the reaUzation of Happiness can alone come from the performance of Duty.

These Discourses will not be theological, though they will have sometliing to say respecting the existence, character, and attributes of God, and much to say respecting his laws and government on earth. They will not be strictly scientific ; though they will welcome and solicit the aid of all those departments of systematized knowledge which we dignify with the name of science ; — all our natural and moral sciences being but expressions of God's win as manifested in nature and man. Least of all will they be devoted to mere questions of political economy, or profit and loss, in a mercantile or worldly sense ; though even here, they wiU avail themselves of every opportunity to demonstrate that, as " godhness is great gain," so there can be no great gain, or gain of any kind, in despite or in defiance of

godliness.

^ [11]

Not being an ordained minister of the Gospel, I may conform to the almost universal custom of such persons, in not speaking from a text ; and yet I may be allowed to cite the text which an ordained minister would preach upon.

in regard to Duty, I believe not only in the Ten Commandments, but in ten thousand. God lives and rules by law ; and, therefore, wherever He lives, and wherever He rules, there is law, and a law of God is a coimnand. All the kingdoms of nature around us — the inorganic which exists, and the organic which hves, and the sentient which feels — are pervaded by God's laws. We also, in all our powers, faculties, and susceptibilities, are the subjects of God's laws. Our hmbs and our body, our stomach and our brain, not less than our heart, each is the subject of God's laws. That is, there is a right way, and there are "wrong ways for them all ; and God commands the right way. There is, therefore, not only a Decalogue, but a Mirialogue.

Of course, among all these commands, there must be the first ten. But having learned these, we ought to go on and learn the rest as fast as we can ; and, as "we leam, we ought to obey ; otherwise, the learning is but the unprofitable hoard of the miser.

But if I discourse on Duty, I must have a foundation for my discourse. I must have proof of the solidity and validity of that foundation. No man should affirm anything, or deny anything, without proof, that is, without reason. With all rational minds, it is in vain for me to build the most magnificent superstructure of argument, and leave the four comers hansing in the air.

I find the foundation of Duty in the being and altributes of God. There are secondary and incidental

FOUNDATION OF HUMAN DUTY. 13

arguments, but this is the primary and original one. There are collateral argniments ; but this is fundamental. Even on the atheistic hypothesis of no God, it could be shown that Duty is expedient ; but on the theistic hy=- pothesis of a God, it can be demonstrated that the knowledge and the performance of Duty are the highest moral necessities for every human being.

It may be a very easy matter to adduce such evidence of the existence of God as shall be acceptable and satisfactory to one who believes it already. Such a one is only to be moved down the inclined plane of argument, and goes easily. But I wish to adduce such evidence as shall be imperative and constraining to those minds which do not derive their evidence from their behef, but their belief from their evidence. Such minds are to be moved up the inclined plane of argument, and so both friction and weight are to be overcome.

First, then, I would reverently attempt to prove the existence of a God, by the same kind of evidence as proves the existence of the external and material world. Do vou believe in the existence of rivers and forests, of mountains and oceans, of sun, moon, and a firmament of stars ? Do you believe in the existence of men, and of the various zoological races, whether they walk or fly, or creep or swim ? Do you believe in the existence of anything outside of yourself, or in anything that is not yourself?

People who do not believe in the existence of anytliing outside of themselves, or in the existence of anything which is not themselves, are commonly considered the subjects of medical treatment, before they become the subjects of syllogistic or argumentative treatment. And this medical treatment, in well-ordered states, is administered inside a lunatic or insane asylum. When, therefore, we see a man outside of an asylum for the insane, we are entitled to presume that lie does believe in the existence of a material world. As to those who are inside of the insane hospital, let them first go tlttough with a course of medicine, and afterwards, if necessary, with a course of logic.

But on what evidence do we believe in the existence of a material universe outside of ourselves ? I answer, on the evidence of the senses, and of reason.

On the evidence of the senses. There is an ancient proverb, that " seeing is believing." By our eyes, we see that things exist around us. And we see the greatest differences between these things, in color, shape, size, &c. If all of them, taken together, are not something, then they are nothing ; and it seems to me that Nothing would look more alike, — that is, if it could look at all. The external world gives out its myriad varieties, of sounds to our ear, of odors to our smell, of tastes to our palate, and of tactual sensations. The mountain top does not appear like the mountain cave ; the shriek of a drowning man does not sound hke an infant's laugh ; water new-born from a pure fountain does not taste nor smell hke the drunkard's foul beverage ; and the thorn-tree does not feel like the pigeon's plumy breast. If Nothing could be seen or heard, or smelt, or tasted, or felt, Avould it not be more alike ' When Nothing can blast the eye-balls in the lightning's flash, or solace the diseased vision in the verdure of spring ; when Nothing can stun in the whirlwind's roar, or whisper a welcome to its sweets as its comes o'erladen from spicy groves ; ^\\\e\\ Nothing can congeal us with arctic cold-i, or dissolve us with tropic heats ; when

FOUNDATION OF HDMAN DUTY. 15

Nothing can tear us in pieces by the tiger's fangs, or bind lip our wounds with iEsculapian skill ; when Nothing can consume our bodies and scatter the ashes to the winds, or, with Egyptian unguents can preserve these same bodies for thousands of years ; — when Nothing can do all these things, and ten times ten million more like them, and repeat them forever, then it will be time to alter its name, and call it Something. Now, that is the Something, which is not you, but is outside of you, whose existence I am demonstrating. But, if you say that the thing which you call Nothing has the power to put on all this myriad of forms and to do all this myriad of things, then you mean by Nothing, what I mean by Something, and we Avill not dispute about words.

Now I think it can be shown that there is as high a kind of evidence to our spirits of what we call the Spiritual World, as there is to our bodily senses of what we call the Material World.

I think it can be as convincingly proved that Arkwright and Fulton had mechanical talent ; that Lord Chatham and Dr. Franklin had statesmanshij) ; that Shakspeare and Milton had poetic genius ; and that Howard and" Oberlin had philanthropy ; as that they liad bodies, lived in houses, breathed air, and ate food. My mind or spirit has proof of the existence of mind or spirit in others, — proof of affection, talent, genius, virtue, devotion, just as my bodily senses have of the existence of what we call the material universe, — seas, plains, fish, beast, bird, man, stars, galaxies. The spirit has powers of perception for spiritual qualities outside of itself, just as the body has organs for the perception of material properties outside of itself. What is this, which we call love or hate, which we call philanthropy or misanthropy, which M'e call fidelity or perfidy, which we call saintliness or sin, devotion or impiety ; — are all these the attributes and qualities of Nothing also ? The Levite and the Samaritan, Napoleon and Washington, Judas and Jesus, were they all the same, too ; or rather, were they all Nothing ? I say, as I said before, that I think we should find Nothing less variously diversified ; or, if you say that Nothing does put on this multiplicity and diversity of forms, then you affirm that it is no longer Nothing, but Something. Rational beings, then, who believe in the existence of what we call Matter, cannot escape fi-om a belief in what we call Mind.

But perhaps an objector will say, that a proof of the existence of mind does not prove the existence of a Supreme Mind, — of a creative, intelligent, sovereign, first cause. But here, too, it seems to me that the evidence is overwhelming. It is the same in nature, or in kind, as the evidence before referred to, — the evidence of the existence of matter, and of the existence of mind, — the same in kind, though infinitely greater in amoimt and in demonstrativeness.

Whether unaided human reason would ever have conceived or originated the idea of^ a God, has been questioned, and is perhaps questionable. But this I deem to be a fact not questionable ; that there is a sentiment in man, something instinctive, though infinitely higher and wider in its functions than mere animal instinct, which does suggest, intimate, nay, which would originate the conception of a Supreme Being. And if any pestilence of atheism could suppress or abolish all expression and belief of the existence of a God in a whole generation, the next generation would originate rOUXDATIOX OF HUMAN DUTY. 17

the same idea for itself. Extinguish it in the parent, and it would blaze up anew in his children. Just as perfect arms and perfect feet will come to cliildren, though bom through a father whose own limbs have all been amputated, so an inborn sentiment and apprehension of a God will come to a child whose father has striven to smother and stifle that sentiment in himself. All nations and tribes which have ever been discovered, and into whose condition any adequate scrutiny has been made, have been found to possess the idea of a Supreme Being. The pohshed Athenians erect a temple to the Unknown God. The Persians worship the sun. The degraded African has his Fetich. And thus, I say, we have inward faculties of veneration and wonder, which of their own mere action suggest the existence, evolve the idea of a great Spiritual Being above us, just as we have outward senses that excite the idea of material objects around us. To any one who could perfectly comprehend our structure, a knowledge of the eye, even before birth, would coramunicate the fact of the existence of light ; a knowledge of the structure of the ear would show that it was made for sound ; and an inspection of lungs and blood would prove the existence of the air. Just so the religious sentiments of veneration and wonder, which are natural to us and born in us, suggest or originate the conception of a God. Now we may call this Being by any one of a thousand names, — with the Hebrews, Eloi ; with the Greeks, Theos ; with the Romans, Deus ; with the French, DieM ; with the Germans, Grott ; or with the English, (xod; or we may call Him the Unknown or the Unnamed God ; or we may call Him by the sublime appellation " I am." That is another matter. We are now speaking of tlie sentiment in the human mind, and not of its name in a human language.

After these strong religious sentiments of veneration and wonder have excited the idea of a God, just as thirst or hunger excite the idea of water and food, then the reason or understanding takes up that idea, and gives it shape and qualities. And here two things are certain ; that, in forming its idea of God, the mind can attribute to Him no quahty or attribute of which it has itself no conception, and that it will attribute to God such quaHties and attributes as most abound in itself. You may hear a thousand men expatiate upon the character of God, and no two of them will apportion His perfections alike. The austere man always attributes to Him more of a stern justice ; the benevolent man more mercy ; the lover of grandeur and sublimity regales himself and exults in God's wonder-working Omnipotence ; while the self-esteeming man thinks God loves him and his friends better than the whole world besides. How can it be otherwise ? How can man build up the idea of God in his own mind out of conceptions or thoughts which he never had in that mind ? If he has no science, no idea of the laws of nature and of mind, how can he conceive of a God, who works eternally by law ; or if he be supremely selfish, how can he conceive of a God of love ?

After our rehgious instincts, then, have given us the conception of a God, or after we have been taught by our parents or otherwise, to form this conception in conformity with our religious instincts, then our own appetites and passions, hopes and fears, reason or unreason, humihty or pride, go to work to think out a God for themselves, or to find one in the Bible, or in the Koran,

FOUNDATION OF HUMAN DUTY. 19

or in the events of Providence ; and they put into tiieir conception or picture of God, more or less of this quality or that, just as they have more or less of this quality or that in their own minds. The contrary would be to say that a man could in his theology attribute ideas and ■qualities to God of which he himself had no conception ; that a painter can put colors into a picture, when he neither has any such colors on his pallet, or any idea of them in his mind.

Here, then, we arrive at two great conclusions ; first, that the natural powers of man do suggest the idea or v' conception of God, so that we find the most savage and barbarous nations in possession of the belief; and second, that human passions and reason modify this belief. All men, then, are alike in having the conception of a Deity ; but they are amazingly unlike in the Deity they conceive of. I suppose there are no two men in the world, nor ever were, whose conceptions of the Deity were precisely alike. One man is a cannibal, another is a Christian ; one man has vast knowledge of the works of God, another has ignorance vaster still ; one man has fervid religious sentiments, another is cold and phlegmatic. Now, if such different men should agree to repeat the same stereotyped phrases respecting the Deity, and should repeat them ten thousand times, the ideas and emotions attached to them and excited by them in their minds, would be as different as the men. The iron or the chalk, the ivory or the fungus, will show in the fabric that is made from them. Are there any two persons in all the British realms who have precisely the same idea of Queen Victoria ? nay, could they all see her, what different views they would cany away !

Not only so, but each man's own ideas of God un-^.

dergo the greatest changes, nay, revolutions. Jolm's idea is not only different from Peter's, but Jolm's idea, when a man, is vastly different from John's idea when a child. How different is the geologist's idea of a God, when he sees in the great strata of the earth an illuminated volume, aU pictorial with proofs of power, wisdom and goodness, — how different, I say, is his idea of God, from that of a President of a certain Southern College, who professes to believe that the bones of the mastodon, shells, sharks' teeth, trilobites, and other fossil remains of preadamitic ages, were scattered about by God at the time of the creation, only as a puzzle for the human race, and to see how much nonsense men would believe for His glory ! How different the idea of God which an astronomer has, who comprehends the subhme laws of the solar and the stellar system, and who can foretell every eclipse that will happen for ten thousand years to come, and when the comets will return from their unutterable distances — how different is his idea of God from that of the barbarian — who believes the heavens to be only a few miles above our heads, and that the stars are nothing but spangles made for show. Indeed, all sects and theologies are founded on the differences of idea which men entertain of a God.

And there is another consideration far grander and more important than this. Variant, conflicting, irreconcilable as are men's ideas, when compared A^'ith one another, respecting the character and attributes of God ; yet the very extremes of them do not differ from each other one ten thousandth part so much as they must all differ from the truth, — from a true, adequate and absolutely correct conception of ^vhat God is. Can

FOUNDATION OF HUMAN DUTY. l!l

your finite mind comprehend and embrace tlie infinite God? If not, then what is that ahnost infinite part of Him which hes outside of your comprehension ? So impossible is it for finite natures to understand the whole of God's infinite nature, that we may say with reverence, that even He, the Infinite himself, cannot make us wholly understand it. How can His infinite knowledge of Himself be transferred to our finite faculties '? As well might His infinite power be incorporated in our mortal arm, or His all-seeing wisdom be matched by our dim faculties, or He make us infinite like Himself. He can hold the ocean in the hollow of His hand ; but with us, in our present state of development at least, to do this is a natural impossibility. Now that part of God's nature which we do not understand, may be vastly different from the part of which we think we have some just conception : not contradictory to it, but different phases of it, as the colors of the rainbow differ from one another. God loves variety ; and He may have constituted other worlds different from ours. How different the forms of fife He has created upon earth ! How different the fish from the bird, and both from the quadruped, and- all fi'om man ! The aerolites that fall upon the earth have elementary combinations differing from any found on the earth. The moon is supposed by philosophers to be without an atmosp)here. If so, no breathing thing can live there, and lungs would be a supernumerary organ. But does it follow that the moon is a great waste or desert, in which is no life, no happiness ; but everywhere silent, melancholy desolation ? It may have inhabitants differently constituted from us, physically ; and why not differently constituted from us morally ? — that is, inhabitants to whom God 2 makes known some other £i;lorious part of His infinite nature ? The stars that fiR the firmament are of such different colors, that if they could be thrown together in a mass, as we throw glass beads into a cup, they would be as variegated with colors of red, blue, yellow, &c., as a cup full of parti-colored beads. What right have we to say that the inhabitants of these starry realms are not as differently constituted from each other, as are the shining robes of light that adom them? What right have we to say that God has not revealed to them other attributes of His infinite nature, and manifested Himself to them in other forms, which shall appeal to their natures, as His goodness, power and wisdom appeal to ours ?

The hght of our sun pours out on all sides. A beam of that light strikes the earth, another beam strikes the planet Venus, another Mars, and so on : but what a vast proportion of that light passes through the inter-planetary sjiaces, and seems to go off into immensity and be lost ! But if we really believe in an immensity, and believe that immensity to be Hill of God's worlds, then not a particle of light is lost. Some of that which passes through the inter-planetary spaces strikes the stars, and is seen by them, and that which passes through the inter-stellar spaces, strikes the constellations and systems beyond, until somewhere in the vast concave around us every particle of light that radiates from our sun shall, in the immensity of God's universe, help illuminate a world, and none of it go off into uninhabited space to be lost. Why may it not be so — nay, have we not reason to beheve it is so — in regard to the infinity of God's spiritual attributes, as well as to His natural light, and that in different worlds there are

FOUXDATION or HUMAN DUTY. 23

different beings, and that He apportioiLS some part of His infinite perfections to each, so that it requires tlie knowledge of all of them to know sometliina: of all of Him, and that it will be a part of the work of the endless ages of eternity to read the lesson in this volume of God, which, for want of a better name, I must call an Infinity of Infinities.

We, therefore, on this narrow earth of ours, can no more tell what new powers and wonders, Avhat other exquisite senses, and what other enrapturing objects of sense, what other glorious faculties, and what other magnificent theatres for the exercise of those faculties, God may have created in other parts of His boundless universe, than the aborigines who once inhabited this beautiful neighborhood could tell, from its climate, its vegetable growths, and its animals, what other climate, what other vegetation and animal life would' be found in the toirid or arctic zones, or among their antipodes. And it would have been an incomparably less folly in them to pretend to know all about the richness and variety of God's works throughout the four quarters of our globe, from what they saw in this vicinity of ten miles square, than for us to pretend to know through what perfections God manifests Himself in stars and constellations outside of Sirius and Orion and the Pleiades, because we know something of His providence in this sublunary world.

Did I not say then truly, that, much as theologians or sectarists may differ- from each other in their belief of the attributes of God, — the Trinitai'ian from tlie Unitarian, the Partialist from the Universalist, the Necessitarian fi'om the believer in Free Agency, the Catholic from the Protestant, — their distance from each other is almost infinitely less than the distance of all of them from the trath. Oh, would to Heaven that those who condemn and doom their fellow men because of certain metaphysical differences of belief respecting God's character and attributes, would for one moment reflect what would be their own fate if God should condemn and doom them because of the difference between their best conceptions of Him, and His consciousness of Himself. How would they stand appalled and overwhelmed if the rude picture of God in their minds were exhibited by the side of the Divine Original, and they were held punishable because the mortal limner had not correctly imitated the Inunortal Prototype !

Now, this view of our subject leads to several conclusions.

First, it shows us that the learned man and the .illiterate man, the scientific man and the ignorant man, not only do not, but they cannot, while remaining as they are, have the same conception of God, any more than they can have the same idea of Paradise Lost, or the liad ; any more than they can have the same idea of the Principia of Newton, or the Mecanique Celeste of La Place. The philosopher cannot expunge from his mind his knowledge of the works of God, and receive back into it the crude conceptions, or caricatiu-es, which infested it when he was a child. Nor is this difference confined to intellectual conceptions of the Creator. The same is true of all our moral perceptions of the character of God. How can a man, who, during his previous life, has been accustomed to the bratality and abomination of Cannibalism, or to the gross and foul rites of Fetichisni, ever have those immaculate conceprOUXDATION OF HUMAN DUTY. 25

tions of God's nature which the prophet Habakkuk felt when he described liim to be of " purer eyes than to look on iniquity " ? How can a child or young man who has wallowed along, for twenty years, through the filth and loathsomeness of Wapping or St. Giles ; or who has swam for twenty years, as a fish swims in water, amid the squalor and beastliness of the wynds of Edinbm-gh, or the Five Points of New York, cleanse his mind from the fetor it has contracted, and come out fresh and fragrant as a June morning, full of the perfume of flowers and the sonas of birds ? Though lais general conceptions of God's character may be changed, though a new set of resolves and desires may supplant the old ones, yet, as the pot Avill smell of the ointment it has held, so will the odors of sanctity and even the incense of praise that come from him, be adulterated by the foul emanations of his previous life. This is the way that Clu'istianity became corrupted with the doctrines of Paganism. The Pagans who became Christians did not leave all their Paganism behind. And this we all know to be the case, when men of low life and manners, of vulgar and beastly associations, become Christians now. As the crooked spine sticks to the hunchback, so the old moral tang inheres in all the savor of their lives.

But secondly, if men, in this state of existence, with their unequal faculties, unequal attainments, and unequal opportunities, are not alike, and never can be alike in their intellectual or metaphysical conceptions of the Deity, how can they be alike in Avorshipping the same hving and true God ? I answer, that with the greatest diversity of thought, they can be alike in their affections. Love must be the same in all ^\orlds. The love 2* that trembles and flickers in the bosom of the lowliest worshipper upon earth, is precisely the same, in nature and in substance, with that which blazes forth from the loftiest and most adoring seraph, and makes the wide heavens resound with its celestial anthems. There are some things which must be the same wherever they exist. They are incapable of alteration ; for, if altered, their very nature is abolished and lost. Arithmetic and mathematics must be the same in all worlds. Nowhere can two and two be more than four, or less than four. Everywhere the three angles of a plane triangle are equal to two right angles. So love must be the same in saint or seraph ; just as hate is the same in murderer or fiend. The altar may be mean or magnificent ; the censer, where we bum our incense, may be large or small, of gold or of clay, but the flame of devotion that ascends from it is the same in all. Alike it aspires to heaven. We cail be alike in sj)irit? however great or small we may be in thought ; " for, thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy place ; with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit ; " but nowhere is it said that God dwelleth.with the preat Intel-