Discourses on human nature, human life, and the nature of religion

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WORKS

Preface

I have collected into these Volumes, most of the Sermons and Essays that have been published with my name ; and have added some Sermons not before printed, together with Articles . from Reviews, and Occasional Discourses. A new arrangement is made, in order to bring the Discourses under certain heads. The title of the Volume first published, " Discourses on Various Subjects," is dropped. The first Series in this Edition, " On Human Nature," embraces several of those Discourses ; others are omitted; and others, placed under another Head. Discourses on "Human Life," follow; and then, a number of Discourses, for which I could find no more definite title than " TheNature of Religion." In the first Sermon of the succeeding series, on " Commerce and Business," I have attempted by a revision of the Argument, to reply to an objection sometimes urged against its main doctrine, with regard to the use of superior knowledge, power or opportunity. I have met with those who argued thus : " We have a right to take every advantage of each other ; it is perfectly honest to do so, because we have agreed to do so. It is a matter of compact, whose chances and risks we mutually agree to take." Now I maintain that the general moral policy of

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trade foroias such compact. The remainder of the Second Volume is occupied by a Miscellaneous Collection of Discourses on Politics and Society, and by reprints of Reviews and Occasional Sermons and Addresses. The Third Volume, or the one which is to occupy that place in the Edition, is already published — as it has been some time out of print, and was cal'ed ror — under the title of " Discourses and Reviews upon Questions in Controversial Theology and Practical Religion." My apology for these details is, that they seemed to be necessary to explain to those who have purchased my publications, the character of the present Edition.

Let me add, that no attempt is made at a full discussion of any of the subjects embraced in these Volumes. I suppose that a Treatise is not usually expected in a Volume of Sermons. Pulpit Discourses are, from the nature of the case, more like separate Essays, than successive portions of a regular Treatise.

I have now said all that is necessary, perhaps, in a Preface ; and yet, in sending forth a revised Edition of my Publications, I am disposed to add one or two remarks.

I have sometimes regretted that it has been my fortune to communicate with the Public through Sermons. I doubt whether there is any one vehicle of communication — Art, Literature, Poetry, Fiction, the Journal, or the Newspaper — in the way of which public opinion has thrown so many obstructions and difficulties. In the first place, it has laid a jealous restriction upon the topics of the Sermon, the style, the modes of illustration — the whole manly freedom of utterance. In the next place, having thus helped to make it tame and common-place, it has branded what is partly its own work, with that fatal epithet, dull. In fact,

PREFACE.

Vll the Sermon, the printed Sermon, has scarcely any recognised place among the great and noble arts of expression or communication. It is not appreciated as such. It has not the stimulus either of praise or blame from any high court of Literary Criticism.

I do not say, I am far from saying, that all this is the fault of the public, or of public opinion. It is the fault of the preacher rather ; it is the error essentially of our religious ideas and feelings. In this view I know of no more significant fact connected with the^history of Christianity than this, that the Sermon should in all ages have been proverbially dull. I confess that I am stung to indignation and shame at the bitter taunt implied in it, and would willingly take upon my hands all the disabilities and difficulties of this kind of communication, if I could give the feeblest demonstration, that it is not altogether deserved. The Essayist, Foster, says : " Might not all the Sermon-books in the English language, after the exception of three or four dozen volumes, be committed to the fire without any cause of regret ?" I am not bold enough to expect that these volumes of mine could escape the doom ; it would be a solace to me if I could believe, that they might stimulate others to do better, and that, from their ashes, something should arise, that would be worthy to live.

Contents

Discourses on Human Nature.

PAGE.

I. ON HUMAN NATURE, 9

I

WHAT IS MAN, THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OP HIM? AND THE SON OF MAN THAT THOU VISITBST HIM 1 FOR THOU HAST MADE HIM A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS, AND HAST CROWNED HIM WITH GLORY AND HONOUR.

— Psalm Tiii. 4, 5.

You will observe, my brethren, that in these words two distinct, and in a degree opposite views are given, of human nature. It is represented on the one hand as weak and low, and yet on the other, as lofty and strong. At one moment it presents itself to the inspired write* as poor, humble, depressed, and almost unworthy of the notice of its Maker. But in the transition of a single sentence, we find him contemplating this same being, man, as exalted, glorious and almost angelic. " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained," he says, " what is man that thou art mindful of him ?" And yet. he adds, " thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour."

But do not these contrasted statements make up, in fact, the only true view of human nature ? Are they not conformable to the universal sense of mankind, and to the whole tenor and spirit of our religion? Whenever the human character is portrayed in colours

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altogether dark, or altogether bright ; whenever the misanthrope pours out his scorn upon the wickedness and baseness of mankind, or the enthusiast lavishes his admiration upon their virtues, do we not always feel that there needs to be some qualification ; that there is something to be said on the other side ?

Nay more ; do not all the varying representations of human nature imply their opposites? Does not virtue itself imply, that sins and sinful passions are struggled with, and overcome ? And on the contrary, does not sin in its very nature imply that there are high and sacred powers, capacities and affections, which it violates ?

In this view it appears to me, that all unqualified disparagement as well as praise of human nature, carries with it its own refutation ; and it is to this point that 1 wish to invite your particular attention in the following discourse. Admitting all that can be asked on this subject by the strongest assertors of human depravity ; admitting every thing, certainly, that can be stated as a matter of fact ; admitting that men are as bad as they are said to be, and substan tially believing it too, I shall argue that the conclusion to be drawn is entirely the reverse of that which usually is drawn. I shall argue, that the most strenuous, the most earnest and indignant objections against human nature imply the strongest concessions to its constitutional worth. I say then, and repeat, that objection here carries wTith it its own refutation ; that the objector concedes much, very much to human nature, by the very terms with which he inveighs against it.

It is not my sole purpose, however, to present any abstract or polemic argument. Rather let me attempt to offer some general and just views of human nature ;

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li and for this purpose rather than for the sake of controversy, let me pass in brief review before you, some of the specific and disparaging opinions, that have prevailed in the world concerning it ; those for instance, of the philosopher and the theologian.

In doing this, my purpose is to admit that much of what they say, is true ; but to draw from it an inference quite different from theirs. I would admit on one hand, that there is much evil in the human heart, but at the same time, I would balance this view, and blend it with others that claim to be brought into the account. On the one hand, I would admit the objection that there is much and mournful evil in the world ; but, on the other, I would prevent it from pressing on the heart, as a discouraging and dead weight of reprobation and obloquy.

It may appear to you that the opinions which I have selected for our present consideration are, each of them, brought into strange company ; and yet they have an affinity which may not at once be suspected. It is singular indeed, that we find in the same ranks and waging the same war against all human self-respect, the most opposite descriptions of persons ; the most religious with the most irreligious, the most credulous with the most sceptical. If any man supposes that it is his superior goodness or purer faith, which leads him to think so badly of his fellow-men and of their very nature, he needs to be reminded that vicious and dissolute habits almost invariably and unerringly lead to the same result. The man who is taking the downward way, with almost every step, you will find thinks worse of his nature and his species ; till he concludes, if he can, that he was made only for sensual indulgence, and that all idea of a future, intellectual, and immortal existence, is a dream.

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And so if any man thinks that it is owing to his spirituality and heavenly mindedness, that he pronounces the world so utterly corrupt, a mere mass of selfishness and deceit ; he may be admonished that nobody so thoroughly agrees with him as the man of the world, the shrewd, over-reaching and knavish practicer on the weakness or the wickedness of his fellows. And in the same way, the strict and high-toned theologian, as he calls himself, may unexpectedly find himself in company with the sceptical and scornful philosopher. No men have ever more bitterly decried and vilified human nature, than the Infidel philosophers of the last century. They contended that man was too mean and contemptible a creature, to be the subject of such an interposition as that recorded in the Gospel.

I. But I am to take up in the first place, and more in detail, the objection of the sceptical philosopher.

The philosopher says, that man is a mean creature ; not so much a degraded being, as he is originally, a poor, insignificant creature ; an animal, some grades above others perhaps, but still an animal ; for whom, to suppose the provision of infinite mercy and of immortality to be made, is absurd.

It is worth noticing, as we pass, and I therefore remark, the striking connection which is almost always found, between different parts of every man's belief or scepticism. I never knew one to think wrongly about God, but he very soon began to think wrongly about man : or else the reverse is the process, and it is not material which. The things always go together. He who conceives of the Almighty as a severe, unjust and vindictive being, will regard man as a slave, will make him the slave of superstition, will take a sort of superstitious pleasure or merit in magnifying his

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wickedness or unworthiness. And he who thinks meanly of human nature, will think coldly and distrustfully of the Supreme Being, will think of him as withdrawing himself to a sublime distance from such a nature. In other words, he who does not take the Christian view, and has no apprehension of the infinite love of God, will not believe that he has made man with such noble faculties, or for such noble ends, as we assert. The discussion proposed is obviously, even in this view, one of no trifling importance.

Let us, then, proceed to the objection of our philosopher. He says, I repeat, that man is a mean creature, fit only for the earth on which he is placed, fit for no higher destination than to be buried in its bosom, and there to find his end. The philosopher rejects what he calls the theologian's dream about the fall. He says that man needed no fall in order to be a degraded creature ; that he is, and was, always and originally, a degraded creature ; a being, not fallen from virtue, but incapable of virtue ; a being, not corrupted from his innocence, but one who never possessed innocence ; a being never of heaven, but a being only of earth aud sense and appetite, and never fit for any thing better.

Now let us go at once to the main point in argument, which is proposed to be illustrated in this discourse. What need, I ask, of speaking of human debasement, in such indignant or sneering tones, if it is the real and only nature of man ? There is nothing to blame or scorn in man, if he is naturally such a poor and insignificant creature. If he was made only for the senses and appetites, what occasion, I pray, for any wonder or abuse, that he is sensual and debased? Why waste invectives on such a being? The truth is, that this zealous depreciation of human 2

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nature betrays a consciousness, that it is not so utterly worthless, after all. It is no sufficient reply to say, that this philosophic scorn has been aroused by the extravagance of human pretensions. For if these pretensions were utterly groundless, if the being who aspired to virtue were fit only for sensation, or if the being whose thoughts swelled to the great hope of immortality, were only a higher species of the animal creation, and must share its fate ; if this were true, his pretensions could justly create only a feeling of wonder, or of sadness.

We might say much to rebut the charge of the philosopher ; so injurious to the soul, so fatal to all just self-respect, so fatal to all elevated virtue and devotion. We might say that the most ordinary tastes and the most trifling pursuits of man carry, to the observant eye, marks of the nobler mind. We might say that vain trifling, and that fleeting, dying pleasure, does not satisfy the immortal want ; and that toil does not crush the soul, that the body cannot weigh down the spirit to its own drudgery. We might ask our proud reasoner, moreover, whence the moral and metaphysical philosopher obtains the facts with which he speculates, and argues, and builds up his admirable theory ? And our sceptic must answer, that the metaphysical and moral philosopher goes to human nature ; that he goes to it in its very attitudes of toil and its free actings of passion, and thence takes his materials and his form, and his living charm of representation, which delight the world. We might say still more. We might say that all there is of vastness and grandeur and beauty in the world, lies in the conception of man ; that the immensity of the universe, as we term it, is but the reach of his imagination ; that immensity in other words is but the image of his own idea ; that

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there is no eternity to him, but that which exists in his own unbounded thought ; that there is no God to man, but what has been conceived of in his own capacious and unmeasured understanding.

These things we might say ; but I will rather meet the objector on his own ground, confident that I may triumph even there. I take up the indignant argument, then. I allow that there is much weight and truth in it, though it brings me to a different conclusion. I feel that man is, in many respects and in many situations, and above all, compared with what he should be, that man is a mean creature. I feel it, as I should if I saw some j^outh of splendid talents and promise plunging in at the door of vice and infamy. Yes, it is meanness, for a man — who stands in the presence of his God and among the sons of heaven ; it is meanness in him to play the humble part of sycophant before his fellows ; to fawn and flatter, to make his very soul a slave, barely to gain from that fellow-man his smile, his nod, his hand ; his favour, his vote, his patronage. It is meanness for a man to prevaricate and falsify, to sell his conscience for advantage, to barter his soul for gain, to give his noble brow to the smiting blush of shame, or his cheek to the deadly paleness of convicted dishonesty. Yes, it is a degradation unutterable, for a man to steep his soul in gross, sensual, besotting indulgence ; to live for this, and in this one, poor, low sensation to shut up the mind with all its boundless range ; to sink to a debasement more than beastly ; below where an animal can go. Yes, all this, and much beside this is meanness ; but why, now I ask — why do we speak of it thus, unless it is because we speak of a being who might have put on such a nobility of soul, and such a loftiness and independence, and spiritual beauty and glory,

ON HUMAN NATURE.

as would fling rebuke upon all the hosts of sin and temptation, and cast dimness upon all the splendour of the world?

It may be proper under the head of philosophical objections to take notice of the celebrated maxim of Rochefoucauld ; since it is among the written, and has as good a title as others, to be among the philosophic objections. This maxim is, that we take a sort of pleasure in the disappointments and miseries of others, and are pained at their good fortune and success. If this maxim were intended to fix upon mankind the charge of pure, absolute, disinterested malignity, and if it could be sustained, it would be fatal to my argument. If I believed this, I should believe not only in total, but in diabolical depravity. And I am aware, that the apologists for human nature, receiving the maxim in this light, have usually contented themselves with indignantly denying its truth. I shall, however, for myself take different ground. I suppose, and I admit, that the maxim is true, to a certain extent. Yet I deny that the feelings on wThich it is founded, are malignant. They may be selfish, they may be bad ; but they are not malicious and diabolical. But let us explain. It should be premised, that there is nothing wrong in our desiring the goods and advantages of life, provided the desire be kept within proper bounds. Suppose then that you are pursuing the same object with your neighbour, a situation, an office, for instance ; and suppose that he succeeds. His success, at the first disclosure of it to you, will of course, give you a degree of pain ; and for this reason : it immediately brings the sense of your own disappointment.

Now it is not wrong perhaps, that you do regret your own failure ; it is probably unavoidable that you should. You feel perhaps that you need, or deserve the appointment, more than your rival. You cannot help, therefore, on every account, regretting that he has obtained it. It does not follow that you wish him any less happy. You may make the distinction in your own mind. You may say — " I am glad he is happy ; but I am sorry he has the place ; I wish he could be as happy in some other situation." Now all this, so far from being malignant, is scarcely selfish; and even when the feeling in a very bad mind is altogether selfish, yet it is very different from a malignant pain, at another's good fortune. But now, let us extend the case a little, from immediate rivalship to that general competition of interests which exists in society ; a competition which the selfishness of men makes to be far more than is necessary, and conceives to be far greater than it is. There is an erroneous idea, or imagination shall I call it — and certainly it is one of the moral delusions of the world — that something gained by another, is something lost to one's self : and hence the feeling, before described, may arise at almost any indifferent instance of good fortune. But it always rises in this proportion : it is stronger, the nearer the case comes to direct competition. , You do not envy a rich man in China, nor a great man in Tartary. But if envy, as it has been sometimes called, were pure malignity, a man should be sorry that any body is happy, that any body is fortunate or honoured in the world. But this is not true ; it does not apply to human nature. If you ever feel pain at the successes or acquisitions of another, it is when they come into comparison or contrast with your own failures or deficiencies. You feel that those successes or acquisitions might have been your own ; you regret, and perhaps rightly, that they are not; and then, you insensibly slide into the very wrong 2*

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feeling of regret, that they belong to another. This is envy ; and it is sufficiently base ; but it is not purely malicious, and it is, in fact, the perversion of a feeling originally capable of good and valuable uses.

But I must pursue the sceptical philosopher a step farther ; into actual life. The term, philosopher, may seem to be but ill applied here ; but we have probably all of us known or heard those, who, pretending to have a considerable knowledge of the world, if not much other knowledge, take upon them with quite an air of philosophic superiority, to pronounce human nature nothing but a mass of selfishness ; and to say that this mass, whenever it is refined, is only refined into luxury and licentiousness, duplicity and knavery. Some simple souls they suppose there may be, in the retired corners of the earth, that are walking in the chains of mechanical habit or superstitious piety, who have not the knowledge to understand nor the courage to seek, what they want. But the moment they do act freely, they act, says our objector, upon the selfish principle. And this he maintains is the principle which, in fact, governs the world. Nay more, he avers, that it is the only reasonable and sufficient principle of action ; and freely confesses that it is his own.

Let me ask you here to keep distinctly in view the ground, which the objector now assumes. There are talkers against human virtue, who never think however of going to this length ; men in fact, who are a great deal better than their theory ; whose example, indeed, refutes their theory. But there are worse objectors and worse men ; vicious and corrupt men ; sensualists ; sensualists in philosophy, and in practice alike ; who would gladly believe all the rest of the world as bad as themselves. And these are objectors,

ON HUMAN NATURE.

I say, who like the objections before stated, refute themselves.

For who is this small philosopher, that smiles, either at the simplicity of all honest men, or at the simplicity of all honest defenders of them ? He is, in the first place, a man who stands up before us, and has the face to boast, that he is himself without principle. No doubt, he thinks other men as bad as himself. A man necessarily, perhaps, judges the actions of other men by his own feelings. He has no other interpreter. The honest man, therefore, will often presume honesty in another ; and the generous man, generosity. And so the selfish man can see nothing around him but selfishness ; and the knave, nothing but dishonesty ; and he who never felt any thing of a generous and self-devoting piety, who never bowed down in that holy and blessed worship, can see in prayer nothing but the offering of selfish fear ; in piety, nothing but a slavish superstition.

In the next place, this sneerer at all virtue and piety, not only imagines others to be as destitute of pvinciple as himself ; bat to some extent, he makes them such, or makes them seem such. His eye of pride chills every goodly thing it looks upon. His breath of scorn blights every generous virtue where it comes. His supple and crafty hand puts all men upon their guard. They become like himself, for the time ; they become more crafty while they deal with him. How shall any noble aspiration, any high and pure thoughts, any benevolent purposes, any sacred and holy communing, venture into the presence of the proud and selfish scorner of all goodness ! It has been said, that the letters your friends write to you, will show their opinion of your temper and tastes. And so it is, to a certain extent, with conversation.

ON HUMAN NATURE.

But in the third place, where, let us ask, has this man studied human nature ? Lord Chesterfield observes— and the observation is worthy of a man who never seems to have looked beneath the surface of any thing — that the Court and the Camp are the places, in which a knowledge of mankind is to be gained. And we may remark, that it is from two fields not altogether dissimilar, that our sceptic about virtue always gains his knowledge of mankind : I mean, from fashion and business: the two most artificial spheres of active life. Our objector has witnessed heartless civilities, and imagines that he is acquainted with the deep fountains of human nature. Or he has been out into the paths of business, and seen men girt up for competition, and acting in that artificial state of things which trade produces ; and he imagines that he has witnessed the free and unsophisticated workings of the human heart ; he supposes that the laws of trade, are also the laws of human affection. He thinks himself deeply read in the book of the human heart, that unfathomable mystery, because he is acquainted with notes and bonds, with cards and compliments.

How completely, then, is this man disqualified from judging of human nature ! There is a power, which few possess, which none have attained in perfection ; a power to unlock the retired, the deeper and nobler sensibilities of men's minds, to draw out the hoarded and hidden virtues of the soul, to open the fountains which custom and ceremony and reserve have sealed up : it is a power, I repeat, which few possess — how evidently does our objector possess it not — and yet without some portion of which, no man should think himself qualified to study human nature. Men know but little of each other, after all ; but little know how many good and tender affections are suppressed and

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kept out of sight, by diffidence, by delicacy, by the fear of appearing awkward or ostentatious, by habits of life, by education, by sensitiveness, and even by strong sensibility, that sometimes puts on a hard and rough exterior for its own check or protection. And the power that penetrates all these barriers, must be an extraordinary one. There must belong to it charity, and kindness, and forbearance, and sagacity, and fidelity to the trust which the opening heart reposes in it. But how peculiarly, I repeat, how totally devoid of this power of opening and unfolding the real character of his fellows, must be the scoffer at human nature !

I have said that this man gathers his conclusions from the most formal and artificial aspects of the world. He never could have drawn them from the holy retreats of domestic life — to say nothing of those deeper privacies of the heart of which I have just been speaking ; he never could have drawn his conclusions from those family scenes, where unnumbered, nameless, minute, and indescribable sacrifices are daily made, by thousands and ten thousands all around us ; he never could have drawn them from the self-devoting mother's cares, or from the grateful return, the lovely assiduity and tenderness of filial affection ; he never could have derived his contemptuous inference from the sick-room, where friendship, in silent prayer, watches and tends its charge. No : he dare not go out from our dwellings, from our temples, from our hospitals — he dare not tread upon the holy places of the land, the high places where the devout have prayed, and the brave have died, and proclaim that patriotism is a visionary sentiment ; and piety a selfish delusion ; and charity a pretence ; and virtue, a name !

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II. But it is time that we come now to the objection of the Theologian. And I go at once to the single and strong point of his objection. The Theologian says that human nature is bad and corrupt. Now, taking this language in the practical and popular sense, I find no difficulty in agreeing with the Theologian. And, indeed, if he would confine himself — leaving vague and general declamation and technical phraseology — if he would confine himself to facts ; if he would confine himself to a description of actual bad qualities and dispositions in men, I think he could not well go too far. Nay more, I am not certain that any Theologian's description so far as it is of this nature, has gone deep enough into the frightful mass of human depravity. For it requires an acute perception, that is rarely possessed, and a higher and holier conscience, perhaps, than belongs to any, to discover and to declare, hoio bad, and degraded and unworthy a being, a bad man is. I confess that nothing would beget in me a higher respect for a man, than a real — not a theological and factitious — but a real and deep sense of human sinfulness and unworthiness ; of the grievous wrong which man does to himself, to his religion and to his God, when he yields to the evil and accursed inclinations that find place in him. This moral indignation is not half strong enough, even in those who profess to talk the most about human depravity. And the objection to them is, not that they feel too much or speak too strongly, about the actual wickedness, the actual and distinct sins of the wicked ; but they speak too generally and vaguely of human wickedness, that they speak with too little discrimination to every man as if he were a murderer or a monster, that they speak in fine too argumentatively, and