Studies of Christianity

Contents

Pacw

Introductobt Thoughts, from Mr. Martineau*s Writings v

Christianity without Priest and without Ritual . 35

Introduction

The American Unitarian Association in 1835 reprinted from the English edition, among their Tracts, a Sermon on " The Existing State of Theology as an Intellectual Pursuit and of Religion as a Moral Influence." Its rare merits elicited great praise. Its author was the Rev. James Martineau, then a settled minister in Liverpool. Since that time, his occasional publications from year to year have been winning a wider audience, and awakening a deeper admiration. The history of his mind has been a broadening track of light. And now the Association feel that they cannot do a greater favor to the reading public, or better aid that cause of Liberal Christianity whose servants they are, than by printing a collection of the later writings of this gifted man, whom they first introduced to American Unitarians a quarter of a century ago.

Tlie list of works prefixed to the article here entitled " Distinctive Types of Christianity," as it appeared in the Westminster Review, and the opening sentence referring to them, have been accidentally omitted. Two or three of the papers belong to the author's earlier years, but are inserted here equally on account

INTRODUCTION.

of their eminent ability, their special timeliness, and their striking adaptation to the general purpose of the work ; namely, to throw light on the true nature of Christianity. They will also be new to most of those whom they now reach. The last paper in the volume is one of the first its writer published, in his comparative youth. We shall be disappointed if the benignant wisdom and moral fidelity of its catholic lessons do not secure a sympathetic response in many a quarter once closed against such appeals.

In selecting from Mr. Martineau's numerous invaluable articles, not already published in book-form, the contents of the present work, the rule has not been so much to choose the ablest productions, as to take those best fitted to meet the wants of the time, by diffusing among ministers, students of divinity, and the cultivated laity a knowledge of the most advanced theological and religious thought yet attained. We regret that the necessary limits of the volume exclude several of the author's most instructive and inspiring essays ; particularly the magnificent one in the National Review upon "Newman, Coleridge, and Carlyle" ; also the one upon " Lessing as a Theologian."

We have called this volume " Studies of Christianity," simply as a convenient indication of the general character of its contents. In justice to the author, it should be borne in mind that the separate papers were prepared to meet various occasions, without a suspicion that they would ever be brought together to form a book. Of course they do not express his complete views of the mighty subject which they fragmentarily treat. The relative order and rank of his convictions, the interpretation of Christianity from its inner side, appear much better in his " Endeavors after the Chris-

INTRODUCTION. ix

tian Life," — by far the richest and noblest series of sermons in the English language. Still, a kind of unity pervades the different pieces composing this collection. One Christ-like strain of sentiment breathes through them all. The same consecrating fealty to truth presides over them all. The same grand outline of principles and unvarying standard of judgment are constantly evident. The same marvellous acumen, breadth of learning, and exquisite culture, everywhere appear. Each article is more or less directly an illustration of Christianity, as something moral, spiritual, vital, dynamic, to be practically assimilated by the soul, in distinction from the common exposition of it, as something sacerdotal, dogmatic, formal, forensic, once enacted and now to be mimetically observed. The energetic patience of labor, the detersive intellect, the unalloyed devoutness of spirit, the telescopic range both of faculty and equipment, revealed even in these wayside products, awaken in us an unappeasable desire for a more purposed and systematic work from the same mind, now in its fullest maturity. In the mean time we will express our grateful appreciation of the contributions already furnished, by giving them further circulation, assured that no truly pious and intelligent person, free from bigotry and shackles, can peruse them without receiving equal measures of delight and profit. Mr. Martineau is so thoroughly acquainted with the processes and results of spiritual experience, with the sciences of nature, and with the whole realm of metaphysical philosophy, and his own wealthy faculties are so tenacious in their activity and freshness, that every subject he touches receives novelty, light, and ornament. He is emphatically a teacher for the teachers, — a greater guide and master for the common

INTRODUCTION.

guides and masters. Traversing the whole domain of human contemplation with the defining lines of analysis, clothing the severe materials of science with the colors of aesthetic art, he sheds on every theme the illumination of intellectual genius, and transfuses every thought with the distinctive sentiments of piety. Thus is afforded that rarest of all spectacles, — and the one now most needed by the cultivated religious world, — of a man who is greatly endowed at once as philosopher, poet, and Christian, and who with simultaneous earnestness in each capacity is devoted, by the whole labors of his life, to the instruction of mankind.

For these reasons, we feel it a duty to attract as much attention as possible to Mr. Martineau's past and expected publications. The peerless intelligence, the bracing fidelity, the essential nobleness and catholicity, the tender beauty and reverence, of his utterances, his consummate mastery of the great topics he handles, seem to us fitted in a solitary degree to meet the highest wants of the age, — to do divine service in the conflict of scepticism, sensuality, and decay against all that is truest and purest in the religious faith and moral life of Christendom. Therefore, to persons who, unacquainted with the author's previous works, may read the papers here collected, we would recommend as the best books for educated and earnest Christian thinkers, Mr. Martineau's " Rationale of Religious Inquiry," tlie volume of his " Miscellanies " edited by the Rev. T. S. King, and the two series of " Endeavors after the Christian Life " recently republished in one volume by Messrs. Munroe and Company.

We shall make up the rest of this introductory paper by quoting from some of Mr. Martineau's articles, not generally accessible, a few specimens of those thoughts

INT1RODUCTION. Xl

which, if freely received in these times of theological doubt and turmoil, would lead many a religious thinker towards the truth and peace he covets.

How clearly the following passage shows the true

RELATION BETWEEN NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

The contempt with which it is the frequent practice of divines to treat the grounds of natural rehgion, betrays an ignorance both of the true office of revelation and of the true wants of the human heart. It cannot be justified, except on the supposition that there is some contradiction between the teachings of creation and those of Christ, with some decided preponderance of proof in favor of the latter. Even if the Gospel furnished a series of perfectly new truths, of which nature had been profoundly silent, it would be neither reasonable nor safe to fix exclusive attention on these recent and historical acquisitions, and prohibit all reference to those elder oracles of God, by which his Spirit, enshrined in the glories of his universe, taught the fathers of our race. And if it be the function of Christianity not to administer truth entirely new, but to corroborate by fresh evidence, and invest with new beauty, and publish to the millions with a voice of power, a faith latent already in the hearts of many, and scattered through the speculations of the wise and noble few, — to erect into realities the dreams which had visited a half-inspired philosophy, interpreting the life and lot of man ; — then there is a relation between the religion of nature and that of Christ, — a relation of original and supplement, — which renders the one essential to the apprehension of the other. Revelation, you say, has given us the clew by which to thread the labyrinth of creation, and extricate ourselves from its passages of mystery and gloom. Be it so ; still, there^ in the scene thus cleared of its perplexity, must our worship be paid, and the manifestations of Deity be sought. If the use of revelation be to explain the perplexities of Prov-

Xii INTRODUCTION.

idence and life, it would be a strange use to make of the explanation were we to turn away from the thing explained. We hold the key of heaven in our hands. What folly to be for ever extolling and venerating it, whilst we prohibit all approach to the temple whose gates it is destined to unlock.

One would search long to find a finer illustration than is here given of the real

NATURE OF DEVOTION.

In Devotion there is this great peculiarity, — that it is neither the work nor the play of our nature, but is something higher than either, — more ideal than the one, more real than the other. All human activities besides are one of these two things, — either the mere aim at an external end, or the mere outcome of an inner feeling. On the one hand, we plough and sow, we build and navigate, that we may win the adornments and securities of life ; on the other hand, we sing and dance, we carve and paint, that we may put forth the pressure of harmony and joy and beauty breaking from within. Mechanical Toil terminates in a solid product ; graceful Art is content with simple expression ; but Religion is degraded when it is reduced to either character. It is not a labor of utility ; and he who looks to it as a means of safety, to ingratiate himself with an awful God, and bespeak an interest in a hidden Future, is an utter stranger to its essence ; his habits and words may be cast in its mould, but the spark of its life is not kindled in his heart. When fed by the fuel of prudence, the fire is all spent in fusing it into form ; and the finished product is a cold and metal mimicry, that neither moves nor glows. Nor is Religion a simple gesture of passion ; and to class it with mere natural language, to treat it as the rhythmical delirium of the soul working off an irrepressible enthusiasm, is to empty it of its real meaning and contents, and sink it from a divine attraction to a human excitement. The postures and movements and tones which

INTRODUCTION. XUl

simply manifest the impassioned mind are content to go off into space, and pass away ; they direct themselves no whither ; they have no more object than a convulsion ; they ask only leave to be the last shape of a feeling that must have way ; and be the inspiration what it may, they close and consummate its history. But he who prays is at the beginning of aspiration, not at the evaporating end of impulse; he is drawn, not driven ; he is not painting himself upon vacancy, but is surrendering himself to a Presence real and everlasting. If he flings out his arms, it is not in blind paroxysm, but that he may embrace and be embraced ; if he cries aloud, it is that he may be heard ; if he makes melody of the silent heart, it is no soliloquy flung into emptiness, but the lowbreathing love of spirit to Spirit. Devotion is not the play even of the highest faculties, but their deep earnest. It is no doubt the culminating point of reverence ; but reverence is impossible without an object, and could never culminate at all, or pass into the Infinite, unless its object did so too. In every case we find that the faculties and susceptibilities of a being tell true, and are the exact measure of the outer life it has to live; and just as many and as large proportions as it has, to just so many and so great objects does it stand related ; so that from the axis of its nature you may always draw the curve of its existence. Human worship, therefore, turning to the living God as the infant's eye to light, is itself a witness to Him whom it feels after and adores ; it is " the image and shadow of heavenly things," the parallel chamber in our nature with that Holy of Holies whither its incense ever ascends.

In a similar strain is this argument to show that

DEVOTION IS NOT A MISTAKE.

Be assured, all visible greatness of mind grows in looking at an invisible that is greater. And since it is inconceivable that what is most sublime in humanity should spring from visb xiv INTRODUCTION.

ion of a thing that is not, that what is most real and commanding with us should come of stretching the soul into the unreal and empty, that historic durability should be the gift of spectral fancies, Ave must hold these devout natures to be at one with everlasting Fact, — to feel truly that the august forms of Justice and Holiness are at home in heaven, the object there of clearer insight and more perfect veneration. There are those w^ho please themselves with the idea that the world will outgrow its habits of worship ; that the newspaper will supersede the preacher and prophet ; that the apprehension of scientific laws will replace the fervor of moral inspirations ; that this sphere of being will then be perfectly administered when no reference to another distracts attention. But, for my oami part, I am persuaded, that life would soon become intolerable on earth, were it copied from nothing in the heavens ; that its deeper affections would pine away and its lights of purest thought grow pale, if it lay shrouded in no Holy Spirit, but only in the wilderness of space. The most sagacious secular voice leaves, after all, a chord untouched in the human heart : listening too long to its didactic monotone, we begin to sigh for the rich music of hope and faith. The dry glare of noonday knowledge hurts the eye by plying it for use and denying it beauty ; and we long to be screened behind a cloud or two of moisture and of mystery, that shall mellow the glory and cool the air. Never can the world be less to us, than when we make it all in all.

Our author makes a striking reply to the common assertion that

"THEOLOGY IS NOT A PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE."

It may, however, be retrogressive ; and it is sure to repay flippant neglect by lending its empty space to mean delusions. To its great problems some answer will always be attempted ; and there is much to choose between the solutions, however imperfect, found by reverential wisdom, and the degrading

INTRODUCTION. XV

falsehoods tendered in reply by the indifferent and superficial. Even in their failures, there is a vast difference between the explorings of the seeing and the blind. We deny, however, that Christian theology can assume any aspect of failure, except to those who use a false measure of success. It is not in the nature of religion, of poetry, of art, to exhibit the kind of progress that belongs to physical science. They differ from it in seeking, not the phenomena of the universe, but its essence, — not its laws of change, but its eternal meanings, — not outward nature, in short, except as expressive of the inner thought of God ; and being thus intent upon the enduring spirit and very ground of things, they cannot grow by numerical accretion of facts and exacter registration of successions. They are the product, not of the patient sense and comparing intelligence which are always at hand, but of a deeper and finer insight, changing with the atmosphere of the affections and will. Instead of looking, therefore, for perpetual advance of discovery in theology, we should naturally expect an ebb and flow of light, answering to the moral condition of men's minds ; and may be content if the divine truth, lost in the dulness of a material age, clears itself into fresh forms with the returning breath of a better time.

Most readers will find suggestions of great freshness in the passage next cited : —

THE HEAET OF CHRISTIANITY.

To lose sight of this principle in estimating Christianity, and to insist on judging it, not by its matured character in Christendom, not by the unconscious spirit of its founders, but by their personal views and purposes, is to overlook the divine in it in order to fasten on the human; to seek the winged creature of the air in the throbbing chrysalis ; and is like judging the place of the Hebrews in history by the court and the proverbs of Solomon, or the value of Puritanism by the sermon of a hill-preacher before the civil war.

XVI INTRODUCTION.

The primitive Christianity was certainly different from that of other ages ; but there is no reason for believing that it was better. The representation often made of the early Church, as having only truth, and feeling only love, and living in simple sanctity, is contradicted by every page of the Christian records. The Epistles are entirely occupied in driving back guilt and passion, or in correcting errors of belief; nor is it always possible to approve of the temper in which they perform the one task, or to assent to the methods by which they attempt the other. Principles and affections were indeed secreted in the heart of the first disciples, which were to have a great future, and to become the highest truth of the world. But it was precisely of these that they rarely thought at all. The Apostles themselves speak slightingly of them, as baby's food ; and the great faith in God, the need of repentant purity of heart, with the trust in immortality, — the very doctrines which we should name as the permanent essence of Christian faith, — are expressly declared by them to be the childish rudiments of belief, on which the attention of the grown Christian will disdain to dwell. And what did they prefer to these sublime truths, as the nutriment of their life and the pride of their wisdom ? Allegories about Isaac and Ishmael, parallels between Christ and Melchisedec, new readings of history and prophecy to suit the events in Palestine, and a constant outlook for the end of all things. These were the grand topics on which their minds eagerly worked, and on which they labored to construct a consistent theory. These give the form to their doctrine, the matter to their spirit. These are what you will get, if you go indiscriminately to their writings for a creed : and these are no more Christianity than the pretensions of Hildebrand or the visions of Swedenborg. The true religion lies elsewhere, just in the things that were ever present with them, but never esteemed. Just as your friend may spend his anxiety on his station, his usefulness, his appearance and repute, and fear lest he should show nothing deserving your regard, while all the time you love him for the pure graces, the native wild-flowers, of his

INTRODUCTION. Xvii

heart ; so do the choicest servants of God ever think one thing of themselves, while they are dear to him and revered by us for quite another. " The weak things " in the Church not less than in " the world hath he chosen to confound the mighty ; the simple, to strike dumb the wise ; and things that are not, to supersede the things that are."

In rude ages, and amid feudal customs, it has perhaps been no unhappy thing that this image of servitude has been transmitted into the conceptions of faith: it may have touched with some sanctity an inevitable submission, and mingled a sentiment of loyalty with religion. But the external relation of serf and lord is no type of the internal relation of spirit to spirit, which alone constitutes religion to us. To God himself, with all his infinitude, we are not slaves ; we are not his property^ but his children ; he regards us, not as things^ but as persons ; he does not so much command us, as appeal to us ; and in our obedience, it is not his bidding that we serve, but that divine Law of Right of which he makes us conscious as the rule of His nature only more perfectly than of ours. To obey him as slaves, in fear, and with an eye upon his power, is, with all our punctuality and anxiety, simply and entirely to disobey him ; nor is anything precious in his sight, except the free consent of heart with which we apprehend what is holy to his thought and embrace what is in harmony with his perfection. Still less can we be slaves to Christ, who is no autocrat to us, but our freely followed leader towards God ; the guide of our pilgrim troop in quest of a holy land ; who gives us no law from the mandates of his will, but only interprets for us, and makes burn within us, in characters of fire, the law of our own hearts ; who has no power over us, except through the affections he awakens and the aspirations he sets upon the watch. We have emerged from the Religion of Law, whose only sentiment is that of obedience to sovereignty ; we have passed from the religion of Salvation, whose life consists in gratitude to a Deliverer ; and we are capable only of a religion of reverence, which bows before the authority of Goodness, And in the infinite ranks

XVIU INTRODUCTION.

of excellence, from the highest to the lowest, there are no lords and slaves ; the dependence is ever that of internal charm, not of external bond ; the authority is but represented and impersonated in another and a better soul, but has its living seat within our own ; and in this true and elevating worship, the more we are disposed of by another, the more do we feel that we are our own. This is a relation wliich the political terms of the expected theocracy are ill adapted to express ; and if we have required many centuries to grope our way to this clearest glory of religion, to disengage it from the impure admixture of servile fear and revolting presumption ; if it has taken long for us to melt away in our imagination the images of thrones and tribunals, of prizegivings and prisons, of a police and assizes of the universe ; if only at the eleventh hour of our faith, the cloud has passed away, and shown us the true angel-ladder that springs from earth to heaven, the pure climax of souls whereon each below looks up and rises, yet each above bends down and helps ; — the discovery which brings such peace and freedom to the heart, has been delayed by the mistaken identification of the entire creed of the first age with the essence of Christianity. Now that God has shown us so much more, has tried the divine seed of the Gospel on so various a soil of history, and enabled us to distinguish its fairest blossoms and its choicest fruits, a much larger meaning than was possible at first must be given to the purpose of his revelation. Even to Paul, Christ was mainly the great representative of a theocratic idea ; and was in no other sense an object of spiritual belief, than that he was not on earth and mortal, but in heaven and immortal. That faith in Christ, which then prominently denoted belief in his appointed return, and allegiance to him as God's viceroy in this world, is now transferred into quite a different thing. It is altogether a moral and affectionate sentiment : an acknowledgment of him as the highest impersonation of divine excellence and inspired insight yet given to the world ; a trust in him as the only realized type of perfection that can mediate for us betw:een ourselves and God 5

INTRODUCTION. xix

a faithfulness to him, as making us conscious of what we are and what God and our conscience would have us to be. It is vain to pretend that revelation is a fixed and stereotyped thing. It was born, as the divinest things must be, among human conditions ; and into it ever since human conditions have perpetually flowed. The elements of Hebrew thought surrounded the sacred centre at first, and have been erroneously identified with it by all Unitarian churches in every age. The Hellenic intellect afterwards streamed towards the fresh point of life and faith, and gathered around it the metaphysical system of Trinitarian dogma in which orthodox communions of all times have, with parallel error, sought the essence of the Gospel. The true principle of the religion has been secreted in both, and consisted in neither: it has lain unnoticed in the midst, in the silent chamber of the heart, around which the clamor of the disputatious intellect whirls without entrance. The agency of Christ's mind as the expression of God's moral nature and providence, and as the realized ideal of beauty and excellence, — this is the power of God and the wisdom of God, which has made vain the counsels of the world, and bafiled the foolishness of the Church. This is the Gospel's centre of stability, — " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

Few persons can be insensible to the sublimity of this expression upon the relation between

CHRIST, NATURE, PROVIDENCE, AND GOD.

In conclusion, then, I revert, with freshened persuasion, to the statement with which I commenced. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God hath presented to us simply in his inspired humanity. Him we accept, not indeed as very God, but as the true image of God, commissioned to show what no written doctrinal record could declare, the entire moral perfections of Deity. We accept, not indeed his body, not the struggles of his sensitive nature, not the travail of his soul, but

XX INTRODUCTION.

his purity, his tenderness, his absolute devotion to the great idea of right, his patient and compassionate warfare against misery and guilt, as the most distinct and beautiful expression of the Divine mind. The peculiar office of Christ is to supply a new moral image of Providence ; and everything, therefore, except the moral complexion of his mind, we leave behind as human and historical merely, and apply to no religious use. I have already stated in what way nature and the Gospel combine to bring before us the great object of our trust and worship. The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ, his Spirit. We climb to the infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of light. We dive into his eternity, through the ocean waves of time, that roll and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his intellect, and the majesty of his rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the spirit that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Nazareth ; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One that passed no sorrow by. The government of this world, its mysterious allotments of good and ill, its successions of birth and death, its hopes of progress and of peace, each life of individual or nation, is under the administration of One, of whose rectitude and benevolence, whose sympathy with all the holiest aspirations of our virtue and our love, Christ is the appointed emblem. A faith that spreads around and within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the light of every pure affection, and presses with omnipotent power on the conscience ; and our only prayer is, that we may walk as children of such light.

It seems as if no one capable of understanding could resist the convincing cogency of the following exhibition of

INTRODUCTION. XXI

THE IDEA OF VICARIOUS JUSTICE.

It is only natural that the parable of the Prodigal Son should be no favorite with those who deny the unconditional mercy of God. The place which this divine tale occupies in the Unitarian theology appears to be filled, in the orthodox scheme, by the story of Zaleucus, king of the Locrians ; which has been appealed to in the present controversy by both the lecturers on the Atonement, and seems to be the only endurable illustration presented, even by Pagan history, of the execution of vicarious punishment. This monarch had passed a law condemning adulterers to the loss of both eyes. His own son was convicted of the crime ; and, to satisfy at once the claims of law and of clemency, the royal parent " commanded one of his own eyes to be pulled out, and one of his son's." Is it too bold a heresy to confess that there seems to me something heathenish in this example, and that, as an exponent of the Divine character, I more willingly revere the Father of the prodigal than the father of the adulterer ?