Christian morals

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Chapter II

The first thing, then, which great and good men, many ages back would have done to make you like themselves, would have been this : they would have gone, when you were an infant, to your cradle, or even before you were strong enough to lie in a cradle, while your eyes were scarcely open, and your little tiny fingers were moving faintly about, as if to find out where you were ; and, hour after hour, you were sleeping without sense on your mother's breast, or wearying her with little cries, which neither you could explain, nor she understand — these great and good men, I say, would have come to find you, and would have bade your mother and your father bring you, as a foul, polluted, accursed thing, against which God was wroth, and over which the spirits of evil were permitted to have dominion, to a place which they would appoint. And your parents would undoubtedly have obeyed. With all their love and pity for you, though they might willingly have died to do you good, they would still have confessed that you were thus polluted, and accursed, and a prey to evil spirits, and that by themselves they were powerless to rescue you from this state of misery and shame. Now is not this a mystery, a strange thing, which you cannot understand ? You did not make yourself — you had no choice in your parents, no power to do a single act ; you lay there feeble, ignorant, half blind, half deaf, at the mercy of others ; never having heard of God, never having disobeyed his voice, unstained by any offence to man, and the b 2 b NECESSITY OF TESTIMONY.

object of tenderest love and compassion to all about yon. Your mother would hang over you hour by hour, her eyes rilled with tears at the joy now following her great anguish ; clasping you to her breast as her precious treasure ; thinking nothing of cold, or pain, or watching, or hunger, while you could be satisfied. Your father would leave his work or his business to come and watch over your cradle. Your little brothers would gather round to look at you while you were sleeping, and disturb you by trying to kiss you, that they might shew their affection. Neighbours, and even strangers, would interest themselves about you, visit you, talk of you, and, if death had come upon you then, would have mourned for you. And if you were the firstborn — born to great riches or rank — your entrance into the world would be announced to it as an event in which many hearts were called on to rejoice. The rich would be invited to congratulate — the poor would be fed — the house gladdened — every thing would be full of exultation, and gratitude, and hope, because you were born into the world — you, who all the time were lying in helpless ignorance, not merely helpless and ignorant, but, as wise and holy men would declare, under the wrath and curse of God! Would not this be a mysterious tale to tell a stranger?

Now I do not ask you yet to consider if there are not more mysteries of this same kind — more cases within your own experience, where men, and boys, and children, may be objects of aversion and anger to others, without being aware of it themselves, or having done any thing to deserve it by their own will and deed — more cases were common people may be rejoicing in hope and triumph over beings who ought really to be pitied. When you become older, you will learn that to look first to your own

CH. II.] NECESSITY OF TESTIMONY. 7

experience, to your own understanding, or to your own notions of right and wrong, is not the wisest or safest way of solving mysteries. Let us rather think, who are these persons who would have come, as I described, to your cradle, given this account of your condition, and bade your father and mother do as they commanded, to save you from it. Are they persons whom you ought to trust — whom it would be great presumption and mere folly for you to despise ?

In the first place, who are you that you should despise any one ? You are not wise, otherwise you would not require instruction ; nor strong, for you cannot preserve your life without assistance ; nor experienced, for the world is immeasurable, and time infinite, and of these you see but a part — and think how small a part! All that you are quite sure of is the present moment ; just as if you were imprisoned in a dungeon, and only one little eyelethole could be discovered in the roof, over which some hand without were drawing a long infinite series of objects, and only one to be seen at a time. Of the future you know nothing ; it is all dark. You walk on ; but beyond the ground on which you fix your foot, you cannot see a step. You guess, hope, fear, imagine, anticipate ; and very often hopes, and fears, and anticipations come true ; but they are but guesses after all, and guesses are not knowledge. And so, too, of the past. Upwards of five thousand years have passed since man was created. Millions of men have been scattered over the face of the earth, have seen sights, and done deeds, and collected observations, of which how little do you know ! How far have you journeyed from your own home ? What countries and nations have you seen ? What have you read from those innumerable volumes in which the learning of men lies

8 NECESSITY OF FAITH IN TESTIMONY.

buried as in a catacomb ? And if you thus know nothing of the earth, how much less have you seen of heaven — of those illimitable regions, sown with myriads of stars, each star a world — each leading the eye beyond it into immeasurable depths of space — each subject to laws, performing works, obeying the will of its Creator ; but whose laws, and works, and obedient movements, no human eye has yet done more than guess at?

I say, then, that you are not in a capacity to despise any one — to deny any fact which you may receive from the testimony of others, unless it is refuted by other and superior testimony. You cannot say what may, or may not, be. All that you know beyond the thought of the moment, you must take upon trust from others. You must live upon their contributions ; trade with their capital ; build on their foundations ; follow in their footsteps ; — or you must perish. In one word, your whole existence depends on the belief of testimony.

Now, as all that I — this little book, which you hold in your hand — intend to say to you, is built on this fact, lay me down for a moment, and consider if it is not so. And I will just suggest to you some simple obvious heads, under which to make the trial.

First, then, consider what takes place whenever you eat or drink ; and eat and drink you must often, or you will certainly die. Now what do you know of your food? You have never seen it prepared; you see little of its contents, still less of its effect upon your frame. You take it on the testimony of those who serve it up to you — of the servant, the cook, the baker, the confectioner, the butcher, the grocer, the vintner, of every one who has been engaged in preparing it, or any part of it ; and each of whom had it in his power to insert poison, or to

CH. II.] NECESSITY OF FAITH TN TESTIMONY. 9

omit something which renders it nutritious. And yet you believe what they tell you, without asking ; and if you refuse to believe them, you cannot eat at all. And what is to become of you ?

You talk with your companion, with your master, your parent, your servant. Now all that you hear are certain sounds issuing from his mouth, and you see certain movements of the face ; and from these two together you conjecture what is passing in his mind — in that mind which you never saw, and never can see in this life ; but without knowing the movement of which, you may as well live with an automaton or a stone statue. And we all know how easy it is to feign words and dress up the countenance ; and every one about you, who speaks to you, may have a real interest in deceiving you. Some of them may have great powers of deceit, and take delight in it. Not one in a thousand either could, or would unveil to you the whole state of his heart and mind. And yet if you distrust them, if you will not believe that they speak truth, how will you live with them? You cannot converse with them, nor be instructed by them, nor learn their character, nor love, nor please, nor guard against, nor influence them, nor establish any communication whatever with them, unless you take their testimony to what is passing within them. And without such communication daily and hourly, I ask again, what is to become of you ?

Take another instance. How much of your life must depend on acting upon general rules ! that is, on a knowledge, not only of individual facts, as that, on taking this drug, death has followed — on following this path, a man has fallen into a pit, — but rather of the universal principles wrought out by experiment and induction, that such drugs always will produce death, that such and such paths always

10 NECESSITY OF FAITH IN TESTIMONY.

do terminate in pitfalls. Every action in life, which proceeds from the higher exercise of reason, must start with general principles of this kind. But where are you to get them, if testimony is not to be admitted ? How many are deduced from experiments, which have been, and will be again, fatal to the experimenters ? how many from observations within the reach of a few only! how many from facts which are past, and may never return again ! Will you throw them aside — commence forming a new stock for yourself — hazard every thing in the act of forming them — and, after all, receive them upon human testimony, the testimony of your own senses, instead of the combined senses of many others ?

These are but a few of the cases in which testimony is all in all. Of the past, of the distant, of every thing beyond the range of your own eye and ear — even then, of the certainty and correctness of your own perception, — of all universal truths, of all more recondite experiences, which have not happened to fall within your own narrow field of inquiry, of the heart and mind of man, and of all that passes within it ; in other words, of all that is invisible (and how much of our existence, even in this world of sense, depends on things invisible ?) ; of all this, without testimony, you can know nothing.

And therefore I say to you, that when good and wise men — when any men come forward, and assert any thing, however strange and mysterious, the first thought should be, not to reject the testimony, because the fact is strange, but to incline to admit the fact, because testimony is the natural channel for conveying such strange knowledge to man.

What, then, you will ask, am I to be credulous, superstitious, a listener to old wives' fables ? Am I to have no discernment, no judgment of my own ?

CH. II.] FAITH NOT DANGEROUS. 11

I answer, that you ought to be credulous — a listener to every thing — to exercise no judgment of your own in opposition to accredited testimony. Do not begin with doubting, but begin with believing. Belief is natural, doubt is not ; belief is a virtue, doubt is a sin. Why is it you fear to believe ? because some evil may follow ? Consider, for a moment, even in the worst instances, if believing the word of others is thus dangerous. Grant that we should put trust in every thing, what evil would follow ? Of all that range of knowledge which is merely speculative, and involves no practical risk — as of geography, history, natural science, geometry, astronomy, — it is little man's interest to deceive ; his discoveries are nothing, unless supported by learning and reasoning ; they are open to correction at each point, and must be corrected step by step, exactly in proportion as they are brought into action. You read Bruce' s Travels. They sound strange ; but what harm arises from believing them to be true, even though indeed they were false? And what good proceeds from doubting? For it is better to have the mind filled with innocent fairy tales, and visions of the fancy, than to keep it empty, and cold, and lonely, without an occupant.

And as for facts which lead to action, how rarely are men interested in deceiving you ! A robber may wish to entrap you to a solitary spot by some false tale ; a beggar may delude you by a fiction of distress. But these cases are not the ordinary dealings of men, and carry with them their own safeguard. For the most part, men are more disposed to warn you against evil by their testimony, than to delude you into it. They are alarmists ; they like to exaggerate ; they are fond of exciting wonder, and sympathy, and emotion ; of spreading terror, of exercising power in deterring

12 god's witnesses.

you from action, of leading you away with themselves from possible mischief, rather than of drawing you on to share in a doubtful good. And when they do attempt to deceive, how hard they find it not to betray themselves by inconsistencies !

Now these are provisions of nature , or, rather, never say nature, but of Almighty God, the Lord and Master of nature ; these are his provisions for guarding you from hurt, when you obey his will, and put your trust in the words of men. But he has made a -still better provision. He takes care that from your earliest childhood, you should have standing by your side his own appointed witnesses — witnesses of truth and good ; not indeed infallible, but least of human beings likely to err or to mislead you ; so that your ears may be preoccupied by them, and every suggestion of evil, however mighty the testimony to it, may be met by a previous testimony still mightier against it. God has given you Parents, whose interest, as well as duty, is to secure you from harm — whose authority is founded on a commission from Him, by whose law man does not spring out of the earth, but is moulded at the breast of his mother — whose knowledge is rarely their own invention, but the common treasure of approved human wisdom. He has given you, moreover, Society, — Society, with its governors and laws; its governors, like parents, commissioned from heaven ; its laws having their root in the revealed will of God ; and both, even from the instinct of self-preservation, compelled to wish that you should do what is good, and obtain what will make ' you happy. At any rate, they are both of them ministers and representatives of God. They are not formed by man. They derive their power by delegation from heaven ; and as such they claim your obedience. If they speak what God has put into their mouths, you can-

CH, II.] god's first two witnesses. 13

not err in following them ; if they speak for their own profit, yet obey them, as set over you by God, until you have from God some positive command to the contrary brought to you by ministers more formally accredited, with superior powers ; and he ivill bear you safe from harm. For this is the real question for your consideration : Are these witnesses, whose voice I am called on to obey, sent by another, or do they come of themselves ? Are they appointed, instituted, regularly commissioned to deliver a message from Gocl, or are they self-taught, and mere human agents ? Ask this of your parents ; ask it of your king and civil governors ; ask it, above all, of those who come to you with especial warnings and spiritual communications. Did you appoint them ? Did they appoint themselves ? Do they date their authority from man? If so, you must follow them at your own risk. In obedience there is no virtue, for you are not obeying God. There is even sin, for you cannot follow two masters ; and in following those whom God has not sent, you must be deserting those whom He has sent. And if they lead you by accident in the way which He would choose, there is no reward; for you are not thinking of God, but of man : and if, as they are sure to do, they lead you from the path into evil, there is no excuse ; for the evil has been of your own choosing.

Let me give you, then, in conclusion, for the present, these few short maxims : —

1. In all things act by testimony.

2. In all things take that testimony which is appointed for you by God ; which is given to you by persons set over you by His hand.

3. Never depart from this, unless you have the clearest and most indisputable dispensation, con-

14 god's first two witnesses.

veyed to you by an authority also set over you by God, but appointed as superior to them.

Or, in still fewer words,

Believe in and obey your parents. Believe in and obey your king ; and never dispute their voice, except you are commanded by — whom ?

I will tell you this in another chapter.

CH. III.] THE THIRD WITNESS OF GOD. 15

Chapter III

It is not unlikely that you think I am wandering from the subject. I began by saying, that in former times good men would have little thought of making you good by means of a book — a book on Ethics ; and I was about to tell you how they would have attempted to make you good, when the very first part of their proposal seemed to involve a strange mystery which startled us ; and I was obliged to go over a part, but only a part, of the many considerations which might fairly induce a man to listen to them submissively, and to put confidence in their words. For the men of whom I spoke, as coming to your cradle, if you had been born 1500 years ago, are not mere imaginary persons, who lived, and died, and passed away from the earth, leaving nothing but their names and their ashes behind them. They are persons with whom, even at this distance of time, you, who perhaps never heard before of them, or saw them, have a very close connexion. They were no relations to your family, yet are very near relations of yourself. They had no money, and never knew that such a being as you would be born ; and yet they laboured to preserve, and succeeded in transmitting for you, a greater inheritance than any earthly monarch ever accumulated for his son. Many more strange facts might be stated of them ; not the least, that it is their testimony to which, in the present day, we must look back through the long mist of years, whenever we want to know what is good and evil — what will make us

16 MINISTERS OF RELIGION.

happy — how we should try to become, what we all wish to become, perfect instead of imperfect, strong instead of weak, pure instead of impure, wise instead of fools.

These men are also the persons to whom you must look, by whose testimony you must abide, if ever your parent or your king, the appointed messengers of God, seem to betray their trust, and speak words which you ought not to obey.

Now all this is liable to much misinterpretation ; and there are not a few persons in the world who would put on, when they read it, a very grave face, and use very hard words, as if a little book containing such notions could only lead you into mischief. But let us consider together how the case really stands ; and when any person of any kind comes to you seriously with any statement whatever, never turn away in contempt without examining it, unless it be contradictory, positively contradictory, to something which you have been told before, and by better testimony. If it be not contradictory, it may be something which may be true, and which you may hold together with what you know already; and then, in rejecting it, you would lose an opportunity of gaining an accession to your knowledge, and of possessing two facts or principles instead of only one.

Now look round first in the place where you are living. Besides your parents, who are constantly telling you what to do and what not to do — and besides certain magistrates and civil officers, who, if you disobeyed the laws of the land, would proceed to punish you, and who, therefore, stand to you as witnesses of good and evil — besides these, who both have been placed over you by God, parents through the arrangements of nature, magistrates through the appointment of that supreme power in the state, the King, who is ordained of God — besides these, there

CH. III.] MINISTERS OF RELIGION. 17

are certain other persons, — I should fear there would be more than o?ie, — who call themselves ministers of God. They profess that God has sent them with an especial message in their hands — a message (they would say) not invented by themselves — containing promises and threatenings, which, as men, they can have no power to enforce , and advice, which, if it comes from them as men, is little better to be regarded than the words of any ordinary fellow-mortal. All this message, and these promises and threatenings, this advice, thus proffered to you, turns precisely on the same subject on which I am now speaking to you — they turn on Christian Morals. They profess to tell you what you ought to do, in order to make yourself what you ought to be, perfectly good, perfectly happy, and perfectly wise. But they differ very much as to the nature of the message ; and, in particular, each declares, that he himself is the only one right, and that all others who have not the same credentials with himself are impostors. On every Sunday, at least, one of those professed ministers of God rises up in the old sacred building especially called the church, and to which, and to no other, those who know the truth and value your soul would hope that you go ; and he there, after many prayers, addresses you on some portion of our present subject — Christian Ethics. On the same day, other persons, claiming the same title of respect, rise up in other places, which they may not call holy, and there discourse to other persons on some portion of this same subject — -Christian Morals; telling them how they ought to live — how they can make themselves happy — what they ought to become.

Now, I need not tell you that these are the most

important questions which man can discuss — that

they are the questions on which, as a rational being,

you must rule your whole life : and we have agreed

c 2

18 THEIK WITNESS NECESSARY.

(have we not ?) that in answering these, as in obtaining any other knowledge, we must be mainly at least, (I should be inclined even to say exclusively,) guided by the testimony of others who have lived longer and known more than ourselves. We agreed also that the first testimony to which we should look is that of our parents — then that of the laws of the land ; and for this reason, that both of these are in some sense set over us by God ; and therefore that in obeying them, we might be endeavouring to obey God, and so should at least be safe from provoking his anger against us, however we might err ; for he would be satisfied with our wish and intention to do his will, even if we happened to be misled by others in its meaning. And both our parents and our civil governors agree that it is necessary for us to have, beside themselves, some other instructors in Christian ethics. They say, we have either not time, or not sufficient knowledge, or not opportunities, or, what is more true, we have no authority to undertake a certain portion of the education which is requisite to teach you your duty, and ensure you your happiness. They point to this class of persons, of whom you spoke just now, the professed ministers of God, as joined with themselves in this task, and they refer you to them for information and guidance. Your Parents, on Sundays, take you to church — or if, unhappily, they have departed from the church, they take you to a meeting house — and the Laivs of the land are full of rules relative to the clergy, as a body co-operating with the government in the education of the people. Parent, King, and Clergy, then, are the three authorized witnesses of God to whom you must listen. You cannot omit one without great danger and folly. And if they all happen to agree, your course is clear before you. And time was when they did agree — happier times

CH. Ill] THEIR WITNESS NECESSARY. 19

than the present — and times to which I would recall you, in speaking of a period 1500 years ago ; but now they do not agree. Instead of one body of clergy, all teaching the same truths, and teaching by the same authority, every town, and almost every village, has two or more individuals professing to be ministers of God, and opposed to each other. And therefore, if you would think at all, and think you must, you will be compelled at one time or other to doubt, and ask which is the true minister of God — the one whom I have to follow — the one who witnesses most truly God's truths of Christian Morals, and will supply, what neither parents nor magistrates profess to give me, a certain, most important aid and instruction in the art of becoming wise, and good, and happy ?

You must make your decision. And, in making this decision, let us consider calmly and quietly together what will be the safest course.

And first, then, is it a light question ? Do your Parents, and does the State, tell you that it is a light thing, whether you add to their instruction the instruction of a minister of God ? Or is it not the first lesson which they would teach you ? Would they like you to read no religious books — to attend no religious worship — to make no prayers — to confine yourself to the lessons of your home, imperfect and often erroneous as they are, and to an abstinence from open crime, which is all the morality expressly contemplated by the statute-books of the land ? Or, do they tell you, that without religion you cannot be either obedient to them, a good son, or a good citizen, or happy and good in yourself, or any thing but a curse to your fellow- creatures. They may, indeed, at times neglect to tell you this ; or falter and hesitate in the selection of the religious teacher whom you are to follow ; but put the ques-

20 IMPORTANCE OF DISTINGUISHING THEM.

tion to them boldly, and they will answer at once, that religion you must have as a part of your ethics ; and to have religion, you must have a religious teacher of some kind or another distinct from themselves. In neglecting, therefore, to make some choice, you are neglecting their testimony ; and you must do it at the same peril as if you would put a light to gunpowder when they warned you against it, or persisted in refusing to consult a physician when they told you must die unless you did.

But consider another thing.

Suppose two or more men were some day to come before you, professing to bring each a message and communication from your sovereign ; let the message contain information of the highest importance to your interest, pointing out to you a mode of securing his favour, and threatening the severest penalties on disobedience ; or even without such conditions (for this is the better way to regard it), — let it be a simple message from your sovereign, suggesting a mere trifle. And when the messengers stand before you, let each charge the other with being an impostor each declare his own message true, and the other false. Will it be a light thing to determine which should be recognized ? Will not mere reverence for your sovereign require a careful examination into their respective pretensions ? Will you not risk much by sending them both away in contempt, because it may be difficult to decide between them, and insult your sovereign by rejecting his true messenger and message, because some one had forged another ?