"We,
on the contrary, fulfill every thing by that magic
phrase, "the destruction of Jerusalem." But can we
really and seriously refer these passages which I have
quoted from Paul, to the destruction Jerusalem? Can we
truly say that the rejection of the Jews and the calling
of the Gentiles, let that mean what it may, exhausted
all their meaning ---the meaning which was the thought
in Paul’s mind when he wrote them? I must confess I
cannot"
On leaving Preterist
Universalism: "I fear that we are in a poor sickly way
just now, by all I can read and hear. I fear we shall
remain a sect without hope of ever being anything
better. It does not look likely that the grub will ever
come to be a butterfly."
SERMON.
"IF ANY MAN SPEAK, LET HIM SPEAK AS THE ORACLES OF GOD.” 1
Peter 4:2
If
this Apostle could have cast a glance forward eighteen
centuries from his own day - if he could have known that the
world would have lasted so long, and had been asked what he
should suppose would the be the power of the Gospel in the
world, how do we think he might have answered? What, may we
reasonably imagine, Would have been his expectations? Would
it not have been a thing incredible to him to have imagined
the actual state of the world? Could he ever have supposed
that at the end of so many centuries, the Jews, his
brethren, according to the flesh, would be apparently as far
off as ever from acknowledging the faith Of Christ? Could he
ever have believed that Christianity would have proved so
powerless to lead the barbarian, and to throw light upon the
dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of
cruelty? And above all, could he ever have thought that
among Christians themselves Christianity would still remain
for the most part only an impracticable idea?
And
yet it is very much so. The Jew everywhere refuses to
acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ. The Pagan and the
Mahometan are found to be altogether inaccessible to any
amount of Christian evidences the Missionary enterprise
being only a cumbrous and expensive method of spreading the
arts of Civilization. And among Christians themselves,
essential Christianity, what themselves confess sometimes to
be pure and undefiled religion, is only an idea, a theory, a
beautiful speculation, or a something desirable, that
receives plenty of the cheap homage of any man speak, let
him speak as the oracles of God but practically we, the
preachers of liberal Christianity, have no such freedom. One
thing has impressed me very unfavorably in this land of
equal rights; I mean the tyrannous weight of public opinion.
I remark a want of individuality of character, and a slavish
submission to custom and usage on the part of the American
people, that beforehand I should never have expected.
Politically, socially, religiously- whether it be a Fugitive
Slave Law or a Maine Liquor Law, or a Church Creed- I see
the same spirit every where. And I have often asked myself,
remembering some things that I have preached, what would be
the consequence if I preached all I believed to be true or
might one day come to believe so. Could I be certain that me
own sect, for instance, would think as well of me as a man
and feel as kindly towards me, no matter what I might
believe the truth to be, or whether they would recieve or
reject it? If I should wander into the wilderness of
unbelief, (as they might call unbelief,) could I depend upon
them that, like the Good Shepherd we read of, they would be
ready to leave the ninety and nine righteous persons, and go
and seek the lost sheep till they found it; and when they
had found it would they bring it home again on their
shoulders rejoicing? If I should be obliged to doubt or deny
this or the other article of the creed, would they speak no
harsh word? would they do no unkind thing? would they be
found walking in the footsteps of Him, the divine heretic of
Nazareth of Galilee - of him who upbraided never his
unbelieving disciple, but rather gave him the desired proof,
“Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands; and reach
hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not
faithless but believing?” I think these questions are their
own sufficient answer. It has never been so hitherto. It is
not so now. It has never been but that the Christian sects,
like the Priest and Levite in the parable, have passed by
the poor unbelieving Samaritan on the other side of the way,
and have had no thought of going to him in what they
consider his distress, and binding up his wounds, pouring in
the oil and wine of Gospel peace and consolation. It has
never been but that they have passed him by, (9) merely
observing, perhaps, in passing, that ‘it is very sad;’ ‘that
it would only be a waste of time to attempt to convince such
an one;’ or that ‘such doubts and unbelief are just what is
to be expected from a weak intellect, and a vain, corrupt
heart.’
So
do the current Christianities treat with affected contempt,
those who doubt or disbelieve their philosophy are these-
that doubt and disbelief are an evidence of moral disease,
and that a sceptic must necessarily be a mournful,
melancholy being. That modest man and generous Christian,
the author of the “Eclipse of Faith,” thinks that “what may
be expected of a genuine sceptic is a modest hope that he
may be mistaken; a desire to be confuted; a retention of his
convictions as if they were a guilty secret, or the
promulgation of them as the utterance of an agonized heart
unable to suppress the language of its misery.” So they all
think -
______”they make the evil first
A
base, then pile a heap of censures on it.
‘Tis their
own sin supplies the scaffolding
And
mason work: they skillful, rear the grim
Unsightly fabric, and then point and say,
“How ugly is
it.” They meanwhile forget
“Tis their
own handy-work.”
This
is the way of them, to judge every thing and every body only
from their own point of view, and yet this is “liberty of
opinion” ; this “liberal Christianity.” How, I ask, is it to
be expected that with this vulgar prejudice, this most
ignorant common-place, this injurious and irreligious cant,
any man in the present pulpits can preach as the oracles of
God? – unless it be assumed, and the assumption be allowed,
that my sect, or your sect, or that other man’s sect has
appropriated all the oracles of God to itself, which, to say
true, is what they call claim in effect, if not in words.
But
suppose I try them on their own ground in this matter of
liberty of opinion.
I am
told, perhaps, that if any man speak as the oracles of God,
he will teach what the Bible teaches. Well, then, I inquire
upon this, how he is to ascertain what is the teaching of
the Bible; and I am further told say, that he is to find
what is the original sense of any Scripture- what was the
thought which the original writer had in his mind when he
wrote it. This, as far as I am able to discover in a thing
so dark with confusion, is the' received principle of
Scripture interpretation, at least among ourselves.
But
what if I object to it? What if I entirely dissent from it?
What if I say this is to bind our judgment to the opinions
and doctrines of men who have been dead these many
centuries, 'and who were strangers to the thoughts of these
latter days? What if I say this is to stereotype opinion?
What if I affirm that this is in effect to deny the great
law of human progress ; nay more, to deny all that can
constitute the Bible the Word of God, and to make the Bible
any thing rather than' the living oracles of God? What if I
ask where is the freedom' here only to be the poor
dependents upon what Prophets once believed, and Evangelists
and Apostles once preached? The great God; you say, makes
these earthen vessels called David and Isaiah, and Paul, and
Peter, the mediums of conveying his infinite love and wisdom
to the souls of men; and you say that those earthen vessels
were the exact measure of that love and wisdom, and knew all
about it. What an idea of revelation is this! What a
speaking as the oracles of God is here!-to believe that a
half dozen of men of the Hebrew race drained the last drop
of the river of the water of life. No wonder that theology
is complained of and despised as the only thing that is'
stationary in a world of continual change. A man must be
content merely to copy the ancient oracles, and not' be an
oracle himself. It is credited that there was once, a long
time ago, a holy Spirit of God in the world, and it taught
men, and " they needed not that any man should teach them
but as the same anointing taught them of all things, and was
truth and was no lie." This was once a fact and worthy of
all acceptation, but it now lies nearly two thousand years
behind us, and if we would be right we must be careful to
look back to it. No wonder that the Bible" thus interpreted,
instead of being the lively oracles of God is become a
millstone round the neck of religion. For surely we cannot
call this spiritual freedom where the words of a book are
made of higher authority than the soul of man, and the ever
dwelling Spirit of God within him. This is no spiritual
religion where the plain preaching of Jesus Christ is
altogether discarded,
“it is the
spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the
words that speak unto you they are spirit, and they are
life." The words thus read are dead words. The Bible thus
approached is a dead book. I appeal to your own knowledge of
these things. I ask you how many are the preachers who in
the least conform to this description by Christ himself, and
whose words are spirit and life. How many are they who
resemble the good man that is a householder, and that
bringeth forth out of his treasury things new and old? How
many are they who can take up a text of Scripture, and show
you a truth and, a beauty, a divine spirit and life in it,
which you' had never seen before? Alas, I fear the reproach
is too just; that the text is merely the motto of the
sermon, and where it is not the motto, it is treated in a
dry, mechanical manner, and worked up into a proof of things
which have been proved a thousand times before, and ought
long ago to hate been taken for granted. What South said,
two centuries ago, of certain preachers of his day is not
without its application now: "First of all· they seize upon
some text from whence they draw something which they call a
doctrine, and well may it be said to be drawn from the
words, for as much as it seldom naturally, flows or results
from them. In the next place, being thus provided they
branch it with several heads. Whereupon for the prosecution
of these they repair to some trusty concordance which never
fails them, and by the help of that they range six or seven
Scriptures under each head, which Scriptures they prosecute
one by one; first amplifying· and enlarging upon one, for
some considerable time, till they have spoiled it, and then,
that being done, they pass onto another, which in its turn
suffers accordingly." Of a certain sort of Universalist
preaching this is a very life-like description, and it is a
natural consequence of those blunderings about inspiration
which are insensible to the great truth, that the words of
Scripture are spirit and life, and carry with them, in the
thoughts which they embody, the properties of an infinite
Word of God.
Now
we have got somehow to alter all this. The times demand it;
and it is perhaps the one demand which includes every other.
They demand an altered treatment of that particular word of
God which we call the Bible; I think it is exceedingly
dangerous to
proceed any further in the path in which we are now so
blindly treading. Our ways are the ways of death. They lead
straight on to that Infidelity we so much affect to dread,
and we seem, (shall I say it?) to be conscious of this, by
the limitations which we set up beyond which it shall not be
lawful for a man to doubt. Scarcely to ministers hold the
same theory of inspiration; and there is no theory taught in
the colleges, and in the schools of the doctors, which is
not a heap of contradictions, or which has the slightest
pretensions to scientific expression.
But
let me particularize some things. Let me hold up the mirror
to this kind of Christianity, that it may see itself. The
Christian sects, however much they may differ in other
matters, agree in the general assumption, that there is in
the Bible no truth but the truth of the letter. They reject
the idea of a spiritual sense or senses beneath the letter,
that is, they believe the words of the Bible to be only like
the words of any other book, and that when God speaks, he
speaks only after the m anner
of men.
Now
I take them on this ground. I try the Bible by this rule,
and what do I find? I find that I get the following
astonishing result as a correct statement or summary of the
main doctrines of the Bible: -- “God created the universe in
six days, and rested on the seventh. He made the world as a
man might make a world, as if he were only an infinite
mechanic. He made man, as a potter might make man, out of
the dust of the ground. He then, by an after-thought, made
woman from one of the ribs of man. He placed the man and the
woman, thus so strangely fashioned, in a garden. He made the
liable to err, and set before them a temptation to err in
the shape of a tree, the fruit of which they were forbidden
to eat, on pain of death. Being made liable to err, and
tempted to err, this liability; of course, soon manifested
itself in the Fall. A serpent beguiled the woman, and she
did eat; and the man, as he was bound by his affection for
her, became partner with her in the transgression. Upon
this, God drove them out of the garden into the wide world,
cursed by Him for their sakes; and God placed at the east of
the garden, cherubims and a flaming sword, that turned every
way to keep the way of the tree of life.
They
did not surely die on the day they sinned, as might have
been expected, but the death was a never-dying death, an
endless perdition of body and soul in hell. Following
further the history of this primitive pair, we find that
they and their immediate descendants, live to the extreme
age of nearly one thousand years. They become very wicked,
so that God repents ever having undertaken the work of
creating the race of man. He gets angry with them, cuts them
off from the face of the earth, with eight exceptions only,
by a deluge of waters, which covered the face of the whole
earth, and overflowed all the high hills under heaven. After
seeing the ruin he had made, God repents again. He says he
will no more bring a flood of waters to drown the earth.
Then speedily he has another quarrel with this poor
unfortunate race of man. He comes down among them as they
are busy plotting against him on the plain of Shinar, and
confounds their speech, so that they may be no longer able
to understand each other. Having done this merciful thing,
he leaves them all to themselves for a while, to follow the
devices and desires of their own hearts, till at last he
selects from them a single tribe or nation to be his
favorites. For these he has an especial regard. he watches
over them with a jealous care, and performs a long series of
providences for their benefit and protection.
“A tale of
bloodshed is their history
And
to all human hearts a mystery.”
But
from among this people there arises the hope of redemption.
A Savior is born of them, who shall deliver man from that
fall and its consequences, which he incurred by acting
according to his natural propensities. God is pleased to
give fallen man a chance of salvation. For this end He takes
upon him our human nature. He comes into the world by the
common ways of birth, and He dies on a cross in Palestine.
This is the great central fact of Christianity, and belief
in this is made the condition of salvation, “though the very
fact to be believed must necessarily have remained unknown
to millions, damned for their ignorance, and questionable to
millions, damned for their unbelief.”
Such, I repeat, is a summary of Bible doctrines, according
to the received theories of the Bible. In the main this is
Orthodoxy; or to go further back, and speak still more
correctly, it is Roman Catholicism. It is that form of
Christianity which men have gleaned from the Bible, by the
perceptions of their natural mind, and as seeing no truth
but the truth of the letter. It is that sensuous
Christianity which men will always believe in, as they look
no deeper than the outward show and sense of the Word of
God: as indeed the entire history of Christianity proves.
It
is the Christianity which THE CHURCH has universally taught,
and we who are liberal, and cast out the pale of 'THE
CHURCH, reject a good part of it. But see our inconsistency.
See how we fail by our present methods, or rather no 'method
of biblical interpretation, to prove that this is not the
Christianity of the Bible. The Infidel argues that it is. He
says, that Roman Catholicism is the only consistent
Christianity, and that the moment you relinquish Roman
Catholic ground you come over so far to him. He gives you
the after native, Roman Catholicism or Infidelity. He says
that orthodoxy and liberal Christianity, in all their forms
are only so many vain and futile attempts to bridge the
impassable gulf between them. Can we: as we new are,
disprove his positions? I think not. I am certain we cannot.
Ask any of the leaders of our liberal Christianity, whether
he believes some things in the foregoing statement, and he
will take the question as next to an insult. Either he
rejects them entirely, or he adopts them in some other
sense. But many parts of the statement he unconsciously
adopts, and that, too, in the most literal sense. For
instance: He is Unitarian in his idea of Christ, (if there
can be said to be any Unitarian idea of Christ) and so he
does not believe many exclusive relation between Jesus and
the Father; he does not believe in original sin; he does not
believe that a serpent, or the devil, in the form of a
serpent, tempted Eve; he does not believe there was a
literal tree "Of life, or of the knowledge of good and evil,
in the midst of the Garden of Eden, or, a cherubim, or a
flaming sword; but he believes in the literal Mosaic account
of the creation of the world, of the creation of man, of the
creation of woman, of the sudden fall of man, of the great,
ages of the antediluvian patriarchs, of the deluge, of the
building of Babel, of the confusion of tongues, and other
things equally incredible, and equally repugnant to the
enlightened reason. He has believed all this form his youth
upward, and it would sorely puzzle him to say why, after
rejecting other parts of the story, or explaining them
another than a literal sense, he should refuse to give up
these portions of it, or to treat them after the same
fashion. Nay, if there be one thing plain on the face of the
Scriptures, it is their enunciation, that Jesus Christ was
God manifest in the flesh; it is that Jesus and the Father
are one, in 'the most singular and exclusive sense; and
liberal Christianity, whether Unitarian or Universalist, by
explaining away this Scripture doctrine, sufficiently
refutes itself. What a position! It rejects the plainest
testimony of, "Jesus Christ" and yet, accepts, without;
inquiry, such stories as that of the Creation of woman, and
of the tower of Babel. Do we need any clearer proof of the
inefficacy of our present methods of interpreting the Bible,
that is, of the inefficacy of our liberal Christianity? Do
we need any more convincing demonstration that we, Liberal
Christians, as we love to call ourselves, are in an attitude
of impotent antagonism towards the old theology, while we do
not and cannot provide a religion, which shall be credible
to the cultivated intellect, and to the best mind of the
age? This seems a harsh question; and a hard conclusion; but
truth. . . . well, truth is a hard master.
It
is to me a most surprising fact, to see how liberal
Christianity flatters itself that it is destroying or
modifying orthodoxy, while it is seemingly in blissful
ignorance that its very foundations, which are the same as
the Orthodox, are being gradually undermined by the
resistless and remorseful progress of the natural sciences.
No man among us seems to be aware, that there are now great
questions, lying far back of those we dispute and which must
be settled before those we dispute can be worth a hearing.
No man appears to recognize the immense discrepancies
between the teachings of Scripture, in their literal sense,
and their teachings of science. Now and then some learned
professor from the orthodox ranks, such as Dr. Hitchcock, In
his Religion of Geology, tasks his ingenuity to reconcile
the contradictions between the express language of the
Bible, and the conclusions of science, (and the very
helplessness of the attempt may ensure its toleration.) But
as for us, we are "like unto them that dream." I can
compare us to nothing but so many theological Rip Van
Winkles. We are still contending about such queries, as
whether the Universal Father can doom any of his children
to the miseries of an endless hell; or what is the
consequences of sin extend into the future state; or what is
the difference between punishment and discipline, and if
future punishment should not rather be called future
discipline. We are still laboriously striving about
questions of words and names to no profit. We are like that
foolish bird we read of that runs from danger to hide its
head in the nearest bush, and flatters itself that then it
is hid every whit, and safe from harm. Astronomy, geology,
physiology, ethnology, chemistry, comparative anatomy, --all
the naturaI sciences, have in their turn borne down with the
certainty of fact upon this or the other text of the Bible,
and demonstrated its literal absurdity, and yet, what have
we done? What are we doing in this war of words and things
in this conflict of science with opinion, of demonstration
with guess-work, of facts with fancies, of the Book of
Nature, ,which none can doubt is God's book, with that other
Book, which we say is his, but have never proved to be his?
What
are we doing? Why, if for a moment we venture to look
forward from our hiding-place - if we bestow a thought in
that direction where the mind of this age is busy, we
content ourselves with declaiming against “vain
philosophies," and “the oppositions of science, falsely so
called!" We hint our disparagement and dislike of human
learning. We set up “the foolishness of preaching (foolish
enough,) "the simplicity of the Gospel.” We virtually build
our divinity on the ruins of humanity, and hale the Bible to
the worst of the drudgeries to recommend natural weakness
for supernatural grace.” We join in the now unmeaning cry;
“the Bible, and the Bible alone, the religion of
Protestants;” and as for objections to the Bible, we say
that there is nothing new in them; we say that they are
substantially the same with those which have been refuted
from the days of the Christian Fathers to our own day - from
Origen down to Paley. Nay, we have even the affected
ignorance to affirm, that there is no contradiction between
the teachings of science, and the teachings of Scripture;
that the Bible, though often attacked, still stands firm as
ever on the old basis where it was originally placed, and
that every new scientific discovery, so far from disproving
it only serves the more to confirm it. We are so very
innocent, that we seem to have persuaded ourselves that
these grim and stubborn facts of the Word of Nature, are so
many helps and incentives to make us cling the closer to the
teachings of that other Word of Scripture and to the "simple
faith of the Gospel." Doubtless, it were good for us to
ponder a little on that saying, "If ye were blind, ye should
have no sin, but now you say we see, therefore, your sin
remaineth.” Blind indeed are we, to think as many among us
seem persuaded, that ours is that better form of
Christianity, and Ours that more excellent way which will
convert the infidel.
Let
me now change the point of view. Let me particularize some
other things of the Bible, bearing in mind still, the
currently received theory of interpretation -- that we are
to consider the thought which the original writer had in his
mind. Let me test the capabilities of our Christianity to
speak as the oracles of God here:
Almost on every page
of the Apostolic Epistles I find the clearest evidence of
three things:
1. The expectation
of the Second Advent of Christ.
2. That the Second
Advent would shortly take place
3. That it was to be
a real personal return of Christ.
The
first of these propositions is universally accepted. The
second is admitted by some of the Christian sects, (by
ourselves for instance,) and nothing can well be plainer
than the uniform testimony of the
Apostles in regard to it. The third proposition we reject.
We do not believe that the Apostles, expected a real
personal return of Jesus Christ.
We don’t believe that some of them hoped they should
not taste of death till they had seen the Son of Man coming
thus in his kingdom. This is our position, and in view of it
l would propose these queries. Do we really think that we
can maintain it? Are we about to build a College for the
support of a theology of which it shall form apart? Do we
think that in this age of criticism we shall be permitted
much longer to rest here? So far as I am concerned in
answering these queries, I say now, as I said years ago from
this place, that it is altogether hopeless to attempt it.
That Paul, Peter, James, all the Apostles, all the churches
they founded, all the converts they made, expected the
personal return of Christ – that this expectation was the
spring of all their life, and "colored for them all objects
of all thought," is plainly written on the face of the New
Testament, if anything is so. This was the "original thought
in the writers’ mind," if they had any thought at all. And
they derived it directly from the words of Christ himself,
as where he said, "The
Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his
angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his
works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here,
that shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man
coming in his kingdom." Whether the Apostles conception
of the meaning of these words was the exact thought of
Christ himself, may be doubted, and perhaps reasonably
denied by those who regard; His Word as the Word of God; but
what the apostolic conception was, is beyond all doubt Paul
himself expected to live to the second coming, and in
fifteenth of first Corinthians, be places himself at the
advent, not among the dead who should be raised
incorruptible, but among the living who shall be changed. In
another place he desires not to be unclothed of his mortal
body, as a man that dies in due course of nature but to be
clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life.
In another place still, we find him exhorting believers:
"But this I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth,
therefore, that both they that have wives be as though they
had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and
they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they
that buy, as though they possessed not ; and they that use
the world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world,
passeth away." Equally clear is the testimony of the other
Apostles. “The evidence on this point," says a well known
writer in the Westminster Review, "is so positive and
overwhelming, that writers, whose testimony is undoubtedly
reluctant, no longer think of resisting it. Nothing, indeed,
can be opposed to it, but a kind of interpretation, which is
the opprobrium of English theology, and whose problem is,
not simply to gather the author's thought from his words,
but from among all true thoughts, to find the one that will
sit the least uneasily under his words. Thus, " the end of
all things" is explained away in to the founding of the
Christian Church: "the coming of the Son of Man in the
clouds of heaven," into the Jewish ar, under Titus; "the
last judgment which rewards every man according to his
works;" into the escape of the Christians, and the slaughter
of the Jewish zealots at the destruction of
Jerusalem." This writer goes on to say, “No doubt
many good and well instructed men have persuaded
themselves, that by such exegetical sleight of hand, they
could save apostolic and other infallibility." Yes, there is
the trouble. This is our interpretation, and just the way in
which we contrive to escape Orthodox dogmas, and at the
same time, to save apostolic in fallibility; for that must
be saved by some means or other. Precisely by this
exegetical sleight of hand have we managed to emasculate the
apostolic Christianity. The magnificent parables of the wise
and foolish virgins, and of the sheep and goats; are to us
nothing more than a sort of dramatic representation of “the
rejection of the Jews, and the calling of the Gentiles;"
Throughout our theology, there runs the cry of Hebrew
old-clothes," and to hear us in our interpretation of the
New Testament, one might suppose that this "rejection of the
Jews" was the whole of Christianity. Every text that has any
the least touch or taint of orthodoxy about it is referred
to “the rejection of the Jew, and the calling of the
Gentiles." Truly, it is a poor thing to be called "the
everlasting Gospel," that we make out of this class of
Scriptures. It is a kind of inspiration, and a Word of God
which, will never make us spiritual Christians, or put life
and devotion into our cold, heartless religion. And why
cannot we give it up? Why cannot we abandon it is untenable?
We are afraid. We dare not. We cannot receive the Orthodox
doctrine, so we are obliged to take up with this, which
again, we shudder to part with, because, to part with it,
and to place the apostolic Christianity in its true light,
involves, as some say, "the entire principle of German
Rationalism" But I say, what of that? What if it, does
involve the principle of Rationalism, or any other -ism,
provided it be true? "What can it profit any mortal to adopt
locutions and imaginations which do not correspond to fact;
which no sane mortal, can deliberately adopt in his soul as
true; which the most orthodox of mortals can only, (and this
after infinite essentially impious effort to put out the
eyes of his mind,) persuade himself to believe that be
believes? " [ Carlyle's Life of Sterling] I have often
suspected the skepticism of our Christianity. I have
sometimes thought that the opprobrium which we fasten upon
too Orthodox, for saying, that if they did not believe as
they do, they would live as they pleased, might be extended
to ourselves. We think, that to believe the Apostles looked
for the real personal return of Christ, is, to set aside
their authority as teachers," -- that is, to question their
infallibility; or to put it in plainer words still, we think
that if the Apostles were mistaken in regard to the second
coming of Christ then their writings are invalidated and
there is no more any standing-room
for
faith Now can never consent to this. I care absolutely
nothing for that word authority," when it is thus made to
represent something that if external to myself. My religion
is from from within outward, and not from without inward. My
But this dictum concerning the authority of Paul, like
almost every other dictum of the Christianity that now is
reverses this true method. I think it is entirely wrong; I
think it is a pitiful tenure by which to hold fast the
profession of our faith as Christians, and I think, also,
that of all the men that ever lived, none would have
rejected it sooner than Paul. A slight acquaintance with
Paul's manner of expressing himself is enough to convince me
that he had no thought of claiming any such authority, as
that which has been conferred; upon him since the authority
of the Church; three hundred years after the death of Christ
decided that his letters were apart of the Word of God. To
me, I confess, it has long appeared that on the whole it is
only Paul himself who is speaking in these letters.
It
is everywhere, "I Paul say unto you;" and not infrequently
he guard against mistake, by declaring that he has no
teaching or revelation from the Lord, but speaks from his
own mind. It is the man, Paul, and his opinions and beliefs,
which are mostly presented to us a fact so evident in Paul's
Epistles, that it led Swedenborg to reject all the
apostolic epistles; as being no part of the proper Word of
God, but “merely dogmatic writings, whose ,meaning is
conveyed on the surface, in the plain grammatical import of
the language." And what Swedenborg did a century ago, we
have all got to do sooner or later; we liberal Christians
especially, if we have any hope of really dispossessing
orthodoxy, or of gaining the ear of a careless and
unbelieving world. As we now are. Our quarrel with the old
theology is, to say the least, very inconsistent and
unmeaning. We complain of the orthodox theory of life. We
say that it is impracticable and unreal. We say that human
nature cannot be made to accept it that there is no such
antagonism between heaven and earth, and temporal and
eternal things, as forms the continual burden of the
teachings of the Orthodox pulpit. But we forget. This
Orthodox theory is borrowed mainly from Paul, and is the
legitimate effect of Paul's expectation of the second coming
of Christ. Paul believed that he lived in the very days of
which the Christ had said, '" Can; the children of the
bride-chamber mourn while the bridegroom is with them? But
the days will come when the bridegroom shall he taken away
from them, and then they shall fast." Paul believed that a
new heaven and anew earth would shortly appear;
it
was therefore natural that he should not be concerned or
careful for the perishing things around him. He had a desire
to depart and to be with Christ. "Our conversation," he
writes, "is in heaven, from whence we look for the Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that
it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." And again
in another place, he exhorts believers as "knowing the time
that now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is
our salvation nearer than when we believed; the night is far
spent, the day is at hand!" And again in many places, he
intimates that it is not worth while to be concerned in the
things of this world, as where he says; "Judge nothing
before the time, until the Lord come. Do ye not know that
the saints shall judge the world? Know ye not that we shall
judge angels, how much more the things pertaining to this
life? If ye then have judgment of these things, set them to
judge who are least esteemed in the church."
Orthodoxy in its estimate of life, copies Paul, and walks by
his rule and example. How are we in a condition to meet it
from the Scriptures? How can we justly charge it with
holding a theory of life which, is scorned 'through all the
live-long hours of the working day world, and confined to
the empty homage a Sabbath recitation? Orthodoxy, by a soft
of expansive process with which it is familiar extends the
time of the second coming into infinitely, and so contrives
to keep hold of that view of life which, was connected with
it and grew out of it. We, on the contrary, fulfill every
thing by that magic phrase, "the destruction of Jerusalem."
But can we really and seriously refer these passages
which I have quoted from Paul, to the destruction Jerusalem?
Can we truly say that the rejection of the Jews and the
calling of the Gentiles, let that mean what it may,
exhausted all their meaning ---the meaning which was the
thought in Paul’s mind when he wrote them? I must confess I
cannot, and I do not see what it is to set aside the
authority of Paul as a teacher, if this be not to affirm
that Paul had nothing more in his mind than what we call the
second coming of Christ, when he wrote these solemn word,
"for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so
them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For
the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; and
the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever
with the Lord: wherefore comfort one another with these
word." Comfort one another! It were cold comfort me thinks,
to tell these Thessalonians believers sorrowing for their
dead, that all that Paul meant was fulfilled a few years
afterwards at the destruction of Jerusalem. I know it may be
said that this passage refers to another coming, at the time
of the restitution of all things"; but I never could
understand or make out; that there were three comings of
Christ spoken of in the New Testament. Paul's language
cannot be thus evaded. It is plain enough, “We which are
alive and remain.” There can be no question but that Paul
described one return of Christ, whatever were its nature,
and that it included in his mind a resurrection of the dead,
an end of the world, and a day of judgment as being within
the limits of his own natural life, and of those lives of
those to whom he was writing.
Time
forbids; or I might extend this inquiry, and examine other
particulars of our belief, to show that we are- incompetent
to handle the Word of God; and therefore, incompetent also
to present to the world a Christianity which shall be
credible to it, and which shall have some prospect of
getting itself universally discussed and accepted.
Confessedly the Bible is too big for our handling. We make
no progress in the understanding of it. Universalist
theology is just where it was when "the Plain Guide to
Universalism" was published. Our Scripture exegesis is for
the most part, a resurrection of Lightfoot, Whitby, and
other Rabbis, whose opinion on any real vital doctrine of
Christianity is as worthless as that of a Jew or a Mahometan
would be. We have no science of Biblical interpretation, but
we go on interpreting the Bible in the same way that men
formerly interpreted Nature -- according to merely sensuous
appearances. How, then, can we reasonably expect that if any
man speak he will speak as the oracles of God? To do this,
he must come to the study of the Bible as he would to the
study of any other work of God; with his eyes open and his
reason free. For only thus can he discover if it be indeed a
Word of God; but now after eighteen centuries of controversy
we have not yet determined that one question. We are still
debating it; and if no doctrine can be considered as
established, till it has won universal assent in the arena
of free and universal discussion then the doctrine of the
Sacred Scripture far enough from a goal like this. It cannot
get itself accepted within the limits of Christendom. So far
from having won universal assent, there are scarcely two
who, think alike about it. There is no king in Israel, but
every man does that which is right in his own eyes. Every
man has his own opinion; and I know not but the extremist
opinion is as good as any, when opinions are equally adrift.
In the present state of things, given up as we are to
endless guesses and conjectures, and running the round of
universal hypothesis, we need not wonder if some of our
preachers do fly off in chase of any exciting novelty that
comes in their way. It is only the old story reversed.
"
Rather than choose the ills they have,
They
fly to others that they know not of."
The
Gospel of Mesmerism and of the Spiritual Rappings are only
the marks of an absent inspiration in the Churches --an
evidence of the poverty of the current religions --a sign
how hard it is, after men and women have come to what are
called years of discretion, to turn the current of their
thoughts; for these Gospels, I take it, are but a kind of
complement or supplement of the Gospels they have been
brought up to believe. If they really believed that life and
immortality has been brought to light by the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, they would not want, neither would they seek, any
additional evidence of the fact, in the spiritual gymnastics
of our modern chairs and tables.
Ah!
Believe me, we need not go far to find that a profound
skepticism lurks under all our religion, and is behind our
loudest professions of faith. Like children in the dark, the
more afraid we are, the louder we shout. I see it in these
modern Gospels of immortality. I see it by the way in which
we cling to these poor empty relations of earth and time,
and think that to be immortal is to perpetuate them. We do
but half believe. We are not able, as we say we are, to give
a reason for the hope that is in us. We do not, for one
thing, heartily believe in the reality of the religious
sentiment, for we have never dared to repose in it an
unlimited trust. Our faith, stands in the wisdom of men
after all, and not in the power of God --else why should we
think that such terrible consequences would follow from
denying the infallibility of the man Paul? It would seem,
indeed as if a single move from our present theological
position would plunge us into eternal night, as if we were
committed not simply to truth but to a system. Instead of
allowing one another the largest liberty of thought, and of
suffering one another to think the best we are able
concerning the great problems that we have to encounter; we
are doing all we can as a denomination to stereotype one
particular form and doctrine of Universalism. So far are we
from leaving the minds of our preachers free to work out for
themselves a Christianity which shall fulfill its own
function, and make this earth a heaven, and get the will of
God done on earth as it is done in heaven, so far are we
from any state and condition of life like this, that there
are those among us who seem "to consider it their duty as a
kind- of ecclesiastical Dogberries, to 'comprehend all
vagrom men' who are disposed to break the peace of the
Church." We see that something must be done or we shall die,
and so we are beginning to talk about ecclesiastical
disciplines, church systems, and other such 'childish
things,' as the best means we know of for getting that
spiritual kingdom established, of which the Christ declared
that it cometh not with observation, but is within. But the
time is gone by for these things. 'Nothing dies,' said a
wise man,' but what deserves to die;' and this Church idea,
and the notion that pervades it, of a man's, responsibility
to external authority, is dying daily past all hope of
resurrection. We must be blind indeed if we do not see this
if we do not see that the entire spirit of this age is a
revolt against authority, and a struggle for individual
sovereignty if we do not see the gradual and irresistible
tendency; no less in the religious than in the political
world, to replace external arbitrary coercion by internal
voluntary conviction; in a word, the tendency to
spiritualize religion," to anoint the man, and to supersede
the priest," with all the paraphernalia that makes him
priestly.
If
it would avail anything, or if I flattered myself that I had
any influence, I would speak in season and out of season,'
against the movement now going on in the Universalist
denomination, and against the priestly spirit of inquisition
and terror out of which it is born --the spirit, I mean,
which appears week after week, complaining of the lack of
distinct scriptural preaching among us, and especially among
the younger preachers. I would with all my heart that we
could have distinct scriptural preaching. This is just what
we want, but it is just that "which those who call the
loudest for in others are least able to furnish themselves.
I would we had preachers, many of them, who could give us
distinct scriptural preaching on those topics which I have
discussed in this sermon. Distinct scriptural preaching!
Seeing what we are, and what we know of Scripture
interpretation, let us for shame be silent on any demand
like this. Let us give up this carping and quibbling about
the merest trifles, and remember rather the word of Jesus,'
why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
I
fear that we are in a poor sickly way just now, by all I can
read and hear. I fear we shall remain a sect without hope of
ever being anything better. It does not look likely that the
grub will ever come to be a butterfly. If the present spirit
shall bear rule if our preachers are to be haled back to
this old fashioned, dogmatic, chop-logic Universalism, miscalled
distinct scriptural preaching --we shall do our best to make
the doctrine of Universalism contemptible. But thank God we
can never do that, for that doctrine has other evidence
beside the Scriptures- that-doctrine is not the Universalism
that -some among us so want to have preached in every
pulpit; no, but something I take it, infinitely grander if
the tree is to be known by its fruits --something that
suggests no thought of divisions and contentions, of hatred
and envyings, of murmurings and complainings, as our present
Universalism does and always has done, and always will do;
for it is with us, practically, not a positive doctrine at
all, but merely the negation of something else that is
false. No, the true Universalism, believe me, is widely
distinct from this.
It
is really in word and also in deed, a doctrine of love and
good will and mutual charities, for it is the doctrine which
links all men together, not by any natural,. but by a
spiritual bond. It is the doctrine which teaches that the
Good God cannot have any more respect or affection for one
than for another of his children—that he loves an Ishmael or
a ????? just as much as he loves an Isaac or a Paul – and
which for an end of all controversy, affirms once for all
and despite all texts, and all presumed Scripture proof, and
all scriptural preaching distinct or otherwise, that we
cannot be accountable to Him from Whose hangs the issues of
our life proceed. It is the doctrine which teaches that
there is, no crime in the creed of the understanding -- that
the Atheist and the Christian must stand equally innocent in
the eye of God; and that the Nlf6re, eternal punishment for
belief, can have no truth in itself, no place in philosophy,
nor admit of any defense in discussion. This is my doctrine
of Universalism, and therefore in my preaching I have been
in the habit of taking some things for granted l have
ventured largely to assume my position, and to work from it,
not at it. This is my doctrine, and I do confess that it is
something exceedingly distasteful to me to prove it by
common Universalist methods, and to feel obliged to run the
eternal mill-horse round of orthodox controversy and textual
preaching to settle it. But yet I have so preached it, and
from the Scriptures too, that by your own united confession
you have seen a glory in it and in them which you had not
seen before. This is my doctrine of Universalism, and I hope
that he who shall follow me in this place where I stand
to-day, will preach it from the Bible. I have preached it,
and show it in Christ as as I have showed it, for, believe
me, there are some among you who will not, hear him
otherwise, and who could not hear him if you would.
For
you are not what you were, and what would once content you,
will content you now nevermore; you, I mean, who do not come
to meeting merely because it is respectable, or as if there
were some duty or virtue in hearing sermons, or as if the
only road to heaven lay through the Church, doors. We are
both changed since we first assembled here. “We all with
open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the· same image, from glory unto glory." And
one thing is certain now, that whoever,' henceforth preaches
here, must be a Bible preacher, to meet your wants. He
must bring out of his treasury things new, as well as old.
He must still lead you on-ever on. As it has been hitherto,
so it must continue to be. He must “speak unto this
congregation that they go forward." Above all things he must
understand what that Scriptures meaneth, "the Sabbath was
made for man and not man for the Sabbath; and must venture
to read it thus: "the Bible was made for man, and not man
for the Bible.
I
know well that my late lectures on Science and Scripture
have made it impossible for those of you who are capable of
thinking, ever again to care about the present theologies,
or to seek rest and shelter, food and raiment in them; just
as impossible as they made it for me to continue over this
society as Pastor. I knew perfectly well, the consequences
that would attend upon them, before I preached the first
lecture –one consequence in particular, that with them my
ministry here would be ended. They were t{Jo . real for the
modern pulpit. They discovered too plainly the nakedness of
the land ... ' They showed that if I was right, our present
methods of proving our doctrines from the Bible are Wrong,
They were such that "the publicans and sinners' began to
draw near for to hear them, as they always do like to hear a
man who can speak" with authority and not as the scribes,"
So we part. The modern pulpit loves a respectable gospel and
opinions which are at least in tolerable favor, and these I
can no longer give, any more than could my master Christ
before me. So we part, and with the consciousness on my
side; that I have done what I promised to do when I accepted
the call which you were pleased to extend to me. As is known
to many, I did not come to this country with any intention
to preaching again. I came determined; if possible, to
relinquish preaching, and so this office was none of my
seeking. I did not seek it. I was not eager to accept it
when offered to me. I am not concerned to relinquish it. My
determination is the same still, to retire from a profession
which, in its present form, is become a burden of
insincerities to every man of an intellectual mark, and who
loves not a life of perpetual warfare, such as must be ills
lot if he do battle with those insincerities. If, indeed, I
could find or gather around me, a people who would, welcome
me in my true character, grant me a manly independence and
hear me for what I had to say, then it would be something
desirable to be a preacher ; but there is little hope of
this. So we part: and I am careful for nothing at this hour
except it be that I have kept my word. I have kept it, in
the letter and in the spirit –kept it as knowing well, what
is the position of the minister in these days, that he can
be no more than a Religious Lecturer; a man hired by sundry
associated individuals to give them on the Sunday the best
thought that is in him, on things as seen from the religious
point of view. Societies, indeed, profess that it is
otherwise, but I know better. They profess to seek for a
minister who shall be a good pastor as well as a good
preacher; but then they only talk in this way, out of up
uneasy recollection of what has been in the time of their
forefathers, but can now be no more. For if a man were to
come among them really in earnest to be a Pastor in the
Scripture sense of the word --if he were to attempt to go
from house to house, teaching and exhorting the things
concerning the kingdom of God," the days of his pastorship,
methinks, would soon be numbered.
Let
us clear our minds of cant -- above all things let us clear
them of cant. . Let us try to be sincere. What people
really, mean by a pastor, is one who will talk with them on
this or the other triviality from Monday morning to Saturday
night, and then, on the Sunday be expected to come into what
they are pleased to call the sacred desk, and in all
reverence and solemnity of spirit, take upon his lips those
awful names, God, Heaven; Immortality, Eternal Life.
The
age of worship is past at least with us. It is the age of
criticism now. It is the spirit of criticism; not of
devotion, which is visible here. We do not, as we know well,
come to worship. It is, as I have said, the preacher has
ceased to be the minister of Christ. He is a religious
lecturer, and the Church is a kind of Sunday Lyccum. And yet
he is obliged to go through the form of confessing himself a
minister of Christ in the house of God. He must continue to
speak of himself as one "appointed to feed the flock of God,
over which the Holy Ghost hath made him overseer.”
Let there be
no regrets, therefore, at this parting hour. For myself when
I think on these things, I can feel none. I go to breathe
the airs of a larger freed om.
I give you farewell. |
