THE 
 
 REUGIOIOFTHEIEART 
 
THE 
 
 RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 '^ ilTanual of JaitI) a\\b JDutp. 
 
 Br" 
 LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 rUBLISHED AND DISTRIBUTED BY A DISCIPLE. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 PRINTED BY J. J. REED, 16 SPRUCE STREET. 
 
 1857. 
 

 V 
 
 ^ 
 
 \J 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 The Religion op the Heart.. 
 
 Its Creed and Hopes ..*,»,.! 
 
 Daily Service, 
 
 Aspiration in the Morning 8 
 
 Aspiration at Noon 9 
 
 Aspiration in the Evening . . : i . .10 
 Aspiration at B«dtime 11 
 
 Weekly Service. 
 
 Silent Reflections 12 
 
 Liturgy 14 
 
 Rules of Life and Manners . . , . ; 16 
 
 Benediction and Aspiration 20 
 
 Another 22 
 
 Another 24 
 
 Another, during a Time of Trouble . . i .26 
 
 Exercises of the Heart in its Duties and Aspirations. 
 
 I. Of Duty itself 29 
 
 II. Of our Duties to Others . , , . . .30 
 
 III. Of the Duties commonly called Public . . .34 
 
 IV. Of our Duties to Posterity 34 
 
 V. Of our Duties towards Children . . . .36 
 
 VI. Of our Duties to Ourselves in Relation to Our De- 
 scendants .38 
 
 VII. On the Same Subject 39 
 
 442329 
 
Vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VIII. Of Pain and Trouble 40 
 
 IX. On the Same Subject 41 
 
 X. During Affliction 41 
 
 XI. Addition to the Foregoing, in Case of the Loss 
 
 of Any One that is dear to us . . . .42 
 XII. In Severe Sickness . . . . . .45 
 
 XIII. In Sickness that may be Mortal . . .46 
 
 XIV. Of Endeavor in the Great Work of Improvement. 60 
 XV. Of Pain as the Result of Vice and as the Occa- 
 sional Necessity of Virtue . . . .51 
 
 XVI. Against Excess in Pleasure . . . .52 
 
 XVII, Against Pride in Virtue 53 
 
 XVIII. Of Prayer and Thanksgiving . , . .54 
 
 XIX. Of Love to God and Man 57 
 
 XX. Of Other- Worldliness 60 
 
 XXI. Of Tears and Laughter 61 
 
 XXIT. Of Conscience 62 
 
 XXIII. Of War 72 
 
 XXIV. Of Telescope and Microscope . . . .73 
 XXV. Of Spirits and the Invisible World . . .74 
 
 XXVI. Of Religion 76 
 
 XXVII. Against Superstition and Intolerance. . . 78 
 
 XXVIII. Household Memorandum 81 
 
 XXIX. Of the Great Benefactors of the World . . 81 
 XXX. Of the Great Means and Ends of Endeavor . 85 
 
 Punishments and Rewards accordinq to the Neglect 
 OR Performance of Duty. 
 
 Punishments 87 
 
 Rewards 100 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Nearly thirty years ago was written, and ten 
 years afterwards printed, for private circulation, 
 a book entitled ^^Christianism; or, Belief and 
 Unbelief Keconciled." From the introduction 
 to that book, with a few variations, is extracted 
 the greater part of the first section of this Pre- 
 face. 
 
 There are thousands of persons in England, 
 as well as in other countries, who appear to be 
 of no religion ; who are certainly not of any of 
 the established opinions ; and who join in no 
 sort of worship, public or private. These per- 
 sons are of all classes. Formerly they were con- 
 fined to the more educated ; but of late years 
 they have spread among all the others. It is 
 admitted, at the same time, that great numbers 
 of persons of this description enjoy the most re- 
 spectable characters ; are just in their dealings ; 
 beloved by their friends ; and fit to set an ex- 
 ample to society in every respect but this one. 
 
 It is not so well known, certainly not so often 
 
VUl PKEFACE. 
 
 admitted^ that, however deficient these persons 
 may be with respect to any visible religion, there 
 are multitudes of them who have a strong sense 
 of religion at heart; who make enquiries on 
 the subject in all directions, vainly seeking 
 spiritual satisfaction ; and who are thus driven 
 to wish that they were in possession of some 
 form of religion of their own, not inconsistent 
 ■with those exalted notions which they enter- 
 tain of the Divine Spirit of the universe, and 
 of the duties of beneficence. A great reverence 
 for the character and intentions of the Founder 
 of Christianity is common among them, though 
 they take care to distinguish their opinions of 
 him from those which have been dictated by 
 theologians. 
 
 By a form of religion not inconsistent with 
 these sentiments, is meant one free from con- 
 tradiction to the best ideas of moral goodness. 
 In the service of the church, speaking of it as a 
 whole, including the scriptural as well as eccle- 
 siastical portions, nothing is to be desired in 
 point of eloquence. It is often afiecting, often 
 majestic, always nobly and simply written. The 
 authors of it, both ancient and modern, were in 
 earnest, and brought to their tasks a great por- 
 tion of natural humanity, as well as certain in- 
 duced feelings not so worthy of it as they sup- 
 posed, though equally calculated to make an 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 impression upon existing states of the human 
 mind. But not to mention other difficulties in 
 the way of making a selection from this service, 
 those very feelings, which were thought so es- 
 sential a part of devotion, express, and mix up 
 with better things so many rude and mistaken 
 passions, and involve contradictions, both divine 
 and human, so incompatible with the present 
 advanced state of knowledge and love of good, 
 that they are found to be no less barbarous in 
 the eyes of simplicity and common sense, than 
 in those of a philosophy the most subtle. The 
 man unsubdued by the force of habit, and the 
 child before he is made to take words for ideas, 
 are equally qualified to refute some of their 
 gravest dogmas. The very congregations who 
 repeat them, are compelled, from time to time, 
 by the progress of reason, to soften the mean- 
 ing of them in their own minds ; till at length 
 a persuasion comes up, that profession and be- 
 lief are different things, and that it is necessary 
 in this world to say one thing and mean an- 
 other ; — an insincerity, the danger of which is evi- 
 dent, and which has been extremely pernicious. 
 The book entitled ''Christianism," was in- 
 tended, in default of a better, to supply the want 
 which so many of this portion of the communi- 
 ty have felt. A sense of duty may be kept 
 alive in the bosoms of individuals without any 
 
ostensible religion ; and very certainly it is so ; 
 otherwise there would not be such numbers of 
 good and excellent men who have no other tie. 
 But one generation may be differently situated 
 in this respect from another. Those who first 
 speculate for themselves, are actuated by a 
 vigor of mind, and checked by a variety of cir- 
 cumstances, which tend to keep the moral sense 
 in a sufficient state of ascendancy ; and if such is 
 not always the case, excuses may perhaps be 
 found for them, not only common to humanity, 
 but connected with the opinions from which 
 conscience has induced them to depart. But 
 not to mention the claims of sentiment and 
 imagination, it may be dangerous to a succeed- 
 ing generation to be in want of something di- 
 rectly calculated to put the young and the un- 
 thinking in mind of their duties. It may throw, 
 and in fact does throw^, unexpected and avowed 
 difficulties in the way of the best parents and 
 teachers ; deprives them of the pleasure and the 
 advantages of family consciousness and co-ope- 
 ration ; makes them lament that they have no 
 day set apart, nor even a few moments on other 
 days, for the purpose of ridding themselves of 
 worldly distractions ; of refreshing their sense 
 of right in relation to the world itself ; of open- 
 ing to them, under a light equally devout and 
 cheerful, the sacred volume of Creation, its 
 
wonders and its beauties ; and dismissing them 
 to their very rest and recreation with the only 
 thoroughly delightful warrant : — in short, gives 
 to no injunction the stamp and authority of 
 Divineness. 
 
 All systems of religion however, to be avail- 
 able for congregational, or even for individual 
 purposes, are in need of formulas ; the formulas 
 are not complete, unless they include both in- 
 junction and assent ; and as the book in ques- 
 tion was defective in those particulars, consisting 
 chiefly of meditations, and putting its conclu- 
 sions into no practical shape," — in other words, 
 into no ritual, — it was found, by those who 
 otherwise approved it, insufficient to work out 
 its most specific object. 
 
 This defect the anxious consideration of many 
 years has supplied. The ritual is short, but 
 one portion of it is of daily obligation ; and the 
 other, or Sunday portion, is extendible at plea- 
 sure, in point of time, by the length that may 
 be given to the Discourse. Additions have also 
 been made to the rest of the book, rendering it 
 four times the size it was ; and a new title has 
 been given it, not from diminution of reverence 
 for the great name connected with the former 
 one (far be any such suspicion) ; but because 
 the worship of great names is too apt to be sub- 
 stituted for the observance of the duties which 
 
XU PREFACE. 
 
 they illustrated ; and because a due amount of 
 association with the reverence was to be incul- 
 cated towards every great and loving teacher 
 whom the world has beheld, and for the God- 
 given scripture in his heart. 
 
 It is not assumed, that the ritual will be 
 adopted by other portions, or by any other 
 single portion, of th^ new church which is mak- 
 ing its appearance in various quarters, and 
 which (without meaning to say it offensively to 
 any church) is destined, I believe, to supersede 
 all others, by reason of the growth and survival 
 of whatsoever is alone good in eveiy one of 
 them. It merely (as far as I am aware of any- 
 thing to the contrary) sets the example of em- 
 bodying some advanced conclusions, for congre- 
 gational purposes, on the subjects of faith and 
 practice ; and though its friends would gladly 
 find the seed which it has sown, promise to be - 
 come, not a single tree, but many, yet as there 
 are trees in the vegetable world of many kinds, 
 so this church of the future, for the comfort and 
 free breathing of the natural diversities of human 
 judgment, may well contemplate in its offsets a 
 like wholesome variety. Some persons may de- 
 sire a service of a kind less perceptive ; others, 
 more so ; othei*s, of greater or less magnitude ; 
 more or less accompanied with music, &c. The 
 consummation to be desired by mankind is, not 
 
PEEFACE. Xm 
 
 that all should think alike in particulars^ hut 
 that all should feel alike in essentials, and that 
 there should be no belief or practice irreconcil- 
 able with the heart. 
 
 As to those who insist that the heart itself, 
 the tenderest and most teachable of God's earthly 
 works, is a thing essentially wicked and deceit- 
 ful, I would beg them not so to calumniate their 
 own hearts, much less those of their neighbors. 
 Most persons are acquainted with individuals so 
 good-liearted, that if the whole world were com- 
 posed of such, we feel it would be a Paradise ; 
 and what is to hinder the progress of love and 
 reason from rendering the many as good-hearted 
 as the few ? or what, meanwhile, can so remove 
 obstacles in the way of the progress as taking 
 for our guides the hearts ihat have proved their 
 goodness and their truth by every trial that 
 could put worth to the test ? If wisdom such 
 as theirs cannot enlighten our path, what can ? 
 and w^hat have their calumniators to show for 
 their better knowledge of the road, whose hearts, 
 if we are to believe their own accoimt of them, 
 are not to be trusted ? 
 
 As little answer need be given to those who 
 assert, (and very believing as well as unbeliev- 
 ing persons have asserted) that no reasonable 
 Religion can prosper, because of its reason. — 
 Every creed, they tell us, must contain some- 
 
thing to daunt and defy reason ; otherwise no- 
 body will attend to it. It will not strike the 
 senses of the world sharply enough ; will not 
 force them to quiver, and be awe-stricken, and 
 give up their own judgment to ^' God's ;" for 
 the assumption is, that God's judgment, being 
 superior to man's, must so differ from it in kind 
 as well as degree, that it must needs contain 
 something finally discordant, and everlastingly 
 to be deplored. Without threats to terrify us, 
 and impossibilities to bend reason to faith, God, 
 they say, would never be thought of, nor man 
 kept in order. The Divine Teacher must suc- 
 ceed differently from all others, and make his 
 children love him by dint of fear and terror ; by 
 setting pits of torment beside lessons incapable 
 of comj)rehension. Such are the comj)liments 
 which superstition pays the Creator ! 
 
 If argument, or fact, were of any use in 
 answering logicians like these, they might be 
 referred for their refutation to the religion 
 founded upwards of two thousand years ago in 
 China by Confucius, which was set up wholly 
 on a ground of reason, and yet has outlasted 
 many a superstition, frightfulness notwithstand- 
 ing. I do not mean it to be inferred, that the 
 religion founded by the great Eastern sage was 
 the most reasonable which time could discover. 
 Noble and wonderful as it was, and is, consider- 
 
ing the superstitions around it, it partook of 
 the mistakes of his age and country. Nobler 
 systems arose, how perverted and rendered ig- 
 noble by the very prosperity that seemed to at- 
 tend them, need not be here explained ; since 
 the object of this book is to supply the wants 
 of one class of religious persons, and not to 
 give more offence than can be helped to others. 
 I mention this charge however against reason- 
 able religions, partly in order to notice that re- 
 markable disproof of it, and partly that no in- 
 ducement may be wanting to its like refutation 
 in this quarter of the world ; which after having 
 so excelled the Chinese in almost all those other 
 advancements in civilization, of which they set 
 the example, should hardly think with compla- 
 cency of the right which their men of letters re- 
 tain to wonder at some of the lore of its mission- 
 aries. For it is another charge against reason- 
 able religions, that the professors of them are as 
 cold as their doctrine ; not anxious to make 
 proselytes ; nor even willing to encourage co- 
 operation. It must be allowed, that reasonable- 
 ness of any kind is not disposed to take the 
 same hasty and passionate steps for making its 
 way as unreasonableness : the heart itself, the 
 more it warms towards its fellow-creatures, feels 
 itself more and more alien from the fervors of 
 fire and sword ; and I must confess, as one of 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 those who desire the triumj)h of its religion, 
 that glad as I should be of seeing as many- 
 voluntary converts to it as it could attract, I 
 have never thought of making proselytes in any 
 other way ; nor do I now aim at making them 
 in this. I address myself solely to the predis- 
 posed and their families. Yet I should laugh 
 at any one who told me, that this was owing to 
 coldness or want of zeal. Want of zeal will be 
 as little charged uj)on me, as abundance of 
 worldly wisdom, by those who will nevertheless 
 consider the religion in this book as very reason- 
 able indeed ; far too reasonable. 
 
 Circumstances occur however in transitional 
 states of opinion, during which those who are 
 most in the habit of associating the idea of 
 permanent results with endeavors the least im- 
 patient, feel it to be the duty of a zeal the most 
 considerate to run the risk of being thought 
 wanting in consideration, and make a special 
 movement in advance. The greater the number 
 therefore of reasonable religionists who join it, 
 the more they will vindicate the zeal both of it 
 and of themselves, in concern for whose perplex- 
 ity it is made. I do not, of course, assume 
 that they are to remain with it, or to make no 
 better movement of their own. Let them make 
 such a movement by all means, and it shall be 
 joined by myself. I should ill pretend quali- 
 
PREFACE. XVU 
 
 fications for leading, if I did not know how to 
 follow. Indeed my qualifications in the one re- 
 spect (if I possess them) are mainly founded 
 upon those in the other. 
 
 And may Grod bless the religion itself, ad- 
 vance by whose guidances it may. 
 
RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 ITS CREED AND HOPES. 
 
 God, — ^wMcli is the name for the great First 
 Cause of the Universe, for the power which has 
 set it in motion, which adorns it with beauty, 
 and which, in this our portion of it, and through 
 the mystery of time and trouble, incites us to " 
 attain to the welfare and the joy which are there- 
 fore to be considered the purpose of all final ex- 
 istence, here or hereafter, — God has written his 
 religion in the heart, for growing wisdom to read 
 perfectly, and time to make triumphant. 
 
 Without this First Divine Writing, and this 
 power to outgrow barbarous misconceptions of 
 it, no writing, claiming to be divine, could be 
 estimated, or understood. The human being 
 would have no language to correspond with its 
 
"i THE flELIGION OF THE HEAKT. 
 
 ].'ieitnlng^ no fJacnlties to recognize whatever di- 
 vineness it contained, or to reject what was mix- 
 ed with it of unworthy. Decline its arbitration, 
 when ascertained by the onlj final evidence of 
 its correctness, — that of a thorough harmony 
 with itself, — and there is no folly, cruelty, or 
 impiety of belief, which the mind, however un- 
 willingly, and to its ultimate confusion, shall 
 not be led to take for religion. Admit the ar- 
 bitration so ascertained, and such mistakes be- 
 come impossible. Doctrines revolting to the 
 heart are not made to endure, however mixed 
 up they may be with lessons the most divine. 
 They contain the seeds of their dissolution. — 
 They cannot even be thoroughly well taught. 
 Something inconsistent, something quarrelsome, 
 something dissatisfied with itself, or uncharita- 
 ble to others, something uneasy, unlovely, or 
 unpersuasive, will sooner or later disclose the in- 
 congruity, and leave the gentle and coherent 
 wisdom to be found the only guide. 
 
 "With a like necessity for relief from the other- 
 wise imperfect conclusions of the understanding, 
 mankind have been so constituted, that for the 
 most part they cannot, without uneasiness, dis- 
 associate the ideas of order and design, of means 
 taken and ends contemplated, of progressive hu- 
 manity and a divine intention. They are con- 
 scious of a difference between mind and body, 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 6 
 
 between the invisible will that moves and the 
 visible substance that is moved ; also between 
 the greatness of their intellectual aspirations 
 and the smallness of their knowledge ; and most 
 of all, between their ca23acity for happiness and 
 the amount of it which they realize : and for 
 all these reasons they desire a Giver and Com- 
 forter, whom they can thank in joy, and turn for 
 support to in affliction, and feel to be the only 
 fulfiller and security of that triumph over the 
 visible and the mortal, which their nature has 
 been made to desire. 
 
 Is it asked, why God, the Great Beneficence 
 (by which noblest of his names it is comfortable 
 to call him, since it has never been abused,) — 
 Is it asked, why the Great Cause of all this 
 beauty, and good impulse, and hope, has left 
 any proof of his being undivulged ? any one 
 evidence of his existence unwritten upon the 
 firmament, in characters as legible as those of a 
 native tongue ? Not being able to tell, our 
 hearts bid us use the choice which he has given 
 us, and believe his reasons for the silence to be 
 good, and the happiness which it contemplates 
 greater than we could otherwise have attained. 
 Perhaps the bliss of completely knowing him, 
 could we have drawn it prematurely on us, might 
 have put an end to us with its excess. 
 
 Impressed meantime, more and more^ with a 
 
4 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 sense of this Great Beneficence, in proportion 
 as we become intimate with his works, the hold- 
 ers of the Keligion of the Heart beKeve, that 
 part of his divine occupation is to work ends 
 befitting his goodness, out of difi'erent forms of 
 matter, and out of transient, qualified, and un- 
 malignant evils ; — probably to the endless mul- 
 tiplication of heavens. 
 
 They believe, that in the world which they 
 inhabit, its human beings are among the instru- 
 ments with which the Great Beneficence visibly 
 operates, to purposes of this nature ; that is to 
 say, with manifest change and advancement : 
 and they are of opinion, that wherever a so-called 
 divinely-inspired man has appeared, the inspira- 
 tion has been justly attributed to his unusual 
 participation of the beneficent impulse, in pro- 
 portion as the lessons which he has taught have 
 been effective, reasonable and lasting. 
 
 They are of opinion, that enough of these 
 lessons have been given mankind to furnish 
 them with right principles of conduct, mental 
 and bodily ; but that the particulars of con- 
 duct into which those principles should be 
 carried out, are too commonly lost sight of 
 in the supposed sufficiency of general precepts, 
 perfect in spirit, but incessantly violated for 
 want of reduction to such particulars. It is 
 therefore their opinion, that this want ought to 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 5 
 
 be zealously and constantly supplied; that 
 health of mind and health of body are to be , 
 'professedly cultivated in unison, as the only sure 
 means of completing the rational and cheerful 
 creature, which the human organization, in em- 
 powering him, requires him to become ; that 
 some of what are called minor morals, or those 
 affecting temper and manners, deserve, on that 
 account, to be known for what they are, — the 
 particulars of great ones, — the everyday mo- 
 ments of which life is made, household moments 
 especially, being deeply concerned in the recog- 
 nition ; that any further insistment on the ne- 
 cessity of such points of faith as have divided 
 and scandalized the world, and maintained the 
 worst notions of the divinest things, is not only 
 worse than useless to man, but impious (how- 
 ever unwillingly so) towards God ; and that the 
 great business of Faith is to believe in the good- 
 ness of the Creator and all his works ; of Hope, 
 to look for the thorough manifestation of it in 
 time or eternity ; and of Charity, to do and 
 think everything meanwhile in the spirit of 
 kindness. 
 
 For they believe that the Divine Being is a 
 wholly good and beneficent being ; wholly and 
 truly the Great Beneficence ; not be thought of 
 in any other light ; free and distinct, in essence, 
 and to all final purpose, from admixture of the 
 
b THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 least evil through which he works, as the light 
 itself is from the substance which it penetrates. 
 And though they hold it to be as impossible for 
 his human creatures entirely to comprehend 
 him, as it is for their arms to embrace infinitude, 
 yet, inasmuch as they are his work, and gifted 
 by him with affections, they may feel conscious 
 of him with their hearts on the side at which 
 his infinitude touches humanity, and without 
 presuming to conceive any portion of him in 
 human likeness, consider the Author of their 
 Being as including a Divine Paternity. 
 
 Nor do the holders of these opinions the less 
 hoj)e for a heaven elsewhere, or for an endless 
 succession of heavens, or for an equal measure 
 of happiness for all who have lived and suffered 
 in past times, let earth be rendered never so 
 heavenly. For what marval, deeply considered, 
 is more liiarvellous than another.? And who 
 shall limit the possibilities of adjustment, during 
 the endlessness of space and time, in the hands 
 of the maker of the stars ? 
 
 On all these accounts, it is their persuasion, 
 that every human being, for his own sake, and 
 for his fellow-creatures' sake, and (not to speak 
 it presumptuously) for God's, is bound to main- 
 tain all his faculties, mental and bodily, in their 
 healthiest, hopefuUest, most active, and most 
 affectionate condition ; mankind, in proportion 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 7 
 
 as they do so, being advanced, and the Great 
 Beneficence becoming known. 
 
 And on the strength of all this hope and be- 
 lief, they bear, they endeavor, and, as far as 
 duty sanctions, they enjoy. 
 
DAILY SERVICE. 
 
 ASPIRATION IN THE MORNING. 
 
 When the hour has arrived in the morning, at which the 
 reader thinks it right for him (or her) to get up, he will re- 
 peat mentally and with his greatest attention (or loud, if a 
 companion is agreed with him in so doing) the following 
 words. In the latter ease, the personal pronoun singular 
 will be changed for the plural. 
 
 1. In the name of the Great Beneficence, to 
 whom be all reverence, with a filial trust. 
 
 2. My first duty this day is to delay, or slur 
 over, nothing which I am bound in conscience 
 to perform. 
 
 3. The hour has come, at which it is there- 
 lore time for me to rise. 
 
 4. Thou, my heart, biddest me rise, for the 
 sake of others as well as myself 
 
 5. Because on thee the Divine Spirit has 
 written the laws, which love teaches knowledge 
 to read : 
 
 5. And because they tell me, that duty must 
 be done, and that affection must be earned by 
 good offices. 
 
 7. May I discharge, throughout the day, every 
 other such duty as conscience enjoins me : 
 
 8. Beginning the day with a kind voice to 
 others ; 
 
 9. And ending it with no reproach to myself. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 ASPIRATION AT NOON. 
 
 (To be repeated as the foregoing, and as near to the hour 
 of noon as possible.) 
 
 1. Blessed be Grod : blessed be his Beneficence, 
 working towards its purposes in the noon. 
 
 2. It is good for me, whether unoccupied or 
 busy-j to withdraw my thoughts awhile into a 
 sense of my duties towards God and man ; to- 
 wards the appreciation of the Good and Beau- 
 tiful in his universe, and the diffusion of their 
 blessings among his creatures. 
 
 3. The sun, glorious when the sky is clear, 
 glorious also, for it gives light, when the sky is 
 clouded, is the mightiest, and at the same time 
 the most beneficent, of all his visible creatures 
 in this our sphere : 
 
 4. And yet it is but one of an innumerable 
 starry brotherhood : 
 
 5. What a proclamation of the nature of 
 Himself ! 
 
 6. May exalting and humanizing thoughts 
 forever accompany me, making me confident 
 without pride, and modest without servility. 
 
 7. Perhaps my dearest friend is now thinking 
 of me : 
 
 8. Perhaps more than one of my dear friends 
 and kindred. 
 
10 THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 9. May I ever be such, as generous affection 
 would have me : 
 
 10. And may strength and happiness be 
 theirs. 
 
 ASPIRATION IN THE EVENING. 
 
 (To be repeated at Dusk.) 
 
 1. Blessed be God ; blessed be his Beneficence, 
 working towards its purposes in the evening. 
 
 2. The portion of the globe on which I live is 
 rolling into darkness from the face of the sun. 
 
 3. Softly and silently it goes, with whatever 
 swiftness. 
 
 4. Soft and silent are the habitual movements 
 of nature : 
 
 5. Loudly and violently as its beneficence may 
 work, within small limits and in rare instances. 
 
 6. Let me imitate the serene habit ; 
 
 7. And not take on my limited foresight the 
 privilege of the stormy exception. 
 
 8. May I contribute what I can, this evening, 
 to the peace and happiness of the house in which 
 I live ; 
 
 9. Or of the fellow-creatures, anywhere, among 
 whom I may find myself. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 11 
 
 ASPIRATION AT BEDTIME. 
 (To be repeated as the foregoing.) 
 
 1. Blessed be God : blessed be liis Beneficence, 
 •which neither sees wisdom in haste, nor has need 
 of rest. 
 
 2. If I have done any wrong to-day, or fear so ; 
 
 3. Or if I have left any duty undone, as far 
 I could perform it ; 
 
 4. Let me not fail to make amends to-morrow. 
 
 5. Let me not have to rei3eat this wish to- 
 morrow night. 
 
 6. May M. have a happy sleep ; 
 
 7. May N. : 
 
 8. May all whom I love : 
 
 9. May all who are to sleep this night. 
 
 10. I hope grief and pain will find respite ; 
 
 11. And wakefulness discover its cure. 
 
 12. Gentle and good is darkness : 
 
 13. Beautiful with stars ; 
 
 14. Or working to some benefit of a difierent 
 aspect, with clouds. 
 
 15. God's ordinance of the rolling world takes 
 away the light at bed-time, like a parent ; 
 
 16. Shall I not sleep calmly under its shadow ? 
 
 17. May I drop as calmly into the sleep of 
 death ; 
 
 18. And wake to an eternal morning. 
 
WEEKLY SERVICE. 
 
 On Sundays, at a regular hour between breakfast and dinner, 
 tbe family or other congregation will assemble, and service 
 will be performed as follows. 
 
 After a pause of a few minutes, when the congregation is 
 settled, the organ or seraphine, or other such musical instru- 
 ment, if the place possess one, will be played, the music be- 
 ing instrumental only, and of a gentle character. 
 
 This music is to be considered a preparation for the Silent 
 Reflections, which, after a brief pause, will follow. 
 
 But where there is no such instrument, the Reader for the 
 Day, instead of it, and after the pause following on the set- 
 tlement of the congregation, will say : — 
 
 My friends, let us prepare our thoughts for 
 the consideration of the duties which we owe to 
 the Great Being that has formed us, and to the 
 fellow-creatures with whom we are incited to 
 make progression. 
 
 . The congregation, making it a point to attend to the words 
 as closely as if they were addressed to them by another, will 
 repeat the following 
 
 SILENT REFLECTIONS. 
 
 1. It is good to prepare the thoughts in gen- 
 tleness and silencCj for the consideration of duty. 
 
 2. Silence as well as gentleness would seem 
 beloved of God : 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 13 
 
 3. For to the human sense, 
 
 4. And like the mighty manifestation of a 
 serene lesson, 
 
 5. The skies, and the great spaces between 
 the stars, are silent. 
 
 6. Silent too, for the most part, is earth ; 
 
 7. Save where gentle sounds vary the quiet 
 of the country, 
 
 8. And the fluctuating solitudes of the waters. 
 
 9. Folly and passion are rebuked before it : 
 
 10. Peace loves it : 
 
 11. And hearts are drawn by it together ; 
 
 12. Conscious of one service ; 
 
 13. And of one duty of sympathy. 
 
 14. Violence is partial and transitory : 
 
 15. Grentleness alone is universal and ever 
 sure. 
 
 16. It was said of old, under a partial law, 
 and with a limited intention, — 
 
 17. But with a spirit beyond the intention, 
 which emanated from the Grod-given wisdom in 
 the heart, — 
 
 18. That there came a wind which rent the 
 mountains, and brake the rocks in pieces before 
 the Lord ; but the Lord was not in the wind : 
 
 19. And after the wind was an earthquake ; 
 but the Lord was not in the earthquake : 
 
 20. And after the earthquake a fire ; but the 
 Lord was not in the fire : 
 
14 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 21. And after the fire a still sraall voice. 
 
 22. Such is the God-given voice of conscience 
 in the heart : 
 
 23. Most potent when most gentle ; 
 
 24. Breaking before it the difficulties of 
 worldly trouble ; 
 
 25. And inspiring us with a calm determina- 
 tion. 
 
 Here the Reader acd the Congregation will proceed aloud, 
 alternately, as follows : — 
 
 LITURGY. 
 
 Beader. The heart bids us adore the great 
 and serene Mystery of the Universe ; 
 
 Congregation, The calmness and the good- 
 ness of God : 
 
 B. Constant as the heavens above the clouds ; 
 
 C. Yet working in them, and beneath them, 
 for the hopes of earth : 
 
 B. Who, far as telescope can discern, has sown 
 the gulfs of space with planets as with seed-pearl ; 
 
 G. And yet is not more present in the remot- 
 est of them than he is in our own planet, which 
 is one of his pearls also : 
 
 B. Inciting uc to advance in knowledge and 
 goodness. 
 
 Q. Through troubles which are not all trouble ; 
 
 B. But sweeteners also of joy ; 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 15 
 
 C. And provers of affection ; 
 
 R. Giving also termination to trouble ; 
 
 €. But no end to the hope of joys to come : 
 
 B. Who being therefore good in the evils 
 which we understand, 
 
 G. Is to be held equally so in those which are 
 obscure to us ; 
 
 B. Like the good and wise parents, whom 
 their children sometimes misconstrue ; 
 
 C. But who are loved by them more and 
 more, as they grow up in wisdom themselves : 
 
 B, Encouraging us nevertheless, for our 
 growth in strength and worthiness, to assist in 
 doing evils away ; 
 
 G. Especially those of the poor and misled ; 
 
 B. And of all wants whatsoever, both of body 
 and soul ; 
 
 G. As from time to time is done, in the course 
 of the progress which he has ordained ; 
 
 B. The human creature learning to know and 
 to respect, more and more, the frame which his 
 soul inhabits ; 
 
 G. And the beautiful region of the universe, 
 in which it is sojourning ; 
 
 B. Worthy of study for its wonders ; 
 
 G. And of admiration for its beauties ; 
 
 B. And of respect for its patience and its en- 
 deavors : 
 
 G. And of love for its affections ; 
 
16 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 B. And of its place among the stars for its 
 hopes : 
 
 C. Giving us to see vast evidences of space 
 and time, and starry habitations ; 
 
 i?. With suns nobler and nobler, and like cen- 
 tres for other suns ; 
 
 G. As if to encourage o^-'r hearts and our un- 
 derstandings, onwards, and for ever. 
 
 The Reader shall then say: — 
 
 My friends, in gratitude for our heavenward 
 thoughts, feeling that God is the ordainer of 
 least as well as greatest, and that to reach the 
 highest of our approaches towards him, we must 
 begin with the lowest step, — 
 
 Let us enumerate the duties which the hearts 
 of his wisest servants, by their efforts from age 
 to age, have enabled us to read in our own. — 
 And may we perform them now this day, and 
 every day of the coming week, and as long as 
 we can take thought for one another. 
 
 The Reader is here joined hy the congrega- 
 tion in repeating aloud the 
 
 RULES OF LIFE AND MANNERS. 
 
 Our duties this day, and always, are — 
 
 1. To reverence God and his purposes with a 
 filial trust. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 17 
 
 2. To study, as far as in us lies, his creation, 
 and be sensible of its beauties. 
 
 3. To consider duty our first object, and the 
 highest warrant of our pleasures. 
 
 4. To delay, or slur over, nothing which it is 
 incumbent on us to perform. 
 
 5. To keep our bodies clean, things about us 
 in order, and our appearance decent and unaf- 
 fected. 
 
 6. To keep our blood pure with exercise and 
 fresh air, and to be as conversant always with 
 the air as befits creatures that exist only by 
 means of it. 
 
 7. To avoid oppressing, exciting, or drowsing 
 ourselves with over-eating, or drinking, or with 
 narcotics. 
 
 8. To consider kind manners, and a willing- 
 ness to please and be pleased, not supei-ficial, 
 but substantial duties. 
 
 9. To hold censorious talk dishonorable to the 
 motives, and in a creation so full of interest, 
 disgraceful to the understanding. 
 
 10. To set examples, in word and deed, of 
 the truthfulness that we demand from others ; 
 not indeed saying all that we think at all times 
 (which would be inhuman), but never saying 
 anything which we do not think, or doing any- 
 thing with duplicity. 
 
 11. To cultivate large-heartedness ; endeav- 
 
18 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 oring to think and to do on all occasions the re- 
 verse of what is petty and self-seeking, even at 
 the hazard of misconstruction. 
 
 12. To consider, nevertheless, indifference to 
 misconstruction, as a presumption and of bad 
 example. 
 
 13. To inflict no pain on any creature for the 
 sake of a pleasure. • 
 
 14. To shrink from no pain to ourselves, 
 which in wholesomeness or in kindness ought to 
 be met. 
 
 15. To visit the sick, and others who need 
 comfort. 
 
 16. To encourage unbounded enquiry, par- 
 ticularly into the causes of social evils ; and to 
 do what we can towards their alleviation and 
 extinction. 
 
 17. To consider the healthy, and therefore, as 
 far as mortality permits, happy exercise of all 
 the faculties with which we have been gifted, as 
 the self-evident final purpose of our being, so 
 far as existence in this world is concerned ; and 
 as constituting therefore the right of every in- 
 di\idual human creature, and the main earthly 
 object of all social endeavor. 
 
 18. To reflect at the same time, that man's 
 hope of immortality is also the gift of his Crea- 
 tor ; that the certainty of it in this life, might, 
 in some way or other, be inconsistent with the 
 
THE EELIGION OF THE HEAET. 19 
 
 very perfection of its happiness when attained ; 
 and that, in the meantime, the hope of that 
 happiness for all is a heavenlier thing, and more 
 suitable to a good heart, than assumptions of 
 certainty barbarized with unhappiness to any. 
 
 19. To bear in mind, that Morals mean Hab- 
 its ; that good as well as bad habits are acquir- 
 able ; and that satisfaction, instead of regret, 
 increases with their advancement. 
 
 20. Never to forget, that as the habits of 
 childhood commence with its existence, they 
 are the most acquirable of any, and are of all 
 the most important. 
 
 Reader speahing alone. 
 
 So be it, my dear friends. Amen. And may 
 the Divine Mystery who created us, the Great 
 and Beneficent God, the ordainder of growth 
 and progress, who has thought fit for his wise 
 purposes that the human race should join in 
 working out their own advancement, find us 
 worthy of our share in the endeavor, and give 
 us a foretaste of his heaven in the love and har- 
 mony of the perseverance. 
 
 Congregation. Amen. 
 
 Here, after the like music, or pause, as before, will follow 
 a Sermon or other serious Discourse, original or select, and 
 written or extempore, on a subject concordant with the prin- 
 
20 THE RELIGION OF THT HEART. 
 
 ciples of the Religion ; after which the Service will conclude 
 with a hymn, if convenient, accompanied or otherwise by 
 iDusic ; or if not, with music alone. 
 
 There is no other service all day, not even of the custom- 
 ary week-day Aspirations. The whole remainder of the time 
 is given up, though in accordance with the spirit of the Rules, 
 to the most thorough rest and recreation, particularly in the 
 enjoyment of the works of Nature and Art ; and as the Ser- 
 vice itself aspires towards the source of those works, the 
 great First Cause of all that is Good and Beautiful, the en- 
 tire day is considered a Practical Thanksgiving on all these 
 accounts. 
 
 BENEDICTION AND ASPIRATION. 
 
 (To be read occasionally, before the Sunday Discourse, in 
 case the latter happen to be shorter than usual ; or for any 
 other special reason.) 
 
 Peace be to this assembly. '•'■ May it advance 
 in knowledge and goodness. May it assist, by 
 its endeavors and its example, the advancement 
 of all. 
 
 As a family bound together by love and duty, 
 even such are we incited to hope, that all man- 
 kind may become. If here on earth, then there 
 will be a heaven on earth ; and God will some- 
 how reconcile past to future, that nothing heav- 
 enly may be wanting. If in another world only, 
 
 * Or, to this family, this house, &c., according as circum- 
 stances may require. 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 21 
 
 then there is heaven still, as the heart bids us 
 hope, and as God therefore bids us hope, by 
 whom the heart was made. 
 
 In this hope let us live, and let us rejoice, 
 interchanging our comforts, dividing our bur- 
 dens, and in every way striving to shew ourselves 
 worthy of the heaven to which we look. "Heav- 
 en," said the good priest, "is first a temper, and 
 then a place." 
 
 By this shall we know, that we are helping 
 to carry on the best part of the great work of 
 progression, manifest in our eyes. By this shall 
 we know, that growing and strengthening in our 
 acquirements, according to the laws of all en- 
 during things, we have learnt truly to read the 
 wisdom which God has written in our hearts, 
 hailing it in the approbation which he has em- 
 powered them, and them only, in conjunction 
 with the hearts of our fellow-creatures, to give 
 us, and receiving comfort from it, perhaps joy, 
 in proportion to that which we bestow. 
 
 For even to be worthy of a noble want of joy, 
 we must learn to be content with duty. 
 
 0, may we find ourselves daily growing in 
 such strength and such worthiness ! May we, 
 as friends, and as kinsfolk, and as children, and 
 as the moulders of children, as families also, and 
 as fellow-creatures, and as inhabitants of this 
 our star, the earth, become daily more conscious 
 
22 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 and more hopeful co-operators in tlie work to 
 wliich the Great Beneficence has been pleased 
 to call us ! May we become even as animated 
 and creative images, contemplated by his Divine 
 Mind, that warming into action before the eyes 
 of the Great Artist, shall realize his intentions, 
 and complete the human portion of this his 
 beautiful world! one of innumerable worlds, 
 which are always perhaps thus being made, and 
 always thus succeeding. 
 
 ANOTHER. 
 
 Peace be to this house. May it be good and 
 loving. May devotion to its duty cause it reci- 
 procation of happiness. May it realize in itself 
 what it would see over all the earth. 
 
 As a family bound together by duty and love, 
 even such are we incited to hope that the whole 
 world may become. In that hope let us live 
 and let us endeavor, interchanging our com- 
 forts, dividing our burdens, and ever maintain- 
 ing brave and affectionate wills for all good pur- 
 
 If many generations must pass away, before 
 this great end can arrive, shall we refuse on that 
 account, to do what we can towards it ? Shall we 
 refuse to anticipate the happiness of others by 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 23 
 
 contributing to it ourselves ? Shall we recoil into 
 despondency at the thought of spaces and mea- 
 surements of time, which, compared with eter- 
 nity, are but as drops of water in the ear of a 
 listener ? or shall we not rather surmount them, 
 and be with our children's children on the an- 
 gelic wings of hope and imagination ? If we 
 are destined only to hope and to endeavor, for 
 other great purposes connected solely with other 
 spheres, shall we not cultivate, with the same 
 cultivation, our energies and our tenderness ? 
 knowing that there is nothing which we can do 
 better ? and that a task is often good for its 
 own sake, and for the profit which it does our 
 spirit ? 
 
 Let us be wise always ; enjoying whatever 
 duty permits us to enjoy, communicating knowl- 
 edge, strengthening and perfecting our bodies 
 and our souls. 
 
 Yet why should progression be deprived of 
 any one portion of its hopes ? The tranquillity 
 of this room, the consciousness of a purpose and 
 a sympathy, of reposing on one another's hearts, 
 of desiring to be stronger and kinder, to lay 
 aside all ill, and to possess ourselves of all 
 good, — nay, the recollection of the little heats 
 we may have indulged at any time against one 
 another, or even brought with us now to this 
 place (may we hasten to shew that they are no 
 
24 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 more when we go out of it), — does not all this 
 pleasure, and even this pain, if well considered, 
 incite us to do as much as possible for the en- 
 lightenment and gathering together, in one 
 sweet pasture of many folds, the whole human 
 race ? Do not we think that families, less com- 
 fortable or consoled than ourselves, might at- 
 tain to the same comfort and consolation ? Do 
 we not seem to feel, in this gentle and reflecting 
 quiet, that heaven extends itself to wherever 
 such meetings take place ? and that by many 
 such meetings, and many such carryings on of 
 their spirit when they are over, heaven indeed 
 would be extended and detained upon earth ? 
 
 Let us pause on that thought. Let us sit 
 awhile, and refresh ourselves for our task, in the 
 quiet of that aspiration. 
 
 ANOTHER. 
 
 Peace be to this meeting. May it behold the 
 happiness diffused by the sense of duty. May 
 it realize in itself its efforts for the good of all. 
 
 As a family bound together by love and duty, 
 such are we incited to hope the whole world may 
 become. To that end are we incited to labor ; — 
 to that end are we encouraged both to endure 
 sorrow and to diminish it : and the endeavor is 
 divine, even should it terminate with itself. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 25 
 
 Yet why should it so terminate ? The small 
 period during which we know the history of 
 man, argues nothing against hope the most ar- 
 dent: — the improvements which we are sure 
 have taken place from time to time, especially 
 during these latter days, may animate endeavor 
 the most unaided. Shall our hearts not ad- 
 vance with our material welfare ? our sympa- 
 thies not increase in proportion with the world- 
 wide spread of our intercourse ? Let us be 
 among the foremost in furthering them, where 
 we can. Let us encourage others with our love 
 and gratitude, where we cannot. We can at 
 least present to the friends that know us, and 
 the strangers that may come among us, the spec- 
 tacle of dutiful and affectionate, and therefore 
 in all probability cheerful households, such as 
 we would fain see throughout the earth. 
 
 Consider. The heavens do not speak to us. 
 The sun and the stars are silent. But the si- 
 lence only invites us the more eloquently to co- 
 operate with these inaudible energies of the uni- 
 verse ; and the lustre of the stars reaches our 
 eyes, as if for the purpose of showing that our 
 remotest hopes are justified. We have a task 
 to perform for others and for posterity, which 
 certainty for ourselves might injure. Do we 
 droop and do nothing, because we are not cer- 
 tain of anything ? The most selfish are not guil- 
 
26 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 ty of a folly so unprofitable. Shall we refuse 
 to cultivate this noble garden, the Earth, be- 
 cause we hope for a paradise more complete ? 
 Little honor should we do the Spirit by whom 
 we breathe in it. Shall we work only for our 
 individual selves, or even for the kindred that 
 reflect the likeness of us ? The wide air does 
 not confine itself to our gardens. The seeds are 
 not scattered by the genial winds solely on one 
 spot. Small will be our greatest harvest, — un- 
 successful our success, — if we enter not into the 
 joys of others ; if we interchange not with them 
 our comforts and our cares, and partake not the 
 mighty heart of the many. 
 
 ANOTHER, 
 During a Time of Trouble. 
 
 Peace be to this meeting. May duty and love 
 be its support. May it strengthen itself by still 
 giving that comfort to others, which at this mo- 
 ment it finds it difficult to receive. 
 
 Tears, and sorrows, and losses, are a part of 
 what must be experienced in this present state 
 of life : some for our manifest good, and all, 
 therefore, it is trusted, for our good concealed ; 
 for our final and greatest good. 
 
 But part of our good consists in the endea- 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 27 
 
 vor to do sorrow away, and in tlie power to sus- 
 tain them when the endeavor fails ; — to bear 
 them nobly, and thus help others bear them as 
 well. 
 
 Let us take care therefore that we do not de- 
 grade our sorrows by sullenness and ill-temper, 
 and that we may ever be ready to accept a kind 
 relief 
 
 Let us seek, also, rational and generous com- 
 fort ourselves ; and therefore let us begin by 
 bestowing it. 
 
 Some tears belong to us because we are un- 
 fortunate ; others because we are humane ; 
 many because we are mortal. But most are 
 caused by our being unwise. It is these last 
 only, that of necessity produce more. The rest 
 dissolve into patience and hope ; and may add 
 to the sum of our blessings, by enlarging our 
 hearts. 
 
 But so may the others, if we grow wiser. 
 Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask our- 
 selves, after the first suffering, how we can turn 
 it into good. So shall we take occasion, from 
 one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers. 
 
 Neither let us repeat this to ourselves as a 
 thought to be approved, but as a thing that can 
 be done : and never let us forget, that, on this 
 as on all other occasions, the endeavor is half 
 the work. Come what will, to be weak is only 
 
28 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 to be more miserable. To be strong is to have 
 a double chance. The supports of sorrow are, 
 patience, activity, and affection. May we be 
 strong in ourselves : may we be strong in loving 
 and being beloved by one another. Linked with 
 one another's hearts, let us be equally prepared 
 to present a firmer front to adversity, and to 
 partake the dew of whatever blessing shall fall 
 upon our heads. 
 
EXERCISES OF THE HEART 
 
 IN ITS DUTIES AND ASPIRATIONS. 
 
 I. 
 OF DUTY ITSELF. 
 
 Though it is impossible for us not to desire hap- 
 piness, or to contemplate the performance of 
 duty but as a means of partaking, or at least of 
 deserving it, yet as duty is the only security for 
 the general welfare, and as individual welfare 
 itself cannot be complete without general wel- 
 fare (so beautifully all-involved is the final good 
 of all), duty must be our great end and aim, 
 leaving happiness to follow as it may. 
 
 Abiding by duty, our happiness, when it- 
 comes, is the greatest we can receive ; and when 
 it does not come, we live nevertheless, if not in 
 the light and joy, yet in the shadow of heaven. 
 Its gravity is better than the levity of the un- 
 dutiful. Forsaking duty, we find what we took 
 for heaven, to be none. 
 
 And what is duty 7 — Whatever we take to 
 be such, uncondemned by our conscience, and 
 apart from forcing the consciences of others. — 
 We cannot ascertain it further ; and with that 
 
30 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 sense of it we may be content, trusting that 
 our consciences, if it be necessary, will be fur- 
 ther enlightened by time and reflection, and 
 testing our sincerity meanwhile by our power 
 to be indulgent to others, and denying to our- 
 selves. 
 
 Not that we are to reject happiness now, or 
 at any time, if duty warrant it. Nor are we to 
 cease to expect its arrival, or that of some balm 
 in its stead, provided duty be with us. For 
 what is du ty itself but the means of giving as 
 much happiness as we can to others ? And sup- 
 posing that we could refuse happiness if we 
 would, what right should we have to refuse 
 what we claim a right to give ? The refusal 
 itself could arise from nothing but a sullen 
 pleasure of its own, or from a sickliness needing 
 to be cured. 
 
 But we must entertain happiness in such 
 sort, that duty be ever set above it. 
 
 Duty must be known to be that only inmate 
 of our hearts, which can do rightly with happi- 
 ness or without it. 
 
 II. 
 
 OF OUR DUTIES TO OTHERS. 
 
 Our duty to others consists in imagining our- 
 selves in their places, and doing them good ac- 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 31 
 
 cordingly. Self-love will easily correct an un- 
 due portion of sympathy ; but a great portion 
 of sympathy is necessary to correct the errors 
 of self-love. 
 
 We must earn our pleasures as much as pos- 
 sible through the medium of those of others, 
 sharing with them our enjoyments, and furnish- 
 ing them, whenever we can io so unostenta- 
 tiously and unofficiously, with the knowledge 
 and improvements in our possession. We must 
 also hazard pain to others as little as possible ; 
 whether apart from, or in connection with our 
 own ; considering consequences to them, even 
 when it becomes our duty to disregard them as 
 affecting ourselves. 
 
 We are not to be slow in endeavoring to right 
 those whom others wrong : but on all occasions, 
 whether acting for or against individuals, we 
 must bear in mind the good of the community, 
 as the warrant of all that we do. Before we 
 oppose them, it is our duty to endeavor to set 
 them right. If opposition be unavoidable, we 
 must still be as placable as we are courageous. 
 There is a noble and an ignoble quarreling. — 
 The consequence of the one is to excite, in a 
 generous enemy, the wish to be a friend ; of 
 the other, to do injury to all, and to our own 
 minds. 
 
 Envy we must counteract by doing all we 
 
32 THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 can to produce equality of happiness ; for envy, 
 black a sorrow as it is, is but one of the impa- 
 tient and uneducated instincts of justice ; and 
 so is revenge. One of our greater duties is to 
 learn to know these and all other passions for 
 what they are ; so that we may assist our fel- 
 low-creatures cheerfully, and distinguish their 
 mistakes and wrong-doing from fancied malig- 
 nities and the existence of something devilish. 
 
 Believe the best. Live with your friends, not 
 as if they were one day to be your enemies, (a 
 proposal which is absurd — ^for how can such in- 
 tercourse be friendship ?) but as though you 
 would always deserve that they should remain 
 your friends. 
 
 A particular friendship does not hinder a wide 
 sympathy with the world. It is only one of the 
 greatest proofs that you can feel the sympathy, 
 imd one of the greatest rewards for its exercise. 
 
 Eather be forsaken by a friend, than forsake 
 one ; for men may be forsaken for their virtues 
 as well as their vices ; whereas, if another has 
 ever deserved your friendship, it is your duty to 
 abide by him as long as possible, and to try 
 whether you cannot make him still deserve it. 
 
 Cultivate what is good in all men, and be 
 glad that you have found it. Consider your 
 own defects, and the charity you need for them. 
 If you think you have no defects, and that you 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 33 
 
 are not in want of charity, you are either above 
 or below humanity, and therefore will either 
 have still more charity for others, or be in want 
 of it more miserably for yourself. 
 
 Be ingenuous in all that concerns yourself; 
 reserved and considerate in everything which af- 
 fects others. Be personally concerned in noth- 
 ing which you must keep secret from those who 
 have a right to your confidence, and whose 
 welfare is concerned in it. But this caution 
 being observed, the secrets of others are not 
 yours to part with. We must keep them as re- 
 ligiously as entrusted gold. We must do more. 
 We must regard every matter as an entrusted 
 secret, which we believe the person concerned 
 would wish to be considered as such. Nay, fur- 
 ther still, we must consider all circumstances as 
 secrets- entrusted, which would bring scandal 
 upon another if told, and which it is not our 
 certain duty to discuss, and that in our own 
 persons, and to his face. The divine rule of 
 doing as we would be done by, is never better 
 put to the test, than in matters of good and 
 evil speaking. We may sophisticate with our- 
 selves upon the manner in which we should 
 wish to be treated, under many circumstances ; 
 but everybody recoils instinctively from the 
 thought of being spoken ill of in his absence. 
 
 Let us see, that as men, we are manly ; as 
 
34 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 women, feminine — mutual helpers — linked bro- 
 therly and sisterly, one with another. 
 
 III. 
 
 ANOTHER. 
 Being on the Duties commonly called Public. 
 
 Public and private duty is, in the end, the 
 same. What we owe to ourselves, we owe to 
 our neighbor : what we owe to our neighbor, we 
 owe to the whole world. This is the circle of 
 humanity. 
 
 Every man is bound to have a general knowl- 
 edge of the institutions under which he lives, 
 of the existing state of the world, and of the 
 progress which it has made. He is bound to 
 encourage the j)rogress of knowledge and edu- 
 cation ; to inc[uire calmly, and without inter- 
 ruption to reasonable business, what are the 
 remedies for war, for poverty, for vice, and for 
 all other great mistakes and imperfections ; and 
 to take care, as far as in him lies, that society 
 is so much the better and wiser for his being a 
 member of it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 ANOTHER. 
 Regarding our Duties to Posterity, 
 
 Our duties to posterity are two-fold ; part, 
 as being its originators physical and moral ; and 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 35 
 
 part, as "being its guardians political. The lat- 
 ter is comprised in our public duties, all of them 
 tending of necessity to that end ; but we ought 
 to keep in mind, for our further incitement, 
 that the former is of still greater importance, 
 and goes to include the latter. 
 
 Consider. We are the makers of .the next 
 generation, and so of the next, and so of the one 
 that follows. Let us take care that they are 
 not the offspring of weak bodies or ill minds ; 
 not the offspring of indifference ; of matches 
 either mercenary or unthinking ; of monstrous 
 disproportions in age, spirit, or temper. 
 
 For we make both minds and bodies ; — and 
 shall the creation of thousands of deformities, 
 moral as well as physical, be counted as noth- 
 ing ? 
 
 OF OUR DUTIES TOWARDS CHILDREN. 
 
 Our duty towards children, besides those 
 which we owe to our descendants in general, is 
 to set them a good example, especially in re- 
 gard to truth, modesty, and mildness ; to be at 
 once gentle with them, and firm ; to sacrifice 
 nothing which concerns them to our convenience 
 or self-indulgence ; to be entire parents to them 
 from the first, neither denying to them the 
 
36 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 sweet bosom of the mother, nor obstnicting 
 their free breathing with false comfort, nor sub- 
 stituting the drugging of their senses for our 
 own patience ; to guard against the planting 
 of fear and jealousy in their minds, teaching 
 them to love one another, and to be glad of the 
 good darkness of the night-time. We must not 
 humor any other wrong passion in order to save 
 ourselves trouble, (much greater will be our 
 trouble in the end) ; must see that they are kept 
 clean, and have plenty of exercise and recrea- 
 tion, particularly in the open air ; and must 
 encourage them to help themselves, and be in- 
 dependent, and despise little pains, that acci- 
 dent and fortune may not surj)rise, nor our ser- 
 vices weaken them. We must accustom them, 
 till they can reason, rather to feel the force of 
 a dispassionate necessity, than to obey our mere 
 will and command ; must guard against lead- 
 ing them into vanity with foolish and ill-timed 
 praises ; must conduct them by gentle means 
 into knowledge, neither being in a hurry to make 
 them thoughtful, nor afraid of exercising their 
 faculties with a little difficulty ; must not ex- 
 cite imagination in them toO much (which ren- 
 ders them fearful), nor suppress a reasonable 
 and natural tendency to it (which is depriving 
 them of a good) ; must make allowances (espe- 
 cially as parents) for the respective tendencies 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 37 
 
 or peculiarities of their constitutions, being more 
 patient with the impatiences, and more self-re- 
 flecting and anxious for the welfare, of the sick 
 and the deformed ; must encourage them to 
 bear a generous pain, however great, and to 
 learn the dignity of foregoing a selfish pleasure ; 
 must enter as much as jiossible into their sports 
 and satisfactions, which is doing ourselves a 
 good ; and above all, (which cannot be too of- 
 ten repeated,) must make them strong in body, 
 and sociable and affectionate in mind. 
 
 To these ends it is one of the most impera- 
 tive of all duties towards them, that by due de- 
 •grees, according as their minds understand and 
 their tendencies require it, we make them ac- 
 quainted with, and teach them to respect, the 
 wonderful structure of their own bodies, its 
 perfect fitness for a wise and happy life, and 
 the sufferings that a rejection of wisdom may 
 cause both to it, and the mind by which it is 
 inhabited. 
 
 Our first duty to a child is to lay the foun- 
 dation for all comfort and spirit in his health : 
 our second, to take care that this spirit place 
 one of its main goods in associating fellow-crea- 
 tures with its enjoyments. It is our sacred duty 
 (and we must commence it almost with their 
 existence, for afterwards it may be too late), to 
 inspire children with a delight in beholding the 
 
38 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 pleasures of others. They are ever desirous to 
 possess what they see enjoyed. The desire is 
 natural. Possession, if rightly enjoyed, is a 
 good. But let us teach them how to enjoy en- 
 joyment. Let us encourage them to partake 
 with others ; let us guide their little hands, that 
 others may share what they contain, making 
 them notice the pleasure which they bestow. 
 
 But do not expect that this will be done by 
 the foolish and the unconcerned. We must 
 not entrust to ignorance the tasks of wisdom, 
 and then lament that they are not learnt. Let 
 us, ourselves, do all that we can. Let ourselves 
 set the example of teaching justice, and of be- 
 holding delight delightedly. Let us show them 
 that the sight of good possessed is in itself a 
 good ; opening to their innocent eyes the trea- 
 sures of a generous imagination, the innermost 
 portals of wisdom, the feast of angels. 
 
 VI. 
 
 OUR DUTIES TO OURSELVES IN RELATION TO 
 OUR DESCENDANTS. 
 
 As in order to render children good, we must 
 set them a good example, so in order to be the 
 parents of a healthy offspring, we must take 
 care of our own health ; in order to render them 
 
THE BELIGION OF THE HEART. 39 
 
 happy and well-tempered, we must cultivate a 
 happy temper in our own minds. Again and 
 again let us remember, that we are the fathers, 
 and mothers, and predisposing kindred, of the 
 succeeding generations. The consequences do 
 not flow vindictively, but naturally ; as ordinary 
 consequences from a cause. Again and again, 
 therefore, of this let us be mindful. 
 
 We ourselves are influenced in our characters 
 and temperament by those who went before us, 
 as they were by others. Let us be grateful for 
 what we inherit of good, but accuse nobody of 
 evil, — ^hoping that posterity will be charitable 
 in like manner to us : for the first sources and 
 the last operations of evil will be still a mys- 
 tery. But knowing and reflecting more than 
 others, let us keep our duties in mind kindly 
 and cheerfully. 
 
 Let us be just. Let us be generous. And if 
 sorrows must nevertheless come, let us hope, 
 that as it is the nature of good to produce good, 
 so a good compensation will be found even for 
 our sorrows. 
 
 VII. 
 
 ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 Be healthy and cheerful, cultivating all kindly 
 emotions, and enjoying all natural pleasures 
 
40 THE EELIGION OF THE HEAKT. 
 
 consistent with duty and a fitting strength of 
 mind and body. 
 
 Many pleasures are allowed, if many are 
 earned. 
 
 Shall we be the ancestors of a race, compelled 
 wdth difficulty to work themselves forth into 
 the light ? or the ancestors of brave and hope- 
 ful spirits, whom we help in their task before- 
 hand ? 
 
 VIII. 
 OF PAIN AND TROUBLE. 
 
 Think not all pain evil, nor all opi30sition en- 
 mity : neither desj^air under difficulty. For 
 there is a labor that makes repose more delight- 
 ful, and there is a strife, that invigorates good 
 endeavor. Better any generous strife, however 
 painful, than the calm of indifference, and the 
 dead waters of slavery. 
 
 Pain must accomj^any even the attempt to do 
 pain away. 
 
 If there were no opposition to opinion, the 
 world would either turn about with every breath 
 of novelty, or stagnate forever in a living death. 
 
 Let us demand of Fortune, only that she gives 
 us a fair stage ; and of our opponents, nothing 
 but what every wrestler can teach them. 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEAKT. 41 
 
 ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 The pain that affects ourselves only, and not 
 the comfort or interest of the many, let us learn 
 to keep in subjection, in order that it may not 
 subject us. Let us lord it, as much as we can, 
 over physical evil, that we may bend circum- 
 stances to our will. Let us be respectful wrest- 
 lers also with intellectual suffering, that we 
 may win it to do our bidding. As men, let us 
 be manly ; as women, womanly ; thorough help- 
 ers ; forgiving friends ; not querulous with evil, 
 both for the sake of others and ourselves ; but 
 nevertheless doing all we can to master it for 
 the same reason ; counting pain at what it is 
 worth only ; forcing what would be more evil, 
 to become a part of good ; and opposing, to 
 what we cannot subdue in its effects on others, 
 a resolution that will at least hinder ourselves 
 from being conquered. Let impatience be quick- 
 ly over. If we cannot master it by ourselves, 
 let us take it with us to God, and under the 
 sense of his all-embracement it will not abide. 
 
 X. 
 DURING AFFLICTION. 
 I am afflicted and in great grief, I feel my 
 spirit bowed down in spite of every struggle. 
 
42 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 I repose it in tlie consciousness of the Great 
 Beneficence. If I have pitied others, and not 
 been quick to feel for my own troubles, I may 
 now at length pity myself Nay, if I have not 
 pitied others enough, as I fear, surely I shall 
 now pity them more ; for this indeed is suffer- 
 ing, and few can tell how my nature is wrung. 
 Flow then, my tears : be the kindly waters in 
 which regret shall be allowed a balm, — in which 
 endeavor shall be refreshed. Come about me, 
 hopes ; caress me, dear and tender recollections ; 
 give way, my weakness, and be gathered under 
 the shadow of the great and gentle mystery 
 whence my tears themselves are derived, whence 
 paternity and pity issue forth, desiring what is 
 good. Surely, if I am weak, I will do my ut- 
 most : if I have erred and am repentant, I may 
 look the more for commiseration. Thou, 
 that art the cause of pity, thou from whom is 
 derived whatever is filial and can receive com- 
 fort, let me feel thee upon my bended head, 
 like as the hand of a father. Let me be weak a 
 little, in order to be strong much ; so that I may 
 dry up my tears quickly, and proceed to serve 
 thee better, even if it be with my patience only. 
 
 XI. 
 
 ADDITION TO THE FOREGOING, 
 
 In case of the loss of any one that is dear to us. 
 
 He has gone before us. The spirit within 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 43 
 
 him, that used to talk to us, to look at us with 
 kind eyes, has left its body to dissolution, and 
 is visible to us no longer. Blessings on his 
 memory ! May he also, if he behold us, bless 
 us ! for we need blessing. Greatly we need it, 
 with these hopeless yearnings for his presence ; 
 these impatiences constantly reminded of the 
 dreadful necessity of patience ; these fears, even 
 in the midst of conviction to the contrary, that 
 we did not do all that w^e might have done for 
 him ; this consternation and astonishment, per- 
 petually recurring, at the difference between 
 what was and what is ; — this awful experience 
 of the terrible thought ^^No More ;'' of the in- 
 exorable truth ^' Never;" — this almost shame 
 at feeling that we are warm and living, while 
 he is cold and motionless ; at home and housed, 
 while he is away and in the earth ; seeing thou- 
 sands still privileged to remain who seem of no 
 worth, while he, so kind and so good, is gone 
 forever ! 
 
 But these are our thoughts, not his ; and 
 though they are permitted to the first bursts of 
 our sorrow, to continue them would be unduti- 
 ful towards the Beneficent Mystery, without 
 whose ordination of death as well as life, he 
 himself would not have existed to bless us. — 
 His body is not his spirit ; and perhaps his 
 spirit looks upon us this moment, and sees 
 
44 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 how we loved him, and how we suffer. If it 
 does, (and the power of thinking so, and of 
 hoping so, is given us by the same -Beneficence,) 
 he knows that a time will come, when he shall 
 be beheld again. To bear the same anguish as 
 ourselves, is therefore not in his power. But 
 he can pity us still: he knows the struggles 
 that we have still to endure ; he looks on his 
 mortal friends with immortal kindness ; on 
 these dear relations ; on these weak and beloved 
 children ; and whatsoever a spirit can feel, in 
 the place of tears, that assuredly he feels, bless- 
 ing us with an angel's countenance. 
 
 Let us pacify ourselves in the hope of re- 
 joining him : let us become patient in it : let 
 us rejoice in it : let us earn, if we may so 
 speak, the right of the re-union by all the 
 thoughts which he would desire us at this 
 moment to entertain, by all the duties which 
 he would wish us, now and ever, to perform. 
 That we are not vessels broken by the way, let 
 these our endeavors, and even these our sorrows, 
 show to us ; for surely sorrow, if it be lo^dng, 
 will be recompensed, and good endeavor is our 
 share in the great task of serving the divine en- 
 ergy, and extending happiness to others. Let 
 us show, before we leave this earth, that we are 
 deserving of a heaven of heavens, that is to say, 
 a heaven with those whom we have loved, by 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 45 
 
 having extended, as far as lies in our power, 
 a heaven upon earth ; and may our sorrows do 
 for us what our virtues have left undone ! 
 
 XII. 
 IN SEVERE SICKNESS. 
 
 Let me guard, in this trial, my temper and 
 sense of justice ; that, being weak, I may not 
 become weaker ; that, giving trouble, I may not 
 give more than I can help. I have now an op- 
 portunity to be more beloved ; and to reward 
 the anxiety of those who love me, with the 
 sight of my deserving it. 
 
 Let me consider whether or not I am the oc- 
 casion of this sickness. Let me remember the 
 lesson it teaches me. Do I derive it from the 
 temperament I may have inherited ? or does it 
 acquire additional force from that circumstance ? 
 Let me be generous in bearing it, as I would 
 have others generous to me. Am I not treated 
 as kindly, or with as much patience, as I could 
 desire ? Let me reflect how many times I mav 
 have been neglectful or impatient with others, 
 perhaps much oftener than I am aware. mem- 
 ory of my father, (or mother,) bear witness 
 that I reproach you not ! friends, who visit 
 and console me ; servants, to whom I give 
 new and unlooked-for trouble ! if I am weak 
 
46 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 and impatient, I will love and thank you the 
 more for bearing with me, and will endeavor to 
 make you amends. 
 
 But let me not be weak and impatient. Let 
 me prove to myself that I still have strength 
 and generosity, by resolving, from this present 
 moment, to behave myself as I ought, and by 
 keeping the resolution. 
 
 XIII. 
 IN SICKNESS THAT MAY BE MORTAL. 
 
 The elements that compose my body will 
 shortly, perhaps, be dissolved. They will go to 
 the formation of other bodies; of earths, of 
 flowers, of trees ; of creatures capable of similar 
 or different sensations; even as the hair has 
 gone, which has many times been cut from my 
 head. 
 
 Perhaps the creature the lowest in my eyes, 
 may have perceptions the most exalted. The 
 organization, at which I shudder when in health, 
 (the purposes of life requiring that I should 
 have that preference for my own,) can be recon- 
 ciled to imagination in the all-embracing kindli- 
 ness of death ; in the change that is common to 
 all, and that opens to us new hopes, and a wider 
 prospect of action. 
 
 For does this soul within me, this spirit of 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 47 
 
 thought, and love, and infinite desire, dissolye 
 as well as the body ? Has nature, who quenches 
 our bodily thirst, who rests our weariness, and 
 perpetually encourages us to endeavor onwards, 
 prepared no food for this appetite of immortali- 
 ty ? Who am I ? Do I not know the defects 
 as well as excellencies of this body, and the 
 aspirations which even they suggest to the soul ^ 
 Have I not joined in the divine task of endea- 
 voring to diminish the inert mass of evil, and 
 e,xtending the dominion of good ? The Divine 
 Spirit, of which, I trust, I contain a portion, 
 answers nothing in its mysterious self, in its 
 greatest and unearthly abstraction. But its 
 earthly voice is the speech of the wise ; its 
 thought upon earth is our noblest human 
 thought; and thought says, — I am different 
 from matter ; my hope, my memory, my per- 
 ception, are not to be accounted for by the me- 
 dium through which they receive light at pre- 
 sent. Our habitations, and the windows of our 
 habitations, are not ourselves ; much as the dwel- 
 ler in the abode is affected by what contains 
 him. This endless succession of mortal bodies, 
 short-Kved and endeavoring, what is it but na- 
 ture's mode of giving birth to immortal souls ? 
 Our existence, must it not originate somewhere ? 
 Our earthly task, is it not necessary in order to 
 make us helpers of the Spirit from which we 
 
48 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 proceed, and extenders of its great heaven? 
 But this earthly substance, of which we suppose 
 bodies to be composed, what is that also ? Is 
 it in reahty, anything different from spirit? 
 How do I know its existence, but in my con- 
 sciousness of it ? And in what respect is this 
 consciousness different from the thing of which 
 it is conscious? Are we, and all w^hich w^e 
 think we see, but so many thoughts in the mind 
 of the Divine Being ? Are we amazing thoughts, 
 that at one and the same time have our pleasure 
 and our own objects, and give pleasure and fur- 
 therance to the objects of what contains us ? 
 Does the Great Spirit let us exist, purely that 
 other beings beside itself may enjoy a sense of 
 existence, and share its own divine endeavors 
 to that end ? 
 
 We know not. It does not at present appear 
 desirable for us to know. And more blessed is 
 this uncertainty, mixed with this sweet hope 
 for all, than* the certainties of which some tell 
 us, ivJiose pleasure if is not good for a just heart 
 to part alee. My death-bed will demand no 
 miserable thoughts of futurity for myself or 
 others. The heaven I look for, has a right to a 
 happy face ; it reflects no ghastly fires of eter- 
 nity. 
 
 All pain is transitory : pain of all sorts looks 
 to an end, and is distributable among many 
 
THE EELIGION OF THE HEART. 49 
 
 bearers ; nothing but the love and joy, which 
 are perpetually set before our hopes, have an 
 immortal aspect. If it be not necessary for us 
 to know more in this earthly state, nevertheless 
 it is good and wise for us to endeavor, and to 
 love ; and it is good, at the end of our mortal 
 state, that we should be ready, with our habits 
 of mind and heart, to commence worthily an- 
 other. As the sun is at a wonderful distance from 
 the earth, and yet is intimately connected with 
 it, so we may be intimately connected with the 
 most distant and beautiful spheres, both in the 
 present and future operations of our nature. 
 Do not our thoughts travel with the speed of 
 light ? Cannot my mind, at this instant, dart 
 out of its pettier sphere, and cross thousands of 
 glad spirits in its path ? Oh, may the deficiency 
 of my past endeavors be forgiven me! May 
 they be forgiven for many great and kind rea- 
 sons ! And may I enter upon my new exist- 
 ence in the company of angels, in the society of 
 those whom I have lost and loved ! 
 
 friends that remain ! ye will keep as much 
 of me as ye are able ; kind thoughts of me ; re- 
 collections of our mutual joys and sufferings ; 
 recollections of our pardonings of one another ! 
 relics, too, of what I had and was ; a toy, a 
 something I wore, a poor lock of my hair ; now 
 become rich, because it was a part of me. You 
 
50 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 will love all whom I loved. You will love them 
 and myself still, each in the other : and you will 
 continue in the great work of endeavor, for the 
 sake of extending the heaven in which your 
 friend is about to repose. 
 
 Dearest friend of all, it is but a night till I 
 see you again. My body will be sleeping near 
 you ; my spirit alone will be gone, as it used to 
 be gone in dreams ; only, instead of visibly re- 
 turning, it will soon receive yours, clasping it 
 never to be parted more. Believe that I shall 
 commence my new existence with helping to 
 encourage yours ; and that you would be sure I 
 were present with you, whenever you thought so, 
 if it were not necessary to the great work of en- 
 deavor, that nothing in this mortal life should 
 be certain but hope. 
 
 Love and hope are my last words, if I die : 
 and again shall they be my first, if my sickness 
 leave me. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 OF ENDEAVOR IN THE GREAT WORK OF IMPROVE- 
 MENT, 
 
 (A Thought for Moments of Misgiving.) 
 
 Either this world is alterable, that is to say, 
 improvable, in reality as well as in seeming, or 
 it is not. If it is alterable, it may be in our 
 power to alter it : we may even be the only or- 
 
THE KELiaiON OF THE HEART. 51 
 
 dained means for that end : we cannot be cer- 
 tain : but it is our duty to endeavor. If on the 
 other hand it is not alterable, it is the business 
 of wisdom to conclude, that pain and evil are 
 for the best ; perhaps necessary to the enjoy- 
 ment of futurity. What the dark ground of a 
 picture is to the cheerful colors of the artist, 
 such may the darkness of this world be to the 
 light of another. But of neither are we cer- 
 tain. Let us then still endeavor : — for the sake 
 of alteration, if the world be alterable ; — ^for the 
 sake of action and variety, if it be not. 
 
 Behold a use, even in uncertainty ; the sure 
 ground upon which benevolence proceeds, even 
 in its ignorance of what is sure. 
 
 XV. 
 
 OF PAIN AS THE RESULT OF VICE AND AS THE 
 
 OCCASIONAL NECESSITY OF VIRTUE. 
 
 There is no vice, or other discordant mistake, 
 but sooner or later has a result of pain : not be- 
 cause nature is revengeful, but because it is in 
 the nature of blows given to the proper harmo- 
 ny of things to recoil and jar against those who 
 give them. It is no revenge in a wall to pain 
 the hand that smites it ; but the hand is pain- 
 ed, if it so smite. It is a warning that you are 
 not to smite again. 
 
52 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 But then is all pain tlie result of vice or mis- 
 take ? By no means. All vice produces pain, 
 or else a worse want of feeling and enjoyment ; 
 but there may be pain also in resisting vice, and 
 this latter pain is allied to health and pleasure. 
 
 It would be a happier system, at present, 
 though not, we are to believe, in the end, if 
 there could be all pleasure and no pain ; but it 
 would be much unhaj)pier, constituted as it is, 
 if we always avoided pain in the hope of having 
 nothing but pleasure. The very avoidance, 
 even if it could otherwise succeed, would consti- 
 tute a feeble misery, and subject us to worse 
 chances. 
 
 It is our business to hope that nine-tenths of 
 all the pain in the world may cease to exist ; — 
 but none of it could cease, if nobody endeavored 
 to diminish it by pain of his own. 
 
 XVI. 
 AGAINST EXCESS IN PLEASURE. 
 
 Pleasure is just, even when it ends with our- 
 selves ; but not, when in so ending, it loses 
 sight, however remotely, of the claims and in- 
 terests of others. It~is our business, in all plea- 
 sures, to have regard to four things — health, 
 conscience, our connections, and the world at 
 large. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 53 
 
 XVII. 
 AGAINST PRIDE IN VIRTUE. 
 
 Though the good are worthy partakers of the 
 Divine Spirit, being empowered to assist in for- 
 warding the great work of beneficence, yet are 
 they but small portions of a spirit whose bounds 
 we know not. They that understand this, are nei- 
 ther proud nor humiliated, but only natural and 
 full of courage. 
 
 Who shall be proud of his virtue, or angry 
 but for a little space, at vice ? The virtue of 
 this man, what perhaps has produced it ? The 
 nature of his temperament, the instructions 
 of his friends and kindred, the fortunate turn 
 of his circumstances. The vice of another man, 
 what perhaps has produced it .? The nature of 
 his temperament, the folly of his friends and 
 kindred, the unfortunate turn of his circum- 
 stances. The virtuous man is the wiser and 
 more fortunate man, whose business it is to cor- 
 rect the errors and disadvantages of the foolish ; 
 but he loses his fitness for partaking of the Di- 
 vine Spirit, and becomes one of the foolish, if 
 he thinks that his virtue is a merit to be proud 
 of, and not an advantage to exercise his charity. 
 
 Pity not vice, looking down on it ; but pity 
 it, helping it up, and planting it beside thee. — 
 But do this with simplicity and without preten- 
 
54 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 sion ; otherwise vice will have reason to look 
 down on thee ; the drunken man on the more 
 intoxicated vanity. 
 
 XVIII. 
 OF PRAYER AND THANKSGIVING. 
 
 Prayer is good, if it has a good motive, and 
 if it is reasonable, and prepared for resignation ; 
 for whatever may be the apparent system of the 
 universe, however unalterable in its laws, and 
 inattentive to men's wishes, who shall say that 
 the Lawgiver cannot vary his laws ; or that he 
 cannot reconcile appearances to contradictions ; 
 or that prayer itself, among the infinite secrets 
 of his working, may not be one of his instru- 
 ments of modification ? 
 
 Modify both action and passion, prayer assu- 
 redly does. It assuages calamity, excites hope, 
 encourages endeavor ; gives the feelings a link 
 with heaven, both humble and exalted ; anima- 
 ting, and making patient. 
 
 If these are delusions, what are other efiects 
 from causes ? or how is anything provable but 
 by the strength of its impressions, and by our 
 inability to refute it ? 
 
 Above all, how can we think of God as a 
 Father, and not pray to him ? not ask him for 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 55 
 
 help, and expect even -to receive it ? Modestly 
 indeed, as children ask favors of an earthly fa- 
 ther ; and prepared as modestly for disappoint- 
 ment, knowing his wisdom. 
 
 Good and reasonable is it to pray, when we 
 feel need of help, and have done our best to de- 
 serve it ; or even when we are miserable at the 
 thought of not having deserved it ; and when, 
 in either case, we are prepared to think as we 
 should do of our heavenly Father without it. 
 
 But for the most part, we should pray rather 
 in aspiration than petition, rather by hoping 
 than requesting ; in which spirit also we may 
 breathe a devout wish for a blessing on others, 
 upon occasions when it might be presumptuous 
 to beg it. 
 
 But let no one disgrace his belief in a Divine 
 Being, either with thinking to gain by praise 
 what his endeavors or his troubles should obtain 
 for him ; or by assuming e\ en the right to 
 praise, when his worship has never been any- 
 thing but that of a worldling or a slave. 
 
 To praise even an earthly father, in order to 
 gain some object by the praise, is disgraceful in 
 children, and dishonoring towards himself. 
 
 What is to be thought of it, when the father 
 is God ? 
 
 God is not to be supposed to delight in praise 
 and glorification, like a satrap. To praise is to 
 
56 THE BELIGION OF THE HEART.' 
 
 upraise ; and who can upraise the highest ? — 
 To glorify is to surround with pomp and lustre ; 
 and what can do that like his works ? 
 
 The praise which God requires from creatures 
 no greater than ourselves, is to love one another ; 
 to delight ourselves in his works ; to advance 
 in knowledge ; and to thank him, when we are 
 moved to do so, from the bottom of our hearts. 
 
 Thank whenever your heart is joyful, and the 
 occasion not mean : — not as children who are 
 taught to do it, in good manners, for every lit- 
 tle thing ; much less for meat and drink in par- 
 ticular, unless when you can give them to the 
 poor, or when you yourself have failed in spirit 
 for need of them ; but chiefly for things spirit- 
 ual and noble ; for the good and beauty of his 
 works ; for the happiness of your friends ; for 
 the advancements of your fellow-creatures. 
 
 Above all, take care of thanking him out of 
 the notion of being favored ; for that is the most 
 preposterous of fopperies ; one that ought to 
 make us blush at the sight of every good man 
 suffering. 
 
 Suifering itself might rather be looked upon 
 sometimes as one of the favors of God. And the 
 beholders may justly think so, in proportion as 
 the sufferer is great enough to deserve the opin- 
 ion, and too modest to entertain it. 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 57 
 
 XIX. * 
 OF LOVE TO GOD AND MAN. 
 
 Love to God, in tlie extreme sense in which. 
 Bome undertake to j) reach it, and others have 
 said that they have felt it, is impossible to his 
 creatures in their present state of knowledge. 
 They who tell us otherwise, especially when they 
 profess to know it from experience, either speak 
 untruly, or are indulging a fond conceit. Child- 
 ren who have scarcely outgrown infancy, might 
 as well pretend such a love for the father who 
 gives them pain as well as pleasure, and whose 
 discipline, however wise, it is therefore impos- 
 sible for them thoroughly to understand. The 
 children, it is true, discover, as they grow older, 
 that the pain is good for them, and perhaps that 
 their father means them well always ; and when 
 theycome to be fathers themselves, and consi- 
 der what anxieties he underwent for their wel- 
 fare, how he may have lain awake to secure 
 them rest, and how his heart bled when he pun- 
 ished them, their love for him becomes entire, 
 and they look back with sorrow for having doubt- 
 ed him, particularly if they find in themselves 
 weaknesses that formerly diminished their rev- 
 erence. But all this js human, not divine ; or 
 only so far divine, inasmuch as divineness can 
 
58 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 be liumanly partaken; and to what extent is 
 that? How' far does it enable the finite child- 
 ren of the infinite Father to stretch their little 
 arms to embrace him ? to think of him as Father 
 alone ? to be sensible of him only on the side 
 on which he touches humanity, and never to feel 
 awed at the whole inconceivable remainder of 
 his invisible and interminable presence ? How 
 can they be as glad at what he takes away as 
 at what he gives ? at his awfulest as well as love- 
 liest instruments of good ? how repose with the 
 same child-like joy in pestilence and earthquake, 
 as in flowers of the field, or as the infant does 
 on the bosom of its mother ? 
 
 The progress of the best and wisest in the 
 love of God must be entirely that of children in 
 the love of their mortal father ; till having ar- 
 rived at intellectual man's estate, and read tho- 
 roughly what has been written in their hearts, 
 they learn to love him so well in what they know 
 of his works, as to be prepared to know and to 
 love him more and more, in new stages of ex- 
 istence. But meantime, in the present state of 
 things, however beautiful upon the whole, and 
 worthy of all trust and endeavor, human beings 
 are creatures too weak and too ignorant to be 
 able to love thoroughly any nature but such as 
 thoroughly partakes of their own ; and who can 
 do this so well as the God that ordained it ? 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 59 
 
 They who demand in this respect what is im- 
 possible, only tend to make vanity more vain, 
 and to drive humility and love itself to despair. 
 Suppose it were demanded of a child that he 
 should love his father with a perfect love, and 
 this on peril perhaps of incurring his hate (for 
 such is the monstrosity, murderous of its own 
 purpose, which has been too often threatened.) 
 What could the child do, short of taking to sul- 
 lenness in self-defence, but be filled either with 
 hypocrisy or terror, most probably both ? On 
 the other hand, perhaps the reader is himself a 
 father. Did he never, in that case, look at his 
 little children, as they sat loving and caressing 
 one another, and think how content he was 
 that they should love him less, till they could 
 grow old enough to know the extent of his af- 
 fection 7 In like manner, let us be assured that 
 Grod wills us to love one another, and can wait 
 — who so well .? — till our affections towards 
 Himself approach those of higher existences. 
 Oh, let us love him as we can, and admire him 
 as we must, and learn even in this world more 
 and more to love him and admire ; but let us 
 on no account make pretensions which he must 
 know to be false, and which he has not ordained 
 to be necessary. 
 
 There is an Eastern apologue to this purpose, 
 which o^oes to the heart. A Mussulman, famous 
 
60 THE EELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 for his benevolence, awoke one night, and be- 
 held an angel in his room, writing in a golden 
 book. The good man, emboldened by a con- 
 science of peace, ventured to ask the angel what 
 he was WTiting. The names, answered the ce- 
 lestial visitant, of those who love God. And is 
 mine one of them ? said Ben Adhem (for that 
 was his name.) It is not, replied the angel. — 
 Ben Adhem, upon this, begged that his name 
 might still be set down, as one that loved his 
 fellow-creatures. The angel set it down, and 
 disappeared. 
 
 The next night the heavenly messenger re- 
 turned, and displaying the page of the book, on 
 which the names had been written, Ben Adhem 
 found that his own name had been put at the 
 head of all the others. 
 
 XX. 
 
 OF OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 
 
 Other-Worldliness is the piety of the worldly. 
 It is the same desire for the advantages of the 
 world to come, which the worldly-minded feel 
 for those of the present : and it is manifested 
 in the same way. 
 
 At the best it is self-seeking, without thought 
 of others ; at the worst, it is self-enjoyment at 
 their expense. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 61 
 
 The other-worldly are known by the dishonor 
 which they do the Master to whose favor they 
 aspire; by their adulation of his power, their 
 meanness towards the poor, and their insensi- 
 bility to the cruelties which they think he will 
 wreak on those who offend him. 
 
 Yet nine- tenths of the pieties that exclusively 
 pretend to the name, are made up of selfishness 
 of this kind ; and their professors do not know it ! 
 
 XXI. 
 OF TEARS AND LAUGHTER. 
 
 We must not call earth a vale of tears. It 
 is neither pious to do so, nor in any respect pro- 
 per. We might as well, nay, with far greater 
 propriety, call it a field of laughter. For as 
 there is more good than evil in the world, more 
 action than passion, more health than disease, 
 more life than death (life being a thing of years, 
 but death of moments), so there is more com- 
 fort than discomfort, more pleasure than pain, 
 and therefore more laughter than tears. 
 
 But as it would be a disrespect to sorrow to 
 call earth a field of laughter, so it is a sullenness 
 to joy, and an ingratitude to the goodness of 
 God, to call it a vale of tears. 
 
 God made both tears and laughter, and both 
 
62 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 for kind purposes. For as laugliter enables 
 mirth and surprise to breathe freely, so tears 
 enable sorrow to vent itself patiently. Tears 
 hinder sorrow from becoming despair and mad- 
 ness ; and laughter is one of the very privileges 
 of reason, being confined to the human species. 
 It becomes us, therefore, to receive both the 
 gifts thankfully, and to hold ourselves, on fit- 
 ting occasions, superior to neither. To be in- 
 capable of tears, would be to lose some of the 
 sweetest emotions of humanity ; and the proud 
 or sullen fool who should never laugh, would 
 but reduce himself below it. 
 
 XXII. 
 OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 If we are conscious of having done wrong, or 
 of doing it, we must refrain instantly, and set 
 about making amends. All other modes of re- 
 pentance, unattended by these proofs of it, (ex- 
 cept in case of impossibility, of which more 
 anon,) are but so much culpable weakness or 
 vice ; pity for ourselves not others ; regrets 
 that we cannot be selfish towards others with- 
 out some degree of concern for the consequences ; 
 tributes of self-indulgence to bad habits of body 
 or mind. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 63 
 
 Should the habit be such as to render the 
 sudden and entire abandonment of it dangerous 
 ' — as in the case of certain stages of drinking 
 (for the analogy, which is adduced on such oc- 
 casionSj of the man rescued from drowning, is 
 not a fair one, habit being a second nature, and 
 the drunkard having accustomed himself to the 
 element in which he lives,) the vicious person 
 is not the less under the obligation of instant 
 amendment, but he is warranted in bringing it 
 about by degrees, and those even small and slow 
 ones, provided he persevere. Suffering, whether 
 of mind or body, must in that case be borne ; — 
 first, as a necessity for the ultimate production 
 of non-suffering ; secondly, as a help to 'self-re- 
 spect and resolution, every borne suffering being 
 a new layer for the consolidation of patience ; 
 thirdly, as a proof of repentance, and a return 
 for the sympathies and anxieties of friends. 
 
 In this, and all other cases, if we cannot make 
 thorough amends, or amends in the best direc- 
 tion, that is to say, to those whom we have 
 most directly injured, we must make them to 
 the best of our ability, and do proportionate 
 good (as far as it can be calculated) elsewhere. 
 The best way is to do double good, or what we 
 may hope to be such. 
 
 But we must not reckon upon repenting or 
 leaking amends beforehand ; for wrong is in 
 
64 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 proportion to its deliberateness, and such pro- 
 spective repentance is therefore a great aggra- 
 vation of it. Those religions^ which by en- 
 couraging a tendency to such calculations turn 
 absolutions into allurements, can only be ex- 
 cused on the ground of their wishing to make 
 the best of what they cannot mend ; but in 
 truth, as far as habit is concerned, they make 
 the worst ; and thus, by an unhappy kind of 
 justice, become bound to pardon what they con- 
 tribute to cause. 
 
 But conscience, it will be argued, may itself 
 be in the wrong : we may not always condemn 
 ourselves justly ; — no, not even when we most 
 think we do. 
 
 The remark is just. Conscience may be in 
 the wrong. It may be over-scrupulous as well 
 as too little so ; may have been wrongly trained ; 
 may have been taught, not only to take right 
 for wrong, but wrong itself for right. Hence 
 ascetics and other bigots. Hence persecutors ; 
 inquisitors ; refusers of the rights of conscience 
 to others ; fallible creatures claiming privileges 
 of infallibility, though they have no greater 
 faculties wherewith to be capable of the endow- 
 ment. 
 
 If your conscience, then, is in doubt, consider 
 what you would have thought of the case had 
 it been another's, before it was vonr own. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 65 
 
 If still in doubt, take your perplexity to tlie 
 friend whose principles you most respect. 
 
 If he cannot solve it, and if it includes noth- 
 ing which you could not state to the hearts of 
 the whole world, take it to God in prayer, and 
 abide by the feeling which results. 
 
 But perhaps your conscience is one which is 
 not liable to perplexity ? Construe the doubt 
 then, without further ado, against yourself. 
 
 Perhaps, on the other hand, it is a conscience 
 too easily affected ; a conscience so anxious and 
 full of others, that it does not leave itself room 
 enough for claims of its own. Its friends tell it 
 so, whatever it may say to the contrary. In 
 that case, it is its duty to accept the first relief 
 which the respected friend offers. 
 
 But be careful never to perplex it again. It 
 is true, the tenderer the conscience the braver 
 it can be ; but only on the side of right ; only 
 in the performance of what it thinks just and 
 kind. It does but the more strongly feel every 
 deviation and every neglect ; every point, not 
 only of wrong which it has done, but of right 
 which it has omitted to do. Let it lose there- 
 fore, above all, nothing of its bravery. Let it 
 dare everything, rather than shrink from a pain 
 which it becomes it to meet, and which may 
 save pain to another ; for one omission will out- 
 weigh with it a thousand performances. Not that 
 
66 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 it ought to do so ; but it will ; till the con- 
 science itself grow stronger. 
 
 And here let it be noted, that it is the duty 
 of conscience itself, as well as of those who train 
 it, to render it, as far as is compatible, both 
 tender and strong ; both sensitive and self-pos- 
 sessed, considerate to others, and at the same 
 time not unjust to itself ; in one word, healthy. 
 But as long as tenderness predominates, again 
 must it be told to — Beware. Let it especially 
 beware of two things ; of impulse, to which it 
 has a natural liability ; and of presumption, to 
 which, though a weakness, it is fortunately not 
 inclined. For presumption is a defect on the 
 side of modesty or self-knowledge. It is mea- 
 surement of ability by assumptions of the will ; 
 and if this is a weakness on the part of strength 
 itself, what must it be on that of a want of 
 strength ? 
 
 In all frailties of mind, we must endeavor to 
 strengthen the body. In all frailties of body, 
 we must endeavor to strengthen the mind. In 
 most cases, a physician will be found the best 
 adviser for both. But he should be a physician 
 of the first order, qualified both to instruct and 
 to win ; to alarm, to comfort, and advise the 
 very best. For conscience has to do both with 
 great and small duties ; and according to its 
 sensitiveness or dullness, it may be mistaken in 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 67 
 
 its conclusions on both. One man may feel as 
 much for an offence as another for a sin ; a crime 
 may drive the first to despair ; and a third may 
 need but some better knowledge to waken him 
 to a reasonable degree of regret and amendment.'-' 
 The greatest perplexities of conscience, as far 
 as the logic of it is concerned, are occasioned by 
 duties in a state of conflict. It has been asked, 
 for instance, by way of putting an extreme case 
 for the purpose of illustration, whether a fugi- 
 tive in peril of his life, apart from the question 
 of guilt or innocence, may be screened from his 
 pursuers by a falsehood. It has also been ask- 
 ed, whether in dangerous cases of illness, untrue 
 answers may be given to the sufferers, for fear 
 of increasing the danger. Perhaps the com- 
 
 * offence is a blow given to propriety of any kind, great 
 or small. Immorality is conduct offensive to virtuous cus- 
 tom, or received moral opinion. Vice is bad habit, — habit 
 which ought to be shunned, as injurious to mind or body. — 
 Sin is the violation of ordinance in deed or thought, con- 
 sidered in the religious point of view. Crime is the greatest 
 practical violation of ordinance, whether divine or human. 
 There is no final distinction, however, of divine from human 
 ordinance, all human .ordinance being good only inasmuch 
 as it is divine ; that is to say, inasmuch as it accords with 
 those first principles of right and just, which are found to 
 be written on all hearts, in proportion as men rid themselvea 
 of unsocial prejudices, and learn to know one another in a 
 manner worthy of creatures of God. 
 
68 THE EELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 monest of all these perplexities is that of per- 
 sons engaged in traffic, when they are men of 
 veracity out of the pale of shop or office, and 
 would gladly speak the truth at all times, but 
 think it impossible in justice to themselves and 
 families. 
 
 You must speak the truth, says one moralist, 
 even at the expense of kindness. What signi- 
 fies money or life itself, in the case of the indi- 
 vidual, compared with injury done to a principle 
 which is the only security of good to all ? 
 
 Be kind, says another moralist, even at the 
 expense of truth, when the perplexity between 
 the two duties is pressing, and not to be solved. 
 Why sacrifice a good, obvious, and such as you 
 would long for, were the case your own, to ano- 
 ther which at the best is far off", and which pro- 
 bably does not even exist ? 
 
 Now in such extreme cases as those of the 
 fugitive and the sick bed, the universal Heart 
 of mankind must be the judge. The man who 
 from his alleged love of truth should sacrifice a 
 fugitive to the sword, or a patient to the terrors 
 'of a nervous fever, would assuredly, from pole 
 to pole, be held to be nothing but a cruel bigot. 
 The human race would not give credit to his 
 love of truth ; and therefore the interests of 
 truth itself would be hurt instead of maintained, 
 and men be tempted on less occasions to think 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 69 
 
 it a pedantry and a pretence. It becomes a 
 Keligion of the Heart to proclaim such cases 
 exceptional and privileged ; for thus humanity 
 is assured, and as little harm done to the oppos- 
 ing duty as possible. 
 
 The case, however, is diiferent with the per- 
 son engaged in traffic ; for though it may cost 
 him many a delay, many an impatience, many a 
 sickness of heart, many a sore trial even of those 
 he loves, yet, to say nothing of nobler arid less 
 interested sides of duty, it has been proved by 
 facts as well as arguments, that the good old 
 proverb is true, and that Honesty is really the 
 Best Policy. Thoroughly honest dealing and 
 triumphant profit have been proved to be com- 
 patible by the experience of some Christian 
 sects, such as the Quakers and Moravians ; and 
 of all the traders of the East, none are so hon- 
 est, so rich, or so respected, as the Parsees, — a 
 remnant of the ancient Fire-worshippers, who 
 believed God to be present in the sun. 
 
 But the trafficker may answer, that he has no 
 faith in these stories of Quakers and others, es- 
 pecially after what has been seen of individuals 
 among them. 
 
 To which it is to be replied, that individuals 
 prove or disprove nothing corporate, and that 
 bad children may be found in families the most 
 estimable. The Quakers and others, among 
 
70 THE EELIGION OF THE HEAET. 
 
 beautiful opinions, hold some which are far dif- 
 ferent ; but inasmuch as they make a religious 
 duty of veracity, there is no beautiful religion 
 conceivable, to which they do not belong. 
 
 The duty, then, of the trafficker, — that is to 
 say, of the shop-keeper, the merchant, the bro- 
 ker, the land-owner, or whatever denomination 
 of buyer or seller may describe him, — is clear. 
 He is bound, at the very least, to make enquiry 
 into the state of this question between the pro- 
 verb and its impugners. If he has any con- 
 science, he has no alternative between so doing 
 and remaining self-dissatisfied. Should he bo 
 discerning as well as candid enough to discover 
 the identity of the true and the profitable, his 
 pains will turn from ignoble to noble ones, and 
 his ultimate pleasures will be unpolluted. — 
 Should he remain unconvinced, he must count 
 on being always uneasy in proportion to the 
 amount of his conscience, and on losing the 
 pleasures of goodness, and of the belief in good- 
 ness, in proportion as he unhappily succeeds in 
 diminishing it. As to those simply conven- 
 tional persons, on another wrong side of com- 
 mon-place, who, from dullness of nature, com- 
 bined with bad training and example, commence 
 business with no thought on the matter but to 
 avail themselves of the usual tricks of trade and 
 the show of respectability, they must be allowed 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 71 
 
 their excuses, and not grudged their comforts, 
 till the many, whose customs have misled them, 
 can be taught better. Times of transition and 
 of abundant^ work may require such laborers ; 
 and the servants of intellectual and moral ad- 
 vancement must neither be irritated at the delay 
 of their adhesion, nor despair of its turning to the 
 very greatest account, when custom shall have 
 grown wiser. For these are but the dullest 
 children of humanity, not destitute of a strong 
 social propensity, as may be seen by their very 
 slavery to example ; and as those who follow a 
 multitude to do evil, do it out of some imagin- 
 ary notion of good, so these will no less follow 
 the multitude to do good, when good shall have 
 become the general attraction. Custom, appa- 
 rently the most unpromising of all things, be- 
 comes, if we reflect upon it, the most hopeful ; 
 for if mankind, by the mere force of it, can be 
 wedded to the falsest notions of prosperity, how 
 fast w^ill not the tie be found, when they are 
 wedded to the true ? 
 
 There are two things, — a first thing and a 
 last, — which are to be said respecting conscience 
 to the whole world. 
 
 To those who think themselves most inno- 
 cqjit, — Never be proud ; for you may not have 
 undergone your worst temptation, and if you 
 have, the pride of it will be a sin. 
 
72 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 To those who think themselves most guilty, 
 — Never despair ; for despair does not befit the 
 creatures of a good Maker ; and if you have 
 suffered remorse, and have surely repented, and 
 have begun making what amends are in your 
 power, God, speaking through the hearts of 
 your brethren, his other children, bids you say 
 to him, " Thou, Father, wilt not suffer to be 
 ever miserable, one whom thou hast thought fit 
 to create." 
 
 XXIII. 
 OF WAR. 
 
 The best way to consider war, is to look upon 
 it as having been a necessity up to a certain 
 point, and as beginning to be otherwise when 
 the necessity becomes a doubt. The assump- 
 tion that it can never be abolished, is not only 
 a presumption from a brief joast to an intermi- 
 nable future, but every barbarous age might 
 have said as much for evils which its posterity 
 has seen abolished. Nakedness has gone out 
 with civilization ; cannibalism has gone out ; 
 the torturing of prisoners taken in battle has 
 gone out ; yet what Cherokee Indian, wlmt 
 New Zealander, what ancient Briton, would at 
 one time have thought it possible .^ They 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 73 
 
 would have referred to customs, to wants, to 
 passions, to " human nature ;" yet, notwith- 
 standing these opponents, mankind have dressed 
 themselves and become humaner. 
 
 All opinions die hard ; and it is as well that 
 they do ; otherwise change might come too 
 lightly, and the best sentiments might perish. 
 Let us be content, therefore, to see good opin- 
 ions of slow growth, and promising for dura- 
 tion. 
 
 The Heart bids us believe every evil remova- 
 ble, the absence of which is not incompatible 
 with the conditions of life itself, and with the 
 progress of social intercourse. 
 
 As there is no evil, therefore, which more af- 
 flicts the heart than War, it becomes our duty, 
 if we have not already done so, to look closely 
 into its miseries, which is a task, that its de- 
 fenders in general neither will, nor dare perform. 
 The inspection will be sufficient, to show us 
 what we have then to do. 
 
 XXIV. 
 OF TELESCOPE AND MICROSCOPE. 
 
 Be not dismayed at the revelations of tele- 
 scope or microscope : for magnitude implies 
 nothing hostile^ and death has the same recon- 
 
74 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 cilements in least as in greatest. You yourself 
 are an immeasurable giant^ a spectacle for a 
 telescope, compared with creatures, myriads of 
 whose shells go to make up a particle of slate ; 
 and you yourself, harmless as you otherwise 
 may be, and benevolent as you know yourself 
 to be, are the cause of the deaths of innocent 
 creatures in stream and meadow, in vegetables, 
 and in the air, who pass healthy, and therefore, 
 it is to be presumed, happy lives, and whose 
 deaths are brief 
 
 In the present state of things, without death 
 life could not be renovated, and hope of still 
 better life could not exist. Let us prepare our- 
 selves by thinking and doing our best in this 
 life, to enter worthily on the noblest possibili- 
 ties of another.. 
 
 XXV. 
 OF SPIRITS AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 
 Be on your guard against those who, because 
 science and experiment are admirable things, 
 and appear to be the only means of ascertaining 
 material truths, would fain do injustice to sci- 
 ence itself, and conclude that nothing can exist 
 which is not provable by the senses. Percep- 
 tion is a mystery explainable by no modes of 
 sensation. Science itself has discovered that 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 75 
 
 there are things which we cannot see ; which 
 we know only in combination. Analogy opens 
 to us an endless world. We reasonably con- 
 clude that one planet is inhabited as well as 
 another. We know that every part of the 
 world we live in, is animated by other living 
 beings. Are we to assert that fields of space 
 are not as well filled ? or that there are not 
 modes of existence, even round about us, im- 
 perceptible to our species of eye-sight ? 
 
 Surely love, and hope, and joy, and endeavor, 
 and imagination are not confined to us and 
 to what resembles us. Surely there are my- 
 riads of beings elsewhere inhabiting their re- 
 spective spheres, both visible and invisible, all 
 perhaps inspired with the same task of trying 
 how far they can extend happiness. Some may 
 have realized their heaven, and are resting. 
 Some may be carrying it farther. Some may 
 be helping ourselves, just as we help the bee, or 
 the wounded bird ; spirits perhaps of dear 
 friends, who still pity our tears, who rejoice in 
 our smiles, and whisper into our hearts a belief 
 that they are present. 
 
 The heart bids us believe it possible ; and 
 Oh ! whatever good thing the heart bids us be- 
 lieve, let us do our best to believe it ; for God 
 has put it there ; and its goodness is his war- 
 rant for its being cherished. 
 
76 THE KELIGION OF THE HEAKT. 
 
 He that does not make use of imagination 
 and affection to help him to these thoughts, is 
 as limited in the amount of his faculties, and 
 perhaps as deficient in the appreciation of the 
 very instruments of philosophy, as the bigot 
 who sees no good in the progress of science, or 
 in the refutation which it gives to assumptions. 
 
 Be it the ambition of those who know better, 
 to improve and exalt their condition, by the 
 exercise of every faculty : and may all the be- 
 ings, visible or invisible, who would extend the 
 dominion of heaven, be conscious of the com- 
 panions they have in their task. • 
 
 XXVI. 
 OF RELIGION, 
 
 Keligion (religio — religare, to rebind) is the 
 rebinding of conscience, with a belief in its di- 
 vine origin. 
 
 Religion is as natural to man as his sight of 
 the stars, and his sense of a power greater than 
 his own. 
 
 But systems of religion vary with successive 
 generations ; and though it becomes all men to 
 entertain a certain reverence for the past, and 
 to regard its sufferings, and perhaps its mistakes, 
 as having been good for the future, yet it is not 
 in the nature of the feelings which God has 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 77 
 
 given us, that any good heart, in proportion as 
 it reflects on the subject, should be content with 
 any system of religion inferior to its notions of 
 what is best. 
 
 With no religion at all, men are in danger 
 of falling into a mechanical dullness, or into 
 preposterous self- worship, or into heart-harden- 
 ing abandonment to the senses. 
 
 With a religion that is unworthy of them, 
 they make God himself unworthy, and fill their 
 belief with cruelty and melancholy, with dispute 
 and scandal. 
 
 With a religion satisfactory to the heart, men 
 love and do honor to God, make brothers of 
 their fellow-creatures, are animated in their en- 
 deavors, comforted in their sufferings, and en- 
 couraged to hope everything from the future. 
 
 Religion is reverence without terror, and hu- 
 mility without meanness. It is a sense of the 
 unknown world, without disparagement to the 
 known ; an admiration of the material beau- 
 ties of the universe, without forgetfulness of the 
 spiritual ; an enhancement in both instances, of 
 each by each. 
 
 Religion doubles every sense of duty, great 
 and small ; from that to the whole human race, 
 down to manners towards individuals, and even 
 to appearance in ourselves ; from purity of 
 heart to cleanliness of person. 
 
78 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 But it does all without gloom or oppressive- 
 ness. It does not desire us to reflect in any 
 painful manner or to any painful extent, unless 
 some necessity for the good of others demands 
 it ; and then it would terminate the pain with 
 the necessity. 
 
 The very uncertainties of a right religion are 
 diviner than the supposed certainties of a wrong 
 one ; for its hopes for all are unmixed with ter- 
 rible beliefs for any. 
 
 Keligion, earthwards, begins with reverence 
 to offspring before they are born : and heaven- 
 wards, it sees no more end to its hopes than to 
 the number of the stars. 
 
 XXVII. 
 AGAINST SUPERSTITION AND INTOLERANCE. 
 
 Never think it necessary to the belief in a 
 God, to retain all the attributes given him by 
 less informed ages, to whose cruder states of in- 
 tellect such opinions perhaps were not without 
 their use. So at least let us hope, in our igno- 
 rance of a better reason, and in our right, per- 
 haps in our duty, to surmise the best. The 
 whole past may have been necessary to the fu- 
 ture, but the highest state of our reason must 
 modify the present. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 79 
 
 " I would rather men should say/' says the 
 devout heathen, " that there was no such man 
 as Plutarch, than that there was one Plutarch 
 who ate his children as soon as they were born." 
 
 And he was right, says the philosopher ; "for 
 atheism is but disbelief, but superstition is con- 
 tumely." 
 
 Let us see, nevertheless, that we endeavor 
 calmly and charitably to do away superstition 
 itself ; otherwise our impatience of wrong will 
 make us impatient, and wrong ourselves ; for 
 (in another view of the matte r) what are the 
 most inhuman threats held out against differ- 
 ence in opinion, but the consequences of error, 
 of impatience in argument, — and such as no 
 human being, whatever he ma/ suppose, would 
 endure to see executed ? The threateners say, 
 that they feel for all, and therefore denounce 
 many. Too many, indeed, do they denounce, 
 and quite irreconcilably to their feeling for all. 
 Let us, because we feel for all, denounce no one : 
 for rather ought heaven and earth to pass away, 
 than one Single being suffer eternal misery. — 
 God bids the Heart think so, whatever may be 
 argued from false assumptions by the sophistries 
 of the brain. 
 
 Let us not stand a chance of hurting the 
 most tender and innocent mines in a passionate 
 hope, and by an irrational and feeble mode, of 
 
80 THE KELIGIQN OF THE HEART. 
 
 restraining tlie worst. Let us not become in- 
 jured ourselves, and throw a darkness over life, 
 by shadows of our own creation. The Deity 
 that we serve, can afford to bear contumely as 
 well as unbelief. Shall we conduct ourselves as 
 if he could not, or attempt to convince mankind 
 by the least thing unbefitting so true a dignity ? 
 "What man, or set of men, could long continue 
 to think erroneously of pure beneficence ? 
 
 Calvin, thou who couldst not bear in ano- 
 ther the right thou assumedst thyself ! Ter- 
 tuUian, who didst vainly fancy thou couldst be- 
 hold with pleasure, hellish pangs and monstrous 
 absurdities not to be spoken of ; — ^let your spir- 
 its become reconciled to themselves, for, behold ! 
 the only real part of your hell is passing away, 
 — the belief of it in the minds of men. There 
 are sorrows for the best, because we are mortal. 
 There are pains for the worst, because it is the 
 nature of their mistakes to produce them. But 
 the sorrows of the good have their relief ; and 
 the pains of the worst have their termination ; 
 for goodness looks not to the punishment, but 
 to the end of it. 
 
 Let not, therefore, the evil despair, and re- 
 main edl, as men having no hope ; neither let 
 them have a hope founded on the despair of 
 others, which is no good and fit hope, nor such 
 
THE BELIGION OF THE HEABT. 81 
 
 as can endure. But let them have a real hope, 
 and be reconciled, and know their profit. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD MEMORANDUM. 
 
 It is our daily duty to consider, that in all 
 circumstances of life, pleasurable, painful, or 
 otherwise, the conduct of every human being 
 affects, more or less, the happiness of others, 
 especially of those in the same house ; and that 
 as life is made up, for the most part, not of 
 great occasions, but of small every-day moments, 
 it is the giving to those moments the greatest 
 amount of peace, pleasantness, and security, 
 that contributes most to the sum of human 
 
 Be peaceable. Be cheerful. Be true. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 OF THE GREAT BENEFACTORS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Let US be grateful, without idolatry, without 
 worship of any sort, to the memories of those 
 divine men who from time to time have ad- 
 vanced the human species in knowledge and 
 
82 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 goodness. They partook of our infirmities ; but 
 the divine particle was stronger within them ; 
 they may have been misrepresented in some in- 
 stances by their followers ; their history may 
 have been mingled with unworthy fables ; they 
 themselves^ the best of them, from excessive 
 sensibility, and their very impatience with what 
 was wrong, may have failed in becoming pat- 
 terns of humanity. But it is our duty to sepa- 
 rate what is good and likely in their history, 
 from that which is of doubtful character. They 
 who loved us, and we who love and honor them, 
 have equally a right to the benefit of the sepa- 
 ration. 
 
 Let us reverence and love all who have acted 
 or suffered in the great cause of beneficence. 
 
 Let us reverence the bright names in dark 
 periods, the remote philosophers of Europe and 
 Asia ; Confucius in particular, the first great 
 light of rational piety and benignant intercourse. 
 
 Let us reverence our latest benefactors, the 
 exposers of intolerance, the overthrowers of 
 cruel substitutions of force for argument, the 
 furtherers of the love of reason. 
 
 Let us reverence the great teachers of experi- 
 ment, the liberators of the hands of knowledge ; 
 and their disciples, the movers of the earth. 
 
 Let us reverence and love those extraordinary 
 men of action, the Alfreds, Epaminondases and 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 83 
 
 their like, who have been busiest in the thick of 
 the world, and yet it polluted them not ; thus 
 enabling us, for ever, to refute the sophistries of 
 the worldly. 
 
 Let us reverence and love Socrates, who next 
 to the great philosoj^her of China shewed the 
 way to this union of the active and contempla- 
 tive ; who was the first among Europeans to 
 teach us, that philosophy does not require lofty 
 occasions on which to exert itself, but may be- 
 come a part of the daily business of life. 
 
 Let us reverence and love Epictetus and An- 
 toninus, who, though the one was a slave and 
 the other an emperor, alike told us to bear and 
 forbear ; being self-denying to themselves, and 
 indulgent to others ; and teaching beneficence, 
 not only towards friends, and men in general, 
 but towards enemies and those who ill treat us. 
 Let us reverence and love above all, their 
 martyred brother Jesus ; not because he was in 
 all respects their superior, or to be looked upon, 
 as that " perfect man,'^ which, with an injurious 
 want of sincerity, he has been pronounced ; for 
 his temperament was less under his control, and 
 sometimes contradicted his doctrines ; but be- 
 cause he was the man who fel t most for the 
 wants of his fellow-creatures, and who saw deep- 
 est into their remedy ; the man fullest of love 
 for the loving, of forgiveness for the ignorant. 
 
84 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 of pity for the unfortunate and the outcast ; the 
 identifier of one's neighbor with every human 
 being ; the freer of spirit from letter ; the pro- 
 claimer of the rights of the poor. May he 
 never be deprived of the love and honor that 
 are his due, by having had the claims for them 
 stretched beyond the limits of conscience and 
 common sense.* 
 
 We should consider it incumbent upon us, 
 that no evil endured for the sake of mankind 
 by any such men as these, at any time, or in 
 any country, should lose its good effects, as far 
 
 * It is very painful to us to write the objecting portions of 
 this paragraph, even if for no other reason than the fear lest 
 they may wound the feelings of chance readers, who have 
 been brought up without a misgiving on the subject. Others 
 who are acquainted with the New Testament, and who have 
 exercised any judgment upon it at all, will instantly (and 
 how much does that say 1) guess the kind of passages in the 
 life of Jesus, to which we allude,— occasions on which he 
 speaks with a vituperation not according to meekness, and 
 on which he acts with an inconsistency, and even a practical 
 violence, wholly opposed to it. The spirit at heart, no doubt, 
 was still the same ; but the flesh was weak. There are, it is 
 true, self-evident fables recorded of him, and he has a right 
 to be relieved of their responsibility. Yet the injury thus 
 done to the probability of his history in general is obvious ; 
 and if more is to be admitted, where is the authenticity to 
 begin 7 or to what is it to be confined 1 — See what Francis 
 William Newman has said on the subject of "perfection," in 
 his admirable book, entitled "Phases of Faith,', p. 208, &c. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 85 
 
 as our efforts can realize them. For us, Con- 
 fucius himself should not have suffered calumny 
 in vain ; nor Socrates in vain have drunk his 
 poison ; nor the thorns of the loving Jesus fail 
 to produce flowers. 
 
 But faith in their names without imitation 
 of their virtues, is nothing ; often worse than 
 nothing ; for it enables men who are unlike 
 them, to lord it over those who do better. 
 
 Names, the very greatest, are nothing. Na- 
 tures and duties are all. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 OF THE GREAT MEANS AND ENDS OF ENDEAVOR. 
 
 The great means and ends of all Social En- 
 deavor are these : — 
 
 The Means, — Unbounded Enquiry ; Unchal- 
 lenged Eights of Conscience ; Universal Educa- 
 tion (including Knowledge of the Bodily 
 Frame) ; Universal Extinction of the Doctrine 
 of Fear by that of Love ; Universal and Rea- 
 sonable Employment ; Universal Leisure. 
 
 The Ends, — Universal Healthy Enjoyment 
 
86 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 of all the Faculties, Bodily and Mental ; Uni- 
 versal Love of tlie Beautiful ; Universal Bro- 
 therhood ; Universal Hope of Immortality ; 
 Universal Trust in the Goodness and All-Re- 
 conciling Futurities of Grod. 
 
PUNISHMENTS AND REWARDS 
 
 ACCORDING TO 
 
 THE NEGLECT OR PERFORMANCE OF DUTY. 
 
 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 The word Punishment literally means the giving 
 of pain, and has no other meaning. The im- 
 plication of a sense of vengeance has been im- 
 posed on it by a bad theology. 
 
 Punishment is no more vindictively intended 
 by our Divine Father, than he vindictively 
 intends the pain which the hand suffers when 
 we strike it accidentally against a wall. Pain 
 in that case, and so in every other, is simply the 
 conseq[uence of disturbing the condition proper 
 to us : and it thus becomes a warning to our- 
 selves, and to others, how we cause it again. 
 
 Punishment then, or the giving of pain, 
 whether physical or moral, is, in the religious 
 sense of the word, the requisite and admonitory, 
 
88 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 bnt not vindictive consequence of violations of 
 the laws of G-od, as ascertained by knowledge 
 and by our hearts ; and it has for its sole end 
 the good of the violator and his fellow creatures. 
 If he takes warning from it, he ceases to need 
 it : if he hardens himself against it, the advan- 
 tages of sensibility and of goodness forsake him 
 till he is wiser : if he persists in giving it 
 occasion, till amendment is too late or too 
 difficult, he dies of it. And in the worst of 
 these cases, the warning is good for others. 
 
 It will have been seen, however, in these 
 consequences of ill doing, that punishment, in 
 the literal sense of the word, that is to say, the 
 giving of pain strictly so called, or positive 
 pain, does not include them all ; for there is 
 also the negative pain, whether physical or 
 moral, consequent upon a man's hardening him- 
 self against the pain positive ; and this nega- 
 tive pain may be increased by his persistence in 
 thus hardening himself, till it apparently be- 
 comes no pain or punishment at all, the offen- 
 der having become callous. There is even a 
 penalty of the negative kind, attendant on the 
 neglect of our physical or moral duties, apart 
 from actual violation of them ; such as when 
 mental idleness, by self-indulgence, and by heed- 
 lessness to admonition, becomes self-contented, 
 and never even thinks of what knowledge or 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 89 
 
 respectability it is losing ; or when physical 
 idleness, in like manner, reposes on its habit, 
 and is content to lose air and exercise, attribu- 
 ting the disorders that assail it to any cause but 
 the right one, and losing perhaps at last the 
 power of counteracting them, in the use of its 
 limbs. 
 
 Intellectual and moral observers, by the natu- 
 ral tendency to activity in their minds, have 
 found in these negative states of being such ex- 
 cess of wrong, and of ungodliness towards the 
 Author of Being, that they have taken them to 
 be the worst and most fatal punishments of all ; 
 and as observers of this kind are in general men 
 of benevolence, such of them as were desirous 
 of reconciling certain texts in the Bible to the 
 human heart, considered the various threaten- 
 ings of death which accompanied them, and by 
 which indeed their worst punishments are some- 
 times wholly expressed, as implying retributive 
 deprivation of bodily existence in this world, 
 and the ^'eternal death" of the soul, or total 
 annihilation, in the next.* 
 
 From a principle similar to this, but still 
 more accordant with value for life, and considera- 
 
 * See an interesting little book, entitled Human Nature: 
 A Philosophical Exposition of the Divine Institution of Reward 
 and Punishment which obtains in the Physical, Intellectual, and. 
 Moral Constitutions of Man, if«r. 1844. 
 
90 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 tion for offenders, arose the ancient doctrine of 
 the Metempsychosis ; in which, as boys do in 
 their classes at school, the souls of those who 
 had acted unworthily in their human condition 
 went "lower down," and inhabited the bodies 
 of such animals as were supposed to be addicted 
 to their vices ; till, by rej)eated sufferings, and, 
 if necessary, still further changes, they expiated 
 their misconduct, and so worked their way back 
 into humanity. 
 
 The holders of both these doctrines equally 
 saw the folly and monstrosity of that which 
 threatened positive punishment without end. — 
 Such punishment, in their opinion, (and it is 
 the same with all humane and reflecting persous 
 who have the courage to look the ghosts of su- 
 perstition in the face,) was as absurd a notion 
 as that of an endless dose of medicine, an end- 
 less surgical operation, or an endless whipping 
 in a jail. What, say they, would be the good 
 of it to the sufferer ? and what sort of being 
 should we think the judge who ordered the whip- 
 ping ? 
 
 God will not allow that any of his creatures 
 should either suffer, or offend, without ceasing : 
 for incessant offence would only perpetuate that 
 necessity for suffering which it is the object of 
 punishment to prevent, and which would thus 
 be rendered an absurdity ; and incessant suffer- 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 91 
 
 ing would go counter to the object for which he 
 created us, and which would thus become, if 
 possible, an absurdity still greater. 
 
 To enumerate, then, the punishments or ad- 
 monitions for non-attention to the duties men- 
 tioned in this book. 
 
 1. The punishment of not cultivating a reve- 
 rence for God, or the Divine Mind which has 
 ordained the universe, is the want of a sense of 
 intercourse with him, on the part of our best 
 faculties, — of our minds and affections as distin- 
 guished from sensuous perception, and from 
 what alone concern it. It is the want of the 
 happiness of believing that we have a divine 
 resource in affliction ; a divine accepter of our 
 gratitude in joy ; an exalter and purifier of our 
 spirit, in moments when we aspire beyond the 
 body. Wanting reverence for a Divine Spirit 
 in the universe, we tend to a similar want for 
 the inner spirit of whatever is great and beauti- 
 ful, and are in danger of receiving pleasure from 
 nothing but what is sensual and external. 
 
 2. The punishment of not cultivating a sense 
 of the beautiful in Nature and Art, is a lower- 
 ing of ourselves to the gratifications of appetite, 
 a confinement to the jail of common-pl^ce, and 
 a sense of uneasiness and mortification when 
 pleasures are mentioned that we have left 
 
92 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 unstudied, and that would enrich those which 
 we possess. 
 
 3. The punishment of not considering duty 
 our first object, is that pleasure itself escapes 
 us : for we do not consider properly what can 
 alone secure it. 
 
 4. The punishment of delay is accumulation 
 of trouble ; a mortifying sense of weakness ; a 
 constant tendency to increase that weakness ; 
 loss of opportunity ; diminution of means ; great 
 inconvenience to others, probably serious dis- 
 tress ; and ultimately great regret on our own 
 parts, possibly remorse. 
 
 5. The j)unishment of uncleanliness of person 
 is proportionate want of health, unseemliness 
 of appearance, and not improbably, disgust to 
 the senses of others. 
 
 6. The ]3unishment of inattention to air and 
 exercise is proportionate want of health, loss of 
 diversity and amusement, and impaired energy 
 for the work which is too often made its excuse. 
 Not to breathe the air out of doors, is to darken 
 and sadden the blood. Not to give exercise to 
 the body, is to weaken the muscles, which are 
 the instruments of the will, and so, by degrees, 
 the will itself- Furthermore, all the injuries 
 which human beings do to themselves, are 
 hazarded to the children that are born of 
 them. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 93 
 
 7. The punishment of exciting and oppressing 
 ourselves with over-eating and drinking, and of 
 drowsing ourselves with narcotics, is the same 
 as those of uncleanliness, with loss (if persevered 
 in) of the power of the will. Physical intem- 
 perance increases the action of the muscles that 
 perform our involuntary actions, or the bidding 
 of our physical organization, to the detriment 
 of those that perform our voluntary actions, or 
 the bidding of our will ; till at length, in extreme 
 cases, the will itself is lost. Drunkards drink 
 till they die. Indulgers in narcotics, gradually 
 losing the power to give them up, have been 
 known to be unable (literally) to will themselves 
 out of their chairs, or to quit a corner of the room 
 in which they were standing. The physical 
 horrors that await long indulgences of intem- 
 perance are not to be described. They tax the 
 endurance of love to the utmost ; while the 
 persons who so tax it, have done perhaps little 
 or nothing to merit the endurance. The 
 coarsest indiiference of the hireling, or the most 
 angelical patience and charity, can alone support 
 it. Good qualities render infirmities piteous, 
 and worthy of all tenderness : bad qualities 
 reduce tiiem to their last degradation, and 
 render them loathsome. you who have any 
 goodness and lovingness remaining, any delicacy 
 and reflection, think while it is yet time ! — 
 
94 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 Think, and begin your first step to reform in- 
 stantly. You know not what you may come 
 to ; what disgusts, including your own, may 
 humiliate those among you, whose pride or 
 vanity never dream of such possibilities. And 
 in the background may stand a worse threaten- 
 er, completing the horror with all other horrors, 
 — madness. 
 
 8. The punishment of unkind manners is 
 dislike from others ; resentment ; the substitu- 
 tion of a narrow-minded, uneasy pleasure for 
 better ones ; and the reputation of being ill- 
 bred and conceited, perhaps brutal and a fooL 
 Pettishness, arrogance, exaction, the love of 
 fault-finding, angers for little or no reason, 
 galling insinuations, the habit of what is called 
 talking ''at people," these and all other forms 
 of unkindness cause hate, alienation, not unfre- 
 quently vengeance. The most disgusting per- 
 jhaps of them all is a habit of sarcasm, indulged 
 at the expense of dependents and others, who 
 are expected not to retaliate. By little and 
 little, they all constitute afflictions and calami- 
 ties, and render whole lives unhappy. They 
 deface good looks ; they put the last ugliness 
 upon bad looks ; they__ Jire out affections, re- 
 spects, endurances ; and the foolish vain people 
 who think to dictate for life by means of them, 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 95 
 
 often lose all power, and are willingly left even 
 to themselves, to die. 
 
 9. The punishment of a censorious habit of 
 conversation is censure from everybody, not ex- 
 cepting those who join in it ; the loss of all bet- 
 ter topics of discourse, beautiful and ennobling ; 
 and the danger of ceasing even to like the good 
 qualities, the want of which we pretend to be 
 shocked at, but which furnish no food for our 
 unhappy propensity. Avowed satire, with good 
 intentions, is one thing, and under particular 
 circumstances may be . a noble thing ; though 
 the best-intentioned satirist might be startled 
 to think of these perils of the satirical habit : 
 indeed would be the person most startled, and 
 would hasten to show how he repudiated them. 
 But backbiting who can avow ? and how is it 
 not hated ? 
 
 10. The punishment of violations of truth and 
 confidence, from the blackest treachery down to 
 the commonest habits of falsehood, is propor- 
 tionate resentment, alienation, infamy. The 
 traitor to the affections, the seducer for instance, 
 is a cruel fool, whatever powers of persuasion 
 he may possess ; for he has been undermining 
 his own happiness as well as that of others, has 
 injured his power of discerning what is best (if 
 he ever had it), and must needs try to believe 
 others as bad as himself, in self-defence. A 
 
96 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 sorry world of his own lie will make of it, by the 
 time he is a little older and more cynical ! — 
 The dishonest accountant also pays, for what 
 he has acquired, the penalty of a bad conscience, 
 if he has any conscience, and of insensibility to 
 real happiness, if he has no conscience. The 
 common habitual liar is mulcted in disbelief 
 from others ; in the secret disgust (producing 
 resentment) of those with whom he converses ; 
 in a character for silliness, for conceit, or for 
 dishonesty (from each of which it often arises, 
 and often from all three combined), and if per- 
 severed in for any length of time, in loss of re- 
 sources (if poor), loss of friends under any cir- 
 cumstances, perhaps in crime, perhaps in the 
 exchance of a self-importance which was always 
 secretly laughed at, for a consciousness of being- 
 foolish and despised. simpleton ! begin this 
 instant with picking your way back into truth 
 and wisdom. 
 
 11. The punishment of ordinary self-seeking, 
 and of a slavish dread of misconstruction, is 
 that we narrow our faculties, and enlarge our 
 fears. 
 
 12. The punishment of indifference to mis- 
 construction is that we offend social feeling and 
 revolt good will. 
 
 13. The punishment of giving pain for the 
 sake of producing a pleasure, is that we render 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 97 
 
 ourselves insensible to many pleasures, and un- 
 deserving (so to speak) of sympathy when we 
 suffer. No man deserves his sufferings more 
 than a wounded " sportsman ;" nor is there a 
 less respectable sight than such a man wailing. 
 Newspapers that call his wounds "shocking 
 accidents/' seem to talk ironically. Friends 
 who lament them, forget the torments which 
 the sufferer has inflicted on bird and beast. — 
 Men who have an indisputable right to the 
 handling of gun and sword ; heroes, for instance, 
 such as the Arctic voyagers, who encounter 
 perils worth talking of, and who encounter them 
 in the cause of civilization, regret the bears and 
 their cubs whom necessity may have forced 
 them to kill ; and they would disdain to have 
 more said of their own sufferings than is just : 
 but the sportsman records his slaughters with 
 triumph, and then consents to have his hand 
 wailed over, if it chance to meet with a taste of 
 what it inflicts. His plea is, that the inhuman- 
 ity is good for his health, and that he should 
 want a motive for taking air and exercise with- 
 out it. But in what respects is his health bet- 
 ter worth considering than the lives and happi- 
 ness of the creatures whom he torments ? and 
 why must they suffer, in order that his indiffer- 
 ence to the attractions of out of door nature 
 should be supplied with a motive ? 
 
98 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 14. The punishment of shrinking from pains 
 which ought to be met for the good of ourselves 
 or others, is the increase of all the pains that 
 arise from effeminacy, whatever be our disposi- 
 tion ; and regret, perhaps remorse, if our dispo- 
 sition be good. 
 
 15. The punishment of not visiting the sick, 
 and others who need comfort, is the same as 
 that which has just been mentioned, and proba- 
 bly want of comfort when we ourselves need it. 
 
 16. The punishment of imposing limits on 
 inquiry, is that we bring doubt on the tenability 
 of our own opinions, deserve imputations against 
 our honesty in maintaining them, and provoke 
 a bursting of the limits by violence, with ex- 
 cesses of retribution. 
 
 17. The punishment of refusing to consider 
 any one single exercise or enjoyment of all the 
 faculties given by Grod to his human creatures, 
 as a right belonging to every human creature, 
 demonstrable by the possession of those facul- 
 ties, is the denial and stultification of the right 
 in ourselves, and the most deplorable reaction 
 of the wrong upon our social relations. 
 
 18. The punishment of not cherishing God's 
 gift of the hope of immortality, is that of in- 
 gratitude to the Giver, and of a sullen shutting 
 of the eyes to a divine prospect ; the loss of a 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 99 
 
 pleasure in possession, and of unbounded plea- 
 sures in the contemplation. 
 
 19. The punishment of a refusal to bear in 
 mind that morals are habits, and that good as 
 well as bad habits are acquirable, is that we 
 lose the fear of a bad habit, and the encourage- 
 ment to begin a good one. 
 
 20. The punishment of refusing to bear in 
 mind that the habits of children commence with 
 their existence, is that we increase every day the 
 difficulty of laying the foundations for good 
 ones, and that we suffer the consequences mean- 
 while, perhaps all our lives. As to the punish- 
 ment after death, little can be imagined of it in 
 a book like this, because the Heart revolts from 
 the addition of penalties to those already men- 
 tioned, and because it cannot but think that the 
 souls of those who should be unable to enter 
 worthily on a higher state of existence, would 
 have new chances given them, or rather new 
 revolutions into existence, so as, of necessity, to 
 bring all inequalities of birth, breeding, and 
 circumstance, right at last. The only objections 
 to the ordinary idea of a metempsychosis are, 
 first, the danger of its subjecting inferior animals 
 to ill treatment from unfeeling persons, or to an 
 injurious over-consideration from the sensitive ; 
 and second, the question, why any one human 
 being should be created liable to the necessity 
 
100 THE EELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 of the revolution^ more than another. The 
 Heart can rest satisfied with no conclusion that 
 involves an appearance of injustice. It must 
 always prefer a benevolent ignorance to an 
 inhuman assumption. 
 
 REWARDS. 
 
 Kewardj or the necessary consequence of the 
 performance of duties enjoined us by the laws 
 of Grod, as ascertained by knowledge and by our 
 hearts^ has for its sole end the happiness of the 
 receiver. It consists of good, healthy, and 
 happy life ; or of so much of it, as the amount 
 of performed duty obtains ; and it is that natu- 
 ral and final condition of humanity, for the en- 
 joyment of which our bodies and our minds are 
 constituted, if we do but observe the laws of 
 their welfare. 
 
 1. The reward of reverence for God, or a Di- 
 vine Mind governing the universe, is a sense of 
 recognition, and (so to speak) sympathy from 
 the Great Author of sympathy ; something, 
 however limited, of personal and spiritual inter- 
 course with the Great and Good Spirit who has 
 put the thought into our hearts ; something of 
 a privilege of retreating within a sense of him 
 during affliction, and of being regarded by his 
 fatherly complacency during joy and gratitude ; 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEArTT. lOl 
 
 in a word, a humanization (as it were) of God, 
 so far as lie is the author and includer of hu- 
 manity, yet at the same time no degradation of 
 him from the universality which so includes it, 
 or from the power by which he made all other 
 beings and their worlds, with their endless and 
 inconceivable diversities. It is heaven stooping 
 to us, because it can stoop as well as it can do 
 all other things, and because the heart which it 
 has made, has been made to need the stooping. 
 
 2. The reward of the cultivation of the Beau- 
 tiful is the enrichment of the sight wherever it 
 turns (for there is some beauty of proportion, or 
 of relation or of light and shade, everywhere), 
 and the enrichment of the soul by the relation 
 of the visible to the invisible, or form to senti- 
 ment ; its endless analogies, and divine exalta- 
 tions. 
 
 3. The reward of considering duty our first 
 object is self-respect, respect from others, and a 
 constant sense of triumph (however modestly it 
 becomes us to think of it), of strength, and of 
 good intention. For the performance of duty 
 is triumph in itself, whatever be its success 
 otherwise. Self-denial, the essence of virtue, is 
 the first principle of duty ; and self-denial, 
 when it is the sacrifice of inclination to reflec- 
 tion, of the will to the reason, of selfishness to 
 unselfishness, is, though the bitterest of cups at 
 
102 THE'^EiiGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 top, the sweetest at bottom. By degrees the 
 bitters are overcome ; the taste of sweets alone 
 remains ; duty, from self-denial, becomes self- 
 enjoyment ; in prosperity, a delight ; in adver- 
 sity, a sustainment and a balm. 
 
 4. The reward of never delaying, is to be the 
 lord of time, the doubler of obligation, the re- 
 ceiver of perpetual thanks. It is business in 
 advance, leisure unrebuked, kindness not to be 
 doubted. To meet even the smallest requests 
 instantly, and to grant them for the pleasure 
 of granting, though they take no more trouble 
 than the getting up from a chair or the looking 
 for a straw, is, in no long course of time, to give 
 and to receive harvests of good will. It shows a 
 willingness to gratify ; a spirit of obligingness ; 
 and obligingness, spread over the little mo- 
 ments of which the chief part of life is made 
 up, constitutes a mass of benefit, which it sel- 
 dom falls to the lot of greater opportunities to 
 equal. Nor are those who are in the habit of 
 doing such small favors, by any means the least 
 likely persons to be capable of conferring the 
 noblest ; for we are speaking of a real and dis- 
 interested, not a designing wish to please ; and 
 it is observable, that the best and greatest men 
 are apt to be the most good-natured in inter- 
 course. They are too superior to petty feelings 
 to be otherwise. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 103 
 
 These remarks might have been added to 
 those on kind manners ; but the immediate 
 subject suggested them ; and all duties are more 
 or less connected. 
 
 5. The reward of cleanliness of person is pro- 
 portionate health, self-respect, cheerfulness, and 
 the giving of i)leasure to others. 
 
 6. The reward of attention to air and exercise 
 is proportionate health, self-respect, cheerfulness, 
 and the enjoyment of the external world. 
 
 7. The reward of not exciting or oppressing 
 ourselves with over-eating and drinking, and 
 of not drowsing ourselves with narcotics, is 
 proportionate self-respect, activity, bodily and 
 mental, and command over the Avill. Free- 
 dom from intemperance of any kind is so much 
 power gained to think, to do, and to ab- 
 stain. The intemperate man is merry at times, 
 and the habitual smoker and opium-taker is 
 soothed at times ; but the temperate man is 
 cheerful always, or can best support Avant of 
 cheerfulness. He need never be running after 
 the time he has lost ; nor lamenting the bad 
 spirits, the repentances, or the fits of anger and 
 sullenness, into which intemperance betrays 
 
 8. The reward of kind manners (supposing 
 them to be really kind, and not pretended) is 
 kindness in return, harmony around us, and 
 pleasure in the recollection of us. All human 
 
104 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 beings love power more or less, be it only for 
 the sake of obtaining as strong a sense as possi- 
 ble of their individualit}^ ; — of the worth and 
 amount of their actual existence. But it is 
 acquired in different ways, in different quanti- 
 ties, and of different qualities. They who 
 exact it least (unless they fall among very 
 unworthy persons) acquire it most, and (if 
 unexacting from the best motives) of the best 
 sort. Should their goodness and understandings 
 be on a par, power indeed is fairly shovelled 
 into their hands ; and as they use it only for the 
 happiness of those around them, their own 
 happiness is of a kind the most rewarding. 
 
 9. The reward of freedom from censoriousness 
 in conversation, from speaking evil of the absent, 
 and from the habit of fault-finding with those 
 who are present, is a portion of that which has 
 just been described ; but as it is advisable to 
 make special mention of it, particularly as re- 
 gards the absent, it may be said to consist in 
 the consciousness of not deserving to be ill- 
 spoken of in our own absence, of not seeking to 
 rise by pulling others down, of being thought 
 of with pleasure by all our acquaintances (the 
 censorious, unless at times, not excepted), and 
 of exciting the gratitude of all with whom we 
 converse by showing them how safe they will 
 leave their own characters in our hands, and 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE HEART. 105 
 
 how little we tliouglit them under the necessity 
 of being unworthily entertained. To come away 
 from a conversatioUj in which there has been no 
 censure of others, yet no lack of zest, is to carry 
 with our memories a golden clue. 
 
 10. The reward of being true in word and 
 deed (supposing it to be truth of the true sort, 
 that is to say, kindly truth, truth true to the 
 objects of all virtue, and not unfeeling or ma- 
 levolent truth, truth that can be of no service, 
 or can only give pain) is proportionate esteem, 
 veneration, love, power ; all the good will that 
 others can feel for us, and all the positive good 
 they can do us. Nine-tenths of the alleged in- 
 humanity of mankind is owing to their ])eing 
 deceived. If people are sure of an accident or 
 a calamity, crowds hasten to relieve it. By ve- 
 racity we cliarm in conversation ; by sincerity 
 we influence opinion ; by trustworthiness we 
 render friends loving and secure ; add to the 
 general confidence of men in men, and by thus 
 strengthening the foundations of society, acquire 
 the right to an analogous personal sense of worth 
 and firmness. Truth gives a sense of security 
 to the feeblest man, as lying does of insecurity 
 to the strongest. The true man has but one 
 answer to give to interrogators, one story to tell 
 them, one face to shew them, nobody's face to 
 fear. 
 
106 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 11. The reward of magnanimity, and of being 
 able to hazard misconstruction for the sake of a 
 principle, is the knowledge of lis by those who 
 resemble us, and the chance of being able to do 
 the greatest good. 
 
 12. The reward of not being indifferent to 
 misconstruction, is gratitude from that reason- 
 able portion of self-love in the community which 
 is founded on the instincts of love social, and on 
 the importance of fellow-creatures to one ano- 
 ther. 
 
 13. The reward of abstaining from pleasures 
 that are founded on giving j)ain, has been inti- 
 mated, as respects the moral portion of it, in the 
 remarks upon kind manners. The reward of 
 abstaining from pleasures connected with the 
 giving of physical pain, is the consciousness of 
 being able to do without them, of not taking 
 unwarrantal)le advantages of creatures inferior 
 to us, of saving unnecessary suffering, and of 
 doing as we would be done by at the hands of 
 beings superior to ourselves. A lover of nature, 
 who can get health from the fields without agony 
 to stag or pheasant, and who, besides health, 
 can get instruction and delight from studying 
 the creation around him, is as mucli superior to 
 the sportsman who can do nothing of this, as the 
 sportsman is superior (if he is) to a beast of 
 pi-ey. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 107 
 
 14 and 15. The reward of undergoing pain 
 and danger for duty's sake, particularly duty to 
 others, is proportionate self-respect, respect and 
 love from others, and the godlike joy of bringing 
 best out of worst, and good from evil. To bear, 
 with perfect good temper, even a head-ache or a 
 tooth-ache, is something ; to have been a good 
 servant at the bed of sickness, is a thing we 
 may remember with some comfort in sorrow ; to 
 have spared ourselves no additional anguish in 
 sustaining the dying, is more, far more ; to en- 
 counter long and great perils in peaceful enter- 
 prises for the sake of mankind, such as those of 
 the Arctic voyagers, is heroical ; to go to the 
 stake for a principle, or be left of loving friends, 
 or get ill repute from the fellow-creatures whom 
 it would benefit, is martyrdom ; and yet the 
 greatest of these trials have rewards in the very 
 penalties, the suffering being noble, and the soul 
 by it purified and exalted. The saying, that 
 "virtue is its own reward," may be accepted by 
 sincere men, mthout help from the satirist. — 
 Virtue is its own reward ; often a great one, 
 always one that is worth having. What does 
 it not bestow, in the consciousness of strength 
 and truth ? What has it not saved from, in 
 the wisdom of self-denial ? What would not 
 any right-minded man give to have exercised it, 
 when temptation proved too strong for him ? 
 
108 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 when one failure may liave blighted even many 
 successes, and put remorse into a sensitive 
 mind ? 
 
 Virtue, however, is not the only reward of 
 virtue. All who are acquainted with it, love 
 it. They all rejoice in its joy, and suffer with 
 its distress. 
 
 Provided it has been charitable. 
 
 Provided that the worth of it, as virtue, which 
 is strength, has been completed by charity, which 
 is goodness. 
 
 16. The reward of encouraging unbounded 
 inquiry, is the consciousness of our willingness 
 to discover the truth, though at ex])ense to our 
 previous oj^inions ; of deserving therefure the 
 respect of all honest men ; and of losing no 
 chance for increasing the welfare of mankind. — 
 Wliat matters it to the lover of truth, whether 
 his own opinions prove true or not, j^rovided he 
 gets truer oj^inions .^ What he desires is, not 
 to be tliought wise. Init to be so ; not to be 
 considered a traveler on a right road, (for, should 
 he be on the wrong one, how ridiculous would 
 be that !) but to be actually traveling the right 
 road ; bound, in sober sincerity, for that home 
 of truth which he has been seeking ; and not 
 bent on the fantastical reiDutation of being sup- 
 posed to seek it. 
 
 17. The reward of recognizing the right of 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 109 
 
 every fellow-creature, of whatsoever creed, color, 
 or condition, to the exercise and enjoyment of 
 every faculty, bodily and mental, bestowed by 
 the Creator, is gratitude from obtainers of the 
 right recognized, and advancement of its recog- 
 nition by the species. Enslavement of the negro 
 is an impudent substitution of selfish force for 
 social beneficence. Condemnations to celibacy 
 and prostitution are alike the results of cruel 
 mistakes, political and moral. 
 
 18. The reward of encouraging in ourselves 
 the hope of immortality, is gratitude to the 
 Giver, contemplation of endless progress and 
 acquirement, patience under affliction, joyful 
 thoughts of meetings in futurity, and, conse- 
 quently upon those thoughts, a wonderfully 
 changed aspect in death itself ; which thus be- 
 comes a joiner of what it has separated, and 
 almost a wholly different thing from what it was 
 before friends were lost. Thoughts of immor- 
 tality are reconcilers of disappointments, com- 
 pleters to short-comings, solvers of hard riddles, 
 fulfillers of expectations, only satisfiers of hearts. 
 Is it possible that God should have given them 
 to us, and that anybody should refuse them ? 
 
 19. The reward of bearing in mind that mo- 
 rals are habits, and that good habits are acquir- 
 able as well as bad ones, is that a man may be- 
 
110 THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. 
 
 gin the reformation of a bad habit instantly and 
 with hope. 
 
 20. The reward of bearing in mind that the 
 habits of children commence with their exist- 
 once, is the saving of great troubles both to us 
 and to themselves ; their love and gratitude as 
 tho}^ grow up, if they turn out worthy ; and 
 the comfort of a good conscience in sorrow, if 
 they do not. 
 
 A wise mother provides for the well-being 
 of her child before it is born, by good habits of 
 her own : a wise father assists the foresight, and 
 loves her for it : she loves him for an aifection 
 ?o discerning, and so honorable to both their 
 hearts : and what rewards are not these ? 
 
STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 '1»PR 30 1934 
 
 
 nrr. 27 ma 
 
 
 ^■t 01 II 
 
 
 '49^3^23^5 
 
 
 HIM 9 1QM i 
 
 ij 
 
 JUli A ^S Rjda 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD 21-100//i-7,'33 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY