UC-NRLF B E 637 3E7 fJt.'^-'"-'i,',' ' -.fe': :;y ; < LIBRARY UNIVMSITY Of . CA11K)«NIA ^c /2l Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2008 witii funijling from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.arcliive.org/details/beautiesofclianniOOcli^nricli BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. WITH AN ESSAY PREFIXED WILLIAM MOUNTFORD. LONDON : JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND. MDCCCXLIX. LOAN STACK LYNN : PRINTED BY J. W. AIKIN, 73, HIGH STREET. INDEX. An essay on the growth and influ- ence OF THE character OF WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING . . . xi CRITICISM. The Dominion of Mind ... 37 The Purpose of Poetry ... 38 Milton's Love of Liberty . . .40 Milton in his Old Age . • . 41 Fenelon 42 Johnson and Milton ... 44 An Estimate of Bonaparte's Greatness 46 Wordsworth, Scott, and Dickens . 48 The French Revolution ... 50 Religion and Literature . , 52 Faith the Assistant of Science . . 53 Military Talent .... 56 Books .•••.. 57 The Present Age .... 57 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Human Rights . . • • 59 Man not the Creature of the State . 62 9G7 IV INDEX The real use of Government . . 65 The Supreme Law of a State . • 66 The Subject in relation to the State 67 Liberty impossible without Virtue . 68 Democracy 70 The Grand end of Society ... 71 The Power of Principle . . 72 The Great Idea of American Institutions 74 The Chief Argument against Slavery 76 The Great Law of Humanity . . 78 The Conditions of a Just War . 79 Maritime Law 81 Free Trade 83 Party Spirit 84 The Real Enemies of Society . . 85 National Retribution .... 86 Liberty Essential to Virtue . . 87 The Perfectibility of the Human Race 88 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. The Idea of a Man ... 90 The Duty of Self-Culture , . . 91 Man Self-searching and Self-forming 93 The Soul's Principle of Growth . 95 Great and Little Minds ... 97 The Spiritual Sciences Accessible to All 99 The Selfish and Disinterested Principles 100 The Sense of Duty, God's Greatest Gift 102 Spiritual Intuitions . . . 103 INDEX. The Perception of the Beautiful 104 The Feeling of Perfectibility . 105 True Culture 106 Great Ideas 108 Spiritual Freedom . . . . 109 Danger the Means to Progress 111 The Moral Purpose of Labour . 113 Thought Essential to Virtue . 115 Free Inquiry 116 Moral Energy Endangered by Society 117 The Child and the World . 119 The Treatment of a Child 120 The Worthlessness of mere Learning . 121 RELIGION. Religion 122 The Religious Principle 123 Religion a Principle of Human Nature 123 The Great Mystery of Religion . 124 Religion a Quickening Power 125 The Glory of Religion 126 God's Connexion with his Creatures 127 The True View of Religion 129 The Great Purpose of Worship 130 Tlie Great Object of the Universe 132 THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. Distrust of Miracles an Atheistical Feelingl33 The Littleness of Scepticism • . 134 INDEX. The Evidences of the Christian Miracles 135 Christianity a Rational Religion . 136 The Great Principle of the Evidences 140 The Jews of our Saviour's Age . 142 Christ's Character a proof of his Gospel 144 The Heavenly Origin of Christianity 146 The Sublimity of our Lord's Character 152 The Mission of the Apostles . , 154 Christianity its own Evidence . .155 Christian Evidences not Overwhelming 157 Christianity Adapted to the Soul . 158 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES AND DUTIES. The Great Purpose of Christianity The Character of God God our Father Christ the Son of God Jesus the Saviour . Christ the Mediator . Jesus our Exemplar The Holy Spirit Christ's Coming Immortality Spiritual Influence The Right Use of Christ's Sufferings The Purpose of Suffering Jesus Christ in Heaven Human Likeness to God The Essence of Religion 160 161 163 168 169 169 170 172 173 174 175 177 178 180 180 182 INDEX. VU Heaven . • • . Religious Peace Strength from Trial • Real Greatness • . . , The Soul's Welcome into Heaven The Love of God An Invitation to Worship The Knowledge of Christ Love to Christ Self-Denial . ' . Honour all Men Christian Meekness The Subject's Duty in an Unjust War Prosperity no Security against War The Remedy for War Courage Sympathy with the Poor Sympathy with every Church Sin Sin Worse than Punishment The Punishment of Injustice The Victims of Drunkenness Retribution Hereafter CHRISTIAN AGENTS. The Lord's Day The Christian Minister Dedication of a Church . Woman's Work VIU INDEX. The Teacher's Faith ... 229 The Soul the True Temple . . 230 True Consecration .... 231 The Universal Church . . . 231 CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENTS. The Difficulty of Religious Knowledge 233 The Duty of Free Inquiry ... 235 Liberality Essential to Religion . 236 Unitarianism 238 The Theology of Milton, Locke, and 7 q«q Newton . . . . j The Debasing Doctrine of Total Cor- 7 ruption . • . . j The Purer Piety of Unitarianism . 242 The Baleful Nature of a Priesthood . 24G Religious Terror . • . . 24G The Victims of Bigotry . . .248 The Unitarian's Love of his Faith . 248 Channing's Last Words in Public . 250 240 AN ESSAY ON THE GROWTH AND INFLUENCE OF THE CHARACTER ov WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. AN ESSAY. William Ellery Channing was born in the year seventeen hundred and eighty. He became a student in Harvard University, Cam- bridge, in his fifteenth year. In his nineteenth year, he went to live in Virginia, as tutor in a planter's family ; in his twenty-second year, he was elected to the office of Regent in Harvard University ; in his twenty-fourth year, he was ordained, as the minister of a Christian Society in Boston : in his thirty-sixth year, he was mar ried ; in his thirty-ninth year he became a happy father ; he made a visit to Europe in his forty- third year ; and he ended life in his sixty-third year of it. Of Channing's life, these are the chief dates. But there can be no doubt, of there having been in it many other dat( s of great importance. XU AN ESSAY. though not of a kind for history. For with a thinker, his greatest seasons are commonly his most silent; and what he himself talks least about, even when they are over. What can be said of the times, in which the mysterious inlet of the spirit opens, for the truth of God to flow in upon the soul ? How can the season be told of, in which a man grows the wiser for his virtue : and how can the way be described, in which a person's meditations are the nobler and the wider, one year, from his resolutions for self- denial and righteousness, the year before ? What is there to be told of hearing the wind in the trees : or of listening to the tide on the beech : or of how it feels, as the sun goes down ? Yet with a thinker, a storm, a sunset, an hour's sight of the sea, may be seasons, and are sometimes gi'eat occasions. Still from the Life of Channing, many a date might easily be given, that ought to be very interesting. For the discourse on Unitarian Christianity, preached in 1819, at Baltimore, will widen in its effects, very likely, so as that for its importance, it will prove to be historical sometime. * Man, the Image of his Maker ' has been a sermon, the reading of which has been an era in many a man's life ; and from the preaching of which in Rhode Island, larger men- tal changes are to be dated, than from some AN ESSAY. Xlll very famous conquests. And the year 1816 is the date of a sermon, that is greater than the gathering of an army ; for it is against war, and through men's minds it is working mightily towards ending war with the peace of Christ. And from Channing's completion of his Essay on Slavery, in 1835, it will be hereafter, as though American history had begun anew. But are Essays and Discourses great works ? They are, if they are the expressions of a great mind. Before Channing's Works are thought the less of, as being merely Essays, Sermons, and Letters, let it be remembered, that there is not one of Paul's Epistles, but might for the length of it, be a sermon ; and that all the old Hebrew writings are printed together in one book. The greatness of truth is not in the word- iness of it, but otherwise, perhaps altogether otherwise. The divine teaching, which there was in the world once, is of holier mention than to be named just in this place, yet often it was delivered only in short parables. A larger work than anything he has left, Channing did purpose; but he never had strength enough to write it. And so he said, he could sympathise as few other men could, with an intellectual hibourer disappointed in his dear- est hopes. Perhaps his disap[)ointmcnt was greater than there was ground for. Because XIV AN ESSAY. from his occasional writings there is to be learned every great principle, probably, which he had become persuaded of, in philosophy and religion. Let the reader look at the table of contents prefixed to this volume, and he will be surprised to see, how easily from Channing's writings are to be gathered a whole system of morals, a philosophy of politics, principles of criticism, and a body of divinity. It has been strangely objected to the intellec- tual greatness of Channing, that there is no new truth to be found in his writings. Such an objection as this is, is made in almost utter igno- rance of the nature of the human mind. William EUery Channing was a humble and reverential expounder of the Gospel ; he was not a professed propounder of new truths. It is not for the disciples of Christ to be looking for new truths in religion : nor is a moral truth, quite new, to be expected from any one. Perhaps at no time, did any moral truth feel quite new. Always, ages before the sunrise of a truth, there is the dawn of it; and so the rays of it are never quite new. Even the special doctrine of the Gospel, that God is our Father, did not come into the world, without the last of the prophets having looked in its direction, and asked " Have we not all one Father ? " And always with us all, the noblest teaching of duty is as though our own AN ESSAY. XV hearts were being read off to us. There is a light that lights every man that comes into the world. In every Christian living now, there is the dawn of what will be the brightness of a hundred ages hence. All essential truths in morals and reli- gion may easily be learned ; but they are not learned to the same purpose by every body : and it is the spirit in which those truths are held, that is littleness or greatness, with any one. Against the greatness of Channing as a Divine, there has been an allegation made, which means that he was not a Lardner, nor a Calmet, nor a Rosenmueller. But he was himself. And his calling was not to make a great dictionary, nor to lay old manuscripts together and find out the exact word that Matthew or Mark wrote, nor to be an Oriental scholar forgetting the present in the past. He was learned enough for his work ; and his work was not philology, but something of a higher and much rarer nature than that. He was not merely such a man as may grow up in any college ; he was not a philologist, but an evangelist he was. Channing's greatness was of the soul ; and so was what service he rendered men. The same truths are little from little minds, and great from great minds. Worthy utterance religion never has, except from a spirit wise and free, just and pure, loving, devout, and hopeful. And some B 2 XVI AN ESSAY. time perhaps, there has been an age of darkness, only for the want of one right thinter in it. Channing was one to feel what life is, and to make his fellow-men feel afresh its worth, and beauty, its awfulness and blessedness. He was one, so religious, that the word, God, had new- ness in it with his speaking. It was the rectitude of his spirit, that was the wisdom of his writings. For his memory was not very remarkable, nor his logical power un- commonly great. But there was in him that Spu'it of truth, that guides into all truth. And from among men, he was a lofty example of that divine guidance. His wonderful words were truth, that had found ready entrance into his soul, and principles, that had grown in him, he knew not how, perhaps. He lived a holy life ; he kept himself like a temple ; and so the spirit of God could and did dwell in him. As a little child, William EUery Channing was loving, truthful, and thoughtful ; as an older boy, he was open, brave, and generous ; and so he was described by one that knew him. According to the accounts of his fellow-students, his life at college was an exercise unto godliness ; and with his classmates, his company felt like holiness. AVhen he lived in Virginia, rather than take money, which had been remitted to him, by his widowed mother, he did without it, AN ESSAY. XVU and endured the winter without warm clothing ; and in hard and anxious study, he lost his health, and for all his life, as it proved. In studying to fit himself for the ministry, he was very careful to have only the Bible, as the origin of his Christian doctrines, and he said to himself that he ought to separate from all parties, by adher- ing to principles and not to men. As a minister and an example, he was very eminent. Yet in the earlier season of his ministry, he was sadden- ed by doubts about his usefulness. He was bravery itself with the public ; but with a private person he was modest, and almost diffident. He said, he felt himself nobody, in private. He was very reserved, when a young man ; and he could not help seeming cold, even with persons whom he warmly wished to have friendly with him. He was very generous with his money ; and some times he gave away so much of a large salary, as to know what it was, having food and raiment merely, to be therewith content. And always his way of living was very simple, and for his station, even plain. He was fond of chil- dren ; and when he heard of a little girFs telling her mother, that she had understood every word of some address of his, he said it was the greatest compliment ever paid him. He was very can- did, and glad of correction from any one. " I acknowledge the justice of your reproof ; I have B 3 XVlll AN ESSAY, been silent too long ;" was his answer to one, who almost severely blamed him, for not doing more, and something more publicly against slavery, than simply speaking against it from his pulpit. The remonstrance with him was in private, and most men would have said was unseasonable, and unjust, and presumptuously made. But Chan- ning's answer to it was the greatness of humility ; was that self-abasement that is the highest exal- tation. As a young student, it was the wish of Chan- ning to attach himself to principles and not to men ; and this was his care throughout his life. And it made him very jealous of all associations, and very scrupulous about what he joined. For he knew well how the best causes often end in the worst effects, when taken to by parties. He never would be a member of any Abolition Society, even when he was himself writing and acting against slavery more powerfully than all other anti-slavery men together. As a Unitarian writer, he was the best of his time, and singularly revered and loved : but almost he was afraid of the friends he made; fearful of becoming sec- tarian, through having them attach themselvesi to him like followers. It was not from heading any political movement, nor from having a sect to advance him, that Chaiming was so powerful. Simply his influence was the action of soul upon AN ESSAY. XIX soulc Without noise, and just like the way of thouglit in the mind, was the manner in which Channing grew upon the public, till by many men, he was reverenced like conscience nearly, and loved like their own souls, almost. His greatness was of the truest kind, and theiefore not easily understood, nor allowed by some persons. They ask, what has Channing performed ; what institutions has he founded, what bands has he made, for holding men in order : what has he done ? Little, very little in that way, has he done. I'ut what does the sun do ? Shine, only shine. But without his shining, without his light and heat, there would be no forest??, nor green fields, nor living creatures, nor spring time, nor autumn. And under the influence of Channing's spirit upon men, there are growing up kindlier customs, a more tender regai'd for human nature, freedom for the slave, and newness of religion. In Channing was silently wrestled out a struggle, which ages will be the better for : and in his mind wore perfected those ways of thinking, along which, thousands of men are moving towards the heights of con- viction, and sight of tlie infinite, and of heaven almost. Channing may be regarded in his public cha- ractcT, as a divine and a citizen. But a divine, he would not have much liked being called, perhaps; ZZ AN ESSAY. for he disliked being styled reverend. By the members of his congregation, he wished to be held, as a thoughtful and a Christian brother, and not as a professional man, whose business was with the Scriptures, while theirs might be with trade only, with commerce or with pleasure. Much and rightly he longed for Christians to be less dependent on ministers, than they are. His theology was nothing new, but as old as the Scriptures he hoped : and he became a contro- versialist for it, only when he was obliged to be. He knew, a controversial attitude was a great misfortune, but he judged it to be infinitely bet- ter than keeping silence on the truth, or being false to it. No long while before he died, he was told by an eminent member of an orthodox communion, that there were some very easy con- cessions, which might be made to Trinitarians : but he answered that he could not use phrases in one sense, for the purpose of having them under- stood in another. With him, it was a greater thing to keep sincere, for life, than at once to get more popular, and even useful. Sectarianism was the abhorrence and the dread of Channing. He would not liave been the head of a sect if he could. He loved his religious opinions, but was anxious not to love them in such a way, as to get bigotted to them. For even truth may be held in such a wrong AN ESSAY. XXI spirit, as almost itself to be false. This is a thing that ought to be understood. It would seem, that Channing was well persuaded of it. As far as Unitarians were a sect, like other sects, be had little interest in them : so he said, the year before bis death : and yet just about the same time, in a letter, which he published, he spoke of his having a Unitarian cause, on behalf of which, he wished to be cautious, for it not to get hindered]. There are truths : and there is a spirit, that is truthful. For matters a man is sure of, he ought to be zealous ; but he ought not to forget, that there are many things, that have not come to his knowledge. And for ever and ever, princi- ples the best known will have to be held in a spirit of reverence towards what truth is un- known. Perhaps there may have been persons willing to call Channing thuir Master, and his doctrine something like infallible. But to such people, he would have said " I am little of a Unitarian.*' An 1 these words, he did use once, and so showed himself a more trustworthy minister than ever, more nearly like those teachers, to whom it was gaid — Neither be ye called Masters ; for ono is your Master even Christ. The works of Clianning are so beautifully, and j)urely, and strongly religious, that almost tliey XXll AN ESSAY. are the religion of every one that reads them. For the reader can Iiardly help feeling, that the one Lord and one Faith are in them: and that whether his own old notions are in them or not, that very certainly there is in them the one Spirit, which Christians have been all made to drink into. Religiously the closest relationships are not always between one Catholic and another, or one Unitarian and another. Channing knew himself nigher Fenelon than Priestley, great and good man, though he thought him. And very likely, he felt himself closer in spirit, to some monks, some bishops, some Quakers, than even to some of his own acquaintances. And a far wider brotherhood he had than he knew of perhaps. Theological change is very slow. Often a man is a new believer long before he can cease from his old words, his old creeds, his old prayers. In sectarian communions, there are unsectarian worshippers. There is many a church, in which Channing would not have been allowed .o speak, but to which fellow-believers with him go ; for it feels holy to them ; but yet they rejoice to know of a holy of holies beyond, in which ihe spirit of Channing is true worship. Silently but surely, and very widely is Channing's influence working along wiih other powers of God, to- wards making Christians know of the one Spirit, in the one hope of which they arc culled. AN ESSAY. XXlll Channing was as great a citizen, as he was a divine. It was very much in his spirit, that Boston has grown to be what it is, the joy of every visitor, and what is best in that country, that is the hope of the world. Only by what Channing was in the place of his residence, the whole world is the better, or is to be. For forty years, Boston was the home of Channing ; the place he commonly dwelled in, and acted in, and talked in. And Orville Dewey has said, that his daily conversation was even better than his writings. He was not without aptitude for business. And his own great thoughts, he was himself active in carrying out. And nobly he showed the heroism of a good citizen. For the best actions were no easier with him than with others. Now and then his goodness was so good, as not to be understood at once, by some persons and even by many. And once or twice, he was so anxious for the right, that his resoluteness seemed to be wrong, even to some of his friends. But he was right altogether ; and from those two or three actions, rather hard to be understood at one time, the meaning of his whole life is deep- ened now. For it is certain, what a disinterested and noble spirit, all his words are the utterance of. So noble a citizen he was, that almost public errors were ennobled by his correction of them. XXIV AN ESSAY. Temporary mistakes of a people turned to ever- lasting truths through him. An American ship was driven into a Britii^h port ; and from what happened in consequence, Channing argued the great law of nations, for all times, and every country, and in a way it was never shown before. Political, sounds like. an unworthy word for any of his writings, so unworldly they all are. His politics are true to human nature ; and yet they are the thoughts and feelings of one free of the City of God. Channing was a sufferer from ill health, from his twentieth year to the end of his life. His illness was from hard and anxious thought, at first, and was so perhaps all through his life. In nearly every thing else, but health, he was singularly fortunate ; for he was happy in his parents, his friendships, and his marriage, in the place of his birth, and in that of his dwell- ing ; he was happy in his ministry ; and at the last, happy in his death, for it was in peace, and in fullness of faith, he died; on a Sunday evening too, with friends about him, and just as the sun was setting. He had the best of friends ; some of them men of genius, as well as the purest character. His home was of the happiest nature, every way. And publicly, the esteem he was held in, was of the highest. Always he was surrounded by AN ESSAY. XXT comforts ; and nearly always, there was some sweet voice nigh him, for him to listen to. But in the in idst of these happy circumstances, every day there was at his lips an invisible cup, given him to drink from on high, and it was ill health. But he took it, sure of its being from his Father ; and so bodily weakness turned with him to strength of spirit. In the earlier part of his life, Channing was sad and very reserved. As a child, he said him- self, he was sorrowful, from feeling himself much in want of wisdom and goodness. And as a minister, for years, he was sad, from fearing himself to be unequal to his office. At this part of his life, he knew of more holiness, love, dero- tion, and wisdom, than he himself had : but he had not yet come to feel, that so it must always be with every one ; and that this necessity is not meant to torture, but to solemnise us. The higher a man is in goodness, the more do heights upon heights rise beyond him ; not to sadden him with his own lowliness, but to witness to him, what a spiritual world it is that he belongs to, so infinite and so sublime. And as a guide for man in life, and to walk beside him, there is Right, an angel from God, whose countenance is the more majestic, the oftoner it is looked at, and whose eyes are the more meaning, the more they are minded. But those deep eyes are on a c XXVI AN ESSAY. man, not to abash him, but for him to drink in courage from, and hope, and strength. Channing was very reserved, when he was a young man. His self-constraint was so great, that some persons thought it coldness : and he himself felt it, like a misfortune he could not get through ; and sometimes, like a fault he had to be sorry for. But a fault it was not. With those, who are a little merry only, a man can be a little humourous ; but a saint cannot sympa- thize, like a companion, with the little goodness of those, who are only a little loving, a little just, a little pure. He is restrained from this, by something else than his will. And so he grows reserved at first, and he keeps so for a while ; for it feels to him, as though his nature were something strange ; because he does not easily believe that what is peculiar in him, is his good- ness. Almost always it has been through a sorrowful youth, that great souls have entered on a glorious manhood. To be full of rever- ence, and yet to feel none for many that are in places of reverence ; to be love itself, and to have others mistake his great affection for a weakness, which they may safely impose on ; to be nobly minded towards men, only to be reckoned by them deficient in that prudence, which is mere cunning ; to be pure in heart, and to be fancied on that very account, wanting in AN ESSAY. XXVll common sense ; to be obliged to keep his better self to himself, even amongst his acquaintances, and BO to be more lonely amongst them, than even in his own chamber ; these are experiences, which almost always sadden the earlier years of one, that is tender of heart, as well as great in mind. Very sad it must be, to get used to the com- pany of men as they are, for one, who is a saint, but does not know it. The early reserve of Channing was from the very strength of his feelings. And his youthful sadness was only the grey morning, out of which he was himself to shine on the world, so clearly and brightly, and cheerfully. Very uncommon is the extent, to which he was independent of men, events, and cir-i cumstances. What he became was not much | through what books he read, what society he was in, what opinions he learned, as a boy, or what events happened to him. This is what can be said of very few persons. Even some of the most honoured minds are but like edifices, that stand nobly indeed, but whicli liave been built out of the woods and quarries nighest ; and that look venerable, but which have been colored so, only by the atmosphere, by the sunshine and the storms of their times. And with most men, their minds arc an agglomeration of facts, they have known of, and of inconsistent opinions, c 2 XXVm AN ESSAY. they have been told of. Their minds have grown, like commemorative mounds in Arabia, on to which, every traveller throws a stone, as he passes by. But Channing's mind was like some mountain of old time, that was heaved up, from within, by forces of its own, more and more sub- limely above the earth ; and that grew green of itself with vines and olives, and higher up with oaks and firs. In perusing the biography of Channing,* the reader feels so strangely, that it IS the record of a soul, which grew mysteriously from within. Not that there were no outward circumstan- ces, or authors, or events, influential on the mind of Channing : for there must have been not a few ; and some he has himself mentioned. When a little boy, he was present at the Convention, at which the inhabitants of Rhode Island, agreed to the Federal Constitution ; and he heard his father address the meeting, in the character of Attorney-General ; and long after- wards, he said, the enthusiasm of that time, he should never forget. When he was thirteen, and at school, his father died. This must have been a great event for Channing, and a mournful one, for a long while. And for years afterwards, thoughts of ♦ Memoirs of William Ellery Channing : edited by his nephew, William Henry Channing. London, Chapman. AN ESSAY. XXIX the past, must have come over him solemnly, and like a breeze out of a church-yard, from among tombs and yew-trees. It was while reading a work of Francis Hutcheson's, that Channing first felt what it is to be a soul, free and freely choosing the right. And he said that Dr. Richard Price's Disserta- tions, were what kept him a spiritualist in philo- sophy, when he was a student. However, these books would not have been much to him, but for the free spirit of his birth-place. Very important is the spirit, which a thinker grows up in. And just as Newton ^ learned the way of the stars from seeing an ^ apple fall ; so it is possible that almost every spiritual principle may be grandly argued from any one of a hundred very common books. Six years before Channing died, he preached a sermon at the dedication of a Church in Rhode Island^ at Newport, his native town. And in it he spoke of the great and beautiful impres- sions, which came upon him, from the scenery of his native island, and which had been no little influential in determining his modes of thought and habits of life. He said, no spot on earth had helped him so much as the beech, down to which, when he was a youth, he used to go, in the sunshine, and in tempests ; and wliere with prayers and thanksgiving, a great work c 3 XXX AN ESSAY. went on in his soul ; aided sometimes by the beauty, that softened his heart, and sometimes by the storms, that awed him with the power of God. But for Channing, the freedom of the island, was perhaps a much happier thing than the beauty of it. The Commonwealth there, was of Roger Williams* settling, religiously free from the beginning, and generously as well as reso- lutely free. Its founder was one who loved liberty quite as dearly, and much more wisely than the other pilgrim fathers ; and he was a man of the largest love, and the greatest patience. He was a minister at Salem ; and for many years, he was the object of bitter persecution, by neighbouring ministers : and he was driven out, among the Indians, one winter. But at last he founded a colony of his own, and for it, he made such laws, as he thought were right. And in the peace, and happiness, and dear liberty of this Settlement, it was a delight to the governor of it, to think of his early troubles, and to write about himself, at last, as he did — Lost many a time, I've had no guide, No house but hollow tree, In stormy, winter night, no fire, No food, no company. It was in Roger Williams' Commonwealth, and under laws of his framing, and so in his AN ESSAY. XXXI spirit very much, that Channing grew up. And in this he was fortunate ; for had he been a bigot, he would not have felt the beauty of his birth-place much, nor the glory of the worship made by winds and waves for man to join in. It was because he was so free in spirit, that beauty was such a delight and virtuous help to him, as it was. It was soon after maintaining that freedom is of the very essence of human nature, that he said himself at Newport " I thank God that this beautiful island was the place of my birth." There was not anything very special either in the accidents or the circumstances of his life ; nor was there in the early promise of his genius, nor even in his very earliest writings. His character is not to be accounted for, either from his parents, his studies, or his time and place in the world. Wonderful is it ? So it is, and very rightly : for it is a message from God ; and the very mystery of it, should draw to- wards it our reverent attention. In this sj)irit, let the noble memoir of Channing be studied, and the reader will be the wiser for it, and not the worse. For there is a curiosity, which reads the life of a great man, like gossip about him, and which discovers that he could not have been otherwise than the poet, or the philoso- XXXll AN ESSAY pher, or the philanthropist he was, on account of his disposition as a boy, and the opportu- nities which he had as a man. An acorn will not open and become a seedling, and grow to be a shady tree, without God : nor will a soul, out of nothingness, grow to be wise, I and good, and wondrous, without much more than what the eye can see, or the ready tongue well explain. In at the ears enter sounds, and in at the eyes enter sights, for a man ; but into his mind, there are other inlets than his eyes and ears ; for man is soul as well as body ; and he is a child, with God for a father. And so into his mind, there enter helps, which are invisible and inaudible, but not therefore the less real. And of every man's history, the most important part, is what no fellow-creature but only some angel could write. Always let this be remem- bered ; and the narrative of a life will not interest the less, and will profit the more. There is a God about us, drawing the nigher us, for every holy thought of ours. And it was the same with Channing, And by gladly recog- nizing the way of his spiritual growth, we shall ourselves grow the more freely. Many are the men, who are the better loved for being the better known ; but they are few indeed, who can be the more highly esteemed, AN ESSAY. XXXlll as well as the more tenderly loved, for being thoroughly known : but of these very few Chan- ning is one. A man good as well as great, is a blessing to all who know him, for their souls are the larger for sympathy with his soul. And from perusing the life of Channing, the reader feels enlarged in soul, and for some while at least, walks about, as though in a new spirit. The Memoirs of Channing make an emphasis on almost every sentence of his writings. His arguments for liberty are the holier, for the sacred way he respected the freedom of others. His exhortations to goodness are the more persuasive for his own more remarkable virtues, his humil- ity, patience, kindness, and godly courage. It was because he himself lived so familiarly in the thought of immortality, that in his writings there is to be tasted a something of the powers of the world to come. He lived so religiously, was so simply and sweetly religious, that simply to know of the life which he lived, is religious refreshment and almost renewal. His health was always so ill, and for a long time, there were so many prejudices against him, and so many bigotted oppositions, that in it all, his life was a great achievement. Sometimes he felt as though he were doing very little in the XXXIT AN ESSAY. world ; but the life, which he was living, when become history, was itself to be peculiarly use- ful. By work and meditation, by prayer and by the spirit that came to him in answer, he grew to be what he was. And now his simple name is a nobler thing than even the books them- selves of most other writers. BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 38 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. THE PURPOSE OF POETRY'. By those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as light reading, Milton's eminence in this sphere may be considered only as giving him a high rank amongst the contributors to public amusement. Not so thought Milton. Of all God's gifts of intellect, he esteemed poetical genius the most transcendent. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with something of the conscious dig- nity of a prophet. We agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts ; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment, which is deepest and sublimest in human nature ; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, some- thing more powerful, lofty, and thrilling than ordinary and real life affords. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be crea- tive energies, powers of original and ever-growing thought ; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it "makes all things new'' for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and })ounds of nature ; imparts to material objects life, and sen- timent, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendours of the outward crea- tion ; describes the surrounding universe in the colours which the passions throw over it, and Beauties of channing. 39 depicts the soul in those modes of repose or agita- tion, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, the laws of the immortal intellect ; it is trying and developing its best faculties ; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emo- tions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendour, beauty, and happiness, for which it was created. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of the outward creation and of the soul. It indeed pour- trays, with terrible energy, the excesses of the pas- sions ; but they are passions which shoAV a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep though shuddering sym- pathy. Its great tendency and purpose is to carry the mind above and beyond the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life ; to lift it into a purer element; and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of early feel- ing, revives the relish of simple ])leasures, keeps unquenchcd the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, n^lincs youthful love, strengthens our interest in liunian njitun; by vivid delineations of its t(niderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, bclps I'uitli to lay hold on iho future life. D 2 40 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. Milton's love of liberty. We see Milton's greatness of mind in his fer- vent and constant attachment to liberty. Free- dom, in all its forms and branches, was dear to him, but especially freedom of thought and speech, of conscience and worship, freedom to seek, profess, and propagate truth. The liberty of ordinary politicians, which protects men's out- ward rights, and removes restraints from the pursuit of property and outward good, fell very short of that for which Milton lived, and was ready to die. The tyranny which he hated most, was that which broke the intellectual and moral power of the community. The worst feature of the institutions which he assailed, was, that they fettered the mind. He felt within himself that the human mind had a principle of perpetual growth, that it was essentially diffusive and made for progress, and he wished every chain broken, that it might run the race of truth and virtue with increasing ardour and success. This attachment to a spiritual and refined freedom, which never forsook him in the hottest contro- versies, contributed greatly to protect his genius, imagination, taste, and sensibility, from the withering and polluting influences of public sta- tion, and of the rage ol parties. It threw a luie of poetry over politics, and gave a sublime refer- ence to his service of the commonwealth. The fact that Milton, in that stormy day, and amidst the trials of public office, kept his liigh faculties undepraved, was a proof of no common greatness. Politics, however they make the intellect active, sagacious and inventive, within a certain sphere, generally extinguish its thirst for universal truth, paralyse sentiment and imagination, corrupt the BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 41 simplicity of the mind, destroy that confidence in human virtue which lies at the foundation of philanthropy and generous sacrifices, and end in cold and prudent selfishness. Milton passed through a revolution, which, in its last stages and issue, was peculiarly fitted to damp enthu- siasm, to scatter the visions of hope, and to infuse doubts of the reality of virtuous principle ; and yet the ardour and moral feeling, and enthusiasm of his youth, came forth unhurt, and even exalted from the trial. MILTON IN HIS OLD AGE. We see Milton's magnanimity in the circum- stances under which " Paradise Lost '' was written. It was not in prosperity, in honour, and amidst triumphs, but in disappointment, desertion, and in what the world calls disgrace, that he composed that work. The cause with which he had identified himself, had failed. His friends were scattered ; liberty was trodden under . foot ; and her devoted champion was a by-word among the triumphant royalists. But it is the prerogative of true greatness to glorify itself in adversity, and to meditate and execute vast en- terprises in defeat. Milton, fallen in outward condition, afflicted with blindness, disap})ointed in his best hopes, applied himself with charac- teristic energy to the sublimest achievement of intellect, solacing himself with great thouglits, with splendid creations, and with a prophetic confidence, that however neglected in his own age, he was framing in his works a bond of union and fellowship with the illustrious spirits of a brighter day. We delight to contemplate him in his retreat and last years. To the passing D a 42 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. spectator lie seemed fallen and forsaken, and his blindness was reproached as a jndgment from God. But though sightless, he lived in light. His inward eye ranged through universal nature, and his imagination shed on it brighter beams than the sun. Heaven, and hell, and paradise, were open to him. He visited past ages, and gathered round him ancient sages and heroes, prophets and apostles, brave knights and gifted bards. As he looked forward, ages of liberty dawned and rose to his view, and he felt that he was about to bequeath to them an inheritance of genius, "which would not fade away,'' and was to live in the memory, reverence, and love of re- motest generations. FENELON. Fenelon, if not a profound, was an onginal thinker, and though a Catholic, he was essen- tially free. He wrote from his own mind, and seldom has a purer mind tabernacled in flesh. He professed to believe in an infallible church ; but he listened habitually to the voice of God within him, and speaks of this in language so strong, as to have given the Quakers some plea for ranking him among themselves. So little did he confine himself to established notions, that he drew upon himself the censures of his church, and, like some other Christians whom we could name, has even been charged with a refined Deism. His works have the great charm of coming fresh from the soul. He wrote from experience, and hence, although lie often speaks in a language which must seem almost a foreign one to men of tlie Morld, yet he always speaks in a tone of reality. That he has excesses, we i BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 43 mean not to deny ; but they are of a kind which we regard with more than indulgence, almost with admiration. Common fanaticism we can- not away with ; for it is essentially vulgar, the working of animal passions, sometimes of sexual love, and oftener of earthly ambition. But when a pure mind errs, by aspiring after a disinterestedness and purity not granted to our present infant state, we almost reverence its errors ; and still more, we recognize in them an essential truth. They only anticipate and claim too speedily the good for which man was made. They are the misapprehensions of the inspired prophet, who hopes to see in his own day, what he was appointed to promise to remoter ages. Fenelon saw far into the human heart, and especially into the lurkings of self-love. He looked with a piercing eye through the disguises of sin. But he knew sin, not as most men do, by bitter experience of its power, so much as by his knowledge and experience of virtue. Defor- mity was revealed to him by his refined |)ercop- tions and intense love of moral beauty. The light wliicli he carried with him into the dark corners of the human heart, and by which he laid open its most hidden guilt, was that of celestial good- ness. Hence, though tlic severest of censors, he is the most pitying. Not a tone of asperity e8caj)e8 him. lie looks on human error with an angel's tenderness, with tears whicli an angel might shed, and thus reconciles and binds us to our race, at the very moment of revealing its corruptions. That Fciiclon's views of liunian nature were (lark, too dark, we learn from almost every page of his writings; and at this we cannot wonder. 44 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. He was early thrown into the very court iVoni which Rochefoucaukl drew his celebrated Max- ims, perhaps the spot, above all others on the face of the earth, distinguished and disgraced by selfishness, hypocrisy, and intrigue. When we think of Fenelon hi the palace of Louis XIV. it reminds us of a seraph sent on a divine commis- sion into the abodes of the lost ; and when we recollect that in that atmosphere he composed his Telemachus, we doubt whether the records of the world furnish stronger evidence of the power of a divine virtue, to turn temptation into glory and strength, and to make even crowned and prosperous vice a means of triumph and exalta- tion. JOHNSON AND MILTON. Johnson did not, and could not, appreciate Milton. We doubt whether two otlier minds, having so little in common as those of which we are now speaking, can be found in the higher walks of literature. Johnson was great in his own sphere, but that sphere was comparatively "of the earth," whilst Milton's was only inferior to that of angels. It was customary in the day of Johnson's glory, to call him a giant, to class him with a mighty, but still an earth-born race. Milton we should rank among seraphs. John- son's mind acted chiefly on man's actual condition, on the realities of life, on the springs of liuman action, on the passions whicli now agitate society, and he seems hardly to have dreamed of a higlier state of the human mind than was then exhibit- ed. Milton, on the other hand, burned with a deep, yet calm love of moral grandeur and celestial purity. He thought, not so mucli of BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 45 what man is, as of what he might become. His own mind was a revelation to him of a higher condition of humanity, and to promote this he thirsted and toiled for freedom, as the element for the growth and improvement of his nature. In religion, Johnson was gloomy and inclined to superstition, and on the subject of government leaned towards absolute power; and the idea of reforming either, never entered his mind but to disturb and provoke it. The church and the civil polity under which he lived, seemed to him perfect, unless he may have thought that the former would be improved by a larger infusion of Romish rites and doctrines, and the latter by an enlargement of the royal prerogative. Hence, a tame acquiescence in the present forms of reli- gion and government, marks his works. Hence, we find so little in his writings which is electric, and soul-kindling, and which gives the reader a consciousness of being made for a state of loftier thought and feeling than the present. Milton^s whole soul, on the contrary, revolted against the maxims of legitimacy, hereditary faith, and ser- vile reverence for established power. He could not brook the bondage to which men had bowed for ages. " Reformation '* was the first word of Eublic warning whicli broke from his youthful ps, and the hope of it was the solace of his declining years. The difference between Milton and Johnson may Ixi tra(UHl not only in these great features of mind, but in their whole char- acters. Milton was refined and spiritual in his habits, temperate almost to abstemiousness, and refreshed himself after intellectual ellort bv mu- sic. Johnson in(;liiied to more sensual delights. Milton was exquisitely alive to the outward 46 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. creation, to sounds, motions, and forms, to natural beauty and grandeur. Johnson, through defect of physical organization, if not through deeper deficiency, had little susceptibility of tliese pure and delicate pleasures, and would not have exchanged the Strand for the vale of Tcmpe or the gardens of the Hesperides. How could Johnson be just to Milton ! The comparison which we have instituted, has compelled us to notice Johnson's defects. But we trust we are not blind to his merits. His stately march, his pomp and power of language, his strength of thought, his reverence for virtue and religion, liis vigorous logic, his practical wisdom, his in- sight into the springs of human action, and the solemn pathos which occasionally pervades his descriptions of life, and his references to his own history, command our willing admiration. That he wanted enthusiasm and creative imagination and lofty sentiment, was not his fault. We do not blame him for not being Milton. We love intellectual power in all its forms, and delight in the variety of mind. We blame him only that his passions, prejiulices, and bigotry, engaged him in the unworthy task of obscuring the brighter glory of one of the most gifted and virtuous men. AN ESTIMATE OF BONAPARTE's GREATNESS. There are different orders of greatness. Among these, the first rank is unquestionably due tomoral greatness, or magnanimity ; to that sublinu^ ener- gy, by which the soul, smitten with the love of virtue, binds itself indissolubly, for life and for death, to truth and duty ; espouses as its own the interests of human nature ; scorns all mean- BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 47 ness and defies all peril ; hears in its own con- science a voice louder than threatenings and thunders ; withstands all the powers of the universe, which would sever it from the cause of freedom and religion ; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour, and is " ever ready to be offered up '' on the altar of its coun- try or of mankind. Of this moral greatness, which throws all other forms of greatness into obscurity, we see not a trace in Napoleon. Though clothed with the power of a god, the thought of consecrating himself to the introduc- tion of a new and higher era, to the exaltation of the character and condition of his race, seems never to have dawned on his mind. The spirit of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice seems not to have waged a moment's war with self-will and ambition. His ruling passions, indeed, were singularly at variance with magnanimity. Moral greatness has too much simplicity, is too unos- tentatious, too self-subsistent, and enters into others' interests with too much heartiness, to live an hour for what Napoleon always lived, to make itself the theme, and gaze, and wonder of a dazzled world. Next to moral comes intellectual greatness, or genius in the highest sense of that word ; and by this, we mean that sublime capaci- ty of thought, tlirouirh which the soul, smitten witli the love of the true and the beautiful, essays to conipn^bend the universe, soars into the lioavenH, j)enetrates tlie earth, penetrates itself, (juestions tlie past, anticipates the future, traces out the general and all-comprehending laws of nature, binds togetlier by innumera])le afHnities and rehitions all tin; objects of its knowltnlffc, ris(>s from the finite and transient to the infinite 48 BEAUTIES OF CHANGING. and the everlasting, frames to itself from its own fulness lovelier and sublimer forms than it hehohls, discerns the harmonies between the world within and the world without us, and finds in every region of the universe types and interpreters of its own deep mysteries and glorious inspirations. This is the greatness which belongs to philoso- phers, and to the master spirits in poetry and the fine arts. Next comes the greatness of action : and by this we mean the sublime power of conceiving bold and extensive plans; of con- structing and bringing to bear on a mighty object a complicated machinery of means, energies and arrangements, and of accomplishing great out- ward effects. To this head belongs the greatness of Bonaparte, and that he possessed it, we need not prove, and none will be hardy enough to deny. WORDSWORTH, SCOTT, AND DICKENS. The works of genius of our age breathe a spirit of universal sympathy. The great poet of our times, Wordsworth, one of the few who are to live, has gone to common life, to the feelings of our universal nature, to the obscure and neglected portions of society, for beautiful and touching themes. Nor ought it to be said, thatjie has shed over these the charms of his genius ; as if in themselves they had nothing grand or lovely. Genius is not a creator, in the sense of fancying or feigning wliat does not exist. Its distinction is, to discern more of truth than common minds. It sees, under disguises and humble forms, ever- lasting beauty. This it is tlie prerogative of Wordsworth to discern and reveal in the ordina- ry walks of life, in the common human heart. He BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 49 has revealed the loveliness of the primitive feelings, of the universal affections of the human soul. The grand truth which pervades his poetry is, that the beautiful is not confined to the rare, the new, the distant, to scenery and modes of life open only to the few ; but that it is poured forth profusely on the common earth and sky ; that it gleams from the loneliest flower, that it lights up the humblest sphere, that the sweetest aliections lodge in lowly hearts, that there is sacredness, dignity and loveliness in lives which few eyes rest on, that even in the absence of all intellectual culture, the domestic relations can quietly nourish that disinterestedness which is the element of all greatness, and without which intellectual power is a splendid deformity, Wordsworth is the poet of humanity ; he teaches reverence for our universal nature; he breaks down the factitious barriers between human hearts. The same is true, in an inferior degree, of Scott, whose tastes however were more aristocra- tic. Scott had a childish love of rank, titles, show, pageants, and in general looked with keener eye on the outward life than into the soul. Still he had a human heart and sympathised with his race. With few exceptions, he was just to all his human brethren. A reconciling spirit })reathes through his writings. He seizes on the interesting aiul beautiful features in nil conditions of life; gives us bursts of tender and noble feel- ings even from ruder natures ; and continually knits some new tie between the reader and the vast varieties of human nature which start up under his teeming pen. He delighted, indeed, in Highland chiefs, in border thieves and mur- E IK> BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. derers, in fierce men and fierce encounters. But he had an eye to catch the stream of sweet afiec- tions, as it wound its way through humble life. What light has Jeanie Deans shed on the path of the obscure ! He was too wanting in the religious sentiment, to comprehend the solemn bearing, the stern grandeur of the Puritans. But we must not charge with narrowness, a writer, who embodied in a Jewish maiden his highest conceptions of female nobleness. Another writer, illustrating the liberalising, all-harmonising tendency of our times, is Dickens, whose genius has sought and found subjects of thrilling interest in the passions, sufferings, vir- tues of the mass of the people. He shows, that life in its rudest forms may wear a tragic gran- deur; that amidst follies and sensual excesses, provoking laughter or scorn, the moral feelings do not wholly die ; and that the haunts of the blackest crimes are sometimes lighted up by the presence and influence of the noblest souls. He has indeed greatly erred, in turning so often the degmdation of humanity into matter of sport ; but the tendency of his dark pictures is to awaken sympathy with our race, to change the unfeeling indifference which has prevailed to- wards the depressed multitude, into sorrowful and indignant sensibility to their wrongs and woes. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The French Revolution is perpetually sounded in our ears, as a warning against the lawlessness of the people. But whence came this revolution? Who were the regicides? Who beheaded Louis XVI ? You tell me the Jacobins ; but history BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. 51 tells a different tale. I will show you the beheaders of Louis XVI. They were Louis XIV. and the Regent who followed him, and Louis the XV. These brought their descendant to the guillotine. The priesthood, who revoked the Edict of Nantz, and drove from France the skill, and industry, and virtue, and piety, which were the sinews of her strength ; the statesmen who intoxicated Louis XIV. with the scheme of universal empire ; the profligate, prodigal, sham- less Orleans; and the still more brutalized Louis the XV. with his court of panders and prostitutes ; these made the nation bankrupt, broke asunder the bond of loyalty, and overwhelmed the throne and altar in ruins. We hear of the horrors of the revolution; but in this, as in other things, we recollect the effect, without thinking of the guiltier cause. The revolution was indeed a scene of horror ; but when I look back on the reigns which preceded it, and which made Paris almost one great stew and gaming-house, and when I see altar and throne desecrated by a licentiousness unsurpassed in any former age, I look on scenes as shocking to the calm and searching eye of reason and virtue, as the 10th of August and the massacres of September. Bloodshed is indeed a terrible spectacle ; but there are other things almost as fearful as blood. There are crimes that do not make us start and turn pale like the guillotine, but are deadlier in their workings. God forbid that I should say a word to weaken the thrill of horror with which we contemplate the outrages of the French lievoliition. But when I hear that revolution quoted to frighten us from reform, to show us the danger of lifting up the depressed and igno- E 2 52 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINCJ. rant mass, I must ask whence it came ? and the answer is, that it came from the intolerable weight of misgovernment and tyranny, from the utter want of culture among the mass of the people, and from a corruption of the great, too deep to be purged away except by destruction. I am also compelled to remember, that the people, in this their singular madness, wrought far less wo than kings and priests have wrought, as a familiar thing, in all ages of the world. All the murders of the French Revolution did not amount, I think, by one-fifth, to those of the " Massacre of St. Bartholomew.*' The priest- hood and the throne, in one short night and day, shed more blood, and that the best blood of France, than was spilled by Jacobinism, and all other forms of violence, during the whole revo- lution. Even the atheism and infidelity of France were due chiefly to a licentious priesthood and a licentious court. It was religion, so called, that dug her own grave. RELIGION AND LITERATURE. Our chief hopes of an improved literature, rest on our hopes of an improved religion. From the prevalent theology, which has come down to us from the dark ages, we hope nothing. It has done its best. All that can grow up under its sad shade, has already been brought fortli. It wraps the Divine nature and liuman nature in impenetrable gloom. It overlays Christianity with technical, arbitrary dogmas. True faith is of another lineage. It comes from the same source with reason, conscience, and our best affections, and is in liannony with them all. True faith is essentially a moral conviction ; a BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 53 confidence in the reality and immutableness of moral distinctions ; a confidence in disinterested virtue or in spiritual excellence as the supreme good ; a confidence in God as its fountain and almighty friend, and in Jesus Christ as having lived and died to breathe it into the soul ; a con- fidence in its power, triumphs, and immortality ; a confidence, through which outward changes, obstructions, disasters, sufferings, are overcome, or rather made instruments of perfection. Such a faith, unfolded freely and powerfully, must " work mightily " on the intellect as well as on the practice. By revealing to us the supreme purpose of the Creator, it places us, as it were, in the centre of the universe, from which the harmonies, true relations, and brightest aspects of things are discerned. It unites calmness and enthusiasm, and the concord of these seemingly hostile elements is essential to the full and healthy action of the creative powers of the soul. It opens the eye to beauty and the heart to love. Literature, under this influence, will become more ingenuous and single-hearted ; will pene- trate farther into the soul ; will find new inter- pretations of nature and life; will breathe a martyr's love of truth, tempered with a never failing charity ; and, whilst sympathising with all human suttering, will still be pervaded by a healthful choorfiilncss, and will often break forth in tones of irrepressible joy, responsive to that happiness which fills God's univei^se. FAITH THE ASSISTANT OF SCIENCE. The great principles of moral and religious science, are above all others, fruitful, life-giving, and have intimate connexions with all other £ 3 54 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. truths. The Love towards God and man, which is the centre in which they meet, is tlie very spirit of research into nature. It finds perpetual delight in tracing out the harmonies and vast and beneficial arrangements of creation, and in- spires an interest in the works of the Universal Father, more profound, intense, enduring, than philosophical curiosity. I conceive, too, that faith in moral and religious truth, has strong affinities with the scientific spirit, and thus con- tributes to its perfection. Both, for example, have the same objects, that is, universal truths. As another coincidence, I would observe, that it is the highest prerogative of scientific genius, to interpret obscure signs, to dart from faint hints to sublime discoveries, to read in a few fragments the history of vanished worlds and ages, to detect in the falling apple the law that rules the spheres. Now it is the property of moral and religious faith, to see in the finite the manifesta- tion of the Infinite, in the present the germ of the boundless future, in the visible the traces of the Incomprehensible Unseen, in the powers and w^ants of the soul, its imperishable destiny. Such is the haraiony between the religious and the philosophical spirit. It is to a higher moral and religious culture, that I look for a higher inter- pretation of nature. The laws of nature, we must remember, had their origin in the mind of God. Of this they are the product, expression, and type ; and I cannot but believe, that the human mind which best understands, and which partakes most largely of the divine, has a power of inter- preting nature, which is accorded to no other. It has harmonies with the system which it is to unfold. It contains in itself the principles M-hich BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 55 gave birth to creation. As yet, science has hardly penetrated beneath the surface of nature. The principles of animal and vegetable life, of which all organized beings around us are but varied modifications, the forces which pervade or consti- tute matter, and the links between matter and mind, are as yet wrapped in darkness ; and how little is known of the adaptations of the physical and the spiritual world to one another ! Whence is light to break in on these depths of creative wisdom ? I look for it to the spirit of philosophy, baptized, hallowed, exalted, made piercing by a new culture of the moral and religious principles of the human soul. MILITARY TALENT. Militaiy talent, even of the highest order, is far from holding the first place among intellectual endowments. It is one of the lower forms of genius ; for it is not conversant with the highest and richest objects of thought. We grant that a mind, which takes in a wide country at a glance, and understands, almost by intuition, the positions it affords for a successful campaign, is a com- prehensive and vigorous one. The general who disposes his forces so as to counteract a greater force ; who supplies by skill, science, and inven- tion, the want of numbers ; who dives into tlie counsels of his enemy, and who gives unity, energy, and success to a vast variety of operations, in the midst of casualties and obstructions which no wisdom could foresee, numifests great power. \inl still the chief work of a general is to apply physical force ; to remove |)hysical o!)structions ; to avail himself of })liysical aids and advantages ; to act on matter ; to overcome rivers, ramparts, 56 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. mountains, and human muscles ; and these are not the highest objects of mind, nor do they demand intelligence of the highest order ; and, accordingly, nothing is more common than to find men eminent in this department, who are wanting in the noblest energies of the soul, in habits of profound and liberal thinking, in imagination and taste, in the capacity of enjoying works of genius, and in large and original views of human nature and society. The office of a great general does not differ widely from that of a great mechanician, whose business it is to frame new combinations of physical forces, to * adapt them to new circumstances, and to remove new obstructions. Accordingly, great generals, away from the camp, are often no greater men than the mechanician taken from his workshop. To institute a comparison in point of talent and genius between such men and Milton, Bacon, and Shakspeare, is almost an insult on these illustrious names. Who can think of these truly great intelligences ; of the range of their minds through heaven and earth ; of their deep intuition into the soul ; of their new and glowing combi- nations of thought ; of the energy with which they grasped and subjected to their main purpose the infinite materials of illustration which nature and life afford — who can think of the forms of transcendent beauty and grandeur which they created, or which were rather emanations of their own minds; of the calm wisdom and fervid imagination which they conjoined ; of the voice of power, in which, "though dead, they still speak," and awaken intellect, sensibility, and genius in both hemispheres — who can think of such men, and not feel the immense inferiority BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 57 of the most gifted warrior, whose elements of ^thought are physical forces and physical obstruc- tions, and whose employment is the combination of the lowest class of objects on which a powerful mind can be employed. BOOKS. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books ! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take uj) their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me witli his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, thougli exchulod from what is called the best society in the place where I live. TIIK PHKSKNT AGE. In these brief words, what a world of thought is comprehended! what infinite movements! wliat jovH and sorrows! what hope ami despair! what faith and doubt ! what silent grief and loud lament ! what liorce conliiets and subtle sehemcs of policy ! what private and public revolutions ! 58 BEAUTIES or CHANNING. In the period through which many of us have passed, what thrones have been shaken ! What hearts have bled ! What millions have been butchered by their fellow-creatures ! What hopes of philanthrophy have been blighted ! And at the same time, what magnificent enterprises have been achieved! What new provinces won to science and art ! What rights and liberties secured to nations ! It is a privilege to have lived in an age so stirring, so pregnant, so eventful. It is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of warning and encouragement is never to die. Its impression on history is indelible. Amidst its events, the American Revolution, the first dis- tinct, solemn assertion of the Rights of Men, and the French Revolution, that volcanic force which shook the earth to its centre, are never to pass from men's minds. Over this age, the night will indeed gather more, as time rolls away ; but in that night two forms will appear, Washington and Napoleon, the one a lurid meteor, the other a benign, serene, and undecaying star. Another American name will live in history, your Frank- lin ; and the kite, which brought lightning from heaven, will be seen sailing in the clouds by remote posterity, when the city where he dwelt may be known only by its ruins. There is however, something greater in the a^e than its greatest men ; it is the appearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the multitude of men on that stage, where as yet the few have acted their parts alone. This influence is to endure to the end of time. What more of the present is to survive ? Perhaps much, of which we now take no note. The glory of an age is often hid from itself. Perhaps some word has been spoken BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 59 in our day, which we have not deigned to hear, but which is to grow clearer and louder through all ages. Perhaps some silent thinker among us is at work in his closet, whose name is to fill the earth. Perhaps there sleeps in his cradle some Reformer, who is to move the church and the world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to fire the human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to survive the age ? That, which the age has little thought of, but which is living in us all ; I mean the soul, the Immortal Spirit. Of this all ages are the unfoldings, and it is greater than all. We must not feel in the contemplation of the vast movements of our own and former times, as if we ourselves were nothing. ' I repeat it, we are greater than all. We are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pro- nounce its sentence. As yet, however, we are encompassed with darkness. The issues of our time how obscure ! The future into which it opens, who of us can foresee ? To the Father of all Ages I commit this future, with humble yet courageous and unfaltering hope. HUMAN RIGHTS. Man has rights by nature. The disposition of some to deride abstract rights, as if all rights were uncertain, mutable, and conceded by society, shows a lamentable ignonmcc of human nature. Whoever understands this must see in it an im- moveable foundation of rights. These are gifts of the Creator, bound up indissolubly with our moral constitution. In the order of things, they precede society, lie at its foundation, constitute man's capacity for it, and are the great objects of social institutions. The oonsciousnese ofnghts 60 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. is not a creation of human art, a conventional sentiment, but essential to and inseparable from the human soul. Man's rights belong to him as a Moral Being, as capable of perceiving moral distinctions, as a subject of moral obligation. As soon as he be- comes conscious of Duty, a kindred consciousness springs up that he has a Right to do what the sense of duty enjoins, and that no foreign will or power can obstruct his moral action without crime. He feels that the sense of duty was given to him as a Law, that it makes him responsible for himself, that to exercise, wnfold, and obey it is the end of his being, and that he has a right to exercise and obey it without hindrance or op- position. A consciousness of dignity, however obscure, belongs also to this divine principle ; and though he may w ant words to do justice to his thoughts, he feels that he has that within him which makes him essentially equal to all around him. The sense of duty is the fountain of human rights. In other words, the same inward prin- ciple, which teaches the former, bears witness to the latter. Duties and Rights must stand or fall together. It has been too common to oppose them to one another ; but they are indissolubly joined together. That same inward principle, which teaches a man wliat he is bound to do to others, teaches equally, and at the same instant, what others are bound to do to him. That same voice, which forbids him to injure a single fellow- creature, forbids every fellow-creature to do hiin harm. His conscience, in revealing the moral law, does not reveal a law for himself only, but speaks as a Universal Legislator. He has an BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. 61 intuitive conviction, that the ohligations of this divine code press on others as truly as on him- self. That principle, which teaches him that he sustains the relation of brotherhood to all human beings, teaches him that this relation is reciprocal, that it gives indestructible claims as well as im- poses solemn duties, and that what he owes to the members of this vast family, they owe to him in return. Thus the moral nature involves rights. These enter into its very essence. They are taught by the veiy voice which enjoins duty. Accordingly there is no deeper principle in Imman nature than the consciousness of rights. So profound, so ineradicable is this sentiment, that the oppressions of ages have nowhere wholly stifled it. Having shown the foundation of human rights in human nature, it may be asked what they are. Perhaps they do not admit very accurate defini- tion any more than human duties ; for the Spiritual cannot be weighed and measured like the Material. They may all be comprised in the right, which belongs to every rational being, to exercise his powers for the promotion of his own and others' Happiness and Virtue. These are the great purposes of his existence. For these his powers were given, and to these ho is bound to devote thorn. He is bound to make himself and others better and happier, according to his ability. His ability for tliis work is a sacred trust from God, the greatest of all tnists. Having considered the gi*eat fundamental right of human nature, particular rights may easily be deduced. Every man has a right to exercise and invigorate his intellect or the power of knowledge, for knowledge is the essential condi« trZ BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. tion of successful effort for every good ; and whoever obstructs or quenches the intellectual life ill another inflicts a grievous and irreparable wrong. Every man has a right to enquire into his duty, and to conform himself to what he learns of it. Every man has a right to use the means, given by God and sanctioned by virtue, for bettering his condition. He has a right to be respected according to his moral woi-th ; a right to be regarded as a member of the commu- nity to which he belongs, and to be protected by impartial laws ; and a right to be exempted from coercion, stripes, and punishment, as long as he respects the rights of others. He has a right to an equivalent for his labour. He has a right to sustain domestic relations, to discharge their duties, and to enjoy the happiness which flows from fidelity in these and other domestic relations. MAN NOT THE CREATURE OF THE STATE. Man is not the mere creature of the state. Man is older than nations, and he is to survive nations. There is a law of humanity more primitive and divine than the law of the land. He has higher claims than those of a citizen. He has rights which date before all charters and communities; not conventional, not repealable, but as eternal as the powei's and laws of his being. This annihilation of the individual, by merging him in the state, lies at the foundation of des- potism. The nation is too often the grave of the man. This is the more monstrous, because the very end of the state, of the organization of the nation, is to secure the individual in all his BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 63 rights, and especially to secure the rights of the weak. The individual is not made for the state, so much as the state for the individual. A man is not created for political relations as his highest end, but for indefinite spiritual progress, and is placed in political relations as the means of his progress. The human soul is greater, more sacred than the state, and must never be sacri- ficed to it. The human soul is to outlive all earthly institutions. The distinction of nations is to pass away. Thrones, which have stood for ages, are to meet the doom pronounced upon all man's works. But the mdividual mind survives, and the obscurest subject, if true to God, will rise to a power never wielded by earthly poten- tates. A human being is a member of the community, not as a limb is a member of the body, or as a wheel is a part of a machine, intended only to contribute to some general, joint result. He was created, not to be merged in the whole, as a drop in the ocean, or as a particle of sand on the sea- shore, and to aid only in composing a mass. He is an ultimate being, made for his own perfection as his highest end, made to maintain an individual existence, and to serve others only as far as consists with his own virtue and progress. A man, by his very nature, as an intelligent, moral cnniture of God, has claims to aid and kind regard from all other men. There is a grand law of hunianity, more comprehensive tlian all others, and under which every man should find shelter. He has not only a right, but is bound to use freely and improve the powers p 2 64 BEAUTIES OF OHANNING. which God has given him; and other men, instead of obstructing, are bound to assist their development and exertion. These claims a man does not derive from the family or tribe in which he began his being. They are not the growth of a particular soil ; they are not ripened under a peculiar sky ; they are not written on a particular complexion; they belong to human nature. The ground on which one man asserts them, all men stand on, nor can they be denied to one without being denied to all. We have here a common interest. We must all stand or fall together. We all have claims on our race, claims of kindness and justice, claims grounded on our relation to our common Father and on the inheritance of a common nature. THE REAL USE OF GOVERNMENT. 1 Government is a great good, and essential to human happiness ; but it does its good chiefly I by a negative influence, by repressing injustice and crime, by securing property from invasion, | and thus removing obstructions to the free exer- j else of human powers. It confers little positive j benefit. Its office is, not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happi- i ness for themselves. Government resembles the ! wall which surrounds our lands; a needful | protection, but rearing no harvests, ri})ening no { fruits. It is the individual who must chose \ whether the enclosure shall be a paradise or a \ waste. How little positive good can government ', confer? It does not till our fields, build our < houses, weave the ties which bind us to our \ families, give disinterestedness to the lieart, or | energy to the intellect and will. All our great ' BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. 65 interests are left to ourselves ; and governments, when they have interfered with them, have ob- structed, much more than advanced them. For example, they have taken religion into their keeping only to disfigure it. So, education, in their hands, has generally become a propagator of servile maxims, and an upholder of antiquated errors. In like manner, they have paralysed trade by their nursing care, and multiplied poverty by expedients for its relief. Govern- ment has almost always been a barrier against which intellect has had to struggle ; and society has made its chief progress by the minds of pri- vate individuals, who have outstripped their rulers, and gradually shamed them into truth and wisdom. Laws may repress crime. Their office is to erect prisons for violence and fraud. But moral and religious worth, dignity of character, lofti- ness of sentiment, all that makes man a blessing to himself and society, lies beyond their province. Virtue is of the soul, where laws cannot penetrate. Excellence is something too refined, spiritual, celestial, to be produced by the coarse machinery of government. Human legislation addresses itself to self-love, and works by outward force. Its chief instrument is punishment. It cannot touch the s[)rings of virtuous feelings, of great and good deeds. Accordingly, rulers, with all their imagined omnipotence, do not dream of enjoining by statute, philanthropy, gratitude, devout sentiment, miigiianiunty, and purity of thought. Virtue is too high a concern for government. It is an inspinition of God, not a creature of law ; and the agents whom God chiefly honours in its promotion, are those who, F 3 9d BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. through experience, as well as meditation, have risen to generous conceptions of it, and who show it forth, not in empty eulogies, but in the lan- guage of deep conviction, and in lives of purity. THE SUPREME LAW OF A STATE. The supreme law of a state is not its safety, its power, its prosperity, its affluence, the flourish- ing state of agriculture, commerce, and the arts. These objects constituting what is commonly called the Public Good, are, indeed, proposed, and ought to be proposed, in the constitution and administration of states. But there is a higher law, even Virtue, Rectitude, the voice of Con- science, the Will of God. Justice is a greater good than property, not greater in degree, but in kind. Universal benevolence is infinitely superior to prosperity. Religion, the love of God, is worth incomparably more than all his outward gifts. A community, to secure or aggrandize itself, must never forsake the Right, the Holy, the Just. Moral Good, Rectitude in all its branches, is the Supreme Good ; by which I do not intend that it is the surest means to the security and prosperity of the state. Such, indeed, it is, but this is too low a view. It must not be looked upon as a Means, an Instrument. It is the Su- preme End, and states are bound to subject to it all their legislation, be the apparent loss of prosperity ever so great. National wcaltli is not the End. It derives all its worth from national virtue. If accumulated by rapacity, conquest, or any degrading means, or if concentrated in the hands of the few, whom it strengthens to cnish the many, it is a curse. National wealth is a BEAUTIES OF CHANNINQ. 67 blessing, only when it springs from and repre- sents the intelligence, and virtue of the commu- nity, when it is a fruit and expression of good habits, of respect for the rights of all, of impartial and beneficent legislation, when it gives impulse to the higher faculties, and occasion and incite- ment to justice and beneficence. No greater calamity can befall a people than to prosper by crime. No success can be a compensation for the wound inflicted on a nation's mind by re- nouncing Right as its supreme Law. THE SUBJECT IN RELATION TO THE STATE. What the government determines, the multi- tude of men are apt to think right. We do not exercise our moral judgment, because it has been forestalled by the constitution and by the laws. We are members of a community, and this rela- tion triumphs over all others. Now, the truth is, that no decision of the State absolves us from the moral law, from the author- ity of conscience. It is no excuse for onr wrong-doing, that the artificial organization, called society, has done wrong. It is of the highest moment, that the prevalent notions of a man's relation to the State should be rectified. The idea of this relation is so exaggerated and perverted, as to impair the force of every other. A man's country is more thought of than his nature. Ilia connexion with a particular com- munity is more respected than his connexion with God. His alliance with hi>» race is reduced to a nullity by his alliance with the State. He must be ready to give up his race, to sacrifice all its rights and interests, that the little spot where he was born, may triumph or prosper. The Go BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. history of nations is very much the history of the immolation of the individual to the country. His nationality stands out before all his other attributes. The nation, represented by one or a few individuals, has arrogated to itself the dignity of being the fountain of all his rights. It has made his religion for him. Its will, called law, has taken place of all other laws. It has seized on the individual as its tool, and doomed him to live and die for its most selfish purposes. But the nation is not everything. The nation is not the fountain of right. Our first duties are not to our country. Our first allegiance is not due to its laws. We belong first to God, and next to our race. We were, indeed, made for partial, domestic, and national ties and affections, and these are essential means of our education and happiness, in this first stage of our being ; but all these are to be kept in subjection to the laws of universal justice and humanity. They are intended to train us up to these. In these consists our likeness to the Divinity. LIBERTY IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT VIRTUE. I know that it is supposed, that political wisdom can so form institutions, as to extract from them freedom, notwithstanding a people's sins. The chief expedient for this purpose has been, to balance, as it is called, men's passions and interests against each other, to use one man's selfishness as a check against his neighbour's, to produce peace by the counteraction and equili- brium of hostile forces. This whole theory I distrust. There is no foundation for the vulgar doctrine, that a state may flourish by arts and crimes. BEAUTIES OF CHAXiVING. 69 Nations and individuals are subjected to one law. The moral principle is the life of commu- nities. No calamity can befall a people so great, as temporary success through a criminal policy, as the hope thus cherished of trampling with impunity on the authority of God. Sooner or later, insulted virtue avenges itself terribly on states as well as on private men. We hope, indeed, security and the quiet enjoyment of our wealth, from our laws and institutions. But civil laws find their chief sanction in the law written within by the finger of God. In pro- portion as a people enslave themselves to sin, the fountain of public justice becomes polluted. The most wholesome statutes, wanting the sup- port of public opinion, grow impotent. Self- seekers, unprincipled men, by flattering bad passions, and by darkening the public mind, usurp the seat of judgment and places of power and trust, and turn free institutions into lifeless forms or instruments of oppression. I especially believe, that communities suffer sorely by that species of immorality which the herd of statesmen have industriously cherished as of signal utility, I mean, by hostile feeling towards other coun- tries. The common doctrine has been, that prejudice and enmity towards foreign states, are means of fostering a national spirit, and of confirming union at liome. But bad passions, once instilled into a people, will never exhaust themselves abroad. Vice never yields the fruits of virtue. Injustice to strangers docs not breed justice to our friends. Malignity, in eveiy form, is a fire of hell, and the policy which feeds it, is infernal. Domestic feuds and the madness of party, are its natural and necessary issues ; and 70 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. a people hostile to others, will demonstrnte in its history, that no form of inhumanity or injustice, escapes its just retribution. DEMOCRACY. It is a common notion here, as elsewhere, that it is a grand privilege to govern, to exercise political power; and that popular institutions have this special benefit, that they confer the honor and pleasure of sovereignty on the greatest number possible. The people are pleased at the thoughts of being rulers ; and hence all obstruc- tions to their immediate, palpable ruling, are regarded with jealousy. It is a grand thing, they fancy, to have their share of kingship. Now thisis wrong, a pernicious error. It is no privilege to govern, but a fearful responsibility, and seldom a^umed without guilt. The great good to be sought and hoped from popular institutions is, to be freed from unnecessary rule, to be governed with no reference to the glory or gratification of the sovereign power. The grand good of popular institutions is Liberty, or the protection of every man's rights to the full, with the least possible restraint. Sovereignty, wher- ever lodged, is not a thing to be proud of, or to be stretched a hand's-breadth beyond need. If I am to be hedged in on every side, to be fretted by the perpetual presence of arbitrary will, to be denied the exercise of my powers, it matters nothing to me whether the chain is laid on me by one or many, by king or people. A despot is not more tolerable for his many heads. Democracy, considered in itself, is the noblest form of government, and the only one to satisfy a man who respects himself and his fellow- BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 71 creatures. But if its actual operation be regar- ded, we are compelled to say that it works very imperfectly. It is true of people, as it is of king and nobles, tliat they have no great capacity of government. They ought not to exult at the thought of being rulers, but to content them- selves with swaying the sceptre within as narrow limits as the public safety may require. They should tremble at this function of government, should exercise it with self-distrust, and be humbled by the defects of their administration. THE GRAND END OF SOCIETY. Property continually tends to become a more vivid idea than right. In the struggle for private accumulation, the worth of every human being is overlooked. The importance of every man s progress is forgotten. We must contend for this great idea. They who hold it, must spread it around them. The truth must be sounded in the ears of men, that the grand end of society is to place within reach of all its members the means of improvement, of elevation, of the true happiness of man. There is a higher duty than to build almshouses for the poor, and that is, to save men from being degraded to the blighting influence of an almshouse. Man has a nght to something more than bread to keep him from starving. He has a right to the aids, and encouragements, and culture, by which he may fulfil tne destiny of a man : and until society is brought to recognise and reverence this, it will continue to groan under its present miseries. 72 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. THE POWER OF PRINCIPLES. When will statesmen learn, that there are higher powers than political motives, interests, and intrigues ? When will they learn the might which dwells in truth ? When will they learn that the great moral and religious Ideas, which have now seized on and are working in men's souls, are the most efficient, durable forces, which are acting in the world ? When will they learn that the past and present are not the future, but that the changes already wrought in society are only forerunners, signs, and springs of mightier revolutions ? Politicians absorbed in near ob- jects, are prophets only on a small scale. They may foretell the issues of the next election, though even here they are often baffled ; but the breaking out of a deep moral conviction in the mass of men, is a mystery which they have little skill to interpret. The old notion of the subjection of the many, for the comfort, ease, pleasure, and pride of the few, is fast wearing away. A far higher, and more rational conception of freedom, than entered into the loftiest speculations of ancient times, is spreading itself, and is changing the face of society. "Equality before the laws,'* has become the watchword of all civilized states. The absolute worth of a human being is better un- derstood ; that is, his worth as an individual, or on his own account, and not merely as a useful tool to others. Christianity is more and more seen to attach a sacredness and unspeakable dignity to every man, because each man is im- mortal. Such is the current of human thought. Principles of a higher order are beginning to operate on society, and the dawn of these primal, BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 73 everlasting lights, is a sure omen of a brighter day. This is the true sign of the coming ages. Politicians, seizing on the narrow, selfish princi- ples of human nature, expect these to rule for ever. They hope, by their own machinery, to determine the movements of the world. But if history teaches any lesson, it is the impotence of statesmen : and, happily, this impotence is increasing every day, with the spread of lights and moral force among the people. Would politicians study history with more care, they might learn, even fronj the dark times which are past, that self-interest is not, after all, the mightiest agent in human affairs ; that the course of human events has been more determined, on the whole, by great principles, by great emotions, by feeling, by enthusiasm, than by selfish calculations, or by selfish men. In the great conflict between the Ori- ental and the Western World, which was decided at Thermopylae and Marathon ; in the last great conflict between Polytheism and Theism, begun by Jesus Christ, and carried on by his followers ; in the Reformation of Luther ; in the American Revolution ; in these grandest epochs of history, what was it which won the victory ? What were the mighty, all-prevailing powers ? Not political managcment,not self-interest, not the lower prin- ciples of human nature ; but the principles of freedom and religion, moral power, moml enthu- siasm, the divine aspirations of the human soul. Great thoughts and great emotions liavc a place in hunuui history, whicli no historian has hitherto given them, and the future is to be more deter- min(Ml by those than the past. One great idea stands out amidst the discovo- rics and improvements of modern times. It is, a 74 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. that man is not to exercise arbitraiy, irresponsible power, over man. To restrain power, to divide and balance it, to create responsibility for its just use, to secure the individual against its abuse, to substitute law for private will, to shield the weak from the strong, to give to the injured the means of redress, to set a fence round every man's property and rights, in a word, to secure liberty, — such, under various expressions, is the great object on which philosophers, patriots, philan- thropists, have long fixed their thoughts and hopes. THE GREAT IDEA OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS. Every country is characterized by certain great Ideas, which pervade the people and the government, and by these chiefly its rank is determined. When one idea predominates strongly above all others, it is a key to a nation's history. The great idea of Rome, that which the child drank in with his mother's milk, was Dominion. The gi'eat idea of France is Glory. In despotisms, the idea of the King or the Church possesses itself of the minds of the people, and a superstitious loyalty or piety becomes the badge of the inhabitants. The most interesting view of this country, is the grandeur of the idea which has determined its history, and which is expressed in all its institutions. Take away this, and we have nothing to distinguish us. In the refined arts, in manners, in works of genius, we are as yet surpassed. From our youth and insulated position, our history has no dazzling brilliancy. But one distinction belongs to us. A great Idea from the beginning has been working in the minds of this people, and it broke forth with peculiar BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 75 energy in ouf Revolution. This is the idea of Human Rights. In our Revolution, liberty was our watchword : but not a lawless liberty, not freedom from all restraint, but a moral freedom. Liberty was always regarded as each man's Right, imposing on every other man a moral obligation to abstain from doing it violence. Liberty and law were always united in our minds. By government, we understood the concentration of the power of the whole community to protect the rights of each and all its members. This was the grand idea on which all our institutions were built. We believed that the rights of the people were safest, and alone safe, in their own keeping, and therefore we adopted popular forms. We looked, indeed, to government for the promotion of the public welfare, as well as for the defence of rights. But we felt that the former was inclu- ded in the latter ; that, in securing to every man the largest liberty, the right to exercise and improve all his powers, to elevate himself and his condition, and to govern himself, subject only to the limitation which the equal freedom of others imposes, we were providing most effectu- ally for the common good. It was felt, that, under this moral freedom, men's powers would expand, and would secure to them immeasurably greater good than could !)e conferred by a govern- ment, intermeddling perpetually with the subject, and imposing minute restraints. Th(?se views of human rights, which pervade and light up our history, may be expressed in one word. They are summed up in respect for the Individual Man. In all other countnes, the man has been obscured, overpowered by rulers, merged in the state, made a means or tool, o 2 76 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. Here, eveiy man has been recognised as having rights, on which no one can trench without crime. The nation has recognised something greater than the nation's prosperity, than outward, mate- rial interests ; and that is. Individual Right. In our Revolution, a dignity was seen in human nature, a generous confidence was placed in men. It was believed, that they would attain to greater nobleness by being left to govern themselves ; that they would attain to greater piety, by being left to worship God according to their own con- victions ; that they would attain to greater energy of intellect, and to higher truths, by being left to freedom of thought and utterance, than by the wisest forms of arbitrary rule. It was believed, that an universal expansion of the higher faculties was to be secured by increasing men's responsi- bilities, by giving them higher interests to watch over, by throwing them very much on themselves. Such is the grand idea which lies at the root of our institutions ; such the fundamental doctrines of the political creed into which we have all been baptized. THE CHIEF ARGUMENT AGAINST SLAVERY. This is to my own mind the great argument against seizing and using a man as property. ile cannot be property in the sight of God and justice, because he is a Rational, Moral, Immor- tal Being ; because created in God's image, and therefore in the highest sense his child ; because created to unfold godlike faculties, and to govern himself by a Divme Law written on his heart, and re-published in God's Word. His whole nature forbids that he sliould be seized as pro- perty. From his very nature it follows, that so BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 77 to seize him is to offer an insult to his Maker, and to inflict aggravated social wrong. Into every human being God has breathed an immor- tal spirit, more precious than the whole outward creation. No earthly or celestial language can exaggerate the worth of a human being. No matter how obscure his condition. Thought, Reason, Conscience, the capacity of Virtue, the capacity of Christian Love, an Immortal Destiny, an intimate moral connection with God, — here are attributes of our common humanity which reduce to insignificance all outward distinctions, and make every human being unspeakably dear to his Maker. No matter how ignorant he may be. The capacity of Improvement allies him to the more instructed of his race, and places within his reach the knowledge and happiness of higher worlds. Every human being has in him the germ of the greatest idea in the universe, the idea of God ; and to unfold this is the end of his existence. Every human being has in his breast the elements of that Divine, Everlasting Law, which the highest orders of the creation obey. He has the idea of Duty ; and to unfold, revere, obey this, is the very purpose for which life was given. Every human being has the idea of what is meant by the word. Truth ; that is, he sees, however dimly, the great object of Divine and created intelligence, and is capable of ever- enlarging perceptions of truth. Every human being has affections, which may be purified and expanded into a Sublime Love. He has, too, the idea of Happiness, and a thirst for it which cannot be appeased. Such is our nature. Wherever we see a man, we see the possessor of these great capacities. Did God make such a G 3 78 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. being to be owned as a tree or a brute ? How plainly was he made to exercise, unfold, improve his highest powers, made for a moral, spiritual good ! and how is he wronged, and his Creator opposed, when he is forced and broken into a tool to another's physical enjoyment ! Such a being was plainly made for an End in Himself. He is a Person, not a Thing. He is an End, not a mere Instrument or Means. He was made for his own virtue and happiness. Is this end reconcileable with his being held and used as a chattel ? The sacrifice of such a being to another's will, to another's present, outward, ill-comprehended good, is the greatest violence which can be offered to any Creature of God. It is to degrade him from his rank in the universe, to make him a means, not an end, to cast him out from God's spiritual family into the brutal herd. THE GREAT LAW OF HUMANITY. The great duty of God's children is, to love one another. This duty on earth takes the name and form of the law of humanity. We are to recognise all men as brethren, no matter where born, or under what sky, or institution, or religion, they may live. Every man belongs to the race, and owes a duty to mankind. Every nation be- longs to the family of nations, and is to desire the good of all. Nations are to love one another. It is true, that they usually adopt towards one another principles of undisguised selfishness, and glory in successful violence or fraud. But the great law of humanity is unrepealed. Men can- not vote this out of the universe by acclamation. The Christian precepts, " Do to others as you BEAUTIES OF CHANNINQ. 79 would they should do to you : Love your neigh- bour as yourselves : Love your enemies ;'' apply to nations as well as individuals. A nation, renouncing them, is a Heathen, not a Christian nation. Men cannot, by combining themselves into narrower or larger societies, sever the sacred, blessed bond, which joins them to their kind. An evil nation, like an evil man, may indeed be withstood, but not in hatred and revenge. The law of humanity must reign over the assertion of all human rights. The vindictive, unforgiving spirit which prevails on the earth, must yield to the mild, impartial spirit of Jesus Christ. I know that these principles will receive little hearty assent. Multitudes, who profess to believe in Christ, have no faith in the efficacy of his spirit, or in the accomplishment of that regenera- ting work which he came to accomplish. There is a worse scepticism than what passes under the name of infidelity, a scepticism as to the reality and the power of moral and Christian truth ; and accordingly, a man who calls on a nation to love the great family of which it is a part, to desire the weal and the progress of the race, to blend its own interests with the interests of all, to wish well to its foes, must pass for a visionary, perhaps in war would be called a traitor. The first teacher of Universal Love was nailed to the cross for withstanding the national spirit, hopes, and prejudices of Judea. His followers, in these better days, escape with silent derision or neglect, THE CONDITIONS OF A JUST WAR. When the spirit of justice, hunumity, and forbearance, instead of spreading peace, provokes fresh outrage, this outrage must be met and 80 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. repressed by force. I know that many sincere Christians oppose to this doctrine the precept of Christ, " Resist not evil." But Christianity is wronged and its truth exposed to strong objec- tions, when these and the like precepts are literally construed. The whole legislation of Christ is intended to teach us the spirit from which we should act, and not to lay down rules for outward conduct. The precept, " Resist not evil," if practised to the letter, would annihilate all government in the family and the state ; for it is the great work of government to resist evil passions and evil deeds. It is indeed our duty, as Christians, to love our worst enemy, and to desire his true good ; but we are to love not only our enemy, but our families, friends, and coun- try, and to take a wise care of our own rights and happiness ; and when we abandon to the violence of a wrong-doer these fellow-beings and these rights, commended by God to our love and care, we are plainly wanting in that expanded benevolence which Christianity demands. A nation, then, may owe it to its welfare and dig- nity to engage in war ; and its honour demands that it should meet the trial with invincible resolution. It ought, at such a moment, to dismiss all fear, except the fear of its own pas- sions — the fear of the crimes to which the exas- perations and sore temptations of public hostilities expose a state. The great idea which should rise to the mind of a country on meditating war, is rectitude. In declaring war, it should listen only to the voice of duty. To resolve on the destruction of our fellow-creatures without a command from con- science — a commission from God — is to bring BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 81 on a people a load of infamy and crime. A nation, in declaring war, should be lifted above its passions by the fearfulness and solemnity of the act. It should appeal with unfeigned con- fidence to Heaven and earth for its uprightness of purpose. It should go forth as the champion of truth and justice, as the minister of God, to vin- dicate and sustain that great moral and national law, without which life has no security, and social improvements no defence. It should be inspired with invincible courage, not by its pas- sions, but by the dignity and holiness of its cause. Nothing in the whole compass of legis- lation is so solemn as a declaration of war. By nothing do a people incur such tremendous responsibility. Unless justly waged, war involves a people in the guilt of murder. The state which, without the command of justice and God, sends out fleets and armies to slaughter fellow- creatures, must answer for the blood it sheds, as truly as the assassin for the death of his victim. Oh, how loudly does the voice of blood cry to Heaven from the field of battle! Undoubtedly, the men whose names have come down to us with the loudest shouts of ages, stand now before the tribunal of eternal justice condemned as murderers ; and the victories whicli have been thought to encircle a nation with glory, have fixed the same brand on multitudes in the sight of the final and Almighty Judgo. How essential is it to a nation's Iionour that it should engage in war with a full conviction of rectitude ! MARITIME LAW. A vessel is sometimes said to be "an extension of the territory" to which it belongs. The 82 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. nation, we are told, is present in the vessel ; and its honour and rights are involved in the treat- ment which its flag receives abroad. These ideas are in the main, true in regard to ships on the high seas. The sea is the exclusive property of no nation. It is subject to none. It is the common and equal property of all. No State has jurisdiction over it. No State can write its laws on that restless surface. A ship at sea. carries with her, and represents the rights of her country, rights equal to those which any other enjoys. The slightest application of the laws of another nation to her is to be resisted. She is subjected to no law but that of her own country, and to the law of nations, which presses equally on all states. She may thus be called, with no violence to language, an extension of the territory to which she belongs. But suppose her to quit the open sea and enter a port. What a change is produced in her condition ! At sea she sus- tained the same relations to all nations, those of an equal. Now, she sustains a new and peculiar relation to the nation which she has entered. She passes at once under its jurisdiction. She is subject to its laws. She is entered by its officers. If a criminal flies to her for shelter, he may be pursued and apprehended. If her own men violate the laws of the land, they may be seized and punished. The nation is not present in her. She has left the open highway of the ocean, where all nations are equals, and entered a port where one nation alone is clothed with authority. What matters it that a vessel in the harbour of Nassau is owned in America ? This does not change her locality. She has contracted new duties and obligations by being placed under BEAUTIES OF CHANNINa. 83 a new jurisdiction. Her relations differ essen- tially from those which she sustained at home or on the open sea. These remarks apply, of course, to merchant vessels alone. A ship of war is ^' an extension of the territory to which she be- longs/' not only when she is on the ocean, but in a foreign port. In this respect she resembles an army marching by consent through a neutral countiy. Neither ship of war nor army falls und erthe jurisdiction of foreign states. Merchant vessels resemble individuals. Both become sub- ject to the laws of the land which they enter. FREE TRADE. Free trade ! — this is the plain duty and plain interest of tlie human race. To level all barriers to free exchange ; to cut up the system of re- striction, root and branch ; to open every port on earth to every product; this is the office of enlightened humanity. To this a free nation should especially pledge itself. Freedom of the seas ; freedom of harbours ; an intercourse of nations, free as the winds ; this is not a dream of j)hilanthropists. We are tending towards it, and let us hasten it. Under a wiser and more Christian civilization, we shall look back on our present restrictions, as we do on the swaddling bands, by which, in darker times, the human body was conij)roHsed. Government enriches a pcoj)lc by removing obstructions to their powers, by defending tliem from wrong, and thus giving thorn opportunity to enrich themselves. Government is not the spring of the wealth of nations, but their own sugucitv, industry, enterprise, and force of chanictor. To leave a people to themselves, is general ly the best 84 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. service their rulers can render. Time was when sovereigns fixed prices and wages, regulated industry and expense, and imagined that a na- tion would starve and perish, if it were not guided and guarded like an infant. But we have learned, that men are their own best guar- dians, that property is safest under its owner's care, and that, generally speakins^, even great enterprises can better be accomplished by the voluntary association of individuals, than by the state. Indeed, we are met at every stage of this discussion, by the truth, that political power is a weak engine compared with individual intelli- " gence, virtue, and effort. PARTY SPIRIT. Human nature seems incapable of a stronger, more unrelenting passion. It is hard enough for an individual, when contending all alone lor an interest or an opinion, to keep down his pride, wilfulness, love of victory, and other personal feelings. But let him join a multitude in the same warfare, and, without singular self-control, he receives into his single breast the vehemence, obstinacy, and vindictiveness of all. The triumph of his party becomes immeasurably dearer to him than the principle, true or false, which was the original ground of division. The conflict becomes a struggle, not for principle, but for power, for victory ; and the desperateness, the wickedness of such struggles, is the great burden of history. In truth, it matters little what men divide about, whether it be a foot of land, or precedence in a procession. Let them but begin to fight for it, and self-will, ill-will, the rage for victory, the dread of mortification BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 85 and defeat, make the trifle as weighty as a matter of life and death. The Greek or Eastern empire was shaken to its foundation by parties, which differed only about the merits of chario- teers at the amphitheatre. Party spirit is singularly hostile to moral independence. A man, in proportion as he drinks into it, sees, hears, judges by the senses and understandings of his party. * He surrenders the freedom of a man, the right of using and speaking his own mind, and echoes the applauses or maledictions, with which the leaders or passionate partizans see fit that the country should ring. THE REAL ENEMIES OF SOCIETY. It ought to be understood, that the great ene- mies of society are not found in its poorer ranks. The mass may, indeed, be used as tools ; but the stirring and guiding powers of insurrection are found above. Communities fall by the vices of the prosperous ranks. We are referred to Rome, which was robbed of her liberties, and reduced to the most degrading vassalage, by the lawless- ness of tiie plebeians, who sold themselves to demagogues and gave the republic into the hands of a dictator. But what made tlie plebeians an idle, dissolute and raj)sicious horde? It was the system of universal rapine, which, under the name of conquest, had been carried on for ages by patricians, by all the powers of the State; a system which ghitted Rome with the spoils of the pillaged world ; which fed her population without labour, from the public treasures, and corrn]>tod them by public shows. It was this which helped to make the metropolis of the earth a sink of crime and pollution, such as the world 11 80 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. had never known. It was time, that the grand robber-state should be cast down from her guilty eminence. Her brutish populace, which followed Caesar's car with shouts, was not worse than the venal crouching senate which registered his de- crees. Let not the poor, bear the burden of the rich. NATIONAL RETRIBUTION. Religious men know and should make it known, that nations cannot consolidate free insti- tutions, and secure a lasting prosperity by crime. They know, that retribution awaits communities as well as individuals ; and they should tremble amidst their hopes, when, with this solemn truth on their minds, they look round on their country. Let them consider the clearness with which God's will is now made known, and the signal blessings of his Providence poured out on this people, with a profusion accorded to no other under heaven ; and then let them consider, our ingratitude for his boundless gifts, our unmea- sured, unrighteous love of gain, our unprincipled party-spirit, and our faithless and cruel wrongs toward the Indian race ; and can they help fear- ing, that the cup of wrath is filling for this people ? Men, buried in themselves and in outward inter- ests, atheists in heart and life, may scoff at the doctrine of national retribution, because they do not see God's hand stretched out to destroy guilty communities. But does not all history teach, that the unlicensed passions of a guilty people are more terrible ministers of punishment than miraculous inflictions ? To chastise and destroy, God needs not interfere by supernatural judg- ments. In every community, there are elements BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 87 of discord, revolution, and ruin, pent up in the human soul, which need only to be quickened and set free by a new order of events, to shake and convulse the whole social fabric. Never were the causes of disastrous change in human affairs more active than at the present moment. Society heaves and trembles, from the struggle of opposing principles, as the earth quakes through the force of central fires. This is not the time for presumption, for defying Heaven by new crimes, for giving a new range to cupidity and ambition. LIBERTY ESSENTIAL TO VIRTUE. All excellence, whether intellectual or moral, involves, as its essential elements, freedom, ener- gy, and moral independence ; so that the invader of these, whether from the throne or the pulpit, invades the most sacred interest of the human race. Intellectual excellence implies and requires these. This does not consist in passive assent even to the highest truths ; or in the most exten- sive stores of knowledge acquired by an implicit faith, and lodged in the inert memory. It lies in force, freshness, and independence of thought ; and is most conspicuously manifested by him who, loving truth supremely, seeks it resolutely, follows the light witliout fear, and modifies the views of others by the patient, strenuous exercise of his own faculties. To a man thus intellectually free, truth is not, what it is to passive multitudes, a foreign substance, dormant, lifeless, fruitless; but penetrating, prolific, fiill of vitality, and ministering to the health and expansion of the soul. And what we have said of intellectual excellence is still more true of moral. This has 11 2 88 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO* its foundation and root in freedom, and cannot exist a moment without it. Tlie very idea of virtue is, that it is a free act, the product or result of the mind's self-determining power. It is not good feeling, infused by nature or caught by sympathy ; nor is it good conduct into which we have slidden through imitation, or which has been forced upon us by another's will. We ourselves are its authors in a high and peculiar sense. We indeed depend on God for virtue : for our capacity of moral action is wholly his gift and inspiration, and without his perpetual aid this capacity would avail nothing. But his aid is not compulsion. He respects, he cannot vio- late that moral freedom which is his richest gift. To the individual, the decision of his own charac^ ter is left. He has more than kingly power in his own soul. Let him never resign it. Let none dare to interfere with it. Virtue is self- dominion, or, what is the same thing, it is self- subjection to the principle of duty, that highest law in tlie soul. If these views of intellectual and moral excellence be just, then to invade men's freedom is to aim the deadliest blow at their honour and happiness ; and their worst foe is lie w ho fetters their reason, who makes his will their law, who makes them tools, echoes, copies of liimself. THE PERFECTIBILITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. Were I to look on the world as many do ; were I to see in it a maze witliout a plan, a whirl of changes without aim, a stage for good and evil to tight without an issue ; an endless motion without progress, a worhl where sin and idolatiy are to triumph for ever, and the oppressor's rod BEAUTIES OP CHANNING. 89 never to be broken, I should turn from it with sickness of heart, and care not how soon the sentence of its destruction were fulfilled. His- tory and philosophy plainly show to me in human nature the foundation and promise of a better era, and Christianity concurs with these. The thought of a higher condition of the world, was the secret fire which burned in the soul of the Great Founder of our religion, and in his first followers. That he was to act on all future generations, that he was sowing a seed which was to grow up and spread its branches over all nations, this great thought never forsook him in life and death. That under Christianity a civil- ization has grown up, containing in itself nobler elements than are found in earlier forms of society, who can deny ? Great ideas and feelings, derived from this source, are now at work. Amidst the prevalence of crime and selfishness, there has sprung up in the human heart a senti- ment or principle unknown in earlier ages, an enlarged and trustful philanthropy, which recognises the rights of every human being, wliich is stirred by the terrible oppressions and corruptions of the world, and which does not shrink from conflict with evil in its worst forms. Tlierc has sprung up, too, a faitli of which anticpiity knew nothing, in the final victory of truth and right, in the elevation of men to a clearer intelligence, to more fniternal union, and to a purer worshij). This faith is taking its place among the great springs of human action, is becoming even a passion in more fervent spirits. I hail it as a prophecy which is to fulfil itself. A nature capable of such an aspiration cannot be degraded for ever. Ages rolled away before II 3 W BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. it was learned, that this world of matter which we tread on is in constant motion. We arc beginning to learn, that the intellectual, moral, social world has its motion too, not fixed and immutable like that of matter, but one which the free-will of men is to carry on, and which, instead of returning into itself like the earth's orbit, is to stretch forward for ever. This hope lightens the mystery and burthen of life. It is a star which shines on me in the darkest night ; and I should rejoice to reveal it to the eyes of my fellow-creatures. THE IDEA OF A MAN. I should say, that it consists, first, in that spiritual principle, called sometimes the Reason, sometimes the Conscience, which, rising above what is local and temporary, discerns immutable truth, and everlasting right ; which, in tlie midst of imperfect things, conceives of Perfection; which is universal and impartial, standing in direct opposition to the partial, selfish principles of human nature ; which says to me with author- ity, that my neighbour is as precious as myself, and his rights as sacred as my own ; wliich commands me to receive all truth, however it may war with my pride, and to do all justice, however it may conflict with my interest ; and which calls me to rejoice with love in all that is beautiful, good, holy, happy, in whatever being these attributes may be found. This principle is a ray of Divinity in man. We do not know what man is, till something of the celestial gran- deur of this princij)le in the soul be discerned. There is another grand view of nian, included indeed in the former, yet dcsierving dii^tinct notice. BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 91 He is a Free being ; created to act from a spring in his own breast, to form himself, and to decide his own destiny ; connected intimately witli nature, but not enslaved to it; connected still more strongly with God, yet not enslaved even to the Divinity, but having power to render or withhold the service due to his Creator ; encom- passed by a thousand warring forces, by physical elements which inflict pleasure and pain, by dangers seen and unseen, by the influences of a tempting, sinful world, yet endued by God with power to contend with all, to perfect himself by conflict with the very forces which threaten to overwhelm him. Such is the idea of a man. Happy he in whom it is unfolded by earnest thought. THE DUTY OF SELF-CULTURE. The ground of a man's culture lies in his nature, not in his calling. His powers are to be unfolded on account of their inherent dignity, not their outward direction. He is to be educated, be- cause he is a man, not because he is to make shoes, nails, or pins. A trade is plainly not tlie great end of his being, for his mind cannot be shut up in it ; his force of thouglit cannot be exhausted on it. He has faculties, to wliicli it gives no action, and deep wants, it cannot answer. Poems, and systems of theology and pIiilosoi)hy, which liave made some noise in tlie worUl, have been wrought at tlie work bench and amidst the toils of tli(^ field. How often, when the arms are mechanically plying a trade, docs the minil, U)st ill reverie or (lay-dreams, escape to the cuds of I he earth ! How often does the pious heart of woman mingle the greatest of all tlioughts, timt 93 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. of God, with household drudgery ! Undoubt- edly, a man is to perfect himself in his trade, for by it he is to earn his bread and to serve the community. But bread or subsistence is not his highest good ; for if it were, his lot would be harder than that of the inferior animals, for w^hom nature spreads a table, and weaves a wardrobe, without a care of their own. Nor was he made chiefly to minister to the wants of the community. A rational, moral being, can- not without infinite wrong, be converted into a mere instrument of others' gratification. He is necessarily an end, not a means. A mind, in which are sown the seeds of wisdom, disinter- estedness, firmness of purpose, and piety, is worth more than all the outward material interests of a world. It exists for itself, for its own perfection, and must not be enslaved to its own or others' animal wants. You tell me, that a liberal cul- ture, is needed for men who are to fill high stations, but not for such as are doomed to vulgar labour. I answer, that Man is a greater name than President or King. Truth and goodness are equally precious, in whatever sphere they are found. Besides, men of all conditions sus- tain equally the relations, which give birth to the highest virtues and demand the highest powers. The labourer is not a mere labourer. He has close, tender, responsible connections with God and his fellow-creatures. He is a son, husband, father, friend, and Christian. He belongs to a home, a country, a church, a race; and is such a man to be cuhivatcd only for a trade ? Was lie not sent into the world for a great Avork ? To educate a child perfectly, re- quires profounder thought, greater wisdom. BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 93 than to govern a state ; and for this plain reason, the interests and wants of the latter are more superficial, coarser, and more obvious, than the spiritual capacities, the growth of thought and feeling, and the subtle laws of the mind, which must all be studied and comprehended, before the work of education can be thoroughly per- formed ; and yet to all conditions, this greatest work on earth is equally committed by God. What plainer proof do we need, that a higher culture, than has yet been dreamed of, is needed by our whole race ? Not a few persons desire to improve them- selves only to get property and I'ise in the world ; but such do not properly choose improvement, but something outward and foreign to them- selves ; and so low an impulse can produce only a stinted, partial, and uncertain growth. A man as I have said, is to cultivate himself because he is a man. He is to start with the conviction, that there is something greater within him tlian in the whole material creation, than in all the worlds which press on the eye and ear ; and that inward improvements have a worth and dignity in themselves, quite distinct from the power they give over outward things. Undou])tedly a man 18 to labour to better his condition, but fii*st to better himself. If he knows no higher use of his mind, than to invent and drudge for his body, his case is desperate as i'ar as culture is concerned. man\s self-search 1 no and self-formino POWERS. W(^ have iu^i the faculty of turning tin* mind on itself; of recalling its past, and wutthing iU j)rescnt opcmtions ; of learning its various ca|>a- 94 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. cities and susceptibilities, what it can do and bear, what it can enjoy and suffer ; and of thus learning in geneml what our nature is, and what it was made for. It is worthy of observation, that we are able to discern not only what we already are, but what we may become, to see in ourselves germs and promises, of a growth to which no bounds can be set, to dart beyond what we have actually gained, to the idea of Perfection, as the end of our being. It is by this self-comprehending power that we are dis- tinguished from the brutes, which give no signs of looking into themselves. Without this there would be no self-culture, for we should not know the work to be done ; and one reason why self- culture is so little proposed is, that so few pene- trate into their own nature. To most men their own spirits are shadowy, unreal, compared with what is outward. When they happen to cast a glance inward, they see there only a dark, vague chaos. They distinguish perhaps some violent passion, which has driven them to injurious excess ; but their highest powers hardly attract a thought ; and thus multitudes live and die, as truly strangers to themselves as to countries of which they have heard the name, but which human foot has never trodden. But self-culture is possible not only because we enter into and search ourselves. We have a still nobler power, that of acting on, determin- ing and forming ourselves. This is a fearful as well as glorious endowment, for it is the ground of human responsibility. We have the power not only of tmcing our powers, but of guiding and impelling them ; not only of watching our passions, but of controlling them; not BEAUTIES OF CHANNINQ. 95 only of seeing our faculties grow, but of ap- plying to them means and influences to aid their growth. We can stay or change the cur- rent of thought. We can concentrate the intel- lect on objects which we wish to comprehend. We can ^x our eyes on perfection, and make almost every thing speed us towards it. This is indeed a noble prerogative of our nature. Pos- sessing this, it matters little what or where we are now, for we can conquer a better lot, and even be happier for starting from the lowest point. Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important at the present mo- ment, is that of the self-forming power, treasured up in themselves. They little suspect its extent, as little as the savage apprehends the energy which the mind is created to exert on the mate- rial world. It transcends in importance all our power over outward nature. There is more of divinity in it, than in the force which impels the outward universe ; and yet how little we com- prehend it! How it slumbei*s in most men unsuspected, unused ! This makes self-culture possible, and binds it on us as a solemn duty. THE S0UL*9 PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH. We were made to grow. Our faculties arc germs, and given for an expansion, to wliich nothing authorises us to set bounds. The soul bears the impress of illimitableness, in the tliirst, the unqucncliable thirst, which it brings with it into being, for a power, knowledge, happiness, which it never gains, and which always curry it forward into futurity. Tlie body soon reaches its limit. But intellect, affection, moi-al enei*p}', in proportion to their growth, tend to furtucr 96 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. enlargemont, and every acquisition is an impulse to something higher. When I consider this principle or capacity of the human soul, I cannot restrain the hope which it awakens. The par- tition-walls which imagination has reared between men and higher orders of beings vanish. I no longer see aught to prevent our becoming what- ever was good and great in Jesus on earth. In truth, I feel my utter inability to conceive what a mind is to attain which is to advance for ever. Add but that element, eternity, to man's progress, and the results of his existence surpass, not only human, but angelic thought. Give me this, and the future glory of the human mind becomes to me as incomprehensible as God himself. We wonder indeed when we are told, that one day we shall be as the angels of God. I apprehend that as great a wonder has been realized already on the earth. I apprehend that the distance between the mind of Newton and of a Hottentot may have been as great as between Newton and an angel. There is another view still more strik- ing. This Newton who lifted his calm, sublime eye to the heavens, and read among the planets and the stars, the great law of the material uni- verse, was, forty or fifty years before, an infant, without one clear perception, and unable to distinguish his nurse's arm from the pillow on which he slept. Howard, too, who, under the strength of an all-sacrificing benevolence, ex- plored the depths of human suffering, was, forty or fifty years before, an infant wholly absorbed in himself, grasping at all lie saw, and almost breaking his little heart with fits of passion when the idlest toy was withheld. Has not man already traversed as wide a space as separates him from BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 97 angels ? And why must he stop ? There is no extravagance in the boldest anticipation. We may truly become one with Christ, a partaker of that celestial mind. He is truly our brother, one of our family. Let us make him our constant model. GREAT AND LITTLE MINDS. Intellectual culture consists, not chiefly, as many are apt to think, in accumulating informa- tion, though this is important, but in building up a force of thought which may be turned at will on any subject, on which we are called to pass judgment. This force is manifested in the concentration of the attention, in accurate, pene- trating observation, in reducing complex subjects to their elements, in diving beneath the effect to the cause, in detecting the more subtle differences and resemblances of things, in reading tlie future in the present, and especially in rising from par- ticular facts to general laws or universal truths. This last exertion of the intellect, its rising to broad views and great principles, constitutes what is called the philosophical mind, and is especially worthy of culture. What it means, your own observation must have tauglit you. You must have taken note of two classes of nion, the one always employed on details, on particular facts, and the other using these facts as founda- tions of higher, wider truths. The lattci* ai*e philo80i)hers. For exami)le, men had for ages seen pieces of wood, stones, metals, falling to the ground. Newton seized on these particular facts, and rose to the idea, that all matter tends, or is attracted, towards all matter, and then detined the law according to which this attraction or I 9B BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. force acts at different distances, thus giving us a grand principle, which, we have reason to think, extends to and controls the whole outward crea- tion. One man reads a history, and can tell you all its events, and there stops. Another combines these events, brings them under one view, and learns the great causes w^hich are at work on this or another nation, and what are its great tendencies, whether to freedom or despotism, to one or another form of civilization. So one man talks continually about the particular actions of this or another neighbour ; whilst another looks beyond the acts, to the inward principle from which they spring, and gathers from them larger views of human nature. In a word, one man sees all things apart and in fragments, whilst another strives to discover the harmony, connec- tion, unity of all. One of the great evils of society is, that men, occupied perpetually with petty details, want general truths, want broad and fixed principles. Hence many, not wicked, are unstable, habitually inconsistent, as if they were overgrown children rather than men. To build up that strength of mind which apprehends and cleaves to great universal truths, is the high- est intellectual self-culture ; and here I wish to observe how entirely this culture agrees with that of the moral and the religious principles of our nature, of which I have previously spoken. In each of these the improvement of the soul consists in raising it above what is narrow, par- ticular, individual, selfish, to the universal and unconfined. To improve a man is to liberalize, enlarge him in thought, feeling, and purpose. Narrowness of intellect and heart, this is the degradation from which all culture aims to rescue the human being. BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 99 THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES ACCESSIBLE TO ALL. The great object on which force of thought is to be exerted, is Mind, Spirit, comprehend- ing under this word, God and all his intelligent offspring. This is the subject of what are called the metaphysical and moral sciences. This is the grand field for thought ; for the outward, material world is the shadow of the spiritual, and made to minister to it. This study is of vast extent. It comprehends theology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, political science, history, lite- rature. This is a formidable list, and it may seem to include a vast amount of knowledge, which is necessarily placed beyond the reach of the labourer. But it is an interesting thought, tliat the key to these various sciences is given to every human being in his own nature, so that they are peculiarly accessible to him. How is it that I get my ideas of God, of my fellow-creatures, of the deeds, suffering, motives, which make up universal history ? I comprehend all these from the consciousness of what passes in my own soul. The mind within me is a type, represen- tative of all others, and therefore I can understand all. Wlicnce come my conceptions of the intel- ligence, and justice, and goodness, and power of God ? It is because my own spirit contains the germs of these attributes. TIic ideas of them are first derived from my own nature, and tliere- fore I comprehend them in other beings. Thus the foundation of all the sciences which treat of mind is laid in every man's breast. The good man is exercising in his business and family, faculties and afiections which bear a likeness to the attributes of the divinity, and to the energies which have made the greatest men illustrious ; I 2 100 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. SO that in studying himself, in learning the high- est principles and laws of his own soul, he is in truth studying God, studying all human history, studying the philosophy which has immortalised the sages of ancient and modern times. In every man's mind and life all other minds and lives are more or less represented and wrapt up. To study other things, I must go into the outward world and perhaps go far. To study the science of spirit, I must come home and enter my own soul. The profoundest books that have ever been written, do nothing more than bring out, place in clear light, what is passing in each of your minds. So near you, so within you is the grandest truth. No work of the most exalted genius can teach us so much, as the revelation of human nature in the secrets of our own souls, in the workings of our own passions, in the operations of our own intelligence, in the retributions which follow our own good and evil deeds, in the dissatisfaction with the present, in the spontaneous thoughts and aspirations, which form part of every man's biography. The study of our own history from childhood, of all the stages of our development, of the good and bad influences which have beset us, of our mutations of feeling and purpose, and of the great current which is setting us towards future happiness or woe ; this is a study to make us nobly wise ; and who of us has not access to this fountain of eternal truth ? THE SELFISH AND THE DISINTERESTED PRINCIPLES. When a man looks into himself, he discovers two distinct orders or kinds of principles, which BEAUTIES OP CHANNING. 101 it behoves him especially to comprehend. He discovers desires, appetites, passions, which ter- minate in himself, which crave and seek his own interest, gratification, distinction; and he dis- covers another principle, an antagonist to these, which is Impartial, Disintcirested, Universal, enjoining on him a regard to the rights and happiness of other beings, and laying on him obligations which must be discharged, cost what they may, or however they may clash with his particular pleasure or gain. No man, however narrowed to his own interest, however hardened by selfishness, can deny, that there springs up within him a great idea in opposition to interest, the idea of Duty, that an inward voice calls him more or less distinctly, to revere and exercise Impartial Justice, and Universal Good-will. This disinterested principle in human nature we call sometimes reason, sometimes conscience, sometimes the moral sense or faculty. But, be its name what it may, it is a real principle in each of us, and it is the supreme power within us, to be cultivated above all others, for on its cul- ture the right development of all others depends. The passions indeed may be stronger than the conscience,*may lift up a louder voice; but their clamour differs wholly from the tone of command in which the conscience speaks. Tlicy are not clothed witli its authority, its binding power. In their very triumnlis, tliey arc rebuked by tlio moral principle, and often cower before its still, deep, menacing voice. No part of self-know- ledge is more important than to discern clearly these two great principles, the self-seeking and the disinterested ; and the most important part of self-culture is to depress the former, and to exalt I 3 \ \ 102 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. the latter, or to enthrone the sense of duty within us. There are no limits to the growth of this moral force in man, if he will cherish it faithfully. There have been men, whom no power in the universe could turn from the Right, by whom death in its most dreadful forms has been less dreaded, than transgression of the inward law of universal justice and love. THE SENSE OF DUTY, GOd's GREATEST GIFT. The sense of duty is the greatest gift of God. The Idea of Right is the primary and the highest revelation of God to the human mind, and all outward revelations are founded on and addressed to it. All mysteries of science and theology fade away before the grandeur of the simple percep- tion of duty, which dawns on the mind of the little child. That perception brings him into the moral kingdom of God. That, lays on him an everlasting bond. He, in whom the conviction of duty is unfolded, becomes subject from that moment to a law, which no power in the universe can abrogate. He forms a new and indissoluble connexion with God, that of an accountable being. He begins to stand before an inward tribunal, on the decisions of which his whole happiness rests ; he hears a voice, which, if faithfully followed, will guide him to perfection, and in neglecting which he brings upon himself inevitable misery. We little understand the solemnity of tlie moral principle in every human mind. We think not how awful are its functions. We forget that it is the germ of immortality. Did we understand it, we should look with a feeling of reverence on every beinc to wliom it is given. This is the great gift of God. We can con- BEAUTIES OF CHANNIXO. 103 ceive no greater. In seraph and archangel, we can conceive no higher energy than the power of virtue, or the power of forming themselves after the will and moral perfections of God. This power breaks down all barriers between the serajDh and the lowest human being ; it makes them brethren. Whoever has derived from God this perception and capacity of rectitude, has a bond of union with the spiritual world, stronger than all the ties of nature. He possesses a principle, which if he is faithful to it, must cany nim forward for ever, and ensures to him the improvement and happiness of the highest order of things. SPIRITUAL INTUITIONS. It is a matter of experience, that the greatest ideas often come to us, when right-minded, we know not how. They flash on us as lights from heaven. A man seriously given to the culture of his mind in virtue and truth, finds himself under better teaching than that of man. Revela- tions of his own soul, of God's intimat j presence, of the grandeur of the creation, of the glory of disinterestedness, of the deformity of wrong-doing, of the dignity of universal justice, of the might of moral principle, of the immutablenoss of truth, of immortality, and of the inward sources of happiness ; these revelations, awakening a tliirst for something higher than he is or has, come of themselves to an humble, self-improving man. Sometimes a common scene in nature, one of the common relations of life, will open itself to us with a brightness and pregnancy of meaning un- known before. Sometimes a thought of this kind forms an era in life. It changes the whole 104 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. future course. It is a new creation. And these great ideas are not confined to men of any class. They are communications of the Infinite Mind to all minds which are open to their reception ; and labour is a far better condition for their reception than luxurious or fashionable life. It is even better than a studious life, when this fosters vanity, pride, and the spirit of jealous competition. A childlike simplicity attracts these revelations more than a selfish culture of intellect, however far extended. THE PERCEPTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL. Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in the numberless flowers of the spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the moun- tains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple ; and those men, who are alive to it, cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side. Now this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial to our tenderest and noblest feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it, as if, instead of this fair earth and glorious sky, they were tenants '>^** of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world, by the want of culture of this spiritual endow- ^ ment. Suppose I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest pictures of BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 105 Raphael, and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn, that neither man, woman, nor child ever cast an eye at these miracles of art, how should I feel their privation ; how should I want to open their eyes, and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice ! But every > husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner Artist ; and how much would his exist- ence be elevated, could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and moral expression ! I have spoken only of the beauty of nature; but how much of this mysterious charm is found in the elegant arts, and especially in literature? The best books have most beauty. The greatest truths are ''wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire. Now no man receives the true culture of a man, in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished. THE FEELING OF PERFECTIBILITY. A man who wakes up to the consciousness of having been created for pro^^ress and perfection, looks with new eyes on himself and on tin* world in which he lives. This great truth stilus the soul from its depths, breaks up old associations of ideas, and establishes new ones, just as amiglity agent of chemistry, brought into contact with natural substances, dissolves the ohl afHiiities which had bound their particles together, and arranges them anew. Tiiis truth particularly aids us to |>cno- trate the mysteries of Imman life. By revealing 106 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. to US the end of our being, it helps us to compre- hend more and more, the wonderful, the infinite system, to which we belong. A man in the common walks of life, who has faith in perfection, in the unfolding of the human spirit, as the great purpose of God, possesses more the secret of the universe, perceives more the harmonies or mutual adaptations of the world without and the world within him, is a wiser interpreter of Providence, and reads nobler lessons of duty in the events which pass before him, than the profoundest philosopher who wants this grand central truth. TRUE CULTURE. The truth is, that there is no cultivation of the human being, w^orthy of the name, but that which begins and ends with the Moral and Religious nature. No other teaching can make a Man. We are striving indeed to develop the soul almost exclusively by intellectual stimulants and nutri- ment, by schools and colleges, by accomplish- ments and fine arts. We are hoping to form men and women by literature and science ; but all in vain. We shall learn in time that moral and religious culture is the foundation and strength of all true cultivation; that we are deforming human nature by the means relied on for its growth, and that the poor who receive a care which awakens their consciences and moral sentiments, start under hapi)ier auspices than the prosperous, who place supreme dependence on the education of the intellect and the taste. I look with admiration on the intellectual force which combines and masters scattered facts, and by analysis and comparison ascends to the general laws of the material universe. But the BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 107 philosopher, who does not see in the force within him, something nobler than the outward nature which he analyzes, who in tracing mechanical and chemical agencies, is unconscious of a higher action in his own soul, who is not led by all finite powers to the Omnipotent, and who does not catch, in the order and beauty of the universe, some glimpses of Spiritual Perfection, stops at the very threshold of the temple of truth. Miser- ably narrow is the culture which confines the soul to Matter, which turns it to the Outward as to something nobler than itself. I fear, the spirit of science, at the present day, is too often a degradation rather than the true culture of the soul. It is the bowing down of the heaven-bora spirit before unthinking mechanism. The true cultivation of a human being, consists in the development of great moral ideas ; that is, the Ideas of God, of Duty, of Right, of Justice, of Love, of Self-sacrifice, of Moral Perfection as manifested in Christ, of Happiness, of Immor- tality, of Heaven. The elements or genns of these ideas, belong to every soul, constitute its essence, and are intended for endless expansion. These are the chief distinctions of our nature ; they constitute our liumanity. The Liglit in which these ideas rise on the mind, tlie Love which they awaken, and the Force of Will with which they are brought to sway the outward and inward life, here anil here only, arc the measures of human cultivation. One ray of moral and religious truth is worth all the wisdom of tlio schools. One lesson from Ciirist, will carry you higher than years of study under those, who are too cnliirlitened to follow this celestial guide. 108 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. GREAT IDEAS. What is needed to elevate the soul is, not that a man should know all that has been thought and written in regard to the spiritual nature, not that a man should become an Encyclopedia, but that the Great Ideas, in which all discoveries termi- nate, which sum up all sciences, which the philosopher extracts from infinite details, may be comprehended and felt. It is not the quantity, but the quality of knowledge, which deteiinines the mind's dignity. A man of immense infor- mation, may, through the want of large and comprehensive ideas, be far inferior in intellect to a labourer, who, with little knowledge, has yet seized on great truths. For example, I do not expect the labourer to study theology in the ancient languages, in the writings of the Fathers, in the history of sects, &c. &c. ; nor is this need- ful. All theology, scattered as it is through countless volumes, is summed up in the idea of God ; and let this idea shine bright and clear in the labourer's soul, and he has the essence of theological libraries, and a far higher light than has visited thousands of renowned divines. A great mind is formed by a few great ideas, not by an infinity of loose details. I Yiave known very learned men, wlio seemed to me very poor in intellect, because they had no grand thoughts. What avails it, that a man has studied ever so minutely the histories of Greece and Rome, if the great Ideas of Freedom, and Beau- ty, and Valour, and Sj)iritual Energy, liave not been kindled by those records into living fires in his soul. Tlie iUumination of an age does not consist in tlie amount of its knowledge, but in the broad and noble principles, of which that BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 109 knowledge is the foundation and inspircr. The truth is, that the most laborious and successful student is confined in his researches to a very few of God's works ; but this limited knowledge of things may still suggest universal laws, broad principles, grand ideas, and these elevate the mind. There are certain thoughts, principles, ideas, which by their nature rule over all know- ledge, which are intrinsically glorious, quicken- ing, all-comprehending, eternal. SPIRITUAL FREEDOM. I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison with its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognizes its own reality and great- ness, whicli passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness. I cjill that mind free, which escapes the bond- age of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison-wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which it everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlargement. I (rail that mind free, which jealously guards its intellcrtual rights and powei*s, which calls no man muster, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whence-soever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel fioni heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquins still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions tVom abix>ad, not to supersede but to quicken and exalt its own energies. K 110 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself, or in a sect, which recognizes in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind. I call that mind free, which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable princi- ples, which it has deliberately espoused. I call that mind free, which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself ac- countable to a hiffher tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind free, which, through confi- dence in God and in the power of virtue, has cast off all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthral, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all else be lost. I call that mind free, which resists the bond- age of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which docs not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of con- science, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. Ill I call that mind free, which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world. In fine, I call that mind free, which, conscious of its affinity with God, and confiding in his promises by Jesus Christ, devotes itself faithfully to the unfolding of all its powers, which passes the bounds of time and death, which hopes to advance for ever, and which finds inexhaustible power, both for action and suffering, in the pros- pect of immortality. Such is the spiritual freedom which Christ came to give. It consists in moral force, in self- control, in the enlargement of thought and afiec- tion, and in the unrestrained actions of our best powers. This is the great good of Christianity, nor can we conceive a greater within the gift of God. DANGER THE MEANS TO PROGRESS. Danger we cannot avoid. It is a grand ele- ment 01 human life. We always walk on preci- pices. It is unmanly, unwise, it shows a want of faith in God and humanity, to deny to otiiers and ourselves free scope and the expansion of our best powers, because of the possible collisions and pains to be ftjarcd from extending activity. Many, indeevhere and per- petually before its eyes. It takes lessons from every o!)ject within the sphere of its senses and its activity, from the sun and stai*8, from the flowers of spring and the fruits of autumn, from 120 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. every associate, from every smiling and frowning countenance, from the pursuits, trades, professions of the community in which it moves, from its plays, friendships, and dislikes, from the varieties of human character, and from the consequences of its actions. All these, and more than these, are appointed to teach, awaken, develop the mind of the child. It is plunged amidst friendly and hostile influences, to grow by co-operating with the first, and by resisting the last. THE TREATMENT OF A CHILD. Inward life, force, activity, this it must be our aim to call forth and build up in all our teacli- ings of the young, especially in religious teaching. You must never forget, my friends, whether parents or Sunday-School instructors, what kind of a being you are acting upon. Never forget that the child is a rational, moral, free being, and that the great end of education is to awaken ra- tional and moral energy within him, and to lead him to the free choice of the right, to the free determination of himself to truth and duty. The child is not a piece of wax to be moulded at another's pleasure, not a stone to be hewn pas- sively into any shape which the caprice and interest of others may dictate ; but a living, thinking being, made to act from princii)les in his own heart, to distinguish for himself between good and evil, between truth and falsehood, to form himself, to be in an important sense the author of his own character, the determiner of his own future being. This most important view of the child, should never forsake the teacher. He is a free moral agent, and our end should be to develop such a being. He must not be BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 121 treated as if he were unthinking matter. You can make a house, a ship, a statue, without its own consent. You determine the machines which you form wholly by your own will. The child has a will as well as yourselves. The great design of his being is, that he should act from himself and on himself. He can understand the perfection of his nature, and is created that he may accomplish it from choice, from a sense of duty, from his own deliberate purpose. THE WORTHLESSNESS OF MERE LEARNING. How little does it avail us to study the outward world, if its greatness inspire no reverence of its Author, if its beneficence awaken no kindred love towards our fellow-creatures ! How little docs it avail us to study histoiy, if the past do not help us to comprehend the dangers and duties of the present ; if from the sufferings of tliose who have gone before us, we do not learn how to suffer, and from their great and good deeds liow to act nobly ; if the development of the human heart, in different ages and countries, do not give us a better knowledge of ourselves ! How little does literature benefit us, if the sketches of life and character, the generous sentiments, the testi- monies to disintcrc^stcdness and rectitude, witli which it abounds, do not incite and guide us to wiser, purer, and more graceful action ! How little substantial good do we derive from poetry and the fine arts, if the beauty whicli delights the imagination, do not warm and refine the heart, and raise us to the love and adniinitionof what is fair, and perfect, and lofty, in ehanicter and life ! Let our studies be as wide as our condition will allow ; but let this be their highest L 122 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. aim, to instruct us in our duty and happiness, in the perfection of our nature, in the true use of life, in the best direction of our powers. Then is the culture of intellect an unmixed good, when it is sacredly used to enlighten the conscience, to feed the flame of generous sentiment, to perfect us in our common employments, to throw a grace over our common actions, to make us sources of inno- cent cheerfulness and centres of holy influences, and to give us courage, strength, stability, amidst the sudden changes and sore temptations and trials of life. RELIGION. Religion demands, that He who is supreme in the universe, should be supreme in the human soul. God, to whom belongs the mysterious and incommunicable attribute of Infinity ; who is the fulness and source of life and thought, of beauty and power, of love and happiness ; on whom we depend more intimately than the stream on the fountain, or the plant on the earth in which it is rooted, — this Great Being ought to call forth peculiar emotions, and to move and sway the soul, as he pervades creation, with unrivalled energy. It is his distinction, that he unites in his nature infinite majesty and infinite benignity, the most awful with the most endearing attributes, the tenderest relations to the individual with the grandeur of the universal sovereign; and, through this nature, he is fitted to act on the mind as no other being can, — to awaken a love more intense, a venemtion more profound, a sensibility of which the soul knows not its capa- city until it is penetrated and touched by God. To bring the created mind into living union witb BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 123 the Infinite Mind, so that it shall respond to him through its whole being, is the noblest function which this harmonious and beneficent universe performs. For this, revelation was given. THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE. When we look into ourselves we discover powers, which link us with this outward, visible, finite, ever-changing world. We have sight and other senses to discern, and limbs and various faculties to secure and appropriate the material creation. And we have too, a power, which cannot stop at what we see and handle, at what exists within the bounds of space and time, which seeks for the Infinite, Uncreated Cause, which cannot rest till it ascend to the Eternal All-com- prehending Mind. This we call the religious principle, and its grandeur cannot be exaggerated by human language ; for it marks out a being destined for a higher communion than with the visible universe. To develop this, is eminently to educate ourselves. The true idea of God, unfolded clearly and livingly within us, and moving us to adore and obey him, and to aspire after likeness to him, is the noblest growth in human, and, I may add, in celestial natures. IIKLIOION A PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN NATURE. Religion was an earlier bond and a deeper foundation of society than govcrnuKMit. It wis the root of civilization. It has founded the mightiest empires; and yet men question whe- ther religion be an element, a principle of human nature ! Our nature is perpetually developing new senses, for the perception and enjoyment of God. L 2 124 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. The liuman race, as it advances, does not leave religion behind it, as it leaves the shelter of caves and forests ; does not outgrow faith, does not see it fading like the mist before its rising intelli- gence. On the contrary, religion opens before the improved mind in new grandeur. God, whom uncivilized man had narrowed into a local and tutelar Deity, rises with every advance of knowledge to a loftier throne, and is seen to sway a mightier sceptre. The soul, in proportion as it enlarges its faculties and refines its affec- tions, possesses and discerns within itself a more and more glorious type of the Divinity, learns his spirituality in its own spiritual powers, and offers him a profounder and more inward worship. Thus deep is the foundation of worship in human nature. Men may assail it, may reason against it, but sooner can the laws of the outward uni- verse be repealed by human will, sooner can the sun be plucked from his sphere, than the idea of God can be erased from the human spirit, and his worship banished from the earth. All other wants of man are superficial. His animal wants are but for a day, and are to cease with tlie body. The profoundest of all human wants is the want of God. Mind, spirit, must tend to its source. It cannot find happiness but in the perfect Mind, the Infinite Spirit. Worship has survived all revolutions. Corrupted, dishonoured, opposed, it yet lives. It is immortal as its Object, immor- tal as the soul from which it ascends. THE GREAT MYSTERY OF RELIGION. Tliere is in religion a great mystery. I refer to the doctrine of Free-will or moral liberty. How to reconcile this with God's foreknowledge BEAUTIES OP CHANNING. 125 and human dependence, is a question which has perplexed the greatest minds. It is probable, that much of the obscurity arises from our ap- plying to God the same kind of foreknowledge as men possess by their acquaintance with causes, and from our supposing the Supreme Being to bear the same relation to time as man. It is probable that juster views on these subjects will relieve the freedom of the will from some of its difficulties. Still the difficulties attending it are great. It is a mystery in the popular sense of the word. Now is it not strange that theolo- gians who have made and swallowed so many other mysteries, have generally rejected this, and rejected it on the ground of objections less formidable than those which maybe urged against their own inventions ? A large part of the Pro- testant world have sacrificed man's freedom of will to God's foreknowledge and sovereignty, thus virtually subverting all religion, all duty, all responsibility. They have made man a machine, and destroyed the great distinction between him and the brute. RELIGION A QUICKENING POWER. To this belongs pre-eminently the work of freeing, and elevating the mind. All other means are comparatively impotent. Tlie sense of God is the only spring, by which the crushing weight of sense, of tlie world, and temptation, can be withstood. Witliout a consciousness of our relation to God, all other relations will prove adverse to spiritual life and progress. I have spoken of the religious sentiment as the mightiest agent on earth. It has accomplislied more, it has strengthened men to do and sutVer more, than L 3 126 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. all otlier principles. It can sustain the mind against all other powers. Of all principles, it is the deepest, the most ineradicable. In its per- version, indeed, it has been fruitful of crime and woe ; but the very energy which it has sjiven to the passions, when they have mixed with and cor- rupted it, teaches us the omnipotence with which it is imbued. Religion gives life, strength, elevation to the mind by connecting it with the Infinite Mind ; by teaching it to regard itself as the offspring and care of the Infinite Father, who created it that he might communicate to it his oa^ti spirit and perfections, who framed it for truth and virtue, who framed it for himself, who subjects it to sore trials, that by conflict and endurance it may grow strong, and who has sent his Son to purify it from every sin, and to clothe it with immor- tality. It is religion alone, which nourishes patient, resolute hopes and efforts for our own souls. Without it, we can hardly escape self- contempt, and the contempt of our race. With- out God, our existence has no support, our life no aim, our improvements no permane nee, our best labours no sure and enduring results, our spiritual weakness no power to lean upon, and our noblest aspirations and desires no pledge of being realized in a better state. Struggling vir- tue lias no friend ; suffering virtue no promise of victory. Take away God, and life becomes mean, and man poorer than the brute. THE GLORY OF RELTGIOX. Why has the Creator sent his Son to make liimself known ? I answer, God is most worthy to be known, because he is the most Quickening, BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 127 purifying, and ennobling object for tbe mind ; and his great purpose in revealing himself, is that he may exalt and perfect human nature. God, as he is manifested by Christ, is another name for intellectual and moral excellence ; and in the knowledge of him, our intellectual and moral powers find their element, nutriment, strength, expansion, and happiness. To know God is to attain to the sublimest conception in the universe. To love God, is to bind ourselves to a being, who is fitted, as no other being is, t# penetrate and move our whole hearts ; in loving whom, we exalt ourselves ; in loving whom, we love the great, the good, the beautiful, and the infinite ; and under whose influence, the soul unfolds itself as a perennial plant under the cherishing sun. This constitutes the chief glory of religion. It ennoble ^ the soul. In this its imrivallcd dignity and happiness consist. Men have been virtually taught to glorify God by flattery, rather than by becoming excellent and glorious themselves, and thus doing honour to their maker. Our dependence on God, has been so taught as to extinguish the consciousness of our free nature and moral power. god's connexion with his creatures. The danger to which we arc most exposed, is that of severing tlie Creator from his creatures. The propensity of humnn sovereigns to cut ott* connnunication between themselves and their subjects, and to disclaim a common nature with their inferiors, lijis led the multitude of men, who think of (Jod chiefly under the character of u king, to conceive of him as a being who j)laces his glory in multiplying distinctions between 128 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. himself and all other beings. The truth is, that the union between the Creator and the creature surpasses all other bonds in strength and intima- cy. He penetrates all things and delights to irradiate all with his glory. Nature, in its lowest and inanimate forms, is pervaded by his power ; and when quickened by the mysterious property of life, how wonderfully does it show forth the perfections of its author ! How much of God may be seen in the structure of a single leaf, which, though so frail as to tremble in every wind, yet holds connexions and living communi- cations with the earth, the air, the clouds, and the distant sun, and, through these sympathies with the universe, is itself a revelation of an omnipotent mind! God delights to diffuse himself everywhere. Through his energy, un- conscious matter clothes itself with proportions, powers, and beauties, which reflect his wisdom and love. How much more must he delight to frame conscious and happy recipients of his perfections, in whom his wisdom and love may substantially dwell, with whom he may form spiritual ties, and to whom he may be an ever- lasting spring of moral energy and happiness ? How far the Supreme Being may communicate his attributes to his intelligent offspring, I stop not to enquire. But that his almighty goodness will impart to them powers and glories, of which the material universe is but a faint emblem, I cannot doubt. That the soul, if true to itself and its maker, will be filled with God, and will manifest him, more than tliat sun, I cannot doubt. Who can doubt it, that believes and understands the doctrine of human immortality ? BEAUTIES OF CHANNIXG. 129 THE TRUE VIEW OF RELIGION. What then is religion ? I answer, it is not the adoration of a God with whom we have no common properties ; of a distinct, foreign, sepa- rate being ; but of an all-communicating Parent. It recognises and adores God, as a being whom we know through our own souls, who has made man in his own image, who is the perfection of our own spiritual nature, who has sympathies with us as kindred beings, who is near us, not in place only like this all-surrounding atmosphere, but by spiritual influence and love, who looks on us with parental interest, and whose great • design is to communicate to us forever, and in freer and fuller streams, his own power, good- ness, and joy. The conviction of this near and ennobling relation of God to the soul, and of his great purposes towards it, belongs to the very essence of true religion ; and true religion mani- fests itself chiefly and most conspicuously in desires, hopes, and efforts corresponding to this truth. That religion has been so dispensed as to de- press the human mind, I need not tell you ; and it is a triitli which ought to be known, that the greatness of the Deity, when separated in our tiioughts from his parental character, especially tends to onisli human energy and hope. To a frail dependent creature, an omnipotent Creator easily becomes a terror, and iiis woi*ship easily degenerates into servility, flattery, sclf-conteinnt, and selHsh calculation. Religion only ennol)les us, in as far as it reveals to us the tender and intimate connexion of God with his creatures, and teaches us to see in the very greatness which might give alarm, the source of great and glorious 130 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. communications to the human soul. You can- not, my hearers, think too highly of the majesty of God. But let not this majesty sever him from you. Remember, that his greatness is the infinity of attributes which yourselves possess. Adore his infinite wisdom ; but remember that this wisdom rejoices to diffuse itself, and let an exhilarating hope spring up, at the thought of the immeasurable intelligence which such a Father must communicate to his children. In like man- ner adore his power. Let the boundless creation fill you with awe and admiration of the energy which sustains it. But remember that God has a nobler work than the outward creation, even the spirit within yourselves ; and that it is his purpose to replenish this with his own energy, and to crown it with growing power and tri- umphs over the material universe. Above all adore his unutterable goodness. But remember, that this attribute is particularly proposed to you as your model; that God calls you, both by nature and revelation, to a fellowship in his phi- lanthropy; that he has placed you in social relations, for the very end of rendering you ministers and representatives of his benevolence ; that he even summons you to espouse and to advance the sublimest purpose of his goodness, the redemption of the human race, by extending the knowledge and power of Christian truth. It is through such views, that religion raises up the soul, and binds man by ennobling bonds to his Maker. THE GREAT PURPOSE OF WORSHIP. Why is it, my hearers, that God has discovered such solicitude, if I may use the word, to make BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 131 himself known and obtain our worship ? Think you, that he calls us to adore him from a love of homage or service ? Has God man's passion for ruling, man's thirst for applause, man's desire to have his name shouted by crowds ? Could the acclamations of the universe, though concentra- ted into one burst of praise, give our Creator a new or brighter consciousness of his own majesty and goodness ? Oh! no. He has manifested himself to us, because, in the knowledge and adoration of his perfections, our own intellectual and moral perfection is found. What he desires, is, not our subjection, but our excellence. He has no love of praise. He calls us as truly to honour goodness in others as in himself, and only claims supreme honour, because he transcends all others, and because he communicates to the mind whicli receives him, a light, strength, purity, which no other being can confer. God has no love of empire. It could give him no pleasure to have his footstool worn by the knees of infinite hosts. It is to make us his children in the highest sense of that word, to make us more and more the partakers of his own nature, not to multiply slaves, that he hath sent his Son to make himself known. God indeed is said to seek his own glory ; but the glory of a creator must consist in tlie glory of his works ; and wo may be assured^ that he cannot wish any recognition of himself, but that which will perfect his noblest, highest work, the immortal mind. Do not, my friends, forget the gn^at end for which Christ enjoins on us the worship of God. It is not, that we may ingnitiato ourselves with an almighty agent, whose frown is destruction. It is, that we may hold connuunion with an in- 132 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. telligence and goodness, infinitely surpassing our own ; that we may rise above imperfect and finite natures ; that we may attach ourselves by love and reverence to the best Being in the universe ; and that through veneration and love, we may receive into our own minds the excellence, dis- interestedness, wisdom, purity, and power, which we adore. This reception of the divine attributes, I desire especially to hold forth, as the most glorious end for which God reveals himself. To praise him is not enough. That homage, which has no power to assimilate us to him, is of little or no worth. The truest admiration is that by which we receive other minds into our own. True praise is a sympathy with excellence, gain- ing strength by utterance. Such is the praise which God demands. Then only is the purpose of Christ's revelation of God accomplished, when, by reception^of the doctrine of a Paternal Divin- ity, we are quickened to " follow him, as dear children," and are " filled with his fulness," and become " his teniples," and " dwell in God, and have God dwellinfij in ourselves. . THE GREAT OBJECT OF THE UNIVERSE. It is the mark of a weak mind, to make an idol of order and method ; to cling to established forms of business, when they clog instead of ad- vancing it. If, then, the great purposes of the universe can best be accomplished by departing from its established laws, these laws will un- doubtedly be suspended ; and though broken in the letter, they will be observed in their spirit, for the ends for which they were first instituted will be advanced by their violation. Now the question arises, for what purposes were nature BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 133 and its order appointed ? and there is no pre- sumption in saying, that the highest of these is the improvement of intelligent beings. Mind (by which we mean both moral and intellectual powers) is God's first end. The great purpose for which an order of nature is fixed, is plainly the formation of Mind. In a creation without order, where events would follow without any regular succession, it is obvious, that Mind must be kept in perpetual infancy ; for in such a uni- verse, there could be no reasoning from effects to causes, no induction to establish general truths, no adaptation of means to ends ; that is, no science relating to God, or matter, or mind ; no action ; no virtue. The great purpose of God, then, I repeat it, in establishing the order of nature, is to form and advance the mind; and if the case should occur, in which the interests of the mind could best be advanced by departing from this order, or by miraculous agency, then the great purpose of the creation, the great end of its laws and regularity, would demand such departure ; and miracles, instead of warring against, would concur with nature. DISTRUST OF MIllACLES AN ATHEISTICAL FEELING. I have considered the objections to niimcles in general ; and 1 wouhl close witli observing, that tliese objections will lose tlicir weight, just in proportion ns we strengthen our conviction of God*s power over nature, and of his paternal interest in his creatures. The great repugnance to the belief of miraculous agency, is found in a lurking atheism, which ascribes supremacy to nature, and whicli, whilst it professes to believe 134 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. in God, questions his tender concern for the im- provement of men. To a man who cherishes a sense of God, the great difficulty is, not to account for miracles, but to account for their rare occur- rence. One of the mysteries of the universe is this, that its Author retires so continually behind the veil of his works, that the great and good Fa- ther does not manifest himself more distinctly to his creatures. There is something like coldness and repulsiveness, in instructing us only by fixed, inflexible laws of nature. The intercourse of God with Adam and the patriarchs, suits our best conceptions of the relation which he bears to the human race, and ought not to surprise us more, than the expression of a human parent's tenderness and concern tow^ards his offspring. THE LITTLENESS OF SCEPTICISM. Scepticism is essentially a narrowness of mind, which makes the present moment the measure of the past and future. It is the creature of sense. In the midst of a boundless universe, it can con- ceive no mode of operation but what falls under its immediate observation. The visible, the present is every thing to the unbeliever. Let him but enlarge his views ; let him look round on the immensity of the universe ; let him con- sider the infinity of resources which are compre- hended in omnipotence ; let him represent to himself the manifold stages through which the human race is appointed to pass ; let him re- member that the education of the ever-growing mind must require a great variety of discipline ; and especially let him admit the sublime thought, of which the germ is found in nature, that man was created to be trained for, and to ascend to an BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 135 incomparably higher order of existence than the present, — and he will see the childishness of making his narrow experience the standard of all that is past and is to come in human history. It is strange indeed that men of science should fall into this error. The improved science of the present day teaches them, that this globe of ours, which seems so unchangeable, is not now what it was a few thousand years ago. They find proofs by digging into the earth, that this globe was inhabited before the existence of the human race, by classes of animals which have perished, and the ocean peopled by races now unknown, and that the human race are occupy- ing a ruined and restored world. Men of science should learn to free themselves from the vulgar narrowness which sees nothing in the past but the present, and should learn the stupendous and infinite variety of the dispensations of God. THE EVIDENCES OF THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. I would only observe, that they may all be resolved into this single principle, namely, that the Christian miracles were originally believed under such circumstances, that this belief can only be explained by their actual occurrence. That Christianity was reooivod at first on the ground of miracles, and that its first preachers and converts proved the depth and strength of their conviction of these facts, by attesting them in suficrings and in death, wo know from the most ancient records which relate to this religion, both Christian and Heathen ; anil, in fact, this conviction can alone explain their adherence to Christianity. Now, that this conviction could onlv have sprung from the realitv of the miracles, M 2 136 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. we infer from the known circumstances of these w itnesses, whose passions, interests, and strongest prejudices, were originally hostile to the new religion ; whose motive for examining with care the facts on which it rested, were as urgent and solemn, and whose means and opportunities of ascertaining their truth were as ample and un- failing, as can be conceived to conspire ; so that the supposition of their falsehood cannot be admitted, without subverting our trust in human judgment and human testimony under the most favourable circumstances for discovering truth ; that is without introducing universal scepticism. CHRISTIANITY A RATIONAL RELIGION. It has been . strenuously maintained, that Christianity contains particular doctrines which are irrational, and which involve the whole reli- gion to which they are essential, in their own condenination. To this class of objections I have a short reply. I insist that these offensive doc- trines do not belong to Christianity, but are human additions, and therefore do not derogate from its reasonableness and truth. What is the doctrine most frequently adduced to fix the charge of irrationality on the gospel ? It is the Trinity. This is pronounced by the unbeliever a gross offence to reason. It teaches that there is one God, and yet that there are three divine persons. According to the doctrine, these three persons perform different offices, and sustain different relations to each other. One is Father, another his Son. One sends, another is sent. They love each other, converse with each other, and make a covenant with each other ; and yet, with all these distinctions, they are, according to BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 137 the doctrine, not different beings, but one being, one and the same God. Is this a mtional doc- trine ? has often been the question of the objector to Christianity. I answer. No. I can as easily believe that the whole human race are one man, as that three infinite persons, performing such different ofiices, are one God. But I maintain, that, because the Trinity is irrational, it does not follow that the same reproach belongs to Christ- ianity ; for this doctrine is no part of the Christian religion. I know, there are passages which are continually quoted in its defence ; but allow me to prove doctrines in the same way, that is, by detaching texts from their connexion and inter- preting them without reference to the general current of Scripture, and I can prove anything and everything from the Bible. I can prove, that God has human passions. I can prove transubstantiation, which is taught much more explicitly than the Trinity. Detached texts prove nothing. Christ is called God ; the same title is given to Moses and to rulers. Christ has said, " I and my Father are one ; '^ so he prayed that all his disciples might be one, meaning not one and the same being, but one in affection and purpose. I ask you, before you judpe on this point, to read the Scriptures as a whole, and to inquire into their general strain and teaching in regard to Christ. I find him uniformly dis- tinguisiiing between himself and God, calling himself not God the Son, but the Son of God, contiinially speaking of himself as sent by God, continually referring his power and mimclos to God. I hear him saying, that of himself he can do nothing, and praying to his Father under the character of tlie only true God. Such I affirm M 3 138 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. to be the tenor, the current, the general strain of the New Testament ; and the scattered passages, on which a different doctrine is built, should have no weight against this host of witnesses. Do not rest your faith on a few texts. Some- times these favourite texts are no part of Scrip- ture. For example, the famous passage on which the Trinity mainly rests, "There are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one," — this text, I say, though found at present in John's Epistle, and read in our churches, has been pro- nounced by the ablest critics a forgery ? and a vast majority of the educated ministers of this country are satisfied, that it is not a part of Scripture. Suffer no man, then, to select texts for you as decisive of religious controversies. Read the whole record for yourselves, and pos- sess yourselves of its general import. I am very desirous to separate the doctrine in question from Christianity, because it fastens the charge of irra- tionality on the whole religion. It is one of the great obstacles to the propagation of the Gospel. The Jews will not hear of a Trinity. I bave seen in the countenance, and heard in the tones of the voice, the horror with which that people shrink from the doctrine, that God died on the cross. Mahometans, too, when they hear this opinion from Christian missionaries, repeat the first arti- cle of their faith, " There is one God ; " and look with pity or scorn on the disciples of Jesus, as deserters of the plainest and greatest truth of religion. Even the Indian of our wilderness, who worships the Great Spirit, has charged ab- surdity on the teacher who has gone to indoctri- nate him in a Trinity. How many, too, in BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 139 Christian countries, have suspected the whole religion for this one error. Believing, then, as T do, that it forms no part of Christianity, my allegiance to Jesus Christ calls me openly to withstand it. In so doing, I would wound no man's feelings. I doubt not, that they who adopt this doctrine intend, equally with tho^e who oppose it, to render homage to truth, and service to Christianity. They think that their peculiar faith gives new interest to the character and new authority to the teaching of Jesus. But they grievously err. The views, by which they hope to build up love towards Christ, detract from the perfection of his Father ; and I fear, that the kind of piety, which prevails now in the Christian world, bears witness to tlie sad influence of this obscuration of the true glory of God. I We need not desert reason or corrupt Christian- ity, to ensure the purest, deepest love towards the only true God, or towards Jesus Christ,! whom he has sent for our redemption. I have named one doctrine, Avhich is often urged against Christianity as irrational. There is one more on which I would offer a few re- marks. Christianity has often been reproaclied with teaching, that God brings men into life totally depraved, and condemns immense multi- tudes to everlasting misery for sins to which their nature has irresistibly impelled them. This is said to be irrational, and consequently such must be the religion which teaches it. I certainly shall not attempt to vindicate this theological fiction. A more irrational doctrine could not, I think, be contrived ; and it is something worse; it is as immoral in its tendency, as it is unrea- sonable. It is suited to alienate men from God 140 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. and from one another. Were it really believed (wliicli it cannot be,) men would look up with dread and detestation to the Author of their being, and look round with horror on their fellow-crea- tures. It would dissolve society. Were men to see in one another wholly corrupt beings, incar- nate fiends, without one genuine virtue, society would become as repulsive as a den of lions or a nest of vipers. All confidence, esteem, love, would die ; and without these, the interest, cTiarm, and worth of existence would expire. What a pang would shoot through a parent's heart, if he were to see in the smiling infant a moral being 1 continually and wholly propense to sin, in whose I mind were thickly sown the seeds of hatred to j God and goodness, and who had commenced his ' existence under the curse of his Creator. What good man could consent to be a parent, if his offspring were to be born to this infinitely wretched inheritance ? I say, the doctrine is of immoral tendency ; but I do not say that they who profess it are immoral. The truth is, that none do or can hold it in its full and proper import. Christianity indeed speaks strongly of human guilt, but always treats men as beings who have the^power of doing right, and who have come into existence, under the smile of their Creator. THE GREAT PRINCIPLE OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. All the evidences of Christianity may be traced to this great principle, that every effect must liave an adequate cause. We claim for our religion a divine original, because no ader] uate cause for it can be found in the powers or passions of human BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 141 nature, or in the circumstances under which it appeared ; because it can only be accounted for by the interposition of that Being, to whom its first preachers universally ascribed it, and with whose nature it perfectly agrees. Christianity, by which we mean not merely the doctrines of the religion, but everything rela- ting to it, its rise, its progress, the character of its author, the conduct of its propagators — Christianity, in this broad sense, can only be accounted for in two ways. It either sprung from the principles of human nature, under the excitements, motives, impulses of the age in which it was first preached ; or it had its origin in a higher and supernatural agency. To which of these causes the religion should be referred, is not a question beyond our reach ; for being partakers of human nature, and knowing more of it than of any other part of creation, we can judge with sufficient accuracy of the operation of its principles, and of the effects to which they are competent. It is indeed true, that human powers are not exactly defined, nor can we state precisely the bounds, beyond which they cannot pass ; but still, tlic disproportion between human nature and an effect ascribed to it, may be so vast and i)alpablc, as to satisfy us at once, that tho effect is inexplicable by human power. I know not precisely what u(lvanccs may be made by the intellect of an unassisted savage ; but that a savage in the woods could not compose the Prin- cipia of Newton, is about as j)lain as that lie could not create the world. I know not tJie point at which bodily strength must stop; hut that a man cannot carry Atlas or Andes on his shoulders, is a safe position. The question, 142 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. therefore, whether the principles of human nature under the circumstances in which it was placed at Christ's birth, will explain his religion, is one to w^hich we are competent, and is the great question on which the whole controversy turns. Now we maintain, that a great variety of facts belonging to this religion, — such as the character of its founder ; its peculiar principles ; the style and character of its records ; its progress ; the conduct, circumstances, and sufferings of its first propagators ; the reception of it from the first on the ground of miraculous attestations ; the pro- phecies it fulfilled and which it contains; its influence on society, and other circumstances connected with it — are utterly inexplicable by human powers and principles, but accord with and are fully explained by the power and perfec- tions of God. THE JEWS OF OUR SAVIOUR S AGE. The truth is, Christ lived in a [state of so- ciety singularly remote from our own. Of all nations, the Jewish was the most strongly marked. The Jew hardly felt himself to be- long to the human family. He was accustomed to speak of himself as chosen by God, holy, clean ; whilst the Gentiles were sinners, dogs, polluted, unclean. His common dress, the phylacteiy on his brow or arm, the hem of his farment, his food, the ordinary circumstances of is life, as well as his temple, his sacrifices, his ablutions, all Jield him up to himself, as a pecu- liar favourite of God, and all separated him from the rest of the world. With other nations lie could not eat or marry. They were unwortliy of his communion. Still, with all these notions of BEAUTIES OF CHAINING. 143 superiority, he saw himself conquered by those whom he despised. He was obliged to wear the shackles of Rome, to see Roman legions in his territory, a Roman guard near his temple, and a Roman tax-gatherer extorting, for the support of an idolatrous government and an idolatrous worship, what he regarded as due only to God. The hatred which burned in the breast of the Jew towards his foreign oppressor, perhaps never glowed with equal intenseness in any other con- quered state. He had, however, his secret con- solation. The time was near, the prophetic age was at hand, when Judea was to break her chains and rise from the dust. Her long pro- mised king and deliverer was near, and was coming to wear the crown of universal empire. From Jerusalem was to go forth his law, and all nations were to serve the chosen people of God. To this conqueror the Jews indeed ascribed the office of promoting religion ; but the religion of Moses, corrupted into an outward service, was to them the perfection of human nature. They clung to its forms with the whole energy of their souls. To the Mosaic institution, they ascribed their distinction from all other nations. It lav at the foundation of their hopes of dominion. 1 believe no strenfrth of nrejudice ever equalled the intense attachment o4 the Jew to his peculiar national religion. You may judge of its power by the fact of its having been transmitted through so many ages, amidst pc^i-secution and sufferings whicb would liave subdued any spirit but that of a Jew. You must bring these things to your mind. You must place yourself in the midst of these singular people. 144 beauties of channing. Christ's character a proof of his gospel. Among this singular people, burning with impatient expectation, appeared Jesus of Naza- reth. His first words were, " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." These words we hear with little emotion ; but to the Jews who had been watching for this kingdom for ages, and who were looking for its immediate mani- festation, they must have been awakening as an earthquake. Accordingly we find Jesus thronged by multitudes which no building could contain. He repairs to a mountain, as affording him advantages for addressing the crowd. I see them surrounding him with eager looks, and ready to drink in every word from his lips. And what do I hear ? Not one word of Judea, of Rome, of freedom, of conquest, of the glories of God's chosen people, and of the thronging of all nations to the temple on Mount Zion. Almost every word was a death-blow to the hopes and feelings, which glowed through the whole people, and were consecrated under tiie name of religion. He speaks of the long-expected Kingdom of Heaven ; but speaks of it as a felicity promised to, and only to be partaken by, the humble and pure in heart. The righteousness of the Phari- sees, that which was deemed the perfection of religion, and which the new deliverer was expect- ed to spread far and wide, he pronounces worth- less, and declares the kingdom of Heaven, or of the Messiah, to be shut against all who do not cultivate a new, spiritual, and disinterested virtue. Instead of war and victory, he commands his impatient hearers to love, to forgive, to bless their enemies ; and holds forth this spirit of benignity, mercy, peace, as the special badge of the people BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 145 of the true Messiah. Instead of national interests and glories, he commands them to seek first a spirit of impartial charity and love, imconfined by the bounds of tribe or nation, and proclaims this to be the happiness and honour of the reign for which they hoped. Instead of this ^yorld's riches, which they expected to flow from all lands into their own, he commands them to lay up treasures in heaven, and directs them to an in- corruptible, immortal life, as tlie true end of their being. Nor is this all. He does not merely offer himself as a spiritual deliverer, as the foun- der of a new empire of inward piety and universal charity ; he closes with language announcing a more mysterious oflice. " Many will say unto me in that day. Lord, Lord, have we not pro- phesied in thy name ? and in thy name done many wonderful works ? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you ; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.'^ Here I meet the annunci- ation of a character as august as it must have been startling. I hear him foretelling a dominion to be exercised in the future world. He begins to announce, what entered largely into his future teaching, that his power was not bounded to this earth. These words I better understand, when I hear him subsequently declaring, that alter a painful death, lie was to rise again and ascend to heaven, and there, in a state of pre-eminent power and glory, was to be the adyocate and judge of the human race. Such are some of the views given by Jesus, of his character and reign, in the Sermon on the Mount. Inun(Mliatoly afterwards, I hear another lesson from him, bringing out some of these truths still more strongly. A lloman centurion makes N 146 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. application to him for the cure of a servant, whom he particularly valued ; and on express- ing in a strong manner, his conviction of the power of Jesus to heal at a distance, Jesus, according to the historian, " marvelled, and said to those that followed. Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith in Israel ; and I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom ^of heaven; but the children of the kingdom '' (that is, the Jews) " shall be cast out." Here all the hopes which the Jews had cherished of an exclusive or peculiar possession of the Messiah's kingdom, were crushed ; and the reception of the despised Gentile world to all his blessings, or, in other words, the extension of his pure religion to the ends of the earth, began to be proclaimed. I ask you, whether the character of Jesus be not the most extraordinary in history, and wholly inexplicable on human principles. THE HEAVENLY ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY. I believe Christianity to be true, or to have come from God, because it seems to me impossi- ble to trace it to any other origin. It must have had a cause, and no other adequate cause can be assigned. The incongruity between this religion and all the circumstances amidst which it grew up, is so remarkable, that we are compelled to look beyond and above this world for its expla- nation. When I go back to the origin of Christ- ianity, and place myself in the age and country of its birth, I can find nothing in the opinions of men, or in the state of society, which can account for its beginning or diffusion. There was no BEAUTIES OF CHANNIN^G. 147 power on earth to create or uphold such a system. There was nothing congenial with it in Judaism, in heathenism, or in the state of society among the most cultivated communities. If you study the religions, governments, and philosophical systems of that age, you will discover in them not even a leaning towards Christianity. It sprung up in opposition to all, making no com- promise with human prejudice or passion ; and it sprung up, not only superior to all, but pos- sessing at its very beginning a perfection, which has been the admiration of ages, and which, instead of being dimmed by time, has come forth more brightly, in proportion to the progress of the human mind. I know, indeed, that at the origin of our reli- gion, the old heathen worship had fiillen into disrepute among the enlightened classes through the Iloman empire, and was gradually losing its hold on the populace. Accordingly some have pretended that Christianity grew from the ruins of the ancient faith. But this is not true; for the decline of the heathen systems was the pro- duct of causes singularly adverse to the origination of such a system as Christianity. One cause was the monstrous depravity of the age, which led multitudes to an utter scorn of religion in all its forms and restraints, and which prepared others to exchange their old worship for still grosser and more licentious superstitions, parti- cularly for the magical arts of I'^gypt. Surely this corruption of manners, this wide-wasting moral pestilence, will not be considered by any as a germ of the Christian religion. Another principal agent in loosening the foundations of the old systems, was Philosophy, a noble effort N 2 148 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. indeed of the human intellect, but one which did nothing to prepare the way for Christianity. The most popular systems of philosophy at the birth of Christianity were the Sceptical and the Epicurean, the former of which turned religion into a jest, denied the possibility of arriving at the truth, and cast the mind on an ocean of doubt in regard to every subject of inquiry; whilst the latter placed happiness in ease, incul- cated a calm indifference both as to this world and the next, and would have set down the Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice, of suffering for truth and duty, as absolute insanity. Now, I ask in what single point do these systems touch Christianity, or what impulse could they have given to its invention ? There was indeed another philosophical sect of a nobler character ; I mean the Stoical. This maintained that virtue was the supreme good, and it certainly nurtured some firm and lofty spirits amidst the despotism which then ground all classes in the dust. But the self-reliance, sternness, apathy, and pride of the Stoic, his defiance and scorn of mankind, his want of sympathy with human suffering, and his extravagant exaggerations of his own virtue, placed this sect in singular opposition to Christ- ianity ; so that our religion might as soon have sprung from Scepticism and Epicureanism, as from Stoicism. There was another system if it be worthy of the name, which prevailed in Asia, and was not unknown to the Jews, often called the Oriental pliilosophy. But this, though certainly an improvement on the common hea- thenism, was visionary, and mystical, and placed happiness in an intuition or immediate percep- tion of God, which was to be gained by contem- BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 149 plation and ecstacies, by emaciation of the body, and desertion of the world. I need not tell you how infinitely removed was the practical, benevolent spirit of Christianity, from this spurious sanctity and profitless enthusiasm. I repeat it, then, that the various causes which were silently operating against the established heathen systems in the time of Christ, had no tendency to suggest and spread such a religion as he brought, but were as truly hostile to it as the worst forms of heathenism. We cannot find, then, the origin of Christi- anity in the heathen world. Shall we look for it in the Jewish ? This topic is too familiar to need much exposition. You know the charac- ter, feelings, expectations of the descendants of Abraham at the appearing of Jesug ; and you need not be told that a system, more opposed to the Jewish mind than that which he taught, cannot be imagined. There was nothing friendly to it in the soil or climate of Judea. As easily might the luxuriant trees of our forests spring from the sands of an Arabian desert. There was never perhaps a national character so deeply stamped as the Jewish. Ages after ages of unparalleled suffering have done little to wear away its indelible features. In the time of Jesus, the wliole influence of education and religion was employed to fix it in every member oi the state. In the bosom of this community, and among its humblest classes, sprung up Clirist- ianity, a religion as unfettered by Jewisli preju- dices, as untainted by the earthly, narrow views of the age, as if it had come from another world, Judaism was all around it, but did not mar it by one tracei or sully its brightness by a single N 3 150 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. breath. Can we find, then, the cause of Christ- ianity in the Jewish, any more than in the heathen world. Christianity, I maintain, was not the growth of any of the circumstances, principles, or feelings of the age in which it appeared. In truth, one of the great distinctions of the Gospel is, that it did not grow. The conception, which filled the mind of Jesus, of a religion more spiritual, generous, comprehensive, and unworldly than Judaism, and destined to take its place, was not of gradual formation. We detect no signs of it, and no efforts to realise it, before his time ; nor is there an appearance of its being gradually matured by Jesus himself. Christianity was delivered from the first in its full proportions, in a style of singular freedom and boldness, and without a mark of painful elaboration. This suddenness with which this religion broke forth, this maturity of the system at the very moment of its birth, this absence of gradual development seems to me a strong mark of its divine original. If Christianity be a human invention, then I can be pointed to something in the history of the age, which impelled and fitted the mind of its author to its production ; then I shall be able to find some germ of it, some approximation to it, in the state of things amidst which it first appeared. How was it, that from thick darkness there bui*st forth at once a meridian light? Were I told that the sciences of the civilised world had sprung up to perfection at once, amidst a barbarous horde, I should pronounce it incredible. Nor can I easily believe, that Christianity, the religion of unbounded love, a religion which broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, and the BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 151 barriers between nations ; which proclaimed one Universal Father, which abolished forms and substituted the worship of the soul, which con- demned alike the false greatness of the Roman and the false holiness of the Jew, and which taught an elevation of virtue, that the growing knowledge of succeeding ages has made more admirable; — I say, I cannot easily believe that such a religion was suddenly, immediately struck out by human ingenuity, among a peo- ple distinguished by bigotry and narrowness of spirit, by superstitious reliance on outward worship, by hatred and scorn of other nations, and by the proud, impatient hope of soon bend- ing all nations to their sway. Christianity, I repeat it, was not the growth of the age in which it appeared. It had no sympathy with that age. It was the echo of no sect or people. It stood alone at the moment of its birth. It used not a word of conciliation. It stooped to no error or passion. It had its own tone, the tone of authority and superiority to the world. It struck at the root of what was everywhere called glory, reversed the judgments of all former ages, passed a condemning sentence on the idols of this world's admiration, and hold forth, as the perfection of human nature, a spirit of love, 80 pure and divine, so free and full, so mild and forgiving, so invincible in fortitude, yet so tender in its Hympathies, tliat even now few comj)reliend it in its extent and elevation. Such a religion had not its origin in this world. I have thus sought to unfold one of the evi- dences of Christianity. Its incongruity witli tlu^ age of its birth, its freedom from earthly mixtures, its original, unborrowed, solitary greatness, and 162 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINQ. the suddenness with which it broke forth amidst the geneml gloom ; these are to me strong indica- tions of its divine descent. I cannot reconcile them with a human origin. Next to the character of Christ, his religion might be shown to abound in circumstances which contradict and repel the idea of a human origin. For example, its representations of the paternal character of God ; its inculcation of a universal charity; the stress which it lays on inward purity ; its substitution of a spiritual worship for the forms and ceremonies, which everywhere had usurped the name and extin- guished the life of religion ; its preference of humility, and of the mild, unostentatious, passive virtues, to the dazzling qualities which had mo- nopolised men's admiration ; its consistent and bright discoveries of immoi-tality ; its adaptation to the wants of man as a sinner ; its adaptation to all the conditions, capacities and sufferings of human nature ; its pure, sublime, yet practical morality ; its high and generous motives ; and its fitness to form a character, which plainly prepares for a higher life than the present: — these are peculiarities of Christianity, which will strike us more and more, in proportion as we imderstand distinctly the circumstances of the age and country in which this religion appeared, and for which no adequate human cause lias been or can be assigned. THE SUBLIMITY OF t)UR LORD's CHARACTER. We probably have often read of the charac- ter which he claimed, without a thought of its extraordinary nature. But I know nothing so sublime. The plans and labours of statesmen BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 153 sink into the sports of children, when compared with the work which Jesus announced, and to which he devoted himself in life and death, with a thorough consciousness of its reality. The idea of changing the moral aspect of the whole earth, of recovering all nations to the pure and inward worship of one God, and to a spirit of divine and fraternal love, was one of which we meet not a trace in philosopher or legislator before him. The human mind had given no promise of this extent of view. The conception of this enterprise, and the calm, unshaken expectation of success, in one who had no station and no wealth, who cast from him the sword with ab- horrence, and who forbade his disciples to use any weapons but those of love, discover a won- derful trust in the power of God and the power of love ; and when to this we add, that Jesus looked not only to the triumph of his pure faith in the present world, but to a mighty and bene- ficent power in Heaven, we witness a vastness of purpose, a grandeur of thought and fooling, so original, so superior to the workings of all other minds, that nothing but our familiarity can prevent our contemplation of it with wonder and profound awe. I confess, when I can escaj)e the deadening pow(>r of habit, and can receive the full import of such passages as the following, " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," — " I am come to seek and to save that which was lost," — " He that confesseth me before men, biin will I con- fess before my Father in Heaven," — ** Whoso- ever shall bo ashamed of nw. before men, of him shall the Son of Mnn be ashamed, when ho Cometh in the glory of the Father with the holy 154 BEAUTIES OF CHAINING. angels/' — " In my Father's house are many mansions ; I go to prepare a place for you ; " — I say, when I can succeed in realising the import of such passages, I feel myself listening to a being, such as never before and never since spoke in human language. I am awed by the consciousness of greatness which these simple w^ords express ; and when I connect this great- ness with the proofs of Christ's miracles, I am compelled to speak with the Centurion, " Truly, this was the Son of God." THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES. Jesus brought with him a new era, the era of philanthropy ; and from his time a new spirit has moved o^er the troubled waters of society, and will move until it has brought order and beauty out of darkness and confusion. The men whom he trained, and into whom he had poured most largely his own spirit, were signs, proofs, that a new kingdom had come. They consecra- ted themselves to a work at that time without precedent, wholly original, such as had not entered human thought. They left home, pos- sessions, country; went abroad into strange lands ; and not only put life in peril, but laid it down, to spread the truth which they had re- ceived from their lord, to make the true God, even the Father, known to his blinded children, to make the Saviour known to the sinner, to make life and immortality known to the dyinff, to give a new impulse to the human soul. We read of the mission of the Apostles as if it were a thing of course. The thought perhaps never comes to us, that they entered on a sphere of action until that time wholly unexplored ,* that BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 155 not a track had previously marked their path; that the great conception which inspired them, of converting a vrorld, had never dawned on the sublimest intellect ; that the spiritual love for" every human being, which carried them over oceans and througn deserts, amidst scourgings and fastings, and imprisonments and death, was a new light from heaven breaking out on earth, a new revelation of the divinity in human nature. Then it was that man began to yearn for man with a godlike love. Then a new voice was heard on earth, the voice of prayer for the reco- very, pardon, happinesfj of a world. It was most strange, it was a miracle more worthy of admir- ation than the raising of the dead, tliat from Judea, the most exclusive, narrow country under heaven, which hated and scorned all other na- tions, and shrunk from their touch as pollution, should go forth men to proclaim the doctrine of human brotherhood, to give to every human being, however fallen or despised, assurances of God's infinite love, to break down the barriers of nation and rank, to pour out their blood like water in tlie work of dirtusing the spirit of uni- versal lovo. Thus mightily did the character of Jesus act on the spirits of the men with wlioni he had lived. CHIUSTIANITV ITS OWN EVIDENCE. The miracles of Christianity have left effects, which onually attest their reality, and cannot be ^xpluiiied without them. I go hack to the age of Jesus Christ, and I am imiiKHliutely struck with the connnencenient and rapid progress of the most rcnuirkahle revolution in the annals of the world. I see a new religion, of a churacter 156 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. altogether its own, which bore no likeness to any past or existing faith, spreading in a few years through all civilized nations, and introducing a new era, a new state of society, a change of the human mind, which has broadly distinguished all following ages. Here is a plain fact, which the sceptic w^ill not deny, liowever he may ex- plain it. I see this religion issuing from an obscure, despised, hated people. Its founder had died on the cross, a mode of punishment as disgraceful as the pilloiy or gallows at the pre- sent day. Its teachers were poor men, without rank, office, or education, taken from the fishing- boat and other occupations which had never furnished teachers to mankind. I see these men beginning their w^ork on the spot where their Master's blood had been shed, as of a common malefactor; and I hear them summoning first his murderers, and then all nations and all ranks, the sovereign on the throne, the priest in the temple, the great and the learned, as well as the poor and the ignorant, to renounce the faith and the worship which had been hallowed by the veneration of all ages, and to take the yoke of their crucified Lord. I see passion and prejudice, the sword of the magistrate, the curse of tlie priest, the scorn of the philosopher, and the fuiy of the populace, joined to crush this common enemy ; and yet, without a human weapon and in opposition to all human ])ower, I see the hum- ble Apostles of Jesus winning their way, over- powenng prejudice, breaking the ranks of their opposers, changing enemies into friends, breath- ing into multitudes a calm spirit of martyrdom, and carrying to the bounds of civilization and even in half-civilized regions, a religion which BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 157 lias contributed to advance society more than all other causes combined. Here is the effect. Here is a monument more durable than pillars or triumphal arches. Now I ask for an expla- nation of these effects. If Jesus Christ and his Apostles were indeed sent and empowered by God, and wrought miracles in attestation of their mission, then the establishment of Christ- ianity is explained. Suppose them, on the other hand, to have been insane enthusiasts, or selfish impostors, left to meet the whole strength of human opposition, with nothing but their own power or rather their own weakness, and you have no cause for the stupendous effect I have described. Such men could no more have changed the face of the world, than they could have turned back rivers to their sources, sunk mountains into valleys, or raised valleys to the skies. Christianity, then, has not only the evi- dence of unexceptionable witnesses, but that of effects; a proof which will grow stronger by comparing its progress with that of other reli- gions, such as Mahomctanism, which sprung from human passions, and were advanced by human power. THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES NEVER DESIGNED TO BE OVERWHELMING. I have laid before you some of the principal evidences of Christianity. I have aimeu to state thcni without exaggeration. T)mt an honest mind, which thoroughly comprehends them, can deny their force, seems to me hardly possible. Stronger proofs may indeed be conceived, but it is doubtful, whether these could be given in consistency with our moral nature, and with the o 158 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. ] moral government of God. Such a government i requires, that truth should not be forced on the ' mind, but that we should be left to gain it, by an , upright use of our understandings, and by con- forming ourselves to what we have already | learned. God might indeed shed on us an over- powering light, so that it would be impossible ; for us to lose our way ; but in so doing he would \ annihilate an important part of our present pro- i bation. It is then no objection to Christianity, j that its evidences are not the very strongest which might be given, and that they do not | extort universal assent. In this respect, it ! accords with other great truths. These are not I forced on our belief. Whoever will, may shut i his eyes on their proofs, and array against them I objections. In the measure of evidence with ! which Christianity is accompanied, I see a just j respect for the freedom of the mind, and a wise I adaptation to that moral nature, which it is the ! great aim of this religion to carry forward to ' perfection. , CHRISTIANITY ADAPTED TO THE SOUL. When I look into the soul, I am at once struck with its immeasurable superiority to the ; body. I am struck with the contrast between | these different elements of my nature, between ' this active, soaring mind, and these limbs, and ' material organs which tend perpetually to the earth, and are soon to be resolved into dust. How consistent is Christianity with this inward i teaching ! In Christianity, with what strength, i with what bold relief, is the supremacy of the spiritual nature brought out ! What contempt does Jesus cast on tlie body and its interests, BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 159 when compared with the redemption of the soul ! — Another great truth dawns on me when I look within. I learn more and more, that the great springs of happiness and misery are in the mind, and that the efforts of men to secure peace by other processes than by inward purification, are vain strivings ; and Christianity is not only consistent with, but founded on this great truth ; teaching us that the kingdom of heaven is within us, and proposing, as its great end, to rescue the mind from evil, and to endue it with a strength and dignity worthy its divine origin. — Again, when I look into the soul I meet intimations of another great truth. I discern in it capacities which are not fully unfolded here. I see desires which find no adequate good on earth. I see a principle of hope always pressing forward into futurity. Here are marks of a nature not made wholly for this world ; and how does Christian- ity agree with this teaching of our own souls ? Its great doctrine is that of a higher life, where the spiritual germ within us will open for ever, and where the immortal good after which the mind aspires will prove a reality. — Had I time, I might survey distinctly the various principles of the soul, the intellectual, moral, social, and active, and might show you how Christianity accords with them all, enlarging their scope and energy, proposing to them nobler objects, and aiding their development by the impulse of a boundless hope. But, commending these topics to your private meditation, I will take but one more view of the soul. When I look within, I see stains of sin, and fears and forebodings of guilt ; and how adapted to such a nature is Christianitv, a religion which contains blood- 2 160 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. sealed promises of forgiveness to the penitent, and which proffers heavenly strength to fortify us in our conflict with moral evil. — I say, then, Christianity consists wuth the nature within us, as well as with nature around us. The highest truths in respect to the soul are not only respond- ed to, but are carried out by Christianity, so that it deserves to be called the perfection of reason. THE GREAT PURPOSE OF CHRISTIANITY. Receive Christianity as given to raise you in the scale of spiritual being. Expect from it no good, any farther than it gives strength and worth to your characters. Think not, as some seem to think, that Christ has a higher gift than purity to bestow, even pardon to the sinner. He does bring pardon. But once separate the idea of pardon from purity ; once imagine that for- giveness is possible to him who does not forsake sin ; once make it an exemption from outward punishment, and not the admission of the re- formed mind to favour and communion with God ; and the doctrine of pardon become^ your peril, and a system so teaching it, is fraught with evil. Expect no good from Christ, any farther than you are exalted by his character and teach- ing. Expect nothing from his cross, unless a power comes from it, strengthening you to " bear his cross,'* to "drink liis cup," with his own unconquerable love. This is its highest influ- ence. Look not abroad for the blessings of Christ. His reign and chief blessings are within you. The human soul is his kingdom. There he gains his victories, there reai*s his temples^ there lavishes his treasures. His noblest monu- ment is a mind redeemed from iniquity, brought BEAUTIES OF CHAINING. 161 back and devoted to God, forming itself after the perfection of the Saviour, great through its power to suffer for truth, lovely through its meek and gentle virtues. No other monument does Christ desire ; for this will endure and increase in splendour, when earthly thrones shall have fallen, and even when the present order of the outward universe shall have accomplished its work, and shall have passed away. THE CHARACTER OF GOD. We conceive that Christians have generally leaned towards a very injurious view of the Supreme Being. They have too often felt, as if he were raised, by his greatness and sovereignty, above the principles of morality, above those eternal laws of equity and rectitude, to which all other beings are subjected. We believe, that in no being is the sense of right so strong, so omni- potent, as in God. We believe that his almighty power is entirely submitted to his perceptions of rectitude; and this is the ground of our piety. It is not because he is our Creator merely, but because he created us for good and holy pur- poses ; it is not because his will is irresistible, but because his will is the perfection of virtue, that we pay him allegiance. We cannot bow before a being, however great and powerful, who governs tyrannically. We respect nothing but excellence, whether on earth or m heaven. We venerate not the loftiness of God's throne, but the equity and goodness in which it is established. We believe that God is infinitely good, kind, benevolent, in the proper sense of these words ; good in disposition, as well as in act ; good, not to a few, but to all ; good to every individual, as well as to the general system. 162 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. We believe, too, that God is just; but we never forget, that his justice is the justice of a good being, dwelling in tlie same mind, and act- ing in harmony, with perfect benevolence. By this attribute, we understand God's infinite re- gard to virtue or moral worth, expressed in a moral goverment; tliat is, in giving excellent and equitable laws, and in conferring such rewards, and inflicting such punishments as are best fitted to secure their observance. God's justice has for its end the highest virtue of the creation, and it punishes for this end alone, and thus it coincides with benevolence ; for virtue and happiness, though not the same, are insepar- ably conjoined. God's justice thus viewed, appears to us to be in perfect harmony with his mercy. According to the prevalent systems of theology, these attri- butes are so discordant and jarring, tliat to reconcile them is the hardest task, and tlie most wonderful achievement of infinite wisdom. To us they seem to be intimate friends always at peace, breathing the same spirit, and seeking the same end. By God's mercy we understand not a blind instinctive compassion, which forgives without reflection, and without regard to the interests of virtue. • This we acknowledge, would be incompatible with justice, and also with enlightened benevolence, God's mercy, as we imderstand it, desires strongly the happiness of the guilty, but only through their penitence. It has a regard to character as truly as his justice. It defers punishment, and suffers long, that the sinner may return to his duty, but leaves the impenitent and unyielding, to the iearful retribu- tion threatened in God's Word. BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 163 To give our views of God in one word, we believe in his Parental character. We ascribe to him, not only the name, but the dispositions and principles of a father. We believe that he has a father's concern for his creatures, a father's desire for their improvement, a father's equity in proportioning his commands to their powers, a father's joy in their~progress, a father's readiness to receive the penitent, and a father's justice for the incorrigible. We look upon this world as a place of education, in which he is training men by prosperity and adversity, by aids and obstruc- tions, by conflicts of reason and passions, by motives to duty and temptations to sin, by a various discipline suited to free and moral beings, for union with himself, and for a sublime and ever-growing virtue in heaven. GOD OUR FATHER. God is the Father, and as such letliim be worshipped. He is the Father. By this I understand that he has given being not only to worlds of matter, but to a rational, moral, spirit- ual, universe, and still more I imdcrstand, not only that lie has created a spiritual family in heaven and on earth, but that ho manifests towards them the attributes and exerts on them the influences of a Father. Some of tliese attri- butes and influences I will suggest, that the parental ciiaracter in wliicli God is to be wor- shipped may be more distinctly apprehended and more deeply felt. First, tlicn, in calling God the Father, I understand that he loves his rational and moral oirs})ring with unbounded aflection. Love is the fundamental attribute of a Father. How 164 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. deep, strong, tender, enduring, the attachment of a human parent ! But tliis shadows forth feebly the Divine Parent. He loves us with an energy- like that with which he upholds the universe. The human parent does not comprehend his child, cannot penetrate the mystery of the spirit- ual nature which lies hid beneath the infant form. It is the prerogative of God alone, to understand the immortal mind to which he gives life. The narrowest human spirit can be comprehended in its depths and destiny by none but its Maker, and is more precious in his sight than material worlds. Is he not peculiarly its Father ? Again, in calling God the Father, I understand that it is his chief purpose in creating and govern- ing the universe, to educate, train, form, and enno- ble the rational and moral being to whom he has given birth. Education is the great work of a parent, and he who neglects it is unworthy the name. God gives birth to the mind, that it may grow and rise for ever, and its progress is the end of all his works. This outward universe, with its sun and stars, and mighty revolutions, is but a school in which the Father is training his children. God is ever present to the human mind to carry on its education, pouring in upon it instruction and incitement from the outward world, stirring up everlasting truths within itself, rousing it to activity by pleasure and pain, call- ing forth its affections by surrounding fellow- creatures, calling it to duty by placing it amidst various relations, awakening its sympathy by sights of sorrow, awakening its imagination by a world of beauty, and especially exposing it to suffering, hardship, and temptation, that by re- sistance it may grow strong, and by seeking help BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 165 from above, it may bind itself closely to its Maker. Thus he is the Father. There are those who think, that God, if a parent, must make our enjoyment his supreme end. He has a higher end, our intellectual and moral educa- tion. Even the good human parent, desires the progress, the virtue of his child more than its enjoyment. God never manifests himself more as our Father, than in appointing to us pains, conflicts, trials, by which we may rise to the heroism of virtue, may become strong to do, to dare, to suffer, to sacrifice all things at the call of truth and duty. Again, in calling God a Father, I understand that he exercises authority over his rational off- spring. Authority is the essential attribute of a father. A parent, worthy of tliat name, embo- dies and expresses both in commands and actions, the everlasting law of Duty. His highest func- tion is to bring out in the minds of his children the idea of Right, and to open to them the perfection of their nature. It is too common a notion, that God as Father, must be more dis- posed to bless than to command. His commands are among his chief blessings. He never speaks with more parental kindness tliau by tliat inward voice, wliich teaches duty and excites and cheers to its ntM'forniance. Notliing is so strict, so inflexible in enjoining the right and the good as perfect love. This can endure no moral stain in Its object. The whole experience of life, rightly construed, is a revelation of God's parental authority and righteous retribution. Again. When I call God the Father, I understand that ho comniunicates Himself, his own spirit, what is most glorious hi his owa 166 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. nature to his rational offspring; a doctrine almost overwhelming by its grandeur, but yet true, and the very truth which shines most clear- ly from the Christian Scriptures. It belongs to a parent to breathe into the child whatever is best and loftiest in his own soul, and for this end a good father seeks every approach to the mind of the child. Such a father is God. He has created us not only to partake of his works, but to be "partakers of a divine nature," not only to receive his gifts, but to receive Himself. As he is a pure spirit, he has an access to the minds of his children not enjoyed by human parents. He pervades, penetrates, our souls. All other beings, our nearest friends, are far from us, foreign to us, strangers, compared with God. Others hold intercourse with us through the body. He is in immediate contact with our souls. We do not discern him because he is too near, too inward, too deep to be recognized by our present imper- fect consciousness. And he is thus near, not only to discern, but to act, to influence, to give his spirit, to communicate to us divinity. This is the great paternal gift of God. He has greater gifts than the world. He confers more than the property of the earth and heavens. The very attributes from which the earth and heavens sprung, these he imparts to his rational offspring. Even his disinterested, impartial, universal good- ness, which diffuses beauty, life, and happiness, even this excellence it is his purpose to breathe into and cherish in the human soul. I might here pause in the attempt to give distinct conceptions of the Father whom we are to worship ; but there are two views so suited to us, as sinful and mortal beings, that I cannot pass BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 167 them over without brief notice. Let me add, then, that in speaking of God as the Father, I under- stand, that he looks with overflowing compassion on such of his rational off*spring as forsake him, as forsake the law of duty. It is the property of the human parent to follow with yearnings of tenderness an erring child ; and in this he is a faint type of God, who sees his lost sons " a great way off," who to recover his human family, spared not his beloved Son, who sends his re- generating spirit into the fallen soul, sends rebuke and shame, and fear, and sorrow, and awakens the dead in trespasses and sins, to a higher life than that which the first birth conferred. I also understand, in calling God the Father, that he destines his rational, moral creatures to Immortality. How ardently does the human parent desire to prolong the life of his child ! And how much more must He, who gave being to the spirit witli its unbounded faculties, desire its endless being ! God is our Father, for he has made us to bear the image of his own eternity as well as of his other attributes. Other things pass away, for they fulfil their end ; but the soul, which never reaches its goal, whose development is never complete, is never to disappear from the universe. God created it to receive for ever of his fulness. His fatherly love is not exhausted in what ho now bestows. There f* a higher life. Human perfection is not a dream. The brightest visions of genius fade before the realities of excel- lence and happiness to which good men arc ordained. In that higher lifo, the parental character of God will break forth from the clouds which now obscure it. His bright image in his children will proclaim the Infinite Father. 168 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. CHRIST THE SON OF GOD. In saying that the Divine Sonship of Jesus is the great foundation of attachment to him, I say nothing inconsistent with the doctrine, that the moral excellence of Jesus is the great object and ground of the love which is due to him. Indeed, I only repeat the principle, that he is to be loved exclusively for the virtues of his character ; for what, I ask, is the great idea involved in his filial relation to God ? To be the Son of God, in the chief and highest sense of that term, is to bear the likeness, to possess the sj)irit, to be partaker of the moral perfections of God. Tliis is the essential idea. To be God's Son is to be united with him by consent and accordance of mind. Jesus was the only begotten Son, because he was the perfect image and representative of God, especially of divine philanthropy ; because he espoused as his own the benevolent purposes of God towards the human race, and yielded himself to their accomplishment with an entire self-sacrifice. To know Jesus as the Son of God, is not to understand what theologians have written about his eternal generation, or about a mystical, incomprehensible union between Christ and liis Father. It is something lar higher and more instructive. It is to see in Christ, if I may say so, the lineaments of the universal Fatlier. It is to discern in him a godlike purity and goodness. It is to understand his harmony with the Divine Mind, and tlie entirencss and singleness of love with which lie devoted himself to the purposes of God, and the interests of the human race. Of consequence, to love Jesus as the Son of God, is to love the spotless purity and godlike charity of his soul. BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 169 JESUS THE SAVIOUR. Whilst we gratefully acknowledge, that he came to rescue us from punishment, we believe, that he was sent on a still nobler errand, namely, to deliver us from sin itself, and to form us to a sublime and heavenly virtue. We regard him as a Saviour, chiefly as he is the light, physician, and guide of the dark, diseased, and wandering mind. No influence in the universe seems to us so glorious, as that over the character ; and no redemption so worthy of thankfulness, as the restoration of the soul to purity. Without this, pardon, were it possible, would be of little value. Why pluck the sinner from hell, if a hell be left to burn in his own breast? Why raise him to heaven, if he remain a stranger to its sanctity and love? With these impressions, we are accustomed to value the Gospel chiefly as it abounds in effectual aids, motives, excitements to a generous and divine virtue. In this virtue, as in a common centre, we see all its doctrines, precepts, promises meet ; and we believe, that faith in this religion is of no worth, and contri- butes nothing to salvation, any farther than as it uses these doctrines, precepts, promises, untl the whole life, character, sufferings, and triumphs of Jesus, as the means of purifying the mind, of changing it into the likeness of Tiis celestial ex- cellence. CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. I now j)roce(Hl to give our views of the medi- ation of Christ, and of the purposes of his mission. With regard to the great object which Jesus came to accomplish, there seems to be no {)os8i- bility of mistake. We believe, that he was sent p 170 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. by the Father to effect a moral, or spiritual deliverance of mankind ; that is, to rescue men from sin and its consequences, and to bring them to a state of everlasting purity and happiness. We believe, too, that he accomplishes this sub- lime purpose by a variety of methods ; by his instructions respecting God's unity, parental character, and moral government, which are admirably fitted to reclaim the world from idolatry and impiety, to the knowledge, love, and obedience of the Creator ; by his promises of pardon to the penitent, and of divine assistance to those who labour for progress in moral excel- lence ; by the light which he has thrown on the path of duty ; by his ow^n spotless example, in which the loveliness and sublimity of virtue shine forth to warm and quicken, as well as guide us to perfection ; by his threatenings against incor- rigible guilt; by his glorious discoveries of immortality ; by his sufferings and death ; by that signal event, the resurrection, which power- fully bore witness to his divine mission, and brought down to men's senses a future life ; by his continual intercession, which obtains for us spiritual aid and blessings ; and by the power with which he is invested of raising the dead, judging the world, and conferring the everlast- ing rewards promised to the faithful. JESUS OUR EXEMPLAR. I exhort you with calmness, but earnestness, to choose and adopt Jesus Christ as your example, with the w^hole energy of your wills. I exhort you to resolve on following Iiini, not, as perhaps you have done, with a faint and yielding purpose, but with th^ full conviction, that your whole BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 171 happiness is concentrated in tlie force and con- stancy of your adherence to this celestial guide. My friends, there is no other happiness. Let not the false views of Christianity which prevail in the world, seduce you into the belief, that Christ can bless you in any other way than by assimilating you to his own virtue, than by breathing into you his mind. Do not imagine that any faith or love towards Jesus can avail you, but that which quickens you to conform yourselves to his spot- less purity and unconquerable rectitude. Settle it as an immoveable truth, that neither in this world nor in the next can you be happy, but in proportion to the sanctity and elevation of your characters. Let no man imagine, that through the patronage or protection of Jesus Christ, or any other being, he can find peace or any sincere good, but in the growth of an enlightened, firm, disinterested, holy mind. Expect no good from Jesus, any further than you clothe yourselves with his excellence. He can impart to you nothing so precious as himself, as his own mind ; and believe mc, my hearers, this mind may dwell in you. His sublimest virtues may be yours. Admit, welcome this great trntli. Look up to the illustrious Son of God, with the conviction that you may become one with him in thought, in feeling, in power, in holiness. His chamcter will become a blessing, just as far as it sliall awaken in you this consciousness, this hope. Th(* most lamentable scepticism on earth, and inconipunibly the; most common, is a scoptieism as to the greatness, powors, and high destinies of human nature. In this grcatn(»ss I desire to cherish an unwavering faith. Tell me not of the universal corruption of the race. Humanity has p 2 172 BEAUTIES OF CHANNIXa. already in not a few instances, borne conspicu- ously the likeness of Christ and God. The sun ^rows dim, the grandeur of outward nature shrinks, wlien compared with the spiritual energy of men, who, in the cause of truth, of God, of charity, have spurned all bribes of ease, pleasure, renown, and have withstood shame, want, perse- cution, torture, and the most dreaded forms of death. In such men I learn that the soul was made in God's image, and made to conform itself to the loveliness and greatness of his Son. My friends, we may all approach Jesus Christ. For all of us he died, to leave us an example that we should follow his steps. By earnest purpose, by self-conflict, by watching and prayer, by faith in the Christian promises, by those hea- venly aids and illuminations, which he that seeketh shall find, we may all unite ourselves, in living bonds to Christ, may love as he loved, may act from his principles, may suffer with his constancy, may enter into his purposes, may sympathise with his self-devotion to the cause of God and mankind, and by likeness of spirit, may prepare ourselves to meet him as our everlasting friend. THE HOLY SPIRIT. The promise of the Holy Spirit is among the most precious in the sacred volume. Worlds could not tempt me to part with the doctrine of God's intimate connexion with the mind, and of his free and full communications to it. But these views are in no respect at variance with what I have taught of the method by which we are to grow in the likeness of God. Scripture and experience concur in teaching, that by the BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 173 Holy Spirit, we are to understand a divine assis- tance adapted to our moral freedom, and accor- dant with the fundamental truth, that virtue is the mind's own work. By the Holy Spirit, I understand an aid, which must be gained and made effectual by our own activity ; an aid, which no more interferes with our faculties, than the assistance which we receive from our fellow- beings ; an aid, which silently mingles and con- spires with all other helps and means of goodness; an aid, by which we unfold our natural powers in a natural order, and by which we are strength- ened to understand and apply the resources derived from our munificent Creator. This aid we cannot prize too much, or pray for too ear- nestly. But wherein, let me ask, does it war with the doctrine, that God is to be approached by the exercise and unfolding of our highest powers and affections, in the ordinary circum- stances of human life ? CHRIST S COMINQ. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come, whenever his religion breaks out in new glory, or gains new triumphs. He came in the Holy Spirit, in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction of Jerusalem, wliich, by subverting the old ritual law, and breaking tlie power of the worst enemies of his relimon, ensured to it new victories. He came in tlie Reformation of the Church. He came on this day four years ago, wh(Mi, through his religion, Eight Hundred Thousand men were raised from tlic lowest detjjradation, to the rights, and dignity, and fellowship of men. Christ's outward appearance is of little moment, compared with the brighter p a 174 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. manifestations of his spirit. The Christian whose inward eyes and ears are touched by God, dis- cerns the coming of Christ, hears the sound of his chariot-wheels and the voice of his trumpet, when no other perceives them. He discerns the Saviour's advent in the dawning of higher truth on the world, in new aspirations of the church after perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error, in brighter expressions of Christian love, in more enlightened and intense consecra- tion of the Christian to the cause of humanity, freedom, and religion. Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration, the emancipation of the world. IMMORTALITY, How full, how bright are the evidences of this grand truth ! How weak are the common argu- ments, which scepticism arrays against it ! To me, there is but one objection against immortali- ty, if objection it may be called, and this anses from the very greatness of the truth. My mind sometimes sinks under its weight, is lost in its immensity ; I scarcely dare believe that such a good is placed within my reach. When I think of myself, as existing through all future ages, as surviving this earth and that sky, as exempted from every imperfection and error of my present being, as clothed with an angel's glory, as com- prehending with my intellect and embracing in my affections an extent of creation com|)ared with which the earth is a point ; when I tliink of myself, as looking on the outward universe with an organ of vision that will reveal to me a beauty and harmony and order not now imagined, and as having an access to the minds of the wise BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 175 and good, which will make them in a sense my own ; when I think of myself, as forming friendships with innumerable beings of rich and various intellect and of the noblest virtue, as introduced to the society of heaven, as meeting there the great and excellent, of whom I have read in history, as joined with " the just made perfect '' in an ever-enlarging ministry of bene- volence, of conversing with Jesus Christ with the familiarity of friendship, and especially as having an immediate intercourse with God, such as the closest intimacies of earth dimly shadow forth; — when this thought of my future being comes to me, whilst I hope, I also fear ; the blessedness seems too great ; the consciousness of present weakness and unworthiness is almost too strong for hope. But when, in this frame of mind, I look round on the creation, and see there the marks of an omnipotent goodness, to which nothing is impossible, and from which everything may be hoped ; when I see around me the proofs of an infinite Father, who must desire the perpetual progress of his intellectual oifspring ; when I look next at the human mind, and see wliat powers a few years have unfolded, and discern in it the capacity of everlasting im- provement ; and ospocially when I look at Jesus, the conqueror of death, the licir of innnortality, who has gone as the forerunner of mankind into the mansions of light and purity, I can and do admit tiie almost overpowering thougiit of the everlasting life, growth, felicity of the human soul. SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. In regard to the spiritual influence^ by which 176 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. God brings the created spirit into conformity to his own, I would that I could speak worthily. It is gentle, that it may not interfere with our freedom. It sustains, mingles with, and moves all our faculties. It acts through nature, provi- dence, revelation, society, and experience ; and the Scriptures, confirmed by reason and the testimonies of the wisest and best men, teach us, that it acts still more directly. God, being im- mediately present to the soul, holds immediate communion with it, in proportion as it prepares itself to receive and to use aright the heavenly inspiration. He opens the inward eye to himself, communicates secret monitions of duty, revives and freshens our convictions of truth, builds up our faith in human immortality, unseals the deep, unfathomed fountains of Love within us, instils strength, peace, and comfort, and gives victory over pain, sin, and death. This influence of God, exerted on the soul to conform it to himself, to make it worthy of its divine parentage, this it is which most clearly manifests what is meant by his being our Father. We understand his parental relation to us, only as far as we comprehend this great purj)ose and exercise of his love. We must have faith in the human soul as receptive of the divinity, as made for greatness, for spiritual elevation, for likeness to God, or God's character as a Father will be to us an unrevealed mystery. If we tliink, as so many seem to think, that God has made us only for low pleasures and attainments, that our na- ture is incapable of godlike virtues, that our prayers for the Divine Spirit are unheard, that celestial influences do not descend into tlie human soul, that God never breathes on it to lift it above BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 177 its present weakness, to guide it to a more perfect existence, to unite it more intimately with himself, then we know but faintly the meaning of a Father in Heaven. The great revelation in Christianity of a Paternal Divinity, is still to be made to us. THR RIGHT USE OF CHRIST*S SUFFERINGS. I have often been struck by the contrast be- tween the use made of the cross in the pulpit, and the calm, unimpassioned manner in which the sufferings of Jesus are detailed by the Evan- gelists. These witnesses of Christ's last moments, give you in simple language the particulars of that scene, without one remark, one word of emotion ; and if you read the Acts and Epistles, you will not find a single instance in which the Apostles strove to make a moving picture of his crucifixion. No ; they honoured Jesus too much, they felt too deeply the greatness of his charac- ter, to be moved as many are by the circum- stances of his death. Reverence, admiration, sympathy with his sublime spirit, these swallow- ed up in a great measure, sympathy with his sufferings. The cross was to them the last, crowning manifestation of a celestial mind ; they felt that it was endured to communicate the siune mind to them and the world ; and their emotion was a lioly joy in this consummate and uncon- querable goodness. To be touched by suiFering is a light thing. It is not the greatness of Christ's sufferings on the cross whicli is to move our whole souls, but the greatness of the spirit with which he suffered. There, in death, he proved his entire consecration of himself to tlie cause of God and mankind. There, his love flowed forth towards his friends, his cnemicSi 178 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. and the human race. It is moral greatness, it is victorious love, it is the energy of principle, which gives such interest to the cross of Christ. We are to look through the darkness which hung over him, through his wounds and pains, to his unbroken, disinterested, confiding spirit. To approach the cross for the purpose of weeping over a bleeding, d}"ing friend, is to lose the chief influence of the crucifixion. We are to visit the cross, not to indulge a natural softness, but to acquire firmness of spirit, to fortify our minds for hardship and sufiering in the cause of duty and of human happiness. To live as Christ lived, to die as Christ died, to give up ourselves as sacrifices to God, to conscience, to whatever good interest we can advance, — these are the les- sons written with the blood of Jesus. His cross is to inspire us with a calm courage, resolution, and superiority to all temptation. THE PURPOSE OF SUFFERING. This is found in the truth, that benevolence has a higher aim than to bestow enjoyment. There is a higher good than enjoyment ; and this requires suffering in order to be gained. As long as we narrow our view of benevolence, and see in it only a disposition to bestow pleasure, so long life will be a mystery ; for pleasure is plainly not its great end. Earth is not a para- dise, where streams of joy gush out unbidden at our feet, and uncloying fruits tempt us on every side to stretch out our hands and eat. But this does not detract from God's love ; because he has something better for us than gushing streams or profuse indulgence. When we look into our- selves, we find something besides capacities and BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 179 desires of pleasure. Amidst the selfish and animal principles of our nature, there is an awful power, a sense of Right, a voice which speaks of Duty, an idea grander than the largest personal interest — The Idea of Excellence, of Perfection. Here is the seal of Divinity on us ; here the sign of our descent from God. It is in this gift that we see the benevolence of God. It is in writing this inward law on the heart, it is in giving us the conception of Moral Goodness, and the power to strive after it, the power of self-conflict and self-denial, of surrendering pleasure to duty, and of suffering for the right, the true, and the good ; — it is in thus enduing us, and not in giv- ing us capacities of pleasure, that God's goodness shines; and of consequence, whatever gives a field, and excitement, and exercise, and strength, and dignity to these principles of our nature, is the higliest manifestation of benevolence. Moral, spiritual excellence, that which we confide in and revere, is not, and from its nature cannot be, an instinctive, irresistible feeling infused into us from abroad, and which may grow up amidst a life of indulgence and ease. It 18 in its very essence, a free activity, an energy of the will, a deliberate preference of the right and the holy to all things, and a chosen, cheorlul surrender of everything to these. It grows brighter, stronger, in proj)ortion to the panis it bears, the difficuUies it surmounts. Can we wonder that we sutler ? Is not suffering the true school of a moral being? As administered by Providence, may it not be the most necessary poition of our lot ? 180 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. JESUS CHRIST IN HEAVEN. Jesus is indeed sometimes spoken of as reign- ing in the future world, and sometimes imagina- tion places him on a real and elevated throne. Strange that such conceptions can enter the minds of Christians. Jesus will indeed reign in Heaven, and so he reigned on earth. He reigned in the fishing-boat, from which he taught ; in the humble dwelling, where he gathered round him, listening and confiding disciples. His reign is not the vulgar dominion of this world. It is the empire of a great, godlike, disinterested being, over minds capable of comprehending and loving him. In Heaven, nothing like what we call government on earth can exist, for government here is founded in human weakness and guilt. The voice of command is never heard among the spirits of the just. Even on earth, the most perfect government is that of a family, where parents employ no tone but that of affectionate counsel, where filial affection reads its duty in the mild look, and finds its law and motive in its own pure impulse. Christ will not be raised on a throne above his followers. On earth he sat at the same table with the publican and sinner. Will he recede from the excellent whom he has fitted for celestial mansions ? HUMAN LIKENESS TO GOD. God is a spirit, says the text, and we are spirts also. This our consciousness teaches. We are conscious of a principle superior to the body, which comprehends and controls it. AVe are conscious of faculties higher than the senses. We do something more than receive impressions passively, unresistingly, like the brute, from the BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 181 outward world. We analyse, compare, and combine anew the things which we see, subject the outward world to the inquisition of reason, create sciences, rise to general laws, and through these establish an empire over earth and sea. We penetrate beneath the surface which the senses report ; search for the hidden causes, in- quire for the ends or purposes, trace out the connections, dependencies, and harmonies of nature; discover a sublime unity amidst its boundless variety, and order amidst its seeming confusion ; rise to the idea of one all-compre- hending and all-ordaining Mind ; and thus by thought, make as it were a new universe radiant with wisdom, beneficence, and beauty. We are not mere creatures of matter and sense. We con- ceive a higher good than comes from the senses. We possess, as a portion of our being, a law higher than appetite, nobler and more enduring than all the laws of matter, the Law of Duty. We discern, we approve, the Right, the Good, the Just, the Holy, and by this sense of recti- tude are laid under obligations, which no power of the outward universe can dissolve. We have within us a higher force than all the forces of material nature, a power of will which can ad- here to duty and to God in opposition to all the might of the clementj*, and all the malignity of earth or hell. We have thoughts, ideas, which do not come from nuitter, tlie Ideas of the Infi- nite, the Everlasting, the Immutable, the Perfect. Living amidst the frail, tlie limited, the chang- ing, we rise to the thought of Unbounded, Eternal, Almighty Goodness. Nor is this all. While matter obeys niechunical and irresistible laws, and is bound by an unrelaxing necessity to 182 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. the same fixed, unvarying movements, we feel ourselves to be Free. We have power over ourselves, over thought and desire, power to conform ourselves to a law written on our hearts, and power to resist this law. Man must never be confounded with the material, mechanical world around him. He is a spirit. He has capacities, thoughts, impulses, which assimilate him to God. His reason is a ray of the Infinite Reason ; his conscience, an oracle of the Divin- ity, publishing the Everlasting Law of Rectitude. Therefore God is his Father. Therefore he is bound to his Maker by a spiritual bond. This we must feel, or we know nothing of the paren- tal relation of God to the human race. THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. Inward sanctity, pure love, disinterested at- tachment to God and man, obedience of heart and life, sincere excellence of character, tliis is the one thing needful, this the essential thing in religion ; and all things else, ministers, churches, ordinances, places of worship, all are but means, helps, secondary influences, and utterly worth- less when separated from this. To imagine that God regards anything but this, tliat lie looks at anything but the heart, is to dishonour him, to express a mournful insensibility to his pure char- acter. Goodness, purity, virtue, this is the only distinction in God's sight. This is intrinsically, essentially, everlastingly, and by its own nature, lovely, beautiful, glorious, divine. It owes no- thing to time, to circumstance, to outward con- nexions. It shines by its own light. It is the sun of the spiritual universe. It is God himself dwelling in the liuman soul. Can any man BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 183 think liglitly of it, because it has not grown up in a certain church, or exalt any church above it ? My friends, one of the grandest truths of religion, is the supreme importance of character, of virtue, of that divine spirit which shone out in Christ. The grand heresy is, to substitute anything for this, whether creed, or form, or church. One of the greatest wrongs to Christ, is to despise his character, his virtue, m a disci- ple who happens to wear a different name from our own. HEAVEN. Heaven is, in truth, a glorious reality. Its attraction should be felt perpetually. It should overcome tlie force with whicli this world draws us to itself. Were there a country on eartli uniting all tliat is beautiful in nature, all that is great in virtue, genius, and the liberal arts, and numbenng among its citizens, the most illustri- ous patriots, poets, pliilosophers, pliilantliropists, of our age, how eagerly should we cross th« ocean to visit it ! And how immeasurably greater is tlic attraction of Heaven ! There live the elder brethren of the creation, the sons of the morning, who sang for joy at tlie creation of our race ; there the groat and good of all ages and climes ; the friends, benefactors, deliverers, ornaments of their race ; the j)atriurch, pro|)het, ajmstle, and martyr; tlu* true heroes of public, and still more of private life: the father, mother, wife, Inisband, child, who unrecorded by man, have walked be- fore (jlod in the beauty of love and self-sacrificing virtue. There are all who have built up in our hearts the power of goodness and truth, tiie wri- ters from whose pages we liavc received the ^2 184 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. inspiration of pure and lofty sentiments, the friends, whose countenances have shed light through our dwellings, and peace and strength through our hearts. There they are gathered together, safe from every storm, triumphant over evil ; — and they say to us, Come and join us in our everlasting blessedness ; Come and bear part in our song of praise; Share our adoration, friendship, progress, and works of love. They say to us, Cherish now in your earthly life, that spirit and virtue of Christ which is the beginning and dawn of Heaven, and we shall soon welcome you, with more than human friendship, to our own immortality. Shall that voice speak to us in vain ? Shall our worldliness and unfoi'saken sins, separate us, by a gulf which cannot be pas- sed from the society of Heaven ? RELIGIOUS PEACE. There is a twofold peace. The iirst is nega- tive. It is relief from disquiet and corrodmg care. It is i*epose after conflict and storms. But there is another and a higher peace, to which this is but the prelude, " a peace of God which passeth all understanding,*' and properly called '* the kingdom of heaven within us.'' This state is anything but negative. It is the higliest and most strenuous action of the soul, but an entirely harmonious action, in which all our powers and affections are blended in a beautiful proportion, and sustain and perfect one another. It is more than silence after storms. It is as the concord of all melodious sounds. Has the reader never known a season, when, in the fullest flow of thought and feeling, in the universal action of the soul, an inward calm, profound as midnight BEAUTIES OIF CHANNING. 185 silence, yet bright as the still summer noon, full of joy, but unbroken by one throb of tumultuous passion, has been breathed through his spirit, and given him a glimpse and presage of the se- renity of a happier world ? Of this character is the peace of religion. It is a conscious harmony with God and the creation, an alliance of love with all beings, a sympathy with all that is pure and happy, a surrender of every separate will and interest, a participation of the spirit and life of the universe, an entire concord of purpose with its Infinite Original. This is peace, and the true happiness of man ; and we think that human na- ture has never entirely lost sight of this its great end. It has always siglied for a repose, in which energy of thought and will might be tem- pered with an all-pervading tranquillity. We seem to discover aspirations after this good, a dim consciousness oi it, in all ages of the world. We think we see it in those systems of Oriental and Grecian philosophy, which proposed, as the consummation of present virtue, a release from all disquiet, and an intimate union and harmony with the Divine Mind. We even think, that we trace this consciousness, this aspiration, in the works of ancient art which time has spared to us, in which the sculptor, aiming to embody his deepest thoughts of human perfections, hua join- ed with the fulness of life and strength, a repose^ which broatheH into the sj)octator an admiration as calm as it is exalted. Man, we believe, never wholly loses the sentiment of his true good. There are yearnings, sighings, which he does not himself comprehend, which break forth alike in his prosperous and adverse seasons, which betray a deep; indestructible faith in a good that q3 186 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. he has not found, and which, in proportion as they grow distinct, rise to God, and concentrate the soul in him, as at once its life and rest, the fountain at once of energy and of peace. STRENGTH FROM TRIAL. Do not complain, then, of life's trials. Through these you may gain incomparably higher good, than indulgence and ease. This view reveals to us the impartial goodness of God in the variety of human conditions. We sometimes see indi- viduals, whose peculiar trials are thought to make their existence to them an evil. But among such may be found the most favoured children of God. If there be a man on earth to be envied, it is he, who amidst the sharpest as- saults from his own passions, from fortune, from society, never falters in his allegiance to God and the inward monitor. So peculiar is the excellence of this moral strength, that I believe the Creator regards one being who puts it forth, with greater complacency than he would look on a world of beings, innocent and harmless, through the necessity of constitution. I know not that human wisdom has arrived at a juster or higher view of the present state, than that it is intended to call forth power by obstruction, the power of intellect by the difficulties of knowledge, the power of conscience and virtue by temptation, allurement, pleasure, pain, and the alternations of prosperous and adverse life. When I see a man holding faster his uprif^htness in proportion as it is assailed, fortifying liis religious trust in proportion as Providence is obscure ; hoping in the ultimate triumph of virtue, more surely in proportion to its present afflictions; cherishing BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 187 philanthropy amidst the discouraging experience of men's unkindness and unthankfiilness ; extend- ing to others a sympathy which his own sufferings need, but cannot obtain ; growing milder and gentler amidst what tends to exasperate and har- den ; and through inward principle converting the very incitements to evil into the occasions of a victorious virtue, — I see an explanation, and a noble explanation, of the present state. I see a good produced, so transcendent in its nature as to justify all the evil and suffering under which it grows up. I should think the formation of a few such minds worth all the apparatus of the present world. I should say, that this earth with its continents and oceans, its seasons and har- vests, and its successive generations, was a work worthy of God, even were it to accomplish no other end than the training and manifestation of the illustrious characters which are scattered through history. And when I consider, how small a portion of human virtue is recorded by history, how superior in dignity, as well as in number arc the unnoticed, unhonoured saints and heroes of domestic and humble life, I see a light thrown over the present state wliich more than reconciles me to ail its evils. BEAL OltKATNESS. Real greatness has nothinj^ to do with a man's sphere. It docs not lie iu th(^ inagnitudt? of his outward agency, in the extc^nt of the effects which Ik; produces. The greatest men may do compa- rativ(»ly little abroaa. Perhaps tlie greatest in our city at this moment are buried in obscurity. Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is; in the force of thought^ moral prin- 188 BEAUTIES OF CHANNINO. ciple, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life. A man brought up to an obscure trade, and hemmed in by the wants of a growing family, may, in his narrow sphere, perceive more clearly, discriminate more keenly, weigh evidence more wisely, seize on the right means more decisively, and have more presence of mind in difficulty, than another who has ac- cumulated vast stores of knowledge by laborious study ; and he has more of intellectual greatness. Many a man, who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, tlian another, who has travelled over the known world, and made a name by his reports of dif- ferent countries. It is force of thought which measures intellectual, and so it is force of princi- ple which measures moral greatness, that highest of human endowments, that brightest manifesta- tion of the Divinity. The greatest man is he who chooses tlie Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheer- fully, who is calmest in storms, and most fear- less under menace and frowns, wliose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering ; and is this a greatness which is apt to make a show, or which is most likely to abound in con- spicuous station ? The solemn conflicts of reason with passion ; the victories of moral and religious principle over urgent and almost irresistible solicitations to self-indulgence ; the hardest sa- crifices of duty, those of deep-seated affection and of the heart's fondest ho})es; the consolations, hopes, joys, and peace, of disappointed, persecu- ted, scorned; deserted virtue ', these are of course BEAUTIES OP CHANNIXG. 189 unseen ; so that the true greatness of human life is almost wholly out of sight. Perhaps in our presence, the most heroic deed on earth is done in some silent spirit, the loftiest purpose cherish- ed, the most generous sacrifice made, and we do not suspect it. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard. Among common people will be found more of hardship borne manfully, more of unvarnished truth, more of religious trust, more of that generosity which gives what the giver needs himself, and more of a wise estimate of life and death, than among the more prosper- ous. THE SOUL S WELCOME INTO HEAVEN. Those who are newly born into Heaven meet Jesus, and meet from him the kindest welcome. The happiness of the Saviour, in receiving to a higher life a human being who has been re- deemed, purified, inspired with immortal good- ness by his influence, we can but imperfectly comprehend. You can conceive what would be your feelings, on welcoming to shore your best friend, who had been tossed on the perilous sea ; but the raptures of earthly reunion are faint compared with the happiness of Jesus, in re- ceiving the spirit for which he died, and which under liis guidance has j)assed with an improving virtue tlirough a world of sore temptation. We on earth meet after our long separations to suf- fer as well as enjoy, and soon to part again. Jesus meets those wlio ascend from earth to Heaven, with the consciousness that their trial is past, their race is run, that death is concpiered. With his far-reaching, prophetic eye he sees them 188 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. ciple, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life. A man brought up to an obscure trade, and hemmed in by the wants of a growing family, may, in his narrow sphere, perceive more clearly, discriminate more keenly, weigh evidence more wisely, seize on the right means more decisively, and have more presence of mind in difficulty, than another who has ac- cumulated vast stores of knowledge by laborious study ; and he has more of intellectual greatness. Many a man, who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, than another, who has travelled over the known world, and made a name by his reports of dif- ferent countries. It is force of thought which measures intellectual, and so it is force of princi- ple which measures moral greatness, that highest of human endowments, that brightest manifesta- tion of the Divinity. The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheer- fully, who is calmest in storms, and most fear- less under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering ; and is this a greatness which is apt to make a show, or which is most likely to abound in con- spicuous station ? The solemn conflicts of reason with passion ; the victories of moral and religious principle over urgent and almost irresistible solicitations to self-indulgence ; the hardest sa- crifices of duty, those of deep-seated affection and of the hearths fondest hopes; the consolations, hopes, joys, and peace, of disappointed, persecu- ted, scorned, deserted virtue , these are of course BEAUTIES OP CHANNIXG. 189 unseen ; so that the true greatness of human life is almost wholly out of sight. Perhaps in our presence, the most heroic deed on earth is done in some silent spirit, the loftiest purpose cherish- ed, the most generous sacrifice made, and we do not suspect it. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard. Among common people will be found more of hardship borne manfully, more of unvarnished truth, more of religious trust, more of that generosity which gives what the giver needs himself, and more of a wise estimate of life and death, than among the more prosper- ous. THE SOUL S WELCOME INTO HEAVEN. Those who are newly born into Heaven meet Jesus, and meet from him the kindest welcome. The happiness of the Saviour, in receiving to a higher life a human being who has been re- deemed, purified, inspired with immortal good- ness by his influence, we can but imperfectly comprehend. You can conceive what would be your feelings, on welcoming to shore your best friend, who had been tossed on the perilous sea ; but the raptures of earthly reunion are faint compared with the happiness of Jesus, in re- ceiving the spirit for wliich he died, and which under liis guidance has j)asse(l with an improving virtue through a world of sore temptation. Wo on earth meet afler our long separations to suf- fer as well as enjoy, and soon to part again. Jesus meets those who ascend from earth to Heaven, with the consciousness that their trial is past, their race is run, that death is conquered. With his far-reaching, prophetic eye he sees them 192 BEAUTIES OF CHANNIXG. shows his delight in God's benevolence, by lov- ing and serving his neighbour ; his delight in God's justice, by being resolutely upright ; his sense of God's purity, by regulating his thoughts, imagination, and desires ; and whose conversa- tion, business, and domestic life, are swayed by a regard to God's presence and authority. In all things else men may deceive themselves. Dis- ordered nerves may give them strange sights, and sounds, and impressions. Texts of Scrip- ture may come to them as from Heaven. Their whole souls may be moved, and their confidence in God's favour be undoubting. But in all this there is no religion. The question is, do they love God's commands, in which his character is fully expressed, and give up to these their habits and passions ? Without this, ecstacy is a mock- ery. One surrender of desire to God's will, is worth a thousand transports. We do not judge of the bent of men's minds by their raptures, any more than we judge of the natural direction of a tree during a storm. AN INVITATION TO WORSHIP. I can only say that you, Unitarian Christians are peculiarly bound to inward worship ; for to you especially, Christianity is an inward system. Most other denominations expect salvation more or less from what Jesus does abroad, especially from his agency on the mind of God. You ex- pect it from what he does within your own minds. His great glory, according to your views, lies in his influence on the human soul, in the communication of his spirit to his follow- ers. To you, salvation, heaven, and hell, have their seat in the soul. To you, Christianity is BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 193 wholly a spiritual system. Come, then, to this place to worship with the soul, to elevate the spirit to God. Let not this house be desecrated by a religion of show. Let it not degenerate into a place of forms. Let not your pews be occupied by lifeless machines. Do not come here to take part in lethargic repetitions of sacred words. Do not come from a cold sense of duty, to quiet conscience with the thought of having paid a debt to God. Do not come to perform a present task to ensure a future heaven. Come to find heaven now, to anticipate the happiness of that better world by breathing its spirit, to bind your souls indissolubly to your Maker. Come to worship in spirit and in truth, that is, intelligently, rationally, with clear judgment, with just and honourable conceptions of the In- finite Father, not prostrating your understand- ings, not renouncing the divine gift of reason, but offering an enlightened homage, such as is due to the Fountain of intelligence and truth. — Come to worshij) with the heart as well as intel- lect, with life, fervour, zeal. Sleep over your business if you will, but not over your religion. — Come to worship with strong conviction, with living faith in a higher presence than meets the eye, with a feeling of God's proscnco not only around you, but in tlie depths of your souls.— Come to woi*ship with a filial spirit, not wjth fear, dread, and gloom; not with sepulchral tones and di^sponding looks, but with numbje, cheerful, boundless trust, with overflowing gr a- titude, with a love willing and earnest to do, and to suffer, whatever may approve your devotion to God. Come to worslii[) him with what he most delights in, with aspiration for spiritual light and 11 194 BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. life; come to cherish and express desires for virtue, for jjurity, for power over temptation, stronger and more insatiable than spring up in your most eager pursuits of business or pleasure ; and welcome joyfully every holy impulse, every accession of strength to virtuous purpose, to the love of God and man. — In a word, come to offer a refined, generous worship, to offer a tribute worthy of Him who is the perfection of truth, goodness, beauty, and blessedness. Adore him with the calmest reason and the profoundest love, and strive to conform yourselves to what you adore. THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. Who knows Christ best ? I answer. It is he who, in reading his history, sees and feels most distinctly and deeply the perfection by which he was distinguished. Who knows Jesus best? It is he, who, not resting in general and almost un- meaning praises, becomes acquainted with what was peculiar, characteristic, and individual in his mind, and who has thus framed to himself, not a dim image called Jesus, but a living being, with distinct and glorious features, and with all the reality of a well-known friend. Who best knows Jesus? I answer. It is he, who deliber- ately feels and knows, that his character is of a higher order than all other characters which have appeared on earth, and who thirsts to com- mune with and resemble it. I hope I am plain. When I hear, as I do, men disputing about Jesus, and imagining that they know him by settling some theory as to his generation in time or eternity, or as to his rank in the scale of being, I feel that their knowledge of him is about as great as I should have of some saint or hero, by BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. 195 studying his genealos^y. These controversies have built up a technical theology, but give no insight into the mind and heart of Jesus ; and without this the true knowledge of him cannot be enjoyed. And here I would observe, not in the spirit of reproach, but from a desire to do good, that I know not a more effectual method of hiding Jesus from us, of keeping us strangers to him, than the inculcation of the doctrine which makes him the same being with his Father, makes him God himself. This doctrine throws over him a mistiness. For myself, when I attempt to bring it home, I have not a real being before me, not a soul which I can under- stand and sympathise with, but a vague, shifting imagC; which gives nothing of the stability of knowledge. A b Mug, consisting of two natures, two souls, one Divine and another human, one finite and another infinite, is made up of quali- ties which destroy one another, and leave nothing for distinct apprehension. This compound of different minds, and of contradictory attributes, I cannot, if I would, regard as one conscious person, on(; intellig<»nt agent. It strikes mc al- most irresistil)ly as a fiction. On the other hand, Jesus, contemplated as he is set before us in the gospel, as one mind, one heart, answering to my own in all its essential powei-s and af- fections, bjit i)urified,