* 
 
 THE SUSPENSE OF FAITH. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 THE ALUMNI OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 
 
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 HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
 
 GIVEN JULY 19, 1S59. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY W. BELLOWS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 C. S. FRANCIS & CO., 554 BROADWAY, 
 AND 53 DEVONSHIRE STREET, BOSTON. 
 
 1859. 
 
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 The subject I propose to treat at this time is large, and 
 will stretch your patience; it is disputed, and will need 
 your charity ; it is, in some measure, new, and not sure of 
 your sympathy. I cannot, perhaps, introduce it better, 
 than by confessing the difficulty of naming it; and the 
 difficulty is intrinsic. To raise a question, and not answer 
 it; to object to what exists, and present nothing better ; to 
 start a discussion, without much advancing it, is, of course, 
 more or less, to beat the bush without being able to 
 foretell the game. And yet, how can a Unitarian Christian, 
 amid the honest antagonism and divergent tendencies of 
 his own people, treat of our religious times, our denomina¬ 
 tional experiences, wants, and prospects, with candor and 
 largeness, and yet claim wholly settled convictions, clear 
 views, and a fixed policy ? Nay, how can our history, 
 position, and future, be considered at all, apart from the 
 history, position, and future of the Protestant era itself: 
 that is to say, without a consideration of the mental and 
 ecclesiastical attitude of the nineteenth century ? To search 
 out the characteristic ideas,'positive and negative, of this 
 epoch, with special reference to the good or evil influence 
 they have exerted upon our own faith and its embodiment, 
 
 (/ 
 
 ON HIST, COLLECTION 
 
4 
 
 is what I undertake. And before I conclude the discussion 
 of my theme, I shall hope to justify its title, which is this: 
 —The Suspense of Faith. 
 
 Let me preface what I have to say, with a single word 
 more. I am about to speak of tendencies; and the most 
 liberal exceptions are to be allowed for, in favor of those 
 who resist them. I am about to enter complaints against 
 what I could spend the whole time in praising, and yet 
 leave the ground of these complaints as solid as ever. 
 Let no one, then, imagine me to be ungrateful to the 
 services, insensible to the merits, or cold to the fellowship 
 of the Unitarian Body, or the Protestant era, because my 
 present business is to examine their defects. If I criticize 
 Unitarianism, it is as a Unitarian ; or Protestantism, it is 
 as a Protestant. If I show the wants of our own system, 
 it is not as advocating a return to the systems we have 
 abandoned ; if I question the finality of Protestantism, it is 
 not in the interest of Pomanism; if I speak in the language 
 of a Churchman, it is not as an Episcopalian, much less as 
 one aiming at the re-establishment of a hierarchy ; if I use 
 some tones of despondency, and point to some clouds big 
 with threats, it is not in forgetfulness of the everlasting 
 bow that spans the storm that evokes them. I place this 
 caveat at the threshold to avoid the necessity of a fatiguing 
 caution in every step beyond it. 
 
 What, then, is the present condition of our Unitarian 
 body ? Considered numerically, or with reference to social 
 position and moral influence—considered relatively to its 
 age and opportunities—considered with reference to any 
 obstacles to its spread in public sentiment, or from ex¬ 
 ternal quarters, it is impossible not to concede to it a fair 
 
5 
 
 degree of prosperity. There was never less reason for 
 despondency, so far as a rivalry with other religious sects 
 could breed it; never less to fear from the arguments, 
 the exclusiveness, or the reproaches of others. Our minis¬ 
 ters, churches, charities, public gatherings, manifestations 
 of all sorts, were never so numerous and so popular as at 
 present. 
 
 And yet, spite of increasing numbers and increasing 
 moral vitality, of growing earnestness and activity, of 
 larger acceptance and easier advance, there is an undeni¬ 
 able chill in the missionary zeal, an undeniable apathy in 
 the denominational life of the body; with general pros¬ 
 perity, in short, there is despondency, self-questioning, and 
 anxiety. It is a singular, and, to many, perhaps an unac¬ 
 countable phenomenon. 
 
 What is the explanation of it ? 
 
 It will be found in a consideration of— 
 
 I. The particular, 
 
 II. The general, 
 
 III. The universal, Reason, of what, in the course of this 
 discussion, will show itself to be a common suspense of 
 faith. 
 
 I. Is it not largely due, in the first place, and particu¬ 
 larly, to the fact, that our missionary and denominational 
 work, through the changed aspects of the theological 
 world—the decay of intolerance, the softening of the cur¬ 
 rent creed of Christendom, and the spread of mild and 
 practical views of religious duty—has lost much of its 
 urgency and point ? Is not the work of emancipating the ' 
 community from bigotry and superstition, so much more 
 rapidly and successfully carried on by political and demo- 
 
6 
 
 cratic life, literature, and the public press, that our voca¬ 
 tion in this direction is mostly gone? Doubtless, in the 
 newer parts of the country, there are thousands of small 
 communities, where the polemic instructions of the Uni¬ 
 tarian pioneers would be a great blessing still; but before 
 such wants could be met by us, they are so sure to be over¬ 
 taken by more general influences—the spirit of the country, 
 the age, and the Church,—that we instinctively feel the 
 inexpediency of wasting our energies upon them. The 
 propagandism of Unitarian ideas is essentially paralyzed 
 by the feeling that they are sowing themselves broadcast, 
 not in the formal, but the essential religious thought of the 
 country and the time; and the indifference to increasing 
 our ministers and our churches is very much due to the 
 conviction that many ministers and churches, of all names 
 and orders, are now doing our work, if less directly, yet 
 more thoroughly than we could do it ourselves. 
 
 I do not wish to take this first position, which lays no 
 
 % 
 
 claim to originality, without careful discrimination. It is, 
 otherwise, liable to misconstruction, and justly offensive, 
 both to earnest Unitarians, as disparaging the importance 
 of our formal controversy, and to the great orthodox public, 
 as a boastful calumny upon its sincerity and actual self- 
 knowledge. I do not affirm, therefore, that the spirit of 
 the age and the providence of God, are making the world 
 Unitarian, in the sectarian sense of that word, or that an 
 inevitable abandonment of those formulas of the Church 
 against which we have openly protested, is in the near, or 
 even the distant prospect. But I do maintain, that the 
 principles and sentiments, the rights of conscience, the 
 rationality of method, the freedom of inquiry, the practical 
 
7 
 
 views of religion, which we have been contending for under 
 the name and colors of our Unitarian theology, are under 
 other names and colors so rapidly conquering the mind of 
 our American Christendom, that it is no longer felt to he 
 necessary to maintain a stringent denominational organiza¬ 
 tion for their sake; and thus that the original and animat¬ 
 ing spirit of the denomination is taken away, by the success 
 of the principles for which it stood. On the other hand, 
 while not prepared to claim that the Unitarian movement 
 has caused this general advance, or that its present position 
 indicates the final stand of the Church, I believe that it has 
 providentially led, and historically signalized, a forward 
 movement of the whole Protestant body ; and that universal 
 Christendom will heartily own in due time the urgent 
 necessity of the correlative ideas for which we have so 
 boldly stood. I thoroughly believe that the Trinitarian 
 theology of the historic Church, outworn and embarrassing 
 now, was helpful, because relatively true, to the times in 
 which it arose; and that the ideas which lay in the minds 
 of the authors of the Athanasian and Uicene Creeds—to 
 emphasize and defend which against the swelling and 
 encroachment of other and mischievous opinions they 
 erected the bulwarks of those mighty affirmations and 
 solemn protests—were essential ideas; but ideas, which, if 
 they add any thing to a devout and scriptural Unitarianism, 
 (which is doubtful,) contradict nothing in it. It was be¬ 
 cause, in course of time, the heirs of those creeds, ignorant 
 of their origin, or forgetful of their purpose, came to hold 
 them in a way that did contradict the common sense and 
 self-evident principles touching God’s sovereignty and 
 Fatherhood, Christ’s humanity and subordination, and 
 
8 
 
 Man’s uprightness of nature, which Unitarianism has so 
 triumphantly vindicated and re-established, that our mission 
 became imperative. 
 
 Mazzini lately refused the programme of the Allies, 
 because the Piedmontese government substituted the unifi¬ 
 cation for the unity of Italy; thus admitting its division 
 under different rulers. We refused and refuted the pro¬ 
 gramme of modern Orthodoxy, because a degenerate Trini- 
 tarianism had substituted the unification for the Unity of 
 God. The Church Universal will, in due time, bless us 
 for this service to the common cause. 
 
 No view of ecclesiastical history is respectable which 
 allows much place to self-will in the origin of considerable 
 sects and heresies, still less in the grander movements of 
 the Church. There is a providential necessity in the rise, 
 progress, conflict and confluence of all religious bodies. 
 As our Saviour’s robe was parted among his enemies, so 
 his truth is divided among his friends. Sects are comple- 
 mental of each other, and none of them are any thing more 
 than relatively right. To speak of Unitarianism indepen¬ 
 dently of Trinitarianism, conveys no correct, and no valu¬ 
 able ideas ; and the purely denominational theology of our 
 bodv has no worth in the decline of the errors or extrava- 
 gancies it was born to balance or compensate. It is for 
 this particular reason that we are now experiencing our loss 
 of interest in it, and its consequent languor as a missionary 
 impulse. 
 
 II. But, in the second place, to come to the general 
 
 reason. There is a broader view to be taken of the general 
 
 • * 
 
 cause of the pausing posture and self-distrust of our Body. 
 Since we began our career, a fact of decisive influence 
 
9 
 
 upon our destiny lias unexpectedly disclosed itself. The 
 underlying principles and sentiments of the Unitarian body 
 have turned out to be the characteristic ideas and tenden¬ 
 cies of the religious epoch we live in. Protestantism pro¬ 
 duced us, not we it. Whatever is good or bad in our spirit 
 and direction, was latent in the Reformation, and is fast 
 becoming patent in the whole product of that world- 
 movement. The peculiar identification of Protestant tend¬ 
 encies with our special theology is partly accidental, partly 
 historical; the tendencies themselves are the great fact. 
 Thus no criticism of Unitarianism is radical which is not 
 also a criticism of Protestantism ; nor is it possible to un¬ 
 derstand our position and prospects, without considering 
 from a high point of view the general drift of Protestantism 
 itself. Our eddy or rapid is to be explained only by a sur¬ 
 vey of the main current; our drought or freshet only by 
 an examination of the common water-shed. If I say, then, 
 that our pause as a denomination is the pause which Pro¬ 
 testantism makes on awakening to the full consciousness of 
 her own tendencies, I shall best express my second and 
 most important idea. 
 
 These tendencies have only recently cleared themselves 
 to view, and are not by the boldest faced without some con¬ 
 cern. Yet it is best to look them full in the front; to ac¬ 
 knowledge them for just what they are, and rely upon God 
 and the truth to deliver us from evil at their hands. Per¬ 
 mit me, then, for the moment, to state in unqualified, and 
 even in offensive terms, w T hat the logical product of Pro¬ 
 testantism is. 
 
 If, then, with logical desperation, we ultimate the tend¬ 
 encies of Protestantism, and allow even the malice of its 
 
10 
 
 enemies to flash light upon their direction, we may see 
 that the sufficiency of the Scriptures turns out to be the 
 self-sufficiency of man, and the right of private judgment 
 an absolute independence of Bible or Church. No creed 
 but the Scriptures, practically abolishes all Scriptures but 
 those on the human heart; nothing between a man’s con¬ 
 science and his God, vacates the Church ; and with the 
 Church, the Holy Ghost, whose function is usurped by pri¬ 
 vate reason: the Church lapses into what are called Reli¬ 
 gious Institutions; these into Congregationalism, and Con¬ 
 gregationalism into Individualism—and the logical end is 
 the abandonment of the Church as an independent institu¬ 
 tion, the denial of Christianity as a supernatural revela¬ 
 tion, and the extinction of worship as a separate interest. 
 There is no pretence that Protestantism, as a body, has 
 reached this, or intends this, or would not honestly and 
 earnestly repudiate it; but that its most logical product is 
 at this point it is not easy to deny. Nay, that these are 
 the tendencies of Protestantism is very apparent. 
 
 Let us not be too much alarmed at this statement, as¬ 
 suming it to be true. Tendencies are not always ultimated. 
 They encounter resistance. They meet and yield to other 
 tendencies. The tendencies of an epoch, religious or politi¬ 
 cal, do not decide its whole character. There are forces in 
 humanity stronger than any epochal powers—the per¬ 
 manent wants, the indestructible instincts of our nature. 
 It is safe, and it ought not to be alarming, to see and con¬ 
 fess that the tendencies of political and religious specula¬ 
 tion and sentiment, in the universal Church of our day, are 
 to the "weakening of the external institutions of Christianity, 
 the extinction of the ministry, and the abandonment of any 
 
11 
 
 special interest in religion, as a separate interest of man or 
 society. If our Unitarian body understands this better than 
 the inner ranks of Protestantism, it is only because the 
 squadrons behind have pressed it nearer the brink towards 
 which they are unconsciously advancing. With great tem¬ 
 porary superiority and advantages, one over another, there 
 is really nothing to choose between the Protestant sects in 
 general direction, and ultimate destinies; logically, and 
 what is more, practically, they are shut up to one conclusion. 
 All alike in this respect, they represent human liberty, self- 
 assertion, and man’s power to choose and enthrone his own 
 God. The differences between them are chronological, cir¬ 
 cumstantial, accidental; the likeness is logical, essential, and 
 absolute. We need not fancy that our peculiar theology is 
 responsible for the latitudinarianism, the negation, the un- 
 devotionality, complained of in the Unitarian body. The 
 same qualities belong to all Protestant sects, to the degree 
 in which their culture and opportunities establish positive 
 and logical relations between their principles and their cha¬ 
 racters. The Unitarian body, not as being more learned or 
 more thoughtful than other Protestant bodies in its leaders 
 and ministry, but as having a laity on the same intellectual 
 level with its leaders, and no dead weight of mere instinct 
 and affection to drag along with it, has carried out and ex¬ 
 perienced in its denominational life, what no other Protestant 
 sect has yet been sufficiently conscious of itself, and enough 
 under the dominion of its own ideas fully to experience. 
 We have shown the world the finest fruits and the rankest 
 weeds of the Protestant soil; we have most freely felt and 
 most plainly indicated the main Protestant current; and the 
 criticisms we have suffered from our Protestant brethren 
 
12 
 
 have owed much of their edge, to the anxiety of fellow-pas¬ 
 sengers, bitterly upbraiding the officers of the ship because 
 they could not resist the force of the stream that set to¬ 
 wards the rapids and the precipice. The same sympathy, 
 taking often the form of antipathy, that connects the conser¬ 
 vative and historical rank of our own body, with the front- 
 rank of avowed rationalists, connects us all, as the front-rank 
 of Protestantism, w T ith the wdiole body behind; and we must 
 pardon the severity of its criticism upon us, when we con¬ 
 sider that it is an unconscious self-criticism—a parent’s 
 blame of the hereditary taint it has communicated to its 
 child. 
 
 Let us not deceive ourselves in respect to the tendencies 
 of Protestantism, as such, by crediting it with the resist¬ 
 ance which is constantly made to its logical and its spir¬ 
 itual impulses, by tlie permanent instincts of humanity, 
 or by the still unspent force of past epochs of a diamet¬ 
 rically opposed quality. It is not the devout and virtuous 
 class which, in any community or sect, best expresses the 
 animating tendencies of the time and place. Catholic 
 saints do not properly measure and represent the level of 
 Pomanism, or its characteristic influence and sentiments, 
 but rather the common people of that Church any and 
 everywhere. And Unitarian saints—of whom, thank God, 
 many as pure and noble as the calendar of any Church 
 can produce have shed their fragrance upon us and gone 
 up in clouds of glory—do not exhibit the tendencies of our 
 liberal faith. Hor is it the religious portion of Pro¬ 
 testantism that shows the influence of Protestantism. 
 Exceptional and marked piety, is, in all Churches, constitu¬ 
 tional ; due to the devout nature of its subjects, independent 
 
13 
 
 of the theological opinions or the special era and circum¬ 
 stances with which it is associated. Men and women, pious 
 by nature, are pious as Heathen, Jews, or Christians; as 
 Catholics or Protestants; and it matters little under what 
 religious influences they are brought, or on what times they 
 fall. The religious tendencies of an era are indicated satis¬ 
 factorily only by the ideas and sentiments that sway the ✓ 
 unthinking, unspeculative, unconscious masses. Ho opin¬ 
 ions are efficacious over society at large, which are held as 
 opinions, oi\ voluntarily taken up and inculcated. We 
 inculcate opinions for the benefit of future generations, in 
 which we may hope they will appear as blessed prejudices 
 of the blood. For, as a rule, it is only ideas from which 
 men cannot get away, sentiments that are spontaneous, 
 natural, and constant, that exert any shaping and decisive 
 influence over them. “ Opinion,” says Milton, “ is knowl¬ 
 edge in the makingand until it has passed the stage of 
 intellectual effort and conscious will, it is inoperative to 
 any degree worth considering in a large view of things. 
 If we would know the religious tendencies of our Protestant 
 age, (for I deny the existence of any living Catholic Church 
 in an estimate of the world-movements of the time,) we 
 must go outside the Churches, to the vast population, said 
 to be much more than half, perhaps three-quarters, of every 
 considerable community, that goes to Church nowhere; we 
 must notice the deepening hostility of all States to established 
 churches ; the disjunction between science and faith, litera¬ 
 ture and theology; the transference of the faith of the 
 people from the church to the school-house ; the popularity 
 of all, attacks upon the clergy; the acceptance and eleva¬ 
 tion of those ministers, understood to be suspected and dis- 
 
V 
 
 14 . 
 
 countenanced by the rest; the open and extensive sale of 
 infidel books ; the growing use of the Sabbath for recrea¬ 
 tion—not, as abroad, under the smile of the Church, but in 
 direct contempt of its frown ; the easy conscience of the 
 people in the profound secularity of their lives—indicating 
 their contentment in a condition of alienation from religious 
 relations and ideas ; the frequency of suicide ; the increasing 
 
 laxity of the marriage-bond; the defence of scortatory love— 
 
 * 
 
 all marked indications of the decay of religious ideas; the 
 peculiar interest attached to preaching in contradistinction 
 to worship, and the necessity of keeping together the 
 church-going class by the extra allurements of gifted 
 speech ; the general inculcation of morality on utilitarian 
 grounds; the excellence, as citizens and neighbors, of an 
 avowedly irreligious class; the popular and applauded 
 hostility of the philanthropy of the day to the Churches— 
 the most accomplished orators of the times, being high- 
 toned, virtuous, respected men, and virulent assailants of 
 the religious creeds and customs and institutions of the 
 community; the existence of a vast and governing class in 
 this country, felt in all our elections, and more and more 
 shaping our institutions, with whom not only is the higher 
 law in its refined form unknown, but whom religious con¬ 
 siderations of any kind seem to sway not at all; so that 
 an infidel, as such, would not perhaps stand a poor chance 
 as a candidate for the presidency. I do not forget that 
 religious or sectarian prejudices exert a considerable influ¬ 
 ence in our politics. But when w r e remember how 
 numerous and powerful the great religious sects in our 
 country are, it becomes still more striking to think how large 
 must be the body of citizens, without religious prejudices, 
 
15 
 
 that is, for the masses, without religious ideas , when they 
 are the regular reliance of the democratic (which is the log¬ 
 ical) party, in all our great elections. I call it, then, an un- 
 religious age—I do not say irreligious, for that implies active 
 opposition to religion ; not a bad, or an immoral, or a 
 discouraging, or a wicked age—better, doubtless, on the 
 whole, and in respect of the general interests of society, 
 than any that has preceded it—but nevertheless character¬ 
 istically an unreligious age—despite its philanthropy and 
 its throes of sectarian piety, its rights of man, and its self- 
 complacency toward God. 
 
 Nor is this all. It is not only an unreligious age, but it 
 is becoming more and more unreligious. For religious 
 institutions and ideas in our day flourish mainly in the 
 strength of their roots in a religious past, a strength which 
 is constantly diminishing. As respect for rank in England, 
 the remnant of an honest aristocratic system ages in 
 power, is the wholesome vis inertice which prevents the 
 democratic instincts of the age in that country from hurry¬ 
 ing precipitately to their inevitable goal, so the genuine 
 religiousness of ages gone by, whose flavor lingers in our 
 blood, is the most vigorous support the worship of this age 
 enjoys. Whatever public nourishment besides, distinctive 
 and essential religion has in our generation, is due to the ex¬ 
 ceptional devoutness of spirits born out of due time, and to 
 the esprit de corps so characteristic of the day—the love of 
 joint action, the fondness for educational, moral and ethical 
 institutions, the emulation of communities with each other, 
 the partisan rivalry of sects, and the fact that, under the 
 name of religious institutions, we sustain a vast and valu¬ 
 able system of adult education* in thought, humanity and 
 
16 
 
 manners. Our churches, to a great extent, and constantly 
 more and more so, are lecture-foundations—in which the 
 interest is less and less religious, more and more political, 
 social and ethical. The one thing the people are interested 
 in is life, themselves, each other, and the relation of the in¬ 
 side to the outside—of man to his dwelling, of man to man, 
 of man to himself. To make a religion out of self-respect, 
 right-living, self-culture—to insist that aspiration is wor¬ 
 ship, that truth is God, that goodness is religion—is the 
 highest ambition of our modern pulpit. I do not say it in 
 blame, nor in scorn ; for, under the circumstances, it is an 
 honorable ambition, laid upon men by the necessity of jus¬ 
 tifying their own faith to themselves. God is too sacred a 
 word to be lost out of the language; worship too holy a 
 thing not to be held on to on some pretence or other; 
 piety too profound and indestructible an instinct to be 
 abandoned ; and therefore the political and social idealism 
 of our age clothes itself in religious phraseology and forms, 
 out of an honest respect for the past, a sincere self-delusion, 
 and, what is best of all, under an instinctive ora providential 
 guidance. But to say that the animating and characteris¬ 
 tic quality of the American people of the nineteenth cen¬ 
 tury is religion, worship, faith, or that whatever is theo¬ 
 logical and ecclesiastical in jour terms and usages repre¬ 
 sents a living spirit, and not a revered memory, is more 
 than a just discrimination will allow. On the contrary, the 
 science, philosophy and literature of the day are busily en¬ 
 gaged in creating substitutes for religion—and authorizing 
 the continuance of the names and forms and symbols of 
 worship and faith, after asserting, in more or less obvious 
 language, the irrelevancy of the things themselves. 
 
17 
 
 When the Head of an American University, from whom 
 I had the anecdote, inquired of a professor in Berlin, what 
 Humboldt would probably answer, if asked what was his 
 religious faith ?—He said, his reply would probably be : “I 
 am of the religion of all men of science.” 
 
 Doubtless he meant what the lively Frenchman, the ex¬ 
 cellent Catholic! who has just treated the Roman question, 
 means, when he says in praise of the Bolognese as com¬ 
 pared with the Romans, “ They know all that we know; 
 they believe all that we believe, and nothing more.” 
 
 We owe a recognition to the actual and serious faith of 
 science in our day. While Oersted, Whewell and Hugh 
 Miller, and names nearer home, are remembered, w T e are not 
 likely to forget our respect for the union of science and faith. 
 
 Yet the actual weakness of positive faith is visible in 
 nothing so much as in the eager welcome yielded by the 
 professed friends of Christianity to any succor which the sci¬ 
 ence or literature of the day may see fit to bestow, in char¬ 
 ity, upon the Church. The times, indeed, are changed, since 
 science and literature were humble suppliants at the Church- 
 gate, asking her permission to set up their conclusions within 
 her palings; and now religion is thankful if geology, scorn¬ 
 fully passing by, does not throw her hammer at her head, 
 and literature lampoon her in her own pulpit. 
 
 I have been speaking, you will observe, not wholly, yet 
 mainly, of tendencies; and tendencies may be dangerous 
 and extravagant, and yet necessary and providential—a 
 wholesome reaction upon other tendencies still more alarm¬ 
 ing. There have been perilous tendencies to excess of 
 ritual and positive religion in Oriental regions, in past 
 eras, ending in paralysis of the private will, and deteriora- 
 2 
 
18 
 
 tion of humanity. At times, even in the Christian world, 
 there has been too much worship, too constant and formal 
 a reference to God’s will to admit of a proper degree of 
 human freedom. You will not understand me, then, as 
 generally questioning the merits of the age we live in, by 
 calling it an unreligious age, or as disparaging Protestant¬ 
 ism, as if it had not been, and were not still, until honestly 
 exhausted, a valuable and indispensable movement. And 
 for a psychological reason of the utmost importance, to ex¬ 
 plain which is the third step in our journey. I have shown, 
 first, the particular, and next, the general historical reason 
 of the pause of faith; I wish now to set forth the still 
 more fundamental or psychological reason of this pause— 
 the universal reason. 
 
 III. There are two motions of the spirit in relation to God, 
 his Creator and upholder, essential to the very existence of 
 generic or individual Man—a centrifugal and a centripetal 
 motion—the motion that sends man away from God, to 
 learn his freedom, to develope his personal powers and facul¬ 
 ties, relieved of the over-awing and predominating presence 
 of his Author; and the motion that draws him back to God, 
 to receive the inspiration, nurture, and endowment, which 
 he has become strong enough to hold. For man, though a 
 creature of faculties, is still more characteristically, a crea¬ 
 ture of capacities; and his capacities must be developed 
 before they can be filled—his vessel shaped before it can 
 go to the fountain. He must have freedom before he can 
 yield obedience; he must possess a will before he can sur¬ 
 render it; affections, trained to love visible objects, before 
 they can love the unseen Source; intellectual and moral 
 independence, to make his loyalty significant, and his 
 
19 
 
 service blessed. Accordingly, tlie origin and history of 
 the race exhibits the care with which God has hidden him¬ 
 self away from his creatures in the infancy of their exist¬ 
 ence, lest they should be scorched and shrivelled in the 
 glory of his presence. And yet his whole purpose is to 
 create a race that can live in his conscious society, without 
 
 « 
 
 losing their individuality and freedom in gaining his inspi¬ 
 ration and guidance. The whole vexed question of the tar¬ 
 diness of the great Dispensations, and of the necessity of 
 Revelation itself, is to be solved only in the light of this 
 law, the sistole or disastole, or double motion of our spirits. 
 Man is not made acquainted with God by nature, and God 
 does not come into his earliest stages of existence with 
 distinctness, because spiritual creation must precede spirit¬ 
 ual salvation. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the 
 second man, is the Lord from heaven: the first Adam was 
 created a living soul; the second Adam a quickening 
 spirit. Man’s creation is not complete at his birth, but con¬ 
 tinues on in his development as an intellectual and moral 
 being; and this development is primarily more important 
 than the use to which his faculties are put; as the life, 
 health, and growth of our children are more important than 
 any thing they can do for us, or any affections they mani¬ 
 fest towards us, in their infancy and youth. If w T e view the 
 history of the race in a comprehensive way, we shall ob¬ 
 serve that it has been providentially occupied in all its 
 earlier eras with itself, establishing what may be called its 
 self-hood; and that what is termed natural religion—which 
 is only an inverted self-worship, in which man makes his 
 own deity to suit his tastes and feelings, and, of course, does 
 not make him too strong for his own self-will—is then the 
 
20 
 
 only witness of the living God—a witness so meek, as not 
 to interfere with the providential process of setting man np 
 in his own right and liberty. Revealed religion—the only 
 religion that ever has had authority, or which, by the nature 
 of the case, can have power to awe, restrain, and elevate 
 man, or to overcome the congenital bias of his nature— 
 being something outside of, and independent of his person¬ 
 ality—has necessarily been subsequent to his creation ; 
 confined to special representative races and eras; and has 
 applied itself through the slow form of institutional influ¬ 
 ences, in order to gain a greater power in the end, because 
 over a more freely and fully developed being, surrendering 
 himself voluntarily to a control which enlarges his true 
 freedom, and accepting a liberty in divine dependence, of 
 which his previous independence has been only a fictitious 
 foreshadowing. 
 
 Thus, taking in all history, we may consider the educa¬ 
 tional orbit of the race, as completing itself under natural 
 and revealed religion, as its centrifugal and centripetal 
 forces ; natural religion being, as I have said, in its last 
 analysis, self-worship—and of course intensely favorable to 
 self-assertion, individuality, and self-development, or alien¬ 
 ation from God as a necessary preparation for the worship 
 of God in the end—and revealed religion, being the essen¬ 
 tial condition of emancipation from self and connection 
 with God, as a power outside of and independent of man— 
 or, God coming to possess, and fill, and occupy the soul he 
 has been making for his dwelling. 
 
 But within the domain of revealed religion, and in 
 Christendom, the same centrifugal and centripetal forces 
 continue to act; of course under the modifying influences 
 
21 
 
 of revelation. Here, the World represents the centrifugal, 
 the Church the centripetal force; the world upholding, 
 asserting, and defending Humanity, its freedom, the unim¬ 
 peded play of its tastes and faculties and desires—favoring 
 the development of the utmost energy, enterprise, and 
 individuality;—the Church steadily denouncing humanity, 
 as depraved, corrupt, unclean, partial, condemned — its 
 freedom, license; its independence, rebellion; its only 
 hope and salvation in and from God. Thus the world, and 
 the Church, notwithstanding, or rather because of this 
 disagreement, has each had truth on its side, and each 
 been performing indispensable duties—one making man, 
 and the other saving him ; one giving him a Being to be 
 saved , and the other putting salvation into his being—one 
 making him “a living soul,” the other, “a quickening 
 spirit,” The world, and that portion of the Church, which 
 has been with the world in this quarrel, has been mainly 
 right in asserting the dignity and rectitude of human 
 nature ; the Church mainly right in asserting the destitute¬ 
 ness and depravity of human nature—for one looked at 
 man with reference only to his faculties, the other with ref¬ 
 erence only to his destii^. One looked at him, as a vessel 
 of honor, in the shape originally given it by his creator, 
 finished and perfect; the other as a vessel, empty and wait¬ 
 ing for a divine fullness, which should prove its true 
 ennobling. There was nothing inconsistent in these ideas. 
 Both were true—and each did injustice to the other’s real 
 meaning, but not to the other’s terms—and, greatly as the 
 earnest discussion touching the import and the fitness of 
 the phrases used to convey the ideas of these opposite parties 
 was needed to clear up the real truth, we can afford now to 
 
9 9 
 
 w w 
 
 drop it, if prepared, on both sides, to acknowledge the half¬ 
 ness of our antagonistic statements. 
 
 And within the Church, as well as within Christendom, 
 these two forces have been at work, under the names of 
 Romanism and Protestantism ; Romanism representing the 
 centripetal force of Christianity, Protestantism the -centri¬ 
 fugal ; Romanism standing for external or divine authority, 
 Protestantism for internal liberty and individual freedom ; 
 Romanism representing God’s condescension to man, Pro¬ 
 testantism man’s aspiration toward perfection ; Romanism 
 leading to worship, Protestantism to work. But there is 
 no doubt that Romanism, merely as a religion, fulfilled its 
 function more perfectly than Protestantism, whose main 
 services have not been to religion, but directly to humanity, 
 and to religion only indirectly. bTot that her influences 
 were not vastly, nay, indispensably necessary, even to the 
 ultimate triumphs of faith; but they have not been in the ' 
 w T ay of bringing man’s soul more under the idea or the 
 inspiration and sway of God, but rather of conscience, and 
 intellect, and will—a magnificent development of human 
 faculties and powers—but not, as experience proves, ade¬ 
 quate to the religious wants of man; to the peace and rest 
 of the soul, the nurture of the sweet and unselfish affections 
 of the Gospel. ^ 
 
 Is it not plain, then, that as Protestants of the Protestants, 
 we are at the apogee of our orbit; that in us the centrifugal 
 epoch of humanity has for this swing of the pendulum, at 
 least reached its bound. For one cycle we have come, I 
 think, nearly to the end of our self-directing, self-asserting, 
 self-developing, self-culturing faculties ; to the end of our 
 honest interest in this necessary, alternate movement. We 
 
23 
 
 see it to be so well established in Protestantism at large, 
 that it does not need our leadership—that it is sure to do 
 its work and complete its oscillation independently of us. 
 And we are very weary of the toil it has thrown upon us; 
 the speculation, inquiry, and self-sustaining energy we 
 have put forth under its compulsion. Moreover, having 
 enlarged our faculties, we want a use for them; having 
 achieved our freedom, we know not what to do with it; 
 having cultivated our wills, consciences, and intellects to 
 the utmost at present possible, they cry out for objects that 
 they do not find. And this is the painful pause—this the 
 suspended animation, seen and felt throughout Christen¬ 
 dom—especially throughout Protestant Christendom—and 
 more particularly throughout our own more Protestantized 
 province of the Church. Why is it that the moment we 
 find ourselves in possession of men, whom genius, character, 
 and scholarship fit to lead us in our logical career to 
 new victories and the extension of our faith, they almost 
 uniformly become paralyzed by doubts and scruples, and 
 lose their interest in the progress they might assure ? It 
 is simply because the small elevation which gives them 
 command of us, reveals to them the absence of any more 
 road, in the direction we have been going. Hot brave 
 enough, or quite clear enough, to announce this, they allow 
 themselves to seem smitten with sudden indifference to 
 their former interests, and leave the rank and file to 
 blunder on and find out the truth for themselves. Of later 
 years this has been our almost constant experience as a 
 body. The moment we have given our faith to our leaders, 
 that moment, without changing their allegiance or opinions, 
 they have lost their own faith in themselves and our cause. 
 
24 
 
 Of course this state of tilings lias been attended with other 
 results. Not a few, less conscious of the unrest, weariness, and 
 dissatisfaction of ultra-protestantism, have pronounced the 
 recoil upon it they began to notice a servile and dangerous 
 retrogradation, and, to resist it, have rushed on, reckless of 
 consequences, into a still bolder self-assertion. Like the 
 new war-rocket, which, having expended its first force, 
 lights with its last ember a fresh fuse that propels another 
 projectile far beyond the place where it falls itself, Pro¬ 
 testantism, which has exhausted its own orbit, flings off 
 into space its eccentric particles, henceforth to be contented 
 with a geocentric, not a heliocentric revolution. Thus the 
 school of Mill and the secularists abroad, and the Emer¬ 
 sonian and transcendental school at home, acknowledge 
 only one true movement in humanity—the egoistic—the 
 self-asserting and self-justifying movement—which is Pro¬ 
 testantism broken loose from general history, taken out of 
 its place in the providential plan, and made the whole, instead 
 of the part. Toward this position we have of necessity 
 continually tended, and into this many of our bravest and 
 best spirits have gone to dwell, and all of them have been 
 to visit. And now that the ecclesiastical leaders of ultra- 
 protestantism begin to be anxious to turn their forces, not 
 back, but round and up, we may expect to see literary 
 and secular leaders arise wdio will have none of their 
 scruples, because little of their experience, and who will 
 press on and inspirit the flagging ranks—that for a time 
 may take new courage in the hearing of fresh and cheery 
 voices, and seem to themselves to have great victories 
 before them in the old field. Science, art, and culture will 
 place themselves in the van, which the Church lately held 
 
25 
 
 but now deserts—and there are not a few who do not quite 
 say, but hint clearly enough to be understood by the wise, 
 that the Church of the future will be the diffusion of a , 
 universal intelligence, in which natural laws shall take the 
 place of bibles and prayer-books, and Science and Art be 
 the high and only priests. 
 
 If, however, universal history is to be heeded, if the 
 great common instincts of humanity are prophetic, if 
 religion .be the earliest and latest, the deepest and the 
 highest interest of man, then we may trust that the sense of 
 want, the yearning for rest, the longing for legitimate 
 authority, the expectation of relief, the general feeling 
 throughout the devouter portion of Protestantism of dissat¬ 
 isfaction with the existing attitude of things, with a secret 
 faith that God or Christ is about to interpose for its relief, 
 indicates the conception—I do not say the birth—of a new 
 religious epoch, to be distinguished as much by faith, as 
 the last has been by doubt—an epoch in which the temple 
 that man has been building and beautifying shall be occu¬ 
 pied by its Lord—in which the passive side of humanity 
 shall enjoy its long-neglected rights; and when, instead of 
 seeking God as the solar system is seeking the star Aries 
 in the constellation Hercules, He shall seek us, as the 
 shepherd in the parable, leaving the ninety and nine of the. 
 flock, sought the lost lamb and folded it in his arms ; and 
 in place of self-assertion, self-abnegation and life in God, 
 shall again become the type of human experience. 
 
 Even the intimations of the destructive philosophy of the 
 positivists, which ends in a ritual of worship, and the ap¬ 
 plication of the Hamiltonian metaphysics to orthodoxy, 
 wdiich puts the reason of religion as the mean product of 
 
26 
 
 two extremes of absurdity, seem to be lending unwilling 
 testimony to the same yearning for a settled and external¬ 
 ized faith. 
 
 Who can believe, or who, intimately acquainted with the 
 inner life of this age, desires to believe, that the nineteenth 
 century, however important in its place, is to be indefinitely 
 continued ? Or that the spirit and temper of this inventive, 
 bustling, irreverent, and self-asserting time, is to govern the 
 whole future; a time in which knowingness, curiosity, wit, 
 covetousness, and publicity, external accomplishments, arts, 
 and achievements, have so largely taken the place of the 
 deeper passions and richer experiences of the soul; and in 
 which conjugal love, parental care, filial reverence, domes¬ 
 tic quietude, true friendship, spiritual art, poetic imagina¬ 
 tion, and private peace, seem so lamentably in abeyance. 
 Plan’s body, tasked by this quick time, is furrowed with 
 the lash, and begs for mercy; his nerves have come to the 
 surface with the unnatural strain; his spirits fagged, or 
 unduly stimulated, send him moping or maudlin to the 
 mad-house, or dig him an early grave. Meanwhile his 
 proud work is to moor the hemispheres side by side with 
 his metallic cable; to decant the oceans with the syphon 
 of his Isthmus canal; or to swallow the continent when he 
 flings toward the Pacific his iron rod. His insolent pleas¬ 
 ure is to dance over dread Niagara on the showman’s 
 rope, or to hang above it in the slippery clouds, till he 
 dwindles it to a ripple. His architecture, gay with emula¬ 
 tive cost, covers cheerless homes; his churches, splendid 
 with sectarian rivalry, shelter unworshipping hearts. His 
 philanthropic assemblies, crowded and frequent, breathe 
 violence and hatred, while they advocate the rights of 
 
27 
 
 man, and rebuke the Church in the tones of Mephistopheles. 
 An age, that has to be busy to save itself from knowing 
 its own destitution ! to which leisure is a burden and 
 solitude a calamity! What is there that we can desire to 
 see perpetuated in the peculiar spirit—I do not say in the 
 institutions, achievements, or victories—of an age like 
 this ? And when this spirit which now animates the 
 highest and most influential classes of society, and pro¬ 
 duces the self-criticism, the disintegrating individualism, 
 the pride that kills hospitality, and the strain of social emu¬ 
 lation which makes elegant fortresses of men’s homes; the 
 esoteric want behind the exoteric abundance; when the 
 cold polish, the brilliant surface, the dead enthusiasm of 
 the best and most characteristic products of the nineteenth 
 century, come to strike downwards and to be seen in con¬ 
 nection with the inferior culture, the more vulgar tastes, 
 the coarser grain of the masses, as they surely will, we 
 may then perhaps discover the origin of the alarming 
 symptoms of our national life, its vulgar credulity, and as 
 vulgar infidelity, its denial of so many things that are true, 
 and affirmation of so many things that are false; its un¬ 
 spirituality and spiritism ; its no faith in the Old Testament, 
 and interest in the Mormon Bible and the Spiritual 
 Telegraph.* 
 
 * “ I bear my cotemporaries boast of the enlightened age they live in. I do 
 not find this light. To me it seems that we state our problems somewhat more 
 distinctly than heretofore. I do not find that we solve them. We are very lumi¬ 
 nous in our doubts. Never, I think, since the world began, was so wide a pros¬ 
 pect of lucid perplexity laid open to the speculative mind. We walk our laby¬ 
 rinth in clear day, but we don’t get out of it. Society and Religion lie dissected 
 before us. We analyze, detect, repudiate; we rush back and gather up the frag¬ 
 ments of what a moment before we had torn in pieces. We embrace again the 
 old form and the old creeds, and we embrace them at the last, perhaps, with as 
 much of despair as of hope.”—Thorndale, on Conflict of Opinions , page 18. 
 
28 
 
 Nobody acquainted with that portion of the modern liter¬ 
 ature of all nations which indicates the inw r ard yearnings of 
 our instant humanity, can fail to acknowledge the omni¬ 
 presence of a dissatisfied, expectant, and thoroughly be¬ 
 wildered, spirit. The cultivated mind of the rising genera¬ 
 tion, wdiether in England or America—that of the young 
 men and women who will help largely to form the next 
 age—is not so much aggressive or progressive as in a 
 painful equipoise which forbids healthful motion—melan¬ 
 cholic, sad, astray or afloat. What Lamartine says so well 
 of one of his characters, “ II fut ne fatigue,” may be said 
 of the most intellectual and spiritual portion of our youth 
 of both sexes. The inherited thought of a Protestant epoch 
 of three centuries’ duration, is born tired, in the meditative 
 mind of our generation. As a necessity of this state of 
 things, the Protestant Church has lost its hold of the two 
 ends of society—the cultivated and the uncultivated end— 
 of the head, because it is under the dominion of paralyzing 
 ideas, which leave faith a fiction and worship a mockery ; 
 of the foot, because it is no longer controlled by that author¬ 
 ity which a living and satisfied faith can alone put into the 
 wills and into the actions of the governing classes. The in¬ 
 fidelity of our age is not commonly an insolent, self-satisfied, 
 flippant criticism of evidences, or a sour and bitter assault 
 upon Christianity, although we still have that. It is, in the 
 cultivated classes—and with frightful frequency there—a 
 silent, thoughtful, sad consciousness that the soul has no 
 faith, and possesses no religion except the religions senti¬ 
 ment, and knows no God and no Saviour—with a tender 
 reserve toward others, a gentle unwillingness to bring into 
 their own condition those in whom faith still has any exist- 
 
29 
 
 ence. And in the uncultivated classes, it is a loss for the 
 time being, in the absorbing interest of life itself, enriched 
 with the emancipated rights and opportunities which this 
 self-asserting epoch has given to the masses—of any sense 
 of a need of religion, with a decay of the affections, in¬ 
 stincts, and usages connected with it—a state frightful to 
 consider—not in its immediate, but only in its coming 
 social consequences! 
 
 Meanwhile, into the empty crypts and chapels of the 
 human mind have rushed, as by the attraction of a vacuum, 
 the succedaneums and lieutenancies of Worship and Faith. 
 The instructed and thoughtful have attempted to revive the 
 worship of Nature ; while demonology and witchcraft have 
 amused the supernatural instincts of the people at large. 
 The microscope and the refracting mirror have become the 
 chief windows of the soul for the educated, whose only 
 spiritual world, it would often seem, now lies in the inter¬ 
 stices of the physical laws of the universe ; w T hile the people 
 have been bowing down to patent reapers and sewing- 
 machines, the daguerreotype and the stereoscope, trance 
 mediums and homoeopathic miracles—and both classes have 
 made hero-worship—whether of a horse-tamer or a chess- 
 conqueror—the unconscious indulgence of their disused 
 and suffering organs of veneration and faith. 
 
 It is not strange in a state of things so humiliating, so 
 unsatisfactory, so wearisome for thoughtful spirits as this— 
 so alarming, too, if alarm were not impious as a conclusion, 
 for lovers of their race and their country—that questful in¬ 
 quiries should be made of the past, of philosophy, of expe¬ 
 rience, of the soul itself, as to the probable issue of this 
 epoch. Nor is it to be at all wondered at, that so many, 
 
30 
 
 by either positive or negative consent, should be now 
 acknowledging a longing for a revival of the ages of Faith. 
 Many, already, of the ablest heads and strongest hearts of 
 the time, not chargeable, certainly, with ignorance of 
 science, history, or philosophy, like Newman abroad, and 
 Brownson at home, have gone boldly and bravely back 
 into the Catholic Church, and with them hundreds of the 
 worshipful, tender, and thoughtful young men and women 
 of Protestant Christendom. Without understanding their 
 necessity or their solace, I confess, for one, I value the 
 costly testimony which such a course has given to the 
 worth of the fundamental idea of Catholicism, in a time 
 when puritanical prejudices and terrestrialism combine to 
 confound the superstitious and accidental usages and cus¬ 
 toms of the Catholic Church, with its essential idea, and so 
 to blind the Protestant w T orld to its own interest in the other 
 and larger half of its integral history. 
 
 Protestantism—for I will not say, the Protestant Church 
 —stands, and nobly stands, for human rights—for man 
 as against rulers, kings, institutions, ignorance, want, vice, 
 sloth; stands for morality—which is good usage and wise 
 custom, for citizenship, individuality, faculty, will and 
 knowledge. The Catholic Church stood for revelation, 
 for God condescending, for supernaturalism, for bread 
 from heaven, for the authority, the support, and the 
 benediction of living and divine persons, outside of hu¬ 
 manity and above it. As such, independently of its his¬ 
 torical identification with Christianity, Pomanism had 
 a sacred and indefeasible right in the history of humanity. 
 It represented God coming to man—as Protestantism rep¬ 
 resents man coming to himself—and then, perchance, 
 
 l 
 
31 
 
 and perchance not, going to the Father who comes to 
 meet him. The Church, in every heathen age, has been 
 some rude but potent organization of the idea of God 
 brooding over and descending upon his children ; the 
 natural priesthood of the world, having been the spirits, in 
 whom, however crudely, the sense of God overpowered 
 the sense of themselves. What the natural religions of 
 the world thus preluded and typified, the positive re¬ 
 ligions of history have distinctly articulated and ful¬ 
 filled. The Christian Church, in its earlier ages, did not 
 embody, nor did it most need to embody, the morality 
 of Christ; for at our time of day, morality is the neces¬ 
 sary product of knowledge, which, in emancipating the 
 individual, and all individuals, gradually makes order, 
 decency—in short, morality, the only possible condition 
 ■under which human beings can live together—which is 
 a sufficient account of the tang of worldliness and in¬ 
 adequacy which disflavors the phrase Morality. Morality, 
 though a slow growth, is a sure one, and follows in the 
 wake of education and freedom—matching precisely the 
 political and civil condition of every community. 
 
 But the Christian Church, embodied and represented 
 what is no growth of civilization, and what is indepen¬ 
 dent of ages and grades of culture—the doctrine and 
 presence of the Holy Ghost—the descent of God into the 
 world, the gift of himself to his children as the jpleroma 
 —the only fullness for the infinite emptiness of the hu¬ 
 man soul. It represented, in short, what alone is entitled 
 to be called religion—the bond and contract between God 
 and man—in which the superior party is God fulfilling his 
 promise, not man observing his obligation. In natures, 
 
32 
 
 \ 
 
 whose constitutional individuality had been sufficiently 
 secured by a high organization, or by propitious cir¬ 
 cumstances, the Catholic Church, by the supply of the 
 Holy Spirit which it furnished, and the lively faith it 
 communicated, worked those miracles of saintly character, 
 artistic beauty, and divine poetry, which include, as their 
 after-birth, even the great ornaments of the age im¬ 
 mediately succeeding the Reformation. But it is equally 
 true, that the masses, though immensely and benignantly 
 supported, emancipated and elevated by the earlier ages 
 of the Church, were in the deepest need of the centrifugal 
 movement, which w r e call Protestantism, when it came—or, 
 rather, when their want of it produced the reaction which 
 was its final cause. For the Church had absorbed the 
 world; the divine had overflowed the shallow channel of 
 humanity, and it needed to be deepened even at the 
 expense of becoming temporarily dry, that it might hold 
 larger measures from the river of God. 
 
 o 
 
 The particular, the general, the universal reason for 
 the suspense of faith, we have now successively set forth. 
 It remains only, in conclusion, to look at the form in 
 which we may hope that faith will rally and go on. And 
 this brings us face to face, at last, wfith what w r e have 
 been secretly envisaging all the time, the Church question, 
 which is the real question of the earnest, religious thought 
 of the time, and agitates itself and us, under all sorts of dis¬ 
 guises. Many, indeed, are striving, with all their might, to 
 prove that there is no such question; that we have got by 
 it; that it is treason to the nineteenth century, to human- 
 
33 
 
 ity, and to the future, to allow any reality in it; that only 
 priest-craft and quackery give it a seeming importance for 
 their own ends; that the world is going on well enough 
 upon its present tack, and wants only more of what it has 
 already got so much. But these encouraging skeptics cry 
 Peace, peace, when there is no peace. The Church ques¬ 
 tion is a real question in all Protestant countries—most so 
 in Germany, in England, in America;—and it must be met 
 and discussed with a courage which it does not yet find out¬ 
 side of the innermost circles of confidential scholarship, and 
 the private communion of hungering hearts. 
 
 Who does not see that the fatal misgiving at the bottom 
 of the mind of Protestantism is this—Have the external insti¬ 
 tutions of religion any authority but expediency ? do they 
 stand for and represent any thing but one portion of the 
 human race educating another portion of the human race, 
 which, in the last analysis, is self-culture? And if they stand 
 only for self-culture, on what other basis do they stand than 
 schools and colleges? Hone whatever, the logical mind 
 will answer, except that they are religious schools and col¬ 
 leges. Make your ordinary schools and colleges, your 
 family education, religious , and you may dispense with the 
 Church, which has no basis but expediency, and is founded 
 wholly in man’s wit. Accordingly, it is a very common 
 and spreading feeling, that our religious institutions are ap¬ 
 proaching their natural term of existence. I know, by per¬ 
 sonal conference wfith some of the most living minds of Italy 
 and Germany, that patriotism is fast getting to be the only 
 religion of the upper classes, and while their ritual is music 
 and revolution, their immortality is to die for fatherland. 
 And why not, if religion means only human development 
 3 
 
34 
 
 and self-perfection ? What furnishes these, is the highest in¬ 
 terest of society and man ; and if the school does it better 
 than the Church, the school ought to, and will, supersede 
 the Church, as, indeed, it already occasionally has done 
 in what are thought to be very advanced neighborhoods 
 of this country. But the Protestant of a less uncompromis¬ 
 ing kind, may reply, You overlook the fact that Christian¬ 
 ity is a positive revelation of truth and duty, and that the 
 Church, having to embody this revelation, has an excuse 
 and a reason, nay, a necessity for existing. But suppose 
 he is asked, Has not this revelation emptied its contents 
 into human reason, into history and civilization, until the 
 Gospel of Christ is so mixed with the moral and spiritual 
 life of society, that philosophy and practical wisdom, nay, 
 that Society itself, is wiser than the Church? What special 
 or exclusive custody of the Gospel given to the world has 
 the Church ? and if we have the Gospel, what want we of 
 the Church ? I know no answer to this question, if the Gos¬ 
 pel mean only or chiefly what it now passes for with most 
 noble spirits, a mere revelation of truth. It is more. It is a 
 gift of life, or communication of power, which is continuous, 
 its force and virtue always residing in its living fountain, 
 making the Church, through which it is given, not a mere 
 reservoir that may be emptied, but a permanent conduit, or 
 channel, through which flows down the eternal river of 
 God. But is the Church, in fact, such a channel, supposing 
 even that the fountain be alive and flowing, that God be 
 really immanent, communicating a force not merely in but 
 to our souls through His Gospel and by His Son ? Is not 
 society itself now, in its total organization, the vehicle 
 through which the consciousness of God, opened by Christ, 
 
35 
 
 reveals itself to, and nourishes and makes divine, the life 
 and heart of man ? In short, is not that invisible Church, 
 which, without noise of hammer or saw, secretly builds itself 
 up in the spiritual life of humanity, far more real, life-giving, 
 and sustaining, than the visible Church, which the extant 
 religious institutions of Christendom claim to be? The 
 query is plausible, and is proposed by noble men among us. 
 But has it only an affirmative answer ? Far be it from me to 
 deny that the Holy Spirit, to an extent seldom appreciated, 
 that God himself, to a degree infinitely beyond any ordinary 
 or possible recognition, that Christ, in these latter ages, in 
 an immeasurable sum, is the secret life of humanity. Were 
 there not a vast deal more of God, and Christ, and the Holy 
 Ghost in the world than the world knows of, or thinks for, 
 w T e should go to ruin swiftly indeed. But I am persuaded 
 that we have, as social and terrestrial beings living in defin¬ 
 ite historical relations, a great deal more of obligation to 
 the visible than to the invisible Church. The invisible 
 Church takes due care of itself and of us; the visible 
 Church is committed to our hands. I do not say that the 
 visible is as important as the invisible, or as great in its in¬ 
 fluence, but only that it is our charge, because, of the two, 
 it alone is within our voluntary reach. Moreover, I am 
 convinced, that, in accordance with the whole analogies 
 of Providence, every radically important relationship of 
 humanity is, and must be, embodied in an external institu¬ 
 tion ; the relation of the exclusive affections in the family, 
 the social relations in society, the political in the state, the 
 religious in the Church. 
 
 I am well enough aware that the ennXeota of the Scrip¬ 
 tures is the collection or congregation of the the 
 
36 
 
 called. But it is only an illustration of the common rule 
 governing our humanity in all things, that the collection 
 or calling together of human beings in any one of their 
 radical relationships, or about any one of their essential 
 needs or aspirations, develops at once something which 
 none of the individual parties could have predicted or 
 anticipated, or in himself possessed—a pre-ordained conse¬ 
 quent of relationship — a “tertium quid” which is very 
 different from any of the elements of which it is composed. 
 Thus Man is a domestic, a social, a political, an ecclesias¬ 
 tical being; but it is absurd to say that any individual 
 man is this, each one of these things, the family, society, 
 the State, the Church, being impossible to an isolated 
 being, and even inconceivable until it has been experienced 
 as the fruit of a community of life. There is a Church in 
 humanity, as there is a family state, a social state, and a 
 political state—a Church which has always been devel¬ 
 oped, and has been the principal source of the religious 
 life of humanity. Christianity takes advantage of a pre¬ 
 viously existent institution, which was not simply Jewish, 
 but human, when she pours her life through the Church. 
 This is the reason why Christ established his Church, but 
 not the Church; and why so little of the thought and in¬ 
 spiration of our Lord is used to re-construct an institution 
 already organized, through which his spirit was to flow; 
 but that spirit was no less shut up in an institution and an 
 organization than is the family, differing by various shades 
 and usages as that does, but always tending to its pure and 
 holy type of strict monogamy; or than the State is, or 
 than society is. 
 
 Would that I could develop here, at a time so forgetful 
 
37 
 
 and reckless of the dependence of society on organization, 
 the doctrine of institutions , the only instruments, except 
 literature and the blood, by which the riches of ages, the 
 experience and wisdom of humanity, are handed down ; in¬ 
 stitutions the only constant and adequate teachers of the 
 masses, and which are to the average mind all that honor, 
 conscience and intellect are to exceptional men and women. 
 But I forbear. 
 
 Christianity, nothing until an institution, seized the 
 Church as the pre-established channel and organ of her 
 influence and transmission, the conduit of her living water, 
 the vehicle of her Holy Spirit; she put her own external 
 marks upon it, as well as her own interior life into it, and 
 has at length made the Church to mean her Church, as 
 the Bible has come to mean her sacred books. All sacred 
 books predicted the Bible, which has summed them up, 
 and dismissed them from duty; and the Church in the wil¬ 
 derness predicted the Church in Christian civilization 
 which should publish the eternal Word. Thus the Church 
 is neither new nor old, neither fixed nor transitional; it is 
 simply living, and, therefore, like the family and the State, 
 is costumed and uncostumed, is cold, is warm, is recog¬ 
 nized, is unrecognized, is Homan, Greek, English, Ameri¬ 
 can, but always the Church, the organic, external vehicle 
 of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to aggregate or congre¬ 
 gate humanity. The individual can join the Church only 
 in his capacity of a member of the human race. It is his 
 humanity, or oneness with and dependence upon his race, 
 that makes him eligible to Church membership, as it is his 
 relationship to his kind that alone makes the bond of the 
 
38 
 
 family, of society, or of tlie State, and existence in them 
 possible to him. 
 
 The common consciousness of God, which is the Gospel, 
 none partake who wilfully cut themselves off from the 
 body of Christ. It is therefore a fact (and anybody may 
 see it who reads the recent letter to his congregation of the 
 gifted lieresiarch of this neighborhood, the ultimator of 
 Protestant negations) that hostility to the Church is 
 fatal to the memory of the spirit of Christ once possessed, 
 much more to the attainment of it; that the unction of the 
 Holy one is lost even by those unconscious of their misfor¬ 
 tune, in this only possible form of concision. 
 
 In his individual capacity, as an inorganic, unrelated, 
 independent being, a man has not, and cannot have, the 
 affections, internal experiences and dispositions, or the 
 powers and blessings, which we can, and may, and will re¬ 
 ceive in his corporate capacity—in either or any of the 
 great departments of his Humanity, the family, the State, 
 the Church. Nor is there any complete and satisfactory, 
 perhaps no real way, to come into this corporate capacity, 
 except through a publicly recognized and legitimate organ¬ 
 ization, whether domestic, political, or religious. “ The 
 powers that be are ordained of God’’;—the laws governing 
 the family order, are, in each country for the time, divinely 
 empowered, to shield what society did not make and cannot 
 unmake ; and the Historical Church for the time being, and 
 the place in which it organizes the Word of God, and in¬ 
 stitutes the channel of divine grace, is a divine institution, 
 connection with which is the normal, not the only, condition 
 of salvation. I am not to be driven from this ground by 
 arguments drawn from the number and variety of churches, 
 
39 
 
 or the profitless character of many of them, or their often 
 imperfect and miserable administration ; any more than the 
 unhappy marriages, or the wretched laws applicable to 
 them, should drive me from my reverence for the family, 
 as a divine institution and order. I recognize the fact that 
 in all Christian countries the main channel of the religious 
 life of the people is an external organization. I know that 
 the whole Gospel cannot be taught to individuals as indi¬ 
 viduals. I believe that the Holy Spirit communicates with 
 Humanity, and not with private persons. God speaks to 
 men, individual men, through their consciences; but the 
 Holy Spirit is God coming into the world through his 
 Word, a living Word, but still a word, a spoken, taught, 
 published word, which is neither communicated to indi¬ 
 viduals, nor from individuals, but from the Church to 
 Humanity. This doctrine does not deny open relations be¬ 
 tween individual men and their Maker; does not deny 
 spiritual influences to private souls ; but it denies that the 
 Holy Ghost is to be confounded with these private whis¬ 
 pers, or that the religious life of the world is mainly due to 
 these independent and inorganic suggestions. 
 
 “Ho prophecy is of any private interpretation.” That 
 view of Christianity which makes it the magnificent out- 
 birth of a great private individual, the Galilean peasant, 
 saint, philosopher, and seer; or of the Gospel which makes 
 it a business between one private man, namely, one’s-self, 
 and another private man, Jesus Christ; or of religion which, 
 leaving out the bond which is the Church, makes it a mat¬ 
 ter between a man and his God ; or of the Church which 
 establishes it fundamentally in the personal experience and 
 worth of every good man, is a view false to the constitution 
 
40 
 
 of humanity, the conditions of man’s historic existence and 
 development, a profound psychological, or a wide practical 
 analysis—false to the wants, experiences, instincts, and im¬ 
 aginations of men. It is the cause and consequence, the 
 consequence and cause, of the disintegrating ideas and 
 usages which are now creating the injurious and unsatis¬ 
 factory aspects of our Christian civilization—and as such, I 
 have now, in conscious infirmity, and with an appalling 
 sense of crudity and blindness, excusable only because the 
 age is crude and groping, attempted to set forth the princi¬ 
 pal grounds of it. 
 
 What, then, have we to do, waiting on God’s help, to re¬ 
 animate the Church, but heartily to recognize the existing 
 religious institutions of Christendom as the chosen channel 
 through which the divine Word is seeking to descend into 
 Humanity and the world ? Do you ask whether, upon the 
 theory that the Church contains the power of God, and is a 
 channel of influences independent of human wfll, we have 
 any ability to increase or diminish its contribution? or wheth¬ 
 er our recognition of its presence and working can touch its 
 efficacy ? I reply, that whatever else we know not, we may 
 safely assume to know this, that no view of God’s agency, 
 or Christ’s, or the Holy Ghost’s, which sets aside human 
 responsibility, or ignores human will, or makes the action 
 of any of them independent of the mental, moral, and spir¬ 
 itual organization of humanity, which they are aiming to 
 bless and save, can be a sound or true view. You might 
 as well attempt to disconnect the freedom of the arm that 
 moves the organ barrel from the previously arranged teeth, 
 and springs, and pipes of the organ itself, or the freedom of 
 the stream from the configuration of the banks that make the 
 
41 
 
 $ 
 
 river, as disconnect man’s freedom and responsibility from 
 God’s freedom and help. A revelation comes only to a 
 being made to receive and capable of receiving revelations; 
 the Holy Ghost comes only to a being made to receive and 
 capable of receiving the Holy Ghost; the Church exists, 
 and is designed for a being fitted to receive spiritual life 
 and salvation through a Church, and his fitness lies in his 
 having faculties and powers corresponding to, not in any 
 degree identical with, the faculties and powers of the Being 
 wdio makes revelations, sends the Holy Spirit, and animates 
 the Church. The seed has relations to the sun, and it must 
 germinate in the dark, and press up to the surface, before 
 it can receive the direct beams of its God. There are facul- 
 ties in man that must lay hold on God, as there are powers 
 in God that will lay hold on man ; the initiation is to be 
 taken now by one, now by the other—but any theory of 
 the Church, or of the Holy Spirit, which violates, paralyzes, 
 or in any way disparages the activity and responsibility of 
 man’s own will in seeking God, is false to human nature 
 and to God. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Church, as a divine and specific institu¬ 
 tion, having the stewardship of the Holy Ghost and the dis¬ 
 pensation of the Word of God, is to be maintained and up¬ 
 held in its external form as a separate and distinct, a preci¬ 
 ous and indispensable interest of humanity. All the ten¬ 
 dencies to merge it in other interests and organizations, to 
 break down the barriers that define its sphere, to extin¬ 
 guish the lineaments of its supernatural origin and super¬ 
 human functions, to secularize (I do not say to liberalize) its 
 sacred day, to empty its rites and forms of mystic signifi¬ 
 cance, to rationalize its teachings, are to be resisted. The 
 
t 
 
 42 
 
 Church is to be content with its religious function and office. 
 It is not the source and vehicle of the general culture of so¬ 
 ciety ; it is not the guide and critic of science, and art, and 
 social progress. These precious interests have other pro¬ 
 tectors and inspirers. Let science and philosophy, the 
 schools and the journals, the critics and the social reformers, 
 fulfil their own high and important tasks. The Church 
 would be blind to her own interests, not to rejoice in, and to 
 bless their exertions, and to pray for their success. But she 
 has her own peculiar and precious work to do, her own sacred 
 department to fill, which cannot be administered with the 
 highest success in commixture or in partnership with other 
 important offices. States of society may arise in which all 
 institutions, organizations, and offices are temporarily con¬ 
 founded, compelled to interchange functions and function¬ 
 aries ;—as, in a fire, or a shipwreck, or a wilderness, age, 
 sex, grade, decorum, order, and usage, are necessarily and 
 usefully forgotten and superseded. But as nobody can de¬ 
 sire to return to that semi-barbaric condition in which our 
 American pioneers lived, when one and the same room 
 served as hall, kitchen, parlor, and bed-chamber for the 
 household and its guests—although, no doubt, that compact 
 and versatile style of housekeeping had its charm and its 
 disciplinary influences—so we are not wise nor considerate 
 of the laws and wants of our nature, when we seek to level 
 its great partitions, and to confound the professions and in¬ 
 stitutions auxiliary to them. It was a great convenience in 
 our early New England life to have what was called a 
 meeting-house, to serve as church, town-hall, concert-room, 
 and exchange, in which, perhaps, a fire-engine shed stood 
 at one corner, a gun-room at another, and a hearse-house at 
 
43 
 
 a third; and it may have been economical, at a later era, 
 to occupy the cellars of our city churches for storage of 
 spirits and molasses; but nobody who has considered the 
 law of association can regard such a state of things as one 
 to be cherished, however it might be tolerated. 
 
 That alleged superiority to prejudices which would 
 dance in a church, or worship in a theatre, play cards on a 
 Sunday, or end the ball with a benediction, preach and 
 pray in the striped costume of a harlequin, or invite a 
 promiscuous company in the midst of jollity to unite in 
 prayer—is a coarse trampling upon the delicate perceptions 
 ot fitness, a rude obliteration of the nicer distinctions of 
 human feeling—which, if carried out, would end in bar¬ 
 barizing humanity. The author of “The Roman Question” 
 wittily complains of the Pontifical rule, that under it “ one 
 sole, identical caste possesses the right of administering both 
 sacraments and provinces, of confirming little boys and the 
 judgments of the lower courts, of despatching parting souls 
 and captains’ commissions.” The transcendental philosophy 
 which generalizes away all diverse concretes into monotonous 
 abstractions, and delights in making the secular and the 
 sacred, the right and the wrong, the grave and the gay, the 
 male and the female, the world and the Church, the human 
 and the divine, the natural and the supernatural, one and 
 the same, pursues the exact reverse of the order of creation, 
 which is a steady multiplication of distinctions, a growth 
 of diversity, an ascent from roots into branches, twigs, 
 flowers, and fruits. The alleged simplification of our 
 modern medico-philosophic theology, is a simplicity like 
 that which might unite and condense family life, by dis¬ 
 missing the servants and burying the children. 
 
44 
 
 Let the Church feel that it has a sphere quite as im¬ 
 portant as it can fill, in maintaining the worshipful and 
 God-fearing affections—in supplying the purely religious 
 wants of the people. I would have it undertake less, in 
 order to do more; it would exert a larger influence in the 
 end by confining its work to the illumination of the spirit¬ 
 ual interior, the communication of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 If we imagine this to be a short, a vague, a monotonous 
 work, it is only because we have not considered that the 
 communication of the contents of revelation, the supply of 
 the Holy Spirit, and the publishing of the Word, the con¬ 
 version, regeneration, and sanctifying of the souls of men, 
 involves the perpetual reproduction of Christ’s life, pre¬ 
 cepts, history, and spirit. I know how degenerate a sense 
 of Christianity the so-called advanced feeling about the 
 Gospel is. The words of the Bible pass for the Word of 
 God, which that Bible is; the words of Jesus, for Jesus 
 himself—the Word that came down from heaven. But 
 God’s Word is God’s power, God’s Wisdom, God’s love 
 made known in the great language of natural and super¬ 
 natural events. God talks in creation, in history, in reve¬ 
 lation. Nations are his alphabet, epochs his syllables, 
 humanity his discourse. The Bible is God’s Word, be¬ 
 cause it is the record of his dealings with nations and ages 
 —the religious and priestly nations and ages. More es¬ 
 pecially, and in the most pregnant and peculiar sense, 
 Christ is the Word of God ; not what he said, but what he 
 was and did and suffered, and thus showed and taught; 
 and his words and promises and precepts are only part 
 and parcel of his life and death, his resurrection, and per¬ 
 petual epiphany in the Church. Christ must be formed in 
 
45 
 
 ns, the hope of glory. God speaks peculiarly and savingly 
 to every soul in whom he makes Christ live. And the 
 work of the Church is so to speak to the world in the 
 orotund of great historic incidents; so to preach by em¬ 
 phasizing the commemorative days, and illuminating the 
 holy symbols—and pausing on the successive events which 
 made the doctrines of Christianity—as gradually to thun¬ 
 der into the deaf ear of humanity the saving lesson of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 ~No lecture-room can do this; no preaching-man can do 
 this ; no thin, ghostly individualism or meagre Congregation¬ 
 alism can do this. It calls for the organic, instituted, ritual¬ 
 ized, impersonal, steady, patient work of the Church—which, 
 taking infancy into its arms, shall baptize it, not as a 
 family custom, but a Church sacrament; which shall speak 
 to the growing children by imaginative symbols and holy 
 festivals—and not merely by Sunday-school lessons and 
 strawberry-feasts; which shall confirm them and take them 
 into the more immediate bosom of the Church as they at¬ 
 tain adult years, and are about to step beyond the thresh¬ 
 old of domestic life; which shall make both marriage and 
 burial rites of the immediate altar—and give back to 
 the communion-service the mystic sanctity wdiicli two cen¬ 
 turies has been successfully striving to dispel, without 
 gaining by this rationality any thing except the prospect of 
 its extinction. A new Catholic Church—a Church in 
 which the needed but painful experience of Protestant¬ 
 ism shall have taught us how to maintain a dignified, 
 symbolic, and mystic church-organization without the aid 
 of the State, or the authority of the Pope—their support 
 being now supplied by the clamorous w T ants of our starved 
 
46 
 
 imaginations and suppressed devotional instincts—this is 
 the demand of the weary, unchurched humanity of our 
 era. How to remove the various obstacles, how to inaugu¬ 
 rate the various steps to it—is probably more than any 
 man’s wisdom is adequate to direct just now. But to ar¬ 
 ticulate, or even to try to articulate the dumb wants of the 
 religious times, is at least one step to it. It is a cry for 
 help, which God will hear, and will answer by some new 
 word from the Holy Ghost, when humanity is able and 
 willing to bear it. 
 
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