The age, and especially the country, in which we live, arepeculiar. They, therefore, require a peculiar kind ofinstruction, and, I may say, a peculiar mode of dispensingchristian truth. They are unlike any which have preceded us. Theyare new, and consequently demand what I have called a newDispensation of Christianity, a dispensation in perfect harmonywith the new order of things which has sprung intoexistence. Yet of this fact we seem not to have beengenerally aware. The character of our religious institutions, thestyle of our preaching, the means we rely upon for tbe productionof the christian virtues, are such as were adopted in a distantage, and fitted to wants which no longer exist, or which existonly in a greatly modified shape.
It is to this fact that I attribute that other fact,of which I have heretofore spoken, that our churches arefar from being filled, and that a large and an increasing portionof our community take very little interest in religiousinstitutions, and manifest a most perfect indifference toreligious instruction. These persons do not stay away from ourchurches because they have no wish to he religious, no desire tomeet and commune in the solemn Temple with their fellow men, andwith the Great and Good Spirit which reigns everywhere around andwithin them. It is not because they do not value this communion,that they do not come into our churches, but because they do notfind it in our churches. They cannot find, under the costume ofour institutions, and our instructions, the Father-God, to loveand adore, with whom to hold sweet and invigorating communings;they are unable to find that sympathy of man with man which theycrave--to obtain that response to the warm affections of theheart, which would make them love to assemble together and bowtogether before one common altar.
But were this difficulty obviated, were seats easily obtainedby all, and so obtained as to imply on the part of no one anassumption of superiority, or a confession of inferiority, thepreaching which is most common is far from being satisfactory,and the wants of the times would by no means be met. I say thepreaching which is most common is far from being satisfactory;but not because it is not true. I accuse no preacher of notpreaching the truth. The truth is, I believe, preached in allchurches, of all denominations, to a certain extent at least; butnot the right kind of truth, or not truth under the aspectsdemanded by tbe wants of the age and country. All truth isvaluable, but all truths are not equally valuable; and allaspects of the same truths are not at all times, in all places,equally attractive. The fault I find with preaching in generalis, that it is not on the right kind of topics to interest themasses in this age and country. The topics usually discussed mayonce have been of the highest importance; they may now be veryinteresting to the scholar, or to the student in his closet, orwith his fellow-students; but they are, to a great extent,matters of perfect indifference to the many. The many carenothing about the meaning of a Greek particle, or the settling ofa various reading; nothing about the meaning of dogmas long sincedeprived of life, about the manners and customs of a people ofwhom they may have heard, but in whose destiny they feel nopeculiar interest; they are not fed by descriptions of a Jewishmarriage-feast, a reiteration of Jewish threatenings, nor withbeautiful essays, and rounded periods, on some petty duty, orsome insignificant point in theology. They want strong language,stirring discourses on great principles, which go deep into theuniversal mind, and strike a chord which vibrates through theuniversal heart. They want to be directed to the deepthings of God and humanity, and enlightened and warmed on matterswith which they every day come in contact, and which will be tothem matters of kindling thought and strong feeling througheternity.
That our religious institutions, or our modes of dispensingchristian truth, are not in harmony with the wants of thetimes, is evinced by the increase of infidelity, and the successinfidels have in their exertions to collect societies andorganise opposition to Christianity. There is sustained in thiscity a society of infidels: free inquirers, I believe they callthemselves. Why has this society been collected? Not, I willventure to say, because their leader is an infidel. People do notgo to hear him because he advocates atheistical or pantheisticaldoctrines; not because he denies Christianity, rejects the bible,and indulges in various witticisms at the expense of members ofthe clerical profession; but because he opposes the aristocracyof our churches, and vindicates tbe rights of the mind. Hesucceeds, not because he is an infidel, but because he hashitherto shown himself a democrat.
Men are never infidels for the sake of infidelity.Infidelity--I use not the term reproachfully--has no charms ofits own. There is no charm in looking around on our fellow men asmere plants that spring up in the morning, wither and die ere itis night. It is not pleasant to look up into the heavens,brilliant with their sapphire gems, and see no spirit shiningthere-- over the rich and flowering earth, and see no spiritblooming there--abroad upon a world of mute, dead matter, andfeel ourselves--alone. It is not pleasant to look upon theheavens as dispeopled of the Gods, and the earth of men, to feelourselves in tbe centre of a universal blank, with no soul tolove, no spirit with which to commune. I know well what is thatsense of loneliness which comes over the unbeliever, thedesolateness of soul under which he is oppressed: but I will notattempt to describe it.
I say, then, it is not infidelity that gives the leader of theinfidel party success. It is his defence of free inquiry and ofdemocracy. In vindicating his own right to disbelieveChristianity, he has vindicated tbe rights of the mind, provedthat all have a right to inquire fully into all subjects, and toabide by the honest convictions of their own understandings. Indoing this he has met the wants of a large portion of thecommunity, and met them as no church has ever yet been able tomeet them. I say not that he himself is a free inquirer, but heproclaims free inquiry as one of the rights of man; and in doingthis, he has proclaimed what thousands feel, thourgh they may notgenerally dare own it. The want to inquire, to ascertain what istruth, what and wherefore we believe, is becoming more and moreurgent; we may disown, unchurch, anathematise it, but suppress itwe cannot. It is too late to stay the progress ot free inquiry.The dams and dykes we construct to keep back its swelling tideare but mere resting-places, from which it may break forth inrenovated power, and with redoubled fury. It is sweepingon; and, I say, let it sweep on, let it sweep on; the truthhas nothing to fear.
Next to the want to inquire, to philosophise, the age isdistinguished by its tendency to democracy, and its craving forsocial reform. Be pleased or displeased as we may, the age isunquestionably tending to democracy; the democratic spirit istriumphing. The millions awake. The masses appear, and every dayis more and more disclosed
"The might that slumbers in a peasant'sarm."
The voice of the awakened millions rising into new andundreamed-of importance, crying out for popular institutions,comes to us on every breeze, and mingles in every sound.All over the christian world a contest is going on, not as informer times between monarchs and nobles, but between the peopleand their masters, between the many and the few, the privilegedand the unprivileged--and victory, though here and there seemingat first view doubtful, everywhere inclines to the party of themany. Old distinctions are losing their value; titles arebecoming less and less able to confer dignity; simple tastes,simple habits, simple manners are becoming fashionable; thesimple dignity of man is more and more coveted, and with thediscerning it has already become more honourable to call onesimply a MAN than a gentleman.
Now it is to this democratic spirit that the leader of theinfidel party appeals, and in which he finds a powerful elementof his success. Correspondents of his paper attempt even toidentify atheism and democracy. I myself once firmly believedthat there could be no social progress, that man could not riseto his true dignity without the destruction of religion; I reallybelieved that religious institutions, tastes, and beliefs werethe greatest, almost the sole, barrier to human improvement: andwhat I once honestly believed, is now as honestly believed bythousands, who would identify the progress of humanity with theprogress of infidelity.
It is, I own, a new state of things, for infidelity to professto be a democrat. Hobbes, one of the fathers, if not the father,of modern infidelity, had no sympathy with the masses; Hume andGibbon dreamed of very little social progress, and manifested nodesire to elevate the low, and loosen the chains of the bound.Before Thomas Paine, no infidel writer in our language, to myknowledge, was a democrat, or thought of giving infidelity ademocratic tendency. Since his times, the infidel has been fondof calling himself a democrat, and he has pretty generallyclaimed to be the friend of the masses, and the advocate ofprogress. He now labours to prove the church aristocratic, toprove that it has no regard for the melioration of man's earthlymode of being. Unhappily, in proportion as he succeeds, thechurch furnishes him with new instruments of success. Inproportion as he seems to identify his infidelity and thedemocratic spirit, the church disowns that spirit, and declaresit wholly opposed to the faith. When, some years since, thethought passed through my head, that there were things in societywhich needed mending, and I dreamed of being a social reformer, Ifound my bitterest opponents, clergyman as I was, among theclergy, and those who were most zealous for the faith. That Ierred in the inference I drew from this fact, as unbelievers nowerr in theirs, I am willing to own; but the fact itself hasthe appearance of proving that religion and religion'sadvocates are unfriendly to social progress.
These are the principal reasons why infidelity succeeds. Itsadvocates meet two great wants, that of free inquiry, and that ofsocial progress--two wants which are at the present time, and inthis country, quite urgent--and meet them better than they aremet by any of our churches. We need not, then, ascribe theirsuccess to any peculiar depravity of the heart, nor to anpeculiar obtuseness of the understanding. They are right in theirvindication of the rights of the mind, and in advocating socialprogress. They are wrong only in supposing that free inquiry andthe progress of society are elements of infidelity, when they areonly, in fact, its accidents. They constitute, in reality, twoimportant elements of religion; as such I own them, accept them,and assure the religious everywhere that they too must acceptthem, or see religion for a time wholly obscured, and infidelitytriumphant.
Infidels are wrong in pretending that infidelity can effectthe progress of mankind. Infidelity has no element of progress.The purest morality it enjoins is selfishness. It does notpretend to offer man any higher motives of action than that ofself interest. But self-interest can make no man a reformer. Nogreat reforms are ever effececd without sacrifice. In labouringfor the benefit of others, we are often obliged to forgetourselves, to expose ourselves, without fear and without regret,to the loss of property, ease, reputation, and sometimesof life itself. He who consults only his own interest will neverconsent to be so exposed. Or admitting that we could convincemen, that to labour for a universal regeneration of mankind isfor the greatest ultimate good of each one, the experience ofevery day proves that no one will do it, when a small, immediategood intervenes which it is necessary to abandon. A small,immediate, present good always outbalances the vastly greater,but distant good. The only principle of reform on which we canrely is love. We must love the human race in order to be able todevote ourselves to their greatest good, to be able to do and todare everything for their progress. But we cannot love what doesnot appear to us loveable. We cannot love mankindunless we see something in them which is worthy to be loved. Butinfidelity strips man of every quality which we can love. In theview of the infidel, man is nothing more than an animal, born topropagate his species and die. It is religion that disclosesman's true dignity, reveals t0he soul, unveils the immortalitywithin us, and presents in every man the incarnate God, beforewhom he may stand in awe, whom he may love and adore. Infidelitycannot, then, effect what its friends assert that it can. Itcannot make us love mankind: and not being able to make us lovethem, it is not able to make us labour for their amelioration.
But I say this, without meaning to reproach infidels. I do andmust condemn infidelity; but I have taught myself to recognise inthe infidel a man, an equal, a brother, one for whom Jesus died,and for whom I, too, if need were, should be willing to die. Ihave no right to reproach the infidel, no right to censure himfor his speculative opinions. If those opinions are wrong, as Imost assuredly believe they are, it is my duty to count them hismisfortune, not his crime, and to do all in my power to aid himto correct them. We wrong our brother, when we refuse him thesame tolerance for his opinions which we would have him extend toours. We wrong Christianity, wherever we censure, ridicule, ortreat with the least possible disrespect any man for his honestopinions, be they what they may. We have often done violence tothe gospel in our treatment of those who have, in our opinion,misinterpreted or disowned it. We have not always treated theiropinions, as we ask them to treat ours. We have not always beenscrupulous to yield to others the rights we claim for ourselves.We have been unjust, and our injustice has brought, as it alwaysmust, reproach upon the opinions we avow, and the cause weprofess. There was, there is, no need of being unjust, noruncharitable to unbelievers. We believe we have the truth. Let usnot so wrong the truth we advocate as to fear it can sufffer byany encounter with falsehood. Let us adopt one rule for judgingall men, infidels and all; not that of their speculativeopinions, but their real moral characters.
I prefer to meet the infidel on his own ground; I freelyaccept whatever I find him advocating which I believe true, andjust as freely oppose whatever he supports which I believe to befalse and mischievous. I think him right in his vindication offree inquiry and social progress. I accept them both, not aselements of infidelity, but as elements of Christianity. Shouldit now be asked, as it has been, what I mean by the newdispensation of Christianity, the new form of religion, of whichI have often spoken in this place and elsewhere, I answer, I meanreligious institutions, and modes of dispensing religious truthand influences, which recognise the rights of the mind, andpropose social progress as one of the great ends to be obtained.In that New Church of which I have sometimes dreamed, and I hopemore than dreamed, I would have the unlimited freedom of the mindunequivocally acknowledged. No interdict should be placed uponthought. To reason should be a christian, not an infidel, act.Every man should be encouraged to inquire, and to inquire not alittle merely, within certain prescribed limits; but freely,fearlessly, fully, to scan heaven, air, ocean, earth, and tomaster God, nature, and humanity, if he can. He who inquires fortruth honestly, faithfully, perseveringly, to the utmost extentof his power, does all that can be asked of him; he does God'swill, and should be allowed to abide by his own conclusions,without fear of reproach from God or man.
In asserting this I am but recalling the community toChristianity. Jesus reproved the Jews for not of themselvesjudging what is right, thus plainly recognising in them, and ifin them in us, both the right and the power to judge forthemselves. "If I do not the works of my Father," saysJesus, "believe me not;" obviously implying both man'sright and ability to determine what are, and what are not,"works of the Father:" that is, in other words, what isor what is not truth. An apostle commands us to "stand fastin the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free," "toprove all things," and to "hold fast that which isgood." In fact, the very spirit of the gospel is that offreedom; it is called a "law of liberty," and its greatend is to free the soul from all restraint, but that of itsobligation to do right. They wrong it who would restrain thought,and hand-cuff inquiry; they doubt or deny its truth and power whofear to expose it to the severest scrutiny, the most searchinginvestigation; and, were I in an accusing mood, I would bring thecharge of infidelity against every one who will not or dare notinquire, who will not or dare not encourage inquiry in others.
I have said that social progress must enter into the church Iwould have established, as one of the ends to be gained. Socialprogress holds a great place in the sentiments of this age.Infidels seize upon it; find in it one of the most powerfulelements of their success. I too would seize upon it, give it areligious direction, and find in it an element of the triumph ofChristianity. I have a right to it. As a Christian, I am bound torescue social progress, or if you please, the democratic spirit,from the possession of the infidel. He has no right to it; he hasusurped it through the negligence of the church. It is achristian spirit. Jesus was the man, the teacher of the masses.They were fishermen, deemed the lowest of his countrymen, whowere his apostles; they were the "common people," whoheard him gladly; they were the Pharisee and Sadducee, the chiefpriest and scribe, the rich and the distinguished, in one wordthe aristocracy of that age, who conspired against him, andcaused him to be crucified between two thieves. He himselfprofessed to be anointed of God, because he was anointedto preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim liberty to themthat are bound, and to let the captive go free. To John heexpressly assigns the kindling fact, that the poor had the gospelpreached unto them, as the most striking proof of his claims tothe Messiahship.
And what was this gospel which was preached to the poor? Wasit a gospel suited to the views of the Autocrat of the Russias,such as despots ever love? Did it command the poor, in the nameof God, to submit to an order of things of which they are thevictims, to be contented to pine in neglect, and die ofwretchedness? No, no Jesus preached no such tyrant-pleasing andtyrant-sustaining gospel. The gospel which he preached, was thegospel of human brotherhood. He preached the gospel, the holyevangile, good news to the poor, when he proclaimed them membersof the common family of man, when he taught that we are allbrethren, having one and the same Father in heaven; he preachedthe gospel to the poor, when he declared to the boastinglyreligious of his age, that even publicans and harlots would gointo the kingdom of heaven sooner than they; when he declaredthat the poor widow, who out of her necessities, cast her twomites into the treasury of the Lord, cast in more than all therich; and whoever preaches the universal fraternity of the humanrace, preaches the gospel to the poor, though he speak only tothe rich.
There is power in this great doctrine of the universalbrotherhood of mankind. It gives the reformer a mighty advantage.It enables him to speak words of an import, and in a tone, whichmay almost wake the dead. Hold thy hand, oppressor, it permitshim to say, thou wrongest a brother! Withhold thy scorn, thoubitter satirist of the human race, thou vilifiest thy brother! Inpassing by that child in the street yesterday, and leaving it togrow up in ignorance and vice, notwithstanding God had given theewealth to train it to knowledge and virtue, thou didst neglectthy brother's child. Oh, did we but feel this truth, that we areall brothers and sisters, children of the same parent, we shouldfeel that every wrong done to a human being, was violence done toour own flesh!
I say again, that Jesus was emphatically the teacher of themasses; the prophet of the working men if you will; of all thosewho "labour and are heavy laden." Were I to repeat hiswords in this city or elsewhere, with the intimation that Ibelieved they meant something; were I to say, as he said,"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," and tosay it in a tone that indicated I believed he attached anymeaning to what he said, you would call me a "radical,"an "agrarian," a "trades unionist," a"leveller," a "disorganiser," or some othername equally barbarous and horrific. It were more than a man'sreputation for sanity, or respectability as a Christian,is worth, to be as bold even in tbese days in defence of the"common people" as Jesus was.
I say still again, that Jesus was emphatically the teacher ofthe masses, the prophet of the people. Not that he addressedhimself to any one description of persons to the exclusion ofanother, not that he sought to benefit one portion of the humanrace at another's expense; for if any one thing more than anotherdistinguished him, it was, that he rose above all the factitiousdistinctions of society, and spoke to universal man, to theuniversal mind, and to the universal heart. I cal1 him theprophet of the people, because he recognised the rights ofhumanity; brought out, and suffered and died to establishprinciples, which in their legitimate effect, cannot fail tobring up the low and bowed down, and give to the many, who, inall ages, and in all countries, have been the tools of the few,their due rank and social importance. His spirit, in itspolitical aspect, is what I have called the democratic spirit; inits most general aspect, it is the spirit of progress, in theindividual and in the race, towards perfection, towards unionwith God. It is that spirit which for eighteen hundred years hasbeen at work in society, like the leaven hidden in three measuresof meal; before which slavery, in nearly all Christentlom,has disappeared; which has destroyed the warrior aristocracy,nearly subdued the aristocracy of birth, which is now strugglingwith the aristocracy of wealth, and which promises, ere long, tobring up and establish the true aristocracy--the aristocracy ofmerit.
If it be now asked, as it has been asked, to what denominationI belong, I reply, that I belong to that denomination, whosestarting point is free inquiry, which acknowledges in good faith,and without any mental reservation, the rights of the mind, andwhich proposes the melioration of man's earthly mode of being, asone of the great ends of its labours. I know not that such adenomination exists. I know, in fact, of no denomination, which, asa denomination, fully meets the wants of the times. Yet letme not be misinterpreted. I am not here to accuse, or to make warupon, any existing denomination; I contend with no church; I haveno controversy with my Calvinistic brother, none with myArminian, Unitarian, or Trinitarian brother. Every church has itsidea, its truth; and more truth, much more, I believe, than anyone church will admit of in those from which it differs. Formyself, I delight to find truth in all churches, and I own itwherever I find it; but still I must say, I find no church whichowns, as its central truth, the great central truth ofChristianity--a truth which may now be brought out of thedarkness in which it has remained, and which it is now more thanever necessary to reinstate in its rights.
Let me say, then, that though I am here for an object, whichis not, to my knowledge, the special object of any existingchurch, I am not here to make war upon any church, nor to injureany one in the least possible degree. I would that they all hadas much fellowship for one another, as I have for them all! Iinterfere with none of them. I am here for a special object, butone so high, one so broad, they may all cooperate in gaining it.My creed is a simple one. Its first article is, free, unlimitedinquiry, perfect liberty to enjoy and express one's own honestconvictions, and perfect respect for the free and honestinquirer, whatever be the results to which he arrives. The secondarticle is social progress. I would have it a special object ofthe society I would collect, to labour to perfect all socialinstitutions, and raise every man to a social position, whichwill give him free scope for the full and harmonious developmentof all his faculties. I say, perfect, not destroy, allsocial institutions. I do not feel that God has given me a workof destruction. I would improve, preserve, whatever is good, andremedy whatever is defective, and thus reconcile the CONSERVATORand the RADICAL. My third article is, that man should labour forhis soul in preference to his body. Man has a soul; he is notmere body. He has more than animal wants. He has a soul, which isin relation with the absolute and the Infinite--a soul, which isfor ever rushing off into the unknown, and rising through auniverse of darkness up to the "first Good and the firstFair." This soul is immortal. To perfect it is our highestaim. I would encourage inquiry; I would perfect society, not asultimate ends, but as means to the growth and maturity of man'shigher nature--his soul.
These are my views, and views which, I believe, meet the wantsof the times. They make war upon no sect of Christians. They areadopted in the spirit of love to humanity, and they can be actedupon only in the spirit of peace. They threaten no hostility,except to sin: with that, indeed, they call us to war. We mustfight against all unrighteousness, against spiritual wickednessin high places, and in low places; but the weapons of our warfareare not carnal, but spiritual. We must go forth to the battle infaith and love, go forth to vindicate the rights of the mind, toperfect society, to make it the abode of all the virtues, and allthe graces, to clothe man in his native dignity, and enable himto look forth in the image of his Maker upon a world of beauty.
This is my object. I am not here to preach to working men, norto those who are not working men, in the interests ofaristocracy, nor of democracy. I am here for humanity; to pleadfor universal man; to unfurl the banner of the cross on a new andmore commanding position, and call the human race around it. I amhere to speak to all who feel themselves human beings; to allwhose hearts swell at the name of man; to all who long to lessenthe sum of human misery, and increase that of human happiness; toall who have any perception of the Beautiful and Good, and acraving for the Infinite, the Eternal, and Indestructible, onwhom to repose the wearied soul and find rest--to all such is myappeal: to them I commit the object I have stated, and beforewhich I stand in awe, and entreat them by all that is good intheir natures, holy in religion, or desirable in the joy of aregenerated world, to unite and march to its acquisition,prepared to dare with the hero, to suffer with the saint, or todie with the martyr.
From Harriet Martineau, Society in America, AppendixE - "Discourse on the Wants of the Times." London:Saunders and Otley, 1837, pp. 342-359.
Forward to Society in America, Appendix F- "Woman."
Back to Society in America, Appendix D -"Public Education in the United States."
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