Page images
PDF
EPUB

by substituting a scornful indifference to the subject. For the temporary fever to which life in proportion to its very energy is liable, they have no other cure than death. But why has theological controversy been bitter? Why, but because men have seen and felt the incalculable value of the objects with which it deals. And thus perhaps few kinds of dispute have been more acrimonious than those which are exhibited in the history of politics: because few subjects come more nearly home to our hearts and our characters; and because unhappily it is one of the proofs and symptoms of our depravity, that upon any given subject our passions are ready to be excited in proportion as our substantial interests are involved. This fact, however, does not justify the temper for which it may fairly be said to account. The question is, where a remedy is to be sought. Not, let us entreat, in a depreciation of that truth which is inestimable for its practical effects; but in the use of those appointed means for subduing and governing the temper, which afford to the Christian the only guarantee of the ultimate subjugation of inward as well as outward foes.

24. If, however, there be certain evils which peculiarly beset the time when religious emotion, already widely and sympathetically spread, is progressively extending its range, there are also means by which they may be susceptible of mitigation. The source and the terminating point of those evils is in self. It is in the tendency of men, however unacknowledged,

to claim infallibility as individuals or as a party; to view as having been created by us that of which we are in fact the mere recipients; to substitute for ancient and authorised bonds of union others which are new and unrecognised, but which, as framed by our own will, are calculated to gratify the spirit of self-worship. From the disease we learn the remedy. It must be sought in a special solicitude to cling to every principle and usage which depreciates the relative importance of self; and this, be it remembered, not only by a verbal ascription of all honour and of all effectual agency to God. This may often become a mere snare of our great enemy: if, allowing that God is the originator of everything good, we nevertheless claim His sanction for all that we may choose to attribute to Him. Self-love may operate as destructively under the notion that good things come specially through us, as under the more evidently mischievous opinion that they come originally from us. We must all therefore be ready, nor only ready but anxious," in honour to prefer one another," by recognising a divine agency through the instrumentality of others, as freely and fairly, as some may earnestly hope that a portion of it might be conveyed through themselves.

25. But further and more specifically I should look for such mitigation of the evils thus attaching to our present condition, from a steady resolution to establish in the mind, by God's help, and to keep constantly in view, the essential principle, that in whatever we pro

pose we look not to change, properly so called, not to innovation, but to renovation; to a bringing back of that which our fathers once had, which was unduly hidden from them, which is ours by inheritance, not by acquisition, which was not made by us, nor even by them, but first received by them, and then transmitted to us. To explore an old way, not to survey for a new one, is the work of him who would be a reformer in religion; for it is not here as in other sciences. Not only does there exist a collection of facts, natural and revealed, which form the proper basis of religious argumentation, and analogous to those upon which other systems of knowledge are founded, but there is also, superadded to this resemblance, a broad distinction: namely, that we have in religion the assurance that that scheme of doctrine which the universal Church has ever drawn from Scripture is, in all its fundamental characteristics, eternally and unchangeably true. To remove from the face of that truth whatever may have sullied or obscured it, to repel assaults upon its purity and integrity, to illustrate and make it known, and to adapt and prepare the minds of men, by the means which itself supplies, for its reception-these are the objects of religious reform; and when, instead of imaging to ourselves a modern revelation of which we are the favoured subjects, we desire simply a recurrence to the old truth of the Gospel in the old spirit of the Gospel, we check the exorbitance of selfish pride by placing between ourselves and the Divinity an instrumental agency inde

pendent of ourselves; while it still remains true, that for the very perception of the existing defects, and of any means for their removal, we must refer entirely and alone to God.

26. Though with a trembling hand, it will now be attempted to specify particulars, in which may perhaps be perceived the peculiar and unfavourable characteristics of a period of revival. Are we not apt to undervalue ordinances and Church authority? To give to each man, not only the ultimate determination of his own belief and conduct, but an absolute licence of overlooking all but what comes to him direct from the fountain of self? or, at all events, what is transfused through self as the only medium? Does not the individual substitute in some measure religious evidences of which he himself is the only possible witness, for the recognised, ordained, and authoritative testimony afforded him by the palpable acts and fixed laws of the Church? Have we sufficiently endeavoured to realise those benefits which even the lower and instrumental parts of religion may afford, as, for example, even that bodily exercise which for this life is declared to be somewhat profitable?* Nay, have we not been neglectful of the duty of drawing out and striving to transcribe upon ourselves, the great features of Christian obedience in that degree of detail into which it ought to be developed? Have we not a tendency to substitute self-contrived bonds of association and of

* 1 Tim. iv. 8.

agency for the old and recognised relation which, as among ourselves, we should chiefly regard, of creatures ruined and redeemed together, and united in the one Catholic Church of Christ?

27. But let it not be supposed that it is hereby desired to imply that an amount of blame is due individually to those who have been mainly employed in promoting the advance of our religious movement, exactly commensurate with the amount of these detriments and disadvantages, partial as even these latter are, which may have attended it. The defects and even the positive mischiefs which may adhere to it are mainly imputable to the previous lethargy. As the cold theology of the last century may have partially arisen out of the practical and political excesses by which in the foregoing one religious profession was disgraced, so, in a connexion more evident and proximate, the faults in the religious temper of this period may have been connected, to a great extent, with the opposite errors of the age which it succeeds.

28. Lastly, let it not be thought that this is a speculative subject. We are too fond of laying the blame of existing evils on "the Church" as an imaginary person. But we have all a real, though divided, responsibility for the character, the actions, and the omissions of the Church, since they are made up of, and determined by, those of her members. Our individual amendment will brighten her glory, as it has been tarnished by our individual defects and delinquencies. The full development of religious belief,

« EelmineJätka »