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Published by Request.
THE INFLUENCE OF DOGMA
UPON RELIGION.
A REPLY
TO SOME REMARKS MADE IN CONVOCATION
DURING THE DEBATE ON THE ATHANASIAN
CREED, APRIL 24, 1872.
BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
LATE VICAR OF HEALAUGH.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
CAMDEN HOUSE. DULWICH, S.E.,
AND
TRUBNER AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
Price Fourpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY WERTHEIMER, LEA AND CO.
CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBURY CIRCUS.
HHEBHBSBBDEBnSKSB08K9flffl
�PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
APRIL 28th, 1872.
;
(J .
(( Now the axe is laid at the root of the trees.”
Matthew iii. 10.
•
During the debate on the Athanasian Creed last
week in Convocation, one of the speakers is reported
to have said, 11 Pogma and Religion must go togetherj and the Church cannot unlearn her dogmas.”
Statements, so plain and concise as this one, are
of great value, and bring out in sharp outlines the
chief points of contrast between conflicting opinions
or principles. We may be thankful to any bishop
or priest for coming forward in this way and throw
ing down the gauntlet for us to take up. The
sooner that both sides in this great dispute between
authority and individual freedom see the real issue
which is at stake, the less time will be wasted in
endless petty discussions about particular doctrines.
I therefore take up the challenge, and will this
morning endeavour to prove that religion and
dogma do not necessarily go together; that, if any
thing, dogma is a hindrance to religion; and that
�4
the cry of 11 Non possumus” is the death-knell of
any church.
(1.) Religion and Dogma do not necessarily go
together.
Not to mention the Unitarian body, a large por
tion of whose ministers and laity have no articles
and creeds, no written dogmas at all, we will only
speak for ourselves. Religion surely means a sense
of the being of God, a belief in His goodness
which inspires veneration, obedience and love on our
part, and a consciousness of our hearts’ desire to
conform our lives to His holy will. This is not in
tended to be a definition; but, I think, people of
every creed in Christendom will admit that so much
at least is included under the term 11 Religion.”
That this devout reverence towards God, this
entire confidence in His fidelity, lies absolutely
at the very foundation of our present movement
cannot be gainsaid. Many, it is true, have joined
us only because they see the falseness and corrup
tion of the prevailing beliefs; and some few have
joined us, not through sympathy with our religion
at all, but from sympathy with our principles in
the search after truth. But with these exceptions,
the rest of that large and influential body who are
with us, have undertaken this great work from
religious motives; because they love God, and would
fain deliver the Christian peoples around them from
their unwholesome dread of God, from their gloomy
superstitions, and from their degrading and de
moralising ideas of the Divine dealings with men.
•
�Does this religion depend on dogma, or does it not ?
I answer, this religion not only does not depend on
dogma, but owes its very existence to the subversion
of dogma. It is born out of the instinctive rebellion
of our own reasons, consciences, and hearts, against
dogmas which we saw to be false, immoral, and
cruel. So far from such a religion and dogma
going together, speaking for ourselves, they could
not exist side by side. Either the dogma would
kill the religion, or the religion crush the dogma.
We owe all the light and beauty and gladness of
our religion to our having been able to renounce
the dogmas of orthodoxy, and to our determination
never again to be bound by any of them.
And this leads me to say a necessary word or two
about the term “dogma.” Dogma must not be con
founded with doctrine. Doctrine is merely a tech
nical term for an opinion, say a formal opinion, and
in theology doctrine is therefore a theological formal
opinion, the expression of a thought or idea about
God, or about our relation to Him. Now it is easy
to see that there can be no religion without doctrine,
?.e., without some thought or opinion about God;
and that every one of us who is religious must have
doctrines in his own mind as the basis of his religion.
In our case, there is such a general consensus of
doctrine or opinion as to draw us together, and
enable us to worship together, with a very great
degree of unanimity, in the words of one book.
But nevertheless, each one’s doctrine is his own to
hold or to change as he pleases, and is held only to
�6
grow wider and deeper in meaning, or to be
abandoned for another which has been found to be
more true. There must be many shades of doctrine
amongst us which, if they ever came to be petrified
into dogmas, would explode our society into frag
ments; but we have a bond of union deeper still
than our doctrines, we are bound together mainly
and most securely by our principles, by the princi
ples on which we consider that all doctrines should
be held. The most important of these is the
principle of perfect liberty given and received all
round to each one to hold his own, without fear of
illegitimate pressure or interference, and above all,
without fear of God or hell-fire. Such a bond of
union, never before tried so thoroughly, so radically,
will, we believe, be found strong and lasting—
infinitely better than that delusive uniformity in
which all churches have placed their trust.
Doctrines held on such terms of perfect individual
liberty, and by each one in the hope of going on
learning more and more of religious truth, and of
changing the partial truth of to-day for the more
complete truth of the morrow; doctrines which are
thus being continually brought to the test of reason,
and into the clearer light of advancing science, can
never be identified with dogmas.
Dogmas are doctrines turned into stone, of which
Church walls are built, to shut out the rest of the
world, and to imprison those who take shelter behind
them. When a doctrine is taken up by a commu
nity or Church, signed, sealed, stamped, ratified, and
�7
passed into law, then it becomes a dogma. Dogmatism
is the death of deliberate thought, because it is the
enforcement of doctrine. It makes little difference
whether the doctrine be enforced by Act of Par
liament, and its infringement made punishable by
pains and penalties, or whether it be urged upon
the acceptance of men under threats of God’s dis
pleasure, or with bribes of heaven hereafter—if it
be enforced at all, it becomes dogma. And one of
the most hopeful signs of our times is that the very
name of dogma is execrated by the wise, and
dreaded by the loving. Dogmas are the stones by
which priests and people in all ages have killed
their prophets. While it is the very nature of doc
trines to be ever changing, dogmas have congealed
them in deadly frost. Doctrines are the living
thoughts of living men; dogmas are the lifeless
forms of thoughts which are dead, curious only as
the contents of a long-closed sepulchre. Doctrines
have the power of immortal life and ever increasing
beauty and variety; dogmas once written down
with the iron pen of Church authority on the stone of
stumbling and rock of offence, become first ghastly
and then grotesque by the ravages of time.
No wonder then that, as doctrine after doctrine
died and was buried in the sepulchre of dogma, the
collection of thoughts scattered over centuries, but
which the dogmas now present for our acceptance
en masse, should prove to be nothing but a jumble
of incoherent and contradictory propositions. The
miserable keepers of this museum of ugly relics in
�8
our own times are only still more to be pitied than
the unhappy men whose business it was, in the
sixteenth century, to build for them a new gallery,
and place them in their new niches. Whoever it
was who wrote the Thirty-nine Articles began at
least with a noble Te Deum, simple and grand, the
earnest utterance, no doubt, of a heart overflowing
with reverence and love. “ There is but One living
and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or
passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;
the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible
and invisible.” He had only written three lines
however, before the religious emotion which had
inspired them, fled suddenly away when he was
compelled to grope amongst the ashes of the past,
and divide the invisible One into three pieces, and
then put them together again like a dreadful puzzle.
But his grief and perplexity are not to be compared
with the despair of those who have to face all these
embalmed relics to-day, and to tell the people in
solemn time and place that they are all alive and
will live for ever. Can we think without pity of
one, who knowing, e.g., what the Athanasian creed
contains, is obliged to confess: r The Church
cannot unlearn her dogmas.” To be placed in such
dire and distressing antagonism to the tide of
thought in the nineteenth century and in England
is far worse than to endure the worst penalties of
modern martyrdom. But what will not 11 Dogma”
do ? It is backed up by authority. All these
mummies of creeds and articles stand and preach
�9
to us the dreary echoes of long-dead thought, they
tie our hands, direct our steps, and force words
upon our lips. Galvanized by Acts of Parliament,
and by the still more coercive authority of a spectral
Church, they can make slaves of us as we go, can
scare us into submission, if a daring thought should
venture to rebel, and can, even to-day, darken our
last hours by visions of a fathomless despair. No
words of mine can describe their fatal power in
such vivid imagery as that of the old Hebrew
Psalmist. “Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but
unto Thy name be the praise, for Thy loving mercy
and for Thy truth’s sake. Wherefore should the
heathen say of us, ‘ Where is now their God ?’ As
for our God, He is in heaven, He hath done
whatsoever pleased Him. But their idols are the
work of men’s hands. They have mouths and
speak not; eyes have they and see not. They
have ears and hear not, noses have they and smell
not. They have hands and handle not; feet have
they and walk not; neither speak they through
their throat. They that make them are like unto
them, and so are all they that put their trust in
them.”
(2.) And these words bring me to say, in the second
place, that dogma is a hindrance to true religion.
Think first what is its influence on the preacher.
The enforcement of doctrine, whether by acts of
uniformity, by thirty-nine articles, by subscription
of clergy, by solemn oath of clerical fraternities, by
trust deeds, by inarticulate signs of assent or dis
�sent on the part of pewholders in any Church—
directly or indirectly—the imposition of dogma and
its practical enforcement on the preacher’s utterance
is a mischief indescribably deep and subtle. No
arguments can ever justify the anomaly, the ab
surdity and the cruelty of telling a man who desires
to preach the truth, that he must think in a par
ticular groove, and speak in conformity with par
ticular written or unwritten propositions; to be met,
at the moment of the discovery of some beautiful
idea, by this kind of caution, “ It is all very good,
but it is not orthodox, you know,” or that ((it may be
ever so true, but it is not safe,” &c., is to sentence
a man to lasting hypocrisy, or to temporal ruin.
Besides this, every limit put upon the freedom of
his utterance diminishes the value of every state
ment of his own true conviction, and casts discredit
upon whatever he may honestly say. How can
you be sure that your preacher in his moments of
greatest fervour is not saying what his heart belies,
if it be in the power of any of his hearers to turn
round upon him and say, “ You dare not preach
otherwise if you would.” It is therefore for the
best interest of all opinions whatsoever, to leave the
preacher absolutely unfettered.
But if you have a tongue-tied clergy you must
have a hood-winked laity. If you have falsehood
in the priest, the people will learn to love falsehood,
to prefer the poison of a lie to the nourishment of
truth.
But quite apart from this corruption, dogma most
snsHorannHi
�11
surely hinders religion, both in its essence and ex
pression. Have not hundreds and thousands been
thrown into frightful confusion and perplexity by
the dogma of the Trinity, not because it was a
doctrine, but because it was a dogma, to be believed
under peril of damnation ? Have not their hearts
sunk within them in trying to master a problem
which one moment’s free thought would have made
them toss aside with ridicule and scorn, but which
the awful dread of hell fascinated them to study ?
Treated as fanciful speculations, or as modes of
expressing theologically some subtle metaphysical
abstractions, these old creeds could do but little
harm; but as dogmas required to be believed
for one’s soul’s salvation, they have done irre
parable mischief to religion, alienated many and
many from the very thought of God, driven them
for shelter from Him and His awful mysteries
to the arms of a comprehensible and kind-hearted
man, and have forced the nations of Christendom
into an idolatry scarcely less injurious to reli
gion than the paganism which it supplanted. If
mankind are really at a hopeless distance from
God, and alienated from Him by their ignorance
and sin, dogma only adds wofully to their miseries,
dogma builds a wall between God and man over
which every prodigal son must climb, who would
11 arise and go to his father.” Every step which we
take under its guidance is, by the confession of its
own priests, full of darkness and danger. Clouds of
heaven’s wrath are waiting to burst in fury upon
�12
our unfortunate heads, pit-falls beneath our feet lie
hidden to entrap us into some shocking Sabellian
heresy, or some Homoiousian shade of a deadly
Arianism.
For this and that and the other
dogma, however hopelessly contradictory, “is the
Catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully,
he cannot be saved.”
Now where is religion all this time, that we have
been picking our way over this morass and that
desert, and climbing over the walls of dogma to get
ourselves saved I To me it looks like the religion
of the lowest physical type, if it be religion at all.
It is fetichism and not religion. It is the worship
of ourselves, not of God; it is devotion to our own
safety, not to His blessed will; it is the apotheosis of
bribery and corruption. But it is dogma and
dogma only that thus debases men. Left to them
selves they would be ashamed to believe those very
creeds which “the Church cannot unlearn.” They
would hide them away as symptoms of mental and
moral disease, lest men should scorn them for their
folly or shun them for their madness.
Dogma has, alas! laid its fetters over the very
worship of mankind, and forbidden aspiration which
it could not sanction, has silenced praises which it
did not enjoin. If our thoughts of God rise and
expand, our forms of prayer and praise are still
petrified and all but lifeless. If we have outgrown
those conceptions of the Divine Being, and of the
early origin of our race, on which the liturgy was
based, we are still tied down by dogma to repeat
�13
the same old weary platitudes, and to utter the
same senseless lamentations, which once suited our
unhappy forefathers. If we have grown more bro
therly towards our fellow-men, under the blessed
sunshine of the Father’s love to us all, we are still
bound, on the Church’s highest festivals, to curse
all Arians and Unitarians, and all the millions of
the Greek Church, with a bitter curse, and to pollute
our very praises to the Almighty Father by
anathemas against our brethren.
(3.) It does not require much courage to predict
the near dissolution of any Church offering such ob
structions to true religion, and, moreover, declaring
that she “ cannot unlearn her own dogmas.” Bad as
the Church of England may be, we must not believe
she is so bad as that, or that any Anglican High
Churchman is her spokesman. The Houses of
Parliament, and not the Houses of Convocation,
have the laws of the Church in their own hands.
The Queen, and not Christ or Peter, is the real head
of the Church, and so there is some chance of her
unlearning her own dogmas. Not merely a chance
of unlearning these particular ones, which are now
embalmed in the Thirty-nine Articles and Creeds,
but a chance of her divorcing herself for ever from
all dogmas, and of allowing doctrines to resume
their proper place, as the living thoughts of living
men, whose goal is the truth, and whom neither
terror nor greed can hinder from its pursuit.
Has the past no lesson to teach the dogmatist ?
What are his own dogmas, and what is the origin of
�14
his own creeds? Were not each and all in turn
the heresies of the successive ages in which they
first appeared ? Did not the dogmas of the dying
systems struggle long and manfully against the
new opinions, and was not their fall certain only
because the new opinions were more true than
those which they displaced? Neither priests of
Jupiter nor silversmiths at Ephesus could keep
their petrified dogmas from sinking in the sands of
time, and going down into the darkness where all
that is dead must finally be laid.
Tell us, ye chief priests and rulers, you will not,
you cannot unlearn your dogmas, then we tell you
that your day has come and is gone.
The thing that will not grow and keep pace with
the march;of intellect, that cannot move with the
progress of scientific knowledge, nor expand with
the enlarging hearts of men who have found a
loving God for themselves, that thing, we say, must
die, it is dead as soon as it ceases to move onward.
Your best, your noblest dogma of all, if it be
dogma and no longer living thought, is dead already,
and you cannot for long pass off that lifeless corpse
for a living man, dress it how you will, and paint
its withering parchment with the glowing carmine,
prop it up in your busiest thoroughfares, and give
it attitudes like the attitudes of the living throng;
speak for it too, be the interpreter of its wakeless
silence to the ears of men and women who have
been scared by its cold fixed gaze; but you will not
long succeed in deluding your fellow-men. They
�15
will soon find out that you have been playing upon
their childish and groundless fears, that you have
been amusing yourself in the twilight at their ex
pense, and they will sweep you and your mummified
creeds quickly, and perhaps rudely, out of the path
way of mankind.
If religion itself were worthless, dogma would
never give it worth. But if religion still holds its
own amongst human hearts, men will find one for
themselves which shall best accord with the highest
and not with the lowest aspect of their nature, one
which can lead them on instead of drawing them back.
But one thing they will not do. They will not give
up their manly souls to the dictates of the dead, nor
suffer themselves to be enslaved by those whom they
have once discovered to be the dupes of their
own fears, who shamelessly confess that for all
time to come, no one among mankind will ever dis
cover any truth about God and man not already
known, and that no one will discover any error in
the little patch of dogmas round which the’ Church
has built its ugly stone wall. What? errors in
Paganism, errors in Judaism, errors in Mahometanism,
errors in Brahmanism, errors in Buddhism, but none
in Christianity ? No, not one I
il The Church cannot unlearn her own dogmas.”
Then the Church is dead. Cover her tenderly,
bury her reverently—but pile over her tomb the
stumbling blocks of creed and dogma, which she had
strewn in our way.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The influence of dogma upon religion. A reply to some remarks made in convocation during the debate on the Athanasian creed, April 24 1872
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. Printed by Wertheimer, Lea and Co., London. Title page states: Published by Request. The sermon was preached at St George's Hall, April 28th 1872.
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[1872]
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G3391
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Religion
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English
Athanasian Creed
Dogma
Morris Tracts
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ae4fb95d46ef150f942a0fdc6944d39a
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to Bi due.
Vtut Religion an
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
JULY 27th, 1873,
by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
[From the Eastern Post, August 2nd, 1873.]
On Sunday (July 27th) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. Charles
Voysey took his text from Psalm xvi., 9, “ I have set God always
before me. He is on my right hand; therefore I shall not fall.”
He said—Our meditations on the supremacy of virtue would
hardly be complete without an effort to discern more clearly the
relation between morality and religion. One of the most important
questions that can be asked is, “ What is the help which Religion
gives to true Virtue ?” I do not say that Religion ought to be
abandoned if it could be proved to be of no value in the promotion
of virtue, because Religion has other functions to fulfil in the
economy of man; but it must be owned that Religion would lose
nine-tenths of its value if it were of no moral use; and our duty
would be to abandon it altogether if it were found to be a hindrance
to morality. I am here forced to stand on the threshold of our
enquiry in order to explain what is meant in this discourse by the
word Religion. One is quite overwhelmed at the mass of different
senses in which this and kindred terms are used, and it is positively
alarming to think of the confusion that must overtake posterity
in trying to understand the theological productions of this age.
One can hardly take up a book or a magazine, or a weekly news
paper, without perceiving the perfect Babel we are in through our
use of ambiguous terms, without any effort at definition. Contro
versy will one day come to a full stop, being choked by its own
jargon. Theological polemic will at length fall into disuse when
the light of day shall reveal every belligerent in the act of “beating
the air,” and thrusting at shadows.
�2
To pass over the long list of senses in which the term religion
is used, I will briefly repeat the definition, or rather the explana
tion, of it which I have often already given. Of course I do not
give this as arbitrary and dogmatic, but only in order to leave no
mistake as to my meaning.
Religion, as I understand and use the term, is the consciousness
of a supreme God and of our relation to Him. It is the conviction
of the heart that there is an invisible One who is Source and
Ruler of the whole universe, and is especially the Lord of our
hearts and lives; whose will is always good and must be obeyed ;
whose purpose is always kind, and may, therefore, be implicitly
trusted; to whom we may turn for guidance, and on whom we
may rest all our hope—in the words of my text, “ I have set God
always before me; He is on my right hand, &c.” To have this
conviction is to be religious. To be destitute of all sense of God,
so as to doubt gravely whether there be a God or not, is to be
irreligious. Again, Religion is not merely an intellectual assent to
the proposition, “ There is a God, and He is good,” for a man may
arrive at this conclusion in various ways, and yet not have any
feeling of loyalty, or trust, or love towards God in his heart.
Religion is intensely, but not exclusively, a matter of emotion.
Observe further, that Religion is much more than mere awe and
reverence. The Pantheist and even the Atheist may feel the
emotions of awe and reverence excited by the contemplation of the
grandeur and beauty of Nature; but while it is regarded as
unconscious, and therefore irresponsive to human aspiration and
devotion, it is impossible to regard it with religious feelings. The
laws of Nature, which is the God of the Pantheist, are regarded
by him as supreme, and nobly loyal to them he endeavours to
become ; but he owns that Nature does not know nor care whether
he obeys her laws or not—that is his own business—nor is she
conscious in the least degree of his loyalty or admiration. The
Pantheist may be ravished with the sight of Nature’s beauty, but
there is no return of his loving gaze, no gratified sense on her part
of having filled her worshipper with bliss. The Pantheist may
also be a very optimist of content and hope, abiding in the immu
tability and certainty of Nature’s operations; but he can never
feel that rest and peace which those souls feel who know what it
�is “to cast their burden on the Lord.” In the Pantheist’s God
there is no consciousness, no individual will, no heart. But
Religion recognises in God all these. It is the characteristic of
religion to attribute to God more than all else—next to righteous
ness—tender sympathy and affection.
I am willing to admit that some of this, which I have called
Religion, may be erroneous, and must be defective. We know how
religion hitherto has been mixed up with errors and falsehood too
patent to remain for ever rooted in men’s minds. But Religion
has outlived all primseval superstitions, and seems to have a
vitality of its own by which it rises from the ashes of burned and
buried creeds. In spite of the thousands who are just now destitute
of all religion whatever, owing to the solemn mockery of maintain
ing a creed no longer credible, and owing in other cases to the
intense disgust at having been so long the dupe of groundless
superstitions; in spite of these, I say, Religion is taking fresh and
stronger root than ever, and is putting forth new leaves, and even
already bearing fresh and wholesome fruit for the healing of the
nations. While morality owes scarcely a single thread of its
binding power to the dying religions of modern Christendom, the
true essence of religion, set free by the destruction of the tissue of
creeds, is filling the air with its fragrance, and making glad the
hearts of those who wept when their idols were shattered.
A modern wit has immortalised himself by describing the present
State of religious feeling—if feeling it may be called—-throughout
orthodox Europe, in these terms : “To believe implicitly what one
knows to be false.” Let us hope that the time will come when it
may be truly described thus : “ To deny openly what one knows
to be false,” and when this stage is reached, “To know certainly what
one believes to be true.” Till this blessed change is consummated,
we have but one duty in regard to, religion. To be utterly true to
the convictions of the hour, and to be honest enough as well as
brave enough to abandon any position proved to be untenable. It
is impossible on this, the deepest and highest of all themes, to
attain the certainty of demonstration ; to have such knowledge of
God as would enable us, or warrant us, to teach with authority, as
if it were scientifically verified, what we feel in our hearts to be
true about God. It is alike impossible for the irreligious to know
�4
that our convictions are false, or our feelings groundless, and it is
unbecoming to dogmatise in the negative, as the orthodox have
dogmatised in the affirmative. Time alone will show who is right
and where lies the truth. Both , of us are on the side of virtue;
both alike regard it as supreme; both of us measure the worth or
the worthlessness of any religion by its influence on the culture of
morals. What better task could we pursue than to investigate to
the very foundation the claim made for religion, that in so far as
it approximates to the truth, or is set free from false admixtures,
it is . a very powerfu laid to virtue1?
Between the orthodox God, whose system is one of bribes and
threats, and the God of Matthew Arnold, who is a “ Power that
makes for righteousness,” and yet has no faculties for knowing
when we are righteous and when we are not; who does not even
know what righteousness is and has no power to think about any
thing—between these two—there is the God of pure Theism, who
“ thinks, and knows, and lovesand is present to the soul as the
most Holy One, the searcher of hearts, the Divine Father who
loves to see His child willingly good—good from choice; a God
who uses no coercion or enticement; who only whispers “ Do this,
because it is right.” “ Do not that, because it is wrong.” Now,
whether this be or be not a delusion of the mind which transfigures
the human conscience into a Divine voice, at all events, it gives a
sanction to the moral sense far more weighty than any other sup
position yet known. It is only natural and human in the highest
degree to attach unspeakable importance to what we believe to be
mandates of the Eternal Will. Every thought, word, or deed,
becomes magnified for good or ill, beyond all calculation, when it
is regarded as conforming to, or rebelling against, the law of the
most Holy One. And this part of religion—our recognition of a
Divine Law-giver, an accuser and a judge—would never fail of its
moral power were we always to 'realise what we profess to believe,
were we “ to set God always before us.” We fail, not because it
is for one instant a matter of indifference to us whether we obey
God or not; but because we cannot, in the presence of temptation,
and under pressure of physical allurements, realize to ourselves
that God Himself is warning us from temptation, or urging us to
perform some arduous duty. Indeed, we are religious in exact
�5
proportion as we do realise His right of control, and in the same
proportion is our religion a help to our virtue.
But, passing from the sense of Divine authority we come to the
still higher conviction of the Divine friendliness—God’s will that
we should be good, joined with God’s willingness to help us to
become good; not by miracle, not by invariable answei' to prayer,
not by uniform rescue from temptation; but by the whole and
mingled method of His discipline. Sometimes we are helped to
virtue by being suffered to taste the bitter fruits of disobedience,
oi’ to be stung by the remorse which belongs to it. But to feel
sure from first to last that One above, the most Holy, has devised
all our past, present, and future as a means for the perfecting of
our natures and the reproduction in ourselves of His own spotless
image, must, without doubt, be a tremendous moral force, because
it adds hope and encouragement of the highest order to the sense
of solemn obligation. I know nothing more terrible than the
weight of sin which used to be heaped upon our young heads by
the reiterated falsehood that we had broken the whole of God’s
law if we were guilty in only one point. It was simple agony to
be assured that a Perfect God demanded, and would be satisfied
with, nothing less than a perfect obedience from man, which we
knew could not possibly be rendered; and one only wonders why
more brains did not give way under the never-to-be-forgotten
weight of sin and doom. It made matters worse; resistance of
temptation more difficult; hope of renewal impossible. One’s only
refuge was in atonement and substitution and imputed righteous
ness ; leaving one no better than before and only an ungrateful
slave. But now, what a change ! Over again we can calmly
repeat, but with an infinitely higher meaning, the old orthodox
formula, “ a Perfect God requires perfect obedience from man,”
Yes, indeed! But when? Not until he can render it. Notone
moment sooner than all his faculties and surroundings shall have
made it possible to him. But what does a “Perfect God” mean, but
one perfectly just, and therefore requiring of us no more than we
can render; so that perfect obedience is only doing our very best
under our circumstances. A Perfect God can require no more;
but He can require no less. Here the burdened sinner is pacified
and encouraged; assured that God does not blame him one grain
�mor© than he Must blame himself; and consoled by the hope that
his present exertions, and even failures, shall work in at length
to the purification of his soul. It is something to be virtuous for,
if one knows that virtue in one little thing will lead to being
virtuous in many great things; and that the more one tries the
sooner one will succeed. It is some encouragement to be as
virtuous us we can be now, to beheve that we shall be perfectly
virtuous hereafter. And this hope and encouragement, I say, are
the direct fruits of true religion. Perfect trust in God’s good
purposes does provide this invaluable aid to virtue. Just, in fact,
as the old falsehood paralysed moral effort through utter despair
of success, and then sent conscience to slumber by saying, “ All
your righteousness is as filthy ragsso the new truth stimulates
to an enthusiasm of virtuous effort, and comforts the soul, not only
by assurances of Divine approval, but by promise of entire success.
Moreover, a religion like this which recognises the universal and
impartial love of God for all mankind is a powerful aid to virtue,
by inspiring affection between man and man. It was, perhaps,
excusable under the old creed to hate those whom God was supposed
to hate, and to count them our enemies; but it is impossible to
feel the same animosity towards anyone in v horn at the time we
recognise one who is very dear to God, and who, like ourselves, is
destined to perfect holiness. The mere fact of our common
relationship to one Divine Father, and our common hope of being
thoroughly cleansed from all sin and cured of all defects, must have
its influence in softening down our asperity, and in awakening our
mercy and forbearance. Whatever helps to kindle affection between
man and man is a real help to virtue. It would be an evil day for
mankind, if a mere sense of duty—invaluable as that is—only re
mained as a spur to right conduct; if our motives for doing good
were to be stripped of the lovely adornments of tender feeling and
sympathy, and our lives were only regulated by the cut and dried
rules of mechanical morals. In truth, it seems to me, though I say
it with all diffidence, that love is the real root of all virtue, and
not its tardy fruit. Men have begun by acting from tender
emotions and kind feelings, and then have discovered that their
conduct was beneficial. Even Utilitarianism must fall back on
love and kindness and the desire to do good, as the root of all
�7
morality. For why should it be right to promote the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, instead of promoting the greatest
happiness of the few who are best able to enjoy and appreciate
happiness 1 Because, behind and beneath it lies the native kindli
ness of the human heart, the instinct of generosity, the longing
that all may share in our happiness, which, when wisely directed
and organised, is called morality or virtue. Most true it is that
we need, the help of reason in the discovery of the best method of
showing kindness j and our defective reasoning requires the cor
rection of experience that we may learn how to select, and how to
perform, what is really best for the common good. But, in general,
the impulses of a kind heart go straight to the point, and are, in
nine cases out of ten, infallibly virtuous.
It is through his affections chiefly that man has ever attained a
true morality, and it is by his’affections mainly that the standard
of morals is kept steadily rising, Love deepens and widens
sympathy, sympathy thus enlarged reveals to us wants and wrongs
and sorrows of others to which we had before been blind, and this
revelation is followed instantly by fresh calls upon our sense of
duty, by new demands of the conscience. If I am my brother’s
keeper, and try to behave accordingly, the longer I keep him, the
more faithfully I watch over'his needs and perils, the morel shall
have to do for him, and the greater will be the claims made upon
my love and sympathy. It is notorious how we grow to love
more those to whom we have shown kindness. In this sense also
it is true that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” The
love born out of bounty is far greater than the love born of
gratitude.
If love then be rightly regarded as the proper root of virtue,
and a religion be found which tends to inspire love between man
and man, that religion must be a powerful auxiliary in promoting
virtue. It is on this ground that we must admire those precepts
of Christianity, and of all other religions, which inculcate “love to
the brethren,” and also detest and abjure those principles, beliefs,
and precepts which inculcate first exclusiveness, and then hatred,
malice and all uneharitableness towards those who are not theolo
gically “ brethren.” As a religion, Christianity—as developed in
Europe and America—has been nearly as much a source of strife
�8
and hatred and selfish ambition, as a source of peace, charity, and
good-will. It has hitherto, therefore, been nearly as great a
hindrance to true virtue as a help to it. By its fruits it can be
known; and by its fruits it must be judged. And in so far as it
has taught what is true, it has blessed mankind; in so far as it has
taught what is false, Christianity has been its bane.
The same sifting will be applied to the Religion of which I have
spoken to-day. Its faults will show its truth and its falsehood ;
will disclose its weakness while declaring its power. Meanwhile, it
is a comfort to know that in the long run truth alone is friend to
mankind, while every falsehood is its foe.
*
EASTERN
Post
Steam Printing Works, 89, Worship Street, Finsbury E.CJ
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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True religion an aid to virtue: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, July 27th 1873
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. Printed by Eastern Post: August 2nd 1873.
Publisher
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[Eastern Post]
Date
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[1873]
Identifier
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G3419
Subject
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Sermons
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (True religion an aid to virtue: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, July 27th 1873), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conduct of life
Morris Tracts
Virtue