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NOTES
ON THE
CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
BY
JOHN RUSKIN, M.A.;
AUTHOR OF
“THE STONES OF VENICE,” “THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE,” &c.
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.
1851.
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LONDON:
PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY,
OLD BAILEY.
�PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Since the publication of these Notes; I have received
many letters upon the affairs of the Church; from
persons of nearly every denomination of Christians;
for all these letters I am grateful; and in many of
them I have found valuable information or sugges
tion : but I have not leisure at present to follow out
the subject farther; and no reason has been shown
me for modifying- or altering any part of the text
as it stands. It is republished; therefore; without
change or addition.
I must; however; especially thank one of my
correspondents for sending me a pamphlet; called
“ Sectarianism; the bane of Religion and the Church/’*
which I would recommend, in the strongest terms;
to the reading of all who regard the cause of Christ;
and; for help in reading the Scriptures; I would
* London: 1846.
Nisbet & Co., Berners’ Street.
A
�PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
name also the short and admirable arrangement of
parallel passages relating to the offices of the clergy,
called “ The Testimony of Scripture concerning the
Christian Ministry ”*
* London : 1847.
J. K. Campbell, 1, Warwick Square.
�ADVERTISEMENT.
Many persons will probably find fault with me for
publishing opinions which are not new: but I shall
bear this blame contentedly, believing that opinions
on this subject could hardly be just if they were
not 1800 years old. Others will blame me for
making proposals which are altogether new: to
whom I would answer, that things in these days
seem not so far right but that they may be mended.
And others will simply call the opinions false and
the proposals foolish—to whose good will, if they
take it in hand to contradict me, I must leave what
I have written—having no purpose of being drawn,
at present, into religious controversy.^If, however, any
should admit the truth, but regret the tone of what
I have said, I can only pray them to consider how
much less harm is done in the world by ungraceful
boldness, than by untimely Fear.-'
Denmark Hill,
February, 1851.
A 2
��NOTES,
The following’ remarks were intended to form part
of the appendix to an essay on Architecture : But it
seemed to me, when I had put them into order, that
they might be useful to persons who would not care
to possess the work to which I proposed to attach
them ; I publish them, therefore, in a separate form ;
but I have not time to give them more consistency
than they would have had in the subordinate posi
tion originally intended for them. I do not pro
fess to teach Divinity; and I pray the reader to
understand this, and to pardon the slightness and
insufficiency of notes set down with no more in
tention of connected treatment of their subject than
might regulate an accidental conversation. Some
of them are simply copied from my private diary;
others are detached statements of facts, which seem
to me significative or valuable, without comment;
all are written in haste, and in the intervals of
occupation with an entirely different subject. It may
be asked of me, whether I hold it right to speak thus
hastily and insufficiently respecting the matter in
�6
NOTES ON THE
question? Yes. I hold it right to speak hastily;
not to think, hastily. I have not thought hastily of
these things; and, besides., the haste of speech is con
fessed; that the reader may think of me only as
talking to him, and saying; as shortly and simply as
I can; things which; if he esteem them foolish or idle;
he is welcome to cast aside; but which; in very truth;
I cannot help saying at this time.
The passages in the essay which required notes;
described the repression of the political power of the
Venetian Clergy by the Venetian Senate; and it
became necessary for me—in supporting an assertion
made in the course of the inquiry; that the idea of
separation of Church and State was both vain and
impious — to limit the sense in which it seemed to
me that the word “Church” should be understood,
and to note one or two consequences which would
result from the acceptance of such limitation. This
I may as well do in a separate paper, readable
by any person interested in the subject; for it is
hiodi time that some definition of the word should be
o
agreed upon. I do not mean a definition involving
the doctrine of this or that division of Christians, but
limiting, in a manner understood by all of them, the
sense in which the word should thenceforward be
used. There is grievous inconvenience in the present
state of things. For instance, in a sermon lately
published at Oxford, by an anti-Tractarian divine, I
find this sentence,— “It is clearly within the pro
vince of the State to establish a national church, qt
external institution of certain forms of worship
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
7
Now suppose one were to take this interpretation
of the word a Church/’ given by an Oxford divine,
and substitute it for the simple word in some Bible
Texts, as, for instance, “ Unto the angel of the
external institution of certain forms of worship
of Ephesus, write,” &c. Or, “ Salute the brethren
which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the ex
ternal institution of certain forms of worship which
is in his house,”—what awkward results we should
have, here and there ! Now I do not say it is pos
sible for men to agree with each other in their re
ligious opinions, but it is certainly possible for them
to agree with each other upon their religious expres
sions ; and when a word occurs in the Bible a hun
dred and fourteen times, it is surely not asking too
much of contending divines to let it stand in the
sense in which it there occurs ; and when they want
an expression of something for which it does not
stand in the Bible, to use some other word. There
is no compromise of religious opinion in this : it is
simply proper respect for the Queen’s English.
The word occurs in the New Testament, as I
said, one hundred and fourteen times.
*
In every
one of those occurrences, it bears one and the same
grand sense : that of a congregation or assembly of
men. But it bears this sense under four different
modifications, giving four separate meanings to the
word. These are —
I. The entire Multitude of the Elect; otherwise
* I may, perhaps, have missed count of one or two occurrences
of the word; but not, I think, in any important passages.
�8
NOTES ON THE
called the Body of Christ; and sometimes the Bride,
the Lamb’s Wife; including- the Faithful in all ag-es;
Adam, and the children of Adam yet unborn.
In this sense it is used in Ephesians v. 25, 27, 32 ;
Colossians i. 18, and several other passag-es.
II. The entire multitude of professing- believers in
Christ, existing’ on earth at a given moment; in
cluding- false brethren, wolves in sheep’s clothings
g-oatspand tares, as well as sheep and wheat, and
other forms of bad fish with g-ood in the net.
In this sense it is used in 1 Cor. x. 32; xv. 9;
Galatians i. 13, 1 Tim. iii. 5, &c.
III. The multitude of professed believers, living'
in a certain city, place, or house. This is the most
frequent sense in which the word occurs, as in Acts
vii, 38; xiii. 1; 1 Cor. i. 2 ; xvi. 19, &c.
IV. Any assembly of men : as in Acts xix. 32, 41.
That in a hundred and twelve out of the hundred
and fourteen texts, the word bears some one of
these four meaning-s, is indisputable.
*
But there
are two texts in which, if the word had alone
occurred, its meaning’ mig-ht have been doubtful.
These are Matt. xvi. 18, and xviii. 17.
The absurdity of founding- any doctrine upon the
inexpressibly minute possibility that, in these two
• The expression 11 House of God,” in 1 Tim. iii. 15, is shown to
be used of the congregation by 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17.
I have not noticed the word KvpiaKq (olicla), from which the
German “ Kirche,” the English “ Church,” and the Scotch
“ Kirk ’’ are derived, as it is not used with that signification
in the New Testament.
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
9
texts, the word might have been used with a dif
ferent meaning from that which it bore in all the
others, coupled with the assumption that the meanino; was this or that, is self-evident: it is not so
much a religious error as a philological solecism;
unparalleled, so far as I know, in any other science
but that of divinity.
tNor is it ever, I think, committed with open
front by Protestants. No English divine, asked
in a straightforward manner for a Scriptural defi
nition of “ the Church,” would, I suppose, be bold
enough to answer “the Clergy.” Nor is there any
harm in the common use of the word, so only that
it be distinctly understood to be not the Scriptural
one; and therefore to be unfit for substitution in a
Scriptural text. There is no harm in a man’s talk
ing- of his son’s “ going into the Church”: meaning
that he is g’oing to take orders; but there is much
harm in his supposing this a Scriptural use of the
w’ord, and therefore^ that when Christ said, “Tell
it to the Church,” He might possibly have meant,
“ Tell it to the Clergy.”
It is time to put an end to the chance of such
misunderstanding. Let it but be declared plainly
by all men, when they begin to state their opinions
on matters ecclesiastical,-that they will use the word
“ Church” in one sense or the other;—That they will
accept the sense in which it is used by the Apostles,
or that they deny this sense, and propose a new
definition of their own. We shall then know what
we are about with them—we may perhaps grant
�10
NOTES ON THE
them their new use of the term, and argue with
them on that understanding; so only that they will
not pretend to make use of Scriptural authority,
while they refuse to employ Scriptural language.^
This, however, it is not my purpose to do at present.
I desire only to address those who are willing to
accept the Apostolic sense of the word Church, and
with them, I would endeavour shortly to ascertain
what consequences must follow from an acceptance
of that Apostolic sense, and what must be our first
and most necessary conclusions from the common
language of Scripture respecting these following
*
points:—
1.
2.
3.
4.
The distinctive characters of the Church.
The Authority of the Church.
The Authority of the Clergy over the Church.
The Connection of the Church with the State.
These are four separate subjects of question; but
we shall not have to put these questions in succession
with each of the four Scriptural meanings of the
word Church, for evidently its second and third
meaning may be considered together, as merely ex
pressing the general or particular conditions of the
Visible Church, and the fourth signification is entirely
independent of all questions of a religious kind. So
* Any reference, except to Scripture, in notes of this kind
would of course be useless: the argument from, or with, the
Fathers is not to be compressed into fifty pages. I have some
thing’ to say about Hooker; but I reserve that for another
time, not wishing’ to say it hastily, or to leave it without support.
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
11
that we shall only put the above inquiries successively
respecting’ the Invisible and Visible Church; and as
the two last, — of authority of Clergy, and connec
tion with State—can evidently only have reference
to the Visible Church, we shall have, in all, these
six questions to consider :
1. The distinctive characters of the Invisible
Church.
2. The distinctive characters of the Visible Church.
3. The Authority of the Invisible Church.
4. The Authority of the Visible Church.
5. The Authority of Clergy over the Visible Church.
6. The Connection of the Visible Church with the
State.
1. What are the distinctive characters of the
Invisible Church; that is to say, What is it which
makes a person a member of this Church, and how
is he to be known for such? Wide question—if we
had to take cognizance of all that has been written
respecting- it, remarkable as it has been always for
quantity rather than carefulness, and full of con
fusion between Visible and Invisible : even the article
of the Church of England being ambiguous in its
first clause: “ The Visible Church is a congregation
of Faithful men.” As if ever it had been possible,
except for God, to see Faith 1 or to know a Faithful
man by sight. And there is little else written on
this question, without some such quick confusion of
the Visible and Invisible Church ;—needless and
unaccountable confusion. ^For evidently, the Chui ch
�12
NOTES ON THE
which is composed of Faithful men, is the one true,
indivisible and indiscernible Church, built on the
foundation of Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ
himself being the chief corner stone. It includes all
who have ever fallen asleep in Christ, and all yet
unborn, who are to be saved in Him ; its Body is
as yet imperfect; it will not be perfected till the last
saved human spirit is gathered to its God.
.A man becomes a member of this Church only
by believing in Christ with all his heart; nor is he
positively recognizable for a member of it, when he
has become so, by any one but God, not even by
himself. Nevertheless, there are certain signs by
which Christ’s sheep may be guessed at. Not by
their being in any definite Fold—for many are lost
*
sheep at times : but by their sheep-like behaviour;
and a g’reat many are indeed sheep which, on the
far mountain side, in their peacefulness, we take
for stones. To themselves, the best proof of their
*
being Christ’s sheep is to find themselves on Christ’s
shoulders; and) between them, there are certain sym
pathies (expressed in the Apostles’ Creed by the term
“communion of Saints”), by which they may in a
sort recog
n
*ise
each other, and so become verily visible
to each other for mutual comfort.2..The Limits of the Visible Church, or of the
Church in the Second Scriptural Sense, are not so
easy to define: they are awkward questions, these,
of stake-nets. It has been ingeniously and plausi
bly endeavoured to make Baptism a sign of ad
mission into the Visible Church; but absurdly
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
13
enough; for we know that half the baptized people
in the world are very visible rogues, believing
neither in God nor devil; and it is flat blas
phemy to call these Visible Christians; we
also know that the Holy Ghost was sometimes
given before Baptism, and it would be absurdity
*
to call a man, on whom the Holy Ghost had
fallen, an Invisible Christian. The only rational
distinction is that which practically, though not
professedly, we always assume. If we hear a man
profess himself a believer in God and in Christ,
and detect him in no glaring' and wilful viola
tion of God’s law, we speak of him as a Chris
tian ; and, on the other hand, if we hear him
or see him denying Christ, either in his words or
conduct, we tacitly assume him not to be a Chris
tian. A mawkish charity prevents us from out
speaking in this matter, and from earnestly endea
vouring to discern who are Christians and who are
not; and this I holdf to be one of the chief sins
* Acts x. 44.
, t Let not the reader be displeased with me for these short and
apparently insolent statements of opinion. I am not writing* inso
lently, but as shortly and clearly as I can; and when I seriously
believe a thing1, I say so in a few words, leaving* the reader to de
termine what my belief is worth. But I do not choose to temper
down every expression of personal opinion into courteous generalities,
and so lose space, and time, and intelligibility at once. We are
utterly oppressed in these days by our courtesies, and considera
tions, and compliances, and proprieties. Forgive me them, this once,
or rather let us all forgive them to each other, and learn to speak
plainly first, and, if it may be, gracefully afterwards; and not only,
�14
NOTES ON THE
of the Church in the present day; for thus wicked
men are put to no shame; and better men are
encouraged in their failing's, or caused to hesitate
in their virtues, by the example of those whom, in
false charity, they choose to call Christians. Now,
it being’ granted that it is impossible to know, de
terminedly, who are Christians indeed, that is no
reason for utter negligence in separating the no
minal, apparent, or possible Christian, from the pro
fessed Pagan or enemy of God. We spend much
time in arguing about efficacy of sacraments and
such other mysteries; but we do not act upon the
very certain tests which are ( clear and visible.
We know that Christ’s people are not thieves—not
liars—not busybodies—not dishonest—not avaricious
—not wasteful—not cruel. Let us then get our
selves well clear of thieves—liars—wasteful people
— avaricious people — cheating people—-people who
*
do not pay their debts. Let us assure them that
they, at least, do not belong to the Visible Church;
and having thus got that Church into decent shape
and cohesion, it will be time to think of drawing
the stake-nets closer.
to speak, but to stand by what we have spoken. One of my Ox
ford friends heard, the other day, that I was employed on these
notes, and forthwith wrote to me, in a panic, not to put my name
to them, for fear I should “ compromise myself.” I think we are
most of us compromised to some extent already, when England
has sent a Roman Catholic minister to the second city in Italy,
and remains herself for a week without any government, because
her chief men cannot agree upon the position whieh a Popish car
dinal is to have leave to occupy in London.
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
15
*-I hold it for a law, palpable to common sense,
and which nothing1 but the cowardice and faith
lessness of the Church prevents it from putting in
practice, that the conviction of any dishonourable
conduct or wilful crime, of any fraud, falsehood,
cruelty, or violence, should be ground for the ex
communication of any man :—for his publicly de
clared separation from the acknowledg’ed body of
the Visible Church: and that he should not be re
ceived again therein without public confession of his
crime and declaration of his repentance. If this
were vigorously enforced, we should soon have greater
purity of life in the world, and fewer discussions
about high and low churches. - But before we can
obtain any idea of the manner in which such law
could be enforced, we have to consider the second
question, respecting the Authority of the Church.
Now Authority is twofold: to declare doctrine and
to enforce discipline; and we have to inquire, there
fore, in each kind,—
3. What is the authority of the Invisible Church ?
Evidently, in matters of doctrine, all members of the
Invisible Church must have been, and must ever be,
at the time of their deaths, right in the points essen
tial to Salvation. But, (A), we cannot tell who
are members of the Invisible Church.
(B) . We cannot collect evidence from deathbeds in
a clearly stated form.
(C) . We can collect evidence, in any form, only
from some one or two out of every sealed thousand of
�16
NOTES ON THE
the Invisible Church. Elijah thought he was alone
in Israel; and yet there were seven thousand in
visible ones around him. Grant that we had Elijah’s
intelligence; and we could only calculate on collect
ing the TtWh part of the evidence or opinions of the
part of the Invisible Church living on earth at a
given moment: that is to say, the seven-millionth or
trillionth of its collective evidence. It is very clear,
therefore, we cannot hope to get rid of the contradictory
opinions, and keep the consistent ones, by a general
equation. ^But, it has been said, there are no contra
dictory opinions ; the Church is infallible. There was
some talk about the infallibility of the Church, if I
recollect right, in that letter of Mr. Bennett’s to the
Bishop of London. If any Church be infallible, it is
assuredly the Invisible Church, or Body of Christ;
and infallible in the main sense it must of course be
by its definition. An Elect person must be saved,
and therefore cannot eventually be deceived on es
sential points: so that Christ says of the deception
of such, cc If it were possible” implying’ it to be
impossible. Therefore, as we said, if one could
get rid of the variable opinions of the members of
the Invisible Church, the constant opinions would
assuredly be authoritative : but for the three reasons
above stated, we cannot get at their constant opi
nions : and as for the feelings and thoughts which
they daily experience or express, the question of In
fallibility—which is practical only in this bearing—is
soon settled. Observe, St. Paul, and the rest of the
�17
CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
Apostles, write nearly all their epistles to the Invi
sible Church :—Those epistles are headed,—Romans,
“To the beloved of God, called to be saints”; 1 Co
rinthians, “ To them that are sanctified in Christ
Jesus”; 2 Corinthians, “To the saints in all
Achaia ”; Ephesians, “ To the saints which are at
Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus ”; Philippians, “ To all the saints which are at Philippi” ;
Colossians, “ To the saints and faithful brethren
which are at Colosse”; 1 and 2 Thessalonians, “To
the Church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the
Father, and the Lord Jesus”; 1 and 2 Timothy, “To
his own son in the faith ”; Titus, to the same;
1 Peter, “ To the Strangers, Elect according to the
foreknowledge of God ”; 2 Peter, “ To them that
have obtained like precious faith with us”; 2 John,
“ To the Elect lady ”; Jude, “ To them that are
sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus
Christ and called.”
There are thus fifteen epistles, expressly directed
to the members of the Invisible Church. Philemon
and Hebrews, and 1 and 3 John, are evidently also
so written, though not so expressly inscribed. That
of James, and that to the Galatians, are as evidently
to the Visible Church: the one being general, and the
other to persons “ removed from Him that called
them.” Missing out, therefore, these two epistles,
but including Christ’s words to His disciples, we find
in the Scriptural addresses to members of the In
visible Church, fourteen, if not more, direct injuncB
�18
NOTES ON THE
tions C( not to be deceived.” * So much for the (( In
fallibility of the Church.”
Now, one could put up with Puseyism more pa
tiently, if its fallacies arose merely from peculiar
temperaments yielding to peculiar temptations. But
its bold refusals to read plain English ; its elaborate
adjustments of tight bandages over its own eyes, as
wholesome preparation for a walk among traps and
pitfalls; its daring trustfulness in its own clairvoy
*
ance all the time, and declarations that every pit it
falls into is a seventh heaven ; and that it is pleasant
and profitable to break its legs;—with all this it is
difficult to have patience. One thinks of the high
wayman with his eyes shut, in the Arabian Nights;
and wonders whether any kind of scourging’ would
prevail upon the Anglican highwayman to open
“first one and then the other.”
«4. So much, then, I repeat, for the infallibility of
the Divisible Church, and for its consequent autho
rity. Now, if we want to ascertain what infallibility
and authority there is in the Visible Church, we have
to alloy the small wisdom and the light weight of
Invisible Christians, with large per-centage of the
false wisdom and contrary weight of Undetected Anti
Christians. Which alloy makes up the current coin of
opinions in the Visible Church, having such value as
we may choose—its nature being properly assayed—
to attach to it. •
* Matt. xxiv. 4; Mark xiii. 5 ; Luke xxi. 8; 1 Cor. iii. 18, vi.
9, xv. 33; Eph. iv. 14, v. 6; Col. ii. 8; 2 Thess. ii. 3 ; Heb. iii.
13 ; 1 John i. 8, iii. 7 ; 2 John 7, 8.
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
19
.There is, therefore, in matters of doctrine, no such
thing as the Authority of the Church. We might as
well talk of the authority of a morning- cloud. There
may be light in it, but the light is not of it; and
it diminishes the light that it gets; and lets less of
it through than it receives, Christ being its sun. Or,
we might as well talk of the authority of a flock of
sheep—>.for the Church is a body to be taught and
fed, not to teach and feed : and of all sheep that are
fed on the earth, Christ’s Sheep are the most simple,.,
(the children of this generation are wiser): always
losing themselves ; doing little else in this world but
lose themselves ;—never finding themselves; always
found by Some One else; getting perpetually into
sloughs, and snows, and bramble thickets, like to
die there, but for their Shepherd, who is for ever
finding them and bearing them back, with torn fleeces
and eyes full of fear. This, then, being the No-Authority of the Church
in matter of Doctrine, what Authority has it in
matters of Discipline ?
Much, every way. The sheep have natural and
wholesome power (however far scattered they may be
from their proper fold) of getting- together in orderly
knots; following each other on trodden sheepwalks,
and holding their heads all one way when they see
strange dogs coming; as well as of casting out of
their company any whom they see reason to suspect
of not being right sheep, and being among them for
no g-ood. All which things must be done as the time
and place require, and by common consent. A path
B 2
�20
NOTES ON THE
may be good at one time of day which is bad at
another, or after a change of wind; and a position
may be very good for sudden defence, which would
be very stiff and awkward for feeding in. And com
mon consent must often be of such and such a com
pany on this or that hillside, in this or that par
ticular danger,—not of all the sheep in the world: and
the consent may either be literally common, and
expressed in assembly, or it may be to appoint officers
over the rest, with such and such trusts of the common
authority, to be used for the common advantage.
Conviction of crimes, and excommunication, for in
stance, could neither be effected except before, or
by means of, officers of some appointed authority.
5. This then brings us to our fifth question.
What is the Authority of the Clergy over the
Church ?
The first clause of the question must evidently
be,—Who are the Clergy? and it is not easy to
answer this without begging the rest of the ques
tion.
For instance, I think I can hear certain people
answering, That the Clergy are folk of three kinds,—
Bishops, who overlook the Church; Priests, who
sacrifice for the Church; Deacons, who minister
to the Church : thus assuming in their answer,
that the Church is to be sacrificed for, and that
people cannot overlook and minister to her at the
same time ; — which is going’ much too fast. I
think, however, if we define the Clergy to be the
“ Spiritual Officers of the Church,”—meaning, by
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
21
Officers; merely People in office;—we shall have a
title safe enough and general enough to begin
with; and corresponding too; pretty well; with St.
Paul’s general expression 7rpoi<rrap.svoi, in Rom.
xii. 8; and 1 Thess. v. 13.
Now; respecting these Spiritual Officers; or office
bearers; we have to inquire; first; What their Office or
Authority is; or should be; secondly; Who gave; or
should give; them that Authority ? That is to say;
first; What is; or should be the natn/re of their office;
and secondly; What the extent, or force of their
authority in it? for this last depends mainly on its
derivation.
First; then; What should be the offices; and of
what kind should be the authority; of the Clergy ?
I have hitherto referred to the Bible for an answer
to every question. I do so again; and behold; the
Bible gives me no answer. I defy you to answer
me from the Bible. You can only guess; and dimly
conjecture; what the offices of the Clergy were in
the first century. You cannot show me a single
command as to what they shall be. Strange; this;
the Bible give no answer to so apparently important
a question! God surely would not have left His
word without an answer to anything' His children
ought to ask.
Surely it must be a ridiculous
question—a question we ought never to have put;
or thought of putting. Let us think of it again
a little. To be sure;—It is a ridiculous question;
and we should be ashamed of ourselves for having
put it:—What should be the offices of the Clergy?
�22
NOTES ON THE
That is to say, What are the possible spiritual neces
sities which at any time may arise in the Church,
and by what means and men are they to be sup
plied ; — evidently an infinite question.
Different
kinds of necessities must be met by different autho
rities, constituted as the necessities arise. Robinson
Crusoe, in his island, wants no Bishop, and makes
a thunderstorm do for an Evangelist. The Uni
versity of Oxford would be ill off without its Bishop ;
but wants an Evangelist besides; and that forthwith.
The authority which the Vaudois shepherds need,
is of Barnabas, the son of Consolation; the autho
rity which the city of London needs is of James,
the son of Thunder. Let us then alter the form of
our question, and put it to the Bible thus : What are
the necessities most likely to arise in the Church ; and
may they be best met by different men, or in great
part by the same men acting in different capacities ?
and are the names attached to their offices of any
consequence ? Ah, the Bible answers now, and that
loudly. The Church is built on the Foundation of
the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself
*
being the corner-stone. Well; we cannot have two
foundations, so we can have no more Apostles nor
Prophets : — then, as for the other needs of the
Church in its edifying upon this foundation, there
are all manner of things to be done daily;—rebukes
to be given; comfort to be brought; Scripture to
be explained; warning to be enforced; threatening's
to be executed; charities to be administered ; and the
men who do these things are called, and call them
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS
23
selves, with absolute indifference, Deacons, Bishops,
Elders, Evangelists, according to what they are
doing at the time of speaking. St. Paul almost
always calls himself a deacon, St. Peter calls him
self an elder, 1 Pet. v. 1, and Timothy, generally
understood to be addressed as a bishop, is called a
deacon in 1 Tim. iv. 6 — forbidden to rebuke an elder,
in v. 1, and exhorted to do the work of an evangelist,
in 2 Tim. iv. o. ,?But there is one thing which, as
officers, or as separate from the rest of the flock,
they never call themselves,—which it would have
been impossible, as so separate, they ever should have
called themselves; that is—Priests, c
Ht would have been just as possible for the Clergy
of the early Church to call themselves Levites, as
to call themselves (ex officio) Priests. The whole
function of Priesthood was, on Christmas morning,
at once and for ever gathered into His Person who
was born at Bethlehem ; and thenceforward, all who
are united with Him, and who with Him make sacri
fice of themselves; that is to say, all members of the
Invisible Church, become at the instant of their conver
sion, Priests ; and are so called in 1 Pet. ii. 5, and Bev.
i. 6, and xx. 6, where, observe, there is no possibility
of limiting the expression to the Clergy y the condi
tions of Priesthood being simply having been loved
by Christ, and washed in His blood. r-The blasphe
mous claim on the part of the Clergy of being more
Priests than the godly laity—that is to say, of hav
ing a higher Holiness than the Holiness of being
*
one with Christ,—is altogether a Romanist heresy,
�24
NOTES ON THE
dragging after it; or having- its origin in; the other
heresies respecting- the sacrificial power of the
Church officer; and his repeating- the oblation of
Christ; and so having- power to absolve from sin:
—with all the other endless and miserable false
hoods of the Papal hierarchy; falsehoods for which;
that there mig-ht be no shadow of excuse; it has
been ordained by the Holy Spirit that no Christian
minister shall once call himself a Priest from one
end of the Mew Testament to the other; except
together with his flock ; and so far from the idea
of any peculiar sanctification; belonging- to the Clergy;
ever entering the Apostles’ minds; we actually find
St. Paul defending himself against the possible im
putation of inferiority : “ If any man trust to him
self that he is Christ’s; let him of himself think
this again; that; as he is Christ’s; even so are we
Christ’s” (2 Cor. x. 7). As for the unhappy reten
tion of the term Priest in our English Prayer-book;
so long as it was understood to mean nothing but
an upper order of Church officer; licensed to tell
the congregation from the reading-desk; what (for
the rest) they might; one would think; have known
without being told;—that “ God pardoneth all them
that truly repent,”—there was little harm in it; but;
now that this order of Clergy begins to presume
upon a title which; if it mean anything- at all; is
simply short for Presbyter; and has no more to do
with the word Hiereus than with the word Levite;
it is time that some order should be taken both
with the book and the Clergy. For instance; in
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
"25
that dangerous compound of halting poetry with
hollow Divinity, called the Lyra Apostolica, we find
much versification on the sin of Korah and his com
pany : with suggested parallel between the Christian
and Levitical Churches, and threatening that there are
“Judgment Fires, for high-voiced Korahs in their
day.” There are indeed such fires. But when Moses
said, “ a Prophet shall the Lord raise up unto you,
like unto me,” did he mean the writer who signs
y in the Lyra Apostolica ? The office of the
Lawgiver and Priest is now for ever gathered
into One Mediator between God and man; .and
they are guilty of the sin of Korah who blas
phemously would associate themselves in his Media
torship.
As for the passages in the “ Ordering- of Priests”
and “Visitation of the Sick” respecting Absolution,
they are evidently pure Romanism, and might as
well not be there, for any practical effect which they
have on the consciences of the Laity ; and had much
better not be there, as regards their effect on the
minds of the Clergy. It is indeed true that Christ
promised absolving power to His Apostles: He also
promised to those who believed, that they should
take up serpents, and if they drank any deadly thing,
it should not hurt them. His words were fulfilled
literally; but those who would extend their force to
beyond the Apostolic times, must extend both pro
mises, or neither.
Although, however, the Protestant laity do not
often admit the absolving power of their clergy, they
�26
NOTES ON THE
are but too apt to yield, in some sort, to the im
pression of their greater sanctification; and from this
instantly results the unhappy consequence that the
sacred character of the Layman himself is forgotten,
arid his own Ministerial duty is neglected. Men not
in office in the Church suppose themselves, on that
ground, in a sort unholy ; and that, therefore, they may
sin with more excuse, and be idle or impious with
less danger, than the Clergy: especially they con
sider themselves relieved from all ministerial func
tion, and as permitted to devote their whole time
and energy to the business of this world. No
mistake can possibly be greater. . Every member of
the Church is equally bound to the service of the
Head of the Church; and that service is pre
eminently the saving' of souls.
There is not a
moment of a man’s active life in which he may
not be indirectly preaching ; and throughout a great
part of his life he ought to be directly preaching, and
teaching both strangers and friends ; his children,
his servants, and all who in any way are put under
him, being given to him as especial objects of his
ministration. So that the only difference between a
Church officer and a lay member, is either a wider
degree of authority given to the former, as appa
rently a wiser and better man, or a special appoint
ment to some office more easily discharged by one
person than by many : as, for instance, the serving' of
tables by the deacons ; the authority or appointment
being, in either case, commonly signified by a marked
separation from the rest of the Church, and the
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
27
privilege or power of being maintained by the rest
*
of the Church, without being forced to labour with
his hands or encumber himself with any temporal
concerns.
Now, putting out of question the serving of tables,
*
and other such duties, respecting which there is no
debate, we shall find the offices of the Clergy, what
ever names we may choose to give to those who
discharge them, falling mainly into two great heads :
—Teaching; including doctrine, warning, and com
fort : Discipline ; including reproof and direct
*
administration of punishment.
Either of which
functions would naturally become vested in single
persons, to the exclusion of others, as a mere matter
of convenience : whether those persons were wiser
and better than others or not: and respecting each
of which, and the authority required for its fitting
discharge, a short inquiry must be separately made.
First, Teaching.—It appears natural and wise that
certain men should be set apart from the rest of the
Church that they may make Theology the study of
their lives: and that they should be thereto in
structed specially in the Hebrew and Greek tongues ;
and have entire leisure granted them for the study of
the Scriptures, and for obtaining general knowledge
of the grounds of Faith, and best modes of its de
fence against all heretics: and it seems evidently
right also, that with this Scholastic duty should be
joined the Pastoral duty of constant visitation and
exhortation to the people 5 for, clearly, the Bible,
* E&vata, in 1 Cor. ix. 12.
2 Thess. iii. 9.
�28
NOTES ON THE
and the truths of Divinity in general, can only be
understood rightly in their practical application; and
clearly, also, a man spending his time constantly in
spiritual ministrations, must be better able, on any
given occasion, to deal powerfully with the human
heart than one unpractised in such matters. The
unity of Knowledge and Love, both devoted alto
gether to the service of Christ and his Church, marks
the true Christian Minister ; who I believe, when
ever he has existed, has never failed to receive due
and fitting reverence from all men,—of whatever
character or opinion; and I believe that if all those
who profess to be such, were such indeed, there
would never be question of their authority more.
But, whatever influence they may have over the
Church, their authority never supersedes that of
either the intellect or the conscience of the simplest
of its lay members. They can assist those members
in the search for truth, or comfort their over-worn
and doubtful minds j they can even assure them
that they are in the way of truth, or that pardon is
within their reach : but they can neither manifest the
truth, nor grant the pardon. Truth is to be dis
covered, and Pardon to be won for every man by
himself. This is evident from innumerable texts of
Scripture, but chiefly from those which exhort every
man to seek after Truth, and which connect knowing
*
with doing. We are to seek after knowledge as silver,
and search for her as for hid treasures ; therefore,
from every man she must be naturally hid, and the
discovery of her is to be the reward only of personal
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
29
search. The kingdom of God is as treasure hid in a
field; and of those who profess to help us to seek for
it, we are not to put confidence in those who say,—
Here is the treasure; we have found it; and have it;
and will give you some of it; but to those who say;—
We think that is a good place to dig; and you will digmost easily in such and such a way.
*
-Farther, it has been promised that if such earnest
search be made; Truth shall be discovered : as much
truth; that is, as is necessary for the person seeking.
vThese, therefore; I hold; for two fundamental prin
ciples of religion;—that; without seeking, truth cannot
be known at all; and that, by seeking, it may be dis
covered by the simplest. I say, without seeking it
cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared
from pulpits, nor set down in Articles, nor in any wise
“ prepared and sold ” in packages, ready for use.
Truth must be ground for every man by himself out
of its husk, with such help as he can get, indeed, but
not without stern labour of his own..- In what
science is knowledge to be had cheap? or truth to
be told over a velvet cushion, in half an hour’s talk
every seventh day ? Can you learn chemistry so ?—
zoology ?—anatomy ? and do you expect to penetrate
the secret of all secrets, and to know that whose price
is above rubies; and of which the depth saith,—It
is not in me, in so easy fashion ? - There are doubts in
this matter which evil spirits darken with their wings,
and that is true of all such doubts which we were
told long ago—they can “ be ended by action alone.”*
* (Carlyle, Past and Present, Chap, xi.)
Can anything be
�30
NOTES ON THE
As surely as we live; this truth of truths can only
so be discerned: to those who act on what they
know; more shall be revealed; and thus; if any man
will do His will; he shall know the doctrine whether
it be of God. Any man:—not the man who has
most means of knowing’; who has the subtlest brains,
or sits under the most orthodox preacher; or has
his library fullest of most orthodox books—but the
man who strives to know, who takes God at His
word; and sets himself .to dig1 up the heavenly mys
tery; roots and all; before sunset; and the nig-ht come;
when no man can work. Beside such a man; God
stands in more and more visible presence as he toils;
and teaches him that which no preacher can teach—
no earthly authority gainsay. By such a mail; the
*
preacher must himself be judged.
Doubt you this? There is nothing’ more Gertain
nor clear throughout the Bible: the Apostles them
selves appeal constantly to their flocks; and actually
claim judgment from them; as deserving it; and having
a right to it; rather than discouraging’ it. But; first
more striking than the repeated warnings of St. Paul against
strife of words ; and his distinct setting forth of Action as the only
true means of attaining knowledge of the truth, and the only sign
of men’s possessing the true faith. Compare 1 Timothy vi. 4,.20,
(the latter verse especially, in connection with the previous three,)
and 2 Timothy ii. 14, 19, 22, 23, tracing the connection here also ;
add Titus i. 10, 14, 16, noting’ “in works they deny him,” and
Titus iii. 8, 9, “affirm constantly that they be careful to maintain
good works; but avoid foolish questions;” and, finally, 1 Timothy
i. 4—7 : a passage which seems to have been especially written for
these times.
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
31
notice the way in which the discovery of truth is
spoken of in the Old Testament: “ Evil men under
stand not judgment; but they that seek the Lord
understand all things/’ Proverbs xxviii. 5. God overthroweth, not merely the transgressor or the wicked,
but even “the words of the transgressor/’ Proverbs
xxii. 12, and “the counsel of the wicked/’ Job v. 13,
xxi. 16 ; observe again, in Proverbs xxiv. 4, “ My
son, eat thou honey, because it is good—so shall the
knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul, when thou
hast/twwZ it, there shall be a reward/’ and ag'ain,
“ What man is he that feareth the Lord ? him shall
he teach in the way that he shall choose /’ so Job
xxxii. 8, and multitudes of places more; and then,
with all these places, which express the definite and
personal operation of the Spirit of God on every one of
His people, compare the place in Isaiah, which speaks
of the contrary of this human teaching: a passage
which seems as if it had been written for this very
day and hour. “ Because their fear towards me is
taught by the precept of men j therefore, behold the
wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the under
standing of their prudent men shall be hid.” (xxix.
13, 14.) Then take the New Testament, and observe
how St. Paul himself speaks of the Romans, even as
hardly needing his epistle, but able to admonish one
another; “ Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the
more boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in
mind.” (xv. 15.) Any one, we should have thought,
mig'ht have done as much as this, and yet St. Paul
increases the modesty of it as he goes on; for he
�32
NOTES ON THE
claims the right of doing as much as this, only
“ because of the grace given to me of God; that I
should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gen
tiles.” Then compare 2 Cor. v. 11, where he appeals
to the consciences of the people for the manifestation
of his having' done his duty • and observe in verse 21
of that, and 1 of the next chapter; the “pray” and
“ beseech/’ not “ command” ; and again., in chapter
vi. verse 4, “ approving ourselves as the ministers of
God.” But the most remarkable passage of all is
2 Cor. iii. 1; whence it appears that the churches
were actually in the habit of giving letters of recom
mendation to their ministers j and St. Paul dispenses
with such letters^ not by virtue of his Apostolic autho
rity; but because the power of his preaching’ was
enough manifested in the Corinthians themselves.
And these passages are all the more forcible; because
if in any of them St. Paul had claimed absolute
authority over the Church as a teacher; it was no
more than we should have expected him to claim; nor
could his doing so have in anywise justified a suc
cessor in the same claim. But now that he has not
claimed it—who; following him; shall dare to claim
it? And the consideration of the necessity of joining
expressions of the most exemplary humility; which
were to be the example of succeeding ministers; with
such assertion of Divine authority as should secure
acceptance for the epistle itself in the sacred canon;
sufficiently accounts for the apparent inconsistencies
which occur in 2 Thess. iii. 14; and other such texts.
So much; then; for the authority of the Clergy
�83
CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
in matters of Doctrine. Next, what is their autho
rity in matters of Discipline ? It must evidently be
very great, even if it were derived from the people
alone, and merely vested in the clerical officers as
the executors of their ecclesiastical judgments, and
general overseers of all the Church. But granting’,
as we must presently, the minister to hold office
directly from God, his authority of discipline becomes
very great indeed; how great, it seems to me most
difficult to determine, because I do not understand
what St. Paul means by “ delivering a man to
Satan for the destruction of the flesh.” Leaving
this question, however, as much too hard for casual
examination, it seems indisputable that the authority
of the Ministers or court of Ministers should extend
to the pronouncing a man Excommunicate for cer
tain crimes against the Church, as well as for all
crimes punishable by ordinary law. * There ought,
I think, to be an ecclesiastical code of laws; and
a man ought to have jury trial, according to this
code, before an ecclesiastical judge; in which, if he
were found guilty, as of lying, or dishonesty, or
cruelty, much more of any actually committed vio
lent crime, he should be pronounced Excommuni
cate; refused the Sacrament; and have his name
written in some public place as an excommunicate
person until he had publicly confessed bis sin and
besought pardon of God for it. The jury should
always be of the laity, and no penalty should be
enforced in an ecclesiastical court except this of
excommunication.
c
�34
NOTES ON THE
This proposal may sound strange to many persons;
but assuredly this, if not much more than this, is
commanded in Scripture, first in the (much abused)
text, “Tell it unto the Church”; and most clearly
in 1 Cor. v. 11-13; 2 Thess. iii. 6 and 14; 1 Tim. v.
8 and 20; and Titus iii. 10; from which passages
we also know the two proper degrees of the penalty.
For Christ says, Let him who refuses to hear the
Church, “ be unto thee as an heathen man and a
publican.” But Christ ministered to the heathen,
and sat at meat with the publican; only always
with declared or implied expression of their in
feriority; here, therefore, is one degree of excom
munication for persons who “ offend” their brethren;
committing’ some minor fault against them; and
who, having been pronounced in error by the body
of the Church, refuse to confess their fault or repair
it; who are then to be no longer considered mem
bers of the Church; and their recovery to the body
of it is to be sought exactly as it would be in the
case of a heathen. But covetous persons, railers,
extortioners, idolaters, and those guilty of other
gross crimes, are to be entirely cut off from the
company of the believers; and we are not so much
as to eat with them. This last penalty, however,
would require to be strictly guarded, that it might
not be abused in the infliction of it, as it has been
by the Romanists. We are not, indeed, to eat
with them, but we may exercise all Christian charity
towards them, and give them to eat, if we see them
in hunger, as we ought to all our enemies; only we
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
35
are to consider them distinctly as our enemies: that
is to say, enemies of our Master, Christ; and ser
vants of Satan.
As for the rank or name of the officers in whom
the authorities, either of teaching- or discipline, are to
be vested, they are left undetermined by Scripture.
I have heard it said by men who know their -Bible
far better than I, that careful examination may
detect evidence of the existence of three orders of
Clergy in the Church. This may be; but one thingis very clear, without any laborious examination,
that “bishop” and “elder” sometimes mean the
same thing, as, indisputably, in Titus i. 5 and 7,
and 1 Pet. v. 1 and 2,. and that the office of the
bishop or overseer was one of considerably less im
portance than it is with us.. This is palpably evi
dent from 1 Timothy iii., for what divine among us,
writing of episcopal proprieties, would think of say
ing that bishops “ must not be given to wine,” must
be “ no strikers,” and must not be “novices”? We
are not in the habit of making bishops of novices
in these days; and it would be much better that,
like the early Church, we sometimes ran the risk of
doing so; for the fact is we have not bishops enough,
—by some hundreds. The idea of overseership has
been practically lost sight of, its fulfilment having
gradually become physically impossible, for want of
more bishops. The duty of a bishop is, without
doubt, to be accessible to the humblest clergymen
of his diocese, and to desire very earnestly that all
of them should be in the habit of referring to him
c 2
�36
NOTES ON THE
in all cases of difficulty; if they do not do this of
their own accord, it is evidently his duty to visit
them; live with them sometimes, and join in their
ministrations to their flocks, so as to know exactly
the capacities, and habits of life of each; and if any of
them complained of this or that difficulty with their
congregations, the bishop should be ready to go down
to help them, preach for them, write general epistles
to their people, and so on: besides this, he should of
course be watchful of their errors—ready to hear
complaints from their cong’reg’ations of inefficiency
or aught else; besides having' general superintendence
of all the charitable institutions and schools in his
diocese, and good knowledge of whatever was g'oing’
on in theological matters, both all over the kingdom
and on the continent. This is the work of a right
overseer; and I leave the reader to calculate how
many additional bishops—and those hard-working
*
men, too—we should need to have it done even
decently. Then our present bishops might all be
come archbishops with advantage, and have general
authority over the rest.
*
* I leave, in the main text, the abstract question of the fitness
of Episcopacy unapproached, not feeling any call to speak of it
at length at present; all that I feel necessary to be said is, that
bishops being- g-ranted, it is clear that we have too few to do their
work. But the argument from the practice of the Primitive
Church appears to me to be of enormous weight,—nor have I
ever heard any rational plea alleg’ed against Episcopacy, except
that, like other things, it is capable of abuse, and had sometimes
been abused; and as, altogether clearly and indisputably, there is
described in the Bible an episcopal office, distinct from the merely
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
87
As to the mode in which the officers of the Church
should be elected or appointed, I do not feel it my
business to say anything- at present, nor much
respecting- the extent of their authority, either over
each other or over the congregation, this being a
most difficult question, the right solution of which
evidently lies between two most dangerous extremes
—insubordination and radicalism on one hand, and
ecclesiastical tyranny and heresy on the other: of the
two, insubordination is far the least to be dreaded—
for this reason, that nearly all real Christians are
more on the watch against their pride than their
indolence, and would sooner obey their clergyman, if
possible, than contend with him; while the very pride
they suppose conquered often returns masked, and
causes them to make a merit of their humility and
their abstract obedience, however unreasonable: but
they cannot so easily persuade themselves there is a
merit in abstract ^obedience.
Ecclesiastical tyranny has, for the most part,
founded itself on the idea of Vicarianism, one of the
most pestilent of the Romanist theories, and most
plainly denounced in Scripture. Of this I have a
word or two to say to the modern cc Vicarian.” All
powers that be are unquestionably ordained of God ;
so that they that resist the Power, resist the ordi
nance of God. Therefore, say some in these offices,
ministerial one; and, apparently, also an Episcopal officer attached
to each church, and distinguished in the Revelations as an Angel,
I hold the resistance of the Scotch Presbyterian Church to Epis
copacy to be unscriptural, futile, and schismatic.
�38
NOTES ON THE
We, being- ordained of God, and having- our cre
dentials, and being- in the English Bible called am
bassadors for God, do, in a sort, represent God. We
are Vicars of Christ, and stand on earth in place
of Christ. I have heard this said by Protestant
clergymen.
Now the word ambassador has a peculiar am
biguity about it, owing- to its use in modern poli
tical affairs; and these clergymen assume that the
word, as used by St. Paul, means an Ambassador
Plenipotentiary; representative of his King, and ca
pable of acting for his King. What right have they
to assume that St. Paul meant this ? St. Paul never
uses the word ambassador at all. He says, simply,
“ We are in embassage from Christ; and Christ be
seeches you through us.” Most true. And let it fur
ther be granted, that every word that the clergyman
speaks is literally dictated to him by Christ; that
he can make no mistake in delivering his message;
and that, therefore, it is indeed Christ himself who
speaks to us the word of life through the messenger’s
lips. Does, therefore, the messenger represent
Christ ? Does the channel which conveys the waters
of the Fountain represent the Fountain itself? Sup
pose, when we went to draw water at a cistern, that
all at once the Leaden Spout should become ani
mated, and open its mouth and say to us, See, I am
Vicarious for the Fountain. Whatever respect you
show to the Fountain, show some part of it to me.
Should we not answer the Spout, and say, Spout,
you were set there for our service, and may be
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
39
taken away and thrown aside * if, anything1 goes
wrong with you. But the Fountain will flow for
ever.
Observe, I do not deny a most solemn authority
vested in every Christian messenger from God to men.
I am prepared to grant this to the uttermost; and all
that George Herbert says, in the end of the Church
porch, I would enforce, at another time than this, to
the uttermost. But the Authority is simply that of
a King-’s messenger j not of a King’s Representative.
There is a wide difference; all the difference between
humble service and blasphemous usurpation.
Well, the congregation might ask, grant him a
King’s messenger in cases of doctrine,—in cases of
discipline, an officer bearing the King-’s Commission.
How far are we to obey him ? How far is it lawful
to dispute his commands?
For, in gTanting, above, that the Messenger always
gave his message faithfully, I granted too much to
my adversaries, in order that their argument might
have all the weight it possibly could. The Mes
sengers rarely deliver their message faithfully; and
sometimes have declared, as from the King, messages
of their own invention. How far are we, knowing
them for King’s messengers, to believe or obey them?
Suppose for instance, in our English army, on the
eve of some great battle, one of the colonels were to
give this order to his regiment. a My men, tie your
belts over your eyes, throw down your muskets, and
follow me as steadily as you can, through this marsh,
♦ “ By just judgment be deposed,” Art. 26.
�40
NOTES ON THE
into the middle of the enemy’s line,” (this being pre
cisely the order issued by our Puseyite Church
officers). It might be questioned, in the real battle,
whether it would be better that a regiment should
show an example of insubordination, or be cut to
pieces. But happily in the Church, there is no such
difficulty; for the King is always with his army: Not
only with his army, but at the right hand of every
soldier of it. Therefore, if any of their colonels give
them a strange command, all they have to do is to
ask the King; and never yet any Christian asked
guidance of his King, in any difficulty whatsoever,
without mental reservation or secret resolution, but
he had it forthwith. We conclude then, finally, that
the authority of the Clergy is, in matters of dis
cipline, large (being executive, first, of the written
laws of God, and secondly, of those determined and
agreed upon by the body of the Church), in matters
of doctrine, dependent on their recommending them
selves to every man’s conscience, both as messengers
of God, and as themselves men of God, perfect, and
instructed to good works.
*
6. The last subject which we had to investigate
* The difference between the authority of doctrine and dis
cipline is beautifully marked in 2 Timothy ii. 25, and Titus ii.
12—15. In the first passage, the servant of God, teaching
divine doctrine, must not strive, but must “in meekness instruct
those that oppose themselves;” in the second passage, teaching
us “ that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts he is to live
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world,” the minis
ter is to speak, exhort, and rebuke with all authority—
both functions being- expressed as united in 2 Timothy iv. 3.
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
41
was, it will be remembered, what is usually called
the connection of“ Church and State.” But, by our
definition of the term Church, throughout the whole
of Christendom, the Church (or society of professing’
Christians) is the State, and our subject is therefore,
properly speaking, the connection of the lay and
clerical officers of the Church; that is to say, the
degrees in which the civil and ecclesiastical govern
ments ouoht to interfere with or influence each
orther.
It would of course be vain to attempt a formal
enquiry into this intricate subject;—I have only a
few detached points to notice respecting it.
There are three degrees or kinds of civil govern
ment. The first and lowest, executive merely; the
government in this sense being simply the National
Hand, and composed of individuals who administer
the laws of the nation, and execute its established
purposes.
The second kind of government is deliberative ; but
in its deliberation, representative only of the thoug’hts
and will of the people or nation, and liable to be
deposed the instant it ceases to express those
thoughts and that will. This, whatever its form,
whether centred in a kinoo or in any number of
*
«/
men, is properly to be called Democratic. The
third and highest kind of government is deliberative,
not as representative of the people, but as chosen
to take separate counsel for them, and having power
committed to it, to enforce upon them whatever
resolution it may adopt, whether consistent with
�42
NOTES ON THE
their will or not. This government is properly to
be called Monarchical, whatever its form.
I see that politicians and writers of history con
tinually run into hopeless error, because they con
fuse the Form of a Government with its Nature.
A government may be nominally vested in an indi
vidual ; and yet if that individual be in such fear of
those beneath him, that he does nothing but what he
supposes will be agreeable to them, the Government
is Democratic; on the other hand, the Government
may be vested in a deliberative assembly of a
thousand men, all having' equal authority, and all
chosen from the lowest ranks of the people; and
yet if that assembly act independently of the will of
the people, and have no fear of them, and enforce
its determinations upon them, the government is
Monarchical; that is to say, the Assembly, acting’
as One, has power over the Many, while in the case
of the weak king, the Many have power over the
One.
A Monarchical Government, actino- for its own
interests, instead of the people’s, is a tyranny. I
said the Executive Government was the hand of the
nation; — The Republican Government is in like
manner its tongue. The Monarchical Government
is its head.
All true and right government is Monarchical, and
of the head. What is its best form, is a totally
different question • but unless it act for the people,
and not as representative of the people, it is no
government at all; and one of the grossest block-
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
48
headisms of the English in the present day, is their
idea of sending- men to Parliament to “ represent
tlieir opinions.” Whereas their only true business
is to find out the wisest men among them, and send
them to Parliament to represent their own opinions,
and act upon them. Of all puppet-shows in the
Satanic Carnival of the earth, the most contemptible
puppet-show is a Parliament with a mob pulling
the strings.
Now, of these three states of government, it is
clear that the merely executive can have no proper
influence over ecclesiastical affairs. But of the other
two, the first, being the voice of the people, or voice of
the Church, must have such influence over the Clergy
as is properly vested in the body of the Church.
The second, which stands in the same relation to the
people as a father does to his family, will have such
farther influence over ecclesiastical matters, as a
father has over the consciences of his adult children.
No absolute authority, therefore, to enforce their
attendance at any particular place of worship, or
subscription to any particular Creed. But indis
putable authority to procure for them such religious
instruction as he deems fittest, and to recommend it
*
* Observe, this and the following conclusions depend entirely
on the supposition that the Government is part of the Body
of the Church, and that some pains have been taken to
compose it of religious and wise men. If we choose, knowin glv and deliberately, to compose our Parliament, in great
part, of infidels and Papists, gamblers and debtors, we may
well regret its power over the Clerical officer; but that we
should, at any time, 80 compose our Parliament, is a sign that
�44
NOTES ON THE
to them by every means in his power; he not only
has authority, but is under obligation to do this, as
well as to establish such disciplines and forms of
worship in his house as he deems most convenient
for his family : With which they are indeed at liberty
to refuse compliance, if such disciplines appear to
them clearly opposed to the law of God ; but not
without most solemn conviction of their being- so,
nor without deep sorrow to be compelled to such a
course.
But it may be said, the Government of a people
the Clergy themselves have failed in their duty, and the Church
in its watchfulness ; — thus the evil accumulates in re-action.
Whatever I say of the responsibility or authority of Govern
ment, is therefore to be understood only as sequent on what I
have said previously of the necessity of closely circumscribing
the Church, and then composing the Civil Government out of
the circumscribed Body. Thus, all Papists would at once be
rendered incapable of share in it, being subjected to the second
or most severe degree of excommunication—first, as idolaters,
by 1 Cor. v. 10; then, as covetous and extortioners, (selling ab
solution,) by the same text; and, finally, as heretics and main
tainers of falsehoods, by Titus iii. 10, and 1 Tim. iv. 1.
I do not write this hastily, nor without earnest consideration
both of the difficulty and the consequences of such Church Disci
pline. But either the Bible is a superannuated book, and is only
to be read as a record of past days; or these things follow from
it, clearly and inevitably. That we live in days when the Bible
has become impracticable, is (if it be so) the very thing I desire
to be considered. I am not setting down these plans or schemes
as at present possible. I do not know how far they are possible;
but it seems to me that God has plainly commanded them, and
that, therefore, their impracticability is a thing to be meditated
on.
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
45
never does stand to them in the relation of a father
to his family. If it do not, it is no Government.
However grossly it may fail in its duty, and however
little it may be fitted for its place, if it be a Govern
ment at ail, it has paternal office and relation to the
people. I find it written on the one hand,—“ Honour
thy Father;” on the other,—“Honour the King:”
on the one hand,—“ Whoso smiteth his Father, shall
be put to death ;” * on the other,—“ They that resist
shall receive to themselves damnation.” Well, but,
it may be farther argued, the Clergy are in a still
more solemn sense the Fathers of the People, and the
People are their beloved Sons; why should not,
therefore, the Clergy have the power to govern the
civil officers ?
For two very clear reasons.
In all human institutions certain evils are granted,
as of necessity; and, in organizing such institu
tions, we must allow for the consequences of such
evils, and make arrangements such as may best keep
them in check. Now, in both the civil and ecclesias
tical governments there will of necessity be a certain
number of bad men. The wicked civilian has com
paratively little interest in overthrowing' ecclesiastical
authority; it is often a useful help to him, and
presents in itself little which seems covetable. But
the wicked ecclesiastical officer has much interest in
overthrowing the civilian, and getting the political
power into his own hands. As far as wicked men
are concerned, therefore, it is better that the State
* Exod. xxi. 15.
�46
NOTES ON THE
should have power over the Clergy, than the Clergy
over the State.
Secondly, supposing’ both the Civil and Eccle
siastical officer to be Christians; there is no fear
that the civil officer should underrate the dignity
or shorten the serviceableness of the minister; but
there is considerable danger that the religious en
thusiasm of the minister might diminish the service
ableness of the civilian. (The History of Religious
Enthusiasm should be written by some one who had
a life to give to its investigation; it is one of the
most melancholy pages in human records, and one
the most necessary to be studied.) Therefore, as far
as good men are concerned, it is better the State
should have power over the Clergy, than the Clergy
over the State.
This we might, it seems to me, conclude by un
assisted reason. But surely the whole question is,
without any need of human reason, decided by the
history of Israel. If ever a body of Clergy should
have received independent authority, the Levitical
Priesthood should; for they were indeed a Priest
hood, and more holy than the rest of the nation.
But Aaron is always subject to Moses. All so
lemn revelation is made to Moses, the civil ma
gistrate, and he actually commands Aaron as to
the fulfilment of his priestly office, and that in a
necessity of life and death : “ Go, and make an
atonement for the people.” Nor is anything’ more
remarkable throughout the whole of the Jewish
history than the perfect subjection of the Priestly
�CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
47
to the Kingly Authority. Thus Solomon thrusts
out Abiathar from being priest, 1 Kings ii. 27;
and Jehoahaz administers the funds of the Lord’s
House, 2 Kings xii. 4, though that money was
actually the Atonement Money, the Ransom for
Souls (Exod. xxx. 12).
We have, however, also the beautiful instance of
Samuel uniting in himself the offices of Priest, Pro
phet, and Judge; nor do I insist on any special
manner of subjection of Clergy to civil officers, or vice
versa • but only on the necessity of their perfect unity
and influence upon each other in every Christian
kingdom. Those who endeavour to effect the utter
separation of ecclesiastical and civil officers, are
striving, on the one hand, to expose the Clergy to the
most grievous and most subtle of temptations from
their own spiritual enthusiasm and spiritual pride; on
the other, to deprive the civil officer of all sense of
religious responsibility, and to introduce the fearful,
g'odless, conscienceless, and soulless policy of the
Radical and the (so called) Socialist. Whereas, the
ideal of all government is the perfect unity of the two
bodies of officers, each supporting and correcting the
other ; the Clergy having due weight in all the national
councils; the civil officers having a solemn reverence
for God in all their acts; the Clergy hallowing all
worldly policy by their influence; and the magistracy
repressing all religious enthusiasm by their practical
wisdom. To separate the two is to endeavour to
separate the daily life of the nation from God, and to
map out the dominion of the soul into two provinces
�48
NOTES ON THE
—one of Atheism, the other of Enthusiasm. These,
then, were the reasons which caused me to speak
of the idea of separation of Church and State as
Fatuity; for what Fatuity can be so great as the
not having God in our thoughts; and, in any act
or office of life, saying in our hearts, a There is
no God.”
Much more I would fain say of these things,
but not now: this only, I must emphatically as
sert, in conclusion :—That the schism between the
so-called Evangelical and High Church parties
in Britain, is enough to shake many men’s faith
in the truth or existence of Religion at all. It
seems to me one of the most disgraceful scenes
in Ecclesiastical history, that Protestantism should
be paralyzed at its very heart by jealousies, based
on little else than mere difference between hioh
and low breeding. For the essential differences, in
the religious opinions of the two parties are suffi
ciently marked in two men whom we may take
as the highest representatives of each — George
Herbert and John Milton ; and I do not think there
would have been much difficulty in atoning those two,
if one could have got them together. But the real
difficulty, nowadays, lies in the sin and folly of both
parties; in the superciliousness of the one, and the
rudeness of the other. Evidently, however, the sin
lies most at the High Church door, for the Evan
gelicals are much more ready to act with Churchmen
than they with the Evangelicals; and 1 believe that
this state of things cannot continue much longer;
�49
CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.
and that if the Church of England does not forthwith
unite with herself the entire Evangelical body; both
of England and Scotland; and take her stand with
them against the Papacy; her hour has struck. She
cannot any longer serve two masters; nor make curt
sies alternately to Christ and anti-Christ. That she
has done this is visible enough by the state of Europe
at this instant. Three centuries since Luther—three
hundred years of Protestant knowledge — and the
Papacy not yet overthrown ! Christ’s truth still re
strained; in narrow dawn, to the white cliffs of Eng
land and white crests of the Alps;—the morning star
paused in its course in heaven;—the sun and moon
stayed; with Satan for their Joshua.
But how to unite the two great sects of paralyzed
Protestants ? By keeping simply to Scripture. The
members of the Scottish Church have not a shadow
of excuse for refusing Episcopacy ; it has indeed been
abused among them; g'rievously abused; but it is in
the Bible; and that is all they have a right to ask.
They have also no shadow of excuse for refusing to
employ a written form of prayer. It may not be to
their taste—it may not be the way in which they like
to pray; but it is no question; at present; of likes or
dislikes; but of duties ; and the acceptance of such a
form on their part would go half way to reconcile
them with their brethren.
Let them allege such
objections as they can reasonably advance against the
English form; and let these be carefully and humbly
weighed by the pastors of both churches : some of
them ought to be at once forestalled. For the
D
�50
NOTES; ETC.
English Church; on the other hand; must cut the
term Priest entirely out of her Prayer-book; and
substitute for it that of Minister or Elder; the pass
ages respecting absolution must be thrown out also;
except the doubtful one in the Morning’ Service; in
which there is no harm; and then there would be
only the Baptismal question left; which is one of
words rather than of things; and might easily be
settled in Synod; turning the refractory Clerg'y out of
their offices; to go to Borne if they chose. Then;
when the Articles of Faith and form of worship had
been agreed upon between the English and Scottish
Churches; the written forms and articles should be
carefully translated into the European languages;
and offered to the acceptance of the Protestant
churches on the Continent, with earnest entreaty
that they would receive them; and due entertain
ment of all such objections as they could reasonably
allege ; and thus the whole body of Protestants;
united in one great Fold; would indeed go in and
out; and find pasture; and the work appointed for
them would be done quickly; and Antichrist over
thrown.
Impossible : a thousand times impossible !—I hear
it exclaimed against me. No—not impossible. Christ
does not order impossibilities; and He has ordered
us to be at peace one with another. Nay; it is
answered—He came not to send peace; but a sword.
Yes, verily: to send a sword upon earth; but not
within His Church; for to His Church He said;
“ My Peace I leave with you.”
�
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CT 25
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH:
ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
-
■ "
<>
A Controversy Between the Rev. Dr. Sunderland,
Wm. Henry Burr, and Others.
.... num!
ii
in
i
i
In the Washington Daily Chronicle of October 10, 1871, a
sermon was published, two columns in length, with the follow
ing heading:
THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
DISCOURSE BY DR. SUNDERLAND IN HIS CHURCH ON SUNDAY MORN
ING, OCTOBER 8, 1871—A NEW VIEW OF THE QUESTION—THE
JEWISH WEEK SET ASIDE—THE CHRISTIAN WEEK ESTABLISHED—
THE SABBATH IS ALWAYS “THE SEVENTH DAY” OF THE ESTAB
LISHED -WEEK—AS REQUIRED BY THE MORAL OBLIGATION OF THE
DECALOGUE.
The only portion of the discourse which it is necessary for the
present purpose to reproduce is the following :
In Acts xiii, 14, it is stated that Paul and his company, hav
ing arrived at Antioch, “ went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down.” The Sabbath day here mentioned
was undoubtedly a “Jewish Sabbath.” In the 44th verse it is
said: “And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city
together to hear the word of God.” The Greek phrase for “the
next Sabbath day,” as our English translation has it in this
verse, is: to te erchomeno Sabbato—that is, “ on the approach
ing or coming Sabbath.” This was likewise undoubtedly a
“Jewish Sabbath,” occurring after the six secular days which
followed the Sabbath mentioned in the 14th verse. But what
had occurred in the meantime in the synagogue and in the city ?
What had occurred between these two consecutive Jewish
�2
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
Sabbaths ? . . . . Some Gentiles, who had either wit
nessed or heard of the scene which had transpired, and who had
become deeply interested in the declaration of Paul, besought
that these words might be preached to them, (not, as in our own
version, “ the next Sabbath,” but as in the original,) “ on the
intervening Sabbath,” or “ the Sabbath betweeny This was the
request not of Jews, but of Gentiles, who paid no special regard
to Jewish ordinances, and who were doubtless aware of the new
institution and custom of the observance of “ the Christian Sab
bath” or “ the Lord’s day,” and who here, for the want of better
terms, described it as “the Sabbath between,” or “the inter
vening Sabbath”—that is, the Sabbath coming between two
Jewish Sabbaths, This was a matter of fact, and while the
record is silent as to whether Paul complied with this request
of the Gentiles—though in all probability he did—yet one thing
is beyond dispute, if we read the account in the Greek, and
that is, the Sabbath mentioned in the 42d verse is not identical
with that mentioned in the 44th verse. The conclusion is inevi
table—one was “ a Christian Sabbath,” the other was a “Jewish
Sabbath.”
On the next day a communication appeared in the Chronicle,
as follows :
AN INTERESTING QUESTION—DR. SUNDERLAND’S POSITION ON “THE
CHRISTIAN SABBATH ” DISPUTED.
To the Editor of the Chronicle ;
In the discourse of the Rev. Dr. Sunderland, which appeared
in yesterday’s Chronicle, he draws the “ inevitable conclusion”
that Paul preached to the Gentiles on a “ Christian Sabbath,”
because in Acts xiii, 42, the Greek words “ to metazu sabbaton”
mean “ on the Sabbath between,” or “ on the intervening Sab
bath,” and not “ on the next Sabbath,” as rendered in our Bi
bles. It is true that the marginal translation in our reference
Bibles sustains [favors] the Doctor’s view. But if he will exam
ine one of the latest and best authorities, namely, the Greek
Testament, by Henry Alford, D.D., of Cambridge, England,
1868, (which may be found at Ballantyne’s book-store,) he will
see that this marginal translation is not sustained. Therefore,
unless we discard this latest standard authority, we cannot ac
cept Dr. Sunderland’s “ inevitable conclusion.” Moreover, his
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
3
admission that “ the record is silent as to whether Paul did
preach on a ‘ Sabbath between,’” must be taken in favor of the
rendering in our Bi,bles, viz : “ the next Sabbath ” of the Jews.
The attempt to prove that Paul observed the so-called Chris
tian Sabbath is futile. In Acts xx, 7, we read that on one oc
casion, when the disciples came together to break bread on the
first day of the week, Paul preached (p them, and the preaching
and breaking of bread continued till daybreak, i. e., about ten
hours into the second day of the week, which began at s-unset.
But this breaking of bread was a daily occurrence at the first,
(Acts ii, 46,) and therefore proves nothing as to the sanctity of
any particular day. The proof, therefore, fails that Paul ob
served a Christian Sabbath. On the contrary, during a ministry
of twenty years he constantly preached in the synagogues on the
Jewish Sabbath, (Acts ix, 20 ; xiii, 14, 44; xiv, 1 ; xvii, 2, 10,
17; xviii, 4, 11, 19; xix, 18.)
If space were allowed me, I can prove that the following emi
nent Christian authorities are against the observance of both the
Jewish and Christian Sabbath as a sacred day: Justin Martyr,
Tertullian, Eusebius, Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Neander,
Jeremy Taylor, and many others.
W. H. B
This brought out a reply from Dr. S., followed by a further
correspondence, as reproduced below.
HAVE WE A CHRISTIAN SABBATH?—A PROPOSAL TO “W. H. B.” FROM
DR. SUNDERLAND.
To the Editor of the Chronicle:
It is easy to show the fallacy of the comments of “ W. H. B.”
on my discourse in last Tuesday’s Chronicle. But not “ to make
two bites of a cherry,” and to save the daily journals of the city
the burden of an extensive and gratuitous publication, I have this
proposition to submit to “ W. H. B.,” (he must give his full
name.) Let us correspond upon the subject privately at first, and
when each has concluded what he wishes to say, let us then pub
lish the whole correspondence in pamphlet form.
I would not propose this labor and expense did I not feel so
deeply the importance of the truth in regard to the Christian Sab
bath. It is high time the present generation should know whether
we have left to us a Sabbath of divine authority and perpetual
�4
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH I
obligation, or whether the whole Christian world has been hood
winked and deceived by a stupendous imposition which has been
palmed upon them without any Scriptural authority whatever.
I think I have a right to expect an affirmative reply to the
above proposition, or in some way its equivalent.
B. SUNDERLAND.
REPLY OF “ W. H. B.” TO DR. SUNDERLAND.
Much as I desire to see the question of the Christian Sabba.h discussed, I feel constrained to decline the proposition of
Di .. Sunderland in yesterday’s Chronicle. In the first place, my
native modesty shrinks from the publicity of a controversy with
so distinguished an antagonist. I prefer to withhold my full
name altogether, especially as I take the unpopular side. I am
an obscure layman ; my antagonist is a distinguished clergyman.
Unknown as I am to him now, I am quite certain that he
would prefer a, more equal adversary. Iu coming out to meet
me he would reel as Goliath did when he saw the stripling
David, while I could never acquire the courage and confidence
of David, nor would I like, after all, to triumph, metaphorically
speaking, as David did. Therefore I propose to offer a sub
stitute ; and with that view I have written to one who I believe
will accept the challenge and do ample justice to my side of the
question. I mean Parker Pillsbury, of Ohio. Should he not
accept it there are several other men of distinction that I can
name, some one of whom doubtless will be willing to discuss the
question as fully as Dr. Sunderland desires.
Let us have light, and let truth prevail, though the heavens
aL
W. H. B.
THE DOCTOR READY FOR A SKIRMISH.
“W. H. B.” declines my proposition. His “native mod
esty is certainly a curious thing. It permits him, with an
apparent show of learning, to dispute my position and to vaunt
before the public what he could do if he only had “ the space.”
At the same time, it hides his name, especially as he is “ on the
unpopular side.” It suggests a comparison between himself and
David, and yet disclaims any desire for a similar triumph. Be
yond this, however, it prompts him to seek “a substitute,” and
to inform the public that he has written to Mr. Pillsbury.
�5
ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
.Well,.when Mr. Pillsbury is ready let me know, and I will com
mence’ the suggested correspondence at once. After we have
finished we will have it all published in pamphlet form, if
possible.
B. SUNDERLAND.
In the next issue of the same paper another writer makes the
following strictures on Dr. Sunderland’s discourse :
ANOTHER RICHMOND IN THE FIELD.
I have read with some curiosity Dr Sunderland’s sermon on
this subject, and, if I had been a firm believer before in the
duty of keeping Sunday, I should have had my faith severely
shaken finding that two columns of special pleading in fine print
were necessary even to get up a showing of a case in favor of the
obligation. I know I cannot have two columns to answer the
reverend Doctor, but perhaps you will let me state a few proposi
tions, which, I think, are clearer than his argument:
1. The observance of any day is not, in itself, a moral duty,
2. It can become a duty only by divine command.
3. inere was such a divine command in reference to the
seventh day.
4. There was a reason given for the observance of the sev
enth day, viz : that God rested on that day.
5. It is taught in the New Testament, and admitted by Dr.
Sunderland, that there is no longer any obligation to keep the
day originally appointed.
6. It would have been a very simple matter to make known
any transfer of obligation from the seventh day to the first day
of the week, in a plain command to that effect.
7. It is not pretended that there ever has been any such com
mand.
8. The pretended obligation to keep Sunday is merely a mat
ter of unfair inference, sustained by a tissue of sophistical special
pleading, such as would drive any lawyer out of court.
9. The idea of attaching superlative importance to an observ
ance wholly ceremonial, and as a duty wholly artificial, involv
ing no moral principle whatever, is simply preposterous.
SIGMA.
The Doctor replies to the foregoing as follows :
�6
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
FIGHTING IN AMBUSH—DR.
SUNDERLAND’S COUNTER PROPOSITIONS.
While waiting for Mr. Pillsbury on the Sabbath question, it
seems a new gun is opened from another ambush. Does it not
look like a sign of conscious weakness in their cause for men to
hide themselves behind some signature which keeps them from
being known to the public? I must confess I don’t like such
opponents. My general rule is not to notice them. If a man is
afraid or ashamed to let the public know who he is, I say he is not
the man to conduct a public discussion on a subject of this kind.
I should not reply to “ Sigma,” were it not for the importance
of meeting every objection which it is possible to urge against
‘ ‘ the Christian Sabbath.” I suggest, in answer to his communi
cation, the following counter propositions :
1. The moral welfare of man is an object of prime considera
tion .
2. To divide and spend our time in such a manner as best to
promote our moral welfare is a moral duty.
3. The Bible teaches (and all experience and observation con
firm it) that spending one day in seven as a day of sacred rest is
pre-eminently conducive to our moral welfare, and therefore it im
poses the moral obligation to do so.
4. Keeping the seventh day of the established week becomes
a duty by divine command, just as “ Thou shalt not steal” be
comes a duty by divine command.
5. There is now such a divine command in reference to the
seventh day of the present established week, which command is
accompanied by the reason that God set an example of such rest
at the conclusion of the creation week.
6. It is taught in the New Testament, and maintained by me,
that there is no longer any obligation to keep “ the Jewish Sab
bath,” but that such obligation is now transferred to “ the Chris
tian Sabbath.”
7. It is a false issue to assert that the question is upon trans
ferring the obligation from the seventh to the first day of the
Jewish week, and that there is no command for such transfer,
when the whole “ Jewish week” itself has been set aside and
‘‘the Christian week” has been established.
8. Such an issue as the above, sustained by no facts, and even
by no pleadings, sophistical, special, general, or otherwise, worthy
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
7
of the name, would drive not only “lawyers” but “laymen”
out of court.
9. The duty of observing and keeping the Sabbath day holy
is not for the benefit of the day, but for the benefit of man him
self. It is not, therefore, either “ a ceremonial or artificial duty;”
and when God commanded it as a part of the moral law, He was
probably about as wise as the anti-Sabbatarian, Mr. “Sigma,”
who, it seems, does not even comprehend either the nature of the
Sabbath or the first principles of morality.
B. SUNDERLAND.
And now another writer steps in with the following reply to
the above:
A THIRD RICHMOND—THE ARGUMENT BECOMING CONTAGIOUS.
In reply to Dr. Sunderland’s nine propositions, I observe, sev
erally and consecutively, as follows :
1. Good health is the greatest of all earthly blessings.
2. The twenty-four hours of the day are best divided into three
equal parts-, eight hours for labor, eight for refreshment and
sleep, and eight for the service of God and a distressed brother.
3. Petitio Principii.
4. “ Thou shalt not steal” is mala per se; “ Remember the
Sabbath day” is mala prohibita.
5. “ The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
Sabbath.”
6. “ Let no man judge you in keeping the Sabbath day.”
7. 11 False issue” denied in toto. The question is upon the
transfer.
8. Matter of private opinion as to the form of a special plea.
9. “ Mr. Sigma does not comprehend either the nature of the
Sabbath or the first principles of morality.” The old dodging
place of the clergy when close run.
RICHMOND No. 3.
To this the Doctor puts in a rejoinder, the essential part of
which is given below.
THE DOCTOR PRESSING ON—WHERE IS MR. PILLSBURY?—“ RICHMOND
NO. 3 ” DISPOSED OF.
As the argument of the anti-Sabbatarians (while waiting for
Mr. Pillsbury) seems to be rather “ running emptyings,” it is
�8
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
hardly worth while to spend much time on “Richmond No. 3.”
However, his propositions may be answered in few words, as fol
lows :
1. As “ good health is the greatest earthly blessing,” virtue,
of course, will have to take a back seat.
2. Obiter dictum.
3. Ipse dixit.
4. An affirmative precept,, mala prohibita ! Ha! ha ! ha !
Hog-latin; up with the hog-latin ! up with a baseless distinc
tion !
5. The Sabbath was made for man.’’ Man continues and
the Sabbath remains.
6. Misquotation and misapplication of Scripture.
7. The question is not upon the transfer from the seventh to
the first day of the Jewish week.
8. Private opinion—a great responsibility.
9. Smart thing for men in their holes to talk about “the old
dodging-place of the clergy.”
Let us now attend to the matter of Dean Alford on Acts xiii,
42. The meaning of this text turns on the word metaxu. Al
ford says, “ to metaxu Sabbaton appears by the usage of Luke to
mean the next Sabbath day, not the ‘ following week.’ This last
rendering would hardly suit eis, which fixes a definite occasion.”
Thus he merely conjectures that metaxu signifies here “ next,”
and in the margin he makes two references to Josephus and one
to Plutarch in support of his conjecture. Our answer is four
fold :
1. Altord, following many others in this error, did not under
stand the allusion of this passage, and consequently resorted to
a conjecture wholly unnecessary.
2. ^ The word metaxu has no such meaning in classic Greek,
but invariably signifies that which intervenes or comes between.
3.. There is no such usage of the word metaxu either in the
writings of Luke or of any other part of the New Testament
Greek. In fact, it is used only nine times, all told.
[In seven of the passages cited by Dr. S. the word is rendered
“between,” and in two, “ meanwhile.”]
Now, can any man tell me why the word metaxu in the New
lestament Greek has an invariable signification—that of inter-
�ALL DAYS ALIKE IIOLY,
9
vening or coming between, and yet it must be used out of its ac
customed import in this single text alone—that is, Acts xiii, 42?
What authority has Alford or any other scholar to make such a
•departure from the established meaning of words ?
4. My fourth point is that the references given by Alford do
not sustain his conjecture, but show that just the opposite is the
fact.
[Having considered and discussed the references, the Doctor
continues :]
Thus we see that every reference made by Alford is against the
sense of “ next,'1' or ‘‘following” for the word metaxu in this
passage. Beside this, neither Josephus nor Plutarch, both of
whom wrote about a century after the New Testament was com
posed, can furnish authority for the usage of words by writers so
long before them. The law of usage does not ascend.
Such being the case, I would say to Mr, “ W. H. B.,” whoso
ever he may be, that we feel constrained on this text “to dis
card” Dr. Alford as “ the latest standard authority,” and to hold
to the old classic and New Testament usage of the word metaxu
in the interpretation of this passage. Our English translators
stand corrected here. They mistook the allusion of the passage
and the learned Doctor of Cambridge has only followed in their
footsteps.
B. SUNDERLAND.
IS DR. SUNDERLAND A ROMAN CATHOLIC?
And now comes in still another adversary, who insists that Dr.
S., in taking the position he has assumed, has, “unknowingly,
demolished the groundwork of Protestant belief, namely, the
Bible, and practically indorsed that of the Catholic, namely,
Tradition.” The obligation to keep holy the first day of the
week, says the writer, “is nowhere stated to have been imposed,
either by Christ or his apostles; nowhere recorded, or so much
as alluded to in any one of the Gospels or Epistles.” The obli
gation rests “ wholly and exclusively upon the authority of tra
dition.”
The Doctor replies to the above as follows :
�10
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH:
THE CHARGE OF ROMANISM:—THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES—SCRIPTURE
AND TRADITION.
Has Rip Van Winkle come again? The article of “ M.” in
yesterday’s paper takes us back to the dark ages. In those days
tradition was a huge thing. The Bible was of but little account.
Few people knew much about it.
When the Reformation rose the English Church combated the
authority of tradition by affirming the article quoted by “ M.,”
namely: “ Holy Scripture containeth all things,” &c. This was,
and is, good Christian doctrine.
Our new Rip Van Winkle thinks he has me here. His trap
is remarkably novel and ingenious. He begins by reiterating the
old/aZse issue about “ changing the Sabbath from the seventh to
the first day of the Jewish week.” He says the warrant for this
change is not to be found “ in any one of the Gospels, or in any
one of the Epistles;” but yet it is an article of Christian faith,
and must, therefore, be founded on tradition.
And having come to this conclusion, he makes the astounding
discovery that I have “unknowingly demolished the groundwork
of Protestant belief 1”
It is curious to see what makeshifts are adopted by the anti
Sabbatarians (while waiting for Mr. Pillsbury) to conceal their
total discomfiture in the discussion of “ the Christian Sabbath.”
Driven from one point they fly to another, if possible, still more
irrelevant and untenable. Like Samson’s foxes, tail to tail, they
run in all directions and in no direction long.
B. SUNDERLAND.
In the same paper containing the above “ W. H. B.” comes
out with the following essay :
“w. H. B.” AT LAST SIGNS IN FULL—DAVID MEETS GOLIATH.
Not having heard from Mr. Pillsbury, whom I addressed at
Toledo, Ohio, but who doubtless is now absent from that city, I
will, with your permission, Mr. Editor, reply to Dr. Sunder
land’s defence of his position in regard to the proper rendering of
to metazu sabbaton. But before doing so allow me to say that,
while I protest against the injustice of his charge that I am ‘ fight
ing in ambush ”—while I insist that it is both customary and
proper for an obscure writer to withhold his name from the pub
lic in sending contributions to the press, except where the public
�ALL DAYS ALIKE IIOLY.
II
interest demands it—and though I am not aware that I am known
personally to a single editor in this city, I will, nevertheless, to
use the elegant expression of my adversary, “ come out of my
hole ” and disclose my full name.
There is another reason why I preferred in this case to remain
anonymous; that reason may be inferred from the last sentence
in Dr. S.’s reply to “ Sigma,” who, he says, “ it seems does not
even comprehend either the nature of the Sabbath or the first
principles of morality.” I have a private character which I hope
to maintain, and I do not wish to have it brought before the pub
lic with any imputation of that sort upon it, which, in my estima
tion, is little short of a libel. That is a style of discussion that I
wish to avoid.
The main point that I made against Dr. S.’s sermon was that
his “inevitable conclusion ” that Paul preached on a Christian
Sabbath, between two Jewish Sabbaths, was at variance with the
latest and best Christian standard anthority, Dean Alford. This
the Doctor admits, but he says that Dean Alford does not under
stand the allusion in the passage in question.
In order to present the question intelligibly let me give the two
verses in Acts xiii:
Verse 42.—“And when the Jews were gone out of the syna
gogue the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached
to them the next Sabbath.”
Verse 44.—“And the next Sabbath day came almost the
whole city together to hear the word of God.”
Dean Alford says that this rendering in verse 42, “ the next
Sabbath,” is correct; that it means the next Sabbath day, and
not the 1‘following week.” And he adds : “ This last rendering
would hardly suit eis, which fixes a definite occasion, nor verse
44, which gives the result.” The last clause was not quoted by
Dr. S., nor the author’s note on verse 44, which is as follows:
“ Whether erch (omeno} or ech (omeno') be read, the sense will
be ‘ on the following [ day,’ and not as Henrichs, ‘ on the fol
]
*
lowing week day.’ ”
Now, I submit to scholars and common-sense people whether
Dean Alford’s rendering is not more probably correct than that
* The intelligent reader will here supply the word “Sabbath,” for
verse 44 reads, to te erchomeno Sabbato—“ the next Sabbath day.”
�12
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH I
of Dr. Sunderland. This point is one on which the whole argu
ment of Dr. S. hinges ; if it fails his Christian Sabbath falls. If
Paul did not then and there observe a Christian Sabbath, there
was none at that time, and there is none now.
But I have not done with Christian authorities in support of
the passage as given in our Bibles. I find it sustained by John
Calvin, Adam Clarke, Matthew Henry, Thomas Scott, and
Joseph Benson. I will not take the space to quote them all, but
content myself with an extract from the last. Says Benson :
“In the intermediate Sabbath, i. e., says Bengelius, ‘ the
Sabbath that should occur in the remaining days about to be spent
by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch.’ But Grotius is confident
that the reading ought to be ‘ in the intermediate time between
the two Sabbaths,’ or ‘ in the course of the ensuing week;’ Mon
days and Thursdays, or the second and fifth days of the week,
being times in which the pious Jews were accustomed to meet
together in the synagogue for the study of the law, in compli
ance, says Lightfoot, with the appointment of Isaiah. It seems,
however, to be fully determined by ver. 44 that our version
gives the true expression.”
Thus I have brought five Christian commentators against the
rendering which Dr. S. gives. I do not know whether he
claims originality of discovery or not. I am not aware, as yet,
of any authority on his side except the marginal reading of our
reference Bibles, and that is ambiguous. If Dr. S. is right, let
him try and convince Christian scholars who accept the Lord’s
day as a Christian Sabbath, but who reject this passage as proof
of it; and then let him try to convert us anti-Sabbatarians.
As David chose five smooth stones from the brook, so have I
cited five eminent commentators, any one of whom is fatal to
Goliath.
WM. HENRY BURR.
GOLIATH THINKS DAVID HAS HIT HIMSELF.
We wait no longer for Mr. Pillsbury. “ W. H. B.” comes
out from his obscurity. I think Mr. Burr is not personally
known to me, and he will excuse any omission of titles, as I do
not know whether I should address him as judge, professor, gen
eral, colonel, major, or captain.
This is just what comes of men not doing right in the
�ALL DAYS ALIKE IIOLY.
13
first place. If lie had announced himself he would have been
saved the trouble of the protest in his first .paragraph. As to
the “little short of a libel” on “Sigma,” there was the same
difficulty. I had nothing to judge by but his propositions, and
my conclusion, as I think, was perfectly logical from the premises.
Mr. Burr is deceived when he thinks that the argument for
“the Christian Sabbath” rests solely on the meaning of Acts
xiii, 42. This text is, in fact, but a subordinate incident in the
general discussion. But when rightly understood, it does clearly
confirm the truth of the Christian Sabbath. The great argu
ment springs from another quarter.
Mr. Burr, it seems, relies on the opinions of distinguished
Christian scholars, and expects to triumph through the over
whelming weight of great names. He will find before he gets to
the end that this is a very precarious game, which two can
play at.
His main point against me was that metaxu, (not metazu, as
he writes it,) in Acts xiii, 42, does not mean between or inter
vening, but next or following. To support this position, he cited
the authority of Alford. I have shown that Alford is totally
mistaken. If he is mistaken, then all who agree with him are
mistaken.
I am glad Mr. Burr calls my attention to Alford’s note on verse
44, as it furnishes a new argument from his stand-point for my
rendering of metaxu in verse 42. If, as Alford says, “ the sense
will be on the following day, and not as Heinrichs, on the fol
lowing week-day,” this shows conclusively it was “ the Christian
Sabbath,” for if the day following the Jewish Sabbath “ was not
a week-day,” then it was “the Christian Sabbath,” as we know is
now the fact.
Thank you, Mr. Burr ! Truth always shines brighter the more
it is rubbed!
He has not done, however, “with Christian authorities.” He
produces his five smooth stones, Calvin, Clarke, Henry, Scott,
and Benson, but only slings one of them. The shot, however,
by some singular freak, instead of hitting his adversary, twirls
round and sinks into his own head I Quoting Benson, who
quotes Grotius, who was the most learned man of his time, he
distinctly proves the truth of my rendering of metaxu. Grotius
insists that the reading should be “ the intermediate Sabbath
�14
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
that is, the Sabbath between two Jewish Sabbaths. So much for
the quotation from Benson.
Four stones remain unslung.
“ He is not aware of any authority on my side, except the mar
ginal reading, which is ambiguous. ” He had better go back to
the old classic Greek, to the usage of the New Testament Greek
itself, and to hundreds of authorities far more decisive of my ren
dering of me tax u in this passage than any he has yet produced
against it.
But to do this I fear will require more time and space than can
be devoted to the subject in the columns of the daily journals.
And now that the gentleman appears in his own proper person,
and Mr. Pillsbury is out of the question, I have the pleasure of
renewing to Mr. Burr my original proposition. Let us corres
pond, privately at first, till we have concluded what we have to
say, and then publish the correspondence in pamphlet form.
B. SUNDERLAND.
DAVID CUTS OFF GOLIATH’S HEAD.
Prostrate Goliath flounders. He speaks. It is David, he says,
that is smitten. David thinks Goliath is blind, and in the death
struggle.
My adversary says that the weight of Christian authority is a
game that two can play at. Just so. Play away, Doctor. You
are plaintiff, I defendant. I demand a jury of your peers, all
drawn from the Christian Church. I challenge now [none] for
bias ; and if I can’t get a verdict for defendant, all the plaintiff
can hope for is a disagreement; so that he loses his case any way.
The Doctor’s Greek is good ; not so his logic. First, he admits
that Dean Alford is against him, and then claims that he is for
him. This will be news to the Dean of Canterbury. Grotius,
he says, is for him, because he insists on the reading, “ the inter
mediate Sabbath.” Not so, Doctor. Surely, you did not intend
to garble and pervert Grotius, who says, “in the intermediate
time between the two Sabbaths,” specifying Monday and Thurs
day, {not Sunday,) which were the lecture days of the Jews.
My opponent having thus perverted both Alford and Grotius,
let him try his hand at the other four authorities. It is unneces
sary for me to quote them; they are clearly and strongly against
him. And I will add that I have two more of the same sort,
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
15
namely, Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, who first made
public in that city the existence of the Book of Acts in the year
400, and the late Albert Barnes. The earliest Christian com
mentator [upon the book of Acts] never dreamed of the render
ing of the passage in question, revealed to Dr. Sunderland, and
his brother Barnes, the latest commentator, died without the dis
covery.
Having slung the stone, I now proceed to cut off Goliath’s
head with his own two-edged sword. Eight years after the cru
cifixion the Gospel was first preached and the Christian Church
established at Antioch, in Syria. (Actsxi, 19-26.) Fouryears
later, Paul and Barnabas, being sent on a missionary tour, reached
Antioch, in Pisidia, a sequestered town, remote from the sea,
lying at the foot of impassable mountains, and distant about 330
miles in a straight line from the other place. There were a few
Jews in this second Antioch, but not a Christian until Paul went
there. How, then, could the Gentiles, who had never before
heard of Christianity, have besought Paul to preach to them on
the next Christian Sabbath ?
Dear Doctor, is not this one of those passages ‘ ‘ which they that
be unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own destruction ?” I
mean polemically, not literally.
Enough on this point. I have said that Paul, during a minis
try of twenty years, constantly preached in the synagogues on the
Jewish Sabbath. I now give the proof. Straightway after his
conversion he began to preach in the synagogues, (Acts, ix, 20.)
He did so at Antioch, in Pisidia, two Sabbath days in succession,
(xiii, 14, 44,) then at Iconium, (xiv, 1,) then at Thessalonica,
“as his manner was,” three Sabbath days, (xvii, 2,) then at
Berea, (ver. 10,) then at Athens, (ver. 17,) then at Corinth
“ every Sabbath,” for a year and a half, (xviii, 4-11,) then at
Ephesus, (ver. 19,) and again at the same place for “ three
months,” (xix, 8.) During all this time I do not find the slight
est evidence that Paul observed the first day of the week as a
Sabbath.
I decline a private correspondence. In three or four articles
of a quarter of a column each, I can say all I desire to on this
subject. But if my opponent declines a further newspaper discus
sion, I rest my case here.
J
WM. HENRY BURR.
�16
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
GOLIATH, THOUGH DEAD, YET SPEAKS.
Mr. Burr positively declines the private correspondence. I
must, therefore, make short work of his last communication.
1. I quoted Grotius from memory. The original has tempore
instead of Sabbato. I have no intention to misquote.
2. Can Mr. Burr say as much, when he has misrepresented
Alford on verse 42, and misquoted him on verse 44?
3. Mr. Burr cannot be permitted to select a jury from wiinesses whom we are going to put on the stand !
4. We will attend to these witnesses in due time. Alford is
already discredited. Benson gets his quietus from Grotius, and
the rest will follow as fast as we can reach them ?
5. He praises my Greek. Of course, after his blunder in
orthography I fully appreciate the compliment.
6. He says my logic, &c., “ will be news to the Dean of Can
terbury,” (meaning Alford.) As the Dean is dead, the “ news”
will, of course, be penetrating.
7. He need not spend time on “ the Jewish Sabbath,” or to
prove that the Apostles availed themselves of those occasions to
preach the Gospel. Nobody denies this.
8. It is equally useless to enter upon any historical researches
of the early Church to show that none of the Gentiles in Pisidia
had ever heard of “ the Christian Sabbath.” Dozens of people
might have been in Antioch on that very Sabbath who had
recently come from Palestine.
9. The issue between us, mind, is the meaning of ’metaxu.
He says it means next. I say it means between.
I will endeavor to be perfectly fair in examining the witnesses
he produces on his side, and in presenting such witnesses as I
may on my side. But it will take more time and space than can
be usually given in the columns of a daily journal like the Chron
icle. I therefore defer further observations to a future occasion.
B. SUNDERLAND.
DAVID ADDRESSES GOLIATH’S GHOST.
The ghost of
from memory I
his eyes. Why
In answer to
intend to do so,
Goliath appears. He says he quoted Grotius
The passage, as given by Benson, was before
did he garble it ?
my charge of misquoting, he says he did not
and insinuates that I intended to misrepresent
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
17
and misquote Dean Alford. I neithei intended it nor did it.
The charge is false. I quoted from Alford what Dr. S. omitted.
In impannelling a jury of authorities I said, “ I challenge
none for bias.” The word none was printed novo. I don’t want
to “ select'’ a jury. I will take them as they come.
I mistook a Greek letter for another almost exactly similar,
and I was not aware that Dean Alford had died within a year.
I acknowledge my mistakes; my opponent persists in his.
The lexicons say that metaxu means not only between, but
afterwards.
Ghost of Goliath, an revoir.
WILLIAM HENRY BURR.
THE GHOST APPEAHS AGAIN.
Mr. Burr sees a ghost! Quite likely! Men’s minds do
wander sometimes.
1. He says the passage as given by Benson was before my
eyes, and wants to know why I garbled it? Does he know the
primary meaning of garble? But let that pass. I would say to
Mr. Burr, just in this connection, that Grotius wrote in Latin. I
choose to read him in the original, not at second-hand. I made
the proper correction in Latin without any reference to Benson.
Is this persisting in a mistake ?
2. Mr. Burr denies that he misrepresented and misquoted
Alford, and disclaims the intention. I do not charge him with
the intention; but that he did it I will show. His words are,
“Alford says that this rendering in verse 42, ‘ the next Sabbath’
is correct." Alford does not use the word correct. To ascribe it
to him is what I call misrepresentation.
Again, on verse 44, he quotes Alford as saying, “ the sense
will be on the following day.” Alford’s words are, “ the sense
will be on the following Sabbath-day.” This is what I call mis
quotation.
3. Bias or no bias, we cannot consent to have a jury made up
of the rednesses in the case.
4. Lexicons at the best are only secondary authority. Cer
tainly they cannot settle the meaning of metau in Acts xiii., 42.
I am preparing an article on the weight of authority as to the
meaning of this text, which, when completed, I hope to have
published in some form as a full expression of my views.
B. SUNDERLAND.
�18
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
WHAT DAVID SAYS TO IT A SECOND TIME.
Dr. Sunderland did not make “the proper correction” of his
misquotation of Grotius. The passage reads “ medio tempore
inter duo Sabbata ”—“in the intermediate time between two
Sabbaths.” To make it read, “ in the intermediate Sabbath,” is
garbling.
I did not “ ascribe” the word “ correct” to Alford, and Dr.
Sunderland knows it. In the quotation, “ the following Sabbath
day,” the word “ Sabbath” is not to be found in Alford’s latest
edition, which I saw. I knew and Dr. Sunderland knew it ought
to be there, and yet upon that omission he sought to make Alford
stultify himself; and now, finding the word supplied in a former
edition, with strange perversity he charges me with misquotation.
WM. HENRY BURR.
THE GHOST RETURNS A THIRD TIME.
1. Mr. Burr thinks I did not make the proper correction. Let
us see. Quoting Grotius from memory, I made him read “ the
intermediate Sabbath,” as though his words were medio Sabbato.
Discovering the mistake, I corrected it by saying ‘ ‘ the original
has tempore instead of SabbataS This would make it read, as it
actually does, medio tempore.
But Mr. Burr hastens to tell us that the passage reads “ medic
tempore inter duo Sabbato.” And he adds, to make it read “ in
the intermediate Sabbath ” is garbling. He might as well accuse
me of garbling because I did not quote the entire work of Gro
tius bodily.
2. Mr. Burr’s words are, “Alford says that this rendering in
verse 42, ‘ the next Sabbath,’ is correct.” If this is not ascribing
to Alford the word “ correct,” will Mr. Burr tell us what it is?
3. How will Mr. Burr reconcile what he represents Alford as
saying with what he quotes Grotius as saying in regard to the
meaning of metaxu, in Acts xiii, 42.
4. I am inclined to think that Mr. Burr muddles himself and his
foremost witness, Alford, by confessing that he quoted an error
from an erroneous copy of Alford, knowing it to be such at the
time 1 Isn’t that being rather hard-pushed for testimony ?
5. Now, Mr. Burr, see what you have done ? By quoting
from your erroneous edition of Alford you have led me into error
in quoting the same thing after you, to make, from your stand-
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
19
point, an argument on my side. This is “stultifying” Alford
with a vengeance I I have never seen the erroneous edition of
which you speak. Is it at Ballantyne’s ?
B. SUNDERLAND.
A FINAL WORD BY DAVID.
Mr. Burr, deeming it unnecessary to reply to the foregoing,
leaves his adversary to have the last word in the Chronicle. But
in reproducing the controversy he submits the following final
word:
“ There is no God,” (Ps. liii, 1 ;) “ Trust in vanity and speak
lies,” (Is. lix, 4.) Who says that is garbling? Must I quote
the whole Bible ?
How “ hard-pushed” the Doctor must have been for an argu
ment when he eagerly seized upon so apparent an omission as that
of the word “ Sabbath,” in Dean zllford’s note on Acts xiii, 44,
not only to make nonsense of the note, but to make the “ Sab
bath-day,” mentioned in verse 44, mean the first day of the week,
contrary to the Doctor’s own admission in his discourse I (See
page 1.)
HOW THE EARLY FATHERS, REFORMERS, AND OTHER
EMINENT CHRISTIAN WRITERS REGARDED
SUNDAY AND THE SABBATH.
In the Daily Chronicle of October 31, one day prior to the
appearance of Dr. Sunderland’s last article in the controversy
with Mr. Burr, the Doctor uses this language in reply to an asser
tion by “J. R.,” on the previous day, that there is no authority
in history or Christianity for a special sacred day:
‘ ‘ Whoever will undertake deliberately to assert that there is
no authority for the Christian Sabbath in history or Christianity
is too far gone in self-complacent ignorance to be reasoned with.”
And yet so eager was the Doctor at the outset to discuss the
�20
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH I
question, that he challenged an anonymous writer, (“ W. II. B.,”)
who clearly denied the authority for the Christian Sabbath, to a
private controversy. (See page 3.) But letting that pass, let us
see how the early Fathers, Reformers, and other eminent Christian
writers regarded Sunday and the Sabbath, and whether the charge
of iC self-complacent ignorance ” will apply to them,
JUSTIN MARTYR,
So called from his being believed to have suffered martyrdom
about A. D. 163, was supposed to have been born A. D. 89. In
his Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, reported by himself, (AnteNicene Library, vol. ii,) the following passages referring to the
Sabbath are gathered:
Trypho. “ This is what we are most at a loss about: that you,
professing to be pious and supposing yourself better than others,
are not in any particular separate from them, and do not alter
your mode of living from the nations, in that you observe no fes
tivals or Sabbaths, and do not have the rite of circumcision.”
Justin. “We do not trust through Moses or through the law,
for then we would be the same as yourselves. . . For the
law, promulgated on Iloreb, is now old and belongs to yourselves
alone. . . Now, law placed against law has abrogated that
which is before it, and a covenant which comes after in like man
ner has put an end to the previous one, and an eternal final law,
namely, Christ, has been given to us; and the covenant is trust
worthy, after which there shall be no law, no commandment, no
ordinance. . . The new law requires you to keep a per
petual Sabbath ; and you, because you are idle for one day, sup
pose you are pious, not discerning why this has been commanded
you. . . As if it were not the same God who existed in
the times of Enoch and all the rest, who neither were circumcised
after the flesh, nor observed Sabbaths, nor any other rites.
Do you see that the elements are not idle and keep no Sabbaths ?
. For if there was no need of circumcision before Abra
ham, or of the observance of Sabbaths, feasts, and sacrifices,
before Moses, no more need is there of them now, after that,
according to the will of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has
been born without sin.”
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
*
21
Trypho. ‘ ‘ Why do you select and quote whatever you wish from
the prophetic writings, but do not refer to those which expressly
command the Sabbath to be observed ?”
Justin. “I have passed them by, not because such prophecies
were contrary to me, but because you have understood and do
understand, that although God commands you by all the prophets
to do the same things which He commanded Moses, it was on
account of the hardness of your hearts and your ingratitude
towards Him that He continually proclaims them. . . Why
did He not teach those who are called righteous and pleasing to
Him, who lived before Moses and Abraham . . and
observed no Sabbaths, to keep these institutions ?”
TERTULLIAN
Was presbyter of the Church of Carthage about A. D. 193, and
died about A. D. 220. In his Apology addressed to the rulers
of the Roman Empire, (Ante-Nicene Library, vol. xi, p. 85,) he
says:
“But you, many of you, also, under pretence sometimes of
worshipping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direction
of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sun-day to
rejoicing from a far different reason than Sun-worship, we have
some resemblance to those who devote the day of Saturn to ease
and luxury, though they, too, go far away from the Jewish ways,
of which indeed they are ignorant.”
In his essay On Idolatry (Ibid, p. 162) are these words:
“ By us, to whom Sabbaths are strange, and the new moons
and festivals, formerly beloved by God, the Saturnalia and Newyear’s and Mid-winter’s festivals and Matronalia are frequented.
J • • • We are not apprehensive lest we seem to be heaj thens ! If any indulgence is to be granted to the flesh you have
it. I will not say your own days, but more too; for, to the
heathens each festive day occurs but once annually: you have a
i festive day every eighth day.”
In his -address To the Nations, (Ibid, p. 449,) he thus
speaks of Sunday:
“Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be
�22
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
confessed, suppose that the Sun is the God of the Christians, be
cause it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the East or
because we make Sunday a day of festivity.”
Lastly, in his Answer to the Jews, (Ibid, vol. xviii, chap. 4,)
he maintains that the temporal, Jewish Sabbath is abrogated:
“It follows accordingly, that in so far as the abolition of carnal
circumcision and of the old law is being demonstrated as having
been consummated at its specific times, so also the observance of
the Sabbath is being demonstrated to have been temporary.
We [Christians] understand that .we still more
ougiht to observe a Sabbath from all ‘ servile work’ always, and
not only every seventh day, but through all time.
For the Scriptures point to a Sabbath eternal and a Sabbath
temporal.”
EUSEBIUS,
The father of church history, who wrote about A. D. 315, in
Book i, chap. 4, of his Ecclesiastical History, says:
“They [the patriarchs] did not therefore regard circumcision
nor observe the Sabbath, neither do we; neither do we abstain
from certain foods, nor regard other injunctions which Moses
subsequently delivered to be observed in types and symbols,
because such things as these do not belong to Christians.”
MARTIN LUTHER,
The father of the Reformation, is quoted by Mitchelet in his Af/e
qf Luther, (Book iv, chap. 2,) as follows :
“As regards the Sabbath or Sunday, there is no necessity
for keeping it; but if we do, it ought to be not on account of
Moses’ commandment, but because nature teaches us from time
to time to take a day of rest.”
The following quotation is also made from Luther, by Cole
ridge, in his Table Talk, article ‘ ‘ Christian Sabbath
“ Keep it for its use’ sake both to body and soul. But if any
where the day is made holy for the mere day’s sake—if any
where any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation,
then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to
feast on it—to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment
on the Christian spirit of liberty.”
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
23
In a hasty search of Luther’s writings we have been unable to
find either of the above passages; but their verity is not contro
verted, even by the Rev. James Gilfillan, of Scotland, the latest
and perhaps most learned advocate of the Christian Sabbath,
whose elaborate work on that subject has been recently reissued
by the American Tract Society. And we have found in Luther’s
works enough to prove that he did cherish such views, as will
appear from his instructions to Christians how to make use of
Moses, a few sentences of which we here translate from Lutheri
Opera Latina, Tom. iii, pp. 72-3 :
“ The whole of the law of Moses, in its promulgation, be
longs to the Jews alone, and not to other nations, nor to us
Christians. It was manifestly given to that people only, and
they received it to be observed by them and their posterity to
the exclusion of all other nations. . . . Nothing of it
pertains to other nations, not even the words delivered from
Mount Sinai. ... I say this on account of certain
ignorant and pernicious spirits, who, because the laws and polity
of Moses were prescribed to the people of God, say it is necessary
that we should observe the same. These new masters would
teach us something more than the Gospel of Christ.
Their doctrines are fanatical, and foreign from the true under
standing of the Gospel. Do not listen to them ; rather let no
mention of Moses be made at all. . . . We neither wish,
nor ought we to acknowledge Moses as our legislator, nor has
God so intended it. . . . When, therefore, you hear
these men say, ‘ Thus Moses wrote and commanded the people
of God by Divine authority, and therefore these things are bind
ing on us,’ you will answer them in a word : ‘ What is Moses to
us? We have nothing to do with his ministry or vocation’
For if you concede that you are bound by one of his
laws you cannot eScape the observance of the whole.
Let Moses go; he is dead, and was buried long ago by God him
self. . . . That the decalogue does not bind the Gen
tiles is shown by the very words of its promulgation, in Exodus
xx, where God says, ‘ I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee
out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.’
Clearly he speaks and gives commandments to those whom he had
�24
. SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
led out of Egypt. Therefore the words have no reference to other
nations, nor to us, for we were not brought out of Egypt.
Here we might also show that the Sabbath in no way per
tained to the Gentiles. It was not commanded to them nor
observed by any of them. Even Paul and the Apostles, after
the Gospel began to be preached and spread over the world,
clearly released the people from the observance of the Sabbath.
And even the prophets foretold that the time would come when
the Jewish Sabbath would cease to exist. Thus Isaiah, in the
last chapter, says that after Christ has come the distinction be
tween the Sabbath and other days shall be removed, ‘ and there
shall be month after month and Sabbath after Sabbath.’ ”—
[Douay version, Is. lxvi 23.]
PHILIP MELANCTHON,
The bosom friend of Luther, framed and presented the Augsburg
Confession to the Assembly in 1530. In it (Omnium Operum,
1562, vol. i, p. 37,) are these words, which we translate from
the Latin :
“They who think that the observance of the Lord’s day has
been appointed by the authority of the Church instead of the Sab
bath, as a necessary thing, do greatly err. The Scripture allows
that the observance of the Sabbath has now become void, for it
teaches that the Mosaic ceremonies are not needful after the rev
elation of the Gospel. And yet, because it was requisite to assign
a certain day that the people might know when to come together,
it seems that the Church did, for that purpose, appoint the Lord’s
day, which day, for this cause also, seemed to have better pleased
the Church, that in it men might have an example of Christian
liberty, and might know that the observance neither of the Sab
bath nor of any other day is necessary.”
JOHN CALVIN,
*
The father of Presbyterianism, in Book ii, chap. 8, of his Insti
tutes, concludes a long essay on the fourth commandment as fol
lows :
“Thus vanish all the dreams of false prophets who, in past
ages, have infected the people with a Jewish notion, affirming
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
25
that nothing but the ceremonial part of this commandment
(which, according to them, is the appointment of the seventh day)
is abrogated; but that the moral part of it—that is, the obser
vance of one day in seven—still remains. But this is only
changing the day in contempt of the Jews, while retaining the
same opinion of the holiness of a day; for on this principle the
same mysterious signification would still be attributed to particu
lar days which formerly obtained among the Jews.”
GROTIUS,
The distinguished Dutch jurist and theologian, was born A. D.
1583. In his Annotations on the Old Testament he thus com
ments on Exodus xx:
“ These things refute those who suppose that the first day of
the week (that is, the Lord’s day) was substituted in place of
the Sabbath; for no mention is ever made of such a thing, either
by Christ or the Apostles; and when the Apostle Paul says,
Christians are not to be condemned on account of Sabbaths, &c.,
(Col. ii, 16,) he shows that they were entirely free from that law ;
which liberty would be of no effect, if, the law remaining, the
day merely were changed. Therefore the day of the Lord’s res
urrection was not observed by Christians, any more than the Sab
bath, from any precept of God, or of the Apostles, but by volun
tary agreement of the liberty which had? been given them.”
WILLIAM TYNDALE,
The distinguished English reformer and martyr, in his Answer to
Sir Thomas Moore's Dialogue, chap. 25, says:
“ As for the Sabbath, we be lords over the Sabbath, and may
yet change it into Monday or into any other day, as we see need;
or make every tenth day a holy day only, if we see cause why.
We may make two every week, if it were expedient, and not one
enough to teach the people. Neither was there any cause to
change it from Saturday than to put difference between us and
the Jews, and lest we should become servants unto the day, after
their superstition. Neither need we any holy day at all if the
people might be taught without it.”
�26
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
JOHN FRITH,
A cotemporary of Tyndale, and also a martyr, in his Declaration'
of Baptism, takes a similar view, as follows :
“ Our forefathers which were in the beginning of the Church
did abrogate the Sabbath, to the extent that men might have an
example of Christian liberty, and that they might know that
neither the keeping of the Sabbath nor of any other day is neces
sary. . . Howbeit, because it was necessary that a day
should be reserved in which the people should come together to
hear the word of God, they ordained in the stead of the Sabbath,
which was Saturday, the next day following, which was Sunday.
And although they might have kept Saturday with the Jews as
a thing indifferent, yet did they much better, and overset the day,
to be a perpetual memorial that we are free and not bound to any
day, but that we may do all lawful works to the pleasure of God
and profit of our neighbor. We are in manner as superstitious
in the Sunday as they were in the Saturday; yea, are we much
madder ; for the Jews have the word of God for their Saturday,
since it is the seventh day, and they were commanded to keep the
seventh day solemn; and we have not the word of God for us,
but rather against us, for we keep not the seventh day as the Jews
do, but the first, which is not commanded by God’s law.”
JOHN MILTON,
In his Treatise on Christian Doctrines, vol. ii, p. 331, says:
“ Since, then, the Sabbath was originally an ordinance of the
Mosaic law, since it was given to the Israelites alone, and that for
the express purpose of distinguishing them from other nations, if
follows that if (as was shown in the former book) those who live
under the Gospel are emancipated from the ordinances of the law
in general, least of all can they be considered as bound by that
of the Sabbath, which was the special cause of its institution.”
Again, on page 332 :
“ The law of the Sabbath being thus repealed, that no particu
lar day of worship has been appointed in its place is evident from
the same Apostle, (Rom. xiv, 5.”)
And on page 339 he concludes :
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
27
‘ ‘ First, that under the gospel no one day is appointed for
divine worship in preference to another, except such as the Church
may set apart, of its own authority, for the voluntary assembling
of its members; . . . and, secondly, that this may con
veniently take place once every seven days, particularly on the
first day of the week. ... I perceive also that several of
the best divines, as Bucer, Calvin, Peter Martyr, Musculus, Ursinus, Gomarus, and others, concur in the opinions above ex
pressed.”
PETER HEYLYN,
Chaplain to Charles I and Charles II, as cited by Bannerman
in his Modern Sabbath Examined, (London, 1832, p. 139,) dis
courses as follows:
“ It was left to God’s people to pitch on the first day of the
week or any other, as the public use might require; for there
was no divine command that it particularly should be sanctified,
as there was concerning the Jewish Sabbath. And though this
day was taken up and made a day of meeting in the congrega
tion for religious exercises, yet for three hundred years there was
neither law to bind them to it nor rest from labor or from worldly
business required upon it. And when it seemed good unto
Christian princes to lay restraints upon their people, yet at first
it was not general, but only this: that certain men in certain
places should lay aside their ordinary works to attend to God’s
service in the church ; those engaged in employments that were
most toilsome and most repugnant to the true nature of a Sab
bath being allowed to follow and pursue their labors, because
most necessary to the Commonwealth. And in following times,
when the princes and prelates endeavored to restrain them from
that also, it was not brought about without much strugglin''
and opposition of the people; more than a thousand years being
past after Christ’s ascension before the Lord’s day had attained
that state in which it now standeth. ... In all this
time, in twelve hundred years, we find no Sabbath.”
ARCHBISHOP WHATELY,
In his Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul., (Andover edi
tion, p. 160,) says:
�2S
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
“ Throughout the whole liturgy and rubric the word Sabbath
never once occurs. Our reformers, there is every reason to
believe, concurred in taking the same view of the obligation of
the fourth commandment as is set forth in the catechism extant
under the name of Archbishop Cranmer, published in the be
ginning of the reign of Edward VI: ‘ The Jews in the Old Tes
tament were commanded to keep the Sabbath day; and they
observed every seventh day, called the Sabbat or Satterday.
But we Christian men in the New Testament are not bound to
such commandments of Moses’ law.”
Again, on page 163 :
“We find, in short, the most ample evidence of the observance
of the Lord’s day as a Christian festival by the Apostles and
their immediate converts, whose example has been followed by
all Christian churches down to this day; but that in so doing
they conceived themselves to be observing a precept of he
Levitical law, that they taught the doctrine of a transfer of the
Sabbath from one day to another, we find not only no evidence,
but every conceivable evidence to the contrary.”
JEREMY TAYLOR
Treats of the Sabbath at great length. We subjoin a few pas
sages from vol. xii, of his Whole Works :
‘ ‘ The Christians for a long time together did keep their conven
tions upon the Sabbath, in which some portions of the law were
read. ... At first they kept both days, with this only dif
ference : that though they kept the Sabbath, yet it was after the
Christian, that is, after the spiritual manner. . . . They
did it without any opinion of essential obligation and without the
Jewish rest. . . . We find it affirmed by Balsamo, ‘ The
Sabbath day and the Lord’s day were almost in all things made
equal by the holy fathers.’ . . . The effect of which
consideration is, that the Lord’s day did not succeed in the place
of the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was wholly abrogated, and the
Lord’s day was merely an ecclesiastical institution.
And the primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the
Lord's day, even in times of persecution, when they are the
strictest observers of all the Divine commandments. But in this
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
29
they knew there was none; and therefore when Constantine, the
Emperor, had made an edict against working upon the Lord’s
day, yet he excepts and still permitted to agriculture the labors
of the husbandman whatsoever; for ‘ God regardeth not outward
cessation from works more upon one day than another,’ as St.
Epiphanius disputes well against the Ebionites and Manichseans.”
NEANDER,
The most profound Church historian, in vol. i, sec. 3, of his Gen
eral History of the Christian Religion and Church in the three
first centuries, (first edition,) thus speaks of Sunday :
“The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always
only a human ordinance ; and it was far from the intention of the
Apostles to establish a divine command in this respect; far from
them and from the early Apostolic Church, to transfer the laws
of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second
century a false application of this kind had begun to take place,
for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sun
day as a sin.”
In the second edition, which the author issued in 1843, the
foregoing passage is not found, nor indeed anything like it. The
explanation of so remarkable an omission is given by the trans
lator in his preface to the English edition, (Edinburgh, 1851-2,)
as follows : “In this new edition the alterations are numerous and
important. . . . These important changes, not here and there,
but through the entire page and paragraphs, have made it neces
sary to translate nearly the whole of the first volume anew.”
That Neander did modify bis views on the Sunday question ap
pears not only from the radical changes made in the second edi
tion of his General Church History, but from the following pas
sages contained in his prior work, entitled, History of the Plant
ing and Training of the Christian Church, (Edinburgh, 1842,
vol. i, p. 156 :)
“According to the doctrine of the Apostle Paul, the Mosaic
law in its whole extent had lost its value as such to Christians ;
. . . but whatever was binding as a law for the Christian life
�30
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
must, as such, derive its authority from another quarter. Hence
the transference of the Old Testament command of the sanctity
of the Sabbath to the New Testament standing point was not
admissible. . . , Thus all the days of the Christian life must
be equally holy to the Lord. . . . He fears that his labors
among them, [the Galatians,] to make them Christians, had been
in vain, because they reckoned the observance of certain days as
holy to be an essential part of religion. . . . We must de
duce the religious observance of Sunday, not from the Jewish
Christian churches, but from the peculiar circumstances of the Gen
tile Christians, and may account for the practice in the following
manner: Where the circumstances of the churches did not allow
of daily meetings for devotion, . . . although on the Chris
tian standing point all days were to be considered as equally holy,
in an. equal manner devoted to the Lord, yet, on account of
peculiar outward relations, such a distinction of a particular day
was adopted for religious communion.”
WILLIAM PALEY,
Author of standard works on Natural Theology, Evidences of'
Christianity, and Moral and Political Philosophy, in discussing
the Sabbath question in the last mentioned work, chap, vii,
says :
“St. Paul evidently appears to have considered the Sabbath
as part of the Jewish ritual, and not obligatory on Christians as
such.” (Col. ii, 16, 17.)
And in regard to the first day of the week he speaks as follows :
“A cessation upon that day from labor beyond the time of
attendance upon public worship is not intimated in any passage
of the New Testament; nor did Christ or his Apostles deliver,
that we know of, any command to their disciples for a discontin
uance, upon that day, of the common affairs of their professions.
The opinion that Christ and his Apostles meant to
retain the duties of the Jewish Sabbath, shifting only the dav
from the seventh to the first, seems to prevail without sufficient
reason ; uor does any evidence remain in the Scripture (of what,
howevei, is not improbable) that the first day of the week was
thus distinguished in commemoration of our Lord’s resurrec
tion.”
�ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
If the Christian Sabbath, so called, be of Divine appointment,
to commemorate the resurrection of Christ, it must take its origin
from that event. During the forty days thereafter that Jesus
remained on earth, (Acts i, 3,) it is conceded that He gave no
command to observe any day as a Sabbath. Did He then by His
example indicate such an observance ?
According to Matthew, He met the two Marys on the morning
of the day of his resurrection, and bade them “ go tell my breth
ren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.”
(xxviii, 10.) “ Then the eleven disciples went away into Gal
ilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them,” (v. 16;)
and after receiving from Him a command to teach and baptize,
the narrative ends. Is it not very remarkable, if this was the
first Christian Sabbath, that we find no intimation of it here, but
on the contrary an order sent to the disciples, which they seem
to have straightway obeyed, to set out on a journey of more than
fifty miles ? Only one meeting with the disciples after the resur
rection is recorded, and that, being in a far off mountain, can
hardly be supposed to have occurred on Sunday. In short, there
is no intimation in Matthew’s narrative that the risen Jesus met
His disciples at all on the first day of the week.
According to Mark, the two Marys and Salome received the
instruction to tell the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee from the
young man in a long, white garment. A little later in the day
Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene alone, who went and told the
disciples that He was alive, (xvi, 10;) afterward He appeared to
two of His disciples as they went into the country, (v. 12;) and
lastly, to the eleven as they sat at meat, (y. 14.) The three
appearances seem to have occurred on the same day; and not only
31
�32
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
is there no indication of the special observance of that day, but
quite the contrary ; for two of the disciples were journeying into
the country, an act entirely inconsistent with the keeping of a
Sabbath, and Jesus appears to have kept them company. The
meeting of the eleven at meat would seem to have been in the
evening, (John xx, 19,) which, according to the Jewish division
of time, was the beginning of another day. So there is no inti
mation in Mark’s narrative of the observance of the first day of
the week.
According to Luke, the two Marys, Joanna, and other women,
having visited the empty sepulchre, went and told the fact to the
eleven, (xxiv, 9.) Then that same day, as two of the disciples were
going to the village of Emmaus, (v. 13,) a distance of seven and a
half miles, Jesus drew near and walked with them ; and when they
came to the village “ He made as though He would have gone
further,” (v. 28,) but they constrained Him to take supper with
them, the day being “far spent;” after which they returned to
Jerusalem, where they met the rest of the eleven and others
gathered together. But presently Jesus himself appeared among
them, (y. 36.) Here we have the fact of Jesus and two of the
disciples traveling a distance of fourteen miles, which is adverse
to the recognition, even by Jesus himself, of the sacredness of
the day. Nor did He meet the eleven disciples until late in the
evening, which was the second day of the week; for it is not to
be supposed that the disciples, who were all Jews, had suddenly
discarded the Jewish division of time, by which the day began at
sunset. Moreover, there is nothing to show that this meeting of
the disciples was extraordinary, or more than accidental. The
two disciples appear to have returned from Emmaus on purpose
to tell the rest that Jesus was alive, so that their attendance at
least was accidental; and in spite of the information that the other
nine had received of the resurrection from these two, as well as
from the women, His appearance among them was a surprise, and
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33
with difficulty did He persuade them that He was not a spirit.
Then He led them out to Bethany, (w. 50,) whence He was car
ried up into heaven. Luke, like Mark, mentions but this one
meeting of Christ with His disciples, and every circumstance
recorded is opposed to the recognition of the day of the resurrec
tion as a Sabbath.
According to John, Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene,
(xx, 14,) who went and told the disciples, (y. 18.) “Then the
same day at evening/’ ten of the eleven disciples being assembled,
Jesus came among them, (v. 19.) This meeting was not on the
first but the second day of the week, as we have already seen,
and the appearance of Jesus among the ten was a surprise. He
convinced His incredulous disciples that He was alive; but they
could not afterward convince the absent Thomas of the fact. So,
“after eight days,” when the eleven were assembled, Jesus ap
peared again among them, (y. 26,) apparently for the sole pur
pose of convincing Thomas. Admitting that “ after eight days”
means one week, which is disputed by learned theologians, it is
certain that this second meeting, which is mentioned by John
only, was, like the first, on the second day of the week. John
mentions a third appearance of Jesus to the disciples when they
were fishing, (xxi, 3, 4,) which of course could not have been
on a Sabbath.
So, then, there is not the slightest testimony in any of the four
Gospels to the observance of Sunday as a Sabbath. Surely, if
the day was thenceforth to be hallowed, there must have been
some intimation of it by at least one of the Evangelists ; but on
the contrary, every recorded circumstance is against it.
Here we might rest the case, for if Christ did not institute a
Christian Sabbath, what authority had His Apostles, much less
their successors, to do it? But waiving that objection, let us turn
to the Acts of the Apostles and remaining books of the New Tes
tament, and see if they contain any warrant for the sanctification
of Sunday.
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SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH
The first nineteen chapters of Acts contain no reference what
ever to the first day of the week. On the other hand, we there
have a history of twenty-five years of Paul’s ministry, in which
he constantly preached in the synagogues on the Sabbath-day of
the Jews, showing that if he had any regard for one day as holier
than another it was the seventh day. But there is no intimation
even of this, and many passages in his epistles are clearly against
the observance of any Sabbath. (Rom. xiv, 5; Gal. iv, 10Col. ii, 16.)
The first and only mention of the first day of the week in Acts
is in chap, xx, 7, where it is said the disciples came together on
that day to break bread, and Paul, ready to depart on the mor
row, preached to them till midnight; i. e., six hours into the sec
ond day of the week. But after midnight they again broke bread,
(y. 11,) and Paul talked till daybreak; i. e., ten hours or more
into the second day of the week. ,Rut if, as may be the fact, this
meeting was on Saturday evening, which was the beginning of
the Jewish first day, then it is certain that Paul, in taking his
departure in the morning, traveled on Sunday. The fact of the
disciples coming together to break bread on the first day of the
week has no significance as to the sacredness of that day, because
it was a daily practice, as we read in Acts ii, 46. So there is
nothing in Acts xx, 7, to indicate the special observance of Sun
day.
The last and only othei- mention of the first day of the week
in the New Testament is in 1st Corinthians, xvi, 2, where every
one is exhorted to lay by him in store on that day for a collection.
Nothing further can be inferred from this than that on that par
ticular day the Corinthian Christians, like the Galatians, were to
lay by their contributions—reserved, perhaps, from the earnings
of the past week.
The only mention of the “Lord’s day” in the New Testament
is in Revelations i, 10 : “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day.”
�ALL DAYS ALIKE IIOLY.
Granting that by this was meant the first day of the week, and
not a particular day of the year, (which was possible,) it proves
nothing as to the sacredness of Sunday, especially as it was the
custom in the early Christian church to meet on other days as
well as Sunday for religious purposes. To establish this fact we
produce Neander, author of the most profound and exhaustive
history of the Christian church yet produced, who, in speaking
of the observance of festive days in the first three centuries, (vol.
i, second edition, p 402,) says :
“ Sunday was distinguished as a day of joy. . . . The Friday of
•each week, this day in particular, and the Thursday, were specially con
secrated to the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ and of the prepara
tory circumstances. On those days there were meetings for prayer and
fasting till three o’clock in the afternoon. . . . Those Churches, how
ever, which were composed of Jewish Christians, though they admitted
with the rest the festival of Sunday, yet retained also the Sabbath.”
Again, in vol. iii, p. 398:
“ Yet the most distinguished Church teachers of this period continue still
to express the purely Christian idea of the relation of the festivals to the
whole Christian life. . . . Thus Jerome asserts that, considered in a
purely Christian point of view, all days are alike, and every day is for the
Christian a Friday, . . . every day a Sunday. . . . Chrysostom
delivered a discourse at Antioch, in which he showed that those who never
attended church except on the principal festivals adopted the Jewish point
of view ; that on the other hand the Christian celebration of festivals was
not necessarily restricted to certain times, but embraced the whole life.
. . . In like manner the Church historian Socrates remarks that Christ
and the Apostles, conformably to Christian freedom, gave no law respect
ing feasts, but left everything open here to the free expression of feelings.
. . Socrates mentions it as a peculiarity of the Alexandrian Church,
that on Wednesday and Friday the Holy Scriptures were read in the Church
and expounded by homilies; and in general the whole service conducted
as on Sunday, the celebration of the communion excepted. This custom
probably vanished by degrees in most of the Churches ; only Friday con
tinued to be consecrated to the memory of Christ’s passion. The Emperor
Constantine, as Sozomon relates, enacted a law that on Friday, as on Sun
day, there should be a suspension of business at the courts and in other
civil offices, so that the day might be devoted with less interruption to the
purpose of devotion. At Antioch the communion was celebrated on Fri
day as well as on Sunday. Also, at Constantinople, Friday was observed
by the more serious Christians as a day of penitence and fasting, conse
crated to the memory of Christ’s passion, and the Sacrament of the Sup
per was distributed. . . . In several of the Eastern Churches the Sab
bath was celebrated nearly after the same manner as Sunday.”
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SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH:
In Mosheim’s Church History (cent, ii, part ii, ch. iv, sec.
8) the observance of four days of the week by the Christians of
the second century is mentioned, namely : the first, the fourth,
the sixth, and the seventh—the fourth being the day on which
Christ was betrayed, and the sixth day on which he was crucified.
In Jeremy Taylor’s treatise on the Sabbath ( Whole Works, vol.
xii,) he says that the primitive Christians continued to meet
publicly on the Jewish Sabbath until the time of the Council of
Laodicea, (A. D. 368,) when the observance of that day was ex
pressly forbidden in these words: “ Christians must not keep a
rest Sabbath, but work upon that day, preferring the Lord’s day
before it. If they will rest on that day let them rest as Chris
tians ; but if they rest as Jews, let them be accursed.”
It is needless to cumulate proof of the fact that the primitive
Christians were accustomed to meet for religious purposes on other
days beside Sunday. There can be no question of it. Indeed,
if any day of the week was more generally used than another
for Christian worship in the first three centuries it was the sev
enth day, or Jewish Sabbath.
The “Lord’s day” mentioned in Rev. i, 10, probably meant
the “great day of God Almighty,” (xvi, 14,) or “ the great day
of His wrath,” (vi, 17,) and the proper rendering of the passage
would be, “I was in spirit on the Lord’s day,” i. e., the day of
God’s wrath. At all events it is mere conjecture that it meant
Sunday, and it would be a bettei’ conjecture that it meant the old
Sabbath. The date of the book of Revelation is given in the
margin of our Bibles as A. D. 96, but modern criticism fixes it
about A. D. 70. The earliest use of the expression “ Lord’s
day” we have been able to find in the writings of the Fathers is
in the Miscellanies of Clement of Alexandria, (B. v, p. 284;
Ante-Micene Lib., vol. xii,) the date of which is assigned be
tween A. D. 194 and 202. Eusebius, however, (B. iv, ch. 23,)
quotes it from an epistle (not now extant) of Dionysius, who was
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
37
made bishop of Corinth, A. D. 170. Assuming that Eusebius
quoted it correctly, we have but these two occurrences of it in the
writings of the Fathers of the first two centuries, unless what is
known as the long epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, which
is generally regarded as spurious, was forged before the year 200.
That epistle, which is an enlargement of the short one, contains
these words:
“Let us, therefore, no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner,
and rejoice in days of idleness, . . . but let every one of you keep the
Sabbath after a spiritual mauner. . . . And after the observance of
the Sabbath let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s day as a festival ;
the resurrection day, the queen and chief of days.” (Ch. ix.)
The short epistle, which, though questionable, is believed by
some to be genuine, and therefore written about the end of the
first century, also contains the expression “Lord’s day” in our
translations, but not in the original Greek. In Archbishop
Wake’s translation we read, “No longer observing Sabbaths, but
keeping the Lord’s day.” (Ch. iii, 3.) The Greek reads, kata
kuriaken zoen zontes, and the rendering should be, “living
according to the Lord’s life.” This, too, makes far better sense
of the whole passage, thus : “ No longer observing Sabbaths, but
living according to the Lord’s life, in which also our life is sprung
up,” &c.
It therefore appears that until about the close of the second cen
tury the expression “ Lord’s day” occurs but barely once in any
existing manuscript, namely, the Book of Revelations; and it is
presumptuous to assume that it meant a Christian Sabbath. Nor
is the meaning of the expression as used by Clement of Alexan
dria, A. D. 194-202, any more certain; for in repeating it
(B. vii, ch. xii) he seems to regard any day as the Lord’s day.
Furthermore, it is a remarkable fact that the most learned advo
cates of the Christian Sabbath, in applying Rev. i, 10, to Sunday,
never refer to any writer earlier than the fourth century who
quotes it. Hence there may be just ground for the suspicion that
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SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH !
the passage was interpolated in that Book about or prior to the
time of Constantine.
Still it is conceded that Sunday had begun to be observed in a
special manner about the middle of the second century. Justin
Martyr, in his Apology, written about this time, speaks of the
celebration of the “day of the Sun, because on this first day God
made the world, and Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.”
But no observance of Sunday is to be traced in any writer of the
first century; and when the observance began, the laws of the
Sabbath were not transferred to Sunday; nor were they so applied
at all until, says Neander, “perhaps at the end of the second
century a false application of this kind had begun to take place.”
(First Edition, vol. i, sec. 3.) The observance of the day seems
to have grown up gradually from about A. D. 140 to A. D. 321,
when the Emperor Constantine issued the following edict:
“Let all judgesand people of the town and all the various trades be
suspended on the venerable day of the Sun, [die Solis.] Those who live
in the country, however, may freely and without fault attend to the culti
vation of their fields, (since it often happens that no other day may be so
suitable for sowing grain and planting the vine;) lest, with the loss of
favorable opportunity, the commodities offered by Divine Providence
should be destroyed.’’ ( Cod. Justin., lib. iii, tit. 12, secs. 2, 3.)
In this edict the day is not called the ‘ ‘ Lord’s day,” but ‘ ‘ Sun
day,” or literally the “Sun’s day,” which was the Pagan desig
nation. And not only did Constantine ordain the observance of
Sunday, but also of Friday.Says Eusebius, in his Life of Con
stantine, Book iv, chap. 18 :
“ He commanded that through all the Roman empire they should forbear
to do any work upon the Lord’s day, and that they should reverence the
day immediately before the Sabbath, in regard to our Saviour’s memorable
and divine actions performed on those days.”
It is the Christian historian Eusebius, and not Constantine,
who here uses the expression “Lord’s day ” Sylvester, who was
bishop of Rome while Constantine was emperor, in order, as it
is stated, to give more solemnity to the first day of the week,
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
39
changed its name from Sunday, which Constantine had given it,
to the more imposing one of the “Lord’s day.” (ZtictW Eccl.
Hist., cent, v, p. 470.)
The Rev. James Gilfillan, in his able work on the Sabbath,
indorsed and extensively distributed by the New York Sabbath
Committee in 1865, concedes that “ the Fathers of the first three
centuries believed that the Jewish Sabbath-day had been set
aside,” (p. 377,) but labors to prove that they recognized the
Divine appointment of the first day of the week, in place of the
seventh, as a “day of rest and worship,” citing several of the
early Fathers. Let us take them up in their order, and see what
they prove.
All that Clement of Rome (A. D. 68-97) says is, that “ offer
ings and sacred services ” were commanded by our Lord to be
rendered “ at appointed times and hours.”
“ Barnabus, disclaiming the old Sabbath-day,” says Gilfillan,
“ declares the eighth day to be its acceptable substitute.” The
epistle of Barnabus is unquestionably spurious, and its date can
not be fixed earlier than A. D. 120. (Ante-Nicene Lib., vol. i.)
Here is what the writer of that epistle says:
“Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all
things will be finished. ‘And He rested on the seventh day.’ This meaneth : when His Son, coming [again,] shall destroy the time of the wicked
man and judge the ungodly, and change the sun, and the moon, and the
stars, then shall He truly rest on the seventh day. . . . Further, He
says to them: 1 Your new moons and your Sabbaths I cannot endure.’
Ye perceive how He speaks. Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to
me, but that is which I have made, [namely, this,] when giving rest to all
things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day; that is, a beginning
of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyful
ness, the day, also, on which Jesus rose again from the dead, and, when
He had manifested Himself, ascended into the heavens.” (Ante-Nicene Lib.,
vol. i, ch. xv )
Whatever the character of the observance of the eighth day
may have been when this epistle was written, it is clear that it
was not a day of rest, and the “joyfulness” of its observance
�40
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
implies that it was a festive day. It was, therefore, by no means
■an ‘ acceptable substitute,” as Gilfillan asserts, for the “ old Sab
bath-day.”
Justin Martyr (A. D. 140-165) is claimed as the next wit
ness for the substitution of Sunday for the Jewish Sabbath, be
cause he says that the Christians assembled for worship in his
time on the day of the Sun, “because on this first day God made
the world, and Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.”
{Apology, ch. lxvii.) This is a most unfortunate passage to prove
a Sabbath, for it denies all possible connection between Sunday
and the fourth commandment. Nothing is said by Justin about
observing Sunday as a day of rest in obedience to the law of the
Decalogue, and we have already seen (p. 20) that he says there
is no more need of Sabbaths now.
The testimony of Melito, Bishop of Sardis, is based on the statemont of Eusebius (B. iv, ch. 26) that he wrote a book on the
subject of the Lord's day in A. D. 170, or later. This is a mis
translation; in the original Greek it is Kuriakes logos—“Lord’s
discourse.”
That of Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, (A. D. 170 or later,)
is, that Eusebius, in the fourth century, quotes him as having
written, “ We have passed the Lord’s holy day, in which we have
read your epistle.” It is second-hand testimony, and amounts
to little or nothing if true.
That of Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, (A. D. 168-188,) is
that he “ appeals to the observance of the Lord’s day as a cus
tom in the churches.” Eusebius, to whom reference is made,
states no such thing in regard to Theophilus of Antioch, but he
does speak of a Theophilus, Bishop of Cesarea, (A. D. 180-192,)
who presided at a council which enacted “ that the mystery of
our Lord’s resurrection should be celebrated on no other day than
the Lord’s day.” (B. v., ch. 23.) This is also second-hand
testimony, and of little or no weight if true.
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY,
41
The testimony of Irenaeus (A. D. 177-202) is in his saying
that the “true sanctification of the Sabbath consists in doing
works of mercy;” and that the commandments of the Decalogue
“ continue with us, extended and enlarged, not abolished.” (B.
iv, ch. 16.) But in the very next sentence Irenaeus calls these
commandments “laws of bondage,” and adds: “These things,
therefore, which were given for bondage and for a sign to them
He cancelled by the new covenant of liberty. But He has in
creased and widened those laws which are natural, and noble, and
common to all.” Furthermore, in section 1 of the same chapter,
he quotes Exod. xxxi, 13, and Ezek. xx, 12, to prove that the
Sabbath was a sign, and says: “The Sabbaths taught that we
should continue, day by day, in God’s service.” Again, in sec
tion 2, he says:
“And that man was not justified by these things, but that they were
given as a sign to the people, this fact shows—that Abraham himself, with
out circumcision and without the observance of Sabbaths, ‘ believed God
and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend
of God.’ . . . Moreover, all the rest of themultitude of those righteous
men who lived before Abraham, and of those patriarchs who preceded
Moses, were justified independently of the things above mentioned and
without the law of Moses. As also Moses himself says to the people in
Deuteronomy: 1 The Lord thy God formed a covenant in Horeb. The
Lord formed not this covenant with your fathers, but for you.’ ”
Clement of Alexandria (A. D. 189-202) is quoted by Gilfillan
is saying, “ The eighth day appears rightly to be named the sev
enth, and to be the true Sabbath.” This, if correctly rendered,
would be testimony of some weight, but in the recent translation
(Ante-Flcene Lib., vol. xii, B. vi, The Fourth Commandment') it,
is rendered thus : ‘ ‘ The eighth day may possibly turn out to be
properly the seventh, and the seventh manifestly the sixth, and
the latter properly the Sabbath. ” So the passage proves nothing
in favor of Sunday Sabbatarianism.
Tertullian (A. D. 193-220) is cited in proof of the sanctity
of the Lord’s day. In his time it is quite possible, as Neander
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SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH !
intimates, that a false application of the laws of the Sabbath to
Sunday began to prevail. Tertullian discusses the question of
kneeling in prayer on the Sabbath and on the day of the Lord’s
resurrection, (not “ Lord’s day/’ as Gilfillan quotes it,) and says
that on the last-mentioned day we “ought to guard not only
against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude; defer
ring even our business lest we give any place to the devil.” And
he adds : “ Similarly, too, in the period of Pentecost,which period
we distinguish by the same solemnity of exultation. But who
would hesitate every day to prostrate himself before God, at least
in the first prayer, with which we enter on the daylight ?” (AnteNicene Lib., vol. xi, ch. xxiii, On Prayer.We have seen, fur
thermore, that Tertullian speaks of Sunday as “ a day of festiv
ity/’ and of observing “ a Sabbath from all servile work always,
not only every seventh day, but through all time.” (P. 22.)
He is certainly, therefore, far from being a witness in favor of
Sabbatarianism.
All that Minutius Felix (A. D. 210) says on the subject, as
quoted by Gilfillan, is this: “ On a solemn da,y persons of 'both
sexes and of every age assemble at a feast, with all their children,
sisters, and mothers.” The scene described by this enemy of
Christianity, if at all truthful, is one that does not in the least
comport with the observance of a holy day. {Octavius of Minu
tius Felix, ch. ix, Anti-Nicene Lib., vol. xiii.)
Origen, who wrote about A. D. 230, while he repudiates the
“Jewish Sabbath observances,” commends the “Christian ob
servance of the Sabbath,” in abstaining from secular duties to
attend to spiritual exercises. Here is the first witness of any
weight in favor of modern Sabbatarianism. He concludes his
instructions by saying : “ This is the observance of the Christian
Sabbbath”—Sabbati Christiani. Here, 200 years after the cruci
fixion, we find the first use of the term “Christian Sabbath.”
We believe not a solitary writer can be found prior to Origen who
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
43
ever called Sunday the Sabbath, and even he seems to have ap
plied the term only by way of contrast. Nor did any one of them,
Origen included, claim the fourth commandment as authorizing
Sunday observance. If we are perchance mistaken in regard to
these facts, we will fall back on the statement of Richard Baxter,
who,in speaking of Sunday, says: “ The ancient churches called
it constantly by the name of ‘ Lord’s day,’ and never called it the
SabbathWit, when they spoke analogically by allusion to the Jew
ish Sabbath.” (-Baxter’s Works, vol. iii, “ On the Lord’s Day,”
ch. 7.) Gilfillan erroneously makes Tertullian speak of the duty
of abstaining from work on Sunday, (p. 378,) when it was the
Jewish Sabbath that Tertullian was discussing.
The next one of the Fathers cited is Cyprian, Bishop of Car
thage, (A. D 253,) who says: “The eighth day, that is, the
first day after the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day, went before in
the figure; which figure ceased when, by-and-by, the truth came
and spiritual circumcision was given.” (Ante-Nicene Lib., vol.
viii, Ep. lviii.) Cyprian, in this chapter, discusses solely the
question of infant baptism—whether or not it should be admin
istered before the eighth day—and makes no allusion whatever to
any observance of the Lord’s day.
To complete the proof of “ the ordinance of a weekly season
of rest and devotion ” in the first three centuries, Gilfillan says
that Commodian, a Christian poet, (A. D. 270,) mentions the
Lord’s day, and that Victorinus, Bishop of Petau, (A. D. 290,)
speaks of the custom of fasting on the seventh day, lest they
“ should seem to observe the Sabbath of the Jews.” This quo(ation is neither correct nor complete. It reads : “ Lest we should
appear to observe any Sabbath with the Jews, which Christ Him
self, the Lord of the Sabbath, says by His prophets that ‘ His
soul hateth ;’ and which Sabbath He, in His body, abolished.”
Furthermore, Victorinus says that the “true and just Sabbath
should be observed in the seventh millenary of years, when Christ
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SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH I
with His elect shall reign.” {Ante-Nicene Lib., vol. xviii, p
390.)
Such is the meagre and barren testimony upon which the ex
istence of a Christian Sabbath is vainly sought to be traced
through the first three centuries. The proof is entirely wanting,
with the possible exception of the uncertain testimony of Origen.
Modern Sabbatarians may trace the first use of their favorite term
■“ Christian Sabbath” to him, whom they have facetiously styled
the “ Origin of all heresies.” That Sunday was observed as a
festival from a very early period is not denied, nor that in the
latter part of the second century it began to be called the Lord’s
day. But, says Jeremy Taylor—
“ It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because
they for almost 300 years together kept that day which was in that com
mandment ; but they did it also without any opinion of prime obligation,
and therefore they did not suppose it moral. . . . They affirmed it to
be ceremonial and no part of the moral law, as is to be seen in Irenaeus,
Tertuliian, Origen, St. Cyprian, and others before quoted.”
Says the learned Heylyn, as quoted by Bannerman, {.Modern
Sabbath Examined, p. 139 :)
“ Thus do we see upon what grounds the Lord’s day stands—on custom
first, and voluntary consecration of it to religious meetings; that custom
continued by the authority of the Church of God, which tacitly approved
the same, and finally confirmed and ratified by Christian princes through
out their empires.”
This same author, Heylyn, as we have already seen, (p. 27,)
says that more than a thousand years passed after Christ’s ascen
sion before the Lord’s day had attained that state in which it
stood in his time, (A. D. 1660,) and that for “ 1,200 years we
find no Sabbath.” Until some time after the Reformation, in the
sixteenth century, Sunday was uniformly regarded throughout
Christendom as a weekly festival or holiday. How it grew up to
be a holy day will appear from the extracts subjoined. Says Ban
nerman, (p. 143:)
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
45
“ In 1541 Edward VI thus directed the clergy : ‘All parsons,vicars, and
curates shall teach and declare unto their parishioners that they may, with
a safe and quiet conscience, in the time of harvest, labor upon the holy and
festival days and save that which God hath sent.’ . . . The festival
days mentioned included, it is well known, all Sundays in the year. These
directions were adopted by Elizabeth in 1559, adding merely to the words
‘quiet conscience,’ ‘ after their common prayer.’ The act of 1552 declared
it ‘ lawful for every husbandman, laborer, fisherman, &c., upon the holy
days aforesaid, in harvest time or any other time in the year, when neces
sity shall require, to labor, ride, fish, or work any kind of work, at their
free wills and pleasure.’ ”
“ It was shortly after this that the doctrine that the prescriptions of the
fourth commandment have been transferred to the first day of the week
was introduced into this country, [England.] It has been traced to Dr.
Bownd, who published a book upon the subject in the year 1594[5.] . . .
This new doctrine was for a long time strenuously opposed by the leading
divines of the English church ; it was warmly contended for, however, by
the Puritans, and shortly became one of the most distinguishing tenets of
that party.”
Says Dr. Heylyn, in his History of the Presbyterians, p. 24 :
“He [Calvin] esteemed no otherwise of the Lord’s day Sabbath than of
an ecclesiastical constitution appointed by our ancestors in the place of the
Sabbath, and, therefore, alterable from one day to another at the Church’s
pleasure, followed therein by all the churches of his party, who thereupon
permit all lawful recreations and many works of necessary labor on the day
itself, provided that the people be not thereby hindered from giving their
attendance in the Church at the times appointed ; insomuch that in Ge
neva, itself, all manner of exercises, as running, vaulting, leaping, shoot
ing, and many others of that nature, are as indifferently indulged on the
Lord’s day as on any other. How far the English Puritans departed from
their mother Church, both in doctrine and practice, with reference to this
particular, we shall see hereafter.”
Then on p. 337 he shows how the Puritan Sabbath was estab
lished :
“The brethren had tried many ways to suppress them [the ancient fes
tivals] formerly, as having too much in them of the superstitions of the
Church of Rome, but they had found no way successful till they fell on
this, which was to set on foot some new Sabbath doctrine, and, by advanc
ing the authority of the Lord’s day Sabbath, to cry down the rest. Some
had been hammering at this anvil ten years before, and had procured the
mayor and aidermen of London to present a petition to the Queen for the
suppression of all plays and interludes on the Sabbath (as they pleased to
call it) within the liberties of their city, the gaining of which point made
them hope for more, and secretly to retail those speculations which after
ward [Dr.] Bownd sold in gross by publishing his treatise on the Sabbath,,
which came out in this year, 1595.”
�46
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH :
“ Now for the doctrine. It was marshalled in these positions ; that is to
say, that the commandment of sanctifying every Sabbath-day, as in the
Mosaical decalogue, is natural, moral, and perpetual; that when all other
things in the Jewish Church were so changed that they were clean taken
away, this stands—the observation of the Sabbath. And though Jewish
and Rabbinical this doctrine was, it carried a fair show of piety, at the
least, in the opinion of the common people, and such as did not stand to
examine the true grounds thereof, but took it upon the appearance; such
as did judge, not by the workmanship of the stuff, but the gloss and color,
in which it is not strange to see how suddenly men were induced not only
to give way unto it. but without more ado to abet the same, till in the end
and in very little time it grew the most bewitching error and most popu
lar infatuation that ever was infused into the people of England.”
Coleridge also bears testimony to the modern origin of the Chris
tian Sabbath. Commenting upon the passage which he quotes
from Luther, (p. 22,) he says:
“ The English reformers took the same view of the day as Luther and
the early Church. But, unhappily, our Church, in the reigns of James
and Charles First, was so identified with the undue advancement of the
royal prerogative that the puritanical Judaism of the Presbyterians was
too well seconded by the patriots of the nation in resisting the wise efforts
of the Church to prevent the incipient alteration of the character of the
day of rest. After the restoration the bishops and clergy in general
adopted the view taken and enforced by their enemies.”
The astounding spread of the new Sabbath doctrine is attested
also by Gilfillan himself, who quotes Fuller, the historian, as say
ing
It is almost incredible how taking this doctrine was. . . .
For some years together Dr. Bownd alone carried the garland
away, none offering openly to oppose, and not so much as a feather
of a quill in print did wag against him.” (P. 70.) The publi
cation of Dr. Bownd’s treatise, says Gilfillan, was “the com
mencement of the earliest Sabbatic contest, entitled to the name,
in the Christian Church,” (p. 66 ;) and the author goes on to give a
history of the agitation, which culminated in the incorporation of
the new Sabbath doctrine in the Westminster Confession of Faith,
agreed upon in 1643, approved by the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland in 1647, and ratified by act of Parliament in
1649. The doctrine was introduced into Holland by some Eng
lish Puritans, but with poor success. John Robinson, pastor of
�ALL DAYS ALIKE HOLY.
47
the Pilgrim Fathers, left England in 1608, and settled in Hol
land, whence in 1620 he and his flock came to America. “Of
the various reasons for the resolution to quit their adopted coun
try for America,” says Gilfillan, “ one was that they could not
bring the Dutch to observe the Lord’s day as a Sabbath.” (P.
91.) “The controversy,” says Hengstenberg, {Ibid., p. 117,)
“ was kept up in Holland till the eighteenth century, but with
great calmness. However, the more liberal views gradually ad
vanced, and became more and more prevalent throughout the Re
formed Churches, with the exception of Great Britain.”
Thus we see where the so-called Christian Sabbath originated,
when it was instituted, and by whom it was ordained. Its origin
was not in Judea, but in Great Britain; it was instituted not
in the first century, but in the seventeenth; it was ordained not
by Christ or His Apostles, but by the Puritans.
ORIGIN AND ABROGATION OF THE JEWISH SABBATH.
The origin of the seventh-day Sabbath is not involved in the
present discussion, but the weight of evidence, as well as of Chris
tian authority, fixes it after the exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt. Says Calmet, in his Dictionary of the Bible, first pub
lished by him in 1730 :
“The greater part of the Divines and Commentators hold that the ben
ediction and sanctification of the Sabbath mentioned by Moses in the be
ginning of Genesis signifies only that appointment then made of the sev
enth day, to be afterward solemnized and sanctified by the Jews.”
The learned Dr. Gill, in commenting on Gen. ii, 3, “And Godblessed the seventh day,” &c., remarks:
“These words may be read in a parenthesis, as containing an account of
a fact that was done not at the beginning of the world and on the seventh
day of it, but of what had been done in the time of Moses, who wrote this
after the giving of the law of the Sabbath.”
Throughout all history we discover no trace of a Sabbath among
the nations of antiquity. Says Theodoretus, a Christian Father,
�48
SUNDAY NOT THE SABBATH.
(A. D. 429 :) “ No other nation beside the Jews ever observed
the Sabbatic rest.” (Comment, in Ezek. xx.) Passages from
Josephus, Philo, and other ancieut writers, have been mistrans
lated to support a contrary theory. The Christian Fathers uni
formly regarded the Sabbath as a ceremonial institution peculiar
to the Jews, and as having been abrogated by the advent of Christ,
with no other day substituted therefor. Such also were the views
of the most illustrious reformers and many of the most brilliant
ecclesiastical writers, besides those already quoted. That the
Apostle Paul taught the same doctrine is clear from Col. ii, 16,
1/; Gal. iv, 10, 11, and Rom. xiv, 5. His teachings in this
respect are in harmony with the adjudication of the first great
Council of the Church, A. D.52, which decreed that the keeping
of the law, with the exception of three (or four) things named, two
of them of a moral nature and the other ceremonial, was a burden
not to be laid upon the Gentiles. (Acts xv, 24, 28, 29.) The
observance of the Sabbath was not one of the articles enjoined.
The Gentile converts knew no Sabbath, and it is incredible that
that question should have been ignored if Sabbath-keeping was
an essential part of Christianity. Therefore, by the formal de
cree of that first Church Council, the Sabbath was wholly and
unequivocally abrogated.
Stereotyped and Printed by Gibson Brothers, Washington, D. C.
�
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Sunday not the Sabbath: all days alike holy. A controversy between the Rev. Dr. Sunderland, Wm. Henry Burr, and others
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Notes: Stereotyped and printed by Gibson Brothers, Washington D.C. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Byron Sunderland was an American Presbyterian minister, author, and Chaplain of the United States Senate during the American Civil War. Date of publication from KVK.
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Text
COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
I SEEING AND BELIEVING. .
ytrfutt
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 27th FEBRUARY, 1881,
By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D.,
IConban:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�Works by the same Author:
“The Pathology of Mind.” Being the Third Edition of the Second
Part of the “ Physiology and Pathology of Mind,” re-cast, much
enlarged, and re-written. In 8vo, price 18s.
“ The Physiology of Mind.” Being the First Part of a Third Edition,
revised, enlarged, and re-written, of “ The Physiology and Pathology of
Mind.” Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d.
“Body and Mind:” An Inquiry into their connection and Mutual In
fluence, especially with reference to Mental Disorders. Second
Edition, enlarged and revised, with Psychological Essays added.
Crown 8vo, 6s. 6d.
Macmillan & Co., London.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage
the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellectual,
and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing
upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoonsy at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-foub Lectures (in three series), ending 24th April, 1881, will
be given.
Members’ annual subscription, £1, entitles them to a ticket, transferable
(and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat
tickets, available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture)—
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each
lecture.
For tickets, and the printed Lectures, and for list of all the Lectures
published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer,
Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door :—One Penny ;—Sixpence ;—and (Reserved
Seats) One Shilling.
�SYLLABUS.
1. The influence of preconceived idea and of feeling to vitiate observation.
Illustrations:
а. Illusions of Sense.
б. Hallucinations of Sense.
c. Erroneous observation.
d. Miracles.
2. The influence of feeling and belief to vitiate reasoning.
a. Individuals.
b. In communities.
3. The relation of feeling to intellect in the progress of the race.
�I
H
?!
�COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
. SEEING AND BELIEVING.
PROPOSE not in this lecture to enumerate and discuss all the
mistakes which we are liable to make when we see and draw
conclusions from what we see—all the fallacies, that is to say, to
which observation and reasoning are exposed; I purpose only to
note and illustrate now one very common and prolific source of
wrong observation and inference. It is certain we do not see and
judge rightly by instinct; too often, although we have eyes, we
see not truly, and although we have reason, we use it to come to
wrong conclusions. Reason, we know, man claims as his almost
exclusive prerogative, defining himself—for he has that advantage
over other animals—as pre-eminently the reasoning animal; and
one need not cavil at the definition so long as it is not understood
to mean that everybody reasons rightly, or even commonly bases
his beliefs upon reason. To say of the great majority of persons
that they reason at all in the highest sense of the word is to say
what is not true, since their opinions are plainly either got by
inheritance, or engrafted by education, or moulded by particular
life-experiences, or imposed by authority of some kind, and are
then worn by them, as they wear their clothes, after the fashion.
Governed by their habits of opinion as they are by their habits of
life they find it as hard a matter to change the one as to change
the other. If all men reasoned truly and adequately on every
subject, it is evident that all men would be agreed, which is not
quite the case; we should not be meeting here this afternoon to
broach opinions which will not be perhaps in harmony with those
which have been preached from a thousand pulpits this morning;
the heresy of yesterday would not be, as it often is, the common
sense of to-day, and the common sense of to-day the nonsense of
to-morrow ; the majority would not have found it necessary to
stone, burn, poison, cut asunder, crucify, or otherwise silence the
voices of the few who, in the succession of the ages, have not
I
�6
Common Source of Error in
failed to appear from time to time to inspire and to raise men to
higher planes of thought and duty; the world would have been
without the history of its noble army of martyrs of humanity.
This being so, it is a good thing, I think, from time to time to
make a particular study of the common errors to which we are
liable in observation and thinking, and to take note how far
wrong they may carry us. My attention is drawn often and
forcibly to this matter, because, in the course of my professional
work, I meet with persons who, of sound understanding in respect
of all ordinary matters, entertain some extraordinary delusions in
respect of one or two subjects, and cannot be convinced of their
errors by the plainest evidence and argument. Naturally one asks
oneself how it comes to pass that they form and entertain notions,
which are absurd to the common sense of mankind, holding to
them in the face of conclusive disproof, and notwithstanding that
they cannot find a single person in the world to agree with them.
The vulgar saying is that they have “ lost their senses,” but it is
not so; their senses are in full work, but somehow they fail to
perform their proper offices. In seeking the explanations of these
remarkable distractions of mind one comes to perceive that, after
all, these people have only carried to an extreme pitch, to an
insane height, a kind of faulty observation and reasoning which
is common enough among persons who are not in the least out of
their minds. ’Tis not true perhaps, as is sometimes said, that
everybody is a little mad, but it is true that everybody makes day
by day the same sort of errors in observation and reasoning as
those which lead madmen to their delusions.
I go at once to the heart of what I have to say by laying down
the broad proposition that in looking at things a person sees what
he believes he sees, not necessarily that which really is: his notion
of what he sees may correspond with the reality or not, but in
any case he does not see the reality purely; he sees it through the
idea or notion which he has of it. Had I been born blind, and
were my eyes opened at this moment for the first time to see a
human face before me, I should not know it to be such by my
sense of sight alone: I know a human face, when I see it, only
because of the training in seeing which has been going on ever
since I was born, the unceasing, if unconscious, education which
I have had. The idea has been organised gradually in my mind—
abstract, so to speak, from a multitude of impressions—and when
it is stirred into activity by the proper impression made upon
sight it instantly interprets that impression, so that I recognise
�s
Seeing and Believing.
7
the object. If my idea were very active and at the same time
*
did not fit the reality, it might mislead sight, making me mistake
the identity of a face which I saw—just as Don Quixote, possessed
with his fixed idea of giants and enchanted castles, mistook the
sails of a windmill for the arms of a giant—or even, in a more
extreme case, making me actually see a face where there was no face
at all. You have perhaps seen a person who has been put into
what is called the mesmeric state and noticed the extraordinary
illusions which he can be made to suffer: the operator bids him
take a glass of simple water, assuring him at the same time that it
is exceedingly bitter and nasty, and he forthwith spits it out as if
it were poison, with every expression of disgust; he is told that a
wasp is buzzing about his face and he instantly makes frantic
movements to strike it away; he is introduced to a stranger as his
mother or sister and he immediately embraces her. There is
scarcely a mistake of sense, however extravagant, of which he
may not be made the victim if he is duly susceptible and the
operator skilful and confident. Now what is it which takes place?
This: the idea suggested by the operator becomes so very active
in the subject’s mind, takes such exclusive possession of it, that all
other ideas are inhibited or silenced; they are inactive, in abey
ance, asleep, so to speak, unable therefore to comment upon or
correct it; accordingly the person sees, hears, or otherwise per
ceives all impressions through the active idea, which interprets
them instantly into the language of its own nature; being the
only part of the mind which is then sensible to stimulus and in
function, it cannot of necessity reveal anything which it does notice
but in terms of itself. The person does not see the real thing but
his notion of what the real thing is ; and that does not in this
case accord with what really is. Here then is an experiment
which plainly shows us that an idea in the mind may reach such a
pitch of exclusive activity as to put to silence other ideas and to
completely befool the senses. It is what happens also to the mad
man who, having the delusion that he is the victim of a malignant
persecution, sees or hears his persecutors pursue or threaten him
where no one else can see or hear anything of them.
I now go a step further and note that something of the same
sort takes place in dreams. When we are asleep we see nothing
* The common saying that “seeing is believing” may then be applied
in a double sense—not Sone in the understood sense that we believe by
what we see, but also in the sense that we see by what we believe.
�8
Common Source of Error in
outside us; our eyes being shut it is impossible we should; never
theless we do see very remarkable scenes if we dream, seeing them
too as if they were outside us and more vividly perhaps than we
do see real things when we are awake. What happens is that the
thoughts of the dreamer as they occur to him become instantly
visible as sensory presentations ; the idea of a thing, so soon as it
becomes active, takes form as the sensible object, is translated into
the outward reality; the idea of a person, for example, becomes
the seen person, the idea of a voice the heard voice, bo before the
dreamer’s eyes as a visible pageant, a scenic show, moves the train
of succeeding ideas; it is as if each vague thought which came
into the mind as we walked along the street absorbed in reverie
was visible as an actual scene ; in which case it is plain we
should be surrounded by an ideal world which would be the real
world to us, while the real world would be faint and shadowy or
quite unperceived. Now this happens the more easily in dreams
for two reasons—first, because the active idea has for the time
almost exclusive possession of the mind, the rest of it being asleep,
and, secondly, because the closure of the senses by sleep to all
outward things, preventing that distraction of them by other
objects which is taking place more or less during waking even in
the deepest reverie, leaves them at the mercy of the idea. Here
there is another instance where an idea or notion vividly experi
enced imposes itself upon sense, becomes an actual hallucination.
Take another case: people don’t see ghosts nowadays when they
go through churchyards by night, as they used often to do in olden
times. Why is that ? ‘ It is because, not believing in ghosts, they
do not expect to see them: they have not in their minds the idea
of a ghost which may step solemnly forth from behind a tombstone
or glide away like a guilty thing ashamed. ’Tis an instance of the
excellent philosophy which is never wanting in Shakspeare, that
he makes Hamlet see his father’s ghost at midnight, when the air
is bitterly cold, not a mouse stirring, on the lonely and rocky
platform before the castle of Elsinore, after he had been informed
in solemnly impressive tones of its previous appearances, when he
himself is there in a tremor of expectation to see it, and immedi
ately after Horatio’s exclamation “ Look, my lord, it comes! ”
Again: there is an event which has happened sometimes to
dying persons, well fitted to make a solemn and startling impres
sion on those about them. When at the point of death or nearly
so, the dying person, gazing intently before him, as if he saw some
one there, may pronounce suddenly the name of a long dead
�Seeing and Believing.
9
relative, exclaim perhaps “ Mother,” and soon after expire. Natu
rally people suppose that the spirit of his dead mother has appeared
to him, and are happy to think that he has joined in a better world
those who were taken away from him in this world. So they take
comfort to themselves when they lose by death one who is near
and dear to them in the belief that although he shall not return to
them they shall go to him. That may or may not be, but certainly
the apparition is not proof of it, since it is no more than one of
the hallucinations which a dying person is liable to have; for when
he is near death and the failing functions of his brain portend
their near impending extinction, wandering thoughts of the far
distant past, impressions of childhood perhaps, seemingly long
effaced, but never actually effaced, may flicker in the mind and,
taking visible form as thoughts take form in dreams, be seen as
visions. You will remember that Shakspeare makes Falstaff,
when dying in a London tavern after a life of the most gross
debauchery, a worn out old libertine, go back in this way to the
memories of more innocent days and “babble of green fields.”*
These broken reversions, as I may call them, are the last ebbing
functions of the brain which, as Shakspeare puts it, then
“ Doth by the idle comments that it makes
Foretell the ending of mortality.”
I might go on to multiply instances of this production of hallu
cination by idea, since they are to be met with in all quarters.
You have heard perhaps that there has lately been an apparition
of the Virgin Mary at Father Ignatius’s Monastery of Llanthonev
Abbey, which was seen first in a meadow by four boys of the
Abbey, after that by a brother of the Abbey, and last of all
by Father Ignatius himself. This is his account of what he
saw:—
“ About eight o’clock on Wednesday evening, the 15th inst. (after
the last service of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin) we all.
* It is very doubtful, however, whether Shakspeare ever wrote what is
now the received text. In the first authentic edition (1823) the words
were not “ ’a babbled of green fields,” but “ a table of green, fields,” which
was nonsense. It was changed by an anonymous critic to “ ’a talked of
green fields,” which Theobald altered into" the present reading. Thirty
years ago, however, an annotated copy of the edition of 1632 was found,
which, among a great number of corrections of the text, substituted for
“ ’a table of green fields,” the words “ on a table of green frieze ”—z.e.,
“ His nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze.” Dr. Newman
makes use of these discrepancies for the purposes of his argument in
Grammar of Assent (p. 265), and it is from him that I quote them.
�10
Common Source of Error in
came to the porch door. I held the processional crucifix. With
me were the brothers, Mr. Bouse, and a gentleman from Oxford
who had visited the Monastery for the purpose of endeavouring
to see the vision. The boys were kneeling in front of us, Sister
Janet was kneeling in the meadow. It was a very wet night. We
were singing the ‘Aves.’ We had sung three ‘Aves’ in honour
of the Holy Trinity, and we had just finished a fourth to the
Blessed Virgin, when, all of a sudden, when I was not expecting
anything of the kind, I saw a tremendous outburst of light from
the dark, heavy clouds over the farm building. It seemed to
burst right upon the buildings. The light was all in bulging circles.
In the very centre of the light there appeared, coming down upon
us, a human form. It was a very commanding, stately figure.
I could only see sideways. The face was turned towards the bush.
I could only see it momentarily, as it were in the ‘ twinkling of an
eye.’ But in that moment it stood out so distinctly and startling
that I am sure that it was darker than the light. Had it been
clothed in cloth of silver, or cloth of gold, it might have produced
the same effect—the darkness against the light. There was an
intense reality about the figure. It was momentary, as I before
said, and yet it seemed that it might have been an hour’s vision,
so intensely real was it. In the majesty of the figure, and in its
being dark against the light, it reminded me of Dore’s picture,
‘ The triumph of Christianity over Paganism.’ There were
flashings of light about the figure. In a moment, as I looked, it
vanished. Before it vanished it had appeared as if it would have
descended upon the church door or the church roof. I feel sure
that it must have been the figure of the Blessed Virgin, because,
although I could not discern the dress it wore, I could see that it
was fully draped; whereas in the visions which others have seen,
when they have seen a male figure, it has always appeared with
simply a cloth round the loins, as our Lord is represented in
baptism, and at other times. I also feel sure that it was the
Virgin, because the figure appeared immediately after we had
sung the ‘ Ave ’ in her honour. The figure also had its face
turned towards the bush, where our Ladye had first been seen. I
have further confirmation in the fact that about two or three,
minutes afterwards the Blessed Virgin’s figure was seen by the
gentleman who was watching with us, and by one of the boys,
nearer to the ground.” *
South Wales Daily News, September 13th and 27th, 1880.
�Seeing and Believing.
11
“ These,” he says, “ are extraordinary and absolute facts. The
sceptic may and will scoff, but his scoffing will not explain or
diminish the truth or supernatural character of these absolute and
incontrovertible facts * * * No amount of contradiction, ridicule,
or unbelief can alter the fact that Monday, August 30th, 1880, be
tween the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., the Blessed Virgin appeared in
dazzling light to four boys and did what no earthly being could do
before their eyes.” With such positive and incontrovertible testi
mony of eye-witnesses, are you of so little faith as to doubt that
the Blessed Virgin appeared ? Probably you have great doubts, as
I have; and perhaps I may venture to think that I shall carry your
sympathetic doubts with me in my sceptical interpretation of
another vivid vision of an apparition in circumstances particularly
favourable to its occurrence.
The vision in this case happened to a woman whom we may
believe to have been predisposed in some measure to hallucination,
since we are told of her that she had once had seven devils cast
out of her.; a story which, in modern scientific interpretation,
means that she had once been insane and had recovered. • In all
likelihood, therefore, she was one of those persons, susceptible or
sensitive, as mesmerists call them, whose unstably balanced nervecentres were easily liable to take on that sort of irregular action
which issues in hallucination and delusion. The woman I refer
to is Mary Magdalene, who visited the sepulchre of Christ on the
third day after His burial, and who, according to the gospel of St.
John, saw two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the
other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. I say accord
ing to John, because the stories of the resurrection told by the
writers of the different gospels differ considerably in details;
amongst other things, not agreeing as to whether there was one
angel or whether there were two angels, or as to the persons who
saw the apparition or apparitions. Discrepancies in the stories of
supernatural phenomena are not of course to be wondered at;
they are the natural results of an inspiration more than natural
pouring itself into natural channels. Those, however, whose
understandings are informed by observation and experience of
nature, not by inspiration from outside nature, may suspect
perhaps that Mary Magdalene, having an excitable brain, was the
victim of a hallucination. She ran to the sepulchre in hot excite
ment, eagerly expectant to see something extraordinary, and she
saw something extraordinary: a flitting impression on sight, pro
bably the “ linen clothes lying there, and the napkin that was
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Common Source of Error in
about the head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped
together in a place by itself,” suggested two angels, and the ideas
of the angels so suggested took visible form, dominating the sense,
just as the gleaming whiteness of a tombstone suggesting the idea
of a ghost to the walker through a churchyard by night was trans
formed instantly into a ghost.
This dominion of the idea over the senses, which has its con
summate effect in the production of hallucination, is really the most
fruitful source of error and defect in common observation, an ever
active, and never to be neglected, cause of fallacy. Men see not
the reality purely, but see it in the coloured light of the notions
which they have of it. Hence no two persons see an event exactly
alike; two witnesses go into the witness-box and give widely dif
ferent accounts of the same transaction at which they were present
together; two newspaper reporters, of different politics, believing
themselves sincere and truthful, send home to their respective
employers nearly opposite accounts of the same occurrences ; in
each case there is the individual mind behind the eye. Has any
one got a belief, no matter how he got it—whether through his
understanding, as he flatters himself he gets all his beliefs, or
through his feelings, as he actually gets most of them—his mind
yields willing access to all facts which are in keeping with it, and
very unwilling access to any fact which does not consist with it,
insomuch that the belief comes to determine much of what he sees,
to govern his actual observation of things. The stronger, more
over, the feeling associated with a preconceived idea or belief, the
more completely does it rule sense and vitiate observation. What
infatuated lover ever fails to see “ Helen’s beauty in a brow of
Egypt?” What excited onlooker at a spectacle of horror could
ever give an accurate account of it ? At one time it was a firmlyrooted superstition that the wounds on the body of a murdered
person would bleed afresh when the murderer was made to touch
the corpse, and witnesses testified frequently to having seen that
happen. Two respectable clergymen, for example, swore at a trial
in the time of Charles I. (1628-9) that the body having been taken
out of the grave and laid on the grass, thirty days after death, and
one of the parties accused of murder required to touch it, “the
brain of the dead began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it,
which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on
the face; the brow turned to a lively flesh-colour, and the deceased
-opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening of the
eye was done three several times ; she likewise thrust out the ring,
�Seeing and Believing.
13
Or marriage finger, three times, and pulled it in again; and the
finger dropped blood from it on the grass.” Here was evidence
against the accused which, if true, must have convinced even him
that he ought to be hanged. Of course, it was not true; the
witnesses, however, were not wilfully or wittingly deceiving, they
were themselves deceived; they saw not the real thing, but the
imagination of what the real thing was. One may be permitted
to judge, by this example, of the value of the unsifted testimony
of the believer who has seen a miracle. ’Tis not that he has
really seen a miracle, but that he has made a miracle of what he
has mis-seen.
,lt may be urged perhaps in respect of miracles that it is ex
tremely improbable, if not impossible, that several persons attest
ing them could be deceived in the same way at the same time. On
the contrary, nothing more easy in certain circumstances : a great
wave of emotion passing through a number of people, as emotion
does pass by the quick infection of sympathy, will carry belief with
it and make them see and testify to a quite impossible occurrence.
Hence miracles have always abounded where there was a great
fever of religious enthusiasm. The greater the heat of feeling the
less the coolness of observation and the more plentiful the mira
cles. Hay, it needs not much heat of feeling to see a miracle if a
number of persons be collected together intently expecting to see
something extraordinary happen: the ghost seldom fails to appear
where the spectators are gathered together to see it. Every
religion has had its miracles and its multitudinous witnesses to
them. We do not believe it any the more on that account; we
ought indeed to believe it rather the less, since the miracle is pre
sumption, if not proof, of bad observation by the witnesses. The
lowest religion will have the most miracles, a higher religion will
have few of them, and the highest of all will probably have none
at all. What we may fairly conclude from the testimony of hot
believers is that, by reason of their strong belief, they were not
witnesses to be depended upon, as observers. The interest of
miracles at this day, I take it, is not that which could attach to an
occurrence out of the fixed order of nature, but that which attaches
to the study of the defective, irregular, or actually morbid action
of the human brain, especially under conditions of unusual excite
ment ; it is not whether the body of a dead man which had lain in
the grave until it had begun to putrefy came to life again, but why
people thought and said so. When the belief in miracles has
become extinct they will be received by psychology into its domain
�14
Common Source of Error in
and they will be of lasting interest there. Indeed, it will be a
most instructive study of the future to elucidate and set forth the
exact relations of beliefs in supernatural phenomena to defective
or morbid functions of the brain. Supernaturalism will take its
proper place as an interesting chapter in psychology.
Thus much then with regard to the action which idea may exert
upon the senses; an action plainly so strong sometimes as to sub
due them into a complete subjection to it. In any case it is almost
impossible for one who has a preconceived notion in his mind to
help seeing in an event that only which is agreeable to the notion,
that which sorts or suits with it. Those who have not thought of
this tendency as an active source of fallacy in observation, and
realised how deeply, widely, constantly and unconsciously it works
are not qualified to weigh the value of testimony; they are like
those who should accept without question an assertion that the
trees and grass were blue from one who was looking at the country
through blue spectacles. To denote, moreover, this action of idea
upon sense vaguely as imagination or even as mental carries us no
further forward; to rest satisfied there is simply to make a word
do duty for a conception; there is neither explanation nor definite
meaning in the statement. Whether we like it or not, we shall
have to acknowledge, first or last, that the process is at bottom
physical, and that we can have no explanation worth thinking
about until we find out what the physical basis is. Unhappily we
are yet a long way from that discovery; we must be satisfied for
the present to figure grossly to ourselves what takes place in the
intimate, most delicate and hidden operations of nerve molecules,
by the help of conceptions derived from the grosser operations in
physics which we can observe and manipulate. When the impres
sion on sense vibrates to the same note as the idea, we may say, it
is perceived and intensifies the idea—that is to say, is assimilated
mentally; when it does not vibrate in unison with it there is no
response, it is not perceived; the active idea responds to the note
that is in harmony with it, just as the string of a harp gives back
in consonant vibrations its proper note when that note is struck
near it.
I proceed now to mark the operation of the same sort of error
in the higher region of thought—in reasoning, that is, about what
we get from the senses when we have got the facts correctly.
Even then we are liable to go all wrong in the opinions or infer
ences which we form. The predominant bias sways the judgment.
Two persons shall have the same facts presented to them, and
�Seeing and Believing.
15
shall not differ as to the facts, yet it is notorious that they will,
according to the bias of their respective opinions, feelings, interests,
differ widely in the conclusions they draw from them, just as two
judges will give very unequal sentences for the same kind of
offence. How is it that the one sees a conclusion plainly and
thinks the other, who does not see it, blinded by prejudice to the
most obvious truth ? The reason of course is that each looks at
the circumstances from his own standpoint, and sees only or
mainly that which is in accord with the bias of his mind, over
looking that which is not; he sees vividly the reasons which
support his opinion, and which the other sees dimly or not at all;
he sees only dimly, or not at all, the reasons which go counter to
it, and which the other sees vividly. Now, how would a third
person,'undertaking to bring these two to the same conclusion, go
about to accomplish it ? Certainly he would not treat them as
purely reasoning beings, and encourage them to go on arguing, by
which they would only heat themselves the more, but he would
handle each as if he was anything but an exact reasoning being;
he would not consider only the truth of what he had to say to
him, but would take account of his feelings, principles, prejudices,
character, and endeavour to bring this truth into the best relations
possible with these predominant lines of disposition, making it
pleasing or agreeable—that is to say, able to agree—and so to get
it accepted; he would in fact persuade by agreeing more than by
convincing, remembering the adage—
•
“ A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.”
Dealing in this insinuating way with both he brings them gently
and skilfully over their difference to the same conclusion, and that
the right conclusion if the affair be properly managed. One must
have the feelings of a person engaged in favour of reason before he
can see reason, must prejudice him in favour of an argument
before he can feel the force of it. Is not this a proof how very far
man is from being the good reasoning machine which he imagines
himself?
There is not a day, not an hour of the day perhaps, in any
one’s life which does not yield examples of this sort of biassed
or one-sided perception and reasoning. The moods of the moment
notably colour strongly our views of the character or issue of an
event, notwithstanding that the dry light of reason ought to
demonstrate a plain and certain conclusion. Optimism or pessi
mism is a matter of temperament, not of reason; life-despair may
�16
Common Source of Error in
be the intellectual expression, and suicide the outcome in act, of
deranged organic feeling in a sadly tuned temperament. In that
extreme state of morbid depression of mind which we call
melancholia the sufferer cannot perceive a ray of hope, a glimmer
of comfort anywhere; he sees every undertaking, every scheme,
moving towards the same goal of ruin; he can follow the argu
ments which prove that his fears are groundless, but they produce
no effect upon him ; they reach his understanding, but they do
not touch his gloom-enshrouded heart, and accordingly they “ no
more avail than breath against the wind.” Assuredly we credit
ourselves with a great deal larger measure of reason in the forma
tion and change of our beliefs than ever enters into them. On
the one hand, strong and convincing argument will sometimes not
compel belief; on the other hand, a change will sometimes take
place in an individual’s belief, while the reasons in favour of it are
as strong as ever; as Cardinal Newman has remarked, he does
not know how or when the belief has gone, but he finds out some
day that it is gone ; the perception of the old argument remains,
but some change in feeling in himself arising out of condition, age,
interests, occupation, &c., has worked a change of belief.
I shall not go on now to give any more illustrations from
individual experience, because I am anxious, in the time which
remains at my disposal, to point out how this source of error
in reasoning infects the belief of whole peoples, and leads them
to the most illogical conclusions. Do we not oftentimes see
nations swept by epidemics of feeling and belief, good or bad?
Have wars been rational undertakings, or have they not been, in
nine cases out of ten, the results of insane suspicion and insaner
folly ? When one looks quietly back at the history of man’s
thoughts and doings upon earth, considering at the same time
his claim to be pre-eminently a reasoning animal, it is impossible
to help being amazed at the utterly irrational belief which pro
fessedly rational beings have formed and sincerely cherished.
More wonder, perhaps, that as they were so irrational as to form
and hold them they were ever rational enough to get rid of them.
It may be said, no doubt, that as they got better knowledge they
abandoned them, but I doubt whether knowledge has nearly so
much to do directly with human progress as we are in the easy
habit of assuming. It has always been as positive a piece of
knowledge as it is now that every one must die—that to be mortal
is not to be immortal—and that when a person is dead and buried
he does not come to life again ;■ that certainly is as long and sure
�Seeing and Believing.
17
an experience as human beings have had, since it dates from the
beginning of experience ; yet, in spite of that experience, the
greater part of those ranking amongst the most civilized and
enlightened of the earth, and marking therefore the highest water
mark of human progress, solemnly believe at this moment that
there have been men’ who have not died, and others who, after
being dead, have come to life again. And at great expense, and
through many perils, they send missionaries into all parts of the
earth to teach that wisdom to those whose sad ignorance of it
they compassionate. The very creed of the Christian is that the
God whom he worships became a man, was crucified on the cross,
died and was buried, and on the third day rose again and ascended
into heaven. That is a matter of solemn belief, but can we truly
say that it is a matter of rational knowledge ? Looked at in the
dry light of the understanding, we must admit that there could
not well be a doctrine more improbable, more revolting to reason.
How it strikes the unbiassed minds of those who have not been
trained from youth upwards to accept it we know by the experience
of the Jesuit missionaries in China, who found the dogma of a
crucified God so great an obstacle in the way of conversions that
they quietly suppressed it; they preached Jesus Christ triumphant,
not Jesus Christ crucified. It is beyond question then that there
is in man a power deeper and stronger than knowledge which
decides in some cases what he shall believe, and that the most
complete contradiction of observation and reason which it is
possible to conceive can be accepted as a solemn truth, if it be in
harmony with the prevailing tone or feeling of mind. Thereupon
all the powers of the understanding are brought into play, not to
prove it by a searching trial of its worth, but in order to find out
reasons why it should be believed. Meanwhile, all the reasons in
the world against it will not seriously touch it so long as there is
no fundamental change of feeling: when that takes place, how
ever, the whole fabric of belief tumbles easily to pieces without
any serious assault being made upon it. So far from rational im
probability being a difficulty to theological faith, the greater the
mystery the greater the faith of the true believer, until he reaches
the logical climax of sublime credulity in the acceptance of
Tertullian’s maxim—Credo quia impossibile est, I believe it because
it is impossible.
Look back for a moment at the beginnings of Christianity.
How little had knowledge to do with its origin and progress! It
was born of the heart, not of the understanding of mankind, in the
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Common Source of Error in
stable not in the Academy or the Lyceum. The great and learned
of that time looked down on it with scorn as a pernicious supersti
tion, and it found acceptance among the poor and ignorant, the
publicans and sinners.
*
Let us note well the meaning of that:
the greatest revolutionary—or rather evolutionary—force which
has moved human society was not the product of the intellect, but
was an outcome of a glowing feeling of the universal brotherhood
of mankind; a feeling so deep and strong and true that it has
inspired and kept alive to this day many beliefs which outrage the
understanding. Can we believe then that the next great revolu
tionary force which shall move society afresh will spring from the
understanding and be governed by its rules? It needs little
reflection, I think, to show that a great social reform will never
come from a Senate or a House of Lords or other sort of upper
chamber, however cultivated and benevolent its members. No;
the impulse will come deep out of the heart of the people,
announcing itself many times beforehand no doubt in blind
yearnings, in wild explosions of social discontent, perhaps in reck
less uprisings of turbulence and violence, a great unreflecting
force, which it should be the function of intelligence to guide in
the right way. You may stop a revolution which has been
hatched in the intellect, by cutting off the heads of the few who
have knowledge; you will never stop a revolution which has been
bred in the heart of the people by cutting off their heads. Instead
of denouncing •wildly the social interest and visionary aspirations
which find outlets in communistic, socialistic, nihilistic, and
similar doctrines and disorders, it would be more wise to try to
understand their meaning; since it may be they are the blind,
* “ It is profitable to remind ourselves,” says Dr. Newman, “ that our Lord
Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four
Apostles were fishermen, one a petty-tax collector, two husbandmen, one
is said to have been a coachman, and another a market gardener.” Peter
and John are spoken of as “ illiterate men and of the lower sort.” Their
converts were of the same rank. They are, says Celsus, “ weavers, shoe
makers, fullers, illiterate clowns.” “Fools, low-born fellows,” says
Trypho. “ Men collected from the lowest dregs of the people; ignorant,
credulous women; ” “ unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the
sordid arts of life; they do not understand civil matters, how can they
understand divine ? ” says Coecilius. “ They deceive women, servants and
slaves,” says Julian. The Fathers themselves give similar testimony as to
their brethren. “ Ignorant men, mechanics, and old women,” says Athenagoras. “They are gathered,” says Jerome, “not from the Academy or
the Lyceum, but from the low populace.” Of meaner sort and more de
spised than the Communisis of Paris; and yet they overturned the world!
�Seeing and Believing.
19
instinctive, dimly prophetic impulses of a truth which, coming
from the suffering and brooding heart of society, lies deeper than
knowledge and which knowledge will one day have to reckon
with. No man’s intellect measures his character; from the un
fathomed depths of his being comes not only that which he shall
feel and do but in great measure also that which he shall think.
So it is with humanity as a whole. It is feeling which inspires
and stirs its great pulses, the intellect fashioning the moulds into
which the feeling shall flow. How momentously important then
that the people should have understanding, should learn know
ledge, so that neither craft of superstition, nor craft of ruler, nor
any other craft may again take possession of its forces and turn
them to its profit!
We are so comfortably confident of the stability of our progress
in these days that we do not give the heed we should to the lessons
of the past and consider seriously, as we might well do from time
to time, to what destructive issues uninstructed popular feeling
may one day carry us. There can be little doubt that each of the
mighty nations of the past believed that its kingdom would endure
and that it was impossible its gains should ever be lost to man
kind. But Home, and Greece, and Egypt are now but the
shadows of great names, and the once powerful Empires of the
East have disappeared so completely that even the places where
their mighty cities stood are hardly known. We may be sure that
there were sagacious men in each of these dead nations who fore
saw the end, perceived the causes that were leading straight to it,
and raised their unregarded voices in warning to the people. But
it is the eternal fate of Cassandra to be unheeded. In vain are the
most obvious truths preached to a people possessed by an impulse
of feeling with which, they are not in harmony; the nation which
is declining to its fall is as deaf to the admonitions of the few
thoughtful men who perceive and try to stay its course of folly
as it is blind to the plainest lessons of its own experience;
elementary principles of morality and the commonest maxims of
prudence go down alike before the current of feeling, and the
audacious charlatan who most cleverly flatters, fans, and directs
its sentiments is acclaimed and obeyed as a hero. This has
always been so, and it would be taking much too hopeful a view
of human nature to believe that it will not be so again. In spite
of all the gains of modern knowledge, which we think so certain,
but which, after all, are the real work and possession of only a
few, it is not at all out of the range of possible occurence that a
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Common Source of Error in
great turbid wave of superstition may overflow and overwhelm our
civilization, as other civilizations have been overwhelmed before it.
Do you think perhaps that the foundations of modern knowledge
are laid so deep and sure that it is incredible that they should ever
be swept away? Well, it is a very sanguine belief: one might
have thought it as sure a truth as could well be that a person once
dead will not come to life again, but while multitudes believe the
opposite of that very plain experience, are the foundations of
belief so very sure ? Men are not moved by knowledge, let me
say again, but by feeling, and were a strong wave of superstitious
feeling to pass through them they would see and believe nothing
that was not in harmony with it, would see and believe every
thing that was in harmony with it, would move on, until it was
spent, a huge devastating force, so far as pure reason was
concerned.
There is something too much of complacent self-deception in the
loud praise which we give to pure truth and in the high-flown devo
tion which we loudly profess to it; we make up by our theoretical
enthusiasm for it for much practical dislike and intolerance of it.
Truth is not so acceptable as illusion, since we live in perpetual
illusion, deceived and deceiving. We seem what we are not, and
make others believe that we think them what they are not. No
one speaks the truth sincerely to another, or talks of him in his
presence as he does in his absence. There is no one who would
not think himself grossly insulted if he had truth told of him, nor
would any one who adopted the practice of speaking the truth
always find it easy to keep himself out of an asylum. We hate the
speaker of truth, although the truth which hurts our self-love may
be most useful to us; and love the flatterer, although we know the
flattery to be false and injurious. The ardent profession which
we make of a love of pure truth is itself a comfortable illusion
which we create for ourselves. From cradle to grave we are occu
pied—wisely, I dare say—in nursing our illusions, putting away
one, when we have worn it out, to take up another more fitting
the new desires which experience and years give us. If a person
really believed at the outset of life, as he knows at the end of it,
that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, would he have sufficient
motive to live ? Had there been no illusory prospect of Elysian
fields, or happy hunting grounds, or other sort of paradise beyond
the miseries of this world, where those who had suffered much and
unjustly here might hope to find recompense, one may doubt
almost whether faith in virtue could have been kept alive, whether
�Seeing and Believing.
21
the social organism, would have held together ; at any rate, thou
sands of dreary lives would have been more dreary than they were,
thousands of self-sacrifices of work, of wealth, of duty, would never
have been made, the hopes, aspirations, and' prayers which have
consoled and sustained thousands of heavy-laden hearts would not
have been. What then will be the consequence if science, as it
seems to threaten, shatters these hopes as illusions ? Will the
multitude be able to bear the pain, to face the fearful void, of so
great a loss ? Will man be able to live what the Bishop of Peter
borough has described lately as “ a joyless existence, uncheered by
the hope of a happier hereafter, undignified by the consciousness of
divine descent and the heirship of immortality,” if science makes
him sincerely realise, as it seems to be going to work to do, that
he has no hope whatever of a happier hereafter, that his descent is
not divine but simian, that his last heirship is the corruption of
the grave ? Will not the bereaved people, craving for something
to satisfy the needs of the heart which knowledge cannot give, fly
for refuge in despair to some creed or church in which they may
find again the hopes, and consolation, and support of which they
have been robbed ?
Here lies the strength of the position of the Church of Rome.
Possessing an organization the most complete which the world
has ever known, served by its ministers with a devotion which
counts nothing gain that is not its gain, inspired with the theory
that the meanest human soul is worthy of all its energies, it offers
what seems a safe haven of refuge in the midst of the surging tur
moil of doubts, perplexities, and despair, the perfect rest of absolute
truth delivered into its keeping from the beginning: Come unto
me, might be its cry, all ye that are weary of spirit, with many
doubts and heavyladen of heart with the burden of your fears,
and I will give yon rest.
*
It is admirably adapted by its organi
* “ Thus it is sometimes spoken of as a hardship that a Catholic is not
allowed to inquire into the truth of his Creed; of course he cannot if he
would retain the name of believer. He cannot be both inside and outside
of the Church at once. It is merely common sense to tell him that, if he
is seeking, he has not found. If seeking includes doubting, and doubting
excludes believing, then the Catholic who sets about inquiring thereby
declares that he is not a Catholic. He has already lost faith.”
J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 184.
“ For, since we have the truth, and truth cannot change, how can we
possibly change in our belief, except indeed through our own weakness
or fickleness.” p. 186.
�iMMMiMM*
22
Common Source of Error in
zation, its ordinances, and its doctrine to respond to all the appeals
of the weak side of human nature. And I make no doubt many
will flee to it in the coming conflicts. But not of the people, we
may predict; not of the masses which constitute the foundation
and strength of the social organism. Its converts will come from
the tired votaries of fashion, weary of the dreary frivolities of
their lives, and eager to replace their exhausted desires by new
sentiments; from those who are educated enough to perceive
difficulties and perplexities of thought, without being courageous
and capable enough to face them sincerely and to think them out
thoroughly; from those again who, in the mortal struggle of new
thought for existence, have not the strength of understanding and
character to stay through the course, but falling by the wayside,
eagerly in their need lay hold of the helping hand which authority
holds out to them. These and the like are the classes from which
its converts will mainly come. The strong pulsations of popular feel
ing which make themselves felt in different nations, have no affini
ties with the Church of Rome nor has it shown the least sympathy
with them ; on the contrary they are essentially hostile to it, since
it has committed what seems to an outsider the fatal mistake of
allying itself with caste, privilege, power, and of alienating the
great liberal forces with which lies the determination of the
future : Catholic in name it has lost all claim to be Catholic in
fact. It is a rash thing to prophesy, but if I may venture a
prophesy here, it is that it will be by these great popular forces,
not by the knowledge of the learned, that it will be overthrown in
the final struggle. The French Revolution, momentous as an
event, was perhaps more momentous as a prophesy.
If what I have said thus far be true, what is the function of
those who have faith in the future of mankind, who are sanguine
enough to nurse enthusiastic hopes of its glorious destiny ? As
suredly to work well together, while it is time, to enlighten the
giant, so that when he puts forth his strength he may use it wisely,
to give him the understanding to direct his might in the right way.
Although intellect does not move the world it should guide directly
the forces which do move it, and so modify indirectly, as it will by
degrees, the deeper sources in which they take their instinctive
origin. One thing is certain whatever else may be doubtful: that
the true and honest method to pursue is directly the opposite of
that which the Churches have striven to enforce; it is not to incul
cate credulity, to stifle doubt, to foster prejudice, in order that the
beliefs which are may continue to be. That method we know to be
�Seeing and Believing.
23
false. It is to seek truth and pursue it, at whatever cost, whether
it bring us sorrow or joy, peace or tribulation. Doubt, be it never
so disquieting, must go before enquiry, and enquiry before the
discovery of new truth. Scepticism is guilt in the eyes only of those
who fear truth, since it is the essential prerequisite of it. It is
impossible to foresee what fate the future has in store for the race
of man on earth; one may fain hope a more peaceful and happy
career than that which he has had in the past, since to look back
through his history from the beginning unto now is to look back
through succeeding chapters of wars, treachery, tortures, cruelties
and atrocities of all sorts and degrees by which “ man’s inhumanity
to man” has “made countless thousands mourn;” a spectacle of
horrors so appalling that, could we compass it in imagination, it
might well warrant the belief, if matters ended now, of a malevo
lent, not a benevolent, scheme of creation. We shall do well to
cherish the hope, or if not the hope the illusion, that matters will
not end here; that a brighter day will come when knowledge and
peace shall spread through the whole earth, and man’s humanity
to man leave few to mourn; that the past traditions of a golden
age, when all was plenty and peace, and the later aspirations for
a Paradise to come, in which sorrow and sin shall be no more,
may be not entire fable and illusion, but essentially dim fore
feelings, the prophetic instincts, of that which one day shall have
a measure of fulfilment upon earth.
�
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Common source of error in seeing and believing: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday Afternoon, 27th February 1881
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Maudsley, Henry [1835-1918]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Contains bibliographical references. Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
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1902
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Miracles
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Christian church
Fallacies
Miracles
New Testament
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Text
THIRD
THOUSAND.
n.waaja CcM StA*m *1
No. 4.— TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
ON THE HUMAN CAUSES
,
WHICH HAVE CONCURRED TOWARD THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF BENJAMIN CONSTANT,
BY WILLIAM MACCALL.
Long before our era Polytheism had arrived at its highest point of relative perfection.
But relative perfection is transitory, like everything which belongs to our nature.
Imperfect in JEscliylus, perfect in Sophocles, Polytheism declined the moment it
attained that perfection, since germs of its decay are preceptible in Euripides. Those
germs were numerous.
,
First, the gods had been multiplied to excess by personifications and allegories.
Hence a strange confusion in doctrines, in fables, and in ceremonies.
, , •
Secondly, a disproportion, always increasing between the dogmas of Polytheism and
the state of knowledge, had arisen.
Thirdly, the physic d sciences by unfolding to mankind the natural causes ot events
which they had formerly considered miraculous, had given a deadly blow to religious
traditions.
.
Fourthly, the inevitable struggle between religious power and political power had
produced a disastrous effect on the opinion of the multitude.
.
Fifthly, philosophy, after having1, long marched by the side of Polytheism, had turned
against it, because Polytheism had wished to oppress philosophy.
Sixthly, the most discordant opinions had been crowded together in the occult portion
of religion, and the depositories of this mysterious portion, proud, as is usually the case,
of possessing secrets, had allowed the people to divine them.
From all these causes had resulted, for the enlightened class, an attachment to one or
other of many philosophical opinions which all were opposed to Polytheism ; and, for the
people, a brutal infidelity, as mad as the maddest superstition, since like superstition it
was founded on no examination.
.
Yet, in the midst of all these things, the religious sentiment yearned for food. Raillery
in undermining belief, does not destroy the need of believing; it merely makes the need
ashamed to show itself. But the need is thus only rendered the more irritable, and
the more ardent, because in giving ourselves up to it in secret, we can only satisfy
it incompletely, in haste, and with much vexation. And then, when we are found out,
we pretend to laugh at ourselves, to get rid of the ridicule of others.
At such an epoch as that described, the state of the hum in race is one of the strangest,
and that estate be’comes soon one of the saddest of all states. Scepticism has destroyed
all conviction in the very roots. Morality is overthrown less by the direct effect of
infidelity, than by the recollection of the religious traditions which survive that infidelity.
Those traditions in credulous times, served as a prop to moral ideas: the prop breaking,
�2
those ideas fall into ruin. It is not always certain that such or such a religion does good,
while people believe iu it; but it is very certain that every religion does harm when it is
no longer believed.
The world, at the time when Christianity appeared, was exactly in that position.
Tired of the infidelity of which, for a moment, it had been so proud, a portion of the
human race tried to fill the gap caused through a lost faith, by the adoption of foreign
religions ; another portion substituted for that faith the extravagances of magic; and a
third portion tried to cling to the fallen religion.
This last attempt is that alone which interests us, because it was the cause of the
struggle which Christianity had to sustain, and of the obstacles which it had to combat.
It is, therefore, with that attempt that we have exclusively to occupy ourselves.
When an endeavour is made to restore a religion which has fallen into discredit, those
who desire to clothe it once more with authority or favour are never agreed as to what
parts of it, it is useful or possible to conserve or to re-establish.
Consequently, immediately before the fall of Polytheism, we see its partizans dividing
themselves into two very different paths, though both the paths promised to conduct to
the same goal. The first wished that a return should be made to Polytheism, such as it
had been professed in the times of a simple and submissive piety, and previously to
philosophical doubts and objections. Transmitted, they said, from generation to genera
tion, anterior to all abstract speculations, which end in nothing but vague conjectures,
has it not, during a long succession of ages, assured the purity of morals, the tranquillity
of states, the happiness of nations. Instead of following the gropings of pretended sages,
who contradict each other, and give each other the lie, would it not be better, they said,
that man should adopt, as rule of truth, the teachings of his fathers; and that he should
take for guide those favoured men, the illustrious ancestors of the human race, and the
disciples of the gods in the grey dawn of the world.
None of the works which contained this system of orthodoxy in Polytheism has come
down to us; but Plutarch shows us, by an example, what was the logic of its defenders.
The infidels of that time had drawn objections against the divinity of oracles, from the
barbarous style often employed by the priestess of the Delphic Oracle, nearly in the same
way as the infidels of the eighteenth century had sought for arguments against the Bible
in certain expressions which appeared rude and singular. The orthodox Polytheists, far
from admitting that the style of the Delphic priestess was barbarous, replied that it only
seemed such to a generation unworthy of feeling its simple and primitive beauties, and
that it was not the language of the gods which it was necessary to change, but men whom
it was necessary to render capable anew of appreciating its sublimity.
Thus, far from acknowledging the truth of the charges which infidelity brought against
the imperfections and supposed rudeness of preceding notions, they affirmed that these
accusations were only dictated by the presumption of man—always such a lover of novelty.
Let us not crush down religion, they insist, under arbitrary modifications; let us, on the
contrary, crush down, under the yoke of religion, those rebellious minds whom the habit
of rash inquiry hath corrupted, and who aspire to sacrifice holy traditions to their vain
and false scrupulosities.
This party wished the books of Cicero to be burned. It rejected the interpretations
of philosophers; it proved, by incontrovertible facts, that the morals of the community
had been much more strict and pure in the degree that men had adopted, with a more
literal faith, the fables, which a presumptuous reason affected to despise—it repeated
that which the great men of past ages had affirmed; and it had this advantage, that it
presented something fixed, while those who diverged from the rigour of orthodoxy offered
nothing but what was vague and undecided.
These efforts, however, could obtain no success. Man does not resume his respect for
that which has ceased to seem to him respectable. Below the surface of apparent enthusiaism for the ancient Polytheism there was nothing but calculation. At this epoch of
its decline, men desired to believe in it, because the misery of doubt made the joys of a
sincere faith be regretted; just as, at an anterior epoch, they bad tried to maintain Poly
theism, because they considered it useful that others should believe therein. But its
feebleness was too clearly exhibited. When beliefs have fallen, ancient associations
hover round the altars which men wish to surround with a majesty which has been
eclipsed. If infidelity is no longer a proof of knowledge, or subject of glory, it has, at
least, become a habit; and in the same way that in its commencements religious remini
scences assail the unbelievers, infidel reminiscences assail the men who would wish to
make themselves religious.
The orthodox defenders of Polytheism, therefore, could obtain no success. But another
party arose whose hopes appeared plausible, and whose concessions to the spirit of the
�3
age .necessarily rendered the resistance of opinion less violent, by throwing over the
adversaries of the religion which they defended all the odium of obstinacy and hostility.
This party tried to explain, allegorically or metaphysically, the fables which shocked
contemporary convictions ; it justified them by a mysterious sense. Poetry, on the one
hand, and philosophy on the other, furnished it with the means of apology and explanation,
and nothing is more curious than to observe the efforts of the most ingenious men of the
second and third centuries of our era, to combine two incompatible things—the most
exalted enthusiasm of which they felt the need in the reconstruction of a faith, and the
most arid abstractions of which their philosophy made for them a not less imperious
necessity. We cannot give examples here, for these would throw us away from our
subject; but all those who have read the Enneades of Plotinus, must have remarked that
he sets out with the supposition of a first principle destitute of intelligence, of all physical
or moral quality, to arrive at a system through means of which he blends himself by
ecstasy, four times a day with the Divinity.
These innovators, Polytheists more in appearance than in reality, could not, therefore,
succeed better than the orthodox Polytheists. They composed a religion of unintelligible
distinctions, and of incompatible notions; and that religion was susceptible of acquiring
neither the favour of popularity, like the ancient Polytheism, when in all its force ; nor
the strength of reasoning, like the philosophical doctrines. The state of opinions re
mained, therefore, necessarily the same, and continued to float between infidelity as
theory, and superstition as practice.
A new religion was, therefore, necessary; a younger and stronger religion, whose
standard had not yet been profaned, and which filling men’s souls with a real exulta
tion, should smother doubts instead of discussing them, and triumph over objections by
not permitting them to spring up.
This religion could be nothing but Theism. There is in the religious sentiment a ten
dency toward unity ; if man arrives at unity only after many successive revolutions,
the reason is, that the circumstances in which he finds himself, disturb his sentiment,
and give to his ideas a different direction. Ignorance assigns to every effect of detail a
cause apart; selfishness divides the divine power to bring it more within its reach ; rea
soning founds its syllogisms on the deceitful evidences of external appearances. But
ignorance is dispersed, selfishness becomes enlightened, and reasoning is perfected by
experience. The more the regularity of effects is evident, the more the unity of causes
grows probable. The view of disorders, of catastrophes, of exceptions, in short to the
general rule, had procured for polytheism its superiority. It becomes known now that
those exceptions are only apparent, and polytheism thus loses its principal bulwark.
At the same time, the need of theism makes itself more strongly felt in the heart of
man than ever; he has arrived at the last term of civilisation; his soul satiated, fatigued,
exhausted, inflicts on itself sufferings of its own, more bitter than those which come to
him from without. What can he do against those sufferings, with those gross low gods,
whose protection, exclusively material, sufficed for his ignorant ancestors? What can he
do with the fetiche which procured for the savage nothing but success and abundance in
hunting or in fishing? What can he do with those divinities of Olympus who, doing
nothing but punish crimes, preserve human families from external woes only ? He needs
other gods—gods who may understand and re-animate him, restore to him a force which
he has lost, save him from himself, probe his most secret wounds, and know how to pour
into them with a succouring hand, the blessings of an indulgent pity. Such are the gods
—or rather, such is the god that he needs; for numerous divinities, limited in their
faculties, divided in their interests, imperfect by those very limits, and by that very
division cannot fulfil those delicate functions.
Also immediately before the establishment of Christianity, unity had become the
dominant idea of all systems, as well religious as philosophical. It was celebrated by the
poets; it was claimed by the learned as the forgotten discovery of the remotest antiquity ;
it was taught by the moralist; it 6tole into the works of writers without any distinct
consciousness ou their part, and reproduced itself under the pen of simple compilers.
When this doctrine of unity did not compose the principal and avowed part of a system,
it was yet announced as its result. When it was not on the foreground of the picture, it
was yet visible in perspective : here, combined with the popular belief; there, presented
as the explanation of that belief; even the people created for themselves sensuous images
of the abstract notion. Everywhere were placed on the domestic altars statues, where
were united and confounded the attributes of all the divinities.
In this state of things, the human mind seemed arrived at the extremest frontier of
Polytheism; and it might have been thought that only one step remained for it to make
to proclaim the unity of God, and to erect into a practical religion that sublime theory.
�4
But the same civilisation which had rendered the duration of Polytheism impossible had
deprived man of that youthfulness of feeling, of that interior energy, of that power of
conviction, of that faculty of enthusiasm, which are conditions so indispensable for the
establishment of a new religion, and which must exist if the hesitations of philosophers,
the complicated and confused secrets of priests, the aspirations and the fugitive regrets of
souls suffering, but enfeebled and discouraged, are all to blend into a body, and to compose
a faith—public, national, and revered as sacred.
Theism thus existed everywhere, as a principle ; but nowhere was it found in organic
application.
It was not, in the nature of things, for authority to give Theism a helping hand.
Authority saw in Theism scarcely anything else than a doctrine, the foe- of established
order, and saw it under a distinct form only among philosophers, whom it believed to be
dangerous.
The priests in their revelations to the initiated sometimes thrust it aside altogether.
They forced it always into unnatural alliance with the ancient traditions ; and where it
would not bind itself to the artificial connection, it was to these traditions mysteriously
interpreted that the priesthood gave the preference.
Many philosophers adopted Theism ; but it was unceasingly discussed, submitted every
day to a new examination, cited before the tribunal of those who commenced to frequent
the schools of the philosophers, and understood by each in a different manner. A num
erous portion of its partisans rejected the influence of ceremonies, the efficacy of
prayer, the hope of supernatural succours, and made thus of Theism an abstract opinion,
which could not serve as the basis of a religion.
In the upper ranks of society the tendency to Theism existed no doubt, but the pressing
and continual interests of the earth easily smothered that inner voice. Among nations
exceedingly civilised, men of information are very ardent for their interests, and very
moderate in their opinions; now moderate parties conserve what exists, but anything
like creation is greatly above their strength.
The people would not admit as religious an opinion which had no wholeness, no con
sistency ; they repeated some formulas which impligd the unity of God, but rather by
imitation than from conviction. Whilst the habits of infidelity rendered for the upper
class the revival of a religious form almost impossible, magic rendered for the multitude
that revival almost superfluous, because it offered to the imagination more powerful allure
ments, and to hope, promises of a nearer execution.
To gather the human race round Theism, a banner would have been enough ; but no
arm was strong enough to raise the banner, which remained useless on the ground.
Nevertheless this memorable revolution was effected. An extraordinary circumstance
restored all at once to men’s souls sufficient energy, to men’s minds sufficient authority
to give a positive form to human desires, human needs, and human hopes. We treat here
of this circumstance under its human relations ; but we must confess it would afford us no
pleasure to combat the opinion which assigns divine causes to this important revolution.
Certainly when we contemplate man, such as he is, when he has rejected all religjpus
faith; when we behold the religious sentiment powerless and vague, precipitating itself
sometimes into magic, and sometimes into ecstacy and delirium; enthusiasm practising
extravagancies so much the more incurable that they start from reasoning to arrive
methodically at madness; reasoning offering, as the result of eight centuries of labours, at
first only nothingness, then chimerical and contradictory hypotheses; the intelligence
successful in destroying everything, but incompetent to re-establish anything; dare we
say that, at such an epoch, celestial pity hath not come to the succour of the world;
that a lightning flash hath not rent the cloud to show the right path to our wandering
race ; that a divine hand hath not aided men to leap over the barrier against which they
were dashing themselves to pieces?
All would then resume its customary order. Man, abandoned anew to himself, would
recommence his labour; his mind would struggle, in accordance with its nature, round
this great discovery; he would give it imperfect forms; he would lower its sublimity.
Calculation, egoism, monopoly, would strive for its possession ; but man would still pre
serve the ineffaceable remembrance of it; an immense step would be taken, and, by
degrees, purer forms, juster conceptions, would permit him to enjoy this inestimable
blessing in all its fullness and purity.
At the epoch which forms the subject of our researches, the religion of the Hebrews
was the only one whose adherents had possessed not only a mechanical attachment to
religious forms, but a profound conviction. At the same time, the fundamental dogma
of their religion was conformable to the universal need of the human race. It was at
that torch that the religious sentiment was rekindled.
�0
But if the fundamental dogma of the Jewish religion responded to the demand of every
soul, there were terrible things in that religion.
Assuredly, we do not place ourselves among the detractors of the Mosaical law ■ we,
by no means, forget the superiority of its doctrine, both taken as a whole, and in many
of its parts, over all contemporary religions. But, its very sublimity had contributed
to stamp on it an excessive severity—a severity necessitated by its disproportion with
the ideas of the people who professed it, and likewise with those of the neighbours of that
people—neighbours who, simply by being so, had become its enemies.
Add to this, the spirit of all the Jewish priesthood, similar in many respects to that
of all the sacerdotal corporations of antiquity, and which the very obstacles it had been
compelled to vanquish had rendered more stern and suspicious.
It seems to us that the doctrine of Moses has not been sufficiently distinguished from
the spirit of the priesthood, which was the organ and the defender of that doctrine.
Nevertheless, in this distinction may be found the solution of all the difficulties which
have appeared to give so many advantages to the enemies of religious ideas, and of
Christianity.
However, our object is not to judge here the Jewish religion. It is sufficient for our
purpose, that at the moment when Polytheism was approaching its downfal, and when all
faiths were shaken, the Jewish religion alone, still living and rooted in the soul of a people,
offered Theism as a rallying point to the rest of the human race.
Notwithstanding if the Theism of the Hebrews had presented itself to the nations who
had revolted from Heathenism under the forms which it had assumed at its origin among
the people who professed it, it is doubtful whether it would have obtained the success
which has made of the adoration of one God only the universal belief of all civilised countries.
Minds accustomed to the subtleties of a philosophy which had refined on every com
bination of ideas and every form of dialectics, would probably have rejected a doctrine
whose dogmatical simplicity imposed articles of faith, instead of presenting a series of
reasonings.
The almost total absence of notions on the nature of the soul and its immortality would
have offended these same minds, prepared by Platonism, to deliver themselves to hopes
and to rush into hypotheses on the future existence of man.
The character of the God of the Jews, represented as despotical, fierce, and jealous,
could not have accorded with the milder and more abstract conceptions of the sages of
Greece. The multitude of rites, of ceremonies, and of superstitious observances, would have
fatigued men, the most religious of whom thought that internal worship constituted the
most acceptable homage that could be offered to the Supreme Being. Finally, the very
morality of Judaism, which made of the assent to certain propositions the principal and
indispensable virtue, would have contrasted too strongly with the universally adopted
principles of tolerance.
But the Jews, who had for a long time been initiated, and especially since their sojourn
at Alexandria, in all the discussions of philosophy, had made in this career progress
almost equal to that of the Pagan philosophers. They had shown themselves not less
subtle than these in metaphysical researches; and toward the epoch when Christianity
appeared, Judaism had undergone modifications sufficient to cause whatever doctrine
might spring from its bosom to attract curiosity, to fix attention, and soon to captivate
the suffrages of a great number of enlightened men. It was, therefore, leaning on the
one hand on Judaism, and gathering the fruits of all the labours of preceding centuries,
among nations more advanced than the most of the Jews, that Christianity appeared in
the world.
It has often been asserted that Christianity was adopted at the time of its appearance,
only by the vilest and most ignorant classes; nothing is falser, and nothing would have
been more inexplicable.
It was by the progress of knowledge that the human race had been driven from Poly
theism to Theism. Christianity was the purest of the forms of Theism, and yet we are
to believe the absurdity that it was only embraced by the populace, in whom, of course,
the progress of knowledge must have had least power to produce any effect.
It was, on the contrary, in the nature of things, that men of all classes should adopt
Christianity. The religion which, at such a moment, was most suitable, or rather which
alone was suitable, was one which should elevate mau above all visible objects, binding
him again to none of the religious institutions which had fallen into discredit; to none of
the political institutions which had grown oppressive; the only religion possible, was one
which, at a time when nations were nothing but gangs of slaves, in whom patriotism could
not exist, should gather together all nations round the same faith, and transform those
into brothers who had ceased to be fellow-citizens.
�6
The Christian religion combined all these advantages. By proscribing sensuality, the
love of riches, all ignoble passions, by announcing, beyond the grave, a life more impor
tant by its eternal duration, than all the felicities of earth, it attracted all those who had
preserved the sentiment of human dignity. By proclaiming an immediate revelation, a
direct communication with the Divinity, and a succession of inspirations, obtained by
faith and prayer, and accompanied by supernatural forces, it pleased those whom Neo
Platonism, and the thirst of the marvellous had accustomed to desire a habitual commune
with superhuman natures. By substituting ceremonies, simple, modest, and few in
number, for rites, some of which were revolting, and others of which had fallen into dis
credit, it satisfied reason. It offered to the poor freedom, to the oppressed justice, to the
slaves libertv, as a right. Finally, and this, at such a moment, was not one of its
smallest advantages, it refrained from all philosophical and metaphysical researches, re
searches for which, if there was a prevalent taste, there was a no less prevalent dislike, it
refrained from all questions on the nature and substance of God, all hypotheses on the
laws and forces of nature, and the action of the invisible world, all discussions on destiny
in opposition to Providence. It disclosed but one fact, and offered only one hope. Now,
man had need of a stone to repose his head upon; lie had need of a fact, a miraculous
fact, in order that, delivered from the torment of doubt, he might breathe freely, gather
up his energies again, and begin once more the great intellectual labour.
Also, the faith in Jesus Christ was embraced even at its first proclamation, by a
multitude of persons, who were strangers neither to opulence nor instruction. Pliny
attests, that already, under the reign of Trajan, persons of every condition met at the foot
of the cross. Men of consular dignity, senators, matrons of the noblest extraction, had
devoted themselves to this worship. Christians, as they said themselves, abounded at
the court, in the camps, in the Forum. Nevertheless, when the standard was once raised,
a struggle could not fail to ensue ; and in that struggle Christianity encountered among
its enemies, authority, the priests, a portion of the philosophers, and the populace.
Authority never examines, it judges by appearances. It saw a society of men who re
jected all external worship; it declared them atheists.
In its relation with human existence, Christianity was diametrically opposed to the
idea which statesmen, in an infidel age especially, form of the utility of religion. In their
eyes it must be intimately connected with the interests of society. This life is the end,
religion a means. The Christians, on the contrary, considered life as a means to another
end. Their enthusiasm for a future world delivered them from all cares relating to this
world, and from every occupation mixed up with a transitory and perishable present.
The love of country, of which governments always speak the more, the less a fatherland
exists, was menaced by the contempt of the Christians for earthly tilings. This was
ascribed to them as a crime; and the accusation brought against them then has been
raised by the pens of their modern detractors. But what fatherland were they accused of
deserting? Was that a fatherland, that chaotic assemblage of a thousand nations who
were gagged and lettered, instead of being united, and who had nothing in common but
the same misery, under the same yoke ?
The means of authority against opinion are the same in all countries, and in all ages—
the hateful spy, the informer as hateful, persecutions, punishments. The effects of these
means are also always the same; the oppressed obtain the sympathy of every soul of true
valour, and of true worth ; they give, in the midst of adversity, in the presence of death,
sublime examples of fortitude and of sacrifice. What matters that the frequency of the
persecutions and the number of the martyrs have been somewhat exaggerated ? Was
the courage of the martyrs the less admirable on that account ? That is a miserable im
partiality which places itself between the instruments of persecution and their victims.
The cruelties which authority expended against Christianity undoubtedly accelerated
its progress. There is something contagious in the spectacle of disinterestedness, of intre
pidity, and of hope, in the midst of a corrupt and degenerate race.
Persecution has this peculiarity, that when not revolting it is proved thereby not to
have been necessary : the people who suffer it had nothing formidable. But when it is
necessary, it becomes revolting, and thereby it becomes useless.
To this consideration, applicable to Christianity as to all opinions which are proscribed
or threatened, add a circumstance characteristic of the epoch—we mean the contradictions
into which authority rushed, from its consciousness of not being supported by any moral
force. Galerius, one of the most ferocious enemies of Christianity, stopping suddenly in
his career of blood and tyranny, terminates an edict, in which he accords to Christians a
momentary tolerance, by inviting them to implore for him the Divinity whom they
adore—a singular proof of the feeble conviction of the Polytheists, of even those of
them who were the most violent in their efforts to restore the vanquished religion,
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and of the secret instinct which drew them toward that faith which was the object of
their fury.
The priesthood could not have more success than authority had against the new religion.
In vain, the priesthood collected their scattered forces and formed monstrous alliances
against the common enemy. In vain, it made an appeal to all the doctrines, which, it
.mattered not at what epoch had crept into the religion which it wished to defend—doctrines
which, for a long time, the priesthood had rejected. By a mistake sufficiently natural,
the priests thought to fortify themselves by the number and diversity of their troops,
whilst that very number and the motleyness of its discordant auxiliaries, brought the
priesthood still more into discredit.
The priests tried to preserve or to re-establish their domination over the minds of the
people, by increasing ceremonies and traditions, to which they endeavoured to give an air
of antiquity. Ear from reforming what was indecent in the mysteries which had become
all but public, they rather relied upon their indecency, as being likely to be agreeable to
the corruption of the age. They introduced into those mysteries every kind of privation
by the side of every kind of obscenity. They introduced into those sanguinary cere
monies, mutilations, voluntary tortures, which they imposed as a duty on the initiated.
And at the same time, playing the part of half-philosophic jugglers, the priests of the
ancient religion proposed their doctrine rather than imposed it: their rites were frightful,
but their language was timid. They carried hesitation even into anathema, and lifting
one hand to hurl the thunder of a curse, with the other they made a sign that they were
ready to enter into a compromise, but no compromise was possible. They offered to place
the new god among the ancient divinities. The followers of Christ indignant at such a
thought, forced to the combat adversaries who would have preferred negotiations.
In our days an attempt has been made to praise polytheism for this tolerance, for this
mildness, for these conciliatory intentions; in effect, disarmed as it was at this epoch, or
rather annihilated, its appearances were less vehement, its style more courteous than
those of nascent Christianity; but the fact is, that Christianity existed, whilst polytheism
was a vain shadow. Its forbearance, its complaisances, all the qualities which we admire
in it were only the virtues of the dead. Men began once more to struggle because they
began once more to live, and far from seeking in this energetic struggle a subject of accu
sation against Christianity, we ought to thank it for having re-animated the life of the
soul, for having awakened the dust of the graves.
Whilst the Christians marched, surrounded by incontestable miracles, because they
were filled by an indestructible conviction, their rivals opposed to them fictitious and
puerile prodigies, easily called in doubt, and the pale copies of those which they imi
tated ; for they imitated Christianity to resist it, thinking to combat it with its own arms.
One of the blunders and one of the misfortunes of the vanquished, is to conclude from the
victories of their adversaries the power of their means, and to make use of the same
means, without inquiring whether it is not the purpose for which the means are em
ployed which gives them their force.
The Christians had on their side reasoning and force. When directing reasoning
against their adversaries, they had no fear of compromising their own cause, which had
its protector in Heaven, and could not be compromised. The Pagans also tried reason
ing and enthusiasm ; but their enthusiasm was feeble and forced; their reasoning reacted
against themselves, and were more injurious to what they affirmed, than to what it was
their intention to contest.
We have already spoken of that fraction of philosophers who tried to prop up the
ruined edifice of polytheism, and we have indicated the course which struck their efforts
with an incurable impotence.
As to the populace, it cried—the Christians to the lions ! just as soon after it cried —
the Pagans to the stake ! It tore in pieces, or saw with joy torn in pieces men, in the
name of Jupiter; as soon after it saw them, with the same delight, turn in pieces in the
name of the Homousia, or of the Homoousia. It showed itself that which it is always_
drunk with rage, in favour of force, wherever it perceives force to be*, and displaying the
same fury, and passing into the same intoxication in the opposite direction when force
passes from one party to another.
Clear and coherent, simple and precise, calming the earthly passions which the human
race had in satiety, delivering it from the atmosphere of corruption when it breathed with
agony and with a profound disgust at itself, and having a root in all primordial memo
ries ;—in philosophy, by doctrines which it possessed pure, while rendering them less
subtle—in history, by the traditions of a people whose ancient splendour it consecrated,
without proposing them as objects of imitation—in ancient usages, whilst retrenching
what of minute, of severe, and of hostile they had; freeing Reason from the interminable
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difficulties of dialectics—speaking to the soul the language which it had need to hear—
Christianity could not fail to triumph over a host of enemies not agreed amoDg them
selves, without fixed systems, having at their disposal nothing but brutal force, and fore
seeing their defeat at the very moment when they were employing atrocious means to
retard it.
Christianity, therefore, of necessity triumphed. A new order of things commenced for
man, and that order of things sent from the height of Heaven by an omnipotent hand,
after having regenerated corrupt nations, softened and civilised barbarous tribes.
No doubt, whatever was imperfect in the nature of man mixed almost from the birth of
the Gospel a fatal alloy with this universal amelioration.
The intolerance which under the reign of Polytheism seemed an exception to its funda
mental principles, appeared to become during a long time the permanent spirit of Chris
tianity. The Christian priesthood arrogated to itself an authority similar to that which
had bound down under its yoke the great number of the ancient nations; it extended this
terrible authority over nations which till then had escaped its despotism. Morality, falsi
fied and perverted, fell soon into dependence on subtle interpretations and arbitrary prin
ciples. The human faculties were struck with immobility, and succeeded in reconquering,
I do not say their legitimate liberty, which has always been disputed to them, but the
right to exist, only by passing through a persecution which fell heaviest on the most
enlightened and courageous men.
Nevertheless, let us consider more closely these great incon"eniences. Will they not
equally be found in the Polytheism of nations subject to sacerdotal corporations ? Trans
port the belief and the priests of Egypt to Madrid, or to Goa, you will have—in the name
of Isis and of Horus—inquisitors, not inferior in ferocity or in hypocrisy to any of their
modern colleagues; and you will have, in addition, human sacrifices, licentious orgies,
revolting ceremonies, which have never stained the most corrupt Christianity.
Besides the philosophers who have praised the tolerance of Polytheism, have fallen,
perhaps involuntarily, into a singular error. The tolerance which they have boasted of
in this faith did not repose on the respect which society owes to the opinions of indi
viduals. The nations tolerant toward each other in their national capacity, were
nevertheless ignorant of that eternal principle, the only basis of all enlightened tolerance,
that each and every one has the right of adoring his God in the manner which seems to
him the best. The citizens were, on the contrary, bound to conform to the worship of
the city. They had not the liberty to adopt a foreign worship, though that worship
might be authorised for the strangers who were its followers. The independence of thought,
the independence of the religious sentiment gained, therefore, nothing by this tolerance of
Polytheism.
Certainly the zeal of Chosroes, who was not willing to enter into treaty with his
enemies, unless they rendered homage to his gods; the reciprocal furies of the Teutyrites
and the Ombrites; the fierce wars which the inhabitants of Oxyrinchus and Cynopolis
carried on till the Romans forced them to be at peace; the hatred which divides in India
the adorers of Schiva and of Vishnu; the proscriptions to which the Brahmins and
the Buddhists have been alternately exposed, sufficiently refute the eulogies lavished, in
hatred of Christianity, on the religions which it supplanted.
Let me frankly state that wherever the power of the priests is not restrained by just
limits, there has been intolerance; and if we consider the substance of all faiths, real
tolerance has existed hitherto; only in Christianity, when uninfluenced by all foreign
power. It is there alone that the supreme God, the father of all men, of all love, of all
goodness, does not reproach his creatures with the efforts which they make to serve him
with greater zeal. Their errors can excite only his pity; all adoration is equally
agreeable to him when the intentions are equally pure.
Is the other accusation better founded? If the axiom, that it is better to obey God
than men has conducted fanatical Christians to the greatest crimes—if it has been main
tained, under this pretext, that cruelty, that refinement in torture, that forgetfulness of
the bonds of blood and of affection, perjury towards the partisans of another faith, were
the duties of true Christians, open the Sehastabade, the Bhaguat-Gita, the Zendavesta, you
will find those disastrous precepts inculcated in a manner much more positive and much
more fervent; and there is this difference, that among the Persians and the Hindoos their
abominable morality is found in their sacred books themselves, whilst among Christians
it is only found in those miserable commentators who falsify the texts of scripture to serve
the interest of their corporation and caste.
Finally, if an insolent tyranny has sometimes, in the name of Christ, who disarmed it,
chained the march of the human faculties, that noblest gift of Providence, were those
faculties freer among Polytheistic nations, to whom the slightest alteration of their faith
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in the figure, in the attributes of the gods, the smallest knowledge of writing, the slightest
participation in the services were interdicted?
Thus, under whatever point of view we look at Christianity—even when it was cor
rupted by men—it was a great deal superior to the Polytheism of the majority of nations;
and, freed from that corruption, which is foreign to it, it has advantages which the most
perfect Polytheism could not possess.
A great mistake has been made as to the sense of an assertion which serves as basis to
the author’s work on religion. Because the author has distinguished the forms of
religion from the religious sentiment, it has been supposed that he professed an equal
indifference for all those forms. But, on the contrary, he believes these forms to be pro
gressive—some being always better than others, and those which are better always arising
at the time when they are most needed.
And this system is not that of a modern writer; it is that of Saint Paul, who says, in
express terms, that when man was yet a child, he was under obedience to the first and
rudest instructions which God had given him, and that the state of ignorance having
passed away, God sent Christ on the earth to abolish the ancient law. Thus, according to
the doctrine of the first Christians themselves, God proportions his instructions to the
state of man; his first instructions which Saint Paul speaks of as not of an elevated kind,
were what was necessary to nations in their early stages. Those instructions became
useless, when the infancy of nations ceased. Is it irreligion to recognise this progression
in the Divine goodness ? The Pharisees said so to the apostles, and the Roman Emperors
said it to the Christian martyrs.
[Benjamin Constant, the author of the preceding essay, was born at Lausanne, in
Switzerland, on the 25th October, 1767. He died on the 8th December, 1830. He was
a voluminous author, an eloquent orator,and a distinguished and disinterested patriot; in
the great struggles for liberty in France from 1815, he occupied a foremost place. He
wrote a work on religion, in five volumes, which, if not the profoundest, is one of the
clearest, most ingenious, and most instructive on the subject. His essay, just given,
easily accounts for the origin and growth of Christianity, without the introduction of any
supernatural and miraculous machinery ; for when Constant speaks of the supernatural
and the miraculous, it is not in the English sense of those words, that is, as indicatingarbitrary interferences with the immutable laws of the universe. The essay is valuable
for another reason, for are not the tricks which the Christian priesthoods at present are
employing to support their exhausted systems and institutions, exactly similar to those so
distinctly and forcibly indicated by Constant, as having been employed by the Polythe
istic priesthood for a kindred purpose.]
THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.
Theology is the science of Religion. It treats of man, God, and the relation between
man and God, with the duties which grow out of that relation. It is both queen and
mother of all science; the loftiest and most ennobling of all the speculative pursuits of
man. But the popular theology of this day is no science at all, but a system of incoher
ent notions, woven together by scholastic logic, and resting on baseless assumptions. The
pursuit thereof in the popular method does not elevate;—there is in it somewhat not holy.
It is not studied as science, with no concern except for the truth of the conclusion. We
wish to find the result as we conceived it to be; as Bishop Butler has said, “People habi
tuate themselves to let things pass through their minds, rather than to think of them.
Thus by use they become satisfied merely with seeing what is said, without going any
further.” Our theology has two great Idols, the Bible and Christ: by worshipping
these, and not God only, we lose much of the truth they both offer us. Our theology
relies on assumptions, not ultimate facts ; so it comes to no certain conclusions—weaves
cobwebs, but no cloth.
The popular Theology rests on these main assumptions—the divinity of the Church,
and tiie divinity of the Bible. What is the value of each ? It has been found con
venient to assume both. Then it has several important aphorisms, which it makes use of
as if they were established truths, to be employed as the maxims of Geometry, and no
more to be called in question. Amongst these are the following: Man under the light of
nature i§ not capable of discovering the moral and religious truth needed for his moral
and religious welfare; there must be a personal and miraculous mediator between each
man and God; a life of blameless obedience to the law of man’s nature will not render us
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acceptable to God, and ensure our well-being in the next life; we need a superhuman
being to bear our sins, through whom alone we are saved; Jesus of Nazareth is that
superhuman, and miraculous, and sin-reconciling mediator ; the doctrine he taught is re
vealed Religion, which differs essentially from natural Religion; an external and contin
gent miracle is the only proof of an eternal and necessary truth in morals or religion;
God now and then transcends the laws of nature, and makes a miraculous revelation of
some truth ; he does not now inspire men as formerly. Each of these aphorisms is a gra
tuitous assumption, which has never been proved, and of course all the theological deduc
tions made from the aphorisms, or resting on these two main assumptions, are without
any real foundation. Theologians have assumed their facts ; and then reasoned as if the
facts were established;—but the conclusion was an inference from a baseless assumption;
thus it accounts for nothing. “We only become certain of the immortality of the soul
from the fact of Christ’s resurrection,” says Theology. Here are two assumptions : first,
the fact of that resurrection; second, that it proves our immortality. If we ask proof of
the first point, it is not easy to come by it; of the second, it is not shown. The theologi
cal method is false; for it does not prove its facts historically, or verify its conclusions
philosophically. The Hindoo theory says, the earth rests on the back of an Elephant, the
Elephant on a Tortoise. But what does the Tortoise rest upon ? The great Turtle of
popular theology rests on—an assumption. Who taught us the infallible divinity of the
Bible, or the Churches? “Why, we always thought so; we inherited the opinion, as
land, from our fathers, to have and to hold, for our use and behoof, for ourselves and our
heirs, for ever.” Would you have a better title? We are regularly “ seized” of the doc
trine ; it came, with the divine right of kings, from our fathers, who, by the grace of God,
burnt men for doubting the truth of their theology.” This is the defence of the popular
theology. We have freedom in civil affairs; can revise our statutes, change the administra
tion, or amend the constitution: have we no freedom in theological affairs, to revise, change,
amend a vicious theology? We have always been doing it, but only by halves, not looking
at the foundation of the matter. We have applied good sense to many things,—Agriculture,
Commerce, Manufactures,—and with distinguished success; not yet to Theology. We make
improvements in science and art every year: men survey the clouds, note the variations of
the magnetic needle, analyze rocks, waters, soils, aud do not fear that truth shall hurt
them, though it make Hipparchus and Cardan unreadable. Our method of theology is false,
no less than its assumptions. What must we expect of the conclusion ? What we find, j
If a school was founded to teach Geology, and the professors of that science were
required to subscribe the geological creed of Aristotle or Paracelsus, and swear solemnly
to interpret facts by that obsolete creed, and maintain and inculcate the geological faith
as expressed in that creed, in opposition to Wernerians, Bucklandians, Lyellians, and all
other geological heresies, ancient or modern ; if the professors were required to subscribe
this every five years, and no pupil was allowed the name of Geologist, or permitted
peacefully to examine a rock, unless he professed that creed ;—what would men say to
the matter? No one thinks such a course strange in Theology; our fathers did so before
us. In plain English, we are afraid of the truth. “God forbid,” said a man, famous in his
day, “ that our love of truth should be so cold as to tolerate any erroneous opinion ”—but
our own. Any change is looked on with suspicion. If the drift-weed of the ocean be
hauled upon the land, men fear the ocean will be drank up, or blown dry; if the pinetree rock, they exclaim, the mountain falling cometh to naught. How superstitiously
men look on the miracle question, as if the world could not stand if the miracles of the
New Testament were not real.
The popular Theology does not aim to prove absolute Religion, but a system of doctrines.
Now the problem of theology is continually changing. In the time of Moses it was this :
To separate Religion from the Fetichism of the Canaanites and the Polytheism of the
Egyptians, and connect it with the doctrine of one God. No doubt Jannes aud Jambres
exclaimed with pious horror, “ What! give up the garlic and the cats which our fathers
prayed to and swore by ! We shall never be guilty of that infidelity.” But the Priest
hood of Garlic came to an end, and the world still continued, though the Cats were not
worshipped. In the time of Christ, the problem was: To separate Religion from the
obsolete ritual of Moses. We know the result. The Scribes and Pharisees were shocked
at the thought of abandoning the ritual of Moses I But the ritual went its way. In the
time of Luther, a new problem arose: To separate Religion from the forms of the Catholic
Church. The issue is well known. In our times, the problem is: To separate Religion
from whatever is finite,—church, book, person,—and let it rest on its absolute truth.
Numerous questions come up for discussion: Is Christianity absolute Religion? What
relation does Jesus bear to the human race? What relation does the Bible sustain to it ?
We have nothing to fear from truth, or for truth, but every thing to hope. It is about
Theology that men quarrel, not about Religion; that is but one.
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Coming away from the Theology of our time, and looking at the public Virtue, as
revealed in our life, political, commercial, and social, and seeing things as they are, we
must come to this conclusion: Either Christianity—absolute Eeligion—is false and
utterly detestable,—or else modern Society, in its basis and details, is wrong, all wrong :
there is no third conclusion possible. Christianity demands a divine life ; Society, one
mean and earthly. Christianity says—its great practical maxim—•“ We that are strong
ought to bear the burdens of the weak;” Society—“ We that are strong must make the
weak bear our burthens;” and it does this daily. The Strong do not compel the Weak
as heretofore, mainly with a sword, nor bind them exclusively in fetters of iron : they
compel with an idea, and chain with manacles unseen, but felt. Who does the world’s
work?—hethat receives most largely the world’s good? It needs not that truisms be
repeated. Now it is a high word of Christianity—“ He that is greatest shall be (your
servant.” What is the corresponding word of Society? Everybody knows it. Bo we
estimate greatness in this way, by the man’s achievements for the public welfare ? Oh
no! we have no such vulgar standard! Men of “ superior talentsand cultivation,”—do
we expect them to be great by serving mankind ? Nay, by serving themselves !
Eeligion is love of God and man. Is that the basis of action with us ? A young man
setting out in life, and choosing his calling, says this to himself: “ How can I get the
most ease and honours out of the world, returning the least of toil and self-denial ? j” That
is the philosophy of many a life; the very end of even what is called the “ better class ”
of society. Who says, “ This will I do ; I will be a man, a whole complete man, as God
made me; take care of myself, but serve my brother, counting my strength his, not his
mine ; I will take nothing from the world which is not honestly, truly, manfully earned? ”
Who puts his feet forward in such a life? We call such a man a fool. Yes, Jesus of
Nazareth is a fool, tried by the penny wisdom of this generation. We honour him in our
Sunday talk ; hearing his words, say soleniDy, as the parasites of Herod, “ It is the voice
of God, not of a man! ” and smite a man on both cheeks who does not cry, Amen ! But
all the week long we blaspheme that great soul, who speaks though dead, and call his
word a fool’s talk. This is the popular Christianity. We can pray as well as the old
Pharisee—“ Lord, we thank thee we are not as other men; as the Heathen Socrates,
who knew nothing ; and as the ‘ Infidel,’ who cannot believe contradictions and absurd
ities. We say grace before meat; attend to all the church ordinances; can repeat the
creed, and we believe every word of both thy Testaments, Oh Lord! WhaWouldst thou
more? We have fulfilled all Eighteousness.”
Alas for us ! we have taken the name of Jesus in our church, and psalm-singing. We
can say “ Lord! Lord ! no man ever spake as thou.” But our Christianity is talk ; it is
not in the heart, nor the hand, nor the head, but only in the tongue. Could that Great
Man, whose soul bestrides the world to bless it, come back again, and speak in bold words,
to our condition, follies, sins, his denunciation and his blest beatitudes, rooting up with
his “ Woe-unto-you, hypocrites ! ” what was not of God’s planting, and calling things by
right names—how should we honour him ? As Annas and Caiaphas and their fellows
honoured that “ Gallilean and no prophet ”—with spitting and a cross. But it costs little
to talk and to pray.
A divine manliness is the despair of our churches. No man is reckoned good who does
not believe in sin, and human inability. We seem to have said—“ Alas for us ! we defile
our week days by selfish and unclean living; we dishonour our homes by low aims and
lack of love, by sensuality and sin. We debase the sterling word of God in our soul; we
cannot discern between good and evil, nor read nature aright, nor come at first-hand to
God; therefore let us set one day apart from our work; let us build us an house which we
will enter only on that day trade does not tempt us ; let us take the wisest of books, and
make it our oracle; let it save us from thought, and be to us as a God ; let us take our
brother to explain to us this book, to stand between us and God; let him be holy for us,
pray for us, represent a divine life. We know these things cannot be, but let us make
believe.” The work is accomplished, and we have the Sabbath, the Church, the Bible,
and the Ministry ; each beautiful in itself, but our ruin when made the substitutes for
holiness of heart and a divine life.
In Christianity we have a religion wide as the East and the West; deep and high as
the Nadir and Zenith ; certain as Truth, and everlasting as God, But in our life we are
heathens. He that fears God becomes a prey. To be a Christian, with us, in speech and
action, a man must take his life in his hand, and be a lamb among the wolves. Does
Christianity enter the counting-room, the senate-house, the jail ? Does it look on ignor
ance and poverty, seeking to root them out of the land ? The Christian doctrine of work
and wages is a plain thing: he that wins the staple from the maternal earth; who ex
pends strength, skill, taste, on that staple, making it more valuable; who aids men to be
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healthier, wiser, better, more holy—he does a service to the race —does the world’s work.
To get commodities won by others’ sweat, by violence and the long arm, is bobbery—the
ancient Roman way; to get them by cunning and the long head, is trade—the modern
Christian way. What say Reason and Jesus to that? No doubt the Christianity of the
Pulpit is a poor thing: words cannot utter its poverty; it is neither meat nor drink ; the
text saves the sermon. But the Christianity of daily life, of the street—that is still
worse: the whole Bible could not save it. The history of Society is summed up in a
word—Cain killed Abel ; that of real Christianity also in a word—Christ died for
his Brother.
From ancient times we have received two priceless treasures: the Sunday, as a day of
rest, social meeting, and religious instruction; and the institution of Preaching, whereby
a living man is to speak on the deepest of subjects. But what have we made of them ?
Our Sabbath—what a weariness is it 1 what superstition defiles its sunny hours 1 And
Preaching—what has it to do with life? Men graceless and ungifted make it handiwork;
a sermon is the Hercules-pillar and ultima Thule of dullness. The popular religion is
unmanly and sneaking; it dares not look Reason in the face, but creeps behind tradition,
and only quotes—it has nothing new and living to say. To hear its talk, one would think
God was dead, or at best asleep. We have enough of church-going, a remnant of our
father’s veneration, which might lead to great good; reverence still for the Sabbath, the
best institution the stream of time has brought us ; we have still admiration for the name
of Jesus—a soul so great and pure could not have lived in vain. But to call ourselves
Christians!—may God forgive that mockery ! Are men to serve God by lengthening the
creed and shortening the commandments ? making long prayers, and devouring the weak ?
by turning Reason out of doors, and condemning such as will not believe our Theology,
nor accept a priest’s falsehood in God’s name?
Religion is Life. Is our Life Religion? No man pretends it. No doubt there are
good men in all churches, and out of all churches; there have been such in the holds of
pirate ships and in robbers’ dens. I know there are good men and pious women, and I
would go leagues long to sit down at their blessed feet, and kiss their garments’ hem.
But what are the mass of us? Disciples of absolute Religion? Christians after the
fashion of Jesus of Nazareth ? No: only Christians in tongue. It is an imputed righteous
ness that we honour; not ours, but borrowed of Tradition; an “ historical Christianity,”
that was, but is no more. A man is a Christian if he goes to church, pays bis pew-tax,
bows to the parson, believes with his sect, is as good as other people. That is our religion;
what is lived, which is preached: “ like people, like priest,” was never more true.
It is not that we need new forms and symbols, or even the rejection of the old. Bap
tism and the Supper are still beautiful and comforting to many a soul. A spiritual man
can put spirit upon these. To many they are still powerful auxiliaries. They commune
with God now and then—through bread and wine, as others converse with llim forever
through the symbols of nature, the winds that wake the “ soft and soul-like sound” of the
pine-tree; through the earliest violets of spring and the last leaf of autumn; through
calm and storm, and stars and blooming trees, and winter’s snows and summer’s sun
shine. A religious soul never lacks symbols of its own—elements of communion with
God. What we want is the Soul of Religion—Religion that thinks and works: its Sign
will take care of itself.
With us, Religion is a nun. She sits, of week-days, behind her black veil, in the
church; her hands on her knees; making her creed more unreadable; damning “infidels”
and “carnal Reason:” she only comes out in the streets of a Sunday, when the shops are
shut, and temptation out of sight, and the din of business is still as a baby’s sleep. All
the week, nobody thinks of that joyless vestal. Meantime strong-handed Cupidity, with
bis legion of devils, goes up and down the earth, and presses Weakness, Ignorance, and
Want into his service; sends Bibles to Africa, on the deck of his ship, and Rum and
Gunpowder in the hold, knowing that the church will pray for “the outward bound.”
lie brings home—most Christian Cupidity!—images of himself which God has carved in
ebony—to Christianize and bless the sable sou of Ethiopia ! Verily we are a Cliristain
people! zealous of good works! drawing nigh unto God—with our lips! Lives there a
savage tribe our sons have visited, that has not cause to curse and hate the name of
Christians, who have plundered, polluted, slain, enslaved their children ? Not one, the
wide world round, from the Mandans to the Malays. If there were but half the Religion
in all Christendom, that there is talk of it during a “ Revival ” in a village—at the base
ness—political, commercial, social baseness daily done in the world, such a shout of
indignation would go up from the four corners of the earth, as would make the ears of
Cupidity tiDgle again, and hustle the oppressor out of creation.
The Poor, the Ignorant, the Weak, have we always with us: inasmuch as we do good
�13
unto them, we serve God ; inasmuch as we do it not unto the least of them, we blaspheme
God, and cumber the ground we tread on. Was there no meaning in that old word—
“ Tie that knew his Lord’s will and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes ? ”
They are already laid upon us. Religion meant something with Paul; something with
Jesus: what does it mean with us ? A divine life from infancy to age ? Divine all
through ? Oh no! a cheaper thing than that: it means talk, creed-making, and creed
believing, and creed-defending. We, Christians of the “ nineteenth century,” have many
“inventions to save labour;” a process by which “ a man is made as good a Christian in
five minutes as in fifty years.” Behold Christianity made easy ! Do men love Religion
and its Divine Life, as Gain and Trade ? Is it the great moving principle with us ?
something loved for itself—something to live by ? Oh no! Nobody pretends it.
No wonder young men, and young women too, of the most spiritual stamp, lose their
reverence for the Church, or come into it only for a slumber—irresistible, profound, and
strangely similar to death. What concord hath freedom with slavery ? Talent goes to
the world, not to the churches. No wonder Unbelief scoffs in the public print, “ beside
what that grim wolf, with privy paw, daily devours apace, and nothing said.” There is
an unbelief, worse than the public scoffing, though more secret, which needs not be spoken
of. No wonder the old cry is raised, The Church in danger, as its crazy timbers sway
to and fro, if a strong man tread its floors. But what then ? What is true never fails.
Religion is permanent in the race—Christianity everlasting as God. These can never
perish, through the treachery of their defenders, or the violence of their foes. We look
round us, and all seems to change: what was solid last night, is fluid and passed off
to-day; the theology of our fathers is unreadable ; the doctrines of the middle-age
“ divines” are deceased like them. Shall our mountain stand ? “ Everywhere is insta
bility and insecurity.” It is only men’s heads that swim; not the stars that run round.
The soul of man remains the same: Absolute Religion does not change ; God still speaks
in Reason, Conscience, Faith—is still immanent in his children. We need no new forms:
the old, Baptism and the Supper, are still beautiful to many a soul, and speak blessed
words of religious significance. Let them continue for such as need them. We want
real Christianity, the Absolute Religion, preached with faith, and applied to life,— Being
Good, and Doing Good. There is but one real Religion; we need only open our eyes
to see that; only live it, in love to God, and love to man, and we are blessed of Him that
liveth forever and ever 1—Theodore Parker.
CALVINISM.
It makes God an awful king. The universe shudders at his-presence ; the thunder and
earthquake are but faint whispers of his wrath, as the magnificence of earth and sky is
but one ray out from the heaven of his glory. He sits in awful state. Human flesh
quails at the thought of Him;—it is terrible to fall into His hands, as fall we must. Man
was made not to be peaceful and blessed, but to serve the selfishness of the All-King, to
glorify God, and to praise him. Originally, man was made pure and upright; but to
tempt beyond his strength the frail creatue He had made, God forbade him the exercise of
a natural inclination, not evil in itself. Man disobeyed the arbitrary command;—he fell.
His first sin brought on him the eternal vengeance of the all-powerful King; hurled him at
once from his happiness; took from him the majesty of his nature; left him poor, and
impotent, and blind, and naked; transmitting to each of his children all the guilt of the
primeval sin. Adam was the “federal head of the human race:” “By Adam’s fall we
sinned all.” Man has now no power of himself to discern good from evil, and follow the
good ; his best efforts are but filthy rags in God’s sight; his prayer an abomination. Man
is born totally depraved ; sin is native in his bones; hell is his birthright. To be any
thing acceptable to God, he must renounce his nature, violate the law of the soul. He is
a worm of the dust, and turns this way and that, and up and down, but finds nothing in
nature to cling by and climb.
°
God is painted in the most awful colours in the Old Testament. The flesh quivers
while we read, and the soul recoils upon itself with suppressed breath, and ghastly face,
and sickening heart. The very Heavens are not clean in his sight. The grim, awful
King of the world, “ a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children,”
“angry with the wicked every day,” and “keeping anger forever,” “ of purer eyes than
to behold iniquity,”—He hates sin, though he created it, and man, though he made him
to fall, “ with a perfect hatred.” Vengeance is His, and He will repay. He must, there
fore, punish man with all the exquisite torture which infinite Thought can devise, and
�14
Omnipotence apply ; a Creditor, He exacts the uttermost farthing; a King, “ upheld by
his jury,” the smallest offence is high-treason—the greatest of crimes. Ilis code is
Draconian : he that offends in one point is guilty of all. Good were it for man that he
had never been born—extremest vengeance awaits him;—the jealous God will come upon
him in an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him asunder. Hence comes the doc
trine of “ eternal damnation,” a dogma which Epicurus and Strato would have called it
blasphemy to teach.
But God, though called personal is yet infinite. Mercy, therefore, must be a part of
His nature. He desires to save man from the horrors of hell. Shall he change the
nature of things ? That is impossible. Shall he forgive all mankind outright? Theinfinite King forgive high treason ! It is not consistent with divine dignity to forgive the
smallest violation of his perfect law. A sin, however small, is an infinite evil: He must
have an infinite “ satisfaction.” All the human race are sinners, by being born of woman;
the damning sin of Adam vests in all their bones;—they must all suffer eternal damna
tion, to atone for their inherited sin, unless some “ substitute ” take their place.
Now it has long been a maxim in the courts of law,—whence many forensic terms have
been taken and applied to theology, especially since the time of Anselm,—that a man’s
property may suffer in place of his person; and since his friends may transfer their pro
perty to him, they may suffer in his place “ vicarious punishment.” Thus before
Almighty God, there may be a substitute for the sinner. This doctrine is a theological
fiction; it is of the same family with what are called “ legal fictions ” in the courts, and
“ practical fictions ” in the street—a large and ancient family, it must be confessed, that
has produced great names. But no man can be a substitute for another; for sin is infinite,
and he finite. Though all the liquid fires of hell be poured from eternity on the penitent
head of the whole race, not a single sin, committed even in sleep, by one man, could be
atoned for. An infinite “ ransom ” must be paid to save a single soul. God’s “ Mercy ”
overcomes his “Justice;” for man deserves nothing but “damnation:” He will provide
the ransom. So He sent down His Son, to fulfil all the law—which man could not ful
fil,—realising infinite goodness, and thus merit the infinite reward, and then suffer all
the tortures of infinite sin as if he had not fulfilled- it, and thus prepare a ransom for all;
“purchasing” their “salvation.” Thus men are saved from hell by the “vicarious suf
fering ” of the Son. But this would leave them in a negative state—not bad enough for
hell—not good enough for heaven. The “ merits ” of the Son, as well as his sufferings,
must be set down to their account; and thus man is elevated to Heaven by the “ imputed
righteousness ” of the Son.
But how can the Son achieve these infinite merits, and endure this infinite “ torment,”
and “redeem” and “save” the race? He must be infinite, and then it follows; for all
the actions of the Infinite are also infinite, in this logic. But two Infinites there cannot be.
The Son, therefore, is the Father, and the Father the Son. God’s justice is appeased by
God’s mercy;—God “sacrifices” God, for the sake of man. Thus the infinite “satisfac
tion” is accomplished; God has paid God the infinite ransom for the .infinite sin; the
“ sacrifice ” has been offered; the “ atonement ” completed ; “ we are bought with a price.”
As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Now, in the very teeth of logic, this system under consideration maintains that God did
not thus purchase the redemption of all; for such “forgiveness” would ill comport with
his dignity. Therefore certain “ conditions ” are to be complied with, before man is en
titled to this salvation. God knew from all eternity who would be saved, and they are
said to be “ elected from before the foundation of the world ” to eternal happiness. God
is the cause of their compliance—for man has no free will,—hence foreordination; they are
not saved by their own merit, but by Christ’s,—hence “ particular redemption; ” having
no will, they must be “ called ” and moved by God, and if elected, must come to him,—
hence “ effectual calling; ” if to be saved, they must continue in “grace,”—hence the
“ perseverance of the saints.” The salvation of the “elect,” the damnation of the non
elect, is all effected by the “decrees of God,” the “agency of the Holy Spirit,” the
“satisfaction of Christ; ”—all is a work of “divine grace.”
The doctrine of the “Trinity” has always been connected with this system. It does
not embrace three Gods, as it has often been alleged, but one God in three persons,—
as the Hindoos have one God in thirty millions of persons, and the Pantheists one God
in all persons and all things. The Father sits on the throne of his glory ; the Son, at his
right hand, “intercedes” for man; the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from the Father and the
Son, “calls” the saints, and makes them “persevere.” This doctrine of the Trinity
covers a truth, though it often conceals it. Its religious significance—the same with
that of Polytheism—seems to be this: God does not limit himself within the unity of his
essence, but incarnates himself in man,—hence the Son; diffuses himself in space and in
spirit, works with men both to will and to do,—hence the Holy Ghost.—Theodore Parker.
�15
THE SPIRITUALISTS.
“ Changes are coming fast upon the world. In the violent struggles of opposite interests, the
decaying prejudices that have bound men together in the old forms of society are snapping
asunder, one after another. Must we look forward to a hopeless succession of evils, in which
exasperated parties will be alternately victors and victims, till all sink under some one power,
whose interest it is to preserve a quiet despotism ? Who can hope for a better result, unless the
great lesson be learnt, that there can be no essential improvement in the condition of society,
without the improvement of men as moral and religious beings ; and that this can be effected
only by religious Truth ? To expect this improvement from any form of false religion, because
it is called religion, is as if, administering to one in a fever, we were to take some drug from an
apothecary’s shelves, satisfied with its being called medicine.”—Andrew Norton : Statement of
Reasons, <£>c., Preface, p. xxii. xxxiii.
This party has an Idea wider and deeper than that of the Catholic or Protestant—namely,
that “ God still inspires men as much as ever ; that He is immanent in spirit as in space.”
This relies on no church, tradition, or scripture, as the last ground and infallible rule;
it counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters —helps, if they help us, not
authorities. It relies on the divine presence in the soul of man ; the eternal Word of
God, which is Truth, as it speaks through the faculties he has given. It believes that
God is near the soul, as matter to the sense; thinks the canon of revelation not yet closed,
nor God exhausted. It sees Him in Nature’s perfect work ; hears Him in all true scrip
ture, Jewish or Phoenician ; feels Him in the inspiration of the heart; stoops at the same
fountain with Moses and Jesus, and is filled with living water. It calls God Father, not
King; Christ brother, not Redeemer; heaven home; Religion nature. It loves and
trusts, but does not fear. It sees, in Jesus, a man living manlike, highly gifted, and
living with blameless and beautiful fidelity to God, stepping thousands of years before the
race of man; the profoundest religious genius God has raised up ; whose words and works
help us to form and develope the native idea of a complete religious man. But he lived
for himself; died for himself; worked out his own salvation—and we must do the same,
for one man cannot live for another, more than he can eat or sleep for him. It is no
personal Christ, but the Spirit of Wisdom, Holiness, Love, that creates the well-being of
man ; a life at one with God. The divine incarnation is in all mankind.
The aim it proposes is a complete union of man with God, till every action, thought,
wish, feeling, is in perfect harmony with the Divine will. It makes Christianity not°the
point man goes through in his progress, as the Rationalist—not the point God goes
through iD his development, as the Supernaturalist; but Absolute Religion, the point
where map’s will and God’s will are one and the same. Its source is absolute, its aim
absolute, its method absolute. It lays down no creed, asks no symbol; reverences exclu
sively no time nor place, and therefore can use all time and every place. It reckons
forms useful to such as they help; one man may commune with God through the bread
and the wine, emblems of the body that was broke, and the blood that was shed in the
cause of truth ; another may hold communion through the moss and the violet, the moun
tain, the ocean, or the scripture of suns which God has writ in the sky—it does not make
the means the end; it prizes the signification more than the sign. It knows nothing of
that puerile distinction between Reason and Revelation; never finds the alleged contra
diction between good sense and Religion. Its Temple is all space; its Shrine the good
heart; its Creed all truth ; its Ritual, works of love and utility; its Profession of faith a
divine life-works without, faith within, love of God and man. It bids man do duty, and
take what comes of it—grief or gladness. In every desert it opens fountains of living
water; gives balm for every wound, a pillow in all tempests, tranquillity in each distress.
It does good for goodness’ sake ; asks uo pardon for its sins, but gladly serves out the
time. It is meek and reverent of truth, but scorns all falsehood, though upheld by the
ancient and honourable of the earth. It bows to no idols of wood or flesh, of gold or
parchment, or spoken wind; neither Mammon, neither the Church, nor the Bible, nor yet
Jesus, but God only. It takes all helps it can get; counts no good word profane’ though
a heathen spoke—no lie sacred, though the greatest prophet had said the word. Its re
deemer is within—its salvation within, its heaven and its oracle of God. It falls back on
perfect Religion; asks no more—is satisfied with no less. The personal Christ is its en
couragement, for he reveals the possible of man. Its watchword is, Be Perfect as God.
With its eye on the Infinite, it goes through the striving and the sleep of life ; equal to
duty, not above; fearing not whether the ephemeral wind blow east or west. It has the
strength of the Hero, the tranquil sweetness of the Saint. It makes each man his own
priest, but accepts gladly him that speaks a holy word. Its prayer in words, in works
m feeling, in thought, is this—Tiiy will be done!—its Church that of all holy souls’
the Church of the first-born, called by whatever name.
�16
Let others judge the merits and defects of this scheme. It has never organized a
church; yet in all ages, from the earliest, men have more or less freely set forth its doc
trines. We find these men among the despised and forsaken; the world was not ready to
receive them. They have been stoned and spat upon in all the streets of the world. The
“ pious ” have burned them as haters of God and man ; the “ wicked ” called them bad
names and let them go. They have served to flesh the swords of the Catholic church,
and feed the fires of the Protestant. But flame and steel will not consume them ; the
seed they have sown is quick in many a heart; their memory blessed by such as live
divine. These were the men at whom the world opens wide the mouth, and draws out
the tongue, and utters its impotent laugh ; but they received the fire of God on their
altar, and kept living its sacred flame. They go on the forlorn hope of the race; but
Truth puts a wall of fire about them, and holds the shield over their head in the day of
trouble. The battle of Truth seems often lost, but is always won. Her enemies but
erect the bloody scaffolding where the workmen of God go up and down, and with divine
hands build wiser than they know. When the scaffolding falls, the temple will appear.—
Theodore Parker.
.i
TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
No. I—THE BIBLE: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT. Br
Theodore Parker, Minister of the Second Congregational Church,
Boston, Mass.
No. II.—CHRISTIANITY: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.
By Theodore Parker.
No. III. — PRIESTLY SYSTEMS REPUGNANT TO CHRISTIAN
PRINCIPLES. By Rev. Thomas Wilson, A.M., late of Corp. Chris.
Cambridge, and St. Peter’s Norwick.
No. IV.—ON THE HUMAN CAUSES WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO
TIIE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. Translated from
the French of Ben. Constant, by Wm. Maccall, Author of “ The
Elements of Individualism,” “Agents of Civilization,” “Education of
Taste,” &c.
Will be Published on the First of March.
No. V. — INFALIBILITY, CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT.
By
Rev. James Martineau, Professor of Moral Philosophy, &c., Manches
ter New College.
Glasgow:—John Robertson, 21 Maxwell Street,
��
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On the human causes which have concurred toward the establishment of Christianity
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Constant, Benjamin [1767-1830]
MacCall, William (tr)
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Series title: Tracts for the times
Series number: No. 4
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CT 8}
COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
SEEING AND BELIEVING.
iCccturc
DELIVERED BEFORE
SUNDAY LECTURE
THE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 27th FEBRUARY, 1881,
By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D.,
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�Works by the same Author:
“ The Pathology of Mind.” Being the Third Edition of the Second
Part of the “ Physiology and Pathology of Mind,” re-cast, much
enlarged, and re-written. In 8vo, price 18s.
“The Physiology of Mind.” Being the First Part of a Third Edition,
revised, enlarged, and re-written, of “ The Physiology and Pathology of
Mind.” Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d.
“ Body and Mind : ” An Inquiry into their connection and Mutual In
fluence, especially with reference to Mental Disorders. Second
Edition, enlarged and revised, with Psychological Essays added.
Crown 8vo, 6s. 6d.
Macmillan & Co., London.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage
the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellectual,
and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially iu their bearing
upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind.
, THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), ending 24th April, 1881, will
be given.
Members’ annual subscription, £1, entitles them to a ticket, transferable
(and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat
tickets, available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture)—
To the Sixpenny Seats —2s., being at the rate of Threepence each
lecture.
For tickets, and the printed Lectures, and for list of all the Lectures
published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer,
Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park,
Payment at the door :—One Penny ■—Sixpence and (Reserved
Seats) One Shilling.
�SYLLABUS.
1. The influence of preconceived idea and of feeling to vitiate observation.
Illustrations:
a. Illusions of Sense.
b. Hallucinations of Sense.
c. Erroneous observation.
d. Miracles.
2. The influence of feeling and belief to vitiate reasoning.
a. Individuals.
b. In communities.
3. The relation of feeling to intellect in the progress of the race.
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�COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
SEEING AND BELIEVING.
PROPOSE not in this lecture to enumerate and discuss all the
mistakes which we are liable to make when we see and draw
conclusions from what we see—all the fallacies, that is to say, to
which observation and reasoning are exposed; I purpose only to
note and illustrate now one very common and prolific source of
wrong observation and inference. It is certain we do not see and
judge rightly by instinct; too often, although we have eyes, we
see not truly, and although we have reason, we use it to come to
wrong conclusions. Reason, we know, man claims as his almost
exclusive prerogative, defining himself—for he has that advantage
over other animals—as pre-eminently the reasoning animal; and
one need not cavil at the definition so long as it is not understood
to mean that everybody reasons rightly, or even commonly bases
his beliefs upon reason. To say of the great majority of persons
that they reason at all in the highest sense of the word is to say
what is not true, since their opinions are plainly either got by
inheritance, or engrafted by education, or moulded by particular
life-experiences, or imposed by authority of some kind, and are
then worn by them, as they wear their clothes, after the fashion.
Governed by their habits of opinion as they are by their habits of
life they find it as hard a matter to change the one as to change
the other. If all men reasoned truly and adequately on every
subject, it is evident that all men would be agreed, which is not
quite the case; we should not be meeting here this afternoon to
broach opinions which will not be perhaps in harmony with those
which have been preached from a thousand pulpits this morning;
the heresy of yesterday would not be, as it often is, the common
sense of to-day, and the common sense of to-day the nonsense of
to-morrow; the majority would not have found it necessary to
stone, burn, poison, cut asunder, crucify, or otherwise silence the
voices of the few who, in the succession of the ages, have not
I
�6
Common Source of Error in
failed to appear from time to time to inspire and to raise men to
higher planes of thought and duty; the world would have been
without the history of its noble army of martyrs of humanity.
This being so, it is a good thing, I think, from time to time to
make a particular study of the common errors to which we are
liable in observation and thinking, and to take note how far
wrong they may carry us. My attention is drawn often and
forcibly to this matter, because, in the course of my professional
work, I meet with persons who, of sound understanding in respect
of all ordinary matters, entertain some extraordinary delusions in
respect of one or two subjects, and cannot be convinced of their
errors by the plainest evidence and argument. Naturally one asks
oneself how it comes to pass that they form and entertain notions
which are absurd to the common sense of mankind, holding to
them in the face of conclusive disproof, and notwithstanding that
they cannot find a single person in the world to agree with them.
The vulgar saying is that they have “ lost their senses,” but it is
not so; their senses are in full work, but somehow they fail to
perform their proper offices. In seeking the explanations of these
remarkable distractions of mind one comes to perceive that, after
all, these people have only carried to an extreme pitch, to an
insane height, a kind of faulty observation and reasoning which
is common enough among persons who are not in the least out of
their minds. ’Tis not true perhaps, as is sometimes said, that
everybody is a little mad, but it is true -that everybody makes day
by day the same sort of errors in observation and reasoning as
those which lead madmen to their delusions.
I go at once to the heart of what I have to say by laying down
the broad proposition that in looking at things a person sees what
he believes he sees, not necessarily that which really is : his notion
of what he sees may correspond with the reality or not, but in
any case he does not see the reality purely ; he sees it through the
idea or notion which he has of it. Had I been born blind, and
were my eyes opened at this moment for the first time to see a
human face before me, I should not know it to be such by my
sense of sight alone: I know a human face, when I see it, only
because of the training in seeing which has been going on ever
since I was born, the unceasing, if unconscious, education which
I have had. The idea has been organised gradually in my mind—
abstract, so to speak, from a multitude of impressions—and when
it is stirred into activity by the proper impression made upon
sight it instantly interprets that impression, so that I recognise
�Seeing and Believing.
7
the object.
*
If my idea were very active and at the same time
did not fit the reality, it might mislead sight, making me mistake
the identity of a face which I saw—just as Don Quixote, possessed
with his fixed idea of giants and enchanted castles, mistook the
sails of a windmill for the arms of a giant—or even, in a more
extreme case, making me actually see a face where there was no face
at all. You have perhaps seen a person who has been put into
what is called the mesmeric state and noticed the extraordinary
illusions which he can be made to suffer: the operator bids him
take a glass of simple water, assuring him at the same time that it
is exceedingly bitter and nasty, and he forthwith spits it out as if
it were poison, with every expression of disgust; he is told that a
wasp is buzzing about his face and he instantly makes frantic
movements to strike it away; he is introduced to a stranger as his
mother or sister and he immediately embraces her. There is
scarcely a mistake of sense, however extravagant, of which he
may not be made the victim if he is duly susceptible and the
operator skilful and confident. Now what is it which takes place ?
This: the idea suggested by the operator becomes so very active
in the subject’s mind, takes such exclusive possession of it, that all
other ideas are inhibited or silenced; they are inactive, in abey
ance, asleep, so to speak, unable therefore to comment upon or
correct it; accordingly the person sees, hears, or otherwise per
ceives all impressions through the active idea, which interprets
them instantly into the language of its own nature : being the
only part of the mind which is then sensible to stimulus and in
function, it cannot of necessity reveal anything which it does notice
but in terms of itself. The person does not see the real thing but
his notion of what the real thing is and that does not in this
case accord with what really is. Here then is an experiment
which plainly shows us that an idea in the mind may reach such a
pitch of exclusive activity as to put to silence other ideas and to
completely befool the senses. It is what happens also to the mad
man who, having the delusion that he is the victim of a malignant
persecution, sees or hears his persecutors pursue or threaten him
where no one else can see or hear anything of them.
I now go a step further and note that something of the same
sort takes place in dreams. When we are asleep we see nothing
* The common saying that “seeing is believing” may then be applied
in a double sense—not alone in the understood sense that we believe by
what we see, but also in the sense that we see by what we believe.
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Common Source of Error in
outside us: our eyes being shut it is impossible we should ; never
theless we do see very remarkable scenes if we dream, seeing them
too as if they were outside us and more vividly perhaps than we
do see real things when we are awake. What happens is that the
thoughts of the dreamer as they occur to him become instantly
visible as sensory presentations ; the idea of a thing, so soon as it
becomes active, takes form as the sensible object, is translated into
the outward reality; the idea of a person, for example, becomes
the seen person, the idea of a voice the heard voice. >80 before the
dreamer’s eyes as a visible pageant, a scenic show, moves the train
of succeeding ideas; it is as if each vague thought which came
into the mind as we walked along the street absorbed in reverie
was visible as an actual scene ; in which case it is plain we
should be surrounded by an ideal world which would be the real
world to us, while the real world would be faint and shadowy or
quite unperceived. Now this happens the more easily in dreams
for two reasons—first, because the active idea has for the time
almost exclusive possession of the mind, the rest of it being asleep,
and, secondly, because the closure of the senses by sleep to all
outward things, preventing that distraction of them by other
objects which is taking place more or less during waking even in
the deepest reverie, leaves them at the mercy of the idea. Here
there is another instance where an idea or notion vividly experi
enced imposes itself upon sense, becomes an actual hallucination.
Take another case: people don’t see ghosts nowadays when they
go through churchyards by night, as they used often to do in olden
times. Why is that ? It is because, not believing in ghosts, they
do not expect to see them: they have not in their minds the idea
of a ghost which may step solemnly forth from behind a tombstone
or glide away like a guilty thing ashamed. ’Tis an instance of the
excellent philosophy which is never wanting in Shakspeare, that
he makes Hamlet see his father’s ghost at midnight, when the air
is bitterly cold, not a mouse stirring, on the lonely and rocky
platform before the castle of Elsinore, after he had been informed
in solemnly impressive tones of its previous appearances, when he
himself is there in a tremor of expectation to see it, and immedi
ately after Horatio’s exclamation “ Look, my lord, it comes!”
Again: there is an event which has happened sometimes to
dying persons, well fitted to make a solemn and startling impres
sion on those about them. When at the point of death or nearly
so, the dying person, gazing intently before him, as if he saw some
one there, may pronounce suddenly the name of a long dead
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Seeing and Believing.
Relative, exclaim perhaps “ Mother,” and soon after expire. Natu
rally people suppose that the spirit of his dead mother has appeared
to him, and are happy to think that he has joined in a better world
those who were taken away from him in this world. So they take
CQmfort to themselves when they lose by death one who is near
and dear to them in the belief that although he shall not return to
them they shall go to him. That may or may not be, but certainly
the apparition is not proof of it, since it is no more than one of
the hallucinations which a dying person is liable to have; for when
he is near death and the failing functions of his brain portend
their near impending extinction, wandering thoughts of the far
distant past, impressions of childhood perhaps, seemingly long
effaced, but never actually effaced, may flicker in the mind and,
taking visible form as thoughts take form in dreams, be seen as
visions. You will remember that Shakspeare makes Falstaff,
when dying in a London tavern after a life of the most gross
debauchery, a worn out old libertine, go back in this way to the
memories of more innocent days and “babble of green fields.”*
These broken reversions, as I may call them, are the last ebbing
functions of the brain which, as Shakspeare puts it, then
“ Doth by the idle comments that it makes
Foretell the ending of mortality.”
'
I might go on to multiply instances of this production of hallu
cination by idea, since they are to be met with in all quarters.
You have heard perhaps that there has lately been an apparition
of the Virgin Mary at Lather Ignatius’s Monastery - of Llanthonev
Abbey, which was seen first in a meadow by four boys of the
Abbey, after that by a brother of the Abbey, and last of all
by Father Ignatius himself. This is his account of what he
saw:—
“ About eight o’clock on Wednesday evening, the 15th inst. (after
the last service of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin) we all
* It is very doubtful, however, whether Shakspeare ever wrote what is
now the received text. In the first authentic edition (1623) the words
were not “ ’a babbled of green fields,” but “ a table of green fields,” which
was nonsense. It was changed by an anonymous critic to “ ’a talked of
green fields,” which Theobald altered into the present reading. Thirty
years ago, however, an annotated copy of the edition of 1632 was found,
which, among a great number of corrections of the text, substituted for
“’a.table of green fields,” the words “on a table of green frieze ”—£<?.,
“ His nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze.” Dr. Newman
makes use of these discrepancies for the purposes of his argument in
Grammar of Assent (p. 265), and it is from him that I quote them.
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Common Source of Error in
came to the porch door. I held the processional crucifix. With
me were the brothers, Mr. Bouse, and a gentleman from Oxford
who had visited the Monastery for the purpose of endeavouring
to see the vision. The boys were kneeling in front of us, Sister
Janet was kneeling in the meadow. It was a very wet night. We
were singing the ‘Aves.’ We had sung three ‘Aves ’ in honour
of the Holy Trinity, and we had just finished a fourth to the
Blessed Virgin, when, all of a sudden, when I was not expecting
anything of the kind, I saw a tremendous outburst of light from
the dark, heavy clouds over the farm building. It seemed to
burst right upon the buildings. The light was all in bulging circles.
In the very centre of the light there appeared, coming down upon
us, a human form. It was a very commanding^ stately figure.
I could only see sideways. The face was turned towards the bush.
I could only see it momentarily, as it were in the 1 twinkling of an
eye.’ But in that moment it stood out so distinctly and startling
that I am sure that it was darker than the light. Had it been
clothed in cloth of silver, or cloth of gold, it might have produced
the same effect—the darkness against the light. There was an
intense reality about the figure. It was momentary, as I before
said, and yet it seemed that it might have been an hour’s vision,
so intensely real was it. In the majesty of the figure, and in its
being dark against the light, it reminded me of Dore’s picture,
‘The triumph of Christianity over Paganism.’ There were
flashings of light about the figure. In a moment, as I looked, it
vanished. Before it vanished it had appeared as if it would have
descended upon the church door or the church roof. I feel sure
that it must have been the figure of the Blessed Virgin, because,
although I could not discern the dress it wore, I could see that it
was fully draped; whereas in the visions which others have seen,
when they have seen a male figure, it has always appeared with
simply a cloth round the loins, as our Lord is represented in
baptism, and at other times. I also feel sure that it was the
Virgin, because the figure appeared immediately after we had
sung the ‘ Ave ’ in her honour. The figure also had its face
turned towards the bush, where our Ladye had first been seen. I
have further confirmation in the fact that about two or three
minutes afterwards the Blessed Virgin’s figure was seen by the
gentleman who was watching with us, and by one of the boys,
nearer to the ground.” *
* South Wales Daily News, September 13th and 27th, 1880.
�Seeing and Believing.
11
“ These,” he says, “ are extraordinary and absolute facts. The
sceptic may and will scoff, but his scoffing will not explain or
diminish the truth or supernatural character of these absolute and
incontrovertible facts * * * No amount of contradiction, ridicule,
or unbelief can alter the fact that Monday, August 30th, 1880, be
tween the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., the Blessed Virgin appeared in
dazzling light to four boys and did what no earthly being could do
before their eyes.”. With such positive and incontrovertible testi
mony of eye-witnesses, are you of so little faith as to doubt that
the Blessed Virgin appeared ? Probably you have great doubts, as
I have; and perhaps I may venture to think that I shall carry your
sympathetic doubts with me in my sceptical interpretation of
another vivid vision of an apparition in circumstances particularly
favourable to its occurrence.
The vision in this case happened to a woman whom we may
believe to have been predisposed in some measure to hallucination,
since we are told of her that she had once had seven devils cast
out of her; a story which, in modern scientific interpretation,
means that she had once been insane and had recovered. In all
likelihood, therefore, she was one of those persons, susceptible or
sensitive, as mesmerists call them, whose unstably balanced nervecentres were easily liable to take on that sort of irregular action
which issues in hallucination and delusion. The woman I refer
to is Mary Magdalene, who visited the sepulchre of Christ on the
third day aft.er His burial, and who, according to the gospel of St.
John, saw two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the
other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. I say accord
ing to John, because the stories of the resurrection told by the
writers of the different gospels differ considerably in details;
amongst other things, not agreeing as to whether there was one
angel or whether there were two angels, or as to the persons who
saw the apparition or apparitions. Discrepancies in the stories of
supernatural phenomena are not of course to be wondered at;
they are the natural results of an inspiration more than natural
pouring itself into natural channels. Those, however, whose
understandings are informed by observation and experience of
nature, not by inspiration from outside nature, may suspect
perhaps that Mary Magdalene, having an excitable brain, was the
victim of a hallucination. She ran to the sepulchre in hot excite
ment, eagerly expectant to see something extraordinary, and she
saw something extraordinary: a flitting impression on sight, pro
bably the “ linen clothes lying there, and the napkin that was
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Common Source of Error in
about the head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped
together in a place by itself,” suggested two angels, and the ideas
of the angels so suggested took visible form, dominating the sense,
just as the gleaming whiteness of a tombstone suggesting the idea
of a ghost to the walker through a churchyard by night was trans
formed instantly into a ghost.
This dominion of the idea over the senses, which has its con
summate effect in the production of hallucination, is really the most
fruitful source of error and defect in common observation, an ever
active, and never to be neglected, cause of fallacy. Men see not
the reality purely, but see it in the coloured light of the notions
which they have of it. Hence no two persons see an event exactly
alike; two witnesses go into the witness-box and give widely different accounts of the same transaction at which they were present
together ; two newspaper reporters, of different politics, believing
themselves sincere and truthful, send home to their respective
employers nearly opposite accounts of the same occurrences; in
each case there is the individual mind behind the eye. Has any
one got a belief, no matter how he got it—whether through his
understanding, as he flatters himself he gets all his beliefs, or
through his feelings, as he actually gets most of them—his mind
yields willing access to all facts which are in keeping with it, and
very Unwilling access to any fact which does not consist with it,
insomuch that the belief comes to determine much of what he sees,
to govern his actual observation of things. The stronger, more
over, the feeling associated with a preconceived idea or belief, the
more completely does it rule sense and vitiate observation. What
infatuated lover ever fails to see “ Helen’s beauty in a brow of
-Egypt?” What excited onlooker at a spectacle of horror could
ever give an accurate account of it ? At one time it was a firmlyrooted superstition that the wounds on the body of a murdered
person would bleed afresh when the murderer was made to touch
the corpse, and witnesses testified frequently to having seen that
happen. Two respectable clergymen, for example, swore at a trial
in the time of Charles I. (1628-9) that the body having been taken
out of the grave and laid on the grass, thirty days after death, and
one of the parties accused of murder required to touch it, “ the
brain of the dead began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it,
which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on
the face; the brow turned to a lively flesh-colour, and the deceased
opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening of the
eye was done three several times ; she likewise thrust out the ring,
�Seeing and Believing.
13
or marriage finger, three times, and pulled it in again; and the
finger dropped blood from it on the grass.” Here was evidence
against the accused which, if true, must have convinced even him
that he ought to be hanged. Of course, it was not true ; the
witnesses, however, were not wilfully or wittingly deceiving, they
were themselves deceived; they saw not the real thing, but the
imagination of what the real thing was. One may be permitted
to judge, by this example, of the value of the unsifted testimony
of the believer who has seen a miracle. ’Tis not that he has
really seen a miracle, but that. he has made a miracle of what he
has mis-seen.
It may be urged perhaps in respect of miracles that it is ex
tremely improbable, if not impossible, that several persons attest
ing them could be deceived in the same way at the same time. On
the contrary, nothing more easy in certain circumstances : a great
wave of emotion passing through a number of people, as emotion
does pass by the quick infection of sympathy, will carry belief with
it and make them see and testify to a quite impossible occurrence.
Hence miracles have always abounded where there was a great
fever of religious enthusiasm. The greater the heat of feeling the
less the coolness of observation and the more plentiful the mira
cles. Nay, it needs not much heat of feeling to see a miracle if a
number of persons be collected together intently expecting to see
something extraordinary happen: the ghost .seldom fails to appear
where the spectators are gathered together to see it. Every
religion has had its miracles and its multitudinous witnesses to
them. We do not believe it any the more on that account; we
ought indeed to believe it rather the less, since the miracle is pre
sumption, if not proof, of bad observation by the witnesses. The
lowest religion will have the most miracles, a higher religion will
have few of them, and the highest of all will probably have none
at ail. What we may fairly conclude from the testimony of hot
believers is that, by reason of their strong belief, they were not
witnesses to be depended upon, as observers. The interest of
miracles at this day, I take it, is not that which could attach to an
occurrence out of the fixed order of nature, but that which attaches
to the study of the defective, irregular, or actually morbid action
of the human brain, especially under conditions of unusual excite
ment ; it is not whether the body of a dead man which had lain in
the grave until it had begun to putrefy came to life again, but why
people thought and said so. When the belief in miracles has
become extinct they will be received by psychology into its domain
�14
Common Source of Error in
and they will be of lasting interest there. Indeed, it will be a
most instructive study of the future to elucidate and set forth the
exact relations of beliefs in supernatural phenomena to defective
or morbid functions of the brain. Supernaturalism will take its
proper place as an interesting chapter in psychology.
Thus much then with regard to the action which idea may exert
upon the senses; an action plainly so strong sometimes as to sub
due them into a complete subjection to it. In any case it is almost
impossible for one who has a preconceived notion in his mind to
help seeing in an event that only which is agreeable to the notion,
that which sorts or suits with it. Those who have not thought of
this tendency as an active source of fallacy in observation, and
realised how deeply, widely, constantly and unconsciously it works
are not qualified to weigh the value of testimony; they are like
those who should accept without question an assertion that the
trees and grass were blue from one who was looking at the country
through blue spectacles. To denote, moreover, this action of idea
upon sense vaguely as imagination or even as mental carries us no
further forward ; to rest satisfied there is simply to make a word
do duty for a conception; there is neither explanation nor definite
meaning in the statement. Whether we like it or not, we shall
have to acknowledge, first or last, that the process is at bottom
physical, and that we can have no explanation worth thinking
about until we find out what the physical basis is. Unhappily we
are yet a long way from that discovery; we must be satisfied for
the present to figure grossly to ourselves what takes place in the
intimate, most delicate and hidden operations of nerve molecules,
by the help of conceptions derived from the grosser operations in
physics which we can observe and manipulate. When the impres
sion on sense vibrates to the same note as the idea, we may say, it
is perceived and intensifies the idea—that is to say, is assimilated
mentally; when it does not vibrate in unison with it there is no
response, it is not perceived; the active idea responds to the note
that is in harmony with it, just as the string of a harp gives back
in consonant vibrations its proper note when that note is struck
near it.
I proceed now to mark the operation of the same sort of error
in the higher region of thought—in reasoning, that is, about what
we get from the senses when we have got the facts correctly.
Even then we are liable to go all wrong in the opinions or infer
ences which we form. The predominant bias sways the judgment.
Two persons shall have the same facts presented to them, and
�Seeing and Believing.
15
shall not differ as to the facts, yet it is notorious that they will,
according to the bias of their respective opinions, feelings, interests,
differ widely in the conclusions they draw from them, just as two
judges will give very unequal sentences for the same kind of
offence. How is it that the one sees a conclusion plainly and
thinks the other, who does not see it, blinded by prejudice to the
most obvious truth?' The reason of course is that each looks at
the circumstances from his own standpoint, and sees only or
mainly that which is in accord with the bias of his mind, over
looking that which is not; he sees vividly the reasons which
support his opinion, and which the other sees dimly or not at all;
he sees only dimly, or not at all, the reasons which go counter to
it, and which the other sees vividly. Now, how would a third
person, undertaking to bring these two to the same conclusion, go
about to accomplish it ? Certainly he would not treat them as
purely reasoning beings, and encourage them to go on arguing, by
which they would only heat themselves the more, but he would
handle each as if he was anything but an exact reasoning being;
he would not consider only the truth of what he had to say to
him, but would take account of his feelings, principles, prejudices,
character, and endeavour to bring this truth into the best relations
possible with these predominant lines of disposition, making it
pleasing or agreeable—that is to say, able to agree—and so to get
it accepted; he would in fact persuade by agreeing more than by
convincing, remembering the adage—
“ A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.”
Dealing in this insinuating way with both he brings them gently
and skilfully over their difference to the same conclusion, and that
the right conclusion if the affair be properly managed. One must
have the feelings of a person engaged in favour of reason before he
can see reason, must prejudice him in favour of an argument
before he can feel the force of it. Is not this a proof how very far
man is from being the good reasoning machine which he imagines
himself?
There is not a day, not an hour of the day perhaps, in any
one’s life which does not yield examples of this sort of biassed
or one-sided perception and reasoning. The moods of the moment
notably colour strongly our views of the character or issue of an
event, notwithstanding that the dry light of reason ought to
demonstrate a plain and certain conclusion. Optimism or pessi
mism is a matter of temperament, not of reason ; life-despair may
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Common Source of Error in
be the intellectual expression, and suicide the outcome in act, of
deranged organic feeling in a sadly tuned temperament. In that
extreme state of morbid depression of mind which we call
melancholia the sufferer cannot perceive a ray of hope, a glimmer
of comfort anywhere; he sees every undertaking, every scheme,
moving towards the same goal of ruin; he can follow the argu
ments which prove that his fears are groundless, but they produce
no effect upon him ; they reach his understanding, but they do
not touch his gloom-enshrouded heart, and accordingly they “no
more avail than breath against the wind.” Assuredly we credit
ourselves with a great deal larger measure of reason in the forma
tion and change of our beliefs than ever enters into them. On
the one hand, strong and convincing argument will sometimes not
compel belief; on the other hand, a change will sometimes take
place in an individual’s belief, while the reasons in favour of it are
as strong as ever; as Cardinal Newman has remarked, he does
not know how or when the belief has gone, but he finds out some
day that it is gone ; the perception of the old argument remains,
but some change in feeling in himself arising out of condition, age,
interests, occupation, &c., has worked a change of belief.
I shall not go on now to give any more illustrations from
individual experience, because I am anxious, in the time which
remains at my disposal, to point out how this source of error
in reasoning infects the belief of whole peoples, and leads them
to the most illogical conclusions. Do we not oftentimes see
nations swept by epidemics of feeling and belief, good or bad ?
Have wars been rational undertakings, or have they not been, in
nine cases out of ten, the results of insane suspicion and insaner
folly ? When one looks quietly back at the history of man’s
thoughts and doings upon earth, considering at the same time
his claim to be pre-eminently a reasoning animal, it is impossible
to help being amazed at the utterly irrational belief which pro
fessedly rational beings have formed and sincerely cherished.
More wonder, perhaps, that as they were so irrational as to form
and hold them they were ever rational enough to get rid of them.
It may be said, no doubt, that as they got better knowledge they
abandoned them, but I doubt whether knowledge has nearly so
much to do directly with human progress as we are in the easy
habit of assuming. It has always been as positive a piece of
knowledge as it is now that every one must die—that to be mortal
is not to be immortal—and that when a person is dead and buried
he does not come to life again ; that certainly is as long and sure
�Seeing and Believing.
17
an experience as human beings have had, since it dates from the
beginning of experience ; yet, in spite of that experience, the
greater part of those ranking amongst the most civilized and
enlightened of the earth, and marking therefore the highest water
mark of human progress, solemnly believe at this moment that
there have been men who have not died, and others who, after
being dead, have come to life again. And at great expense, and
through many perils, they send missionaries into all parts of the
earth to teach that wisdom to those whose sad ignorance of it
they compassionate. The very creed of the Christian is that the
God whom he worships became a man, was crucified on the cross,
died and was buried, and on the third day rose again and ascended
into heaven. That is a matter of solemn belief, but can we truly
say that it is a matter of rational knowledge ? Looked at in the
dry light of the understanding, we must admit that there could
not well be a doctrine more improbable, more revolting to reason.
How it strikes the unbiassed minds of those who have not been
trained from youth upwards to accept it we know by the experience
of the Jesuit missionaries in China, who found the dogma of a
crucified God so great an obstacle in the way of conversions that
they quietly suppressed it; they preached Jesus Christ triumphant,
not Jesus Christ crucified. It is beyond question then that there
is in man a power deeper and stronger than knowledge which
decides in some cases what he shall believe, and that the most
complete contradiction of observation and reason which it is
possible to conceive can be accepted as a solemn truth, if it be in
harmony with the prevailing tone or feeling of mind. Thereupon
all the powers of the understanding are brought into play, not to
prove it by a searching trial of its worth, but in order to find out
reasons why it should be believed. Meanwhile, all the reasons in
the world against it will not seriously touch it so long as there is
no fundamental change of feeling : when that takes place, how
ever, the whole fabric of belief tumbles easily to pieces without
any serious assault being made upon it. So far from rational im
probability being a difficulty to theological faith, the greater the
mystery the greater the faith of the true believer, until he reaches
the logical climax of sublime credulity in the acceptance of
Tertullian’s maxim—Credo quia impossible est, I believe it because
it is impossible.
Look back for a moment at the beginnings of Christianity.
How little had knowledge to do with its origin and progress I It
was born of the heart, not of the understanding of mankind, in the
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Common Source of Error in
stable not in the Academy or the Lyceum. The great and learned
of that time looked down on it with scorn as a pernicious supersti
tion, and it found acceptance among the poor and ignorant, the
publicans and sinners.
*
Let us note well the meaning of that:
the greatest revolutionary—or rather evolutionary—force which
has moved human society was not the product of the intellect, but
was an outcome of a glowing feeling of the universal brotherhood
of mankind; a feeling so deep and strong and true that it has
inspired and kept alive to this day many beliefs which outrage the
understanding. Can we believe then that the next great revolu
tionary force which shall move society afresh will spring from the
understanding and be governed by its rules? It needs little
reflection, I think, to show that a great social reform will never
come from a Senate or a House of Lords or other sort of upper
chamber, however cultivated and benevolent its members. No;
the impulse will come deep out of the heart of the people,
announcing itself many times beforehand no doubt in blind
yearnings, in wild explosions of social discontent, perhaps in reck
less uprisings of turbulence and violence, a great unreflecting
force, which it should be the function of intelligence to guide in
the right way. You may stop a revolution which has been
hatched in the intellect, by cutting off the heads of the few who
have knowledge ; you will never stop a revolution which has been
bred in the heart of the people by cutting off their heads. Instead
of denouncing wildly the social interest and visionary aspirations
which find outlets in communistic, socialistic, nihilistic, and
similar doctrines and disorders, it would be more wise to try to
understand their meaning; since it may be they are the blind,
* “ It is profitable to remind ourselves,” says Dr. Newman, “ that our Lord
Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four
Apostles were fishermen, one a petty-tax collector, two husbandmen, one
is said to have been a coachman, and another a market gardener.” Peter
and John are spoken of as “illiterate men and of the lower sort.” Their
converts were of the same rank. They are, says Celsus, “ weavers, shoe
makers, fullers, illiterate clowns.” “ Fools, low-born fellows,” says
Trypho. “ Men collected from the lowest dregs of the people ; ignorant,
credulous women; ” “ unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the
sordid arts of life; they do not understand civil matters, how can they
understand divine ? ” says Ccecilius. “ They deceive women, servants and
slaves,” says Julian. The Fathers themselves give similar testimony as to
their brethren. “ Ignorant men, mechanics, and old women,” says Athenagoras. “They are gathered,” says Jerome, “not from the Academy or
the Lyceum, but from the low populace.” Of meaner sort and more de
spised than the Communisis of Paris; and yet they overturned the world!
�Seeing and Believing.
19
instinctive, dimly prophetic impulses of a truth which, coming
from the suffering and brooding heart of society, lies deeper than
knowledge and which knowledge will one day have to reckon
with. No man’s intellect measures his character; from the un
fathomed depths of his being comes not only that which he shall
feel and do but in great measure also that which he shall think.
So it is with humanity as a whole. It is feeling which inspires
and stirs its great pulses, the intellect fashioning the moulds into
which the feeling shall flow. How momentously important then
that the people should have understanding, should learn know
ledge, so that neither craft of superstition, nor craft of ruler, nor
any other craft may again take possession of its forces and turn
them to its profit I
We are so comfortably confident of the stability of our progress
in these days that we do not give the heed we should to the lessons
of the past and consider seriously, as we might well do from time
to time, to what destructive issues uninstructed popular feeling
may one day carry us. There can be little doubt that each of the
mighty nations of the past believed that its kingdom would endure
and that it was impossible its gains should ever be lost to man
kind. But Home, and Greece, and Egypt are now but the
shadows of great names, and the once powerful Empires of the
East have disappeared so completely that even the places where
their mighty cities stood are hardly known. We may be sure that
there were sagacious men in each of these dead nations who fore
saw the end, perceived the causes that were leading straight to it,
and raised their unregarded voices in warning to the people. But
it is the eternal fate of Cassandra to be unheeded. In vain are the
most obvious truths preached to a people possessed by an impulse
of feeling with which they are not in harmony ; the nation which
is declining to its fall is as deaf to the admonitions of the few
thoughtful men who perceive and try to stay its course of folly
as it is blind to the plainest lessons of its own experience;
elementary principles of morality and the commonest maxims of
prudence go down alike before the current of feeling, and the
audacious charlatan who most cleverly flatters, fans, and directs
its sentiments is acclaimed and obeyed as a hero. This has
always been so, and it would be taking much too hopeful a view
of human nature to believe that it will not be so again. In spite
of all the gains of modern knowledge, which we think so certain,
but which, after all, are the real work and possession of only a
few, it is not at all out of the range of possible occurence that a
�20
Common Source of Error in
great turbid wave of superstition may overflow and overwhelm our
civilization, as other civilizations have been overwhelmed before it.
Do you think perhaps that the foundations of modern knowledge
are laid so deep and sure that it is incredible that they should ever
be swept away ? Well, it is a very sanguine belief: one might
have thought it as sure a truth as could well be that a person once
dead will not come to life again, but while multitudes believe the
opposite of that very plain experience, are the foundations of
belief so very sure ? xMen are not moved by knowledge, let me
say again, but by feeling, and were a strong wave of superstitious
feeling to pass through them they would see and believe nothing
that was not in harmony with it, would see and believe every
thing that was in harmony with it, would move on, until it was
spent, a huge devastating force, so far as pure reason was
concerned.
There is something too much of complacent self-deception in the
loud praise which we give to pure truth and in the high-flown devo
tion which we loudly profess to it; we make up by our theoretical
enthusiasm for it for much practical dislike and intolerance of it.
Truth is not so acceptable as illusion, since we live in perpetual
illusion, deceived and deceiving. We seem what we are not, and
make others believe that we think them what they are not. No
one speaks the truth sincerely to another, or talks of him in his
presence as he does in his absence. There is no one who would
not think himself grossly insulted if he had truth told of him, nor
would any one who adopted the practice of speaking the truth
always find it easy to keep himself out of an asylum. We hate the
speaker of truth, although the truth which hurts our self-love may
be most useful to us;. and love the flatterer, although we know the
flattery to be false and injurious. The ardent profession which
we make of a love of pure truth is itself a comfortable illusion
which we create for ourselves. From cradle to grave we are occu
pied—wisely, I dare say—in nursing our illusions, putting away
one, when we have worn it out, to take up another more fitting
the new desires which experience and years give us. If a person
really believed at the outset of life, as he knows at the end of it,
that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, would he have sufficient
motive to live ? Had there been no illusory prospect of Elysian
fields, or happy hunting grounds, or other sort of paradise beyond
the miseries of this world, where those who had suffered much and
unjustly here might hope to find recompense, one may doubt
almost whether faith in virtue could have been kept alive, whether
�*
‘Seeing and Believing.
21
the social organism would have held together ; at any rate, thou
sands of dreary lives would have been more dreary than they were,
thousands of self-sacrifices of work, of wealth, of duty, would never
have been made, the hopes, aspirations, and prayers which have
consoled and sustained thousands of heavy-laden hearts would not
have been. What then will be the consequence if science, as it
seems to threaten, shatters these hopes as illusions ? Will the
multitude be able to bear the pain, to face the fearful void, of so
great a loss ? Will man be able to live what the Bishop of Peter
borough has described lately as. “ a joyless existence, uncheered by
the hope of a happier hereafter, undignified by the consciousness of
divine descent and the heirship of immortality,” if science makes
him sincerely realise, as it seems to be going to work to do, that
he has no hope whatever of a happier hereafter, that his descent is
not divine but simian, that his last heirship is the corruption of
the grave ? Will not the bereaved people, craving for something
to satisfy the needs of the heart which knowledge cannot give, fly
for refuge in despair to some creed or church in which they may
find again the hopes, and consolation, and support of which they
have been robbed ?
Here lies the strength of the position of the Church of Rome.
Possessing an organization the most complete which the world
has ever known, served by its ministers with a devotion which
counts nothing gain that is not its gain, inspired with the theory
that the meanest human soul is worthy of all its energies, it offers
what seems a safe haven of refuge in the midst of the surging tur
moil of doubts, perplexities, and despair, the perfect rest of absolute
truth delivered into its keeping from the beginning: Come unto
me, might be its cry, all ye that are weary of spirit, with many
doubts and heavyladen of heart with the burden of your fears,
and I will give yon rest.
*
It is admirably adapted by its organi
* “ Thus it is sometimes spoken of as a hardship that a Catholic is not
allowed to inquire into the truth of his Creed ; of course he cannot if he
would retain the name of believer. He cannot be both inside and outside
of the Church at once. It is merely common sense to tell him that, if he
is seeking, he has not found. If seeking includes doubting, and doubting
excludes believing, then the Catholic who sets about inquiring thereby
declares that he is not a Catholic. He has already lost faith.”
J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent. p. 184.
“ For, since we have the truth, and truth cannot change, how can we
possibly change in our belief, except indeed through our own weakness
or. fickleness.” p. 186.
�22
Common Source of Error in
zation, its ordinances, and its doctrine to respond to all the appeals
of the weak side of human nature. And I make no doubt many
will flee to it in the coming conflicts. But not of the people, we
may predict; not of the masses which constitute the foundation
and strength of the social organism. Its converts will come from
the tired votaries of fashion, weary of the dreary frivolities of
their lives, and eager to replace their exhausted desires by new
sentiments; from those who are educated enough to perceive
difficulties and perplexities of thought, without being courageous
and capable enough to face them sincerely and to think them out
thoroughly; from those again who, in the mortal struggle of new
thought for existence, have not the strength of understanding and
character to stay through the course, but falling by the wayside,
eagerly in their need lay hold of the helping hand which authority
holds out to them. These and the like are the classes from which
its converts will mainly come. The strong pulsations of popular feel
ing which make themselves felt in different nations, have no affini
ties with the Church of Rome nor has it shown the least sympathy
with them ; on the contrary they are essentially hostile to it, since
it has committed what seems to an outsider the fatal mistake of
allying itself with caste, privilege, power, and of alienating the
great liberal forces with which lies the determination of the
future : Catholic in name it has lost all claim to be Catholic in
fact. It is a rash thing to prophesy, but if I may venture a
prophesy here, it is that it will be by these great popular forces,
not by the knowledge of the learned, that it will be overthrown in
the final struggle. The French Revolution, momentous as an
event, was perhaps more momentous as a prophesy.
If what I have said thus far be true, what is the function of
those who have faith in the future of mankind, who are sanguine
enough to nurse enthusiastic hopes of its glorious destiny ? As
suredly to work well together, while it is time, to enlighten the
giant, so that when he puts forth his strength he may use it wisely,
to give him the understanding to direct his might in the right way.
Although intellect does not move the world it should guide directly
the forces which do move it, and so modify indirectly, as it will by
degrees, the deeper sources in which they take their instinctive
origin. One thing is certain whatever else may be doubtful: that
the true and honest method to pursue is directly the opposite of
that which the Churches have striven to enforce ; it is not to incul
cate credulity, to stifle doubt, to foster prej udice, in order that the
beliefs which are may continue to be. That method we know to be
�Seeing and Believing.
23
false. It is to seek truth and pursue it, at whatever cost, whether
it bring us sorrow or joy, peace or tribulation. Doubt, be it never
so disquieting, must go before enquiry, and enquiry before the
discovery of new truth. Scepticism is guilt in the eyes only of those
who fear truth, since it is the essential prerequisite of it. It is
impossible to foresee what fate the future has in store for the race
of man on earth; one may fain hope a more peaceful and happy
career than that which he has had in the past, since to look back
through his history from the beginning unto now is to look back
through succeeding chapters of wars, treachery, tortures, cruelties
and atrocities of all sorts and degrees by which “ man’s inhumanity
to man” has “made countless thousands mourn;” a spectacle of
horrors so appalling that, could we compass it in imagination, it
might well warrant the belief, if matters ended now, of a malevo
lent, not a benevolent, scheme of creation. We shall do well to
cherish the hope, or if not the hope the illusion, that matters will
not end here; that a brighter day will come when knowledge and
peace shall spread through the whole earth, and man’s humanity
to man leave few to mourn; that the past traditions of a golden
age, when all was plenty and peace, and the later aspirations for
a Paradise to come, in which sorrow and sin shall be no more,
may be not entire fable and illusion, but essentially dim fore
feelings, the prophetic instincts, of that which one day shall have
a measure of fulfilment upon earth.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
The SOCIETY’S LECTURES NOW PRINTED are .—
Miss Mary E. Beedy. On “Joint Education of Young Men and Women
in the American Schools and Colleges.”
Rev. J. F. Blake. On “The Geological Results of Arctic Exploration.”
Professor G. S. Boulger. On “The Physiological Unity of Plants and
Animals.”
Professor Clifford. On “ The bearing of Morals on Religion.”
On “Right and Wrong; the scientific ground of their distinction.”
Mr. T. W. Rhys Davids. On “ Is life worth having ? and the eternal
Hope. An Answer from Buddha’s First Sermon.”
Mr. W. H. Domvtlle. On “ The Rights and Duties of Parents in regard
to their children’s religious education and beliefs.” With notes.
Mr. A. Elley Finch. On “The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in
the Development of the Human Mind.” With woodcut illustrations.
On “ Civilization; its modern safeguards and future prospects.”
On “The Principles of Political Economy; their scientific basis, and
practical application to Social Well-being.”
On “The English Freethinkers of the Eighteenth Century.”
On “ The Science of Life Worth Living.”
On “The Victories of Science in its Warfare with Superstition.”
Rev. J. Panton Ham. On “The Stage and Drama in relation to Society.”
Professor W. A. Hunter. On “A sketch of the English Law of
Heresy past and present.”
Mr. M. Macfie. On “ The impending contact of Turanian and Aryan
Races;—the Physical and Economic results of Chinese migrations
to the West.”
On “ Religious Parallelisms and Symbolisms, Ancient and Modern.”
Dr. H. Maudsley. On “ Lessons of Materialism.”
On “ The Physical Basis of Will.”
On “ Common Source of Error in Seeing and Believing.”
Mrs. Fenwick Miller. “ The Lessons of a Life :—Harriet Martineau.”
Dr. Andrew Wilson. On “ The Origin of Nerves.”
Dr. G. G. Zerffi. On “ The spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
On “ The Eastern Question; from a Religious and Social point of view.”
On “ Jesuitism, and the Priest in Absolution.”
On “ Pre-Adamites ; or, Prejudice and Science.”
On “ Long and short Chronologists.”
On “ The Origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of View.”
The price of each of the above Lectures is 3d., or post-free 3)d.
Mr. A. Elley Finch. On “The Pursuit of Truth.” Cloth 8vo„
pp. 106. “ The Inductive Philosophy.” Cloth 8vo„ pp. 100.
The price of each of these Lectures is 5s., or post-free 5s. 3d.
Two vols. of Lectures (1st and 3rd Selection), cloth-bound, price 5s.
each, or post-free 5s. 6d., contain Lectures otherwise out of print, viz.:
by the late Mr. Geo. Browning and Professor Clifford, and by
Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Clodd, Mr. Edward Maitland, Mr. Plumptre,
and Dr. Zerffi. Table of contents of these vols. sent on application.
Can be obtained (on remittance, by letter, of postage stamps or order) of
the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domvtlle, Esq., 15, Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecturi;
or ofTAv. J. Bumpus, Bookseller, 158, Oxford Street, W.
�
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Common source of error in seeing and believing : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 27th February, 1881
Creator
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Maudsley, Henry [1835-1918]
Description
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Presented in Memory of Dr. Moncure D. Conway by his children, July Nineteen hundred & eight. Includes bibliographical references. List of Sunday Society Society lectures on back page.
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Sunday Lecture Society
Date
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1881
Identifier
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N477
CT87
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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 (Common source of error in seeing and believing), 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
Subject
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Christianity
Bible
Christian church
Conway Tracts
Fallacies
Miracles
New Testament