# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 1/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT ON LIFE.
Man is not a being of isolated faculties which act independently. The religious, like each other element in us, acts jointly with other powers. Its action therefore is helped or hindered by them. The Idea of Religion is only realized by an harmonious action of all the faculties, the intellectual, the moral. Yet the religious faculty must act, ​more or less, though the understanding be not cultivated, and the moral elements sleep in Egyptian night; in connection therefore with Wisdom or Folly, with Hope or Fear, with Love or Hate. Now in all periods of human history Religion demands something of her votaries. The ruder their condition, the more capricious and unreasonable is the demand. Though the Religious instinct itself be ever the same, the form of its expression varies with man's intellectual and moral state. Its influence on life may be considered under its three different manifestations.
I. Of Superstition.
Combining with Ignorance and Fear, the Religious Element leads to Superstition. This is the vilification and debasement of men. It may be defined as Fear before God. Plutarch, though himself religious, pronounced it worse than Atheism. But the latter cannot exist to the same extent; is never an active principle. Superstition is a morbid state of human nature, where the conditions of religious development are not fulfilled; where the functions of the religious faculty are impeded and counteracted. But it must act, as the heart beats in the frenzy of a fever. It has been said with truth, “Perfect love casts out fear.” The converse is quite as true. Perfect fear casts out Love. The superstitious man begins by fearing God, not loving him. He goes on, like a timid boy in the darkness, by projecting his own conceptions out of himself; conjuring up a phantom he calls his God; a Deity capricious, cruel, revengeful, lying in wait for the unwary; a God ugly, morose, and only to be feared. He ends by paying a service meet for such a God, the service of Horror and Fear. Each man's conception of God is his conception of a man carried out to infinity; the pure idea is eclipsed by a human personality. This conception therefore varies as the men who form it vary. It is the index of their Soul. The superstitious man projects out of himself a creation begotten of his Folly and his Fear; calls the furious phantom God, Moloch, Jehovah; then attempts to please the capricious Being he has conjured up. To do this, the demands his Superstition makes are not to keep the laws which the one God wrote on the walls of Man's being; but to do arbitrary ​acts which this fancied God demands. He must give up to the deity what is dearest to himself. Hence the savage offers a sacrifice of favourite articles of food; the first-fruits of the chase, or agriculture; weapons of war which have done signal service; the nobler animals; the skins of rare beasts. He conceives the anger of his God may be soothed like a man's excited passion by libations, incense, the smoke of plants, the steam of a sacrifice.
Again, the superstitious man would appease his God by unnatural personal service. He undertakes an enterprise, almost impossible, and succeeds, for the fire of his purpose subdues and softens the rock that opposes him. He submits to painful privation of food, rest, clothing; leads a life of solitude; wears a comfortless dress, that girds and frets the very flesh; stands in a painful position; shuts himself in a dungeon; lives in a cave; stands on a pillar's top; goes unshorn and filthy. He exposes himself to be scorched by the sun and frozen by the frost. He lacerates his flesh; punctures his skin to receive sacred figures of the Gods. He mutilates his body, cutting off the most useful members. He sacrifices his cattle, his enemies, his children; defiles the sacred temple of his body; destroys his mortal life to serve his God. In a state more refined, Superstition demands abstinence from all the sensual goods of life. Its present pleasures are a godless thing. The flesh is damned. To serve God is to mortify the appetites God gave. Then the superstitious man abstains from comfortable food, clothing, and shelter; comes neither eating nor drinking; watches all night absorbed in holy vigils. The man of God must be thin and spare. Bernard has but to show his neck, fleshless and scraggy, to be confessed a mighty saint. Above all, he must abstain from marriage. The Devil lurks under the bridal rose. The vow of the celibate can send him howling back to hell. The smothered volcano is grateful to God. Then comes the assumption of arbitrary vows; the performance of pilgrimages to distant places, thinly clad and barefoot; the repetition of prayers, not as a delight, spontaneously poured out, but as a penance, or work of supererogation. In this state, Superstition builds convents, monasteries, sends Anthony to his dwelling in the desert; it founds orders of Mendicants, Rechabites, Nazarites, Encratites, Pilgrims, Flagel​lants, and similar Moss-troopers of Religion, whom Heaven yet turns to good account. This is the Superstition of the Flesh. It promises the favour of its God on condition of these most useless and arbitrary acts. It dwells on the absurdest of externals.
However, in a later day it goes to still more subtle refinements. The man does not mutilate his body, nor give up the most sacred of his material possessions. This was the Superstition of savage life. But he mutilates his soul; gives up the most sacred of his spiritual treasures. This is the Superstition of refined life. Here the man is ready to forego Reason, Conscience, and Love, God's most precious gifts; the noblest attributes of Man; the tie that softly joins him to the eternal world. He will think against Reason; decide against Conscience; act against Love; because he dreams the God of Reason, Conscience, and Love demands it. It is a slight thing to hack and mutilate the body, though it be the fairest temple God ever made, and to mar its completeness a sin. But to dismember the soul, the very image of God; to lop off most sacred affections; to call Reason a Liar, Conscience a devil's-oracle, and cast Love clean out from the heart, this is the last triumph of Superstition; but one often witnessed, in all three forms of Religion—Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism; in all ages before Christ; in all ages after Christ. This is the Superstition of the Soul. The one might be the Superstition of the Hero; this is the Superstition of the Pharisee.
A man rude in spirit must have a rude conception of God. He thinks the Deity like himself. If a Buffalo had a religion, his conception of Deity would probably be a Buffalo, fairer limbed, stronger, and swifter than himself, grazing in the fairest meadows of Heaven. If he were superstitious, his service would consist in offerings of grass, of water, of salt; perhaps in abstinence from the pleasures, comforts, necessities of a bison's life. His devil also would be a Buffalo, but of another colour, lean, vicious, and ugly. Now when a man has these rude conceptions, inseparable from a rude state, offerings and sacrifice are natural. When they come spontaneous, as the expression of a grateful or a penitent heart; the seal of a resolution; the sign of Faith, Hope, and Love, as an outward symbol which strengthens the in-dwelling sentiment—the sacrifice is ​pleasant and may be beautiful. The child who saw God in the swelling and rounded clouds of a June day, and left on a rock the ribbon-grass and garden roses as mute symbols of gratitude to the Great Spirit who poured out the voluptuous weather; the ancient pagan who bowed prone to the dust, in homage, as the sun looked out from the windows of morning, or offered the smoke of incense at nightfall in gratitude for the day, or kissed his hand to the Moon, thankful for that spectacle of loveliness passing above him; the man who, with reverent thankfulness or penitence, offers a sacrifice of joy or grief, to express what words too poorly tell;—he is no idolater, but Nature's simple child. We rejoice in self-denial for a father, a son, a friend. Love and every strong emotion has its sacrifice. It is rooted deep in the heart of men. God needs nothing. He cannot receive; yet Man needs to give. But if these things are done as substitutes for holiness, as causes and not mere signs of reconciliation with God, as means to coax and wheedle the Deity and bribe the All-powerful, it is Superstition, rank and odious. Examples enough of this are found in all ages. To take two of the most celebrated cases, one from the Hebrews, the other from a Heathen people: Abraham would sacrifice his son to Jehovah, who demanded that offering, Agamemnon his daughter to ​angry Diana. But a Deity kindly interferes in both cases. The Angel of Jehovah rescues Isaac from the remorseless knife; a ram is found for a sacrifice. Diana delivers the daughter of Agamemnon and leaves a hind in her place. No one doubts the latter is a case of superstition most ghastly and terrible. A father murder his own child—a human sacrifice to the Lord of Life! It is rebellion against Conscience, Reason, Affection; treason against God. Though Calchas, the anointed minister, declared it the will of Heaven—there is an older than Calchas who says, It is a Lie. He that defends the former patriarch, counting it a blameless and beautiful act of piety and faith performed at the command of God—what shall be said of him? He proves the worm of Superstition is not yet dead, nor its fire quenched, and leads weak men to ask, Which then has most of Religion, the Christian, who justifies Abraham, or the Pagan Greeks, who condemned Agamemnon? He leads weak men to ask; the strong make no question of so plain a matter.
But why go back to Patriarchs at Aulis or Moriah; do we not live in New England and the nineteenth century? Have the footsteps of Superstition been effaced from our land? Our books of theology are full thereof; our churches and homes, not empty of it. When a man fears God more than he loves him; when he will forsake Reason, Conscience, Love—the still small voice of God in the heart—for any of the legion voices of Authority, Tradition, Expediency, which come of Ignorance, Selfishness, and Sin; whenever he hopes by a poor prayer, or a listless attendance at church, or an austere observance of Sabbaths and Fast-days, a compliance with forms; when he hopes by professing with his tongue the doctrine he cannot believe in his heart, to atone for wicked actions, wrong thoughts, unholy feelings, a six-days' life of meanness, deception, rottenness, and sin,—then is he superstitious. Are there no fires but those of Moloch; no idols of printed paper, and spoken wind? No false worship but bowing the knee to Baal, Adonis, Priapus, Cybele? Superstition changes its forms, not its substance. If he were superstitious who ​in days of ignorance but made his son's body pass through the fire to his God, what shall be said of them in an age of light, who systematically degrade the fairest gifts of men, God's dearest benefaction; who make life darkness, death despair, the world a desert, Man a worm, nothing but a worm, and God an ugly fiend, that made the most of men for utter wretchedness, death, and eternal hell? Alas for them. They are blind and see not. They lie down in their folly. Let Charity cover them up.
II. Of Fanaticism.
There is another morbid state of the religious Element. It consists in its union with Hatred and other malignant passions in men. Here it leads to Fanaticism. As the essence of Superstition is Fear coupled with religious feeling; so the essence of Fanaticism is Malice mingling with that sentiment. It may be called Hatred before God. The Superstitious man fears lest God hate him; the Fanatic thinks he hates not him but his enemies. Is the Fanatic a Jew?—the Gentiles are hateful to Jehovah; a Mahometan?—all are infidel dogs who do not bow to the prophet, their end is destruction. Is he a Christian?—he counts all others as Heathens whom God will damn; of this or that sect?—he condemns all the rest for their belief, let their life be divine as the prayer of a saint. Out of his selfish passion he creates him a God; breathes into it the breath of his Hatred; he worships and prays to it, and says “Deliver me, for thou art my God.” Then he feels—so he fancies—inspiration to visit his foes with divine vengeance. He can curse and smite them in the name of his God. It is the sword of the Lord, and the fire of the Most High that drinks up the blood and stifles the groan of the wretched.
Like Superstition, it is found in all ages of the world. It is the insanity of mankind. As the richest soils grow weightiest harvests, or most noxious weeds and poisons the most baneful; as the strongest bodies take disease the most sorely; so the deepest natures, the highest forms of worship, when once infected with this leprosy, go to the wildest excess of desperation. Thus the fanaticism of worshippers of one God has no parallel among idolaters ​and polytheists. There is a point in human nature where moral distinctions do not appear, as on the earth there are spots where the compass will not traverse, and dens where the sun never shines. This fact is little dwelt on by philosophers; still it is a fact. Seen from this point, Right and Wrong lose their distinctive character and run into each other. Good seems Evil and Evil Good, or both appear the same. The sophistry of the understanding sometimes leagues with appetite, and gradually entices the thoughtless into this pit. The Antinomian of all times turns in thither, to increase his Faith and diminish his Works. It is the very cave of Trophonius; he that enters loses his manhood and walks backward as he returns; his soul, so filled with God, whatever the flesh does, he thinks cannot be wrong, though it break all laws, human and divine. The fanatic dwells continually in this state. God demands of him to persecute his foes. The thought troubles him by day, and stares on him as a spectre at night. God, or his angel, appear to his crazed fancy and bid him to the work with promise of reward, or spurs him with a curse. Then there is no lie too malignant for him to invent and utter; no curse too awful for him to imprecate; no refinement of torture too cruel or exquisitely rending for his fancy to devise, his malice to inflict; Nature is teased for new tortures; Art is racked to extort fresh engines of cruelty. As the jaded Roman offered a reward for the invention of a new pleasure, so the fanatic would renounce Heaven could he give an added pang to hell.
Men of this character have played so great a part in the world's history, they must not be passed over in silence. The ashes of the innocents they have burned, are sown broadcast and abundant in all lands. The earth is quick with this living dust. The blood of prophets and saviours they have shed still cries for justice. The Canaanites, the Jews, the Saracen, the Christian, Polytheist and Idolater, New Zealand and New England, are guilty of this. Let the early Christian and the delaying Heathen tell their tale. Let the voice of the Heretic speak from the dungeon-racks of the Inquisition; that of the “true believer" from the scaffolds of Elizabeth—most Christian Queen; let the voices of the murdered come up from the squares of Paris, the plains of the Low Countries, from the streets of Antioch, Byzantium, ​Jerusalem, Alexandria, Damascus, Rome, Mexico; from the wheels, racks, and gibbets of the world; let the men who died in religious wars, always the bloodiest and most remorseless; the women, whom nothing could save from a fate yet more awful; the babes, newly born, who perished in the sack and conflagration of idolatrous and heretical cities, when for the sake of Religion men violated its every precept, and in the name of God broke down his Law, and trampled his image into bloody dust;—let all these speak, to admonish, and to blame.
But it is not well to rest on general terms alone. Paul had no little fanaticism, when he persecuted the Christians; kept the garments of men who stoned Stephen. Moses had much of it, if, as the story goes, he commanded the extirpation of nations of idolaters, millions of men, virtuous as the Jews; Joshua, Samuel, David, had much of it, and executed schemes bloody as a murderer's most sanguine dream. It has been both the foe and the auxiliary of the Christian Church. There is a long line of Fanatics, extending from the time of Jesus, reaching from century to century, marching on from age to age, with the banner of the Cross over their heads, and the Gospel on their tongues, and fire and sword in their hands. The last of that Apocalyptic rabble has not as yet passed by. Let the clouds of darkness hide them. What need to tell of our own fathers; what they suffered, what they inflicted; their crime is fresh and unatoned. Rather let us take the wings of an angel, and fly away from scenes so awful, the slaughter-house of souls.
But the milder forms of Fanaticism we cannot escape. They meet us in the theological war of extermination, which sect now wars with sect, pulpit with pulpit, man with man. If one would seek specimens of Superstition in its milder form, let him open a popular commentary on the Bible, or read much of that weakish matter which circulates in what men call, as if in mockery, "good, pious books.” If he would find Fanaticism in its modern and more Pharisaic shape, let him open the sectarian newspapers, or read theological polemics. To what mean uses may we not descend? The spirit of a Caligula and a Dominic, of Alva ​and Ignatius stares at men in the street. It can only bay in the distance; it dares not bite. Poor, craven Fanaticism! fallen like Lucifer, never to hope again. Like Pope and Pagan in the story, he sits chained by the wayside to grin and gibber, and howl and snarl, as the Pilgrim goes by, singing the song of the fearless and free, on the highway to Heaven, with his girdle about him and white robe on. Poor Fanaticism, who was drunk with the blood of the saints, and in his debauch lifted his horn and pushed at the Almighty, and slew the children of God,—he shall revel but in the dreamy remembrance of his ancient crime; his teeth shall be fleshed no more in the limbs of the living.
These two morbid states just past over, represent the most hideous forms of human degradation; where the foulest passions are at their foulest work; where Malice, which a Devil might envy, and which might make Hell darker with its frown; where Hate and Rancour build up their organizations and ply their arts. In man there is a mixture of good and evil. “A being darkly wise and poorly great,” he has in him somewhat of the Angel and something of the Devil. In Fanaticism, the Angel sleeps and the Devil drives. But let us leave the hateful theme.
III. Of Solid Piety.
The legitimate and perfect action of the Religious Element takes place when it exists in harmonious combination with Reason, Conscience, and Affection. Then it is not Hatred, and not Fear, but Love before God. It produces the most beautiful development of human nature; the golden age, the fairest Eden of life, the kingdom of Heaven. Its Deity is the God of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Holiness—Fidelity to Himself,—within whose encircling arms it is beautiful to be. The demands it makes are to keep the Law He has written in the heart, ​to be good, to do good; to love men, to love God. It may use forms, prayers, dogmas, ceremonies, priests, temples, sabbaths, festivals, and fasts; yes, sacrifices if it will, as means, not ends; symbols of a sentiment, not substitutes for it. Its substance is Love of God; its Piety the form, Morality the Love of men; its temple a pure heart; its sacrifice a divine life. The end it proposes is, to reunite the man with God, till he thinks God's thought, which is Truth; feels God's feeling, which is Love, wills God's will, which is the eternal Right; thus finding God in the sense wherein he is not far from any one of us; becoming one with Him, and so partaking the divine nature. The means to this high end are an extinction of all in man that opposes God's law; a perfect obedience to Him as he speaks in Reason, Conscience, Affection. It leads through active obedience to an absolute trust, a perfect love; to the complete harmony of the finite man with the infinite God, and man's will coalesces in that of Him who is All in All. Then Faith and Knowledge are the same thing, Reason and Revelation do not conflict, Desire and Duty go hand in hand, and strew man's path with flowers. Desire has become dutiful, and Duty desirable. The divine spirit incarnates itself in the man. The riddle of the world is solved. Perfect love casts out fear. Then Religion demands no particular actions, forms, or modes of thought. The man's ploughing is holy as his prayer; his daily bread as the smoke of his sacrifice; his home sacred as his temple; his work-day and his sabbath are alike God's day. His priest is the holy spirit within him; Faith and Works his communion of both kinds. He does not sacrifice Reason to Religion, nor Religion to Reason. Brother and Sister, they dwell together in love. A life harmonious and beautiful, conducted by Righteousness, filled full with Truth and enchanted by Love to men and God,—this is the service he pays to the Father of All. Belief does not take the place of Life. Capricious austerity atones for no duty left undone. He loves Religion as a bride, for her own sake, not for what she brings. He lies low in the hand of God. The breath of the Father is on him.
If Joy comes to this man, he rejoices in its rosy light. His Wealth, his Wisdom, his Power, is not for himself alone, but for all God's children. Nothing is his which a ​brother needs more than he. Like God himself, he is kind to the thankless and unmerciful. Purity without and Piety within; these are his Heaven, both present and to come. Is not his flesh as holy as his soul—his body a temple of God?
If trouble comes on him, which Prudence could not foresee, nor Strength overcome, nor Wisdom escape from, he bears it with a heart serene and full of peace. Over every gloomy cavern, and den of despair, Hope arches her rainbow; the ambrosial light descends. Religion shows him that, out of desert rocks, black and savage, where the Vulture has her home, where the Storm and the Avalanche are born, and whence they descend, to crush and to kill; out of these hopeless cliffs, falls the river of Life, which flows for all, and makes glad the people of God. When the Storm and the Avalanche sweep from him all that is dearest to mortal hope, is he comfortless? Out of the hard marble of Life, the deposition of a few joys and many sorrows, of birth and death, and smiles and grief, he hews him the beautiful statue of religious Tranquillity. It stands ever beside him, with the smile of heavenly satisfaction on its lip, and its thrusting finger pointing to the sky.
The true religious man, amid all the ills of time, keeps a serene forehead, and entertains a peaceful heart. Thus going out and coming in amid all the trials of the city, the agony of the plague, the horrors of the thirty tyrants, the fierce democracy abroad, the fiercer ill at home, the Saint, the Sage of Athens, was still the same. Such an one can endure hardness; can stand alone and be content; a rock amid the waves, lonely, but not moved. Around him the few or many may scream their screams, or cry their clamours; calumniate or blaspheme. What is it all to him, but the cawing of the sea-bird about that solitary and deep-rooted stone? So swarms of summer flies, and spiteful wasps, may assail the branches of an oak, which lifts its head, storm-tried and old, above the hills. They move a leaf, or bend a twig, by their united weight. Their noise, fitful and malicious, elsewhere might frighten the sheep in the meadows. Here it becomes a placid hum. It joins the wild whisper of the leaves. It swells the breezy music of the tree, but makes it bear no acorn less.
​He fears no evil, God is his armour against fate. He rejoices in his trials, and Jeremiah sings psalms in his dungeon, and Daniel prays three times a day with his window up, that all may hear, and Nebuchadnezzar cast him to the lions if he will; Luther will go to the Diet at Worms, if it rain enemies for nine days running; “though the Devils be thick as the tiles on the roof.” Martyred Stephen sees God in the clouds. The victim at the stake glories in the fire he lights, which shall shine all England through. Yes, Paul, an old man forsaken of his friends, tried by many perils, daily expecting an awful death, sits comforted in his dungeon. The Lord stands by and says, Fear not, Paul, Lo, I am with thee to the world's end. The tranquil saint can say, I know whom I have served. I have not the spirit of fear, but joy. I am ready to be sacrificed. Such trials prove the Soul as Gold is proved. The dross perishes in the fire; but the virgin metal—it comes brighter from the flame. What is it for such a man to be scourged, forsaken, his name a proverb, counted as the offscouring of the world? There is that in him which looks down millions. Cast out, he is not in dismay; forsaken, never less alone. Slowly and soft the Soul of Faith comes into the man. He knows that he is seen by the pure and terrible eyes of Infinity. He feels the sympathy of the Soul of All, and says, with modest triumph, I am not alone, for Thou art with me. Mortal affections may cease their melody; but the Infinite speaks to his soul comfort too deep for words, and too divine. What if he have not the Sun of human affection to cheer him? The awful faces of the stars look from the serene depths of divine Love, and seem to say, “Well done.” What if the sweet music of human sympathy vanish before the discordant curse of his brother man? The melody of the spheres—so sweet we heed it not when tried less sorely—rolls in upon the soul its tranquil tide, and that same Word, which was in the beginning, says, “Thou art my beloved Son, and in thee am I well pleased.” Earth is overcome, and Heaven won.
It is well for mankind that God now and then raises up a hero of the soul; exposes him to grim trials in the forefront of the battle; sustains him there, that we may know what nobility is in Man, and how near him God; to ​show that greatness in the religious man is only needed to be found; that his Charity does not expire with the quiverings of his flesh; that this hero can end his breath with a “Father, forgive them.”
Man everywhere is the measure of man. There is nothing which the Flesh and the Devil can inflict in their rage, but the Holy Spirit can bear in its exceeding peace. The Art of the tormentor is less than the Nature of the suffering soul. All the denunciations of all that sat on Moses's seat, or have since climbed to that of the Messiah; the scorn of the contemptuous; the fury of the passionate; the wrath of a monarch, and the roar of his armies; all these are to a religious soul but the buzzing of the flies about that mountain oak. There is nothing that prevails against Truth.
Now in some men Religion is a continual growth. They are always in harmony with God. Silently and unconscious, erect as a palm tree, they grow up to the measure of a man. To them Reason and Religion are of the same birth. They are born saints; Aborigines of Heaven. Betwixt their Idea of Life and their Fact of Life there has at no time been a gulf. But others join themselves to the Armada of Sin, and get scarred all over with wounds as they do thankless battle in that leprous host. Before these men become religious, there must be a change,—well-defined, deeply marked,—a change that will be remembered. The Saints who have been sinners, tell us of the struggle and desperate battle that goes on between the Flesh and the Spirit. It is as if the Devil and the Archangel contended. Well says John Bunyan, The Devil fought with me weeks long, and I with the Devil. To take the leap of Niagara, and stop when half-way down, and by their proper motion reascend, is no slight thing, nor the remembrance thereof like to pass away.
This passage from sin to salvation; this second birth of the Soul, as both Christians and Heathens call it, is one of the many mysteries of Man. Two elements meet in the consciousness. There is a negation of the past; an affirmation of the future. Terror and Hope, Penitence and Faith, rush together in that moment and a new life begins. The character gradually grows over the wounds of sin. With bleeding feet the man retreads his way, but gains at last ​the mountain top of Life and wonders at the tortuous track he left behind.
Shall it be said that Religion is the great refinement of the world; its tranquil star that never sets? Need it be told that all Nature works in its behalf; that every mute and every living thing seems to repeat God's voice, Be perfect; that Nature, which is the out-ness of God, favours Religion, which is the in-ness of Man, and so God works with us? Heathens knew it many centuries ago. It has long been known that Religion—in its true estate—created the deepest welfare of Man. Socrates, Seneca, Plutarch, Antoninus, Fenelon can tell us this. It might well be so. Religion comes from what is strongest, deepest, most beautiful and divine; lays no rude hand on soul or sense; condemns no faculty as base. It sets no bounds to Reason but Truth; none to Affection but Love; none to Desire but Duty; none to the Soul but Perfection; and these are not limits, but the charter of infinite freedom.
No doubt there is joy in the success of earthly schemes. There is joy to the miser as he satiates his prurient palm with gold: there is joy for the fool of fortune when his gaming brings a prize. But what is it? His request is granted; but leanness enters his soul. There is delight in feasting on the bounties of Earth, the garment in which God veils the brightness of his face; in being filled with the fragrant loveliness of flowers; the song of birds; the hum of bees; the sounds of ocean; the rustle of the summer wind, heard at evening in the pine tops; in the cool running brooks; in the majestic sweep of undulating hills; the grandeur of untamed forests; the majesty of the mountain; in the morning's virgin beauty, in the maternal grace of evening, and the sublime and mystic pomp of night. Nature's silent sympathy—how beautiful it is!
There is joy, no doubt there is joy, to the mind of Genius, when thought bursts on him as the tropic sun rending a cloud; when long trains of ideas sweep through his soul, like constellated orbs before an angel's eye; when sublime thoughts and burning words rush to the heart; when Nature unveils her secret truth, and some great Law breaks, all at once, upon a Newton's mind, and chaos ends in light; when the hour of his inspiration and the joy of his genius ​is on him, ’t is then that this child of Heaven feels a godlike delight. ’T is sympathy with Truth.
There is a higher and more tranquil bliss when heart communes with heart; when two souls unite in one, like mingling dew-drops on a rose, that scarcely touch the flower, but mirror the heavens in their little orbs; when perfect love transforms two souls, either man's or woman's, each to the other's image; when one heart beats in two bosoms; one spirit speaks with a divided tongue; when the same soul is eloquent in mutual eyes—there is a rapture deep, serene, heart-felt, and abiding in this mysterious fellow-feeling with a congenial soul, which puts to shame the cold sympathy of Nature, and the ecstatic but short-lived bliss of Genius in his high and burning hour.
But the welfare of Religion is more than each or all of these. The glad reliance that comes upon the man; the sense of trust; a rest with God; the soul's exceeding peace; the universal harmony; the infinite within; sympathy with the Soul of All—is bliss that words cannot portray. He only knows, who feels. The speech of a prophet cannot tell the tale. No: not if a seraph touched his lips with fire. In the high hour of religious visitation from the living God, there seems to be no separate thought; the tide of universal life sets through the soul. The thought of self is gone. It is a little accident to be a king or a clown, a parent or a child. Man is at one with God, and He is All in All. Neither the loveliness of Nature, neither the joy of Genius, nor the sweet breathing of congenial hearts, that make delicious music as they beat,—neither one nor all of these can equal the joy of the religious soul that is at one with God, so full of peace that prayer is needless. This deeper joy gives an added charm to the former blessings. Nature undergoes a new transformation. A story tells that when the rising sun fell on Memnon's statue it wakened music in that breast of stone. Religion does the same with Nature. From the shining snake to the waterfall, it is all eloquent of God. As to John in the Apocalypse, there stands an angel in the sun; the seraphim hang over every flower; God speaks in each little grass that fringes a mountain rock. Then even Genius is wedded to a greater bliss. His thoughts shine ​more brilliant, when set in the light of Religion, Friendship and Love it renders infinite. The man loves God when he but loves his friend. This is the joy Religion gives; its perennial rest; it everlasting life. It comes not by chance. It is the possession of such as ask and toil and toil and ask. It is withheld from none, as other gifts. Nature tells little to the deaf, the blind, the rude. Every man is not a genius, and has not his joy. Few men can find a friend that is the world to them. That triune sympathy is not for every one. But this welfare of Religion, the deepest, truest, the everlasting, the sympathy with God, lies within the reach of all his Sons.
* ↑ Gen. xxii. 1-14. The conjectures of the learned about this mythical legend, which may have some fact at its foundation, are numerous, and some of them remarkable for their ingenuity. Some one supposes that Abraham was tempted by the Elohim, but Jehovah prevented the sacrifice. It is easy to find Heathen parallels. See the story of Cronus in Eusebius, P. E. I. 10; of Aristodemus, of whom Pausanias tells a curious story, IV. 9. See the case of Helena and Valeria Luperca, who were both miraculously saved from sacrifice, in Plutarch, Paralel. Opp. Vol. II. p. 314. The Bulgarian legend of poor Lasar is quite remarkable, and strikingly analogous to that of Abram and Isaac. A stranger comes to Lasar's house, L. has nothing for his guest's supper, and therefore, at his suggestion, kills Jenko, his son; the guest eats; but at midnight cries aloud that he is—the Lord! Jenko is restored to life. See the story in a notice of Paton's Servia, in For. Quart. Review for Oct. 1845, Am. ed. p. 130. Polybius says we must allow writers to enlarge in stories of miracles, and in fables of that sort, when they desire to promote piety among the people. But, he adds, an excess in this line is not to be tolerated. Opp. Lib. XVI. ch. 11, ed. Schweighäuser, Oxon. 1823, III. p. 289. Elsewhere he says, this would not be necessary in a state composed of wise men, but the people require to be managed with obscure fears and tragical stories. Ibid. Lib. VI. ch. 56, Vol. II. p. 389. Strabo is of the same opinion, and thinks that women and the people cannot be led to piety by philosophical discourses, only by Fables and Myths. Geog. Lib. I. ch. 2, ed. Siebenkees, p. 51-2. Dionysius. Hal. speaks more wisely, Antiq. II. ch. 18—20, Opp. ed. Reiske, Lips. 1774, I. p. 271, et seq., and properly commends Romulus for rejecting immoral Stories from the public and official theology.
* ↑ See the Book of Revelation, passim.
* ↑ A powerful priesthood has usually had great influence in promoting fanaticism of the most desperate character. One need only look over the history of persecutions in all ages to see this. We see it among the Hebrews, the Germans, the Druids; the nations that opposed the spread of Christianity. The Christian Church itself has erected monuments enough to perpetuate the fact. The story of Haman and Mordecai is no bad allegory of the conflict between the orthodox priesthood and the unorganized heretics.