# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 07/Discourse 6

VI.
"By their fruits ye shall know them."—Matthew, viii. 20.
Last Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I ask your attention to a " Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of. JJos,tqn." I use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition "Sermon of Piety," I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all manly excellence, and was the condition of all noble, manly development; what love of truth, love of justice, love of love, were respectively the condition of intellectual, moral, and affectional development, and that they were also respectively the intellectual, moral, and affectional forms of piety; that the love of God as the Infinite Father, the totality of truth, justice, and love, was the general condition of the total development of man's spiritual powers. But I snowed that sometimes this piety, intellectual, moral, affectional, or total, did not arrive at self-consciousness; the man only unconsciously loving the Infinite in one or all these modes, and in such cases the man was a loser by frustrating his piety, and allowing it to stop in the truncated form of unconsciousness.
Now what is in you will appear out of you; if piety be there in any of these forms, in either mode, it will come out; if not there, its fruits cannot appear. You may reason forward or backward; if you know piety exists, you of this town in respect to piety. ​ may foretell its appearance; if you find fruits thereof, you may reason back, and be sure of its existence. Piety is love of God as God; and as we only love what we are like, and in that degree, so it is also a likeness to God. Now it is a general doctrine in Christendom that divinity must manifest itself; and, in assuming the highest form of manifestation known to us, divinity becomes humanity. However, that doctrine is commonly taught in the specific and not generic form, and is enforced by an historical and concrete example, but not by way of a universal thesis. It appears thus: The Christ was God; as such Ho must manifest himself; the form of manifestation was that of a complete and perfect man. I reject the concrete example, but accept the universal doctrine on which the special dogma of the Trinity is erected. From that I deduce this as a general rule: if you follow the law of your nature, and are simple and true to that, as much of godhead as there is in yon, so much of manhood will come out of you; and, as much of manhood comes out of you, so much of godhead was there within you; as much subjective divinity, so much objective humanity.
Such being the case, the demands you can make on a man for manliness must depend for their answer on the amount of piety on deposit in his character; so it becomes important to know the condition of this town in respect of piety, for if this be not right in the above sense, nothing else is right; or, to speak more clerically, "Unless the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain;" and unless piety be developed or a developing in men, it is vain for the minister to sit up late of a Saturday night to concoct his sermon, and to rise up early of a Sunday morning to preach the same; he fights but as one that beateth the air, and spends his strength for that which is nought. They are in the right, therefore, who first of all things demand piety; so let us see what signs or proof we have, and of what amount of piety in Boston.
To determine this, we must have some test by which to judge of the quality, distinguishing piety from impiety, and some standard whereby to measure the quantity thereof for though you may know what piety is in you, I what is in me, and God what is in both and in all the rest of us, it is plain that we can only judge of the existence of piety ​ in other men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard measure.
Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal unlike; each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and standard measure. Let me say a word of each.
I. Some contend for what I call tho conventional standard; that is, tho manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these forms there are three modes or degrees, namely: first, the form of bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without proof, but because they are taught with authority; and, third, a passive acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance thereof.
II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes of action.
It is plain that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear very different when tested, by one or the other of these standards. It may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal, blue and bounding, may leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is but fair to try it by both standards.
Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in any one State, would vary with the health of the ​ judge. However, to do what can be done with a measure thus uncertain, it in plain that, estimated by airy ecclesiastical standard, the amount of piety is small. There is, as men often say, "a general decline of piety;" that is a common complaint, recorded and registered. But what makes the matter worse to the ecclesiastical philosopher, and more appalling to the complainers, is this: it is a decline of long standing. Tho disease which is thus lamented is paid to be acute, but is proved to be chronic also; only it would seem, from the lamentations of some modern Jeremiahs, that tho decline went on with accelerated velocity, and, the more chronic the disease was, the acuter it also became.
Tried by this standard, things seem discouraging. To get a clearer view, let us look a little beyond our own borders, at first, and then come nearer home. The Catholic church complains of a general defection. The majority of the Christian church confesses that the Protestant Reformation was not a revival of religion, not a "great awakening," but a great falling to sleep; the faith of Luther and Calvin was a great decline of religion—a decline of piety in the ecclesiastical form; that modern philosophy, the physics of Galileo and Newton, the metaphysics of Descartes and of Kant, mark another decline of religion—a decline of piety in the philosophical form; that all the modern Democracy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries marks a yet further decline of religion—a decline of piety in the political form; that all the modern secular societies, for removing the evils of men and their sins, mark a yet fourth decline of religion—a decline of piety in the philanthropic form. Certainly, when measured by the mediaeval standard of Catholicism, these mark four great declensions of piety, for, in all four, the old principle of subordination to an external and personal authority is set aside.
All over Europe this decline is still going on; ecclesiastical establishments are breaking: down; other establishments are a building up. Pius the Ninth seems likely to fulfil his own prophecy, and be the last of the popes; I mean the last with temporal power. There is a great schism in the north of Europe; the Germans will be Catholics, but no longer Roman. The old forms of piety, ​ such as service in Latin, the withholding of the Bible from the people, compulsory confession, the ungrateful celibacy of a reluctant priesthood—all these are protested against. It is of no avail that the holy coat of Jesus, at Treves, works greater miracles than the apostolical napkins and aprons; of no avail that tho Virgin Mary appeared on the 19th of September, 1846, to two shepherd-children, at La Salette, in France. What are such things to Kongo and Wessenberg? Neithor the miraculous coat, nor the miraculous mother, avails aught against thin untoward generation, charm they never so wisely. Tho decline of piety goes on. By tlio now Constitution of France, all forms of religion are equal; tho Catholic and the Protestant, the Mahometan and the Jew, are equally sheltered under tho broad shield of tho law. Even Spain, the fortunes walled and moated about, whithor the spirit of the Middle Ages retired and shut herself up long since, womanning her walls with unmanly priests and kings, with unfeminine queens and nuns—even Spain fails with the general failure. British capitalists buy up her convents and nunneries, to turn them into woollen mills. Monks and nuns forget their beads in some new handicraft; sister Mary, who sat still in the house, is now also busy with serving—careful, indeed, about more things than formerly, but not cumbered nor troubled as before. Meditative Rachels, and Hannahs, long unblest, who sat in solitude, have now become like practical Dorcas, making garments for the poor; the Bank is become more important than the Inquisition. The order of St. Francis d'Assisi, of St. Benedict, even of St. Dominic himself, is giving way before the new order of Arkwright, Watt, and Fulton,—the order of the spinning jenny and the power-loom. It is no longer books on the miraculous conception, or meditations on the five wounds of the Saviour, or commentaries on the song of songs which is Solomon's that get printed there; but fiery novels of Eugene Sue and George Sand; and so extremes meet.
Protestant establishments share the same peril. A new sect of Protestants rises up in Germany, who dissent as much from the letter and spirit of Protestantism, as the Protestants from Catholicism ; men that will not believe the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of the Trinity, ​ the depravity of man, the eternity of future punishment, nor justification by faith—a justification before God, for more belief before men. The new spirit gets possession of new men, who cannot be written down, nor even howled down. Excommunication or abuse does no good on such men as Bauer, Strauss, and Schwegler; and it answers none of their questions. It seems pretty clear, that in all the north of Germany, within twenty years, there will be entire freedom of worship, for all sects, Protestant and Catholic.
In England, Protestantism has done its work less faithfully than in Germany. The Protestant spirit of England came here two hundred years ago, so that new and Protestant England is on the west of the ocean; in England, an established church lies there still, an iceberg in the national garden. But even there the decline of the ecclesiastical form of piety is apparent: the new bishops must not sit in the House of Lords, till the old ones die out, for the number of lords spiritual must not increase, though the temporal may; the new attempt, at Oxford and elsewhere, to restore the Middle Ages, will not prosper, Bring back all the old rites and forms into Leeds and Manchester; teach men the theology of Thomas Aquinas, or of St. Bernard; bid them adore the uplifted wafer, as the very God, men who toil all day with iron mills, who ride in steam-drawn coaches, and talk by lightning in a whisper, from the Irk to the Thames,—they will not consent to the philosophy or the theology of the Middle Ages, nor be satisfied with the old forms of piety, which, though too elevated for their fathers in the time of Elizabeth, are yet too low for them, at least too antiquated. Dissenters have got into the House of Commons; the Test Act is repealed, and a man can be a captain in the army, or a postmaster in a village, without first taking the Lord's Supper, after the fashion of the Church of England, Some men demand the abandonment of tithes, the entire separation of Church and State, the return to "the voluntary principle" in religion. "The battering ram which levelled old Sarum," and other boroughs as corrupt, now beats on the church, and the "Church is in danger." Men complain of the decline of piety in England. An intelligent and very serious writer, not long ago, lamenting this ​ decline, in proof thereof relates that formerly men began their last wills, "In the name of God, Amen;" and headed bills of lading with, "Shipped in good order, by the grace of God;" that indictments for capital crimes charged the culprit with committing felony, "At the instigation of tho devil," and now, he complains, these forms have gone out of use.
In America, in New England, in Boston, when measured by that standard, the same decline of piety is apparent. It is often said that our material condition is better than our moral; that in advance of our spiritual condition. There is a common clerical complaint of a certain thinness in the churches; men do not give their bodily attendance, as once they did; they are ready enough to attend lectures, two or three in a week, no matter how scientific and abstract, of how little connected with their daily work, yet they cannot come to the church without teasing beforehand, nor keep awake while there. It is said the minister is not respected as formerly. True, a man of power is respected, heard, sought, and followed, but it is for his power, for his words of grace and truth, not for his place in a pulpit; he may have more influence as a man, but less as a clergyman. Ministers lament a prevalent disbelief of their venerable doctrines; that there is a concealed scepticism in regard to them, often not concealed. This, also, is a well-founded complaint; the well-known dogmas of theology were never in worse repute; there was never so large a portion of the community in New England who were doubtful of the Trinity, of eternal damnation, of total depravity, of the atonement, of the Godhead of Jesus, of the miracles of the New Testament, and of the truth of every word of the Bible. A complaint is mode, that the rites and forms which are sometimes called "the ordinances of religion," are neglected; that few men join the church, and though the old hedge is broken down before the altar, yet the number of communicants diminishes, and it is no longer able-headed men, the leaders of society, who come; that the ordinances seem haggard and ghastly to young men, who cannot feed their hungry souls on such a thin pittance of spiritual aliment as these afford; that the children are not baptized. These things are so; so in Europe, Catholic and Protestant; so in America, so in Boston. Notwith​ standing tho well-founded complaint that our modern churches are too costly for the times, we do not build temples which bear so high a proportion to our wealth as the early churches of Boston; the attendance at meeting does not increase as the population; the ministers are not prominent, as in tho days of Wilson, of Cotton, and of Norton; their education is not now in the some proportion to the general culture of the times. Harvard College, dedicated to "Christ and the Church," designed at first chiefly for the education of the clergy, graduates few ministers; theological literature no longer overawes all other. The number of church members was never so small in proportion to the voters as now ; the number of Protestant births never so much exceeded the number of Protestant baptisms. Young men of superior ability and superior education have little affection for the ministry; take little interest in the welfare of the church. Nay, youths descended from a wealthy family seldom look that way. It is poor men's sons, men of obscure family, who fill the pulpits; often, likewise, men of slender ability, eked out with an education proportionately scant. The most active members of the churches are similar in position, ability, and culture. These are undeniable facts. They are not peculiar to New England, You find them wherever the voluntary principle is resorted to. In England, in Catholic countries, you find the old historic names in the Established Church; there is no lack of aristocratic blood in clerical veins ; but there and everywhere the church seems falling astern of all other craft which can keep the sea.
Since these things are so, men who have only the conventional standard wherewith to measure the amount of piety, only that test to prove its existence by, think we are rapidly going to decay; that the tabernacle is fallen down, and no man rises to set it up. They complain that Zion is in distress; theological newspapers lament that there are no revivals to report; that "the Lord has withheld His arm," and does not "pour out His Spirit upon the churches." Ghastly meetings are held by men with sincere and noble heart, but saddened face; speeches are made which seem a groan of linked wailings long drawn out. Men mourn at the infidelity of the times, at the coldness of some, at the deadness of others. All the sects complain of ​ this, yet each loves to attribute the deadness of tho rival sects to their special theology; it is Unitarianism which is choking tho Unitarians, say their foes, and tho Unitarians know now to retort after tho samo fashion. The less enlightened put tho blame of this misfortune on tho good God, who has somehow "withheld. His hand," or omitted to "pour out His Spirit,"—the people perishing for want of tho open vision. Others put tho blame on mankind; some on "poor human nature," which is not what might have been expected, not perceiving that if tho fault be there, it is not for us to remedy, and if God made man a bramble-bush, that no wailing will make him bear figs. Yet others refer this condition to the use made of human nature, which certainly is a more philosophical way of looking at the matter.
Now there is one sect which has done great service in former days, which, is, I think, still doing something to enlighten and liberalize the land, and, I trust, will yet do more, more even than it consciously intends. The name of Unitarian is deservedly dear to many of us, who yet will not be shackled by any denominational fetters. This sect been always been remarkable for a certain gentlemanly reserve about all that pertained to the inward part of religion; other faults it might have, but it did not incur the reproach of excessive enthusiasm, or a spirituality too sublimated and transcendental for daily use. This sect has long been a speckled bird among the denominations, each of which has pecked at her, or at least cawed with most unmelodious croak against this new-fledged sect. It was said the Unitarians had "denied the Lord that bought them;" that theirs was the church of unbelief—not the church of Christ, but of no-Christ; that they had a Bible of their own, and. a thin, poor Bible, too ; that their ways were ways of destruction; "Touch not, taste not, handle not," was to be written on their doctrines; that they had not even the grace of lukewarmness, but were moral and stone-cold; that they looked fair on the side turned towards man, but on the Godward side it was a blank wall with no gate, nor window, nor loop-hole, nor eyelet for the Holy Ghost to come through; that their prayers were only a show of devotion to cover up the hard rock of the flinty heart, or the frozen ground of morality. Their faith, it was said, ​ was only a conviction after the case was proven by unimpeachable evidence, and good for nothing; while belief without evidence, or against proof, seems to be tho right ecclesiastical talisman.
For a long time the Unitarian sect did not grumble unduly, but set itself to promote the cultivation of reason, and apply that to religion; to cultivate morality and apply it to life; and to demand the most entire personal freedom for all men in all matters pertaining to religion. Hence came its merits; they were very great merits, too, and not at all tho merits of the times, held in common with the other sects. I need not dwell on this, and the good works of Unitarianism, in this the most Unitarian city in the world; but as a general thing the Unitarians, it seems to me, did neglect the culture of piety; and of course their morality, while it lasted, would be unsatisfactory, and in time would wither and dry up because it had no deepness of earth to grow out of. The Unitarians, as a general thing, began outside, and sought to work inward, proceeding from the special to the general, by what might be called the inductive mode of religious culture: that was the form adopted in pulpits, and in families, so far as there was any religious education attempted in private. That is not the method of nature, where all growth is the development of a living germ, which by an inward power appropriates the outward things it needs, and grows thereby. Hence came the defects of Unitarianism, and they were certainly very great defects; but they came almost unavoidably from the circumstances of the times. The sensational philosophy was the only philosophy that prevailed! The Orthodox sects had always rejected a part of that philosophy, not in tho name of science, but of piety; and they supplied its place not with a better philosophy, but with tradition, speaking with an authority which claimed to be above human nature. It was not in the name of reason that they rejected a false philosophy, but in the name of religion often denounced all philosophy and the reason which demanded it. The Unitarians rejected that portion of orthodoxy, became more consistent sensationalists, and arrived at results which we know. Now it is easy to see their error; not difficult to avoid it; but forty or fifty years ago it was almost impossible not to fell ​ into thin mistake. Sometimes it Booms an if the Unitarians were half conscious of this defect, and so dared not be original, but borrowed Orthodox weapons, or continued to use Trinitarian phrases, long after they had blunted those weapons of their point, and emptied the phrases of their former sense. In the controversy between tho Orthodox and Unitarians, neither party was wholly right: the Unitarians had reason to charge the Orthodox with debasing man's nature, and representing God as not only unworthy, but unjust, and somewhat odious; the Trinitarians were mainly right in charging us with want of conscious piety, with beginning to work at tho wrong end; but at tho same time it must be remembered that, in proportion to their numbers, the Unitarians have furnished far more philanthropists and reformers than any of the other sects. It is time to confess this on both sides.
For a long time the Unitarian sect did not complain much of the decline of piety; it did not care to have an organization, loving personal freedom too well for that, and it had not much denominational feeling; indeed, its members were kept together, not so much by an agreement and unity of opinion among themselves, as by a unity of opposition from without; it was not the hooks on their shields that held the legion together with even front, but the pressure of hostile shields crowded upon them from all sides. They did not believe in spasmodic action; if a body was dead, they gave it burial, without trying to galvanize it into momentary life, not worth the spark it cost; they knew that a small cloud may make a good many flashes in the dark, but that many lightnings cannot make light They stood apart from the violent efforts of other churches to get converts. The converts they got commonly adhered to their faith, and in this respect differed a good deal from those whom " Revivals" brought into other churches; with whom Christianity sprung up in a night, and in a night also perished. Some years ago, when this city was visited and ravaged by Revivals, the Unitarians kept within doors, gave warning of the danger, and suffered less harm and loss from that tornado than any of the sects. Unitarianism seems, in this city, to have done the original work; so the company is breaking up by degrees, and the men are going off, to engage in other ​ business, to wood other old fields, or to break up new land, each man following his own sense of duty, and for himself determining whether to go or stay. But at tho same time an attempt is made to keep the company together; to cultivate a denominational feeling; to put hooks and staples on the shields which no longer offer that formidable and even front; to teach all trumpets to give the same sectarian bray, all voices to utter tho same war-cry. The attempt does not succeed; the ranks are disordered, the trumpets give an uncertain sound, and tho soldiers do not prepare themselves for denominational battle; nay, it often happens that the camp lacks the two sinews of war—both money and men. Hence the denominational view of religious affairs has undergone a change; I make no doubt a real arid sincere change, though I know this has been denied, and tho change thought only official. The men I refer to are sincere and devout men; some of them quite above the suspicion of mere official conduct. This sect is now the loudest in its wailing; these Christian Jeremiahs tell us that we do not realize spiritual things, that we are all dead men, that there is no health in us. These cold Unitarian Thomases crowd unwontedly together in public to bewail the spiritual weather, the dearth of piety in Boston, the "general decline of religion" in New England. Church unto church raises the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us!" The opinion seems general that piety is in a poor way, and must have watchers, the strongest medicine, and nursing quite unusual, or it will soon be all over, and Unitarianism will give up the ghost. Various causes have I heard assigned for the malady; some think that there has been over-much preaching of philosophy, though perhaps there is not evidence to convict any one man in particular of the offence; that philosophy is the dog in the manger, who keeps the hungry Unitarian flock from their spiritual hay, and out straw, which are yet of not the smallest use to him. But look never so sharp, and yon do not find this dangerous beast in the neighbourhood of the fold. Others think that there has been also an excess of moral preaching, against the prevalent sins of the nation, I suppose—but few individuals seem liable to conviction on that charge. Tet others think this decline comes from the fact that the terrors have not been duly and sufficiently ​ administered from tho pulpit; that while Catholics and Methodists thrive under such influences, tho Unitarian widows are neglected in the weekly ministration of terror and of threat; that there has not neon so much an excess of lightning in tho form of philosophy or morality, but only a lack of thunder.
This temporary movement among the Unitarians of Boston is natural; in some respects it is what our fathers would have called " judicial." Tho Unitarians have been cold, have looked more at tho outward manifestations of goodness than at tho inward spirit of piety which was to make the manifestations; they have not had an excess of philosophy, or of morality, but a defect of piety. They have been more respectable than pious. They have not always quite rightly appreciated tho enthusiasm of sterner and more austere sects; not always done justice to the inwardness of religion those sects sought to promote. When their churches get a little thin, and their denominational affairs a little disturbed, it is quite natural these Unitarians should look after the cause, and pass over to lamentations at the present state of things; while looking at the community from the new point of view, it is quite natural that they should suppose piety on the decline, and religion dying out. Yes, in general it is plain that, if men have no eyes but conventional eyes, no spirit but that of the ecclesiastical order they serve in, and of the denomination they belong to, it is natural for them to think that because piety does not flow in the old ecclesiastical channel, it does not flow anywhere, and there is none at all to run. Thus it is easy to explain the complaint of the Catholics at the great defection of the most enlightened nations of Europe; the lamentation of the Protestants at the heresy of the most enlightened portion of their sect; and the Unitarian wail over the general decline of piety in the city of Boston. Some men can only judge the present age by the conventional standard of the past, and as the aid. form of piety does not appear, they must conclude there is no piety.
Let us now recur to the other or natural standard, and look at the manifestation of piety in the form of morality. Last Sunday I spoke of our moral condition; and it ap​ peared that morals were in a low state hero when compared with the ideal morals of Christianity. Now, as the outward deed is but tho manifestation of the inward life, and objective humanity tho index of subjective divinity, so the low state of morals proves a low stato of piety; if the heart of this town was right towards God, then would its hand also be right towards man. I am one of those who for long years have lamented the want of vital piety in this people. We not only do not realize spiritual things, but we do not make them our ideals. I see proofs of this want of piety in tho low morals of trade, of the public press; in poverty, intemperance, and crime; in the vices and social wrongs touched on the last Sunday. I judge the tree by its fruit. But it is not on this ground that the ecclesiastical complaint is based. Men who make so much ado about the absence of piety, do not appeal for proof thereof to the great vices and prominent sins of the times; they see no sign of that in our trade and our politics; in the misery that festers in, putrid lanes, one day to breed a pestilence, which it were even cheaper to hinder i»ow, than cure at a later time; nobody mentions as proof the Mexican war, the political dishonesty of officers, the rapacity of office-seekers, the servility of men who will tamely suffer the most sacred rights of three millions of men to be trodden into the dust. Matters which concern millions of men came up before your Congress; the great senator of Massachusetts loitered away the time of the session here in Boston, managing a lawsuit for a few thousand dollars, and no fault was publicly found with such neglect of public duty; but men see no lack of piety indicated by this fact, and others like it; they find signs of that lack in empty pews, in a deserted communion-table, in the fact that children, though brought up to reverence truth and justice, to love man and to love God, are not baptized with water; or in the fact that Unitarianism or Trinitarianism is on the decline! How many waitings have we all heard, or read, because the Puritan churches of Boston have not kept the faith of their grim founders; what lamentations at the rising up of a sect which refuses the doctrine of the Trinity, or at the appearance of a few men who, neglecting the common props of Christianity, rest it, for its basis, on the nature of man and the nature of God: though almost ​ all the eminent philanthropy of the day is connected with these men, yet they are still called "infidel," and reviled on all hands!
The state of things mentioned in the last sermon does indicate a want of piety, a deep and a great want. I do not see signs of that in the debt and decay of churches, in absence from meetings, in doubt of theological dogmas, in neglect of forms and ceremonies which once were of great value; but I do see it in the low morals of trade, of the press; in the popular vices. On a national scale I see it in the depravity of political parties, in the wicked war we have just fought, in the slavery we still tolerate and support. Yes, as I look on the churches of this city, I see a want of piety in the midst of us. If eminent piety were in them, and allowed to follow its natural bent, it would come out of them in the form of eminent humanity; they would load in the philanthropies of this day, where they hardly follow. In this condition of the churches I see a most signal proof of the low estate of piety; they do not manifest a love of truth, which is the piety of the intellect; nor a love of justice, which is the piety of the moral sense; nor a love of love, which is the piety of the affections; nor a love of God as the Infinite Father of all men, which is the total piety of the whole soul. For lack of this internal divinity there is a lack of external humanity. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? This is what I complain of, what I mourn over.
The clergymen of this city are most of them sincere men, I doubt not; some of them men of a superior culture; many of them laborious men; most, perhaps all of them, deeply interested in the welfare of the churches, and the promotion of piety. But how many of them are marked and known for their philanthropy, distinguished for their zeal in putting down any of the major sins of our day, zealous in any work of reform? I fear I can count them all on the fingers of a single hand; yet there are enough to bewail the departure of monastic forms, and of the theology which led men in the dimness of a darker age, but cannot shine in the rising light of this. I find no fault with these men; I blame them not; it is their profession which so blinds their eyes. They are as wise and as valiant as the churches let them be. What sect in all ​ this land ever cared about temperance, education, peace betwixt nations, or even tho freedom of all men in our own, so much as this sect cares for the baptizing of children with water, and that for the baptizing of men; this for the doctrine of the Trinity, and all for the infallibility of tho Bible? Do you ask the sects to engage in the work of extirpating concrete wrong? It is in vain; each reformer trios it—the mild sects answer, "I pray the have me excused; "the sterner sects reply with awful speech.
​ I see much to complain of in the condition of piety; seems worse still, for worse, lucre has not been "a decline of piety" in Boston of late years. Religion is not sick. Last Sunday I spoke of the great progress made in morality within fifty years; I said it was an immense progress within two hundred years. Now, there cannot be such a progress, in the outward manifestation without a corresponding and previous development of the inward principle. Morality cannot grow without piety, more than an oak without water, earth, sun, and air. Let me go back one hundred years; see what a difference between the religious aspect of things then and now ! certainly there has been a great growth in spirituality since that day. I am not to judge men's hearts; I may take their outward lives as the teat and measure of their inward piety. Will you say the outward life never completely comes up to that? It does so as completely now as then. Compare the toleration of these times with those ; compare the intelligence of the community ; the temperance, sobriety, chastity, virtue in. general. Look at what is now done in a municipal way by towns and States for mankind; see the better provision made for the poor, for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, for the insane, even for the idiot; see what is done for the education of the people—in schools, academies, colleges, and by public lectures; what is done for the criminal, to prevent the growth of crime. See what an amelioration of the penal laws ; how men are saved and restored to society, who had once been wholly lost. See what is done by philanthropy still more eminent, which the town and State have not yet overtaken and enacted into law; by the various societies for reform—those for temperance, for peace, for the discipline of prisons, for the discharged convicts, for freeing the slave. See this anti-Slavery party, which, in twenty years, has become so powerful throughout all the Northern States, so strong that it cannot be howled down, and men begin to find it hardly safe to howl over it; a party which only waits the time to lilt up its million arms, and hurl the hateful institution of Slavery out of the land! All these humane movements come from a divine piety in the soul, of man. A tree which bears such fruits is not a dead tree; is not wholly to ​ be despaired of; is not yet in a "decline," and past all hope of recovery. Is the age wanting in piety, which makes such efforts as those? Yes, you will say, because it does no more. I agree to this; but it is rich in piety compared in other time? Ours is an age of faith; not of mere belief in the commandments of men, but of faith in the nature of man and the commandments of God. This prevailing and contagious complaint about the decline of religion is not one of the new things of our time. In the beginning of the last century, Dr. Colman, first minister of the church in Brattle Street, lamented in small capitals over the general decline of piety:—"The venerable name of religion and of the church is made a sham pretence for the worst of villanies, for uncharitableness and unnatural oppression of the pious and the peaceable;" "the perilous times are some, wherein men are lovers only of their own selves." "Ah! calamitous day," says he, "into which we are fallen, and into which the sins of our infatuated age hive brought us!" He looks back to the founders of New England; they "were rich in faith, and heirs of a better world " men of whom the world was not worthy;" "they laid in a stock of prayers for us which have brought down many blessings on us already." Samuel Willard bewailed "the chequered state of the gospel church;" it was "in every respect a gloomy day, and covered with thick clouds."
We retire yet further back, to the end of the seventeenth century; a hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, Dr, Increase Mather, not only in his own pulpit, but also at "the great and Thursday lecture," lamented over "the degeneracy and departing glory of New England." He complained that there was a neglect of the Sabbath, of the ordinances, and of family worship; he groaned at the lax discipline of the churches, and looked, says another, "as fearfully on the growing charity as on the growing vices of the age." He called the existing generation " an unconverted generation." "Atheism and profaneness," says he, "have come to a prodigious height;" "God will visit" for these things; "God is about to open the windows of heaven, and pour down the cataracts of His wrath ere this generation … is passed away." If a comet appeared in the sky, it was to admonish men of the visitation, and ​ make "the haughty daughters of Zion reform their pride of apparel. "The world is full of unbelief" (that is, in tho malignant aspect and disastrous influence of comets), "but there is an awful Scripture for them that do profanely condemn such signal works!"
One of the present and well-known indications of the decline of piety, that is often thought a modern luxury, and ridiculously denounced in the pulpit, which has done its part in fostering the enjoyment, was practised, to an extent that alarmed the prim shepherds of the New England flock in earlier days. The same Dr. Mather preached a series of sermons "tending to promote the power of godliness," and concludes the whole with a discourse "of sleeping at sermons," and says: "To sleep in the public worship of God is a thing too frequently and easily practiced; it is a great and a dangerous evil." "Sleeping at a sermon is a greater sin than speaking an idle word. Therefore, if men must be called to account for idle words, much more for this!" "Gospel sermons are among the most precious talents which any in this world have conferred upon them. But what a sad account will be given concerning those sermons which have been slept away! As light as thou makest of it now, it may be conscience will roar for it upon a death-bed!" "Verily, there is many a soul that will find this to be a dismal thought at the day of judgment, when he shall remember, so many sermonB I might have heard for my everlasting benefit, but I slighted and slept them all away. Therefore consider, if men allow themselves in this evil their souls are in danger to perish." "It is true that a godly man may be subject unto this as well as unto other infirmities; but he doth not allow himself therein." "The name of the glorious God is greatly prophaned by this inadvertency." "The support of the evangelical ministry is …discouraged." He thought the character of the pulpit was not sufficient explanation of this phenomenon, and adds, in his supernatural way, "Satan is the external cause of this evil;" "he had rather have men wakeful at any time than at sermon time." The good man mentions, by way of example, a man who "had not slept a wink at; a sermon for more than twenty years together;" and also, but by way of warning, the unlucky youth in the Acts who ​ slept, at Paxil's long sermon, and fell out of thb window, and "was taken up dead." Sleeping was "adding something of our own to the worship of God;" "when Nadab and Abihu did so, there went out fire from the Lord and consumed them in death." "The holy God hath not been a little displeased for this sin." "It is not punished by men, but therefore the Lord himself will visit for it. "Tears of blood will trickle down thy dry and damned cheeks for ever and ever, because thou mayest not be so happy as to hear one sermon, or to have one offer of grace more throughout the never-ending days of eternity." Other men denounced their "Woe to sleepy sinners," and issued their "Proposals for the revival of dying religion."
Dr. Mather thought there was " a deluge of prophaneness," and bid men "be much in mourning and humiliation, that God's bottle may bo filled with tears." He thought piety was going out because surplices were coming in; it was wicked to "consecrate a church;" keeping Christmas was "like the idolatry of the calf." The common-prayer, an organ, a musical instrument in a church, was "not of God." Such things were to our worthy fathers in the ministry what temperance and anti-Slavery societies are to many of their sons—an "abomination," "unchristian and atheistic! "The introduction of "regular singing" was an indication to some that "all religion is to cease;" "we might as well go over to Popery at once." Inoculation for the small-pox was as vehemently and ably opposed as the modern at tempt to abolish the gallows; it was "a trusting more to the machinations of men than to the all- wise providence of God."
"When the enchantments of this world," says the ecclesiastical historian, "caused the rising generation more sensibly to neglect the primitive designs and interests of religion propounded by their fathers, a change ia the ten our of the Divine dispensation towards this country was quickly the matter of every one's observation." "Our wheat and our peas fell under an unaccountable blast." "We were visited with multiplied shipwrecks;" "pestilential sicknesses did sometimes become epidemic among us." "Indians cruelly butchered many hundreds of our inhabitants, and scattered whole towns with miserable ​ ruins." "The serious people throughout the land were awakened by these intimations of Divine displeasure to inquire into the causes and matters of the controversie." Accordingly, 1679, a synod wast convened at Boston, to "inquire into the causes of the Lord's controversie with His New England people," who determined the matter.
A little later, in 1690, the General Court considered the subject anew, and declared that "A corruption of manners, attended with inexcusable degeneracies and apostacies… ​ is the cause of tho controvesie." We "are now arriving such an extremity, that the axe is laid to the root of tho trees, and we are in imminent danger of perishing, if a speedy reformation of our provoking evils prevent it not." In 1702, Cotton Mather complains that " Our manifold indispositions to recover the dying power of godliness were successive calamities, under all of which our apostacies from that godliness have rather proceeded than abated." "The old spirit of New England has been sensibly going out of tho world, as the old saints in whom it was have gone; and, instead thereof, the spirit of the world, with a lamentable neglect of strict piety, has crept in upon the rising generation."
You go back to the time of the founders and fathers of the colony, and it is no better. In 1667, Mr. "Wilson, who had "a singular gift in the practice of discipline," on his death-bed declared, that " God would judge the people for their rebellion and self-willed spirit, for their contempt of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and for their luxury and sloth; "and before that he said, people rise up as Corah, against their ministers." "And for our neglect of baptizing the children of the church, … I think God is Srovoked by it. Another sin I take to be the making light… of the authority of the synods." John Norton, whose piety was said to be " Grace, grafted on a crab-stock," in 1660, growled, after his wont, on account of the "Heart of New England, rent with the blasphemies of this generation." John Cotton, the ablest man in New England, who "liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, before he went to sleep," and was so pious that another could not swear while he was under the roof, mourned at "the condition of the churches;" and, in 1652, on his death-bed, after bestowing his blessing on the President of Harvard College, who had begged it of him, exhorted the elders to " Increase their watch against those declensions, which he saw the professors of religion falling into." In 1641, such was the condition of piety in ​ Boston, that it was thought necessary to banish a man, because he did not believe in original sin. In 1639, a fast was appointed, "To deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the wont of zoal in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety." "The church of God had not been long in this wilderness," thus complains a minister, one hundred and fifty years ago, "before the dragon cast forth several floods to devour it ; but not the least of these floods was one of the Antinomian and familistical heresies." "It is incredible what alienations of mind, and what a very calenture the devil raised in the country upon this odd occasion." "The sectaries" "began usually to seduce women into their notions, and by these women, like their first mother, they soon hooked in the husband; also." So, in 1637, the synod of Cambridge was convened, to despatch "The apostate serpent:" one woman was duly convicted of holding "about thirty monstrous opinions," and subsequently, by the civil authorities, banished from the colony. The synod, after much time was "spent in ventilation, and emptying of private passions, condemned eighty-two opinions, then prevalent in the colony, as erroneous, and decided to " refer doubts to be resolved by the great God." Even in 1636, John Wilson lamented "the dark and distracted condition of the churches of New England."
"The good old times," when piety was in a thriving state, and the churches successful and contented, lay as far behind the "Famous Johns," as it now does behind their successors in office and lamentation. Then, as now, the complaint had the same foundation: ministers and other good men could not see that new piety will not be put into the old forms, neither the old forms of thought nor the old forms of action. In the days of Wilson, Cotton, ​ and Norton, there was a gradual growth of piety; in the days of the Mathers, of Colmon, and Willard, and from that time to this, there has boon a steady improvement of the community, in intellectual, moral, and religious culture. Some men could not see the progress two hundred years ago, because they believed in no piety, except as it was manifested in their conventional forms. It is so now. Mankind advances by the irresistible law of God, under the guidance of a few men of large discourse, who look before and after, but amid the wailing of many who think each advance is a retreat, and every stride a stumble.
Now-a-days nobody complains at "the ungodly custom of wearing long hair;" no dandy is dealt with by the church for his dress; the weakest brother is not offended by "regular singing"—so it be regular,—"by organs and the like;" nobody laments at " the reading of Scripture lessons," or "the use of the Lord's Prayer" in public religious services, or is offended because a clergyman makes a prayer at a funeral, and solemnizes a marriage,—though these are "prelatical customs," and were detested by our fathers. Yet, other things, now as much dreaded, and thought "of a bad and dangerous tendency," will one day prove themselves as innocent, though now as much mourned over. Many an old doctrine will fade out, and though some think a star has fallen out of heaven, a new truth will rise up and take its place. It is to be expected that ministers will often complain of "the general decay of religion." The position of a clergyman, fortunate in many things, is unhappy in this : he seldom sees the result of his labours, except in the conventional form mentioned above. The lawyer, the doctor, the merchant and mechanic, the statesman and the farmer, all have visible and palpable results of their work, while the minister can only see that he has baptized men, and admitted them to his church; the visible and quotable tokens of his success are a large audience, respectable and attentive, a thriving Sunday school, or a considerable body of communicants. If these signs fail, or become less than formerly, he thinks he has laboured in vain, that piety is on the decline : for it is only by this form that he commonly tests and measures piety itself. Hence, a sincere and earnest minister, with the limitations which he so easily gets from his profession ​ and social position, is always prone to think ill of the times to undervalue the new wine which refuses to be kept in the old bottles, but rends them asunder; hence he bewails the decline of religion, and looks longingly back to the days of his fathers.
​ In. a solar system, the central sun, not barely powerful from its position, is the most weighty body—heavier than all the rest put together; so with even swing they all revolve about it. Our little ministerial sun was ambitious of being, amongst large satellites; he is there, but the law of gravitation amongst men is as certain as in matter; he cannot poise and swing the system; he is not the sun thereof, not even a primary planet, only a little satellite revolving with many nutations round some primary, in an orbit that is oblique, complicated, and difficult to calculate; now waxing in a "Revival," now waning in a "decline of piety," now totally eclipsed by his primary that comes between him and the light which lighteth every man. Put one of the cold thin moons of Saturn into the centre of the solar system, — would the universe revolve about that little dot? Loyal matter with irresistible fealty gravitates towards the sun, and wheels around the balance-point of the world's weight, be it where it may, called by whatever name.
While ministers insist unduly on the conventional manifestation of piety, it is not a thing unheard of for a layman to resolve to go to heaven by the ecclesiastical road, yet omit resolving to be a good man before he gets there. Such a man finds the ordinary forms of piety very convenient, and not at all burdensome; they do not interfere with his daily practice of injustice and meanness of soul; they seem a substitute for real and manly goodness; they offer a royal road to saintship here and heaven hereafter. Is the man in arrears with virtue, having long practised wickedness and become insolvent? This form is a new bankrupt law of the spirit, he pays off his old debts in the ecclesiastical currency—a pennyworth of form for a pound of substantial goodness. This bankrupt sinner, cleared by the ecclesiastical chancery, is a solvent saint; he exhorts at meetings, strains at every gnat, and mourns over "the general decay of piety," and teaches other men the way in which they should go—to the same end.
"So morning insects, that in muck begun,
Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the evening sun."
I honour the founders of New England; they were pious men—their lives proved it; but domineered over by ​ false opinions in theology, they put their piety into very unnatural and perverted forms. They had ideas which transcended their age; they came here to make those ideas into institutions That they had great faults, bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, is now generally conceded. They were picked men, "wheat sifted out of three kingdoms," to plant a new world withal. They have left their mark very deep and very distinct in this town, which was their prayer and their pride. It may seem unjust to ourselves to compare a whole community like our own with such a company as filled Boston in the first half century of its existence,—men selected for their spiritual hardihood; but here and now, in the midst of Boston, are men quite as eminent for piety, who as far transcend this age as the Puritans and the pilgrims surpassed their time. The Puritan put his religion into the ecclesiastical form; not into the form of the Roman or the English Church, but into a new one of his own. His descendant, inheriting his father's faith in God, and stern self-denial, but sometimes without his bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, with little fear but with more love of God, and consequently with more love of man, puts his piety into a new form. It is not the form of the old church; the church of the Puritans is to him often what the church of the Pope and the prelates was to his ungentle sire. He puts his piety into the form of goodness; eminent piety becomes philanthropy, and takes the shape of reform. In such men, in many of their followers, I see the same trust in God, the same scorn of compromising right and truth, the same unfaltering allegiance to the eternal Father, which shone in the pilgrims who founded this new world, which fired the reformers of the church; yes, which burned in the hearts of Paul and John. Piety has not failed and gone out; each age has its own forms thereof; the old and passing can never understand the new, nor can they consent to decrease with the increase of the new. Once, men put their piety into a church, Catholic or Protestant; they made creeds and believed them; they devised rites and symbols, which helped their faith. It was well; but we cannot believe those creeds, nor be aided by such symbols and such rites. Why pretend to drag a weighty crutch about because it helped your father once, wandering alone and in the dark, sound​ ing on his dim and perilous way? Once earthen roads wore the best we know, and horses’ foot had shoes of swiftness; now we need not, out of reverence, refine the iron road, the chariot and the steed of flame; nor out of irreverence need we spurn tho path our fathers trod; sorely bested and hunted after, tear-bedewed and travel-stained, they journeyed there, passing on to their God. If the mother that bore us were rover so rude, and to our eyes might seem never so graceless now, still she was our mother, and without her we should not have been born. Wives and children may men have, and manifold; each Christian Church has been the mother of us all; and though in her own dotage she deny our piety, and call us infidel, far be it from me to withhold the richly earned respect. Behind a decent veil, then, let us hide our mother's weakness, and ourselves pass on. Once piety built up a theocracy, and men say it was divine; now piety, everywhere in Christendom, builds up democracies; it is a diviner work.
The piety of this age must manifest itself in morality, and appear in a church where the priests are men of active mind and active hand; men of ideas, who commune with God and man through faith and works, finding no truth is hostile to their creed, no goodness foreign to their litany, no piety discordant with their psalm. The man who once would have built a convent and been its rigorous chief, now founds a temperance society, contends against war, toils for the pauper, the criminal, the madman, and the slave, for men bereft of senses and of sense. The synod of Dort and of Cambridge, the assembly of divines at Westminster, did what they could with what piety they had; they put it into decrees and platforms, into catechisms and creeds. But the various conventions for reform put their Siety into resolves and then into philanthropic works. I do not believe there has ever been an age when piety bore so large a place in the whole being of New England as at this day, or attendance on church-forms so small a part. The attempts made and making for a better education of the people, the lectures on science and literature abundantly attended in this town, the increased fondness for reading, ​ the better class of books which are read—all those indicate an increased love of truth, the intellectual part of piety; societies for reform and for charity show an increase of the moral and affectional parts of piety; the better, the lovelier idea of God, which all sects are embracing, is a sign of increased love of God. Thus all parts of piety are proving their existence by their work. The very absence from the churches, the disbelief of the old sour theologies, the very neglect of outward forms and ceremonies of religion, the decline of the ministry itself, under the present circumstances, shows an increase of piety. The baby-clothes were well and wide for the baby; now, the fact that he cannot get them on, shows plainly that he has outgrown them,—is a boy, and no longer a baby.
Once Piety fled to the Church as the only sanctuary in the waste wide world, and was fondly welcomed there, fed and fostered. When power fled off from the Church——"Wilt thou also go away?" said she. "Lord," said Piety, "to whom shall we go? Thou only hast the words of everlasting life." Once convents and cathedrals were what the world needed as shelter for this fair child of God; then she dwelt in the grim edifice that our fathers built, and for a time counted herself "lodged in a lodging where good things are." Now is she grown able to wander forth fearless and free, lodging where the night overtakes her, and doing what her hands find to do, not unattended by the Providence which hitherto has watched over and blessed her. I respect piety in the Hebrew saints, prophets, and bards, who spoke the fiery speech, or sung their sweet and soul-inspiring psalm:—
"Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old."
I honour piety among the saints of Greece, clad in the form of philanthropy and art, speaking still in dramas, in philosophies, and song, and in the temple and the statue too:—
"Not from a vain and shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought."
I admire at the piety of the Middle Ages, which founded the monastic tribes of men, which wrote the theologies, ​ scholastic and mystic both, still speaking to the mind of men, or in poetic legends insinuated truth; which built that heroic architecture, overmastering therewith the sense and soul of man:—
"The passive muter lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o'er him planned:
And the same Power that reared the shrine
B-wtrode the tribes that knelt therein."
But the piety winch I find now, in this age, here in our own land, I respect, honour, and admire yet more; I find it in the form of moral life ; that is the piety I love, piety in her own loveliness. Would I could find poetic strains as fit to sing of her—but yet such
"Loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorned, adorned the most."
Let me do no dishonour to other days, to Hebrew or to Grecian saints. Unlike and hostile though they were, they jointly fed my soul in earliest days. I would not underrate the mediaeval saints, whose words and works have been my study in a manlier age; yet I love best the fair and vigorous piety of our own day. It is beautiful, amid the strong, rank life of the nineteenth century, amid the steam-mills and the telegraphs which talk by lightning, amid the far-reaching enterprises of our time, and amid the fierce democracies, it is beautiful to find this fragrant piety growing up in unwonted forms, in places where men say no seed of heaven can lodge and germinate. So in a June meadow, when a boy, and looking for the cranberries of another year, faded and tasteless, amid the pale but coarse rank grass, and discontented that I found them not, so I have seen the crimson arethusa or the cymbidium shedding an unexpected loveliness o'er all the watery soil, and all the pale and coarse rank grass, a prophecy of summer near at hand. So in October, when the fields are brown with frost, the blue and fringed gentian meets your eye, filling with thankful tears.
There is no decline of piety, but an increase of it; a good deal has been done in two hundred years, in one hundred years,—yes, in fifty years. Let us admit, with thankfulness of his art, that piety is in greater proportion to ​ all out activity now than ever before; but then compare ourselves with the ideal of human nature, our piety with the ideal piety, and we must confess that we are little and very low, Boston is the most active city in the world, the most enterprising. In no place is it so easy to obtain men's ears and their purses for any good word and work. But think of the evils we know of and tolerate; think of an ideal Christian city, then think of Boston; of a Christian man,—ay, of Christ himself,—and then think of you and me, and we are filled with shame. If there were a true, manly piety in this town, in due proportion to our numbers, wealth, and enterprise, how long would the vices of this city last? How long would men complain of a dead body of divinity and a dead church, and a ministry that was dead? How long would intemperance continue, and pauperism, in Boston; how long Slavery in this land?
Last Sunday, in the name of the poor, I asked you for your charity. Today I ask for dearer alms; I ask you to contribute your piety. It will help the town more than the little money all of us can give. Your money will soon be spent; it feeds one man once; we cannot give it twice, though the blessing thereof may linger long in the hand which gave. Few of us can give much money to the poor; some of us none at all. This we can all give: the inspiration of a man with a man's piety in his heart, living it out in a man's life. Your money may be ill-spent, your charity misapplied, but your piety never. After all, there is nothing you can give which men will so readily take and so long remember as this. Mothers can give it to their daughters and their sons; men, after spending thereof profusely at home, can coin their inexhausted store into industry, patience, integrity, temperance, justice, humanity, a practical love of man. A thousand years ago, it was easy to excuse men if they chiefly showed religion in the conventional pattern of the church. Forms then were helps, and the nun has been mother to much of the charity of our times. It is easy to excuse our fathers for their superstitious reverence for rites and forms. But now, in an age which has its eyes a little open, a practical and a handy age, we are without excuse if our piety appears not ​ in a manly life, our faith in works. To give this piety to cheer and bless mankind, you must have it first, be cheered end blessed thereby yourself. Have it, then, in your own way; put it into your own form. Do men tell you, "This is a degenerate age," and " religion in dying out?" tell them that when those stars have faded out of the sky from very age, when other stars have come up to take their place, and they too have grown dim and hollow-eyed and old, that religion will still live in iron's heart, the primal, everlasting light of all our being. Do they tell you that you must put piety into their forms; put it there if it be your place; it not, in your place. Let men see the divinity that is in you by the humanity that comet out from you. If they will not see it, cannot, God can and will. Take courage from the past, not its counsel; fear not now to be a man. You may find a new Eden where you go, a river of God in it, and a tree of life, an angel to guard it; not the warning angel to repel, but the guiding angel to welcome and to bless.
It was four years yesterday since I first came here to speak to you; I came hesitatingly, reluctant, with much diffidence as to my power to do what it seemed to me was demanded. I did not come merely to pull down, but to build up, though it is plain much theological error must be demolished before any great reform of man's condition can be brought about, t came not to contend against any man, or sect, or party, but to speak a word for truth and religion in the name of man and God. I was in bondage to no sect; you in bondage to none. When a boy I learned that there is but one religion though many theologies. I have found it in Christians and in Jews, in Quakers and in Catholics. I hope we are all ready to honour what is good in each sect, and in rejecting its evil not to forget our love and wisdom in our zeal.
When I came I certainly did not expect to become a popular man, or acceptable to many. I had done much which in all countries brings odium on a man, though perhaps leas in Boston than in any other part of the world. I had rejected the popular theology of Christendom. I had exposed the low morals of society, had complained of the want of piety in its natural form. I had fatally offended ​ the soot, small in numbers, but respectable for intelligence and goodness, in which I was brought up. I came to look at the signs of the times from an independent point of view, and to speak on the most important of all themes. I thought a house much smaller than this would be much too large for us. I knew there would be lit audience; I thought it would be few, and the few would soon have heard enough and go their ways.
I know I have some advantages above most clergymen: I am responsible to no sect; no sect feels responsible for me; I have rejoiced at good things which I have seen in all sects; the doctrines which I try to teach do not rest on tradition, on miracles, or on any man's authority; only on the nature of man. I seek to preach the natural laws of man. I appeal to history for illustration, not for authority. I have no fear of philosophy. I am willing to look a doubt fairly in the face, and think reason is sacred as conscience, affection, or the religious faculty in man. I see a profound piety in modern science. I have aimed to set forth absolute religion, the ideal religion of human nature, free piety, free goodness, free thought. I call that Christianity, after the greatest man of the world, one who himself taught it; but I know that this was never the Christianity of the churches in any age. I have endeavoured to teach this religion and apply, it to the needs of this time. These things certainly give me some advantages over most other ministers. Of the disadvantages which are personal to myself, I need not speak in public, but some which come from my position, ought to be noticed with a word. The walls of this house, the associations connected with it, furnish little help to devotion; we must rely on ourselves wholly for that. Other clergymen, by their occasional exchanges, can present their hearers with an agreeable variety in substance and in form. A single man, often heard, becomes wearisome and unprofitable, for "No man can feed us always." This I feel to be a great disadvantage which I labour under. Your kindness and affectionate indulgence make me feel it all the more, But one man cannot be twenty men.
When I came here I knew I should hurt men's feelings. My theology would prove more offensive and radical than men thought; the freedom of speech which men liked at a ​
* ↑ The Synod declared: "That God hath a controversie with His New England people is undeniable" "There are visible manifest evils, which without doubt the Lord is provoked by." 1. "A great and visible decay of the power of godliness amongst many professors in these churches." 2. "Pride doth abound in Now England. Many have offended God by strange apparel." 3. "Church fellowship and other divine institutions are grossly neglected." "Quakers are also worshippers," "and Anabaptists… do no better than set up an altar against the Lord's altar." 4. "The holy and glorious name of God hath been polluted;" "because of swearing the land mourns" "It is a frequent thing for men to sit in prayer-time… and to give way to their own sloth and sleepiness." "We read of but one man in Scripture that slept at a sermon, and that sin had like to have cost him his life." 5. "There is much Sabbath-breaking; since there are multitudes that do profanely absent themselves from the public worship of God,…" walking abroad and travelling… being a common practice on the Sabbath day." "Worldly unsuitable discourses are very common upon the Lord's day." "This brings wrath, fires, and other judgments upon a professing people." 6. "As to what concerns families and Government thereof, there is much amiss." "Children and servants… are not kept in due subjection." "This is a sin which brings great judgments, as we see in Eli's and David's family." 7. "Inordinate passions, sinful heats and hatreds, and that amongst church members." 8. "There is much intemperance:" "it is a common practice for town-dwellers, yea, and church members, to frequent public-houses, and there to mis-spend precious time." 9. "There is much want of truth amongst men." "The Lord is not wont to suffer such an iniquity to pass unpunished." 10. "Inordinate affection unto the world." "There hath been in many professors an insatiable desire after land and worldly accommodations; yea, so as to forsake churches and ordinances, and to live like heathen, only be that they might have elbow-room in the world. Farms and merchandisings have been preferred before the things of God." "Such iniquity causeth war to be in the gate, and cities to be burned up." "When Lot did forsake the land of Canaan and the church which was in Abraham's family, that so he might have better worldly accommodations in Sodom, God fired him out of all." "There are some traders that sell their goods at excessive rates; day-labourers and mechanics are un-reasonable in their demands." 11. "There hath been opposition to the work of reformation." 12. "A public spirit is greatly wanting in the most of men." 13. "There are sins against the, gospel, whereby the Lord has been provoked." "Christ is not prized and embraced in all His offices and ordinances as ought to be."
* ↑ In 1646, Mr. Samuel Symonds wrote to Governor Winthrop, as follows: "I will also mention the text preached upon at our last fast, and the propositions raised thereupon, because it was so seasonable to New England's condition. Jeremiah xxx. 17: For I will restore health to thee, and heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord; because they called thee an outcast, Baying, This is Zion, whom noe man careth for. 1. Prop. That sick tymes doe passe over Zion. 2. That sad and bitter neglect is the portion, aggravation and affliction of Zion in the tyme of his sicknesse and wounds, bat especially in the neglect of those that doe neglect and yet, notwithstanding, doe acknowledge it to be Zion. 3. That the season of penitent Zion' a passion is the season of God's compassion. "This sermon tended much to the settling of godly minds here in God's way, and to raise their spirits, and, as I conceive, hath suitable effects."