This pamphlet[17] of ninety-five pages gives an account of the last annual meeting in Boston of the “Free-Religious Association, its object being to promote the practical interests of pure religion, to increase fellowship in spirit, and to encourage the scientific study of man’s religious nature and history.” Associations of this kind seem to be necessary as safety-valves to a certain class of men and women, chiefly found in New England, who, especially in matters of religion, are in a state of effervescence, and feel the pressing need at times of publicly delivering themselves of such thoughts as come uppermost in their minds on this and kindred subjects. The phenomenon is a peculiar one, and perhaps in no other country could such a variety of odd spirits as are usually found in these assemblies be convoked. Their proceedings are full of interest to the student of religion and the mental philosopher, no less than to the observer of the phases of religious development of some of the most active thinkers of this section of our country.
The American mind at bottom is serious, clings with deathless tenacity to a religion of some sort; and of none is this more characteristic than of the descendants of the Puritan Fathers. The children of the Puritans may be eccentric, at times fanatical, and inclined to thrust their religious, social, political, and even dietetical notions upon others; but they are men and women who think; they are restless until they have gained a religious belief, and are marked with earnestness of some sort, energy, and practical skill. The Puritan race is a thinking, religious, and an aggressive race of men and women. Whatever he may be, there is always in a genuine Puritan a great deal of positive human nature. Let him be under error, and his teeming brain will breed countless crotchets, any one of which he will maintain with the bitterest fanaticism, and, if placed in power, will impose it upon others with a ruthless intolerance.
Give him truth, and you have an enlightened faith, indomitable zeal, and not a few of the elements which go to make up an apostle. The main qualities which distinguish the typical New-Englander, though not altogether the most attractive, are nevertheless not the meanest in human nature, and we candidly confess, though not a drop of Puritan blood runs in our veins, that we have but few dislikes, while we entertain many feelings of sincere respect, for the New England type of man. It is, therefore, with special interest that we read whatever offers an insight into the workings of the minds of so large, influential, and important a class of the American people.
The Unitarian Association did not go far enough and fast enough to suit the temper of a class of its more radical and ardent members; hence the existence of the separate organization of “The Free-Religious Association.” The movement of the free-religionists may be said to spring from a laudable desire to get rid in the speediest way possible of the spurious Christianity which was imposed upon them by their forefathers as genuine Christianity and pure religion.
Suppose they have accomplished this laborious task of purification, what then? Have they found wherewith “to yield the religious sentiment reasonable satisfaction,” which Mr. Tyndall says “is the problem of problems at this hour”? By no means; this discovery is quite another affair.
They have only reached its starting-point. Let them begin their search, and investigate every form or scheme of religion that has existed among men from the beginning of the human race; let them speculate on these to their hearts’ content, and indulge in the fancy that they have a mission to invent or construct a new religion—and what then? Why, they will find, at the end of all their earnest efforts, that there are, and especially for those who have been under the light and quickening influences of Christianity, but two possible movements, one a continuous curve and the other a tangent. One or the other of these lines they will be inevitably forced to take. If they pursue the first and push their premises to their logical consequences, they will, if intelligent and consistent, be led at some point into the circle of the Catholic Church; if they follow the latter, and have the courage of their opinions, they will declare themselves first infidels and then atheists. The fact is becoming daily more and more plain to intelligent and fearlessly honest men that there is no logical standing ground, we do not say between Catholicity and atheism—for atheism has no logical standing position whatever—but that there is no logical standing ground at all outside of Catholicity. For Catholicity professes to be, and has ever maintained that it is, the most perfect manifestation to men of the supreme divine Reason, and to reject the truths which it sets before human reason with the convincing evidence of their divine origin necessarily involves the denial of human reason itself; consequently, human reason inevitably falls, in the end, with the rejection of Catholicity. A man may reject Protestantism and claim human reason; nay, he is bound to repudiate Protestantism, if he holds to human reason, for the doctrine of “total depravity” taught by orthodox Protestant sects undermines altogether the value of human reason.[18] But Catholicity appeals confidently to human reason for its firm support, since its entire structure is based upon the infallibility of human reason in its sphere, and the irrefragable certitude of its great primary truths. The interdependent relations, therefore, existing between reason and Catholicity are essential, and they stand or fall together. The way that Dr. Holmes has put this question is not, we beg his pardon, the right way; he says: “Rome or Reason?” He should have said: Rome and Reason.
There can be no rational belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, in human responsibility as against Christianity, as there can be no rational belief in Christianity as against Catholicity. Outside of the Catholic Church there is only nihilism.
It would be difficult to predict the precise course of these “come-outers” of the latest date, called free-religionists. Some will probably stop after having repudiated Protestantism, rest upon the truths of reason, and, without inquiring further, vainly try to satisfy, with a species of theism, the great aspirations and deep needs of their souls; eventually they may fall back on old Unitarianism. Others will venture to examine, as some before them have done, the claims of the Catholic Church, and finding that these are founded on human reason, that her doctrines perfect the truths of human reason, and that she alone is adequate to satisfy all the wants of the human heart, will become in the course of time Catholics, and save their souls—that is, reach their high destiny. Another section will, during, perhaps, their whole lives, seriously amuse themselves with the study of Brahminism, Buddhism, and every other kind of outlandish religion—not a vain intellectual amusement, except when associated with the absurd idea of concocting a new religion. While the larger section, we fear, will follow the tangent and end in nihilism. For although the main drift of the religious world outside of the Catholic Church, especially in the United States, is towards naturalism; although the face of each free-religionist looks in a somewhat different way, yet the actual movement of the greatest number of these Unitarian dissenters is apparently in the direction of zero.
Precisely where the president of the Free-Religious Association stands, to what definite truths he assents as undeniable, and what convictions he holds as settled, is not to be gathered from any of his sermons, tracts, speeches, and several published books. He seems to be laboring under the impression that he has a mission to bring forth a new religion, but thus far he or his associates in this illusive idea have given to the world no new word in religion, or in morals, or in philosophy, or in politics, or in social life, or in art, or in science, or in method, or in anything else scibile. Mr. William R. Alger has ventured to predict to his free-religionist brethren in their last annual gathering a new incarnation and its gospel, in which we fail to see anything new or important, if true. “The spirit of science,” such are the words of his prophecy, “enriched with the spirit of piety, is the avatar of the new Messiah.”
Francis Ellswood Abbot, a conspicuous member of the Free-Religious Association, as well as one of its active directors and the editor of the Index, a weekly journal which is in some sort the organ of the free-religious movement, has, among other notable things, come to the front and publicly impeached Christianity. His indictment contains five counts against the Christian religion: “human intelligence, human virtue, the human heart, human freedom, and humanitarian religion.”[19] Here are his charges: “Christianity,” he says, “no longer proclaims the highest truths, inculcates the purest ethics, breathes the noblest spirit, stimulates to the grandest life, holds up to the soul and to society the loftiest ideal of that which ought to be.”[20] But this is neither new nor original; for what is the Christianity which Mr. Abbot so boldly impeaches? Why, in all its main features it is that disfigurement of Christianity which he has inherited from his Calvinistic progenitors, and which the Council of Trent impeached, and for the most part on the very same grounds as he does, more than three centuries ago; so that in each of his articles of impeachment every Catholic to-day will heartily join, and to each of his charges say: Amen; Anathema sit!
What is surprising to Catholics is that there should be intelligent and educated men living in this enlightened nineteenth century who have found out that Calvinism is false, and have not yet discovered in the intellectual environment of Boston that Calvinism is not Christianity. “They do not attack the Catholic Church,” said Daniel O’Connell, in speaking of a similar class of men, “but a monster which they have created and called the Catholic Church.”
But Mr. Abbot is not of the men who are content to rest in mere negation. In a lecture delivered by him in a course under the auspices of the Free-Religious Association, entitled A Study of Religion, after much preliminary discourse, he gives with the heading, “The New Conception of Religion,” the following definition of religion: “Religion,” he says, “is the effort of man to perfect himself.”[21] Now, what is the origin of “man’s effort to perfect himself”? “Religion,” he affirms, “appears in its universal aspect as the decree of Nature that her own end shall be achieved. Religion is the inward impulsion of Nature, seconded by the conscious effort of the individual to conform to it,” etc.[22]
What Mr. Abbot calls “nature” and “ideal excellence in all directions” is what the common sense of mankind has named God. Mr. Abbot has no objection to the same name; only he insists that the idea of God, which is very proper, should be submitted “to the educated intelligence of the human race.”[23] “It is,” he says, “because I do believe in God that I am willing to submit my belief in him to the sharpest and most searching scrutiny of science.”[24]
Now, Mr. Abbot admits that if you once concede the Messianic claim of Christ, “then it is true that Catholicism is itself Christianity in its most perfect form.”[25] He therefore stops virtually in his analysis of religion at the idea of God, and, if he believed in the Divinity of Christ and did not eschew logic, he would have to embrace Catholicity. Mr. Abbot, like many Unitarians, agrees on this point with P. J. Proudhon, but with this difference: the Frenchman recedes a step, and maintains that “outside of Christianity there is no God, no religion, no faith, no theology.... The church believes in God, and believes in God more faithfully and more perfectly than any sect. The church is the purest, most perfect, and most enlightened revelation of the divine Being, and none other understands what is worship. From a religious stand-point the Catholicism of the Latin peoples is the best, the most rational, and the most perfect. Rome, in spite of her repeated and frightful falls, remains the only legitimate church.” Hence Proudhon and those of his school lay it down as a sine qua non that the elimination of the idea of God, and of all obligation to any divine law, is the condition of all true progress. From this we may draw the conclusion that Francis E. Abbot is on the curve line, and, if he follows out his definition of religion to its logical consequences, he will surely land, whatever may be the sweep of his continuous curve, in the bosom of the Catholic Church. There is no escape from this ultimate result, if reason is to rule, except by hastily taking the back track, and starting on the tangent, and eventually plunging with Proudhon into the dark abyss of nihilism. Hence every sagacious straight-line radical cannot but look upon the platform of the editor of the Index as the jumping-off place into popery for all consistent theists. That this is not meant as pleasantry, but is written in downright earnestness, we quote the conclusion of his lecture on A Study of Religion, and preface it by saying that the language with which he urges his definition of religion on his hearers finds in every word an echo in the hearts of all sincere and instructed Catholics, and receives their full endorsement.
“I speak now,” he says, “as one who believes in religion, thus conceived, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, without apology either for the name or the thing, and without the smallest concession to the prejudice that assails either the one or the other. To-day I speak only to the large in heart and broad in mind—to those who must accept science and would fain accept religion too. To these I say that science itself would lose its fearless love of truth, were it not that religion fed its secret springs; that social reform would lose its motive and inspiration, literature and art their beauty, and all human life its sweetest and tenderest grace, did not religion evermore create the insatiable hunger after perfection in the soul of man. Bright, cheerful, ennobling, stimulating, emancipating, religion is the greatest friend of humanity, ever guiding it upward and onward to the right and the true; ay, and to all we yearn for, if, as we believe, the right and the true are indeed the pathway to God.”
But not all free-religionists are gifted with so deep, intelligent, and healthy an appreciation of the essence of religion as Francis E. Abbot, who leaves nothing at present to be desired but the courage of his convictions—proficiat!
There is, however, in the Christian Inquirer a revelation made by William Ellery Channing, a distinguished nephew of the celebrated Dr. Channing, which tells quite another story. It appears by this article that the president of the Free Religious Association, O. B. Frothingham, had attributed to Mr. Channing, one of the speakers in the tenth annual assembly, a “poetic Christianity,” a “religion in the air,” an “up-in-a-balloon” religion, and in reply to this accusation he draws from nature the following unattractive personal portraits:
“Let me,” says Mr. Channing, “make a clean breast of it to you before all onlookers. What you mean by the ‘rumors’ that I had become ‘ecclesiastical in tastes and opinions’ I can but conjecture. But the simple facts are in brief these: You remember how seven years ago, on the public platform, and in the reunions of the Free-Religionists in dear John Sargent’s hospitable rooms, and in private ‘confabs’ with yourself, and W. J. Potter, and S. Longfellow, and S. Johnson, and J. Weiss, and T. W. Higginson, and D. A. Wasson, and F. E. Abbot, etc., I tried to preach my gospel, that the vital centre of free religious union is the life of God in man as made gloriously manifest in Jesus the Christ. And you remember, too, how around that centre I illustrated the historic fact that the great religions of our race arranged themselves in orderly groups. For nearly a year I opened my heart and mind to the free-religionists and liberal Christians, without a veil to hide my inmost holy of holies. But shall I tell you, my friend, that when I bade you all farewell, in the summer of 1870, it was with sad forebodings? And why? The story, too long to tell in full, ran thus: One, in his wish to be bathed in the sense of ever-present Deity, had ceased to commune with the Spirit of spirits in prayer. Another, in his repulsion from imprisoning anthropomorphism, had abandoned all conceptions of a personal God, and so lost the Father. A third, in his historic purpose to lead a heavenly-human life, here and now, gave up the hope of immortal existence, as a sailor might turn from contemplating the cloud-palaces of sunset to pull the tarry cordage and spread the coarse canvas of his ship. And, saddest of all, a fourth, in his bold purpose to be spontaneous in every impulse and emotion, spurned the motherly monitions of duty so sternly that conscience even seemed driven to return to heaven, like ‘Astræa Redux.’ In brief, one felt as if the liberal college of all religions in council with pantheism, agnosticism, and atheistic materialism was destined to fall flat to dust in a confused chaos of most commonplace spiritual ‘know-nothingism.’ Such was my disheartening vision of the near future for dearly-loved compeers. And a darker valley of ‘devastation,’ as our Swedenborgian friends say, than I was driven into I have never traversed.”
But Mr. Channing goes further; he shows that he has studied the religious philosophers of antiquity to some purpose, seized their true meaning and real drift, and in touching language takes his readers into his confidence, offering to them an insight into his present relations to Christianity.
The following remarkable paragraph possesses a thrilling interest for Catholics; and if it affects others as it has the present writer on reading it, they will not fail to offer up an aspiration to Him who has given such graces to the soul of the man who penned it—and doubtless to others among the free-religionists—that he will render their faith explicit and perfect it.
“Once again,” he says, “I sought comfort with the blessed company of sages and saints of the Orient and Hellas—with Lao-Tsee and Kung Fu-Tsee; with the writers of the Bhagava-Geeta and the Dhamma-Bada; of the hymns of ancient Avesta and the modern sayings and songs of the Sufis; with radiant Plato and heroic Epictetus, etc., etc. Once more they refreshed and reinspirited me as of old. But they did something better: hand in hand they brought me up to the white marble steps, and the crystal baptismal font, and the bread and wine-crowned communion-table—ay, to the cross in the chancel of the Christian temple—and, as they laid their hands in benediction on my head, they whispered: ‘Here is your real home. We have been but your guides in the desert to lead you to fellowship with the Father and his Son in the spirit of holy humanity. Peace be with you.’ And so, my brother, once again, and with a purer, profounder, tenderer love than ever, like a little child, I kissed the blood-stained feet and hands and side of the Hero of Calvary, and laid my hand on the knees of the gentlest of martyrs, and was uplifted by the embracing arms of the gracious elder Brother, and in his kiss of mingled pity and pardon found the peace I sought, and became a Christian in experience, as through a long life I had hoped and prayed to be. Depend upon it, dear Frothingham, there is on this small earth-ball no reality more real than this central communion with God in Christ, of which the saints of all ages in the church universal bear witness.”
But we have wandered off somewhat from our present point, which is the proceedings of “the tenth annual meeting” of the free-religionists in Boston. What is singularly remarkable among so intellectual and cultivated a class of men as assemble at these gatherings, and especially among its select speakers and essayists, is that they should display so great a lack of true knowledge of the Catholic Church. If the Catholic Church is not worthy of serious study, then why make it a subject for speeches and essays in so important an assembly? But if it be worthy of so much attention, why not give it that investigation which its significance demands? We dare not say that the leaders among the free-religionists are not intelligent men, that they have not read considerably. But when they charge the Catholic Church with heresies which she has condemned; when they attribute to her doctrine which she always has detested and does detest; and when they blacken her with stale and oft-refuted calumnies, and recklessly traduce her dearest and best, her holiest children, we dare not trust ourselves to give expression to what comes uppermost in our thoughts. Shakspeare gives good advice in this matter:
We recommend this to the consideration of our free-religionists. It will do them “no hurt” to show more of this virtue when speaking of the Catholic Church. It becomes those who talk so much about science to talk a little less about it, and, when the Catholic religion is concerned, to give more evidence of scientific study. Especially does this course become men who claim to be public teachers belonging to a body whose object is “to encourage the scientific study of man’s religious nature and history.”
The first essay, delivered by William R. Alger, entitled Steps towards Religious Emancipation in Christendom, and published in their tenth annual report, will serve to illustrate our meaning. Mr. Alger is a scholar of repute, a man who has travelled abroad, written and published several books displaying extensive reading, refined tastes, and high literary culture. He is, moreover, a distinguished minister of the Unitarian denomination. His essay, we have reason to believe, was prepared with the usual care bestowed upon such papers; for the president of the association, in introducing the author, said: “The discussion will be opened by an essay by Mr. William R. Alger, of New York, who has made this matter in its historical aspects the study of years, and is carefully prepared to present the result of his deepest thought and investigation.”[26]
In its fourth paragraph the essay proposes to give a rough sketch of the “doctrinal thought” on which in mediæval times the “intellectual unity” of the church rested. Our limits will not allow us to quote it entire, but it is enough for our purpose to say—and we weigh our words before putting them on paper—that scarcely any one sentence of this paragraph contains a correct statement of the “doctrinal thought” of the Catholic Church either in the middle ages or in any other age.
Here are some of the statements: “The whole human race, descended from Adam, who lived five thousand years before,” etc. Mr. Alger would convey new information to the readers of The Catholic World, if he would give his authorities for this assertion. Thus far, if our authorities do not deceive us, the Catholic Church has, in her wisdom, left the question of the date of man’s appearance upon this earth to the discussion of chronologists and to the disputes among scientists.
Again: “The Bible, a mysterious book dictated by the Spirit of God, containing an infallible record of what is most important in this scheme of salvation, is withheld from the laity.” It would also increase the knowledge of our readers if the author had given his authorities to prove the above charge. The testimony of Catholics, if we be a judge, is precisely the contrary to this accusation. They entertain the conviction that it was the most earnest desire of the church in the period of which Mr. Alger is speaking to render the Bible accessible to all classes of men. Her monks devoted themselves to the severe manual labor of copying the Bible, and engaged in the noble toil of translating it into the vulgar tongues of various nations, that the people might become readers of the Bible. She exposed the Bible publicly in her libraries, and chained it to their walls by the windows, and to desks in her churches, in order that it might be read by everybody and not stolen. The charge is simply an old and oft-repeated calumny quite unworthy a man of reputed intelligence.
“The actual power or seal of salvation is made available to believers only through the sacraments of the church—confession, baptism, Mass, and penance—legally administered by her accredited representatives.” There is such an inextricable confusion pervading this statement that it is difficult to discern its meaning. No one, we venture to say, who had mastered the “doctrinal thought” of the church would have ever penned so distracted a sentence on so important a point. One would suppose that, according to Mr. Alger, there were two sacraments, one “confession” and the other “penance”; whereas every Catholic who has learned the little catechism knows that “confession,” the popular term, means, in the language of the church, the Sacrament of Penance. Then what is meant by “baptism legally administered by her accredited representatives”? This is not clear; but the whole statement is so confused in thought and tangled in expression that the only hope of understanding the author’s meaning is to give him an opportunity of trying again. It would be, among ourselves, interesting to read from non-Catholic authors the “doctrinal thought” of the church on what is essential to salvation and what is ordinarily necessary to salvation. It would also, we are inclined to think, clear up many of their misconceptions and do them no little good to have correct ideas on so important a matter.
“Those,” says Mr. Alger, “who humbly believe and observe these doctrines shall be saved; all others lost for ever.”
This sentence follows the preceding one, and the same confusion and error underlie both. When the ingenuous author of this essay has corrected the former sentence by reading up on the point involved, he will, as a matter of course, correct the error contained in the latter.
Passing now over several paragraphs containing many charges, we regret to say, in unusually bitter words, we come to the following: “The revival of the Greek learning, the study of the works of Plato, Aristotle, the classic poets, orators, and historians, with their beautiful and surprising revelations of genius, virtue, and piety, entirely independent and outside of the church and Bible, exerted an immense force in liberalizing and refining the narrow, dogmatic mind of the Christian world, refuting its arrogant pretensions to an exclusive communion with God and heritage in Providence.” If the cultivated writer of this essay had qualified the phrase “outside of the church” as I understand it, “exclusive communion” as I view it, this sentence might pass; but, as it stands, the position in which the Catholic Church is placed is entirely false, and we refer our readers to what is said on these points under the heading of “The Mission of the Latin Race,” commencing on page 5, in the last number of this magazine.
“Now the Pope,” says Mr. Alger, “excommunicates the emperor, sets up a rival, foments a rebellion among his subjects, or launches the terrible interdict on a whole nation, shutting the churches, muffling the bells, forbidding confession to the penitent, unction to the dying, burial to the dead.”[27] Either the author has been imposed upon by his authorities, or perhaps he has not weighed sufficiently his words. The effect of an interdict of the Pope is inaccurately stated. These are “terrible” matters, and one who is reciting history should be careful and exact in his specifications. Here, as before, he is bound to give his authorities, and learned and credible ones, or change his language.
“The repeated gross contradictions of bishops, councils, and popes, their inconsistent decrees reversing or neutralizing each other, infallibility clashing with infallibility, begat irrepressible doubts.”[28] This sentence may pass for a rhetorical flourish, but it involves a grave, a very grave, a most grave charge, and is backed up by no example, or proof, or relation of authorities! These cutting and slashing assertions where conscientious accuracy is required and sound scholarship ought to be displayed, place the intelligence and education of his Boston audience in no enviable light. Let us have some specimens of “infallibility clashing with infallibility” by all means:
“Luther sprang forth with one-third of Christendom in revolt at his back.... But the fundamental doctrines of the church scheme otherwise remained essentially as they had been, unchallenged.”[29] What a pity that the theologians of the sixteenth century had not known that “the fundamental doctrines of the church scheme remained essentially” the same! The Council of Trent, if it had only understood this, might have saved its anathemas.
“After Luther, then, we see Christendom, with fundamental agreement of belief, differing, for the most part, only in affairs of polity and ritual, split into two bodies—those who rest their belief on the inspired authority of the church, and those who rest it on the inspired authority of the Bible.”[30] Here again we have another fundamental erroneous idea of the church. “Inspired” authority is not what Catholics believe. This language shows poor theological training or a loose way of handling delicate and important points. But on this point we shall have more to say.
“Third,” says Mr. Alger, “a revolt of common sense against errors with which the teachings of church and Scripture were identified, but which, by the simple lapse of time, had been demonstrated to be false. For example, in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelations it is recorded: ‘And he laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled; after that he must be loosed a little season.’ This passage was thought to fix the date of the Day of Judgment. And as the time drew near the terror was profound. Throughout the generation preceding the year one thousand the pulpits of the Christian world rang with this frightful text and with awful descriptions of what it implied. The fear was as intense as the belief was general.”
Has not the author of this essay taken some romancer of history or some idle tale for his authority in the above charge? When and where did the church identify her teachings with this error? We grow uneasy in asking for authorities and examples; and when we are given an example of things which are said to have taken place eight hundred years or more ago, no authority is cited to authenticate the fact. The author may have given his hearers “the result of his deepest thought,” but he is too chary of the authorities for his “historical study of years.”
“The priests,” he tells us, “from the first hour scented this enemy from afar, and declared war against it [physical science], as the meaner portion of them still do everywhere. In the twelfth century the Council of Tours, in the thirteenth century the Council of Paris, interdicted to monks the reading of works on physical science as sinful.”[31] We retract having said that Mr. Alger cites no authorities; he does in the above accusation, but fails to quote the decrees or give their language, or tell what kind of councils these were and what their weight. We feel suspicious, and have grounds for this feeling, and we demand more definite proofs. The charge is precise; let the proofs be equally so. Let us have the authentic decrees and ipsissima verba. This is asking only fair play. It would not be pleasant to find this accusation, on serious investigation, a misconception, or a misinterpretation, or perhaps an invented calumny, but not by our author. We take real pleasure in finding a point in which we agree with him. Here is one: they are the “meaner portion,” if there be such “priests,” who “war against” the study of “the physical sciences.” We know of priests who are devoted to the study of the physical sciences, and some who are distinguished in these studies; but we have no acquaintance with the “meaner portion” who have “declared war against physical science.” Perhaps Mr. Alger has, and, if so, he will inform us who they are.
“Ethnology,” he asserts, “multiplies the actors in its drama [that of history], and takes the keystone from the arch of the church theology by disproving the inheritance of total depravity from one progenitor of all men.”[32] Here the author shares the error in common with almost all, if not all, Unitarians and free-religionists. They seem not to be able to grasp the idea that the Catholic Church, in the œcumenical Council of Trent, condemned the doctrines of Protestantism concerning original sin; and, whatever may be said to the contrary, the Catholic Church never goes back on her authoritative decisions. Mr. Alger well says that the doctrine of original sin is “the keystone of the arch of theology”; so much the more reason, therefore, that there should be no mistake on a point which shapes theology almost entirely. And if he and his brethren, free-religionists and Unitarians, could be got to understand and acknowledge that the Catholic Church has condemned the doctrines of Protestantism on original sin, as well as “the five points of Calvinism”—for they go together—then there would be some hope that the gross error of identifying Catholicity and Protestantism as “fundamentally and essentially the same” on this most important subject would be corrected. The error is an egregious one, which is constantly appearing in their addresses, sermons, tracts, essays, books, weekly papers, and journals, and with that error a thousand dependent errors would disappear. But, alas! we fear that we shall have to regard this as hopeless, and resign ourselves, for the present generation at least, to placing this, with other radical errors, among the points of “invincible ignorance”! May we just here be allowed, without being stigmatized as one of the “meaner portion” of the priesthood, to put in a humble demurrer to the unsustained assertion that “ethnology” has “disproven” “one progenitor of all men”?
If the reader is weary of following up with us this labyrinth of error in this not very long essay, he will pity the present writer; for he has not touched upon one-tenth of the errors which the same short essay holds. We have been careful, too, to be silent on language which might have come from Exeter Hall ranters or from the late Dr. Brownlee, a notorious anti-popery lecturer of former days. Indeed, we can scarcely allow ourselves the freedom of expressing our feelings of indignation at reading such language coming from men who have a reputation for polite culture. “Men,” we say; for at the close of its delivery Mr. Alger’s essay was endorsed by the president of the association as “the admirable essay by Mr. Alger, at once a history and an argument, a summary of facts and also a summary of apprehensions and suggestions, etc.”[33] Another speaker pronounced it a “most magnificent and masterly essay.”[34] We are not over-sensitive in matters of this kind, and before concluding our remarks we give a specimen of the language and spirit of the “most magnificent and masterly essay.”
“Few men,” says our estimable writer, “duly feel what a debt the nineteenth century owes to the illustrious founders and cultivators of science, Aristotle, Archimedes, Kepler, Newton, and the hundreds of lesser lights in many departments. What a beneficent and herculean task they have accomplished in breaking the chains of false authority, opening the dungeons of superstition, removing the incubus of religious terror! Their sunlit and open-air minds, in harmonious working connection with nature and their race, have done much to dispel the baneful power of a celibate church, the cloistered and mephitic minds of monks and hermits, introspective dreamers, tyrannical theorizers, who, set apart from the living interests of men, had woven over Christianity a horrid web of diseased logic spun out of the entrails of their own morbid brains.”
Let free-religionists honor Aristotle, Archimedes, Kepler, Newton, and other great masters in natural science; they are worthy, and we also pay them honor. Let them be grateful to those “cultivators of science” for all the hidden truths which, by their genius and toil, they have brought to light, and in this we also sympathize. Let them join with this class the men of our own day distinguished in this line of studies: the Herschels, the Faradays, the Agassiz, the Quatrefages, the Darwins, the Secchis, the Huxleys, the Tyndalls, the Drapers, etc.; they are all worthy of honor and gratitude for every new truth which they have discovered and made known to the world. Not to love all truth unreservedly is to renounce the light of reason and to repudiate God; for he was God who said, “I am the truth.” But this grateful acknowledgment for the labors of cultivators of the sciences by no manner of means implies the acceptance of every hypothesis or theory, put forth by some of them, which for the most part are based upon insufficient data or spun out of misconceptions of religion with secret hostility to Christianity. For there are men who pass for scientists who seem to be actuated more by a spirit of opposition to religion than a sincere desire for the discovery of the secrets of nature. Hence genuine science has to suffer no less than true religion from bigots and hypocrites, who erect their untenable opinions into final decisions of scientific investigation, and cloak themselves with the honorable livery of science to put forth the ignoble doctrines of materialism. Speculations, however brilliant, ought not to pass for science, and one must be on his guard in our days, lest he allow the authority of great names to impose upon his credulity the romance of science for real science.
But could not the author of this essay honor the really great men of science and be content, without dishonoring another class of men who devoted their gifts and gave their toil as enthusiastically at least, and with an equal self-sacrificing spirit, to the contemplation and discovery of another, and even, in degree, a higher, class of truths? Could he not pay Paul without robbing Peter?
Then, again, why this bitterness of expression towards the monks? Have these monks no aspirations that are holy? no convictions that are sacred? no rights worthy of respect? Why could not the monks with equal liberty lead such lives as the highest feelings in their souls called them to do as well as a Bronson Alcott, a Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Henry Thoreau, or William R. Alger? What or who has given to these Americans the liberty to lead such lives as they chose, and deprived men of other climes of this same personal privilege? Is it a commendable thing for a Sir Isaac Newton to lead a celibate life out of devotion to mathematics, and a sin for a St. Benedict to lead a single life out of as pure a devotion, at least, to the religion of Christ? If Reverend Ralph Waldo Emerson throws up his pastorate over a respectable Unitarian congregation, and retires to a remote country village to devote himself to the cultivation of literature and whatever he may please to think a more useful calling, in fidelity to his best aspirations, why may not a Bernadotti of Assisi retire from the business of a silk merchant, renounce his gay companions, and, in obedience to the voice of God in his soul, practise poverty and turn a religious reformer under the name of Francis? If Henry Thoreau repudiates the calling to be a clergyman not to be false to his highest convictions, devotes his leisure hours to the study of nature and the Greek poets, and, living for the most part on bread and water, takes up the manual labor of making lead-pencils to meet the cost of his scanty support, and in so doing not lose cast among the literary brahmins of Boston, why not let, with equal freedom, Anthony retire to the deserts of Egypt and give himself to divine contemplation and the making of baskets and mats for his innocent way of life, without being loaded with a heap of most abusive epithets? Was it heroic in Mr. Bronson Alcott to make an attempt to realize his ideal of a pure and holy life with a few choice spirits at Fruitlands, in the State of Massachusetts, while it was only the “mephitic” action of a “morbid brain” in a saintly Bernard actually to realize the ideal at Clairvaux, in the province of Burgundy in France? Are we to praise and never be weary of praising the Pilgrim Fathers for abandoning their country, their homes, their friends, and their relations to come to the wilds of inhospitable New England, in order that they might worship God according to the dictates of their consciences, and must we condemn the first pioneers in the wilderness who plunged into the solitudes of Egypt for precisely the same reason, in order to fulfil the great aspiration of their souls to God—the pilgrim saints of the desert? Who can read the riddle why the aspiration or effort of the soul to perfect itself is the result of “mephitic minds” in a Hebrew, or an Egyptian, or a Latin, or a Celt, and the same aspiration is religious, sacred, holy, when found in the soul of a New-Englander?
Did it not suggest itself to the mind of the author of this essay, when he perused the passage quoted against the monks, that he exposed himself to a flank movement? For where could you find better specimens and more plentifully of “introspective dreamers” and “tyrannical theorizers” than in the State, in the very city, nay, in the actual audience which assembled at the time to listen to Mr. Alger’s essay?