Isaac Taylor

“ The thread of every life is entangled with other threads beyond all reach of calculation, the weal and woe of each depends, by innumerable correspondences, upon the will, and caprices, and fortune, not merely of the individuals of his immediate circle, but upon those of myriads of whom he knows nothing. Or, strictly speaking, the tie of mutual influence passes, without a break, from hand to hand, throughout the human family: there is no independence, no insulation, in the lot of man; and therefore there can be no absolute calculation of future fortunes ”

“ But if there were room to imagine that the first spread of Christianity was owing rather to an accidental conjuncture of favoring circumstances than to its real power over the human mind, or if it might be thought that any such peculiar virtue was all spent and exhausted in its first expansive effort, then it is natural to look to the next occasion on which the opinions of mankind were put in fermentation, and to watch in what manner the system of the Bible then rode over the high billows of political, religious, and intellectual commotion. ”

“ If, as every one would profess, we desire to live, not for selfish pleasure, but to promote the happiness of others, if we would become, not idle well-wishers to our species, not closet philanthropists, dreaming of impracticable reforms, and grudging the cost of any effective relief, but real benefactors to mankind, we must take up the lessons of New Testament philanthropy, just as they lie on the page before us, and without imagining simpler methods, follow humbly in the track of experience. ”

“ In a word, it may be confidently affirmed that no man becomes an enthusiast in religion, until he has forgotten that he is a transgressor—a transgressor reconciled to God by mediation.
But when, either by the refinements of rationalism—a gross misnomer—or by superstitious corruptions, the central facts of Christianity have become obscured, no middle ground remains between the apathy of formality and the extravagance of enthusiasm. The substance of religion is gone, and its ceremonial only remains—remains to disgust the intelligent, and to delude the simple. ”

“ He surely need not want light and warmth who has the glories of heaven before him; let these glories be contemplated with constant and upward gaze, while the foot presses with energy the path of hope, and the hand is busied in every office of charity. The Christian who thus pursues his way, will rarely, if ever, be annoyed by the spectres that haunt the regions of a saddened enthusiasm.
The moping sentimentalism which so often takes the place of Christian motives is to be avoided, not merely because it holds up piety to the view of the world under a deplorable disguise ”

“ If you will receive the enthusiast's description of himself, he has become, in his own esteem, by continued force of divine contemplation, infinitely less than an atom—a mere negative quantity—an incalculable fraction of positive entity! meanwhile the whole of his deportment betrays a self-importance that might be ample enough for a god.
Minds of superior order, and when refined by culture, may be full fraught with enthusiasm without exhibiting any very reprehensible extravagances; for taste and intelligence avail to conceal the offensiveness of error, as well as of vice. ”

“ Christianity—we ask not whether for the benefit or the injury of the world—has triumphed; the mere fact is all that concerns our argument. But shall it be said, or if said, believed, that the late resurrection of the religion of the Bible has been managed in the cabinets of monarchs? Have kings and emperors given this turn to public opinion, which now compels infidelity to hide its shame behind the very mask of hypocrisy that it had so lately torn from the face of the priest? ”

“ Christianity is a religion neither for angels nor for ghosts; but for man, as God made him. Nevertheless, in revealing an endless existence, and in establishing the paramount claims of the future world, it has placed every interest of the present transient life under a comparison of immense disparity; so that it is true—true to a demonstration, that a man ought to "hate his own life" if the love of it puts his welfare for immortality in jeopardy. ”

“ Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence; and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable than that which usually envelops a pampered imagination. ”

“ The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy; and the eye that can pour forth its flood of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable apathy:—the heart has become, like that of leviathan, "firm as a stone, yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone." ”

“ And how immensely is this folly and immorality aggravated, when it is found that the voluntary suffering, instead of being simply useless, becomes, in its consequences, highly pernicious; and when, by abundant evidence, it is proved to generate the very worst corruptions and perversions to which human nature is liable! Such, clearly, are the inflictions of the monastic life—the solitude, the abstinence, the celibacy, the poverty!
The rule of Christian martyrdom is precise and unequivocal, and is such as absolutely to exclude every sort of spontaneous heroism. ”

“ It were an affront to reason, as well as to theology, to suppose that true and universal virtue can rest on any other foundation than the fear and love of God. The enthusiast, therefore, whose piety is fictitious, has only a choice of immoralities, to be determined by his temperament and circumstances. He may become, perhaps, nothing worse than a recluse—an indolent contemplatist, and intellectual voluptuary, shut up from his fellows in the circle of profitless spiritual delights and conflicts. ”

“ Were it indeed permitted to man to gaze upward from step to step, and from range to range of the vast edifice of rational existences, and could his eye attain its summit, and then perceive, at an infinite height beyond that highest platform of created beings, the lowest beams of the eternal throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be left to him in drawing near to the Father of spirits? How, after such a revelation of the upper world, could the affectionate cheerfulness of earthly worship again take place? ”

“ They were backed by the secret wishes, or the undissembled cheerings of almost the entire body of educated men throughout Europe. They used the only language then common to the civilized world, and a language which might be imagined to have been framed and finished designedly to accomplish the demolition of whatever was grave and venerated; a language, beyond any other, of raillery, of insinuation, and of sophistry; a language of polished missiles, whose temper could penetrate not only the cloak of imposture, but the shield of truth. ”

“ Not so the man who inhabits a den or a cell, who is seen by the world only through a loop-hole; or who shows himself to an admiring crowd when, and where, and in what posture he pleases. To such a one, the praise of sanctity will most often be found inscribed, on its other side, with a license to crime. Under circumstances so blasting to the simple honesty and unaffected humility of true piety, almost the best that charity can imagine is, that the hooded saint deludes himself, more even than he deceives others. ”

“ Nevertheless, from the accidents of the position in which we are placed, the divine influence may appear under an aspect immensely unlike that in which we should view it if our prospect of the intelligent universe were more extended than it is. Thus the sad tenant of a dungeon, who has spent the days of many years alive in the darkness of the tomb, thinks far otherwise of the light of the sun, as he watches the pencil ray that traverses his prison wall, than those do who walk abroad amid the splendors of the summer's noon. ”

“ In proportion as the influence of scriptural religion faded, the elder and the younger vice—Superstition and Enthusiasm, joined their forces to deform every principle and practice of Christianity, and in the course of four or five centuries, under their united operations, a faint semblance only of its primeval beauty survived; another period of five hundred years saw Superstition prevail, almost to the extinction, not only of true religion, but of Enthusiasm also; and mankind fell back into a gloom as thick as that of the ancient polytheism. ”

“ It has been proved that nothing inseparable from human nature, nothing invincible, stands in the way of the diffusion of our faith among either polished or barbarous polytheists; for already has it been victorious in both kinds. Let it be affirmed that the religious infatuations of mankind are firm as adamant; still it is a fact that a hammer harder than adamant once shattered the rock to atoms. And now, when it is proposed again to smite the same substance with the same instrument, are those to be deemed irrational who anticipate the same success? ”

“ The amenities that have been diffused through society in modern times forbid the overt acts and excesses of fanatical feeling; but the venom still lurks in the vicinity of enthusiasm, and may be quickened in a moment meantime, while smothered and repressed, it gives edge and spirit to those hundred religious differences which are still the opprobrium of Christianity. Whoever, then, admits into his bosom the artificial fire of an imaginative piety, ought first to assure himself that his heart harbors no particle of the poison of ill-will. ”

“ The illusions of hope then assume a tone of authority which effectually silences the whispers of common sense; and the imagination, more highly stimulated than when it fed only on things of earth, boldly makes a prey of the divine power and goodness, to the utter subversion of humble piety. A sanguine temper, quickened by perverted notions of religion, easily impels a man to believe that he is privileged or skilled to penetrate the intentions of Providence towards himself ”

“ And such interpretations may be held with so full and overwhelming a persuasion of their truth, that heaven and its splendors may seem to stand at the door of our very homes: to-morrow, perhaps, the hastening crisis of the nations shall lift the veil which so long has hidden the brightness of the eternal throne from mortal eyes: each turn of public affairs, a war, a truce, a conspiracy, a royal marriage, may be the immediate precursor of that new era, wherein it shall no longer be true, as heretofore, that "the things eternal are unseen." ”

“ The doctrine of a mystical sense has invariably been espoused by every successive body of idle religionists; that is to say, by all who, spurning or forgetting the authority which the Scriptures assert over the life and conscience, convert them into the materials of a delicious dream. The mask of allegory imposed on the Bible, serves first as a source of entertainment, and then as a shelter against the plain meaning of all passages directly condemning the will-worship, the fooleries, and the extravagances to which persons of this temper are ever addicted. ”

“ If, for example, there were no constancy in the events of life, there would be no room left for rational agency; and if, on the other hand, there were no inconstancy, the operations of the reasoning faculty would fall into a mechanical regularity, and the imagination and the passions would be iron-bound, as by the immobility of fate. It is by the admirable combination of the two principles of order and disorder, of uniformity and variety, of certainty and of chance, that the faculties and desires are wrought up to their full play of energy and vivacity of reason and of feeling. ”

“ And what shall be said of the audacity of one who, with no other commission in his hand than such as any man may please to frame for himself, usurps the awful style of the seer, pronounces the doom of nations, hurls thunders at thrones, and worse than this, puts the credit of Christianity at pawn in the hand of infidelity, to be lost beyond recovery, if not redeemed on a day specified by the fanatic for the verification of his word! ”

“ Surely men are not always so to remain children in understanding, that the less shall be preferred to the greater; nor shall it always be that the substantial evils of schism are perpetuated and vindicated on the ground of obscure historical questions, fit only to amuse the idle hours of the antiquary. This trifling with things sacred must come to its end, and the great law of love must triumph, and the Christian Church henceforward have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." ”

“ If the eye, when it fixes its gaze upon the vault of heaven, could see, in fancy, a causeway arched across the void, and bordered in long series with the hills and plains of an earthly journey—repeated ten thousand and ten thousand times, until ages were spent in the pilgrimage, then would he who possessed such a power of vision hide himself in caverns rather than venture to look up to the terrible magnitude of the starry skies, thus set out in parts before him. ”

“ Those unforeseen accidents which so often control the lot of men, constitute a superstratum in the system of human affairs, wherein, peculiarly, the Divine Providence holds empire for the accomplishment of its special purposes. It is from this hidden and inexhaustible mine of chances—chances, as we must call them—that the Governor of the world draws, with unfathomable skill, the materials of his dispensations towards each individual of mankind. ”

“ To assert, either that nature has conferred no physical superiorities, favorable to the development of mind, on particular races, or to maintain that the comparative disadvantages of some nations are so great and unalterable as to constitute impassable barriers in the way of civilization, is equally a quackery which history and existing facts condemn, and which nothing but the love of theory or simplification could ever recommend to an intelligent observer of mankind. ”

“ Whoever, instead of simply repressing the irregularities of the imagination, and forbidding its predominance, would altogether exclude its influence, must either sink far below the common level of humanity, or rise much above it.
The excesses of the imagination are of two kinds; the first is when, within its proper sphere, it gains so great a power that every other affection and motive belonging to human nature is overborne and excluded. ”

“ He who entertains it may exultingly, yet calmly exclaim, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand;" and this kindling expectation will rouse him to greater diligence in every good work, to greater watchfulness against every defilement of heart, and frivolity of spirit, and inconsistency of conduct: he will strive with holy wakefulness, to live as the disciple should who is "waiting for his Lord." Thus far he can justify the new vivacity of his hopes upon the ground of the permanent motives of religion; for he feels nothing more than a Christian may well always feel ”

“ No species of enthusiasm, perhaps, is more extensively prevalent, and certainly none clings more tenaciously to the mind that has once entertained it, and none produces more practical mischief, than that which is founded on an abuse of the doctrine of a particular Providence. It is by the fortuities of life that the religious enthusiast is deluded. Chance, under a guise stolen from piety, is his divinity. ”

“ Here, then, as a plain matter of fact, is an instance of boundless causation, connecting certain individuals with myriads of their species, from age to age, and forever. It is an instance, we say, and not more: for the voice of history is but a preluding flourish to that voluminous revelation which shall be made, in the great day of consummation, of all that has been acted and suffered upon earth's surface. ”

“ If we encumber the Providence of God with unwarranted expectations, it will be difficult not so to murmur under disappointment as those do who think themselves defrauded of their right. In truth, amidst the sharpness of sudden calamity, or the pressure of continued adversity, the most sane minds are tempted to indulge repinings which reason, not less than piety, utterly condemns. The imputation of defective wisdom, or justice, or goodness, to the Being of whom we can form no notion apart from the idea of absolute knowledge, rectitude, and benevolence, is too absurd to need a formal refutation ”

“ The mischief of heresy becomes often far more active and conspicuous in second hands than it was in those of its authors; and the reason is that it is usually the child of intellectualists—an inoffensive order of men: but no sooner has it been brought forth and reared, than it joins itself, as by instinct, to minds of vulgar quality, and in that society soon learns the dialect of impiety and licentiousness. The heresiarch, though he may be more blameworthy, is often much less audacious, and less corrupted, than his followers; for he, perhaps, is only an enthusiast; they have become fanatics. ”