J. F. Hurst

“ Nature's seers, running their eye along the line of the moral law, catch vistas in the future brighter than those that now are fading from the Old Testament page; and Nature's prophets, putting their ear to the ground, hear the murmur of nobler revelations than were ever given to the old oracles now moving their stiffened lips in death. Humanity's heresiarchs are lordlier than inhumanity's priests. The soul's image-breaking is diviner than the prelate's worship. Knowledge distances faith. Human solidity more than makes good the Catholic's Communion. ”

“ In its eyes the moral element of Christianity is as the sun in heaven, and dogmatic systems are as the clouds that intercept and temper the exceeding brightness of its rays. The insect, whose existence is but for a moment, might well imagine that these were indeed eternal, that their majestic columns could never fail, and that their luminous folds were the very source and centre of light. ”

“ An enumeration of the evil doings of a public enemy is the best plan to forestall his future misdeeds. We are not to judge Rationalism by its professions. The question is not, What does it wish? At what does it aim? or, What is its creed? But the true way to measure, understand, and judge it, is by answering the inquiry, What has it done? Its work must determine its character. This work has been most injurious to the faith and life of the church, and its deeds must therefore be its condemnation. There are those who say, "Tell us nothing about skepticism; we know too much about it already." ”

“ He lived a life according to the spirit, and proclaimed a religion such as no one before or after him has been able to do. Is it not enough that he has glorified humanity, and made himself adored as king of humanity, even with a crown of thorns upon his brow? The hearts of men have been disclosed to him, and he has caused to well up therefrom streams of love, which none can turn aside. ”

“ The so-called revelation was only the mythical copy of the moral law already implanted in our nature. He believed in a universal religion. Everything peculiar and won by struggle should be given up; all strife of opinions should cease at once. Kant designed, in the main, to curb the illicit exercise of Reason, but his failure to indorse the great doctrines of our faith, because revealed, threw him on the side of the Rationalists. His adoption of God's existence, the soul's immortality, human freedom, and original sin, was not due to his belief in these doctrines as revealed, but as intuitive. ”

“ He holds with Schleiermacher, that Christianity is not as much doctrine as vitality, and that it possesses the creative and organizing power of religion. Christianity is both divine and human; divine in its origin and essence, but human in its development and fulfillment. Without the person of Christ to stand in the very focus of Christianity, the latter becomes void and no more than any moral religion. We can have no proper conception of Christianity apart from its founder, for its whole essence exists in him. Christianity is Christ developing himself in humanity. ”

“ Your fathers believed the old Confessions, imagined Christ to be divine, and the Scriptures inspired. We do not blame them much, for they knew no better. But, if you follow in their footsteps, the world will never give you any credit for originality; your slow chariot will move on in the old rut; you will never accomplish anything; your generation will be in advance of you. Be a man! The field of usefulness, prominence, and honor, opens before you. Think for yourself! The Bible is a book of the past, and you should have more manliness and independence than to be guided by its declarations. ”

“ Of the Lord's Supper he said, on his entrance upon his pastoral duties at Weimar, "The Lord's Supper should not be a mere word and picture, but a fact and truth. We should taste and see what joys God has prepared for us in Jesus Christ when we have intercourse with him at his own table. In every event and accident of life we should feel that we are his brethren and are sitting at one table, and that, when we refresh ourselves at the festival of our Saviour, we are resting in the will and love of the great King of the world as in the bosom of the Father. ”

“ I hasten thither to make good my confession, to strengthen myself in the truth, and to prepare myself for death and eternity. O lead me in such a path, my Father, and so open my heart to the impressions of truth that I may be strong enough to make it known to my fellow men. They know that thou art their God and Father, and that thou didst send Jesus thy Son, and the Holy Spirit who was to testify of the truth. They can therefore have strength for every grief of this life, and for the sorrows of death a bright hope of a happy immortality. ”

“ The intellectual power, the mental enlargement arising from converse with the great objects of faith is always to be regarded as a secondary and supplementary benefit to that which it is the immediate object of the gospel to bestow. Despise not human greatness or talent or ability of any kind, but beware lest you overvalue it. I see a time coming—indeed it is already at hand—in which gifted men will lift up their voices for the truth; but woe to the times in which admiration and applause of the speaker shall be substituted for laying to heart the truth which he delivers! ”

“ As a specimen of Pierson's style, we give his portrait of a good preacher: "All elements are concentrated in him in such a way that men will, can, and must listen, for attention is as much a state as love. You cannot command, but you may deserve it. Paint for humanity, which, though despised by the formalists, terrified by the moralists, and condemned by the Pharisees, is yet the image of him who spoke not of its guilt, but of its sickness and sorrow; not of a judgment-seat, but of the open arms of the Father; not of damnation, but of regeneration. ”

“ The American has never been a cold observer of the hemisphere from which his forefathers came. We appropriate the treasures of the Old World, and love to call them our own. We are as proud of the martyrology and literature of England as if Latimer and Ridley had died for their faith on Boston Common, or Shakspeare and Milton had lived on the banks of the Hudson. The early legislation of our government having left the individual conscience to the exercise of its own convictions, each citizen has been more interested in whatever religious opinions might appear from European sources. ”

“ This was indeed a race of thinkers who have been equaled in strength in but few periods of history. Coming in regular succession, their systems sprang from Kant's philosophy, and constituted the growth of his wonderful achievement. They tended to withdraw the flippant spirit of criticism to a more serious and modest path of inquiry, and to make men look more at their own weakness than at their greatness. But what a mass of subtleties do we have to pass through to get at the substance of their speculations! ”

“ In Geneva the free-thinking stranger is advised of Christianity. In the souls of men, instead of meeting with no resistance, no solidity,—as, for instance, among the greater part of our Parisian Catholics,—instead of finding himself in the face of a creed mechanically repeated, of a memory and not of a conscience,—you feel yourself in contact with an individual who will believe, who can believe, who is in full possession of the why of his belief. Nothing in the world is to me so sacred as sincerity in intelligent faith. ”

“ God is not a person—least of all are there three persons in God. If God be the substance in all the phenomena, then it follows of itself that God cannot be thought of without the world, and hence that the world has no more had an origin than it will have an end. One may call the world the body of God, the shadow of God, the son of God. The spirit of God is in all that exists. It is ridiculous to ascribe inspiration to special persons only; every one ought to be a Christ, a prophet, an inspired man. ”

“ Christianity is a determinate mode of man's life, and is so determined by conscious dependence on God, but in no wise by knowledge, conception, action, or the will. Religion does not arise from experience and sensation, but from an original self-consciousness. There is an intimate connection between doctrine and practice, truth and holiness. Redemption is not merely a restoration, nor a mere perfected creation, but one through the other. ”

“ Though only forty-six years old, twenty of which have been passed in the rectorship of Eversley, an enumeration of his works shows him to have written theology, philosophy, poetry, and romance. But his publications betray unity of purpose. Instead of suffering Christianity to be a dead weight upon society, he would adapt it to the wants of the masses. He holds that when the adaptation becomes thorough, when, by any means, the people can be made to grasp Christianity, the reflexive influence will be so great as to elevate them to a point unthought of by the sluggish Church. ”

“ It is the most perfect reciprocal penetration of the divine and human by means of liberty. If the moral idea be consecrated by Christ, it will lead to the Gospel. No one will become a Christian unless he has determined to listen to his conscience, and never question concerning moral certainty. We know of no other corner-stone in morality or in religion. But, in order to bring the truths of the Gospel home to the heart, there must be religious liberty. Christianity is the religion of love, but to what could a reconciliation amount which is not free? It is the religion of freedom ”

“ The proof of the true human conception of God, as well as of man, is their harmonious union in the conception of the God-man. This is the centre of all doctrine. The world is a progressive succession, developing the divine germ. History unites itself to revelation as a second creation, elevating man to continuous growth. God's providential changes unite with the active faith of man, and they do not constitute an isolated act of God, but a great historical combination of revelations. They rise gradually and find their completion in the God-man. ”

“ There is no other radical cure for a proud, self-willed heart than every day and every hour to repeat that act by which we first came to Christ. Pray that you may have more of that childlike spirit which regards the grace of your Lord as a perennial fountain of life. Especially avoid the error of those who seek life for the sake of light, who would make religion a mere stepping-stone to intellectual superiority. Such persons will never attain to a vital apprehension of divine things; for our God is a jealous God, and will be loved by us for his own sake. ”

“ On the one hand, it is my belief that the consciousness of the age will never thoroughly reässimilate Christianity till it can take courage to believe again in miracle and supernatural influence. I am no less firmly convinced, on the other hand, that miracle and supernatural influence will never find their way into the conscious belief of Christians in the form in which church-theology has allowed those ideas to be inoculated into it. That which is passed can never be recalled to life after history has once buried it. ”

“ That which constitutes the peculiar characteristic of religion, namely, that it is an independent element in human nature, had fallen into oblivion by a one-sided rational or speculative tendency, or a one-sided disposition to absorb it in ethics. Schleiermacher had touched a note which, especially in the minds of youth, was sure to send forth its melody over the land. Men were led back into the depth of their heart, to perceive here a divine drawing which, when once called forth, might lead them beyond that which the author of this impulse had expressed with distinct consciousness. ”

“ One of the speakers, in explaining the relations of the Union to the church, said: "We maintain, then, that we are in the church, are the church—not a part of it, but the whole church,—having in us the heart and soul of orthodoxy itself, the essence of all that gave life to its creed, the utmost significance and vital force of what it taught and still teaches, in what we conceive to be a stuttering and stammering way, in a cumbrous and outworn language, with a circuitous and wearisome phraseology; but meaning really what we mean, and doing for men essentially what we are doing. ”

“ God still inspires men as much as ever, and is immanent in spirit as in space. This doctrine, which is Spiritualism, "relies on no church, tradition, or Scripture, as the last grand and infallible rule; it counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters; helps, if they help us, not authorities. It relies on the Divine presence in the soul of man; the eternal word of God, which is truth, as it speaks through the faculties he has given. It believes God is near the soul as matter to the sense; thinks the canon of revelation not yet closed, nor God exhausted. ”

“ Instead of looking without for a basis of religion, we must commence at home, within ourselves. "We must start in religion from our own souls, for in them is the fountain of all divine truth. An outward revelation is only possible and intelligible on the ground of conceptions and principles previously furnished by the soul. Here is our primitive teacher and light. Let us not disparage it. There are, indeed, philosophical schools of the present day, which tell us that we are to start in all our speculations from the Absolute, the Infinite. ”