James Martineau

“ Is our religion, my friends, a matter of the intellect only,—a mere mine of inexhaustible speculation? I grant that it is in perfect unison with the dictates of enlightened reason, and that it administers the noblest stimulus and worthiest employment to the faculties of the mind. But are not its ultimate dealings with the affections? Does it not present to us new objects of love, new scenes of hope, a new system of desires? Does it not unlock the springs of human feeling, and pour the full tide of emotion upon the soul? ”

“ He melts the barrier away that hides from mere sense and intellect the interior sentiment—the formative idea—of all visible things; and his glance of sympathy changes them not less than a burst of amber sunrise changes a leaden landscape and picks out the freshest smiles. Thus he finds himself in a living universe, ever striving to show him a divine beauty that lurks within and presses to the surface; and he stands before a curtain only half opaque, watching the lights and shadows thrown on it from behind by the ceaseless play of infinite thought. ”

“ It is the function of Religion to occupy a tranquil seat above the contests of partial pursuits and narrow interests; as, in the world of action, to hold the balance of Right, so, in the world of intellect, to preserve the equities and the equilibrium of Truth; and her trust is betrayed by any one who flings himself, as her representative, into the civil wars of the sciences, and in her name signs away whole provinces of thought, and abandons them to outrage and confiscation as conquered lands. Human faith has nothing to fear from the unity and perfection of all the sciences ”

“ They shrink from the toil of working out truth for themselves out of the materials which Providence has placed before them. They long for the precious metal, but loathe the rude ore out of which it has to be extricated by the laborious alchemy of thought. A ready-made creed is the paradise of their lazy dreams. A string of authoritative, dogmatic propositions comprises the whole mental wealth which they desire. The volume of nature—the volume of history—the volume of life—appall and terrify them. Such men are the materials out of whom good catholics of all sects are made. ”

“ But, for my own part, I am persuaded, that life would soon become intolerable on earth, were it copied from nothing in the heavens; that its deeper affections would pine away and its lights of purest thought grow pale, if it lay shrouded in no Holy Spirit, but only in the wilderness of space. The most sagacious secular voice leaves, after all, a chord untouched in the human heart: listening too long to its didactic monotone, we begin to sigh for the rich music of hope and faith. The dry glare of noonday knowledge hurts the eye by plying it for use and denying it beauty ”

“ We dive into his eternity, through the ocean waves of time, that roll and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his intellect, and the majesty of his rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the spirit that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Nazareth; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One that passed no sorrow by. ”

“ A religion that is superior to the external distinctions of lineage and class, and draws its lines only by the invisible coloring of souls, must ever be a religion open to hope, and therefore apt to love. Even where the severest doctrine of exclusion has prevailed, the fundamental sentiment of Christian faith has saved the heart from the most withering of all passions,—the blight of scorn. Human nature may appear beneath the eye of an austere believer in an awful, but never in a contemptible light. The very crisis in which it is suspended can belong to no mean existence. ”

“ The time is too short, the crisis too near, for the career of a free life, or the building of a human home. It is better for every one to continue as he is; and instead of waiting to have the world perish from him, to regard himself as already dead to the world. To stand impassive and alone, neutral to joy or sorrow, with soul intent on the future, and disengaged from impediments of the past, earnest to keep bright on its watch-tower the beacon of faith, but resolute to descend no more into the plain below, appeared to the Apostle Paul the highest wisdom. ”

“ What is this but to make Moral Excellence something quite different in heaven and on earth?—not veracity, not justice, not purity of thought, not self-sacrificing love; nothing that here makes our hearts burn within us as we look at the dear face of long-tried friends or saintly strangers, or leaving the Jerusalem of the noisy present pace the quiet road of history, talking by the way with the saviours of nations and the prophets of a world;—not this, but some hidden charm that finds neither place nor answer in our souls ”

“ Assigning to him a transcendent moral nature, sensitive to the same distinctions, conservative of the same solemnities, which awe and kindle us, it singles out the conscience as the field where we are to meet him,—where the bridge will be found of transit between the human and the divine. No fear or servility remains with an obedience consisting, not in mystic acts and artificial habits, but in the free play of natural goodness; and rendered, not in homage to a Supreme Autocrat, but in sympathy with a Mind itself the infinite impersonation of all the sanctities. ”

“ Philosophy at its ease, apart from the real responsibilities and strong battle of life, loses its diviner sympathies, and lapses into the scrupulosity of doubt, and from the centre of comfort weeps over the miseries of earth, and the questionable benevolence of heaven; while the practically tried and struggling, with moral force growing beneath the pressure of crushing toil, look up with a refreshing trust, and with worn and bleeding feet pant happily along to the abodes of everlasting love. ”

“ Is there a Christian mother who has not lingered with the bereaved Mary around the cross, wondered at her awful sorrows, and thought how in the watches of the night memory would bring back upon her ear that last appeal, "Woman, behold thy son"? The tears which flow at passages like these, the admiration with which they burden the heart, the images of moral loveliness with which they fill the imagination, are not the exclusive possession of any sect; they are the unrestricted boon of God to the human soul. ”

“ Never did any one spend himself in the service of man, and yet despair of the benignity of God. Our faith, then, in the Divine perfection, forms and disengages itself from the deeps of conscience: and the Holiest that broods over us solemnly rises—the awful spirit of eternity—from the ocean of our moral nature.
It is in conformity with this doctrine of the moral origin of our belief in the first principles of religion, that to every man his God is his best and highest, the embodiment of that which the believer himself conceives to be the greatest. ”

“ The peculiar office of Christ is to supply a new moral image of Providence; and everything, therefore, except the moral complexion of his mind, we leave behind as human and historical merely, and apply to no religious use. I have already stated in what way nature and the Gospel combine to bring before us the great object of our trust and worship. The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ, his Spirit. We climb to the infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of light. ”

“ Is all the wickedness, then, that I am doomed to witness, nothing but a personal affront? When a rascal threatens to blow out my neighbor's brains, or to blast his character by infamous accusations, am I in a position to forbear and pardon? Must I not own myself under a solemn trust, to see the right done and the guilty punished? Nay, would not the injured man himself greatly mistake the nature of the crime, and measure it by a paltry standard, if he took it for a mere private offence which it was his prerogative to punish or to overlook? ”

“ The first remains, and ever will remain, worthy of the glorious joy with which Paul regarded and expounded it. God has committed the rule of this world to no exclusive prince, and no sacerdotal power, and no earthly majesty; but to one whose spirit, too divine to be limited to place and time, broke through clouds of sorrow into the clearest heaven; and thither has since been drawing our human love, though for ages now he has been unseen and immortal. An impartial God, a holy and spiritual law, an infinite hope for all men, are given to us by that generous cross. ”

“ If there be any truth in the remark of a philosopher, that the essence of friendship is to have the same desires and aversions, how much ground have all Christians for mutual love! Widely as their speculations may diverge, the great concern of all is with God, the Infinite Father; with Christ, the commissioned prophet, the merciful redeemer, the inspired teacher, the perfect model, the heavenly guide; with eternity, the seat of our deepest and most permanent interests, the receptacle of our lost friends, the grave of virtuous sorrow, the home of the tossed and faithful spirit. ”

“ But from our watch-tower we can look through only one window at once; the blind walls of our mental chamber shut out all the rest; and as we kneel, like Daniel, at the open light, the breeze upon our face seems sacred, because it comes from our Jerusalem. The question is not, whether there is such a thing as truth, rounded off, self-balanced, and complete; in the mind of God,—the final seat of reality,—of course there is. Nor is it a question, whether each individual man can attain a faith consistent in its parts, agreeable to fact, and adequate to his nature. ”

“ Show me a child that flings an affectionate arm around a parent, and lights up his eyes beneath her face, and I know that there have been no lectures there upon filial love; but that the mother, being lovable, has of necessity been loved; for to genial minds it is as impossible to withhold a pure affection, when its object is presented, as for the flower to sulk within the mould, and clasp itself tight within the bud, when the gentle force of spring invites its petals to curl out into the warm light. ”

“ Shall the love restored to us after long delay, and in consideration of an equivalent, work mightily on the heart,—and shall that which asked no purchase, which has been veiled by no cloud, which has enfolded us always in its tranquillity, nor can ever quit the soul opened to receive it, fail to penetrate the conscience, and dissolve the frosts of our self-love by some holier flame? ”

“ An earnest speech, a brave and holy life, truth of sympathy, severity of conscience, freshness and loftiness of faith,—these natural sanctities are his implements of power; and if heaven be pleased to add any other gifts, still are they weapons all,—not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom,—but forged in the inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows beneath the breath of God, framing things of ethereal temper. Thus armed, he lays undoubting siege to the world's conscience; tears down every outwork of pretence; forces its strong-holds of delusion ”

“ Is he in his heart to identify his own with the absolute truth, sufficient for all as for himself? Is he to expect them to come round to it, and altogether throw away their own? Or is he to confess to himself his own limitations, to suspect that he may have his blind sides, and reverently to seek something he has missed in that which others persist in seeing? In which direction is he to seek unity? By antipathy to all beliefs save one?—or by inviting all of them to live their life and show their place in human nature? ”

“ Nor can any philosophy, falsely so called, permanently expel this conviction from the Christian heart. Every devout and earnest mind naturally feels that its selfishness and sin are of the earth, earthy,—the most offensive of all attitudes to God,—the infatuated turning of the back to Him: and, on the other hand, welcomes the fresh glow of pure Resolve, the heart-felt sob of Penitence, the glorious Courage that slays Temptation at his feet,—each as the gracious gift of a divine strength, and the authentic voice of the Inspirer, God. ”

“ Man feels that his personal attributes, his will, his character, his conscience, demand conflict for their condition, and without the possibility of ill could never be; and when he carries them out into the infinite region, to serve as his image of the Highest, they bear with them the inseparable shadow of evil, and give it place in the universe, as the darkness in whose absence light would want its distinction, the privative without which the beauty of holiness were nothing positive. Hence, expressed or unexpressed, a dualism mingles with all genuine theistic faith. All is not divine for it. ”

“ It is the abode of every ennobling relation, the scene of every worthy toil;—the altar of his vows, the observatory of his knowledge, the temple of his worship. Whatever succeeds to it will be its sequel, not its opposite, will resume the tale wherever silence overtakes it, and be blended into one life by sameness of persons and continuity of plan. He is set here to live, not as an alien, passing in disguise through an enemy's camp, where no allegiance is due, and no worthy love is possible, but as a citizen fixed on an historic soil, pledged by honorable memories to nurse yet nobler hopes. ”

“ Why should we start to think that there is a part of us which is divine?—why image to ourselves a distant, external, contemplative God, seeing all things and touching nothing, gazing on the unconscious evolutions of things, as the retired Mechanist of nature?—why enthrone Him in the inertness of dead space, without even a sacred function there, and exclude Him from the tried, and tempted, and ever-trembling soul of Man? ”

“ Nor are any dizzy and perilous flights incurred by a devotion which meets its great Inspirer in no foreign heaven, but in the higher walks of this home life, and misses him only in what is mean and low. The place assigned in Christianity to the moral sentiments and affections has no parallel in any other religion. The whole faith is as an unutterable sigh after an ideal perfection. Holiness eternal in heaven, incarnate on earth, and to be realized in men,—this is the circle of conceptions in which it moves. ”

“ Those on whom Heaven lays the burden of duty no power on earth may strip of rights. The conscience with which the Highest can commune, the spirit which is not too mean for His abode, can be no object of slight and scorn from men. By law and usage you may have the disposal of another's lot and labor; but in the reality of things the lord of a province may be less than the conqueror of a temptation. You may be Greek, and he barbarian; but in the heraldry of the universe, the blood of Agamemnon is less noble than the spirit of a saint. ”

“ We shrink from being singular, even in excellence, forgetting how many things are customs in heaven which are eccentricities on earth. We fix our eye, now on the tempting treasures below, then on the half-veiled glories above; we open our ears, now to the welcome tones of human praise, then to the accents of God's approving voice; and in the vain attempt to reconcile opposing claims, we sacrifice our interest in both worlds. ”