Proselytizing

“ And, to our shame be it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism—those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and piety—I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever so silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world. We, I say, have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the sects of the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it. ”

“ But there are worse things than prosiness. The mere change from the poetry of youth to the prose of middle life need not in itself alarm us. Some of the finest classics in our literature are penned in prose. But within this minor peril lies the germ of a major peril. The trouble is that prosiness may develop into pessimism. And when prosiness curdles into pessimism the case of the patient is very grave. I heard a young fellow in his teens telling a much older man of his implicit faith in the providence of God. ”

“ To all this it is to be added, that the rules of prudence, good manners, and religion, by restraining all rusticity, moroseness, and insolence, and obliging us to actions of a contrary nature, even though we have not the proper internal feelings, do by degrees contribute to beget these in us, i.e. to beget sociality and complaisance; just in the same manner, as a person in a passion becomes much more inflamed from his own angry expressions, gestures, and actions. ”

“ Our literary, like our religious, creed should rest upon a purely rational ground, and be exposed to logical tests.2 Our faith in an author must, in the first instance, be the product of instinctive sympathy, instead of deliberate reason. It may be propagated by the contagion of enthusiasm, and preached with all the fervour of proselytism. But when we are seeking to justify our emotions, we must endeavour to get for the time into the position of an independent spectator, applying with rigid impartiality such methods as are best calculated to free us from the influence of personal bias. ”

“ Were they drugged with instruction which they nauseated? Were they goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and disgusting mummeries; and drilled into the tactics of a creed rank with loathed abominations? We repeat it, to become a servant, was to become a proselyte. Did God authorize his people to make proselytes at the point of the bayonet? by the terror of pains and penalties? by converting men into merchandise? Were proselyte and chattel synonymes in the Divine vocabulary? Must a man be sunk to a thing before taken into covenant with God? ”

“ Prejudice, faith in authority, mysticism, etc., with conscious or unconscious hypocrisy, and by the aid of more or less transparent sophisms, place themselves at the service of the basest human passions—envy, hatred, vanity, avarice, lewdness, scandal, desire of domination and idleness—and clothe them all with the sacred mantle of ancient customs, the better to sanction their ignominy by relying on the authority of tradition. ”

“ It was here alone that the traveller felt himself bound to take liberties with the original; for though the march of mind and the general augmentation of ideas, have made prolixity a common characteristic of each man in his own person, they have not made him more tolerant of it in another. ”

“ Yet more, and worse than that, you have been no thoughtless day-laborer; you have fully and entirely belonged to us; you were, in fact, a scholar, from whose learning many with higher pretensions have frequently taken counsel. You not only treasured in your mind a mass of rare knowledge, but you well comprehend the thoughts to which such knowledge gives rise. You were all this--and yet a forger. With true devotion and self-denial, you united malicious willfulness; you were a confidential and assiduous assistant, and at the same time a deceiver, bold and mocking like a devil. ”

“ You interest me, Heard. If you deny the susceptibility of a temperament like his, you deny the whole operation of externals upon character and action. You deny, for example, the success of the Roman Catholic Church which relies, for its moral effects, upon such optic appeals to the senses, and upon the ease with which transitory feelings can be transmuted into axioms of conduct. ”

“ And even some amongst themselves, great advocates for what they choose to call practical godliness, who have been drenched in sensuality, some of whom have been exposed to the public—why not use them as they have me? I only appeal to every thinking mind, whether their cruelty could arise from any thing but spite. It cannot arise from my doctrine itself, but their wilful ignorance of it, perversion p. ”

“ With large Conscientiousness, Veneration, Ideality, Benevolence and Causality, he will rather suffer death than commit a dishonourable action. If Conscientiousness, Benevolence and Veneration are deficient, he will be dogmatic, imperious and haughty, and will be constantly striving for power, which, when obtained, he invariably abuses. If an author, with Ideality, Language and Comparison large, he will write in a sustained and lofty style, never descending to a common-place expression. ”

“ These ghostly animadversions may, perhaps, sound harsh to the polite ears of latter days, but denunciation was, at that time, an instrument of reasoning much more effectual than persuasion, and the spiritual guides of the people, in warning them of the danger of evil courses, made no scruple, on any occasion, to strengthen their admonitions with the liveliest imagery that religion and enthusiasm supplied. ”

“ But if we wish to analyze this innate conviction, upon which so much weight is placed, we will find that it is but the effect of a rooted habit, which, making them close their eyes against the most demonstrative proofs, leads the majority of men, and often the most enlightened ones, back to the prejudices of childhood. What can this innate sense or this ill-founded persuasion prove against the evidence which shows us that what implies contradiction can not exist? ”

“ The language and dress of these sentiments is such as the present temper of mind dictated, whether it were grave or pleasant, severe or smiling. If there has been any thing expressed with too much severity, I suspect it will be found to fall upon those sneering or daring writers of the age against religion, and against the Christian scheme, who seem to have left reason, or decency, or both, behind them, in some of their writings. ”

“ This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud in the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse of conscience. ”

“ Arrived at the ninth degree, the proselyte knows of no religion, nor submission to any other authority but his own, and is left to himself for choosing among the systems of philosophy the one he likes best. ”

“ For ‘to prose’, as we all now know too well, is to talk or write heavily and tediously, without spirit and without animation; but once it was simply the antithesis of to versify, and a ‘proser’ the antithesis of a versifier or a poet. It will follow that the most rapid and liveliest writer who ever wrote, if he did not write in verse would have ‘prosed’ and been a ‘proser’, in the language of our ancestors. ”

“ The vividness of the ideas of this class easily generates this false persuasion in persons of strong fancies, little experience in divine things, and narrow understandings, (and especially where the moral sense, and the scrupulosity attending its growth and improvement, are but imperfectly formed,) by giving a reality and certainty to all the reveries of a man’s own mind, and cementing the associations in a preternatural manner. ”

“ But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. ”

“ It is, without exception, the boldest effort the human mind has yet produced, in the investigation of morals and theology—in the destruction of priestcraft and superstition—and in developing the sources of all those passions and prejudices which have proved so fatal to the tranquillity of the world. ”

“ Large.—With Comparison large, one will be strongly given to criticising and analyzing, and will readily detect fallacies and improprieties that would escape the observation of those in whom this organ is small. If Ideality and Individuality are large, his language will abound with elevated metaphors and figures of speech, but if Causality is small, his judgment will be defective. If Secretiveness is small, and Combativeness and Self-esteem large, he will be strongly inclined to criticise every observation he hears, and will thus excite enmity and ill-will. ”

“ And, in the same way, as soon as we have recognised that an act is brave or generous, we regard with esteem or admiration the doer of it. But, though the feeling of approbation or disapprobation follows instantaneously on the act of judgment, the recognition of the character of the action, or its reference to a class, which constitutes this act of judgment, may be, and often is, a process of considerable length and complexity. ”

“ I ask, if proficiency must imply profligacy, would you not rather find a man break down in his verbs than in his virtue? Would you not prefer a little inaccuracy in his declensions to a total forgetfulness of the decalogue? And, lastly of all, what man of real eminence could have masqueraded—for it is masquerading—for years in this motley, and come out, after all, with even a rag of his identity? ”

“ It is not enough, then, that you dissipate the charm by your moral, and eloquent, and affecting exposure of its illusiveness. You must address to the eye of his mind another object, with a charm powerful enough to dispossess the first of its influence, and to engage him in some other prosecution as full of interest, and hope, and congenial activity, as the former. ”

“ This is the world which ought to be crucified to us—that is, ought to be the object of our aversion, and to which we ought to be crucified—that is, ought to be the objects of its censures and ridicule. ”

“ The ambiguous jest, the anecdote of questionable propriety, the loose and unguarded manner, with other such indications of the unpriestly character, will be remembered and perhaps quoted against him when the evening is over, and when its warping influences have given way to calmer thoughts and cooler judgments. The same persons who in the spirit of hospitable good nature have placed in his way the inducements to those excesses which at least weaken morality, if they do not occasion scandal, will be among the first to criticise the indiscretions to which they have helped to give rise. ”

“ Treating of recondite and obscure matters, they soar beyond the comprehension of the vulgar, and tickle the ears of women and fools, whom they dismiss as ignorant as they found them. Some vices they reprove in such a manner that they seem rather to teach, than to correct them, and in their thirst for gain, they forget the promotion of the cause of religion. ”

“ Rhetoric and sophistry have been on this ground condemned when they were misused for the cultivation of the art of persuasion apart from knowledge and virtue; but almost every good gift—personal affection, medical science, artistic genius—has every now and then been abused; and the higher and nobler the faculty, the more sorrowful and diabolical must be its prostitution. ”

“ Much speaking, an affectation of prolixity in prayer, either out of pride or superstition, or an opinion that God needs either to be informed or argued with by us, or out of mere folly and impertinence, because men love to hear themselves talk. ”

“ And both are destroyed at once, and the ceremonial or doctrinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if they make us either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods of proselytism. Of those who will compass sea and land to make one proselyte, it is too generally true that they are themselves the children of hell, and make their proselytes twofold more so. ”

“ Jesus did not rebuke Pharisees for making proselytes, but for making them "twofold more children of hell" than they were themselves. Proselyting, per se, is not only permissible, but a positive duty. It is only by making proselytes that any reform may hone to succeed. ”

“ Thus, after having studied the character and manners of each person, you will endeavour to conform yourselves to them as much as duty will permit,—so that, if you have to do with an excitable and ardent character, you should shake off all tedious prolixity. ”

“ In those persons of a better organised structure, who yield themselves up to the mesmeric degradation, the physical causes are less operative; but the moral causes are still more influential. In all cases the prostration is self-induced. ”

“ Over-refinement, however, cannot be charged as the failing of most of our periodical publications. Some are full of polemical orthodoxy—some of methodistical deliration—some inculcate servility, and others preach up sedition—some creep along in a series of dull truisms and stale moralities—while others, more ‘lively, audible, and full of vent,’ subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality, and enjoy all the advantages that result from an entire contempt for the restraints of decency, consistency, or candour. ”

“ The measures, for instance, in which your Grace's activity has been chiefly exerted, as they were adopted without skill, should have been conducted with more than common dexterity. But truly, my Lord, the execution has been as gross as the design. By one decisive step you have defeated all the arts of writing. ”