Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Gerrit Smith on religion.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

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Call number: Smith 528

GERRIT SMITH

ON

RELIGION.

1863.

GERRIT SMITH

ON

RELIGION.

1863.

LETTER TO DOCTOR CHEEVER.

PETERBORO, March 6th, 1863.

REV. DR. G. B. CHEEVER, New-York:

MY DEAR SIR: I have read your review of Bishop Colenso's Criticisms on the Pentateuch.

That men can not believe in God without believing "in every part of the Scriptures" - "in their perfect and infallible truth and certainty" - is, as I was aware, a doctrine of most of the churches. Nevertheless I was somewhat surprised to find that this exceedingly harsh doctrine has your sanction.

I readily admit that, in the sense of loving God, men can not believe in him unless they also believe in the great moral principles and precepts of the Bible. It is only the good heart that lovingly believes in God. Such a heart, wherever or whenever found - be it in the depths of Africa or antiquity - never fails to respond to those principles and precepts. But there are large portions of this book, belief or unbelief in which is a purely intellectual exercise. Whether a particular battle is or is not in all respects rightly described in it is a question of evidence. Precisely the same kind or degree of evidence may not come before all who are gathering it. And even if there should, nevertheless from the difference between them, constitutional as well as educational, they might not be able to arrive at the same conclusion. Half the jurors believe that the evidence is sufficient to convict the accused, and the other half do not. One man can resist the multiplied proofs that the human race has existed on the earth more than six thousand years, and another is obliged to yield to them. To say that some persons are so prejudiced against the Bible as to be incapable of deciding fairly or according to evidence, is but to open the door for

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the reply that some persons are so partial to it that they can not decide impartially on any thing in it. Nevertheless, whatever may be the play of prejudice or partiality in solving this question about the battle, it remains true that it must be solved by means of evidence. But the question whether we shall lovingly believe in God finds its solution in the affections of the heart rather than in evidence - overflowing and convincing as is the evidence. Insist, I care not how intolerantly, that all men shall believe in essential and eternal goodness. He is a bad man who does not believe in it. But do not condemn men for believing or disbelieving in that which with a good heart they may either believe or disbelieve in.

Perhaps you will say that there is not this room, which I claim there is, for an honest difference of judgment. Perhaps you will say that here is no occasion for summoning and sifting witnesses; and that the miracles of the Bible prove beyond all possible question the truth of every part of the Bible. I might admit that whoever had the miracles needed no more proof of what they prove, and had no right to call for more. But we have only the record of the miracles; and this record, it must be borne in mind, can prove nothing until itself is proved. Moreover, as we are favored with no miracles for proving the truth of the record, we are obliged to set about proving it in the common method of proving records. I do not forget that the practice is to cite the miracles for the truth of the Bible, and the Bible for the truth of the miracles. But this glaring instance of vicious circular reasoning forcibly reminds one of the servant who, in answer to his master's quickly successive inquiries for the barrow and the plow, said that the harrow was with the plow and the plow with the harrow.

It is much insisted on that whoever really believes in one part of the Bible believes in every other part of it. It is true that he, who really believes in the inculcations of justice and mercy in one part of the Bible, must, from the nature of things, believe in the like inculcations in other parts of it. But surely there is no such natural connection between all parts of the Bible, as makes belief in some of them necessitate belief in the others. It is not a necessity in the nature of things, that belief in the story of Samson should go along with belief in the Sermon on the Mount. In the justice and love which Jesus taught

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I am compelled, by the nature of things - by my own nature to believe. But I am under no such compulsion to believe that he was born here rather than there - this year rather than that. To believe in the justice and love, I need not go out of myself for evidence; but I must do so in order to believe in the other. The testimony of my heart suffices in the former case; but in the latter I must seek for other and outward testimony. It will be said that if we are not sure of the truth of what the Bible says of the birth of Christ, we can not be sure that it truly ascribes to him such high and heavenly utterances. I admit we can not be. Nevertheless, of the utterances and their match less power - and this is the great point - we are sure. And sure too are we that the utterer, whatever his name, whenever or wherever born, spake as "never man spake," and stood upon an immeasurably higher plane of life than roan ever stood upon before. I am not entirely certain when or where Shakspeare was born, nor that he wrote the plays ascribed to him. But I am certain of the plays and of their power to stir the soul; and certain am I also that whoever, whenever, wherever he was that wrote them, he was incomparably the greatest of all known dramatists. And now, compared with these certainties, what else is there in all this connection of any value?

It is often said that we must believe in the possibility of the miracles, because the miracles Jesus wrought are needed to prove his divinity. It is his words that prove his divinity. The power to work miracles can be claimed for any man, and with such evidence as would convince multitudes. But there has been only one man from whom the divine words attributed to Jesus could have proceeded. The celebrated Brahmin, Rammohun Roy, omitted the miracles from his translation of the New Testament, for the reason that the Jewish miracles being so infinitely surpassed in wondrousness by the Hindoo miracles, would serve rather to disparage than exalt the precious and sublime truths with which they stand connected. Then, again, it is so difficult to prove the truth of ancient miracles to those who deny the truth of modern miracles. How can one who, requiring evidence for all his beliefs, refuses faith in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, give his assent to a miracle far back in the depths of antiquity? The miracle in the former case is attested by known and living witnesses, but in

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the latter by unknown and dead ones. How can he then, provided he be swayed less by superstition than by evidence, utterly reject the former miracle, and be entirely sure of the latter one?

I wish with all my heart that you would be content to teach only the one true religion, which you do teach, and to leave it to others to teach the nominal and mistaken religions. This one true or natural religion is the same in all lands and all ages. It is this which made beautiful and sublime the lives of Confucius, Socrates and Plato. It is this which shone preeminently, ay, culminated, in the life of Jesus. It is of this that your own honest, earnest, strong life comes. It is the religion of human nature ; and it is inspired by the Author of all nature. It is as simple as it needs to be in order to be the religion of the simple masses. The unlearned can both understand and practice it. Thousands of the slaves, who are now coming forth from the great American Prison-House, prove that they who know nothing else may nevertheless know this religion.

Greatly do they err who suppose that Jesus was the author of a religion. He taught no other than this religion of nature, which great and good men of all the climes and all the centu ries had taught before. He but summoned men to be true to the old religion - to the demands or religion of their own unchanged and unchangeable nature. This nature he recognizes to be their sufficient instructor in their religious duties; and hence does he inquire of them: "Why judge ye not even of yourselves what is right?"

I said that this religion is simple. Paul makes it nothing else than to "love thy neighbor as thyself;" and Jesus sums it all up in doing as we would be done by. That to Him who made us capable of this equal love, and whose name is "Love," we owe supreme love, is an irresistible inference.

But although there is only one true religion, there are innumerable conventional religions. It is only a very small propor tion of men who have the true religion. A very large proportion have a conventional one. Even those who have the true religion have, with comparatively few exceptions, a conventional religion also. Meet with a Hindoo or Persian or Turk who has the true religion or, in other words - a heart to deal justly with his neighbor in all things - and, with scarce an instance to

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the contrary, you find that he combines with it a conventional religion drawn from his Sacred Books. So too it is but a very small proportion of the religiously just men of Christendom, be they Jews or Gentiles, who to their true or natural religion do not add some one of the false and artificial religions, which are claimed to be authorized by Jewish writings. Do not understand me to say that the true religion is not also to be found in the Vedas, the Zendavesta, the Koran, and the Bible. Each inculcates it - the Bible with infinitely more clearness, fullness and power than does any of the other Sacred Books. Nevertheless, from each of them are materials drawn to build up unnatural and false religions.

I do not forget that they who unite with the true religion a conventional one make the latter an essential part of the former. Very certain is it that they do so who draw their conventional religion from the Bible. This is manifestly the case with yourself. But these conventional religions contain much that is at war with the natural or true religion - much that is repugnant to the moral sense produced by the latter. Even the conventional religion made up from the Bible, is obnoxious to this censure. For instance, it requires us to believe that God loved Jacob and hated Esau, "being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil." Will it be said that he loved the one and hated the other for what they would become? But Jacob became a mean man and Esau a magnanimous one. Again, it requires us to believe that God gave Saul's wives into David's bosom, and laid him under obligations of gratitude for it. And, again, it requires us to believe that there may be upon God's authority wholesale slaughters of women and children.

Alas! the innumerable and appalling proofs in all ages of the disparaging and neutralizing of the natural or true religion by coupling with it a conventional and false religion ! The Rev. Dr. Thomas Worcester of Boston is reputed to be a very good man. Nevertheless, he admits that until very recently he believed "Slavery to be a good thing " - in other words, the system, which forbids marriage and parental rights and all rights, and markets men as beasts, "to be a good thing." Whence did he derive this belief? Evidently not from his natural or true religion, but from the conventional and false one which he had unhappily combined with it. All over the Southern half

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of our country, and extensively over the Northern half also, Slavery is held to be right, on the ground that the Bible makes it right. I agree with you that the Bible condemns it. But good men differ at this point; and bad men so read it as to suit themselves. The natural religion - the religion of doing as you would be done by - instantly and utterly forbids slavery. No man would be a slave. And, were there no pro-slavery conventional religion in which their conscience could find shelter, few could brace themselves up to be slaveholders, and none would be allowed to be. Thrice happy for the interests of freedom and humanity that you read the Bible to be against slavery ! But, alas! should you in some new light shed upon its meaning, come to read it otherwise, then, though all nature cries out trumpet-tongued against the abomination, you would be for it! For with you that Book is above all nature. Or if you prefer it, that Book is with you the supreme and authoritative interpreter of nature.

In my reference to miracles I did not deny their possibility. I agree with you that your conventional religion (I speak not now of your true one) needs miracles to authenticate it. I add that there is not a little of beautiful fitness in proving the religion which is a war upon nature by miracles which are also a war upon nature. On the other hand, you will agree with me that if the true religion is the simple and obvious thing which I have defined it to be, miracles are no more needed to prove it than to prove the sun in the heavens.

This breaking up of the churches, which has begun in our day, does, I confess, bring no sorrow to my heart. Her way must be clean swept of them before Truth can "have free course and be glorified." They are the bulwarks of superstition instead of religion. They are huge conventionalisms, which have usurped the place of nature, and the place of the simple, rational churches of Jesus Christ. They are, and none the less effectively because unintentionally, the great enemies of human progress, human holiness, and human happiness. I rejoiced to see right feeling for the slave - in one word, religion - break up the Baptist Church and the Methodist Church. For this breaking up not only proves that religion finds hearts in these churches which she can work upon, but it awakens the reasonable hope that large portions of their members will continue to improve

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and to go onward and upward until they shall at last have eliminated from their creeds all the conventional and artificial, and be prepared to take part in, building up the church of the one true religion. And now I rejoice to see that science is be ginning to break up the Church of England. It would be an entirely reasonable expectation, that the Baptist and Methodist Churches, characterized as they are by a wider diffusion of piety than of learning, might be torn asunder by a religious question. As reasonably would it be expected that science might make breaches in the Church of England - a Church in which there are so many who appreciate science - a Church which, notwithstanding the much heartfelt and holy worship in it, is nevertheless more distinguished for its learning than for its piety. The only way to have held back Colenso and the Authors of the celebrated Essays and Reviews from being disturbing forces in the Church of England was to have held them back from Geology, Astronomy, and the other fields of science. And the only way to prevent others from following them and becoming even disrupting forces in that Church, is to roll back the wheels of civilization. To secure the Bible from all possible criticism, they will have to be rolled back not only to the comparatively recent date, when belief in God's authority for polygamy and the most savage warfare was well-nigh uni. versal ; but they will have to be rolled back to those early centuries, when none doubted that the Sun and the Moon were made but to be candles for the Earth.

You ought not to wonder at the modern growth of infidelity. It is infidelity to conventional and superstitious religions - to religions unadapted to modern times. Ages, which believed in Astrology, Alchemy, and the hanging of witches, and the wildest doctrines and usages of an all-swaying superstition, could, of course, and very consistently and easily, resign themselves to such religions. But it is not strange that an age, which puts Astronomy in the place of Astrology, and Chemistry in the place of Alchemy, and enlightened laws in the place of fanatical traditions, and which is coming up rapidly out of the slough of ignorance and superstition toward the summits of science, should be weary of such religions and impatient to throw them off.

You long for the enlightenment and blessedness of the whole earth. So do I. But it is mainly in very different ways that

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we seek to accomplish it, You would supplant with the Jew ish Sacred Books the Sacred Books of all other peoples. I, on the contrary, would call upon the disciples of Mohammedanism and of all the other religions to learn, love, and practice that one religion of reason, nature, and Jesus, which is common to all these Books.

How vain the hope that the Turks, the Persians, the Chinese, or Hindoos will ever consent to cast upon their most cherished names and writings the contempt which they would cast upon them should they acknowledge the Jewish Books to be true and their own to be false 1 But how reasonable the hope that, as all shall come to know, love, and practice the one true religion, the interest of all in their respective Sacred Books, save only in those portions of them which partake of and illustrate the essence of that religion, will pass away forever!

The churches must go down before the powers of religion and science. Their walls are not impervious to the heavenly influences of the one, nor have they strength to resist the in creasingly mighty assaults of the other. And as surely as these churches shall go down, others will take their places, that will teach and illustrate the religion of reason and nature; and that will know men not by their theological metaphysics, and mysteries, but solely as the Great Teacher of the religion of nature and reason requires, "by their fruits." But these churches of a conventional religion will linger for ages - Science is not yet ripe enough, nor diffused enough, to perform its part in overthrowing them. A portion of the scientific men who concern themselves about religion, had embraced their conventional religion before their minds were stored with science and their habits of exacting legitimate and ample evidence for their beliefs were formed. Such will be like to live and die in the superstition that their religion is too sacred to be put upon trial. Then a much larger portion of the men of science, though despising this superstition, do, like other men, care for the public favor and the advantages that come of it. Hence they conclude to drift, along with the superstition, instead of exercising the courage to expose and overthrow it. Not until science shall be far more spread through the masses, and not until it shall become so sound and uncompromising, as to require all things, and that too even in the department of religion, to be proved,

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will a large share of the scientific men strike boldly at the ab surdities in the religious systems. But they will do so then. For then it will not be unpopular to do so; and therefore not unsafe to their interests. Then they will find willing hearers a good soil to cast the seeds of skepticism into. Skeptics are much dreaded. Nevertheless, the world will never have its race of sound believers until it has first had its race of enlightened and honest skeptics.

In the mean time, however, and whilst science is mustering its forces for its final and effectual onset upon these artificial and superstitious religions and their churches, here one man and there another, who can afford the personal loss of striking at hoary and popular errors, and who are willing, for conscience and truth's sake, to incur hatred and scorn, must continue their protests against identifying religion with things which are no part of religion, and with things which misrepresent, conflict with, and neutralize it.

I hope you will not be offended at what I have written; and yet I can not be entirely sure that you will not. For I am aware that one part of the orthodox training is, that nothing in the whole range of orthodoxy is an open question, or liable to a wise and an honest doubt. Hence I was not surprised to find you making light of both the sense and the candor of Bishop Colenso.

It is this perfect confidence that in the whole huge bundle of beliefs, which make up orthodoxy, be it in Christendom or Hindostan or elsewhere, there is not the slightest flaw, nor aught which a man sound in both bead and heart can find to criticiseit is this, which renders religious reformation, be it in Christendom or Heathendom, so difficult and so distant.

The political economist allows me to confront him. Often has a slaveholder heard my Anti-Slavery patiently and kindly. Often so has a rumseller heard my Temperance. But when I speak on religion, many of my neighbors, and those of them too who for thirty or forty years have heard me quite willingly on all other subjects, refuse to hear me. They are too civil and too kind to say either that I am foolish or dishonest; and yet, when religion is my theme, they can hardly help feeling that I am one or the other, if not indeed both; so almost impossible is it for them to conceive that a man can have both

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sense and candor, or even either, who ventures a doubt on any thing in orthodox theology.

Theology! Theology!! Oh !how the poor world has in all ages been cursed by it! But gradually, though slowly, one thing after another escapes from its thraldom to theology. Now it is Geology, and now it is Astronomy; and by and by, in the progress of science and civilization, religion itself will escape from it.

GERRIT SMITH.

DISCOURSE IN PETERBORO.

MAY 3, 1863.

THE GOOD SEE: THE BAD ARE BLIND.

We learn from our text - from this power of a pure hearthow it is that Jesus was made capable of his wondrous words. The words of no one, either before or after him, were so searching, so spiritual, so sublime. He spake as never man spake. His purity explains it. This perfect purity, giving him the fullest access to God and the fullest sight and knowledge of God, enabled him to speak as God. I say not whence this

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purity. I speak but of its power. And without inquiring bow else he is one with God, I hold that from his purity he is one with him. Nay, Jesus teaches that such purity as his disciples are capable of, would bring them also into this oneness. If he does not teach it when he says, "I in them and thou in me, that they maybe made perfect in one," nevertheless does he not teach it when he says, "Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect"? His injunction of this absolute moral perfectness implies his belief in its possibility. And surely whoever attains to this perfectness attains to oneness with God - oneness too at that point where alone it is needed, and where alone it is possible. Man can not be - does not need to be - wise and strong as God, but only sinless and innocent as God.

There are critics who regard the claim of the Son to oneness with the Father as an arrogant or at least an ignorant assumption. They would not, however, bad they themselves the purity of heart which opens the eye on God and identifies with God.

And do we not learn from our text how also to account for the wondrous works as well as the wondrous words of Jesus? I say not that in the record of these works all is literal truth, and nothing figurative or fanciful. I say not that there were miracles amongst them. I do not believe that Jesus ever performed a miracle; that any man ever performed one; that God himself ever performed one. A miracle is a violation or arrest of the laws of nature. Why then should he who is the Author of nature be found working a miracle ? - in other words, be found warring upon the works of his own hands? Miracles would put anarchy in the place of the government of the Universe; and surely it is not for Him, "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," to set Himself to subverting that government. Moreover, God requires us to adjust ourselves to his laws, and to find all our duty and all our happiness in such adjustment. How then can it be supposed that he would himself introduce uncertainty into these laws, and a corresponding uncertainty into our sense of the necessity of obeying them? Is it for him to strip them of the honor of being unchangeable and eternal, and to degrade them from a certain to an uncertain rule of conduct? I believe that Jesus

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did nothing contrary to but every thing in accordance with these laws. I believe too that were we on his moral plane, or, in other words, had we his purity of heart, we too should be capable of doing such wondrous works as he did. And might I not add on his own authority, even "greater works than these"? What can be wrought on that plane - what, for instance is the power there of the moral over the material - we know not now, but perhaps we shall "know hereafter." This much however we should feel assured of even now - that the higher the moral plane on which the worker stands, the more does he seek to work by law, and the less is he inclined to attempt miracles and jugglery ; the more does he cling to the whole law; physical, mental and moral, and the less accessible is he to pleas, be they in behalf of the advantage of man or the glory of God, for departing from it.

There are many who, disbelieving that Jesus is the essential God, doubt the truth of some of his words and make light of some of his warnings. These doubters can be measurably replied to without going into the discussion of the question whether his nature, though "filled with all the fullness of God," is other than a simply human nature. For, in the first place, his spiritual teachings commend themselves to our reason so far as in its undeveloped state it can comprehend them; and in the second place, where they exceed its comprehension, they are to be respected as the teachings of One whose spiritual discernment of spiritual things is proportioned to his matchless purity.

Our reason teaches that a great change in the common character of men is necessary. But well is it for us to have Jesus add that this change must be so radical as to merit the name of a New-Birth; and that this New-Birth is impossible without the help of the Divine Spirit. Reason sees in the light of nature another life. It sees a heaven and a hell.But this does not render useless the testimony of Jesus at this point. The report which he brings of the revelations made to his purity and to his sight of God, serves both to confirm the deductions of our reason and to add to them. It is reasonable to listen to what Jesus tells us of the future blessedness of the righteous and the future misery of the wicked. Is it said, in order to shake confidence in his communications, that he does not claim to have knowledge at all points? A man's not being a mathe-

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matician does not impeach his moral knowledge; nor should it be argued, from Christ's confessed ignorance of the time of some future event, that there is any lack in his stores of spiritual wisdom for our use. Let then the righteous take comfort and the wicked take warning from what Jesus says of the future life. Some words more in this connection. But few of the righteous should take much thought of the heaven beyond this life. Most of them should be content with the heaven that is here, and which is incidental to their labors of love here. The happiness which, by a sure law of reflection, comes back to our hearts from the hearts we have made happy, is quite enough for us in this pilgrimage. Most good men should be too busy, too brave, and too self-forgetful to indulge in the weakness of longing for heaven. Here and there are good men shut out and cut off from the world by disease, oppression, imprisonment and other causes. Their earthly prospects are all blotted out, and their earthly hopes all crushed. To such it is permitted to sigh for heaven. Their poor weary hearts have no other refuge. Before such aficted ones Paul sets the "exceeding and eternal weight of glory." To such Jesus says: "Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father's house are many mansions."

"The pure in heart shall see God." This is not the promise of a supernatural reward. It is but the declaration of what must naturally and necessarily come from being pure. My hearers, shall we ever see God? We shall if we are pure, and not otherwise. Not the soundness of our creed, nor our connection with the most orthodox church, nor high hopes of heaven, can suffice to open our eyes upon the Blessed One. The consecration of our faculties, inward and outward, to purity alone can. The selfish man can not see God; for his low aims are at fatal war with purity. He is corrupted and shriveled by them as surely as the unselfish man is purified and expanded by the deeds and designs of his benevolence.

Men are lost who do not see God. They grope in blindness. This nation is lost because it did not see God. I call it lost. I hope it will yet be found. It was dead; but I hope it will live again. It did not see the avenging God - the Divine Nemesis - in the black cloud which had for many years been gathering over it. Nay, it was too blind to see even the clouds, much less the cause of them. Very great was its blindness, be-

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cause it was induced by oppression-by extreme and long-per. sisted-in oppression. From the day of its birth it had made merchandise of humanity and trafficked in the image of God as in hogs and horses. As nothing is so sure to soften the heart and clear the eye as sympathy with the poor, so there is nothing that so effectually generates hardness and blindness as oppression of the poor.

Let me not, however, do injustice to my nation. I used to speak of it as the guiltiest of all nations. But I now think that I was wrong in doing so. This nation was the first to undertake to build on the foundation of equal rights; and it did not count the cost of building on so broad a foundation. What were our fathers, that they and they alone should be able to build upon it? They had been fashioned in a school of politics mainly European. They saw no wrong in land-monopoly, in the governmental license and patronage of the dram-shop, in the scanty concession of rights to woman, in the various meddlings of government with the natural rights of its subjects; and but very few of them saw much wrong in slavery. Indeed the great mass of them were, in their political qualifications, but little better fitted than Europeans to erect a national structure on the foundation of the equal rights of all. Nor had they a religion to this end any better than their politics. Their religion was the same with that of Europe, and was, even to a greater extent than is that of their descendants, a superstition. It was not the religion of humanity. It did not array itself on the side of human rights. No nation's religion, either in an cient or modern times, ever did so. Scattered individuals, all along since Christ, and all along before him, had the religion of humanity. But no nation, nor any considerable portion of a nation, ever bad it. That blessedness is not to be until the theologies - relics of ages of ignorance and superstition - shall have passed away. Until then the conventional religion of those theologies will effectually hinder the true religion - the Christ-religion of doing as you would be done by - the religion which goes for man and man's rights - from becoming the religion of a nation.

Other nations - for instance, Mexico, and the South - American States, and France - copied our attempt to build on this only true foundation. It will not do to say that any of them have

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succeeded. They, like ourselves, have, for the lack of the natural religion in the place of the theological religion, and for the lack of politics corresponding with the natural religion, failed. But shall the nations, our own included, who have attempted to build on the only true foundation, be counted more guilty than the nations which have escaped the failure only by shrinking from the attempt? Certainly not. Rather let those nations that have tried to build on it be honored for making the trial, which other nations had not the virtue and courage to make. Better is the drunkard who tries, though in vain, to reform himself than the drunkard who is past making the trial.

Our little church is this afternoon to celebrate the Lord's Supper. It is not alone because of the recorded injunction of Jesus upon his disciples that we celebrate it. Perhaps, as is extensively held, this injunction was upon his cotemporaries only; though I do not see why there is not as good reason for us, as there was for them, to celebrate it.

If it is right for the admirers of Washington to come together to honor their hero, or for the admirers of Jackson to do so, why is it not right for the admirers of one immeasurably greater and dearer than Washington or Jackson to do likewise? But our highest reason for celebrating the Lord's Supper is that the occasion is preeminently suited to purify our hearts by bring ing him so distinctly and affectingly before our minds. We need more purity of heart, that we may see more of God - ay, that we may see him where now we see him not. No means to this increase of purity is so effectual as "looking unto Jesus." By perseverance in looking unto him, we shall at last attain to such a degree of purity and to such a resulting degree of spiritual vision, as shall enable us to see God in all his works and all his ways; in all his creations and all his providences. Then shall we see him not only in the Sun and Stars, and in the sublimities of the mountain and the ocean, and the fruitfulness of the field which waves with food for man and beast, and in the flowers which deck the earth; but we shall also see him in the history of the individual and the nation. Then shall we see him in the horrors of this surpassingly horrid war, and in his judgments upon this surpassingly oppressive nation. And then too shall we have in our own bosoms sweet and blessed experience of the truth, that "the pure in heart shall see God."

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LETTER TO HENRY WARD BEECHER.

"STONEWALL" JACKSON.

PETERBORO, May 20th, 1863.

REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER:

MY DEAR SIR: I have read in the Independent your column on the late "Stonewall" Jackson. I honor him for his earnest ness, sincerity, and devoutness. I grant that he was a deeply religious man. But I can not agree with you that his religion was of the Christ-type. How can it be in the light of your own admission, that he was "the champion of slavery" - the champion of that system which denies all right to husband, wife, child; all right to resist the ravisher or murderer; and which works and whips and markets men as beasts? How can it be in the light of your admission, that "he was fighting against the natural rights of man"? Nevertheless you declare him to be "a rare and eminent Christian." I readily admit that even these enormous crimes against justice and humanity are compatible with high religiousness. But I can not admit that he who is guilty of them is grounded in the Christ-religion and is "eminent" in its graces. For the Christ-religion is simply a religion of justice. It does as it would be done by. It is for, and not "against the natural rights of man." For it is simply the religion of nature.

I do not wonder that the Churches regard Jackson's as the Christ-religion. For the bundle of dogmas, Trinity, Atonement, Resurrection of the Body, Miracles, etc., which they make up and hold to be essential to salvation, he deeply believed in. I say not whether these dogmas are true or false - originating in fancies or in facts. I but say that they are no part of the Christ-religion. Natural justice toward God and man - so earnest and entire as to fill the heart and life with its presence and power - this, and this alone, is the essence and the all of that religion. Think not that I look for such justice where the Divine Spirit is not at work to produce it. In order to attain

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to it, depraved man-man who has run away from his naturemust be "born again."

Jackson had the theology of a Church. But he certainly had not a large share of the religion of Christ. Christ was opposed to all the theologies; for he saw that they all stand in the way of the one true religion - the religion of reason and nature. A theological, or common Church religion, is a traditional religion, authenticated by miracles and other outward testimonies. At the best, it is but a history, and full of all the characteristic uncertainty of history. Moreover, if parts of the history, or of its accepted interpretation, shall prove false, then, as is held, the deceived disciple is lost. Such is the untrustworthy plank on which men are urged to embark their all. But Christ's religion is no historic nor external thing. It cometh not from the past, and it "cometh not with observation. "It is within" us. It is written by the finger of God in the moral consciousness; and every one, who will listen to God's voice in his soul, will know this religion, or, in other words, will know what is right. "And why," says Jesus, "even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" Instead of sending his hearers to Moses, he sends them to themselves. Instead of bidding them go to priests to get religion interpreted, he tells them to interpret it for themselves. Instead of making religious truths a mystery, which only the wise and learned can unravel, he thanks his Father for having "revealed them unto babes." Instead of teaching a religion as fluctuating and uncertain as human testimony is fluctuating and uncertain, he teaches a religion founded and fashioned in human nature, and therefore as unchangeable as human nature - a religion the same in all climes and ages, because human nature is the same in all climes and ages. Instead of teaching a cabalistic and conventional religion, whose rules are hard and impossible to be understood, he teaches the natural and reasonable religion which has but one rule, and this rule so obvious and simple that all know it, and need nothing but honesty to apply it. All know how they would be done by, and hence all know what to do to others.

I am amazed that you make so much account of Jackson's theological bundle, and of his being "an active member of the Presbyterian Church, of which he was a ruling Elder." These, in your esteem, suffice to carry him straight to heaven. I had

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supposed that your strong common-sense and large intelligence had long ago lifted you up out of the superstitious faith that any such things can carry any man to heaven. I had taken it for granted that you believed that it is his character, however induced - whether by himself or by Christ, or otherwise - that alone qualifies a man for heaven ; so obvious is it, in the light of reason, that every man must go to his own place, and that what shall be his place must be determined, not by his theology, but by his character. But I was mistaken. For in the same breath in which you send Jackson to heaven, you argue out for him a thoroughly base and abominable character; even, to use your strong and eloquent words, a "comprehensive and fundamental degradation of heart and mind and soul."

So, since it can not be in virtue of his character, it must be in virtue of his theology and ecclesiasticism, that you send Jackson to heaven. Or am I again mistaken? Perhaps you believe that the death of the body works moral changes; and that, though Jackson died with a bad character, he woke up with a good one.

But, notwithstanding I believe that our character in this life is that with which we begin the next, I have hope for "Stonewall" Jackson. And this hope for two reasons. First, I do not believe his character to be as bad as you make it. In many an instance, slaveholding does not deprave and debase the whole soul. Unconsciousness of its criminality, and a kindly exercise of its despotic power, are among the things which leave room for the growth of self-respect and other high virtues. Second, the Christ-religion will be more clearly seen, and more justly judged, in the next life; and mistaken and guilty, though still largely noble souls, like the "Stonewall" Jacksons, will hasten to exchange their miserable theologies for it. Nay, I trust that our Church-misled hero already begins to see more beauty and preciousness in the simple doctrine of doing as we would be done by, than in all the dogmas and prayers and rites of his corrupt and corrupting Church.

But I must stop. I meant to write only a few lines. How long, oh! how long, my great-souled brother, must we still wait for the open enlistment of your large powers against the theologies! I confess that you preach the religion of Jesus, and that you preach it with rare force and beauty. But, alas! how

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is this preaching counteracted by your preaching the theologies also! The cause of truth can not afford to have Henry Ward Beecher continue to nix up traditional trash, or even tradi tional sweetness or sublimities, with that religion. She needs him to be wholly, and not but partly, on her side.

With great regard, your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.

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FUNERAL DISCOURSE IN PETERB0RO.

JUNE 28, 1863.

"Slowly, but surely, the progress of civilization is emancipating mankind from the theologies. God hasten the day when these huge and hoary structures, which have so long cast their baleful, blighting shadows over all the earth, shall be over thrown forever! God hasten the day when the soul-shriveling and degrading, theological, or superstitious age of the human family shall give place to its expanding and ennobling, rational, or scientific age!

The worst obstacles in the way of human improvement, are put there by the theologies. For instance, in Europe the Jew ish theology stood out against astronomy. A remarkable fact, by the way, that Europe (and America also) instead of making a theology for herself, should adopt an Asiatic one! Astronomers were persecuted and stopped by this theology. Happily, however, they triumphed in the end. They proved that the earth, instead of being the principal body in the universe, is comparatively but a speck; and that the sun, moon, and stars are something more than mere candles for the earth. Enough has been proved to falsify the very first chapter of the Bible, and fling it upon the big heap of outgrown fables and follies. So too, did the Jewish theology stand out against geology. It stands out against it still. But it may as well strike its colors, for geology has gained the victory. This noble science has persevered in searching into the crust of the earth, until it has now found in various deposits, of a far earlier date than that at which the Jewish theology fixed the beginning of human existence, indisputable specimens of the work of man. What is more, they have also found here and there portions of the bodies of men, who must have lived long before the time when, according to the Bible, Adam was created.

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One of the great battles yet to be fought with the theologies, is with their doctrine that God kills his children; and that when they get sick and die, or when they perish from the lightning, the earthquake, or the volcano, it is because He would have it so, and wills it to be so. So far, indeed, do the theologies go in this direction, as to affirm that God sends forth men to murder men. In the Jewish theology are found repeated instances of his commanding the wholesale slaughter of harmless women and innocent children. This theology makes him much more the Great Murderer than the Great Father of his children.

Now, reason teaches that God has given man a body which should grow and mature, and then continue to exist, subject only to the natural laws of decay and death. How long would be the earthly life of man, provided he had lived rightly in all his generations, we can not tell. It would probably be little less than twice the assumed threescore and ten years. It is for him to learn to live rightly; and he must meet the consequences of living wrongly. He must keep himself in health and in life. God will not do it for him. He must learn to read the warnings which nature gives of the earthquake and volcano, and to devise the utmost securities against thunderbolts and against accidents on land and water. He must learn how to cure disease, and, what is far more important, how to prevent it. What should be the house he dwells in, what his food, and drink, and dress, and other things which concern his health, should be his habitual, enlightened and earnest inquiry. Greatly deficient, however, in all this will he continue to be, until he shall deeply and effectually believe that not God, but only man, is responsible for premature death. The death, which concludes the natural wearing out of the body, is, we admit, of Divine arrangement. But never will man hold himself responsible for premature death, so long as he believes in a theology which teaches that death, be it in childhood or manhood, comes from the absolute and unevadable appointment of God. Not until he shall be sensible that premature death comes from man's crime, or from man's ignorance, (which, in the advancement of the world, becomes more or less criminal,) will he adequately resolve, or adequately guard against it. He must believe that such death can be prevented ere he will do all in his power to prevent it.

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Bible fallacies, in regard to sickness and death, he must no more feel to be in his way than do astronomers and geologists now feel to be in their way those Bible fallacies which so long and so frowningly confronted them.

Very little is the physician worth who prescribes, subject to the consciously probable or even possible Divine decree, that his patients shall die. Of very little worth is any thing that is done for life or health, when it is done under the apprehension that it has to encounter such a Divine decree. We need to settle it in our minds that God wills no sickness and no shortening of life. He leaves it to ourselves whether to have or not have health, and whether to live or die. Whether man's life shall be prolonged, is conditioned on the care which man shall take of it. God has blessings for all and curses for none. He would have us all live out the natural period of life. It is no more his will that we should make no further progress in the knowledge of sheltering ourselves from sickness and death, than it was his will that our rate of travel, and of the transmission of messages should be but a few miles an hour, or than it was that the expense of making pictures of our faces for our children and friends, should exceed the means of the poor. It was his will that we should attain to far greater speed in the one case, and far greater cheapness in the other ; and we have already executed his will so far, as to travel thirty or forty miles an hour, and to make the lightning our messenger, and the sun our painter. Moreover, he not only paints us for a shilling or two, but he paints us with an accuracy infinitely greater than can be done by the most expensive and skilful band. It is God's will that we should make as swift progress in the department of health, as in any other department. Theology, not God, hinders our way. He has infinite helps and no hindrances for us.

The atheist, in his blindness and folly, tells us that there is no God - certainly no benevolent God - no father in heaven. A true God, according to his conceptions of him, would permit no sickness and no perils from storms, earthquakes, or volcanoes. But there is a God ; and he proves his benevolence as well as his wisdom, not in dwarfing his children by doing every thing for them and leaving them nothing to do, but by requiring them to task to the utmost the large powers He has given them,

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so that they may rise to immeasurable bights of wisdom and usefulness, grandeur and goodness. They should believe that, by such tasking of their powers from generation to generation, they would at last bring up man to be proof against diseases both of the body and the soul.

Alas, these theologies! What drags are they upon human advancement! How they hold our faces to the past! How they bind us in the habit of submission to precedent and authority! But for them, how much less, ere this time, of sickness and death? But for their influence upon character, Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood would not, as is so often said, have been rejected by all British physicians over forty years of age. But for this influence the physicians of Spain (the nation which, more than any other in Christendom, is in theological bonds) would not, for nearly two centuries, have rejected it. But for this influence the London physicians would not have vilified Jenner's discovery of the prevention of smallpox; nor would the London clergymen have denounced it from their pulpits as "diabolical." How swift the progress of the astronomer and geologist, now that they move on contemptuous of all theological opposition! What the physician needs in order to get abreast them is the like contemptuousness.

For the sake of every good thing do we need to get rid of the theologies, since it is in the way of every good thing that they all stand. Most of all do we need to get rid of them for the sake of religion. They are its mightiest hindrance. They are this mainly because, from their so plausibly and persistingly claiming to be religion, the popular mind comes to confound and identify them with religion. The theological sects do actually make the ridiculous story of Jonah and the whale an essential part of religion. They cling as closely to it as to the doctrine of doing as we would be done by. It is true that religion, which is simply justice toward God and man, is mixed up with the theologies; but they are no part of it. Especially true is it that religion is mixed up with the Jewish theology. Nowhere else is it taught so truly and so impressively as in the Bible - that collection of the highest inspirations which man was ever blessed with - that wondrous book worth more than all other books. This would be its preeminent value did

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it nothing more than tell of Jesus - of that blessed one whom to know; with whose spirit to be imbued; with whose aims to be identified; in whose principles to be established; is eternal life.

Thanks mainly to science, light is fast breaking in upon the churches. It is fast streaking their very dense darkness. Thousands in them are convinced of the falseness and absurdity of the theologies. But whilst some of them are afraid that the expression of this conviction would damage their personal interests, others are afraid it would damage religion. Innumerable good persons fall in with the miserable policy of exempting the Bible from criticism, and contend that the book is too holy to be criticised - nay, that it is infidelity and blasphemy to criticise it. They suffer its false lines to be called true, for fear that, if they do not, others will call its true lines false. They are anxious to save the Bible. But they can not save it by such folly. It can be saved only by itself - only by its own truth - and that will save it. The best service that can be rendered to the Bible, is to rid it of its nonsense and falsehood; to winnow the chaff from the wheat; to separate the dross from the gold.

Very sad is it, that our religious teachers persist in inculcating and in exacting faith in every line of the Bible. They do this, notwithstanding they know that science has exploded parts of it. They do it, notwithstanding advancing knowledge has shaken their own faith in miracles and in such alleged facts as God's commanding the wholesale slaughter of the innocent and putting Saul's wives into David's bosom. This persistency, as disgraceful and demoralizing to the teachers as it is darkening and deluding to their hearers, will not, however, last always. The day is coming when science shall have lifted up the human family to far higher planes, and when the office of the religious teacher will no longer be to uphold a theology and a superstition, but to preach the religion of reason and nature. This religion, which Jesus preached, will again be preached. Here

and there it is now preached. Jesus will yet be known. As yet he is misunderstood. But in proportion as science scatters the theologies and the superstitions he will be understood."