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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Gerrit Smith on "The Index".

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 573

GERRIT SMITH ON "THE INDEX."

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PETERBORO May 1 1873.

DOCTOR FITZHUGH, Livingston Co., N. Y.,

MY DEAR KINSMAN,

You like "The Index" of Toledo, Ohio. So do I. Its vigorous reasonings and its beautiful candor and fairness make it a very attractive and useful Paper. Its leading position, however - that christianity is not the true and ultimate religion and that our duty is to stand outside of it - I cannot, as yet, fall in with.

Where shall we look to learn what is man's true religion? To man himself. If we could conceive of such an absurdity as a horse-religion, it would be of a religion suited to the horse. So, too, the religion for human nature must clearly be the one, which that nature calls for. In other words, to know what moral character and, what moral life his nature calls for is to know man's true religion. Hence, he, who is the most natural of men, is the most religious of men, and that it is a mistake to say:

"Nature must count her gold but dross
If she would gain the heavenly land."

We cannot attain to that land by ignoring or disparaging nature - but by obeying and honoring her. He, who abides most steadfastly in his nature, and is most careful to meet all her demands upon him, is the best of all men, and therefore the happiest of all men. The unjust man, the merciless man, the proud man, the dissolute man, is, by force of his violated nature, an unhappy man. The debauchee and drunkard have so far perverted and debased their nature, as to be amongst the most miserable of men. And who, that sees how unhappy a creature the liar makes of himself, can doubt that his nature required him to be truthful in order to be happy ? We learn both from experience and observation that men are made to be benevolent and to find their own happiness in studying and promoting the happiness of others. Hence, the deeper they sink themselves in selfishness, the deeper they sink themselves in misery. Our nature, if preserved in its original benevolence, forbids our betaking ourselves to occupations, in which we cannot benefit and bless, but in which we rather curse, mankind. He has departed from his true nature, who sells tobacco, or who, like the sham christians of the Connecticut Valley, taxes God's good earth to produce the vile weed: and he has very widely departed from it who sells the drunkard's drink, or who grows the materials for it.

As religion is our most important concern, there is, therefore, nothing of which we need to have, and are entitled to have such certain proof. It cannot be that our Heavenly Father has left us in necessary uncertainty as to what is the true religion. But it is nature only, that supplies us with certain knowledge on any subject. How unreasonable then, how unphilosophical and absurd, for him, who would study to know what is the true religion, to go away from the certainties of nature to traditions and histories! Even the best of histories are so marked with man's imperfections, that the uncertainty of history has become proverbial. "History is a lie," is a universally accepted saying.

The religion of nature is the one true religion. If christianity does not recognize this fact, then "The Index" is right in repudiating christianity.

Christianity must not be identified with the superstitions and speculations, legends and myths connected with it either in or out of the bible. It must be judged of in the light of what its great teacher taught to be its substance and essence. In this light it is the religion of love to man: and this is very religion revealed in nature. My nature teaches me to regard my fellow-man as I regard myself, for the reason that he ranks in the scale of being with myself; and it also teaches me that we are both to love God supremely, for the reason that He is the Father of us both.

Every man, who has not so far dulled and destroyed his nature, as to render it unfit to guide him, knows the difference between moral right and moral wrong: - in other words, he is capable of distinguishing the essentially true from the essentially false religion. Christianity affirms this in Jesus' saying to the promiscuous assembly and even to those who had darkened and debased themselves by hypocrisy: "Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" And so deeply engraved upon the heart of human, nature is equity, that every man, even though he have but shreds of human nature left in him, knows that he should do as he would be done by. But emphatically is this the teaching of christianity also. How obvious is the harmony - is the oneness indeed - between christianity and nature in respect to impartial goodness! The former commends to us the

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latter by the example of the gun's rising upon the evil and the good and the rain's failing upon the just and the unjust. Then, again, that the sole duty of man is "to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with god" is a lesson which christianity got from judaism and judaism got from nature.

In this age when science is testing all things, a prominent objection to christianity is that it enjoins prayer, and that prayer is an unnatural absurdity. I admit that it enjoins prayer: and I hold that nothing is more natural than prayer. Indeed, so entirely natural is it that christianity, if it forbade or ignored prayer, could not be the religion of nature, and therefore could not be the true religion. Nothing is more natural than for distressful want to make supplications, and nothing is more natural than for alarmed sin, yes and for broken-hearted sin also, to pray for forgiveness. I add that nothing is more natural than for conscious weakness to praise and adore power, especially boundless power.

The absurdity of prayer is insisted on in the light of God's unchangeableness. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which it is not unreasonable to suppose that He does change, and that, in his self-adaptiveness, He is different to different persons - different on different occasions. There is a legend that the famous statue of Memnon in Egypt was so constructed as to break forth in sublime music every rising of the Sun upon it. May we not suppose that there is a fact in the ease of the true God, which matches this fancy in the ease of the false one ? May we not reasonably suppose that God has so constructed his temple - his universe - that "prayer ardent opens heaven?" - and that blessings, withheld from the prayerless, do, in some form or other, descend to the prayerful? Methinks that the attitude of this world toward its great and loving Father will not be entirely what it should be until all lips shall break forth in prayer and express the thankfulness, praise and supplication of all hearts.

I do not need to bolster my argument for prayer by reliance on either supernatural or special answers to prayer. I believe the answer to prayer to be as natural as the prayer, and, moreover, that the answer is as truly ordained from the beginning as is any other of the arrangements of nature. It is surely not unreasonable to suppose that, from the beginning, prayer has been made "a condition precedent" to the bestowment of many of the blessings, which come to the prayerful and, indeed, to the prayerless also. Is it said that God knows our wants without our expressing them? He does - but has He not the right to require us to express them ? May he not say in the words of Ezekiel (36:37) "I will yet for this be inquired of - to do it ?" God, because He is God, is necessarily different to the pure and merciful from what He is to the froward (18th Psalm) - necessarily different to the proud from what He is to the humble. He would not be God did He not resist the proud whilst giving his grace to the humble.

We must stand up for the religion of the bible - not because it is in the bible, but because it is in nature. The bible, though grandest and best of all books, yet, being the work of men, may and does contain errors. But nature is as free from errors as is He from whom it came. We should not, in our ignorance and superstition, idolize the bible and claim perfection for it. But we should prize it because it essentially agrees with nature, explains nature and enforces it. Christianity, though so much of error is mixed with it, must, in its essentials, be one with nature. Were it not so, it could not have been so largely influential in holding millions to their uncorrupted nature and in moulding them into that precious character and beautiful life, which they and they only can attain to, who are kept faithful to the claims of their God-given nature.

As I have already virtually said, their nature shows that men are made to love one another, and thus be happy in one another. But christianity, so emphatically one with nature at this point, goes so far as to declare that "love is the fulfilling of the law." Let us then cling to christianity and seek to purify it of its dross and of whatever, that is contrary to nature, has crept into it. For none of all these evil and spurious mixtures is Christ's religion responsible. They are to be thrown out because of their violent disagreement with its great principles and precepts.

May this sure and simple religion - this religion of nature and reason, of justice and goodness - be, my beloved friend, yours and mine and our children's. I trust that it is yours. I would there were more evidence that it is mine also - more evidence in the experiences of my heart and manifestations of my life.

Of all the men, who have walked this earth and wet it with their tears and sweat and blood, none have lived so obediently to the laws of

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their being, in a word so naturally, as Jesus. Why then should we doubt that the religion he taught is the religion of nature? - in other words, the true religion ? It is an entire mistake that the mission of Jesus was to teach a new religion, It was to revive in the minds and hearts of men and call forth in their lives that which, from the beginning of the world, had been the only true religion, and that which, to the end of the world, will be the only true religion - the religion of nature.

I repeat, why should we doubt that it was the religion of nature, which Jesus taught? He was its supreme expositor. He was himself pre-eminently the child of nature. He loved her with his whole heart , - even with a woman's love. Her whole wealth of illustration was ever at his service; and she ever stood ready to enliven and adorn his truths and enforce his arguments. When we reflect that Jesus taught and insisted that men can receive his religion only in a childlike spirit - only, indeed, by becoming as little children, dropping their artificial and cunning life, and returning, as if by a new birth, to the naturalness, simplicity and sincerity of childhood - when I say that all this is before our mind, how can we doubt that it was the religion of nature, which he urged on the acceptance of his hearers? Especially, how can we doubt that he, who was so given to deep and fervent prayer, taught the naturalness and therefore the need of prayer?

It may be objected to my train of thought that human nature is too diverse in its different races, and, indeed, in the different individuals of the same race, to afford a uniform guide and standard in the matter of religion. But man is essentially the same every where. "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." The only danger at this point is the mistaking of the perversions and abuses of nature for nature herself. The debauchee and drunkard must not let their evil habits decide for them what is the true religion. No sinner must let his sins do this. Every person is, in spite of the

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perversions and pollutions of his nature, held responsible to his nature as it was before he had perverted and polluted it. He is to be judged by and, bound to conform to his original nature, however many and wide may have been his departures from it. Let him fix his eye on a nature still as pure as when it came from the hand of its Maker. Let him fix it on Jesus. Say not that Jesus was a Hebrew ; had the training, the prejudices and partialities of a Hebrew; and therefore could not be a universal model. He was far more than a Hebrew. He represented all races. He was a man, and he lived and died for our common humanity - for our humanity, as it lies back of all races, sects and educations, all literatures and traditions.

Perhaps, I have done wrong to "The Index." For, perhaps, I have unduly magnified the difference between it and myself. This difference may be wholly in our definitions of christianity. My definition does not include its unchristian mixtures. But "The Index" includes them all in its definition and holds Christ's religion responsible for them all. Were its definition just, there would be no ground to com plain of its war upon christianity. But in my view it is exceedingly though unintentionally unjust. Christianity is what its constructive principles are. It is what these always and every where call for nothing more, nothing less. If they call for any moral wrong, then christianity is wrong, otherwise not. These principles determine its theoretical scope and practical character: and it is unreasonable to hold it responsible for any thing which violates them. It is true that Jesus said somewhat more than sufficed to enunciate these principles - but it was only to illustrate and explain them. It was certainly not to overthrow nor invalidate them. In other words, it is not supposable that Jesus should speak against the tenor of the religion he taught against the principles of his own religion.

Affectionately yours

GERRIT SMITH.