joiced in all the atrocities of religious persecution! How many such men have vindicated negro slavery, unjust wars, oppressive governments, and a thousand other social wrongs, because they esteemed those wrongs beneficial to the caste, the nation, the party, the order, the religion, or the race for which their sympathies were specially engaged! * 8. We have shown elsewhere that the mystic personal God, both from the character ascribed to him, and from the special degree of favor with which devout believers always suppose him to regard them, is calculated to engross their entire affections, and to become the sole object of their sympathy. And according to that law of sympathy above explained; just in proportion to the ardor of their love for him,—except perhaps with a few of the theosophistic school, has been the fierceness of their hatred towards his supposed enemies; and their disposition to justify, to enjoin, to extol, the most horrible severities exercised towards them, as sensible proofs of love and zeal for him. How could they imagine that a Deity himself supposed to inflict interminable torments upon sinners in another world, could be otherwise than pleased that those - * "One of the largest meetings perhaps ever held in Exeter Hall, was held on Tuesday evening, convened by the London Missionary Society, to consider the means of extending and promoting in China, the objects of the Society. Wm. T. Blair, Esq., of Bath, presided. Dr. Liefchild moved the first resolution, expressive of thanksgiving to God for the war between China and Great Britain, and for the greatly enlarged facilities, secured by the treaty of peace for the introduction of Christianity into that empire. The resolution was seconded by the Rev. Dr. Adler, and was carried unanimously."- London Examiner, January 21, 1843. same sinners should be made to commence their sufferings here! Hence, the Djehad, or holy war of the Mahometans, to be perpetually carried on against the infidels for the love and glory of God, and represented as the most meritorious of acts; hence, the crusades of the Christians, another name for the same thing. Hence, the Holy Inquisition, and the autos-da-fe, those acts of faith, perpetrated by Protestants as well as Catholics, which consist in burning heretics and infidels at the stake. Hence, those ruthless persecutions, those wholesale banishments, those cruel penal laws, those massacres, assassinations, confiscations, dragonnades, that setting of the son against the father, of the daughter against the mother, of the wife against the husband; those miserable mutual hatreds, jealousies, and contentions, by which, in times of religious excitement, every city, every town, every village, every neighbourhood, every family is distracted; and in which the chief actors so often are conscientious men, who, having sacrificed their reason, sacrifice their humanity, also, to their notions of religious duty. If, of late, the fierceness of religious bigotry has somewhat subsided, it is because the increasing humanity of the times has greatly modified the popu lar idea of the Deity, who, even in the minds of the vulgar, has grown less a person, and more an abstraction; so that mystic faith, even among professed believers, has become historic and traditionary, and less what it used to be, vision and feeling. 9. Closely connected with these duties, of sym pathy are those which are called duties of selfrespect. In all communities in which the distinction of ranks exists, that is, in almost all communities which have advanced beyond the savage state, it is esteemed the duty of men and women so to conduct themselves, as to sustain the dignity and privileges of the order or caste to which they belong. Thus, to admit persons of a proscribed caste or sect, a man of color in America, a Jew in many parts of Europe, to sit at table with us, and much more, habitual association and intermarriage with such persons, is esteemed in several codes of current morals, a grave offence,* indicating a disposition to sacrifice the feelings and the comfort of those whom we are specially bound to regard, to the gratification of an idle or criminal caprice. The subject of ranks and castes, their origin and the social consequences thence resulting, belongs to the Theory of Politics; but it was necessary shortly to advert to it here, on account of the great influence thence exercised over every current code of morals, and the numberless inconsistencies and contradictions in current moral opinions thence resulting. Lorqu'au théâtre de la Guadeloupe, nous vîmes toute la salle battre des mains à l'Antony de M. Alexandre Dumas, nous ne pâmes réprimer un mouvement de pitié, en pensant que ceux-là même qui applaudissaient à l'œuvre, se croiraient déshonorés s'ils rencontraient l'auteur dans un salon; et que toutes ces femmes si émues à l'entendre peindre les passions qui les agitent, rougiraient de honte, seulement à la idée de figurer avec lui dans une fête. VICTOR SCHOELCHER, Des Colonies Françaises, ch. 14. CHAPTER IX. DUTIES TO GOD, OR RELIGIOUS DUTIES. 1. We have explained, in the first part, how it happens that duties to God hold a place not only in mystic, but also in forensic codes of morals. We have pointed out how there arises in the human mind, even in its most uncultivated state, the idea of invisible, supernatural personal agents, as being the causes of all those natural phenomena so intimately connected with the existence and well-being of man. We have indicated the gradual progress by which the idea, first of a supreme, and afterwards of a single, Deity, is finally arrived at. This single Deity, however, still remains in the minds of the multitude, a personal God, made and modelled after the image of man. Especially is it believed that the will of God may be operated upon by substantially the same means which influence the human will; whence follows the conclusion, that as the phenomena of nature are but the voluntary acts of God, those means which can operate upon God's will may be able to control even nature itself. It is little to be wondered at, that a dogma so flattering to the sentiment of self-comparison, so useful to the wise and so comforting to the simple, a dogma which teaches that not only the eternal laws of nature, but the infinite God himself, may be compelled to bend and yield to human incantations, should have been so implicitly received, and so zealously maintained. It is upon this alleged personal nature of the Deity, that rests the whole superstructure, not only of the mystic theory of morals, but of the political and social importance of the priesthood; and, also, that part of forensic morality, which inculcates what are called religious duties. 2. As men everywhere necessarily frame after their own image the personal deity whom they adore, their ideas of the duties due to God have everywhere substantially depended upon their notions of the duties due to themselves and to each other. We have already seen how all the changes which have taken place in current moral theories have been gradually embodied into current theological dogmas; though from the conservative spirit of all priesthoods, and from the influence of ancient sacred books, theology always lags a good way behind, and experiences a certain difficulty and delay in coming up to the opinions of the times. Hence, in all inquisitive ages, the priesthoods of every sect are divided into two parties, an old school which stickles for the past, a new school which strives to accommodate itself to the present.* 3. It seems to be at once a characteristic and a cause of stationary civilization, when forms and cer * This adaptation of popular religious traditions and current scriptures to the moral opinions of the times is what Kant recommended and defended under the name of the method of moral interpretation. Though he was the first to give it a name, and candidly to recognize in it the substitution of new moral meaning in place of the meaning actually intended to be conveyed by the authors of the tradition or the writing, the method itself had been practised from time immemorial, and grows, in fact, out of the necessities of human nature. |