The World's Greatest Books - Volume 13 Part 9

Ignorance of the doctrine of election and predestination impairs the glory of G.o.d and fosters pride. The covenant of life is not preached equally to all, and among those to whom it is preached does not always meet with the same reception. The reason of this discrimination belongs to the secret thing of G.o.d. This doctrine is cavilled at; yet when we see one nation preferred to another, shall we plead against G.o.d for having chosen to give such a manifestation of His mercy? G.o.d has displayed His grace in special forms. Thus of the family of Abraham He rejected some, and kept others within His Church, showing that He retained them among His sons.

Although the election of G.o.d is secret, it is made manifest by effectual calling. Both election and effectual calling are founded on the free mercy of G.o.d Calling is proved to be according to the free grace of G.o.d by the declarations of Scripture, by the mode in which it is dispensed, by the instance of Abraham's vocation, by the testimony of John, and by the example of all those who have been called. There are two species of calling. There is a universal call by which G.o.d, through the preaching of His Word, invites all men alike. Besides this, there is a special call, which, for the most part, G.o.d bestows on believers only, when by the internal illumination of His Spirit he causes the Gospel to take deep root in their hearts.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

AIDS TO REFLECTION

This famous book, of which the full t.i.tle is "Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion," was published in 1825, nine years before the author's death. Its influence on thoughtful minds was very great, and many of the first divines of that period owed to it their profoundest religious ideas. It has been said that the fame of Coleridge (see LIVES AND LETTERS) as a philosophic thinker is not so great as it was during the twenty years immediately after his death; but one imagines that this statement merely means that not so many people now read Coleridge as did fifty years ago.

The book, at any rate, has not yet been written which exposes a fallacy in his argument or demolishes his system. It should be remembered that this poet and searching thinker, to whom men like Wordsworth and Haslitt listened with reverence, was for some time in his life a Unitarian, and won to faith in the divinity of Christ by the use of his reason.

_I.--INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS_

It is the most useful prerogative of genius to rescue truths from the neglect caused by the very circ.u.mstance of their universal admission.

Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true that they lose the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul.

There is one sure way of giving freshness and importance to the most commonplace maxims--that of _reflecting_ on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being. A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and source of every good thing. As a man without forethought scarce deserves the name of man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.

In order to learn, we must attend; in order to profit by what we have learnt, we must think; he only thinks who reflects.

To a.s.sign a feeling and a determination of their will as a satisfactory reason for embracing or rejecting an opinion is the habit of many educated people; to me, this seems little less irrational than to apply the nose to a picture, and to decide on its genuineness by the sense of smell.

In attention we keep the mind pa.s.sive; in thought we rouse it into activity.

An hour of solitude pa.s.sed in sincere and earnest prayer, or the conflict with and conquest over a single pa.s.sion or "subtle bosom sin,"

will teach us more of thought, will more effectually awaken the faculty, and form the habit of reflection, than will a year's study in the schools without them.

Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and pa.s.sions. "Give me understanding,"

says David, "and I shall observe Thy laws with my whole heart."

It is worthy of especial observation that the Scriptures are distinguished from all other writings pretending to inspiration, by the strong and frequent recommendations of knowledge and a spirit of inquiry. The word "rational" has been strongly abused of late times.

This must not, however, disincline us to the weighty consideration that thoughtfulness and a desire to rest all our convictions on grounds of right reasoning, are inseparable from the character of a Christian. He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his own sect and church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself best of all.

_II.--REFLECTIONS RESPECTING MORALITY_

Sensibility, that is a const.i.tutional quickness, of sympathy with pain and pleasure, is not to be confounded with the moral principle.

Sensibility is not even a sure pledge of a good heart. How many are prompted to remove those evils alone, which by hideous spectacle or clamorous outcry are present to their senses and disturb their selfish enjoyments? Provided the dunghill is not before their parlour window, they are well contented to know that it exists, and perhaps is the hotbed on which their own luxuries are reared. Sensibility is not necessarily benevolence.

All the evil of the materialists is inconsiderable besides the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental philosophy of Sterne and his numerous imitators. The vilest appet.i.tes and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects, acquired the t.i.tles of the "heart,"

"the irresistible feelings," "the too-tender sensibility"; and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chain of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fas.h.i.+on and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the service of virtue than by such a comment on the present paragraph as would be afforded by sentimental correspondence produced in courts of justice, fairly translated into the true meaning of the words, and the actual object and purpose of the infamous writers.

Do you in good earnest aim at dignity of character? I conjure you, turn away from those who live in the twilight between vice and virtue. Are not reason, discrimination, law, and deliberate choice the distinguis.h.i.+ng characters of humanity? Can anything manly proceed from those who for law and light would subst.i.tute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impulses, which, as far as they differ from the vital workings in the brute animals, owe the difference to their former connection with the proper virtues of humanity? Remember that love itself, in its highest earthly bearing, as the ground of the marriage union, becomes love by an inward fiat of the will, by a completing and sealing act of moral election, and lays claim to permanence only under the form of duty.

All things strive to ascend, and ascend in the striving. While you labour for anything below your proper humanity, you seek a happy life in the region of death.

Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!

_III.--PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS_

With respect to any final aim or end, the greater part of mankind live at hazard. They have no certain harbour in view, nor direct their course by any fixed star. But to him that knoweth not the port to which he is bound, no wind can be favourable; neither can he who has not yet determined at what mark he is to shoot, direct his arrow aright.

It is not, however, the less true that there is a proper object to aim at; and if this object be meant by the term happiness, the perfection of which consists in the exclusion of all hap [_i.e.,_ chance], I a.s.sert that there is such a thing as _summum bonum_, or ultimate good. What this is, the Bible alone shows certainly, and points out the way. "In Cicero and Plato," says Augustine, "I meet with many things acutely said, and things that excite a certain warmth of emotion, but in none of them do I find these words, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!'"

In the works of Christian and pagan moralists, it is declared that virtue is the only happiness of this life. You cannot become better, but you will become happier; you cannot become worse without an increase of misery. Few men are so reprobate as not to have some lucid moments, and in such moments few can stand up unshaken against the appeal of their own experience. What have been the wages of sin? What has the devil done for you?

Though prudence in itself is neither virtue nor holiness, yet without prudence neither virtue nor holiness can exist.

Art thou under the tyranny of sin, a slave to vicious habits, at enmity with G.o.d, a fugitive from thy own conscience? Oh, how idle the disputes whether the listening to the dictates of prudence from self-interested motives be virtue, when the _not_ listening is guilt, misery, madness, and despair! The most Christian-like pity thou canst show is to take pity on thy own soul. The best service thou canst render is to show mercy to thyself.

_IV.--APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION_

If there be aught spiritual in man, the will must be such. If there be a will, there must be spirituality in man.

There is more in man than can be rationally referred to the life of Nature and the mechanism of organisation. He has a will not included in his mechanism; the will is, in an especial sense, the spiritual part of our humanity.

I a.s.sume a something, the proof of which no man can _give_ to another, yet every man may find for himself. If any man say that he cannot find it, I am bound to disbelieve him. I cannot do otherwise without unsettling the foundations of my own moral nature. If he will not find it, he excommunicates himself, forfeits his personal rights, and becomes a thing--_i.e.,_ one who may be used against his will and without regard to his interest. If the materialist use the words "right" and "obligation," he does it deceptively, and means only compulsion and power. To overthrow faith in aught higher than nature and physical necessity is the very purpose of his argument. But he cannot be ignorant that the best and greatest of men have devoted their lives to enforce the contrary; and there is not a language in which he could argue for ten minutes in support of his scheme without sliding into phrases that imply the contrary.

The Christian grounds his philosophy on a.s.sertions which have nothing in them of theory or hypothesis; they are in immediate reference to three ultimate facts--namely, the reality of the law of conscience; the existence of a responsible will as the subject of the law; and lastly, the existence of evil--of evil essentially such, not by accident of circ.u.mstances, not derived from physical consequences, nor from any cause out of itself. The first is a fact of consciousness, the second a fact of reason necessarily concluded from the first, and the third a fact of history interpreted by both.

I maintain that a will conceived separately from intelligence is a non-ent.i.ty, and that a will the state of which does in no sense originate in its own act is a contradiction. It might be an instinct, an impulse, and, if accompanied with consciousness, a desire; but a will it could not be. And this every human being knows with equal clearness, though different minds may reflect on it with different degrees of distinctness; for who would not smile at the notion of a rose willing to put forth its buds and expand them into flowers?

I deem it impious and absurd to hold that the Creator would have given us the faculty of reason, or that the Redeemer would in so many varied forms of argument and persuasion have appealed to it, if it had been useless or impotent. I believe that the imperfect human understanding can be effectually exerted only in subordination to, and in a dependent alliance with, the means and aidances supplied by the supreme reason.

Christianity is not a theory, or a speculation, but a life. Not a philosophy of life, but life, and a living process. It has been eighteen hundred years in existence.

The practical inquirer has his foot on the rock when he knows that whoever needs not a Redeemer is more than human. Remove from him the difficulties that perplex his belief in a crucified Saviour, convince him of the reality of sin, and then satisfy him as to the fact historically, and as to the truth spiritually, of a redemption therefrom by Christ. Do this for him, and there is little fear that he will let either logical quirks or metaphysical puzzles contravene the plain dictate of his commonsense, that the Sinless One that redeemed mankind from sin must have been more than man, and that He who brought light and immortality into the world could not in His own nature have been an inheritor of death and darkness.

A moral evil is an evil that has its origin in a will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. Now, this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine will; it must, therefore, be referred to the will of man. And this evil ground we call original sin. It is a mystery--that is, a fact which we see, but cannot explain; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, but can neither comprehend nor communicate.

The article on original sin is binding on the Christian only as showing the antecedent ground and occasion of Christianity, which is the edifice raised on this ground. The two great moments of the Christian religion are, original sin and redemption; _that_ the ground, _this_ the superstructure of our faith. Christianity and redemption are equivalent terms.

The agent and personal cause of the redemption of mankind is--the co-eternal word and only begotten Son of the living G.o.d. The causation act is--a spiritual and transcendent mystery, "that pa.s.seth all understanding." The effect caused is--the being born anew, as before in the flesh to the world, so now born in the spirit to Christ.

Now, albeit the causative act is a transcendent mystery, the fact, or actual truth, of it having been a.s.sured to us by revelation, it is not impossible, by steadfast meditation on the idea and supernatural character of a personal will, for a mind spiritually disciplined to satisfy itself that the redemptive act supposes an agent who can at once act on the will as an exciting cause, and in the will, as the condition of its potential, and the ground of its actual, being.

The frequent, not to say ordinary, disproportion between moral worth and worldly prosperity has at all times led the observant and reflecting few to a nicer consideration of the current belief, whether instinctive or traditional. By forcing the soul in upon herself, this enigma of saint and sage, from Job, David, and Solomon to Claudian and Boetius, this perplexing disparity of success and desert, has been the occasion of a steadier and more distinct consciousness of a something in man, different in kind, which distinguishes and contra-distinguishes him from animals--at the same time that it has brought into closer view an enigma of yet harder solution--the fact, I mean, of a contradiction in the human being, of which no traces are observable elsewhere, in animated or inanimate nature.