in regard to his approaching kingdom) and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” TRUTH, in this passage, evidently means reality, in contradistinction to emblems; the worship of the heart, in opposition to the worship of ceremonies; the direct worship of the soul, not that which requires the interposition of a priesthood. But mark the reason given by Christ-GOD IS A SPIRIT. To the Eternal Mind (such is the reasoning implied), to that Eternal Being who is the Father of Spirits, the only acceptable worship must be that which is truly spiritual. Figures and ceremonies must cease; for they are shadows, and he loves realities. The only sacrifice he demands is that of the individual will to his supreme will. This is the reasonable service of faith, peculiar to Christianity. But the mind, which is both the altar and the priest of this sublime and pure sacrifice, should not be degraded by a subjection to words, which are mere figures, more oppressive and enslaving than that of the Jews to the ceremonial law. The spirit of Christ has set the spirit of the true worshipper completely free from such fetters. The Christian worshipper should worship in TRUTH; and nothing is true to the human mind but what carries conviction to the understanding: another man's truth is error to him who does not see it as true. To offer up such borrowed truth-a truth which the individual reason rejects—is to lay a falsehood before God's throne as an offering. Such, in most cases, are the offerings of Orthodoxy. LETTER III. ON HERESY AND ORTHODOXY. MY DEAR FRIEND, IN In my first letter I defined Heresy "an opposition to the various standards of Christian faith which men not only adopt for themselves, but also think binding on all others." This was the result of the reasoning which preceded the definition; and I consider it proved by that reasoning. I have, nevertheless, employed a great part of that first letter, and the whole of the second, in confirming the accuracy of that analytical conclusion. But I am not yet satisfied that I have done enough. The difficulty of uprooting a prejudice which was almost undisturbed during, at least, fourteen centuries before the Reformation; a prejudice which the reformers themselves, for the most part, confirmed; a prejudice which is instilled into the opening mind with the first rudiments of education; a prejudice, in fine, which in this country has become so disguised that it exists in full vigour side by side with the most active spirit of political freedom: the difficulty of uprooting such a prejudice is greater than any one can conceive who has not traced the minute ramifications by means of which it keeps its hold on men possessing the best qualities of mind and heart. Do not lose sight, I again request you, of the leading principle which, from the beginning I have laid before you. Heresy, in the sense which the different parties who call themselves Orthodox have given to that word, cannot be conceived unless it be proved that Christ established some perpetual authority-an authority to be kept in existence by an unquestionably legitimate succession,-whose duty and privilege it is to declare, what doctrines are true. If no such authority exists, if the Scriptures are addressed to the understanding, not of a privileged class, but of every individual who wishes to follow Christ; if there is no divinely appointed judge to decide between the various mental impressions, i. e. the various meanings which the Scriptures convey to different minds; Heresy is a word which expresses only the anger of one Christian against another. It is only in this light that a history of the Inquisition can be read without nourishing in ourselves an inquisitorial spirit. Excuse this repetition: the truth, in circumstances like those of my subject, glides off the mind as a paradox, unless it be repeatedly brought in contact with it to be gradually, as it were, absorbed, and incorporated with the rest of our knowledge. The same process should be adopted in regard to important passages of Scripture, which, for many years, have been constantly presented to the mind in connexion with established doctrines. Language being a collection of arbitrary signs and words, having no meaning but that which is given to them by the mental habits of those who use them, any word, and, still more, any sentence (for words in combination are particularly subject to a variety of shades of meaning), if habitually repeated in connexion with certain notions, will appear to reject all other significations, as it were, by a natural power. The identical texts which opposite parties of Christians so decidedly assert to convey naturally and obviously notions which destroy each other, are (considering the sincerity with which those assertions are generally made) striking instances of the unlimited power of association over language. The controversialists stare, in unfeigned surprise, at what each conceives to be the glaring absurdity and perverseness of his opponent. The ill-subdued flames of equally genuine zeal make the blood boil in their veins when they observe that such plain words as body and blood, for instance, are not taken in their obvious sense; forgetting that in arbitrary signs, especially when they may be used figuratively, that sense alone can be obvious which use has rendered familiar*. For persons who * At all events, that sense cannot be obvious which would not stand before or present itself readily, and in the first instance. If we heard a person, holding some bread in his hands, say, This is my body, the literal sense belong to the same age and country, and who, by education and habits, have been placed in a sort of mental contact with the generations of their not very remote forefathers, the language of those ancestors may, in many cases, properly be said to have an obvious meaning. But in the very ancient languages, espepecially of the Eastern nations, there is hardly any expression which can have an obvious meaning for us. The habits of the Jews, in our Saviour's time, for instance, were so totally different from ours; the mass of each individual's ideas was so dissimilar to that which will be found in a corresponding class of people among us, that the phrases which would convey a clear meaning to a child in those times, may now be grossly misunderstood by the ablest men. We have but one method of avoiding great mistakes in the perusal of such writings as those of the New Testament. The reader should make himself, as much as possible, a cotemporary of the writers, by an intimate acquaintance with their language, their learning, their modes of thinking, and their habits. In this manner will he be able to understand the general import of those documents, especially in connexion with practical subjects of morals;-morals I say, not limiting the word to external conduct, but extending it to the discipline of the will and affections. In regard to this, the notions of mankind are so coincident, that they may be conveyed even by the slightest hints*. But in respect to philosophical or speculative ideas, especially in relation to the invisible world, far from expecting that the sense of those writers should be obvious, a sober and unprejudiced mind will be prepared to meet with great obscurity. All that we have a right to expect is a probable sense, disclosed by the light which the clearer passages cast over the more obscure. But even this probability is greatly diminished would by no means come foremost into our minds: it would not stand before us, or be obvious. This observation may be applied in very different ways, according to circumstances. * It is owing to this that Homer's poems are easily understood, so far, at least, as to create a deep interest. The words of that patriarch of poetry have a living interpreter in every human heart. The same happens in regard to many portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. by the habits of mind which are sedulously cherished in children, and which grow with them into manhood. The notions which some early writers conceived and published when knowledge was very scarce among Christians-the notions which, in subsequent times, a clergy who took for their mental guide a deceitful verbal philosophy, reduced into a logical system, with nothing but empty speculation for its ground-these notions digested into catechisms, whose expressions have been incorporated with every vernacular tongue, are now so attached, by mental association, to certain passages of Scripture, that it is very difficult to separate them, even when the understanding is thoroughly convinced that they could not be thus associated in the minds of the original teachers of Christianity*. That you may completely overcome such habits, allow me to recommend the re-perusal of such passages in the New Testament as speak of the SPIRIT in opposition to the LETTER, and of Christian LIBERTY in contrast with Jewish BONDAGE; examining them in the light of the principle which I have developed in the two preceding Letters. Examine, I beg you, whether, if the common notions of HERESY and ORTHODOXY were true, the law of Moses would be so decidedly inferior to the Gospel as the apostle Paul represents it; or whether, on the contrary, if, while our salvation depended on our right choice of theological opinions, and on the legitimate use of SACRAMENTS (as some practices are called without the least ground or authority), we had been left in great uncertainty as to the truth of the opinions and the divine appointment of the ministers of the sacraments, we should * I wish again and again, if possible, to remove the alarm which the clear statement of the difficulty in which we are placed, respecting doctrines considered by a great majority of Christians as of supreme importance, will raise. But as that unquestionable difficulty is the leading fact which Providence has permanently left us, in order that we may perceive how unjustifiably those difficult points have been superadded to a Gospel intended for the learned as well as the unlearned, for the lowly civilized, as well as the most refined nations as it is that very fact which demonstrates the necessity either of rejecting Christianity as not of divine origin, or accepting it free from those metaphysical appendages; I am bound, in proportion as I value from my heart the Gospel of Christ, to urge, "in season and out of season," the important consideration which forms the basis of these Letters. E |