NEW VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY, SOCIETY, AND THE CHURCH. PREFACE. IT must not be inferred from my calling this little work New Views, that I profess to bring forward a new religion, or to have discovered a new Christianity. The religion of the Bible I believe to be given by the inspiration of God, and the Christianity of Christ satisfies my understanding and my heart. However widely I may dissent from the Christianity of the church, with that of Christ I am content to stand or fall, and I ask no higher glory than to live and die in it and for it. I believe my views are somewhat original, but I am far from considering them the only or even the most important views which may be taken of the subjects on which I treat. Those subjects have a variety of aspects, and all their aspects are true and valuable. He who presents any one of them does a service to Humanity; and he who presents one of them has no occasion to fall out with him who presents another, nor to claim superiority over him. Although I consider the views contained in the following pages original, I believe the conclusions, to which I come at last, will be found very much in accordance with those generally adopted by the denomination of Christians, with whom it has been for some years my happiness to be associated. That denomination, however, must not be held responsible for any of the opinions I have advanced. I am not the organ of a sect. I do not speak by authority, nor under tutelage. I speak for myself and from my own convictions. And in this way, better than I could in any other, do I prove my sympathy with the body of which I am a member, and establish my right to be called a Unita riani In what I have written here, as well as in all I have written elsewhere and on other occasions, I have aimed to set an example of free thought and free speech. I ask no thanks for this, for it was my duty and I dared not do otherwise. Besides, theology can never rise to the rank and certainty of a science, till it be submitted to the free and independent action of the human mind. Vol. IV.-1 1 It will at once be seen that I have given only a few rough sketches of the subjects I have introduced. Many statements appear without the qualifications with which they exist in my own mind, many parts are doubtless obscure for the want of fuller developments, and the whole probably needs to be historically verified. But I have done all I could without making a larger book, and a larger book I could hope that nobody would buy or read. I may hereafter fill up my sketches and complete my pictures; but it would have been useless in the present state of the public mind to attempt more than I have done. For my literary sins I have a right to some indulgence. My early life was spent in far other pursuits than those of literature. I make no pretensions to scholarship. For all my other sins-except those of omission, for which I have given a valid excuse-I ask no indulgence. I hope I shall be rigidly criticised. He who helps me correct my errors is my friend. Those who feel any interest in "The Society for Christian Union and Progress"-a society collected during the past summer, and of which I am the minister-may find in this volume the principles on which that society is founded, and the objects it contemplates. To the members of that society and to those who have listened to my preaching these views will not be new. If any of my readers wish to pursue the subject touched upon in my Introduction, I would refer them to Benjamin Constant's great work De la Religion considérée dans sa Source, ses Formes et ses Développements; to Religion and the Church, a book by Dr. Follen, which he is now publishing in a series of numbers; and especially to Schleiermacher's work Ueber die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern, a work which produced a powerful sensation in Germany when it first appeared, and one which cannot fail to exert a salutary influence on relig ious inquiry among ourselves. A friend, to whom I am proud to acknowledge myself under many obligations, has translated this work in the course of his own private studies, and I cannot but hope that he may be induced ere long to publish it. of With these remarks I commit my little work to its fate. It contains results to which I have come only by years painful experience; but I dismiss it from my mind with the full conviction, that he, who has watched over my life. and preserved me amidst scenes through which I hope I may not be called to pass again, will take care that if what it contains be false it shall do no harm, and if it be true that it shall not die. BOSTON, Nov. 8 1836. INTRODUCTION. Religion is natural to man and he ceases to be man the moment he ceases to be religious. This position is sustained by what we are conscious of in ourselves and by the universal history of mankind. Man has a capacity for religion, faculties which are useless without it, and wants which God alone can satisfy. Accordingly wherever he is, in whatever age or country, he has-with a few individual exceptions easily accounted forsome sort of religious notions and some form of religious worship. But it is only religion, as distinguished from religious institutions, that is natural to man. The religious sentiment is universal, permanent, and indestructible; religious institutions depend on transient causes, and vary in different countries and epochs. As distinguished from religious institutions, religion is the conception, or sentiment, of the Holy, that which makes us think of something as reverend, and prompts us to revere it. It is that indefinable something within us which gives a meaning to the words venerable and awful, which makes us linger around the sacred and the time-hallowed, the graves of heroes or of nations,-which leads us to launch away upon the boundless expanse, or plunge into the mys terious depths of being, and which, from the very ground' of our nature, like the Seraphim of the prophet, is forever crying out, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.' Religious institutions are the forms with which man clothes his religious sentiment, the answer he gives to the question, What is the holy? Were he a stationary being, or could he take in the whole of truth at a single glance, the answer once given would be always satisfactory, the institution once adopted would be universal, unchangeable, and eternal. But neither is the fact. Man's starting-point is the low valley, but he is continually-with slow and toilsome effort it may be-ascending the sides of the mountain to more favorable positions, from which his eye may sweep |