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nounced the rich to be accursed, the poor to be blessed;-if, while proclaiming his precepts to be superior to those of any earlier teacher, and blessing those who had the privilege of listening to him, he yet taught dictatorially much that is erroneous;-if he declared that he would in the course of that generation return, in the clouds of heaven and in sight of all men, to take possession of the throne of the world;-if he asserted that all power in heaven and earth was granted to him ;-if he identified submission to himself with obedience to God;-if he declared the reception or non-reception of his ill-taught messengers to be a test of piety or impiety;-if he denounced on his simple countrymen a doom at the great day of judgment worse than that of Sodom, merely because they did not listen to his teaching;-if he emphatically taught the eternity of torture in the flames of Hell;-if he was gratified by seeing men fall prostrate before him ;-if he declared the sins of a woman to be remitted, because she kissed his feet and loved him much;-if he railed against men in authority as rudely and fiercely as all the narratives represent;—if he identified Credulity with Faith;-if he deprecated examination, inquiry, and cautious suspense of the judgment;-if he haughtily repelled questions mildly and reasonably asked;-if he mistook disease for possession by a demon and believed in his own power to cast the demon out by a word;-if he taught that Faith, combined with Fasting, would enable every one to perform physical miracles; if he used the whip against traders, who, for the convenience of the legal sacrifices and in conformity to custom and the Mosaic law, sold victims needed for the temple service;—it is certain that such a teacher, had he appeared in our days, in whatever part of Christendom, would find no acceptance among moralists or statesmen. Our bishops and clergy would not discover his moral perfection; possibly our magistrates would think it their obvious duty to treat him with severity. When such a portrait, wholly without historical attestation and perhaps largely false, is held up to us as that of an absolutely perfect man, and we are (not sarcastically, but in good faith) exhorted to make it our pattern ;-surely it is high time to protest for common sense against Credulity. If we allow our moral judgment to be so tampered with, we may easily be carried into the most foolish and gratuitous Saint-worship.

I was grieved and a little alarmed last year, to read in the public press that a revered Brahmo, who had separated himself, first, from Hindoo idolatry, next, from the leadership of K. Ch.

Sen, practised Invocation to the spirits of deceased parents and grandparents as a part of religious worship. What Hero-worship and Saint-worship is to the State and Church, such is the Worship of Ancestors or Kinsfolk to the Family. Among the old Greeks and Romans we find the same thing; the daiμoves or Spirits among Greeks, the Dü Manes among Romans,—that is, the Spirits of Ancestors-received honour as inferior gods. Hindoo religion to this day makes much of religious ceremonies paid to the dead. That European sentiment is as prone to the same practice, as are Asiatics or as were the ancients, I make no doubt; when, in the Life and Letters of the celebrated historian, statesman, and critic, Bertholdt Niebuhr, himself informs us that in the illness of his second wife he prayed to the spirit of his first wife for aid. The eminent Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby gave as a reason for accepting the doctrine of Christ's divinity, that human nature needs for worship and trust something nearer and more like itself than the Supreme and Infinite Being. (I quote from memory, but think I give the substance of his argument.) But this is, in other words, a simple confession, that each of us has to struggle for a pure religion against the ever besetting sin of idolatry. Because human nature is prone to the sin, he says that human nature needs the practices. If once we allow Poetry and Affection to persuade us, that the spirits of deceased loved ones can be present with us and listen to us, and we habituate ourselves to their imaginary intercourse, we at once invest them in our minds with superhuman qualities,-even with a virtual omnipresence, while to their possible faculties and powers we can set no limit. The same must be said, if we make invocation to any of the heroes of history, or to a St. Becket, a St. Joseph, a St. Mary, or a St. Jesus. The argument is always specious: "We do not adore St. Joseph, we only honour him: we do not pray to the Virgin, we only make entreaty to her:" So argued a Greek bishop to me. But entreaty and affectionate intercourse addressed to departed spirits, whom we imagine to be superhuman, and to haunt us invisibly,-whose faculties and powers we cannot limit,-tend directly to supersede adoration of a Holy Supreme God. For movements of the heart in trust and love to him, we substitute trust and love to an inferior mystical being. Grant that there is a stage of barbaric intellect which cannot yet form the conception of an Infinite and Perfect God; in that stage polytheism is a movement upwards. But to barbarians taught by higher minds to revere one Supreme Being,

no intellectual difficulty arises; and in our present stage every form of polytheism is decidedly a movement downwards. In particular, and above all, to introduce into religion the name of Jesus, is to ensure the renewal of endless pernicious controversies, which have made Christianity the divider, instead of the uniter of mankind, and have with frightfully literal truth fulfilled the prophecy rightly or wrongly attributed to Jesus: "Think ye that I am come to send peace upon earth? I tell you Nay, but a sword."-May God in his mercy forbid that in the future of the human race such should be the tendency of religion! Your part and mine it is, to struggle against it. It has been said, that National Liberty can only be maintained by Eternal Vigilance. Equally true is this of Simplicity in Religion; for the Fantasy which would corrupt its Simplicity, and thereby its Truth, is undying. A Religion which is to promote union and charity among mankind must above all exclude from itself historical and legendary elements; for these will inevitably generate in different regions diverse mythologies, which, even if they be in the origin mere plausible accretions, before long will eat as a canker.

ERRORS CONCERNING DEITY.

[1880.]

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HE subject announced for the lecture this morning was Errors concerning Deity. It may seem that in no topic is error so venial, so much to be expected and calculated on, so unavoidable to every one of us. To the question, "Who can by searching find out God?" one answer alone is thought possible, and that a confessing of inability. But the same confession is needful as to complete knowledge of astronomy, of physiology, of botany-in short, of any of the natural sciences. They are all infinite. Modest we ought to be, yet modesty may be carried to a vicious extreme. It cannot be always wrong to reprove error concerning Deity; especially when error is peculiarly noxious. In many cases it may be quite in our power to discern that what is noxious is also erroneous. It may be wise to speak decisively against that which is clearly false, even when we have an uncertain or modest opinion as to what is true.

The case, I repeat, is not peculiar to religion. If there be any branch of real or fancied knowledge which we accept as a guide to action, its error may have a malignant influence. Thus, in regard to the laws of health. In these we are necessarily liable to error, and our knowledge is sure to be in many points inadequate. If opinion be perverse, it may dictate as healthful that which is uselessly cruel, or that which directly tends to unhealth. The same may be said of all moral teaching. And though Religion, as I think, steps beyond its own line if it undertake to dogmatize concerning morals, yet it generally has so dogmatized. Moreover, even when it does not, it generally exerts a moral influence, good or evil, a topic which it may be well to illustrate from the notions of the ancient Greeks.

The Greeks, as all scholars know familiarly, held as a national creed opinions concerning the gods alike fantastic and puerile. They depicted them as full of human weaknesses and passions, but free from moral restraints, and glorified them in this condition as beautiful and blessed. Reverential admiration was thus excited for beauty and power, apart from goodness. Base

selfishness passed without censure, because it was the selfishness of a god; honour was claimed for godhead, while godhead was morally despicable. Voluptuous and impulsive natures could hardly fail to envy the lot of gods, who could indulge appetite and passion without restraint. Whatever may be said in praise of Greek mythology as elegant, it is certain that the belief in it aided to deprave that highly intelligent nation. With excellent reason did the early Christians rebel against the national creed, instilled though it was with the mother's milk and supported by public law. Xenophanes and Epicurus much earlier assailed it, with the same good reason. It was not rash, it was not an unseemly self-confidence, to say concerning the religion of Homer and Hesiod, "Whatever may be true concerning Divine existence, these fancies are certainly false and evil." The Epicureans were quite in the right thus far. Their error lay, not in their preferring virtual Atheism to the received beliefs concerning the gods, but in their defective and delusive morality.

Moslims and Christians alike, when brought into contact with Pagan religion, especially as held by half-barbarous tribes, are apt to describe it as devil-worship. Base credulity and base fear are seen to underlie both sentiment and practice. A god is worshipped, not because he is great, good, and just, but because he is supposed to be powerful, and dangerous. Simple-hearted American savages are said to have formulated the grounds of their worship by this motto, "We need not worship the good deities, for they are sure to be kind to us; but we need to propitiate the malignant deities, lest they do us harm." This frank utterance instructively brings to light the important certainty, to which multitudes of Christians are blind, that to worship Power apart from Justice and Goodness-a worship which nothing but fear can prompt is really and effectively to worship a devil. This of necessity debases the heart and often hardens it.

Without mature rumination on these noxious influences, proceeding from false views of Deity, we may fail of boldness to cast off that morbid humility, which dreads the imputation of selfconfidence in the renunciation of religious error. Among some highly intellectual Christian divines, the belief concerning God is noble, refined and heart-satisfying. But as, among Hindoos, Egyptians and Greeks, the learned few interpreted into spiritual truth many fables and many images, which to the vulgar mind suggested nothing but hideous and pernicious folly; so among ourselves the roots of Pagan error spread wide and strike deep; and this,-not

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