OBSERVE the remarkable contrast between the religion of the tragic and other poets of Greece. The former are always opposed in heart to the popular divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and Aeschylus. The ancients had no notion of a fall of man, though they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most part in Aeschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together.
Table Talk.
No. 19. Homily on Prayer
Observe: we must not worship God, as if his Ways were as our Ways. We must not apply to him, neither, as tho’ God were the same with Sensible Nature, or the sum total of the Objects of our bodily Senses. For Nature in this sense must of necessity appear to us but as a more subtle and exquisite sort of Machine—and so to think of God is a deathly Superstition. And to speak aloud to God and by the sound and meaning of our words to suppose ourselves influencing him as we in this way influence our fellow-men, this is a delirious Superstition. O in that, which comprizing both transcends both, what precious Mysteries lie hid.
Means┼intreaty—O miraculous indeed hath been and would be such Prayer!
MS.
Just and generous actions may proceed from bad motives, and both may, and often do, originate in parts, and, as it were, fragments of our nature. A lascivious man may sacrifice half his estate to rescue his friend from prison, for he is constitutionally sympathetic, and the better part of his nature happened to be uppermost. The same man shall afterwards exert the same disregard of money in an attempt to seduce that friend’s wife or daughter. But faith is a total act of the Soul: it is the whole state of the mind, or it is not at all! and in this consists its power, as well as its exclusive worth.
Friend.
I make the greatest difference between ans and isms. I should deal insincerely with you, if I said that I thought Unitarianism was Christianity. No; as I believe and have faith in the doctrine, it is not the truth in Jesus Christ; but God forbid that I should doubt that you, and many other Unitarians, as you call yourselves, are, in a practical sense, very good Christians. We do not win Heaven by logic.
By the by, what do you mean by exclusively assuming the title of Unitarians? As if Tri-Unitarians were not necessarily Unitarians, as much (pardon the illustration) as an apple-pie must of course be a pie! The schoolmen would, perhaps, have called you Unicists; but your proper name is Psilanthropists—believers in the mere human nature of Christ.
Upon my word, if I may say so without offence, I really think many forms of Pantheistic Atheism more agreeable to an imaginative mind than Unitarianism as it is professed in terms: in particular, I prefer the Spinosistic scheme infinitely. The early Socinians were, to be sure, most unaccountable logicians; but, when you had swallowed their bad reasoning, you came to doctrine on which the heart, at least, might rest for some support. They adored Jesus Christ. Both Laelius and Faustus Socinus laid down the adorability of Jesus in strong terms. I have nothing, you know, to do with their logic. But Unitarianism is, in effect, the worst of one kind of Atheism, joined to the worst of one kind of Calvinism, like two asses tied tail to tail. It has no covenant with God; and looks upon prayer as a sort of self-magnetizing—a getting of the body and temper into a certain status, desirable per se, but having no covenanted reference to the Being to whom the prayer is addressed.
Table Talk.
In natural history, God’s freedom is shown in the law of necessity. In moral history, God’s necessity or providence is shown in man’s freedom.
Table Talk.
Assume the existence of God,—and then the harmony and fitness of the physical creation may be shown to correspond with and support such an assumption;—but to set about proving the existence of a God by such means is a mere circle, a delusion. It can be no proof to a good reasoner, unless he violates all syllogistic logic, and presumes his conclusion.
Kant once set about proving the existence of God, and a masterly effort it was. But in his later great work, the ‘Critique of the Pure Reason’, he saw its fallacy, and said of it—that if the existence could be proved at all, it must be on the grounds indicated by him.
Table Talk.
The unspeakable importance of the Distinction between the Reason and the Human Understanding, as the only Ground of the Cogency of the Proof a posteriori of the existence of a God from the order of the known Universe. Remove or deny this distinction, and Hume’s argument from the Spider’s proof that Houses &c were spun by Men out of their Bodies becomes valid.
MS.
There are spiritual truths which must derive their evidence from within, which whoever rejects, ‘neither will he believe though a man were to rise from the dead’ to confirm them. And under the Mosaic law a miracle in attestation of a false doctrine subjected the miracle-worker to death: and whether the miracle was really or only seemingly supernatural, makes no difference in the present argument, its power of convincing, whatever that power may be, whether great or small, depending on the fulness of the belief in its miraculous nature. Est quibus esse videtur. Or rather, that I may express the same position in a form less likely to offend, is not a true efficient conviction of a moral truth, is not the creating of a new heart, which collects the energies of a man’s whole being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the same and of the same evidence to the ignorant and the learned, which no superior skill can counterfeit, human or dæmoniacal? Is it not emphatically that leading of the Father, without which no man can come to Christ? Is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle and of miracle in the doctrine, which is the bridge of communication between the senses and the soul?—That predisposing warmth which renders the understanding susceptible of the specific impression from the historic, and from all other outward seals of testimony? Is not this the one infallible criterion of miracles, by which a man can know whether they be of God? The abhorrence in which the most savage or barbarous tribes hold witchcraft, in which however their belief is so intense as even to control the springs of life,—is not this abhorrence of witchcraft under so full a conviction of its reality a proof, how little of divine, how little fitting to our nature, a miracle is, when insulated from spiritual truths, and disconnected from religion as its end? What then can we think of a theological theory, which adopting a scheme of prudential legality, common to it with ‘the sty of Epicurus,’ as far at least as the springs of moral action are concerned, makes its whole religion consist in the belief of miracles! As well might the poor African prepare for himself a fetish by plucking out the eyes from the eagle or the lynx, and enshrining the same, worship in them the power of vision. As the tenet of professed Christians (I speak of the principle not of the men, whose hearts will always more or less correct the errors of their understandings) it is even more absurd, and the pretext for such a religion more inconsistent than the religion itself. For they profess to derive from it their whole faith in that futurity, which if they had not previously believed on the evidence of their own consciences, of Moses and the Prophets, they are assured by the great Founder and Object of Christianity, that neither will they believe it, in any spiritual and profitable sense, though a man should rise from the dead.
For myself, I cannot resist the conviction, built on particular and general history, that the extravagancies of Antinomianism and Solifidianism are little more than the counteractions to this Christian paganism: the play, as it were, of antagonist muscles. The feelings will set up their standard against the understanding, whenever the understanding has renounced its allegiance to the reason: and what is faith but the personal realization of the reason by its union with the will? If we would drive out the demons of fanaticism from the people, we must begin by exorcising the spirit of Epicureanism in the higher ranks, and restore to their teachers the true Christian enthusiasm, the vivifying influences of the altar, the censer, and the sacrifice. They must neither be ashamed of, nor disposed to explain away, the articles of prevenient and auxiliary grace, nor the necessity of being born again to the life from which our nature had become apostate. They must administer indeed the necessary medicines to the sick, the motives of fear as well as of hope; but they must not withhold from them the idea of health, or conceal from them that the medicines for the sick are not the diet of the healthy. Nay, they must make it a part of the curative process to induce the patient, on the first symptoms of recovery, to look forward with prayer and aspiration to that state, in which perfect love shutteth out fear. Above all, they must not seek to make the mysteries of faith what the world calls rational by theories of original sin and redemption borrowed analogically from the imperfection of human law-courts and the coarse contrivances of state expedience.
Friend:
Stilling fleet writes: But there is this vast difference between them [God and the sun], that though God is essentially and necessarily good, yet the communications of this goodness are the effect of his Will and not merely of his nature.
Coleridge comments: Well! but is not the Will of God identical with his nature? Is it not naturally good or beneficient? Is there in Eternity a distinguishable moment, that one moment should possibly be preferred to another? And where is the danger to Religion, if we make preservation a perpetual creation, and interpret the first words of Genesis as we must do (if not Socinians) the first words of St. John, ‘From all eternity God created the Universe—And the Earth became waste and void’ &c. It might have been a comet—it might have been as to its whole surface, ruined by a comet. It is a rule of infinite importance, that the Scriptures always speak not ad rem in se ipsâ, sed quoad hominem. It is a moral and religious, not a physical revelation, and in order to render us good moral agents, not accurate natural speculators, to make us know ourselves and our relations both present and future, not to make us knowing in nature—without industry or intellectual exercitation. S. T. C.
MS.
Stilling fleet writes: And how inefficacious the precepts of Philosophy were, appears by the Philosophers themselves, who were far from having command by them over their Masterless passions, and were fain sometimes to confess that nature was too headstrong to be kept in by such weak reins as the precepts of Philosophy were.
Coleridge comments: Cannot the philosophers quote as many instances as can reasonably be expected from men who did not make plebeian Sects? And are not the lives of nominal Christians as offensive to Christianity, as those of nominal Philosophers to Philosophy? And is not the number in each proportionate to that of the Professors? Nay! are there not more bad Christians in proportion? Why? because the very habits of Speculation remove men farther from Temptation, or disarm it. This is not meant as an argument in favor of Philos. against Christianity, but to overthrow its dangerous enemy, false Reasoning, in its favor. And why is Philosophy for ever to be set up as the Rival rather than the Friend and natural Companion, of Christianity? What is Christianity but a divine and pre-eminent Philosophy? A stream, in whose depths the Elephant may swim, and in whose practical and saving Truths the Lamb may ford? Besides, who shall dare say of yon river, such and such a wave came from such a fountain? What Scholar (and by scholars the vulgar are taught) shall say—Such a conviction, such a moral feeling, I received from St. John, such and such from Seneca, or Epictetus? S. T. C.
MS.
A Beech rises in a columnal Trunk to the height of 20 feet from the Ground and there it divides into two, diverging as the Samian Y. A River flows from its fountain in one widening stream over a vast tract of Country and thro’ various soils, till it reaches a bed of rocks, over and between which it twists, foams, roars, eddies for a while,
‘Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy tumult bewilder’d 
Rushes dividuous all, all rushing impetuous onwards,’
till it is met by a vast compact breast-work of Rock, which divides the stream into two diverging channels—and obtains the name of the Rock of Separation. Which of the two Limbs shall call itself the Beech-tree and retain the name of Trunk? Which of the two streams, the South-West, or the South-East, shall call itself the River? Is not the question palpably absurd? What if the Genie or Naiad of the one Channel should with an angry sneer ask the Sister Naiad, ‘Where were you and your Stream before Rock Separation?’ Might not the latter reply, ‘Exactly where you were, Sister. To be sure, I have deposited a good deal of the mud and the filth which our waters had contracted during their long journey. I wish, Sister! you would make use of my Filtring Machine!’ To the same purpose was the answer of——to his Catholic Neighbour who had asked him, ‘Where was your Religion before Luther?’—‘Where was your Face before you washed it this morning?’ S. T. C.
MS.
The poltroonery of our clergy in their anxiety to suppress the arguments of Infidels or Heretics. Ex. gr. I was speaking of Eichhorn’s Theory of the three first Gospels, and his View of the Apocalypse, to an Oxford and lettered Clergyman—and the answer was—‘I don’t wish to hear anything about [that]. Let them keep it to themselves.’ And recommended silence to me, lest some busybody may translate it. As if Truth were to be prized because and as far as it happened to be Christianity, and not Christianity] because it is the Truth.
MS.
Whether it may be expedient or even consistent with the duties of Charity to the Weak in Faith to publish the maxim, I have not decided—but of the maxim itself I have no doubt, viz. That nothing having a primary relation to the present State, whether moral, or prudential or gubernamental, is ordained in the New Testament which would not have been, according to the nature of the case, binding on the Conscience, true for the Reason, or apt for the Understanding, independent of the Ordinance. In relationibus humanis e statu mundano et sociali sive politico ortis, nihil religat Religio Christiana quod non ante ligatum erat. The Ignorance of this great Truth, in application to the government and discipline of Christian Communities, led the first and second Generation of Reformers into grievous Errors, on both sides. Had they but asked themselves what would naturally arise, what would be dictated by prudence and good sense, and what the Graces of Humility, brotherly Affection, and Zeal in a common cause would have impelled and realized, under the known state and circumstances of the Apostolic Age and then compared the Result with the Apostolic Precepts and Ordinances, recorded or resting on a constant Tradition, and found the coincidence perfect, they would in like manner have begun to consider calmly all the state and circumstances of their own Age and Country, each in his own Land and from these would with Christian Confidence have inferred, what under such circumstances, the same Apostles would have ordained. The Lauds would not have quarreled with the Genevan and Scottish Frames, nor the Leightons (Senr) and Melvills have entangled the two Nations with Covenants against the English Frame.
MS.
Similes and Metaphors judiciously used serve not only for illustration and refreshment. To inventive and thoughtful minds they are often the suggesters of actual analogies—the apparent Likeness being referred to a common Principle, ex. gr. the likeness between animal life and flame to’ the vital air present for both. But they have a third use—namely, that on many occasions they present a far more perfect, both a fuller [and yet less equivocal crossed out] and a more precise and accurate language than that of abstract or general words.
For instance, I suppose myself to say ‘I have known many instances of men who are religious because they are good but not one of whom the person was good because he was religious, and I wonder not that it startles and offends. For first, it may be understood as asserting a goodness divided and even contra-distinguished from Religion, both of which positions are false, and dangerous Falsehoods. But let me begin with explaining the identity or co-inherence of Morality and Religion, as the Transcendent containing both in one, and as one, that which our elder Divines meant by the Seed of Election in the Soul, and which St. Paul calls the Root (Vide the aphorism on the equivocal meaning of the term, ‘Consciousness’) and let it be premised that by moral and religious I mean only two different forms and states in the development or gradual unfolding of this principle into distinct existence and outward Manifestation, so as to become severally the object of a distinct Consciousness—I may then safely speak of Morality proceeding from the Root of obedience as the Stem, with its sprays and leaves, and Religion from the summit of the Stem, as the Crown and Flower of the Plant. But this Flower with its Petals, which differ from the leaves by a more refined Sap, and a more transparent membrane, in their more harmonious arrangement, and in a more intimate communion with the Light, is not only the Seat of its especial Beauty and Fragrancy, but the Seat and Organ of its reproductive Powers, and giving birth to new growths, both Stem and Flower. To make the Image adequate and to give it a full spiritual propriety, we have only to conceive this process as proceeding in a succession of Acts in the same Individual, instead of its being carried on, as in the vegetable Creation, in a succession of Individuals. (For we may say with the old Schoolmen, to whom the cause of Truth and reformed Religion is under far greater obligations than the shallow and contemptuous Spirit of the Philosophy in fashion will allow itself to suspect, each immortal Soul is at once an Individual and a Species: or rather, an Individual containing its Species and co-extended and co-enduring with it and in it.) We may likewise pursue the Likeness on to another point. That as wherever the Crown or Corolla is conspicuous, the whole Plant is called a Flower, and all numerous sorts of Plants thus distinguished have this for their common or family Name, naturally and were it not for the mournful frequency of Pharisaical Hypocrisy, as universally would we express the whole of Goodness, the moral no less than the devotional Requisites, by the appellation, ‘Religious’,—as, ‘He is a religious Man’, or ‘the Religious of all ranks and denominations’.
MS.
Our mutual life a Stoppage in the Blood—an eddy in the Ocean of pure Activity, from concourse of Currents—Pyramids—Alps, and Andes, giant Pyramids the work of Fire, Fire who like a generous Victor raises Monuments over the Conquered, Tombstones of a World destroyed—yet these, even these, float toward the great Equator, like Mountains of Ice, melting as they float.
Life knows only its product, and beholds itself only as far as it is visible in its offspring. Yea, the Ground and Cause of All comprehends itself only because the Logos in its co-eternal offspring, its Product, is at the same time its adequate Idea. No Word, no God.
MS.
Yes, my dear Mrs. W.
That is indeed the one great Paramount, without whose countenance nothing dare be even held indifferent—Duty, the Voice of God to all, the Presence of God in each, more than Human, and yet the very Essence of Humanity. Let us do our Duty: all else of mortal Life is but a Dream. But then what is Duty? What ought we to mean by the word? Is it but a general term, comprizing an aggregate of particular acts defined and described beforehand? The Name of a Dictionary or Catalogue, in which the Things to be done or not done are to [be] looked out for, with the ways and means of doing each? Is it a magic Scroll, which read forwards dictates one [long series crossed out] linked chain of Self-sacrifice?
MS.
Thomas Adam, in Private Thoughts on Religion, writes: The world slides into our hearts by the avenues of sense, in cases we think little of. There may be danger in giving ourselves up fully to a warm sunshine, or the pleasures of a beautiful landscape.
Coleridge comments: To certain characters this is true, but unfortunately those are most likely to act upon it to whom it is not true—those, to whom a quiet Subjacence to sunshine and natural beauty would be often medicinal. S. T. C.
And again in the same work Adam says: What is it to me whether the Americans are in a state of rebellion or not? Why do I not advert more to the rebellion of my own heart and will against God?
Coleridge comments: Have we then no duties to mankind? Or is it the Monk or Hermit only that performs them? Did not Christ weep over Jerusalem, even as over Lazarus? He wept twice, once in justification of public, and once of private affections. I can easily conceive that such a reflection may arise virtuously from the sense of unchristian excess and of worldly Bustle in the Heart—and may act medicinally on the reflector—but there is danger in propounding such reflections as general Truths, in prescribing my medicine for every man’s food. S. T. C.
MS.
Encyclopaedia Biblica—to be published in monthly Numbers, each containing 12 Sheets Quarto=96 Pages, with maps and plates chiefly illustrative and explanatory of Plants, animals, costume, Architecture &c.
CONTENTS
1. The sacred Scriptures in a fair large Type in three Columns, i.e. first the original Text, the Hebrew from Buxtorf’s Edition with the latest universally admitted Corrections, the Greek of the Apocrypha from Grabe, of the N.T. from Griesbach: the second, the common authorized Version: the third, a new Version, in which no alteration is made not rendered necessary by errors in the sense of the original, and all words, phrases, and collocation of words and phrases not found in the Church Bible are carefully avoided.
2. The various Readings, the variations of [the] Septuagint from the Hebrew Text, and of the present from the elder English Versions, with the most plausible conjectural emendations.
3. An elaborate Commentary, philo-chrono-phyto-zoo-geo-etho-theological, historical and geographical—and the Interpretations that have at any rate obtained currency chronologically arranged from the Fathers to the School-men, from the School-men to the Reformers and their learned Opponents of the Roman Church, and then the systematic Divines to the Latitudinarian, even to the present Day, including the comments of Eichhorn, Paulus, &c.—and of the English Unitarians, accurately stated, and the Tenets and Interpretations common to the Reformed. Protestant Churches explained and defended.
4. Original comments by the Editor, theological and critical.
5. The Texts best fitted for Sermons, with numerous Skeletons of Sermons illustrating the manner in which the Text may be aptly divided, and the most instructive and affecting deductions be naturally drawn.
MS.
As many notes, memoranda, cues of connection and transition, as the Preacher may find expedient or serviceable to him. But to read in a MSS Book, as our Clergy now do, is not to preach at all. Preach out of a Book if you must, but do not read in it—or even from it. A read Sermon of 20 minutes will seem longer to the Hearers than a free Discourse of an Hour. S. T. C.
MS.
… And the capacious and capable Ether was the work of God the Spirit, as the Spirit singly. It was the Breath of God breathed on the closed Eye-lids of the Darkness, the Brooding and Hush that smoothing the convulsive Death-throe into the smooth Sleep made Death and the Darkness parturient at the voice of the heavenly Lucina.
MS.
If Prudence, though practically inseparable from Morality, is not to be confounded with the Moral Principle; still less may Sensibility, i.e. a constitutional quickness of Sympathy with Pain and Pleasure, and a keen sense of the gratifications that accompany social intercourse, mutual endearments, and reciprocal preferences, be mistaken, or deemed a Substitute for it. Sensibility is not sure pledge even of a GOOD HEART, though among the most common meanings of that many-meaning and too commonly misapplied expression.
So far from being either Morality, or one with the Moral Principle, it ought not even be placed in the same rank with Prudence. For Prudence is at least an offspring of the Understanding; but Sensibility (the Sensibility, I mean, here spoken of), is for the greater part a quality of the nerves, and a result of individual bodily temperament.
Prudence is an active Principle, and implies a sacrifice of Self, though only to the same Self projected, as it were, to a distance. But the very term Sensibility, marks its passive nature; and in its mere self, apart from Choice and Reflection, it proves little more than the coincidence or contagion of pleasurable or painful Sensations in different persons.
Alas! how many are there in this over-stimulated age, in which the occurrence of excessive and unhealthy sensitiveness is so frequent, as even to have reversed the current meaning of the word, nervous,—how many are there whose sensibility prompts them 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 as the hotbed on which their own luxuries are reared. Sensibility is not necessarily Benevolence. Nay, by rendering us tremblingly alive to trifling misfortunes, it frequently prevents it, and induces an effeminate Selfishness instead,
—pampering the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use.
Sweet are the Tears, that from a Howard’s eye
Drop on the cheek of one, he lifts from earth:
And He, who works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half. He chills me, while he aids,
My Benefactor, not my Brother Man.
But even this, this cold beneficence,
Seems Worth, seems Manhood, when there rise before me
The sluggard Pity’s vision-weaving Tribe,
Who sigh for Wretchedness yet shun the Wretched,
Nursing in some delicious Solitude
Their slothful Loves and dainty Sympathies.
Sibylline Leaves, p. 180.
Lastly, where Virtue is, Sensibility is the ornament and becoming Attire of Virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become Virtue. But Sensibility and all the amiable Qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the pandars of Vice and the instruments of Seduction.
So must it needs be with all qualities that have their rise only in parts and fragments of our nature. A man of warm passions may sacrifice half his estate to rescue a friend from Prison: for he is naturally sympathetic, and the more social part of his nature happened to be uppermost. The same man shall afterwards exhibit the same disregard of money in an attempt to seduce that friend’s Wife or Daughter.
All the evil achieved by Hobbes and the whole School of Materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental Philosophy of STERNE, and his numerous Imitators. The vilest appetites and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects, acquired the titles of the Heart, the irresistible Feelings, the too tender Sensibility: and if the Frosts of Prudence, the icy chains of Human Law thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of Human Nature, who could help it? It was an amiable Weakness!
Aids to Reflection.
He need only reflect on his own experience to be convinced, that the Man makes the motive, and not the motive the Man. What is a strong motive to one man, is no motive at all to another. If, then, the man determines the motive, what determines the Man—to a good and worthy act, we will say, or a virtuous Course of Conduct? The intelligent Will, or the self-determining Power? True, in part it is; and therefore the Will is pre-eminently the spiritual Constituent in our Being. But will any reflecting man admit, that his own Will is the only and sufficient determinant of all he is, and all he does? Is nothing to be attributed to the harmony of the system to which he belongs, and to the pre-established Fitness of the Objects and Agents, known and unknown, that surround him, as acting on the will, though, doubtless, with it likewise? a process, which the co-instantaneous yet reciprocal action of the Air and the vital Energy of the Lungs in Breathing may help to render intelligible.
Aids to Reflection.
Of the sects of ancient philosophy the Stoic has been deemed the nearest to Christianity. Yet even to this Christianity is fundamentally opposite. For the Stoic attaches the highest honour (or rather, attaches honour solely) to the person that acts virtuously in spite of his feelings, or who has raised himself above the conflict by their extinction; while Christianity instructs us to place small reliance on a Virtue that does not begin by bringing the Feelings to a conformity with the Commands of the Conscience. Its especial aim, its characteristic operation, is to moralize the affections. The Feelings, that oppose a right act, must be wrong Feelings. The act, indeed, whatever the Agent’s feelings might be, Christianity would command: and under certain circumstances would both command and commend it—commend it, as a healthful symptom in a sick Patient; and command it, as one of the ways and means of changing the Feelings, or displacing them by calling up the opposite.
Aids to Reflection.
Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the Heart, the Moral Nature, was the Beginning and the End; and that Truth, Knowledge, and Insight were comprehended in its expansion. This was the true and first apostasy—when in Council and Synod the divine Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, and Religion became a Science of Shadows under the name of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For these therefore there remained only rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus among the learned the substance of things hoped for (Heb. xi. 1.) passed off into Notions; and for the Unlearned the surfaces of Things became Substance. The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many, that did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think—both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of the Act, the other from the absence of an Object.
Aids to Reflection.
Young, beautiful was she; her parents’ joy,
And the sole prop of their declining age.
And happy was she,—and perhaps had been
For ever happy,—but in evil hour,
Her lover took her to the theatre;—
Thence date her sorrow and her misery.
The Age: A Poem in Eight Books, Anon.
Coleridge comments: Not in the fictions of poetry but in the records of our criminal courts may we find similar results and consequences not less tragic from evening attendance on the Conventicle. Many a poor wretch has dated her fall, from the evil hour, Her lover took her to the Methodist Barn, or half-lit Chapel.—But neither Theatre nor Conventicle can be wisely considered as the cause of the depravity, tho’ both may be accessaries, and the latter more influentially, perhaps, than the former. For religious (more accurately, irreligious) Fanaticism is a species of Concupiscence—alike in its source, in its manifestations and in its products sensual.
MS.
‘Philosophy and Religion p. 5. Here we have strikingly exemplified the ill-effects of an ambiguous (i.e. double meaning) word even on highest minds. The whole Dispute between Schelling and Eschenmeyer arises out of this—that what Esch[enmeyer] asserts of Faith (the fëalty of the partial faculty even of Reason itself as merely speculative to the focal Energy—i.e. Reason+ Will+Understanding=Spirit) Schelling understands of Belief, i.e. the substitution of the Will+Imagination+Sensibility for the Reason.
MS. note on Schelling.
He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
Aids to Reflection.
We all know, that Lovers are apt to take offence and wrangle on occasions that perhaps are but trifles, and which assuredly would appear such to those who regard Love itself as Folly. These Quarrels may, indeed, be no proof of Wisdom; but still, in the imperfect state of our Nature the entire absence of the same, and this too on far more serious provocations, would excite a strong suspicion of a comparative indifference in the Parties who can love so coolly where they profess to love so well. I shall believe our present religious Tolerancy to proceed from the abundance of our charity and good sense, when I see proofs that we are equally cool and forbearing as Litigants and political Partizans.
Aids to Reflection.
Have you children, or have you lived among children, and do you not know, that in all things, in food, in medicine, in all their doings and abstainings they must believe in order to acquire a reason for their belief? But so it is with religious truths for all men. These we must all learn as children. The ground of the prevailing error on this point is the ignorance, that in spiritual concernments to believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same thing in different periods of its growth. Belief is the seed, received into the will, of which the Understanding or Knowledge is the Flower, and the thing believed is the fruit. Unless ye believe (saith the Prophet) ye cannot understand: and unless ye be humble as children, ye not only will not, but ye cannot believe. Of such therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven. Yea, blessed is the calamity that makes us humble: though so repugnant thereto is our nature, in our present state, that after a while, it is to be feared, a second and sharper calamity would be wanted to cure us of our pride in having become so humble.
Aids to Reflection.
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. Without reflection, it is evident that neither the one can be acquired not the other exercised.
Aids to Reflection.
Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof—sang Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any personal wrongs—rapine or insult—that she or the house of Lapidoth had received from Jabin or Sisera? No; she had dwelt under her palm tree in the depth of the mountain. But she was a mother in Israel; and with a mother’s heart, and with the vehemency of a mother’s and a patriot’s love, she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the people that had jeoparded their lives unto the death against the oppressors; and the bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants who came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord, against the mighty.
As long as I have the image of Deborah before my eyes, and while I throw myself back into the age, country, circumstances, of this Hebrew Bonduca in the not yet tamed chaos of the spiritual creation;—as long as I contemplate the impassioned, high-souled, heroic woman in all the prominence and individuality of will and character,—I feel as if I were among the first ferments of the great affections—the pro-plastic waves of the microcosmic chaos, swelling up against—and yet towards—the outspread wings of the Dove that lies brooding on the troubled waters. So long all is well,—all replete with instruction and example. In the fierce and inordinate I am made to know and be grateful for the clearer and purer radiance which shines on a Christian’s paths, neither blunted by the preparatory veil, nor crimsoned in its struggle through the all-enwrapping mist of the world’s ignorance: whilst in the self-oblivion of these heroes of the Old Testament, their elevation above all low and individual interests,—above all, in the entire and vehement devotion of their total being to the service of their divine Master, I find a lesson of humility, a ground of humiliation, and a shaming, yet rousing, example of faith and fealty.
But let me once be persuaded that all these heart-awakening utterances of human hearts—of men of like faculties and passions with myself, mourning, rejoicing, suffering, triumphing—are but as a Divina Commedia of a superhuman—O bear with me, if I say—Ventriloquist;—that the royal Harper, to whom I have so often submitted myself as a many-stringed instrument for his fire-tipt fingers to traverse, while every several nerve of emotion, passion, thought, that thrids the flesh-and-blood of our common humanity, responded to the touch, that this sweet Psalmist of Israel was himself as mere an instrument as his harp, an automaton poet, mourner, and supplicant;—all is gone,—all sympathy, at least, and all example. I listen in awe and fear, but likewise in perplexity and confusion of spirit.…
Does not the universally admitted canon—that each part of Scripture must be interpreted by the spirit of the whole—lead to the same practical conclusion as that for which I am now contending;—namely, that it is the spirit of the Bible, and not the detached words and sentences, that is infallible and absolute?—Practical, I say, and spiritual too;—and what knowledge not practical or spiritual are we entitled to seek in our Bibles? Is the grace of God so confined,—are the evidences of the present and actuating Spirit so dim and doubtful,—that to be assured of the same we must first take for granted that all the life and co-agency of our humanity is miraculously suspended?
Whatever is spiritual, is eo nomine supernatural; but must it be always and of necessity miraculous? Miracles could open the eyes of the body; and he that was born blind beheld his Redeemer. But miracles, even those of the Redeemer himself, could not open the eyes of the self-blinded, of the Sadducean sensualist or the self-righteous Pharisee;—while to have said, I saw thee under the fig tree, sufficed to make a Nathanael believe.…
… no man, I say, can recognize his own inward experiences in such Writings, and not find an objectiveness, a confirming and assuring outwardness, and all the main characters of reality, reflected therefrom on the spirit, working in himself and in his own thoughts, emotions, and aspirations—warring against sin, and the motions of sin. The unsubstantial, insulated Self passes away as a stream; but these are the shadows and reflections of the Rock of Ages, and of the Tree of Life that starts forth from its side.
On the other hand, as much of reality, as much of objective truth, as the Scriptures communicate to the subjective experiences of the Believer, so much of present life, of living and effective import, do these experiences give to the letter of these Scriptures. In the one the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we have received the spirit of adoption; in the other our spirit bears witness to the power of the Word, that it is indeed the Spirit that proceedeth from God. If in the holy men thus actuated all imperfection of knowledge, all participation in the mistakes and limits of their several ages had been excluded, how could these Writings be or become the history and example, the echo and more lustrous image of the work and warfare of the sanctifying Principle in us?
Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit.
A beautiful Allegory of Persian Wisdom—its analogy to Prometheus—to Satan or Lucifer &c.
Anahid, the Egyptian Nëith, the Greek Athenè=Logos, Verstand. Harut and Murat, who obtained permission to descend from Heaven and become incarnate as Men, in order to try the sensual nature, and the possibility of its subordination to the Spiritual—[But they became sensually enamoured of crossed out] bringing with them the holy Word (Idea, 
) by which they descended and were enabled to re-ascend. But they became sensually enamoured of Anahid, who gave them hopes of yielding herself to their embraces, on condition of their communicating the Holy Word. Instead of trying they [were] tempted, and they gave the Word to Anahid—which instantly was lost to them, forgotten—and in the same instant, Anahid soared to the morning Star (Phosphor) and with her harp strung with sunbeams, plays to the Spheres, the Goddess of Love and Order. H[arut] and M[urat]=Reason and Will.
MS.
But when Count Zinzendorf and the founders of his Moravian Church had stript away the beautiful imaginative garment, they found it expedient to provide fig-leaves for naked nature;
Southey, The Life of Wesley, I. 143.
Coleridge comments: Metaphors are tricksy companions—Will o’ the Wisps that often lead a man to say what he never meant; or call them fire-flies, that (on all momentous subjects) should be examined by the stronger light of the lamp of reflection, before they are let loose to ornament the twilight. Had the question been put, ‘Is the exclusive love, which a man and woman of pure mind and inward dignity feel toward each other, and consecrate by a vow, only a gauze veil with which their imaginations clothe their lust to make it look charming?’ who would return a more indignant No! than Robert Southey? who would turn away with more impatience from the person who had dared insult him by proposing the question?
P. S. These bewilderments of the first Moravians suggested to me, what I still hope to execute, an essay on the nature and importance of Taste (
) in religion.—S. T. C.
‘Antinous.—What do you call Mysticism? and do you use the word in a good or in a bad sense?’
‘Nous.—In the latter only: as far, at least, as we are now concerned with it. When a Man refers to inward feelings and experiences, of which Mankind at large are not conscious, as evidences of the truth of any opinion—such a Man I call a MYSTIC: and the grounding of any theory or belief on accidents and anomalies of individual sensations or fancies, and the use of peculiar terms invented or perverted from their ordinary significations, for the purpose of expressing these idiosyncracies, and pretended facts of interior consciousness, I name MYSTICISM. Where the error consists simply in the Mystic’s attaching to these anomalies of his individual temperament the character of Reality, and in receiving them as permanent Truths, having a subsistence in the Divine Mind, though revealed to himself alone; but entertains this persuasion without demanding or expecting the same faith in his neighbours—I should regard it as a species of ENTHUSIASM, always indeed to be deprecated but yet capable of co-existing with many excellent qualities both of Head and Heart. But when the Mystic by ambition or still meaner passions, or (as sometimes is the case) by an uneasy and self-doubting state of mind that seeks confirmation in outward sympathy, is led to impose his faith, as a duty, on mankind generally: and when with such views he asserts, that the same experiences would be vouchsafed, the same truths revealed, to every man but for his secret wickedness and unholy will—such a Mystic is a FANATIC, and in certain states of the public mind a dangerous Member of Society. And most so in those ages and countries in which Fanatics of elder standing are allowed to persecute the fresh competitor. For under these predicaments, Mysticism, though originating in the singularities of an individual Nature, and therefore essentially anomalous, is nevertheless highly contagious. It is apt to collect a swarm and cluster circum fana, around the new Fane: and therefore merits the name of FANATICISM, or as the Germans say, Schwärmerey, i.e. Swarm-making.’
We will return to the harmless species—the enthusiastic Mystics: a species that may again be subdivided into two ranks. And it will not be other than germane to the subject, if I endeavour to describe them in a sort of allegory, or parable. Let us imagine a poor Pilgrim benighted in a wilderness or desart, and pursuing his way in the starless dark with a lanthorn in his hand. Chance or his happy genius leads him to an Oasis or natural Garden, such as in the creations of my youthful fancy I supposed Enos the Child of Cain to have found. And Here, hungry and thirsty, the way-wearied Man rests at a fountain; and the Taper of his Lanthorn throws its Light on an over-shadowing Tree, a Boss of snow-white Blossoms, through which the green and growing Fruits peeped, and the ripe golden Fruitage glowed. Deep, vivid, and faithful are the impressions, which the lovely Imagery comprised within the scanty Circle of Light, makes and leaves on his Memory! But scarcely has he eaten of the fruits and drank of the fountain, ere scared by the roar and howl from the desart he hurries forward: and as he passes with hasty steps through grove and glade, shadows and imperfect beholdings and vivid fragments of things distinctly seen blend with the past and present shapings of his Brain. Fancy modifies Sight. His Dreams transfer their forms to real Objects; and these lend a substance and an outness to his Dreams. Apparitions greet him; and when at a distance from this enchanted land, and on a different track, the Dawn of Day discloses to him a Caravan, a troop of his fellow-men, his memory, which is itself half fancy, is interpolated afresh by every attempt to recall, connect, and piece out his recollections. His narration is received as a Madman’s Tale. He shrinks from the rude Laugh and contemptuous Sneer, and retires into himself. Yet the craving for Sympathy, strong in proportion to the intensity of his Convictions, impels him to unbosom himself to abstract Auditors; and the poor Quietist becomes a Penman, and, all too poorly stocked for the Writer’s trade, he borrows his phrases and figures from the only Writings to which he has had access, the sacred Books of his Religion. And thus I shadow out the enthusiastic Mystic of the first sort; at the head of which stands the illuminated Teutonic Theosopher and Shoemaker, honest Jacob Behmen, born near Gorlitz, in Upper Lusatia, in the 17th of our Elizabeth’s Reign, and who died in the 22d of her Successor’s.
To delineate a Mystic of the second and higher order, we need only endow our Pilgrim with equal gifts of Nature, but these developed and displayed by all the aids and arts of Education and favorable Fortune. He is on his way to the Mecca of his ancestral and national Faith, with a well-guarded and numerous Procession of Merchants and Fellow-pilgrims, on the established Track. At the close of Day the Caravan has halted: the full moon rises on the Desart: and he strays forth alone, out of sight, but to no unsafe distance; and Chance leads him too to the same Oasis or Islet of Verdure on the Sea of Sand. He wanders at leisure in its maze of Beauty and Sweetness, and thrids his way through the odorous and flowering Thickets into open ‘Spots of Greenery’, and discovers statues and memorial characters, grottos, and refreshing Caves. But the Moonshine, the imaginative Poesy of Nature, spreads its soft shadowy charm over all, conceals distances, and magnifies heights, and modifies relations; and fills up vacuities with its own whiteness, counterfeiting substance; and where the dense shadows lie, makes solidity imitate Hollowness; and gives to all objects a tender visionary hue and softening. Interpret the Moonlight and the Shadows as the peculiar genius and sensibility of the Individual’s own Spirit: and here you have the other sort: a Mystic, an Enthusiast of a nobler Breed—a FÉNELON. But the residentiary, or the frequent visitor of the favored spot, who has scanned its beauties by steady Day-light, and mastered its true proportions and lineaments, he will discover that both Pilgrims have indeed been there! He will know, that the delightful Dream, which the latter tells, is a Dream of Truth; and that even in the bewildered Tale of the former there is Truth mingled with the Dream.
Aids to Reflection.
And finally, and above all, let it be remembered by both parties, and indeed by controversialists on all subjects, that every speculative error which boasts a multitude of advocates, has its golden as well as its dark side; that there is always some truth connected with it, the exclusive attention to which has misled the understanding, some moral beauty which has given it charms for the heart. Let it be remembered that no assailant of an error can reasonably hope to be listened to by its advocates, who has not proved to them that he has seen the disputed subject in the same point of view, and is capable of contemplating it with the same feelings as themselves; (for why should we abandon a cause at the persuasions of one who is ignorant of the reasons which have attached us to it?) Let it be remembered, that to write, however ably, merely to convince those who are already convinced, displays but the courage of a boaster; and in any subject to rail against the evil before we have inquired for the good, and to exasperate the passions of those who think with us, by caricaturing the opinions and blackening the motives of our antagonists, is to make the understanding the pander of the passions; and even though we should have defended the right cause, to gain for ourselves ultimately from the good and the wise no other praise than the supreme Judge awarded to the friends of Job for their partial and uncharitable defence of his justice: ‘My wrath is kindled against you, for ye have not spoken of me rightfully.’
Friend.
From this hint concerning Toleration, we may pass by an easy transition to the, perhaps, still more interesting subject of Tolerance. And here I fully coincide with Frederic H. Jacobi, that the only true spirit of Tolerance consists in our conscientious toleration of each other’s intolerance. Whatever pretends to be more than this, is either the unthinking cant of fashion, or the soul-palsying narcotic of moral and religious indifference. All of us without exception, in the same mode though not in the same degree, are necessarily subjected to the risk of mistaking positive opinions for certainty and clear insight. From this yoke we cannot free ourselves, but by ceasing to be men; and this too not in order to transcend, but to sink below, our human nature. For if in one point of view it be the mulct of our fall, and of the corruption of our will; it is equally true, that contemplated from another point, it is the price and consequence of our progressiveness. To him who is compelled to pace to and fro within the high walls and in the narrow courtyard of a prison, all objects may appear clear and distinct. It is the traveller journeying onward, full of heart and hope, with an ever-varying horizon, on the boundless plain, that is liable to mistake clouds for mountains, and the mirage of drouth for an expanse of refreshing waters.
But notwithstanding this deep conviction of our general fallibility, and the most vivid recollection of my own, I dare avow with the German philosopher, that as far as opinions, and not motives, principles, and not men, are concerned; I neither am tolerant, nor wish to be regarded as such. According to my judgment, it is mere ostentation, or a poor trick that hypocrisy plays with the cards of nonsense, when a man makes protestation of being perfectly tolerant in respect of all principles, opinions, and persuasions, those alone excepted which render the holders intolerant. For he either means to say by this, that he is utterly indifferent towards all truth, and finds nothing so insufferable as the persuasion of there being any such mighty value or importance attached to the possession of the truth as should give a marked preference to any one conviction above any other; or else he means nothing, and amuses himself with articulating the pulses of the air instead of inhaling it in the more healthful and profitable exercise of yawning. That which doth not withstand, hath itself no standing place. To fill a station is to exclude or repel others,—and this is not less the definition of moral, than of material, solidity. We live by continued acts of defence, that involve a sort of offensive warfare. But a man’s principles, on which he grounds his Hope and his Faith, are the life of his life. We live by Faith, says the philosophic Apostle; and faith without principles is but a flattering phrase for wilful positiveness, or fanatical bodily sensation. Well, and of good right therefore, do we maintain with more zeal, than we should defend body or estate, a deep and inward conviction, which is as the moon to us; and like the moon with all its massy shadows and deceptive gleams, it yet lights us on our way, poor travellers as we are, and benighted pilgrims. With all its spots and changes and temporary eclipses, with all its vain halos and bedimming vapours, it yet reflects the light that is to rise on us, which even now is rising, though intercepted from our immediate view by the mountains that enclose and frown over the vale of our mortal life.
This again is the mystery and the dignity of our human nature, that we cannot give up our reason, without giving up at the same time our individual personality. For that must appear to each man to be his reason which produces in him the highest sense of certainty; and yet it is not reason, except so far as it is of universal validity and obligatory on all mankind. There is a one heart for the whole mighty mass of Humanity, and every pulse in each particular vessel strives to beat in concert with it. He who asserts that truth is of no importance except in the signification of sincerity, confounds sense with madness, and the word of God with a dream. If the power of reasoning be the gift of the supreme Reason, that we be sedulous, yea, and militant in the endeavour to reason aright, is his implied command. But what is of permanent and essential interest to one man must needs be so to all, in proportion to the means and opportunities of each. Woe to him by whom these are neglected, and double woe to him by whom they are withholden; for he robs at once himself and his neighbour. That man’s soul is not dear to himself, to whom the souls of his brethren are not dear. As far as they can be influenced by him, they are parts and properties of his own soul, their faith his faith, their errors his burthen, their righteousness and bliss his righteousness and his reward—and of their guilt and misery his own will be the echo. As much as I love my fellow-men, so much and no more will I be intolerant of their heresies and unbelief—and I will honor and hold forth the right hand of fellowship to every individual who is equally intolerant of that which he conceives such in me.—We will both exclaim—‘I know not what antidotes among the complex views, impulses and circumstances, that form your moral being, God’s gracious providence may have vouchsafed to you against the serpent fang of this error,—but it is a viper, and its poison deadly, although through higher influences some men may take the reptile to their bosom, and remain unstung’.
Friend.
What are all these Mechanics Institutions, Societies for spreading Knowledge, &c. but so many confessions of the necessity and of the absence of a National Church?
MS.
Who then shall dare prescribe a law of moral action for any rational being, which does not flow immediately from that Reason, which is the fountain of all morality? Or how without breach of conscience can we limit or coerce the powers of a free agent, except by coincidence with that law in his own mind, which is at once the cause, the condition, and the measure of his free agency? Man must be free; or to what purpose was he made a spirit of reason, and not a machine of instinct? Man must obey; or wherefore has he a conscience? The powers, which create this difficulty, contain its solution likewise: for their service is perfect freedom. And whatever law or system of law compels any other service, disennobles our nature, leagues itself with the animal against the godlike, kills in us the very principle of joyous well-doing, and fights against humanity.
Friend.
The most common effect of this mock evangelical spirit, especially with young women, is self-inflation and busy-bodyism.
Table Talk.
As long as the spirit of philosophy reigns in the learned and highest class, and that of religion in all classes, a tendency to blend and unite will be found in all objects of pursuit, and the whole discipline of mind and manners will be calculated in relation to the worth of the agents. With the prevalence of sophistry, when the pure will (if indeed the existence of a will be admitted in any other sense than as the temporary main current in the wide gust-eddying stream of our desires and aversions) is ranked among the means to an alien end, instead of being itself the one absolute end, in the participation of which all other things are worthy to be called good, commences the epoch of division and separation. Things are rapidly improved, persons as rapidly deteriorated; and for an indefinite period the powers of the aggregate increase, as the strength of the individual declines. Still, however, sciences may be estranged from philosophy, the practical from the speculative, and one of the two at least may remain. Music may be divided from poetry, and both may continue to exist, though with diminished influence. But religion and morals cannot be disjoined without the destruction of both: and that this does not take place to the full extent, we owe to the frequency with which both take shelter in the heart, and that men are always better or worse than the maxims which they adopt or concede.
Friend.
The error of all sects, whether in religion or in philosophy, is commonly to be found, not in the positive of their characteristic tenets, but in the negative—nil, nisi hoc; not in the positions, but in the imposition. S. T. C.
MS.