FRUITION. ( SONG-CREATING month of May, I found companionship with you, In this lone field, beside the stream, In sombre clumps of evergreens Soft azure floods the crimson vales, And mountains watch the floating Earth The river flows through meadow slopes, Winding and dreaming past her isles, The bubbles swim in willowy coves, O Earth, the sky in love descends, Your boughs are weighed with rosy fruit, Nor anxious sigh, nor pleading look, For heaven a boon to give you, No Spring-time birth-throes, painful hope, But rest, for heaven is with you. I feel the hallowed breath of joy, Sweet benedictions kiss my cheek, A touch of consecration. Yearning, I turn from all and wait; Unrest, pain, sin, contrition, Tears, longing, growth-pangs, fevered strife, THE CHRISTIANITITY OF CHRIST. [Final Article.] THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS. It is impossible to say in what the religious system of Christ consisted, or whether he had one carefully reasoned out in his mind. His detached thoughts are scattered up and down the Gospels without order and without perfect coherence even, and when occasionally, as in the report of the Sermon on the Mount, a certain arrangement is observed, it is purely artificial, and is but the mechanical and arbitrary collocation of sayings according to the taste of the Evangelist. Nothing indicates that Jesus held what we call a system of philosophy, or a scheme of faith. It is difficult to conceive, however, that the leading ideas of such a person should not have held some vital relation to each other in his thought; he must have combined his main principles in something like a system, harmonious though expansive, and perhaps loose. At least from the few splendid fragments of teaching which we possess, it is an easy task to construct for us a system at once profound, compact and beautiful, such as may well have been his own. Every form of Religion has for its object. the union of man with God. This is what religion means; it is the power that binds fast" the Finite to the Infinite. The tenets (bonds, clamps, holdings, from the Latin teneo,) are the best which do this work most effectually. A scheme of religious faith must be built upon one of three principles. It must be Sacramental, Dogmatical, or Spiritual. According to the Sacramental system, a man is reconciled with God by the observance of ceremonies, the mechanical performance of certain actions, reckoned to be holy and sanctifying. Such among the Jews were the regular offering of sacrifice, frequent attendance at the temple-worship, at the national feasts and fasts; the paying of tithes; careful keeping of the ritual Law, touching the Sabbath; abstinence from meats; purifications; cleansing of dwellings, garments, vessels, and the like; punctilious regard for the moral Law in its negative injunctions to do no murder, no stealing, lying, violating, blaspheming, traducing; and in its positive injunctions to give a certain portion of the income in alms to the poor. Among the Catholics such sacramental acts, by which man purchases the favor of God, are baptism and communion; penance, including self-abnegation; liberality to the Church; alms-giving, and other similar performances. Protestants also have their sacramental deeds, their religious ordinances for the body. They are- corporal presence at church; corporal presence at communion; office of prayer; reading the Holy Book; baptism, and abstinence from worldly amusements. Such acts are regarded as sacred and sanctifying. The performance thereof is reckoned meritorious before God; sacrifice is good and wellseeming in His sight. Sacramental religion is of the lowest kind. It belongs to the infant condition of man, and prevails most extensively among uncivilized nations, in unenlightened ages; the religion of the Hottentot and the Carib, of the Calmuck and the Camanche, is of this type; and it is no more dignified in the people of Catholic and Protestant Christendom than it is among these savage tribes. The presence of the sacramental element in our modern religions indicates that we are still, to a certain extent, barbarous and childish; and the zeal which Christians manifest in its preservation, their eagerness to perpetuate. it, even in spite of the faith of Jesus, which they profess, their persistency in calling those infidels who discard it, even now, only proves how slowly the human race outgrows its infancy; how dull is the intelligence of the best educated communities in the present boasted age of light, and how obstinately men will prostrate themselves before their idols, insisting that they are no idols, because they are not figures of wood or stone. Even in educated New-England, called the "salt" of America, and the "candle " of the Continent, the sacramental part of religion is still deemed the most essential part, and the teaching of a pure Christianity without circumcision, fasts, and ordinances, is flouted as the vain prattle of transcendental philosophy, or the treacherous talk of a disguised infidelity. Dogmatical Religion is of a slightly higher grade than sacramental, inasmuch as it implies the action, however mechanical, of intellect. People who have outgrown the idea that they can handle God with their fingers, eat Him in a consecrated wafer, receive His spirit in a few drops of cold water sprinkled upon the forehead. come into His presence by entering a church, or reach His senses by odorous fumes of incense, and the flattering voice of prayer,still think to bring Him near to them by a formal act of belief. The impression seems to be that God incarnates Himself in certain opinions, and makes His holy habitations in some "body of Divinity; His grace fills the dogma of Trinity, or Transubstantiation; His spirit nestles among the five points of Calvinism; His glory is revealed in the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, and is plain to the believer in Human Depravity; His comforting soul loves such a temple as Eternal Damnation offers him to dwell in. Would you find God? Men say, you must believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, for that is the volume which contains Him. The Catholic avers that He quickens, with His especial grace, the propositions of his Church. The Protestant contends that ile crouches beneath the fundamentals of his Creed. The Calvinist tells us we shall certainly miss Him if we do not receive implicitly the doctrine of Election. The Lutheran assures us that we are out of his range if we do not hold to "Justification by Faith." The Unitarian is persuaded that the Living Spirit of Deity can. not be apprehended except by one who accepts unreservedly the New Testament miracles. These are sacramental opinions. Simply to assent to them in ever so dogged a fashion is enough. need not understand them; you need not have investigated them; you need not entertain them with any depth and earnestness of conscience. Only receive them; only do not deny and reject them, and they will bridge over the gulf betwixt you and the Infinite. We said that dogmatical religion was superior to sacramental religion, in that it substituted an act of the intellect for an act of the body. Perhaps this is using rather strong language. Dogmatical religion does not, strictly speaking, require an act of intellect, but only an act of will, dispensing with the act of intellect. The sacramental belief is quite as mechanical as the sacramental ceremony; being fully as much a matter of habit and routine. The religion of You doctrines does not ask its disciples to think; on the contrary, it discourages their thinking, for thought leads to doubting, and doubting leads to unbelief, and unbelief swings one clear away from the influence of God: swings him off into perdition. Belief, therefore, is a sacrament; something to be had and held as a matter of course; something to be maintained against knowledge and reason, if need be; to be maintained at all events. The religion of all the Protestant sects, without one solitary exception, is mainly dogmatical. The Unitarian stands here upon the same ground with the Calvinist, for if he does not avowedly hope to make himself one with God through opinions, he admits no possibility of becoming one with him if certain opinions are discarded. Spiritual Religion seeks to make perfect the union between man and God through the exercise of moral and spiritual qualities through natural truth and goodness; not by any conventional acts of the body, not by any conventional acts of the mind, but by the real acts of the conscience and the soul. Man is made at one with God by becoming like God - by worshipping the highest ideal he knows, by repeating in himself the attributes he adores; and by manifesting toward others the disposition which the Great Father exhibits toward him. To be obedient to the soul's best prompting; to love God with heart, mind and strength, with affection, reason and will; to love man like oneself, doing unto others as one would have them do unto him; to do unto others as the Heavenly Father does unto all, this is spiritual religion, religion without saving ordinances, and without saving creed-simple and undefiled; its faith a conviction of the pure heart; its sacraments the endeavors of a loyal will. Such, if we know it at all, was the religion of Christ; such was his religious system, if we insist upon his having a religious system. So far as his ideas are presented to us, they shape themselves into a form of doctrine that is strictly moral and spiritual. Religion, from its nature, supposes two terms Man and God; and the character of either one of these terms defines the other. The primary doctrine of all Religion is the doctrine respecting Man. This comes first. The idea of God takes its shape from the theory we entertain in regard to Human Nature. The Calvinist, who looks upon human nature as utterly corrupt and depraved, must have a conception of God entirely different from the Socialist, who looks upon human nature as finished and perfect. |