him, and hence hate and enslave him. Enough that we are like God-like our idea of God. And as the development and formation of the religious life is according to our idea of God, it is but a corollary to this fact that, the more truthful this idea, the more perfect is the religious development. When this idea is partial, erroneous, or perverted, so must be the religious life formed under its influence. But as this idea is truthful and complete, so will the religious life be the more perfect, symmetrical, and complete. And here we are brought back to those cardinal facts of religion, already presented as such. Most of the perversions of the religious life result from perverted views of the divine goodness and justice. The evil is twofold. First, the divine mind is wrongly interpreted as to what is virtue or vice, and right or wrong; also as to his estimate of men. Our false view holds that to be good or bad, right or wrong in the estimate of God which he does not so regård. Then we claim it is right and virtuous in us, without any warrant from him, to neglect, or hate and afflict such as we assume-falsely it may be that he regards with displeasure. Now we can reach such false conclusions only by a false or perverted idea of the divine goodness and justice. When we can hold these to be partial; particularly, when we can hold the latter to be partial and arbitrary, oppressive and cruel, and to warrant in us like feelings, then our own wrong notions and feelings follow as the logical sequences. But when our idea of them is truthful, we are saved from such false and perverted sentiments, and cherish only those which are righteous and good. These principles, which so far determine the character of our religious development, give a peculiar force to certain commands of Scripture; a force deeply felt by the true believer in God. The devotee at the altar of an idol may have no command to be like the god he worships; but all the religious sentiments which his idea of such divinity inspires so command him, even more imperatively than any mere words of authority. As his divinity is, such he feels himself required to be. This fact is often corrupting, as so many of the heathen gods are corrupt. Still it is none the less a religious force, ever present and active. The same force lies in all true faith in God. Here we have such commands as these: "Be ye therefore perfect, FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVII.-2 050 M59 even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," "Be ye holy, for I am holy;" "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful." These are commands of divine authority. But they have far greater weight with the believer whose idea of the character of God is truthful and clear, than any mere authority can give them. They come to him, indeed, with all their weight of authority; but above all this, they come with the inspiration of all his love and reverence for God, his devout admiration of the perfections of his character, his aspirations to be assimilated to him in like excellences, and his longings for the divine communion and blessing. And thus the religious life takes its highest, best form. age. Any one at all observant has marked examples of the most perfect religious development in persons of very limited powers and culture. He has found here an intensity, fullness, and symmetry of the religious life, often wanting in Christians of the rarest gifts, the broadest views, and richest culture. How is this? Should not these laws of the religious life, which we have considered, invariably give to the latter the more perfect religious development? Far from it. This development is determined by the clearness and truthfulness of our views of God in those attributes in which he is specially the object of the religious affections. Here the simple-minded man is equal to the gifted and cultured. In some respects he has the advantHis very simplicity enables him to contemplate God with the deepest religious intensity. He is not perplexed with any difficult or puzzling questions respecting the ubiquity, or unchangeableness, or eternity of God, or the harmony of his prescience with the freedom of human actions. He sees his natural attributes only as they heighten the glory and majesty of his righteousness and love. The light of the divine goodness and justice beams upon his soul, and his religious affections kindle. and glow under the vision of their glory. And, religion being so largely affectional, it is legitimate to the laws of its development that it should take a higher form in such a one, rather than with those of far larger gifts and richer culture, whose views of God as the object of religion are not likely to be so simple, clear, and intense, on account of those disturbing questions ever rising to their mind. We follow the logical sequences of this subject, in applying its principles to the religious life, under its various forms or dispensations. As the development of that life is determined by the idea of God, it must be largely influenced or modified by the dispensation under which it has its formation. As the true religious idea of God is less or more clearly revealed and received, so the religious life will have a less or more perfect development. RELIGION UNDER NATURE.-Nature sheds but a feeble light upon the moral attributes of God. Its chief manifestations are of his natural attributes. But these, however clearly seen, make no direct appeal to the religious affections, and, hence, have no inherent formative power over the religious life. Its feeble light upon the moral attributes of God is especially defective as to his goodness. Nature more clearly manifests his justice than his goodness-justice, not as it springs from his holiness, and forms his righteousness, but in its punitive function and visitations of wrath. Whoever will contemplate God simply in the light of nature, will receive a deeper impression of his wrath than of his love. But in saying this, we are not consenting that our afflictions are greater than our blessings. We think them far less. Yet our blessings do not equally impress us. We are more keenly sensitive to pain than to pleasure. Besides, our blessings come to us so constantly and gently that we scarcely observe them; while our afflictions are often sudden and intense. Frequently they come with severity and whelming violence. The result is, that, left to the light of nature, we receive the deeper impression of the divine justice and wrath. Hence, fear is ever the predominant element in the religious life under nature. It has far more strength and intensity than love. This is seen everywhere in the various forms of heathen religion. The vast sum of superstition, so common to heathenism, is but the offspring of this strong feeling. This superstition itself is the very embodiment of fear, and clearly manifests the character of its source. It is this ruling feeling that has filled grove and field, valley and mountain, river and sea, wind and darkness, cloud and storm, with alarms and terrors. So the predominance of fear is manifest, as heathenism has wrought it into religious rites and ceremonies of extreme cruelty and self-torture, for the expiation of sin. It follows from these principles and facts that the light of nature has but little true religious power. It equally follows that it cannot develop a well-formed, symmetrical religious character, one in which these two profound feelings of love and fear coexist in harmonious proportion, and gather about them all the subordinate graces of a true religious life. RELIGION UNDER JUDAISM.-Judaism opens the clearest, loftiest views of the natural attributes of God. Here it even excels Christianity; not what Christianity might have done, had there been occasion or need. But there was neither. Here Judaism was all-sufficient. Hence Christianity addressed itself to the higher revelation of the moral attributes of God. These are less clearly manifested than the natural under Judaism. And it is a dispensation rather of law than of grace; rather of wrath than of love. Yet even here there are clear manifestations of the divine goodness and mercy. God is a gracious sovereign and compassionate father. Still, justice has its pre-eminence. Its penalties are severe; its threatenings fearful; its declarations of wrath full of terror. Its judgments were often such as to strike deeply into the soul; far deeper, from their suddenness and whelming ruin, than all the dispensations of divine love. The inevitable result was that fear had its pre-eminence in the religion of the Jew; and, hence, that it tended rather to the outward and ceremonial than to the internal and experimental, and was greatly wanting in the more spiritual, gentle, and kindly graces, to be wrought out under a more perfect dispensation. RELIGION UNDER CHRISTIANITY.-This is God's final dispensation of truth. It is a system of perfect truth. It makes no higher declaration of divine justice than Judaism, except in the instance of the cross; though it does make a clearer disclosure of the great principles, the equitableness, and impartiality of that justice. But Christianity has its chief sphere and pre-eminence in the higher revelation of the divine goodness. Its central truth of theosophy is, "God is love." Its central fact of grace is, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." It points to the cross, and proclaims: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This, we say, is the pre-eminence and glory of Christianity. But let us not mistake, and suppose that the leaping lightnings and deep-pealing thunders of Sinai, the dread heralds of the holy majesty and punitive justice of God, are extinguished and hushed amid the milder radiance of Calvary and its celestial voices of love. By no means. Christianity has transferred into her own dispensation, and embodied in herself, all the truth of Judaism as to the justice of God. Here she stands at least upon a level with Judaism. Nay, divine justice has a loftier stand on Calvary than on Sinai. "The prominent article of the New Testament, and which distinguishes Christianity from all other religious systems, is a doctrine of mercy incomparably full, free, and available. And yet this happy announcement of forgiveness of sins takes its stand upon a much more distinct and alarming assertion of the rigor of divine justice, and of the extent of its penal consequences, than hitherto had been heard of, or than the natural fears of conscious guilt would suggest or readily admit."* Christianity, being such in the revelation of the divine goodness and justice, is pre-eminently the religion of power; of power unequaled over the religious affections. She has more than a Sinai's voice appealing to our religious fear; one which, gathering strength and power from her own light, is sufficient to penetrate the profoundest depths of the soul, and awaken it to the deepest reverence for God. She has a voice of Calvary appealing to our love; a voice of richer melody and charm, of fuller power and pathos than any voice of heaven besides, appealing to the love of man or angel; one all-sufficient to kindle the soul to the intensest love for God. Such is the character of God in Christianity, as the object of true religion in man. Hence her power to develop an earnest religion; a deeply spiritual and practical religion. Her tendency is to the experimental rather than to the ceremonial. And from her power over the emotions proceeds her practical efficiency. Taking so deep and firm a hold on the cardinal religious affections, she wields so mighty a force over the outward life. Thus, too, she develops and forms a religious character at once symmetrical and complete; one blending in fullest harmony the profoundest reverence and purest love for God, and adorning the *Isaac Taylor. |