The Same Subject Continued
Intimately allied to the thouoht on which we have jvist been dwelling, we remark, in the next place, that every system of religious teaching, and ahnost every pulpit in Christian lands, has some strong peculiarities. Different ages of the world, and different lands, and different depart- “ments of the Christian Church, are a sort of transcript of the pulpits that have instructed them, and hear their peculiarities to the present hour. It would be curious, but it would be no difficult matter, to trace this resemblance minutely, and mark those strong pecidiarities by which some communities are distinguished, and note the striking conformity between them and their religious teachers. The gross idolatry of the patriarchal ages, from the worship they paid to the heavenly bodies to the debasing homage they offered to the elements of nature, to senseless images and brutes, was changed from time to time through the influence of their priests. The crimes which drew down the wrath of heaven upon the nations, were perpetrated at their altars. The Jew is a Jew still, and a Jew everywhere, because his religious teachers are the same. The hybrid character of the colony planted by the king of Babylon in Samaria, to supply the place of the ten tribes whom he had carried into captivity, may be attributed to the mingled influence of the pagan and the JcAvish priesthood. The Epicurean, the Stoic, and the Platonic philosophy formed a community like themselves. All the prominent features of the different branches of the entire Mahometan world And their exact counterpart in the teaching of the Arabian impostor. The character of the Chinese remains less changed than that of any other portion of the human race; and it is because, amid all the corruptions which have been ingrafted upon their religious system during so many successive ages, and amid all the varieties of their priesthood, it is a variety which is scarcely distinguishable.
These remarks are not less true in their application to the different classes of men calling themselves Christians. As a general fact, the Romanist is everywhere a facsimile of the priesthood. The great feature of his religion is, that he knows nothing of personal responsibility. He reads not, he thinks not, he eats not, without the special permission of his priest; while, at his bidding, he kneels reverently before the altar, and then, as in our own times,
34 THE powr.R, OF Tin: imlpit.
and in wretched Ireland, he marks his solitary victim, or enters on the holy work of pillage, plunder, and blood. Proud and haughty England, with all her cxcelleneies, is just the image of her arrogant Prelacy. Scotland too, what is she, what has she been, if not the reflection of her noble ministry? And young England, in her net and Puritan garb on the rocks of Plymouth, what was she but the counterpart of the spirit and character of the Lollards, — the foe of the hierarchy and the friend of God? And in her degeneracy, what has she done but tread in the footsteps of her religious teachers, deny the Lord that bought her, and in the excess of her liberality, give the right hand of fellowship to the beast and the false prophet?
Not only does the pulpit stamp its impress on the passing times, but it leaves its mark for a long time to come. It does its work so thoroughly, that it requires more than one generation to obliterate the impression. Many generations will pass away before Germany can obliterate the influence of Luther; Holland, of Van Mastricht; Switzerland, of Calvin; Scotland, of John Knox; ligland, of Howe; or this New World, of Jonathan Edwards.
We see these things for ourselves; we have examples of them before our eyes. We have but to overlook the land, and inspect the people who have been under the same religious instruction for some ten, twenty, or forty years, and, with the exception of those large cities, where the population is ever changing, we know the people when we know their minister. Almost every observing man can fix his thoughts upon more than one community which has been distinguished for commendable peculiarities. They retain them at home, and those who remove from them carry the savor of them wherever the providence of God determines their residence abroad. It would be no difficult task to name the pulpit that stamped this character upon them, almost with the precision of the image to the seal. There it stands; it cannot be mistaken! The image is perfect. It is the venerable preacher, long since sleeping with his fathers, reappearing, and living among men, in the strong lineaments of those who have come after him.
Advert now to these influences in a new aspect. They have been exerted, very often under great emharrassment, and in the face of the fiercest and most malignant opposition.
There is great force in that mechanical machinery which contends successfully with the wild elements; which not only walks like “a thing of life” over the tranquil lake, but which buffets the infuriated wdnds and waves, and holds in mysterious subordination the raging storm. Never were greater nor more desperate efforts made, than to destroy the Christian ministry. In almost every age of the world, from the time that “he that was after the flesh persecuted him that was after the Spirit,” these appointed guardians of God’s truth have encountered hostilities directed against no other class of men. Sometimes this hostility has assumed ensnaring forms, with the view of rendering their work ineffectual; sometimes the form of obloquy and slander; sometimes it has resorted to blood. It stoned and slew the Prophets; the lone and defenceless precursor of the Great Messiah it beheaded in prison; his Apostles it consigned to the stake and the scaffold, and their adorable Master to the cross.
Bitter are the conflicts which the pulpit has encountered. The waters have been troubled and lashed to fury by the “Prince of the power of the air;” yet has its voice been heard in the midst of, and above the fierce elements. Though, for the most part, the first, the least pitied, and the most signal victims of this malignity, its ministers have held fast the testimony of Jesus. It is a fact of deep interest, that from the death of its Divine Founder, the history of the pulpit may be traced, not in the martyrdom only, but in the successes and triumphs of its martyred preachers.
The first three centuries, immediately after the death of the last of the Apostles, form a remarkable era in the history of the pulpit. The corruption of subsequent ages had not yet so changed its character, but that it still bore the prominent features of Christianity. We have found no means of ascertaining to what extent its ministers were multiplied at this early period; but from the multitude of the Jewish priests that were obedient to the faith, and from the number and flourishing condition of the churches that were organized durino: the ministry of the Apostles, and soon after, we have no reason to think they were few. There were such men as Simeon of Jerusalem, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Tolycarp, IrcBneus, Clemens, Cyprian, and others, through whom multitudes, especially of the middle and lower orders of society, were brought to the knowledge of the truth. Ecclesiastical historians unite in the testimonv, that the Christians of this period furnish rare specimens of the true faith and the true charity. Nor were these triumphs limited to the lower classes; high-born, and highly-nurtured men and women, and illustrious families there were, whose zeal, liberality, brotherly love, and heavenliness of spirit and deportment, as well as their fortitude in suffering, evinced the victorious strength of those truths that were “to the Jew a stumbling block, and to the Greek foolishness.”
During the Ijittcr part of this period, there were dissensions; there was even schism; but there was self-denying, persevering piety, — piety that rose superior to the favor and frowns of the world. There was less of its favors than its frowns; for the most part, it was a period of storms; while amid the severity of the storm, the ministers of God, instead of seeking a refuge from its fury, buried themselves in its angry waters, and rather than prove recreant to their trust, chose to be dragged from the altar to the scaffold.
Of the latter part of this age of terrific persecution it is difficult to speak. It has no need of painting and poetry to add to it one sombre hue, or one lyric strain. The sober facts are, that the utter extermination of Christianity was the favorite object of the Pagan world. The public assemblies of the people of God were forbidden; their prayers, and their praises, and the voice of their beloved teachers were heard in the fastnesses of the mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth, Christianity was stigmatized as the plague of the nations, and the procuring cause of all their calamity; it was slandered as the disloyal religion, and the enemy of princes, and the blood of its ministers flooded the land. Human ingenuity was tasked to augment their sufferings, and to render the most revolting scenes of cruelty the amusement of the people. The pulpit was covered with the pall of death, and the “witnesses prophesied in sackcloth.”
But “why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” Jew and Gentile, princes and people, polytheism and philosophy stood forth as God’s selected testimony that these martyred men triumphed in Christ, and made manifest the savor of his name in every place. Christ triumphed in the triumph of his Gospel, and his ministers triumphed in him. The few who were left in that terrible age, uniting their living testimony with the “poor dumb mouths” of the dead, carried the truth to the high places of the earth, made disciples of persecutors, and converts of kings, and turned the temples of Paganism into churches for the worship of the living God.
We need not descend to later times. It were, in some memorable periods of the world, but substantially the same tale of suffering and of conquest, with this dilTerence only, that the former were the cruel deeds o Paganism, the latter, the more cruel deeds of a power baptized with the Christian name! Yes, the Christian name, — I blush to say it, — the Christian name! Oh Christianity! Christianity! what deeds of darkness and of blood have not been imputed to thy pure and lovely nature, and perpetrated under the cover of thy holy cross! That sweet emblem of peace and of thee has been upon their bosoms when they have shed the blood of thy saints! So insatiate was blood-thirsty Rome, that the rising generation grew up only to take the place of their slaughtered fathers, and the children at school spake familiarly of being educated for the scaffold. Yet, strange to say, the same historian who tells us these things, tells also, that while the Protestant prisoners w ere so numerous that it was impossible to put them all to death, it was the complaint of the Catholics that the heretics were increasing every day; “so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.” The pulpit weathered the storm.
If we speak of our own times, we can only say, ‘’the offence of the cross has not ceased.” God has chained the arm of persecution in this land, but he has not sealed the lips of obloquy. Nor is it “as though some strange thing had happened to us,” that men there are who are never more eloquent than when speaking and writing against God’s ministers. If we were to give a word of counsel to these men, we would tell them, that it is the devil’s work they are doing, and we would caution them against spitting out their venom so freely at the foot of God’s altars. One thing comforts us. Such men are not wont to contend wdth shadows. The pulpit may glory in having such enemies, for it shows its worth and importance. It must have power, else would it never have excited so much concern and suspicion, and provoked such ribaklry and rage. That it has a being- in such a world as this, is proof that it has power which even such a world cannot overcome.
There is still another view. If you derange the main shaft of a steam-engine, or the mainspring of a watch, you disturb the whole machinery, and it stops. And what does this indicate, but that the shaft of the engine and the spring of the watch have a place that is essential to the complicated machinery; or if they are but partially deranged, and still act, they act irregularly, and perhaps furiously. And this shows again that they have power.
In the moral machinery of this world, that great engine, the pulpit, has not unfrequently been thus deranged. It has been entangled with other and distinct parts of this moral mechanism; and the consequence has been just what might have been expected from an agency so effective; its movements have been erratic, wild, furious, and destructive. Now we affirm, that this very derangement and abuse of the pulpit is evidence of its power. We acknowledge that it has often been perverted to unworthy ends; but what if it be so? What if, in some lands, the Church has become so entangled with the State, that the pulpit has lost its spiritual character, and been thrust out of its place? Was it powerless? Was it the weakness of the pulpit seeking to support itself by alliance with the State; or was it the weakness of the State seeking to sustain itself by alliance with the pulpit? There is but one answer to these inquiries; and that is, the moral has ever been demanded to guard and augment the civil power. The only instances with which I am familiar, in which the pulpit has sought alliance with the State, have been those in which the Church has first been weakened by the “powers that be.” Constantine and Theodosius made the pulpit dependent on the civil power; but they destroyed its spiritual character, in which all its native energy consists. When Pepin laid the foundation of the temporal power of the Roman Pontiffs, he ruined the pulpits of the Church of Rome.
There is such a thing as a degenerate and corrupted priesthood. At the close of that period of bitter persecution, to which we have already referred, the time was drawing near when the pulpit entered upon that career of spiritual domination, which was not less its own dishonor than the infamy and curse of the Church. During what are called the “middle ages,” comprising a period of a thousand years, from the fall of Rome by the Goths in the fifth century, to the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth before the Turks, little can be said of the true power of the pulpit. They were “dark asfes.” Ministers of relioion there were, but they were not teachers. Ignorance could not, in those days, be more emphatically stigmatized, than to say of any man, that he is “ignorant as a priest.” Altars there were, and dumb images, and senseless relics, and unmeaning rites and ceremonies. Priests there were, with splendid robes, and shaven and mitred head. There were retired confessionals, and penance, and indulgencies, and ridiculous controversies. But places of religious worship, pulpits devoted to the teaching of the people, religious services in the vernacular tongue, were like fountains sparsely scattered in the Arabian desert. One thing seems, indeed, to have been authoritatively taught, and it was the sum and substance of the teaching. Boldly and without shame was the dogma enforced, that ignorance is the mother of devotion; and it sunk into the minds of the people. It was easily believed and digested; for it was an easy religion. “Like priest, like people.” The people “loved to have it so.” Priests and people were true to their principles. They had no need of pulpits; for a long period, there was not such a thing known as for a pope, a cardinal, or even a bishop, to preach.
44 THE POWER 01-^ THE PULPIT.
I would not be misunderstood. There were some few truly Christian ])ulpits in the Dark Ages, Augustin and Lactantius of the Latin, and Chrysostom and Basil of the Greek church, furnish examples of rich, eloquent, and effective preaching. Men there were of illumined intellect and sanctified heart, like Athanasius, Ambrose, and Gregory Nazianzen, and Claude of Turin; but they were like solitary lights travelling across this night of deep and protracted darkness. And it is because they were so few, and these few not a little tinged with the Platonic philosophy, and so embarrassed by the restriction of a spiritual despotism, and some, even of these, led away by the same grasping ambition, that the pul])it had so little power as the depository of Christian instruction, and so much as the engine of a secular policy.
The pulpits that were not Christian, too, had power; and it was tremendous power, wandering as they did so far from their legitimate sphere as to exhaust their energies for evil. Peter the Hermit was a simple ecclesiastic; yet did he rouse the whole of Christendom to arms. The Spanish Inquisition too, was the offspring of the priesthood. Nor is there any thing that detracts from the power of the anti-christian pulpit, in these and subsequent times, but the simple fact, that it is so much easier to do wrong than it is to do right, — to effect evil than to effect good, — to give an impulse to the downward current of men’s passions, than to resist and control it. It is a very small capacity which is necessary for mischief; yet was that capacity exerted to the utmost. The barbarous Attila, that “scourge of God,” did not more certainly spread terror and desolation over Europe, than the Romish hierarchy diffused far and wide an influence destructive to true relisfion.
When the enemies of relio:ion tell us to look at the Dark Ages for exemplifications of the power of the pulpit, it is just where we wish to look, because they furnish the strongest proofs of the gross perversion of that moral influence in which the Christian pulpit glories. It was an age far more replete with danger to the true ministers of Christ, than were the most stringent proscriptions of the Roman Emperors, and the sorrow and mourning of the ten memorable persecutions that preceded it. The pulpit fell before it, and, to show its power, every thing holv was buried in its fall.
What is the pulpit without the preacher? A block of wood, or a slab of marble. And what is the preacher, without the word of truth? Just a block of wood, or a slab of marble. Extinguish the light of the pulpit, and it no longer deserves the name. The pulpit of the Dark Ages is the merest caricature of the Christian pulpit. The house of God was metamorphosed into the syiiac:o£rne of Satan, and its ministry was the ministry of death. It was but the emissary of the Man of Sin, promulgating new doctrines of iniquity and blasphemy in the name of God the Holy.”
Just change that thousand years into the nineteenth century. Light up that dark night with but a thousand suns as bright as Isaac Barrow and William Bates, Stephen Charnoch, Jeremy Taylor, and John Owen, and where would have been the Dark Ages? Had there been a few men like the Apostle Paul, to have raised their voices amid all that worldliness and pride; nay, had there been one pulpit within every thousand square miles, that spake with a voice like Luther, the clouds had been dispersed, and that dark night had never overshadowed the earth.