In addi­tion to work­ing on my home­work and writ­ing a cou­ple of NSF grant pro­pos­als on short notice, mind you.

From “Reli­gious Char­la­tanry”, in The Knicker­bocker New-​​York Monthly Mag­a­zine, Vol­ume X, Num­ber 1, 1837. I am inevitably struck, when I proof­read my scans of this 150-​​year-​​old mag­a­zine, how mod­ern the voices are, and how won­der­fully clear the thinking.

But then again, I tend to write this way myself. Would that I could write more like this, than I already do.…

As ever, if you have enjoyed this extract in any way, please go and visit the Dis­trib­uted Proof­read­ers project, sign up for a free vol­un­teer account, take a few min­utes to famil­iar­ize your­self with the sim­ple web inter­face, and proof­read four or five pages of your choice. It’s fun, sim­ple, quick, and a good way to help the world remem­ber itself.

RELIGIOUS CHARLATANRY

NUMBER ONE.

Every age and every com­mu­nity have their pecu­liar moral and reli­gious symp­toms, under the action of the Chris­t­ian sys­tem. So also every sep­a­rate form of Chris­tian­ity hath its own char­ac­ter­is­tic fea­tures. Doth not the Roman Catholic reli­gion dif­fer from the Protes­tant? Doth not Protes­tant reli­gion in Ger­many dif­fer from that which passes under the same name in Great Britain? Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism in Scot­land from Epis­co­pacy in Eng­land? Eng­lish Epis­co­pacy from Dis­sent? Chris­tian­ity in Great Britain from Chris­tian­ity in Amer­ica? Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ism in New-​​England from the Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism of the mid­dle and south­ern states? The two lat­ter from Wes­leyanism? The Bap­tists from all three? Uni­tar­i­an­ism from the four? And Amer­i­can Epis­co­palian­ism from each of this tribe? We might descend to other spec­i­fi­ca­tions, were it need­ful. It is enough for our pur­pose, that they are suggested.

It is inter­est­ing as well as pleas­ant to sup­pose, that the actual exper­i­ment of the dif­fer­ent and suc­ces­sive modes, or devel­op­ments, of the divine econ­omy of redemp­tion, as they tran­spire in human soci­ety, oper­ates as a sift­ing of their qual­i­ties as excel­lent or oth­er­wise; and that the good grad­u­ally com­bine and become per­ma­nent, while the faulty, by the same grad­ual process, become obsolete.

Human frail­ties have ever found their way into Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tions, and per­vaded more or less all Chris­t­ian enter­prises; but the proof of time invari­ably deter­mines their char­ac­ter before the pub­lic, and causes them to be sev­ered from such connection–to be ejected from such society–and con­se­quently, to lose their influ­ence, while that which is excel­lent abides. Faults almost innu­mer­able may be traced in the his­tory of the Church; but the can­did reviewer, occu­py­ing our present posi­tion, can sep­a­rate the good from the bad. We are more imme­di­ately con­cerned, how­ever, to observe the char­ac­ter of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­ity–espe­cially those parts of it which have been most promi­nent and influ­en­tial, and which have gen­er­ated what may be called the reli­gious spirit of the age in our own quar­ter. It can­not be denied, that there is some­thing pecu­liar in Amer­i­can reli­gion. First, reli­gion here has been uncom­monly ener­getic. Next, it has assumed some strik­ing pecu­liar­i­ties in its modes of oper­a­tion. There has been a dis­po­si­tion to lay aside old forms, and to put on new ones; to make exper­i­ments; and the busi­ness of exper­i­ment­ing has been pushed so far as to bring the pub­lic mind to a pause. It may be prof­itable, there­fore, in the tem­po­rary and com­par­a­tive quiet of this hia­tus, to inter­pose a lit­tle philo­soph­i­cal inquiry.

Not to detract at all from the highly mer­i­to­ri­ous char­ac­ter of our fore­fa­thers, it will be obvi­ous to the observer of the past, that the reli­gious spirit of those who have had most influ­ence in form­ing the reli­gious char­ac­ter of this coun­try, was of the puri­tan­i­cal school. Thus far in this state­ment we are inno­cent, and hope that no ghost will start up before he is called. Nev­er­the­less, we begin to imag­ine a stir­ring in the graves. But we intend not to dis­turb the dead. We revere and laud that high Prov­i­dence, which trans­planted so much conscience–so much fear of himself–into these wilder­ness realms, and whose spirit has made this for­mer wild abode to bud and blos­som like the rose, morally and phys­i­cally. We have some respect even for puri­tanism in ‘its straitest sect;’ but in some of its forms, it was, in our opin­ion, rather too strait.

Doubt­less the puri­tanism of Eng­land was well pro­voked. But it was pro­voked. The pecu­liar­i­ties of its mood were the legit­i­mate prod­uct of oppres­sion; and its nat­ural off­spring, Dis­sent, has been nour­ished by the same cause. The puri­tans were aggrieved, and they came here for com­fort. They might have been blessed with a Cromwell for a king, if an order from gov­ern­ment had not thrown a bar­rier in his path of emi­gra­tion through the sea, and des­tined him for a higher and more sub­lime pur­pose, whether for good or for evil. Cer­tainly it was not for good, in the esti­ma­tion of those who had the ill luck to keep him back by their own mea­sures. They dreamed not, they were favored with no prophecy, of the work assigned to him. The reign of puri­tanism in Eng­land stands forth on the page of his­tory as a sin­gu­lar and instruc­tive drama, not to say tragedy. Doubt­less there was much virtue in it; but the sub­lime of its enact­ments was so closely allied to the ridicu­lous, that the reader who weeps must also be pre­pared to laugh.

Amer­ica was a bet­ter field for puri­tanism. It was a con­ge­nial soil. And beyond all ques­tion, here it has earned an hon­or­able dis­tinc­tion, and won lau­rels. Though it believed in witches, and hung them, (poor crea­tures!) it believed in God as well as in the devil. Though it ban­ished Roger Williams, and inter­dicted the Quak­ers, it had this good rea­son: ‘We came here to be by our­selves. Pray don’t dis­turb us, when the land is so wide!’ They who had expe­ri­enced intol­er­ance, might have some excuse for prac­tis­ing it–especially, as their the­ory and pur­pose was to have a com­mu­nity adher­ing to one cat­e­chism. They had taken and occu­pied vacant ground, (Indi­ans are not counted,) for the sake of peace; and they thought the best way to main­tain it, was to keep away dis­sentients from their opin­ions. Nev­er­the­less, dis­sentients came in, and dis­putes have pre­vailed. But the spirit of the puri­tan fathers also pre­vailed. That spirit, with cer­tain mod­i­fi­ca­tions of time and chance, has per­vaded New-​​England soci­ety, and, to a great extent, our land. Like the Scotch, who are never at home till they get abroad, the sons of New-​​England have also been rather ‘curi­ous.’ They have spread out to the north, to the east, to the west, and to the far west, and sent school-​​masters, as well as ped­lars, to the south. They have sub­dued the wilder­ness in all direc­tions; they have built and peo­pled our great cities and flour­ish­ing towns at the north and west; their bone and sinew have sus­tained our agri­cul­ture; their enter­prise built our man­u­fac­to­ries; and their love of gain has pushed our com­merce to the ends of the earth. First in reli­gion, espe­cially in the com­mend­able qual­ity of zeal, and first in schools and col­leges, they have been chief in influ­ence through­out all our bor­ders. Alas for the Pres­by­ter­ian church! (for their sakes we say it,) the Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ism of New-​​England gov­erns it. They must eman­ci­pate them­selves as best they can. It is not for us to say which is the bet­ter of the two.

Now be it known–such at least is our philosophy–the reli­gious nov­el­ties of the age, on our side of the water, owe their being to the New-​​England spirit, and had their germ in puri­tanism. The strait­ness of this excel­lent sect was too strait to last always. Chil­dren, kept so close on Sun­day as to run them­selves out of breath when let loose at sun-​​down, were very likely to relax that kind of dis­ci­pline when they came to be par­ents. The blue-​​laws of Con­necti­cut, once thrown off, were nat­u­rally sup­planted by a more gen­er­ous code. The Say­brook Plat­form has been thrown into the gar­ret, or buried beneath the wreck and dust of some other deposit of old rub­bish. Who can find a copy? And as for the West­min­ster Cat­e­chism, what pas­tor of New-​​England now assem­bles the chil­dren of his parish in the old school-​​house once a quar­ter to hear them recite this elab­o­rate and com­pre­hen­sive body of divin­ity, from begin­ning to end, as was the uni­ver­sal cus­tom of olden time? These blessed days of New-​​England have gone by. The fathers are dead. A new gen­er­a­tion, new laws, new cus­toms, and a dif­fer­ent set of man­ners, have succeeded.

But how did this grow out of puri­tanism? Is it not rather an aban­don­ment of that high char­ac­ter? There may be a lit­tle, and not a lit­tle, of truth in both. Puri­tanism was itself a nov­elty, and nov­elty begets nov­elty. We do not mean that it never had a type; but it was cast in an Eng­lish mould–a mould that was formed at a par­tic­u­lar junc­ture of Eng­lish his­tory, by the oper­a­tion of spe­cial and pecu­liar agen­cies; and even on Eng­lish ground, it could last in all its force only while the causes which pro­duced it con­tin­ued to take effect, and just in that pro­por­tion, allow­ing, indeed, a rea­son­able time for its nat­ural sub­si­dence. In Amer­ica, the causes did not exist, and the sub­si­dence was unavoid­able. It was indeed a high and stern char­ac­ter, which would require a space for its abate­ment into milder forms; but it was not in man to main­tain it with­out its orig­i­nal provocations.

If we were called to give a philo­soph­i­cal account of its pro­duc­tions, we should say briefly, that the basis of this char­ac­ter, inde­pen­dent of reli­gion, was that sturdy and indomitable love of lib­erty which has for so many cen­turies char­ac­ter­ized the Eng­lish. It was only nec­es­sary to graft reli­gion, the strongest pas­sion of man, on such a stock, to ren­der it truly sub­lime in its capa­bil­i­ties for endurance, or dar­ing under oppres­sion. The nat­ural con­se­quence of the annoy­ances and vex­a­tions of bad gov­ern­ment with such minds, and of encroach­ing on the rights of con­science, was the pro­duc­tion of a strik­ing sever­ity and deter­mi­na­tion of character–especially among the ruder and less cul­ti­vated classes of soci­ety. The fear of God, as every Chris­t­ian is happy to record, rose above the fear of man; all sym­pa­thy between the two great par­ties was divorced; and nei­ther could dis­cern the virtues of the other. The indif­fer­ent cus­toms of the oppres­sors were allied to their vices in the esti­mate of the oppressed, and the the­ory of per­fec­tion with the lat­ter was to eschew, repu­di­ate, and abhor that which was done or approved by the for­mer. Some of the high­est and most desir­able attain­ments and attrib­utes of civ­i­liza­tion were counted as sins, and incon­sis­tent with Chris­t­ian char­ac­ter, sim­ply because they were held dear by their oppo­nents. Refine­ment of man­ners was reck­oned a snare to the soul, and regarded as beneath the high aims of reli­gion, because it was the study of courtiers, and of the higher con­di­tions of life. To smile, was a mark of lev­ity, or a proof of unbe­com­ing thought­less­ness, because it might be a stage of progress toward a sin­ful mirth. All his­tor­i­cal rec­ol­lec­tions of prim­i­tive self-​​denial, and sac­ri­fice, and earthly painful­ness, were set up as the per­ma­nent lot of Chris­tians, and the mea­sure of present duty. ‘In the world ye shall have tribu­la­tion,’ was accepted as equally applic­a­ble to all the con­sci­en­tious, in all times and cir­cum­stances. In a word, the the­ory of Chris­t­ian char­ac­ter was moulded by the acci­dents of a pecu­liar con­di­tion; and those acci­dents con­tributed emi­nently to the for­ma­tion of a lofty and vig­or­ous char­ac­ter, a char­ac­ter which com­bined the most essen­tial ele­ments of moral sub­lim­ity, and oppres­sion matured and con­firmed it. There might be some acer­bity of tem­per under such provo­ca­tions, and rus­tic­ity of man­ners in such a course of train­ing. The germ of a ter­ri­ble ret­ri­bu­tion might lurk and lower amid the loftier aspi­ra­tions of a pure and heav­enly piety; for how could a deep and abid­ing sense of per­pet­ual wrong fail to have its influ­ence over minds but par­tially sanctified?–and the period of the inter­reg­num suf­fi­ciently devel­oped this fear­ful ingre­di­ent. Nev­er­the­less, it was, on the whole, a char­ac­ter to be respected, as well as to be feared. It was com­pounded of the best and of the worst ele­ments. But a trans­plan­ta­tion beyond sea, in a wilder­ness, where all the causes of its pro­duc­tion and the mod­i­fy­ing cir­cum­stances of its growth were want­ing, did not indeed at once reduce and new-​​create it; for it had been too long in com­ing to such a matu­rity, to for­get its for­mer being; it had acquired too much vigor, to bend and become sup­ple, even by a round of years, in a new world–in a field left to its own sole occu­pa­tion, unsup­ported by the blasts and storms of its native regions. But it was morally impos­si­ble that the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion in such cir­cum­stances should fully sus­tain the char­ac­ter of their fathers. The sec­ond was nat­u­rally des­tined to soften down yet more; the third to expe­ri­ence a far­ther mod­i­fi­ca­tion; and so on, till this char­ac­ter should nec­es­sar­ily, and to a great extent, be remod­elled by the altered cir­cum­stances of a new state of exis­tence. That cer­tain of the prim­i­tive fea­tures, enough for ever to iden­tify the race, should remain, was as nat­ural as that any should be effaced. And here we are, the chil­dren of our puri­tan fathers. Who could mis­take us?

Again, we solemnly aver, that we mean not to speak dis­re­spect­fully. Far from it. Eter­nal shame on the recre­ant, who could libel such a parent­age! Let the princes of the earth boast of their lin­eage; let the sons of a race embla­zoned with the proud­est her­aldry, hang out the flag that dis­plays their arms, and prove their worth and great­ness, by deci­pher­ing the emblems of a piece of parch­ment, bor­rowed from the remotest antiq­uity. Ours be the glory of descend­ing from a stock heaven-​​born by the imprint of the hand of God, who could dis­pute a right with kings, embar­rass the wicked coun­sels of their min­is­ters, mea­sure weapons with their armies, and found and main­tain an inde­pen­dent empire, to rival equally their wealth and power.

But this high claim affects not at all the mat­ters of fact in our moral and reli­gious his­tory. For us to assert a title to per­fec­tion, would be as fool­ish as untrue. He is wise who knows him­self; and so is that nation which under­stands its own his­tory, and under­stand­ing, prof­its by it. Human soci­ety has no where yet attained the best pos­si­ble con­di­tion. Nay, more: where is the com­mu­nity that has not in its bosom por­ten­tous ele­ments of mis­chief? And who will deny that it is the part of wis­dom to inves­ti­gate and expose them, and if pos­si­ble, to invent and apply a rem­edy? We have our virtues, doubt­less, though it might be more becom­ing to allow the world to see and acknowl­edge them, than to laud our­selves. Our fathers had their virtues–enough for us to be proud of; and they and their chil­dren have had their faults. Nei­ther is it dis­hon­or­able will­ingly to see and frankly to con­fess them. It is inju­di­cious; it is a dis­ease of the mind; it may lead to fatal error, to insist on bestow­ing and claim­ing praise for that in our­selves which is faulty.

While, there­fore, we pro­ceed to unfold yet more dis­tinctly and minutely the reli­gious blem­ishes of our national char­ac­ter, in their ori­gin and suc­ces­sive mod­i­fi­ca­tions, we are pre­pared to assert our respect, and even our ven­er­a­tion, for the virtues of our ances­tors. They who brought reli­gion, and planted and nour­ished it here, were men of a high order. Nev­er­the­less, it would be allow­ing more than belongs to man, in any stage of his his­tory, or to any set of men, to write them down as per­fect. We do con­sci­en­tiously believe, that the puri­tanism of Eng­land, and that por­tion of it which has so exten­sively leav­ened the reli­gion of this coun­try, was gravely faulty, in some very essen­tial and influ­en­tial par­tic­u­lars. We believe, more­over, that these faults have been, directly and indi­rectly, the occa­sion of evil–of dis­as­ter to our reli­gious history.

We have said, that puri­tanism was itself a nov­elty, in the form it assumed at the period to which we allude. It was the off­spring of cir­cum­stances pecu­liar to the time. We have hinted that it was the par­ent of nov­el­ties in a series of changes that have come down to our own day. Cer­tain it is, our eyes and ears have recently been forced to wit­ness some strange, not to say alarm­ing, exhi­bi­tions of reli­gion and moral reform, in this land. They have assumed an aspect to chal­lenge uni­ver­sal atten­tion. Who­ever feels an inter­est in Chris­tian­ity, can­not fail to look upon those extra­or­di­nary phe­nom­ena of the moral world, with some con­cern. They demand and must receive the most grave con­sid­er­a­tion. The press which sus­tains them must be the organ to dis­cuss them. They must be viewed calmly and con­sid­er­ately, and treated philo­soph­i­cally as well as con­sci­en­tiously. Beyond a ques­tion, they are novel devel­op­ments, but not with­out cause; and as cer­tain as there is a cause, we think it may be suf­fi­ciently pal­pa­ble to be traced. For our­selves, we have pre­sumed upon the essay, and will deliver our opinion.

We have inti­mated that the sever­ity of the puri­tan­i­cal char­ac­ter could not endure in all its vigor, with­out the con­tin­ued action of its pro­duc­ing causes. In cor­re­spon­dence with this the­ory, we observe, that the growth of this por­tion of Amer­i­can soci­ety has given birth to a grad­ual and unin­ter­rupted mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Not to speak of oth­ers, there are two attrib­utes very essen­tial to give per­ma­nency and con­trol­ling influ­ence to any spe­cific form of human soci­ety: antiq­uity and a proof com­mend­ing itself to the good sense of the com­mu­nity. Puri­tanism, in the form now under con­sid­er­a­tion, could not claim antiq­uity. True there had been things like to it; but this par­tic­u­lar type was well under­stood to have been of recent ori­gin. It grew out of resis­tance to oppres­sion, in part, within the mem­ory of liv­ing wit­nesses. It was the prod­uct of an acci­dent, and the resort of a tem­po­rary expe­di­ency. Cir­cum­stances being changed, and so far as it dif­fered from the doom of neces­sity, that same dis­cre­tion which adopted the expe­di­ent in one case might and would nat­u­rally accom­mo­date itself to another. So far as neces­sity was the cause, it was equally impos­si­ble to oppose neces­sity in a change of cir­cum­stances. The force of antiq­uity was utterly nugatory.

As to the arbi­tra­tions of good sense, it hardly need be said, at this time, that there were many things in puri­tanism which could not long be tol­er­ated under such an appeal. Hence almost the entire code of its more severe cus­toms has long since become obso­lete, even in the land of the pil­grim fathers. So far as they have not passed from mem­ory, they are handed down, not as author­ity, but sim­ply as an amus­ing, and in regard to some things, an incred­i­ble, tale. They who had rebelled against the estab­lished usages of soci­ety once, might do it again. They who had made a code, might amend it. Pecu­liar cir­cum­stances had formed the puri­tan­i­cal char­ac­ter in the mother coun­try; and there was no good rea­son why pecu­liar cir­cum­stances should not mod­ify, or re-​​model it in this. The author­ity of prece­dent in change was established.

Here, if we mis­take not, is devel­oped a prac­ti­cal secret of stu­pen­dous influ­ence over the reli­gious des­tinies of our coun­try. That there were good rea­sons for rebel­lion against the prelacy of Eng­land, and ade­quate causes for the pro­duc­tion of a dis­taste for Epis­co­pal usages on an extended scale, can hardly be denied.

Here was the begin­ning of an order of things, that has come down to us, and had more influ­ence in this than in the par­ent coun­try. Here it has taken the lead, for the rea­son that this land was made the refuge and asy­lum of those who felt them­selves injured, and who were injured, by the oper­a­tion of a sys­tem of oppres­sion. It is an instruc­tive les­son, and ought to stand up as a bea­con, in all com­ing time, among other his­tor­i­cal advices of the same class, to warn those who, clothed with legit­i­mate author­ity, are tempted to abuse it, by lord­ing it over God’s her­itage. To pro­voke and enforce schism in the Church of Christ, involves a most grave respon­si­bil­ity, and may lead to infi­nite mischief.

We have suf­fi­ciently recog­nised the fact of the ascen­dancy of puri­tari­ism in Amer­i­can soci­ety, and that its pecu­liar tem­pera­ment was the soul of a sys­tem of dis­sent from an Epis­co­pal orga­ni­za­tion. Again we say, we mean not to speak dis­re­spect­fully. Our aim is an exposé of facts, and, if pos­si­ble, to present a philo­soph­i­cal view of their his­tor­i­cal train. We respect the piety of the puri­tans, and desire to do jus­tice to all their virtues; and if we have not already shown a sat­is­fac­tory can­dor, we hope before we shall have done, abun­dantly to appease the most sen­si­tive par­tial­ity for our puri­tan ances­try. We are not unwill­ing to believe, that the orig­i­nal ele­ments of Amer­i­can soci­ety, in so far as this par­tic­u­lar class pre­dom­i­nated, were on the whole most happy, and will yet, in the long run, be over­ruled for the great­est good. Their virtues were stern and lofty, and their faults are sub­ject to the cor­rec­tive influ­ence of time and events. It was as impos­si­ble that the lat­ter should not have their race, as that the for­mer should not come in with their bal­ance of influ­ence, and finally obtain a con­ser­v­a­tive shape and com­mand­ing posi­tion. And this end, as we opine, will the sooner be accom­plished, as the pub­lic can be made to dis­crim­i­nate, by the instruc­tive career of events between the good and the bad. When­ever soci­ety, or any por­tion of it, runs off in a wrong direc­tion, it must ulti­mately find itself in a false posi­tion; and the dis­cov­ery being made, there is the same cer­tainty, if virtue enough remains, that it will aim at a recovery.

If we do not err in our dis­cern­ment of the signs of the times, there is even now a con­vic­tion rapidly obtain­ing in the pub­lic mind of this coun­try, that we have nearly if not quite arrived at a ne plus ultra of reli­gious rad­i­cal­ism; and that a con­ser­v­a­tive and redeem­ing influ­ence is being formed and grow­ing into impor­tance. The race of change, which has been a long time, even ages, in the course, has recently been so accel­er­ated, as to set the axles of the machin­ery on fire, and run off the wheels. The char­iot of reli­gious rad­i­cal­ism, we think, is tum­bling and falling.

In our opin­ion, this cat­a­stro­phe is not the prod­uct of an hour, nor of an age. We go far­ther back for the pri­mal cause. As a mat­ter of his­tory, we find that the lead­ing and most influ­en­tial reli­gious machin­ery of this coun­try was com­posed of the dis­lo­cated frag­ments of long-​​established Euro­pean insti­tu­tions, bro­ken off by con­vul­sions, not want­ing virtue so much as order, sym­me­try, and con­sis­tency. The virtue was strong, and while its char­ac­ter of firm­ness was main­tained, it could bet­ter dis­pense with a fixed and well-​​ordered machin­ery, sanc­tioned by time, and hav­ing a rea­son­able claim to apos­tolic ori­gin. But the rapid growth and the fer­vid con­di­tion of our social orga­ni­za­tion, have put the new the­ory to a test too stern for a felic­i­tous development.

[end of part one]