The Homes of the New World/Letter XLII.
LETTER XLII.
TO THE PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY,
DR. H. MARTENSEN.
Stockholm, May, 1853.
Of the happy time during which I was able every week to enjoy your society and conversation, I retain in my soul two especial moments as focuses of that light which, through the mercy of God, flowed from your soul into mine. The one was that evening when, emboldened by the struggle of my spirit, and by your goodness, I vindicated the teachings of heathenism against those of Christianity, enquiring after the new life, until I made you angry, but by so doing drew from your lips a word before which my spirit became silent, because it perceived therein the true answer to my enquiry, and the arising of the new life. The second moment was the completion of the first. Many questions had become entangled into one single knot. You disentangled them by a single blow of that spiritual sword, which is at the same time the sword of the Word, and of discriminating reason, which the Eternal Word has placed in your hand, accompanied by a power but rarely given to mortals. The effect of these two words, which still resound in my inner being, was, that they reached the very core of the subject, and called forth within me that which was essential, that which was vital.
Would that I might do the same now, in giving you an account of the new life which, during the two years which have elapsed since we parted, I have contemplated in that great Western land, whither I went, as I had gone before to you, as an enquirer, a seeker.
This is my wish. And I can promise you one thing, I will not detain you by many words.
“For what purpose are you going to America—what do you desire to see there?” was the question which you and many other of my friends in Denmark put to me before I embarked. I desired to see—the approaching One.
For One there is who has silently advanced onward through time, from the beginning. Bloody ages, brilliantly splendid epochs, are merely dissimilar chambers through which he advances, silently, calmly, becoming more and more distinct, through the twilight veil, until he reaches that period on the threshold of which he now stands, contemplated by many with rapture, by many, too, with fear. And if it be asked, whose is the form before which thrones totter, crowns fall off, and earthly purple grows pale, the reply is, Man!—Man in his original truth, formed in the image of God.
In all realms of Christendom, people are becoming aware of his presence; are speaking of him, combating for him, combating against him, and—preparing for him a way. For his day is at hand, and he will come with it.[1]
I wished to see humanity as she presented herself in the New World, now that she had cast off all dominion of courts, forms and uniforms, which had become oppressive burdens in the Old World; now that she had there, on the new soil, erected for herself a kingdom and an asylum for all nations, according to no other law than that promulgated in the Christian revelation and within her own breast. That was the form of humanity which I desired to see and to comprehend, and with her the new community and life.
Contemplate with me then for a moment this humanity as she emerges from the bosom of the Mayflower and plants on the new soil the earliest legislative colony; behold her in the little company of the Pilgrim Fathers.
They have come hither from the Old World, because in the midst of persecution for their faith and struggle for daily bread, they felt themselves called upon to extend the kingdom of Christ in the New World; yes, even though they should be, as it were, merely stepping-stones for others. They call themselves Independents, Nonconformists and Puritans, because they have separated themselves from the outward church, and from all worldly power, and demand their right to govern themselves conformably only to the word of God, and the light of their own conscience. The Bible and implements of labour were the principal effects which they conveyed with them to the New World.
They wished to establish on that new, virgin soil, a church and a social state of the purest character of the inner man enlightened by the Word of God.
Every individual of that little company is made free by God, and is a free fellow-citizen. And not fellow-citizen merely; ruler, priest, magistrate, public official, of every kind, because he may and must also be all these, if he is nominated to them by the community. Man bears within himself the ability for all. Each individual feels himself a man, and at the same time intimately bound up in consolidated union with the rest. The community governs itself by the appointment of its own governors. These are elected by vote. The majority of votes decides the election; all agreeing to respect rules and rulers, which the majority have agreed to. The document of this agreement was signed by the emigrants before they left the Mayflower; before they had landed on the new soil. When the little community trod the shores of the New World it had already perfected its essential, its formative principle. Within themselves were governors, priests and magistrates, such as every human community would require, but they must all be chosen by the popular voice. Neither rank nor wealth availed anything; nothing in that new community was of higher avail than those qualifications which made the fisherman Peter and Paul the tent-makers apostles in the kingdom of Christ. The human being made free through Christ holds the highest rank on earth; there can be none higher. Such rank and dignity are absolute; and the labour of this elevated and ennobled humanity becomes thereby of the highest value. Sanctity of life, and the honour of labour, are laws in the community of the Pilgrims, and the occupation of their lives during the earlier portion of their settlement in the New World was divine worship and labour.
Such was the little colony of the Mayflower. That was the seed. It fell in good soil, and bore fruit a hundred-fold. There was a creative power in that grain of corn; and we recognise the same to this day in all the social institutions and spiritual life of the United States, even where this is still cramped by accidental fetters, or darkened by the shades of the old night.
The humanity which became the lawgiver of this hemisphere stood forth there with a full consciousness of herself as the servant of God, and a member of the social State. These two in her are one. This is her peculiarity, or her peculiar perfection.
Many of our countrymen regard the United States merely as an aggregate of inharmonious parts, brought together by chance, and adhering together by chance, without any organised centre.
But no one who has lived for any length of time in the United States, with leisure to study their life, can fail to perceive that they are within themselves possessed of a common creative principle of life, which is vital in the highest degree, and this is their religious and civil consciousness.
It is this which everywhere erects churches, organises social institutions, and those still more powerful free associations; this it is which gives the bent to education, which determines the character of the home; this which finds its way into literature, into all great social movements, the watchword of which is everywhere that of the genuinely divine commandments: “Love God above all things, and thy neighbour as thyself.” Nowhere, indeed, on the face of the earth has the Christian consciousness of true human freedom attained to so full a recognition as in the United States; nowhere has it expressed so universally and still continues to express, both by word and deed, the doctrine that pure religion is the foundation and fortress of sound morality; that the true worship of God is the true love of man; that the most acceptable sacrifice which can be presented to the Father of Nations, is the sight of a free, pious, and happy people, all of whom have equal rights and equal opportunity to acquire the highest human worth, the highest human happiness.
This consciousness is the centre of gravity in the cultivation of the New World throughout the northern States. Everything else, whether it be statesmanship, material development, science or art, are subordinate to this, and must voluntarily or involuntarily obey it. There are separate corps, and separate leaders, and many different names, but there is one commander-in-chief whom all must obey and follow, and this is the great humanity; humanity in its highest individual and social development. The leading principle of this idea is, that each and all must serve. This it is which must be realised in every individual human being, and in society at large.
The Pilgrims took with them the Bible and implements of labour from Europe to the New World; and it may be said with justice, that these two are, to this day, great powers in the cultivation of the New World. Religious and spiritual life develope themselves in proportion to physical improvement. The human being and humanity are regarded, and advanced pre-eminently with reference to their heavenly and their earthly relationship: everything else is secondary.
Spiritual life must be here regarded principally in its form as churches, and in the results thence accruing.
North America is usually upbraided, in Europe, with its many dissimilar religious sects, its many separated churches. Nevertheless it may be perceived at the same time that they are possessed of an essential unity in doctrine and life, although each individual sect has, as its germ, gathered itself around some one individual truth which it elevates for its standard.[2]
This was its purpose, its mission, its necessity, “God would have it so!” I have been compelled to say many times to myself as I contemplated the histories and the lives of the persons who founded the most remarkable sects of North America; Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, George Fox, Anne Lee, and others, were all impelled by a spirit mightier than themselves. They began by opposing the inner voice (as Luther did) but in the end they were compelled to follow its commands. These persons, divinely-possessed, were driven by their inward spirit from comfortable and cheerful homes out into the wilderness, into captivity and persecution, and amid manifold suffering for the promulgation of that truth which they had received, to suffer, nay even to die, for the doctrines they proclaimed. They could not do otherwise; they ought not to do otherwise if they were worthy to be the servants of God.
“Do not stand still with Luther and Calvin,” exclaimed Robinson, the spiritual pastor of the pilgrims, addressing them from the shores of the old world, “they were great and shining lights in their time, but they penetrated not to the councils of God. I conjure you bear this in your remembrance; it is an article of your church communion that you hold yourselves in readiness to receive whatever truth shall be revealed to you from the written word of God.”
It was on the ground of this progressive, divine communication from God to man that Luther appealed from the Pope's bull to the Bible; it was on the ground of the same doctrine that the Puritans appealed from the state church of England to the right of the human conscience, with the light of Scripture, to decide, each man for himself, on his mode of faith and divine worship. It was also on the ground of the same doctrine that, still later, Anne Hutchinson and Henry Vane—in whom it was said that Calvinism went to seed—appealed from the dogmatic despotism of Calvinism to the judgment-seat of individual conscience, and the voice of God within it. God's light in the Scriptures, in connection with the revelation of God in the conscience of the searcher of the Scriptures, could and should alone decide. Persecution and banishment only served to strengthen the cry in the innermost of the soul.
Driven from home and country, deserted by all, accused by his friends, and reproached even by his wife, the gentle but stedfast Roger Williams was obliged to flee into the wilderness for the doctrines of the liberty of conscience. But God was with him, and there grew up around him the large city of Providence, and afterwards a state, that of Rhode Island, the home of religious toleration and human love.
The principle of freedom which the Pilgrims first planted in the soil of the New World, became more and more intrinsically inward, demanding for man that he should be left alone with God.
We know very well, my noble friend, to what dangers of self-delusion and arrogance the human mind is liable from this point of view. But—every point of view has its dangers when the eye is dark, and the human mind weak or inflated with pride; nevertheless there is no higher or more inward point of view than this—Man alone with God. God spoke in the times of old with the great law-givers, with Moses and the prophets. It is our Christian, our joy-giving belief, that God at this day speaks individually to all and each of his children, as He, through Christ, spoke to Peter and Mary; that all and each of us may, in our most sacred moments, perceive His voice, and become both ear and tongue for his truth. Everything in this respect depends on purity and obedience in the individual man. It may be unpardonable audacity to stand forth in the pretention of a higher knowledge; it may be criminal cowardice to remain silent; God alone can be the judge of this. The human being always stands at the last alone with God, and no one can then come between them. The church can teach much, society can give much culture, but at the last they are insufficient. The human soul must converse alone with God. In this lies a great danger, but great strength and consolation likewise. The founders of sects in America have known both.
If you should inquire in what way this division of the church into so many sects exhibits itself in the New World, I would reply, firstly, in a large and universal love of the church, and a powerful form of church discipline. The number of churches—always well and handsomely built—in both the larger and smaller cities, must strike every traveller in the United States. Generally the churches are in proportion to the number of the inhabitants, one for each thousand persons, frequently each five hundred, sometimes for less. Each religious community governs itself, and takes cognisance of all its members, and of its poor, and exercises a salutary supervision of morals and general conduct. The minister is exclusively the shepherd of souls, and occupies himself with nothing excepting the care of souls, by public preaching and private admonition and sympathy. The community, which elects its own minister, is generally very much attached to him, and estimates him very highly if he deserves it. Much has been said in Europe on the fortune-hunting of the ministers in America; but I must say, that I found those ministers who were possessed of great Christian worth and great independence of character, always were regarded with great affection by their congregations, supported by them, cared for and provided for as long as they lived. The ministers of religion constitute one portion of the aristocracy of America, and I have met with the most intelligent and interesting individuals amongst them.
The consequence of this liberty, which is extended to sects, exhibits itself still farther by a large development of the religious mind. Each considerable sect has its own religious publication, in which its doctrines are developed by discussion with others, and the church relationship is contemplated in a many-sided manner. The public mind is thus very much turned to these subjects, and a general comprehension of them is the result. Hence it may be said of the American people, as Swedenborg, in his day, said of the English, in his “Vision of the Last Judgment:”
“The better portion of this nation are at the central point before all Christians, and the cause of their being at the centre is, that they have developed the intellectual light. This light proceeds from the freedom which they have enjoyed in thought, and consequently in speaking and writing. Among the people of other nations this intellectual light is concealed, because it has had no outlet.”
You are of a certainty acquainted with a number of the more important religious sects in the United States. I will here, therefore, merely speak of that which distinguishes them in general, and is indicative of their inner congregational life. Some address themselves more immediately to the feelings, others to the intellect; all, however, lay the greatest importance on works of love. The Catholic and the Quaker on this broad ground extend to each other their hands. No sect, however, it seems to me, has attained to an universal church consciousness, proportioned to the political consciousness of the United States, excepting in some of their highest representatives. I have heard genial ministers among the Calvinists, the Unitarians, the Baptists, who all open the church of Christ to the wide world. Especially so in the old Presbyterian congregational church, which I will also call the Church of the Pilgrims, and in which every layman takes part in the affairs of the church. This Presbyterian church seems to be possessed of a strong, growing, and expansive life, i.e. in the Free States; in the Slave States this church is in general enslaved and bigoted in character. In the Free States it stands fixed on the Rock of Ages, but opens itself thence to embrace the whole world. Even nature, art, industry, and science are baptised to the service of God.
The so-called “Revivals” belong to the phenomena which are common to all the Protestant churches of the United States, and which are indications of their vitalising principle. These Revivals are times when persons, possessed of unusual gifts and impelled by burning zeal, go about as missionaries into the cities and the country, uttering afresh the cry of John the Baptist, “Be ye converted!” Such times and seasons permeate the life of the church like deep, fresh respiration from the sphere of religious life, and thousands of individuals date from such their new and better life.
One of the most beautiful circumstances of the general church in the United States appears to me to be the great institution for the diffusion of popular literature of a moral and religious tendency, but without any sectarian spirit, which was established in New York about twenty years ago, and to which the adherents of many different sects equally extended support, continuing to work amicably and powerfully together to the present time. Twenty steam-presses work off twenty-five thousand sheets daily, three thousand volumes, calculated to diffuse the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the redeemer of sinners, and to promote living piety and sound morality, by the circulation of works which will meet the approval of all evangelical Christians.
The American Tract Society has thus made the press subserve for the evangelising of America. The best of the religious and moral literature of England and America is collected in these popular works, which are handsomely printed and furnished with beautiful woodcuts. Many hundred colporteurs are sent out to diffuse these over the whole Union, over its most remote portions, among foreigners, and in the wildernesses; and thus the evangelical church continues to the present day to scatter a gentle rain of manna over the land, as seed from the hand of the Great Sower; and the good which is thereby produced, and which springs up especially in the hearts of childhood and youth, is incalculable.
And if we turn from this great institution for the scattering of evangelical seed—which has now been imitated in many of the Northern States—to popular schools, to establishments for neglected humanity, for the criminal, for the sick, for the unfortunate of society; and above all to the increasing attention to these, and the labour which is bestowed upon them in the United States, it cannot be denied that they above all deserve the name of Christian States.
But you will say that this is merely one side of the picture, that you know very well that another life increases also in these states, a worship and a church which are not of God. I know it well also. The old serpent lives also on the soil of the New World. And call it Mammon-worship, slavery, despotism, mobocracy, or by whatever name you please, indicative of the principle of selfishness and lies, it lives, it grows there, as the tares among the wheat. Yes, it seems to me that the most essential impulses of the human spirit, for good as well as for evil, and which, during the ages of history, have sprung up and nourished in Asia and in Europe, have sprung up also in America, and will there ripen for harvest. Frequently, during my residence in America, was I reminded of your words, in your article on the coming of the Lord, and the completion of all things, in which you say,
“The nearer history approaches to its close, the greater is the impetus attained by the wheel of time; the greater is the speed and the rapidity, the more quick the revolution of dissimilar conditions hurrying onward development; and he may greatly miscalculate who conceives that in the present condition of the world there still remains as much to do as may require the labour of centuries, and that the end may still be very distant. For, if the Lord so will, it may be done in an eventful day, and without such an one it never will be accomplished. Neither, therefore, is it opposed to the doctrine of Scripture, if we conceive of the Millennium as a very short period, as one day which concentrates in itself a fulness and a glory which otherwise would extend over a century.”
The life of North America exhibits such a hurrying onward, such a concentration of the fulness of development in good and in evil. The vastness and comprehensiveness of this hemisphere, embracing the productions and peculiar beauties of every zone; the means of communication, their abundance and facility, which places them within the reach of every man; the extent of individual freedom, the unlimited scope for competition; nay, even the nervous temperament of the climate, and its stimulating effect upon a race whose inborn energy impels them onwards, and carries all other people along with them, ever accelerating their speed with the force of the avalanche, onward to the goal, to the day of judgment. For, though I have already said it, I must repeat it here, we must not expect a Utopia from America, but rather a day of judgment. And to no nation so much as to this does the admonishing word of Christ seem so applicable—“Watch!”
Yet, nevertheless, when I look at that life, which is at this time most powerfully increasing; that which is in the ascendant and prevalent throughout the United States, I must confess that my heart is filled with hope. Because, if the United States would—and I believe they will—remove from their present legislation its great anomaly; if they would introduce into slavery the right of liberation by labour, and establish a gradual emancipation according to law, then ———
If I imagine to myself some great convulsion of nature, which should all at once annihilate this vast hemisphere; imagine it sunk in the twinkling of an eye into the depths of the sea, and there vanishing with its star-strewn banners, its fleets and railroads, its great cities and swarming human masses, its proud capitols and beautiful quiet homes; imagine to myself all this vanishing silently into the great deep, as into an immense grave, and the waves roaring over it, and the space being desolate and void, save for the angel of judgment, flying forth alone over the past world, with the record of its deeds in his hand, which he will place in the Book of Life before the throne of the Almighty Judge—then on this page I read:—
“This people were in earnest to realise the kingdom of Christ on earth, for the honour of God the Father!”
Behold here, my precious friend and teacher, my confession of faith regarding the life of the New World. Let me hope that I may one day justify it to you, either in your home or in mine.
It was one of my most ardent wishes in the United States to make them acquainted with you and your theological opinions, and it lies very much at my heart to make you more intimately acquainted with them, being certain that the Christian mind of Scandinavia and the people of America are profoundly united by their labour in the service of the same Lord, and that they have much to say to each other.
Let me be included in your goodness, in your kind remembrance!
- ↑ As a beautiful proof of this it seems to me, may be instanced, that ready, cordial homage which free nations at the present time pay to noble and liberal-minded rulers, such as Leopold, Victoria, Oscar. What triumphal procession of antiquity can indeed be compared to those noble human thanksgiving festivals which were this year celebrated, in Sweden and Norway, for the restored health of King Oscar; homage as much due to the man as to the monarch!
- ↑ “What, even the Mormons?” you may ask, suspiciously. Without
being able to speak with precision of that which is distinctive in the
doctrines of the Mormons, I must still say, on the ground of what I was
able to collect in America regarding this sect—its leaders and doctrines,—that
I believe the accusations laid to their charge are for the greater part
untrue. The Mormons acknowledge, as theirs, the revelation of Christ
and the Bible. Their later prophets (as I myself had the opportunity of
ascertaining) have given merely more close and more special prophecies
of Christ, but no new doctrines. I was assured by an intellectual man—not
a Mormon—who had resided two years among the Mormons in
Utah, that the morals of the people were remarkably pure, and that the
Mormon women were above all blame.
The founder of the sect, Joe Smith, was a man of simple education, but possessed of extraordinary natural gifts, even of that secondary prophetic kind which is known in Scotland under the name of “second-sight.” He himself believed in his revelations,—at least in a part of them. After his death, the Mormon community was governed by men whom Joe Smith appointed to be his successors. They rule, as Smith had done, according to the word of the Bible, and the inspiration of the Spirit. The hierarchical character of the government under prudent leaders, constitutes its present strength, and has caused its rapid prosperity, under the Anglo-American moral law and order—which even in the Valley of the Salt Lake shows its formative powers—that very form of government constitutes its danger and may probably one day bring about its fall. And that day will be whenever it violates the sanctity of private life. Should the inspiration of the government permit polygamy, the Anglo-American home will never allow it.