240 PROFANE TREATMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. What, after all, does the most disgraceful page of ecclesiastical history prove but that the passions of our common nature are not altered or excluded by distinctions of name, and that the characters of men are formed much more by the temptations than the duties of their profession? (3.) A third finds delight in collecting and repeating accounts of wars and massacres, of tumults and insurrections excited in almost every age of the Christian era by religious zeal as though the vices of Christians were parts of Christianity; as though intolerance and extirpation were precepts of the Gospel; or as if its spirit could be judged of from the counsels of princes, the intrigues of statesmen, the pretenses of malice and ambition, or the unauthorized cruelties of some gloomy and virulent superstition. (4.) By a fourth, the succession and variety of popular religions; the vicissitudes with which sects and tenets have flourished and decayed; the zeal with which they were once supported, the negligence with which they are now remembered; the little share which reason and argument appear to have had in framing the creed, or regulating the religious conduct of the multitude; the indifference and submission with which the religion of the state is generally received by the common people; the caprice and vehemence with which it is sometimes opposed; the phrensy with which men have been brought to contend for opinions and ceremonies, of which they knew neither the proof, the meaning, nor the original; lastly, the equal and undoubting confidence with which we hear the doctrines of Christ, or of Confucius, the law of Moses, or of Mohammed, the Bible, the Koran, or the Shaster, maintained or anathematized, taught or abjured, revered or derided, according as we live on this, or on that side of a river; keep, or step over, the boundaries of a state: points of this sort are exhibited to the public attention, as so many arguments against the truth of the Christian religion-and with success. For these topics being brought together, and set off with some exaggeration of circumstances, and with a vivacity of style and description common enough to the writings and conversation of freethinkers, insensibly lead the imagination into a habit of classing Christianity with the delusions that have taken PROFANE TREATMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 241 possession, by turns, of the public belief; and into a habit of regarding it, as what the scoffers of our faith represent it to be, the superstition of the day. But is this to deal honestly by the subject, or with the world? May not the same things be said, may not the same prejudices be excited by these representations, whether Christianity be true or false, or by whatever proofs its truth be attested? May not truth as well as falsehood be taken upon credit? May not religion be founded upon evidence accessible and satisfactory to every mind competent to the inquiry, which yet, by the greatest part of its professors, is received upon authority? 547. Infidelity is served up in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed and broken hints; remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels, of philosophy, and natural history; in a word, in any form rather than the right one, that of a professed and regular disquisition. And because the coarse buffoonery and broad laugh of the old and rude adversaries of the Christian faith would offend the taste, perhaps, rather than the virtue, of this cultivated age, a grave irony, a more skillful and delicate banter, is substituted in their place. An eloquent historian (Gibbon), beside his more direct, and therefore fairer, attacks upon the credibility of the evangelic story, has contrived to weave into his narrative one continued sneer upon the cause of Christianity, and upon the writings and characters of its ancient patrons. The knowledge which this author professed of the frame and conduct of the human mind, must have led him to observe, that such attacks do their execution without exciting inquiry. Who can refute a sneer? Who can compute the number, much less, one by one, scrutinize the justice, of those disparaging insinuations, which crowd the pages of this elaborate history (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)? What reader suspends his curiosity, or calls off his attention from the principal narrative, to examine references, to search into the foundation, or to weigh the reason, propriety, and force of every transient sarcasm, and sly allusion, by which the Christian testimony is depreciated and traduced; and by which, nevertheless, he may find his persuasion afterward unsettled and perplexed? Ꮮ 242 PROFANE TREATMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 548. The enemies of Christianity have pursued her with poisoned arrows. Obscenity itself is made the vehicle of infidelity. The awful doctrines, if we be not permitted to call them the sacred truths, of our religion, together with all the adjuncts and appendages of its worship and external profession, have sometimes been impudently profaned by an unnatural conjunction with impure and lascivious images. The fondness for ridicule is almost universal; and ridicule, to many minds, is never so irresistible as when seasoned with obscenity, and employed upon religion. But in proportion as these noxious principles take hold of the imagination, they infatuate the judgment; for trains of ludicrous and unchaste associations adhering to every sentiment and mention of religion, render the mind indisposed to receive either conviction from its evidence, or impressions from its authority. And this effect being exerted upon the sensitive part of our nature, is altogether independent of argument, proof, or reason; is as formidable to a true religion as to a false one; to a well grounded faith, as to a chimerical mythology, or fabulous tradition. Neither, let it be observed, is the crime or danger less, because impure ideas are exhibited under a veil, in covert and chastised language. 549. Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the following: "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation," he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mission was introduced and attested; a message in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say, that a future state had been discovered already. He alone discovers, who proves; and no man can prove this point, but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God. TENDENCY OF THE THIRD PRECEPT. 243 III. Beneficial Effects among Men of a Universal Observance of the Third Commandment. 550. Universal and profound reverence of the name and character of God, would lead to the practice of all the duties of piety and morality. The whole earth would be consecrated as one grand temple, from which a grateful homage would ascend from the hearts and the lips of millions of devout worshipers in all places from the rising to the setting sun. In the domestic circle, in the convivial meeting, in the public walks, in the councils of nations, and in every other intercourse of human beings, the name of God would never be mentioned, nor his character alluded to, but with feelings of profound and reverential awe. His holy word would be perused by all classes of men, with affection and delight, as the oracle which proclaims the glories of his nature, the excellence of his laws, the blessings of his salvation, and the path which conducts to eternal felicity in the life to come. Such are some of the delightful effects which would follow, were a sentiment of profound reverence to pervade, as it should do, the whole mass of human beings; and corresponding sentiments of affection for each other, would be the necessary accompaniment of respect and veneration for their common Parent. [Professor Dick's Lectures; Archbishop Secker's Works; Dick's Philosophy of Religion; Paley's Moral Philosophy; Whewell's Elements of Morality.] 529. What are we to understand by the name of the Lord? 530. What is meant by taking it in vain? 531. What are oaths, and what is their moral character? 532. What arguments may be used to establish the lawfulness of oaths when taken in a proper manner? 533. But there is a difficulty to dispose of. Does not our Savior say, Matt. v. 34, "Swear not at all;" and does not the apostle James reiterate the same prohibition? 534. When may an oath be administered, and how should it be taken? 535. What crime, chiefly, is prohibited in this precept? 536. Under what circumstances would we make ourselves guilty of the crime of perjury? 537. What gives to perjury its great criminality? 538. In what methods, secondly, is this precept violated with respect to swearing? 539. What crime, in the third place, is prohibited in this precept? 540. What considerations show the folly and criminality of profane swearing? 541. What illustrative anecdote may here be related? 244 THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 542. In view of such kind of swearing, what does our Savior direct? 543. What, in the fourth place, may be named as a crime similar to that of common swearing? 544. What other practices may, in the fifth place, be regarded as com. ing within the spirit of the prohibition in this precept? 545. In what modes have many of the adversaries of Christianity, as sach, been guilty of a gross violation of the Third Commandment? 546. In what opposite and profane manner have hostilities been waged by unbelievers against the Christian religion, which claims to be the product of divine wisdom and benevolence? 547. But if the matter of these objections be reprehensible, as calculated to produce an effect upon the reader beyond what their real weight and place in the argument deserve, what is there also of management, of disingenuousness, and profaneness, in the form under which they are dispersed among the public? 548. In what still more culpable and dishonorable method have some of the enemies of Christianity violated the Third Commandment? 549. What does Dr. Paley say to that class of reasoners who affect to see but little in Christianity, even supposing it to be true? 550. What are some of the beneficial effects which would result from a universal observance of the Third Commandment? THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." I. Nature and Importance of this Precept. 551. THIS precept obviously enjoins the setting apart of one day in seven, as a day of rest from worldly labor, and as a portion of time to be devoted to the exercises of religion, and particularly to the public worship o God. 552. If the worship of God were left at large to be performed at any time, too many would be tempted to defer and postpone it, on one pretense or another, till at length it would not be performed at all. Further, reason shows it to be requisite, and the experience of all ages proves it to be natural, that as we are social creatures, we should be social in religion, as well as in other things, and honor in common our common Maker. Since, therefore, on these accounts, there must be public worship and instruction, it is not only expedient, but necessary that there should be, also, fixed times appointed for it, by sufficient authority. How much, and what time should be devoted to this purpose, every society must |