Mercy, in the dark, after man is lured by it down the steeps of damnation! justice, truth-nothing in human character, when they are the very pillars of the throne of God. "O beauty, shrined on earth, or air or sea, Christ did not seem to be afraid of nature. He taught no fear and deprecation of human reason. He called "evil men" the children of God. He said to the common people about him, "Judge ye not of your own selves what is right." * * * * * * * * Just as the very Apostolic Church, under Peter and other temporizing, halfconverted teachers, drifted into parts of Paganism and Judaism-imposing circumcision, fastings, divers washings and baptisms, abstinence from meats and worship of days no where commanded by Christ, or the great Apostle to the Gentiles; but the rather forbidden;- so the modern organized Church of every name have superadded to Christianity, and made tests of membership outside of admitted christian character, where Christ has made none. great body of the so-called christian world is governed by the thought, the ignorance and superstition of the middle ages, when thinking was made a crime, and the very genius and liberty of Christianity was pronounced schismatic. As witness the Roman Catholic and the high church parties. The The great body of the more enlightened and liberal, are governed by the glimmering twilight of the Sixteenth century; dawning just at the outbreak of the revival of learning, just at the birth of modern criticism, as man was coming of age, and opening his eyes to the knowledge of his powers and rights; and to this day Calvin and Luther, and Beza, are vastly more potent names and authorities in the Evangelical Church than Paul or Christ. A man in its fellowship drifting into a newer or larger truth than is found in the canons of the church, is made uncomfortable. He is told that his ordination vows or his covenant obligations will not allow him to see around the laws of the church, or through them. He must accept them unchanged, or renounce its fellowship, or be made uncomfortable with odium, and social and religious proscription. You would think with the assiduity with which free thinking is pursued by the doctors of Orthodoxy, that God in his providence invited stagnation, that the chief function of the Church was to keep man down, not to lift him up, that the chief work of the doctors and spiritual guardians was, to quarry flat stones to lay upon young men's heads. A milder type of intolerance and opaque bigotry runs through the advanced liberal sects, called Unitarian and Universalist, milder, but more offensive to a free man, because coming from those who profess better things. Unitarianism was not broad enough for Theodore Parker. Universalism is not broad enough for young Connor and Blanchard. No one doubts the Christian character of these men. No one questions their morality or goodness. Judged by the Sermon on the Mount, they shame their accusers. But they have advanced or think they have. They have seen new light, or think they have; they have heard new and better interpretations of the bistorical problems and difficulties of Christianity, and are loyal to their highest convictions. It suddenly appears that they are not in harmony with the "Winchester Confession." They are not loyal to the denomination; no one doubts their loyalty to the truth. They swore to support, protect, and defend the "Winchester Confession," and the denomination based upon that is vastly of more importance than any man's conceit of loyalty to a greater truth. If they see short of it, or go beyond it, they must leave their cherished denominational association. The Winchester Confession is the measuring reed of a Universalist. He can be neither longer nor shorter, broader nor narrower than that. When he varies from this spiritual and intellectual gauge, he must get out of the denomination, or he is an impostor. My friends, this whole clamor and flutter among us is the essence and spirit of priest-craft and church-craft. It is the clamor and flutter of men who are conscious of weakness and a false position, opposed to the spirit of the age. They feel the sands giving beneath their feet, and see the darkening shadow that a greater truth will cast upon their pet and partial theories, and hence they take alarm; hence they ply their arts; hence they vent their little harmless tyrannies. When the plague broke out at Wittemburg, the students and doctors all advised Martin Luther to flee. He said, "I hope the world will not go to pieces if little Martin should fall.” The world will not go to pieces if all these confessions should fall and all the denominations built upon them with such assiduous care, be swallowed up in wider, newer, and better truth. Admit that they have served a historic and moral and spiritual purpose, that does not give them the lease of immortality; admit they aim at Christian work, that does not make them infallible, nor custodians of all God's truth. For the purpose of the argument and for the inculcation and the winning of that Christian liberty which you and I are born heirs of, it matters not that all the sects are right or wrong. Grant them all right (which they cannot be, for they are at the antipodes of statement), yet being right, what charter have they from God, or Christ, or Paul, or any of the Apostolic leaders, for narrowing the base of the Christian Church one hair below Christian character ? What charter for demanding conformity in this technical statement, or that, as conditions precedent to Christian fellowship? None at all. Love of God and love of man, is all the law and the prophets; this is more than all whole-burnt offerings and sacrifices. Christianity makes every man king and priest unto God, it says, "Call no man master on the earth, for one is your master and all ye are brethren." Of the man casting out devils by his own incantation, instead of Christ's, he said, "Forbid him not, he that is not against us is for us.” "Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations." "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth, yea, God shall hold him up." The family is a Divine Institution. A child born in my family is a member of it, an heir of its wealth and culture, and privilege, in virtue of being born there. What would you say of a man coming to one of my children and saying, "You can be a member of your father's household on this or that technical condition. You must receive the law of your conduct from me instead of your father? you would call that a rank impertinence, and assumption, and justify me in showing him the door. The Church is a Divine Institution. Every good man and woman on the globe is born into it, when they fulfil Christ's own conditions of membership, knowingly or not. A pagan never having heard of Christ, is a member of his Church, if a good man, loving God and his fellow men, as Socrates. The good, devout, and humane of this town, are members of the true Church in this town, and dear to God and Christ, and the good angels, as such. They, of whatever name, are all the Church of God there is in Huntington. The Christians of a place are the Church of that place, and the Christians are all who love God and love their fellow men. By their fruits shall ye know them." Pity for the smallness of a man's heart and the poverty of his life when you have got to unroll the church register to find if he be a christian. Now, the denomination, the sect of whatever name, busy in exacting conditions precedent to membership which Christ has not made, are guilty of rank impertinence and assumption. They are dictating terms to Christ, they say Christ is very good, but the confession is better. Charity, humanity, are very good, but dogmatic correctness is better. To this assumption and impertinence I would give place, no, not for an hour; to this preposterous claim I would be in subjection, not for one moment; to every such arrogance I would hold up the Divine constitution of the Church, the new life of goodness, love of God and love of man, and say, that is good enough for me, that is the liberty of Christ; in that “I will stand fast." When the genius of human Government the world over, is calling for more liberty, let not the Church be seen, drawing back and calling for less. When thrones and orders and privileged classes, are bowing to the rights of the commons as an ozier bows in the wind; let not the Church dare to lift the head of effete and privileged authority. When the freest nation on the globe has gone through four years of civil war, and spent cheerfully three thousands of millions of treasure for the rights of mankind, and is impeaching its chief magistrate for standing on the necks and liberties of the ignorant, and enfranchized, let not the freest religious denomination in the land attempt to impeach its brave young men, who with the fresh blood of the century are trying to ciothe religion and science, faith and nature, in one seamless robe of beauty and truth. THE CHINESE CLASSICS, With a translation, critical and exegetical notes, Prolegomena, and copious indexes, By JAMES LEGGE, D. D., in 7 vols. Vol. 1 containing Confucian Analects, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. Hong Kong: at the Author's. London: Trubner & Co., 60 Paternoster Row, 1861. Dedicated to the Hon. JOSEPH JARDINE. IT T is not to the enthusiasm of scholars, the exaggerated estimate of a few transcendentalists, nor even the conscious ignorance of the literary world, that we owe the successful achievement of Dr. Legge's long and painful task. We wish that those who fancy the Christian dispensation greatly indebted to the Confucian, or that Jesus is to be named in the same category as the Chinese sage, could be kept on a diet of "Great Learning" for one month. We cannot conceive of a drearier entertainment, and it would soon bring criticism to its senses. But the civilization of China is a problem older than Confucius. The household furniture of the Sage, still in existence, bears evidence of arts and culture far advanced; and on the one hand an intelligent missionary saw the necessity of making himself familiar with the literature of a people whom he undertook to convert, and on the other, a wealthy and generous merchant, Joseph Jardine, saw the fitness of dedicating a portion of the money acquired in China, to making its language and its institutions better understood. In a brief review of Loomis's abridgement of Dr. Legge's book, we have lately indicated how mistaken are some of his inferences. It is to be hoped that a similar work from Dr. Legge's own hand, just published by the Lippencotts in Philadelphia, will be free from such errors; still the army of octavos, which have begun to issue from the author's own press at HongKong, will always be the chief resource of the scholar. Few of us are likely to become proficients in the Chinese language, but we wish to interrogate it— to set the translations against the original text, and to understand thoroughly the changes through which that text has passed, and the pretensions with which it was first issued. An ignorant coolie does not fall further behind the average American mechanic in intelligence, than this text drops behind the Gospel story in variety, beauty and in power to move man. As to inspiration, it pretends to none and has none. It is sacred, as a law book is sacred, but does not deai with the gods, in any sense. "Righteousness," says a Chinese proverb, "was born with Mencius-propriety and politeness belong to Confucius ;" but all the honors of the former have been heaped by Western scholars upon the head of Confucius, and yet of the books attributed to the Sage of Loo, not one could really have been written by him, not even the Preface to the ShooKing, which it has always been believed, is the chief monument of his power and wisdom. In order to give a satisfactory view of the Chinese Classics, we shall invert Dr. Legge's method, showing first, what manner of man Confucius actually was, and then discuss his relation to the books that bear his name. A knowledge of his life is a necessary preparation to the reader. Enthusiastic Chinese scholars trace the genealogy of Confucius to Hwang-ti, the inventor of the cycle, 2637 B. C. The name, as we all know, is only the Latin form of Kung Footsze, or "The Master." All along the line there seem to have been men distinguished for literary tastes, and eminent in history and poetry. Seven hundred and nine years before Christ, we get a touch of romance. K'ung-kea, a loyal officer in Sung, had a wife of surpassing beauty. The minister of State Hwa-Tuh murdered her husband and the reigning Duke, in his efforts to get possession of her person. It availed him little, for she had the good sense to strangle herself with her girdle as he bore her away! Between the descendants of the two families, as might be expected, a bitter feud arose, and to avoid the persecutions which grew out of it, K'ung Kea's great grandson moved into the territory of Loo. His grandson was the father of Confucius. This was Heih, well known in the history of the time as a soldier of great bravery. Five hundred and sixty-two years before Christ, he was at the Siege of Peih-yang. After the tricky fashion of Eastern warfare, a portcullis was purposely left open to the assault of his friends, and as soon as they had entered, it was dropped to cut them off from succor. Heih was just beneath it, he caught it and held it with his hands till the party had time to escape. Confucius was the child of his old age. Heih had nine daughters, and when over seventy years of age, sought a second wife in order that he might have a son. The chief of the Yen family said to his three daughters, Here is the commandant of Tsow. His ancestors were descended from the Emperors, his father and grandfather were scholars. He is ten feet high and of extraordinary prowess. Which of you will have him?" The two older daughters did not speak; the youngest said, Father, it is for you to decide," Very well!" he answered, you will do!" and so in good time Ching-tsae Yen became the mother of Confucius. He was born 551 years B. C., in the district of Tsow, of which his father was governor. Although Confucius never recognized the existence of a God, there seems never to have been a time, if we may take the testimony of tea-cups and lacquered trays, when the Chinese nation did not believe in a demon with horns and hoofs, and a sweeping tail. So dragons and spirits attended the unhappy babe, giving warning in his mother's dreams, and a miraculous stream was provided for his first bath. From a baby he was fond of ceremony. His father died when he was three years old, and the family became very poor; of this he was never ashamed, but always attributed the variety of his knowledge to his early obscurity. He married at nineteen, and if the testimony of the Analects, v. i., is to be trusted, had one daughter, as well as his well known son Le, or The Carp. This son was named for a fish sent as a present of congratulation by the Duke on the day he was born. |