study for the priesthood, are assumed to have been as highly endowed with the natural religious instinct as other people; and their second careful training has developed in them a strong religious, priestly, or sacerdotal feeling, connected with what is distinct from the material things of life, such as may be called forth by parts of the service, its dogmas, incense, music, singing, praying and confession, and ceremonies foolish enough in themselves, and that general obeisance to what is outside of themselves, and which may be called ghostly; without destroying, but rather sharpening, those instincts that are applied to advance the interests of their corporation-all so impressed on them that it is difficult to wean them from "Mother Church." To realize in some degree the ghostly feeling of Romanists lay or clerical-let any one enter their churches, and lay aside his religious knowledge and principles, and he can feel what Pagans were inspired with when they entered their temples and gloomy religious groves, provided he has a lively imagination, and a sensitive feeling of the religion of nature. And that can be said in a much greater degree of Romanists themselves, to whom the scene conveys, generally, an exquisite pleasure and a profound awe; and especially when they contemplate in the mass, God on the altar, their own belief, confession, and absolution, and the mysterious priest as the instrument of the miracle of transubstantiation, and the custodier of the keys of heaven for all believ 66 on a question like this, that has come down to them from a high antiquity, when anyone expresses a doubt in regard to it; and the most positive, noisy and daring of them will carry the crowd with them in the cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," whom all Asia and the world worshippeth." And "what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter? Things that cannot be spoken against" (Acts xix.), as if they were facts that no one could or would dare doubt. Humanity as such will not question, and is hardly capable of questioning a national worship of this kind, but receives it actively or passively, with something like a natural instinct. Whatever the abuses, real or apparent, that may have crept into it, it was not for the priests publicly to make an ado about them, for fear of destroying the whole religion of the Great Diana herself. If it is hard for people to understand why the more intelligent of the priests of Rome do not condemn many things connected with their religion, but rather teach and practise them, it can be answered that such is for the interest of themselves and their infallible Church, which has to be upheld under all circumstances; to say nothing of the things complained of being submitted to, and doubtless believed in by as intelligent lay members, who have no particular interest in doing so. Considering the amazing things that have been practised as religion, we need feel no surprise at what comes up of that nature, and must therefore reserve an opinion on what is believed or not believed among Romanists, lay or clerical. At the worst, we can yield to the priests of Rome the credit due to as much belief in their system as could be given to the priests of Paganism, past and present, whatever that might be, provided they have never read the original | common with God and the saints, charter of Christianity, and been made aware of the changes and variations of those claiming to represent it. They have every human motive to make the most of a religion which none of them, on their own knowledge, and relying upon themselves, can tell whether it is true or false; and they might say of it what Cicero made the pontiff of old Rome say of the gods, that he did not believe in them as a man, but did as a pontiff, and as one upholding the religion of his ancestors. The real moral responsibility of the priests of Rome would begin with the study of the word of God, and tradition, and history, contrasting these with the doctrines and practices of Rome to-day; which they will not do, like one that is afraid or ashamed to look at himself in a mirror. As the old Pagans, surrounded by all the pomp and awe of animal sacrifices, incensed, prayed and sang praises to "Pan and all the gods,' which existed only in their imaginations, so does human nature worship its deities in various countries today. As the Romans adored Jupiter, and the Greeks Zeus- -"the father of gods and men with a host of demigods, and to a great extent believed in God in the abstract, but did not worship Him adequately, or only along with a multitude of beings of their own creation, so it can be said of Romanists in their worship of God and the saints, who are too numerous to be mentioned individually. They can as easily believe in Christ and the Holy Ghost as they believe in God and the saints, or as the old Pagans believed in Jupiter, or as Eastern nations believe in their deities, when they have been taught from infancy to do so, and when it is obligatory on them as a part of an inherited public worship, which they could not altogether corrupt or modify. Among Romanists, Christ and the Holy Ghost may be considered, in as representing the deities of ancient Rome, in the possession of a sodality of priests, or close sacerdotal corporation, making their worship a Pagan one in reality, although Christian in name. Here we would have the major deities changed and presented merely as a blind to the real Paganism and idolatry that make up the worship, viz.: that of the Virgin and the saints, and the innumerable superstitions connected with them; Christ being seldom mentioned or thought of, but brought forward on public occasions to support or constitute their position before the world; and God merely a kind of Jupiter whom no one must trouble, but through the saints deputed from one to another, till the petition reaches the "greatest and best," ""the father of gods and men," of the heathen. Christ and the Holy Ghost seem, in practical Romanism, to be there merely because they were inherited, and could not in the nature of things be kept out; while the Bible is a superfluity, and a source of great weakness when appealed to. If one had entered many an old Roman temple, he would have found the people, with more or less sincerity, according to the occasion, worshipping Jupiter and some of the demigods, and many with great sincerity at all times. Let one enter a Roman Church to-day, and he will find substantially the same religion, the same human nature, and the same degrees of sincerity; the saints being, at the very least, demigods that are supposed to hear and answer the prayers of millions at the same moment, that is, beings existing in that respect, and often in every respect, only in the imaginations of the worshippers. It is strange that Christianity, which recognized the worship, in all its simplicity, of God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost, only, and our duties to each other, should, as it were, have ended in the system | manifesting his divinity in the hearwhich we have been considering. ing of one who did not understand And it is strange that the humility of Christ, whose kingdom was not of this world," to the extent that he would not even give an opinion regarding the division of an inheritance between brothers, should have one like the Pope claiming to be his vicegerent, or "God on earth"-the supreme ruler in things temporal as well as spiritual who has shed oceans of blood, and tortured the bodies and souls of men, for no other offence than reading God's Word, and entertaining conscientious opinions in consequence thereof. Such a phenomenon, with all its idolatry, can only be accounted for for some such reason as that already given, viz: "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess. ii. 11, 12).* The Pope has been declared to be infallible to enunciate, but what would that avail if his followers are not equally infallible to understand? Does this Italian "God on earth reveal his will from day to day in Latin, when he might not infallibly understand that language? Who in that case would guarantee the infallibility of his scribe, or the infallible correctness of the translations into the languages of all the tribes of the earth, or their infallible meaning to the bog-trotters and brigands, or the most ignorant of beings, clothed in rags and covered with vermin-mere Mumbo Jumbo religionists—who are the most devoted of Romanists? In short, we would require to be all infallible to make the infallibility of one of any use to the world; and then the infallible proclamation of that one would be in a measure superfluous. As it is, the Pope, * See page 53. his language, would illustrate the saying of St. Paul, when he wrote :"If I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me" (1 Cor. xiv. 11). And who is to decide when the Pope speaks ex cathedrâ, and when he does not speak ex cathedrâ, or how can that question be settled? For all practical purposes, every priest, according to the system, is infallible in the teaching he gives his followers, or how can they feel sure that what he tells them is truth? And what would that avail them, if they were not also infallible to receive and understand what he tells them? Under any circumstances, even with Romanists, there must be the right of private judgment, whatever it might result in. Rather than "search the Scriptures," which he dares not say are not infallible, the Pope would have nothing less than the human family receive, as divine and infallible truths, his dogmas, conveyed through a variety of earthen conduits, some of them being of the basest materials; while he, or the synagogue of which he is the chief, infallibly assures us that mankind at large can make nothing of these Scriptures, and would be guilty of the highest presumption, if not absolute profanity, in even attempting to do it, unless in rare instances, or by priestly permission. Of these same Scriptures St. Paul wrote to Timothy: "From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. iii. 15). The apparent trouble of the Pope in regard to the Scriptures is to get rid of their circulation, and perhaps themselves, altogether, if he could do either with any show of decency; and, not being able to do it, beyond mistranslating them in many places, and striking out the second commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," it is easy to understand why he proscribes them to the extent he does, or limits the reading of them; for when they are earnestly and prayerfully studied by his followers, they lead them to renounce him and his works," with a bitterness that almost amounts to an execration, after loosening themselves from the toils in which they had been held. Could not the Pope, in virtue of his recently proclaimed superhuman attribute, be prevailed on to favour the world with an ex cathedrâ decision on the meaning of the following passages of Scripture: "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth."-1 Tim. iv. 1-3. "Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."-2 Thess. ii. 3, 4. Lord Bacon used to say that if these passages were printed as a "hue and cry," no constable in England would find a difficulty in laying his hands on the person wanted. The ten commandments were delivered to Moses amidst "Thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly."-Ex. xix. 16-18. And Christ, whose vicegerent the Pope claims to be, said : "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew v. 18, 19). "Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away."Mark xiii. 31, and Luke xxi. 33. Here is the second commandment, which Romanists keep out of their catechisms and books of devotion, and the Scriptures themselves, dividing the tenth, so as to nominally preserve the original number: 66 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."-Ex. xx. 4-6. And in the last verse but two of the Scriptures we find the following: "And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."-Rev. xx. 19. JOHN STUART MILL:* A STUDY. I. HIS RELIGION. of HE most satisfactory way treating his Autobiography is to string together selections from it, and with comments on these make chievous tendencies, in the way that so loosely and illogically put together, that among other things, the positive truth cannot be drawn from elder Mill's religious ideas; and it in regard to the stages of the there is much that requires ex the them furnish an antidote to its mis-planation about him consenting to be educated by others for Church, and being licensed to preach at the age of twenty-five, and then becoming a practical atheist. He is a witness is made to prove the worthlessness of the cause in fa vour of which he is brought forward to testify. The book begins badly : 66 described as "One who never did anything negligently; never undertook any task, liteMy father, the son of a petty trades-rary or other, on which he did not conman and (I believe) small farmer, at scientiously bestow all the labour necesNorthwater Bridge, in the County of sary for performing it adequately" (p. Angus, was, when a boy, recommended 4). by his abilities to the notice of Sir John Stuart, of Fettercairn, one of the Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland, and was, in consequence, sent to the University of Edinburgh, at the expense of a fund established by Lady Jane Stuart (the wife of Sir John Stuart) and some other ladies, for educating young men for the Scottish Church. He there went through the usual course of study, and was licensed as a preacher, but never followed the profession, having satisfied himself that he could not believe the doctrines of that or any other Church. For a few years he was a private tutor in various families in Scotland, among others that of the Marquis of Tweeddale, but ended by taking up his residence in London, and devoting himself to authorship. Nor had he any other means of support until 1819, when he obtained an appointment in the India House (p. 3). "I was brought up from the first without any religious belief, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. My father, educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion" (p. 38). There is so much in the Autobiography that is so illy arranged, and A man of his talents and energy, with a conscience to regulate them, could not surely have taken four years' study in literature and philosophy, and then four years in divinity, at the university, in addition to his school and home training, and his "own studies and reflections," to make up his mind on the subject of the first principles of religion (saying nothing of Christianity). However that may be, he was received into the ranks of the clergy, as a probationer, after a severe examination into his religious knowledge, learning, walk and conversation, and giving specimens of his sermons and prayers; and it does not appear from the Autobiography that he did not preach occasionally for other clergymen, either before or while he was a tutor in the families mentioned. No doubt he was engaged in the latter capacity on the faith-implied or expressed-of his being a clergyman of the Church, believing its doctrines; and he was most probably employed while tutor *Born May 20th, 1806; died May 8th, 1873. |