162

MAGNANIMOUS CONFESSION.

Now, hold to your thesis, and then what a synopsis! Your metaphysics have refuted all the law and the prophets, ay, and the Son of God too, with a witness.

Thus, my honored and dear sir, it is plain that God, making no account of all your philosophy, has given you and all men a perfect measure of their social obligations, in the simple perfection of his word; and what has become of it? Is not his word better than your philosophy? Can we understand the former alone through the medium of the latter? In respect to the duty of each to every other, he has given us the proper and the perfect measure; and you, by your metaphysics, have knocked the bottom out of it. Now it is like a broken cistern that will hold no water. Now philanthropy has become a crime, as much so exactly as selfishness is, and as certain-as your metaphysics! It is thus that extremes meet, and that the world, ay, and the Church too, by wisdom knew not God. What is the worth or the virtue of revelation, if, after all, we must go to sea with the heathen, before we can know our duty and our salvation?

2. Why, I am wrong; surely I am wrong, sir.

This he solemnly announced, and not ironically, as I at first was tempted to suspect. It was a moment of awe and surprise. I could say nothing-he said no more; my friend was affected even to tears.

After a pause of some length and meaning, I rejoined,

1. Honored and dear sir, if I may, I would now say three things:

(1) I am wonder-struck and overwhelmed. We seem to reach a result "portentous, unexampled, unexplained." never anticipated it at all, and, of course, never intended it in form.

(2) The thing itself is strange and rare in history. I give you the credit, and God the glory of your making a magnanimous confession, the like of which, its proper parallel, I never knew before as a fact in history. Here is an ele

TERMINUS OF THE ARGUMENT.

163

ment of your vaunted metaphysics and your own unique theology, that you have held and preached for two or three generations; and now, in your ninety-fourth year, and in the full exercise of your faculties, you repudiate it as false, in honor of a simple saying of the Son of God! I only add,

(3) Would to God that you could have seen-the grand and the simple truth of scripture eighty years ago, and never departed from it! What a different influence would you have exerted, what a superior ministry would you have exercised, what a better course would you have run, what richer, and lovelier, and nobler, and wiser, and more useful sermons would you have preached, what a change for the better, and what a great change, so to speak, would have been realized in comparison with what your sermons now are; with your tests of Christian piety, ultra-evangelical and impossible; with your rough and jagged theological horns every way protruded, and goading the simple piety of the Church of God! This my soul sincerely thinks.

It may be inferred that, in his most exemplary confession, he was both sensitive and sincere, from the fact that, after it, he showed no inclination to pursue the controversy. Accordingly, I also declined; and after a few more remarks on general topics, we took our departure as respectfully and as tenderly as we could, and with his subdued but well-sustained politeness to the end, uttering its valediction. On some accounts I regretted, while on others I rejoiced, that any third person, and especially a layman, was present at the interview, fearing that it might embarrass or wound him in the result. I certainly endeavored to be at once courteous and reverential on the one hand, honest and faithful on the other; and if in any thing I failed, contrary to the spirit of the fifth commandment, I am ready to ask pardon for it before God and man. The interview was so singular and so remarkable, and also so very instructive, that I obey my own feelings not more than the requests of others, whom I respect

164

SIMPLE BIBLE PIETY.

and love, in making this registration of the occurrence and giving it to the public; well availed of the attestation of my valued friend, who was my companion there, whose testimony I have chosen, in anticipation, to provide to the substantial truth of the narration, and which will be found at the end of this article. Indeed, without such attestation, in reference especially to his confession, as above related, I should almost fear to stand before the orthodox theology of New England and affirm the fact. Some may refer it to incidental causes, some to the second childhood of age, some to mistake on my part or his; I only say that I believe, as does also my friend above named, the facts as here stated, that is, in their main and substantial verity. As to the manner of the narration, it is much my own; it has, perhaps, defects and superfluities; I have aimed, however, to have it not unworthy of confidence, however vulnerable to criticism.

Our promiscuous conversation, before the colloquy just recited, had many salient points that were characteristic and worthy of recognition. One or more of these I may relate.

The old disciple* that I had just previously visited, and with whose ripe and evangelical piety I was so gratefully impressed, frequently recurred to my thoughts, and that in a way suggestive as well as agreeable. I could not avoid the contrast between piety trained by the Bible, with common sense, spiritual experience, faith, prayer, and hope; and that artistic and technical sort, which metaphysics, clear and cold as an arctic day in December, yet affecting to show to us a more excellent way, is fitted or able to produce. His willingness to die; his hope of heaven; his trust alone in Christ; his simplicity of submission; his prayer for patience; his sense of personal unworthiness; his confession of sin; his fear of desiring too much to be with God; his joy in the salvation of the gospel; his devout meditation; and his rich yet simple-hearted love for the Savior, as dying for him, as inter* Captain Benjamin Shepard, of Wrentham.

THE DOCTOR'S HOPE OF HEAVEN.

165

ceding for him, as never leaving or forsaking him, as loving him with an everlasting love, and as ruling over all, mighty to save, never-changing, all-adorable; these remembered traits affected my mind, and induced the following dialogue :

1. There is one question, Dr. Emmons, which, if you allow the freedom, I would respectfully venture to ask.

2. Ask it, sir, with freedom.

1. You have lived long, wrote, and read, and thought, and preached, and prayed much, and probably may soon be called to the world of spirits; how, then, do you feel about salvation? how does heaven appear to you, or what think you of it? Does it seem sure and desirable, as well as proximate to your experience?

2. You wish to know what I think about heaven and salvation? about my own being saved?

1. I do, sir, if you please; I desire to know that exactly. 2. Well, then, I will tell you. I think that, if I am never saved, and never get to heaven, others will.

He spoke this with deliberation and emphasis. I heard his words, waited for more, thought the sentence incomplete, and was surprised to see that it was finished.

1. Is this all, sir?

2. Yes; what need of more? what could I say better? 1. I can easily tell you-having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better!

I can not well recollect what followed; but view this answer as the logical, uncomfortable, and jejune result of his religious metaphysics. No rejoicing in hope; no full assurance of hope; no consciousness that could say, for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain-and no self-love! No, not a particle of that metaphysical sin!

If you say it was his humility, he felt his atomic insignificance, and was too modest to aver his certain glorification; I then reply, It is not the fruit of the Spirit, but of his own philosophy. Isai. 30: 1; Mic. 27; Eph. 5: 8-10.

166

tion.

THE PROPER HOPE OF CHRISTIANS.

This is his hope, and all of it. I never read of such a hope in all the scriptures. It is as unlike the wisdom of the Bible, as the first chapter of Ephesians is other than a theorem in Euclid; or as a beautiful flower is different from the Autocrat of France or the Queen of Madagascar. It was the utterance of a mere metaphysico-hypothetical truism, and about as pertinent as if he had said, Robinson Crusoe cared very little either for democratic progress or for the recent discoveries in astronomy. It is not to be praised because Dr. Emmons said it; and apart from such a reverent or filial consideration, it ought to be rejected with religious indignaWhat could I say better, indeed! The only credit due for it is-it is consistent. It is the starved and imbecile symbol or epitome of his system and his theology. It is not the result of the gospel at all. Christian hope may be defined-the authentic expectation and joyous desire of future good, resting on Christ alone for its basis, and honoring scripture alone for its medium, in which one's character becomes, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the subjective counterpart of all the exceeding great and precious promises of the gospel, received objectively as revealed, and realized subjectively by faith in their Author. Let any unsophisticated person consult those promises, and then ask whether the counterpart of them can be any thing like this-If I am not saved, others will. The gospel is not responsible.

At another moment, as we were approaching the severer part of our conference, he remarked that the presumption was against my system, and in favor of his system; since his was so purely unselfish, so illustriously disinterested, that mine, in the contrast, must appear inferior and wrong, as just the opposite, or nearly so, and therefore as interested and selfish.

1. To that, doctor, I not at all assent. The truth, I think, would well-nigh reverse your statement. I deny that there is any selfishness in my system at all, especially because, in