No More Learning

Is God
a Father,— really and actually a Father? is he in heaven, far
away from our conceptions and confusions,- one whom we can-
not make in the likeness of anything above, around, beneath us?
Or is all this a dream ? is there no God, no father? has he never
made himself known, never come near to men ? can men never
come near to him ?
Are you startled that I put these questions to you? Do
they seem more terrible than any that have yet presented them-
selves to you? Oh, they are the way back to the faith of the
little child, and to the faith of the grown man. It is not Christ
about whom our doubts are. We are feeling after God if haply
we may find him.
We cannot find him in nature. Paley will not
reveal him to us. But he is very near us; very near to those
creatures whom he has formed in his own image; seeking after
them; speaking to them in a thousand ways.
The belief of a Son who was with him before all worlds, in
whom he created and loves the world; who for us men and for
our salvation came down from heaven and became incarnate, and
died, and was buried, and rose again for us, and ascended on
high to be the High Priest of the universe, - this belief is what?
Something that I can prove by texts of Scripture or by cun-
ning arguments of logic ? God forbid! I simply commend it to
you. I know that you want it. I know that it meets exactly
what your spirit is looking after, and cannot meet with in any


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
9831
books of divinity. For we have to find out that God is not in a
book; that he is; that he must reveal himself to us; — that he is
revealing himself to us.
I am not distressed that you should be brought to feel that
these deep and infinite questions - not questions about the arith-
metic of the Bible — are what are really haunting and torment-
ing you. I believe that the clergy must make this discovery. We
have been peating phrases and formulas. We have not entered
into them, but only have accepted certain reasonings and proofs
about them. Now they are starting up and looking at us as if
they were alive, and we are frightened at the sight. It is good
for us to be frightened; only let us not turn away from them,
and find fault with them, but ask God - if we believe that he can
hear us
- to search us and show us what is true, and to bring
us out of our atheism.
How, you ask, can I use the prayers of the Church which
assume Christ's divinity when I cannot see sufficient proof that
he is divine ? That is a question, it seems to me, which no man
can answer for you; nay, which you cannot answer for yourself.
If I am right, it is in prayer that you must find the answer.
Yes, in prayer to be able to pray; in prayer to know what prayer
is; in prayer to know whether, without a Mediator, prayer is not
a dream and an impossibility for you, me, every one. I cannot
solve this doubt. I can but show you how to get it solved. I
can but say, The doubt itself may be the greatest blessing you
ever had, may be the greatest striving of God's Spirit within you
that you have ever known, may be the means of making every
duty more real to you.
I do not know who your bishop is. If he is a person with
whom it is possible to communicate freely, I should tell him that
I had perplexities which made the use of the Prayer Book not
true to as it once was; that I wanted time for quiet
thought; that I should like to be silent for a little while;-I
would ask him to let me commit my charge to a curate till I
could see my way more clearly. That would be better, surely,
than a resignation, painful not merely to your friends but inju-
rious to the Church, and perhaps a reason for severe repentance
afterwards. But I may be only increasing your puzzles by this
suggestion. Of the fathers in God on earth I have no certainty.
Of the Father in heaven I can be quite certain. Therefore one
of my hints may be worth nothing. The other is worth every-
thing.
as
me


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9832
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
FROM A LETTER TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY
1
MARCH 9TH, 1849.
HAVE done your bidding and read Froude's book (the Nemesis
of Faith'), with what depth of interest I need not tell you.
It is a very awful, and I think may be a very profitable book.
Yes, God would not have permitted it to go forth if he did not
mean good to come out of it. For myself, I have felt more than
ever since I read it how impossible it is to find any substitute
for the old faith. If after all that experience, a man cannot ask
the God of Truth to give him his spirit of truth, to guide him
into all truth, what is left but just what he describes, — doubt;
not merely of existence, but of doubt itself; doubt whether every
superstition may not be real, every lie a fact? It is undoubted
that such a state of mind is possible, - yes, is near to all of us;
Froude is no false witness. But if it is possible, there must be
some one to bring us out of it; clearly the deliverance is not in
ourselves. And what is the Bible after all but the history of a
deliverer; of God proclaiming himself as man's deliverer from the
state into which he is ever ready to sink,-a state of slavery to
systems, superstitions, the world, himself, atheism? The book is
good for this: it brings us to the root of things; and there is
nothing, or there is God. It is good for this: it shows that God
must come forth and do the work for us, and that all the reli-
gions we make for ourselves, whatever names we give them, are
miserable mutilated attempts to fashion him after our image, with
yet such fragments of truth as show that we are formed in his.
THE SUBJECTS AND LAWS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Text:–«And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye
poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. ” — St. LUKE vi. 20.
S
BEGINS a discourse which has often been said to contain a
code of very high morality for those who forsake the low
level of the crowd, and aim at a specially elevated stand-
ard of excellence. The previous sentence explains to whom the
discourse was addressed. "And he came down with them, and
stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great
multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem, and from
the sea-coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
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(
»
а
be healed of their diseases. Those were the people who heard
Christ say, “Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of
Heaven. ”
We were wont to mitigate the force of this sentence by re-
ferring to the one in St. Matthew's Gospel which most resembles
it. For “poor,” we say, the other Evangelist gives us "poor in
spirit. ” Is not that the sense in which we must understand the
words here? I am most thankful for the expression in St. Mat-
thew, and am quite willing to use it for the illustration of the
discourse in which it occurs. We may find it a great help here-
after in understanding St. Luke. But I must take his language
as it stands. He says that our Lord lifted up his
eyes on
miscellaneous crowd. He cannot have expected that crowd to
.
introduce any spiritual qualification into the words, “Yours is
the Kingdom of Heaven. ” What then did those words import?
.
Might they be addressed to a multitude similarly composed in
London ?
Surely, in this very simple and direct sense. Our Lord had
come to tell them who was governing them; under whose author-
ity they were living. Who had they fancied was governing
them ? One who regarded the rich with affection; who had
bestowed great advantages upon them, who had given them an
earnest here of what he might do for them hereafter.
It was
most natural for poor men to put this interpretation upon that
which they saw and that which they felt. It was difficult for
them to find any other interpretation. It was not more difficult
for the people who dwelt about the coasts of Tyre and Sidon
than for the people who dwell in the courts and alleys of Lon-
don. The difficulty is the same precisely in kind. The degree
of it must be greater, on some accounts, for the dwellers in
a crowded modern city than for those who breathed the fresh
air of Galilee. The difficulty was not diminished for the latter
(I mean for the Galileans) by anything which they heard from
their religious teachers. It was enormously increased. God was
said to demand of these poor people religious services which they
could not render; an account of knowledge about his law which
they could not possess. His prizes and blessings here and
hereafter were said to be contingent upon their performing these
services, upon their having that knowledge. Whichever way they
turned, - to their present condition, to the forefathers to whose
errors or sins they must in great part attribute that condition,


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
(
to the future in which they must expect the full fruit of the
misery and evil into which they had fallen, - all looked equally
dark and hopeless.
Startling indeed, then, were the tidings, «Yours is the King-
dom of Heaven. ” Most startling when they were translated into
these: "You have a father in heaven who is seeking after you,
watching over you, whom you may trust entirely. He ruled over
your forefathers.
He promised that he would show forth his
dominion fully and perfectly in the generations to come.
I am
come to tell you of him; to tell you how he rules over you,
and how you may be in very deed his subjects. I am come
that you and your children may be citizens in God's own city,
that the Lord God himself may reign over you. " I cannot ren-
der the phrase into any equivalents that are simpler, more obvi-
ous, than these. And if they were true, must they not have been
true for all that crowd, for every thief and harlot in it ?
not this the very message of John, delivered by Him who could
not only call to repentance but give repentance?
« Yes,” it may be answered, "that might be so, if the lan-
guage only declared to the poor that there was a Heavenly
Father who cared for them no less than he cared for the rich:
but the sentences which follow give them a positive advantage;
it would appear as if the blessing on the poor involved a curse
on the rich. What other force can you put on such sentences as
these? Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled.
Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. But woe unto
you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation. Woe
unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that
laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. ) »
Language so explicit as this cannot be evaded. And I hold
it is greatly for the interest of all of us who are leading easy
and comfortable lives in the world, that it should not be evaded.
If any amount of riches greater or smaller does give us consola-
tion, it is well for us to understand that there is a woe upon
those riches. They were not meant to give consolation; we were
not meant to find it in them. If any laughter of ours does make
us incapable of weeping, incapable of entering into the sorrow
of the world in which we are dwelling, we ought to feel that
there is misery and death in that laughter. Our Lord does not
speak against laughter; he sets it forth as a blessing. He does
denounce all that laughter which is an exultation in our own
>


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
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prosperity and in the calamities of others. He does promise
that those who are indulging that sort of laughter shall weep.
I use the word promise advisedly. It is a promise, not a threat-
ening; or if you please, a threat which contains a promise. It
is the proof that we are under a Kingdom of Heaven; that God
does not allow such laughter to go on; that he stops it; that he
gives the blessing of sorrow in place of it. And thus all alike
are taught that they are under this fatherly government. All
are shown that the Father in heaven is aware of the discipline
which they need, and will apportion it. All may be brought
to take their places with their brethren in this kingdom. All
may be taught that the common blessings — the blessings from
which one cannot exclude another - are the highest blessings.
All may be brought to know that this one fact, that they have
a Father in heaven, is worth all others. And so that poverty
of spirit which is only another name for childlike dependence
upon One who is above us, and is all good because we have
found we cannot depend upon ourselves, may be wrought by
Him with whom we have to do in rich and poor equally. The
heavenly treasures may be revealed to both, which moth and
rust cannot corrupt, which thieves cannot break through and
steal.
Thus far, assuredly, the tendency of this discourse of our
Lord's has been to level, not to exalt. The Kingdom of Heaven
has not been a prize for those who are unlike their fellows, but
for those who will take their stand by them — who will set up
no exclusive pretensions of their own.
But what shall we say
of this benediction —« Blessed are ye when men shall hate you,
and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall
reproach you, and shall cast out your name as evil, for the Son
of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy, for
behold your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner
did their fathers unto the prophets”? And again of this woe
"Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did
their fathers unto the false prophets”? Is there not here a glori-
fication of the little minority which is persecuted, a denunciation
of the majority which persecutes ?
The comment on the language is in the actual history. Why
was St. Stephen, whom we have been remembering lately, cast
out of the city of Jerusalem and stoned ? Because he was ac-
cused of breaking down the barriers which separated the chosen
»


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9836
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
men
people from the surrounding nations. Why was the young man
at whose feet the witnesses against Stephen laid down their
clothes, afterwards denounced in the same city as one who ought
not to live ? Because he said that he was sent with a message
of peace and reconciliation to the Gentiles. What was it that
sustained and comforted Stephen in the hour when his country-
were gnashing upon him with their teeth? The sight of
the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God; the Savior
and King, not of him and his brother disciples, but of mankind.
What was St. Paul's deepest sorrow, and how was it that in the
midst of that sorrow he could always rejoice? His sorrow was
that his kinsmen after the flesh were to be cut off, because they
were enemies to God and contrary to all men. His joy was in
the thought that “all Israel should be saved;” that “God had
concluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. ”
This then was the witness of the little band of the persecuted,
that God is the Father of all; that his Kingdom is over all.
And the determination of that powerful majority of persecutors
was to keep the favor of God and the Kingdom of Heaven to
themselves. Those of whom all men speak well are those who
flatter their exclusiveness; who lead them to think that they
are better than others, and that they shall have mercies which are
denied to others. The comfort of the persecuted, which the per-
secutor could not have, was the comfort of believing that God
would conquer all obstacles; that the Son of Man, for whose sake
they loved not their lives, would be shown in very deed to be
King of kings and Lord of lords - all human wills being sub-
jected to his will.
And so you perceive how the next precepts, which we often
read as if they were mere isolated maxims, are connected with
these blessings and these woes. But I
say unto you which
hear,” – unto you, that is, whom I have told that men shall sep-
arate you from their company, and cast out your persons as
evil, — "Love your enemies; do good to them which persecute
you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which de-
spitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one
cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke
forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh
of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not
again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also
to them likewise. For if ye love them which love you, what
»


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
9837
use.
thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And
if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have
ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them
of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners
also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your
enemies, and do good; and lend, hoping for nothing again. And
ye shall be the children of the Highest; for he is kind unto the
unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your
Father in heaven is merciful. ”
In these passages is contained the sum of what we have been
used to call the peculiar Christian morality. It is supposed to
be very admirable, but far too fine for common He who
aims at following it is to be counted a high saint. He claims
a state immensely above the ordinary level of humanity. He
even discards the maxims by which civil society is governed —
those which the statesman considers necessary for his objects.
No doubt, it is said, this transcendent doctrine has had a cer-
tain influence upon the nations in which it is promulgated. It
has modified some of the thoughts and feelings which are most
adverse to it. The beauty of it is confessed by many who never
dream of practicing it. There are some unbelievers who try to
practice it, and say that if this part of Christianity could be sepa-
rated from its mysterious part, they could not reverence it too
highly. But though this is true, we have proofs, it is said, every
day and hour, that this love to enemies, this blessing them that
curse, this turning the one cheek to him who smites the other,
is altogether contrary to the habits and tempers of the world.
My friends, the evidence goes much further than that. We
need not derive our proofs that the natural heart revolts against
these precepts from what is called The World. The records of
the Church will furnish that demonstration much more perfectly.
Hatred of those whom they have counted their enemies, - this
has been the too characteristic sign of men who have called
themselves Christ's servants and soldiers. Curses have been their
favorite weapons. Nó church can bring that charge against an-
other without laying itself open to retaliation. And it cannot be
pleaded, “Oh, there is a corrupt unbelieving leaven in every
Christian society. ” The habit I speak of has come forth often
most flagrantly in those who were denouncing this leaven, who
were seeking to cast it out. I am not saying that they were not
good men. The case is all the stronger if they were. I am not
(


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
saying that a genuine zeal for truth was not at the root of their
rage, and did not mingle with the most outrageous acts of it.
Of all this, God will be the judge. We are not wise to antici-
pate his decisions.
But such facts, which are notorious, and are
repeated in every age and in every country, show the absurdity
of the theory that what our Lord lays down as the laws of the
Kingdom of Heaven are intended for the use of a particular
class of persons, who aspire to outstrip their fellows and win
higher prizes than the rest of mankind. They lead us to suspect
that those who have aimed at such distinctions and pursued such
objects have not been able to submit to his government — have
-
assumed a position which was essentially rebellious. They lead
us back to the leveling sentence with which the discourse opens,
and which must be accepted as the key to the whole of it. What
business has any citizen of a kingdom to talk of a certain standard
which is meant for him and not for all the subjects of it? What
is that but adopting the maxim which the Roman poet unfairly
ascribed to the Greek hero, that “laws were not born for him?
How reasonable, on the other hand, - how perfectly consist-
ent,- is our Lord's language, if we suppose him to be revealing
the laws under which God has constituted human beings,— the
laws which are the expression of his own Divine nature, the laws
which were perfectly fulfilled in his Son, the laws which his
Spirit is seeking to write on all hearts! What signifies it to
the reality of such laws that this or that man transgresses them;
that he who transgresses them calls himself Churchman or Dis-
senter, Catholic or Protestant, believer or infidel?
If they are
true, they must stand in spite of such transgressions; they will
make their power manifest through such transgressions. There
will be a witness on behalf of them, such as we see there is in
all human consciences; there will be a resistance to them, such
as we see there is in all human wills. Our belief in their ulti-
mate triumph over that which opposes them must depend on
our belief in Him who is the Author of the law. If we think
that he is our Father in heaven, and that his law of forgiveness
has been fully accomplished in Christ, and that his Spirit is
stronger than the Evil Spirit, every sign of the victory of love
over striving and hating wills must be a pledge how the battle
is to terminate: no success of bitterness, and wrath, and malice,
however it may shake our minds, can be anything but a proof
that less than Almighty love, less than a Divine sacrifice, would


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
9839
-
have been unable to subdue such adversaries. But if we think
this discourse to be the announcement of a refined ethical sys-
tem,- not the proclamation of a Kingdom of Heaven, as it pro-
fesses to be, - we may well complain how feeble and ineffective it
is and must always be. We may say that its power can never be
recognized beyond a circle of rare exceptional persons.
And we
may find that these rare exceptional persons are always supplied
with a set of evasions, equivocations, and apologies for violating
every one of its principles, especially in those acts which they
consider most religious and meritorious.
Those who confine this discourse to saints speedily contradict
themselves. When they bring forth evidences of Christianity, or
evidences of the influence of the Catholic Church, they appeal to
the power which the Cross, with its proclamation of Divine for-
giveness to enemies, has exercised over the wild warring tribes
that have fashioned modern Europe. They ask whether the con-
science of those tribes, in the midst of all their bloody feuds
and acts of personal vengeance, did not stoop to the authority
of a Prince of Peace; whether it did not confess him as King of
kings and Lord of lords; whether it did not acknowledge those
as especially his ministers who in bodily weakness - in defiance
of the physically strong — showed forth the loving-kindness which
they said was his, and claimed the serf and the noble as alike
his subjects and his brethren. The facts cannot be gainsaid.
They are written in sunbeams on all the darkest pages of mod-
ern history. What do they prove? Surely, that our Lord was
not proclaiming a code which was at variance with civil order
and obedience,-a transcendental morality, - but principles which
were the foundation of civil order and obedience; principles
which were to undermine and uproot the very evils which all
national codes are endeavoring to counteract. The national code
- the most exalted, the most divine code — can only forbid, only
counteract. If it aspires to do more, if it strives to extirpate
vices instead of to punish crimes, if it enjoins virtues instead of
demanding simple submission to its decrees, - it proves its own
impotence. It is always asking for help to do that which it can-
not do. It wants a power to make the obedience which it needs
voluntary; to kindle the patriotism without which it will only
be directed to a herd of animals, not a race of men. Wherever
there has been a voluntary obedience, wherever there has been
a patriotism which has made men willing to die that their land


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9840
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
for us.
might not be in the possession of strangers, there has been faith
in an unseen Ruler; there has been a confidence that he wills
men to be free. The Jewish history interprets other history.
It shows what has been the source of law and freedom; what
has been the destruction of both; what has been the preservation
of both. This discourse, because it proclaims a more universal
principle than the Jewish or national principle, is supposed to
set that aside. I accept our Lord's words, "I come not to de-
stroy, but to fulfill," as true in every case. He does not destroy
the fundamental maxim that God is the author of the Com-
mandments. He fulfills it by proclaiming the mind of his Father
in heaven as the ground of all the acts of his children. He does
not destroy one sacrifice which any patriot had made for his peo-
ple's freedom. He fulfills it in his perfect sacrifice to God and
He does not destroy any one precept of duty to God
or to our neighbor. He fulfills it by baptizing with his Spirit;
by making duty to God the surrender of man's will to his will
which is working in us; that will binding men to each other as
members of the same body; that will fighting with all the self-
ish impulses which tear us asunder. There is no opposition be.
tween the Kingdom of Heaven and any kingdom of earth, except
what is produced by this selfishness which is the enemy of both.
If the civil ruler sanctions one law for the rich and one law
for the poor, he offends against the maxims of the Kingdom of
Heaven; but then he also introduces a confusion into his own.
If he prefers war to peace, gambling to honesty, bondage to
freedom, and if he seeks religious sanctions to uphold him in
these tastes, he offends against the maxims of the Kingdom
of Heaven, and he is preparing ruin for his own State. If the
ecclesiastic proclaims one law for the saint and another for the
common man, he overthrows the common order and morality of
nations; but he sins still more directly against the laws which
Christ proclaimed on the Mount. If he sets up the priest against
the magistrate, he disturbs the peace of civil communities; but
he also exalts the priest into the place of God, and so commits
treason against the Kingdom of Heaven. If he assume the office
of a judge of his brethren, he may do much mischief on earth
which the ruler on earth cannot hinder. But he falls under this
sentence: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not,
and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and ye shall be for-
given. ”


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FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
9841
(
These laws of the Kingdom of Heaven seem very hard to
keep. See what hinders us from keeping them. It is not some
incapacity. It is our determination to assume a place which is
not ours. Each of us is continually setting up himself to be a
God. Each is seizing the judgment-throne of the universe. We
know that it is so. And from this throne we must come down.
We must confess that we are not gods; not able to pronounce
on the condition of our fellows, needing forgiveness every day
from our Father and from each other, permitted to dispense
what he sends us. The lesson is a simple one. Yet every other
is contained in it. If we do in very deed come to the light,
our deeds may be made manifest; if we ask to be judged - if
we ask our Father in Heaven to make us his ministers and not
his rivals — we shall be able to enter into the wonderful precept
that follows (v. 38): Give, and it shall be given unto you;
good measure pressed down and shaken together, and running
over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same meas-
ure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. ”
They had been told before that they were “to do good and lend,
hoping for nothing again. ” How is it that we are encouraged
to hope here that if we give it shall be given to us? The two
passages explain each other; experience confirms them both.
Only the man who gives hoping for nothing again, who gives
freely without calculation out of the fullness of his heart, ever
can find his love returned to him. He may win hatred as well
as love; but love does come in measures that he never could
dream of. We see it every day; and every day, perhaps, we may
be disappointed at finding some favors which we thought were
well laid out bringing back no recompense. They were bestowed
with the hope of something again.
Yes, friends: most truly are these the unchangeable laws of
the Kingdom of Heaven. That which we measure is measured
against us again; selfishness for selfishness, love for love. It
may not be clear to us now that it is. We shall be sure of it
one day — in that day which shall show Him who spoke this dis-
course to be indeed the King of kings and Lord of lords. For,
as his next words tell us, this has been the great inversion of
order: « The blind have been leading the blind; the disciples have
been setting themselves above their Master. ” We have been lay-
ing down our own maxims and codes of morality. Each one has
been saying to his brother, "Brother, let me pull out the mote
XVII-616
C


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9842
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
out of thine eye. ” We have had such a clear discernment of
these motes! And all the while none of us has been aware of
the beam in his own eye. And how can any of us become aware
of it; how can we escape the charge of hypocrisy which our con-
sciences own to be so well deserved ? Only if there is a King
and Judge over us who detects the beam; who makes us feel
that it is there; who himself undertakes to cast it out. To that
point we must always return. We may boast of this morality
as something to glorify saints. We may call it
We may call it "delicious," as a
modern French critic calls it. Only when it actually confronts
us, as the word of a King who is speaking to us and convict-
ing us of our departures from it — only then shall we discover
that it is for sinners, not saints; that it is terrible, not delicious.
But only then shall we know what the blessedness is of being
claimed as children of this kingdom; only then shall we begin
to apprehend the glory of which we are inheritors. For we then
shall understand that there is a selfish evil nature in every man,
let him call himself churchman or man of the world, believer
or unbeliever, which cannot bring forth good fruit - which is
utterly damnable; and that there is a Divine root of humanity,
a Son of Man, whence all the good in churchman or man of the
world, in believer or unbeliever, springs — whence nothing but
good can spring. If we exalt ourselves upon our privileges as
Christians or saints, the King will say to us, "Why call ye me
Lord, and do not the things which I say? If we submit to his
"
Spirit we may bring forth now the fruits of good works which
are to his glory; we may look for the day when every law of
his kingdom shall be fulfilled, when all shall know him from the
least to the greatest. And churches, in the sense of their own
nothingness, may seek after the foundation which God has laid,
and which will endure the shock of all winds and waves. And
churches which rest upon their own decrees and traditions and
holiness will be like the man « who without a foundation built
an house upon the earth, against which the stream did beat
vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house
was great. ”


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9843
JOSEPH MAZZINI
(1805–1872)
BY FRANK SEWALL
MONG the liberators of modern Italy, ranking in influence with
Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, and Garibaldi, Joseph Mazzini
was unique in his combination of deep religious motive,
philosophic insight, and revolutionary zeal. His early studies of Dante
inspired in him two ideals: a restored Italian unity, and the subor-
dination of political government to spiritual law, exercised in the
conscience of a free people. Imprisoned in early life for participation
in the conspiracy of the Carbonari, he left Italy in his twenty-sixth
year, to spend almost the entire remainder
of his life in exile. While living as a refu-
gee in Marseilles and in Switzerland, from
1831 to 1836, he fostered the revolutionary
association of young Italian enthusiasts,
and edited their journal, the Giovine Italia,
its purpose being to bring about a national
revolution through the insurrection of the
Sardinian States. In Switzerland he organ-
ized in the same spirit the “Young Switzer-
land and the “Young Europe, fostering
the idea of universal political reform, and
the bringing in of a new era of the world,
in which free popular government should JOSEPH MAZZINI
displace the old systems both of legitimate
monarchy and despotic individualism. Banished from Switzerland
under a decree of the French government, in 1836 Mazzini found
refuge in London; and for the remainder of his life the English press
was the chief organ of his world-wide influence as a reformer, while
his literary ability won him a place among the most brilliant of the
modern British essayists. Only for brief intervals did Mazzini appear
again in Italy; notably in the period of 1848 and 1849, when, on the
insurrection of Sicily and Venetian Lombardy and the flight of Pio
Nono from Rome, like a Rienzi of the nineteenth century he issued
from that city of the soul ” the declaration of the Roman Republic,
and was elected one of the triumvirs. He led in a heroic resistance



## p. 9844 (#252) ###########################################

9844
JOSEPH MAZZINI
to the besieging French army until compelled to yield; and he was
content to have brought forth from the conflict the unstained banner,
"God and the People,” to be the standard for all future struggles for
the union of free Italy under the rightful leadership of Rome. In
1857 he again took part in person in the insurrections in Genoa and
in Sicily, and was laid under sentence of death, a judgment which was
removed in 1865. In 1870, on his attempting to join Garibaldi in
Sicily, he was arrested at sea and imprisoned at Gaëta, to be released
in two months, as the danger of a general insurrection disappeared.
During all this time he had been carrying on, mainly from England,
his propaganda through the press; publishing in 1852, in the West-
minster Review, the essay Europe, its Conditions and Prospects,'
completing in 1858 The Duties of Man,' and addressing open letters
to Pio Nono, to Louis Napoleon, and to Victor Emmanuel. In 1871 he
contributed to the Contemporary Review an essay on "The Franco-
German War and the Commune. The last production of his pen was
his essay on Renan's Reforme Morale et Intellectuelle,' finished in
March 1872, and published in the Fortnightly Review in 1874.
It was shortly after the completion of this essay at Pisa, whither
he had gone in the hope of regaining his health, that he was seized
with the illness that closed his earthly life on March 1oth, 1872.
Honors were decreed him by the Italian Parliament, his funeral was
attended by an immense concourse of people, and his remains were
laid away in a costly monument in the Campo Santo of Genoa.
If Mazzini is entitled to be called the prophet of a new political
age, it is because he sought for a new spiritual basis for political
reform. What is remarkable is, that his bold and ingenuous insist-
ence on the religious motive as fundamental in the government that
is to be, did not diminish his influence with his contemporaries of
whatever shades of opinion. Even so radical a writer as the Russian
anarchist Bakunin, in an essay on the Political Theology of Mazzini,
speaks of him as one of the noblest and purest individualities of our
age.
The two fundamental principles for which Mazzini stood were col-
lective humanity as opposed to individualism, and duty as opposed to
rights. His position was, that the revolutionary achievements of the
past had at most overcome the tyranny of monarchy in asserting the
principle of the rights of the individual. But this is not in itself a
unifying motive. The extreme assertion of this leads to disunion and
weakness, and makes way only for another and more hopeless des-
potism. The rights of the individual must now be sacrificed to the
collective good, and the motive of selfish aggrandizement must yield
to the sacred law of duty under the Divine government. It is this
undeviating regard for the supreme principle of duty to the collective


## p. 9845 (#253) ###########################################

JOSEPH MAZZINI
9845
man, under the authority of the Divine law, that alone can make the
perpetuation of the republic possible.
Mazzini's devotion to this principle accounts for his apparent luke-
warmness in many of the boldest and most conspicuous movements
in the progress of Italian liberation and unity. It was because he
saw the preponderance of sectional aims rather than the participa-
tion of all in the new federation, that he criticized the Carbonari king,
Charles Albert, in 1831, and that he fought against the policy of ob-
taining at the cost of Savoy and Nice “a truncated Italy of monarchy
and diplomacy, the creation of Victor Emmanuel, Louis Napoleon, and
Cavour. ” He lived to see Italy, nominally at least, a united nation,
freed from foreign control; but far from being the ideal republic
whose law is from above, and whose strength is in the supreme
deyotion of each citizen to the good of all, and to the realization
in this manner of a Divine government in the world. Toward the
attainment of this ideal by progressive governments everywhere, the
influence of Mazzini will long be a powerful factor, and his mission
more and more recognized as that of a true prophet of a new politi-
cal era of the world.
Among Mazzini's literary writings may be mentioned his essays on
(Victor Hugo,' (George Sand,' (Byron and Goethe,' (The Genius and
Tendency of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle,' and that on M. Renan
and France. His Life and Writings,' in six volumes, were published
in London in 1870; and a volume of Essays, Selected,' in 1887.
anh Surall
FAITH AND THE FUTURE
From the Essays
F"?
AITH requires an aim capable of embracing life as a whole,
of concentrating all its manifestations, of directing its vari-
ous modes of activity, or of repressing them all in favor of
one alone.
It requires an earnest, unalterable conviction that
that aim will be realized; a profound belief in a mission and
the obligation to fulfill it; and the consciousness of a supreme
power watching over the path of the faithful towards its accom-
plishment. These elements are indispensable to faith; and where
any one of these is wanting, we shall have sects, schools, political
parties, but no faith, -no constant hourly sacrifice for the sake of
a great religious idea.


## p. 9846 (#254) ###########################################

9846
JOSEPH MAZZINI
-
Now we have no definite religious idea, no profound belief in
an obligation entailed by a mission, no consciousness of a supreme
protecting power. Our actual apostolate is a mere analytical
opposition; our weapons are interest, and our chief instrument of
action is a theory of rights. We are all of us, notwithstanding
our sublime presentiments, the sons of rebellion. We advance
like renegades, without a God, without a law, without a banner
to lead us towards the future. Our former aim has vanished
from our view; the new, dimly seen for an instant, is effaced by
that doctrine of rights which alone directs our labors. We make
of the individual both the means and the aim. We talk of
humanity — a formula essentially religious — and banish religion
from our work. We talk of synthesis, and yet neglect the most
powerful and active element of human existence. Bold enough
to be undaunted by the dream of the material unity of Europe,
we thoughtlessly destroy its moral unity by failing to recognize
the primary condition of all association,- uniformity of sanction
and belief. And it is amidst such contradictions that we pretend
to renew a world.
Right is the faith of the individual. Duty is the common col-
lective faith. Right can but organize resistance: it may destroy,
it cannot found. Duty builds up, associates, and unites: it is
derived from a general law, whereas right is derived only from
human will. There is nothing, therefore, to forbid a struggle
against right; any individual may rebel against any right in
another individual which is injurious to him, and the sole judge
left between the adversaries is force: and such in fact has fre-
quently been the answer which societies based upon right have
given to their opponents.
Societies based upon duty would not be compelled to have
recourse to force; duty, once admitted as the rule, excludes the
possibility of struggle; and by rendering the individual subject to
the general aim, it cuts at the very root of those evils which
right is unable to prevent, and only affects to cure. Moreover,
progress is not a necessary result of the doctrine of right: it
merely admits it as a fact.
a fact. The exercise of rights being of
necessity limited by capacity, progress is abandoned to the arbi-
trary rule of an unregulated and aimless liberty.
The doctrine of rights puts an end to sacrifice, and cancels
martyrdom from the world: in every theory of individual rights,
interests become the governing and motive power, and martyrdom


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JOSEPH MAZZINI
9847
.
an absurdity; for what interest can endure beyond the tomb ?
Yet how often has martyrdom been the initiation of progress,
the baptism of a world!
Faith, which is intellect, energy, and love, will put an end to
the discords existing in a society which has neither church nor
leaders; which invokes a new world, but forgets to ask its secret,
its Word, from God.
With faith will revive poetry, rendered fruitful by the breath
of God and by a holy creed. Poetry, exiled now from a world a
prey to anarchy; poetry, the flower of the angels, nourished by
the blood of martyrs and watered by the tears of mothers, blos-
soming often among ruins but ever colored by the rays of dawn;
poetry, a language prophetic of humanity, European in essence
and national in form, - will make known to us the fatherland of
all the nations hitherto; translate the religious and social syn-
thesis through art; and render still lovelier by its light, Woman,
an angel,- fallen, it is true, but yet nearer heaven than we,-
and hasten her redemption by restoring her to her mission of
inspiration, prayer, and pity, so divinely symbolized by Christian-
ity in Mary.
The soul of man had fled; the senses reigned alone. The
multitude demanded bread and the sports of the circus. Philoso-
phy had sunk first into skepticism, then into epicureanism, then
into subtlety and words. Poetry was transformed into satire.
Yet there were moments when men were terror-struck at the
solitude around them, and trembled at their isolation. They ran
to embrace the cold and naked statues of their once venerated
gods; to implore of them a spark of moral life, a ray of faith,
an illusion! They departed, their prayers unheard, with
despair in their hearts and blasphemy upon their lips. Such
were the times; they resembled our own.
Yet this was not the death agony of the world. It was the
conclusion of one evolution of the world which had reached its
ultimate expression. A great epoch was exhausted, and passing
away to give place to another, the first utterances of which had
already been heard in the north, and which awaited but the Ini-
tiator to be revealed.
He came,- the soul the most full of love, the most sacredly
virtuous, the most deeply inspired by God and the future that
men have yet seen on earth,— Jesus. He bent over the corpse of
the dead world, and whispered a word of faith. Over the clay
that had lost all of man but the movement and the form, he
even


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9848
JOSEPH MAZZINI
uttered words until then unknown,- love, sacrifice, a heavenly
origin. And the dead arose. A new life circulated through the
clay, which philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. From that
corpse arose the Christian world, the world of liberty and equal-
ity. From that clay arose the true man, the image of God, the
precursor of humanity.
THOUGHTS ADDRESSED TO THE POETS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
From (Giovine Italia
T".
He future is humanity. The world of individuality, the world
of the Middle Ages, is exhausted and consumed. The mod-
ern era of the social world is now in the dawn of its devel-
opment; and genius is possessed by the consciousness of this
coming world.
Napoleon and Byron represented, summed up, and concluded
the epoch of individuality: the one the monarch of the kingdom
of battle, the other the monarch of the realm of imagination;
the poetry of action, the poetry of thought.
Created by nature deeply to feel, and identify himself with
the first sublime image offered to his sight, Byron gazed around
upon the world and found it not.
Religion was no more. An altar was yet standing, but broken
and profaned: a temple silent and destitute of all noble and ele-
vating emotion, and converted into a fortress of despotism; in it
a neglected cross. Around him a world given up to materialism,
which had descended from the rank of philosophical opinion to
the need of practical egotism, and the relics of a superstition
which had become deformed and ridiculous since the progress of
civilization had forbidden it to be cruel. Cant was all that was
left in England, frivolity in France, and inertia in Italy. No
generous sympathy, no pure enthusiasm, no religion, no earnest
desire, no aspiration visible in the masses.
Whence could the soul of Byron draw inspiration ? where
find a symbol for the immense poetry that burned within him?
Despairing of the world around him, he took refuge in his own
heart, and dived into the inmost depths of his own soul.
indeed a whole world, a volcano, a chaos of raging and tumultu-
ous passions, - a cry of war against society such as tyranny had
made it; against religion such as the pope and the craft of priests
It was


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JOSEPH MAZZINI
9849
had made it; and against mankind as he saw them,- isolated,
degraded, and deformed.
The result was a form of poetry purely individual,- all of
individual sensation and images; a poetry having no basis in
humanity, nor in any universal faith; a poetry over which, with
all its infinity of accessories drawn from nature and the material
world, there broods the image of Prometheus bound down to
earth and cursing the earth, an image of individual will striving
to substitute itself by violence for the universal will and univer-
sal right.
Napoleon fell; Byron fell. The tombs of St. Helena and Mis-
solonghi contain the relics of an entire world.
ON CARLYLE
From the Essays)
E
W*
ALL seek God; but we know that here below we can
neither attain unto him, nor comprehend him, nor con-
template him: the absorption into God of some of the
Brahminical religions, of Plato, and of some modern ascetics, is
an illusion that cannot be realized. Our aim is to approach
God: this we can do by our works alone. To incarnate as far
as possible his word; to translate, to realize his thought, — is
our charge here below. It is not by contemplating his works
that we
can fulfill our mission upon earth; it is by devoting
ourselves to our share in the evolution of his work, without
interruption, without end. The earth and man touch at all points
on the infinite: this we know well, but is it enough to know this ?
have we not to march onwards, to advance into this infinite ?
But can the individual finite creature of a day do this if he
relies only upon his own powers? It is precisely from having
found themselves for an instant face to face with infinity, with-
out calculating upon other faculties, upon other powers, than
their own, that some of the greatest intellects of the day have
been led astray into skepticism or misanthropy. Not identifying
themselves sufficiently with humanity, and startled at the dis-
proportion between the object and the means, they have ended
by seeing naught but death and annihilation on every side,
and have no longer had courage for the conflict. The ideal has
appeared to them like a tremendous irony.


## p. 9850 (#258) ###########################################

9850
JOSEPH MAZZINI
In truth, human life, regarded from a merely individual point
of view, is deeply sad. Glory, power, grandeur, all perish,-
,
playthings of a day, broken at night. The mothers who loved
us, whom we love, are snatched away; friendships die, and we
survive them.