28 But if any one say to you, "This hath been sacrificed to idols," eat not, because of him that pointed 29 it out, and because of conscience. Conscience I say, not thine own, but that of the other. Why is my 30 liberty judged of by another man's conscience? If I partake by grace, why am I evil spoken of, on account 31 of that for which I give thanks? Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to God's 32 glory. Become occasions of sin neither to Jews, nor to 33 Gentiles, nor to the Church of God: even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own benefit but the benefit of the many, that they may be saved. XI. 1. Become imitators of me, even as I am of Christ. THERE is something of pleasing and graceful sentiment in the prevalent conception, that the Early Ages of the Church were the pure times of Christianity. The mind does not readily adapt itself to the idea, that Antiquity was the Infancy of human wisdom and development, and that modern men are the Sages of Time. There is an instinctive tendency to regard that venerable Past as the Fountainhead of Knowledge, and to place ourselves in humble attitude, as juniors and disciples, at the feet of those "gray fathers" of the Ancient World. This indeed is but a sentiment, which reflection speedily corrects; and, as happens to most sentiments, even to those that have a divine Right of Rule, it is not suffered to stand in the way of any practical interest that touches the business and bosoms of men. Reverence for Antiquity will impede no man's gains, and the Wisdom of our Ancestors is seldom used as an argument against change, except when it is a profitable plea. There are minds, no doubt, abstracted from the world, with whom this worship of the Past is a lofty and enthusiastic sentiment, nor do we envy the man whose thoughts are never tinged by its solemn power. But still, wherever in the press of real life, in the great questions that practically affect Society, that sentiment holds its place as a guide to conduct, it will be found on the side of Interest and Ease, that under its influence large classes of men neither make sacrifices for the good of others, nor resist advantages for themselves. It has indeed too slight a basis of truth to be of any practical force, except when allied with some secret motive of self. That no voice comes to us from the first Ages of the world for thousands of years, because, as children write no Histories, undeveloped that the earliest exer even -- man had nothing to record; cise of human faculties was in the helpless surrender of the Imagination, a dim, passive, and shadowy Mirror, to the forms of the Outward World; — that the first Worship and the first Civilization were in rude attempts to symbolize the Powers of Nature in vast and shapeless emblems;-that the period of auther tic History commenced only when Man ceased to lie, like a dreaming child, on the mighty bosom of the External Universe, and awoke dimly to the consciousness of an inward Life and a spiritual Nature, designed to interpret and rule the Outward, not to lie prostrate beneath it; that Experience is accumulative and her lessons most abundant, not in the earlier but in the latter Ages; — that all physical science is of modern date, and only in the sixteenth century an Englishman revealed the methods by which Nature should be studied; - that Revelation itself has had an historical development, and Moses and the Prophets are no longer the Lights of spiritual man: - these are facts, in the face of which mere veneration for Antiquity cannot reasonably be expected to hold its place, against any real interest, or temptation, of the world. But no sooner is one Figure of the Imagination removed than another takes its place; for it is wonderful to what extent Metaphors rule the world. If length of experience belongs to modern men, and we, in the opportunities of knowledge, are the seniors of Antiquity, - then we change the emblem, and, since we cannot regard the olden Time as the hoary Age, we now call it the Infancy of the Race; and no sooner have we given it that name, than images of purity, and simplicity, and innocence, rise before us, the golden light of Childhood fills our eye; and the next error we fall into is, that, if the Primitive Times were not wiser, they were at least purer, gentler, with the first freshness of heavenly affections yet unsullied and unworn. Alas! we forget that this Infancy of the Race is all a figure; that the ignorance of a child was united to the passions of a man, the most dreadful combination of moral elements that Humanity can present. The animal nature in its fiercest vigor, the moral and intellectual nature helpless as infancy, are these, materials to produce a Golden Age?- or do they now, in the untaught masses, who have developed passions and undeveloped souls, produce the fabled tenderness and simplicity of the world's youth? That the former Times were better than the Present, is what no one with the least acquaintance with. Antiquity will be forward to maintain, — and in fact only the total absence of any enlightened public sentiment, the silence and unconcern that suffered familiar inhumanities to pass almost unoticed, without a recording word or a resisting struggle, have left out the dark coloring of truth. The very protests of this Age against the ills that afflict it, contribute to swell our impressions that we have fallen upon evil times. That of which we hear so much, we imagine to be growing in amount. The constant denunciations of public injustice, and of private vice, never permit us to lose the feeling that we dwell in a bad world. There were Times, and not distant ones, when the evils were greater, and the denunciations less, because there was no enlightened Opinion to appeal to, and no public Virtue to speak out. I am not the apologist of the present Times, yet, however we may fail to detect the exact law by which Providence regulates the progress of Man, a successive progress History broadly declares, and though we are justly dissatisfied with our present condition, yet God has not deserted us, for in vain shall we search the past for a nobler Age. Of all the delusions which have grown up as to the wisdom and virtue of primitive Times, that which affirms the perfection and purity of primitive Chris tianity is the most blind, both to the facts and to the reason of the case. "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not," is a truer picture, and from a higher authority. Is it reasonable to expect that the Period of its conflict with Heathenism should bear the choicest fruits of its unadulterated spirit, or that those from whose hearts it was expelling the gross darkness of the Pagan worship, should reach its most spiritual truths, and walk in its divinest light? Does it belong to the moral nature of man to be the subject of such rapid and perfect transformations, to empty the mind completely of one set of influences, and receive at once the entireness and purity of another, and, without a long term of intermediate mixture and struggle, put off the Heathen or the Jew, and exhibit, like a new creation, the truest symmetry of Christian development? And what are the facts? Do the Gospels, or do the Epistles of St. Paul, exhibit a more spiritual Discipleship, as we approach the person of Christ; or present a Model in the Churches that had an Apostle for their guide? Christ's life was passed without the conversion of a single soul; and when he died, the Jewish peculiarity had yielded to the Christian Idea of the Kingdom of God in not one single mind. In fact, the work of conversion, even in the Apostles themselves, took place after the death of Christ; and only when no longer Jewish notions could be made to cohere with a Messiah in the skies, did they gradually, and by necessity, adapt their conceptions of his Mission to his now spiritual and heavenly state. The Resurrection |