225. Thomas Chalmers, 1780-1847. (Handbook, par. 486.) On the Inherent Pleasure of the Virtuous and Misery of the Vicious Affections. There is a felt satisfaction in the thought of having done what we know to be right; and, in counterpart to this complacency of self-approbation, there is a felt discomfort, amounting often to bitter and remorseful agony, in the thought of having done what conscience tells us to be wrong. This implies a sense of the rectitude of what is virtuous. But, without thinking of its rectitude at all, without viewing it in reference either to the law of conscience or the law of God, with no regard to jurisprudence in the matter, there is, in the virtuous affection itself another and a distinct enjoyment. We ought to cherish and to exercise benevolence; and there is a pleasure in the consciousness of doing what we ought: but beside this moral sentiment, and beside the peculiar pleasure appended to benevolence as moral, there is a sensation in the merely physical affection of benevolence; and that sensation, of itself, is in the highest degree pleasurable. The primary or instant gratification which there is in the direct and immediate feeling of benevolence is one thing: the second or reflex gratification which there is in the cousciousness of benevolence as moral is another thing. The two are distinct of themselves; but the contingent union of them, in the case of every virtuous affection, gives a multiple force to the conclusion, that God is the lover, and, because so, the patron or the rewarder, of virtue. He hath so constituted our nature, that in the very flow and exercise of the good affections there shall be the oil of gladness. There is instant delight in the first conception of benevolence ; there is sustained delight in its continued exercise; there is consummated delight in the happy, smiling, and prosperous result of it. Kindness, and honesty, and truth, are of themselves, and irrespective of their rightness, sweet unto the taste of the inner man. Malice, envy, falsehood, injustice, irrespective of their wrongness, have, of themselves, the bitterness of gall and wormwood. The Deity hath annexed a high mental enjoyment, not to the consciousness only of good affections, but to the very sense and feeling of good affections. However closely these may follow on each other-nay, however implicated or blended together they may be at the same moment into one compound state of feeling-they are not the less distinct, on that account, of themselves. They form two pleasurable sensations, instead of one; and their opposition, in the case of every virtuous deed or virtuous desire, exhibits to us that very concurrence in the world of mind which obtains with such frequency and fulness in the world of matter, affording, in every new part that is added, not a simply repeated only, but a vastly multiplied evidence for design, throughout all its combinations. There is a pleasure in the very sensation of virtue; and there is a pleasure attendant on the sense of its rectitude. These two phenomena are independent of each other. Let there be a certain number of chances against the first in a random economy of things, and also a certain number of chances against the second. In the actual economy of things, where there is the conjunction of both phenomena, it is the product of these two numbers which represents the amount of evidence afforded by them, for a moral government in the world, and a moral governor over them. In the calm satisfactions of virtue, this distinction may not be so palpable as in the pungent and more vividly felt disquietudes which are attendant on the wrong affections of our nature. The perpetual corrosion of that heart, for example, which frets in unhappy peevishness all the day long, is plainly distinct from the bitterness of that remorse which is felt, in the recollection of its harsh and injurious outbreakings on the innocent sufferers within its reach. It is saying much for the moral character of God, that he has placed a conscience within us, which administers painful rebuke on every indulgence of a wrong affection. But it is saying still more for such being the character of our Maker, so to have framed our mental constitution that, in the very working of these bad affections, there should be the painfulness of a felt discomfort and discordancy. Such is the make or mechanism of our nature, that it is thwarted and put out of sorts by rage, and envy, and hatred; and this irrespective of the adverse moral judgments which conscience passes upon them. Of themselves, they are unsavoury; and no sooner do they enter the heart, than they shed upon it an immediate distillation of bitterness. Just as the placid smile of benevolence bespeaks the felt comfort of benevolence: so, in the frown and tempest of an angry countenance, do we read the unhappiness of that man who is vexed and agitated by his own malignant affections, eating inwardly, as they do, on the vitals of his enjoyment. It is therefore that he is often styled, and truly, a self-tormentor, or his own worst enemy. The delight of virtue, in itself, is a separate thing from the delight of the conscience which approves it. And the pain of moral evil, in itself, is a separate thing from the pain inflicted by conscience in the act of condemning it. They offer to our notice two distinct ingredients, both of the present reward attendant upon virtue, and of the present penalty attendant upon vice, and so enhance the evidence that is before our eyes for the moral character of that administration under which the world has been placed by its author. The appetite of hunger is rightly alleged in evidence of the care wherewith the Deity hath provided for the well-being of our natural constitution; and the pleasurable taste of food is rightly alleged as an additional proof of the same. And so, if the urgent voice of conscience within, calling us to virtue, be alleged in evidence of the care wherewith the Deity hath provided for the well-being of our moral constitution; the pleasurable taste of virtue in itself, with the bitterness of its opposite, may well be alleged as additional evidence thereof. They alike afford the present and the sensible tokens of a righteous administration, and so of a righteous God. Bridgewater Treatise-On the adaptation of external nature to the moral and intellectual constitution of man. Pt. i. cp. ii. Omniscience of God. The more we know of nature, should we not have the loftier conception of Him who sits in high authority over the concerns of so high a universe? But is it not adding to the bright catalogue of his other attributes to say that while magnitude does not overpower him, minuteness cannot escape him, and variety cannot bewilder him, and that at the very same time while the mind of the Deity is abroad over the whole vastness of creation, there is not one particle of matter, there is not one individual principle of rational or of animal existence, there is not one single world in that expanse which teems with them that his eye does not discern as constantly, and his hand does not guide as unerringly, and his spirit does not watch and care for as vigilantly, as if it formed the one and exclusive object of his regard. Astronomical Discourses. The force of Christian Evidence strengthened by the Christianity of the Witnesses. Tacitus has actually attested the existence of Jesus Christ. Suppose that besides attesting, his existence he had believed in him so far as to become a Christian. Is his testimony to be refused because he gives this evidence of his sincerity? Tacitus asserting the fact, and remaining a heathen, is not so strong an argument as Tacitus asserting the fact and becoming a Christian in consequence of it. Yet the moment the transition is madea transition by which in point of fact his testimony becomes stronger-in point of impression it becomes less; and by a delusion common to the infidel and the believer the argument is held to be weakened by the very circumstance which imparts greater force to it. . . . A direct testimony to the miracles of the New Testament from the mouth of a heathen is not to be expected. We cannot satisfy this demand of the infidel; but we can give him a host of much stronger testimonies than he is in quest of-the testimonies of those men who were heathens, and who embraced a hazardous and a disgraceful profession, under a deep conviction of those facts to which they gave their testimony. O but now you land us in the testimony of Christians.' This is very true; but it is the very fact of their being Christians in which the strength of the argument lies. In the Fathers of the Christian church we see men who, if they had not been Christians, would have risen to as high an eminence as Tacitus in the literature of the times; and whose direct testimony as to the Gospel history would, in that case, have been most impressive even to the mind of an infidel. And are these testimonies to be less impressive because they were preceded by conviction and sealed by martyrdom! The Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation, chap. v. 226. Thomas Moore, 1779-1852. (Handbook, par. 226.) Remember Thee! Remember thee! Yes, while there's life in this heart Wert thou all that I wish thee-great, glorious, and free, Irish Melodies. Out of three stanzas, He healeth the broken in heart.-Ps. cxlvii. 3. Oh! Thou who dry'st the mourner's tear, How dark this world would be, The friends who in our sunshine live Must weep those tears alone, But thou wilt heal the broken heart, Which, like the plants that throw Their fragrance from the wounded part, Breathes sweetness out of woe; When joy no longer soothes or cheers Did not thy wing of love Our peace-branch from above? Then sorrow touched by thee grows light, With more than rapture's ray; As darkness show us worlds of light We never saw by day! Paradise and the Peri. One morn a Peri at the gate Of Life within, like music flowing, Through the half-open portal glowing, Sacred Songs 'Mid flowers that never shall fade or fall; One blossom of Heaven out-blooms them all! And sweetly the founts of that Valley fall; |