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Show Uncle Jack and Bis liepbew. REgS In last week's publication of the dialogue dia-logue between Uncle Jack and his nephew, the former showed the inconsistency incon-sistency of the latter in maintaining the intrinsic purity and natural efficiency ef-ficiency for good of human nature, while at the same time he proclaims the absolute necessity of reform. The nephew replies that this necessity is the work of "crafty priests and ambitious ambi-tious rulers, who make it their business busi-ness to keep nature in chains, repress its native energies and restrain its pure and noble operations." The uncle retorts that this was only shifting the 1 responsibility a step further back, since the crafty priests and ambitious rulers ; were "human nature," wherefore, they : at least stood in contradiction to his theory of "nature's innate purity and sanctity." He then launches into a definition of human nature relative, to the fall, which is continued through the present publication. "Very likely not. The Lutheran or Calvinist doctrine of total depravity, or total corruption of man's nature by the fall, is no doctrine of the Catholic church. It is a heresy which she condemns. con-demns. Man's nature at the fall underwent un-derwent no physical change, and is intrinsically in-trinsically what it was from the beginning. be-ginning. It lost no natural faculty and received no new appetite or passion. pas-sion. As pure nature, seclusa ratione culpae, it is what it always was, and always will be in this world. But what you are to bear in mind is that our nature never was intended to operate oper-ate well, or to attain to its beatitude, save as the flesh was subordinated to the spirit. On this point Christianity introduces no new law, but simply asserts as-serts what was the law from the beginning. be-ginning. Always was the same law necessary aud obligatory, and all the difference is that before the fall the flesh did not rebel, and obedience required re-quired no effort, no interior struggle; but since the fall it has become rebellious, re-bellious, and it is only by effort, by struggle, by a painful and unceasing interior warfare, that we can subdue it. and bring ourselves into conformity with the law of God. By the- fall we I lost the supernatural grace which elevated ele-vated us to the place of our supernatural supernat-ural destiny, what theologians call the indeblta; that Is, the Integrity of our nature, exemption from sickness and death, and, more especially to our present pres-ent purpose, the subjection of the flesh to the spirit, or exemption from that interior conflict between inclination and duty, the flesh and the spirit, which makes our whole earthly existence exist-ence one continual warfare, and originates orig-inates all tragedies of life. What was before easy is now painful; what was before done without effort is now possible pos-sible only by self-violence, self-denial, mortification, interior crucifixion." "There you are again, uncle, back in your Christian asceticism, preaching your eternal war against nature, and anathematizing all that 13 sweet in our natural emotions and ravishing in our sentiments. You will tolerate nothing that is natural. ,-You will not permit a bird to sing, or flower to bloom. All nature must be silent and drab-colored. No heart must be allowed to expand with joy, no fresh young love must be tasted, no sweet, intoxicating sentiments senti-ments indulged.!?. "I understand you, Dick, but you do not understand the religion I profess. I anathematize nothing that is good, war against no pure and ennobling sentiment, and I love, even more than in my cold and Btormy and heretical youth, the blithesome song of birds and the beauty and fragrance of flowers. To the Christian, nature Is ' neither drab-colored nor silent. TIt Is clothed with the beauty of its Creator, ' and vocal with the music of His love. Christian love purifies our sentiment and gives them new sweetness and power. All experience proves that Christian asceticism, as forbidding as It may appear to you, Is the highest wisdom; nay, the only true philosophy of life. No life is so miserable as that of the unrestrained indulgence of our appetites and passions, which grow by indulgence and become all the more importunate im-portunate in their demands the oftener they are gratified. There is no appetite appe-tite or demands of our nature that does not become morbid by Indulgence, and, therefore, a source of torment. Heathen wisdom taught that if we would make a man happy we must study to moderate his desires. The philosophy of the Porch was defective because It substituted pride for humility, hu-mility, and, therefore, the self-denial of the Stoics is not to be named with the self-denial of the Christian; but it was far superior to the philosophy of the Garden. Such is the nature of man, quarrel with it as you will, that he cannot attain to real good without imposing a severe restrains on his appetites ap-petites and passions, without keeping them under, and maintaining in spite of them the freedom of the spirit that true freedom wherewith the Son of God makes us free, and which none but the true Christian ascetic ever attains at-tains to, or can even comprehend. Freedom of the flesh is the slavery of the spirit, and the emancipation of con- the subjection or slavery of reason. These, my dear Dick, are only commonplace com-monplace truths; nevertheless, they lie at the foundation of all morality, of all science of virtue or beatitude, and that, too, whether you consider man individually or socially." "You may think so. uncle, but you must allow me to tell you that not so thinks this enlightened and advanced nineteenth century. You are behind the age. We have exploded all those notions. no-tions. You still talk of reason, and profess to respect logic. We have learned better. We do not respect logic; we place very little reliance on reason. The reason or intellect, the logical understanding, is a very low faculty, and, as the inspired Fourier has taught, should serve as a mere instrument in-strument of the passions which are the springs of action; not as their master. We have passed beyond the Petrine gospel, that of authority, attempted to be realized in your old popish church, fit only for women and children, or the infancy of nations; we have passed beyond be-yond your Pauline gospel, or that of the intellect, reason or understanding, on which Luther and Calvin founded their churches, and which were fit only for a certain stage in the development of society; and we have passed on to the Johannine, gospel, the gospel of love, preached noy St. John, 'the beloved disciple,' which never fails, but endures for ever. We rely on the heart; we place religion in the heart, and virtue in sentiment. We seek the man who has a soul, who can feel, who has pure, lofty, warm, gushing feelings, and who is moved by their noble impulses, not by the dry deductions of logic or the cold calculations of duty. We hate the word duty. It freezes our blood; it dries up the juices of our hearts. Give us the man who acts from love, not duty who devotes himself to the sacred cause of humanity, not because commanded, not because he sees that it is reasonable, reason-able, or fears that he will be damned if he does not, but from love, tfrom the promptings of his own free, warm and loving heart. This, dear uncle, is the gospel of the nineteenth century, the gospel of today." "And no great novelty, after all. It was reached, in substance, by the fifth-monarchy fifth-monarchy men In the seventeenth century, cen-tury, the. followers of the Evangile Eternal in the fourteenth, and various sects of the Gnostics in the third. It it is only a phase of anti-nomianism, virtually held by all so-called Evangelical Evangel-ical sects. It is a very old, and not a very specious, heresy. Its revival does not say much for the progress of your boasted nineteenth century." "No matter, if it is old, if it be true. Undoubtedly .the advanced spirits of past ages, indeed of every age, have had glimpses, as it were, a presentiment of it; but never was it generally embraced or recognized as the authentic gospel of the age, before our times." j "Be it so. It gives loose reins to all unlawful passions. The ministers of this gospel, I take it, are your modern novelists, who celebrate fornication and adultery. - Old-fashioned, lawful love, the love of the husband for his lawful wife, or of the wife for the lawful husband, hus-band, is too insipid for the taste of : these modern evangelists. Duty is humdrum, hum-drum, what is lawful is cold and repulsive. re-pulsive. Love, to be interesting, must be unlawful. must be forbidden, on the principle that 'forbidden fruit is sweetest, and is pure and beautiful beau-tiful only as it is a violation of duty. Has not Gee 1 Sand proved this? Has not Bulwer pi ;ed it? Have not countless count-less hosts of German and French sentimentalists senti-mentalists proved it? How complacently compla-cently they dwell on an unlawful passion, pas-sion, and follow it through all its windings, wind-ings, and how eloquently they extol, its depth, its purity, its sanctity? There is no question but the greater part of your modern popular literature is written in the true spirit of your gospel gos-pel of love. That your gospel of love is very generally embraced, and faithfully faith-fully observed, may be safely concluded from the waning intellect of the age, the superficial character of its productions, produc-tions, and the general relaxation of morals. Your own party proves its prevalence in their war against all established es-tablished authority, in their lack of common understanding, their ceaseless agitation, their violence, their worship of the dagger. But, my poor boy, why do you suffer suf-fer yourself to be the dupe of words God is Love, the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Is a gospel of love, and love charity is the bond of perfection, the origin, life and end of creation. What Christian knows not that? But the love of which the Christian Chris-tian gospel speaks is not the burning passion nor the watery sentimentality of your novelists and the reformists. It is the love of the heart, not of the senses; the free, voluntary exercise of the rational nature, not the morbid cravings of the sensitive soul. It is the highest and purest exercise of the rational soul, and is on the part of man only another name for duty, or a true moral conformity to the law of God. The distinction you seek to set up between love and duty is founded upon the ambiguity of the word 'love,' sometimes used to express a blind passion pas-sion with which one is carried away, or a simple affection of concupiscence, and someHjmes an affection of the rational ra-tional soul, reason and will, and, therefore, there-fore, a free, voluntary affection. In the former sense it is irrational, involuntary, invol-untary, and therefore not moral. It is by resolving love into this affection of the inferior soul, making it an affection af-fection of the sensitive nature, as distinguished dis-tinguished from the rational, that your popular authors are led to their Immoral Im-moral doctrine that love cannot be controlledthat con-trolledthat it submits to no law but the necessity of nature, and regards no considerations of duty; that we love where we must, and that we cannot help loving where we do, or bring ourselves' our-selves' to love where we do not. Coupling Cou-pling with this the evident sanctity of love, in the other sense of the word, they lay down the doctrine that even the most irregular and licentious love, if strong, if intense, is pure and holy. The wife is not censurable for not loving lov-ing her husband, or for seeking to fill up the void in her heart by loving another an-other perhaps another woman's husband. hus-band. Hence the whole force of modern mod-ern literature is directed against the cruelty of those laws which seek to control the affections, and of those parents par-ents who interfere with the affections of their children, arrange their marriage, mar-riage, or cross them in their love affairs. af-fairs. The custom still prevalent . in some countries, for parents to select a wife for a son, or a husband for a daughter, is condemned as absurd and a ''treason to love. Parents may undoubtedly un-doubtedly abuse their power in this respect, as they may every other, and the abuse is always to be condemned; but there can be little doubt that there were fewer mismatches and more do mestic love and happiness under the old custom than there are under our modern custom, which leaves the most important affairs of life to be settled by the inexperience, the fancy, the caprice, or the excited passions of youth, incapable of making a wise or prudent choice. Then youth grew up pure and innocent, and their hearts retained re-tained their virginity, and their imagination im-agination its chastity. Now the girl is hardly in her teens before her head is filled with thoughts of love and marriage, mar-riage, and she is on the alert to see who will love her or whom she will love. All this grows out of your iow and sensual view of love, of rir making mak-ing it an affection of the sensitive nature na-ture Instead of the rational, and supposing, sup-posing, that it does in no sense depend on reason and will to love wherever It is our duty to love." |