Page images
PDF
EPUB

origin precisely similar. To what but the sanctifying influences which grow out of the single life of Jesus, do they attribute all that has eleva ted our nature in the past? all that promises farther elevation in the future? And if the obedience of one man, amid all human corrup tion, holds so efficient a recuperative influence over the race forever, why need we shrink from attributing a similar efficiency of preservation to the obedience of our first ancestor? Surely they who find such reclaiming efficacy in the life of the second Adam, may not forbid us to suppose that the sinless life of the first would have wrought those immeasurable results of blessing which the evangelical faith ascribes to it.

The principle on which these discussions of Mr. Bellows proceed, seems evidently to be, that the experience of sin affords to a moral being an element of useful culture. We have heard the idea from other sources. For ourselves, we discern not the smallest argument to relieve it of the repulsive aspect in which it must present itself to a mind of any religious sensibility. On the contrary, it seems at utter variance with much of our most familiar experience. What valuable discipline have we ever derived from this unclean source? What benefit accrues to our voluntary faculty from having learned to act in defiance of all truth and all authority? What improvement do the fine sensibilities of our nature derive from having been accustomed to pass by all that is grand and ennobling, and fasten on despicable and impure things? What conceivable addition is made to our intellectual wealth, or our intellectual power, by acts the very essence of which is to cast contempt upon all true wisdom? The whole tendency is plainly in the opposite direction, to stultify and debase the mind.

So far is this idea from the truth, that in fact we have no reason to

conclude that even the glorious influences of this redemptive system can ever entirely counteract the pernicious effects of sin. Who shall say that a soul long subjected to a process which tends powerfully to enfeeble it in all those elements of its nature which must constitute the strength of holy principle, will ever secure the harmonious and vigorous development of a perfectly sinless being. Who shall say that this protracted and extreme conflict with evil will not leave scars to mar the beauty, and wounds to impair the efficiency, even of those who are victorious in it; as the ordeal by fire, of old, left its ineffaceable marks in the scathed and callous flesh of those who successfully en. dured it.

Still farther; it may be alledged as a decisive fact of consciousness, that all the discipline we are conscious of having received, has been gained not only without the aid of sin, but in actual and vigorous opposition to all that would lead to it. It is in resisting temptation, not in yielding to it, that the soul confirms itself in good. It is the great law of our nature that affections and impulses of whatever kind grow by acting, not by being trampled on. Benevolence strengthens with each act it is allowed to dictate, and diminishes in power on each occasion that it is overruled and suppressed by selfish or covetous passion. Ambition towers higher and stands stronger with each victory that it gains over the love of justice or the sense of duty. It is not therefore by sinning that the soul ever gains the least of the valuable discipline which this probationary scene furnishes. Transgression tends only to future weakness and blindness: leaves only a mist before the eye and a palsy upon the arm of him who ventures beyond the sphere which wisdom and love assign as ours. All the development which the present system affords, is due to

trial, not to sin. "We count them blessed which endure." How entirely would sin have destroyed the beneficent results of a trial like that of Abraham; and become an occasion of everlasting regret!

But it is the life of Christ which lends the highest confirmation to the view we advocate. On the theory of those with whom we argue, here was the passage of a purely human being through this world utterly unstained with sin. And who will stand up to maintain that his affec tionate and ingenuous childhood,his thoughtful and auspicious youth, his lovely and most perfect manhood, had been improved in aught that lends beauty or dignity to human character by the smallest ex⚫perience of moral evil? It were ignominious to say it. Yet he shared each simple impulse of our common nature, and "was tempted in all points like as we are;" that he who would hold up before his mind the highest ideal of moral discipline and its benign results, might see that in all that process of culture which thus sanctifies and adorns our nature, sin has literally no part. Who that compares regenerate character in the fairest forms it assumes among men, with the character of Christ, can fail to see that, precious as are the spiritual economies which surround us in this system of fall and redemption, they fail utterly to elevate human character to any thing like that eminence of glory, to which it might have attained? Who can fail to see in the light of such an example, that sin only deforms our nature, only obstructs its fair and fine development, and causes the education which abounding grace yet achieves, to advance toward perfection with a slow and halting move. ment, and reach it at last on a far lower level, than that on which unfallen nature might have sped its rapid and graceful course to the same bright goal. Indeed there are to us few aspects of the incarnation

so interesting, as that which exhibits Deity assuming our nature, and guarding it from all corrupting con. tact with the evil which is in the world, for the purpose of showing to the race and the universe, a spe cimen of what human nature was "originally framed" to be;-and thus, of manifesting the value of the original law of holiness, the ear nestness with which that law was given, and the odiousness in every aspect of the sin which has caused actual human nature, even in the glory of its redeemed state, to fall so far below the divine ideal of it.

That system of influences then, under which our nature receives its development, owes no part of the benign culture it confers, no one of its glorious fruits, to the moral evil which it contains. Admitting all that can justly be claimed for it on the score of its tendency to illumi nate and establish the soul, we contend that precisely in proportion to the prevalence of sin in it, is the system deteriorated. The present has then simply taken the place of a more perfect and beautiful scheme, that would have conducted the race, through processes of trial pursued under better auspices, to happier results. Even as now each earnest and devout co-worker with God, in troduces into the system, influences of good which seem never to die out of it, we believe that Adam, had he but stood in his uprightness, might have made it one of unfailing power to develop the soul through scenes of more than Eden's loveliness, to a piety nobler, and more beautiful, than ever can bless it now. We do not indeed attribute any such results to a single act in its isolation; but we believe that the act in which he fell might have become the turning point of his character, and bound him to holiness as it really did to sin: that his character, once confirmed, might have become then as now, the model of character in his immediate offspring, and through

them have been perpetuated to unknown generations. All this is certainly possible; and though we may not affirm that precisely these results would have taken place, it is not to be questioned that some ap. proximation to them would have been actually realized. In the assured conviction that obedience would have brought to him, as to us, strength and blessedness; and that obedience then, before the gigantic power of sin had enslaved the world, would have been far more full than now of auspicious and delightful results, we contemplate the introduction of evil with unmingled pain. We think that no act which history records, is to be "deplored" like that which dropped this deadly drug into the very fountain of our being. With no wish, and no willingness, to denounce the errors of one whose candor both ancient and modern sys

tems seem to have conspired to mis. lead, we should not do justice to our most deliberate and cherished con. victions, did we not declare that, both in judgment, and in feeling, we stand at the widest remove from the views which he has felt at liberty to promulgate.

But our remarks have extended far beyond our design, and we must bring them to a conclusion. We have sought to show, because we sincerely believe, that from investi. gations pursued in the direction of those which have furnished us our subjects of remark, little good result is to be looked for. It would doubt. less be too much to expect that our reasonings should beget any such conviction in Mr. Bellows himself; and we have only to say therefore, that we shall await with interest and examine with respect the farther de. velopment which he promises.

IRELAND: HER SUFFERINGS AND THEIR REMEDY.*

WE approach this subject with pain and diffidence. Our sympa. thies are strongly excited for the miserable, degraded, starving people of Ireland. Not only are we drawn toward them by the common ties of humanity, but we (the wri. ter) confess also the fellow-feeling of consanguinity with the emerald

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Thoughts on the Poor-relief Bill for Ireland together with reflections on her miseries, their causes, and their remedies. By John, Earl of Shrewsbury. London: Chas. Dolman. 1847. pp. 84.

Irish Sufferers, and Anti-Irish Philosophers; their pledges and performances. By Eneas MacDonnell, Esq., Barrister-atlaw. London: John Ollivier. pp. 60. Reply to the Speech of the Archbishop of Dublin, against the Poor-relief (Ireland) Bill. By G, Poulett Scrope, Esq.,

isle, though the "white boy" of Tipperary, or the wild boy of Connaught, would hardly acknowledge the remotest kin with a descend. ant of the covenanting Scotchmen of Derry and Coleraine. Famine, which we have hitherto known only from the page of history, is a present reality. A nation of more than

M. P.,

pp. 41.

[blocks in formation]

Paddiana: or Scraps and Sketches of Irish life, present and past. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1847.

Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger: or an excursion through Ireland, in 1844 and 1845, for the purpose of personally investigating the condition of the poor. By A. Nicholson. New York: Baker & Scribner. pp. 456.

A Lecture on the antecedent causes of the Irish Famine in 1847, by the Rt. Rev. John Hughes, D. D.

Impressions of Ireland and the Irish. Philadelphia: Zieber & Co. 1845.

eight millions has been deprived of its great staple article of food, and thousands and tens of thousands have perished with hunger, or with the diseases consequent upon extreme privation. We have heard the cry of the famishing; our ears have caught the distant wailing of a once blithe and mirthful land; and we have even encountered in the streets of our own cities, the gaunt, hag gard forms of men, women and children who had fled from the jaws of famine at home to die of fever in a foreign alms-house. Our first duty on being informed of this distress, was to relieve it. It was no time to philosophize when men were starving. The citizens of the United States, from Maine to Louisiana, vied with each other in prompt and liberal contributions of food and clothing for the poor of Ireland. It was nothing that those poor are emigrating by thousands to our own shores; it was nothing that New York is called to share with Liverpool the burden of Irish pauperism and crime; it was nothing that those miserable, starving creatures, were of another nation, and under a gov. ernment which is in part responsible for their condition, and of another and an uncongenial religion, which has its part in the same fearful responsibility; it was enough that they were men, and that they were starving. Ship loads of breadstuffs were sent with the utmost despatch to relieve those whose necessities were most urgent; and every thing was done which sympathy and kindness could suggest to alleviate misery under the embarrassment of distance from the scene of suffering.

A year has elapsed, and the condition of Ireland is but little improved. Notwithstanding the abundant crops of 1847, notwithstanding the uninterrupted flow of charity from England and the United States, notwithstanding that famine, and pestilence, and emigration, have decimated the population in a single

year, there is in Ireland at this moment an amount of destitution and distress which we can hardly estimate. Evicted cottiers, discharged laborers, and a shiftless, ragged, famished peasantry, crowd the streets and highways of town and country, presenting a picture which we can not look upon even at the distance of three thousand miles, but with sadness and horror. Riots and mur. ders have become frequent in some districts, indicating the extremity to which a people naturally docile and patient under suffering, have been reduced, while the commer. cial embarrassments of England, the insufficiency of all the measures hitherto proposed for the relief of Ireland, the crippling of the energies and resources of the country by forced measures of relief in her extremity, the physical debility which famine has induced, and the general apprehension among medical men of the return of the cholera, cause us to fear that the day of Ireland's calamity has not yet passed.

It is difficult to take a sober review of a subject in which our sympathies are so deeply involved. It is difficult also for us at a distance, to solve the complicated problem of the present condition of Ireland, or to suggest a remedy for its evils which may possibly commend itself to those who are called to legislate upon them, as judicious and practicable. Yet there is no question in which we, as Americans and as philanthropists, can have a deeper interest. In Ireland we may study the workings of civil, social, and ecclesiastical systems, which we in this country have discarded; we may there trace not only in history, but in passing events, the effects of feudal tenures, of a non-resident government, of an established church, and of the Roman Catholic religion. But it is not only as a field of phi losophical inquiry, that Ireland invites attention. Her superabundant

population is discharging itself upon our shores to such an extent, that the improvement of the condition of the poor of Ireland is with us a practical question of vital importance. There is no people of Europe in whose welfare we have such a direct personal concern.

The actual condition of the country, in respect to population and resources, must be ascertained, before we can form an intelligent opinion as to the causes and the remedy of its present evils. The population of Ireland is about eight millions, which is, upon an average, two hundred and fifty to every square mile, or one individual for every two and a half acres. The number of families in the kingdom may be computed at one million and a half, twothirds of which live in what are called third and fourth class houses; i. e. "in mud cabins having only one room, and a better description of cottage, still built of mud, but having from two to four rooms and windows." "About fourteen million acres are under cultivation, which is but little more than one half the extent of soil under cultivation in England, and yet the proportion of agricultural laborers in Ireland to those in England is as five to two. We have here the phenomenon of a dense rural population-a population more dense than that of Eng. land with her vast commercial and manufacturing interests, and with her numerous great towns-upon a territory two-thirds of which is in a very imperfect state of cultivation, and the rest almost entirely unimproved. This density, for reasons which shall be given hereafter, is the result of a recent and rapid increase; the population having more than trebled in sixty years. Agricultural improvements and development of the natural resources of the country not having kept pace with the growth of population, and there

[blocks in formation]

being few manufactures, and comparatively little commerce and trade to employ her surplus, it has come to pass that there are at least "double the number of persons in Ireland that, with its existing means of production, it is able either fully to employ or to maintain in a moderate state of comfort.* Yet this population, by dint of pigs, potatoes, and the poor-house, has maintained not only its existence, but its rate of increase; has supported a burdensome religious establishment, and the more expensive church of its own preference; and has paid its weekly "rint" with exemplary patience, for O'Connell and "repale." But now the potatoes are gone, and with them the pigs, and the poor laws serve only to perpetuate the misery which they can not relieve. Happily, taxes levied at Conciliation Hall have gone with O'Connell himself.

Nothing could so strikingly ex. hibit the extreme poverty of the people as their dependence upon a single root for subsistence. The loss of one crop, and that by no means the most valuable, has reduced thousands of families to starvation. They have no resources out of their potato pits, and these can yield them no more sustenance than their peat bogs. They have not been accustomed to labor for wages, or to supply their wants through the usual channels of trade. The pig, that universal domestic animal among the Irish, which furnished manure for the little patch of potato-land, and was then sold or killed to pay the rent, lived like his owner upon the product of the soil to which he contributed so much, and now that his occupation's gone," he has thrown up his perpetual lease, and abandoned his domicil.t What must

66

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »