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Wars would be the consequence, with all their accompaniments armor, horsemanship, means of attacking and defending cities, ships, etc. Then these warlike exploits must be recorded and perpetuated. Happily the country abounded with the materials of writing. The great deeds of kings and warriors could be engraven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever. The hardest and most beautiful granite, in inexhaustible quantity, was perfectly accessible, while the religion had provided a learned class, who had leisure and skill to hold the pen of ready writers. In short, such facilities, operating on a portion of the human race highly endowed, originally very susceptible to impression, and undoubtedly migrating with many advantages from the oldest seat of civilization, may be sufficient to account for the speedy and extraordinary growth of Egyptian art and civilization, and render it unnecessary to suppose that the "old empire," or the earliest dynasties of Manetho, belonged to the "middle ages of mankind." At least, the phenomena do not render such an hypothesis indispensable.

ARTICLE VI.

THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ELEMENT OF RELIGION.

By Rev. James W. Ward, Abington, Mass.

SYSTEMS of religion very dissimilar in character have, at different times and places, prevailed in the world. They have all, however, been alike in one particular, viz. the profession of two grand elemental principles — an internal and an external one; and the difference between them has arisen mainly from the different proportion in which these two elements have been combined. It is true in the moral as in the natural world, that the same elements, when united in different proportions, produce compounds whose characteristics are not only unlike, but even opposite to each other. As alcohol and sugar, the one poisonous and the other nutritious, are formed, by combining in different proportions the same original elements (carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen), so paganism and Christianity, the one a baseless fabric of hope, and the other the power of God unto salvation, are formed by the union, in different proportions, of internalism and externalism, or faith and form. These two elements possess each its

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own peculiar characteristics, and are easily distinguishable the one from the other. They differ in their nature, the one being spiritual and the other material. As all religion is action of some kind — the one is the action of the soul, and the other that of the body. The one consists in prayers, penances, prostrations, baptisms, bands, cowls, mosques, temples — all the work of the outward man and all pertaining to that bodily exercise which profiteth nothing; while the other consists in penitence, faith, hope, love, and other internal exercises which, when directed to their proper objects and duly combined, constitute that godliness which is profitable to all things, having the promise of two worlds, the present and the coming. They differ, too, in their permanence; the one being transient, and the other abiding forever. The altars on which the patriarchs sacrificed the victim and the incense; the temples of Solomon and Herod, in which kings, priests, and people paid their devotions; the linen ephod and the breastplate of the high priest; the show-bread and the ark of the testimony; the externals of the Jewish economy, have long since passed away. But the spiritual emotions,the reverence, love, and joy which these outward acts and objects tended to awaken and deepen, still live, and will live as long as the redeemed souls of patriarchs and prophets shall continue to bow and worship around the eternal throne. Whatever acts, then, are performed by the bodily organs, and must cease to be performed when the body crumbles to decay, belong to externalism. But those which are the product of the mind, and may be produced wherever mind exists, whether connected with the body or not, whether in this mixed state of being, or in a purely spiritual condition, pertain to the internal element of religion. The two are as radically distinct as an animal of earth and an angel of heaven; but in our present state they live together and form one perfect whole, just as do the body and soul of man.

Into every system of religion which has appeared among men, both these elements have gained admission. The Christian religion is unquestionably the most purely spiritual of any that has ever been offered to the world. And yet Christianity has her external forms, her church organizations, her eucharist, her baptismal rite, her sacred temples, her gathered congregations, and her sabbath festivals. Still more emphatically all this was true of the Mosaic dispensation. Its sacrificial offerings, its utensils of service, its priestly garments, were all prescribed with the most punctilious particularity; so that it would almost seem as if the acceptance of the worshipper with God, depended on the age of the lamb he offered, and the very salvation of a tribe, on the number of stones in the high priest's breastplate. And

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yet all this precision in the external element of religion was the appointment of Heaven, and as really required by God as the homage of the heart. The discharge of the outward service was the only manifested proof of the performance of the inward; an evidence not, it is true, perfectly infallible, but the very best which the nature of the case allowed. And if, from the Jewish ritual, we turn to the systems of pagan worship, we shall find that the temple, the altar, the holocaust, and the image, have nearly exiled all idea of spirit alike from the mode and the object of worship; thus apparently rendering both the being adored and the adoration itself purely material. Still however there is even in paganism, where we should least expect to find it, a spiritual element remaining. In most cases, the idolator does not pay his worship to the carved wood or chiselled stone, but to the living spirit which, as he thinks, inhabits it. And to this spirit, a deity of his own, the product of his hopes and fears, but still a spirit, though possessed of like passions with himself, he pays a semi-spiritual service. He renders it fear and reverence, and reposes in it a partial, if not a perfect faith. And even where the degradation is so complete that the worshipper venerates the material image, he still exercises a species of confidence in his idol-god. He offers it not only a bleeding victim (it may be a lamb from his sheepcote, or a son from his hearthstone), but also the unseen yet more precious homage of blinded faith. And as the spiritual element enters, in some slight degree, into the grossest forms of paganism, so also, in a much fuller measure, is it found in Mohammedanism, Judaism, and the various types of Christianity. In fact, both these elements seem absolutely necessary to the very existence of every form of religion among men. As man is a twofold being, possessing both a soul and body, reason teaches that a system of religion for man should be suited to his compound nature. Its rules and precepts, its duties and services, should contemplate the improvement of his whole character. Its hopes and fears, its rewards and penalties should appeal to both parts of his double manhood. So is it with the religion of nature, which requires him to discipline both the soul and the body, and rewards and punishes with both corporeal and spiritual pains and pleasures. And with the religion of nature, all true systems of revealed religion must perfectly harmonize, for the author of one is the author of both. A religion destitute of either the internal or external element, could find no abiding place among men. Without the former, it might answer for irrational animals; without the latter, for incorporeal angels. But both are needed for man. If either could be dispensed with, it must be the external one. And We would not assert but that, were man a solitary being, holding no VOL. VI. No. 24.

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connection with his fellow men, he might commune with his God in the spirit, without the utterance of words or the form of prayer. He might then, perhaps, worship God with the blue heavens for his only temple, and a penitent and filial heart for his only altar of sacrifice. But he does not dwell thus alone. He is a social being and must have a social religion. And for such a religion, an outward service is absolutely requisite. There must be a place and form of worship, an assembly of the people, and a church with its officers and sacraments. If a social religion is to abide with men, it must require not only an inward faith but an outward profession. The conditions of its promise must be, "he that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved." "If thou shalt believe in thy heart and confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, thou shalt be saved." (Rom. 10: 9.) Not, it may be, because the confession of the mouth, or the baptismal rite is, in all cases, absolutely necessary to individual salvation, but because they are necessary to the very existence of a social religion in the world, and the highest honor of its author among men. And not only are both elements essential to the life but also to the growth of any system of religion. Religion must be addressed to the eyes or ears before it can be received into the heart. It must consequently have its organized externality of propagandism. How can they hear without a preacher? How can they preach except they be sent? It must have its recorded principles, its active agents to take and promulgate them, its corporate bodies for sustaining the laborers, and its schools of doctrine to discipline and bring into action young men who, when they attempt to demolish delusive schemes of salvation and rear on their ruins a saving plan of hope, will shame neither themselves nor their cause. When a host goes forth to battle, it needs for success not only a courageous heart within, but also outward equipments, ammunition and arms. So if truth would wage successful war with error, she must take not only her internal spirit of love, but also her external panoply, her preachers and colporteurs, her Bibles and Tracts, and the whole array of moral machinery with which she is furnished for her conflict. In this matter Romanism is far wiser than Protestantism, or rather she makes her wisdom far more practical. To a great extent she affiliates her members, young and old, demanding of each a small weekly contribution. It may be only a penny, or a half-penny even, but grains make the globe; and from a source so seemingly insignificant, there would arise, in a Catholic country with a population equal to our own, a yearly revenue to the church of more than $10,000,000. She gathers into her College of the Propaganda, at Rome, young men from every nation under heaven, from India, China,

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and Japan, from Ethiopia and Greenland, initiates them into the mysteries of her religion, and prepares them, on their return to their native lands, to exert a commanding influence on their own countrymen. She employs extensive printing establishments to publish, in the vari ous languages and dialects of men, tracts, catechisms and brief tems of doctrine, to be gratuitously circulated by her missionaries. Nor does she overlook what might at first seem insignificant means of success. She employs the talents of some of the most eminent artists of Rome, that city of sculpture and painting, in originating lithographs and engravings, illustrative of the doctrines and practices of her church. And these attractive pictures she scatters over the face of the earth, thus teaching, through the eye, thousands who have never learned the names or powers of alphabetic characters. Had Protestantism a tithe of her wisdom and zeal, with a religion so inherently diffusive, and commending itself, by its native truth, to the hearts and consciences of all men, she would soon plant her standard on every hill-top and in every vale, and all nations would welcome her peaceful reign.

For aggression, then, the external as well as the internal element is imperatively demanded. Like doctrine and practice, they are both absolutely necessary to the vitality, energy, and perfection of a religious system. Still they do not stand on the same ground, nor occupy an equally commanding position. Each has its own place; and it is a matter of no trifling consequence as to which predominates in our system, for on this point hinges the character of the system itself. The facts by which the appropriate place of each must be determined, are to be found in the nature of the elements themselves, and have been already considered. They are these: first, the one element has respect to the soul of man; the other, to his body; and second, the one is confined, in its action, to time; the other lives through eternity. As, then, the soul and eternity infinitely transcend, in importance, the body and time, so the permanent element of religion should stand infinitely above the temporary. The latter occupies its proper place only when it is subordinate and subservient to the former. In fact, it derives all its value from the relation it sustains and the support it yields to the spiritual element. It has, in itself, no intrinsic excellence. Like the moon, it shines only by borrowed light. Just so far as the ceremonials of the sabbath service are adapted to deepen the impres sion of divine truth on the mind, and bring the soul into conjunction and harmony with God, just so far they answer their legitimate end, and fulfil their appropriate office. But when the lofty dome of the cathedral vies with the arch of heaven, exciting feelings of sublime

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