The publication of THE RADICAL is secured for one year, at least. We propose that it shall live to increase, both in stature and wisdom, for many years. We have counted the cost. We count on you, friends. We count on ourselves. WE MEAN WORK FOR ALL. To the exclusion of other articles of interest, which have been furnished us, we publish this month the admirable Address by R. W. EMERSON, which has for many years been before the public, in his volume of "Miscellanies." This Address has a significance bearing upon the religious discussions of to-day, which cannot be over-estimated. It should be in the hands of all thoughtful people, to be not only read, but studied. Mr. Emerson's writings are doubtless best known to the young men and women, who may be said to have grown up since this Address was delivered to the School at Cambridge, by his later Essays; principally, by those contained in "Conduct of Life." We have been surprised, on many occasions, to learn how few people, young or old, have read this Address, or even known of it. If its appearance in THE RADICAL shall lead any to a further reading of "Miscellanies," and of "Essays," we shall accomplish the double purpose we have in view by its publication. TERMS: Single Subscriptions, Two Dollars per annum. SINGLE COPIES, 20 CTS. Communications and Subscriptions should be addressed to "The Radical," No. 15 Cornhill, Boston; or, to S. H. Morse, Haverhill, Mass. The last address is for the present preferred. W. F. BROWN & CO., STEAM BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS, No. 15, CORNHILL, BOSTON. Books, Pamphlets, Catalogues, Pofters, Billheads, Circulars, Cards, etc. V. Sonnets. Pride - The Guests. D. A. WASSON. VI. Enlightenments - Charity - Company - Providence..... JOHN WEISS 33 34 49 59 63 64 65 66 68 Liberal arrangements will be made with those who wish to act as Agents in canvassing for THE Radical. Persons interested in the circulation of THE RADICAL can offer their good will by sending us the names of those to whom it might be well. to mail specimen numbers. TERMS: Single Subscriptions, Two Dollars per annum. SINGLE COPIES, 20 CTS. Communications and Subscriptions should be addressed to “The Radical," No. 15 Cornhill, Boston; or, to S. H. Morse, Haverhill, Mass. The latter address is for the present preferred. We commence in this number of THE RARICAL, a series of "DISCOURSES CONCENING THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF," by Rev. Samuel Johnson, which cannot fail to secure a careful reading. The first of these Discourses was published in the Friend of Progress. We re-publish it from that Magazine, in order to furnish our readers the series complete. Gift of Son. Ers. Sumner, (F6.6. 1830) THE RADICAL. NOVEMBER, 1865. DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. IT BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, Minister of the Free Church at Lynn, Mass. I. PAST AND PRESENT. T is startling to reflect on what foundations the Christian World is for the most part content to rest its Religious Assurance. Beliefs without which the soul is an orphan and idiotic, are held to have no other valid guarantee then a revelation, conceived to have been "supernaturally" attested, at a certain epoch in ancient times. The truth of what it most needs to find true concerning God, Duty, Immortality, is staked upon the infallibility of a Book and the accuracy of a Tradition. Religion stands or falls with the miracles of . Jesus of Nazareth, as the "Christ of God." Or in one way or another, the certainties vital to spiritual being are transmuted into mere historical heirlooms results of "instituted religion." They are not (it is insisted) reached by natural organic processes of the soul, but fall into it from without, through some supernaturally gifted official Person or Race. They are glimmers of reflected, secondary light. Christianity is a graft set in human nature by such Person and Race, and kept alive by their transmitted forces. The most popular Orthodox preacher in America confesses that God is known to him only as an impalpable effluence from the person of Jesus. And a distinguished theological professor of the Unitarian sect instructs his pupils that their "idea of God is a Hebrew tradition;" that "the Moral Law is mere Judaism over again without its sanction;" and that Religious Belief must rest either "on the Bible or the Mathematics:" in other words, that the only valid foundation for such Belief, as long as scientific certainty is not attained, is an "authoritative record." He further inti 74 mates that such scientific certainty, however possible in the future, This resolution of Religion into a Tradition, undermines its foundations in the Spiritual Nature. What should we think of a mental philosophy, which should affirm that we derive the consciousness of our existence from the knowledge either that the Pilgrim Fathers believed in theirs, or that the Anglo-Saxon race were positively assured of theirs some centuries ago, or that our common ancestor Adam believed in his, beyond a possibility of doubt? We all comprehend that this consciousness is involved in the very structure of our being; that we accept our existence on the testimony of our rational faculties; and that any statement of the like consciousness by others, in past or present time, appeals to our present experience of the fact that we do now exist, and could not even be apprehended at all by us, but for that experience; in a word, that the mental constitution is the ground of this consciousness, and the veracity of our faculties our authority for trusting it. We are fully aware that to trace its origin in us to a mere tradition from the Past would be to ignore the foundations of all knowledge whatever. Our Spiritual Now our nature is spiritual as well as intellectual. Constitution perpetually bears witness of spiritual things. Relations to God, to Duty, to Eternal Life, are involved in its very structure. And so we have a spiritual consciousness of these relations as we have a mental consciousness of our own existence and all statements of them, in past or present time, grow out of this structure and out of * I am aware that this alternative was presented by its author, not absolutely, but as the basis of preaching. But it must of course be maintained as the law of individual belief, or it fails as the law for the preacher. For why should human nature in the pew be bound to receive truth on different grounds from human nature in the pulpit? Or how can a preacher honestly present "the Bible or the Mathematics" as the sole alternative authorities for belief before men, who yet rejects this dilemma in his own consciousness, and finds a better sanction than either in his spiritual intuitions? Or is it proposed that the American Protestant Pulpit should assume -count the people incapable of receiving the light the Roman Catholic principle and liberty revealed to the learned, or of realizing the faith vouchsafed to the eccle- and so justify itself in preaching one philosophy of Authority and siastical official believing another! If we would not attribute to the author above quoted dispositions and imaginations like these, we must do him the justice to suppose that he presented as the basis of preaching what he accepted as the basis of belief. |