REFORM AND THE DOCTRINE OF NECESSITY.
By Editor
THERE is a class of so-called reformers who are in reality fatalists, and the number is increasing very fast. The Spiritualists are taking this position. Infidels and Universalists have advocated the view that man is a creature governed by motive as irresistible as the locomotive is impelled by steam. In 1829 a debate was held in Cincinnati, Ohio, between Alexander Campbell and Robert Owen, an extract from which was recently given in the Review. On account of something published by Mr. Owen, Mr. Campbell published an appendix to the debate, in which he speaks of this doctrine as advocated by Mr. Owen; as this species of infidelity is often put forth by those who justify wrong, and deny human responsibility, we give the following extract from Mr. Campbell's appendix; it is a complete refutation of the theory. "The materialist, or philosophic necessarian, who says that the earth is one immense prison, and the laws of nature so many jailers, and all mankind prisoners, bound in chains which cannot be dissevered, or to speak without a figure, who says that the actions of all are so unavoidable as the ebbing and flowing of the sea, or the waxing and waning of the moon, can never rationally be a reformer. For what could he reform? He could not pretend to reform nature, nor any of its laws. On Mr. Owen's principles, the present state of the world is perfectly natural and unavoidable. Nature in the regular operations of cause and effect has issued in his trinity of evils, religion, matrimony and private property. Now if nature has gone wrong, and man, without free agency, has landed in religion, matrimony and private property, how unphilosophical is the philosopher of circumstances, who would preach up the necessity of a change in society, when he cannot change necessity!! "It is a climax in the eloquence of absurdity which Mr. Owen is aspiring after. He preaches that all things are just as they must be. The uncontrollable laws of nature have issued in the present system of things; and yet, he would have us to make things as they ought not to be, that is, he would have us to abolish religion, matrimony and private property, which his own eternal and unchanging laws of nature, in their necessary and uncontrollable operations, have originated and established. On Mr. Owen's theory, all things are natural and unavoidable. It is mother nature working by her own laws, and yet he would make us all matricides!!! If Mr. Owen is not stranded here, there is not a shoal in the universe. From all eternity, according to Mr. Owen's theory, particles of matter have been in incessant agitation, working themselves up into ten thousand times ten thousand forms. A few of them at one time produced a Nimrod, a Pharaoh, a Moses, a Cyrus, a Nebuchadnezzar, an Alexander, a Julius Cæsar, a Buonaparte, a Paul, a Robert Owen, and a few such manufacturers of human character. Not one of them could help being born, nor being such characters, nor producing such effects on society. Blind and omnipotent nature cast them forth as she does so much lava from a crater of a volcano. She tied them fast in adamantine chains of exorable fate, and gave them no more liberty to act than a peak of Teneriffe to emigrate to New Harmony. Yet, surpassing strange as it is, this singular piece of inanimated matter, called Robert Owen, which required old nature in her laboratory six thousand years to produce, would now teach us to rebel, and become seditious against the queen of fate, and would have us claim and take the liberty from nature of forming human beings to our own mind, and of checking the powers of nature, and in fact, of binding her fast in her own cords, so that we shall abolish religion, matrimony and private property; put queen nature into jail at New Harmony, and never let her out on parol of honor as long as grass grows or water runs. "Mr. Owen is, without knowing it, or intending it, the greatest advocate of free agency I have ever known, for he would have the present generation to adopt such arrangements and so to modify the circumstances that surround them as to prevent the goddess nature from having it in her power ever to make another religious animal, another wedding, or to use the words mine and thine. And yet the chorus of his new music77is, that we have no more liberty to act than Gibraltar has to perch herself on the state house of Ohio. Such a philosopher is my good-natured friend Mr. Owen. "Questions in arithmetic may be differently stated, and give the same result. Error may be exposed from every point of the compass, but from some points more clearly than others. We shall now make the mechanics understand the sophistry of Mr. Owen. Suppose a carpenter's square or rule is not what it purports to be, will not every measurement he makes with it be erroneous, and all his conclusions be false? But how shall we test the pretensions of the square? We may compare it with many others, but they may all be incorrect. We may prove it by geometry. This is an infallible test; but there are only a few geometricians, and none but they can understand the proof. If the square is still disputed, how will its pretensions be settled to the comprehensions of the community who are interested in the matter? We want some plain, palpable, common-sense way of deciding the matter. What shall it be? This way perhaps: all will agree that all the substances, all the superficies of all things in the world are not perfect squares or straight sided figures. All will agree that there are some crooked or irregular figures, superficies or substances in the world. Now if any instrument purporting to be a square or straight edge should always give the same result, represent all things alike, make every superfice a perfect square, every surface a smooth surface, and every figure a straight sided figure, all would agree that such a rule or square was a false test, too flexible pliant or otherwise defective. Such results would condemn the instrument in the estimation of every human being who could think at all. "Now for the application. Mr. Owen invented a measure, rule or instrument for deciding the qualities of human actions. This rule, he says, is an infallible one. We compare it with all others, but he says they are incorrect. We are then compelled to test it by the abstract science of mind; but few understand this science. What then shall we do? The community must have some way of deciding this controversy. We shall give it to them in this similitude before us. All will agree that all actions are not alike moral, useful, worthy of admiration or gratitude and of imitation; in a word, that all actions are not alike good and commendable. All will also agree that whatever rule will make all actions alike good, commendable, worthy of admiration, gratitude or imitation, is a false rule. So far the analogy is perfect and unexceptionable. Mr. Owen's rule makes every figure a perfect square or every action alike commendable, and, indeed, alike useful. His proof is very short and simple too. It is this: Nature is always right. She never errs. The laws or acts of nature oblige all men to act as they do. The laws of nature are all necessary laws. The laws of nature brought Mr. Owen half around the globe to meet me on the stage of debate in Cincinnati. They carried him down the Ohio. Necessity compelled Mr. Owen to plead the cause of infidelity, and me to plead the cause of Christianity. We both obey nature, and both our actions are perfect squares, are perfectly right, equally moral and commendable, when measured by the same rule—that is, Mr. Owen's rule. If Mr. Owen had made a hundred infidels and I a hundred Christians, by our debate, it would have been equally commendable, good and useful. Every Christian is necessarily so, every infidel is necessarily an infidel. Nature cannot go wrong, and therefore Mr. Owen's rule is an infallible one. If she produces two effects diametrically opposite, at war with each other, it is all right, moral, useful and good. He is only the sinner who counteracts nature. But Mr. Owen's rule makes himself and me equal sinners. He wishes to prevent nature from making Christians by throwing circumstances in her way. She laughs at him, however, and throws his circumstances back into his face, asking him who made circumstances!! But he has not discernment to feel her satire, or her irony. He laughs too, and thinks not that he has been the cause of all her mirth. He thinks that nature laughs with him, not at him. But to this conclusion the rational must come: that whatsoever rule gives the same decision on two cases, diametrically opposite, must be as false as a square that makes a straight line and a curve equal straight lines." J. H. W. OBJECTION TO ENTIRE CONSECRATION.
I'm afraid, says one, that the idea of entire holiness will have the effect to lift up and exalt the mind, and when one has attained to this standard as he supposes, he will not be willing to see and confess his faults, and will try to justify himself on the ground that he is a holy person. Now dearly beloved brother, I see you judge in the matter from what you have seen in the past. You have seen a people who took just this course, but your mistake lies in this: you do not take into consideration the fact that those who have fallen into this dreadful state of morals are not subject to the perfect law of God; they live at random, while they profess to be holy. It is very painful to see an enlightened person, with his foot upon God's holy Sabbath, preaching holiness. It seems like jargon. It is like a discord in music. It pains the cultivated ear. And so with any other sin. He who lives in the practice of sin, in the breach of that holy law of God, is ill fitted to be an advocate of holiness. It is an inconsistency, a blot. But here we have published in our ears the message of the third angel, the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, coming from Jehovah, a celestial message, which is to prepare a peculiar people, who must get the victory over the beast, and all the errors pertaining thereunto. Here is a perfect standard given us, and the faith of Jesus, with the ministry of angels to aid us in attaining to that holiness, without which we cannot stand in the trying time foretold by the prophets, the time of the end, when many shall be purified and made white, as the work of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary closes; and he that is holy must be holy still, while he that is unholy will then find it too late to become holy; mercy will then have passed away, and what then will be the situation of him who falls short of the perfect rule? But to illustrate what is meant by a full and entire consecration of one's self to God, we will suppose that:
A. is a man of immense wealth, and he is too a person of force and ability, and truth, and he is frequently engaged in purchasing old, dilapidated, worn-out farms, and by his skill and force and ample means, he brings them up into the highest state of cultivation. Soon as he gets a clear title of a farm, he sets carpenters at work erecting proper buildings, he hires men to rebuild the fences, he starts ploughs at work, which thoroughly and deeply loosen the soil, unaccustomed to such thorough treatment, and soon those fields once barren and sterile, or damp and cold, and uninviting, now smile with verdant and luxuriant crops and herbage, while herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, rejoice in the wonderful change. Every one knows that if A. buys a farm he will immediately set to work recruiting it; all feel sure what A. will do with such exhausted, ruined lands. Now suppose A. agrees with C. to buy his farm, and gets a bond to that effect, think you he will set his men and his means at work, on that bonded estate? Not he. Or suppose he gets a mortgage, or any claim of such a kind upon an estate, think you he would set to work upon such a prospect? Not he indeed! No he will wait till C. gives him a clear warranty deed, recorded, an indisputable title; then you will see affairs begin to move. Now here is the idea: God will have a clear deed of the sinner's heart, his talents, his money, his all, before he will work for him in power in this matter: it must be without reserve, perfect, entire. Do this, dear brethren, give all to God, place all upon the altar; you need a thorough work done; deed it all cheerfully, voluntarily, and then see what God will do for you.