24 AUGUST 1861, Page 16

PIETISM AND PIETY.

TT is easy to understand the moral diseases which spring from the .I. unmeasured intensity of religions impressions—for the super-

natural world is a great and awful world. But how are we to ac- count for the moral diseases which spring from the intolerable petti.

tiness which religion seems to nourish, if not to cause, in a very large class of minds ? No shrieks and spasms of anarchical revivalism seem to us so unutterably oppressive and unintelligible as the paltry coxcombry of modern pietism—the artificial airs and graces with which so-called religious circles address themselves to the task of fascinating "the world," and luring it into the precints of salvation.

The normal influence of faith would be, one would think—certainly ought to be—to teach a clearer apprehension of what is great and what is small, what is real and what is only apparent, what is endur- ing as eternity and what is ephemeral. Instead of this, the pietistic school appear to think that they follow St. Paul's example of " be- coming all things to all men" to win souls, by emulating the poverty, the half-sincerity, the general paltriness of the shallowest conven-

tional life, in their bids for new disciples of Christ. They appear to appropriate not the strongest, but the feeblest and falsest parts of secular life, in order, we suppose, to persuade their converts that in embracing the life of faith there is no need either to abandon the shallow conceptions of this world, or to grasp the stern and deep realities of the other.

Look only at the class of literature which you encounter on the table of any professedly "religions" bookseller. You will find it far more astounding, far more indicative of paradoxical and painful anomalies, than any of the confessedly abnormal phenomena of reli- gious revivals. Entering the other day a shop of this reputation, we examined a few of the expedients by which the "serious-minded" pro.

pose to arousetheslumbering consciences of unawakened men. At least, we conclude that the eccentric spiritual allurements to which we

allude are meant for the exterior world, as they would seem to be

hardly necessary for the interior circles of souls already safely landed in the true creed. Yet, as far as we can learn, the only people whom these little secular artifices really attract are those who from this point of view did not need them, and who, nevertheless, greedily snatch and swallow these little delicate morsels of worldly vanity prepared for the unconverted, with a fearful joy, as the nearest ap- proach to the natural world in which they dare indulge. They say to themselves that as they are fishing for worldly men, they must give a worldly spice to their bait; but those who really enjoy this hybrid flavour are their own brother-anglers, while the intended prey are repelled far more by the bait than by the hook itself.

Nor can we wonder or regret that it is so, when we see what the expedients are by which the pietists propose to convince the spirits of men that there is a life deeper than this life, the mighty power of which has been revealed to man. The first on which we alighted was a sixpenny pack of cards containing a dozen "friendly inquiries," with a duplicate copy of each inquiry. Here, for example, is No. 10 :

FRIENDLY INQUIRIES.

Are You Happy ?

No.10. (Thru over.) relics disappeared in the Niemen, vast hosts have always asks, " Where are you going r and, on the reverse side, tells of On "turning over" as directed, we found several texts : "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understand- ing."—Prov. iii. 13. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."—Psalm cxi. 10. "Reader, are you thus wise and happy ?" No. 12 asks, in like manner, "Do you want a friend?" and, on turn- ing over, we are favoured with a text warning us not to put trust in princes; and another text referring us to a truer friend, with an italicized exhortation to the reader to love Him. Similarly, No. 9 course of the straight and narrow way. This detestable little melo- dramatic contrivance for flirting, as we may say, with the careless eye of the world, by awakening curiosity with a question in big letters on one side of a card, and .making us turn over in order to .gratify it, is typical of the whole series of spiritual artifices by which the pietists hope to steal a march on the devil. The notion in all of them is this : that if you can gild the religious pill with a little trivial finesse, you may get a man of the world, here and there, to swallow a text whole, which is likely enough; what is forgotten being that the text, as the centre and aim of this very small intrigue, will become distasteful and unmeaning, if not ridiculous. It is, in fact, an effort to adapt the arts of puffing to the spiritual world, being exactly analogous to the questions so freely paraded at the railway stations, " Do you use rhorley's food for cattle ?" " Have you seen Biondi!' ?" Now do these people really believe that these vulgar little blisters to human curio- sity can do anything to arouse the spiritual yearnings of the heart for God ? Do they suppose that John the Baptist would have per- mitted his disciples—we speak not in mockery, but in the most earnest simplicity—to entrap people into visiting him by posting up energetic inquiries in the streets of Jerusalem, "Have you been into the wilderness ?" "Have vou seen the hermit who lives on locusts and wild honey ?" And if it be mere profanity to talk of such things, why is this kind of trickery less ignoble now than it would have been then

Again in the same religious repository we found a box of "Scrip- ture Night-lights," by the Rev. B. Power, M.A., with a picture on each of them of one of Child's night-lamps,—a wick burning in a little saucer of oil. These " Scripture Night-lights" consist of twelve little dissertations on twelve little words, " Never," "Also," " Upon," " Yet," "Lest," " Ye," " Sown," " And," " But," "Any," " How," " All." Of course the bait here is to excite curiosity as to how these small words are to be made the text of an evangelical discourse. The solution is very simple. A text is chosen which happens to con- tain the word, and agreat deal of pains is taken to emphasize the i function of the word in that particular text; and this is all. Thus the night-light " Any" is elicited from the text, "Neither shall ANY man pluck them out of my father's hand." The rest may be im- agined. Mr. Power's "night-lights" are chiefly wick, and if there be twelve virgins who would trust to them, we fear they are all foolish virgins.

But even Mr. Power has successful rivals. Mr. G. Forlong far sur- passes him in the novelties of his spiritual buffoonery. It has been his object, apparently, to write something very like a comic Testa- ment; and he apparently, at all events succeeded in being grossly profane. He writes one of a series of very dear "penny letter tracts," and calls it " What I Was and What I Am." This is the nature of the per- formance:

WHAT I WAS, AND WHAT I AM.

" Dear reader, I once resided with 2 Tim. iii. 4, and walked in Eph. ii. 2, and my continual conversation at that time is still recorded in Eph. ii. & heard one day that an inheritance had been purchased for me, and a de- scription of it reached me ; you will find it at 1 Peter i. 4. "One who resides in Heb. iv. 14, had purchased it, and paid an extraordinary price for it; but, to say truth, I did not believe this report, as I was entirely unacquainted with the MAN, and long experience had convinced me that strangers NEVER gave favours through love alone, and friends seldom gave any favours that cost ranch.

" However, I called at 2 Tim. iii. 16, as my own prospects at Eph. ii. 12 were as bad as they could be.

" I found the house I sought for at 2 Cor. v. 1, and the invitations to it, which you will see pat up at Isa. lv. 1, 2, and by John at vii. 37, are wonderfully inviting to the poor and needy. " The house has only one door, and it was some time before I saw the door at John x. 9 "My permanent address will now be 2 Cor. v. 1, but if you call any clay at Heb. iv. 16, you will meet me and many others ; we are daily in the habit of meeting there.

"If you call, attend to what the servant says at Luke xiv. 22, and you may DEPEND upon what that servant says."

Is this indeed honest pietism, or is it a disguised scoff ? Whichever

k it be, no attempt could be more successful to empty faith of all its meaning. Honest secularism, with all its desolation, is a thousand times nearer to true faith than such spiritual pantomime as this. If iety be the state of mind which, through realizing most vividly our revealed relation to the unseen world, gives us the deepest insight into this, nothing can be more widely removed from it than the pietism which sacrifices the essence in order to foist the words of revelation into reluctant minds. It rises out of notions closely allied with the Sepoy conceit that Christianity can be introduced into men by a trick of human manoeuvring. Forgetting that the Word of God is a two-edged sword which must pierce deep when it enters at all, the pietists try to administer its words, as they would give an unpleasant medicine to children disguised in sweetmeats. Surely, when the party which is par excellence considered the repre- sentative of evangelical piety in England takes to unreal grimace of this sort by way of being "all things to all men," it is high time they had a fresh baptism in the spirit of the old Puritanism.