Volume I Part 3 (2/2)

I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the Goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously thro' a long life, I have no doubt of its Continuance in the next, though without the smallest conceit of meriting such Goodness.

It is amusing to compare this letter written in America to the President of Yale College with what Franklin had previously written to Madame Brillon, when she objected to the marriage of her daughter to William Temple Franklin partly on the score of religious incompatibility: ”These are my ideas. In each Religion, there are certain essential things, and there are others that are only Forms and Modes; just as a loaf of Sugar may happen to be wrapped up in either brown, or white or blue Paper, tied up with either red or yellow hempen or worsted twine. In every instance the essential thing is the sugar itself. Now the essentials of a good Religion consist, it seems to me, in these 5 Articles viz.” Then ensues a statement of practically the same fundamental tenets as those that he afterwards laid before Ezra Stiles; except that, when he wrote to Madame Brillon, he was not certain whether we should be rewarded or punished according to our deserts in this life or in the life to come. He then adds: ”These Essentials are found in both your Religion and ours, the differences are only Paper and Twine.”

Dr. Priestley, in his _Autobiography_, laments that a man of Dr. Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and should also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers. Franklin acknowledged to this friend that he had not given as much attention as he ought to have done to the evidences of Christianity, and, at his request, Priestley recommended to him several books on the subject, which he does not seem to have read. As Priestley himself rejected the doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, Original Sin and Miraculous Inspiration, and considered Christ to be ”a mere man,” though divinely commissioned and a.s.sisted, his fitness for the office of winning Franklin over to Christianity might well have been questioned. He belonged to the same category as Dr. Richard Price, that other warm friend of Franklin, who came into Franklin's mind when Sir John Pringle asked him whether he knew where he could go to hear a preacher of _rational_ Christianity.

Franklin, it pa.s.ses without saying, had his laugh at Religion as he had at everything else at times. ”Some have observed,” he says of the clergy in his _Apology for Printers_, ”that 'tis a fruitful Topic, and the easiest to be witty upon of all others.” For the earliest outbreak of his humor on the subject, we are indebted to William Temple Franklin. Young Benjamin found the long graces uttered by his father before and after meals rather tedious. ”I think, father,” said he one day after the provisions for the winter had been salted, ”if you were to say grace over the whole cask, once for all, it would be a vast saving of time.” Some of his later jests, at the expense of Religion, read as if they were conceived at the period, upon which his vow of silence called a halt, when, according to the _Autobiography_, he was getting into the habit of prattling, punning and joking, which only made him acceptable to trifling company. Others, however, have the earmarks of his humorous spirit in its more noteworthy manifestations. When he was off on his military excursion against the Indians, his command had for its chaplain a zealous Presbyterian minister, Mr. Beatty, who complained to him that the men did not generally attend his prayers and exhortations. When they enlisted, they were promised, besides pay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually served out to them, half in the morning, and the other half in the evening.

I observ'd [says Franklin in the _Autobiography_] they were as punctual in attending to receive it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, ”It is, perhaps, below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it out and only just after prayers, you would have them all about you.” He liked the tho't, undertook the office, and, with the help of a few hands to measure out the liquor, executed it to satisfaction, and never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for non-attendance on divine service.

The efficacy itself of prayer also elicited some bantering comments from him. Alluding to the prayers offered up in New England for the reduction of Louisburg, he wrote to John Franklin:

Some seem to think forts are as easy taken as snuff.

Father Moody's prayers look tolerably modest. You have a fast and prayer day for that purpose; in which I compute five hundred thousand pet.i.tions were offered up to the same effect in New England, which added to the pet.i.tions of every family morning and evening, multiplied by the number of days since January 25th, make forty-five millions of prayers; which, set against the prayers of a few priests in the garrison, to the Virgin Mary, give a vast balance in your favour.

If you do not succeed, I fear I shall have but an indifferent opinion of Presbyterian prayers in such cases, as long as I live. Indeed, in attacking strong towns I should have more dependence on _works_, than on _faith_; for, like the kingdom of heaven, they are to be taken by force and violence; and in a French garrison I suppose there are devils of that kind, that they are not to be cast out by prayers and fasting, unless it be by their own fasting for want of provisions.

We can readily imagine that more than one mirth-provoking letter like this from the pen of Franklin pa.s.sed into the general circulation of Colonial humor.

As for the humorist, he did not fail to return to the subject a little later on, when Louisburg, after being bandied about between English and French control, was again in the hands of the English. ”I congratulate you,” he said to Jane Mecom, ”on the conquest of Cape Breton, and hope as your people took it by praying, the first time, you will now pray that it may never be given up again, which you then forgot.”

In his _A Letter from China_, he makes the sailor, who is supposed to be narrating his experiences in China, say that he asked his Chinese master why they did not go to church to pray, as was done in Europe, and was answered that they paid the priests to pray for them that they might stay at home, and mind their business, and that it would be a folly to pay others for praying, and then go and do the praying themselves, and that the more work they did, while the priests prayed, the better able they were to pay them well for praying.

After expressing his regret in a letter from New York to Colonel Henry Bouquet, the hero of the battle of Bushy Run, that because of business he could enjoy so little of the conversation of that gallant officer at Philadelphia, he exclaimed: ”How happy are the Folks in Heaven, who, 'tis said, have nothing to do, but to talk with one another, except now and then a little Singing & Drinking of Aqua Vitae.”

His leniency in relation to the Sabbath also vented itself in a jocose letter to Jared Ingersoll:

I should be glad to know what it is that distinguishes Connecticut religion from common religion. Communicate, if you please, some of these particulars that you think will amuse me as a virtuoso. When I travelled in Flanders, I thought of our excessively strict observation of Sunday; and that a man could hardly travel on that day among you upon his lawful occasions without hazard of punishment; while, where I was, every one travelled, if he pleased, or diverted himself in any other way; and in the afternoon both high and low went to the play or the opera, where there was plenty of singing, fiddling and dancing. I looked around for G.o.d's judgments, but saw no signs of them. The cities were well built and full of inhabitants, the markets filled with plenty, the people well-favoured and well clothed, the fields well tilled, the cattle fat and strong, the fences, houses, and windows all in repair, and no Old Tenor (paper money) anywhere in the country; which would almost make one suspect that the Deity is not so angry at that offence as a New England Justice.

The joke sometimes turns up when we are least expecting it, if it can be said that there is ever a time when a flash of wit or humor from Franklin surprises us. In a letter to Richard Price, asking him for a list of good books, such as were most proper to inculcate principles of sound religion and just government, he informs Price that, a new town in Ma.s.sachusetts having done him the honor to name itself after him, and proposing to build a steeple to their meeting-house, if he would give them a bell, he had advised the sparing themselves the expense of a steeple for the present and that they would accept of books instead of a bell; ”sense being preferable to sound.” There is a gleam of the same sort in his revised version of the Lord's Prayer; for, almost incredible as the fact is, his irreverent hand tinkered even with this most sacred of human pet.i.tions. ”Our Liturgy,” he said, ”uses neither the _Debtors_ of Matthew, nor the _indebted_ of Luke, but instead of them speaks of _those that trespa.s.s against us_. Perhaps the Considering it as a Christian Duty to forgive Debtors, was by the Compilers thought an inconvenient Idea in a trading Nation.” Sometimes his humor is so delicate and subtle that even acute intellects, without a keen sense of the ludicrous, mistake it all for labored gravity. This is true of his modernized version of part of the first chapter of Job, where, for ill.u.s.tration, for the words, ”But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face,” he suggests the following: ”Try him;--only withdraw your favor, turn him out of his places, and withhold his pensions, and you will soon find him in the opposition.”

It is a remarkable fact that more than one celebrated man of letters has accepted this exquisite parody as a serious intrusion by Franklin into a reformatory field for which he was unfitted. We dare say that, if Franklin could have antic.i.p.ated such a result, he would have experienced a degree of pleasure in excess of even that which he was in the habit of feeling when he had successfully pa.s.sed off his Parable against Persecution on some one as an extract from the Bible.

There is undeniably a lack of reality, a certain sort of hollowness about his religious views. When we tap them, a sound, as of an empty cask, comes back to us. They are distinguished by very much the same want of spontaneous, instinctive feeling, the same artificial cast, the same falsetto note as his system of moral practice and his _Art of Virtue_.

Indeed, to a very great degree they are but features of his system of morals. That he ever gave any sincere credence to the written creed of his youth, with its graded Pantheon of G.o.ds, is, of course, inconceivable. This was a mere academic and transitional conceit, inspired by the first youthful impulses of his recession from extreme irreligion to lukewarm acquiescence in accepted religious conventions. Nor can we say that his belief in a single Deity was much more genuine or vital, confidently as he professed to commit himself to the wisdom and goodness of this Deity. There is nothing in his writings, full of well-rounded thanksgiving and praise as they sometimes are, to justify the conclusion that to him G.o.d was anything more than the personification, more or less abstract, of those cosmic forces, with which he was so conversant, and of those altruistic promptings of the human heart, of which he himself was such a beneficent example. The Fatherhood of G.o.d was a pa.s.sive conception to which his mind was conducted almost solely by his active, ever-present sense of the Brotherhood of Man.

But it is no greater misconception to think of Franklin as a Christian than to think of him as a scoffer. He was no scoffer. A laugh or a smile for some ceremonious or extravagant feature of religion he had at times, as we have seen, but no laugh or smile except such as can be reconciled with a substantial measure of genuine religious good-faith. It was never any part of his purpose to decry Religion, to undermine its influence, or to weaken its props. He was too full of the scientific spirit of speculation and distrust, he was too practical and worldly-wise to readily surrender the right of private judgment, or to give himself over to any form of truly devotional fervor, but he had entirely too keen an appreciation of the practical value of religion in restraining human vices and pa.s.sions and promoting human benevolence to have any disposition to destroy or impair its sway. The motive of his existence was not to unsettle men, nor to cast them adrift, nor to hold out to them novel projects of self-improvement, not rooted in fixed human prepossessions and experience, but to discipline them, to free them from social selfishness, to keep them in subjection to all the salutary restraints, which the past had shown to be good for them.

Of these restraints, he knew that those imposed by Religion were among the most potent, and to Religion, therefore, he adhered, if for no other reason, because it was the most helpful ally of human morality, and of the munic.i.p.al ordinances by which human morality is enforced. From what he said to Lord Kames, it seems that he regarded his _Art of Virtue_ as a supplement to Religion, though really with more truth it might be a.s.serted that it was Religion which was the supplement to his _Art of Virtue_.

Christians [he said] are directed to have faith in Christ, as the effectual means of obtaining the change they desire. It may, when sufficiently strong, be effectual with many: for a full opinion, that a Teacher is infinitely wise, good, and powerful, and that he will certainly reward and punish the obedient and disobedient, must give great weight to his precepts, and make them much more attended to by his disciples.

But many have this faith in so weak a degree, that it does not produce the effect. Our _Art of Virtue_ may, therefore, be of great service to those whose faith is unhappily not so strong, and may come in aid of its weakness.

How little Franklin was inclined to undervalue Religion as a support of good conduct is, among other things, shown by the concern which he occasionally expressed in his letters, when he was abroad, that his wife and daughter should not be slack in attending divine wors.h.i.+p. One of his letters to Sally of this nature we have already quoted. Another to his wife expresses the hope that Sally ”continues to love going to Church,” and states that he would have her read over and over again the Whole Duty of Man and the Lady's Library. In another letter to his wife, he says: ”You spent your Sunday very well, but I think you should go oftner to Church.”

Fortified as he was by his _Art of Virtue_, he felt that church attendance was but a matter of secondary importance for him, but he was eager that his wife and daughter, who had not acquired the habitude of the virtues as he had, should not neglect the old immemorial aids to rect.i.tude.

Even to the levity, with which religious topics might be handled, he set distinct limits. He had no objection to a good-humored joke at the expense of their superficial aspects even if it was a little broad, but with malignant or derisive attacks upon religion he had no sympathy whatever. In the _Autobiography_, he denounces with manifest sincerity, as a wicked travesty, the doggerel version of the Bible, composed by Dr. Brown, who kept the inn, eight or ten miles from Burlington, at which he lodged overnight, on his first journey from Boston to Philadelphia. Nothing that he ever wrote is wiser or sounder than the letter which he addressed to a friend, dissuading him from publis.h.i.+ng a ”piece,” impugning the Doctrine of a Special Providence. In its utilitarian conceptions of religion and virtue, in the emphasis placed by it upon habit as the best security for righteous conduct, in the cautious respect that it manifests for the general sentiments of mankind on religious subjects, we have a concise revelation of his whole att.i.tude towards Religion, when he was turning his face seriously towards it.

By the Argument it contains against the Doctrines of a particular Providence [he said], tho' you allow a general Providence, you strike at the Foundation of all Religion. For without the Belief of a Providence, that takes Cognizance of, guards, and guides, and may favour particular Persons, there is no Motive to Wors.h.i.+p a Deity, to fear its Displeasure, or to pray for its Protection. I will not enter into any Discussion of your Principles, tho' you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my Opinion, that, though your Reasonings are subtile, and may prevail with some Readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general Sentiments of Mankind on that Subject, and the Consequence of printing this Piece will be, a great deal of Odium drawn upon yourself, Mischief to you, and no Benefit to others. He that spits against the Wind, spits in his own Face.

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