The Life of Benjamin Franklin

"I don't know what to say to that, Ben; certainly his power and wisdom must be very great too."

"Yes, father, they are very great indeed: but still they seem but subject to his greater benevolence which enlists them in its service and constantly gives them its own delightful work to do. For example, father, the wisdom and power of the Deity can do any thing, but his benevolence takes care that they shall do nothing but for good. The power and wisdom of the Deity could have made changes both in the earth and heavens widely different from their present state. They could, for instance, have placed the sun a great deal farther off or a great deal nearer to us. But then in the first case we should have been frozen to icicles, and in the second scorched to cinders. The power of the Deity could have given a tenfold force to the winds, but then no tree could have stood on the land, and no ship could have sailed on the seas. The power of the Deity could also have made changes as great in all other parts of nature; it could have made every fish as monstrous as a whale, every bird dreadful as the condor, every beast as vast as the elephant, and every tree as big as a mountain. But then it must strike every one that these changes would all have been utterly for the worse, rendering these noble parts of nature comparatively useless to us.—I say the power of the Deity could have done all this, and might have so done but for his benevolence, which would not allow such discords, but has, on the contrary, established all things on a scale of the exactest harmony with the convenience and happiness of man. Now, for example, father, the sun, though placed at an enormous distance from us, is placed at the very distance he should be for all the important purposes of light and heat; so that the earth and waters, neither frozen nor burnt, enjoy the temperature fittest for life and vegetation. Now the meadows are covered with grass; the fields with corn; the trees with leaves and fruits; presenting a spectacle of universal beauty and plenty, feasting all senses and gladdening all hearts; while man, the favoured lord of all, looking around him amidst the mingled singing of birds and skipping of beasts and leaping of fishes, is struck with wonder at the beauteous scenery, and gratefully acknowledges that benevolence is the darling attribute of the Deity."

"I thank God, my son, for giving you wisdom to reason in this way. But what is still your inference from all this, as to true religion?"

"Why, my dear father, my inference is still in confirmation of my first answer to your question relative to the true religion, that it consists in our imitating the Deity in his goodness. Every wise parent, wishing to allure his children to any particular virtue, is careful to set them the fairest examples of the same, as knowing that example is more powerful than precept. Now since the Deity, throughout all his works, so invariably employs his great power and wisdom as the ministers of his benevolence to make his creatures happy, what can this be for but an example to us; teaching that if we wish to please him—the true end of all religion—we must imitate him in his moral goodness, which if we would but all do as steadily as he does, we should recall the golden age, and convert this world into Paradise.

"All this looks very fair, Ben; but yet after all what are we to do without Faith?"

"Why, father, as to Faith, I cannot say; not knowing much about it. But this I can say, that I am afraid of any substitutes to the moral character of the Deity. In short, sir, I don't love the fig-leaf."

"Fig-leaf! I don't understand you, child: what do you mean by the fig-leaf?"

"Why, father, we read in the Bible that soon as Adam had lost that true image of the Deity, his Moral Goodness, instead of striving to recover it again, he went and sewed fig-leaves together to cover himself with."

"Stick to the point, child."

"I am to the point, father. I mean to say that as Adam sought a vain fig-leaf covering, rather than the imitation of the Deity in moral goodness, so his posterity have ever since been fond of running after fig-leaf substitutes."

"Aye! well I should be glad to hear you explain a little on that head, Ben."

"Father, I don't pretend to explain a subject I don't understand, but I find in Plutarch's Lives and the Heathen Antiquities, which I read in your old divinity library, and which no doubt give a true account of religion among the ancients, that when they were troubled on account of their crimes, they do not seem once to have thought of conciliating the Deity by reformation, and by acts of benevolence and goodness to be like him. No, they appear to have been too much enamoured of lust, and pride, and revenge, to relish moral goodness; such lessons were too much against the grain. But still something must be done to appease the Deity. Well then, since they could not sum up courage enough to attempt it by imitating his goodness, they would try it by coaxing his vanity—they would build him grand temples; and make him mighty sacrifices; and rich offerings. This I am told, father, was their fig-leaf."

"Why this, I fear, Ben, is a true bill against the poor Heathens."

"Well, I am sure, father, the Jews were equally fond of the fig-leaf; as their own countrymen, the Prophets, are constantly charging them. Justice, Mercy, and Truth had, it seems, no charms for them. They must have fig-leaf substitutes, such as tythings of mint, anise, and cummmin, and making 'long prayers in the streets,' and deep groanings with 'disfigured faces in the synagogues.' If they but did all this, then surely they must be Abraham's children even though they devoured widows' houses."

Here good old Josias groaned.

"Yes, father," continued Ben, "and it were well if the rage for the fig-leaf stopped with the Jews and Heathens; but the Christians are just as fond of substitutes that may save them the labour of imitating the Deity in his moral goodness. It is true, the old Jewish hobbies, mint, anise, and cummin, are not the hobbies of Christians; but still, father, you are not to suppose that they are to be disheartened for all that. Oh no. They have got a hobby worth all of them put together—they have got Faith."

Here good old Josias began to darken; and looking at Ben with great solemnity, said, "I am afraid, my son, you do not treat this great article of our holy religion with sufficient reverence."

"My dear father," replied Ben eagerly, "I mean not the least reflection on Faith, but solely on those hypocrites who abuse it to countenance their vices and crimes."

"O then, if that be your aim, go on, Ben, go on."

"Well, sir, as I was saying, not only the Jews and Heathens, but the Christians also have their fig-leaf substitutes for Moral Goodness. Because Christ has said that so great is the Divine Clemency, that if even the worst of men will but have faith in it so as to repent and amend their lives by the golden law of 'love and good works,' they should be saved, many lazy Christians are fond of overlooking those excellent conditions 'Love and Good works,' which constitute the moral image of the Deity, and fix upon the word Faith for their salvation."

"Well, but child, do you make no account of faith?"

"None, father, as a fig-leaf cloak of immorality."

"But is not faith a great virtue in itself, and a qualification for heaven?"

"I think not, sir; I look on faith but as a mean to beget that moral goodness, which, to me, appears to be the only qualification for Heaven."

"I am astonished, child, to hear you say that faith is not a virtue in itself."

"Why, father, the Bible says for me in a thousand places. The Bible says that faith without good works is dead."

"But does not the Bible, in a thousand places, say that without faith no man can please God?"

"Yes, father, and for the best reason in the world; for who can ever hope to please the Deity without his moral image? and who would ever put himself to the trouble to cultivate the virtues which form that image, unless he had a belief that they were indispensible to the perfection and happiness of his nature?"

"So then, you look on faith as no virtue in itself, and good for nothing unless it exalt men to the likeness of God?"

"Yes, sir, as good for nothing unless it exalt us to the likeness of God—nay, as worse; as utterly vile and hypocritical."

"And perhaps you view in the same light the Imputed Righteousness, and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper."

"Yes, father, faith, imputed righteousness, sacraments, prayers, sermons; all, all I consider as mere barren fig-leaves which will yield no good unless they ripen into the fruits of Benevolence and Good Works."

"Well, Ben, 'tis well that you have taken a turn to the printing business; for I don't think, child, that if you had studied divinity, as your uncle Ben and myself once wished, you would ever have got a licence to preach."

"No, father, I know that well enough; I know that many who think themselves mighty good Christians, are for getting to heaven on easier terms than imitating the Deity in his moral goodness. To them, faith and imputed righteousness, and sacraments, and sour looks, are very convenient things. With a good stock of these they can easily manage matters so as to make a little morality go a great way. But I am thinking they will have to back out of this error, otherwise they will make as bad a hand of their barren faith, as the poor Virginia negroes do of their boasted freedom."

"God's mercy, child, what do you mean by that?"

"Why, father, I am told that the Virginia negroes, like our faith-mongers, fond of ease and glad of soft substitutes to hard duties, are continually sighing for freedom; 'O if they had but freedom! if they had but freedom! how happy should they be! They should not then be obliged to work any more. Freedom would do every thing for them. Freedom would spread soft beds for them, and heap their tables with roast pigs, squealing out, 'come and eat me.' Freedom would give them fine jackets, and rivers of grog, and mountains of segars and tobacco, without their sweating for it.' Well, by and by, they get their freedom; perhaps by running away from their masters. And now see what great things has freedom done for them. Why, as it is out of the question to think of work now they are free, they must give themselves up like gentlemen, to visiting, sleeping, and pastime. In a little time the curses of hunger and nakedness drive them to stealing and house-breaking, for which their backs are ploughed up at whipping-posts, or their necks snapped under the gallows! and all this because they must needs live easier than by honest labour, which would have crowned their days with character and comfort. So, father, it is, most exactly so it is, with too many of our Faith-mongers. They have not courage to practise those exalted virtues that would give them the moral likeness of the Deity. Oh no: they must get to heaven in some easier way. They have heard great things of faith. Faith, they are told, has done wonders for other people; why not for them? Accordingly they fall to work and after many a hard throe of fanaticism, they conceit they have got faith sure enough. And now they are happy. Like the poor Virginia negroes, they are clear of all moral working now: thank God they can get to heaven without it; yes, and may take some indulgences, by the way, into the bargain. If, as jovial fellows, they should waste their time and family substance in drinking rum and smoking tobacco, where's the harm, an't they sound believers? If they should, as merchants, sand their sugar, or water their molasses, what great matter is that? Don't they keep up family prayer? If, as men of honour, they should accept a challenge, and receive a shot in a duel, what of that? They have only to send for a priest, and take the sacrament. Thus, father, as freedom has proved the ruin of many a lazy Virginian negro, so I am afraid that such faith as this has made many an hypocritical christian ten times more a child of the devil than he was before."

Good old Josias, who, while Ben was speaking at this rate, had appeared much agitated, sometimes frowning, sometimes smiling, here replied, with a deep sigh, "Yes, Ben, this is all too true to be denied: and a sad thing it is that mankind should be so ready, as you observe, to go to heaven in any other way than by imitating God in his moral likeness. But I rejoice in hope of you, my son, that painting this lamentable depravity in such strong colours as you do, you will ever act on wiser and more magnanimous principles."

"Father, I don't affect to be better than other young men, yet I think I can safely say, that if I could get to heaven by playing the hypocrite I would not, while I have it in my choice to go thither by acquiring the virtues that would give me a resemblance to God. For to say nothing of the exceeding honour of acquiring even the faintest resemblance of him, nor yet of the immense happiness which it must afford hereafter, I find that even here, and young as I am, the least step towards it, affords a greater pleasure than any thing else; indeed I find that there is so much more pleasure in getting knowledge to resemble the Creator, than in living in ignorance to resemble brutes; so much more pleasure in benevolence and doing good to resemble him, than in hate and doing harm to resemble demons, that I hope I shall always have wisdom and fortitude sufficient even for my own sake, to spend my life in getting all the useful knowledge, and in doing all the little good I possibly can."

"God Almighty confirm my son in the wise resolutions which his grace has enabled him thus early to form!"

"Yes, father, and besides all this, when I look towards futurity; when I consider the nature of that felicity which exists in heaven; that it is a felicity flowing from the smiles of the Deity on those excellent spirits whom his own admonitions have adorned with the virtues that resemble himself; that the more perfect their virtues, the brighter will be his smiles upon them, with correspondent emanations of bliss that may, for aught we know, be for ever enlarged with their ever enlarging understandings and affections; I say, father, when I have it in my choice to attain to all this in a way so pleasant and honourable as that of imitating the Deity in wisdom and GOODNESS, should I not be worse than mad to decline it on such terms, and prefer substitutes that would tolerate me in ignorance and vice?"

"Yes, child, I think you would be mad indeed."

"Yes, father, especially when it is recollected, that if the ignorant and vicious could, with all their pains, find out substitutes that would serve as passports to heaven, they could not rationally expect a hearty welcome there. For as the Deity delights in the wise and good, because they resemble him in those qualities which render him so amiable and happy, and would render all his creatures so too; so he must proportionably abhor the stupid and vicious, because deformed with qualities diametrically opposite to his own, and tending to make both themselves and others most vile and miserable."

"This is awfully true, Ben; for the Bible tells us, that the wicked are an abomination to the Lord; but that the righteous are his delight."

"Yes, father, and this is the language not only of the Bible, which is, perhaps, the grand class book of the Deity, but it is also the language of his first or horn book, I mean reason, which teaches, that if 'there be a God, and that there is all nature cries aloud through all her works, he must delight in virtue,' because most clearly conducive to the perfection of mankind; which must be the chief aim and glory of the Deity in creating them. And for the same reason he must abhor vice, because tending to the disgrace and destruction of his creatures. Hence, father, I think it follows as clearly as a demonstration in mathematics, that if it were possible for bad men, through faith, imputed righteousness, or any other leaf-covering, to get to Paradise, so far from meeting with any thing like cordiality from the Deity, they would be struck speechless at sight of their horrible dissimilarity to him. For while he delights above all things in giving life, and the duellist glories in destroying it; while he delights in heaping his creatures with good things, and the gambler triumphs in stripping them; while he delights in seeing love and smiles among brethren, and the slanderer in promoting strifes and hatreds; while he delights in exalting the intellectual and moral faculties to the highest degree of heavenly wisdom and virtue, and the drunkard delights in polluting and degrading both below the brutes; what cordiality can ever subsist between such opposite natures? Can infinite purity and benevolence behold such monsters with complacency, or could they in his presence otherwise than be filled with intolerable pain and anguish, and fly away as weak-eyed owls from the blaze of the meridian sun?"

"Well, Ben, as I said before, I am richly rewarded for having drawn you into this conversation about religion; your language indeed is not always the language of the scriptures; neither do you rest your hopes, as I could have wished, on the Redeemer; but still your idea in placing our qualification for heaven in resembling God in moral goodness, is truly evangelical, and I hope you will one day become a great christian."

"I thank you, father, for your good wishes; but I am afraid I shall never be the christian you wish me to be."

"What, not a christian!"

"No, father, at least not in the name; but in the nature I hope to become a christian. And now, father, as we part to-morrow, and there is a strong presentiment on my mind that it may be a long time before we meet again, I beg you to believe of me that I shall never lose sight of my great obligations to an active pursuit of knowledge and usefulness. This, if persevered in, will give me some humble resemblance of the great Author of my being in loving and doing all the good I can to mankind. And then, if I live, I hope, my dear father, I shall give you the joy to see realized some of the fond expectations you have formed of me. And if I should die, I shall die in hope of meeting you in some better world, where you will no more be alarmed for my welfare, nor I grieved to see you conflicting with age and labour and sorrow: but where we may see in each other all that we can conceive of what we call Angels, and in scenes of undeserved splendour, dwell with those enlightened and benevolent spirits, whose conversation and perfect virtues, will for ever delight us. And where, to crown all, we shall perhaps, at times, be permitted to see that unutterable Being, whose disinterested goodness was the spring of all these felicities."

Thus ended this curious dialogue, between one of the most amiable parents, and one of the most acute and sagacious youths that our country, or perhaps any other has ever produced.

CHAPTER XVIII

The three days of Ben's promised stay with his father being expired, the next morning he embraced his parents and embarked a second time for Philadelphia, but with a much lighter heart than before, because he now left home with his parents' blessing, which they gave him the more willingly as from the dark sanctified frown on poor James' brow they saw in him no disposition towards reconciliation.

The vessel happening to touch at Newport, Ben gladly took that opportunity to visit his favourite brother John, who received him with great joy. John was always of the mind that Ben would one day or other become a great man; "he was so vastly fond," he said, "of his book."

And when he saw the elegant size that Ben's person had now attained, and also his fine mind-illuminated face and manly wit, he was so proud of him that he could not rest until he had introduced him to all his friends. Among the rest was a gentleman of the name of Vernon, who was so pleased with Ben during an evening's visit at his brother's, that he gave him an order on a man in Pennsylvania for thirty pounds, which he begged he would collect for him. Ben readily accepted the order, not without being secretly pleased that nature had given him a face which this stranger had so readily credited with thirty pounds.

Caressed by his brother John and by his brother John's friends, Ben often thought that if he were called on to point out the time in his whole life that had been spent more pleasantly than the rest, he would, without hesitation, pitch on this his three days' visit to Newport.

But alas! he has soon brought to cry out with the poet,

"The brightest things beneath the sky,Yield but a glimmering light;We should suspect some danger nigh,Where we possess delight."

His thirty pound order from Vernon, was at first ranked among his dear honied delights enjoyed at Newport; but it soon presented, as we shall see, a roughsting. This however, was but a flea bite in comparison of that mortal wound he was within an ace of receiving from this same Newport trip. The story is this: Among a considerable cargo of live lumber which they took on board for Philadelphia, were three females, a couple of gay young damsels, and a grave old Quaker lady. Following the natural bent of his disposition, Ben paid great attention to the old Quaker. Fortunate was it for him that he did; for in consequence of it she took a motherly interest in his welfare that saved him from a very ugly scrape. Perceiving that he was getting rather too fond of the two young women above, she drew him aside one day, and with the looks and speech of a mother, said, "Young man, I am in pain for thee: thou hast no parent to watch over thy conduct, and thou seemest to be quite ignorant of the world and the snares to which youth is exposed. I pray thee rely upon what I tell thee.—These are women of bad character; I perceive it in all their actions. If thou dost not take care they will lead thee into danger!!"

As he appeared at first not to think so ill of them as she did, the old lady related of them many things she had seen and heard, and which had escaped his attention, but which convinced him she was in the right. He thanked her for such good advice, and promised to follow it.

On their arrival at New-York the girls told him where they lived, and invited him to come and see them. Their eyes kindled such a glow along his youthful veins that he was on the point of melting into consent. But the motherly advice of his old quaker friend happily coming to his aid, revived his wavering virtue, and fixed him in the resolution, though much against the grain, not to go. It was a most blessed thing for him that he did not; for the captain missing a silver spoon and some other things from the cabin, and knowing these women to be prostitutes, procured a search warrant, and finding his goods in their possession, had them brought to the whipping-post.

As God would have it, Ben happened to fall in with the constable and crowd who were taking them to whip. He would fain have run off. But there was a drawing of sympathy towards them which he could not resist: so on he went with the rest. He said afterwards that it was well he did: for when he beheld these poor devils tied up to the stake, and also their sweet faces distorted with terror and pain, and heard their piteous screams under the strokes of the cowhide on their bleeding backs, he could not help melting into tears, at the same time saying to himself—"now had I but yielded to the allurements of these poor creatures, and made myself an accessary to their crimes and sufferings, what would now be my feelings!"

From the happy escape which he had thus made through the seasonable advice of the good old quaker lady he learned that acts of this sort hold the first place on the list of charities: and entered it as a resolution on his journal that he would imitate it and do all in his power to open the eyes of all, but especially of the young, to a timely sense of the follies and dangers that beset them. How well he kept his promise, will, 'tis likely, gentle reader, be remembered by thousands when you and I are forgotten.

CHAPTER XIX