Joseph A. Benton Collection

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Joseph A. Benton came to California in 1849, during the gold rush. He first settled in Sacramento, where he founded the First Congregation Church in 1851. He was a pastor for many years as well as a professor of Biblical literature at Pacific Theological Seminary. This collection consists of correspondences and sermons dating from 1848 to 1893. Please note that historical materials in the Gold Rush Collections may include viewpoints and values that are not consistent with the values of the California State Library or the State of California and may be considered offensive. Materials must be viewed in the context of the relevant time period but views are in no way endorsed by the State Library. The California State Library’s mission is to provide credible information services to all Californians and, as such, the content of historical materials should be transcribed as it appears in the original document.

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of that waveless sea, whose black waters flow around the world, begin to rise; how good it is to feel that we are built upon the hard, imperishable rock!

A structure of this sort, or of any sort, in fact, is not simply so much material put together; it is a thing of character; it speaks a language; it sets forth ideas. How it may be with pure Spirits we know not, but with us mixed beings there is almost an irrepressible desire to work into the outward; to mold & shape matter; to express ideas in outward forms; to see the idea in exterior figure & out-ward effect, that lay once impalpable in the mind. Hence the arts & their history – poetry, painting, sculp-ture, architecture, invention, & all the works men busy themselves with. The cultivated man scarcely lives who has not some ideal that has been, or is to be, put into outward expression. And the poet has it truly – "All are architects of fate" &c [etc.]. The useful the beautiful, & the good, are the ideas sought to be embodied, expressed, & subserved by all

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true art, & true labor. And men are never so highly gratified as when their ideas have found a fit expression in the material world. Before they please only as phantasms, & castles in the air.

That part of our nature that disposes fits us to be us to the subjects of religion, or our religious nature, with its basis in the natural conscience, has ideas & notions that seek outward expression. They have always found it. So soon as God had a chosen people he gave them outward symbols & expressions. This longing of their nature was gratified. The people under Moses were allowed to represent almost all ideas in matter; but that of God was excepted for obvious reasons. Himself Jehovah held up in his naked, sole, unmixed spirituality. Yet Israel journeyed behind a pillar of cloud & fire; & they followed a tabernacle that was a gem of beauty. So soon as peace & wealth were theirs, the idea of the sublime & beautiful in religion blossomed out into the gorgeous & magnificent temple of Solomon

In truth, it is may be considered one of the proofs of the religion of the Bible as true, that nothing else claiming

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to be religion has ever so naturally, so nobly, so usefully, & so beautifully fostered, educated & developed men's religious ideas & the fit forms & modes of expressing them in matter. The religious temples of the heathen are commonly distortions; & even those of cultivated Greece expressed little beyond the sensuous in art & beauty. They lacked everything to inspire devotion, & melt to tears.

As for atheism, where are its builded [built] mon-uments & temples? what has it done to show itself the results of the highest style of taste & reasoning? & what to show itself adapted to secure the happiness of our nature? Nought! Simply nought! Bald base, blank nothingness that it was, it is, & will ever be! Skepticism, too, how shall it teach itself thro. [through] man's religious nature, & develop itself into the outward, & take on form & shape in stone & marble? What sort of a structure would that be which should represent it? Now should we make a temple of doubt; unless one could be built so as to be in doubt with itself whether it were standing or falling, whether it were matter, or dreamy ether?

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This modern, fashionable, pantheism, also, what sort of structures does it rear, & will it rear for worship? Or Can it have one that will fitly symbolize it? It cannot; till it shall have a pantheon for all the beasts of the Earth, & fishes of the sea, & fowls of the air, & specimens of the races of men. This is impossible; &, therefore, pantheism is a monstrosity as a religion impracticable & monstrous; & the nearest approach it can make to a religious temple for itself, is, to buy up a strolling menagerie!

So, as atheism, skepticism, pantheism, can not have holy temples; can express nothing by them; can give man's religious nature no play through them; they are cheats & delusions. The religious nature abhors & rejects them, as nature ever abhors a vac-uum. But Christianity shows its adaptation to our manhood & our nature, by not only fostering & cherishing all true ideas of religion in the soul, but by developing them, & giving them play into the outward, & letting them express themselves in temples, monuments, & shrines; in utterances of music, & forms of devotion.

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When their circumstances allow the full expres-sion, a people's house of worship expresses much of their character, & many of their ch ideas as connected with religion & worship. Their build-ing speaks for them. It is a fixed utterance which they have made. If however it fails to satisfy them, then it is not, in all respects, the true utterance of their hearts; & but it proclaims also their poverty, or their disagreement, or something else, that has clogged & hindered the full & complete expression.

This building is to be out utterance to men of our view of God's demands on us, our sense of propriety, our taste, & our judgm-ent – as modified by our ability, the state of the community, & so on; since as it is a building into the outward of our religious natures, which thus seek a home for themselves, in a world where so much of life & labor is, and where are such alternations of sorrow & joy,

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