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“Religious Education.”
A LETTER TO
CARDINAL MANNING.
PART I.
BY
London :
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
��6 JO 7/
KT555
“Religious Education.”
May it Please Your Eminence,—I have read in the
Newcastle Daily Chronicle the report of your sermon,
delivered at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
on Saturday, September 26th, 1885. From your interest
ing biography, venerable age, and exalted position in the
Romish Church, your utterances challenge criticism.
Whether they challenge criticism from any intrinsic con
siderations I leave your readers and mine to decide.
Recognising that you and I respectively stand at the
very antagonising poles of modern tendency and thought,
I will make an effort to come within touch of you, in order
to, as far as possible, realise your position before I assail it.
Your attitude I recognise to be a complete anachronism:
it belongs to the time when Rufus founded a castle on
the banks of the Tyne, not to the generation in which
Stephenson spanned that river with an iron bridge.
Your Eminence lays stress upon the special solicitud(e
heaven took in children, although only the children of
Jews, before the Christian dispensation, and then you
exclaim:—
How much more, then, are yours—your children that are born
again by water and the Holy Ghost, and are made children of God
in a higher sense than the children of Israel—members of Christ,
heirs of the eternal heirship of the Son of God, of the kingdom of
heaven ?
Am I to infer from the hackneyed and half-meaningless
pulpit jargon of this passage that God likes Jew children
well, but Christian children better ? I have been told
by God, on the authority of his own book, that he is
“ no respecter of personsbut you apparently know
better. Has the unchangeable God changed his mind
and given your Eminence the advantage of a private
revelation, prefaced by : “ Don’t mind my old book : I
�4
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. ’
am a much older and wiser God than I was when I wrote
that”? My children, your Eminence, are neither Jewish
nor Christian : perhaps you would be courteous enough
to say how he regards them. If there be a God who,
on account of the faith of its parents, would even com
paratively disfavour (as you allege he does) an innocent
child, I am glad I am only an Agnostic, and cannot,
by searching, find out such a God ; for, were I a Theist,
and could find him out, I should denounce him as a
malignant fiend and curse him to his face. Thrust aside
your theological tantrums for a moment, Cardinal Man
ning, and tell me if you are not ashamed of this mean
little godling you worship, who, before'he determines to
what degree he will love an innocent baby, takes into
consideration whether its parents are Jewish or Christian.
One of the reasons you allege why God loves the
Christian baby more than the Jewish one is, that the
former is “ born again by water and the Holy Ghost.”
Pray be good enough to step down for a moment from
your ranting theological perch to the firm ground of
common sense, and tell me, in the name of all that is
explicable, what this means. “ Born again by water and
the Holy Ghost” ! You know as well as I do that this
expression is as utterly nonsensical as if your Eminence
had said : “ Born again of a paving-stone and of the
fire-shovel.” Your dupes ask you for bread, and you
give them a stone; they ask for an idea, and you give
them words. Your Church conducts much of its service
in Latin, to impose upon the ignorant and keep them
ignorant; and your priesthood take care that their English
is as unintelligible as their Latin, the threadbare and labo
riously nonsensical platitudes of pontifical jargon. The
“fools and blind ” are awed by the presentiment that some
fearfully significant and mysterious meaning underlies
your priestly babblement. “Born again by water”!
Such jargon, instead of exciting reverent piety with those
with whom you have to cope now-a-days, evokes only
the irreverent contempt which asks : Do you refer to
parturition in a punt on the river, or to an accouchement
down in a diving-bell ? And as for your exceedingly
phantasmal Holy Ghost, will you tell me anything he
ever did, except his being mixed up with an affiliation
�“ RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
5
case under remarkably shady circumstances, appearing
once in the guise of a dove or fantail pigeon, and once
again in the shape of “ cloven tongues as of firewhile
appearing as Paysandu tongues, at 9d. a lb., would have
been more to the purpose ? Is this scurrilous blasphemy?
So be it. It is our contemptuous reply to divine thimble
rigging. Give us arguments to deal with, and wre will
deal with them ; but insult our reason with the hackneyed
and vapid platitudes of professional priestcraft, and our
sneer and our sarcasm will give you to understand what
we think of them and you.
Your Eminence assures us that, as regards children—
They have an invisible guardian—an angel ever watching over
them.
Here, your Eminence, you have effectively curbed my
irreverent levity. To talk, as you do, of an “invisible
guardian ” watching over every child is too sinister and
solemn a mockery for flippant refutation. You are
double my age, Lord Cardinal. Have you not seen
children as I have seen them ? Do you speak in igno
rance, or do you speak in truculent and terrible jest ?
Have you seen the child, partially born, have its skull
crushed in in splinters upon its brain by iron forceps,
as the solution of the desperate alternative whether the
life of the mother or that of the child should be saved?
Where was the “invisible guardian’? Have you seen
the child born mutilated and covered with ulcers, fearful
heirloom from the sins and sorrows of its progenitors ?
Where was the “ invisible guardian ” ? Have you seen
the babe, with sunken eyes and ravenous lip, and the
haggard look that babyhood should never know, tug at
the milkless nipples of a-starving mother ? Where is the
“invisible guardian?” Have you seen that haggard
baby dead and shrouded in a newspaper, as I have seen
it, and smuggled surreptitiously into the coffin of an
adult pauper, and buried with him to save expense ?
Where was the “ invisible guardian ” ? That baby was
so buried in its newspaper cerements because its mother,
who followed it to the grave, through want, would not
stoop to prostitution, even to save its life and her own.
Where was the “ invisible guardian ” ? Have you seen,
�6
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
as I have seen, the child born in “ holy wedlock,” but with
the prostitution of its mother resorted to in order to save
its life and hers ; and have you seen that babe, as I have
seen it, drain from its mother’s breast the syphilitic virus
till the cartilege of the baby nose and the scalp on the
baby skull rotted away, and the innocent infant was
putrescent before it reached the tomb ? Where was the
“ invisible guardian ” ? Have you seen the prepossessing
female child fed and nurtured by its own parents, to be
sold to the lecher—incipient human flesh exposed on the
shambles of lust, and knocked down to the highest
bidder? Where was the “ invisible guardian ” ?
I could go on with interrogations like these, your
Eminence, mounting step after step in the terrible climax;
for I, who write to you, am a man who have turned from
the study of Greek to study the fearful moods and tenses
of the streets ; and I have left Hebrew that I might
study the square characters of the alleys and the Massorah of the slums. The hand that holds the pen that
now writes to you has lain upon the pulse of the world,
and felt all the irregular throbbings of the heart of
Humanity.
The eye that glances upon the paper
upon which this missive is written has, for God, gazed
through the clouds of the esoteric till it has been com
pelled to look down in Agnosticism, dimmed and blinded,
outside the unopening gates of Mystery. I have seen
falsehood on the throne, and truth on the scaffold; but
I have never traced, and neither have you, the action of
the “invisible guardian.”
In pleading for the support of schools in which the
Romish faith may continue to be inculcated, your
Eminence remarks:—
And, lastly, some of you, perhaps, may remember the schools of
this parish when you make your last will and testament, and your
Lord’s name will be found among the names of your heirs.
Did your Eminence so far master your risible tendencies
as to look sufficiently solemn for your sacred calling when
you uttered these words ? Cicero opines that two augurs
could not meet without laughing in each other’s faces,
in tacit recognition of how they managed to gull the
populace. When you spoke of Catholics executing their
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. »
7
wills, and making Jesus Christ one of their heirs, did
you, internally, put your divine thumb to your sacred
nose and extend your holy fingers? You well know
that Jesus Christ—whether that half-mythical character
ever really existed or not—wants none of your filthy lucre.
You use his name as the shears with which to shear the
sheep, that the fleece may come to the priests. This
lending money to the Lord in celestial debentures is a
very old confidence trick and financial swindle, Cardinal
Manning. The swindle has never been a farthing in the
pocket of “ the Lord,” whatever and whoever he may
be ; but it has, for centuries, swelled the coffers of a fat,
lazy, and licentious priesthood. For how many dreary
and black ages the priest of your baleful creed has
attended at the bedside of the dying man and indemni
fied the expiring wretch against the red fire of hell in
consideration of the Church receiving the red sheen of
his gold ! Is the palpable imposition not yet played
out ? How long, O Lord, how long, will the mothers of
our race only bear and suckle fools ?
Your Eminence goes on to say :—
I would fain much rather speak upon the Sermon on the Mount,
or upon the useful history of the gospel we have read to-day, than
upon the matter on which I may say necessity compels us at this
time to think with all the energy of our hearts—I mean the state
and condition of the education of this country, the peril that is
before us, the unconsciousness of that peril; and that peril multi
plied by the fact that men are not roused up or awakened to see
what is certain and inevitable in the future. Let us, then, con
sider this. From the seventh century down to the present the
education of the people of this land was a Christian education.
The Christianity of England was perpetuated by that which made
England in the beginning. At this moment we have come to what
I may call a deviation from that sacred tradition, which, until now,
has sustained the Christianity of the people of this land. Some
men will call it a new departure. It is the language of the day ;
and it is a useful phrase for us for it is a departure—a striking off
from the tradition, the broad highway of the people, of Christian
England. And we are threatened at this time with a system of
education neither Christian nor English, but borrowed from the
vain and shallow theories of the first French Revolution—that is to
say, a State education without definite teaching, and, therefore—I
will say it boldly—Christianity. Down to fifteen years ago the
education of this land was in the hands of the parents of children
and those whom they spontaneously and voluntarily chose. For
the last fifteen years the State has claimed the children as its own,
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
and the State has claimed to be the educator of the children born
within its boundaries. These two principles are the principles of
the old Greek philosophy of the Platonic Republic, revived at the
end of the last century, as I have said, by the vainglorious and
superficial minds who wrecked the noble and Christian people of
France. And these two principles are establishing themselves in
the minds of the people of this country.
I quite credit your Eminence when you allege that you
would much rather dilate upon the “ Sermon on the
Mount ” than comment upon the, to you, extremely
painful fact of the education of the children of this
generation passing out of the hands of your Church, and,
indeed, out of the hands of Christianity. The “ Sermon
on the Mount,” with its cruel mockery and fiendish
sarcasm of '‘'■Blessed be ye poor,” is, possibly, the source
from which you have drawn your terrible trope anent the
“ invisible guardian ” which stands in watch and ward
over every child. But be assured, my Lord Cardinal,
that men are “ roused up or awakened to see what is
certain and inevitable in the future.” They see as clearly
as you do that the “ inevitable ” is that your Church is
doomed ; but they anticipate its dissolution and ruin with
equanimity, where they do not contemplate it with satis
faction. You, most reverend father, and your caste, have
lived upon the base craft of the priest and ascended on
the wings of sacerdotalism to the high places of the
earth; but those who do not belong to your craft have
had to maintain you, and they begin to find out that they
have been gulled too long by your wheedling them to
endure a hell upon earth on the promise that they will
have wings and glory in the skies. They are beginning
to discover that they know as much about the wings and
glory as you do, and find that they are so extremely
problematical that they have resolved to make the best
and the happiest of Here and Now, leaving the wings and
the glory to take care of themselves. They have resolved
that their children shall be taught Reading and Writing
and Arithmetic, and, where practicable, the “ Extra
Subjects and they have freely permitted themselves to
be rated for this purpose, and have practically told you
and yours to stand aside with your Gospels and your
“ Sermon on the Mount,” and let them have a little more
bread and intelligence here, and not stultify them any
�“religious education.”
9
longer with your child-bearing Virgin, your crucified
joiner, and your other monstrous, but to you profitable,
“ teachings ” upon which your poor dupes are to depend
for their wings and their glory.
The very France upon which your Eminence lays
such great stress is drifting away with England from
the rusty and obsolete moorings of your Church.
In France the item for education has just been con
sidered in the Budget; and, when Bishop Freppel
objected to secular schools, M. Debost replied that
they were gaining in popularity, having had since
last year 65,000 more attendants, while the scholars in
the Catholic schools have in the same time decreased
by 13,000. The establishment of professorship of the
History of Religions, to be filled with men who count
the Christian religion as but one among many, was also
very naturally objected to by the Bishop, as virtually
teaching a State irreligion. But to all this it was con
sidered sufficient to reply that these posts would be
filled by men like Ernest Havet and Renan, who would
discuss texts, and not dogmas.
What does your Eminence think of men of the type
of Ernest Renan and Ernest Havet? They are not
exactly the kind of persons upon whom your Church has
pronounced panegyrics. Your Almighty God and your
infallible Church are behind you. Strike and spare not.
Scatter the charred dust of the heretics on the wings of
the wind, as you were wont. You w’ould do so without
invocation from me; but your God has become decrepit
and your Church has become imbecile. There are, alas
for you, no lightning at Sinai to vindicate, no Holy
Inquisition at Rome to avenge. We “Infidels” have
emerged from the Stygian gloom. Our eyes have caught
from the far horizon the sunrise of the world’s morning;
and, long before the sun has climbed to the zenith, we
will stand with our heel upon the neck of your God and
your Church, proclaiming that heaven is annihilated and
hell extinguished, that the Demon of the Seven Hills is
dead, and that man, at last, is free.
Renan and Havet! Alas ! poor Cardinal. Your lines
have not fallen in pleasant places. Simeon Styletes,
standing uselessly on the top of his pillar praying, while
�IO
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
worms and vermin were eating holes through his shrunken
flesh into his sapless bones, was the type of manhood
your papist cultus produced. Marie Angelique, praying
forever, except when she stood on her head before the
Lord, and pointed up to his throne with her unwashed
heels ; or when she sucked, in his holy name, rags that
had bandaged and were saturated with the pus from sores,
was the model type of womanhood your Church pro
duced when she alone was the educator, and none
durst say unto her, What doest thou ?
Your Church, when all the power was hers, my Lord
Cardinal, inculcated a coarse, but devout, blasphemy far
beneath the mental and moral status of the School
Board system which you abhor. For instance, in
several churches of France, remarks Russell, in his
“ Modern Europe,” a festival was celebrated in com
memoration of the Virgin Mary’s flight into Egypt. It
was called the “ Feast of the Ass.” A young girl, richly
dressed, with a child in her arms, was placed upon an
ass superbly caparisoned. The ass was led to the altar
in solemn procession. High mass was said with great
pomp. The ass was taught to kneel at proper places ;
a hymn, no less childish than impious, was sung in his
praise; and, when the ceremony was ended, the priest,
instead of the usual words with which he dismissed the
people, brayed three times like an ass ! and the people,
instead of the usual response, brayed three times in
return!
Your Eminence objects to the School Board and to
secular education generally : no wonder, it is so exceed
ingly different from the “ religious education ” which
held sway when all the power was yours, and when Pro
testants and “ Infidels ” were unknown. A “ religious
education ” embraced profound speculations as to
whether Adam, not having a mother, was “created”
with a navel, and as to whether Christ could have taken
any other form but that of man—as, for instance, that of
a woman, of the devil, of an ass, of a cucumber, or of
a flint stone. Then, supposing he had taken the form
of a cucumber, how could he have preached, worked
miracles, or been crucified ? Whether Christ could be
called a man while he was hanging on the cross;
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
I1
whether the Pope shared both natures with Christ;
whether God the Father could in any case hate the Son ;
whether the Pope was greater than Peter, and a thousand
other niceties far more subtle than those about
“notions,” “formalities,” “quiddities,” “ ecceities,” “in
stants,” and “essences.” This “religious education,”
whose demise you lament, disposed the mind all through
Christendom to give a ready credence to miracles worked
by bottles of Christ’s blood and bottles of Mary’s milk,
“ God’s coat,” “ our lady’s smock,” part of the last supper,
a piece of the halter with which Judas hanged himself,
a bone of Mary Magdalene, at least two different heads
of Thomas-^.-Becket, Christ’s picture on a handkerchief
which he had sent to Abgarus, Christ’s foreskin, and a
finger of the Holy Ghost. In the genuineness of these and
thousands of other sacred and miracle-working relics all
Europe believed, Cardinal Manning, when your Church
had undisputed power in education; and, in the few re
maining dark dens of ignorance where your power remains
unbroken, your dupes believe in these relics still; but,
except in her dens of ignorance, Europe will tolerate your
“ religious education ” no more forever.
Ichabod ! the glory of your house has departed ;
and it would not be without sympathy that I should
listen to your wail of desolation, your voice as of one
crying in the wilderness ; but I hear in your wail the
clarion-blast which heralds that the New World is
drawn up in battle-line against the Old. I hear in
your voice in the wilderness the clash of steel in the
Armageddon in which Truth shall conquer Error, and
from which the world shall emerge, not looking for its
salvation to your poor Jew upon Calvary, but looking to
the might that slumbers in its own heart and brain for the
working out of its own sanctification and redemption.
Your Eminence states that, “from the seventeenth
century down to the present,” the education of this
country has been a “Christian education.” Yes; but it
is just because Christianity was established in England
so early as the seventh century (it was established much
earlier than that, as your Eminence will see when you
begin to read history) that it should be continued no
longer. What suited the seventh century will not suit
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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
the nineteenth. Human progress is as slow as the
proverbial “ mills of Godstill, it is progress ; and
what suited lethargic Saxons or steel-shirted Danes under
Offa or Hardraga will not suit the awakening intelligence
of England in the reign of Victoria.
Could I sympathise with a terrible calamity falling
upon the defenceless head of Abaddon, I should sym
pathise with your Eminence in your cry of tribulation
thatvthe education of the children of our time is passing
—has almost passed—out of the control of the Church.
This, to your Christian Abracadabra, simply means
perdition. It was only because the Christian priesthood
got hold of plastic childhood, and maimed the intellect
and mutilated the understanding, that you got Christianity
to be accepted by any except lunatics. Try it with adults
who never heard of it till they were adults, and from
the experiment you will be able to determine whether
or not what I say is true. I make bold to allege that
there never was a really sane human being in the world
who had reached manhood before he had heard of Chris
tianity, and then adopted it from the appeal it made to
his mental and moral acceptance. You have tried the
adult Jew and the adult Hindoo for ages, and what have
you to show for your missionary zeal and vast monetary
sacrifice? Your labourers have got no souls for their
hire. The field consecrated by their devotion, and not
infrequently watered with their blood, is sterile. The
effort is stupendous, and the result is mV.
No wonder that you cry with a bitter and despairing
cry that the children are taken from you. For centuries
you have crippled and debased them to bring them down
to the low standard of your creed and render them
the half-hewn caryatides to support the superstructure of
your wealth and power and splendour. It is in youth
the Chinese must distort the feet of their ladies into the
pedal abortions upon which Chinese ladies walk. If
they tried to do so in later life, the more consolidated
tarsal and metatarsal bones would resist, and the woman
would perish before the deformity was effected. It is
only in early youth you can bend the credence into accept
ing as fact that Jonah was three days “ in the whale’s
belly,” and that the Son of Man was three days “in
�“religious
education.”
13.
the heart of the earth;” and that, at the end of three days,
Jonah got vomited out on dryland ; and that, at the end
of three days, the Son of Man got up out of his grave
and flew to heaven. Tell this to any man out of Colney
Hatch, and see whether he will believe you. Then, is
it moral to impose to such an extent upon the innocent
credulity of a child as to impress fables upon him as
facts, and burn them so deeply into his soul with the
accursed branding-irons of your priestcraft that the
intellect of his manhood is unable to deface the scars ?
You can rely upon the judgment finding for Christianity
only when that judgment is strongly warped by early
prejudice. Without the instilling of that early prejudice
you cannot make Christians, and you never will. You
use with skill all the most powerful influences of mental
distortion : you use shuddering fear ; you use the most
exalted love. You terrify the child with the fire and
brimstone of your hell, and you decoy him with the
tenderest emotions to which the human heart ever
throbbed; for the child first lisps his prayer at his
mother’s knee, and, in after years, the words have still
memories of a mother’s kiss and the halo of a vanished
face and the echo of a voice that is no more. The first
dread of hell, the first memories of a mother’s love, are
skilfully linked on to a debased and degrading supersti
tion, and they are, alas! too often strong enough to
support that superstition through a whole life. And this
deep engraining of prejudice, in favour of monstrosities
which, but for this prejudice, wrould never, on their own
merits, have had a moment’s serious consideration, is
what you and your clerical fraternity of all denomina
tions call Education ! Education, forsooth—it is the
very antithesis of it. You know that the intellect, if left
unmutilated till it matured, -would attach at most as
much credence to the Arthurian as to the Gospel legends.
Accordingly, to make sure that the intellect shall never
see above and beyond the “ truths ” which must be
believed in the interests of priestcraft, you take the
intellect in its infancy and burn out its eyes, or at least
afflict them with myopia and a malignant squint.
And this is Education ! For shame, my Lord Cardinal 1
If your Christianity be so true and reasonable, wait till
�14
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
the reason is developed before you attempt to teach.
I will then make you welcome to the half-dozen idiots in
all England who will believe your fable. But, in the
name of all that is sacred in the soul of the race, desist
from mutilating the intellect and debasing the morals
of little children in the interests of your irrational and
execrable creed. They are guilty who mutilate the feet
of Chinese girls, that when they become women they
may not wantonly walk into their neighbour’s houses;
but thrice damned is the guilt of those who mutilate the
intellects of European boys and girls, that when they
become men and women they may “ walk in the way of
the Lord.”
The section of the Christian Church of which your
Eminence is an ornament has always presumed upon the
crass ignorance of its votaries, and done its best to keep
that ignorance devotedly dense. But surely you presume
too much upon the ignorance of even the dupes of the
Church of Rome when you slanderously refer to “ the
vainglorious and superficial minds who wrecked the
noble and Christian people of France.” Surely some,
even in your ignorant auditory, must have had a surmise
that the “vainglorious and superficial minds” you referred
to were the Economists and the Encyclopaedists. Your
disparaging sneer was flung at Voltaire, D’Alembert,
Diderot, Duclos, Mably Condillac, Rousseau, Turgot,
Marmontel, Helvetius, and Raynal. Was there not,
even in the dull brains of the bigots who listened to you
at Newcastle as you sneered at “ superficial minds,” some
unbidden vision of a living pigmy kicking at a phalanx
of dead colossus ?
And, as for “the noble and Christian people of France,”
where did they exist outside of the prejudiced imagina
tion of your Eminence ? As for the people of France
before the Revolution you deplore, “ Christian ” they
may have been ; but “ noble ” they were not. The world
has never seen—and may the world never see again—a
people so utterly trampled down into the abyss of want
and misery and general degradation. Every schoolboy
knows this ; but your Eminence, apparently, does not
know it—or, rather, does not want to know it. “ Every
thing was fastened on by a few hands; everywhere the
�“ RELIGIOUS EDUCATION/’
J5
smaller number was in set opposition to the plundered
many. The nobility and clergy possessed nearly twothirds of the landed property ; the other third, possessed
by the people, paid taxes to the crown, a multitude of
feudal dues to the nobility, tithes to the clergy, and was,
moreover, subjected to the devastations of noble sports
men and the depredations of their game. The taxes
upon commodities weighed upon the great mass, and,
consequently, heaviest upon the people. The mode of
levying them was vexatious; the gentry might be in
letters with impunity; the people, on the contrary, were
ill-treated and imprisoned in default of payment. It
maintained by the sweat of its brow and defended with
its blood the higher classes, while scarcely able to subsist
itself. The inhabitants of towns, industrious, enlightened
—less miserable, certainly, than the peasantry, but en
riching the country by their industry and reflecting credit
upon it by their talents—enjoyed none of the advantages
io which they were entitled. Justice, administered in
some provinces by the gentry, in the royal jurisdictions
by magistrates who had bought their offices, was slow,
often partial, always ruinous, and especially atrocious in
criminal cases. Personal liberty was violated by lettres
de cachet, the liberty of the Press by royal censors.
Lastly, the State, ill-defended abroad, betrayed by the
mistresses of Louis XV., compromised by the ministers
of Louis XVI., had just been dishonoured in the eyes
of Europe by the shameful sacrifice of Holland and
Poland.”* So much for “the noble and Christian people
of France,” and the glorious state of affairs that the
“ superficial minds ” overthrew !
It is with diffidence I remind your Eminence of what
a “ noble and Christian people” the French were before
the “superficial minds” wrecked their nobility and
Christianity. To pay the infamous gabelle, a tax on
salt of about sevenpence in the pound, and other grievous
taxes, “ I have known poor people,” says Michelet, “sell
their beds and lie upon straw ; sell their pots, kettles,
and all their necessary household goods, to content the
unmerciful collectors of the king’s taxes.” There is a
* Thiers’ “ History of the French Revolution,” vol i., p. 9.
�“religious
16
education.”
well-known official document extant which proves that
the people were oppressed to such a degree that they,
“ could not buy wheat or barley ; they had to live on
oats, to nourish themselves on grass, and even to die of
hunger.” “ The people have not money to buy bread ;”
and Foulon, the model tax-collector, retorted : '"'■Then kt
them eat grass ”—this “ noble and Christian people of
France,” whose exalted position the “ superficial minds ”
so wickedly overthrew! No doubt your Eminence
admires the corvee with the admiration you lavish upon
the vingtieme and the gabelle. By virtue of this corvee,
on certain days in each year, the officers of the Court
went through the country, seized the peasants at will,
and marched them off in droves to make or repair the
public roads. For this the peasants received no pay;
and, if they could not, during their short respites from
labour, beg enough to keep themselves alive, they might
perish of hunger. Your Comte de Charolois amused
himself by going about with his musket in his hand,
looking out for peasants thatching their cottages, that
he might fire at and shoot them for the sport of seeing
them roll off the roof to the ground. How deplorable
it is to be sure that the “ superficial minds ” should
object to such a happy condition of affairs among “ the
noble and Christian people of France !”
Every Thzirsday.
THE
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Text
“Religious Education.”
A LETTER TO
CARDINAL MANNING.
PART II.
BY
London :
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
�.......
¿ 1i
�B3 0 7y
“Religious Education.”
And, Cardinal Manning, you will be gratified to hear
that your Church played an exceedingly prominent part
in the state of affairs the abolition of which you lament»
Great numbers of “ the noble and Christian people of
France ” were Huguenots. We will say nothing of how
your Church waded through the blood of 70,000 of these
Huguenots on a certain eve of St. Bartholomew. But
here is a record in regard to how your Christian Catholics
loved the Christian Huguenots : “ Some they stripped
naked, and, after they had offered them a thousand
indignities, they stuck them with pins from head to foot;
they cut them with pen-knives, tore them by the noses
with red-hot pincers, and dragged them about the rooms.
........... They tied fathers and husbands to the bed-posts,
and ravished their wives and daughters before their
eyes.”* No doubt, since your Eminence considers these
the amenities of a “ noble and Christian people,” you are
justified in your opposition to the un-Christian character
of School Board education. It will certainly not pro
duce the state of things you seem to admire. No set of
men brought up at a Board school will ever see any
motive to use red-hot pincers upon the flesh of those
trained at any other Board school. The teaching of
secular subjects produces no such result. To produce
adult actors in the red-hot pincers tragedy, you must train
children m the horrid dogmas and ruthless intolerance of
your Church. All the murder and martyrdom has been
over your Catechisms. I have never heard that an inch
of human flesh has been scorched, or that a drop of
human blood has been shed, over the Rule-of-Three.
Quicks “Synodicon,” vol. i., pp. 130-131.
�4
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
If you want all the old stabbing and scorching and
persecution and hatred to go on as they were wont, you
will, in early childhood, have to lay the substratum on
which they are based. The School Board will engender
only Philadelphia and cosmopolitanism; therefore, you
do well to attempt to arrest its hand, if you desire a con
tinuance of theological sectarianism and rancour. Get
hold of the children, if you can, my Lord Cardinal;
for it will take very early and unfair initiation to induce
them to tolerate, much less adore, your creed and
you. I repeat, Get hold of them early, if you can ; for
remember the truism Dryden renders so epigrammatically
in his “ The Hind and the Panther —
‘ ‘ By education most have been misled ;
So they believe because they so were bred.
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.”
The Due de Chartres built himself a magnificent
brothel, to which from 150 to 200 fallen women were
led each night blindfolded. A gorgeous supper, com
prising the most generous and heating wines, was what
met the eyes of the wantons when the bandages were
removed therefrom. The 150 or 200 women sat down
to the feast in a state of perfect nudity, and had. the
fiery vintages poured out to them by the assembled
*
libertines.
Modesty cries to Mercy to let the curtain
drop upon this carnival of lust participated in by “ the
noble and Christian people of France,” before the
“ superficial minds ” incited the populace to wash away
the stains of Christian lechery in the blood of a godless
revolution. Madame de Pompadour founded that “ noble
and Christian ” institution, the Parc aux Cerfs, and to
this institution were decoyed pretty maidens, no matter
how young, to minister to the pampered sensualities of
the king when Pompadour herself, in the course of years,
had lost her fascinations as a courtesan. A secret police
was instituted to entice, or kidnap, these young girls for
sensual orgies in the Parc aux Cerfs. The pious
Christian king insisted that these girl-children should tell
their beads and say their prayers, anxious that he should
* Vide “ Regede Louis XVI.;” “ Soulaire,” vol. ii., pp. 103, 104,
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.'
5
have their bodies and that Christ should have their souls.
Christ generously responded to this solicitude. One of
the little kidnapped ministers of the king’s licentiousness,
a girl of fourteen, had contracted small-pox. From the
girl, in whom it was as yet undeveloped, the king caught
the disease. The malady was fire to tinder in the
corrupt and poisonous blood of the royal débauchée.
His body was one mass of nauseating putrescence. The
stench from the dying lecher was so intense that no one
could go near the bed upon which he festered and died.
Before the writings of the “ superficial minds ” had had
time to take effect, your God, Cardinal Manning, took
this “ noble and Christian ” king unto himself, because
that, when debauching the bodies of little girls, he was
so solicitous that Christ should have their souls !
In 1777 the surface of their “noble and Christian”
France was crawled over by 1,200,000 diseased beggars,
all hungry, all in rags, all criminal and murderous, all
suffering from hideous diseases which want and filth had
brought on, but all “ noble and Christian.” For mercy’s
sake, your Eminence, do, when you are moved by the
Lord Jesus Christ to speak, insist that he move you to
speak a little nearer the truth ! Remember you are not
speaking amid the darkness of the seventh century, to
which you refer so fondly. Remember that I, an ir
reconcilable layman, conduct a journal which shrinks
not from the duty of speaking plainly to you, Cardinal
though you be. The only arguments you ever had to
meet such objections as I raise, such criticisms as I offer,
were of the dungeon-and-fire order ; and neither of these
you can now employ against me. The storm of public
opinion has' blown the roof off your dungeon, and Freethought stands defying you with her foot placed upon
the torch that lit your martyr-fires. Do, then, keep a
little nearer the truth ; for, if you do not, I promise you
I will strike and spare not ; and although the clientele I
appeal to may not, in your opinion, be “ noble,” and is
certainly not “ Christian,” it is neither small nor power
less ; and it prefers my history to your faith, my blasphemy
to your mass, and my sarcasm to your prayers. This
clientele can, if you persist in putting forward devout
fallacies, afford to dispise your Eminence ; but your
�6
“ RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.’
Eminence cannot afford to despise it; for, unlike you,
it raises no wail that its house is falling into decay : it
faces you, young indeed, but strong and resolute ; and,
panoplied in the armour of truth and righteousness, it
means to go forward conquering and to conquer, till
“ noble” does mean noble, and till the term “ Christian”
is first execrated and then abandoned.
Let the tree of Roman Catholic education be judged
by its fruits. Those ignorant and down-trodden thralls
of “ noble and Christian France ” are a specimen of
the fruits. Do you object: “ These are the fruits of
the laic branches of the tree”? Very well, your
*
Eminence, I am willing to stand by testing the fruit on
the cleric branches of the tree—by the very Pope
on the chair of St. Peter. Pope Sergius III., the vice
gerent of God upon earth, lived in concubinage with a
woman named Marocia. Pope John X. lived in con
cubinage with Theodora, a younger sister of Marocia.
Pope John XII. converted the papal palace into a perfect
seraglio, and lost his life by the hand of a husband whose
wife he had dishonoured. Pope John XVII. pursued
the same licentious course, and also perished under the
hand of an avenging husband. Benedict IX. led such
a scandalous life that he outraged even the too tolerant
laxity of the Roman citizens, and was expelled the city.
Clement V. lived in concubinage with his own relative,
the Countess of Perigord. Paul III. was a Sodomite.
Pope Sixtus IV., the founder of the Inquisition, and who
is reported to have died of venereal disease, opened
brothels in Rome, which produced an annual income of
20,000 ducats, which went to help to support the luxurious
lechery of your most holy Christian Church. It was the
same Pope who, in reply to the petition of Cardinals
Robere, Riario, and San Lucas, requesting that Sodomy
might be permitted in Rome during the warm months of
June, July, and August, wrote on the margin of the
petition, “ Let it be so.” And as to Alexander VI., the
Borgia, what thinks your Eminence of him as a specimen
of the fruit of your Christian teaching? He lived in
concubinage with a young girl called Catalina Vanoci: by
her he had several sons and one daughter, the infamous
Lucretia. Lucretia became the concubine of her own
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
7
father, the Pope of Rome and vicegerent of God, and
cohabited with her own brothers, Luigi and Caesar.
This holy father-in-God—and father and more of
Lucretia—died of poison which he had himself prepared
for three Cardinals, and which he took in mistake. We
learn from Burnet’s exposition that indulgence in un
natural lusts was so prevalent among ecclesiastics that
St. Bernard, in a sermon preached to the clergy of
“ noble and Christian France,” affirmed Sodomy to be so
common in his time that bishops Sodomised with other
bishops! What think ye of this, your Eminence? Have
I shown you sufficient specimens of the fruit of your
Roman Catholic education? If I have not, say so, and
I will show you more. Give us, who believe in secular
education, a fair chance; give our system some fifteen
centuries, as yours has had, and see whether we will not
produce better fruit. One thing is certain : we can
hardly produce worse.
Your “religious education,” my Lord Cardinal, but
for influences which were non-Christian—nay, antiChristian—would have blotted out forever all the
learning that the past centuries of the world had accu
mulated. While your Church was piously and labo
riously discussing such problems as Was Adam’s faeces
before the Fall malodorous? How many angels at a
time can stand on the point of a needle ? the learning
which dead Greece had left, the learning which mighty
Rome had bequeathed to the world as she herself
crashed and crumbled into ruin, was trodden under the
brute hoofs of your Christian Church, but taken up and
cherished as a priceless boon by the followers of the
Prophet of Islam, whom your Church despised and
hated. “ All the knowledge of mathematics, astronomy,
medicine, and philosophy, propagated in Europe from
the tenth century onward, was derived principally from
the schools and books of the Arabians in Italy and
Spain.”* “ Mere human learning,” as your Christianity
contemptuously called it, owed its salvation from extinc
tion to the persecuted and detested Saracen.
No, your Eminence; learning never did flourish
Mosheim, vol. ii., p. 194.
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION/
under Christian auspices ; and she only dares to par
tially assert herself now because Christianity is rent and
shattered and half-dead, and where she could once bury
the Albigensian heresy under a million of bloody corpses
she is now impotent to break and silence a bitter pen
like mine. Learning was never at all in the line of the
followers of your uneducated carpenter and his illiterate
fishermen. Your creed, my Lord Cardinal, was hatched
in the nest of Ignorance, and only on the dunghill of
Ignorance can it thrive. Learning, I repeat, was never
in the Christian line; but, to cheer and encourage your
Eminence, I will tell you what was in the Christian line.
From accounts of the Council of Pavia we find that
horses and hawks and gambling and harlots and drunken
ness were very much in the Christian line, and very con
spicuously distinguished the Christian priesthood. And
as for the sanctity of woman, your Church conserved it
as such a sacred trust that the same Council remarks
of your religious houses : “ They seem to be rather
brothels than monasteries.” From accounts of the
Council of Mayence—and, remember, the accounts
of these Councils were not written by wicked Infidels,
but by devout Catholics—it is candidly remarked
that “some priests, cohabiting with their own sisters,
have had children by them.” How to make convents
into brothels, and how to have children by their own
sisters, was the kind of learning your priesthood culti
vated when they were not deep in absorbing studies as to
the exact odour of prelapsarian excrementum, whether
Adam, having had no mother, had a navel, and the
precise number of angels that could stand on the point
of a needle.
One other branch of “ religious education ” was parti
cularly in the Christian line; and, in this branch, the
Christians left the Saracens and all other pagans far
behind. This branch of a “ religious education ” in
which your Church so greatly excelled was Hatred. The
Christians could hate each other more bitterly, and per
secute each other more cruelly, than any other religionists '
on the face of the earth, and their ancient excellence in
this department of polite learning is not yet entirely lost.
It was, as you are no doubt aware, the common proverb
�“ RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.”
9
of the pagans, “ No wild beasts are so hostile to men as
are Christian sects to one another.” No one save rival
Christians ever drenched the fields of the earth with
blood over a diphthong, or ever flew at each other’s
*
throats over such hair-breadth twaddle as the difference
between Filioque and no Filioqne, till the Christian
Church was permanently rent into two sections, the
Latin and the Greek. We have seen the results of
“ religious education ” when your Church had the power.
These things were done in the green tree ; we shall take
care they are not done in the dry.
Is your Eminence aware that in 1861 (before the
institution of the School Board which you deplore), of
persons sent to prison, 8^ per cent, were under 16
years of age. In 1870 7 per cent, were under 16. In
1884 only 3 per cent., and this 3 per cent, has been found
to consist almost entirely of children who have managed
to elude attendance at school. So much for the abhorred
School Board and the diminution of criminality; but,
then, criminality and devotion to your Church go
together; and thus it is that you practically lament that
crime is on the decline. Statistics show with inexorable
clearness that, out of all proportion to their numerical
efficiency outside, the inmates of our prisons are Roman
Catholics. With Superstition and Ignorance you always
must have Crime; but, then, without Superstition and
Ignorance you cannot have Christianity, and, of course,
from a priest’s point of view, better have Crime with
Catholicism than throw over Catholicism to get rid of
Crime.
Before the Education Act of 1870, which is so detest
able to your Eminence, the so-called National Schools
were, as a judicious writer remarks, only sq in name, and
they were administered by one religious denomination,
being therefore under the control of its sectarian influence,
while also supplying instruction to a comparatively small
number of children. The remainder were to be found
in the Dame Schools, British and Ragged Schools, and
the Voluntary Schools of various denominations. But
* I refer to the dispute between the Homoousians and Homoibusians.
�TO
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.'
what of the larger residue ? They were running about
the streets; they were ignorant and uncared for, except
at the hands of noble philanthropists, like the late Lord
Shaftesbury and his colleagues. Imbibing the instincts
of idleness and crime, without a counteracting check,
they sapped the healthy life of the growing generation.
Crime among the juvenile classes had grown to such an
extent that in 1870 no less than 9,998 children were
committed to prison for a variety of offences. Over all
educational facilities for their improvement the State
possessed no control, excepting where schools were
subject to Government inspection as the condition of
receiving grants of public money.
And, in the incontrovertible words of another writer,
“ the Board Schools have through good and evil report
sown the seeds of a new era. The children who go back
to the slums from the Board Schools are themselves
quietly accomplishing more than Acts of Parliament,
missions, and philanthropic crusades can ever hope to
do. Already the young race of mothers, the girls who
had the benefit for a year or two of the Education Act,
are tidy in their persons, clean in their homes, and decent
in their language. Let the reader who wishes to judge
for himself of the physical and moral results which educa
tion has already accomplished go to any Board School
recruited from the ‘ slum ’ districts, and note the differ
ence in the older and younger children ; or attend a
Board meeting, where the mothers come to plead
excuses for their little ones’ non-attendance, and mark
the difference between the old and young mothers,
between those who, before they took ‘mates’ or husbands,
had a year or two of school training, and those who had
given birth to children in the old days of widespread
ignorance.” But all this indisputable improvement of
the social, moral, and intellectual condition of the masses
is, of course, to your Eminence, only a cold and comfort
less fact, seeing that your theological absurdities are being
neglected, and stubborn knees are being trained that will
not genuflect to crosses and relics ; manly voices being
trained, but not to whine your litanies; and above all,
breeches pockets being plenished which will not disgorge
their contents for penance and purgatorial fees for vest-
�“ RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.”
11
merits and images and candle-sticks .and altars and
painted glAss and mummery.
My Lord Cardinal, it is a simulation and a mockery
for you to speak about education at all. As a Cardinal
of the Romish Church, your comments upon education
are about as valuable as would be those of Satan upon
holy water. It has ever been your aim and policy to
murder education; he who murders any person is the
last one in the world whose sincerity we should trust in,
should he evince a specially anxious affection for the
person he had murdered.
I am sorry that the limits of this letter preclude
my giving more than the very vaguest outline of the
learning (?) of your Christian priesthood and the attitude
they have from first to last taken up as regards education.
However the exigencies of the time may urge upon you
to enunciate your theory to-day, we well know what your
attitude has been through all the centuries of your domi
nation. You have ever maintained that the wisdom of
man (and, in the name of casuistry, what other wisdom is
there ?) is foolishness in the sight of God. The unalter
able attitude of your faith towards education, about
which you now orate, may be summed up in the wellknown retort of the infallible Pope, Felix V. A cardinal
one day ventured to reproach him for his ignorance,
whereupon, with pious bigotry, the pontiff replied : “ The
Holy Ghost is not an ass, is it? Well, it will inspire me.
That is its business.” You educated, and (because you
change not unless when you cannot possibly help it) you
would still educate Christendom on the old-fashioned
lines of the Holy Ghost. Now, this Holy Ghost may be
very well as “ the comforter ” to devout imbeciles who
feel the peristaltic movements of the abdominal viscera,
and mistake them for the action of the Holy Spirit. Rut
this Holy Ghost, “the comforter,” is no schoolmaster,
and this I say to his face ; and if he, she, or it have no
face, then I say it to its os coccyx, or whatever part of
it it is decorous to address.
Your infallible Felix V. sounded the keynote of the
devilward march of your hierarchy when, instead of to
study, he gave himself up to gluttony and volup
tuousness, and where anything like education was
�12
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
wanted left the matter in the hands, or feet, or
tentacula, or some such organs, of the Holy Ghost.
And this said Holy Ghost has shirked its business
deplorably. It has been as successful in standing to man
in the place of education as the other third part of a
juggle of a deity has been in redeeming the world. The
party that permits me to speak in its name, your
Eminence, has had enough of the Holy Ghost as a
schoolmaster. We mean to dismiss this ghost, and try
some mortal with a degree from an university, or a certi
ficate from a training college. Besides being a school
master, this ghost of yours has figured as a dove, or
pigeon. The world will figure better when it sees this
pigeon finally baked into a pie and its feet sticking up
through the crust. Is this offensive ? It is not our time
to apologise; it is yours. You first insult our sense and
outrage our reason with your divine twaddle and pious
balderdash, and then expect us to be deferential and
apologetic. Your absurdity and cant is as revolting to
the Agnostic as the Agnostic’s anti-Christian blasphemy
can be to you. Cease to print your inane and insane
lunacies, and, of course, we will cease to attack them.
But, in the interests of the sanity of our race, in the
interests of man’s practicable hopes and rational aspira
tions, insult us no more with the pious legerdemain and
divine conjuring tricks of your pulpits; or, with the
most savage cat-o’-nine tails that sarcasm can wield, we
will lash your rhinoceros hide, O Church, till you will be
glad to find even in the depths of hell a refuge from our
scourge.
You have heard of the lex talionis, your Eminence.
Feel it. We are not your friends. We are your enemies
to the death. We refuse in the interests of conventional
amity to forget your faith’s diabolical record of over a
thousand years. Rivers of the best blood of Europehave, O Church, been let loose by your sword. They
have flowed into a sea of vengeance over which now
gather the thunder-clouds that will burst and shatter
you. These rivers of human blood flow between us and
you ; and over them we refuse to reach you any olive
branch. The charred bones of Giordano Bruno lie
between us and you. The flame that shrivelled up his
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
z3
majestic brain and heroic heart yet throws its heat upon
our “ Infidel ” cheek, and over these bones—holier than
tons of your priestly relics—we swear, by our deathless
and relentless hatred of wrong and tyranny, that with
you we will hold neither truce nor parley, that our helmet
shall never leave our head, that day or night our swordbelt shall never be ungirded till your utter destruction is
accomplished and guarantee thereby given that you, O
Rome, will curse the world no more.
“ Christian education ” indeed, your Eminence !
Unless you presumed upon the impenetrable ignorance
of your dupes, you would never dare to refer to such a
sinister sham and flagitious hypocrisy. I say it delibe
rately, judicially, and ' perfectly prepared to take up the
gauntlet of any historical student who may challenge
me : Christian education has been the curse of Europe.
From the very first, Christianity “ despised all knowledge
that was not useful to salvation.”* A great majority
of Christians were anxious “ to banish all reason and
philosophy out of the confines of the Church.”f Up to
the time when Constantine, the libertine and murderer,
took Christianity by the hand, and she found she was in
a position to argue with the sword and debate with the
heading-axe, she took no further pains to discipline
herself in what she contemptuously called mere human
learning. Formerly a section of the Christian priesthood
had taken some interest in such learning, in order to be
able to argue with the Pagan; but the Christian was able
now to argue with the Pagan in a far different fashion—
with the dungeon and the stake, and accordingly “ the
liberal arts and sciences and polite literature fell into a
declining condition.’’^ This Christian bigotry and
murderous persecution asserted itself till, in the words
of Moshiem,§ “ learning was almost extinct; only a
faint shadow of it remained.” Philosophy was persistently neglected, for, writes Moshiem, “ nearly all
supposed that religious persons could do very well without
it, or, rather, ought never to meddle with it.”
I could go on interminably, your Eminence, in demon
* “ Decline and Fall,” chap. xv.
J “Jorian,” vol. ii., p. 212.
+ “ Mosheim,” vol. i., p. 148.
§ Vol. i., p. 359.
�14
“religious education.”
strating that your Church not only utterly neglected
“worldly learning,” but that it assumed to it an attitude
of actual hostility; but I presume that even you, with
your faculty for pious romancing will not pretend there is
any way of rebutting the charge in this respect; so, turn
ing from your neglect of and hostility to “ mere human
learning,” I shall briefly revert to the “ religious educa
tion ” which you have inculcated for fifteen centuries,
and which you teach to-day. You want the education of
the children of this our England to be in your hands.
You teach that these children must be baptised, or that
they will be damned. So urgently do you contend for
this barbarous hocus-pocus of baptism that, if the mother
be likely to die while she is in a state of pregnancy, she
must be cut up alive so that the foetus may be extracted
alive and baptised to obviate its spending an eternity in
fire and brimstone. The sweetness and delicacy of this
doctrine is as conspicuous as its loving kindness of
the fiery sort that demonstrates itself in never-dying
worms and inextinguishable flames. This, your Eminence,
teaches us the incalculable importance of a few drops of
water at the right time, and the ineffective impotence of
the whole Pacific at, say, five seconds subsequent to the
right time. It also teaches us how profound are the
divine mysteries of a “ religious education.”
One beauty of belonging to your Church, your
Eminence, is exceedingly solacing and comforting, and
that is, that you and your fellow Catholics will be saved,
and that all the rest of the world will be damned; for I
find, from your “ Ordo Administrandi Sacramenti,” that
outside “ the true Catholic Faith ” “ no one can be
saved.” Of course, this is quite certain. It is also very
modest; there is not a vestige of blasphemous cheek
about it. The whole world has been “ created ” for the
purpose of being roasted for ever and ever, to afford
amusement to the handful of Catholics who will sit up
aloft in heaven looking down upon the agony wriggle of
the infernal pit. The inhabitants of the globe have
been estimated at 1,000,000,000, and the Catholics amount
to only 160,000,000. Heaven will be the dress-circle,
and Hell will be the stage ; and those on the stage,
amusing those in the dress-circle, dancing an agony break-
�‘religious education.’
15
down, and footing the fiery jig of the damned, will be out
of all proportion to the mere handful of privileged Papists,
wearing crowns, waving wings, thumbing harps, and
looking on. This doctrine is as humble as it is humane,
and gives us a divine insight into the glories of a “ re
ligious education.” It must be so gratifying to a true
Catholic to see his Protestant wife in endless torment.
She was loving and true and noble. She bore him sons
and daughters. In poverty, distress, and sickness she
stood by him with that self-denying and heroic tender
ness with which woman alone is gifted. She was the wife
of his bosom; but now, in hell, she leaps into the em
brace of devils. All this because she could accept the
Tweedledum of Consubstantiation, but not the Tweedledee of Transubstantiation. For this “ thou art com
forted” and she is “tormented.” So much for the
unspeakable happiness of “religious education.” I am
only an “ Infidel,” and only imperfectly appreciate it.
In fact, honesty impels me to make the impious admis
sion that I desire to be with my wife and children
wherever they are. I wish to be with them, whether
they be in Heaven, Hell, or Annihilation.
The “religious education” of your Eminence implies
subscription to the creed that, “ in the most holy Sacra
ments of the Eucharist, there are truly, really, and sub
stantially the body and blood, together with the soul and
divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made
a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into
the body and of the whole substance of the wine into
the blood.”* After you have eaten a slice of this God
who made the earth and then came down to it as a
joiner and made wheelbarrows, your “religious educa
tion ” advises those who have eaten hocus-pocussed Godand-joiner to pray as follows : “ May thy body, O Lord,
which I have received, and thy blood which I have
drank, cleave to my bowels, and grant that no stain of sin
may remain in me who have been fed with this pure and
holy sacrament.”! If I could humbly 'presume to
comment on a mystery so sacred, I should reverently
* “ Ordo Ministrandi Sacramenti.”
+ “ Missal for the Use of the Laity,” p. 30.
�16
“religious education.”
observe that, after you have eaten a world-maker and
wielder of a jack-plane, there is little wonder if he should
“ cleave ” to your “ bowels,” that you should be afflicted
with divine constipation ; but I should, with therapeutic
piety, suggest that you work off the god with Glauber salts
and the joiner with jalap. Is this blasphemous, your Emi
nence ? It is infinitely less blasphemous than your missal.
Mine is a drastic attempt to make men sane; yours is an
insidious attempt, in the interests of priestcraft, to keep
men cross-signing and genuflecting idiots.
Price Twopence.
Every Thursday.
THE
SECULAR
REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED BY SALADIN.
Order of your Newsagent, or send direct to the Publishers—W.
Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, London( E.C.
HISTORICAL PAMPHLETS.
A Reply to Cardinal Manning, by Saladin ...
The Crusades, by Saladin
The Covenanters, by Saladin
Christian Persecution, by Saladin ...
The Flagellants, by Saladin
The Iconoclasts, by Saladin
The Inquisition, Part I., by Saladin
...
The Inquisition, Part II., by Saladin
The Dancers, Shakers, and Jumpers, Part I., by Saladin
The Dancers, Shakers, and Jumpers, Part II., by Saladin
The Persecution of the Jews, Part I., by Saladin
The Persecution of the Jews, Part II., by Saladin
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London : W. Stewart & Co,, 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCT^ty
“Religious Education.”
A LETTER. TO
CARDINAL MANNING.
FART III.
WITH
ADDENDA.
London:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
��B 30?9
M5 <>7
“Religious Education.”
Have I recommended purgatives to work deity and
mechanic out of the enterics of saints? May I point
out, your Church, in its “ religious education,” proceeds
on somewhat similar lines ? I find, from a rubric in the
“ Roman Missal,”* what is to be done with Christ, pro
viding that the saint vomit him ! The blasphemy implied
in a “ poor worm of the dust ” retching away and
vomiting God is a hyperbole of sacrilege to which I
cannot aspire to reach, and I leave all the honour and
glory of it to the Roman Catholic Church. I find that,
according to the rubric (how unspeakable the advantages
of a “ religious education ” !), the vomit is to be kept in
“some sacred place” till it is “corrupted”—in other
words, till God is rotten. It is so considerate of your
Church to thus write down to the level of a sow—perhaps
the only creature besides a priest who could contemplate
without nausea first swallowing the Lord and then
vomiting him, and then looking for him in the vomit.
And your Eminence would like this emeticating of God,
prodding about for him in the vomit, finding him and
swallowing him over again, or not finding and, therefore
burning him and the vomit, and casting the ashes into
the sacristan to be taught at the expense of the rate
payers ! The ratepayers are mostly fools, and pay rates
and taxes with too little investigation into the why and
wherefore; and many of them are addicted to finding
Jesus. But they draw the line somewhere. They
have begun to draw the line at the priest who, in
order to “find Jesus,” prods about in a vomit with a
breakfast fork! Ugh! But no. This is nastiness to
be sure; but it is divine nastiness, and part and parcel of
* Published in Mechlin, 1840.
�4
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.'
a “ religious education.” Would it be etiquette, your
Eminence, for the person prodding about with the fork,
when he has discovered the half-digested wafer in the
vomit, to exclaim, “I have found Jesus!”
Then, your Eminence, the fine, cheerful doctrine of
Purgatory enters into the curriculum of a “ religious edu
cation.” In purgatory there is a nice, clear fire (ignis
)
*
for cooking souls. This nice, clear fire is exceedingly
useful; it enables you to rifle the pockets of a man’s
relations after he himself has been laid in his grave.
The fires in purgatory are just the sufficient heat for the
dead to enable you to extract half-crowns from the
pockets of the living.
Old Brown dies, his body is
buried, and you get certain fees over that; and his soul
canters off to purgatory. Young Brown would not mind
a cent about his dad being in purgatory, if you would
make the place at all comfortable for him ; but you
manage to make old Brown hot enough to make young
Brown pay to get him out. All this is very clever, and
very religious. St. Christina, who had been in purgatory,
and managed to come back to the earth again (possibly
for her umbrella), told your great and learned Cardinal
Bellarmine that “ the torments that I there witnessed
are so dreadful that to attempt to describe them would
be utterly in vain.” The place was found to be filled
with “ those who had repented indeed of their sins,
but had not paid the punishment due for them.’T After
this, from St. Christina to Bellarmine, who would be so
unfilial as to leave his father, or even his mother-in-law,
in purgatory ? Out they must come. The devout one
must “raise the wind ” to put out the fire. What man
who has the soul of a man would not pawn his braces;
what woman who has the heart of a woman would not
sell her garters, to get her dear dead out of such a hot
and damnable hole as the purgatory of Bellarmine? It
is set apart, it seems, for those who have repented of
their sins, but have not paid for them. Those who
have neither repented of their sins nor paid for them go
straight to hell; but that matters little : the temperature
* See Catechism on the fifth article of the Creed of Pope Pius IV,
t “ De Genitu Columbse,” bk. ii., ch. ix.
�RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
5
is only a trifle higher, and a good, round, sound specimen
of a sinner can soon get accustomed to that. The great
thing is the pay. Pay, and it hardly matters a cinder
whether you repent or not. Yours is a grand and noble
Church, Cardinal Manning. It has the knack of getting
all possible moneys out of a man when he is alive, and,
through its purgatory, it can pursue the dead through
the very bottom of the grave, as it were, and shake him,
red-hot, flaming, and shrieking, in the eyes of the friends
he has left, that they may sell their very shirts to relieve
him of his agony. The one paid for leaps out from the
flames into the midst of heaven’s wings and harps, and
the gold and silver ring and rattle into the coffers of the
priest.
The Agnostic, alas, has no such facilities for turning
an honest penny. He does not know God sufficiently
to be able to induce him to enter into the swim with
him to help him to swindle and juggle. It is no use
any one trying to swindle on any exalted and profitable
scale, unless he has got God on his side, and does his
juggling in God’s name. All history and all experience
teach us that lesson with pious emphasis. I have not
God on my side, so all that I get is a little pittance for
my honest toil. I have no way of extracting cash for
the love of harps that have never been strung, and for
the fear of fires that have never been kindled. I am at
this disadvantage for not having acted up to the precepts
of a “religious education.”
Still, O Cardinal, if God be God—if he be noble and
generous and humane—you may stride up to him with
all the wealth and grandeur your Church has acquired,
and I will walk up into his presence with only this year’s
volume of the Secular Review under my arm. And, if
he say, “ Depart from me, ye cursed 1” it will be to you,
O Cardinal, and not to me. He will say, “ Give me a
shake of your hand, Saladin. You searched earnestly
and honestly for me, and could not find me ; but you
see I am here. You often studied and read all day, and
then burned the oil till long after midnight. Without
fee or reward, amid contumely and in obscurity, you
worked out your very life to teach others what you con
ceived to be right and true. To be mistaken, Saladin, is
�6
“religious
education.”
a small thing in the eyes of a God ; but to be honest is a
great thing. Read me some passages from ‘At Random
they are flashes from the immortal soul of a man
struggling in the dark ;• and passages written in the red
blood of an earnest human life are worthy the attention of
a God.”
I am, My Lord Cardinal,
Your Eminence’s
Obedient Servant,
Saladin.
�ADDENDA.
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN.
Bishop Croke of Cashell recently mounted the highest
stilts of sacred oratory, and dashed along thus, with his
head in New Jerusalem and his feet in Kildare :—
When we read in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according
to St. Luke that “there is more joy in heaven upon one sinner
that doeth penance than upon ninety-nine just who need not
penance,” we may very naturally be expected to say each one
within himself—Sin, then, must sadden God exceedingly, and cast
a gloom, so to speak, over the face of His angels ; because penance
that wipes sin away gives great gladness to God, fills with joy the
whole court of heaven, makes the loveliest seraph there smile yet
more sweetly, and Heaven itself become more heavenly still. Only
just think of it, brethren. There is the great God of the universe
sitting serenely, as we are used to picture him, on his throne of
state on high. Millions and hundreds of millions of angels
brighter far than the sun and infinitely more beautiful than the
moon stand ever-joyous sentinels around him. The ample domain
of,heaven itself, extending far and wide—yea, full many a mile
further than created eye can carry—encompasses him on every side.
It is lit up with lamps that know no dimness, and peopled with
happy spirits that are not destined to die. This earth is but an
atom in their sight. Wars, conflagrations, earthquakes, plague and
famine, and pestilence sweep over and decimate its inhabitants, and
Heaven heeds not the ruin that is tints made. Yet, strange to say,
one man, a poor weak worm of the earth, living on it, born of it,
and destined to return to it again in death, trangresses a law that
had been given to him by God for his guidance—thereby commit
ting sin—and behold the heart of the Most High is saddened, a
cloud comes across the countenance of his angels, and heaven itself
seems to be heaven no more. But, see, that same man repents;
that sinner is converted ; that rebel hand raised in pride against
the Almighty is uplifted no more, and, as the herald of God’s mercies
to man proclaims the glad tidings aloud, the music of heaven’s
choir becomes sweeter still; the light of heaven’s lamps becomes
brighter still ; the face of heaven’s angels becomes more smiling
still, for there is more joy in heaven upon one sinner that does
penance than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance.
�8
ADDENDA,
You see into that passage in Luke the Archbishop
has got his papist “penance” inserted where the
Protestant version has “repentance.” With the Pro
testant, “penance” is an heretical abomination. But
you observe the “word of God” is so explicit and simple
that it means either, or both, or neither. This vague
ambiguity is a distinguishing feature of divine writing.
If a man were to lose his reason, he could write tolerably
like God; and a man who has lost his reason, or who,
as is usually the case, had never any to lose, understands
best what God has been graciously pleased to write.
“ Sin,” according to Croke, and of course he knows
all about it, must “sadden God exceedingly.” A “sad”
deity, God-in-the-dumps, sitting on the white throne,
with all the beasts roaring “ Holy, holy, holy 1” and
glaring at him with the eyes they have in their tails and
their elbows, convinces me that Augustus Harris will
never produce a really effective pantomime at Drury
Lane till he has had the advantage of spending a week
in heaven. Would the great Croke, who seems to know
heaven and its denizens so intimately, inform me whether
the hebdomadal issue of this journal can “sadden God
exceedingly ” ? I know of no god, and I prefer to know
of none till I find one magnanimous and mighty enough
not to get “sad” at the writings of a weak mortal like
Saladin, or be pleased with the ranting but pious blarney
of a little sermon-spinner like Croke.
God used to be unchangeable. But that was in the
good old days, before Ireland and Croke were invented.
Now he gets “sad” whenever anybody sins; but grins
from ear to ear, and kicks up his holy heels with delight,
whenever anybody does penance. Pretty sudden and
fiequent transitions these for an unchangeable God.
But the authority is very high—the authority of his
friend, Croke of Cashel.
u
am „really sorry f°r
P00r dear angels with the
gloom on their faces. I once had a notion of becom
ing an angel myself by imitating, say, David, the man
“according to God’s own heart.” But now I give up
the project. There would always be somebody sinning,
and so my face would always be clouded with “gloom,”
except when somebody did penance—the only thing, by
�THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN.
9
the-bye, that seems to throw a gleam of light into heaven.
This “ gloom ” would never do for me; I like a good
laugh now and again; and I can laugh, too, a loud hurri
cane of a laugh that shakes the rafters. So I will relin
quish my design of becoming an angel by imitating
David, and thereby some Uriah and some Joab will
escape murder and some Bathsheba dishonour.
Lord, how Croke does hit off heaven with only a few
spasms of his voice—the best voice going at wild rant
and mad tapsalteerie. Perhaps “ the loveliest seraphs
there would smile yet more sweetly” if I could get
beside them to tell them tales of heroic W allace instead
of stories about timid Jesus. By my halidome, I should
like to strut up the golden street—although I should
much rather stand up to the hurdies in Scottish heather
—and fling the strains of my mountain harp into the
ears of the belles of heaven. If they have blood in their
veins, I should send it tingling to the tips of their toes
and their wings. I should make the lyre of Caledonia
weep and moan and thunder and dirl till the harps that
hung on the willows by the streams of Babel would be
broken up and cast away.
Dr. Croke’s heaven, which is intended to be so attrac
tive to good Catholics and Land-Leaguers, does not
tempt me. I do not feel at all attracted to a great
ogre of a God, sitting on “ his throne of state on high,”
while “ millions and hundreds of millions of angels,
brighter far than the sun, and infinitely more beautiful
than the moon,” stand around him as “ sentinels.”
“ Sentinels,” indeed ! Surely these millions of angels
might be better employed. Millions of these celestial
monsters with wings, but whose tails are never men
tioned, stand “sentinel,” like the big horsemen at White
hall. Before I can be got to be really enamoured of
heaven, I should like to know how its flying monsters
get along without tails. A tail is to a bird what a rudder
is to a ship. I should like to be assured, before I consent
to go to heaven, that an angel can steer its course
accurately without a tail. I do not wish to go there and
incur the risk of some great, flying idiot coming dashing
up against me and knocking the teeth out of my head,
with a “Beg your pardon, Sir—pure accident; had
�IO
ADDENDA.
intended to fly to that there rafter 1” Besides, if these
angels are “ brighter far than the sun/’ I could not look
upon their splendour; so I should shortly be blind as
well as toothless.
In spite of the tremendous effulgence of Dr. Croke’s
angels, I observe that heaven is “lit up with lamps.”
Seeing that, in brilliance, every angel must be equal to
at least fifty sperm candles, I fail to see the use of the
lamps ; and I fear, as a canny Scot, I should demur
at the holy extravagance and the divine waste of paraffin.
At all events, fitting heaven up with lamps does not, as
far as I am concerned, add to its charms. There you
sit, pen in hand, all silent as death ■ and you in obstetric
t roes with one of your biggest thoughts, when crack
goes the glass chimney of the said lamp, and, in your
state of concentrated intensity, nearly startles your life
out. Besides, lamps are constantly getting upset, and,
if I were to upset one upon Sarah’s skirts or Rahab’s
polonaise, the effects might disconcert all heaven.
Besides, in trimming the wick, I usually burn my fingers,
and when I burn my fingers I usually swear ; and a good,
rattling malediction might tempt some outraged seraph
to throw me over heaven’s battlements into' the other
place, hurling the lamp after me.
But, O Bishop of Cashel, can all these millions
of angels find nothing better to do than to “stand
sentinel ” ? It may be all glory and brilliance with
;
but there are lanes and alleys with us where it is all
misery and gloom. The sties of Seven Dials are filled
with guilt and misery; over the fever slums of White
chapel falls the Shadow of Death.
Where are the
hundreds of millions of angels? From the dens of
Want and Stench and Disease rises the cry of Humanity;
but that cry reaches not the ears of the angels. Un
moved, they stand sentinel round their ogre God. Not
one angel breaks away from the phalanx to help the
gallant soul beaten down in life’s struggle, to drive away
want and shame from the home of the widow, to give
shelter to the destitute and bread to the fatherless.
The father which art in heaven ” cannot spare one
angel out of his hundreds of millions to visit his children
in mercy, and allay the gnawings of hunger and the pain
�THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN.
11
of the heart that aches in misery. The music of every
harp, the sheen of every wing, is wanted “ for his own
glory.” No angel can be spared to stand between the
maiden and the deceiver. No angel can be sent for a
moment to kiss the desperately-parted lips and smooth
down the wildly-dishevelled hair of her, the lost and
ruined, as she mounts the parapet of the bridge to leap
from the street and Shame into the river and Death.
No angel comes down with the lightning in his hand to
strike the rich man dead as, by dint of his gold, from
the pale arms of Famine he forces the embraces of
Love.
A hundred thousand men, in uniform, are struggling
in yonder valley. A chorus goes to hell of the yells
of madness, the groans of anguish, and the screams of
agony. The gulf of smoke is torn by torrents and bursts
of fire, and shaken by louder than the thunders of
God. Weary with slaughter, his feet entangled in his
brother’s entrails, the powder-blackened madman falls.
He clutches at the red grass and the heaps of reeking
butchery, and gurgles and gasps and drowns in his
brother’s blood. And the horror and the agony are not
all here. Circling away into the busy towns, the quiet
villages, the corn fields, and the apple orchards of other
lands, extends the tide of misery and woe. Far away
from the field of carnage, hunger overtakes the orphan
child. The aged mother has lost her son, and the
young girl her lover. Over hundreds of leagues of the
world rises the voice of mourning and lamentation and
woe. Damn the heartless god that required all his idle
angels when his children down here went mad 1 Out of
the vast multitude, could he spare not a single one to
stand between these two hosts, and stay that hurricane
of lead; not one to stop these levelled bayonets and
that crunch of steel—that grinding of the bloody wheels
of the mills of Death ?
Is this God—this omnipotent fiend who could make
us, his poor children on earth here, holy and happy, and
will not ? Then let me, his son, flee from such a father
to the uttermost rim of the universe. Is this heaven,
where immortals stand as a retinue of sentinels, unmoved
by the tears of man’s misery and the cries of human
�12
ADDENDA.
pain ? Is this heaven—the happiest sphere we are to
enter when the gate of the grave closes behind us ? Then
proclaim it from the housetops that there is no heaven,
that all that is is a universal hell, and that man is the
plaything of an inscrutable fiend.
When will gushing gospel-mongers learn that, in spite
of its “loveliest seraphs” smiling as sweetly as they can
be made to do in Bishop Croke’s pious rhetoric, heaven
is not good enough for nineteenth-century men and
women. It did ■well enough as a more or less delirious
day-dream for centuries that are no more, for those who
have Jain in the grave so long that it would require
chemical analysis to distinguish the marrow of thefemorbone from the rust of the coffin-nail.
Shades of the dead, whose essence, in a sublime
panontism, has gone to feed the tissues of the universe,
we mean no disrespect to you when we reject your heaven.
It is upon the mountain,formed by the bonesofa departed
world, we stand, in order to see further than that departed
world ever saw. It is not the cerebration inside our indivi
dual skull, but the fact of our standing upon a more than
Tamerlane pyramid of skulls, that throws our vision
further down the vista of Mystery. The former coral
zoophytes laid their deposits on the sea-bed and under the
wave; on their deposits we place ours, thanks to them,
not in the dark like theirs, but up in the light, where the
sun shines, where the clouds roll and unroll, where the
wind blows and the billows thunder and s ing. We are
no longer away down among heavens and hells, the rocks
and algae of the ocean’s floor, but up in the light, where
the sea-birds scream, where the blue smoke from our
hearth melts away calmly over the deep green of the
trees, where the waters are wooed by olive boughs and
kissed by riparian myrtles, and flowers fling the glory of
their fragrance over the lake of the atoll.
Away with your heaven and other submarine night
mares of the world before sunrise. All hail a new
heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness !
Emerged at length from the deep, we are religious, but
our religion has burst asunder the fetters of your
theology; we are pious, but we visit your temples with
fire and desolation ; we are worshipful, but we urge on the
car of Progress over the shattered fragments of your gods.
�CHIVALRY.
13
CHIVALRY.
They knelt ’fore the altar’s gilded rail,
The beautiful and the brave,
In the dim old abbey down in the vale,
O’er high-born dust in the grave.
And martyr holy and tortured saint
Were limned on the glorious pane,
And the sunbeams threw on the carvings quaint
A golden and crimson stain.
And the organ peal shook the dead in their grave,
And the incense smoke died away
Down the dim-lit chancel and solemn nave
Where the dead in their marble lay.
The orange wreath in the morning’s breath,
And the warrior’s nodding plume,
In the hoary cloister smiled at Death
And the warp and the weft of Doom.
And the noblest blood in the land was there—
The chivalrous sword and mail;
And the naked breasts of the Norman fair
Throbbed around that altar’s rail.
And the father leant on his battle brand,
And the mother dropped a tear,
And De Wilton’s Edith laid her hand
In the gauntlet of De Vere.
And the bridal ring and the muttered words,
And the gems and the plumes of pride,
And the whispers low, and the clank of swords,
And De Wilton’s girl was a bride.
*
*
*
*
Heir to wide lands, she bore him a son
On a sweet and a silent day :
Where the breach was won, and lost, and won,
De Wilton was far away.
�14
addenda.
And he wore her glove by his mangled plume
And her kiss on his lip still lay,
1
nd his blade flashed dread as the bolt of Doom
From the morn till the noon of day.
Wherever raved wildest the storm of blades,
And the red rain bloodiest fell
Wherever thickest the troops of shades
Were hurled to the realms of Hell
°e Vere’s blue flag with his Edith’s hair
Waved in the reeling van,
And rose and fell, ’mid groan and yell,
In the chaos of horse and man.
It sank at last in the hurricane
That raged round the knights of De Vere
And the world span round his reeling brain ’
Laid bare by a foeman’s spear.
Hearts rained out blood, helms glinted fire
Mid the death groan and hurraa •
An^ kn,ghthood’s pride toiled, tugged, and died
Wheie the spangled banner lay.
For Edith s hair on that broidered soy
Lay trampled in dust and gore;
And Rudolph had sworn to bear it with joy
bo her bower or return no more.
He sprang with a shout from the reeling sod
A gash on his helmless brow,
Raised his red hand aloft to God,
And hissed his dauntless vow :
“Ye saints,” quoth he, “this soy’s my shroud,
Or I bear it to Edith again !”■_
_
BUA.^ld
tbe burst of the thunder-cloud,
Or the dash of the roaring main,
The foe swept on ten thousand strong
O’er Rudolph’s wounded ten;
&
quakes, the mountain shakes
Neath the tramp of armed men.
And vassal thralls with husky cheer
Rush o’er the banner fair,
�CHIVALRY.
15
The blazoned scutcheon of De Vere
And Edith’s golden hair.
Firm faced the host the glorious ten
For Edith, God, and Home—
Swung the angry sea of ten thousand men—
Dashed the battle’s bloody foam.
*
*
*
*
His horse lay on the carnage ground,
Upon that flag of woe ;
His mangled vassals lay around,
And Rudolph lay below,
’Mid battered helm and shivered lance,
And corslet, helm, and glave;
And all the wrecks of War’s wild dance
When waltzing to the grave.
*
*
*
*
Sighed o’er the field the young morn’s breath :
The foemen found him there,
His pale lips pressed in ghastly death
To Edith’s crimsoned hair.
They laid him down by the side of her bed,
The monks who his body bore;
His eyes had the glare of the eyes of the dead,
His armour was dyed in gore.
A friar essayed the ladye to cheer
Jn the mournful tidings of ill;
But the faithful heart of the bride of De Vere
Ever, forever was still.
Though the babe still lay on the high, white breast
That milk to its dear lips gave,—Years laid him again on that bosom to rest,
When he fell in the ranks of the brave. ’
*
*
*
*
She followed her lord to the halls of God
Ere that sorrowful day was done;
For her lord had died on the trampled sod :
To a corpse she had borne her son.
�i6
ADDENDA.
Now the sire and the dame and their gallant boy
All rest ’neath the marble there,
And over them waves the banner of soy,
With Edith’s blood-stained hair.
And swords have clashed to the valiant tale,
And the voice of the minstrel sung,
How fair were the maids, how deadly the blades,
When the heart of the world was young !
price Twopence.
Every Thursday.
THE
SECULAR
REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED BY SALADIN.
Order of your Newsagent, or send direct to the Publishers—W.
Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, London. E.C.
HISTORICAL PAMPHLETS.
A Reply to Cardinal Manning, by Saladin ...
...
The Crusades, by Saladin
...
...
...
The Covenanters, by Saladin
...
...
...
Christian Persecution, by Saladin ...
...
...
The Flagellants, by Saladin
...
...
...
The Iconoclasts, by Saladin
...
...
...
The Inquisition, Part I., by Saladin
...
...
The Inquisition, Part II., by Saladin
...
...
The Dancers, Shakers, and Jumpers, Part I., by Saladin
The Dancers, Shakers, and Jumpers, Part II., bySaladin
The Persecution of the Jews, Part I., by Saladin
...
The Persecution of the Jews, Part II., by Saladin
...
01
o 1
o x
o x
o x
o x
0 I
o 1
o 1
o 1
01
01
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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"Religious education" : a letter to Cardinal Manning
Creator
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 3 v. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Ross's reply to a sermon preached by Cardinal Manning on 26 September, 1885. Includes bibliographical references. "by Saladin" [title page]. Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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W. Stewart & Co.
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[n.d.]
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N595
N596
N597
Subject
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Education
Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ("Religious education" : a letter to Cardinal Manning), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Henry Edward Manning
NSS
Religious Education
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a7e637c901cb29f3f879cf221d79e32a.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=TFhtuSLO79Y5vzc%7E1WrUi4C1nnSxHcMG5fUWwhtVXjMTXJimEnZPoZtaHpPkIM7SwORoCx%7EoaptMJgOx5MOqltxJGUQftkGwDaQ%7EchJpV5PYnOALRCFBaQgaPKB3KNjVARlPJZSOveLbLY0yPx5sB3Z4Fr-D6XSOoBpWPWKsISJ9xo%7EB%7EWJ1Ihfxcv0m4AJ1autMqLZvcbpK5a4Pmt1OxrlarrerHDauWWP2aMtiPSPca5xdTZekK2EU3GF1d1pYG6B4CJkoMBvyFiV2JHkcdPdQaK-k4IfdCDrpanmMNouHF4C9H2eNEAejwDDa4iJx0TVn1E7eW-A59NsCig%7EyHg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d2a2a9e9210ba1a3d11883699bc2a0c2
PDF Text
Text
By One who Endured It.
BASED UPON A MS. IN THE POSSESSION OF
LONDON:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
�I
1
89WAR1998 J
—i rm 0ffH.WlT1
IMr-v^»r'i**wninr*u)i/y^jCW<-yt >4^. r
RM
�i 3^ ;
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
A week or two ago, commenting on an exceedingly
polite and urbane letter addressed to me by Julia Hey
wood, nee Fraser, I hinted that I had more MSS. in the
strong and distinctive handwriting of her late father, and
that her provoking courtesy and politeness might tempt
me to publish them. I had hoped to be able to silently
recede from my minatory hint, and leave the soft-spoken
wife of the Rev. Mr. Heywood undisturbed by further
posthumous publication of her father’s MSS. I felt
somewhat regretful at having published “The Agonies
of Hanging” memoir of Major F------, and, in the
interests of peace and amicability, I said to myself:
“Poor Julia! in memory of young and happy days of
auld lang syne, I cannot vex her. When I was a
chubby-cheeked and callow boy, trudging to school with
my leathern satchel on my back, she was to me an elder
sister. When from boyhood I developed into a senti
mental, romantic, dreamy, and erratic lad, and left my
old haunts for roaring Glasgow and its then dingy uni
versity in High Street, it was unmistakeable that she
regarded me in a light more chivalrously tender than
that in which sisters regard their brothers. And—shall
I admit it ?—when in Glasgow I wrote her letters which
I should not be ashamed of even now, should she elect
to disentomb and publish them. Well I know that,
should she give them publicity, my readers would have
many a joke, numerous sneers, and not a few laughs at
�4
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
my expense; but I have got accustomed to being:
sneered at and innured to being laughed at, and the
reading at this mature date of the letters which, in my
burning adolescence, I addressed to Julia Fraser would
irradiate with the glow of boyhood my now murky sky,
awake the dormant throb of passion in my callous heart,
scatter my now barren path with the roses and honey
suckles I was wont to twine in her hair, and fling over
the thought-worn brow of middle life the romantic halo
of love’s young dream. But most likely Julia consigned
my letters to the fire many years ago. Letters signed
‘Heavenly Julia, Yours eternally, W. Stewart Ross,’
are not letters which a clergyman’s wife would be likely
to retain and cherish. I have taken some pains that •
fK Stewart Ross should be a name that clergymen
should have little reason to love. No doubt the wife of
the Rev. Mr. Heywood has destroyed my letters. Poor
Julia ! Many a time, over the midnight and post-mid
night gas, her dear idea and her poetic vision visited me
in my student’s lonely room. Her face peered out from
between the rolling lines of Homer ■ and even sines and
cosines, the processes of surds and the mysteries of the
calculus, were not strangers to the flutter of her skirts
and the perfume and flashing radiance of her hair.
Then, throwing my books aside, I would lift one of the
slippers she worked for me (I never wore these slippers ;
they were too sacred to be soiled by my study floor) and
kiss it, and—shall I own it?—bedew it with the tears of
a poetic, ardent, and impetuous boy. Julia, I am sorry
I published that scrap from your father’s writings. I
will publish no more !”
The above was my soliloquy on Monday evening last
as I sat with my elbows on my desk, burying my face in
my hands. My brain was full of old and tender
memories, my heart replete with unwonted emotions,
when my reverie was rudely broken by the sharp metallic
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
5
■clack-clack ! which announces that the postman is at
the door, and that letters are falling into the letter-box
—letters of praise and letters of blame—to the earnest
if erring man who writes over the name of Saladin.
The servant brought up the letters on a tray. There
was one that at once arrested my eye. It was in the, to
me, never-to-be-forgotten handwriting of Julia. I tore it
open and read it. It will be found reproduced in
another page. Rightly or wrongly, I cried “ Damn!”
*
struck my fist violently on the desk, and resolved to
place before the public more of her father’s MSS. I am
•to be led, but I am not to be driven; I will brook to be
advised, but I will not submit to be defied by either
man or woman. I reproduce “ The Thrashing Machine ”
in defiance of the parson’s horsewhip, the menace in
regard to the criminal court, and the fate of them who
joined in the gainsaying of Kor.
The MS., a printed copy of which I am about to
subjoin, was, along with a large bundle of others, for
warded to me by Julia herself. The messengerf who
carried the package is still alive'. I asked him to my
hotel last time I was in the North, and had a talk with
him about old times. I, moreover, still possess the note
Julia sent along with the packet. Since she went so far
as to suggest that I stole the MS. I formerly published, I
shall take ample care that she shall .not be able to allege
that I stole this one. In self-defence, I feel compelled
to publish the letter which accompanied the package :—Dunder Hall, Tuesday evening.
Beloved Ross,I—Herewith receive, by the hands of Andrew, a
bundle of Dad’s scribbles. He was a daft man, and you are a daft
lad (but a dear, dear ducky all the same !), and let us hope that the
* See Appendix.
+ Andrew Edgar.
t She always called me Ross. I objected to being called Willie.
It had been the name borne by a previous lover of hers.
�6
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
daft darling will understand the daft Dad. Do whatever you like
with the scribbles. Dad used nasty blue paper, and browned it all
over with whiskey and snuff, or I should have used the whole clam*
jawphery to put my hair in curls. You can light the school fire
with them or light the world with them, whichever way you please.
The Irvings have got a gig. I have finished Grant’s “ Harry
Ogilvie.” Glorious 1 The hair-comb ran a long way into my
head : it was too bad of you. The ode is splendour (sic)—better
than that you wrote to pale-faced Agg ; but the fifth line won’t fit
the piano—nearly breaks it. Put that line right, like a dear.
Caught cold sitting on that damp stone, although you put your
handkerchief on it. Friday—old place—old time. It wil be
eternity till then. Don’t bring again that devil of a dirty dog.
Kisses when we meet. Don’t forget your .great coat and your
strong boots. With sincerest love, from everlasting to everlasting,
I am, beloved Ross,
Yours,
Julia.
MAJOR F----- ’j MS.
Ever since my boyhood I have busied myself in
humanitarian pursuits. Even when I was a little fellow
in the sixth form I went out one evening and saw two
broad-haunched, broad-shouldered, rosy-faced, yellow
haired, spanking huzzies driving home the cows of a
neighbouring farmer. They were the very sort of lassies
who had borne sons for Bannockburn. Either of them
could have taken the ordinary Cockney clerk and bent
him over her knee as easily as a Cockney clerk would
bend a hazel wand. On went the cows before and the
girls behind. The former lowed as they had done in
Bashan or Arcadia three thousand years before, and the
latter sang—sang as the angels sang when the world was
newly born, and before singing-masters, or even crotchets
and quavers, had yet been invented. The Ettrick Shep
herd’s songs had just begun to take root in his native
* A wrongly-spelt word of Northern etymology, ancl with little
or no meaning.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
7
land, and it was one of his songs that his two country
women sang as, with loose hair and swinging step, and
their petticoats kilted to their knees, they strode up the
loaning behind the cows :—
“ ’Tis not beneath the burgonet,
Nor yet beneath the crown ;
’Tis not on couch of velvet,
Nor yet on bed of down ;
It is beneath the spreading birk,
In the glen without a name,
Wi’ a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
When the kye come hame.
What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name ?
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame. ”
I am not sure but it was on that occasion I first fell in
love. The odorous breath of the cows, the fragrance
which the zephyr wafted from the valley below where the
bean was in bloom, the solemn hush of the twilight
hour, and that idyllic song of the milk-maids warmed me
and charmed me till I wandered far away from the school
to the byre into which the cows and the lassies dis
appeared. I, too, went into the byre, the lassies taking
little notice of me, doubtless thinking me too young to
engage their serious attention in any way.
“Jenny,” at last faltered T timidly to the lassie that
had charmed me most; “Jenny, I love you;” and, in
the words of the refrain of a song that ran in my head,
and will you “ meet me by moonlight alone ?”
Jenny set down her milk-pail from her lap, and, fling
ing back her wealth of unkempt hair, looked up at me
with her beaming, healthy, happy, and innocent face,
and said, with a bewitching smile, “Yes, little boy, I
will meet you; but who is to milk the cows ? If you
can invent something to milk the cows, I will meet you.”
“ Thank you, dear Jenny,” said I; and I timidly
�8
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
kissed the upturned face of the milk-maid. “ I will not,
Jenny,” quoth I, waving my hand in adieu; “ I will not
return till I have invented something to milk the cows
while we are gone.”
With the vague uneasiness of premature love, I
wandered back through the dewy grass and through the
bean fields, and arrived at the school too late for evening
prayers, but not too late to receive a sound thrashing
for being absent without leave. I was packed off to bed
sobbing and supperless, and lay nearly all night awake
thinking about Jenny, and planning the invention for
milking the cows while she should “ meet me by moon
light alone.” All next day I had a practice sum on the
one side of my slate and plans for a milking-machine on
the other. Whenever an usher came near I pretended
to be working at the practice sum; but I was really
engaged upon the milking-machine. At the end of
three days I had struck upon a plan which I felt sure
would work. All that was now wanted was to get the
proper materials together, and the little box of tools
which my father had put into my school trunk, guided by
my mechanical ingenuity, would do the rest. My father
had always believed me to be possessed of mechanical
talent. I was now developing that talent in a direction
he little dreamt of, and for a purpose of which I could
hardly venture to hope he would approve. All I needed
by way of material was some pieces of wood, an indiarubber tube, a piece of rope, a penny-worth of tin-tacks,
and seven stripes of leather. During the play-hours,
extending over a week, I hid myself in a deserted barn
and constructed my machine, ever dreaming of yellow
haired Jenny, and humming to myself:—
“ What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name ?
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame,
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
9
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame.”
At length, duly equipped with my milking-machine, I
-strode off to the byre, regardless of discipline and flogging
and extra task and everything sublunary save Jenny. I
felt proud I had suffered for her sake, and I was prepared
to suffer again. I reached the byre, got behind Jenny
who was milking, and triumphantly set down my milkingmachine, which, to tell the truth, looked a queer cross
between a three-legged stool and a sou’-wester, and a
baby-jumper and a sausage-machine. Jenny turned
round and looked at me, and glanced at the machine,
and then held her sides and laughed till the tears ran
down her cheeks. The other milk-maid caught up the
tune and laughed almost as immoderately.
Drawing myself up to my full height, “ Jenny,” said I
sternly, “ I am here in redemption of my promise, and
to demand of you the fulfilment of yours. I guarantee
that this machine will milk the cows, and I claim of you
that you ‘ meet me by moonlight alone.’ ”
“ Great God,” said the other milk-maid, “ the boy is
clean cracked 1”
“ Madam,” rejoined I fiercely, “ I am a gentleman,
and I did not come here to be insulted. This lady
made a vow to me, and by heaven she shall redeem it,
or I shall know why.”
The two milk-maids opened their mouths at me as
well as their eyes, and stared at me in incredulous bewil
derment.
“ Of course, of course,” at length spake Jenny, with an
arch smile; “I will ‘meet you by moonlight alone,’
according to my promise, if you will make that thing
[pointing to the machine] milk the cows while we are
•gone.”
�IO
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
“That/7zz>?£-,” said I with pride and firmness, “will
do the work while we are gone.”
“ Set it to its work, then,” answered Jenny, still with
wild bewilderment on her sun-burnt but honest and
happy countenance.
'‘iThe lady is won” murmured I in triumph; and I
lifted my machine and proceeded to attach it to the
udder of the cow. The animal resisted my attentions,
and seemed to have somewhat set her face against
vaccine innovations. I succeeded, nevertheless, in
attaching the machine to her udder.
“Now!” exclaimed I; and I gave the leather a tug
and the rope a pull, and set in motion the fly-wheel
which I had taken off a disused grindstone. The tug
and the pull and the wheel were more than the cow
could stand—perhaps more than any cow before or
since has been expected to stand. She ventured one
mad stare at myself and the apparatus, and then lashed
out devilishly with her feet. I was lifted clean off the
ground and dashed up against the opposite wall, and the
milk-pail and my most ingenious machine were kicked
to shivers and scattered over and around me. I stag
gered up with a fractured skull and a broken arm, and,
observing the thick milk lying white all around me, I
took it to be the whole of my brains, or mayhap my
immortal soul, scattered over the pavement; and, with a
despairing cry, I fell back insensible.
When I recovered my senses I found myself in my own
bed at school, with my father standing over me. He
had been sent for, and had come more than three hun
dred miles. The doctor was also there, and an old
chrone of a nurse, besides a great number of basins and
bowls and medicine bottles and poultices and jugs with
flowers, and wet towels. When I was sufficiently re
covered to receive it, and when my father was gone,
quite in the interests of the school, I got my ever-
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
II
memorable thrashing, that the discipline of the establish
ment might be vindicated. That thrashing fructified into
incalculable good : it set me to planning and devising
my thrashing machine, the greatest invention since Napier
invented logarithms. It is of this thrashing machine,
God willing, I propose to speak. But I may just mention
that, as regards my first and incipient venture, the milkingmachine, the splinters and fragments of it were picked,
up carefully ; but a piece of leather belonging to it, and
as large as a shoe-sole, was never found—neither were
two of my front teeth. My firm impression is that both
that piece of leather and my two front teeth were knocked
down my throat, and that they remain somewhere inside
my person till the present day. A German surgeon I
once met at Baden-Baden (a Herr Pulvermacher) inclines
to the same opinion. He placed some curious acoustic
contrivance of his own upon my naked back, and, apply
ing his ear to it, assured me that he heard distinctly the
two teeth biting away at the piece of leather. I have a
strange pain in the part, and, on a very quiet night,
when I have had enough whisky, but not too much, I
myself have heard a sound appallingly like the two teeth
biting the leather. But let that pass, and let this serve
as prolegomena to the conception, process, and com
pletion of the triumph of my life, The Thrashing
Machine.
I found I was in for a terrific hammering. It seems
that, in my unconscious state, I had two or three timesevery day risen up in bed and whispered, “Jenny, my
love,” kissed a viewless form, and then sang :—
“ See yonder pawky shepherd
That lingers on the hill ;
His yowes are in the fauld,
And his lambs are lyin’ still ;
But he downa venture hame,
�12
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
For his heart is in a flame
To meet his bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
’Tween the gloamin’ and the mirk,
When the kye come hame.”
These recurring outbursts of love and song had, the
surgeon alleged, made me much worse. On one occasion,
as I got enthusiastic in the refrain of my bucolic melody,
it seems I had torn the bandage from my head and flung
it right in the face of Mrs. Fergusson, the principal’s
wife. My wounded scalp bled afresh, and I fell back in
a state of syncope; but Mrs. Fergusson did not stay to
attend to me. One or two drops of blood from the
bandage had lighted upon her face. She rushed out of
the room screaming, and vehemently advised her hus
band, Dr. Fergusson, that I was “ a horrid little pig,” that
I had assaulted her, and that she would not live in the
same establishment with me.
“Thrash,” screamed she; “thrash the insubordinate
and cracked little blockhead, and send him home. He
is not fit to be in the school.”
The Doctor, if he had not had a wife, would not have
been a bad sort of fellow: he was a scholar, a pedant,
but on the whole a gentleman; albeit an act of juvenile
indiscretion on his part had made it necessary for him
to marry a village dressmaker. Dr. Fergusson governed
the school, and this quondam dressmaker governed Dr.
Fergusson.
“ My dear, it shall be done,” said Dr. Fergusson sub
missively, as he wiped away the blood-drops off his wife’s
face with his snuffy handkerchief. “ I agree with you;
he is monstrum nulla virtute redemptum a vitiis. I will
thrash him.”
If the Doctor had not promised “ I will thrash him,”
I strongly suspect he would have got thrashed himself.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
IS
All the boys remembered the day he came into the
school minus one of his side whiskers. It was no joke
to disobey the impetuous caprices of the quondam
dressmaker who was now Mrs. Fergusson.
In a day or two I was considered well enough to get
thrashed. I was, with shabby solemnity, arraigned
before the entire teaching staff and all the boys in the
school. Mrs. Fergusson sat by her husband’s side, busy
hemming an apron : she surmised that her presence was.
necessary to give him the essential constancy, courage,
and cruelty.
“ Donald Fraser,” began the Doctor sternly, “ you are
unworthy, sir, of the attention of my staff and myself
unworthy of the kindness of your more than mother,
Mrs. Fergusson [here the lady referred to laid down her
seam, took off her spectacles, and wiped her eyes]
unworthy of the young gentlemen who have been pol
luted by being doomed to associate with you ; unworthy,,
sir, of these benches ; unworthy of this ancient academy,
which has been the alma mater of many who have sub
sequently been ornaments to the Army, the Church, and
the Law. [Here Mrs. Fergusson beat the floor with her
heel by way of applause; and all the boys, with the
single exception of myself, battered the boards with
their feet, and hurrahed, and kicked up such a cloud of
dust that, in my weak state, I felt choking and faint.]
It is not for your sake, Fraser, that I put myself to the
trouble of administering a flagellation. Before me lies
a task, not a pleasure. Virtute non armis fido. Your
offence has been inexpressibly flagrant. Twice you have
been absent without leave—absent for a purpose which
I would describe as diabolical if it were not that I have
an impression that you are of unsound mind. You
were found in a cow-house four miles away, lying in a
cataplasm of cow’s milk and fool’s blood, the staves of a
broken milk-pail, and the shivered fragments of an idiotic.
�14
A FEVRm. FLOGGING.
contrivance of yours. In the name of omnipotent God,
sir, what were you doing there ? How, sir, did you dare
to drag the reputation of this ancient seat of learning
over the filthy floor of a cow-house ? How, sir, did you
come to exchange expressions of precocious amativeness
with an unlettered woman of the people? No boy who
has the privilege to attend a seat of learning like this,
august with the classic memories of nearly half a cen
tury, but should sing from the bottom of his heart the
noble ode which opens, Odi prefanum ntlgvs, ef arceo.
Even with the oldest of you it is time enough to think
of ladies: but, when the time comes, look only and
alone to a lady bred and a lady bom [here Mrs. Fcrgusson primmed her mouth, straightened her hards,
perked back her head, and posed as " a lady bred and
a lady bom
and speak to no other woman wha-ever,
unless it be to command her to wash vour shirr or
blacken your boots.”
“ Hear, hear F cried Mrs. Ferguson.
“But,” continued the Doctor, “you have actually
gone and compromised me and the school and vour
family and yomselt, by precocious advances to a miser
able plebeian of the feminine gender. In your delitiirm
you spoke of Jenny. Jenny is not such a mnv as
should be in die mouth of any youth who has walked
through the classic groves of this establishment. sir.
Phyllis, or Chloris. or Calpumia, or Clytemnesma. are
such names as alone should escape your Kps. yborr
is vulgarity and desecration. [ His own wife's name was
Mary Ann.] Then, sir, you kept humming a ditcv
wrirten by a shepherd, and fit only for plcueh-bovs.
‘ To wee a txxutie ssssae
When the kye cosrse tiirae'—
provincial crtveh sir. with which you have polluted vour
mouth and contaminated the atmosnhere of this classic
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
15
• establishment. Your stripes, sir, which shall be many,
would have been few if, in your delirium, you had
sung:—‘ Supprime jam I'aerymas, non est revocabilis istis,
Quern semel umbrifera navita lintre tulit. ’
Sir, you shall be beaten with many stripes in vindication
of the outraged reputation of this seat of learning, and
then you will be forever and ignominiously expelled, a
mensa et thoro. Divest yourself of the garment that
■envelopes the part of your somatic entity upon which,
from time immemorial, flagellation has been conven
tionally laid.”
At this point Mrs. Fergusson pretended to turn her
eyes away, and many of the smaller boys began to sob
audibly, for an expulsion flogging at Angel Turret in
the good old days was something you would carry the
memory, and perhaps the marks, of to your grave. I
let the curtain fait over the sickening details of how I
was stripped, strapped, and flogged till I fainted ; and
how, next morning, I was stuffed inside the school
master’s lumbering carriage, my boxes being on the top,
and driven to the mail coach, that I might be despatched
en route for home.
My father was neither to hold nor to bind. He took
me into the library, and examined my stripes carefully
with a candle, muttering strange oaths as each blue weal,
red line, or yellow star revealed itself to his indignant
scrutiny. He rushed out to the stables and instructed
the coachman to get ready the carriage at once. My
mother met him in the hall, and asked anxiously, “Where
are you going, dear ? Whatever is the matter ?”
“ Going 1” rejoined he, angrily ; “ do you know that
that snuffy old rascal at Angel Turret—the Devil’s Turret
they should call it—has all but murdered your boy ? I
start to-night to punch his infernal old head. I’ll teach
the pedantic old compound of snuff and Latin and
�i6
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
barbarity what it is to print the American flag with a
stick upon the foundation of any boy of mine. I’ll twist
the truculent old savage’s neck for him.”
“No, you won’t,” said my mother; “you won’t do
anything of the kind and she placed her arm in his
and endeavoured to lead him back to the dining room,
for she was well aware that, if he were permitted to visit
I)r. Fergusson, he would be likely, by his choleric temper
and heavy hand, to get himself into serious if not in
superable difficulties.
“ Come with me,” she murmured persuasively, gently
drawing him in the direction of the dining room. But
he was in an ungovernable rage, all the more deep-seated
and determined and dangerous because it was not paiticularly demonstrative; and he shook my mother off
as if she had been a viper, and simply said, with an
inflexible firmness : “ Woman, I have made up my mind,
and go I shall.”
My mother waxed pale with dread, and, with the
utmost exertion of her persuasive force, induced him to
go into the parlour and have a cup of tea, previous to
his setting out on his journey, which she was apprehen
sive might end in murder. Grimly he sipped a cup of
tea. “ Now I am in for anything from pitch and toss to
manslaughter,” muttered he through his teeth; but
beyond this he uttered not a word. A servant announced
that the carriage was ready. He set down the tea-cup
with a clank and sprang to his feet. But, on the instant,
somehow, and from somewhere, a brass kettleful of
boiling water was upset upon his feet, almost filling his
Hessian boots. He uttered a roar of pain, and, without
opening the glass door, crashed through it, and in an
instant was upon the lawn. Here he swore like a fiend
and jumped mountain high with agony. For an instant
. he stood on the margin of the fish-pond. It struck me
like an inspiration that, if he could get some cold water
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
17
introduced into the boiling water in his boots, all would
be well with him. There was not a moment to lose. I
made a short and mad race, and came up against him
like a battering ram; and he was, in what I conceived
to be mercy, knocked heels over head into the fish
pond.
She never confessed it, but I have a strong suspicion
that my mother upset that kettle by preconcerted accident,
in order to circumvent a journey that she apprehended
would end in manslaughter, if not indeed in murder.
Be that as it may, my father was in bed for a fortnight
in a raging fever. I had indeed taken him out of hot
water and cooled him down a bit; but, as it turned out,
the cooling had been all too suddenly effected. By the
time he had fairly recovered he had apparently given up
all idea of visiting Dr. Fergusson and Angel Turret; he
never again mentioned them, nor referred to them in
any way.
During the time my father was confined to bed with
burnt feet and fever I had leisure to attend to and medi
tate upon the many stripes on my person, the outward
and visible signs of an inward grace which I fear I did
not possess. I was seized with an overpowering desire
to behold with my own eyes the stripes by which the
honour of Dr. Fergusson and his academy had been
vindicated. My father had examined these stripes, and
had compared the part on which they were inflicted to a
representation of the American flag, the glorious gon
falon of the stripes and stars. I must behold these
stripes by which the honour of Angel Turret had been
vindicated and my own moral redemption secured. I
twisted myself round like an acrobat; and, if I could
only have twisted myself round two inches further, I
believed I could have had a full view; but, as it was, I
had no view at all. It occurred to me that, if I kept
trying on frpm day to day, I would gradually overcome
�i8
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
that difficulty about the two inches. I, however, tried
and tried three days in succession, but without success,
and on the third day I took cramp while I was in the
very acme of my distorted attitude; and, unable to
screw myself back to my normal position, for over five
minutes I yelled with pain. My cries brought my mother
and the scullery-maid to my bed-room door; but I had
taken the precaution to lock it before I commenced my
experiments, or these two persons would have found me
in an exceedingly awkward predicament. As soon as
the cramp relaxed its grasp I straightened myself up,
hurriedly redressed myself, and opened the door with a
bland smile.
“ Donald, Donald, in the name of heaven,” exclaimed
my mother, “ what is the matter with you ? Your cries
were heartrending.”
“ Oh, nothing the matter with me, mother—all right
—I was experimenting,” stammered I, with some confu
sion of manner.
“ Experimenting 1” cried my mother, “ your screams
were as terrible as if you had, all of a sudden, tumbled
into hell. What kind of experiment requires yelling of
that kind ?”
“ Well, you see I was experimenting on the acting of
Hamlet.’ That scene where the Dane leaps into the
grave of Ophelia, in my opinion, requires fearful yelling.”
“ Boy, you are clean cracked. First you did some
abominable thing at school—Lord knows exactly what it
was; next you attempt to drown your own father ; and
then, in your attempt at acting ‘ Hamlet,’ you bid fair to
burst your own wind-pipe and shout the whole of us
deafand my mother slammed the door and hurried
downstairs.
I was still determined to behold the stripes for which
I was indebted to the strong right arms of Dr. Fergusson
■and his principal assistant. I tried ingenious combina
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
19
rtions of double mirrors and triple mirrors, and I, by this
means, succeeded in seeing all parts of my body except
the very part I desired to examine. Discomfiture I
But I was still determined, ingenious, and resourceful.
.Sitting on the top of the garden wall was a tom-cat
•engaged in his toilet. Now, when a cat sponges himself
•with his tongue he sponges himself all over, from the
■very hat-crown to the boot-heel, as it were. One toilet
.attitude the tom-cat struck gave me a wrinkle. Like
.the ancient Greek geometer, I exclaimed “ Eureka!”
I apprehended that my task could be accomplished if I
■could only place my heel on the back of my neck.
Then an astonishing field of view wrould open before my
prying and intelligent vision. Sir Isaac Newton had
struck upon the law of gravitation from seeing an apple
fall; I, the product of a later and more go-ahead age,
had, from observing a cat at his toilet, struck upon the
law by which I could survey the stripes which the
learned Dr. Fergusson had inflicted that the prestige of
Angel Turret might be vindicated and my own moral
regeneration secured.
Preparatory to my new experiment I stripped myself
and sparred and attitudinised before a mirror, and,
without egotism, it really did appear to me that I was an
•exceptionally handsome lad, and peculiarly suggestive
•of a Greek athlete or agonistes. I arrayed myself in a
■pair of bathing drawers and sat down upon the hearth
rug in order to experiment in the way of placing my
heel behind my neck, that, with mortal vision, I might
behold the stripes with which my moral iniquities had
been healed. At the first trial I managed to put my
great toe in my mouth. At the end of half-an-hour I
.succeeded in making the said great toe touch my ear
Eldorado was all but reached ! I became inordinately
excited and I resolutely determined to succeed. One
desperate duck till my neck cracked, and one reckless
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
20
wrench upward of the leg till knee and pelvis cracked in.
chorus—and the deed was done ! My heel was placed
firmly and solidly on the back of my neck! But no
undiscovered worlds and unexplored hemispheres or
American or other flags met my adventurous vision:
the drawers were there—frightful oversight, irreparable
blunder ! I felt in a state of distress and blindness, and
hastened to remove the heel which I had placed upon
my neck. I was utterly powerless to do so. In a short
time I had not even the power to try to remove my
heel. I tumbled sidewise upon the hearth-rug, and lay
moaning in absolute misery. I felt I was dying—dying
a martyr to research after a certain fundamental truth ;
dying, unlamented, deserted, unappreciated, and no one
would ever divine the cause in which I had perished.
No marble tomb for me, and a brilliant name among
the world’s great discoverers, and those who passed
through the furnaces of tribulation to the throne of the
immortals. In my deadly distress I remembered the
words of young Norval:—“ Cut off from Nature’s and from Glory’s course,
Which never mortal was so fond to run.
*
*
*
*
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves,
May yet conjecture what I might have been.”
In the collapse of my previous experiment I was able
to scream ; but now that last solace of the sufferer was
denied me. My chin was pressed firmly down upon
my throat, and I could make only a low, croaking noise,
resembling the jeremiad of a frog, rather than the wail
of a human being. My plight was terrible. Nobody
would miss me now till supper time, if even then ; and
by that time I should be beyond the reach of mortal
assistance. By the merest accident, the maid had
neglected to “ make ” my bed at the proper time; and,
before I had lain five minutes—which, however, seemed
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
21
.-an eternity—in my helpless and desperate condition, she
entered the chamber to “make” the bed. She stared
at me, uttered a scream, and hurried out of the
room.
“ O ma’am,” she said to my mother, in breathless ex
citement, “the young master is in his room, and has
made himself into a Isle of Man halfpenny, with feet
.all round ; and he is groaning horrible. O ma’am, I
have got quite a scunner. I never see’d the like. Come,
ma’am; he is a-dyin’ by inches.”
My mother rushed up the stairs three steps at a time,
and, beholding my extraordinary plight, she held up her
hands in bewildered horror, and exclaimed :
“ What next ? What part of the play of ‘ Hamlet ’ can
Z7zzk be meant to represent ? What have I done that
divine providence should give me a son like this ? He
is knees and elbows all over, like an octopus. He will
drive me cracked !” and she rushed out of the room and
sent for the parson and the doctor. The former prayed
for me, while the latter, by main force, extracted my
heel from the back of my neck. Then they two retired
to my father’s bedroom, where he was still lying, bad
with burnt feet and fever; and all three got drunk
together. You may think all this unimportant; but it is
not. It all had its bearing upon the magnum opus of my
life, The Thrashing Machine, and that you shall see
before many more lines have proceeded from my gifted
pen.
I was not even yet defeated. Every fresh repulse I
sustained served only to render me the more determined
to behold and study the stripes with which my moral
delinquencies had been healed. These stripes, still
sharply painful, should I inadvertently forget they were
there and sit down all of a sudden, were all that resnained to me to hallow the memory of far-off Jenny
�22
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
and the literal shattering of my idol which the cow had
so irreverently kicked to splinters. But Jenny and the
milking-machine alike became half-obliterated in my wild
and all-absorbing desire to read the primitive hieroglyphy
which Dr. Fergusson and his principal assistant, a B.A.
of Oxford, had written upon me with rods. They were
two learned men. I must see what, in their wisdom,,
they had written with sticks, using my skin for parch
ment. The results of their labour, I determined, should
not be lost to the world,
I, with the unconventional and rare ingenuity which
has ever been my distinguishing trait, sat down upon a
large plate of salt, that I might learn and note from the
spasms and yanks of pain the particular directions and
crossings and re-crossings and notches and stars and
scars of the stripes with which my morals had been so
learnedly, if not humanely, healed. I went down to the
pantry when the butler happened to be out; and I filled
my pockets with finely powdered salt, and concealed as.
best I could under my coat a large silver tray. With
the salt and the tray I retired to my bedroom. I filled
the tray full to the brim with the salt, and levelled it off
beautifully with a comb. Then down I sat with a jerk
but, by the King of Heaven, up I rose with another jerk !
I uttered a savage yell, and ran tearing across the floor
as if all the fiends had been behind me. I had had my
arm broken, my skull fractured, and my two teeth kicked
down my throat; but, in insufferable pain, this salt ex
periment beat all my previous experiences hollow. I
beg humbly to recommend its adoption by the Great
Spiritual Enemy of Mankind as something worthy of the
liveliest corner in the Infernal Pit. Into the room rushed
my mother and her maid.,
“ Donald, Donald dear, in the name of all that is
sane, what is the matter now ?”
“ ‘Hamlet ’ again, mother!” exclaimed I bitterly, hardly
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
2S
knowing what I said; for the pain, although subsiding,
was still intense.
“ But you gag ‘Hamlet ’ horribly,” rejoined she, half in
literal earnest and half in pitying irony; “ I distinctly
heard you cry out, ‘ O Almighty thunder ! I cannot
read the writing with the stick 1 I have sat down on
hell, and here am I!’ What part of ‘ Hamlet ’ is that ?
It is not to be found in Shakespeare’s version.”
I explained that Hamlet was mad, and that, in my
contemplated representation of the character, I should
give a rendering which would astonish the world.
“Astonish the world! I should think so,” rejoined
my mother curtly, and left the room.
I had managed to place a pillow over the tray with the
salt, or I might not have been able to give my explana
tions so readily, or to have got rid of her so easily.
Labor omnia vincit. The gate of hell itself cannot
prevail against the unconquerable might of the human
will. Even the fiery fury of the trayful of salt had not
burnt out of me the indomitable resolution to read the
cryptograms which the learned Dr. Fergusson and his
assistant, Morris, had written with sticks. The gardener
was an exceedingly intelligent young man. Pencil and
compasses were hardly ever out of his hands. His busi
ness was to design flower-beds, rockeries, and fountains ;
but he could draw nearly anything that is in heaven
above, on earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
I would take him into the summer-house and engage
him to produce, on a sheet of drawing-paper, a facsimile
of the stripes with which my moral delinquencies had
been healed. I hastened out to the garden, gave my
instructions, and, within three hours from the inception
of the idea, it was a consummated fact. The annexed
cut is, accurately, but on a reduced scale, and without
colours, a copy of the document, plan, map, or what you
will, with which the gardener furnished me :—-
�24
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
Never did panting lover read a missive from his mistress,
never did young poet read his first verses in type, with
more ecstatic rapture than warmed and thrilled me now
that I had the stick-writing of a great seat of learning
unrolled before me in all its mysterious splendour. I
admit it was utterly incomprehensible. Would to heaven
I could interpret its esoteric lines, its occult angles, and
its mysterious stars ! But I knew that Dr. Fergusson
was a learned and earnest man, who would not write
flippantly or in vain; and that, therefore, in that mystic
scribble, which had been subsequently retraced by the
flame-pen of the salt, lurked the key to unlock that
problem in ontology, the Origin of Evil, and the sword
with which to cut the Gordian Knot of Evil’s Final
Eradication. I gazed on the map-document with that
absorbing dream-worship with which we regard that
which at once awes our senses and baffles our reason.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
25
Although I could not read the inscription now that I had
it before me, the consciousness of possessing it was to
me a profound, if inexplicable, pleasure. What could
be the portentous significance of that blue fading away
into that green ; of that umbre black losing itself in that
flaming yellow; of that ominous ttJ, and that fearful □ ?
I would be at the bottom of all this, or perish in the
.attempt. I worked at the problem till I felt the wheels
of my brain cracking and the belts giving way. But, at
last, an inspiration as magnificent as that which had
impelled me to employ the gardener to make the copy
of the cryptogram now struck me with the divine impulse
to employ a certain servant of the Most High to trans
late it. About six miles distant from my father’s house,
Dunder Hall, lived a man of God and Learning such as
the world has all too seldom seen. He had preached
himself out of his kirk, and all but preached himself into
a lunatic asylum, for it is with a lunatic asylum the
world rewards all possessors of mental energy and moral
force which cannot be weighed or measured in the bushel
of vulgar common sense or yoked into the mill of com
monplace to grind out half-crowns.
I begged two guineas from my ever-indulgent father
and enclosed them, along with the inscription, to the
learned and pious, albeit impecunious, servant of the
Most High. I explained to him that I was anxious to
have a translation. I made him aware that the cryptogramic hierogram was the work of two elegant scholars,
James Fergusson, M.A. of Edinburgh and LL.D, of
Yale, and Arthur Morris, B.A., of Brazenose College,
Oxford, and editor of an approved edition of Thucydides.
I permitted the learned and reverend servant of the Most
*
High to infer that the copy I sent him, and which the
* The Rev. Dr. Hamilton, author of “ Key to the Apocalypse ”
and “ The Contents of the Seven Phials.”
�26
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
gardener had made, was the original. I, somehow, had
not the face to take him the original and lay it before
him. Thank heaven I had just taken the copy in time,
for, under the influence of a salve made of bees-wax,.
fern roots, and alum, the original was rapidly becoming
illegible and passing away, leaving only a tabula rasa
behind.
Within a week from the day I sent off the inscription,
a messenger from the scholar handed it back to me with
the translation thereof! I rushed upstairs to my room,
locked the door from the inside, and eagerly tore open,
the scholar’s packet. A guinea tumbled out upon the
floor. I set my foot upon it till I had time to lift it. I
had now before me a prize grander than a Dijon pyramid
of guineas. A private note ran thus :—
The Cottage, Thursday morning.
Donald Fraser, Esq.
*
Dear Sir,—The writing with a sight of which you honoured,
me, although exceedingly important at this crisis of the Church,
is not at all difficult to decipher. I devoted to it only oneday of prayerful reading and one day of philological synthesis and
analysis. I got at the key to the cryptogram all the readier as the
whole inscription bore a striking resemblance to that upon an
Assyrian tile which Dr. Ravenstein brought from the Land of Moab
seven months ago. Having had to devote only two days tothe translation, it would be avaricious on my part to retain the twoguineas you were generous enough to enclose; but, as I am not
abundantly blessed with the world’s wealth, I have taken the liberty
to retain one of the guineas, and I sincerely trust that you will not
consider the fee for the trifling service it has been my privilege torender you exorbitant.
With prayers that the translation may be blessed to the saving of'
your soul and the souls of those who are of your household,
I am, Dear Sir,
Your most respectful, humble servant,
•
James Hamilton.
The Rev. Dr. Hamilton had evidently thought that the inscrip
tion had been sent him by my father.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
27
PROLEGOMENAL CLARIS.
(T) The lines have all a tendency from east to west.
They are simply the rays of the sun-god, ^(lrrrjp, Mises
Saotes, He., He. I give due weight in detail to their
respective ray-weight and deflection from the horizontal.
(2) The distinctive marks are all grammalogoi, Phallic
symbols (crux ansata), signs of the Zodiac, oriental,
ancient Egyptian, and Ptolemaic, Hebrew characters, in
which W and H are conspicuous, and tt, which, with its
indication of the relation of the diameter of a circle to
its circumference, affords, in the hands of esoteric erudi
tion, a key to the whole position.
(3) The great character to the left is of course Hl/N,
which, taken with 1TJJ (the virgin) and Zo (the crab) and
TT (the twins), all of which are readily discernible in
the inscription, render the solution easy to the occultist'
scholar.
TRANSLATION.
BY THY LEFT HAND, O AMMON, GREETING.
GREAT
VINDEMIATRIX, ARISE IN THE EAST.
THERE
WAS SILENCE IN HELL ABOUT THE SPACE OF HALF AN
STAR,
HOUR. WO, WO, SON OF POMPONIUS MELA, WITH THE
IRON IN THE GROIN AND THE FOUNDATIONS BEATEN
LIKE AN ANVIL OF MULCIBER. THE RAYS THEREOF
FLEW. Zeus hflijv STRUCK THE NETHER HEEL J THE
MOUTH WAS THAT OF A LION, THE FEET WERE THOSE
OF A SHE-BEAR, AND THE TAIL THAT OF A FROG. FOR
*
n SHALL JUDGE AMONG THE NATIONS, AND AT THE
END OF A TIME AND THREE TIMES AND ONE-EIGHTH
OF A TIME THE EARTH SHALL HOWL AS THE MOON
DROPS DOWN UPON IT IN BLOOD. HOWL FOR THE
CIVET, CRY ALOUD FOR THE MUSTARD PLANT. FOR
THE CRAB AND THE VIRGIN AND THE TWINS MOURN
WITH TAMMUZ IN BAAL-PEOR. THE HERON AND THE
WEAZEL LAMENT IN BACTRIA FOR ANUBIS AND RA AND
SET-TYPHON
AND
SEKRU
AND
TUM
AND
PHTHAH.-
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
MOURN, FOR THE LEGS AND THE TEETH ARE BROKEN.
MISES HARMACHIS AND OANNES COME ; THE GRAVES
OPEN J THE WORLD ENDS.
GLORY TO pH ! BEAT
THE WIND WITH RODS, 12 I
AND YEARS 9,999-
CUBITS, AND
FOR DAYS
My countenance fell. The original, even as I sat
upon the salt, was nearly as intelligible as the translation
that now lay before me. What could possibly be the
use of James Fergusson, M.A., and Arthur Morris, B.A.,
troubling in my interest to write with sticks, didactics,
and apothegms utterly beyond the range of my scholar
ship and the scope of my intelligence ? Of the “ founda
tions beaten like an anvil ” I had a vivid comprehension ;
while “ beat the wind ” was intelligible, but rather vague ;
and “ rods ” of “ 121 cubits ” were certainly a great deal
too long for actual, practical flogging. And could they
not, at Angel Turret, have flogged a boy like me without
referring me to, as far as I was concerned, such unknown
monsters as Ra and Set-Typhon and Turn and Phthah ?
No wonder the thrashing did me no good ! No wonder
that I felt quite as wicked as ever ! I resolved to devote
some years to deep meditation on the philosophy of
flogging. And any one who is privileged to follow the
coruscations of my gifted pen may have the glory to
find out for himself the magnificent result at which I
^ultimately arrived.
(To be continued, if Julia—Mrs. Heywood—
shoiild see fit to again provoke Saladin.)
�APPENDIX.
ANOTHER LETTER FROM MRS. HEYWOOD.
Sir,—I have read your vile paper. I took the tongs, and with
them carried it out at arm’s length to the dust-bin. I feel defiled.
I shall ask my husband, a feeble but earnest servant of God, to
appoint a clay of humiliation and prayer throughout his parish.
Then I shall ask him, if he loves me, the wife of his bosom, to horse
whip you to within one inch of your life. He is strong in the arm of
the flesh, and will thrash you as if you were a rat; and the God of
Jacob, the mighty one of Israel, has, in answer to my prayer, pro
misecl to assist him. You shall perish in the gainsaying of Kor.
My father never hanged himself with the----- of any creature.
You forged the whole infamous thing, and you have provoked the
holy one of Israel to anger. I shall be at you at the criminal court.
I never saw you save once, and I wish I had never seen you. The
devil tempted me, and I tattooed on my left arm—
I Love Ross Alone and Forever.
My husband has seen the inscription two or three times, and has
each time kicked up a dust and preached in a way that has emptied
the church and drawn upon him the displeasure of the bishop. I
have tried to take out the tattooing with poultices of vaccine excre
ment, black soap, and steel filings ; but it will not come out. I
shall have my arm amputated rather than bear about with me your
accursed name. Last time the Rev. Mr. Heywood saw it he hurled
a heavy clasped Bibleat my head. The holy book, glory be to
God, missed my head ; but it knocked down Jesus Christ and
three of the saints, and it took £4 5s. 3d. to repair them. I
enclose you the account, and, if you have a soul in your body, you
will pay it.
My father, whose memory you foul with burlesque and whose
grave you desecrate, would not have trusted you with a brass six
pence, far less with his Julia’s honour. Beware of the curse of
Hiel the Bethelite ! There shall be a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a
great slaughter in the land of Idumea, for you stole my father’s-
�3°
APPENDIX.
MS. and then forged it. I will yet number you and your readers
in Telain, when the mighty one cometh from Teman and Ur of the
Chaldeans. I am my father’s daughter, you viper. You say he was
hanged with a murderer’s intestines, which is a falsehood ; and I
pray God that you may .yet see the day when you will be hanged
with his daughter’s garters, which she weareth under the knees
thereof (sic). My husband shall chastise thee with whips, and the
Lord shall rain down upon thee hail-stones and coals of fire. Blow
ye the cornet in Gibeah and the trumpet in Ramah : cry aloud at
Beth-aven !—Yours, with loathing and contempt,
Julia Heywood (nee Fraser).
The Vicarage, Sunday evening.
P.S.—You may insert this or not, as you like ; but, if you do not,
the husband of my bosom has made arrangements to have the whole
•matter of your vile slander published in the Church Times and the
Christian World, and also brought into the police-court.—J. H.,
nee F.
���
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Victorian Blogging
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A fearful flogging : by one who endured it; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Stamp on front cover: Bishopsgate Institute. Reference Library. Appendix: Another letter from Mrs Julia Heywood (nee Fraser). Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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PDF Text
Text
A Visit to the Grave
OF
THOMAS CARLYLE.
BY
SALADIN.
London :
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
�ERECTED TO THE
MEMORY OF JANNET CARLYLE,
SPOUSE OF JAMES CARLYLE, MAS
ON, IN ECCLEFECHAN, WHO DIED
THE IIth SEPtr, 1792, IN THE 25th
YEAR OF HER AGE.
ALSO JANNET CARLYLE, DAUGHTER TO
JAMES CARLYLE AND MARGARET AIKEN,
DIED
SHE AT ECCLEFECHAN JANR 27™, l8oi,
AGED 17 MONTHS, ALSO MARGRET
THEIR DAUGHTER, SHE DIED JUNE 2 2nd, 1830,
AGED 27 YEARS. AND THE ABOVE
JAMES CARLYLE, BORN AT BROWN KNOWE
IN AUGT 1758, DIED AT SCOTSBRIG ON THE
2 3d JANry 1832, AND NOW ALSO RESTS HERE
AND HERE NOW RESTS THE ABOVE
MARGARET AITKEN, HIS SECOND
WIFE, BORN AT WHITESTANE, KIRKMAHOE, IN SEPTM 1771; DIED AT SCOTSBRIG,
ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1853.
SHE BROUGHT
HIM NINE CHILDREN WHEREOF FOUR
SONS AND THREE DAUGHTERS SURVIVED
GRATEFULLY REVERENT OF SUCH
A FATHER AND SUCH A MOTHER.
�6 SIX©
LA0'
[Reprinted from The Secular Review.]
A VISIT TO THE GRAVE
OF
THOMAS CARLYLE.
Barefooted lads and lasses, when I was some seventeen
years of age, came skelping over the red heather and
yellow broom of the moors from Carlyle’s Craigenputtock
to my school at Glenesslin, Dunscore. I well knew
Mr. Cumming, the seven-feet-high child of Anak, who
was then Carlyle’s tenant farmer, and who showed me
some of Carlyle’s “ business ” letters to himself, and
which, for the incipient soul which was then in my body
of length without breadth, I could not decipher. “ I
should flog the smallest boy in my school for perpetrating
a handwriting like that!” exclaimed I, with the full flavour
of pedagogic strut. As far as I am aware, Carlyle never
visited the Dunscore district without calling upon my
venerable and highly-gifted friend, Thomas Aird; and
dear old Aird of “The Devil’s Dream” made up his
mind that I, his raw and vehement young protege, should
take tea with Carlyle in the little upper room at Mountain
Hall, near Dumfries, where the grand and quiet old poet
had often told me tales of his earlier years to cheer me
through the toil and blighted hope of mine. What tales
he could tell, too, of his early associates in literature; of
John Wilson, with his radiant genius and majestic man
hood ; of De Quincey, with his dreamings over the
borderland of the world; of the lovable “Delta” of
“ Casa Wappy,” and of Blackwood and of Lord Jeffrey ;
and of that marvellous shepherd of Ettrick, who fashioned
the glamourie of “ Kilmeny ” out of the dim mists of
his native hills.
�2
A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
Carlyle took tea exactly like any other uncouth mortal.
I was young and blate and timid. By the grace of a
Titan I, a big schoolboy, with his legs too long for his
breeches, was stuck between a Titan and a Deity, and I
shrank into nothingness under the fierce light that beat
upon me. I was told that the butter was from the Barnkin
(which was ever Aird’s guarantee of that article’s excel
lence), and I was recommended to try it with the soda
scone. Thus appealed to, I felt that it devolved upon
me to immortalise myself. Now was the chance for me
to come out of my shell and show Carlyle that Aird was
correct in his predilection for me, and that I was no
common country hobbledehoy. I would astonish Carlyle
—and I daresay I did. I began a sentence, which I
intended to be a long, eloquent, and elegant one. I
would demonstrate that I could orally marshal more than
monosyllables. I would prove that I was a scholar, and
could weild the sesquipedalian thunders. But, O shade
of Tully, in my blateness and trepidation a word of
tremendous length got inextricably and inappropriately
jammed into the sentence, and all the wits I had left got
jammed i.i along with it. I lost my meaning altogether.
I abandoned the old sentence, and began a new one, less
ambitious and perfectly commonplace and trite; but,
before I had got half way through with it, I had forgotten
what I had intended to say. I stuttered and blushed, let
my knife fall upon the floor with a bang, the perspiration
broke upon my brow, and I subsided into silence and
despair. I dared not look up to observe the facial effect
my discomfiture had produced; but I doubt not that, if
Carlyle deigned to think of me at all, he set me down as
a complete idiot, or the nearest to it that could wrell be
conceived.
Much has come and gone since then. Now I am
bolder and my sentences are less ambitious. A raw youth,
I broke down in the orgies of my hero-worship before
the furrowed cheeks and the rugged brow of one of the
most exceptional men that ever ate bread prepared from
the cereals of our planet. In the morning of August 29th,
1884, I repeated wierdly : “Brief, brawling day, with its
noisy phantoms, its poor paper crowns, tinsel gilt, is gone,
and divine, everlasting night, with her star-diadems, with
�A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
3
her silences, and her veracities, is come,”* and I deter
mined, since I was only some fifteen miles from Ecclefechan, that I should go and see my old master’s restingplace, and cull a few blades of grass from the clay of
death which now fills up the wrinkles indented with the
graving tool of a weary life. I reached Ecclefechan.
There is a key to the plain iron gate of the sepulchre;
but, as regards the cottage where the key is kept, there
was no one within and the door was locked. A substan
tial and ungainly wall of whin-stone and lime rose, some
nine or ten feet high, between me and the Ecclefechan
city of the dead. But, standing within a few feet of
where Carlyle lay, was I to be turned aside by a wall of
stone—aye, or a wall of fire ? It wras Carlyle who had
first prompted me to be heroic enough to become a Free
thinker and repudiate the moral suicide of attempting to
force upon the credence that which is repulsive to the
reason. I buttoned my coat, glanced critically at my
boot-soles, and, repeating between my set teeth, “ What
is incredible to thee thou shalt not, at thy soul’s peril,
attempt to believe! Elsewhither for a refuge, or die
here. Go to perdition if thou might; but not with a
lie in thy mouth ; by the Eternal Maker, no ;”t rushed
at the jagged, hard, and ungainly wall, scrambled up it
like a cat, and leapt from its top like a deer.
A plain, spear-headed iron railing, set on a coping of
stone, the spear-points reaching as high as your chin,
encloses three headstones standing in line, to the left old
James Carlyle, the stone-mason ; to the right Thomas
Carlyle, the baby; in the centre Thomas Carlyle, the
God-knows-what, lying waiting for God-knows-what.
“Yes, thy future fate, indeed? Thy future fate, while
thou makest it the chief question, seems to me extremely
questionable.’’^ “ Or, alas, perhaps at bottom is there
no Great Day, no sure look-out of any life to come, but
only this poor life; and what of taxes, felicities, Nell
Gwynes, and entertainments we can manage to muster
here ?Ӥ Outside the rail, in a drizzling shower, I
copied the inscriptions upon the three several grave
stones, for the benefit of him who may not care to visit
* “ Past and Present.”
+ “ Life of Sterling.”
I “ Past and Present.”
§ Ibidem.
�4
A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OK THOMAS CARLYLE.
Ecclefechan at all, and also for the benefit of him who
may visit Ecclefechan, but who may not see his way to
leaping over a ten-feet wall at the risk of breaking his
neck.*
The Thomas Carlyle on tombstone No. 3 was the son of
James Carlyle, brother of Thomas the Great. This brother
James still vegetates in Ecclefechan, but was invisible.
He was described to me as “wee and eccentric,” and was,
till lately, farmer in the Scotsbrig, of tombstone celebrity.
I called at his house ; but, although he did not pretend
to be absent, he was more difficult of access than even
his brother’s grave, and I had to return to London with
out even a glimpse at Carlyle the undistinguished. I,
however, saw his son, nephew of him whom Gilfillan
dubbed “ the cursing Polyphemus of Chelsea.” He is a
rough, broad-set, bucolic-looking person, with a wrinkled,
bull-dog sort of face, but full of ingenuousness and
sonsy integrity. In a quiet and stolid, but unostenta
tiously polite, manner he took me upstairs and pointed
out to me several mementoes of his illustrious uncle.
Among these was a framed oil painting of a person of
about forty-five years of age, not a ladies’ man by any
means, but the possessor of a grim, hard face of heather
and granite, under which the volcanic fires of genius
might slumber, and which I had no difficulty in predicat
ing to be the face of Thomas Carlyle. It is noteworthy
that, from this oil painting, no impression whatever has
yet been taken, as the nephew laconically assured
me. In the room there is also a framed oil painting,
purporting to be the counterfeit presentment of Jane
Welsh Carlyle. But the thing has a face as long as your
arm, and has, altogether, such features and expression as
I cannot charge God Almighty with having bestowed
upon any being I have yet seen. If the father of
Teufelsdrockh had really a wife like that, the key is
furnished to the secret of his bearishness, dyspepsia, and
misanthropy.
I next went to the house in which Thomas the
Uncanny was born. It has a wide cart-arch running
right through it to some unspeakable stables or lumber
* F®r an exact transcript see cover.
�A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
5
houses behind. In a little room upstairs, on December
4th, 1795, a baby came howling and wailing, as we have
all done, out of Mystery into Mystery ; and this baby,
instead of an ordinary clod-hopper, turned out to be
Thomas Carlyle. Scotland, although she has specially
the knack of turning cuckoos—or, rather, eagles—out
of sparrows’ nests, had done nothing so tremendous in
this line since the immortal twenty-fifth of January, 1759>
when she parturited in an “auld clay biggin” near
Alloway Kirk the infant that developed into that porten
tous jumble of dirt and deity known as Robert Burns.
In the little room there is a chair, brought from Chelsea,
and which is interesting as being reputed to have often
sustained the somatic foundations of the author of
“ Sartor Resartus.” There is also, in a corner, a bracket,
on which are arranged copies of the whole of the
author’s works—his own present to the room. 1. he
house, although a poor and plain, is a strong and sub
stantial one, and was built with the undistinguished
hands of a father whose son built up with distinguished
hands, not a little whin-stone house in a little obscure
village, but a fabric whose august and rugged masonry
forms a fane in which millions worship, and in which
succeeding millions will continue to worship when the
present celebrants are wiped off the slate with the sponge
of Death. The natal room is shown off by a smart and
pretty young dressmaker, who exposes for sale some
Carlyle nicnacks, one of which I brought away with me
in the shape of a wooden pin-tray, with a photograph of
Ecclefechan in the bottom thereof.
But, as to Ecclefechan itself, it is not worth going the
length of your leg to see. Its principal feature is the
red and rustic U. P. church, which overlooks Ecclefechan’s sole attraction—its graveyard. I saw at least
four public-houses, two or three of which had the cheek
to dub themselves inns. All seemed dead as the grave
yard, except these “ inns,” and one old man wheeling a
barrow, and one frail old woman carrying a back-load of
sticks. Where did the money come from to purchase
the “liquid Madness sold at tenpence a quartern, all
the products of which are, and must be, like its origin,
mad, miserable, ruinous, and that only”?* And yet,
�6
A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
let the “ inns ” flourish ; their “ black, unluminous, un
heeded Inferno and Prisonhouse of souls in pain ”f of
fiery whisky must surely be better than the waters of
the Ecclefechan burn as it “wimples through the
clachan.” Even for Carlyle’s sake, I did not taste the
liquid of this burn that runs down the main—in fact,
the only—street of the village, and quite close to the
door of the tenement in which Ecclefechan’s only man
was born. The day was showery ; watery clouds scudded
athwart the autumn sky, and the tide of the unclassical
burn had the appearance of dirty milk. This appear
ance was considerably enhanced t’ne wrong way by the
presence in the bed of the stream—which is now, how
ever, partly covered over—of old boots, old sardine tins,
scraps of old newspapers, the heads of herrings, the
parings of potatoes, yellow cabbage leaves, and the
mortal remains of unburied cats. I should think Eccle
fechan should be a tolerably ready place to die in, never
to speak of the privilege of being buried beside a man
who has left an indelible mark upon his century. Off
trudges the dirty burn to join Mein Water, which, in its
turn, falls into the River Annan, and the miasma of
dead cabbages and the malodour of the corpses of cats
are lost in the tossing tides and saline winds of the
Solway. Ecclefechan has a woollen factory (I took it for
a gaol, or a madhouse), which, when business is brisk,
employs forty hands ; but it now employs only four
teen. Alas for the local Plugstone of Undershot!
Ichabod is over every door. The glory has departed.
There is no vitality in the woollen factory, in the dotard
with the wheelbarrow, or in the beldame with the bundle
of sticks. The village’s only heirloom is decay; its only
source of life—a grave 1 I looked beyond the wheel
barrow, the public-house, and the bundle of sticks, into
the depths of the silent and mysterious sky, and
murmured : “ The Past is a dim, indubitable fact; the
b uture, too, is one, only dimmer—nay, properly, it is the
same fact in new dress and development. For the
Present holds in it both the whole Past and the whole
Future : as the Life-Tree, Igdrasil, wide-waving,
* “Chartism.”
+ Ibidem.
�A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
7
many-toned, has its roots down deep in the Death-King
doms, among the oldest dead dust of men, and with its
boughs reaches away beyond the stars, and in all times
and places is one and the same Life-tree.”*
By the way, speaking of Scotsbrig, I had a chat with
a hale and hearty old peasant, who had long been plough
man at that farm. He knew all the ins and outs of the
Carlyles well, and had frequently, when a youth, “put
the graith on the pony for baith Tammas and his brither
John, the doctor. The doctor was a raal gentleman. I
never pat on a saddle for him but he geid me half-acroon ; but Tammas was a meeserable screw. I never
got as muckle as a bawbee frae him.” So much for
this aged yokel’s estimate of him of the Eternities and
Immensities 1
It will be observed that, on his monolith, James Carlyle
is described mas-on. The ancient ploughman of Scots
brig assured me that the gravestone was the handiwork
of the mason who sleeps below. I am sorry for this, as
there is something on the obverse side of the stone which
offends me. At the top there is an angel with wonder
fully chubby cheeks, and the rest of the space is carved
and scrolled over with two heraldic beasts and two
heraldic shields, showing that the modern stonemason
prided himself upon being connected with some strutting
sept of ancient cut-throats. The two heraldic beasts
have each an open mouth, from which proceeds what has
evidently been intended to represent a tongue with
terrible forks ; but which, as they stand, would more
readily suggest that each beast had swallowed a hen, all
but one foot and leg, which still protruded from the open
jaws, with all the toes spread. There are, furthermore,
in sundry places on the stone, as many loose feathers
carved here and there as would make a decent-sized
pillow; but whether they had belonged to the angel, or
the hen, or both, I could not determine. With its
feathers and feet and detached nooks and corners and
humbugs, the whole thing looks like a Kindergarten
puzzle: “Given the pieces, put together the hen.” So
much for a peasant’s heraldry.
Proem to “ Past and Present.’'
�s
A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
Howbeit, in the village stonemason all this might be
overlooked and forgiven ; but the very two heraldic brutes
that figure on the back of the tombstone of the father
appear on the face of that of the son—he of the mongrel
English and German kettle-drum with stick and calf’sskin thunder. Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the
streets of Askelon. One more cynical than I might
pronounce the soi-disant scarifier of shams himself a
sham, and sneer that, if Carlyle’s burial in Westminster
would have savoured of vain-glory, his interment in Eccle
fechan is redolent of burlesque.
But if there be here, over thy tomb, Thomas Carlyle,
room for cynicism, still that cynicism is not for me. I
leave to burn, as the only funeral tapers over thy grave,
the few heads of red clover I found blooming there
among the sweet and ungrimed green grass over which
trod the feet of thy childhood. I am fain to forget thy
poor little make-believes of heraldry. Thou, and not
the red-handed cattle-reiver of the bygone centuries, art
the founder of the house of Carlyle. Thine are the
gules, d’argent, and d’or that should make every dead
man of thy lineage, proud of thee, stand up in his grave,
and utter a sepulchral hurrah. So much for thy lineage
of the Past; and, as for thy lineage of the Future, did
no “ two-legged animals without feathers ”* proceed from
thy loins ? Yet, thou hast ten thousand sons, no dwarfs
and drowes either, but men with blood of fire and thews
of steel—Atlases carrying the world on their shoulders.
Over thy bed, with its clay sheets so cool, with its cover
let of green grass and white daisies, I lean, O my father,
and ask thee for thy blessing. I am thy youngest and
most unworthy son; but I have the honour to be con
sanguine with thee in Scottish peasant blood, in sour
peat bogs, in porridge and penury. Your boyish arm,
like mine, bore a shield that was battered shapeless in
the battle for bread; and your right hand, like mine,
bore a blade whose gladiatorial flashes of flame had ren
dered more terrible, but had not illumed, the invulner
able panoply of Ontology and Mystery.
�HUMILITATE.
HERE RESTS THOMAS CARLYLE, WHO WAS BORN
AT ECCLEFECHAN, 4™ DECEMBER, 4795, AND DIED AT
24 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, LONDON, ON SATURDAY
5th FEBRUARY, l88l.
HERE ALSO RESTS JOHN AITKEN CARLYLE, M.D. LL.D.
WHO WAS BORN AT ECCLEFECHAN 7™ JULY l8oi
AND DIED AT THE HILL, DUMFRIES ON MONDAY
15 SEPTEMBER 1879
IN
MEMORY
OF
THOMAS CARLYLE
SON OF JAMES CARLYLE AND ISABELLA CALVERT
IN SCOTSBRIG WHO DIED 27 DEC. 1841
AGED 3 YEARS AND ONE MONTH.
ALSO THE ABOVE ISABELLA CALVERT, WHO
DIED AT SCOTSBRIG Ist JUNE 1859,
AGED 46 YEARS.
�Price 2s., post free,
LAYS OF ROMANCE & CHIVALRY.
By W. STEWART ROSS (“Saladin”).
“ Some of these effusions are ot a very remarkable character, and indicate
that Mr. Ross has a genuine vein of poetic inspiration.”—Daily Telegraph.
“ Mr. Stewart Ross shows great power of dramatic expression.............. The
work will be welcomed by all who can appreciate poetic energy applied to the
interesting and thrilling incidents of the earlier and more romantic periods of
history.”—Aberdeen Journal.
“ Many of the poems are characterised by a spirit and ringing martial vigour
that stirs the blood.”—Daily Chronicle.
“ A book of romantic, historic verse, aglow in every page with the energy of
a true and high poetic genius.”—Glasgow Weekly Mail.
“ The author gives amjffe proof of his varied talents, and his no small share
of the minstrel's magic power.”—Aberdeen Free Press.
“ There is much that is excellent in the work....... Mr. Ross is apparently a
scholar, and might make a success in some other walk in literature.”—Liver
pool Daily Post.
“ Mr. Ross is a poet of undoubted power.”—Hull Miscellany.
“ The poems are characterised now by vigour, now by grace, and now by
pathos,”-—Nottingham Guardian.
“ Mr. Stewart Ross is not only a poet, he is a scholar and a thinker.”—
South London Press.
“The poems contain many fine thoughts, expressed in powerful language.”—
Newcastle Weekly Chronicle.
“ The book is well worthy the perusal of all readers of taste, and we trust
Mr. Stewart Ross will favour this department of literature with further efforts
of his genius.”—Liverpool Mercury.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Now Ready, bound strongly in cloth, gilt lettered, price is, 8d.
post free,
AN EXAMINATION & POPULAR EXPOSITION
OF THE
HYLO-IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY.
BY WILLIAM BELL McTAGGABT.
(Late Captain 14th Hussars.)
This volume should be read by all interested in the problems of
philosophy ; for the highest advances of modern thought are here
laid bare to their inmost recess, and in a style and diction that he
who runs may read.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 4r, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�
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A visit to the grave of Thomas Carlyle
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Notes: Includes references to Carlyle's works. Reprinted from The Secular Review. Stamp inside front cover: Bishopsgate Institute Reference Library, 09 MAR 1998. Medallion of Carlyle on front cover. Publisher's advertisements on back cover. Date of publication from British Library. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Free thought
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CHRISTIAN
PERSECUTION.
BY
SALADIN
Author of “ God and His Book” “ The Bottomless Pit”
“ Lays of Romance and Chivalry” etc.
LONDON:
W. STEWART & CO., 41 FARRINGDON ST., E.C.
�By SALADIN.
Price 1d., Post Free 1%d., unless otherwise specified.
HISTORICAL PAMPHLETS.
THE DIVINE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.
A Reply to Cardinal Manning.
THE CRUSADES. Their Reality and Romance.
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
THE FLAGELLANTS.
THE ICONOCLASTS.
THE INQUISITION. Part I.
THE INQUISITION. Part II.
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS AND JUMPERS. Part ITHE DANCERS, SHAKERS AND JUMPERS. Part II.
THE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. Part I.
THE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. Part II.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. A Letter to Cardinal Manning.
Part I.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. A Letter to Cardinal Manning.
Part II.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
A Letter to Cardinal Manning.
Part III.
ST MUNGO.
The Saint who Founded Glasgow. Price 3d.,.
post free 4d.
Or in one vol., handsomely bound in cloth, gilt lettered, 2s., post
free 2s. 2d.
MISCELLANEOUS PAMPHLETS.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. Price id., post free i|d.
A VISIT TO MR SPURGEON’S TABERNACLE.
With Portrait.
A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
With Portrait.
ROBERT BURNS: WAS HE A FREETHINKER?
With Portrait. Appendix :—The Prize Poem in Connection
with the Dumfries Statue to Burns.
HELL : W^HERE IS IT? Price id., post free i|d.
BEETLES AND BATHERS : Coffins and Cantrips.
CONCERNING THE DEVIL.
A FEARFUL FLOGGING. Price 3d., post free 4d.
THE AGONIES OF HANGING. Price 3d., post free 4d.The above, in one vol., cloth, gold lettered, price ir. 6d., post
free ij. 8<7.
LONDON: W. STEWART & CO., 41 FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
The Church that is better at argument must give way to
the Church that is better at blows. Theology is not a
dialectician with words—she debates with the shillelagh.
The young plant of Christianity never grew till it was
fenced round with a hedge of swords. “ Proof,” say
you ? If such a statement be not true on the very face
of it, history can produce proof in abundance. The
Saxon axes hewed Christianity out of Britain; it had to
be restored by the monks of St Augustine, and they
managed to re-establish it, only because they managed to
get the axes on its side. The Society of Jesus fairly
planted Christian colonies in Japan ; but, in spite of the
sword of the spirit and the whole armour of righteous
ness, Christianity became utterly exterminated before a
torrent of spears. If Christian cannon had only spoken
louder, the sound of the “glad tidings of great joy”
(save the mark !) might to-day have been ringing from
the cathedral of Yeddo. If, instead of the sword of the
spirit, there had been 20,000 British bayonets, the
breezes of Niphon might at this hour have been musical
with the psalms of David. Persecution paralysed the
/Wejy' of the Albigenses, and ran its stilleto through the
heart of Protestantism in Spain. In France, Catholicism
waded to power through the carnage of the St Bartho
lomew massacre, and set her heel on the neck of the
Huguenots by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
In England the issue between Rome and the Reforma
tion hung in the balance till the diplomatic ability of
Elizabeth and her ministers flung the preponderance of
bills and bows, pikes and spears, into the scale against
the interests of her of the Seven Hills.
�4
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
State religion is State persecution. It is privilege to
one band of sectaries and disability to all others. “ The
opinions,” says Lecky, * “ of 99 persons out of every 100
are formed mainly by education, and a Government can
decide in whose hands the national education is to be
placed, what subjects it is to comprise, and what prin
ciples it is to convey. The opinions of the great
majority of those who emancipate themselves from the
prejudices of their education are the results, in a great
measure, of reading and discussion, and a Government
can prohibit all books, and can expel all teachers, that
are adverse to the doctrines it holds. Indeed, the
simple fact of annexing certain penalties to the profes
sion of particular opinions, and rewards to the profession
of opposite opinions, while it will, undoubtedly, make
many hypocrites, will also make many converts. For
any one who attentively observes the process that is
pursued in the formation of opinions must be aware that,
even when a train of argument has preceded their adop
tion, they are usually much less the result of pure reason
ing than of the action of innumerable distorting influences
which are continually deflecting our judgments. Among
these one of the most powerful is self-interest.” Thus
the mere act of taking one sect of Christians under State
protection is injustice and persecution to all other sects
whatever.
But, in the past, Christian persecution has seldom
stopped at the infliction of mere civil and social disabili
ties. When persecution is spoken of to Christian apolo
gists, under the influence of modern humanitarianism,
they reply that persecutions have, indeed, been carried
on by professing Christians; but that, in so far as they
indulged in them, they belied Christian principles and
permitted their vindicative passions as men to overmaster
the essentially tolerant and humane principles of their
faith. This is false. Nay, the very opposite is the truth.
The modern and cultured Christian is tolerant only in
proportion as he is not a Christian, and in ratio as he
has progressed in the path of enlightenment and bene
volence and forsaken that of Paul and the Fathers. The
The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe,” vol. ii. p. 3.
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
5
belief that you have the finality and fixity of truth from
authority that cannot err is an inevitable source of
intolerance towards those who cannot accept the truth
which is, to you, a complete entelechy. Doubt in your
own mind, as regards the tenets you hold, is the well
spring of toleration towards those whose tenets are
different. Absolute faith inevitably means persecution ;
doubt is the fons et origo of toleration. “ The only
foundation for toleration,” said Charles James Fox, “ is
*
a degree of scepticism, and without it there can be none.
For, if a man believes in the saving of souls, he must
soon think about the means, and if, by cutting off one
generation, he can save many future ones from hell-fire,
it is his duty to do it.” Not only, then, does Chris
tianity, being a divine revelation, “ the very word of very
God,” contain in it essentially the principle of persecution ;
but the Bible exemplifies the practice as well as supplies
the theory. For his most horrible cruelties to the heretic
the Churchman could always quote, “ Idolatra educebatur
adportas civitatis, et lapidibus obruebatur.” t
Christianity itself whined and groaned under persecu
tion on the scaffold or among the wild beasts of the
arena; but, in conformity with its inherent principles,
the moment it got the power to do as it had been done
to it inaugurated persecution upon a scale tremendous
and terrible, and to which the world had previously
been a stranger. The early Christians were real; the
modern Christians are a sham. If the Christians were
real, they would before this have burnt to ashes the
hand that pens these lines. Christianity would have
done it unhesitatingly in the days before it degenerated
into a conventional bogus that nobody can well attack,
because nobody knows exactly where it stands. But
in the old and true days, when it stood by the Scriptures
and the Fathers, it acted in a way which, however
deplorable, we must respect the actors for sincerity and
consistency. To try to stamp out heresy it hesitated
not to slaughter thousands and tens of thousands—nay,
to exterminate a nation, or even to depopulate the
world. “ Give me the earth purged from heretics, and I
Rogers’ “ Recollections,” p. 49.
+ Deuteronomy xvii.
�6
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
will give you a heaven! ” was the vehement cry of
Nestorius to the Emperor. After the mission of
Dominic the persecution of heretics in certain districts
amounted to absolute extermination; and in 1568 a
sentence of the Inquisition doomed the entire popula
tion of the Netherlands to death as heretics.
“ Three
millions of people, men, women and children were
sentenced to the scaffold in three lines.” * So terribly
in earnest was the Christian Church, preferring that the
earth should be rendered a depopulated and howling
wilderness rather than be peopled by heretics.
No sooner had the perfidious murderer, Constantine,
declared in favour of Christianity than, armed with the
civil power, it sprang from the dust in which it had
been writhing and shrieking under the rod, and, wrench
ing that rod from the hands of the persecutors, it
brought it down with remorseless cruelty upon the backs
of all and sundry who failed to recognise deity incarnate
in the wandering preacher of Galilee.
First, with
terrible hate, the Christian blade was stabbed into the
Jewish heart, and persecution, such as they had never
before experienced, fell upon the seed of Abraham,
although they were of the same race as the man-god
of this new faith in whose name they were called upon
to suffer. The race-blood from which their Christ had
sprung the Christians shed like water. Next, the
Christian fury was directed against the Pagans, who,
when in power, had been so tolerant to them, and who
had never punished them for their monstrous creed,
but only for their flagitious crimes. And, next, the
Christian fury fell upon such Christians as differed from
the majority on some nugatory and hair-breadth point
of doctrine; and neither Jew nor Pagan was hounded
to dungeon and death with more remorseless zeal than
was Christian by brother Christian.
“ There are,”
exclaimed the heathen, “ no wild beasts so ferocious as
Christians who differ concerning their faith.” A Jew
who married a Christian incurred the penalty of death ;
a Christian who might select a Jewess for his mistress
was liable to be burned alive ; and a certain Christian
* Motley’s “ Rise of the Dutch Republic,” vol. ii. p. 155-
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
7
*
Queen passed a statute going into the details as to how
Christians were to be entertained and accommodated in
Christian brothels, but enacting that, if a Jew dared to
enter the chamber of the holy harlots, he was to be
flogged.
The Jew’s own Scriptures furnished texts which the
new sect read as his death warrant. Deity himself was
cited as the first persecutor in that he expelled Adam
from Eden for a breach of the divine law, and cursed
his descendants. Elijah was referred to as having slain
the prophets of Baal, and also Hezekiah, Josiah, and
Nebuchadnezzar as noted persecutors of heretics under
divine approval. Moreover, the master-spirit of the early
Church, St Augustine, gave to persecution the impetus
of his genius, learning and zeal. He cursed religious
liberty in the memorable words: 11 Quid cst enun pejor,
mors animce quam libertas errorisP\ With him heresy
was the most destestable of all crimes, immeasurably
worse than ordinary murder, being the murder of the
soul. Toleration was an absolute crime. The closest
and the tendcrest relations of life were to be utterly
trampled on and disregarded in the interests of suppress
ing heresy. “ If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or
thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or
thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee
secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods which
thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; namely,
of the gods of the people which are round about you,
nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one
end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth ;
thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto
him ; neither shalt thine eye pity him ; neither shalt thou
spare, neither shalt thou conceal him ; but thou shalt
surely kill him ; thine hand shall be first upon him to
put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the
people; and thou shalt stone him with stones, that he
die ; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from
the Lord thy God.”J “ He that believeth and is baptised
* Jeanne I., in 1347. DVZs Sabatier, “Hist, de la Legislation
sitr le Femme Publique,” p. 103.
f Epist. clxvi.
I Dent. xiii. 6-10.
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be
damned.”* “ If there come any unto you and bring not
this doctrine, receive him not into your house, nor bid
him God speed.”f “ If any man preach any other
Gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be
accursed.”§ “ I would they were even cut off that
trouble you.”f The whole Christian fabric was rested
upon “Believe and be baptised.” Any hypocrite and
liar could, when he found it suited his interests, say he
believed, and generally there was an end of it. But,
with baptism, it was different; there required to be the
“ outward and visible sign : ” every human being that did
not submit to being damped by a priest went inevitably
to perdition. Practically, the Christian watchword was
“ Be damped or be damned.”
The Church took care that children who were likely
to die before their mothers gave them birth should be,
prenatally, baptised with a syringe. Christendom was
baptism mad. Only the waters of baptism could render
you so damp as to be unsuited for hell. The keenest
intellects of the Middle Ages engaged in a subtle and
acrimonious controversy in regard to a Jew who got
converted to Christianity in an arid desert. The Jew
was dying, no water could be found, and, instead of
the cooling fluid, his brow was sprinkled with hot desert
sand, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. |)
The controversy hinged on the question as to whether
baptism with sand was, or was not, effective in securing
salvation. The Council of Trent settled the matter, and
declared that baptism must be by water, and water only;
and so it was discovered that, after all the bother, the
converted Jew was damned. Every unbaptised infant
was consigned to the same region as the sand-baptised
Jew. Every child came into the world bearing the
guilt of “Adam’s first sin,” and under the sentence of
eternal torment; and learned works advocating this view
have been written as late as in the memory of men still
living, and by no less able theologians than Dr Jonathan
* Mark xvi. 16.
f 2 John i. 10.
t Gal. i. 9.
§ Gal. v. 12.
|| PT/k Thiers’ “Traite de Superstitions.”
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
9
Edwards—so firmly based is Christian persecution upon
ihe bed rock of infallible dogma.
Under Christian persecutions thousands of Jews took
the precaution to get baptised with water to save their
lives. Christianity thus made tens of thousands of
hypocrites and liars, and she makes millions of them
even at this hour—men and women who do not believe
her dogmas, but who are too indolent to investigate and
too cowardly to avow in vindication of conscience as
against selfish interest. The converted Jews had more
moral verve. Whenever there was a lull in the storm of
persecution they returned to Judaism. No fewer than
17,000 converts that had been made by one man re
turned, as soon as they dared avow it, to the faith of
Israel. This one man was St Vincent, a friar so pure
that it is recorded of him that he always undressed in
the dark lest his modesty might be shocked by seeing
himself naked. The Christians have had numerous
purists of this order : they had, in more recent times, the
holy ones who inveighed against Linnaeus as indecent
because his system of botany taught the doctrine of the
sexes of plants.
The Crusades alone are estimated to have cost the
lives of two million Christians, who dashed their religious
fury, almost as impotently as the wave dashes its foam
on the rock, on the warriors of the turban and crescent.
And even to this day the detested Mohammedan has his
mosque on the site of the Holy Sepulchre. But the
fury of Christian against Infidel was surpassed by the
ferocious zeal with which Christian persecuted Christian,
often for differences all but imperceptible, except to the
faith-opened eyes of religious lunatics. As we have seen,
a keen and rancorous dispute raged for years as to
whether it was lawful to baptise with sand, instead of
water; and to the learned and devout such problems
were ever presenting themselves as the double proces
sion of the Holy Cyhost, the exact nature of the trans
figuration light upon Mount Tabor, and the existence in
Christ of two coincident, but perfectly independent,
wills. Want of soundness on such insane subtleties was
sufficient to have the unsound one burnt to a cinder.
Indeed, to a common-sense observer, who can divest
�io
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
himself of the distorted and diseased spirit which
animated the centuries when Christianity was yet strong,
it would seem that the faith had entered into a solemn
league with the powers of Evil to fill the world with
horror and misery. When accused by the Inquisition
you were not permitted to confront your accuser, nor
even to know his name. You might be as orthodox as
it was possible to be; but, if any one entertained a
grudge against you, he could have you tortured to death
by simply giving in your name to the nearest agent of
the Holy Office. Then it was all over with you.
The procedure was thus :—“ The Inquisitor tried to
mystify the accused by captious questions. He asked
the presumed delinquent whether the new-born infant
came from man or God. If the reply was, ‘ From man,’
‘Then,’ said the Inquisitor, ‘you are a heretic; for only
heretics deny the creation of man by God.’ And if the
accused happened to reply, ‘ From God,’ he was equally
convicted of heresy, as making God the paramour of a
woman. They asked, too, whether the soul began with
the embryo, or after it; whether all souls were made at
one and the same moment, and where; whether the host
consecrated by the priest was the whole deity, or only
part of him. If he answered, ‘ The whole deity,’ the
examiner exclaimed : ‘ Suppose, then, that four priests
consecrate the host at one time in the same church,
how can the whole deity be contained in each conse
cration ? ’ and, if the trembling respondent admitted, in
his confusion, that such was the necessary inference, the
Inquisitor triumphantly convicted him of asserting the
existence of four gods at once. A Franciscan monk
ventured to declare openly (1319) in Toulouse that Peter
and Paul themselves would have been unable to prove
their orthodoxy before the Inquisition, and was con
demned to imprisonment for life for uttering this un
palatable truth.” *
Among the first schismatics to suffer martyrdom were
the Arians and the Donatists. Their churches were
destroyed, their leaders banished, and their writings
committed to the flames. Then there was a lull. The
* Mackay’s “ Rise and Progress of Christianity,” pp. 301, 302.
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
II
tremendous power of the hierarchy had welded and
pressed together the shattered fragments of the dis
membered Roman Empire. The influence of the then
Church and the condition of the then Western Europe
were commensurate, and on the quiet of moral apathy
and intellectual atrophy rested the pillars of the Age of
Faith. But this age was, naturally, only a transition, not
a permanency. The innate restlessness of human specu
lation and the Revival of Learning chafed against the
iron ring with which the Vatican bounded the world.
Under the blow of the crozier Europe lay stunned, but
not slain. She arose, and, looking around in the dim
sunrise which had succeeded a rayless night, she beheld
Rome holding the crown and keys, and posing as the
sole and only oracle to which the problems of existence
and destiny could be carried and the vexed questions of
secular life referred. The pretensions of the oracle were
doubted. Scepticism arose spontaneously and blossomed
into heresy—in the eyes of the Church the most exe
crable of all crimes.
Though heaven and earth should fall to pieces, this
heresy must be put down. Rome arose in her majesty,
strong as the north wind, cold and pitiless as the de
scending avalanche. Her attitude had been, and must
be, unquestioned, unchallenged authority ; and that
authority must be vindicated. The issues of man s
everlasting destiny were in her hands, and she would
rise equal to the charge confided to her. She had the
whole truth, and outside her pale was inevitable perdi
tion. The fate of souls was in her keeping, and those
souls should be kept, at whatever cost to the body.
Better that earth should shriek for a thousand years
under the fellest tortures human ingenuity could devise
than that a single soul should pass an eternity of fiery
agony in hell.
Her mind was made up, her Holy
Scriptures explicit, and her duty clear. She set afoot
her Inquisition, deepened her dungeons, sharpened her
heading axe, got ready her torch and fagot and her
machines of torture, and set about her duty as expressly
indicated in her doctrines. Christianity was then strong
and honest. She could see her duty and carry it for
ward for God’s sake, even through consequences the
�12
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
most terrible—through the annihilation of all that is
essentially human and the substitution of all that is
positively fiendish.
“Men, like fish, were devourers of each other; there
was no fear of God or man; iniquity trod on the heels
of iniquity ; adultery, sacrilege, and homicide abounded ;
the strong oppressed the weak.”* This was the state
of matters that obtained from 1208, when Pope Innocent
III. established the Inquisition. For weary century after
century the red spectre of persecution presided over
the thud of the heading-axes and built up the fires that
were fed with human flesh. On, from 1208, this spectre
stalked down the ages till it was lost amid the bloodmists of the French Revolution. The ancient red
spectre died in the grasp of the modern one ; the rack
of Innocent gave way to the guillotine of Marat. But
the Inquisition did not depart till it had piled its
holocausts mountain high. According to Llorente, who
had free access to the Inquisitorial archives, in Spain
alone the Inquisition burnt 31,000 persons to death,
and condemned 290,000 to punishments in many cases
only nominally less extreme than the death penalty.
These numbers do not include the victims who perished
under branches of the Inquisition established in Mexico,
Lima, Carthagena, the West Indies, Sicily, Sardinia, and
Malta. In the Netherlands alone 50,000 suffered death
for heresy in a single reign—that of Charles V.
Vivicremation—burning alive—was the stale and ordi
nary manner in which the Christian Tweedledum dis
posed of the equally Christian, but more unfortunate,
Tweedledee. But the vivicremation had, in the interests
of Jesus, to be conducted on a scale so extensive that
the ordinary stake-and-fagot arrangement was found to
be inadequate. Besides, the quantity of timber it took
to roast him was too expensive to be consumed on such
a worthless thing as a heretic. It accordingly came
into fashion to make strong enclosures, like cattle-pens,
into which the heretics were packed along with some
cart-loads of straw and brushwood. Then the pen was
closed and surrounded with troops, and the straw and
* Hallam’s “Middle Ages,” ii. 223.
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
IJ
brushwood set fire to. And there, amid flame and
smoke, perished scores at a time, their cries of agony
falling on the impervious ears of their brother Christians,
and the stench of their burning flesh ascending as a
sweet-smelling savour to the nostrils of Jehovah Elohim,
in whose accursed interests man had so terribly turned
his hand against his brother man. Then followed the
wholesale and unconsecrated burial. Scores still alive,
but blistered with burning straw and half-suffocated with
smoke, had the cold earth of the grave-pit laid upon
their scorched flesh, and were, in their tomb, left to die
at their leisure. The Archbishop of Rheims and seven
teen other prelates looked upon the conflagration in
such a pen as I have referred to, when no fewer than
184 heretics were in it, at one and the same time,
suffering death by fire.
In the face of the appalling numbers of those who died
for real or suspected heresy in regard to often incom
prehensibly subtle points in that most unscientific of all
sciences, theology, dare you, O Christian apologist, con
tend that a faith that, in one way or other, has been
guilty of the violent death of millions of the human race
has brought “glad tidings of great joy”? Thousands,
tens of thousands, were tortured for days with the fellest
torture that human ingenuity could devise, and then
borne out with dislocated joints, broken bones, and
mangled limbs to, over a slow fire, writhe out the bitter
dregs of life that yet remained. Hear their groans, their
shrieks, their yells of anguish arise from the torture
chamber and the fagot’s burning agony. These cries of
mortal pain yet peal down the corridors of the ages, and
proclaim your “ peace and goodwill ” a mockery and a
lie. And to the fiery sufferings of dissolution was added
all the poignancy of supernatural terrors. The Spanish
heretic was burnt in a yellow blouse, upon which the
flames of hell were painted to indicate that the few days
or hours of torment on earth were to be succeeded by
torment everlasting in the infernal world. The heretic’s
goods were confiscated, his children left to perish, and
his wife, under social and ecclesiastical ban, to sink to
prostitution and beggary; for the heretic's crime was so
terrible that it blighted all that had been connected with
�14
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
him like a canker and a curse. Thus was spread the
suffering over an immeasurably wider area than the mere
tens of thousands who perished at the stake. For every
sufferer had some friend, some father, some mother, some
child, and the bane of his martyrdom alighted upon all,
and the fearful conviction that the one who had been so
dear to them had gone only through a fiery prelude on
earth to the everlasting burnings of hell. Thus the
Christian faith blighted and embittered the lives of
millions whom its malevolence only indirectly reached.
Unsatiated with the burning of the living, the Romish
Church tried for heresy the very dead man in his grave,
and the coffin and the pall and corruption could not save
him from the dread tribunal, more especially if his heirs
were in possession of property which, finding him guilty,
would confiscate to the Church. Death and suffering
to millions and outrage to the very dead in the tomb are
associated with the faith of the Galilean and his Gospel
of sarcastic mockery: “ On earth peace and goodwill
to men.”
If any apologist for Christianity may venture to affirm
that Catholicism had the monopoly for persecution, I am
prepared to maintain that Protestantism, in proportion
to its power, in the work of persecution, was no whit
behind the Church of Rome.
“ He that believeth not,” etc., was a statement so explicit
and on such inexpugnable authority that the extirpation of
those who should tend to shake the belief of the orthodox
became the foremost and most imperative of duties. Be
lieve this statement, and the better man you are, the more
merciless persecutor you will be. Buckle has cor
roborated the testimony of Llorente, that the most terrible
of the persecutors, Torquemada included, were, in them
selves, humane and kind-hearted men ; but they believed
in the doctrines of their Scriptures and Church, and con
sequently, when heresy was under judgment, deemed it
their duty to God and man to steel their heart against
every human emotion, and to become merciless as the
she-wolf from whose dugs her young had been torn away.
The crime lay not with the inquisitors and torturers; it
lay with those who forged writings which they alleged to
be of divine origin—it lay with the Church that, in
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
I5
maintenance of her own dominancy, perpetuated and
enforced the fiendish corollary of the written fraud.
Consequently, as I have said, Papist and Protestant
alike persecuted in proportion to their respective influ
ences. For the stake and rack were on both sides, at
the disposal of strong and earnest men—souls capable
of the direst renunciation and sacrifice, and prepared,
at the call of what they felt certain was duty, to make
earth an Aceldama of gore and groans, that heaven might
be an Elysium of gold and glory. In England here we
have been fed full of horrors on the recital of the per
secutions by the Papists; and the ordinary Protestant
in the street holds persecution to be a trait of the hated
Romish Church, and is unaware that /?A Church ever
persecuted at all. The prolonged and gallant struggle
of the Scottish Covenanters was not against Papists but
against their fellow Protestants. It was a Protestant
hammer that drove the wedges down upon the splintered
bones of Hugh MacKail; it was Protestant murder that,
in front of his own doorstep, scattered the brains of John
Brown of Priesthill. They were Protestant hands that
tore the body of Alexander Peden from the grave. Those
fierce blades at Bothwell are in Protestant hands, and,
from point to hilt, they are red with Protestant blood.
The mad and miserable hundreds in Greyfriars’ church
yard are Protestants, and it is a hedge of Protestant
muskets that keeps them there. The Crown that goes
down into the churned fury of the deep, gored to ruin on
the rock horns of the Orkneys, is filled with Protestants,
shipped off by other Protestants to be sold in the Indies
as slaves. Protestant voices sing that death-psalm till the
sea closes and roars over the psalm and the singer.
The John Calvin was no Papist who, in order to
prolong his agony, caused Michael Servetus to be slowly
roasted to death. In Holland a man who had already
been scorched, racked, and partly flayed is trailed across
the floor of the dungeon out into the light, that other
horrors may be perpetrated for the purpose of inducing
him to take a certain view of certain doctrinal points—
one more attempt to bring him properly to him who said,.
“ He that believeth not shall be damned.” The man,
back downwards, was firmly secured to the floor. '1 hen,
�I6
CHRSTJAN PERSECUTION.
on his naked abdomen, was placed an inverted metal
vessel containing under it a number of rats. On the
bottom uppermost of this basin live coals were heaped
till the rats underneath, to escape being roasted alive,
tore their way through the man’s flesh into the cavity of
his body to find refuge among his intestines. The basin
was removed, and fiery cinders were thrust into the holes
in the flesh through which the rats had torn their way.
*
* Adapted from “The Bottomless Pit” to which the reader is
referred for further details of persecution by Protestants.
�
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Christian persecution, by Saladin
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
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Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Publisher's advertisements on p.[2]. "by Saladin" [title page], the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Persecution
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CHRISTIAN
PERSECUTION.
*
, ‘J
BY
SALADIN.
[reprinted from “the
secular
review.”]
London:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
��CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
The Church that is better at argument must give way
to the Church that is better at blows. God is not a
dialectician with words—he debates with the shillelagh.
The young plant of Christianity will never grow till it is
fenced round with a hedge of swords. “ Proof,” say
you ? If such a statement be not true on the very face
of it, history can produce proofs in abundance. The
Saxon axes hewed Christianity out of Britain; it had to
be restored by the monks of St. Augustine, and they
managed to re-establish it, only because they managed
to get the axes on its side. The Society of Jesus fairly
planted Christian colonies in Japan; but, in spite of the
sword of the spirit and the whole armour of righteous
ness, Christianity became utterly exterminated before a
torrent of spears. If Christian cannon had only spoken
louder, the sound of the “ glad tidings of great joy ”
(save the mark !) might to-day have been ringing from
the cathedral of Yeddo. If, instead of the sword of
the spirit, there had been 20,000 British bayonets, the
breezes of Niphon might to-day have been musical with
the psalms of David. Persecution paralysed the heresy
of the Albigenses, and ran its stiletto through the heart
of Protestantism in Spain. In France Catholicism
waded to power through the carnage of the St. Bartho
lomew massacre, and set her heel on the neck of the
Huguenots by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
In England the issue between Rome and the Reforma
tion hung in the balance till the diplomatic ability of
Elizabeth and her ministers flung the preponderance of
bills and bows, pikes and spears, into the scale against
the interests of her of the Seven Hills.
State religion is State persecution. It is privilege to
one band of sectaries and disability to all others. “ The
�4
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
opinions,” says Lecky, “of 99 persons out of every 100
*
are formed mainly by education, and a Government can
decide in whose hands the national education is to be
placed, what subjects it is to comprise, and what prin
ciples it is to convey. The opinions of the great
majority of those who emancipate themselves from the
prejudices of their education are the results, in a great
measure, of reading and discussion, and a Government
can prohibit all books, and can expel all teachers, that are
adverse to the doctrines it holds. Indeed, the simple
fact of annexing certain penalties to the profession of
particular opinions, and rewards to the profession of
opposite opinions, while it will, undoubtedly, make many
hypocrites, will also make many converts. For any one
who attentively observes the process that is pursued in
the formation of opinions must be aware that, even when
a train of argument has preceded their adoption, they
are usually much less the result of pure reasoning than
of the action of innumerable distorting influences which
are continually deflecting our judgments. Among these
one of the most powerful is self-interest.” Thus the
mere act of taking one sect of Christians under State
protection is injustice and persecution to all other sects
whatever.
But, in the past, Christian persecution has seldom
stopped at the infliction of mere civil and social disabili
ties. When persecution is spoken of to Christian apolo
gists, under the influence of modern humanitarianism,
they reply that persecutions have, indeed, been carried
on by professing Christians ; but that, in so far as they
indulged in them, they belied Christian principles and
permitted their vindicative passions as men to overmaster
the essentially tolerant and humane principles of their
faith. This is false. Nay, the very opposite is the truth.
The modern and cultured Christian is tolerant only in
proportion as he is not a Christian, and in ratio as he
has progressed in the path of enlightenment and bene
volence and forsaken that of Paul and the Fathers.
The belief that you have the finality and fixity of truth
* “The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe,” vol. ii.,
P- 3-
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
5
from authority that cannot err is an inevitable source of
intolerance towards those who cannot accept the truth
which is, to you, a complete entelechy. Doubt in your
own mind, as regards the tenets you hold, is the well
spring of toleration towards those whose tenets are
different. Absolute faith inevitably means persecution;
doubt is the fons et origo of toleration. “ The only
foundation for toleration,” said Charles James Fox, “is
*
a degree of scepticism, and without it there can be none.
For, if a man believes in the saving of souls, he must
soon think about the means, and if, by cutting off one
generation, he can save many future ones from hell-fire,
it is his duty to do it.” Not only, then, does Chris
tianity, being a divine revelation, “the very word of very
God,” contain in it essentially the principle of persecution ;
but the Bible exemplifies the practice as well as supplies
the theory. For his most horrible cruelties to the heretic
the Churchman could always quote, “Idolatra educebatur
ad portas civitatis, et lapidibus obruebaturdp
Christianity itself whined and yelled under persecution
on the scaffold or among the wild beasts of the arena;
but, in conformity with its inherent principles, the moment
it got the power to do as it had been done to it inaugu
rated persecution upon a scale tremendous and terrible,
and to which the world had previously been a stranger.
The early Christians were real; the modern Christians
are a sham. If the Christians were real, they would
before this have burnt to ashes the hand that pens these
lines. Christianity would have done it unhesitatingly in
the days before it degenerated into a conventional bogus
that nobody can well attack, because nobody knows
exactly where it stands. But in the old and true days,
when it stood by the Scriptures and the Fathers, it acted
in a way which, however deplorable, we must respect the
actors for sincerity and consistency. To try to stamp out
heresy it hesitated not to slaughter thousands and tens of
thousands—nay, to exterminate a nation, or even to
depopulate the world. “ Give me the earth purged from
heretics, and I will give you a heaven !” was the vehement
cry of Nestorius to the Emperor. After the mission of
Rogers’ “ Recollections,” p. 49.
+ Deuteronomy xvii.
�6
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
Dominic the persecution of heretics in certain districts
amounted to absolute extermination; and in 1568 a
sentence of the Inquisition doomed the entire population
of the Netherlands to death as heretics. “ Three millions
of people, men, women, and children were sentenced to
the scaffold in three lines.”* So terribly in earnest was
the Christian Church, preferring that the earth should be
rendered a depopulated and howling wilderness rather
than be peopled by heretics.
No sooner had the perfidious murderer, Constantine,
declared in favour of Christianity than, armed with the
civil power, it sprang from the dust in which it had been
writhing and shrieking under the rod, and, wrenching that
rod from the hands of the persecutors, it brought it
down with remorseless cruelty upon the backs of all and
sundry who failed to recognise God incarnate in the
wandering preacher of Galilee. First, with terrible hate,
the Christian blade was stabbed into the Jewish heart,
and persecution, such as they had never before experi
enced, fell upon the seed of Abraham, although they
were of the same race as the man-god of this new faith
in whose name they were called upon to suffer. The
race-blood from which their Christ had sprung the Chris
tians shed like water. Next, the Christian fury was
directed against the Pagans, who, when in power, had
been so tolerant to them, and who had never punished
them for their monstrous creed, but only for their flagi
tious crimes. And, next, the Christian fury fell upon
such Christians as differed from the majority on some
nugatory and hair-breadth point of doctrine ; and neither
Jew nor Pagan was hounded to dungeon and death with
more remorseless zeal than was Christian by brother
Christian. “There are,” exclaimed the heathen, “no
wild beasts so ferocious as Christians who differ concern
ing their faith.” A Jew who married a Christian incurred
the penalty of death ; a Christian who might select a
Jewess for his mistress was liable to be burned alive;
and a certain Christian Queenf passed a statute going
into the details as to how Christians were to be enter
* “Motley’s “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” vol. ii., p. 155.
+ Jeanne I., in 1347. Vide Sabatier, “ Hist, de la Legislation
sur le Femme Publique,” p. 103.
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
7
tained and accommodated in Christian brothels, but
enacting that, if a Jew dared to enter the chamber of the
holy harlots, he was to be flogged.
The Jew's own Scriptures furnished texts which the
new sect read as his death warrant. God himself was
cited as the first persecutor in that he expelled Adam
from Eden for a breach of the divine law, and cursed
his descendants. Elijah was referred to as having slain
the prophets of Baal, and also Hezekiah, Josiah, and
Nebuchadnezzar as noted persecutors of heretics under
divine approval. Moreover, the master-spirit of the early
Church, St. Augustine, gave to persecution the impetus
of his genius, learning, and zeal. He cursed religious
liberty in the memorable words : “Quid est enim pejor,
mors anima quam libertas errorisP
*
With him heresy
was the most detestable of all crimes, immeasurably
worse than ordinary murder, being the murder of the
soul. Toleration was an absolute crime. The closest
and the tenderest relations of life were to be utterly
trampled on and disregarded in the interests of suppress
ing heresy. “ If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or
thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or
thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee
secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods which
thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; namely,
of the gods of the people which are round about you,
nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one
end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth ;
thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto
him ; neither shalt thine eye pity him ; neither shalt thou
spare, neither shalt thou conceal him; but thou shalt
surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to
put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the
people; and thou shalt stone him with stones, that he
die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from
the Lord thy God.”f “ He that believeth and is baptised
shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be
damned.”;: “ If there come any unto you and bring not
this doctrine, receive him not into your house, nor bid
him God speed.”§ “ If any man preach any other
* Epist. clxvi.
t Mark xvi. 16.
+ Deut xiii. 6-10.
§ 2 John i. io.
�3
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
Gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be
accursed.”* “ I would they were even cut off that
trouble you.”f The whole Christian fabric was rested
upon “Believe and be baptised.” Any hypocrite and
liar could, when he found it suited his interests, say he
believed, and generally there was an end of it. But,
with baptism, it was different; there required to be the
“ outward and visible sign :” every human being that did
not submit to being damped by a priest went inevitably
to perdition. Practically, the Christian watchword was
“ Be damped or damned.” The Church took care that
children who were likely to die before their mothers gave
them birth should be, prenatally, baptised with a syringe.
Christendom was baptism mad. Only the waters of
baptism could render you so damp as to be unsuited for
hell. The keenest intellects of the Middle Ages engaged
in a subtle and acrimonious controversy in regard to a
Jew who got converted to Christianity in an arid desert.
The Jew was dying, no water could be found, and, in
stead of the cooling fluid, his brow was sprinkled with
hot desert sand, in the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. J The controversy hinged on the question
as to whether baptism with sand was, or was not, effec
tive in securing salvation. The Council of Trent settled
the matter, and declared that baptism must be by water,
and water only; and so it was discovered that, after all
the bother, the converted Jew was damned. Every un
baptised infant was consigned to the same region as the
sand-baptised Jew. Every child came into the world
bearing the guilt of “ Adam’s first sin,” and under the
sentence of eternal torment; and learned works advocat
ing this view have been written as late as in the memory
of men still living, and by no less able theologians than
Dr. Jonathan Edwards—so firmly based is Christian per
secution upon the bed rock of infallible dogma.
Under Christian persecutions thousands of Jews took
the precaution to get baptised with water to save their
lives. Christianity thus made tens of thousands of
hypocrites and liars, and she makes millions of them
* Gal. i. 9.
+ Gal. v. 12.
J Vide Thiers’ “ Traite de Superstitions.”
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
9
even at this hour—men and women who do not believe
her dogmas, but who are too indolent to investigate and
too cowardly to avow in vindication of conscience as
against selfish interest. The converted Jews had more
moral verve. Whenever there was a lull in the storm of
persecution they returned to Judaism. No less than
17,000 converts that had been made by one man re
turned, as soon as they dared avow it, to the faith of
Israel. This one man was St. Vincent, a friar so pure
that it is recorded of him that he always undressed in
the dark lest his modesty might be shocked by seeing
himself naked. The Christians have had numerous
purists of this order : they had, in more recent times, the
holy ones who inveighed against Linnaeus as indecent
because his system of botany taught the doctrine of the
sexes of plants.
The Crusades alone are estimated to have cost the
lives of two million Christians, who dashed their religious
fury, almost as impotently as the wave dashes its foam
on the rock, on the warriors of the turban and Crescent.
And even to this day the detested Mohammedan has his
mosque on the site of the Holy Sepulchre. But the
fury of Christian against Infidel was surpassed by the
ferocious zeal with which Christian persecuted Christian,
often for differences all but imperceptible, except to the
faith-opened eyes of religious lunatics. As we have
seen, a keen and rancorous dispute raged for years as to
whether it was lawful to baptise with sand, instead of
water; and to the learned and devout such problems
were ever presenting themselves as the double proces
sion of the Holy Ghost, the exact nature of the trans
figuration light upon Mount Tabor, and the existence in
-Christ of two coincident, but perfectly independent,
wills. Want of soundness on such insane subtleties was
sufficient to have the unsound one burnt to a cinder.
Indeed, to a common-sense observer, who can divest
himself of the distorted and diseased spirit which
animated the centuries when Christianity was yet strong,
it would seem that the faith had entered into a solemn
league with the powers of Evil to fill the world with
horror and misery. When accused by the Inquisition
you were not permitted to confront your accuser, nor
�IO
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
even to know his name. You might be as orthodox as
it was possible to be; but, if any one entertained a
grudge against you, he could have you tortured to death
by simply giving in your name to the nearest agent of
the Holy Office. Then it was all over with you.
The procedure was thus :—“ The Inquisitor tried to
mystify the accused by captious questions. He asked
the presumed delinquent whether the new-born infant
came from man or God. If the reply was, ‘ From man,’
‘Then,’ said the Inquisitor, ‘ you are a heretic; for only
heretics deny the creation of man by God.’ And if the
accused happened to reply, ‘ From God,’ he was equally
convicted of heresy, as making God the paramour of a
woman. They asked, too, whether the soul began with
the embryo, or after it; whether all souls were made at
one and the same moment, and where ; whether the host
consecrated by the priest was the whole Deity, or only
part of him. If he answered, ‘ The whole Deity,’ the
examiner exclaimed : ‘ Suppose then, that four priests
consecrate the host at one time in the same church,
how can the whole Deity be contained in each conse
cration ?’ and, if the trembling respondent admitted, in
his confusion, that such was the necessary inference, the
Inquisitor triumphantly convicted him of asserting the
existence of four gods at once. A Franciscan monk
ventured to declare openly (1319) in Toulouse that Peter
and Paul themselves would have been unable to prove
their orthodoxy before the Inquisition, and was con
demned to imprisonment for life for uttering this un
palatable truth.”*
Among the first schismatics to suffer martyrdom were
the Arians and the Donatists. Their churches were
destroyed, their leaders banished, and their writings
committed to the flames. Then there was a lull. The
tremendous power of the hierarchy had welded and
pressed together the shattered fragments of the dis
membered Roman Empire. The influence of the then
Church and the condition of the then Western Europe
were commensurate, and on the quiet of moral apathy
and intellectual atrophy rested the pillars of the Age of
* Mackay’s “ Rise and Progress of Christianity,” pp. 301, 302.
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
II
Faith. But this age was, naturally, only a transition, not
a permanency. The innate restlessness of human specu
lation and the Revival of Learning chafed against the
iron ring with which the Vatican bounded the world.
Under the blow of the crozier Europe lay stunned, but
not slain. She arose, and, looking around in the dim
sunrise which had succeeded a rayless night, she beheld
Rome holding the crown and keys, and posing as the
sole and only oracle to which the problems of existence
and destiny could be carried and the vexed questions of
secular life referred. The pretensions of the oracle were
doubted. Scepticism arose spontaneously, and blossomed
into heresy—in the eyes of the Church the most exe
crable of all crimes.
Though heaven and earth should fall to pieces, this
heresy must be put down. Rome arose in her majesty,
strong as the north wind, cold and pitiless as the des
cending avalanche. Her attitude had been, and must
be, unquestioned, unchallenged authority ; and that
authority must be vindicated. The issues of man’s ever
lasting destiny were in her hands, and she would rise
equal to the charge confided to her. She had the whole
truth, and outside her pale was inevitable perdition.
The fate of souls was in her keeping, and those souls
should be kept, at whatever cost to the body. Better
that earth should shriek for a thousand years under the
fellest tortures human ingenuity could devise than that
a single soul should pass an eternity of fiery agony in
hell. Her mind was made up, her Holy Scriptures
explicit, and her duty clear. She set afoot her Inquisi
tion, deepened her dungeons, sharpened her heading
axe, got ready her torch and fagot and her machines of
torture, and set about her duty as expressly indicated in
her doctrines. Christianity was then strong and honest.
She could see her duty and carry it forward for God’s
sake, even through consequences the most terrible—
through the annihilation of all that is essentially human
and the substitution of all that is positively fiendish.
“ Men, like fish, were devourers of each other; there
was no fear of God or man; iniquity trod on the heels
* Hallam’s “ Middle Ages,” ii. 223.
�12
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
of iniquity; adultery, sacrilege, and homicide abounded;
the strong oppressed the weak.”* This was the state
of matters that obtained from 1208, when Pope
Innocent III. established the Inquisition, for weary
century after century. The red spectre of persecution
presided over the thud of the heading-axes and built up
the fires that were fed with human flesh. On, from
1208, this spectre stalked down the ages till it was lost
amid the blood-mists of the French Revolution. The
ancient red spectre died in the grasp of the modern
one: the rack of Innocent gave way to the guillotine of
Marat. But the Inquisition did not depart till it had
piled its holocausts mountain high. According to
Llorente, who had free access to the Inquisitorial archives,
in Spain alone the Inquisition burnt 31,000 persons to
death, and condemned 290,000 to punishments in many
cases only nominally less extreme than the death penalty.
These numbers do not include the victims who perished
under branches of the Inquisition established in Mexico,
Lima, Carthagena, the West Indies, Sicily, Sardinia, and
Malta. In the Netherlands alone 50,000 suffered death
for heresy in a single reign—that of Charles V.
Vivicremation—burning alive—was the stale and ordi
nary manner in which the Christian Tweedledum
disposed of the equally Christian, but more unfortunate,
Tweedledee. But the vivicremation had, in the interests
of Jesus, to be conducted on a scale so extensive that
the ordinary stake-and-fagot arrangement was found to
be inadequate. Besides, the quantity of timber it took
to roast him was too expensive to be consumed on such
a worthless thing as a heretic. It accordingly came
into fashion to make strong enclosures, like cattle pens,
into which the heretics were packed along with some
cart-loads of straw’ and brushw’ood. Then the pen was
closed and surrounded with troops, and the straw and
brushwood set fire to. And there, amid flame and
smoke, perished scores at a time, their cries of agony
falling on the impervious ears of their brother Christians,
and the stench of their burning flesh ascending as a
sweet-smelling savour to the nostrils of Jehovah Elohim,
in whose accursed interests man had so terribly turned
his hand against his brother man. Then followed the
�CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
13
wholesale and unconsecrated burial. Scores still alive,
but blistered with burning straw and half-suffocated with
smoke, had the cold earth of the grave pit laid upon
their scorched flesh, and were, in their tomb, left to die
at their leisure. The Archbishop of Rheims and seven
teen other prelates looked upon the conflagration in
such a pen as I have referred to, when no fewer than
184 heretics were in it, at one and the same time,
suffering death by fire.
In the face of the appalling numbers of those who died
for real or suspected heresy in regard to often incom
prehensibly subtle points in that most unscientific of all
sciences, theology, dare you, O Christian apologist, con
tend that a faith that, in one way or other, has been
guilty of the violent death of millions of the human race
has brought “glad tidings of great joy”? Thousands,
tens of thousands, were tortured for days with the fellest
torture that Christian ingenuity could devise, and then
borne out with dislocated joints, broken bones, and
mangled limbs to, over a slow fire, writhe out the bitter
dregs of life that yet remained. Hear their groans, their
shrieks, their yells of anguish arise from the torture
chamber and the fagot’s burning agony. These cries of
mortal pain yet peal down the corridors of the ages, and
proclaim your “ peace and goodwill ” a mockery and a lie.
And to the fiery sufferings of dissolution was added all
the poignancy of supernatural terrors. The Spanish
heretic was burnt in a yellow blouse, upon which the
flames of hell were painted to indicate that the few days
or hours of torment on earth were to be succeeded by
torment everlasting in the infernal world. The heretic’s
goods were confiscated, his children left to perish, and
his'wife, under social and ecclesiastical ban, to sink to
prostitution and beggary ; for the heretic’s crime was so
terrible that it blighted all that had been connected with
him like a canker and a curse. Thus was spread the
suffering over an immeasurably wider area than the mere
tens of thousands who perished at the stake. For every
sufferer had some friend, some father, some mother, some
child, and the bane of his martyrdom alighted upon all,
and the fearful conviction that the one who had been so
dear to them had gone only through a fiery prelude on
�i4
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
earth to the everlasting burnings of hell. Thus the
Christian faith blighted and embittered the lives of
millions whom its malevolence only indirectly reached.
Unsatiated with the burning of the living, the Romish
*
Church tried for heresy the very dead man in his grave,
and the coffin and the pall and corruption could not save
him from the dread tribunal, more especially if his heirs
were in possession of property which, finding him guilty,
would confiscate to the Church. Death and suffering
to millions and outrage to the very dead in the tomb are
associated with the faith of the Galilean and his Gospel
of sarcastic mockery : “ On earth peace and goodwill to
men.”
* If any apologist for Christianity may venture to affirm that
Catholicism had the monopoly for persecution, I hereby throw down
my gage of challenge, and am prepared to maintain that Protestant
ism, in proportion to its power, in the work of persecution, was no
whit behind the Church of Rome.
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FROM THE VALLEY
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WITCHCRAFT
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Being an Address delivered at the Inauguration of the Secular
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Christian persecution, by Saladin
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
HELL:
WHERE
IS
IT?
•
BEING
A LETTER TO THE ARCHBISHOP [OF I ORE.
BY
*
SALADIN,
[reprinted
from
“the secular review.”]
London :
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
��HELL: WHERE IS IT?
My Lord Archbishop,—May it please your Grace, you
have not yet replied to my last letter to you on Agnosti
cism ; you have only alluded to it in a letter, and in that
tried to raise a false issue in regard to it. I never ex
pected that you would answer it—nay, more, I had my
conviction from the outset as to whether you could
answer it. May I assure your Grace that it is a matter
of supreme indifference to me whether you answer it or
not ? I have met with no one who is sanguine enough
to expect that your attempted answer to it would throw a
single new ray of light upon a problem so difficult and
momentous as the one you had the temerity to interfere
with, and from which, when challenged to deal with it
fairly, you have had the timidity to run away.
According to a recent report in the Northern Echo,
your Grace abolished Heaven and Hell as localities, and
made them mere mental conditions. You and yours
allowed the report, which was no doubt correct, to pass
unchallenged. It was not till an “ Infidel ” paper com
mented on your Grace’s allegation that Heaven and
Hell were nowhere that you saw fit to take exception to
the Northern Echo report. One of your own pious
satraps pointed out to you, in Christian horror, that you
had suppressed Heaven’s fearful manag'erie of beasts,
with horns on their hips and eyes in their elbows, and
had played havoc with Hell’s everlasting teeth-gnashing,
and had cut the tail of that curious helminthological
specimen, “ the worm that never dies.”
I will give your Grace a present of your heaven ; do
what you like with it; “make a kirk and a mill of it;”
no one but a beast with eyes in his elbows cares what you
do with it. Burns and Shelley and a good many of my
�4
HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
friends, according to your doctrines, are in Hell; there
fore, Hell interests me more, and it is upon that I would
have a word with your Grace. In the letter to your
satrap, the Rev. Henry Macdougall, you do not contra
dict the Northern Echo report. You simply act as a
sort of clerical cuttlefish, and raise an obfuscation of
words by means of which you attempt to escape from a
dilemma. Your Grace knows as well as I do that, with all
except the most devoutly ignorant, Hell is now as extinct
as Hades or Nifleheim. In all the regions of inter
stellar space through which the vision of the telescope
has ranged no vestige of Hell has been discovered.
Where is Hell ? Since it is so distant that it is beyond
the range of the telescope, it matters not to us where it
is, for, even if it did exist, and we were despatched to it,
it would take us billions of years to reach it, even if we
travelled without ceasing at the rate of a cannon-ball.
Much must, necessarily, come and go in such a long
journey. Talk of “ Coelebs in search of a wife what
is that to a sinner in search of Hell ?
So much for Hell, if it is a place. If it has geographi
cal, or rather astronomical, position, which your Grace
would seem to imply by challenging the report in which
you were represented as submitting that it was only a
mental condition, I am justified in dealing with it as
if subject to the attributes of time and space. Your
Grace is fully aware that your space-Hell is an utter
absurdity, and that, even if it were not, its horrible tor
ments are so revolting to the sense of modern civilised
man that you dare not preach them for fear of bringing
down the whole Christian fabric about your ears. Piti
able is your plight. On the one hand you dare not
preach the doctrine of eternal torment, and on the other
hand you dare not repudiate it.
The cultured Christianity your Grace represents leans,
in this its decrepit old age, on the staff of quibble and
subterfuge. The most prominent doctrines of the New
Testament are ignored if they are out of harmony with
modern aesthetics. The doctrines now insisted upon
are not those upon which the Holy Ghost laid most
stress, but those which Mr. John Smith will pay to hear
discussed. John Smith has now got a step beyond Hell
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
5
and so the parson finds that Hell will not pay : Mr.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon is almost the only man left
who can make money out of Hell.
And yet, though you dare not preach it, your Grace
well knows that, if there is a single unmistakable teaching
in the New Testament, it is that there is a fine, fiery,
flaming Hell. Pontifical cowardice may desert, but
pontifical ingenuity will never explain away, such
passages as Matthew v. 22, 29, 30 ; x. 28 ; xxiii. 15-33;
xi. 23; xviii. 8, 9; Mark ix. 43-47 ; Luke x. 15;
xvi. 23. The unfortunate thing for your Grace’s Church
is that Christ himself has expressed himself so unequi
vocally as regards Hell. Of course, I commiserate a
cautious and discreet man like your Grace uf>on having
such a rash and injudicious Saviour, who gives you such
incalculable trouble to tone down and explain away his
utterances, so as to adapt them to modern acceptance.
You complain of the Secularists that they are “vehement.”
No doubt you feel that Christ, too, erred grievously in
this way. He, like the Secularists, was in earnest, and,
like them, spoke with the directness that springs from
singleness of purpose and the force that is born of con
viction. Those who now pose as the ministers of this
simple-minded and single-hearted teacher live by garble
and quibble and fraud; for his teachings are exploded
and obsolete, but they are still associated with rich
emolument, and so persons in the position of your Grace
dare neither preach them nor admit that they do not.
It is unfortunate for your Grace that that inconvenient
Christ in whose name you have your
10,000 a year,
but whose doctrines you have to explain away, not only
believed in a material Hell, but placed it at no great
distance—-in fact, alarmingly too near. T^evya rov irvpos,
says Christ, in Matthew v. 22. reej/nx is the word of
his which has been translated Hell; but once or twice
he uses Hades, showing that he had not had the origi
nality to construct a Hell of his own, but had knocked
together a sort of mongrel one borrowed from Homer
and Jeremiah. Teevva. is only a corruption of y??, land
and Hinnon, the name of a person who once owned
land in a valley near Jerusalem. This Valley of Hinnon,
referred to in Jeremiah xix., and elsewhere throughout
�6
hell:
where is it?
the Old Testament, is, in Hebrew, called Gehenna,
Christian Hell, as every scholar knows. In
this Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnon, human beings were
burnt alive to Moloch and Christ’s father of the same
age as himself, Jehovah.
*
Tophet was the particular
spot in Gehenna where the furnaces were erected for
the burning of human flesh. A huge brazen God stood
in the fire to receive living human sacrifices into his
brazen arms. “They lighted a great fire within the
statue and another before it. They put upon its arms
the child they intended to sacrifice, which soon fell into
the fire at the foot of the statue, putting forth cries, as
may easily be imagined. To stifle the noise of these
cries and howlings, they made a great rattling of drums
and other instruments, that the spectators might not be
moved with compassion at the clamours of these miser
able victims.”!
That horrible Gehenna, your Grace, with a dash of
the classical Hades added, is the frame-work of the
Christian Hell, as no doubt you very well know. If it
had been said to Christ, when in Galilee, “ Go to Hell I”
and he had obeyed the mandate, he would have given
his bridle reins a shake and Henglered off to the Valley
of Gehenna, “ riding on an ass and a colt the foal of an
ass —a foot on the back of each. Your Grace can, any
day, for a few pounds, purchase one of Cook’s tourist
tickets and go to Hell, as Christ understood the term;
and perhaps the best thing you could do would be to
stay there. The children roasting on the fiery arms of
brass was your Christ’s basis for “ the fire that never
shall be quenched the worms wriggling in the stercorous
and putrid remains of flesh the fire had not consumed
were the parents of Christ’s “worm that never dies.”
■ I do not know whether Jesus ever seriously reasoned
that all the wicked of all the world were to come to be
eternally cremated in the small and obscure Valley of
Gehenna. One with the limited mental and moral vision
of a fanatical Jewish peasant could hardly be expected
to devise a Hell large enough for all the damned. He
* See Isaiah xxx. 27-33.
+ Cruden’s “ Concordance,” under Tophet.
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
7
seems to have been incapable of giving a second thought
to anything. The few fishermen, mechanics, Pharisees,
and wastrels he had seen in a little obscure part of Syria
were, to him, the world. The Valley of Gehenna was
big enough for the burning of the whole of them—at least,
the few of them who might not find room to be cremated
could be provided for in his “ father’s house,” in which
there were many mansions, which, let us trust, have been
duly papered, and have had gas and water laid on.
Last time, your Grace, I wrote with forbearance and
deferential courtesy. The letter was a pertinent one. I
am an Agnostic who, week by week, drag men out of your
Church, and, according to you, send them straight to the
Hell anent which you quibble. If you value these men’s
“ immortal souls,” cannot you show them the error of my
teaching? You cannot urge that the issue involved is a
trifling one : it is one in which, according to your teach
ing, the eternal destinies of the thousands who are
deluded by me are involved. Up, your Grace, and arm
yourself with the “ sword of the spirit” and “the whole
armour of righteousness,” for to your very teeth I defy
you.
“Let,” as Milton puts it, “Truth and Error
grapple.” Why are you so reluctant to measure swords
with me, seeing that you are so sure that Truth is on your
side and Error on mine ? Pardon me for assuring your
Grace that by your conduct you show clearly enough that
you know as well as I do where the Truth lies, and
where the Error. My challenge to you to prove my
Agnosticism erroneous is at your feet, and your exalted
rank shall not stand between you and the bitterness of
my pen, which is honest and unhired. Still, I must assure
your Grace that I have as much respect for you as I have
for any august imposture and well-paid poltroonery. I
am no sycophant or flunkey, and, standing sturdily in
front of you, I refuse to recognise the line that separates
you from Norna of Fitful Head who sold prosperous
winds and the latest old crone who was sent to prison for
palmistically telling the .fortunes of a servant-girl. You,
outraging the spirit of the age, pray for rain, and that
bullets may not hit our soldiers on the battle-field. I
have more sympathy with the poor and vulgar than I
have with the rich and aristocratic thaumaturgist. You
�8
HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
know well that to be an archbishop you must also be an
archhumbug. I am, your Grace, whatever I may be,
neither bishop nor humbug, but simply a. thoughtful
and thoroughly earnest man, whose pen gibes at
your heaven and knocks the bottom out of your
bottomless pit.
I ask you, and I want an answer—Where did
you get Hell ? Your Grace is a Protestant, and your
doctrines must necessarily find their basis in the Scrip
tures. Then, where in the Scriptures, from Genesis to
Revelation, do you find your Christian Hell ? Point
me out in the entire Scriptures, from Genesis to Revela
tion, any word which, when correctly translated, means
a place of torment for the souls of the dead. The
word
often translated Hell in the English and
Hades in the Greek version of the Old Testament,
signifies only the grave, a great depth, or a cavern or cave,
such as in which the dead were wont to be buried.
The Saxon word helion, to be concealed, from which
come hole and hollow, corresponds pretty closely to
the Hebrew shaol, or sheol. So where in Scripture
does your Grace get your Christian Hell, or your Chris
tian Heaven either, for that part of it ? Come, your
Grace; since I and those who follow my teachings are
to be burnt in it, we should, naturally enough, like to
know where you get it. We should like to be made
aware of your authority for assuring us that somebody
is to be at such expense for brimstone on our account ;
that our incisors and molars are so sound that they will
stand an everlasting gnashing ; and where you get the
vermicular swirls of the red-hot worm that never dies.
When you archbishops and your Church had the power,
you could make such a Hell upon earth, and you
made it, that your ignorant and intimidated dupes could
easily enough believe there was also another hell some
where else. But alas ! poor Prelate, you have fallen
upon times when I, the defiant and aggressive “Infidel,”
dare to extinguish your Hell with my ink-pot, and
challenge you to show me where you get it before I
will consent to go to it. From Scripture you don't
get it—that you know as well as I do, although you
dare not say so straight out as I do. Your Hell, your
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
9
Grace, is stolen from Paganry, and your Heaven also,
and made horrible with Christian vulgarity. Your Hell
is a poor, unpoetic affair, compared with the awful
regions through which /Eneas wandered after the soul
of Anchises, not to mention the frozen terrors of the
realm where Odin and Thor drank blood out of the
skulls of the dead, their toast and revel and wassail
illumed by the yellow flash of the hair of the Norse
maidens and the blue gleam of the Norland steel. The
poor, brutal faith of which your Grace is an archbishop,
having neither art nor poetry, nor flight of dream nor
range of vision, spoilt Hell when it stole it. Get a
better Hell, your Grace, before you presume to think it
is good enough for a heretic, although that heretic may
be your match in honesty, and far more than your match
in intellectual power.
Your Grace may reply that that which was good
enough for your Jesus Christ is good enough for me;,
but I claim the right of private judgment, and demur.
Since you Christians have partly stolen and partly
invented a Hell, you can, of course, put your Jesus
Christ into it if you like ; it matters not to me. I know
that, now-a-days, you find it necessary to refine away
the teaching that he was ever there. But this shilly
shallying comes too late. The most learned and devout
of the Christian fathers have taught that Christ spent
three days in the charming company of the never-dying
worm. As you and yours, your Grace, are usually not
so well versed in the records of your own Church as we
Freethinkers might expect, I will cite you my authorities,
in case you might lay small account upon the mere
ipse dixit of an avowed and aggressive heretic. “St.
Thomas, pp. 3, 9, 52, art. ii., teaches that Christ, by his
real presence, descended but to limbus patrum, and in
effect only to the other places of Hell. Secondly, St.
Thomas seems to say that it was some punishment to
Christ to be in Hell, according to his soul. Cajetan
saith that the sorrows of Christ’s death continued on
him till his resurrection, in regard of three penalties,
whereof the second is that the soul remained in
Hell, a place not convenient for it. But Bonaventure
saith that Christ’s soul, while it was in Hell, was
�IO
HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
in the place of punishment indeed, but without punish
ment; which seems to me more agreeable to the fathers.”*
■Cardinal Cajetan and Thomas Aquinas—no mean pillars
■in the Christian Church, your Grace—are on the side of
Bonaventure in alleging that Christ went from Calvary
to Hell.
I think I hear your Grace repudiate such authorities
with the pious scorn with which Protestantism regards
her venerable mother, the Scarlet Lady. Do you allege
that, in support of Christ going to Hell, I have relied
upon a Roman Catholic heresy which your reformed
Church repudiates? Not so fast, your Grace. Hugh
Latimer, your glorious Protestant martyr, taught the
same doctrine, and not only roasted your Christ in plain
brimstone, but also treated him to a “ scalding house,”
where, in all seriousness, we may conclude that the
■second person of the Trinity had poured over him
successive kettles of boiling water. I refer your Grace
to Bishop Latimer’s seventh Sermon, where you will
find his own words as follows : “ But now I will say a
word ; and here I protest, first of all, not arrogantly to
■determine and define it. I will contend with no man
for it; but I offer it unto you to consider and weigh
it. There be some great clerks that take my part;
and I perceive not what evil can come of it, in saying
that our Saviour, Christ, not only descended into Hell,
/W also that he suffered in Hell sttch pains as the
damned spirits did suffer there. Surely, I believe, verily,
for my part, that he suffered the pains of Hell pro
portionally as it corresponded and answered to the
whole sin of the world. He would not suffer only
bodily in the garden and upon the Cross, but also in
his soul when it was from the body, which was a pain
due for our sin........... Some write so, and I can believe
it, that he suffered in the very place (and I cannot tell
what it is ; call it what you will—even in the scalding
house, in the ugsomeness of the place, in the presence
of the place) such pain as our capacity cannot attain
unto. It is somewhat declared unto us when we utter
Bellarmine, “ De Christo,” lib. iv., cap. 16, pp. 396, 397.
�HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
11
it by these effects—viz., by fire, by gnashing of teeth, by
the worm that gnaweth on the conscience.”
So, your Grace, the venerable Latimer, a luminary
and master-spirit of the Christian Church, and of
your own section of it, not only introduces your
Christ to the interesting companionship of the neverdying worm, but to the delicate attentions of the ever
scalding kettle. This is the teaching of your Church,
as you will see; and I have quoted the ipsissima verba
of one of your greatest men—one who was concerned
in the compilation of your Book of Common Prayer
and the drawing up of your formularies. And yet you
would seek in your Northallerton sermon to explain
away this Hell altogether; and even when challenged on
the point, in your letter of extenuation you go crawling
round the subject in a labyrinth of verbal mists as only
a Churchman can ; but you never once venture to assert
that Hell, as an objective reality, exists. If your Lord
had such a tough time of it for three days with the
worm and the kettle, he will not thank your Grace for
explaining the whole thing away. With him it will be
just the one thing that cannot be explained away, even
if he should forget Gethsemane and Judas Iscariot, and
even your Grace.
I recognise your difficulty, my Lord Archbishop, and
I sympathise with you. Some eighteen hundred years
ago you had the misfortune to have a dead god—a
god killed with a hammer and four tenpenny nails, and
your Church has been in a terrible quandary as to
where to put his “soul” during the three days he
managed to get along without it in the Arimathean’s
tomb. You could not send him to Heaven, because, to
produce the proper effect, he had subsequently to fly
from Olivet to that elevated region. So you had to
send him to Hell; and nowT, since you explain away
Hell, will you be good enough to say where the sheol
he went to ? As I have said, I really sympathise with
your Grace in this, literally, infernal dilemma, and I
hasten to relieve you from impalement on its horns.
Explain away Christ as well as Hell, and then you will
not be perplexed as to what to do with his “ soul ”
during the three awkward days that he remained “ in
�12
HELL :
WHERE IS IT ?
the heart of the earth,” even as Jonah had remained
three days “in the whale’s belly,” that the Scripture
might be fulfilled. I admit, your Grace, that I write
with irreverence. I should have no reverence for the
human race, no reverence for my own manhood, if I had
reverence for a learned and sane man w’ho, in the last
quarter of this nineteenth century, accepts of ,£10,000
per annum for the task of attempting to reconcile the
fabulous rubbish of 2,000 years ago with the light and
reason of to-day.
There are Christians and Christians, your Grace ; and
it would, perhaps, be as unfair to make you responsible
for the wild theological teachings of Mr. Spurgeon as it
w’ould be to hold me responsible for the feculent socio
logical doctrines of Mr. Bradlaugh. According to the
luminary of the Newington Tabernacle, the damned may
devote thousands of years to examining the wounds
which were inflicted on Christ at the crucifixion. From
this I infer that Mr. Spurgeon not only believes that
Christ went to Hell, but that he stayed there. If he is
not in Hell, how can the denizens of that torrid realm
examine his wounds ? Does he “ sit at the right hand
of God,” but send his wounds down to Hell in a brown
paper parcel that they may be inspected ? After having
examined wounds for thousands of years, “ the Lost ”
should have a considerable knowledge of morbid
anatomy. Your Grace, a Protestant Archbishop, would
explain away Hell altogether; but another Protestant,
Bishop Latimer, thinks it good enough for Christ, and
puts him into the “ scalding house,” while yet another
Protestant, Pastor Spurgeon, also deems it good enough
for Christ, and makes him reside there permanently as a
“subject” in a Hospital for Incurables. In me, an out
sider, what profound respect is inspired for the three of
you—for Latimer and Spurgeon’s realistic crudities, and
for your Grace’s disingenuous shuffling !
By-the-bye, your Grace, the Bottomless Pit is not so
deep after all. The word is a/Lwos, /Suo-cros, deep,
*
intensified by the prefix a. It is only the word Homerf
uses to signify the bottom of the sea. In the Septuagint
Rev. xi. 15.
+ “ Iliad,” bk. xxiv., line 80.
�HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
13
it answers generally to the Hebrew □‘infb deep waters.
It is, moreover, only the word used to show where the
*
pigs of the Gadarenes ran to. Accordingly, Why, in
“ the Authorized Version,” is it not stated that the pigs
ran down a steep place into the bottomless pit and were
choked ? Why is the same word in Revelation trans
lated the “bottomless pit” and in Luke “the sea”?
Only one of the tricks of parson-craft, your Grace. The
translators of 1611 apparently did not like the idea of
the swine running down a steep place into Hell. So,
accordingly, although they had the same word to deal
with, they made it into a bottomless pit to put the dragon
into, and a sea into which to put the pigs. From this
sort of fact an Agnostic like myself infers that those who
translate the works of their Maker require gumption, in
the exercise of which they need not be over-scrupulous.
Again, if it does not trouble your Grace, I should like to
know how the Devil is confined in a pit without a bottom.
An angel “ shut him up and set a seal upon him;” but
was the angel a lunatic ? If you put a cat into a bag
without a bottom, you may tie up the neck of the bag,
and even “ set a seal on it p but the cat will set small
value upon all your precautions. Your Bottomless Pit,
my Lord Archbishop, is worthy of your Bottomless
Creed.
Your Grace will remember that many years ago it was
decided by the Court of Arches that a disbelief in the
Devil did not invalidate a man’s right to be a commu
nicant of the Church of England. Further, Lord West
bury, in the matter of “ Essays and Reviews,” in address
ing the jury, uttered the pithy and memorable words :
“ Gentlemen, your verdict kills the Devil, and puts out
Hell-fire.” The verdict of the jury of the entire civilised
and educated world is now dead against the existence
of Satan and his flaming throne. This is a verdict that
brings relief and delectation to all, except to that burglar
the priest, who used the Devil and his fearful pyrotechnics
as a jemmy with which to force open the doors, that
he might pilfer the belongings of mankind.
* Luke viii. 31.
�14
HELL : WHERE IS IT ?
One very plain question, your Grace : If there be no
Hell, what use is there for you ? Your sole business
upon earth is to keep people out of Hell; but to what
honest calling do you think of turning your attention
now that there is no Hell to keep them out of? You
have admitted there is no such place as Hell; but, when
pushed into a corner, you, in a sort of obscure way, eat
your own words. In short, your Grace, the exigencies
of your office make it incumbent upon you to put out
Hell with the one hand and kindle it with the other.
If there be no Hell, not only what is the use of you,
but what is the use of your Christ ? It must be morti
fying for him to discover that, after all his redeeming
escapade, and the bother the Ghost had in begetting
him with a virgin, the human race he came to “redeem "’
were not in the slightest danger of Hell—in fact, that
there was no Hell for them to go to. He surely must
have been taught a salutary lesson. Surely, when he
comes down from Heaven again, he will take more pains
to discover why he is coming, and not go on such a
wild-goose chase as that which taxed his energies eighteen
centuries ago. Of course, your Grace’s whole raison
d'etre is based upon the assumption that mankind are
unthinking and credulous simpletons, and I am sorry
to admit that this is almost the only warrantable assump
tion your Church has ever made. But, at last, after
centuries of pious stupor, the world is rubbing its eyes
and beginning to awake : you are beginning to be found
out, my Lord Archbishop. How long do you calculate
you will still be paid for blowing hot and cold—-for
putting out Hell with the one hand and kindling it with
the other ? The wheels of Progress are like the pro
verbial mills of God—they move exceeding slow; but
on they move, from the darkness into the penumbra,
from the penumbra into the light; and those who drive
her triumphal car through the shining fields of the
world’s to-morrow shall look back over the plains they
have left behind, and, far away in the rear, see your
Christian faith crushed to death under the wheels, dis
embowelled and rotten—the ugliest and slimiest of the
snakes that had to be strangled before the Herakles of
Humanity could rise from its cradle and realise the
�HELL:
WHERE IS IT?
15;
thought, the action,'the glory, and the triumph which all
lie in the arena of life for those who can win and wear
them.
I am
Your Grace’s Most Obedient Servant,
Saladin.
Price id., by post i%d., 100 copies for distribution post free 5s. 6d.,
AGNOSTICISM:
WHAT IT IS, PUT IN THE BRIEFEST AND
PLAINEST WAY.
Read Saladin’s Reply to the Archbishop
of
York.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
HISTORICAL PAMPHLETS.
A Reply to Cardinal Manning, by Saladin ...
...
01
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...
...
...
0 j
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Christian Persecution, by Saladin ...
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The Flagellants, by Saladin
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The Iconoclasts, by Saladin
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The Inquisition, Part I., by Saladin
...
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o x
The Inquisition, Part II., by Saladin
...
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The Dancers, Shakers, and Jumpers, Part II., bySaladin
o 1
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...
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London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Every Thursday.
Price Twopence.
THE SECULAR REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF
AGNOSTICISM AND NEO-SECULARISM.
EDITED BY
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*** The Secular Review is the only journal of advanced
thought of the overt and aggressive order that has broken
away from the “Freethought” traditions of Richard Carlile
and his school to adopt a policy compatible with the higher
moral tone and riper culture of modern times. The Secular
Review contends that liberal thought does not necessarily
arrive at the conclusion that all existing institutions should be
overturned; and it distinctly repudiates the crude sedition in
politics and the revolting prurience in sociology which have for
so long made popular “ Freethought ” a hiss and a byword
with all whose adherence would be of value.
Under name and pen-name, some of the most scholarly and
able writers of the age contribute regularly to The Secular
Review ; and, although the Editorial policy is uncompromis
ingly hostile to the popular and dominant faith, the columns
of the journal are ever open to articles in defence of Chris
tianity from clergymen or lay Christians of recognised ability.
The Secular Review can be had free by post on the
following terms
Quarterly, 2s. 8^d.; half-yearly, 5s. 5d.;
yearly, 10s. iod. Orders should be given to local newsagents;
but where this is impracticable they should be sent direct to
the Publishing Office.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon St., E.C.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Hell : where is it? being a letter to the Archbishop of York
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: New ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 14. [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Publisher's advertisements on unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication not earlier than 1889 (advertisement for The agnostic journal and eclectic review on back cover). "by Saladin" [title page]. Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
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W. Stewart & Co.
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[n.d.]
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N589
N588
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Hell
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Hell
NSS
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3JS0
€^7
X15S
BfctopsoaW Institute
?aiM.
REVISED LIST
OF
W.I STEWART & CO.’S
[— IBiitil (rations.
Large cr. 8vo, cloth, gold and silver lettered, price 3s., by post
ROSES AND RUE;
BEING RANDOM NOTES AND SKETCHES.
By SALADIN.
“A collection of clever essays.......They have originality, fresh
ness, impudent daring, and a total want of reverence. Mr. Ross
made a hit with his ‘ Lays of Romance and Chivalry,’ and thisvolume, which he does not dignify by presenting under a bolder
description than ‘random notes and sketches,’is marked by the
same dash and vigour as the ‘ Lays.’ On the whole, the essaysbreathe a healthy spirit, and the girding at humbug and hypocrisy
are not unwelcome. It is not a book to send to a country vicarage
and such like homes of intellectual serenity; but it has enough;
cleverness and ‘go’ to make it acceptable to minds jaded by
commonplace orthodoxy. ”—Evening News.
“ The author is a man of intense moral earnestness, and
he offers to his readers not opinions, but convictions; not such
thoughts as lightly come and lightly go, but conclusions'arrived at by the severest processes of heart and head. The
essays seem written in his heart’s blood, and, while we reject
many of his theological views, we cannot but admire his transparent
honesty, his high moral attitude, his chivalrous courtesy, and his •
trenchant yet felicitous literary style. The volume is at once
instructive, entertaining, and stimulating.”—Brighouse Gazette.
“ These notes and sketches are intensely interesting. It is not
easy to say which of the three-dozen papers is most entertaining,,
and none, is bald or tame. Keen humour runs through them.
Whether in soap, warts, sentiment, scandal, whisky, or witchcraft,
he is brilliantly attractive. He gives us much useful information,,
told in a charming way. We heartily recommend the well-got-up
volume to those who wish to be entertained as well as instructed.”
—Perthshire Advertiser.
“ ‘ Roses and Rue ’ is the pretty title of a collection of essays
not quite suitable to searchers after prettiness. The author, Mr.
W. Stewart Ross, better known, perhaps, as Saladin, has a facilepen, a quick fancy, and a daring wit. Sometimes he rises into avein, of lofty thought; but, for the most part, these essays aresatirico-comic, with the former flavour largely predominating.”—
Inquirer.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
3%
�Recently issued, cr. 8vo, 224 pp., rough edges, gilt top, price
2s. 6d., post free 2s. 9d.,
JANET SMITH:
A PROMISCUOUS ESSAY ON WOMAN.
By W. STEWART ROSS.
“Mr. Stewart Ross’ ‘Janet Smith’ is not a story, but a ‘pro
miscuous essay,’ and the critic who casually opens it merely gnashes
his teeth. The critic who reads a few pages in the middle at
once turns back to the beginning of the book, and, come friend
come foe, perseveres to the end. He still frequently gnashes his
teeth ; but he laughs often, and, although his path is unduly thick
with thorns, he plucks roses most desirable. Mr. Stewart Ross is
sometimes fearfully and wonderfully mad ; but he is a clever man,
and not seldom he has moments of genius.”—Literary World.
“ W. Stewart Ross has achieved a reputation as the wielder of a
facile pen, the possessor of a brilliant fancy, and a daring wit. He
revels in tilting at humbugs, in unmasking the shams of modern
life. He has a happy vein of satirical humour, and he is never
dull..... The ‘ proem ’ on a mother’s love is in the author’s best style,
full of tenderness and pathos, and through his merciless unveiling
of feminine shortcomings peeps ever and anon the intense love of
home which covers a multitude of his satirical sins against the
‘Janet ’ who is at once man’s delight, desire, and despair.”—The
Star.
“ Credit is due to his unfailing honesty and his vigorous literary
style. Much in the book is worthy of serious thought and atten
tion on the part of political economists and social reformers.”—
Aberdeen Journal.
“ The author.......has audacity which makes him say what he
desires without the slightest attention to conventionalities. When
an author writes cleverly and smartly he is entitled to some praise
from those who think dullness is the last and worst infirmity of an
author........ We give to Mr. Stewart Ross the praise due to a smart
writer.”—Perthshire Advertiser.
“Mr. Stewart Ross includes a review7 which observes, ‘this is
not a book to send to a country parsonage,’ and this quite expresses
our view' of ‘Janet Smith.’ It is clever; it is often more than
plain-spoken ; it is written by one who is both poet and dreamer.”
—Glasgow Herald.
“A most provoking book. Some parts of it are so good, others
are so reckless, that one scarcely knows what to say about it........
Taking it altogether, it is quite an uncivil book. ”—Brighton Herald.
“Bold, daring, and clever. The reader cannot but admire the
keen satire and irreverent iconoclasm........ Will hold the reader
amused and entertained from the first chapter to the last.”—Ports
mouth Times.
“ A vigorous attack on some of the shams of the day.”—Light.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Recently Issued, in neat wrapper, price is., by post is, id.,
The Bible’s Own Account
Itself.
of
BEING A CONCISE EXPOSITION OF THE CHRISTIAN
THEOSOPHY.
By EDWARD MAITLAND,
Author of “The Pilgrim and the Shrine“The Keys of the
Creeds, ” etc., and Joint Writer with Dr. Anna Kingsford
of “The Perfect Way,” etc.
“Ingenious in thought and well-written.’—Religio-Philosophical
Journal.
Cr. 8vo, 96 pp., cloth, gilt lettered, red edged, on superior paper,
price 2s., post free 2s. 2d.,
Isaure & Oto Poems.
By W. STEWART ROSS (Saladin).
Mr.. Stewart Ross has the fervour of a true and natural lyrist. This quality
-is exhibited to advantage in some of his smaller pieces, such as the Ode to
Burns and the poem entitled “The Declaration of Sanquhar.”—Scotsman.
Mr. Stewart Ross, as we before have had occasion to say......... has decided
poetic .ability, and. his muse seems to inspire him with a certain fantastic and
■weird imagery which may remind his American readers of Edgar Allen Poe
—not in its rhythm or subjects, but in its passionate utterances and romantic
exaggeration.—The Open Court (Chicago).
“ Isaure ” is pathetically and touchingly told; a story of intense passion, in
■the telling of which the author at times rises beyond himself and shows us of
■what he is capable.—Wakefield Herald.
The whole twenty-one poems are cultured, fresh, fragrant, thoughtful.........
Every versereveals the thinker, observer, reformer....... Every page glows with
passion and throbs with life.—Oldham Chronicle.
The soul of a true poet.. ..Often attains the lilt of the genuine music._
Gerald Massey.
Price 2s. post free, elegantly printed in colours,
SONGS BY THE WAYSIDE
OF AN AGNOSTIC'S LIFE.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Now Ready, People’s Edition, unabridged, with two new Poems
added, price is., post free is. 2d., or cloth, gilt lettered, 2s.,
by post 2s. 2d.,
LAYS OF ROMANCE & CHIVALRY.
By W. STEWART ROSS (Saladin).
“ Lays of Romance and Chivalry ” may now be had for one shilling. The
“ Lays ” remind us of Walter Scott at his best, and years ago they secured for
their author a place among the genuine singers of the nineteenth century.—
Oldham Chronicle.
Some of these effusions are of a very remarkable character, and indicate
that Mr. Ross has a genuine vein of poetic inspiration.—Daily Telegraph.
Mr. Stewart Ross shows great power of dramatic expression.............. The
work will be welcomed by all who can appreciate poetic energy applied to the
interesting and thrilling incidents of the earlier and more romantic periods of
history.—Aberdeen Journal.
Many of the poems are characterised by a spirit and ringing martial vigour
that stirs the blood.—Daily Chronicle.
A book of romantic, historic verse, aglow in every page with the energy of
a true and high poetic genius.—Glasgow Weekly Mail.
The poems contain many fine thoughts, expressed in powerful language.—
Newcastle Weekly Chronicle.
The author gives ample proof of his varied talents, and has no small shareof the minstrel’s magic power.—Aberdeen Free Press.
There is much that is excellent in the work....... Mr. Ross is apparently a
scholar, and might make a success in some other walk in literature.—Liver
pool Daily Post.
Mr. Stewart Ross is not only a poet, he is a scholar and a thinker.—
South London Press.
The “Lays ” are of great poetic merit.—Wakefield Free Press.
We have no hesitation, indeed, in saying that there is a true poet’s fervour,
a genuine originality of manner, and much fineness and richness of expression
in these productions.—Newcastle Daily Journal.
As to the success with which Mr. Stewart Ross has hit on the salient points
of the various incidents there can be no two opinions ; while there is an easy,
bold swing in most of the poems which will certainly help to make them*
popular.—Brighton Herald.
Price id., post free i%d.,
The Gospels Critically Examined.—I.
THE BIRTH OF JESUS.
By AGNOSCO AND GIAOUR.
Price Sixpence, post free Sevenpence,
THE PILLARS OF THE CHURCH
Or, THE GOSPELS AND COUNCILS.
By JULIAN.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�NE W EDITION.
380 pp, cloth, gold lettered, price 3s., free by post for 3s. 3d.,
GOD AND HIS BOOK.
By SALADIN.
“ You have earned the thanks of all who really think. You have
'hastened the coming of that day when there will be found in the
■world’s creed this at least:—Happiness is the only good. The time
to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to
be happy is to try to make others so. And, when that day comes,
those who by thought or deed have added to the sum of human joy
will be the saints, and on that calendar will be found your name.”
—R. G. Ingersoll.
“ I have dwelt upon its vast research, its sound criticism, its
caustic humour, its sledge-hammer vehemence, its scathing satire,
its occasional pathos, and its bursts of eloquence. As a work of
art, it manifests true genius of a very high order, is never dull, is
often stirring as a trumpet, or the flourish of a red flag in a Spanish
arena ; and I say it advisedly that never book has issued from the
press so calculated to strike at the foundation of that idol temple
miscalled the Church of God.”—Julian.
“ ‘ God and His Book ’ is the heaviest iconoclastic broadside
that has been fired at the Jewish God and the Bible by any modern
Freethinker. Christians may get angry at it; but their system of
religion cannot escape conviction under, the powerful indictment
■ drawn by Saladin.
Truthseeker, New York.
“ The only gentleman of real genius the Secularists ever had was
AV. Stewart Ross (Saladin), a true poet, a man of fine sympathies,
a slashing and brilliant writer.”—Rev. Z. B. Woffendale, in “Light
the World.”
“ There is not a dull page from beginning to end. There are
gems from the byeways of recondite erudition and slag from the
newspapers of yesterday—all, by the touch of literary magic, welded
into a mass of forcible but eccentric illustration, tearful pathos,
sublime poetry, soaring eloquence, and sardonic laughter.”—“ A
■University Man ” (see S. R., Feb. gth, 1887).
“ It will be admitted by all impartial critics that Saladin has
-done his work well. To many his fierce and relentless advocacy
may cause grievous pain.......Yet even the most sensitive critic will
-concede that the impeachment is the work of a scholar and thinker,
-who is intensely in earnest, if deplorably wrong.”—The
.Literary Guide.
“ The author is a scholar, a dialectician, a thinker, a poet of high
"order
His honesty is transparent on every page
Saladin is a
unique figure in the theological battlefield, and the figure is as
picturesque as it is unique.”—Oldham Chronicle.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt lettered, Vol. I., 260 pp., price 2s. 6d.r
post free 2s. 9d.; and Vol. II., 268 pp., price 2s. 6d.,
post free 2s. 9d.,
W0MAN:
HER GLORY, HER SHAME, AND HER GOD.
By SALADIN.
The motto on the title-page of this volume is from the Rev. Archdeacon*
• -k rraj’ an<^ 1S« *n these words: ‘ It* [Christianity] elevated the woman ; it
shrouded as with a* halo of sacred innocence the tender years of the child.*
The object of Saladin s book appears to be to refute the assertion of Arch
deacon Farrar’s opinion of what Christianity has done for woman; and
this object has been carried out in the most thorough, exhaustive, andplainest manner possible. Everything relating to woman, from her first
appearance in the Garden of Eden, down through all her subsequent history—
Biblically, religiously, socially, morally, domestically, etc.—is given with
great minuteness, and her ‘glory and shame ’ dwelt upon most elaborately.
It is a book that many Christians would be frightened to read, and yet the
1?r gives copious proofs from the Bible and from history for the correctness
of all he says in regard to woman.”—Boston Investigator.
“This certainly is one of the most *marvellous books ever issued from the:
ess. The conception is novel and unique, the reading it has required musthave been Gargantuan, the authorities cited are unquestionable, the style is-,
ever fresh and ever new,* and the result convincing."—Julian.
r * S'^?Sie neatly-j^ot-up half-crown volumes are sure to be the most popular
of all Saladin’s writings. They appeared in weekly instalments in the Secular'
Review, which is the ablest, strongest, and most cultured of all the Secular
periodical literature. When the articles on * Woman : Her Glory, Her Shame,
and Her God,’ appeared, it was generally known that Saladin would issue
them in a more permanent form, for he clearly had braced himself up for a
great effort. The work is a heavy onslaught on Christianity. Saladin does
not spare the Church, nor Christian ministers ; but, then, he assails them not
with the fierce vindictiveness of the wolf, but with the majestic heroism of the
1
1S aot a mere smasher, like so many who write Secularism; he is a
soldier, and will only *use fair weapons, recognised by the army of literary'
belligerents. Every line seems to bristle with a fact, or marshals an argu- ment, or* burns with righteous indignation. One cannot but grieve to see such.
extraordinary talent defending propositions which our best men cannot en-dorse.* —Oldham Chronicle.
New Edition, price is., by post is. id.,
THE CONFESSIONAL^
ROMISH AND ANGLICAN. An Exposure.
By SALADIN.
Contents :—Introduction—Licentiousness of the Pre-Reformation Church
—Lechery of the Confessional—Ritualism : “ The Priest in Absolution ”—
The Anglican Confessional—Ineffectual Efforts to Suppress Reforming Ten
dencies in the Anglican Church—Confessions of an Escaped Nun—Extractsfrom Dens and Liguori—Examination of the Church’s Claim to have Fostered
Learning : Her Attempts at Continency even more Ruinous than her Self-in
dulgence—-The Relative Criminal Statistics of Catholicism and Protestantisms
—Appendix
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�112 pp., price is. 6d., post free is. 8d.,
Why I am an Agnostic.
BEING
A MANUAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
By SALADIN and JOSEPH TAYLOR.
(Dedicated to Samuel Laing.)
Our Objects and Method—Agnosticism the Spirit of the Age—
Special Misconceptions and Misrepresentations of Agnosticism—
General Misconceptions and Misrepresentation of Agnosticism—
The Affirmation of the Absolute : the Negation of the Individual.
*»* The most clear, simple, and succinct exposition and defence
of Agnosticism ever published.
64 pp., in wrapper, price 6d., post free, 7d.,
“ SEXUAL
ECONOMY,”
AS TAUGHT BY CHARLES BRAD LAUGH.
By Peter Agate, M.D. (and Addendum by Saladin)
Contents: Introduction—The Two B.’s and “The Elements”—Bradlaugh’s
Quarrel with Joseph Barker—Sexual Religion—The Neo-Malthusian Doctrine
of Marriage—Palaeo-Secular Views of Social Evils—Palaeo-Secular Medicine—
The Palseo-Secularist Malthusians—Palseo-Secularist Society—Addendum, by
Saladin.
Crown 8vo., handsomely bound, gilt lettered, gilt edges and
vignette title page, price 2s., post free,
MOODS AND MEMORIES,
BEING MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
By the late William Maccall.
*** “ The latest literary expression of another son of Genius and
Misfortune.”
London: W
Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�MISCELLANEOUS PAMPHLETS.
BY
SALADIN.
VISIT TO MR. SPURGEON’S TABERNACLE. Full
Account of the Dipping,” etc. With Portrait. Price
id., post free i%d.
VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.
(With Portrait.) Price id., post free i%d.
? (With
Portrait.) Appendix :—The Prize Poem in Connection with
■the Dumfries Statue to Burns. Price id., post free i%d.
ELL : WHERE IS IT ? Bitterly sarcastic, and yet grave
and erudite brochure. Price id., post
i%d.
“
A
Aobert burns : was he- a freethinker
R
Heetles and bathers •, coffinsfreeand cantrips.
B
Price id., post free l%d.
{JONCERNING THE DEVIL.
FEARFUL FLOGGING.
Price id., post free l%d.
Price 3d., post free 4d.
qpHE AGONIES OF HANGING.
Price 3d., post free 4d.
The above, in one vol., cloth, gold lettered, price is. 6d., post free
is. 8d.
“A COMPLETE DIGEST OF SCIENCE.”
The Dynamic Theory of Life and Mind:
An Attempt to Show that all Organic Beings are both
Constructed and Operated by the Dynamic Agencies
of their Respective Environment.
By JAMES B. ALEXANDER.
Over 400 Illustrations. 87 Chapters, 1,067 Pages, and a
3-col. Index of 11 Pages. Price 12s., by post 12s. 6d.
New Edition, 64 pp., in wrapper, price 6d., post free 7d.,
DID JESUS CHRIST RISE FROM
THE DEAD ?
The Evidences for the Resurrection Tried and Found
Wanting^
By
SALADIN.
“ One of the best essays ever written on the subject.”—Truthseekek.
London : W. Stewart & Co, 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�HISTORICAL PAMPHLETS.
BY SALADIN.
he divine interpretation of scripture.
T
T
A Reply to Cardinal Manning.
"id., post free l%d.
HE CRUSADES.
free ij£d.
New Edition, 16 pp., price
16 pp., with Illustration, price id., pest
HRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
I^d.
Che flagellants.
free i%d.
The iconoclasts.
T
he covenanters.
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
R
R
K
16 pp., price id., post free
In neat wrapper, price id., post
In neat wrapper, price id., post
free i%d.
free i%d.
In neat wrapper, price id., post
HE INQUISITION.
l%d.
Part I., 16 pp., price id., post free
HE INQUISITION,
i%d.
Part II., 16 pp., price id., post free
HE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
16 pp., price id., post free l%d.
Part I.,
HE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
16 pp., price id., post free i%d.
Part II.,
HE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.
price id., post free l%d.
Part I., 16 pp.
HE PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.
price id., post free i%d.
Part II., 16 pp.,
ELIGIOUS EDUCATION. A Letter to Cardinal Manning.
Part I., 16 pp., price id., post free i%d.
ELIGIOUS EDUCATION. A Letter to Cardinal Manning.
Part II., 16 pp., price id.s post free ij^d.
ELIGIOUS EDUCATION. A Letter to Cardinal Manning.
Part III., with Addenda, “The Christian Heaven” and
■“ Chivalry.” 16 pp., price id., post free i%d.
QT.' MUNGO. The Saint who Founded Glasgow.
KJ post free 4d.
Price 3d.,.
Or in one vol., handsomely bound in cloth, gilt lettered, 2s., post
free 2s. 2d.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�96 pp., in pictorial wrapper, price is., post free is. id.,
CHRISTIANITY AND THE SLAVE
TRADE.
By Saladin.
_ “ An idea of the nature of the work may be gained by imagining a condensa
tion of all the well-known and other facts upon this subject, with the additionsof such comments as only Saladin can make.”—Truthseeker, New York.
MAJOR F---- 1
MAJOR F----- 1
In pictorial wrapper, price 3d., by post 3%d.,
THE AGONIES OF HANGING.
BY ONE WHO WAS CUT DOWN FROM THE GALLOWS.
Printed from MSS. in the hands of Saladin.
‘ This is the first instalment of a work which promises to be one of the most
wonderful efforts of Saladin’s wonderful pen. It is vivacious, yet awful; witty,,
yet blood-curdling ; bantering, yet stern. One cannot, as yet, see its purport,
though every line makes us feel that there is deep meaning in it throughout.”—
Oldham Chronicle.
In pictorial wrapper, price 3d., by post 3%d.,
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
BY ONE WHO ENDURED IT.
Printed from MSS. in the hands of Saladin.
“ In a previous issue we noticed Saladin’s ‘Agonies of Hanging,’an uncom
monly weird and truly extraordinary emanation of human mentality, ‘A
Fearful Flogging ’ is a sequential brochure, and, from a literary and artistic
point of view, is a most grotesque performance. It is inimitably clever, and is
decidedly humorous. He would be a pulseless man indeed who could read the
account of the ‘ flogging ’ without being continuously provoked to boisterous
laughter. Every line irritates even the dullard, and, except it be the prude, no one
can reasonably object to Saladin’s, at times, dangerously indelicate insinuations,
Mr. W. Stewart Ross has proved himself a born wit, and his ever-increasing
constituency should welcome this brilliant addition to his writings.”—Watts’s
Literary Guide.
Bound strongly in cloth gilt, lettered, price is. 6d., post free is. 8d.,.
HYLO-IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY.
BY WILLIAM BELL Me TAGGART.
(Late Captain 14th Hussars.)
This volume should be read by all interested in the problems of
philosophy; for the highest advances of modern thought are here
laid bare of their inmost recess, and in a style and diction that he
who runs may read.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Price ios. 6d., post free,
OUTLINES OF
MENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
Bv J. D. MORELL, M.A., LL.D.
Price I2s. 6d., post free,
A MANUAL OF THE
HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY.
FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME-
By J. D. MORELL, M.A., LL.D
Cr. 8vo, bevelled boards, red edges, published at 4s. 6d., reduced
to 2s. 6d., post free 2s. gd.,
PHILOSOPHICAL
FRAGMENTS.
Written during Intervals of Business.
By J. D. MORELL, LL.D.
In cloth, gilt lettered, price 2s.,
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE.
By Edward Von Hartmann.
Translated from the German by Ernest Dare.
New Edition, crown 8vo, cloth, gold lettered, price is.,
post free is. ij£d.,
LIFE AND MIND:
ON THE BASIS OF MODERN MEDICINE.
By the late Robert Lewins, M.D.
With Biographical Sketch of Dr. Lewins, by Saladin.
Price 6d., post free 7d.,
AUTO-CENTRICISM ;
Or, THE BRAIN THEORY OF LIFE AND MINDBeing the Substance of Letters written to the Secular Review
(1883-4).
By the late Robert Lewins, M.D.
Edited by Herbert L. Courtney.
London ; W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Cr. 4to, cloth, gilt lettered, price 7s. 6d. post free,
ABSOLUT ERELATIVISM;
OR,
THE ABSOLUTE IN RELATION.
By WILLIAM BELL McTAGGART.
This work consists of a Prolegomena which is a vidimus of the
entire field of Mental Science, and of an exhaustive chapter on
Materialism and another on Idealism, setting forth a compendious
and exhaustive exposition of the two great primary schools into
which philosophical thought is divided.
We regard the work as an able and valuable contribution to the philosophic
.discussion of the day.—The Oj>en Court (Chicago).
OUTLINES OF RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY.
Neatly bound in cloth, price is. 6d., by post is. 8d.,
FREETHINKING & FREE INQUIRY.
By AGNOSCO.
Contents:—Freethought : What is It ?—Freethought in Science—
Freethought in Politics—Freethought in Religion—Rationalism as
.a Philosophy—The Scope of Rationalism—Education—Summary.
Cr. 8vo, price 6d., by post 7d.,
SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
CALVIN AND SERYETUS.
A SKETCH OF REFORMATION TIMES.
By LEX NATURAE.
Crown 8vo, 64 pp., in wrapper, price 6d., by post 7d.,
Christianism and Natural
Religion.
By the Late ROBERT A. RIDDELL, M.A.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Every Thursday.
Price Twopence..
THE AGNOSTIC JOURNAL
AND ECLECTIC REVIEWEDITED BY
SALADIN.
*** Under name and pen-name, some of the most
scholarly and able writers of the age contribute regularly'
to The Agnostic Journal; and, although the Editorial
policy is opposed to the popular and dominant faith,
the columns of the journal are ever open to articles
in defence of Christianity from clergymen or lay Chris
tians of recognised ability, while considerable space is
devoted to the investigation of Theosophy, Spiritualism*
Mysticism, etc.
The Agnostic Journal can be had free by post
on the following terms :—Quarterly, 2s. 8 j£d.; halfyearly, 5s. 5d.; yearly, 10s. rod. Orders should be
given to local newsagents; but where this is impractic
able they should be sent direct to the Publishing Office.
In wrapper, with newly-engraved portrait of Bruno.
Crown 8vo, 64 pp., price 6d., by post 7d.,
Life of Giordano Bruno.
By F. J. GOULD,
Azithor of “ Stepping-Stones to Agnosticism,” etc.
Price is., post free is. id., packed safely in mill-board,
LIFE-LIKE PHOTOGRAPHIC
PORTRAIT OF SALADIN.
(cabinet
size.)
By the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.-
�Just ready, crown 8vo, 64 pp., in wrapper, by post 7d,,
The AND REAPED.
Whirlwind
SOWN
In the Instance of the Rev. William Byres.
A NOVELETTE.
BY
SALADIN.
11Be sure thy sins ivill find thee out.”
“Astrong, realistic story by an able and scholarly writer.”—
Religio- Philosoph icalJournal.
“Written in Saladin’s weirdly energetic style, with streaks of
grim humour thrown in.”—Truthseeker.
“A short story of clerical crime and villainy founded on fact.
The story is told in Saladin’s characteristic way, and is as thrilling
as a drama.”—Boston Investigator.
“Saladin is, undoubtedly, one of the best authors of his kind,
and his novel will command the same, or more, interest than Helen
Gardener’s story, ‘Is this your Son, my Lord?’”—Open Court
(Chicago).
Price is., post free is. id.,
WHAT IS RELIGION’
A VINDICATION OF FREETHOUGHT.
By Constance Naden.
ANNOTATED BY THE LATE DR. LEWINS.
Paper covers 6d. ; superior Edition, cloth, lettered, is. 6d.,
NOTES ON
NORWAY
AZVZ> PLACES ELSEWHERE.
By W. B. McTAGGART, late Captain 14th Hussars.
Price 2$., post free 2s. 3d.,
MAGIC AND MYSTERY.
ALL ABOUT THE SECRET AND WONDERFUL.
By ALFRED THOMPSON.
Ghosts, Spiritualism, Palmistry—Ether, Astrology, Mes
merism—Table Turning, Dreams, Faith Healing,
Second Sight, Etc.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Recently Issued, price 3d., post free 3%d.,
ST. MUNGO:
BEING THE
Life and Adventures of the Son of a Virgin.
By SALADIN.
Price 6d., by post 7%d.,
The Agnostic Annual fop 1896.
Balfour’s “Foundations of Belief” : An Agnostic Rejoinder. By
S. Laing.
Agnosticism and its Equivalents. By Amos Waters.
The Man, Christ Jesus : The Germ of the Christian Myth. By
J. Allanson Picton.
Psyche : A Poem. By W. Stewart Ross (Saladin).
Mind as Controlled by Matter. By Constance E. Plumptre.
The Faiths of Our Forefathers. By Charles Watts.
An Agnostic View of Theism and Monism. By R. Bithell, B.Sc.,
Ph.D.
The Old Testament Library. By F. J. Gould.
Immortality. By W. A. Leonard.
The Physiological Bias of Religious Leaders. By Furneaux
Jordan, F.R.S.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
TO AUTHORS.
W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, London,
E.C., are prepared to negotiate with Authors for the
publication of their MSS.
MSS. lacking in literary accuracy and finish pre
pared for the Press by experienced writers at moderate
charges.
�Just Issued, uniform with “Janet Smith,” price 2s. 6d., or 2s. 9d.
post free,
A Discursive Treatise on Eternal Torme?it.
By W. STEWART ROSS (Saladin).
“The orthodox will have no difficulty in believing that Mr.
Stewart Ross is, in the mediaeval sense, a man ‘ possessed ’ of his
subject. He is terribly in earnest; and against the austere mood
of the knight-errant, whose self-appointed mission is to hunt?
‘ Auld Hornie ’ off the face of the earth, his undoubted humour
stands out the more grimly.”—Scotsman,
“ ‘ Our popular faith, with its hells, has hurled millions of thebest of us into mad-houses, and it has never built lunatic asylums
to hold a tithe of the maniacs it has made.’ This is a tremendous
indictment. Unhappily, it is not altogether untrue. If we might
judge from this book, Mr. Stewart Ross himself has not altogether
escaped from the disturbing effects. It has roused in him not sub
mission, but revolt, and revolt of the bitterest kind. Amid his wild
and whirling words one can recognise the qualities of a fine mind
and a fervent spirit. The pity of it is that the horrific side of
religion should have passed over such a spirit and left it seared.”—
Brighton Herald.
“ In a succession of chapters made up of whirlwind, earthquake*
and fire, Saladin here sets forth his hatred of the medieval doctrine
of hell, the appreciation of the devil, which he appears to share
with his compatriot Burns, and his contempt for orthodoxy and its;
teachers. In so far as the horrible notions he here stigmatises still'
survive in Christendom, we sympathise with him in his crusade.”—
The Literary World.
“ This volume is charged with an explosive energy of thought
suggestive of a kind of intellectual dynamite. No one acquainted
with the writings of Saladin will be astonished by the vigour which
is here displayed, nor by the grim humour that never forsakes him.
His courage is altogether undismayed by any fear, whether of the
present or of the future ; and he pursues his iconoclastic, mocking
way without the least regard for the susceptibilities of the men and
women whose most cherished beliefs it is his business to assail.”—
Dumfries Standard.
_ “ That brilliant writer, Mr. Stewart Ross, scored a success with
his witty satire, ‘Janet Smith but this, his latest effusion, is in a
more caustic vein. He inveighs, with intense earnestness, against
the humbug and wickedness of conventional religion.”—Portsmouth
Times.
“He is a writer of power, and has an excellent subject.”—
Inquirer.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�*** In preparing these Letters for the press, the
writer has endeavoured to speak with perfect freedom,
and yet to avoid hurting the feelings of those to whom
free speaking on these subjects is strange.
Crown 8vo, cloth, gold lettered, price 2s. 6d.; by post, 2S. 9d.,
Lay Religion.
BEING SOME
O UTSPOKEN LETTERS TO A LAD Y ON THE
PRESENT RELTGTO US STTUATTON.
By RICHARD HARTE.
“ Presents a readable account of opinions that appear to be widely
current at present among thinking people.”—Scotsman.
“ The letters are written in a bright, lively, and chatty manner. ”
—Aberdeen Journal. ______ ____ _____ _
Crown 8vo, cloth, gold lettered, price 2s. 6d.; by post, 2S. 9d.,
THE NEW THEOLOGY.
BEING SOME
QUTSPOKEN LETTERS TO A LAD Y ON THE
/
PRESENT RELLGLO US SLTUA TLON.
By RICHARD HARTE.
“ Must help many to think again-—and to think seriously—of
dogmas conventionally accepted.”—Inquirer.
“The letters are generally suggestive, and will be read with
interest by laymen who like to think for themselves on matters of
religion.”—Scotsman.
. “ .......
“Despite its avowedly colloquial and epistolary form,'
Mr. Harte’s book must prove of notable interest and value to all
lingerers in the quagmires of orthodoxy and materialism.”—The
Agnostic Journal.
London: W. STEWART & CO., 41 Farringdon ST, E.C.j
TO
AUTHORS.
________
,
J
W. Stewart & Co., 41 Farringdon Street, London,
E.C., are prepared to negotiate with Authors' for the
publication of their MSS.
AJSS. lacking in literary accuracy and finish prepared
for the Press by experienced' writers at moderate charges.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Revised list of W. Stewart & Co.'s publications
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 1 v. (unpaged) ; 18 cm.
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W. Stewart & Co.
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[n.d.]
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W. Stewart and Company
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY,
COMPRISING
The Agonies of Hanging.
By One who was Cut Down from the Gallows.
LONDON:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
��(isogo
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY,
COMPRISING
THE AGONIES OF HANGING.
It has been my fortune to meet with some of the
strangest characters that ever trod this planet. I myself,
I admit, am not over-like Mr. John Smith, nonconfor
mist and cheesemonger, and like draws to like. I have
been more than once pronounced daft; and, be that as
it may, I feel certain that during my lifetime more than
one daft person has had my friendship. As I make a
retrospect it occurs to me that, upon the whole, the
daftest person that was ever enrolled on my list of friends
was Major F------, who had been twelve years in the
East India Company’s service, and who belonged to an
old county family. I was a big boy at school when
Major F------first took notice of me. It was the Annual
Examination, and he and several other persons of influ
ence were present, along with a contingent of the local
clergy. I had distinguished myself by reading my theme,
a wild, weird, Monk Lewis composition, full of dream and
lightning and gloom and phantasy. It was certainly as
unlike anything else that any other boy in the school
could produce as it is possible to imagine. Some of
the pupils could beat me at mere feats of commonplace
drudgery; but they had all the leaden-footed mediocrity
of the farmers and country parsons into which they
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
ultimately vegetated. My command of language and
flight of imagination took Major F——’s breath away.
He was heard muttering to himself: “This is a devil of
-a boy! I must do something for him. May I be
jiggered if I don’t!” And the masters and my classfellows congratulated me; for the Major was known to
be a man of his word, and to be both loyal and liberal
to those to whom he felt attracted.
Only a few days after the school examination a report
.spread like wild-fire through the district that the Major
had hanged himself 1 Throwing aside my FEschylus
and Dunbar’s Greek Lexicon, I hurried off to the resi
dence of my prospective patron. He was reported to
be dying, and for me to gain access to his chamber was
exceedingly difficult. The principal obstacle was his
daughter, Julia, who stood in the passage that led to his
room and positively refused me entrance thereto. I
.attempted to crush past her, but she got hold of my ear
and pulled it to the length of ear that is worn by an ass,
but by no other of God’s creatures. I was young, with
a frame unknit, and with bones that were little more
than cartilage; and this Julia was a perfect Amazon in
physical strength. Howbeit, her mental prowess was as
small as her personal vanity was inordinate.
“ I know you,” sneered she; “ you are the school
brat who wrote the ode to Aggie------ ’s ankle!”
As she pronounced the word “ ankle ” she gave her
skirts an opportune sweep, which revealed both her own
ankles and a trifle more. I took the hint.
“Yes,” quoth I, in a tone of well-simulated admira
tion. “ But now that I have seen your ankle I repent
me bitterly that I ever wrote a line upon Aggie------’s.”
“Will you write upon mine now ?”
“ Yes.”
“ Quite sure ?”
'“Yes.”
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
5
“You will write prettily ?”
“Yes.”
“You are a dear 1”
And with this tender exclamation she seized me in
her arms and inflicted a loud, smacking kiss upon my
forehead, and then gave me a push that nearly sent
me abruptly and head foremost into the chamber where
her father lay dying.
Thus, by a skilful blend of blandishment and impu
dence, I succeeded in being shown into the room
where the Major lay. He was in bed. He raised
himself up on his elbow and, staring at me, politely
asked, “Who the deuce are you?” Then, steadying
his gaze, a gleam of delight shone in his wild, mad eye,
and he murmured, “Oh, it’s Wully Ross.” Next,
putting his hand under his pillow, he drew out a few
sheets of sermon-paper, all written over with his strong,
determined handwriting, bold as a cavalry charge and
straight as a sword.
“Thank you, Major F------,” said I. “What am I to1
do with this ?”
There was no answer. The Major was dead.
And now, after the lapse of many years, I put that
MS. of his into the hands of the printer, with a trust
that the manes of the writer may not disapprove.
MAJOR F-------- ’s MS.
My studies have been so peculiar that I may be
excused for digressing for a moment to show whence
and how I inherited the bias for the dreamy, the
mystical, and esoteric. The bias is not hereditary. My
mother’s milk was not full of inspirations and visions. It
was thus she became the wife of my prospective father,
who, unlike myself, was, by all competent authorities,
believed to have had a slate off his upper storey.
The night was dark and stormy, and my future father,
�6
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
who was then about twenty-two, was returning alone
from a military review when he got benighted and lost.
The rain splashed furiously, “ the wind blew as ’twad
blawn its last,” and only glares and flashes of lightning
lit up ever and anon the Cimmerian gloom.
“ The gods have doomed and damned me,” quoth my
father; “ I will lie down on the moor and perish !” But,
at the moment, a faint gleam, as if from a distant glow
worm, shimmered through the blackness; and, clenching
his teeth and his fists, he who was destined to be my
male parent toiled on desperately in the direction of the
light. At the light he arrived, after much scrambling
through the bushes and not a few tumbles into the
ditches. The light proceeded from a large oriel window
in an old-fashioned country house with picturesque
facades and romantic gables, which now, in a lull and
hush of the storm, shone out with dim grandeur in the
sheen of the waning moon. Through the gauzy curtajns
and the glass flowed the waves of instrumental music
and the sound of the measured footfalls of the dance.
It was evident that something was being enacted within
in the way of mirth and revelry.
My prospective father knocked at the front door.
The door was opened by a half-drunken footman carry
ing a lamp, who, observing that he who had knocked
was a dejected-looking youth, drenched with rain and
bedabbled with mire, politely advised him to “ go to
blazes,” and at once slammed the door in his face. The
door was, however, immediately re-opened, and an old
white-haired gentleman, with a wild, wandering eye,
asked decisively, but not unkindly :
“Well, what do you want ?”
My prospective father told his tale, and impressively
asked for the favour of a lodging till morning.
“ This is my second daughter’s wedding night,” quoth
the old gentleman, “and every bed in the house is occu
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
7
pied, as the guests who have not already gone will stay
over night.”
“ I am utterly tired out, and would gladly sleep on a
sofa, a hearth-rug, or anyhow and anywhere,” urged my
prospective male parent.
“ There is only one spare bed, and I do not care to
send you to that,” rejoined the old gentleman moodily,
and with a strange light in his eye.
“ Pray, sir, have no misgivings about its not being
soft in feathers and luxuriant in drapery; I am too tired
to be critical,” urged my prospective parent.
“You know not what you ask,” responded the old
gentleman. Then, sinking his voice to a solemn
whisper—'‘''The room is haunted/”
His would-be guest laughed a derisive laugh, and
replied: “ Kind sir, show me into the room, and I will
put up with the haunting.”
To the room he was shown—a room handsome, taste
ful, and even opulent.
“ Haunted indeed,” soliloquised he; and, divesting
himself of his torn and sodden garments, he extinguished
the candle, placed his loaded pistol under the bolster,
and was soon fast asleep. Two hours later a hand was
placed upon his brow, coldly and firmly, and under the
mysterious pressure thereof he awoke. He sat up in
bewilderment, not unalloyed with a vague terror. A
white and ghostly figure loomed by the bedside, softly and
hazily limned against the opposite wall, upon which,
through the spars of the Venetian blind, fell the last rays
of the waning moon or the first beams of the rising sun.
My prospective father recollected that he had been
apprised that the chamber was haunted.
“ Some knavish trick,” murmured he grimly. “ By
God, I will make a real ghost of this sham ghost,
or may I ------and he thrust his hand under the
bolster to grasp his pistol. Then he recollected that the
�8
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
report of fire-arms ringing through the house in that
stilly hour would create intense alarm, and his rash act
would be a poor return for the hospitality which had
been accorded him. Still, determined that he would
unmask the ghost, he leapt from his couch and seized
the vague, white semblance vigorously in his arms. The
figure fell supinely to the floor, and shriek after shriek
rang hysterically through the chamber and echoed and
re-echoed through the halls and corridors outside,
“What, in the name of all the saints, has happened
now?” exclaimed my future father, as the shrieking
form lay before him on the carpet, dimly, almost in
visibly. Another minute, and the chamber-door burst
open, and the grey-haired gentleman, in his night-gown
and slippers, with a lighted candle in his left hand and
a cocked pistol in his right, entered excitedly. He
glanced at the figure prostrate on the floor, and then at
his guest. “ My daughter—scoundrel 1” was his laconic
exclamation, and he presented the muzzle of his weapon
to my future father’s head. Then he dashed the pistol
on the floor, and cried bitterly, “ Devil, was it for this I
sheltered you in my house! My daughter 1 my daughter 1”
Quite suddenly he left the room, leaving the candle
burning on the floor beside the prostrate lady. In the
light of this candle the youth beheld her. He beheld
her and was vanquished. Her loveliness, as she
lay there in the loose white drapery of the night, with
the wealth of her rich brown hair falling over the lily
whiteness of her bosom, sinking and rising in its con
vulsive breathing, was too much for the man for whom
was reserved the distinction of being my father. The
free sweeping symmetry of these arms had enthralled
him. That bosom, that might have put that of Aphrodite
to shame, made him love’s willing slave, and the tangles
of that heavenly hair, which the flicker of the candle
now flung into raven blackness, now touched into ruddy
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
9
gold, had forged the fetters of a bondage that made the
young cadet forever and forever the thrall of the lady
who lay at his feet. “ Thine, thine,” he murmured ;
“ come life, come death, thine, only thine.”
Suddenly the chamber door again burst open, and the
old gentleman re-entered, still arrayed in his slippers and
dressing gown. With him he brought a clergyman with
his black coat on and his white choker, but with bare
legs, and his unsocked feet stuck into a pair of unlaced
boots. In his right hand he carried a Bible. He
appeared more than half drunk, and, having been suddenly
and abruptly summoned from his bed, he seemed dazed
and only half awake. At his side walked a servant maid
with bare neck and feet, and arrayed in a hurriedlydonned and solitary petticoat. The maid applied a
small bottle of smelling salts to the nostrils of the
prostrate lady, and baptised her brow and breast and
hair with the contents of the water bottle.
The old gentleman was livid with rage. “ Sir,” said
he sternly, “ it pains me beyond expression that I have
to give my girl in marriage to a blackguard ; but, since
things are as they are, I feel constrained to try to make
the best of an infernally bad bargain. You have dis
honoured the girl and her family. This parson will wed
you to her, here—here on the very scene of your diabolical
crime, or, by heavens, I will blow your brains out if I
hang for it to-morrow from the highest tree on my
estate.”
The young gentleman who was destined to be my
father did not prefer even the ghost of an objection to
being united for life to her who had already, even in her
mute unconsciousness, quite vanquished him. The lady
at length stood up, utterly dazed. The parson performed
the nuptial ceremony, and the father and the maid
servant were witnesses. The bride’s father lifted his
pistol from the floor and soliloquised :
�IO
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
“ My second daughter was married yesterday, and my
eldest to-day. My second was married to an earl’s son ;
my eldest and most beautiful is married to—oh, damn
it all 1” and he raised his pistol and fired point
blank at the wash-stand, shattering the basin and ewer
to shivers. This was too much for the excited nerves
of the bride. She shrieked, and fell into the bride
groom’s arms in a swoon, from which she was recovered
with difficulty.
The day after the marriage the mystery of the haunted
chamber was solved, the riddle read. Matilda Clinton
had been a confirmed somnambulist, without any one
having suspected the fact; and the chamber which was
reputed to be haunted had evidently been the goal of her
nocturnal wanderings. To her dying day she remained
“ beautiful exceedinglybut to her dying day the
villagers set her down as “ cracked,” so disastrous had
been the effects of awakening her in that room under
the circumstances which I have just narrated. My
father, too, was reputed to be “ cracked,” and the great
wonder is—a wonder that occasionally overwhelms me
—that, under the circumstances, I should be the posses
sor of mental gifts of an exceptional order, and of a
genius to which neither of my parents could lay any
valid claim. However, a man’s history commences
before he is born; and, having ventured to give so much
of my own hereditary biography, I proceed to my
narrative.
MAJOR F-------- AT HIS STUDIES.
I have frequently been induced to contemplate in
theory the physiology and psychology of “ Hanging by
the neck till dead,” and also some of the more salient
points in the more salient exigencies of human life and
destiny. The results have occasionally been, to the un
initiated, impregnated with burlesque and eccentricity,
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
II
as the inductions of all experimental philosophers in the
occult sciences must necessarily be. However, I have
succeeded, to my own satisfaction, in establishing that
the Rosicrucian theory is correct, and that heaven, earth,
and hell are severally playing their role on the land, the
water, and the welkin. We are roaring, “ Cash—no
abatement!” the angels are chanting “ Hallelujah !” and
the damned are yelling, “ Oh, dear me !”—all mixed up
together upon the same arena here. It is literally, and
not figuratively, that we have each our good and evil
spirits concerning themselves in the colouring of our
destinies. They are not perceptible to the material, but
they are to the psychal, man. Consequently, it is pre
sumable that the determining of the number of good or
evil spirits we may have is much in our own hands.
If we can win the good graces of every one around us,
supposing they amount to a few hundreds, the strong
probability is that some of them will pass before us
through that transformation scene vulgarly called “dying,”
and then we can depend upon their good offices. It is
presumable that they cannot be friendly to those who
offended them when they were as yet sealed up in the
anatomical soul-envelope ; nor perhaps with any who,
subsequent to the transformation scene vulgarly called
'“ dying,” may grow potatoes, or make bricks out of the
said soul-envelope lately warm and perambulating about
invested in a hat, a pair of boots, or perhaps a pair of
petticoats.
Nor is this state of matters strictly confined to that
order of animals called human. I apprehend there is
danger from the malevolent spirit of a murdered beetle.
Life is life—the same mysterious afflatus, whether it
animate Benjamin Disraeli or a cockroach; but in
Disraeli it operates through a more high-strung deve
lopment of nervous organism. What we so pompously
designate “ soul ” is only “life” thrilling through finer
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
nervous fibres than are possessed by a beetle or a cock
roach, or any of the intermediate links between them
and the homo sapiens of Linnaeus. How else can it be ?
Shall I who write deny the cockroach immortality, its
chance for the felicity of heaven or the torment of hell,
because its nervous organisation is defective compared
with mine? It may have a very noble and elevated
soul, without material to work with or through. Take
my so-called soul from me and infuse it into the cock
roach, and it would be an ordinary cockroach still; and,
if I were to have its soul in return, I should simply be the
living, breathing, scribbling, fighting creature that I am.
How the idea originated that the life of man alone has a
monopoly for immortality baffles the conception. It
must be maintained, too, in the face of most awkward
contingencies.
In pursuit of my studies in psychology, only a few
months ago I procured a pauper just on the point of
shuffling off this mortal coil. As I was defective in
experimental apparatus bearing upon the peculiar modus
operandi in which I was about to experiment, I
ordered at the brass-founder’s a brass cylinder, twelve
feet long by twelve feet in diameter. The cylinder
was hollow; but the walls were several feet thick, of solid
brass. On one end of the cylinder was a square of glass
of five feet in thickness, through which was visible the
interior of the cylinder. This square of glass was a
door, which, at pleasure, could be opened, and again
secured with screws of immense strength. This was the
only opening into the cylinder.
As soon as the physician informed me that the pauper
could not survive over half-an-hour I had him placed
inside the cylinder, and the hyaline door strongly secured
with screws. I pressed my face to the glass, and, with
breathless anxiety, watched what was going on inside.
The pauper was a sickly yellow, and a cold, oily perspira
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
13
tion glistened upon his deeply-corrugated forehead. One
of his brown and toil-hardened hands held a convulsive
grasp of the dirty blanket in which he was wrapped. A
portion of his hirsute and muscular breast was visible
where two of the buttons of his faded blue stripe shirt
were open in front. That breast heaved a long, long
heave. Oh, God, would it ever fall ? Aye, it must. For
there was a low mortal rattling audible through the five
feet of solid glass—the death-rattle—and the old pauper
could not live long now. I confess I felt somewhat
terrified—not at the mere phenomenon called death, for
I had witnessed it a thousand times on the field of battle,
the hospital, and elsewhere; but, then, there was plenty
of scope for the soul to fly heavenward, or wherever it
might be labelled for; but, now, in the brass cylinder
—close, air-tight—good Christ! A hundred-weight of
gunpowder would hardly burst the “ everlasting brass ” of
old Horace in which the pauper was expiring ! What
if the disembodied spirit should burst it with a fearful
explosion, and blow me to atoms ! But, from the time
I was a cornet at sweet seventeen, I had sought the
bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth, and at the
dear coral mouth of Miranda; and I resolved not to
turn upon my heel now to save my head in anticipation
of the explosive character of a pauper’s soul.
The cylinder was secured to prevent its flying up into the
air by appending to it several cables with heavy anchors.
The uncertainty of what the results would instantly be
became absolutely harrowing. The dark-coloured and
hairy breast, visible through the faded, striped shirt, fell
at last. I looked with a rivetted gaze : would it ever rise
again ? The yellow, oily appearance of the complexion
faded away into a ghastly white; not that lily whiteness
which is lovely, not that snowy whiteness which is beau
tiful ; but that horrible whiteness which is death-like.
The baked lips were dry and shrivelled up, revealing the
�14
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
pale gums and the grinning teeth, worn away in front by
the common clay pipes which the man had smoked for
forty years. His grey beard bristled grimly, and the
forlorn lock of hair which time had left upon his temples.
The eyes were wide open, and stared upward, as though
they would stare through the worlds and the ages. Then
the death-rattle ceased, the breast under the faded, striped
shirt rose no more, the eyes glazed, the jaw fell, and the
pauper was a clod of the earth he, grub-like, had toiled
and moiled in so long.
I saw no spirit make its escape; but I knew that it
was in the man in the cylinder no more. I knew I had
him there soul and body, although the two had dissolved
partnership. I could not tell whether the elements of
felicity or vice versct were in the brazen prison, but I
knew that I had therein the two constituent parts of an
animal, even a human one, and those two constituent
parts no longer in functional conjunction. For the
cylinder had not exploded, nor had I experienced the
slightest concussion. If that soul were now reaping the
rewards of the deeds done in the flesh, then the interior
of that cylinder must be a portion of heaven, or, rather,
there is no heaven or no hell, except what the soul
contains in itself—a disembodied soul qtia a disem
bodied soul. Re-united with the body in ultra-sepulchral
life, the economy must of necessity be essentially dif
ferent.
I had clearly got heaven or hell inside that cylinder ;
but the business was to find out which. The matter
could, however, be determined by finding out what kind
of life the pauper had led. From the conduct of his
life I should be able to infer whether he had merited a
harp in his hands in heaven or a gridiron under his hips
in hell. So I went round the parish inquiring of all
who had known this pauper as to what sort of a person
he had been. I heard no good of him. There was a
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
15
chalk up against him at the public-house. He had
fractured three of his wife’s ribs and broken his motherin-law’s thumb. He had, furthermore, not partaken of
the holy sacrament for three years; he had pulled the
half of his mother’s hair out, and had attempted to blow
up his father with gunpowder; he gave up reading his
Bible, and had refused to take tracts; and it was in
sinuated that he had actually poached and taken the
name of the Lord his God in vain. So, of course, I
had no doubt that he was in hell, and that consequently
hell was inside the brass cylinder behind my coach-house.
There are several reasons (too obvious to warrant my
occupying space with them here) for supposing that dis
embodied spirits are, with qualifications, subject to the
restraints of matter. A sound anatomical organisation
can contain a spirit; but it sooner or later escapes from a
defective and impaired organisation. If we could have
a guarantee against bodily malady, we would have a
guarantee against death. Never yet did the soul escape
from man but through some flaw in the physical organism.
There was no flaw or mode of egress in the cylinder,
consequently the soul must be there. If the cylinder
had been organised, the internal spirit might have ani
mated it. If a robin swallow a spider which expires in
the gizzard, it is presumable that the vital principle of the
spider goes to augment that already animating the
animal organism of the robin—a strange, but somewhat
feasible phase of metempsychosis. With a conviction of
the truth of this principle, when I am oppressed with
lassitude, lowness of spirits, and nervous prostration, I
am in the habit of swallowing a live frog, which, expiring
in my internal arrangements, its life goes to auxiliarate
mine, and the experiment seldom fails to inspire me with
healthful and exuberant spirits. At my instance, several
of my friends have also tried the experiment, and pro
nounce it a most decided biocrene.
�16
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
Further, in corroboration of the principle of spirit
being imprisoned in matter, St. Peter writes of Christ:
“ Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the
spirit, by which also he went and preached to the spirits
in prison.” This is the preposterous “ He descended
into hell ” of the creed explained by the indefinite, “ that
is remained in the state of the dead and under the power
of death,” which may mean anything or nothing. Who
were the “ spirits in prison ” which Christ preached to
after His “ being put to death in the flesh ” ? It is not
on record that, after His resurrection, he preached to
any, if we except the expounding of the Scriptures to the
two men journeying to the village of Emmaus, and the
admonition to the eleven whom He found gathered
together at Jerusalem. They cannot certainly be meant
by the expression, “ spirits in prison.” The “ preaching ”
must then refer to the interval in which the body of
Jesus lay in the rock-hewn sepulchre. But it seems
quite obvious who are meant by the “ spirits in prison.”
St. Peter distinctly designates, at least, a portion of them.
His words are : “ He went and preached to the spirits in
prison, which some time were disobedient when once
the long-suffering of God awaited in the days of Noah,
when the ark was preparing,” etc. Since Scripture never
once intimates, and the very Apostles’ Creed itself vacillates
on the subject of the descent into hell, and perhaps the
ascent into heaven on that awful occasion has never been
yet contended for, the spirit of Jesus must have remained
in the material world to preach to the spirits of the ante
diluvians whom St. Peter expressly mentions. Neither
am I aware that it has ever been contended for that
there is more in the universe than matter and spirit;
and since spirits are in prison, a spirit imprisoned in a
spirit seems more untenable and enigmatical than a spirit
imprisoned in matter. Hence it appears that, during the
three days of his interment, the disembodied spirit of
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
17
Christ, “ ekeruxen,” assembled together the spirits of the
dead, “ phulake,” under watch or guard—that is, as we
have seen, in this material world—till the resurrection
day again unites the body with the spirit, and man,
psychological and physiological, becomes subject to an
essentially different economy.
Reasoning in this manner, I set about experimenting
further upon the pauper in the cylinder. Ocular proof
of the presence of a spirit can be arrived at only under
peculiar circumstances. Man is seldom conscious of the
maximum of his own physical force till some imminent
emergency calls it forth ; and it is even so with the capa
bilities of his spirit. One on the point of drowning will
lay a grasp upon an object, the strength and tenacity of
which, in ordinary circumstances, he might regard as
absolutely superhuman. So is it in abnormal conditions
of the soul. It puts forth energies for the exertion of
which the ordinary senses do not afford a competent
medium. It grasps at more than the material eyes and
ears have been constructed to convey to it—views into
the realm of shades, sounds from the shores of the
Eternal. By a week’s morbid contemplation upon the
most revolting developments of human depravity and
crime, and the most deep and awful mysteries of exist
ence, I fitted myself to become aware of the presence of
the soul in the cylinder by another process than that of
ratiocination. Having schooled myself at the solemn
hour of midnight, through the darkness and the thunder
of the storm, arrayed in a long white sheet, I glided
along in the direction of the cylinder. I carried in my
right hand a half-rotten splinter of fir, which had formed
part of the bottom of a murderer’s coffin. It was deeply
saturated with the putrid grease of his viscera, and,
being ignited, burned fiercely in the tremendous might
of the storm. I brandished the red fire wildly around
my head, and it threw a weird, wild radiance upon the
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
dim outline of the tombstones, the black and terrible
rocks, and the rank hemlocks as they were crushed
beneath my hurrying feet.
Where on fields of fire hiss rains of blood,
I go ! I go I I go !
A gore-bubble on the infernal flood,
Io ! Io ! Io 1
Ten thousand grave-worms wriggle here,
And on their backs I ride,
In a long black coffin, grim and drear,
And my skull on its dexter side—
Nail’d with a nail through the bare white skull
To the coffin’s dexter side !
Io ! Io 1 Io !
And I shout Io 1 on the slimy shore,
’Neath the palls of the ages unfurl’d ;
And the worms go with me round evermore,
In the weird rolling round of the world !
Oh, the damned stench of my rotted brains !
Oh, the crawling that ceases, oh never !
Of worms, horrid worms, o’er my thighs, in my veins,
Of worms, horrid worms, in my eyes, in my reins,
And the burnings forever and ever !
Ride helter-skelter down to hell,
’Neath the Banner of Darkness unfurl’d !
Ring—ring my death-toll on Destiny’s bell,
In the weird rolling round of the world !
Io ! Io ! Io !
To the waist in eternal burnings I go !
I kept waving the horrible torch round my head, and, in
a voice high, husky, terrible, and unearthly, chanted the
dithyramb which I have just transcribed. I reached
the cylinder. I crushed a skull which I carried down
into the soft earth opposite the glass door, and stuck a
lighted candle into each eyeless socket. By this light,
which I managed to shelter from the wind, I ventured to
look into the interior, where the mortal remains of the
pauper lay. He was there, cold and rigid, just as I had
left him—ghastly, ghastly 1—with his hand still grasping
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
I?
a handful of the miserable blanket, in which lay his poor
remains............. The voice of God shouted in the black
heaven. The foundations of the earth reeled under the
tremendous roll of the thunder. The rain splashed
down in the darkness, and extinguished the two candles
that burned in the sockets of the skull............ A black
cloud lay on the eastern, a blacker cloud on the western
horizon, and the devil himself—I knew him at a glance
—leapt from the one cloud to the other with a yell to
which the thunder was a mere whisper. In his leap
across the world, by a blow of his club foot he knocked
the planet Mars out of the solar system, and gave the
moon a switch with his tail which nearly blotted that
satellite from the face of the heavens forever. I stag
gered forward, half suffocated with the fumes of brim
stone. Something struck me on the head which sent
stars flying out of my eyes three times in succession,
and by the light of those stars I beheld my hands and
found that they had become as large as frying-pansand were dripping with blood........... Yes, the spirit
was there, inside the cylinder. But it was a fearful
ordeal: I would not pass through it again to be lord of
a thousand worlds. The spirit was there ; but I had
better say no more, aided only by a human vocabulary
and the limited capacities of a human brain. When
there is no blood in my arm, and my skull is filled with
cold clay, I shall write it.
My next study in psychology was my endeavouring to
obtain a glimpse of what was going on behind the eternal
curtain through the medium of strangulation—“ hanging
by the neck till dead.”
I, perhaps somewhat unwarrantably, took it for granted
that the portal of the Future opens gradually in propor
tion as the soul succeeds in disengaging itself from the
body in the hour of death; and, consequently, in the
agonies of dissolution I might have some degree Oi
�20
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
insight into the arcana of the Future. Accordingly, I
gave instructions that a gallows should be erected on
the lawn in front of my residence.
To keep touch with the otherworld, I had the scaffold
constructed from the more or less rotten boards of
exhumed coffins; and I had a canopy erected over the
noose mounted with the blackest and heaviest of hearse
plumes. When the south wind swept up the lawn it
waved these sombre plumes with most sepulchral effect:
I was seized with a befitting sensation of shudder and
nausea; and, in spite of the fragrance of the birch, the
narcissus, and the rhododendron, the air was heavy
with stench, which seemed to proceed from the marrow
growing putrid in my own bones. Considering the
nature of the study in wffiich I was engaged, this was as
it should be. One adjunct, however, was still wanting
—the rope. In order to have all things as far as pos
sible appropriate, I determined to have this rope made
of a murderer’s entrails. At the town of D------they
had just hanged a miscreant who had done to death his
own mother. You have no idea what difficulty I had
with the authorities in obtaining this scoundrel’s, to me,
exceedingly valuable viscera. However, by the dint of
persistency, diplomacy, and hard cash, I managed to
have him exhumed from amid the earth and quicklime
where he lay under the flag-stones of the gaol floor.
Then, at midnight, I had him carried by three ticket-ofleave men to the haunted thorn in L------moss. By my
command, to this thorn they secured the lower extremity
of his intestinal canal, and carried him round and round
the tree till the whole length of his intestines was coiled
round the thorn, as you have seen an anchor-chain
coiled round the capstan. While they carried the
wretch round and round the tree I whistled the “ Dead
March in Saulbut I had to whistle till I was
utterly out of breath. It seemed to me that the scoun
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
21
drel’s intestinal canal must have been at least ten miles
long.
The next trouble was to get some one to tan and
prepare the ten miles of viscera, preparatory to spinning
them into the rope with which I was to hang myself. With
the whole concern on my back in a fisher’s creel, I called
upon the local chemist at two o’clock in the morning,
and, ringing him up, I threw down the basket before
him, and explained to him what I wanted him to do.
That chemist was an utter ass, without a scintilla of the
heroic self-sacrifice that is indispensable in him who
would dare to travel on the path of scientific investiga
tion. First he threatened to have me locked up as a
lunatic; next, looking into the basket of viscera, he
swore he would have me arrested on the suspicion of
murder. I took out my cheque book and wrote three
figures; and, in the chemist’s eyes, I became at once
sane and innocent, and, taking the basket and its contents
on his back, he descended into the cellar, assuring me
that what I wanted done was not only aesthetic, but
highly rational.
The murderer’s intestines made as much tough, cat
gut-looking cord as would have rigged a sloop of war.
I cut off twelve feet, sufficient to hang me. But, after I
had run on a beautiful noose, and had got the cord
properly fixed to the gallows’ beam, the next business
was to test its strength. I was over eleven stone : what
if, under my weight, the cord should give way ? I
remembered that my wife was rather over twelve stone.
I determined to see if it would bear her. If it would
bear her, it would bear me.
I found my wife even more intractable than the
chemist. Not all my blandishments could induce her
to allow the noose to be placed over her head.
“Miranda,” said I at length, “I conjure you by the
moon'that looked down through the quivering leaves of
�22
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
the aspen under which we sat as boy and girl forty-five
years ago, when first I ventured to whisper to you of
love—by that moon I conjure you to humour your
Harold now.” She let her head sink upon my bosom
as she sobbed forth: “ Harold, Harold darling, tie me
up by the feet?'
Good! The noose round the ankles would do as
well as the noose round the neck, as far as the mere
testing of the strength of the cord was concerned. I
took off my braces and knotted them round her skirts,
that there might be no unseemly garmental disarrange
ment as my darling danced from the gut with her heels
to the sky. I put the noose over her ankles and
launched her into the air. Round she gyrated in three
glorious whirls, and the cord brake not. Hurrah ! I
took her down. She was black in the face and speech
less. “ A swoon,” muttered I; and I took her up in
my arms and ran off with her to the fish-pond, into
which I plunged her. It occurred to me that that would
put her all right; but, in my absorption in my transcen
dental studies, it did not occur to me to wait and fish
her out of the water. However, the butler, assisted, as
I understand, by a policeman, did so; and she was
clean dead for the space of three hours, though she is
now more or less alive again. But I am digressing into
a subsidiary and trifling matter.
Some whisperings of my design got abroad into the
surrounding districts with marvellous rapidity, and for
days bands of roughs, such as go to witness public exe
cutions, might be observed hanging about the avenue
gate and the preserves. I was painfully apprehensive,
however, that the proposed experiment would not partake
of the character of amusement to myself individually,
and I resolved that it should not become so to the
public. My wife implored me, as I valued her love and
the love of God, to desist from what she in her sim
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
23
plicity was pleased to call “ a mad and ludicrous pro
ject.” But her entreaties and remonstrances were of no
avail in moving me from undertaking at all hazards an
enterprise for the promotion of science and in the sacred
cause of truth. My only marriageable daughter threat
ened to make off with the ostler, or do some other
horrible thing, if I would persist in disgracing and
making the family ridiculous by what she called exhibi
tions of “ crazy eccentricity.” I dismissed the ostler, and
locked her up in the spirit-cellar. In short, I gave the
whole household to understand that I was not a man to
be trifled with, and that, although I was thoroughly do
mesticated and a little uxorious, yet my connubial and
paternal obligations were secondary to those I owed to
the pursuit of science and the elucidation of truth. I
took to the gallows with me the key of the cellar in
which my daughter was confined. I had a settee with
the softest of cushions drawn up into the recess of the
drawing-room window, that, reclining there, my wife
might, if she chose, witness the scene to be enacted. I
arose rather before my accustomed hour—ten o’clock—
and partook heartily, with her, of our matutinal meal,
and ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of buttered toast
to be taken down to Julia in the cellar. Then I returned
to the seclusion of my study, and, to while away the
hour till the clock struck twelve, I set myself to sketch
ing with a crayon several monsters I found scattered
through the Revelation of St. John. I intend shortly
to put the Revelation cartoons into the hands of the
engraver. I was specially struck by the “ great red
dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven
crowns upon his heads.”* I drew this dragon with all
the skill I possessed as an imaginative limner; but, as
he did not look red, according to St. John, he did not
" Rev. xxii. 3.
�24-
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
appear formidable. So I resolved he should be red,
according to the Scriptures; and I accordingly threw off
my coat, rolled up my left shirt sleeve, cut my arm with
my pen-knife, and, dipping a tooth-brush in the blood,
I therewith reddened the dragon. The “ four beasts ”
were next honoured by my attentions as an artist. “ And
the four beasts had each of them six wings about him;
and they were full of eyes within.”* I managed pretty
well with the six wings a-piece, which was twenty-four
wings in all; but to draw or paint the “ eyes within,”
and yet make them visible, called for a supreme effort
of ingenuity. I thought first of printing under the
picture :
m
“foitljin/’ ob nf nnw latuiuf
But it occurred to me that some might doubt my word
and question whether indeed the eyes were there at all.
Utterly non-plussed as to how to get the eyes painted
“within” these four apocalyptic beasts and yet visible,
I, in a prayerful spirit, read the fifth chapter of Daniel,
and how to represent the internal eyes flashed upon me
like a revelation. In each beast I, with a bodkin, punc
tured seven holes through the paper—that is, twenty
eight holes in all. As the paper lies flat on the table
these twenty-eight eyes are not over-distinct. They
show to the greatest advantage when you take the paper
into a dark room, hold it up vertically, and get some
one to stand behind it and to strike a match all of a
sudden. Each of the twenty-eight eyes then becomes
distinctly visible, and a small gleam of light is emitted
from each. Of course, under the circumstances, you
see nothing but the eyes—you cannot see the beasts;
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
25
but you know the beasts are there; and it is too much,
in the mystery of divine things, to presume to try to be
able to see both the four beasts and their twenty-eight
eyes ‘‘'within” at one and the same time. I am, no
doubt, an amazingly able man. When I quite recover
from the hanging I shall saw away one side of my skull,
in order that I may see my mental machinery at work.
Having completed my apocalyptic drawings, I fell
down on my knees and preferred the following prayer to
Heaven :—
Omniscient Power, whose dominion extends alike over
the worlds of Mind and Matter, sustain me in the pur
suit of Knowledge, even to a comparative disregard of
the life which Thou gavest me. I thank Thee, O Lord,
for the rooted impression that true intelligence is a
synonym for Religion and Virtue, and Ignorance only
another name for Depravity and Sin. And I would
humbly desire to thank Thee for that boldness by which
I can disregard the derision and sneers of vulgar and
narrow prejudices, and for that originality of conception
which ranges afar into undiscovered lands, spurning the
hackneyed and beaten pathways of experiment and
thought. I thank Thee that Thou hast given me no
reverence for social landmarks, however time-honoured,
unless they have been placed there true to the theodolyte of Reason and the geometry of Truth—not that
I love what is time-honoured less, but that I love
Truth more. Give me none of the arrogance but
all of the humility of Philosophy, and enable me to feel
that, to whatever degree I may be able to dispel the
mists which brood around the presence of the Eternal,
I am still immeasureably far from grasping the immensity
of knowledge which, perhaps to the exclusion of the
archangel, it may be Thine own special prerogative to
know. Enable the wrorld to feel, O Lord, that all
�26
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
knowledge is generically divine, and that strenuous
toiling towards its attainment is the only pursuit worthy
of the lofty and sacred destinies of man as a defaced
specimen of Thy noblest handiwork. Pardon all my
frailties and shortcomings, and-----Here I heard the old clock in the dining-room begin
ning to strike twelve ; so, muttering “ Amen,” I drew
on my gloves, lifted my hat and cane, and with a fear
less heart and a steady step I strode downstairs to the
gallows.
Tony, the footman, acted as executioner, and not
another individual of the household was allowed to be
present, under pain of my most severe displeasure.
Tony, with evidences of the most terrible reluctance,
put the noose over my head, and I was swung into the
empty air. A white silk handkerchief which I carried
in the outside pocket of my coat was to be drawn out
by me as a signal that the hanging process had become
absolutely unendurable, and then Tony was at once to
cut the rope by which I was suspended. The instant I
felt the trap-door give way under my feet the sensation
became utterly indescribable, and I thrust my hand
into my pocket to pull out the handkerchief, when I
discovered—oh, heaven and earth !—that I had left it
where I had thrown off my dressing-gown.
I could not speak a word, if on it had hung the event
of my soul’s salvation. Every sin of mine—of thought,
wTord, and deed—blazed before me in characters of fire,
and from amid the lurid blazonry the meek, calm face
of my mother, who had been thirty years in the grave,
looked upon me with unutterable tenderness and love.
Then the earth gave way, and I was hurled down head
long into the unfathomable darkness. In my descent I
•was dashed against revolving and tremendous worlds,
with rivers of blood rolling into oceans of fire. Portions
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
27
of my agonised frame stuck to every fearful world against
which I was driven, whereupon they seemed to become
part of myself, and their oceans of blood lashed the
shores in darkness and thunder in sympathy with my
torture, which, increasing with an inconceivable rapidity,
already amounted to ten thousand times beyond what
mortals can conceive to be the agonies of ten thousand
hells. I became unconscious of my material identity,
and had only a mysterious existence as a spirit of
suffering infused through the worlds—boundless,
limitless, and horrible embodiments of darkness and
death—the condensed breathings from the yells of the
damned. The myriad world-shadows rolled into one
mass with a diameter of millions and millions of
miles, and my suffering soul writhed through the
minutest part of the mass in the fires of unutterable
agony. The amalgamated planets became identified
with my brain. Then innumerable gigantic forms of
shadow shot through it arrows of red fire, and it reeled
millions of miles away through the darkness and horrors
of immensity in the wild madness of ever-increasing
torture. Anon it seemed that, after the lapse of many
thousand years, all the thunder-peals since the creation
of the world combined in one tremendous roar, the
skull of the tortured brain was split, and the boundless
world-shadow of agony rolled down—down into vacuity
and nothingness !
I understand that Tony had discovered that I had
not the handkerchief, and instantly cut the rope of the
gallows. I am yet in bed, severely indisposed; but I
hope soon to be able to subject the agonies I suffered
to the ordeal of scientific and philosophical analysis.
Meanwhile I am nearly perishing for a draught of water;
but all the servants have, without their wages, gone off
in terror. My wife is with me in bed. She never
�2S
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
speaks, but only stares at me wildly, and falls into one
fit of hysterics after another. I am told Julia has
effected her escape from the cellar, and has gone off,
heaven knows where 1
�APPENDIX.
LETTER FROM MAJOR F----- ’s DAUGHTER, JULIA.
Sir,—A friend of mine has sent me copies of your horribly
wicked and abominable journal, in which I see that you have dared
to publish, disfigured by the grossest exaggerations and most fearful
absurdities, the manuscript which, to my eternal regret, my poor
dead father so mistakenly entrusted to your care. You know per
fectly well that I never, never, never showed you my ankles, and
never asked you to write your foolish verses about them, which were
just suited to the fast and silly young hoydens who were taken in
by your ranting and raving about “ knights and fair ladies,” which
is a habit I see you have by no means lost as you have grown older,
but not apparently wiser, except that you have added wickedness to
foolishness by blaspheming Jehovah and ridiculing His holy Book,
for which you will certainly suffer hereafter in the fire that is not
quenched and the worm that dieth not.
As for your abominable calumny that I threatened to run away
with the ostler, I can only put it down to the fact that I once re
fused to run away with you, and that you are now trying to punish
my maidenly modesty by mean spite and wicked lying. Let me
remind you, Sir, if you have conveniently forgotten it, that at the
time of my poor father’s untimely decease I was engaged to a deacon
of the Established Church, who has since become a humble but
ardent minister of that Word which you are so continually reviling
to your eternal damnation, and whose name I have now the happi
ness of bearing as his loved and loving wife. You are a wicked,
unprincipled man to divulge in your lying paper family secrets and
matters which should always remain sacred to the privacy of the
hearth ; and God will judge you for it, seeing that my husband
cannot so forget his character as a man of God (what you irreve
rently call a “ beetle ”) as to horse-whip you as you deserve in this
world. But wait till the next.
i I admit that my dear papa was considered to be a little eccentric ;
but that he ever suffocated a poor pauper in a brass thing, or hung
my sainted mother up by the heels with such a hideous rope, is
�30
APPENDIX.
as wickedly untrue as that he tried to commit suicide, as you have
so unscrupulously said he did. The manuscript, which I sometimes
suspect you stole from under his dying pillow, was simply an
account of some dreadful dreams he had one night after going to
have supper with the man of God and my husband, who distinctly
remembers the occasion, because he helped to bring poor papa
home after being taken seriously ill as he was about half-past eleven.
I remember myself how frightened I was by his cries after he got to
sleep, poor dear.
If you are not ashamed of what you have done, a Day will come
when you will be—I mean the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord,
when, if you do not repent and be saved, you and all who write
and read your horrible paper will be burned up with chaff and fire
unquenchable.—Yours indignantly,
Julia Heywood (nee Fraser).
[I publish the foregoing that the public may have an idea of the
refined and delicate character of the daughter of Major F----- . I
would have corrected her prosody and set her shambling sentences
on their feet; but I do not care to run the risk of placing a document
before the world which she can assert is ‘ ‘ disfigured by the grossest
exaggerations.” In reply to her charge, I can only say with Pilate,
“What I have written, I have written,” and, moreover, every word
I have written is true. I have several more MSS. from the pen of
the lady’s late father, one particularly on a “School Thrashing
Machine,” which he claimed to have invented, which I had thought
to suppress out of deference for the Julia I knew of old, but which
I now feel inclined to publish out of lack of deference for the sweettempered and soft-spoken parson’s wife into which this Julia seems
to have developed. Moreover, a certain delicacy restrains me from
being more explicit when I say that I have a large bundle of loveletters tied together with a silk ribbon of now faded green, and that
the perusal of these letters would astonish the Rev. Mr. Heywood.
—Saladin.]
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Studies in psychology : comprising the agonies of hanging, by one who was cut down from the gallows; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin
Creator
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Stamp on front cover and elsewhere: Bishopsgate Institute. Reference Library. Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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W. Stewart & Co.
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[1894]
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N598
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Capital punishment
Ethics
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application/pdf
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THE
BEAUTY OF HOLINESS,”
AND
THE HARP OF HELL.
BY
SALADIN,
AUTHOR OF “ GOD AND HIS BOOK,” ETC.
London:
W. STEWART & CO., 41 FARRINGDON ST., E.C-
�New Edition, price is., by post is. id.
THE CONFESSIONAL:
ROMISH AND ANGLICAN.
An Exposure.
By SALADIN.
Contents:—Introduction — Licentiousness of the
Pre-Reformation Church—Lechery of the ConfessionalRitualism : “The Priest in Absolution”—The Anglican
Confessional—Ineffectual Efforts to Suppress Reforming
Tendencies in the Anglican Church—Confessions of an
Escaped Nun—Extracts from Dens and Liguori—Ex
amination of the Church’s Claim to have Fostered
Learning : Pier Attempts at Continency even more
Ruinous than her Self-indulgence—The Relative Crimi
nal Statistics of Catholicism and Protestantism—Ap
pendix.
London:
W. Stewart & Co., 41 Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Q(,cThe "Beauty of Holiness.”
“ Bible Extracts and Assertions in Proof of its Origin ”
is the title of a brochure which I have received by post.
Like all works which feel their position before the law
rather shaky, no printer’s or publisher’s address is given ;
and thus, to escape the possibility of prosecution, by
doubtful means this work has leapt into the greater
evil of making successful prosecution certain, should any
one feel it to be his mission to set the law in motion.
The compiler’s name is not given; but the author from
whom the compilation is made is well known; he is
none other than the Christian deity, and, as he is the
author of one literary production only, and every babe in
this country knows the name of his book, and as my forte
is not supererogation, I need not name it here.
When I was a boy I read a work entitled “ Dodd’s
Beauties of Shakespeare,” this anonymous brochure
should be entitled “Somebody’s Beauties of Deity.” I
confess I do not know much of Deity; but, from the
extracts from his writings which are before me, he must
be a very plain-spoken sort of person, who certainly calls
a spade a spade, and that with a vengeance too. Judging
from modern standards of etiquette, he must evidently
have spent a good deal of his life among costermongers
and the rest of it as bully in a maison-de-joie. Should
any of his own well-paid priests resent this as an asper
sion upon the culture and gentlemanly bearing of “ the
Lord,” I have the pleasure to refer them to what “Rabshakeh said unto them,” * and to the pleasing little
anecdote anent Judah and his daughter-in-law.f “The
* 2 Kings xviii. 27.
f Genesis xxxviii., passim.
�THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.
4
Lord,” judging from the extracts from his book, maybe a
decent enough body in his way; but he can hardly be
described as a cultured writer, and he would certainly be
very questionable company at a young lady’s tea-party.
He has not had the advantage of having James Boswell
for a biographer; but he has got along remarkably well
without him ; and I make bold to say that Dr Johnson
and Jehovah-jireth are the most minutely-biographed
persons in the temple of Fame, and Jehovah has the
advantage of Johnson in this—he himself is the recorder
of his own life and achievements. It must be admitted
that these achievements evince a remarkable versatility
of talent. In his autobiography I find that he “ created
the heavens and the earth,” but that all that he did sub
sequently was not on so magnificent a scale. After
creating the heavens and the earth he did not “ live up to
it,” for I read that, condescendingly, he spued and sent
scabs and winked, and chatted with the devil, and was
troubled with his bowels, and took no pleasure in men’s
legs—neither do gentlemen who go to the Alhambra to
see the ballet; they have no pleasure in men's legs,
and in this they resemble “ the Lord.”
I should be inclined to think that talents that range
from world-making to spueing and winking are of an
order to which the Admirable Crichton could not have
held a candle. The compiler of the “Bible Extracts” has
arranged, with loving care, a list of the feats of the
“ Almighty Maker of heaven and earth.” With a pious
hand, I transcribe them here for the refutation and dis
comfiture of such as allege that of Deity nothing can be
known. I transcribe chapter and verse, which proves
to demonstration that a great deal can be known about
him:—
God
God
God
God
God
God
God
God
walks—Gen. iii. 8.
talks—Deut. v. 24.
smells—Gen. viii. 21.
works—Gen. ii. 2.
rests—Gen. ii. 2.
repents—Gen. vi. 6.
flies—2 Sam. xxii. xi.
sits—Psalm xcix. 1.
�THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.
5
God stands on a wall with a plumb-line—Amos vii. 7.
God spues—Rev. iii. 16.
God laughs—Psalm xxxvii. 13.
God runs like a giant—Job xvi. 14.
God roars like a lion—Hosea xi. 10.
God curses—Gen. viii. 21.
God changes his mind—Exodus xxxii. 14.
God sends lice—Exodus viii. 16.
God sends scabs—Deut. xxviii. 27.
God wrestles with Jacob—Gen. xxxii. 24, 26, 30.
God a tailor and clothier—Gen. iii. 21.
God writes on stone—Deut. iv. 13.
God afraid of man—Gen. iii. 22, 23.
God is a husband—Isa. liv. 5.
God shows his back parts—Exodus xxxiii. 23.
God shaves with a razor that is hired—Isa. vii. 20.
God winks—Acts xvii. 30.
God chats with the devil—Job. i. 7, 8.
God hardens men’s hearts—Exodus xiv. 4.
God takes no pleasure in men’s legs—Psalm cxlvii. 10.
God argues—Job xxiii. 4.
God graves on his palms—Isa. xlix. 16.
God delivers men into the devil’s power—Job ii. 6.
God charges his angels with folly—Job iv. 18.
God distrusts his saints—Job xv. 15.
God causes adultery—2 Sam. xii. xi.
God causes suicide—Jer. viii. 3.
God causes cannibalism—Jer. xix. 9.
God causes desecration of the dead—Jer. viii. 1, 2.
God causes indecency—Isa. xx. 4.
God orders the slaughter of men, women, and chil
dren—1 Sam. xv. 3.
God causes lying—1 Sam. xvi. 1, 2.
God punishes the guiltless—1 Sam. xv. 3.
God uses low language—Jer. xxv. 27.
God is said to possess foolishness—1 Cor. i. 25.
God makes Moses a god—Exodus vii. 1.
God sanctions borrowing without repaying—Exodus
xi. 2 ; xii. 36.
God creates evil—Isa. xlv. 7.
God is a merchant—Hosea xii. 7.
God loves to oppress—Hosea xii. 7.
�6
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.
God is troubled in his bowels—Jer. iv. 19.
God smites his hands together—Ezek. xxi. 17.
God speaks to fishes—Jonah ii. 10.
God breathes—Gen. ii. 7.
God’s breath causes frost—Jobxxxvii. 10.
God asks questions—Gen. iii. 9.
God is a baker—Exodus xvi. 4.
God works with his fingers—Psalm viii. 3.
God swears—Deut. xxxiv. 4.
God bares his arm—Isa. lii. 10.
God is in hell—Psalm cxxxix. 8.
God considers some men as a smoke in his nose—
Isa. lxv. 5.
God gives bad laws—Ezek. xx. 25.
God finds rest refreshing—Exodus xxxi. 17.
God rewards transgressors—Prov. xxvi. 10.
God creates the wicked for the day of evil—Prov.
xvi. 4.
God is a man—Exodus xv. 3.
God rewards fools—Prov. xxvi. 10.
God is a consuming fire—Deut. iv. 24.
God orders men to drink, be drunken, and spue—
Jer. xxv. 27.
God blasts through his nostrils—Exodus xv. 8.
God requests Moses to “let him alone”—Exodus
xxxii. 9, 10.
God came down to earth in form of a bird—Luke
iii. 22.
God is like soap—Mai. iii. 2.
God takes away nose jewels, etc.—Isa. iii. 21.
God hisses—Zechariah x. 8.
God visits the earth to inspect buildings—Gen. xi. 5.
God was born—Colos. i. 15.
God is weary with repenting—Jer. xv. 1.
God spreads dung on men’s faces—Mai. ii. 3.
And His Son
Jesus orders us to hate our parents and all belongings
—Luke xiv. 26.
Jesus ordered swords—Luke xxii. 36.
Jesus tells us to be improvident—Luke xii. 24.
Jesus sent devils into pigs—Mark v. 13.
�THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.
7
Jesus says he came to cause war, not peace—Matt,
x. 34.
Jesus rode upon two animals at once—Matt. xxi. 7.
Jesus supped after resurrection on broiled fish and
honeycomb—Luke xxiv. 42.
Jesus says all who disbelieve him shall be damned—
Mark xvi. 16.
Jesus says all who ever came before him were as thieves
and robbers—John x. 8.
If the work before us had been a chemical, instead of a
literary, production, it might have been put into a phial
and labelled “ Pure Essence of Dunghills.’’ Only a
stern sense of duty could have induced the compiler to
engage in such a labour of disgust. I have gone through
the Greek and Roman classics, Boccacio, and “ The
Merry Muses,’’ as well as the pages of “ Thomas Little,”
and Tobias Smollett; but “the Lord” beats all of them
at writing clean dirt.
The worst of “ the Lord ” is, he has few traits to redeem
liis coarseness. We find in Psalm xxxvii. 13 that he
laughs : but it certainly cannot be at his own jokes. Wit
will redeem much; but pure coarseness is irredeemable.
However, let me say it to his credit (I have always
tried to give the very devil his due), he never seems, to
me, to indulge in a libidinous tale just for the mere
love of the thing. At a moment's notice he will go off
from his dirt into a rigmarole about breeches and candle
sticks and fringes, which shows that he does not deal in
dirt for dirt's dear sake, but that he is such an unsophisti
cated old innocent that he does not know dirt when
he sees it. In this age and country we have come to be
aesthetic and fastidious ; and, as for “the Lord,” “his
ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts,”
and, for this same fact, those who glance at the “ Bible
Extracts’’ will be devoutly thankful.
Again, in the interests of “the Lord,” I willingly admit
that there is no absolutely fixed standard of taste, more
than there is an absolutely fixed standard of morals. The
England that accepted the English Bible of 1611 was
leagues away from the England of to-day. Its English
is that of the Shakspearian era, and, upon the whole,
�THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.
Shakspeare is just about as indecent as “his maker.”
The tastes of England and Heaven were, at that time,
about on a par ; and, with the then standard of taste, the
Bible did not strike any one as indecent. The Black
friar’s theatre, in which Shakespeare himself had a share,
has been described, and, from the description, we can
gauge the state of public taste and morals. There was
no chalet to which the playgoers could retire; but, as
substitute, a big tub stood on the floor, serving an ex
ceedingly useful, if not over-ornamental, purpose. Plain
old Jah, in i Kings xvi. ii, and elsewhere, refers to
a “wall,” and the English playgoers, who used their
tub and cracked their now unspeakable jokes, did not
see anything improper in Jehovah-jireth and his “wall.”
So much for the manners of England about the time
when the country was first made acquainted with the
manners of Heaven.
Gadzooks and marry-come-up, Jehovah could get along
well with Queen Elizabeth ; but he is out of all harmony
with Queen Victoria. Elizabeth could have read these
“ Bible Extracts,” and had a good guffaw over them with
Cecil or Raleigh ; but the sight of the very first page
would drive Victoria into the hands of Sir William Gull.
The truth is, modern intellect has not done so much as
modern sentiment to knock a hole in the drum of
Holy Writ. The flames of hell still roar and sputter
away at Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, and at one or two
Bethels of the vulgarian order; but nowhere that culti
vated nineteenth-century men and women do congregate
is the doctrine of hell now preached. Hell has not been
reasoned out of the Christian creed; it has simply been
rejected because it is revolting to the moral sentiment of
modern times. When you reason Hell away, you will
reason away Heaven also; for, in theology, they are
correlated, and stand or fall together.
Heaven still
stands, not because it is more reasonable than Hell, but
simply because it is not so repugnant to the moral senti
ment of this latter quarter of the nineteenth century.
zEstheticism has not reached a very high level even yet.
It can stand wing-flapping and “holy, holy!” but it
draws the line at chain-clanking and yelling and brim
stone.
�THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.
9
The “ Bible Extracts ” is far from commendable
reading; but the disagreeable task of noticing it, and
what must have been the still more disagreeable task of
compiling it, will be served if it, to some extent, help to
rend away the veil of pseudo-sanctity which hangs around
the book which is the Protestant fetish. It cannot be
urged that it is a small matter that the Bible offends
against the canons of taste; for, had I space, I could show
that this is only another way of saying that it offends
against the canons of morals. True, the standard of
morals differs in different ages ; but the standard of
morals which obtains in any particular epoch is, practic
ally, fixed and immutable for that epoch, and to attempt to
roughly and hastily upset that standard is more than a
venial offence against Mrs Grundy and Mrs Gamp—it is
treason against the best interests of mankind. Such
treason Holy Writ is perpetrating in Europe to-day wher
ever it is read; but the saving clause is, it is not read
by one in a thousand even of those who pretend to
regard it as infallible and associated with the highest
solemnities of their career in life, and their destiny when
life is over. The principal part of the Bible with the
ordinary Protestant John Smith is the fly leaf in front of
it, on which are inscribed the date of his marriage with
Janet, and the dates of the births of all the young Smiths
which were the result of the union of John and Janet.
If the book be big enough and gilt enough, it is also
useful for laying on the window-sill with a small anti
macassar over it, the whole surmounted with a little vase
of flowers. The ordinary chapel-goer is as ignorant of
the Bible as he is of the Koran or the Zend-Avesta.
And it is through this very ignorance of it that it has
been possible for him to rise to an elevation of purity
and delicacy of word and deed which leaves “ the Lord ”
and his crude and plain-spoken book far behind—a land
mark nearly out of sight, away back in the wilderness
through which the human race has marched to the
comparatively green pastures and relatively still waters
that are now theirs to enjoy.
�The Harp of Hell.
Robert Burns wished, in the interest of the deil him
self, as well as in the interest of others concerned, that
he (the deil) might—
“ Aiblins tak’ a thocht and men’.”
The deil has certainly followed the suggestion. He is
not the malefic fiend he once was; and, as I have said, he
is the most interesting character in the Christian drama,
and he has the most “go ” in him. His personal friend,
Burns, wrote an address to him, distinguished by great
candour, and John Lapraik responded on behalf of the
deil; but I should say the deil had not authorised him
to do so, as the “answer” is but poor, and has nothing
devilish in the ring of it.
As I am more of a heretic than “ blithe Lapraik ” was,
and, in consequence, presumably more of a personal
friend of the deil, I will take the liberty of replying to
Burns on the deil’s behalf. My reply is based upon an
anonymous and fugitive performance which fell into my
hands some years ago.
THE DEIL’S ADDRESS TO ROBERT BURNS.
Oh, wae’s me, Rab 1 hae ye gane gyte ?
What is’t that gar’s ye tak’ delight
To jeer at me, and ban, and flyte,
In Scottish rhyme,
And falsely gie me a’ the wyte
O’ ilka crime ?
�THE HARP OF HELL.
“Auld Hangie’s” no a bonnie name,
But just the warst word in your wame,
But I forgie ye a’ the same ;
I’ll let ye see
Quite plain what’s what, when ye come hame,
And live wi’ me.
An’, Rab, fu’ frankly let me tell,
Ilk ane o’ mettle like yoursel’
Had far, far better mop and mell
Wi’ rattlin’ chiels
Sic as ye’ll fin’ down deep in hell
Amang the deils
Than ye had lie in Abram’s lap,
Or hingin’ on by Sara’s pap,
Giein’ yer wings an extra flap,
A heevenly hen,
And leavin’ aff the milky drap
To scraich “ Amen/”
O’ auld nicknames ye hae a fouth,
O’ sharp, sarcastic rhymes a routh,
And as you’re bent to gie them scouth,
’Twere just as weel
For ye to tell the honest truth,
Just like the deil.
Rab, far mair lees are tauld in kirk
By every bletherin’, preachin’ stirk
Wi’ whinin’ theologic quirk
Than deils daur tell
Down in the blackest brumstane mirk
O’ lowest hell.
I dinna mean to note the whole
O’ your unfounded rigmarole ;
I’d rather haud my tongue, and thole
Your clishmaclavers,
Than try to plod through sic a scroll
O’ senseless havers.
O’ warlocks and o’ witches a’,
O’ spunkies, kelpies, great or sma’,
There isna’ ony truth ava’
In what you say ;
For siccan frichts I never saw,
Up to this day.
11
�12
THE HARP OF HELL.
The truth is, Rab, that wicked men,
When caught in crimes that are their ain,
To find a help, are unco’ fain
To share the shame ;
And so they shout, wi’ micht and main,
The deil’s to blame.
Thus I am blamed for Adam’s fa’ ;
You say that I maist ruined a’ ;
I’ll tell you ae thing, that’s no twa,
It’s just a lee ;
I fasht nae wi’ the pair ava’,
But loot them be.
I’d nae mair haun in that transgression,
Ye deem the source o’ a’ oppression,
And wae, and daith, and man’s damnation,
Than you yoursel’;
I filled a decent situation
When Adam fell.
I was a god o’ the first water,
An’ wad tae Heeven’s auldest daughter ;
But, by my sooth, the dad that gat her
Trod on my taes—
I took my sword an’ tae the slaughter,
Amang his faes.
For I could neither thole nor dree
Or god or deil to tramp on me ;
An’, Rab, in this I’m like to thee,
Fu’ croose and bauld,
Wha car’d na no a single flea
For Daddy Auld.
Nae doot I hae o’ sins enoo,
But lees, an’ neither sma’ nor few,
A tail like dragon, foot like coo,
Hae gien to me,
As, Rabbin, mony an evil mou’
Has spak’ o’ thee.
And, Rab, gin ye’ll just read your Bible
Instead o’ blin’ Jock Milton’s fable,
I’ll plank a croon on ony table
Against a groat,
Tae fin’ my name ye’ll no be able
In a’ the plot.
�THE HARP OF HELL.
Your mither, Eve, I kent her b rawly ;
A dainty quean she was, and wally,
But destitute o’ prudence haly,
The witeless hissie ;
Aye bent on fun, and whiles on folly
And mischief busy.
But, by my saul, she was a limmer
At ever kittled heart o’ kimmer ;
Nane were bonnier, some were primmer,
For, gif ye please,
She jinked about, through a’ the simmer,
Without chemise.
The loesome lassie wadna bin’,
Just whaur forbidden she wad rin,
A’ Natur’ sought her smile to win,
An’ deil may care,
Up tae her bonnie waist in sin,
She jumpit fair.
An’, Rantin Rab, I tell ye true
There’s much o’ mither Eve in you ;
So rein ye up, or ye sail rue,
I rede ye weel,
An’ tak’ a word o’ warnin’ noo,
Though frae the deil.
Eve had a leg like Bonnie Jean ;
She was a wily, winsome quean,
Wi’ rosy mou’ an’ pawky een,
Airms warm an’ saft,
She needit only to be seen
To drive ane daft.
Had Jah himsel’ been in that yaird
An’ tae that witchin’ lassie pair’d,
As sure as daith he’d kissed the swaird
E’en Jah himsel’;
E’en he wad no hae better fared
Whaur Adam fell.
An’, Rab, my birkie, gie’s yer haun’,
Now whether ye be deil or man,
If she says Na ye winna stan’
Her wiles ava,
But like a tree by wind up-blawn
Ye feckless fa’.
13
�14
THE HARP OE HELL.
As for that famous serpent story,
Tae lee’ I’d baith be shamed and sorry ;
It’s just a clever allegory,
An’ weel writ doon ;
The wark o’ an Egyptian Tory—
I ken’t the loon.
Your tale o’ Job, the man o’ Uz,
Wi’ reekit claes, and reested guiz,
My hornie hooves and brocket phiz,
Wi’ ither clatter,
Is maistly, after a’ the bizz,
A moonshine matter.
Auld Job, I ken’t the carl richt weel;
An honest, decent, kintra chiel,
Wi’ heid to plan and heart to feel
And haun tae gie—
He wadna wrang’d the verra deil,
A broon bawbee.
The man was gey and weel tae do,
Had horse, and kye, and ousen too,
And sheep, and stots. and stirks enoo,
Tae fill a byre ;
O’ meat and claes, a’ maistly new,
His heart’s desire.
Foreby, he had within his dwallins
Three winsome queans, and five braw callans,
Ye wadna, in the hale braid Lallans,
Hae fund theii' marrow,
Were ye to search frae auld Tantallans
Tae Braes o’ Yarrow.
It happened that three breekless bands
O’ caterans cam frae distant lands,
And took what fell amang their hands,
O’ sheep and duddies,
Just like your reivin’ Hielan’ clans,
Or Border bodies.
I tell thee, Rab, I had nae share
In a’ the tulzie, here or there ;
I lookit on, I do declare,
A mere spectator,
Nor said, nor acted, less or mair
About the matter.
�THE HARP OF HELL.
Job had a minstrel o’ his ain,
A genius rare, and somewhat vain
O’ rhyme and leir ; but then, again,
Just like yersel’,
O’ drink and lasses unco fain,
The ne’er-do-well.
So wi’ intention fully bent,
My doin’ to misrepresent,
That book o’ Job he did invent,
And then his rhymes
Got published in Arabic prent,
Tae suit the times.
You poets, Rab, are a’ the same,
O’ ilka kintra, age and name ;
Nae matter what may be your aim,
Or your intentions,
Maist o’ your characters o’ fame
Are pure inventions.
Your dogs are baith debaters, rare,
Wi’ sense galore and some to spare,
While e’en the verra brigs o’ Ayr
Ye gar them quarrel—
Tak’ Coila ben tae deck your hair
Wi’ Scottish laurel.
Haith ! Michael ne’er laid haun’s on me ;
Your tale, Jock Milton’s, a’ a lee,
Tak’ tent, puir crater though ye be,
Puir Roundhead loon,
Had ye had but had een to see,
I’d crack ye’re croon.
I like Rab’s deevil mair than Jock’s,
A hamely deil for hamely folks ;
He swirls his tail, his bonnet cocks,
An’ aff he goes
To sup among the preachers’ “ flocks,”
His Scottish brose.
Yet, Rabin, lad, for a’ your spite,
And taunts, and jeers, and wrangfu’ wyte,
I find, before you end your flyte,
And win your pirn
Ye’re nae sae cankered in the bite
As in the girn.
]5
�THE HARP OF HELL.
For when ye think he’s doomed to dwell
The lang for ever mair in hell,
Ye come and bid a kind farewell,
And guid be here,
E’en for the verra deil himsel’
Let fa’ a tear.
I own it, Rab I like it weel
To be auld Scotian’s ain auld deil,
An’ 1’11 stan’ by her staunch and leal,
Whate’er may be,
An’ ne’er a son o’ hers sail “ squeal ”
That comes to me.
An’ I hae brimstone for their yeuk,
An’ down in hell I’ll hae your buik,
An’ aqua vita in the neuk
In kegs galore,
An’ never parson, plague, or spook
Shall vex them more.
When e’er I hear the Scottish tongue
I’ll frae the barrel knock the bung,
Sing “ Scots Wha Hae ” wi’ lusty lung,
An’ by the urns
O’ a’ the great wha Scotian’ sung
The deil an’ Burns
Sall stan’ the rough burr thistle by,
An’ haud the drinking quaich on high
Wi’ heather wreathed frae Ayr or Skye,
Frae Clyde or Dee.—
“ Lo, Dogma perish, Priestcraft die ;
Scotian’ !—Tae thee ! ”
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The "Beauty of holiness, and The harp of hell, by Saladin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: The Harp of Hell is a poem by Ross in the style of Robert Burns. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
W. Stewart & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N575
Subject
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Poetry
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The "Beauty of holiness, and The harp of hell, by Saladin), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Bible-Evidences
NSS
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b1bebc27dfbe93aa54888598ee3aa6fc.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=RYyBbg6IM2bIvBe%7EM6gtbRJGwwSxyHp5dp5XLy1mTekoBBbVYRfn8NJN3C24liZFzEt7LwMooeJt7dGmPYZdsXXIKYKnS%7EeEe7bBLX1sQsrYeY7UwLvjhSUm5jl5euO%7E8%7E8jbyPbVoeG6HAn6OSmEMa1C5DYdclbcGq2xfneRgzzADxN5dyMcIiVsT3v9BcbNZ9LuilcQ%7EHwUl0WljKkeeW8eaM1Y5FQsGUXU33TZ56MU-KXtTEY7HePbFJ9ZuJmznAtEkI%7EDpew48EIEiZRZdyb9%7Ebuk1h-0P6IaByDCVat3BEekvV9gt-9Ri983z9CI6SDOrG7%7EV%7EAUb1gxU3GFw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
52681812ff3ea72b37803bf637eb0551
PDF Text
Text
THE
[REPRINTED FROM
SECULAR
REVIEW.”]
London :
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
�/
■
Every Thursday.
Price Twopence.
THE SECULAR REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED BY SALADIN.
The Secular Review is the recognised organ of cultured
Freethought in England, and its contributors comprise some
of the leading scholars and foremost thinkers of the country.
...
Subscription
...
is. ^y^d. per Quarter.
Publishing Office: 41, Farringdon St., London, E.C.
Price 2s. Post Free.
In Limp Cloth.
POEMS:
GENERAL, SECULARISTIC, AND
SATIRICAL.
By LARA.
Dedicated to Saladin.
“ Contains specimens of the most biting satire penned since
the days of Pope.”
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Recently Published.
Price
is.
6d. Post Free.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE
HYLO-IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY
DEMONSTRATING the true basis of
AGNOSTICISM.
By WILLIAM BELL McTAGGART.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�[reprinted from "the
SECULAR. REVIE.7. ']
THE COVENANTERS.
MONDAY, October 27th, 1SS4.
The House met at four o’clock.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
Answering Mr. Buchanan, the Marquis of Hartington Laid he
had communicated with Lord Wolseley as to the employment of a
greater number of Presbyterian chaplains with the Scottish regi
ments under his charge, adding that one at present at Alexandria
would be available, if his services were required.
Alas, that the world has not yet dispensed with the
services of Presbyterian Beetles of god and gun ! I
myself ran such a narrow escape of being a Scotch
Beetle that this project of employing the S-carabceus
Scotorum in Egypt brings up to my memory sundry of
the bloodthirsty insects’ previous ravages scrolled over
history’s panoramic canvas, and that in pigments of black
ness and fire.
There, with high cheek-bones and scowling brows,
with black gowns and Geneva bands, file past the dour
and grim fanatics who barred the path of Charles I. and
of Laud, Juxon, and Wren. There go they who, for
twenty-eight years, through steel and blood and heather,
set their backs against the wall of Fate and practically
swore to lead Scotland to Hell, rather than to Rome.
History has a pretty feasible hint that the shower of claspBibles that, on July 23rd, 1637, rained .so murderously
round the head of Dean Hanna in St. Giles’s church
were flung by Scottish ministers, dressed in female gowns
and mutches, and that their pulpit-trained voices initiated
the popular yell of “ Anti-Christ! Anti-Christ 1 A Pope !
A Pope I A Belly-god 1 Stone him !” It was the fanatical
�'l'HE COVENANTERS.
and hard-headed Presbyterian Beetles who, by their wild
biblically-phrased warnings, roused the Scottish peers to
a vivid apprehension that, if Charles and Laud succeeded,
the estates which had been confiscated from the Church
at the Reformation would be wrenched from the nobles
and restored to Rome. This was a potent argument; for,
whatever might be the territorial lord’s desire for a place
in the kingdom of heaven, he would fight and sing psalms
for twenty years rather than lose a single acre of his
’ands in the kingdom of Scotland. And thus there was
ilmost instantly arrayed against the Government a black
)halanx of ninety Beetles, walled round by John, Ear!
of Rothes; John, Earl of Cassilis; Alexander, Earl of
Eglinton; James, Earl of Home; William, Earl of
Lothian ; John, Earl of Wemyss ; and John, Earl of
Loudon ; Lord Lindesay, Lord Yester, Lord Balmerino,
Lord Cranston, and large numbers of the gentry and
lesser nobility. These, of course, led with them the
psalm-singing yokels of their estates, primed up by
the Beetles to a perfect phrenzy of religious fanaticism,
which could not fail to be exceedingly profitable to their
lords and masters. There is no patriotism in denying
that Scotland’s desperate struggle in the seventeenth
century was carried out by the immoral instrumentality
of Beetle and noble-primed bumbkins, howling from
Jeremiah and canting from Ezekiel, grimly frantic with
suffering and fanaticism, who, singing psalms, mutilated
the slain, and dashed their texts and swords at the same
time through the bodies of the dragoons of the Govern
ment. Scotland did all this drunk with divinity, and 1
should respect her quite as much if she had done it al!
drunk with whisky. And yet I should like to see the
land in the whole world that can afford to scoff at her.
Man, up to this time, has been a small and nasty animal
at the best, and what are magniloquently called his
noblest motives will not bear anything like rigid analysis.
You are kinder, to mankind w’hen you expect too little
c>f them than when you expect too much. And it will
puzzle your ingenuity to expect less than you will get.
The .passage in Genesis anent God’s making all things
very good would have stood better on its legs if it had
read, “God made all things very good save man, and
�3
THE COVENANTERS.
him he made mad.” It is teleology alone that makes
man madder than his “earth-born companions and
fellow mortals.” Well might Burns apostrophise the
mouse:—
“ Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me :
The Present only toucheth thee ;
But, ah ! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear ;
And, forward though I canna see,
I guess and fear.”
. ,
' j
'
'
.
It it all very well for writers of the school of Dr. Lewins
to abjure teleology absolutely. It rises superior to abjura
tion. The speculatively religious instinct is strong in
normal man, and I, for one, rejoice rather than lament
that it is so. It is not the religious instinct that has
stultified and cursed the race, but the diversion of that
instinct into baleful channels by interested sacerdotal anc
civil chicane. Man has too little religion, rather thar.
too much ; but he has certainly too much theology, rather
than too little.
But, back to the Black-Beetles of the Presbyterian
corner of the vineyard of the Lord. So well did the
interested leaven of religious sedition work that in June,
1638, the High Commissioner swaggered up to Holy
rood escorted by 20,000 men, most of them mounted.
There were present, moreover, 700 Beetles, the most
sour and grim kind that ever banged a bible for the love
of God. Many of them had buff coats under their
Geneva cloaks, and, according to Burnet, many wore in
their belts swords, pistols, and daggers, that, for the love
of heaven, they might redden the earth with blood.
Madly Beetle-bitten, the peasantry flew to arms ; every
Beetle-box in the country breathed of fire and slaughter;
the crackle of musketry was in every sermon, the roar
of cannon in every prayer; the sword-blade was sharpened
on the pulpit, and the kirk became a recruiting-ground
for the battle-field. “ We have now cast down the walls
of Jericho; let him who rebuildeth them beware of the
curse of Hiel the Bethelite ” was the refrain of a
Tyrtaean sermon by Henderson, of Leuchars. Beetles
Mushet, Row, Cant, Dickson, and a mighty host of
murderous piety, took up the cry. It was thundered
�4
THE COVENANTERS.
from hundreds of pulpits. The heather was, indeed,
on fire. The Beetle struck the Bible with his fist in the
emphasis of bloodthirsty rhetoric, and his voice found a
terrible echo in the ring of the armourer’s anvil, as the
hammer clashed and clanged upon the red-hot iron that
was being fashioned into bit and stirrup, helmet and
sword-blade.
The Lords of the Covenant prepared for war. Where
soever the carcase of prey is there shall the eagles of
militarism be gathered together. Heretofore Scotland
had proved too stale and pacific to be a fitting arena for
the restless energies of her gentlemen of the sword and
swashbuckling fire-eaters, and they had accordingly
poured in thousands from the banks of the Forth, the
Dee, and the Clyde to the banks of the Elbe, the Oder,
and the Danube, to follow Gustavus Adolphus for gold
and glory, and write their names imperishably in their
blood in the annals of the Thirty Years’ War, in which
the stubborn valour of the Scottish Legion filled all
Europe with their renown. The Beetles had now wrung
the coin out of the pockets of their frugal countrymen at
home, and their fighting countrymen abroad rushed back
to offer their steel blades and their blood for the merks of
the peasant and the burgher. The world had no better
soldiers than the Scoto-Swedish officers of Gustavus,
among the most distinguished of whom were Sir Alex
ander Leslie, Sir Alexander Hamilton, Sir James Living
stone, Monroe, Baillie, and other heroes of Prague and
Fleura, and numerous battle-fields in Polish Prussia,
Brandenherg, Westphalia, and Silesia. The Beetle, the
ancestor of him now wanted in Egypt, had done it with
a vengeance. Every fourth man in Scotland was to
consider himself a soldier. The sword of the Lord and
of Gideon s. The land was as busy as a beehive declaim
ing sermons, whining prayers, drawling psalms, and
getting ready arms and munitions—body armour for the
cavalry, buff-coats and morions for pikemen, and muskets
with rests for the musketeers. A cannon-foundry was,
moreover, established at the Potter Row, Edinburgh,
under the direction of Sir Alexander Hamilton, formerly
master of the cannon-foundries of Gustavus Adolphus at
Urbowt, in Sweden. And all Beetledom was up on end
�THE COVENANTERS.
5
and raving to Jehovah to hurl down the curse of Meroz
upon those who failed to gird up their loins and go forth
to help the Lord against the mighty.
The old legend-book of Judah was clasped to the very
heart of Scotland. Its bloodiest and most terrible texts
were interwoven with the common parlance of mundane
affairs and preached from with a wild and volcanic vehe
mence. “ And I will feed them that oppress thee with
their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their
own blood, as with sweet wine : and all flesh shall know
that I, the Lord, am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the
mighty one of Jacob.” “The Lord hath a sacrifice in
Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea/’
“ Cursed be he who keepeth back his sword from blood.”
“ Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Put every man his
sword by his side, and go in and out, from gate to gate,
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother,
and every man his companion, and every man his neigh
bour.” These were the sort of bases of Beetle-spun
harangues that scared the pee-wheet and the plover of
the hills and moors. “Now go and smite Amalek,
and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them
not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass. And Saul gathered the
people together and numbered them in Telaim, two hun
dred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah.
And the Lord sent thee on a journey and said: Go and
utterly destroy the sinners, the Am al ekites, and fight against
them until they be consumed,” was the fearful text from
which a certain Beetle of Hell preached, and incited the
Covenanters to, after the Battle of Philiphaugh, enclose
the defeated musketeers of Montrose in the courtyard of
Newark Castle, and pour in volley after volley of shot
upon the defenceless and unresisting mass, till not a man
remained standing; and the gunpowder smoke cleared
away and left the court covered with blood and brains
like the floor of a slaughter-house, and the air rent with
the shrieks of those to whom Death had not yet come
in mercy to end their agony. After this holy massacre
1,000 corpses were interred in a spot which to this day
bears the shuddering name of The Slain Man's Lea.
And so much did the Presbyterian Beetles insist upon
�6
THE COVENANTERS.
the curses that would overtake those who spared the
Amalekites, the enemies of God, and so terribly did they
emphasise '''‘man and woman, infant and suckling,” that
the swords of the Covenant ripped open the bodies of
the women with child and transfixed the unborn babe
with the blade reeking with the blood of its mangled
mother,* that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
So much for the antecedents of the Presbyterian
Beetles Mr. Buchanan inquires about so kindly, and in
regard to whom the Marquis of Hartington replies that
there is a spare one to be had at Alexandria. Even
now, it would seem, Scottish soldiers do not feel they can
slaughter properly for the Lord unless they are under
the beetlefications of an Ephraim MacBriar or a Gabriel
Kettledrummle !
How long, O Lord, how long, will it be accounted
glorious to drill a bayonet through a diaphragm and
valorous to lodge a leaden pellet in the medulla oblon
gata ? No religion whatever can be true whose God is
the God of Battles, and whose priests officiate in the
sanctification of slaughter. O that there were a righteous
heaven, and that man’s objective Paradise was correlative
with man’s subjective desire ! then would I call to this
heaven to witness that the torn banners and emblazoned
rags of war are hung up as trophies in the Christian
churches and cathedrals—the relics and memorials of
wounds and misery and hate and death in the temples
of “the Prince of Peace”! I have sat in a certain
Cathedral and listened to the Gospel of goodwill to all
mankind, although, at the entrance, I had to pass dusty,
torn, and ghastly relics of some of the bloodiest engage
ments in India and the Peninsula. I yearn for the
religion that will account State murder and private
murder alike unhallowed, and which will find no room
in its fanes for bannered rags in memorial of burning
towns, slaughtered men, shrieking widows, and breadless
orphans, more than for the gory knives which were
wielded by the miscreants and murderers whose infamy
is perpetuated in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame
Tussaud’s.
Gordon of Ruthven.
�Price 2s., post free,
LAYS OF ROMANCE & CHIVALRY.
By W. STEWART ROSS (“Saladin”).
“ Some of these effusions are ot a very remarkable character, and indicate
that Mr. Ross has a genuine vein of poetic inspiration.”—Daily Telegraph.
“Mr. Stewart Ross shows great power of dramatic expression................. The
work will be welcomed by all who can appreciate poetic energy applied to the
interesting and thrilling incidents of theeailier and more romantic periods of
history.”—Aberdeen Journal.
“ Many of the poems are characterised by a spirit and ringing martial vigour
that stirs the blood.”—Daily Chronicle.
“ A book of romantic, historic verse, aglow in every page with the energy oi
a true and high poetic genius.”—Glasgow Weekly Mail.
“ The author gives ample proof of his varied talents, and his no small share
of the minstrel’s magic power. —Aberdeen Free Press.
“There is much that is excellent in the work........ Mr. Ross is apparently a
scholar, and might make a success in some other walk in literature."—Liver
pool Daily Post.
“ Mr. Ross is a poet of undoubted power.”—Hull Miscellany.
“ The poems are characterised now by vigour, now by grace, and now by
pathos.”—Nottingham Guardian.
“ Mr. Stewart Ross is not only a poet, he is a scholar and a thinker.”—
South London Press.
“The poems contain many fine thoughts, expressed in powerful language.”—
Newcastle Weekly Chronicle.
“ The book is well worthy the perusal of all readers of taste, and we trust
Mr. Stewart Ross will favour this department of literature with further efforts
of his genius.”—Liverpool Mercury.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Just out, price id., post free i%d., The
WHITMINSTER SECULAR SCHOOL
INAUGURATION,
Speeches by Glegg Bullock, Esq., Saladin, Lara, Edith
Saville, and George Minson.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Now ready, neatly bound in cloth, price is., post free is. 2d.,
LIFE
ON THE
BASIS
AND
OF
By ROBERT
MIND:
MODERN
MEDICINE.
LEWINS, M.D.
With an Appendix by “ Thalassoplektos ” (“Pioneer.”).
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�RECENT. PAMPHLETS.
The Dying Faith, by Lara
...
...
...
o 3
A Visit to the Grave of Thomas Carlyle, by Saladin
o 1
The Divine Interpretation of Scripture, being a Reply to
Cardinal Manning, by Saladin ...
...
...
01
The Crusades, by Saladin
...
...
...
o 1
The Covenanters, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
Christian Persecution, by Saladin ...
...
...
01
The Flagellants, by Saladin
..
...
...
o I
The Iconoclasts, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
The Inquisition, by Saladin
...
...
...
o I
Christian Crackers, by Inquirer
...
...
...
04London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Just issued, price 10s. 6d., post free,
OUTLINES OF
MENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
By J. D. MORELL, LL.D.
(Author of ‘•'■Manual oj History of Philosophy,'1
Grammar and Analysis,” etc.)
“ English
Since the Psychology of the Scottish School (Reid, Stewart, Brown)
has ceased to satisfy the requirements of the age, various efforts
have been made to discuss the whole question from a more scientific
point of view. These were commenced by Sir William Hamilton
in his Notes on Reid. Since then James Mill, Alexander Bain, and
Herbert Spencer have treated the whole science with great power
of analysis from a more sensualistic point of view. Various German
systems (Hegel, Herbart, Beneke) have also, during the present
century, attempted to throw new light on the subject, each in its
own particular form. The present Outlines were designed to take
into due account these various attempts at a more complete develop
ment of the science, and educe from them a brief and intelligible
sketch of a System of Psychology based on a critical apprehension
of all the previous analyses. These Outlines are now published
with such exposition as the progress of scientific thought on the
subject seemed to require. They are thus presented as a Text-book,
which may enable the student, in-some measure, to test the claims,
of opposing systems, and to enter fairly into the main questions
which have been mooted by the leading psychologists of Europe
in the present age.
London: W. Stewart & Co., the Holborn Viaduct Steps, E.C.
Edinburgh : J. Menzies & Co.
�Price One Penny.
p„,t Free Thrce-Halffma.
FROM THE VALLEY
OF
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
By SALADIN.
IN
BRUNO
MEMORIAM
STEWART
ROSS,
Died i9th November, 1882, aged two years and five weeks.
3
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Recently Published.
Post free Twofence-halfpenny.
WITCHCRAFT
IN CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES.
By SALADIN.
Being an Address delivered at the Inauguration of the Secular
Society at Stockport, November 19th, 1882—the Marquis of
Queensberry m the Chair.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 4r, Farringdon Street, E.C
Price 2s. post free.
Elegantly printed in colours.
SONGS BY THE WAYSIDE
OP AN AGNOSTIC'S LIFE.
By Himself.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 4i, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Now ready, price id., post free ij£d.,
THE DIVINE
INTERPRETATION OF
- - SCRIPTURE:
A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING.
By Saladin.
Being a Paper read at the Cassadaga Conference, New York,
by S. P. Putnam, Secretary, American Liberal League.
“ This trenchant and incisive impeachment of the pretensions
of our greatest enemy, the Romish Church, was well worth re
printing, and we hope it will have a large circulation.”—Free
thinker.
16 pp., with Illustration, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
CRUSADES.
THE
By Saladin.
16 pp., price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION.
By Saladin.
V
In neat wrapper, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE FLAGELLANTS.
a /
By Saladin.
In neat wrapper, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE
COVENANTERS,
r- „
By Saladin.
z
f The Publishers will be pleased to forward an assorted parcel of
100 copies of the above Pamphlets (carriage paid) for distribution
" on receipt of ys. 6d.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Covenanters
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 6, [3] p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from The Secular Review. Publisher's advertisements inside front cover, and on unnumbered pages at the end. "by Saladin" [title page], the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. The Coventanters were people who believed in the presbyterian form of Protestant worship and organisation, and who had signed the various National Covenant. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
W. Stewart & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1884?]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N578
Subject
The topic of the resource
Protestantism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Covenanters), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Covenanters
NSS