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DOGMA versus MORALITY.
.
A
REPLY TO CHURCH CONGRESS.
BY
CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
INCUMBENT OF HEALAUGIT, NEAR TABCASTER.
SECOND THOUSAND.
LONDON:
TEUBNEE AND CO., 60, PATEENOSTEE EOW.
1866.
Price Threepence.
�I
�PREACHED AT HEALAUGrH,
Sunday Morning, October 21st, 1866.
1 John iii. 7.—11 Little children, let no man deceive you: he that
doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous."
The week before last, at a Congress of Bishops
and Clergy held at York, a dignitary of the
church is reported to have said, that it was
“ better to have a religion without morality than
morality without a religion,” As I have not the
exact words before me, 1 will not mention the
name of the speaker; but, as far as I could gather
from the report, the whole speech was intended to
advocate the necessity for a dogmatic creed, and
to shew the superiority of creed over practice.
Painful as such a view must be both to you and to
myself, I am not at all surprised at a Church
dignitary putting it forth, nor at the applause
with which it was received by the assembled
clergy.
For, indeed, I have often before heard it
expressed and implied, in different ways, and in
different degrees of shamelessness. Some High
Churchmen have as good as denied the possibility
of being righteous, without being baptised and
�4
partaking of the Lord’s Supper; and Evangelicals
have gone so far as to say, that a moral life was a
hindrance, rather than a help, to our reception of
the Gospel. They deserve some credit for their
candour and consistency; and if it were not for
such utterances as these, the popular credulity
would never be shaken. When, however, one more
energetic than the rest follows out the principles of
his party to their legitimate consequence, then the
people have their eyes opened to a simple question,
on which they are quite competent to pronounce
an opinion. I am, therefore, under some consider
able obligation to the speaker of that remarkable
sentence, in which he deliberately prefers religion
to morality, as he makes it all the easier for me to
carry on the delightful work of drawing you on,
step by step, to think out for yourselves a true
faith, and to shake off irrational and ill-founded
beliefs and opinions. We must, however, first try
to get a clear notion of what we are talking about,
before we can derive any benefit from the discus
sion of this unwise maxim,— “Religion without
Morality is better than Morality without Religion.”
What do the words “religion and morality”
here mean? There is no doubt about the meaning'
of “morality.” We all mean by it “ Doing what
is right to our fellow-men;” “Loving our neigh
bour as ourselves;” “Doing as we would be done
by.” Both the speaker and ourselves agree in
calling this “morality.” But I am sure we do not
�5
agree with him as to the meaning of the word
“religion;” simply because he contrasts in this
sentence the one with the other. He draws a
distinction and makes a choice between religion
and morality; whereas you, if you have followed
my teaching for three years, as I believe you have
done, would never have dreamt of separating
religion from morality, nor morality from religion.
Your idea of true religion is, if I mistake not,
true obedience to God’s laws; and true obedience
to God’s laws is to do what is right, to love your
neighbour as yourself. You' believe that no
amount of doctrinal belief, of lip service, or
even of long and earnest prayers and praises
to God, will do instead of our being good;
or would at all please God, if we were not,
at the same time, working righteousness in
our daily lives. So with us, true religion and
morality must go together—must be so intimately
bound together as to be one and the same. Our
religion is our duty, and our duty is our religion.
We know of nothing which God demands of us as
religious duty which is not part and parcel of
moral duty. If I made any distinction between
them it would be this:—> Religion is morality with
a conscious reference to God’s authority over us,
or with a sense of His interest in our well-doing.
You see, then, when a Church dignitary talks of
religion and morality as if they could be separated,
as if one could exist without the other, he cannot
�6
mean by the word “ religion ” what we mean by it.
His idea of religion cannot be the same as ours, or
else he would never have thought of such a thing
as religion without morality, or morality without
religion.
Now, as he is not here to answer for himself the
question, “ What do you mean by religion as
separate from morality?” the only fair way of pro
ceeding is to suppose an answer, and to remember
all through that we are only supposing it. We
can only be certain of one thing, that he did not
mean by religion 'what we mean by it. That is
clear. Beyond this we can only guess. But, my
friends, if you will trust me, I will do my best to
tell you what the speaker meant by the word
“religion.” I am unhappily more familiar with
clerical notions than you are, and have dim recol
lections of having once thought and spoken as they
do now.
From the whole tenor of the speech referred
to, the speaker meant by “religion” a “ belief in
the articles of the Christian Faith.” I do not
think, as some have suggested, that he meant any
religious belief without morality to be better than
morality without any religious belief; but, espe
cially and definitely, that the maintenance of
Christian dogmas, such, for example, as the
dogmas of the Incarnation and Atonement, the
assertion of the Crucifixion, Burial, Resurrection,
and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and the dogmas
�7
about the Holy Ghost, the Church, and the for
giveness of sins—that the maintenance of all these
without morality was better than morality without
this religious belief. Incredible as it seems to you
that any minister of Christ should have so far
forgotten, or remained ignorant, of the Master’s
own religious belief and religious morality, it is
nevertheless true that hundreds of clergymen, and
some few laymen, whom they have misled, actually
prefer the maintenance of these dogmas to every
other cause in the universe. Indeed, as I told
you, the Evangelical, seeing that integrity of life
renders the mind incapable of being enslaved by
his fearful doctrines, frankly owns that a good life
is a hindrance to the reception of what he calls the
Gospel. It is indeed a hindrance, thank GodI
and if you want to be free from credulity
and superstition, begin betimes to “ amend your
lives, and live in charity with all men.” “ So
shall you be meet partakers” of that rich banquet
of truth, which God has spread for all upright
souls. So surely as you carelessly launch your
selves into the waves of sin and selfishness, you will
have to take refuge, if you ever get to land at all,
on some far distant foreign shore, terribly unlike
your own home and your native land.
Now, if the meaning of the speaker be, that
a belief in the articles of the Christian Creed
without morality is better than morality with
out this belief, I put it to you very simply, Do
�8
you think so? I frankly own that, though I
am a Churchman, I should much rather see them
put aside and torn up as rubbish, than to see
the cause of morality, which is true religion, for
a moment imperilled. I -would honestly prefer
a morality without any religious belief—nay,
even without any religious hopes and religious
consolations — than the most comforting, satisfy
ing creed without morality. I will not judge
other men — not even by their foolish words —
but I will say that God has taught me, or I
believe He has taught me, that the highest and
noblest thing to which we can aspire, is to be
righteous — to do what is right—to live and walk,
in love; that this is the Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and the end of all true religion, and
that if any religion were found unfavourable to
this personal righteousness, this divine morality,
it must be a false religion and not a true one;
that if any religion could be substituted for
morality, so as to make its professors sit down
contentedly without making moral effort, satisfied
and even happy,".while they are still unrighteous,
and morally* no^better for their religion, that
religion, whether spoken by men or angels, con
secrated or not with the testimony of ten thousand
miracles, would be a curse instead of a blessing;
and what is more, [could have no abiding roots
in a world where God has placed the sons of
men. For men will be true to the nature which
�9
God has given, them, and must learn, whether
they will or not, every lesson which their bitter
experience forces upon them, with regard to the
sovereign importance of righteous dealing.
It is from statements like the one which we
are considering, that the gravest attacks are made
upon existing religious beliefs.
The reverend
speaker little knew that those few words of his
would awaken enquiry, thought, and scepticism
which no after apologies can allay. Common
men and women like you and me, dear friends,
who have our daily work to do, our many self
denying duties to fulfil, our own rough or sour
tempers to control, our homes to guard and
our dear ones to cherish and to help—who know
how hard the battle between the flesh and the
spirit really is — who yearn after eternity, not
for its rest and its joy, but for its divine promise
of perfect righteousness—when we hear an advo
cate of modern Christianity talk in these, to us,
pagan—nay, worse than pagan—Pharisaical riddles,
we feel inclined to retort—“Keep your religion
and leave us our morality. Comfort your hearts
with incessant religious rites, and stimulate your
imaginations with contemplation of wonders which
tax human credulity without healing human
wounds, which stimulate your fevered selfishness,
and narrow up the channels of the love of God;
and leave us to ourselves, and to our unaided, un
seen struggle in the darkness of our own hearts.
�10
We would rather thus fight against our daily be
setting sins, from simple sense of duty, or regard
for fellow-men, even should we have to do so with
out a ray of hope from above, than give up our
march onwards, over the stones and briars of life,
to stop playing with you by the wayside, while
you are mimicking the grand rites of Ancient
Sacrifice/ and thinking to please your Maker, or
some of His subordinate deities, by your empty
and dreary conjuring!
“ Take your religion, with its mystifications and
its impossibilities, and leave us to our excommuni
cated morality, and to the uncovenanted mercies of
God!”
Truth must be spoken, Though God forbid it
should ever be said of us, it is certain that some
have been driven by these foolish priests into
downright Atheism. And an Atheist, you know, is
one who does not believe in the existence of God
at all. Inexpressibly sad as it is to us, who rejoice
in our Maker, and whose hearts pant for the Living
God, yet there are some who cannot believe in
Him at all. Some of these are kept stedfast in
duty, pure and upright in their lives, models of
good fathers and mothers, good husbands and
wives, and fulfilling God’s own law of love, which
in mercy He has not made dependent on Creed,
* See Letter, signed C.C., on St. Alban’s Church, Holborn, in
the Times, October 19th, 1866, and the article thereon.
�11
but lias engraven on our very hearts. They are
living evidences of morality without a religion;
and if I had to choose between the lot of the
righteous man who could not believe in a God, and
the man of unlimited credulity, who cared not to
be righteous so much as to be a believer, I would
infinitely sooner be the righteous Atheist. Simply
and solely from love of God I would thus choose.
Because I believe that God would be more pleased
with any one for doing his duty to his fellow-men,
than for being merely occupied with making
prayers, and singing psalms, and filling the mind
with all sorts of profitless imaginations respecting
the unseen. Even, as a poor selfish father, if I
must choose, I would rather my children behaved
well to each other, and to their mother, than to me.
And I would much prefer their doing this, to their
coming to me all day long, and making petitions,
and saying over the same words of praise to me.
But, never fear, there is no need of our having
such an alternative set before us. God will not—
at least, so we hope and believe,—God will not
require us to choose between a religion without
morality, and a morality without religion. To
“ love our neighbour as ourselves ” is to render the
best homage of our lives to our adorable Maker,
who has written this as His law upon our hearts.
“ To do righteousness is to be righteous even as
Christ was righteous.” These are not my words,
but St. John’s. u Let no man deceive you.” Be
�12
not put off with the enticing parade of religious
ceremonies, or the long list of religious dogmas
and religious miracles, to abandon your devotion
to God in the more difficult, but more honourable
conflicts of daily life. If religious belief, and the
cause of morality, should ever come into open
•1
collision, I know well which must give way. A
Creed crowned with the victories of twice .two
thousand years cannot stand a day when brought. .Jl
into open contrast with the Eternal Law oMoff,
M
the Law of Love, which man’s deepest heart yearns
to fulfil.
Priests may howl at you, “ He that believeth not
shall be damned” but you may cheerfully and
kindly reply, “ We know that we have passed from
death unto life, because we love our brethren.”
J. Wertheimer & Co., Printers, Circus Place, Finsbury Circus.
i*
�
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Dogma versus morality: a reply to Church Congress
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Voysey, Charles
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 12 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Preached at Healaugh, Sunday morning, October 21st, 1866. Printed by Wertheimer & Co., Finsbury Circus, London.
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Conway Tracts
Religion and Morality
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INAUGURAL DISCOURSE
AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
ON SUNDAY, 1st OCTOBER, 1871.
BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
ST. EDMUND HALL, OXFORD, LATE VICAR OF HEALAUGH.
LONDON:
To be obtained of the Author at
ST. GEORGE’S HALL.
1871.
Price Fourpence.
��SERMON.
c< Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season
roe shall reap if we faint not.”
Q&LKTlkKS
vi. 9.
I have chosen this text as a motto on this very
interesting occasion of our assembling here to-day,
rather than as a special subject of our meditation.
It would be unnecessary, and even unprofitable, to
occupy our thoughts with an essay on the duty of
perseverance, or with a string of common-places
about success being the reward of patient and
well-sustained exertion. We are too much men of
the world not to know by experience that if we wish
to succeed in our present undertaking, we must
bring to bear upon it our best and wisest thought—
our undaunted courage under, apparent failure—and
our most patient and self-denying exertions.
It seems more fitting to the circumstances of the
hour that we should begin our work with a brief and
comprehensive review of what we have undertaken
�4
to do, so as to get, if possible, in plain words, a
definite statement of the objects which have drawn,
and are still drawing, together from all parts of the
world so important an organization as that which
we profess to represent.
Our first work—that indeed which has been the
key note of this organization — is to undermine,
assail, and, if possible, to destroy that part of the
prevailing religious belief which we deem to be false.
We make no secret of our antagonism. We
frankly state our denials, and are ready to give our
reasons for the denial of any doctrine which we de
nounce. We are in open warfare against much of
what goes by the name of Christianity. We repu
diate at the outset the tacit or avowed assumptions
which are almost universally accepted as the basis
of religious belief.
To be more explicit, we deny the doctrines of the
fall of man from original righteousness; of the curse
of God against our race, and of his supposed sen
tence of any of his creatures to everlasting woe;
therefore we deny not merely the doctrine of the
atonement, but the necessity for any method what
ever of appeasing the imaginary wrath of God. For
every one of these doctrines involves a flaw in the
moral perfection of God, and violates our instinctive
perception of His goodness. The fall of man, e.g.,
involves an admission that God was either unable or
unwilling to keep His creature as good as He had at
first made him ; and that, contrary to the conclusions
of science, God’s work is not progressive, that the
�5
first man was a paragon of perfection, instead of
being in the lowest rank of savages. The doctrine
of God’s curse against our race in consequence of
the first man’s sin involves a still greater blemish on
the moral perfection of God; it is contrary to all
sense of justice that one man should be an object of
wrath in consequence of another man’s sin, much
more that a whole world of countless millions should
be deemed accursed and sentenced to everlasting
perdition through the sole faults of their first parents.
This doctrine we discard, because it is morally de
grading to God. For the same reason, only with
immeasurably greater indignation, we reject the
doctrine that God withdrew the curse and sentence
from the heads of a few of our race in consequence
of the death of Jesus, by which, orthodoxy tells us,
the Father was reconciled to men. The remedy was
worse than the disease. The compromise more dis
honourable than the injustice which it was intended
to amend. These are only a few, but they are the
most prominent of the doctrines which nearly all socalled Christians deem to be essential; and our first
work, I say, is to hasten their coming downfall—to
rid the world of ideas which, though once were good
and useful in comparison with the ideas which they
supplanted, have now become both poisonous and
loathsome—full of injury to the human heart and
mind, and blasphemous in the ears of the most
High.
Gathering round these abjured doctrines are others
of only less noxious character, such as the belief in
�6
a Devil, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Godhead,
and even the superhuman Divinity of Jesus Christ—
the expectation of His return to earth as the Judge
and King of men—the doctrine of the Church as a
spiritual and authoritative power—the doctrines of
sacraments, of holy orders, of priestly interference
and control in every shape, and of the necessity for
priestly intervention at the burial of the dead. All
these topics are suggestive of many protests, which
it will be our duty to make.
There is one, however, which I have not yet men
tioned, reserving it for a paragraph by itself. We
shall be met at the onset of our attack by the
warning, that we have no right to form about any
of God’s dealings an opinion which may be con
trary to the revealed religion contained in the
Bible, or in the Church, or in both. This is
where the conflict will be hottest. We must bring
all our forces to bear against this insidious and
plausible plea. We shall have not merely to defend
our own right to use the Light of Nature within us,
but to show up the weak points in our enemies’
armour—to challenge them to a defence of those
glaring immoralities and absurdities in the Bible, or
in the £‘ revealed ” religion, which none of them as yet
have had the courage to defend—to exhibit also un
sparingly the numberless fallacies which abound in
their theories of a Church, and to make them show
cause why any claimant for our obedience should be
accepted more than his rivals. We must repeat and
repeat the fact, that so-called revelations abound in
�7
all the earth, each one being believed by its ad
herents to be the only true one; and that Chris
tendom itself is divided piecemeal into separate and
antagonistic Churches, each of which in turn is, of
course, the only true Church.
To the world outside, who may watch the struggle,
we may appeal with confidence, knowing that all the
Churches, all the priests, all the Bibles, and all the
Catechisms, have never yet been able to quench the
spark of Divine justice, and love of truth, which the
Almighty God has kindled in the human breast.
The time will come when, if our orthodox opponents
shall have succeeded in proving that the Bible or
the Church teach authoritatively doctrines against
which the mind and ■ heart and conscience of men
rebel, men will make answer—“ So much the worse
for the Church—so much the worse for the Bible;”
and what is bad in both will be cast away to the
moles and to the bats—to the dust and darkness
appointed for all falsehood.
To pave the way for even this preliminary work of
necessary destruction, we must first of all persuade
the timorous to enter upon the work of religious
enquiry without any dread of being punished for
honest conviction. The Churches hold all their
power at this moment through the superstitious fears
of men and women. From first to last the cry is,
“Flee from the wrath to come,” “Believe this, and
thou shalt be saved and as nothing is so catching
as fear, the multitude run hither and thither, to seek
shelter from impending doom.
�A great part of our work, then, must be to pro
claim the perfect safety of the path of enquiry. To
tell men and women that even if they go wrong in
opinion, even if they miss much precious truth and
embrace much mischievous error, the Lord of all will
not damn them for it for ever. The Father’s love
will not shrivel up or grow cold because, in our
blindness or twilight, we have missed the path of
truth, or made but slow progress therein. We must
teach them that, wrong or right, they are equally safe
from the absurd horrors which have hitherto scared
them; and that all the ill-consequences of error which
Divine goodness has ordained, are only ordained to
teach us to correct our mistakes, and to improve our
method of search after His truth. 1 sometimes fear
that—as regards this country at all events—most of
us will not live to see the false doctrines of Christianity
utterly rooted out, but we may well hope to have set
free our countrymen in a few short years from this
insane and ridiculous fear of damnation as the penalty
for error in opinion. We can do nothing with the
religious masses till we have set them free to think
without trembling at every step. Let us do this with
all our might, and let us not be weary in this piece
of well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we
faint not.
But our work does not rest here. I believe I am
only echoing the thoughts of every heart which has
sympathised with us, when I say we should be both
distressed and ashamed if all our work were only
destructive, if all our energies were to be exhausted
�9
in pulling down even false belief and only in under
mining erroneous doctrine. So far from that, we
only pull down that we may build up, we only de
sire to eradicate false beliefs that we may be able to
plant true beliefs in their place. Though I am only
an insignificant unit in the great brotherhood of free
thinkers and enemies of orthodoxy, I may point with
an honest pride to those published works for which
I have been expelled from my benefice, and ask, Are
not those writings full of positive beliefs ? Can you
find a sermon amongst them all which does not pro
claim as much my anxiety that we should believe and
teach what is true, as that we should give up and de
nounce what is false ? Had this not been so, I
should certainly not deserve to stand here to-day as
the mouthpiece of so many earnest and devout men.
But we must be prepared for every form of reproach
and every degree of misrepresentation. When
people can deliberately say of a man, “ He is only a
Theist,” assuming that, in their own minds, and in
that of their hearers, contempt need go no further,
it proves that they know nothing whatever of Theism
and that they have never taken the pains even to
ascertain what we really believe, or why we believe
it; still less why we should have willingly suffered
for it.
It will be our chief duty and our highest delight
to proclaim our real convictions — to contrast our
own faith with the faith we have so gladly aban
doned, and to try to teach those who may be halting
between two opinions, and others who may have
�10
no faith at all, to embrace the views which our own
hearts, as God made them, have taught us to ap
prove.
It will delight us to tell how we have learnt to
call God our Father—to trust Him unseen—to look
to Him for guidance in difficulty, and for strength in
duty—to feel that He is about our path and about
our bed, near to us at every moment of our lives,
ready to give all the light and knowledge which our
narrow souls can receive—to console us under every
disappointment and sorrow—and to give us hope
when everything else is gone. It will be our joy to
show that this faith in our Father is the natural
outcome of the possession and exercise of loving
virtues; that—if there be a God at all—He must
for ever be above, and never below, the moral beauty
of the best of His creatures; that as we grow in
friendliness, and brotherliness, and fatherliness to
our fellow-men, we learn more and more of the ex
ceeding and unspeakable love of God ; that we give
to Him the best name we know to-day, ready to ex
change it for a better and truer one on the morrow,
if human life and its relations rise higher still.
Contrasting this with the miserable narrow estimate
of God’s love as given us in Christianity, we gladly
proclaim that all that God is to ourselves, He is also
that to every one of our fellow-men. He has no
favourites, and the best and happiest one amongst us
all, in this world or in the world to come, is only the
type of what every other soul shall be when his turn
come. Meeting with the objection against His love,
�11
drawn from the sufferings and moral degradation of
many of our race, we can either explain it by
thoughtful reference to pains and sins we have our
selves once experienced, and found them to be preg
nant with eternal blessing, or we take refuge in the
thought that our goodness—small as it is—would
not allow us to inflict one grain of pain or shame
without a purpose of lasting good, nor to withhold
any amount of painful discipline that was necessary
to secure the ultimate happiness and virtue of the
individual exposed to it; and then we ask ourselves,
“ Shall mortal man be more just than God ? Shall
the creature be more loving than the Creator ?”
We shall have to confront those who believe too
little as well as those who believe too much. We
know that if an unspoken Atheism be rife in this
land, it must be laid at the door of those who painted
man worse than a worm, and God blacker than a
fiend.
The creed of Christendom is the cradle—nay, the
mother of Atheism ; and the Churches may thank
themselves for degrading not only the name and work
of Jesus—one of the world’s best men—but also the
principles of mankind and the honour of God. If
we would do any successful work amongst those who
are exiles from the regions of faith, we must come to
them to learn, not to teach—to learn every bit of
truth and duty which they have valued, while, per
haps, we have under-valued it. We must come to
them, honouring them for their protest against a foul
caricature of the Most High and His dealings, and
�12
only desiring to impart to them what is so precious
to ourselves by the legitimate process of argument,
and the still more efficient agency of a well-ordered
example. If they make their just boast that they
are all for mankind—to raise their kindred and their
race, to un-loose the heavy burdens, to let the op
pressed go free, and to break every yoke—let us
meet them, at all events, on their own ground as
brothers of humanity, and as setting the highest
possible value on services rendered to man as the
only true service acceptable to God.
Amongst the beliefs which it will be our duty to
proclaim, stands next in order our hope for the life to
come. We do not dogmatise on this or on any other
point, but it will devolve upon us to multiply and
strengthen all the evidences on which our hopes are
based. We all feel that our future life is bound up in
the very existence of God; the two must stand or fall
together; and while we are careful never to allow our
hopes and longings for immortal bliss to clog our foot
steps in the path of duty upon earth; while we are
most scrupulous to avoid turning it into a bribe for
the performance of duties which are their own reward,
we should do all in our power to deepen the roots of
our belief in the world to come, as the only solace
under the bitter pangs of bereavement, and as a
wholesome stimulus to our efforts after holiness,
which can never be adequately satisfied in the world
below.
To all this, which we may call our public work,
we must add the far more important business of
�131
cultivating in our lives the spirit of truth, integrity,
purity, and brotherly love. In our own homes, and
in the pursuit of our daily toil, we must find the
great field of self-culture and discipline, without
which all our public exertions in the service of truth
and liberty will be thrown away. If we find our
honour growing more sensitive, our thoughts more
elevated, our speech more refined and exact, our
tempers more placid and enduring, our consciences
more tender, and our affections more wide and deep,
we shall find, also, that our public and social influence for good will grow at the same time, and men
will learn to love us in spite of our creed, and will
pardon us for spurning their own. And above all,
if, in our desire to know more of God, and to be
convinced of His goodness, where we only doubted
before, we seem only to become more confused, more
bewildered by the strife of tongues, our only chance
of rest, and peace, and joy in believing, will be found
in our own efforts to be good and to do good. There
is no other avenue to the Throne of God’s majesty
on high; no other means of rending the veil which
hides the glory of His love, but what is to be found
in the goodness of each man’s own heart. “ Blessed
are the pure in heart for they only shall see God.”
Time would fail me were I to attempt to enume
rate the many collateral duties which will belong to
us as an association. We must only resolve to meet
them as they arise, in the same sincerity, and with
the same activity, as that in which we desire to
regulate our lives.
�141
Of the service in which we have all united to-day,
it becomes me not to speak but in terms of humility
and hope. It has been prepared in distressing haste.
At best it is only an experiment, and time alone will
enable us to test its value and to correct its faults.
I only ask you—and that with perfect confidence—
for your patient trial of it.
One word more upon my text and I have done.
“Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due
season we shall reap if we faint not.”
For my own part, I have taken up my share in this
great work without any sanguine expectation of my
own success. But I mean to work at it body and
soul, day and night, if need be, in spite of any
amount of opposition and discouragement. I do not
mean to let it go till I am beaten off it, as it were,
lifeless. As long as I have a voice left me, it shall
be raised to magnify the loving kindness of the Lord,
and to speak good of His name. No terror shall
shut my lips—no bribes shall tamper with the utter
ance of my heart’s thoughts. So help me God ! But
in saying this for myself, I know I am speaking for
the thousands who have hitherto supported me, and
for those who are gathered here to-day. If we fight
shoulder to shoulder, turning neither to the right
hand nor to the left, we shall in time disarm all
opposition, win over to our ranks the wavering and
fashion-fearing multitude, and plant our banner of
truth, and liberty, and love, where no foe can reach
it. Thank God, the cause to which we have pledged
ourselves is not our cause only but His—does not
�15
depend on my life or fidelity, or feeble powers—no,
nor on all of us put together——it must prevail in the
end, conquering every obstacle, and rising over every
wave of seeming failure, because it is devoted, first
to God’s truth, then to God’s honour, and last, but
not least, to the true welfare of man. u Our help
standeth in the name of the Lord who hath made
heaven and earth I ”
��
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Inaugural discourse at St. George's Hall, on Sunday 1st October, 1871
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Voysey, Charles
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text of sermon from Galatians vi. 9 "Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap if we faint not".
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Conway Tracts
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ON MORAL EVIL
A LETTER
FROM
A
FRIEND.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Sixpence.
�..
.. -.
�ON MORAL EVIL.
---------- t----------
My dear Friend,—It cannot be disguised that in
this age there is a great amount of atheism, or, what
is nearly akin to it, great distrust of God, arising from
the difficulty of reconciling the phenomena of moral
evil with the attributes of a holy and beneficent God.
For your readers there will be no necessity to enter
into any consideration of those explanations which
orthodox theology has given to account for the exist
ence of moral evil, because those explanations cannot
be reconciled with the most approved conclusions
respecting primitive man, and because the theories of
the remedy for moral evil do violence alike to our
highest instincts and to the honour of God.
I shall, therefore, confine my attention to the purely
rational side of the argument, in the hope of getting
a hearing from those wise and thoughtful men
amongst us who are willing to listen to reason, and tn
accept whatever can be shown to harmonise with the
facts of human nature and the moral instincts.
In dealing with a theme almost exhausted by con
troversy, of stupendous interest, and of very nearly
inscrutable mystery, it is impossible to refrain at the
outset from putting in a plea for indulgence, on the
score of my deeply felt incapacity to handle the sub
ject worthily; and, what is far more important, it is
necessary to caution my readers against any hasty
conclusion unfavourable to moral effort, which might
be- drawn from a sort of outside and comprehensive
�4
On Moral Evil.
view of the whole subject. My sole object in medi
tating on this momentous theme is to strengthen, not
to weaken my own sense of duty, to deepen, and not
to efface the moral obligations engraved upon my own
conscience. In writing therefore for others, my aim
can only be to endeavour, by setting forth the truth,
or what I believe to be the truth, to serve the cause
of pure morality and true religion, to lead my fellow
men by the shortest and most direct road to triumph
over moral evil in themselves, and to make that
triumph easier for others.
I must assume that there is a God—a moral
Governor of mankind—a Being from whom has
emanated all that we are and all that we desire, to
whom can be traced, so to speak, the ultimate respon
sibility of all that happens throughout the universe.
There was a time when I felt disposed to question
this complete and undivided sovereignty, but I per
ceive that it is no longer tenable to conceive of a First
Great Cause of all things, and yet to deny the connec
tion with that cause of any of the visible undisputed
phenomena of the world. God must be all or none;
that is to say, the Almighty power and perfect wis
dom and foreknowledge which we attribute to God,
prevent the possibility of any accidental frustration of
His purpose, or the real rebellion against Him of any
one of His creatures. Of every part of His creation,
we must at all times affirm that it is exactly what the
Creator intended that it should be then and there;
and of every thought, word, and deed, of men, we
must likewise affirm that each one is part of God's
original plan, and is the direct or indirect result of
forces which He himself, foreknowing all, set in oper
ation at the beginning of time. Find me the basest
man you know, and try if you can, to separate him and
his depraved condition, in any single point of his his
tory or antecedents, from the chain of God's order and
providence. Find one gap if you can, where a missing
�On Moral Evil.
5
link betokens an independent set of forces; shew me
but one instance in which his thoughts, words, or
deeds, are his own—independently of his Creator—■
and I will then admit that the Creator is not ulti
mately responsible for what that man is, or for what
he has done.
I know he has done worse when he might have
done better, but how was such a depraved choice
made possible to him ? Whence did he get his evil
bias ? From his companions ? or early training 1 or
from inherited moral weakness ? So far as he is con
cerned, he had no control over two of these corrupting
influences, and, in all probability, as little control over
the lot into which he was cast. As a creature, he is
the victim rather than the criminal, and in the sight
of the Creator he may be an object of pity, but never
of hatred. But his parents were wicked before him,
and transmitted the increased tendency to evil ?
Granted, and the man’s very birth into the world,
may have been the result of an unlawful, perhaps an
adulterous union. At first sight, it might seem as if
the very creation of this bad man had been taken out
of the Creator’s hands, and done in spite of His holy
will. But a moment’s consideration shews that we are
only pushing the difficulty further and further back,
and at last we should have to ask the question regard
ing the first and least corrupted of the man’s ancestors
(if the first were really the least corrupted); Who made
these people, in the first instance, what they were,
knowing what would be their debased offspring after
a thousand generations 1 It was still God at the
beginning who constituted man as he was, liable to
these moral aberrations and corruptions, and having
a certain degree of liberty within which he could do
evil instead of good; it was still God who knew all
the endless and countless variabilities of the human
will and character, and who, foreknowing it all, did
not prevent or provide for the prevention of those
�6
On Moral Evil.
results which we call evil. In the foregoing case you
will observe that I have admitted the worst form in
which moral evil can be imagined to take shape, viz.
—in the steady downward course of moral debase
ment, from slight weakness to actual sin, from bad to
worse, spreading and growing continually more loath
some from generation to generation, giving no hope
of amendment or of arrest in its downward course.
All we know of primitive man teaches us that just
the contrary of this has been the course of mankind,
that mankind began with a far lower moral condition
than we have now, that mankind is continually rising
and advancing (as a whole), and that superior moral
races take the place of those which are inferior. But
I took the other hypothesis, because the greater in
cludes the less. If under the worst aspect of human
depravity we must still trace the ultimate responsi
bility to our Creator, a fortiori, we must surely do so
in considering human depravity under the more
favourable aspect, which is offered to us through
modern researches into the history of primaeval man.
The atheist and the profligate may, however, be
inclined to cry exultingly that I have given them
all they ask. The atheist says, There cannot be a
God, because of all this moral evil in the world. I
admit the facts which are called evil, and I say the
ultimate responsibility of them lies with the Creator.
I cannot deny that God is the cause of all things.
The profligate and the criminal may rejoice to think
that God is to blame for what they do; and that, as
the Creator is responsible, they may as well do as they
like.
Much as one deplores the mis-use of any truth, it
affords no just ground for keeping it back, or for
putting a falsehood in its place. There ever will be
persons who must derive temporary injury from the
announcements of truths, however wholesome for the
mass, or salutary for mankind in the future. We
�On Moral Evil.
7
cannot be silent, and miss our chance; I ought rather
to say, we must not neglect our bounden duty, lest
some evil effects should mingle with the good effects
of what we have to make known. The world would
never have emerged from its primitive barbarism, had
its wise men and seers waited till all possible danger
of the mis-use of truth was past. Like one who said,
** He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” I would
only caution my readers against fastening on any one
isolated fact or truth, to the exclusion of other facts
and truths which we are equally bound to recognize.
If it be true that God is the author of all that happens,
is the ultimate cause of all which we call evil as well
as of all which we call good, there are other truths
and facts of our nature and moral organization quite
as fundamental and important, which we cannot ignore
without perverting the first cardinal truth respecting
our Creator's responsibility.
It has been well said, the use of abstract instead of
concrete terms has given rise to an enormous amount
of error in philosophy in general, and in ethics in par
ticular. The terms “evil” and “sin” when used as
abstract terms are fraught with mischief. There can
be no moral evil apart from some thought, word, or
deed, of man. There can be no sin without a sinner.
In endeavouring to discover what moral evil or sin is,
we shall go astray at the outset, if we begin to define
the abstract term, as theologians vainly do. We must
study men and women, their desires, motives, and
actions; and from that study we may come in time
to be able to generalize, and come to use abstract
terms in safety.
Let us then first consider what are the factors in
ourselves which go to produce an immoral act. We
are certainly conscious of having a body, which is the
subject of certain normal and natural desires. This
body, so far as we can discover, is in one respect
analogous to the individual beings around us, in
�On Moral Evil.
every class of animal life. The body at all times
seeks its own pleasure and satisfaction. It is en
dowed with absolute self-love, and is made dependent
on its own selfishness for its very life and power.
All its functions and its appetites are arranged for its
own good, its own safety, health, enjoyment, and that
without any regard to the safety, health, or enjoyment
of any other body, i.e., whenever such foreign interests
stand in its way.
Just as the different individuals in the vegetable
and animal worlds, each and all, struggle for existence,
if not for supremacy, so the bodies of men and women
are by nature under the same law of self-preservation;
and, but for the moral element in us which has led to
civilization and self-denial, we should differ in nothing
fundamentally from the animals around us. This is
as much God's own doing as all the rest of the Kosmos.
It is quite as necessary to our very existence, and to
the perpetuation of the race, that our bodies should be
organized as they are, as that the world should keep
its mean distance from the sun and revolve diurnally
on its axis. I find, then, all I am in search of to ex
plain the source of our wrong-doing, in the very con
stitution of our bodies and brains ; that is to say, we
are constituted by nature to gratify our bodies as we
please, just according to our several tastes, or the
varying dominance of certain appetites, utterly regard
less of any interests or pleasures but our own. Even
some beautiful instances of happiness shared with
others, do not form exceptions to this rule. I may
delight in cherishing my wife and in feeding my little
ones, but in this I only share the same lovely instinct
of many birds, quadrupeds, and insects. It adds to
my own comfort to contribute to theirs ; and I may
discharge this function all my life, without a spark of
moral goodness entering into a single act of fatherly
devotion. Another man may prefer the gratification
of being constantly drunk; and so he seeks his own
�On Moral Evil.
9
pleasure at the entire sacrifice of his family. In both
cases, the course of conduct pursued may be suggested
by the desires of the flesh, and as natural to the body
as eating when hungry, and drinking when thirsty.
By far the largest number of evil deeds belongs to
the class which we rightly call self-indulgent. And of
the rest, which are predatory, destructive, brutal—
such as the deeds of rapine, cruelty, and murder—we
can only say they are the acts of the indulgence of less
common appetites—such as envy, anger, jealousy,
revenge, and the like—which are more or less excep
tional, but which, equally with other appetites, ori
ginate in the bodily and cerebral frame. Now, it is
manifest, without the necessity for illustration, that
some appetites and natural cravings may be, and are
constantly, gratified without any sin at all; and also
that in some instances it would be a sin not to gratify
them. To these facts we must add a third, viz., all
the natural appetites whatever (and by the term
“natural” I, of course, exclude appetites which are
created or aggravated by cerebral disease) are in
themselves needful, beneficial to the welfare of indi
viduals possessing them, and, subject to certain con
trol, good for the world at large.
The appetite for sexual intercourse, which is gene
rally considered the most fruitful source of moral
evil, I believe to be, on the contrary, one of the
highest and noblest of our physical desires, and mani
festly necessary for the world’s welfare. That it has
been abused, and in many cases unduly stimulated,
is no argument against its intrinsic value. Even that
ambition or envy, which is the spring of robbery, and
the fruitful source of tyranny and injustice, is a neces
sary adjunct to our natural state. Without the desire
to emulate others, and to possess for ourselves what
we perceive has added to their comfort or advantage,
we should be infinitely less active and progressive
than we are, if indeed progress in the arts of civilisaB
�IO
On Moral Evil.
tion were then possible at all. And that very anger
which leads to cruelty and to murder, is an element
in our constitution just as vital to the protection of
the race—to the protection not only of individuals
who are the subjects of anger, but also of others under
their care—as the desire for food and the instinct to
cherish our offspring. I cannot find a single element
in man’s nature, not even the murderous element and
love of cruelty, which has not its rightful place in the
economy of man, as an animal—and I might also add,
of man considered as a moral agent, destined for im
mortality.
I need not enlarge further on this factor of moral
evil. It must be evident to any one who will care
fully examine several instances of sin, that it invari
ably arises on one side from the action of some phy
sical impulse or appetite—that it is always an act
done to gratify the animal part of our nature. I now
proceed to consider the other factor, without which
moral life cannot be produced.
On examining ourselves, we find a principle or
power within us which is more or less in antagonism
to our natural physical impulses. It matters little to
oui* argument whether we call this inward controlling
power by the name of Reason, or Conscience, or Love.
We are considering only the thing itself, the nature
of which we shall discover from the observation of its
mode of action; and we can therefore for the present
waive discussion as to its proper name.
While a very large portion of our life is spent in
the unrestricted indulgence of some of our natural
desires, with which no voice within us interferes,
there are at the same time other natural desires which
are under the control of an inward power, antagonis
tic to their indulgence, either altogether or beyond
certain limits.
The body cannot do as it likes in all cases, without
being brought more or less under the censure of an
�On Moral Evil.
11
inward voice, which either checks the body in its wish
for gratification, or, being disobeyed, punishes the
body by reproaches or remorse. Every one knows
that he is thus under restraint, and that there is no
possibility of his doing just what the appetites and
impulses of his flesh suggest, without being opposed
from within by a power which demands the submis
sion of his will, or bitterly reproaches him when that
power is disobeyed. Illustration is scarcely required
here, but we can all recall instances of the remark
able exercise of this power. Some persons have felt
the tendency to theft or falsehood, and know that this
inward power has held them in check. Some have
had a similar tendency to intoxication, and have felt
the same restraint, whether they have obeyed it or
not. The free indulgence of sexual appetite is subject
to the same control, or punished by loss of self-respect
whenever that control has been defied.
And yet the proper indulgence of appetites has not
been thus interfered with or censured. We find anger
sometimes justified, sometimes forbidden. Love of
wealth, the same. Even strict truthfulness may some
times, and for certain ends, be relaxed. A person in
a very critical state of health may be lawfully screened
by deception from the danger of being killed by a
sudden shock, which some fatal news might cause.
Of course, cases in which deception is justifiable are
extremely rare. I only instance one, to show what I
am aiming to prove—viz., that the inward controlling
power permits, under certain circumstances, those
actions which, under other circumstances, it would
unhesitatingly forbid. There must be a law forbid
ding, an inward power or voice restraining, in order
to evolve sin out of any act of physical impulse. We
see this exemplified in human society. The existence
of law must in every case precede the birth of crime.
Different states have not always the same laws. I
may whistle for my dog in the streets of London on
�12
On Moral Evil.
a Sunday without infringing any statute or municipal
regulation. If I do the same in Glasgow, I am tapped
on the shoulder by a policeman, and reminded of the
law which turns my harmless or benevolent action
into an offence. In England bigamy is a felony. If
I am a Turkish subject, I may have four wives if I
please. Then again, some evil things are not pro
hibited at all. Many forms of fraud and extortion
are perfectly legal. Prostitution, and the use thereof,
are not crimes, nor even misdemeanours. From this
it is evident that states and governments make cer
tain crimes by enacting certain laws. That is, the
law alone is the legal measure of certain acts. Where
no law against them has been passed, the actions are
not recognised as offences.
Now, in precisely the same way, a man can only
sin when he disobeys the inner law which forbids cer
tain thoughts, words, and deeds. A certain act may
present itself to a thousand different persons as an act
which their consciences would forbid, and so they may
come to call that act immoral under all possible cir
cumstances, and no doubt they would be right in nine
hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand. For
this is how the standard of morality has been formed
in all ages, and why it is gradually rising. But we
should fall into a serious mistake if we tried to make
a leap over the one man’s conscience, and, ignoring
that, denounced him as guilty of immorality, simply
because he did what public opinion had condemned.
If the act was sinful at all, it was so only because it
was done in disobedience to the man’s own conscience.
The mere fact that a multitude of men have a common
experience about a certain act does not entitle them
to make the philosophical error of ignoring a principal
factor in the product of sin. It is not necessarily sin
ful—nay, it is sometimes greatly virtuous—to act in
direct violation of public opinion; so this in itself
would not be enough to convict a man of immorality.
�On Moral Evil.
A man does right so long as he exercises that degree
of control over his physical appetites demanded by
his inner moral sense. The moment that he oversteps
that limit, or disobeys the inward voice, he commits
an act of immorality.
Supposing he should outrage public decency in
England, so far as to marry two wives, and supposing
him at the same time to be a trained-up Mormonite,
taught from infancy to believe that polygamy is law
ful in God’s sight, we should do right in punishing
him as a felon for his felony, but we should be wrong
in accusing him of immorality, because his conscience
had sanctioned his conduct. This brings us to per
ceive that merely written laws, whether in the Bible
or in the Statute Book, are not by themselves the
other factor in the product of moral evil. Unless
there is a sense of obligation there can be no sin. There
may be crime against the State, or a violation of Bible
precept, which some may deem irreverent or impious,
but there cannot be sin, without a violation of one’s
own sdhse of moral obligation. Moreover, there may
be some laws of the State which are bad laws, and
some Bible precepts directly opposed to morality, in
which case disobedience would be virtuous, though, in
the one instance, punished by the State, and in the
other by the public opinion of the orthodox; there
may be other cases, too, in which a man might be
a grievous sinner, though he had broken no written
law anywhere.
This may be deemed a dangerous doctrine to teach,
but, in the first place, it is not a doctrine at all, but
a question of fact as to what constitutes guilt—for
guilt can only be the result of previous sense of obli
gation. And men only feel obliged or bound to do
that which they can do. They never really feel
bound to do what is known to be beyond their
power, and therefore they never can feel guilty for
omitting to do what is impossible to them, or for
�14
On Moral Evil.
doing what they really could not help. The previous
sense of obligation which alone can constitute a sub
sequent sense of guilt springs from within, and not
from without; it is a part of ourselves, and is one of
the modes in which the inner voice or conscience acts
upon our lower nature. It cannot be so dangerous to
speak the truth about any matter as to say what is
false—nor can it endanger morality to endeavour to
get a right understanding of the true nature and source
of immorality.
The two factors of moral evil, then, are simply the
whole physical nature on one side, and on the other,
an inward power or law which sometimes opposes
our natural instincts and seeks to control them.
The action of the physical nature by itself is neither
moral nor immoral.
The submission of the physical nature to the moral
sense is virtue. The rebellion of the physical nature
against the moral sense resulting in action is vice
or moral evil. Conscious conformity to the moral
sense is morality. Conscious disobedience to it is
immorality.
From observation and induction, we are enabled to
form moral codes, for the greater facility of education,
i.e., for the cultivation of the moral sense, and for the
welfare of society. But it is putting these cases quite
out of place, to teach that they must be obeyed merely
because they are recognised codes, or to describe the
infringement of them as immorality, upon any lower
ground than that infringement is in every case a vio
lation of individual moral obligation. In a general
way, it is true, that certain acts are immoral, done by
whom they may, and under any circumstances; but
it will only mislead us to suppose that they can ever
be immoral except in one invariable way, viz., in that
they do violence to the moral sense of every individual
who commits them.
It may here be objected : The moral sense gets
�On Moral Evil.
*5
weaker the oftener it is violated, and the appetites of
the flesh get stronger the oftener they are indulged. In
this case it is said, men may go on doing wrong, from
worse to worse, until they cease to feel any sense of
moral obligation, or any sense of guilt in the commis
sion of those acts which were once felt to be immoral;
and at last they become as hardened and indifferent
to right and wrong as the beasts of the field, and yet,
according to my theory, it is alleged, they would not
be immoral, for their conduct would not violate any
inner law or moral sense. Hence, if any one wished
to escape the unpleasantness of being morally con
trolled, and the remorse of a guilty conscience, it is
urged, he would have nothing to do but to be sinful
to the utmost of his power—-doing all he could, and
as fast as he could, to kill all conscience within him.
This would be indeed a formidable objection to the
promulgation of the statement that men are only im
moral, sinful, guilty, in exact proportion to the activity
of their moral sense, unless the objection were based
on a misconception of the possibilities of man’s nature.
The supposed case of a man extinguishing, by repeti
tion of immoral acts, all moral sense whatever, is
purely gratuitous and unwarrantable. We have no
reason for supposing that any man, unless diseased in
body or mind, can by his own act rid himself of a
sense of moral obligation. It is true that it is in our
power to increase and develop that moral sense by
cultivation and strict obedience, but it by no means
follows that it is in our power to destroy it altogether;
even, if for a time we can contrive to weaken and
resist it.* I refuse to believe in the possibility of a
* Granting that this does take place in some instances,
the fact does not overthrow the author’s theory. The de
praved man has ceased to sin by ceasing to be what God
created him. He has fallen lower than a sinner, for he
has forfeited his natural human condition. The myth of
Nebuchadnezzar would seem to have this meaning.—Note
by a Friend.
�16
On Moral Evil.
man thus destroying his moral sense after having
had one in normal exercise, until such a man is pro
duced and exhibited. All my experience goes to
prove that men cannot lose their moral sense, and it
more frequently happens, that the self-reproach and
remorse grow deeper, the more sin has been indulged.
But granted such a case as the objector mentions.
Some few instances of the kind among many millions
would not overturn the overwhelming testimony on
the other side. Exceptions would but prove the rule.
The great mass of mankind are incapable of losing
their moral sense, and they would not be less or more
under its influence for any theories which might be
started to account for its agency in producing moral
evil. Vast numbers are kept as they are, neither
better nor worse, through the chief agency of custom
and public opinion. Their good and their bad actions
are alike the result of moulding circumstances, and
surrounding example, rather than of any conscious
moral effort, or immoral resistance of conscience.
Times and opportunities come to all for virtue and
vice, but the even tenor of many lives is, by compa
rison, seldom disturbed by any great conflict between
the flesh and the moral sense. The usual aspect of
such lives is best described as w-moral, not as moral
or immoral at all. Great drinkers, great profligates,
and great criminals, are as much the exception as
great heroes, great moralists, and great martyrs.
Both classes, both extremes of honour and baseness,
are doubtless the products of much moral conflict, of
which the easy-going world knows little or nothing.
A celebrated preacher, a man of exemplary life and
morals, once said to me, “ If I had not been a saint, I
should have been a devil,” and, really, to look at him
was enough to make one believe his words. There
was tremendous power in his head, and the furrows
of spiritual conflict had been ploughed deep into his
very face. The very good and the very bad are near
�On Moral Evil.
*7
a,kin, depend upon it. And the judgment of God,
who knows all, may be very different from ours, as
to the exact moral status of each one—
Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman ;
Though they may gang a kenning wrang,
To step aside is human.
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it:
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it.
Who made the heart, ’tis He alone
Decidedly can try us ;
He knows each chord—its various tone,
Each spring—its various bias:
Then at the balance let’s be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.*
From the foregoing observations on the source of
moral evil, we cannot but draw some important con
clusions.
(1) . There is no such thing at all as moral evil,
apart from the thoughts, words, and deeds of moral
beings, i.e., of beings endowed with a moral sense, a
power which offers resistance to the physical impulses.
Therefore, there is nothing so absurd as to suppose
that evil has originated in any spiritual being or
devil; or has been imported into man’s nature from
without, or, still less, is the result of God’s defeat, or
of some flaw or defect in His original plan.
(2) . The mere fact of man being able to commit an
immoral act furnishes evidence of his superiority over
other kinds of animal organism. He could not
sin unless he first possessed a moral sense— -a sense of
obligation. It is a mark, if anything, of divine favour,
* Burns’ Address to the Unco Guid.
�i8
On Moral Evil.
rather than of divine anger. It is the token of God’s
blessing rather than of God’s cursing.
(3) . It is an indication of man’s destiny. What
possible benefit could be derived from the endowment
of man with a moral sense, if this life were the only
field for its exercise 1 If this be the only sphere in
which the moral sense will ever be developed, then its
presence in human nature must be admitted to be a
profound mistake, a mere wanton disturbance of
human animal contentment, without any correspond
ing advantage. The moral sense is to some men an
incessant check on the appetites and inclinations of
the flesh, submitted to only for the sake of an eternal
moral progress, which man’s inmost heart desires, and for
which alone he is willing to make the sacrifices of his
fleshly indulgence. To undergo all this in pure delu
sion—a delusion for which no set of priests, or pro
phets, no sacred books or churches are responsible—a
delusion purely originating in the highest and noblest
part of man’s own nature, is to submit to a moral
government based on immorality—to be kept truth
ful and honourable by a lie, and to be the utter dupe
of the Creator. If men can bring themselves to be
lieve that this faith in eternal moral progress after
death is utterly false and without foundation, they
can only do so by denying the goodness of God, and
by affirming that, if there be a Creator at all, he must
be the most treacherous and cruel of fiends.
(4) . As the relative powers of the flesh and the
moral sense are absolutely due to the Creator, partly
by the constitution of each man’s nature, and by the
circumstances in which he is placed, and over which
he has often no control, it follows that the failure of
the moral sense to regulate the body must be regarded
by the Creator in a very different light to what is
generally supposed. It is, of course, right to employ
language which conveys in the most clear and forcible
manner the divine authority of the moral sense, and
�On Moral Evil.
J9
to teach young persons and men of little intellectual
culture how wicked and wrong it is not to control
themselves ; and so we naturally say, “ G-od is angry
with sin.” “ God will punish it.” I say this language
is in use among us from the exigencies of the case, and
is justifiable only so long as we find it the best by
which to convey the incontrovertible truth that it is
man’s duty to control himself, and to act in strict
obedience to the moral sense, and further, that dis
obedience will entail painful consequences in order to
train him back into obedience and virtue.
But if this be kept well in view, and insisted on by
teachers, and preachers, and parents, they will be more
successful in their efforts to promote virtue, and to
diminish moral evil, if they ascertain clearly how all
sin is really punished, and skilfully expose the num
berless fallacies commonly entertained with regard to
punishment; and if to this they add true views of
God’s relation to the world, and of His moral govern
ment, they will get rid of those dreadful notions about
the Creator which make the lives of so many needlessly
sad, and weaken morality by weakening hope. It
is not true that sin is always punished by bodily pain.
Pain administered as punishment can only serve to
discipline the body, just as little children may be
trained into civilized animals by a little wholesome
chastisement in early years, which must on no acconnt
be inflicted after the moral sense is sufficiently de
veloped to make them ashamed of having done wrong.
As a matter of fact, the body gets more punished by
virtue than by vice. Provided a vicious man is
prudent in his self-indulgence, he can secure comfort
and gratification to his body by his very sins; whereas,
in very many cases of true virtue, the body suffers by
the moral conduct of the individual. To use an old
Bible phrase which is very expressive, “ the flesh, with
its affections and lusts, is mortified.” Being called to
a life of moral excellence is, in many instances, really
�20
On Moral Evil.
being called to a life of much physical pain. Loss of
liberty, loss of pleasure, and often positive discomfort,
and even misery, have arisen purely out of the rigid
exercise of moral control. We cannot, therefore,
look for the punishment of moral evil in the region
of physical pain or bodily discomfort. As the only
reward. or compensation for virtue is to be found in
the satisfaction of the moral sense, either on account
of what has been gained by self-conquest in moral
progress, or on account of some manifest benefit which
has been conferred thereby on others; so the only
true punishment for moral evil—that is, pain which
can be felt as punishment—is in shame and remorse.
Our Creator has so ordered it that we must reproach
ourselves for all failure in duty, for all conscious
disobedience to the higher law within us. He
has so constituted us, that we blame ourselves in
exact proportion to our real guilt; that we measure
our own guilt by the previous sense of obligation,
which is, in turn, measured by the power of doing
right of which we were conscious at the time of the
sinful act. Thus a man’s own sense of guilt is the
exact measure of guilt. Of course, that sense of
guilt may not come into exercise all at once. The
better feelings may be overpowered by a delirium of
self-indulgence, which, for a time, makes him as it
were out of his mind ; but when he comes to himself,
and reviews his conduct, the full sense of guilt comes
over him, and he is tortured by shame and selfreproach. There is just this difference between
God’s moral government and ours : we cannot reach
the inner life; we can only deal with the body: and
so the criminal is punished by us in his body. We
take our revenge, just or unjust, for his offences by
various methods of inflicting pain on the cerebral
and physical frame of the offender. But God’s way
of punishing is just the opposite. For the most part
the body is left alone, or only indirectly affected
�On Moral Evil.
21
through the emotions. God makes the sinner to be
his own judge and his own executioner. The stings
of remorse are the only real ministers of divine justice.
Thus we are brought by a single step to question the
accuracy of that common sentiment, “ God is angry
with sin,” “ God will surely punish it.” These common
phrases plainly declare a change of mind or feeling in
God, and a determination on His part to interfere—
to do something—in consequence of our sin. Though
well intended and often practically useful, because
not clearly understood, these phrases are unsound and
untrue. God cannot be made angry by anything
whatever which occurs in the universe which He him
self has planned and built. God cannot be the sub
ject of variable emotions, such as are common to the
finite human being. God cannot be disturbed by any
consequence of those manifold forces which He at
first, foreknowing all, set in operation. It is quite
absurd to talk of God’s anger at all, when one con
templates the complete foreknowledge which must
have ever filled the Creator’s mind. To say that one
is displeased, or angry, is to express that the will of
the angry person has been thwarted, his plans in some
way defeated; and to ascribe such defeat to any part
of God’s plans, is to divest Him either of Infinite
Power or Infinite Wisdom. To say that God is angry
with sin, is only to use a figure of speech whereby we
wish to describe the fact that our own moral sense
has a divine authority for the control of the body in
which it dwells. Beyond that, the phrase is false and
misleading, and has done infinite mischief in the world
by representing sinful man as an object of God’s dis
pleasure, and as an offender doomed to some terrible
fate. So, too, the phrase, “ God will surely punish
sin,” misleads us by carrying away our thoughts from
the present punishment which the Creator has made
man to inflict upon himself. It originates all sorts of
absurd and cruel theories of delayed vengeance, brew
�22
On Moral Evil.
ing wrath, and a future hell of endless torment,
when, all the. while, the only just, and suitable, and
beneficial punishment is being already borne. Besides
this, the punishment of moral evil by shame and re
morse, is in itself remedial and not vindictive. It is
a pure medicine, and not the scourge or axe of an
executioner. It contains the germs of repentance and
amendment of life, and was intended to do so.
We have been too long under this horrid nightmare
of the dread of God, and the sense of His anger. It
is “ high time to awake out of sleep.” Men have been
estranged from their great Friend, who alone knew
how to help them. They have lived all their lives
under a dark cloud, or in the wild endeavour to
lighten up their gloom by the glare of reckless revel
ling. They have sometimes abandoned all efforts at
self-control, and smothered the appeals of conscience,
by trusting to “ atoning blood” or “imputed right
eousness.” They have multiplied schemes on schemes
for escaping from God, though all the while He was
their Father and Friend, and no more angry with
them than the tender mother is angry with her sick
babe.
I am not afraid myself of believing that God is not
angry with sin, and that He will not punish it by
any other method than that already in force—through
the moral sense itself. Though I have long held this
view, it has never made me careless about right and
wrong, or diminished, by the weight of a grain, the
burden of self-reproach whenever I have done amiss.
I don’t know what I might have been, or have done in
the whole range of sins, but for the constant and stedfast assurance of God’s unabated love and friendship.
It has helped and not hindered me in the struggle
between good and evil. So I am not afraid to tell the
truth to my fellowmen, whenever I can tell it wholly,
and not partially. At the same time, God’s own pro
vision for the moral progress of mankind is ample and
�On Moral Evil.
23
unassailable. We can only do temporary harm, if
even that, by our false theories. We cannot unmake
a single man, woman, or child, or wrest from them
the moral sense which God has given.
(5.) It is a relief to turn from the ugly distortions
of man's relation to God, as described by theologians
to those happier views which you have done so much
to make known. In the pamphlets on “The Analogy
of Nature and Religion” and “ Law and the Creeds,”
and others in that series, we breathe an atmosphere
of. calmness and hope, instead of the alarm and despair
fostered by the old theologies.* Moral evil is only
relative ; we create it, so to speak, by our aspirations,
by our widening knowledge, and by our increasing
desire to walk in the will of God. We learn by it
what we have been created for, and what destiny God
has in store for us. We cannot shut our eyes to the
fearful and wicked things which are done in the
world, but we ought to be thankful that we have the
power of seeing them to be wicked and fearful, the
sense of abhorrence of them, and the capacity for
struggling against their commission by ourselves, and
for making a manful attempt to remedy their bitter
consequences, and prevent them in future. We are
apt to forget that there was a time when people who
were accounted holy and saintly, and believed them
selves to be so, practised lying and fraud without a
sense of shame; f when a man fervent in piety,
and full of honest trust in His Maker’s love and
righteousness could turn brigand, and seize other
men’s wives for his own lust, and day by day make
deadly raids upon the property and dependants of the
man who was giving him a shelter and a home, and
all this without any sense of having done amiss, or
broken the law of common humanity4 The very
saint who was called the Father of the Faithful §
* This subject is also treated in “The Sling and the Stone,”
in various sermons on sin.
t Jacob, &c.
I David.
§ Abraham.
�24
On Moral Evil.
could deliberately tell a lie in order that his own wife
might be taken to be ravished in a royal couch, with
out the necessity of his being previously murdered.
What should we say now if such deeds could be done,
as they once were done, without exciting any sense of
shame or calling forth the indignation of a whole
people ?
Times have changed indeed, and morality has made
great strides. True, many fearful crimes are now
perpetrated, but they are no longer committed with
out the abhorrence of the multitude. Terrible inroads
on domestic morality have been lately revealed to us
through our Divorce Courts, but only to meet with
the reproaches and indignation which they deserve.
And to pass from classes to individuals. We have
had living amongst us in the past century, men whose
virtues had never before been reached, much less sur
passed. Such men leave their impress on the age
which follows them, by an improved standard of
morals, and so the whole race is lifted on, step by
step, up the mountain of holiness which leads to the
throne of God.
But each man, as his body falls asleep in death, wakes
up, as we believe, to a new life in the world which we
cannot see, wherein the great work begun here is
carried on more rapidly, with fewer falls and blunders
than we make in our earliest essays at moral progress
here below. There are vast differences between us on
earth, as to the degrees of the strength and develop
ment of the moral sense, but this no more hinders us
from believing that all must take the same blissful
journey upwards to light and goodness, than the fact
of pur children being of different ages prevents our
believing that they will all in succession grow up to
manhood.
Whatever view we take of evil, we can only struggle
against it as we ought when we are assured that the
contest is not hopeless, and that a great and kind
�On Moral Evil.
*5
Friend has subjected us all to it for a purpose which
shall bring infinite good to every one. If our aspira
tions are above our capacities, the result will be a
temporary sense of bitter failure; it need not involve
any sense of guilt for any failure but such as was
clearly within our power to prevent. It need not
involve any regret—still less despair—so long as we
are sensitive to our position, earnestly desiring to im
prove. And while we can take comfort from the
assurance that God cannot be angry with us, we shall
be only more angry with ourselves for not achieving
what we might have achieved, and for failing when we
wight, have prevailed. The love and friendship of
God will thus cast a bright light about us in our
deepest sadness and bitterest repentance, and will
strengthen us more than anything else to amend our
lives, and to conquer the foe that stands still be
fore us.
I have only briefly, and very imperfectly, touched
on this vast subject, but the little I have said may
lead some of your more able readers to correct my
errors and to supplement my defects.
Ever most truly yours,
*****
To Thomas Scott, Esq.,
Mount Pleasant,
Ramsgate.
�26
On Moral Evil.
POSTSCRIPT.
A Review of one of your pamphlets, “ Is Death the
End of all things for man,” in the “Rock ” of June 10th,
leads me to add a few more words, which may help to
correct the erroneous impressions now current amongst
the orthodox, respecting our views of rewards and
punishments. The writer of that Review represents
the author of the above-named pamphlet as being
‘‘shut up to one or other of the only other pos
sible doctrines—the reward of all, or the punishment of all, or haply, a temporary punishment of
some, in order to the ultimate issue of the reward or
blessedness of all.”
I cannot, of course, answer for the author of that
pamphlet, but most Theists are agreed in believing
that all men will be gradually brought to a state of
holiness at last. It is not a question with them of
reward and punishment at all, but one relating to the
good purpose of God in having created us. That, in
this process of becoming holy, the punishment of
remorse will still be used hereafter, as it is in this life,
is, to say the'least, highly probable; but it does not in
volve any notions of Purgatory, such as are referred to
by the Reviewer in the “Rock.” As to reward, the only
reward for which the Theist hopes or seeks to attain
is that of success—of becoming at last what he wishes
and tries to be—of being able to do the perfect will
of God, and to love it entirely. Happiness of any
other sort is out of all consideration, and the hope of
it has been cast away as one of the attractions of our
childhood. The blessedness of being good, of growing
up into perfect sonship to God—this alone is our
aspiration and our well-grounded hope. We do not
pretend to describe, or even to suggest, the details of
�On Moral Evil.
God’s future discipline of us, which must remain hid
den from our knowledge on this side the grave, but
only so far as analogy helps us, we believe that moral
discipline will be carried on with each of us when we
die, and that then, as now, we shall find in the pun
ishment which comes by remorse the best medicine for
faults still incurred. To compare this to the doctrine
of Purgatory is to disclose an entire ignorance of our
standpoint. The Reviewer, after stating, in his own
language, the doctrine that (til will hereafter be
blessed, goes on to say, “ It has no foundation to rest
upon excepting general notions respecting the good
ness of God, and His purpose and His power to make
His creatures happy.”
Now this hope does not rest at all on “general
notions,” many of which are rejected by the Theist,
and none of which are ever accepted by him as authori
tative, but the hope, wherever it exists, rests on the
individual’s firm belief in the goodness of God, and m
His purpose and power to make His children good.
What foundation for our hope, we ask, can possibly
be so strong, or so wide, as this conviction of God s
good purpose, and His boundless power to carry it
out ? No voices from without, no parade of Church
authority, no library full of Bibles and Testaments, no
miracles of raising the dead, no word of Christ Himself,
or of the whole army of martyrs, not even the chorus of
angels or archangels, and all the company of heaven,
could make so certain our blessed hope as this still
small voice in our own hearts, “ God is love.” Those
who cannot feel this are yet unbelievers; they do not
know what real faith is; they do not yet “understand
the loving kindness of the Lord.” From the dark
cloud of orthodox infidelity, the wind moans and the
atmosphere is loaded with profound gloom; the hope
of the final bliss of all is swept away by a scornful
scepticism which reckons on the sympathy of the
“ Christian” multitude. “ Now, with respect to this
doctrine” (i.e., the final good of all) it might be
�28
On Moral Evil.
enough, to say that it has no foundation to rest upon,
excepting general notions respecting the goodness of
God/’ &c. Can infidelity sink lower than this ?
Another fallacy lies near at hand. After errone
ously putting the term “happy” for “good” (a con
fusion which we studiously avoid, although it may
be. true that the only real happiness consists in
being good), the Reviewer asks, “ Why is there any
unhappiness in the universe at all ? God could pre
vent it, but He does not. There must be good reasons
for His refraining, and how can we tell that these rea
sons shall cease to act when men cease to live in this
world? If the existence of suffering in the world
were incompatible with the Divine goodness, the exis
tence of it for a lifetime, or for an hour, were as
incompatible with that goodness as its existence
throughout eternity. This can never be answered.”
We don’t want to answer it; we quite agree with the
Reviewer that unhappiness is in the world, might be
preventible by God, is not prevented by God for certain
good reasons. We further agree in believing that God’s
good reasons will continue to act in the next world as
in this. We accept this life with its present share of
unhappiness only and entirely on the ground that God
is working by this means, amongst others, to certain
ends, of which the chief is that every man under pre
sent discipline shall be made good at last. We do not
rebel against the suffering—nay, we would not wish
one iota of it diminished, if thereby God’s good pur
poses should risk a failure. ; We believe in Him, and
therefore we are willing to bear what He appoints.
We trust Him implicitly, and therefore are willing to
wait, in perfect confidence, in sure and certain hope.
But the Reviewer, to whom I should be sorry to
attribute, even by mistake, any opinions which are not
his, seems evidently to think his closing sentence in
the above paragraph a triumphant argument for the
endless torment in which he believes.
�On Moral Evil.
*9
The fallacy lies in his not distinguishing between
the abstract and the concrete. “ Suffering,” I beg to
remind him, implies a sufferer, or sufferers. Now, it
does make all the difference to Divine goodness
whether a human being suffers for a time, with a
view to his final good, or suffers for all eternity.
This “suffering” which exists in the universe is a
state into which multitudes of individuals are being
born, and out of which they are constantly passing.
The suffering may only be correctly described as
eternal as regards its permanence as a system, and
the unbroken succession of individuals subjected to it
(supposing that this present state of human life is to
continue on the earth for ever). But as regards the
beings who suffer, it is not only not eternal, but tem
porary; as compared with a millennium, even very
temporary, and as compared with eternity, in the lan
guage of the apostle, “ it is but for a moment.”
Were it not temporary, and inflicted for a purpose
beneficent to the sufferer, suffering would be really
incompatible with the Divine goodness; but this just
makes all the difference. The orthodox man believes
in the endless suffering of some human beings whom
God has created, who were actually born morally
weak, and who were perhaps so trained and circum
stanced that moral improvement was hardly possible
to them at all; or, to speak in more orthodox terms,
they “rejected the Saviour,” because they had not
that “faith” which the New Testament affirms “is
not of ourselves, but is the gift of God.”
To remain for ever and ever wicked and unhappy,
incurable by God, even if He had the will to redeem
and reform the poor sinner, would be a standing wit
ness of the triumph of evil over good, of the defeat of
Him whom the very orthodox call “Almighty.”
No ! the existence of suffering in the world, when
once understood, is not incompatible with the Divine
goodness, but rather one of its strongest proofs, lout
�30
On Moral Evil.
only when understood. As a means to an end, as in
flicted for a time on each individual, in order to secure
his everlasting good, it is a mark of God’s fatherlylove for us all; but without this condition it would
convey to us, an irresistible evidence that we were
the sport of a fiend, or the victims of the most gigan
tic blunder.
The Reviewer, of course, after what he hadTsaid,
could not help falling into the error of supposing that
morality would be weakened by the final prospect of
universal happiness. Taught as we teach it, the doc
trine of final good for all can only tend to strengthen
our moral sense ; and to hasten, not to retard, amend
ment. Our belief is, not that God intends us all to
be indiscriminately 1 happy,’ but that He intends to
make us all good, to make us not only obedient to
His will, but to love it, and be drawn towards it by
impulses from within corresponding to His laws with
out. That is our summurn bonum, the only fruition
of our earthly trials for which we have any right to
look to our Creator, and that of itself teaches the
supreme importance of losing no time in beginning,
and relaxing no effort in continuing, the great work
of our moral progress. I cannot do better than re
mind the Reviewer and his readers of the “ Bock,” of
these apostolic words which on this subject express
the mind of the theist so forcibly : “ Work out your
own .salvation, for it is God who is working in you, both to
will and to do of His good pleasure.”
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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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>
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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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On moral evil: a letter from a friend
Creator
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Voysey, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 30 p. ; 18 p.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. The letter, published anonymously, is written to Thomas Scott. The author attribution of Charles Voysey taken from Scott's publications list at the end of item catalogued in Conway Tracts 32, no. 13. Date of publication from British Library catalogue.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[187-?]
Identifier
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G5472
Subject
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Ethics
Evil
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 (On moral evil: a letter from a friend), 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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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Good and Evil
Morality
-
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9520394cdd0bcc750d6c6146bc6ef50f
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Text
REFORM IN BURIAL RITES.
LETTER
BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
IN THE “INDEX,” Aran. 12, 1873.
Editor of the Index,
Sib,—'Without waiting to know the effect upon your
readers of my last letter about Euthanasia, I proceed to give
them another violent shock.
From my past experience of human kind, I feel convinced
that it is much more difficult to effect a change in their social
customs than in their ethics. In every country the births,
marriages, and deaths are attended by certain social rites which
are more imperious than any demands of conscience, and it
would be easier far to relax or to tighten the restraints of
morality than to alter one of the social ceremonies. I half
expect then that, for every one whom I may have startled by
my last letter, there will be a score to be horrified by what I
am going to say in this.
I wish to revolutionize our funeral rites. I want to abolish
the burial of the dead, and the wearing of •‘mourning.”
If the reader should lose his breath here, let me pause for a
moment and tell him that my object originates in pure pity. I
desire to relieve mankind of a great and needless burden; to
remove some of the greatest aggravations to which we have
foolishly submitted in times of our deepest grief; and to insti
tute customs which will be an unspeakable relief to the poor.
My objections to the present system of interment, with its
distressing paraphernalia of Under takerism, are as follows :—
To
the
�The first and least important objection is that it is needlessly
expensive and an undoubted hardship on the poor. Second,
that it is sooner or later a source of great injury to the public
health. Third, that our cemeteries occupy a vast amount of
space which could be more profitably filled. Fourth,—and this
I reckon to be the chief of all objections,—it is a needless and
' cruel aggravation of our physical and mental pain in bereave
ment, to witness the process of interment.
There may be some persons whose feelings are not harrowed
by this sight; but I can speak for myself and for thousands of
persons of equally sensitive nerves and strong imagination, that
it is positive torture to witness the burial of the body of a very
near and dear relative. The outward form which we have loved
and caressed we place in a coffin, close fitting to the outline of
a human body (a coffin is in itself a melancholy object, quite
apart from its associations); and this gloomy case, containing
our beloved dead, we follow to the dark vault or deep grave,
into which it is lowered amid choking sobs and a dead weight
at our hearts. We leave the loved object at the bottom of a
cold, dark pit, in which we picture to ourselves, for months and
years afterwards, all the foul and revolting processes of chemical
decay, our thoughts being positively scourged by this haunting
picture. It is bad enough to lose our friends and to miss them
• day by day ; but it is a monstrous aggravation of our physical
pain in losing them, to be tortured by such visions, such
memories.
Now what I would propose is this. As soon as death is per
fectly assured,—after such an interval as would render it
impossible for a medical man to doubt that death had ensued,—
the body should be chemically destroyed. It should be placed in
some receptacle containing those powerful agents known to
chemical science, which would simply annihilate the outward
forip. and practically destroy it. There would necessarily be
some deposit, which one might call the “ashes” of the dead;
and these might be reverently gathered and placed in a beauti
ful urn or vase, to be disposed of according to the wishes of the
.survivors. They might easily be deposited in consecrated places,
in niches in the walls of churches, or in mortuary chapels
designed for their reception. This, too, might be accompanied
by a religious service ; so that. the religious element is left
untouched by my revolutionary proposal.
The advantage of all this to people of highly-wrought feel
ings would be immense. I can imagine the peaceful calm which
would steal over the mind when one could take reverently into
�3
one’s hands the sacred urn and say, “ This holds all that remains
of my beloved.” No horror of dark vaults and damp graves,
with their seething corruption. No precious body being eaten
piecemeal by worms of the earth, or melting away in a loath• some stream. The form is changed; the substance really
remaining after chemical burning is not in the least degree sug
gestive of the past or the future. The body is saved thereby
from every possible dishonour, purified from every decay. No
words can describe the relief which such a process would bring
to many and many an afflicted soul.
On the ground of health to the community, it would also
be most salutary. We little know, in England at least, what
mischief is brewing for us in our seething cemeteries. They
are getting fuller and fuller, at the rate of I know not how
many hundreds of corpses a day, the later ones being nearer
and nearer the surface. Many are within four feet of the turf,
and that is not enough to prevent the escape of the most foul
and pestilential gases. I know of one old cemetery which is
now occupied by a cooperage, and which is constantly wet
with stagnant water. All around it typhus fever is perpetually
raging. The danger would not be so great if the bodies were
buried without a coffin. The earth would sooner disinfect
them; but as it is, the mischief is nursed and multiplied a
hundred-fold by the process of decay being delayed.
It is quite possible that an outcry might be made on the plea
of my scheme being impracticable. I can only say that our
Undertakers might take this' subject into their consideration,
* and see whether they could not furnish all that was necessary,
and conduct the business of destroying the body with decency
and skill. Science will not fail to furnish the best chemi cal
agents for performing this service speedily and inoffensively.
I should not have touched on the question of economy but
for my sad experience amongst the poor. The most ordinary
burial costs them five pounds; that is a fearful sum for a really
poor family to contribute, and that often after heavy medical
expenses. Whereas my plan ought to be quite within the cost
of a fifth of that sum, let it be done in the best manner
possible.
As for the rites of burial in themselves, no wise man would
care what became of his own dead body, so long as it was not
left to be an injury to the living. I should not mind being sent
to the dissecting room, or to the kennels. But the rites of
burial assume a very important aspect in the interests of the
surviving relatives and friends. And for their sakes I plead
�4
that those rites may be made as little harrowing as possible ;
may conduce as much as possible to console and cheer them, and
leave no artificially cruel memories and associations behind
them. It is on this ground that I object to the barbarous prac
tice of‘ ‘Christian” burial and would do my utmost to revolutionize
our customs in this matter, and introduce -a refined method of
burning instead. Christianity is deeply to blame for aggrava
ting our fear of death, and for aggravating our grief when
death visits our homes. It is time that we turned such a reli
gion out of doors; not only expelling it from our hearts and
minds, but driving out its offensive and oppressive customs,—thus
claiming the privileges of consolation under bereavement,
which are ours by nature.
In another letter I must write a word or two on the subj ect
of wearing 11 mourning.’’
I am very sincerely yours,
Charles Voysey.
Camden House,
Dulwich, S.E., March 14, 1873.
P. S. I have mentioned the subject to some of my most
admired and cultivated friends, and I never met yet with a
disc ouraging remark from them. All we want is for some brave
family to set the example.
The Index is published weekly in Toledo, Ohio.
Wertheimer, Lea and Co., Printers, Finsbury Circus, London.
�
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Title
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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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
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Reform in burial rites: letter by Rev. Charles Voysey
Creator
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Voysey, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 9 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Wertheimer, Lea and Co., Finsbury Circus, London. Reprinted from The Index, April 12 1873. The Index is published weekly in Toledo, Ohio.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1873
Identifier
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G5527
Subject
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Death
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 (Reform in burial rites: letter by Rev. Charles Voysey), 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
Burial
Conway Tracts
Funeral Rites and Ceremonies
-
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d4d97a6a7f1e1d50f9fd42fe59f2dd8f
PDF Text
Text
THE
No. 25.] LANGHAM HALL PULPIT.
[june30,i878
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SZEZRGXZEOIT
PREACHED AT THE LANGHAM HALL, JUNE 23rd, 1878, BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEYV
1 Cor. xiv. 8.—“ If the trumpet give an uncertain sound,
who shall prepare himselffor the battle ? ”
A Conference was held at South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
on the 13 th and 14th inst. convened by means of the following
circular.
a,
Pt.ACJ CHAPEL,
*
11 South Place, Finsbury,
London, E.C.
The Minister and Committee of the Religious Society meeting at South Place
solicit your attendance at a General Conference of Liberal Thinkers, to be held
here on June 13th and 14th, 1878, from 12 to 5 p.m. each day, for the discussion of
matters pertaining to the religious needs of our time, and the methods of meeting
them.
In assuming the initiative in this matter, our Society has no disposition to
commit anyone who may accept this invitation to any opinions held by its minister
or members. It is actuated by a desire to promote the unsectarian and liberal
religion of the age, now too much impeded by isolation and by misunderstandings
among those really devoted to common aims, and to utilise its building and organiza
tion for that purpose.
At the proposed Conference it is hoped that persons may be gathered who,
though working in connection with particular organizations, yet acknowledge no
authority above Truth, and are interested in the tendency to that universal religion
which would break down all partition walls raised by dogma and superstition between
race and race, man and man.
It is believed that light and strength may be gained for each and all by earnest
and frank consultation concerning such subjects as the relation of liberal thinkers
S0UTI1
Rev. C. Voysey’s sermons are to be obtained at Langham Hall,
43 Great Portland Street, every Sunday Morning, orfrom the Author
(by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.H.
Price one penny.
�2
to the sectarian divisions of the world; their duties of negation and affirmation, and
the practical methods of advancing their principles.
The proposed meeting will he informal in its constitution, no regular represen
tation being at present in view, the assembly being thus left free to adopt any prac
tical course for the future that shall appear desirable.
A careful report of the proceedings will be printed.
Your reply, whieh it is hoped will be favourable, together with the names and
addresses of such persons as you believe would be interested in the proposed Con
ference, may be sent to Mr. MONCURE D. CONWAY, Hamlet House, Hammer
smith, London, W.
I will ask any candid religious person what possible objection
he could make to the terms of this circular. Indeed, I will go
further, and say, that it reflects great credit on those who drew
it up, and that, had the programme but been adhered to, few
conferences could have been more timely or more useful. The
wonder is that there was not a rush of earnest religious men
from every Church and Sect in the kingdom to bear their part
in discussing the religious needs of our time, and the methods
of meeting them. The archbishops and bishops in their
palaces, the deans and dignitaries of the Church, clergy of all
shades of opinion, ministers of religion among the Noncon
formists, active influential laymen, peers of the realm, mem
bers of Council and Legislature, philanthropists of every
school—in short, all men and women who are above frivolity,
and whose lives are occupied in useful work, might well have
been expected to be drawn together by such an invitation, by
such an admirable project. The object was exalted, it was set
forth in plain terms, free
office; and, lest any should
be deterred by a knowledge of the traditions or present charac
teristics of the place of assembly, the promoters wisely and
laudably stated in their circular that they had no desire to
commit any of the attendants of the Conference to their own
particular views.
Speaking for myself, it disarmed all opposition, and I was
ready at once to throw myself into the scheme, and to con
tribute, to the best of my power, to the deliberations of the
assembly. Looking round at the various schools of religious
thought, I could not but feel that the proposed object of the
Conference belonged even more to us than to any other asso
ciation. Our work was inaugurated, and has been manfully
maintained for no other purpose in the world than to study the
religious needs of our time, and to endeavour to meet them.
The very defects of our work are in one sense its merits. We
have aimed at providing a path easy and pleasant for those
who were weary and footsore in their search after reasonable
religion. We have tried to make the transition from old to
new as gentle and safe as was consistent with strict integrity.
�We have thrown away nothing that we could conscientiously
retain; we have retained nothing that we could not conscien
tiously use. We have added nothing that did not give promise
of being a grateful substitute for cast-off forms. It is not
perfect; it is purposely left open to correction and improve
ment, to suit our spiritual growth and the new needs of a
coming time. But from first to last it is an effort to recog
nize the religious needs actually before our eyes, and to meet
them with a reasonable satisfaction. A Conference professing
to be an interchange of thought on such a theme between
really religious people could not fail to be an attraction for us;
and again I say the proposal deserved our high appreciation
and our genuine thanks.
But the promise so fair, so fascinating, was only made to be
broken. The expectations raised by it were doomed to disap
pointment. Compared with the terms of the circular by which
the Conference was summoned the meeting was a signal failure.
In the first place we heard little or nothing of the “ religious
needs of our time,” and a great deal of downright, and some
vulgar, Atheism; one of the speakers going so far as to wish
to expunge the very name of religion from the face of the
earth. Allusions were also made to recent prosecutions for
illegal publications and were designated as “tyrannous.”
Women’s rights [which in one place and on some lips is a
term signifying all that is just and good and pure, and in
another place and on otherIip£^plies just the opposite] were
imported into the discussion; and when we Remember what
this phrase is associated with in America, we cannot but fear
that the reference to it in connexion with these prosecution s
was as dangerous to morals as to religion.
Speeches of this
tendency were not checked, but greeted with vociferous ap
plause. Very soon it became manifest that the main object
of the Conference as stated in the circular was ignored or
forgotten, and superseded by an entirely new one. This was
the formation of an association of all “Liberal thinkers ” for
their protection against the social and other consequences of
Their free thought. It was proposed to swamp all differences
between Atheists and Theists, and to unite for political and
social aims. In short the Conference wished to drop religion
altogether out of its programme, or to treat Faith in God as
a matter of perfect indifference or of curiosity, and only to
be tolerated in any members of the Association, so long as
they kept it out of sight and did not obtrude it upon the notice
of the body corporate.
�4
Considering the position I occupy, and the work which by
your faithful exertions I have been enabled to carry on for
so many years, I could not but think that such an assembly
was the very last place in which I ought to be seen.
I
formally withdrew from it on the ground of my objection to
certain speeches, and the evident favour with which they were
received.
If Liberal thinkers, as they call themselves, hold, to any
appreciable extent, atheism in religion, radicalism in politics
and socialism in morals, they are of course at liberty to make
any alliance they please, and for any object that may take
their fancy; but it is monstrous to expect to be joined by
those to whom atheism is a distressing and dangerous evil, to
whom radicalism is utterly distasteful, and to whom socialism
is revol ting.
*
To unite such wholly discordant elements for
any purpose would be a foolish enterprise; but when it is pro
fessed that they should coalesce in order to prosecute some
end which is called “ religious,” the absurdity is too palpable
to require exposure.
No doubt every man who has devoutly thought for himself
in matters of religion is more or less averse from the orthodox
dogmas; and in this one point alone could there ever be found
a meeting-place or common ground for the Theist and Atheist.
It was thought by some speakers at the Conference that this
would be sufficiently wide to^admit nf organised co-operation
between the two; but I venture to think that it could not be
made available without the entire submission and suppression
of religious belief, and the consequent dominance of Atheism.
There is a vast number of Theists, who, like myself, feel that
notwithstanding all our repugnance to orthodoxy and our de
sire to sweep it away, we are nearer in our sympathies to the
Orthodox than we are to the Athejst—at least such types as
were heard at the Conference. If in fact it were deemed de
sirable to organise a league to destroy any objectionable form
of thought, it would be more natural, and I think more wise,
for TheistB to join with the orthodox against Atheism than
• The term radicalism, I think, is somewhat ambiguous. Some may call them
selves “ radicals,” who do not hold what I here mean by radicalism. It is the
extreme of opposition to the constitution and aristocratic institutions of the country.
It seeks revolution, and only waits its opportunity to overthrow existing authority.
It avails itself of every chance to vilify and endeavour to bring into contempt es
tablished law, and desires nothing so much as a commune. But in objecting to it,
I do not forget that this kind of radicalism is not confined to socialist agitators and
low prints, but is exhibited in one of its aspects by that section of the clergy who
band together to set the law of England at defiance, and to pour contempt on our
Highest Courts of Justice,
�5
for Theists to join with the Atheists to put down orthodoxy.
But I question the advantage of such organizations at all. I
believe that the determined resistance offered by the power
ful, the influential and the lovers of order in our middle classes,
to the very beginning of free thought in religion, is due
entirely to the dread as to where it may lead. In religion,
they say, it may land us in utter Atheism; in politics it may
end in radicalism and revolution; in social morals to their
corruption and decay.—The dread of these evils has not only
kept back many excellent and generous-minded persons from
daring to think at all independently on religion ; but is now
keeping away from our side many who are quite convinced of
the superiority of our beliefs over those of orthodoxy, and who
would not scruple to come forward and help us boldly, if they
were quite sure that there was no danger of any of those evils,
and that they would run no risk of being mixed up with that
class of “ Liberal thinkers.”
If such an alliance as was proposed at the Conference were
to be entered into between Theists and such Atheists, it would
entirely frustrate the end in view, viz., the dissolution of or
thodoxy. . In my opinion, even if our feeling and taste
permitted it, such an alliance would have the effect of making
orthodoxy stronger than ever, of consolidating its loose and
crumbling walls, and of firing its defenders with a fresh
enthusiasm in its defence. / Jhey would feel not only that
their religion was in danger, but their social and moral peace
was threatened too; and the struggle which would then be
really undertaken on behalf of the common welfare of society
would give new security and new life to the dogmas which had
been attacked. Not by elements such as made themselves
manifest at South Place will orthodoxy ever be dethroned.
Free thought in religion was not the only or the chief object
sought by some of the promoters of this alliance. Free thought
means on their lips much more than that; and it is this arriere
pensee which lovers of order really dislike even more than they
dread Atheism.
The Conference will have done good, however, if it should
prove to have led to a better and more accurate discernment
of our own work and objects; if it should lead to the correc
tion of those misunderstandings and misrepresentations where
by we suffer from undeserved suspicions and lose the help of
those#whose sympathies we have already gained. We let it be
known then, once for all, that our sole purpose is a religious
one; that our quarrel with orthodoxy is not that it is too reli
�6
gious, but not religious enough ; that we want to elevate and
strengthen faith in the Living God and not to knock it down
and trample on it; that we aim at the preservation of social
order and of all domestic virtues, to deepen the respect of man
to man and not to sow the seeds of class-hatred and party
strife ; to seek after all new truth wherever it may be found;
but always to regard our treasure as a precious trust for the
benefit of mankind. The Atheistical party at South Place,
were apt to wind up their speeches by some brilliant appeal
on behalf of humanity. Let them not forget that our belief
in God adds to the sentiment the highest sanction and man
date of conscience, and that we are not one whit behind them
in desiring and seeking to release mankind from its burdens.
Let them and ourselves also remember that the best and
highest of philanthropists are still religious men, orthodox
Christians or orthodox Jews, and believers in God, and that it
is really an affectation on their part or on ours, if they or we
pretend to be setting up an altogether fresh standard of
human brotherly love. No doubt orthodox people need deli
verance from some bondage—such as we call superstition,
sacerdotalism, and spiritual fear. But do we not also need
deliverance from our own class of prejudices, bigotry and
intolerance, and much irrepressible conceit of which Atheism
is the most prolific mother ? If we wish to uproot the errors
of orthodox people we must show them some better and higher
truths in their place. If we wish to give them better spiritual
food, we must provide a real banquet for their hungering
and thirsting souls, and not make them sit down before empty
tables. It is hard enough for the most joyous and enlightened
believer to gain a hearing for his higher truth about God and
human destiny from orthodox people; how then can they be
expected to listen to those who not only deny God’s existence
altogether, but trample on His holy name in jubilant
blasphemy ?
We must, however, record our deep regret that that kind of
Atheism or Agnosticism (which is so often forced upon the
wearied and baffled mind rather than sought by the rebellious
and proud spirit) should be exposed to social disabilities. Too
often, men cannot help their convictions, especially in matters
of religion. No honest convictions should ever be visited with
punishment, not even with disrespect. On this ground I would
never have raised my voice against unbelievers, of whom I have
always spoken respectfully. But it is quite another matter
when an alliance is offered for our acceptance, by which our
�7
whole position and work would be compromised. Then is the
time when a protest may fairly be made; and the line drawn
in conspicuous colour between that party and ourselves; so
that no one may have the shadow of an excuse for suspecting
us of sympathies from which we utterly revolt. It is the
common right of all to make known our own individual posi
tions, our beliefs, our denials, our aims, social, or political or
religious; and therefore I felt bound to repudiate, with what
emphasis I could summon, all complicity with the opinions,
sympathies, and purposes expressed by the majority at the
South Place Conference of Liberal Thinkers.
I feel it also my duty to express profound regret that the
word “ religion ” has found a place in the list of the Rules of
the Association. It will mislead thousands, it has misled
some already. If the new Association care for what is generally
understood by religion, by all means let them adopt the right
name for it; but if in one breath they vilify and ridicule
religion, or give definitions of it, carefully excluding not only
the name but all idea of God, and then say that the promotion
of religion is one of their chief objects, then I deliberately
accuse them of making a fraudulent use of words—for what
purpose I do not assign—but nevertheless a wilful perversion
of a word which to 99 out of every 100 persons has a meaning
diametrically opposed to the meaning it has on the lips of the
Association.
r' '
I bear them no ill-will. I can but regret that men are so
divided as we are and must be in our present state of partial
knowledge. I am sorry that I have had to protest against
their proceedings, and to decline an alliance with them. But
I should have been far more full of regret and even of shame
had I left it uncertain whether I approved of their scheme or
not; had I left a single loop-hole for the accusation that my
sympathies were enlisted on their side.
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Dublin Core
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Title
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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
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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Theism neither radicalism, socialism, nor atheism: a sermon preached at the Langham Hall, June 23rd, 1878
Creator
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Voysey, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 7 p. ; 23 cm.
Series: Langham Hall Pulpit
Series No.: 25
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The Langham Hall Pulpit, June 30, 1878. Printed by Upfield Green, Moorgate Street, E.C.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1878
Identifier
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G5588
Subject
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Theism
Atheism
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 (Theism neither radicalism, socialism, nor atheism: a sermon preached at the Langham Hall, June 23rd, 1878), 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
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Atheism
Conway Tracts
Radicalism
Theism