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erne
/
THE CUSTOM OF WEARING
“ MOURNING.”
TO THE EDITOR OF “ THE INDEX.”
Sir,
I will follow up my last letter on Funeral Rites by a few
remarks on the custom of wearing black as a sign of mourning
for the dead.
The most obvious objections to it are—that it adds unneces
sarily to the gloom and dejection already caused by bereave
ment, where grief really exists ; that where there is no real
grief, the putting on of signs of grief is a contemptible sham;
that the custom of wearing “mourning” tends greatly to per
petuate unhappy—and, as I conceive, false—views of death;
and it is also objectionable in being compulsory upon many
families who are too poor to bear the expense. I will say
something upon each of these objections.
1. That it adds needlessly to the gloom and dejection of really
afflicted relatives must be apparent to all who have ever taken
part in these miserable rites. The houses are generally closed
until the burial is over, and this of itself is a glaring instance of
self-inflicted torture. When the physical frame is already
weakened by long watchings, want of sleep, and floods of tears,
common sense would direct the sufferers to seek the refreshing
stimulants of air and sunshine ; to throw open doors and win
dows and let in God’s heavenly messengers of “sweetness and
light;” to endeavour to turn the thoughts as much as possible
away from the troubled past, and to relieve the dull pain at the
�2
heart by objects and occupations of cheerfulness; to avoid a
darkened chamber, or a black dress, as one would avoid the
devil—if there were any such “ enemy of mankind.” But no
sooner is the breath gone from the body of one of the household,
than all the blinds are drawn down and the shutters closed, and
a fearful race against time is begun with the horrid prepara
tions for “mourning.” Dressmakers are in demand, the anxieties
of economical shopping are multiplied, often at the very time
when every penny is needed for coming wants or for past
doctor’s bills. And all is black—crape—jet ; everything
hideously black, the blackness only deepened by the white cap
or white edging in which it is set. A poor widow, for instance,
must shudder afresh over all the realities of her woe, the first
time she looks in the mirror after having put on the hateful
garb. Her sorrow was surely enough without her being com
pelled to bear about on her own body its ghastly tokens.
At the funeral, this is made worse still by “mourning coaches,”
and that most repulsive thing that moves on earth—the hearse
—with its plumes of black stuck all over it, waving and nodding
like so many fiends mocking at your grief as they are carrying off
their prey. Long and costly hatbands of crape and silk, dozens
of costly black gloves which seldom fit, cloaks of the same
eternal, infernal black—all contrived to make you feel as
miserable and wretched as possible, while the woe at your heart
is almost unendurable! Why should we be reminded for months
afterwards, by outward tokens, of our sad loss ? Every time we
brush the little ring of hat left us by the undertaker, we are
carried back to that terrible day on which the crape or cloth was
first put on, and the very things we ought to try to forget are
forced upon our notice at every turn in our lives.
2. But when, as is often the case, there is no real grief, but
perhaps a good deal of real rejoicing over the death, the putting
on of “mourning” is a piece of hypocrisy and falsehood which
nothing can justify. No one will contend that “ mourning ’ is
anything but a sign of grief; therefore if the sign be assumed
when there is no grief, it is an acted lie, and helps to corrupt
�3
society and make it love shams and pretences and varnished
deceit. I greatly honour those really broken-hearted widows
who keep their “ mourning” on all their days, for it is with
them a true token, an outward and visible sign of an inward
and heartfelt grief which must abide with them through all
their weary pilgrimage ; but I utterly despise the custom of
putting on 11 mourning” because it is the fashion, and because
“ people would talk so, you know,” if the “ mourning” were to
be omitted. As a sign of grief, ‘ ‘ mourning ” would often be
much more suitable before the death than after it, inasmuch as
the grief of watching a beloved one pass through weeks and
weeks of physical torture, with the certainty of no recovery, far
exceeds the grief of bereavement. It is only a truism to say
that death is often the greatest possible relief to the poor sufferer
himself, and to the sorrowing relatives. The number of cases
in which the grief before far exceeds the grief after death, is
much larger than is generally supposed.
3. I come now to the last and perhaps most important objec
tion of all. “ Mourning” tends to perpetuate unhappy and
1
false views of death. To those who have no belief in immor
tality and re-union with our dear ones after death, it might
f
seem only natural to give oneself up to despair and to all its
fl E horrible outward signs.
But to those who profess to believe,
Efci
and who really do believe, that the dead are still living in a
I'M happier world, free from earthly pain and sorrow, it ought to
be quite natural to rejoice and give thanks “ that it hath pleased
A
Almighty God to take unto himself the soul of the departed,
a» and to deliver him from the miseries of a sinful world,”—to
quote from the Christian Burial Service. Death ought to
ed be looked upon as at least as much of a heavenly boon to the be
fol loved one, as a source of bitter pain to ourselves. But that pain
raff! itself would be greatly diminished if we were trained to think
■aol of death as we are trained to talk about it; if we were brought
nJ
up to feel that it is a manifest and real benefit, and however
£Ij1 distressing to survivors, is not to be regarded from its dark
side. By refusing to darken our homes and to gird ourselves in
�4
black raiment, we would make our protest against the melan
choly—the unmitigated melancholy—of the popular views of
death. We would shake off as much as we could that morbid
weeping and sighing which are so destructive to health and
enfeebling to the mind. We would let the world know that how
ever great our loss, however irreparable it might be on earth,
we still trusted in the loving kindness of God, and unselfishly
resigned into His hands the soul of our nearest and dearest,
believing that He can and will, as a faithful Creator, give us a
happy meeting in a brighter home above.
I have myself resolved never to put on “ mourning ” again—
not even for my children or my wife ; and I will do my best to
persuade others to get rid of this most cruel and oppressive
burden. (In the case of a public “mourning,” I would make
an exception ; but this would be altogether on different grounds,
and would be worn for the sake of strangers who know not my
private opinions.) One thing seems very clear; it is our
bounden duty to'mitigate and remove all the grief we possibly
can. We have no right to add to our natural distress by
artificial means, nor to bemoan any loss longer than we can
possibly help. If we believed in God and in His fidelity more,
we should be the better assured of our meeting again beyond
the tomb.
I am, Sir,
Yours very sincerely,
Charles Voysey.
Dulwich, S.E., March 31s^, 1873.
Wertheimer, Lea & Co,, Printers, Circus Place, Finsbury.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The custom of wearing "mourning"
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 4 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: A letter to the Editor of "The Index". From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Wertheimer, Lea & Co,., London.
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Thomas Scott
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1873
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CT116
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The custom of wearing "mourning"), 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
Subject
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Death
Mourning
Conway Tracts
Death
Funeral Rites and Ceremonies
Mourning
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“ATHEIS M.”
I.
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
JANUARY 12th, 1873, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
From the Eastern Post, January Y&th, 1873.
On Sunday'(Jan. 12th) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C. Voysey
took his text from Ephesians ii., 12., “ Having no hope and without
God in the world.”
I was speaking last Sunday of our special mission to the
Orthodox Christians, and how it lies in our power to liberate them
from their present position of doubt and dissatisfaction, by winning
them over to our more rational, simple, and consoling belief in God.
But we have another high duty to perform, another mission to
fulfil. There are around us on every hand, almost in every home,
men who are practically Athiests, who ■without actually denying,
in open speech, that there is a God, yet are totally indifferent to
the subject, and care nothing at all whether there be a God or not.
Some of these have joined the school of thinkers who look upon
one question at least as definitively settled; who, at all events, have
satisfied themselves that if there be a God it is impossible for man
to know anything about him ; and who, therefore think it is a
waste of time, energy, and thought to pursue any enquiry into
things Divine. I believe that by far the largest number of
Atheists are men of this school, and the obvious causes of. their
Atheism may be found in the wide-spread diversity of religious
opinion, which shows that even those who believe m a God cannot
agree among themselves as to his nature, or attributes, or dealings
with mankind'; and also in the entire failure of Christianity to
present us with a religious belief in harmony with the Reason, the
Conscience, and the Affections of man,
�The breaking up of their old belief has landed them in a waste
howling wilderness. They have nothing in exchange for what they
have lost, They are “ Without hope and without God in the world. ”
Now it is a fact which I never contemplate without the deepest
delight, that there are some amongst us, some even of our most
devoted friends and supporters, who were for a time Atheists, and
whose hearts were clouded over by utter infidelity, but who
recovered for themselves the blessed solace of a firm faith in a good
God, and whose religious instincts have found new life and fresh
occupation.
Years and years ago many of us must have foreseen what one
of the immediate consequences of the downfall of Orthodoxy
would surely be, viz. : “ The temporary but total eclipse of faith
in the hearts of thousands.” Francis W. Newman, foreseeing this,
prefaced all his work of destruction by sending forth his book
entitled, “The Soul; Her Sorrows and Aspirations,” which was, in
reality, an “ Essay on the Positive Foundations of Practical
Religion.” And his instinctive desire to furnish a. foundation for
true faith in place of the old one, which he was about to remove,
has been shared by other great reformers in this age. In the
works of Theodore Parker and of Francis Power Cobbe, and even
in the purely critical works of Bishop Colenso, the same desire to
establish a pure and true faith is everywhere manifested. The
spirit which has animated the movement with which we are
specially connected is essentially the same, and no libel could be
more unjust than to say we only want to pull down errors and
have nothing to put in their place.
I conceive it to be, then, a very important part of our work to
endeavour to stop the further progress of that Atheism -which
threatens to become so popular, and to win back the poor
wandering souls who have no Divine shepherd to feed, to guide, and
to defend them.
But before we can undertake such an important task we must
carefully consider how it is best to set about it. There are always
two or more ways of doing everything, and we may do more harm
than good if we adopt the wrong method.
Experience of certain wrong methods will furnish us with
one or two excellent cautions -which I will now briefly touch
upon.
�o
1. It was the custom for religious people to approach the un
believing and the hetrodox with an air of superiority; to treat
them as if they were wicked, or, at least, greatly to blame for their
unbelief or their heresy. Now, if we would do any good, if we
wish to be true to our own principles, we must forswear such a
grave mistake as that. The Atheist is, for the most part, on a level
with ourselves, morally and intellectually, not unfrequently our
superior in what is noblest in man. He, at least, has made the
greatest sacrifice which a human heart could make for the sake of
Truth. In his loyalty to what he believed to be true he gave up
all the bright possibilities of a believer’s joy, and abandoned all
hope of a life to come.
We cannot, without folly, as well as impertinence, lecture such a
man as a missionary lectures his idolatrous savage. We cannot,
without indecency, approach such a man with our patronage and
address him with a lofty commiseration.
'lire best attitude we can wear is that which most truly accords
with our inmost humility as seekers after truth. What are we
ourselves but learners 1 We may be very sure that the highest
truth we clasp to day with fond and grateful emotion will one
day have to give place to a truth far higher still, and we may be
sure that if we are ever so much nearei’ to the truth than the
Atheist is, we must have some admixture of error. So if we betake
ourselves to the Atheist it must be to hear and to learn quite as
much as to speak and to teach.
Even granting that the truth is on our side, we may be very
sure that he has some truth to tell, some correction of error to
impart which is of priceless value. Let us argue with him (and
argument means fair play on both sides), and not dictate to him.
Let us remember that our dogmatising is just as unwelcome and
useless to him as his dogmatism is to us. We must not be afraid
to argue even -with the Atheist; for an opinion or belief that will
not bear hard reasoning is in a rapid decline and will soon have to
be buried. If our Faith be true, it will out-match all falsehood.
If our belief in God be worth anything it will be armour-proof
against the most subtle denials. So dearly, so intensely, do we love
truth, that we would give up God Himself if God were a lie, and
we would hug our own despair rather than be the dupes of a fake
hope. Let the Atheist see, then, that we arc quite as much in
�4
earnest as lie is; quite as desirous of learning from him, as that he
should learn from us. Such respect given can only win respect in
turn. It is painfully true that many Atheists are the most vain
and conceited of men—quite as pharisaical as the old chief priests
and scribes down in Judea—quite as scornful in their pity of us
“ blind believers ” as we have ever been towards them. But what
has made them so ? And who is to blame for it ? Why, the
scornful attitude of religious society during the last hundred years.
Voltaire, Tom Paine, and the long list of their successors,
though falsely called Atheists, were considered by Christians as
the offscouring of the world, and a disgrace to mankind, not for
blemishes in their lives, but for heresy in their opinions ; and the
real Atheist, in the present day, is, by religious people, looked
down upon as contemptible, or dreaded as dangerous. It is,
therefore, the fault of believers if Atheists have grown vain and
conceited. False blame always tends to exaggerate the sense of
our own importance, while merited praise tends to remind us of
our shortcomings. If possible, we must change this state of
irrational hostility, and drive out the pharisaism of Atheism, by
first expelling the pharisaism of Belief. Mutual respect is the
key to mutual understanding, and, without that, discussion and
argument are vain.
(2) Another caution I would mention is that against supposing
that modern Atheism is necessarily connected with domestic im
morality or social anarchy. I would not, myself, dare to prognos
ticate the results were the belief in God entirely to fade out of
the hearts of our nation. There might be, for a time, a most fear
ful insurrection of men and women against the moral laws by which
Society is bound together ; but it is impossible to say with accuracy
what would be the result, because men and women are so illogical.
Believing, as I do, in God, and assured, as I am, by the past history
of our race thatwe are ever going forwards, I should expect that God
would provide in the future, as he has ever done in the past, for
the moral government of his children. At all events, so far, the
modern A theist is no ruffianly breaker of laws, or violator of the
sanctity of human rights. Some of them, indeed, are among the
world’s most righteous men, most fond and affectionate husbands
and fathers, most true and generous friends of mankind. Most of
them are lovers of order as well as of freedom, and “ use their
�5
liberty ” as if they believed themselves to be the servants of God.”
It will not do, then, to make the mistake of assuming that the
Atheist is at all our moral inferior. It is false in fact; and to go
upon that assumption is not only to insult a body of highly honour
able men, but to ruin our own work at the outset.
(3.) In the third place, we cannot be too candid in our discus
sions. It is a very common fault in theologians to shut their eyes
to unpleasant facts, and to refuse to draw obvious conclusions.
If we desire to influence reasoning men we must show our own
knowledge of the laws of the game, and use skilfully and fairly
the weapons of logic. Nothing helps sooner to confirm any one
in his own opinion than to hear it feebly assailed, or unfairly
opposed. The weapons of modern Atheism are very powerful and
finely tempered. We cannot, with a wave of the hand, or a shrug
of the shoulders, get rid of the army of unpleasant facts and
stubborn difficulties in the condition of humanity and of nature
around us, which will be arrayed against our belief. AVe must
ignore nothing, we must not gloss over a single flaw in our
reasoning, or make any leaps such as delight theological con
troversialists. The battle of argument must be fought inch by
inch, and there must be no strategem, no surprises.
(I.) As our real aim must be the discovery of the truth,
it will never do to give undue weight to the personal value
of our own convictions. That value is enormous, and of its
weight, as an argument, I shall presently speak ; but it must not
be used in its wrong place. The pleasantness of a conviction, by
itself, is no more proof of the truth of that conviction than the
pleasantness of an action is a proof that that action is right.
<•' Pleasant but false ” is quite as good a proverb as “ pleasant but
wrong.” To believe a doctrine only because it consoles, is to
confess that it has no other logical basis, and therefore is not to
be accepted by reasonable men. We must be prepared to be
utterly loyal to reason and truth, remembering that if there be no
God it is our manifest duty to ascertain and prove the fact, and
if there be a God—a God of truth and equity—it will not please
Him to deceive ourselves, or to prop up our belief by false argu
ments. If there be a God, the very Atheist commends himself to
the Divine approval whenever he is true tq himself.
For what other purpose was our Reason given us than to be
�6
supreme in all intellectual inquiries. It was surely intended to
raise us into a condition superior to all fear, and far above all
bribes. It was given to be the master of our spiritual emotions as
well as the governor of our animal passions, and we cannot,
honour God by renouncing our own Reason, or suffering ourselves
to be carried away from the stern truth, however terrible, by the
allurements of a false hppe, or by the terrors of a dismal certainty.
But, then, if truth be our chief aim, and not our own mental
enjoyment, we must gain by it in the end ; it will make our souls
more heroic ; it will prepare us the better for that clearer know
ledge of God Himself, which may await us as our reward, But if,
on the other hand, we let the Atheist see that we only believe in
God because we want to be comfortable, we put a stumbling block
in his way, and shew ourselves to be unworthy and selfish in
our aims, and no true seekers after truth. The moral effect
upon him, of such a discovery, would be quite fatal to his
conversion.
(•5) The last caution I would name is that against mistaking the exact limits of our inquiry. It must ever be borne
in mind that the Atheists and ourselves stand on the same ground
in denying that the existence of God can be demonstrated in the
same way as we demonstrate a mechanical fact or a scientific
proposition.
Time and breath would be spent in vain if the disputants were
to miss the main point of the question. We do not want to do the
impossible task of demonstrating or defining the existence of God.
We w^nt only to make it clear that the balance of probability is on
the side of Belief—that it is far more likely that 'there is a perfectly
good and capable God, in whose hands every real oi’ apparent evil
is sure to issue in final good to every conscious creature who is the
subject of that evil, than that there is no God at all; Stillmore
probable than that there is a God to whom the sufferings and
failures of his creatures is a matter of unconcern.
If we will only bear in mind that the Atheist can never prove
that there is no God ; and that we can never prove to him that
there is one, we shall more easily confine our discussion to the
balance of probalities, and that, in all conscience, is wide enough to
occupy the deepest and most laborious thought.
It is the province of Reason to examine these probabilities
�awl con; it is not the province of Reason to believe anything.
That we have, most of us, a faculty of believing in God which is
not mere credulity but a reliance of a dependant creature on the
goodwill of its Creator, is one of the facts of the universe which
it will be impossible for the Atheist to ignore ; but that faculty is
not called upon to reason about its object any more than the eye
is called upon to reason about what it sees.
We may first reason upon probabilities and thus call into exer
cise onr sense of Faith ; or we may first believe and then justify
our faith by the exercise of our Reason.
In conclusion, I will say a few. words on the immense value of
our personal convictions as to the existence of God and the hope
which they inspire. Having in the most unqualified manner
asserted that truth must stand first in our regard, that all ease and
comfort and even hope itself must be given up if they clash with
the claims of truth, I trust I shall not seem inconsistent if I say
that the joy and consolation of believing God is one of the strongest
arguments in favour of His real existence. For this joy and
consolation, this perfect peace in the present and hope for the
future, are exactly what we needed to make us to bear up under
the pains and evils of our mortal life, and to watch with submissive
hope the fearful sufferings in the world around us. The strongest
argument the Atheist has against our belief lies in the sin and
misery which abound. I do not see how men and women can
behold all this, believing it to be the work of blind Nature, and yet
preserve their reasons. To take such a view of life, as that described
in the last pages of the Martyrdom of M an, by Mr. Winwood
Reade, and to have no God in whose good purposes to confide, no
hope for a future in which present evil shall work itself out in
everlasting good, would be to darken the whole atmosphere of life
and thought, to paralyse moral energy, and never to smile again.
What conclusion could we draw from all we see and suffer, if there
is to be no beneficent issue to it all, but that we are the sport of a
malignant fiend who has not only amused himself thus at our
expense but mocked at us with false hopes and fond delusions,
creating us, indeed, unspeakably nobler than he is himself, and
worthy to put our feet upon his neck.
If there be no redress, if all these woes, and stragglings, and
sorrows, and irreparable losses are purposeless, the universe itself
�8
is cursed ; it has stultified aud degraded itself by evolving such a
creature as man, who can sit in judgment on the morality of its
course. All its starry gems, its gorgeous drapery, its siren songs,
its fascinating forms, its entrancing magic, its lustrous light and
heat all those, its enticements and allurements, testify, not to the
benevolence, but to the infinite perfidy of the whole design. They
are no better than the deadly gaze of the venomous snake, or the
treacherous blandishments of the harlot. All nature is a foul
cheat, if the aspirations of moral man are false. But I turn from
this dark picture, which is, after all, but a hideous passing dream,
to the fact that under all trials, under every degree of suffering,
physical and moral, men and women have been sustained by a
belief in a God who is filled with all the tenderest and purest
feelings of humanity without sharing any of its faults or ignor
ance. Their minds resting on God, they have not only borne
unspeakable tortures, but they have looked full and steadily in the
face of the world’s worst moral corruption, and their hearts have
told them, “ Bear it all; it will all yet turn to good. Be patient;
God’s ways are mysterious and, to our eyes, often entangled, but
good shall come at last to all. We know not how, or when, or
where. But He who made us what we are, to long only for good
—not for mere happiness but goodness—must Himself do good,
and only good. And in Him wc rejoice. Yea ! and will rejoice
with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Without God we are
without hope, and the whole world is “a blunder infinite’ and
inexcusable
but with God we can abound in hope, and the
mysterious dealings of God with us and with nature are made, not
only bearable, but even appear as steps unto Heaven for every
suffering creature. Verily, God is as real a necessity to the life of
reasoning moral men as the glorious sun to the planets around
him.
Let us not, then, forget the enormous value of this personal
experience as an argument to meet the strongest arguments on the
other side. The world is only seen to be hopelessly wretched and
base where the Light of God’s righteousness has been shut out
from the soul of man. But everywhere and in everything there
is ground for hope when the fearful shadow has been withdrawn,
and the beams of His Eternal Love burst forth upon us once more
and turn our night into day.
�A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
JANUARY 19th, 1873, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
From the Eastern Post, January 25th, 1873.
------ -c -----*
On Sunday (Jan. 19 th) at St. George’s Hall, the Roa-. C. Voysey
took his text from Psalm viii., G., “Thou rnadest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hands; thou lust put all things in
subjection under his feet.”
In undertaking a task of such magnitude and difficulty as that
of supplying reasonable grounds for belief in a Perfect God, I am
deeply conscious of the inadequacy of my own powers and know
ledge ; and it is only natural for me to approach the work with
fear and trembling lest through my feebleness or errors I should
give a new occasion for the Atheist to triumph. But while I thus
flinch, and am full of diffidence, I am unspeakably consoled and
strengthened by the fact that whatever is really true will prevail
at last, and cannot suffer permanently from the strongest opposition,
or from the feeblest support; it is also an encouragement to remember
that mine is only one poor voice out of many; that no one is pledged
or compromised by what I may say; that I speak for myself alone;
and that, should I fail in my effort, the only logical'conclusion to
be drawn from it by the Atheist is, that one man has tried with
out success to convince the unbelieving world of the reasonableness
of his faith, not that his faith is unreasonable. My failure will
not prove that Atheism is true, though it might in the eyes of
sowe persons be thought to damage Theisrri,
�2
iTow, our first step must be to describe, if possible, what we
mean by the term God. The Christian, the Theist, the Pantheist,
all use the same term, but each in a different sense. I pass over
the first, with which all of us are familiar, to notice the difference
between the Theistic and Pantheistic senses of the term God.
The Pantheist denies self-consciousness to God, while the Theist
affirms it. The Pantheist affirms, not merely the co-extension of
God with the universe, but their absolute identity • the Theist,
denying this identity, affirms that God is distinct from the universe,
however inseparably they may be united. The Theistic idea of God is
of a Being without form, without material substance, one whole and
indivisible; a Being who is self-conscious, and who possesses
intelligence, power, and love, only in a degree far more exalted
than we can comprehend or describe ; and who, therefore, exercises
will and works from design. The Theist confesses that he has no
other means of gaining a conception of God than that which is
affordedhim by the contemplation of the works of God, and
especially of His noblest work—man. Prom a contemplation of
the highest part of man’s nature, viz., his intellect, conscience, and
affection, he rises by a single step into a conception of a Being who
possesses all these faculties in their fullest perfection, without any
of the limitations of matter, time, and space.
It is in vain that an opponent hurls at us his taunts about
anthropomorphism. It cannot be avoided. We have reached the
loftiest peak on which human feet have stood, when we have found
what man can do and be. Man is our only key to the problems
of nature, our only ladder from earth to Heaven. And in no
other way is his present greatness attested, or his glorious future
promised, so distinctly as in his own power to make, as it were, a
God in his own image and after his own likeness, and yet One,
stripped absolutely of every flaw and defect, and even of the
remotest tendency to human weakness. Men have never invented
a God morally inferior to themselves, the idols have only outlasted
*4r.
�3
their time, and have become anachronisms.
As men grew loftier
in mind and morals, the once revered images became first grotesque
and then hideous. I therefore defend the anthropomorphism of
the Theist as a merit, and do not apologise for it as a defeat, of his
system. Used with fidelity to the principles of progress m which
he believes, his anthropomorphic conception of God is a constant
guarantee of higher and higher knowledge, till he shall arrive at
the innermost sanctuary of the Divine presence. . At all events, if
there be a God, it is clear enough that He has given us no other
means of conceiving of Him at all. Man knows his own superiority
to the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes m the
sea; to the trees and flowers, the rocks and hills, the towering
mountains and the foaming sea. He knows his own superiority
of nature, even in his extremest physical helplessness, to the wild
and fierce forces which play about him. The winds and the waves,
the roaring cataract, and even the burning lava, he turns to his
own service and becomes their lord; the very lightning becomes
the swift messenger of his thoughts, and the blazing sun itself,
though enthroned afar in unapproachable glory, is made to unfold
the secrets of its awful flame. A human mind which has mastered
its subtle beams, draws them through a fragment of crystal, and
reads the chemistry of the stupendous conflagration. Wonderful
as are the resources, even in organic matter, yet . with
our little fragment of knowledge, and our sense of spiritual
activity we have come to call the great masses of worlds around us
“ inert matter,” and to regard the physical forces every where in
operation as inferior to the emotions and aspirations of the human
soul. From all this, but one conclusion can be drawn, viz., that
there is something even in ourselves radically superior to that
visible universe, from which we, ourselves, were evolved. Man is
thus forced to feel the gulf between the seen and the unseen—
between the grandest exhibitions of power in the world of nature
and the spiritual forces at work within his own soul. It is m vain
that you tell him how he has been evolved m the natural course of
things from the simplest form of animal life, you will only increase
�4
Ills wonder at tlie powers thus originated without shaking for ohe
moment his confidence in their possession, or his faith in their
grandeur. He does not care, except as he may care for every grain
of true knowledge, how he came to be what ho is, what chemical
or molecular changes in inorganic matter produced his compound
and complex organism j but he docs care supremely to know hiraself
as a man, and to wield the royal sceptre over that portion of the
visible universe in which he woke up—a king.
In vain, too, will it be to show him the dissected brain of one of
the world’s great teachers and say, “ We cannot find anything but
wbat you see. All that made the man what he was lies now in
those bony hemispheres; in a few days it will rot and be dissolved
for ever.” He will turn round upon you and say, “This is only
what I expected you would find in the noblest head that lifted itself
proudly above the intellects of men; what I have felt all my life,
is that I am not identical with my body or any of my organs • that
I am something superior to what I see and feel, and that this body
is nothing more to me than the house in which I have dwelt, and
shall dwell till I die. Even, if I never live again, it cannot alter
the conviction of my life; that I have had a something, either the
product of my brain, or the impalpable and nndiscoverable germ
from which my brain was produced, which is myself, as dis
tinguished from the body in which I now speak and hear.
All that can be handled with your forceps, and seen through your
microscope is, of course, doomed to utter and irrevocable dissolution
—the particles will never again be united in their former con
dition. But if they sprung but yesterday from a mollusc, and are
doomed to utter dispersion to-morrow, one fact remains, I am that
I am. I have come into possession of these batteries of cerebral
matter, and I shall have to lay them down ; but they and I are
not one and never were. However essential to our speech and
action upon earth—to our communion with each other as fellow
beings, I have always felt that I was something greater than thev,
that by my will I could keep them in health, give them rest when
weary, and alas make them ache with pain by over-exertion, or by
senseless folly.”
�•J
Should this seem to be a digression, let me remind yoti
of what I am driving at, I want to state with emphasis
the fact, not merely of man’s superiority to the visible Universe,
but also of his own consciousness of his superiority.
With
the materialist he can go all lengths in the admission of the
entirely physical origin of his bodily frame, and of all its organs,
and consequently he can go all lengths with the materialist in
saying that there is nothing discoverable by the eye as a basis of
immortality. But he is no less certain that he is superior to the
body in which he dwells, than certain that he is superior to the
sun, without whose beams his body could not have come into
being at all.
' Now, if this superiority, which is instinctive in thousands and
millions of our race, and in the highest portion thereof, be
admitted, we haVe ground for justifying our search for God by
studying man. Of course, it would not do to study man alone
without studying also the othei’ and inferior works of God, foi that
*
would make our conclusions too visionary and speculative; but it
would be more erroneous still to study only the physical phenomena,
and leave the soul of man out of the range of our enquiry. If
we studied only the physical phenomena we could hardly come to
any other than the conclusion of the modern Pantheist, whereas,
if we study both the phenomena and the human soul, we naturally
arrive at Theism. There is not much, if any, token of conscien
tiousness in the outei world. Individuals are simply ignored by
*
the forces of nature, pain and pleasure are scattered about in what
seems to be wild caprice, i.e., in utter disregard of the merits or
demerits of the individuals on whom they fall. But the whole
thing apparently works pretty well so as to produce a constant
supply of flowers and butterflies who are not expected to stay too
long in their little patch of sunshine, and who must always be
expecting to be done to death at any moment by a sudden change
in temperature, oi' downfall of rain and hail. Still, no matter, a
thousand dead things are soon replaced. The laboratory is always
open, resources are abundant, the workmen never rest, and so far
as a perpetual transformation-scene is the order of the day,
nature certainly does her work with infinite skill and industry.
But you don’t want a moral God to do all this, it does itself
�6
apparently; once set going—no one cares to enquire how—it can’t
help going, till some fine day it will, perhaps, go to pieces and
begin all over again, taking the first employment that offers
itself.
I, for one, do not wonder at the Pantheism or, as
it may truly be called, the Atheism which comes of regarding
only the outside of things, i.e., of studying only physical
phenomena with a determined blindness to the moral and
spiritual nature of man. If nature outside of us were all we had
to lean upon for instruction concerning God, I confess we should
be driven eithei’ to attribute to Him frightful want of conscien
tiousness, or—what is more logical—to do without the hypothesis
of a God at all.
On the other hand, if we take both together, and explain the
one by the other, searching for all that nature has to tell, and
remembering that if God works there, he also works in human
hearts and souls, we shall be able at length, if not to explain
every seeming moral anomaly, at all events, to give Him as much
credit for good intentions, as we do to our fellow-men when we
cannot exactly see what their aims really are, and when we cannot
help finding fault with their methods.
The old maxim “Never let children or’fools see half-done deeds,”
should have its weight in the correction of any impatient
a
*gainst
murmuring
the course of Providence. To Him we are
but as children; by the side of His wisdom, our greatest knowledge
is but folly; and therefore, if we arepermitted to stand by His side,
and follow His dealings as the world’s great artificer, a becoming
silence should mark our reverence, and a patient watchfulness
should be our tribute to His wisdom and skill. “ God is in
Heaven, and thou upon earth, therefore let my words be
few,” contains a profound caution, which we shall do well to
remember.
Having attained a clear perception of the superiority of man—
as the highest product of nature yet known to us—our first
question must be “ Is there, or is there not, some Being higher
still 1” Now, most men, and even Atheists, readily admit the
possibility of the existence of creatures higher than man. They
do not know what other worlds contain, of course, but they think
it quite possible, if not probable, that there are highei’ intclli-
�gences, some where but still evolved like ourselves from the
Universe. They will not take the next step, and say with me
that it is possible that there is one Being, not evolved, but the
source of evolution, above all other Beings, who has perfect
knowledge of the Universe; but it seems to me but a very short
step indeed, from the admission that possibly higher intelligences
than our own exist somewhere. But if they have a right to
assume there are higher intelligences, we surely have the right to
assume that there is one Highest and Supreme.
Here, however, we must use the method of balancing proba
bilities. Supposing that there were no supreme and perfect intelli
gence, then as fax' as we know, man would be the Supreme Being
of the universe—the one intelligent creature who stands on the
highest, pinnacle of knowledge. He knows more about the world
than any other being. Bnt what does he know as yet ? He is only
just beginning to find out how little he knows by comparison with
the sum total of things actually present and visible. He knows
very little about the past, next to nothing about the regions of the
world which are invisible, and nothing at all about the distant
future. A creature only of yesterday, not so long ago an ignorant
savage, a little earlier still only an ape, how should he know more
than he knows at present? But he has, nevertheless, learnt that
there are system and law prevailing in every part of the universe,
that invariable sequences attend given actions and mutations of
force. Man has at least learnt to banish from scientific language
the names of “accident” and “chance,” and he has tacitly admitted
the presence of active intelligence in the evolution of all things.
Nature has taught him all he knows. All his sciences, of which
he is justly proud, are records of facts and phenomena actually
observed, discoveries on his part of what had been done, or is now
being done, without his aid, not inventions of his own or results of
his interference. Nature is so manifestly controlled by intelligence,
that the mind of man has its most exquisite delight in reading the
secrets of nature, and watching her wondrous developments.
Man further admits that we ourselves are products of this care
fully designed whole. That we are the latest, noblest, and fairest
fruit of Nature’s skill; and yet some men will hesitate to confess
that the intelligence which arranged this grand evolution is grander
�far than one of its products. If there be no higher mind than the
mind of man, how could man have ever been evolved ? ‘
nihilo
nihil Jit' stands good yet, and we can never be persuaded that the
intellect of man is the offspring of that which had no intelligence.
A perfect knowledge of all the sciences, and of thousands of things
yet unknown to us, was required to produce even this little globe
on which we live. Had there been false Chemistry, or deficient
Mathematics, or ignorance of the laws of Astronomy, or of Optics,
what hopeless chaos would have ensued ! One false step would
have ruined the whole. Can we then, who attach so much
importance to our own tiny share in this knowledge, pretend that
no knowledge at all was needful to produce the stupendous whole?
It must be infinitely more probable that a Supreme mind is in
existence who knows the whole, while we only know a small part,
than that man is the supreme intelligence himself.
Moreover, if there were no such supreme intelligence, the universe
supposing it to be self-evolved (and of course unconscious, since it is
not intelligent) has only just come into self-consciousness through
one of its parts, viz., man. It had been, so to speak, asleep all these
eycles of ages till man was born, and his intellect dawned upon
the world, and for the first time the Universe realised its own
existence through the intelligent consciousness of one of its pro
ducts I I do not think absurdity could go further than that. If
there be no God then man is the supreme intelligence, and the
product of what vye must admit to be the most profound wisdom
must then be wiser than the wisdom from which he sprang. And
if there be no self-conscious intelligence but man, then the
Universe is only just now, through man, becoming aware of its
own existence.
I throw out these fragmentary hints for abler men to take up.
They are only a specimen of what may be said for and against the
probability that there is a self-conscious supreme intelligence at the
root of, and behind, all visible and invisible things. But, if we
take man as our key to the solution of the problem, we shall find
much more in him than his mind, which justifies his belief in God;
and of this I will speak another day. I conclude by saying that
I shall be thankful to any one who will write to me, to correct my
errors and to point out any flaw in my arguments,
�“A T II E I S M.”
III.
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
JANUARY 26th, 1873, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
From the Eastern Post, February Is#, 1873.
......
On Sunday (Jan. 26th) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C. Voysey
took his text from Psalm xl., 10., “Thy law is within my
heart.”
He said :—Last Sunday we were considering the argument for
the existence of a Supreme intelligence, which may be drawn from
the intellectual part of man’s nature. Our next step is to examine
the moral part, and to endeavour to show that the Conscience of
man furnishes strong ground for our belief in a Perfectly Good
God.
Let us first inquire what is the proper function of the Con
science. In the first place it seems to be a faculty distinct from
the ordinary reflective powers of the mind, which we sum up
under the term Reason. I do not now enquire how Conscience is,
in the first instance, generated, or whether or not it be some
phrenological organ, more or less conspicuous as a bump on the
human head. It is neither my province, nor within my grasp, to
settle such questions as to its origin or physical construction, I
have only to deal with it as it seems to most men to act- a part in
our complex nature, and to influence our conduct. In affirming,
then, the distinctness of Conscience from the Reasoning faculties,
I only speak of it as it appears -to my thought. It does not, and
cannot, teach me what is right or what is wrong. Only my
�2
Reason can tell me that, but as soon as I perceive what is right
my Conscience commands me to do it; as soon as I perceive what
is wrong, my Conscience forthwith commands me not to do it.
Many have been the strifes in the world owing to the confusion
between Conscience and Reason. Our knowledge being defective,
our reasoning must be sometimes fallible, our conclusions as to
right and wrong, must be sometimes false, and yet the Conscience
only sanctions what seems to be right, and forbids only what seems
to be wrong. It follows, as a matter of course, that people will
sometimes do wrong conscientiously, i.e., not as wrong, but believing
it to be right.
“ The time will come when he that killeth you
will think that he doeth God service,” is a good illustration of this
perversion of mind. Many persons will thereupon jump at the
conclusion that Conscience is not to be trusted, and that it must
be over-ruled by superior authority external to itself—whereas the
fault lies not with the Conscience but with the Reason which is
imperfectly enlightened. The Conscience has nothing whatever to
do with drawing the conclusions of the Reason; its only function
is to endorse with all the weight of its sanction whatever the
Reason has pronounced to be right. Conscience, even in its
apparently worst perversions, is not perverted at all, is still loyal
to the best that is put before it. It cannot help us to makeup Our
minds in the least degree ; it waits quietly till this process is com
pleted by the Beason, and then steps in with its powerful mandate,
to demand that the best alternative should be adopted and pursued.
It has always seemed to me a great mistake to blame the Con
science for those moral errors which have been perpetrated in its
name. Conscience is evex loyal to duty as duty, never sanctions
*
any "wrong as wrong, is a perpetual witness in the soul of man for
all righteousness, and it differs in different men only in strength
and intensity, in its power to control the life ; it does not differ in
being morally inferior and superior.
If my Conscience sanctions what another man’s Conscience
�3
would condemn, tliat only shows that there is a moral difference of
opinion in our respective minds, not that his Conscience is more
loyal to what is right than my Conscience, nor mine than his.
Looseness of language is largely responsible for many popular
errors. We often speak of one man as conscientious, and another
as unconscientious, when the real difference we wish to describe is
the difference of their moral opinions. We ought never to use
these terms “ conscientious and unconscientious,” except to dis
tinguish between the man who obeys his Conscience and the other
who disobeys it. W e take too much for granted that our estimate
of what is right and wrong is shared by every one else alike; and
then come to the false conclusion that those who do not do what we
believe to be right are acting against their' Consciences.
Whole races of men we have heard stigmatised as wanting in
conscientiousness because they are remarkably untruthful; othei’S
because they are habitual thieves ; others because they love to
shed innocent blood and their land groans with murder ; others
because they are frivolous, fickle and vain ; others because
polygamy is their law ; others because they practice polyandry.
In all these cases you find conscience quite as much at work as in
ourselves, commanding what is believed to be right, for bide, ing
what is believed to be wrong. They lie, and steal, and murder,
&c., through their want of clear and vigorous perception that lying,
stealing, and murder are wrong. Their education has been defi
cient, and the inherited tendency to these habits has not been
resisted; they are ever ready with reasons to justify their conduct,
or to make very light of it. Otherwise, it would have been
impossible for whole populations to connive at these outrages, and
to shield the guilty heads from the penalties of the law. But
these same people taught from their youth up to regard some act
of religious observance as the highest of all duties, and the neglect
of it the most wicked of crimes, are very very conscientious in the
discharge of that duty, and manifest the functions of Conscience
in that particular, in a striking degree.
�4
If ever the question is raised ‘‘ Why does the Conscience bid
you do this,” the sole answer always is, “ Because it is right.”
Never in any case is it “ Because it is wrong, ”
The Conscience is, I grant, not equally strong in all men. In
some natures it has more, in others less, power to influence the
conduct. But this is only like all other faculties in man. The
Reason, the imagination, the affections, the hopes, and the fears
vaiy considerably in strength and degree in different men, and so
also the Conscience varies; in some it is the lord of the whole
life, in others it is hustled into a corner and seldom suffered to raise
its voice. But it is sufficiently universal to be argued from as
the common property of human nature, and in reasoning about the
source and fountain of all things, the Conscience is as much entitled
to be considered as the intellect.
Moreover, if we would argue fairly, wo must take the average
quality of the Conscience rather than the mor® rare instances of
those who hardly exhibit any Conscience at all. In a treatise
on the Reason of man, it would be manifestly unfair to
take only the undeveloped state of it, as it appears in a
child, 01 the diseased condition of it as it appears in an idiot; so
in speaking of the Conscience of man we ought to take it in
its more complete and perfectly healthy development, in the
noblestmoral examples, rather than its earlier and undeveloped
state.
We are searching for indications of a Divine Being among the
works of the universe, we have found, so far, that man is the
noblest of them, by Reason of his Intellect alone, but we find that
he has something else, which, in his own estimation, he reckons
nobler still than Intellect—viz., Conscience, or the faculty which
urges him to do what is right and avoid what is wrong, and this
faculty is, In its normal exercise, one of the greatest blessings
which man could possess.
In thd first place, it marks afresh our superiority to the physical
world. While everything around us is by the laws and constitution
of its nature designed for selfishness, to win its way, if it can, in
the struggle for existence ; while even the body of man, with all
its functions, has precisely the same nature, and might lawfully
(were it not for the Reason and Conscience) study its own comfort
�and well-being alone, and without the smallest scruple, enrich
and adorn itself at the ruin of others ; while the unbridled indul
gence of our physical instincts would lead us to the most profound
animalism and beastiality, the Conscience is the chief faculty of
our being, which rescues us from this degradation, and actually
alters the whole natural course and tendency of our lives. That
we should, to some extent, lead animal lives is not merely inevitable,
but necessary and good, and, therefore, we find the Conscience, duly
enlightened by Reason, sanctioning a certain degree of animalism
for the very purpose of carrying out a benevolent design; but the
checks and limits, which the Conscience puts upon our indulgence,
are of a nature to cause us, at times, positive pain and annoyance.
We cannot obey the Conscience in everything without trampling
on our physical nature, and sometimes not without permanent
injury to our health and brain. Self-denial and mortification of
the flesh, (and I use this term in the very widest sense, and not
merely in the sense of asceticism) are absolutely necessary to the
perfect supremacy of the Conscience when enlightened by Reason,
If my Reason tells me that such and such a thing is wrong, i.e.,
will inflict, injury on others, that does not necessarily prevent my
wishing to do it. I cannot help wishing to do it, if the gratification
be very great, and do it I should to a certainty, but for that
wonderful monitor within, who says “ How can I do this great
wickedness and sin against God.”
The collision is so complete between the higher voice and the
impelling instinct, that one can only feel that the two are radically
different in nature, and must have had a different source. This
struggle between a strong desire and a higher law within the same
breast if it gives any witness, bears testimony to the exalted
nature of man, and almost drives him in thought to the threshold
of that Heavenly Home, where he was born and cradled. To have
the power of doing intentionally what one shrinks from doing, and
to deny oneself the pleasure which is so fascinating, and which one
longs to do, is to prove the immense superiority of our inner selves
over the visible universe.
Here I must pause to notice an objection which may be urged,
that whenever we obey the Conscience we only do so to gain a
greater pleasure than we relinquish. It is said that we are still
�6
selfish after all, and dread remorse more than the present pain of
self-denial. Now I cannot, of course, speak for others, but for my
self I deny this with my whole soul. I am perfectly certain that
it is neither fear of greater pain, nor hope for greater joy, that
makes me endeavour to obey my conscience. Many a time in my
life I have had nothing at all but pain for doing what I thought to
be right, and I did it too, grudgingly, half regretting my own self
denial, at the time wishing that I had not been so Conscientious.
It is unfair to mankind to put such a construction upon their sub
mission to that imperious call of conscience. To us, perhaps, the
hope of being perfectly conformed to God’s will, in some far-off
future, may be an attraction entering into more than half our
moral struggles but nothing can be more false than to say it is
always so, or to deny the possibility of a man doing what his
Conscience demands from the most disinterested motives. For does
not Conscience itself sit in judgment with Reason upon motives as
well as conduct ? Does it not condemn, as unworthy, all motives
of action, the. core and kernel of which is selfishness ? No doubt in
our imperfect state our motives are not always pure and perfectly
disinterested, but the soul of man has at all events risen up to
that height in which it deliberately distinguishes pure from impure
motives ; and while she gives her solemn approval to the nobler,
she condemns and denounces the baser. There is all the difference
between seeking to be true to one’s higher nature and seeking
greater happiness. It is true we cannot avoid the happiness, but
we disqualify ourselves for its attainment the moment we fix upon
it a longing eye. What often determines our choice is the strength
of our conviction that a thing is right, not the possibility of our
being the happier for it afterwards. The efforts made by some to
depreciate the force and value of Conscience are unworthy of men
who profess to be students of facts and phenomena; for if there
had been no cases of genuine disinterested doing of duty for duty’s
sake, we should never have been able to discover the difference
*
between that and seeking our own happiness. Man has detected
the superiority of the one motive over the other, only after having
witnessed or experienced the higher motive in himself. Had it
never been done, man would never have imagined that it could be
done.
�I
And this brings me to notice that the Conscience, enlightened by
Reason, always urges us to do good to our fellow-men, rather than
to make them happy. An unenlightened benevolence, such as the
animal instinct of an indulgent parent, which leads to the spoiling
x of a child, is a mere impulse to give happiness, and is on that
grouud actually condemned by the enlightened Conscience, because
that happiness not only does not tend to the child’s real and lasting
good, but tends to his present and future degradation. In its
higher state the Conscience bids us aim exclusively at the culti
vation of all virtue in ourselves and in others. It teaches us
always to subordinate happiness to holiness, and often deliberately
to forego and withhold happiness, that goodness may ensue. Truth
and righteousness would be preferred, not only before wealth and
comfort here below, but even before an eternity of mere enjoyment
without personal holiness. Thus, on every side, it seems that the
superiority of our inner nature becomes an antagonism to the out
ward and visible. “ The flesh warreth against the spirit, and the
spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.”
The contrast and hostility between them we all feel, but which of
the two do we reckon the higher, the nobler, the truer part of
man 1 Surely the Conscience—the Conscience which makes us
mortify our flesh with its affections and lusts, which often and
often mars our happiness and embitters our pleasure, upbraids us
with reproaches, and stings us with remorse—that voice which
hushes our cry for happiness, which will not endure a single selfish
plea, but demands unquestioning obedience, and bids us fall down
in the very dust before the majesty of duty. We all in our secret
hearts revere this power, whether or not we obey it as we should.
At least we pay it the homage of our inmost souls and feel how
great and grand it is to be its slave.
We have here, then, something in man which we cannot find in
the physical universe, where happiness is the aim of every living
thing. Every single being in every class of animal life, including
the body of man, is constituted to seek its own happiness first, but
in man we find a principle entirely at war with this universal
instinct, a power that forces us to break the natural law of mortal
life, and to seek for that which is supremely higher than mere
animal safety and enjoyment. For the sake of goodness, men have
�learnt, not merely to suffer pain and loss themselves, but to
undergo the still worse pain of inflicting suffering upon others.
We would deliberately hurt their bodies and mortify their
desires, if by so doing we could raise them into the exalted con
dition of goodness.
Now to me, I confess, this fact is a greater revelation of a Divine
Being than even the intellect of man. For ignoring altogether
the fact that men have almost universally regarded the Conscience
as the vicegerent of God—the mere possession of a power which
claims the mastery over our whole natures, which disturbs our
animal repose, and which demands the deliberate surrender ot
happiness for the sake of truth, righteousness, and every form of
duty, brings us face to face with a power—call it human oi
*
Divine—which, whatever it be, is absolutely transcendent over
nature, and suggests to our minds the existence of another world
altogether, in and around us, in which the laws and forces of the
visible universe have no place. Were we to grant that our intellect
is only an animal organism, we should still be at our wits’ end to
account for the Conscience on purely physical grounds; and we
would never get over the anomaly and absurdity of the Universe
evolving and evolving itself cycle after cycle till it produced an
element at variance with its own laws, a power and a force which
deliberately set them at defiance, and a conscious being who calmly
rejected, for the sake of virtue, the most enticing happiness placed
in its path. If we could get over the intellectual difficulty of
Atheism, we could never get over the difficulty which is presented
by the Conscience. I do not den> that there is antagonism in the
physical universe ; it abounds everywhere ; it is in accordance with
its own principle of “ Everyone for himself;” but that antagonism
is wholly different from that which exists between two distinct
portions of one and the same being; greater still is the difference
when we observe that the higher law often condemns as morally
wrong what nature herself tempts us to do.
I cannot pursue the enquiry further at present, it is enough that
the human Conscience is not merely superior, but antagonistic, to
the selfish principle in nature, to prove that if we would search for
indications of the Deity, we must make man the field of our
enquiry.
�“ATHEIS M.”
IV.
A SERMON,
PRE ACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
FEBRUARY 2.nd, 1873, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
From the Eastern Post, February 8th, 1873.
On Sunday (Feb. 2nd) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C. Voysey
took his text from 1 John iv., 16, “God is love; and he that
dwelletli in love dwelletli in God, and God in him.”
He said—We now come to the third branch of our enquiry into
the nature of man, in search for indications of a Supreme and
Perfect Divine Being.
We have perceived, in the intellect of man, manifest tokens of
a supreme intellect from which it sprang. AVe have discovered in
the Conscience a power, not only superior, but antagonistic, to the
forces in Natureand we must now direct our attention to Human
Love.
What is Love ? This sacred name has alas ! been shamefully
misapplied. It has been made t^stand for its very opposite
selfishness. It has been used to denote the most imperious of our
animal instincts, the gratification of merely physical desire j even
the mere desire to attain such enjoyment, has been profanely called
Love. Far be it from me to deem anything which God has placed
in the nature of man as unholy or unclean. The animal instinct
referred to is exquisite and sacred, the source of untold happiness,
and the fountain of domestic virtue, but then it is not Love.
When people talk of “ making Love ” and “ falling in Love,” they
are using expressions of profound inaccuracy, for which the
poverty of our language is the only excuse. The affection which
�2
subsists between lovers, husbands and wives, parents and children,
brothers and sisters, is
nothing more than a merely
animal attachment to each other, which they share in common with
the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. It is - all called
“ Love,” and we cannot in a day—no, not in a generation—change
its name. But the time seems to have come for us to make long
and loud our protest against the use of ambiguous terms. Words
do re-act more or less upon those who use them, and if we persist
in applying one and the same term to two or more absolutely
distinct things, we shall come in time to lose sight of the distinc
tion between them, and in that case the higher sense will be
forgotten, and the lower one alone remain.
Now, to discern what Love is, we must contrast it with what it
is not.
We find everywhere reigning in nature the law of self-love, of
self-preservation, self-indulgence, and self-advancement. We own
its necessity. No living thing is safe without it. It is given to
us that we may live as long and as happily as we can, and that we
may promote our own earthly advantage. In the struggle for
existence this law bids us without scruple trample on the rights
of others if they have any, and then might becomes right. In
reference to self-indulgence, it bids us get all the pleasure we
possibly can; it takes no account of the pleasure of others, except in
so far as it may minister to our own. And as for self-advancement
its maxim is to be first in the race if we can. Its cry is, “ Every
man for himself.”
Now it is easy to see without illustration that were this the
only law which governed humanity our time would be divided
between avarice, lust, and war. We should have nothing else to
do but to give free play to our appetites and to smite and murder
every one who stood in the way of our gratification. Supposing
that a certain amount of civilisation had been reached by mutual
concessions for the attainment of happiness, then you would have
�still a state of soiety, if society it might be called, in which selfish
ness would prevail, only somewhat refined and gilded over by
conventionalities. You would still have men seeking to make
themselves rich at the ruin of others, to indulge their animal
passions at the cost of their neighbours’ felicity, and to do each
other to death only in a slower and less brutal manner than by
bloodshed. They would still unscrupulously push themselves to the
front if possible, not caring whom they crushed or trampled under
foot in the struggle.
Bret Harte, an author to whom I shall again presently refer,
among other' writers has given pictures of life in the Far West of
America, wherein all that we could imagine of such a state of
society has been enacted within this century. Lawless, ruffianly,
selfishness has been the rule, because most of the men gathered in
those regions were mere animal men, carrying their whole animalism
with them into a district where they had no law but themselves.
This was the coarse and brutal picture of the reign of selfishness.
But we need not go so far as to San Francisco to see the same
selfishness under a more refined aspect. There are men and women
in all our great cities, aye, and in the country too, (let us hope
there are but few of them), who behave as if they were animals
and nothing more—human animals with the cunning and resources
of human skill, education, and prudence—who live for themselves
alone, and who seldom feel what it is to love. They follow their
strong instincts for pleasure and ease, their unscrupulous desire to
enrich themselves on the race-course or at the gambling tables,
their studious regard for their own health and the supply of every
luxury; and they do not hesitate in the pursuit of their own
indulgence to force their rivals or dependents down into unspeak
able misery, or leave others to die in disease and poverty, rather
than forego one of their accustomed pleasures. •
We may fairly hope that such are extreme and most rare
instances ; but dress it up as finely as you can, you will only get
�4
one result out of entire obedience to the natural law of selfishness,
you must have avarice, lust, murder, and all manner of crime.
Now true Love is that principle which we find almost universal
in human nature, which impels us to resist in a measure this law
of selfishness, to overcome its dictates whenever they tend to
entrench on the rights and welfare of others. Love will go long
lengths in sanctioning the law of selfishness j but there is a point
where it will stand up and resist it. It will sanction self-preservation
until another’s life is in peril. It will sanction self-indulgence
until that indulgence becomes robbery of the happiness or
well-being of another. It will sanction ambition, and even
gathering of gold, so long as the means employed do not hinder a
companion in the race.
Love will hide itself beneath an apparently selfish disguise, and
all at once it will leap out upon you in all its glory, melting your
eyes and your heart. It is that in man which redeems him from
being a beast—for man without Love is worse than any beast which
Lord God hath made; and when he Loves he becomes more than
animal, more than man, I had almost said, and stands forth in the
very image of God.
With the world so full as it is of real Love, if we will only look
for it, illustrations would be endless. But every wish felt, every
word spoken, every deed done for the sake oj others is a witne s
of true Love.
Some may say this is only the function of conscience over again.
But, in reply, I say that the brilliancy of Love outshines that of
conscience as the sun outshines the moon. Love is conscience in an
ecstasy—it is a perfect enthusiasm of goodness, because it does not
stop to reason out with itself, and to balance the pros and cons of
right and wrong, but with eager bound rushes to its goal and acts
without reflection, the slave of inspiration. Conscience says, 11 Do
this because it is right.” Love says, “ I will do this for you.”
Conscience mercifully keeps us mindful of oui’ responsibility when,
�Love is absent or cool. But Love has no responsibility, and acts
upon its own Divine impulse, needing no reminder, no prompting,
no command. We fall back upon Conscience, only when deficient
in Love.
By Love, we pass out of ourselves into our object, as it were;
we seem to have merged almost our own consciousness, sympathies,
and desires, in the soul of another ; till we live a new life in hers,
and become her saviour and her shield. When Paul said, “ Love
worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore Love is the fulfilling of
the law,” he stated feebly and negatively the exact truth, fie
should have said, “ Love worketh all possible good to his neigh
bour, therefore Love is the fulfilling of the law.” It will not do
to leave our neighbour alone, and do him no harm ; love bids us
be active and attentive, and do him all the good we can. Then
Love is the fulfilling of all human obligations. If we were wholly
and continually under the influence of Love, and not sometimes
under the sway of selfishness, our whole lives would be blameless,
sin would be no more, and human life—ah ! it would be too sweet
ever to lay it down.
But Love teaches us that goodness is identical with the supremest
happiness of man. It is not identical with physical happiness, it
is often at war with that, and its terms with our animal nature are
unshrinking submission, and if need be, the self-sacrifice of life
itself. Yet strange—-most strange—when we suffer most for one
we love, we reap our highest joys, every wound is a healing of the
spirit, and as we lie on Love’s altar, bleeding, gasping, dying, v e
reach the sublimest region of human joy.
Think what the old poets have sung, what the Bibles of all lands
have enshrined, what tradition prizes as its noblest treasure. They
all sing in praise of Love—Love which began by heroic self-con
quest and ended in death. But one and all bear the same testi
mony, the joy of dying for Love was worth all that life itself
CQuld ever purohase.
�6
In those tales of the Far West, by Bret Harte, to which I have
alluded, there is unfolded a perfect gospel of this human triumph.
Amidst scenes of appalling horror, of the most brutal savagery,
and the most abandoned lawlessness, he brings to view this one
exquisite flower of humanity, and shows how Bove was at the
bottom of these fierce hearts; how it stayed the murderer’s hand ‘
how it softened the impious tongue; and brought men whose lives
had been fouled by the worst of crimes to die the noblest martyr
death. No Christ could do more than those and hundreds and
thousands of our fellow-men have done for each other, and are doing
daily—and all for Love.
That fearful catastrophe to the Northfleet, off Dungeness, which
has awakened so much sympathy throughout the land, brought
out afresh the glorious powers of self-sacrifice which belong to man.
To some, the touching incidents of the Captain’s farewell of his
wife might seem a conflict between Love and Duty. But Love and
Duty are one, they can never clash. It is always a duty to
do what Love desires. And Love itself is best proved by
doing oui Duty. Just think of those few minutes of parting
agony.
Amid the roar and screaming of rough men and women, all
struggling for their lives, some so fierce and frantic in their terror
that they must be kept back from swamping the boats by the cap
tain’s revolver, his young wife, a bride ef seven weeks, pleads to
be allowed to stay and die at her husband’s side. Her Love, how
ever, made her lose herself in him, and to make him happy she
would do his bidding, and live in bitter grief all her days. Her
Love and duty were one. She would have stayed and died for
Love; she left him for a life of woe—no less for Love. It was all
she could do for him, to live because he asked it; and he, in his
keen sense of duty, knew that to desert his ship even for his
wife’s sake would have been no act of Love to her. To bring with
him into safety a soiled reputation and an honour stained would
�7
have been far more cruel than to have bid her farewell for ever.
So for Love of her, as well as for duty’s sake, he stands firm as a
rock ; and fighting God’s battle for the weak, against the strong
until the surging waves engulph him, he dies a hero and a martyr,
and around his cross let us say in solemn reverence, “ Truly this
was the Son of God.”
Are there no more like him ? Yea ! thousands on thousands.
The earth is full of such heroes, though we know them not,
and their lives and deaths have been done in secret—no
plaudits to give them courage; no eulogies spoken over their
graves. Ask the generals who lead armies, the captains who
carry their vessels all over the world, search the records of
the Royal Humane Society, look into the hospitals, the theatres,
and the homes of the poor. Enquire at the police stations; yes,
and search the gaols and the galleys. Everywhere you find such
Love as makes men and women Divine; raises them above them
selves, i.e., above all that selfish nature would make them. If
you will only look for it, I believe every one you meet can show
it, or has some heavenly story to tell of how it was shown to
them. Let us not say, then, that God has deserted his world,
while he has given us love. “ He left not himself without wit
ness in that he did us good,” says the Apostle. But he
goes on to say, “ in giving us rain and fruitful seasons,
filling our hearts with food and gladness.”
I will not
question the general benevolence of the arrangements of nature;
but they are not worth looking at by the side of the marvellous
gift of Love which God has given to men to make them fruitful in
all virtue, triumphant over all appetites and passions, and full of joy
unspeakable, and full of glory. This great gift, I say, is so
antagonistic to the laws and forces of nature that it cannot have
had its origin in the visible universe whose laws it sets at defiance.
It cannot be “ of the earth, earthy,” it must be “ the Lord from
Heaven,” it must be an afflatus which is Divine, We
�8
cannot deny the influence winch, it wields. To see and hear
of any noble act of Love warms and melts the most frozen
nature, and breaks the heart of stone. All mankind, in various
ways, bears testimony to the supremacy of Love. Just as we admire
a conscientious fool more than a clever rogue, so do we admire him
who is impelled by Love more than one who is only guided by a
cold sense of duty. Among the faculties of man, then, Love holds
the very highest place. It is the instinct of doing the best possible
good. "While conscience is our authority for doing it, Love leaps
into the act without needing any sanction at all. To do anything
for Love is to justify the deed without any further plea.
I have only then to urge once more, that as man is the noblest
work in the universe, and as Love is the noblest part of man, so
we must infer that God cannot be a Being inferior to the most
Loving of men. He may be, and to our adoring eyes of faith He
really is, far and high exalted ovei his noblest creature ; but less
*
than that He cannot be. Whenever, therefore, we would conceive
of Him, we must make the noblest part of the noblest man’s
character our starting point, or else we shall do violence to the first
principles of Reason, and contradict the universal testimony of the
human Consciousness.
I believe it can be shown that, with the light of human Love
shed upon the scene, all that is most dark, and sad, and dismal in
the world can be reconciled with the existence of a Perfectly Holy
and Loving God; and more than that, the miseries of the world
become proofs and tokens of what God is, and unfold to us His
nature in a more complete and intelligible manner than had we
been living in a fairyland, or had we been all our lives happy
citizens of some Golden Jerusalem. If you shut out sorrow you
shut out the highest, purest, forms of Love. And if you shut out
Love you shut out God. So we come back, out of our clouds
of sorrow, to praise His glorious Name for every wounded heart,
for- every scalding tear, for every last farewell I
�■k
“A T H E I S M.”
V.—ON
£
“THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN.”
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
FEBRUARY 16th, 1873, by the
R EV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
From tits Eastern Post, February 22nd, 1873.
On Sunday (Feb. 16th) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C. Voysey
took his text from Hebrew xii, 11, “ Now no chastening for the
present seemeth to be joyous but grievous j nevertheless afterward
it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which
are exercised thereby.”
He said :—In my last sermon I endeavoured to describe what
true Love is ; how it differs from merely animal attachment, how
complete is its triumph over the natural desires, and how it raises
us into the highest happiness in the supreme act of self-sacrifice.
It is my purpose now to point out the process by which Love is
venerated or brought out into manifestation j to show that Love
cannot be developed at all except under the conditions of suffering
or sin, and therefore that that which we deem the most beautiful
flower of humanity Is the result of those very conditions on which
the Atheist bases his strongest arguments against the existence of
a Good God. The Atheist, as represented by Mr Winwood
Reade in his Martyrdom of Man, argues thus :—
“ The conduct of a father towards his child appears to be cruel
but it is not cruel in reality. He beats the child but he does it
I
�2
for the child’s own good; he is not omnipotent; he is therefore
obliged to choose between two evils. But the Creator is omnipotent;
He therefore chooses cruelty as a means of education or develop
ment ; He therefore has a preference for cruelty, or He would not
choose it; He is therefore fond of cruelty, or He would not prefer
it; He is therefore cruel, which is absurd.”
“ Again, either sin entered the world against the will of the
Creator, in which case He is not omnipotent, or it entered with His
permission, in which case it is His agent, in which case He selects
sin, in which case He is fond of sin, in which case He is sinful,
which is an absurdity again.”—(pp, 518-519.)
It would be easy to dispose of this argument by at once disputing
the hypothesis that God is omnipotent. The so-called “ omnipo
tence” of God has assumed the most extravagant shapes in the
human imagination. We could name a score or two of things
inherently impossible, which God Himself has no power to do
He cannot make the phenomena of noon and midnight to coincide.
He cannot so alter the nature of a thing as to make it at the same
moment both a cube and a sphere. He cannot confound the parts
of a thing with each other, or put any part for the whole. God
could not make my hand to be my eye j nor my eye to be my handNever could a single limb be a whole human body. Never can
God undo the past or break the sequence of time. God Himself
could not make any material thing to be in two places at once.
God’s power is limited—by what, we do not know—possibly bv
His own will; i.e.—if he wills a thing to be such and such, He
cannot at the same time make it to be absolutely different. We
have no difficulty whatever in giving up the notion of God’s
omnipotence, when the idea of that omnipotence is stretched
beyond the limits of common sense. But this is not quite the
point in the passage quoted from Mr. Reade’s book which I desire
to take up. He manifestly assumes and elsewhere affirms, that if
there be a God, He cannot be either cruel or sinful. Mr. Reade
�3
calls it “ an incontrovertible n axim in morality that a God has no
right to create men except for their good.” We would go further
still, and say, “ God has no right to create any self-conscious
creatures at all, except for their good.” The author then turns to
man and nature, and finds visible tokens of suffering and sin;
from which he draws the conclusion that there is no God. It is
perfectly logical, because his suppressed premiss is, “ that suffer
ing and sin are evils per se, and what is more, they are unnecessary
evils”
If this were true, then with the facts before us, we could draw
no other conclusion than that an evil God caused the unnecessary
evils; but when we confront this conclusion with the axiom that
an evil God is a contradiction in terms; or more plainly, that “ if
there be a God, lie must be good,” it follows at once that if
suffering and sin are unnecessary evils, there is no God at all.
What, then, we have to dispute is the assumption that suffering
and sin are evils, per se, and unnecessary evils.
If we can show that suffering and sin are not evils, per se, but
only relatively evils compared with other conditions ; and further,
that they are not unnecessary, but absolutely indispensable to our
highest good, then, instead of going to prove that there is no God,
suffering and sin will go far to prove that there is a God; and
moreover, a good and holy God, who would not create any creature
except for its good. Now, as I must not attempt too many things
at once, I must leave on one side for the present the sufferings of
the lower orders of animals, and confine myself only to the subject
of the sufferings and sin which are endured by man.
Of the various functions which suffering and sin serve in the
economy of the moral world, I have elsewhere written at some
length ; I now only desire to dwell upon one function, the chiefest
of all, viz.,—they are the agents by which the purest Love is called
forth. If they do originate or call into activity this noblest, most
beautiful part of man’s nature, they cannot be evils per se; and if
�as far as we know, such Love could never have birth apart from
suffering and sin, then they are necessary.
You will remember that true Love is the very opposite of
selfishness—it makes us do sometimes the most painful things ; it
is most exalted and supreme in a perfect self-sacrifice.
Now, what do we find, e.g., in the relations between husband
and wife. Granted that there has been much animal attachment
between them, and that true Love has not been yet elicited. Let
one or the other be in sickness or pain, or in any trouble of mind,
body, or estate, and then, if there be a germ of Love in the other,
it will come forth in thoughts, words, and deeds, of exquisite
sympathy and self-devotion. We need not lift the sacred veil
which covers wedded life, but surely all husbands and wives must
know that their real Love first made itself heard and seen in some
season of suffering and pain; they know what holy sacrifices it has
demanded and received. Suffering is the cradle of Love.
See, too, how the mother’s love, even as a mere animal affection,
surpasses the Love which first made her a bride; and how it quickens
her into activity of devotion; giving, and toiling, and watching;
watching, and toiling, and giving, day and night, to her own cost
of health, rest, and ease; and why ? because her infant is feeble,
dependent, suffering. Its cries lacerate the mother’s heart, and fill
her eyes with tears ; but the same sting kindles a Love which is
Divine, making her ready to give her life for her babe.
You see the same thing in the family. How selfish, how
quarrelsome, children often are; till the hour comes when there
is an accident, a terrible bruise, or a broken bone; and up the
little wranglers run and are like ministeiing angels to the sufferer.
Toys that were once fought for are now heaped on the sick-bed
without being asked for, and the dreariness of the siek-chamber is
willingly endured by sturdy ruddy boys who would ten times
rather have been out at play. But Love has made them stay by
the sick-bed, drawn thither by her handmaid—Suffering. It is
�5
almost invariable that the weakest, sickliest, membei of a family
receives the most love, and is served with the greatest self
sacrifices. And it often happens that a son who has brought the
family into trouble, or a daughter who has put it to shame, is the
object of the parent’s tenderest, most anxious, self-denying Love.
The old story of the Prodigal Son is not only exquisitely true to
nature,but a most powerful illustration of the theory that suffering
and sin are the very cradle of the Highest Love.
By very instinct we look on sin as a terrible kind of suffering
—a fearful moral disease—and it hag a tendency to call out Love,
in spite of its first tendency to call out hatred. We are angry
and indignant if any injury be done to ourselves it is true, but the
highest and rarest forms of Love—viz., mercy and forgiveness,
are very often developed by the wrong doing of others. What
sight more pretty among children than the making up of some
quarrel, the sweet overtures of tiny arms around tiny necks, and
the smothering kisses all wet with tears, which tell of the birth
of the highest Love in their little souls !
In domestic life it often happens that sin, as well as sorrow, calls
forth this noblest virtue. Neglected duties, careless accidents,
even want of fidelity and honesty on the part of servants, have
been overlooked, or forgiven and forgotten out of true pity and
charitv, which “ hopeth all things.” In like manner lovingservants have borne long and patiently with the provocations of
of their masters, forgiving their harsh and inconsiderate treat
ment and their surly tempers, and covering with a sacred privacy
their worst failings. Old and young, all around in turn, have to
bear and forbear, i.e., to bear gently the injuries cf others and to
forbear from revenge, to return good for evil, and thus to rise into
man’s most exalted condition because of the sin which is being con
tinually committed. Love cannot rise higher than this—to render
good for ill, to overcome all evil with good. And where, we ask,
would such Love be but for the evil which calls it into exercise ?
But go abroad and look on men and women beyond the home
which is but a microcosm, and you will see the same beautiful
sights if you knew how to look for them. Sin and sorrow every
�where—but sin and sorrow followed by the holiness and joy of
Heaven-born love. What man or woman who had ever felt the
bliss of it would wish it had never been ?
To have received an injury, and yet to have pardon freely, and
to have turned our foe into a friend, is unspeakably better than to
have received no injury at all. To have kindled Love—true Love
in the breast of another, is worth doing at the cost of much
suffering. And although no one would be so mad as to incur
disease on purpose to arouse sympathy, or so idiotic as to commit
an injury for the sake of being forgiven; yet, for all that, the
suffering and the sin do raise the hearts of those who come in
contact with them, and teach them what they could not otherwise
learn. As Miss Cobbe says in her Intuitive Morals. “ Instead of
an evil nature, oui' lower nature is a necessary postulate of all
our virtue.” Every word you use to denote the highest human
qualities implies the conditions of pain and sin. You speak of
patience ? How could you be patient if there were no trials to
bear, no cruel suspense to undergo, no provocation to irritate your
temper, or to prompt your revenge? You speak of mercy and
forgiveness ? How could you be merciful to those who have done
you no wrong, or forgive those who have never sinned ? You
speak of generosity of heart and hand ? What generosity of
heart could you feel for those who never failed in duty, who never
transgressed the exact limits of their own rights ? What
generosity of hand could you show to those who never needed
your bounty, and what happiness was already full ? You speak
of sympathy, but sooner could the light be severed from the sun
than sympathy be detached from suffering. How could you know
what this perfectly holy feeling is, had there been no suffering to
feel for, no pains to lament, no sin to degrade and distress ? And
you speak of Love—the word which gathers up patience, mercy,
forgiveness, generosity, sympathy, and surpasses them all ? How
could you have known the bliss of it unless human feeling had
been, as it were, bruised and trampled on, to spread its fragrance,
and to shed its life-giving wine? Humanity has indeed been
martyred. Its flesh has been given for the life of the world. Its
sacrifice was needed before men could grow out of the human into
the Divine. Sin and sorrow must rend it, pain and shame must
�7
tread it down, before Love can grow out of it. Your animal
affections, mis-called Love, are only the products of physical ease,
of undisturbed selfishness ; but you had to mortify the flesh with
its affections and lusts before true Love could take its throne in
your soul. You must see and feel what sin and suffering are ;
you must feel them in your own proper person that you may
know what they mean in others, and then you shall enter by that
gate through which all must pass who would fain be Divine. As
fast as one set of sins and sufferings are overcome, new ones arise
in their place. Generation succeeding generation finds the
martyrdom of man taking new shape ; but this is only that man
may not die eternally, but share the life which is endless and
divine. Each age must bear and be hung upon its own cross, that
everyone may learn how to love and be loved.
Evils, you call them ? Well 1 so they are, if, by evil, you mean
that which makes one uncomfortable, The rod, the medicine, and
the surgeon’s knife, are, in this sense, evils. But not so do I
define evil. I call that an evil which works only for harm and
incurable misery ; and of such kind of evil I do not know one
single specimen in the whole universe. Relatively, many things
are evil, nay, almost all things but Love, because they are
imperfections, and constantly under the correction of something
better; but so long as they are working for final good, all things
are good, and to dispense with any one of them while it thus works
would be our bitter loss.
But granting that sin and suffering are evils—not absolute but
relative, we must admit that they are necessary to the development
of that which is highest and most lovely in man’s nature. Because,
as I have tried to show, Love in its highest and purest forms has
no existence apart from the conditions of sin and sorrow which
call it into exercise.
I do not say that this, therefore, proves the existence of God,
but it removes one of the most common and powerful arguments
against it. It destroys the objection of the Atheist which is based
on the sin and misery of the world.
There remains one more objection to meet, and that is contained
in Mr. Reade’s question, “ If God is Love, why is there any bad at
all ?’ Because, I answer, there would have been no more love in
�8
God than love in man, but for the bad. Had there been no
conditions like ours in the universe, the Creator’s heart could have
known nothing of that feeling which we call Love.
Rightly or wrongly, we ascribe to the Divine Being a divine
conquest of Love over what are to us the difficulties and obstacles
in nature. We believe He is taming and subduing all things to
His purposes, and making all things work together for good
to every creature which He has made. Our own highest attitude
in our difficulties of sin and sorrow is that of patient, untiring
Love; and this it is, only in its supremest exaltation that we
ascribe to Him when we say “ God is Love ”
To do the final good at once, instead of to prolong the precess
through painful stages, even if it were possible, would be to achieve
something quite foreign to our best conceptions of good. But it is
a begging of the whole question to imply that it could- be done
*
To make men good at once, without the intermediate processes of
pain and sin, would be to make another kind of creature altogether,
of whom and of whose happiness we have neither experience nor
conception. As well might you try to imagine a man who had
*
never been a child, as a man made perfect without the discipline of
sin and sorrow.
I rejoice in it all, as I have often said, with unspeakable and
glowing delight. My frail flesh would fain escape some of its
dreadful pangs, would fain lay the heavy burden of its cross upon
the shoulders of others. I shudder when I see and think of the
martyrdom of pain, and the worse crucifixion of shame, which
have been the portion of some, and might have been my own •
but I would not have one grain of the world’s burden lightened
by evasion, or one pang dulled by the deadly anodyne,''' so as to
■miss the Heaven-sent blessing which comes to us in disguise,
or to interfere even in thought with the perfect arrangements of
the most Loving Will. I would still say of it all,
“ It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.”
* In the present controversy about Euthanasia, I wish it to be understood that
the term “deadly anodyne” has na reference to the humane and perfectly
justifiable methods of preventing or alleviating physical suffering. I have been
for years an earnest advocate of Euthanasia, and I deem it right to use all means
in our power to diminish or prevent pain. Pain and sin are things to be conquered
and got rid of by all means short of injury to others, or to our higher nature;
but not to be considered unr.ecessarj/ when they are inevitable.
�
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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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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Atheism
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 5 parts ; 19 cm.
Notes: 5 pamphlets on Atheism delivered at St. George's Hall, Langham Place and printed by the Evening Post. 1: January 12th, 1873 from the Evening Post, January 18th, 1873. II. January 19th, 1873 from the Evening Post, January 25th, 1873. III. January 26th, 1873 from the Eastern Post, February 1st, 1873. IV: February 2nd, 1873 from the Evening Post, February 8th, 1873. V: subtitled 'On the Martyrdom of Man' February 16th, 1873 from the Eastern Post, February 22nd. 1873. Part of Morris Tracts 6.
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[Eastern Post]
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[1873]
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G3412
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Atheism
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Atheism
Morris Tracts
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ORTHODOXY AND PANTHEISM
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
DECEMBER 29th, 1872, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
On Sunday {Dec. 29tli) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C. Voyscy
took his text from the 2 Corinthians, iv. 13 v., “ We also believe,
and therefore speak.”
He said—In a splendid oration before the scholars of Liverpool
College, the Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone made an
appeal to his young hearers on behalf of the Christian religion,
warning them against the Pantheism which Dr. Strauss has
recently put forth, with all frankness and courage, in a book
entitled, “ The Old Belief and the New.”
We cannot but sympathise with the pious intention of this
warning, nor can we fail to admire the high and generous tone
which the speaker' adopted in reference to the great critic whose
opinions he deplored and denounced. The temper of the speech
was as perfect as its eloquence, and, although we may find grave
fault with some of the positions he assumed, we feel quite assured
that the speaker was honestly doing his very best for the moral
and religious interests of the youths before him, and that he was
only uttering forth the most cherished convictions of his own
heart.
In the interests of that very religion of the soul, which Mr.
Gladstone would defend with all the great powers of his mind and
tongue, we must, however reluctantly, bring to light some of the
mistakes into which he has fallen, and place the relations of
Orthodoxy and Pantheism in a new light.
I say, in the interests of time religion, we must do this; for
whether Orthodoxy be true or false, there are thousands of Orthodox
people who are truly religious, who are living lives of earnest
faith and. love towards the highest God they can conceive, and
while they thus live (kept back by some cause or other, not of
�their own fault, from rising into a higher conception) they are
truly religious; and God above, whom the best and wisest of us
know so imperfectly, will surely say of them all “ They have done
what they could, it is not their fault if they have done no more.”
So far as the words we are considering were spoken by a truly
religious man, we must sympathise with him in his repudiation of
Dr. Strauss’ Pantheism. The learned critic declares his Pantheism
with a plainness of speech which commands our gratitude. He
says, “There is no personal God; there is no future state;. all
religious worship ought to be abolished. The very name of Divine
service is an indignity to manInstead of God he offers to us
what he calls the All or Universum., This All or Universum has
neither consciousness nor reason. But it has order and law. Now
Dr. Strauss might be right or wrong. We are not now discussing
the question, we only contrast this Pantheism with the devout
language of our own hearts ; and it is no stretch of enthusiasm to
say the contrast is as between darkness and light—Heaven and
Hell. We who utterly believe in a God who has both reason and
consciousness, in One who knows all about the past, present, and
future of every one of us; in One who really love us each and all
with a fatherly and motherly affection, and who has . taught ms to
look up to Him, and love and trust Him, and seek to do His will,
foi’ the sole satisfaction of doing it; we to whom good and illfortune, health and disease, life and death, are all ministers of His
Divine will to work only for our good; we, who thus believe, should
be plunged into the outer darkness of despair if Dr. Strauss’
Pantheism were true. You may put out a man’s eyes and sentence
bim to livelong night, but in the dreary gloom there come sweet
voices of loving friends, gentle hands to make sure the companionsliip, and to guide the steps, and beams of Heavenly sunshine to
warm the chill blood in his veins, and tell him that the glorious
light still shines on. But if you put out the eyes of a man’s soul,
who across that nethermost abyss can reach him with a word of
hope, or melt the frozen fog in which his spirit is imprisoned ? The
darkness of night is as clear as noon-day compared with the
blackness of despair when the light of the soul has been put out.
But to feel this horror, in all its intensity, you must once have
known what it is to see God, and to live joyously in his presence.
To be born blind is not to suffer l,OOOth part so much as to have
ones had eyesight and lost it. The Pantheist or Atheist is almost
�always one who never was truly religious, who never did really
believe in God at all. Now and then you find exceptions of those
who have lived in the blaze of Heavenly sunshine, and then
suffered a total eclipse of faith, and as far as my experience goes
such sufferers have nearly lost their reason, and some have put an
end to their torture by suicide.
I do not wonder, then, at the earnestness with which Mr. Glad
stone pleaded with those young people not to go too near that
awful precipice. I think that passionate fear for their safety
justified him in warning them of their peril.
If we have nothing but unconscious unreasoning Universum,
we have no God. Its boasted order and law are cruel and inex
orable. Nay, rather they can have no moral significance to the
moral beings who are tortured by their caprice. Without the
heart of man to reflect the heart of God, the order and laws
manifested in the phenomena around us chiefly tell of reckless
disregard of human feeling and utter negligence of cieature happi
ness. What is it to me to be told that the greatest number are
happy, when I may be one of the wretched few whose life is a
torment ? Take away God, and the whole creation is cursed—not
a single solution left of all its malignant riddles, not a grain of
hope left at the bottom of nature’s infernal gifts. Its very joys
mock us; it sweetest pleasures grind to ashes as we taste them.
But oh! with just one gleam from Heaven, refracted from the poor
dull broken mirror of the heart of man; what light and joy
spring forth ; how all the woes of earth are relieved, how its most
suffering victims are pillowed on a mother’s breast, how its worst
despair is conquered by the feeblest hope! If we only believe in
One just a little better than ourselves, a Heavenly voice goes through
the world cheering the drooping souls on its way with the celestial
song, “ Glory to God in the Highest, on Earth there shall yet be
peace, for all is goodwill to man.” And they hear a voice
behind them saying, “ Fear not, for I am with thee. Be not
dismayed, for I am thy God. I will help thee. Yea, I will
strengthen thee, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my
righteousness.”
I must pause for a moment to explain what we mean by a
“personal” God. We use this term only in contrast to Pantheism,
It is commonly taken to imply a God in some form or other, possibly
hunian. But of course that is not the sense in which we use it,
�4
We mean by it only the individual self-conscious existence of God,
which enables him to say Ego et non-Ego—T and the Universe, [
and you. However mysterious and subtle the connexion may be
between God and matter, yet we believe God is able to say “I and
matter,” that he is able to think, and to will, and to love. This is
why we speak of a “ personal ” God, even while we have not the
remotest anthropomorphic conception of the mode of His existence,
or of the nature of His substance or essence.
To return to Mr. Gladstone’s speech. The safeguard against
Pantheism or Atheism which he proposes, is to hold fast “the
faith once delivered to the Saints,” viz., “Belief in the Deity and
Incarnation of our Lord.” These he describes as “ the cardinal
and central truths of our religion,” “confessed by many more than
ninety-nine in every hundred Christians.”
With quite as deep a horror of Atheism as he has, we neverthe
less demur altogether to his antidote, and we will give our reasons
for it.
First, in passing, we may well question whether the Deity and
Incarnation of Jesus was the faith once delivered to the Saints, or
the belief of the Apostles rhemselves. But as it is a matter of
no consequence whatever, except to the critics, we pass on at once
to give our reasons for demurring to the efficacy of the safeguard
proposed.
1st. Mr. Gladstone seems to us to make his first mistake in
identifying a belief in the Deity and Incarnation of Jesus with
religion. You will, perhaps, remember in my recent sermons on
“ Faith: Intellectual and Emotional” how I endeavoured to shew
that Intellectual Faith was not only not essential to religion, but,
for the most part, calculated to weaken and destroy religious
emotion. I will not go over this ground again, but I can quite
understand Mr Gladstone identifying the two things which are
radically distinct, because all his own religious emotion has been
derived, in the first instance, from impressions connected with the
Christian doctrines, and they are now practically bound up
together. That is, the historical Jesus, of whom his Church and
his Testament speak, has become to him a God in Heaven, and the
personal solace of his own soul. He cannot enter into the
feelings of the Jew who, while looking upon Christ as only one of
his countrymen and a mere man, lifts up his soul to Jehovah in
the words of the Old Psalmist, “ Whom have I in Heaven but
�3
Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of
Thee.” To a votary of Mary or of Jesus, the religious man of
another creed is an inscrutable enigma, he is an object of pity ;
considered to be only a poor lame or blind traveller in a wrong
road, who shall be dealt with mercifully, if at all mercifully,
because he was ignorant; and so the real religious element which
is to be found in men and women of all creeds is thought, by all
in turn, to be peculiar to their own creed.
Mr. Gladstone’s creed may be true or false. Whether it be one
or the other, true religion is to be found connected with all creeds.
But we demur to this safeguard on another ground, viz., that it
is a belief resting solely on external authority, and not on the
reason, conscience, and love of the human soul. Any religion
coming to us on such terms, claiming belief in external authority,
must expect to have its claims challenged, its witnesses crossexamined, its authority sifted.
Now-a-days we cannot expect men and women to believe the
Deity of Christ because Mr. Gladstone believes it, or because
others before him, not a bit more entitled to credit on such a
subject, believed it. The appeal to antiquity is vain, for it proves
too much; it proves Brahminism, Judaism, Buddhism, and ever
so many things, false as well as true. Dr. Strauss himself, the
master of modern criticism, has examined these historical claims
for Christianity, and found them wanting. He began, no doubt
as many begin, by thinking that the only God in Heaven was the
God revealed in the Bible, and when he found that the Bible told
falsehoods, and that the image of God, in some places therein
described, was a foul image, to be hated and not loved by man, he
ceased to believe in God at all. He cannot have had any religion,
as we understand it, apart from his intellectual conceptions of the
Divine Being, as drawn from the Old and New Testaments,
interpreted by the Church, or else his belief in God would have
survived the shock of his discovery. But having no idea of God,
apart from what he had been taught, he came to the only logical
conclusion—that there was no God at all. Dr. Strauss will pardon
me if I have misread his experience; but it is that of thousands
and thousands. It is not merely natural, it is inevitable.
The same process is going on around us in all the religious
bodies of this country. So far as men and women have been
taught that their Bibles and Churches are the only means of
�G
knowing anything about God, so far, when they discover, as they
inevitably must, the falsehoods and errors, and impieties of their
Bibles and creeds, will they become Atheists, or Positivists, or
believers in Dr. Strauss’ unconscious Universum. Put a Bible
into a man’s hand and say to him “ This is God’s Holy Word. It
is all true, and right, and good.” If he have no religion indepen
dent of what he gets out of that book, resting on its authority
alone, then as soon as its authority is shaken, or his eyes open to
see its falseness and immorality, he loses his religion entirely, and
has no alternative at first but to make a frantic effort to swallow
it all down without another moment’s reflection, or to turn his
back on it for ever, and perhaps to sink down into the torpor and
misery of Atheism.
f
It is, therefore, not only the Christian creeds, but the Christian
method of imposing them on the acceptance of men which is to
blame for Pantheism and Atheism. You churches have done it;
You Christian Evidence champions, in your mistaken zeal; You
sticklers for dogma; You believers in moral and physical monstrosi
ties ; You slave-bound idolaters of the traditions of antiquity. It is
you that have slain these poor souls, or shut them up in the dun
geons of despair. It is on your heads that the blood of these
victims will fall, and it cries up out of the ground for vengeance
at the hands of the living God. No, not for such vengeance as
your Bible teaches, 11 a fearful looking-for, ©f fiery indignation, to
consume the adversaries ”—not that; but for the plucking up, and
tearing down, and ruthless burning of your false creeds, which are
only cruel when they are not childish and silly. All these thou
sands and thousands of stray souls, driven out by your curses from
green pastures into a waste howling wilderness—these bear witness
against you, that when they asked you for bread you gave them
only a stone; when they sought the Lord God who made them,
you set before them a fierce and burning savage, more awful than
Moloch, and then tried—but vainly—to shade his hideous image
by the Cross of Calvary; when they wanted the eternal, you gave
them only the temporal; whenthey panted for the living God, you
gave them only a dying man. Oh ! shame on your cowardice,
your childish fears, which bind you to these old wives’ fables, and
make you an incubus on the face of God’s fair earth. You make a
darkness where all ought to be light, and would be light too, but
for your crypts and cells. You make desolation where joy and beauty
�f
ought to flourish, and the songs of the happy fill the spacious air.
Is there no revelation of God in men’s own hearts, that you must
needs read solemnly your ancient tales of magic and Incarnation,
and tell them this is God’s only visit to earth, his one only con
descension to the children of men ? Does not my heart, from its
lowest depths, scorn a boon so rarely, so grudgingly, so partially
given, when I have my God with me, and about my
path and about my bed by night and by day, healing
all mine infirmities, saving my innermost life from destruction,
and crowning me with mercy and loving kindness ? What
Incarnation or Deified prophet can bring God so near to me
as he is now, has ever been, and always will be ? To make
me believe your old story would be to darken all my soul, and
drive me, as it has driven thousands, to blank despair. But
what if, besides this story of the Incarnation, your gospels and
creeds drive me to believe in the damnation of unbelievers, and
in the eternal wrath of your crucified God ? Can you expect
me to keep my reason, not to say my religion, in the presence
of such a nightmare as that? Oh, if you would really save
your young men and maidens from that horrible despair of
hcpeless Atheism, in the name of God I charge you to take from
them their Bibles and Cathechisms, and tear out those horrible
leaves which tell such awful and blasphemous falsehoods to the
dishonour of God, and the discredit of Christ. If you would have
them grow up to be religious, keep far from them the sight and sound
of those very things which you prize most dearly as “ the cardinal
and central truths ” of your religion. The new world, taught by
science, and it is to be hoped by a standard of morality not
lower than the present, will laugh at your story of the miraculous
birth, will grow impatient at the blindness of any who will
think the Incarnation a great act of God’s love and condescension,
and will become indignantly deaf to the enchantments of any
one who dares to follow up your antiquated legends with threats
of hell-fire everlasting, if they do not believe them. Take it home
to your heart while you are still earnest to serve God, that you
are doing his cause and his children infinite wrong by persisting
in enforcing your absurd creed upon an age which has well-sifted
its pretensions, and thus driving all restless souls from one extreme
of a paralysing superstition to the other extreme of a blank and
hopeless infidelity.
�But there is yet hope for men and women in this world if the
croning churches will but hold their peace. In the hearts of the
young are strains of Heavenly music, which will lure them on into
paths of holiness and peace, if the sounds be not overwhelmed by
the threats of the creeds. “ My son give me thine heart ” is no
pretty fiction of fabulist or poet; but a great multitude, whom no
man can number, have heard that celestial entreaty and have cast
themselves into the Father’s everlasting arms, Tell them far and
wide, over the whole earth, “ God is Love.” “ God is Just.”
“God is Holy.” Use what terms you will to express all that is
noblest and highest—only, “ Speak good of his name.” Dishonour
it not by your old fables. Blaspheme it not by your Bible
curses. “ Speak good of His name.” “ 0, let your songs be
of Him, and praise Him.” “Let your talking be of all His won
drous works.” “ Be telling of His righteousness and salvation
from day to day.” And then surely you will find even the young
ones more ready to embrace the holy joy, more willing to learn
more about so great and good a God; and then the poor Atheists,
too, whom your false creeds have blighted, will perchance come
back, as many have done already, under the genial rays of such a
gospel, and begin to believe in very earnest what their hearts had
so long told them was “ too good to be true.” Let it never be
forgotten that there is a third alternative between Orthodoxy and
Pantheism, a true religion of love and trust towards God, and of
love and duty towards men, without Bible, or dogma, or church ;
without Christ, or Paul, or John. And as it is most certainly true
that Orthodoxy must fall when you take away from its foundations
the bottomless pit of hell fire, so it is true that, so long as man is
man, his faith will survive the ruin of the churches, and the
burning of creeds and Bibles; and as the ages roll on, he will
wondei- not that he can walk so well without these long disused
props and crutches, but that he could ever have borne at all
such frightful and dangerous impediments to his communion with
God.
If I have spoken too fiercely, I must say “ my zeal hath even
consumed me.” I may be reproached for “pride and perverseness,”
but I am not ashamed of being proud to bear witness for the
noblest conception of God ever held by mortal man, noi’ ashamed
of a perverseness which refuses to be made the slave of foolish
ness, or the accomplice of Atheism.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Orthodoxy and pantheism. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, December 29th, 1872
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Tracts 6.
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1872]
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G3399
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Pantheism
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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 (Orthodoxy and pantheism. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, December 29th, 1872), 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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English
Morris Tracts
Orthodoxy
Pantheism
-
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Text
“SCIENCE AND RELIGION.”
JL SZEZHLMZOTST,
PREACHED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM
PLACE, SEPTEMBER 20, 1874, BY THE
REV.
CHARLES
VOYSEY.
Tlie text was taken from J oh xi, 7, “ Canst thou by
searching find out God? ”
He said—After much hesitation, I have consented to speak
to you, my friends, on the Inaugural address recently de
livered before the British Association by Professor Tyndall.
It is scarcely necessary to explain that I hesitated to do
so partly through a diffidence which it is impossible to con
ceal, and partly because I shrink from the ridicule which I
should deserve if I came forward as Professor Tyndall’s
apologist or eulogist. . Such a man needs no defence, and for
a clergyman to patronize him would be to earn derision.
At the same time no one would lament more than the
Professor himself an excessively jubilant tone on the part of
either believers or unbelievers over his Address. He would
be equally displeased to hear the believer say “ Now we can
go on believing in God, because Professor Tyndall says we
may
and to hear the unbeliever say “ We have no souls
and there is no God, because Professor Tyndall has declared
in favour of materialism.” But despite all the great teacher’s
modesty and moderation, there will be many on both sides to
feel, if not to say, such silly things. Leaving this attitude
for the little-minded and shallow-headed, we are nevertheless
conscious of the great importance to our own times of an
ex cathedra declaration of the latest scientific conclusions. It
is of consequence to the world at large what such a Professor
may think and what he may say on such an august occasion.
And although the truly wise will never take any opinion, or
accept any inference, merely out of reverence for the speaker;
the speaker has a claim on the attention of the enlightened
world in proportion to his knowledge and his uprightness.
�I do not intend to review at any length, or with any
attempt at criticism, the Address with which I hope we are
all familiar. All I desire to do is to direct special attention
to certain striking points in it and especially to those which
have more bearing on religious questions.
At the outset, 1 own with pleasure that the oftener I read
the Address the more I like it and admire it. In the first
place it is delightfully honest, and, I am sure, that is no
small claim on our attention. It is of course full of learning
as one might expect, and will help to popularize the best
thought of our best men. Its tone is everywhere moderate
and generous, which ought to soften even the prejudices and
asperities of bigotry itself. And while the Professor declares
boldly his present convictions, and presumes that time and
further research will only strengthen them, he admits the
possibility of future modification, and leaves to us—as a
right not to be disputed—the field of religious enquiry, so
long as our researches therein shall not be pursued to the
injury or enslavement of the understanding.
I do not say that this concession was necessary, but it was
generous. The Professor had a perfect right to proclaim his
theory of materialism, to show how the doctrine of evolution,
amongst others, overthrows the popular conceptions of God
and the soul, and to have religion unnoticed. No one—
especially in the present jealous attitude of theology towards
science—could have blamed him for steering clear of all such
reefs and shoals. But it seems an act of consideration to
have admitted the existence of some kind of religious enquiry
which in the opinion of the speaker did no violence to the
claims of science. It was a condescension to opponents who
have hitherto done little to deserve tender treatment.
The most striking of what I may call the negative con
clusions of the Professor are these : First, that he secs no
necessity for a Creator ; the term Creator here being used in
the hitherto popular sense of the term. There is no room
in nature’s operations for the interference of the gods.
Secondly, that he can discover no soul in man, as the term
“ soul ” is popularly understood, or even as it is represented
by Bishop Butler under the figure of an operator using a
machine. Thirdly, with the popular idea of soul, personal
immortality also vanishes from his conception of human
destiny.
�3
Now if we bear in mincl that these negations are not put
forth as dogmas, but as inferences ; are not so much the con
clusions of scientific knowledge, as confessions of scientific
ignorance, we shall be able to examine them and to hear
them repeated without the least mental disturbance. They
are put forth much in this wise :—Science reveals that natural
laws and forces are sufficient to account for all phenomena.
Matter is and ever has been adequate to produce all that we
see and all that we are. The origin of matter is still undis
covered, and a great mystery still hangs over the mighty
past and present which is yet unsolved. Everything tends
to prove that matter existed from all eternity, and every atom
of it is everlasting. The perpetual changes in the combina
tion of molecules are enough by themselves to produce all
the varying forms of animate and inanimate existence.
Creation by jumps is out of the question. Origin of species
by caprice, or by independent exercises of a creative will, is
but a bungling method of explaining what is now perfectly
clear without any such Divine interference. Science does
not say there is no God at all ; but only says, There is no
room in the perfect self-sufficiency of matter for that
manipulating, contriving artificer of a God whom the ortho
dox world have called “ The Creator of the Universe.”
Now I wonder what there is in all this for any religious
man to take objection to ? As a firm and unshaken believer
in God, I have long been familiar with the modern scientific
conceptions of the universe, and my faith has never quailed
before them. Years ago, before a country congregation, I
preached the doctrine of the eternity of matter and suc
ceeded in showing my rustic hearers that there was no more
difficulty in believing that, than in believing the eternity of
God Himself—far less difficulty indeed than in believing
that God made everything or anything whatever out of
nothing. Our notions of God’s relation to matter might
change again and again, without our losing any assurance
of His Being and His Love.
Moreover, when Darwinism arose—instead of dismay—
wonder and admiration were awakened afresh at the mar
vellous wisdom of the world’s order. To have had a toad or
a snail for one’s grandsire only added to the awe and thank
fulness of feeling that one was a man and could worship Gocl!
It is what we are, and not whence we came or how we were
born, that should regulate our conception of Him.
�4
There is nothing whatever, then, in tlie first of these
negative propositions hostile to religions belief. On the con
trary, in so far as it of necessity relieves the idea of God
from unworthy conceptions, it is an aid to faith, and leads to
an exaltation of religious feeling.
The next proposition, that man has no soul independent of
his body and brain is at first sight a little more alarm
ing. But in the first place, science here only confesses she
cannot find a soul, and points somewhat triumphantly to
the utter absence of all mental or spiritual phenomena when
the brain is totally disabled by torpor or death. The evidence
is only what might have been expected. Even in life-time
we can give no demonstration of our own “soul” as it is
called ; nor receive any proof from others that they have
souls. Accepting entirely and frankly the hypothesis that
the so-called “soul” is only the product of a living brain,
(though how produced is admitted to be another great
mystery) yet there is no evidence forthccming that once
produced it is not immortal; that impressions made upon
the mind are not indelible somew/zere—the dissolution of
cerebral tissue notwithstanding. Hitherto Science has not
proved this negative, and, what is more to the purpose, we
do not expect to find that the most minute microscopical in
vestigations can ever reveal what we call the soul, or make
manifest to the senses what can only be found in an entirely
different region. As we cannot find God in matter, so we do
not expect to find the soul in man; though in each we may
detect, as it were, the footprints of a presiding ruler, and the
traces of a force which eludes our grasp.
While Life itself remains shrouded in an impenetrable
mystery, how can we dream of understanding even the
nature of a soul or God? The term “soul” is after all only
an apology for our ignorance. One of the commonest of
human weaknesses is to give a name to what no one under
stands. We so label some of our aches and pains, just to
distinguish one from another, but the name seldom throws
light on the nature of our malady. But whether it be named
or not, no man can rid himself of that thing, or aggregate of
things, or product of things, which is commonly called his
soul—himself—the source of his most solemn action, the
medium of his communion with other souls and with the
Father of all souls—God. That self, or soul, is a reality, while
�5
it lasts, and cannot be left out of linman consideration,
merely because we cannot weigh it in our scales or seize it
with our forceps. But I go further still and say, should it
ever be proved that the “soul” is material and God Himself
also material—in the sense understood by men of science
who include invisible gases, electric and magnetic phenomena
and the forces which produce them, under that term—I do
not think I should lose my faith in God or immortality. At
this present moment I have the impression that there is
something common between me and my God, some identity
of nature between Him and what I call my spirit, although I
do not know in the least degree what that nature is, or how
it differs from tangible matter. It is enough that I am, and
that I think invisible thoughts and feel imponderable
emotions towards one who corresponds, so to speak, with my
aspiration and sympathizes with my feeling. I did not make
myself thus. I accept the doctrine of Herbert Spencer on
this matter without reservation, and conclude that my
emotions are the result of the accumulated emotions of my
ancestors. Still Nature has made me thus, and—let my
soul and God be what they may, material or not—they meet
here in this life ; trust is inspired, and love follows trust, and
hope promises endless communion.
The apparent inadequacy of the means to the end is no
serious discouragement; for this is Nature’s way—from the
embryo, to the wisest of philosophers—her beginnings are
feeble and seemingly contemptible when contrasted with
her finished work. Of course we have no proof, nor as yet
can we get one, of a future so carefully veiled from our sight
and experience, and only opened to our imagination and
hope. But the change from the primal cell to the perfected
living man, is not less marvellous and a priori incredible,
than would be the production of an immortal soul from the
mortal brain. To leave, however, all speculation, we admit
and have admitted many times, that neither God, nor the
soul, nor immortality is as yet capable of demonstration
either by scientific or any other means ; and yet we believe.
In this address Professor Tyndall has said nothing ot a
negative character which, as true and firm believers in God
and immortality, we could not honestly endorse.
I now turn to those passages in the Address which may be
termed Concessions of Science to Religion,
�6
They may be summarized as follows :
(1) Physical science does not cover the whole ground of
man’s being, or exhaust the legitimate objects of his interest
and study.
(2) There is still behind Nature, and what we call Life,
a mystery, as yet unsolved.
(3) There is a kind of enquiry into this mystery involving
the exercise of religious emotions, which is not contrary but
supplementary to science.
With reference to the second of these important admissions
by Professor Tyndall, I need say very little, as there is no
controversy about it whatever. The more we really know,
the more we find there is to be learnt. And science herself
having made such vast explorations in our own times, in every
possible direction, admits with every fresh conquest, that
new fields yet untrodden are rising to view on every side.
It is the glory of science to recognize the limits beyond
which scientific investigation cannot pass. Those who have
reached the confines of knowledge in our own day, are the
first to confess that the mystery of mysteries lies yet under
an impenetrable veil. This of itself is justification enough
for proper religious enquiry, and ought to silence the scorn
of those who deride religious investigation as childish and
futile.
But in the other two concessions, the Professor goes much
further. To him the mystery is insoluble, and on that
account investigation may have been abandoned by him as
altogether fruitless. He is, however, not so narrow-minded
as to turn round upon others and forbid their searching into
the mystery, if they please. He has no words of ridicule
for those whose chief pursuit is in a field of enquiry, which, to
him, cannot be explored. So far from that, he announces,
almost at the outset, that “ Man never has been, and he
never will be satisfied with the operations and products
of the understanding alone ; hence, physical science cannot
cover all the demands of his nature." Later on, he says,
“ It comes to pass that, over and above his understanding
there are many other things appertaining to man, whose
prescriptive rights are quite as strong as that of the under
standing itself.” Amongst these rights, he ennumerates, the
exercise of awe, reference, love, and what he calls the “ deep
set feeling ” of humanity, that which <£ incorporated itself
into all the religions of the world.”
�7
“ You,” lie says, “ who have escaped from these religious
into the high and dry light of the understanding, may deride
them; but in so doing you deride accidents of form merely,
and fail to touch the immoveable basis of the religious senti
ment in the emotional nature of man. To yield this
sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of problems
at the present hour.”
I think you will agree with me that no rebuke, so just and
well-timed, has been administered to the fashionable Atheism
of the day from any pulpit in Christendom. Professor
Tyndall has discerned what has escaped less thoughtful
minds, that it has been the errors, the assumptions, and the
intolerance of the religions of the world, which have earned
the contemptuous rejection of the wise ; and not Religion
itself, which has been wrongly identified with its corrupt
forms and accessories.
It is to solve “ this problem of problems,” that we, my
friends, are bound together.
To yield to the religious
emotions a reasonable satisfaction. We have, each in his
own way, given up all for this. Despite our failures and dis
couragements, we hold our ground with a desperate determina
tion that we may hew out a path for others to walk in, and
by kindling a little twilight that others may usher in the day.
Our religion is nothing if it be not reasonable. Long ago
did we renounce that fatuous hostility to and dread of science
common to Theologians, knowing well that whatever science
might reveal, it would bring glory to the God of the whole
universe, and give us better for our worse, more truth for our
partial and dim perceptions—yes, and more ground for hope
that every thing that breathes was wrapped in the same
everlasting arms of Divine Love. We welcomed science as
our schoolmaster, and our constant guide to warn us from
the pitfalls of ignorance and superstition, to give us the
ballast of sober thought when enthusiasm or imagination
might tempt us to soar too high. We have nothing to fear
from science so long as she is true to herself and speaks the
plain truth. As plainly as words can speak, she bids the
seeker after God forego his fruitless search for demonstration
in the realm of matter, “ Why seek ye the living among the
dead ? He is not here, but He is risen—risen from your
earlier and false conceptions into a region where only the
spiritual eye can find Him.”
We were, indeed, on the
�wrong scent when we were mixing up our speculations on the
origin and formation of matter with our search for the living
(rod, and though we may use out of mere habit, or in
religious poetry, the term. “ Creator,” yet we have long since
abandoned the meaning of that term which science has con
demned. What may be G-od’s relation to matter must for a
long time remain an insoluble mystery, but this does not con
cern those who love Him, and strive to do His will, and trust
His constant goodness. We do not know what we ourselves
are—how much less can we know what God is 1 But we
know that “we love Him because He first loved us,” and
in that daily, hourly, most profound satisfaction, we have the
consent of our understandings that it is perfectly reasonable.
I will conclude with a fragment from Professor Tyndall’s
peroration, in which every one present will recognize the
spirit and aims of our own work.
“I would set forth equally the inexorable advance of man’s
understanding in the path of knowledge, and the unquench
able claims of his emotional nature, which the understanding
can never satisfy.
*
*
*
»
*
«
“And, if still unsatisfied, the human mind, with the
yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will turn to the
mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it
as to give unity to thought and faith—so long as this is done,
not only without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but with
the enlightened recognition that ultimate fixity of conception
is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must be
held free to fashion the mystery in accordance with its own
-needs; then, in opposition to all the restrictions of
materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for the noblest
exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may
be called the creative faculties of man. Here, however, I
must quit a theme too great for me to handle, but which
will be handled by the loftiest minds ages after you and I,
like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the
infinite azure of the past.”
Carter & Williams, General Steam Printers, 14, Bisliopsgate Avenue, Camomile-street, E.C
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Science and religion: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 20, 1874
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[Carter & Williams]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874]
Identifier
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G3415
Subject
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Science
Religion
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 (Science and religion: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 20, 1874), 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
Morris Tracts
Science and Religion
-
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64554358d2538f524e6f285ac17fc5a2
PDF Text
Text
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
MAY 11th, 1873, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
[From the Eastern Post, May 17th, 1873.]
On Sunday (May 11), at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C.
Voysey took his text from John i., 9., “ That was the true light,
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
The religious differences which have made, and are yet making,
such fierce discord in the world lie far deeper down than the mere
surface of various doctrine. The real root of these differences is
to be found in the method of enquiry into religious truth, in the
means by which it is believed to be discoverable. So long as men
keep on trying to substitute one set of dogmas for another, and to
impose, as dogma, any new doctrine because it is less false or more
true than its predecessor, so long shall we have the strife oftongues
and the endless confusion of conflicting sects. Not until we have
perceived the only true basis of unity, shall we cease to fight with
one another for the ascendancy of our own particular beliefs.
The votaries of all religions in turn claim that in their own creeds
lies the only pathway to God, and it stands on the face of it, that
when these creeds are opposed to each other, they cannot all be
true, though they may be all false. If one be true, who can test
its truth ? What witness could we have that would be infallible
to make the choice for us out of so many claimants ? Moreover,
if only one be true, and only one lead to God, what a frightful
injustice is done to the millions on millions who have no access to
it, who by the accidents of birth and education, have been not
only shut out from hearing of it, but have had their minds pre
occupied from childhood by false beliefs, and have been prejudiced
�2
against all other beliefs, (and among them, of course, the true
belief) by the most solemn sanctions ! Then again, supposing that
the truest belief were discoverable to day, and enforced upon a
growing and advancing posterity in consequence, posterity would
be hampered by our decrees, fettered and enslaved by our creeds
and articles, kept tied and bound in swaddling clothes instead of
having the freedom of men. What to us had served all the pur
poses of truth, because it was the truest we could discover, would
inflict all the hardship and hindrance of falsehood upon our child
ren’s children. Look at it how w’e will, in dogma and creed we
find no sure resting place for our anxious souls, no safe road to lead
us heavenward, no sure light to bring us to God. But we have
not therefore been left in darkness because errors and falsehoods
have clouded our sky. God hath not left himself without witness,
because we have neither infallible Bible, nor infallible Pope, nor
infallible heresy. Still brightly shines over us, still leads us ever
onward and upward, the true light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world. For all purposes of a true redemption—or
to speak more correctly—of a true progress towards God, men have
now as ever the light of life, the steady burning gleam that draws
us ever onwards, and guards our wayward and storm-tost souls from
wreck and ruin.
But I should be sailing under false colours were I to use the
text which I have chosen without disowning the sense in which it
is generally understood. I quite agree with the writer in this,
that that only is the true light which is universal—•“ which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.” Any light which fails
thus to illumine all hearts is not the true light, and cannot safely
be trusted. A partial light may serve its purpose for a while, just as
we use a lantern in the darkness while the wanton earth turns her
face from the sun, but its weak and slender rays can only lighten
a narrow circle, and by its flickering may even add to our error
and perplexity.
As the rush-light to the sun, so are the various systems of belief
to that true light which God has sent to lighten every man that
cometh into the world. But some will tell us that the author of
this text meant that Christ was that true light; and I do not see
how we can deny this to have been his meaning. In the opening
�verses of this gospel the author unmistakeably refers to the Alexan
drine doctrine of the Logos which some one has aptly termed “Pla
tonism spoilt.” He speaks of the true light as “ he” and “ him;
as “ coming into the world,” as “being received,” and being rejected
as having the glory of the Great Father, and yet as being made
flesh and dwelling visibly among men. Now we unhesitatingly
refuse to accept Christ as the true light, on the simple ground that
he does not answer to the definition, he certainly does not lighten
every man that cometh into the world. He did not lighten a
single soul of the countless generations before him, nor many
millions of his fellow-creatures in his own generation. Whatever
liaht they wanted down in Judea that Christ could give (and we
do not hesitate in saying that that light was great and glorious)
they wanted also in the uttermost parts of the, earth and in the
Antipodes to Galilee, of the very existence of which Christ had no
conception. No one who is not a theologian would attempt the
folly of making-believe that Christ was the light that was
lighting every man all over the world at the very time that he was
wandering over the hills of Capernaum or disputing with Pharisees
in the streets of Jerusalem. That the soul of Jesus, and in like
manner, the souls of the rest of the world’s greatest men shed a
glorious light over humanity, wherever their names and histories
have travelled, is undeniably true; but it is not at all the same
thing as being a universal light, or even an infallible one. For
whether Christ could help it or not, there was more than one dark
band on his spectrum, and some have been led into darkness, and
even despair by sayings attributed to him by his friends. No one
human being, no one human life, has ever been bright enough to
lighten all mankind, nor sufficiently clear and unclouded never to
lead them astray. If there is one thing that God has stamped
upon all his works, and especially upon his noblest work—man, it
is the stamp of imperfection. Nothing is absolutely perfect—
though He may behold everything which He has made and say
“ It is very good. It is exactly what I intended it then and there
to be and so far very good,” He can never say “ It is perfect, “ It
is finished,” “ It is incapable of improvement.” This must ever be
the difference between the Creator and the created. While He
alone is absolutely perfect and incapable of change or progress—
�4
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—all we his creatures are
in the very infancy of our existence, and have an eternity oi
change and growth before us. So the “ brightest and best of the
sons of the morning ” are each in turn displaced by a brighter and
better successor. However vast the interval between their rising
over the world’s darkness, the glory that has set is eclipsed by the
glory that has arisen anew. However, long and glad may have
been the zenith of such a star, its turn for fading lustre will surely
come, and a more brilliant orb shall take its place.
With the deepest reverence for the excellency of Jesus of
Nazareth, and with sincere gratitude for what light he brought
into the world, we, nevertheless, deliberately say of him as the
Evangelist said of John the Baptist. “ He was not that light,
but was sent to bear witness of that light.” Christ was not the
true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,
but was only one among the great cloud of witnesses on whom the
true light shone, and by whom it was most splendidly reflected.
It that light was not Moses, nor Menu, nor Christ, nor Paul, nor
Confucius, nor Sakya Mouni, nor Odin, nor Zoroaster, nor Socrates,
nor Mahommed, nor any one, nor all of the great world teachers,
because none of them were universal, what is the true light ? It
is not far to seek if the definition be accepted. If the true light
really lightens every man that cometh into the world—
ever did, ever does, and ever will give him all the light he
can ever get—then it must be found in man, in men universally,
and neither outside of them, nor in only a few rare specimens
of the race. And this is easy to find j for as in water face
answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.
We
know humanity by knowing ourselves—know it very imper
fectly, but what we do know is truth' and fact. And in
human nature we find an universal principle, instinct or affection,
call it what you will, which is the love of truth and right. In spite
of all the texts and Confessions and Catechisms, I affirm that the
heart of man is not “ desperately wicked above all things,” but,
on the contrary, is almost the only thing about him that is
thoroughly sound and good. Man, at heart, is good, because he
loves goodness, and true because he loves truth. As soon as ever
he discovers that there is such a distinction as good and evil, or
�5
truth and falsehood, his inmost heart turns with desire towards
goodness and truth. Of the idiotic and insane I here say nothing
because I know nothing; they are not only beyond the reach of
adequate tests, but they are so exceptional, and abnormal, as to
form no solid objection to the universality of the statement that
all men love goodness and truth. Of the great bulk of humanity,
from the best to the worst, from the most cultured to the most
ignorant, from the holiest saint to the most depraved sinner, it is
only the honest truth to say that they all at heart love goodness
and truth. They may love them in varying degrees, for the more
goodness and truth are known by practice, the more they are
loved, the less men know of goodnesss and truth, the less they
care for them. But at heart every sane man has some love for
goodness and truth. No man ever yet believed a lie knowing or
even suspecting it to be a lie. It is a contradiction in terms.
However false may be a man’s conviction, it is his conviction only
because it seems to him to be true. All he cares to get hold of
is truth and fact j and though he should seem to us to hold the
most absurd fancies, or cherish, even unto dying for them, beliefs
which we cannot but scorn, yet to him they are sacred, because
they seem true and because he has not begun to question or sus
pect their accuracy. From the darkest days of Fetichism, through
all the corrupt fables of Polytheism, and down the turbid stream
of Christendom to this hour, men have been ever loyal to truth—
loyal to such truth as they could discover. They have toiled to
find it; and when found, as they think, they would fight for it
and die for it, giving up all this world below and risking all that
world above for the sake of it. They might have been happy
together as one family, but no ; they loved the truth better than
peace; and they welcomed the fire and sword which laid waste
their lands and made their streets run blood rather than sacrifice
the sacred treasure which they believed God had entrusted to their
keeping. Could they have done this, could they have suffered
what was far worse than the crusader’s steel, the cruel rupture of
their domestic love, for what they thought to be a lie 1 Impossible 2
a thousand times No ! They bore it all for truth, for what they
believed to be true. But what of the persecutors ? Greater still
was the sacrifice for truth which some of these men made. The
�6
persecutors forced themselves to trample on their holiest affections
and tenderest instincts before they could put their fellow-men to
torture and cruel death. They had to stiflle every relenting sigh,
to crush their pitying breasts against the stone walls of misguided
conscience, and to train themselves to the maddening sport of
witnessing horrors of torment without a flinching eye or a quiver
ing lip. They had to lay down their manhood for the time, and
clothe themselves in the fury—not of beasts, never was wild beast
so cruel as man—but in the fury of fiends, and all for truth !
What will not men do for truth ? In spite of all counterfeits
which claim our regard, in spite of all usurpers of her rightful
throne, men are loyally, though blindly, bent on serving truth ' on
finding it if they can, and on believing it, and living and dying,
and becoming devils for it, when found.
.And as of truth so of goodness, it is true that men at heart love
goodness. It is no answer to point to the enormous crimes that
have been done and are still being done; at the vices which infest
our fields and markets and towns, our highways and byways alike;
it is no answer to take me to the prisons and galleys, and to the
dark places of the earth, where evil reigns unchecked by such
means of restraint and discipline. I still tell you these men are
not lovers of evil for evil’s sake, as you suppose, but they are
mistaken utterly mistaken—lovers of goodness. Do you suppose
God has made man such a fool as to prefer evil to good if he knows
it ? Why, even the most fiendish of all human passions—revenge__
is a thirst for gratification, for something which seems to him
exquisitely desirable in itself, or the man would not seek it. It
is at the very root of it an excessive love of justice, an exaggerated
and therefore mistaken desire for what is right. I know that men
do wrong, knowing it to be wrong, and liking it for the passing
pleasure that it may afford; but I never knew one such who
loving it called it evil, or hating it called it good. Men hate the
evil in themselves, and think that they would be better if they
could. Men’s ideas of what is good or evil may be as numerous as
the stars. Some condemning what others approve ; but they are
all alike in condemning wrong as wrong, and upholding goodness
as goodness. If a man approves what I condemn, the difference is
not a moral one, but one of judgment. To him it seems right, and
�7
he can call it by no other name. To me it is evil and I cannot call
it good. Every man in one respect is a law unto himself, however
deficient he may be in what is called ethical science, however,
outwardly indifferent he may be to the well-being of otheis, he is
nevertheless, at heart, convinced that goodness is right and evil is
wrong, and up to the dim intelligence of his feeble mind would
bear his modicum of testimony on the side of goodness.
Now what have not these instincts for goodness and truth done
for man ? They are the very foundations of all civilization, the very
root of all religion. All the progress of the world, from the first
dawn of humanity, is due to the desire after goodness and truth.
Only try to realise the changes through which our race has passed
and you can come to only one conclusion, that 11 the true light
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” is this love
of right and truth by which we have ever been led onwards. Have
not we been mending since the world of man began ? Have not
we often and often learnt to change our moral code according as
experience or circumstance showed that it was good and right so
to do ? Do we not condemn what our forefathers deemed innocent,
and add to the number or cogency of pre-existing rules? We
could only do this, because our aim was goodness, and not mere
reverence for past law-givers. Is not the standard of virtue for
ever rising, not merely by improving on the models of the past, but
by leading us to think with greater reverence of their noblest
traits ? It is only because we love goodness, and carry with us the
true light which sheds light on that which has gone as well as on
that which is to come. Religious beliefs have come and gone in
like manner, perpetually but imperceptibly being modified by our
love of truth. The love of truth ever remains, no matter what the
creed with which it is associated. The false is hugged so long
as it is thought to be true j but [once exposed as falsehood, its
day is over. Down, down, it must go ; first into lower strata of
humanity who catch it and clutch at it as it falls, and then at last
to the very lowest ground on which human feet can tread and be
trampled into dust. A new or unfamiliar truth dawns on the
horizon, and straightway the foremost lovers of truth lift their
thirsting eyes to greet its advent, and welcome it with shouts of
joy. But some will shut their eyes, and hide themselves in their
�§
inner chambers, lest it should make them dissatisfied with the old
truths which they have loved so long; and so the world becomes
divided into foes and factions, each partizan forgetting the tie that
really binds them all—their common love of truth. Let them rail
at each other’s notions as much as they please. We are barbarians
still, and know no better mode of pressing on progress, or of
keeping it within a safe rate of movement; but while we do this,
let us not forget that we are both alike loyal 'to the truth which
neither of us has really found; that we, with our more con
spicuous sacrifices for the new truth, are not alone in our costly
virtue, but they, too, have much to bear and much to lose in the
perilous and somewhat ignoble task of fighting for a mummy, and
exposing their names to the ridicule of posterity for a mere shadow.
Let it be understood on both sides that both alike love truth and
goodness, and our contests of opinion will soon lose all their bitter
ness, and our controversies their sting.
But best of all is the assurance that however wicked and erring
men have been and are, God has made them to love goodness and
truth. The time will come when that deep seated love of goodness
will assert its mastery over the whole man, and present us fault
less before the Eternal Throne, just as that radical love of truth
will bring every one at last into that glorious region where
falsehood and error are unknown.
Then shall be fulfilled that grand old prophecy, “ After those
days, saith the Lord, I will put my law into their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be
my people. And they shall teach no more, every man his neigh
bour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they
shall all know me from the least of them even unto the greatest.”
EASTERN POST Steam Printing Works, 89, Worship Street Finsbury, E.C.
�
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The true light: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, May 11th, 1873
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed by Eastern Post May 17th, 1873. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
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Sermons
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Morris Tracts
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TRINITY SUNDAY.
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
MAY 3.1st, 1374, by tiie
REV.
CHARLES VOYSEY
[From the Eastern Post, June 'oth, 1874/1
On Sunday (May 31st) at St. George’s Rail, Langham-place, 'he
Rev. C. Voysey took his text from Psalm cxlv., 10., “All 1 hy
works praise Thee O Lord, and Thy saints give thanks unto
Thee.”
He said—As the world grows older and wiser, men begin to be
weary of Theology, and to care more for Religion. <>n this Trinity
Sunday I might, perhaps, be expected to go over the old and
tedious ground of a barren controversy, and to shew, for the
thousandth time, that Three can never be One, nor One ever be
Three, in the same arithmetical sense of the terms. But I am in
no mood for so wearisome and thankless a task. In an orthodox
pulpit such a renewal of a worn-out discussion might be very
useful and appropriate; but surely, in a place like this, it would
be a waste of time, if not an affront to your understandings, to go
over ground every inch of which must be already painfully
familiar.
Moreover, the doctrine of the Trinity, as laid down in the
Athanasian Creed, however distinctly set forth in language, how
ever frequently and solemnly repeated, has never yet been believed
bv a human being. It is as impossible for one to believe two
contradictory and intelligible propositions, as it is for one to walk
on the water, or to fly without wings. Every professed Trinitarian
is mentally conscious of believing in Three Gods, or in only one
of them at a time. No one ever achieved the miracle of believing
that the Three are not Three but One. Christendom is divided
between those who worship Jesus as Supreme God, those who
worship his mother as Supreme, and a very small minority who
worship the Father. They are all practically Monotheists,
�2
because human nature is incapable of bestowing the adoration
affection, and trust of the soul upon more than one God at a time
Polytheism, which includes Tritheism, is itself a standing proof
of my assertion. For, have as many Gods as you will, one of them
must be nearest and dearest as an object of worship. The rest fall
back into lower ranks.
As involving moral mischief, the doctrine of the Trinity is,
perhaps, the most innocuous of all the dogmas of Christianity. It
is so purely metaphysical (or would be so if it had in it a grain of
sense) that the heart is neither blessed nor injured by pretending
to hold it. It is not, therefore, worthy of our attack; it is
practically as dead and dry as an Egyptian mummy and as fruit
less for good or evil, only interesting as an antiquity, and a
curiosity of mental history.
But the passing thought we have given it suggests another of
great interest; and that is, the necessary decline ot dogmatic
Theology before the march of Human Progress; and by Human
Progress, I mean our advance in scientific knowledge, and our
advance in philanthropy.
All Theology is the result of man’s thought and observation of
the world without, and of the soul within. Whatever was true in
his reflections upon the world, whatever was correct in his obser
vation of phenomena, and whatever was exact in his self-scrutiny
entered into and became an integral part of his Theology. And
on the other hand, all his mistakes about the world and himself
were developed into Theological errors. His Theology has always
been more or less the counterpart of his own mingled knowledge
and ignorance of the things within reach of his examination.
The very subject of which Theology treats viz :—God and God’s
relation to man, has varied from age to age with the varying
growth of knowledge in other matters. At one time the conception
of a Divine Being must have been very different to what it is now.
From the beginning “God” has been made in man’s image, and I
do not see bow it could be otherwise, or how else to account for
the varieties in -Religious beliefs, or for the growths and changes of
any one of them. It cannot however be gainsaid that every
addition to man’s knowledge of any importance has been followed
by a marked corresponding change in his Theological ideas. There
�3
can be little doubt that when astrology passed into astronomy, and
alchemy into chemistry, religious ideas were vastly enlaiged, con
ceptions of God must have expanded with the - pening magnificence
of the scale of His operations in Nature. But it is in our own
times that we observe this ( subtle connexion more clearly.
Within the last twenty or thirty years the knowledge of civilized
man has grown out of all proportion to its previous rate of piogiessand with this more rapid advance have come a most remarkable
shaking of old beliefs, and a somewhat ruthless cross-examination
of the grounds on which they had been accepted. The moie we
know of the enormous extent of the universe, of the majestic forces
which are at work within it, and of the unbroken and eternal order
by which those forces are guided and controlled; the less
anthropomorphic are our conceptions of God, the less egotistical
are our notions of His relation to man. One by one the dogmas
are doubted, re-examined, thrown away. We no longer tolerate
definitions of God, still less the absurdity of descriptions of His
mode of existence. As we abandon the fables of Biblical cosmogony,
we dethrone the triple oligarchy which heretofore had ruled, and
so misruled, the world and mankind. A manipulating Creator, a
Divine artizan who is fatigued and needs rest, a disappointed
artificer whose noblest work is marred by a rival, an impatient and
petulant tyrant who drowns a whole world which he is incompetent
to govern—all these and such like notions disappear the instant
they are confronted by even our slender discoveries in true
cosmogony. The certainty and constancy of natural laws banish
in a moment the probability, if not the possibility, of miracles,
dethroning God the second, and discovering the utter baselessness
of his pretensions to power.
Scientific knowledge and scientific methods bring freedom of
mind and a sense of manly independence. We no longer accede
to any one the right to dictate our thoughts and be iefs. We
claim the right to think for ourselves and be our own guides in
matters of religion. So the time-spirit expels God the third, the
God-spirit whose authority had been claimed for Churches and
Books and PH sts; and the old three thrones are taken down
while the kingdom of darkness is retreating and retreating befire
the dawn of truth.
�4
In spite of all protests ta the contrary, the old Theology rested
entirely upon miraculous assumptions, and these it is to which
modern science has given a death-bl >w. The theology even of
professedly orthodox teachers can never again be what it once was.
But while science is thus pulling down and clearing away the
rubbish of centuries, another hand no less Divine and loyal to
truth is building up—we will not arrogantly. say a true, but a
truer theology—a more reasonable Faith. Despite all the mourn
ful and even shameless instances of se fish m ss and cruelty, this age
is undoubtedly blessed with an out-pouring of brotherly love and
sympathy, such as the world has never before seen. This love
colours everything it touches with a golden light. It manifests
itself through every virtue ennobling, justice, truthfulness,honesty,
industry, breaking down the barriers of caste and class, not by level
ing the higher to the lower, but by endeavouring to lift every lower
to the standard of the higher. Love is at work among the rich
and amcng the poor as it never was be'ore No interest is without
ir>s passionate adherents; no oppressed soul without a champion
and would-be deliverer. Men of high degree think it now their
first poiut of honour to defend the weak against the strong, and
offer as a justification for their championship, Noblesse oblige. The
rich consider themselves most blessed when they give of their
abundance to the helpless and poor. The bounty of the world is
beautiful to behold; and it comes not so much from ostentation or the
love of fame, as from tender love and sympathy with distress; for
what we see and read is not a thousandth part of what is being
done in secret through the length and br adth of our land and
nearly all over the world.
No soorner is any grand discovery made than a hundred kindly
hands are stretched out to render it practically beneficial to the
rest of mankind. The wise and learned no longer write their
books in dead languages, but in the common tongue of the people
among whom they scatter the words of wisdom and truth—very
often without money and without price. Illustrations are endless.
Never surely was benevolence so active, so enthusiastic as now.
And this, I say, is beginning to build up a new faith—new, not so
much in words as in deeds - a faith whiih is no metaphysic, but
a soul’s trust in the Soul of Goodness. Little by little it is teaching
�5
us the alphabet of scientific Theology. The old astrological or
alchemical stage of Theology is passing away—driven out by
scientific knowledge. The new stage of Theology as a science is
now coming, led by the gentle instincts of that spirit of love which
is the genius of our times. Men’s eyes are beginning to see that
if they care so much for each other, God Himself can care no less,
that if they find their supreme happiness in doing good and
rendering helpful service to each other, the bliss of the most
Blessed God must be the same — only so much the more as it is the
bliss of one who knows that His kind purpose cannot fail. All our
conceptions of the Divine are confined to spiritual and moral
qualities. We have abandoned every theory as to His nature and
mode of existence as hopelessly inscrutable to us as we are. But
we attribute to Him only such moral beauty as we ourselves in
our highest moments adore; and strange to say that the very act
of so doing seems to add to our grounds for believing in a God
at all. Our highest religious emotions are their own justification.
What may lie beyond forourselves in the future, or for our posterity,
we do not know, nor pretend to foretell; only that the past of man
kind leads us to expect with confidence that, as the present is
better tlnn the past, so the future will be better than the present.
If ever the day comes when God will not be deemed loving and
trustworthy, and an “ ever present help in time of trouble,” it
will be when human experience and human growth shall have
dwarfed these present virtues which we deem so grand; it will not
be because our notions of good and evil can ever be reversed.
There can be no possible retrogression in morals any more than in
science.
Our own integrity, sympathy, and trustworthiness towards each
other are, and I believe were intended to be, the only revelation to
us of the Divine qualities. As we grow in these, we grow in our
conception of Him, and, of course, the more these are practised,
the surer is the ground of our hope. Bor if God will not do what
we now deem to be the greatest possible kindness in those who
love one another, it must be not because He is wanting in kindness,
but b' cause He has an excess of it, and will only deny us that,
in erder to confer some better gift, some larger blessing
still.
�6
These are not only different views of God and His relation to
man, but they differ in kind from the unscientific theology of the
past, as the ground on which they stand differs from the old
foundations.
The old Theology said “ It is written,” or <f It is decreed by the
Church,” always having an assumption which either could not be
verified or could be easily disproved.
The new Theology asks “ What has God done ?” “ What is He
doing ?” and answers by pointing both to the phenomenal world
outside of us, and to the mental, moral, and emotional nature
within us. These, if there be a God, are the works of God; and
though they can only tell us a very very little of Him, inasmuch
as this whole globe is only a drop in the stream of existence, and
all the history of it we know, but one drop in the ocean of past
eternity, still that little must be true so far as it goes, and enough,
if we use it aright, to lighten our darkness, and to cheer us in
the gloom.
Science, at all events testifies there is method in the arrangement
and action of the forces. The soul of man denies it not, but says
there must be mind and will, or some infinitely higher some.hings
to correspond. Science says there is a great deal of rough play
and even cruel sport in these forces of nature. The som of man
denies it not, but says there must be love behind these sorrows and
tortures, for even to our eyes they are not all unmixed evils, but
some are disguised mercies as we have proved , and we know that
as we would not inflict wanton injury upon any sensitive cieatuie,
so neither would we bring any creature into existence purely to
torment it. Science says—I can see no good in it. The soul of
man replies—You have not seen it all yet. Wait till the end
comes, or for more light. Those who have suffered most have least
repined.
The really tortured souls whose pains never leave them till they
end in death are for the most part silent and patient, often praise
and bless God’s Holy Name for all His mercies
11 And publish with their latest breath,
His love and guardian care.”
Certain it is that the soul of man must be the interpreter of
nature’s awful mysteries. Just as his head can weigh its forces
�and tell to a nicety the machinery by which her massacres are
perpetrated, so his heart must learn the moral significance of the
deeper problem, and interpret the end and purpose for which her
catastrophes were permitted.
My friends, we claim it as our special function to pursue
religious enquiry on these principles forswearing alike all violence
to scientific conclusions, and all neglect of the testimony borne by
the human soul to the existence of the Divine. Hitherto, all
sects in Christendom have professed to base their belief on a book
or person, or some authority external to themselves. The New
School of Theology which is represented by Theodore Parker,
Professor Newman, Frances Power Cobbe and the Brahmo Somaj
of India, and lastly by ourselves, openly disclaim all ^external
authority, and as we do not rest upon it, so neither do we attempt
to claim for ourselves any right to impose our faith upon others.
We desire only to be nourished out of the wealth of the human
soul, and guarded against error by science. We are but a small
number by comparison with the Christian world. But our views
have already conquered a third, if not more, of the Unitarian
Church, are held at this moment by hundreds of the clergy and
thousands of the laity of the Church of England and spreading
rapidly through every church and sect in Christendom. We make
no new sect. It is our honour to be only leaven.
When we give God thanks for “all the truth which may have
been spoken ” let us gratefully remember that it is from the faith,
fill and earnest students of nature that we first heard those words
of truth to which this day we owe not only our freedom and
safety, but our emancipation of soul from the grovelling super
stitions which darkened the lives of our remote ancestry.
Religion will one day repay science for her somewhat stern but
faithful correction, by returning to her bosom, pure and unblem.
ished, lovely in form, and having a sound mind.
Eastern Post Steam Printing Works. 89, Worship-street, Finsbury, E.C.
��
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Trinity Sunday: a sermon, preached at St George's Hall, Langham Place, May 31st, 1874
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 7 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed by Eastern Post June 6th, 1874. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
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Trinity
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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 (Trinity Sunday: a sermon, preached at St George's Hall, Langham Place, May 31st, 1874), 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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Athanasian Creed
Morris Tracts
Trinity
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Text
the Itebibaliste’
or is it Jfatee?
JL SEPuMOlV,
PREACHED
AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM
PLACE, APRIL 25, 1875,
REV.
CHARLES
BY THE
VOYSEY.
Psalm CIII., 9. u He will not alnay be chiding, neither
keepeth he his anger for every
Y task this morning is anything but easy and
pleasant; and at its outset I ask for a fair and
candid weighing of my words, as in the face of God
I desire to say nothing but the simple truth. I have under
taken to make some answer to the all-important question, Is
the Gospel preached by Messrs. Moody and Sankey true, or
is it false ? The issues which depend on this alternative are
enormous, whether we consider them in their bearing on our
own individual destiny or as affecting the welfare of all man
kind. On such a momentous theme, it is not merely foolish
but heinous to halt between two opinions.
The documents from which I draw the particular state
ments of this Gospel are (1.) An elaborate account of the
New Evangelists published by Ward, Lock and Tyler, and
B
Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's
Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden
House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny, postage a halfpenny.
�2
sold at every railway book-stall in the kingdom. (2.) The
book of Hymns and Songs used in the revival services. (3.)
Two pamphlets containing many sayings of Mr. Moody’s,
collated by the Bev. A. S. Herring, with the object of getting
subscriptions for a Church which he is hoping to build. (4.)
The various reports of his sermons which have appeared in
the newspapers.
On every ground, I would not for the world misrepresent
the doctrines I am about to attack; and I emphatically
repeat my conviction that these men thoroughly believe what
they say, and think they are doing God service.
I go further still, and say that they are far more consistent
in making all this stir than the thousands of clergy who hold
pretty nearly the same opinions and yet make comparatively
but little effort to rescue their brethren from perdition.
Now, what is their great theme, the key-note of all their
preaching and the essence of all their hymns ? It is Jesus.
In their own language, it is “ The old old story, of Jesus and
his love.” And in order to get at the kernel of their Gospel,
it will be necessary to raise a few questions.
1. Who is this Jesus?
2. In what was his love for man manifested ?
3. What benefit did his work on earth procure ?
4. How came man to be in need of that benefit which
they call salvation ?
5. Was it God, or was it the Devil, whose wrath was
pacified by Christ’s death ?
6. What is the penalty for disbelieving “the old old
story ? ”
I think when we have answered these questions in the
exact sense, if not always in the exact words, of the
Revivalists, we shall have before us a clear conception of what
they teach.
1. Who is this Jesus?
Nothing less than Almighty God; infinite and eternal
God. Only trustworthy as a Saviour because he is God ;
one of their hymns contains these two lines :—
�3
“ 0 Jesus the crucified ! Thee will I sing,
My blessed Redeemer, my God and my King.”
So entirely is this taken for granted, that seldom in the
sermons is any reference made to a contrary opinion. The
Revivalists—much to their credit—never touch scholastic
theology at all. I do not suppose the doctrine of the Trinity
ever enters their heads; but they undoubtedly believe in the
true Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost. When they go to Heaven they expect to meet, face
to face, God the Father and God the Son, as distinct as any
two persons on earth; though why they never speak hopefully
of seeing also God the Holy Ghost, I have not been able to
discover. At all events our first question needs no further
reply. They believe that Jesus is a God—God’s Eternal Son.
We turn next to the fact that nearly all their songs and
sermons are upon the love of Jesus. It is only just to say
that in quantity and emphasis this theme predominates
over every other, and may be called the cardinal doctrine of
their Creed. The question then to be next answered is,
2. In what was the love of Jesus manifested ?
It was in taking upon himself a human form and then
dying upon the cross that he might thus bear the whole
weight of the punishment due to the sins of mankind.
A hymn entitled Substitution, gives an exact answer to
our question :
“ 0 Christ, what burdens bowed thy head I
Our load was laid on Thee ;
Thou stoodest in the sinner’s stead,
Didst bear all ill for me.
A victim led, Thy blood was shed,
Now there’s no load for me.
Death and the curse were in our cup—
O Christ, ’twas full for Thee!
But thou hast drained the last dark drop—
’Tis empty now for me.
That bitter cup—Love drank it up ;
Now blessings’ draught for me.”
This is only one specimen out of scores that I could quote.
The whole Hymn Book rings with the same note. Let us
ask in passing, Who can wonder at men loving Jesus, if
Jesus so loved men ? His heart inust be a heart of stone
�4
who could withhold his love and gratitude for such a
deliverance!
The third question, “ What benefit did his work on earth
procure ? ” is partly answered by the hymn just quoted. The
benefit is two-fold (a) the cancelling of a debt due by the
sinner, the release from a sentence of eternal woe; and (6)
the peace of mind which the knowledge of that cancelling or
release brings with it. Sinners are not only set free from an
awful penalty, but they are delivered from their fears of it,
and are assured of everlasting happiness instead of everlasting
misery.
To quote again from the Hymns :
“ Your many sins are all forgiven,
Oh hear the voice of Jesus ;
Go on your way in peace to heaven,
And wear a crown with Jesus.
All glory to the dying Lamb!
I now believe in Jesus;
I love the blessed Saviour’s name,
I love the name of Jesus.
His name dispels my guilt and fear
No other name but Jesus;
Oh how my soul delights to hear
The blessed name of Jesus! ”
Who, I ask again, can wonder at such absorbing regard
for Jesus, if the “ old old story ” be true?
I pass on to the fourth question, “ How came man to be in
need of that benefit which they call Salvation ? ”
Here again, as in the matter of the Godhead of Jesus, we
find very little information. The preachers studiously avoid
controversy unless it be forced upon them. They take for
granted that their hearers believe already that they are lost
and doomed through Adam’s fall and their own trans
gressions ; and that for these sins they deserve to be cast
into an endless hell. One hymn certainly contains the
doctrine :
“ God loved the world of sinners lost
And ruined by the fall;
Salvation full at highest cost
He offers free-to all.
0 ’twas love, ’twas wondrous love,
�5
The love of God to me ;
It brought my Saviour from above
To die on Calvary.”
But though the repulsive doctrine of the curse against
mankind for the sin of our first parents, and the still more
awful sentence of everlasting torments, are not obtrusively
prominent in either sermons or hymns, the preachers rest
upon these frightful tenets just as much as they do on the
Godhead of Jesus. Their preaching would be sheer nonsense
if the story of the fall and the doom of mankind and the
reality of hell-fire were to be by them for one moment
doubted. All their rapture for Jesus and their songs to his
love turn upon the supposed reality of this awful curse from
which he is believed to have saved them. Salvation, on their
lips, is the correlative of eternal damnation ; the former has
no meaning in their theology without the latter. In a sermon
Mr. Moody says, “ I believe in the old-fashioned hell, if I did
not believe in hell for ever, would I come here to preach
night after night ?” Indeed it is here chiefly that their move
ment deserves the name of a Revival, inasmuch as the doctrine
of a lost and ruined race, of an everlasting fire for the
damned was rapidly dying out and the belief in it con
siderably modified. The theology of Mr. Maurice and his
school has shaken also the belief in substitution. If the
Revivalists produce any desired effect on their hearers, it will
be to restore these horrible doctrines to the position' which'
they have recently 1-ost, and to excite afresh fears which were
nearly quelled. I am therefore not misrepresenting them
when I affirm that the doctrines of the fall and the conse
quent doom of mankind to endless, hopeless, misery lie at
the very foundation of their Gospel th at . Je sus came and
died to save us.
The fifth question, Was it G id, or was it the Devil whose
wrath was pacified by Christ’s death? may be readily
answered by some more verses of a hymn already quoted:
“ Jehovah lifted up his rod—
0 Christ, it fell on Thee !
•
Thou wast sore stricken by thy God,
There’s not one stroke for me.
Thy tears, Tby blood, beneath it flowed ;
Thy bruising healeth me.
�6
Jehovah hade His sword awake—
0 Christ, it woke ’gainst Thee!
Thy blood the foaming blade must slake;
Thy heart its sheath mnst be—
All for my sake, my peace to make;
Now sleeps that sword for me,”
If any further reply to this question be needed, we have
only to turn to Mr. Moody’s sermon on “ The Blood,” which
seems tto have been elicited by a letter he had received
asking, “ If believing in Christ’s death or the shedding of
His blood as an atonement for sin, be the only way by which
a sinner can be saved, how is it that Christ himself never
spoke of it in that way ?, nor do we find it mentioned in the
Acts of the Apostles as the Gospel preached to the Gentiles.”
Mr. Moody, in reply to this letter “ wondered how this per
son had read his Bible. God helping him he would answer
the question, because he believed that the Blood was the
foundation of all their hopes. Take the Blood out of the
Bible and he would not carry it home. That book did not
teach anything else. For the last 4,000 years it has been
telling the one story that man was saved by the Blood. The
first glimpse they caught of the Blood was in the 21st verse
of the 3rd Chapter of Genesis, in which it was stated that
unto Adam and his wife the Lord made coats of skin. Skins
could not have been got from animals without the shedding
of blood. In the next chapter it was stated that Abel
brought of the firstlings of his flock, and that the Lord had
respect for Abel’s offering, but no respect for the offering of
Cain. Why ? Because there was no Blood in it. Abel came
to God according to God’s way. Cain came in his own way.
He was like a great many who were saying now, What
have I to do with blood : Why can I not come in my own
way ; if I do about as nearly right as I can, will it not be
all right with me ? Cain did not see why his beautiful fruit
should not have been more acceptable than a bleeding lamb,
which was repulsive to him ; but Abel came by way of Blood,
and his offering was accepted. There were a great many
Cainites now who did not like the doctrine ; but he challenged
them to find in the Bible any other way to Heaven save by
Blood. There was no doctrine that the world attacked so
much as that of the Blood ; but the more the world assailed
him (Mr. Moody) about it, the more thoroughly he was con
�7
vinced he was right. The whole Bible went the moment this
doctrine was touched. It was a terrible thing for a man to
speak contemptuously out of any pulpit of the doctrine of
Blood ; and he did not know when be was more shocked than
when he heard a minister of the Gospel in Dublin say of the
doctrine of the precious Blood of Christ that it was the doc
trine of the shambles. It was horrible—damnable. Might
God keep them from trampling the Blood of Christ under
foot! ”
There can be no doubt then on this head. It was the
wrath of God and not the wrath of the Devil that was
appeased by the Blood of Christ.
The sixth and last question is one that must have some
little interest for us, Cl What is the penalty for disbelieving
the old old story ? ”
Again a verse of a hymn shall be our answer :
“ But if you still this call refuse,
And. all His wondrous love abuse,
Soon will He sadly from you turn,
Your bitter prayer for pardon spurn.
‘ Too late 1 too late ! ’ will be the cry,
Jesus of Nazareth has passed by.”
“ Almost persuaded, harvest is past,
Almost persuaded, doom comes at last
‘ Almost ’ cannot avail;
‘ Almost ’ is but to fail!
Sad, sad, that bitter wail—
‘ Almost ’—but lost"
il A Terrifying death-bed.—A man had often been lovingly
warned, but no heed was taken. The unexpected messenger
showed itself. The agonising soul cried aloud, “ The har
vest is passed, the summer is ended, and I am not saved I ”
(Jeremiah viii. 20.) Weaker, he said it a second time ; in
a very faint whisper he again breathed it out, and instantly
expired. Yes, my dear unsaved friends, he died a Christless death, was wrapped in a Christless shroud, was put into
aChristless coffin, and lowered into a Christless grave.”
In a sermon entitled For or against Christ; this night or
never, Mr Moody said “ he believed thousands were
trembling in the balance between heaven and hell. Every
�8
one of them’ must decide the question for themselves
That very hour they would receive Him and be saved, or
reject Him and be damned.”
This is a pleasant prospect for you and me, and I think
our anxiety to test the truth needs no apology. If it be
true, we are 11 in a parlous state ” instead.
I pause herefor one moment to gather up in the fewest possible
words the Gospel which these revivalists preach, that there may
be no mistake as to what we are about to attack. All man
kind were doomed for the sin of our first parents, and for
our subsequent sins, to everlasting woe. God was so angry
with men, that, but for Christ he would have sent them all
to hell. Christ, however, came down to earth and shed His
blood; God looked at the Blood and was satisfied. He
accepted the sufferings and death of Christ instead of the
everlasting sufferings of mankind, but only on one condition,
viz :—that men should accept it on their parts as He had
done on His part—should take it and believe it and be ,
thankful. Then they should be forgiven, and saved, and go
to heaven; but that if they did not believe it, they should
be damned after all, and Christ himself would turn against
them, become their fierce judge, and in the words of Mr
Moodythey would be lost for all eternity.”
Now, until very lately this has been the main Creed of
Christendom. Of course each church or sect adds somethingto it of its own. But they all agree in a lost and doomed
race, a dying, and bleeding God, and a salvation all owing to
Him. Messrs Moody and Sankey are only giving us the old
story of orthodox Christianity, the message of the greater
part of the New Testament, the “ the Gospel once for all
delivered to the saints.” They are now saying in striking
and novel language what the whole Church and aggregate
of Churches (except the Unitarian) have been saying ever .
since the day of Penticost. So when we challenge the truth
of their Gospel, we are challenging what the whole world
recognizes as the Christian Faith, which, however erroneously
it may be claimed to be based on the authority and teaching
of Jesus himself, is commonly called Christianity. Moreover,
it strangely shows itself as the common element in all the
divisions of Christendom, except the Unitarian. A revival
�9
of this Faith would be a revival of universal Christianity in
which every church and sect would share. No one calling
himself an orthodox Christian ought to breathe a word of
complaint against Messrs Moody and Sankey’s doctrines.
I now proceed to analyse this Gospel, and shew the grounds
on which I impugn it and declare it to be false.
May I not lay down as axioms that no doctrines can be
true which are based on a primary falsehood; and that every
proposition must be false which declares or implies that
God is unjust? I pass then from the structure of this
Gospel to the very foundation, and analyse the cardinal
assumption on which it all rests. It is over and over again
repeated that God cursed all mankind with an exceedingly
bitter curse and sentenced the whole of our race to endless
torments in hell, as a punishment for sin.
There is no shadow of doubt that nearly the whole of
Christendom has imputed to God this sentence of doom.
In spite of all they say about His love for lost sinners in
sending His Son to save them, there the awful charge stands
arrayed against Him. of having pronounced this;most unjust
and cruel sentence. He, the Maker of all things made this
pit of everlasting fire for the endless torment of his frail
creatures. We need not think of its matchless cruelty, but
only ask Was it just and right? Did man deserve such an
awful fate ? I demand an answer to this question from every
minister who preaches to me the Gospel of Salvation by
Christ. I claim to be told on what grounds of eternal
justice, even the most awful sin which man or devil could
commit, can be punished with endless, hopeless woe without
a chance of repentance ? Even if the sinner had been born
absolutely perfect, with fullest measure of reason and moral
power, in sovereign command of every faculty, and had
entered into solemn contract with the Almighty to do His
bidding without fault or wavering, and had, in spite of these
overwhelming advantages and responsibilities, set his
Maker at defiance and drawn a host of his fellows into
rebellion—even then, I say, a Being who had the power
over him, and who had the right of vengeance, would be a
fiend of the blackest dye if he condemned that rebel to neverending torture. But how awfully aggravated is the injustice
�10
ascribed to God in the damnation of a creature like man.
Putting aside the use of Adam and Eve as exceptional, the
whole of their posterity were born weak and sinful, and more
ready for evil than for holiness. Nay, the Gospellers are
never weary of expatiating on our total depravity by nature,
and our utter inability to keep the laws of God. And yet
they dare to say of the most Holy and Righteous God that
He has doomed us frail sinners to everlasting Hell, in order
that the Majesty of His Law might be vindica
ted !
I demand an answer from these preachers ; Is
this right and just?
Is it conduct which the
Old Testament at all events bids us imitate ? Is it
not the exact opposite of that mercy and love which their
God Jesus is believed to have shown? Further, the damna
tion so unjust as against frail sinners is more unjust still as
against unbelievers ; for men cannot control their beliefs,
they must believe as they are convinced, and this is an in
tellectual process over which they can exercise little or no
control. Indeed, there is everything to induce them to
believe, for the Gospel says they will escape the awful
damnation and win an endless bliss if they will only believe
it; therefore if anyone refuses to believe, it is because he
cannot help it. So whether the doom of hell be pronounced
against sinners, as sinners, for their own and Adam’s trans
gression, or against unbelievers for their unbelief, it is a
monstrous and inexpressible injustice ; and all the sins of
the whole world piled up together are righteousness itself—
are as white as snow—compared with the infamy, the black
hearted fiendishness of sending one soul to perdition.
The doctrine of hell, then, is in our view the most fearful
blasphemy which can be spoken against God, and therefore
it cannot be true. Therefore, since it is absolutely false,
mankind are not, nor ever were, in danger of eternal damna
tion ; never needed the salvation which these preachers pro
claim ; therefore they did not need Jesus or anyone else—
God or man—to bear their punishment in their stead; if there
was no hell to be saved from, they wanted no saviour; if
there was no burning wrath of Jehovah against them, they
needed no mediator to slake it; if no death nor curse were
in their cup, they needed no Christ to drink its bitter draught.
The dying love of Jesus, and the precious Blood flowing to
�11
hide men’s guilty stains from the eye of the Christian
Moloch, are all a myth, a pure fable, as little worthy of
credit as the labours of Hercules or the banquet of Thyestes.
And it is not our fault that we utter this unwelcome rejection
of their Gospel. It is theirs and theirs alone. They have
put into our hands this very weapon to strike at the vitals of
their Gospel. They have kept on telling us that Christ
came to save the lost; that he would not have come at all,
but to rescue us out of the burning pit of destruction, and so
we have only to echo their ’ words and to shew the helpless
falsehood of their whole Gospel by exposing the utter
falseness and impiety of the fundamental assumption on
which the whole fabric is based. This conclusion was long
foretold by the orthodox themselves. The very first time
that the eternity of Hell-fire was questioned, they murmured
in sorrow and fear that if that went, Christianity would soon
follow. A Bishop once told me that if I did away with
everlasting Hell, there would be no ground for the atonement,
and if the atonement were needless, so also was the Incarna
tion and so too were all the miraculous events of Christ’s life
and death. He was quite right. He had been at the Bar and
knew how to reason. I deliberately therefore denounce the
Gospel according to Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and the
prevailing teaching of Christendom, as utterly false and
fabulous, resting entirely on a proposition inherently untrue,
because it charges God with the most wicked of crimes and
the most cruel injustice.
Time forbids me to say more to-day. I only wish that
this challenge or one of a similar kind may be sent to these
popular preachers and by them fairly met and answered. If
they are in earnest, as we may well believe, they will surely
find it to the interest of their cause to meet and not to evade
this challenge, to look again at the very foundation stone of
their religion, lest the whole fabric fall unawares upon
themselves and their deluded followers, and in its fall may
crush and bury all the good and pure and lovely thoughts
which, in spite of its falsehoods, still cluster around lt the old
old story of Jesus and his love.”
�LONDON:
CARTER & WILLIAMS, Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue,
Camomile-street, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
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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
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Pamphlet
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Is the revivalists's gospel true, or is it false?. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, April 25, 1875
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 11 p. : 19 cm.
Notes: A response to the Gospel preached by Moody and Sankey.
Publisher
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[Carter & Williams]
Date
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[1875]
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G1597
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<p><a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img style="border-style:none;" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> <br /> This work (Is the revivalists's gospel true, or is it false?. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, April 25, 1875), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
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Christianity
Gospels
Revivalism
-
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Text
LONDON:
CARTER & WILLIAMS, Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue,
Camomile-street, E.C,
�The Causes of Irreligion.
A Sermon,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SEPTEMBER 5, 1875, BY THE
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
Jeremiah, IX., 1. 2., “Oh that my head were waters and
mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people.
Oh that I
had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men, that
I might leave my people and go from them....................... for
they lend their tongues like their bow for lies, they are not
valiant for the truth upon earth..................... and they
know not me saith the Lord
E
W are met together once more, my friends, to worship
God in such simplicity and truth as we are capable
of, and to pursue the great work which binds us in
one heart and soul—the redemption and preservation of true
Religion.
Religion has well-nigh become a by-word and a reproach
in this age of boasted enlightenment. The record of its past
has made good men weep, and wise men scoff. The. con-:
temptible triviality of the questions it has raised has often
found a fearful contrast in the storms of fierce passion which
have raged over them and the rivers of blood in which they
have issued.
While philosophers had no alternative but to cast aside
with derision the absurd assumptions of theologians ; while
moralists and philanthropists have mourned over the obstacles
to human welfare and progress everywhere set in their path
by Christian dogmas ; the various champions of conflicting
Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's
Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden
House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny postage a halfpenny.
�■
creeds have been doing their worst, unconsciously, to under
mine all reverence for religion, to alienate the hearts of men
from the very thought of God, and to foster the vices and
follies which Religion is supposed to condemn.
With many it is quite a question whether religion is not
the greatest blunder man has ever committed since the world
began. With others, it has ceased to be a question at all
and has become a settled conviction. Go into any mixed
society and you will find types of at least three prevailing
modes of thought about religion. One is partisanship,
another indifference, a third denunciation. You have the
dogmatic sectarian, believing himself and the rest of his sect
or party to be the prime favourites of Heaven ; another who
makes his boast of being utterly worldly and irreligious, and
can afford to do so seeing so many around him to keep him
countenance ; and a third who never loses an opportunity of
scoffing at religion and laying at its door every foul act which
comes to the surface. These three are common types. The
first is the strongest numerically ; the second socially; the
third intellectually.
Now there is an obvious cause tor each of these three modes
of thought upon religion; and it might be well to point it
out for the benefit of those who ought to be most interested
in the maintenance of religion. We will begin with the first
class, the dogmatic sectarian. What is it that makes him
what he is ? Simply an entirely false notion of religion
itself. Nearly all the teaching of Christendom has been to
the effect that man is saved or. damned according to his belief,
and not according to his life. And even where the ideas of
salvation and damnation have been kept in abeyance and
worthier motives have been substituted, there has been the
same false notion at the root, viz : that God is pleased or dis
pleased with us according as we think truly or think falsely
respecting Him. I am not one, as you well know, to hold
loosely in my regard the value of true opinions on any sub
ject, much less in matters pertaining to religion. We all of
us, by our readiness to encounter suffering in the mainten
ance of our opinions, testify to the importance of believing
and proclaiming what is, to our minds, true. But one and
all deny with our whole hearts the notion that to hold right
�3
beliefs is praiseworthy, or to hold wrong beliefs blameworthy;
that our opinions can make any possible difference to the
favour or disfavour of God ; still less that on such a slender
thread can hang our immortal destiny for bliss or woe. Men
can only believe as they may be persuaded; according to the
cogency of the arguments before them, or, what is much
more common, according to the tendency of their own minds
coupled with their early training or surrounding associations.
The Christian Missionary in vain confronts the Mussulman
and shaking the Bible at him says, “ You reject God’s word,”
for the Mussulman with equal right ’can shake the Koran at
the Christian and say, “ You are rejecting God’s word.”
To believe or accept any book or body of doctrine, or any
illustrious individual as a Divine teacher, is itself an involun
tary act of the mind and cannot deserve praise or blame.
God is no more disobeyed or dishonoured by a man refusing
to acknowledge the Divine authority of the Bible, of Jesus
or of the Church, than He is dishonoured by another man
accepting as Divine the authority of the Koran and of
Mahomet. But we need not pursue these common-places.
It is more to our purpose to observe what inevitable conse
quences of conduct, feeling, attitude must follow upon believ
ing that our creed or religious opinion secures our salvation
from perdition, or in any way merits the favour of God. The
first and most obvious effect of this is to set the holders of
different creeds at war with each other. They cannot help
it. Their very differences, small at first, perhaps, become
magnified and raised into essentials of salvation. Kindhearted men on either side try to convert each other, each
truly fearing that the other is going to hell. Hard-hearted
men will add hatred to this conviction and resort to violence
as in the days of the Inquisition, or to other milder means of
coercion as the state of civilization will permit.
Next, there comes an over-culture of the sentiment of
pride, which soon breeds arrogance and unlawful ambition.
Those who believe themselves to be the repositories of God’s
truth would fain conquer the world, and if they cannot force
all men to believe with them, the effort is made at least to
force them into outward conformity. And there, in the per
son of Pius the ninth, we see the embodiment of this principle
�4
and the action in which it finally issues. Nothing can be
more logical or more practically consistent. The Pope simply
acts, or tries to act, so far as his crippled liberties will allow
him, up to his convictions that he is God’s vicar on the earth
and the sole repository of Divine truth. But in looking at
the Roman Pontiff, every dogmatic sectarian ought to see
the reflection of wrhat he himself would be if he could. The
principle of Rome and that of all her rebel children is the
same. The difference is only such as exists between a hen
and her chickens. The nature is identical, and, if suffered to
develope, each sect would become an imperial ecclesiasticism
like that which is governed from the Vatican.
Another result of attaching undue value to opinion is the
development of dogma from what was originally perhaps
simple and reasonable to what is complex metaphysical or
absurd. The Jews,
who did not at first hold this foolish
idea of being saved for their creed, never wanted any other
God but Jehovah, nor sought to define Him in riddles of
speech or to depict Him in any similitude until they caught
the infection from those who thought more of creed and wor
ship than of duty and love. But this dire necessity of con
ceiving rightly about God on pain of His everlasting
displeasure set men groping in the thick darkness among
mysteries of their own contriving. Nothing but metaphysical
definition would satisfy them. The native trustfulness of
heart towards the Good Spirit was gone, and in its place came
fear and trembling, and speculation; and, like drowning men
catching at straws, they invented first one and then another
god to keep company with the Supreme, and around every
fresh name were clustered webs and mazes of ever-deepening
perplexity, every item and detail of which must be held
faithfully and kept whole and undefiled, or “ without doubt
they should perish everlastingly.”
It would be impossible to believe unless the facts were un
disputed, that our Christian forefathers fought and wrangled,
and finally ruptured Christendom over the question whether
or not the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Son as well as
from the Father. The celebrated filioque dispute has never
been settled to this day, and it is more incredible still that
any one in the whole of Christendom should be found
�5
sufficiently antiquated to care a straw for the clause in
question.
But the Church of Rome (and the Church of England too)
damns to everlasting fire all who reject this diminutive
dogma. According to us and Rome, the whole Eastern
Church is under sentence of endless perdition, because she
rejects the statement of the double procession, and for good
reasons known to herself will not have fiilioque in her Nicene
Creed. 'The recent conference at Rome with the best inten
tions has nevertheless brought back the smile of contempt
to the faces of impartial spectators ofthe Churches’ squabbles.
If the voice of God out of Heaven could reach the solemn
meditators over this infinitesimal problem, saying, “ What
doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to do justly and
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” those
men whose minds and hearts are worthy of better themes
would quietly let that double procession fall under their
table, would let go one by one all the silly inventions which
led up to it and gave to it its grand but fictitious notoriety,
and would disband and go home impressed with the really
vital and tremendous questions on which the welfare of so
many millions of mankind is now hanging. They would say
in their quickened souls “While we have been mooning
over the procession of the Holy Ghost and the filioque, God
Himself is being eclipsed—the lamp of faith is dying out for
want of the oil of gladness, and the world is hastening into
the night of despair. While we were seeking for new
Shibboleths, and torturing language to call white black and
to affirm and deny the same proposition with one breath, the
voice of j oy and peace in believing is fading, fading away ;
and when men and women in their sadness call on us for
comfort, for one word to strengthen their failing faith, we
shall be dumb with astonishment and there will be no voice
nor any to answer.”
But why all this wanton waste of time, and toil and brain ?
Because they and the whole aggregate of Churches have been
taught to believe that on their believing rightly down to the
minutest dogma depend all their hopes of salvation. Hence
and hence only has arisen this scrupulousness about questions
inherently contemptible. Hence has come the utter neglect
�6
of the really important questions, the first and most necessary
foundations of all true religion ; and hence has sprung the
contempt into which religion has been plunged, and the still
wider indifference to it which has fallen like the sleep of
death over the most influential people in our land.
And I think they will bear me out if I speak apologeti
cally for them on this theme. They would most likely
say :—“We do not hate religion because it is good ; for
though we are mirthfully disposed and detest puritanism
and asceticism, we are men at heart. and have an eye for
what is pure and lovely quite as clear as yours. We should
not despise religion if the professors and teachers of religion
were only to talk a little sense and not treat us as if we
were babies. We should not despise it if the preachers were
to make some attempt to draw the line between what may
reasonably be inferred and what is too incredible to be
swallowed. We should not despise religion if it was more
natural and appealed to our common sense and better feel
ings, instead of giving us patent absurdities like the
Athanasian Creed, immoral and revolting dogmas like those
of the atonement and everlasting fire ; if they did not go
on asserting that ‘ it .the resurrection of Jesus as recorded in
the gospels be not true, then all that Christianity teaches is
a falsehood,’ or thatf if the gospels are not all true then Jesus
must have been an impostor and other foolish talk of the
same kind. We should not despise religion if men and
women—especially the clergy—did not quarrel over it so
much and manifest such bitterness, jealousy, -animosity, and
slander towards each other. We should not despise it, if
the poor preachers had a chance of speaking their honest
minds ; but if we go to church the parson must say what
he is bidden to say by the 39 Articles ; and if we go into a
chapel the minister must say only what he is bidden to say
by the congregation. We see, therefore, the whole system
made systematically insincere, and hollow; and without
reckoning the wearisome monotony of second-hand doctrines
repeated from Sunday to Sunday all the year round, we are
fairly disheartened by the conviction that the preachers are
all gagged and muzzled, and whether they believe what
they teach or not, we have no means of discovering. Finally,
�4
we despise religion because we are for ever being told that
it is wicked not to believe this, that, or the other ; and no
matter what we do or how we live we shall be damned if we
do not believe in the blood of Christ or submit ourselves to
the dictates of the church. We know better than that.
We have the sense to discern the malignity and injustice of
such an arrangement, even if our consciences did not tell
us that we shall be sure to have to pay the full penalty—
no more and no less than our sins deserve. We despise
religion too because they tell us not to use our reason ; that
it is impious to doubt or question any of their assertions or
the still more incredible assertions in their Bibles and
Prayer-books. We know that must be wrong, for if there
be a God and He has given us reason, without which we
cannot move one step in the discovery of what is right and
true, He must wish us to use our reasons in searching after
Him and in the discovery of His will; and that religion
carries its own condemnation which says it is wrong or
dangerous to think for oneself. This is why we despise
religion and will no more of it till the preachers talk sense
and are permitted freely to say what they really believe.”
Such, I believe is the testimony of the indifferent. In
some, indifference has been pushed to the extreme of active
hostility ; but the alienating cause is the same in either
case. These reflections, loose and fragmentory as they are,
should lead us to hope that true religion consistent with
common sense, with duty and with cheerfulness, is yet
possible to those who have been alienated by what bears the
sacred name of religion in our day. Men and women clo
love that which is good, are ready to believe that which is
true, are thankful to embrace hopes for the future which do
not outrage the intellect or demoralize the heart.
If there be a God in Heaven—and when I say “ if,” I do
not falter one moment in my grateful trust in Him—then
surely He will continue to draw to Himself the hearts of the
gentle and aspiring, the hearts -of the weary and careworn,
the hearts of the tempted and the enchained, the hearts of
the weak and the hearts of the strong; the young, the
prime, and the aged, those who toil and those who rest, the
sick and the dying. If God loves, He needs us as much as
�we need Him, or we should never have been here at all. If
He is as good as He is wise, He will not alter the hard path of
our lives to suit our discontent, however justifiable, nor sur
render into our childish, short-sighted control, the guidance
of our lives and destiny.
True religion must live, in spite of false religion, indiffer
ence, or hostility,—or this world will be turned into hell;
might will overcome right; aud every soul which survives
the catastrophe will in weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth cry out like Lucifer in his fall “ Evil be thou my
good.”
D. WILLIAMS & CO,, Printers, 14. Bisliopsgate Avenue, Camomile Street, E.G,
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The causes of irreligion. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 5, 1875
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
D. Williams & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1875]
Identifier
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G3390
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The causes of irreligion. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 5, 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Atheism
Belief and Doubt
Religion
-
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01371de3b53f050abccf235a070d5fac
PDF Text
Text
“AN IDEAL PARISH.’’
y A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
MAY 4th, 1873, BY THE
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
[From tho Eastern Post, May 10th, 1873.]
On Sunday (May 4th) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C.
Voysey took his text from 1 Peter, iv., 11, “If any man minister,
let him do it as of the ability which God giveth.”
He said—At the request of some of the congregation, I will
resume my discourses on the subject of the Church. In order to
form a correct idea of what a Church should be, we must first
consider what are the proper relations between a minister and the
people to whom he ministers.
The first thing that strikes one as eminently desirable is that
those relations should be made as close and as permanent as
possible, short of absolute irrevocability. The parochial system,
as it is called, furnishes the opportunity for such a relation better
than any other which has yet been tried. A minister ought to be
resident among the people to whom he ministers, and should make
it his paramount duty to become personally acquainted with them,
and if possible, to become their constant friend. He can do very
little indeed for their advantage in the pulpit, unless he is tolerably
familiar with their daily lives. Unless he knows their thoughts
and sentiments by friendly converse, more than half of what he
may say is like beating the air, and is sheer waste. Unless he
hears their arguments against his own opinions, he and they will
diverge further and further, till his influence is entirely destroyed
—to say nothing of the constant strain upon his ingenuity as a
preacher in selecting subjects for the pulpit, week after week,
without having any clue as to what is most expedient or timely
�2
for his hearers. Acquaintance and converse with the people is a
perpetual mine of wealth for the preacher’s thoughts, not only
giving him a large choice of topics, but directing him to the best
selection that could be made.
Important, however, as is the work in the pulpit, it is not nearly
so important as the work in the parish. And if the minister's
function be to build up the temple of religion and morality, and
to help in raising to a higher platform the less advanced souls of his
flock, that function can never be adequately fulfilled by mere preach
ing. He must live amongst his people, and learn to understand their
feelings and sympathise with their views, and have compassion on
those who are are ignorant. Personal contact is the only power
that one can depend upon to obtain a legitimate influence over the
minds of others. We see it too often resorted to for most
unworthy ends. It is an old complaint that priests have been
wont to “devour widows’ houses,” and to “lead captive silly
women laden with sins.” Of such influence we can only think
with indignation and shame, but what I would advocate is the
use, instead of the abuse, of a power which, when wielded aright,
is pregnant with beneficial results. What the minister has to do
is to serve his people—to lay out his days in such help of head, or
heart, or hand, as may be within his power to render. If he
knows his duty and privilge, it will delight him to make friends
of all his parishioners, so that in time of trouble they will send
for him, as a matter of course, knowing how faithfully and
efficiently he will stand by them. Such help is something infinitely
more than almsgiving. That, of course, is unhappily needful at
times, but the help of which I speak may be extended to persons
of all ranks and conditions, till almsgiving sinks into one of the
most occasional and unimportant services he has to render.
There may be places where such services are quite superfluous,
but I believe I am right in saying that in nine-tenths of the
parishes in England, the presence of a resident clergyman and his
family is an unmixed blessing, for the loss of which not even
liberation from superstition would entirely compensate. I have
known clergymen who have spent the greatest part of their days
in visiting their parishioners and in teaching in the village school.
During their rounds, they have not only consoled the sick, and
�3
raised the spirits of the depressed, but they have saved their
parishioners from, serious losses by that counsel which could only
be supplied by a man of culture. How often they have to write
letters for their people and explain legal documents and supply legal
information. How often they have sufficient knowledge of medi
cine to be of invaluable service, and to win from the doctor, who
had been summoned from a great distance, the welcome ejaculation
l< You have saved the poor fellow’s life.” Every day brings up
some fresh want which only a minister thus placed could supply.
But then to do this, he must first be known and felt to be a friend,
a friend in need, a willing friend, one who does not look for any
return in Easter offerings; no, nor for any return in compli
mentary attendance at Church■ nor for any other kind of quid
pro quo. If a man has it in him, he will soon show that he works
only for love, for the sake of being useful, and not even to be well
spoken of, though that is a great boon in such a position. And
so when he fails, as he surely must fail sometimes, in the pulpit,
to satisfy his hearers, or to come up to the standard of his own
ideal, he has at least the satisfaction that his whole life is spent in
their service, and one good deed is better than a thousand ser
mons. In spite of all the misuse that has been made of this
relation of minister and people, it can assuredly be made the
purest instrument of good that can be imagined. But you can
only get this relation in the parochial system. Draw a line round
a given area and let all the inhabitants of that area know that
they have a property in the gentleman who resides among them as
their minister; and? let him also know that he is placed there to
be their common servant; let Jews and Christians, let Catholics
and Protestants, Churchmen and Dissenters, Believers and Infidels
alike claim his faithful friendship and service. Let him know
that it is his business not to convert them, but to be of use to
them in mind, body, and estate; to help them all whenever and
howsoever he can; and then, if this condition be fulfilled, you have
your ideal parish, in which peace will reign, in which sectarianism
and religious strife become paralysed, and in which the minister of
religion is recognised as the type of perfect toleration and the best
of peacemakers. Do not think this is Utopian; it has been done
already and done under more eyes than mine.
�4
It is, however, essential to the clergyman’s fidelity and selfrespect that he be entirely independent of his parishioners for his
income. He cannot possibly preserve a strict impartiality if he be
supported by the voluntary subscriptions of his flock. Those who
give more money for his support would claim more of his service
and concession than those who gave less. He would become the
rich man’s minister and the rich man’s tool. The poor could not
feel, as they do under the endowment system, that he was par„
ticularly their property—more their servant because their needs for
his culture were greater. No man, however high-minded, could
bear such a restraint upon his conduct as that which is involved
in being the protege of a wealthy parishioner who practically had
the power of dismissing him.
Still there is something in the objection : What is a parish to
do with an incompetent or unworthy minister ? How is he to be
got rid of ? Well. He ought to be got rid of; and parishioners
ought to have the power of preventing a well-known obnoxious
clergyman being forced upon them ; and after one year’s trial of
any minister a majority of three-fifths or three-fourths of the
parishioners ought to have power to remove him. This power in
reserve would be enough wholesome restraint upon lax-minded or
indolent men, while it would do no injury to the self-respect of
those who were good and capable.
The subject of patronage I do not here touch upon. I will now
endeavour to represent what the minister and people ought to do
in reference to the public ministrations of religion. Supposing
them to be in the harmony which I have described, and which is
much easier to achieve than is generally supposed, the minister,
still keeping in mind that he is the servant of the people, will set
his mind on having a service such as they, or the large majority of
them, will approve. He may well be entrusted and expected to
draw up the service in accordance with what he knows or guesses
to be popular and within the limits of the resources of the district.
He does not say, “You shall have this service whether you like it
or notbut says, “ Try it for a little while, and if then you do
not like it, we will alter it to meet vour objections, or prepare
another.” If the loudest and most influential voices are inclined
to be over-bearing and dictatorial, it will be his duty to plead foi'
�5
minorities, and to retain or insert occasionally such forms as may
be only pleasing to the few. But, if he have a grain of wisdom,
he will regard the service in the Church as for the people and not for
himself. He must waive his own prejudices so long as it does not
involve the sacrifice of principle ; and he will remember that he is
their spokesman, and not necessarily pledged to every word or
sentiment that his parishioners desire him to read on their behalf.
Here, instead of a new bone of contention, would be found a
new bond of friendship and mutual esteem. A minister so acting
would thereby recommend his own proposals far more eloquently
than by any reasoning. It would be enough for the people to
know that not only they eould have their own way about the
service, but that that was the minister’s sole desire. Say not, this
could not be done in a parish, when it has been done where not one
single parochial advantage exists. It has been done here, where
our congregation meets from the four winds, and many members of
it travel long distances, few knowing each other, and the minister
labouring under the overwhelming disadvantage of only meeting
them in the pulpit, and exercising not one ministerial function for
them during the week. If it be both possible and easy under our
circumstances, it would be infinitely more so, were we all living
together in one parish.
I do not know how my brother clergymen would like what I
have next to propose ? But I cannot forget that half-a-dozen per
sons in my late parish, who still remained my sincere friends, felt
conscientiously unable to attend the parish church while I
preached in it. Such a case might happen anywhere, and in some
places the scruples might be very numerous ; yet it always seemed
to me a hardship that even six people were kept away from the
church on such grounds. Now in my ideal parish, if I were
minister, I would advocate the opening of the church once at least
on a Sunday to the few who could not agree with the majority,
and they might have as their minister for the occasion whomsoever
they would, provided always that the man chosen were blameless
in moral character, and that the services were decently conducted,
and not made occasions for irreverent mirth. Next to subscribinoto Dissenters to enable them to build their chapels in one’s own
parish, I' think, such a step would be highly beneficial. A man
�6
only increases tenfold his influence by toleration. He diminishes
it in like proportion by every act of exclusiveness and bigotry. I
once saw a whole settlement of Baptists go over to the Church
because the clergyman gracefully gave way in a matter of disputed
right of occupation.
I have now only to speak of the minister’s function in the
pulpit. I take it for granted that he is a man of ordinary
tact, and possessing what is infinitely more than tact, an honest
and kind heart. I have assumed that every minister should
have some culture, and be morally of blameless life. These are
the only conditions with which the State ought to concern itself.
As to his religious views and opinions, they are exclusively his
own, to hold or relinquish at pleasure. His sole claim to appoint
ment is that he is duly qualified from a literary point of view, and
that he seeks to be a minister of religion. He goes to his parish
perfectly untrammelled by religious tests, 39 Articles, 3 Creeds, or
Acts of Uniformity. He is not bound to take any man, or any
number of men, as his guide or model. He is perfectly free. All
that is expected of him is that he will be faithful—true to himself,
and to his own convictions. Being a man among men, it will be
only natural for him to be tentative at first, and not shock and
alienate the strangers who gather round to hear his earliest
discourses. He will find out by gentle means how much the
people agree with him and how far they differ, so that he may give
attention to those points where reconciliation is attainable by
persuasion or amplification. He will soon discover whether he
can lead them on, or whether he is altogether unfit for their present
stage of thought. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, such a
minister’s work will be easy from the first, and crowned at last by
the hearty concurrence of his parishioners. But this is the only
limitation he will put upon his own perfect freedom; the only
ground on which he will tolerate in himself the slightest reticenee.
His grand aim will be to declare unto them “ the whole Counsel
of God,” as it appears to him ; and not to keep back “ one word of
God’s truth from the great congregation.” He has no excuse now
for evasion or subtlety, or that most miserable and fashionable of
expedients, the knocking to pieces of some orthodox doctrine, and
then saying, “I believe in it for all that.” He has no ground for
�■ i'*~- ■ t * •■ &fp?j 'ffi v> > z?*?b >?'■'■'';*■'?<* om ‘^yi >.,<r'>
5f’' ''.*'? *"•
7
hesitation. The people expect honesty from his lips, not things
merely smooth and agreeable. They only bind him by tacit
agreement to be true to himself, and not to deceive them by
ambiguous speech, or hide his honest thought under a cloud of
controversial dust. This, of itself, would be a great attraction. I
know of the preaching of a heretic that was attended by some of
his parishioners who could not bear his doctrine, and when asked
why they continued to go to church to hear him, said, “ Well, he
always speaks his mind, and says we are not obliged to think as
he does.” Indeed it would be life from the dead in our English
churches and chapels if the word were to go forth that everywhere
on a certain Sunday, the ministers, without fear of pains, penalties,
or social stigma, would really preach what they honestly believed.
It would be such a day of Pentecost for thought and religious
earnestness as the world has never yet seen.
I know I am speaking the sober truth when I affirm that
though there are many earnest and true-hearted men of every
shade of religious opinion, who invariably say what they think to
be true, are yet undistinguishable from the mass around them,
who preach doctrines cut and dried for them, and shun original
thought or speech as they would the plague. How can you tell
whether a man be true to himself or not, if all are tethered with
the same length of rope and must not transgress certain limits.
Go to St. Pauls, or to Westminster, or to our Chapels Royal, or
anywhere you please, and distinguish the honest men from the
dishonest if you can. They are there sure enough, but you cannot
test them. They are bound up in one bundle with the insincere
and the indifferent. In the interest of all religious opinions what
ever, it is absolutely needful to have no prohibition on the ex
pression of honest opinion. Without that liberty you cannot be
sure that the Protestant is not a Catholic, the Catholic an Infidel,
the Evangelical a Rationalist. It is in the power of any Sunday
School boy to say of every preacher thus tied and bound—“ Ah !
he did not dare say what he believes.”
While we are yet ignorant, we need the fullest variety of opinion.
Such differences are blessings, not curses, till the true science of
God shall come. And we ought to welcome honest speech, how
ever distasteful its arguments and conclusions, however seemingly
f
�8
dangerous to order and morality, simply because it is honest, and
is the deeply rooted conviction o£ another man’s mind. More
than this, 1 believe the honest utterance of opinions one does not
like, does a great deal more good than the flattering repetition of
sentiments already adopted.
For the present I-close with this remark. The ideal parish which
I have endeavoured to draw, is based upon the principles of Love,
Liberty, and Truth. In sad contrast to these, the churches, as
history tells us, are worked by hatred, intolerence, slavery, and
falsehood—falsehood clung to after it had been detected and
exposed. Shall not the Church of the Future learn a lesson by the
shame brought upon the Church of the past, and cast away her idols
of Dogma, Sacerdotalism, and so-called Uniformity to the moles
and to the bats'?
Eastern POST Steam Printing Works, 89, Worship Street Finsbury, E.C,
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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An ideal parish: a sermon, preached at St George's Hall, Langham Place, May 4th, 1873
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Published by Earstern Post, May 10th 1873. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
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Eastern Post
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1873
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Clergy
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Morris Tracts
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“ Wit
f urbibme
of
(to.”
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
JANUARY 11TH, 1873, BY
the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
[From the Eastern Post, January Ylth, 1874.]
On Sunday (January 11,) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C.
Voysey took his text from Acts xv., 18, “ Known unto God are
all his works, from the beginning of the world.”
He sai(i—I wish to set you thinking upon a subject that has
occupied my own mind a great deal, but upon which I find it
very difficult to come to a conclusion.. It is the Providence of
God. The question is often put, “Do you believe in Providence?”
when more correctly it should be asked, “ Do you believe in a
special and peculiar Providence watching over yourself different to
the general and universal order of Nature ?” To the question put
in this form, I confess myself ready to give a prompt denial. I
in no way believe myself, or any other person, to be a favourite
of Heaven, or the object of God’s peculiar care.
It is much more congenial to think and speak in the spirit of
those words of Jesus, “Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without
the will of our Father.” One of the most striking changes we
have witnessed in this age is the abandonment of those views
which flatter individual vanity—of that mode’of thought which
cherishes personal conceit in dwelling upon our relation to God.
We no longer take any pleasure in the thought that God’s loving
kindness is our peculiar inheritance; we should be loth to accept,
even at the Divine hands, gifts and privileges which all our
brethren might not share.
It would make us miserable to believe that God loved us more
than others, or was preparing for us mansions in the sky from
■which any of our fellow-men were to be shut out. It has.become
�2
a cardinal assumption with us that it must be all or cone. That
whatever the favour of God may consist in, and whatever be the
happiness of Heaven hereafter, they belong by right to all mankind
or to none. If thedifferencesin human lot, and in human culture,
on earth, present any difficulty we soon waive it out of our path
by remembering that there everyone will be made perfectly holy,
perfectly happy; and that even now these differences are no tokens
of the favour or disfavour of God, no measures of a varying love.
Just as we are assured of God’s love to ourselves whether we are.
in prosperity or adversity, in health or in sickness; so we are
assured of His love to all, whatever their lot may be. Hence we
discard entirely the notion of Special Providence, in so far as it
implies partiality or favouritism on God’s part, or any special
worthiness on our own.
But the difficulty still remains to determine what is Providence
and what is not—to settle whether every minutest event in our
lives is, as it were, ordained and regulated by a conscious
determining will, or that the events of our life are for the most
part fortiutous, or brought about by ourselves.
For some, it may be natural to say “Our lives are regulated in
great measure by our own wills and by the native qualities we
possess acted upon by the people and circumstances by which we
are surrounded. We see no need for the interposition of Providence,
things have taken their natural course, and we cannot admit the
necessity for any theory of Providence, special or otherwise.”
But forothers it is quite as natural to say, ‘‘Our lives have been
so eventful, so full of rare perils, of hair-breadth escapes; of trials
in mind body and estate so deep, and of deliverances so unexpected,
so timely, so independent of ourselves, that it looks as though an
eye of Love had been watching over us, and an unseen hand had
been leading us and supplying our wants, forestalling our griefs
and necessities. We do not say or dream that this protection has
been peculiar to ourselves, but we believe that everyone is guarded
and helped in the same way; but it has been brought home to us
in such a manner that we should be blind and ungrateful not to
acknowledge it. Moreover, we should feel the same to the end of
our days, if instead of mercies and deliverances, the cause of
�events should be reversed and bitter misfortunes be henceforward
our lot.”
This is no fancy picture, this is the real history of many and
many a happy and unhappy life. It is the history of nations as
well as of men.
For the whole Jewish people whether in
prosperity or adversity have persistently acknowledged the good
providence of God through their chequered career. Of course
they were wrong, like the Puritan Christians, and the Roman
Catholics, in claiming the divine favour exclusively for themselves,
but this narrowness has been to a great extent broken down.
The point to observe, however, is that great numbers of men and
women have been impressed with the idea tnat they were under
the care and guidance of a most loving will, and have been forced
to own it after their greatest sorrows had led them to doubt it.
The great question before us is then, are our lives over-ruled
and ordered by a divine will, or not ? If not, how can we account
for certain events too manifestly the result of forethought to be
attributed to chance 1 If there is no Providence, no will above
us which controls and arranges the course of human lot, we are
brought face to face with difficulties infinitely greater still, with
footprints on the sands of time which must have made themselves,
with marks of evident design and order which would have to be
attributed to unreflecting, unreasoning, chance.
If we attribute everything to Nature, and spell it with a capital
“ N,” admitting skill, or wisdom, or any quality of mind to be
manifest in any of its operations, we simply give up the contest;
and “Nature” so regarded becomes so far synonymous with God or
Providence. But call it what we will, we cannot deny that the
intelligent action of something underlies certain indisputable facts
of human life.
I am as far as possible from assuming the airs of a philosopher,
or wishing to tread the unfamiliar ground of metaphysics; but from
the stand-point of common-sense, I am led to believe inthe sequence
of cause and effect. We are what we are through an inconceivably
long chain of antecedents, which, if followed out far enough, would
lead us to trace our origin to the sun, or what was once the sun
when it occupied the whole space now bounded by the orbit of the
�most distant planet. I am forced to admit that this is at least true op
everything within the solar system which is visible, or which can
be apprehended by chemical, electrical and kindred science. I do
not know what my mind is or how it originated, but it must be
quite safe to say that the mind, like the bcdy, is the product of
something else, the effect of some preceding causes. We are,
therefore, entirely the results of causation, and we in turn must
affect the condition of posterity; nay, they and their entire lives
must be only and completely what they will be, in consequence of
what we are.
But of one thing I am yet doubtful. What is the extent of the
disturbing element called man’s free will? We know for certain
that there is some measure of choice allotted to each individual;
but we are equally certain that the limits within which choice can
be exercised are very narrow. A bird must have a bird’s will,
and not the will of a beast; the beast cannot have
the will of the insect or the will of the fish.
In like
manner man can only have the will belonging to his nature. That
is the first and most obvious limit to freedom of choice. And
when we come to individuals, we find the will again limited by the
personal characteristics, the inherited tendencies, the surrounding
influencies of circumstance and association. So easy does it seem
for us to choose that we quite forget that our choice is almost
forced upon us, and that we have little left of freedom of will but
the empty name. Still if we have any freedom at all, it is enough
to become what I called a disturbing element in the course of
event?. And this is exhibited in action when we find to our
surprise someone turning out in character or in conduct the direct
opposite to what we should have expected from the ordinary rule
of nature. We do, now and then, take each other by surprise and
present striking exceptions to universal law.
The effect of these considerations has been to make me not
metely question, but entirely deny, the interference of God by
what is often called “ Providence ” in the course of human or any
other destiny.
(1.)
Because it is manifestly unnecessary.
(2.) Because it would be an admission on His part that His fore
thought had been deficient, or His materials inadequate.
�(3.) Because it would have a disastrous effect upon men’s minds
to imagine that God would so interfere; for they would claim that
interference in every difficulty instead of putting their own
shoulders to the wheel, and those who had no such favour might
reasonably accuse God of partiality, and
therefore of
injustice.
If then by “ Providence ” be understood in the least degree, a
patching up, or mending, or supplementing a defect in, any part
of the universe by an act of divine interference, then, I for one,
declare mj utter disbelief in it, as unnecessary, derogatory to our
idea of God, and injurious to mankind.
But just as we discarded the old conception of God, because we
had found and embraced one inconceivably more exalted, so we
discard the common action o± Proridence for an idea infinitely
higher. Taking as a motto, “ Known unto Him are all things
from the beginning,” we conceive of Providence as the action of
an intelligent and loving Being who, whether or not he be the
cause of the universe, is one for whom it exists, and by whom
all its issues are controlled.
Not like a great mechanician making an engine for use, nor a
giant carpenter fitting pieces of clumsy material together, nor a
builder fashioning a house, nor an artificer inventing a toy. We
.know nothing whatever of God’s relation to the visible world, and
would not venture on the folly of even speculating as to how it
was originated, or whether it was ever originated at all. But we
are guided by our intuitions, and permitted by our reason, to
attribute the course of the universe to some intelligent and
beneficent guide, who, having cognisance of all that would happen
in it, or be evolved out of it; having cognisance of, and special
regard to, the various natures of the living creatures which would
occupy it, was responsible for—not their mere pleasure—but their
welfare, their truest and most lasting good.
Is not Providence—to use a figure of speech—the fiat of such
a Being. The word once spoken, “ Let all things be very good ?”
And they are good. Is not Providence simply the eternal and
unchangeable will of Him who “ is loving unto every man, and
whose tender mercy is over all His works ?” Is it not our
�6
guarantee that nothing shall ever happen by chance, or without
the prevision of His far-seeing wisdom and love ?
When we receive tokens of a watchful Providence—such as I
alluded to just now—tokens which seem to bring God down into
our very homes and families, and remind us that ‘in Him we live
and move, and have our being,” and “ The very hairs of our head
are numbered,” which is the grander thought? That He, watching
over us like an anxious parent, was attracted by our distress, and
busied himself to find means for our deliverance, while next door
to us, perhaps, distress worse than our own was being left to
remedy itself, or work its bitter way through the aching hearts of
our neighbours; or, to think of Him as one to whom every
possible contingency that might arise in the life of every creature
in all time was well known, its effects for pain or pleasure all
carefully measured, every possible consequence provided for—only
not by calculation and skilful arrangement which are our only
conceptions of forethought—but by stamping on the whole from
the beginning the one eternal law, that “ all things should work
together for good,” that the universe should be so evolved that
nothing really evil should abide therein, and for every passing
sorrow there should be everlasting joy ?
Such a view of God's providence, however, does greater things
than these. In our childish state we were wont to look only upon
God’s deliverances as marks of His love, and our misfortunes as
due only to the course of nature. Now we take the clouds and
storm, as well as the blessed sunshine, as the gifts of His bounty;
the night not less the day bears witness of His regard. Our tears
and sorrows, and sad partings— all, all are His precious memorial**
of a loving care quite as much as the joys and pleasures and blessed
meetings which make life so glad.
In that kind of Providence, let me ever believe, then no sorrow
can overwhelm my soul, no joy or deliverance can make me forge-fc
my God.
But what, if after all, this has a tendency to a kind of fatalism
which in all ages has been found detrimental to virtue, and
paralysing to the moral powers ? Here is uncertainty again. If all
has been planned from the beginning, every event in life known and
�provided for, an unworthy soul might say ‘det thingstake their course
we will just do what we must, it is sure to come right.” There
would be dangei' in this, indeed, were it not for one element which
no theories can destroy. Still we feel our responsibility, still we
have our undying sense of duty, still we hear our brothers’ cry
for help and pity, and the heart of man as God has made i t, is
by nature neither base nor ungrateful. We shall not love God
the less for knowing His good purposes towards us ; we shall not
be less kind to one another when we know their glorious destiny ;
we shall not be less diligent in duty when we perceive that
the very ends which God has in view can on'y be accomplished
with the consent of our free will. To make earth all that is fair
and lovely, and pure, and happy, each moral denizen thereof must
first become so. To make eternal bliss in heaven, each soul must
first be made eternally holy.
There is no more miracle, no more special providenee, no more
Divine interference. We have been launched on the wide ocean
of human lot, and we must bring our bark safe to land. The
breezes may blow, now for us, now against us, and angry waves
may rise and threaten us with their foaming jaws; but over the
billows we must rise and conquer even adverse winds, keeping our
eye stedfastly on the compass at our feet, or on the stars above our
heads, bound for that haven which God has promised to the brave
and the true.
If indeed it be true that
“A Providence doth shape our ends
Rough hew them how we will.”
it only means that we have not absolute control over the small
or even the great, events of life; but it never was written to dis
courage manly independent action of an honest heart aiming only
at what is right and good. Depend upon it, until we work out
our path into holy life and liberty God will not interfere to
help us to find it, or give us one moment’s rest until it is
found.
The Providence which has made man the author of his own
destinies—every one of which destinies is to be eternally good_ will not abandon such a glorious scheme of salvation, or defraud
�8
one human being of the painful and costly honour of being his
own Saviour.
Finally, as we cannot be always in the clouds of the orizing and
controversy about fate and freewill, let us give free play to our
religious emotions, and day by day learn better to recognize the
Providence of God as it is working before us in every event of life.
If we begin by lifting grateful hearts to God for every thing we
deem a joy and a blessing, we shall soon learn to welcome with a
calm and reasonable thankfulness those events which under another
light, or fn the darkness of unbelief, we deem to be evils and
curses.
Let each one of us sing in the words of the poet,
“May £ remember that to Thee
Whate’ei I have I owe
And back in gratitude from me
May all thy bounties flow.
And though thy wisdom takes away
Shall I arraign thy will ?
No 1 let me bless thy name and say
The Lord is gracious still.”
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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>
Creator
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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
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The providence of God: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, January 11th, 1873
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. Printed by Eastern Post, January 17th 1874.
Publisher
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[Eastern Post]
Date
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[1874]
Identifier
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G3413
Subject
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God
Sermons
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The providence of God: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, January 11th, 1873), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
God
Morris Tracts
Press