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“THE DUTY OF INSTRUCT
ING THE CONSCIENCE.”
A SERMON
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
AUGUST 18th, 1872. BY A
CLERGYMAN
of the
CHURCH
of
ENGLAND.
*
[From the Eastern Post, August 24tZi, 1872.]
On Sunday last, in the absence of Mr Voysey, a Minister of the
Church of England officiated, and preached on “The Duty of In
structing the Conscience,” taking for his text, Romans xiv., pt. of
23,—“ For whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”
Some persons have understood this statement to mean that all
actions are in their nature sinful that do not spring from a
principle of Christian faith ; i.e. that all the works of unbelievers
“ have the nature of sin,” as the 13th Article of the Church of
England says. Whatever Divines, however, may allege for this
theory, it must be evident from a consideration of the whole scope
of the chapter, that St. Paul here means nothing of the kind.
He is treating of persons who are in doubt as to the lawfulness or
unlawfulness of certain proceedings ; though he himself, he says,
is persuaded of their lawfulness or indifference, yet it would be
wrong for anyone to do them who thinks them unlawful, “ for
whatsoever is not of faith is sin i.e. whatever action is ventured
on without a full persuasion of its rightfulness is wrong in the
doer of it; which is no more than what Cicero tells us when he
says, “ Nothing ought to be done concerning which you doubt,
whether it may be rightly done.” The declaration of Paul, there
fore, comes to this, that in any case it must be wrong to act
against the persuasion of one’s own conscience. A statement which
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
none of us would be likely to deny, for if one doubts of the recti
tude of an action, to persist in it notwithstanding such doubt
argues a deliberate carelessness as to whether one’s actions are
right or she contrary, and as to the criminality of such conduct,
I think there is no room for difference of opinion.
But then arises the question, can we be always sure that when
we act on the prompting of conscience we are certainly right ?
That is, are the affirmative dictates of conscience a safe guarantee
of the rectitude of actions ? Experience, I think, compels us to
answer this question in the negative. To do what our conscience
forbids is clearly wrong; but it by no means follows
that to do what our conscience prompts is clearly right.
Although subjectively a man may be held guiltless who has
acted conscientiously, and yet erroneously, yet objectively
it is evident the action itself derives no sanction from the edict of
conscience. And since experience has so often taught us this
lesson of the defectiveness of conscience, it is a question whether
a man can be held guiltless who gratuitously makes his own con
science the measure of actions beyond his personal and proper
sphere. Certainly he cannot be acquitted of arrogance and pre
sumption.
Examples of the fallibility of conscience crowd upon us from all
quarters. Louis IN., perhaps the most sincerely conscientious man
that ever existed, made no scruple in robbing heterodox bankers.
Many a one has conscientiously persuaded a Hindoo widow into sui
cide. It is needless to rake history for instances of this kind, espe
cially as common experience shows us the same thing every day. A
pious family in Tyburnia thinks it wrong to open the ipiano on
Sundays, when an equally pious family in Saxony finds its con
science unwounded in listening through the harmless afternoon to
the public band, playing Straus’s Waltzes. In fact, conscience
changes with the latitude; the incoherent collection of sentiments
which a man calls his conscience, North of the Tweed, forms a
curious contrast with the equally heterogeneous convictions of
dwellers South of the Seine.
Some persons endeavour to evade objections of this sort'
against the absolute authority of conscienc, by alleging that
there is pre-supposed a belief in God and goodness. But it is
evident this is only shifting the difficulty from one shoulder to
the other; for what is your standard of goodness ? ’ Goodness is
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
what your conscience approves,—and conscience is your opinion
with respect to what constitutes goodness. We are, you perceive,
going round in a circle. It has been shown by numberless reasoners
that there is no innate infallible test on these matters ; morals have
varied from age to age according to the world’s progress, and their
historical developement is as traceable as that of the intellect.
Now what is the result of all this ? Not as some of the Sophists
once alleged an utter Scepticism as to the difference between
right and wrong, nor a denial of the utility and authority of con
science in her proper sphere. Nothing we have said affects the
validity of the rule of St. Paul and Cicero with which we set out,
that where we are not fully persuaded of the rectitude of an action,
to do it is wrong. But the confession of the errors to which
conscien ce is liable, at once involves the positive duty of informing
the conscience ; if, as some say, conscience is the great judge in the
human breast, it must certainly be as much our interest as our
duty to see that the judge is as fully instructed as possible ; it
becomes a man’s duty in short to convince himself of the correct
ness of his creed, by examining its grounds and weighing sub
stantial objections against it. Our creed is to our conscience as the
motive power and governing-wheel to a machine. Conscience
prompts us to act in such or such a manner because of certain
beliefs and opinions. As a sweet stream will not flow from a
bitter fountain, so neither can a truth-loving and charitable con
science result from a bitter creed, when such creed is personally
realised.
Now it does'not appear to me thatthe partisans of rational religion
can be justly charged with failing in this duty of enlightening the
conscience, sincethedifferenceswhichnowdistinguish them from the
rest of the community have mainly1 arisen from their endeavour
ing to seek out the grounds on which the judgments of conscience
are founded. But here we come upon a curious anomaly, the
rationalists who do not consider a correct creed the most important
thing in the world, at any rate they do not think an incorrect one
a damning matter, they are most scrupulous in examining the
round of their conclusions; while the orthodox, who for the most
part think correctness of belief of vital necessity, who even venture
in their public proclamations to put forth such declarations, as,
“Whosoever will be saved before all things, it is necessary that he
hold this,” and “furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
that he also believe rightly that,” these orthodox, who thus stickle
for exactness of creed, discountenance that free enquiry and re
search by which only exactness can be arrived at, and while pro
claiming the peril of error denounce the processes by which error is
to be avoided. No one at all acquainted with the subject can deny
that the most prominent representatives of orthodoxy withstand
free enquiry, and too often decry and calumniate its advocates,
They ^commonly represent that hesitation, and doubt, which are
the parents of enquiry; “are diabolical temptations bombshells. as
a certain prelate called them, from the camp of Satan shot into the
citadel of the soul. The mass of their followers readily accept this
representation, they have been .content to take their creed whole
sale, as it was provided for them in infancy, and no more think of
enquiring into its evidence than into that of their nationality. In
face of piled up masses of evidence, increased bj every newspaper
which brings tidings from other lands, all evincing the conflict of
human judgments and the variation of that moral thermometer,
which men call conscience, they congratulate themselves on re
taining their old-fashioned weather-glass, which persistently points
to “set fair” in all weathers. Like a boy’s watch, more for show
than use, it is all the same to them that it never shows the right
hour. They refuse to be told that as far as keeping time goes, as
far as answering to outward facts, their machine is perfectly use
less. They are careless as to its use and object, while they glory
in its possession. The very object of a creed and a conscience is to
discriminate the true from the untrue, the right from the wrong,
like the needle of a hand-compass, whichever way you turn, it
should always find its way round to the north, but they have fixed
their needle down for the rest of the voyage, and wherever borne
still consider it a safe indicator of their course- But Niccea is no
more a perpetual test of truth than the letter N of the real north.
The magnetic current of the universe is. the heaven-sent force
which sways the living needle round to the pole, as the heavendirected onward march of humanity is the invincible attraction
which leads the eye of a living faith to the never setting star of
truth. But the orthodox sometimes endeavour to vindicate the
wisdom and conscientiousness of their refusal to entertain enquiry
by affirming for themselves “our conscience is fully informed
already, complete instructions were laid down for us, and the
limits of its safe exercise determined long ago by wise men, who
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
went into all these matters you wish us to re-open; we feel quite
sure of the correctness of this judgment, and. do not consider
ourselves bound to enter upon enquiry <on our own account.” All
we can reply is, if this is'what your teachers tell you to rely on,
you are buildiug on a simple historical fallacy, which an hour’s
honest reading will enable the most illiterate to refute. Your
wise men, you say, went into thfese matters, why how many hundred
new matters have entered the mental spectrum since your latest
creed was manufactured. Why, man, since your old theory of the
universe was concocted, an absolutely new world has come
into existence; Columbus has sailed the waters, and
a new race has been planted in the West, while scholarship
and commerce have lifted the curtains of the east, have broken
the slumber of centuries, and disclosed to us vast churches and
religions which your sages never dreamt of. In the writings of
those old-world teachers you may find the most difficult problems
of religion and philosophy treated, and theories on which your
best doctors are still unsettled, estimated, argued out, exploded,
and thrown away ages before yofir venerable patriarchs had
mastered the rudiments of grammar. While your Western
fathers and schoolmen were blundering in bad .Latin, and still
innocent of Greek—ay ! even before Greece herself had a philoso
phical literature—the problems had long been squeezed dry, over
which some of your orthodox Divines are still addling their brains,
You would not choose to sail the globe by a -chart constructed on
their- limited knowledge, whose whole world lay round the Medi
terranean, and which was adapted to the voyage of the good ship
Argo. But youT spiritual chart is just about as much in accord
ance with modern discovery, and bears about as exact a relation to
truth and reality.
This then is the answer we give to our orthodox friends—this is
the challenge that is borne to them, whether they will hear or
whether they will forbear, not merely from a few liberal thinkers
here in London, but from every corner of thd intellectual and civi
lised world. We say, that your old theory of existence, your in'
fallible book, your exclusive creeds are totally inconsistent with
the truth and reality of things-. They cannot anyhow be made
to square with the patent phenomena of the universe. We do not,
of course, presume to say that you are bound to accept what one or
another of us, may offer you in their place, but we say you are
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE,
hound to examine, to inquire, to inform yourselves; that you
cannot, as honest men, ignore the voices and the light pressing
upon you from every side; that it is impossible for you to keep a
safe and candid conscience while you resolutely blind its eyes and
close its ears,
I do not, indeed, affirm of the orthodox that their conscience
is always as narrow as their written creed ; in various ways the
creed has submitted to a sort of smoothing down of its more horrescent parts—fashionable lectures on science and language have
loosened a few misconceptions, have accustomed them to bear a
little light, and the general tone of society encourages a certain
laxity. It is notorious, moreover, that some have arrived at the
stage of “ making believe to believe.” But this, it appears to me,
makes their conduct all the more disingenuous, they have seen
enough light through the chinks to certify them that there is much
more behind if they would only draw the curtain, but yet when
their theories are challenged they immediately recur to the old
barriers, they deny or prevaricate their former concessions, they
count those as enemies who would be their friends, and excite a
prejudice where they are at a loss for an argument; they bolster
up with all their might those institutions and societies which
carry on the war against enlightenment a outranee. If they were
truly conscientious, the light they have attained would at least
lead them earnestly to examine the asserted unsoundness of their
belief. But the very fact of being in their secret heart suspicious
of the validity of their creed, seems to make them all the more
angry with those who would call their attention to it.
As I explained last Sunday, I can make every allowance for that
natural apprehension with which some view any kind of change,
nor do I think that the less wealthy of the middle-class, whose
time and energies are so severely taxed, are to be blamed if they
are not the first in'encountering such inquiries, or removing the
obstacles which hinder the progress of truth. But what are we
to say of those who labour under no such impediments, who
have great opportunities for enlightenment, whose time even
often hangs wearily on their hands for want of useful employment,
who many of them have more than a shrewd suspicion of the
groundlessness of the popular orthodoxy, who yet not only decline
all candid enquiry themselves, but do all they can to make enquiry
difficult and dangerous for others.
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSCIENCE.
We can understand the feeling which resents in others that
activity of mind to which they feel themselves disinclined, we can
even feel a certain sympathy with that love of ease and quiet which
dreads the noisy invasion of religious and social problems,—(were
it not for overwhelming evidence that shows that ere long these
problems will seek a solution in a way they most dislike,)—but we
cannot understand that they should consider this a mark of
conscientiousness, that they should even pretend they are paying
a deference to conscience when they decline the opportunity of
enlightenment, when they refuse to hearken to the injunctions of
their own Apostle St. Paul. For how can a man “prove all things”
and study, as St. Paul says, to “have a conscience void of offence
towards God and towards men”, who is indifferent to the distinction
between sham and reality, who refuses evidence, who is careless
whether or no the light in him be darkness, or how great is that
darkness. If they simply deny that it is their duty to enlighten
their conscience and that they accept the consequences, then
of course we have nothing more to say to them except
that they deny the very basis on which Christianity
itself professes to rest. When Christianity was first preached, it
was professed to be an appeal to every man’s conscience in the sight
of God, Why had not those who refused to listen to evidence in
that day, as good an excuse as those who refuse in this ?
After all, however, it might be but small concern to the more
reflecting part of the community that the orthodox should
acquiesce in an unillumined conscience, and shape their lives on
baseless theories, if they would be content to restrain its exercise
to their own concerns, and simply forbear themselves from doing
that of which they doubt the legality. But this would never
satisfy them. Not happy in a monopoly of darkness, they seek to
make it universal. The languid crowds of orthodoxy throng the
fashionable churches, and strive to spread their system everywhere;
too listless for the intellectual exertion to which we call them,
their interest is, however, excited when it is a question of lording
it over God’s heritage and dictating to other men’s faith, and
they subscribe their handsome sums, to those favoured religious
societies whose chief ambition it is to run down, persecute, mulct
of their honest gains, and if possible, ruin every soul within their
reach who has shown the slightest sympathy with freethought.
The faithful now-a-days, instead of keeping their conscience to its
�THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTING THE CONSOIE
E.
proper office of checking their own. acts, and restraining the judg
ment for which prejudice disqualifies them, make it the chief ex
cuse for interfering with others- Gne man’s conscienc is wounded
because someone else sees fit' to use the post-office on
Sunday, another man has severe inward searchings because his
neighbour likes toitake a glass of beer. There is hardly a path
of life into which they do not intrude their conscientious scruples;
they would certainly have a stroh'ger plea for their interference
if they tried earnestly to enlighten their conscience. As it is
they upset the world with blunderihg efforts to make their narrow
notions the measure of other men’s faith and .practise, and then
when their ignorant and injudicious missionaries have embroiled
themselves with offended governments, they expect European
fleets and armies to fly to the rescue, and carry out their delusive
gospel at the point of the bayonet.' Certainly before trying to make
their notions palatabledo the numberless votaries of Buddha and
Brahm, they should furnish a solid answer to the objections raised
on their own hearth. Butit has beena comm on mse of superannuated
despots, ecclesiastical and other by enterprise abroad, to divert
attention from defects and collapse ' at home. It was during the
throes of the Reformation, for instance that the Roman Church
set on foot its missions t0 China, India, Japan and elsewhere.
This much . may suffice to show the plain duty of every man to
try and inforni his conscience, both:oh account of the truth which
he thus may require himself; and as restraining that unwarrant
able interference with the rights of others, and those harsh judg
ments against which both Christ and the Apostles protest.
The consideration of the best mode of instructing the conscience
would be ample material for a separate discourse. I will conclude
therefore with a passage which affords some indication of the
true method, from the works of a> renowned political writer and
patriot lately deceased.
“ God;‘the Father and Educator of
Humanity, reveals his law to Humanity’ through Time and
Space. Interrogate-the' traditions- bf Humanity, which is the
Council of yohr .brother, mfen, hot hi the restricted circle of an
age or sect? but in ‘all ages, and in a; majority of mankind past aDd
present. Whensoever that; con sent .bf humanity Corresponds with
the teachings of-your own conscience; you are certain of the
truth, certain of having’read ope lint) of thelaw of God?"
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The duty of instructing the conscience. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 18th,1872, by a clergyman of the Church of England.
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[1872?]
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CT9
Description
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Place of publication: [s.n.]
Collation: [8] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the Eastern Post, August 24th, 1872. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text taken from Romans xiv, pt. of 23 - 'For whatsoever is not of faith is sin'.
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[s.l.]
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Sermons
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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 duty of instructing the conscience. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 18th,1872, by a clergyman of the Church of England.), 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
Conscience
Conway Tracts
Sermons
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PDF Text
Text
THE
“PRAYER FOR THE SICK:”
HINTS TOWARDS A SERIOUS ATTEMPT TO ESTIMATE
ITS VALUE.
Reprinted with permission from the July No. of the
Contemporary Review.
HE following suggestive letter has been placed in
my hands, with a view to publication. It is
sure, I think, to interest the thoughtful readers of the
Contemporary Preview. It deals, indeed, with a sub
ject which interests everybody, and regarding which
all manner of men, from the Prime Minister down
wards, have given the public the benefit of their
views.
If such be attainable, it is surely desirable to have
clearer notions than we now possess of the action of
“Providence” in physical affairs. Two opposing
parties here confront each other—the one affirming
the habitual intrusion of supernatural power, in an
swer to the petitions of men ; the other questioning,
if not denying, any such intrusion. The writer of
the letter wishes to bring these opposing affirmations
to an experimental test. He considers the subject to
be accessible to experiment, and makes a proposal
which, if faithfully carried out, would, he thinks,
displace assertion by demonstration as regards the
momentous point in question.
T
�2
The “ Prayer for the Sick.”
It was justly stated by the Archbishop of York at
a recent meeting of the supporters of the Palestine
Exploration Fund, that the progress of the human
mind is from vagueness towards precision. The letter
before us seems an illustration of this tendency. In
stead of leaving the subject to the random assertions
of half-informed sceptics on the one hand, and hazy
lecturers of the Victoria Institute on the other, the
writer seeks to confer quantitative precision on the
action of the Supernatural in Nature. His proposal
is so fair, and his mode of stating it so able and con
ciliatory, that I could not, when asked to do so, refuse
to give it the support implied by these few lines of
introduction.
John Tyndall.
Athenaeum Club, June, 1872.
Dear Professor Tyndall,
Since dur conversation the other night, when
you were good enough to listen to a suggestion I
made relative to a means of determining the value of
prayer to the Deity, it occurred to me to put the idea
into writing, and to ask you to do me the further
kindness of looking at it in this shape.
It seems to me impossible at the present day to find
ourselves in contact with a source of power available
for human ends, or affirmed to be so on high authority,
without recognising a necessity—or even that it is a
duty—to estimate its value. And especially if the
power be one which is effective for the production of
physical results, is it desirable to examine its nature,
and to measure its extent, and the conditions under
which it works.
The value of prayer to the Deity has been recog
nised in all ages and by all nations, not merely by
the ignorant and superstitious, but by the more cul
tivated portions of the human race. And I think it
�The “ Prayer for the Sick.”
3
may be said that among the great body of religious
people of all denominations in this country, a belief
in its efficacy is almost universally professed. As to
the objects which it is believed are attainable by
prayer, they are almost without limit as to kind.
Taking as an authority that well-known compendium
which none will dispute to be the national epitome
of English religious idea on the subject, “ The Book
of Common Prayer,”* the legitimate objects of suppli
cation to God may be classified as follows :—
Class A. Spiritual improvement; moral superiority;
intellectual power.
„
B. National supremacy. Preservation from
pestilence, famine and battles. The
fertility of the soil; weather suitable
for the growth and preservation of ve
getable products. The health, wealth,
and long life of the chief national
ruler. A special share of grace and
wisdom for the Nobility, and for mem
bers of the Legislature and of the
Executive.
„
C. For all that are in danger; for the pre
servation of travellers, of sick persons,
of young children, prisoners, orphans,
and widows ; protection against murder
and sudden death.
„
D. Comprehends special forms for occasional
use, e.g., for “ moderate rain and
showers,” &c.; that “ scarcity and
dearth may be turned into cheapness
and plenty;” that “this plague and
grievous sickness may be withdrawn
* Although not used by Dissenters, they do not reject it
on account of its contents, since its very phraseology is often
employed by them, but for the most part because all forms
are deemed by them undesirable.
�4
I. x
The “ Prayer for the Sick.”
and the prayer for “ sick persons,”
which is not precise in its requests on
their behalf.
From all the foregoing it is impossible to resist the
conclusion already more than hinted, that a very
. ample belief exists in the Christian Church, in the
efficacy of prayer to God to avert dire physical evils,
which without it might occur; such, for example, as
disease and death. Were any one, however, hardy
enough to question this, it would suffice to point out
that the custom of offering prayers for the recovery
of sick persons when in great danger is almost univer
sal here. And it may be added that, in the larger
and more ancient section of the Church, prayer still
continues on behalf of the deceased, a custom, perhaps,
not less pious and reasonable than the first-named.
Now, I propose to examine this subject from on©
point of view only, in the endeavour to discover a
means of demonstrating, in some tangible form, the
efficacy of prayer. I commence by remarking, how
ever, that the objects of prayer in Class A. clearly
present inordinate difficulties, and are obviously un
fitted for our purpose. Class B. furnishes subjects
which might be examined, but which are less easy of
treatment than some of those to be found in classes G.
and D. But even here, elements of disturbance pre
sent themselves; thus, in reference to the influence
of prayer on states of the weather in limited localities,
that food may be cheapened, that travellers may be
preserved from accident, &c., it is certain that consi
derable difficulty would arise in any systematic
attempt to arrive at accurate conclusions. But this
leads me to remark that there appears to be one source
from a study of which the absolute calculable value
of prayer (I speak with the utmost reverence) can
almost certainly be ascertained. I mean its influence
in affecting the course of a malady, or in averting the
fatal termination. For it must be admitted that such
�The “ Prayer for the Sick.”
5
an important influence, manifestly either does, or does
not exist. If it is does, a careful investigation of
diseased persons by good pathologists, working with
this end seriously in view, must determine the fact.
The fact determined, it is simply a matter of further
careful clinical observation to estimate the extent or
degree in which prayer is effective. And the next
step would be to consider how far it is practicable to
extend this benefit among the sick and dying. And
I can conceive few inquiries which are more pregnant
with good to humanity when this stage has been
arrived at.
You will naturally next say, What practical shape
does the method take by which you propose to attain
your end ? The method has its difficulties, but I see
none that are insuperable. If I may reckon on the
active co-operation of those who most believe in the
value of such prayer, and I think I have a right to do
so, the enquiry will be easy. For few more interesting
subjects of enquiry can exist for the honest believer
than the extent of man’s influence with Heaven, at
the most momentous crisis in his personal history.
Before entering on the details demanded, it is first
necessary to remark that prayer for the recovery of
sick persons exists in two distinct forms, or, if I may
use the term, in two orders or degrees of quality.
For, first, there are the general prayers for the sick,
made without distinction as to individuals, or to
numbers, on most occasions of public worship. These
prayers are offered by, perhaps, thirty thousand con
gregations every Sunday in our country, since it is no
less the practice of the Dissenter than of the Church
man to remember devoutly the sick in the weekly
supplication. But besides these, there are the special
prayers for individual sick persons, which are by
general consent deemed also necessary; and thus it
is that when the patient holds a very high place
in society, a special form of petition is sometimes
�6
The “Prayer for the Sick.”
ordained to be used throughout the national churches
for his recovery. It is one of the advantages of rank
and gentle birth in England, that special prayers are
made for such every week at least, in most churches
throughout the country.
The first kind, or general prayer, then, must be
held to have a certain value not inconsiderable, since
it is this kind which is relied on against the dangers
of travel, of murder, and of sudden death, and respect
ing which no other or special petitions are provided.
This general prayer for the recovery from sickness is
constantly ascending, if I may use the term, in a broad
stream to heaven. Yet its objects, “all men,” being
so numerous, it is not held to suffice for all individual
cases. Hence the second kind, or spacial prayer ; and
the object sought by those who are interested in the
recovery of the sick, obviously is to concentrate the
special prayers of many on the recovery of one, in
the belief that by this means the malady may be
more certainly checked than were the patient’s fate
to depend only on the influence of the “general
prayer.” With this end it is that the special prayers
of a congregation are asked for A or B, or a special
prayer-meeting is held to offer the one object of
petition. I have been myself present at such meet
ings, and have witnessed the number, the minuteness,
and the length of the petitions.
Now the latter kind, or special prayer, is that
which readily lends itself to the earnest enquirer in
this matter, and it is by its means, if carefully and
conscientiously pursued, that we may certainly arrive,
if at all, at a solution of the great question I have
proposed.
The following appears to me to indicate the manner
of conducting the inquiry. It should be pursued on a
system somewhat analogous to that which is pursued
by the Faculty when a question arises as to the value
of any particular mode of treating disease. For
�The “ Prayer for the Sick."
7
example, a new remedy has been proposed, or is 'said
on high authority to be efficacious, and as authority
does not suffice in medicine further than to recommend
a given course, and never to prescribe it, the remedy
is carefully tested. Usually a hospital or a ward is
assigned for the purpose. All the patients suffering
from the disease to be treated are, during a certain
period, divided into two classes, and all are subjected,
as far as possible, to the same conditions, that single
one of treatment alone excepted.
The ages, sexes,
and many other particulars of the patients are taken
into account, and duly noted. The one class is treated
by the old system, and the other by the new remedy.
When a very large number—for in large number
only is there truth—has been thus dealt with, the
results are compared, and the value of the remedy can
be definitely expressed; that is, its influence above or
below that of the old treatment, as the case may be,
will appear in the percentage of recovery, or of
other results.
Now, after much thought and examination of the
various questions and objections which may possibly
be urged, I do not hesitate to propose an analogous
arrangement, in order to estimate and rightly appreciate
the influence of special prayer to check disease, or to, avert
death.
We possess unquestionable data in reference to
certain well-known maladies, particularly the fevers, of
eruptive type; such as small-pox, typhod, scarlet
fever, &c. Of some local acute disorders, such as
pneumonia, we know what is termed their natural his
tory pretty well, their duration and probable termina
tion at different ages, &c.
The mortality which
follows the great surgical operations at different ages
is a matter known and determined ; for example, after
lithotomy and lithotrity, amputations of the limbs,
hernia, &c. The very large records of past cases which
exist, and the very wide and careful researches which
�8
The “ Prayer for the Sick.”
have been made, have had for their result the pro
duction of known numerical mortality-rates per cent.,
tad applicable to future patients of different ages and
conditions. Indeed, the whole system of life assur
ance is, all the world over, based solely on the
accuracy of such data, and on the certainty with which
they will reproduce themselves. Whatever these
numerical results have been—'whether the mortality
rates deduced belong to healthy lives or to diseased
lives—-all have been necessarily made, subject to the
conditions of human life as it now exists, and includ
ing, among a thousand other influences, that most
important one of “ general prayer” by the whole
Christian Church for “ all men ” as it has been already
described, and influencing as it does, whatever may be
its extent, the sick, the suffering, those exposed to
murder and sudden death, &c., throughout the whole
world. Subject to this influence is that of every drug
prescribed. Influenced by this is the result of every
surgical operation.
Now, for the purpose of our inquiry, I do not pro
pose to ask that one single child of man should be
deprived of his participation in all that belongs to him
of this vast influence. But I ask that one single ward
or hospital, under the care of first-rate physicians and
surgeons, containing certain numbers of patients
afflicted with those diseases which have been best
studied, and of which the mortality rates are best
known, whether the diseases are those which are
treated by medical or by surgical remedies, should be,
during a period of not less, say, than three or five
years, made the object of special prayer by the whole
body of the faithful, and that, at the end of that time,
the mortality rates should be compared with the past
rates, and also with that of other leading hospitals,
similarly well managed, during the same period.
Granting that time is given, and numbers are suffici
ently large, so as to ensure a minimum of error from
�Illi
i, Bk
��The “ Prayer for the Sick.” .
9
accidental disturbing causes, the experiment will be
exhaustive and complete.
I might have proposed to treat two sides of the
same hospital, managed by the same men; one side to
be the object of special prayer, the other to be
exempted from all prayer. It would have been the
most rigidly logical and philosophical method. But I
shrink from depriving any of—I had almost said—his
natural inheritance in the prayers of Christendom.
Practically, too, it would have been impossible ; the
unprayed-for ward would have attracted the prayers of
believers as surely as the lofty tower attracts electric
fluid. The experiment would be frustrated. But the
opposite character of my proposal will commend it to
those who are naturally the most interested in its
success; those, namely, who conscientiously and d’evoutly believe in the efficiency against disease and
death of special prayer. I open a field for the exercise
of their devotion.
I offer an occasion of demonstrat
ing to the faithless an imperishable record of the real
power of prayer.
Atlienoeum Club, Pall Mall,
June, 1872.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The "Prayer for the sick": hints towards a serious attempt to estimate its value
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 9 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Consists of a letter by John Tyndall to the Contemporary Review; an unsigned letter to Tyndall, a galley proof attached to p. 9 of a statement signed 'Y', which replies to a statement by Mr McGrigor Allan reprinted from The Examiner, October 12, 1872. Neither 'Y's or Allan's earlier statements have been identified. Reprinted from Contemporary Review, July 1872.
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Prayer
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Conway Tracts
Illness
Prayer
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Text
RELIGION VIEWED AS DEVOUT OBEDIENCE
TO THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE.
F one had the required power, leisure, and knowledge
for the purpose, no work could be undertaken, at
present, as it seems to me, more seasonable or more use
ful than to write a book on Religion viewed as consisting,
simply, of devout obedience to the laws of the universe,
and, in so far, as being obedience to the God of the
universe.
I do not pretend that this definition of religion is
absolutely perfect. But whatever its defects may be, it
has, at least, one advantage. It lifts the subject out of
the region of all dogmatic controversy. It runs back
to ultimate principles, and is the only definition I can
think of that is likely ever to bring rational and nnprejudiced men everywhere into religious agreement.
It rises above the narrow and superstitious tests of
churches, and aims not, as sectarianism has done, at
breaking up society, but at building it up. It takes
account of men, not as believers in this metaphysical
theology or the other, but simply as constituent parts
of Humanity, and refuses, at all hazards, to acknowledge
them under any more limiting classification.
All that can be attempted in this short paper is to
group together a few ideas on the subject, and to offer
them only as rough and fragmentary materials for a
chapter in the suggested volume, which, I hope, may
some day be undertaken by an abler pen than mine.
Perhaps the most noticeable fact to the reader of
history is that Humanity has been looked upon by the
I
�4
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
wise and good in all past ages as out of gear in relation
to itself and to the whole physical and moral order of
things; and philosophers, prophets, patriots, politicians,
and philanthropists have, up till now, been thinking
and toiling in their respective centuries, and in their
several ways, to set it right. But this is found to be a
longer and more difficult business than most of us, in
our juvenile dreams, had supposed.
Moreover, the
good work has been too often complicated and retarded
by the remedial schemes proposed being extremely
partial. In some cases these schemes have had the
misfortune to be based on an incorrect diagnosis of the
disease, and consequently have not touched more than
a very limited part of the surface to be covered by the
remedy. In other cases they have been marred by the
silly conceits of the world’s benefactors and their
disciples—the representatives of each cure praising
their own as the only right one, and running down
that propounded by their neighbours.
There can be little doubt that the ancient seers and
reformers of the East battled with each other over their
rival efforts to raise the people of their times, and
weakened their most zealous attempts by jealousies and
struggles for mere theoretic and party victory. The
sectarian divisions of philosophers and theologians in
India and China date back, it is impossible to say how
far, and continue in bitterness up to this moment.
The Jews were so vain of their systems of healing error
and evil that they handed over even their own Samari
tan kinsfolk to reprobation for the crime of following
their religious convictions in preference to the creed
and rubric prescribed at Jerusalem; and if we knew
all, it is very probable that this arrangement of holy
cursing was punctually observed on both sides.
The Greek schools of philosophy were so busy in
attacking each other’s ideas—the Stoics finding fault
with the Epicureans and the Platonists with the
Sophists—that these profound sects had neither time
�To the Laws of the Universe.
5
nor strength left to test their different experiments in
the raising of the helot population around them.
Nor does Christianity form an exception to this rule.
It, too, had its enemies in the orthodox Scribes and
Pharisees, as previous great schemes and efforts had
their opponents; and so wrapt up were those Jewish
dignitaries in their traditions and ritual that they
could see no salvation outside their own pale, and
would rather that the author of Christianity should
perish ignominiously than that his more realistic
teachings should supersede their rabbinical subtleties
and ceremonial insipidities. The unhappy persecutions
of the followers of Jesus by each other, too, since those
times are familiar to all; so that the saying has passed
into a proverb, that the greatest barrier to the extension
of Christianity has been Christians.
But, at all events, it is painfully evident that, after
all the systems for removing human evils which have
been contrived or set on foot, Republics, Churches,
Utopias, Arcadias, “ New Moral Worlds/’ St Simonism,
Fourrierism, and the like, after all the battles of religions
and philosophies that have been fought—the state of
the world is still, without doubt, a great deal worse
than it ought to be.
The tastes and habits of the masses of the people
may not be so openly barbarous as in ages gone by,
but still society is ill at ease with itself. Whether wre
look in the walks of commerce, the sphere of politics,
the family, or the social circle, we find that the mass of
the people continue under the sway of mad passion or
foolish prejudice. We are over-ridden by priestcraft,
social enmities, and class inequalities; capital and
labour bidding each other defiance; pauperism draining
the resources of the honest and the thrifty by its hungry
and oppressive demands, and crushing the higher
possibilities of the pauper’s nature; crime, sparing
neither age nor sex in the havoc it is continually
making with human life and property; hard and fast
�6
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
lines, ridiculously capricious, drawn between class and
class; vice, sitting without a blush in high places, and
making its contagion to be felt, more or less, through
out all grades of society; ignorance, holding its carnival
in the lanes and alleys of our great towns.
What is to be done with these moral and physical
pestilences'? No past religious, philanthropic or politi
cal system, has thus far been anything like a success
in dealing with them; and the proof of this is as
ironical as it is real. The countries which get the
greatest credit for possessing pure religion are the homes
of the darkest deeds, and after we have accomplished
our fondest wishes in the adjustment of the relations
between Church and State, and the reform of our Par
liament, and the recognition of woman’s rights, and the
settlement of social and international differences by
arbitration, and the universal extension of education,
I fear the millennium will yet be a good way off. Are
we quite sure that we have distinctly understood the
ailment of the patient? If not, we need not be sur
prised that we should not have hit upon the adapted
remedy.
One thing is certain, that old theories of
“ sin ” and “ the devil ” have failed to account for
the disorder, and equally superannuated theories of
“grace” and “supernatural regeneration” have failed
to remove it, to say nothing of the doubtful benefit
to the character in the case of those who profess to
believe and follow such notions.
Forbid that I should disparage any earnest experiments
to improve the world which history records. There is
much in past leading systems of religion, philosophy,
and ethics that shews them to have begun in a sincere
attempt to advance the world’s good, though their
gradual enfeeblement and decay proves that they were
only intended to bring partial and temporary relief, and
to be mere foreshadowings of the true and complete
Temedy.
Indeed, it could not be otherwise with
methods planned before the idea of conformity to
�To the Laws of the Universe.
7
natural law came to be discovered and comprehended
as the one effectual and permanent cure for the world’s
errors and sufferings.
If I have expressed, then, in the last sentence, the
only fixed and absolute condition of the deliverance of
Humanity from the manifold burdens under which it
groans, I show no disrespect to that form of religion
which traditional Christians tell us is to cover the earth
and change it into a moral and physical paradise. I am
not aware that I cast any slight upon Christianity, as
commonly understood, if I venture to say that, in the
nature of things, it is impossible that it can ever achieve
such an universal triumph. Whatever in it is naturally
permanent will prevail, but nothing else. The best systems
ever founded before the principle of scientific induction
came to be known and applied in the investigation of
law in the universe and in human history, must neces
sarily be limited in the time and area of their influence.
If they rest on any authority short of the cultured and
unsophisticated reason of Humanity, and on any authority
short of universal law—whether that authority be ch urch,
book, or man—their power can only be temporary. They
contain within themselves the elements of eventual de
cay as systems, though whatever modicum of truth may
be in them will be taken up by the system which at
length is destined to advance beyond and displace them.
I do not hesitate to assert that the popular habit in
Europe and America of regarding Christianity as the
final and absolute revelation of God’s moral nature
and will to man and as the sole medium of regenerating
society, has no historical basis to rest upon, and is, in
fact, a species of idolatry. The orthodox theory of
Christianity, by centering the thought and veneration of
mankind in a man, a book and a theology all belonging
to a period between one and two thousand years ago
(though several of the evangelical tenets are much more
recent,) tends to check that free and onward develop
ment of our perceptions which was clearly the design of
God in the arrangements of our being and of the
�8
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
*
universe.
The traditional founder of that religion,
moreover, judging from what trustworthy statements
the New Testament contains about him,—would be the
last man to give countenance to so pernicious an idea,
tending, as it does, to arrest the progress of the
human mind in its pursuit of the new forms of truth
that daily invite our study. At the outset of his career
as a teacher and before the foolish worship of J ewish
peasants brought any shadow of ego-ism upon his con
stitutionally self-forgetful nature, he seems to have
breathed a truly universal spirit,—the spirit of a
brother of all Humanity. No doubt, at first, his simple
aim was to lay the foundation of man’s future good in
piety and charity sufficiently broad and deep to carry
the world-w'de moral structure he proposed to raise upon
it. It must be admitted that the mzZ as distinguished
from the mythical Jesus towers above all the ancient
* The eminent statistician, Professor Leone Levi, a short
time ago delivered an address at Birmingham on the issues of
the Bible, which brings out the monstrous views of the
character of God held by the orthodox in a light not intended
by the speaker. He said, ‘ ‘ the Mission of the British and
Foreign Bible Society was simply this—to see that every
individual in the world had a copy of the Bible in his own
vernacular. Consider what this meant : in this wide, wide
world of ours, scattered over its continents and its islands
there were 1100 million human beings. How many Bibleshad
been issued for them ? Taking the issues of this and of all
other societies, including Bibles, Testaments and portions of
Scripture, there was 112,000,000, or including issues from
private sources, 120,000,000. Taking one-fourth of the people
and apportioning the Bible (among them) there would be one in
40............ Taking the number of Bibles which had been dis
tributed as being now in existence, the number would be
8,000,000 and if it was over 10,000,000 the proportion of Bibles
to people would be one in four. In France the proportion was
probably one in 20 ; in Italy one in 30; in China one in 600,
and in India one in 2000.” But even granting that the supply
of Bibles circulated had been at all equal to the number of
adults in the world capable to read them the professor goes on
to inform us that “a great hindrance to the diffusion of the
Bible was the comparatively small number of readers. “ Tak-
�To the Laws of the Universe.
9
seers known to us in the clearness of his perceptions of
the grand secrets of men’s moral growth; viz. looking
upon God as a Father and upon mankind as a brother
hood, knowing no orthodoxy but loyalty to conscience,
and disapproving no infidel ity\m.\> infidelity to conscience,
living up to your lights and conceding credit for sincerity
to all who reverently differ from you. Such a beautiful
blending of unselfish truth-seeking and charity is quite
enough, without any effete theory of supernaturalism, to
account for the spread of Christianity in spite of the
superstition, bigotry, anderrorwithwhichhuman passions
have, from the first, alloyed it. But looking at the whole
question of religion in the light of modern research, it
must forcibly strike us that the religion associated with
the name of Jesus—very wise and good though many of
its principles are—-could not, by any means, ever serve
the purpose of an authoritative and exhaustive exposition
of religion for all Humanity and for all time. The line of
ing the number of recruits as a guide, he found that in Prussia
4 in every 100 could neither read nor write, in Belgium 14, in
Great Britain 21, in France 23, in Italy 70, and in Austria
71.” The gist of these remarks is that to meet the religious
wants of 1,100,000,000 human beings there have only been
sent forth 120,000,000 portions of the Bible or 8,000,000
entire copies of it. So that, at most, only a little over
100,000,000 have it in their power to possess individually a
copy of even a portion of the Bible while there are still little
short of 1,000,000,000 or nearly ten-elevenths of the inhabit
ants of the world left without even the smallest portion of the
book. Yet, according to the popular faith, that volume is the
sole revelation of truth and duty to the world, and he who dies
ignorant of Jesus as the atoning sacrifice for “original ” and
“actual” sin must be eternally roasted or annihilated. That
is to say, for not doing what it is totally impossible for them
to do, ten-elevenths of the inhabitants of the world are doomed
to the most frightful destruction. The case is aggravated
when we take into account the unhappy fact that many who
happen to possess the Bible are denied ability to read it, in
general from no fault of their own, but only from the destitu
tion or the neglect of their parents. Almost any deity in the
pantheon of ancient paganism is a fitter object of worship than
a god so grossly immoral as the God of Evangelicism.
B
�io
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
religious thought marked out in the New Testament, as
far as it is true, forms but an arc in the circle of universal
moral truth. Jesus probably spoke and lived the high
est and most comprehensive moral truth possible to his
times and the one most needed by the world at that
stage of its culture. He enunciated the eternal and
unchangeable principles of morality and religion with
unsurpassed fervour and wisdom. But voices were to
speak whose time had not come yet. Humanity was
not then prepared to understand them. Laws of the
universe were yet to be revealed, but their revelation to
the prophets and teachers of the future was to be brought
about by slow and gradual preparation. Not even the
highest and truest seer of those dimmer times was premitted to anticipate, in detail, the further unfolding of
the mysteries of God and of the universe which would
be needed, and made when needed, at a distant day.
The moral experiments that have been tried in the
past, therefore,—not excepting organized Christianity,
have been too local, too partial, too much mixed up
with party interests, and too unscientific to meet the
whole length and breadth of the world’s' present and
future wants. It is according to analogy that the woes
of men and the cure alike, should not come to be known
and realized all at once. The training of the world and
of the child are substantially similar. In both instances
the process is necessarily very gradual.
The individual cannot at first travel in thought
beyond the parental hearth. His parents, in general,
are to him all the providence he knows and all that as
a child he can be expected to know.
His sense of
obedience is directed, in the first instance, only by the
parental approval or displeasure. At length he gets to
know his relation to those beyond the dwelling, and
connected with him by family ties. His next social
experience probably concerns the religious body to
which his parents belong. He comes to think, as most
do, who yield for a while to the teaching of traditional
�0
To the Laws of the Universe.
11
beliefs—that the only effectual method of setting the
world right is the theological method. But if he have
anything like a progressive mind, he will rise, in time,
above and beyond these primal relationships and ideas.
He will take in by and by, his position and duties as a
citizen, and afterwards his connection with the whole
family of Humanity. As he advances from twilight to
day-light he will become firmly established,-—as his
ancestors had not so favourable an opportunity of being
before him, in the immoveable conviction that the
revelation of God and the well-being of man physically,
morally, intellectually and religiously, turn on knowing
and keeping of the laws of the universe. But this last
experience, if it come at all,—comes only in its fulness,
in riper years.
So it is with the race : there is first the tribe ; and
in barbarous times people used to think all other tribes
the natural enemies of their own. They carried the
same prejudice into their religion. Everybody else’s
religion was held to be dangerous and heretical, and
scheming politicians and unscientific traditional systems
have united in strengthening this social and religious
exclusiveness more or less up to the present time.
These primitive circumstances however are the first
“ tutors and governors ” of Humanity. But “when the
fulness of the time has come ” all narrow dogmas and
enslaving creeds and alleged infallible authorities and
sectarian boundaries will perish. It will then be found
that religion, in its broad and absolute form, is but re
motely connected with theologies and churches, and that,
in its greatest purity, truth, and power, it can be culti
vated outside these institutions. And this Emancipation
of the human mind will not consist, as many timid per
sons fear it may, in Humanity merely passing from super
stitions to negations. Humanity will rather be emanci
pated by passing out of useless speculations about what
cannot be proved into positive faith in those great veri
ties and phenomena of the universe which have the
�12
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
clearest and closest bearing upon our every-day life. The
transition will be from the experience of the vague and
the partial to that of the plain and the universal. Just
as the worship of things gave way among the Hebrews
to the higher development of Jehovah ivorship, and as
Mosaism was succeeded by Christianity, which latter
form of religion professes to be less occupied with details
and more with principles than the faith which imme
diately preceded it: so, existing systems and sects which
at present claim to have their roots in the religion of
Jesus, must, sooner or later, succumb to a religion
grounded solely upon a devout recognition of the known
laws of the universe, taken as a whole. The operation
of these laws will be deemed by the disciples of this
highest, truest, most absolute, and most practical faith,
the one, all-sufficient and ever-expanding revelation of
truth and duty,—equally accessible and adapted to
men of all countries and times.
Compliance with
these laws will then be viewed as the one sure antidote
to human evil of every kind.
When this religion becomes universal,—as it certainly
will do,—the world will be able to dispense with
ecclesiastical and theological props, with the authority
of tradition, with theories of supernatural interference
and with formulated doctrines, expedient,—perhaps in
some measure necessary, as these things may have been
up to a certain point in the training of Humanity. The
new development of Religion will recognise all feelings,
thoughts, acts, and experiences tending in any way to
our individual elevation and culture, and to the general
good of mankind.
The race will have done with slavish devotion to any
one set of commandments, be they ten or ten thousand,
and to any one written book,—however interesting and
inspiring to us, religiously, that book may be. For only
thus can we rise from letter to spirit, from printed ideas
in one volume—ministering to one part of our nature—
to all thought-prompting and heart-stirring books, which
�To the Laws of the Universe.
13
gleam upon us like the light hues shining through parti
coloured window panes—all fitted to delight, refine and
develop, in due proportion, our whole nature.—We shall
cease to show deference too exclusively to one teacher,
richly endowed though he may be with prophetic gifts.
We shall ever accept his teaching thankfully, as far as
it goes; but our nature is inany-sided, and every part
claims alike to be trained. So in the future to which I
refer, men will everywhere lay themselves open to the
influences of all true teachers who can contribute, in
any wise, to the unfolding of their whole nature in its
nobler individualism, and who can strengthen their rela
tions to the world in charity, harmony and peace. An
universal religion now dawning, but not, as yet, generally
received—not new, but already in its essence, underly
ing all the splintered forms which the religions of the
nations have assumed, will rise upon the ruins of all
existing and conflicting faiths, whether they be based
on tradition or sentiment. Orthodox churches must
die, for they are erected on this latter sandy foundation.
Even churches of more liberal tendencies, unless resolved
to place themselves in accord with the prophets who
stand on the heights of true scientific thought, and
who are “ ringing in the Christ that is to be,” unless,
moreover, they are ready to follow the true spirit of
the age which beckons us forward, they cannot last.
Every religious institution that is accustomed to view
religion chiefly from dogmatic stand-points, and to rest
in the perpetuation of theological shibboleths and anti
quated forms and phrases is already an anachronism.
The church of the future will insist on truth being
looked at, not in relation to barren controversies ecclesi
astical or dogmatic, but simply in relation to God,
Humanity and natural law. It will teach that “the
root of the matter ” can only be reached by the devout
knowledge and application of the laws of the universe,
as far as they can be known and applied. It will urge
upon individuals and communities to consider how far
�14
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
they have fallen short of those laws and to help each
other on in the path of intelligent and rational obedience
to them, as the “one sure and certain hope” for the race.
Up till lately.most religious sects have suspected
science as the natural foe of religion. The church ok
humanity to be founded solely on the reverent acknow
ledgment of universal law, will welcome the discoveries
of science in every department as its chief means of know
ing what the will of God is, and how that will is to be
obeyed. The priestly distinction between secular and
sacred, with all the childish folly which that distinction
has wrought, will then cease. Everything whatsoever
which aids in making up a rich and full mind and
character—whether it pertain to health, pleasure, art,
literature, morals, philosophy or devotion, will then be
held to be equally religious. Worship will not then
consist simply or mainly in frequenting churches, and
in offering up prayers and praise,—exercises which how
ever, I admit, are honestly valued by a certain class now,
as helps to a good life. But the pure and loving heart,
the cultured mind, the tender conscience, the enlightened
and happy family, the unselfish friendly circle, will then
everywhere be acknowledged as the true consecrated
altar, and that devotion will be respected as the very
highest expression of religion; which consists of a
brave, kind, and noble life. Our fellowship will then
be based, not so much on connection with some theolo
gical sect as on natural humanitarian sympathy and
enterprise. The ministers of the coming church will
not be men trained chiefly in theories of theology and
church government and in whom, as at present, the lead
ing qualification for their work is the predominance of
the devotional element. Religion will then be felt to
include every development of law affecting individual
and social interests, and so the teachings of that church,
will have a. correspondingly wide range. Each assembly
of kindred minds will have a plurality of ministers,
though they will need no sacerdotal or professional
�To the Laws of the Universe.
L
T5
badge to distinguish them, and these ministers will
number among them all the strongest spirits of the
■ - community who have high truths to tell of whatso
ever kind, and are able to teach them. These minis
ters will include cultivated and earnest men and
women of all occupations and of no occupation. Their
themes will embrace the laws of health, the laws of
mind, the laws of conduct, the laws of sociology, the
laws that govern every department of material and
spiritual life, and they will be listened to with equal
interest upon all these subjects. In that happy day
“ the mountain of the Lord’s House ” shall indeed “ be
established on the top of the mountains and all nations
shall flow into it.”
Now let us see how this notion of religion as the
recognition of and compliance with law will work in
.
effecting the. improvement which the partial systems of
philosophy, philanthropy, and theology have, as yet,
failed adequately to accomplish.
Man’s being an'd character are made up of two
*
. factors:—first, the natural constitution inherited from
those who gave him birth; and, secondly, the educating
conditions in which he has been trained and in which
he lives. Now, there is no religion at present, that I
am acquainted with, which lays it down definitely as
an offence against Law or against God, for two persons
to be united by conjugal ties whose offspring are certain
to be tainted with hereditary blemishes, physical or
• B
moral, through that union. It is seldopi that this is
made a religious question 'at all. Few magistrates or
clergymen would be prepared to take the legal conse
quences of refusing to be a party to the union of such
a pair, rather than be instrumental in introducing
bodily suffering, mental defect, or moral obliquity into
the world. I have met with but few members of popular
religious bodies who seriously look at violation of law in
this respect as having anything to do with religion. But
if the world is to be radically reformed we must begin
�16
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
here, and get rid of that morbid squeamishness which
evades so solemn and urgent a consideration. Mr
Herbert Spencer powerfully reminds us in one of his
remarkable essays that, in the rearing of animals for
the race, the hunt, or the market, the necessity of
regard to the law of their breeding is felt to be vitally
important. But when the propagation of human beings,
with “sound minds in sound bodies,” is at issue, this
matter is usually left to the control of chance or caprice,
the impulse of passion, or the motive of social aggran
disement. To make the most sacred earthly alliance
subservient to the mere demands of the lower nature, or
to the ridiculous demands of the deity of fashion, is to
desecrate an institution which was expressly ordained
to be the mightiest lever in the elevation of the race,
and to evince, moreover, a state of mind grossly irre
ligious. But the natural penalties which persistently
and without exception track this most “respectable”
sort of folly, ignorance, and transgression, prove unmistakeably that “higher law” has been outraged by
such acts.
Mr Huxley’s well-known essay on “ The Physical
Basis of Life” has in it, I think, the elements of the
psychology of the future; and the tendency of the
greatest philosophic minds, at present, is in the direc
tion of believing that the cast of one’s thoughts, tastes,
and habits depends even more, if possible, upon our
born physical organisation than upon the moulding
agencies by which our daily life afterwards may be
surrounded. In fact, education is but a leading out of
what powers may be in the brain, and not so much the
altering of its original structure; and I believe the day
will come when married combinations, physically and
morally unequal, will be pronounced to be wrong as
emphatically on religious grounds as they now are on
scientific grounds, because, then science will be reve
renced as one of the mainsprings of religious emotion
and action. As the knowledge of the secrets of nature
�To the Law of the Universe.
*7
gets more spread abroad, an. increasingly deterrent
influence will be exerted upon all who may seek to
enter the family relation from sensual or sordid
motives.
If, in short, the scientific conditions of
begetting a progeny, vigorous in mind and body, be
not thoughtfully recognised as the basis of our opera
tions in the general improvement of mankind, the best
choice of schools, books, companionships, and principles
for children afterwards, will be almost labour lost.
“How is it possible,” some may object, “to secure
spontaneity and depth in the loves of the sexes by such
an arrangement?” My reply is not difficult.
Does
not the reason, at present, usually come somewhat into
play, to determine, first, when and where love is to be
encouraged, in what are deemed “ prudent marriages?”
Men and women already, for the most part, let con
siderations of suitability go before and direct matri
monial selections, in respect of station and culture, at
least, in the middle and upper classes ; and when
scientific intelligence on this subject is more widely
diffused, the reason will command and shape the out
going of the affections so as to secure right physical
and moral conditions in the domestic partners sought for.
There is a fine touch in the gospel parable of the
sower, which I do not happen to have seen noticed
anywhere, bearing on the vital importance of natural
susceptibilities.
The writer distinctly lays it down
there that Jesus trusted more to the innately can
did, self-forgetful, truth-loving disposition than to
any outward and applied scheme of regeneration
in producing that disposition. In that parable he
accounts for the inoperativeness of his teaching in
certain classes of persons, and in every such case traces
the cause of spiritual insensibility to the particular
constitutional tendencies of the recipient, and, at the
same time, shows the happy affinity that there is
between the universal moral truth he strove to teach
and “ the good and honest heart,” the truly gentlemanly
�18
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
*
nature.
Like all other great and good qualities in
Humanity, this one, if it exist at all, must be born
with us. It may be feebly simulated, but can never
be acquired by any evangelical or other -process. In
this respect it is just on a footing with intellectual
qualities. The man of bright parts cannot help being
clever; the man of obtuse faculties can never rise above
dulness. No more can he of high moral qualities, if
justice be done to his training, be other than righthearted. To bring into being, then, a generation that
shall rise above their ancestors in all the higher attri
butes of manhood and womanhood, we must become
more religious — wider in our conceptions of what
religion is in its relation to natural law, and more
devoutly alive to the necessity of loyalty to natural
law in relation to parentage as an indispensable con
dition of human improvement.
But when we have achieved this essential prelimi
nary to the world’s advancement, there is still a great
deal to be done before we get civilised communities—•
to say nothing of barbarians—to lay to heart religiously
their duty as to the education and training of their
children. Before popular organized religion be good’
for much, it must cease the mystical business of arraying
itself in ceremonial vestments and lifting up a whining
voice, and dealing in super-mundane phraseology and
ghostly manipulations, and giving itself to vague un
realities ; it must have done with its weird way of
holding itself aloof from the practical world, as if its
sorcery-mongering were a higher sort of exercise than
* It is not uninteresting to observe that the phrase, KaXy Kat
aya.Oy, which occurs in the parable (Luke viii. 15), to describe
the approved state of heart, is the very one used by Plato,
with only a difference of gender, to describe a gentleman, and
the writer of the parable probably intended to convey the
idea that only the disposition which was naturally ingenuous
could ever have the courage, honesty, and readiness to receive
truth for its own sake, independently of the name and position
of the teacher and of the consequences to the recipient.
�T) the Laws of the Universe.
i9
“ waiting upon the oracles of nature,” and serving God
by solemnly keeping nature’s laws. Most earnest men,
who put a right value upon the scientific method, of
viewing the universe and of doing duty, are fast getting
to look upon much that goes on in churches and chapels
as a fanatical perversion of true religion. . Before
popular organized religion be good for much, it must
not confine its attention so exclusively to teaching the
young, Sunday after Sunday, what happened to the old
Hebrews, and the alleged incidents in the life of Jesus
or of Paul, and the contents of some gospel or epistle,
proper as these things are to be known in their place,
though forming a very small part of the infinite circle
of truth; it must take the form of bringing up the rising
race, in every respect, in harmony with the eternal laws
of their being and development. The first thing reli
giously demanded of us is, that the child have secured to
him, as far as possible, thorough vigour of brain and
muscle and proportionateness of form, as the groundwork
of all future culture. He should next be trained to the
habit of accurately observing the ordinary objects that
meet his eye in the nursery and in his daily walks. He
should be brought in contact with refining influences in
the scenery, the sounds, the pictures, and the persons
around -him • and when the Government and the nation
become religiously impressed with a sense of duty in
the education and development of the children of the
State—which they.are far from being, at present-—the
lot of no citizen will be incompatible with those con
ditions. Not only should the imagination be early
filled with visions of varied beauty, but the memory—
‘which is so largely drawn upon for the data of reasoning
in after life—should be systematically stored with wellsifted facts, and where fictions are admitted they should
be distinctly labelled as such, whether they be found
in the Bible or any other book. When he has learned
the leading realities of the universe and the outlines of
human history, he should be trained to the right use of
�-20
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
his reason, and taught to put on one side what cannot
be proved by evidence, whether it relate to science or
morals, and to cleave through good and through evil
report only to what has forced itself upon him as matter
of conviction. While made to feel that he must con
form to reason and law in using his senses and his
appetites, and to be severely exact in all details per
taining to the exercise of the intellect, he will have
to be taught to remember that both physical and intel
lectual powers are intended to he subject to the control
of the moral. The discipline of the conscience is seldom
conducted with that specific discrimination to which it
is entitled. When we consider the subtle influences by
which it is prone to be warped—some of these arising
from the excessive and dominant activity of certain other
parts of the nature, and others arising from outward
circumstances unfavourable to clear moral ideas and
the self-denying performance of duty; when we con
sider that the prevailing tone of society is against
our feeling with scrupulous delicacy on moral questions,
and that there is no sphere of work or pleasure free from
temptations to our tampering with the moral faculty,
surely the education of it, on philosophical principles,
ought to receive more anxious attention than it usually
does. Otherwise, the law of proportion, which is the
test of correct human development, will be disturbed
and the design of existence frustrated.
The culture of the child’s emotions should next en
gage thought and effort that they may always be con
trolled by sober, well-considered conclusions of the
judgment, and that they may be kept from running to
the equally dangerous extremes of stoicism and
fanaticism.
Strict regard to the law of our mental structure and
progress also requires that we give just and proper
scope to the exercise of the child’s social affections, never
allowing him to shrink from the sight of pain, squalor,
or poverty in others, but making contact with such
�To the Laws of the Universe.
21
experience the occasion of stimulating and guiding
those sympathic human feelings that cannot be held
back from their appropriate objects without marring
the symmetry of our nature. A lively connection
should also be established in our little ones between
the decisions of the judgment and the will, the ap
pointed vehicle for carrying out the behests of all the
other powers. In brief, if, in the process of training,
we fail to treat the child’s nature as a sacred whole ; if
we fail to remember that we cannot slight or mis
manage one faculty without more or less weakening
and lowering all, we violate the laws inscribed upon
our constitution, and act irreligiously.
Are these views of religion prominently set forth in
the teachings of the pulpit ? Do they mainly influence
church-going populations 1 So far from this being the
case, I fear that any painstaking effort to adapt the
training of youth to the repression of innate weaknesses,
and to the bringing out of the nobler parts, of the
organization in a strong and well-balanced life is rarely
felt by the orthodox to have much to do with religion.
There is a sad lack of system and principle in the choice
of the things taught, and in the proportion in which
they are generally taught. Parental ambition is often
satisfied, even in evangelical circles, with acquirements
in children that simply serve the purposes of expediency
or display; and no wonder, for the orthodox faith
implies—if it does not positively teach—that the great
business of life is to have the soul insured against risk
of eternal torture or annihilation through faith in “ the
sufferings of God the Son,” and this end gained, the
symmetrical discipline of the whole nature is deemed a
thing of secondary moment. Once the soul is “ saved
religion comes to be very much a matter of decently
waiting till death remove us beyond the reach of suffer
ing. Hence, often the remarkable exhibitions in reli
gionists of this class, of narrowness, meanness, pride,
and covetousness, side by side with an enthusiastic en-
�22
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
joyment of unctuous evangelical services. Where they
can gratify their love of “ pomps and vanities,” this
passion does not, as a rule, grow less for all their stick
ling about 11 salvation through the cross,” and “ living
by faith.”
There is no more melancholy spectacle than the
ignorance of an average middle-class English girl of
nineteen or twenty, in many a so-called religious
family, after her education is supposed to be over.
The vacuity of her mind, as regards the knowledge
and management of her physical, intellectual, and
moral being is appalling. As far as any thoughtful
preparation for domestic or other responsibilities is con
cerned, the subject rarely suggests itself to her. As
for boys, in the same station, they are not unfrequently
fitted out only with the particular education that
bears on the professional or commercial career chosen
for them, and are sometimes allowed to stumble into
positions in life for which they prove quite unsuited.
If the parents have risen in wealth and social standing,
it sometimes happens that they look down upon the
honest toil by which they have been raised, and their
children follow in their wake of contempt for their own
origin; so the parents resolve, (carried away by the
witchery of feudal illusions, and irrespective of fitness
in their sons,) that one of the lads shall enter the pro
fession of law, and another the profession of war, and
another the profession of the church, and thus many
hopeful minds getting misplaced, are blighted in the
spring-time of their days, and fall a wretched sacrifice
to parental ambition. And this profane disregard of
reason and divine law is carried on to the detriment of
humanity by many who believe themselves to be the
“ regenerate ” favourites of heaven.
*
* I am optimist enough, to believe that every moral absurdity
in mankind carries with it its own remedy, and the presage of
its own ultimate removal. The marvellous far-reaching and
Wealth-producing influence of commerce is still a comparative
�To the Laws of the Universe.^
23
But if these things be done in the green tree of wellto-do society, how shall we estimate the sad and uncon
scious outrage upon physical, intellectual, and moral
law which takes effect in the dry tree of poverty, where
the struggle for a bare existence is so hard, that many
great powers are suffered to rot in neglect, and minds
naturally inclined to good are mixed up in the same
polluting society with minds naturally inclined to evil,
in undistinguishable confusion.
But the religion of the future will be brought to bear
throughout the State in discovering, under enlightened
governmental supervision, the distinctive natural
tendencies of the children of the state, that they may
all be educated, and especially that their education may
be rightly directed in the unfolding of their nobler in
dividuality, and that they may be led in that path in
which their abilities will be most beneficial to the
world. The economic law will be reverently acknow
ledged, that every human faculty has its corresponding
sphere amid the activities of the universe, and that it
clashes with the designs of being for any community
to permit the powers of any of its members to be mis
directed or to run to waste.
When this law of social economy—the principle of the
utilization of all human powers, great and small—comes
to be respected by nations as an integral part of religion,
it will be embodied in the statutes of every realm ; the
right situation will be found for every citizen, and all
will be qualified by training to do the work for which
novelty in the western world. The rise of commerce and
manufactures has inflicted a blow that will eventually prove
fatal to feudal rank and has already reduced to a minimum
the influence of pedigree and title. Aristocratic birth will
now-a-days do little for a man who is without brains and in
dustry. So the advance of general education among the
people will, in time, make “British Philistinism,”—our rougher
money-ocracy,—ashamed of their “ fantastic tricks ” in aping
a style of things which is untrue to their associations and their
nature.
�24
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
they are naturally fitted in the very best way. Every
man will be compelled to contribute his quota of
labour to the common weal and will be adequately sup
ported and honoured in whatever position he may be
called to fill. Of course a sense of public duty will
guarantee to all the poor and the sick whom misfortune
prevents from adequately providing for their own
wants, a liberal supply of what they may need.
Then, but not till then, will science, art, literature,
and religion truly flourish, for the division and faith
ful consecration of labour will ensure unceasing and
intelligent industry everywhere. Idleness will be put
to shame by law, and by the force of public opinion
expressed through law, and with the disappearance of
idleness, want will be comparatively rare. Sensuality,
intemperance, and crime will no longer be dealt with
by the unphilosophical and barbarous arrangements of
the prison and the gibbet. We are largely indebted
for the long continuance of these absurd forms of pun
ishment among the Bible-reading communities of the
west, to the stern Oriental Criminal Codes which
characterize the Old and, in part, the New Testament.
The enthralling doctrine that the Bible was sent as an
infallible and a miraculous authority, has greatly
tended to perpetuate this foolish and useless penal
severity and keep us from looking into the subject
rationally. But signs are not wanting, that reason
will soon assert her rightful authority in the adjustment
of these questions. All natures disposed to vice or
crime will by and by be treated medically. Any man
or woman in that good time coming, who lives at
variance with the laws of nature and of intelligent
society—who, for instance, feels an impulse to take
the life or the property of another, will be looked
upon as in some way the subject of cerebral derange
ment or defective education, and dealt with as one
insane or ignorant, and requiring to be placed under
the control of doctors and teachers.
�To the Laws of the Universe.
15
In the -world-embracing religion, to the advent of
which we look forward, the application of law to mental
and moral affinities will also be better known and more
fully acted on. The accident of birth, fortune, or social
status, will no longer determine, as nowit does, the range
within which friendships may be formed. When a high
education becomes universal and braces and refines all
the powers of the mind in every section of society, the
dignity of all honourable and useful labour will be duly
respected. The degree of a man’s intellectual and
moral force may then—though not now—be safely
judged by the work to which he is chosen ; for the
right man will always, under the universal reign of
law, fill the right place ; but the intelligence of all will
be so broad, their feelings so pure, their hearts so
generous, and their characters so correct, as to make
them companionable to each other, let their outward
circumstances be what they may. The wise will walk
with the wise, and the good with the good, irrespec
tive of the accidents of birth and wealth.
The laws of mind and of morals too, will then coin
cide with the laws of the state, and proved vices of the
mind such as selfishness, dishonesty, envy, ingratitude
*
and conceit will be dealt with by the enlightened
authorities of that day with full public consent, as pre
judicial to the whole nature of the individual and, in
so far, as dangerous to the interests of the entire body
politic.
Religion will also take the form of conformity to
political justice, and every measure brought before
Parliament will be decided upon its merits; not as now
according to the effect it will have, if passed, upon the
fate of a political party. It is needless to say that, at
* The reader will remember the fact recorded by Xenophon,
that the ancient Persians had so advanced an idea of morals
that they punished ingratitude as a crime.
�q.6
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
present, this self-evident principle of justice has not as
yet found a place in “ the rules of the house ” or in the
jurisprudence of the country. Our legislators, for the
most part, do not even pretend that abstract justice and
eternal right are practicable in statesmanship, and the
man who would be so bold as to enforce these principles
upon “ honourable members ” would be at once put
down as a fool or a bore. We are very scrupulous
about keeping up an Established Church “ as a solemn
public acknowledgment of God by the nation.” But
we have high authority for believing that it is one
thing to have the popular religion which cries “ Lord,
Lord ” in hymns and prayers, and quite another to
observe that higher religion which consists in “ doing
justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly.”*
The
time is coming, however, when official and diplomatic
expediencies will no longer usurp the throne of con
science and right. The “ golden rule ” will be held to
be as necessary, as a test of religion in reference to
politics, as the law of gravitation is necessary as a fact
in astronomy.
Prejudice, passion and class-interests
will then be felt to be so flagrantly opposed to the laws
of reason and of social progress that these qualities will
effectually disqualify any candidate for the responsi
bilities and honours of parliamentary life.
What are all the painful eruptions on the surface of our
society but beneficent signs and faithful warnings that
social laws whose observance is necessary for our social
health, have been broken ? The workhouse, the prison,
the lunatic asylum, the criminal nisi prius and divorce
courts, the daily “ inhumanity of man to man,” ay and
to woman, too, the strife going on between employers
and employed, in all these troubles God is standing like
* “A man may cry ‘ church ’ ‘ church ’ at every word
With no more piety than other people
A daw’s not reckoned a religious bird,
Because he keeps caw-cawing from the steeple.”
Hood.
�To the Laws of the Universe.
27
the fabled angel with the uplifted sword in the path of
the disobedient prophet, to stop us in the career of ignor
ance and wrong-doing, and to urge us in the path of
obedience to natural law. Just as discoveries in the laws
of physical healing have sometimes been suggested to
great minds by the sudden and untimely death of
thousands from a virulent plague, and as our forefathers
sanctioned the burning of witches before their eyes came
to be opened, (through the very enormity of the folly
they were thus superstitiously committing,) to the de
lusion of demoniacal possessions and the appreciation
of the uniformity of universal law, so it is through
the experience of present religious, social and political
anarchy that we are destined to come to a clear
understanding of the eternal laws designed to govern
religious, domestic, social and political life. When
these laws are intelligently apprehended by the whole
people, our religion will simply be measured by the ex
tent to which they are earnestly complied with. The
family will then be a scene of unbroken joy and peace,
the master will feel it to be to his interest to be just and
liberal to his workmen ; the workmen, not, as at pre
sent, in many cases, the creatures of impulse and
caprice, will find an intense satisfaction in devoting
their best energies to the work for which their faculties
specially fit them, the rich and the strong will cheer
fully render aid and sympathy to the deserving who
are poor and weak, and not as now to bestowing their
attentions mostly upon those who least require their
help.
There is a touching legend related of Jesus, when
he is said to have risen from the dead and met two
of his disciples on the way to Emmaus. It is written
that their eyes were holden so that they did not know
him. In like manner the moral vision of the world is
“ holden ” that it does not usually discern wisdom in
the first instance, unless it strives and cries and lifts up
its voice in the streets, is accompanied by prestige and
�28
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience
“ arrayed in fine linen and fares sumptuously.” If a
prince or a millionaire happen to have the merest grain
of sense or kindliness, though it be mingled with child
ish frivolity, the toadies of the earth would fain exalt
him to the dignity of a philosopher or a saint. But if
a humble John the Baptist, a witness fortruth, freedom
and justice, living on rough fare and clad in homely
attire, seek a hearing, he is ruthlessly pooh-poohed as
a crazy intruder.
It will be clearly seen, one day,
that the gifts of insight into the higher laws of thought
and life and heroic resistance to oppression and wrong
are vastly more precious than mines of wealth. Noise,
audacity, diplomacy, show, and monopoly, will then have
died out, and enlightened goodness and truth, forgotten
amid ages of neglect, will be called to the leadership of
the world. Mankind will then be civilized; and to that
term I for one attach a very definite meaning. Civilization
means something more than railways and telegraphs,
conveniences and luxuries. It is the art of putting a
right estimate upon things, and the countries which have
not acquired that art have no right to be called civilized.
The African is not civilized while he parts with lapfuls
of ivory, and gold, and rivers of palm oil for glass beads
and iron pots. The Englishman is not civilized while
he places more value on a large income, a costly estab
lishment and a popular faith, than upon scientific
spiritual insight, the honest investigation and profession
of truth, and an unselfish life. Our country is only
civilized and religious in proportion as its citizens come
to know and reverence law in its universality and
uniformity.
It is the habit of paid teachers of Christianity to
credit that form of organized religion with all the
higher civilization of the world.
We only know
Christianity, so called, as it is embodied in creeds
and churches, and it is simply a fact that so far from
this boast having any foundation, popular churches
and creeds, have invariably denounced, as pernicious or
�T) the Laws of the Universe.
29
profane in one age, discoveries in science and criticism,
which the inexorable logic of events has compelled them
to approve in the next.
Science and criticism have
always, in the first instance, had to encounter clerical
opposition. The most superficial study of history irre
sistibly leads to the conclusion that at least during
the last three centuries, however, science and criticism
looked down upon, though they have been by priests and
their disciples as only “carnal” or “secular” have
greatly modified theological and ecclesiastical principles,
while the influence of churches upon science and criti
cism has only been to alienate more and more the intel
lect and learning of the world from orthodoxy and its
creeds as gigantic unrealities and persistent hindrances
to human progress.
Is it not the case that the human mind has become
strong and clear, and that even the cause of morality
has thriven just in proportion as the law’s of nature
have been found out, studied and followed in relation
to the government of the world 1 Had we only been
allowed the fare which orthodox churches would have
provided for us, had the ecclesiastical spirit proved
stronger than the scientific and sceptical one, our minds
would simply have been embittered by angry theological
controversies and warped by the bondage of papal dog
mas or protestant bibliolatries. But science has sped
its fearless course towards light and truth in spite of the
thunders of the Vatican and the anathemas of Geneva,
and its beneficent mission will continue till it has swept
from the world the last vestige of superstition, bigotry,
ignorance and suffering.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
��
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
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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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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Religion viewed as devout obedience to the laws of the universe
Creator
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Macfie, Matthew
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 29 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Tentative date of publication from KVK. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1872?]
Identifier
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G5492
Subject
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Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Religion viewed as devout obedience to the laws of the universe), 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
Conway Tracts
Religion