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Text
By One who Endured It.
BASED UPON A MS. IN THE POSSESSION OF
LONDON:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
�I
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A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
A week or two ago, commenting on an exceedingly
polite and urbane letter addressed to me by Julia Hey
wood, nee Fraser, I hinted that I had more MSS. in the
strong and distinctive handwriting of her late father, and
that her provoking courtesy and politeness might tempt
me to publish them. I had hoped to be able to silently
recede from my minatory hint, and leave the soft-spoken
wife of the Rev. Mr. Heywood undisturbed by further
posthumous publication of her father’s MSS. I felt
somewhat regretful at having published “The Agonies
of Hanging” memoir of Major F------, and, in the
interests of peace and amicability, I said to myself:
“Poor Julia! in memory of young and happy days of
auld lang syne, I cannot vex her. When I was a
chubby-cheeked and callow boy, trudging to school with
my leathern satchel on my back, she was to me an elder
sister. When from boyhood I developed into a senti
mental, romantic, dreamy, and erratic lad, and left my
old haunts for roaring Glasgow and its then dingy uni
versity in High Street, it was unmistakeable that she
regarded me in a light more chivalrously tender than
that in which sisters regard their brothers. And—shall
I admit it ?—when in Glasgow I wrote her letters which
I should not be ashamed of even now, should she elect
to disentomb and publish them. Well I know that,
should she give them publicity, my readers would have
many a joke, numerous sneers, and not a few laughs at
�4
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
my expense; but I have got accustomed to being:
sneered at and innured to being laughed at, and the
reading at this mature date of the letters which, in my
burning adolescence, I addressed to Julia Fraser would
irradiate with the glow of boyhood my now murky sky,
awake the dormant throb of passion in my callous heart,
scatter my now barren path with the roses and honey
suckles I was wont to twine in her hair, and fling over
the thought-worn brow of middle life the romantic halo
of love’s young dream. But most likely Julia consigned
my letters to the fire many years ago. Letters signed
‘Heavenly Julia, Yours eternally, W. Stewart Ross,’
are not letters which a clergyman’s wife would be likely
to retain and cherish. I have taken some pains that •
fK Stewart Ross should be a name that clergymen
should have little reason to love. No doubt the wife of
the Rev. Mr. Heywood has destroyed my letters. Poor
Julia ! Many a time, over the midnight and post-mid
night gas, her dear idea and her poetic vision visited me
in my student’s lonely room. Her face peered out from
between the rolling lines of Homer ■ and even sines and
cosines, the processes of surds and the mysteries of the
calculus, were not strangers to the flutter of her skirts
and the perfume and flashing radiance of her hair.
Then, throwing my books aside, I would lift one of the
slippers she worked for me (I never wore these slippers ;
they were too sacred to be soiled by my study floor) and
kiss it, and—shall I own it?—bedew it with the tears of
a poetic, ardent, and impetuous boy. Julia, I am sorry
I published that scrap from your father’s writings. I
will publish no more !”
The above was my soliloquy on Monday evening last
as I sat with my elbows on my desk, burying my face in
my hands. My brain was full of old and tender
memories, my heart replete with unwonted emotions,
when my reverie was rudely broken by the sharp metallic
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
5
■clack-clack ! which announces that the postman is at
the door, and that letters are falling into the letter-box
—letters of praise and letters of blame—to the earnest
if erring man who writes over the name of Saladin.
The servant brought up the letters on a tray. There
was one that at once arrested my eye. It was in the, to
me, never-to-be-forgotten handwriting of Julia. I tore it
open and read it. It will be found reproduced in
another page. Rightly or wrongly, I cried “ Damn!”
*
struck my fist violently on the desk, and resolved to
place before the public more of her father’s MSS. I am
•to be led, but I am not to be driven; I will brook to be
advised, but I will not submit to be defied by either
man or woman. I reproduce “ The Thrashing Machine ”
in defiance of the parson’s horsewhip, the menace in
regard to the criminal court, and the fate of them who
joined in the gainsaying of Kor.
The MS., a printed copy of which I am about to
subjoin, was, along with a large bundle of others, for
warded to me by Julia herself. The messengerf who
carried the package is still alive'. I asked him to my
hotel last time I was in the North, and had a talk with
him about old times. I, moreover, still possess the note
Julia sent along with the packet. Since she went so far
as to suggest that I stole the MS. I formerly published, I
shall take ample care that she shall .not be able to allege
that I stole this one. In self-defence, I feel compelled
to publish the letter which accompanied the package :—Dunder Hall, Tuesday evening.
Beloved Ross,I—Herewith receive, by the hands of Andrew, a
bundle of Dad’s scribbles. He was a daft man, and you are a daft
lad (but a dear, dear ducky all the same !), and let us hope that the
* See Appendix.
+ Andrew Edgar.
t She always called me Ross. I objected to being called Willie.
It had been the name borne by a previous lover of hers.
�6
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
daft darling will understand the daft Dad. Do whatever you like
with the scribbles. Dad used nasty blue paper, and browned it all
over with whiskey and snuff, or I should have used the whole clam*
jawphery to put my hair in curls. You can light the school fire
with them or light the world with them, whichever way you please.
The Irvings have got a gig. I have finished Grant’s “ Harry
Ogilvie.” Glorious 1 The hair-comb ran a long way into my
head : it was too bad of you. The ode is splendour (sic)—better
than that you wrote to pale-faced Agg ; but the fifth line won’t fit
the piano—nearly breaks it. Put that line right, like a dear.
Caught cold sitting on that damp stone, although you put your
handkerchief on it. Friday—old place—old time. It wil be
eternity till then. Don’t bring again that devil of a dirty dog.
Kisses when we meet. Don’t forget your .great coat and your
strong boots. With sincerest love, from everlasting to everlasting,
I am, beloved Ross,
Yours,
Julia.
MAJOR F----- ’j MS.
Ever since my boyhood I have busied myself in
humanitarian pursuits. Even when I was a little fellow
in the sixth form I went out one evening and saw two
broad-haunched, broad-shouldered, rosy-faced, yellow
haired, spanking huzzies driving home the cows of a
neighbouring farmer. They were the very sort of lassies
who had borne sons for Bannockburn. Either of them
could have taken the ordinary Cockney clerk and bent
him over her knee as easily as a Cockney clerk would
bend a hazel wand. On went the cows before and the
girls behind. The former lowed as they had done in
Bashan or Arcadia three thousand years before, and the
latter sang—sang as the angels sang when the world was
newly born, and before singing-masters, or even crotchets
and quavers, had yet been invented. The Ettrick Shep
herd’s songs had just begun to take root in his native
* A wrongly-spelt word of Northern etymology, ancl with little
or no meaning.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
7
land, and it was one of his songs that his two country
women sang as, with loose hair and swinging step, and
their petticoats kilted to their knees, they strode up the
loaning behind the cows :—
“ ’Tis not beneath the burgonet,
Nor yet beneath the crown ;
’Tis not on couch of velvet,
Nor yet on bed of down ;
It is beneath the spreading birk,
In the glen without a name,
Wi’ a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
When the kye come hame.
What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name ?
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame. ”
I am not sure but it was on that occasion I first fell in
love. The odorous breath of the cows, the fragrance
which the zephyr wafted from the valley below where the
bean was in bloom, the solemn hush of the twilight
hour, and that idyllic song of the milk-maids warmed me
and charmed me till I wandered far away from the school
to the byre into which the cows and the lassies dis
appeared. I, too, went into the byre, the lassies taking
little notice of me, doubtless thinking me too young to
engage their serious attention in any way.
“Jenny,” at last faltered T timidly to the lassie that
had charmed me most; “Jenny, I love you;” and, in
the words of the refrain of a song that ran in my head,
and will you “ meet me by moonlight alone ?”
Jenny set down her milk-pail from her lap, and, fling
ing back her wealth of unkempt hair, looked up at me
with her beaming, healthy, happy, and innocent face,
and said, with a bewitching smile, “Yes, little boy, I
will meet you; but who is to milk the cows ? If you
can invent something to milk the cows, I will meet you.”
“ Thank you, dear Jenny,” said I; and I timidly
�8
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
kissed the upturned face of the milk-maid. “ I will not,
Jenny,” quoth I, waving my hand in adieu; “ I will not
return till I have invented something to milk the cows
while we are gone.”
With the vague uneasiness of premature love, I
wandered back through the dewy grass and through the
bean fields, and arrived at the school too late for evening
prayers, but not too late to receive a sound thrashing
for being absent without leave. I was packed off to bed
sobbing and supperless, and lay nearly all night awake
thinking about Jenny, and planning the invention for
milking the cows while she should “ meet me by moon
light alone.” All next day I had a practice sum on the
one side of my slate and plans for a milking-machine on
the other. Whenever an usher came near I pretended
to be working at the practice sum; but I was really
engaged upon the milking-machine. At the end of
three days I had struck upon a plan which I felt sure
would work. All that was now wanted was to get the
proper materials together, and the little box of tools
which my father had put into my school trunk, guided by
my mechanical ingenuity, would do the rest. My father
had always believed me to be possessed of mechanical
talent. I was now developing that talent in a direction
he little dreamt of, and for a purpose of which I could
hardly venture to hope he would approve. All I needed
by way of material was some pieces of wood, an indiarubber tube, a piece of rope, a penny-worth of tin-tacks,
and seven stripes of leather. During the play-hours,
extending over a week, I hid myself in a deserted barn
and constructed my machine, ever dreaming of yellow
haired Jenny, and humming to myself:—
“ What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name ?
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame,
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
9
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame.”
At length, duly equipped with my milking-machine, I
-strode off to the byre, regardless of discipline and flogging
and extra task and everything sublunary save Jenny. I
felt proud I had suffered for her sake, and I was prepared
to suffer again. I reached the byre, got behind Jenny
who was milking, and triumphantly set down my milkingmachine, which, to tell the truth, looked a queer cross
between a three-legged stool and a sou’-wester, and a
baby-jumper and a sausage-machine. Jenny turned
round and looked at me, and glanced at the machine,
and then held her sides and laughed till the tears ran
down her cheeks. The other milk-maid caught up the
tune and laughed almost as immoderately.
Drawing myself up to my full height, “ Jenny,” said I
sternly, “ I am here in redemption of my promise, and
to demand of you the fulfilment of yours. I guarantee
that this machine will milk the cows, and I claim of you
that you ‘ meet me by moonlight alone.’ ”
“ Great God,” said the other milk-maid, “ the boy is
clean cracked 1”
“ Madam,” rejoined I fiercely, “ I am a gentleman,
and I did not come here to be insulted. This lady
made a vow to me, and by heaven she shall redeem it,
or I shall know why.”
The two milk-maids opened their mouths at me as
well as their eyes, and stared at me in incredulous bewil
derment.
“ Of course, of course,” at length spake Jenny, with an
arch smile; “I will ‘meet you by moonlight alone,’
according to my promise, if you will make that thing
[pointing to the machine] milk the cows while we are
•gone.”
�IO
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
“That/7zz>?£-,” said I with pride and firmness, “will
do the work while we are gone.”
“ Set it to its work, then,” answered Jenny, still with
wild bewilderment on her sun-burnt but honest and
happy countenance.
'‘iThe lady is won” murmured I in triumph; and I
lifted my machine and proceeded to attach it to the
udder of the cow. The animal resisted my attentions,
and seemed to have somewhat set her face against
vaccine innovations. I succeeded, nevertheless, in
attaching the machine to her udder.
“Now!” exclaimed I; and I gave the leather a tug
and the rope a pull, and set in motion the fly-wheel
which I had taken off a disused grindstone. The tug
and the pull and the wheel were more than the cow
could stand—perhaps more than any cow before or
since has been expected to stand. She ventured one
mad stare at myself and the apparatus, and then lashed
out devilishly with her feet. I was lifted clean off the
ground and dashed up against the opposite wall, and the
milk-pail and my most ingenious machine were kicked
to shivers and scattered over and around me. I stag
gered up with a fractured skull and a broken arm, and,
observing the thick milk lying white all around me, I
took it to be the whole of my brains, or mayhap my
immortal soul, scattered over the pavement; and, with a
despairing cry, I fell back insensible.
When I recovered my senses I found myself in my own
bed at school, with my father standing over me. He
had been sent for, and had come more than three hun
dred miles. The doctor was also there, and an old
chrone of a nurse, besides a great number of basins and
bowls and medicine bottles and poultices and jugs with
flowers, and wet towels. When I was sufficiently re
covered to receive it, and when my father was gone,
quite in the interests of the school, I got my ever-
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
II
memorable thrashing, that the discipline of the establish
ment might be vindicated. That thrashing fructified into
incalculable good : it set me to planning and devising
my thrashing machine, the greatest invention since Napier
invented logarithms. It is of this thrashing machine,
God willing, I propose to speak. But I may just mention
that, as regards my first and incipient venture, the milkingmachine, the splinters and fragments of it were picked,
up carefully ; but a piece of leather belonging to it, and
as large as a shoe-sole, was never found—neither were
two of my front teeth. My firm impression is that both
that piece of leather and my two front teeth were knocked
down my throat, and that they remain somewhere inside
my person till the present day. A German surgeon I
once met at Baden-Baden (a Herr Pulvermacher) inclines
to the same opinion. He placed some curious acoustic
contrivance of his own upon my naked back, and, apply
ing his ear to it, assured me that he heard distinctly the
two teeth biting away at the piece of leather. I have a
strange pain in the part, and, on a very quiet night,
when I have had enough whisky, but not too much, I
myself have heard a sound appallingly like the two teeth
biting the leather. But let that pass, and let this serve
as prolegomena to the conception, process, and com
pletion of the triumph of my life, The Thrashing
Machine.
I found I was in for a terrific hammering. It seems
that, in my unconscious state, I had two or three timesevery day risen up in bed and whispered, “Jenny, my
love,” kissed a viewless form, and then sang :—
“ See yonder pawky shepherd
That lingers on the hill ;
His yowes are in the fauld,
And his lambs are lyin’ still ;
But he downa venture hame,
�12
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
For his heart is in a flame
To meet his bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
’Tween the gloamin’ and the mirk,
When the kye come hame.”
These recurring outbursts of love and song had, the
surgeon alleged, made me much worse. On one occasion,
as I got enthusiastic in the refrain of my bucolic melody,
it seems I had torn the bandage from my head and flung
it right in the face of Mrs. Fergusson, the principal’s
wife. My wounded scalp bled afresh, and I fell back in
a state of syncope; but Mrs. Fergusson did not stay to
attend to me. One or two drops of blood from the
bandage had lighted upon her face. She rushed out of
the room screaming, and vehemently advised her hus
band, Dr. Fergusson, that I was “ a horrid little pig,” that
I had assaulted her, and that she would not live in the
same establishment with me.
“Thrash,” screamed she; “thrash the insubordinate
and cracked little blockhead, and send him home. He
is not fit to be in the school.”
The Doctor, if he had not had a wife, would not have
been a bad sort of fellow: he was a scholar, a pedant,
but on the whole a gentleman; albeit an act of juvenile
indiscretion on his part had made it necessary for him
to marry a village dressmaker. Dr. Fergusson governed
the school, and this quondam dressmaker governed Dr.
Fergusson.
“ My dear, it shall be done,” said Dr. Fergusson sub
missively, as he wiped away the blood-drops off his wife’s
face with his snuffy handkerchief. “ I agree with you;
he is monstrum nulla virtute redemptum a vitiis. I will
thrash him.”
If the Doctor had not promised “ I will thrash him,”
I strongly suspect he would have got thrashed himself.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
IS
All the boys remembered the day he came into the
school minus one of his side whiskers. It was no joke
to disobey the impetuous caprices of the quondam
dressmaker who was now Mrs. Fergusson.
In a day or two I was considered well enough to get
thrashed. I was, with shabby solemnity, arraigned
before the entire teaching staff and all the boys in the
school. Mrs. Fergusson sat by her husband’s side, busy
hemming an apron : she surmised that her presence was.
necessary to give him the essential constancy, courage,
and cruelty.
“ Donald Fraser,” began the Doctor sternly, “ you are
unworthy, sir, of the attention of my staff and myself
unworthy of the kindness of your more than mother,
Mrs. Fergusson [here the lady referred to laid down her
seam, took off her spectacles, and wiped her eyes]
unworthy of the young gentlemen who have been pol
luted by being doomed to associate with you ; unworthy,,
sir, of these benches ; unworthy of this ancient academy,
which has been the alma mater of many who have sub
sequently been ornaments to the Army, the Church, and
the Law. [Here Mrs. Fergusson beat the floor with her
heel by way of applause; and all the boys, with the
single exception of myself, battered the boards with
their feet, and hurrahed, and kicked up such a cloud of
dust that, in my weak state, I felt choking and faint.]
It is not for your sake, Fraser, that I put myself to the
trouble of administering a flagellation. Before me lies
a task, not a pleasure. Virtute non armis fido. Your
offence has been inexpressibly flagrant. Twice you have
been absent without leave—absent for a purpose which
I would describe as diabolical if it were not that I have
an impression that you are of unsound mind. You
were found in a cow-house four miles away, lying in a
cataplasm of cow’s milk and fool’s blood, the staves of a
broken milk-pail, and the shivered fragments of an idiotic.
�14
A FEVRm. FLOGGING.
contrivance of yours. In the name of omnipotent God,
sir, what were you doing there ? How, sir, did you dare
to drag the reputation of this ancient seat of learning
over the filthy floor of a cow-house ? How, sir, did you
come to exchange expressions of precocious amativeness
with an unlettered woman of the people? No boy who
has the privilege to attend a seat of learning like this,
august with the classic memories of nearly half a cen
tury, but should sing from the bottom of his heart the
noble ode which opens, Odi prefanum ntlgvs, ef arceo.
Even with the oldest of you it is time enough to think
of ladies: but, when the time comes, look only and
alone to a lady bred and a lady bom [here Mrs. Fcrgusson primmed her mouth, straightened her hards,
perked back her head, and posed as " a lady bred and
a lady bom
and speak to no other woman wha-ever,
unless it be to command her to wash vour shirr or
blacken your boots.”
“ Hear, hear F cried Mrs. Ferguson.
“But,” continued the Doctor, “you have actually
gone and compromised me and the school and vour
family and yomselt, by precocious advances to a miser
able plebeian of the feminine gender. In your delitiirm
you spoke of Jenny. Jenny is not such a mnv as
should be in die mouth of any youth who has walked
through the classic groves of this establishment. sir.
Phyllis, or Chloris. or Calpumia, or Clytemnesma. are
such names as alone should escape your Kps. yborr
is vulgarity and desecration. [ His own wife's name was
Mary Ann.] Then, sir, you kept humming a ditcv
wrirten by a shepherd, and fit only for plcueh-bovs.
‘ To wee a txxutie ssssae
When the kye cosrse tiirae'—
provincial crtveh sir. with which you have polluted vour
mouth and contaminated the atmosnhere of this classic
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
15
• establishment. Your stripes, sir, which shall be many,
would have been few if, in your delirium, you had
sung:—‘ Supprime jam I'aerymas, non est revocabilis istis,
Quern semel umbrifera navita lintre tulit. ’
Sir, you shall be beaten with many stripes in vindication
of the outraged reputation of this seat of learning, and
then you will be forever and ignominiously expelled, a
mensa et thoro. Divest yourself of the garment that
■envelopes the part of your somatic entity upon which,
from time immemorial, flagellation has been conven
tionally laid.”
At this point Mrs. Fergusson pretended to turn her
eyes away, and many of the smaller boys began to sob
audibly, for an expulsion flogging at Angel Turret in
the good old days was something you would carry the
memory, and perhaps the marks, of to your grave. I
let the curtain fait over the sickening details of how I
was stripped, strapped, and flogged till I fainted ; and
how, next morning, I was stuffed inside the school
master’s lumbering carriage, my boxes being on the top,
and driven to the mail coach, that I might be despatched
en route for home.
My father was neither to hold nor to bind. He took
me into the library, and examined my stripes carefully
with a candle, muttering strange oaths as each blue weal,
red line, or yellow star revealed itself to his indignant
scrutiny. He rushed out to the stables and instructed
the coachman to get ready the carriage at once. My
mother met him in the hall, and asked anxiously, “Where
are you going, dear ? Whatever is the matter ?”
“ Going 1” rejoined he, angrily ; “ do you know that
that snuffy old rascal at Angel Turret—the Devil’s Turret
they should call it—has all but murdered your boy ? I
start to-night to punch his infernal old head. I’ll teach
the pedantic old compound of snuff and Latin and
�i6
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
barbarity what it is to print the American flag with a
stick upon the foundation of any boy of mine. I’ll twist
the truculent old savage’s neck for him.”
“No, you won’t,” said my mother; “you won’t do
anything of the kind and she placed her arm in his
and endeavoured to lead him back to the dining room,
for she was well aware that, if he were permitted to visit
I)r. Fergusson, he would be likely, by his choleric temper
and heavy hand, to get himself into serious if not in
superable difficulties.
“ Come with me,” she murmured persuasively, gently
drawing him in the direction of the dining room. But
he was in an ungovernable rage, all the more deep-seated
and determined and dangerous because it was not paiticularly demonstrative; and he shook my mother off
as if she had been a viper, and simply said, with an
inflexible firmness : “ Woman, I have made up my mind,
and go I shall.”
My mother waxed pale with dread, and, with the
utmost exertion of her persuasive force, induced him to
go into the parlour and have a cup of tea, previous to
his setting out on his journey, which she was apprehen
sive might end in murder. Grimly he sipped a cup of
tea. “ Now I am in for anything from pitch and toss to
manslaughter,” muttered he through his teeth; but
beyond this he uttered not a word. A servant announced
that the carriage was ready. He set down the tea-cup
with a clank and sprang to his feet. But, on the instant,
somehow, and from somewhere, a brass kettleful of
boiling water was upset upon his feet, almost filling his
Hessian boots. He uttered a roar of pain, and, without
opening the glass door, crashed through it, and in an
instant was upon the lawn. Here he swore like a fiend
and jumped mountain high with agony. For an instant
. he stood on the margin of the fish-pond. It struck me
like an inspiration that, if he could get some cold water
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
17
introduced into the boiling water in his boots, all would
be well with him. There was not a moment to lose. I
made a short and mad race, and came up against him
like a battering ram; and he was, in what I conceived
to be mercy, knocked heels over head into the fish
pond.
She never confessed it, but I have a strong suspicion
that my mother upset that kettle by preconcerted accident,
in order to circumvent a journey that she apprehended
would end in manslaughter, if not indeed in murder.
Be that as it may, my father was in bed for a fortnight
in a raging fever. I had indeed taken him out of hot
water and cooled him down a bit; but, as it turned out,
the cooling had been all too suddenly effected. By the
time he had fairly recovered he had apparently given up
all idea of visiting Dr. Fergusson and Angel Turret; he
never again mentioned them, nor referred to them in
any way.
During the time my father was confined to bed with
burnt feet and fever I had leisure to attend to and medi
tate upon the many stripes on my person, the outward
and visible signs of an inward grace which I fear I did
not possess. I was seized with an overpowering desire
to behold with my own eyes the stripes by which the
honour of Dr. Fergusson and his academy had been
vindicated. My father had examined these stripes, and
had compared the part on which they were inflicted to a
representation of the American flag, the glorious gon
falon of the stripes and stars. I must behold these
stripes by which the honour of Angel Turret had been
vindicated and my own moral redemption secured. I
twisted myself round like an acrobat; and, if I could
only have twisted myself round two inches further, I
believed I could have had a full view; but, as it was, I
had no view at all. It occurred to me that, if I kept
trying on frpm day to day, I would gradually overcome
�i8
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
that difficulty about the two inches. I, however, tried
and tried three days in succession, but without success,
and on the third day I took cramp while I was in the
very acme of my distorted attitude; and, unable to
screw myself back to my normal position, for over five
minutes I yelled with pain. My cries brought my mother
and the scullery-maid to my bed-room door; but I had
taken the precaution to lock it before I commenced my
experiments, or these two persons would have found me
in an exceedingly awkward predicament. As soon as
the cramp relaxed its grasp I straightened myself up,
hurriedly redressed myself, and opened the door with a
bland smile.
“ Donald, Donald, in the name of heaven,” exclaimed
my mother, “ what is the matter with you ? Your cries
were heartrending.”
“ Oh, nothing the matter with me, mother—all right
—I was experimenting,” stammered I, with some confu
sion of manner.
“ Experimenting 1” cried my mother, “ your screams
were as terrible as if you had, all of a sudden, tumbled
into hell. What kind of experiment requires yelling of
that kind ?”
“ Well, you see I was experimenting on the acting of
Hamlet.’ That scene where the Dane leaps into the
grave of Ophelia, in my opinion, requires fearful yelling.”
“ Boy, you are clean cracked. First you did some
abominable thing at school—Lord knows exactly what it
was; next you attempt to drown your own father ; and
then, in your attempt at acting ‘ Hamlet,’ you bid fair to
burst your own wind-pipe and shout the whole of us
deafand my mother slammed the door and hurried
downstairs.
I was still determined to behold the stripes for which
I was indebted to the strong right arms of Dr. Fergusson
■and his principal assistant. I tried ingenious combina
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
19
rtions of double mirrors and triple mirrors, and I, by this
means, succeeded in seeing all parts of my body except
the very part I desired to examine. Discomfiture I
But I was still determined, ingenious, and resourceful.
.Sitting on the top of the garden wall was a tom-cat
•engaged in his toilet. Now, when a cat sponges himself
•with his tongue he sponges himself all over, from the
■very hat-crown to the boot-heel, as it were. One toilet
.attitude the tom-cat struck gave me a wrinkle. Like
.the ancient Greek geometer, I exclaimed “ Eureka!”
I apprehended that my task could be accomplished if I
■could only place my heel on the back of my neck.
Then an astonishing field of view wrould open before my
prying and intelligent vision. Sir Isaac Newton had
struck upon the law of gravitation from seeing an apple
fall; I, the product of a later and more go-ahead age,
had, from observing a cat at his toilet, struck upon the
law by which I could survey the stripes which the
learned Dr. Fergusson had inflicted that the prestige of
Angel Turret might be vindicated and my own moral
regeneration secured.
Preparatory to my new experiment I stripped myself
and sparred and attitudinised before a mirror, and,
without egotism, it really did appear to me that I was an
•exceptionally handsome lad, and peculiarly suggestive
•of a Greek athlete or agonistes. I arrayed myself in a
■pair of bathing drawers and sat down upon the hearth
rug in order to experiment in the way of placing my
heel behind my neck, that, with mortal vision, I might
behold the stripes with which my moral iniquities had
been healed. At the first trial I managed to put my
great toe in my mouth. At the end of half-an-hour I
.succeeded in making the said great toe touch my ear
Eldorado was all but reached ! I became inordinately
excited and I resolutely determined to succeed. One
desperate duck till my neck cracked, and one reckless
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
20
wrench upward of the leg till knee and pelvis cracked in.
chorus—and the deed was done ! My heel was placed
firmly and solidly on the back of my neck! But no
undiscovered worlds and unexplored hemispheres or
American or other flags met my adventurous vision:
the drawers were there—frightful oversight, irreparable
blunder ! I felt in a state of distress and blindness, and
hastened to remove the heel which I had placed upon
my neck. I was utterly powerless to do so. In a short
time I had not even the power to try to remove my
heel. I tumbled sidewise upon the hearth-rug, and lay
moaning in absolute misery. I felt I was dying—dying
a martyr to research after a certain fundamental truth ;
dying, unlamented, deserted, unappreciated, and no one
would ever divine the cause in which I had perished.
No marble tomb for me, and a brilliant name among
the world’s great discoverers, and those who passed
through the furnaces of tribulation to the throne of the
immortals. In my deadly distress I remembered the
words of young Norval:—“ Cut off from Nature’s and from Glory’s course,
Which never mortal was so fond to run.
*
*
*
*
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves,
May yet conjecture what I might have been.”
In the collapse of my previous experiment I was able
to scream ; but now that last solace of the sufferer was
denied me. My chin was pressed firmly down upon
my throat, and I could make only a low, croaking noise,
resembling the jeremiad of a frog, rather than the wail
of a human being. My plight was terrible. Nobody
would miss me now till supper time, if even then ; and
by that time I should be beyond the reach of mortal
assistance. By the merest accident, the maid had
neglected to “ make ” my bed at the proper time; and,
before I had lain five minutes—which, however, seemed
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
21
.-an eternity—in my helpless and desperate condition, she
entered the chamber to “make” the bed. She stared
at me, uttered a scream, and hurried out of the
room.
“ O ma’am,” she said to my mother, in breathless ex
citement, “the young master is in his room, and has
made himself into a Isle of Man halfpenny, with feet
.all round ; and he is groaning horrible. O ma’am, I
have got quite a scunner. I never see’d the like. Come,
ma’am; he is a-dyin’ by inches.”
My mother rushed up the stairs three steps at a time,
and, beholding my extraordinary plight, she held up her
hands in bewildered horror, and exclaimed :
“ What next ? What part of the play of ‘ Hamlet ’ can
Z7zzk be meant to represent ? What have I done that
divine providence should give me a son like this ? He
is knees and elbows all over, like an octopus. He will
drive me cracked !” and she rushed out of the room and
sent for the parson and the doctor. The former prayed
for me, while the latter, by main force, extracted my
heel from the back of my neck. Then they two retired
to my father’s bedroom, where he was still lying, bad
with burnt feet and fever; and all three got drunk
together. You may think all this unimportant; but it is
not. It all had its bearing upon the magnum opus of my
life, The Thrashing Machine, and that you shall see
before many more lines have proceeded from my gifted
pen.
I was not even yet defeated. Every fresh repulse I
sustained served only to render me the more determined
to behold and study the stripes with which my moral
delinquencies had been healed. These stripes, still
sharply painful, should I inadvertently forget they were
there and sit down all of a sudden, were all that resnained to me to hallow the memory of far-off Jenny
�22
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
and the literal shattering of my idol which the cow had
so irreverently kicked to splinters. But Jenny and the
milking-machine alike became half-obliterated in my wild
and all-absorbing desire to read the primitive hieroglyphy
which Dr. Fergusson and his principal assistant, a B.A.
of Oxford, had written upon me with rods. They were
two learned men. I must see what, in their wisdom,,
they had written with sticks, using my skin for parch
ment. The results of their labour, I determined, should
not be lost to the world,
I, with the unconventional and rare ingenuity which
has ever been my distinguishing trait, sat down upon a
large plate of salt, that I might learn and note from the
spasms and yanks of pain the particular directions and
crossings and re-crossings and notches and stars and
scars of the stripes with which my morals had been so
learnedly, if not humanely, healed. I went down to the
pantry when the butler happened to be out; and I filled
my pockets with finely powdered salt, and concealed as.
best I could under my coat a large silver tray. With
the salt and the tray I retired to my bedroom. I filled
the tray full to the brim with the salt, and levelled it off
beautifully with a comb. Then down I sat with a jerk
but, by the King of Heaven, up I rose with another jerk !
I uttered a savage yell, and ran tearing across the floor
as if all the fiends had been behind me. I had had my
arm broken, my skull fractured, and my two teeth kicked
down my throat; but, in insufferable pain, this salt ex
periment beat all my previous experiences hollow. I
beg humbly to recommend its adoption by the Great
Spiritual Enemy of Mankind as something worthy of the
liveliest corner in the Infernal Pit. Into the room rushed
my mother and her maid.,
“ Donald, Donald dear, in the name of all that is
sane, what is the matter now ?”
“ ‘Hamlet ’ again, mother!” exclaimed I bitterly, hardly
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
2S
knowing what I said; for the pain, although subsiding,
was still intense.
“ But you gag ‘Hamlet ’ horribly,” rejoined she, half in
literal earnest and half in pitying irony; “ I distinctly
heard you cry out, ‘ O Almighty thunder ! I cannot
read the writing with the stick 1 I have sat down on
hell, and here am I!’ What part of ‘ Hamlet ’ is that ?
It is not to be found in Shakespeare’s version.”
I explained that Hamlet was mad, and that, in my
contemplated representation of the character, I should
give a rendering which would astonish the world.
“Astonish the world! I should think so,” rejoined
my mother curtly, and left the room.
I had managed to place a pillow over the tray with the
salt, or I might not have been able to give my explana
tions so readily, or to have got rid of her so easily.
Labor omnia vincit. The gate of hell itself cannot
prevail against the unconquerable might of the human
will. Even the fiery fury of the trayful of salt had not
burnt out of me the indomitable resolution to read the
cryptograms which the learned Dr. Fergusson and his
assistant, Morris, had written with sticks. The gardener
was an exceedingly intelligent young man. Pencil and
compasses were hardly ever out of his hands. His busi
ness was to design flower-beds, rockeries, and fountains ;
but he could draw nearly anything that is in heaven
above, on earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
I would take him into the summer-house and engage
him to produce, on a sheet of drawing-paper, a facsimile
of the stripes with which my moral delinquencies had
been healed. I hastened out to the garden, gave my
instructions, and, within three hours from the inception
of the idea, it was a consummated fact. The annexed
cut is, accurately, but on a reduced scale, and without
colours, a copy of the document, plan, map, or what you
will, with which the gardener furnished me :—-
�24
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
Never did panting lover read a missive from his mistress,
never did young poet read his first verses in type, with
more ecstatic rapture than warmed and thrilled me now
that I had the stick-writing of a great seat of learning
unrolled before me in all its mysterious splendour. I
admit it was utterly incomprehensible. Would to heaven
I could interpret its esoteric lines, its occult angles, and
its mysterious stars ! But I knew that Dr. Fergusson
was a learned and earnest man, who would not write
flippantly or in vain; and that, therefore, in that mystic
scribble, which had been subsequently retraced by the
flame-pen of the salt, lurked the key to unlock that
problem in ontology, the Origin of Evil, and the sword
with which to cut the Gordian Knot of Evil’s Final
Eradication. I gazed on the map-document with that
absorbing dream-worship with which we regard that
which at once awes our senses and baffles our reason.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
25
Although I could not read the inscription now that I had
it before me, the consciousness of possessing it was to
me a profound, if inexplicable, pleasure. What could
be the portentous significance of that blue fading away
into that green ; of that umbre black losing itself in that
flaming yellow; of that ominous ttJ, and that fearful □ ?
I would be at the bottom of all this, or perish in the
.attempt. I worked at the problem till I felt the wheels
of my brain cracking and the belts giving way. But, at
last, an inspiration as magnificent as that which had
impelled me to employ the gardener to make the copy
of the cryptogram now struck me with the divine impulse
to employ a certain servant of the Most High to trans
late it. About six miles distant from my father’s house,
Dunder Hall, lived a man of God and Learning such as
the world has all too seldom seen. He had preached
himself out of his kirk, and all but preached himself into
a lunatic asylum, for it is with a lunatic asylum the
world rewards all possessors of mental energy and moral
force which cannot be weighed or measured in the bushel
of vulgar common sense or yoked into the mill of com
monplace to grind out half-crowns.
I begged two guineas from my ever-indulgent father
and enclosed them, along with the inscription, to the
learned and pious, albeit impecunious, servant of the
Most High. I explained to him that I was anxious to
have a translation. I made him aware that the cryptogramic hierogram was the work of two elegant scholars,
James Fergusson, M.A. of Edinburgh and LL.D, of
Yale, and Arthur Morris, B.A., of Brazenose College,
Oxford, and editor of an approved edition of Thucydides.
I permitted the learned and reverend servant of the Most
*
High to infer that the copy I sent him, and which the
* The Rev. Dr. Hamilton, author of “ Key to the Apocalypse ”
and “ The Contents of the Seven Phials.”
�26
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
gardener had made, was the original. I, somehow, had
not the face to take him the original and lay it before
him. Thank heaven I had just taken the copy in time,
for, under the influence of a salve made of bees-wax,.
fern roots, and alum, the original was rapidly becoming
illegible and passing away, leaving only a tabula rasa
behind.
Within a week from the day I sent off the inscription,
a messenger from the scholar handed it back to me with
the translation thereof! I rushed upstairs to my room,
locked the door from the inside, and eagerly tore open,
the scholar’s packet. A guinea tumbled out upon the
floor. I set my foot upon it till I had time to lift it. I
had now before me a prize grander than a Dijon pyramid
of guineas. A private note ran thus :—
The Cottage, Thursday morning.
Donald Fraser, Esq.
*
Dear Sir,—The writing with a sight of which you honoured,
me, although exceedingly important at this crisis of the Church,
is not at all difficult to decipher. I devoted to it only oneday of prayerful reading and one day of philological synthesis and
analysis. I got at the key to the cryptogram all the readier as the
whole inscription bore a striking resemblance to that upon an
Assyrian tile which Dr. Ravenstein brought from the Land of Moab
seven months ago. Having had to devote only two days tothe translation, it would be avaricious on my part to retain the twoguineas you were generous enough to enclose; but, as I am not
abundantly blessed with the world’s wealth, I have taken the liberty
to retain one of the guineas, and I sincerely trust that you will not
consider the fee for the trifling service it has been my privilege torender you exorbitant.
With prayers that the translation may be blessed to the saving of'
your soul and the souls of those who are of your household,
I am, Dear Sir,
Your most respectful, humble servant,
•
James Hamilton.
The Rev. Dr. Hamilton had evidently thought that the inscrip
tion had been sent him by my father.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
27
PROLEGOMENAL CLARIS.
(T) The lines have all a tendency from east to west.
They are simply the rays of the sun-god, ^(lrrrjp, Mises
Saotes, He., He. I give due weight in detail to their
respective ray-weight and deflection from the horizontal.
(2) The distinctive marks are all grammalogoi, Phallic
symbols (crux ansata), signs of the Zodiac, oriental,
ancient Egyptian, and Ptolemaic, Hebrew characters, in
which W and H are conspicuous, and tt, which, with its
indication of the relation of the diameter of a circle to
its circumference, affords, in the hands of esoteric erudi
tion, a key to the whole position.
(3) The great character to the left is of course Hl/N,
which, taken with 1TJJ (the virgin) and Zo (the crab) and
TT (the twins), all of which are readily discernible in
the inscription, render the solution easy to the occultist'
scholar.
TRANSLATION.
BY THY LEFT HAND, O AMMON, GREETING.
GREAT
VINDEMIATRIX, ARISE IN THE EAST.
THERE
WAS SILENCE IN HELL ABOUT THE SPACE OF HALF AN
STAR,
HOUR. WO, WO, SON OF POMPONIUS MELA, WITH THE
IRON IN THE GROIN AND THE FOUNDATIONS BEATEN
LIKE AN ANVIL OF MULCIBER. THE RAYS THEREOF
FLEW. Zeus hflijv STRUCK THE NETHER HEEL J THE
MOUTH WAS THAT OF A LION, THE FEET WERE THOSE
OF A SHE-BEAR, AND THE TAIL THAT OF A FROG. FOR
*
n SHALL JUDGE AMONG THE NATIONS, AND AT THE
END OF A TIME AND THREE TIMES AND ONE-EIGHTH
OF A TIME THE EARTH SHALL HOWL AS THE MOON
DROPS DOWN UPON IT IN BLOOD. HOWL FOR THE
CIVET, CRY ALOUD FOR THE MUSTARD PLANT. FOR
THE CRAB AND THE VIRGIN AND THE TWINS MOURN
WITH TAMMUZ IN BAAL-PEOR. THE HERON AND THE
WEAZEL LAMENT IN BACTRIA FOR ANUBIS AND RA AND
SET-TYPHON
AND
SEKRU
AND
TUM
AND
PHTHAH.-
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
MOURN, FOR THE LEGS AND THE TEETH ARE BROKEN.
MISES HARMACHIS AND OANNES COME ; THE GRAVES
OPEN J THE WORLD ENDS.
GLORY TO pH ! BEAT
THE WIND WITH RODS, 12 I
AND YEARS 9,999-
CUBITS, AND
FOR DAYS
My countenance fell. The original, even as I sat
upon the salt, was nearly as intelligible as the translation
that now lay before me. What could possibly be the
use of James Fergusson, M.A., and Arthur Morris, B.A.,
troubling in my interest to write with sticks, didactics,
and apothegms utterly beyond the range of my scholar
ship and the scope of my intelligence ? Of the “ founda
tions beaten like an anvil ” I had a vivid comprehension ;
while “ beat the wind ” was intelligible, but rather vague ;
and “ rods ” of “ 121 cubits ” were certainly a great deal
too long for actual, practical flogging. And could they
not, at Angel Turret, have flogged a boy like me without
referring me to, as far as I was concerned, such unknown
monsters as Ra and Set-Typhon and Turn and Phthah ?
No wonder the thrashing did me no good ! No wonder
that I felt quite as wicked as ever ! I resolved to devote
some years to deep meditation on the philosophy of
flogging. And any one who is privileged to follow the
coruscations of my gifted pen may have the glory to
find out for himself the magnificent result at which I
^ultimately arrived.
(To be continued, if Julia—Mrs. Heywood—
shoiild see fit to again provoke Saladin.)
�APPENDIX.
ANOTHER LETTER FROM MRS. HEYWOOD.
Sir,—I have read your vile paper. I took the tongs, and with
them carried it out at arm’s length to the dust-bin. I feel defiled.
I shall ask my husband, a feeble but earnest servant of God, to
appoint a clay of humiliation and prayer throughout his parish.
Then I shall ask him, if he loves me, the wife of his bosom, to horse
whip you to within one inch of your life. He is strong in the arm of
the flesh, and will thrash you as if you were a rat; and the God of
Jacob, the mighty one of Israel, has, in answer to my prayer, pro
misecl to assist him. You shall perish in the gainsaying of Kor.
My father never hanged himself with the----- of any creature.
You forged the whole infamous thing, and you have provoked the
holy one of Israel to anger. I shall be at you at the criminal court.
I never saw you save once, and I wish I had never seen you. The
devil tempted me, and I tattooed on my left arm—
I Love Ross Alone and Forever.
My husband has seen the inscription two or three times, and has
each time kicked up a dust and preached in a way that has emptied
the church and drawn upon him the displeasure of the bishop. I
have tried to take out the tattooing with poultices of vaccine excre
ment, black soap, and steel filings ; but it will not come out. I
shall have my arm amputated rather than bear about with me your
accursed name. Last time the Rev. Mr. Heywood saw it he hurled
a heavy clasped Bibleat my head. The holy book, glory be to
God, missed my head ; but it knocked down Jesus Christ and
three of the saints, and it took £4 5s. 3d. to repair them. I
enclose you the account, and, if you have a soul in your body, you
will pay it.
My father, whose memory you foul with burlesque and whose
grave you desecrate, would not have trusted you with a brass six
pence, far less with his Julia’s honour. Beware of the curse of
Hiel the Bethelite ! There shall be a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a
great slaughter in the land of Idumea, for you stole my father’s-
�3°
APPENDIX.
MS. and then forged it. I will yet number you and your readers
in Telain, when the mighty one cometh from Teman and Ur of the
Chaldeans. I am my father’s daughter, you viper. You say he was
hanged with a murderer’s intestines, which is a falsehood ; and I
pray God that you may .yet see the day when you will be hanged
with his daughter’s garters, which she weareth under the knees
thereof (sic). My husband shall chastise thee with whips, and the
Lord shall rain down upon thee hail-stones and coals of fire. Blow
ye the cornet in Gibeah and the trumpet in Ramah : cry aloud at
Beth-aven !—Yours, with loathing and contempt,
Julia Heywood (nee Fraser).
The Vicarage, Sunday evening.
P.S.—You may insert this or not, as you like ; but, if you do not,
the husband of my bosom has made arrangements to have the whole
•matter of your vile slander published in the Church Times and the
Christian World, and also brought into the police-court.—J. H.,
nee F.
���
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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
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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A fearful flogging : by one who endured it; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Stamp on front cover: Bishopsgate Institute. Reference Library. Appendix: Another letter from Mrs Julia Heywood (nee Fraser). Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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W. Stewart & Co.
Date
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[1894]
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N585
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Religious practice
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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 (A fearful flogging : by one who endured it; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Christianity
Flagellation
NSS
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WEV.
■,■.••-■•*
CHARLES WATTS’S WORKS.
The Teachings of Secularism Compared with Orthodox Christianity. Is , by post Is. 2d.
Christianity :
Origin, Nature,
its
Secularism ; Destructive
The Glory
of
Agnosticism
and
and
Influence. 4d., by post 5d.
Constructive.
3d., by post 4d.
Unbelief. 3d., by post 4d.
Christian Theism ; Which is the More Reason
and
able ? 3d., by post 4d.
A Reply to Rather Lambert’s “Tactics
post 7d.
of
Infidels.”
6d., by
Theological Presumption : An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. R. F.
Burns, of Halifax, N.S. 2d,, by post 2jd.
The Natural and the Supernatural} or, Belief and Knowledge.
3d., by post 4d.
Evolution and Special Creation. 3d., by post 3jd.
Contents :—What is Evolution ?—The Formation of Worlds—The
Beginning of Life upon the Earth—Origin of Man—Diversity of Living
Things—Psychical Powers—The Future of Man on Earth.
Happiness
Science
in
Hell and Misery
in
Heaven, 3d., by post 3jd.
Bible. 4d., by post 5d.
and the
Bible Morality : Its Teachings Shown to be Contradictory and
Defective as an Ethical Code. 3d., by post 3|d.
The Bible Up
Date. 2d., by post 2|d.
to
The Superstition
of the
Christian Sunday.
3d., by post 4d.
Education: True and False. (Dedicated to the London School
Board.) 2d., by post 2jd.
Secularism: Its Relation
to the
Social Problems of the Day.
2d., by post 2Jd.
Christianity : Defective (and Unnecessary.
Watts. 3d., by post 3|d.
Secularism; Is
it
By Mrs. Charles
Founded on Reason, and is it Sufficient
to Meet the Needs of Mankind ?
Debate between the Editor of the “Evening Mail” (Halifax, N.S.) and
Charles Watts. With Prefatory Letters by G. J. Holyoake and Colonel
R. G. Ingersoll, and an Introduction by Helen H. Gardener. Is., by
post Is. 2d.
�HA/T78
CHRISTIANITY
AND
CIVILIZATION:
Why Christianity is Still Professed.
BY
CSS’fMS W®TTg
Author of ‘ ‘ The Teachings of Secularism Compared wit Orthhodox
Christianity," “Secularism: Constructive and Destructive,”
“ Evolution and Special Creation,” “The Glory of Unbelief,”
“Saints and Sinners: Which?” “ Bible Morality,”
“ Christianity: Its Origin, Nature and Influence”
“ Agnosticism and Christian Theism : Which
is the More Reasonable ?” “ Reply to
Father Lambert,” Etc., Etc.
LONDON:
WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET ST., E.C.
PRICE
THREE
PENCE.
�1
�CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION,
It would be difficult to select two other words which are used x
as extensively as “ Christianity ” and “ civilization,” about
which there are such vague and conflicting notions as to their
meaning. If we ask Christians for a definition of their faith,
it will be found that the answers given are as varied as they are
numerous. The reply of a Roman Catholic will differ widely
from that of a Protestant, while the meaning given to Christi
anity by a member of the Church of England would not be the
same as the one furnished by the adherents of the many dis
senting sects. A decided lack of harmony would be perceptible
between the definitions offered by Unitarians and Trinitarians,
by Quakers and Salvationists, by Swedenborgians and Christadelphians. The expounders of what is termed the “higher
criticism ” present a conception of Christianity the very oppo
site to that taught by the school represented by Dr. Talmage
and the late C. H. Spurgeon. The same diversity as to the
nature of the Christian faith obtains among nations. In Spain
it has proved a cruel oppression, in Rome a priestly domination,
in America a commercial commodity, in Scotland a gloomy
nightmare, and in England an emotional pastime. This dis
similitude as to the character of the “ new religion ” appeared
immediately after the alleged death of Christ. According to
the New Testament, Paul preached a system of a philosophical
character compared with that of Jesus. The Christianity of
Paul was widely different from that of his “ divine Master.”
The character of Christ was submissive and servile, that of
Paul defiant and pugnacious. We could no more conceive
Christ fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus, than we could
suppose Paul submitting without protest or resistance to those
�4
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION ;
insults and indignities which are alleged to haye been heaped
upon Christ. Neither could we for one moment imagine Paul
advising his disciples when anyone smote them on one cheek
to offer them the other. Paul introduced by his personal
character a certain amount of boldness and energy into the
Christian propaganda, and by the character of his mind he
largely modified the Christian system. In fact, each successive
age has left its mark and impress upon Christianity. No
system was ever less rigid and more plastic. It has certainly
come up to the injunction of St. Paul “ to be all things to
all men.” Persons of the most contrary dispositions and
of the most opposite natures have been its great illustrators,
expounders, and living representatives. It has found room for
all temperaments ; the ascetic and luxurious enjoyer of life ;
the man of action and the man of contemplation ; the monk
and the king : the philanthropist and the destroyer of his race;
the iconoclastic hater of all ceremonies, and the superstitious
devotee. All these opposites have found refuge within the
pale of Christianity. But this heterogeneous family is by no
means the result of any all-embracing comprehensiveness in
the system of Christ, but rather the effects of a theology
characterized alike by its indefinite, incomplete, and undecisive
principles.
These different and contradictory views which are entertained
as to what Christianity really is, prove that its truths are not
self-evident, but that they depend, for their interpretation and
manifestation, upon the education and surroundings of their
professors. This deprives the faith of any just claim to infal
libility and to a “ divine origin.” For, if the reason of man
has to decide its meaning, one uniform conception of what it
teaches is impossible, and the criterion by which its claims are
tested is a human one. The term “ Secular Christianity ” we
regard as a misnomer, for the system has no consistent signifi
cation if the notion of what is called the supernatural is ignored.
The inspiration that induced Christ to say and do what is
ascribed to him in the four gospels, was considered to have
�WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED.
5
emanated from above. The power that moves and regulates
the whole system of Christianity is designated by its believers
as supernatural. Christ did not teach from purely secular
motives, but through the belief that he was doing the will of
his ‘ Father in heaven.” The leading features of the teachings
of the New Testament are: reliance upon a supernatural
power, faith in Christ, belief in the efficacy of prayer, and in
the immortality of the soul; also that poverty is a virtue, that
submission is a duty, and that love to man should be subordin
ate to love to God. These principles, however consoling they
may be to some, must, from their nature, check the pi ogress of
civilization. The extent of their retarding influence depends
upon the degree of1 veneration in which they are held by their
professors. With some Theists and Unitarians these theologi
cal notions are less dangerous, because such Christians are
less dogmatic and less orthodox.
But with a Wesleyan, a
Baptist, or a member of the Salvation Army, such notions
frequently lead to conduct antagonistic to general improvement.
With these latter Christians, Christ is “all in all,” and they are
ever ready to exclaim :
“No foot of land do I possess,
A stranger in the wilderness,
I all their goods despise.
I trample on their whole delight,
And seek a city out of sight,
A city in the skies.”
For:
” Nothing is worth a thought beneath,
But how I may escape the death
That never, never dies.”
Such is the complex character of the Christian religion,
which its enthusiastic devotees boast has been the cause of
modern civilization. “ See,” they exclaim, “ how it made men
free, established liberty, abolished the corruptions of Rome,
liberated the human mind from heathen darkness, gave peace
to the world, and introduced a new and pure religion.” To
put the matter mildly, all this is pure assumption and nothing
�6
i 1
a
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION:
more, and this we hope to show beyond all possible doubt.
We shall endeavor to prove that Christianity does not contain
the elements which have produced civilization, butthat modern
progress is the result of agencies the very antithesis to New
Testament teachings. Before doing this, however, we ask,
when and where did Christianity cause the changes above
mentioned ? What we call civilization means a condition of
society where movements are in operation that will banish
barbarism, and in its place establish culture and the right of
personal freedom. Now, in what nation has Christianity ac
complished this result ? It is no credit to any faith to have
destroyed Roman learning, and then to have plunged Europe
into a state of mental darkness.. Yet this is what the early
Christians did, as the history of the Middle Ages amply testifies.
The monuments of Christianity are huge buildings erected at
the expense of the blood and muscle of unremunerated laborers.
True, Christianity produced architecture, and so it did monk
ish lying chronicles. It incited Europe to a state of ferment,
and also inspired the Crusaders to wage their unholy wars; it
lighted the fires of Smithfield and Oxford, and it established
the Holy Inquisition and the Star Chamber, wherein human
beings were tortured and cruelly put to death. The adherents
of this “ new religion ” have spread war, strife, and desolation
among nations in their attempt to subdue races who were -no
more savages than were the Christians themselves. This was
the work of the promoters of the “new and pure religion. ’
Christianity was erected upon the ruins of Greek and Roman
philosophy, but it failed to give birth to principles that could
be practically carried out in daily life. All that tends to pro
duce a state of civilization and to supply the needs and ensure
the refinement of a people, does not date its inception from the
introduction of Christianity, for that lacks not only any
scheme of education, but much of its teaching encourages un
thrift and favors despotism.
We are told that the Christian clergy were the scholars of the
nation for a thousand years, although the Christian Mosheim
�WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED.
7
says, in his “ Ecclesiastical History,” that “ The bishops in
general were so illiterate, that few of that body were capable of
composing the discourses which they delivered to the people.”
Even the clergy, who were comparatively learned, kept all their
knowledge to themselves, while the general masses were steeped
in ignorance and moral degradation. Christianity has estab
lished churches, but when did it give the artisan any ownership
in them ? For centuries the Christian Church has been the
opponent of all literary, political, and social advancement. It
did not found mechanics’ institutes, free schools, or unsectarian
universities. But it did close the avenues of learning against
those who did not swear by its faith. Its Protestant supporters
argued against giving Roman Catholics and Jews their civil
rights. Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, once asked in the
House of Commons how the bishops could condemn perjury,
when they declared before God that they were moved by the
Holy Ghost to accept many thousand pounds a year for preach
ing “Blessed be ye poor ?” The fact is, money is at the root
of religion, as established in England, and we see in every
cathedral pile an emblem of a petrified faith.
Many able expounders of Christianity, failing to recognize the
true causes of civilization, urge that it has produced what they
term “ a change of heart,” and that this change has a more
beneficial effect upon the general conditions of society than
secular agencies have. Now, we fail to discover any proof of
this allegation. Western civilization is the result of the culti
vation of the intellect far more than it is of the fostering of the
emotions. In transforming society from what it was to what
it is, the teachings of science have proved more efficacious than
the preaching of sermons, and the brain power of such master
minds as Galileo, Newton, Watt, and Stephenson has been a
greater civilizing factor than all the emotional force manifes
ted by the host of divines who have contributed to the history
of the Christain faith. We hope to show that the improve
ments of modern life are not the outcome of putting into
practice the injunctions of Christ, but rather the consequence
�8
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION :
of following the truths born of such geniuses as those whose
names we have mentioned. The discovery of coal and of
electricity, the mechanical inventions of the last two hundred
years, the control of the lightning, and the navigation of the
seas, have been the potent agencies in bringing about modern
civilization. But these agencies have been secured through the
medium of cultivated intellects and are not the result of any
Christian “ change of heart.”
Experience amply testifies that if we keep our bodies in a
healthy condition and properly drain our land, the probability
is that if epidemics come upon us they will soon depart, and'
these duties are neglected, it is likely that diseases may not
only visit us, but that they will linger in our midst despite any
“ change of heart ” that might have taken place. If, however,
by this phrase is meant, that men should cease to do evil and
learn to do good, then we do not deny the advantages of such
a change, but we contend that intelligence and secular agencies
are necessary to render such advantages serviceable for all
civilizing purposes. We further assert that before a person’s
character is changed for the better, the conditions which surround
him must be improvedr; for, as Spencer has shown, a moral
character cannot emanate from immotal surroundings. Thus
the very “ change of heart ” spoken of depends upon the
superior environment caused by external influences. Moreover,
we find that this “ change of heart ” has not induced Christians
to seek to remove slavery, religious inequalities, political
z wrongs and social injustice ; neither has it inspired them with a
desire to encourage education or to favor the discovery and
the application of the sciences. In the face of these facts, it
cannot be consistently said that the Christian’s “ change of
heart ” has brought about the civilization of the nineteenth
century.
Persons with unbiased minds, and who are capable of general
izing facts, will doubtless recognize that civilization is not the
result of any one thing, or of the efforts of any one man, and
least of all of those of a person who possibly might have lived
�WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED.
9
in Palestine two thousand years ago. The progress of a nation
is to be attributed to efforts of many men of different genera
tions ; and also to a combination of circumstances that have
been in operation during all ages, preparing the way for the
advancement of a higher condition of things. For instance, if
it had not been for the scientific discoveries of a Watt, a Dalton,
and a Black of the last century, the application of the sciences
with which their names are associated would not have been
capable of being so easily applied to the ends of general utility
in this present age. It is equally true that for the freedom
from theological intolerance which we possess to-day, we are
indebted to the persistent and fearless advocacy of the Freethought pioneers of past ages, as well as to the efforts of
Freethinkers of more recent times.
We are aware that many of the most able thinkers entertain
different views from ours as to the cause of human progress,
but the question is, Whose views are supported by historical
facts and by general experience ? If the sources of civilization
are contained in the New Testament, how is it that at the
time when its teachings were observed, more than at any other
period, civilization was comparatively unknown ? It is only
within the present century, when scepticism and reliance on
mundane resources have been and still are so prevalent, that
real progress to any great extent has been accomplished.
Moreover, we know too well that two of the principal civilizing
agencies—science and general knowledge—have been bitterly
opposed and continually retarded by those very persons who
professed to be the exemplars of Christ’s teachings. When
the facts of modern science were first proclaimed, they were
denounced as untrue by Christians who for centuries constantly
condemned them as being antagonistic to the welfare of the
people. New truths that were demonstrated by early scientists
were regarded by believers in Christianity as instances of the
insanity of the discoverers, and every fossil wonder disclosed
was referred by Christians to the limited explanation of the
Noachian deluge. Finding threats and intimidation failed to
�IO
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION:
check the advance of truth, persecution and imprisonment
were the weapons used by Christian hands towards those who
investigated the laws of nature, and who sought to make such
laws known to their fellow creatures. Dr. Ferguson, in. his
work, “The Penalties of Greatness, ” acknowledges that.the
Roman Catholic Church was the first to extinguish the light of
reason. But truth existed in spite of the deadly agencies
which' surrounded it. Not only did this . Christian Church
employ means to prevent the least difference of opinion. on
religious subjects, by the' invention of the most finished instru
ments of torture, but science itself became the object of burning
jealousy and persecution, and men were made to deny the
very laws of nature.
Dr. Dick, in his work, the “ Philosophy of .Religion,” shows
that the Protestant Church exhibited a similar spirit of perse
cution. The same may be said of Christians in their morerecent treatment of such men as Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, and
Tyndall. Dr. White’s “Warfare of Science ” contains innum
erable facts showing how scientific men have been' denounced
by Protestants and charged with promulgating theories that
were said to be injurious to the welfare of mankind, And yet
the very knowledge that these men endeavored to impart is
now admitted to be among the most potent factor? in sustaining
and improving our civilization. For as Buckle observes,
“ Real knowledge, the knowledge on which, all civilization is
based, solely consists in an acquaintance with the relations
which things and ideas bear to each other and to themselves ;
in other words in an acquaintance with physical and mental
laws.”
No one can seriously question the fact that general education
has played a, most important part in producing and in increasing
civilization, yet it has taken the Christian world nearly eighteen
hundred years to arrive at the conclusion that ,it is - necessary
that the people should have adequate means of instruction at
their command.
Every step taken towards obtaining a
national system of education has been determinedly opposed
�WHY IS CHRISTIANITY STILL PROFESSED.
II
by men who were the leading expounders of the Christian faith.
And the most resolute opponents of our present public schools
areto be found in the Christian ranks. Buckle states that
where Christian governments “have not openly forbidden the
free dissemination of knowledge, they have done all they could
to check it. On all the implements of knowledge and on all
the means by which it is diffused, :such as papers, books,
political journals, and t.he like, they have imposed duties so
heavy that they could hardly have done worse, if they had
been the sworn advocates of popular ignorance. Indeed,
looking at what they have actually accomplished, it may be
emphatically said that they have taxed the human mind.”
Civilization is not an invention, but a growth ; a process
from low animal, conditions to higher physical, moral, .and
intellectual attainments. The real value of civilization consists
in its being the means whereby the community can enjoy-per
sonal comfort and general happiness. Now the elements that
have contributed to such a societarian condition, are those
that Christianity has not concerned itself with, either as
originator or as promoter. The lesson of all history teaches
the fact that the. progress of a people depends upon their
knowledge of, and their obedience to organic and inorganic
laws. This great truth has not been sufficiently recognized by
the expounders of Christianity. On the contrary, following in
this particular the example of their Master, they have
urged that man’s principal attention should be directed to the
alleged supernatural, and to the considerations of a life beyond
the grave. The secular affairs of existence have been deemed,
by the consistent professors of Christianity, as being of only
secondary importance. This disregard of mundane duties is,
no doubt, the logical sequence of believing such teachings of
the New Testament, as : “ He that loveth his life shall lose it;
and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it - until life
eternal” (John 12 : 25). Also, “Everyone that hath forsaken
houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife,'
or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hun-
�12
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION,'
dred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life ” (Matt. 19 : 29),
This is actually offering a premium for neglecting the require
ments of this world, and for ignoring the natural promptings of
humanity.
In any accurate history of the advancement of the human
race, the influence of external forces must be duly considered.
The emotions of our nature have doubtless played an active
part in civilizing processes, but external conditions have also
proved potent factors in all progressive movements. For
instance, the geographical position and climate of nations have
always had a marvellous effect upon the .temperaments and the
beliefs of individuals, thus either marring or improving
the development of civilization. An observant traveller can
readily discern the difference between the temperament of the
inhabitants of the Swiss and of the Italian sides of the Alps,
or between those who reside on the English and on the French
side of the Channel. The Swiss are as solemn as their snow
capped mountains, and the Italians are as lively as the English
larks whose songs accompany the dawn of the summer mcrn.
The mental calibre of the French, as a rule, differs in many
respects from that of the English ; and a faith that may satisfy
an Oriental mind, would probably be found inadequate to
meet the requirements of the Western intellect. This is a
feature in the process of civilization that Christianity has not
taken into account ; for it prescribes the same faith for all
nations and for all people, despite the varied climates and the
different localities in which they are born and trained. Buckle
has shown that man’s progress is the result of his physical
environment; for it has been found to be impossible to establish
a high civilization in certain countries, and under certain
climatic influences. Take, for instance, the people of Asia, and
of Africa ; also the Abyssinians. In spite of all the efforts of
Christian missionaries civilization in those countries is at its
lowest ebb. As a writer aptly remarks; “ If it were the Church
that created civilization, then we should see similar results in
different latitudes, and among different races. But the facts
�WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED.
T3
are opposed to this claim. Wherever there is a high civilization,
there is a good soil and a temperate climate.” This fact
proves that it is not to Christianity that we owe civilization,
but rather that it depends for its manifestations upon the
healthy conditions of society and its surroundings.
Briefly summarized, it appears to us that the principal causes
of modern civilization are : The development of the intellect,
this rules the world to-day; the expansion of mechanical genius,
this provides for the increased needs of the people ; the exten
sion of national commerce, this causesan inter-change of ideas ;
the invention of printing, this provides for the circulation of
newly-discovered facts ; the beneficial influence of climate, this
affects the condition both of body and mind ; the knowledge
and the application of science, these reveal the value and the
power of natural resources; the spread of scepticism, this
provides for the vindication of the right of mental freedom :
the practical recognition of political justice, this forms the
basis of all just governments ; and finally, the establishment of
the social equality of women with men, this secures the eman
cipation of women from that state of domestic servitude and
general inferiorityin which theology had for centuries kept them.
The question here to be considered is, are the causes of civiliza
tion just named, even indicated in the New Testament? We sub
mit they are not, for if the following injunctions were implicitly
obeyed, there would be a complete stagnation of all civilization.
“ Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,”
“ For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world and
lose his own soul ?” “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and
his righteousness and all these things [food, clothes, etc.] shall
be added unto you. Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh
not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple,” “ Take no
thought for your life,” “Resist not evil,” “ Blessed be ye
poor,” “ Labor not for the meat which perisheth,” “ Let every
man abide in the same calling wherein he was called,” “ Submit
yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake,” “ Let
every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no
�*4
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.
'
power but of God. .... Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power resisteth the ordinance of God-, and they that resist
shall receive to themselves damnation?’ “ Wives submit your
selves to your own husbands,” “ As the Church‘is subject unto
Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything,”
‘ What therefore God hath joined; together let‘no man put
asunder,” “ Servants be subject to your masters with all fear;
not only to the good and gentle, but also to the frowaird,” " Lay
not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,” Give to him that
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not
thou away,” “ Lend hoping for nothing again,” “ He that taketh
away thy goods ask them not again,” Forgive your brother who
who sins “ until seventy times seven,” “ Whosoever shall not
receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of thaf
city, shake off the dust of your feet,” “ If any man preach any
other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be
accursed,” “ If any man teach otherwise, an’d consent not to
the wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ
.... he is proud, knowing nothing. ...... from such
withdraw thyself,” “Of whom is• HymenSeus and Alexander,
whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to
blaspheme.”
...
Here are a few passages from the Scriptures, the highest
Christian authority, which enjoin conduct that cannot possibly
promote .civilization, but must necessarily retard it. The
teachings herein set forth are, neglect of the world, personal
indifference to human needs, non-resistance of wrongs, to regard
poverty as a blessing, abject submission to “ the powers that
be,” the subjection of woman, the giving up all for Christ,
reckless lending without any conditions for the return of the
loan, and the encouragement of a bitter spirit of prosecution.
Well may the late John S. Mill exclaim, in his work on Liberty,
“ That not one Christian in a thousand guides or tests his
individual conduct by reference to those [New Testament]
laws.” The reason why those laws cannot be obeyed in the
nineteenth century is because, as Mill further states, the
�WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED.
i5
morality of Christ is,, “ in many important points incomplete
and one-sided, and unless ideas and feelings not sanctioned by
it had contributed to the formation of European life and
character, human affairs would have been in a worse condition
than they now are Other ethics than any which can be
evolved from exclusively Christian sources must exist side by
side with Christian ethics to produce the tn oral regeneration of
mankind.”,
f.
.
■
...It.may be asked by. professors pf the Christian faith, .“If
Christianity is so unprogrest?ive in its nature,, and so muchopposed to a high condition of civilization. as.: ypu allege ■ that
it is, how is it that the profession of Christianity is so extensive
to-day?” . .
.
. .
In estimating th,e position that a system occupies in a. com-’
munity, it is necessary to distinguish between its profession
and its practice. It must be evident to.the impartial observer,
that while the name Christianity is still retained in our midst,
its essential principles have become impotent as a factor in
daily, life. As. James Cotter Morison observes in his “Service
of Man”: “There seems to be no exception to:the rule, that
the older religions grow, the; more infirm dodhey become, the
less hold do they, keep on ; the minds, of welhinformed and
thoughtful men. . Their truths, once accepted without question,
are gradually doubted, and i,n the end denied by , increasing
numbers. . . . All the chief dogmas of the Christian. . . . Creeds
have been for several centuries before the* world.. They: were
once, not only believed, but adored. Now .the: numbers who
doubt or dispute .them are increasing every day.- Time has.
not been their friend, but their enemy. , ... Religious truth
begins with undoubting’ acceptance, and after a shorter or.
longer period of supremacy, with the growth of knowledge and
more severe canons of criticism, passes gradually into the cat
egory of questioned and disputed theories, ending at last in
the class of rejected and exploded errors.” The proceedings
at recent Congresses and Conferences, amply justify the truth
of the above statements . At the present time the Churches
�l6
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION .'
are rent by intestine divisions, and assailed on all sides from
without by all that is vigorous, intelligent, liberal, free, and
progressive in our modern civilization. Christianity stands now
as the mythologies of Greece and Rome stood at the period
when it arose. The gods were more numerous than ever
before, the temples more magnificent, the sacrifices and
festivals more splendid, the priesthood more arrogant; but
living faith had deserted them, the intellect of the age despised
them, and its loftiest morality condemned them ; therefore,
despite their wealth, pomp, and power, they were irrevocably
doomed to destruction.
History repeats itself, hence a similar state of the decay that
marked the career of the religions of Greece and Rome, has
characterized the history of Christianity. The truth of this
allegation will be obvious to those who study the variety of
stages through which the faith has passed. True the name
has been retained, but not the faith the name was once sup
posed to represent. People in different nations and different
ages have accepted the term Christianity, and applied it to a
theological and ceremonial system arranged in accordance with
their education and their habits. The Christianity introduced
into this country by Augustine in the sixth century, was not
the Christianity taught in the East. The faith of the Middle
Ages was not the faith that is professed in the nineteenth
century.
Dean Milman, in his “ History of Civilization,” observes :
“ Its (Christianity’s) specific character will almost entirely
depend upon the character of the people who are its votaries . . .
It will darken with the darkness and brighten with the light
of each succeeding century.” Lord Macaulay says with
no less truth than brilliancy : “ Christianity conquered Pagan
ism, but Paganism infected Christianity. The rites of the
Pantheon passed into her worship, and the subtleties of the
Academy into her creed.” Francis William Newman, in his
“ Phases of Faith,” also remarks : “ I at length saw how
untenable is the argument drawn from the inward history of
�.
* '
“if 27::
i.U rf?,'
WHY IS CHRISTIANITY STILL PROFESSED.
17
Christianity in favor of’its superhuman origin. In fact, this
religion cannot pretend to self-sustaining power. Hardly
was it started on its course when it began to be polluted by
the heathenism and false philosophy around it. With the
decline of national genius and civil culture it became more and
more debased. So far from being able to uphold the existing
morality of the best Pagan teachers, it became barbarized itself,
and sank into deep superstition and manifold moral corruption.
From ferocious men it learned ferocity. When civil society
began to coalesce into order, Christianity also turned for the
better, and presently learned to use the wisdom first of Romans,
then of Greeks ; such studies opened men’s eyes to new appre
hensions of the scripture and of its doctrine. By gradual and
human means, Europe, like ancient Greece, grew up towards
better political institutions and Christianity improved with
them.”
Thus, according to these authorities, it will be seen that the
adherence to’ Christian theology which was observable in its
primitive history is no longer perceptible. The aim and
desire of modern reformers are to base morals, politics, and
commerce on the principles of utility. Human instincts are
found to be too strong, the necessities of life too potent, the
exigencies of existence too imperative to allow the standard of
two thousand years ago to regulate the actions of to-day. The
political world is now conductedon secular principles ; scientific
research is unfettered by theology, and is therefore secular ;
and the practical ethics of modern society are utilitarianism
and are therefore secular. Our civilization is indissolubly
connected with these three important facts.
So extensively is the change—produced by the sceptical
tendency of the age—progressing that we are continually
hearing of some avow'al either upon the part of a prelate, a
clergyman, or a learned professor, of a new view of the Chris
tian faith, or of a modification of the once popular theology.
The nature of the new departure depends, of course, upon the
intellectual status and the social position of those, who either
�i8
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION:
give up altogether the profession of their old beliefs, or who so
modify those beliefs that they may be considered more in
harmony with the requirements of the age. But a general
agreement appears to exist amongst the superior intelligent
expounders of Christianity that the ideas that were for centuries
entertained as to the character of their faith, and of its sanc
tions, can no longer be supported in the face of modern criti
cism. It cannot be doubted that many of the new views that
are being promulgated as to what Christianity really is, strike
at the very root of the system as it was taught in former times.
Still, despite this fact, there is such a manifest desire to retain
the name of Christian upon the part of a large section of so
ciety, that it may be useful to inquire what the magic influences
are that impel so many persons to tenaciously cling to a name
that represents no practical principle in the actions that govern
the well-being of the community.
It has been frequently urged by orthodox believers, that if
all the facts of Christianity could be disposed of, Christian ex
perience would still remain, and that it is this which gives the
consolation that no criticism can destroy. Probably this will
explain why a large number of persons continue to adhere to
the profession of Christianity. It, however, reduces the basis
of their faith to the level of fanaticism, for the same reason
could be given with equal force in justification of the mani
festation of the wildest enthusiasm associated with the worst
forms of superstition. It is the old idea that a thing is true
because one feels it to be so. This is an assumption that
assuredly should find no support from thinking persons, inas
much as it could be cited to prove the truth of the greatest
errors that have ever degraded the human mind. The savage,
who worships his idol of wood and stone, derives consolation
from his abject prostration. Why should Christian mission
aries seek to rob him of his source of supreme comfort ? The
answer is, because the poor savage is thought to be mistaken
in his useless and humiliating devotion. For a similar reason
we remind the orthodox professor that the consolation exper
�WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED
19
ienced from a faith destitute of any practical value, and which
consigns the majority of the human race to everlasting torture
is unworthy of man, and would be a disgrace to any God.
Besides, the probability that such consolation is based on
fiction is not very complimentary to the power of truth. 1 he
lesson of experience is, that it is more serviceable to the world
to revere what is true than to sacrifice the general results of
reality for the selfish satisfaction of personal consolation.
It is, however, impossible to argue profitably with people
who do not use their mental faculties, and hence the greatest
delusions that take possession of the human mind often remain
unchecked and irremovable. On the other hand, when the
intellect is brought into play, the result is the growth of new
ideas. The attempts made by any of the clergy to explain
away theobjectionablefeaturesof certain doctrines are prompted,
possibly, by their desire to retain their position in the Church,
which is their only means of obtaining the necessaries of
life. Those who have qualified themselves only for the
theological profession know the difficulties that beset them
when doubts enter their minds as to the truth of the creeds
they profess. They may preach “ Blessed be ye poor,” but
personally they dread poverty, and they do their best to avoid
sharing its “ blessings.” They may advise their congre
gations, in the words of Jesus, to “Take no thought for your
life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on. Behold the fowls of the air : for
they sow not neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet
your heavenly Father feedeth them.” So far, however, as the
clergy themselves are concerned, they find it necessary to be at
times exceedingly anxious for the morrow, and, rather than
having faith that their “ heavenly Father ” will feed and clothe
them, their concern is how to get cash to purchase food, drink,
and clothes. It is not surprising, therefore, that clergymen
and ministers with more than “a living wage” hesitate to give
up the name by which they live. A change would perhaps mean
ruin, and self-preservation is the first law of nature even among
�20
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.
clericals, where personal and family interests are concerned.
Besides, every man has not the courage to sever his connec
tions with old institutions, old friends, and the comforts oflife.
Thus a second reason is discovered why many persons remain
professors of Christianity. They see no chance of providing
for their daily bread outside of the Christian body, and con
sequently they prefer to bear the ills they have—in clinging to
an empty name—than fly to others they know not of.
In some cases men remain Christians in name because they
persuade themselves that they can harmonize their new depar
ture with modern discoveries. It has been so with astronomy
and geology. At first these sciences were denounced as being
heretical, now they are accepted as agreeing with Christian
teachings. It was the same with that terribly destructive agent
Evolution, which to theology meant revolution The only
way a man could remain in the Christian ranks, and agree
with Darwin’s theory, was to contend that it agreed with the
Bible, and, as a sort of final indication of friendship for the
distinguished sceptic, they buried him in Westminster Abbey.
It is remarkable how. easy some people find it to rest under
false convictions, particularly when such convictions are backed
by pecuniary gain and found to be in accordance with fashion
able opinions. Then people become like Goldsmith’s vicar in
his “ Deserted Village,”
‘ ‘ Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e’er had changed, nor wished to change his place ”
The tendency at the present time within the Churches is to
raise new theological ghosts as fast as the old ones are laid. We
are now face to face with a fresh enemy to the long cherished
notions of the Christian profession. It is a movement that
commenced years ago outside the pulpit, and it bears the high
and dignified name of “The Higher Criticism.” Looking at
the results already achieved by this destructive criticism, the
question again arises, Why do men remain professors of
Christianity ? The answers that we have already given explain
why some of the clergy continue in the fold, but what are the
�WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED.
21
reasons that so many of the laity linger therein ? The reply is
in the first place because they are too intellectually indolent,
and they find it more convenient to accept things as they are
than to examine and study the value or otherwise of what they
are asked to believe. If we look at the attendance at an
ordinary church or chapel, who do we discover occupying the
pews ? Mostly women and children, who do not concern
themselves about criticism, either higher or lower. In fact
the indifferent section of believers constitute the large majority
of professors of Christianity. Such persons never doubt and
never inquire. Changes of opinion are the result of causes
that seldom affect the intellectually lazy. With them it is not
a question of mental honesty, hut a case of inactivity of mind,
which results in a deep slumber, that only ignorance induces.
To excite the general mass of mankind to any perceptible
degree of serious thought, a volcanic eruption in the intellectual
world would be required. So long as persons are contented
to “ shut their eyesand open their mouths,”or while they are too
idle to use their faculties in thinking for themselves, they will
probably remain Christians in name. Orthodox folks are too
prone to rely upon others as to what they shall believe ; it saves
a degree of mental exercise for which the many have but
little taste or inclination. This seems to account for the
persistence of belief in all ages and in all countries, whether
Christian or not. Hence millions of our fellow-mortals remain
in the faith and follow the customs of their fathers, having no
desire for, or conception of change. In all the great religious
communities of the world we find that men adopt a faith ; it is
not really a belief at all, for the road to intelligent belief is
through the portals of doubt and investigation, in the absence
of which true belief is not formed
As a further illustration that indifference is a prominent
' cause of the name of Christianity being perpetuated, we may
mention the case of shopkeepers and commercial men, whose
indifference is intensified by self-interest. They attend church
either to please their customers or to gain some relief from
�22
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.
the anxieties pertaining to their weekly labors. They listen to
the sermons, but they pay little or no heed to what they hear.
It is the fashion to attend “ a place of worship,” and they
consider that their business success depends upon their going
with the multitude, at least outwardly. The clergyman or
minister is too shrewd to talk to such persons about the grave
discussions going on in popular reviews, or new books of here
tical tendency. And if the preacher does allude to the subject,
it is for the purpose of showing that if his hearers have heard
that anything has gone wrong with the faith or the Church,
they need not be alarmed, it is only the spite of “ infidelity,”
and he will see to the matter and put all things right. Sup
posing the educated, reading young men of his con
gregation express any doubts, the minister may deliver a
course of sermons, not allowing any discussion, in which he
boldly asserts that the Bible and the Church still rest on an
impregnable rock, against which many sceptics have been
dashed to pieces in trying to blast it with “infidel ” powder.
He concludes by urging that the faith of Jesus has its hold
upon the human heart, satisfying al) its desires and longings,
and that to yield up this faith would be followed by conse
quences appalling to contemplate. These appeals to ignorance
and uncontrolled emotion succeed, for a time, in suppressing
doubt, stopping inquiry, and securing a profession of a faith in
the acceptance of which reason and investigation have had no
part.
In addition to those who remain professing Christians from
interested motives, from aversion to change, or through inherit
ing the belief of their parents, there are others who have what
they term “ intelligent convictions ” of the truth of the faith
they avow'. They believe in Jesus as an historical character,
whose life is truly recorded in the gospels. Conflicting texts
may be found in the scriptures, doubts may be expressed by
Bible critics as to the genuineness of the gospels, it may be
found difficult to explain many events described in the New'
Testament. Nevertheless, the professors of Christianity from
�WHY IS CHRlSTlANrTY STILL PROFESSED ?
23
“conviction” accept the declaration that “God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Believers of this class are easily made professors of Christianity,
and are as easily kept so, for they feel sure that their belief
secures for them safety in “ the world to come.” The doctrine
of rewards and punishments has always been a powerful factor
in the promulgation of the orthodox faith. The Devil has
been the clergyman’s best friend, and now that it is acknowledged that the belief in the existence of such a being was a
delusion, and that hell was a fiction, Christianity is losing its
former influence over the human mind—the faith has to be
reconstructed to suit requirements of this sceptical age. Of
course those who believe “ in Christ and him crucified,” have
only an ideal founded upon an imaginary Christ. They ignore.
the elementary facts of nature, for in the constitution of man
and of nature in general there is going on a perpetual struggle
for existence, which does not harmonize with the alleged love,
of God for the world. It may be said that the existence of
so much suffering and misery in the world is a mystery, but if
this is so, it does not dispose of the fact that such drawbacks
to man’s happiness are here, and no God of love is apparently
disposed to remove them. Besides, it is difficult to believe
that “ God so loved the world,” that he sent his son to be
tortured on the cross to achieve a purpose which God, if he.
were all-powerful, could have accomplished without this
exhibition of cruelty and injustice. Those persons who remain
’Christians because of their desire to believe that Christ was.
really their crucified Savior, can never full}' recognize the.
horrible nature of “ the agony and bloody sweat,” the sufferings;
endured by the man of sorrow and grief,, and the sadness
experienced by him when abandoned by his,God: at the hour
of death. They also ignore, in the person of Christ, the
scientific fact , that death is the terminatiQn of life, for he is
supposed to have performed more wonderful things after his
death than he did before.
�24
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.
Briefly stated, it may be said that the thoughtless multitude
adhere to the profession of Christianity because they are either
too indifferent to oppose it, or they cling to the belief through
tear of punishment hereafter; or still further, they adhere to
the old faith in consequence of their inability to understand
what-is to replace the orthodox belief. Among persons of
intellectual ability there are two considerations that principally
induce them to favour the continuation of the profession of
the Christian name. They suppose that it is to their interest
to be thought in accord with the fashionable belief of the day,
and they are impressed with the idea that the masses are kept
in check by believing that the doctrine of hell-fire is a true one.
Thus the profession of Christianity is perpetuated through
mental laziness, lack of intellectual capacity, consideration of
self-interest, or through the notion that fear, even if based on
fiction, is necessary to keep the uninformed in order and sub
jection. While the triumphs of political and scientific inquiry,
in dismissing from men’s minds despotic and erroneous views,
have been numerous, theology is still making desperate
struggles to cling to its old positions. It will require, probably,
more than one generation of educated persons to eliminate
from the human mind the ideas that cause men and women to
remain professors of Christianity. Although we may believe,
with Shelley, that the evil faith will not last for ever, it dies
hard nevertheless. In the persistent warfare with this evil,
supported as it has been by so many varying interests, many
brave reformers have exhausted their energies, while other
toilers have had to give up the battle. The magnitude of the
undertaking to reform the religious world reminds us of Butler’s
lines :—
Reforming schemes arc none of mine,
To mend the world’s vast design ;
Like little men in a little boat,
Trying to pull to them the ship afloat.
�
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Christianity and civilization: why Christianity is still professed
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Christianity
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY,
COMPRISING
The Agonies of Hanging.
By One who was Cut Down from the Gallows.
LONDON:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
��(isogo
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY,
COMPRISING
THE AGONIES OF HANGING.
It has been my fortune to meet with some of the
strangest characters that ever trod this planet. I myself,
I admit, am not over-like Mr. John Smith, nonconfor
mist and cheesemonger, and like draws to like. I have
been more than once pronounced daft; and, be that as
it may, I feel certain that during my lifetime more than
one daft person has had my friendship. As I make a
retrospect it occurs to me that, upon the whole, the
daftest person that was ever enrolled on my list of friends
was Major F------, who had been twelve years in the
East India Company’s service, and who belonged to an
old county family. I was a big boy at school when
Major F------first took notice of me. It was the Annual
Examination, and he and several other persons of influ
ence were present, along with a contingent of the local
clergy. I had distinguished myself by reading my theme,
a wild, weird, Monk Lewis composition, full of dream and
lightning and gloom and phantasy. It was certainly as
unlike anything else that any other boy in the school
could produce as it is possible to imagine. Some of
the pupils could beat me at mere feats of commonplace
drudgery; but they had all the leaden-footed mediocrity
of the farmers and country parsons into which they
�4
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
ultimately vegetated. My command of language and
flight of imagination took Major F——’s breath away.
He was heard muttering to himself: “This is a devil of
-a boy! I must do something for him. May I be
jiggered if I don’t!” And the masters and my classfellows congratulated me; for the Major was known to
be a man of his word, and to be both loyal and liberal
to those to whom he felt attracted.
Only a few days after the school examination a report
.spread like wild-fire through the district that the Major
had hanged himself 1 Throwing aside my FEschylus
and Dunbar’s Greek Lexicon, I hurried off to the resi
dence of my prospective patron. He was reported to
be dying, and for me to gain access to his chamber was
exceedingly difficult. The principal obstacle was his
daughter, Julia, who stood in the passage that led to his
room and positively refused me entrance thereto. I
.attempted to crush past her, but she got hold of my ear
and pulled it to the length of ear that is worn by an ass,
but by no other of God’s creatures. I was young, with
a frame unknit, and with bones that were little more
than cartilage; and this Julia was a perfect Amazon in
physical strength. Howbeit, her mental prowess was as
small as her personal vanity was inordinate.
“ I know you,” sneered she; “ you are the school
brat who wrote the ode to Aggie------ ’s ankle!”
As she pronounced the word “ ankle ” she gave her
skirts an opportune sweep, which revealed both her own
ankles and a trifle more. I took the hint.
“Yes,” quoth I, in a tone of well-simulated admira
tion. “ But now that I have seen your ankle I repent
me bitterly that I ever wrote a line upon Aggie------’s.”
“Will you write upon mine now ?”
“ Yes.”
“ Quite sure ?”
'“Yes.”
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
5
“You will write prettily ?”
“Yes.”
“You are a dear 1”
And with this tender exclamation she seized me in
her arms and inflicted a loud, smacking kiss upon my
forehead, and then gave me a push that nearly sent
me abruptly and head foremost into the chamber where
her father lay dying.
Thus, by a skilful blend of blandishment and impu
dence, I succeeded in being shown into the room
where the Major lay. He was in bed. He raised
himself up on his elbow and, staring at me, politely
asked, “Who the deuce are you?” Then, steadying
his gaze, a gleam of delight shone in his wild, mad eye,
and he murmured, “Oh, it’s Wully Ross.” Next,
putting his hand under his pillow, he drew out a few
sheets of sermon-paper, all written over with his strong,
determined handwriting, bold as a cavalry charge and
straight as a sword.
“Thank you, Major F------,” said I. “What am I to1
do with this ?”
There was no answer. The Major was dead.
And now, after the lapse of many years, I put that
MS. of his into the hands of the printer, with a trust
that the manes of the writer may not disapprove.
MAJOR F-------- ’s MS.
My studies have been so peculiar that I may be
excused for digressing for a moment to show whence
and how I inherited the bias for the dreamy, the
mystical, and esoteric. The bias is not hereditary. My
mother’s milk was not full of inspirations and visions. It
was thus she became the wife of my prospective father,
who, unlike myself, was, by all competent authorities,
believed to have had a slate off his upper storey.
The night was dark and stormy, and my future father,
�6
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
who was then about twenty-two, was returning alone
from a military review when he got benighted and lost.
The rain splashed furiously, “ the wind blew as ’twad
blawn its last,” and only glares and flashes of lightning
lit up ever and anon the Cimmerian gloom.
“ The gods have doomed and damned me,” quoth my
father; “ I will lie down on the moor and perish !” But,
at the moment, a faint gleam, as if from a distant glow
worm, shimmered through the blackness; and, clenching
his teeth and his fists, he who was destined to be my
male parent toiled on desperately in the direction of the
light. At the light he arrived, after much scrambling
through the bushes and not a few tumbles into the
ditches. The light proceeded from a large oriel window
in an old-fashioned country house with picturesque
facades and romantic gables, which now, in a lull and
hush of the storm, shone out with dim grandeur in the
sheen of the waning moon. Through the gauzy curtajns
and the glass flowed the waves of instrumental music
and the sound of the measured footfalls of the dance.
It was evident that something was being enacted within
in the way of mirth and revelry.
My prospective father knocked at the front door.
The door was opened by a half-drunken footman carry
ing a lamp, who, observing that he who had knocked
was a dejected-looking youth, drenched with rain and
bedabbled with mire, politely advised him to “ go to
blazes,” and at once slammed the door in his face. The
door was, however, immediately re-opened, and an old
white-haired gentleman, with a wild, wandering eye,
asked decisively, but not unkindly :
“Well, what do you want ?”
My prospective father told his tale, and impressively
asked for the favour of a lodging till morning.
“ This is my second daughter’s wedding night,” quoth
the old gentleman, “and every bed in the house is occu
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
7
pied, as the guests who have not already gone will stay
over night.”
“ I am utterly tired out, and would gladly sleep on a
sofa, a hearth-rug, or anyhow and anywhere,” urged my
prospective male parent.
“ There is only one spare bed, and I do not care to
send you to that,” rejoined the old gentleman moodily,
and with a strange light in his eye.
“ Pray, sir, have no misgivings about its not being
soft in feathers and luxuriant in drapery; I am too tired
to be critical,” urged my prospective parent.
“You know not what you ask,” responded the old
gentleman. Then, sinking his voice to a solemn
whisper—'‘''The room is haunted/”
His would-be guest laughed a derisive laugh, and
replied: “ Kind sir, show me into the room, and I will
put up with the haunting.”
To the room he was shown—a room handsome, taste
ful, and even opulent.
“ Haunted indeed,” soliloquised he; and, divesting
himself of his torn and sodden garments, he extinguished
the candle, placed his loaded pistol under the bolster,
and was soon fast asleep. Two hours later a hand was
placed upon his brow, coldly and firmly, and under the
mysterious pressure thereof he awoke. He sat up in
bewilderment, not unalloyed with a vague terror. A
white and ghostly figure loomed by the bedside, softly and
hazily limned against the opposite wall, upon which,
through the spars of the Venetian blind, fell the last rays
of the waning moon or the first beams of the rising sun.
My prospective father recollected that he had been
apprised that the chamber was haunted.
“ Some knavish trick,” murmured he grimly. “ By
God, I will make a real ghost of this sham ghost,
or may I ------and he thrust his hand under the
bolster to grasp his pistol. Then he recollected that the
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
report of fire-arms ringing through the house in that
stilly hour would create intense alarm, and his rash act
would be a poor return for the hospitality which had
been accorded him. Still, determined that he would
unmask the ghost, he leapt from his couch and seized
the vague, white semblance vigorously in his arms. The
figure fell supinely to the floor, and shriek after shriek
rang hysterically through the chamber and echoed and
re-echoed through the halls and corridors outside,
“What, in the name of all the saints, has happened
now?” exclaimed my future father, as the shrieking
form lay before him on the carpet, dimly, almost in
visibly. Another minute, and the chamber-door burst
open, and the grey-haired gentleman, in his night-gown
and slippers, with a lighted candle in his left hand and
a cocked pistol in his right, entered excitedly. He
glanced at the figure prostrate on the floor, and then at
his guest. “ My daughter—scoundrel 1” was his laconic
exclamation, and he presented the muzzle of his weapon
to my future father’s head. Then he dashed the pistol
on the floor, and cried bitterly, “ Devil, was it for this I
sheltered you in my house! My daughter 1 my daughter 1”
Quite suddenly he left the room, leaving the candle
burning on the floor beside the prostrate lady. In the
light of this candle the youth beheld her. He beheld
her and was vanquished. Her loveliness, as she
lay there in the loose white drapery of the night, with
the wealth of her rich brown hair falling over the lily
whiteness of her bosom, sinking and rising in its con
vulsive breathing, was too much for the man for whom
was reserved the distinction of being my father. The
free sweeping symmetry of these arms had enthralled
him. That bosom, that might have put that of Aphrodite
to shame, made him love’s willing slave, and the tangles
of that heavenly hair, which the flicker of the candle
now flung into raven blackness, now touched into ruddy
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
9
gold, had forged the fetters of a bondage that made the
young cadet forever and forever the thrall of the lady
who lay at his feet. “ Thine, thine,” he murmured ;
“ come life, come death, thine, only thine.”
Suddenly the chamber door again burst open, and the
old gentleman re-entered, still arrayed in his slippers and
dressing gown. With him he brought a clergyman with
his black coat on and his white choker, but with bare
legs, and his unsocked feet stuck into a pair of unlaced
boots. In his right hand he carried a Bible. He
appeared more than half drunk, and, having been suddenly
and abruptly summoned from his bed, he seemed dazed
and only half awake. At his side walked a servant maid
with bare neck and feet, and arrayed in a hurriedlydonned and solitary petticoat. The maid applied a
small bottle of smelling salts to the nostrils of the
prostrate lady, and baptised her brow and breast and
hair with the contents of the water bottle.
The old gentleman was livid with rage. “ Sir,” said
he sternly, “ it pains me beyond expression that I have
to give my girl in marriage to a blackguard ; but, since
things are as they are, I feel constrained to try to make
the best of an infernally bad bargain. You have dis
honoured the girl and her family. This parson will wed
you to her, here—here on the very scene of your diabolical
crime, or, by heavens, I will blow your brains out if I
hang for it to-morrow from the highest tree on my
estate.”
The young gentleman who was destined to be my
father did not prefer even the ghost of an objection to
being united for life to her who had already, even in her
mute unconsciousness, quite vanquished him. The lady
at length stood up, utterly dazed. The parson performed
the nuptial ceremony, and the father and the maid
servant were witnesses. The bride’s father lifted his
pistol from the floor and soliloquised :
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
“ My second daughter was married yesterday, and my
eldest to-day. My second was married to an earl’s son ;
my eldest and most beautiful is married to—oh, damn
it all 1” and he raised his pistol and fired point
blank at the wash-stand, shattering the basin and ewer
to shivers. This was too much for the excited nerves
of the bride. She shrieked, and fell into the bride
groom’s arms in a swoon, from which she was recovered
with difficulty.
The day after the marriage the mystery of the haunted
chamber was solved, the riddle read. Matilda Clinton
had been a confirmed somnambulist, without any one
having suspected the fact; and the chamber which was
reputed to be haunted had evidently been the goal of her
nocturnal wanderings. To her dying day she remained
“ beautiful exceedinglybut to her dying day the
villagers set her down as “ cracked,” so disastrous had
been the effects of awakening her in that room under
the circumstances which I have just narrated. My
father, too, was reputed to be “ cracked,” and the great
wonder is—a wonder that occasionally overwhelms me
—that, under the circumstances, I should be the posses
sor of mental gifts of an exceptional order, and of a
genius to which neither of my parents could lay any
valid claim. However, a man’s history commences
before he is born; and, having ventured to give so much
of my own hereditary biography, I proceed to my
narrative.
MAJOR F-------- AT HIS STUDIES.
I have frequently been induced to contemplate in
theory the physiology and psychology of “ Hanging by
the neck till dead,” and also some of the more salient
points in the more salient exigencies of human life and
destiny. The results have occasionally been, to the un
initiated, impregnated with burlesque and eccentricity,
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
II
as the inductions of all experimental philosophers in the
occult sciences must necessarily be. However, I have
succeeded, to my own satisfaction, in establishing that
the Rosicrucian theory is correct, and that heaven, earth,
and hell are severally playing their role on the land, the
water, and the welkin. We are roaring, “ Cash—no
abatement!” the angels are chanting “ Hallelujah !” and
the damned are yelling, “ Oh, dear me !”—all mixed up
together upon the same arena here. It is literally, and
not figuratively, that we have each our good and evil
spirits concerning themselves in the colouring of our
destinies. They are not perceptible to the material, but
they are to the psychal, man. Consequently, it is pre
sumable that the determining of the number of good or
evil spirits we may have is much in our own hands.
If we can win the good graces of every one around us,
supposing they amount to a few hundreds, the strong
probability is that some of them will pass before us
through that transformation scene vulgarly called “dying,”
and then we can depend upon their good offices. It is
presumable that they cannot be friendly to those who
offended them when they were as yet sealed up in the
anatomical soul-envelope ; nor perhaps with any who,
subsequent to the transformation scene vulgarly called
'“ dying,” may grow potatoes, or make bricks out of the
said soul-envelope lately warm and perambulating about
invested in a hat, a pair of boots, or perhaps a pair of
petticoats.
Nor is this state of matters strictly confined to that
order of animals called human. I apprehend there is
danger from the malevolent spirit of a murdered beetle.
Life is life—the same mysterious afflatus, whether it
animate Benjamin Disraeli or a cockroach; but in
Disraeli it operates through a more high-strung deve
lopment of nervous organism. What we so pompously
designate “ soul ” is only “life” thrilling through finer
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nervous fibres than are possessed by a beetle or a cock
roach, or any of the intermediate links between them
and the homo sapiens of Linnaeus. How else can it be ?
Shall I who write deny the cockroach immortality, its
chance for the felicity of heaven or the torment of hell,
because its nervous organisation is defective compared
with mine? It may have a very noble and elevated
soul, without material to work with or through. Take
my so-called soul from me and infuse it into the cock
roach, and it would be an ordinary cockroach still; and,
if I were to have its soul in return, I should simply be the
living, breathing, scribbling, fighting creature that I am.
How the idea originated that the life of man alone has a
monopoly for immortality baffles the conception. It
must be maintained, too, in the face of most awkward
contingencies.
In pursuit of my studies in psychology, only a few
months ago I procured a pauper just on the point of
shuffling off this mortal coil. As I was defective in
experimental apparatus bearing upon the peculiar modus
operandi in which I was about to experiment, I
ordered at the brass-founder’s a brass cylinder, twelve
feet long by twelve feet in diameter. The cylinder
was hollow; but the walls were several feet thick, of solid
brass. On one end of the cylinder was a square of glass
of five feet in thickness, through which was visible the
interior of the cylinder. This square of glass was a
door, which, at pleasure, could be opened, and again
secured with screws of immense strength. This was the
only opening into the cylinder.
As soon as the physician informed me that the pauper
could not survive over half-an-hour I had him placed
inside the cylinder, and the hyaline door strongly secured
with screws. I pressed my face to the glass, and, with
breathless anxiety, watched what was going on inside.
The pauper was a sickly yellow, and a cold, oily perspira
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
13
tion glistened upon his deeply-corrugated forehead. One
of his brown and toil-hardened hands held a convulsive
grasp of the dirty blanket in which he was wrapped. A
portion of his hirsute and muscular breast was visible
where two of the buttons of his faded blue stripe shirt
were open in front. That breast heaved a long, long
heave. Oh, God, would it ever fall ? Aye, it must. For
there was a low mortal rattling audible through the five
feet of solid glass—the death-rattle—and the old pauper
could not live long now. I confess I felt somewhat
terrified—not at the mere phenomenon called death, for
I had witnessed it a thousand times on the field of battle,
the hospital, and elsewhere; but, then, there was plenty
of scope for the soul to fly heavenward, or wherever it
might be labelled for; but, now, in the brass cylinder
—close, air-tight—good Christ! A hundred-weight of
gunpowder would hardly burst the “ everlasting brass ” of
old Horace in which the pauper was expiring ! What
if the disembodied spirit should burst it with a fearful
explosion, and blow me to atoms ! But, from the time
I was a cornet at sweet seventeen, I had sought the
bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth, and at the
dear coral mouth of Miranda; and I resolved not to
turn upon my heel now to save my head in anticipation
of the explosive character of a pauper’s soul.
The cylinder was secured to prevent its flying up into the
air by appending to it several cables with heavy anchors.
The uncertainty of what the results would instantly be
became absolutely harrowing. The dark-coloured and
hairy breast, visible through the faded, striped shirt, fell
at last. I looked with a rivetted gaze : would it ever rise
again ? The yellow, oily appearance of the complexion
faded away into a ghastly white; not that lily whiteness
which is lovely, not that snowy whiteness which is beau
tiful ; but that horrible whiteness which is death-like.
The baked lips were dry and shrivelled up, revealing the
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
pale gums and the grinning teeth, worn away in front by
the common clay pipes which the man had smoked for
forty years. His grey beard bristled grimly, and the
forlorn lock of hair which time had left upon his temples.
The eyes were wide open, and stared upward, as though
they would stare through the worlds and the ages. Then
the death-rattle ceased, the breast under the faded, striped
shirt rose no more, the eyes glazed, the jaw fell, and the
pauper was a clod of the earth he, grub-like, had toiled
and moiled in so long.
I saw no spirit make its escape; but I knew that it
was in the man in the cylinder no more. I knew I had
him there soul and body, although the two had dissolved
partnership. I could not tell whether the elements of
felicity or vice versct were in the brazen prison, but I
knew that I had therein the two constituent parts of an
animal, even a human one, and those two constituent
parts no longer in functional conjunction. For the
cylinder had not exploded, nor had I experienced the
slightest concussion. If that soul were now reaping the
rewards of the deeds done in the flesh, then the interior
of that cylinder must be a portion of heaven, or, rather,
there is no heaven or no hell, except what the soul
contains in itself—a disembodied soul qtia a disem
bodied soul. Re-united with the body in ultra-sepulchral
life, the economy must of necessity be essentially dif
ferent.
I had clearly got heaven or hell inside that cylinder ;
but the business was to find out which. The matter
could, however, be determined by finding out what kind
of life the pauper had led. From the conduct of his
life I should be able to infer whether he had merited a
harp in his hands in heaven or a gridiron under his hips
in hell. So I went round the parish inquiring of all
who had known this pauper as to what sort of a person
he had been. I heard no good of him. There was a
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
15
chalk up against him at the public-house. He had
fractured three of his wife’s ribs and broken his motherin-law’s thumb. He had, furthermore, not partaken of
the holy sacrament for three years; he had pulled the
half of his mother’s hair out, and had attempted to blow
up his father with gunpowder; he gave up reading his
Bible, and had refused to take tracts; and it was in
sinuated that he had actually poached and taken the
name of the Lord his God in vain. So, of course, I
had no doubt that he was in hell, and that consequently
hell was inside the brass cylinder behind my coach-house.
There are several reasons (too obvious to warrant my
occupying space with them here) for supposing that dis
embodied spirits are, with qualifications, subject to the
restraints of matter. A sound anatomical organisation
can contain a spirit; but it sooner or later escapes from a
defective and impaired organisation. If we could have
a guarantee against bodily malady, we would have a
guarantee against death. Never yet did the soul escape
from man but through some flaw in the physical organism.
There was no flaw or mode of egress in the cylinder,
consequently the soul must be there. If the cylinder
had been organised, the internal spirit might have ani
mated it. If a robin swallow a spider which expires in
the gizzard, it is presumable that the vital principle of the
spider goes to augment that already animating the
animal organism of the robin—a strange, but somewhat
feasible phase of metempsychosis. With a conviction of
the truth of this principle, when I am oppressed with
lassitude, lowness of spirits, and nervous prostration, I
am in the habit of swallowing a live frog, which, expiring
in my internal arrangements, its life goes to auxiliarate
mine, and the experiment seldom fails to inspire me with
healthful and exuberant spirits. At my instance, several
of my friends have also tried the experiment, and pro
nounce it a most decided biocrene.
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
Further, in corroboration of the principle of spirit
being imprisoned in matter, St. Peter writes of Christ:
“ Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the
spirit, by which also he went and preached to the spirits
in prison.” This is the preposterous “ He descended
into hell ” of the creed explained by the indefinite, “ that
is remained in the state of the dead and under the power
of death,” which may mean anything or nothing. Who
were the “ spirits in prison ” which Christ preached to
after His “ being put to death in the flesh ” ? It is not
on record that, after His resurrection, he preached to
any, if we except the expounding of the Scriptures to the
two men journeying to the village of Emmaus, and the
admonition to the eleven whom He found gathered
together at Jerusalem. They cannot certainly be meant
by the expression, “ spirits in prison.” The “ preaching ”
must then refer to the interval in which the body of
Jesus lay in the rock-hewn sepulchre. But it seems
quite obvious who are meant by the “ spirits in prison.”
St. Peter distinctly designates, at least, a portion of them.
His words are : “ He went and preached to the spirits in
prison, which some time were disobedient when once
the long-suffering of God awaited in the days of Noah,
when the ark was preparing,” etc. Since Scripture never
once intimates, and the very Apostles’ Creed itself vacillates
on the subject of the descent into hell, and perhaps the
ascent into heaven on that awful occasion has never been
yet contended for, the spirit of Jesus must have remained
in the material world to preach to the spirits of the ante
diluvians whom St. Peter expressly mentions. Neither
am I aware that it has ever been contended for that
there is more in the universe than matter and spirit;
and since spirits are in prison, a spirit imprisoned in a
spirit seems more untenable and enigmatical than a spirit
imprisoned in matter. Hence it appears that, during the
three days of his interment, the disembodied spirit of
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
17
Christ, “ ekeruxen,” assembled together the spirits of the
dead, “ phulake,” under watch or guard—that is, as we
have seen, in this material world—till the resurrection
day again unites the body with the spirit, and man,
psychological and physiological, becomes subject to an
essentially different economy.
Reasoning in this manner, I set about experimenting
further upon the pauper in the cylinder. Ocular proof
of the presence of a spirit can be arrived at only under
peculiar circumstances. Man is seldom conscious of the
maximum of his own physical force till some imminent
emergency calls it forth ; and it is even so with the capa
bilities of his spirit. One on the point of drowning will
lay a grasp upon an object, the strength and tenacity of
which, in ordinary circumstances, he might regard as
absolutely superhuman. So is it in abnormal conditions
of the soul. It puts forth energies for the exertion of
which the ordinary senses do not afford a competent
medium. It grasps at more than the material eyes and
ears have been constructed to convey to it—views into
the realm of shades, sounds from the shores of the
Eternal. By a week’s morbid contemplation upon the
most revolting developments of human depravity and
crime, and the most deep and awful mysteries of exist
ence, I fitted myself to become aware of the presence of
the soul in the cylinder by another process than that of
ratiocination. Having schooled myself at the solemn
hour of midnight, through the darkness and the thunder
of the storm, arrayed in a long white sheet, I glided
along in the direction of the cylinder. I carried in my
right hand a half-rotten splinter of fir, which had formed
part of the bottom of a murderer’s coffin. It was deeply
saturated with the putrid grease of his viscera, and,
being ignited, burned fiercely in the tremendous might
of the storm. I brandished the red fire wildly around
my head, and it threw a weird, wild radiance upon the
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
dim outline of the tombstones, the black and terrible
rocks, and the rank hemlocks as they were crushed
beneath my hurrying feet.
Where on fields of fire hiss rains of blood,
I go ! I go I I go !
A gore-bubble on the infernal flood,
Io ! Io ! Io 1
Ten thousand grave-worms wriggle here,
And on their backs I ride,
In a long black coffin, grim and drear,
And my skull on its dexter side—
Nail’d with a nail through the bare white skull
To the coffin’s dexter side !
Io ! Io 1 Io !
And I shout Io 1 on the slimy shore,
’Neath the palls of the ages unfurl’d ;
And the worms go with me round evermore,
In the weird rolling round of the world !
Oh, the damned stench of my rotted brains !
Oh, the crawling that ceases, oh never !
Of worms, horrid worms, o’er my thighs, in my veins,
Of worms, horrid worms, in my eyes, in my reins,
And the burnings forever and ever !
Ride helter-skelter down to hell,
’Neath the Banner of Darkness unfurl’d !
Ring—ring my death-toll on Destiny’s bell,
In the weird rolling round of the world !
Io ! Io ! Io !
To the waist in eternal burnings I go !
I kept waving the horrible torch round my head, and, in
a voice high, husky, terrible, and unearthly, chanted the
dithyramb which I have just transcribed. I reached
the cylinder. I crushed a skull which I carried down
into the soft earth opposite the glass door, and stuck a
lighted candle into each eyeless socket. By this light,
which I managed to shelter from the wind, I ventured to
look into the interior, where the mortal remains of the
pauper lay. He was there, cold and rigid, just as I had
left him—ghastly, ghastly 1—with his hand still grasping
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
I?
a handful of the miserable blanket, in which lay his poor
remains............. The voice of God shouted in the black
heaven. The foundations of the earth reeled under the
tremendous roll of the thunder. The rain splashed
down in the darkness, and extinguished the two candles
that burned in the sockets of the skull............ A black
cloud lay on the eastern, a blacker cloud on the western
horizon, and the devil himself—I knew him at a glance
—leapt from the one cloud to the other with a yell to
which the thunder was a mere whisper. In his leap
across the world, by a blow of his club foot he knocked
the planet Mars out of the solar system, and gave the
moon a switch with his tail which nearly blotted that
satellite from the face of the heavens forever. I stag
gered forward, half suffocated with the fumes of brim
stone. Something struck me on the head which sent
stars flying out of my eyes three times in succession,
and by the light of those stars I beheld my hands and
found that they had become as large as frying-pansand were dripping with blood........... Yes, the spirit
was there, inside the cylinder. But it was a fearful
ordeal: I would not pass through it again to be lord of
a thousand worlds. The spirit was there ; but I had
better say no more, aided only by a human vocabulary
and the limited capacities of a human brain. When
there is no blood in my arm, and my skull is filled with
cold clay, I shall write it.
My next study in psychology was my endeavouring to
obtain a glimpse of what was going on behind the eternal
curtain through the medium of strangulation—“ hanging
by the neck till dead.”
I, perhaps somewhat unwarrantably, took it for granted
that the portal of the Future opens gradually in propor
tion as the soul succeeds in disengaging itself from the
body in the hour of death; and, consequently, in the
agonies of dissolution I might have some degree Oi
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insight into the arcana of the Future. Accordingly, I
gave instructions that a gallows should be erected on
the lawn in front of my residence.
To keep touch with the otherworld, I had the scaffold
constructed from the more or less rotten boards of
exhumed coffins; and I had a canopy erected over the
noose mounted with the blackest and heaviest of hearse
plumes. When the south wind swept up the lawn it
waved these sombre plumes with most sepulchral effect:
I was seized with a befitting sensation of shudder and
nausea; and, in spite of the fragrance of the birch, the
narcissus, and the rhododendron, the air was heavy
with stench, which seemed to proceed from the marrow
growing putrid in my own bones. Considering the
nature of the study in wffiich I was engaged, this was as
it should be. One adjunct, however, was still wanting
—the rope. In order to have all things as far as pos
sible appropriate, I determined to have this rope made
of a murderer’s entrails. At the town of D------they
had just hanged a miscreant who had done to death his
own mother. You have no idea what difficulty I had
with the authorities in obtaining this scoundrel’s, to me,
exceedingly valuable viscera. However, by the dint of
persistency, diplomacy, and hard cash, I managed to
have him exhumed from amid the earth and quicklime
where he lay under the flag-stones of the gaol floor.
Then, at midnight, I had him carried by three ticket-ofleave men to the haunted thorn in L------moss. By my
command, to this thorn they secured the lower extremity
of his intestinal canal, and carried him round and round
the tree till the whole length of his intestines was coiled
round the thorn, as you have seen an anchor-chain
coiled round the capstan. While they carried the
wretch round and round the tree I whistled the “ Dead
March in Saulbut I had to whistle till I was
utterly out of breath. It seemed to me that the scoun
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
21
drel’s intestinal canal must have been at least ten miles
long.
The next trouble was to get some one to tan and
prepare the ten miles of viscera, preparatory to spinning
them into the rope with which I was to hang myself. With
the whole concern on my back in a fisher’s creel, I called
upon the local chemist at two o’clock in the morning,
and, ringing him up, I threw down the basket before
him, and explained to him what I wanted him to do.
That chemist was an utter ass, without a scintilla of the
heroic self-sacrifice that is indispensable in him who
would dare to travel on the path of scientific investiga
tion. First he threatened to have me locked up as a
lunatic; next, looking into the basket of viscera, he
swore he would have me arrested on the suspicion of
murder. I took out my cheque book and wrote three
figures; and, in the chemist’s eyes, I became at once
sane and innocent, and, taking the basket and its contents
on his back, he descended into the cellar, assuring me
that what I wanted done was not only aesthetic, but
highly rational.
The murderer’s intestines made as much tough, cat
gut-looking cord as would have rigged a sloop of war.
I cut off twelve feet, sufficient to hang me. But, after I
had run on a beautiful noose, and had got the cord
properly fixed to the gallows’ beam, the next business
was to test its strength. I was over eleven stone : what
if, under my weight, the cord should give way ? I
remembered that my wife was rather over twelve stone.
I determined to see if it would bear her. If it would
bear her, it would bear me.
I found my wife even more intractable than the
chemist. Not all my blandishments could induce her
to allow the noose to be placed over her head.
“Miranda,” said I at length, “I conjure you by the
moon'that looked down through the quivering leaves of
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the aspen under which we sat as boy and girl forty-five
years ago, when first I ventured to whisper to you of
love—by that moon I conjure you to humour your
Harold now.” She let her head sink upon my bosom
as she sobbed forth: “ Harold, Harold darling, tie me
up by the feet?'
Good! The noose round the ankles would do as
well as the noose round the neck, as far as the mere
testing of the strength of the cord was concerned. I
took off my braces and knotted them round her skirts,
that there might be no unseemly garmental disarrange
ment as my darling danced from the gut with her heels
to the sky. I put the noose over her ankles and
launched her into the air. Round she gyrated in three
glorious whirls, and the cord brake not. Hurrah ! I
took her down. She was black in the face and speech
less. “ A swoon,” muttered I; and I took her up in
my arms and ran off with her to the fish-pond, into
which I plunged her. It occurred to me that that would
put her all right; but, in my absorption in my transcen
dental studies, it did not occur to me to wait and fish
her out of the water. However, the butler, assisted, as
I understand, by a policeman, did so; and she was
clean dead for the space of three hours, though she is
now more or less alive again. But I am digressing into
a subsidiary and trifling matter.
Some whisperings of my design got abroad into the
surrounding districts with marvellous rapidity, and for
days bands of roughs, such as go to witness public exe
cutions, might be observed hanging about the avenue
gate and the preserves. I was painfully apprehensive,
however, that the proposed experiment would not partake
of the character of amusement to myself individually,
and I resolved that it should not become so to the
public. My wife implored me, as I valued her love and
the love of God, to desist from what she in her sim
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
23
plicity was pleased to call “ a mad and ludicrous pro
ject.” But her entreaties and remonstrances were of no
avail in moving me from undertaking at all hazards an
enterprise for the promotion of science and in the sacred
cause of truth. My only marriageable daughter threat
ened to make off with the ostler, or do some other
horrible thing, if I would persist in disgracing and
making the family ridiculous by what she called exhibi
tions of “ crazy eccentricity.” I dismissed the ostler, and
locked her up in the spirit-cellar. In short, I gave the
whole household to understand that I was not a man to
be trifled with, and that, although I was thoroughly do
mesticated and a little uxorious, yet my connubial and
paternal obligations were secondary to those I owed to
the pursuit of science and the elucidation of truth. I
took to the gallows with me the key of the cellar in
which my daughter was confined. I had a settee with
the softest of cushions drawn up into the recess of the
drawing-room window, that, reclining there, my wife
might, if she chose, witness the scene to be enacted. I
arose rather before my accustomed hour—ten o’clock—
and partook heartily, with her, of our matutinal meal,
and ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of buttered toast
to be taken down to Julia in the cellar. Then I returned
to the seclusion of my study, and, to while away the
hour till the clock struck twelve, I set myself to sketch
ing with a crayon several monsters I found scattered
through the Revelation of St. John. I intend shortly
to put the Revelation cartoons into the hands of the
engraver. I was specially struck by the “ great red
dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven
crowns upon his heads.”* I drew this dragon with all
the skill I possessed as an imaginative limner; but, as
he did not look red, according to St. John, he did not
" Rev. xxii. 3.
�24-
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
appear formidable. So I resolved he should be red,
according to the Scriptures; and I accordingly threw off
my coat, rolled up my left shirt sleeve, cut my arm with
my pen-knife, and, dipping a tooth-brush in the blood,
I therewith reddened the dragon. The “ four beasts ”
were next honoured by my attentions as an artist. “ And
the four beasts had each of them six wings about him;
and they were full of eyes within.”* I managed pretty
well with the six wings a-piece, which was twenty-four
wings in all; but to draw or paint the “ eyes within,”
and yet make them visible, called for a supreme effort
of ingenuity. I thought first of printing under the
picture :
m
“foitljin/’ ob nf nnw latuiuf
But it occurred to me that some might doubt my word
and question whether indeed the eyes were there at all.
Utterly non-plussed as to how to get the eyes painted
“within” these four apocalyptic beasts and yet visible,
I, in a prayerful spirit, read the fifth chapter of Daniel,
and how to represent the internal eyes flashed upon me
like a revelation. In each beast I, with a bodkin, punc
tured seven holes through the paper—that is, twenty
eight holes in all. As the paper lies flat on the table
these twenty-eight eyes are not over-distinct. They
show to the greatest advantage when you take the paper
into a dark room, hold it up vertically, and get some
one to stand behind it and to strike a match all of a
sudden. Each of the twenty-eight eyes then becomes
distinctly visible, and a small gleam of light is emitted
from each. Of course, under the circumstances, you
see nothing but the eyes—you cannot see the beasts;
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
25
but you know the beasts are there; and it is too much,
in the mystery of divine things, to presume to try to be
able to see both the four beasts and their twenty-eight
eyes ‘‘'within” at one and the same time. I am, no
doubt, an amazingly able man. When I quite recover
from the hanging I shall saw away one side of my skull,
in order that I may see my mental machinery at work.
Having completed my apocalyptic drawings, I fell
down on my knees and preferred the following prayer to
Heaven :—
Omniscient Power, whose dominion extends alike over
the worlds of Mind and Matter, sustain me in the pur
suit of Knowledge, even to a comparative disregard of
the life which Thou gavest me. I thank Thee, O Lord,
for the rooted impression that true intelligence is a
synonym for Religion and Virtue, and Ignorance only
another name for Depravity and Sin. And I would
humbly desire to thank Thee for that boldness by which
I can disregard the derision and sneers of vulgar and
narrow prejudices, and for that originality of conception
which ranges afar into undiscovered lands, spurning the
hackneyed and beaten pathways of experiment and
thought. I thank Thee that Thou hast given me no
reverence for social landmarks, however time-honoured,
unless they have been placed there true to the theodolyte of Reason and the geometry of Truth—not that
I love what is time-honoured less, but that I love
Truth more. Give me none of the arrogance but
all of the humility of Philosophy, and enable me to feel
that, to whatever degree I may be able to dispel the
mists which brood around the presence of the Eternal,
I am still immeasureably far from grasping the immensity
of knowledge which, perhaps to the exclusion of the
archangel, it may be Thine own special prerogative to
know. Enable the wrorld to feel, O Lord, that all
�26
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
knowledge is generically divine, and that strenuous
toiling towards its attainment is the only pursuit worthy
of the lofty and sacred destinies of man as a defaced
specimen of Thy noblest handiwork. Pardon all my
frailties and shortcomings, and-----Here I heard the old clock in the dining-room begin
ning to strike twelve ; so, muttering “ Amen,” I drew
on my gloves, lifted my hat and cane, and with a fear
less heart and a steady step I strode downstairs to the
gallows.
Tony, the footman, acted as executioner, and not
another individual of the household was allowed to be
present, under pain of my most severe displeasure.
Tony, with evidences of the most terrible reluctance,
put the noose over my head, and I was swung into the
empty air. A white silk handkerchief which I carried
in the outside pocket of my coat was to be drawn out
by me as a signal that the hanging process had become
absolutely unendurable, and then Tony was at once to
cut the rope by which I was suspended. The instant I
felt the trap-door give way under my feet the sensation
became utterly indescribable, and I thrust my hand
into my pocket to pull out the handkerchief, when I
discovered—oh, heaven and earth !—that I had left it
where I had thrown off my dressing-gown.
I could not speak a word, if on it had hung the event
of my soul’s salvation. Every sin of mine—of thought,
wTord, and deed—blazed before me in characters of fire,
and from amid the lurid blazonry the meek, calm face
of my mother, who had been thirty years in the grave,
looked upon me with unutterable tenderness and love.
Then the earth gave way, and I was hurled down head
long into the unfathomable darkness. In my descent I
•was dashed against revolving and tremendous worlds,
with rivers of blood rolling into oceans of fire. Portions
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
27
of my agonised frame stuck to every fearful world against
which I was driven, whereupon they seemed to become
part of myself, and their oceans of blood lashed the
shores in darkness and thunder in sympathy with my
torture, which, increasing with an inconceivable rapidity,
already amounted to ten thousand times beyond what
mortals can conceive to be the agonies of ten thousand
hells. I became unconscious of my material identity,
and had only a mysterious existence as a spirit of
suffering infused through the worlds—boundless,
limitless, and horrible embodiments of darkness and
death—the condensed breathings from the yells of the
damned. The myriad world-shadows rolled into one
mass with a diameter of millions and millions of
miles, and my suffering soul writhed through the
minutest part of the mass in the fires of unutterable
agony. The amalgamated planets became identified
with my brain. Then innumerable gigantic forms of
shadow shot through it arrows of red fire, and it reeled
millions of miles away through the darkness and horrors
of immensity in the wild madness of ever-increasing
torture. Anon it seemed that, after the lapse of many
thousand years, all the thunder-peals since the creation
of the world combined in one tremendous roar, the
skull of the tortured brain was split, and the boundless
world-shadow of agony rolled down—down into vacuity
and nothingness !
I understand that Tony had discovered that I had
not the handkerchief, and instantly cut the rope of the
gallows. I am yet in bed, severely indisposed; but I
hope soon to be able to subject the agonies I suffered
to the ordeal of scientific and philosophical analysis.
Meanwhile I am nearly perishing for a draught of water;
but all the servants have, without their wages, gone off
in terror. My wife is with me in bed. She never
�2S
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
speaks, but only stares at me wildly, and falls into one
fit of hysterics after another. I am told Julia has
effected her escape from the cellar, and has gone off,
heaven knows where 1
�APPENDIX.
LETTER FROM MAJOR F----- ’s DAUGHTER, JULIA.
Sir,—A friend of mine has sent me copies of your horribly
wicked and abominable journal, in which I see that you have dared
to publish, disfigured by the grossest exaggerations and most fearful
absurdities, the manuscript which, to my eternal regret, my poor
dead father so mistakenly entrusted to your care. You know per
fectly well that I never, never, never showed you my ankles, and
never asked you to write your foolish verses about them, which were
just suited to the fast and silly young hoydens who were taken in
by your ranting and raving about “ knights and fair ladies,” which
is a habit I see you have by no means lost as you have grown older,
but not apparently wiser, except that you have added wickedness to
foolishness by blaspheming Jehovah and ridiculing His holy Book,
for which you will certainly suffer hereafter in the fire that is not
quenched and the worm that dieth not.
As for your abominable calumny that I threatened to run away
with the ostler, I can only put it down to the fact that I once re
fused to run away with you, and that you are now trying to punish
my maidenly modesty by mean spite and wicked lying. Let me
remind you, Sir, if you have conveniently forgotten it, that at the
time of my poor father’s untimely decease I was engaged to a deacon
of the Established Church, who has since become a humble but
ardent minister of that Word which you are so continually reviling
to your eternal damnation, and whose name I have now the happi
ness of bearing as his loved and loving wife. You are a wicked,
unprincipled man to divulge in your lying paper family secrets and
matters which should always remain sacred to the privacy of the
hearth ; and God will judge you for it, seeing that my husband
cannot so forget his character as a man of God (what you irreve
rently call a “ beetle ”) as to horse-whip you as you deserve in this
world. But wait till the next.
i I admit that my dear papa was considered to be a little eccentric ;
but that he ever suffocated a poor pauper in a brass thing, or hung
my sainted mother up by the heels with such a hideous rope, is
�30
APPENDIX.
as wickedly untrue as that he tried to commit suicide, as you have
so unscrupulously said he did. The manuscript, which I sometimes
suspect you stole from under his dying pillow, was simply an
account of some dreadful dreams he had one night after going to
have supper with the man of God and my husband, who distinctly
remembers the occasion, because he helped to bring poor papa
home after being taken seriously ill as he was about half-past eleven.
I remember myself how frightened I was by his cries after he got to
sleep, poor dear.
If you are not ashamed of what you have done, a Day will come
when you will be—I mean the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord,
when, if you do not repent and be saved, you and all who write
and read your horrible paper will be burned up with chaff and fire
unquenchable.—Yours indignantly,
Julia Heywood (nee Fraser).
[I publish the foregoing that the public may have an idea of the
refined and delicate character of the daughter of Major F----- . I
would have corrected her prosody and set her shambling sentences
on their feet; but I do not care to run the risk of placing a document
before the world which she can assert is ‘ ‘ disfigured by the grossest
exaggerations.” In reply to her charge, I can only say with Pilate,
“What I have written, I have written,” and, moreover, every word
I have written is true. I have several more MSS. from the pen of
the lady’s late father, one particularly on a “School Thrashing
Machine,” which he claimed to have invented, which I had thought
to suppress out of deference for the Julia I knew of old, but which
I now feel inclined to publish out of lack of deference for the sweettempered and soft-spoken parson’s wife into which this Julia seems
to have developed. Moreover, a certain delicacy restrains me from
being more explicit when I say that I have a large bundle of loveletters tied together with a silk ribbon of now faded green, and that
the perusal of these letters would astonish the Rev. Mr. Heywood.
—Saladin.]
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Studies in psychology : comprising the agonies of hanging, by one who was cut down from the gallows; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Stamp on front cover and elsewhere: Bishopsgate Institute. Reference Library. Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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[1894]
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Capital punishment
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Hanging
NSS
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
ATHEIST SHOEMAKER
AND THE
REV. HUGH PRICE HUGHES
OP.
A STUDY IN
LYING
WITH
*
!
A FULL AND COMPLETE EXPOSURE
BY
G. W. FOOTE
President of the National Secular Society
AND
I
Editor of the “ Freethinker
LONDON:
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.O.
Q
f
�his pamphlet is written gratuitously by Mr. Foote, and the expense
of printing one hundred thousand copies, for free distribution, has been
met by a public subscription raised in the Freethinker. This journal is
published every Thursday at the price of twopence. It is sold by many
newsagents in all parts of the country, and can also be obtained, post
free for twopence halfpenny, from the publishing office, 28 Stonecutter
street, London, E.C.]
�THE ATHEIST
SHOEMAKER
Introduction.
ONE of the leading religious agencies in the metropolis
is the West London Mission, and the leading spirit of
this mission is the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes. The
reverend gentleman is specially told off for this work
by the Wesleyan Methodist body ; he discourses on
Sundays in the great St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly ; and
the record of his labors is published in a journal which
he edits, and which belongs to him, called the Methodist
Times.
Five years ago the West London Mission was in
financial difficulties, and fervent appeals were made on
its behalf. Apparently by way of stimulating the
generosity of the Wesleyan Methodist public, Mr.
Hughes printed in his journal, in the months of July
and August, 1889, a long, circumstantial, and vivid
story, entitled “ The Atheist Shoemaker.” It was
afterwards published in book-form at the price of
eighteen-pence, with a Preface, setting forth that the
narrative was “ a true story, and not fiction,” being
indeed “ a literal illustration of the spirit and work of
the West London Mission.”
This “ true story ” was that of a young shoemaker,
who was “ brought to Christ ” by the said Mission. He
had been a famous advocate of Atheism, lecturing to
“ atheistic assemblies ” on Clerkenwell-green, in Vic
toria Park, and apparently at the Hall of Science.
During his last illness, which carried him off at the
age of twenty-eight, he was befriended by the Mission,
and, under the persuasive influence of Sister Beatrice,
he renounced his Atheism, and took the communion.
�( 4 )
which was administered to him by Mr. Hughes.
Finally, he died in Devonshire, making a most edify
ing end, so that “ the last year of his life was full of
instruction for every class of readers.”
Mr. Hughes stated that he had been “urged” to
publish this story. The convert himself had “ willingly
consented” to this being done, and there was “no
reason for concealment.” On the contrary, there were
“ many reasons for publicity.” But the story as pre
sented to the reader was tantalising. The “ publicity ”
was remarkably like “ concealment.” Mr. Hughes gave
his own name, but that could not be avoided. All the
other characters were given fictitious names, and no
clue was afforded to their addresses. Everything, in
short, seemed designed to baffle investigation.
This was strange enough to require as apology, or
at least an explanation. Accordingly it was stated
that “ some of those who must appear on the scene
shrink from publicity.” Now the only prominent
characters were Mr. Hughes himself, whose name i&
given ; the convert, who was dead, and had no feeling*
in the matter ; his widow, who must have furnished
many of the details ; and the “Sister” of the West
London Mission, who was instrumental in his “ con
version.” It was these two ladies, then, who shrank
from publicity; and that they had strong, if not good
reasons for “ shrinking ” wi.l be seen hereafter. Suffice
it to say, for the present, that the convert was called
“ John Herbert ” in the story, while the lady of the
paission was called “ Sister Beatrice.”
The Story Challenged.
Immediately on the first publication of “ The Atheist
Shoemaker ” in the Methodist Times it was criticised
in the columns of the Freethinker. The present
writer (who will henceforth speak in the first person)
saw at a glance that the story was very largely
fictitious. When a narrative begins with “ One dark
night last winter,” one feels it is not history, but the
work of a novelist. But the worst of it was, that no
person answering to the description of John Herbert
was known to the Freethinkers of London. In one
�( 5 )
respect the description was precise enough. John
Herbert died in the spring of 1889, at the age of
twenty-eight; he was by trade a shoemaker ; he had
“ delicate, intellectual features and deep, inquisitive,
penetrating eyes ” ; he was a person of great natural
eloquence ; he was “ a well-known London Atheist ” ;
he used to lecture on Clerkenwell-green and in
Victoria Park, where his voice was drowned by “ con
tinuous cheering”; one of Mr. Hughes’s informants
thought Herbert would get the best of it in a debate
with “ Bradlaugh,” and exclaimed, “Why, everybody
knows Herbert ” ; he was very happy at repartee, in
which “ his public discussions as an Atheist had made
him so expert ” ; and we are told of “ what he used to
say in the Hall of Science,” where Mr. Hughes hoped
to hear him tell the story of his conversion. All this
made a very recognisable portrait—if the original ever
existed, which it never did. I was myself in a position
to deny its existence. As President of the London
Secular Federation, and editor of the Freethinker, and
being intimately acquainted with the propaganda of
Freethought in London, I was prepared to challenge
the substantial truth of Mr. Hughes’s story, Still, I
did not act in a spirit of infallibility. I made inquiries
of others, including those who had carried on the
work of Secularism in the places mentioned by Mr.
Hughes ; and one and all were positive that no such
lecturer as John Herbert had ever been known there.
It must be recollected that they had only to tax their
memories for a year or two, and that no mistake could
arise from the mere lapse of time in this instance.
My own view was thus confirmed, and I felt justified
in severely criticising the story of John Herbert’s
conversion. I declared that it bore every appearance
of a lie ; yet I added that, if Mr. Hughes would give
the real name of his convert, and prove the substantial
truth of his story, I would not only confess my mis
take, but “ apologise for throwing a doubt upon his
honor.” Mr. Hughes took no notice of this appeal,
and when he published his narrative in a volume I
felt bound to publish my criticism as well in a separate
form. It was therefore issued as a penny pamphlet,
under the title of “ A Lie in Five Chapters.”
�( 6 )
Mr- H ughes Keeps Silence.
Several other persons tried to draw Mr. Hughes.
Amongst them was a friendly critic, the Rev. C. A.
(Spurgeon, who noticed Mr. Hughes’s volume in the
Sword and Trowel, and advised him to give the names
and addresses of his characters. The great Baptist
preacher, who was a straightforward man in his way,
could not understand all the mystery of “ The Atheist
Shoemaker.” He thought the “ feelings ” of the
persons concerned were as nothing to the gain to the
cause of Christ, if the conversion were established to
the satisfaction of believers and the confusion of
infidels.
Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, the leader of the English
Secularists, plainly told Mr. Hughes that his story was
clearly untrue in many respects, and invited him to
have an inquiry made into its evidences. The follow
ing paragraph appeared in the National Reformer for
February 2, 1890, soon after Mr. Bradlaugh’s return
from India :—
“ The Rev. Hugh Price Hughes publishes, as if true, a story
of a converted Atheist shoemaker. As Mr. Hughes repeatedly
mentions me by name, and as many of the incidents in his
volume are clearly untrue, I invite him in common decency
to give me the means of judging for myself how far he has
been misled. I hesitate to suppose that he can be the wilful
misleader.”
This was plain enough, and it was written by one
who had a right to intervene. Mr. Bradlaugh was
not only the natural but the official leader of Freethought. He was President of the National Secular
Society, whose headquarters are in London ; and he
was therefore in a position to know whether the
eloquent hero of Mr. Hughes’s story had any real
existence.
Mr. Hughes took no notice of Mr. Bradlaugh’s state
ment and invitation. The burning love of truth,
which he professes, did not lead him to see whether he
had been misled himself, and had consequently misled
others.
The reverend gentleman’s obstinate silence provoked
the publication of a correspondence between him and
�( 7 )
Mr. Robert Forder, secretary of the National Secular
Society, who has an exceptionally intimate acquaint
ance with the iiersonnel of the Freethought movement.
Mr. Forder wrote to Mr. Hughes on September 5,1889,
soon after the completion of “ The Atheist Shoemaker ”
in the Methodist Times, and the following is an
extract from his letter “ As I have been personally acquainted with all the Atheist
lecturers at the Hall of Science, Clerkenwell Green, and
Victoria Park during the last twenty-five years, and have
been secretary of the National Secular Society for the last
fifteen years, you will understand my curiosity to know
which one of my old friends and companions abandoned his
opinions prior to his death. I therefore take the liberty of
asking you the name of the Atheist lecturer, feeling sure you
will be glad to oblige one who must have known him for many
years.”
Mr. Hughes, being away on the continent, did not
reply until October 4. He referred Mr. Forder to the
Preface of “ The Atheist Shoemaker,” where it was
stated that some of the characters shrank from “ pub
licity,” and said in conclusion—
“ I am sorry that passage escaped your notice, for it would
have saved you the trouble of writing to me. Any informa
tion about our work that can be made public with due regard
to the wishes and feelings of others I shall always be happy
to give you.”
Mr. Hughes must have penned the last sentence with
his tongue in his cheek. He knew very well that all
Mr. Forder wanted to know about “ our work ” was the
name of the converted Atheist Shoemaker.
This correspondence appeared in the National
Reformer for February 16, with a note on the opposite
page by Mr. Bradlaugh :
“ In another column I insert a communication from Mr.
Forder as to the falsehood of the story of ‘ the converted
Atheist shoemaker.’ As the Rev. Mr. Hughes has not hesi
tated to increase the commercial value of his romance by
repeatedly using my name, I should have supposed thatcommon decency would have required him to give me the
means of testing his accuracy, especially as he knows I
challenge the main allegations in his story.”
Mr. Bradlaugh wrote another paragraph on February
23, remarking that the Daily Chronicle, the Pall Mall
�( 8 )
Gazette, and other papers, were giving publicity to the
fact that Mr. Hughes would not have his story investi
gated. “ The excuse,” said Mr. Bradlaugh, “ that
publicity might hurt the feelings of the dead shoe
maker’s surviving friends should have been considered
before Mr. Hughes published my name in his story.
Are my feelings and those of my friends of no account
to Mr. Hughes ?”
A final note from Mr. Bradlaugh’s pen was printed
in the National Reformer for March 2 :—
“ The story contains some statements which I know to be
untrue, and contains other statements which I believe to be
untrue. I leave to Mr. Hughes the responsibility of having
published these as parts of what he describes as ‘ a true story.’
Mr. Hughes, although he made his story more saleable by its
references to me, denies my right to inquire into the matter.
Mr. Hughes holds very curious notions of what a religious
man may do against an infidel.”
Now I ask the reader to consider this situation
Would any man of honor have kept silent in the face
of Mr. Bradlaugh’s appeals ? Mr. Bradlaugh was an
eminent man, enjoying at that time almost universal
respect, and he regarded himself in “ common decency ”
as entitled to satisfaction. He had also stated his
knowledge that much of Mr. Hughes’s story was untrue.
In these circumstances, Mr. Hughes ought surely to
have made inquiries, if only to satisfy himself. But
the sequel shows that he did nothing of the kind. He
wilfully closed his eyes to the evidence that would
have proved his inaccuracy.
A Little Speech.
Throughout this dispute Mr. Hughes has displayed
a certain consistency. His policy has been to ignore
all the leaders of Secularism, doubtless on the ground
that their appeals and challenges would not be seen or
heard by his own party. Whenever he has broken
silence, it has been in consequence of something that
his own party could see, in the columns of some
political organ of great influence and circulation.
Accordingly he was stung into saying something by
a leaderette in the Daily Chronicle, the “ motive and
animus ” of the writer of which he complained of.
�( 9 )
just as he has since complained of everyone who has
desired him to put his cards upon the table.
After scolding this writer, Mr. Hughes wrote as
follows in the Methodist Times for February 27, 1890 :
“We are at a loss to understand what right either Mr.
Bradlaugh or the Secretary of the National Secular Society
has to demand the name of ‘ The Atheist Shoemaker,’ which
is suppressed for the reason given in the preface of the
book. The narrative makes no attack whatever, either on
Mr, Bradlaugh or on the National Secular' Society. The
Secretary of that Society says no professional Atheist
lecturer in London has died during the last ten years in the
way de scribedin ‘The Atheist Shoemaker.’ Mr. Price Hughes
never said that ‘ The Atheist Shoemaker ’ was a professional
lecturer of the National Secular Society. He simply said
that he had spoken in advocacy of Atheism in public halls
and in the open air, and that he had spoken with great
eloquence and effect.”
This is no answer at all to Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Forder,
or myself. Mr. Hughes did not state that his “ John
Herbert ” was a lecturer for the National Secular
Society ; but, as a matter of fact, it has a monopoly of
the “ Atheist ” platforms in London, and the Atheist
Shoemaker could not have spoken from them “ with
great eloquence and effect,” yet be absolutely unknown
to the Society’s officials, and even to the rank and file
of its members. Mr. Hughes had been informed that
his convert was unknown ; his story, therefore, could
not be true as it stood ; yet he refused to lift a finger
in the way of correction. He continued to advertise
and sell the volume as though nothing had happened.
Goaded into Action.
My criticism of Mr. Hughes’s story, which I entitled
“ A Lie in Five Chapters,” was extensively circulated.
Freethinkers sent copies of it to Mr. Hughes anl his
friends and colleagues, to the chairmen of his meetings
in the provinces, and to various influential Wesleyan
Methodists. The pamphlet gave him a considerable
amount of trouble. He almits this in the Methodist
Times for January 18,1894 “ Christians of a feeble and
melancholy type ” could not realise the “ absurdity ”
of supposing that the “true story” was “ fiction.”
�( 10 )
“ Moreover, some ministers of religion, local preachers,
and private Christians, deficient in the ever-blessed
sense of humor,” urged Mr. Hughes to publish the
name of the Atheist Shoemaker. One letter “ touched ”
him. It was an appeal from “ the great Anglican
missioner,” the Rev. W. H. Aitken, who said that
“ young fellows who consulted him in the inquiry
room were troubled by fellow-workmen who showed
them Mr. Foote’s pamphlet.” Mr. Hughes was ready
to do anything in reason to “ satisfy the scruples of
the inexperienced, the prejudiced, and the melan
choly ”—of all, in short, who could not take his bare
word in the face of circumstantial contradictions. He
.was “ especially willing ” to give “ every information
in his power to Atheists and Agnostics who treated
their opponents with justice and courtesy”—although
he had refused this information to Mr. Bradlaugh, the
“ courtesy ” of whose appeal he has admitted to a
Morning interviewer (Feb. 10, 1894). Evidently the
time had come to do something. But what? The
proper method was to submit to a Court of Honor.
Mr. Hughes, however, preferred to appeal to one man,
and he cleverly chose a Secularist—Mr. George Jacob
Holyoake, on the pretended ground that he could
investigate “without prejudice and without passion.”
Mr. Holyoake says he applied to Mr. Hughes. Mr.
Hughes says he applied to Mr. Holyoake. It is un
certain, therefore, how the little scheme originated. At
any rate it was carried out with profound secrecy. Mr.
Holyoake was a personal friend of mine as well as a
personal friend of Mr. Hughes. He was also a VicePresident of the National Secular Society, of which I
am President. But he never gave me a hint of what
he was doing. The first intimation I had Of it was a
public announcement in the Daily Chronicle for
January 11,1894, that Mr. Holyoake’s report on the
Atheist Shoemaker case would appear simultaneously
in the next issues of the Methodist Times and the
Freethinker. Subsequently I saw a flaming advertise
ment of this fact in the Methodist Times. I had to
learn from foreign sources what was to appear in my
own paper.
Now I ask any candid reader what is the value of
�(11)
an “investigation” conducted in this manner ?
I
wrote a letter of complaint to Mr. Holyoake, but he
gave me no reply. The whole matter, indeed, compels
me to give my opinion of why Mr. Hughes sought the
aid of Mr. Holyoake.
Mr. Bradlaugh had too much iron in him, and could
not be imposed upon ; he had also a legal mind, and
knew how to take evidence ; besides, he was the leader
of organised Freethought in England, and conversant
with the practical details of its propaganda in London.
It would not do, therefore, to take him into confidence.
Mr. Holyoake, however, was more obliging and suscep
tible to Christian compliments ; he was almost eighty
years of age, and his eyesight was nearly gone, at any
rate for the purposes of investigation, in which so much
depends on the expression on the faces of witnesses ;
besides, he had lived for a long time at Brighton, and
was out of touch with the details of Freethought pro
paganda in London. Mr. Bradlaugh was in a position
to test the truth of Mr. Hughes’s story, Mr. Holyoake
was not, and there is the explanation.
Mr. Holyoake’s Report.
Mr. Holyoake’s report was printed in full in the
Freethinker. Most of it was beside the purpose.
Profuse compliments were paid to Mr. Hughes, who
was described as a gentleman “ entitled to be implicitly
believed on his word ”—a sentence which damns the
whole investigation. Nothing but a sham inquiry was
possible when the investigator started with that
assumption.
The substantial part of Mr. Holyoake’s report is as
follows :—
“ As soon as he knew that I was wishful to investigate the
facts, he placed at my disposal the means of doing so, and
volunteered the real name of Herbert. I have seen an d con
versed separately with ‘ Sister Beatrice ’ and ‘Sister iJthel,’
from whom Mr. Hughes derived many of his statements. I
was shown the private Diary of ‘ Sister Beatrice,’ giving con
temporary documentary evidence of the minute accuracy of
her statement. Their entire veracity seems to me unques
tionable. They had not only sincerity, but that cultivated
sincerity which is without exaggeration. They said Mr.
�( 12 )
Herbert had a vivid faculty of speech and a brightness of
conversation which compelled interest and attention. Of that
they must be good judges, for their own grace and precision
of speech showed that they understood those qualities.
Opportunity was given me of seeing Herbert’s widow, who
has since married again. She appeared an interesting person,
clear, frank, and decisive in her statements. She said she
had been with Mr. Herbert, her former husband, to the Haji
of Science, but had never heard him speak there ; in Victoria
Park she had often heard him. She had been with him there
six hours at a time, he speaking at intervals to groups o
persons all the while. He had sometimes been met on enter
ing the park by persons who would say, if he seemed to wish
to pass them, ‘ Come, give us a few words.’ She had seen
him kicked on the shins by policemen, whose object was to
cause resistance, that they might arrest him; and on one
occasion two gentlemen gave him their names and addresses,
saying if he brought an action against the police they would
give evidence on his behalf. He was very earnest in his
opinions, and had little meetings of persons in his house, to
whom he would produce books and facts in defence of the
opinions he then held. He was very ardent for what he then
thought to be the truth. His wife said he disbelieved in
Christianity because of the cant and, as he said, ‘ the humbug
of those who preached one thing and did another.’ It is
clear to me that Mr. Herbert was for truth and proof, and
was not only ready to offer it when asked, but made occasions
to present it. He was an enthusiast, entitled to the respect
of his former colleagues, since he shortened his life by ?eal
which exceeded his strength.”
Some of these statements arc ridiculous, especially the
one about the Atheist shoemaker’s “ former colleagues,”
who never knew him. But it is needless to expatiate
on this aspect of this report. What I wish to empha
sise is the fact that Mr. Holyoake simply interviewed
the concocters of the Atheist Shoemaker story and
asked them “Is it true?” They said “Yes,” and he
gave it his certificate. He made no attempt to see if
there was another side to the case
Mr. Hughes returned Mr. Holyoake’s compliments,
printed his portrait in the Methodist Times, and called
his report a “ vindication.” Mr. Holyoake had been
put in possession of the real name of the convert, he
had made a “careful” inquiry, and had declared his
belief in the “ substantial truth ” of the Atheist Shoe
maker story. Mr. Hugbes was in raptures. He hoped
�( 13 )
it would be “a lesson” to me. “ We trust,” he said,
“ that Mr. Foote will now, for his own sake, withdraw
his accusation.” Meanwhile the “ vindication ” was
scattered broadcast over the kingdom.
A Rea! Investigation.
Happily I was soon able to make a real investiga
tion. The relatives of “ John Herbert,” who live at
Northampton, put themselves in communication with
me. It may be asked why they never communicated
with Mr. Hughes. The answer is that they tried to.
“ Herbert’s ” father went to one of Mr. Hughes’s
meetings at Northampton a d said he wished to speak
with him on the subject. Mr. Hughes replied that he
was in a hurry. He gave the father his card, and said
“ Call on me.” I have seen that card, and the address
on it is in London. How could a shoemaker pay
“ calls ” like that ? And how much desire had Mr.
Hughes to be well-informed ?
I went down to Northampton and interviewed the
family—the father and two brothers of the Atheist
Shoemaker. They had important documents in their
possession, which they have since left in my custody.
They also gave me a mass of verbal information. The
father is a devout Christian, and has conducted a
Methodist mission at Northampton. He is a man of
simple, honest manners, and strong feelings. Having
just read Mr. Holyoake’s report and my pamphlet, he
deemed it wrong to let the world be longer abused.
“ Herbert’s ” brothers are also Christians, and have
never been otherwise. There was never a Freethinker,
in the family. They are satisfied that the dead son
and brother was never an advocate of Atheism. His
real name was CHARLES ALFRED GIBSON.
The Gibsons in London.
The Gibsons were so indignant at Mr. Hughes’s
conduct that they declared they would do anything I
thought advisable. On my invitation they came up to
tLondon on Sunday, February 4, and appeared on the
^platform at the Hall of Science before a very crowded
assembly. Several reporters were present, and reports
�of the meeting appeared in London papers the next
morning. Half way through my own speech I paused
to let Mr. Gibson senior give his own testimony.
He
said that he was there as a Christian man in the
interest of truth, and he branded the Atheist Shoe
maker story as “ a damnable lie.” Mr. Stephen Henry
Gibson, the “ Atheist brother ” of the story, said
to have been converted by the “ seraphic death ”
of Charles Alfred Gibson, also stood up at my request.
“ Were you ever an Atheist ? ” I asked him, and he
answered “Never.” “Have you ever been anything
but a professed Christian ? ” Again he answered
“Never.” “Have you ever had any communication
with che Rev. Hugh Price PIugh.es or the Sisters of the
West London Mission ? ” And once more he answered
“Never.”
“ Herbert’s ” Identity.
There is no necessity to reproduce the elaborate
proofs I gave in the Freethinker that “ John Herbert”
was really Charles Alfred Gibson. Mr. Holyoake has
admitted that “ Gibson ” was the name disclosed to
him. Mr. Hughes himself also, in reply to the
Morning interviewer (Feb. 10), said, “ Oh, yes, it was
Mr. Gibson’s son undoubtedly who was the subject of
my book.”
“Herbert’s” Career.
Charles Alfred Gibson was born on May 14, 1861.
The date is in the family Bible. He died on March 27,
1889, nearly twenty-eight years of age. His death
took place at Sidmouth—Mr. Hughes’s “ pleasant
home on the Devonshire coast”—and he was buried
there on March 31.
“ Bit by bit,” Mr. Hughes says, “we came to know
his history.” Well, the bits were mostly wrong.
“ Herbert ” is stated to have “ taught himself to read
by a strange device.” The names at the corners of the
streets were “ his reading book.” Then follows a
sample of the Bunyan vein which Mr. Holyoake so
admires in Mr. Hughes.
“ When quite a little lad he would run alongside a gentle
man and say in a casual tone, ‘ Excuse me, sir, but what’s the
�( 15 )
name of that street ?’ Then he would read it and spell it
over and over again for about ten minutes. On the next day
he would return to that street and see if he had learned the
name correctly. Board schools, happily, leave the children
of the poor no room for such pathetic ingenuity now.”
It is a pity to spoil this pretty little story, but there
is not a word of truth in it. It is unadulterated
romance. Charles Alfred Gibson was not a child of
destitution. His father was always able to support his
family as a sober, industrious working-man. His
“ privations,” therefore, are all imaginary. And the
same must be said of his street-corner schooling. He
was at school for five years altogether—when the
Gibsons were in America —at Philadelphia, at Toronto,
and in New Jersey He was also a Sunday-school
scholar at Grace Church, situated at the corner of
Twelfth-street and Race-street, Philadelphia. A faded
portrait of his Sunday-school teacher is still preserved
in Mr. Gibson’s album, and on one of his walls are
hung the three American prints that were presented to
his three boys over there as school prizes.
“As soon as he could read,” says Mr. Hughes,
“ he began to accumulate books.” This also is news to
Mr. Gibson, who describes his dead son as intelligent,
and fond of an argument, but not exactly bookish,
Mr. Gibson stoutly denies that his son could possibly
have uttered many of the things that Mr. Hughes puts
into his mouth. He says they were quite beyond him,
and that “ Tom Paine couldn’t ha^e written them
better.”
Mr. Hughes apparently does not know that Charles
Alfred Gibson served in the Fifth Lancers, in Ireland,
under the assumed name of Cartwright. It was there
that he made the acquaintance of the girl he after
wards married in England.
Another fact that Mr. Hughes seems to be ignorant
of is, that his “ convert ” was in the Salvation Army at
St. Albans. He and Julia both wore the “Army”
uniform. After that he was in the Salvation Army at
Camberwell. Mr. Gibson heard him speak once in the
Camberwell barracks, and was greatly surprised at
some of the things he said.
Julia, the good Christian, who helped to bring her
�( 16 )
husband to Christ—from whom his relatives were not
awa e that he had ever departed—caused an estrange
ment between Mr. Gibson and his son. I had better
be silent about the cause of this division. Suffice it
to say that Mr. Gibson never heard from his son for
two years and a half prior to his death. Even after the
alleged “ conversion ” by Mr. Hughes the son does not
appear to have written a line to his father. Julia did,
but not until her husband was dying in Devonshire.
Mr. Gibson reckons that his son was in London
about eighteen months altogether. During a part of
the time, at any rate, he worked at Ford’s, in the Gray’s
Inn-road. Mr. Gibson never heard of his lecturing,
even from Julia', until he read Mr. Hughes’s book. He
does not believe that his son could ever have *been an
orator, and certainly the space of eighteen months is
too short for his acquiring such distinction in that line
as Mr. Hughes alleges.
Mr. Hughes is good at pathetic stories—true or false.
He tells us that when “ Herbert ” went down to Devon
shire he was “ so ill that it was necessary for his wife
to accompany him.” Yet in a letter from Julia to Mr.
and Mrs. Gibson, written at Sidmouth, she says, “ he
was down here a month before I was sent for.” She
also says that she “ had to leave a good place ” to go,
and adds, “ I was then a cook.” This is very circum
stantial, and it is in absolute contradiction to Mr.
Hughes’s no less circumstantial story. Somebody must
be lying. If the liar is Julia, it shows what her word
is worth. It also shows her power of neat invention.
But if the liar is not Julia, the story shows another
person’s powers of neat invention, and what that
person’s word is worth.
Death of “ Herbert.”
Charles Alfred Gibson died at Sidmouth on March 27,
1889, and was buried in the Sidmouth cemetery on
March 31. Mr. Gibson senior has a letter from the
doctor who attended his son. There was bad disease
of the heart and lungs, and no hope of recovery.
Mr. Hughes devotes several pages to a regular
novelist’s account of “ Herbert’s ” death. The reverend
gentleman was not present at the scene. All the little
�fieath-chamber touches are therefore,imaginary. Julia
must have told him, if anyone did, that the dying
man’s last words were a “ touching tribute ” to Sister
Beatrice, who “ led him to Christ.” Julia stated at
Northampton, however, that his last words were “ Go
to Steve he will look after you”—“ Steve ” being his
brother Stephen Henry, who had also been a soldier.
This is how Mr. Hughes, in his fine, calm, restrained
style, describes the fall of the curtain.
“ He lay for a long time so still that the watchers began to
think they would never hear his voice again. But he was
yet to speak, and to speak a sentence which was destined to
be read in every land in which the English language is
spoken.
“ He was evidently gathering his ebbing strength together
for a great final effort.
“ His hand tightened. He opened his lips; and in startling
contrast with his previous whisper, in clear, ringing, exult
ing tones, he exclaimed :
“ ‘ Tell Sister Beatrice and the Sisters that now when I
have come to the end I fear no evil, for God is with me.’ ”
This is what Mr. Holyoake politely calls “ brilliant
coloring.” But it is not history. I put it to any doctor
whether a man dying of consumption and heart dis
ease, after many months of suffering and slow decay,
could possibly cry out in “ clear, ringing, exulting
tones ” with his very last breath. I have myself seen
cases of death from consumption, and all power of
motion and speech have gone for hours before the final
release. If medical men tell me I am wrong, I will
give in ; but until then I must take leave to regard
“ John Herbert’s ” dying oration as apocryphal.
Was He a Lecturer?
Mr. Hughes represents his convert as a young man
of extraordinary eloquence, and almost a match for
Mr. Bradlaugh. “ I’ve been a ringleader,” he is made
to exclaim to Sister Beatrice. “ I have even cheered
men when they were dying,” he continues, “ and en
couraged them not to give in.” He lectured as an
Atheist on Clerkenwell-green and in Victoria Park.
He was “a well-known London Atheist.” “Why,
everybody knows Herbert ! ” exclaims “a journeyman
�shoemaker in Soho”—where, by the way, this marvel
of eloquence could not have been specially famous.
The journeyman shoemaker is himself but one of Mr.
Hughes’s inventions. His tribute to “ Herbert’s ”
oratory is tremendous. “ When he used to speak in
Victoria Park,” says his Soho eulogist, “ there was such
continuous cheering that you could scarcely hear what
he was saying.”
In a long wrestle between the Devil and “ Herbert ”
after his conversion, the former reminds him of
“ What you used to say in the Hall of Science.” Not
at the Hall of Science, but in the Hall of Science. Of
course it was Mr. Hughes who invented all th®
dialetical points of that “wrestle,” for he never saw
“ Herbert ” after it. Still, words have a definite
meaning, and if Mr. Hughes did not wish to signify
that “ Herbert ” had spoken in the ‘Hall of Science,
what on earth was he driving at ? Nor is this all.
“ It seemed to us of such immense importance,”
Mr. Hughes writes, “ that he should himself go to his
old workshop, and to the Hall of Science, and to
Clerkenwell-green, and to all his former haunts, and
with his own lips tell the story of his conversion.”
Now if this does not mean that he was a speaker on
Atheism in the Hall of Science, the language of Mr.
Hughes is no better than thimble-rigging.
But this does not end the matter. Mr. Hughes
must be attacked in his last entrenchment. I there
fore ask the question, Was his convert ever a lecturer
at all ?
Personally, I never heard the name of Gibson in
connection with Freethought lecturing in London.
Mr. Holyoake said he never heard it, and the same
answer is given by every Freethinker I interrogate.
He could not, therefore, have been “ a well-known
Atheist.” The description is an absurdity. Certainly
he could not have lectured in Victoria Park amidst
thunderous applause. That Soho shoemaker who said
so was a thunderous liar, unless he is, as I conceive, a
mere invention of Mr. Hughes’s.
Charles Alfred Gibson was in London about eighteen
months altogether. He was not a lecturer when he
went there.
His father and brothers never heard of,
�his lecturing after wards—until they read Mr. Hughes’s
book. Not an Atheist in London that I can hear of
has the faintest recollection of this oratorical prodigy.
Mr. Hughes never heard him lecture. The Methodist
Sisters never heard him lecture. Who did then?
Why Julia. The whole fabric of ‘‘Herbert’s” fame
is based upon that one woman’s word.
Mr. Holyoake says he has seen “ Herbert’s ” widow,
who has since “ married again.” That is, Mr. Holyoake
was told so. She has not been seen or heard of by the
Gibsons for two years and a half. Would it not be
well to produce her again for a little cross-examina
tion ?
“ Herbert’s ” widow told Mr. Holyoake that she had
been with her husband in Victoria Park “six hours at
a time, he speaking at intervals to groups of persons
all the while.” Mr. Holyoake may believe it. I do
not. Nor do I believe that “Herbert” or any other
Preethought speaker in Victoria Park was “ kicked on .
the shins by policemen.” As far as I am aware, our
speakers have for a long time been on very good terms
with the police. But be that as it may, I wish to point
out that Mr. Holyoake, as well as Mr. Hughes and the
Sisters, obtained his information from the inevitable
Julia. However many links are put on the chain, they
all hang upon her ; and I venture to say she is not
Strong enough to bear them. We shall see more of her
presently. Meanwhile I have to say that the Gibsons
do not believe her statements on this head. They feel
sure that Charles Alfred Gibson was never a lecturer.
Their opinion is—and, after what they told and showed
me, it is my opinion too—that Julia deceived Mr.
Hughes and the Sisters, and kept up the deception
when introduced to Mr. Holyoake.
There is not the smallest scrap of real evidence that
Charles Alfred Gibson ever lectured at all as an Atheist,
and the negative evidence that he did not is simply
overwhelming. Yet this is the very pivot of Mr.
Hughes’s story. It was nothing to convert an obscure
young man from his atheistical opinions. Such a trivial ‘
incident would not afford substance enough for an
tighteenpenny book. It was necessary to magnify the
convert’s importance, and the thing was done. He was
�( 20 )
represented as noble, intellectual, eloquent and famous.
In other words, his status is the very essence of the
story. It is now demonstrated that he was not, and
could not have been, a notorious Freethinker, and Mr.
Hughes’s story is therefore a lie in its deliberate exag
gerations. To declare that “ Herbert ” was a real per
sonage is no answer to the charge of fraud. It is the
description of him that has to be vindicated, and Mr.
Hughes knows the task is impossible.
Was He an Atheist ?
Three weeks before leaving his father’s house at
Northampton, Charles Alfred Gibson knelt down
and prayed in the passage. He was not an Atheist
then. But did he become an Atheist during the
eighteen months he lived in London ?
In considering this question, it is requisite to bear
in mind the silence of Mr. Hughes as to “ Herbert’s ”
having been in the Salvation Army. If the fact was
known to Mr. Hughes, he acted dishonorably in keeping
it back, and making it appear that “ Herbert ” had never
“ known Christ.” If the fact was not known to Mr.
Hughes, nor even to Sister Beatrice, it must have been
kept back by “ Herbert ” himself, or by his wife ; and,
in that case, the witness of both of them lies under a
very grave suspicion. It would seem that they wished
to let it be thought that “ Herbert ” became a Christian
for the first time through the agency of the West
London Mission. I may be asked, What could be their
motive in this deception ? Well, a very simple one.
They were dependent upon the Mission for the com
forts, if not the necessaries of life.
There is another thing that should be borne in
mind ; namely, the statement of Mr. Hughes as to
“ the privations of his youth ” and his street-corner
schooling. Both are falsehoods, and the first is a cruel
reflection on Mr. Gibson senior, whose indignation at
it is shared by his sons. Now if Mr. Hughes did not
invent these falsehoods, they must have been invented
by “ Herbert ” or his wife; and in either case the
story of his being an Atheist at all is damned—unless
we have independent evidence of its truth. For, if
Mr. Hughes is the liar, how can we believe anything
�( 21 )
he says they told him ; and if they were the liars,
how can we believe what they did tell him ?
Bearing these points in mind, let us proceed with
our inquiry. We are told by Mr. Hughes that
“Herbert” had “old Atheistic comrades,” with whom
he and his wife sometimes took a day’s excursion.
How was it then that he never applied to the National
Secular Society for any assistance in his distress, before
his conversion ? Could none of them tell him of the
Society’s Benevolent Fund, if he was ignorant of its
existence himself ? I have had the books searched,
and his name does not appear in the list of persons
relieved, nor is it in the list of members.
As for the long conversations between “ Herbert ”
and Sister Beatrice, there can be little doubt that they
are literary performances. Sister Beatrice told Mr.
Hughes something, and Mr. Hughes worked it up into
telling dialogues. Still, it may be said, Sister Beatrice
could scarcely be mistaken as to the bare fact of his
Atheism. Well, I am not so sure of that. Her word,
apart from Julia’s, is all we have to go upon ; and we
shall now see how an emotional lady like Sister
Beatrice (or Miss Lily Dewhirst) can be guilty of the
wildest inaccuracy.
“Herbert’s” Converted Atheist Brother.
On the last page of his pious concoction, Mr. Hughes
regrets the loss of “ that eloquent tongue ” of “ Her
bert’s” to the cause of Christ, but believes that his
death (as dressed up by Mr. Hughes) may be “ more
potent even than his life would have been.” Then he
winds up the story with a final falsehood. It is told
in the form of a question—“ Has not his Atheist
brother at Northampton already turned to God under
the influence of his seraphic death ?” Northampton,
of course, was Bradlaugh’s borough ; and the question,
put in this way, would deepen the impression that
“ Herbert ” belonged to an Atheist family.
There is not a word of truth in the “ conversion ” of
that brother. Stephen Henry Gibson, who is the
person referred to, has always been a professed Chris
tian. He has said so himself, and the statement is
�( 22 )
corroborated by his brother Frank, as well as by Mr.
Gibson senior. Consequently there was no “ atheist
brother ” at Northampton to “ turn to God.”
Mr. Hughes, I believe, did not invent this yarn,
although I believe he did invent that Soho shoemaker.
What he did was to publish it as though he knew it for
a fact. He committed the same crime throughout the
story, giving his own authority to mere hearsay, with
out the slightest investigation. He did this as a public
man, in the interest of the West London Mission. It
is impossible, therefore, to exonerate him from respon
sibility. He did not care whether the story was true
or false so long as he could make it useful, and that
is the twin brother of lying. There are very few
persons who lie merely for the exercise of intellectual
ingenuity.
I believe this yarn of the converted Atheist brother
was retailed to Mr. Hughes by Sister Beatrice, and I
will give my reasons.
Stephen Henry Gibson has a letter from Sister
Beatrice, dated May 28, 1889. It is a very sentimental
composition, with ecstatic references to the dead
brother, and a fervid appeal to Stephen to come over
and help the cause of Christ. I asked him how he got
this letter. Was it sent to him through the post ? Did
he answer it ? And had he written to Sister Beatrice
previously ?
He replied that he had never written to Sister
Beatrice at all, and had never had any sort of commu
nication with her. The letter was handed to him by
Julia, who was then living in Northampton.
At the bottom of nearly everything we find Julia.
She was in communication with Sister Beatrice, from
whom, I am told, she sometimes obtained money. It
seems to me highly probable, as it seems to the Gibsons,
that she fooled the Sister with a yarn about Stephen’s
being an Atheist; that the sentimental Sister jumped
at the bait, and wrote that letter to the young man,
sending it through Julia as she did not know his
address ; that Julia informed the Sister that her letter
had brought about Stephen’s conversion; that the
Sister conveyed the glorious intelligence to Mr. Hughes;
and that the reverend gentleman took it without the
�(23)
least inquiry, and worked in this “ crowning mercy ”
as the climax of his narrative.
This is how I believe the story of the converted
“Atheist brother” was developed; and, supposing
Sister Beatrice to be honest, it shows how easily she
may be taken in. She utterly misled Mr. Hughes as
to Stephen Gibson, and she may have utterly misled
him as to Charles Alfred Gibson. At any rate, it is
impossible to take such a lady’s evidence without
cross-examination, and therefore the Atheism of
“ Herbert ” has yet to be established.
Mr. Hughes’s Little Trick.
I say that Sister Beatrice’s evidence on the point of
Charles Alfred Gibson’s Atheism is of no value without
a cross-examination. Now let the reader see what
pains were taken to save her from this ordeal. Her
name is just as imaginary as that of the converted
Atheist. It is now admitted that her real name is
Sister Lily. Had the name she is known by in the
West London Mission been given in the story, she
might have been troubled by inquisitive Methodists.
Mr. Hughes very kindly veiled her identity to guard
her even against her friends. Indeed, his whole
method was one of politic confusion. Feigned names
were substituted for real o^nes at every point where the
story was liable to investigation, and mystery was only
abandoned where there was no danger in openness
and precisiop.
Julia.
The Christian wife of the Atheist shoemaker in Mr.
Hughes’s story is “ a daughter of Erin.” So is Julia,
whom Charles Alfred Gibson married in England,
after forming her acquaintance in Ireland, while he’
was serving in the Fifth Lancers. Judging from the
story (it is an excellent word !) of her husband’s con
version, and the report of her made to me by the
Gibsons, I should say she had extracted the very
quintessential virtue of the Blarney Stone. And
whenever we probe to the bottom of this matter we
come to Julia. It is another case of Cherchez
la femme!
�( 24 )
It is evident that a great deal of Mr. Hughes’s story
must have been furnished by Julia, either directly or
through Sister Beatrice, particularly the account of his
exploits as a propagator of Atheism. We have seen
how she managed that little affair of the “ conversion ”
of Stephen Gibson, and it enables us to estimate the
value of her statements about his dead brother. She
knows the weakness of religionists on the look-out for
converts; and, whatever she may be now, she was
formerly by no means averse from using them to her
own advantage.
When the Gibsons asked how Mr. Hughes came to
tell such falsehoods about her husband, she gave them
the airy reply—“ Oh, they make it up as they like.”
Some of the information I possess was given to me
in confidence. Nevertheless I am free to say that if
Mr. Hughes will divest himself of his “ dignity,” and
condescend to make an investigation, he will learn
whether Julia Gibson was all that his fancy painted
her.
At the same time, I cannot find it in my heart to
blame Julia Gibson overmuch for romancing in order
to obtain assistance for her dying husband. I blame
the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes for working it up into a
“ true story ” without the least investigation.
“ Herbert’s” Old Shopmates.
Mr. Frank Trasler, a member of the National Secular
Society, introduced himself to me and the Gibsons
on Sunday evening, February 4. He had worked in
the same shop with Charles Alfred Gibson, and was
still working there. He remembered the young man
well, and advised us to call on his old shopmates.
On Monday morning, February 5, the Gibsons and
I entered Ford’s establishment. We went down
into the very room where Charles Alfred Gibson made
shoes in 1888. The men laughed when I read to
them what Mr. Hughes says about it in “ The Atheist
Shoemaker.” According to the reverend gentleman’s
account, his convert's health was ruined by working in
“ a sweating den,” and when the Factory Inspector
called, his “ Christian employer ” took the official up
stairs, and treated him to sherry, to keep him from
�( 25 )
“ putting Ills no3e ” in ths basement. “ Rubbish !” the
men said. The Factory Inspector would come when
ever they liked to call him, and as a matter of fact he
made his inspections without the employer. Charles
Alfred Gibson could not have said what Mr. Hughes
had put into his mouth. One of the men had worked
there fifteen years, and still looked sound. “ Herbert ”
was not “ killed by a Christian employer.” The truth
is, the young man inherited heart disease from his
mother, and it killed him as it killed her.
Charles Alfred Gibson’s old shopmates remembered
him well. He had worked with them about twelve
months. Before that he had worked at Lilley and
Skinner’s, Paddington-green, and while there he had
belonged to the Church Army. Within twelve
months, that is, of his conversion by Mr. Hughes 1
“Did you ever know my son to be a lecturer?”
asked Mr. Gibson. One and all answered “ No,” and
declared it an utter absurdity. “ Did you ever know
him to be an Atheist ?” One and all again answered
“No” A shopmate said that he was rather fond of
arguing, in which he shifted about, taking all sorts of
sides, in opposition to the person he argued with. But
he was never to their knowledge an unbeliever ; in
fact, he was always hostile to Atheism in his conversa
tion.
So much for the Atheism of “John Herbert” in the
minds of his old shopmates. I have seen them, and
Mr. Hughes has not. He preferred to spin his history,
spider-like, out of the bowels of his own imagination.
“John Herbert’s” Landlady.
While talking to these shoemakers, I learnt that
Charles Alfred Gibson had lived not far off, in the
Caledonian-road. One of them thought he could
remember the house, and after some tickling of his
recollection he brought out the number, though he was
not quite sure of it. I don’t wish to trouble the land
lady of the house, so I refrain, from disclosing the
number.
Mr. Hughes seems to have do e all he could to baffle
investigation. He represents his convert’s lodgings as
being in Islington. The real place is at the south end
�( 26 )
of the Caledonian-road, between King’s-cross and the
canal. The description of the landlady is equally
faulty. I do not wonder that the reverend gentleman
or the Sisters never sent her a copy of the story of
Charles Alfred Gibson’s conversion, as they promised
to do. The book would have opened her eyes very
considerably.
The landlady confirmed Julia Gibson’s statement
that she did not accompany her husband to Sidmouth,
where he died, but joined him there a month later,
when he was pining for her society. Mr. Hughes is
therefore wrong on a matter where it was so easy to be
right.
Charles Alfred Gibson had no large collection of
books, as Mr. Hughes again and again declares. He
was fond of reading, but his books were generally
borrowed. She spoke, however, in the highest terms
of his transparpnt character, which is a point of agree
ment between her and the Sisters. She also said that
the Sisters were extremely kind, which I can well
believe.
Charles Alfred and Julia Gibson lodged with her for
six months, from July 1888 to January 1889, as she
showed by the rent-book. They had a furnished
front room at the top of the house, which is the second
floor. Here again Mr. Hughes’s account is incorrect.
The room was carpeted, and the narrow stairs the
reverend gentleman “climbed” were like Jacob’s
ladder—imaginary.
The landlady remembered her lodger’s taking the
communion. It was administered by Mr. Hughes,
and this is one of his few accuracies. She joined in
it, though belonging to a different Church ; so it is
nonsense to talk about her narrow school of theology.
She stated that Charles Alfred Gibson was at first
greatly vexed with professed Christianity, because no
one had called on his wife when she was ill. “ But
was my son an Atheist ?” asked Mr. Gibson. “ Oh no,”
she replied, “ not an Atheist.” “ Did he disbelieve in
God ?” “ Oh no, he always believed in God,” she
answered, and added, “ It was the Christianity of the
day he was set against.” In fact she heard him say,
“ I’m not against Jesus Christ.”
�( 27 )
“ Did you ever hear of his lecturing ?” asked Mr.
Gibson. “ No,” she replied, “ he didn’t lecture.” And
she said it with a smile, which showed her sense of
the idea’s absurdity.
A good deal more came out in conversation, but it
will keep. It is enough to say that Charles Alfred
Gibson’s landlady denies his Atheism,^ and never
heard of his being a lecturer.
Mr. Hughes’s Shuffling.
The case against Mr. Hughes is complete and over
whelming. I have followed the track of Charles
Alfred Gibson, and the testimony of all the persons
who knew him—his father, his brothers, his shopmates,
and his landlady—is that he was not a lecturer, and
none of them believe that he was even an Atheist.
Mr. Hughes therefore looks around for some line of
retreat. First of all, he stops the circulation of his
book, which is no longer obtainable for love or money.
Secondly, he seeks to minimise his convert’s import
ance. Having formerly declared that “ Herbert ” was
not a lecturer for the National Secular Society, he now
declares that he did not describe him as a “ lecturer ”
at all. He said this to the Morning interviewer, and
added that I had destroyed a man of straw.
What wretched cavil is this! It is true that Mr.
Hughes did not use the particular word “ lecturer.”
But his Atheist Shoemaker spoke “ amidst continuous
cheering ” in Victoria Park; he had advocated
Atheism “ in public halls and in the open air, with
great eloquence and effect ” ; he was used to addressing
“Atheistic assemblies”; he had experienced “the
exulting glow of the orator who has conquered his
audience.”
The reverend gentleman's convert was not a
“ lecturer.” He was only an “ orator.” Such is the
sum and substance of the denial; and it shows the
shifts this man is reduced to in the effort to save his
blasted reputation.
A Court of Honor.
Partly to set myself right before the public, and
partly to drive Mr. Hughes into the last corner, I
�( 28 )
wrote the following letter, which appeared in the Daily
Chronicle for Friday, February 9 :
MR. G. W. FOOTE AND THE REV. HUGH PRICE
HUGHES.
TO THE EDITOR OE “ THE DAILY CHRONICLE.”
Sir,—As the reputation of public men is of some importance,
if only to the world’s common sense of self-respect, I venture
to make an offer through your columns for the termination
of this dispute between the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes and
myself—a dispute, unfortunately, in which a third public
man, Mr. G. J. Holyoake, has become to a certain extent
involved.
I am willing to let the whole dispute be adjudicated upon
by a Committee of Honor. Two persons might be nominated
by Mr. Hughes and two by myself, with a fifth person agreed
upon by both sides to act as chairman and umpire.
Should the Committee of Honor be constituted, I under
take to prove (1) that the “ John Herbert ” of Mr. Hughes’s
story was Charles Alfred Gibson; (2) that everything is
false which Mr. Hughes states about the young man’s early
training and privations; (3) that there are many similar
inaccuracies and exaggerations in the narrative; (4) that
Charles Alfred Gibson was never a lecturer on Atheism, or
even against Christianity; (5) that he was.never a lecturer
at all; (6) that he was never an Atheist or any kind of
Freethinker; (7) that he had been in the Salvation Army
and the Church Army; (8) that he had no “ Atheist brother ”
at Northampton to be converted to Christianity; and (9)
that the brother referred to, who has ai ways been a professed
Christian, never had any communication whatever with Mr
Hughes or any sister of the West London Mission.
When I say that I will prove these things, I mean that I
will produce documentary evidence and the testimony of
living witnesses, including the members of Charles Alfred
Gibson’s family and all sorts of persons who knew him
intimately while he was working and living in London—the
place which Mr. Hughes represents as the scene of his
exploits as a propagator of Atheism.
Mr. Hughes must be infatuated if he fancies he can find
refuge in the “ dignity of silence,” and if he declines my
present offer I may safely leave him to the judgment of
honest and sensible men and women.
G. W. Foote.
Mr. Hughes did not accept my offer. He preferre
to stand upon his “ dignity.” His reply appeared th
next morning
�( 29 )
REV. HUGH PRICE HUGHES AND MR. FOOTE.
TO THE EDITOR OP “ THE DAILY CHRONICLE.”
Sil,—For some years past Mr. Foote has been trying to
force me into a personal controversy with him. If he had
simply assumed that I was mistaken, or had been misled, he
might have had what he wished. But his carefully-guarded
letter to you is not a specimen of his usual style. He has
again and again insinuated or asserted that I am a deliberate
and systematic liar. With a disputant who assumes that
attitude neither I nor any other civilised man can discuss.
Even in the brutal prize-ring men are obliged to fight
according to the rules.
The time has come to insist that public men can have no
dealings with, those who violate the elementary laws of
courtesy. Quite recently Mr. Foote has grossly exaggerated
his offence by offering similar insults to a Christian lady,
whose integrity is attacked like my own.
Although it was impossible for me to have any discussion
with Mr. Foote, who, I may add, has never suffered the
slightest discourtesy at my hands during all these years of
insult, I was perfectly willing to invite the utmost criticism
of any public act or utterance of mine. It occurred to mo
that there was a well-known public man of Mr. Foote’s way
of thinking, a man of unblemished reputation and a gentle
man—Mr, G. J. Holyoake. Having a slight acquaintance
With Mr. Holyoake, I asked him to read the story of the
“Atheist Shoemaker,” and Mr. Foote’s attack upon it. I
gave him all the names, and offered no suggestion as to "the
method of inquiry. The matter was left absolutely and un
reservedly in his hands. From that day to this I have not
seen him. He has made what inquiries he liked, in his own
way.. The result has been published to l .ie world. Since his
verdict was given, nothing has seen the light which impugn a
the substantial accuracy of any statements for which the two
sisters and I are personally responsible.
But whatever may be said, no civilised man will expect me
to have any communication with Mr. Foote, or with anyone
who represents him, or with anyone else who approves of his
method of controversy. No one regrets more than I do that
Mr. Foote’s own gratuitous conduct has made it impossible
for me to take notice of him.—I am, etc.,
Hugh Price Hughes.
“ If. I am a liar,” Mr. Hughes seems to say, “ it is
very rude to call me one.” He complains of the
incivility of the constable who arrests him. Anything
is preferable to damnation by a Court of Honor.
The whimpering of this man is positively despicable.
�( 30 )
One moment he hides behind Mr. Holyoake, the next
he skulks behind a woman’s petticoats. What have I
to do with the “ Christian lady ” ? I have to deal
with Mr. Hughes. He is the person to be “attacked.”
He alone came before the public without a mask. He
is the author of “ The Atheist Shoemaker.” I there
fore attack him, and I shall continue to do so. Having
proved his story to be a mass of falsehoods, I leave
him to share the responsibility as he pleases with
whatever persons shared with him in the deception.
His “Dignity.”
The only course open to Mr. Hughes is to stand upon
his “ dignity.” Any other course would be fatal. It
was a clever move on his part to obtain Mr. Holyoake’s
“ vindication.” But it was a false move, and he
has paid the penalty. He simply brought upon him
self an avalanche of evidence. He is wiser now, and
knows that if he moves again he is lost.
But movement is possible on my part, and I proceed
to show what this man’s “ dignity ” is worth. I have
to remark that he has been found out before.
In October, 1889, he was taken to task by Captain
Molesworth, the Chairman of the Royal Aquarium
Company, for publicly stating at St. James’s Hall that
“ a young girl who had recently visited the Aquarium
with her father had placed in her hands a card
asking her to accept the escort of a gentleman on
leaving the place.” Being challenged to produce the
girl, her father, and the card, Mr. Hughes was
compelled to admit that the “incident” which had
occurred “recently” had really occurred “two years
ago,” while the “ young girl ” blossomed into a woman.
Captain Molesworth threatened legal proceedings,
whereupon Mr. Hughes replied, “ I .did not intend to
make any attack upon the Royal Aquarium or any
place in particular ”—and by this disclaimer he
avoided a law suit.
, But a far worse case happened in the very same
year, when Mr. Hughes got into trouble with his own
body, by publishing certain articles in the Methodist
Times against the Wesleyan missionaries in India. A
sub-committee was appointed to examine into the
�( 31 )
charges, and the results of the investigation were
published in a volume in 1890 under the title of the
“Missionary Controversy.”
The Rev. George Patterson, who opened the case on
behalf of the missionaries, said that “the mode of
elucidating the truth adopted by the Methodist Times
consisted chiefly in the deliberate suppression of every
thing on the other side.” The sub-committee, while
giving Mr. Hughes credit for “ sincerity in his
professions of confidence and love,” remarked that
he had to “ deal with a public more logical
than himself.” Their report was dead against
hip, and it was accepted by the General Com
mittee, which passed a resolution, for which every
member voted except one, expressing “ profound
regret that charges so grave and so unsustained ”
had been brought against the missionaries by a
Wesleyan minister.
“ In many of the statements
made,” said the Rev. Mr. Allen, “ he has exaggerated
to an enormous extent, and, if he will allow me to say
so, this is characteristic of the man.”
Here, then, we have the official declaration of the
Wesleyan Methodist body, preserved in a special
volume, that Mr. Hughes published in his journal
what he could not sustain under investigation ; and
this is precisely what he did when he published in
that same journal the story of the Atheist Shoemaker.
Here also we have the openly expressed opinion of a
brother minister that enormous exaggeration is “ cha
racteristic of the man.” Yet when he is charged with
having been guilty of “enormous exaggeration” in the
present case, he stands upon his “ dignity,” even in face
of the most overwhelming evidence of his guilt.
Captain Molesworth was able to make the reverend
gentleman climb down, for behind the Chairman of the
Aquarium Company there was the law with all its
terrors. The Wesleyan ; Methodist body was also able
to bring him to trial, because it had the power to
deprive him of his position for contumacy. But no
one can compel him to submit to the adjudication of a
Court of Honor in respect to his story of the Atheist
Shoemaker. All that can be done is to bring him, in
his own despite, before the bar of public opinion.
�FREETHOUGHT
PUBLICATIONS.
FLOWERS OF FREETHOUGHT. By G. W. Foote. Fiftyone selected Essays and Articles. 221pp., cloth. 2s. 6d.
THE GRAND OLD BOOK. A Reply to the Grand Old Man.
By G. W. Foote. An Exhaustive answer to the Right
Hon. W. E, Gladstone s “ Impregnable Rock of Holy
Scripture.” Is. ; bound in doth, Is. 6d.
CHRISTIANITY AND SECULARISM. Four Nights’ Public
Debate between G. W. Foote and the Rev. Dr. J.
McCann. Is. Superior edition, in cloth, Is. 6d.
DARWIN ON GOD. By G. W. Foote. 6d.; cloth, Is.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS. By G. W. Foote. 2nd edition,
enlarged, 8d.
Superior edition, cloth. Is. 3d.
LETTERS TO THE CLERGY. By G. W. Foote. 128pp., Is
COMIC SERMONS & OTHER FANTASIAS. By G. W.
Foote. Price, 8d.
BIBLE HEROES. By G. W. Foote. Cloth,'2s. 6d.
BIBLE HANDBOOK fos FREETHINKERS & INQUIRING.
CHRISTIANS. By G. W. Foote and W. P. Ball. Com
plete, paper covers, Is. 4d. Superior paper, cloth, 2s.
THE JEWISH LIFE OF CHRIST. By G. W. Foote and
J. M. Wheeler. With Historical Preface and Voluminous
Notes, 6d. Superior edition, cloth, Is.
CRIMES OF CHRISTIANITY. By G. W. Foote and J. M.
Wheeler. Vol. I., cloth gilt, 216pp.. 2s. 6d.
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FREETHINKERS of
all Ages and Nations. By J. M. Wheeler. Bound, 7s. 6d.
BIBLE STUDIES. By J. M. Wheeler. Illustrated, 2s. 6d.
MISTAKES OF MOSES. By Col. Ingersoll. Is.; cloth, Is. 6d.
FREE WILL AND NECESSITY. By Anthony Collins.
Reprinted from 1715 ed., with Preface and Annotations
by G. W. Foote, and a Biographical Introduction by
J. M. Wheeler. Is. Superior edition, cloth, 2s.
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. By Ludwig Feuerbach. Is.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CATECHISM EXAMINED.
By Jeremy Bentham. A trenchant analysis, in Bentham’s
best manner, showing how the Catechism is calculated
to make children hypocrites or fools, if not worse.
With a Biographical Preface by J. M. Wheeler. Is.
SATIRES & PROFANITIES. By James Thomson (B.V.)
Cloth Is.
B. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER-STREET, LONDON, E.C.
Printed by G W. Foots, 14 Clerkenwell-green, London. E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The atheist shoemaker and the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes : or, a study in lying, with a full and complete exposure
Creator
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: "The atheist shoemaker" is the title of a story by H.P. Hughes, published in the Methodist Times, August 1889. "This pamphlet it written gratuitously by Mr. Foote, and the expense of printing one hundred thousand copies, for free distribution...". [Inside front cover]. Publisher's advertisements on back page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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R. Forder
Date
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[1894]
Identifier
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N224
Subject
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Atheism
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The atheist shoemaker and the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes : or, a study in lying, with a full and complete exposure), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Atheism
Conversion
Hugh Price Hughes
NSS