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^Ci5>d.i scourses
ON OCCASION OF
THE DEDICATION
OF
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
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LIVERPOOL,
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
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BY
REV. THOMAS MADGE.
REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
REV. CHARLES WICKSTEED.
LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND.
MDCCCXLIX.
PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE.
��DISCOURSES
ON OCCASION OF
THE DEDICATION
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL,
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
BY
REV. THOMAS MADGE.
REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
REV. CHARLES WICKSTEED.
LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND.
MDCCCXLIX.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.
�PREFACE.
The occasion of the following Discourses was naturally
one of great interest to the Society in whose service they
were prepared.
At the entrance of a new era in its con
gregational history, it seemed fit that some comprehensive
expression should be given to the aims which it proposes
to realise, and the views of life which distinguish its in
terpretation of Christianity.
The immediate request for
the publication of the Sermons justifies the hope that they
fairly represent the state of mind and purpose with which
the new Church is entered by its possessors; and that
they may stand as a record of the time and connexion to
which they belong.
This circumstance gives to them a
value not due to any intrinsic qualities of their own; and
induces the preachers to consign them to a permanent
form, less as original expressions of divine truth, than as
marks in the ever-changing course of human sentiment.
November 14, 1849.
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�THE DEDICATION OF THE CHRISTIAN TEMPLE TO THE
WORSHIP AND SERVICE OF GOD.
A SERMON,
PREACHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18th, 1849,
By THOMAS MADGE,
MINISTER OF ESSEX STREET CHAPEE.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.
�A SERMON.
Already, my brethren, as it was meet that it should be
so, has the voice which has so often given utterance to
the devout sentiments of your hearts, and to which, after
a period of silence, you must rejoice again to listen, —
*
already, I say, has that voice breathed forth the prayer of
thanksgiving and the prayer of supplication becoming the
occasion on which we are now assembled. Nevertheless, I
cannot enter upon that part which has been allotted to
me of this day’s service without once more beseeching
Him whose favour is the primal source of all illumination,
of all truth, and goodness, and happiness, to look merci
fully upon us at this time, and graciously accept our
humble endeavours to glorify his holy name. The words
which I have chosen as introductory to the observations
which I have now to address to you are taken from
Acts i. 13, 14.
“ And when they were come in, they went up into an upper
room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, with
the other apostles. These all continued with one accord
in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the
mother of Jesus, and with his brethren?'
* The devotional services were introduced by the Rev. James Mar
tineau, the Minister of the Church, who, since his return from the con
tinent after an absence of more than a year, had now, for the first time,
presented himself to his congregation.
B 2
�Most interesting and affecting must this first meeting
of the apostles and their companions have been after the
trying scenes through which they had lately passed, and
the dispersion of that cloud of doubts, and fears, and
anxieties, which had so heavily hung over them. From
the deep depression into which their minds had sunk as
they fled from the garden of Gethsemane and the tragedy
of the Cross, they had now risen into a state of hopeful,
joyful expectation. For a brief season they had given up
all as lost. They disappeared from the public eye, and
it seemed, for a moment, as if a life of privacy and retire
ment were henceforth the life most fitting for them to
lead. But the sudden re-appearance among them of their
risen and now ascended Lord dispelled their growing
despondency, revived their expiring hopes, brought them
again upon the open stage of life, and imparted to them
fortitude and courage, patience and perseverance, untiring
and unconquerable, in testifying to the truth of what they
had seen and heard. It was when their hearts were thus
re-assured, and their confidence was more than restored,
that they assembled together in the upper room men
tioned in the text, to call to mind those words and deeds
of power and of love of which they had recently been the
admiring witnesses,—to bow down in grateful acknow
ledgements before God for the glorious issue of their Mas
*
ter’s labours and sufferings in his triumphant resurrection
from the dead,—and to invoke the divine blessing upon
their own future labours in the Christian cause. Here
they had met to commune with one another on the new
and important relation into which they had just entered,
and the obligations and duties to which it summoned
them. Hitherto, for the purposes of religious worship
and instruction, they had assembled with their Jewish
�5
brethren in the temple or the synagogue. Now they
were associated together, expressly and purposely, as
Christians, to dwell upon their Christian blessings and
privileges, and to present unto God their thanksgivings
and supplications in the name and as the disciples of
Christ. This meeting, therefore, may be regarded as the
type of all future churches, as indicating the purpose for
which they were designed, and the end to which they
should be subservient. It teaches us that, in entering
the Christian temple, we should enter there to sit at the
feet of Christ and learn of him; to meditate with the
men of Galilee on mortality and immortality; and to
unite our voices, in one blended song of praise and
thanksgiving, that so they may go up in accepted chorus
to the throne of God. Honourable alike is it, my friends,
to your feelings and principles that it was in your heart,
as it has been in your power, to raise up this beautiful
structure for yourselves and families to worship in—de
voting it, not to the interests and fashion of a world that
passeth away, but to the interests and welfare of that
higher life which shall not pass away.
In this place, then, we have nothing to do with the
wisdom of the schools, with the doctrines of human phi
losophy, or the speculations of human ingenuity. I deny
not that in other places, and at other times, they may
well and properly occupy some share of your thoughts and
attention, but here we have greater and more important
topics to dwell upon, higher questions to resolve, a nobler
science to learn, more grave and solemn lessons to attend
to.
The first and greatest truth with which we are here
concerned is the existence and government of God. That
he is, and that he is the rewarder of all who truly and
�diligently seek him, is a proposition of momentous import,
upon the reception or rejection of which awful and mo
mentous consequences are made to depend. But with
the nature of God we must necessarily be totally unac
quainted. It is a subject embracing heights which we
cannot ascend, and depths which we cannot fathom.
What the divine essence is,' or in what manner God
exists, is one of those things which are properly termed
mysterious. It is hidden from our sight. It belongs not
to us to inquire into it. It forms no part of our know
ledge or of our belief. It lies completely out of the sphere
of our understandings. But there is one truth concern
ing the divine existence which it is not difficult for us to
conceive of, nor unimportant for us to believe. It is a
truth for which reason and revelation both earnestly
plead ; and it is a truth which the history of the world
shows to be intimately associated with the virtue and the
happiness of man. That God is one; that he has no
equal, no rival, but reigns absolute and alone, power
above all powers, is the great pervading doctrine both of
the Old Testament and the New.
We, therefore, dedicate this Church to the worship of
one only God.
With the doctrine of the Divine Unity there is closely
connected in the gospel of Christ that of God’s paternal
character. It tells us that as we came from him we are
dear to him ; that as he is our Father, so we are his chil
dren. It assures us that he has not only given us all
things richly to enjoy, causing his sun to shine and his
rain to descend, that the earth might give her increase
and bring forth food for the service of man, but that even
darkness, and storms, and tempests, are his messengers
for good, that his afflictions are in kindness sent, and that
�7
he chastens us for our benefit. It speaks of God as our
almighty friend who ever careth for us, and who, in call
ing us into the ways of piety and virtue, calls us to the
nearer and more perfect enjoyment of himself. It assures
us that as in love God made us, so in love he sent Jesus
Christ to redeem us, that with him there is no respect of
persons, that what he demands of one he demands of
all, that he pities our infirmities and hath compassion
upon them that love him, and that all who sincerely
repent of their sins will be equally the objects of his for
giving mercy. These are glorious, delightful revelations
of Almighty God, well fitted to cheer and encourage the
good, to reclaim the bad from the error of their ways, and
to melt the hard and obdurate heart into penitence and
submission.
We dedicate this Church to the service of God the
Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In accordance with the view presented to us by our
Saviour of the character of God, is the representation
made by him of the duty of man. When asked what
was necessary to be done in order to, secure the gift of
eternal life, he answered plainly and distinctly, “ Keep
the commandments • love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and mind, and strength, and thy neighbour as
thyself; this do, and thou shalt live.” And when the
Scribe acquiesced in this declaration, and acknowledged
that there was no God but one, and that He alone was
entitled to the supreme homage and affection of his
creatures, Jesus turned to him and said, “ Thou art not
far from the kingdom of heaven.” In like manner, when
he gave to his followers a test of true discipleship, it was
not subscription to an unmeaning creed, the adoption
of some mysterious dogma, but it was the practical
�8
application of the precept, Love one another. “ By this,”
said he, “ shall all men know that ye are my disciples if
ye have love one to another.’* Wherever he saw piety
associated with charity, there he recognised the only
bond by which man is connected with heaven, “ the only
step or link for intercourse with God.” “ Blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth, Blessed are the
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Impressive and
beautiful, however, as these words of our Lord are, it is
in his life still more than in his words that we see and
feel the power and the beauty of the doctrines which he
taught. Thus explained and illustrated, they become
clothed with a touching sense of reality and truth. They
speak to the soul with a voice of power to which all its
purer feelings beat responsive. When I see how he went
about doing good, healing all manner of sickness and
ministering to the sorrows of the sorrowful, how he pitied
the erring and sought to reclaim the wandering, what
compassion he had on the multitude and what sympathy
he felt for their distresses,—when I see him mingling
with the despised and neglected of his race, and braving
the misrepresentations and calumnies of his enemies in
his efforts to raise up the fallen and to comfort the miser
able,—when I look at the treatment which he observed
towards the penitent, and perceive how gentle and merci
ful it was, and that to the contrite spirit he ever turned
an eye of encouragement and hope,—when I thus con
template the conduct of Jesus, and remember that he
appeared on earth as the image and representative of the
Most High, I feel that his life is, indeed, the best of
teachers and instructors, that it leaves upon the mind an
impression of what God is, and man should be, such as
�9
even his own gracious words would alone have failed to
impart. Our duty, then, as it respects our Maker, our
fellow-creatures, and ourselves, lies clearly and plainly
before us. The gospel relieves us of all difficulty and
dissipates all doubt. From its pages may be heard the
voice of Jesus, saying to us, Hither come, this is the way
of truth and righteousness. Whosoever folioweth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
We dedicate this Church to a righteous and holy God,
wTho sent his Son Jesus Christ to redeem us from all
iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people
zealous of good works.
From what has now been said you will perceive that
Christianity does not present us with cold and comfort
less abstractions, fitted to the entertainment of the spe
culative understanding, but that it brings before us those
relations which connect us immediately with God, and the
contemplation of which is adapted to touch and engage
our hearts, to warm and enliven our affections, to awaken
virtuous emotions, and to prompt to virtuous actions. It
does not send us to struggle with conceptions too mighty
for our grasp, but it places before us those sublime and
simple truths, which, while they are intelligible to the
humblest understanding, interest and delight the loftiest
mind. To refine and elevate our souls, to lift us above
the meannesses and littlenesses of earth, and to give us
longings for the glories and satisfactions of heaven, our
eyes have been opened to see the things which the wisest
of ancient days desired to see, but were not able. Jesus
Christ has torn away the veil by which the human mind
was once shrouded in darkness and doubt, and let in upon
our souls the discovery not only of that which will inform
and instruct our understandings, but of that also which
�10
will lighten the pressure of grief and relax the bondage
of despair.
Much as on this account it becomes us to prize the
gospel, we have yet still more reason to prize it for the
clear and explicit assurance which it contains, and for the
confirmation which that assurance receives in the resur
rection of Christ, that we shall live again, that this world
is not the last stage of our existence, but one to prepare
us for another and a better. Were I asked what, more
than anything else, is needed to make man what he
should be, to give him courage in the profession of what
is true, and firmness in the practice of what is right; to
make him, in all his ways and doings, pure-minded and
single-hearted, uncorruptible by temptation and uncon
querable by sin,—my answer would be, the doctrine of a
future everlasting life, such as is brought before us in
the revelation of Jesus Christ. No man who truly admits it
into his thoughts, but must feel its great, its inestimable
value. In all states and conditions of our being, whether
we are cast down by misfortune, or whether sorrowing
for the loss of friends, what more blessed source of peace
and consolation can be opened to us than the anticipa
tion of that rest which remaineth for the people of God.
And when we ourselves are stretched on the bed of death,
—when the last dark hour of mortality approaches, and
weeping friends gather around us to take their solemn
farewell,—what is the doctrine we value then ? What
is the hope to which we then cling,—what the prospect
upon which we then dwell ? At such a moment, do we
concern ourselves with questions about the divine essence,
or with distinctions in the divine nature ? Oh ! no. To
the one only question then in our minds, “ When man
dieth and giveth up the ghost, where is he ?” the answer
�11
of Jesus, “ I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever
believeth in me shall never die,” is all sufficient. This,
—this satisfies the heart and gives rest to the soul.
With glad and grateful spirits, therefore, we dedicate
this Church to the Author and Giver of Eternal Life, to
Him who hath given us the victory over death and the
grave through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The views of which I have now presented to you the
merest outline, constitute the common faith of Christians;
and to those who cordially embrace them, they afford
every help and every encouragement that can be given to
the mind of man when struggling with the evils and ad
versities that here assail him. Some of the wisest and
best men that have ever lived have been distinguished
for their attachment to this common faith. Yes, among
Christian professors of this enlarged and liberal school
are to be found those wTho have daily and hourly walked
with God; the consciousness of whose presence has been
to them the sanctifier of their inward thoughts and the
guardian of their outward actions; men, whom the se
ductions of pleasure could not tempt, nor the terrors of
suffering drive from the path of duty; men, whose great
object in life was to do the will of God, and who, for this
purpose, pressed right on in spite of every advancing dif
ficulty and every surrounding danger, and who, when
the summons of death arrived, fixed their thoughts upon
that heaven, the promised inheritance of the wise and
good, and so departed in peace and hope. Many are the
men of this stamp and character who have been found in
all churches. Take, I would say, Eenelon from the Roman
Catholics; Jeremy Taylor, and Barrow, and Tillotson
from the Church of England; Locke, and Newton, and
Hartley from among the ranks of Christian philosophers;
�12
and Doddridge, and Foster, and Price, and Priestley from
the various classes of Dissenters ; and you will find that
the great principles which they most valued and cherished
—those principles which were the actuating motives of
their conduct, and which shed upon their souls refreshing
dews of joy and of hope—were the principles which they
held in common, that is, were the principles by which
we, as a Christian body, are emphatically distinguished.
Now these principles we are desirous of upholding in
their simplicity and integrity ; of preserving in their sin
gleness and purity, apart from all admixture with foreign
ingredients. We look upon the vital, essential truths of
Christianity to be those which are possessed, not by any
one sect exclusively, but which belong to the church of
Christ universally. Our peculiarity therefore—if so it
may be called—that which separates us from other bodies
of professing Christians, consists mainly in this, in the
prominence and distinction which we give to these truths ;
in regarding them as of supreme and paramount import
ance ; as, in fact, the be-all and the end-all of the Chris
tian dispensation. We hold the catholic or universal
faith to be the true genuine Christian faith, and the only
one that should be made a condition of Christian com
munion. It is upon this broad ground that we take our
stand as a Christian society. It is upon this wide foun
dation that the fellowship of our churches is based.
Ever sacred be this temple to the cause of religious free
dom, of piety, peace, and charity !
Of all the bonds by which man is connected with man,
the first and the greatest is that which unites them all to
the Creator. If there be anything more than another
which belongs to us in common, in which we are all one,
it is that of being the creatures of God, subsisting by his
�13
will, depending upon his bounty, daily witnesses of his
majesty and might, daily partakers of his kindness and
care. Receiving common mercies, it is reasonable that
we should unite in common acknowledgements. With
the same reasons for thankfulness and praise, it becomes
us to mingle our songs with the songs of our brethren,
and in sacred union and fellowship to pour out our prayers
and supplications together. Like the good men of old,
it becomes us to go to the house of God in company,
and, with the purest influences of heaven, to mingle the
dearest sanctities of earth. For this let us welcome the
return of each Sabbath morn, inviting us to suspend for
a while the chase after worldly gains and pleasures, and
opening to our inward sight the vision of an immortal
heaven.
There are, I know, those who say that they need not
the ministriations of the sanctuary to remind them of their
relation to God and eternity, to silence the clamour of
worldly passions and pursuits, and to beget in them a
genuine religious thoughtfulness. They can commune
with their own hearts, they tell us, in the stillness of their
chamber, or go forth, like the patriarch Isaac, to meditate
in the fields at even-tide. I believe, however, that for
the most part they who talk in this way do neither the
one nor the other. Gallio-like, they are careless about
these things, and make their objection to time and place
which has its deeper foundation in their own indifference.
This observation, I willingly grant, may not be applicable
to all of the class of whom I am now speaking. There
are instances among them, I doubt not, where the spirit,
in its moments of high-wrought emotion, may think that
it can safely dispense with all external helps and sup
ports,—may even regard them as suited only to ignorant
�14
and feeble minds,—may imagine that its piety need not
be poured forth in words,—that human language only
restrains, cramps, and confines it,—that time and place
are but hindrances and barriers to its exercise, and that
“ wrapt into still communion with God, it will rise far
above all the imperfect offices of prayer and praise.”
Now admitting that there are a few gifted minds capable
of rising by the force of their own wills into the high re
gions of pure spirituality, and that occasionally inclina
tions and desires, looking in the same direction, may be
partially felt by a few more, it is not to be believed, I
think, that such a state of feeling can be either general
or lasting. On the contrary, I am persuaded that most
men’s experience will convince them that in the cultiva
tion and exercise of their religious principles and affec
tions thev must have recourse to much the same means
of exciting and improving them that are employed in the
formation and exercise of their affections and habits ge
nerally.
Humanity does not become changed, is not stripped of
the attributes by which it is usually characterised and dis
tinguished the moment it touches the ground of religion.
It still possesses the same tendencies and is subject to the
same laws by which it is commonly influenced and go
verned. As we feel the value, the comfort, and the hap
piness of the social affections in all other things, I cannot
understand the wisdom or the propriety of refusing their
aid and co-operation in the concerns of religion. We are
sustained, strengthened and cheered in our convictions
and attachments by the presence and communion of our
fellow-men. In the midst of the animating associations
of the church and the radiating sympathies of other
minds, we gather encouragement, confidence, and assur
�15
ance. It is therefore a great error to suppose that a dif
ferent process must be pursued in building up in our
minds the fabric of religion from that which is adopted
in raising any other of our intellectual and moral struc
tures. It is not in enthusiastic sentiments and fervid
emotions that we must place our trust. Suddenly may
they come, and as suddenly may they depart. Our chief
reliance must be founded on the diligent and faithful use
of all those appliances by which the heart of man is
usually impressed and affected. The dread of supersti
tion and the contempt of vain and idle ceremonies have,
I am persuaded, led many to an undue depreciation and
disparagement of the outward means and instruments of
exciting and elevating our religious sensibilities. There
is no doubt that abundance of mischief has been done by
overloading religion with rites and observances. There
is no doubt that the external garb and covering has been
too often mistaken for the genuine inward grace, and that
dead, inanimate forms have been substituted for the living
spiritual substance. Too much care and caution, there
fore, cannot be used to guard against such a perversion
as this. But when that care has been taken and that
caution has been exercised, let us beware of falling into
the error, less pernicious, perhaps, but still an error to be
deplored, of supposing that the religious principle can be
built up and firmly maintained in the soul under a total
disregard and neglect of those assistances and supports of
which, upon other occasions, we are glad to avail our
selves.
We read of the prophet Daniel that, during the time
of his captivity in Babylon, when he prayed and gave
thanks before his God, his mind seems to have been im
pressed by the circumstance that the windows of his
�16
chamber opened towards Jerusalem. Now this is an in
stance of the manner in which we are sometimes affected
by little things,—by things, in themselves considered, of
no importance, but which derive all their interest and in
fluence from the thoughts and feelings associated with
them. He whom Daniel worshipped was the same God
and as ready to listen to the prayer of his servant
whether his eyes were bent on Babylon’s plains, or
turned towards Judea’s hills. Apart from the feelings
called forth by them, it mattered not which of these it
was. But who does not perceive that, with the thought
of Jerusalem and the tender and solemn recollections
which that thought would awaken, there would neces
sarily come over the mind of Daniel a more intense and
vivid feeling of God’s presence and power, of his pre
sence to cheer and his power to save ? Tell me not that
such a feeling betokens a state of pitiable weakness.
For, if it be a weakness, it is one which God has attach
ed to the very constitution of our nature, and above
which the proudest pretender to philosophy, falsely so
called, cannot exalt himself. Will he say that no pecu
liar interest hangs around the spot where he has played
in his childhood or sported in his youth ? Has no place
ever become endeared to his thoughts and consecrated in
his imagination by friendship and affection ? Can you
visit the tomb where a parent sleeps, or walk over the
ashes of the child you loved, with the same emotions with
which you would tread on common ground ? Then times
and places do exercise a power over our thoughts and feel
ings to which we are all of us, in some measure, subject and
obedient. It is a law of our very being, and resistance to
it would be as impotent in its efforts, as it is vain and fool
ish in its aim. And why, we may ask, why should man be
�17
treated in his religious capacity in a manner totally diffe
rent from that which is observed towards him in all his
other relations? From the reasoning and conduct of
some people in this matter it might be inferred that with
reference to the subject of religion they contemplated
man as a being who had neither senses to be exercised,
nor imaginations to be affected, nor feelings to be
touched, nor hearts to be impressed. They would take
him out of the circle of all those influences which, in
other respects, so powerfully move and govern him.
They would deprive him of the benefit of those associa
tions which, on all ordinary occasions, form one of the
chief sources of interest and attraction. Such a proceed
ing I cannot but deprecate as both unnatural and unrea
sonable ; implying equally a forgetfulness of what the
real condition of man is, and of what is taught us in the
lessons of experience. If the love of country will grow
stronger and warmer when standing before the shrine of
her illustrious dead, or when gazing upon the scenes of
her former greatness and glory, why should we not admit
that the feelings of devotion may also be raised and
strengthened in a similar manner, by going to the house
of God in company, and uniting with our brethren in
those sacred services which impressively speak to us of
the glories of creating power and the riches of redeeming
love ? Let not Religion be deprived of all those accom
paniments which are calculated to enliven her sentiments
and to render her services more beautiful and attractive.
Let us view ourselves on all sides. Let us consider what
is due to us as thinking, reflecting beings, and what may
be needful for us as sensitive and imaginative creatures.
And when we feel inclined to treat as superfluous and
vain all outward aids and influences to further the ends
c
�18
of religion,—to think that all regard to times and places
may be utterly discarded, and that our minds are strong
enough to elevate and sustain themselves without such
instrumentalities ; when we are disposed to reason in this
manner, it would be well for us to remember the words
of Christ, “ the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,”
and instead of presumptuously relying on our own imagined strength, to feel more humbly concerning ourselves,
and to be careful to put on the whole armour of God, so
that in the day of trial we may be able to stand, to be
firm and faithful, enduring to the end.
Our failure in duty, our neglect of the things belong
ing to our eternal peace, arises, generally speaking, far
more from insensibility and thoughtlessness than from
absolute ignorance. We need, therefore, to be told, not
so much of what we do not know, as to be reminded
of what we do; to have the dormant energies of our
souls roused from their degrading, destructive torpor,
into watchfulness and vigour; to have the genuine feel
ings and principles of our nature called into activity
and exertion, and those truths which lie, as it were, upon
the surface of our minds, impressed deeply upon our
hearts, and wrought into the web of our affections. One
of our greatest aims should be to rescue admitted truths
from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their
universal admission. Truths, says Coleridge, of all others
the most awful and interesting, are too often considered
as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and
lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side
with the most despised and exploded errors. If the
principles which we hold, fail of prompting to virtuous
conduct, of generating kind and devout affections, of
making the life pure and holy, it is not because they
�19
are intrinsically unfitted to produce these effects, but it is
because they are not sufficiently rooted and grounded in
the mind to be capable of sending forth strong, vigorous
shoots of morality and piety. It cannot be, that while
our faith exists thus loosely in the head without drawing
the least nourishment from the fountains of the heart,—
while it is a mere chance outward profession, and not a
real inward conviction, a cold abstract speculation, into
which there does not enter a single warm affection of the
soul,—it cannot be, that, while it exists in such a form
and under such a condition as this, any very valuable or
precious fruits should be gathered from it. The fault,
however, lies not in the principles which we profess to
believe, but in not truly and heartily believing the prin
ciples which we profess. Now the design and tendency
of the services of this place is to excite within us those
recollections of God and of Christ, of our duty and destiny,
of our condition as men, and of our hopes as Christians,
which cannot come frequently before the mind without
rendering it, in some degree, purer and better and
happier.
I am not ignorant that complaints are sometimes
made that the range of topics to which the preacher re
stricts himself is too narrow and circumscribed to satisfy
the thoughtful and inquiring. Hence there are those
who seem to be desirous that other questions should be
introduced here than those of a strictly religious character.
Now while I admit that, in many cases, there is just
ground for complaining that the discourses of the pulpit
are trite and uninteresting, I must, at the same time,
contend that this is owing, not to the nature of the sub
jects treated of, but to the manner in which they are
treated. Bring to their treatment judgement and imagic 2
�20
nation, genius and sensibility,—such, my friends, as you
are no strangers to,—or, to say nothing of rare endow
ments, let the speaker, if he be possessed only of ordi
nary qualifications, give forth what is in him with simpli
city and earnestness, and with a heart penetrated with
the love of God and goodness, and it will, I think, no
longer be found wanting in interest or impressiveness. I
cannot agree, therefore, with those who are for including
among the themes to be discoursed of here, questions of
government and politics, of literature and science. I
know well the exciting nature of these topics, and the
resources which they supply for strong impression and
immediate effect. But we assemble within these walls
for other purposes than amusement and excitement. We
have a more momentous and solemn end to answer, that
of awakening the soul to its obligations and its hopes, as
the creature of God and the child of eternity. With so
many means and opportunities around us for acquiring
all kinds of information, literary, scientific, and political,
it were, as it seems to me, a wanton desecration of the
purpose for which this temple is reared, to divert and
alienate the little portion of time to be spent in it from its
directly religious ministration. Considering the absorb
ing nature of the things that press upon our senses, and
the almost constant immersion of our minds in the cares
and pursuits of this world, it surely is not too much to
ask that our thoughts and affections should, for a few
moments in the week, be withdrawn from these solici
tudes and engagements, and be devoted exclusively to the
spiritual and immortal concerns of our being. Of course
I am taking it for granted that we have spiritual and
immortal concerns; that out of and beyond this world
lie treasures of knowledge and stores of enjoyment, with
�21
which the wisdom and the gladness of the present mo
ment are not worthy to be compared. If it be so, most
fitting and reasonable is it that we should be awakened
from our dreams of vanity, and be made to feel that
earth is not all, nor man the mere tenant of an hour,
but that when the night of the grave is past, the dawn
of an endless day shall burst upon him, and he shall
spring forth the denizen of a new and nobler community.
We come here to think of these things, to meditate on
this- high and holy destination of our being, and upon
the feelings, purposes and actions which are its required
and appropriate accompaniments. We come here to
listen to the voice which speaks to us of a better and
more enduring substance than meets our bodily eyes; of
hopes which are unfading, and of joys which are imperish
able ; of communions and friendships which time will not
impair and which death will not interrupt. We come
here to have our minds enlightened with the wisdom
which is profitable to direct; to have our hearts touched,
as it were, with a live coal from the altar of God, that
even when we quit the precincts of the temple, a purify
ing and invigorating warmth may still be felt glowing
within us. We come here to break that continuity of
little and low cares in which the world almost necessarily
involves us, and to fasten upon our souls the links of a
chain which embraces in its circuit wider views and loftier
interests. In a word, we come here as weak, dependent,
sinful, dying creatures, to be reminded of what, as such,
it becomes us to be and to do; to be reminded of the
power that made us, of the goodness that supports us,
of the mercy that saves us, and of the heaven that awaits
us. We come, the weak to be strengthened, the careless
to be warned, the erring to be corrected, the sorrowful to
�be comforted, the penitent to be soothed and encouraged,
and all to have the spirit of their minds renewed, and to
receive fresh impulse to run with patience the race that
is set before us. The object for which we assemble on
the “ day of the Lord” is not to pamper the appetite,
ever greedy for something new, for something that may
play around the head, but which comes not near the
heart. It is rather to call attention to truths already
acknowledged, but not sufficiently dwelt upon, not suffi
ciently admitted into the homes and intimacies of our
spiritual nature. It is to draw near and make bright to
the inward eye, views and prospects which lie clouded in
the distance. It is to make that felt within us as a
warm and living reality which too often dwells without
us as a cold and lifeless abstraction. It is to assist us in
lifting up our hearts unto God, and to make us feel that
in his favour there is life, and that his loving-kindness is
better than life. It is, that seeing we may see, and
hearing we may hear, what God hath done for our souls,
and that the glad tidings of the gospel may not lie before
us as a dead letter, but may be “ felt in the blood and
felt along the heart, and passing into our purer minds
with tranquil restoration.”
I repeat then,—it is not for the gratification of the spe
culative understanding that we are to assemble here as a
congregation of Christian worshippers, but the lighting up
in our souls of desires and aspirations which may lead us,
when we retire from this place, to commune with our own
spirits, and to make diligent search whether they are in the
state in which they ought to be,—in the state becoming
their distinguished privileges, worthy of their high descent,
and befitting their heavenly destination. If the result of
our weekly communion should be to send us away in
�23
quiring within ourselves what shall we do to be saved, a
real and substantial good will be obtained by it, a bless
ing conferred infinitely surpassing any other which it
could be the means of imparting. Let me observe also
that, important as I consider just views and correct
opinions on the subject of religion to be, more especially
those which relate to the character and will of God, I
must, nevertheless, not omit to remind you that it is of
more consequence to feel right than even to think right;
to do well than to reason well; that the best orthodoxy
is the orthodoxy of the heart, and that while sentiments
and creeds and systems perish, the best and purest feel
ings of the human soul remain unchanged; the same in
all countries, sects and generations, and so will continue
to remain as long as the relations of man to God and of
God to man have any existence. Doing righteously,
living virtuously, carrying into the world a pure and a
gentle and an elevated spirit, this is the beauty of holi
ness, and the excellence of faith, this is the bright con
summate flower, the end, the crown, and the ornament
of the whole.
Peeling it, then, to be our duty to gather ourselves
together for the pure and spiritual worship of God, let
us gratefully remember the blessed and benignant cha
racter under which the object of our worship is brought
before us in the generous and merciful dispensation of
the New Testament. Let us be thankful that we have a
religion so pure, benevolent and holy; so glorious in its
doctrines, so precious in its promises, so beautiful in its
hopes. Let us rejoice that we are ever in the sight of
God, and that the same Lord over all is rich unto all
that call upon him. Let us cheer and comfort ourselves
with the welcome assurance that all who do his com
�24
mandments shall eat of the tree of life, and live for ever;
that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth;
and that no humble contrite spirit shall go forsaken of
its God. In the presence of such a being let there be
banished from our minds all desponding and despairing
thoughts. Let us come and kneel before the Lord our
Maker in the spirit of filial affection and in the confidence
of filial trust. In deep submission let us bend before
Him in whose hands our life is, and whose are all our
ways. Humbly and meekly let us adore Him joyfully
and reverently let us praise Him; making melody in our
hearts as well as with our tongues. And since we have
all one Father, let us bear in mind that we are one family,
bound to render to each other mutual assistance and
comfort. To our piety, therefore, there must be added
charity—to the love of God there must be joined the love
of man. Let these be the offerings with which we ap
proach the altar of the Lord. Let us consecrate this
house of prayer by the humble mind, the worshipping
spirit, the devout heart, the grateful thanksgiving which
we bring to it; and then peace within and hope in the
favour of heaven will sweeten the days of our earthly
pilgrimage, till, fit for a purer world of love and blessed
ness, we pass on from this perishable temple to that eter
nal temple not made with hands, where at a nobler altar
we shall offer up to God a nobler worship, where we shall
unite our feeble voices to those of adoring millions, and
sing his praises everlastingly.
To you, the members of this congregation, and to him
whom you have chosen to be here the leader of your de
votions and the expounder of Christian duty, I would
now offer my cordial congratulations at the completion
of that work and labour of love which stands before us,
�25
together with my earnest wishes that you may long be
spared to assemble under this roof, mutual helpers of
each other’s joy. On the one hand, may you, my
brethren, rejoice in the privilege of possessing a Teacher
so richly endowed and so thoroughly accomplished to
instruct you in all things pertaining to the kingdom of
heaven ; and, on the other, may my friend, your valued
and beloved minister, have the happiness of seeing that
the work of the Lord prospers in his hands, and that
through his instrumentality many have been made wise
to the salvation of their souls. So may you both have
reason to be thankful that you came up hither to keep
the holy day, and may the intercourses in which you have
delighted here be renewed and perfected in that land
where dwell for ever the spirits of the just.
�•
• J*
'
*
�THE
WATCH-NIGHT
LAMPS.
A DISCOURSE,
PREACHED ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF PUBLIC WORSHIP,
(OCTOBER 21, 1849,)
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL.
BY
JAMES MARTINEAU,
MINISTER OF THE CHURCH.
�ZfW.k
• KA«
‘
I T ' :•
*
-I'
�THE WATCH-NIGHT LAMPS.
Now does the Heavenly Mercy rebuke all my fears. The
long-imagined moment is really come; God restores us
to each other. Beneath his eye we parted, and before
his face we meet; and that Infinite Light scatters the
lingering shadows of misgiving which have hung around
the forecast of this hour. We have not hoped in vain
that He would remove with us to the shrine we have
devoutly raised; and now in his eternal memory he sets
the vows and prayers by which this new opportunity is
to be consecrated or condemned. In distant lands,
through waiting months, my eye has rested upon this
day; which has appeared as a star of hope behind the
perspective of every scene, and looked down, with a clear
and guiding sanctity, on intervening tracts that had
sometimes no other, and never a diviner, ray. Standing
here at length, and looking round on this strange mix
ture of the new and old,—the outward structure new
and beautiful, the living temple of faithful hearts both
old and dearer far,—First, I greet you with all the
warmth of my affection and the fresh devotion of all my
powers; consecrating myself anew to the service, not in
deed of your will,—but of your faith and highest hope,
your love and conscience, your remorse and aspiration,—
E
�30
which you know to be interpreters of a Will that must
be monarch of your own. Next, I remember some, whom
we had thought to have with us as sharers of our joy,
but whom the voice of our salutation can no longer reach.
Those close-filled ranks cannot hide from me the vacancies
in their midst; and I miss here the sweet attentive look
of maidenly docility,—there the dear and venerable form
of one from whose eyes age had exhausted the vision
but not the tears, and whose features were quickened
and kindled by the light within. Greeting to others,
Farewell to them ! and to Him, with whom we and thev
alike live; from whose presence no pathless sea, no
Alpine height, no gulph of death, can e’er divide ; who
spares us for his work, or calls us to his rest; who makes
sweet the memory of dreadful hours, and turns our
tremblings into joy;—to Him, the assuager of care, the
reviver of hope, the giver of opportunity, I render for
this hour a glad thanksgiving, and renew my vow to bear
again his glorious yoke.
My purpose this morning is very simple. I ask you
only to think what you have done in raising this building,
and to find for your own act its true ground of thought.
That you have built this house at all, places you at once
in the great commonwealth of Christendom, and detaches
you from all faiths or ^faiths that would destroy it.
That you have joined together to build it, proclaims that
through your religion there runs a common consciousness
which blends and organises your individual wills into a
higher unity, and makes a Church. The forms you have
given to its outline, and the memorials embodied in its
stones, speak everywhere the sentiments of Worship, and
promise here, not the severity of teaching, but the mel
lowed tones of meditation and prayer. That you throw
�31
open its gates on this sacred day, and ever, when a week
is gone, think to come back to it again, is a confession
that you cannot make your every day a Sabbath, and
would not turn your Sabbath into an every day; but
would still intersect the time with holy lines, and help
to prolong that ladder of heaven which climbs as yet
through all Christian duration, the favourite pathway of
saintly souls. These cardinal points I silently assume
as fixed upon the very face of your design; and what
further may be the function of a Church, and ought to
be the function of this Church, in the present age of the
world, I would explain from the words of the parable,
Matthew xxv. 4.
“ The wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps?’
And then, presuming on their supplies, they took their
ease, like the foolish, and while the bridegroom tarried
they all slumbered and slept. So must it not be in that
great watch-night,—that solemn eve of an eternal day,—
which we call Human Life. The spirit that sits sentinel
through its hours, intent for the Master’s voice and ex
pectant of his approach, cannot, however rich her stores,
set the lamp of duty idly on the ground, while she
dreams away beneath the stars; and then hope, by a
sudden start, at the last knock, to refit the neglected
fires and join the pomp and mingle with the everlasting
train. The watch-lights which we must burn before
God are no outward thing, no ritual adornment, but,
like the glow-worm’s, the intensest kindling of our own
life, rising and sinking with the tone of our energies;
and the oil that feeds them is too ethereal to be set by;
it exists only by being ever used and ever re-distilled.
To keep the heart awake,—to resist all collapse of the
e 2
�will and the affections,—to bring the angels of our nature
to a mood not merely less heedless than the foolish virgins,
but more faithful -than the wise; this is the disciple’s
great thought, ever ringing like a midnight bell upon his
ear, from the Master’s awful word, “ Watch ! ” A Church
is a fraternity for accomplishing this thought; an asso
ciation for realising the Christian life, creating the Chris
tian mind, and guarding from deterioration the pure type
of Christian perfection; and its agency is designed for
keeping to their vigils the several Graces of the soul com
missioned to wait upon their Lord; for trimming the
lamps they severally bear, and screening them from the
winds and damps of this world’s night. Let us number
these Graces as they stand. Till their lamps were lighted
they were themselves invisible, dark negations on the
grand summit of human nature, looking into the dark:
but since the glory of Christ has caught them, they shine
afar, and we see in their forms the distinctive spirits of
our religion. First, I discern the Spirit of
Endeavour.—Foremost among the elements of the
Christian consciousness do I place this,—that we must
strive and wrestle to achieve the Will of God, and that
only he who faints can fail. What else means the deep
doctrine of self-denial, which it has ever been the lowest
impertinence of philosophy to doubt, and the last degra
dation of human nature to reject? How else can we
read the contempt we feel for those who evade martyr
dom with a lie,—the throbbing of our hearts as we watch
the tempted in the crisis of his trial,—and their leap of
exultation when he decides, “Better perish than be false”?
These sentiments, than which none are more ineradicable
in man, and none more intensely stamped into Christian
history, would be absurd illusions, if we were not en-
�33
Jdowcd with a knowledge, placed under a law, and in
vested with a power, of right and wrong : they are founded
on the conception of life as an Obedience due, and of mere
Self-will as an insurrection against authority infinitely
venerable. This faith which assigns a moral basis to all
religion, touches, I believe, the ultimate point of all cer
tainty : older than this or newer, more authentic, more
infallible, no revelation can ever be. Its very contra
rieties, which offend the one-sidedness of logicians and
enthusiasts, constitute its truth, and accurately represent
man’s balanced position; whom you can neither turn
into the mere realm of nature nor invest with the dignity
of a God; who is at once bound, yet free to slip his bonds,
and strangely finds in his thraldom a true liberty, in
escape a wretched slavery; and is conscious of divine and
infinite prerogatives immersed and struggling in finite
conditions. All religion is Christian in proportion as it
takes up into its very substance this law of conscience,
and resolves itself a consecration of Duty. It is the great
glory of the Catholic religion, that it adopts and pro
claims this principle : to this one deep root, which pene
trates through the soil and very structure of our human
world, far beyond the reach of ecclesiastic storms, does
it owe the width of its branches and the richness of its
shade. Conscience, indeed, in reference to the universe
of Persons, like Reason in relation to the universe of
Things, is the Catholic faculty of human nature ; and no
faith which does not interpret and sanctify it can take as
its motto, “ Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omni
bus.” I am not forgetful of St. Paul’s depreciation of
legal religion, and of the triumphs, asserted in all the
churches of the reformation, of a Gospel of Love over a
System of Law. This also I embrace with all my soul,
�34
and chime in with the hymn of Grace led by Luther’s
mighty voice. But this truth is only the other’s second
half, and without it could no more exist than the comple
ment without the primal arc, or the joy of convalescence
without the lassitude of illness. Did not Conscience pro
pose the awful problem, and the Will struggle into its
midst, Faith and Affection could never bring the relief of
solution. Law and Love are but the strophe and anti
strophe of the great chorus of redemption; and without
both the opening and the answering voices, the thought
and melody must alike be broken. The moral law of
God then, and the moral freedom of man, constituting
life a theatre of endeavour, we lay as the granite pillars
of an everlasting faith,—the Kock on which we build our
Church; and whoever, in the partial spirit of one age,
builds on any more inflammable material,—on the wood,
hay, stubble, of a disenthralled enthusiasm,—shall find,
when his work is tried by fire, that, however poised for
awhile on the upward pressure of elastic heats, it will
lean and totter as the temperature declines, and either
drop on to some more primitive foundation, or collapse
among the ruins of the past.
Is Christianity, then, a mere Ethical System ? and do
we identify religion and morality ? Shall we say that
the man who commits no fraud, or violence, or excess, is
forthwith a denizen of the Kingdom of Heaven ? God
forbid ! as soon might we say that every scribbler who
makes no slip in scanning his metres and tuning his
rhymes is a great Poet. Morality speaks like the defiance
of the hero to his foe,—“ DepartReligion like the
summons of the leader to his impatient host,—“ Arise,
come on !” As a prison-task to an Olympic race, so is
the duty copied from a code to the service inspired by a
�35
faith. So long as moral restraints and obligations are
urged upon us we hardly know how, by usage, by opi
nion, by taste, by good sense and regard to consequences,
they appear to lie within a very moderate and definable
compass, and to be matters of dry necessity included in
the conditions of respectability. But when the voice of
Christ has opened our spirit to their true nature, and
from utterances of human police they become tones,
stealing through the foliage of the soul, from enshadowed
oracles of God, their whole character and proportion are
as much changed as if the dull guest had turned into an
angel, and the stifling tent expanded to the midnight
skies. From the drowsy figure emerges the sleepless im
mortal ; upon the heavy body grow the glorious wings;
and the sheet which seemed a tiresome limit to our head,
passes into the deep of stars open for an everlasting flight.
The feeling of duty, no longer negative, ceases to act like
an external hindrance and prohibition, and becomes a
positive internal power of endless aspiration. Yes, of
endless aspiration; for if the suggestions of conscience
are breathings from the Holiest, they are no finite whole,
but parts of an infinite Thought, the surface movements
of a boundless deep. When we have brought ourselves
to be at one with them, when they are no longer dashed
and broken by the resistance of our spirits, but carry
harmoniously with them all the movements of our nature,
still all is not over; God will now try us with a quicker
time: wave after wave of impulse will roll in with in
tenser speed from the tides of his eternal Will; till the
undulations reach the limits of a new element, and our
thrilling spirits burst into an immortal light. To whom
soever God is Holy, to him is Duty Infinite. The good
habits, in which others abide content, give him no rest;
�36
they are but half his world, and that not the illumined
half: by the rotatory law of all custom, they have gone
off into the dark, and make now but the negative
hemisphere of his obligations; and this must be com
pleted by another, where the morning light of thought
is fresh, and the genial warmth of love yet glows. To
such a mind is revealed the depth of that word, “ There
is none good save One •” and of that other, “ I must work
the work of Him that sent me, while it is day
and life
appears simply as the appointed scene of holy Endeavour.
Now, to awaken this consciousness of infinite obliga
tion, to draw forth and interpret its solemn intimations ;
to resist and expose, as a Satanic delusion, every slug
gish doubt or mean doctrine which denies it,—and to
sustain it in its noblest resolves,—is the first function
of a Christian Church. The great antagonist to it is that
corruption of ease, that poisonous notion of enjoyment
as the end of life, which in so many men absolutely stifles
the higher soul, and suppresses in them the belief in
its existence. In that lowest condition of human nature,
man enjoys a certain unity with himself, because all
powers above his animal and intellectual being are fast
asleep, and give him no contradiction in his unworthy
career. In its highest condition, his nature reaches again
a unity with itself, because faith and conscience have
carried their demands, and rule without dispute what
ever is below. It is the aim of the Church to urge him
through the vast interval between these two limits;,
during the whole of which he is at variance with himself‘
and cries out for deliverance from that “ body of death,”
which at first made up his entire consciousness and is no
other than his unawakened self. When that fatal sleep
is once broken, it is the business of a Church to suggest,
�37
perhaps even to provide, a discipline of voluntary self
denial, without which the incipient insight will not last,
but relapse into the darkness which it is so difficult to
dispel from the infinite. It is wonderful how faithful
endeavour withdraws the curtain from before the opening
eye of the late slumbering soul. As one who just turns
on his pillow,—with another folding of the hands to
sleep,—-feels without recognising the dazzling light, and
it only passes through into his dreams to paint anew
their empty phantasies;—so the mind, just stirring from
the dead repose of self, does not yet treat as real the
dawning glow of a diviner consciousness; which, stopping there, will only glide as a bewildering spectrum
over the scenery which the man takes to be the world.
But let him spring up and break the bands of sleep; let
him move about among the objects which the new light
shows, and do the things which it requires; and anon
he finds what’s true, and feels how he is transferred from
the subterranean den of dreams into the open and lus
trous universe. Effort is the condition of the commonest
intellectual knowledge; much more, of insight into things
moral and divine. Is there a poem or a landscape which
you are anxious to remember? So long as you only
look at it and take it in, though with attention ever so
fixed, its hold upon you will be slight and transient:
but invert the mental order, begin at the active instead
of the passive end, and force yourself to reproduce it by
pencil or by word; and it becomes a part of yourself,
incorporated with the very fabric of your mind. So with
the whispers of the holiest spirit; while they only pass
across the still—though it be listening—ear of the soul,
they are evanescent as the traceless wind; but act on
them, and you will believe in them ; produce their issue,
�38
and you shall know their source; and he with whom
God’s presence has quieted a passion or subdued a grief
is surprised by the nearness of his reality. Such
deavour, such earnestness of life, do the members of a
Church undertake to preserve in one another’s remem
brance.
But next to this high Angel of the Soul, I observe a
downcast spirit, bearing in her hand the lamp of Humi
liation : and she too must never cease from her sorrow
ing watch.
Endeavour has its seat in the Will. If there were no
sense of difficulty in the exercise of Will, if all resistance
crumbled away at the first touch of purpose, and thought
could fly off into instant execution, failure, shame, re
morse would be unknown; conscience would realise
whatever it conceived; and though the infinite character
of holy obligation would leave an ineffaceable interval
between our position and our aspirations, the one would
for ever tend to overtake the other; and the chase, al
beit without a goal, would be inspired by the joy of an
eternal success. No deeper shade than the mild sense of
imperfection would fall upon the spirit. But our actual
condition is very different. The suggestions of God are
ever fresh and his enterprises always new, demanding, if
not new matter, at least a new spirit: and it is hard to
our Will to quit the old track, to snap the old restraints,
to lash itself into a higher speed. And thus, with a
sentient nature that loves the easiest, and a conscience
that reveres the lest, we feel that Epicurus and Christ
meet face to face within our soul; which becomes at
once the theatre, the stake, the arbiter, of the most
solemn of all conflicts. The pleasant pleadings, so perl
suasive to our languid strength, make our Temptation 1
�39
and their triumph plunges us into the Sense of Guilt.
This utterly changes the relations of the mind to God;
breaks the springs of Endeavour; turns every blessed
sanctity from a life within the heart to a load upon it;
and condenses the infinite heaven of duty into a leaden
universe of nightmare on the breast. So sinks in sad
ness the pure enthusiasm that had flung itself upon the
godlike track; and the wing that had soared so high
hangs drooping and broken down. It is less the anguish
of this fallen state, than its weakness, that makes it awful.
Who shall remove this burden of sin, which paralyses the
soul’s native strength and restrains it in terror from seek
ing God’s ? Could the immediate remorse be banished
or outlived, yet who can resume an infinite race with a
lowered hope, or faith abashed ? This crisis is the turn
ing point of many a life. By either fall or rise may the
mind escape from it; in the one case relapsing by the
gravitation of the world into the stupor of indifference
and the old belief in the dreams of sense : in the other,
lifted once more into a light of heaven, milder perhaps, ‘
but less precarious. Lifted,—I say; for sure it is that
the fallen, though he may hold his place and fall no more,
has crippled his power to lift himself. Even an arch
angel’s wing cannot rise without an atmosphere; and
the human will (in things divine) is ineffectual with its
mightiest strokes, unless surrounded by a certain air of
pure and clear affection,—which recent sin exhausts and
spoils. While the sweet element of love and hope
and self-reverence is lost to the mind, the spasms of reso
lution are but pitiable distortions,—cramps of uneasiness
and fear, not the progressive action of a vigorous health.
It is the awful punishment of all unfaithfulness, that it
turns the mind in upon itself; makes it look at its dis
�40
ease, and put forth a writhing movement to escape it,
with no effect but to renew the anguish, to feel all the
weakness, and sink down again in faintness and despair.
The intense power which conscious evil gives to con
siderations of Interest, the tumult of anxiety and alarm
it induces, is in itself the most fatal obstacle to recovery :
on which however, with the delusion common to all em
pirics, the mere moralist rests all his hopes. There are
no terms in God’s universe on which the selfish can be
saved; no,—not if a thousand Calvaries were to repeat
to him the divine tragedy of the world. And the more
you set upon him with fists of unanswerable reasons, the
more do you make him the sharp-witted alien from God.
What opening then is there for the offender prostrate
under the sense of sin ? Shall I be told that expiation
must be made by another, who will bear the burden for
him ? Doubtless, with the low mood to which guilt has
brought him, he is just in the state to accept that mer
cantile view of sin, and reckon it as a debt against him
on the ledger of the universe, which the overflowing
wealth of some perfect nature might gratuitously wipe
off. And if you can then convince him that such free
sacrifice has actually been made, that for him in his de
gradation a heavenly nature has been moved with pity,
taken up the conditions of sorrow, laid down the im
mortal prerogative and died; I do not deny that you
may touch the springs of wonder and delight, and that a
burst of thankfulness may break his ice-bound spirit and
set it free. Gratitude for an immense personal benefit
is the first affection of which a low and selfish mind is
susceptible; its very selfishness rendering an act of
generosity in another the more surprising. The pas
sionate emotion thus awakened may certainly tear him
�41
from his prison; and as the object to which your fiction
conducts him is the Jesus Christ of sacred history, that
sublime and holy being, the gentle and winning type of
God’s own perfectness, it will be strange if the false and
immoral grounds of his first homage are not insensibly
exchanged for a veneration purer and more disinterested.
As it is sometimes easiest at the moment to cure a mor
bid patient by a trick, the immediate case of many souls
may be met by this disenchanting legerdemain ; but not
without the cost inseparable from untruth. The great
doctrine of mediation is here corrupted by a complete
inversion of its truth. There are two parts of our nature
essential to our first approaches to God; the Imagination
places him before us as an object of conception external
to the mind ; the Conscience interprets his personal rela
tions of communion with ourselves. The first of these
emphatically needs a mediator; the function of the
second perishes, the moment he appears. We cannot trust
the representative faculty of our nature whose pencil
of design varies with the scope of Reason, and whose
colours change with the moods and lights of Passion, to
go direct to the sheet of heaven, and show us the Al
mighty there: else, what watery ghost, or what glaring
image, might we not have of the Eternal Providence ?
Only through what has been upon earth can we safely
look to what is in heaven, through historical to divine
perfection; and by keeping the eye intently fixed on the
highest and most majestic forms in which living minds
have ever actually revealed their thoughts and ways, we
have a steady type, with hues that do not change or fly, of
the great source of souls. Jesus of Nazareth, the centre of
the scattered moral possibilities of history, is thus media
tor to our imagination between God and man. On the
�other hand, we cannot allow the Conscience to resign for
an instant its native right of immediate contact and au
dience with God: to delegate the privilege is treason;
and to quit his eye is death. Yet the current theology
reverses this. The imagination of the offender, at the
very instant that it is throwing out the fire and smoke
of conscious guilt, is invited to paint its own unmediated
image of the Most High, and rely upon the terrible pic
ture with unquestioning faith; and while the corrupted
fancy is thus sustained in its audacity, the shuddering
Conscience is encouraged in its cowardice, and allowed
to hand over its burthen to a mediator, under pretence
of forfeited approach. Who says, that the sinner must
fly the terror of the Lord? I say, he must face the
terror of the Lord, and instead of blasting it will only
melt him then. You say, he dares not tell his tale and
cannot pray ? Then, I answer, not yet is he true and
contrite; and it is not his humility, but the little speck
of insincerity still spoiling it, that asks for a mediator.
He must accept his whole abasement; must desire, not
to escape, but to endure, his woe •, must not even hang
the head and veil the face before God; but look full up
into the eye of infinite Purity, and, as he disburthens
himself, seek its most piercing glance, that nothing may
escape. Nothing but truth can appear before God ; but
the truth always can appear, and loses its very nature in
parting with its rights to an intercessor. And, as dread
ed duties are apt in the performance to surprise us by
their lightness, so the moment the soul lies thus exposed
and transparent before God, he appears terrible no more a
the dark reserve thrown from the heart seems to sweep
away the cloud from him; and he shines upon us, not
indeed with the sudden blaze of clearance after storm,
�43
but with the affectionateness of an eternal constancy.
We have trusted him, and he is distant no more; we
are emancipated into sympathy with his pure nature;
the old aspirations find way again ; and instead of look
ing at him with outside recoil, we go up into his glory,
losing ourselves once more in those positive admirations
and desires for perfection, which are the very glow of his
spirit, and which, far more than any passionate gratitude
for personal benefits, are fitted to restore our union with
him. And in this crisis it is that the repentant eye, now
purified by tears, turns with infinite refreshment from the
false forms that have beguiled it, to rest on Christ, as the
divine depositary of the sanctity we have lost and seek
again ; and that the ear feels the deep sweetness of that
call, “ Come unto me, ye weary and heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest.”
Now to give this humiliating self-knowledge, to open
the sources of remorse, to prevent its lingering into
morbid and credulous woe, to cause every film of pride
and fear to drop away, and bring the penitent to make
a clear heart before God, is the proper aim and function
of a Church; which thus humanises, while it sanctifies,
and uses our own sins as ground for pity to others, not
others’ as excuses for our own. In the early Christian
societies, penitents were recognised and distinguished as
a class,—a practice which, however needed in evil times
as a check to apostacy, could have no place now, without
drawing fines of classification not truly distinguishing
the characters of men. In later times, the still more
dangerous practice of confession to a human—yet hardly
human, because a sacerdotal—ear, bears witness to the
boundless power of repentance in the heart of Christen
dom. Perhaps the reaction into the jealous individuality
�44
of modern times, in which each soul not only repels the
intrusion, but declines the sympathy of another, has been
carried beyond the point of natural equilibrium. At
least it is not natural that, in fraternities under common
vows of Christian obligation, flourishing selfishness should
often hold a higher place than humble sanctity; and un
repaired, therefore impenitent, injustice should lift its
head unabashed amid indulgent worshippers. Surely the
power of rebuke is too much lost in an easy indifference;
the estimates of the world,—ranging greatly by outward
fortune and condition,—have extravagantly encroached
on those of the Church, which can look only to internal
soundness and affluence of soul. That is not a true com
munity of disciples, in which a collective Christian opinion
does not make itself felt by at least some silent and sig
nificant expression. So long as the trumpet gives an
uncertain sound, who will prepare himself for the battle ?
By its revelations of self-knowledge, its echo to the voice
of self-reproach; by its suggestion of a restorative dis
cipline ; by its appeal to that faith in infinite possi
bilities which alone sustains the burthen of penitential
self-denial; by leading the soul at once to suffer, to
aspire, and to love much,—must every Church of Christ
pour into the energy of endeavour, the lowly spirit of
humiliation.
Side by side with this sad Angel of the Soul stands
another, with look of equal meekness, only clear of shame :
and the small fair light in her hand, shining a few steps
into the dark around, is the lamp of
Trust.—The companion Spirits of which we have
hitherto spoken preside over the work and temper of
the Conscience in its relation to God; and they would
still have to stand upon their watch, though the soul
�45
(were such a thing possible) lived in empty space, in
mere private audience with its Creator. But now comes
before it another object, forcing it to look a different
way, and pressing for some orderly interpretation;—
viz., Nature or the outward Universe. To a mind that,
through moral experience, has already begun its life with
God, the glorious spectacle of the heavens and the earth
will instantly appear divine: the voice of the waters and
the winds, the procession of the sun and stars, the moun
tain’s everlasting slopes, smiling upwards with pastures
till they frown in storms,—will seem the expressions of
Eternal Thought. Well would it be if this first absorp
tion of nature into the substance of faith enabled them
permanently to grow harmoniously together. But the
universe, which ought to be the abode, becomes to us the
rival, of the living and indwelling God. Its inflexible
steadiness, its relentless march, so often crushing beneath
the wheels of a blind law the fairest flowers of beauty and
the unripened fruits of patient hope, look so unlike the
free movements of a living and loving mind, that the
decrees impressed on finite matter begin to contest the
sway of the Infinite Spirit. Other sorrows than any
mentioned yet,—sorrows not merited or self-incurred,—
and which even fancy cannot plausibly link with any sin,
come upon us; and as we cannot sincerely meet them
with humiliation, we need some other guide from infidel
despair. The order of Cause and Effect crosses and con
flicts with the order of Moral Law. This is plainly seen
in the history of the physical sciences-; whose exclusive
pursuit first lowers the conception of God to that of the
primal force, or at best the scientific director of creation;
and then lapses, consistently enough, into a fatalistic
atheism. And the same thing is keenly felt in that in
�46
explicable distribution of suffering in human life, which,
in every age, has perplexed the faith and saddened the
love, of hearts not alien to God. How must this contro
versy be ended in our souls, between the physical God
omnipotent in nature, and the holy God who reveals himself in Conscience ? I will not say here what may be the
solution which the thoughtful may draw from a devout
Philosophy; only that it must be one which charges no
evil upon God. Whatever cannot be glorified into good,
let it be referred, so far as it is not from the human
will, to that negative datum, that shapeless assemblage
of conditions, which constitute the ground of the Creator’s
work; but it must be withheld on any terms from him
who is the perfectly and only Good. He must be ever
worshipped, not as the source, but as the antagonist, of
ill; the august and ever-living check to its desolating
power, who never rides upon the whirlwind, but that he
may curb the storm. It is only in this view that He can
have pity on our sorrows; for who could pity the sufferings
which he himself, without the least necessity, invents and
executes ? That cry on Calvary, “ My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?”—was it not a cry for rescue,
■—rescue as from a foreign foe, from a power ^divine ?
And did it not then burst from One who felt the anguish
of that hour as the inrush of a tide from which the barrier
of God’s volition had withdrawn ? And so the faith
which gave way in that momentary cry is just the oppo
site of this; a faith that no evil is let loose without his
will; that he knows the utmost it can do, keeps it ever
in his eye, and will yield to it no portion of his holy and
affectionate designs; that he has considered all our case,
and will not fail to bring it out clear, if we are true to
him. Trust has no other bearable meaning than this; for
�47
else it would only say that God, being the unquestionable
cause of evil, is not malicious in producing it, and would
thus merely silence a doubt impossible in a Christian,
aud scarcely pardonable in the grossest heathenism.
Trust therefore in the ascendancy of divine Thought and
Affection in the universe, serene confidence in their per
fect victory, I take to be the essence of the Christian faith
respecting nature. The particular thought of God that
may be hid amid events, moulding their forms and pre
paring their tissues for some growth of incomparable
beauty, it may be impossible to trace; but He is there
and never leaves his everlasting work; which is the same
in the shrine of conscience, in the mind of Christ, and
through the sphere of universal nature.
Now to interpret life and all visible things in the spirit
of this Trust; to raise the mind oppressed by the sense
of material necessity: to meet the tendencies towards
passiveness and despair, and, for the consolation of
memory and the kindling of hope, show where the order,
not of a hard mechanism, but of beauty, love and good
ness is everywhere enthroned;—this also is the duty of a
Church. In this relation we must contradict the doc
trine of mere science, which proclaims Force, rather than
Thought, as the source of all: we must counteract its
purely causal and fatalistic explanations -, must detain in
the living present, that God whom it would allow to re
cede indefinitely into the Past, and must lean upon Him
as the nearest to us in our weakness, the most loving in our
sadness, and the Rock beneath our feet in our alarms.
We agree together to sustain each other in this sacred
trust; to withstand the godless doubts and grievings
suggested by our lower mind; to defy nature’s inexorable
Laws to disguise for us the supernatural light and love
f 2
�48
within; and to feel the hardest matter of life, as well as
the severest work of conscience, burning at heart with his
dear spirit.
This triple group, however, of Endeavour, Humiliation,
and Trust, are never found apart from a sister Spirit, in
whose features you trace more human lineaments, and in
whose hand is borne the lamp of
Service.—An individual mind, alone in the universe
with God, might hold the latent germs of all that is
human, and yet, in that solitude, could hardly enter,
perhaps, on the real experience of endeavour, humiliation,
or trust. It is only amid other minds, in the reflection
of eye upon eye and soul upon soul, that we so read our
impulses, and decipher our inspirations, as to be really
capable of the religious life. Society, which opens the
sphere of mutual sympathy, touches also the springs of
reverence and worship. And I entreat you to notice
how it is that the companionship of our fellows operates
to bring out these individual affections. We hear much
in this connexion about the natural equality of souls, implied in their common source and common work and
common end, and are referred to this evident brother
hood as the true basis of both fraternal love to one
another and filial acknowledgment of God. And, no
doubt, this identity of spiritual nature is indispensable to
all sympathy and all devotion ;—not, however, as their
positive and exciting cause, but only as their negative
condition. Like only can comprehend like: and if the
being next me had not the same nature and the same
kces with myself, I should have no key by which
\ him; he would belong to an unintelligible
id fellow-feeling could have no place. But the
here required is not in the minds as they are,
�49
only as they might be. Their circles of possibility must
coalesce; the same capacities must sleep within them,
and the same Law must rule over them. This similitude
of kind, the silent assumption of which lies in all our
affections, merely expresses an ultimate and unrealized
tendency, to which present and actual facts will continually
approximate. Meanwhile, these facts present a very dif
ferent picture;—not of resemblance between man and
man, but of variety so vast and contrast so startling, as
almost to perplex our faith in the unity of nature. Now
it is precisely this inequality of souls which is the positive
awakener of all our higher affections. No man could love
or venerate in a universe stocked with mere repetitions of
himself; the endless portrait would be a barren weari
ness. He pities what is below him in happiness : he re
veres what is above him in excellence: he loves what is
different from him in beauty. His affections rest on
those whom he blesses and those who bless him,—on his
clients and his God. At the shock of lower lives and the
startling spectacle of higher, he is driven to moral recoil
and drawn to moral aspiration; in the one case invested
with armour for the resistance of evil, in the other
equipped with wings to soar after the good. Whatever
is purer and nobler in another than in ourselves opens to
us a new possibility, and wields over us a new authority;
and thus it is that, ascending through the gradations of
souls which culminate in Christ, we find ourselves carried
thence at a bound over the chasm between finite and in
finite, and present at the feet of the Most High, saying,
“ Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints; who
shall not fear Thee, 0 Lord, and glorify thy name, for
Thou only art holy ! ”
It is therefore precisely through the diversity of minds
�50
that the unity of the Divine law reveals and asserts itself
within us; and the common end of life to all is felt. And
it is on this same inequality of souls that Christianity, as
a religion of love and mutual aid, builds all its work. On
the one hand, the strong must bend to the weak; and on
the other, the weak look up to the strong. In both
cases there is self-denial,—self-renunciation from pity, in
the former,—from obedience, in the other. In both there
is reverence for what is divine ■ with the one, for a god
like capacity in the low; with the other, for a godlike
reality in the lofty. When the differing ranks of minds
read off their relations in these opposite directions, the
whole compass of Christian service is given. Within the
Church therefore the eye must be trained to discern this
rank, the affections to own it, the will to obey it. Dis
guised under a like exterior of life are souls divided by
immeasureable intervals; and it is strange and even ter
rible to think what secret differences lurk beneath the
common gloss and gaiety of the same assembled numbers.
How superficial is the kindred of the utterly earthly, who
sees no reality but in the means of ease, the course of
material interests, and the colours thrown up by the
shifting game of external life; with the saintly sufferer,
before whom these flit as unsubstantial shadows, and
nothing is real but the spirit-drama that is enacting in
the midst and the great Will that plays the everlasting
part. Yet we often move about where both of them are
found, and speak with them face to face, and believe them
much alike. Can we not catch from our Lord, who
looked with divine perception straight into the heart of
the widow and the Samaritan, some portion of that in
sight which detects the heroes and despises the impostors
of the present ? Why should we leave it to history to
�51
find out and glorify the good? If they are with us, they
are the most precious of all God’s gifts; let us know
them ere they die, and feel that the earth is sacred where
they tread. Above all, in every Church, the only classi
fication known should be of character and age : and in
using these as grounds of mutual service, provision should
be made for teaching the child, for lifting the suffering,
for confirming the weak, and for supplying duties pro
portioned to the strength of the strong.
And while this angel of Service stands to her watch, a
glorious Spirit is at her side and closes the train; with
an undying flame from her lamp of
Communion.—The relations of service are far from
being limited to the present and its intercourses. Our
life is but the focus of living light into which the Past
and the Future condense their interests. The ranks of
minds by which we help each other, run up both the di
rections of time, and cover the two worlds of mortals and
immortals. We are ourselves disciples of an ancient and
a foreign prophet; and as we pronounce the word
“ Christian,” we feel the spark of his transmitted inspi
ration uniting us with a long chain of generations, and
fusing Christendom into one life and one Church. We
are disciples also of an ascended prophet; nor is it pos
sible for any one to bow down in soul before the divine
law of which he has made us conscious, to burn with the
aspirations which it kindles, and touch upon the peace of
entire surrender, without feeling assured that he is created
on the scale of immortality, and that the risen Christ is
indeed, as the Scripture saith, the head of an immortal
host. It is a faith which fails chiefly to those, who, in
looking at human fife, miss its grandest elements, and
are little familiar with the highest and characteristic
�52
features of our nature. Ask the confidants of great
souls,—the bosom-friends of the holy,—and they will tell
you that life eternal is the only lot at all natural to the
children of the Highest. And the more you grow faith
ful to your own most solemn experience, and learn to
trust your noblest love, the more will that amazing pros
pect assume proportion to the terms of your daily thought.
The happy instinct of purified affections is ever one of
hope and ready faith. And when I simply remember
what faculties, what conceptions, what insight, are im
plied in a being to whom a Church is possible at all; when
I think what a scene in the universe must be opened to
a mind ere it can pray; when I reflect how the Infinite
God must estimate one whom He thinks it worth while to
put on trial amid the theatre of free souls;—all sense of
difficulty recedes from the Christian doctrine of an here
after ; all rules drawn from other races of creatures sink
absolutely away; and man appears no less ennobled
above them than if, like the Angel of the “ Revelations,”
he were standing in the sun. Under the influence of
this truth, the natural kindred of souls is infinitely
extended and deepened; exalted into independence of
change ; and glorified by the hope of sympathy and con
nexions ever fresh. The blessed family of God colonises,
not only the banks of the time-stream that passes by, but
the Alpine heights from which it flows, and the blessed
isles of the ocean to which it tends.
This sense of Communion between all ages and both
worlds, it is the business of a Church to cherish. Within
its walls, and by its ways, must the mind be surrounded
by the atmosphere in which this faith may thrive and
grow,—this family tradition of noble souls be guarded
and handed down. For this end, neither the mediation
�53
of argument nor the directness of authority will avail so
much as the just and holy discipline of the conscience
and affections. To nurture the love of greatness and
goodness in the past; to awaken confidence in the intui
tive estimates of the pure and pious heart; to glorify the
dark places of the world with some light of thought and
love; to vindicate the sanctity of death against the pre
tensions of its physical features, and penetrate its awful
spaces with the glow of prayer and hope;—is the true
method of clearing away the mists from holy expectation,
and realising the communion of Saints.
See then in complete array, the five wise Spirits of the
soul that must stand through the night of the Bride
groom’s tarrying, with their ever-constant lights of En
deavour, Humiliation, Trust, Service, and Communion.
To maintain them at their vigils is the proper end of
every Church that would maintain the Christian attitude
of life. Am I asked, by some theologic wanderer, what
then is special to this Church ? I say, chiefly this, that
these five lamps, and these alone, we believe to be held
in angel hands, and fed with the eternal aliment of truth;
nor will they ever give of their oil to nurture the emptied
lamps, which many foolish servitors of the bridegroom
have brought, and which now are flickering with their
last flame, and expiring in the smoke of error. A pretty
late hour in the watches of this world has struck: many
of the interests and controversies that once dazzled with
their flame have been self-consumed: and when, to find
how the night rolls, we look up to heaven and observe
the altered place and half-inverted form of the eternal
constellations, we know that a morning hour is drawing
on. It behoves every Christian Church to be awake and
set itself in order for a coming age, in which, as I beG
�54
heve, the strife will be something very different from that
whence existing churches obtain their several names. It
is not without some view to that Future of the Church
that I have called the five Spirits, spirits of the soul, and
have shown them to you as they rise from our nature
itself. I might with equal truth have called them cha
racteristics of Christianity, and have evoked them by
appeal to Scripture, and the analysis of Christian history.
But we are on the verge of a time, when the mere use
of an external authority, however just and moderate its
application, will cease to be of much hearty avail; and
only those elements either of Scripture or of Christian
history will have any chance of reverent preservation,
which find interpretation and response in the deeper ex
perience of Man. Whoever keeps fearlessly true to these
may feel secure; but none can say what else will survive
the perils of the present and the coming time. What mean
the strange movements of Catholicism on the one side,
and a pantheistic Socialism on the other, between which
every form of mere Protestantism is growing weaker, day
by day? Are they not a reaction against the extreme
individuality, the disintegrating tendency, of modern
Christianity ; whose unions, born in the transient enthu
siasm of reformation, cannot maintain themselves against
the habits of freedom they have created, or live upon the
dogmas they refuse to change ? Are they not both an
attempt, only prosecuted in opposite directions, to re
cover some centre of human cohesion, more powerful
than interest or judgment, around which the scattered
sympathies and dissipated energies of society may be
collected? In this common quest, the one reproduces
an authority dear to the Memory of Christendom, the
other pours out prophecies dazzling to the Hopes of all
�55
men; the one adorns the old earth, the other paints a
new. The field seems clearing fast to make room for
these great rivals; and in their mutual position the signs
are not few, that they portend a mightier contest than
Europe has seen for many an age. The hosts are already
visibly mustering. On the one hand the venerable
Genius of a Divine Past goes round with cowl and Cro
zier ; and from the Halls of Oxford and the Cathedrals
of Europe gathers, by the aspect of ancient sanctity and
the music of a sweet eloquence and the praises of conse
crated Art, a vast multitude of devoted crusaders to fight
with him for the ashes of the Fathers and the sepulchres
of the first centuries. On the other, the young Genius
of a Godless Future, with the serene intensity of meta
physic enthusiasm on his brow, and the burning songs
of liberty upon his lips, wanders through the great cities
of our world, and in toiling workshops and restless col
leges preaches the promise of a golden age, when priests
and kings shall be hurled from their oppressive seat, and
freed humanity, relieved from the incubus of worship,
shall start itself to the proportions of a God. Who shall
abide in peace the crash and conflict of this war ? He
only, I believe, whose allegiance is neither to the anti
quated Past, nor to the speculative Future; but to the
imperishable, the ever-present Soul of man as it is; who
keeps close, amid every change, to the reality of human
nature which changes not; and who, following chiefly
the revelations of the Divine will to the open and con
scious mind, and reading Scripture, history, and life, by
their interpreting light, feels the serenity and rests on
the stability of God.
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�THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND CHURCH OE THE
EIRST-BORN.
A SERMON,
PREACHED IN
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL,
ON
SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
By CHARLES WICKSTEED, B.A.,
MINISTER OF MILL-HILL CHAPEL, LEEDS.
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�A
SERMON.
Hebrews xii. 22-24.
“ But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innu
merable company of angels, to the general assembly and
church of the first-born, which are written in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new
covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh
better things than that of Abel
Of all the desires of the present time, there is no one
more profound and general than the desire for Christian
unity, communion, and fellowship. Indeed, the craving
for agreement, for, as it were, spiritual identity, for the
support in conviction, and the comfort from conviction,
that according numbers seem to imparty has characterised
the history of Christianity through it^whole extent. On
this has been founded the determination of the Roman
Catholic Church, to preserve at all costs, at costs often
most painful to itself, its spiritual and formal unity : and
in this have originated the imitative efforts of the various
protesting churches which have sprung from it.
h 2
�60
But taught by the experience of ages, taught by the
resolute and the ever-recurring intellectual differences
of mankind, the unity at which, for the most part, the
present age is aiming, is a unity of feeling, a fellowship
of labour, a communion of love. The old desire for
unity took the form of Proselytism. Each Church sup
posing itself to be constructed especially and exclusively
after the heavenly type, it could realise no other and no
better unity than the conversion of all mankind to its
standards, and the introduction of the whole race within
the veil of its Temple. Much of this aim and expecta
tion is to be met with still. The Roman Catholic Priest
goes about, hoping to bring his Protestant neighbours
back into the true faith, and rejoicing in the prospect
which he thinks begins to dawn, that unity may be yet
achieved in England, by the return of the Church and
the nation into spiritual submission to the Papal See.
The clergyman of the English Church may still be found,
ignoring the existence of Dissent in his parish, talking of
the number of souls under his care, of spiritual destitu
tion, of there being only one church or two churches,
one school or two schools, in such and such a population,
while there may be an equal number of other churches
and other schools maintained for Eke holy purposes, but
to whose very existence, as they are not within his spiri
tual precincts, he chooses to be blind.
But though these are very important phenomena, and
show that the old dream of the outward comprehension
of all the inhabitants of a country under the same forms
and symbols, in the bosom of the same outward Church,
is being dreamed among us still; yet such is not the
tendency of the general and independent elements of
society. The liberal churchman is beginning to regard
�61
his Church as a religious community among religious
communities, and only desires permission for it to take
and keep its ground, as others are to take and keep theirs
too. The Wesleyan probably never did regard his con
ference or association as the ultimate or general form of
Christian government and fellowship, but if he ever did
so he must now be taught, by the rapid course of events,
to regard this view of it as untenable. The Independent
earnestly struggles for his theory of Congregationalism;
but so far is that theory from tending to a comprehen
sion within the limits of one outward Church and For
mulary, that it rests upon the basis of the independence
of each society. Added to these signs of hopelessness of,
or indifference to, universal dominion on the part of the
separate bodies, is the increasing desire to unite on prin
ciples which are sufficiently wide, and for purposes which
are sufficiently general, to allow each body to retain its
own peculiar standing-point.
The modern desire of union and of fellowship, then,
takes the form, not so much of proselytism as of com
prehension ; is founded, not so much on the expectation
of bringing all communions into one Church, as of bring
ing all Churches into one communion. It is distinguished
by the effort, while seeing the points of difference, to
discover the points of agreement, and, while recognising
the right of intellectual and theological variety, to bring
out into practical relief the reality of a moral harmony.
The organisations by which it has been attempted to
combine parties otherwise differing, for the expression of
some common feeling or the achievement of some common
object, however imperfect in their conception, or incom
plete in their accomplishment, are indications of the ex
istence of this desire. Contemplated in this light, the
�62
Evangelical Alliance itself is not without its interest!
For, whatever may be its exclusions, and whatever its
narrowness, it yet at least attempts to penetrate through
the mere Episcopalianism of the Churchman, the mere
Congregationalism of the Independent, the mere Me
thodism of the Wesleyan, to a common Christianity,
deeper and more vital than anything involved in these
points (important as in themselves they may be), and so
far even this, in many respects exclusive and limited,
association bears witness to the growing desire of our
times for peace combined with liberty, independence
combined with concord, and the love of truth combined
with the love of each other.
But besides this tendency towards a larger compre
hension and wider terms of union, there is a growing
dislike in most bodies, of denunciation and virulence.
The firm adhesion of a man to that Church or that Body
which is to him the depository of the purest forms of
truth, is a subject of genuine respect. But there is
less and less disposition to approve of the peculiari
ties of that division being made all-important, and
theological intolerance has now to be combined with
some striking practical excellence or moral power to
be itself tolerated. The working classes of our large
towns especially look upon the struggles and animosi
ties of sects with indifference, and even with disgust,
regarding that man as the best man who lives the best
life, and that man as the purest Christian who most re
sembles his Lord.
Two things have principally contributed to this ten
dency : First, the growing disposition to ask what are
the essentials of Christianity, and to separate from these
the adjuncts or modifications which the convictions of
�each body require it, in its own case, to make. Accord
ing to the breadth or narrowness, the grandeur or petti
ness, of our estimate of these essentials, will be the cha^
racter for comprehensiveness or exclusiveness of the
Church we found upon them. Thus, if to submit to the
authority of a particular Church be necessary to the right
reception of the Christian faith, then the essential element
of unity is conformity. If the essentials of Christianity
be a set of theological propositions laid down in a special
ecclesiastical symbol, then there is no such thing as a
Christian Church comprehending all, but only a Christian
sect requiring that all shall belong to her. But if the
essentials of Christianity are found out to be not in the
things which distinguish Churches so much as in that
which is common to all, then we may worship with a
liturgy or without a liturgy, under the ceiling of a meet
ing-house or the roof of a church, under the ministry of
clergymen ordained by Bishops, or ordained by Presby
ters, or ordained bv the voice of God in their own consciences, and in their people’s choice; the essentials of
Christianity will be alike within the reach of us all: and
there may on earth be found such a thing as free thought
combined with a common heart, individual liberty with
universal charity, and Christ may say unto us all, “ I am
the vine, ye are the branches.”
The second thing which has contributed to this desire
for Christian union, and a perception of its possibility, is
the influence of good men; the natural, catholicising
tendency of their Christian tempers, and their holy-lives.
Persons who have been in the habit of supposing belief
in certain doctrines essential to Christian character and
Christian salvation, are startled from their position by the
discovery that certain men, whose lives and characters
�64
they venerate for their purity and goodness, and about
whose salvation it is impossible for them to doubt, do
not believe all these supposed essentials. These truly
good men rise up before them in every branch of the
Church; live long, holy, and beneficent lives ; manifest
the fruits of sincere truth-loving and heavenly hearts;
and they cannot possibly conceive of such men being
driven from the presence of their God, and living in the
eternal sorrows of his displeasure.
In asking, then, who are the true Church below, we
find a very good guidance in the light reflected from this
other question, who are the true Church above ? In in
quiring whom we should consider our brethren and fellowChristians here, our greatest help will be found in the
answer of our hearts to the question, who are likely to be
of the general assembly and church of the first-born
hereafter ?
Thus there grows up, almost unconsciously, within
every man whose heart is open to the signs of human
excellence wherever discerned, a sort of Church of the
Soul, very different in its filling up and in its limitations
from any of the fixed ecclesiastical divisions around us,
which we exclusively call Churches. And we find our
selves anticipating as it were the conditions of heaven
and the judgment of God, in settling (not indeed to the
satisfaction of the logician, but in obedience to the
yearnings of our own hearts) what are the essentials of
Christian Faith and Life on earth, and who are the chil
dren of the kingdom here.
It will be my object, then, to-night, with a single eye
to the end I have in view, and without scrupling to
employ any plainness of statement which I may find
necessary to my purpose—to bring this test before your
�good sense, your conscience, and your affections, in the
most palpable form I can command.
Let us, then, vary the ordinary tenor of address, and the
customary appeals of argument and demonstration, and
inquire for Christianity by inquiring for our fellowChristians, and for the essential faith of Jesus Christ by
inquiring for the general assembly and church of the
first-born in heaven.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, a young
French ecclesiastic of extraordinary piety and virtue com
menced his career of public duty with the charge of a
seminary devoted to those who had been newly converted
to that branch of the Christian Church of which he was
himself a conscientious member. Subsequently, he went
into an unhealthy and desolate district where the greatest
cruelties had been practised against those whom he was
now desired to convert. The first demand he made of
the king was, that all armies should be removed from
the district, and that all persecution and oppression
should immediately cease. He then set himself to the
task of recovering the wanderers by kindness and per
suasion to the bosom of that Church from which they had
strayed. He lived a long life, but when removed from
that district, he watched over it and all others similarly
circumstanced, and whenever he heard of harshness and
severity sent his remonstrance to the seat of power.
From this post of duty he was removed to the most
fascinating and brilliant court of Europe. He was made
tutor to a boy of great ability, but almost ungovernable
pride and passion, but of whom it was important to the
world that he should create an accomplished man and a
virtuous Christian, for he was heir to one of the greatest
monarchies of the earth. Here, amidst his pupil’s bursts
�66
of passion, he maintained an unbending dignity, and the
proud boy soon learned to weep before him for his sins,
to drink in his instructions with eagerness, to delight in
him and to love him. Here royalty, too, received his
calm but intrepid rebuke, and power acknowledged his
sincere independence.
He was raised, but by no arts or efforts of his own, to
an archbishopric. Here the still piety, which was part
of his nature, was misapprehended. His principles and
his doctrines were misinterpreted and condemned. A
storm of calumny gathered round him. The smile of
royalty was converted into a frown, the arm of patronage
was changed into a weapon of offence—friendship turned
away from him—that Church which he had so sincerely
served, began to regard him as her enemy—and the re
vered head of it slowly and unwillingly pronounced his
condemnation. In the midst of all this (gentle, suscep
tible, modest as was his nature), he held fast to his in
tegrity. Immersed in a wearisome, protracted contro
versy, he preserved throughout his courage undaunted,
and his charity unchilled. “ God, who is the witness
of my thoughts,” says he to one of his greatest adver
saries, “ knows that, though differing with you in opi
nion, I still continue to revere you, to preserve unceas
ingly my respect, and to deplore the bitterness of this
contention.”
In the midst, and in the pauses of this storm, he was
performing the duties of his See with exemplary fidelity.
A peace-maker among the divided, a rebuker of the
dissolute, an encourager of the deserving, a father to the
poor: surrounded by the pomp of a princedom, he lived
the life of simplicity. The humblest village pulpit in his
diocese knew the sound of his voice, and the presence of
�67
his care. He would sit down in his walks with the
rustic on the grass, and utter his pure words of counsel.
He would daily have his almoners around him, to mi
nister to the necessitous; and when the evening hour
set in, he was found with his household in prayer.
Throughout all these labours, sorrows, and painful re
membrances, his only recreation was to walk. His con
versation was directed to instruction. “ I have still fresh
in my recollection,” says one, “ all the serious and im
portant subjects which were the topics of our discourse;
my ear caught with eagerness every word that issued
from his lips: his letters are still before me, and they
bespeak the purity of his sentiments, and the wisdom of
his principles. I preserve them among my papers, as
the most precious treasure which I have in the world.”
His sense of friendship was intense and pure. “ Good
friends,” says he, “ are a dangerous treasure in life; in
losing them we lose too much. I dread the charms of
friendship. Oh 1 how happy shall we be, if, hereafter,
we are together before God, loving each other in his
love, and rejoicing only in his joy, and no longer exposed
to separation.” At length the hour of death approached
him. He lay thinking of his friends, his flock, and his
Church; receiving the consolations of his faith—hearing
the selected words of the Scripture, and saying, “ Repeat
—repeat to me those holy words again.” He died as he
had lived, in sanctity—all his goods given to his stu
dents, to his clergy, to his guests, to works of piety, and
to the poor.
This man was a Roman Catholic—his name was
Fenelon.
In our own country, and nearer our own time, at the be
ginning of the present century, in a county bordering on
�68
the Principality of Wales, there resided, in a not ignoble
condition of life, a true servant of God, who took under
his care the spiritual and the temporal wants of an ex
tensive but humble neighbourhood. Diligent in busi
ness, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, he watched with
anxiety over the morals, the faith, and the happiness of
those about him. Frank and cheerful in his manners
and habits, he was full of an earnest piety. He thought
that the strictness which made no distinction between
things absolutely immoral, and things that were innocent,
or blameable only in their abuse, was prejudicial to the
interests of sincerity and religion. He was so absolutely
simple and good-natured, from the innocence of his own
heart, so little prone to consider how others might view
him, when he saw and meant no evil—that people who
were accustomed to judge of seriousness of character by
habitual length of countenance, scarcely appreciated the
religiousness of his soul, as it really lay deeply within him.
From a child he was devout. When in circumstances
of danger his mother was in alarm, the infant monitor
beside her said, “ Be still, mother; God will protect us.”
The generous liberality which compelled his parents,
when sending him to school, to sew up his money in his
pocket, lest he should give it all away upon the road,
tempered with the wiser judgment of the man, continued
with him in maturity. When the poor came to speak
to him, he always, if possible, went out to them immediately, for he said, “ the time of the poor is very valu
able to them; besides, they are more sensitive to any
apparent inattentions.”
In the midst of all this simplicity and goodness, he
was courted by the great for his talents, and for the fas
cination of his company, and his connexions opened out
�69
to him the prospect of a brilliant and distinguished
career. But there was one subject which pre-eminently
engaged his interests, away from the engagements im
mediately around him. He thought much of the super
stitions, ignorance, neglect and misery in which lands at
a distance lay under the reign of Heathenism. He heard
of a Brahmin who had gone to die on the banks of his
sacred river—but to whom a British officer had given
nourishment, and whom he had thus saved. The Brah
min lost caste by this occurrence, was avoided by his
own countrymen, became dependent on the British offi
cer, and each day, as he came for his subsistence, cursed
the hand that had saved his miserable life. “ Now,”
said he, “ if I could only rescue one such miserable crea
ture from this wretched superstition, I should think
myself repaid for any sacrifice.”
The dear claims of neighbourhood, friendship, old
family associations, and old familiar habits—the still
dearer claims of his relationship, as father, husband, bro
ther, son—made him pause for a moment, but at length he
accepted the arduous and honourable post that was as
signed him in the eastern continent. Bor three or four
years he laboured in that fatal clime, travelling from
region to region, initiating and confirming in the mild
faith of the Gospel, raising the character, and stimu
lating the zeal, of the Christian population, elevating the
condition of the natives, noticing and remonstrating
against their oppression or neglect, founding schools for
their instruction, and endeavouring to bring the blessings
of justice in their own tongue into their own neighbour
hoods, till at length he killed himself by the labours that
were too great for his strength, and left a Church in
India sorrowing as for a father.
�70
That man was a Bishop of the English Church
—his name was Reginald Heber.
An upholsterer in London had an only son. Having
been successful in his business he left him considerable
property. With this the son greatly enlarged an origi
nally small estate, lived among his tenantry, and devoted
himself to their good. The neighbourhood being un
healthy, he drained it—the cottages being badly con
structed, he rebuilt them—the people being ignorant, he
opened and supported schools. He encouraged the habit
of attending religious instructions, and warned all those
about him from places of intemperate or dissolute resort.
His health being delicate, from the commencement of
manhood he had often travelled for its improvement.
On one of these occasions, attracted by the mournful in
cident which had left Lisbon in the ruins of an earth
quake, his course was directed to the shores of Portugal.
He was seized, when on the waters, flung into captivity,
and confined in the nauseous dungeon of a jail in France.
Here, meat was flung to himself and his fellow-captives
as to dogs; they had no instruments wherewith to cut it,
and they gnawed it off the bone in the ravenousness of
their hunger. In the midst of the horrors of this capti
vity, he excited a most remarkable feeling of reliance
on his honour—was presently permitted to be at large
upon his word—and finally was sent home on the express
condition that he would return to his confinement in
France, if the English government refused to liberate a
French naval officer in his place. This promise he would
have fulfilled, if the government of his own country had
not, by their compliance with the conditions, rendered
his return unnecessary.
Years rolled by, and his life was marked by the same
�attributes of sobriety, virtue, religiousness and benevo
lence, with the addition of great efforts on behalf of cap
tives of war, with whose fate and sufferings he could now
so acutely sympathize—till he was made High Sheriff of
his county. In this official capacity he was, at Assize
time, to be met with in the prison, examining into the
condition and government of its every part, even to its
inmost cell. “ The distress of prisoners,” he says, “ of
which there are few who have not some imperfect idea,
came more immediately under any notice, when I was
Sheriff of the county of Bedford; and the circumstance
which excited me to activity in their behalf was, the see
ing some, who by the verdict of juries were declared not
guilty; some, in whom the grand jury did not find such
an appearance of guilt as subjected them to trial; and
some, whose prosecutors did not appear against them;
after having been confined for months, dragged back to
jail, and locked up again till they should pay sundry fees
to the jailer, the clerk of assize, &c. In order to re
dress this hardship, I applied to the justices of the
county, for a salary to the jailer in lieu of his fees. The
Bench were properly affected with the grievance, and
willing to grant the relief desired; but they wanted a
precedent for charging the county with the expense. I
therefore rode into several neighbouring counties in
search of a precedent; but I soon learned that the same
injustice was practised in them; and looking into the
prisons, I beheld scenes of calamity, which I grew daily
more and more anxious to alleviate.”
You know the rest—you know the heroic career of
philanthropy which filled every town and county of Great
Britain, and every country of the world, with the name
of this great social benefactor. Devotedly attached to his
�72
own views of Christian truth, in the work of Christian
benevolence, to him Christian, Mussulman and Hindoo
were all alike ; he would have risked his life to save any.
In a remote province of Russia, stricken by a fever caught
by attendance on another, lay at length the philanthropist,
at the goal of all his earthly labours. In his memoran
dum book he had been writing, “ May I not look on
present difficulties or think of future ones in this world,
as I am but a pilgrim or wayfaring man that tarries but a
night; this is not my home; but may I think what God
has done for me, and rely on his power and grace.”—
“ My soul, remember how often God has sent an answer
of Peace, Mercies in the most seasonable times—how
often better than thy fears, exceeded thy expectations.
Oh! why should I distrust this good and faithful God ?
In His word, He hath said, ‘ In all my ways acknowledge
Him, and He will direct thy path.’ But, Lord! leave me
not to my own wisdom, which is folly, nor to my own
strength, which is weakness. Help me to glorify Thee
on earth, and finish the work Thou givest me to do.”
“ Suffer,” he said to his friends as he was dying, “ suffer
no pomp to be used at my funeral, nor any monument,
nor any monumental inscription whatsoever, to mark
where I am laid: lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun
dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten.” This man
was a Calvinistic Dissenter—his name was Howard.
More than a hundred years ago a pious boy left a
country parsonage, the abode of his father, and entered
the Charter-house school in London. From thence he
went to Christ Church College, Oxford. There he ad
vanced, not only in the learning of the place, but in
habits of Christian seriousness and piety, which were not
of the place. Associating himself with a few others like
�73
minded with himself, they devoted a portion of their
time to a study of the Scriptures and to serious reading.
Always of a moral and religious disposition, he might be
said to have obeyed the commandments from his youth.
But this he soon began to feel was not enough. He
began to visit the sick in prison and the poor in their
homes,- prayed and exhorted; avoided all trifling ac
quaintance ; and commenced the religious observance of
the ancient fasts of the Church, keeping Wednesdays
and Fridays with a distinct religiousness. In the midst
of all this he had much heaviness and fear—was often
weak in his new faith, and of doubtful mind. Yet keep
ing his eye upon his object, he practised abstemiousness—
underwent exposure to sudden changes of climate, heat
and cold, fatigue and dangers, which were, under Pro
vidence, to prepare him for his work. Presently he
stepped forth to awaken a drowsy, careless world, sunk
in sin and sensuality. The conventionalism of society
was shocked.
Though a clergyman of the English
Church, the door of the English Church was shut against
him. But Newgate was open to him; the hill-side, and
the high-way, and the market-place, were free to him;
and submitting to be made thus vile, as he expressed it,
against his own natural taste and liking, he preached
with ardour the word of warning; and while he created
great disquietude of heart in those who heard him, at the
dreadful nature of sin and the just wages of it, he spake
again to the storm and tempest of these souls, and im
mediately there was a great calm.
All these services were not rendered without great
contradiction of sinners. The brutal people rose up
against their benefactor; thereby showing what need
they had of him. Alluding to the gradual growth of
�74
these outrages, he says, “ By how gentle degrees does
God prepare us for his will! Two years ago a piece of
brick grazed my shoulders. It was a year after that a
stone struck me between the eyes. Last month I received
one blow, and this evening two; one before we came
into the town, and one after we were gone out; but both
were as nothing; for though one man struck me on the
breast with all his might, and the other on the mouth
with such a force that the blood gushed out immediately,
I felt no more pain from either of the blows than if they
had touched me with a straw.” At length he was sur
rounded with fellow-labourers in this cause, in this great
and good cause of the conversion of the heathens at home.
He made rules, he organised a society, he appointed dis
tricts, and preachers, and meetings. And he nobly says,
“ The thing which I was greatly afraid of all this time,
and which I resolved to use every possible method of
preventing, was a narrowness of spirit, a party zeal, a
being straitened in our own bowels; that miserable
bigotry which makes many so unready to believe that
there is any work of God but among themselves. I
thought it might be a help against this frequently to read
to all who were willing to hear, the accounts I received
from time to time of the work which God is carrying on
in the earth, both in our own and other countries; not
among us alone, but among those of various opinions and
denominations. For this I allotted one evening in every
month; and I find no cause to repent of my labour: it
is generally a time of strong consolation to those who
love God, and all mankind for his sake, as well as a means
of breaking down the partition-wall which either the craft
of the devil or the folly of men has built up, and of en-<
couraging every child of God to say, ‘ Whosoever doth
�the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my
brother, and sister, and mother.’ ”
No doubt in all this a strong will was manifested, and
was accompanied by the exercise of no little authority.
Considerable means poured in upon him to help him in
the accomplishment of his extensive work. Selfish men
were not slow to attribute to him the baseness which
would have characterised themselves. But death, the
great earthly judge, vindicated his character from this
calumny, for he died possessed of nothing but his
books.
This man, the spiritual father and regenerator of
many thousand souls, was unwillingly the greatest
Schismatic the Church of England has ever known—his
name was Wesley.
I must touch upon two characters I wish still to call
to your remembrance with much less detail. One there
is, the record of whose life must have recently passed
through the hands of many now present, who was worthy
of being enrolled among those women who followed our
Lord unto his death, and ministered to his last necessi
ties. The gentle woman who could throw off the allure
ments of a life of refinement—who could submit to the
distressing demands of public duty upon a shrinking
nature—who could go with her spotless purity into the
midst of the most abandoned of her sex, and appease
the anger and calm the passions of guilty men—to
whom the coarse ribaldry, the loathsome filth, and the
tomb-like uncleanness of soul, which characterised the
inmates of a jail, were no barrier to the sun-like beams
of her penetrating Christian love—that woman—the
observer of no ordinances, the acknowledger of neither
Bishop nor Presbyter, member of neither Protestant
i 2
�76
nor Catholic Church—could not have stood the test of
any of the Churches. She was a Quaker—and her name
was Elizabeth Ery.
It is difficult sometimes to return in memory to the pre
judices, the indifference, and the doubt with which great
works have been regarded in their commencement: it is
difficult to realise the state of feeling which made a given
labour necessary, but which now no longer exists, the very
labour which it called forth having driven it away almost
from our recollections. But the corn of wheat, which
first fell into the ground, abiding now no longer alone,
but bringing forth much fruit, must not be forgotten.
Not many years has the tomb closed over the remains
of a humbler and less known labourer in the vineyard
of God, than any that I have mentioned. Placed in
early life upon one of those streams of social good, the
channels of which Society scoops out for herself, and in
which the majority of her sons are content, and wisely
content, to bear their portion of the freight of human
duty,—he of whom I speak devoted himself to the service
of the Christian ministry. Eor many years he was happy
and content to do the work of an evangelist among his
neighbours and parishioners, shedding the light of a pure
heart upon their daily Eves, healing the bitterness of
their sorrows by the overflowing balsam of his sympathy,
and each week assembling them together to point out to
them again the brightening way of truth and heaven.
At length his heart was smitten with the thought of
those who never saw him, and whom he never saw. Be
hind the goodly array of pure young faces, of sober man
hood, and reverend old age, that stood before him in the
Church—behind the attentive countenances, the cleanly
robes and the decorous manners which the Lord’s day
�weekly called before him—his mind’s eye saw a gather
ing group of guilt, intemperance, and crime—of sorrow
ing, sinning men and women, and of children, with
their tears of pain drying upon their unwashed cheeks.
In the very midst of those who came to him to hear the
sounds of peace and holiness in that happy temple, his
soul filled with the thoughts of those who never came. As
he stood upon the steps of the doors which at his touch
were to throw open to him homes of cheerful innocence
and competence, radiant with a welcome to himself, his
heart grew full and heavy with the remembrance of those
at whose door he never stopped, and who never sat at
good men’s feasts. He thought of those great cities in
his own young country, of those greater cities in other
lands, older in sorrows, and more crowded with crime.
His own more limited range among the poor of his
prosperous, healthy village-town, satisfied not the craving
of his sympathy with the wide-spread humanity that
pined in neglected sorrow, and uncombatted vice. He
threw up his easy, happy charge, he went to the nearest
great city, to study and to alleviate its unseen woes, and
to stir up the heart of philanthropy and religion to the
obligation and necessity of this work. Now that Bishops
organise large companies of Missionaries for this very
work; now that Town Missions send forth their hun
dreds of labourers; now that almost every considerable
society of Christians in our large towns bears a part in
this holy undertaking, as an obvious and indispensable
part of their Christian duty,—it is difficult to believe how
new and strange this very work appeared, even to the
best of men, twenty years ago—and how this apostle of
the neglected, this remembrancer of the forgotten, toiled
to convince men’s judgments, and to satisfy their hearts
�78
of the possibility of taking religion and hope into the
very homes of the poor.
Yes ! I remember him when he landed on these
shores, with that countenance, the light whereof was a
divine charity. I remember him when he came among
us, new from the actual personal fulfilment of his own
scheme, and about to return to it again, to die in it.
Yes ! I remember him, with his thrilling tones, and his
overflowing heart, and his consecrated life, and I re
member, too, that at that time there was no such thing
in this country as a Domestic Mission to the outcast of
society, and the neglected and forgotten of Christian, as
semblies, and that most men thought that there never
could be!
This man, so full of purity, so rich in human tenderness,
so affluent in divine forbearance—this man, the friend of
the heroic Follen, the spiritual brother of the high-souled
Channing, and yet the daily companion of the hardest
and most neglected beings in the streets of Boston—was
a Unitarian, and his name was Tuckerman.
Now to which of all these men wTill even the Bigot
venture to deny a place within the Infinite Bather’s all
comprehending mercy ?—a place in the reverent regards
of the great human family ? a place in the heaven of the
just made perfect ?—which of all these will he ven
ture, in any assembly of the good and wise on earth, to
declare unfit to share in the inheritance he anticipates
for himself? Whichsoever of these sainted men is the
object of his intolerant presumption, there is not one
high soul in the world that will cry Amen to his ana
thema. And yet to the Roman Catholic I say, here, in
this group, is to be found almost every possible form of
schism from the unity of your Church ! To the Church
�79
of England man, I say, here are a Quaker and a Uni
tarian ! To the Unitarian, I say, here is the professor
of what you call the stern and gloomy faith of Calvin,
here the submissive subject of the See of Rome ! Not
withstanding, as surely as our Lord said of the little
children, “ of such is the kingdom of heaven,” we may
say of these men, of such is the general assembly and
church of the first-born, whose names are writ in heaven 1
When you ask me, then, for the essentials of Christianity,
I point you to the belief these men had in common ! When
you ask me for the Holy Catholic faith, I tell you, it is
there ! It was not the belief in transubstantiation in one,
or the belief in episcopal ordination in another, or a be
lief in vicarious sacrifice in another, or the neglect of
public religious ordinances in another, or the mental
adoption of the doctrine of the divine unity in another—
that made of him a child of God, and a true follower of
Jesus Christ; but it was that which each had in addi
tion, that which each had, I will say, in superiority, to
these special characteristics of his individual faith—first,
a hearty sincerity in the belief he did profess; and, se
condly, an actual incorporation into his own spiritual
being, of the life and mind of Jesus Christ.
There is one possible conclusion, however, from these
considerations, against which I would earnestly warn you;
it is the adoption, as any result of this survey, of that in
fidel and worldly latitudinarianism, which proclaims it as
indifferent, what mode of faith the individual mind adopts
or professes. The survey of the lives of these great and
good men teaches us nothing of the kind. Each one of
these men commenced, as the very basis of his spiritual
existence, with being earnest and sincere in his own pro
fessions and belief. Each one of them laid the founda
�80
tion of his character in serious thought, and in honest
confession.
We are not to stand before this noble army of holy
men, and, as a result of the contemplation of their excel
lency and their glory, say, “ then it is indifferent what
form of Christianity we shall profess—any is sufficient, all
are good.” Do we suppose that was the spirit in which
they formed their faith ? On the contrary, these men
wrought out their faith with the profoundest anxiety, and
took reverently to their souls every word of God. Fenelon
would have been no Fenelon had he been merely a con
forming Catholic, and not a true and earnest man. Re
ginald Heber would have been no confessor had he been
in heart a Unitarian or a Congregationalist.
These things cannot be. Nothing great or good is
ever founded on a lie. These men were sincere; and
though we may not be able to see how the specialities of
their belief influenced their characters, they were without
a doubt wrought deeply into the tissue of their souls,
were not put on as a garment in which to go forth to
meet the world, or in an easy indifference as to what
profession they should make, but formed a genuine part
of their individual religious being. It was this very
earnestness, this profoundness and sincerity of individual
conviction, that made Christianity to them so intense and
vital an influence. They received the faith of Jesus
Christ under that form which appeared to them, after
grave reflection, to be the purest and the best; and
henceforth it could exist as a personal influence in no
other form whatever to their hearts. When will men see
that he to whom all faiths are alike has no earnest faith
at all ? It is the very lesson of these men’s lives that they
had convictions, determinate convictions, convictions that
�81
made them what they were, and that they were faithful
to them.
It is indeed a holy and delightful thought, that we
may also conclude, (without denying the reality, and to
the men the necessity, of those special and distinctive
peculiarities in which the common faith of Christ ap
proved itself respectively to their consciences,) that the
great saving power of their faith consisted, not in that
which distinguished them from one another, but in that
common treasure which lay at the foundation of all their
differences, in that obedience to God, that love to Christ,
that charity to man, that hope of heaven, in which they
all rejoiced together; that carefulness of mind with which
they sought the truth; that conscientious fidelity with
which they maintained it; that vigilant self-discipline
with which they applied its lessons : and that joyful hope
with which they rested on its promises.
It is not for me, my friends, to speak of the holy
lessons to which this temple shall, from week to week,
be devoted, in the building up of human souls for the
conflicts of earth, and the inheritance of heaven. But I
believe I may with certainty specify two general objects
in its erection; that it stands as an offering to since
rity, to the sacredness of the individual conscience, and
as the provision of an altar for an honest and truthful
sacrifice, such as they who come here may truthfully and
earnestly offer: and that, in the next place, it stands in
determined Protest against those accretions and additions
which Churches too generally enforce upon Christian
belief, as essential to salvation, and in restoration of that
old and only catholic Christianity which is common to all
Churches, though obscured and weakened in so many.
Por we, too, in common with all the holy men whose
�lives and characters we have been considering—we, too,
believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Hea
ven and Earth—we, too, in common with all these holy
men, believe that he hath, in his merciful providence, sent
Jesus Christ to turn away every one of us from his ini
quities, and to be the way, the truth, and the life to us
—and we, too, in common with all these holy men, look
forward to a life beyond the valley of the shadow, where
our sins and our sorrows shall be lost in the light of the
benign presence of God; and trusting in the mercy of
Him who forgiveth, we long, with them, to be prepared,
by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kind
ness, by the holy spirit, and by love unfeigned, to join
that blest assembly and church of the first-born, which
are written in Heaven.—Amen.
�NOTE.
In the above Sermon—designed to promote a feeling of
eatholic charity, in an audience consisting of a variety of de
nominations—the question remains unsolved, and indeed
unattempted, Does any one of these forms of Christian doc
trine accord more than the rest with the teachings of the
New Testament, and is any one more conducive than the
rest to the realization of Christian life and character ? That
this must be the case with some one or other of them, no one
can doubt, for no one can pay attention to their several cha
racteristics, and believe them to be identical in their essence
or in their influence. That any one of them actually reaches
the ideal standard which these two tests imply, is more than,
the writer at least is able to assert. He is much more
disposed to believe that each of these forms of Faith contains
a portion—and the purest and most vital portion—of Christian
truth and influence ; but that in actual development, that
portion in each Church suffers from a relative exaggeration,
or a relative neglect—the exaggeration leading to an exclu
sion of other important principles, necessary to be associated
with it in an integral Faith—and the neglect leading to a
gradual and half unconscious admission of other and inferior
principles, which ultimately predominate and overwhelm it.
The apparent result of this view is Eclecticism. But Eclec
ticism is an artificial and critical process, landing us in a
result which is usually destitute of all homogeneity, a collec
tion from without, under the guidance of the judgment,
�rather than a natural integral production of the soul within.
It is a kind of Peripateticism among the sects—alternately
assimilating and rejecting the elements of actually existing
Churches. Surely the old, but rarely realized, idea, of a recur
rence to the New Testament itself, as containing the spirit of
Christianity in its purest form, and to the life of Jesus Christ,
as affording the only perfect instance of that spirit exemplified
in humanity, involves a far sounder principle. It is a truth
often overlooked in these discussions, but nevertheless to be
borne carefully in mind, that no human being can tell on
what proportion the peculiarities, the differentia of the Roman
Catholic form of Christianity, entered into the composition of
the mind and character of Fenelon—any more than he can
tell in what proportion Calvinism entered into the spiritual
fabric of Howard, or Unitarianism into that of Tuckerman.
It may be—and this is probably nearer the truth—that the
distinctive peculiarities of their special forms of faith were in
each case the subordinate parts of their spiritual system—
that the common essential Christian truth excluded from
none of their systems, but, lying at the base of all, was the
great element in their personal and actuating faith; and
that this fact was precisely the influence which made them the
excellent men they were—as it is probably the fact which
seems to make men of the highest spiritual excellence almost
always of one interior family and creed.
A great mind is able to penetrate beyond the outworks of
its creed, and lay hold of the citadel. But ordinary minds
rest in those very outworks. With them the accretions are
the great thing : and therefore it is, that the purification
of popular belief is a work of great necessity still, for in the
subordinate and comparatively uninfluential elements of the
various prevailing forms of Christian belief, pressed upon the
notice of the general mind, as they are, by the very differences
and antagonism they create, the ordinary mind takes its chief
position, and of these it takes the firmest hold. The doc
trine, then, of this Sermon—the salvability of all these good
and great men of every Church, does not alter the duty of
�85
preventing the saving truth, which they were able to discern
and make their own through all that surrounded it, from
being overwhelmed and paralyzed by accretions—preventing
in fact the saving truth from being saving to the hearts of
the multitude.
The truth appears therefore to stand thus : Each Christian
Church contains within itself the means of salvation, and the
essentials of Truth—but each contains them in various
degrees of development, some having them more perfect in
one direction, others in another. By the first of these posi
tions, we are bound to a universal charity—by the second, to
mutual help, correction and enlightenment. Far from mono
polizing all Christian truth—still less all Christian excellence—
and less still, all Christian salvation—for that religious body to
which the writer belongs—he yet should say, if by so vague
a word he could denote his own version of the Christian
Faith, that among prevailing systems the theory of Unitarianism appears to him to be in itself the purest, the
highest, and the most enduring; and when it shall have
engaged in its development and application a larger number
of the best minds of the community, and the attention of its
adherents shall not be engrossed in its dogmatical defence
(as by the necessity of its position is too much now the case),
it must necessarily produce loftier and more extended spi
ritual results than the world has ever yet witnessed—that it
must necessarily produce the highest characters, and the
greatest number of them: that is to say, the belief in one
undivided and infinite God, our Father, is in itself, and in its
influences, necessarily higher and holier than the present
scholastic division of that unity into natures and persons;—
the belief that God was as fully manifested in J esus Christ,
as the Divine can be in the Human, affords a better support
and guide to our spiritual nature, than the dogma that Christ
himself was the Infinite God;—the desire to partake of the
divine nature in Christ, and to grow up into a resemblance
in all things unto him which is our Head, is a more holy and
influential desire for the heart of man, than a reception of
�86
the doctrine of a vicarious sacrifice, a substituted righteous
ness and a substituted punishment;—and, finally, a prospect
of futurity, in which the fruits of the seeds sown in this life,
whether they be good or whether they be evil, shall be reaped
by each man in a world of greater light and higher progress
beyond the grave, is in itself truer, and in its influences more
efficient, than a belief in the ordinary twofold division of an
everlasting Heaven and an everlasting Hell, into one or other
of which each man is to depart at his resurrection.
This form of Christianity, then, which is at present distinguishedfrom others bythe designation “Unitarianism,” is still,
in the writer’s opinion, a very noble thing to avow—a very
righteous and holy cause for which to labour and to suffer
reproach.
THE END.
Printed by Richard Kinder, Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey.
�May be had of John Chapman, 142, Strand, and all Booksellers,
Price 6d.,
PAUSE AND RETROSPECT;
The Last Discourse preached in Paradise-street Chapel, Liverpool.
BY
JAMES
MARTINEAU.
With an Address on occasion of laying the Foundation-stone of the New Church in
Hope-street.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In two volumes 12mo, price 7s. 6d. each,
ENDEAVOURS AFTER THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
Each Volume may be had separately.
ALSO, THIRD EDITION,
Price 4s. paper cover; 4s. 6d., cloth,
THE RATIONALE OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY;
OB.
THE QUESTION STATED,
OF
REASON, THE BIBLE, AND THE CHURCH.
In one vol. 8vo, price 7s. 6d.,
LECTURES IN THE LIVERPOOL CONTROVERSY.
1. THE BIBLE, WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT;
2. THE DEITY OF CHRIST.
3. THE ATONEMENT.
4. CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL.
5. CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST AND WITHOUT RITUAL.
WITH INTRODUCTION, AND PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE.
Bach Lecture may be had separately.
�In 12mo, price 3s. 6d.,—to Congregations, 2s. 6d.,—bound in cloth,
HYMNS FOR THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND HOME.
COLLECTED AND EDITED
BY
JAMES
MARTINEAU.
SIXTH EDITION.
Congregations requiring a supply should make application to the Editor, Liverpool.
.a
Price 21s.,
THIRD EDITION.
HOLY SONGS AND MUSICAL PRAYERS.
*
Composed or adapted, and harmonized for Four Voices, with separate
accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Organ.
By J. R. OGDEN, Esa.
EDITED BY
JAMES MARTINEAU.
A set of Sixty-two Compositions, of which three-fourths are original, expressly designed for
Hymns in the above Collection.
The Supplement to the former Editions may be had separately, price 7s.
Price 6d.,
IRELAND AND HER FAMINE.
A DISCOURSE.
Price 6d.,
THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD.
A DISCOURSE.
On the 1st of February, May, August, and November,
Price 2s. 6d.,
THE PROSPECTIVE REVIEW.
EDITED BY
Messrs. J. J, TAYLER.
J. H. THOM.
C. WICKSTEED.
J. MARTINEAU.
Respice, Aspice, Prospice.
St. Bernard
�
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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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Discourses on occasion of the dedication of Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool, Thursday, October 18, and Sunday, October 21, 1849
Description
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 86, [2] p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contents: The dedication of the Christian temple to the worship and service of God: a sermon preached on Thursday, October 18th, 1849 / Thomas Madge -- The Watch-night lamps: a discourse preached on the first Sunday of public worship, October 21, 1849, in Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool / James Martineau -- The General Assembly and Church of the First-Born: a sermon preached in Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool on Sunday evening, October 21, 1849 / Charles Wicksteed. A selection of related titles from the publisher's lists on unnumbered pages at the end. Printed by Richard Kinder, London. Date given in Roman numerals.
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Madge, Thomas
Martineau, James
Wicksteed, Charles
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1849
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John Chapman
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Sermons
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Conway Tracts
Sermons
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
LIFE AND CHARACTER
OF
HENRY HETHERINGTON.
‘ We, the Directors of the Poor of the parish of St. Pancras, at present assembled, sincerely deplore
the loss of our much-respected friend, Mr. Henry Hetherington; and cannot allow the earliest oppor
tunity to pass without otfering this poor tribute to his worth, talent, energy, urbanity, and zeal. In
him the poor, and more especially the infant, have lost a powerful advocate, the Directors a valuable
coadjutor, the ratepayers an economical distributor of their funds, and mankind a sincere philanthropist.’
—Passed, unanimously, at a meeting of Members of the Board of Directors, on Friday, Aug. 24, 1849.
[published for the
benefit of the survivors.]
Uonlion:
J. WATSON, 3, QUEEN’S HEAD PASSAGE, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1849.
[price twopence.'
�I
J.
L
�PREFACE.
A Committee of the Directors of the Literary and Scientific Institution,
John Street, Fitzroy Square, who issue this Memorial of their late
esteemed colleague, for the benefit of his survivors, have entrusted its
compilation to me.
The various matter is extracted from the Reasoner,
where Hetherington was gratified to think that all relating to him would,
appear.
The chief abridgment for which I have to apologise is that of
Mr. Cooper’s Éloge, which could not be retained entire without greatly
exceeding the limits prescribed for this Memento.
been a task of difficulty and delicacy.
Its condensation has
But I have, I believe, preserved
its spirit entire ; and if it has lost anything in effect, Mr. Cooper s repu
tation can bear it j and I trust—the cause being considered—his genero
sity will forgive it.
G. J. Hovyoaee.
Reasoner Office,
3, Queen Head Passage, Paternoster Row,
September 8th, 1849.
�-
-íi'íj. . .
.«4®, ..
�THE
LIFE OF HENRY HETHERINGTON,
ABRIDGED FROM THE ÉLOGE
Delivered at the Literary Institution, John Street, on Sunday evening, Aug. 26, 1849 ;
by Thomas Cooper, author of the ‘ Purgatory of Suicides.’
While the instruments of royal and aristocratic tyranny have their
pompous eulogies at the close of their evil career, it becomes the advocates
of freedom to take care that the death of the humblest opposer of misrule
should not go uncommemorated. Every step in the life of a struggler
for human enfranchisement, if it could be beheld by the great Dead, must
fix their attention as big with the fate of Progress. And, surely, the
living would do well and wisely to bestow their anxieties in this humble
direction, rather than on the gew-gaws which attract the unthinking.
One word of bold and firm defiance against legalised oppression—one
act of self-sacrificing and manly resistance to privileged power—is of
deeper import to the true welfare of mankind than all the victories of
Marengo and Austerlitz, of Trafalgar and Waterloo.
Henry Hetherington was born in 1792, fifty-seven years ago, in Comp
ton Street, Soho ; and many remain, I am told, who remember the in
telligence and kindly disposition of his boyhood. He was apprenticed to
the trade of a printer, and served his time with the father of the wellknown Luke Hansard, now living. The printing business was either
dull or overstocked with hands when his apprenticeship ceased, and he
was eighteen months out of work. It was now that he went to Belgium,
and worked there at his trade for a short period. He was in the habit
of telling an anecdote, in his own felicitous way, of a conversation
with a fellow-workman in a workshop at Ghent, that is worth recording.
The report had just reached the Netherlands, of the superb munificence
with which England had rewarded her 4 iron duke,’ the conqueror at
Waterloo. Oui’ friend, full of attachment to his native country, imme
diately exclaimed, with the exaggerated emotion of youth, ‘ Ay, see
there ! Look what a fine country' ours is ! You see how we reward our
soldiers for fighting for us ! You would not hear of any other country
giving money and estates to their public servants like our country !’ The
Belgian workman was older than our friend : he darted an expressive
look at him, and then replied, in broken English, ‘ Ay, ay, it is a tam
fine country, and a tam fine ting for de Duke ; but it is a tam bad
country, and a tam bad ting for de Peuple 1’ The repartee dwelt in his
mind, and led to his ultimate Radicalism. Our friend’s marriage occurred
shortly before this visit to Belgium, or shortly after, and the fruit of it
were nine children, only one of whom—his son, Mr. David Hetherington
—is now living. Among his earliest connections was that with the ‘ Free-
�.LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY HETHERINGTON.
thinking Christians’—a body of religionists at one time much talked of in
London, and numbering among its professors several names of consider
able talent. It was in relation to this society that Hetherino-ton pro
duced the pamphlet, which, so far as I know, was his first essay in print.
Its date is 1828: just twenty-one years ago; and it is entitled ‘Prin
ciples and Practice contrasted; or a Peep into “ the only true church of
God upon earth,” commonly called Freethinking Christians.’
He was one of the earliest and most energetic of working men engaged
in the foundation of the Mechanics’ Institute. His intelligence and zeal
procured him the friendship of the excellent Birkbeck. The doctor fre
quently called upon Henry Hetherington at his shop in the Strand, even
in his sorest times of persecution.
The pamphlet mentioned as published in 1828, was issued from his
shop at 13, Kingsgate Street, Holborn. Here, also, he commenced his
warfare against the false Whigs, by issuing the first number of the Poor
Man’s Guardian. This was in 1831. At the close of 1830, he was
appointed by the radical working men of London, to draw up a circular
for the formation of Trades’ Unions. That document was sanctioned by
a meeting of delegates, and formed the basis of the ‘ National Union of
the Working Classes’—which eventually led to Chartism.
William Carpenter, another distinguished name in the history of work
ing men’s politics, had issued his ‘ Political Letter’ in 1830, and been
prosecuted for it; and now government pounced upon Henry Hether
ington. Three convictions were obtained against him for publishing the
Poor Mans Guardian. He was ordered to be taken into custody, but
the Bow Street magistrates could not enforce their order for some time.
*
Henry Hetherington, with all that deliciously provoking coolness for
which he was characterised, actually sent a note to the magistrates to tell
them that ‘ he was going out of town !’ Then, he printed the note in his
Guardian, and commenced a tour through the country.
At Manchester, he narrowly escaped being taken by Stevens, the Bow
Street ‘ runnerbut he might have continued at large for some time
longer, had he not resolved to hasten up to London, in order to have a
last look at his dying mother. He reached the door of his house, on a
night in September—knocked hard, but was not answered-—the Bow
Street spies .came upon him before his second knock had been heard—
he clung to the knocker, but was dragged away ; and none of his family
knew till he was lodged in Clerkenwell gaol. Here he remained six
months. The Guardian, however, was still carried on.
At the end of 1832, when he had not been many months at liberty, he
was again convicted, and again imprisoned for six months in the same
gaol; and now it was that his friend Watson became his fellow-prisoner
—also for the same ‘ high crime and misdemeanour’ of selling, in ‘Fi •ee’
England, a penny paper without a taxed stamp ! Their treatment during
these six months was most cruel. An opening, called ‘ a window,’ but
which was without a pane of glass, let in the snow upon their food, as
they ate it ; cold and damp filled their bodies with pain; and the
‘ Liberal’ Government seemed intent on trying by these means whether
they could not break their spirits.
John Cleave and his wife were seized, as they were proceeding to
purkiss’s, the news-agent in Compton Street, in a cab, with their papers.
�LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HBNRT HETHERINGTON.
Heywood of Manchester, Guest of Birmingham, Hobson and Mrs. Mann
of Leeds__with about 500 others in town andcountry, were imprisoned
as Vendors of the ‘ Unstamped.’ The spirit displayed by the vendors is
Worthy of remembrance. They carried the ‘Unstamped in their,hats,
in theii pockets: they left them in sure places ‘ to be called for; and
when, for a few weeks, government actually empowered officers to seize
parcels, open them in the streets, and take out any unstamped publications
—Henry Hetherington (while at large) made up ‘dummy’ parcels,
directed them, sent off a lad with them one way, with instructions
to make a noise, attract a crowd, and delay the officers, if they seized
him: meanwhile, the real parcel for the country agent was sent off
another way 1
. ., ,
After the verdict of the * Justifiable Homicide upon the policeman
slain at the Calthorpe Street meeting, a letter appeared in the Poor
Man’s Guardian—signed Palafox junior, but really written by Julian
Hibbert—containing something more than inuendo, in an advice to the
people attending such meetings in future to take bread and cheese with
them, and a good long, sharp-pointed, and strong-hacked knife with which
to cut it.
,.
n
In 1833 Hetherington removed from 13, Kingsgate Street, to his wellknown shop 126, Strand. The Destrwctwe which he issued here, ironically
styled the Conservative, was also unstamped. The London Dispatch,
which followed, reached at one time 2o000 weekly. In 1834 he defended
himself on a trial for publishing the Guardian, and obtained an acquittal,
but was condemned for the Conservative.
. __
Not having grown fond of prison from his experiences of it, He took
a snug little box at Pinner, and by going out of his house in the Strand
at the back, by an outlet into- the Savoy, and by entering it the same
way—and in the disguise of a Quaker /—he contrived to enact the real
Simon Pure so well, that he evaded the keen eyes which were on the
look out for him.
.
But the government revenged themselves by making a seizure tor
£220, in the name of the Commissioners of Stamps, on the false pretext
that he was not a registered printer. They swept his premises.. But
undaunted, our heroic friend resumed his work—rising out of the midst of
ruin. Julian Hibbert, from the moment that he learned Hetherington was
in dancer of another imprisonment in consequence of the publication of the
‘Palafox’ letter, set him down in his Will for 450 guineas; nor did he
cancel the gift when the proceedings were abandoned, Henry Hethering
ton then purchased another printing machine—for no printer would un
dertake his work—and continued to publish the Unstamped, until the
government consented to reduce the newspaper stamp to one penny, when
he issued (stamped) the Twopenny Dispatch, of which Mr. James Bronterre O’Brien was the talented editor.
He incurred some embarrassments by the publication of part of an
Encyclopaedia, at the suggestion of his friend, Dr. Birkbeck. The OddFellow another penny periodical, was more successful. The comparatively
*
narrow circumstances of our friend in after years are to be attributed to
his tenderness. He could not have the heart to sue his debtors at law
though others sued him.
He wrote his ‘ Cheap Salvation’ in consequence of conversations with
�DIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY HETHERINGTON.
the chaplain of Clerkenwell gaol. In 1841, he was tried on a charge of
publishing a ‘blasphemous’ work—‘ Haslam’s Letters to the Clergy of
all Denominations ’—and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment in the
Queen’s Bench prison. He represented London and Stockport, in the
great Convention of 1839, of which the beloved exile Frost was a mem
ber. His latter years were devoted to Socialism and Chartism. In this
institution we have all witnessed his rare enthusiasm and fervour, and
his clear judgment, so often mingled with the humour that always ren
dered him a welcome speaker. The quality I marked in him, the very
first time I saw him—which was at the second Sturge Conference, at
Christmas, 1842—he always displayed when I shared in our common
friendship for him, in this institution: the faculty of reconciling mis
understandings and preventing ill-feeling arising from differences.
With regret, it must be stated that there is too strong reason to con
clude that our friend’s decease was hastened by a want of proper care.
His strict temperance—for he had been almost an absolute teetotaler, for
many years—warranted him in believing that he was not very likely
to fall a victim to the prevailing epidemic. When he was seized with it,
he refused—from what we must call a prejudice—to call in medical relief.
Our friend Holyoake prevailed with him to have a physician called,
after having himself stayed the cramp he suffered from. It was too late,
however, for medicines to relieve his case—although several medical
friends -were successively brought to his bed-side. His natural frank
ness and humour were exhibited even in his last hours. ‘ Why did you
not call for help sooner?’said one medical friend to him. ‘ Why, you
know,’ he replied with a smile, ‘ I don’t like you physic-folks ; and "be
sides, I have had Doctor Holyoake attending me; and he has done all
that could be done.’
Happily the gloomy bigot can forge no tales of death-bed horrors in
this instance : he can derive no lessons from it to frighten children. We
say this with satisfaction—for although the mind of man may sometimes
wander in his last hours, and the true philosopher will not resort to the
account of them for the test of a man’s opinions,—yet it is well for the
sake of others that the death of a Freethinker can be shown by unquestion
able testimony to be without the horrors in which the superstitious delight
to clothe it. I care not whether all of us agree in every item of our deceased
friend’s convictions: I, for one, do not. But we are the foes of priest
craft and superstition, and therefore we make common cause in his
opposition to those twin-plagues of the human race; and we honour his
memory for the courage with which his free thought was proclaimed in
life, and fortitude with which the confession of it was signed in death.
I add my humble testimony to his many excellences, from our friendship
of the last four years; and entreat you to follow his example wherein
he was worthy of your imitation—in his earnestness; his readiness to
labour at all times and seasons for the common good of man and for the
advancement of public liberty; in his perseverance; in his spirit of
self-sacrifice; in the fidelity of his friendships ; and in his spirit of kind
liness and good-humour. Let each man among us display the courage,
perseverance, and unsubduable energy of Henry Hetherington, and
England, Europe, the World, will soon be free and happy, and the
Universal Brotherhood be speedily realised.
�LIFE AND CHARACTER GF HENRY HETHERINGTON
HIS DEATH.
Early on Tuesday morning, August 21,1 was apprised that Hetherington was ilL
Knowing his anti-medicinal views I took medicine with me, and gave him some
instantly. I found that he had veen suffering a fortnight from premonitory
symptoms of cholerine. It is attributable to his temperate habits that he had had
so long a warning. After receiving some relief, he wanted to rise and finish the
arrangement of his books, as he seemed to think his malady might terminate
fatally. His rising I positively forbade, and had by gentle force to prevent it.
(On the preceding day he left my daily paper at my door himself.) While this
was occuring, his favourite physician, Dr. Richard Quain, was sent for. He was
unfortunately out of town. Next, Dr. Epps was summoned, who promptly sent
medicine. But as he was unable to come. Dr. Jones was called upon, when, as
fatality would have it, he was out. I immediately put on my hat and fetched Mr.
Pearse, Surgeon of Argyle Square. The next morning Mr. Kenny took a note
from me to Dr. Ashburner, of Grosvenor Street, who generously attended and
saw him twice, though at great inconvenience to himself. Mr. George Bird,
Surgeon, of Osnaburg Street, Regent’s Park, paid friendly visits, and rendered
his usual able, and unwearied assistance. Mrs. Martin, whose courageous nursing
and intelligent resources might have saved our patient at an earlier period, also
attended till a late hour on Wednesday night. Most of this day he was unconscious.
On Thursday morning, August 24, 1849, about 4 o’clock, he expired. His age
was 57. He left the following document, which speaks for itself.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
As life is uncertain, it behoves every one to make preparations for death; I deem
it therefore a duty incumbent on me, ere I quit this life, to express in writing, for
the satisfaction and guidance of esteemed friends, my feelings and opinions in
reference to our common principles. I adopt this course that no mistake or
misapprehension may arise through the false reports of those who officiously
and obtrusively obtain access to the death-beds of avowed Infidels to priestcraft
and superstition; and who, by their annoying importunities, labour to extort
’rom an opponent, whose intellect is already worn out and subdued _ by protracted
physical suffering, some trifling admission, that they may blazon it forth to the
world as a Death-bed Confession, and a triumph of Christianity over Infidelity.
In the first place, then—I calmly and deliberately declare that I do not believe
in the popular notion of the existence of an Almighty, All-wise, and Benevolent
God—possessing intelligence, and conscious of his own operations; because
these attributes involve such a mass of absurdities and contradictions, so much
cruelty and injustice on His part to the poor and destitute portion of His
creatures—that, in my opinion, no rational reflecting mind can, after disin
terested investigation, give credence to the existence of such a Being. 2nd. I
believe death to be an eternal sleep—that I shall never live again in this world,
or another, with a consciousness that I am the same identical person that
once lived, performed the duties, and exercised the functions of a human being,
3rd. I consider priestcraft and superstition the greatest obstacle to human
improvement and happiness. During my life I have, to the best of my ability,
sincerely and strenuously exposed and opposed them, and die with a firm convic
tion that Truth, Justice, and Liberty will never be permanently established on
earth till every vestige of priestcraft and superstition shall be utterly destroyed.
4th. I have ever considered that the only religion useful to man consists ex
clusively of the practice of morality, and in the mutual interchange of kind
actions. In such a religion there is no room for priests—and when I see
*
them interfering at our births, marriages, and deaths, pretending to conduct
us safely through this state of being to another and happier world, any disin
terested person of the least shrewdness and discernment must perceive that
their sole aim is to stultify the minds of the people by their incomprehensible
* This phrase, ‘when I see,’ should be when they are seen, as it does not follow that ‘any disinterested
person,’ &c. must perceive the stultifying aim of the priests in the way the remainder of the sentence
states, because Hetherington saw it. It was this non sequitur to which allusion is made farther on within
brackets.
�LIFE AND CHARACTER OF IIENRY HETHERINGTON.
doctrines, that they may the more effectually fleece the poor deluded sheep who
listen to their empty babblings and mystifications.
5th. As I have lived so I die, a determined opponent to their nefarious and
plundering system. I wish my friends, therefore, to deposit my remains in un
consecrated ground, and trust they will allow no priest, or clergyman of any
denomination, to interfere in any way whatever at my funeral. My earnest
desire is, that no relation or friend shall wear black or any kind of mourning,
as I consider it contrary to our rational principles to indicate respect for a
departed friend by complying with a hypocritical custom.
6th. I wish those who respect me, and who have laboured in our common cause,
to attend my remains to their last resting place, not so much in consideration of
the individual, as to do honour to our just, benevolent, and rational principles.
I hope all true Rationalists will leave pompous displays to the tools of priest
craft and superstition. If I could have my desire, the occasion of my death and
burial should be turned to the advantage of the living. I would have my kind and
good friend, Watson, who knew me intimately for many years—or any other
friend well acquainted with my character — to address to those assembled
such observations as he may deem pertinent and useful; holding up the good
points of my character as an example worthy of imitation, and pointing out my
defects with equal fidelity, that none may avow just and rational principles without
endeavouring to purge themselves of those errors that result from bad habits previ
ously contracted, and which tarnish the lustre of their benign and glorious principles.
These are my views and feelings in quitting an existence that has been chequered
with the plagues and pleasures of a competitive, scrambling, selfish system; a
system by which the moral and social aspirations of the noblest human being are
nullified by incessant toil and physical deprivations; by which, indeed, all men are
trained to be either slaves, hypocrites, or criminals. Hence my ardent attach
ment to the principles of that great and good man—Robert Owen. I quit
this world with a firm conviction that his system is the only true road to human
emancipation: that it is, indeed, the only just system for regulating the affairs
of honest, intelligent human beings—the only one yet made known to the
world, that is based on truth, justice, and equality. While the land, machines,
tools, implements of production, and the produce of man’s toil, are exclusively
in possession of the do-nothings; and labour is the sole possession of the wealth
producers—a marketable commodity, bought up and directed by wealthy idlers—
never-ending misery must be their inevitable lot. Robert Owen’s system, if
rightly understood and faithfully carried out, rectifies all these anomalies. Jt
makes man the proprietor of his own labour and of the elements of production
—it places him in a condition to enjoy the entire fruits of his labour, and sur
rounds him with circumstances that will make him intelligent, rational, and
happy. Grateful to Mr. Owen for the happiness I have experienced in contem
plating the superiority of his system, I could not die happy without recommending
my fellow-countrymen to study its principles and earnestly strive to establish
them in practice. Though I ardently desired to acquire that benign spirit, and
to attain that self-control, which .was so conspicuous in the character of th®
founder of the Rational System, I am aware I fell immeasurably short of my bright
exemplar; but as I never in thought, word, or deed, wilfully injured any human
being, I hope that I shall be forgiven by those whom I may have inadvertently
or unconsciously jostled in this world’s scramble. I have indefatigably, sincerely,
and disinterestedly laboured to improve the condition of humanity—believing it
to be the duty of every man to leave the world better than he found it; and if I
have not pursued this object with that wisdom and discretion that should mark at
all times the conduct of a rational man, I have zealously maintained what
appeared to me to be right;, and paid the penalty of what my opponents may
term my indiscretions in many cruel persecutions. I freely forgive all who have
injured me in the struggle; and die in the hope and consolation that a time
is approaching when the spirit of antagonism will give place to fraternal affection
and universal co-operation to promote the happiness of mankind.
(Signed)
Henry Hetherington
Witnessed by George Jacob Holyoake,
Henry Allsop Ivory,
August 21, 1849.
John Kenny
�LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY HETHERINGTON.
[Hetherington, it may be necessary to explain, composed this document himself.
A year and half, or more, before his death, he gave the original in his own hand
writing to me and Mr. Watson to read, saying, that if he died in his then opinions,
he intended to leave that behind him as his testimony. He had copies made to’
distribute to a few friends. On the Tuesday (August 21) on which I was called to
him he ordered a copy to be given into my charge. On the evening of the same
day he signed the will of his personal property. On taking it away I handed to
Bim the * Testament of his Opinions,’ saying 1 Will you sign this also ?’ I spoke
in that inquiring tone which implied ‘ If you still see fit do so.’ He at once re
adjusted his glasses, looked at the paper with an air of perfect recognition, and wrote
his name with a firm hand. The copy which I received, and which he signed I
believe to be an exact copy of the original in his own hand-writing which he
formerly gave to me, as it contains (in tbe ‘4th’ paragraph) even a grammatical
error, involving a logical absurdity, which I pointed out, and at which he laughed
heartily at the time, and said he should correct it. But I found it still there
The document is incontestably Hetherington’s. Messrs. Kenny and Ivory are too
young to be able to draw up a declaration in the same maturity of tone; audit
contains some passages which I should express very differently, and others (those
relating to the priests) which I should not express at all, in any way. But I give
the ‘ Testament’ faithfully as I received it. It is a manly declaration of what was
true to the conscience and right in the judgment of him who signed it. The
signed and attested copy I have placed in the Reasoner office for the inspection of
any who are curious or sceptical.]
THE FUNERAL AND PROCESSION.
?N
ev®hing after his death, a special meeting of the committee of the John
Stmt Institute was held, when they, as a mark of respect to their deceased col
league, undertook the conduct of the burial. The arrangements were confided to
, • limn, of the New Road; and the event showed that they could not have been
placed in more judicious hands. Everything was done in quiet taste. The pro
ceedings were decorous without gloom. There was conscientious propriety with
out a particle of ostentation or affected display. The hearse was covered by a
canopy of »use coloured silk, on each side of which appeared, in silver letters,
the words of a frequent phrase of Hetherington’s—
Wg
OUGHT TO ENDEAVOUR TO LEAVE THE WORLD BETTER THAN WE FOUND IT.
At the end of the hearse appeared, in similar letters—
HENRY HETHERINGTON.
Mutes were superseded by pages with white and blue coloured wands, and the
«cere Of the John Street Institution, and various friends of the deceased, walked
with similar wands on each side the procession. The Messrs. Tiffin bore maces.
IJavMl Hetherington the only surviving son (who is with Mr. Heywood, of ManChester), a relative, Mr. Watson, and myself occupied the cab next the hearse,
i
ier cabs hiljowed, and the rear was composed of a long procession
o rnnas. lhe road, during the long journey to the cemetery, was lined with
UyP
, ta™es tbe scene was very affecting, as women following wept as
thWh Hetherington was some Christ of Labour. The ground for the interment
iately Purchased by Mr. W. D. Sauli, and Hetherington is the first who
cupies it.
1 he concourse of persons at the grave was very great. To name
*
Ml who would be known to the public if named, would occupy a page. There
were e i ors, lecturers, publishers, guardians of the poor, foreign Socialists and
politicians of note, who respected Hetherington, or had co-operated with him
Adjoining the grave is the monument of ‘ Bublicola,’ the author of the wellnown Letters of the Weekly Dispatch. The eminence was appropriate. I stood
upon that tomb to speak
ia
Vter
SaU11 annlounced at
Street that he had purchased a piece of ground
S. 1Cemetery, to serve as a burying place for our friends, Hetherington said to me-‘ Sauli
Ms bought a grave, and says he is able te give a friend a lift-there’s a chance lor u#.’
�LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY HETHERINGTON
THE ORATION OVER THE GRAVE
It seems to me that he who is appointed to speak on an occasion like this should
prepare what he will say, that no effort of memory or art, in recalling a fact or
turning a sentence, should interrupt that simple expression of feeling which alone
is suitable on this spot—and that no inapt word should accur to mar the unity of
that regret, which is the only tribute left us to offer at the grave of our common
friend.
The usual Church Service on these occasions is omitted, out of obedience to the
wishes of the friend whom we lament—and its omission also meets with our own
approbation, as that service is little instructive, throws no light on personal cha
racter, and is, in some respects, a libel both on the dead and the living. And to
say this much is in accordance with the wishes of Henry Hetherington, whom we
inter here, and whose indomitable opposition to clerical error he desired to be
perpetuated after his death.
Henry Hetherington, around whose grave we stand, was the well-known pub
lisher, lately residing at 57, Judd Street, Brunswick Square. He was a native of
London, and was one of the early members of the London Mechanics’ Institution,
founded by Dr. Birkbeck, to which he owed many advantages. Henry Hethering
ton first became known to the public by the stand which he took when he thought
that institution was about to be perverted from the designs of its founders. A
printer by trade, he became afterwards a publisher; and during the struggle for
the emancipation of the press from the fetters of the Newspaper Stamp, he became
an accredited leader. He published the Poor Man's Guardian to try, as he said,
the strength of ‘ Right’ against ‘Might;’ and he continued it in defiance of prose
cutions which extended over three years and a half—during which time 500 per
sons were imprisoned in the struggle : at last a special jury under Lord Lyndhurst
declared it a ‘ strictly legal publication.’ They ought to have declared that the
brave and resolute editor was strictly invincible, and that his Guardian became
legal because it could not be put down—for Hetherington continued to conduct
it, in gaol and out, and no accumulation of imprisonment, nor amount of loss, in
timidated him. Hetherington represents the Unstamped agitation, and this is
his great political and historical distinction. It was he who was appointed to
draw up that ‘Circular’ which was the foundation of the ‘National Union of
the Working Classes.’ The Charter Newspaper, of 1839, gave his portrait as
one of the delegates to the ‘ National Convention.’ And since he has constantly
been—when not in prison for the people—working for them through the press
and in connection with public institutions.
In conjunction with his valued friends and old coadjutors, Watson and Lovett,
he exerted himself for the establishment of the National Hall, Holborn. For the
last few years his ardent services have been given to the Literary and Scientific
Institution, John Street, Fitzroy Square, which has embodied in its management
the development of his most cherished ideas of religious liberty, political enfran
chisement, and social reformation. How profoundly he was esteemed in that
institution the arrangements of this day, and the presence of the John Street
friends, testify. In the parish of St. Pancras, of which he was a Director of the
poor, he has commanded, even amid those who dissented from him, esteem for his
benevolent views, his practical ability, and good sense. And it is not a little
gratifying that the last public body which enjoyed the honour of his co-operation
was the Newspaper Stamp Abolition Committee, who are associated to accomplish
that reformation with which the name of Henry Hetherington is so honourably
and so indissolubly connected.
Whatever may be useful to others, Hetherington would desire to be said of
him ; hence it may be remarked, that though he has fallen a victim to the prevail
ing epidemic, it is highly probable he might have lived had not a fixed aversion to
medicine prevented him seeking proper aid in time. He calculated, as he had a
right to do, on a life of temperance as a great'safeguard. But though a wise tem
perance will save us from half the maladies of the day, it does not supersede the
necessity—when really in danger—for that help which the observation and ex
perience of the physician can afford us.
As respects our friend’s death, I can bear personal testimony how much it
became his life. As soon as he found himself in danger, I was summoned to his
�LITE AND CHARACTSB ST HENRY HETHERINGTON.
bed-side, and, with few interruptions, I was with him till his decease. Having
always believed to the best of his understanding, and acted to the best of his
ability, he had no reason for fear, and he manifested none. He alluded to his
probable death with so much good sense, and his bearing to the last hour was so
quiet and so full of equanimity, that I could discern no difference between his death
and his life, save in his failing strength. As sickness could not alter the evidence
on which his principles rested, they underwent no change. He died the avowed,
the explicit, the unchanging foe of Priestcraft, Superstition, and Oppression; and
he strongly and rightly concluded that a life devoted to the welfare of humanity
in this world, was no unsuitable preparation for any other.
Viewed in his public relations, Hetherington was an exemplar of the school of
politicians amid which he was reared. We are now verging on a phase in which
we chiefly affirm positive principles. The school of politicians (to which, indeed,
we owe our present liberty) now going a little out of fashion, was that which
asserted a right, and antagonised it. Of this school Hetherington was the most
perfect type which remained among us. He did not look upon a political victory
as something to be won by exposition so much as by assault. Hence he was more
soldier than advocate; and it must be admitted that political corruption never
had a more resolute opponent, nor popular right a more doughty champion.
It augments my admiration of my friend to know that he desired no blind
eulogist to illustrate his character. In a document which he put into my hands
shortly before his decease, he expressed a manly wish that his faults as well as his
virtues might be made to minister to the instruction of others. This enables me
to explain the two-fold aspect of his character. He had a two-fold character dis
tinctly marked. Many in the ranks above our friend never fully understood him.
To them he seemed to wear a repulsive air. He gave that impression through
that error of party politics, in which each man regards an opponent as an opponent
in consequence of personal interest, rather than through difference of understand
ing ; and hence. Hetherington shrank from the rich and bland, and wrapped him
self up in the integrity, and poverty, and ruggedness of his own order. He
seemed to feel that to reciprocate blandishments with wealth was to betray his
cause. He regarded it as the inclined plain, polished as marble but slippery as
glass, upon which, if the foot of the patriot was once placed, he would inevitably
slip down to political corruption. Yet he had an integrity which could stand
alone, which was as proof against smiles as against frowns; but it was not his
temper to trust it. Those, however, who approached him on his own ground, who
had the honour of working or suffering with him, never knew a more genial
nature allied to so stout a spirit. He was a personification of good-humoured
Democracy. The very tones of his voice bespoke the fulness of honesty and
pleasantry. And beneath his uncompromising exterior and jocular speech, lay
the diamond ore of courage, and truth, and toil. He had a hand as true as ever
friendship grasped. In the hour of political danger, every coadjutor knew that
the secrets of life and liberty could be entrusted into Hetherington’s keeping.
As for toil, he was unwearying. He worked till his last days. He carried out in
practice that exalted creed of duty of which Home’s great Triumvir, Mazzini, is
the exponent and highest type. With him, Hetherington seemed to hold that
‘ ease is the death of the soul;’ and when he enlisted in the army of progress, he
enlisted for life; and, as he never faltered, though he served without pay or
pension, let it be remembered to his honour:
For to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust
Before her cause brings fame or profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just.
The publications which he edited, and pamphlets which he wrote, attest his
great industry—and something more; for, when he was an author, it required not
oniy ability to write, but courage to défendit. And he not only defended the
iberty of the press, he defended the liberty of conscience and the liberty of speech.
mnX?
an 1^ctment f°r blasphemy, in 1840, his defence was so well
f
Penma". ?aid him the compliment of saying that ‘he had
trih tl h * U Wlth .feelinSs of interest and with sentiments of respect and this
address683 by hlS unassuminS but firm bearing, than by his judicious
�LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY HETHERINGTON
Those who know what political trials and imprisonments are at the hands of ais
oppressive government and vindictive priesthood, know that language is inadequate
to express the losses and sufferings which are included in those familiar but
frightful words. But Hetherington knew not only how to work, but how to
suffer—nor has it been in vain.
Careless seems the great Avenger ; history’s pages but record
One death-grapple, in the darkness, ’twixt old systems and th? Word :
Truth for ever on the scaffold, Wrong for ever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth Progress in the shadow, keeping watch above its own.
No less remarkable than his political consistency was the fervour with which
our friend embraced and advocated the views of Robert Owen. They fell on his
paths like a stream of light; they mellowed his manners; they interested his
practical understanding; they gratified his humanity, and filled him with hope.
The old world is effete: there man with man
Jostles ; and, in the brawl for means to live,
Life is trod under foot.
Hetherington felt this deeply, and he never ceased to reverence Mr. Owen for his
benevolent and ceaseless labours, and his remedial proposals.
My co-operation with my friend has extended over many years. But now, as at
the first hour of our acquaintance, there are two qualities of his which I have
been struck with more than with others—his utility and his bravery. He was
decidedly the most useful public man I ever met with. At a public meeting he
was of unexampled service. He would do a man’s duty at a moment’s notice. He
would take the chair or speak. He never hesitated to do what everybody else
declined to do. He had no vanity to be consulted—no egotism stood in the way
of his co-operation with others: he had no ambition but to be useful. And he
was as brave as he was devoted. He never shrunk from danger. To the last day
of his life he would have suffered his home to be broken up, and himself dragged
to prison, to champion an important principle. Many men can be patriots in the
fervour of youth and the presence of applause. Hetherington had a spirit which
was neither chilled by age nor damped by neglect. But we have the satisfaction
of observing that the respect paid to his memory by the public, the press, and his
coadjutors, early and late, is a proof '‘Vat private worth and public service bring
with them individual esteem and general honour. A life spent like his
Will rear
A monument in Fate’s despite,
Whose epitaph will grow more clear
As truth shall rise and scatter light
Full and more full from Freedom’s height.
Let it be graven on his tomb:—
‘ He came and left more smiles behind ;
One ray he shot athwart the gloom,
He helped one fetter to unbind :
Men think of him and grow more kind?
In iienry Hetherington the people have lost an advocate and truth a resolute
partisan. Every honest politician has lost an able coadjutor, every patriot an
exemplar, and every true man among us a friend. In taking our last Farewell of
him at this grave, we should tell him (could he hear our voice) that we do it with
mingled feelings of joy and sorrow. We even feel a triumph in his life, while we
part with profound sadness at the loss of so noble a friend. In those social ieunions, where he has been so great a charm, we shall be all the meniei as we
remember his unclouded humour. And as we continue that struggle, to which his
life has been devoted, we shall take new courage from his example—we shall in
spire new confidence in what one man can do, as we remember what one man has
done : and when in future times the pilgrims of Industry shall visit this shrine,
they will exclaim—
‘ HERE LIES A POOR MAN’S GUARDIAN !'
and poor men will drop tributary tears over his grave.
�LIFE AN® CHARACTER OF HENRI' HETHERINGTON.
MR. WATSON’S SPEECH.
When Mr. Watson rose to speak, the assembly again uncovered. He laboured
under such evident emotion that it communicated itself to those around. He
said the grave at his feet was about to separate from him one who had been not
only his_ political associate, but his personal friend for twenty years. And how
ever painful it was to him, he could not resist compliance, in some form, with the
wish of Mr. Hetherington, in saying a few words over his remains. To the cor
rectness of what his friend Mr. Holyoake had said he could bear his personal
testimony. It was his misfortune to be out of town when Mr. Hetherington’s
illness was first communicated to him. He at once returned home; and when
after a long journey, he hastened to his friend’s door—it was to find him dead
*
He could assure them that he felt deep, intense, inexpressible distress that it was
denied to him to be also at his bed-side, as Mr. Holyoake had been, to administer
to his wants : and he felt deeply grateful to those who were there, as he knew that
all was. done which friendly consideration could suggest or execute. He and
Hetherington had suffered imprisonment together, and he knew that the pecuniary
difficulties which had embittered his latter years, were almost altogether induced
by his sacrifices and losses in the people’s service. And his friendship was as
disinterested as his patriotism. Himself and Hetherington were both book
sellers, but there never was between them the smallest degree of that rivalry
which was so commonly found, and which degraded trade into a low, a dis
ingenuous, a selfish, and a miserable contest. Whatever book he had under
taken, Hetherington promoted its sale just as though it was his own. They
did so by each other, and their single friendship never knew two interests.
Did his feelings leave him the power of speech, he could dwell long on the
virtues of his friend. They had heard the tribute paid him by Mr. Holyoake.
Let them inquire into its truth. It would bear the inquiry—and if they found it
true, let each go, and to the extent of his power do what Hetherington had done.
There were many young men around him. On them it devolved to carry forward
the work to which he whom they deplored had made the unwearied contribution
of his life. Let all who professed esteem for Hetherington imitate him. There
could be no tribute more eloquent—no honour to him greater than that.
Mr, W. J. Linton has forwarded to the Reasoner the following passage, which
he would fain hang garland-like on Hetherington’s tomb. The language in which
it is expressed, no less than the friendship which dictated it, entitles it to a place
in this Memorial.
TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF HETHERINGTON.
Of all the men in the battle for the People’s Right, I have known none
mor© single-minded, few so brave, so generous, so gallant as he. He was
the most chivalrous of all our party. He could neglect his own interests (which
is by no means a virtue, but there is never lack of rebukers for all failings of that
kind), but he never did, and never could, neglect his duty to the cause he had
embiaced, to the principles he had avowed. There was no notoriety-hunting in
him : as, indeed, so mean a passion has no place in any true man. And he was of
the truest. He would toil in any unnoticeable good work for freedom, in any
forlorn hope/ or even, when he saw that justice was with them, for men who
were not of his party, as cheerfully and vigorously as most other men will labour
for money, or fame, or respectability. He was a real man, one of that select and
glorious company’ of those who are completely in earnest. His principles were
not kept in the pocket of a Sunday coat (I don’t know that he always had a Sunday
change of any sort); but were to him the daily light which led his steps. If
strife and wrath lay in his path, it was seldom from any fault of his ; for though
hasty, as a man of impulsive nature, and chafed by some afflictions, he was not
intolerant, nor quarrelsome, nor vindictive. Men who did not know him have
called him violent. He was, as I said before, hasty and impetuous, but utterly
without malice; and he would not have harmed his worst enemy, though, in truth
he heartily detested tyranny and tyrants. Peace be with him, on the other side of
this fitful dream which we call life: peace, which he seldom knew here, though
his nature was kindly and his hope strong, though he loved Truth and wilfully
�MFB AND CHARACTER OF HENRY HETHERINGTON.
injured no man. One of the truest and bravest of the warm-hearted has laid
down among the tombs, not worn out, but sorely wearied. May we rest as
honourably, with as few specks to come between our lives and the grateful
recollections of those who have journeyed with us. If our young men, in the
vigour of their youth, will be but as enthusiastic and as untiring as was Hethering
ton, even in the last days of his long exertion, we need not despair of Freedom^
nor of a worthy monument to a noble life, which else would seem but as a vainlyspoken word, wasted and forgotten.
Yet again, peace be with him ; and in his place, the copy and thankful remem
brance of the worth we loved in him.
W. J. Linton.
It is a peculiarity, which has been the subject of some remark, that I read my
address at the grave. In addition to the reasons I there urged, one not noticed—
a public one—actuated me, which for public reasons I state. It seems to me that
nothing is gained by dispensing with the Church Service unless something, as
carefully considered and more personally conscientious, is put in its place. It
seems to me that, in point of solemnity and decorum, the Church Service is per
fect; and in every substitution of ours, the qualities of propriety and earnestness
should be most anxiously and effectually preserved. It has come under my obser
vation, that some burials of our friends have been conducted where the possibility
has been left open of irrelevant things being said—and sometimes they have been
said. As far as this can be guarded against it should be—and to write what facts
and thoughts are proposed to be expressed is the best precaution we can take to
prevent it. It must not be left open for any man to think that freedom of
thought, which we claim to exercise, is not quite compatible with good taste.
That philosophy which wants sensibility is false. It must be put past all doubt
that scepticism of clerical error does not deprive us of the feelings of men, or the
reverence of humanity. It does not matter to me that to read a speech is sup
posed to mar oratorical effect: this it by no means necessarily does. Victor
Hugo’s late speech at the Peace Conference in Paris, which has won so much
applause in Europe, and so moved those who heard it, was read. But if reading
did impair rhetorical effect, it would matter nothing in a funeral oration—as every
appearance of display is best banished, and that is the most effective, on such an
occasion, which is the most decorous, unambitious, simple, and earnest. My
apology for making these remarks here, is my desire to see some fixed and wellconsidered canon of taste regulate the practice of our friends on these occasions,
and this seems a suitable opportunity for suggesting it.
At the conclusion of the service at the grave, I signed my name at the Lodge
as ‘ Officiating Clergyman.’ Mr. Watson was required to do the same. We had
no power to alter an official form, but I have since been instructed by a legal
observer, that we might have written after our.names ‘ Officiating friends, thus
determining bur own qualification consistently with our views. The fact is worth
mentioning, as it may guide others. The John Street Directors provided 2000
copies of Hetherington’s ‘ Will and Testament’ for distribution to the assembly.
In order that nothing should be done, which could interfere with the etiquette
which the Committee of the Cemetery might be anxious to preserve, these were
not given except outside the gates. Several reprints have already been made of
the document, here inserted. But the distribution and sale of it, in a separate
form, has been discontinued, as it might be better circulated in connection with
the matter in this Memorial, and the proceeds, which may thence arise, be appro
priated, either to perpetuate Hetherington’s memory in some obviously durable
form or to the advantage of his survivors—there being dependents to whom he
was deeply attached—for whom it does not appear that any provision exists.
Messrs. Watson and Whitaker are assiduously engaged in the arduous and
difficult labour of adjusting his very confused and involved affairs, which his con
tinuous adversities and sudden death have left in seemingly inextricable difficulfafawM And if the matter of this brief Memorial should not sufficiently compensate
those who may purchase or circulate it, perhaps the reflection that they may us
contribute to the welfare of those whom Hetherington regarded, may prove an
adequate satisfaction. For, he who cared more for the public than he cared tor
himself, is perhaps entitled (in the persons of those belonging to him) to some
posthumous care in return.
J ■ Holyoakb.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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The life and character of Henry Hetherington
Creator
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Holyoake, George Jacob [1817-1906]
Cooper, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: [14] p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: Preface signed by G.J. Holyoake. "The various matter is extracted from the Reasoner..."--Pref. Contributions by Thomas Cooper and others. Henry Hetherington was a leading British Chartist. In 1822 he registered his own press and type at 13 Kingsgate Street, Holborn (now Southampton Row). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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J. Watson
Date
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1849
Identifier
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N309
Subject
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Chartism
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 life and character of Henry Hetherington), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Chartism
Henry Hetherington
NSS