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THE EXAMINER:
A Monthly Review of Religious and Humane Questions,
and of Literattire.
Vol. I. — NOVEMBER,
1870. — No. 1.
aMjicago;
OR,
THE BACK STAIRS TO FORTUNE.
“ Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do.
Not light them for themselves : for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues ; nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.”
Measurefor Measure.
CHAPTER I.—Introduction.
I WILL frankly say, that my object in writing this serial is. to
strike a succession of the hardest blows I can, at follies, vices, and
crimes, which I find around me, in the society, religion, and types of
character which are current among us.
It is now nearly twenty-eight years since I was walking home one
winter s night with my father, to our log cottage on the west bank of
the Fox river, some thirty-five miles from Chicago, when certain
questions he put to me about my soul and my future destiny,—we
were returning from a “ prayer and inquiry meeting,”—led me to
take the oaths, as it were, of awful fealty to God, and to set my heart
upon intense seeking after the invisible path by which human feet
find entrance to divine life. And for more than a quarter of a cen
tury, from extreme youth to manhood, I have not ceased to contend
with myself, and with all the forces of the world besetting me, for the
attainment of that ideal of a heart right with God, which was before
my young imagination when I first consecrated my powers to religion.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by Edward C. Towne, in the Office of the
Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
VOL. I.—NO. I.
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The lesson I have best learned is, that I am to myself, by many
varieties of ignorance and short-coming, fault and transgression, the
greatest hurt and hindrance; so that it were extreme stupidity and
wrong in me to attempt to cudgel mankind out of my path, as if the
world only stood between me and the gates of light; or to complain
of my earthly condition, as if but for cloud and storm, and the inces
sant turning of earth into her own shadow, I could get away easily
enough on the wings of my own endeavor to some place of eternal,
unclouded day. Out of the depths I confess that I am of the earth,
earthy, born of the dust and compact of common clay, and that for
me there is no problem more immediate and urgent than that of
detaining the incarnate spark in my own breast, and finding other
than the meanest cradle for that of God which is born into my own
life. These pages will bear constant witness, I trust, to my “ personal
conviction of sin,” even if I should not be found spitting out in the
presence of the public the husks I have been fain to eat, and should
hesitate, for decency’s sake, to do as the Pharisees, with their manners
mended in the school of Christ, now do, raise, with smitten breast,
the publican’s wail, to be seen and heard of men.
And it will always appear in what I write, unless I come greatly
short of my aim, that in no case do I propose that kind of judgment
which denies excuse and knows no arrest of the severities of justice.
I mean to comprehend, and to deal generous justice, even when I
strike the hardest and crush the most unsparingly ; believing that so
it is with the truth, and that in the final judgment of perfect wisdom
and absolute power, there is complete reconciliation of the criminal
and the court, and no such thing at last as the chains and prison of
uupitying penalty.
Very many good people on earth, appealing to God in heaven and
to the Devil in hell, are, indeed, still digesting the sour wrath against
wrong which comes of crudeness of faith and virtue, and are still
muttering, boldly or slyly, the foul curses of heathenism, in creeds
Catholic, Calvinist, and other, against the race of mortal men ; but I
no more propose to deem that sort of thing Christian, or decent, or
other than spiritually unclean and detestable, than I propose to accept
human sacrifice and the banquets of pious cannibalism.
The study of follies, faults, and crimes in men, is the study also of
human nature, and no delineation of the former can be true, or even
tolerable, to a just mind, which does not pick out the threads of the
original fabric, and show the work of the Creator under all the marred
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life of the creature. God forbid that I should forget, or fail to
indicate, in speaking of what goes sadly wrong in the details of human
life, that for every soul made in the divine image, there is adequate
discipline, causing a final tendency of character, and of the whole
course of being, to good, even the perfect and eternal good which is
the aim of God and the end of the kingdom of heaven. In the end,
therefore, whatever plainness and sharpness I may use, I hope to
speak kindly of men and of women, and permit my readers to see,
even on the back stairs to fortune, angels ascending and descending,
under whatever disguise and humiliation of soiled humanity.
But let it be understood that I do not mean to forbear criticism
and the exposure of facts, because of my personal consciousness of
deficiency and fault, and my unswerving faith in good in all and
divine good will to all. I shall analyze and portray life as I find it,
and shall take every suitable occasion to pierce the very core of our
doubtful and difficult questions, and to depict in their naked reality
the characters which swarm along the new paths of our new
civilization.
I have the blood of this new life in my own veins ; its great hopes
throb in my heart; I have closely observed and faithfully studied its
manifold, marvellous manifestations; and I feel wholly convinced of
the immeasurable course it is to run, and of the absolute necessity of
making haste to prepare the full success of that course, by culture
such as never before was needed, and never yet has been produced.
New elements of a new world are gathered in this great chaos which
we call The West, and the ever enduring spirit of truth, order,
beneficence, which has had so varied incarnations in human history,
seems destined to attempt here a new manifestation, to the interpre
tation of which new seers must be called. While greater masters of
prophecy prepare their burden, I propose to utter my word, in a
faithful picture of certain aspects of things about us, the criticism of
which, and reform of which, must precede any satisfactory establish
ment of a culture suited to our needs, which are the needs of
enterprise and liberty vastly greater and more radical than were ever
before ventured on.
It must not be thought, as my title may suggest, that I am about
to hold up the great city of the West to contempt. I use her name
to designate a type, a new expansion of energy and freedom, fully
believing that the event will show her to be one of the great centres
of the modern world. Incident to the progress which she represents,
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are insanities of enterprise and liberty, the aggregate of which I may
justly call Crazy Chicago. And in thus naming my picture, I leave
myself at liberty to introduce features brought from far, illustrations
of American insanity which I have gathered in other fields, and which
I am able to use to more advantage than the particular instances
nearer the scene of my tale. Crazy Chicago is an American product.
Some of the elements which mingle in the aggregate designated by
the term, are seen to best advantage in New York or Boston, though
doubtless the natural attraction of all is to the city whose name I use.
Here then, in my story, let them come, and let us behold in one
view the worst and the best of our new march of American energy
and freedom.
CHAPTER II.
It was impossible not to pity her. Only three days before a
bride, and a widow before the sun went down on her wedding-day,
she was journeying with her lover’s remains to lay them where the
new home for the new life had been prepared; and now an inexpli
cable event brought an additional and wholly unthought of shock.
The baggage car, in which was contained the casket of precious clay,
had taken fire, and was already enveloped in fierce, devouring flames.
Nobody could tell how it had happened, but the car, with all its
contents, was burning up. Had some careless person packed matches
in his trunk, along with something readily combustible, and so fur
nished the seed of this destruction ? Had a spark stolen in by an
accidental crack, and fallen on stuff easy to ignite ? Surmises were
abundant, but even the most plausible left the origin of the fire a
mystery. There were two baggage cars, and this one, entirely filled
with through-baggage, express matter and mails, had not been opened
since the train left P------ , ten hours before. The engineer was as
much at a loss as any one, as to how it had happened. He could
only say that he suddenly became aware that this closed and locked
car was bursting out in flames on all sides, and that to stop the train,
to uncouple and drag forward the burning mass, and to himself cut
loose from it, were barely possible for the tongues of flame which shot
fiercely out in every direction. A sense of awe stole over every one,
such as inexplicable manifestations of destroying power always excite,
when it was generally known that no one could tell how the confla
gration had originated.
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5
The utmost exertions of all hands did not suffice to break open a
door, or to get out even a single trunk, box, or mail-bag. Even the
attempt to lift one side of the car, by means of poles and rails, and
throw it over, and off the track, was of no avail. There was no
alternative but to let the fire rage until the chief weight of the
burning mass should be dissipated. It would not take a very long
time to make that heavy load almost as light as nothing, tossing its
elements back into the womb of air and chaos of dust whence they
came. Half a ton of letters, the business and love of New York and
New England written out by thousands of scribes, would become a
few pounds of ashes and lost cloudlets of elemental matter, within a
couple of hours. The huge pile of boxes and trunks, with the varied
belongings of a crowd of persons, things mean and things precious,
things gay and costly, and things cheap and vile ; the gentleman’s
apparel and keepsakes; the lady’s rich collection of necessities of
comfort, beauty, and pride; the student’s books, and love tokens, and
single best suit; and similar treasures of different classes of travelers,
were dissolving in that raging furnace, and their elements flying
away to the treasuries of nature. The full light of noon-day softened
the fire spectacle, extinguishing somewhat the white tips of the
tongues of flame, but still an intensely raging fire was evidently doing
its cruel work. And in the very heart of the fiery pile lay all that
death had left of Marion White’s husband.
Had there been no peculiar distress in the event, almost every one
would have watched the progress of the flames with bitter regret for
his or her own personal loss, but when it was known that those low
wails of irrepressible anguish in the second car were because of a
body burning up,— the last relic of one day of wedlock to a young
bride,— the single thought which pressed upon all hearts, was of
compassion for this unusual aggravation of a dreadful woe. Rough
men as well as gentle, and women commonly thoughtless of either
pleasure or pain not their own, as well as those not bereft by a false
life of the power of womanly sympathy, moved about or looked sadly
on, with that air of real compassion which always seems like a soft
outbreak in human flesh of the divine tenderness. Not a soul there
but sincerely pitied Marion White, for her great sorrow, and for this
strange after-blow of suffering. No one knew her; but her name,
which was distinctly marked on her traveling-bag, had been passed
from one to another in the crowd, as tenderly and reverently as
communion bread and wine are handed about when sacrament is
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administered. It was, indeed, one of the hours when the religion of
our common sympathy, and our common awe before invisible realities,
held its service of communion, and swayed all hearts with its gracious
power. There were bad men standing by, to whom greed was more
than grace, and women looking on who had grown sadly faithless to
womanhood through pride, or passion, or harshness of virtue and
heathenism in religion,— whom in this moment the kingdom of heaven
baptized, so that ever after they were under one memory at least of
sweet human nature, touched once at least with love towards the fellow
creature and natural trust towards the Providence which is behind all
our mysteries and all our woes. The lookers on had, indeed, been
less than human, if the quick tenderness of sympathy had not flushed
every face, and they had not thus tried dumbly to ease Marion White’s
load of pain. But it was only as the hour wore on, and when most
of the passengers were gone to watch the last work of the fire and to
prepare to throw the wreck from the track, that the terrible distress
of the doubly bereaved young wife began to abate a little.
Could she but have thought, there was nothing really dreadful in
this funeral pyre. But she did not think, not even as much as she
had begun to do before the suddenness and strangeness of this
experience came upon her.
The religion which tradition had taught her required a gloomy
contemplation of death. It barely offered its “professors” a candle
of hope for a passage through this valley of terrors, and neither she
nor her lover had ever consented to become “ professors.” There fell
no light, therefore, on the path of her bereavement, from any knowl
edge she had had of Christian faith. On the contrary, all her
instruction, every thing she was accustomed to hear, and even the
prayer in the dreary funeral service, had carefully excluded every
ray of light, and forced her desolate heart upon either blank despair
or desperate trust. The despair was too terrible for endurance, yet
she could not have trusted, if it had been for herself alone. On either
side of her way, as she strove to follow the departed spirit to which
they said “God had joined” her, she saw the Jesus of Christian
superstition,* clothed in blood and breathing fire, and the Devil of the
same dreadful tale, only less horrible than the Judging Christ, while
* A recent evangelical poem, “ Yesterday, To-day and Forever,” which has already had a very
wide circulation, describes the Lord Jesus as rising from the “ Bridal Supper of the Lamb ” to
say, “Now is the day of vengeance in my heart,” and going forth G Apparell’d in a vesture
dipped in blood,” while his angels cry,
“ Ride on and prosper! Thy right hand alone
Shall teach thee deeds of vengeance, and Thy shafts
Shall drink the life-blood of Thy vaunting foes,”
�far before yawned bottomless perdition, and over all was that Infinite
Horror, the presence of “ an angry God.” That it was a heathen
mythology which had created this picture, she could not be expected to
know, but she soon did know, by some better revelation than she had
been taught, that the angry God, the lake of fire, the nearly infinite
devil, and the Jesus of the judgment-throne, were shapes of fear
known only to p ious fiction.
The unreality of customary religion had strongly impressed her
ever since she had first had its lessons pressed upon her attention.
Without distinctly reflecting, she had gathered a strong impression,
and in fact reached a profound conviction, that the usual administra
tion of Christian dogma was formal only, and was wholly false to the
real faith both of ministers and peoples. It was her nursery experi
ence over again, only the tales of catechism, and creed, and church
worship, while solemn and grim as grown men could make them, were
less real than Blue Beard and Jack and the Bean Stalk,— mere
mummery kept up by decent custom and vague fear,— or by the
difficulty ministers found in extricating their real faith from this
customary, consecrated, and said to be Divine Form. She had so
clearly felt this, without distinctly expressing it even to herself, that
the general idea that pious fiction is as much a rule in the religion of
sects and churches, as pleasant fiction is in the nursery, was perfectly
familiar to her.
When, therefore, early impressions and the influences about her,
conjured up the usual dreadful picture of the gods of Christian
heathenism,— Jesus, Satan, and Jehovah,— it was inevitable that her
brave love should recur to the thought that these shapes of terror had
no sanction in any human or any Christian truth.
This, her own individual thought, which had had but a timid
existence in her mind, would have hardly served her needs when the
shadow of utter darkness fell on her life, but for the fact that love
and desperation nerved her spirit, and together drove her upon the
experiment of trust. And once that she dared brave the triune
Horror of her early creed, the conviction grew into dauntless vigof,
that the real truth would unmask and dethrone this image of complex
dread. Of Devil and angry Jehovah, in fact, she at once found the
fear entirely gone. The dreadful figure of the Judge alone remained
to plague her timid trust in God. Unhesitatingly, however, using
this simple liturgy of Old and New Testaments, ‘The Lord is my
Shepherd’ — ‘Our Father which art in Heaven,’ — she defied, for
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her lover’s sake, and trusting Love as true God and God as true Love,
the Messianic Lord of Vengeance, in whom she had wholly lost the
simple Christ of history.
A bitter feeling that some dreadful pretension, in parable or in
false report of parable, had done a most cruel thing to human hearts,
in affording a basis for the fiction of damnation, entirely separated her
from the thought of the teacher whose prayer she had on her lips,
and whose faith towards God her heart repeated. He was less than
nothing to her; he was wholly excluded from her sight; nor can one
wonder, who considers the extent to which Jesus, in the existing
records of his life, apparently lent himself to the idea of a Messianic
avenging deliverer.
“ I have hated Jesus ever since I was a little girl, and first read
about giving bad people to the devil to be put in hell fire,” were actual
words of a perfectly simple, perfectly just, and exceptionally Christian
experience, on the part of one, a very simple, earnest woman, who
could not be expected to discriminate the gross Judaism of some
things in the teaching of Jesus from the pure Christian truth of other
parts of his doctrine.
A resolute idealist, who sets out with the assumption that all the
bad words in the New Testament are to be read any way but simply,
in order to get a good meaning into them, may easily enough create
a Jesus all transcendent goodness and greatness, and think it very
strange that the millions do not see all colors white as he does, but
this is no exploit for common minds. And to many, who have
been diligently instructed in that orthodoxy, which says, as Ecce Deus
expresses it,— “ Christ must be more than a good man, or worse than
the worst man ; if he be not God, he is the Devil,” — it is impossible
to see the real teacher, as he speaks real truth, the attention is so taken
with the figure which he makes, or is represented as making, in some
scene which has no true revelation in it.
Women are commonly the sufferers who revolt finally against the
Jesus of pious fiction, and utterly, though secretly, turn away from
gospel and epistles, to the simple revelation which nature, and provi
dence, and inspiration, furnish to their own hearts. The young wife
of our story was such a sufferer and recusant. Instantly that her
mind became composed to reflection, she found herself a Christian
without Christ, an unfaltering believer in precious truths of God, and
eternal life, which had come to her under the Christian name, and
with that divine quality of mercy which the word “ Christian”
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seemed to most signify in the best Christian hearts, and yet a resolute,
defiant disbeliever in the whole form of creed and custom on which
had been enthroned so long the Judging Christ. The whole matter
had become divided, and a great gulf fixed between the one part and
the other, all the realities of God, and mercy, and heaven on one side,
and the fictions, the forms, and the black idols on the other. Defiance
of the latter was part, for the moment, of the faith with which she
regarded the former.
It was to this state of mind that Marion White had come, when the
sudden intelligence of the burning of her husband’s body threw her
from all self possession, and brought back upon her, with excess of
terror, the gloomiest impressions she had ever had. It seemed almost
as if the offended Judge had kindled those flames, to devour the dead
form, and give her a horrible symbol of the second death, to which
her lover had been received in hell torment. The event was so
unexpected and so inexplicable, and so harrowing at the best, even if
she could have remembered that it was no more than “ dust to dust,”
that, even with a more resolute mind, she must have been made
unusually susceptible, for the time, to dark impressions and depress
ing thoughts, such as early religious associations had always tended to
force upon her. Had her faith met at that moment with disastrous
overthrow, and fear recovered possession of her trembling spirit, it
would have been no more than usually happens. A plausible, tender
appeal to her sense of helplessness, to her feeling of ill desert, to her
natural terror in view of destruction, might have extinguished in her
heart the pure aspiration of the child towards the Father in Heaven,
and fastened on her some one of the forms of current Christian
heathenism. No such advocate was at hand, however, and with the
moving on of the train, and her final departure from the last relic of
her past, Marion White struggled out of the depths with a sad strength
of soul which she was destined never to lose.
CHAPTER III.
There were two persons in the car with Marion White, who each
had an impulse to offer her assistance, of the sort which sympathy
endeavors to render on such occasions. Both of them had the
clerical title, and both were ministers of religion, but they were every
way a singular contrast to each other ; they had in fact no more in
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common than the publican and the Pharisee in the temple. That one
of the two whose presence might have been of real service, we will
call, without his title, John Paul, a modest, earnest gentleman of
nearly fifty, whose countenance told a plain story of very profound,
and possibly very sad, experience. Him, however, we must defer
introducing, because he was anticipated by the Rev. Athanasius
Channing Blowman, a clergyman of national reputation, who was
en route to Chicago to deliver his celebrated lecture on Napoleon
Bonaparte and Modern History.
The Rev. Athanasius Channing Blowman was still a young man,—
thirty-three perhaps,— but he did not lack assurance, and he felt it
incumbent upon him to employ his pastoral, not to say his episcopal,
authority, with the sighs and tears of Marion White. Not that he
was a priest of ‘ The Church,’ much less a bishop, for he belonged to
a small denomination of heretics, and had only the standing which
excessive self-assertion gives; but he made a large and loud claim as
a “minister of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” and he held in
great esteem that prophecy, wherein the master assured the disciples,
“ He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and
greater than these shall he do.” It was from the last clause of this
text that Athanasius Channing Blowman purposed to preach in the
Chicago Opera House, on the Sunday evening previous to his lecture,
which would be given on Monday night.
Nature had used inexplicable freedom in mixing characters in this
young apostle. There was a little of Pope Hildebrand, just enough
to warrant the sublime assurance with which he had demanded and
obtained ecclesiastical dignities, on the various boards engaged in
managing the machinery of the sect. Of Tom Paine, Voltaire, and
any nameless mountebank, there were about equal parts, giving a
considerable dash of irreverent common sense, of egotistic wit, and of
grand and lofty tumbling with figures of speech, epithets fit and unfit,
and the usual weapons of sensational oratory. It was, however, in
personal appearance, that Athanasius Channing Blowman believed
himself indubitably in the line of prophets and apostles, and of his
“ Lord and Master.” Probably he would never have been called a
handsome man; and he certainly was not interesting in appearance;
but he had quite unusual stature, an animated countenance, eyes that
habitually flashed, or were meant to flash, and locks, abundant and
dark, worthy of an Apollo. Two thoughts frequently came to him
through the smoke of his cigar, that the figures of “ the Lord Jesus,”
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in pictures by very old masters, strangely resembled tbe person he
appeared in what he called “ my glorified moments,” and that Apollo
Athanasius Channing would have been a name strikingly suitable for
one who had added to the substance of Greek wisdom and orthodox
inspiration, the advanced views of most reputable heresy, and whose
lofty aim it was to invite Moses and Elias, Catholic and Calvinist, to
abide with him on his mount of transfiguration, “ our elevated liberal
views.”
In the matter of actual religion, this Apollo Athanasius once
naively confessed that it was the unknown quantity in his problem of
life. At the very first of his ministry he had inclined wholly to the
most V radical” paths, and he never had had, or could have, any
other than “ radical ” private opinions. But preferment, such as it
could be had in his sect, did not lie in that direction, and really the
workings of his mind were not so positive as to compel him to minister
one set of opinions rather than another. He went over, therefore, to
the conservative side of the denominational conventicle, and shouted
the shibboleths of orthodox heresy at the head of the “ right wing.”
Here he thought it mighty clever to confute the “ radicals,” who said
much of “ intuition ” and “ inspiration,” by confessing, as if that of
course settled the matter, that his soul was as empty of “ inspiration ”
as a brass horn of the Holy Ghost; and that of “ intuition” he had
never known any more than a dutch cheese; propositions which
nobody felt able to dispute. The single passion of his nature seemed
to be, to raise his voice loudest of all among “ the chief speakers,” and
to persuade himself that he led the van of the Christian religion,
because he was a successful sensational preacher.
In fact, however, the Christian religion, with all its sins of error
and wrong upon it, would have been infinitely indebted to this fellow
if he had looked up some honest employment. There undoubtedly
ought to be a quasi-hell just at present, convenient to urgent mundane
necessities, into which all not honest teachers of religion might be
thrust, long enough to smoke out thejr pretension, and save their
souls, as by fire, from the worst break-down of character to which
man or woman can come. The emptying thereby of numerous
pulpits, which it costs from $7,000 to $12,000 a year to keep a star
performer in, would do no harm whatever to public virtue or popular
interest in religion, and would rid us of a prodigious amount of
humbug, besides turning over to modest and honest labor, and to
good character, quite a number of persons originally capable of a
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career much nobler than that of careless, reckless, sensational
administration of no-truths, half-truths, and lies, in the name of
religion.
It was a pet conceit of young Mr. Blowman, since he had taken
charge of the “ conservative liberal movement of the Christian mind,”
to constitute himself spokesman of the latest discovered true intent of
the only original gospel of “ Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,”
and invite the warring sects of Christendom to say after him this last
revised and finally genuine Christian confession of faith. It was not
that he really had any particular faith to confess himself, but he
imagined himself competent, as conductor of a metropolitan religious
theatre, drawing crowded houses every Sunday morning and evening,
to give a good guess at the average religious notions afloat in the
popular mind, and had no hesitation in assuming that a compend of
such notions would have prodigious popular success.
With his usual largeness and boldness of view, he purposed
obtaining what he called a “ Consensus,” or agreed-upon statement
of beliefs, endorsed by leading divines,— selected by himself from all
parts of Christendom, and addressed by a circular letter under his
own hand,— as an authoritative exposition of faith and practice. To
his mind it was plain that large numbers of the popular clergy of
various sects would welcome so good an opportunity to fall into line
under one banner, and behind a leader whose star was so undeniably
in the ascendant, wherever theatres and opera houses had opened
their doors. The “ liberal views” of his own sect rendered the bare
suggestion of a “ Creed ” dangerous, not because there was really any
indisposition to have a creed, in a small and sly way, by a sort of
ecclesiastical thimblerig, but from the average aversion of the sect to
call the distinctly proclaimed confession by the usual name, the
general impression seeming to be that clever sleight-of-hand infidelity
to the boasted principle of liberty, would escape detection, and
enable the body to save appearances.
In this peculiar exigency, our young apostle was very lucky to hit
on the Latin term, Consensus, which at once sounds neither definite
nor dangerous, and has an impressive suggestion of dignity and
divinity, as much as to say, reversing a scripture word, “ It seems
good to US and to the Holy Ghost.” This term he almost considered
a divine suggestion, only he was not sure that the assumptions of that
word “ divine,” such as the existence of God. inspiration, etc., were
not a little doubtful, useful but misty, while of his own cleverness he
�Crazy Chicago.
13
was certain beyond a doubt, and on the whole preferred to assume
that, in the absence or inattention of Divine Wisdom, and “the Lord
Jesus ” having left the excelsior opportunities to future disciples, he
had invented a kind of Nicholson pavement for religion, over which
ark and hearse, the hope and the terror of traditional faith, might
trundle, smoothly as never before, their glorious onward way.
He often said to himself, and to his numerous admiring confidants,
the quasi-religious clever fellows, of both sexes, who constituted the
voluntary vestry of his grand metropolitan conventicle, “ The Church
of Holy Enoch,” that he should never forget the hour and the
moment when the scheme of a “ Consensus ” occurred to him. It
was on his first visit to Chicago, when for the first time he was driven
down Wabash Avenue, by the Hon. Jupiter William. His calmness
of mind had been disturbed for a moment by the contrast between
his own elegant patent-leather “ Oxford ties ” and the “ heavy kip ”
of the Hon. Jupiter William’s unvarnished boots, resting conspicu
ously on the front seat of the carriage, when suddenly, as the vehicle
swept round into the Avenue, and rolled with soothing smoothness
along the block roadway, a kind of vision brought a recurrence of his
frequent thoughts on the momentous subject of a “ banner-statement
of belief,” and in a moment, as if a Latin Dictionary,— a sealed book
to his education,— had been let down between the scraggy and
smutty trees which line this “ superb drive,” he read this word of
words for his purpose, Consensus, and instantly imagined a grand
turn-out of ecclesiastical vehicles, rolling in noiseless majesty in the
wake of his suggestion, over the way his cleverness should lay down.
From that moment “Consensus” had been his banner in the sky.
Fie had had the word illuminated, and framed in velvet and gold, to
stand on his study table. And straightway he had proceeded to write
out fairly his compend of all known winds of doctrine, attaching thereto
his own bold, decisive, oecumenical signature, Athanasius Channing
Blowman, preparatory to receiving the concurrent attestation of elect
fathers and brethren to whom he would vouchsafe circular epistolary
application. This compend, which was meant to be to the original
materials of prophecy, gospels, and epistles, what an ordered and
elegantly served dinner would have been to the great sheet let down,
full of things clean and unclean, of Peter’s vision, had been printed
in gilt and colors, on a large, elegant broad-sheet, and also in a primer
executed in the richest style of the designer’s art.
It was the broad-sheet which had best pleased the eye and heart of
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Crazy Chicago.
the author, because the first words and the last, the title and the signa
ture, stood as he deemed they should, in one view, the Alpha and
the Omega of this last authoritative interpretation of revelation; and
then it suggested a new Luther, nailing theses of everlasting gospel on
the doors of “ Atheism, Free Religion, and Romanism,” with “ blows
heard in heaven.” “Consensus” and “ Blowman I ” Would not
numberless Simeons now say, “ Mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people ? ”
But the broad-sheet was less convenient than a primer to hand
about, and less durable in the frowsy pockets of unctious youths
who besieged the pulpit steps, at close of service on Sunday nights,
for more words of everlasting bunkum; and then report had it, on too
good ground, alas! that the Reverend Doctor Archangelicus Sanctus
Sanctorum, had made contemptuous reference to the “Consensus” as
“ Blowman’s Handbill,” and really threatened a split in the party of
“ us and the Holy Ghost,” unless “ us” used somewhat more reserve
in presence of the long time “ Liberal ” Vicar of the “ Lord Jesus.”
The primer, therefore, had finally engaged the ardent dogmatic and
aesthetic interest of the inventor of “Consensus.” and was already
privately published, while the large scheme of concurrent attestation
was delayed, until due attention could be afforded it. Some experi
ence which Mr. Blowman had had, with a richly printed and orna
mented insurance tract, which his popular pen had been engaged to
write, and which the enterprising managers, with plenty of other
people’s money to spend, had brought out regardless of expense, now
came in play. Suffice it to say that heavy tinted paper, border lines
which varied with each page through all the colors of the rainbow, a
text printed in old English black letter, with illuminated initial letters
in blue, scarlet, and gold, and an illuminated cover, done in chromo
lithograph, were the main features of the “ Consensus ” primer, the
striking effects of which had moved Blowman to soliloquize, “ Wonder
what J. C. would say to that,” these initials being his usual, strictly
private, familiar designation of the personage professionally spoken of
as “ our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
It was with two or three of these gay picture books in his hand
that Mr. Blowman improved an opportunity to take the seat directly
in front of Marion White, soon after the train had left the scene of
the fire. It was not difficult for him to introduce conversation, as it
certainly would have been for John Paul, or for any other person of
quick sympathies.
�Crazy Chicago.
f
15
“ Permit me, dear Madame, to hand you a short statement of
religious beliefs,— liberal beliefs, Madame, which may afford you some
suggestions.”
“Thank you; you are very kind. It is not a Tract Society —
thing — is it ? ”
Great emotions are apt to induce extreme frankness, which Marion
White had certainly used in intimating the disgust she felt for the
“ blood of Jesus ” leaflets of heathenism which Tract distributors had
so frequently thrust upon her. Her Quaker uncle, good Thomas
White, had long ago shown her that the Tract Society had no moral
character, and her own sense of religious truth had led her to consider
such of its publications as had come in her way as very stupid illustra
tions of the sentimentalism of Christian superstition. The bare
thought of one of these vulgar appeals to fear, and selfishness, and
gross credulity, excited in her an intense desire to cover her grief and
her faith from every eye save that of the One, who was to her the
Lord our Shepherd, and the Father in heaven. However, she did
not wish to be impolite, and then Mr. Blowman’s primer certainly did
not bear the aspect,— generally mean and smutty,— of Tract Society
origin; she added therefore, with some hesitation :
“ I shall be happy to look at it at some time,” and handed it to her
traveling companion, a brother, a youth of eighteen perhaps, who had
found himself not good for much during these last hours of his sister’s
trouble.
Mr. Blowman responded, “ You hold some form, I presume, Madame,
of Christian faith, and are able to —;” exactly what, Mr. Blowman
did not himself know, and the clear, frank eyes of Marion White so
evidently spoke of knowledge, that he dared not make a random
reference; so he stopped, quite at his ease, however, letting a manner
of high self-assurance serve as a resting-place for his broken question,
until he should see what particular hope it might be which kindled
so pure a light in those saddened eyes.
It was painful for Marion White to speak at all just then; it was
torture almost to uncover her heart; but all the more because of the
pain did she reply from her deepest feeling and her most distinct
thought,—
“ I suppose I do not hold any form of what is called Christian faith,
but I believe very strongly indeed.”
That was a distinction quite beyond the Blowman mind, which, to
use a colloquial phrase, ‘took s'ock’ in certain forms and in the
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Crazy Chicago.
‘ Lord Jesus,’ as the impersonation of these forms, but of faith apart
from these knew no more than the unborn know of life. But it did
not become the author of the “ Consensus ” to be puzzled, or to betray
any desire for information on that to him, most remote of subjects,
real faith apart from assent to forms, faith without the touch or sight
of a symbol or idol. Accordingly, to set himself duly above this
young woman, who evidently had something like a ‘ radical ’ conception
of the nature of faith, or rather imagined herself having faith, such
as ‘ radicalism ’ represented it necessary to have, Mr. Blowman, with
his lofty oecumenical tone, said,—
“ Ah, indeed, Free Religion ? ”
The hardly veiled sneer of this question did not escape the notice
of Marion White. The evident skepticism of Mr. Blowman she
readily discovered. It was not the first time she had taken notice
that infidels and scoffers, by any real rule of genuine faith, are to be
found often enough under clerical profession of the popular creed.
Indeed, it had seemed the nearly universal rule, with the class of
ministers she had known, to contemptuously call in question the
natural and genuine experience of spiritual things which people
commonly had, in order to thrust upon everybody the orthodox tradi
tional preconceptions, and compel human hearts to come unto the
Father by the orthodox way. To her simple honesty, her fervent
moral integrity, and her always quick and direct faith in the divine
love and care, this clerical trick had come to seem as barefaced and
unworthy as any other form of false and faithless behavior. Mr.
Blowman, therefore, who apparently meant to intimate that her faith
was a delusion, she looked on with sad wonder, quite unable to
comprehend that any man, seeing her sorrow, and hearing her confes
sion of strong trust, should think it fit, or other than false and wicked,
to carelessly mock at her confidence, and by implication warn her of
the folly of trust such as hers. Exactly what the terms Mr. Blowman
had used, might mean, Marion White did not know, but she saw at
once what they might in truth mean, and she understood clearly that
Mr. Blowman intended to express decided disapproval of the confes
sion she had made. Her first impulse was to say no more, but her
eyes involuntarily turned directly to her questioner, with the frank,
quiet honesty in them which moved her to speak at all, and once that
her attention was taken by Mr. Blowman’s clerical cut and counte
nance, and she saw the unreality, the pretension, the ecclesiastical
frivolity even, of the man, a wholesome force of truth seized her, and
�Crazy Chicago.
W
(
17
she answered, with gentle firmness, and just enough brokenness of
feeling to make every tone of her voice pathetic, —
“ I do not know what you, Sir, may mean by free religion, and
therefore, cannot answer your question. But I confess that I do feel
entirely free to accept religion as my own experience has taught it to
me, and do believe that this freedom is justified by all really religious
truth. Your pamphlet has a very pretty cover, Sir, and your views
are doubtless very good if you believe them, but a Father in heaven
must have better ways of coming to our souls than by ministers and
tracts, or books and histories. I have not seen or heard anything,
since my trouble came, which did me any good, except the kind faces (
of people, and their loving words. All the religion which has come
to me has come of itself, in my heart, with my feelings which only
God knows; and that has kept coming almost all the time, so that I
feel almost as if I were God’s only child, and could not trust him
enough. I hope you do not consider such feeling wrong, because it
seems to me that ministers ought not to kill such religion, merely
because it is free and separate from their views. If God gives religion
to his children, so that it is a new life in their souls, like an angel
child born into a mother’s arms, it cannot be right for anybody to
meddle with it or injure it. I think I could not believe in anything
which would take away any of my faith in God’s being near to me
himself, and taking care of me himself.”
There was a pleading earnestness in Marion White’s concluding
words, which might have led an observer to suspect that she looked
on Mr. Blowman as no better than one of the servants of Herod, who
were sent to slay the infant Jesus, and that she was half afraid he
wished to murder the divine hope which was born in her heart, and
to which she clung with more than a mother’s passion. So many
ministers had seemed to her no better, towards the actual religious
experiences of people, than Herod’s purpose about Jesus, that uncon
sciously this fear did lend a tone to her manner. The Jesus of the
churches had become, so long since, a jealous king, to whom knees
must bend and heads bow, and his ministers had lent themselves so
completely to the Jesuit office of making his kingship the chief
interest, and had so unscrupulously used cruel violence against all
religion, springing up in human hearts, which turned to God directly,
without regard to the king-mediator’s claim, as sole keeper of access
to God, that Marion White, with her unusual possession of natural
and genuine direct faith in God, could not but feel distinct and strong
VOL. I.—NO. I.
2
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Crazy Chicago.
aversion, in the presence of any interference with her religious
experience.
For once in his life Mr. Blowman was nonplussed. He had
thought himself an Apollo of ministers to young women; indeed he
had, as near as his dry, wooden nature could, indulged in the spiritual
concupiscence which so commonly befouls the Protestant confessional;
he believed few females could remain unmoved to tender devotion
under the flash of his eye, and the shake of his locks ; to the best of his
belief, — and he kept a list. — not less than seventy young womeD, of
tolerable charms, worshipped through him, and closely associated the
bliss of heaven with his handsome person; while of unattractive
feminine devotees, who had languished under his flashing eye, he
imagined there must already be several meeting houses full in various
parts of the country, and that his retinue of houris, in the “ fields of living
green ” revealed in the hymn book, would perhaps astonish even the
angels, and go far to entitle him to high rank in the kingdom of “ the
Lord Jesus; ” but here was an instance quite contrary to his philos
ophy and practice of apostleship, a young and sweet woman, in special
need of consolation, who evidently saw neither charm nor help, either
in the Lord Jesus or in him, and who amazed him still further by the
clearness and earnestness of her direct, free confidence in God ! He
did not feel quite easy as he turned away, keeping the seat in front of
Marion White, but quite unable to carry on the interview, and gazing
fixedly out of the window to console his wounded vanity with a
pretence of important occupation for his mind. The thought really
plagued him, as the train sped over the prairie. ‘ What if one might
believe really in God, as he believed in himself, and feel the nearness
of Infinite Spirit, as he felt the visible and tangible fact of his own
person ! If that were so, what might not a man become as a minister,
not of historical recollections, but of actual divine inspiration!’ The
grandeur of the idea teased him, but not into faith, and he gradually
composed himself to abide in the old assumptions, and to go on in the
old way.
�Charles Dickens and his Christian Critics.
CHARLES DICKENS AND
19
HIS CHRISTIAN CRITICS.
The theological heathenism which still sticks to Christianity, has
few consistent, outspoken representatives. Total depravity, wrath of
God, blood atonement, and damnation, are rarely taught in the
orthodox pulpit, and still less rarely applied. It is commonly felt to
be brutal and infamous to rigidly apply them, and worse than useless
to honestly teach them. People do not want to hear of these dogmas,
and they are outraged by any direct application of them. To stand
over a human creature, in the presence of the loving and the weeping,
and argue of depravity, wrath, atoning blood, and damnation, with
intent to intimate that a soul has gone to hell, is commonly felt to
show a kind of cannibal appetite.
Undoubtedly “ Calvary,” as theologically understood, means human
sacrifice, or worse than that, and damnation certainly means that, but
average decent people want to forget it, even if they are not ready to
put it out of their creed. They feel the horrible heathenism of it,
although they have not yet definitely rejected it, and they no more
wish to recall the “ blood of Jesus,” and all it has implied, than they
wish to attempt appeasing God by drawing a butcher knife through
the throat of the eldest son. The sacrifice of Isaac, so often said to
be typical of Calvary, they do not more truly leave behind, than they
do the sacrifice of Jesus, justly assuming that the blood of Jesus has
no more to do with redemption than father Abraham’s knife. When,
therefore, a minister of religion flourishes the old heathen knife over
a dead man, and talks of hell and blood as if Moloch were his god,
and he wanted to cut somebody’s heart out for a sacrifice, the ortho
dox world is not less shocked than the heretic and secular world.
The Tremont Temple Baptist pulpit of Boston, is occupied by a
clergyman,— Fulton by name,— whose theology is that of Abraham’s
knife, and of what he calls the “ reeking cross.” He reads human
history, he tells us, “ in the light of burning Sodom and in the
presence of a reeking cross,” and advises us that “ the mighty tidal
wave of Almighty wrath approaches,” and that all of us who are not
“ clothed in the blood of Christ ” will go to “ hell, the prison-house
of the damned.” It would seem that this Fulton must burn brim
�20
Charles Dickens and hìs
stone, and keep a puddle of blood on his study table, and must, on
special occasions, visit slaughter-houses and hangings, to derive
inspiration and imagery for his gospel of Golgotha and GehennaHe has the fierce, “reeking” godliness of unadulterated heathenism,
and teaches that God hates us like hell, and only restrains his
vengeance a moment, to speedily roll in horrible destruction over us,
and be a hell of torment to us forever. The impatience of God to
drink our blood, is the striking feature of his theism; the necessity to
us of being all over blood,— dipped in the blood of Jesus,— if God is
to be kind to us, is the chief word of his gospel; and the certainty
that, if we reject this vile gospel of blood, God will damn — damn —
damn us, is his one prophetic utterance.
We are not surprised, therefore, to find that his humanity is on a
par with that of the pious cannibalism which enjoins the sacrificial
eating of aged relatives, or that of the Mormon Danite doctrine of
murder as a means of grace, killing people to save their souls. He
takes a great, and loving, and beloved soul, such as he confesses
Charles Dickens to have been, and “ eats him raw,” to use a Greek
metaphor,— damns him to hell, to use his own choice vocabulary,—
as a matter of mercy and truth to us who, vainly and villainously, as
he deems it, trust that God will be kind to our great brother, and
will lead him in the way of eternal life. Merely for appearance’s
sake, he professes not to pronounce “ an opinion as to the home of
his soul,” but he does this nevertheless, and in terms which add
blasphemy to brutality. He “ leaves him with God,” and expounds
“God” as meaning “hell.” And this disgusting Calcraft of
preachers, with his blood-reeking gospel of pious ferocity, asks us to
hear him as a minister of Christian grace and truth ! It is much as
if the slaughter-house offal should be brought us in place of butcher’s
meat; Mr. Fulton keeps the refuse of Christianity without its truth.
The truth of Christianity teaches us to implicitly trust the paternal
sovereignty of God, and to hope the best, and believe the best, and
have full assurance of the best, in any and every instance of the
offspring of God, simply on the ground that God’s care is perfectly
adequate to secure the best. The theological heathenism, which has
so long made part of Christianity, and which undoubtedly is
suggested, if not found, in Jesus and Paul, as part of the heathen
tradition which helped give an envelop, husk, or shell, to Christian
truth, denies the fact of this care of God, chiefly on these grounds, as
now explained, that God cannot consistently be a kind father to
�Christian Critics.
21
unworthy children, and that, even if he could be, the nature of the
freedom he ought to give his children forbids it. That is to say, if
God should effectually influence us, here or hereafter, to be good, and
thereby make us holy and blessed, he would violate our creature
freedom, and if he should concern himself to do this while we were
disobedient, he would fail to show due respect for good character,
which can be fitly shown only by penalty, and that not helpful and
redemptive 1
It is disgraceful, but it is true, that so-called theologians, supposed
to have had at least a common education, and entrusted with the
instruction of the community, unite in forbidding God Almighty to
train up his children in the way in which they should go, and, with
one accord, doubt whether the creatures would walk in that way, even
if the Creator were permitted to use all the powers of divine paternal
discipline. They assert the inconsistency of moral discipline with
human freedom I To persuade, even with the utmost care and
wisdom of God, is to violate the will! A human father may do this,
yea, must do this; but God must not do it I The human father is
derelict in duty if he do not aim to break the disobedient will, and
bring to repentance and perfect obedience; but it is God’s duty to
avoid doing this!
Is it possible to conceive a more absurd doctrine ? Here are the
moral offspring of Deity, made susceptible to moral influence, capable
of due development only under moral influence, and to be brought
under human good influence as much as possible, and yet we are
asked to believe that God must not use good influence, or at least
must avoid using this effectively, because he would thereby make his
children holy and happy forever, at the dreadfid cost of violated free
will! That will do to tell in Tremont Temple. Christian common
sense knows better.
The other point of the popular dogma about God, is no less absurd,
and, besides, it is wicked, if any dogma whatever can be said to be
wicked. This forbids God to make men good, lest thereby he should
not seem to love goodness and hate sin. It forbids God to be kind
and helpful, in divine moral and spiritual ways, lest by so doing he
get the reputation in the universe of a bad moral character. The
mere suspicion that the Father-Creator will deal so wisely with his
creature children as to redeem them finally every one, excites an
orthodox theologian as a red rag is said to do a wild bull. Universal
redemption, by the perfect fatherhood of God, is the abomination of
�22
*
Charles Dickens and his
desolation set up in the holy place of orthodoxy, because, if it is a
fact, then orthodoxy is heathen folly.
Dr. J. P. Thompson, of the Broadway Tabernacle Congregational
church, New York, wrote a book a few years since to prove the neces
sary damning effect of the love of God, on the ground that true love
must respect right, and that right forbids God to be a Father to
sinners. According to the orthodox idea, God must stand off from
the sinner and deal out every possible hurt and pain, by way of
proper penalty. That is the word, “penalty.” Dr. Thompson called
his book “ Love and Penalty.” A more exact title would have been
“ Damning Love.”
By “ penalty ” the orthodox dogmatist means punishment which will
hurt and will not help. This damning penalty, — hurting the sinner
and taking care /wi to help him, or in any way do him any good,—
this infernal, hellish, damnable infliction of unmitigated evil, — is said
by orthodoxy to be the only means by which God can show proper
regard for goodness and suitable dislike of sin. Orthodoxy is fiercely
anxious to have God show that he hates sin. Prophesy to it of God’s
showing that he loves goodness by making every soul good, and it will
retort that such a God is good for nothing, a mere sentimental driv
eller, a goody Being, whose “ throne ” is not worth an hour’s purchase.
Hatred of sin, “ burning to the lowest hell,” is the orthodox charac
teristic of Deity.
Now of this conception of divine law, pure Christian truth knows
nothing whatever. The justice of God is paternal and effective. Its
embodiment is perfect fatherhood. Such a thing as penalty intended
to do evil only, is unknown to Deity. Nothing more would be needed
to make God devilish than the adoption of such penalty. Divine
penalty is intended to do good only, and would not be divine if it
were not redemptive. All the judgment of God looks to reform, and
all divine execution of law causes repentance and obedience. It is
simply by want of faith in God, that the question is, or can be, raised,
whether a soul will fail of holiness and blessedness. Orthodoxy
assumes that God has no more wisdom than our human law embodies,
and that our miserable failure to deal with offenders is an example of
justice which Deity cannot surpass. It stubbornly, blindly, wickedly
almost, refuses to see that fatherhood is the better type, and that the
justice of God must appear, not in harsh, ineffective judgeship, but in
effective, paternal discipline.
�Christian Critics.
23
The “ Our Father,” then, is the true Christian word; the Judge
of the parable is a suggestion from heathenism. Away, therefore,
with the abominable doubt whether a great soul is on the way to
heaven. Away with the brutal and blasphemous suggestion that
Charles Dickens, “ in the hands of God,” is in hell.
Mr. Beecher said of Dickens, —
I
,
/
“ I think that his death produces more the feeling of personal loss than
any since the death of Walter Scott. His books are books of the household
— broad, tender, genial, humane. No man iu our day has so won his way
to the hearts of the people; he took hold of the great middle class of feeling
in human nature, Whether he was a Christian or not, in our acceptation of
the term, God knows. . . One class of men we feel to be Christians — they
are producers of spiritual influences ; another class produce malign influ
ences. . . I recollect hearing my father say of Bishop Heber, after having
read his life, that he doubted whether he was a Christian ; he thought he was
a moral man and had ‘nateral virtoos.’ I think none of us now would share
his doubts. . . All that Dickens wrote tended to brace up manhood; the
generic influences of his writings were to make men stronger, and to make
the household purer, and sweeter, and tenderer. . . I consider him as the
benefactor of his race. Providence did not call him to the spiritual element;
but it gave him no mean task, and equipped him with no mean skill for his
work. . . About the question of his spiritual work we cannot decide. But
we cannot help being grateful to God that he raised such a man up to do a
great work ; and he did his work well. . . I thank God for the life and works
of Charles Dickens.”
This was said in reply to the following remark, made by a Mr. Bell,
at one of Mr. Beecher’s Friday Evening Lectures,—
“There are very few men whose works have a more beneficial influence
in our homes, or of whom we have thought with more kindly interest. We
have all loved the man; but, when I ask myself whether or not Charles
Dickens was a Christian, I can’t help feeling sorry that such a man has passed
away and left us in doubt about his future.”
It was this doubt, whether Dickens would be found to have gone to
hell or to heaven, to which Mr. Beecher attempted to reply; and his
reply, after a sufficient summary of Mr. Dickens’ good and great work
in the world, was “ God knows — we cannot decide.” That is to say,
a good and great work in the world, is not evidence of hopeful Chris
tian character, and does not warrant faith that the doer of that work
will not be damned
Assuming no more than Mr. Bell and Mr. Beecher admit, in regard
to the good work of Dickens, we may say that he oW the Sermon on
�24
Charles Dickens and his
the Mount as thoroughly and largely as any man of his generation,
and that no man living when he did, was more bound to his fellows
by simple and true love than he was. Even the Tremont Temple
cannibal had to say, “all men loved him; he loved all men.” Yet
Mr. Beecher professes not to know whether we may believe that this
great and good man, who was so bound to his fellows by the covenaut
of love, a universally beloved benefactor of his race, has escaped hell,
and may be expected ultimately to reach heaven ! The Brooklyn
prophet thanks God for the life and works of Charles Dickens, and
yet pretends to be “ in doubt about his future.” He does not even
demand that his dead brother’s great and good life be considered
enough to give him a start towards heaven, just enough at least so
that one can feel sure that he has escaped hell! He concedes that, for
all we know or may believe, Dickens is damned !
Mr. Beecher knows better than this. He has a faith which is
utterly misrepresented by the doubt he here confesses. Why did not
the occasion bring out his real faith, and manifest his Christian
common sense ? Because he is, to use plain terms, a Time-Server.
He is afraid of the orthodox public, who buy Plymouth Pulpit and The
Christian Union, and are expected to buy the “ Life of Christ” which
he is writing. If ever hesitation, timidity, faithlessness, ought to be
lashed without mercy, it is when a minister of faith, such as Mr.
Beecher is, offers a stone for bread, a doubt in place of truth, in
answering, in any instance, the question under which so many hearts
are pressed down to the ground and crushed almost out of life,
whether a good life, without special faith in the atonement, is
ground for sure hope that God will be kind. If Mr. Beecher did
not trust, and could honestly say so, the case would be wholly altered.
He had the trust, but gave instead a doubt. He answered the most
serious and widely applicable question which could have been put to
him, by an evasion, the effect of which was a falsehood. He makes
us ask the question, whether to be a Christian, in his “ acceptation
of the term,” includes honesty and courage. And knowing that it
does, we wonder how much he lacks of being half as good a Christian
as Charles Dickens was.
There is a much braver man in the pulpit of Park Street Church,
Boston. He is less endowed with inspiration than Mr. Beecher, but
what he sees, and all that he believes, he dares to preach. We refer
to Mr. Murray. He said of Dickens, —
�Christian Critics.
25
“That the man loved his fellow-men, I know; that he loved his God, I
hope, and have faith to believe. In thought I stand uncovered beside the
tomb in which his body sleeps, in silent sadness, that so sweet and gentle a
spirit is taken from the earth. In reverent gratitude I thank the Lord that
he did bless mankind with the birth of such a mind. I thank him as for a
blessing vouchsafed to me personally. I feel that I am a better man than I
should have been had no Charles Dickens lived. . . Farewell, gentle spirit!
Thou wast not perfect until now! Thou didst have thy passions, and thy
share of human errors; but death has freed thee. Thou art no longer
trammeled. Thou art delivered out of bondage, and thy freed spirit walks
in glory.”
It was in reply to this that Mr. ‘ Believe-or-be-Damned ’ Fulton
said,—
“It is a more than mistake for any man who takes Christ’s gospel for
authority to intimate that death frees a man from human errors, delivers him
from the bondage of sin, or permits him to walk the realms of light. . . He
[Dickens] stands naked before God. . . With what is he clothed upon?
Nothing wrought by himself will answer. The blood of Christ alone cleanseth from all sin. . . Does love won from men insure eternal life? The
question confronts us. Is it or is it not a fearful thing to fall into the hands
of the Living God? . . Never, since I received my commission to preach,
have I seen such universal desire to push by the peril, and ignore the teach
ings, of the gospel. Jesus says, ‘Whosoever believeth, and is baptized,
shall be saved. Whosoever believeth not shall be damned’ . . . Now is
the time to bring the truth home. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
the living God.”
If a recent criminal, with the double infamy on his soul of marital
brutality and cowardly assassination, had been sentenced to be
hanged, and had summoned to his side, as a sympathizer on the
woman-and-marriage question, our Gehenna apostle of Tremont
Temple, and we had seen the Baptist minister on the scaffold, with
an execrable wretch in his hands, we should have beheld the former
unhesitatingly offering salvation to the latter, and confidently urging
it upon him, on the single condition of penitent faith in the atoning
blood of Jesus, if, indeed, the two were not already fellow-communi
cants. But when Charles Dickens dies without a moment’s warning,
and falls instantly into the hands of God, and is found not clothed
in the blood of Jesus, and a minister who preaches a gospel which
pushes by ‘ Believe or be damned,’ far enough to give the Almighty
a decent moral character, and to anticipate from the fatherhood of
God respectable care of human creatures, intimates that the hands of
God mean kindness, help, deliverance, redemption, and that a good
�26
Charles Dickens and his
and great soul gone to God has emerged from the valley and shadow
of mortal limitation, and failure and trouble, and has entered upon a
path which will grow brighter and brighter until it reach the perfect
light of heaven, then, behold ! we hear that “ It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God ! ” The Baptist minister would
assume to administer redemption, and to send a murderer direct to
heaven, but not all the powers of the world to come, not even God
himself, may meet the soul of Charles Dickens and guide it to the
realms of light.
We beg some one to explain to Mr. Fulton that the world to come
has at least as ample an equipment for ministering to souls as this
world, and that it is highly probable, considering that God, the holy
angels, and the blessed saints, are neither fiends, fools, nor Fultons,
that our departed who arrive in that world, as babes born into a new
life, will be received with due care, and aided to find in the new
sphere the blessed way of eternal life. It seems to be according to
the gospel in Tremont Temple, that God’s hands in the world to
come, are much as the hands of what are known as “ baby-farmers ”
are in this world, and that most of us, as soon as God gets hold of us,
may expect to be spiritually put out of the way, murdered, and
thrown, not to the dogs, but worse, to the devils.
The tribute of Dr. Bellows to the genius and character of Charles
Dickens, was at once remarkably appreciative and strikingly signifi
cant. The gist of it was in these words :
“ Rarely have the genius and gifts of the individual soul been so empha
sized as in the world-wide interest and sorrow felt in the extinction of that
shining lamp suddenly dashed from the altar of literature—Charles Dickens.
The burning coal at which a million hearts ignited their dull fancies is
quenched. He that wrote more and better than any novelist of his time,
who had the dangerous field of the comic for his peculiar sphere, yet never
penned a line that dying he could wish to blot, can add nothing to the inex
haustible store of his creations. . . His aim was always pure and
generous and high ; to exalt integrity and truth, to abase falsehood, cruelty
and hypocrisy ; and to do it by stealing upon universal sympathies, and
leaguing all the fun-loving and pathetic sensibilities of the soul in the
service of a common humanity. He enlisted ordinary universal man in his
cause. Whom profound moralists, Christian preachers could not reach, he
touched and ruled. His spiritual knife was so sharp and so sheathed that
its edge was neither seen nor felt while it did its surgical work. He
wrought, doubtless, many a substantial conversion from the purposes of
crime, or folly, or cruelty, by a dose of laughter, whose tears are oftener
more purifying than those of sorrow. He made hypocrisy, selfishness, and
�Christian Critics.
27
sentimentality, absurd and contemptible, when it would have been of no
avail simply to prove them sinful and wrong. But, after all, what I envy
him most for is . . . the immeasurable sum of great, unadulterated
pleasure he has given the world ; the countless hours of amused and
absorbed gratification he has brought into all sorts of homes in both hemi
spheres. Ah ! what a godlike thing it is to Bhed so much self-forgetfulness
and balm into the sore and tired heart of humanity ! . . . As a vindicator
of the intrinsic worth of all human souls, Dickens, not a professed moralist,
has excelled all the professed moralists and preachers and teachers of his
day. If he was not a Christian, he was a glorious instrument of God’s
providence, and may shame, at the great account, many whose Christianity
is unquestioned, but whose usefulness and worth are taken on trust. Let us
be cautious how we raise questions about the Christianity of men like
Washington, Lincoln, or even Charles Dickens ; lest the profane should say,
‘What is the use of a Christianity which such men could live without ? ’
The sword of bigotry has two edges, and often cuts off the bigot’s own head
when aimed at the victim of his self-righteousness. We can well leave such
men to Christ’s own judgment seat, while we try to emulate their usefulness
and bounty of life and character.”
With these words before us, we are reminded of the evident fact,
that Nature, in the large, divine sense, the Substance and Soul of
all this universe of men and things, has very diverse modes of mani
festation. In other words, God speaks to us through varied special
organs of his presence, a Socrates, a Paul, a Spinoza, a Wesley, a
Parker, and the numerous other lights, greater and lesser, of our
race. It is made quite plain by the statement above given, that
Charles Dickens was, in a peculiar way, a remarkable servant of
Infinite Grace. In him dwelt a power to give innocent and whole
some pleasure which may well lead us to own that he was a true
apostle. Honestly toiling, as he did, to unseal the fountain of our
purer and happier sensibilities, and achieving his task, at once with
unexampled fidelity and unexampled success, he is as much entitled
to Christian gratitude and reverence as any master or prophet of all
the ages.
Undoubtedly we had this treasure in an earthen vessel, the excel
lency of the power being of God, as it has always been, and always
must be, but none the less is it evident that the God of all consolation
had shined marvellously into that simple, kindly, capacious heart,
with the true and blessed illumination of eternal wisdom, love, and
faith. There is more pure and undefiled religion in the writings of
Charles Dickens than in all that has been said by orthodox theologi
cal speculation since Paul began confusedly to inquire into the ways
�28
Charles Dickens and his
of God with man. These inspired pages, from the hand of a “ god
like ” genius, which glow with the pure light of a tender humanity,
and from which has been reflected so immeasurable a sum of unadul
terated pleasure, so vast and varied a consolation of human souls, just
as truly betoken the presence of God with man, and the love of God
freely shed abroad in the world, as do gospels and epistles, prophecies
and psalms, or anything whatever which has been called revelation.
The author was no better, perhaps, than Matthew the publican, or
Paul the preaching tent-maker, or Jesus the Nazarene carpenter and
Galilean enthusiast, but then God made him, and made him with
what he deemed sufficient pains, and he came into his generation, and
passed through it, as honest a lover of his fellow-men, as simple and
true and glorious a man, as ever human heart warmed to, or eye of
heaven looked upon with pleasure; and when his winning, heart
lightening, soul-cheering words ran like a river of heaven through
the common life of his fellow-men, his work was no mere human
meddling and making, but one of the eminent manifestations of the
divine mind.
If theological scoffers say nay to this, and angrily accuse us of
depreciating an old story of God with us some two thousand years
ago, we beg to say with emphasis that we know of nothing more
senseless and hurtful than the rank atheism which forever assumes
the absence of divine inspiration in the great and good of our own, or
indeed of any age, and that we should as soon think of maintaining
that Charles Dickens was an automaton, as that he spoke, in his
many brave and blessed words, without a flood-tide of motion in his
soul from the Holy Ghost.
Dr. Bellows acknowledges that Dickens touched and ruled those
whom Christian preachers and moralists could not reach; that he, as
a vindicator of the intrinsic worth of all human souls, excelled all the
professed moralists and preachers and teachers of his day; and that
he was a glorious instrument of God’s providence, and may shame
many whose Christianity is unquestioned. He deems it well to be
cautious about questioning the position of Dickens before God, and
advises, in case he is to be condemned and cast out, that unquestioned
Christians keep quiet about it, until Christ’s judgment seat shall be
set, and the matter can be attended to without danger of profane
interference. Such at least seems to be the implication of Dr.
Bellow’s statement. He does not venture to say that Dickens was a
Christian, and is sure to reach heaven. He implies that he was not
�Christian Critics.
29
a Christian, as he understands Christianity. He doubtless knew that
Mr. Dickens no more sympathized with dogmatic Christianity than
he did with dogmatic Mahometanism, and that it would be as dis
honest, as it was useless, to pretend that any other than natural
religion had any place in his life or played any part in his writings.
But he cannot avoid recognizing that such as he was, in his beneficent
genius and his providential mission, he stood above the usual Christian
level, and did a better than common Christian work. Thereby Dr.
Bellows shows conclusively how inadequate is his separation between
false and true in his appreciation of Christianity, and how much he
needs to revise his interpretation, in the light of such grace and truth
as he confesses to finding outside what he deems the Christian
confession. The superstition which made Jesus a Lord Messiah, and
erected for him a Messianic judgment seat, is found wanting in
presence of an example of inspiration such as Charles Dickens was.
It is in the Christianity of pure and simple faith in God our Father
in heaven, and of love towards the fellow-man, that a life such as the
beloved story-teller lived, finds its full explanation and its due recogni
tion. There was no sham in that life; can as much be said of any
life which still enshrines the dead superstition that Jesus was, or at
least was meant to represent, God ? There was no snuffle in the
simple, genuine religious experience of that man; can as much be
said of any intelligent man who still pretends to append ‘ for Christ’s
sake ’ to his prayers ? And when the marvellous play of Dickens’
peculiar faculties began, and the creations of his observation and
in agination filled the stage, we saw no false light, no beggarly display
of ecclesiastical old clothes, not a half page, not a line, devoted to
popular superstition, but an honest human spectacle, under the ample
natural light of infinite heaven. There was honest humanity in
Charles Dickens, in degree and quality unknown to the professional
confessors of religion, and very much truer to the Christian ideal
than anything these official and officious Christians can show.
�30
The Woman and the Trial.
THE WOMAN AND THE TRIAL.
When individual histories lead up to some Golgotha, where
“striving against sin” ends in some dreadful death and terrible
crushing of living hearts, and the conspicuous awful tragedy chal
lenges universal attention, an observer endued by his knowledge and
his faith with the power of prophetic anticipation, cannot fail to look
for some large and worthy significance of the scene, although, in
general, intelligence and virtue may barely keep timid watch afar off,
and the great world may sweep by in an undisturbed torrent of
condemnation and contempt. In such a spirit do we believe that a
prophet to-day would interpret the spectacle recently made by an
assassination, a marriage, a murder-trial, and the passing of one
crushed woman across the stage of public observation.
It was the foul assassination of as true, pure, and gallant a man as
honor ever crowned. It was as just and holy a marriage as religion
and law ever celebrated. It was as wicked a mockery in court as has
been perpetrated since Pilate sat, Peter evaded and equivocated, and
the mad rabble of Jerusalem yelled for the delivery of Barabbas and
the shedding of innocent blood. And the woman, who was condemned
when an assassin went out free, passed from the stage as true to holy
truth, as pure of stain or sin, and as sure to draw all pure hearts to
see the crime against her and to seek its remedy, as was ever holy
martyr in the furnace of dreadful trial. There is one sufficient use
of such scenes, to point great lessons of difficult revolution, and compel
adequate attention to wrong which lies embedded in some one of the
sacred traditions of mankind.
The first lie, to the races which inherit the ancient Hebrew tradi
tions, was that which charged upon woman the fault of human fall
from grace and truth. The deepest wrong of Hebrew barbarism, was
the law of fierce masculine assertion of prerogative, according to which
the wife was made “ one flesh ” with her husband, and put under his
absolute power, to be in subjection to him for things carnal and
earthly, as he to God for things moral and heavenly. The religious
instinct never erred more seriously and needlessly than in imagining
for a divine hero a birth outside of wedlock, nor ever guided belief
�The Woman and the Trial.
31
more completely astray than when it brought a god-man upon earth
by a way remote from the common path of ordinary human entrance
to life. Christian record and tradition, in asserting, as the great law
of marriage, “they twain shall be one flesh,” and doing little more
than to sanction and cover up the fleshly instincts of the ruder and
ruling sex, has remained at the level of barbarism only less than in
the perpetuation and consecration of heathen notions of God, of human
nature, and of the destiny of souls.
To a faithful thinker, who joins to thought deep and disciplined
emotions, such as make that rarest of gifts and most perfect of attain
ments for a man, a complete pure heart, it cannot but be plain that
marriage ought not to mean power, possession, or even opportunity
and liberty, on the part of the man, but consideration, care, protec
tion, the greatest, and tenderest and bravest possible. The vocation
of the wife to maternity is so significant, so wonderfully sacred, and
her part in the sacraments of a united life has so much of utter
surrender in it, so much pain and sorrow too, and so beautiful a charm
and blessing with it, that only as blind animals, hurried into heedless
liberty, with no just reflection and no proper consideration, do men
assert power, instead of affording protection.
Unhappily very many enter upon wedlock with no proper knowledge
of the wrong and the right of the relation. Love before marriage is
forced to be considerate, and naturally takes a noble tone. Love
after marriage is supposed to be quite another thing, as regards a
chief feature of the union, and too commonly sinks at once to a level
which is far more of the flesh than of ideal truth.
Possibly one party consents as much as the other, and neither may
be conscious, as the tone of mutual relations ceases to be divine, what
it is which is at fault. The man perhaps contents himself with such
gratification as his lower nature finds, and lets the hope of sacrament
go as a dream of his days of inexperience. In some of these instances,
possibly, — perhaps in many of them, — the woman also accepts the
low view, though we would fain believe that in most cases of the class
in point, the wife barely submits to the situation, even if she do not
revolt against it.
On the supposition that ignorance of the real laws of marriage is
the main occasion of this failure of wedlock to be nobly happy, and
that, while the woman is generally the greater sufferer, one party is
no more to blame than the other, the case is yet terribly bad ; bad for
the husband, who fails of true manly love and loses the blessing of
�32
The Woman and the Trial.
true response to such love; worse still for the wife, whose womanhood
is abased and degraded, if not outraged: and most of all bad for the
children, who are not born under influences of natural holiness and
genuine pure happiness, but come as incidents, if not as untoward
accidents, of the united life.
The lazy acquiescence of social and religious sentiment in this state
of things; the assumption that the animal aspects of human nature
must present some such picture at the best • and the rigor and fury
even with which formal marriage, the outward fact without the real,
is insisted on as a fit cloak to these uncomely doings, ought to cover
our civilization and our Christianity with overwhelming confusion and
shame. The fact is that even decent society is but half civilized, and
is very little Christianized, in this matter of marriage.
But the state of things just described is by no means the worst
which the student of society will find. Numbers of husbands in
every community stand at a much lower level than that we have been
considering; the level, we blush to say, of irresponsible brutalisin.
The masculine instinct for exclusive possession of the object of
affection is naturally very strong. It easily becomes fierce. And
when the husband’s interest in virtue is chiefly the result of this
instinct, and he erects his jealousy into absolute law, we behold a
very peculiar, and often very dreadful transformation of wedlock,
under which the only sacredness recognized is that of the husband’s
right to possession of the woman bound to him by marriage vows.
By this theory of marriage one woman is devoted to one man, made
his sacred property, and placed under absolute and awful obligations
to be his without reserve or remedy until death end the service. It
is assumed that a man may so have one woman, if he will get her and
keep her under the sanction of a marriage compact. It is even
claimed that this right of the man to the woman, of the male to the
female, is one of the most sacred rights of existence ; so that no fouler
crime can be than to interfere with the exercise of this right. A
perfectly savage virtue watches against the violation of this law of
the conjugal possessor’s right. No regard for the woman, not even
of a coarse and common sort, enters into it. She may be a crushed
victim of the most brutal abuse, but the “ laws of marriage ” are still
supposed to protect her tyrant’s right to have and to hold her as his
own. The worst forms of crime against woman outside of marriage,
are held of no account compared with touching a woman to the injury
of the man’s right to her. Numberless sad and dreadful incidents of
�The Woman and the Trial.
33
wicked undoing of woman will pass without notice, but report one
deliverance of an outraged, broken-hearted wife, out of the power of
a brutal master, and the whole herd of virtuous human brutes is
thrilled with righteous indignation.
It was this virtuous brutalism which lately delivered an assassin
from the deserved penalty of manifold infamous crime. The hesita
tion of wise and just representatives of public virtue and exponents
of public opinion, to lay bare the ingrained rascality of the virtue
fiercely paraded on this occasion, shows how little courage for the
just comprehension of the matter has been cultivated by our civiliza
tion. In the one man who had so cheerfully risked his life, and
more than his life, his good name,— and had lost one if not both,—
to render help to a helplessly outraged woman, there was more clear
insight and spotless courage, with one dash of^rashness, as the bravest
spirits almost always have it, than in a regiment of those who lent
the countenance of their concern for the laws of marriage to the brute
and assassin over whom a court of pretended justice made villainous
mockery of law.
It is possible to make excuses for the lamentable failure of wellmeaning members of society to be found on the side of justice, by the
side of a worse than murdered woman. It is also possible to give an
explanation of the mad concourse and mad clamor .of the virtuous
rabble, whose fierce rage blazed so hotly around the altars of unholy
brutalism, as if in real defence of some sacred right. These masters
of a servitude more dreadful than any other known to human
experience, with their deluded sympathizers among women, are
natural enough results of the lower tendencies of human nature, or of
extreme ignorance, and the prevalence of a tradition which lacks both
the doctrine and the spirit of adequate justice to woman. The
influence of Hebrew heathenism, coming through the channel which
also brought the best lessons of religion and humanity, has made
Christian society an easy refuge for the hideous wrong we are
contemplating. Ample explanation of this monstrous failure of
justice and departure from truth, will not be far to seek as long as
accredited Christianity, in the name of a half-heathen tradition, for
bids and resists free inquiry for the truth, and proceeds upon the
twofold assumption that man is by nature base, and his lower instincts
unclean at best, and that righteousness cannot come in mens’ lives
and character by actual discipline and culture, but must come as a
cloak of imputed merit. In like manner, excuses for timid inhumanvol. i.—no. i.
3
�34
The Woman and the Tidal.
ity, for total failure of comprehension, such as were pointed at by
Jesus in the priest and Levite who “ passed by on the other side,”
are close at hand. It is much easier and safer not to meddle with
wounded folk, of any of the classes against whom popular prejudice is
virulent. A wife left half dead, under the operation of a brutal
interpretation of the laws of marriage, will get little or no sympathy
from the ordinary administrators of religion and guardians of social
order.
The instances of Mrs. Stowe and Mr. Beecher may be cited,
particularly in view of their final judgments pronounced in The
Christian Union of June 18. If the latter yielded to a just request
and a generous sympathy, when he assisted at the death-bed mar
riage, he evidently came to regret afterwards that he did not pass
virtuously by on the other side. In “ The Meaning of the Verdict,”
the leading article of The Christian Union of June 18, he disa
vowed any Christianity he may have shown before, and summed up
the case for brutalism. We omit names, in quoting Mr. Beecher’s
cold, barbarous homily, because we cannot join in any unnecessary
rudeness to the persons on one side of the case, and will not pollute
our pages with the names on the other side. Mr. Beecher says,—
“Whether------ was worse or better than the average of his journal
istic friends—whether the unhappy woman who has assumed his name is a
pattern of all wifely virtues; whether------ was in the habit of drinking to
excess, and whether, being a drunkard, he was more or less an affliction to
his wife than drunken husbands generally are to their wives, are questions
which need not be agitated further. Higher and wider than all such debates
about persons is the question, What is the Meaning of the Verdict? ... It
was as clear a case of killing with deliberate intention and with no other
warrant than private vengeance, as ever was submitted to a jury. But the
verdict was ‘Not Guilty.’ What does that verdict mean? . . . Just
what was meant by that famous verdict in another case, often quoted but
not found in the books, ‘ Served him right.’ The phrase, ‘ Not Guilty,’ in
this case, means not that------ did not kill------- , but that he ought not to be
punished for that killing. The lesson of the verdict is that any man who
has as much reason as------ had to believe that his wife has been seduced
from her fidelity to him, has a right to do what------ did. .
. The law is
that an adulterer may be punished with death, at the discretion and by the hands
of the injured husband.”
We are not at a loss to characterize the assumptions and the sig
nificance of this statement
It means the sacred right of brutalism,
and it assumes the indifference of all other facts in comparison with
�The 'Woman and the Trial.
35
the crime of delivering a woman from a brute. No need to ask out
of what hell the woman fled, or from what fiend she was protected,
or with what heroism of sanctity that protection was given, the one
important fact being that a brutal man was deprived of his victim,
and the one sacred law being that such interference with marital brutalism may be punished by summary assassination.
Mr. Beecher
appears to dreadful disadvantage in this justification of horrible mani
fold crime. Had he been a vindicator of the New York negro riots,
and appealed to law in justification of Kuklux outrage, we might
have been prepared for the present lapse from manly mercy, consid
erate justice, large comprehension of principle, and fearless devotion
to holiness and truth.*
Mrs. Stowe went to no such extreme, in the judgment which she
pronounced. In fact she condemned with as little harshness, and as
much womanly sympathy and Christian charity, as possible. But she
condemned. In her article mentioned above, she brought in the case
under cover of an elaborate exposition of Christ’s treatment of a
woman “convicted of adultery.” From that she argued to this case
“of a woman not guilty of this offence,” and announced that she saw
“only evidence that a much tried woman in circumstances of great
hardship and perplexity has in certain respects lamentably erred in
judgment.” She then instantly turned away from the woman before
her, to loudly profess her concurrence with “ the sensitiveness of the
community in regard to the enduring sacredness of the marriage
bond,” and her opinion that the “ whole domain of marriage ought
to be guarded by laws as inflexible as those of nature,” and that indi
viduals on whom “they bear severely,” “must be content to suffer for
the good of the whole.” At most she only asked that the judges of
her sister consider, that under extreme tortures “principle often may
become bewildered, and even religious faith may give out,” and that
they temper judgment as Christ tempered the sentence of the woman
“convicted of adultery.”
The offensive association of her sister with the adulteress, the com
prehensive approval of the concern about marriage, which lent so
much support to an assassin, and even gave eclat to the last crime of
a human brute, and the rigorous demand for inflexible protection to
every species of conjugal right, suffer who may thereby, enabled Mrs.
* Mr. Parker said of Mr. Beecher, in connection with the John Brown affair, “Beecher
showed that part of him which is Jesuitical,—not so small a part as I could wish it was. How
ridiculous of Sharpe’s-rifle Beecher to be preaching such stuff at this time; but he can’t stand
up straight unless he have something as big as the Plymouth Church to lean against.”—
Parker’s Life and Correspondence. London Ed., Vol. II., p. 394.
�36
The Woman and the Trial.
Stowe to fully save her credit with the worst expouents of brutalisni,
and completely undo any purpose she may have had to speak a word
of justice, mercy, and holiness on behalf of her sister. Using threefourths of her two columns to come to the point that this woman
to-day was not an adulteress, and almost all the rest of her article to
protest her own desire that marriage should be chains and slavery to
all who find it unhappy, she barely gave a few lines to a half-plea for
the outraged sister on whose behalf she purported to speak.
Yet this same Mrs. Stowe lately served to two continents a nauseous
tale of horrible abomination, polluting men’s and women’s thoughts,
as far as our language is read, with needless mention of nameless
crime, and has not to this day betrayed the smallest regret for her
deed. Does it make so much difference on which side popular taste
and prejudice are ? The same Mrs. Stowe, in her “ Old Town Folks,”
gave the pure young girl of the story to a libertine, who had long
had an unwedded but devoted wife; and when this wronged woman
came upon the scene, within a few hours after her betrayer’s new mar
riage, and all the facts of her love and surrender and fidelity were
before the new bride, the latter saw no wrong whatever in taking
from her outcast sister her all, and felt no hesitation in consummating
wedlock with a convicted villain, because,—as Mrs. Stowe makes her
say,—“7 cazí7iu¿ help loving him; it is my duty to; I promised, you
know, before God, ‘for better for worse’; and what I promised I must
keep; I am his wife; there is no going back from that.” The young
lover of this second wife of a bigamist, took his lady’s fate patiently,
and at the end of four years received her, then a widow, as his bride.
Such admirable patience with bad men’s triumphs, and such con
sent of women to outrage under decent cover of regular marriage,
was the lesson with which Mrs. Stowe left us at the close of “ Old
Town Folks.” Her woman’s instincts made no plea for a creature
wronged as much as woman could be wronged. Testifying that this
rejected woman had shown “ all the single-hearted fervor of a true
wife”; that she had taken her position from “a full and conscientious
belief that the choice of the individuals alone constituted a true mar
riage”; that her betrayer had urged this view and ‘‘assumed and
acted with great success the part of the moral hero during their early
attachment”; that she ‘‘fell by her higher nature,” believing that
‘•she was acting heroically and virtuously in sacrificing her whole life
to her lover,” and that “ her connection had all the sacredness of mar
riage”; testifying these things, and making the new wife confess, “I
�The Woman and the Trial.
37
can see in all a noble woman, gone astray from noble motives; I can
see that she was grand and unselfish in her love, that she was per
fectly self-sacrificing”; Mrs. Stowe yet permitted no one to even
suggest that this woman had the smallest right to the man whom she
had so given herself to for years, and to whom she had borne what
was to her at least a child of pure love. Taking care to interpose a
marriage ceremony, that and nothing more, Mrs. Stowe showed us the
libertine of her tale, in the presence of the two wives, the one bound
to him by years of “ single-hearted fervor of a true wife,” and still
loving him with “full and conscientious belief” that theirs was a
“true marriage,” and the other bound to him only by the ceremony
of a few hours before; and made the former admit, and the other
claim, that the ceremony had created a relation compared with which
the relation based on actual wifehood of love and life need not be so
much as considered. And the new wife gave this reason first of all
for keeping the other woman’s husband, “ I cannot help loving him,”
and then supported herself by: “it is my duty to; I promised, you
know, before God.”
We have very small respect indeed for anything Mrs. Stowe may
say after choosing such a picture with which to conclude her tale of
Old New England. ^And until such leaders of opinion in ethics and
religion, as Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. Stowe, learn to respect
realities of truth, at least as much as they do mere forms, and are
neither unable nor afraid to look at the real facts of tragic lives, and
to declare for justice and holiness, at any cost whatever to decent
shams, popular religion and popular ethics will be despicable. We
deem it shameful in Mr. Beecher that he dared cheer the heart of a
hel/ion with words of downright approval. We utterly refuse to Mrs.
Stowe the privilege of making any apology for a woman whose errors
of judgment do not do her a hundredth part of the discredit which
the author of the Byron scandal has justly earned. The theory
assumed in the closing scene of “Old Town Folks,” that wifehood is
nothing compared with legal marriage, that a woman may take her
sister woman’s actual husband, if that sister woman has had no legal
sanction of the marriage, and she can get the man under legal sanc
tion, is infinitely more immoral than any possible lack of respect for
formal marriage. The duty of holiness and fidelity in all actual
union, is the profound truth on this subject. Until Mrs. Stowe
appreciates it she had as well not meddle with any important aspects
of the woman question. We speak thus strongly with great regret.
�38
The Woman and the Trial.
because we would gladly see, and celebrate, in Mrs. Stowe, insight and
courage worthy of a woman of marked ability and character. But at
this juncture, we cannot forbear strong speech, remembering as we do
a spotless man dead, and a spotless woman living “at the sepulchre,”
while Mrs. Stowe only ventures to beg the brutalism of our time to
consider that these two did not commit adultery.
At present we do the persons just mentioned, one of whom is
beyond reach of either praise or blame, the honor to assume as self*
evident at this moment, to any decently informed person, that they
stand high above any judgment which their generation may pronounce
upon them, the one for heroic womanly endurance of brutalism, out of
far more than just respect for the supposed “laws of marriage,” and
the other for heroic manly obedience to simple dictates of mercy and
honor, with a most exact and noble sense of the sacredness of woman
hood and of the absolute sanctity of true marriage. It may be our
privilege at a future time to add some contribution to the evidence
which has already forced this verdict upon the purest and most
thoughtful of our contemporaries. We content ourselves now with
emphasizing, as fully as we can, our declaration, that brutalism ought
not to find shelter under the laws of marriage; that any decent
delivery of a woman from brutalism is just and right; and that the
instance now awaiting the decision of our social philosophy can not
possibly be brought under any other head than that of perfectly fit,
and strikingly noble, delivery of an exceptionally pure and true
woman from a brute. The question how far legal and conventional sup
ports of brutalism were rashly overleaped, in the crisis and catastrophe
of this drama, need not be answered, before pronouncing the actors in
the scene immaculate, and cannot be answered in any such way as to
raise any just doubt of their perfect purity of purpose. Further
more, it becomes all, who seek a wise solution of our social perplexi
ties, and hope for more truth of character and life in the most
important of human relations, to distinctly advise the undisguised
exponents of virtuous brutalism—the editor of the New York Sun,
for example; that they can only render themselves infamous by such
criticisms and reports as they were guilty of during the late trial.
�Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
39
DR. J. F. CLARKE AGAINST THEISM.
The American Unitarian Association has recently published a small
book, from the pen of Dr. James Freeman Clarke, entitled, “Steps
of Belief, or, Rational Christianity maintained against Atheism, Free
Religion, and Romanism.” Like the previous theological work of the
same author, “Steps of Belief” is in some respects excellent, in
others very unsatisfactory. We forbear criticism of many points
which invite it, and merely consider Dr. Clarke’s attempt to elevate
his sort of Christianity at the expense of “ pure Theism,” which is to
us true Christianity.
It would not be unfair to ask, in view of the title above quoted,
whether Dr. Clarke objects to freedom or to religion itself, and if to
neither, as he would doubtless reply, why to the combination ? But
we may take him in hand quite as well from another point of view.
He identifies free religion and theism. “ The second step of belief,”
he says, “ is from theism to Christianity.” The advocates of free
religion, he tells us, “ deny that Christianity is any advance beyond
theism.” And in chapter third of this portion of his book he attempts
to “ show wherein Christianity is an advance on pure theism.” Of
course we may inquire what objection he makes to theism? Or to
put the matter more clearly, why does he deem faith in God through
Christ better than direct faith in God ? It must be because Christ
is more to him as a direct object of faith, than God. But he makes
Christ a mere man, at most “ a perfect man.” He must, therefore,
in his theism, make very little of God, as a direct object of faith, if he
goes upward from religion towards God directly, to religion towards
God through Christ. And since his “rational Christianity ” is only
religion towards God through a man, it must be regarded as a species
of idolatry, like the Romanist’s devotion to the Virgin Mary.
To show Dr. Clarke’s method of comparing theism and Christianity,
we may cite the following statement:
“ In all the dimensions of space [depth, height, breadth, length] we find
in Christianity something in advance of theism. It is deeper in its life,
higher in its aspiration, broader in its sweep, more far reaching in its per
petual advance.” P. 166.
This is arbitrary assertion. What is deeper than the life of God,
or higher than the thought of God, or broader than the love of God,
or more far-reaching than eternal union with God ?
�40
Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
Another specimen of Dr. Clarke’s treatise will show from how low
a theism he steps up to the level which he deems the highest Chris
tian ground. Thus he says :
“Theism reasons about God; Christianity lives from him and to him.
Theism gives us speculations and probabilities ; Christianity, convictions
and realities. . . Theism says light is the life of men; Christianity declares
that life is the light of men.” Pp. 143, 144.
If this means anything, it is, that direct faith in God is mere
doubtful talk, by which a man cannot live, while faith in God through
the man, Christ, is a deep and real life for the soul. All which we
set down as Dr. Clarke’s opinion, and are sorry that he did not take
more of a step when he undertook to rise from atheism to theism.
Another bit of Dr. Clarke’s argument is as follows:
“ The apostles of free religion take more pleasure in standing apart, to
think; than in coming together, to live. . . If thought could ever become a
fountain of life, it would have done so in the case of Socrates. . . But, though
always seeking he seldom found.” Pp. 147, 148.
Doubtless Dr. Clarke tells us here what he supposes true, about the
thinkers and their Greek master, and believes that he has done them
justice. He seems to have known Socrates and free thought only by
vague heresay, and to have spoken out of the entire honesty of entire
ignorance. As, however, he is arguing down “ pure theism,” or pure
direct faith in God, he might have remembered, without knowing any
thing at all about the apostles of free religion and Socrates, that the
point to be made was, that simple direct faith in God makes men
lonely and barren thinkers, while faith in God through the man,
Christ, makes them sympathetic and fruitful believers. Will he
venture to assert this ?
Dr. Clarke appears to be profoundly ignorant of the true method
and matter of that pure direct faith in God, which constitutes the life
and power of pure theism. He gets hold of a sentence of Rev. Samuel
Johnson, or an affirmation of Rev. Mr. Abbot, and deals with it as if
in it he saw the necessary measure of pure theism, and limit of free
religion. He catches a mere glimpse of Socrates, and talks of the
master of Plato, and the most fruitful teacher of all time, as if he
would have been better for some instruction in a Sunday School. Of
the range, the richness, and the living power of true thought of God,
or indeed of thought at all, he seems to have no conception. With
him to think means to puzzle over dark enigmas; and to think of God
�Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
41
to chop logic with the scholastics. His idea of religion by direct faith
in God, as in pure theism, is, that it is not religion, but a mere vain
attempt at religion.
In order to do Dr. Clarke’s Jesuism no injustice, we will now quote
at length several of his statements :
“ Christianity is an historic religion, with a Founder, a church or commun
ion, with its sacred books, its rites and ceremonies, its faith and its morality.
These doctrines, worship, books, church, and morals, all have the historic
person of Jesus for their centre and source. Theism, or Free Religion, on
the contrary, is a system of belief and method of life which grows up in the
human mind, independently of any such historic source, proceeding only
from the soul itself. P. 141. Christianity is essentially a stream of spiritual,
moral, and intellectual life, proceeding from Jesus of Nazareth. He did not
present it as an intellectual system, but it overflowed from his lips in his
da’’y intercourse with men. Hed'd not speak from his speculation, but from
his knowledge. He spoke what he knew, and testified what he had seen.
This living knowledge created like conviction in other minds. The truth
was its own evidence. Man needs this knowledge. We need to know God,
not merely to think it probable that he exists. We need to live in the light
of his truth and his love. We do Dot get this knowledge of God by reading
books of theology, but by communion with those who have it. If we have
any such faith in God, how did we first obtain it. We caught it as a blessed
contagion, from the eyes and lips, the words freighted with conviction, the
actions inspired by its force, of those who have been themselves filled with
its power. They too usually have received it from others; though after
wards it may have been fed by direct communion with God. It is a trans
mitted as well as an inspired life. . . The deeper, purer, loftier they [the
great modern prophets] are, the more do they love to trace back the great
master-impulse to Jesus of Nazareth. ‘ Of his fullness have we all received,’
say they, ‘and grace upon grace.’ . . Abandon this current, . . and God
becomes an opinion; duty, a social convenience; immortality, a perhaps.
Pp. 145, 146. The doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement have
always been the pivots of Christian theology. The incarnation means, God
descending into the soul of one man to make all humanity divine, to unite
earth with heaven, time with eternity, man with God. The elevation of the
human race, so justly dear to the modern theist, is made possible by this
great providential event in human history. By the law of mediated life,
God is lifting humanity to himself, and penetrating the boundless variety of
his creation with as pervasive a unity. . . Those who were afar off are made
nigh by the blood of Jesus. His death and resurrection have set the seal on
this great atoning work, which is as effective now to create love to God and
to man as it was in the beginning. Pp. 154, 155. God comes near to the
soul in Jesus Christ; through Jesus Christ our sense of sin is taken away;
through Christ, mortal fears are replaced by an immortal hope. . To adhere
to Jesus as the Christ of God, is the very root of Christian experience. Pp.
�42
Dr. J. F. Clarke against 1 heism.
156, 157. Love to Christ is the method of progress, the law of freedom, the
way to knowledge, and the unchecked impulse to God. P. 166. The one
great outward proof that Jesus was thus the Christ of humanity, the ordained
Leader of the human race to God and to each other, is found in his resurrec
tion. . When Jesus appeared to die, he did not die; he remained alive. When
he seemed to go down, he did not go down; he went up. When he seemed
to go away, he did not go away ; he remained. . . The objections to this view
are chiefly a priori and metaphysical. Pp. 114 and 115.
Dr. Clarke appears to believe in a strict external system of tradi
tion and belief, the only channel through which life can come from
God to human souls, and that system he sums up in the “Lord Jesus
Christ,” whom he yet regards as a mere man,* but “a perfect speci
men of the human race.”
Freedom dies in the presence of such a fact, if it be a fact, and
religion equally sinks into nothing with no other direct object of faith
than “ a perfect specimen of the human race.” And seeing the utter
absurdity of taking the historic Jesus as this “ perfect specimen,” the
thoughtful believer must find himself worshipping towards a very
poor idol if he attempt to follow the instruction of Dr. Clarke.
This conception of a historic religion, with the historic person of
Jesus for its centre and source, and distinguished from religion born
in the soul under influences not external and historic, logically points
to an infallible church,—to Romanism in fact. Dr. Clarke puts his
torical human transmission above providential divine instruction and
inspiration, and, therefore, leaves little room to question that the most
direct and largest historical human result of original Jesuism must
be the true faith.
Moral, intellectual and spiritual life comes to us, Dr. Clarke says,
from the man, Jesus, a contagion caught from his person and life by
the first disciples, and historically transmitted. The comprehensive
teaching of theism, that God himself, by perfectly adequate means,
instructs and inspires and disciplines his moral creatures, and so
directly conveys to them the gift of his own eternal life, Dr. Clarke
considers a baseless theory, the delusion of certain absurd people who
“ stand apart to think,” and who “ even prefer speculation to knowl
edge.” Instead of accepting the theistic doctrine of incarnation, the
universal saving presence of God in all souls, he asserts that God
descended “into the soul of one man,” and that “the elevation of
the human race is made possible by this great providential event.”
* “We agree with the Naturalists, that Christ was a pure man, and not superhuman.” P. 133.
�Dr. J. F. Clarke against Theism.
43
And not only does he thus deny the universal providence and
inspiration of God, and reduce the Almighty to dependence upon a
Galilean youth for effective communication with and control of the
human race, but he appears to adopt the wretched superstition that
“the blood of Jesus” is the agency through which God must reach
man.
Neither nature, whose suggestions are so varied, so quickening,
and so universal; nor the universal providence of human events,
which speaks so clearly, so fully, and so powerfully to the thoughtful
student of human life and human history; nor the unceasing inspi
ration which floods the understanding and heart of man, and
marvellously guides the seekers of all the world into one simple faith
in God, are anything to Dr. Clarke, so absorbed is he with worship
through his man-image of God. Omit to look on this image, he says,
and “God becomes an opinion; duty, a social convenience; immor
tality, a perhaps.”
That it is so to him, we do not doubt. We endeavor to accept his
assertion that he knows no other root of Christian experience than
adherence to Jesus; that the death and resurrection of Jesus, alone
or chiefly, induce him to love God and man; and that the proof to
him that this is the true way, he finds in the resurrection of Jesus.
Such external construction of religion, and such reference of its
power to human facts, are doubtless undertaken by Dr. Clarke in
good faith. He undoubtedly believes theological science need say no
more than that Jesus went up when he went down, and that the
objections to this view are chiefly a priori and metaphysical.
The Christianity which Dr. Clarke sets up against Theism, is not
Christian, but Jesuit. Christian religion knows no other object of
faith than God, the “ Our Father” of the prayer of Jesus. The
Jesuism which makes Jesus an object of religious faith is pseudo
Christian. That Jesuism which makes Jesus very God, has some
claims to be considered religion. But that which makes him, as Dr.
Clarke’s does, a mere “ perfect specimen of a man,” is no religion at
all; it is mere hero-worship. And that in fact Dr. Clarke labors to
establish, the worship of Jesus as a hero. For ourselves, we decline,
equally in the name of religion and of Christian teaching, to adopt
the confused sentimentalism of Dr. Clarke’s method, and the feeble
Jesuism of his conclusions. We believe in God.
�44
The Unitarian Situation.
THE UNITARIAN SITUATION.
I.—Mr. Hepworth Relieves Himself.
“There are times when one must relieve himself or die,” said Rev
Geo. II. Hepworth, in the meeting, last May, of the American Unitarian
Association. The Secretary of the Association, Rev. Charles Lowe,
had presented an admirable paper, justifying the general Unitarian
determination to do without a creed, and to depend on the spirit and
the life as a basis of union, when Mr. Hepworth came forward, regard
less of the general disapproval of his intention, to move for a committee
to prepare an “ as-nearly-as-may-be ” representative statement of faith
of the Unitarian denomination, and said, “ Your frequent applause (of
Mr. Lowe’s address) did not daunt my determination to speak because
there are times when one must relieve himself or die.” Of course Mr.
Hepworth could not be expected to assume that the Unitarian body
would prefer the other alternative ; so he proceeded to relieve himself.
The gist of his demand he thus expressed,—
“I want that there shall be a definite signification attached to the word
‘Unitarianism.’ . . The thing it seems to me is demanded; demanded now,
or else we, 1 honestly believe, as a denomination, go under. . . The next two
years will settle, I honestly believe, the fate of the Unitarian denomination.
. . I want a statement of the average views of the Unitarian denomination,
. . something with the endorsement of the Unitarian denomination upon
it.”
How this authoritative statement of faith should relieve Mr. ■
Hepworth, our readers may not quite understand. It seems, how
ever, that be expected it to be good for his back. “Give me,” he
said, “ a single Unitarian document, that I can put my back against.”
How desperate he considered his need of a document to put his back
against, may be judged from his concluding sentence, — “ It is a small
thing to ask for, yet I cannot get L, I suppose, but I waDt to give you
notice I am not exactly down, and I am going to keep this thing going
until I do get it.”
Theodore Parker said of Mr. Hepworth, — “ Hepworth would make
a powerful preacher, if he did not drown his thought in a Dead Sea of
words. What a pity ! You don’t want a drove of oxen to drag a
cart-load of potatoes on a smooth road.” This criticism was provoked
by the earliest failure of Mr. Hepworth’s back, when he withdrew
from an engagement to speak at a meeting held in Boston to express
�The Unitarian Situation.
45
sympathy with the family of John Brown, because he found it would
not be considered decent for him to take ‘ the other side.’ Mr.
Hepworth has needed something to put his back against ever since
John A. Andrew, in that great meeting, said that he had supposed
there was but one side to the question of sympathy with the family of
the Harper’s Ferry martyr.
It appears, from Mr. Hepworth’s speeches on the subject, that he
has made “a document” himself, and has found it useful in bringing
inquirers into the Unitarian fold. He tells us that a similar document,
endorsed by the denomination, would double the nifmber of Unitarians
in less than five years, and that without it Unitarianism will “ go
under” within two years.
The simple meaning of this is that Mr. Hepworth is a prodigious
egotist, who is of late ambitious to appear as the maker of the denom
inational creed. He has no idea whatever of accepting any statement
other than his own. His demand is that Unitarianism endorse his
document. This demand he presses with stupid insolence, imagining
that he will be sustained because his document is conservative.
Originally belonging to the radical wing of Unitarianism, and now a
self-appointed leader of the right wing, be has but one leading aim, to
push himself. This aim he follows with insane disregard of all the
decencies of the matter. We regret the necessity of speaking so
harshly, but feel that we ought to say more rather than less of this
ecclesiastical charlatan. The recent overturning of the Liberal Chris
tian vrds his work, done in a spirit and with a purpose which ought to
exclude h,im from the confidence of every honest and honorable
member of the Unitarian body.
II.—Robert Collyer’s “ Amen ” to Hepworth.
The concurrence of Rev. Robert Collyer with Mr. Hepworth’s
demand for an authoritative statement of faith, caused a great deal of
surprise. Mr. Collyer said, in support of Mr. Hepworth, —
“ His feeling about some statement that we could use when we stand up
and preach, has been my feeling too. . . I felt like saying, Amen, to the gist
of his proposition, and wanted to feel that I stood with him. . . My reason
for it is exactly the same as that which he has given as his primary reason.
. . Letters and requests in person come to me continually, like this, ‘Cannot
you give us something that bears the stamp of authority from your body?’
It should be no test of fellowship to bar any man out, . . and if next year
�46
The Unitarian Situation.
we find that it does not express the honest religious faith of our body, it
shall be altered, . . and made to express then what new light may have
come to us from above.”
This was again explained by Mr. Collyer, in one of the meetings of
the Western Conference in June, after some one had suggested that
his creed should be stamped, as railroad tickets are, “ good for this
day only.” Mr. Collyer then said, —
“ If we can present this thing to the inquiring mind as the statement of
five hundred intelligent Unitarians, it will have a good deal more weight
than the statement of any single individual, that is all I ever meant.”
It seems incredible that Mr. Collyer should not see that the stamp
of external authority must injure rather than help the force of truth.
Inquiry has developed no principle more important than this, that
truth stands best on its own evidence, and always loses when made to
rest on an authority outside of itself. If Mr. Collyer wants to employ,
in preaching, a statement bearing the stamp of authority, he wants to
use a purely and strictly orthodox method, in place of the liberal
method. The latter invariably says, ‘ examine and judge for your
selves what is true,’ and it scrupulously avoids introducing any pressure
of authority. The orthodox method appeals to authority, and largely
succeeds in preventing inquiry. It would be a bastard liberalism
which should admit the use of this appeal to authority. Any real
success in such appeal, would be an encroachment of mischief of the
most serious and dangerous sort. And not merely would actual free
inquiry be checked, but all freedom to inquire will be put in peril. It
is a purely chimerical expectation that possessors of authority would
use it for instruction of inquirers only, and not for judgment on doubt
and denial. At this moment the Unitarian body, as organized in the
National Conference, lends its authority to the dogma of the lordship
of Jesus, as thorough a superstition and yoke of heathenism as was
ever fastened upon men’s minds by religion, and this creed is used as
a test, a rule of judgment, and law of condemnation.
But if the idea of using authority without abusing it were not a
delusion and a snare, it would be worse than useless to attempt to
influence inquirers by means of an endorsed statement of faith. There
may be single instances now and then of inquirers foolish enough to
give weight to such a creed, but in general any such attempt to urge
doctrines on the ground that they had been endorsed by “ five hundred
intelligent Unitarians,” or by five hundred thousand even, would at
�The Unitarian Situation.
47
once raise suspicion and provoke contempt. The evidences for
important truths, apart from ordinary human endorsement, are so
significant and decisive, and the fact of ordinary human endorsement
is, in itself, so insignificant and inconclusive, that a religious teacher
could hardly do a worse thing than to confess that he depended at all
on the fact that his sect had voted the creed he urged. The power,
either for good or for evil, of such a vote, is over those who are
already within the connection. In general it is a power of tyranny
and outrage upon dissenting members of the fellowship. At least it
is not a power of persuasion with outside inquirers.
Granting, however, that there would be no tyranny in voting a
denominational creed, and that it might be possible to use such a
creed with good effect, it still remains, and always must remain, that
a Unitarian statement of faith is as impossible as a Unitarian Pope.
The fact which causes so many questions as to the beliefs of Unita
rians,— which occasions so many to ask, “What do Unitarians
believe ? ” — is a fact which ought to show Mr. Collyer the utter
absurdity of talking about a Unitarian statement of faith. Twenty
decidedly different and distinct statements would not represent Unitarianism. Unitarianism is like our national union; it is a union of
individuals, each independent and sovereign in respect to certain most
important matters, while owning allegiance to the common fellowship
for certain other matters. What Mr. Lowe, the Secretary of the Amer
ican Unitarian Associatian, calls “ the spirit and the life,” is the basis
of union in the Unitarian body. With reference to beliefs, the rule is
liberty and diversity, “ every man fully persuaded in his own mind,”
“every one of us give account of himself to God,” and “every man
receive his own reward according to his own labor.” The one great
principle, which has given life and honor to Unitarianism, has been
this recognition of the duty of individual persuasion, and the liberty
of individual difference, in the matter of beliefs. And he must be
exceedingly heedless of facts which are patent to every observer, who
forgets that the Unitarian body now embraces a great diversity of
beliefs, and can no more be represented by one statement of special
beliefs than the different states of our Union could be represented by
one political creed, except as to certain very general principles. The
representative statement of Unitarianism is its immortal declaration of
liberty and diversity. The demand for any other representative state
ment,— for any sort of statement of beliefs, — assumes that Unitari
anism, founded in liberty, has been so far a comprehensive error.
�48
The Unitarian Situation.
It is undeniable, however, thac the votes of the National Confer
ence, affirming the “ lordship of Jesus,” have created an official
Unitarianism, a Unitarian ecclesiasticism, not founded on the principle
of liberty and diversity, but based, as strictly as any sect in the world,
on a creed, and that creed a contemptible superstition. The lordship
of Jesus, in any Unitarian sense, is nondescript. It is anything but
religious and Christian. If it can be assumed that Jesus is very God,
the lordship of Jesus is religious. Deny that he is God, and the
assertion of his lordship drags that grand term The Lord from its only
true Christian significance, and makes it a cover for putting into
offices of Deity one who confessedly is not God. Taken alone, as the
one article of a creed, and the single foundation stone of an ecclesias
ticism, the lordship of Jesus, in any or all of the Unitarian senses, is
the most beggarly, the narrowest, and most barren creed ever devised.
The day when this creed, which has no iota of religion in it, but is
purely a partisan watchword, was adopted, and the other days on
which it was re-affirmed, each time against protest as distinct and
vigorous as outrage ever provoked, were days of shameful treason to
the genius of the Unitarian movement.
Many years since, the Rev. Dr. Eliot, of St. Louis, an excellent
man in his way, but something of a pope, and an apologist for slavery
during the days of Anti-Slavery excitement, seceded from the Western
Unitarian Conference, because that body adopted some resolution of
sympathy with the cause of the slave. Not only did he go out in
wrath, but he never returned? This Dr. Eliot was unfortunately
named on the original committee appointed to prepare a constitution
for the National Unitarian Conference, and he it was who demanded
the lordship-of-Jesus basis, against the judgment of the committee,
and who compelled its insertion by threatening secession I This playing
pope on the part of one man was the original occasion of giving to
the conference a dogmatic basis.
The wrong could not have been consummated, however, had not
Dr. Bellows espoused it, and carried it through in a spirit even worse
than that in which it was conceived, a spirit at once of treason and
of anger. Dr. Bellows had given pledges, as distinct and full as
could be asked, which required him to exclude dogma from the basis
of the Conference, and to respect without qualification the principle
of liberty and diversity. These pledges he disregarded, as recklessly
as if honor were but a name, when he consented to meet Dr. Eliot’s
demand, and to report a basis for the Conference, which asserted the
�The Unitarian Situation.
49
lordship of Jesus. And when he encountered resistance to his plan,
he took a high tone, the tone of a pope, and gave way to bad temper
besides, as if it were but right for him to visit the anger of an
offended pope on his radical brethren. These are the simple facts in
regard to the creed adopted by the National Conference. Drs. Eliot
and Bellows originally forced that creed upon the Conference, in a
way not one whit better than that of Pope Pius at Rome. Mr.
Hepworth brings forward his creed, because he thinks he can play
pope.
That Mr. Collyer should lend his support to so palpable an iniquity,
is as sad as it is surprising, whether we consider his own good name
as a teacher of religion, or the influence he can exert. It would
seem as if he must have seen enough of Unitarianism to show him
that wide diversities exist in it, such as will always make people ask,
“What do Unitarians believe?” and will forever render it impossible
to answer this inquiry by any one statement of faith. Does Mr.
Collyer mean to assume that it would be either honest or honorable,
or anything better than an outrage and a lie, to put forth his creed,
or any creed which he could endorse, and say of it, “ This is what
Unitarians believe”? The answer made him in the Western Confer
ence, by a lawyer of high character and sound judgment, “ This
proposition is a delusion and a humbug,” deservedly rebuked his
assumption that a creed could be made useful. Let him join in
getting one voted, and he will find that he has put his hand to a
business which can only end in mischief and shame.
III.—Rev. A. D. Mayo Settles the Question.
Rev. A. D. Mayo sustained Mr. Hepworth’s demand for a creed, in
a very characteristic way. He said:
“Sooner or later we must meet the issue which brother Hepworth has
presented; the whole Christian world is looking at us and expecting us to
meet it. If we are found skulking, I believe the modern world will just
drop us, and we shall be left a little association of independent churches to
do anything we have a mind to, but the world will lose all its interest in us.
and that will be the end of us ”
Mr. Mayo is the most positive and most dismal of Pharisees. Why
should a man skulk into a dark closet, he would say, when the universe
looks for his appearing at the corner of the street ? Why should he
forfeit the interest of mankind by sneaking to prayer with the publi
can, when justification so abundant awaits broad phylacteries and
VOL. I.—NO. I.
4
�50
The Unitarian Situation.
pompous self-assertion ? How absurd and contemptible to content
ourselves with devout doing of God’s will, when the rewards of
“Lord, Lord,” are so much more immediate and certain! Blow no
trumpet, and let the modern world just drop us? Do justice, love
mercy, and walk humbly with God, and that the end of us? Indulge
the enthusiasm of humanity and the passion of free communion
with God, when seventy sanhedrins of seventy sects already summon
us to judgment, and the whole menagerie of inquisitors thirsts to
extinguish us? Such, it would seem, is the appeal of Mr. Mayo.
This appeal Mr. Mayo took occasion to vindicate in the meeting of
the Western Conference, in an elaborate address on “The Vocation
of The Western Unitarian Church.” The gist of that address was
that Unitarianism has been governed by the rule of liberty long
enough, and that it ought now to go back to the old and universal
orthodox method, define and adopt an orthodoxy of its own, a fixed
correct creed, and work hereafter by means of, and on the basis of,
this definite and established creed, excluding further free-thinking,
and attempting no further progress.
“Hitherto,” he says, “we have had a creed of one article, spiritual
freedom, and all our loosely-jointed organization has revolved around that.
We have been rather a spiritual exploring expedition on the frontiers of the
church than a well defined branch of Christendom.” “Liberal Christianity
remains,” he tells us, “an undefined and diffused spirit of free-thinking,
irresponsible as the wind, and vast as the mind of man.” Unitarians, again
he says, are “an extended picket-line backed by no army,” in danger of
being “gobbled up and left to pursue their ‘scientific religious’ investigation
inside a spiritual Andersonville, with such comfort as may there be found,”
which he thinks would be “a sad coming down from our dreams of illimitable
and irresponsible individuality.”
“The Unitarian body,” Mr. Mayo
declares, “must soon decide this final question: Is it a Church and apart of
Christendom, or is it a dissolving view of spiritual pioneers on the border-land of
Christian civilization? We may indulge in spiritual vagrancy till we lose the
confidence of the country, and expectation no longer turns our way. Our
widely-roving Unitarian enterprise in the West must consolidate into a
number of Christian churches that agree substantially in their understand
ing of Christianity, their methods for its propagation, their relation to other
Christian churches, and their relation to other communities outside of
Christian belief. . . If we decide that we are not a Christian church ip
this sense, then let us go home, each to his own city or hamlet, and pursue
religion on his own account; for the Western people will no longer concern
themselves with our existence.”
�1 he Unitarian Situation.
51
The criticism here made upon the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing
and Theodore Parker, that it was indefinite, vagrant, irresponsible,
and outside Christian limits; the judgment pronounced upon the
historic Unitarian principle of spritual freedom, that it served well
enough to organize “spiritual vagrancy” and “general free-thinking”
upon, and should now be displaced by the opposite principle, that of
dogma and ecclesiasticism; the proposition to consolidate the Unita
rian movement into a body of orthodox Unitarian churches; and the
reason for doing this, to keep the confidence of the country and the
interest of the Western people, and to escape “a spiritual Anderson
ville,”— these are points of Mr. Mayo’s plea which are criticised the
moment they are stated.
The two great principles of pure Christian religion, loyalty to God
and love to man, are sneered at by Mr. Mayo in this fashion,—
“ Religion is not solely, or chiefly, an affair between one man and the
Power he may choose to call his ‘ Maker.’ . . A Christian church
cannot live long on the assertion, it is good to be good; it is lovely to
love.” Chinese, Hebrews, Mormons, Spiritualists, and Oneida Com
munists, he says, do as much as that. If we do no more, the Western
people will no longer concern themselves with our existence, and that
will be the end of us. Could there be a more lamentable infidelity
than this? If Mr. Mayo represents anybody but himself, we are sorry
for the communion which includes such an element.
IV.—Dr. Bellows Protests.
It is never possible to tell on which side of the Unitarian question
Dr. Bellows will be found. In the Hepworth debate last May, he
came out emphatically and eloquently for liberty and diversity. He
said that he would not submit his faith to “ any statement which the
Unitarian body, as such, is prepared to make, or can honestly make,
or make without deceiving itself and without deceiving everybody
else.” He declared that “the Christian religion at this present time
needs a body which will restrain itself, and not undertake to bind
itself by a positive statement which will strangle its growth. He
insisted that Unitarianism must continue to occupy a position of
“ absolute and perfect liberty.” He besought his brethren not to let
Robert Collyer’s “seductive voice,” “incline or seduce you into any
falsification of the fundamental principle of our body.” “ Let every
man,” he said, “ give the best statement he can make, and send it out
on its own authority.”
�52
History of the Devil.
Now let Dr. Bellows cdnsent to take the lordship-of-Jesus dogma
out of the basis of the National Conference, and Unitarianism may
again mean “ absolute and perfect liberty,” and he cease to be
universally known as Mr. Facing-Both-Ways.
HISTORY OF THE DEVIL.
His Rise, Greatness
and
Downfall.
[Translated from the Revue des Deux Mondes.]
Among the fallen monarchs whom time, yet more than sudden revolutions,
has slowly brought down from their thrones, few are there whose prestige
has been as imposing and as abiding as that of the king of hell, —Satan.
We can safely employ the expression fallen in speaking of him, for those of
our contemporaries who yet profess to believe in his existence and power,
live just as if they did not believe in them; and when faith and life no longer
impress each other, we have a right to say that the former is dead. I speak,
of course, of our educated cotemporaries; the others are no longer of account
in the history of the human mind. It has seemed to us, too, that it would be
interesting to bring together in one view, and to describe in their logical
genesis, the transformations and evolutions of belief in the devil. This is
almost a biography. An occasion has been furnished us by a recent and
remarkable work which we owe to a professor of theology in Vienna.*
Notwithstanding some tedious passages, the book of Professor Roskoff is an
encyclopaedia of everything relating to the matter, and the author will not
complain if we borrow freely from his rich erudition.
I.
The origin of belief in the devil is quite remote; and, like that of every
belief more or less dualistic, that is to say, based on the radical opposition of
two supreme principles, it must be sought in the human mind developing
itself in the bosom of a Nature which is sometimes favorable, sometimes
hostile, to it. There is a certain relative dualism, an antagonism of the I
and not-I, which revealsitself from the time of man’s birth. His first breath
is painful, for it makes him cry out. It is through struggles that he learns
to eat, to walk, to speak. Later, the effort indispensable to his preservation
will reproduce this perpetual struggle under other forms. When the religious
sentiment awakens in him and seeks first its object and support in visible
nature, he finds himself before phenomena which he personifies; some of
which are agreeable and loved, such as the aurora, the fruits of the earth,
and the refreshing and fertilizing rain; the others terrifying and dreaded,
• “ History of the Devil,” by Gustave Roskoff, Professor of the Imperial Faculty of Protestant
Theology in Vienna.
�History of the Deoil.
53
like the storm, the thunder, and the night. Hence good and evil deities. As
a general rule and by virtue of that simple egotism which characterizes
children and the childhood of peoples, the dreaded gods are more worshipped
than those worthy of affection, which always do good of themselves and
without being entreated. Such is at least the convergent result of the observa
tions of all the travelers who have a near view in either hemisphere of peoples
living in a savage state. It is needless to add that their divinities have no
moral character properly so called. They do good or evil because their
nature is thus, and for no other reason. In that, they only resemble their
worshippers. Indeed, man always projects his own ideal upon the divinity
which he adores, and, all things considered, it is in this very manner that
he comes into possession of all which he can comprehend of divine truth.
He always has the feeling that his god is perfect, and that is the essential
thing ; but the traits of this perfection are always more or less those of his
ideal. Some one once asked of two little swine-herds in some remote prov
ince of Austria: “ What would you do, if you were Napoleon?” “I,” said
the younger, “ would put a whole pot of butter on my bread every morning.”
“Andi,” said the other, “ would watch my hogs on horseback!” Thus,
too, a Bushman, when invited by a missionary, who had tried to give him
some notions of morality, to cite some examples showing that he knew how
to distinguish good from evil, said: “Evil is other people who come and
take my wives ; good is me when I take theirs.” The gods of savages are
necessarily savage gods. They usually have hideous forms, as their wor
shippers think themselves bound to become hideous to go to battle, or even
simply for adornment. To them, the beautiful is the odd and grotesque ; the
mysterious is the strange, and the strange is the frightful. To our European
ancestors, the stranger was at the same time the guest and the enemy. With
all due deference to poets, the religion of peoples of this class is tantamount
to the adoration of genii or demons of a bad character. When we pass from
savage peoples, who live only by hunting and fishing, to shepherds, and
especially to agricultural peoples, this adoration of evil deities is no longer
as exclusive. Il et we usually find among them the worship of dreaded gods
predominant. For example, let us cite only that simple prayer of the
Madecassians, who recognize, among many others, two creative divinities*
Zamhor, the author of good things, and Nyang, of the bad :
“ 0 Zamhor! we do not pray to thee. Good gods do not want prayers.
But we must pray to Nyang. We must appease Nyang. Nyang, wicked and
powerful spirit, do not make the thunder roll above our beads ! Bid the sea
keep its limits. Spare, Nyang, the ripening fruits. Wither not the rice in
its flower. Let there be no births in the evil days. Thou knowest the
wicked are thine already, and the number of the wicked, Nyang, is great.
Then torment no more the good.”
It would be easy to multiply facts attesting this characteristic of the
religion of primitive peoples, that terror has more to do with their piety than
veneration or love. Hence the great number of malevolent beings of the
second order which all inferior religions recognize and which are found in
the popular superstitions long clinging to religions of a more elevated spiritual
�51
History of the Devil.
level. In the great mythologies, like those of India, Egypt, or Greece, the
apparent dualism of nature is reflected in the distinction between the gods
of order and production and those of destruction and disorder. The feeling
that order always gains a decisive victory in the battles between the oppos
ing forces of nature, inspires myths like those of Indra the conqueror of the
storm-cloud, of Horus avenging his father Osiris, wickedly put to death by
Typhon. In developed Brahminism, it is Siva, the god of destruction who
concentrates and puts to work the disturbing elements of the universe. Siva
is besides the most adored of the Hindoo gods. In Semitic polytheism,
dualism becomes sexual, or rather, the sun being always the principal object
of adoration, the supreme god is conceived under two forms, the one smiling,
the other terrifying, Baal or Moloch.
This double character of the divinities worshipped is not less striking
when one studies the most "poetical and most serene of polytheisms, that of
Greece. Like all the others, its roots go down into the worship of the visible
world, but more than elsewhere, unless we should except Egypt, its gods join
to their physical nature a corresponding moral physiognomy. They have
conquered the agents of confusion which under the names of Titans, Giants,
Typhons, threatened established order. They are then the invincible preser
vers of the regular order of things; but, as, after all, this regular order is
far from always conforming itself to the physical and moral well-being of
man, the result is that the Greek gods have all, in varied proportion, their
amiable and their dark side. For instance, Phoebus Apollo is a god of light,
a civilizer, inspirer of arts, refiner of the soil and of souls, and yet he sends
the pestilence, is pitiless in his vengeance, and not very prudent in his
friendships. One may say as much of his sister Diana, or rather the moon,
who is personified now under the enchanting image of a beautiful and chaste
maiden, now under the gloomy physiognomy of a Hecate, a Brimo, or an
Empusa. The blue mists of the horizon of the sea are at first beautiful blue
birds, then daughters of the wave, admirably beautiful down to the waist,
who bewitch navigators with their sweet love songs; but alas for those who
allow themselves to be seduced! This physiognomy of mingled good and
evil is a common trait of the Hellenic pantheon, and is continuously manifest,
from the supreme pair, Jupiter and Hera (Juno) to the under-world couple,
zEdoneus or Pluto and his wife the beautiful Proserpine, the Strangler.
Latin mythology suggests the same class of reflections, and, in what is
peculiarly its own, is still more dualistic than Greek polytheism. It has its
Orcus, its Strigae, its Larvae, its Lemures, etc. Sclavonic mythology has its
white god and its black god. Our Gallic fathers had not very attractive
divinities, and the old Scandinavian-Germanic gods unite to valuable quali
ties defects which render intercourse with them at least difficult. Wherever
in our times one has kept a belief in hob-goblins, witches, fairies, sylphs,
water-nymphs, we find this same mingling of good and bad qualities. These
latter relics of the great army of divinities of the former times are at the
same time graceful, attractive, generous when they wish to be, but also
capricious, vindictive and dangerous. It is important to regard all these
facts in seeking the origin of the devil, for we shall see that he is of compos
�History of the Devil.
55
ite order, and that in several of his essential features he is connected with
the dark elements of all religions which have preceded Christianity.
There is nevertheless one of these religions, which, in this special point of
view, calls for a little more attention to its fundamental doctrines: it is the
Zend-Avesta, or, to employ the usual expression, that of the Persians. It is,
in fact, in this religion that the divine hierarchy and belief appear under the
influence of a systematic < ualism applying to the entire world, moral evil
included. The gods of light and the gods of darkness share time and space.
We do not speak here of Zerwan-Akerene, time without limit, who gave birth
to Ahuramazda or Ormuzd, the God of good, and to his brother Ahriman,
the God of evil. This is evidently a philosophical notion much more recent
than that primitive point of view originating with the Zend religion, which
recognizes only two powers equally eternal, continually at strife, meeting for
combat on the surface of the earth as well as in the heart of men. Wherever
Ormuzd plants the good, Ahriman sows the evil. The story of the moral fall
of the first men, due to the perfidy of Ahriman, who took the form of a serpent,
presents most striking analogies with the parallel account in Genesis. In
regard to that, it has often been alleged that the Bible story of the fall was
only borrowed from Persia. This opinion seems to me without good found
ation, for in the Iranian myth the genius of evil is considered disguised. In
the Hebrew story, on the contrary, it is plainly a serpent which speaks, acts,
and brings upon all his progeny the punishment he suffers. We must then
allow to this story the merit of superior antiquity, if not in its present, at
least in its primitive form. The substitution of a disguised god for a reason
ing and speaking animal, denotes reflection unknown to the ages of mythical
formation. It was reflection, too, which, in later times, led the Jews to see
their Satan under the traits of the serpent of Genesis, although the canon
ical text is as contrary as possible to that conception. I prefer, then, to
regard the two myths, the Hebrew and the Iranian, as two variations, differ
ing in antiquity, of one and the same primitive theme, originating perhaps
when the Iranians and the Semites were living together in the shadow of
Ararat.
However this may be, the fact yet remains that in the most seriously moral
polytheism of the old world, one meets a religious conception which
approaches very near to that which Semitic monotheism has bequeathed to
us under the name of the devil or Satan. Ahriman, like Satan, has his
legions of bad angels which only think of tormenting and destroying mortals.
Not alone physical evils, as storms, darkness, floods, diseases and death, are
attributed to them; but also evil desires and guilty acts. The good man is
consequently a soldier of Ormuzd, under his orders opposing the powers of
evil; the wicked is a servant of Ahriman and becomes his instrument. The
Zend doctrine taught that at last Ahriman would be conquered and even
transformed to good. This latter characteristic distinguishes him favorably
from his Judeo-Christian brother; but one may well ask himself here how
far this beautiful hope made a part of primitive religion.* Of one thing we
♦There have been also theological Christiane, like Origen, who believed in the final conversion
of Satan.
�56
History of the Devil.
are certain, that the connection between the Jewish Satan and the Persian
Ahriman is very close, and this is only very natural when we think that of
all the polytheistic peoples the Persians are the only ones with whom the
Jews, emancipated by them from Chaldean servitude, kept up prolonged
relations of friendship.
Nevertheless, we shall try to prove false the quite wide-spread opinion which
sees in Satan only a transplanting of the Persian Ahriman into the religious
soil of Semitism. True, the Jewish and the Christian devil owe much to
Ahriman. From the moment when the Jewish Satan makes his acquaintance,
he imitates him, he adopts his manners, his morals, his tactics, he establishes
his infernal court on the same pattern ; in a word, he becomes transformed
to his likeness; but he was already existing, though leading an obscure and
ill defined life. Let us endeavor to sum up his history in the Old Testament.
The Israelites, as we have shown in a previous article, believed for a long
time, with other Semitic peoples, in the plurality of the gods; and the
dualism which is found at the bottom of all polytheisms must consequently
have assumed among them forms peculiar to the religions of the ethnical
group of which they made a part. In proportion as the worship of Jehovah
excluded all others, this dualism must change its forms. Believing still in
the real existence of the neighboring divinities, such as Baal and Moloch,
the fervent adorer of Jehovah must consider these gods immoral, cruel and
hostile to the people of Israel, much as people looked upon demons of another
age. We may go farther, and surmise some relic of a primitive dualism, or
of an opposition between two gods formerly rivals, in that enigmatic being,
the despair of exegetes, which, under the name of Azazel, haunts the
wilderness, and to whom, on the day of expiation, the high-priest sends a
goat on whose head he has put all the sins of the people. Only we must add
that in historical times the meaning of this ceremony seems lost even to
those who observe it, and there is in reality nothing more opposed
to all dualism than the strictly Jehovist point of view. If we except the
books of Job, of Zachariah, and of the Chronicles, all three being among
the less ancient of the sacred collection, there is not one word said of Satan
in the Old Testament, not even,— we repeat it because almost everybody is
deceived thereupon, notwithstanding the evidence of the texts,— not even
in the book of Genesis. Jehovah, once adored as the only real God, has and
can have no competitor. He holds in his hand all the forces, all the energies
of the world. Nothing happens, and nothing is done, on the earth, but he
wills it; and more than one Hebrew author attributes to him directly,
without the least reserve, the inspiring of the errors or faults which were to
be attributed at a later period to Satan. Jehovah hardens those whom he
wishes to harden; Jehovah strikes down those whom he wishes to strike
down, and no one has a right to ask why; but, as he is also believed to be
supremely just, it is admitted that, if he hardens the heart of the wicked,
it is that they may dig their own graves, and that, if he distributes blessings
and evils according to his will, it is to recompense the just and punish the
unjust. The Hebrew could not always hold to this notion, too easy in theory, too
�History of the Devil.
57
often falsified by experience; but he held to it long, as is evident from the
class of ideas out of which we see Satan finally born.
Hebrew monotheism did not exclude a belief in celestial spirits, in sons of
God (bene Elohim), in angels, which were supposed to surround the throne of
the Eternal like a Heavenly army. Subject to his orders, executors of his
will, they were, so to speak, the functionaries of the divine government.
The administering of the punishment or favors of God devolved directly
upon them. Consequently there were some whose office inspired more fear
than confidence. For instance, it is a spirit sent by God which comes to
punish Saul for his misdeeds, by afflicting him with dark thoughts which the
harp of David alone succeeds in dissipating. It is an angel of the Eternal
that appears to Baalam, with a naked sword in his hand as if to slay him,
or which destroys in one night a whole Assyrian army. After a time they
distinguished especially an angel which might pass for the personification of
a guilty conscience, for he filled, in the celestial court, the special office of
accuser of men. Doubtless sovereign justice alone, and in the plenitude of
its sovereignty, made the decision, but it was after pleadings in presence of
the adverse parties. Now the one whose business it was to proceed against
men before the divine tribunal, was an angel whose name of Satan signifies
an adversary, in the judicial as well as the proper sense of this word. Such,
indeed, is the Satan of the book of Job, still a member of the celestial court,
being one of the sons of God, but having as his special office the ‘continual
accusation of men,’ and having become so suspicious by his practice as
public accuser that he believes in the virtue of no one, not even in that of
Job the just man, and always presupposes interested motives for the purest
manifestations of human piety. We see that the character of this angel is
becoming marred, and the history of Job shows that, when he wishes to
accomplish the humiliation of a just man, he spares nothing Satan
appears, too, as the accuser of Israel in the vision of Zachariah: (iii. 1.)
The result of this peculiar character, and the belief that angels intervene in
human affairs, is that Satan had no need of Ahriman in order to be dreaded
by the Israelites as the worst enemy of men. From that time, it was
common to suspect his artifices in private and national misfortunes. Conse
quently, the fatal inspirations which previous Jehovism had attributed
directly to Jehovah, were henceforth regarded as coming from Satan. We
find in the history of king David a curious example of this evolution of
religious belief. King David one day conceived the unlucky idea, considered
impious even from the theocratic-republican point of view of the prophets
of his time, of numbering the people. In regard to this, the second book of
Samuel (xxiv. 1) says that God, angry against Israel, incited David to give
the orders necessary fcr this work; on the contrary, the first of Chronicles
(xxi. 1), recounting the very same story, begins it in these terms: “Satan
stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” Nothing
shows better than this comparison, the change that had taken place in the
interval between the preparation of the two books. Henceforth the mono
theist attributes to the Adversary the bad thoughts and the calamities which
he had formerly traced directly to God. It is even to be presumed that he
A
"
�58
History of the Devil.
finds some religious comfort in this solution of certain difficulties which must
begin to weigh upon him, for, as in proportion as the idea of God becomes
higher, people can no longer be contented with the simple theories which
could suffice for less reflecting ages.
So we see in the character of adversary of men, of an evil disposed being,
of the angel Satan, the origin, properly so called, of the Jewish and
Christian devil. We need not then rudely identify him with the more or
less wicked divinities of the polytheistic religions. That he has with them
affinities which become continually more close, we fully admit; but his
appearance is quite distinct, and even had the Jews never been in contact
with the Persians, we should have received from Jewish tradition a complete
Satan. Satan, then, is not the son, nor even the brother, of Ahriman; but
we may say that the time came when the resemblance was so great that it
was possible to confound them. Indeed, in the apocryphal books of the Old
Testament, which are distinguished from the canonical books of the same
collection, by the Alexandrian and Persian elements in them, we see Satan
increase in importance and prestige. The seventy, in translating his name
by diabolos, whence comes our word devil, also define exactly his primitive
character of accuser; but henceforth he is something quite different from
that. He is an exciting agent of the first class. He is a very high person
age, counted among the highest rank of angels, who, envious of a still
higher position, was banished from Heaven with those other angels who
were accomplices in his ambitious schemes. Now hatred of God is with him
added to hatred of men. Here begins the imitation of Ahriman. Like the
Persian god, Satan is at the head of an army of wicked beings, who execute
his orders. We know several of them by name; among others Asmodeus,
the demon of pleasure, who plays a great part in the book of Tobias, and
whose Persian origin, since the learned researches of M. Michel Brtial, can
no longer be doubted. In consequence of this increasing importance, and
his separation from the faithful angels, Satan has his kingdom apart, and
his residence in the subterranean hell. Like the Persian Ahriman, he
wished to harm the work of creation and attacked men, whose innocent
happiness was insupportable to him. From that time, it is represented that
it was he, who, like Ahriman, addressed the first woman under the form of
the serpent. Then it was he who introduced death and its horrors; conse
quently the adversaries that he dreads the most, are men capable by their
superior sanctity of fortifying their fellow men against his insidious attacks.
A host of diseases, above all those which, by their strangeness and absence
of exterior symptoms, defy natural explanation, such as idiocy, epilepsy,
Saint Guy’s dance, dumbness, certain kinds of blindness, etc., are attributed
to his agents. It is supposed that the thousands of demons who are under
his orders escape continually from the vents of hell, and,— like the demons
of the night in which people had always believed,— haunt from preference
waste lands and deserts; but there they tire, they become thirsty, whirl
giddily about without finding rest, and their great resource is to find lodg
ment in a human body, in order to consume its substance and be refreshed
by its blood. Sometimes even, they take up their abode in many. Hence,
�History of the Devil.
59
the demoniacs, or possessed, spoken of so many times in evangelical history.
Yet Jewish mythology wculd not carry to the extreme thi^ resemblance to
Ahriman. Satan, for example, would never dare to attack God directlyOrdinarily even certain formulas, in which the name of the Most High
occurred in the first line, sufficed to exorcise him, that is to say, to drive
him away. His power is strictly confined to the circle which it pleased
divine wisdom to trace for his dominion. Dualism, therefore, remains very
incomplete. On the other hand, the Jewish Satan is never to be converted.
A prince of incurable evil, knowing himself condemned by the divine
deerees to a final and irremediable defeat, he will always persist in evil, and
will serve as executioner to Supreme justice, to torment eternally those
whom he has drawn into his terrible nets.
Such was the state of mind on this point in which the first preaching of
the gospel found the Jewish people. The messianic ideas, too, on their side,
in developing themselves, had contributed much to this enrichment of the
popular belief. If the devil, in this order of ideas, did not dare to oppose
God, or even his angels of high rank, he did not fear to resist openly his
servants on the earth. Now the Messiah was to be especially the servant of
God. He was to appear in order to establish the kingdom of God in that
humanity which was almost entirely subject to the power of demons.
Consequently the devil would defend his possessions against him to the last
extremity, and the work of the expected Messiah might be summed up in a
bodily and victorious struggle with the “prince of this world.” This is a
point of view that one should never forget in reading the gospels. Satan
and the Messiah personified, each on his side, the power of evil and good
engaging in a desperate combat at every point of collision. Never would
Jesus, for example, have been able to pass for the Messiah in the eyes of his
countrymen, had he not had the reputation of being stronger than the
demons every time those possessed with them were brought to him.
It is a question which has greatly interested modern theologians, to know
if Jesus himself shared the beliefs of his contemporaries in regard to Satan.
To treat this question as we should, we should have to stop longer on other
points foreign to this history. Let us simply say that nothing authorizes us
to think that Jesus would, from compliance with popular superstitions, have
feigned beliefs which he did not share; but let us add that the principles of
his religion were not in themselves favorable to beliefs of this kind. No
where does Jesus make faith in the devil a condition of entrance into the
kingdom of God, and were the devil only an idea, a symbol, these conditions
would remain literally the same. Purity of heart, strong desire for justice,
love of God and of men, these are all demands completely independent of
the question of knowing whether Satan exists or not. Hence when Jesus
speaks in an abstract, general manner, without any prepossession from
circumstances of place or time, he regularly eliminates the person of Satan
from his field of instruction. For example, he declares that our bad thoughts
come from our heart; according to the Satanic theory, he should have
attributed them to the devil. Sometimes it is plain that he makes use of
popular beliefs as a form, an image, to which he attaches himself no positive
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History of the Devil.
reality; he finds material for parables in them; he addresses as Satan one
of his disciples who is endeavoring to persuade him to withdraw from the
sufferings which await him, and who by his very affection becomes for him
a momentary Tempter One may remark the same thing in studying the
theology of St. Paul, at least in his authentic epistles. St. Paul evidently
believes in the devil, and yet with him moral evil is incident to the mortal
nature of men, and not to the exterior and personal action of a demon. In
a word, the teaching of Jesus and of Paul nowhere combats the belief in the
devil, but it can do without it, and its tendency is to dispense with it. We
see this tendency in our days, when so many excellent Christians have not
the least anxiety about the king of hell; but it was one of those germs of
which the gospel contains many, which needed a different intellectual atmos
phere in order to grow. What I have related will explain why much more
is said of the devil in the New Testament than in the Old. The belief in
the devil and the expectation of the Messiah had grown up side by side.
Yet let us remark that if the New Testament speaks very often of Satan, of
his angels, of the spirits “who are in the air,” and of the devil seeking
whom he may devour, it is more than sober in the descriptions that it gives
of them. A certain spiritual reserve hovers still over all that order of
conceptions; the devils are invisible; no one attributes to them palpable
body, and a crowd of superstitions which arise later, from the idea that we
can see and touch them, are still unknown. Yet, at the commencement of
our era, we may consider the period of the origin of our Satan as concluded.
He represents the union of polytheistic dualism and that relative dualism
which Jewish monotheism could rigorously support. We shall see it grow
still and assume new forms; but, such as it already is, we shall not fail to
recognize it. It is indeed he, the old Satan, the bugbear of our fathers, in
whom is concentrated all impurity, all ugliness, all falsehood, in a word the
ideal of evil.
II.
The first centuries of Christianity, very far from developing that side of
the gospel by which the new doctrine tended logically to banish the devil
to regions of symbol and personal uselessness, on the contrary only increased
his domain, by multiplying his interventions in human life. He served as a
scape-goat to the horror of the primitive Christians for the institutions of
paganism. Even in the early days, Christians did not very clearly distin
guish the Roman empire from the empire of Satan. This too Jewish point
of view did not last, but the favorite theme of most of the apologists was to
attribute to the craft and pride of the devil, everything which polytheism
presented, either fine or disagreeable, bad or good. The beautiful and the
good which might be found mingled there, were in their eyes nothing else
than small portions of truth artfully mingled by the enemy of the human
race with frightful errors, in order better to retain power over men whom
the absolutely false could not have captivated so long. The Alexandrian
teachers alone showed themselves more reasonable, but they took no great
hold on the mass of the faithful. Then especially the idea spread abroad
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History of the Devil.
61
that Satan was a rival really contemptible, but long powerful, of God, alone
adorable. Having an eager desire for honors and dominion, he had imitated
divine perfection as well as he could and had succeeded only in
making an odious caricature of it, but, such as it was, that caricature had
blinded the nations. Tertullian found, even on this subject, one of those
characteristic words in which his mocking spirit excelled. “Satan,” said
he, “is God’s ape,” and the saying was handed down to posterity. Conse
quently the Graeco-Roman gods were, to Christians as to Jews, demons
who had usurped the divine rank. The licentiousness of pagan morals,
too often consecrated by the ceremonies of traditional religion, procured for
this prejudiced point of view a sort of popular justification, enhanced
besides by the moral superiority which the rising church was generally
able to oppose to the corruptions which surrounded it. Satan was then
more than ever “the prince of this world.”
Yet let us not forget one very important circumstance, that other currents,
outside of the Christian church, contributed to extend everywhere a belief
in evil demons. Polytheism, in its decline, obeyed its internal logic, that
is to say, it became continually more dualistic, its last forms, those for
example which are distinguished by what they have borrowed from Platon
ism and Pythagorism, are entirely permeated with dualism, and consequently
they open a large career to the imagination to create every kind of evil
spirits. At that epoch, asceticism, which consists in slowly killing the body
under pretext of developing the mind, was not alone in the most exalted parts
of the Christian church; it was everywhere where people practiced religious
morals. The dreamB of which fasting is the physiological generator, gave
to the imaginary beings which they evoked all the appearance of reality.
Apollonius of Tyana does not drive off fewer demons than a Christian saint.
As Prof. Roskoff very justly remarks, the doctrine of angels and demons,
offered to polytheism, and to Jewish and Christian monotheism, a sort of
neutral territory, on which they might meet to a certain extent.
The
religious movements known under the name of Gnostic sects, which represent
a mingling of pagan, Jewish and Christian views in varied proportions, have,
as a common feature, a belief in fallen spirits, tyrants of men and rivals of
God. The great successes of Manicheism, that union of Persian dualism and
Christianity, were due to the satisfaction which the popular faith took in
everything which resembled a systematic struggle of the geniuB of evil with
the spirit of good. The Talmud and the Cabala underwent the same influ
ence. We need not then impute to Christianity alone the great place which
Satan at that time took in the affairs of this world; it was a universal
tendency of the epoch, and it would be more correct to say that Christianity
suffered the influence of it, with all contemporary forms of religion.
The Jewish Messiah had become to Christianity the Saviour of guilty
humanity; therefore the radical antagonism of Satan and the Messiah was
reflected in the first teaching of redemption. It was represented, from
the end of the Becond century, in a grand drama, in which Christ and the
devil were the principal actors. The multitude satisfied themselves with
thinking that Christ, having descended into hell, had, in virtue of the right
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of the strongest, taken from Satan the souls that he was holding captive;
but this coarse idea was refined upon. Irenaeus taught that men, since the
fall, were Satan’s by right; that it would have been unjust on the part of
God to take away from him violently what was his; that consequently
Christ, in the character of a man perfect and independent of the devil, had
offered himself to him to purchase the human race, and that the devil had
accepted the bargain. Soon, however, it was perceived that the devil had
made a very foolish calculation, since Christ had not remained finally in his
power. Origen, whose ecclesiastical teachings we need not always take for
literally exact representations of his real views, took that view which
admitted without repugnance that, in the work of redemption, Christ and
Satan had played their parts most artfully, the latter thinking he should
keep in his power a prey which he preferred to all the human race, Christ
knowing well that he would not remain in his hands. This point of view,
which ended in making Satan the deceived party and Jesus the deceiving,
scandalous as it appears to us, nevertheless made its way, and was long
predominant in the church. We readily perceive that such a manner of
looking at redemption was not likely to diminish the prestige of the devil.
Nothing could increase fear of the enemy like the exaggerated descriptions
given of his power and of the dangers run by those exposed to his attacks;
especially when, by a singular contradiction which the old theology could
never escape, the devil, declared vanquished, overthrown, reduced to power
lessness by the victorious Christ, none the less continued to exercise his
infernal power over the great majority of men. The saints alone could
consider themselves protected from his snares, and even they, according to
the legends, which began to be circulated, how much prudence and energy
had they not used to escape them! Everything felt the influence of this
continual prepossession. Baptism had become an exorcism. To become a
Christian, was to declare that one renounced Satan, his pomps and his
works. To be driven from the church for moral unworthiness or for heter
odoxy, was to be “delivered over to Satan.” It was also during this period
that was developed the doctrine of the fall of the lost angels. On the one
hand, it was thought that demons were meant in that mythical verse in Genesis
which relates that the “sons of God” married the daughters of men, whom
they found beautiful; and, in this supposition, lust was considered as their
own original sin and their constant prompting; on the other hand, and
since this did not explain the previous presence of a bad angel in the
terrestrial paradise, the fall of the rebellious spirit was carried back to the
moment of creation. Augustine thought that, as an effect of the fall, their
bodies previously subtile and invisible, became less etherial. This was the
beginning of the belief in visible appearances of the devil. Then came that
other idea that demons, in order to satisfy their lust, take advantage of the
night to beguile young men and women during their sleep. Hence the
succubi and incubi, which played so great a part in the middle ages. St.
Victorinus, according to the legend, was conquered by the artifice of a
demon which had taken the form of a seductive young girl lost in the woods
in the night. The ordinances of the councils, from the fourth century,
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enjoin on bishops to watch closely those of their diocese who are addicted to
the practice of magic arts, invented by the devil; there is even talk about
vicious women who run about the fields in the night in the train of heathen
goddesses, Diana among others. As yet, however, there was seen in these
imaginary meetings nothing but dreams suggested by Satan to those who gave
him a hold on them by their guilty inclinations.
But soon everything becomes real and material. There is no saint who
does not see the devil appear to him at least once under human form; Saint
Martin even met him so disguised as to resemble Christ. Generally, however,
in his character of angel of darkness, he appears as a man eutirely black,
and it is under this color that he escapes from heathen temples and idols
which the zeal of neophytes has overthrown. At length the idea that one
can make a compact with the devil, to obtain for himself what he most desires,
in exchange for his soul, takes its rise in the sixth century, with the legend
of St. Theophilus. The latter, in a moment of wounded pride, gives Satan a
signed abjuration; but, devoured by remorse, he persuaded the Virgin Mary
to get back the fatal writing from the bad angel. This legendary story,
written especially with the design of spreading the worship of Mary, was
destined to have serious consequences. The devil, in fact, saw his prestige
increase much more when the conversion of the invaders of the empire, and
the missions sent to countries which had never made a part of it, had intro
duced into the bosom of the church a mass of people absolutely ignorant and
still full of polytheism. The church and state, united in the time of Con
stantine and still more in that of Charlemagne, did what they could to refine
the gross spirits under their tutorship; yet, to tell the truth, the temporal
and spiritual princes ought themselves to have been less under the influence
of the superstitions they wished to oppose. If some able popes could allow
their policy to include a certain toleration for customs and errors which it
seemed impossible to uproot, the great majority of bishops and missionaries
firmly believed they were fighting the devil and his host in trying to exterpate polytheism; they instilled the same belief into their converts and in
that way prolonged very much the existence of pagan divinities. The good
old spirits of rural nature were especially tenacious of life. The sacred
legends collect many of them, and comparative mythology recognizes a great
number of ancient Celtic and German gods in the patrons venerated by our
ancestors. For quite a long time, and without its being regarded as a renun
ciation of the Catholic faith, in England, France and Germany, offerings
were presented, either from gratitude or fear, to spirits of the fields and
forests ; the women were especially tenacious of these old customs. As,
nevertheless, the church did not cease to designate as demons and devils all
superhuman beings who were not saints or angels, and as the character of
the ancient gods had after all nothing angelic, a division took place. The
kingdom of the saints was enriched from the good part under new names ;
the kingdom of the demons had the rest. The belief in the devil, which, in
the first centuries, was still somewhat elevated, became decidedly coarse and
stupid. It was in the beginning of the middle ages that people began to
regard certain animals, such as the cat, the toad, the rat, the mouse, the
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History of the Devil.
black dog, and the wolf, as serving, in preference to all others, as symbols,
auxiliaries, and even as a momentary form, for the devil and his servants.
It has been recently shown that ordinarily these animals were consecrated
or sacrificed to the divinities whose places the demons had taken. Recollec
tions of human sacrifices in honor of the ancient gods must be at the base of
the idea that Satan and his slaves are partial to human flesh. The wehrwolf, man-wolf, which devours children, has been succe; sively a god, a devil,
and a sorcerer going to the wizard’s meeting under the form of a wolf, so as
not to be recognized. We all know that there has never been a sorceress
without a cat. A pest too frequent among a population destitute of all
acquaintance with cleanliness, viz., vermin, was also at that time put to the
account of the devil and his servants. It was also about the same time that
the corporeal form of the devil became a fixed idea; it was that of the old
fauns and satyrs, a horned forehead, blobber-lipped mouth, hairy skin, tail,
and the cloven foot of the goat or the hoof of a horse.
We might accumulate here the half-burlesque, half-tragic details ; but we
prefer to note the salient points of the development of the belief. At the
point we have reached, we must look at it under a new light. Among the
Jews of the time directly preceding our era, Satan had become the so-called
adversary of the Messiah, — among the first Christians, the direct antago
nist of the Saviour of men; but in the middle ages Christ is in Heaven, very
high and far away; the living, immediate organism which is to realize his
kingdom on the earth, is the church. Consequently, it is henceforth the
devil and the church which have to do with one another. The faith of the
collier consists in believing what the church believes, and when one asks the
collier what the church believes, the collier responds boldly: “What I
believe.” So, if one asked during that period : “ What does the devil do ? ”
one would have to respond : “What the church does not do.” “ And what
is it that the church does not do?” “ That which the devil does.” This
would tell the whole story. The nocturnal meetings of evil spirits, which
the old councils, called to consider them, dismissed as imaginary, have become
something very real. The Germanic idea of fealty, that is to say, the idea
that fidelity to the sovereign is the first of virtues, as the treason of the
vassal is the greatest of crimes, was introduced into the church, and con
tributed not a little to give to everything which approached infidelity to
Christ the colors of blackest depravity. The sorcerer, however, is as faithful
to his master Satan as the good Christian to his celestial sovereign, and just
as every year vassals come to render homage to their lord, so the liege-men
of the devil hasten to pay him a like honor, sometimes on a fixed day, some
times by special convocation. The flights through the air of sorcerers and
witches, with hair flying wildly, hastening to the nocturnal rendezvous, are
a transformation of the Celtic and German myth of the wild hunt or the great
hunter ; but the master who appointed this rendezvous is a sort of god, and
in the great assemblies of the diabolical tribe they honor him especially by
celebrating the opposite of the mass. They adore the spirit of evil by
changing the ceremonies which were employed to glorify the God of good. The
name itself of sabbath (a term applied to their nocturnal assemblies,) came
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from the confusion which arose between the worship of the devil and the
celebration of a non-catholic worship. The church put in absolutely the
same rank the Jew, the excommunicated, the heretic, and the sorcerer. One
circumstance contributed greatly to that coufusion. Most of the sects which
had revolted from the church, that especially which holds a grand and
wonderful place in our national history, called the heresy of the Albigenses,
were penetrated to a high degree with the old Gnostic and Manichean leaven.
Dualism was the principle of their theology. Hence came the idea that their
religious assemblies, rivals of the mass, were nothing other than the mass
said in hell, and that such is the kind of worship that Satan prefers. If now
we recall with what docility the state allowed itself to be persuaded by the
church that its first duty was to exterminate heretics, we shall no longer find
anything surprising in the rigor of the penal laws declared against the
pretended sorcerers. It is important that the absorbing character of the
belief in the devil during the middle ages be well understood; those who
believe in Satan now-a-days would have difficulty in conceiving what a sway
this belief had. It was the fixed idea of everybody, especially from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, a period which may be signalized as
having marked the apogee of that superstition. A fixed idea tends, among
those who are possessed with it, to bring over everything to itself. When, for
example, we follow somewhat closely those of our contemporaries who are
devoted to spiritism, we are astonished at the fertility of their imagination
in interpreting in favor of their belief events most insignificant and them
selves indifferent. A door not well closed which half opens, a fly which
describes arabesques in its flight, the falling of an object badly poised, the
cracking of a piece of furniture during the night, is all that is needed to send
them out of sight into space. Let us generalize such a state of mind by
substituting for the innocent illusion of our spiritists the continual interven
tions of the devil, and we shall have quite a good representation of what was
passing in the middle ages. Among the numberless facts and writings which
we could cite, we will mention the Revelations, quite forgotten now-a-days,
but formerly widely known, of the abbé Richeaume or Richalmus, who flour
ished about the year 1270, in Franconia, and who belonged to the order of
Citeaux. The abbé Richeaume attributed to himself a particular gift of
discernment for perceiving and understanding the satellites of Satan, who,
moreover, according to his account, always torment in preference churchmen
and good Christians. What do not these imps of hell make the poor abbé
endure ! From the distractions he may have during mass to the nausea
which too often troubles his digestion, from the false notes of the officiating
precentor to the fits of coughing which interrupt his discourses, all the
annoyances which happen to him are demoniac works. “For example,”
says he to the novice who gives him his cue, “ when I sit down for spiritual
reading, the devils make a desire to sleep seize me. Then it is my custom
to put my hands out of my sleeves so that they may become cold ; but they
bite me under the clothes like a flea, and attract my hand to the place bitten,
so that it becomes warm, and my reading grows careless again.” They like
to disfigure men. To one they give a wrinkled nose, to another hare-lips.
VOL. i.—no. i.
5
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History of the Devil.
If they perceive that a man likes to close his lips properly, they make his
lower lip hanging. “Stop,” says he to his novice “look at this lip ; for
twenty years a little ilevil has kept himself there, just to make it hang.”
And he goes on in that strain. When the novice asks him if there are many
demons who thus make war on men, abbé Richeaume replies that every one
of us is suriounded by as many demons as a man plunged in the sea has
drops of water around him. Happily the sign of the cross is generally
sufficient to foil their malice, but not always, for they know well the human
heart and know how to reach it through its weaknesses. One day when the
abbé was making his monks pick up stones to build a wall, he heard a young
devil, hidden under the wall, cry out very distinctly: “What distressing
labor!” And he said that only to inspire in the monks a disposition to
complain of the base service imposed on them. To the sign of the cross, it
is often useful to add the effect of holy water and salt. Demons cannot bear
salt. “ When I am at the table and the devil has taken away my appetite,
as soon as I have tasted a little salt, my appetite returns; a little after, it
disappears again, I again take salt, and I am hungry anew.” In the hundred
and thirty chapters of which his Revelations consist, the abbé Richeaume does
nothing but subject thus to his fixed idea the most trivial circumstances of
domestic life, and especially of convent life ; but the popularity which this
book, which appeared after his death, enjoyed, proves that he simply agreed
in opinion with his contemporaries. One might find innumerable parallels
in the literature of the time. The Golden Legend of Jacques de Voraigne,
one of the books most read in the middle ages, will give a sufficient idea
of it.
This continual preoccupation with the devil, had two consequences equally
logical, though of a very opposite character. It had at the same time its comical
and its dark side. By seeing Satan everywhere, people at last became familiar
with him, and by a sort of unconscious protest of mind against imaginary
monsters created by traditional doctrine, they became emboldened to the
point of being quite at ease with his horned majesty. The legends always
showed him so miserably taken in by the sagacity of saints and good priests,
that his reputation for astuteness slowly gave place to a quite contrary fame.
They had even reached the point of believing that it was not impossible to
speculate on the foolishness of the devil. For example, had he not had the
simplicity to furnish to architects in trouble magnificent plans for the con
struction of the cathedrals of Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne ? It is true that
at Aix he had demanded in recompense the soul of the first person who
should enter t he church, and at Cologne that of the architect himself ; but
he had to do with those more cunning than he. At Aix, they drove with
pikes a she-wolf into the church then recently finished ; at Cologne, the
architect, already in possession of the promised plan, in the place of deliver
ing to Satan a conveyance of his soul in due form, draws suddenly from
beneath his gown a bone of the eleven thousand virgins and brandishes it in
the face of the devil, who decamps uttering a thousand imprecations. The
high part which is assigned to him in the religious theatricals of the middle
ages, is well known. Redemption, in the popular mind, still passed for a
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divine trick, piously played at the expense of the enemy of men. It was
then natural to imagine a host of other cases where Satan was taken in his
own snares. What laughs these discomfitures excited among the good people !
By a thousand indications, one would be tempted to believe that he had
become the character, in the mysteries, the most liked, if not the most
agreeable. The others had their part entirely marked out by tradition;
with him, one could anticipate something unexpected. We see him, too,
represent for a long time the comic element of the religious drama. In
France, where the people have always liked to subject the theatre to exact
rules, there was a class of popular pieces called deviltries, coarse and often
obscene masquerades in which at least four devils were to struggle together.
Hence comes, it appears, the expression, “faire le diable d quatre.” In
Germany, too, the devil becomes humorous on the stage. There is an old
Saxon mystery of the passion where Satan repeats, like a mocking echo, the
last words of Judas hanging himself; then, when, according to the sacred
tradition, the entrails of the traitor are burst out, he gathers them in a
basket, and, carrying them away, signs an article appropriate to the
circumstances.
This, however, did not prevent a general distressing fear of the devil. At
the theatre, during the middle ages, one was in a certain sense at church.
There, nothing hindered one from deriding at pleasure the detested being
whose artifices were powerless against the actors of the holy representations ;
but people could not pass their lives listening to mysteries, and the daily
realities were not slow in restoring to him all his prestige. Naturally, the
number of individuals suspected of some kind of intercourse with Satan must
have been enormous. This was the first idea that came into the mind of any
one who did not know how to explain the success of an adversary or the
prosperous issue of an audacious enterprise. Enguerrand de Marigny, the
templars, our poor Joan of Arc, and many other illustrious victims of polit
ical hatred, were convicted of sorcery. Popes themselves, such as John
XXII., Gregory VII., Clement V., incurred the same suspicion. At the same
time, we see appear the idea that the compacts concluded with the devil are
signed with the blood of the sorcerer, in order that it may be firmly cove
nanted that his person, his entire life, belongs henceforth to the infernal
master. At this time, also, an old Italian superstition was revived, the idea
of causing the death of those one hates by mutilating or piercing little
images of wax of the person designated, which had been bewitched. There
were councils purposely to proceed rigorously against sorcery, which was
thought to be spread in every direction. Pope John XXII., himself accused
of sorcery, declares, in a bull of 1317, the bitter grief caused him by the
compacts concluded with the devil by his physicians and courtiers, who draw
other men into the same impious relation. From the thirteenth century, they
proceeded against the crime of sorcery just as against the most henious
offences, and popular ignorance was only too well disposed to furnish food to
the zeal of the inquisitors. Toulouse saw the first sorceress burned. This
was Angela de Labarbte, a noble lady, fifty-six years of age, who took part in
that special character in the grand auto-da-fe in that city, in 1275. At
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Carcassone.from 1320 to 1350, more than four hundred executions for the crime
of sorcery are mentioned as having taken place. Nevertheless those bloody
horrors had even in the fourteenth century a local character; but in 1484
an act of Pope Innocent VIII. extended over all Christendom this terrible
procedure. Then began throughout all Catholic Europe that mournful
pursuit of sorcerers which marks the paroxysm of the belief in the devil,
which concentrates and condenses it for more than three cent uries, and which,
yielding at last under the reprobation of modern conscience, was to carry
away with it the faith of which it was the issue.
III.
In the fifteenth century, a momentary relaxing of orthodox fanaticism
rendered the task of inquisitors quite difficult in what concerned heresy
properly so called. It seems that on the banks of the Rhine, as in France,
people began to weary of the insatiable vampire which threatened everybody
and cured none of the evils of the church, which had employed it as an heroic
remedy. The faith in the church itself as a perfect and infallible institution,
was in peril, and the inquisitors complained to the Holy See of the increas
ing difficulties which the local powers and the local clergy opposed to them;
but those even who questioned the church and inclined to toleration of
religious opinion did not mean to give free course to the wiles of the devil
and his agents. Then appeared the famous bull Summis desiderantes, by
which Innocent VIII. added to the powers of the officers of the inquisition
that of prosecuting the authors of sorcery, and applying to them the rules
which until then had affected only depravatio heretica. Long is the list of
witchcrafts enumerated by the pontificial bull, from tempests and devasta
tion of crops to fates cast upon men and women to prevent them from
perpetuating the human species. Armed with this bull which fulminated
against the refractory the most severe penalties, which was strengthened by
other functions of the same origin and same tendency, the inquisitors Henry
Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, prepared that Hammer of sorceries, — Malleus
maleficarum, — which was a long time for all Europe the classical code of
procedure to be followed against individuals suspected of sorcery. This
book received the pontificial sanction, the approbation of the emperor
Maximilian, and that of the theological faculty of Cologne. The reading of
this dull and wearisome treatise cannot fail to cause a shudder. This pro
longed study of the false held for the true, these perpetual sophisms, the
pedantic simplicity with which the authors recall everything which can give
a shadow of appearance of truth to their bad dreams, the cold cruelty which
dictates their proceedings and their judgments, everything would fill the
modern reader with repulsion, if he had not the duty of indicting at the bar
of history one of the most lamentable aberrations which have falsified the
conscience of humanity. We find an answer to everything in this frightful
conjuring-book. We see there why the devil gives his servants the power to
change themselves reali transformatione et essentialiter to wolves and other
dreadful beasts, why it is a heresy to deny sorcery, how the incubi and
succubi manage to attain their ends, quomodo procreant, why one has never
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seen so many sorcerers as at the present time, why David drove the torment
ing demon from Saul by showing him his harp, which resembled a cross, etc.
If there are more sorceresses than sorcerers, it is because women believe
more in the promises of Satan than men do, it is because the fluidity of their
temperament renders them more fitted to receive revelations, it is in short
that women, being weaker, readily have recourse to supernatural means to
satisfy their vengeance or their sensuality. Recipes of every sort arc
recommended to wise persons to guard themselves from the spells that may
be thrown over them. The sign of the cross, the holy water, the judicious
use of salt, and of the name of the holy Trinity, constitute the principal
exorcisms. The sound of church bells is also regarded as a defence of great
power, and it is therefore well to have them rung during tempestuous storms,
for, by driving away the demons which cannot bear this sacred sound, they
prevent them from continuing their work of perturbation. This supersti
tious custom, which has been perpetuated to our times, clearly denotes a
confounding of the demons of the church and the ancient divinities of the
t hunder and of tempests.
What especially commands attention, is the criminal procedure developed
by the authors, and which beoome law everywhere. They are exactly imi
tated from those which the inquisition had instituted against heretics.
Sorcery, arising from a compact with the devil supposing the abjuration of
the baptismal vow, is a sort of apostacy, a heresy in the first degree.
Denunciations without proof are admitted. . . It is even sufficient that
public rumor call the attention of the judge to the matter. All who present
themselves, even the infamous, even the personal enemies of the sorceress,
are permitted to give evidence. The pleadings must be summary, and as
much as possible relieved from useless formalities. The accused must be
minutely questioned, until there are found in the details of her life some
thing to strengthen the suspicions which press upon her. The judge is not
obliged to name to her the informers against her. She can have one
defender, who must know no more of the matter than she, and who must
limit himself to the defence of the person incriminated, but not of her
criminal acts; otherwise the defender will be in his turn suspected. The
acknowledgment of the guilty person must be obtained by torture, as well
as the declaration of all the circumstances relating to her heinous crime.
Still one may promise her security of life, free not to keep that promise
(so the text says), on condition that confession is complete and prompt.
Torture is repeated every three days, and the judge is to take all suitable
precautions that the effect of it may not be neutralized by some charm
hidden in some secret part of the body of the accused. He must even avoid
looking her in the face, for sorceresses have been seen endowed, by the
devil, with a power such that the judge whose glance they were able to
catch no longer felt the strength to condemn them. When at length she is
well and duly convicted, she is given over to the secular arm, which is to
lead her off to death without farther parley.
It is easy to see from this cursory view that the unfortunate women who
fell into the clutches of this terrible tribunal, had only to abandon hope at
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History of the Devil.
the door of their prison. Nothing is more afflicting than a careful review
of the proceedings for sorcery. The women are always, as the inquisitors
learnedly explain, in the majority. Hatreds, jealousies, desires for revenge,
above all suspicions inspired by want and ignorance, could have free course
and did not allow the opportunity to escape them. Often, too, unfortunate
women were victims of their own imagination, over-excited by a hysterical
temperament, or by the terrors of eternal torment. Those in our times who
have been able to examine closely the cases of mania religiosa, know with
what readiness women especially believe themselves the objects of divine
reprobation, and fatally given over to the power of the devil. All those
unfortunates, who to-day are treated with extreme gentleness in special
institutions, then were obliged to pass for possessed or sorceresses, and
what is frightful is that many seriously supposed themselves to be so.
Many related that they had really been to the witches’ meeting, that they
had there given themselves up to the most degrading debauches. How many
like confessions aggravated afterwards the position of those who denied with
the firmness of innocence the disgraceful acts of which they were accused!
Torture was there to draw from them what they refused to tell, and thus the
conviction became rooted in the spirit of judges even relatively humane and
equitable, that besides crimes committed by natural means there was a
whole catalogue of heinous offences so much the more dreadful as their
origin was supernatural. How could one show too much rigor to such
criminals ?
In the single year 1485, and in the single district of Worms, eighty-five
witches were committed to the flames. At Geneva, at Basle, at Hamburg,
at Ratisbonne, at Vienna, and in a multitude of other cilies, there were
executions of the same kind. At Hamburg, among others, they burned
alive a physician who had saved a woman in confinement abandoned by the
midwife. In 1523, in Italy, and after a new bull against sorcery issued by
pope Adrian VI. the single diocese of Coma saw more than a hundred
witches burn. In Spain, it was still worse: in 1527, two little girls, from
nine to eleven years old, denounced a number of witches whom they pre
tended to recognize by a sign in the left eye. In England and Scotland,
government took part in the matter; Mary Stuart was particularly hostile
to witches. In France, the parliament of Paris in 1390, had the fortunate
idea of taking away that sort of business from the ecclesiastical tribunal,
and under Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII., there was scarcely any
condemnation under the head of sorcery; but from the time of Francis I.,
and especially of Henry II., the scourge re-appeared. A man of a real
merit in other respects, but literally a madman on the subject of sorcerers,
Jean Bodin, communicated his madness to all classes in the nation. His
contemporary and disciple, Boguet, communicates in a lengthy article the
fact that France is swarming with sorcerers and witches. “They multiply
in the land, said he, like caterpillars in our gardens. I wish they were all
put in one body to have them burned at once and by one single fire.”
Savoy, Flanders, the mountains of the Jura, Lorraine, Bfearn, Provence,
almost all our provinces witnessed frightful hecatombs. In the seventeenth
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century, the demoniac fever abated, but not without partial returns espe
cially among convents of hysterical nuns. Everybody is acquainted with
the frightful stories of the priests Ganfridy and Urbain Grandier. In
Germany, above all in the southern part, the punishment of sorcerers was
still more frequent. There is a certain insignificant principality in which
two hundred and forty-two persons at least were burned from the year 1640
to 1651. Tale to make one shudder! we find in the official accounts of these
tortures, that there were children from one to six years old among the
victims! In 1697, Nicolas Remy boasted having caused nine hundred persons
to be burned in fifteen years. It appears even that it was to the proceedings
against sorcerers that Germany owed the introduction of the torture as an
ordinary judicial means of discovering the truth.
Prof. Roskoff has
reproduced a catalogue of the executions of sorcerers and witches in the
episcopal city of Würzbourg, in Bavaria, until 1629, in all thirty-one execu
tions, without counting some others that the authors of the catalogue have
not regarded as sufficiently important to be mentioned. The number of
victims, at each of these executions, varies from two to seven. Many are
indicated only by a nick-name: ‘‘the big hunch-back,” “the Sweet-heart,”
“the Bridge-keeper,” “the old Pork-Butcheress,” etc. We find there all
professions and all ranks, actors, workmen, jugglers, city and country girls,
rich bourgeois, nobles, students, even magistrates, as well as quite a large
number of priests. Several are simply marked, “a foreigner,” “a foreign
woman.” Here and there the one who prepares the list adds to the name of
the person condemned his age and a short notice. Thus we notice among the
victims of the twentieth execution, “Babelin, the prettiest girl in Würz
bourg,” “a student who knew how to speak every language, who was an
excellent musician vocaliter et instrumentaliter,” and “the director of the alms
house, a very learned man.” We find also in this mournful catalogue the
heart-rending account of children burned as sorcerers ; here a little girl
from nine to ten years with her little sister still younger (their mother was
burned soon after), boys of from ten to twelve years, a young girl of fifteen,
two alms-house children, the little son of a judge. The pen refuses to
recount such monstrous excesses.
Will those who wish to admit
the correctness of the doctrine of the infallibility of the popes, before giving
in their vote, listen, in the presence of God and history to the cries of the
poor innocents cast into the fire by pontifical bulls?
The seventeenth century, nevertheless, saw the proceedings against sorcer
ers and especially their punishment gradually diminish. Louis XIV., in one of
his better moments, mitigated greatly, in 1675, the rigors of that special
legislation. Yet for that he was obliged to endure the unanimous remon
strance of the parliament of Rouen, which thought society would be ruined,
if the sorcerers were only condemned to perpetual solitary confinement.
The fact is that belief in sorcerers was still sufficiently general for single
executions to take place from time to time, even throughout the eighteenth
century. One of the last and most famous was that of the lady-superior of
the cloister of Unterzell, near Würzbourg, Renata Soenger, (1749.) At
Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756, a young girl of thirteen years was put to
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History of the Devil.
death, having been convicted of having had impure intercourse with the
devil. Seville, in 1781, Glaris, in 1783, saw the last two examples known of
this fatal madness.
IV.
People have sometimes used as a weapon against Christianity, these bloody
horrors, ulteriorly due, they say, to a belief which Christianity alone had
instilled into persons who, without it, would never have entertained such a
belief. This point of view is superficial and not supported by history. The
blame lies primarily with the dualistic point of view, which is much anterior
to Christianity and has outlived it. Pagan antiquity had its necromancers,
its magicians, its old stryges, lamias et verifier, which were not dreaded less
than our witches. We have shown that dualism is inherent in all the relig
ions of nature; that, having attained their complete development, these
religions end, as in Persia, in India, and even in the last evolutions of
Graeco-Roman paganism, by an eminently dualistic conception of the forces
or divinities which direct the course of things ; that the Jewish Satan owes,
not his personal origin but his growth and entire degradation td his contact
with the Persiah Ahriman; that the Christian Satan and his demons have in
turn inherited the worst characteristics and most frightful symbolical formp
of the conquered divinities. In reality, the devil of the middle ages is at
once pagan, Jewish and Christian. He is Christian, because his peculiar
domain is moral evil, the physical ills of which he is the author arising only
in consequence of his passionate desire to corrupt souls, and these
giving themselves up to him only with guilty intent. He is Jewish in
this sense that his power, however great it might be, could not pass the
limits it pleased divine omnipotence to mark out for it. Finally, it is Pagan
by everything which it preserves of ancient polytheistic beliefs. We have a
right to regard the faith in demons, as it came out in the middle ages, as
the retribution of paganism, or, if we please, as the unabsorbed residue of
the old polytheism perpetuating itself under other forms.
That which prolonged the reign of Satan and his demons, was not. alone
the authority of the church, it was above all the state of mind which the
labors pretending to be scientific, of all the period anterior to Bacon and
Descartes, reveal, even to a period approaching ours. There was no real
knowledge of nature: the idea of the inviolability of its laws was yet to
appear. Alchemy, astrology and medicine regularly ministered to magic;
they recognized, as much as did contemporary theology, hidden forces,
talismans, the power of magic words, and impossible transmutations. Even
after the renaissance what a confused mystical medley the physiological
doctrines of Cardan, of Paracelsus, of Van Helmont! The general state of
mind, determined in great part by the church I acknowledge, but by the
church itself under the influence of the ruling ideas, must have been the
true cause of that long series of follies and abominations which constitute
the history of the devil in the middle ages and in modern times. It is an
evidence of this that, in a time and in countries where the church was still
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very powerful and very intolerant, the belief in the devil visibly drooped,
declined, suffered repeated assault.«, and fell slowly into ridicule, without
any notable persecution having signaled this very serious change in the
ideas of enlightened Europe. The old stories pretended that the most
tumultuous witch-meetings vanished like smoke at sunrise; in truth, the old
Btories did not know how far the future would show them to be right.
The two great facts which, modifying profoundly the general state of
mind, brought about this irremediable decline, were the indirect influence
of the Reformation and the progress of rationalistic science. Some will
perhaps be astonished that I mention the Reformation. The reformers of
the sixteenth century did not at all combat faith in the devil. Luther himself
held to it strongly, and so did most of his friends. Calvin was obliged by a
certain dryness of mind, by his distrust of everything which gave too much
play to the imagination, to remain always very sober in speaking of a subject
which made the best heads delirious ; but he nevertheless shared the common
ideas in regard to Satan and his power, and enounced them more than once.
We should speak also of an indirect influence, which was nevertheless very
strong. That which, among people which adopted the Reformation, gave a
first and very sensible blow to his infernal majesty, was that in virtue of the
principles it proclaimed, they had no longer any fear at all of him. The idea
which had so much power among protestants of the sixteenth century, of the
absolute sovereignty of God, that idea which they push even to the paradox
of predestination, very soon led them no longer to see in Satan anything but
an instrument of the divine will, in his actions only means of which it
pleased God to make use in order to realize his secret plans. In pursuance
of this faith, the Christian had now only to despise the rebellious angel,
wholly powerless against the elect. It is known how Luther received him
when he came to make him a visit at the Wai tbourg. The simplicity of
worship, and the denial of the supernatural powers hitherto delegated to
the clergy, also contributed much to dissipate the delusion in the minds of
the simple. No more exorcisms, neither at baptism, nor in the supposed
cases of demoniacal possession ; no more of those scenic displays which
terrified the imagination, in which the priest, brandishing the brush for
sprinkling holy water, fought with the demon, who replied with frightful
blasphemies. No one henceforth believes in incubi or succubi. If there is
still from time to time talk of persons being possessed, prayer and moral
exhortation are the only remedies practiced, and soon nothing is more rare
than to hear demoniacs spoken of among these peoples. The idea that the
miracles related in the Bible are the only true ones, illogical as it may be,
nevertheless made people accustomed to living without daily hoping or fear
ing them. Now the miracles of the devil are the first to suffer from this
beginning of a decline of the belief in the supernatural. Satan then becomes
again purely what he was in the first century, and even less still, a tempting
spirit, invisible, impalpable, whose suggestions must be repulsed, and from
whom moral regeneration alone delivers, but delivers surely. They cannot
even longer keep for him his old part in the drama of redemption. Every
thing now depends on the relation between the faithful man and his God. In
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a word, without any one thinking yet of denying the existence and the
power of Satan, while even making great use of his name in popular teach
ing and preaching, the Reformation sends him slowly back to an abstract,
ideal sphere, without any very clear relation to real life. We might consider
him only as a convenient personification of the power of moral evil in the
world, without changing at all protestant piety. French Catholicism in its
finest period, that is to say in the seventeenth century, feeling much more than
is generally supposed the influence of the Reformation, presents a quite
similar characteristic. With what sobriety its most illustrious representa
tives, Bossuet, F6n61on, preachers even such as Bourdaloue, treat this part
of catholic doctrine ! Good taste among them took the place of rationalism,
and who is astonished in reading them, that a Louis XIV., who nevertheless '
was not tender when a question of religion was at stake, was able to show
himself skeptical on the subject of sorcery and less superstitious than the
gentlemen of Rouen ?
Even in the times of the greatest ignorance, there were skeptics in regard
to sorcerers and witches. The Lombard law, by a remarkable exception,
had interdicted prosecutions against the masks (thus sorcerers were called
in Italy). A king of Hungary, of theeleventh century, had declared that they
need not be mentioned, for the simple reason that there were none. An
archbishop of Lyons, Agobard, had ranked belief in witches’ meetings among
the absurdities bequeathed by paganism to the ignorant. The Hammer of
Sorceresses must certainly have had in view adversaries who denied sorcery
and even the intervention of the devil in human affairs, when it demonstrated
both by a grand array of scholastic arguments. At the time when condem
nations for the crime of covenanting with the devil were most frequent, there
was a worthy Jesuit by the name of Spee, with whom the feelings of human
ity prevailed against the spirit of his order. Charged with the guidance of
souls in Franconia, be had been obliged to accompany to the stake, in the
space of a few years, more than two hundred alleged sorcerers. One day the
archbishop of Mayence, Philip of Schoenborn, had asked him why his hair
was already becoming grey, although he was scarcely thirty years old.
“ From grief,” he replied, “ because of so many sorcerers that I have been
obliged to prepare for death and of whom not one was guilty.” It was from
him that arose a Cautio criminalis, printed without the author’s name iri 1631,
which, without denying sorcery nor even the legitimacy of the legal penalties
declared against it, adjures the inquisitors and magistrates to multiply
precautions so as not to condemn to death so many innocent. Before him,
Jean Weicar, attached to the person of William of Cleves, had written, to the
same purpose, a work quite learned for the time, the fruit of distant voyages
and numerous observations, in which, while fully admitting the reality of
magic, he denied the so-called sorcery, and violently accused the clergy of
keeping up popular superstitions by making good people believe that the
evils from which they could not deliver them had their origin in sorcerers
sold to the devil. There was courage in using such language in such times.
To take the position of defender of sorcerers, was to expose one’s self to be
accused of sorcery, and it is not rare to find in these sad annals examples of
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judges and priests victims of their humanity or their equity, that is to say
condemned and burned with those they had attempted to save. The French
physician Gabriel NaudS, undertook, in the support of the same course of
ideas, his Apology of the Men accused of Magic (1669) ; but the causes, of whose
slow influence we have written, had not yet transformed minds so that they
were capable of emancipating themselves from the devil. A radical demoli
tion of the edifice was necessary on the one side, and on the other a religious
justification of that destruction. There as elsewhere, progress could take
place in a powerful manner only on condition of adding to arguments of a
purely rational sort, the sanction of religious feeling. Otherwise general
opinion divides itself into two camps which continually hold each other in
check, and maintain a menacing attitude without accomplishing anything.
That which had come through the church was to take its departure through
the church. The honor of having inflicted a decisive blow on the diabolical
superstition is due to the Holland pastor Balthazar Bakker, who entered
the lists, no longer simply in the name of good sense or humanity, but as a
theologian, and published his famous book entitled The Enchanted World
(1691-1693). Four thousand copies sent forth in two months, the rapid
translation of this huge work into all the languages of Europe, the ardent
controversies which it aroused and which it has alone survived in the
memory of posterity, all these show what an epoch this book made.
Assuredly the demonstrations of the Dutch theologian would not all have
the same value in our eyes. For example, not yet daring to emancipate
himself from Scripture, considered by him as an infallible authority, he
twists and turns the texts to eliminate from them the doctrine of a personal
devil mingling in the thoughts and actions of men. Nevertheless, he calls
attention to many details not remarked before him, which prove that biblical
teaching about the devil is neither fixed, nor consistent, nor in conformity
to the opinions of the middle ages. He submits to merciless criticism all
the arguments commonly used to support the popular prejudice in regard to
facts drawn from experience. His discussion of the case of Urbain Grandier,
and of the Ursulines of London, which was still fresh in every mind, must
have especially struck his readers.
A fact like that, which one could
analyze and discuss with evidences at hand, threw a clear light on a large
number of other facts older and more obscure, to which the partisans of the
devil constantly appealed. For the first time, too, universal history was
brought into requisition to exhibit the incontestable filiation of the polythe
istic and Christian beliefs in demons. The whole spirit of the book is
expressed in these aphorisms from the latter part. “There is no sorcery
except where people believe in it; do not believe in it, and there will be no
more.” “Rid yourselves of all those superannuated and silly fables, but
exercise yourselves in piety.” It was a true prophecy; but it was not given
to the author to see it realized. To his disrespect for Satan, he added the
wrong then very serious in the eyes of Dutch orthodoxy, of being a zealous
Cartesian. He was accordingly removed by a synod, and died a little after;
but they could not remove his book, which made its way quite alone, and
with great effect. Indeed, from that time the cause of the devil may be
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History of the Devil.
considered as lost in scientific theology. The progress of the human mind
in acquaintance with nature and modern philosophy did the rest.
The scientific spirit, such as it has become since Bacon and Descartes, no
longer admits those hasty conclusions which so readily gained the assent of
the centuries when imagination ruled, when the readiness a man exhibited
in expressing an opinion upon the most obscure subjects was in direct pro
portion to his ignorance. The experimental method, which is the only true
one, obtains as much strength for the theses it verifies, as it inspires mistrust
of everything out of its field of examination. Doubtless there are necessary
truths which we cannot make enter the crucible of experience; however,
they atone for that inconvenience by their close connection wtih our nature,
our life, and our conscience. If, for example, one could say that belief in
the devil recommends itself by its high moral utility, that it makes those
better who share it, that it elevates characters by rendering them more
chaste, more courageous, more devoted, there would yet be respectable
motives for trying to save it from the formidable attacks of modern reason;
but quite the contrary is the case. A belief in the devil tends necessarily to
blunt the feeling of individual responsibility. If I do evil, not because I am
bad, but because another has forced me to it by a power superior to my own
will, my culpability is certainly lessened, if not annihilated. We have just
seen the deplorable superstitions, the dangerous follies, the horrible crimes
of which that belief was so long the inspirer. What is evidence against
sorcery, will perhaps be said, is not evidence against a personal genius of
evil from whom men have to defend themselves as from an enemy continually
around them to drive them to evil. Let us nevertheless reflect that sorcery
is not so detached in principle from that belief whose daughter it is. The
devil once admitted, the sorcerer follows quite naturally. If there really
exists a personal being, in possession of superhuman powers, seeking, as is
said, to ruin us morally for his private satisfaction, is it not evident that, in
order better to succeed, he will try to entice weak souls by furnishing them
the means of procuring for themselves what they most desire? Not without
reason did the belief in the devil reach its full development in a belief in
sorcerers; and the latter, having given way before experience, necessarily
drew down in its ruin the belief in the devil himself. If there is truly a
devil, there are sorcerers, and, since there are no sorcerers, it is clear that
there is no devil; this the combined good sense of the last three centuries
authorizes us to conclude, and this conclusion will forever await its
refutation.
The eighteenth century made the mistake of imagining that to destroy
traditional beliefs it was sufficient to throw ridicule on them. When a
belief which has been ridiculed for some time has deep roots in human
consciousness, it easily survives the sarcasms of which it has been the
object, and the time comes when these sarcasms no longer excite a laugh,
because they chill the dearest feelings of religious minds, and the good taste
of the refined; but, as to the devil, the laugh of the eighteenth century has
remained victorious. It is in fact because the devil is ridiculous. That
being whom they pretend is so cunning, so mischievous, so learnedly ego-
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tistic, and who strives eternally in the wearisome business of corrupting
souls, ends by being very foolish. Looked at thus close at hand, brought
down from the heights where poetry and mysticism have been able some
times to place him, put face to face with the bare reality, Satan is .just
simply stupid and since people have clearly felt that it has been impossible
to do him the honor of admitting his real existence. We could prolong this
retrospective study of works which continued through all the eighteenth
century, and are still continuing in our days, a contest henceforth useless.
Since the real constitution of the universe has dissipated the illusions
which served as an indispensable accompaniment to the person of the old
Satan, viz.: a closed heaven, subterranean hell, and the earth between;
since people have been obliged to recognize the universal presence and
everywhere active life of God in all things, there is no longer, in truth, any
place for him in the world. There is nothing so distressing and puerile, as
the efforts of some reactionary theologians, in Germany and elsewhere, to
give back a shadow of reality to the old phantom, without falling into the
gross superstitions which decidedly orthodox reaction itself can no longer
digest. In vain one seeks to preserve for him a place, in the least honor
able, in some doctrinal treatises or pious songs. The sane portion of the
clergy and people shrug their shoulders or are annoyed. Satan is still per
mitted to be an expression, a type, a symbol consecrated by religious
language, but that is all. As to giving him any place whatever in the laws,
the customs, in real life, there is no longer any question about it.
Is there, nevertheless, nothing at all to draw from this long-continued
error, which holds so considerable a place in the history of religions, and
even goes back to their origin? Must we avow that on this subject the
human mind has nourished itself for so many centuries with the absolutely
false? That cannot be. There must necessarily have been something in
human nature which pleaded in its favor and maintained for so many genera
tions a faith contrary to experience. I will not say, as do some thinkers,
that it was the ease with which that doctrine of the devil permitted the
problem of the origin of evil to be resolved, for it resolved nothing. It
carried back to heaven the problem that was thought insoluble on earth;
but what was gained thereby ? That which has maintained a belief in the
devil, that which, indeed, constitutes the eternal foundation of it, is rather
the power of evil in us and outside of us. I admire the singular tranquility
of mind with which all our French philosophers look at that question, or
rather forget it, to launch out in eloquent phrases on free will. Let us then
put ourselves face to face with realities. The fact is that the best among us
is a hundred leagues from the ideal which he proposes to himself, that he is
too weak to realize it, and that he acknowledges this when he is sincere.
Another fact still is, that we are every moment determined toward evil by
the social influences which surround us, and that very few have the desired
energy to react victoriously against the corrupt streams which hurry them
away. We need not fall into the excess of theologians who have taught the
total depravity of human nature, even too, marking out for it the way of
regeneration, as if miracle itself were capable of regenerating a nature
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History of the Devil.
totally corrupt. Observation attests that we are selfish, but capable of
loving; naturally sensual, but not less naturally drawn by the splendor of
the true and the good; very imperfect, but capable of improvement. The
first condition of progress is to feel what we need. To live in harmony with
conscience, one must know how to triumph over the assaults which selfish
pleasures of sense, which flesh and blood, the world and its allurements, gives
us into the power of at every moment. That is the diabolical power from
which we should emancipate ourselves. In one sense, we might say that we
are all more or less possessed. Error comes in as soon as we desire to per
sonify this power of evil. When theists say that God is personal, they do
not fail to recognize what there is defective in the idea of personality bor
rowed from our human nature; but as it is impossible to conceive another
mode of existence than personality and impersonality, as God must possess
every perfection, they say, for want of something better, that he is personal
because he is perfect, and that an impersonal perfection is a contradiction.
Evil, on the contrary, which is the opposite of the perfect, is necessarily
impersonal. It is against its pernicious seductions, against its always fatal
enchantments that it is necessary to struggle in order that our true human
personality, our moral personality, may disengage itself, victorious, from
the vile surroundings where it must grow. It is on that condition that it
attains the pure regions of liberty and of impregnable morality, where
nothing which resembles Satan can longer trouble the ascent towards God.
That is all that remains of the doctrine of the devil, but also all that concerns
our moral health, and which we ought never to forget.
Albert Reville.
�Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledo.
79
REV. MR. ABBOT AT TOLEDO.
Early in the summer we heard that our friend Abbot, whom we deem not
less worthy of love and honor as a Christian apostle, albeit he calls himself
“outside of Christianity,” than any other man among living religious
leaders, was likely to have a break down with his society at Toledo, though
possibly he might be able to succeed with his weekly paper, The Index. It
was also told us that originally he had crept in privily and stolen a society
and a meeting-house which belonged to regular Unitarianism, and which
were in honor mortgaged to the American Unitarian Association on account
of money paid by it in aid of the society. Knowing that the part of this
information reflecting upon Mr. Abbot must have an explanation honorable
to him, we surmised that the other might also change face upon investiga
tion, and resolved to go and see for ourselves. We went at the end of June,
and spent two days in Toledo, with exceeding satisfaction.
The once Unitarian, and now Independent, society to which Mr.
Abbot preaches, was never aided by the American Unitarian Association.
It twice came near it, and would have put its neck under the yoke, but for
a single circumstance, which was the refusal of the society to accept aid on the
conditions proposed by the American Unitarian Association. Twice in its history
this people, before ever they had heard of Mr. Abbot, had declined to accept
aid as a Unitarian society, lest at some future day they might find tlieir inde
pendence hampered by the implicit pledge thus given. This special provi
dence prepared Mr. Abbot’s way in Toledo. It was but one out of many
which plainly enough show that the Lord is with him.
When Mr. Abbot was asked to go to Toledo to preach a few Sundays, he
wrote a letter stating conditions which he thought would not be accepted,
inasmuch as they included a frank avowal of his most offensive heresies.
This letter was read to a number of the society together, and was then
passed from hand to hand, to anybody who wished to see it. The statement
that it was suppressed, and people kept in ignorance of Mr. Abbot’s views,
is wholly baseless. Moreover, Rev. Mr. Camp, the former pastor, meddlesomely and maliciously towards Mr. Abbot, wrote to a member of the
society against him, and this immoral document circulated freely. Mr.
Abbot came July 3, 18G9, and preached several Sundays with more than his
usual frankness and boldness. What ground he took may be seen by turning
to the masterly discourses in the early numbers of The Index. July 11,
his topic was, “What is Christianity?” July 18, “What is Free Relig
ion?” July 25, “Christianity and Free Religion contrasted as to CornerStones”; August 1, “Christianity and Free Religion contrasted as to
Institutions, Terms of Fellowship, Social Ideal, Moral Ideal, and Essential
Spirit”; August 8, “The Practical Work of Free Religion”; and having
made this full and frank disclosure of his renunciation of Christianity, as
�80
Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledo.
he deemed and proposed it, for Free Religion, he announced, in view of a
nearly or quite unanimous disposition to give him a call to settle, that such
a step would he of no use unless the society would adopt a preamble and
resolutions offered by him (see No. 7 of The Index), and thereby leave
Unitarian Christianity for Free Religion. His reasons for insisting on this,
Mr. Abbot gave in his discourse of August 15, entitled “ Unitarianism
versus Freedom.” A week later, by a vote of 39 to 18, the preamble and
resolutions were adopted, and “The First Unitarian Society of Toledo,” by
its own free act, became the “First Independent Society of Toledo,” outside
of Unitarian Christianity. That the 18 nays did not represent much hostil
ity to Mr. Abbot is shown by the significant fact that the motion immediately
made to give him a call passed by a vote of 60 to 2. And had there been
from that moment no unscrupulous meddling, Mr. Abbot would have carried
along with him all who joined in this call. It was in consequence of outside
interference that a minority which had joined in the vote to accept Mr.
Abbot's ministry, finally seceded from him. This interference came from the
Unitarian headquarters and from Rev. Mr. Camp, and those who took part
in it have no shadow of ground for their assertion that either Mr. Abbot or
his adherents acted in any but the most open and honorable manner.
We preached to Mr. Abbot’s congregation, saw his Sunday School, con
versed with members of his society, and learned all about what has been and
what is the state of things there, and can gay emphatically that the local
movement has been from the first and still continues to be a remarkable
success. The society had just set out upon a new year, with renewed evi
dences of their hearty devotion to Mr. Abbot. The congregation proved to
be more than double what we had been told it was, and as interesting and
Christian in appearance as any we ever saw. Constant labors of charity, and
benefactions widely and generously bestowed, attest the practical Christian
spirit which, to an unusual extent, pervades it. If any comparison is to be
drawn, we should say that the entire Unitarian body is more likely to be
expunged from contemporary history than Mr. Abbot to come to a break
down in Toledo. At the moment of this writing we learn that the publica
tion of The Index is guaranteed foi- a second year, by the parties in Mr.
Abbot’s society who suggested this enterprise, and who have stood behind it
thus far. The Toledo apostleship is genuine. Good men and women gather
to its support, and the good Lord does not have to go out of his way to seal
it with his blessing. We heartily commend it to all who value truth, of
character and of teaching, and earnestly ask our more liberal contempora
ries to lend their aid to the support of our noble friend. Send him money
outright, and bid him good-speed with his work; for he is the servant of all
of us, and in justice should have our sympathy and help. His attempt to
“stand squarely outside of Christianity” is, in our judgment, a sort of
Messianic mistake, but we no less believe in his mission and urge his support.
Such truth of character we but rarely find; such pure and perfect intellec
tual love of truth only the noblest minds of the race are capable of; and by
“outside of Christianity” he means precisely what the most enlightened
Christians signify by Christianity itself.
He fully accepts the universal
�81
Our Religious Purpose.
element of Christianity, its religion, and only rejects the special element,
its Christism, and calls this rejecting Christianity, which it is not, if there
is any truth in the radical method of interpretation, the very point of which
is that it uncovers the living truth of any system, plants itself on that, and
from that rejects whatever in the special element is not consistent with the
universal. In our next issue we shall show that Mr. Abbott is purely and
rigorously Christian, in the true religious sense, and all the more so for his
rejection of Jesuism, and might as well announce himself outside the solar
system as outside true Christianity.
It concerns Christian interests mightily to be reconciled with such burn
ing and shining truth as every candid observer must see in Mr. Abbot. In
intellectual interest he stands with the leaders of our generation, and does
not suffer by comparison with such elder masters as Emerson, Spencer, and
Mill. He is now but thirty-two years of age, and six years ago he had
attracted the attention of the most distinguished philosophical inquirers and
teachers in this country and abroad, as a philosophical writer of great
originality and power. Men of nearly or quite twice his years, philosoph
ical thinkers of repute on the other side of the Atlantic, have sent to him, a
mere youth except in commanding intellectual power, for his judgment upon
their merits as candidates for distinguished philosophical positions. The
quality of Mr. Abbot’s intellect is even more remarkable than its singular
force. Such pure interest in truth, such veracity of intelligence, such
sincerity of mind, have belonged only to the masters of thought and the
greatest leaders of reform. And in serene, uncompromising loyalty to the
moral ideal, and rigorous application of principle to the conduct of life and
the practice of every virtue, Mr. Abbot belongs with the most revered and
endeared of this or any other time. Were he to call himself, from specula
tive doubts, an atheist, he would yet be one of the noblest and most useful
among masters of religion, from the fact that his moral ideal is the truest
possible image of Deity. His intense devotion to the most exact conception
he can form of right is the real explanation of his resolute rejection of the
Christian name; an error which is truly glorified by the spirit which
accompanies it.
OUR RELIGIOUS PURPOSE.
The editor of The Examiner begs his critics to state distinctly the full
extent of his religious purpose, which is,—
1. To teach a Christianity of which the creed is contained in the words
‘Our Father who art in Heaven,’ and is unfolded in the doctrines of
God’s
perfect fatherhood
over all souls, the real
brotherhood of all men
on earth and in the world to come, our supreme duty of
filial loyalty, of trust and love, to God, and
love to men
and
inspiration and providence
the source and guarantee, author and authority, to every one of us, of
knowledge, holiness and blessedness forever.
vol. i.—no. i.
6
�82
How We Start.
2. To explain and prove, with sound learning and sound reasoning, the
fact of error mingled with truth, from the very first, in historical Christian
ity, and how surely, in the exercise of Christian faith and reason, to distin
guish between Christian truth and Christian error.
3. To root up the theological heathenism,— total depravity, divine wrath,
damnation, and blood atonement, which choke Christian truth in orthodox
teaching.
4. To expel from true Christian religion every form of Jesuism, or regard
for Jesus as more than a mere man, and all Bibliolatry, or regard for the
Bible as more than a collection of mere human writings.
And this to the end of plainly opening to all human feet the path of direct,
obedient, and happy trust in God; and in the sincere belief that the Judaic
and half-heathen Christianity of the existing sects, is doomed of God to
speedy extinction.
HOW WE START.
In making our experiment with The Examiner, we gratefully and devoutly
acknowledge the repeated striking providences by which we have been helped
and guided thus far. Our earliest definite plans for such a publication date
back to a period previous to the establishment of The Radical. Our imme
diate arrangements to bring out The Examiner began with the first of May
last. A single difficulty has alone remained since the last week of June, the
need of $------ , the sum we thought we must add to our resources before
commencing. As the end of August approached, and we still lacked this, we
fixed a day on which we would make one last effort to perfect our arrange
ments, and on that day the needed help came. The first person we met on
taking the train from our residence to Chicago, a friend to whom we had
some time before spoken of our plans and our need, said to us instantly,
“You may draw on me after Sept. 10th, for------ dollars,” just the sum we
had waited for.
He had previously resolved on this, and was waiting
to meet us. It came just right. We had waited none too long, and we were
able to make our trial with the requisite means. Now we make our appeal
to other friends, who may believe our work a good one, to give us help, not
only in subscriptions, but in outright contributions, every dollar of which
shall be faithfully applied to printing and distributing The Examiner, not a
cent to any other use, either of the Editor or of any one else. Friends of true
Christian Religion! The time is fully ripe; the hour is exceedingly oppor
tune; our plans, long meditated and waited for, are working perfectly; and
with reasonable assistance we can secure the permanence of our enterprise
beyond a doubt. We are willing to fail, if so it pleases the good providence.
We should but fall back to the line of hope and faith and study from which
we make this forward movement, and wait for opportunity to try again.
�Is There No Open Vision?
83
But there need be no such temporary failure, nor will there be, if good men
and good women who want to be Christian in simple and pure love to all men
and perfect trust in God, will fairly do their part towards the great work for
which we establish The Examiner. If ever an enterprise was born in faith,
this is, and if it goes down, faith will see it fall, and patiently expect its
rise, or the rise in some better shape of the grand interest which it represents.
Every subscription to The Examiner will be deposited with our
banker as money belonging to our subscribers, and only one-twelfth taken
by us each month. If we should fail, every subscriber will receive back as
many twelfths of his $4, as he fails to get numbers of our Review.
IS THERE NO OPEN VISION?
All experience and study teach the wise believer to be very cautious about
assuming a special providence or special inspiration. Just as far as Jesus
and Paul attempted to rest in special knowledge of the secrets of heaven,
they went wrong. The grand failure of Jesus to discern truly God’s will,
was in respect of that anticipation which proceeded from his assumption
that Deity had vouchsafed special attention to him. Paul never blundered so
badly as when he most confidently claimed to be speaking by the word of the
Lord. This only is legitimate, to repose absolute faith in the providence and
inspiration of Infinite Mind; to work, always, at once with this faith, and
with as much diligence, vigilance and earnestness as if all depended on us;
to aim at success and to anticipate it, yet with a mind ready to accept fail
ure; and ever to give thanks, as events pass, however they may turn, or
whatever they may overturn, with full assurance that the Lord the Ruler
doeth all things well.
It is thus that we have striven to ‘wait on the Lord,’ and, never suffering
ourselves beforehand to say, of either deed to be done or word to be spoken,
‘in this the Lord is with us beyond peradventure or mistake,’ we have grown
more and more, taking successes and failures together, to feel that, for the
large aim and long course of our life, we can depend on the gracious presence
and heavenly providence of Infinite Mind, as implicitly as ever trusting
child depended on a faithful parent, or wise prophet on the perfect inspira
tion of the alone supreme and blessed God.
We say this with extreme hesitation, but we venture to say it, because we
want the whole class of Christian heathen and infidels, who do not believe
in God here and now, and who insist that all worship shall be with knees
bent and heads bowed before the idol which they have found in the person
of Jesus, to understand distinctly that we believe, as earnestly and implic
itly as if we knew that tongue and pen were moved by the unerring inspira
tion of God, and that we so believe in Gon, perfect providence and perfect
illumination, that we would no more turn from His presence, .even if a
pantheon of undoubted god-men invited us, than we would turn from perfect
light to utter darkness.
�84
The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
If Samuel, David, and Isaiah, John, Jesus, and Paul, might trust in the
Lord’s direction, so may we, in the full proportion of our diligence, fidelity,
discipline, and instruction. So at least we do trust, and there remains with
us none the least shadow of doubt, that with us, too, God is, and will be, for
the same purposes of manifestation which in all ages lovers of God and
prophets have served, and that we no more need pin our faith to what Jesus
and Paul said, than we need walk at high noon to-day by the memory or the
record of yesterday’s daylight.
We have lived now more than a quarter of a century by this conviction o^
the direct nearness of God to soul and heart and mind in us individually,
and the immediate direction of our life, study, work, and career, by the
most holy divine providence, and for fourteen of these years we have
eagerly, zealously, diligently, and fearlessly studied how to be a true prophet
of pure Christian truth, how most wisely to believe, and most judiciously to
correct belief by thought, and learning, and the blessed rules of holy living,
and we think it right now to say to those who deny living truth in the name
of tradition, that we challenge their idolatry and defy their idol, in the name
of the living God and the authority of divine direction, believing firmly that
‘•The Love of the Lord passeth all things for Illumination,” and that
“Wisdom, in all ages entering into holy souls, maketh them friends of God,
and prophets.”
THE CHICAGO ADVANCE AND THE EXAMINER.
We have always cherished with intense satisfaction the sentiment of
Christian fellowship. The illusion never forsakes us that church relations
mast be at bottom fraternal, even though fallible men administer them less as
brothers than as judges and executioners. The “Church of Christ in Yale
College,” which was our religious home during the years when our greatest
aims for life were maturing, and which at last excommunicated us for
believing in God,* always rises before our imagination and love as one of our
shrines of delightful communion, where we may expect, sometime if not
now, to be made welcome under the immortal covenants of faith, and holi
ness, and love. Memories of bitter injustice, of cruel contempt, of strange
coldness and harshness fade away more easily than not, and we are ready to
go back there as a lover goes home to the most blessed joys.
It was this intense feeling of Christian communion which led us to wish
to make a personal explanation, through the Chicago Advance, to the
denomination under whose influences we were reared, and whose dogmatic
sanctities we knew that we would be regarded as outraging by the publica
tion of The Examiner. To expect candid and kind treatment from the
editor of the Advance, was indeed a stretch of faith even to our disposition
to expect the best everywhere, but we resolved to make the experiment and
sent a communication, which we reproduce below. In this our point was to
give evidence that we had obeyed a Christian motive, and had followed
*As Father, with effective sanctifying and redeeming care of all his human children.
�The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
85
providential guidance and inspiration, in passing from orthodoxy to radical
Christianity, and it included of course a frank and definite indication of
what we meant by radical Christianity. Had the Advance extracted the
former as a matter of fraternal kindness to us, and excluded the latter as a
statement of dangerous or dreadful error unfit to lay before orthodox
readers, its motives would have been defensible. Instead of this it picked
out and published the most offensive part of the latter, and deliberately told
a befouling and wicked falsehood about the former in the following sentence.
“If a Congregationalist forsakes his faith, we cannot appreciate the ground
upon which he should occupy our crowded columns with a statement of his
progress in religious error; whether he become a Unitarian, a Mormon, a
Free-Religionist, or a Positive Philosopher.” Our readers can judge how
unscrupulous must be the anxiety about orthodoxy which led the Editor of
the Advance to write that sentence with our statement before him, as a
response to our request to be allowed to say to fathers and brethren with
whom we have the most sacred associations, that we had reached our present
faith by strictly obeying, as we believed, the purest motive and highest law
of our life-long Christian faith in God Our Father! As a notice of The
Examiner — 350 words at the head of “Editorial Miscellany”—probably
nothing could have been better, because those of the readers of the Advance
whom we care to reach understand its tricks, and are only excited to look
for a fact which they see has been concealed by a fib. But we want justice
and decency, as a preparation for fraternal communion, and we give notice
to irreligious and unchristian editors of theological newspapers that they
will find it to their interest to tell no lies about us.
The following is the communication referred to above, and refused publi
cation by the Advance:
Editor Advance:
Dear Sir: I send you herewith my proposal to publish The Examiner
as a Monthly Review of Religious and Humane Questions, and of Literature,
and an organ of what I would call Radical Christianity. And I beg leave
to make in your journal a brief explanation, in view of the fact that I was
reared in the Congregationalism which you represent. Some twenty years
ago I was admitted to the Congregational church in St. Charles, 111., by Rev.
G. S. F. Savage. Soon after I became a student in Beloit College for above
two years, and went thence to Yale College, where I was graduated in 1856.
I passed the next year in New York city, teaching and studying theology,
and an attendant upon the ministry of Dr. Win. Adams, of the Madison
Square Presbyterian church. The two following years I was again in New
Haven, studying theology. In all these places I never so much as thought
of going near heretical ministry. I never once saw an heretical book, tract,
or journal, nor did I ever converse with an unorthodox person, until after I
had become as fully settled in unorthodox conclusions as 1 am now. In New
York I did not know of the existence of Drs. Osgood and Bellows, and even
did not hear Henry Ward Beecher. I was wholly and absolutely under
orthodox influences, sincerely and earnestly continuing my confession of
hope in Christ which I had first made when I was but eight years old. In
commencing theological study I set to work in the most earnest manner to
put in working order the orthodox reasons for faith in the Bible as the sole
and absolute rule of truth and duty, and I purposed to prepare myself in
the most thorough manner possible for a strictly Biblical style of preaching,
�86
The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
invariable support of every point by a text, and illustration drawn as much
as possible from the sacred pages. I even selected a large octavo copy of
the Bible for my life’s use and study, to be marked and made familiar in
every page, so that preaching from it I could readily put my hand upon any
passage, and be always able to drive home the sure nail with the very
hammer of’the Lord. Such, moreover, was the deliberate ardor of my
orthodoxy that I contemplated, first, taking a five years’ course of varied
preparation, in view of the special demands of an unsettled state of the
popular mind about Christian faith and duty, and, second, devoting myself
to preaching an armed and aggressive, a confident and conquering faith,
from place to place, and as nearly as possible without reward. I had
earlier, I may say, meant to go as a missionary to South-west Africa, and
had lost this dream under the overwhelming sense of the importance of
saving the faith in our own land.
My orthodoxy came to grief all at once, in the following way: I had
always had an intensely real faith in God Our Father, as he was addressed
in the prayer Jesus gave to his disc-iples. The desire to hallow that name
■was a passion stronger than my life, and as sober and sustained as it was
strong. Filial loyalty to God, as the Heavenly Providence and Holy Spirit
of our life and our eternal destiny, was the substance and soul of my inward
experience, the principle on which I built all my careful devotion to Christ,
the Bible, and the Christian church. This principle became the undoing of
my whole structure of orthodox dogma about depravity, wrath, atonement,
hell, and the divine authority and offices of Jesus and the Bible. For as
soon as my observation was once arrested by the condition of that great
seething and surging mass of souls which New York city presents, I believed
instantly, and without hesitation or qualification, that the Heavenly Father,
by the resources of Heavenly Providence and Holy Spirit, both could and
would redeem all, and that every thought, no matter if found on the lips of
a Jesus or a Paul, which implied doubt or disbelief of this, must be an error.
It was no more possible for me to challenge this expansion of my faith in
God than it would be for me to prefer the light of a candle to full sunrise,
even though I had to see Jesus and Paul as erring men, who had held and
taught Christian truth purely in many passages, and in some had set forth
error, and that God had meant us to depend on his own providence and
inspiration, and had not given us Jesus as more than a mere human teacher
and providential leader.
In January, 1859, after studying in New Haven Dr. Taylor’s systematic
and masterly exposition of the grounds of orthodoxy, and otherwise inves
tigating the foundations of religious belief, I found myself, as I believed, as
secure of my new’ position as possible, although I did not then know that
any Christian had come to any similar conclusion, and I wrote a little tract
to show where I stood, the concluding sentence of which was, “Christ was
a mere man, and the speculative theology which has been taught in his
name, and which he partially taught himself, must pass away before the
progress of that religion of good will to men and loyalty to God which he
practiced.”
I have found this conclusion confirmed by more than ten years of addi
tional study, and I now purpose to ask thoughtful attention, in the pages of
The Examiner, to the exposition of pure Christianity, as it is taught in the
prayer of Jesus, and in the most significant spiritual passages of the Bible
at large, without admixture of the errors which even Jesus did not wholly
exclude, and which his followers have expanded into a system which is a
veritable anti-Christ. Knowing full well that ardent faith, thorough study,
and earnest looking to providence and inspiration, do not in the least entitle
me to exalt myself, or claim any special authority, I do yet, declare, in the
very name of God Our Father, and of the truth as it was in Christ, that the
popular faith in “Lord Jesus,” “Holy Bible,” total depravity, wrath of God,
devil and hell, atonement, separate communion here, and separate heaven
�Free Religion not Anti-Christian.
87
i
hereafter, is of human and heathen conceit, and not of the true Christian
consciousness. This ground I shall take in The Examiner, and am ready
to defend against all dispute. If the faculty of instruction in the Chicago
Theological Seminary, or any one of them, will take up the discussion, I
will undertake to prove, that they are teaching heathenism in presenting for
Christian truth the doctrine of Jesus as God-Man, Divine Lord, Atoning
Saviour, and Final Judge, with the related doctrines of the special divine
character of the Bible, the total depravity of human nature, the consuming
eternal wrath of God, and the separate destiny of souls, part to heaven and
part to hell.
Hoping that I may be dealt with in a fair and candid spirit, I am
Yours very truly,
Edward C. Towne,
Winnetka, III.
August 28, 1870.
FREE RELIGION NOT ANTI-CHRISTIAN.
It has been assumed by a portion of the public of late that free religion
implies disavowal of Christianity. The Radical and the Index have been taken
to represent the entire breadth of this new interpretation of religion. The
course of the Executive Committee of “ The Free Religious Association,” in
adopting the Index as an organ of communication with the public, has given
color to this assumption. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. The
movement which the application of freedom to religion has produced is not
in general unchristian, or antichristian, or other than avowedly and reso
lutely Christian, both in fact and in name. We consider even Mr. Abbot, in
all but the name and certain non-essential notions, one of the lights of recent
Christianity, as new studies, new insight, and new providential indications
have disclosed to devout and thoughtful minds the pure truth suggested and
revealed in Christ’s word and life. And we strenuously insist that free
Religion is pure religion, as it has occupied the heart of formal Christianity,
and is now emancipated from errors of form, and disclosed in its real spirit
and power.
The history of the movement which is represented nominally by “ The
Free Religious Association,” we are entitled to write if any one is. We
suggested to Rev. Dr. Bartol, after Unitarianism had settled down upon a
narrow Jesuism, the propriety of a conference of radicals to consider the
practicability of an organization broader than the Unitarian. And when,
after two such conferences, Dr. Bartol and several others decided for action
without organization, we proposd to Rev. W. J. Potter and Rev. F. E. Abbot
that we three unite in a pledge to secure an organization, and that we work
together as a committee to form a plan. Under that pledge we together
carried the movement forward until the plan devised by our little caucus was
realized in “The Free Religious Association.” The other organization
which has been so much spoken of, and so widely reported, “ The Radical
Club,” of Boston, first met at our suggestion and upon our individual invita
tion of the persons who organized it. The term “ Free Religious ” wras
originally suggested by Mr. Potter; and the courses of lectures given in
�88
A Criticism of Our Aim.
Boston were also suggested by him after he had been appointed Secretary of
“ The Free Religious Association.” Mr. Abbot has recently taken ground
for free religion “ squarely outside of Christianity,” and Mr. Potter has
appeared to concur with him. We do not regret Mr. Potter’s action; he did
just right to use the Index, even at the cost of seeming to identify Free
Religion with the position of Mr. Abbot; but we want it understood that we
at least make Free Religion identical with true Christianity, and look for its
confessors in every communion, from Catholic, Calvanist, etc., to the latest
forms of heresy.
A CRITICISM OF OUR AIM.
One of our truest radicals, an admirably Christian scholar, thinker, and
man, writes to us of our position as follows : —
“ I do not assent to the fundamental proposition which you intend The
Examiner shall support, that Free Religion is Christianity stripped of
unessential opinion and tradition. I don’t care to keep the Christian name
— would rather have it dropped, and expect it some day to be dropped. Of
course I understand your meaning, that what has given to Christianity its
best vitality and power is its free and universal elements, the great spiritual
realities found under all forms of religion. And to this I assent. But I see
no logic in calling these universal elements by the specific name ‘ Christian.’
Why go to the progressive Jew, or the Hindu, or the Confucian, and say
• The essential, vital truth under your religious belief is to be called Chris
tianity ? ’ I am content to find that it is the same with the essential and
permanent in the Christian religion, and will not insist that he shall call it
4 Christianity,’ more than I would yield to his claim that I should call my
religion ‘Judaism’ or ‘Hinduism.’ Why not take at once the large term
that includes them all — universal Religion ? ”
Our friend very seriously misapprehends our position, which is, that we,
and all others, Jews, Mahometans, Hindus, and whoever has a religion
which at heart is religion, should, by radical reform, strip off what is not
true religion, and make, each for his own people, a true Judaism, or true
Christianity, or true Hinduism, or true Mahometanism. We could easily show
our friend that Jews, Arabs, Persians, Hindus, Siamese Buddhists, and other
representatives of world-religions, as well as Christians, are each freeing their
respective faiths of superstition, and are appealing to ther fellow believers
to use each their traditional religious name as properly meaning the pure
truth freed from the husk of error. We, on radical Christian ground, say
to each of these faiths, hold your ground and keep your name, and let us
have a world fellowship of the different religions of the earth. Our idea,
when we asked our friend to join us in a resolution to secure a new organi
zation for religious ends, and the idea we supposed the Free Religious
Association was to represent, was this unity of religions with liberty and
diversity both of names and of special tenets. We wanted to see all classes
of Christians come together, Catholic, Calvinist, etc., etc., on a platform of
generous human recognition of one another, and with them, if occasion should
�A Criticism of Our Aim.
89
be found, men and women of other names than the Christian. We desired
to see each accept the method of radical reform, each putting his truest
truth in the front, and agreeing to hold together by that, and to hold separately
other things as each felt necessary.
Our Free Religion leaves the Catholic a Catholic, and the Hindu a Hindu,
and the Moslem a Moslem, and the Jew a Jew, and the Christian a Chris
tian, each to wear his providential name, and to have his individual pecul
iarities of creed and worship, until we all come in the unity of the faith unto
a perfect jian. But our friend, if he is logically consistent, as he seems to
mean to be, must ask each of these to drop their providential name and take
that of Free Religionist, or universal Religionist. If, to use Mr. Abbot’s
language, he proposes to “stand squarely outside of Christianity,” he must
also stand squarely outside of the other great religions, or else go squarely
into some one of them. Assuming that he has not found any of these reli
gions “a good place to emigrate to,” and that he sees the logic of his
position, he really helps to set up, as far as his nominal relations are
concerned, a very small new sect, in fact making Free Religion a Boston
and Toledo notion, and doing this none the less although those engaged in it
feel as broad and liberal as all out of doors. Our friend in short squares off
against all the religions of the world, nominally, while we accept our Chris
tian name and place, with all the other world-religions. He and we alike
hold, and work for, the truth of pure free Religion, and sympathize with it
wherever found, but he declines, or would prefer to drop out of, nominal
relation to Christians, while we adhere to that relation, and do it on a prin
ciple which warrants the Jew, the Hindu, the Moslem, and other religionists
of the world in keeping each to his own name and fellowship, as God has
made them to dwell on all the face of the earth.
This principle is really radical and free, it makes the name a name only,
and gives freedom of names and peculiarities. Our friend’s principle is
neither radical nor free, for it does not allow perfect liberty as to names, and
it insists, not merely on the root of pure truth, but on a correct name, thus
creating a kind of Free Religious orthodoxy which is all about a name.
Especially if this is carried to the extreme point made by Mr. Abbot, that
none are truly and honestly Christian who do not take Jesus as Messiah, it
gives Free Religion an attitude not merely of strictness but of bigotry. We
have a perfect right to judge for ourselves how to be honest Christians, and
our friend misses the radical mark exceedingly when he makes the ado he
does about other people’s honesty. It is done with a nobly pure purpose,
but it ought to be left undone nevertheless. We consider it our duty to stay
under the Christian name, and make Christianity mean Free Religion.
We do in this matter as Theodore Parker did in the matter of American
politics. He took his part as an American citizen, and worked to make
“American” mean justice to all men. Mr. Phillips was working for the
same thing, but refused all citizen relations, on the ground that “American”
did not mean justice. He was for breaking up the national fellowship, while
Mr. Parker was for purging it. Our friend and Mr. Abbot take just the
ground about Christianity which Mr. Phillips took about the Constitution
�90
Matthew Arnold’s Idea of Christianity.
and the Union. It turned out that Mr. Parker was the true prophet. The
course of events purged the nation and left it united. Does anybody wish
Mr. Phillips could have had his way, to break the country in two, one part
to be free, and the other to be securely slave with no abolition fellow
citizens to molest or make them afraid ? We are for purging Christianity,
not seceding from it. Even excommunicated we claim and will hold our
place. And it is as sure as fate that Christianity will be purged, as our
nation was purged, and made to mean free Religion. The other religions
also will be purged in like manner. Whether some of the great names will
fall, we neither know nor care. Possibly they may. But if they do not, and
probably they will not, we can still have religion free and pure in all the
great divisions of the race.
MATTHEW ARNOLD’S IDEA OF CHRISTIANITY.
The acute English critic, Matthew Arnold, who certainly deserves to rank
with the most thoughtful men of the present generation, lays down the
following principle of Christian confession :
“ The Christian Church is
founded, not on a correct speculative knowledge of the ideas of Paul, but on
the much surer ground, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart
from iniquity ; and holding this to be so, we might change the current strains
of theology from one end to the other, without on that account setting up
any new church, or bringing in any new religion.”—St. Paul and Protest
antism, p. 10.
It is not meant of course by this that the text quoted originally averred
the sufficiency of a simply moral basis for Christian communion, but that
“ Christian ” now means, above all things, good, and that this emphatic
meaning we are to accept as from the inspiration and providence of God, as
the fundamental sense of the word. A venerable Puritan minister, in the
old town of Medford, near Boston,—Dr. David Osgood, — said fifty years
and more ago, to some persons who began to suspect their pastor of heresy,
“ If your minister is a good man let him alone.” In so saying he antici
pated what must become the view of all enlightened Christian minds.
Goodness is the root of the matter. There is no more significant Christian
word than the injunction to be perfect, and this injunction is no less signif
icant taken by itself, apart from the appeal to the divine character. The
threshold of Christian teaching is the rule of good will, the commandment
to love one another. Therefore it is necessary to begin with this, and to
build upon it. And, if need be, we may come back to this for determining
and regulating Christian communion, and may always insist that this is
sufficient for real fellowship, and that all good men are truly Christian.
This being said, however, we deem it important, because truth and fact so
require, to include in complete Christian confession the faith in God, and loyalty
to God, implied in the terms of the prayer “Our Father.” No more signif
�Mr. Abbot on Following Christ.
91
icant passage could be cited from the original memorials of historical Chris
tianity than this prayer. If Jesus had the smallest conception of his mission,
he must have touched the heart of the matter in teaching his disciples to
pray, and cannot have left out of that prayer the main point of religion.
Happily that prayer exactly represents the ordinary frame of mind in which
profoundly religious persons do actually bend in devotion. As Mr. Emerson
says, speaking of Reason, the Creator, the Spirit of the Universe, “Man in
all ages and countries embodies it as the Father.” And it is perhaps truest
to say that Christianity has no greater claim to recognition than its distinct
and emphatic utterance of the words God Our Father.
MR. ABBOT ON FOLLOWING CHRIST.
“There is one more way, however, to interpret the command, ‘Follow
Me,’ namely, ‘I)o as the spirit of Christ would prompt you to do.' If this
means simply, let the same spirit of obedience to principle, self-sacrifice,
courage, and love, which controlled Jesus, also control us, —well and good.
But then I must say that this is not, in any true sense, ‘following his
example;’ it is following the spirit which made his example, — obeying the
law which he also obeyed.”
This illustrates strikingly a way which Mr. Abbot has of using, and
insisting on, a method of interpretation which is to us neither free nor reli
gious, but strangely secular and strict. The only true sense in religion,
especially when we appreciate that religion must be free, of following either
Jesus or the example of Jesus, is that of adopting the ideal suggested by his
character and life, the spirit disclosed to us in his deeds and words. It is
not even necessary, nor so much as permissible, to exactly adopt his ideal,
and closely conform to his precise spirit, if we find that any part of either
appears incongruous with the general purport of the same, and no longer
possible to be obeyed by a soul truly obedient in general to the identical
heavenly vision which caught and fixed the eye of the young Nazarene.
While Mr. Abbot is insisting that the usual strict orthodox way of interpret
ing Jesus is the true way, great numbers of liberal orthodox believers, in
and out of pulpits, books, and religious papers, are finding freedom and
simple pure religion in looking to Jesus precisely as they look to teachers
and masters other than him ; for suggestion of how best to seek God directly
without either master or mediator other than the Truth manifested to their
own souls, as a true free thinker looks to Socrates, not to servilely copy him,
nor to copy him at all, but to get inspiration for doing likewise, with such
difference as a like effort will now be sure to find necessary. It is a great
pity that Mr. Abbot should look at Christianity through orthodox spectacles,
and insist that what he sees bears no aspect of Free Religion, when in fact
the clear upshot of Christianity is Free Religion, and numberless persons in
every quarter of Christendom see it to be so, and hail the discovery with
infinite delight.
�92
The Old Christian Test and the New.
THE OLD CHRISTIAN TEST AND THE NEW.
“We believe it is admitted by all sects, that in the first age of the church
pure living was the test, the distinguishing mark, of a Christian. It was
only later, after the philosophers had been at work at the faith, that doc
trines or points of belief assumed the importance they have since held. In
the first century, and second century, a man proclaimed his faith in Christ
by his morals, and the principal vices of paganism were of a nature to
make the line between the church and the world very broad and distinct.
Those vices were cruelty and licentiousness.”—The Nation, June 16, p. 379.
The distinguishing mark of a Christian of the first age was that he
believed Jesus to have been the Christ. Other points of belief which emi
nently distinguished him were, that Jesus had risen from the dead and would
speedily appear as Messianic King in all the terrors and glories of super
natural power, that he would bring a material, political, moral and spiritual
regeneration of the earth, that this sudden change of all things would be
destruction and horror to all enemies of the kingdom and deliverance and
glory to all who looked in faith for its appearing, and that in view of these
things it was but prudent and decent to live moral and pious lives, trusting
God in his Christ for the sake of salvation, and loving the brethren who
might be brought together by this trust.
No such thing as pure living for its own sake was anywhere characteristic
of the primitive Christians. A Paul, indeed, felt the power of the moral
ideal, and also adored God as God, in the spirit of simple, pure religion.
But even he did this only out of his occasional highest inspiration, rising far
above the average level of his teaching and his practice, while his disciples
were almost exclusively ruled to such decency of life as they attained, by
those points of belief which we have mentioned, the doctrines of early
Jesuism, which had engaged their ignorant and superstitious assent, and had
wrought in them a measure of piety and brotherly love.
In very many classes, and on a very wide scale, the faith of the first age
was even scandalously separate from pure religion in either heart or life.
It was a mere fanaticism, a detestable superstition, the faith of those who
forgot God and goodness equally in looking for a King of terrors, a Jesus
more Devil than either human or divine, whose mission it would be to
execute indiscriminate vengeance upon the mass of men and receive a few
devotees to everlasting enjoyment. Unhappily, it was possible to cite sup
posed words of Jesus and undoubted sentences of Paul, in support of even
this wretchedly heathen type of Christianity.
It might be said of certain pagan teachers, previous to or contemporary
with primitive Christianity, that they made pure living of chief importance.
But this cannot be said of Paul, nor even Jesu3; not because either of them
failed to see the intrinsic worth of goodness and power of godliness, but for
the reason that both the master and the apostle put the groundless Messi
anic expectation in the foreground.
Happily Paul stands on quite other ground, on great heights of Christian
inspiration and prophecy in fact, in several of the most significant passages
�Some Recent Views of Jesus.
93
of his letters; and Jesus still more, led astray though he was in the pres
ence of that Jewish world which at once promised and demanded a Messiah
rather than a simple teacher of truth, must have been chiefly attracted, in
his better moments of meditation and prayer, by the pure vision only of
God and of good, and he certainly came in the moment of his great trial, the
single purely Christian moment of his outward career, to give up the delu
sion of Messiahship, and rest all faith in the will of God.
The truth was in Jesus and Paul, and can be clearly seen in them, but the
characteristic thing with them was the Jesuism which received so hard a blow
in Gethsemane, and is now at last fairly dying, after a career of vast mis
chief through eighteen centuries. Side by side with the slow progress of
truth in her narrow path, has run the comprehensive error of the Nazarene
carpenter and the Cilician tent-maker, so that only now does it begin to be
true that “Christian” first and chiefly means pure in heart.
A new Christianity, latent in that of the first age, and never lost out of
the pure hearts which have kept undefiled truth under all the forms of
pseudo-Christianity, is so clearly manifested within a few years, that it is
now possible to speak of Christians whose sole distinguishing mark is pure
living. The professors of accredited Christianity do not generally admit
that this new Christianity is veritably Christian, but philosophical observers,
and nearly all emancipated or rational believers, justly claim, and joyfully
proclaim, this sifted and pure truth of Christ, the only Christianity worthy
the name.
Of course such Christianity does not take its name from the person, pre
tension, or characteristic teaching of Jesus, nor from its affinity with what
is called "The Christian Religion,” but from its fulfilment of the providen
tial ideal of the Christianity and the Christ of history, its expression of
what was suggested, and was meant of God, in Jesus, and was destined to
be unfolded out of the tradition propagated in his name. In this it stands
towards the teaching of Jesus as that stood toward Judaism; it is a new
birth, another regeneration, leaving the form of the old to more perfectly
fulfil its pure truth and vital power.
SOME RECENT VIEWS OF JESUS.
M. Edouard Reuss, the accomplished author of “Histoire de la Théologie
Chrétienne au Siècle Apostolique,” said of Renan’s “Vie de Jésus,” that it
had popularized a study hitherto confined to theologians, and made the
question of who and what Jesus was one of the common topics of free
discussion everywhere. He anticipated that all sorts of people would feel
called to give the public the benefit of their impressions and convictions,
and that thus a great movement of new inquiry would bring its powerful
aid to the solution of the evangelic problem. These expectations of a
thoughtful scholar, expressed in 1864, in the preface to the third edition of
�94
Some Recent Views of Jesus.
the “Histoire” mentioned above, have been more than realized. And, as
M. Reuss intimated, every sort of advocate has entered the field.
Last year Mr. Wendell Phillips undertook a kind of vindication of the
Christ of popular tradition, the Messiah of whatever progress eighteen
centuries can show. Rev. F. E. Abbot, who is now editing the Index at
Toledo, as the organ of religion emancipated from Christian associations,
has found himself impelled to disown Christian fellowship, and to rate Jesus
as unworthy the name of master in any sense whatever. Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe not long since lifted up her voice, to rebuke the hardy recusant of
Toledo, and to certify her esthetic and pious approval of the figure presented
to her imagination in connection with the name of Jesus. And about the
same time Mr. D. A. Wasson, a very acute thinker, who is also not a little
gifted as a poet, earnestly attempted to shelter the ideal Jesus from the rude
blows of free religious discussion.
The singular defect of all the pleas just mentioned is their lack of con
formity to the best results of recent sound scholarship. In Mr. Abbot’s
argument against respect of any sort for the authority of Jesus as a relig
ious master, there occur citations of reported words of Jesus which ought
never to be made again, and never will be made again by any both fair and
well-informed critic. Mr. Abbot does not lack fairness, nor is he, for a
writer who has devoted himself chiefly and with the highest success to
philosophical speculation, without a highly creditable acquaintance with the
results of New Testament criticism. But he does lack a portion of the
knowledge which should have preceded his renunciation of Christian connec
tion, a renunciation for which he will certainly find no enduring warrant in
either the method or the tenets of a sound free thinker. There can be no
question, we believe, that the candor and broad sympathy with noble
effort which are conspicuous in Mr. Abbot, will bring him at length
to give the young peasant rabbi of Nazareth a place among the prov
idential masters of the human race. He speaks still of “the wonderful
religious genius,” “the transcendant greatness,” of Jesus, terms which
he may find occasion to drop as he becomes more intimately acquainted
with the real man whom Pilate crucified, and whom inscrutable Provi
dence made the standard-bearer of a great movement of mankind, but a
closer knowledge of the facts of a simple and humble life, and of the
incidents and accidents to which peculiar circumstances gave momen
tous significance, can hardly fail to convince him that, without any
particular greatness of either intellect or character, the child of Joseph and
Mary fairly obtained, and must always hold among men on earth, one of the
greatest providential places of human history. Think what we may of the
powers or the qualities, of the ideas or the purposes of Jesus, it is absurd to
strike out his name everywhere, or to undertake to stand outside a definite
relation to him.
The warm, and somewhat arrogant pleas of Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Howe
can barely command respect with anyone accustomed to study, thoroughly
�Some Recent Views of Jesus.
95
and without passion, all the historical aspects of the question who and what
Jesus was. It was of course extremely easy for either the orator or the
lady to take a high tone, sustained as they were in so doing by all the popu
lar assumptions, and to rehearse the claims of Jesus, the one with fascinating
eloquence, the other with half-angry dignity. But even Mr. Phillips errs
egregiously if he supposes that any amount of confidence and of eloquence
can make an utterance respectable, as thinkers and scholars count respect,
which is made in nearly total ignorance of the facts elicited by the noble
and fruitful labors of recent scholarship. The field is not one for brilliant
generalization, but rather for a special knowledge to be had only upon
thorough study and long meditation. No one could make general observa
tions upon the appearances presented by Christianity now and formerly, to
better popular purpose than Mr. Phillips, but unfortunately the particular
demand of the discussion is for a true account of what took place before any
of these now visible appearances had yet been seen, and for historical truth
which must beyond a doubt offend the popular faith. Mr. Phillips, there
fore, made an ill-advised and no way useful attempt to deliver a judgment
where he had yet to possess himself of information. And like most persons
who think they know beyond a question, because current tradition is on
their side, he is probably prepared to resent the suggestion of his ignorance.
He doubtless has never even heard of the books to which we should refer
him as sources of knowledge. So runs the religious world, but the time of
the end of this is not, we trust, far distant.
The treatment which Mr. Wasson gave to the theme “Jesus and Chris
tianity,” was that of an idealist far too little conscious of the sober facts of
history. It is solely in the exercise of a generous imagination that he
assures us that the Hebrew hope of a Messiah had become refined and
spiritualized before Jesus came upon the scene, approaching the typical
idea of history, and that this hope, thus refined, furnished the ideal elements
by which the mind of Jesus was nourished, until he imagined a divine soci
ety here on earth, made so by the unqualified sway of ethical law, and was
so possessed by this holy imagination as to think himself more than an
individual being, and to feel in his own exalted soul, in his “ world-great
heart,” the tides of infinite and eternal life; while around him were
gathered “popular imaginations large enough” to recognize and accept “a
soul so amazingly magnanimous.” It would give us great pleasure to see
the evidence on which Mr. Wasson pronounces Jesus “an imperial soul,”
and the historical ground for his assumption that the young Nazarene enthu
siast expected “a reign of morals pure and simple,” not the reign of an
individual, nor of a nation. Still more curious are we to see in what light
other than of imagination the simple folk who gathered about Jesus appear
to Mr. Wasson as “large popular imaginations.” Doubtless there was
imagination enough in the circle of those who handed down the report of
Jesus’s life and teaching, but unhappily it wrought more in the way of
invention than of recognition, and obscured, a great deal more than it dis
closed, the truth of history.
�96
The Failure of the Pulpit.
THE FAILURE OF THE PULPIT.
The Independent, discussing “ the wide and ever widening breach between
modern preaching and modern culture,” attempts the following disposition
of the question:
“ A great deal of the dissatisfaction expressed by educated men with the
manner and matter of modern preaching is only one form in which the revolt
of the age against all theology, and indeed against all preaching whatsoever,
whether good or bad, finds vent for itself. It is not the sermon, it is Chris
tianity which is objected to. This is explicitly admitted by the writer in the
Spectator of whom we have spoken [as having “ stated the prevalent indict
ment of cultivated men against makers of sermons.”]
‘ About the sermon,’
he says, ‘ I am about to state honestly what I believe thousands of men feel
secretly. I dislike good sermons just as much as bad. I do not want to be
lectured, even by a great lecturer. I object to the usual basis of the very
best sermon ever delivered in a Christian church.’ It is only fair, then, to
a great and most laborious and devoted profession, to indicate where the
trouble really lies. A great many cultivated people at present do not like to
hear preaching, . . chiefly, we think, because much of the cultivated mind
of this age has become alienated from the old faith, and is throwing itself
forth, this way and that, in an agony of bewilderment, baffled energy and
discontent. . . If every preacher of this age could preach like Paul,
preaching would continue to be an impertinence and a bore to those whose
minds have swung away from that system of belief which constitutes the
basis of all Christian preaching, good or bad ”
The truly Christian mind cannot help objecting decidedly to the assump
tions of the pulpit. The perfect Christian attitude is that of filial conscious
ness of Our Father, and absolute, direct trust in him. The pulpit claims,
not merely a hearing, to speak of God, but authority, to speak for God. It
assumes to lecture the hearer, in the name of unquestionable dogma, when
religion, justly interpreted, knows nothing of such dogma, and deems the
assertion of dogmatic authority an outrage upon spiritual freedom. So
long, therefore, as pseudo-Christianity dictates the tone of the pulpit, and
the sermon assumes the right of the preacher to proclaim dogma, instead
of promote free inquiry and persuade to free faith, so long must the first
assumption of the pulpit be hateful to truly religious minds.
Further than this, the “system of belief” which constitutes the customary
basis of preaching, has justly lost its hold upon the cultivated Christian
mind of the age, to which total depravity, wrath of God, damnation, blood
atonement, godhead of a young Jew, and infallibility of Hebrew and Chris
tian books, with transmission of same by ignorant and prejudiced interpre
ters, are superstitions as arrant as any the world ever saw. Until, therefore,
preachers shall consent to be truly Christian, to believe in God and in man
with some spirit and truth, and to thoroughly discriminate the husk of
Christianity from its truth, and offer truth only to truth-loving souls, the
providence and inspiration of our time will more and more set aside the
pulpit.
�The Need of a Free Divinity School.
97
We suggest to The Independent, which we believe means to find and to
follow the truth, a study of Christian Conceit and Christian Superstition,
as causes of the failure of the pulpit. The public ministry of religion is
certain to be welcome to the cultivated classes, and to all other classes, when
it shall be made even tolerably worthy of respect. We also beg to assure
our contemporary that the cultivated mind of this age, which is indeed
‘alienated from the old faith,’ is not in the least unhappy in its new situaation. We have had the opportunities of a pronounced heretic, during ten
or twelve years, to observe the real truth of this matter; we have besides
gathered evidence out of recent literature in all directions ; and we know
that nothing could be more ridiculous than the statement that new belief is
in an agony of bewilderment. Orthodox writers should reflect that they
learn of the exceptions only, and are not in a position to know what new
believers usually may feel.
THE NEED OF A FREE DIVINITY SCHOOL.
One of the first and greatest needs of religious and human progress in
America is a well endowed and appointed Free Religious Divinity School.
We have canvassed the matter pretty thoroughly, during the past few years,
and fully believe that this Free School of Truth must be, and that it will be.
The great cause of spiritual emancipation has many liberal friends, who do
not lack means to carry into effect any wise purpose which they may form.
To secure.this, it only needs to make evident the nature of the opportunity
now open, to wealth and faith and learning and zeal, to organize thinking
and believing people everywhere into free societies, under free teachers and
pastors; and to show the necessity to this end, and the practicability, of a
well endowed ami appointed Free Religious Divinity School. We will not
at this time argue the matter. Our present purpose is only to propound it,
and we propound it in fervent hope and full faith. Right here perhaps on
this shore of Lake Michigan, from which we write, not remote from the great
city of the West, yet among scenes of pure nature eminently suitable, we
may yet see a great Free School of Divinity, such as the world has not yet
had. The sum of Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars ought to be
immediately devoted to this grand purpose, and this generation ought not to
pass away without increasing this endowment to One Million Dollars, to
adequately provide for complete, free instruction in religion, in all its
branches, and adequate aid of every sort to students seeking the sacred
ministry of divine truth. In the whole of Christendom there is hardly one
respectable theological school. The greatly dishonest purpose to conceal, to
evade, and everyway to maintain the creed in vogue by means which equally
lack veracity and courage, ought to render them in general morally disrepu
table. There are few in which inadvertent falsification is not the art of arts.
And to support it is the dark spirit whose foul words are “devil,” “hell,”
“damnation,” ever ready to kill off, by ban if not by burning, any teacher
VOL. I.—no. I.
7
�98
Dr. Me Cosh in Boston.
or student who is led, in the sincerest and strictest development of his deepest
Christian faith, to believe better of God than the current creeds allow. And
these creeds are still a refuge of lies about man and about God, theological
old wives’ fables begotten of the darkness of heathenism, and totally unfit to
convey the grace and truth of Christianity. True Christian Religion has
waited long enough; let there be one housetop from which to proclaim the
pure truth which Jesus whispered in the ear of Judea more than eighteen
hundred years ago.
In venturing to bring to public notice a bare proposition, we yield to a
sense of the extreme urgency of an interest which has no representative yet
among religious organizations, or none prepared to appreciate the situation,
and to take action promptly and with energy. We do not hesitate because
of the possibility, or even probability, that no immediate answer will come.
We more than half believe in the prophetic office, and think it in this matter
at least our solemn duty to say to our generation of scattered believers in
the future of free religion, A Million of Money wanted for a Free
Religious Divinity School.
DR. McCOSH IN BOSTON.
The N. K Tribune thinks Free Religion will probably find a defender,
against a late tremendous assault of Dr. McCosh, in “that deep thinker,
uncommon scholar, and courageous woman, Mrs. Howe.” It is difficult to
understand what the Tribune means by deep thought, uncommon scholarship,
and courage in religion, when it finds these in the estimable woman named,
three of whose striking characteristics are conservative timidity about
departure from tradition as it has come to her, the dogmatism of very
insufficient study, and opinion not obtained by profound meditation nor
expressed usually with the spirit of real thought. The Tribune seems not
aware that Mrs. Howe is more an exponent of traditional Christianity than
of Free Religion, and that at least fifty persons might be named in New
England more likely than she to undertake an effective defence of Free
Religion, even if she chanced to be drawn into the controversy on that side.
As for Dr. McCosh, a rude schoolman who knows no better than to assault
sunlight with paving-stones, and whose utmost achievement is to darken with
dust air which will clear itself as soon as his back is turned, we hold him, on
his own ground, greatly inferior to such ripe scholars and sound thinkers as
Rev. Samuel Johnson or Rev. W. J. Potter, though doubtless in tremendous
bluster he can do more in six lectures than they in six thousand. A certain
massive and portentous ignorance, a hopeless failure of perception, charac
terize Dr. McCosh. Had he lived in America even, still more had he passed
some years in Boston, and suffered himself to open his eyes occasionally, it
is possible that he would know a little something about the nature and ground
of Free Religion. As it is, his voice is the roar of a blind son of Anak,
noticeable only as so much noise. He has no more intelligence of the spirit
�Vicious Piety.—Secularism as Religion.
99
uality, pure fervor of soul, and richness of faith which are found in the Free
Religious leaders, than a cannon has of the glory of sunlight under which
nature renews her life. It is highly probable that whatsoever things are
pure, whatsover things are of good report, will continue to be thought on,
and to be most inspiringly discoursed of, among Free Religious believers in
Boston, in spite of the lectures of Dr. McCosh. Grace and truth do not
perish out of the hearts of men and women because of deafening noise in a
Methodist meeting-house, any more than violets and roses fade and die
because of a coluinbiad fired off at Charlestown navy yard.
VICIOUS PIETY.
“ The vices of our time — that is, of a commercial and scientific age — are
fraud, chicane, falsehood, and over-eagerness in pusuit of material enjoy
ment, and scepticism as to the existence of anything higher or better.
Great numbers of the knaves of our time are in the church, ami even active
in it, ami call themselves ‘Christians’ as a help in their business.”—The
Nation, June 16, p. 379.
It would be more exact to say of the pious knaves of our time,
that they profess strict orthodox faith in “the blood of Jesus,” and
confess a hope of redemption through “the atonement alone,” without
merit of good works. And more than this, knavery finds a chance in the
mind of many tempted confessors of this doctrine, to whom it seems quite
easy to be rascals in trade and redeemed sinners through Christ. It is but
one trick and lie at a time, and the fount of absolution is close by, always
open to faith, and the more open the greater the sinner’s demerit. Life
becomes a plunge into the smut of mammon by day, and a bath of absolution
at night. Many practical men bear witness that a man who puts forward an
“evangelical” profession, among men of the world, either as mere profes
sion or for persuasion, is commonly either too weak to be trusted amid
temptations, or is already tricky, or mean, or knavish.
SECULARISM AS RELIGION.
Secularism is vastly powerful [in England] among those of the working
classes who do make the attempt to think on the most serious questions of
life. It would appear that Secularist societies have spread a net-work of
complete organization over the land,.have an effective system of tract distri
bution, and command eloquent and persuasive lecturers, who know the
working classes well, and gain the more ready access to them on the ground
of this knowledge.”—The Sunday Magazine.
This is called “infidelity” and a “gigantic evil,” by the editor whose
statement, we quote. For our part we deem “those of the working classes
who make the attempt to think on the most serious questions of life ” more
faithful to their light than any of the Christian sects. Furthermore, they
are truer to the Christian foundation than these sects. They begin right,
�100
Dr. McLeod on Buddhism.
with the religion of duty. They come nearer doing the things taught in the
Sermon on the Mount than any man does who goes apart from mankind to
seek his own salvation. But even if they did not, they are honest men and
women, who think seriously, believe sincerely, and labor earnestly, and that,
too, with the heaviest troubles of life pressing particularly upon them, and we
deem it only decent to bid them good-speed, and think them well started on
the right way, especially as there is a God, who made these men and women,
and quite likely is looking after them at least as well as we could, and possi
bly has lent them his inspiration and providence even for getting up a
religion whose sole deity and heaven are the doing of duty in common daily
life. It seems to us more important that such practical religion should
flourish than that the Pharisaism of sects should survive. We do not deem
Secularism a perfect form of religion, but we do think it better than any
form of popular Christianity. It is to us among the cheering evidences that
God Almighty has a little the start of his Grace of Canterbury, and his
Holiness of Rome, and the various potentates of dogma and custom, that
Secularism lies like a rock under the troubled sea of English life, a “gigan
tic ” adherence of the common people to the doctrine that it pays to do
right even if death is, as the poor old Bible so often implies, a final rest.
DR. MACLEOD ON BUDDHISM.
Rev. Norman Macleod, D. D., a distinguished Scotch divine whose
Christianity has been for some time growing less and less dogmatic, and
more and more humane, speaks as follows of Buddhism, in connection with
his account of a visit to a Buddhist temple in Ceylon :
“ It was interesting to see, even once, a temple with its living worshippers
representing a religion which, though now extinct in India, yet still com
mands the faith and reverence of hundreds of millions in Ceylon, Thibet,
Burmah, and China. I cannot think, from the laws of the human mind, that
their Aeari-belief is that they are to be so absorbed into the divine essence,
or Nirvana, as practically to destroy all individual existence. . A religion
which denied the immortality of a living God, or of living men, could not
possibly live from age to age in the heart-convictions of a large portion of
the human race, so opposed is such a negation to the instincts and cravings
of human nature. Either human nature has no such moral instincts, or
Buddhists have no such religion.’’
When the “New Logic,” as we have been accustomed to name it, shall be
written, it will fully justify Dr. Macleod’s'assumption that Buddhism, what
ever it may say, does not, and cannot, mean anything either foolish or bad,
in its great doctrine of the final relation of all being to the divine essence.
We make the quotation here, however, to call attention to Dr. Macleod’s way
of looking at the matter. He speaks of these Buddhists as of human brothers,
and interprets by sympathy and faith, instead of doubt and hatred. Instead
of grasping the usual orthodox side-arm, the tomahawk, with an evident
savage desire to hew in pieces before the Lord his pagan fellows, he extends
�Sakya-Muni and Atheism.—Dr. Stebbins's Demand.
101
a Christian right hand of fellowship. There is, in'the kindness with which
he speaks, no Pharisaism as of one who wishes the Buddhists well yet
expects them to be damned nevertheless, but a generous charity, and com
prehension, which hopetli all things and believeth all things. This is
Christian; the other method is anti-Christian, and none the less so because
commonly employed by those who claim exclusive knowledge of Christian
truth.
SAKYA-MUNI AND ATHEISM.
“ The atheism of Sakya-Muni has been asserted by eminent scholars, whose
judgment I am not entitled to controvert, though quite unable to accept it.”—
D. A. Wasson. “The testimony of the most competents cholars certainly
seems to us decisive in this case, as we have no knowledge of the original
sources of information. But perhaps the fact does not harmonize with Mr.
Wasson’s theories, and this may be the reason for discarding it. . . If
Mr. Wasson has any better reasons (than “ I want to” and “ because ”) for
setting aside the verdict of scholars in a question of scholarship, we fail to
see them.”—F. E. Abbot in reply to Mr. Wasson.
Mr. Abbot’s failure herein we are sorry for. The overwhelming presump
tion, established by all thorough study of religions, is, that the human mind
has ever sought, and never unsuccessfully, to find God. Therefore it is
perfectly legitimate to suspect of insufficiency the study which reports SakyaMuni an atheist, and to decline to accept it, even while modestly confessing
not knowledge enough of the studies in question to otherwise prove SakyaMuni a theist. Mr. Abbot entirely forgets the dignity of the discussion, as
well as fails conspicuously to appreciate a significant point, when he accuses
Mr. Wasson of holding a profound conviction with no better reasons than “ I
want to” and “because,” which he (Mr. A.) quotes from a small boy of his
acquaintance.
DR. STEBBINS’S DEMAND.
Rev. R. P. Stebbins, D. D., is energetically arguing for a conservative
policy among Unitarians, on the ground that this is in harmony with the
antecedents of the Unitarian body. He lamentably forgets, as conservative
Christians of every school do, that regeneration, birth out of the old into the
new, is the supreme law of genuine Christianity. There never has been,
and never can be,—certainly was not in Jesus and Paul, and probably is not
in Stebbins and Hepworth,— any form for religion except a human form.
This human form is inevitably more or less imperfect, and also more or less
stamped with peculiarities of time, place, and people, which make it good
for that time, place and people, but not so good for another time and place,
and other people. Hence the necessity of constant change, with effort at
least for improvement. Dr. Stebbins has had occasion enough to know this.
He some years since became disgusted with the failure of Unitarian parishes
to appreciate the sullen roar of his heavy guns, and their decided preference
�102
The Athauasian Creed.
of light rifled cannon, which the old columbiad says take polish because
they are made of brass. As Secretary of the American Unitarian Associ
ation, after leaving his last parish, Dr. Stebbins succeeded in nothing so
well as in stirring up a general determination to get rid, at all costs, of his
portentious and dismal imitation of orthodoxy, and to put in his place a
man who, while no less conservative in doctrine perhaps, had the sense to
see that the young and agile intelligences of the new generation cannot be
expected to repeat the heavy gait and severe mien of elder Puritanism. A
new time must have new methods and new men. We advise grandpa
Stebbins to quit roaring and storming about it.
THE ATHANASIAN CREED.
The Contemporary Review (Strahan & Co., London and New York) is in
some respects the most interesting and valuable publication of the kind
accessible to English-speaking readers. It represents the liberal element in
the Church of England, than which no section of existing Christian com
munion is more worthy of respect, whether for Christian studies or Christian
graces. Dissenting of course from its continued recognition of Jesuism as
essential to Christianity, we yet would be glad to see so admirable an organ
of truly Christian inquiry in the hands of every clergyman in the land. We
know of nothing among religious reviews equally attractive and instructive
to general readers with this representative of the broader scholarship and
more genial piety of the English national church. The publishers would
render a great service to religion in America if they would put an American
edition into our market, at a moderate price.
The August issue of the Contemporary contains an article by Dean Stanley
on “ The Athanasian Creed,” some points of which we wish to lay before
our readers. We premise that this famous creed is peculiar for the dogmatic
harshness with which it sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity, and the rigor
with which it declares the sure damnation to eternal fire of all who hesitate
to fully accept that fiction of theological speculation. It, as a binding creed,
is substantially held still by all orthodox belief, as it must be so long as Jesus
is made a God-Man and Lord and Saviour, and so long as ‘ He that believeth
not shall be damned ’ (Mark xvi. 16), is read as a text of Christian truth.
Originally, to use the language of “ The English Cyclopaedia,” this creed “was
received by the free conviction of the churches that it contained a correct
exposition of Christian doctrine;” the very way in which the authority of
the Bible, and the divine truth of all orthodox dogmas, were originally set
up among Christians. By the same general authority of the Christian
church, this creed was ascribed to Athanasius, the great theologian of the
fourth century, precisely as the fourth gospel was ascribed to the apostle
John. Nobody ever pretended to really prove the ability of primitive
�The Aihanasinn Creed.
103
Christians to detect godhead in Jesus and divinity in gospels and epistles ;
that ability has been loosely assumed ; and how much the assumption is
worth we can judge from Dean Stanley’s remarks on “ The Creed of St.
Athanasius.” He says,—
“ Its first reception and actual use in Christendom is one of the most
remarkable instances of those literary mistakes (not in the first instance a
deliberate forgery, in the vulgar sense of the word) which have exercised so
great an influence over the history of the Church. It is to be classed in this
respect with the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which formed the basis
of the popular notions of the Celestial Hierarchy ; with the false Decretals of
the early Popes, or early Emperors, which formed the basis of the Pontifical
power. Under the shadow of a great name it crept, like those other docu
ments, into general acceptance ; and then, when that shadow was exorcised
by the spell of critical inquiry, still retained the place which it had won
under false pretences. Through the Middle Ages it was always quoted as
his work. At the time of the Reformation, the name of the champion of
Christian orthodoxy still dazzled the vision of the Reformers. In the Augs
burg Confession, and in the Thirty-nine Articles, in the Belgic and in the
Bohemian Confessions, in the ‘ Ecclesiastical Polity ’ of Hooker, it is unhes
itatingly received as the ‘Creed of St. Athanasius.’ No one at that time
entertained any doubt of its authorship. The very year of its composition
was fixed; the very hole in the Abbey of S. Maximin, near the Black Gate
at Treves, was pointed out as the spot where Athanasius had written it in
the concealment of his western exile. Yet it is now known with absolute
certainty not only that Athanasius never did write it, but never could have
written it. The language in which it was composed was probably unknown
to him. We shall see, as we proceed, that the terminology which it employs
was condemned by him. It contains at least one doctrine which he would
have repudiated. But . . the treatise of the unknown author who composed
this, in some respects, anti-Athanasian Creed, has been embalmed for poster
ity by its early ascription to the Father of orthodoxy. . . By the magic
of his name this confession, of unknown and ambiguous character, found its
way into the Western Church, and has been kept alive and retained a charmed
existence after its real character had been discovered. . . The history of
the reception of the Creed of St. Athanasius is like the parallel history of
the reception of the Pope's Infallibility — ‘ gangrened with imposture ; ’ not
willful imposture it may be, not conscious fraud, but still leaving it so desti
tute of historical foundation as to render doubly imperative the duty of
testing its claims to authority by its own intrinsic merits.”
These last strong words are fully justified by the facts. And not only are
they applicable where Dean Stanley applies them, but over the whole field of
ecclesiastical and theological support of accredited Christianity. That
support is gangrened with imposture, not willful it may be, not conscious and
deliberate fraud, but still leaving it so destitute of honest foundation in any
truth ever taught as to render absolutely imperative the duty of testing all
claims of Christianity to authority by the intrinsic merits of its teaching, as
reason and faith can take cognizance of these.
�104
Duty Without Heaven.
AN EVANGELICAL INSTANCE.
In the article from which we have quoted above, Dean Stanley says that
“it was expected, almost wished (by certain orthodox leaders in England),
that a frightful, sudden death, such as that which befel Arius in the streets
of Constantinople [who was believed by one party to have been killed by
God in answer to orthodox prayers], would be inflicted on an eminent scholar
who had come to take his part in making better understood the Holy Scrip
tures, and in kneeling with his brethren around the table of their common
Lord. . . Sentiments like these . . . are the natural fruits of the ancient
damnatory spirit of the age whence those clauses originated. The meaning
of the clauses is now reduced, by ‘considerable intellectual caution’ to
something much more like the spirit of the Gospel. But, to anyone who
accepts them in their full sense, or who is influenced by their intention, it is
only natural that the persons against whom they are believed to be directed
should be viewed with unspeakable horror. A man, of whom we are unhes
itatingly able to say that, ‘he shall, without doubt, perish everlastingly,’
must be the most miserable of human beings—to be avoided, not only in
sacred, but in common intercourse, as something too awful to be approached
or spoken of.”
DUTY WITHOUT HEAVEN.
“The doing of duty without any hope of a future is a daring but a dreary
faith,” says the editor of The Sunday Magazine, in commenting on the Secu
larist confession of faith. Let each speak for himself. We can testify that
there is an inexpressible, heavenly blessedness in giving up all hope of
reward, future as well as present, to do present duty, and that the gloomier
the outlook from the post of duty has seemed, the more would the irrepres
sible sense of heaven in the heart assert itself. We have frequently found
in men and women this perfectly serene, joyous satisfaction in mere doing
duty. It accords with all our study of the human mind, that the best
attainment of man leaves him where he can find perfect delight in duty,
wholly apart from a future, while our observation of human experience has
repeatedly shown us that doing of duty can be profoundly joyous even where
disbelief of a future exists. Those who have never tried a religion which
forbids eagerness about one’s own redemption, and commands the cultivation
of spiritual courage to share all hope with all souls, ought to remember that
their cowardice in the battle of life cannot be a measure of the courage of
soldiers of humanity, who are perfectly willing to do their duty here and
take the result.
�
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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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The Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, November,1870, no. 1
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Place of publication: [Winnetka, IL.]
Collation: 104 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contents: Crazy Chicago; or the back stairs to fortune -- Charles Dickens and his Christian Critics -- The Women and the trial --Dr. J.F. Clarke against theism --The Unitarian situation -- History of the devil, his rise, greatness and downfall / Albert Reville --Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledos. 'The woman and the trial' concerns Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher-Tilton trial. Reville's article was possibly the reason why Conway kept this item - a review of Gustave Roskoff's 'History of the Devil' translated from 'Revus des deux mondes'; his own 'Demonology and devil lore' would be published in 1879.
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Text
EFFICACY OF OPINION
IN
MATTERS OF RELIGION
BY THE
REV. W. R. WORTHINGTON, M.A.
,
“ Est genus hominum, qui esse primos se omnium rerum volunt
Nee sunt.”
Terence.
---------
•
r
•>_
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS. SCOT£,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
1870.
Price Sixpence.
«'
a
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W, REYN ELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�ON
THE EFFICACY OF OPINION
IN
MATTERS OF RELIGION.
NCE upon a time there was a great controversy
as to the comparative merits of knowledge and
opinion. That controversy has been stirred again in
onr own day ; or rather it has not been stirred at all,
but judgment has been given upon it with but scanty
regard to the arguments. The “ religious world ”
has declared in favour of opinion. Theory rides in
its coach, and Fact trudges on foot. This venerable
error which so long discredited philosophy, and which
it is the crowning glory of philosophy to have got rid
of, is the besetting sin of the science (falsely so called)
of theology, and is doubtless the chief reason why,
with modern thinkers, the profession of theology has
fallen somewhat into disrepute.
Generally speaking, we profess to esteem truth above
everything. If a man is on his trial for murder, the
witnesses are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, to the best of their know
ledge. But if the question is as to the sanity of the
murderer, skilled witnesses are summoned to give
their opinions upon the state of his mind. The value
of their opinions is measured by their capacity to. form
O
�4
On the Efficacy of Opinion
an. opinion, and their capacity is measured by their
knowledge of cases in point. But often their opinions
are opinions only ; they cannot be implicitly relied on;
they are mere makeshifts which the court is compelled
to put up with, so long as perfect knowledge is not to
be had. This is an unsatisfactory state of things • and
in this and similar instances (which are plentiful),
opinion, compared with knowledge, appears to disad
vantage.
Its inferiority may be inferred in other ways. In
some things, e.g., political questions, truth is evolved
from the conflict of opinions ; and, beyond all contra
diction, the end is more precious than the means.
Further, when truth is known and established, all
controversy upon it is at an end; there is no room for
disputing ; men are of one mind about it who were at
odds so long as it was a matter of opinion. The har
monising power of knowledge is a circumstance
greatly in its favour.
Passing into the region of theology, we are sur
prised to find a totally different set of principles at
work. We find opinion to be the ‘ be-all and the end‘ all ’ there,—dissent from the reigning opinion counted
for a crime—knowledge studiedly depreciated or valued
only as it is subservient to opinion—reason, as it is
absurdly cried down on the side where it is strongest,
as absurdly cried up on the side where it is weakest—
the oracle of society not the well-informed scholar,
the shrewd observer, the original thinker, the candid
reasoner (a kind of men who have a strong aversion
to hazarding opinions), but the voluble man of ortho
doxy, who for anything anybody knows belongs to no
school,
But that where blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,
On all things all day long :
and we naturally ask, “ How can such things be, and
�in Matters of Religion.
$
« what can orthodoxy have to say for itself? ” Its de
fence will take some such line as this : That Revela
tion is not like other things, and not to be judged ot
by ordinary rules. That religious opinions, not being
capable of demonstration, belong to the province not
of knowledge, but of faith. That right faith and con
sequently right opinions, are essential to holiness ot
living. We will take these propositions in order.
I From the position that Revelation, being a thing
sui generis, is not subject to ordinary laws to the posi
tion that it is subject towhatever laws orthodoxy may
please to impose upon it, is but a step. Fruits of this
doctrine we see every day. Who has ever attended to
a controversial sermon or perused a controversial trea
tise, and not been completely bewildered with the
amazing arbitrariness that characterises them. t e
violent associations of ideas, the axioms that are axio
matic in nothing but their insusceptibility of proof,
the foregone conclusions wrung from worse than
doubtful premisses, the fallacious demonstrations of
the truth of “the Gospel,” the imaginary exposures
of the folly or the knavery of the captious objector r'
Leaving such absurdities, let us ask these questions :
Given that Revelation is a thing sui generisin what
does its distinctive character consist, and how does
that distinctive character affect the value of opinion
as such ?
.
T
The knowledge of divine things differs, I presume,
from the knowledge of all other things either (a) in
the method of acquiring it, or (/3) in the nature of the
knowledge acquired—or both.
.
.
(a). The way in which a thing is communicated to
our knowledge has nothing whatever to do with the
character, utility or importance of the thing itself.
Knowledge is knowledge, however we come by it.
Had the law of gravitation been revealed to Moses
�6
On the Efficacy of Opinion
instead of being reserved for the observation of
Newton, it would have played the same part in the
universe, and have afforded the same exercise for men’s
faculties that it does now. Had gunpowder been a
supernatural and not a natural invention, it would
still have been subject to the same conditions, and
have answered the same purposes for good and evil
as^ at this very moment. Opinion gains nothing on
this ground.
.
(/3). What is really distinctive in the knowledge of
divine things is the transcendent importance of divine
t mgs. Their interest is universal and everlasting.
Moses was inspired and Newton was inspired; but
whereas Newton was inspired to teach science, Moses
was inspired to teach religion. The source of their
teaching* was the same ; the channel by which it came
to them may or may not have been the same too ; it is
in the subject-matter of their teaching that we are
conscious of so momentous a difference. Now, in
every concern of life we observe that the value’ of
knowledge rises, the value of opinion sinks, in direct
proportion to the importance of the subject-matter.
In proportion, therefore, as God is supremely great, so
the knowledge of God, which in the intellectual signi
fication of the words is theology, in their moral signi
fication, religion, is not only of infinitely more impor
tance than knowledge of any other subject, but of
infinitely more importance than any opinion on the
same subject. We find then, that, far from annihi
lating the rule I contend for, the peculiar character of
Revelation only intensifies its force. The New Testa
ment speaks clearly enough to the same effect. As re
gards opinion : “ Whosoever killeth you will 77m7>; he
“ doeth God service.” “ I verily thought with myself
that I ought to do many things contrary to the name
of Jesus of Nazareth ”—things for which we read
that the Apostle obtained mercy only because they
�in Matters of Religion.
7
were done “ ignorantly in unbelief.” As regards
knowledge : “ This is life eternal, that they know (1)
“ thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou
hast sent.” 44 Grod will have all men to be saved, and.
“ come to the knowledge of the truth.” The reason why
the unlearned and ignorant men who had been with
Jesus were enabled to smite so effectively the philoso
phies of heathendom was that their conflict was not
between so many sets of opinions, in which they
would possibly have been worsted, but between sets
of opinions on the one hand and a set of facts on the
other. The superior weapon won.
II. The incurable uncertainty of so many religious
opinions, which in the eyes of the philosopher is their
weak point, constitutes, in the eyes of those who are
not philosophers, their principal attraction. . The phi
losopher would argue that an opinion being, as it
were, a temporary implement, an endeavouring after
truth, is good for nothing when it ends in itself, serves
no ulterior purpose, does not further the discovery of
the truth which it relates to, inasmuch as that truth
is beyond the grasp of the human intellect. To the
authority of the Church, in such a case, he would pay
little regard, knowing that all the heads in the
world put together are as incapable as one head of
solving a problem which has been proved to be inso
luble. No amount of gazing will avail to bring the
invisible into sight, and why strain our eyes in vain,
or, what were worse, shut them and pretend to see ?
The religious world will reply, as one man, that these
uncertainties and difficulties and impossibilities were
intended to try our faith; that there is no room for
faith where there is no room for doubt. Which, in the
first place, is a begging of the question; for while
(1) ^lyvdxTKovfft is the preferable reading in John xvii. 3.
�8
On the Efficacy of Opinion
allowing that there is something to be said in my
favour, it supposes the question already decided in
yours: in the second place, the founder of a religion
who designedly leaves difficulties in the way of its
being received must in all reason share the blame of
its being rejected; as the master who leaves money
about to try his servants’ honesty may thank himself
to . some extent if they steal it: and, lastly, about the
things which are really necessary to salvation, there is
no doubt whatever. For religion in general is based
upon certain fundamental principles which are beyond
the reach of dispute; to which the Christian religion
in particular adds certain historical events, the proof
of which is to be looked for not in faith, but in
history.
HI. It will be alleged that much of what we have
called the knowledge of God really is resolvable into
opinion; and that so far we must admit opinion to be
conducive to righteousness of life.
Thus we have
said that religion is based upon certain indisputable
principles; e.g., that God is true. Supposing, then,
a man to be of opinion that God is not true, he will,
in all probability, either be a liar or be in a fairway of
becoming one. But that God is true, I contend, is no
more a matter of opinion than that things which are
equal to the same thing are equal to one another is a
matter of opinion. Truth is an attribute of God, which
may have been for any number of ages unknown, butwhich being declared is instantly accepted ; it is seen
at once to be an essential part of his being, an insepa
rable concomitant of his name. To deny it, as to
deny the axiom about equal things above mentioned,
is not heresy but insanity, not to be argued either with
or about. The same may be said in regard of any
other of the divine attributes, justice, mercy, omnipo
tence, omniscience.
The same cannot be said in
�in Matters of Religion.
9
regard of speculative opinions, Arian, Afhanasian,
Sabellian, or what not, about the composition of the
godhead. That which commends itself to the con
science of mankind stands on a distinctly higher level
than that which commends itself only to the intellects
of particular men. In the first chapter of the epistle
to the Romans the apostle denounces those heathen
whose immoral practices had so blunted their moral
sense as to render them indifferent to what by nature
they knew of God. But of their theological opinions,
if any they had, he takes no notice whatever. For
opinions are not faith; “ Believe on the Lord Jesus
“ Christ and thou shalt be saved,” does not and cannot
mean, “ Hold my doctrine of the atonement, or you shall
“ not be saved.” Not in this sense is practice founded
upon doctrine: is it not nearer the truth to say that all
human righteousness is founded upon, in other words,
is a following of, the divine righteousness, by his con
formity or non-conformity to which every child of
man shall be judged ?
Hitherto we have considered what may be called
respectable arguments in favour of opinion. There
are one or two more of a different character behind,
unavowed indeed, but which, in practice, I believe
carry considerable weight.
It is curious to observe how the man who has made
up his mind on a point invariably deems himself
entitled to set at naught the man who keeps his judg
ment in suspense. It is true the hesitation of the
latter may be due to his knowing both sides of the
question, the positiveness of the former to his knowing
only one; but your thorough-going dogmatist does
not care for that. He has his opinion, and with him
opinion is a royal road to moral and intellectual
superiority. All he wants to make him perfectly
happy is to get a number of people about him to
share his ideas, confirm one another’s convictions,
�io
On the Efficacy of Opinion
and enhance one another’s conceit. The conceit of
such cliques—the portrait of them in 1 Corinthians
iv. 6-10 is unmistakable—is as unlimited as it is
ridiculous. Now, the “ religious world ” is simply a
big clique. How it hugs itself in its self-complacency !
how coolly, almost innocently, it passes its censures
on those who are not of it I with what a thrill of
pleasure it welcomes a stranger who unexpectedly
speaks its language ! with what terror and disgust it
listens to arguments tending to a conclusion it has
rejected ! All the while “ understanding what it says
“ and whereof it affirms ” as much as animalcules in a
drop of water understand about the gulf-stream. A'
little sound knowledge would abate its infatuation;
what reason, then, it has to be in love with opinion,
when opinion responds so heartily to its self-love !
There is yet another reason. Dethrone opinion, and
what becomes of the privilege of persecuting ? The
exercise of this blessed privilege is two-fold : as it
pertains to persons in authority and to persons not in
authority. Whenever the State has persecuted, it has
done so for reasons of State. It is an error to suppose
that in the good old times the State kept a conscience,
and in that conscience believed it to be its duty to
punish all who dissented from its religion. Thus in
England, Romanists and Dissenters were persecuted
simply because the State thought it impossible for
Romanists and Dissenters to be loyal and peaceable
citizens. As soon as it began to perceive that they
both might be and were as good citizens as any
English churchmen the persecuting laws were doomed,
notwithstanding the efforts, the too-successful efforts,
of ignorance and bigotry to prolong their sinful and
despicable existence. Now in mental as in bodily
concerns, individuals, like States, obey the same in
stinct of self-preservation. Opinions, existing upon
sufferance, are endangered by the presence of opposite
�in Matters of Religion.
11
opinions. Hence the impulse to persecute opposite
opinions.
Persecution and dogma have ever been
brethren in arms. For three centuries, during which
the Church itself was the victim of persecution, the
Christian conscience was satisfied with the apostolic
regvda fidei, which, avoiding abstract dogmas, recited
just such facts connected with the past, and such con
victions respecting the present and the future, as
were profitable for personal holiness. Heretics con
travening the rule were fought with their own
weapons. But in after-days, when the Church had
won its way to empire, and was in a position not
only to teach, but to enforce its teaching by the arm
of the law, then heterodoxy was dealt with in another
spirit, and orthodoxy regulated by other standards.
Inevitable controversy conceived and brought forth
councils, and councils being finished brought forth
definitions of doctrine.
These definitions were
nothing else than encroachments upon common land,
which, once enclosed, could never again be thrown
open. And so, by degrees, the vast system of dog
matic theology grew up, not so much by develop
ment as by accretion, out of which it was as hard for
the inquirer to disentangle the simple truths of the
Gospel of Jesus, as it would be for a Yorkshire
villager of the last century, if suddenly resuscitated in
this, to identify the site of his cottage home in the
stupendous manufacturing borough that has swallowed
up the neighbourhood.
Failing to find what he
wanted, he must go where the authorities sent him.
Failing to obey his orders he was speedily taught what
prayers for magistrates, that they might have “ grace
“ to execute justice and maintain truth,” meant. The
Reformation, while it purged our Church of much
that was Popish in detail, did not purge away what
was worst in Popery, viz., that Popish spirit which
speaks thus: “ Believe as I do, or take the conse-
�12
On the Efficacy of Opinion
“ queuecs.” In the place of one Pope it only set up a
multitude. The result is, that while the State has
abandoned the practice of persecuting, individuals,
with rare exceptions, have not. True they have not
such scope for their energies as they could wish, but
they go manfully to work, considering “ the diversity
“ of times and men’s manners.” If they cannot kill
their brethren by way of doing God service, they can
pick their pockets for the same pious object. If they
cannot hang, they can give bad names. If they can
not visit you with a sentence of the “ greater excom“ munication,” they can send you to Coventry, which
does nearly as well. Now, that a clique, which would
be nothing if not numerous and noisy, should have the
power of subjecting its victims to so much unmerited
annoyance, sometimes to the extent of ruining them
in purse and prospects, is intolerable enough; but
infinitely more intolerable, because so deadly in its
effects, is the tyranny thus exercised over men’s minds.
Right dear in the sight of the clique is the stifling of
inquiry. The intellectual light of the world is put
out in the blaze of its brightness. The intellectual
salt of the earth, in all the freshness of its savour, is
trodden under foot of the vulgar. The branch of
original and independent and healthy and vigorous
thought is by rude hands cut down and cast into the
fire. Everywhere we are confronted with the miser
able spectable of—
art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
which made the soul of Shakespeare weary of his life.
Why ? as Caesar says of the “ great observer ” who
“ thinks too much,”
such men are dangerous.
Danger I danger I is the monotonous cry of the
bigot who, in the same breath in which he professes
�in Matters of Religion.
13
an unbounded confidence in his convictions, unwit
tingly gives his profession the lie.
To conclude. The pre-eminence popularly assigned
to opinion, as it is false in principle, is detrimental in
practice : detrimental to knowledge—for, to take but
one instance, there is no more stubborn impediment
to a right understanding of the Scriptures than a
pre-conceived theory of inspiration; detrimental to
charity—for while opinions are cherished for their
own sake, opinions destined never to become certain
ties, so long on their account will people bite and
devour one another, until they are at length con
sumed one of another. Thus do religious opinions
defeat the purpose of religion 5 which is to lead us to
the “ knowledge of the truth,” and to promote “peace
“ on earth, good-will towards men.”
�The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on ad*
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Incarnation of Jesus. Price Cd.
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By a
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On the efficacy of opinion in matters of religion
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Worthington, William Robert
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 13, [1] p. 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Publisher's list on unnumbered page at the end.
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Thomas Scott
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1870
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Theology
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Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
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t |Jl,
Cannon
ife
Nu&f
I A FREE STATE
AND
FREE MEDICINE.
BY
JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON.
LONDON: F. PITMAN, 20, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.O.
GLASGOW : JOHN THOMSON, 39, JOHN STREET.
1870.
�“ New foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.”
Milton.
�I.
A FREE STATE, AND FREE MEDICINE.
The pages headed Medical Freedom, appended to this
Essay, formed a postscript to a small work of mine on a
new Treatment of Small Pox, written some years ago.
*
Their re-publication has been undertaken because it has
been thought that they have work to do at the present
time. I wrote them in good part from the theoretical
side, having a clear certainty that the separation of medicine
from government, and from power, and the dischartering
of all medical corporations, would confer upon medicine
and the community the greatest benefits. I foresaw that
freedom had a future here of which protection could give
no inkling; and that Art, Science, Service, Healing, would
live anew from it upon a hitherto unknown scale. I
pleaded gently in the interest of medicine and the com
munity.
The pages are reprinted as they stood, with some medical
topics adhering to them.
But now in the face of recent acts and facts, I plead in
the name and interest of the community alone : of the
consumer, not of the producer: of the British people
struggling with bonds, not of the banded and enthralled
medical corporations and profession. The medical pro
* On the Cure, Arrest, and Isolation of Small Pox, by a New Method ; and
on the Local Treatment of Erysipelas, and all Internal Inflammations; with a
Special Chapter on Cellulitis ; and a Postscript on Medical Fkeedom. London :
Leath & Ross, 1864.
�4
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
fession has crept into the Government, and is inciting it to
breaches of most sacred freedom, and thus is virtually at
war, and dreadful to say is influencing the Liberal and
Freetrade Gladstone Ministry to war, with the nation.
The particulars are not far to seek, and need not detain
me long, especially as I am about soon, in a larger Essay,
to treat of them severally. Suffice it now to say that,
I. War is levied upon the population by the Parlia
mentary Jet of Compulsory Vaccination. Vaccination may
be bad or good in its results; so may aconite, or arsenic,
or the sword; but no goodness of it justifies the violation
by it of unwilling families. Parliament has no excuse for
it. If Vaccination be protective, whoso will can be pro
tected by it; and leave those who do not choose to be
vaccinated, to their own freewill, to bear the risk. A large
and increasing body of the population hates the name and
thought of Vaccination; numerous cases are extant in
every considerable town of deterioration of health, injury,
and death from it, inflicted upon little children; and
coroner’s inquests return verdicts of “ died from the con
sequences of Vaccination;” and yet Parliament arms the
medical man with a right of virus against the babies next
born to those who have thus been slaughtered, and sends
the fathers or mothers who cannot pay continual fines, to
prison. In this Act Parliament commits a breach of the
peace as wide as Great Britain and Ireland, for it directly
incites to violent retribution. It is obvious that riot may
come of it. And it is equally obvious that if a mother or
father can say to the virus-man, “ Sir, I believe in my soul,
from dire experience in my own family, or my neighbour’s,
that what you are bent upon doing to my baby will pollute
its health, and probably take its life, and I will resist it to
the death, and rouse my neighbourhood to resist it,”—it is
obvious that whatever weapon that woman or that man
uses to protect, not only his fireside, but the very blood of
his race; and whatever arousing of the passions of his
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
5
commune he may cause against his poisoners, the public
opinion of the world will justify him, as much as if he
shot down a midnight assassin from his wife’s and child’s
bedside.
Yet Parliament has sanctioned this perpetual felony and
occasional murder in this compulsory Act; and Parliament
will now have to unsanction the Act, and to destroy it.
Nothing of this would have happened if medicine had
had no more to do with Government than any other calling
has; but medicine has got into the State, and instead of
being called when wanted, it is itself ensconced in office;
the State has lost its service, and got its impertinence, and
any foothold of power, or patronage, or pay, that it has, it
will by no means surrender. Old Physic, thus officialized,
revels in the application of the Compulsory Vaccination
Law, and hunts out the children of those who are known
Anti-vaccinators with especial zest. Nor does it forget
that hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling are the
reward of what so many now regard as the pollution and
slaughter of the innocents. The pressure of the despotism
is so urgent, that Vaccinators will not listen to medical
certificates against Vaccination, on the score of skin disease,
whooping cough, or the like : fine, imprisonment, or sub
mission, are the unconditional demand of the Government
doctors.
And this for a disease which killed eleven people in
London last week, while scarlatina killed more than a
hundred.
I am not now arguing against Vaccination, but against
Compulsory Vaccination; but I am prepared to argue un
reservedly against Vaccination itself when the occasion
arises. I know that it is a delusion and an evil, and I have
done with it. But my point here is that chartered medicine
has polluted and endangered the State with it, where un
chartered medicine would have had no chance of doing so;
and that hence arises a mighty practical reason why the
�6
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
State should discharter all medical corporations, withdraw
all royal patents from them, and leave physic, like other
businesses, to its own unaided work; calling it in for
an opinion when necessary, but judging that opinion by no
professional standard, but by wide and high common sense;
and being entirely free to act upon it or not when the
opinion is delivered, and the doctor gone from Downing
Street.
The plainest medical reason, or medical truth, may not
be expedient or good for a statesman to carry out. If
Jenner or Watson could prove ever so clearly that by dis
secting alive the vilest felon some desired medical light
would shine forth, it would still be competent for the
Home Secretary to say, 11 No, gentlemen, wait for that!
A generation had better die without benefit of illuminated
doctors, than that its life should be bought in the coins of
hellish cruelty. That vile man is my brother, and the State
stands in the interest of a higher light and life against the
pretended medical good that is to come of disembowelling
him.”
And so the State shall say one day, better let epidemic
smallpox sweep our towns, than Vaccination outrage hearts
and homes under the pretence of abating it. Not that
epidemic smallpox will do it, dear reader, for epidemic
smallpox is for the most part a panic ; though when it
does occur in a bad form, Vaccination has no power to
protect against it. But better the desolation which medi
cine and sanitary action could grapple with at last, than
the moral and personal violation of the homes and children
of our commonwealth.
II. This, then, is the first battleground between the British
Nation and the Chartered Medical Profession.
*
The
* I refer the reader to the Essay on Vaccination, by Chas. T. Pearce, M.D.,
Loudon, 1868; to the Essay of Dr. Bayard; to the Anti-Vaccinator; and in
general to the publications of the Anti-Vaccination League, for full information
against the Utility of Vaccination, and about the injuries it causes, and the
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
7
second and equally serious, but not more serious, battle
ground, is in the Contagious Diseases Act, lately passed
by Parliament, for districts where soldiers are housed, and
now proposed for extension to the whole civil community.
This Act too, passed surreptitiously under a misleading
name, would not have become law but that chartered
medicine was at the ear of the central Government as its
only adviser. The process evidently is, to send for “ the
most eminent medical men,” and be bound by their advice.
This course is both misleading and servile; and the mis
direction and the servility both depend upon royal charters.
Thus, “ the most eminent medical men,” to a Minister of
State’s apprehension, are inevitably at the head of the
orthodox corporations; and hence the minister gets arrant
orthodoxy, whose power of poohpoohing is its supreme
faculty, in place of wide and varied experience. He gets
infallibility instead of heart and brains. And instead of
getting orthodoxy as an opinion, he receives it as a com
mand ; and if he must have medical action at all, he has
nothing to hold orthodoxy in check as the agent. Even a
Gladstone can call in nobody else but these pampered and
easily incensed Mandarins. Our ministry, methinks, should
be the highest present jury of the country, giving its inde
pendent verdict after patiently hearing professional judge
and professional advocates ; but in such cases as these it is
hopelessly charged and commanded by the bench, and the
barristers are with the bench in overruling its twelveman
common sense, and forcing the verdict against it.
This is well divulged in a paper by an eminent orthodox
medical lady, Miss Elizabeth Garrett. “ Is legislation
increased death-rate that coincides with it. By this practice the medical
profession has introduced a new disease into the human race; and by the two
Acts under question, two new tyrannies are added to the evils of our country.
And in the case of Vaccination, from a practice not a hundred years old, but
which the doctors seen! to think is as durable as the rock of ages, though the
counter-experiment of letting Vaccination alone has not been tried ; and, con.
sequently, there is no test of its value in any sense, excepting as a fee-field of
the doctors.
�8
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
[about syphilitic diseases] necessary ? ” she asks, and
answers, “ This is strictly a professional question, upon which
the opinion of trustworthy medical witnesses ought to be
accepted as final. It is enough if unprofessional persons
know what that opinion is, together with some of the prin
cipal facts upon which it is based.” We have heard of
the Rule of the Monk, in Rome, and here is the parallel
Rale of the Doctor in Britain. You are no longer to call
in the doctor, and employ him as long as you like his
treatment, and judge with your own common sense every
serious proposal in that treatment; but he, or she, by
Heaven, is to call you in, and do what he likes with you !
You are his bond slave, and his word is, Flat experimentuni
in corpore tuo—vilissimo.
“ Is legislation necessary ? ” Who is to answer that
question, Miss Garrett ? Who calls in legislators, who are
a high order of professionals ? The people of course.
Air. Gladstone is where he is because the household suff
ragans have placed him there, and keep him there so long
as they have confidence in him. He is bound to consult
with his employers upon all matters pertaining to their
own bodies and fortunes. He has to legislate in their best
interest. On medical questions he avails himself of or
thodox eminent advice; he calls the doctors in as the
householders have called him in. But he is to legislate;
they are not to legislate. The opinion they give is strictly
a professional one; but the question of whether, or how, it
shall be carried out is not professional, excepting so far as
statecraft is a profession; it is a legislative question ; and
the settlement of it lies in the will of the people, and then
in the derivative wise will of the ministry. If the opinions
of callings were to be converted into the immediate volitions
of the State, we should have a pretty time of it. The
State would be garrotted by a hundred small ruffians of
professions. “ Nothing like leather” would be the rallying
cry of every cobbler’s onset on his premier. Miss Garrett’s
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
9
baker would force her into vegetarianism, for the food of
the people is strictly an eminent baker’s question; and the
chief of the bakers must be “ accepted by her as final.”
A homoeopathic premier might call in homoeopathic emi
nence, and converting his eminence’s answer into an edict,
forbid her salts and senna and blue pill for the rest of her
orthodox days.
A professional opinion, however eminent, is not then a
legislative question at all, but a mere suggestion, unless a
legislator takes it up ; and moreover, the whole unprofes
sional mass of the country is the permanent jury which
gives the verdict of To do, or Not to do, in every case.
What are the grounds upon which a legislator as distin
guished from “an expert” or professsional specialist must
act ? The expert, you will observe, merely takes his own
medical view of the case, modified of course by his good
sense, and moral and spiritual capacities ; but the medical
view is central. The statesman—I do not accept him as
“ final ”—-is distinguished from the lesser professional man
in this chiefly, that he has all the interests, not merely the
sanitary interests, to help and not to harm. First of all,
the interest of impartiality ; that is the justice-rock on
which he stands. Then, co-extensive with the common
wealth, social interests, spiritual interests, humanitary
interests, bodily interests, moral interests. The order and
poise of all these together in his mind, each like the organs
of a sound body pressing the rest into shape and function,
is the ground of the wisdom of every special action of the
statesman; and makes him neither a philanthropist, nor a
divine, nor a philosopher, nor a sanitarian, nor a moralist;
but a legislator, and a professional statesman. His will is
never reached by any other one profession separately.
Woe be to him if ever he allows that will to be first
violated and then traversed by any doctor or specialist who
represents one partial interest where all interests should
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A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
be most generously constellated, and a love and wisdom
above interest itself should reign.
The obverse of this, the position assumed by Miss Garrett,
that the people have nothing to do with her foul physic
but to shut their eyes and take it, is the common stupidity
of chartered and collegiate bodies. I leave it to the reader
to imagine whether such dense darkness against human
right, and the human mind, and the all prevalent good
sense of mankind, is a favourable atmosphere for scientific
studies, or the prosecution of the most free and instinctive
of all the arts, the Art of Healing. For my own part I do
not doubt that the conceit and love of power bred of
charters and patronage rob medical men and women of
their best inspirations, and reduce to a minimum the
humane vigour of their lives.
But to return to the Contagious Diseases Act.
As some of my readers do not know what it is, I will
tell them.
First, it is founded on the present fact that the most of
soldiers must be unmarried ; and secondly, on the pre
sumed fact that unmarried soldiers must have women for
their gratification; and thirdly, on the fact that if their
women are diseased, they disease the soldiers, and cause
added expense for the army. Wherefore, it is expedient
to keep the women well for use, which can only be done
by compulsorily examining them at short intervals, and
when needful, compulsorily curing them. For this purpose
they are summoned from very wide districts, one and all,
and come in crowds, to the place of inquisition, the wallow
ing with the tidy, the vilest with the neatest; and they are
examined, very often (I do not know how often, but it
ought to be tabled) with large steel tubes, called specula, and
if diseased, sent to hospital, and if healthy, let back to whore
dom. Purer women may be brought by the police, by
mistake, or by the plotting of villains by design, into the
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
11
same category ; and if they do not take care, or, as Miss
Garrett says, are “ helpless,” which a good many good
women are, they may become liable to fortnightly exposure
and looking at, and steel entry, for one twelvemonth ; and
their husbands have no remedy, because the Act has con
doned the police mistake, and probably veiled the villain’s
plot, by anticipation.
This system, its advocates say, has diminished venereal
disease in array districts, and also the number of pros
titutes ; where it has been applied with the utmost strin
gency, as in the little island of Malta, it has “ stamped
out ” the disease ; and it only remains to apply it to the
whole of Great Britain and Ireland, to extinguish this
disease altogether. Let, then, every common woman in
the three kingdoms be inspected fortnightly—police super
intendents being the judges of who are bad women—and
let hospitals, big enough to take in all who are diseased,
be erected from one end of the land to the other.
A tall medical vision ! Building contractors who could
get on that shoddy Pisgah, would give a handsome per
centage to chartered and patented physic for the admin
istration of the vast disbursement. They need only read
Mr. Simon’s clear'pamphlet to estimate the amazing carcase
to which they would be fain eagles.
But if you can desyphilize little Malta, till a new regi
ment, or a new ship of war comes, it does not follow that
you can do the same for Greater Britain. When I was a
boy there was a current saying, “ Naturam expellas furca,
tamen usque recurret” You may drive out nature with a
pitchfork, but she will always come back again. If you
could clear all prostitution from the streets, so that the
sharpest police superintendent should not know who is
who, you might only, I will say at present you would only,
drive immorality out of sight, and lodge it higher up in
the community. I should like to know if Devonport,
endorsed by Miss Garrett’s “ clergy,” is more moral
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A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
because its 2000 inspected prostitutes have diminished
from 2000 in 1864 to 770 in 1870. I should like to
know from the dissenting ministers of the district the state
altogether of the 770 who do the work of the former 2000.
It strikes me forcibly, that you may scare prostitutes away
at the expense of bringing up servant girls secretly into
their ranks. And these, being uninspected, all the in
fection begins over again in your own kitchens. And as
masters are often immoral with their servants, and innocent
wives and children must be protected, all you can do then
is to suspect every woman below your own rank, and to
have her inspected ; and presently you will find the old
hospitals bursting with their contents into new ones:
bursting, not like Aaron’s rods, but like spawning serpents.
Truly the medical plot thickens. We have got our reward
for protecting physic ; for adopting Miss Garrett’s principle
that the first topmost medical opinion should be taken, and
that then it should override every other faculty and concern,
and be converted into direct and universal legislation.
Out, I say, upon a protected orthodoxy which would
introduce such a horrid tapeworm into our national con
stitution ; if for no other reason, then for this reason, of
saving bodies and souls, give us freedom from State medi
cine, and let medicine herself be remitted to her own
resources, and have a conscience void of public offence,—the blessing in the humility of freedom.
Could Miss Garrett’s orthodoxy be carried out, Great
Britain would swarm with a vermin of pensioned venereal
doctors more than Spain, or Italy, or Turkey, ever swarmed
with beggar priests. Great Britain would have syphilis
with a vengeance.
But, reader, it cannot be carried
out. The Dissenters will not have it, because they can
scarcely understand the vice of which the diseases in
question are some of the plagues, and they will never
sanction the endowment and establishment of the pre
tended cure of those plagues in the interest of the vice.
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
13
The Municipalities will not have it, because they have
great radical works of good needing all their monies and
means, and they do not hold these to be spent on stopgaps
of an evil which in its retreat will more deeply and des
perately defy them. The public exchequer will not have
it (on its own shoulders), because the prostitutes and their
medical bishops, many tens of thousands strong in London
alone, would devour the treasury. The Married will not
have it, because they see that its tendency is to drive
prostitution, and whatever disease adheres to it, from the skin
of the streets, inwards into homes, and upon the vital parts
of the community. The vast Working Classes will not have
it, because their daughters are those in the main who will
first be invaded by the inspreading of the surgeons and their
poxes. Common Sense will not have it, because common
sense seeks cure and not suppression; and common hope,
which is the sister of common sense, knows that cure is pos
sible ; and that necessity of fornication is a chimera which
has no existence, but is merely the horrible shadow pro
jected before the eyes of a chartered and decayed society,
and cleared at once from the heart and brain of a loving,
an ennobled and a progressive society. The statesmen of
these advancing times will not have it, because it has
nothing to do with statecraft; and because they will see
that they are only general managers for the nation, and that
if in the interest of special people they were to undertake
a special stamping out of evils ; a special hospitalling of all
broken and ruined people, the ground would be cumbered
with a Bedlam-city of hospitals, medical, legal, clerical,
*
commercial, legislative, royal, and the only two classes left,
* Dr. Dalrymple, M.P., is moving in this direction, and asks the State to
erect pillars which will hold all drunkards upright, and Mr. Bruce, the Home
Secretary, instead of teaching the lion, member that the State will be happy
to do this as soon as any great wit shows how the State, which finds it hard
itself to be upright, can hold everybody upright—advises him “ to try his
hand at a Bill on the subject.” Mr. Bruce ought to bo moro merciful to
retired physicians.
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A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
besides statesmen, would be inspectors, and patients.
This, the logical carrying out of the Act, would be hell
realized upon earth, with the Inquisition for its portico.
And last and first, the awakened Womanhood of the
land will not have it. I dare not know, Why, in the
woman’s way, because I am not a woman ; but I do
know that they will not because they will not. Their
reasons are made of fire in such a case, and could burn
up a household parliament which is made of parchment
presently. They will not have troopers fed by govern
ment on the carcases of their sex ; on carcases stamped
with the government permit; they know all over that
state prohibition and non-prohibition are the two halves
in all licensing. They will feel with those eyes of the heart
which see and more than see, which are all senses in one
touch, that the shame days of the state are their shame
days, and that fortnight by fortnight common modesty is
being effaced from the lowest women to the highest ; and
that purity is freshly trampled every time in the slums
of the filthiest rumour. They will know by the heart
the secrets of the prison-house ; the surgeons and the
unwilling women’s bodies ; the struggle and the steel,
office and agony ; the fairest searcht the foulest. They
will hate men while they love them, till men, public and
private, leave bad womanhood unworsened. They will
hate a government which crowns the infamy of prostitu
tion with the last ignominy and wrong, of public state
ravin and state rape. They will hate the medical govern
ment dogma which lies to mothers and sisters and
affianced brides of the necessity of prostitution, and proclaimes it as a natural office of the community, young
and old ; the dogma which postpones love to lust, which
it is woman’s severest mission to correct in man. They
will quell and choke the medical assertion that their baby
boys are born whoremongers, and that some poorer mother’s
baby girls are their predestined skittles in the game of
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
15
ruin. They will believe that God is love, and that Christ
is incarnate love, and that love is the Creator, and love
is the hope, and love is the Redeemer; and they will have
nothing licensed but love which is the licenser. None of
these are dead men’s reasons; but men’s best reasons
unloved and unaccepted by women, will be poor stubble
in the days of fire which are coming, in the days of
woman which are coming, in the holy days which are
coming.
And ah ! later than last, the slow Manhood of the
country will rise upon these Acts, and their authors. The
chronic meanness of the State, which has confiscated
woman to man, which has made the huge freedom of
marriage into the gulf and abyss of her person and her
property, will begin to be avenged from the ground up
wards, and the sexes will tear up this lowest wrong with
even hands. We men in truth have not known what we
were doing. All uncorrected, unchastened, unmated, in
our public conscience, we have been cruel and greedy as
impuberous boys, and have ravaged the holdings and
trampled out the capacities of woman on the floors of long
parliaments. We have been a sour and an unmarried
country. We are awakening and ripening at last. The
scorn of women is awakening us ; the new power of women
is awakening us; the fiery justice of women is awakening
us; the angry commonweal and coming democracy of
women is awakening us; and we are going to help our
mothers and wives and all our sisters out of the State
chains of unrighteous laws and customs. Out of sex
legislation, and sex-oppression. Out of one morality for
women, and another for men. Out of the household
political Mahometanism that women to the State have no
separate souls. Out of the claws of chartered surgery.
Out of homes that are prisons, and out of brothels that
are graves.
It is now no digression to see that the questions raised by
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A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
these two seemingly small acts of parliament directly move
the issue of Woman’s Universal Suffrage. All women have
the offices, of protecting their babes, and of caring for their
own sex to whatever deep depths its unfortunates may
have fallen. The public will of woman is summoned forth
by God’s providence when she is publicly assailed in her
womanhood and her home. That which is coming to
answer the call, is not female household suffrage, for that is
another enchanter and chaunter of property, but true univer
sal suffrage, which is the Word of all Souls ■ truly, I will
say, the voice of God more and more audible in progressive
nations. And these Acts of Parliament, if women will
but speedily stamp them out, will be the beginning of the
dav when not woman’s dishonours, but her soul of honour
will be public; when the State in its coldest departments
will begin to know the beating of her heart.
I have now told you faintly some of the reasons why
this Act shall not be extended, and who those are that will
not have it; and I find on carefully looking round that,
judging by the past, the only things that will have it, if
they can, arc the church and the state, including chartered
physic.
So much then for the extension of the Act. But now I
will say further that the present Army Act will not be kept
on the statute book. In the first place, the army which is
said to necessitate it, must go, and give place to an army
which docs not require an episcopacy of prostitution, or to
no.army at all. We are in profound peace, are giving up the
defence of our colonies from home, and there is no disaffec
tion within our borders which a larger commonwealth-heart
would not appease. Gibraltar, and Malta, and Aden, and
the islands of the sea, ought to belong to themselves first,
and next, to the whole world. Excepting for India, where
a humane system of mounted police in plain clothes may
protect the real interests of the country and our own plant
of railway and other property there, we have no need of a
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
17
standing army. We have less need of an army than the
United States has. But as for the graduation of dis
banding, and putting all the remaining men into plain
policemen’s clothes—the symbols of peacekeeping, whereas
the red coats are the symbols of the glories—of slaughter
of males, and seduction of females—as for the disbanding,
the unmarried men, after the horrid treatment they have
survived, should be paid off handsomely, and sent if they
wish it to Canada, or in the “ flying squadron ” to any
other part of the world ; and the married ones, as a
nucleus to national volunteers, should receive a large incre
ment of pay ; <£300 a-year income will be little enough, and
a farm apiece on the crown lands, or in the ducal deso
lations of Argyleshire and Sutherlandshire; for there is no
more reason why an army should be a cheap thing, than
why a Queen should be cheap, or why an Archbishop of
Canterbury should be cheap, or why a Marquis of West
minster should be cheap. This simple plan will render the
Contagious Act unnecessary.
I object, then, to the present Contagious Act, because it
would bolster up our present bestial system —our Sodom
*
* See what the Government and the household suffragans of this country,
the bishops and clergy, and all the classes whose wealth and state are supposed
to be protected by the army, in short, all but the lower classes and the women,
are responsible for in regard to their army. Dr. Stallard says, in the Sessional
Proceedings of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science,
‘ My attention was first directed to the subject by making an attempt to
determine the most convenient number of soldiers who should be accommo
dated in one room. As to the opinion of the commanding officers, I found it
on this subject in general opposition to that of the soldiers. They advocate
large rooms containing not less than eighteen men, and they prefer those with
twenty-five. They do this on the ground of supervision being more easily
exercised, for, with but few exceptions, they are in favour of complete publicity.
There must be no cupboards, no lockers. If the soldier has any money, or
articles on which he sets store, he must keep them in his pockets since he has
nowhere else to put them; and if he keeps over, from time to time, some
portion of his midday meal, he must expose it on the shelf, where it will soon
be covered with dust and dirt from the sweepings of the floor. But as regards
the men, without exception, they prefer a room for eighteen to one for twenty,
five, a room for twelve to one for eighteen, a room for eight to one for twelve,
B
�w
18
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
and Gomorrlia system—with our poor army; because in
so far as it maintains prostitution healthy, it must make
a room for four to one for eight; and those soldiers who have been quartered
in an old prison, now used as a barrack in Dublin, testified that they were
never so comfortably lodged.
*
*
*
The first and great objection
felt by the decent soldier is the entire absence of privacy. From the time of
his enlistment to the date of his discharge there is not a moment or a place
which he can call his own in the fullest sense of the term. He washes, dresses,
eats, drinks, and sleeps in public. Let me try and represent what this publicity
really means. Of his twenty-four comrades it will be absolutely certain that
two or three will be habitual drunkards, and one or two will have been in
prison for some crime. Some commanding officers expressly order the worst
characters in the company to be quartered with the best, with the view of
reformation; indeed this is one of the great arguments used in favour of the
congregation of so many men together.
“ But, as one black sheep infects the flock, so, instead of improving, the bad
soldier often makes the others worse. Naturally, and unless modified by the
presence of a very superior non-commissioned officer, the moral standard of a
barrack-room is that of almost the worst man in it. The more men the worse
and more extensive is the mischief, and the greater is the discomfort inflicted
upon a really decent man. No doubt the presence of a good barrack-room
corporal modifies the evil; but even the power of the best is limited. He is
only a step above the rest, and his life would be unbearable if he were to be
very strict. He is obliged to wink at a great deal which it is his duty to report.
It is well known, for example, that drunkenness escapes report. A man died
of delirium tremens, at Portsmouth, who had gone to bed drunk every night for
more than twenty years, and yet that man had never been convicted, and held
a good conduct medal. There is also a great deal of behaviour which ranges
between fun and torture, of which the non-commissioned officer in charge can
take no notice.
“ An old soldier informed me that he has frequently known a recruit to go to
bed night after night in his clothes, in fear of the remarks and ridicule which
the act of undressing would certainly give rise to. And the public use of that
military institution called the urine tub, is the moment chosen for remarks and
practical jokes of the most disgusting kind.
“ Woe be to the recruit who has any personal defect or peculiarity, and,
above all, to one who has any religious feeling. The attempt to read his bible,
or say his prayers, will be the signal for an onslaught of bread crusts and
slippers. True, it may be, and doubtless is, that the man who firmly persists
in the performance of his religious exercises eventually is let alone, nay, is even
respected by his comrades ; but how few possess this moral courage, and how
many sink before the shafts of ridicule. Moreover, let the man fail to maintain
his own standard for a single moment, and the last discomfort will be greater
than the first, and his difficulties in maintaining his position will be im
measurably increased. And, whilst speaking of the religious life, I have found
that one of the greatest annoyances arising from the publicity of barrack life
is difference of belief. Episcopalians, Methodists, Independents, Baptists,
Roman Calholics, are mixed up together, and with men who scoff at them all.
A Roman Catholic has no opportunity of performing his religious exercises, and
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
19
into shamelessness hard as steel the womanhoods of its
*
base episcopate; and in so far as it scares prostitution
away, it must drive the foul soldiery in upon our houses;
because the fortnightly ripping open of the moral sore and
sewer is an outrage upon the community, and a day of
sour shame and filthy jeering to the thoughtless crowd;
because it embrutes the sacred medical office, and pays it
for pretending to give away the power of sin and wicked
ness ; and because it is the germ of a system which would
debauch and infect the general public. I object to it also
because it sullies the Government of the country with the
responsibility of finding clean prostitutes for the army, and
spends governmental action upon the diseases of one vice,
which itself is but a disease of the hopelessness and drunk
enness which the present Government army system perwhen in a barrack-room with Protestants his position is often most uncomfortable.
A sergeant informed me that, night after night, there used to be controversies
in his room, lasting through half the night, and terminating, not unfrequently,
in blows. He said officers had no conception of the religious quarrels which
ensued, since they were hushed in a moment if an officer came in.
“ Nor is it possible to get a good night’s rest. Out of so many men some
are sure to be noisy and sleepless; and scarcely is the room quiet when some
drunken or noisy person comes in from leave, disturbing all the sleepers. It
not unfrequently happens also, that some one is ill, either from his own fault or
otherwise, and the atmosphere is rendered unbearable by the occurrences
which unavoidably take place. Nor is the urine tub, which appears to be
considered as the only practicable institution of this nature, conducive to the
comfort of the men. If placed inside the room it is most offensive, and is
occasionally used for most improper and disgusting purposes, and if outside the
door, although less objectionable, it‘is often knocked over by the men who
enter in the dark, and the use of it involves the disturbance of all the sleepers
by the opening and shutting of the door. Another objection to a large barrack
room is the impossibility of warming all alike. One fire is quite insufficient for
twenty-five men. Those placed near it are too hot, those at a distance too
cold. This difficulty can only be overcome economically by having a com
bination of fires and hot water pipes; the fires being central, so that the
soldiers may sit around them.”
* Our lady holds that periodical examination by surgeons does not deaden
but increases honest shame; that the violet, modesty, might even root it
were good at least, she thinks, if it did root—on the hot cinder-hills of lust
with the wind of publicity blowing over them. Who else in the world thinks
this ? Or how could such lack of sympathetic knowledge in a woman exist
exoept by royal charter.
�20
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
petuates in the land and in the regiment. I object to it
in the interest of the bad women, whose persons are
violated fortnightly by State interference, and who are
unjustly selected as the mark for medical legislation, while
the corresponding class, the male whores, whose barracks
are the obverse brothels, are left free to emit infection.
And I recall finally that all this comes of taking not the
opinion of “ experts,” but their domination, and of allowing
them to build place, and power, and pelf, where the most
sacred liberties have dwelt, and where the governing will
of the country, founded on the common sense of plain
men, has been hitherto exercised in the righteousness of a
large impartiality.
Only one condition should justify these acts of a despair
ing and witless legislature: the universal female and male
suffrage of the towns and the large surrounding districts
concerned; a majority of 99 hundredths of the population en
dorsing the inspection under much restriction, which would
leave the prostitute population alone against the commu
nity. And even then the commune should give them the
option of handsomely assisted emigration to some of those
new lands where women are wanted. That would have
some fairness in it. And the vote universal which settles
this, including the prostitute vote, should be taken every
three months, that the working of the base, unhoping, un
curing system might be watched and worried continually ;
and that no settlement and medical plant might grow out
of such a polluted pot. And such examination, for sack
cloths’ sake and ashes’ sake,—for we are all “ fallen,” and
the state and the church are prostitute here in their inward
minds more than the street-walker,—should be transacted
in the cathedral or principal church of the district, except in
cases where the whole of its clergy have petitioned govern
ment weekly for the repeal of the act; and in case of such
petitioning, the examination should be done in the officers’
head quarters ; if in London, in Westminster Abbey, in the
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
21
Houses of Parliament, or the Horse Guards; and the
state surgeons should moreover be attended, for indignant
human nature’s sake, by a stout Vigilance Committee of
self sacrificing women, of pure martyr women, chosen by
universal female vote; and this stout Vigilance Committee
should assess drumhead damages for any injury done
by steel or forcings on the examined bodies. Woman
will so be some safeguard to woman. But as at present
administered, the Act is an unrestricted and condoned
male handling by a small household hard-handed minority,
who have no charter but force, of the secret woes of
human nature, selected promiscuously from many woes;
and the sense of the women of the country upon it is
utterly ignored and despised. I am not a jurist, but I
know by heart that there are rights of the person which
precede and tower over the church and the state ; and
that the parliament which breaks them, is out of all law,
and openly invokes on both sides might against right; and
in so far, proclaims the dissolution of society.
Passing now from the patronage which chartered me
dicine gives to one virus, and the public war which it
moves the State to wage upon another virus, I arraign
its mental sanity in the case of the Welsh Fasting Girl.
Here it undertakes by self elected dictatorship to lay
down the final laws of physiology and psychology; to fix
what is possible, and what impossible, in the period of
abstinence from food ; and to rule the press and the people
by its own sick experiences. It undertakes to immure
the people of these islands in its own narrow materialism.
On this I shall not dwell now, having already shewn in
my brother’s pamphlet on the subject, that old physic has
*
no special lights here, and has very special prejudices and
limitations; and is the worst judge of al!, while common
* The Cases of the Welsh Fasting Girl and her Father, by W. M. Wilkinson ;
with Supplementary Remarks, by J. J. Garth Wilkinson. J. Burns, 15
Southampton Row, 1870.
�22
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
experience interpreted by open common sense is the best.
But I will notice, that this arrogance of chartered medi
cine has been displayed on various other subjects ever since
I entered the profession. When Mesmerism came up,
and nobody knew anything about it, and a few wished to
learn something by experiment, chartered physic appeared
upon every mesmeric scene, and attempted by violence to
foreclose the experiments. It swooped with a royal patent
swoop down upon the people who were investigating;
it knew that the whole exhibition was humbug and im
posture ; and it comported itself with an enormity of con
ceited ignorance such as no one can command or contain
unless he has a permanent conceit pipe running into
him directly from a royal college. And yet, reader, the
subject was new: these little men knew nothing about it
but that they hated it; and they hated it because it en
larged the domain of physiology and psychology beyond
their possession; and their possession was narrow, their
heart was narrow, and their mind was narrow, and their
spirit was not, because their calling was no creation of
God, but a manufacture of state colleges.
*
Oh ! but they ought to pray to be drawn up from this
* On the theoretical side, of science and free thought, Lord Bacon saw
clearly the dwarfing of mankind produced by colleges and academic institutions.
I do not know whether his great perceptive observation was ever directed to
the practical working of the same, or to the public conceit and attempted
despotism which the dwarfs would inevitably seek to exercise over peoples in
the last and expiring days of institutional rule. But what Lord Bacon says is
well worth reading still :—“ And he thought this, that in the customs and
institutes of Academies, Colleges, and similar bodies of men, which are designed
for the assemblage and co-operation of the learned, all the elements are found
which are adverse to the ulterior progress of the sciences. For in the main,
the resort is first professorial, and next for honour and reward. The lectures
and exercises are so managed, that it is not easy for anything different from
routine to get into anybody’s mind. And if it happens to any to use liberty of
enquiry and of judgment, he will at once feel himself dwelling in a mighty
solitude.
*
*
*
In the arts and sciences, as in the shafts of metal
mines, all parts should resound with new works and advancing pickaxes.
And in right reason this is so. But in life it has seemed to him, that the polity
and administration of learning which are in vogue, press and imprison most
cruelly the fertility and development of the sciences.”— Coaitata et Visa.
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
23
poisonous well of establishment and patronage, at the
bottom of which, not for truth, they are lying.
And yet, as is always the case with the eaters and
drinkers of evil, they want more of it. They are now
moving Sir John Gray and Mr. Graves to pass a bill to
“ establish one uniform and practical test of efficiency for
all medical practitioners in the United Kingdom,” in order
that “ patients may be enabled readily to distinguish
between qualified and unqualified practitioners.” Uniform
and practical! The pope’s triple hat and Garibaldi’s red
shirt worn by one sentence; high priests and pharisees,
and Lord Christ, at one table. Procrustes cut off heads
and feet, certainly for uniformity, but he did not pretend
to increase either the practicality, or efficiency of his
graduates; or to make their qualifications more dis
tinguishable by an ignorant public. His simple object was
to make men of all sizes fit his bed. The game of life
and death, the grappling with diseases, the cheering of
lengthened sickness, the calm confronting of pestilence,
the promulgation of sanitary rules to sweeten homes and
villages and towns, the private and the public healing,
seem to me to depend all upon the love and life and spirit
and fearless mind of the healers: the education, at this
stage of the world’s books and scientific accomplishments,
is a thing that can be got anywhere; provided you do
not kill the life, by fixing and instituting and endowing
and chartering and deadening the education ; or to sum
up all, by legislating it uniform.
*
And the public has no
difficulty excepting what one uniform diploma and brass
* The following sentences are by one of the greatest men of modern science:
“ Why do candid physicians every now and then astonish casual hearers by a
hint of the very small progress which therapeutics have made since the days of
Calen ? Why does poor little Medicine, stunted and wizened, cast so wistful
an eye at the strong limbs and bouncing proportions of cousin Chemistry ?
Simply because the unhappy child has been brought up on little but main
tenance of truth, while her relative, lucky in not being committed to the care
of royal colleges, has been brought up on progress of science. Go for progress,
and let truth maintain herself.”
�24
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
plate creates and throws in its way, in discerning between
qualified and unqualified practitioners : every neighbour
hood knows its own men; but then the real qualification
lies in the fact that a medical man known otherwise as a
worthy citizen, cures many people, and can probably cure
me, and certainly will if he can : there is no other qualified
practitioner than this; the school gives the schooling, and
certificates the school-success; but the man’s townsmen
give him the seal of qualification.
The struggle for this uniformity where all diversity
would be more to the purpose, because more living, is
another step in the medical plant for power; another
stride into the state ; and another cogent reason for the
dischartering of all medical corporations. If the uni
formity is gained, the people under its regiments will
have a stupider set of men to doctor them for another
quarter of a generation.
I shall now notice one or two reasons alleged in favour
of medical protection, which are not perhaps touched upon
in the following pages. One is, that medical men are so
received in families, are so deeply entrusted, and so re
sponsible, that unless they are good by Act of Parliament
they cannot be up to the mark of their high calling. This
I confess had not occurred to me until I read it in The
Times of last Saturday (art. Medical Education). It would
be a reason for incorporating under the state all catholic
priests, dissenting Ministers, and in general everybody
who has any work of honesty to do for other people. But
the endowment and establishment of everybody is not
likely to be carried in these ways. The other reason was,
that sanitary work, belonging to the public sphere of
action, and comprising towns and districts in its design,
can be carried on only by public medical officers, who can
come only out of royal colleges, which can be created only
by the State. In the first place, this department belongs
more properly to surveyors and engineers; though the
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
25
occasion of it may now and then be suggested by medical
men. But any one with a nose and eyes can generally
tell whether the house-drains, and the drainage of the
neighbourhood are efficient; and where the outward
senses are not enough, other experts, chemists, and not
practising medical men, are usually called in.
In all
general sanitary improvements, engineering talent em
ployed by the municipality through a Board of Works,
is the agent; and medical opinion is for the most part
nothing in regard to such large and obvious uses. It is
but one little nose, and often not the keenest or most
interested nose, among tens of thousands of noses.
These reasons for medical protection are therefore no
reasons, but the animus which they show in the direction
of getting into official place and power by means of fresh
and more centralized chartering, is again another reason for
severing medicine from the State.
If old physic gained nothing from the change but
good manners, the benefit to itself would be great. At
present, all who dissent from it are quacks and impostors;
or as one good man said of homoeopaths, either fools or
knaves. All who die away from it are victims ; and those
who die (the “ peculiar people ”) refusing medical advice,
lay-expectants, we may call them, must be opened after
death by a regular practitioner, who has to decide if they
would have died had they had proper attention and
medicine from old physic.
One would have thought that
the revelations of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, of out
patients treated each in a consultation of 35 seconds, and
then drugged out of one of six bottles, would have kept
down the crest of pride and self applause from the
medical head centres. That such blatant scandals have
not had any effect of the kind, is a proof that the pride
lies deeper than, and out of, the very worthy men who are
so disfigured by it: and I beg to suggest again and again,
that their unhappy inflation, and proved public inefficacity,
�26
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
are due to their royal laurels, which poison their humane
minds, while they seem to decorate their worldly persons.
The present Government, like its predecessors, is not
distinguished for consistency of legislation. Its chieftain,
the most able actuary and accountant mind for assessing
and winding up the failing estates of our societies, that we
have had for centuries ; who knows well how many shillings
in the pound a bankrupt church can pay to its creditors ;
and who apparently can wind up anything, and bring out
comfortable figures ; that great appraising mind has leisure
to write Ecce Homo, Autobiography, and Juventus Mundi,
in addition to the particulars of the numerous State
properties which he is bringing to the hammer. I wish he
would rather spend his leisure in codifying in some manner
the various subjects which all belong under the class of
freedom, free trade, and free competition. I wish he would
hold councils to look all round, and see how many things
the Government can let alone with clearance to itself, and
with advantage to the public. He might draw up for
the guidance of Parliament a schedule of subjects with
which his Government will not meddle, and the control of
which he expressly repudiates. For it is a disgrace to the
mind of a party that they should be increasing freedom of
competition in some departments, and increasing bureau
cracy in others; that they should stand upon the platform
of civil and religious liberty with one foot, and upon that
of medical despotism with the other: that they should
foster all denominations in civil education, and lend their
aid to extinguish all but one denomination in medical
education : that they should leave the bread of the body
free, and let the nation draw upon the fields and granaries
of the whole world for it; and yet confine the growth and
supply of the bread of healing to the sterile field of one
small artificial corporation, where it might be brought
from all ranks and classes, from all men and women, and
the manifold famines of now incurable things be fed into
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
27
health by it. If our great appraiser does not move in this
direction, I shall be forced to think that he has ulterior
objects ; that he is about thoroughly to endow and establish
poor old physic, in order to purchase, I will not say plunder
it at last; and that when it is bureaucratized from top to
bottom, and all colleges are compact as jails, with one big
donjon over all, and the appraiser in the very midst,—
Mark that, old physic ! the appraiser in the midst!—and
the whole profession rigidly fixed in place and power, and
planted like iron upon towns and villages and rustic disstricts, just when that whole profession says, I am all
official and everlasting now, he will step up and say:
“ Gentlemen, you are sold; the State buys you out: you
“ can stay where you are if you like, by paying such or
“ such a per centage, or by purchasing the goodwill of
“ your own practice,—my practice, I mean,—for so many
“ years; but failing this, as your position is an official one,
“ I shall at once appoint your successor, who will comply
“ with ray conditions. In the eye of the State, and in the
“ millennium of Sir John Gray’s uniformity, one medical
“ man is as good as another: they all come from the State
“ brass plate office ; and the public will be satisfied with
“ any change which includes no variety; for I shall be
“ able to remit public taxation out of the annual millions
“ which accrue from my general practice.” Depend upon
it the great appraiser is going to say this, and Sir John
Gray is preparing it: and other callings and professions
may expect to be sold in their turn. This is indeed a
reason why old physic should throw Sir John Gray over
board as soon as ever they can get a cork jacket on him ;
and pray to be dischartered, disendowed, disestablished,
disroyalized, and to have anything on earth done with
them which will take away the great appraiser’s pretext
for buying them at his own probably very low valuation.
The reader will notice that over and over again I have
returned to the assertion that compulsory bills would not
�28
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
have come from Parliament unless privileged medical cor
porations had possessed it. This by no means implies that
the body of the profession is in favour of these Acts : the
crowned head of the profession, perverted by alliance with
the State, acts without caring about the body, and per
suades the State to follow it. The opposite counsels to
these, lie in the absorption of medical sense in common
sense, thereby raising both into powers serviceable to the
community ; not in the calling in of heterodox instead of
orthodox physicians, for then still you would be in the
hands of specialists, and often of very exacting and narrow
specialists, but in the calling in of the nation, which at
present cannot get near to its life, because all the pro
fessionals and experts have closed round that life, and
monopolized it. “ Come let us reason together,” is the
voice of justice on both sides in all propositions affect
ing the people. Whatever clique hinders this, must be
cast out. But this “ reasoning together ” means universal
suffrage, for what else can it mean ? We are living in
great problems of freedom and compulsion ; and we are
bound to reconcile between those opposite ends. Their
meeting point lies in the coming up of the national free
will, which can compel a free nation, as a man’s free will
compels a man, though nothing less than this self com
pulsion can rightfully compel it. The voice of that national
free will is mere universal suffrage. We have a right to
anticipate what the verdict and execution of that suffrage
would be upon these Compulsory Acts ; we know that
they could not subsist one day in any municipality under
that suffrage; we know that that suffrage would not hold
any parley as the Government has done, with these schemes
of chartered physic. As I said before, the absorption of
all professionals into the general voice, and the issue of
measures from none but the chieftains of that voice, are
the only solvent of the case.
My present word is done, though I hope to come forth
�A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
29
again soon on the greater subject of The Commonwealth and
the Godwealth. For thirty years I have been actively con
vinced of the inestimable benefits to be derived from
medical freedom. The results of all legislation towards
freedom during that time have deepened my conviction.
Many years ago I translated Swedenborg’s Animal King
dom, a work in which a free layman demonstrated by light
and life that the psychology and physiology of the body of
man are opened up by God to free thought where they are
closed against professional thought. Next I wrote a tract
on the subject of Unlicensed Medicine After that, a little
work called The Ministry of Health. And lastly, the pages
which now succeed under the special name of Medical
Freedom. As I have said at the beginning of these
remarks, the Medical Freedom was designed to show that
medicine would gain everything by being moveable in
itself, and distant from the State ; by being independent,
and internally various and competitive: in short that
medicine ought to stand clear of Government. Otherwise,
uniformity, livery, dwarfing, arrogance, and contempt of
the laws and light of nature and revelation; in short, social
and scientific materialism. And now I have completed
the globe of fact, and given two hemispheres to this free
dom, in demonstrating that the State and the Government
ought to be quite free from and independent of medicine.
Otherwise the legislative and executive will both be played
upon by the perpetual opinions of “experts;” the rule of
philosophers and scientific men will be forced upon the
bodies of Englishmen ; and the Government will be hated
and despised for essaying to carry out greedy theories and
experiments upon the whole people; and for creating an
official army of apothecaries to superintend the costly vio
lation. The latter half of the proof has been in part
practically furnished by the two heinous Acts of Parlia
ment, the Compulsory Vaccination Act, and the Compulsory
Prostitutes Examination Act; two pestilent diseases in the
�30
A FREE STATE AND FREE MEDICINE.
State which it owes to its unloyal yokefellow, chartered
physic.
I owe it now to all my medical brothers and sisters to
say, that though I have spoken hardly of their corporations
as they at present stand, I desire to speak and think
reverently and lovingly of themselves. For I am one of
them, on board their own boat. I am an old medical
practitioner, forty years at the work; I delight in the
calling, and honour it; and hope to die in the life giving
harness of it. And especially do I desire to see us all more
free and open in our hearts and minds; less fearful and
less unbelieving ; looking less to the past, than to God and
the future ; and praying for His inspirations, while we scan
*
all nature and art and books for His instructions. And I
have learnt very deeply from no man, that the way to
advance to all this is by going out of royal swaddling
clothes, and under heaven winning for ourselves freedom
of medicine in the greater freedom of our country.
�II.
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
It is my intention from time to time to offer cases with
remarks, as an easy means of bringing new treatment
and occasional thoughts before the public.
The time is to come when general medical education
will surround my profession so closely, that its narrow
ness and exclusiveness, and its cliques, will give way
under the pressure of the public common sense; and no
authority will be left but the authority of facts. I
have a great hope in me to hasten that desirable time.
For it is evident that the simpler medical truth can
become—by medical truth understand truth in practice,
the only test of which is, success in practice—the more
must enlightened public criticism come upon the doctors,
and give them their qualification in every separate case. A
man’s or a woman’s repute will be his or her sole
authorization to practice. For instance, in the treatment
of small-pox as I have now made it public, any mother
or grandmother may demand the remedies which ensure
the benefits recorded in my book, and if the doctor is not
acquainted wth them, and will not employ them when
pointed out, then such mother or grandmother can take
away his diploma in the case, and either confer it upon
herself, or provisionally upon any other person whom she
may appoint to conduct the precious interests of the family
health. There can be no wise authority beyond her, or
above her.
For competition will be the soul of success here, as it is in
�32
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
every other case. Given any field of nature or experience
to be explored, and all the faculties of man are wanted
for it; all the chances of birth are wanted for it; all the
gifts of God are wanted for it; all the developments of time
are wanted for it; all the freedom of society is wanted for
it; all absence of fear of man, and fear for position, is
wanted for it; all good genius and good ambition is wanted
for it; in short, numberless men are wanted, each mind of
them free, and original, and inspired, as if there was
nobody else in the world; yet each instructed in his lower
walks by the labours of the rest; and all animated by a
common faith in the inevitable co-operation of good with
good, and the inevitable consentaneousness of knowledge
with knowledge, though independence and freedom be
the only law and bond for each.
Free societies, free institutions will necessarily arise out
of this new medical humanity: order most punctilious and
most exacting will arise; but freedom will be the king upon
its throne.
But now we see the reverse of this, and health contracted
and eclipsed in the prisons of medical establishment.
The maintenance of this present condition lies in the
Protection of Physic by the State. Continue this, and an
external and well-nigh irresistible aid is afforded to the
existing general condition of medical art and science, as
against anything which would considerably enlarge it; still
more, which would revolutionize it ever so benignly; and,
most of all, against anything which tends even remotely to de
professionalize it, publicize it, and humanize it. Continue this,
and an art and science which depend upon the natural truths
of God, the capacities of nature, and the genius of mankind,
and which should be nourished most intimately of all on the
One Exemplar of Revelation, and the fact of Redemption—
that art and science are commanded to eat the dry crusts of
Parliament, instead of the manna of heaven and the bread
of the earth; and lawyers and the magistracy stand with a
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
33
ferule of penalties to rap the knuckles and break the explor
ing fingers of discoverers who dare to discover out of
accord with colleges, or who dare to discover at all if they
are not cloister-vowed, and cloister-bred. Out upon such
public insanity. Any other art, similarly narrowed, would
be similarly strangled. Engineering or chemistry, in their
existing condition in April, 1864, protected—or what is
the same thing—arrested by the State, would stiffen into
Chinese imitation, and their soul, which is invention,
would be lost; their worldly motive, which is ambition,
unbounded by other men’s power, would be lost; and their
huge sense of freedom, in which they live and move and
have their being, would be exchanged for the degrading
consciousness of the powdered head and well-fitted livery of
the kitchen of the State.
But medicine must be emancipated, and as the public,
directed by God, will have to do the work, I address my
medical life and thought to the public; and not specially
to the people in bonds.
Yet would I willingly calm the apprehensions of all
professional brethren.
1. Not a college, sect, or diploma will perish when
physic is free from State patronage and protection; that
is to say, unless public bodies choose to disband themselves.
The only power they will lose will be the power of
harming other bodies, or other people not of their way
of thinking. They will gain the power of emulating in
good works and open-mindedness all the useful people
whom they have called quacks, and imposters, and un
qualified practitioners, and who have been the moving
wheels of practice in all ages of the world. They will
gain the humanity of learning from the dog, when he
cures himself with grass, without practising the now
ordinary ingratitude and inhumanity of kicking the dog
that is their teacher.
They will sympathizingly learn
from the North American Indian, and the poor Hindoo,
c
�34
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
the traditional healing virtues they have known since the
earliest ages; and their own old pharmacopeias will be
enriched, not then without acknowledgment, with the
sweet beginnings of simplicity, of nature, and of health.
Nay, the certainty is, that the existing colleges, owing
to the decrepitude of the public mind, always induced
by being protected, will be too enduring.
2. In the new time coming, when Parliament will no
longer prescribe a medical profession, and force the
British people to take the dose, the public will be more
apt than they are now to send for regular and collegesanctioned practitioners; provided the colleges give them
selves no airs, but compete fairly in the medical race.
For the colleges have the start and can enter the
course with many chances of success; provided, again, they
can take to their hearts the new fact of freedom, and love it
as they ought.
At all events we may say it will be their own fault if
they are not the chief ministers at the public bedside.
This, however, will again depend upon the progress of
the art of healing; and institutionally upon other colleges
quite diverse from themselves coming upon the scene, to
enrich medicine, enflame competition and emulation, and
extend the boundaries of that large kind feeling which alone
can melt away professional jealously, and which is the only
climate in which all that is liberal and humane can live.
But would I commit the lives of the community to the
possible intervention of uneducated men ? That, I answer,
is the very thing which has taken place at present, and
which I would invoke freedom to help me to avoid. The
education of the schools cannot fit men for curing the
diseases of their fellows; it is only one way of launching
them towards professional, but not necessarily, healing
life. A man of no Latin, no anatomy, no physiology, is
every now and then a good physician, though he sits on the
lowest forms of society. He is educated for that use,
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
85
though he cannot write his own name. By freedom, bring
him into rapport with the light of learning, if you can; but
at all events kill not the Divine power which is in him of
doing good, because he is not educated up to your bench.
Perhaps you are confounding education, which is the
accepted art of making gentlemen, with that grander
education, or leading forth, which every man can have,
and which consists in giving him freedom and a career,
that his orginal gifts may be led forth by their own way and
his own way, into each one’s promised land of a useful and
associated life. To confound these two educations were a
mistake; for the great physician, look you, may come in a
beggar’s guise. There are no uneducated men save the
men that cannot do their life-work. Their success in that
gives them their diploma of knowledge every day. And
no college can take it away from them. And none ought
to have the power of obscuring it, by insisting that it shall
be pasted over with an artificial document of State paper.
Want of skill and want of care in medical practice
amount to so much unjustified death per annum; but
who supposes that state protection of physic can in
crease the amount of skill in the medical community ? The
State, it is true, can exact from everyone, that he or
she shall pass through a curriculum of preparatory studies
and hospital attendance, to fit him to enter upon practice.
But of the studies, many may be useless, except as
accomplishments. From the studies, many useful ones
may be left out, owing to the bigotry of the elders. The
diploma may be sought as the shield of protection to the
doctor rather than as the shield of health to the patient.
Numerous men naturally qualified for medicine, born
doctors, may be, and are, shut out from their life-work,
by the expense which confines the practice of physic to
the abler classes. All the State licentiates leaning upon
their diplomas, are apt from the very security of their
position to be mastered by a conceit in which natural
�36
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
skill must languish. To be built up against freedom, to
be privileged, is to be built up against nature ; and gifts
of God, which in this case are given first in the heart,
will be small where the receivers of them deny the exer
cise of them to their fellows. To be inhumane to your
brother man, to be chartered against him, is a bad pre
paration for ministering to the sick, or the departing.
The root and basis of medicine is the love of healing in
the universal heart and mind; the stem of it is the in
stinctive perception and light which is born to penetrate
into health and disease; the branches, and the twigs and
the leaves of it are the specialities of perceptions from the
nature and the spirit of mankind; which become special
in the course of experience; the love of healing reigning
and animating in every one of them. Mere experience in
its widest range is the soil the tree grows in, and the
climate in which it lives. You may garden, you may deepen,
you may purify and enrich this experience as you like; but
the tree grows through all the world, and sciences, and
societies, and states have nothing to do but first not to
define it, not to hinder it; and second, to help it if they
can.
If it wants pruning, the force of public opinion
and public criticism, and the pressure of public safety,
are the only instruments that can lop its sacred life; and
all these will play an immeasurably greater part when
State patronage has passed away.
And now suppose you had broken your leg, and it was
badly managed by a regular doctor, a surgeon by Act of
Parliament; and that I had broken my leg, and it was
badly set by an unlicensed bonesetter; would not your
bad man, in an action at law, be far more likely to escape
from you scot free than my bad man? You know he
would; because he would be in the fortress of legality in
the first place; and because he belongs to a powerful
clique which will gather round his incapacity, and stand
up and speak for him; and unless it be a very gross case,
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
37
say they could have done no better, and that his ante
cedents are perfect. The pressure of public safety towards
each individual is therefore greatly diminished by official
izing a medical profession; thus causing them all,
army-wise, to support each other, and giving them official
irresponsibility toward the suffering and the sick. And
if you could take away bonesetters and quacks altogether,
the medical profession would be utterly uncriticised and
unamenable. We may sum up this branch of the subject
with the axiom, that the more medicine is under the
protection of the State, the less can its practice be subject
to public opinion, or be under the correction of the law.
An impression has been sedulously culivated, that
anatomy and physiology, pathology, and various other
branches of science, are the healing virtue in the world,
and that they, and written Practice of Medicine, con
stitute positive faculties in man; whereas they are mere
books, or at the best outlying experiences. Not one of
them has any direct relation, any ride of thumb, to a single
case that will hereafter occur. In every instance they
require to pass through a living medical perception to
be of any use. That perception and all that belongs
to it, is, as I have said before, a spiritual thing, and
must only be fed, but not substituted or overlaid, by
knowledge. It is an appetite for doing good and
working cures, and experience and knowledge must
feed it; and this must take place upon true social con
ditions ; that is to say, all the men who belong natu
rally to the calling, must be encouraged by the absence of
State interference, to take their places at the Board of
Healing.
For, mark you, all science and experience depend for
their cultivation upon numbers of the right men: so many
earnest men to the square mile of medical truth, and
you will have greater crops of knowledge than if only
half the number were employed. And if you take away
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
protection from this medical corn of humanity, you will
have more colleges to grow it; waste lands of many
minds, never cultivated before, sown with it; more
sciences, more extensive anatomy, physiology, pathology,
pharmacy, rising up from the new interest and curiosity
of the enfranchised medical masses; a greater closeness
of these sciences to the matter in hand; and a quantity of
non-medical minds, who have been forced by mere birth,
parentage, and genteel education, against their grain, into
the cultivation of healing, will be unable to stand the
natural rivalry of born doctors of all classes, and will
betake themselves to other callings. In the meantime,
there will not be more medical men, unless society re
quires them, but there will be a constant tendency ever
increasing, that there shall be none but truly medical men
associated with the medical wants of the people.
This flush and influx of spirit and nature into the call
ing, will greatly—nay, incalculably—alter the spirituality
and naturalness of the art and its ancillary sciences. Much
will then be able to be done by genius and instinct, which
is now only vainly attempted by the cruel senility of an
effete profession. For the matter stands thus:—Nature
and its sciences must be cultivated, according to the
present exigency and mission of the human mind ; for these
are the natural and scientific ages. Medicine must be
extended, falsely or benignly, from the pressure of the sick
upon the sound. The world of work revolving with giddy
velocity, brain and heart, and man and woman, call aloud
for central power to enable us to stand upright in the
rapid revolutions. If the medical faculty — I mean the
cohort of healers out of all men—is only one-tenth nature’s
strength, and nine-tenths noodledom from one class only,
the one-tenth must cast about savagely, and most arti
ficially, for the missing nine-tenths of their natural mind
and their natural array. Failing to combat disease on
such unequal terms, they must endeavour to generate
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
39
power, which is another name for inspiration, instinct, and
genius, out of mere sciences ; and these very sciences per
petually disappointing them they must necessarily cudgel
until there is nothing left but analysis and detail. Woe
then to the bedside when knowledge itself is dust and
ashes; and woe to nature and her feelings when the rack
and the thumbscrew are applied as the only known means
of eliciting her loving, and on any terms but love’s, impe
netrable secrets.
All this has gone on in our time and for ages past, but
now to clear understanding. If the medical calling had
been true to nature, and to human nature, in which free
dom and the order that springs from freedom are abiding
facts, the monstrosity of vivisection, of cutting up live
animals, never could have been thought to be a means to
the healing art. The great gorilla of cruelty could never
have been regarded as an ally of the Great Physician.
Perception, instinct, genius, the inspiration of Christianity,
which by making men love each other is the heart and soul
of all human arts, would have had it given to them to heal
diseases without the need of any suggestion from a torture
in which the demons must rejoice. It would have been
seen at once that to lay one knife edge upon a living
creature was to cut the supreme nerve that carries the
emotion of humanity right out from religion into the
medical mind. It would have been known instinctively
that the power of healing, coming as it should do from
Christ direct, is from that moment paralytic; that the
steady will can no longer lift it, and that the good it still
does is in momentary spasms from the lower emotions of
the man. How different from the river of power, pro
ceeding down the Divine steeps, terrace by terrace, to
humanity at large, through faculties which are essentially
humane.
And this horrible vivisection is a type of the other
distorting arts and sciences which the false cramping of
�40
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
medicine into a State-built profession is one active means
of producing.
Chemic, static, and material reasoning
have as little to do with restoration of health as physiology
founded upon the cutting up of living animals. Observe,
I do not deny that vivisection may, as other analytic
methods have done, contribute hints, in the ages while
man is still cruel to man, to practical medicine; but I
deny our right, even with chloroform to stupify animals,
to gain knowledge in this way. There are robberies and
murders in nature, and science has no more right to live
upon their spoils, than citizens have right to retire into
comfortable drawing-rooms for life upon the proceeds of
daggers and dark lanes. There are better riches for man
and science than these, and immeasurably better ways of
acquiring them. Time was when the cutting up of living
criminals did contribute to the progress of physiological
knowledge. There is no doubt of that; but even Dr.
Brown-Sequard would scarcely advocate the practice as
legitimate at the present day. And now the feelings of
every one of his cats and his crows is worth more than all
the science which their maltreatment has ever brought
into his store.
Before quitting this branch of the subject, let us notice
that the State also lends a heavy pressure to discourage
the introduction of women as medical practitioners. This
it does by chartering irresponsible public bodies, such as
the colleges of physicians and surgeons, who deny the
right of examination to women, however gifted or accom
plished they may be; and these brave women, few at
present in numbers, and with no public support, are
obliged to submit without appeal to this corporate des
potism which has grasped the keys of the door of medical
practice. Surely here, as in all other human things, the
law is freedom and experiment. If woman aspires to try
her hand in healing the sick, what is the justification of
that power which would deny her the trial? You think
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
41
she had better mind her own business, and attend to her
house and its concerns; but why then do you not mind
yours, and leave her to herself? If she has not tried the
medical life, how is it possible to know what will come of
her trial? You cannot penetrate a chemical, or a fact in
anything, by thinking; you must have experiment, which
has made all the difference between the dark ages of
knowledge and the light ages. Especially in human capa
cities you must have experiment: and without freedom,
which State patronage inevitably destroys; you cannot have
experiment. True, woman may be altogether unfit for
this work, but let her try, which is the one only way to prove
her unfitness. Do not with your State sword of ungal
lantry cut her down in her first exercises, because you
think she ought not to succeed. I do not know whether
she will succeed or not, and that is clearly no affair of
mine; but J do know that if I deny her the right to her
experiment, besides being guilty of the most cowardly
meanness and unmanliness, I am denying in the highest
instance the divinely ordained and only successful principle
of all the arts and sciences — I am crushing the very
masterpiece of experiment.
In short, medical social science reposes on the ground
of medical social experiment, just as natural science reposes
upon the ground of natural experiment.
Instead then of cutting up living animals, favour by free
dom the putting together of living humanities; favour
in this way at once the highest synthesis and the highest
experiment; and be assured that if no other good comes
from it, disburdened and leisure-gifted human nature will
become the vehicle of a spirit and a fire, of a generosity
and an insight, of a thankfulness and a penetration, of a
love and of a life, before which Isis will let drop her veil,
and the artificial difficulties which have barred and frozen
out the long lost way to the positive ages will be melted
�43
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
from before our advancing feet by the smiles of nature
herself.
Bnt besides excluding without trial one half of the
human race, and perhaps the better half, from the inspired
pursuit of healing, State interference also confines the cul
tivation and practice of medicine virtually to the middle
classes. That is to say, it ordains that the genius of the
physician is only to be found in one rank of society. It
erects a property-qualification for exercising the gifts of
God in the chief of the inspirational arts supported by the
chief of the sciences. Apply this all round, and how
absurd it grins upon us. Imagine that Parliament should
insist that no painter, sculptor, poet, or musician should be
born in the upper or the lower ranks ! What a belief
in caste, and Chinese artificiality would this imply; and
what an atheistic denial of gifts, of genius, and of the
mission of Nature’s noblemen, wherever they may be.
And yet Parliament, without intending it, virtually does
all this for the medical estate, by interfering to give privi
lege to colleges of the middle class, which thenceforth
inevitably proceed by financial arrangements, and enforced
studies, to make a man first a gentleman in accomplish
ments, and afterwards to let him be a medical man if his
gifts lie that way; and to dub him so in any case. This,
too, is against social experiment, and affronts nature in her
scientific regard. It is the great source of quacks among
the poorer classes ; the said quacks being evidently persons
with some gift for medicine, but with no means of an
education.
Emancipate medicine from State-trammels,
and poor men’s medical colleges would arise, and compete
not ignobly with the other colleges. The poor could then
be attended by educated people of their own sort, at small
expense, and the masses generally would be raised by
having their own unscorned natural professions, and a new
class of bluff honest common senses and artisan ways of
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
43
natural life and thought would be added to these noble
arts. The medical instinct and inspiration of humanity
shall stand upon their feet in the masses.
Nor, then, would medical nature be cashiered, as she
now is, of the splendid culture and chivalric honour and
insight of the upper men and women.
What Lord
Napier was to logarithms; what Lord Rosse is to astrono
mical experiments; what the Duke of Sutherland is to
rescue from fire ; what Wellington was to war; and Prince
Albert to the republicanism of the arts and sciences,
that might other lords and ladies be to practical medicine,
and the inventions which it so much needs. But make
it essentially a middle class affair, and the lower classes
cannot bring their gifts into it, and the upper classes
will not. Yet it is against all reason to suppose that
the noblemen and gentlemen of Great Britain do not
include a per-centage of medically gifted men ; and also
that the same is not true of the people. The fact that
as a rule they yield no recruits to the divine mission of
curing disease, is of itself sufficient to show that some
devouring artificiality is preying upon them; and that a
huge injustice is done to gifts for which we are heavily
responsible before God, and to our fellow men.
The
protection of medicine by the State is that artificiality
and that injustice. Remove it, and with it you begin
to remove the baneful belief—now all but universal—
that medical men can be created by culture; that real
culture can come from without, and that the nature and
gifts of the men are of second-rate importance.
Nay,
in the very act of removing it you reverse that creed,
and make the gifts primary, and set the culture in the
second place.
Will you have less culture for that?
Oh! no, infinitely more! The gifts will become then so
sacred, and the responsibility of them so exacting, that
the sharp and genial powers will raise colleges before
which the existing ones could pass no examination, but
�44
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
great and corporate though they be, would inevitably be
plucked. Where there is a will there is a way. And
the great way is natural knowledge; but the will in
its purest manifestation is only another name for the
determination of our gifts.
And now, to turn the tables, having shown the
blighting and vitiating influence of State patronage upon
medicine, there is another branch of despotism quite
of an internal kind, which deserves to be recorded and
protested against. There is the attempt to subject me
dicine, not to State law, but to scientific law; the aim,
as the phrase goes, to make it into a positive science.
The truth is, as I have stated before, that medicine
is not a science at all, although nourished and fed per
haps out of all sciences; Medicine is an Art, and an
art reposes upon a gift of God, and according to the
intensity of that gift it is called genius, and according to
its native and willing openness to the powers above it
becomes inspiration. And that art summons and em
ploys all the faculties for its furtherance; among them, all
the scientific faculties, and seeks instruction and advance
ment from them all. But because it is an unquestioning
rush of instinctive life from the man into his world and
his calling, it cannot be dominated by any rule or
principle whatever less than the love of medical good,
and subordinate^ and as a means the love of medical
truth. No doctrine or rule must ever be allowed to
invade that centre, any more than the geography of the
earth must be palmed upon the sun. If you attempt
to work it by rule, some one ambitious principle will
extinguish all the much needed others, and you will have
war first, and then inconceivable narrowness in your mind.
You will fall into sects, and at the entrance to each Mrs.
Grundy will stand doorkeeper in your soul. You will
not venture to prescribe what you know would do good,
because it is not of your self-chosen rubric; and because
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
45
your fellows will call you to account for a breach of your
bond. You will cease to look all round for means, and
will wear the blinkers of so-called principle where the
precipices of your own and your neighbour’s danger de
mand the foot of the chamois, and the eye of the eagle.
Heaven help you, you will be accoutred for blindman’s
buff when you ought to be king of the terrible Alps.
And all for what ? that you may pretend to an exactness
which nature disowns; and may enthrone the tiny frame
of material science upon the colossal ruins not only of art,
but of faith.
It cannot be done; there are no positive sciences but
those of man’s own making—the houses which he has
built, and in which therefore he can be supreme—the
rest are all fluctuating, and so full of mystery before
and behind, so meant also for usefulness and not for ab
soluteness, that careful and humble science may indeed be
a positive ship, made in excellent human docks, but
the great, and desiderated, and unattainable knowledge
is the sea itself, and God is in that sea. The bark rocks
and floats, and the further it voyages, and the more it
moves, the less likely is it to founder in the inscrutable
deep. Let it not want to become more positive than
speeding flight can make it; let it not attempt to drop
the anchor of conceit in the unfathomable places. Let it
not dare to say of any spot in the Divine ocean—This
is mine, and here I will abide !
These matters may sound abstract, but they are of
immense practical significance, and play an important
part, for good or for ill, at the bedside. For if you find
a practitioner who has a doctrine which he considers ab
solute, and who derives his art from that doctrine, two
bad consequences will follow. In the first place, he will
set an overweening value upon the science, pure and simple,
of the case he is treating : the exacting doctrine in him
will have an unnatural appetite to be fed out of that
�46
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
science; and the regard of the cure as an end will be
perpetually confused by the regard of the science as an
end.
I have felt this so strongly myself in practice,
that I have been obliged to put it down: and to tear up
in my mind all magisterial doctrines and principles, and to
rewrite them on neutral and subservient parts of myself
in a humble and ministerial capacity. By this means,
however, I hope I am attaining to a wider as well as
exacter science in the end: a science which radiates from
the conscious intellect of cures. But in the second place
the doctrinaire practitioner will be bound, or greatly
biassed,—by his own mind; by the surveillance of his
doctrinaire patients, whom he has helped to make into
pedants; and by the medical clique to which he belongs—
not to do anything which outlies the doctrine which is
his creator. Suggestions apart from that doctrine will
tend to reduce him to a chaos. What treble fear all this
implies ! What a slender exploration of the means of
nature ! What a regard to a centre of the fancy, when
sad and bleeding facts lie calling for pity, and ought to
avail to take one quite out of oneself, and to make one
gather succour from all things. Instead of this, the first
care is to practice within the doctrine, and to use no
weapon but what the armoury of the doctrine contains.
It is true you may have the highest confidence in the
doctrine, and may believe it is a universal rule, but the
universality is only a belief, and not an established fact;
and no number of human lives can make it more than
a belief; that is to say, a probable, and in the ratio of its
probability, a growing and a useful science. Neverthe
less, you have no right to limit your powers of doing
medical good to such a belief or such a science. Observe,
it is not the science but its mastership that I impugn.
And I do impugn it, because it limits you with no com
pensation ; and because in a vast number of serious cases
it does not succeed; and because where it does succeed,
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
47
you have ever a duty to demand a greater success, in
greater rapidity and perfectness of cure. But here again,
your masterful doctrine tells you that when you have
served it faithfully you have done enough.
It will easily be seen that all this applies with force to
Homoeopathy, a doctrine to which I owe so much; in
which, so far as it goes, I thoroughly believe; and which,
whenever the supreme end of cure and my means of know
ledge allow, I unreservedly practice. I regard Homoeo
pathy as the grandest natural and material feeder which
has yet been laid down by the genius of a man from the
nature of things into the spiritual body of the healing
arts. Yet Homoeopathy is but a doctrine, a science, and
a rule, and I will not derive medicine from a science,
or confound it with a science; on the contrary, the science
of Homoeopathy itself is a beautiful child and derivation
of an advancing medical art. Let it occupy a central,
a solar place in the science of therapeutics by drugs.
There it can subsist. But no man can do good by ig
noring any of the wide realms which lie around it and
beneath it, and which are the domain of the collective
medical mind.
I have been allowed to discover that certain formidable
diseases, small-pox to wit, can be treated tuto, cito et
jucunde, with a safetv, rapidity, and absence of suffering
hitherto unknown, by simple external applications. In
the first place, I had a powerful desire to cure my patients
well, and a dissatisfaction with the present standard of
well, in all schools. This desire in its measure is the
natural heart of healing. Then, in the next process, I
knew that Hydrastis soothes irritated mucous surfaces,
and sometimes skin surfaces, and I thought I would try it
on the face of small-pox. The only science here involved
was an acquaintance with the drug, and a little reasoning
by analogy. I tried it, and it succeeded marvellously.
And since then I have the art of applying it correctly,
�48
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
increased by the experience or knowledge of several cases.
And I have faith and confidence in its being a future
blessing to the public; a saving of innumerable healths,
and faces, and lives.
But where is the positive science in all this ? A little
good knowledge suffices for a great deal of good practice.
It strikes me that I have been as little scientific as a
skilled blacksmith who makes a horse-shoe in a given
number of strokes. Of course he knows what he is about
with great accuracy; but that is all you can say of his
knowledge. The rest is educated instinct, and excellent
smiting. He may read about iron and heat, and the
biceps and triceps muscles of his arm, in over hours ; and
he will better his mind by it, and not hurt his strong
sinews ; but the science of his art must not intrude itself
book-wise into his forge, unless as fuel, or he will soon be
a bad professor and spoil horse’s hoofs.
Take the obverse, and suppose that I had enthroned
the Homceopathic principle above my mind, and that I
had to grapple with dreadful small pox. The exigency
then becomes, to cure with a medicine which will produce
symptoms as nearly similar as possible to those of the
disease. I know no drug which will do this except tartar
emetic in one case which I have seen. I should therefore
have had to cast about through the whole of Pharmacy
for the drug in question; to reason by analogy from small
symptoms to great ones, and perhaps I should have reasoned
wrong; and after all I might never have found what I
wanted. And when I had found it, I should have lacked
precedent for applying it externally. In the meantime,
what patients unrelieved and unsaved might be waiting
at the doors of my positive science before I could throw
them open and invite the sufferers into relief and into
health ! Perforce, I must have hardened and narrowed
and thus satisfied my heart, to let such sad waiting go on.
And at the best where would be the gain to science ?
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
49
Science is but the register of success ; and 1 should have
had no science of shortening the disease, no science of
curing the disease, no science of anything, but the worst
sort of expectancy; the science of contentment with bad
things, and the science of waiting for science. In the end,
not Homoeopathy, but the small-pox would be my king.
To obviate this I stood upright, as I have been grad
ually for some years now endeavouring to do, and regarded
Homoeopathy, and all other means and pathies whatever,
as my appointed servants, and myself as the servant of
healing. And now I had no jealousies among the servants,
because I gave no privileges to any; and I could pick
and choose from all means, regardless of the overweening
ness of science, of the sectarianism of patients, and of the
despotism of medical cliques. In short, I essayed to be
free in my art; to wait upon Heaven, and to use all
ministers and faculties in their degree of service. Feeling
the blessed power of this position, in contradistinction to
the cramp and weakness of my old one, I am in duty
bound, even against the charge of egotism, to impart it to
my fellow men.
What then, it may be asked, becomes of Homoeopathy ?
I answer that it takes its place exactly according to its
proved services, and stands upon the irremoveable foun
dation of its cures. It will be all that it ever was, the
most suggestive thing in the round of Pharmaceutical
science. Its dogmatism and its hugeness of minutise will
be cashiered, and Homoeopathy will be the stronger for
losing them. It will be girded afresh for a magnificent
servitude to the ends of healing. Its martyrs will still
prove medicines on their own bodies, but with an almost
exclusive attention to cardinal results. Its registers of
symptoms, curtailed by good sense, will be mastered by
those who court intimacy with drugs, and studied con
tinually afresh where the art of the physician requires it.
The only difference will be, that Homoeopathy will become
�50
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
enormously progressive, because it will have no authority
and no privilege, and will be obliged to subsist upon cures.
Reduced, so far as authority goes, to equality with other
medical sciences, it will become primarily ambitious of
suggesting remedies, and cease from provings which leave
out the human memory, and constitute a new matter and
faculty of absolute dust. But it will no more quarrel with
other means than the mariner’s compass quarrels with
the sextant, or the sails with the steam-engine of the ship.
Above all, mere instrument that it is, and mere instrument
that all science is, it will never go mad again, and believe
that it is the captain of the medical crew; for that captain
is the Great Physician Himself, and all His sons and
daughters in the plenary freedom of His art.
�As a record and a protest I here reprint a Letter on
Vivisection, which appeared in the Morning Star of the
20th of August, 1863. See p. 40.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “STAR.”
Sir,— From my heart, and also from my head, I thank
you for your leading article on Vivisection in to-days
paper.
I hope and trust that through the subject of
vivisection now publicly opened, and the controversy
going on, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals will become affluent enough to have special
correspondents and reporters wherever vivisection is prac
tised under medical sanction. If the horror is to be, let
us know it, and let us judge of it.
If science is to be
born from the throes of animal life, let us also be duly
horrified and agonised, and suffer with the sufferers.
I have long been of Sir Charles Bell’s opinion that
vivisection is a delusion as a means of scientific progress.
Of course its results, like any other set of facts, constitute
a science in themselves ; so do the results of murder,
and so do the results of picking pockets; an exact science,
if you like; and the earlier parts of the science will of
course be subject to correction by the later; and thus
vivisection may show, and has shown, truths and errors in
the special walk of vivisection. The science of animal
agonies, like all sciences, can be corrected, eliminated, and
completed by experiments of fresh and ever-fresh agonies.
But it has been a mistake to suppose that we were in the
path of the humane sciences — in natural physiology,
natural symtomatology, or within millions of leagues of
medicine, when with rack and thumbscrew and all torture
we were the inquisitors of the secrets of animal life.
Under such circumstances nature is inevitably a liar, and
an accomplice of the Father of Lies. I know that her,
�52
VIVISECTION.
and his, very lies are a science ; but then they are not the
science we take them for, nor the science we want. They
are not mind-expanding, heart-softening, or health-con
ferring science.
Vivisectional anatomy has contributed to medicine—
meaning by medicine the healing of diseases—virtually
nothing, but false paths and wrong roads.
Morbid
anatomy has contributed marvellously little. Anatomy
has done far less than is supposed, though it keeps the
eyes of the physician’s imagination open, and enables him
to tally conditions and symptoms somewhat with parts and
organic structures. If the internal parts of the human
frame were a closed page to-morrow, so to remain for the
next half-century, and if the symptoms and results of
disease, and what will mitigate and cure them, were the
only permissible field of experiment, the art of healing
would lose nothing by ceasing to hold intercourse with the
sciences of structure and function—at all events, for a
time.
For example, I assert that the whole science of tubercle
is trivial and valueless in its results upon the curing of
consumption ; and equally inefficient in showing the cause
of consumption ; and that cod liver oil and general régime,
which have no logical or real connection with the morbid
anatomy of consumption, are the present important me
dical agencies for the treatment of that condition. And I
assert that the whole science of the vivisectional and
morbid anatomy of diabetes ; the artificial production of
it by lesions of the nervous system ; the conditions of it in
the liver, the lungs, and the kidneys, have nothing to do
with its cure, and throw no light upon its cause ; and that
the fact that in some instances it can be cured by the
Hydrastis Canadensis, the Leptandria, and Myrica cerifera,
has never yet been pointed to by any scalpel ; and is
likely to be resisted by the men of the scalpel longer than
by many others. What has the grand experience that a
�VIVISECTION.
53
certain herb or drug will cure a disease, to do with a
knowledge of the particular wreck that that disease
has left in the organisation after death?
Pathological
anatomy, except in surgical cases, never suggests cure.
Now then, sir, let us take stock in this great assize of
humanity and the healing art versus the cutting up of
live animals. Let us have tabulated statements of the
discoveries and results, and of the gain to man, which have
accrued from the introduction of vivisection. The great
facts, the benign arts that have been drawn out of the
intestine agonies of animals, can be easily stated in lines,
and columns of lines, if they exist. Let us have them.
We have had vivisection enough. Whole menageries have
been kept here and in Paris, and all over Europe, to have
their brains sliced and their bodies mangled. It has gone
on for hours a day, and year after year. What is the
stock in hand of results to humanity, to healing, or even
to permissible science?
For, good doctors, there are
sciences, and you will find it out, that are not permissible.
It would not be permissible to suspend a man or a woman
by a hook, to know ever so exactly how they would
writhe; no, not even if you were a painter.
And
therefore, I use the word, “ permissible ” science.
And I
say, that if you cannot show some mighty results, far
greater than the discovery of cod liver oil, and of the
circulation of the blood, your persistent vivisection leads
only to abominable sciences, and to the blackest of all the
black arts, the art of turning the human heart into
stone; after which the gutta serena of cruelty will soon
obliterate the poor eyesight of medicine.
Your constant reader,
J. J. Garth Wilkinson.
Brettell, Printer, 336a, Oxford street.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A free state and free medicine
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Wilkinson, James John Garth
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Place of publication: London; Glasgow
Collation: 53 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Inscription on front page: 'M.D. Conway Esq. from the Author'. James John Garth Wilkinson was a homeopathic physician, social reformer, translator and editor of Swedenborg's works. Includes a letter on vivisection by the author to the editor of the Morning Star 20th August, 1863. Includes bibliographical references. "The pages headed Medical Freedom, appended to this Essay, formed a postscript to a small work of mine on a new Treatment of Small Pox, written some years ago [1864]" [Page [3]. Printed by Brettell, London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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F. Pitman
John Thomson
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1870
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G5385
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Health
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English
Conway Tracts
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Health Services
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Smallpox
Social Medicine
Vaccination
Vivisection
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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An evening with Mr. Home fifteen years ago, and reflections thereon: a lecture at the Cavendish Rooms, London, on Sunday evening 17th July 1870
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White, William
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 14, [2], p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed by Thomas Scott, Holborn, London. Extracts from reviews of the author's work 'Emanuel Swedenborg; his Life and Writings' on unnumbered pages at the end. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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James Burns
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1870
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G5177
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Spiritualism
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Conway Tracts
Spiritualism
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REPORT
ON
A DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE
AND
PHYSICAL CULTURE
IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,
BY A COMMITTEE OF THE UNIVERSITY SENATE.
ANN ARBOR:
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY.
�monj
NOTE.
JV
At the meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of
Michigan, September 22d, 1869, the following resolution was adopted:
Resolved, That the University Senate be requested to examine and
report to the Board in regard to the propriety of establishing a Gym
nasium in connection with the University, as also in regard to the re
lation which it shall hold to the University Course, if so established ;
and to collect information and present their views respecting the entire
subject of introducing Gymnastic Exercises as a part of a course of
Education.
The following report, prepared by a committee of the University
Senate, in response to this request, is published by authority of the
Board of Regents.
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a
�REPORT.
A vast expansion of the scope of our American college
system is the characteristic educational fact of the last fifteen
years. One very important direction in which this recent
enlargement has shown itself, is towards systematic physical
culture, as a regular part of the work of a college course.
This latter movement was, indeed, to have been expected.
It would have been more than strange, if, while our colleges
were providing greater facilites for the study of the sciences,
of modern languages and literatures, of history, of the fine
arts, they had done nothing for the instruction of students
in hygiene and gymnastics. For it is impossible to advance
very far in the construction of a scheme of education without
confronting the fair claim of the body for orderly scientific
culture along with the culture of the mind. The mere state
ment of the great object of education as being the systematic
development of manhood and womanhood, really settles the
question; for there is no other spectacle of a want of sym
metry in the development of a human being so glaring and
so painful as that of a cultivated mind inhabiting a neglected,
feeble and incompetent body. And the declaration just made
is confirmed by the fact that the principal modern writers on
education—Roger Ascham, Bacon, Cowley, Milton, Locke,
Rousseau, Dr. Arnold, Horace Mann, and Herbert Spencer—
have insisted upon the equal rights and the equal needs of
the body and the mind, with reference to systematic training.
Yet, in America fifteen years ago, no contrast could have been
greater than that which was presented between theory and
practice upon the subject. All our educational authorities
sanctioned physical culture; and all our educational institu
tions neglected it.
Within the brief period which has been mentioned, how
ever, in consequence of a general awakening of American col
leges to a new and larger life, and especially in consequence of
a ripening of public opinion upon the necessity of attending to
�4
the education of the body, in several of the leading colleges a
department of physical culture has been established. Already,
gymnasiums have been erected at the following colleges:
Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Harvard, Amherst, Williams, Yale and
Princeton. Some of these gymnasiums, particularly those at
Dartmouth, Williams and Princeton, are large, imposing and
costly edifices. At all these colleges, with the exception of
Princeton, the experiment of physical culture has been tried
for a number of years. Ample time has elapsed for the results
of this experiment to appear. What these results are your
committee have sought to ascertain by corresponding with the
proper persons.
At four of the colleges just named, the experiment seems
to have been made with peculiar thoroughness; and for the
sake of simplifying the present report, the results obtained at
these four colleges will be particularly referred to. These
colleges are Yale, Dartmouth, Williams and Amherst.
It appeared to your committee that the experience of these
colleges was to be sought as to the effects of a Department of
Physical Culturt in three particulars :
1. Upon the physical condition of the students.
2. Upoijr the scholarship of the students.
3. Upon the morals and general behavior of the students.
Our informant" are Mr. F. G. Welch, Instructor in Gym
nastics at Yale, whom we have consulted chiefly as to methods
rather than results, Professor A. M. Wheeler of Yale, Presi
dent Smith of Dartmouth, President Hopkins of Williams,
and Professor Edward Hitchcock of Amherst. Professor
Hitchcock, also, very kindly! sent to us a pamphlet entitled
“ Physical Culture in Amherst College, by Nathan Allen,
M. D.,” one of the Trustees of the college. From this pamphlet
we have obtained most valuable information, a part of which
will be given in this report. Before proceeding to quote the
testimony which we have received from these gentlemen it
may be well to say that the Yale and Amherst gymnasiums
have been in use eight years, and those of Williams and Dart
mouth about half that time ; that at Williams and Yale the
attendance at the gymnasium has been voluntary, and conse
quently has been but partial; while at Dartmouth and Am
herst, physical education has been recognized as of equal im
portance with intellectual education, and has been put upon
the same basis with it; and that, consequently, at these two
colleges the influence of the gymnastic department being felt
by all the students, has been more fruitful of results.
1. Effects of the Department of Physical Culture upon
the bodily condition of the students.
Under this head the committee made three inquiries ; first
whether any serious accidents had occurred in the gymnasium ;
second, whether there had been any cases of injury from over
�5
practice; third, whether any improvement had taken place in
the physical development and in the general health of the
students.
To these inquiriegwe have received the following replies:
Yale. Mr Welch says : “ No serious accidents have ever
happened here. In all my experience I have not known a
dozen falls that amounted to anything. Undoubtedly there
are some who are injured more or less permanently by over
practice. Sometimes the results are manifest during the time
of practice ; at otherSlater in life. In my experience I have
known of but two instances. One, a delicate young man,
who seldom frequented the gymnasium, came in one day and
attempted a most difficult feat, rupturing a blood-vessel. His
accident was not of a serious nature] The other was myself,
at a time when I taught and studied too much.”
Dartmouth. President Smith says
Very few serious
accidents and none fatal. Fewer, I think, than in many of
the out-door sports. But few cases of injury from over-prac
tice. When classes enter they sometimes spend too much
time in the Gymnasium, particularly mt the bowling alleys.
But the matter soon regulates itself. As to the effects of
gymnastic practice on the physical development and health of
the students, I give below the testimony of Prof. A. B.
Crosby, now lecturing at Ann Arbor, aslpublished in our
Catalogues. ‘ Since the opening of the Gymnasium, I have
taken occasion to witness frequently the exercises, and the
results have more than equalled my expectations] There has
been no case of severe illness in the College during that time,
and there have been fewerKnstances of slight indisposition
than I have eve]known in the same length of time before.
Dyspepsia, debility, and similar affections incident to a seden
tary life, and which have hitherto been frequent in the change
of seasons from winter to spring, have, during the present
season, been unimown. There has been a manifest improve
ment in the general physical tone of the College, and the
increased muscular power and agility of the young men have
forced themselves on the attention even of unpracticed eyes.
I am fully satisfied, that these exercises have greatly subserved
the general health of the students.’ ”
Williams. Pres. Mark Hopkins says: “ We have had
no serious accidents. I am aware of no serious injury from
over-exertion. I have no statistics, and ca] only say that I
think well of the department of physical training, if the right
man can be in charge of it.”
Amherst. The testimony from Amhers]College, both
on this point and on every other connected with the practice
of physical culture, is very full. Prof. Hitchcock says : “We
have had but two serious accidents] one, that kept a student
from study three months, and one that compelled a young-fnan
�6
to drop behind one year. No cases of injury from over-prac
tice. As to the effects of gymnastics on the physical devel
opment and health of the students, see Dr. Allen’s pamphlet.”
Accordingly we turn to the pamphlet alluded to, and we find
a careful and deeply interesting sketch by a physician of the
history of the department of physical culture in the College.
Upon^the^points now under consideration Dr. Allen, p. 18-19
says:
“When the subject was first agitated in respect to intro
ducing into college gymnastic exercises, there were various
prejudices and objections to such a course. One of the orig
inal objections to the establishment of a gymnasium—and it
still exists to some extent—is the danger of some serious harm
or injury befalling those engaged in such exercises. But such
accidents very seldom occur in the regular practice of gym
nastics. It should be remembered, that the more one exer
cises in this way the better command of his limbs and body
he obtains, and therefore is less likely to meet with injuries.
During the eight years since the establishment of this depart
ment there have been quite a number of bruises and sprains,
one broken limb and one dislocated joint, but no really serious
or permanent injury. Considering the great number and
variety of exercises and the extraordinary exposures in the
performance of daring feats,—that over six hundred students
have taken a part in these exercises, and most of them, for a
time, entirely inexperienced, the accidents have certainly been
very few in number and slight in character. And those that
have taken place occurred generally out of the regular exer
cises, for the want of care, or on account of some physical
weakness of the individual injured. It is stated on good
authority, that the accidents arising in ball-playing,—practiced
only a few weeks each year,—are four times larger than those
from gymnastics.”
With regard to the effects of gymnastics upon the physi
cal development and health of the students, Dr. Allen, pp. 22
—26, says:
“ When the erection of a gymnasium was first agitated,
and even for some time after gymnastics were introduced, it
was said by some persons that the whole thing was an experi
ment ; that after the novelty was over the interest would soon
subside, and the enterprise would prove a failure. It is now
eight years since this department was established,—eight dif
ferent classes, numbering in all over six hundred students,
have taken part in its exercises, and four classes have enjoyed
its benefits throughout their whole collegiate course. What
then has been the effect of these upon the health of the
students, as well as upon the sanitary condition of the Insti
tution ? This may be exhibited in a variety of ways.
1st. There has been a decided improvement in the very
�7
countenances and general physique of students. Instead of
the pale, sickly and sallow complexion once very commonly
seen, with an occasional lean, care-worn and haggard look,
we now witness very generally, fresh, ruddy and healthy
countenances, indicative of a higher degree of vitality, and
that the vital currents, enriched by nutrition and oxygen,
have a free and equal circulation throughout the whole
system. This change is so marked as to attract the attention
of the casual observer, and has been commented upon by
those formerly attending Commencements or other public
occasions here, as exhibiting a striking difference between the
personal anpearance of students at those times, and, that at
the present day.
2d. In the use of the limbs and the body,—in the physi
cal movements and conduct of student® generally, there has
been, we think, decided improvement. Once the awkward
ness of manner and the ungraceful bearing of scholars were
matters of common remark, and such characteristics not unfrequently followed them through life. This resulted not so
much from the want of early training and instruction on this
subject, as from the formation of bad habits in study, and the
long continued neglect of proper exercise. It was frequently
exhibited in stiffness of the joints, a clumsy use of the limbs,
in round shoulders and a stooping postuia and sometimes by
a countenance set, stern and almost devoid of expression.
Now gymnastics, when properly practiced, are calculated to
produce in this respect, a surprising effect upon the use of all
parts of the body, as well as upon its development. They
give not only agility and strength to all the muscles, but a
quick and ready control of them, thereby begetting an easy
and graceful carriage of the person.
*
*
*
*
4th. We come now to consider what has been the effect
more directly upon the health of the students, and the sani
tary condition of the Institution. It is needless to state how
many students formerly impaired or broke down their consti
tutions for want of sufficient exercise, or from irregular or
excessive hours of study, or from some improper habits, or for
want of suitable attention to diet, sleep or some other physi
cal law. Perhaps the effects of violated law were not always
visible at the time, and did not apparently impede the college
course, but the seeds were here sown which afterwards brought
on disease and premature death, or crippled the energies and
limited the usefulness through after life. This may still hap
pen : but with such exercise and instruction as can now be
obtained it is not near so likely to occur. Besides, where the
vitality of the 'system is kept up by regular muscular exercise,
to an even healthy state, it is one of the strongest safeguards
against disease; and then when any organ or portion of the
body iq affected, nature is more powerful to throw off the
�8
attack. In a community thus trained and instructed the more
common complaints, such as colds, headaches, sore throats,
feverish attacks, will seldom occur, and the diseases to which
scholars are peculiarly liable, such as dyspepsia, neuralgia and
consumption stands a far less chance of finding victims. Any
skillful and experienced physician will testify at once, that
such a community is possessed of a wonderful power to pre
vent as well as throw off disease. The common proverbs,
‘ a stitch in time saves nine' and 1 an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure,’ are not more truthful than the
statement here made of the remarkable exemption from dis
ease of a community trained and educated as above described.
5th. A comparison of the present health of students
with what it was ten or fifteen years ago, shows a surprising
improvement. It is rare wow for any student to break down
suddenly in his health, or to be compelled to leave college on
this account. In 1855-6-7 and 8 such cases were common,
as may be seen by referring to the statements of President
Stearns; and the truth of the statements is moreover con
firmed by others personally conversant here for twenty o?
thirty years. As no record was formerly kept of the amount
of sickness from year to year, or of the number of students
leaving college on account of illness, no exact comparison on
these points in figures can be instituted. But the experience
and observation of those who have been on the ground a long
time must bear decided testimony to a greatly improved state
of health among the students over that of former times ; and
as for those who once were members of the Institution, and
return here on public occasions, they cannot fail to see a
great improvement in this respect.
6th. But the evidence of improved health does not rest
wholly upon individual opinions or upon loose comparisons.
Since 1861, a register has been carefully kept of the kind and
amount of sickness in college, an analysis of which presents
some striking facts. No student is placed upon the sick list,
unless he is detained two consecutive days from the usual
exercises of the Institution. The number of students re
ported sick ranges in the course of the year from twenty-five
to sixty, showing a far greater amount of sickness in some
years than others, which depends very much on the fact,
whether some epidemic prevailed, or whether the year as a
whole, either on account of the weather or from some other
cause, was not generally unhealthy. If allowance is made for
this extra sickness in two of the years out of the eight, the
register shows that the actual amount of sickness in college
has diminished in these eight years more than one-third.
That is, in the year just closed, there were only two-thirds rs
much sickness as in 1861, the year when gymnastics were
introduced.
�9
Again, the average number of students sick each year of
these eight was thirty-eight, and the average number present
in college was two hundred and twenty-four, showing that
there were one hundred and eighty-six students on an average
each year who did not experience two days’ sickness at any
one time. The register reports forty-one different diseases or
complaints to account for this sickness, and a careful inspec
tion of the list shows a remarkable exemption from what
are considered generally the more violent and dangerous dis
eases.”
2. After seeking information as to the effects of gym
nastics upon the physical condition of the students, your com
mittee enquired concerning the effects of gymnastics upon
scholarship. The question had been raised among ourselves
whether the gymnasium might not prove a distraction from
study, and especially whether some young men might not
become so proud of their success as athletes as to disregard
the pursuits of the mind. Accordingly into the list of ques
tions sent to the different colleges, your committee intro
duced this: “ Are the great gymnasts apt to be satisfied
with that eminence, to the neglect of study?” The follow
ing replies have been received:
Yale. Professor Arthur M. Wheeler, of the chair of
History, in a letter dated Dec. 20, 1869, says : “ Our gymna
sium is much frequented by the students ; and the general
opinion here is—shared alike by the older and younger officers
—that the students are more vigorous and healthy in conse
quence of it, and that in this way it contributes toward higher
scholarship. Of course it would be difficult to say to what
extent it does this; but we all feel sure that we are much
better off for it, physically, mentally and morally.
There is no tendency among us to cultivate muscle at
the expense of brains, yet now and then a case of that kind
occurs. Nearly all the men who do this, however, are boat
ing men ; and the evil, so far as it exists, is to be attributed
to the boating fever; and boating, as you know, is not an
outgrowth of the gymnasium ; for it existed before we had a
gymnasium.”
Dartmouth. Pres. Smith says: “ The effect on scholar
ship has been good, in that health and physical vigor have
been promoted. We have had no trouble of the kind you
speak of to any extent worth mentioning.”
Williams. President Hopkins includes his answer to
this question in the general answer given to the preceding
one ; which answer is favorable.
Amherst. Professor Hitchcock says: “ Effects on
scholarship, good generally|| Since the first two years, have
known of no neglect to study by any student or set of stu
dents.” Upon the same subject Dr. Allen [p. 29,] says:
.
2
�10
“ There is still another very important consideration, viz: has
the standard of scholarship in college been raised by means
of gymnastics ? As the system of marking or mode of
exhibiting this standard was changed a few years since, an
exact comparison in figures cannot here be instituted; but it
is the decided opinion of the Registrar, (the College Officer
who has charge of these statistics,) that there ‘ has been an
elevation of rank.within the past few years.’ It may be that
some individuals in a class formerly reached as high scholar
ship as any now do ; but the aggregate scholarship of a whole
class, we are confident, is higher now than it once was, and,
to say the least, is much easier obtained, with fewer hours of
study, and less loss of health and life.”
3. The third general question proposed by your commit
tee had reference .to the effects of gymnastic training upon
the morals and manners of the students. To this question the
replies from Yale and Williams are in general terms that the
effects are good.
Dartmouth. Pres. Smith says : “ The effects on morals
are good, in that the sane body is conducive to entire sanity
of soul. A vent is opened also, for superfluous animal spirits,
which sometimes pass with young men into a ‘ superfluity of
naughtiness.’ ”
Amherst. Prof. Hitchcock says: “ Less rough and
rowdy students. Do not make so much noise on the street or
by night; as I oncourage noise and considerable rough play
during the regular exercises.”
In 1862, Professor Hitchcock, in his first report to the
trustees, made this remark ; “ During a portion of the exer
cises, I urge upon the captains the necessity of introducing
playful exercises, such as running in grotesque attitudes,
singing college songs, &c. Sometimes this may seem boister
ous and undignified, but it seems desirable to me that a por
tion of the animal spirits should be worked off inside the stone
walls of the gymnasium, under the eye of a college officer,
rather than out of doors, rendering night hideous ; and in no
instance has the captain found the slightest difficulty in bring
ing his men into line at the word of command.”
Dr. Allen [pp. 17-18] quotes upon this subject the testi
mony of the “ Congregational Journal,” of Concord, N. H.,
for Oct. 23, 1862, a correspondent of which paper writes from
Amherst College as follows:
“The gymnastic exercises greatly promote the good
order and morals of the students. Their animal spirits work
off.by the correct movements of the gymnasium. They are
indisposed to the unmauly and often mischievous doings of
students too frequent in our colleges. A citizen of the town
assures me, that the amount of injury done to the college and
other buildings in the village is almost, nothing since the open
�11
ing of the gymnasium, compared with what it was before.
No less advantageous, probably, is the gymnasium to the
mental progress of the students. They come from the gym
nastic exercises to their studies with healthful bodies, clear
minds and cheerful spirits. The 4 blues,’ those most formid
able enemies of successful study, assail thenf not. All is
bright and promising, all hopeful. Time will undoubtedly
show that no one adjunct, no one department of college, will
conduce more to the noble object for which the Institution
was founded, than the Gymnasium.”
Later in his pamphlet [pp. 31-33] Dr. Allen, refers again
to this subject
follows :
“ There is another advantage from these exercises worthy
of notice, that is in preventing vicious and irregular habits.
While no system of gymnastics alone can be expected to
break up settled habits of dissipation, such as intemperance,
licentiousness, and the excessive use of tobacco or any other
stimulant, still, combined with other good influences, they
have a direct tendency to forestall or arrest such practices by
giving a safe vent to the animal spirits, by regularity of phy
sical exercise, by improving the general health, and producing
a more normal condition of the brain. But there is a vice,
(nameless here,) more terrible in its effects, both physical and
mental, upon the student, than either of the above, and over
which gymnastic exercises have great influence. In fact, it is
the testimony of the highest medical authorities, that regular
and tolerably severe gymnastic exercise is not only the most
effective means of preventing or checking this vice, but is
really the best curative agent. And it is a gratifying fact that
we can add the testimony of the Professor of this department,
that gymnastics have been working to a like result in this in
stitution.
“ It is found that a regular system of gymnastics operates
in a variety of ways as a powerful auxiliary of discipline;
that it answers as a kind of safety-valve to let off in an indirect
way that excess of animal spirits which is characteristic of
some young men, and which not unfrequently leads them into
trouble or conflict with authority. Again it serves with others
as a kind of regulator to the system, exercising certain parts
of it to such an extent as to produce weariness and fatiSue, so
that the individual seeks repose; and with another class it
tends to remove any unnatural or innate weakness of the
frame, and by such improvements serves to equalize and regu
late all the forces of nature. Thus such a system of gymnas
tics sets up a standard of law for self-government ; for it is
based upon those great laws of life and health which are a
part of the will and government of God in this world, as much
as the ten commandments. No by-laws or code of ethics
established by any humen teacher or institution can compare
�12
in authority or final appeal to these great natural, primeval
laws engraved upon our constitntions by the Creator. It will
be seen at once what a power the instructor has over the con
science and reason of a student thus trained. Said President
Felton to the writer, shortly before his decease, referring to
the gymnastics at Amherst which he had just witnessed:
4 Such a system of physical exercises thoroughly understood
and applied by the members of Harvard University, would aid
me in the matter of discipline in P e Institution more than
a,nything else.’ We are here authorized to state, that the
Faculty of Amherst College have found great assistance in
government from this source ;—that since the introduction of
this department, the cases requiring discipline have been far
less numerous, and more easily managed, than formerly.”
Thus upon the three great questions which can be raised
respecting a department of Physical Culture in the University,
namely, as to the effects of such a department upon the bodily
condition, upon the scholarship, and upon the manners and
morals of the students, your committee have submitted—not
abstract theories of their own, but the authentic results of
actual experience, obtained in the four celebrated American
colleges which have tried the experiment of physical culture
the longest and most thoroughly. These results are communi
cated to us in the form of testimony from two college Presi
dents, from two college Professors, from one college Trustee
who is also a physician, and from one practical instructor in
gymnastics, who is very noted in his calling and of whom
President Smith has written to us in the highest praise.
This testimony can not fail to be regarded as decisive.
Your Committee are of the opinion that in the light of
such testimony, this University may proceed to the establish
ment of a department of Physical Culture, not as if it were
venturing upon an untried and a dubious experiment, but un
hesitatingly, boldly, with entire confidence in the complete
success of the measure, if it be but carried out with reasonable
care in its details. Moreover your Committee are of opinion
that in view’ of the great benefits which other colleges have
actually found to proceed from such a department, and in view
of the great needs of our own students with respect to physi
cal culture and healthful regulated exercise, when the
funds of the University shall permit, vigorous action should
be taken upon this subject—providing for the students a de
partment of Physical Culture with a building, with an instruc
tor, and with all the necessary appliances, commensurate with
the greatness of the institution, with the wants of the students,
and with the demands of enlightened public opinion. It has
not been usual for the University of Michigan to be either
timid or laggard in moving towards improved and generous
educational methods. Its true place is in the van of the great
�13
army of educators. At last, however, there is great danger of
its violating its own instincts and traditions. On this im
mense anxious and most urgent business of providing, in a
scientific and efficient manner, for the physical education of
its students, and through that for their highest intellectual and
moral development, the University has dropped*from its hon
ored place in the front; unless speedy action be taken, it will
lose even a middle position; it will drag hopelessly and un
worthily in the rear.
Should it be decided, then, to establish a department of
Physical Culture in the University, a number of very import
ant questions at once arise for determinaion, with reference—
1. To a Gymnastic Building;
2. To the qualifications and duties of the Professor at the
head of the new department;
3. To the relation which the department shall hold to the
various University courses already established, both profess
ional and collegiate.
Your committee are very clearly of opinion that with ref
erence to each of these questions mistakes are not only possi
ble, but are extremely liable to be made—mistakes, too, which
would be absolutely fatal to the utility and success of the
department.
Some of the colleges which have established gymnasiums
have made such mistakes upon these points as have rendered
their gymnasiums nearly useless, thus bringing distrust and
reproach upon the whole cause. These mistakes can be
avoided by us—by our being on our guard against them, by
our remembering that the opinions of experts alone are of
much worth upon this subject in matter a of detail, and by
studying still more minutely the methods pursued in the col
leges which have made this department a success.
We would particularly recommend further study of this
department in Amherst College. That noble institution un
doubtedly leads not only America, but the world, in the suc
cessful solution of the problem of uniting physical and mental
culture. We may safely take it as almost® perfect model in
the arrangement of a department of physical culture. Should
the Regents find themselves enabled to establish such a de
partment here, we would suggest to theifljBthat before finally
deciding as to the dimensions and the interior arrangements
of the gymnasium, upon the choice of an instructor, and upon
the relations of gymnastic instructiointo the other courses, it
would be prudent to send a suitable person to at least six of
the colleges which have been named—Princeton, Williams,
Yale, Amherst, Harvard and Dartmouth—authorized to find
out upon the spot, by actual observation, and by conversation
with officials of experience there, all that can be ascertained
�14
with reference to the mistakes to be avoided, and the right
conclusions'to be reached.
Your committee have already obtained nearly all the in
formation that could be got by correspondence, and they are
able to submit, if it were desirable, a great many facts and
opinions upon the several particulars now referred to. As to
some of these particulars, however, they feel the need of
more information than they have been able to obtain by let
ters, before coming to an absolute conclusion.
For example, if it be decided to have a gymnasium, the
very first question which arises is as to its dimensions. Here,
at the outset is a serious danger. At some of the colleges it
is found that the gymnasiums are too small, or that they are
unfortunately proportioned. One great practical authority
says that whatever may be the length of the building, it must
by all means be as broad as it is long. Yet at Yale the gym
nasium is 120 x 50 ; at Amherst 70 x 40; at Dartmouth
90 x 45 ; at Princeton 81 x 55; at Bowdoin 75 x 30. Now,
we need upon this single point alone, to have some one
enquire upon the spot the results of experience as to these
dimensions. None of these buildings are square. Is this
fact found to be an inconvenience ? It would be a pity to
ascertain, after our building was up, that its utility to us
would be impaired by a mistake that might have been so
easily avoided, as to its size and proportions. Professor
Hitchcock writes to us that he cannot introduce a very im
portant and attractive method of exercise, for want of room.
How unfortunate that that want was not foreseen. Dr. Pea
body of Harvard writes to us : “ If we were to build anew we
should make the gymnasium at least 25 per cent larger, and of
two stories,” instead of one. When we build, we want to
build it as it should be the first time, without having to tear
down and build anew. Too often gymnasiums are built with
out consulting gymnasts; they are built apparently on a
priori principles. Such a course is as foolish as it would be
to build a chemical laboratory without consulting a chemist,
or an astronomical observatory without getting any advice
from an astronomer. This, then, is but a specimen of the
practical questions which present themselves the moment we
set about carrying into effect the resolution to establish a
Department of Physical Culture; and your committee would
repeat their statement that in order to settle these questious
wisely more information must be obtained than can be pro
cured through the channel of letters. Yet as the Regents have
expressed a wish for such recommendations as we could make
upon these questions we will give concisely the conclusions
which we have drawn from our present knowledge upon the
whole subject, conscious that these conclusions may require
some modification under the pressure of further knowledge
that may yet be obtained.
�15
1. We recommed the establishment in this University
at such time as circumstances may permit, a Department of
Hygiene and Physical Culture, believing, as we do upon ample
evidence, that the establishment of such a department would
be attended with no such difficulties, or risks as may not be
overcome by cautious and intelligent foresight, and that if
successful it would result in incalculable good to all our stu
dents, and to an increase of the good reputation of the Uni
versity.
2. In dealing with the next topic, that of the gymnasium
building, the committee have had peculiar difficulty. The
discrepancy between the sort of building we ought to have,
and the sort of building we may be able to have, is so wide
as to make it nearly impossible to determine what to recom
mend. Formerly it was thought that any room, however
cheap, dark, cheerless, and inconvenient, if only large enough
to admit a few ropes and pulleys and bits of timber, was suita
ble for a gymnasium. But the opinions of enlightened edu
cators upon this subject are now changed. At" the principal
colleges the gymnasiums are made as spacious, attractive and
convenient as possible.
The following description of the new gymnasium at
Princeton, written by Professor Schank, and politely commu
nicated to us by President McCosh, may give some idea of
the sort of building which liberal men have provided at that
ancient seat of learning: “It is a two story stone build
ing, the main body of which is 81 x 55 feet, flanked by two
octagonal towers, each about twenty feet in diameter, the en
tire measure, including these, being 92 x 60 feet. On the first
floor, besides both rooms, &c., there are bowling alleys. The
second story, which is open to the roof and high, accommo
dates the ordinary gymnastic fixtures, with a gallery for spec
tators over the ball rooms. The towers are pointed spires
above the roof and terminate on rods with balls and vanes.
The cost when completed and equipped will be about $35,000.”
The gymnasium at Yale cost $14,000 before the war, ex
clusive of the apparatus; and at present prices Mr. Welch
thinks it would cost $30,000.
President Smith informs us that the Dartmouth gymna
sium cost $22,800, with about $1,500 for apparatus—total
cost $24,300.
We did not learn the cost of the Williams gymnasium,
but it could not have been less than $30,000. It is the most
beautiful building in Williamstown.
The gymnasium at Amherst cost $8,000 in 1859, with an
an additional cost of $2,000 for apparatus.
The committee began with the attempt to ascertain what
could be done for $5,000, the sum named in the resolu
tion of the Regents in March 1869 ; but we soon found that
�16
*
no building of the size required could be put up for any such
amount, unless it should be one that would be an eye-sore and
an offense to all beholders. A great ungainly shed would not
answer the purposes of the Department of Physical Culture;
and even if it would, the committ' e would hesitate long before
taking the responsibility of recommending any further dese
cration of our noble University grounds by architectural mon
strosities.
What is really needed by the University to meet the pres
ent demands of scientific physical culture is a building either
of brick or of stone (the latter being preferable) of dimensions
hereafter to be determined, to consist of two stories and a
large well lighted cellar; the cellar serving as a store room,
as a place for heating apparatus, and ultimately, when means
should permit, for ample bath rooms ; the first story to be used
for bowling alleys, superintendent’s and janitor’s rooms, dress
ing rooms and offices; while the second story would contain a
large hall of exercise in both heavy and light gymnastics, as
well as smaller rooms for sparring, fencing, etc., a room for
simple refreshments, like tea and coffee, and a suite of rooms
supplied with a piano, and with newspapers, to be used by all
the students as the University parlors and reading-rooms, and
to be kept open every day in the year, from sunrise until ten
o’clock at night. Such an edifice, especially in the absence
of the dormitory system, would be a most beneficent one to
all our students. It would be the University home. Besides
furnishing the students with a means of bodily health and
development, it would be a boon to them socially; and by its
joyous and hospitable privileges open to them, even when all
the other University buildings are closed, it would both afford
an unspeakable enjoyment to hundreds of young men, and
would save many from temptations now fatal both to health
and character. Such a building, properly furnished, at the
present rate of materials would require not less than $25,000.
3. We recommend the appointment of a Professor of
Hygiene and Physical Culture, to have the full salary of a
Professor in the collegiate department; and as to his qualifica
tions and duties we would adopt the admirable description
given by President Stearns in his Annual Report to the Trus
tees of Amherst College for the year 1 860:
“ What we need is a professorship extending over the
entire department of physical education. 1st—The officer
should be a skillful gymnast, capable of conducting his classes,
by example as well as precept, through all the exercises which
the best training would require them to perform. 2d—He
should have a good medical education, with sufficient know
ledge of disease, if not to manage severe cases, yet to know
whether a student is sick or well, obeying the laws of health
or breaking them, and, as a wise friend, to caution him, ad
�17
vise him and put him on the track towards physical vigor.
3d—That he should have such knowledge of elocution as
would enable him to teach those movements of the body,
lungs and vocal organs which are essential to graceful and
effective oratory. Elocution is properly a branch of gymnas
tics, and the highest degree of health, to say nothing of good
manners and good speaking, can hardly be secured without it
or a substitute for it. This officer, while having charge of
gymnastics, would naturally teach the laws of health and the
physical part of oratory; and as he would be much with the
students, and would be likely to have great influence over
them, he ought to be a man of cultivated tastes and man
ners—a man of honorable sentiments and correct principles,
having high aims and a Christian spirit. Such a man, with
such a work as I have now marked out successfully pursued,
would be an incalculable advantage to the college and to
mankind.”
4. In order to avoid over-crowding of the building, and
inconvenience to the students, we recommend that during the
Law and Medical terms, the several parts of the day and
evening, to be hereafter determined, be divided among the
students of the three departments, and that for at least one
hour each day the building be also appropriated to the use of
the University Faculties; that attendance at the gymnasium
be entirely optional with all the students; only that the stu
dents in the collegiate department be called upon, at the be
ginning of each year, to determine whether they will attend
the gymnasium, and that those who decide to do so shall
be required to exercise in light gymnastics with their respec
tive classes for at least one-half hour each day, for four
days in the week; all work in heavy gymnastics and in the
bowling alleys to be taken by them according to regulations
hereafter to be determined.
5. We recommend that in order to meet the current ex
penses of the Department of Physical Culture, a small fee,
(say $2 per semester, and $3 per professional term) be charged
to each student who avails himself of the privileges of the
department; it being understood that so soon as, either by
private munificence or by State endowment, the expenses of
the department shall be otherwise provided for, its privileges
shall be extended to all without any charge whatever.
In conclusion, the Committee would remark that the
foregoing plan for a Departm^it of Physical Culture involves
an expenditure which is probably quite beyond the present
resources of the University; and that without some special
gift of money for the purpose, either by the legislature or by
private individuals, the University will be unable to confer
upon its students certain very important advantages in the
process of a complete education. We would call particular
�18
attention to the fact that the beautiful and spacious gymnasi
ums at Princeton, Williams and Dartmouth were built by
private generosity. Is there no rich man in Michigan, or
even in the United States, (for our students represent all the
States) who would be willing, by a timely benefaction, to
connect his name forever with the destinies of this great
University, and to bestow an incalculable boon upon all the
multitudes of students who are to resort here for the pursuit
of knowledge ?
MOSES COIT TYLER,
Chairman.
EDWARD OLNEY,
C. L. FORD, M. D.
THOMAS M. COOLEY.
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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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Report of a department of hygiene and physical culture in the University of Michigan
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Tyler, Moses Coit [1835-1900]
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Health
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Conway Tracts
Hygiene
Physical Education
University of Michigan
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Text
THE GENERAL MEETING
OF
THE THEISTIC SOCIETY
HELD
FREEMASONS’
AT
THE
HALL,
LONDON
ON
Wednesday, July 20th, 1870
AND
STATEMENT
OF
THE
COMMITTEE
APPOINTED BY THE MEETING
bg ©rber of
Committee
LONDON
LONGMANS,
GREEN,
1870
AND
CO.
�LONDON : PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
Report of the General Meeting ....
1
Resolutions passed at the General Meeting
71
Statement of the Committee
72
�I
•I
�PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENERAL MEETING
HELD AT
ON
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870.
MR. WILLIAM SHAEN IN THE CHAIR.
The Chairman.—Ladies and Gentlemen, I will state,
in opening the meeting, the course of business which
has been proposed by the Committee. In the first
place, our Honorary Secretary, Mr. E. II. Busk, will read
a report from the Provisional Committee ; that report
will conclude with a set of resolutions which have been
prepared by the Committee. It will then be my duty,
on behalf of the Committee, to move the reception of the
report. If it is your pleasure, after hearing the report, to
receive it, there are three or four resolutions, which have
been prepared, which will be moved and seconded ; and
upon those any observations can be made and any dis
cussion can be taken.
The Honorary Secretary then read the following
report :—
The Provisional Committee appointed at the meeting
held on June 6, 1870, have communicated with persons
who might be supposed willing to aid in the formation of
a Theistic Society, and now submit the following report
of their proceedings, and of the information so collected
by them.
B
�Q
The Committee met shortly after the meeting, at which
they were appointed, and prepared a circular, in which
was inserted the provisional statement of the objects and
means of the Society, which they were instructed to cir
culate with their suggestions.
The following is a copy of the circular, which was pre
ceded by a list of the Provisional Committee.
1. The objects of the Society are to unite men, notwithstanding any
differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and
diffuse purity of Spiritual Life by (i.) investigating religious truth ;
(ii.) cultivating devotional feelings; and (iii.) furthering practical
morality.
2. The Society seeks to attain these objects by the following means:—
(1) By holding meetings for the reading of papers, and for
conference.
(2) By holding and encouraging meetings for the united worship
of God.
(3) By helping its members to ascertain and discharge their
personal and social duties.
(4) By the formation of similar Societies with the same objects
in various parts of the British Empire and other countries.
(5) By correspondence with those who may be supposed willing
to assist in the objects of this Society.
(6) By the issue of publications calculated to promote the above
purposes.
This Society is offered as a means of uniting all those who believe
in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, in the endeavour
to supplement their individual efforts towards goodness and truth by
mutual sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by
fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the discovery and
propagation of Spiritual Truth, that thus they may attain to the more
complete observance of the Divine Laws of Human Nature.
A meeting will be held at the Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street,
on Wednesday, July 20, 1870, at 7 p.m., for the purpose of definitely
constituting the Society. Your attendance at this meeting is requested.
In the meantime you are invited to communicate to the Provisional
Committee your opinion, and any information you can give on the
following subjects :—
a. The expediency of forming the proposed Society.
b. The best name for the proposed Society.
c. The names and addresses of persons or societies likely to be
interested in such a body.
�(1. The number likely to join in your neighbourhood.
e. Any practical suggestions as to the formation, objects, and modes
of action of the proposed Society.
The Committee invited suggestions and information on
various subjects, and have received, in answer to about
2,200 copies which have been circulated, upwards of 100
replies.
The suggestions and information that have been received
may be arranged under the four following heads :—
I. The expediency or inexpediency of forming the
proposed Society.
II. The best name for the proposed Society.
III. The number of persons likely to join in different
towns and districts.
IV. Practical suggestions as to the formation, objects,
and modes of action of the proposed Society.
I. The answers that have been received to the ques
tion whether it is or is not expedient to form the pro
posed Society have comprised every shade of feeling. They
may be roughly classified in the following manner :—
Those who think it expedient (including 5, who
merely express a desire for its formation) . . . 83
Those who think it inexpedient.................................... 17
Those who think the expediency doubtful....
7
107
These numbers do not include the members of the Pro
visional Committee.
The Provisional Committee are of opinion that these
answers afford sufficient encouragement to justify the
formation of the proposed Society.
II. The following names have been suggested for the
o
oo
proposed Society :—
‘ The Association for Promoting Practical Religion.’
‘ The Association for Promoting True Religion.’
B 2
�I
4
4 The Association for the Promotion of Practical Re
ligion.’
4 The Society for the Discovery and Propagation of
Spiritual Truth.’
4 An Association for Developing true Christian Charity
in St. Paul’s Sense.’
4 The Brotherhood of Faith.’
4 The Religious Brotherhood.’
4 The Brotherhood of all Religions.’
4 The Brethren of Progress.’
4 The Progressive Brotherhood.’
■ 4 The Fraternal Union.’
4 The Society of Human Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 The Brotherhood of Love.’ 2.
4 The British Free Church.’
4 The Church of all Religions.’
4 The Church Reform Society.’
4 The Open Church.’
4 The Church of the True God.’
4 The Church of Progress.’
4 The Free Catholic Church.’
4 The Universal Church.’
4 The Church of the Future.’
4 The Church of Religious Progress.’
4 The Church of the Law.’
4 The Church of all Faiths.’
4 The Church Founded on First Principles.’
4 The Universal Church of the Law.’
4 The English Branch of the Bralimo Somaj.’
4 The Friends.’
4 The Progressive Friends.’
4 The Moralists.’
4 The Free Religious Union.’ 3.
4 The Free Religious Society.’
4 The Free Religious Association.’ 2.
4 The Religious Union.’ 2.
�5
4 A Practical Religions Union.’
4 The Religions Alliance Association.’
4 The Religious Society of all People and of all
Nations.’
4 The Religious Liberal Association.’
4 The Society for the Promotion of Religious Liberty.’
4 The Modern Religious Society.’
4 The Rational Religious Society.’
4 The Common Brotherhood Religious Society.’
4 The Theo-Philosophical Society.’
4 The Universalist Society.’
4 The Universal Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 Sons and Daughters of God.’
4 The Universal Family of God.’
4 The Universal Family.’
4 The Christo-Theistic Society.’
4 The Christian Theists.’ 2.
4 The Eisotheistic Society.’
4 The Theistic Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 The Theistic Church.’
4 The Theistic Society.’ 3.
4 The Society of Theists.’
4 The Theistic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.’
4 The Theistic Theological Society.’
4 The Free Theistic Union.’
4 Theistic Christianity.’
4 The Deistic Society.’
Fifteen correspondents, therefore, have proposed names
in which the term Theistic occurs. On the other hand,
nineteen correspondents have declared themselves op
posed to that name, assigning various reasons for their
opposition ; and many others have proposed the other
names above reported, because they prefer them to the
epithet Theistic, which appeared in the heading of the
circular.
�6
III. The Provisional Committee beg to report that
they have received the following information as to the
persons likely to join in the movement.
The Committee have received the names of 245 persons
in various parts of the United Kingdom, as likely to co
operate, of whom ninety-eight have answered, expressing
themselves favourably towards the movement. Of these
persons, eighty-nine reside in the metropolis.
The Provisional Committee beg to report further, that
in addition to the names of individuals which are in
cluded in the foregoing numbers, they have received an
intimation, that at Edinburgh a congregation belonging
to a chapel, of which Dr. Page is the minister, and com
prising about one hundred members, will be likely to co
operate, and that in the same city there are about twenty
other persons who cordially desire such a Society.
These latter people formed a Society under the leader
ship of Mr. Cranbrook, but have become disunited in
consequence of the death of that gentleman, about a
year ago.
Mr. Walter Rew, of Sandgate, is the president of a
society, calling itself the ‘ Social Progress Association,’
and he has informed the Committee, that if the objects of
their proposed Society are sufficiently practical, he will
be happy to propose the amalgamation with it of his own
Association.
The Rev. W. J. Lake, of Leamington, is forming a
society in the Midland Counties, called the ‘Brotherhood
of Religious Reform,’ and has forwarded to the Com
mittee a copy of his programme. He has informed the
Committee that he will work with them, if their objects
are similar. The following is a copy of his programme :—
It is intended to form a Society, to be called ‘The
Brotherhood of Religious Reform,’ whose object shall be
to unite in a common religious fellowship, all who believe
�7
in the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man,
irrespective of all other beliefs they may hold, and by
this union of spirit to put an end to religious sectarianism
and to religious strife, and thus to lay a foundation for
the eventual building up of the one great church of the
living God, which shall be wide as the common need of
humanity, and which shall own as its members all who
love God, and who strive to lead a righteous and loving
life.
The operations of this Society will consist—
1. In the promotion of absolute religious equality ; to
be effected in this country mainly by the nationalisation
of the Established Church.
N.B. By the nationalisation of the Established Church
is meant, the abolition of the Act of Uniformity, and
of all compulsory belief or teaching. Also the establish
ment of a parishioner suffrage, by which the residents in
each parish shall be at liberty to select, from properly
educated and qualified candidates, their own minister,
and to determine the form and character of their worship.
2. It will be the business of this Society to investigate
the popular and accredited forms of religious belief, so
that, through the scholarly and scientific methods which
are now able to be employed, the absolute religious truth
may as nearly as possible be attained.
3. It will undertake the formation of public opinion
in accordance with these ascertained results, by the de
livery of lectures, and the promotion of controversy, the
issue of publications calculated to spread information on
these subjects among the people, and by all other likely
and appropriate methods.
4. It will undertake the immediate establishment of
a church or churches for the worship of God, in accord
ance with the fundamental elements of religious belief
before stated, and the maintenance of these by voluntary
effort, till such time as the national church shall be set
�8
free from the compulsory profession of sectarian dogmas
and mediæval creeds, and shall be thrown open, when
the majority of parishioners shall desire it, to the teach
ing and worship which sum up all the essential truth and
duty of religion in the simple requirements of love to
God as our father, and love to man as our brother.
IV. Among the suggestions that the Committee have
received in reply to their request for suggestions as to
the formation, objects, and modes of action of the pro
posed Society, are the following :—
As to the formation of the Society : That there shall
be, independently of the Society or Societies established
in London, a central Committee, which shall have for its
object the formation and encouragement of independent
branch Societies elsewhere, and shall serve as a means of
communication between such Societies, so as to preserve
union without compulsory uniformity of thought or action.
That admission to any of the affiliated Societies shall
be as wide as humanity itself, and with this view, that
there shall be no compulsory entrance fee or subscription.
The following suggestion has also been received, as
many persons cannot attend the meeting on July 20,
1870,—that the resolutions then passed shall be printed,
and votes taken from all the country correspondents who
have advocated the movement, before such resolutions
are finally adopted.
The following suggestions have been received as to
the objects of the proposed Society : —
Several correspondents approve of the statement of
objects contained in the circular.
One has suggested that the first object shall be ex
tended, so as to include the investigation of scientific as
well as religious truth.
It has been suggested that the Society ought to have
in view the two additional objects of :—
�9
I. Furthering education ; and,
II. Helping liberal churchmen.
Several correspondents have approved of the statement
contained in the circular of the modes of action proposed
for the Society.
One correspondent considers them too abstract and
indefinite ; on the other hand, another correspondent
recommends the adoption of as few rules as possible, and
seems to fear that these paragraphs will be found re
strictive.
None of the correspondents have objected to means
No. 1 (the holding of meetings for the reading of papers
and for conference), while several have written in favour
of it.
There has been much correspondence and difference of
opinion with reference to means No. 2 (the holding and
encouragement of meetings for the united worship of
God), the numbers for and against its adoption being
almost equally balanced.
There is a good deal of opposition to means No. 3 (the
helping of its members to ascertain and discharge their
personal and social duties), many persons believing that
it cannot be adopted as a mode of action without in
terfering with the individual conscience. It would appear,
therefore, that some of this opposition was occasioned by
a misapprehension of the aim of this paragraph.
No correspondent has expressed himself as opposed to
means No. 4 (the formation of similar Societies, with the
same objects, in various parts of the British Empire and
other countries) ; several, on the other hand, have advo
cated its adoption. It has been suggested that the action
of the central Committee in London should be supple
mented by the action of influential and energetic mem
bers, who should visit different provincial towns, and
stimulate to action those who feel the want of such a
Society as it is proposed to establish.
�10
Much has been written in favour of means No. 6 (the
issue of publications calculated to promote the above
purposes).
One or two think that the action of the Society in this
respect should be restricted to reprinting already existing
works or articles in periodicals which expound the prin
ciples of the Society.
Several suggest that a periodical or periodicals, monthly
or weekly, should be established for the diffusion of the
principles of the Society, for correspondence, and for the
information of country members.
In addition to the six modes of action proposed by the
circular, the three following modes of action have been
suggested, viz. :—
7. That lists of the members should be prepared and
circulated from time to time.
8. That the Society should assist in the formation of
libraries in various towns.
9. That there should be lectures given at fixed times
and places, accompanied by classical music, sacred or
otherwise.
The Committee have also received a pamphlet, con
taining very valuable practical suggestions, from Mr.
S. Prout Newcombe, of Croydon.
The variety of suggestions contained in the corre
spondence, of which the foregoing statement is an
analysis, as to the organisation of the proposed Society,
makes it desirable, in the opinion of the Committee, that
this subject should be further considered.
They will, therefore, invite the meeting to appoint a
Committee, by whom a scheme for the organisation of the
Society may be elaborated, and who shall report the
result of their labours to a meeting to be held early in
the ensuing year ; and they will request this meeting to
confine itself at present to resolutions by which the
�11
Society shall be constituted and its name determined, in
accordance with the general character proposed to be
given to it by the circular which has led to this meeting.
On the question of name, the Committee wish to report
that, although a majority has agreed upon a name which
will be proposed to the meeting, yet they have not
arrived at any unanimous conclusion. This result was
one that might be expected, having regard to the number
of different names suggested by their correspondents.
The Committee have found in this matter (as will
doubtless be found in many other cases) an occasion for
exercising that mutual deference of each for the opinion
of others which the proposed Society especially seeks to
cultivate, and without which it cannot exist.
The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I should have
hesitated to accept the responsible post of chairman of
this meeting if it had been intended to be anything in the
nature of a public manifestation; but we are met here
simply to have a friendly conference upon the very im
portant subjects which have been touched upon in the
printed circular which all of you have received, and
which have also been referred to in the report. I trust,
before the end of the meeting, we shall not only have
had a profitable and friendly conference, but really shall
have performed some practical business. Beyond that I
do not think it would be wise for us to attempt anything
at present. The facts which have been stated in the
report show what we have done to elicit opinions, and
what a large amount of sympathy with our views has
been expressed from all parts of England, and that there is
also, as might have been expected, a very wide diversity
of opinion expressed by our correspondents. I think it
is clear that, as we may, on the one hand, draw the con
clusion that a sufficient number of persons feel there
is a good work to be done by a society based on the
�12
principles which we have put forth to justify our proposing
to you that such a Society should now be founded, so, on
the other hand, it would be very unwise at the present
stage of proceedings to put the Society into a fixed and
crystallised condition. We must feel our way, gradually
establishing that which we feel ought to be established,
and leaving, as far as possible, the Society, when formed,
in an elastic state, to assume such a shape and adopt such
modes of action as it may from time to time find best
fitted to attain its objects. Probably many of those who
are here present may not be aware of the steps which
have led to the present meeting, and it may be well for
me, therefore, to refer shortly to them. This movement,
then, owes its origin to the arrival in this country of a
gentleman whom we already rejoice to call our friend—
Mr. Kesliub Chunder Sen. Since he came here, all of us,
I think I may say, who heard him speak at the meeting
held to receive him at the Hanover Square Rooms, or
who have from time to time since that meeting heard
him preach, have felt that in all its essentials the religion
of Mr. Sen was our religion ; and yet, on the other hand,
it is a remarkable fact that he did not find existing in this
country any religious organisation in which he could simply
feel himself to be at home. The feeling on the part of
his friends that there was something wrong in this state
of things led to a series of extremely interesting private
meetings, which were held at his house ; and in the
course of those meetings, the whole of which I had the
pleasure of attending, we found, as was to be expected,
that very similar thoughts had been excited in many
different minds, not only by his visit, but also by many
other circumstances which have occurred of late years.
Everybody seemed to be agreed that, somehow or other,
the religious organisations existing in England have for
the most part failed in their professed object—that reli
gion is, after all, nothing unless it is a uniting principle ;
�13
and yet, while everybody agrees in that opinion, some
how or other the actual religion professed in England
succeeds chiefly in keeping people apart, in marking
them off into separate bodies, and, when they are so
marked off, keeping them entirely asunder.
Then, looking at the subject from another point of
view, we all of us also felt that while, according to the
principles of our religion which we all accept, we ought
to consider ourselves one large human family, yet that, if
we looked into what was passing around us in our great
cities, throughout our country, and throughout the world,
we seemed to be acting in a very curious way when the
matter was considered from a family point of view. The
extraordinary contrast between the professed principles
of the religious organisations of civilised Europe, and the
actual practice of the most highly civilised nations, never,
perhaps, has received a more striking and melancholy
illustration than that which has taken place, even since
this meeting was summoned, in the terrible war which now
has actually commenced, and which, if we are a human
family, is, as all wars must be, a fratricidal war. In
trying to find out what was the cause of the two facts to
which I have alluded, we were pretty well agreed so far
as principle is concerned. With regard to the question
of religious organisations, it seemed to all of us, I believe,
that if we want to let religion do its proper work amongst
us, we must strip off the weeds and briars of multiplied
and complicated dogma which have encumbered and
choked the good seed of central religious truth. We
must get back, if we can, to that which is the foundation
of all religions, and in which we are all agreed. In this
attempt we find very little difficulty in accepting, as a
statement of that upon which we can all agree, the decla
ration that universal religion finds its sufficient foundation
in the two great truths of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. Again, looking at the question
�14
from a practical point of view, it seemed also clear that
if we could, instead of wasting our time in barren con
troversies, apply ourselves to deduce from those two
central truths practical laws for the conduct of human
life, and make the entire round of human life impli
citly obedient to the laws which those central truths
teach, we should then not only succeed in giving, within
the range of our own people, the proper work to religious
organisations so founded, but we should also have esta
blished a society in which no friendly stranger, like Mr.
Sen, coming among us could ever feel himself to be a
stranger. It might be very possible—in fact it would be
certain—that among us there would be developed a large
amount of honest and earnest difference as to detailed
truths and subordinate principles of deep interest and
importance. But we thought there would be a very
large number who would feel that a common belief in,
and a common acknowledgment of, the fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man is sufficient to form
the basis of a religious union, and that in that religious
union all those who agreed in those two principles might
comfortably, cordially, and fraternally find a place.
We determined to see whether we could at once evoke
a sufficient amount of sympathy with those views to
justify us in attempting to found such a society. We
drew up the circular which has been sent about England
to the extent, as the report informs you, of about 2,200
copies. To those circulars we have received rather more
than 100 replies. If we compare the number of replies
with the number of circulars sent out, it certainly seems
very small. On the other hand, I myself consider that
it is an encouraging, and, on the whole, a satisfactory
result. We had no time, and had no very good oppor
tunity, of making a careful selection of the persons who
should be sent to. We took two or three lists, which
were accessible to us, of persons who had either sub
�15
scribed to some fund or some society which seemed to us
to indicate sentiments somewhat kindred to our own, and
we addressed our circulars to every name appearing on
those lists. It is very likely that the whole subject may
have been quite strange to some of them, and a very large
number of persons in England, and probably elsewhere,
take a long time to answer circulars, so that it by no
means follows that, even of those who have not replied,
the majority do not take an interest in the subject. On
the other hand, those circulars have elicited, as you
have heard, from a large and widely-scattered body, a
considerable amount of real sympathy. I was very glad
to see that the meeting seemed to receive with a welcome
the declaration in the report of the Provisional Committee,
that in our opinion the amount of sympathy we had
evoked is sufficient to justify us in founding the Society.
It will be necessary of course to consider very carefully
how far we shall go to-night, and what we shall declare
to be the nature and objects and modes of action of the
Society. On that point, my own belief is that we ought
to proceed carefully and slowly, and that it is much more
important that every step we take should be such as
will excite as much sympathy as possible among all our
friends, than that we should proceed in a hurry to do
something which might seem to have a more complete
appearance. I am afraid of being in too great a hurry to
draw up rules or to do anything more than declare our
general principles. It is quite clear that among the
friends who have signified their sympathy with us we
shall find a very large amount of difference of opinion,
and, in point of fact, the foundation of that sympathy
conies from two different sides. I shall be extremely
sorry if we are not ultimately able to combine the sym
pathy which has been evoked on both sides. I refer
especially to what I may call the speculative side of the
question—free thought; and the practical side of the
�question—the religious life. A very large number of
people who find themselves dissatisfied with the creeds
and customs of religious organisations express themselves
ready to join any society which, throwing off all shackles
of that kind, simply determines to pursue truth, wherever
truth may lie ; and I heartily sympathise with them, and
shall heartily rejoice if we find in our future Society the
means of assisting every earnest attempt at the investi
gation of truth in the freest possible way.
But, on the other hand, I take a still deeper interest in
the other side of the question, the practical application of
the principles we have accepted to the formation of a
religious life. It seems to me that the social evils of the
day may all be traced to the fact that there is such a wide
divorce between the principles which we profess when
we speak religiously, and the every-day practice of our
lives. I think, therefore, that while, as I have said, I
have the deepest sympathy with and shall always be ex
tremely glad to join in any free investigation of specula
tive truth, it will come more home to us as real pressing
business at the present time to see what we can do in
helping each other to ascertain what are the rules to
which we ought to render our daily lives subject, in order
that we may literally live upon this earth as a family of
God’s children ought to live.
Now, the wide differences which appear to exist and
the various shades of opinion which are prevalent among
our friends have been singularly and rather amusingly
illustrated by the long list of proposed names for this
Society which has been read to you by our Honorary
Secretary. It may be said that it makes very little dif
ference by what name we call ourselves, and that prac
tically the work which we do is the all-important subject.
No doubt that is so in the long run. Yet I am quite
sure that the feeling of our correspondents, which has led
them to lay great stress on the wise selection of a name,
�17
is, on the whole, a true one. Our name will be at
once the flag and the motto we display to the world,
and it is really of importance that we should adopt a
name which, while clearly expressing our principles, shall
attract as much and repel as little as possible. There
are many names which I could heartily accept, if there
were not already attached to them some unfortunate
association ; and I think it is important for us to avoid
any name which has already associated with it thoughts
and feelings and actions with which we should not wish
in any way to be identified. When we discussed this
question among ourselves in committee, even in a meeting
of from nine to a dozen, we found that we had the most
curiously varied associations with several of the names
which have been read to you. Among others I may
mention the term ‘Theistic.’ This term is one which, in
the mind of our friend Mr. Chundcr Sen, signifies every
thing which is most delightful and most religious and
devout. For my own part I have long looked upon it as
a word closely connected with all that I most value in
free religious thought—thought which is free, and, at the
same time, really religious; but yet I find that that is by
no means the case with many of those with whom it is
very important that we should be able to work in this
movement. We find among our correspondents that the
term is distinctly disliked and dreaded by a considerable
number. I mention this because it is the term I should
myself have by far preferred to any other, and yet it is
one as to which 1 have come to the conclusion that it
would be unwise in the Society to adopt it. You have
heard that, among the resolutions to be submitted to you
presently, is one for a name for the Society, and that that
name was not arrived at unanimously by the Committee.
In accordance with a common custom in such cases, it
was understood that we should not come down as a
committee and request you to accept the name proposed,
c
�18
.
but that tlic question should be left entirely free and un
shackled, that it should be discussed here and voted upon
without any weight being given to the accident that
there happened to be in the Committee a majority in
favour of a particular name. Accordingly, an amend
ment to that resolution will be moved. It is an amend
ment to the effect that it would be wise in us, on the
present occasion, to avoid pledging ourselves to any
name at all, and that the name, like the further details of
the Society, should be postponed to be further considered,
first by the Committee, whom we shall ask you to appoint
to-night, and afterwards by a meeting of the Society to
whom the Committee will report. I shall say no more
on that subject now, because it will have to be fully laid
before you at a later period of the evening.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is one point referred to
in the report, upon which there has been a good deal
of misapprehension among our correspondents, and on
which, therefore, I would say one word. It is with
regard to the third of what we have called the means
which the Society proposes to adopt, and which is worded
as follows : ‘ By helping its members to ascertain and dis
charge their personal and social duties.’ For my own
part, I consider, as I have already intimated, that that is
perhaps the most interesting and the most important
subject to which our attention can be directed, and I am,
therefore, extremely anxious that it should not in any
way be misunderstood. Some of our correspondents
have objected to that proposal, on the ground that it
would be impossible to adopt any practical measures for
giving it effect without infringing the rights of individual
conscience. It would be suicidal for a Society like ours,
which intends, as far as it can, to be an embodiment of
freedom with order, to do anything which could be open
to the accusation of infringing the rights of individual
conscience ; and the idea must have arisen, I think, from
�19
the supposition, that, under that head, it was intended to
adopt personal and social regulations which should be
binding upon the members of the Society. Nothing of
the kind has ever been contemplated by the Committee,
and I am quite sure nothing of the kind would be accepted
by the Society. One of the great rocks upon which, as I
think, the existing religious organisations of the country
have split, and are splitting, is what they call ‘ church
discipline.’ I trust that our Society will never attempt
to establish anything in the shape of church discipline.
While, however, everybody is absolutely free to do that
which is in accordance with his own conscience, it
seems to me that we should be abdicating what is the
great privilege of a religious fraternity, if we were to
shrink from discussing the question of personal and social
duties with those who may be willing to discuss them
with us. I trust we shall find it possible in an earnest
and faithful manner to assist each other in the attempt to
investigate in what way the principle of the brotherhood
of man ought to be applied to our daily life, in order to
produce the effects which we feel ought to follow from it,
but which we see around us at the present time do not
follow from it. I hope, therefore, the Society will accept
that as one of the most important branches of its ope
rations, at the same time being extremely careful that
nothing whatever shall be done, which can, in any way, be
said to be even an attempt to infringe individual liberty.
There is only one other point to which I need advert.
I think it would be wise to agree not only that a consi
derable part of the details of the working regulations of
this Society should be left in a provisional state, but that
we should express, in the constitution of the Society, the
idea that we can never expect to arrive at perfection,
and that the Society itself, therefore, is one of indefinite
progress. I, with some of those who are now present,
took a part in the attempt, which has come to an untimely
c 2
�20
end, to found what was called the ‘ Free Christian Union.’
From the first it seemed to me there were fatal errors in
the constitution of that Society, and I think the most fatal
of all was the declaration that any attempt to change
the programme, or the statement of the principles upon
which the Society was founded, should be considered
ipso facto a dissolution of the Society. In my view,
no Society is worthy of permanent existence which does
not embody in itself the idea of progressive development.
I do not, of course, mean that we are always to be
seeking change, but that we should always feel that
what we hold is good only until we see something better.
I should very much prefer to see in the constitution of,
our Society a distinct declaration, that once in five years
or once in a certain term of years, the whole constitution
should be submitted to the members of the Society for the
purpose of seeing whether suggestions could not be made
for improvement, rather than to see there anything like
a declaration, that, when we have once come to a con
clusion, we are to bind ourselves for all future time to
that conclusion, and that not only we ourselves for the
rest of our lives, but also those who may come after us,
are to agree with our present opinions.
I will not detain you, ladies and gentlemen, any longer.
I must express my great thanks for the kindness with
which you have listened to what I have said, and I will
now in conclusion move that the report which has been
read be received.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
The Rev. J. E. Odgers.—Mr. Chairman, ladies and
gentlemen, I feel that the motion, which I have to re
commend to the meeting, follows with peculiar fitness
after the speech which has been just delivered, and is, in
point of fact, but the natural consequence which will
�21
suggest itself to every person who has heard you, Sir, with
sympathetic feeling. The resolution which I have to
propose is this—‘ That in the opinion of this meeting it is
desirable to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding
any differences in their religious creeds, in a common
effort to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life, by,
first, investigating religious truth ; secondly, cultivating
devotional feelings; and, thirdly, furthering practical
morality.’ I trust, Sir, that thus far the feeling of the
meeting will support both you and myself, and that the
applause which followed the statement in the report, that
the Committee felt justified in the formation of this Society,
is but the token of a wide and large sympathy both in
this room and outside it. For myself, I am only a country
minister, and I feel at present the strongest hope, from
this meeting, from the words you have uttered, from the
collection of opinion which has passed through the hands
of the Committee, that we may have a Society which shall
furnish those who labour for the principles of attaining
and diffusing spiritual life with a strong motive for ac
tion ; and by those means we shall bind those who
spiritually labour into one common bond of sympathy,
and give them at once that breadth of view and that as
surance of brotherly spirit of which they oftentimes feel
sorely in need. At the same time I rejoice to find that
this sympathy is a sympathy of spirit, and does not ne
cessarily involve an agreement in dogmatic propositions—that this Society proposes to take in all those who cordially
have those three objects in view, notwithstanding any
difference in their religious creed. While we are labour
ing, perhaps each in our several spheres, to support the
thought which is trusted to us, to cultivate and encourage
the life which we most deeply approve, and are perhaps
joined with some dogmatic body for the spread of the
theological views which commend themselves to us,
putting our hands to the plough as far as we can, and
�22
striving by association to make the truth, dear to us, per
fectly common to all mankind,—I feel that there is a need,
not only beyond that, but rendered necessary by those
associations, that we should go somewhere where a larger
and wider field would be open to us, where we should
escape at once from the doctrines which do attend sincere
individual labour in the search after, and propagation of
truth, and also which, in a double measure, attend the
religious associations of those who dogmatically agree.
Therefore, I look forward with the greatest pleasure to
joining and supporting, as far as in me lies, an association
where those, who theologically and religiously differ, may
come, and, taking their stand upon the first article of any
religious creed, however dogmatic, namely, 41 believe
in one God, the Father Almighty,’ may there get glimpses
of sides of religious life which have hitherto been closed
to them ; may find further views of religious truth shining
in on their minds as to those who are, generally speaking,
in time and place separated from them, and return to
their individual work of ascertaining and maintaining the
truth, and spreading, by teaching and example, practical
morality, with their minds refreshed by heartfelt com
munion with others, who bid them God speed across the
barriers of divergent theological theory, and, at the same
time, gaining that outlook into ultimate truth which the
naturally prophetic tendency of the mind does gain for
itself after having every opportunity of hearing the sincere
enunciation of opinion, which is at the present time broken
and varied as the truth reflects itself through the souls of
individuals.
I therefore submit most heartily, and with the strongest
individual feeling, this resolution to the meeting, and I
trust that what I have said will not be thought unprac
tical in itself, or as warring against the practical aims and
objects of the Society. If I, looking at it from my own
point of view, put the speculative side—the subjective
�23
side—first, I do not wish in the least to depreciate any
enumeration of practical ends, however various they
may be. The letters which I have received from my
own correspondents when I have sent them the circulars
of this Society mention very many practical aims, all of
which are in themselves most desirable, and may well
call for religious co-operation; but, at the same time, I
feel that these are early days to speak of the practical
aim of the Society. The great thing is to feel that we
are individually working only for those particular aims
which are dear to us who have communion, in the
highest and deepest sense, with others who are far off,
who are working for the same objects that we all pledge
ourselves to work for, and I feel at the same time that
ends will present themselves—they must follow out of
such communion of thought as I trust will be charac
teristic of this Society, and that we shall gain from this
Society ardour and heartiness of spirit, that we shall re
turn not pledged to any kind of mechanism or organisa
tion which is to hide the fact, that whatever good we do
must come from the determination and aspiration of the
soul, and will, therefore, be strengthened both for thought
and for work by the Association, the formation of which I
most heartily commend to this meeting. Therefore I beg
to propose to the meeting the resolution which I have
already read.
The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have the
greatest possible pleasure in saying that this resolution
will be seconded by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. I must be
allowed to say that, not only because Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell is a valued personal friend of my own, but
because her taking part in this meeting I look upon as a
practical illustration of a great principle.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.—Ladies and gentlemen, I
second this resolution. Its object is union—the union
of all those who heartily love God. It is union for a
�24
practical purpose, viz., the attainment and diffusion of
pure spiritual life; a life which will express itself by
earnestly striving to carry out God’s Will in every action.
There is great necessity for such union. God has given
us enough glorious truth—moral, religious, and scientific
—to regenerate the world, if we would but put that
truth into practice; but we do not know how to shape
into deeds the teaching we get from pulpit, lecture-room,
and book ; this is not taught us. We allow ourselves to
float down the current of evil customs, shutting our eyes
to some, growing indifferent to others, because alone we
do not know how to avoid doing what everybody else
does. We thus become partakers in all the evils that exist
around us, and drunkenness, immorality, destitution, dis
honesty, crime, all have their roots in our own daily life.
There is no escaping from this terrible but grand brother
hood which binds us all together. Single-handed we cannot
resist the overwhelming force of social evils, but united we
may. With the strength of union we may insist upon a
truer education for our children; wTe may teach prac
tically habits of simplicity and industry to youth ; we
may carry out business honesty ; wTe may create a purer
social atmosphere around us. Such effort to regenerate
practical daily life, it appears to me, is the common
meeting-ground of all religious persons. We, with an
earnest Christian faith, can here joyfully meet all those
who love God and seek to obey his laws ; and in this
united effort to realise God’s laws we shall found the
Universal Church. I have great pleasure, therefore, in
seconding this resolution.
The Chairman.—I would now invite any lady or gentle
man to express any opinion on this matter. I hope it
will not be considered necessary, in order that an opinion
may be expressed, that it should be different from those
which we have already heard, for we should be just as
glad to hear additional reasons on our side of the ques
�25
tion, as wo should be ready to hear any opinion not
agreeing with ours. We should be very glad if those
friends from a distance, especially, would say what they
think on the matter.
Mr. F. Wilson.—Sir, I should just like to ask a ques
tion of the gentleman who proposed this resolution, and
it is this—how can people who differ in theological
matters agree to assemble under the proposition he
suggested ? We must have an individual and responsible
idea common to all the members of the Society, or else
the thing cannot work. We must have a centre, and
then you may widen the circumference to any extent
you please, but this centre must be universally recog
nised as a substantial starting-point.
The Chairman.—I don’t know whether Mr. Odgcrs
would wish to answer that question himself, but I must
say I myself consider that it is impossible for men to
unite for any good purpose, unless they also unite in
some common definite belief. On the other hand, I am
certain, from practical experience, that it is very possible
to unite people who combine with that common belief
quite an indefinite amount of theological difference. I
think, therefore, there is no reason at all why we should
despair of uniting in our Society people who, agreeing in
the two principles which we have adopted, namely, the
Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man, yet add to
those principles a very indefinite amount, and possibly a
wide amount, of divergent belief on other points. Cer
tainly we should wish that the question whether they
could or could not unite with ns should be determined
by each individual for himself or herself.
Mr. Wade.—Sir, you were good enough to send to me
a circular stating to me the objects of the proposed
Society. I must say I was much puzzled to give an
answer to the questions which were asked, and I came
here to-night to hear some further elucidation from you.
�26
But I am puzzled now to know in which direction any
superfluous energies one might have can be thrown,
which might not be given to any existing free Chris
tian Church. I had hoped, sincerely hoped, since I
gathered from the Chairman that the old Free Christian
Union is dead, or must die, that we might probably
strike out some new course which, in consequence of the
desire for union among the various churches, and among
those outside the churches, might have drawn together
numbers of persons who, religiously speaking, have no
homes. The Chairman said we need not be agreed as to
a name to-night, but that is to be left open, and then the
following speaker who proposed the first resolution
ignores practicalities altogether. So far as I could follow
him, we might just as well be a corporation to propagate
moonshine as to ignore practicalities. Will you give me,
if you please, something upon which to act ? You ask
me to join you. Will you give me some definite notion
of what this Society is doing, or proposes to do, over and
above what any other Christian church is doing and may
do, such a church as that of Mr. James Martineau or such
as that of Mr. Conway ? We are asked to join with some
other rational beings in doing some work which those
churches are not doing. Show me, if you please, in what
way I can put my hand to the plough. My friend, who
spoke to the resolution, invited us to lay hold of, not a
real plough, but some speculative plough which he had in
his mind. Will you show me a real plough, which I can
lay hold of and work some great furrows, but do not let
us drive off into mere generalities, for that is the rock on
which many associations have split. I am a member of
the Free Christian Union, and I have asked what am I to
do in it. I have got no answer beyond paying my sub
scription to the Society from year to year, and receiving
a pamphlet, which of course, I am delighted to have. If
there is no work to be done, what on earth is a union re
ll
�27
quired for? Ought it not to do something to put into
practice that which stands as the second article of your
creed, that is, love towards man ? Surely that is not a
very difficult thing to do. Either you have got some
thing to do beyond what the other churches are en
deavouring to do or you have not. If you have, let us
know it. If you have not, what good will this Society
do ? If you will be so good as to enlighten my ignorance
on that point I shall be glad. I believe I do not stand
alone in that matter by a good many. We should be
glad to hear, since the mover of the resolution said he
ignored practicalities, some one who would tell us in
what way we can unite to do a work which is not being
done by any other Christian church in the country.
The Chairman.—I think I may make one very short
reply to the kindly criticism, with which we have been
favoured by the gentleman who has just sat down. In
the first place, I did not understand Mr. Odgers to ignore
practicalities. In the printed statement which is before
the meeting, there are three objects stated. The first
is, investigating religious truth. The second, cultivating
devotional feelings. The third, furthering practical
morality; and in the last paragraph those same general
objects are slightly modified and altered in their order.
They are there stated as follows : that the ‘ Society is
offered as a means of uniting all those who believe in the
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, in the
endeavour to supplement their individual efforts towards
goodness and truth by mutual sympathy;’—that corre
sponds with that which is put third in the paragraph
above, namely, ‘ furthering practical morality.’ Then, ‘ to
intensify their trust in and love to God by fellowship in
worship ;’ that is, in other words, the second object stated
in the first paragraph, namely, ‘ cultivating devotional
feelings.’ Then, ‘ to aid each other in the discovery and
propagation of spiritual truth, that thus they may attain
�28
to the more complete observance of the Divine laws of
human nature.’ That which is there put last corresponds,
I take it, to that which is put first in the first paragraph,
namely, ‘ investigating religious truth.’ I think the only
difference between the mover and seconder of the
resolution was, that Mr. Odgers distinctly stated that he
was more drawn by his sympathy for what is stated
first in the first enumeration of the objects of the Society
and last in the second enumeration of those objects,
namely, ‘ investigating religious truth,’ and less to the
practical part; whereas Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell stated that
her great interest was in furthering practical morality,
which is put last in the first and first in the second enu
meration of the objects of the Society, namely to supple
ment individual efforts towards goodness and truth, by
mutual sympathy.
Then, with regard to the question, whether our friend
should join us or not; of course we invite everybody to
join us who wishes to do so. But for my own part I do
not imagine that we shall be joined by a great many of
those who are in the happy position of belonging to a
society which entirely satisfies them. If any member of
the Portland Street congregation, or the South Place
congregation feels that either of those particular churches
completely satisfies all his desires for religious fellowship,
let him remain and be satisfied. We do not seek to
render him dissatisfied, but it is a fact which we find
existing, that there is a large number who do feel dis
satisfied, and who want something more. We offer our
organisation as an attempt to find out among ourselves
the causes and nature of our own dissatisfaction, and the
best practical mode of getting satisfied. Whether any
particular individuals, ladies or gentlemen, should join us
or not is, as I said before, a question which must be left
entirely for themselves to settle. For my part, I think
the enumeration of means under the second head of our
�29
printed circular holds out a prospect, if we can succeed in
getting the Society formed, of a good deal of practical
work which is not much done by any existing church
that I know of. The very first is this, ‘ Holding meetings
for the reading of papers and for conference.’ I am not
aware of any church that attempts anything of that kind
—certainly, neither of the two which have been referred
to does so. Then, secondly, ‘ Holding and encouraging
meetings for the united worship of God.’ That of course
is done by every church. But, taken in connection with
our avowed intention to endeavour to unite those who
belong to the various great branches of monotheistic
theology—Christians, Brahmos, Jews, Parsees, Mohamme
dans, it offers a work that has not yet been attempted, as
far as I know, by any existing church, whether orthodox
or free. Then, thirdly, ‘ Helping its members to as
certain and discharge their personal and social duties.’
No doubt the minister does something towards helping
the members of his congregation to ascertain and dis
charge their duties; but there is very little mutual
fraternal help arising out of the fellowship of the
scattered congregations with which I am acquainted in
London. Those three objects, to say nothing of corre
spondence and the issuing of publications, seem to me
to point out a very large field of practical work. I am
glad that all these questions should be asked, because the
more carefully the matter is considered the better it will
be for us. But we can only lay before you, as I said
before, that which is in our own minds and hearts ; and
if you find that you are perfectly satisfied without any
thing we have to offer, we cannot ask you to join us.
If, however, what we do place before you does seem to
you to be attractive, and to hold out some hope of
useful action on your part, then we ask you to join us.
Mr. Edward Webster.—Sir, I wish to make a few ob
servations with reference to what fell from the gentleman
�30
at the other end of the room (Mr. Wade). I would, in the
first place, ask those who are present, whether an Asso
ciation of this description is, or is not, a necessity of the
age, or rather of the intellectual religion which is so
rapidly spreading throughout the country ? If it be not
a necessity, then this Association will exist but a very
short time, notwithstanding the ability with which I am
quite sure its concerns will be conducted, from what I
have already heard from the Chairman to-night. But if
it be, as I for one undoubtedly think it is, a necessity of
the age, then you will go on, and you will establish
practically the most important religious principles that
have ever yet been communicated to the world. It
is impossible for any person who is at all connected
with the current literature of the age—with what is
going on in general society—I may say, in all ranks of
society, from the highest to the lowest—not to be aware
that doctrines and rules, in connection with religion,
which only twenty-five years ago were received as in
violable, arc now openly questioned—openly questioned,
not for the purpose of depreciating Christianity or re
ligion, but for the noble and exalted purpose of arriving
at truth, and that truth the most important of any. What
are we, and whither are we going ? what is to become
of the undying soul which every one in this room pos
sesses ? Hitherto science has not been applied to religion.
Look at all the religions of the world, and you will find
that science has had nothing whatever to do with them.
But that wondrous intellect of man, which has given us the
electric telegraph, which has enabled us as it were to fly
more speedily than the dove—that intellect is now being
applied to religion, and the consequence is, that there will
be new revelations of the dispensations of Almighty God
to man, and what hitherto have been considered penalties
and punishments will be found to be constructed upon
laws, spiritual, physical, and moral, absolutely perfect in
�31
their conception, and which have never required, and
never will require change, or amendment, or superses
sion, but by certain operations, slow to us but sure, are
effecting the ultimate social and religious civilisation of
the world. Gentlemen, union is strength ; and to tell
me that we are to stop because we cannot this evening
fix upon a name, is absurd. We shall have a name soon
enough, and such a name, I hope, as will unite very
many in supporting this Society. I do not hesitate to
say, and I am not a very young man, that the institution
of this Society has caused me more satisfaction than the
institution of any Society I ever heard of. Its importance
cannot be exaggerated. There is as yet no religion intro
duced into the world, which answers the conceptions of a
highly intelligent, highly cultivated, and highly benevolent
man. Therefore, Sir, I give you all the support I can, and
I most heartily hope that this Society is the commencement
of a thorough religious civilisation, and that it will end in
establishing universally, not only the worship of God, but
the brotherhood of man. Then, Sir, we shall not hear of
men armed to the teeth, and applying that noble mind
which God has given us, not for the purpose of insuring
human happiness, but for the purpose of destroying each
others’ lives. Christianity, as developed, has totally failed
to regenerate mankind. Eeligion founded on man’s in
tellect only will regenerate it, and that religion I trust
you are going to inaugurate this evening.
Mr. James Burns.—Mr. Chairman, and friends, I do
not rise to criticise the objects stated in the programme
of this Society, but rather to suggest something of a
practical character. I am already connected with a body
of people in this kingdom, numbering perhaps 20,000,
who are already endeavouring to do what this Society
contemplates. I see a number of those persons in this
room, and from them we can have practical suggestions
and sympathy. Now, Sir, there are several things con
�32
nected with religion. In the first place, there is senti
ment. We hear a great deal too much of that. In the
second place, there is faith; there is a great deal too
little of that. Then we have corresponding belief. Re
ligion is full of belief, but we put action out of view.
Then again, we have got dogmas or principles, but we
have not got objects. We cannot get all people to believe
alike, because every man will believe in accordance with
his culture and organisation. But there is one thino- we
can get all people to do, and that is, to move with one
beneficial object, namely, human happiness—an object of
all minds above idiocy. But we can never get two
minds to entertain the same conception of the same thing.
Even as to colours, if the organisation of vision is defec
tive, many persons entirely differ. I have to tell you,
ladies and gentlemen, that this Society is the expression
of that which has been going on among some people for
many years past, and all the things considered in your
programme are already at work in this kingdom. We
have Sunday meetings, where papers are read, and where
there is free conference. We have churches, where
there is no toll at the door, and no card for admission on
the platform. Again, we have religion in this country
which may be called scientific religion. What is meant
by that ? Simply, that there is no belief in a religion
which is not founded on facts. A scientific religion re
quires to be based upon man, and not upon God. What
do we know about God? We know nothing about God
further than what He has revealed of Himself, through
human consciousness. Let us realise the great fact of
human consciousness, and then I say all that we know
about God or anything else we can know only by careful
and intelligent investigation, and there are many things
which we can never tell with any degree of certainty.
To try to do so is unphilosophical, and can lead to nothing
but dogmatism. Why should we have dogmatism at all,
�33
where there is intelligence? Intelligence supersedes
dogma. Let us never name the word again, because it
is the sunken rock on which every ship has foundered
which has professed to take mankind to a religious haven.
What do we require to know ? We want to know what
constitutes human happiness. We want to know what
are the objects of human existence. Suppose it is im
mortality. The great object of scientific religion is to
liscover the fact of immortality—what becomes of men
after they leave off their mortality ? In what condition
lo they exist, and what is the relation of the present life
so the future life ? If you can answer those questions,
you know how to found a scientific religion, because you
?annot have a religion made up of mere morality;
morality is not religion—morality is only the performance
>f the various duties of life—
The Chairman.—Allow me, Mr. Burns, to suggest to
7ou that we are rather wandering to subjects which will
>ccupy a great deal of time, and I should like to
‘onfine the discussion to the resolution, which has been
noved and seconded, and to know whether or not we
hould adopt it.
Mr. A. C. Swinton.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlelen, among the objects of the proposed Theistic Society,
s stated in the prospectus issued by the Provisional
ommittee, is, ‘ To unite men, notwithstanding any differnces in their religious creeds, in a common effort to
ttain and diffuse purity of spiritual life.’ The question
now feel it my duty to put, in the presence of this
ssembly, is, Does this proposed Association mean to live
ccording to the divine laws of human nature, as that
reat example among men, Jesus Christ, lived? If so, of
>urse it must thoroughly renounce the present un•otherly system of life, and all that pertains to it. And
ch Theist, as a true child of God, and in His name,
ill proclaim by every deed of his daily life the falseness
D
�34
and criminality of the present system—a system based
on animalism, by which the millions of our actually de
serving fellow-creatures are forced by those who are
more powerful and cunning than themselves to be life
long slaves, and are thereby persecuted in the cruellest
manner, body and soul, to the present injury, and far
greater sin, of both oppressor and oppressed. If, there
fore, this proposed Theistic Society, despite its name and
provisions to the contrary, does not mean to supplant
this brutalising wrongdoing by the pure spiritual life its
Committee proposes to practise, then I say that far more
than is at present done by all the anti-Christian Churches,
and people falsely called Christians, is its dishonour of
God and its mockery of humanity. A few freed souls
have been striving to plant on earth that spiritual life
which the gentle and all-loving Nazarene, amid the
greatest opposition, many centuries since, heroically
proved to the world all might live, if they determined to
cast aside sensual selfishness, which blinds them, and
trust to the guidance of the divine soul within each one
of us for happiness, ever increasing and eternal. More
of these efforts may be heard of from me at the close of
this meeting, if it is desired, or of the Editor of the
‘Alpha,’ 15 Southampton Row, Holborn.
Mr. J. Baxter Langley.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen, I rise with very great hesitation, because I
feel the question which I raise is one upon which there
is a great difference of opinion among those who desire
earnestly to co-operate in a religious movement of the
kind to be inaugurated here. The word ‘devotional’
occurs in the resolution, and I am sure it will convey to
many minds, as it did to mine, the idea of prayer
in public worship and prayer in the sense of petitioning
to the Deity. I believe that there are a very large num
ber of persons who are animated by religious sentiment,
who nevertheless believe that prayer in that sense is not
�35
part of our religious duty, and that it places both man
and God in a wrong position. Therefore I know that,
supposing the resolution were carried with the word
‘ devotional ’ included in it, it would drive away from you
many of those whom I should like to see united with
you—namely, those who philosophically object to the
word ‘ devotional ’ as relating to a form of prayer. I
simply wish to raise the question, whether that word
must be regarded as an essential part of the resolution.
If so, it will exclude myself and those with whom I
am accustomed to co-operate among the advanced
Unitarians.
The Chairman.—We have been desirous so to pre
pare our resolutions as to cause as little difference as
possible ; but I have no doubt it would be quite im
possible to draw up any resolution, and it would be use
less if we could succeed in doing it, which would exclude
nobody. There must be a certain amount of community
of feeling, as I have said already in answering a previous
question. I can only say that the phrase which has been
objected to expresses one of the main objects of the
Society. The cultivation of devotional feeling was a sub
ject which was well considered and very deliberately and
unanimously adopted by the Provisional Committee;
and on the part of that Committee, I have no hesi
tation in saying that they intend to adhere to that phrase.
With regard to what it applies to, or what it means, I
have no authority to enter into that question at all; each
person must judge for himself as to the phrase itself.
The Committee who have called this meeting, and who
have hitherto acted in this movement, heartily adhere
to it.
Mr. E. D. Darbisiiire.—Sir, I feel very much interest
in the programme which I hold in my hand, but I have
very great doubts as to the object of the proposed
Society, much as we have heard of it. I have taken
p 2
�much pains to form my own opinion upon those subjects
mentioned in the circular. I am in doubt at this moment
whether the object of the Society is to unite men or to
make a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of
spiritual life. If the object of the Society is to unite men,
I am afraid the Committee, in their efforts to unite, will
lose that precision of thought, and that resoluteness of prin
ciple, which always disappear from attempts at compro
mise. The object of the Society, so far as I have heard
from the speakers to-night, is a common effort to attain
and diffuse purity of life ; not to unite men. We do not
care for the mere fact of uniting men. The mere fact of
uniting men is of no use. If they are heartily unanimous
in their object—if they are prepared to pledge them
selves to join together—if they hail with the sincerest
thankfulness the authority of the moral law, recognising
similar devotion on the part of their members, whom
they did not know before, as they themselves feel—they
will gather strength from knowing that others have the
same aspiration and the same longing with themselves,
and they will earnestly unite for such a purpose. That
is all our resolution proposes, as it seems to me—that the
Society shall be formed for a common effort to attain
purity of life, and not to unite men.
The Chairman.—Mr. Darbishire is. undoubtedly quite
correct in what he has said. The object of the Society is
a common effort, and it is to unite men only so far as is
necessary to carry out that common effort. Of course
there can be no common effort without union. The
object of the union, no doubt, is not as an end, but
simply as a means — the end being the common
effort.
The resolution was then put to the meeting, and
carried, with four dissentients.
�37
Mr. Vansittart Neale.— Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen, the resolution which I have been asked to
propose is, that the name of the Society be ‘The Uni
versal Religious Association.’ Before I address myself to
the resolution distinctly before you, I wish to disclaim,
in my own name, any notion that I am speaking for any
body except myself. I infer it is one of the charac
teristics of the Society which I hope to see formed, that
in it we should feel that we are not bound by the
opinions of other people ; that we do not pledge our
selves to accept the opinions of all those with whom we
may be associated in this Society, or whom we may ask
to join in the Society ; nor are we to ask them, or require
them, to accept our opinions. But we do ask, and we
hope it may be possible to show, that there should be a
common basis of union, defined, distinct, and practical,
so far as such union can be practical, upon which we may
act, preserving to ourselves that individuality of opinion
without which I myself am convinced it is perfectly im
possible that mankind could ever arrive at a general
acceptance of any religious truth as something in which
they commonly agree.
Now, Sir, as to the name. I have heard, what I was not
aware of before, that it is intended to propose that the
question of the name to be given to this proposed Society
should be deferred for further consideration. I confess
my own opinion is that it would be a great mistake to do
so. Unless it should appear to-night that there is an
irreconcilable diversity of opinion as to what the name
ought to be, I think that the not adopting a name would
be as much as to say we do not ourselves clearly under
stand what we want, we have no distinct idea what the
Society is to exist for, and therefore it is impossible for
us to give it any title which would enable any other
people to tell what it is we ask them to join in. I myself
have a very distinct idea of a principle up >n which I
�38
think it is possible to form the Society, and perhaps I
may be allowed very shortly to fall back upon what has
already been said as to the question which has been
asked, because I think the conclusive answer has not yet
been given—I mean the question as to what such a
Society as this can do which any other free Christian
Church cannot do. I say the answer to that question is
this : it can unite those persons who, having a deep reli
gious feeling, cannot join any Christian Church. That is
what it can do. It can unite the gentleman wrhom I
have the honour to see to-night on my left (Mr. Sen) ; it
will unite the Mohammedan and the Parsee; and it will
unite gentlemen like the author of ‘ The Phases of Faith ; ’
it will unite numbers of those who are now balancing
between Pantheism and the acceptance of that which we
have called Theism. It may unite all those who cannot
and will not join any Christian Church, and in doing that
you will do much to make all those who are members of
Christian Churches understand what it is they ought to
aim at. That is the principle on which I would support
this Society. That is what I think this name, which I
propose, expresses. I think it is apparent, from the list
of names read to you from the report to-night, that there
are at least three different views or heads of what the
name for such a Society as this should be, all of which, I
think, are mistaken ones. There are certain persons who
think that the Society should come out with a definition
of what they call absolute or universal religion, and thus
place itself in a species of critical antagonism to all ex
isting forms of faith. I think that would be a very great
mistake. The object of the Society, I consider, is to bring
men into that state of mind towards each other in which
it may be possible for them thoroughly, fairly, and calmly
to investigate and to judge of what there is which is true
and what there is which is not true in different religious
faiths. Until they have brought themselves into that
�39
state of mind they cannot be in a state of mind to define
in a satisfactory manner what are the religious truths
which they themselves coincide with, and which they
seek to inculcate. Again, there are certain persons who
would suggest apparently that the Society should put
itself under the protection of some existing religious in
stitution, or under some form of Christianity. Here again
I consider we should start upon a great mistake if we did
that. I myself do accept individually that truth as to
which others differ ; for I do accept, and hold, and believe
in the truth of that which has been considered by many
persons to be altogether contrary to reason, that which
has been the foundation of what is called the Catholic faith,
upon which Christianity has been historically founded.
I accept it entirely, although I am not going, of course,
to occupy the meeting with any discussion upon that
point. But I consider that there is no religion, there is
no faith, there is no religious dogma whatever, which
is not influenced by the myths and legends or notions
with which it has been associated. No society which
could hope to bring man generally to the acceptance of a
faith that should extend all over the world can exist at
all if it does not leave itself open to the true, careful,
calm investigation and examination of all those matters
that may be contemned, or may be insufficiently founded
on facts in the existing creeds. Then again there is
another idea which has been prevalent to a certain extent
in America—namely, that the Society is to meet and say,
‘ We hold a number of very different opinions, and we
simply agree to come together and tell each other that
we differ.’ I think that would be an extremely unsatis
factory foundation on which to form the Society. I
cannot imagine that the Society would attain any valuable
action if it were to adopt that as its sole basis. What is
it that the Society ought to stand upon ? I consider that
the Society aims at doing this : it aims, or should aim,
�40
according to my idea, to unite men within their different
faiths by leading them to feel that all of them are, to use
a Biblical phrase, the sheep of one Master, although they
may be separated for the present in many different folds ;
to lead them to believe that there is a spirit common to,
pervading all religions, even those which we most gene
rally condemn as false religions ; there is a spirit per
vading them all, which is the profound spirit of religion,
a part of which each one of the special creeds has
more or less ambiguously given utterance to, but to which
it is our object to bring them back, saying to men, ‘You
remember that all your own acts, all your own dogmas,
all that you, in your own particular religious creeds, may
endeavour to insist upon, they are only helps, and should
be regarded only as helps, to the development of a com
mon foundation which may be said to be the manifesta
tion of the really divine and universal religion of man.’
I consider that every religion has, more or less, been
founded upon trust in God. It is perfectly true that the
idea of trust has been embarrassed by a great deal of
distrust; it is quite true that men are continually talking
as if they were, and imagined themselves to be, in an
tagonism to God, and God in antagonism to them, and
they suppose that it is necessary to put an intervening
mediator between themselves and God, in order to relieve
that antagonism which they imagine exists. But this
mediator and the system of mediation have been intro
duced because they have got in their minds, in spite of
all this intellectual trust, a profound feeling of distrust in
the Being who is the Author of their own lives and the
Author of this wonderful world, and because they wish
to get rid of and relieve any element of distrust, and to
give vent to the confidence in the Being on whom their
lives depend.
Then I say that every religion has, more or less, sought
to affirm fellowship among men. There again we have
�41
the same sort of error. That fellowship lias been limited
to the fellowship of some particular nation, or the fellow
ship of those belonging to some particular sect, or hold
ing some particular set of opinions. There has been a
failure in establishing a feeling of fellowship among men
by having a common relation to the Great Being to whom
they owe their existence. The third great element has
been this : that religion is a matter of revelation ; it is
not an invention of man’s imagination only, but that it is
something which man, through his imagination, appre
hends as the action of God towards him, by means of
which man is brought, through the action of God, to the
apprehension of those deep and spiritual truths upon
which his whole life depends. Here again we have had
the same sort of mixture of error with truth which we
have found in other cases. Here again it is our object
to eliminate that error. Men have generally supposed
that the idea of a revelation was something authoritatively declared at some part of the remote past, and
which for ever after was to be accepted upon certain
grounds with the same evidence. There is another and
grander idea of revelation, wdiich has been imputed to
the Roman Catholic Church—the revelation of a con
tinuous progress, or something going on from the begin
ning of the world, and which will never terminate till the
world itself is terminated—a continual manifestation of
God to man by means of which man is brought into a
more thorough appreciation of his relation towards God,
and, therefore, his relation towards himself. It is the
belief in this system of revelation of continual progress
which I say we substitute for the idea of the authorita
tive revelation, and it is that which completes the scheme.
The third great principle which lies at the bottom of all
religions, and which it is the object of this Society to call
forth and bring out in its purity------ I do not wish to
occupy your time much longer, but these considerations
�42
appear to me very essential to bring before the Society
(although I have been able to do so only in a very im
perfect manner), in order to make you share my convic
tion that the Society has a distinct object on which it
may be formed, and which it may express by its name.
I think the name suggested is one which meets all those
views as well as any name that can be suggested. ‘ The
Universal Religious Association ’ expresses, I think, all
those convictions. It expresses by the word ‘ universal ’
a desire to take in all mankind, that we regard the pro
cess of revelation as something carried on among all
nations throughout all ages, and that we go to all of
them, in order to invite all to join us, and gather from
all of them those signs and features of truths which they
have adopted. Again, it is to be a religious association.
It is to be a union of trust in God; and it affirms the
fellowship of men one with another, which is the second
great principle upon which true religious faith is founded.
I say, therefore, that this name seems to me to express
the object of the Society, such as I conceive it to be, as
fully as any name could express it; and I have, there
fore, no hesitation in recommending to this meeting that
that name should be adopted.
Mr. Andrew Leighton.—Mr. Chairman, I will consult
the desire of the meeting by exceeding brevity, and I
will simply formally second this resolution, reserving to
myself the opportunity of making any remarks at the
close of the discussion if it should be necessary, but not
otherwise.
The Chairman.—As I know there is an amendment to
be moved to this resolution, perhaps it would be con
venient that that should be proposed before any general
discussion takes place.
Mr. Edward Henry Busk.—As you, Sir, have called
upon me to move the amendment at once, I certainly
will do so. Taking as I do so great an interest in this
�43
Society, I move any amendment upon a resolution which
the Provisional Committee has thought fit to bring before
the meeting to-night with the greatest regret. It is from
no wish to force upon the Committee, or upon the Society
which this meeting has declared its desire to found, any
name of my own selection. It is, perhaps, not even
from any feeling that the name which the majority of the
Committee desire to recommend to-night is in itself very
objectionable, but it is from a great desire on my part to
prevent the Society from being misconstrued unneces
sarily by those who have not joined it. The name itself
may seem a very unimportant matter; but, in fact, the
name is the only thing which comes before persons who
are not members of the Society. The name to them re
presents the Society. It is a very important thing, there
fore, that the name should represent the object of the
Society, and, as far as possible, be kept free from being mis
represented and misunderstood. At the same time, it is
not at all important, in my view, that a name should be
speedily fixed upon. We have already passed, almost
unanimously, a resolution which states in very distinct
terms the objects which it is proposed that this Society
shall have in view. It cannot, therefore, be said that, in
thus declining to choose a name to-night, this meeting is
forming a Society without having any distinct object. It
has three very distinct objects ; but at the same time the
name, the short placard which will set before the external
world the objects which we have in our hearts and minds,
is a thing, in my judgment, requiring careful considera
tion. It is not, of course, my place to make known to
the meeting everything that has passed in committee, but
I think I may inform the meeting that the list of names
I have read in the report only came before the Committee
last Monday, and they had then and there to select a
name. Therefore I do think there was very little time
for thought as to the best name to be selected. There
�44
was not unanimity at our committee meeting, as you,
Sir, have said ; and I feel that the subject of choosing a
name is so important, as compared with the fact of being
without a name for four or five months, that I do earnestly
entreat the meeting to consider whether the choice of a
name ought not to be deferred until we have had a longer
time to consider. It is in itself a matter of detail, and,
as the chairman has already informed you, it is the inten
tion of the members of the Provisional Committee to brine»o
before this meeting a resolution to the effect that it
should be referred to a Committee to complete the or
ganisation of this Society, to form rules as to member
ship and as to the management of the Society, and various
questions of that kind which cannot be gone into at a
meeting of this general nature. I therefore move the
amendment, ‘ That this meeting do not commit itself to the
choice of a name, but that the choice of a name be re
ferred, together with the other details of completing the
organisation of the Society, to the Committee,’ which I
hope this meeting will soon appoint.
I will not detain the meeting one instant more. I
wished merely to put before you, as shortly as possible,
the extreme importance of the choice of an appropriate
name, and the desirability of not taking any step which
we should at any time wish to retract, and which we
should regret having taken hastily and without due con
sideration.
Mr. Armstrong.—I beg leave to second the amend
ment, not exactly in the same interest in which it has
been moved by Mr. Busk, but because a name has been
running in my own head which has not been mentioned,
and which I cannot help thinking would recommend
itself to a large number of persons; and, in order that
that name may have a chance of being considered by
the Provisional Committee, I rise to second Mr. Busk’s
amendment. I suppose that the liuc of thought and
�45
feeling which has led the gentlemen forming the Pro
visional Committee to call us together to-night has
been, at any rate, a certain dissatisfaction with the
general lines of religious thought existing around us.
Thought on serious matters seems at the present day to
be running chiefly in two channels: the one is the
ancient channel which regards certain dogmatic beliefs,
whatever they may be, as essential to salvation, and
insists that all men must come to one dogmatic belief in
order that they may be saved; the other is the reaction
on that old belief, which is beginning to overthrow all
distinctively religious thought, and to teach us that man
need not look to anything higher than himself for instruc
tion and light, and that all that has been accustomed to
go by the name of religion may be entirely abandoned.
I apprehend the desire of the Committee would be to
take a medium course; and while rejecting the notion
that any special dogmatic belief, be it Ritualistic, Evan
gelical, or otherwise, is necessary to salvation, nevertheless
they would contend that some religious belief, or, at any
rate, some religious life, is necessary to salvation in its
highest sense—that salvation is an assimilation with the
Divine Being, whom they believe to govern the universe;
and the great religious work before us is to draw man
nearer to that Divine Being. Whether these thoughts
ran in the mind of the Committee or not I cannot tell.
I can only judge from the internal evidence which I find
in the prospectus. I have only endeavoured, as I sup
pose all who received this circular have, to get out of my
brain some name to express this object. I entirely agree
with Mr. Busk, that our name is an exceedingly im
portant point. By our name we shall stand or fall ; by
our name we shall be judged by Saturday Reviewers and
all that tribe ; and if they can find anything to ridicule
in our name, we shall find it hard to contend against it.
But of the names our secretary read, every one con
�46
tained either the word ‘ Religious’ or the word ‘ Theistic.’
Objections have been urged to both those names, the
objection to ‘ Theistic’ being, I presume, that, however
grand and noble the word may be in itself, it may give
rise to certain prejudice, and is not generally understood
in its proper and primary sense. A Theist is a person
who believes in a God. Nevertheless, I have spoken to
many Christian persons of various Churches who were
quite shocked at my notion that they were Theists. I
think, therefore, it would be well if we could find some
other name than ‘Theistic’ by which we could express
our objects, and which there would be no objection to
our adopting. On the other hand, the objection to the
word ‘ Religious,’ to my mind, is that there are things
professed as religious which I, for my own part, am not
inclined to recognise as religious in the proper sense of
the word. The Secularists and the Positivists tell us of
Secular religion and Positive religion. I have no objec
tion either to Secularists or Positivists. I believe many
of them are good and earnest men, but at the same time
I do not think we should find it practicable to work in a
religious association with them. I do not think we
should find we had a common aim and object, and I
doubt whether a society such as that would be found to
be practically useful. I would, therefore, suggest that
the Committee do consider the word ‘ Monotheistic.’ The
word is a very long one, and it may sound too learned.
At the same time I think it combines all that one under
stands by Theism, without having any accretion around
it such as gathers around the word ‘Theistic.’ I sup
pose you do not contemplate being Polytheists, and
therefore I do not think, by adding the word ‘ Mono ’ to
‘ Theistic,’ that you will practically narrow your Society
at all. Monotheistic may seem to be a word out of place
in England; you may say that, by taking the name of
Monotheistic, it is implied there is a Polytheistic Society
�47
against whom we are engaged. But this Society is
not an English Society; it is not even a European
Society; but it is to be a world-wide Society, if the
world will join us. Polytheism is not yet eradicated
from the world ; it still exists in many countries in the
East; and I think by adopting such a name as Mono
theistic we should avoid all prejudice such as gathers
around the word ‘ Theistic.’ We should be distinct and
precise, and not misunderstood by any party ; not lay
ourselves open to ridicule, but express exactly what are
the objects of the majority of the members of the Pro
visional Committee. I have great pleasure, therefore, in
seconding Mr. Busk’s amendment.
Mr. Owex.—Sir, I would support the amendment, and
merely observe that the suggestion made by the last
speaker is one I approve of, although I should like it
better were the title to be ‘ Monotheistic Brotherhood.’ I
was heartily pleased and delighted when I read the pro
spectus, and I thought if a name could be selected in
which both points might be embraced, that of the father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man, it would be
very desirable. I think this comes nearer to it than any
name which I have yet heard. For that reason I sup
port, or rather endorse, what the last speaker has said. I
regret to find that there should be any division to-night.
I believe that in spirit we all agree. I think Mr. Swinton
ought to be satisfied with what this Society intends to do.
It is what I have desired to see for a long time—namely,
a broad platform where any man might stand upon equal
terms with others. I have had much experience with
different denominations, those who profess the popular
Evangelical views and others, and I do not question the
reality of their convictions and enjoyment, although I do
not agree with them. I say there is a reality among
them, and I respect them, and I want to be able to stand
>n the platform side by side with them. I give them
�48
credit for their sincerity, and can understand them when
they say they can realise acceptance with God. I can
appreciate the worthy stranger to whom I have listened
with satisfaction and delight, though introducing views so
different, when he took for his text, ‘ God is love,’ and
when he illustrated that love by referring to the return
ing prodigal. I thought then it was time we had a
movement such as is now being inaugurated, and I hope
those of my friends who have not gone cordially with the
votes will reconsider it, and will not act in opposition, but
in concert. There will be opportunities afforded for con
ference and for the reading of papers, and the Society
will afford them an opportunity of submitting any views
which they may desire to bring before us. I have very
frequently said, and I wish you to bear it in mind (and I
have been labouring outside for many years in attempt
ing such an object), that the things you are now suggest
ing I have attempted to do. I have referred to the
Catholic Church. They have one grand idea, but their
mistake is that they want every one to be of one mind.
But cannot we have all under one Shepherd? Cannot
we have all in one fold, and be looked upon as one
Church ? As things are now, a premium is paid on
hypocrisy. We want each man to be true to himself.
In opening associations like this there will be every
scope offered for humility, as there is a bare possibility
that we may be wrong. When we establish a Society
like this, if any member has anything to communicate,
he will be in a position to do so more than he is now,
when the different sects stand at daggers’ points.
Air. E. Webster.—Sir, I think it would be wise to post
pone the final resolution of this Society with regard to
the name, because I think the name in itself is very im
portant indeed. Moreover, I should object to the name
that has been mentioned, because it is too vague. ‘ The
Universal Religious Society ’ would not carry to ordinary
�49
minds the true nature of this Association. I presume, of
course, when the Society comes to be organised it will
have some system of public worship, because, unless it
applies to the spiritual sentiment of human nature, it will
at last merely become an institution for the circulation of
papers on theological subjects. Man is, by nature, a
gregarious creature, and more especially in matters con
nected with religion, and unless you have some system of
public worship I venture to predict your Society will
ultimately fail. The words ‘ Religious Association ’ do
not point to religious public worship at all. If you had
some such name as this, 4 The Church of God for all
People of all Nations,’ the word 4 Church ’ would in
this Christian country carry with it an idea of public
worship. I do not mean to say that that is a better
name than that which is mentioned in the resolution. I
should like to know very much from our Asiatic friends
what the meaning of the word 4 Theistic ’ is, as understood
in that part of the world, but the word throughout
Christendom has a certain definite meaning. I mention
that now for the purpose of showing my reasons for
voting for the amendment. I think the name has never
been sufficiently considered, and I am not content with
the name that has been mentioned, because it is much
too vague.
Mr. Charles Pearce.—Mr. Chairman, brothers, and sis
ters, I shall support the amendment, but not for the same
reasons for which my friend opposite (Mr. Armstrong)
supported it; and, before I make a very few remarks, I
should like to clear away one or two difficulties which
probably his remarks have made. He suggested a name
in his own mind as one which was suitable to this
Society—that is, Monotheistic, if I understood him aright,
because in the world there were many gods, or rather
there was worship of what are supposed to be numerous
gods. Without entering into any theological discussion,
E
�50
I desire simply to carry your minds back some 4,000 years
since, and to remind you that all the efforts of Moses
were to destroy the worship of gods and to enunciate the
worship of the one true God. Therefore I earnestly
hope you will dismiss from your minds at once any idea
of adopting such a name. We do not want to have this
country and the world embroiled, as were the nations
around the Children of Israel, for the purpose of putting
down the worship of many gods. Our brother’s obser
vations would not apply, for he said we have Positivists
and Secularists ; and I do not think that the name pro
posed, of ‘The Universal Religious Association,’ would be
a name under which we could unite with Positivists and
Secularists. I gathered from his remarks (I do not wish
to do him any injustice) that he would not unite with
Positivists and Secularists. Now, if he did say so, he at
once condemns himself as being unfit to join this Associa
tion. For I take it that if we believe in the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man, if a man be a
Positivist because he has by using his intellect become a
Positivist, he is still a child of God and still a brother ;
and it is just the same if he be a Secularist. I say, all
honour to the noble Secularist of Manchester who chal
lenged his lordship the Bishop to meet him on some fair
platform. They are men and they are brothers.
Now I will state my reason for not agreeing with the
name ‘ Universal Religious Association.’ My reason is
simply this, that no one attempts to define religion. Mr.
Vansittart Neale says, if we ask what is the meaning of
the term ‘ religious,’ we must criticise all religions. Of
course we must. There is only one religion, and that is
very easily found if you are desirous of finding it—it is
the religion of love. It was professed by Jesus Christ
1,800 years ago. It was professed by Confucius nearly
3,000 years since. It was professed by Brahma and
Buddha. It was professed by all the Reformers. We
�51
do not want the religion of love hampered up with doc
trines or dogmas at all. Then we must say what is the
meaning of the word ‘ religious.’ If you can apprehend
thoroughly your relationship to God, or to the cen
tral source of life, call that central source by any name
you please, if you once recognise that from the central
source you issue, then you are a child of the central
source; and every man, woman, and child, no matter
where they are, or in what condition or circumstance,
are your brothers and sisters, and that is the religion of
love. I only support the amendment upon the name to
night that there may be some time to think of the name.
The name proposed is a very fine name, and it is one of
the most suitable you could think of, if you could only
well define in your own mind what religion is. When I
sent in my reply, I thought no name was so suitable as
‘ Theistic Union,’ if Theism were thoroughly exemplified.
I only oppose the carrying of the resolution and support
the amendment that you may think over it, and come
better prepared at the next meeting to vote as to the
name to be given to this Association.
Now let me ask you just to consider one statement.
You say you are here with the desire to associate to
gether as brothers and sisters in forming this Association,
and if you form it under the title of a ‘ Universal Religious
Association,’ you accept the definition of religion that it
is your duty to God, knowing your relationship to Him,
and you accept the duties which devolve upon you when
you meet your brothers. This is important ; and please
to listen to it fairly and in the same spirit in which I offer
it to you. Do you think that the Divine Being is a
respecter of persons? No, you do not. Do you think
the Divine Being gives one man 800,000/., and gives
800,000 men nothing a year ? Certainly not, and He
never intended it. If we are going to work, and not to
talk, one of our efforts will be to carry into daily life that
E 2
�52
precept laid down by the Nazarene Carpenter, ‘ As you
would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto
them.’
Mr. Baxter Langley.—I should like to say a word
or two with regard to the name to be given to the Asso
ciation. I am still in hopes that, as the Society was itself
open to discussion and consideration, it may hereafter
amend the first resolution and adopt some other prin
ciple. I submit for your consideration, and with due
respect, that you will find by experience that you cannot
do by the resolution what I had hoped you intended to
do. I wish to say one or two words as to this Society
being called ‘ The Universal Religious Association.’ I want
to show you, in one or two brief sentences, that it cannot
be universal if you adhere to your first resolution. As I
understand, we came here together to-night to bring as
large a number as possible into religious association ; and
the gentleman at the bottom of the room, very early in
the meeting, said with great force, as I thought, that the
Society must offer something beyond that offered by other
Churches. The question is whether, having adopted the
platform you have to-night, and having determined to
adhere to it, you are not, by calling yourselves ‘ The Uni
versal Religious Association,’ placing the Society in an
equally absurd position as if you called yourself the
Catholic Church. With all respect to the gentlemen who
have spoken, I hold that there are a very large number
of Secularists who are tired and worried to death with
discussions, disputations, and debates upon dogmatic reli
gion who would gladly have welcomed a meeting of this
kind if it had been of such a nature as to present a
platform which was unobjectionable to them. I believe
it was quite possible to adopt a platform which, while it
would have included those connected with Christian
Churches, would yet have been so adapted to the wants of
the age as to have included all those men who are animated
�53
by deep religious feeling and desire religious co-operation.
The orthodox Churches are admitted to have failed, and
a great number have admitted that many of the heterodox Churches have failed. It is a fact that I very
much regret. Having been identified with the Unitarian
Churches, I can say that they are comparatively desolate
and deserted. They are only filled when there is some
man of remarkable ability and eloquence who calls to
gether a congregation simply by the dramatic character
of his eloquence. They have all been rendered desolate
by the fact that they have determined to have as a basis
of worship that there should be a certain creed ; that
lies at the root of the whole of this evil. If you could
adopt such a platform as would be truly universal
then you would bring in a very large number of
people—some of those speculative persons who have
been alluded to in terms hardly so respectful as ought to
have been used—you would bring in a large number of
earnest Secularists who desire to join in what is commonly
known as Christian work and benevolent enterprise.
Now, what are the two ideas which you have embodied
in your programme which would prevent, I believe, the
possibility of this union ? I know that many persons
adhere to the idea of a personal God as being essential
to true religion. I am not an atheist myself, but I claim
that there is a religious spirit existing in the minds of
those who differ from me and from you on that essential
point. I believe there is an enormous amount of useful
effort to be carried on in the world without any dogma
of that kind. And it is a dogma with regard to the
personal existence of the Deity. The other idea to which
I have alluded is that which may be said to have been
embodied in George Coombe’s ‘ Constitution of Man ’—a
work written by a man of the highest ability, of great
earnestness, and of deep religious feeling. His chapter
on Prayer has been adopted and accepted by a large
*
�54
number of persons calling themselves Christians. If you
are to adopt the two ideas to which I have referred, you
cannot get a basis of union which will embrace persons
other than those embraced in the existing Churches;
the Church in South Place includes a very large
number of persons who go the length to which I have
referred to-night. There are other persons who go the
same length among Unitarian ministers. There are very
broad and liberal views preached from their churches,
and I would point to Mr. Mark Wilks, of Holloway, where
discourses of the most profound character are delivered
from the pulpit. It is a matter of grave importance
that you should not hastily take a name because it adds
one more difficulty which you will throw in the way of
adapting yourselves to the wants of the present age. I
am convinced myself, from my knowledge of the common
people (not such as those we see in this room to-night),
many of whom hunger and thirst after some notion of
this kind—I am quite sure you will not bring them on
your platform unless you are careful to avoid the difficul
ties attaching to other Churches, one of which I think
you have thrown in your way by adopting the resolution
you have to-night. I beseech you, therefore, not to
throw a further difficulty in the way by adopting an un
suitable name, because if you do it will only add one more
to the difficulties already existing.
The Chairman.—I think it must be quite clear that
the meeting is not prepared, at any rate unanimously, to
accept a name to-night. On the other hand, we are ex
tremely anxious to get to the next resolution, to which
our friend Mr. Sen will speak. Under those circum
stances, I have the permission of the mover and the
seconder of the resolution to withdraw the resolution
in favour of the amendment, and if that is done we
may at once dispose of this question, and shall be able
to proceed with a more interesting discussion.
�55
Mr. Leighton.—I desire to say one word before you
withdraw the resolution. I was myself asked to second
this resolution on coining into the room to-night, but
have had no time for its consideration. From the
general sense of the meeting, I think it would be desir
able that further consideration should be given. I am
quite willing, and am glad that the mover of the resolu
tion is also, that it should be withdrawn. I want the
meeting to give their sanction to the proposition that the
name, whatever it be, shall be made as broad as possible
—to include all humanity. The question I have been
considering in my own mind is whether even the term
Theistic, broad as that is, would not exclude some who
ought to be included. The religious sentiment is a com
mon principle; all people have it, Secularists as well as
others; and some Secularists I have found to be morp
intrinsically religious than many professing Christians. A
name, therefore, which would include such persons should
surely be the one adopted by such a society as ours.
Mr. Leighton then controverted Mr. Baxter Langley’s
objections to the word ‘ devotional,’ holding that the
question raised was simply one of definition, which each
person must settle for himself, just as each had to define
for himself what was meant by religion.
Mr. Cunnington.—I hope I shall not be considered to
intrude if I occupy your attention for a moment, being
the individual who had the honour of proposing to the
Provisional Committee the name which has been so much
controverted. I do not rise for the purpose of justifying
the name or recommending it, seeing what the present
feeling of the meeting is, but merely for the purpose of
presenting what I think may be a practical inconvenience.
We must have, as it seems to me, some designation in
order that our friend Mr. Busk may be communicated
with. If you have no name it might be temporarily the
Nameless Society. You must have some name, or you
�56
cannot address our friend Mr. Busk. If you cannot agree
upon the name of the Society, let it be ‘The Nameless
Society,’ or something that would prevent the practical
inconvenience of having no title.
The Chairman.—I do not think practical inconvenience
would be at all felt. We came here to-night as a pro
posed Theistic Society, and until something else is adopted
you have that name upon the prospectus, which, I think,
will answer all practical purposes. The resolution now
before the meeting is that the subject of the name be
referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete
the organisation of the Society.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
Baboo Kesiiub Chunder Sen.—Sir, before I introduce
the resolution with which I have been entrusted, I re
quest your permission to say a few words. I have always
felt strongly the importance and necessity of establishing
spiritual fellowship and union among all classes and races
of men. That there should be political and social differ
ences among mankind is not at all surprising ; but that
men and women should fight with each other in the name
of religion and God is really painful and surprising. The
true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and
to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of
religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and
goodwill among men, are trying to show their antagonism
and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must
stand forward with our voice of protest and say religion
is defeating its own legitimate object. I have always
been distressed to find in my own country how many of
the Hindoo sects in India fight with each other, and how
they combine to war with Mohammedans and Christians,
whom they look upon and hate as their enemies. It is
far more painful to see how that spirit of bitterness
�57
and sectarian antipathy has been persistently manifested
towards the Hindoos by many professing Christians.
None preached so eloquently and so ably the doctrine
of the true love of God and the love of man as Jesus
Christ. It is, therefore, extremely unpleasant to us all
to see those who profess to be his disciples hate the
Hindoo as a heathen who has no hope of salvation,
and who has not one single spark of truth in his own
mind. Narrowness of heart has oftentimes its origin in
narrowness of creed. Men hate each other, men con
taminate their hearts with sectarian bitterness, because
they believe that there is no truth beyond the pales of
their own denominations and churches. This is a fatal
mistake, and to this may be attributed all those feelings
of bitterness and mutual recrimination which have con
verted the religious world into a painful scene of war and"
even bloodshed. Religion is essentially universal. If
God is our common Father, His truth is our common pro
perty. But the religious world may be likened to a vast
market; every religious sect represents only a portion of
truth; religion is many-sided; each individual, each
nation, oftentimes adopts and represents only one side of
religion. In different times and in different countries,
therefore, we see not the entire religious life, but only
partial religious life. The Hindoo represents religion
in his peculiar way, the Christian in his. The men
of the first century represented religion in their own way
according to the circumstances in which they lived ; and
so the men who are blessed with modern civilisation re
present religious life in their own way. If we desire to
adopt religious life in its entirety and fulness, we must
not, we cannot, reject or ignore any particular nation or
any branch of God’s vast family. If we embrace all
nations and races from the beginning, from the creation
of man down to the present moment; if we can take in
all religious scriptures, all so-called sacred writings ; if we
�58
are prepared to do honour to all prophets and the great
men of all nations and races, then certainly, but not till
then, can we do justice to universal and absolute religion
such as exists in God. To prove true to Him, to prove true
to humanity, we must do justice to all the departments of
man’s religious life as they are manifested in different ages
and in different parts of the world. The English Chris
tian has no right to hate the Hindoo heathen, nor has the
Hindoo heathen any right to treat the English Christian
with sectarian antagonism and hatred. Both must em
brace each other in the fulness of truth and in the fulness
of brotherly love. I rejoice heartily to see such a thing
foreshadowed in the constitution of the Society about to
be organised. I feel that modern nations and races are
getting their eyes opened to the catholicity of true reli
gion, after centuries of spiritual despotism and sectarian
warfare. Men are beginning to feel that, in order to be
true to nature and true to God, they must cast away
sectarianism and protest against spiritual tyranny and
kiss freedom and peace. The object of this resolution is
to bring together religious men in India, America, Ger
many, France, and in other parts of the world, into one
Monotheistic brotherhood, so that they may all recognise,
love, and worship God as their common Father. The time
has come when such a movement ought to be practically
organised, when all nations and races should be brought
together into one fold. English Christians ought to ex
tend their right hand of fellowship to my countrymen,
and my countrymen ought to extend their right hand of
fellowship to all those who stand beyond the pales of
Hindoo orthodoxy; so that, while they differ from each
other on certain dogmatic questions of theology, they
still recognise each other as brethren, and show their pre
paredness to vindicate the unity of the human race in the
face of the existing conflicting chorus of theological
opinions. It is impossible to establish unanimity of
�59
opinion among mankind, and those who have tried to
bring about such unanimity have always failed. I hope,
therefore, the friends and promoters of this movement
will not commit that great mistake. Let individual
liberty be recognised ; let every individual right be vin
dicated and respected; but still at the same time, while
we recognise differences of opinion, let us feel, and let
us declare, that it is possible to have a common platform
of action, where we can exchange our sympathies with
each other as brethren. There is another mistake which
I hope this Society will not commit, and that is, ever
to assume an arrogant and hostile attitude towards exist
ing sects. We should always assume a humble position.
We must stand at the feet of our ancestors, all those who
have gone before us, and who have left for our enjoy
ment precious legacies of religious life and religious
thought. All honour to such men. Hindoo, Christian,
Chinese, Buddhist, Greek, and Roman—men of all nations
and races—men of all ages—who have in any way
laboured successfully to promote the religious, and moral,
and social amelioration of mankind, are entitled to the
undying gratitude of all succeeding ages. In forming a
Society like that whose formation we contemplate at
present, we feel morally constrained to honour those
spiritual and moral benefactors to whom we owe “ a debt
immense of endless gratitude.” At their feet we sit
to-day, and to them we desire to offer our hearts’ thanks
givings, and we desire to recognise them individually
and unitedly, as those friends and brothers who have
directly or indirectly brought us into that position in
which we feel enabled to establish and organise a Society
like this. It is on account of the light which we have
received from them through succeeding generations that
we are prepared to come forward to-night and stand
before the world as a Theistic brotherhood. We cannot
dishonour them; though they belong to different nation
�60
alities, though they may be of different times and races,
we cannot for one moment dishonour them. We cannot
with pride and arrogance say we do not owe anything to
the Christian Scriptures, we owe nothing to the Hindu
Scriptures, we owe nothing to Confucius. We owe much
to all these sources of religious revelation and inspiration.
To their lives, as the lives of great men, we owe a great
deal. Our attitude, therefore, must be an attitude of
humility towards those who have gone before, an attitude
of thankful recognition; and towards existing Churches
also we must assume the same attitude. If there are
friends around us who think it their duty to criticise
severely our proceedings, to hold us up to public derision
and contempt, they are quite welcome to do so; but let
us not, as members of this Society, for one moment
cherish in our hearts unbrotherly feelings against them.
Our mission is a mission of love, and goodwill, and peace.
We do not stand forward to fan the flame of religious
animosity, but our desire is to extinguish the flame of
sectarian antipathy, if it is possible for us to do so. We
go forth as ministers of peace ; we shall love all sects ;
Christians and Hindoos we shall look upon as brothers,
as children of the same Father ; their books we shall read
with profound reverence ; their priests we shall honour
with thanksgivings ; and to all those around us who desire
to treat us as men who have no hopes of salvation, even
to them we must show charity and brotherly love. I
hope, therefore, not a single member of this Society will
ever think it right or honourable to manifest the bitter
spirit of sectarianism towards any religious denomination.
There are in England at present, I understand, nearly
300 religious sects into which the Christian Church has
been divided. That such a thing should exist in the
midst of Christendom is indeed painful, I may say fright
ful. Let us do all in our power to bring together these
various religious denominations. I do not see why we
�61
should not exercise our influence on Christian ministers
to exchange pulpits with each other. Why should not
the people of one congregation visit the church of another
congregation ? Why should not the various preachers of
the Christian Churches try to harmonise with each other ?
Christian people sometimes go the length of thinking
that the whole religious life is monopolised by themselves.
During my short stay in this country I have been struck
with the fact that English Christian life, however grand
and glorious it may be—and it certainly is in many of its
aspects and features—is sadly deficient in devotional fer
vour in the world ; deficient in feelings such as those
which a deep and trustful reliance upon a personal and
loving God alone can inspire, support, and sustain. Some
thing like that is to be found in India. I do honestly
believe that in India there is such a thing as spirituality.
In England there is too much materialism. That is my
honest conviction. If England and India were to unite
and receive from each other the good things they ought
to receive from each other, we should be able to form a
true Church, where spiritual fervour and the activity of
material life would harmonise, in order to form the unity
of religious life. Whether, therefore, we come to Eng
land, America, Germany, or France, or any other country
where similar religious movements are going on, we ask
them to co-operate with us; we ask the whole world to
treat us as fellow-disciples, to give unto us all the good
things they possess and enjoy for our benefit, that we
may thus collect materials from all existing churches
and religious denominations in order, in the fulness of
time, to construct and uprear the future Church of the
world.
Friends, these are the words that I intended to say
to-night, with a view to invite you all to look upon this
Society as an association of love, and peace, and humility,
not of hatred, mutual persecution, and sectarianism. If
�G2
this Society should live long—and why should it not live
if it is God’s Church and God’s society?—if this Society
be spared to continue in a career of honourable useful
ness, it will bless our hearts ; it will bless your country
and my country; it will bless the whole world. I need
not soar into regions of imagination and fancy in order
to depict in glowing colours the future Church of the
world ; but this I must say, that from the time the light
of religion dawned on my mind, up to the present moment,
I have always been an advocate of the glorious principle
of religion which is summed up in these two great doc
trines, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
man ; and so long as I am enabled to work, whether here
or in my own country or elsewhere, it shall be my duty
to speak, and feel, and labour in such a way that not
only my own countrymen may, under the guidance of
God’s Spirit, and with God’s help, be brought into one
fold, but that all nations and races, so far as is possible
with my humble resources and powers, may be influenced
to feel the necessity of bringing themselves into one
vast family. Oh! may that blessed day soon come
when the earth, untrod by sect, or creed, or clan, shall
own the two great principles — the universal father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man ! I beg to
propose this resolution to the meeting: 4 That in the
opinion of this meeting it is desirable that the Society
should correspond without delay with similar societies in
India, America, Germany, France, and elsewhere, as
suring them of our sympathy and fellowship.’
Mr. Cunnington.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have had
the honour of being asked to second this resolution. I shall
not be so presumptuous as to attempt to add anything to
what Mr. Sen has said, and I shall occupy your time but a
few moments. Mr. Sen has dwelt very forcibly, and very
properly, on the obligations we are under to those who
have preceded us in the discovery and propagation of
�63
religious truth. There is a further idea which strikes me
as being also important, seeing that in Ilim whom I
recognise as the Deity there is neither variableness nor
shadow of turning ; there is no change in His laws, and
the same element, or the same disposition, exists in
humanity now as in former times; and while we ap
preciate at its proper value the truth which has been
handed down to us by past generations, we do not lose
sight of the importance of recognising the inspiration of
the present day. I am one of those who think there
cannot be any difference or clashing between the advocates
of physical science or truths that relate to matter, and
those who are the advocates of truths which relate to
spiritual things, or to the mind. All truth must be in
harmony if it is rightly understood. Both matter and
mind have, according to my conception, been given to us
by the same Being, who is perfect, and in whom there
can be no imperfection. It is on account of our not
sufficiently comprehending the laws of that Being that we
see around us the lamentable and degrading state of society
which exists. I take it that if the interests of society had
been more practically insisted upon there would have been
comparatively less difference of opinion than there is and
less importance attached to the name, which there is, as
it seems to me, a difficulty in accepting. When we see
about us the want of common honesty, the want of truth
fulness, the physical degradation which exists amongst so
many of our fellow-creatures, whilst we are living in a
land groaning, I may say, under its wealth—if the
principle was recognised that property has its duties as
well as its rights, it would go, I think, far towards
remedying the evil which exists in society ; and whatever
name we give to our Society, whatever our aims may be,
unless they are brought to have a practical bearing on
the ills which are patent to all of us, it will be of but little
use. Our object must be to give it a practical direction;
�64
we must make up our minds to act upon the simple
principle, as between man and man, of doing unto others
as we would be done by. I will not attempt to analyse,
or to dilate upon the two grand principles which have
been referred to, of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. It is because, as I think, those two
principles, rightly understood, are sufficient to unite the
whole of us, while we have our own individual opinions,
and hold them sincerely, earnestly, and ardently, that
we may be in a position to join those who may differ
from us, and to give them credit for the same sincerity
which we claim for ourselves.
But, Sir, I am not speaking to the resolution, which is,
that this Society should put itself in communication with
similar societies in all parts of the world. I firmly
believe, using the language of our great poet, that
‘ one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and
I believe that the religious element in some shape or
other exists in all conscious humanity. It is believing
that, that I cordially sympathise with, and second, the
resolution which has been proposed.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
Mr. Conway.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen,
I rise for the purpose of moving a resolution to the
effect ‘ That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with
power to add to their number, to complete the organisa
tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its
affairs; of this Committee, five to be a quorum ; and that
this Committee report to a future general meeting, to be
held as early as they can arrange.’
At this late stage of the meeting I do not feel inclined
to occupy the attention of the audience very long. For
myself, Sir, I would rather sit silent and see this move
ment go on, having perfect faith in the soundness of the
�Go
sped which we tire engaged in planting to-night. 1
believe it to be seed falling into honest soil, and I have
so many opportunities of appealing to the public, and
expressing my opinions, and even of monopolising the
expression of opinion, that I should be much more
pleased to hear some of the rest speak. I will not,
ho wever, let a movement, from which I hope great
things, pass without stating that it has my entire
sympathy, and I heartily approve of it, although, of
course, in many details, it does not exactly express my
particular ideas. I have my own peculiar views about
what constitutes devotion. I do not believe in that which
is called private or public prayer. I am not willing,
with others, to be called a Christian in the usual accepta
tion of the word, because I think I love and admire Jesus
Christ too much for that. I have my various feelings, of
course. Something fell from our chairman which looked
as if he believed we were not quite satisfied with our
respective local associations, and therefore came hither.
I do not agree with that. I think we may be perfectly
well satisfied in our local congregational arrangements,
and at the same time feel there is room for a larger
association with people who disagree with us and people
who are far removed from our ideas ; and the presence
of disagreement, and the presence of misgiving, and the
variety of ways of looking at things which have been
manifested in this meeting to-night are the most hopeful
signs we have ; they show that we are beginning to launch
out into something wider than the little associations
which we have with our own sects, and, instead of heaping
up sect upon sect, we shall come in contact with other
ways of looking at things throughout the world. I believe,
Sir, this Society will stand related to religion exactly as
the British Association of Science stands with regard to
science. There is a Royal Institution for teaching
science, and there is a Jermyn Street School, and there
F
�66
is the Ethnological Society—all practical institutions for
teaching science ; and also there is a great movement in
this country, and in every country where there are
scientific societies, devoted to the union of scientific men
for great purposes, and for the prosecution of vaster dis
coveries than any one society could accomplish by itself ;
and exactly as the Social Science Association stands
related to particular institutions, or the British Associa
tion stands related to a particular scientific association,
so I understand this Association to stand related to any
special religious movement. I should have been glad
were it openly called, what I believe it substantially is,
a Religious Science Association, and that we should an
nually have our meetings for the study of such things
and furtherance of such ends, just as people meet an
nually at Social Science or British Scientific Associations.
However, Sir, I candidly endorse the idea that this meeting
is practically tentative, and the object of this resolution
is to further that idea. It is a seed which we arc
planting, and we propose to appoint a Committee, in order
that they may cultivate that seed through the tenderest
part of its existence—namely, its gradual first growth,
its first tender blade, before it has got the sturdiness
and strength to which it can grow of itself. I think it
is clear that it would be impossible to decide what shall
be the practical mission of an association like this. It
is manifestly impossible for us to decide on the emer
gencies of the future, the exigencies which are to come,
the great demands which are to be made on the united
religious heart and free thought of this country. We
cannot decide till occasions arise, for new occasions teach
new duties, and there is not in this world a limb of any
animal, or form of any plant, that did not come into
being because there was a need which arose for the exist
ence of such animal or plant : every limb, every tree,
every leaf, every lin, in this world was created because
�G7
it was wanted by the surroundings, the great practical
results and emergencies of life. Our movement, then,
must be considered as a small egg, and it is to be formed
in this world as every other organic form has been con
stituted in obedience to the requirements which call
forth the vital germ and give it shape. As it lives,
as it grows, the light which will shine upon it will
give it its proper powers ; the rain which will fall will
clothe it with exactly the duties it needs, and the objects
it should have in view. We must trust this seed to the
eternal elements of this world ; we must trust it to God ;
we cannot decide at present everything it is to do, for
there may arise in distant years some great question upon
which it may be desirable, or even necessary, to call a
special meeting and take some united action. There may
be some other Oriental brother or brothers to wel
come, and then this Society will be here to open its arms
to such a brother, and not to let him wander about to be
tossed hither and thither, and to be preached at at my
lord’s table by his chaplain. He will not be left to be
called a Pagan here and there ; and there will be a large
welcome and a large hearing wherever there is a Society
which regards him as a true, devout, and religious teacher.
And, Sir, there may arise great questions of religious free
dom—questions arising touching religious movements,
national religious establishments, and many other things
in this world, where it will be necessary for people united
in some great salient points to take some practical action ;
and that practical action will decide what limbs, what
shape, what features, we shall have; for it is clear that,
if you try to do too much by giving this Society a
distinct shape beforehand, if you try to make a machine
answer all your ends before you know what those ends
are, if you make your machine without reference to
what may happen in the future, if you do that, you
will find, I think, that the machine will become very
F 2
�68
tiresome, very bungling, mid, in the end, useless. I
repeat, I would rather begin low down, where all things
in nature begin—first of all the mere blade, and let that
grow as the Eternal Tower shall decide and the course
of events shall determine. That is all I have to say, and
that is why it seems to me eminently proper that we
should have a Committee to watch over us, to avail them
selves of every ray of light which shall foil upon our
effort, to avail themselves of all suggestions which may
be made from whatever quarter, to see that we start
well, to see that the first beginnings of this seedling
shall be well cultured, well pruned of all that is ex
traneous, so that we shall see that in the end it is fit
for the garner. Those twelve gardeners who will con
stitute the Committee, those twelve horticulturalists
who are to tend this seed and to watch over it, should,
I think, be appointed by us, and, therefore, I most cor
dially move, with the highest hopes as to the progress
of this Society in the future, that this Committee be
appointed.
Mr. Kisto Gobindo Gupta.—Ladies and gentlemen,
I cannot speak very much. But I have much pleasure in
seconding the resolution which has just been put forward
as to the necessity of the proposed Association, and as to
the necessity for a Committee to manage its business.
Much has been already said upon the subject, and I can
only add my voice to say that I have personally felt the
necessity of such an association, more perhaps than any
body else in the room. In India we have similar associ
ations, but here some of my friends and myself do not
find any distinct association where we can feel ourselves
quite at home. So, if the proposed Association should
be formed, it will be a welcome place to all of us. I
have, therefore, much pleasun1 in seconding the reso
lution.
�69
Mr. Owen.—The last speaker said that he and his
associates have not been able to feel themselves at home
in any association now existing in this country. There
is a class who have not felt themselves at home in any
of the Churches, and hence the question was raised, Why
do not the working classes go to church ? If you arc
going to form a Committee, take heed to that, have regard
to that; do not disregard the working classes ; do not get
a highly respectable and a thoroughly English Committee.
I do not think anyone has attached more importance to
the visit of our distinguished Indian friend than I have;
but what has been his work in India ? He has been
endeavouring to deal a death-blow against caste. Have
any of those associated with him said one word about
the caste which exists in England? And is not that the
curse of our country? And so long as that exists all
that we have said simply amounts to nothing, and
there can be no religious union. I want to test the
matter; and if you are in earnest, I will promise you
that thousands will back you in your work. I have
addressed, I may say, hundreds of thousands of people in
this metropolis, and I have scarcely ever opened mv lips
without advocating the same principles that you have
advanced to-night. I hope, therefore, you will be explicit
on this one point, and don’t let us have a respectable
Committee. I am sure you do not misunderstand me.
I mean that the working classes have not felt them
selves at home, because they are not what is considered
the respectable class. I believe that Jack is as good as
his master, and in fact a good deal better. The working
classes are the industrious bees, and they are better than
the drones any day. I have the greatest respect for
every gentleman present; but I only ask you to be considerative, and to do something worthy of the name of
Chunder Sen. He has the noblest spirit I have seen. I
�70
doubt whether I ever heard a man open his lips in my
life for whom I have a greater veneration. I hope, there
fore, we shall do something worthy of such a man.
After some further discussion, the resolution was put
to the meeting and carried unanimously; and the Com
mittee was subsequently named.
A vote of thanks to the chairman terminated the pro
ceedings.
©
�RESOLUTIONS PASSED AT A GENERAL MEETING
HELD AT
THE FREEMASONS’ 11ALL, LONDON,
ON
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870.
MR. WILLIAM SIIAEN IN TIIE CHAIR.
1. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable
to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding any
differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort
to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life by, (1) in
vestigating religious truth, (2) cultivating devotional
feelings, and (3) furthering practical morality.
2. That the subject of the name of the Society be
referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete
the organisation of the Society.
3. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable
that the Society should correspond without delay with
similar societies in India, America, Germany, France, and
elsewhere, assuring them of our sympathy and fellowship.
4. That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with
power to add to their number, to complete the organisa
tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its
affairs ; of this Committee, five to form a quorum ; and
that this Committee report to a future general meeting,
to be held as early as they can arrange.
A Committee of twelve ladies and gentlemen was then
ippointed, of whom the following have consented to act :
—Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Ananda M. Bose, Edward
Henry Busk, Moncure D. Conway, George Hickson,
Andrew Leighton, Miss E. A. Manning, S. Prout New•ombe, William Sliaen, and Edward Webster.
�72
STATEMENT OF THE COMMITTEE.
— ♦----
The Committee have begun the task committed to
them by the general meeting, and have agreed upon the
following statement for immediate publication :—
The Committee fully recognise and appreciate the
innumerable efforts which have been made by eminently
religious and good men for the amelioration of mankind,
physically, intellectually, and morally, and acknowledge
that a large debt of gratitude is due to these earnest
and devoted men ; but at the same time they feel that
the results of all the efforts which have been made leave
abundant room for, and encourage, fresh exertions upon a
basis as broad and comprehensive as possible.
It is felt that a belief in the two great principles of the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men forms a
sufficient basis for religious communion and united action.
This Society is offered as a means of uniting all who
share this feeling, in the endeavour to supplement their
individual efforts towards goodness and truth by mutual
sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by
fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the dis
covery and propagation of spiritual truth ; that thus they
may attain to the more complete observance of the
divine laws of human nature.
It is. intended to seek the attainment of those objects
by the following means, namely—
1. The holding of meetings for the reading of papers
and for conference.
2. The holding and encouragement of meetings for
the united worship of God.
�73
3. The helping its members t<> ascertain and dis
charge their personal and social duties.
4. The formation of similar societies, with the same
objects, in various parts of-the British Empire and other
countries.
5. Correspondence with those who may be supposed
willing to assist in the objects of this Society.
6. The issue of publications calculated to promote
the above purposes.
The Committee now invite all persons who concur in
the views thus expressed to join the Society. Any person
may become a member by communicating his or her
name and address in writing to the honorary secretary,
in the form appended to this statement.
It is not proposed to have any compulsory subscription’
but all members are invited to contribute to the funds
of the Society.
In the resolution, under which the Committee arc
acting, the objects of the Society are declared to be,
the investigation of religious truth, the cultivation of
devotional feelings, and the furtherance of practical
morality.
With reference to the investigation of religious truth,
the Committee feel that it is desirable that meetings for
the reading of papers and for conference should be
established as soon as possible, and intend to organise
such meetings in the autumn of this year.
The Society will also, with a view to the attainment of
this object, aid in the study of already existing works,
reprinting them when necessary, and will assist in pub
lishing original works.
Under this head will also stand the task of compiling
a collection of the purely religious passages from all the
different Bibles or Sacred Scriptures to which access can
be obtained. The compilation of this work may be begun
without delay.
It is hoped that the Society may soon be in a position
�74
to aid in the establishment in many towns and villages of
libraries in which those books shall find a place which
arc calculated to disseminate the principles of the Society,
and in the publication of works specially intended for the
young.
As to the second of the three objects of the Society,
devotional feelings may be indirectly cultivated in a
variety of ways, such as by a sincere study of science, by
art, or by literature. In fact, all the higher pursuits of
the intellect and imagination, and all developments of
pure social, and domestic affections materially tend to the
increase of the feeling of devotion.
These various means may be encouraged, but can
hardly, at least at present, be actually employed by the
Society. But the Society can hold meetings for the worship
of God, and thereby give such of its members as desire to
attend a means of directly aiding each other in the culti
vation of feelings of devotion.
These meetings, while strengthening and elevating the
spiritual communion between each member and God, will
afford opportunities of public worship to those who feel
themselves excluded from meetings for worship based on
dogmatic theology, and will practically demonstrate the
possibility and desirability of the union for public wor
ship of persons holding different creeds.
The Committee intend, therefore, to arrange, in the
autumn of the present year, meetings of the Society for
united worship.
Another means of furthering this object, which may be
at once begun by the Society, is the collection of a book
of prayer and praise, to contain passages from already
known books and hymns, as well as prayers, meditations,
and hymns which may from time to time be contributed
by members. This book, subject to continual revision,
will be valuable both as an aid in the conduct of meet
ings for united worship and for private use by individual
members.
�75
The third object, namely the furthering of practical
morality, naturally branches off in two directions—the
personal and social.
Under the first head, the aid to be afforded by the
Society will consist principally of the mutual countenance
and support which the members will afford each other in
the endeavour to carry out into their daily life, whether
in the family, society, or in their public or commercial
avocations, the principles of high and pure morality.
It is, perhaps, needless to remark that nothing in the
nature of Church discipline is contemplated or will be
established.
Besides this mutual support among the members, the
Society may itself aid in the realisation by them of a pure
spiritual life by means of its meetings and conferences,
where, by reading papers and by friendly discussion, ques
tions relating to the conduct of life may be treated and
developed.
In connection with the social branch of this subject,
such meetings as are last described will be most useful,
and these subjects will be considered in the meetings to
be organised by the Committee in the autumn of the
present year.
The number of problems to be dealt with under this
head is enormous : and whether or no it will be found
advisable for the Society, as a society, to take any active
part in directly attempting to mitigate the evils which
attach to our present civilisation, such as pauperism, war,
intemperance, &c., or itself to attempt any philanthropic
object ; yet there can be no doubt that the Society can
and ought at the earliest possible moment to afford ample
and frequent opportunities for the reunion of its members,
whereby their individual views may be widened and
defined, and their individual action may consequently be
rendered more intelligent, useful, and energetic.
�76
A list of the members will shortly be printed and cir
culated among the members of the Society.
The time and place, at which the proposed meetings
for united worship and for friendly conference will be
held, will be announced to all the members.
Additional copies of the foregoing pamphlet entire, or
of the concluding portion alone, containing the resolutions
adopted at the general meeting and the statement of
the Committee, can be obtained on application to the
honorary secretary, Edward IIexry Busk, Highgate, N.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
STOTTISWOODK AND CO., NEW-STREET SQtTARtt
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
��187
To Edward Henry Busk, Esq.
Dear Sir,
Please to add my name to the List of Members of the
Society which was founded at the. General Meeting held at the
Freemasons’ Hall, London, on July 20, 1870, for the purpose
of uniting men, notwithstanding any differences in their
religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and diffuse
purity of spiritual life by (fY) investigating religious truth,
(2) cultivating devotional feelings, and (3) furthering prac
tical morality.
L am, dear Sir,
Yours truly,
Name in full
Address__ ____________
I
���
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Proceedings of the general meeting of the Theistic Society held at Freemasons' Hall, London on Wednesday, July 20th, 1870 and statement of the Committee appointed by the meeting
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Theism
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Conway Tracts
Theism
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Text
THE
FINDING OF THE BOOK;
AN ESSAY
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE DOGMA OF INFALLIBILITY,
BY
JOHN ROBERTSON,
COUFAB ANGUS.
“ It is better to speak honest error, than to suppress conscious truth."
“ I know of but one thing safe in the universe, and that is truth; and I know of
but one way to truth for an individual mind, and that is unfettered thought; and I
know but one path for the multitude to truth, and that is thought freely expressed."
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
1870.
�' KIMJI iihwoc
�TO
f
S^taiib
Wllta
of
Whom I honour and esteem as foremost among modern
Apostles and Prophets of Divine Truth, and whom I
regard with gratitude and love, as one of those Leaders,
to whose guidance, under God, I am largely indebted
for the enlightenment of my mind, and for my estab
lishment in the Christian Faith, by my deliverance from
the darkness of that superstitious bondage to the letter,
in which I was brought up, and in which I for many
years vainly struggled to find fight, this rude essay—a first
attempt—is, without his knowledge or permission, very
humbly dedicated by
THE AUTHOR.
��PREFACE.
The Brahmins, the Parsees, the Budhists, the Jews,
the Christians, the Mohammedans, and several other
denominations, have their canonical books of revela
tion, which are in each case regarded as a supreme
external authority dictated or communicated to man
by God.
Thus, for example, the “Bana,” signifying the Word,
is the sacred book of the Budhists, containing the dis
courses of their great original, Gotama Budha, who was
born, as appears to be historically ascertained, at least
624 years before the Christian era, so that he was pro
bably a contemporary of king Josiah and of the prophet
Jeremiah. These discourses, however, were not written
down in a collected form, till about three hundred
years after the death of the great teacher, and critics
have questioned the purity and genuineness of their
previous transmission, but the vast multitude of ortho
dox Budhists have never for a moment entertained
any such doubt. The degree of authority ascribed to
this revelation may be judged of from the very high
estimation in which its author is held. “ Gotama
Budha is worshipped as a divine incarnation, a god
man, who came into this world to enlighten men, to
redeem them, and to point out to them the way to
eternal bliss.”* The favourite theme of the very
numerous Budhist authors is accordingly said to be
the praise of the Bana, in the expression of which the
* “Faiths of the World,” vol. i., p. 399.
�VI
Preface.
most exalted and devout figures of speech are employed,
such, for instance, as these:—“ The discourses of
Budha are as a divine charm to cure the poison of
evil desire; a divine medicine to heal the disease of
anger; a lamp in the midst of the darkness of igno
rance ; a ship in which to sail to the opposite shore
of the ocean of existence; a collyrium for taking away
the eye-film of heresy; a succession of trees bearing
immortal fruit, placed here and there, by which the
traveller may be enabled to cross the desert of exis
tence ; a straight highway by which to pass to the in
comparable wisdom; a flavour more exquisite than any
other in the three worlds; a treasury of the best things
which it is possible to obtain; and a power by which
may be appeased the sorrow of every sentient being.’"
*
It is computed that adherence to this system of
religion is professed by no fewer than 369,000,000
of human beings in India, China, Tartary, Thibet, and
Burmah; while nominal Christians, of all countries and
all creeds, are reckoned tonumber about 256,000,000,
of whom about 60,000,000 are called Protestants.
But Budhism, though now nearly twenty-five cen
turies old, was the Protestantism of a reformation
from Brahminism, the antiquity of which is much
greater; and no less than 150,000,000 of the Hindoos
still adhere to the old religion, believing in the infal
libility of the four “ Vedas,” or sacred books, of which
it appears to be undisputed that one is at least as old
as the time of Moses, while all the four are very
ancient. “The language in which the Vedas are
written is the Sanskrit, which the Hindoos seriously
believe to be the language of the gods, and to have
been communicated to men by a voice from heaven,
while the Vedas themselves have proceeded from the
mouth of the Creator.” t
An intelligent Hindoo thus expresses his views of
* “Faiths of the World,” vol. i., p. 279.
f “ Faiths of the World,” vol. ii., p, 54.
�Preface.
vii
theology :-“We really lament the ignorance or un
charitableness of those who confound our representa
tive worship with the Phoenician, Grecian, or Roman
idolatry, as represented by European writers, and then
charge us with polytheism, in the teeth of thousands
of texts in the Puranas”—(sacred poems of the Vedas)
__ “declaring in clear and unmistakable terms that
there is but one God, who manifests himself as
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, in his functions of creation,
preservation, and destruction.”*
■ All his conceptions of God are thus moulded and
regulated by the Vedas, which contain for him the
authoritative and infallible revelation of trinity. in
unity, to doubt or deny which is for him infidelity.
He finds God in the book, and must believe that God
is exactly as there represented, or not believe at all;
for the book is to him God’s revelation of Himself.
So also the Parsee catechism teaches the doctrine
of plenary inspiration, in terms remarkably similar to
those which our most orthodox Churchmen are wont
to employ:—
“ Q. What religion has our prophet (Zoroaster or Zurthost) brought to us from God ?
“A. The disciples of our prophet have recorded m several
books that religion . . .We consider these books as
heavenly books (the ct Zendavesta ”) because God sent the
tidings of these books to us through the holy Zurthost.
“ Q. What commands has God sent us through his pro
phet, the exalted Zurthost ?
11 A. To know God as one; to know the prophet, the
exalted Zurthost, as the true prophet; to believe the religion
and the Avesta brought by him as true beyond all manner
of doubt; to believe in the goodness of God; not to disobey
any of the commands of the Mazdiashna religion ; to avoid
evil deeds ; to exert for good deeds; to pray five times in
the day; to believe in the reckoning and justice on the
* From an English lecture by a Hindoo, quoted in “ Chips
from a German Workshop,” by Prof. Max Muller, p. xvu.
(preface) ; quoted also by Dr. Norman Macleod, in “Good
Words,” February 1869, p. 100.
,
�viii
Preface.
fourth morning after death ; to hope for heaven and to fear
hell; to consider doubtless the day of general destruction
and resurrection; to remember always that God has done
what he willed, and shall do what he wills; to face some
luminous object while worshipping God,” &c.
*
If the Parsee cannot or dare not doubt nor dispute
the dogma, that the message which contains these tid
ings was communicated by God to Zoroaster, who
lived, according to the best authorities, about eight
hundred years before Moses;—if he must, per force
of religious training and tradition, believe that this
revelation comes to him through Zoroaster from God;
—then it is clear that he must accept whatever this
revelation tells him as the word of God, and, there
fore, “beyond all manner of doubt,” authoritatively
true, in the strictest and fullest sense, in every parti
cular of its contents, and in every expression which it
uses. The Parsee, accordingly, regards the Zendavesta
as the revealed will of God for his conduct in this
life, and for his salvation here and hereafter; and
he adheres to its doctrines and precepts, however un
intelligible these may be, because he submits his rea
son to the authority of the book, in which he believes
that God speaks to him. He, therefore, closes his
mind against all argument of error or imperfection in
the book; and when told of historical or other diffi
culties which stand in the way of his belief, he boldly
argues, to the complete satisfaction of those who hold
the same opinion, that faith must overcome the difficulties of reason, and that sceptical criticism is a
temptation and a snare. A confirmed belief of this
kind is proof against all the attempts of the Christian
missionary to convince the Parsee that his rites and
ceremonies and superstitious beliefs are doctrines and
commandments of men. For him they have the same
authority and certainty as the revelation of God’s
existence. He is under mental bondage to the Zen* “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i.,pp. 174, 175.
�Preface.
ix
dayesta in every word and letter of its contents, and
all its doctrines and laws alike command his unwav
ering acceptance and profound submission. He has
nothing else on which to trust for welfare and for
happiness, but on the doctrines and laws which are
written in that book. To deny or to cast off these, is
to him atheism and infidelity. To believe and obey
them is religion. Every ceremony and observance of
his sacred law is, therefore, to him a sacred duty. He
believes all these things, not because he discerns or
perceives their inherent truthfulness and reality, but
because they are written in God’s book. He holds
that this revelation is the authority which warrants
and enables him to believe in the existence and good
ness of God, and in the duty or privilege of worship,
and obedience to be rendered by men. If he be a
strictly orthodox Parsee, he will hold that the Zendavesta is the only true revelation, and that God can
be truly and acceptably worshipped in no other way
but according to the doctrines and observances which
it makes known. If, however, he be somewhat latitudinarian in his views, as most of the young Parsees
now are, he may, as many of them do, admit that the
Brahmins, Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews,
‘among whom he lives, may have their several revela
tions, good enough for those to whom they have been
given, and all in some sort making known the One
Great Ormuzd, but none of them intended nor suit
able for the Parsee, none of them at all approaching
in excellence to the incomparable Avesta, and none
of them possessing any merit except in so far as they
all more or less distantly resemble it.
If his mind has been still further enlightened by
education and reading, or by intercourse with edu
cated and intelligent men, of whom there are said to
be now a good many among the Parsees, he may per
haps be able to comprehend that Zoroaster must have
been a wise man, who meditated much upon God as
�X
Preface.
revealed in his own reasoning soul, and in all those
other scarcely less wonderful manifestations of creative
wisdom and power, with which God had enabled that
soul to become acquainted, especially as revealed in
the Sun, which was to him the visible and sensible
source of light, heat, motion, life, and happiness; and
he may thus see that the grand distinction of the
Prophet was only his ability to discern and to know,
more clearly than his contemporaries, those things
which every enlightened mind may and ought to infer
from its own perceptions. While profiting much by
all that is pure and good and true in the pages of the
ancient sage, he may thus feel himself perfectly at
liberty to reject any or all of those doctrines, laws, or
ceremonies which to his modern mind appear false,
foolish, evil, or unjust, however reasonable, right, and
true these may have been thought in the days of Zoro
aster, and during all the long ages of the ancient Per
sian empire. For the Parsees of our day are the descen
dants of the faithful remnant of the ancient Persian
people, who refused to be converted by the conquering
sword of Islam, and who chose rather to suffer exile from
the country than to forsake the religion of their ancestors.
We may well suppose, I think we may be sure,
that Zoroaster wrote because he believed, and in
tended thereby merely to assist or enable his disciples
and followers to discern for themselves, as he did, the
goodness and the truth of what he taught them; but
the religion of the Parsees, resting on the authority of
a book, has, like every other such religion, largely
degenerated towards a worship of the letter—bibliolatry—a faith in the book, and has served as a veil
to hinder and obscure the revelation of God in the
soul. If we have to argue with a bigoted adherent of
the conservative orthodox school, which is still the
most numerous among the Parsees, including nearly
all their priests, we may expect to find him main
taining that, apart from his book of revelation, there
�Preface.
X1
can be no sufficient evidence nor true knowledge of
the existence of God, of His character, nor of His will
concerning man’s duty.
This religion has unquestionably been useful in
preserving its votaries, through many generations,
from falling into the grosser forms of image worship,
from the extreme moral degradation with which these
are generally associated, from atheism on the one
hand, and from polytheism on the other. The Zendavesta has thus been the vehicle of light and instruc
tion to the minds of countless millions through thou
sands of years; but, however beneficial its influence
may in these respects have been, it now stands to many
as a barrier in the way of intellectual development and
mental progress, because the infallibility ascribrd to it
renders them blind to the immediate present fact that
God is in and around them, and that He their Creator
has endowed them with faculties, capable of indefi
nitely great cultivation and improvement, and exactly
adapted for the reception and interpretation of the
great revelation of Himself, which with His own
hand He hath written on man, and on every other
thing which He hath created and made. The Zendavesta is indeed a revelation in a way, for, along
with much error, it teaches great truths; but the
belief of these truths on its authority, being insepar
able from the belief of much else that it contains,
necessarily implies ignorance of that which alone
deserves the name of revelation, the realising dis
cernment that the things are true.
It is a most pregnant and wise remark, and may be
appropriately quoted here, that “ the real problem is,
not how a revelation was possible, but how a veil
could ever have been drawn between the creature
and the Creator, intercepting from the human mind
the rays of Divine truth.”* Even a belief in the
* From a lecture on the “ Science of Religion,” by Prof. M.
Muller, at the Royal Institution, as briefly reported in the
Scotsman newspaper of 1st March 1870.
�existence of God, when that belief rests on the autho
rity ascribed to prophet, priest, church, or book,
becomes a veil to obscure more or less that revelation
which may be read, in God’s own handwriting, on
every page of the great volume of Nature with which
we are surrounded, and the authentic transcript of
which is “ written not with ink, but with the spirit of
the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy
tables of the heart,"—the tablets or faculties of the
mind (2 Cor. iii. 3).
Precisely such a veil was thick upon the minds of
the Jews, at the time when Jesus of Nazareth lived
and died as a witness for the truth, denouncing and
rending the veil which concealed it, that God dealeth
with us as with sons, and that He hath abundantly
revealed Himself as our wise, holy, and loving Father.
It was precisely the adherence of the Jews to the
letter of their written revelation, which had blinded
the eyes of their minds to the spiritual light of the
truth which that revelation contained; and thus
those who were converted to Christianity are, most
suggestively, said to have had their eyes opened—to
have had their sight restored—to have been turned
from darkness to light, that they should serve God in
newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter,
for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life and
light to discern our Father’s will, that we should be
merciful as He is merciful, that we should love truth,
and peace, and justice, and all our fellow-men, and
that we should do good, as knowing that we are
•“ children of the Highest, who is kind even unto the
unthankful and to the evil.”—(Luke vi. 35, 36.)
The superstitious reverence in which such veils are
held by those whose minds are obscured thereby, and
the many fond prejudices which are invariably fos
tered in the shade thereof, constitute the most stub
born and insurmountable of all obstacles to the reception of the Gospel of light. It is well known, and
�Preface.
xiii
might, if necessary, be abundantly proved, that it is
more difficult and more expensive to convert one
Brahmin, Budhist, or Parsee, to Christianity, than it
is to convert ten of the far mote degraded fetish
worshippers of Africa, or savages aind cannibals of the
Pacific; and need I say how few and far between are
the trophies of success, resulting from our missions to
the Jews and Mohammedans'?
There may be some among my readers whose minds
are blinded by such a veil, remaining, for them as for
the Jews, “ untaken away in the reading of the Old Testa
ment,'” (2 Cor. iii, 14-18); so that they regard it as
their duty to God to submit their reason to the autho
rity of that book, and to believe that its legendary
and miraculous stories, that its incongruous, inaccu
rate, and even contradictory histories, and that the
idolatrous and superstitious rites and beliefs, of which
in many passages it expresses approval, are all alike
no less certainly and infallibly true than are its decla
rations that God is good to all men, righteous in all
His ways, and holy in all His works; feeling as if
there could be no religious peace nor comfort for them,
unless they by faith be able to surmount the difficul
ties of reason, and to believe everything, which the
Book says is true, as they believe its most indubitable
verities; for, as it is written that by faith the walls
of Jericho fell down, so it is said that by faith must
all such intellectual difficulties be overcome, though
to reason they may appear insurmountable as walls
built up to heaven.
It is my solemn conviction that this notion of
Scriptural infallibility or supreme authority is essen
tially anti-christian; and that those whose minds are
fettered or blinded by any of its various modifications,
are excluded thereby from that liberating and en
lightening influence, which is again and again declared
to be the most essential and distinguishing feature of
�xiv
Preface.
spiritual Christianity (Matt. vi. 22, 23; John viii.
32, 33, 36; Rom. viii. 15 ; Gal. v. 1, 13, 14.)
My chief purpose and earnest desire is to show to
such persons that the veil, on which they look with so
much veneration, is utterly devoid of the clearness,
the certainty, and the harmony of truth, which they
persuade themselves that it infallibly presents to their
view, even in those portions of it where their fallible
vision can discern nothing but mystification, error,
injustice, or sin; that its texture, when closely
examined, is found in many parts to consist of the
most unreasonable and irreconcilable products of
human ignorance, error, and time-serving policy; and
that it is, therefore, when viewed as a whole, notwith
standing the majesty, truth, and beauty of very many
passages, entirely destitute of anything like that in
fallibility or supreme authority, which it nowhere claims
for itself, but which has been, through ignorance or
superstition, or both, erroneously ascribed to it, and
by the ascription of which it retains its false dominion
over their minds, as if it were the Word of God.
I hope, by an examination of the structure of the
veil, in the earliest stages of its development, to show
that a belief in its divine origin, authority, and per
fection, is as unreasonable and false as any supersti
tion to which the human mind has ever been in sub
jection.
Whatever opinion my readers may form, I can and
do say for myself that I have studied what I have
written with profound reverence and love for the
truth, with much earnestness of thought and purpose,
and with a feeling which I cannot better describe than
by calling it a delightful sense of spiritual guidance
and enlightenment as I proceeded with my work.
The essay was commenced without the slightest idea
of publication in February last year, for the purpose
of sifting, maturing, and linking together in my own
�Preface.
XV
mind numerous detached notes and queries, which I
had jotted down during a previous course of biblical
reading and study.
I have been encouraged to publish it by the opinion
of some friends, and by my own hope that it may be
useful and helpful to some who, like myself, are earnest
inquirers after truth.
Forfar Road, Coupar Angus,
lsi June, 1870.
�TRUTH is the “Supreme Authority,” or “ Standard”
to which, as to “ the Word of God,” an appeal is made
in this essay. The enduring power, efficacy, and
sufficiency of this standard are well described by the
poet Milton in the following extract from “the
noblest of his prose works.”
“ Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play
upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously,
by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength.
Let her and falsehood grapple ; who ever knew Truth put
to the worse in a free and open encounter ? Her refuting
is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what
praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent
down among us, would think of other matters to be con
stituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new light which
we beg for shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose,
if it come not first in at their casements. What a collusion
is this, whenas we are exhorted by the wise man to use
diligence, ‘ to seek for wisdom as for hidden treasures,’ early
and late, that another shall enjoin us to know nothing but
by statute! When a man hath beeh labouring the hardest
labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out
his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons,
as it were a battle, ranged, scattered, and defeated all objec
tions in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain,
offers him the advantage of wind and sun if he please, only
that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for his
opponent then, to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a
narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass,
though it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness
and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows not
that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty ? She needs
no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her
victorious ; those are the shifts and the defences that error
uses against her power ; give her but room, and do not bind
her when she sleeps.”
�CHAPTER I.
THE FINDING OF THE BOOK—INTRODUCTION.
b.c. 623.
*
,
2 Kings xxii. 8,10, 11.—“ And Hilkiah the high priest
said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the
law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book
to Shaphan, and he read it. . . . And Shaphan the
scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath
delivered me a book, and Shaphan read it before the king.
And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of
the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.”
2 Cheon. xxxiv. 14, 15, 18, 19. — “ And when they
brought out the money that was brought into the house of
the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the
Lord given by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to
Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the
house of the Lord. And Hilkiah delivered the book to
Shaphan. . . . Then Shaphan the scribe told the king,
saying, Hilkiah the priest hath given me a book. And
Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass,
when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent
his clothes.”
The discovery here recorded was a most momen
tous event, and the account of its occurrence, and of
its attending circumstances, is one of the most in
teresting and suggestive passages in the early history
of the Bible. Its happening seems to have been so
fortuitous and unexpected, and its import so over
whelming and amazing, that the king in his penitent
* The dates and periods of time, when not specially ex
plained, are all taken from or founded on the generally
accepted chronology, as given in “Bagster’s Polyglot Bible.”
B
�18
Introduction.
terror rent his clothes, and in his perplexity com
manded some of the chief priests and scribes,
saying:—
2 Kings xxii. 13.—“ Go ye, enquire of the Lord for
me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the
words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of
the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers
have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do
according unto all that which is written concerning us.”
The light of such a lamp, thus suddenly rekindled,
must have immediately thrown, as the contemplation
of it still does throw, a most peculiar and instructive
reflection upon the previous history of the nation. It
was found that God had given to their ancestors,
eight centuries before then, a miraculous, infallible
code of laws, of which no distinct trace, recollection,
nor tradition had come down to them, and of which
the true character and record had remained for ages
lost, unknown, and forgotten, until this single copy
happened at last to be turned up from under the
accumulated dust of centuries in the temple.
We should, therefore, expect to find in the writings
and histories of those preceding centuries, clear evi
dence, if not distinct record, of the sudden disappear
ance or gradual neglect of the book, and of the
consequent tendency of the priests and people, with
each succeeding wave of change, to diverge further
and further from the laws, ceremonies, and institu
tions of that Levitical code, which had now so
strangely come up as a witness against a generation
of men, to whom, and to whose fathers, it had been
unknown (Deut. xxxi. 26). We should expect to
find, in each receding period before the reign of
Josiah, clearer and clearer traces of its observance,
more and more complete conformity to its ceremonies
and arrangements, and more and more accurate de
tails regarding the classification, duties, privileges,
and provision of its elaborate hierarchy. We should
�Finding of the Book.
J9
expect to find the distinctness of this recognition
increasing with each step backwards, until we should
arrive at a point where we should discern, by the
notices and instances of its observance, or of its guilty
and known neglect, that the old law in its complete
form was then in the hands of the priests and in the
minds of the people.
If we shall find, on the contrary, that in each
receding period, prior to the alleged discovery, there
was less and less recognition of the law; if we find
that, instead of being gradually disused and lost
sight of, the law, through a series of reformations
and changes, became gradually more and more de
veloped, so that in each earlier reformation the code
of religious observances and of ecclesiastical enact
ments was notably further from being complete than
it was in each later reformation ; if we find that the
historical period which approaches nearest to the
date of Moses, to whom the authorship and promul
gation of the entire law is ascribed, is precisely the
period in which there appears no trace whatever of
the Levitical law, no record of its observance, nor re
proof for its neglect; and if we can thus trace the law
in its growth, from rude and primitive times of be
ginning, through several clearly marked stages of
progressive development, we may in that case find
ourselves shut up to the conclusion that Hilkiah’s
production was only a new, or final, phase of the long
continued growth, and that, whatever may be the
merit or the demerit of the Levitical code, it must in
its complete form stand or fall, apart from the sanction
of Mosaic authorship, and of divine inspiration through
Moses.
In order to guard against this inference, and to
evade the difficulties which to their minds it suggests,
some commentators have thought of lessening the
importance of the discovery, by assuming that the
book which was found was only that version or com-
�20
Introduction.
pendium of the law which is given in the book of
Deuteronomy; but this hypothesis cannot be recon
ciled with the account given of the celebration of the
passover in Josiah’s time.
2 Kings xxiii. 21, 22.—“And the king commanded all
the people, saying, keep the passover unto the Lord your
God, as it is written in the book of this covenant. Surely
there was not holden such a passover, from the days of the
judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of
Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.'1'
Now the laws relating to the passover in Deuter
onomy are very brief and incomplete (Deut. xvi. 1-8);
while the full instructions regarding this observance
are to be found in other portions of the Pentateuch
(Exod. xii. 1-20 : Num. xxviii. 16-25); so that the
discovery of Deuteronomy alone would certainly not
have incited nor enabled Josiah to celebrate the
passover better than the pious and zealous reformers
and kings of earlier date might and would have done,
if they had possessed the other books.
The historian in Kings makes the discovery of the
book antecedent to the reforms instituted by Josiah;
while, in Chronicles, it is represented as subsequent
thereto.
2 Chron. xxxiv. 8.—“Now in the eighteenth year of
his reign, when he had purged the land and the house, he
sent Shaphan the Scribe, &c.”
If it were necessary to decide which of these is the
true account of the matter, probability would favour
the narrative in Kings; because it is more reason
able to suppose, that Josiah became acquainted with
the law, before he obeyed it, than that he so far ful
filled it first, and then discovered it afterwards.
Having been sent to “ inquire of the Lordf
2 Kings xxii. 14.—“ Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam,
and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asaiah, went unto Huldah
the prophetess, the wife of Shallum, the son of Tikvah, the
�Finding of the Book
2I
son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe ; (now she dwelt in
Jerusalem in the college;) and they communed with her.”
And she commenced her reply by announcing
dreadful judgment on the people and on the place,
because of their idolatry,—even “ all the curses that
are written ip the book,” says the record, according
to which Josiah had just made an end of purging the
land from idolatry. But, as for Josiah himself, the
prophetess concluded,—
2 Kings xxii. 18, 20; and 2 Chron. xxxiv. 26, 28.—
“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel. . . . Behold I will
gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to
thy grave in peace.”
This is the only original prediction by Huldah, which
has come down to us ; and it will not stand the test,
which the Pentateuch instructs us to apply to all such
prophetical utterances.
Deut. xviii. 21, 22.—“And if thou say in thine heart,
How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not
spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the
Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the
thing which the Lord hath not spoken; but the prophet
hath spoken it presumptuously ; thou shalt not be afraid of
him.”
Instead of being gathered to his grave in peace, the
next chapter of each narrative contains the account
of Josiah's death,-—killed in battle with Pharaoh
Necho, king of Egypt. (2 Kings xxiii. 29 ; 2 Chron.
xxxv. 23, 24.)
Huldah’s reply seems, however, to have been re
ceived as a valid and sufficient confirmation of the
authenticity of the book which had been found ; and
it was accordingly publicly acknowledged as that con
cerning which—
Deut. xxxi. 25, 26.—“ Moses commanded the Levites
which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying,
Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark
�22
Introduction.
of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there
for a witness against thee.”
The consultation with Huldah appears to have been
the only form of inquiry which was considered neces
sary for testing the claims of the book. No one seems
to have thought of employing the outward and ordi
nary means for ascertaining whether or not it was
what it professed to be, or rather what its promul
gators declared that it was. We have no record of
any kind of critical examination, comparison or re
search ; and, so far as we can learn from the two his
tories, there was not even a doubt nor a question of
this kind suggested by king, priests, prophets, or
people. If any one conceived a doubt about the
genuineness of the book, prudence would seem to have
counseled such a one to keep his doubts to himself;
for, if any were disposed to ask troublesome questions
instead of promptly assenting and submitting to the
new confession of faith, and to the new claims of the
ruling hierarchy, means certainly would not be want
ing to silence such presumptuous scepticism; and so.
we read that “ all the people stood to the covenant.'”
In my opinion, there is here a subject for enquiry,
too much neglected by the biblical commentators
with whom I am acquainted; and it appears to me
strange that, while so much has been written, and so
much ingenuity employed, both in the attack and in
the defence of the Pentateuch itself, so very little
attention seems to have been bestowed upon this
most suggestive and important episode in its trans
mission to us. This book, which was found, was and
is the only link, through which, at that point in its
history, the Pentateuch stands connected with our
modern systems of theology. Well might good old
Matthew Henry exclaim, in his Commentary on this
incident—“ If this was the only authentic copy of
the Pentateuch then in being, which had, as I may
say, so narrow a turn for its life, and was so near
�Finding of the Book.
perishing, I wonder the hearts of all good people did
not tremble for that sacred treasure, as Eli’s for the
ark; and am sure we now have reason to thank God
upon our knees for that happy providence, by which
Hilkiah found this book at this time; found it when
he sought it not ! ”
We are told very particularly when the book was
found-, but this immediately suggests another most
important and interesting question, when was it lost ?
and unless the clue, which this question supplies, can
be successfully followed up, the history of the book
must remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. I pro
pose, therefore, in the following chapters, to pursue
this line of enquiry, directing attention chiefly to
the Scriptural narratives, of the times preceding
the discovery. Taking the discovery itself as my
starting point, I shall endeavour to prosecute a search
backwards, so far as may be found necessary or pos
sible, for any traces in the history which may throw
light upon the question as to the time when the book
was lost; or which may seem to account for its pro
duction at the time when it is said to have been found.
In endeavouring to present a clear and connected
view of the events and characters bearing upon the
subject of inquiry, it will suit best to examine the
history of Judah alone, hoping that much of the per
plexity and confusion may thus be avoided,. which
must arise from the mixing up of two histories and
of two dynasties, (those of Judah and of Israel), and
from the alternate introduction of scraps from the one
and from the other.
It is superfluous to say, that I have no new dis
coveries to boast of; and that my desire and aim is
only to arrange and present those materials, with which
every reader of the Bible is or ought to be acquainted,
in such a manner, as to throw the greatest amount of
light upon that event which is the subject of this essay.
�24
When was the Book Lost ?
CHAPTER II.
SEARCH FOR EVIDENCE OF THE PREVIOUS EXISTENCE,
OR OF THE LOSS OF THE BOOK.
HEZEKIAH TO JOSIAH.—B.C. 726 TO 641.
In accordance with the plan which has been indicated,
our search, for such traces as may be found of the Book
which had been lost, is first to be directed to the period
which immediately preceded its alleged discovery;
commencing with the accession of King Hezekiah,
who had been the last predecessor of Josiah in the
work of reformation.
Hezekiah’s reign began eighty-five years earlier
than that of Josiah, or one hundred and three years
before the finding of the Book; and he reigned
twenty-nine years; so that, between his death and
the discovery, there intervened only seventy-four
years; and, as that was a long-living time, we may
presume that old men heard the reading of the new
found book, who in their youth had witnessed the
reforming zeal of Hezekiah. Many, at least, must
have been present on the later occasion, who had
heard from their fathers all that was most interesting
about the good old times. From this consideration,
and from the words of King Josiah—
2 Chron. xxxiv. 21—“Great is the wrath of the Lord
that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not
kept the word of the Lord, to do after all that is written in
this book”—
as also from the surprise and dismay with which the
very unexpected announcement was received by the
king, insomuch that he rent his clothes; there seems
to be a primfr facie probability that, within the com
paratively brief and recent period which we are now
�Hezekiah to Josiah.
25
considering, we shall fail to find any traces of the
Book’s previous existence; because, if it had been
known and obeyed in the time of Hezekiah, it seems
impossible that king, priest, and people should so
entirely have lost all knowledge of it in the interval;
and Josiah’s exclamation implies that, so far as he
knew, the fathers of his generation, at least, had
known nothing of the Book. It is, however, none
the less necessary to examine this period as much as
any other; and, even should we fail to find clear
traces of the Book, we may fairly expect to notice
various things which may be useful in the further
prosecution of this inquiry.
It is interesting to observe the difference of tone
between the earlier and the later narratives, in the
accounts which they respectively give of the reign of
Hezekiah; although there is no contradiction, nor
■any discrepancy, which cannot be easily explained or
reconciled.
According to the earlier Book, which, in this part,
has much internal evidence of being written by the
prophet Isaiah, this was the very first monarch
who ventured to remove the high places.
2 Kings xviii. 4.—“ He removed the high places, and
brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in
pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto
those days, the children of Israel did burn incense to it:
and he called it Nehushtan (a piece of brass).”
It is rather startling to learn from this passage that
Hezekiah was also the first king who entirely put
down the worship of images, which would seem to
have been only partially accomplished by the reformers
of earlier times, who must, at least, have spared the
brazen serpent. But he was, notwithstanding his
piety and faithfulness, exposed to misfortune; for we
learn that he was forced to pay a humiliating tribute
to the king of Assyria.
�26
When was the Book Lost ?
2 Kings xviii. 13-15.—“Now, in the fourteenth year of
King Hezekiah, did Sennacherib, king of Assyria, come up
against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And
Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to the king of Assyria, to
Lachish, saying, I have offended: return from me: that
which thou puttest on me I will bear. And the king of
Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah, king of Judah, three
hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And
Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the
house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king’s
house.”
In this narrative, the celebration of the Passover is
not mentioned; and, indeed, we have nothing at all
about priests or Levites; but many things said and
done by the Prophet Isaiah (chap, xix.)
In the later account, the picture has a totally
different appearance. Now we find only one in
cidental notice of Isaiah :—
2 Chron. xxxii. 20.—“And for this cause Hezekiah, the
king, and the Prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz, prayed and
cried to heaven.”
But we have three chapters (xxix., xxx., xxxi.) of
purely Levitical matter, with a detailed account of
the Passover, which is here mentioned for the first
time in the whole history.
2 Chron. xxx. 21, 23, 26.—“ And the children of
Israel that were present at Jerusalem kept the feast of un
leaven bread seven days with great gladness: and the
Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing
with loud instruments unto the Lord .... And the whole
assembly took counsel to keep other seven days; and, they
kept other seven days with gladness .... So there was
great joy in Jerusalem ; for, since the time of Solomon, the
son of David, King of Israel, there was not the like in
Jerusalem.”
We have detailed lists of priests and Levites, with
many particular ceremonial observances; and, most
notably, we have here a distinct mention of tithes,
�Hezekiah to Josiah.
which we cannot find in the history of any of the
earlier kings :—•
2 Chron. xxxi. 4-6—“Moreover he commanded the
people that dwelt in Jerusalem to give the portion of the
priests and the Levites, that they might be encouraged in
the law of the Lord. And as soon as the commandment
came abroad, the children of Israel brought in abundance
the first fruits of corn, wine, and oil, and honey, and of all
the increase of the field, and the tithe of all things brought
they in abundantly : and concerning the children of Israel
and Judah, that dwelt in the cities of Judah, they also
brought in the tithe, &c.”
In the history of the earlier reigns, we find no
mention made of tithes \ from which it would appear
that the wealth and bounty of the kings, with the
abundance of the sacrifices, had then sufficed for the
support of the priesthood; and the only collections
from the people, which are recorded, were for the
purpose of building and decorating the temple, and
were not for the priests. In the Book of Chronicles
the humiliation of Hezekiah is not related, perhaps
because such a calamity, to such a pious king, would
not harmonize with the historian’s idea of the divine
government; but it is very interesting to _ observe
that this more recent history has a modernized ver
sion of the miraculous discomfiture of Sennacherib,
when that king came a second time against Heze
kiah, modified apparently by the information which
the scribes of Ezra’s time, to whom the authorship of
the Books of Chronicles is generally attributed, had
derived from Babylon:—
2 Chron. xxxii. 21.—“ And the Lord sent an angel, which
cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders and
captains in the camp of the King of Assyria: so he returned,
with shame of face, to his own land.”
This is one of very few and similar cases in
which the later historian seems to be more credible
�28
When was the Book Lost?
than the early narrators, when the two authorities
differ:—
2 Kings xix. 35.—“ And it came to pass that night that
the Angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of
the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand, and
when they arose, early in the morning, behold they were all
dead corpses! ”
In Chronicles, it is not stated, but seems to be
assumed and implied that Hezekiah destroyed the
images, and removed the high places, as, according to
this Book, two former kings had, in their respective
times, done; namely, Asa and Jehoshaphat.
We cannot learn from either of the narratives, nor from
the prophecy of the earlier Isaiah (Isa. i.-xxxix.),
that the Sabbath-day was known or observed at this
time; nor the Sabbatical year; nor the jubilee; nor
the commandment to write and read the law.
Deut. xvii. 18—“ And it shall be when he sitteth upon
the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of
this law in a book, out of that which is before the priests
the Levites.”
Deut. xxxi. 10, 11.—“And Moses commanded them,
saying, at the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of
the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all
Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God, in the
place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before
all Israel, in their hearing.”
The negative proof of this ignorance is as complete
■as it could possibly be; and positive evidence of such
a negation can scarcely be expected. But, with re
gard to the Sabbath-day, we find something nearly
approaching to positive proof, that it was unknown.
2 Chron. xxix. 16,17.—“ And the priests went into the
inner part of the house of the Lord, to cleanse it, and
brought out all the uncleanness that they found. . . . And
the Levites took it to carry it out abroad into the brook
Kidron.
“ Now, they began on the first day of the month to
sanctify (cleanse), and on the eighth day of the month came
�Hezekiah to Josiah.
29
they to the porch of the Lord: so they sanctified (cleansed)
the house of the Lord in eight days; and, in the sixteenth
day of the first month, they made an end.”
And there is also some positive evidence, of an in
direct kind, that the Sabbatical year was not at this
time observed, which in the reign of such a zealous
and reforming king implies that the law regarding it
was not known.
2 Chron. xxxvi. 20,21.—“ And them thatescaped from the
sword carried he away into Babylon, where they were ser
vants to him and his sons, until the reign of the kingdom
of Persia.
“ To fulfil the Word of the Lord by the mouth of Jere
miah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths : for as long
as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfil threescore and
ten years.
Exod. xxiii. 10, 11.—“ And six years thou shalt sow
thy land, and gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh
year thou shalt let it rest and lie still.”
The land had to lie desolate for seventy years, to
make up for the number of neglected Sabbatical years,
so that this neglect is computed by the prophet Jere
miah, as quoted in Chronicles, (in the book of
Jeremiah the prediction seems to have no relation to
the Sabbatical year, Jer. xxv. 12,) to have lasted for
four hundred and ninety years before the time of the
captivity, which leads us back to the reign of Saul,
the earliest period whence the continuous history is
traced : and we must infer that all the good kings,
whose piety and zeal are so much extolled, knew
■nothing about this law, or they could not have so
entirely neglected it. (Compare Nehem. viii. 14
and 17.)
1 Kings xv. 5—“ Because David did that which was
right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from
anything, that he commanded him all the days of his life,
save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.”
The computation of Jeremiah receives confirmation
�30
When was the Book Lost?
from the fact, that there is not to be found in the
whole history of the monarchy any trace of the observ
ance. of the Sabbatical year, nor of the reading of the
law in that year, which proves, almost to demonstra
tion, that the existence of this law was unknown.
Hezekiah was the third of the four great reformers,
of whom Asa had been the first, and Jehoiada the
second. Each of the four arose immediately after a
period of gross declension; and, in each case, the heat
and brightness of the rising sun seems to have been
in proportion to the length and darkness of the pre
ceding night. Hezekiah succeeded Ahaz, who had
reigned sixteen years; and who had been not only an
idolater, but a warlike and vigorous king, and zealous
in his heathenish worship.
2 Kings xvi. 3 — “ Yea, and made his son to pass
through the fire, according to the abominations of the
heathen.”
And the long suppressed zeal of the orthodox party
was most vigorously displayed in the very first year
of the new king, who threw himself into the work of
reformation with all the ardour of youth.
2 Chron. xxix. 3—“ He, in the first year of his reign,
in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the
Lord and repaired them,” &c.
Not content with merely returning to the standards
of the old reformers, which .King Ahaz had set aside,
he proceeded to establish innovations, which must
have been rather startling in their time ; and thus,
while the more recent narrative attributes to him the
first celebration of the Passover, the earlier emphati
cally extols him as the first who destroyed all the
images, and took away the high places.
These two measures would naturally go together,
or at least the one must soon have followed as the
complement of the other; for, when it was forbidden
to worship anywhere except at Jerusalem, it would be
�Hezekiah to Josiah.
3l
expedient or necessary that some great festival should
be instituted, at which the worshippers from all parts
of the country might be invited to meet. Let us not
forget, as we are apt to do, that the removal of the
high places was no mild measure, but one that must
have been felt and regarded as harsh in the extreme
by those who, residing in places distant from Jerusalem, had never before been thus interdicted from
worshipping at the altar which they found in their
neighbourhood, as their forefathers had done; and
as they might plead that they were justified in doing,
by the examples of Samuel, David, and Solomon.
1 Sam. ix. 12—“ Behold he (Samuel) is before you:
make haste now, for he came to-day to the city ; for there
is a sacrifice of the people to-day in the high place,” &c.
1 Chron. xxi. 25, 26, 29—“ So David gave to Oman for
the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight, and David
built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burntofferings. . . . For the tabernacle of the Lord, which
Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt-offering,
were at that season in the high place at Gibeon.”
1 Kings iii. 3—“And Solomon loved the Lord, walking
in the statutes of David his father: only he sacrificed and
burnt incense in high places.”
If we only reflect on some of the hardships which
are implied in the total abolition of local worship by
the strong arm of the civil power; or, if we try to
realise the compulsory operation of such a measure
among ourselves, we shall cease to wonder that the
worshipping in high places was a sin, if sin we are to
call it, into which the people were constantly prone
to fall back. The new law most probably proceeded,
in some degree, from a real desire to maintain purity
and uniformity of worship ; but was unquestionably
also designed to magnify the office, and to increase
the emoluments of the temple priesthood.
This reign, we may rest assured, was not a time
when the book of the law could in any sense be lost;
and, if Hezekiah had such a book, it must, under his
�32
When was the Book Lost?
administration, have assumed or resumed such import
ance in the minds of the people and of the favoured
priesthood, that we cannot conceive it possible for all
trace and recollection of it to have been lost in the
two generations which intervened between his death
and the time of the discovery.
Some commentators, however, have tried to solve
the difficulty, by assuming that the wicked Manasseh,
who succeeded Hezekiah, may probably have caused
the suppression of the book ■, and, to many superficial
readers, this explanation has, doubtless, appeared
satisfactory. But Manasseh had seers (probably
Nahum and Joel) who seem to have spoken to him
fearlessly in the name of God (2 Kings xxi. 10-15);
and some considerable time before his death, Manasseh
repented, turned from his idolatry, prayed to God,
and was forgiven.
2 Chron. xxxiii. 15-17.—“ And he took away the strange
gods, and the idol out of the house of the Lord, and all the
altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the
Lord, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city. And
he repaired the altar of the Lord, and sacrificed thereon
peace-offerings and thank-offerings, and commanded Judah
to serve the Lord God of Israel.
“ Nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the high
places, yet unto the Lord their God only.”
If Manasseh had been guilty of destroying or of
suppressing the book, such guilt must have been
known to the outspoken prophets, and to the ortho
dox priests of his time; and must have been indig
nantly denounced, and certainly recorded, as his other
crimes, some or all of which were of minor import
ance, have been. Restitution also would, in that
case, have been the first fruits of his repentance, and
it cannot be supposed that restitution was impossible,
or even that it would be attended with any serious
difficulty.
Twenty-three years before the commencement of
�Hezekiah to Josiah.
33
Manasseh’s reign, Samaria had been taken, after a
siege of three years, by Shalmanezer, king of Assyria,
who carried the Israelites away into Assyria, and, in
stead of them, placed foreigners in the cities of Israel.
He did not, however, prevent the Israelites from wor
shipping according to their conscience, but, . on the
contrary, sent back a priest from the captivity to
Samaria, that he might teach the foreigners located
there how to worship the true God.
2 Kings xvii. 27, 28.—“Then the king of Assyria com
manded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests, whom
ye brought from thence", and let them go and dwell
there, and let him teach the manner of the God of the land.
Then one of the priests, whom they had carried away from
Samaria, came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught them
how they should fear the Lord.”—(Compare Ezra iv. 2.)
Even supposing, therefore, that Manasseh had
destroyed every copy of the book of the law, on
which he could lay his hands, there would still have
remained others in Samaria, and among the captive
Israelites, which must have been entirely beyond his
control; and this would have made restitution easy,
when the days of repentance and reaction came.
But of any such suppression or restoration—of any
such duty, desire, or intention to restore;—of any such
law in the hands of the captives—of the supposed or
possible existence of any other copy, besides that which
Hilkiah discovered, there is not, in the whole narra
tive, the remotest hint, nor any trace to be found.
Between the death of the repentant Manasseh, who
had reigned fifty-five years, and the accession of Josiah,
there intervened only the two years’ reign of Amon.
2 Chron. xxxiii. 22-24.—“ But he did that which was
evil in the sight of the Lord as did Manasseh his father; for
Amon sacrificed unto all the carved images which Manasseh
his father had made, and served them; and humbled not
himself before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled
himself; but Amon trespassed more and more. And his
C
�34
When was the Book Lost ?
servants conspired against him, and slew him in his own
house.”
The warnings and exhortations addressed to Man
asseh ; the influence which at length brought about
his conversion, and his actions which followed thereon;
the fate of Amon, and the training of Josiah, are all
proofs that the orthodox priesthood, the true pro
phets, and the faithful worshippers of Jehovah,
though oppressed and persecuted, had not been rooted
out; nay, the result soon showed that persecution
had produced its usual results : had deepened their
former convictions, and intensified their former zeal.
Was it in such a time that they, or their children,
were likely to lose all knowledge and all memory of
the book which they would so highly have prized and
revered ? Nay, is it not rather certain that, if they
had possessed, or had even known of the existence of,
such a book, it would in such times as these have been
their chief care to treasure and to preserve it, or, if
lost, promptly to set about recovering or restoring it
among themselves? Would it not have been be
queathed as a sacred trust to their children, as a pre
cious inheritance for the comfort, direction, and
encouragement of all the true persecuted Church ?
And would not Josiah have been from his youth
initiated therein by his pious teachers, instead of
being left to find it, as if by accident, in the twenty-,
sixth year of his age and the eighteenth of his reign?
And, even supposing that Manasseh had actually
destroyed every copy in all Judea, would not the first
righteous impulse of the young Josiah, and of those
who trained him in the knowledge of God, and who
were his advisers, have been to seek by every means
in their power to repair such a serious loss, which, as
we have already shown, could not have been very
difficult ?
In Hezekiah’s reign, several things may be noticed,
which seem to indicate that he must have been ac-
�Hezekiah to ’ osiah.
J
35
quainted with the book ; but there are also many
other circumstances and indications which are opposed
to that conclusion. If, however, Hezekiah had the
book, it must have been left by him in dignity and
safety; and we have seen that, between his reign and
that of Josiah, it could not have been lost. We are,
therefore, forced to conclude that the loss of the
book, if loss there were, did not happen during this
period, which we have been examining, but must, at
least, have taken place before the time of Hezekiah.
The reformation accomplished by Josiah, like all
the three preceding reformations of Asa, Jehoiada,
and Hezekiah, thus immediately succeeded, and may
perhaps be said to have resulted from, a reign of
■mixed worship and of heresy, which had, in this case
been both more gloomy and more lasting, than any of
the former dark intervals had been; and, as we have
seen that the reforming zeal of young Hezekiah led
him to the adoption of bolder measures than those of
the old and cautious Jehoiada had been; so also now,
when, by the accession of the pious and youthful
Josiah, the orthodox priesthood found the pressure
removed, and free scope allowed for the recoil of the
spring, that recoil was in proportion to what the pres
sure had been; their zeal went far beyond the zeal
of Hezekiah; and, instead of being satisfied with
merely restoring what had been gained in the former
reformations, they, in a few years, produced and en
acted, as derived from heaven, a code of infallible and
immutable laws, so very comprehensive and minute,
including so very much of everything which, to their
sacerdotal minds, appeared most desirable, so hedged
round with inviolable sacredness, and with such claims
to the sanction of remote antiquity, as to preclude, so
far, at least, as priestly foresight could, the desire or
the possibility of any further advance in the same
direction for all future time. The priesthood which
�36
When was the Book Lost ?
was typified in Eli and in Samuel, and which was
established by Solomon at the opening of the temple,
had now developed the wonderful extent of its arro
gance and of its claims. The tithes, of which no trace
can be found in the history of David, Solomon, or
Asa, were, in Jehoiada s tune, two hundred and fifty
years before the finding of the book, dimly fore
shadowed by a contrivance, which has often since
then been imitated with more or less success :
2 Kings xii. 9.—“ Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and
bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar, on
the right side, as one cometh into the house of the Lord.”
The temple at that time stood in need of repairs,
which the king was desirous should be done without
delay:
2 Kings xii. 4-8.—“ And Jehoash said to the priests:
All the money of the dedicated things that is brought into
the house of the Lord, even the money of every one that
passeth the account, the money that every man is set at,
and all the money that cometh into any man’s heart to bring
into the house of the Lord, let the priests take it to them,
every man of his acquaintance; and let them repair the
breaches of the house, wheresoever any breach shall be
found. But it was so that, in the three and twentieth year
of king Jehoash, the priests had not repaired the breaches
of.the house. Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the
priest, and the other priests, and said unto them, Why re
pair ye not the breaches of the house ? Now, therefore,
receive no more money of your acquaintance, but deliver it
(what they had already received) for the breaches of the
house. And the priests consented to receive no more money
of the people, neither to repair the breaches of the house.”
So that the priests would seem to have claimed and
kept all that, during many years, had been contri
buted ; and yet were not to do the work for which it
had been given; but they were to receive no more,
except
2 Kings xii. 16.—“ The trespass-money and the sinmoney was not brought into the house of the Lord: it was
the priests’.”
�Hezekiah to Josiah.
$7
-Here it is evident that the contributions of the
people were chiefly voluntary, and not at all in. the
form of tithes; and it also appears that the priests
were at that time dissatisfied with their allowances,
which they sought to increase by questionable means.
In Hezekiah’s time, as we have seen (p. 27), accord
ing to the narrative in Chronicles, the provision for
the priests is called the tithes; but the language em
ployed seems to indicate rather a discretional and
semi-voluntary contribution, than a regular impost of
the tenth part; and this view is supported by the
subsequent context:
2 Chron. xxxi. 14, 15.—“And Kore the son of Imnah the Levite, the porter toward the east, was over the
free-will offerings of God, to distribute the oblations of the
Lord, and the most holy things. And next him were Eden
(and six others named) in the cities of the priests, in their
set office, to give to their brethren by courses, as well to
the great as to the small.”
That these contributions were voluntary, is further
confirmed by the silence of the earlier historian
(2 Kings xviii.), who, though not caring to write
about Levitical matters, would certainly not have
omitted to notice the institution, or the restoration,
of such an important tax as the tithe. We may there
fore, with tolerable certainty, infer that, while Heze
kiah made some provision for the priesthood, more
liberal and more regular than that which had been
made in Jehoiada’s time, it was left for Hilkiah and
Josiah, at the time of their great discovery, to place
the matter on a thoroughly satisfactory and perma
nent footing, by what would, in our days, be called
the “ Tithes Consolidation Bill.”
Lev. xxvii. 30-33. —“And all the tithe.of the land,
whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree,
is the Lord’s; it is holy unto the Lord. And if a man will
at all redeem ought of his tithes, he shall add thereto the
fifth part thereof. And, concerning the tithe of the herd,
or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod,
�38
When was the Book Lost ?
the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord. He shall not search
whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it; and
if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof
shall be holy: it shall not be redeemed.”
Num. xviii. 21.—“And, behold, 1 have given the child
ren of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for the
service which they serve.”
The violent innovations of Hezekiah for the abolition
of all local worship, heresy, and nonconformity, were
restored by Josiah with far more than their original
force.
Deut. xii. 13, 14.—“Take heed to thyself that thou
offer not thy burnt-offerings in every place that thou seest:
but in the place which the Lord shall choose in one of thy
tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt-offerings, and there
thou shalt do all that I command thee.”
Lev. xvii. 8, 9.—“Whatsoever man there be of the
house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among
you, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, and bringeth
it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to
offer it unto the Lord, even that man shall be cut off from
among his people.”
And instead of the one great festival which was
celebrated in Hezekiah’s time, the law was now to
be—
Deut. xvi. 16, 17.—“ Three times in a year shall all
thy males appear before the Lord thy God in the place
which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread,
and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles:
and they shall not appear before the Lord empty: every
man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of
the Lord thy God, which he hath given thee.”
So absolutely unfettered by any restraint were the
sacerdotal party under Josiah, that, not content with
the enforcement of such practical measures as these,
they felt themselves at liberty to enact a thousand and
one other things of a vexatious and oppressive kind,
some of which were so absurd and unpractical, that
we may wonder whether they ever were observed at
�Hezekiah to Josiah.
39
nil: as, for example, the Sabbatical year? which has
already been noticed in this chapter. Of this intoler
able legislation, no words can convey a more concise
and pithy denunciation than those of the Apostle
Peter :—
Acts xv. 10.—“Now, therefore, why tempt ye God, to
put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our
fathers nor we were able to bear ? ”
We need not wonder so very much at the reception of
the book. When the priests and the king had resolved
on its enactment, the matter was settled. Of course
it contained much which the people already knew or
believed to be correct. Most of its leading features
must have had some sort of foundation, or at least of
germ, in the customs and traditions of the.nation;
and for the rest, we must remember that in those
days, and for ages afterwards, both priests, and people
were very innocent in the matter of criticism, as now
understood, and that the people had not, as we have,
the book in their hands, but only had it. read m
their hearing. Nor must we forget to consider how
very vague and superstitious were the notions of
Divine inspiration which prevailed in those early
days, when we find the more recent historian writing
: as follows:—
2 Chron. xxxv. 20-22.—“After all this, when Josiah
had prepared the temple, Necho king of Egypt came up to
fight against Charchemish by Euphrates: and Josiah went
out against him. But he sent ambassadors to him, saying,
What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah ? I come
-not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith
I have war; for God commanded me to make haste; forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he
destroy thee not. Nevertheless, Josiah would not turn his
face from him, but disguised himself that he might fight with
him, and hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the
mouth of God.”
If Josiah’s death, and the non-fulfilment of Huldah’s
�40
When was the Book Lost?
prophecy regarding his peaceful end are thus regarded
as a judgment on him, for refusing to listen to the
words of a heathen king 11 from the mouth of God:” how
shall we wonder that the “ book of the law of the
Eord, which Hilkiah the priest produced, which was
vouched for by Huldah the prophetess, and then
acknowledged by the king, was received by the
people with entire submission to the high authority
which its authors assumed for it ?
J
CHAPTER III.
SEARCH CONTINUED.
JEHOIADA TO HEZEKIAH.—B.C. 878 TO 726.
Continuing our search backwards, the next period
which we come to examine is that which immediately
preceded the accession of Hezekiah, and which we
shall regard as commencing with the reformation
efiected under the powerful, zealous, and orthodox
priest-regent,. Jehoiada, in whose hands the civil
and ecclesiastical authorities were united, for the first
time since the days of Samuel, having been seized by
him, after a successful conspiracy, and the assassination
of Queen Athaliah; thus clearing the way for young
Joash (or Jehoash), the rightful surviving heir, then
only seven years of age, who had been reared secretly
m the temple, and who now ascended the throne under
the tutelage of his guardian, the great priest.
2 Kings xi. 17.—“And Jehoiada made a covenant ber 6 ,Lo*d and the kLn^ and the people, that they
should be the Lord’s people: between the king also and thepeople.”
. 2 Chron. xxiv. 2, 3.—And Joash did that which was
right in the sight of the Lord, all the days of Jehoiada the-
�Jehoiada to Hezekiah.
41
priest. And Jehoiada took for him two wives; and he
begat sons and daughters.”
. , , ,,
2 Chron. xxiii. 18.—“ Also Jehoiada appointed the offices
of the house of the Lord, by the hand of the priests the
Levites, whom David had distributed m the house of the
Lord, to offer the burnt-offerings of the Lord, as it is
written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing,
as it was ordained by David. ’
Here we find several things which seem to imply
that Jehoiada must have had the book of the law, if
the language does not directly assert that he had,
but, then, how can we reconcile this with the state
ment of the earlier historian ?
2 Kings xii. 2, 3—“And Jehoash did that which
was right in the sight of the Lord, all his days, wherein
Jehoiada the priest instructed him. But the Ingh places
were not taken away: the people still sacrificed and burnt
incense in the high places.”
Did the zealous Jehoiada knowingly and wilfully
transgress, or suffer others openly to transgress, the
laws regarding high places, which we have quoted
in the foregoing chapter (p. 38), the observance of
which was afterwards to be regarded as one of the
chief tests of orthodoxy, and the neglect of which was
to be recorded as a grave reproach against him and
others ? Had he never read, in the book of Joshua,
the story of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of
Manasseh, in whom the mere appearance or sus
picion of transgressing this great law was, according
to the narrative, sufficient to rouse the pious indigna
tion of all Judah f
Josh. xxii. 29.—“God forbid that we should rebel against
the Lord, and turn this day from following the Lord, to
build an altar for burnt-offerings, for meat-offerings, or for
sacrifices, beside the altar of the Lord our God, that is be
fore his tabernacle.”
Deliberate transgression, and wilful neglect of God s
law in this particular, would be quite opposed to the
�42
When was the Book Lost ?
piety and zeal which are ascribed to this reformer •
and thus we are forced to conclude that he had no
knowledge of such a law.
Jehoiada, or his pupil-king, repaired the temple
reorganized the priesthood, and renewed the covenant
to worship God alone ; but his reformation fell short
of Hezekiah’s in two most important respects, the
removal of the high places, and the institution of the
Passover; of which latter we find no trace at this
nor at any earlier historic time; and the same may
be said of the observance of the Sabbath-day, the
Sabbatical year, the public reading of the law. &c.
. We learn very clearly, from both narratives, that
m Jehoiadas time the power of the priesthood was
greatly increased or restored, and that he did his
part wisely and well, living to a very great age, and
thus contributing his full share to the elevation and
establishment of his own order, while probably adding
not a little to the fabric of Levitical law.
&
2 Chron. xxiv. 15, 16.—“But Jehoiada waxed old,
and was full of days when he died; an hundred and thirty
years old was he when he died. And they buried him in
the city of David among the kings, because he had done
good m Israel, both toward God, and toward his house.”
But, being an old man before he came to power,
he seems to have ventured on no such startling
innovations as those which were afterwards intro
duced by Hezekiah and Josiah. From the narrative
in Kings, we may infer that he was desirous to secure
a larger and more regular provision for the priesthood;
in which, however, he seems to have been only partially
successful; and, certainly, fell far short of establishing
anything like the tithe-law (p. 36).
King Joash reigned forty years, living twenty
years after the death of Jehoiada.
2 Chron. xxiv. 17,18.—“Now after the death of Jehoiada,
came the princes of Judah and made obeisance to the king;
then the king hearkened unto them. And they left the house
�Jehoiada to Hezekiah.
43
of the Lord God of their fathers and served^groves and
idols: and wrath came upon Judah and Jeiusalem fo this
their trespass.”
The earlier narrative relates the calamity, but not
the sin; and, on the death of Joash, we read :
2 Kings xii. 21.—“ And they buried him with his fathers
in the city of David.”
Whereas the later historian says :—
2 Chron. xxiv. 25.—“And they buried him in the city
of David; but they buried him not in the sepulchre of the
kings.”
Although the law of Moses is mentioned by the
later authority as the rule which guided Jehoiada
and Jehoash in their restoration of the orthodox
worship, we have found, on the other hand, muci
evidence that they did not possess the book of the
law as it afterwards came to be known; but, at all
events, if they did possess it, we are not at liberty to
suppose that it was suppressed or destroyed m their
time, whatever the sins of Jehoash may have been;
because we find it again referred to as a rule of con
duct in connection with his successor, Amaziah, m a
■passage which is nearly the same in both narratives.
“2 Kings xiv. 5, 6; 2 Chron. xxv. 3, 4.—And it came
to pass, as soon as the kingdom was confirmed in his hand,
that he slew his servants, which had slam the king his
father: but the children of the murderers he slew not; ac
cording unto that which is written in the book of the law
of Moses, wherein the Lord commanded, saying, The fathers
shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children
be put to death for the fathers ; but every man shall be put
to death for his own sin (Deut. xxiv. 16).”
In Chronicles, this passage may be regarded as
containing a moral reflection or paraphrase, by the
comparatively recent historian; and, in Kings, as an
interpolation from the later narrative. That it is an
-anachronism, as applied to Amaziah, can easily be
�44
When was the Book Lost?
sh°wn, inasmuch as it attributes to him a higher
standard of morality than was known in his days ■
and, for which at that period, we look in vain, even
where we should most expect to find it fully displayed.
lhe account of the divine appointment of Jehu, to
destroy the family of Ahab, may be taken as a good
illustration of the real lowness of moral sentiment
which prevailed m those days.
W®, read (2 Kings ix.), that Elisha the prophet sent
one of the sons of the prophets to go to Jehu, who
was one of the chief captains of the army of Joram,
son of Ahab king of Israel, and the young prophet
delivered his message thus :—
1
Kl^GS,ixPoured the oil on his head, and
said unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have
anointed thee king oyer the people of the Lord, even over
Israel. And thou shalt smite the house of Ahab thy
Master that I may avenge the blood of my servants the
prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord.”
In the following chapter we have some details of
the manner m which Jehu proceeded to carry out the
prophet s instructions :—
? ^I?GS X'
And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria,
and Jehu wrote letters and sent to Samaria, unto the rulers
children” t0
elderS’ and to them that brought UP Ahab’s
^eMers were not explicit; but, when
obedience had been promised, his further instructions
were plain enough, and were promptly carried out
2 Kings x. 6, 7.—“ Now the king’s sons, being seventy
persons, were with the great men of the city, which brouqht
them up. And it came to pass when the letters came to
them, tha,t they took the king’s sons and slew seventy perJezreef”^
^eads
baskets, and sent them to
. The first idea suggested by this is one of indigna
tion against Jehu, for so horribly misinterpreting and
�Jeboiada to Hezekiah.
45
exceeding the instructions which he had received;
but we are compelled to abandon this view :—
2 Kings x. 30.—“ And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because
thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine
eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab, according to
all that was in mine heart, thy children of the fourth gene
ration shall sit on the throne of Israel.”
While the massacre of so many young persons and
children, for the sins of others, was thus regarded as
right in the eyes of God; it is impossible to believe
that the more humane law was known, by which
Amaziah is said to have been guided.
If he had really merited praise for the respect
shown by him to the law, we should certainly have
had some further and fuller proof of it:—
2 Kings xiv. 4.—“ Howbeit the high places were not taken
away; as yet the people did sacrifice and burn incense on
the high places.”
The very special importance assigned by the his
torians to this matter of the high places, and the
scarcity or absence of other criteria, force us to
regard it as the great comparative test of orthodoxy ;
and Amaziah’s failure on this point, with the negative
proof of silence that he knew nothing of the passover,
of the Sabbath-day, nor of the tithe-law, must be
sufficient to make us doubt whether he really had the
book of the law of Moses; even although we are told
that his leniency in punishing crime was dictated
by his obedience to that book. But, though we can
not be sure that Amaziah had the book, we may be
quite sure that it was not lost in his time; and that,
if he possessed it, it was by him safely bequeathed,
after he had reigned twenty-nine years, to his son
Uzziah or Azariah, who succeeded him :—
2 Kings xv. 3, 4.—“ And he did that which was right in
the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father
Amaziah had done; save that the high places were not re-
�46
When was the Book Lost?
moved: the people sacrificed and burnt incense still on the
high places.”
Uzziah’s wealth and prosperity and success in war,
are described in fulsome terms by the historian in
Chronicles (xxvi.); but only serve to magnify the
humiliation to which he had to submit, when he pre
sumed to usurp the priests’ office by entering the
temple, himself to offer sacrifice :—
2 Chron. xxvi. 16-18.—“But when he was strong his
heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed
against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of
the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense. And
Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore
priests of the Lord, that were valiant men. And they with
stood Uzziah the king and said unto him, It appertaineth not
unto thee Uzziah to burn incense unto the Lord; but to
the priests the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn
incense: go out of the sanctuary, for thou hast trespassed.”
Uzziah was wroth, and persisted in his purpose;
but was humbled and set aside, being miraculously
smitten with leprosy. So great had the power and
arrogance of the priests become under the fostering
influence of royal favour, which they had now for a
century enjoyed.
What would have become of the priest who should
have ventured so to oppose David when he assumed
the priest’s dress and the priest’s office ?
2 Sam. vi. 13, 14.—“And it was so that, when they
that bare the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he (David)
sacrificed oxen and fatlings. And David danced before the
Lord with all his might; and David was girded with a
linen ephod.”
If any one, at that time, had said, ‘ It appertaineth
not unto thee, David,’ there can be little doubt that
his blood would have been upon his own head.
The good priest-ridden king Uzziah, after a long
reign of fifty-two years, was succeeded by his son
Jotham.
�Jehoida to Hezekiah.
47
2 Chron. xxvii. 2.—“ And he did that which was right
in the. sight of the Lord, according to all that his father
Uzziah did: howbeit he entered not into the temple of the
Lord. And the people did yet corruptly.”
It is clear
lesson which
and that in
trifled with ;
that Jotham
that he was not allowed to forget the .
had been so firmly taught to his father,
his days the hierarchy were not to be
but we are not, on this account, to infer
was a weak prince.
2 Chron. xxvii. 6.—“ So Jotham became mighty, because
he prepared his ways before the Lord his God.”
Strange, that up to Jotham’s time, and even then,
when the priesthood had so long been in possession
of power, and when the kings did that which was
right, at least so far as they knew, there is not any
recorded celebration of the Passover, but, on the con
trary, we read :—
2 Kings xv. 34 and 35.—“ And he (Jotham) did that
which was right in the sight of the Lord : he did according
to all that his father Uzziah had done. Howbeit the high
places were not removed; the people sacrificed and burnt
incense still in the high places.”
Jotham is the last of the good or orthodox kings,
against whom this reproach is recorded, under which
all his predecessors, without exception, lie; and when
we consider the amount of reforming zeal, and of
priestly power, often manifested in Jotham’s and in
earlier reigns, we are forced to conclude that the wor
ship in high places which had all along been prac
tised and tolerated, was not known to be sinful, and
that those kings and priests were not acquainted with
the law, by which all local worship was afterwards
suppressed as intolerable heresy.
• After reigning sixteen years Jotham died, leaving
the priesthood, we cannot doubt, in a condition of
power and of prosperity, which, for a time at least, must
have ensured for them toleration under the new king
Ahaz, who is represented as an idolater.
�48
When was the Book Lost?
2 Kings xvi. 3.—“ But he walked in the way of the
kings of Israel, yea and made his son to pass through
the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen.”
2 Chron. xxviii. 25.—“ And in every several city of
Judah, he made high places to burn incense unto other gods;
and provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers.”
Isaiah, his contemporary and survivor, accuses him
only of want of faith in God, which the prophet
sought to stimulate.
Isaiah vii. 10-12.—“ Moreover the Lord spake again unto
Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God ; ask it
either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz an
swered, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.”
And, though noticing many prevailing sins, Isaiah
nowhere mentions nor alludes to the sacrifice of chil
dren, as a crime existing in his days,
But however much Ahaz himself may have sinned,
there is nothing recorded either by the historians or
by the prophet which can warrant us in supposing
him guilty of persecuting the orthodox worshippers,
or of suppressing or destroying the book of the law.
We learn that some of the priests were willing to
share in his irregular worship.
2 Kings xvi. 11, 12.—“ And Urijah the priest built
an altar, according to all that king Ahaz had sent from
Damascus. . . . And, when the king was come from Dam
ascus, the king saw the altar : and the king approached to
the altar, and offered thereon.”
But this incident, being a reproach against the priest
hood, is not noticed in the Book of Chronicles, while
for Ahaz himself the chronicler has no such tenderness,
exhibiting him in a much worse light than does the
historian in Kings.
2 Kings xvi. 7-9.—“ Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglathpilezer, king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy
son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of
Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise
up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and gold that
was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of
�"Jehoiada to Hezekiah.
49
the king’s house, and sent it for a present to the king of
Assyria. And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him :
for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took
it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew
Bezin.”
whereas, in the later narrative, we read
2 Ciiron. xxviii. 20, 21. — “ And Tilgath-pilnezer, king
of Assyria, came unto him, and distressed him, but strength
ened him not. Foi’ Ahaz took away a portion out of the
house of the Lord, and out of the house of the king and of
the princes, and gave it unto the king of Assyria: but he
helped him not.'''
And the discrepancy between the two reports of his
burial exhibits the same bias on the part of the
Chronicler.
2 Kings xvi. 20.—“ And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and
was buried with his fathers in the city of David.”
2 Chron. xxviii. 27.—“ And Ahaz slept with his fathers
and they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem: but they
brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israeli
After reigning sixteen years, Ahaz was succeeded
by his son Hezekiah, who, in his very first year, pro
ceeded to inaugurate the third great reformation of
the Jewish worship, so that he must have been pre
viously educated thereto by orthodox instructors;
and this consideration, taken along with the absence
of intolerance, persecution, or suppression, either im
plied or recorded during the preceding reign, com
pletely excludes the idea that the loss of the book of
the law may be attributed to King Ahaz; and we
may therefore be certain that it was not lost during
the period which in this chapter we have examined.
We have, however, discerned somewhat of the
growth of the claims, the arrogance, and the intoler
ance of the temple priests, ripening for the notable
and definite advance -which they were now about to
achieve under Hezekiah, and only the more stimulated
D
k
�5°
When was the Book Lost ?
by their sixteen years’ exclusion from the favour and
support of the civil power during the reign of the
idolatrous Ahaz; stimulated both by their zeal for the
worship of Jehovah, and by their jealousy for the
sacred privileges and the prosperity of their own order;
—which two strangely mingled motives may, and
ought to, be recognised in every step of their history.
CHAPTER IV.
SEARCH CONTINUED.
ASA TO JEHOIADA.—B.C. 955 TO 878.
As the two periods of time, which we have already
examined, commenced each with a national reforma
tion and a renewal of the national covenant; so the
third period, which in the course of our search for
traces of the existence, or of the loss, of the book, we
now come to consider, shall be regarded as commencing with the first reformation and the first covenant,
of which we have any account in the historic books.
King Asa succeeded Abijah, the grandson of
Solomon, and, like all the other reformers, he came
after a period of heresy and idolatry. It does notappear
that, in the preceding reigns, the worship of Jehovah
had ever been suppressed or abandoned; but the
laxity of mixed worship, which Solomon in his old
age had encouraged, had been continued by his suc
cessors. Yet, though latitudinarianism and general
toleration had prevailed, there is no evidence that the
temple itself, or the temple priesthood, had up to this
time been polluted with the worship of other gods ;
as they afterwards were, in the reigns of Ahaz and of
Manasseh. The high places and altars which Solomon
had built for various heathen gods, (1 Kings xi. 6-8),
were allowed to stand, and whoso would might wor
|
�Asa to Jehoiada.
51
ship there ; but such heathen worship was not allowed
to usurp the altars of Jehovah, for, in the time of
Rehoboam, we read that, when the idolatrous king of
Israel, Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, had cast off the
Levites in his dominions from their office of priests
unto the Lord, they left their possessions, and came
to Jerusalem.
2 Ciiron. xi. 16—“And, after them, out of all the
tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek the Lord
God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the Lord
-God of their fathers.
So that the liberty of worshipping according to con
science, which, in the neighbouring kingdom of Israel
was denied, seems to have been extended, in the
kingdom of Judah, to all religions alike ; and this was
the state of matters, so far as can be known, up to
the time of King Asa.
1 Kings xv. 11, 12, 14 — “ And Asa did that which
was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father.
And he took away the Sodomites out of the land, and
removed all the idols that his fathers had made. . . .
But the high places were not removed; nevertheless Asa’s
heart was perfect with the Lord all his days.”
Regarding the high places, we must in this case
accept the testimony of the earlier historian in pre
ference to that of the writer of the Chronicles, because
the latter contradicts himself.
2 Chron. xiv. 2 and 3—“ And Asa did that which was
good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God: for he took
away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and
brake down the images, and cut down the groves.”
2 Chron. xv. 17—“ But the high places were not taken
away out of Israel: nevertheless the heart of Asa was per
fect all his days.”
Although the authorities thus differ as to Asa’s
removal of the high places, and although we can,
almost with certainty, discern that they were not
removed till the reign of Hezekiah, when, for the first
�52
When was the Book Lost 2
time, the earlier book relates their removal ■ yet it is
here very worthy of notice, that both our authorities
agree in attributing to Asa the destruction of images,
and the abolition of idol-worship ; and that Asa is the
first king to whom this merit is ascribed. But we must
remember that there was at least one image, which
even Asa spared, and whose worship still continued.
2 Kings xviii. 4.—“ Hezekiah brake in pieces the brazen
serpent, which Moses had made: for, unto those days, the
children of Israel did burn incense to it.”
The worship of the serpent, being in some way or
other, connected with the worship of Jehovah, was not
interfered with, while the altars and images of other
gods were destroyed. From the brief narratives of
Asa’s long reign, we learn that he was a warlike, and,
on the whole, a prosperous king; who ruled his
subjects with a vigorous and somewhat despotic sway.
So far as can be ascertained from either history, there
had hitherto, all along been some degree of toleration
for the differences of religion; but Asa seems to have
despised such weakness; and to have resolved that
all his subjects should be converted, whether they
would or not.
2 Chron. xiv. 4, 5.—“ And he (Asa) commanded Judah
to seek the Lord God of their fathers, and to do the
law and the commandment. Also he took away out of all
the cities of Judah, the high places and the images ; and
the kingdom was quiet before him.”
And, being not only strong in purpose, but filled with
energy and zeal for the orthodox worship,
2 Chron. xv. 12-14.—“ They entered into a covenant to
seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart, and
with all their soul; that whosoever would not seek the Lord
God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great,
whether man or woman. And they sware unto the Lord
with a loud voice, and with shouting, and with trumpets,
and with cornets.”
This is the first National Covenant of which we read
�Asa to 'Jehoiada.
53
in either of the histories. There may have been
covenants in the wilderness five hundred years earlier,
as we are told in the Pentateuch ; but it may also be
that covenants are so often described in the book of
the law, just because that book was composed, or
compiled, in the later covenanting times ; and this
view is strongly confirmed by the terms of some of
those Mosaic covenants; in Jacob’s, for example, one
great feature is:—
Gen. xxviii. 22.—“ And of all that thou shalt give me, I
will surely give the tenth unto thee.”
Here we have, apparently, a very ancient sanction
for the institution of tithes, of which, however, we
have been able to trace the germ and the growth
under Jehoiada, Hezekiah, and Josiah; and of
which, in the time of Asa or his predecessors, no
trace is to be found.
At all events, this is the first time, -sincr the tribes
became a nation, that we have any record of the people
entering into a covenant with the Lord—-of the
nation becoming a church : and it is strangely in
teresting to observe, that the national covenant of
those ancient Jews produced, (or was produced by ?)
the same spirit of intolerance and notion of infalli
bility, as the national covenants of our own Scottish
reformers. Of this, it would be easy to find ample
historical illustration, but it is not even necessary to
refer to history, for we have the illustration as clear
and full, in the present day, as it was in the days of
Asa, only that happily the modern Asas cannot
enforce their doctrines with pains and penalties, as
the ancient Asas did.
The “ Original Secession Church ” is a small, but
very zealous body of Scotch Presbyterians; still
maintaining the permanent obligation of the national
covenants, which they from time to time renew; and
rigidly adhering to the doctrinal standards of the old
Covenanters.
�54
When was the Book Lost ?
From the Original Secession Magazine for January
1869, page 37, I quote the following extract of an
address delivered by a professor of theology, to the
students preparing for the ministry, and attending
the “Divinity Hall,” in connection with that Church.
“ By our profession of faith in His Word, we solemnly
declare to the world that God himself is a participa
tor in our views and sentiments, that these are de
rived from Him, and express His mind, and that He
is of the same judgment with ourselves, in attaching
importance to what we adhere to, and in lightly
esteeming what we regard with indifference.' In a
word, our profession of faith must be regarded, not
only as our declaration of our own sentiments, but also
of the mind of God.”
The only recorded fruit of Asa's religious zeal,
being the inauguration of intolerance, and the sum
mary extirpation of all heresy by the civil power, we
are very doubtful, whether such a change ought to be
styled a reformation ; and it has only been after much
hesitation, that we have felt constrained to rank Asa
as the first great reformer of the Jewish faith;—con
strained by the reflection, that so many great refor
mers, to whom the title cannot be denied, have un
happily been intolerant and persecutors.
Asa is the earliest persecutor, on account of either
true or false religion, with whom we become acquaint
ed in the historic books of the Bible. Perhaps he
had a clearer and more intense conviction of God's
unity and omnipresence, than any of his predecessors
had enjoyed ; and he acted according to his light, he
put forth all his strength in furtherance of the cause
of truth. Perhaps his own mind was so filled with
the great truth that God is One,—he had so thoroughly
cast out the idea that there could be any other gods,
that he could not admit, and would not tolerate, the
�Asa to 'Jehoida.
55
right of any other mind to entertain that idea, or to
recognise either more or other gods than Jehovah.
Psalm lxv. 2.—“ 0 thou that hearest prayer ! unto thee
shall all flesh come.”
Or was it only that he was so penetrated and pos
sessed with the conviction, that Jehovah far excelled
all other gods in majesty and power, that it was better
to worship him than any other ?
Psalm lxxxii. 1.—“ God standeth in the congregation of
the mighty : he judgeth among the gods.”
Or was it only that Jehovah was the God, whom
his chosen people, the Jews, ought to worship, while
the other nations, whose God he was not, might do
well to worship the gods whom they knew 1
Judges xi. 24.—“ Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy God giveth thee to possess ? So, whomsoever the
Lord our God shall drive from out before us, them we will
possess.”
Whatever may have been the measure of truth,
which Asa was enabled to discern, it is clear that he
discerned it as the truth; and so forcibly, that he felt
constrained to exert all his energy and zeal, in the
destruction of the opposite falsehood. In Asa’s days,
the sword of the civil power was the most handy and
efficacious instrument of conversion, its arguments
not being easily resisted; and so Asa employed the
sword, probably with as good a conscience, and in as
good a cause, as it ever has been employed by any
teacher of religion; but can it be, that the interests
of true religion have ever been really and truly pro
moted by the use of persecuting power? Must we
not rather believe that, in all cases, judging of what
might have been, by comparison with what has in later
times been witnessed, the immediate gain, however
great apparently it was, could not fail to be far more
than counterbalanced by the deeper and more perma
nent loss; and that the weapons of truth alone, if left
and employed to do their own work, would, in Asa’s,
�When was the Book Lost?
and m every time, have sufficed to achieve conquests
tar more glorious, than the conversion of nations bv
the sword ?
J
In the earlier part of the history, we read of con
tentions between a proud priest and a king, in the
persons of Samuel and Saul; but, in those days, though
there were priests, there was no established priesthwd
and there is no trace of intolerance. The right to
differ, being a natural right, seems to have been gene-,
rally respected, though perhaps not formally recognised.
Saul, David, and Solomon were not over-scrupulous
a out putting men to death. All their enemies were
regarded as enemies of their God, and were to be ex
terminated without mercy; but we cannot learn, that
they ever thought of killing their friends and fellowcountrymen, merely because their religious beliefs
were wrong ■ much less did they ever make a cove
nant or law, to the effect that all heretics should
surely be put to death. But, when Asa reigned, the
temple had been open for fifty yearSj and the priests
of the temple, being an established hierarchy, had, in
that time, already developed somewhat of the doc
trine of the infallibility of the Church, which, in allits varied, forms, and everywhere, and always, has
produced intolerance and persecutions great or small;
and, while, in Asa’s reign, this notion of infallibility
already produced the covenant of intolerance, it is
three hundred years later, in the production of Hil
kiah the priest, in the book which he read to king
Josiah, that we find the legitimate outcome of the
growth of this priestly doctrine, whose influence and
power have never, from that time to this, ceased to be
felt; whether for good or evil,—who shall say ?
Who can tell, how much further or more rapidly
the progressive development of spiritual truth and
the freedom and power of individual thought might
have advanced, if their progress, which seems to have
been so far true, had not been thus early checked, by
�Asa to 'Jehoiada.
57
the counter-progress of intolerance and of submission to
authority,—had not been, so very soon, arrested in its
promising career, by the haste of the priesthood to
re-cast all that they discerned, or believed, or desired
to be truth, in the iron mould of infallibility; from
which, by the device and authority of Asas, Hilkiahs,
and Josiahs, the strange mixture issued, and strangely
has continued to issue, stamped as the word of God ?
Eabbinism, phariseeism, and worship of the letter,
dogmatism, formality, intolerance, and fanaticism
have, in various times, and in many different forms,
been the direct and immediate fruit of that same iron
mould, of which also irreligion, hatred and indiffer
ence to all truth have been the secondary, but no less
certain and natural consequences.
Without that iron mould, God alone knows what
might have been ! I dare not attempt to paint in
words the bright picture which rises before my im
agination. Perhaps those who dwell here a thousand
years hence may see it realised !
But then,—perhaps the way by which we have
been led may also have been the best or only way, by
which mankind could ultimately be brought to the
knowledge and discernment of good and evil. So
many evil things have been made the sources of good,
so altogether incapable are we of reckoning a distant
result, the means are often so very different, unlike
and remote from the ends, that we can only again ex
claim—Who can tell1? God alone knows what might
have been ; but let us beware of knowingly and wil
fully continuing in evil, even in order that good may
come.
Asa, the first orthodox persecutor, after reigning
forty-one years, was succeeded by his son Jehosha
phat, the first missionary king.
2 Chron. xvii. 7-9.—“ In the third year of his reign he
sent to his princes (five names) to teach in the cities of
Judah ; and with them he sent Levites (nine names) ; and
�58
When was the Book Lost ?
with them Eli-sliama and Jehoram, priests. And they
taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of the Lord
with them, and went about throughout all the cities of
Judah, and taught the people.”
After being converted by the sword, the people had
to be taught by the Levites and the book. Here at
length we seem to have found it; but then, what of
the brazen serpent and the second commandment I
what of the passover, the Sabbath day, the Sabbatical
year, the public reading of the law in that year, and
the tithes ? Not a word about any of these in the
reign of Jehoshaphat! And what of the high places ?
2 Chron. xvii. 6.—“And his (Jehoshaphat’s) heart was
lifted up in the ways of the Lord: moreover, he took away
the high places and groves out of Judah.”
But, alas! the same book again contradicts itself, and
is contradicted by the more trustworthy history.
2 Chron. xx. 32, 33.—“And he (Jehoshaphat) walked
in. the way of Asa his father, and departed not from it,
doing that which was right in the sight of the Lord: how
beit the high places were not taken away; for as yet the
people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their
fathers.”
1 Kings xxii. 43.—“ And he walked in all the ways of
Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that
which was right in the eyes of the Lord: nevertheless the
high places were not taken away; for the people offered and
burnt incense yet in the high places.”
It is impossible to believe the later narrative in
preference to that earlier authority, which consistently
and uniformly declares that the high places were not
removed until the reign of Hezekiah; whereas, ac
cording to the Chronicles, they were removed by
nearly every orthodox king. But, though the prac
tise of local worship was still tolerated in the days of
Asa and Jehoshaphat, and was not prohibited till
two hundred years later; we may be sure that in
those very orthodox and intolerant times the wor
�Asa to 'Jehoiada.
59
ship in the high places was the worship of Jehovah
alone, as it was in the days of Manasseh after his
repentance.
2 Chron. xxxiii. 17.—“The people did sacrifice still in
the high places, yet unto the Lord their God only.”
We cannot suppose that such irregularities would
have been tolerated by these zealous ancl covenanted
reformers, or that so many great ordinances of the
law would by them have been ignored, if they had
been in possession of the Pentateuch, as Josiah has
transmitted it to us. It would, therefore, appear that
the book which the missionaries of Jehoshaphat aresaid to have had, must have been, in these points at
least, and probably in many others, different from,
that which was produced by Hilkiah.
In connection with Jehoshaphat, an incident is re
corded which, whether or not intended to be received
as a literal fact, curiously displays the then prevailing,
notions of the moral character of God.
1 Kings xxii. 10, 12, 19-22.—“ The king of Israel and
Jehoshaphat king of Judah sat each on his throne ... at
the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets prophesied before
them . . . saying, Go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper,
for the Lord shall deliver it into the king’s hand. . . .
Micaiah said : I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all
the host of heaven standing by him, on his right hand and
on his left. And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab,
that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead ? . . . And
there came forth a spirit and stood before the Lord, and
said, I will persuade him : and the Lord said unto him,
Wherewith ? And he said, I will go forth and be a lying
spirit in the mouth of all his prophets : And he said, Thou
shalt persuade him, and prevail also; go forth and do so.”
Jehoshaphat reigned well and prosperously for
twenty-five years, and then lived four years after
giving up the kingdom to Joram (or Jehoram) his
son, with whom commenced that period of idolatrous
�6o
When was the Book Lost ?
backsliding which preceded and rendered necessary
the second reformation under Jehoiada,
2 Kings viii. 18.—“And he walked in the way of the
kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab, for the daughter
of Ahab (Athaliah) was his wife: and he did evil in the
sight of the Lord.”
He reigned only eight years, during the two last of
which he laboured under a severe and incurable
disease.
2 Kings viii. 24.—“And Joram slept with his fathers,
and was buried with his fathers in the city of David ; and
Ahaziah his son reigned in his stead.”
In the other account of his burial, there is a dis
crepancy, similar to that which we have in last chapter,
observed in the accounts of the burials of Ahaz and of
Joash.
2 Chron. xxi. 20.—“ Howbeit they buried him (Joram)
in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings.”
Joram was succeeded by his youngest son, Ahaziah,
who also preferred his mother’s religion. When he
had reigned only one year, he went to visit his near
relative, the king of Israel, at Samaria, and, while
there, was overtaken and included in the vengeance
which Jehu was commissioned to inflict on all the
house of Ahab.
2 Kings ix. 27, 28.—“But when Ahaziah the king of
Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden-house:
and Jehu followed after him, and said, Smite him also in the
chariot. And they did so, at the going up to Gur, which
is by Ibleam. And he fled to Megiddo, and died there.
And his servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and
buried him in his sepulchre with. his fathers in the city of
David."
But again the chronicler refuses to assign such
honour to the remains of an idolatrous king, and
gives a different account of the circumstances of his
death.
�Asa to Jeboiada.
6i
2 Chron. xxii. 9.—“And Jehu sought Ahaziah: and
they caught him, for he was hid in Samaria, and brought
him to Jehu : and, when they had slain him, they buried
him: because, said they, He is the son of Jehoshaphat,
who sought the Lord with all his heart.”
So that the heretic king is not only denied his own
place in the sepulchre of his fathers, but is represented
as indebted for even a grave in Samaria to the memory
of his grandfather, the orthodox Jehoshaphat.
It is very observable and worthy of notice, that in
such discrepancies between the twro authorities the
same orthodox or sacerdotal bias may always be re
marked in the book of Chronicles, and may be traced
in every page of that book; so much so, that we may
see in the constant manifestation of it a record, and
a very specimen of the bigotry of the Levitical mind,
with which our consideration of this subject thus
brings us literally into converse and contact.
2 .Chron. xxii. 10-12,—“ But when Athaliah the mother
of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and
destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judali; but
Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the king, took Joash the son
of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons that
were slain, and put him and his nurse in a bed-chamber.
So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of king Jehoram, the wife
of Jehoiada, the priest (for she w’as the sister of Ahaziah),
hid him from Athaliah, so that she slew him not. And he
was with them hid in the house of God six years.
Athaliah thought she had obtained secure posses
sion of the throne; but she reckoned without the
wise old man who had for many years been at the
head of the priesthood, who had grown with its
growth, and who could remember the glorious days
of Solomon, before the kingdom was divided; who
had lived in the covenanting times of King Asa, and
in whose heart the faithful zeal of that covenant still
burned.
The only things recorded about Queen Athaliah, are
her bloody usurpation, and its sudden end, after six
�61
When was the Book Lost?
years,when she was assassinated by conspirators, who
were instigated and directed by Jehoiada the priest.
2 Chron. xxiii. 14, 15.—“ The priest said, Slay her
not in the house of God. So they laid hands on her ; and
when she was come to the entering of the horse-gate by
the king’s house, they slew her there.”
J
True to his old covenant, Jehoiada’s first care, on
finding himself at the head of the government, was
to have it then forthwith renewed by king, priests,
and people.
’
2 Chron. xxiii. 16, 17.—“And Jehoiada made a
covenant between him, and between all the people, and be
tween the king, that they should be the Lord’s people.
Then all the people went to the house of Baal, and brake
it down, and brake his altars and his images in pieces
and slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars.”
Here we have plainly the same old covenant of in
tolerance and persecution, which seems to have been
again renewed by Hezekiah, and yet again by Josiah.
2 Chron. xxix. 10.—“(Hezekiah said), Now it is in mine
heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, that
his fierce wrath may turn away from us.”
2 Chron. xxxiv. 81, 32.—“And the king (Josiah)
stood in his place, and made a covenant before the Lord, to
walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and
his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart; and,
with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant
which are written in this book: and he caused all that
were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it;
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the
covenant of God, the God of their fathers.”
Jehoiada’s zeal for the covenant, and the fidelity
and prudence which he displayed in preserving alive
and concealing the young king, and in finally restoring
him to the throne of his fathers, are sure pledges that
he had not suffered the lamp of truth to be extinguished
in his hands, and that the book of the law of the Lord
was not lost in his time; but we have, on the other
hand, seen that such germs of the book as may then
�Solomon to Asa.
63
have existed did', in this period, first receive the stamp
of infallibility, the whole nation having been com
pelled, ostensibly at least, to surrender the right of
private judgment, and to submit their understandings
and their consciences to the predominant power and
authority of the orthodox covenanters. Under such
sovereigns as Asa and Jehoshaphat, the reign of
absolute intolerance would, of course, give to the
whole nation an outward semblance of religious con
formity ; but that same intolerance most probably was
the principal cause of the subsequent backslidings.
Tending ever to become more stringent and more
arrogant the longer it was cherished, it resulted in
provoking multitudes to throw off the restraints
which they could no longer bear, as Joram the son of
Jehoshaphat did, and as did Jehoiada’s pupil-king so
soon as his preceptor was dead.
CHAPTER V.
SEARCH CONTINUED.
SOLOMON TO ASA.—B.C. 1015 TO 955.
Having now considered the three periods of time,
which respectively followed the three reformations
under Asa, Jehoiada, and Hezekiah, taking, in each
chapter, a step further back from the finding of the
book, whose loss we seek to trace, or whose produc
tion we must endeavour to explain ; we find that the
next preceding period, which presents itself for exa
mination, is that which reaches from the building of
the temple, or from the accession of Solomon, till the
first reformation under Asa.
The earlier narrative records the opposition, which
�64
When was the Book Lost ?
the succession of Solomon to the throne encountered
from his elder brother Adonijah (1 Kings i., ii.),
whom Abiathar the priest, and Joab, the veteran
commander of the forces to David, supported as the
rightful heir; but Solomon, being the son of the
favourite Bathsheba, was preferred.
1 Kings i. 30, 31.—. . Assuredly Solomon thy son shall
reign after me. . . . Then Bathsheba bowed with her face
to the earth, and did reverence to the king, and said, Let
my lord king David live for ever.” (Compare Deut. xxi.
15,16.)
And Solomon was no sooner established in power
than, notwithstanding his promised protection, he put
to death Adonijah, with Abiathar and Joab, who had
been the two most tried and faithful friends of his
father David.
1 Kings ii. 35.—“ And the king put Benaiah, the son of
Jehoiada in his (Joab’s) room over the host; and Zadok
the priest did the king put in the room of Abiathar.”
Thus asserting his ecclesiastical supremacy in the
most unmistakable way.
All the priests, Levites, and musicians, had been,
according to the later narrative, arranged and ap
pointed to their several offices in the temple-service
by David (1 Chron. xxiv.—xxvii.), while the book of
Kings gives no account of these appointments at all;
but, from it, we learn that all this multitude of nomi
nations for the temple-service, if made by David, must
have preceded the opening of the temple by cd least
eleven years.
1 Kings vi. 38.—“In the eleventh year, in the month
Bui, which is the eighth month, was the house finished
throughout all the parts thereof, and according to all the
fashion of it. So was he seven years in building it.”
We may therefore regard these Levitical lists, as
apocryphal, such minute attention to ecclesiastical
details being quite opposed to the character of David,
as we shall have occasion to see in our next chapter.
�Solomon to Asa.
65
The absence from these lists of all notice of provision
for the support of the extensive sacerdotal establish
ment, is perhaps another argument against their trust
worthiness, such provision being, by the same his
torian, specially noted for the comparatively small
number of priests in the time of Hezekiah (2 Chron.
xxxi. 10-19). It is indeed very remarkable that we
have not a hint nor a trace of the tithe-law in connec
tion with Solomon's reign. Probably the numbers and
arrangements of the priesthood were nothing like so
great nor so complete as the chronicler represents them
to have been; but, whatever their real numbers were, it
would appear that the multitude of sacrifices and the
vast revenues of the king, from tribute, commerce, and
accumulated wealth, were at this time sufficient to
preclude the necessity of tithes for the priests.
1 Kings x. 14, 15.—“ Now the weight of gold that came
to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six
talents of gold (equal to £3,646,350 sterling) ; beside that
he had of the merchantmen, and of the traffic of the spice
merchants, and of all the kings of Arabia, and of the gover
nors of the country.” (Read also 1 Chron. xxvi. 26-28.)
When at length the building of the temple was
completed, the ark was brought up from the city of
David, and set in its place.
2 Chron. v. 7.—“And the priests brought in the ark of
the covenant of the Lord unto his place, to the oracle of
the house, into the most holy place, even under the wings
of the cherubims.”
If we assume that the book had a previous existence, we must surely expect to find here, if anywhere,
unmistakable evidence of it. Now was the time
when the book should have been found, which Moses
wrote, and concerning which he commanded the
Levites saying:—
Deut. xxxi. 26.—“ Take this book of the law, and put it
in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,
that it may be there for a witness against thee.”
E
�66
When was the Book Lost ?
But, for this great discovery the times were not
yet ripe: and so we have to read:—1 Kings viii. 9.—“ There was nothing in the ark, save the
two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when
the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when
they came out of the land of Egypt.” (Deut. x. 3-5.)
If the reader will compare Exod. xxxiv. and Exod.
xxiii. 10-19, he will find reason to doubt whether the
commandments on these tables were the same as our
decalogue; and this doubt is confirmed by the fact
that not until the reign of Asa, the third king after
Solomon, is there any record of idol-worship being
abolished, or of images being destroyed; and that
even Asa seems to have gone no further than the
destruction of the idols and images pertaining to the
worship of other gods, while the brazen serpent at
least, but probably also other Jehovistic symbols,
continued to be worshipped till the time of Hezekiah.
2 Kings xviii. 4, 5.—“ He (Hezekiah) removed the high
places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and
brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made:
for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense
to it: and he called it Nehushtan (a piece of brass!) He
trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was
none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that
were before him.'''
From which the unavoidable inference is, in the
absence of all evidence to the contrary, that Solomon,
even while worshipping Jehovah alone, saw no reason
why he should not be worshipped by images, whether
these were the ark, the cherubim, or the serpent.
1 Kings viii. 7.—“ For the cherubims spread forth their
two wings over the place of the ark, and the cherubims
covered the ark and the staves thereof above.” (See page
87.)
Clearly the second commandment was, in those
�67
days, either different or differently understood, from
what it afterwards became.
Having thus not taken, or not fully achieved, the
first great step towards purity of worship, it is not
surprising to find that, even while his intentions were
good, he failed in many points of the law, as in later
times it came to be known.
1 Kings iii. 1, 3, 4.—“And Solomon made affinity with
Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter.
(Comp. Dent. vii. 3.) And Solomon loved the Lord, walk
ing in the statutes of David his father: only he sacrificed
and burnt incense in high places. And the king went to
Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place.”
But it has already been abundantly proved that the
sin of worshipping God, anywhere in his great
temple of the universe, was a sin not then known;—not
invented till, in the course of centuries, the priest
hood which Solomon established had developed much
of the dogmatism, intolerance, selfishness, and arro
gance which, unhappily, seem to have been the snares,
the misfortunes, and the sins of every priesthood
from that time to this. Nor need it be very surpris
ing to discover that, as his ideas of spiritual worship
were so imperfect, his notions of the unity of God
were equally so.
2 Chron. ii. 5.—“The house which I build is great: for
great is our God above all gods.”
These words are addressed to Hiram, King of
Tyre, and clearly acknowledge that the gods of Tyre
were real divinities, though inferior to the God of
Solomon; whereas Jephthah, at an earlier time, seems
to have recognized some degree of equality in the
God of the Ammonites.
Judges xi. 24.—“Wilt not thou possess that which
Chemosh thy God giveth thee to possess ? So whomsoever
the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will
we possess.”
And this enables us to understand, what must
nsaann
Solomon to Asa.
�68
When was the Book Lost ?
otherwise be quite incomprehensible, how that Solo
mon in his old age, when the temple-service was no
longer new, and when the ardour of his youthful
zeal had abated, thought it necessary to propitiate
other gods, though he never abandoned the worship
of Jehovah.
1 Kings xi. 6, 7.—“ And Solomon did evil in the sight of
the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David
his father. Then did Solomon build an high place for
Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is
before Jerusalem; and for Molech, the abomination of the
children of Ammon.”
Concerning which sad declension on the part of
Solomon, as well as concerning his disputed succession,
the later narrative is, consistently, altogether silent.
The prowess of David had conquered and united
the kingdom, and had bequeathed it to Solomon
in the highest state of wealth, strength, and pros
perity; one natural consequence of which was the
erection of a temple in the new capital, more or
less resembling those which neighbouring kingdoms
had long before possessed in honour of the gods
whom they acknowledged. The royal temple implied
an established hierarchy of priests and attendants;
.and it is here that we find the origin of that priest
hood, of whose organization in earlier times no trace
is to be found in the historic records, excepting some
very apocryphal genealogies of comparatively recent
date (1 Chron. i.) The people who had but recently
■become a nation were as yet only commencing their
-progress from barbarism to civilization, and from
polytheism to gradually more and more spiritual
motions of the Divine Unity; and as one strong mind
.after another was led by inspiration to see and to
utter something of the higher truth, in the office of
prophet, priest, or king; the wheat that was among
the chaff, like the handful of corn on the top of a
mountain, took root here and there, and brought
�Solomon to Asa.
69
forth fruit for future harvests, and thus the whole
nation was slowly led on, towards higher and higher
conceptions of the oneness and spirituality of God.
It seems to have been among the priesthood, in a
great measure, that these doctrines had their growth.
Their jealousy for the dignity and glory of their
God, above all other gods, ripened by degrees into
faith in Him, as the one God over all.
In all the prayers and orations of Solomon at the
opening of the temple, and in the direct verbal replies
which he is said to have received from God, there is
not a single reference to Moses nor to his law; nor
do we find that there was any reading of the book of
the law on this great occasion, nor throughout the
whole of Solomon’s reign. We cannot even find that
the priests and Levites had anything wherein to
instruct the people, nor that they gave them any
instruction at all, as is first said to have been done
in the reign of Jehoshaphat, and afterwards in the
reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah.
We have indeed mention made of statutes, judg
ments, and commandments:—
2 Chron. vii. 19.—“ But if ye turn away and forsake my
statutes and my commandments, which I have set before
you, and shall go and serve other gods and worship
them.” . . .
But such expressions may, most probably, refer to
the laws which Samuel and David had instituted, at
and after the foundation of the monarchy.
1 Kings iii. 3.—“And Solomon loved the Lord, walking
in the statutes of David his father.”
Which, being divinely inspired, were of course re
garded as divine laws. The statutes referred to may
also be those which were engraved on the tables of
stone •, but that these references do not apply to the
book of the law, can be shown by evident proofs.
We learn from the earlier narrative, that Solomon
offered sacrifice three times a year.
�When was the Book Lost ?
1 Kings ix. 25.—“ And three times in a year did Solomon
offer burnt-offerings and peace-offerings upon the altar
which he built unto the Lord, and he burnt incense upon
the altar that was before the Lord.”
The later historian greatly increases the number of
times for sacrifice, but gives names to the three great
occasions.
2 Chron. viii. 12, 13.—“ Then Solomon offered burntofferings unto the Lord, on the altar of the Lord which he
had built before the porch ; even after a certain rate every
day, offering according to the commandment of Moses on the
Sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts
three times in the year, even in the feast of unleavened bread,
and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles.”
The simpler and more trustworthy account would
suggest that these three festivals were the same as
those which most heathen nations, and which our own
Scandinavian ancestors observed.
Exod. xxiii. 14-16.—“Three times thou shalt keep a
feast unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of
unleavened bread, and the feast of harvest, the first-fruits
of thy labours which thou hast sown in thy field ; and the
feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when
thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.”
But, of the observance of the Passover and other
feasts, as enjoined by the law, we have not in either
narrative the slightest trace.
Deut. xvi. 16.—“ Three times in a year shall all thy males
appear before the Lord thy God, in the place which he shall
choose ; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast
of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles ; and they shall not
appear before the Lord empty.”
In like manner the Sabbath is named in the later
narrative, but only named, as in the passage quoted
above (2 Chron. viii. 13); and it may well be that the
Sabbath, as a day of rest, had come down from the
earliest time.
�Solomon to Asa.
Exod. xxiii. 12.—“ Six days shalt thou do thy work, and
on the seventh thou shalt rest; that thine ox and thine ass
may rest, and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger
may be refreshed.”
But the negative evidence is complete, that Solomon
knew nothing of the Sabbath as a day 11 holy to the
Lord,” and as enforced in the law.
Exod. xxxv. 2, 3.—“ Six days shall work be done, but on
the seventh there shall be to you an holy day, a Sabbath of
rest to the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be
put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your
habitations upon the Sabbath day.” (Compare Num. xv.
32 and 36.)
If Solomon had observed the Sabbath day thus,—
if those who gathered sticks on Sabbath had been, in
his days, stoned to death, it would assuredly have
been noticed in the detailed and particular accounts,
which are given of his building operations, and of the
king’s daily provision (1 Kings iv. 22-28).
We have also the fullest negative proof that the law
concerning the Sabbatical year was unknown in
Solomon’s time.
Lev. xxv. 3, 4.—“Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and
six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the
fruit thereof; but, in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath
of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord : thou shalt
neither sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard.”
Such a practice as this, and the reading of the
law in the year of release, would surely have been
recorded in the history of Solomon’s time, if any
such observance had been then known; but the
positive evidence, which in a former chapter (p. 29)
we have adduced to prove that this law was not ob
served in the time of Hezekiah, serves equally to show,
that it was neglected or ignored, at any time, from
the commencement of the monarchy, to the Babylonish
captivity. Even during the earlier part of his reign,
while Solomon himself may have been free from the
�Jt
When was the Book Lost ?
sin of idolatry, there is not any evidence, that
it had ever, in his or in David’s times, been re
garded as a punishable offence, to worship idols, or
other gods besides Jehovah; or that the altars
and high places of other gods had ever been
destroyed, as being illegal; much less have we
any grounds for supposing, that the priests or wor
shippers of other gods, who, in those early and
tolerant times, were probably more numerous than
afterwards, had ever been put to death by David or
by Solomon on account of their religious errors; as
was done by the later reformers in the covenant
ing times.
All the evidence on record goes to prove, that not
only the worship in high places, but the worship also
of images and of other gods, was practised and toler
ated, until long after Solomon’s reign; and we may
be very sure that, if there had been any destruction
of images, or removal of high places by David or by
Solomon, it would have been recorded to their praise,
with the same jealous, and somewhat exaggerated
care, as in the histories of Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah.
From all this the inference appears to be inevitable,
that Solomon did not know the second commandment;
and that, if he knew the first, “Thou shalt have
no other gods before me,'1 he must have understood these
words “ before me ” in a different sense from that in
which we are taught to understand them.
We are not at liberty to attribute the indifference
of Solomon to stupidity, for we are told :
1 Kings iv. 29, 30.—“ God gave Solomon wisdom and
understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even
as the sand that is on the sea-shore; and Solomon’s wisdom
excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country,
and all the wisdom of Egypt.”
Solomon’s ignorance of the law, because it was not
in existence, is the only rational, and indeed the only
possible explanation.
�Solomon to Asa.
73
Exod. xxii. 20.—“ He that sacrificeth unto any god, save
unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.”
Lev. xvii. 8, 9.—“ Whatsoever man there be of the house
of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that
offereth a burnt-offering or sacrifice ; and bringeth it not
unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer
it unto the Lord, even that man shall be cut off from among
his people.”
That such kings as David and Solomon should
know these to be Divine laws, and should yet
openly violate them, and constantly tolerate their
violation, is utterly inconceivable. The very intoler
ance of the law, in these and in numerous other
passages, marks it as the product of a later time than
the age of toleration, which continued up to, and
some time after the reign of Solomon.
Thus, instead of finding, as we might reasonably
have expected, clear and abundant evidence of the
knowledge of the book of the law, at the time when
the temple was dedicated, and when the priesthood
was established; we have found, instead, in this as in
each of our former steps backwards, from the finding
of the book, that we are only the further removed
from its influence, and that the traces of its existence
become gradually less;—in other words, we find the
law in each of these periods, at an earlier stage of
its growth, and therefore, in each case, notably less
and less developed.
According to the earlier narrative, the prosperity of
the kingdom was on the wane, before the death of
Solomon. Jeroboam, the future king of Israel, was a
high officer in the service of Solomon, “Ruler over
all the charge of the house of Joseph •” and we read that
“ even he lifted up his hand against the king,” being
instigated to this rebellion by the prophet Ahijah.
1 Kings xi. 30, 31, and 40.—“ And Abijah caught th
new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces
and he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces; for thus-
�74
When was the Book Lost ?
saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the
kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten
tribes to thee. . . . Solomon sought therefore to kill Jero
boam ; and Jeroboam arose and fled into Egypt, unto
Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death
of Solomon.”
But, on this subject, again the later historian is
quite consistently silent; and makes the close of
Solomon’s reign even to surpass its commencement, in
wisdom, righteousness, and triumphant prosperity
(2 Chron. ix.), reserving all the guilt and responsi
bility, as well as all the misfortune and calamity of
the approaching evil time, for his son Rehoboam, by
whom, after reigning forty years, he was succeeded.
Rehoboam was unfortunate in war, both foreign
and domestic, and in his days, the prediction of
Ahijah was fulfilled, by the separation of the ten
tribes of Israel, viewed in the earlier book as the
punishment merited by the idolatries of Solomon’s
old age.
1 Kings xi. 31, 33.—“Behold I will rend the kingdom
out of the hand of Solomon: . . . . because that they have
forsaken me, and have worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of
the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites,” &c.
Whereas the later narrative, though referring to
Ahijah’s prophecy, still throws a veil over Solomon’s
guilt.
2 Chron. x. 15.—“ For the cause was of God, that the
Lord might perform his word, which he spake by the hand
of Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.”
According to the earlier narrative, Rehoboam seems
from the first to have continued the same system of
general toleration which had prevailed under his
predecessors, and which continued till the time of Asa.
1 Kings xiv. 21 and 22.—“ And Rehoboam the son of
Solomon reigned in Judah .... and his mother’s name
was Naamah, an Ammonitess. And Judah did evil in the
�Solomon to Asa.
75
sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with
their sins which they had committed, above all that their
fathers had done : for they also built them high places, and
images and groves, on every high hill and under every green
tree.”
Whereas, according to the later narrative, as
Solomon had continued to the last in the path of
orthodoxy, so Rehoboam, during his first three years,
followed the same good example.
2 Chron. xi. 17.—“ So they strengthened the kingdom of
Judah, and made Rehoboam the son of Solomon strong
three years, for three years they walked in the way of
David and Solomon.”
2 Chron. xii. 1.—“ And it came to pass, when Rehoboam
had established the kingdom, and had strengthened himself,
he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him.”
From both narratives it thus appears that the great
sin, chargeable against Rehoboam, was that he was
not intolerant; that he acknowledged and protected
the right of his people to worship according to their
conscience, a right which, up to his time, seems never
to have been called in question by the civil power,
though it does appear to have already been challenged
by priests and prophets. Rehoboam did not compel
all his subjects, by a covenant of intolerance, to
worship Jehovah alone; but, that he was not hostile
to the orthodox worship, is abundantly manifest, from
the politic fears of his rival.
1 Kings xii. 26 and 27.—“ And Jeroboam said in his
heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David:
if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord
at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again
unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and
they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.”
Rehoboam’s good disposition may also be inferred
from the statement, that multitudes of the priests,
Levites, and devout persons, from the dominions of
Jeroboam, sought and found, at Jerusalem, that
�7&
When was the Book Lost ?
security and liberty of worship, which, in the neigh
bouring kingdom, they could no longer enjoy. (See
p. 51.)
Perhaps the political intolerance of Jeroboam,,
directed against these orthodox worshippers, may
have been the root and parent of that fiercer religious
intolerance, which, among the refugees and their
sympathizers, speedily grew so strong.
1 Kings xiv. 30.—“ And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days.”
It does not appear that Rehoboam’s reign was
wholly disastrous, or wholly wicked, for we read that:
2 Chron. xii. 12.—“ When he humbled himself, the
wrath of the Lord turned from him, that he would not
destroy him altogether: and also in Judah things went well."
After reigning seventeen years :—
1 Kings xiv. 31.—“ Rehoboam slept with his fathers,,
and was buried with, his fathers, in the city of David.”
In relating which, the more rigid Chronicler shows
the same strict discrimination, as in his accounts of
the burials of all the heretic kings : but, in this case,
so mildly that it would scarcely be noticed, if not
illustrated, by the same partiality, more strongly
marked in other instances. (See pp. 60, 61.)
2 Chron. xii. 16.—“And Rehoboam slept with hisfathers, and was buried in the city of David: and Abijah his.
son reigned in his stead.”
Abijah (or Abijam) is the only king who is repre
sented as idolatrous by the earlier authority, but
whose fame is untarnished and whose piety is recorded
by the later historian doubtless because he was a
friend and patron of the priests.
1 Kings xv. 3.—“ And he walked in all the sins of his
father, which he had done before him: and his heart was
�Solomon to Asa.
77
not perfect with the Lord his God, as the heart of David his
father.”
In Chronicles the chief thing recorded is a battle
with Jeroboam, in which Judah was victorious; and
a speech which, before the battle, Abijah addressed to
the opposing army, of which the key-note is :—
2 Chron. xiii. 12.—“ Behold God himself is with us
our captain, and his priests with sounding trumpets to
alarm against you. 0 children of Israel, fight ye
against the Lord God of your fathers, for you shall
prosper.”
for
cry
not
not
And, as the result of such faith, we read :
2 Chron. xiii. 18.—“ Thus the children of Israel were
brought under at that time,"and the children of Judah pre
vailed, because they relied upon the Lord God of their
fathers.”
From all which, two inferences may fairly be
drawn, first,—that in this, as in the former reigns,
there was no legal intolerance, nor violent suppression
of the mixed worship, which hitherto had prevailed ;
and second,—that the orthodox priesthood enjoyed
the royal favour, and had already attained to con
siderable power and influence; which, as usual, only
served to encourage them to hope and strive for
something more than they had yet achieved : even
for the entire extinction of heresy by the sword of
the law, and for the establishment of absolute intoler
ance, instead of that freedom of worship, and that
right to differ, with which no king hitherto had
interfered.
After reigning only three years, Abijah was suc
ceeded by his son Asa, under whom the priestly
doctrines of infallibility and intolerance, at length
obtained full sway.
In the period, to which this chapter has been
devoted, there has been unmistakably less ritualism,
less sacerdotalism, and less conformity to the Mosaic
law, than in any of the more recent periods, which we
�78
When was the Book Lost?
have examined ; but we have here seen the origin of
the established priesthood, consequent on the institu
tion of the temple service ; and we have seen a large
number of zealous priests, and of religious persons,
assembled at Jerusalem, in consequence of their ex
pulsion by Jeroboam. We have also already heard
the spirit of persecution, and of arrogant infallibility,
sounding in the blast of their trumpets ;—the same
spirit, the same trumpets, the same priests as those,
who, shortly afterwards, inspired and responded to Asa’s
covenanted law, that all heretics should surely be put
to death.
CHAPTER VI.
SEARCH CONTINUED.
THE JUDGES TO SOLOMON.—B.C. 1425 TO 1015.
Having traced the history of Judah through four
periods, extending from the finding of the book back
to the accession of Solomon and the building of the
temple; we now find that another step backwards
brings us to the very commencement of the continuous
history, in the time of Samuel; beyond which, the
records evidently cease to be historical in their
character, the book of Judges being undisguisedly
legendary and fragmentary ; while the assumed
authenticity and antiquity of the book of Joshua must
evidently and admittedly either stand or fall along
with that of the Pentateuch; so that, for our present
purpose, the book of Judges is the earliest source
whereto we can appeal for evidence; unless critical
and learned discrimination be employed, in which,
though I might perhaps follow, I cannot pretend to
lead.
Our earliest period must therefore be regarded as
commencing with the era of the Judges, which era is
�The Judges to Solomon.
79
variously estimated to extend from three hundred to
four hundred years, reaching from the death of
Joshua to the accession of Saul. The book of Judges
consists of a number of detached narratives of events,
to which none but the most arbitrary and uncertain
chronological arrangement can be applied. During
all this time there are only two instances, in which
priests or Levites are mentioned, and, in neither of
these, does the narrative afford the slightest support,
to the later doctrine of tribal distinction. In the
first of these cases, Micah, a man of Mount Ephraim
(Judges xvii. and xviii.), made for himself a “ house
of gods ” and images; and consecrated one of his
sons, who became his priest; but was glad, when he
afterwards had the opportunity, to secure a young
man of the family of Judah, who was a Levite, and
who, for a stipulated remuneration, continued to be
Micah’s priest, until the Danites violently carried off
both priest and images, to their new possessions in
the north; and founded there some kind of religious
institution, in which the priest-Levite, of the tribe of
Judah, was succeeded by a priestly family of whose
tribe there is no certain trace, for it is not clear that
Manasseh was their tribe.
Judges xviii. 30.—“ And the children of Dan set up
the graven image ; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the
son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of
Dan, until the day of the captivity of the land.”
The only other passage, in which a Levite is men
tioned, is the story (Judges xix. and xx.) of the
barbarous outrage committed by the men of Gibeah,
on the Levite’s wife; and the bloody revenge exacted
for their crime; but the narrative throws no light
at all upon the worship, office, or tribe of this Levite.
In all this book there are only three sacrifices
described, at none of which, either priest or Levite
seems to have officiated.
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When was the Book Lost ?
Manoah, the father of Samson, of the tribe of Dan,
offered a sacrifice, which was visibly accepted.
Judges xiii. 20.—“ For it came to pass, when the flame
went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of
the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar.”
Gideon, an Abi-ezrite, and a mighty man of valour,
belonging to a heathen, or Baal-worshipping family,
but whose tribe is not named, was specially com
manded to offer sacrifice:
Judges vi. 26.—“ And build an altar unto the Lord thy
God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and
take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the
wood of the grove, which thou shalt cut down.”
And Jephtha the Gileadite in fulfilment of his
horrid vow, said to have been made under the
influence of the Spirit of the Lord, (Judges xi.
29), offered up his daughter, as a burnt-offering to
the Lord; a deed recorded without a shadow of
disapproval, and which the Jews were taught to
regard with entire approbation; if we may judge
from the reference to it in the New Testament (Heb.
xi. 32).
When we compare the sacrifice offered by Jephtha
with that intended by Abraham (Gen. xxii. 10); and
when we consider the awe with which a similar
sacrifice, though offered by a heathen king, inspired
a victorious Jewish army:—
2 Kings iii. 26, 27.—“And when the king of Moab saw
that the battle was too sore for him. . . . Then he
took his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead,
and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall. And
there was great indignation against Israel: and tl 2y
departed from him, and returned to their own land.”—
we are forced to conclude, that human sacrifices
were not so singular, nor even so uncommon among
the Jews, as we are apt to think; and they seem even
to be recognised by the law :—
�The Judges to Solomon.
81
Lev. xxvii. 28, 29.—“ No devoted thing, •which a man
shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man
and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or
redeemed : every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord.
None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be
redeemed ; but shall surely be put to death.'"
Num. xviii. 15.—“Everything that openeth the matrix in
all flesh, which they bring unto the Lord, whether it be of
men or beasts, shall be thine : nevertheless the first born of
man shalt thou surely redeem, and the firstling of unclean
beasts shalt thou redeem.”
Exod. xxxiv. 20—“ But the firstling of an ass thou shalt
redeem with a lamb : and, if thou redeem him not, then
shalt thou break his neck. All the first born of thy sons
thou shalt redeem; and none shall appear before me empty.”
From all which, it seems much more than probable
that, in Jephthah’s, and even in later times, the
sacrifice of children was not very extraordinary; but
was regarded as the most acceptable orthodox worship,
and as the best evidence of sincere piety.
No candid reader will deny, that these passages in
the law, and other similar passages, must either be
founded on ancient customs, well-known before, and
only sanctioned and regulated by the promulgation of
the law; or else must be regarded as introducing, and
commanding, the practice of human sacrifice; and as
we find that such sacrifices were offered, at a time
when the Levitism of the law was wholly unknown;
and that these sacrifices were condemned and abol
ished when the Levitical law became fully developed,
it may be concluded that, in this case, the law was
founded on the custom, and not the custom on the
law. This does not, however, at all exclude the idea
that there may have been ancient laws instituting or
authorizing even the most ancient customs, and after
wards embodied, with too little discrimination, by
the compilers of the more recent code.
There is no description in the book of Judges of
any other sacrifice; and, while neither Manoah,
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When was the Book Lost ?
Gideon, nor Jephthah required the intervention of a
priest, it is no way attributed to them, as a sin, that
they usurped the priest’s office ; but on the contrary,
there are, in each case, manifest tokens of acceptance
and approval. Nor does there appear, either in the
parties themselves or in the narrator, the slightest
consciousness of irregularity in the circumstance, that
these sacrifices were offered at the three different
residences of the parties ; implying a total ignorance
of the law which was in later times enacted for the
suppression of the high places (Lev. xvii. 8, 9). In
the times which we are now considering, it is manifest
that no one had ever begun to think that there was
only one place in which God could be worshipped;
nor did this idea take the form of law, until the time
of Hezekiah, four hundred years after the last of the
judges.
Manoah, Gideon, Jephthah, and others are said to
have been favoured with direct guidance and instruc
tion from God; yet their manifest ignorance and
neglect of the ordinances of the Levitical law, and
the wholly unlevitical worship which they practised,
are never at all reproved. And while there is one
solitary voice raised against the worship oiother gods ;—
Judges vi. 8, 10.—“The Lord sent a prophet unto the
children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the
Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and
brought you forth out of the house of bondage. . . . and
I said unto you, I am the Lord your God; fear not the
gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have
not obeyed my voice ”—
yet the worship of God by images, though a pre
vailing custom, is not once rebuked, nor was it known
to be sinful, so far as we can learn from the narrative.
Gideon, whose piety is extolled both during his life
and after his death, while fully acknowledging the
Lord, and with the best intention, made a golden
image or ephod whereby to worship him (Judges viii.
�The Judges to Solomon.
83
22-35): and we have seen that Micah, with his Levite,
worshipped also by images: and that the Danites, who
robbed him, did the same.
As might be expected, in these rude and unsettled
times, there is abundance of evidence, that the pre
vailing notions of morality, and of the moral character
of "God, were extremely low; of which the story of
Jael and Sisera (Judges iv., v.) is a good illustration.
Sisera, whose army had been defeated by the Jews,
fled from the field, and sought refuge in the tent of
Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, a neutral, with
whom Sisera was at peace, Jael met him with offers
of hospitable concealment, and assurances of safety;
and, when she had lulled him to security and sleep,
for he was weary, she killed him by driving a nail
through his temples, and fastening it into the ground.
Deborah was a prophetess and judge over Israel; and,
in her song, inspired by the ‘Angel of the Lord,’ Jael
is praised in the highest terms, and 1 blessed above
women,’ for her cold-blooded treachery, and her mur
derous deed; on the horrible details of which, the
prophetess gloatingly dwells :—
Judges v. 24-26.—“ Blessed above women shall Jael the
wife of Heber the Kenite be; blessed shall she be above
women in the tent. He asked water and she gave him milk ;
she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand
to the nail, and her right hand to the workman’s hammer ;
and with the hammer she smote Sisera ; she smote off his
head, when she had pierced and stricken through his
temples,” &c., &c.
These sentiments were uttered in a song of praise to
God, and were evidently regarded as acceptable to Him.
Judges v. 31.—“ So let all thine enemies perish, 0 Lord ;
but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth
in his might.”
The God, whom Deborah worshipped, is thus seen
to be one, whom for us to worship would be impos
sible ; his name might be the same as that of Him
�84
When was the Book Lost?
whom we adore; but God is not in a name, even as
God is not in an image.
Before leaving the book of Judges, let us pause to
reflect that the people, of whom this book is the onlyrecord, lived about six hundred years nearer to the
time of Moses, the great lawgiver, than did Hezekiah
and Josiah; and that we might therefore fairly ex
pect to trace, in their customs and in their worship,
fresh, continual, and indubitable proofs, of the exis
tence and recognition of the ‘Mosaic law;’ the pro
mulgation of which would to them have been a recent
tradition, as their fathers or grandfathers might have
been with Moses at Sinai. And let us then consider,
whether we have been, in the course of this inquiry,
approaching to, or receding from, the real date of the
law.
The book of Ruth relates to the time of the judges,
and the chief purpose of its writer seems to have been
to record and to honour the ancestry of David, whose
great-grandmother was Ruth (iv. 22).
In this book, there is nothing either prophetic or
Levitical; and, while marked by a fine religious sen
timent, it contains no allusion to priests, to sacrifice,
nor to any act of worship.
The ‘ custom,’ in accordance with which Boaz took
Ruth to be his wife, is akin to, but is quite distinct
from, that sanctioned by the law of Moses, (compare
Ruth iii. 13, iv. 5 & 8, with the precepts in Deut.
xxv. 5-10).
Neither Boaz nor the writer of the book seems to
have had the slightest idea that the marriage was
sinful or illegal; being a transgression of the law,
which forbade the Hebrews to intermarry with the
surrounding heathen nations.
Exod. xxxiv. 15 and 16.—“ Lest thou make a covenant
with the inhabitants of the land : . . . . and thou take of
their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a
�The Judges to Solomon.
85
whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring
after their gods.”
Deut. vii. 3.—“Neither shalt thou make marriages with
them ; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor
his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.”
But the conduct of Boaz, in marrying Ruth the
Moabitess, is recorded as if it were pious and unim
peachable, and as an incident honouring to the mem
ory of David’s ancestors; and the same ignorance of
this law may be traced through every stage of the
history, till after the finding of the book. David had
heathen wives, (2 Sam. iii. 3), and so had Solomon,
even while he was building the temple (1 Kings iii. 1).
Solomon’s mother was a Hittite; and Rehoboam’s was
an Ammonitess (2 Chron. xii. 13). But, in Ezra’s
times, the law was rigorously enforced; and such
mixed marriages were declared null and void, because
known to be illegal,
Ezra ix. 2.—“ They have taken of their daughters for
themselves and for their sons; so that the holy seed have
mingled themselves with the people of these lands: yea, the
hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this tres
pass.”
Ezra x. 10, 11, 19.—“ And Ezra the priest stood up, and
said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken
strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel. Now
therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your
fathers, and do his pleasure ; and separate yourselves from
the people of the land and from the strange wives.............
And they gave their hands that they would put away their
wives; and, being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for
their trespass.”
Surely here the inference is unavoidable, that Ezra
was acquainted with a portion of the 1 Mosaic law,’
which, in the times of Boaz, David, and Solomon, did
not exist; and which was unknown to the author of
the book of Ruth.
In the book of Samuel, we have the earliest portion
�86
When was the Book Lost ?
of the continuous history of the Jewish nation ; and,
at its opening, we find the civil power in the hands
of a priest, Eli, who judged Israel forty years (1 Sam.
iv. 18.) Eli was succeeded in both his offices by the
great Samuel; in whose person the priesthood attained
to a degree of authority and influence, which seems
to have been always regarded by the later priests as
an example and a model, after which they ought to
strive whenever it was safe or possible to do so. For
us it must therefore be peculiarly interesting to note
the main features of Samuel’s career.
Samuel was a priest from his youth, having been
educated by Eli almost from his infancy, in the
Sanctuary at Shiloh, which is one of several places
mentioned in Samuel’s time as being Sanctuaries, or
houses of God; such as Mizpeh, Judges, xxi., 4, 5,
and 1 Sam. vii., 9, 11; Beth-el, (meaning house of
God) 1 Sam. vii. 16; Gilgal, 1 Sam. xi. 15 ; and
Gibeah, 2 Sam. vi. 2, 3 : all of which were most
probably included among those places of local worship,
which Hezekiah suppressed. Besides worshipping in
these, afterwards forbidden places, Samuel built an
altar at his own residence.
1 Sam. vii. 17.—“ And his return was to Ramah; for
there was his house ; and there he judged Israel, and there
he built an altar unto the Lord.”
Samuel had evidently no idea that, in thus
worshipping at various altars, he was guilty of violat
ing God’s law. (Lev. xvii. 8, 9; Josh. xxii. 29.)
In connection with Eli’s death, an incident is
recorded, which shows, in our opinion very clearly,
that the worship of Jehovah was, at that time,
scarcely, if at all, less idolatrous, than the worship of
other Gods. The Israelites had been defeated in a
battle with the Philistines, with the loss of four
thousand men; and before renewing the combat, they
said :—
�The Judges to Solomon.
87
1 Sam. iv. 8.—“ Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of
the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh
among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies.”
This is the very earliest historic mention of the
ark, if we except a parenthetic clause (Judges xx. 27)
to which no importance can be attached, being man
ifestly an interpolation by some comparatively recent
hand.
Both Israelites and Philistines regarded the ark as
an idol; or, in other words, as a symbol of the Divine
presence ; for what is any idol or image, more than a
symbol of God ? The veriest idolater does not believe,
that his bit of wood or stone is God ; but that it is an
emblem, a sign, or a dwelling place of the Deity; and
that God is somehow represented by it, or present in
it. Hear what the Hindoo has to say for himself, and
it would be easy to multiply evidence of this kind,
“It is not the image that we worship as the Supreme
Being, but the Omnipresent Spirit that pervades the
image as He pervades the whole universe. If, firmly
believing as we do, in the omnipresence of God, we
behold, by the aid of our imagination, in the form of
an image, any of His glorious manifestations ; ought
we to be charged with identifying Him with the
matter of the image?” * In like manner, we suppose,
but only in like manner, neither did Jews nor
Philistines imagine, that the ark was God; though
both parties evidently regarded it as the visible eidolon
—symbol or idol, of God's invisible presence.
1 Sam. iv. 4, 5, 7.—“ So the people sent to Shiloh,
that they might bring from thence the ark of the covenant
of the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth between the cherubims.
.... and when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came
into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that
the earth rang again............... And the Philistines were
afraid; for they said God is come into the camp. And they
* Prom an English lecture by a Hindoo, in defence of his
religion ; quoted in “ Good Words,” February 1869, p. 100.
�88
When was the Book Lost?
said, Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a thing
heretofore.”
But the Philistines were again victorious; the ark
was taken; the two sons of Eli were slain; the old
priest himself, when hearing the sad news, fell back
wards and broke his neck; and his daughter-in-law
died, in premature labour, naming her child Ichabod:
1 Sam. iv. 22.—“ And she said, the glory is departed
from Israel; for the ark of God is taken.”
The Philistines, however, suffered various miraculous
afflictions while they retained the ark ; and were glad
to send it back with a trespass offering (vi. 3.) It
was brought to Beth-shemesh, where, for looking into
the ark, fifty thousand people were slain !
1 Sam. vi. 19, 20.—“ And the people lamented, be
cause the Lord had smitten many of the people with a
great slaughter. And the men of Beth-Shemesh said, Who
is able to stand before this holy Lord God ? and to whom
shall he go up from us ? ”
Surely it is only prejudice, confirmed by, so-called,
orthodox training, that hinders so generally the
readers of the Bible, from here discerning the merest
idolatry and ignorance of the ever-present power of
Him who dwelleth not in temples made with hands.
Samuel had not a word to say against this image
worship, nor against the worship in high places ; but
he denounced the sin of worshipping other gods.
This was the great message of all the early prophets,
that the Jews ought to worship Jehovah alone—the
first step towards the higher truth, that God is One
by whatever name he may be called.
1 Sam. vii. 3.—“ And Samuel spake unto all the house of
Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the Lord with all your
hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from
among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and
serve him only ; and he will deliver you out of the hand of
the Philistines.”
�The Judges to Solomon.
89
Amos iii. 2.—“ You only have I known of all the families
of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your
iniquities.”
We apprehend that these two quotations throw
light upon each other : and that, together, they afford
a fair criterion, by which to judge of the standard
religious sentiment of the Jews at the commencement
of the monarchy (compare Ezra iv. 2, 3, and 2
Kings xvii. 27, 28); the sentiment which Samuel,
David, Amos, and others strove to inculcate; but
which, for a long time, the people were slow to learn.
In the time of the earlier judges, the Jews were
far from being a united people; on the contrary, they
were a number of separate and independent tribes,
one or more of which, generally in a time of pressing
danger, appointed some one to govern them and to
lead their armies. Sometimes the tribes under the
judges fought against other tribes, and sometimes
against foreigners. The so-called judges were in fact
chieftains, generally selected or acknowledged on
account of their warlike prowess; and were, in some
cases, such men as would now be called freebooters or
brigands (Judges x. 18.)
Judges xi. 3, 5, 6.—“ Then Jephthah fled from his
brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob; and there were
gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him.
And it was so that when the children of Ammon made war
against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah
out of the land of Tob ; and they said unto Jephthah, come
and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of
Ammon.”
And so Jephthah became “judge,” and ruled for six
years. Samson was the last of these old judges, and
• _ in his days, the Jews were subject to the Philistines.
Judges xv. 11.—“ Knowest thou not that the Philistines
are rulers over us? ”
And Samson judged Israel twenty years (Judges xvi.
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31), frequently astonishing the Philistines, with his
feats of strength and prowess, but never effecting the
independence of his people. The spirit of freedom
seems to have been quenched, and the neck of Israel
was bowed to the yoke; as shown in the passage
from which the above quotation is taken. Probably
the Philistines would not allow a warlike judge to
succeed Samson; or, perhaps, there was no such man
to be found. The people were so subdued and servile,
that they submitted, for the first time, to be governed
by a priest.
The Bible narrrative does not show the connection
between the books of Judges and of Samuel, but, ac
cording to Josephus, Eli succeeded Samson (Ant. v.,
ix. 1). From the tenor of the three first chapters of
Samuel, we may gather, that till near the close of Eli’s
long life, there had been some thirty or forty years of
peaceful subjection, during which, perhaps through the
over-confident security of their rulers, the tribes seem
to have become more united, and to have developed
somewhat of a national spirit, and of a desire for
independence.
At last they made an effort to throw off the op
pressor’s sway, their disastrous failure in which was
the occasion of Eli’s death; but the attempt was re
newed and was finally successful under the rule of his
successor Samuel.
1 Sam. vii. 3-14.—“Prepare your hearts unto the Lord
and serve him only; and he will deliver you out of the hand
of the Philistines...............And Samuel said, Gather all
Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord.
And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water,
and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day,
and said there, We have sinned against the Lord.............
And the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to cry
unto the Lord our God for us, that he will save us out of
the land of the Philistines............... And Samuel took a
sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt-offering wholly
unto the Lord, and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel;
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and the Lord heard him............. So the Philistines were
subdued, and they came no more into the coast of Israel.
.... And the cities which the Philistines had taken from
Israel were restored to Israel.”
Here, we have probably the very earliest distinct view
of the priest making intercession for the people—a
mediator between God and man. In the times of
Gideon, Jephthah, and Manoah, the prayer of the
suppliant was addressed directly to Jehovah; every
man was his own priest, and might build his own
altar where he chose. But, now, we have the people
confessing their sins, and expressing their penitence
to the priest, and begging him to cry unto the Lord
for them. This notion had doubtless been growing in
Eli's time, and may perhaps be traced in his inter
course with Hannah (1 Sam. i. 17), but this is the
first clear expression of it that we have on record;
and thus we first become acquainted with that veil of
separation, which has served so long to obscure and
to discolour the light of divine truth, and which has
done so much to hinder the approach of man to God.
This is the real veil of the temple, about whose rend
ing, by the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, there
can be no manner of doubt; and whether any veil ot
cloth was then rent or not is a question of small im
portance. But, though rent at that time, even from
the top throughout, and never since then thoroughly
repaired, it has been often, and in many places, won
derfully patched and mended up, and much, very
much of it, though decayed and decaying, still hangs
together, even at the present day.
I am greatly mistaken if the foregoing portion of
this chapter has not placed us in a position to discern
with clearness, that, according to our authorities, it is
in Samuel's time that we have the very first trace,
record, or evidence of the idea of a theocracy,—of
Jehovah’s direct government of the nation, in temporal
affairs, through the ministry of his vicegerent, the
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* When was the Book Lost?
priest. Samuel seems to have been the man who
originated also this great idea, closely akin to the
other one, that the priest was the appointed mediator
between God and man. We have seen evidence
enough, that, in the time of the early judges, no such
idea was known, but that the priest then occupied a
very subordinate position. If the theocracy had
really been established in the time of Moses and
Joshua, with the completely organized hierarchy of
priests and Levites, as described in the Pentateuch;
it must be marvellous, to say the least of it, that all
trace or record of such institutions should have, so
soon and so entirely, disappeared; and that it had
to be all reconstructed, from the very foundation bv
Eli and Samuel.
’
Samuel, combining in himself the power of the
supreme magistrate, with the office of the priesthood,
and with all the prestige of success in war, though
the first to teach this doctrine, was in a position to
assert for it a higher claim than any of his successors.
He had a great advantage over Jehoiada, in whose
days the people were accustomed to a dynasty of
kings; and had far more independent power than
Ezra and his successors, who ruled only by permission
of the Persian monarch.
Ezra vii. 12,13.—“ Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra
the priest, a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect
peace, and at such a time. I make a decree, that all they
of the people of Israel, and of his priests and Levites in my
realm, which are minded of their own free will to go up to
Jerusalem, go with thee. (Read also ver. 25 and 26.)
In Ezra’s time the people were again humbled and
broken in spirit, by their long captivity and by their
continued subjection to foreign power; and were
again prepared to acknowledge the supremacy of the
priesthood, by the restoration of the theocracy. In
these later times, accordingly, they endeavoured to
realize the great beau-ideal of which Samuel’s primi
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tive example had been the prototype and germ;
growing and developing itself, in the minds of the
priesthood, through six intervening centuries, and
asserting itself, meanwhile, in various degrees, wher
ever circumstances would permit.
1 Sam. viii. 1, 4-7.—“ And it came to pass, when Samuel
was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel.............
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together,
and came to Samuel unto Ramah. And said unto him,
Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways:
now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But
the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king
to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the
Lord said unto Samuel............. They have not rejected thee,
but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over
them.”
1 Samuel x. 19.—“Ye have this day rejected your God
who himself saved you out of all your adversities and your
tribulations; and ye have said unto him, Nay, but set a
king over us.”
Samuel took the highest possible ground, by thus
declaring, in the name of God, that the desire of the
people to have an earthly king, instead of being ruled
by a succession of priests, was high treason, not
merely against the priest, as God’s vicegerent, but
against Jehovah himself. Manifestly Samuel was
not aware, that the people, in desiring to have a king,
were only following out the directions of the Mosaic
law; but indeed we may perhaps be justified, in re
garding this portion of the law, as written retrospect
ively, with a view to the events recorded in the book
of Samuel.
**
Deut. xvii. 14, 15.—“ When thou art come unto the land
which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it,
and shalt dwell therein, and thou shalt say, I will set
a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me ;
thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the
Lord thy God shall choose : one from among thy brethren
shalt thou set king over thee.”
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When was the Book Lost?
The people, however, seem to have been somewhat
sceptical about Samuel’s doctrine on this subject,
whether it was that they knew the law better than he
did, or that they were influenced only by a shrewd and
jealous regard for their natural rights and liberties.
1 Samuel viii. 19-22.—“ Nevertheless the people refused
to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay, but we
will have a king over us ; that we also may be like all the
nations ; and that our king may judge us, and go out before
us, and fight our battles. And Samuel heard all the words
of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.
And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice and
make them a king.”—(Comp. 1 Sam. xii. 17.)
Samuel, after often repeated protests and protesting
to the very last, at length yielded to the unanimous
wish of the people; but still sought to terrify them
from their purpose, by telling them “ the manner of
the king ” that should reign over them.
1 Sam. viii. 14, 15.—“ He will take your fields and your
vineyards, even the best of them, and give them to his
servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of
your vineyards, and give to his officers and to his servants.”
This passage contains the only expression which
can be construed as an allusion to the tithe law in
the whole of Samuel’s history; which circumstance,
as well as the manner and purpose of its introduction
here, may suffice to prove that the tithe was a tax
which Samuel had never presumed to impose, and
which,' as the birth-right of the priests, was then
unknown.
By wisely yielding, before it was too late, Samuel
preserved to himself the power of choosing the new
king, and much other power; which in all probability
he would have lost entirely, if the nation had been
driven, by his obstinate resistance, to the adoption of
violent measures. Accordingly, we find that Saul
was, in the first instance, privately anointed as king
by Samuel.
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1 Sam. ix. 27.—“And as they were going down to the
end of the city, Samuel said to Saul, Bid thy servant pass
on before us (and he passed on), but stand thou still a
while, that I may show thee the word of God.”
1 Sam. x. 1.—“ Then Samuel took a vial of oil and poured
it on his head, and kissed him, and said, Is it not because
the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inherit
ance ? ”
And the formal election, ostensibly by God, but
practically by the mediation of the priest, took place
afterwards in public.
1 Sam. x. 19-22.—“ Now therefore present yourselves
before the Lord, by your tribes and by your thousands.
And when Samuel had caused all the tribes of Israel to
come near, the tribe of Benjamin was taken. When he had
caused the tribe of Benjamin to come near by their families,
the family of Matri was taken, and Saul the son of Kish
was taken: and when they sought him he could not be
found. Therefore they enquired of the Lord further, if the
man should yet come thither. And the Lord answered,
Behold, he hath hid himself among the stuff.”
Matthew Henry’s Commentary on this transaction
is a fine specimen of orthodox interpretation, its
quaint simplicity being truly admirable :—“ He puts
them upon choosing their king by lot. He knew
whom God had chosen, and had already anointed
him; but he knew also the peevishness of that people,
and that there were those among them who would
not acquiesce in the choice, if it depended upon his
single testimony; and therefore that every tribe,
and every family of the chosen tribe, might please
themselves withjiaving a throw for it, he calls them
to the lot. Benjamin is taken out of all the tribes,
and out of that tribe Saul the son of Kish. By this
method, it would appear to the people, as it already
appeared to Samuel, that Saul was appointed of God
to be king, for the disposal of the lot is of the Lord.
When the tribe of Benjamin was taken, they might
easily foresee that they were setting up a family
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that would soon be put down again; for dying Jacob
had by the spirit of prophecy entailed the dominion
upon Judah (Gen. xlix. 10, 27). Those, therefore,
that knew the scriptures, could not be very fond of
doing that which they foresaw must ere long be
undone.” As we learn from the narrative, that
Samuel had previous and private knowledge of the
man who would, in this public and ceremonious
fashion, be chosen; so it is at least very natural
to suppose that Samuel may also have had information
as to where the man was to be found when he was
wanted. How very real and natural all this appears
if we would only read it aright!
1 Sam. x. 24, 25.—“ And all the people shouted and
said, God save the king.
Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom,
and wrote it in a took, and laid it up before the Lord. And
Samuel sent all the people away, every man to his house.”
Samuel wrote, in a book that which he had told the
people. Does this mean that he made a copy of the
book, which he had read in their hearing ?
Deut. xvii. 18.—“ And it shall be, when he sitteth upon
the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of
this law in a book out of that which is before the priests,
the Levites.”
Was the book of Moses that which Samuel told and
wrote ? And did he do so in obedience to this law ?
But this law is one of those relating to the conduct
of the king, when he should be chosen to rule the
people; and, as we have seen a few pages back, that
Samuel ignored the lawfulness of the people choosing
a king, and was not guided by Jacob’s prediction
that the king should be of the tribe of Judah; so we
must infer that he was also ignorant of this law, re
lating to the king’s special duties. Thus the natural
sense of the words told and wrote, in the absence of
any reference or allusion to Moses or to his law, is
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certainly the true sense, signifying that Samuel spoke
and wrote of his own wisdom and wit, with whatever
measure of inspiration he may have, enjoyed. The
law which he wrote for Saul, was most probably the
first national foundation upon which all the subse
quent Jewish law-making was built; this very law
for the conduct of a new king, being evidently con
structed on the example set by Samuel at the com
mencement of the monarchy.
Every particular in the history of Saul brings
forcibly to view the very primitive and rude state of
the people at that time. As an illustration let us
look at the first incident recorded in his reign. When
messengers came to tell him that one of his cities was
attacked by the Ammonites, and its inhabitants
threatened with having all their right eyes thrust out.
1 Sam. xi. 5, 6, 7.—“Behold Saul came after the herd
out of the field; and Saul said, What aileth the people that
they weep ? And they told him the tidings of the men of
Jabesh. And the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he
heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly; and
he took a yoke of oxen and hewed them in pieces, and sent
them throughout all the coasts of Israel, by the hands of
messengers, saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul
and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. And
the fear of the Lord fell on the people, and they came out
with one consent.”
And so Jabesh was relieved, the Ammonites were
defeated, and Saul was confirmed in his kingdom. It
is clear, however, that Samuel still regarded the office
of the king,. as entirely subordinate to that of the
priest; for, in connection with Sauls next enterprise,
against the Philistines, we read, that the king himself
offered sacrifice, after waiting seven days for Samuel,
who did not come at the time appointed; and, though
the king condescended to plead with the priest, and
to state what appear to be genuine reasons, for what
he had done, yet the priest was not to be appeased.
G
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1 Sam. xiii. 11-14.—“ And Samuel said, What hast thou
done ? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were
scattered from me, and that thou earnest not within the
days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves
together at Michmash ; therefore said I, The Philistines will
come down now upon me to Gilgal and I have not made sup
plication to the Lord : I forced myself therefore, and offered
a burnt-offering. And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast
done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of
the Lord thy God which he commanded thee............... Thy
kingdom shall not continue ; the Lord hath sought him a
man after his own heart; and the Lord hath commanded
him to be captain over his people.”
Saul was not now at liberty, to suppose that he
could worship or make supplication to God, excepting
through the mediation of a priest. That, which the
old judges had piously done, with clear tokens and
full consciousness of the divine approval, was now to
be regarded as a heinous transgression of God’s law.
There can be little doubt, that the exclusive rights
and privileges of the priesthood, as Samuel conceived
that these ought to be, had been, much more than the
royal prerogative, strictly guarded and provided for,
in the book which Samuel had written : and, there
fore, the king was held inexcusable.
Unconsecrated men might no longer presume to
approach within the sacerdotal veil, which had now
been drawn between them and God; and any disre
gard of the barrier thus set up, was, by the priest,
denounced as sacrilege, and unpardonable sin.
Upon another occasion, the poor king had to submit
to a similar humiliating rebuke. By Samuel’s di
rection, Saul undertook an expedition against the
A malekites.
1 Sam. xv. 3, 8, 9.—“ Now go and smite Amalek, and
utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but
slay both man and woman, infant and suckling (!) ox and
sheep, camel and ass............... And he took Agag the king of
the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people
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with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people
spared Agag, and the best of the sheep and of the oxen.”
Clemency is the noblest prerogative of the crown;
but even this was denied, and trampled in the dust,
by the haughty priest.
1 Sam. xv. 23, 28, 33.—“Because thou hast rejected the
word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being
king............... The Lord hath rent the kingdom from thee
this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine that is
better than thou............ And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces
before the Lord in Gilgal.”
These are the only two faults or offences which are
recorded against Saul; unless we are to regard as
such his subsequent hostility to David and his sup
porters. He is not at all accused of worshipping
other gods, nor of any kind of immorality or excess.
He seems to have been even entirely innocent of any
such oppression and extortion as those which Samuel,
to serve his own selfish purpose, had predicted of him:
and when, in the time of his distress, at the very
close of his forty years’ reign, he once more humbled
himself to the shade of the old priest, whom he had
recalled from beyond the tomb; even then, when he
had lived his life, and when all his sins had been
committed, the ghost of Samuel, whatever or wher
ever that may have been, whether in the house of the
witch or in the mind of the historian, had none but
the same unforgiven offence, to allege as a reason for
the judgment, which was about to fall on the head of
the unfortunate king.
1 Sam. xxviii. 18.—“Because thou obeyedst not the voice
of the Lord, nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek,
therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee this day.”
Saul appears to have had a superstitious dread of
Samuel; but yet he must in some way have asserted
his rights,.in opposition to Samuel’s interference, more
contumaciously than in either of these two cases, or
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When was the Book Lost ?
else we may be sure, that even Samuel would not
have deemed him unpardonable. So far as can be
inferred from the record, the honesty and moral char
acter of Saul was not only equal, but very far superior,
to that of either Samuel or David; and his exclusive
worship of Jehovah is never called in question. But,
for whatever reason, it appears that Samuel very soon
■discovered that he had been mistaken in his choice;
and that he already contemplated the overthrow of
Saul; to make way for another more hopeful nominee,
whom he thereafter proceeded privately to anoint.
1 Sam. xvi. 1.—“ And the Lord said unto Samuel, How
long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him
from reigning over Israel ? Fill thy horn with oil, and go;
I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have pro
vided me a king among his sons.”
This purpose or prediction, however, was not ful
filled in Samuel’s time ; though he thus did his best
to secure its fulfilment by stirring up David’s ambi
tion, and though he lived eighteen years after Saul
became king, and much of that time after anointing
his successor. Saul must have given great offence, for—■
1 Sam. xv. 35.—“ Samuel came no more to see Saul until
the day of his death; nevertheless Samuel mourned for
Saul; and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king
•over Israel.”
I believe it is very important clearly to understand
the leading incidents in the history of Samuel, be
cause there is manifestly much more simplicity and
reality, and therefore much more vivid representation,
in this most ancient portionof the narrative, than in the
more artificial writings of the later historians ; and
because there is reason to regard Samuel, and the
book of laws which he wrote, as, in spirit, purpose,
and action, the very prototypes and models of the
whole Jewish priesthood, and of the far more elaborate
book of the law, which they in course of time pro
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duced. The sanctimonious pride, the political
shrewdness, the strict ritualism, the grasping ambi
tion and, doubtless, also, the genuine religious zeal
of Samuel may be recognized as the most prominent
characteristics of the priests in every stage of their
history; and may be read in almost every line of the
Mosaic law. In like manner, also, the superstitious
credulity and simplicity of Saul, alternating with his
times of wilfulness and self-assertion, may fairly be
regarded as typical in a very high degree, of the
natural character of the whole Jewish people.
At the time when Saul was anointed we read :
1 Sam. x. 9 and 10.—“ And it was so, that when he
turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him (Saul)
another heart; . . . . and the Spirit of God came upon
him, and he prophesied.”
So now, regarding the anointment of his successor:
1 Sam. xvi. 13 and 14.—“ Samuel took the horn of oil,
and annointed him in the midst of his brethren : and the
Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward:
.... but the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and
an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.”
There is no trace until a much later period of the
history of the notion of a personal devil, or ruling
spirit of evil; but good and bad spirits are alike
represented as directly executing the will of Jehovah,
to whom the immediate authorship of both good and
evil is unhesitatingly ascribed.
Isaiah xiv. 7.—“ I form the light and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these
things.”
Isaiah xix. 14.—“ The Lord hath mingled a perverse
spirit in the midst thereof : and they have caused Egypt to
err in every work thereof.”
Amos iii. 6.—“ Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and
the people not be afraid ? Shall there be evil in a city, and
the Lord hath not done it ? ”
Exod. xiv. 17.—“ And I, behold, I will harden the hearts
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When was the Book Lost ?
of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them; and I will
get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host.”
Judges ix. 23.—“Then God sent an evil spirit between
Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of
Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech.
1 Kings xxii. 23.—“Now therefore, behold, the Lord
hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets,
and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.”
It would be easy to multiply such illustrations; but
these, and others which we have previously noticed,
are amply sufficient to teach us, how very low was
the highest standard of morality among the ancient
Jews; and how grossly dark and heathenish were
their notions of the character of God. We must
observe that such sentiments as these not only show
a very low and somewhat devilish conception of God;
but that they are also indicative of a religious belief,
in which the terrors of superstition and the powers of
darkness (whatever these may be) count for more
than their share. It is not at all so difficult, as at
first sight appears, to realize how Saul, when he had
listened to the humiliating rebukes, and to the public
anathemas of the great Samuel, and when he found
that the back of his holiness was sternly turned on
him, should very thoroughly feel that an evil. spirit
from God had come to trouble him; much in the
same way as we may suppose that an ignorant but
sincere Roman Catholic might feel, if he had been
publicly cursed by his priest at the altar, and the
curses confirmed by the bishop and the pope.
When Saul was troubled with this evil spirit, he
was advised to try the soothing influence of music,
and his servants were commanded to provide a
musician.
1 Sam- xvi. 18.—“Then answered one of the servants,
and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man,
and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely
person, and the Lord is with him.”
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It is not easy to reconcile this description with the
account given in the following chapter of the same
book, of David's encounter with the Philistine giant.
1 Sam. xvii. 83, 42, 55, 56.—“ And Saul said to David,
Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight
with him: for thou art but a youth............. And when the
Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him ;
for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair counte
nance............And when Saul saw David go forth against the
Philistine, he said unto Abner, the captain of the host,
Abner, whose son is this youth ? And Abner said, As thy
soul liveth, 0 king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire
thou, whose son this stripling is.”
It is very remarkable that David, the musician, was
a mighty valiant warrior and prudent in matters;
while David the champion was at a later time a
youthful stripling. We may also notice, that on each
of these occasions, we seem to have the account of a
first introduction of David as a stranger to Saul; and
that, on the later of the two, he was not recognized
as David, who had been musician and armour-bearer
to the king; but was designated David, the son of
Jesse the Bethlehemite (1 Sam. xvii. 58.)
David was, after his victory, received with favour
by the king, and promoted to the command of the
army.
1 Sam. xviii. 5.—“And David went out whithersoever
Saul sent him, and behaved himself wisely: and Saul set
him over the men of war ; and he was accepted in the sight
of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul’s servants.”
But this pleasant state of matters did not long con
tinue. The jealousy of Saul was aroused by the fame,
which David’s prowess had gained for him, and which
seemed to eclipse the renown of Saul’s own achieve
ments.
1 Sam. xviii. 8, 9.—“ And Saul was very wroth, and
the saying displeased him ; and he said, They have ascribed
unto David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed
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but thousands: and what can he have more but the kingdom ? And Saul eyed David from that day and forward.”
It soon became necessary for David to escape for
his life; Saul having, on several occasions, tried to
kill him, when under the influence of the evil spirit;
and, from this violence, as well as from the language
of Saul, it is manifest that some rumours of David’s
anointment, and of the ambitious views which he had
thus been led to entertain, had reached the ears of
the king.
1 Sam. xx. 30, 31.—Then Saul's anger was kindled
against Jonathan ; and he said unto him .... As long as
the son of Jesse liveth upon the ground, thou shalt not be
established nor thy kingdom; wherefore now send and fetch
him unto me, for he shall surely die.”
It would also appear that, in consequence of these
rumours, and of David’s popularity, Saul had soon
reason to suspect the loyalty even of some of his
immediate attendants.
1 Sam. xxii. 7, 8.—'“Then Saul said unto his servants
that stood about him, Hear now, ye Benjamites; will the
son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, and
make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds;
that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none
that sheweth me that my son hath made a league with the
son of Jesse?”
Even before his flight, David had a number of per
sonal adherents ; for, when Saul, in order to procure
his death, had proposed to give him his daughter in
marriage, on condition that he should slay one hundred
Philistines :—
1 Sam. xviii. 27.—“ David arose and went, he and his men,
and slew of the Philistines two hundred men .... And
Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.”
In the account of the first incident in David’s
flight, we learn that he had young men with him
(1 Sam. xxi. 4, 5), for whom and for himself, by
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false pretences, he procured food, from Ahimelech
the priest of Nob.
1 Sam. xxi. 2.—“ And David said unto Ahimelech the
priest, The king hath commanded me a business, and hath
said unto me, Let no man know anything of the business
whereabout T send thee, and what I have commanded thee ;
and I have appointed my servants to such and such a place.”
Saul regarded the conduct of Ahimelech and the
other priests at Nob, as evidence of their treasonable
inclination to support the cause of David. The evil
spirit made him feel or fancy, that the whole influence
of the priesthood was turned against him.
1 Sam. xxii. 13.—“And Saul said unto Ahimelech, Why
have ye conspired against me, thou and the son of Jesse, in
that thou hast given him bread and a sword, and hast en
quired of God for him, that he should rise against me to lie
in wait as at this day.”
And all Ahimelech’s protestations of innocence did
not save him, and eighty of his family or friends,
from being put to death at the command of Saul;
of which crime, the responsibility, in a great degree,
rests upon David, his deceit having caused Ahimelee,h’s
destruction, as was indeed clearly acknowledged by
himself.
1 Sam. xxii. 22.—“ And David said unto Abiathar, I
knew it that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that
he would surely tell Saul: I have occasioned the death of all
the persons of thy father’s house.”
This seems to have been the turning point in the
history of Saul. The evil spirit of superstitious dread
had driven him to the opposite extreme. The threats
and curses, uttered against him by Samuel, would
naturally make him too ready to magnify the favour
shown to his rival by the priest of Nob; and, re
garding them as all combined to overturn his throne,
he now felt himself driven to bay. He must either
defy them, or else surrender the kingdom: and, having
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once struck the decisive blow, his course was fixed.
We do not read of any more slaughtering, nor even
persecution, of priests; but neither do we read of
priests having, any longer, power to terrify Saul;
until, after many years, when trouble overwhelmed
him, and his spirit was again plunged in darkness.
May not this slaughter of the priests be the true
reason, why the comparatively slight offences, of
which Saul had been formerly accused, are recorded
as if they had been unpardonable 1
After David’s flight, the number of his followers
speedily increased.
1 Sam. xxii. 2.—“And everyone that was in distress, and
every one that was in debt, and every one that was discon
tented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a
captain over them: and there were with him about four
hundred men,”
who, in the subsequent narrative, are frequently
referred to, as ‘David and his men: and they con
tinued to receive accessions to their number.
1 Sam. xxiii. 13.—“ Then David and his men, which were
about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and
went whithersoever they could go.”
They were outlaws, wanderers, and rebels; and it
does not appear that there were any legitimate re
sources for the support of such a company; but there
is much reason to suppose, both from the nature of
the case, and from the story of Nabal (1 Sam. xxv.),
that they subsisted, as similar parties have often done,
on the booty of their enemies, and on the black-mail
of their friends; acting on the principle, that might
makes right. To suppress and to punish such a
rebellion as this, Saul was bound, both by duty and
by interest, to exert his utmost vigour.
It would not illustrate the subject of our inquiry,
were we to follow David through the manifold adven
tures which are recorded of him, while he fled from
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place to place, as a fugitive from Saul: nor can we
state the duration of his outlawry; because the nar
rative furnishes no exact data for such a calculation :
but it must have continued for a good many years,
terminating only after Saul’s death. Latterly, David
found it necessary to seek refuge with Achish, the
Philistine king, at Gath; who received him with
kindness and hospitality, and gave him the town of
Ziklag, for him and his men to dwell in. (1 Sam. xxvii.)
As he had deceived the priests at Nob, so now he
deceived Achish; for, having made a raid upon the
Amalekites and other friends of the Philistines, he
falsely told Achish, that his expedition had been
against Judah; and thus he succeeded in lulling the
suspicions and the fears, which the presence of so
many traditional enemies could not fail to awaken in
the minds of the Philistines.
1 Sam. xxvii. 11, 12.—“And David saved neither man
nor woman alive, to bring tidings to Gath, saying, Lest
they should tell on us, saying, So did David, and so will be
his manner all the while he dwelleth in the country of the
Philistines. And Achish believed David, saying, He hath
made his people Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he
shall be my servant for ever.”
At this point the book of Chronicles takes up the
tale; and we have thenceforth, and throughout the
whole subsequent history, two very different narratives
to compare, and to contrast. We learn from the
Chronicles that David received great reinforcements
while he dwelt in Ziklag.
1 Chron. xii. 22.-—For, at that time, day by day, there
came to David to help him, until it was a great host, like
the host of God.”
While David was a fugitive, probably soon after his
flight, Samuel died. The Bible narrative does not
tell us exactly when this took place: but, in Josephus
we read, (Ant. vi. xiii. 5): “Samuel governed and
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When was the Book Lost ?
presided over the people alone, after the death of
Eli the High Priest, twelve years: and eighteen
years together with Saul the king.”
For a long time he had abstained from taking, or
trying to take, any prominent share in public affairs.
Finding that he could not be supreme, he had scorned
to accept a subordinate station; and, therefore, he
had held himself aloof. Saul and David, however
much, they differed, seem at least to have agreed, in
alike ignoring any such arrogant and ambitious claims,
as those which Samuel had put forward, on behalf of
the priesthood; and Samuel’s successor, if successor
he had, never had the chance of asserting such claims,
so far as we can learn. The example, which had been
set, was never lost sight of, and its influence may be
traced through the whole history of the priesthood;
but, while the monarchy lasted, these high Sacerdotal
pretensions had to remain more or less in abeyance;
none of their kings having ever been sufficiently
pious, to lay his crown absolutely at the feet of the
priests. During all the years of David’s exile,-—during all the time which intervened between the
death of Samuel and the death of Saul, there is only
one instance on record, in which the services of a
priest were employed; and this happened while David
was at Ziklag, not for sacrifice, but for divination, and
is recorded in terms, which clearly indicate the sub
ordinate position of the priest.
1 Sam. xxx. 7, 8.—“ And David said to Abiathar the
priest, Ahimelech’s son, I pray thee bring me hither the
ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David.
And David enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue
after this troop ? shall I overtake them ? And he answered
him, Pursue : for thou shalt surely overtake them.”
Chronologers seem all to agree that Saul reigned
forty years, thus living twenty-two years after the
death of Samuel.
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Acts xiii. 21.—“ And afterward they desired a king: and
God gave them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of
Benjamin, by the space of forty years."
But of the latter portion of this long reign, there is
absolutely nothing recorded, except a few incidents of
David's history; until we come to the circumstances
which were immediately connected with the death of
Saul. From this silence, and from the fact that
David was all this time never more than a fugitive
and a refugee, we may fairly infer that Saul’s reign
was, on the whole, prosperous; and that, during all
these years, he had not been very much troubled with
the evil spirit. He seems, during these twenty-two
years, to have been endeavouring to free himself from
the dark terrors of superstition.
1 Sam. xxviii. 3.—“Now Samuel was dead............... and
Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the
wizards, out of the land.”
Upon which passage Matthew Henry’s Commentary is again well worth quoting :—“Perhaps, when
Saul was himself troubled with an evil spirit, he
suspected that he was bewitched; and for that reason,
cut off all that had familiar spirits.”
But, at length, the day of calamity came. The
possession of Ziklag had given David a fixed habita
tion, and a centre of power; and, according to the
chronicler, many of Saul’s best captains, and even some
of his kindred had gone there to bask in the rays of the
rising sun, and were now with David in' the enemy’s
country, and on the enemy’s side (1 Chrorn xii.
1-22). When, therefore, the Philistine army came
up against Saul, he found himself weakened by the
defection of those who ought to have been his most
reliable supporters; and, instead of his old warlike
spirit being roused, he felt only the sad forebodings
of defeat.
1 Sam. xxviii. 5, 6.—“And, when Saul saw the host of
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When was the Book Lost ?
the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled.
And when Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered
him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.”
By the visible approach of ruinous disaster, the
door was again opened for the return of superstition.
He beheld in the dangers with which he was threatened
the probable fulfilment of the curses uttered against
him by Samuel, about thirty years before; and, as
Samuel had wrought the spell, he seems to have
thought that if he could, even then, propitiate the
shade of the departed priest, perhaps the spell might
still be broken. But how should he find access to
the world of spirits, having long before renounced the
devil, and all his agents and works ! Like those
who, in much later days, doomed witches to the
stake, he had not been able to banish the belief from
his mind; although he had banished or destroyed
its professors from his kingdom : and so, in the time
of his sore distress, he managed, not without search
and difficulty, to find a witch; and, through her
intervention, he seems to have obtained the interview,
which he desired, with the ghost of Samuel. But,
by this time, no supernatural wisdom was needed to
discern the certainty of the coming destruction, as
Saul himself had already discerned it; and so the
interview only served to confirm his despair, (1 Sam.
xxviii. 7-20). On the following day, the army of
Israel was defeated, and Saul and his sons were slain,
—the victims of priestcraft and superstition ; for was
it not Samuel who had balefully instigated the am
bitious rivalry of David 1 and was it not Samuel who
had woven the mantle of gloom around the whole
life and spirit of Saul ?
1 Sam. xxxi. 6.—“ So Saul died, and his three sons, and
his armour-bearer, and all his men, that same day together.”
2 Sam. i. 19, 23, 27.—“ The beauty of Israel is slain upon
thy high places: how are the mighty fallen I . . . . Saul
and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and
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in their death they were not divided: they were swifter
than eagles, they were stronger than lions. . . . How are
the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished 1 ”
As the result of their victory, the Philistines took
possession of some cities (1 Sam. xxxi 7); but did
not render their conquest complete : for we find that
Saul was succeeded in his kingdom by his surviving
son.
2 Sam. ii. 10, 11.—“ Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, was forty
years old when he began to reign over Israel, and reigned
two years. But the house of Judah followed David. And
the time that David was king in Hebron, over the house of
Judah, was seven years and six months.”
2 Sam. v. 4, 5.—“ David was thirty years old when he
began to reign, and he reigned forty years. In Hebron he
reigned over Judah, seven years and six months; and in
Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years, over all Israel
and Judah.”
2 Sam. iii. 1.—“Now there was long war between the
house of Saul and the house of David: but David waxed
stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul waxed weaker
and weaker.”
It is here that we come upon the first glaring
example of that bias and one-sidedness, which may
be clearly traced through the whole of the later
narrative in Chronicles; according to which, David
was at once unanimously chosen and accepted, as
king over all Israel. Immediately after the account
of Saul’s death, we read :—
1 Chron. xi. 1, 3.—“ Then all Israel gathered themselves
to David unto Hebron, saying, Behold we are thy bone and
thy flesh. . . . And David made a covenant with them in
Hebron before the Lord: and they anointed David king over
Israel, according to the word of the Lord by Samuel.”
1 Chron. xii. 38.—“ All these men of war, that could
keep rank, came with a perfect heart to Hebron, to make
David king over all Israel; and all the rest also of Israel
were of one heart to make David king.”
1 Chron. xxix. 26, 27.—Thus David the son of Jesse
reigned over all Israel. And the time that he reigned over
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When was the Book Lost ?
Israel was forty years ; seven years reigned he in Hebron,
and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem.”
In this book, we accordingly find not a word about
the long war between David and the house of Saul,
(2 Sam. ii. iii); for the same reason that it tells us
nothing about the murder and the adultery of which
David was. guilty in the case of Uriah the Hittite
(2 Sam. xi.); nor about the rebellion of Absalom
(2 Sam, xv. 14); in these points, and in very many
others, studiously hiding whatever might tarnish or
injure; and magnifying whatever might exalt the
glory and the sacerdotalism of David and of his
reign.
At length, after a long and undecisive struggle, in
the course of which Abner, the chief captain and
mainstay of the house of Saul, had been treacherously
murdered by Joab (2 Sam. iii. 23-27), who stood in
the same relation to David, the question was finally
and suddenly settled by men who, presuming on
Joab’s example, contrived to assassinate Ish-bosheth,
the reigning son of Saul.
2 Sam. iv. 6, 7.—“ And they came thither into the midst
of the house, as though they would have fetched wheat;
and they smote him under the fifth rib. . . . and slew him,
and beheaded him, and took his head, and gat them away
through the plain all night.”
They expected that David would acknowledge and
reward the service, which they considered had thus
been rendered to his cause; and, therefore, they
brought their own report, and Ish-bosheth’s head, to
David, but their high hopes were grievously disap
pointed.
2 Sam. iv. 10, 11.—“ When one told me, saying, Behold
Saul is dead (thinking to have brought good tidings) I took
hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag, who thought that I
would have given him a reward for his tidings. How much
more when wicked men have slain a righteous person in his
own house upon his bed,” &c.
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The tribes of Israel being thus deprived, both of
their general and of their king, were now willing to
recognize the government of David, and to make him
king over them all.
2 Sam. v. 1, 3—“Then came all the tribes of Israel to
David unto Hebron, and spake, saying, Behold we are thy
bone and thy flesh. . . . And king David made a league
with them in Hebron before the Lord: and they anointed
David king over Israel.”
David was now firmly established on the throne of
a united nation; and his career was henceforth one
of conquest and of consolidation. His first success was
the taking of Jerusalem, which had hitherto been
occupied by the Jebusites.
2 Sam. v. 9, 10-—So David dwelt in the fort, and called
it the city of David. . . . And David went on, and grew
great: and the Lord God of hosts was with him.”
Up to this point in the history of David, we can
not find any trace of his worship, nor of his offering
sacrifice. On one or two occasions, he is said to have
enquired at God; and, in one or two cases priests
are mentioned, but that is all. David’s life had been
too restless, and too wild, for attending to Levitical
matters. But after he had fixed his residence in his
new capital; and after building for himself a house
there, with the assistance of Hiram king of Tyre;
after two successful wars with the Philistines; and
apparently after a series of marriages and births in
Jerusalem, (2 Sam. v. 11, 13, 17, 22); then David
thought of bringing up the ark of God from Gibeah,
where Saul had dwelt, (2 Sam. xxi. 6); and where,
therefore, the symbols of divinity, employed in Saul’s
worship, had their place.
2 Sam. vi. 4—“And they brought it out of the house of
Abinadab, which was at Gibeah, accompanying the ark of
God : and Ahio went before the ark.”
The ark was placed on a cart drawn by oxen, and
H
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When was the Book Lost ?
driven by Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab,
but when they had gone some distance, the oxen
stumbled, and Uzzah the driver took hold of the ark,
for the oxen shook it; for which presumption, Uzzah
was struck dead.
2 Sam. vi. 9—“And David was afraid of the Lord that
day ; and said, How shall the ark of God come to me ? ”
So he left it there, in the house of Obed-edom the
Gittite (man of Gath, 2 Sam. xxi. 19, 22) three
months; but, as no further harm came of it, he finally
brought it home, to the city of David.
2 Sam. vi. 13, 14—“And it was so, that when they that
bare the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed
oxen and fatlings. And David danced before the Lord
with all his might: and David was girded with a linen
ephod.”
In all this account, there is not a word of priests
or Levites, nor of anything at all Levitical; David
offered his own sacrifices, and is the only person said
to have worn the dress of a priest; but, in the book
of Chronicles, written six hundred years after the
event, we read —1 Chron. xv. 2—“Then David said, None ought to bear
the ark of God but the Levites: for them hath the Lord
chosen to carry the ark of God, and to minister unto him
for ever.”
And we have, accordingly, the whole chapter full
of Levitical arrangements; with classified lists of
about a thousand official personages, priests, Levites,
musicians, porters and doorkeepers, as these were
employed in the bringing up of the ark; and a remark
able reason for all this array is assigned.
1 Chron. xv. 13—“ For, because ye did it not at the first,
the Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we
sought him not after the due order.”
By the 1 due order,’ which, according to this account
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was so tardily remembered and observed by David,
is of course to be understood that which is described
in the Pentateuch.
Num. iv. 15—“ The sons of Kohath shall come to bear it
(the ark): but they shall not touch any holy thing lest
they die.”
Deut. x. 8—“ At that time, the Lord separated the tribe
of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to
stand before the Lord, to minister unto him, and to bless in
his name, unto this day.”
Of which ‘due order,’ it is certainly remarkable
that we can neither trace the observance nor the
conscious neglect, nor any recognition at all, in the
older narrative.
2 Sam. vi. 17—“And they brought in the ark of the
Lord, and set it in his place, in the midst of the tabernacle,
that David had pitched for it: and David offered burntofferings and peace-offerings before the Lord.”
1 Chron. xvi. 1—“So they brought the ark of God, and
set it in the midst of the tent that David had pitched for it:
and they offered burnt-sacrifices and peace-offerings before
God.”
This is the earliest notice, to be found in the
historic books, of a tabernacle for the ark. When the
ark had been returned, after its capture by the
Philistines, and after it had remained a short time at
Beth-shemesh, where fifty thousand men were slain
for looking into it, we read
1 Sam. vii. 1, 2—“Andthe men of Kirjath-jearim came,
and fetched up the ark of the Lord, and brought it into
the house of Abinadab, in the hill, and sanctified Eleazer
his son to keep the ark of the Lord. And it came to pass,
while the ark abode in Kirjath-jearim, that the time was
long : for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel
lamented after the Lord.”
But what practical result their lamentations had,
we are nowhere directly informed; the ark being
never again referred to, until the present occasion,
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When was the Book Lost ?
when David fetches it out of the house of Abinaddb.
If our maps of Palestine are correct, the house of
Abinadab at Gibeah could not be the same place, as
the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim; otherwise
the ark would appear to have rested in that house
for about fifty years, having been brought thither,
before Saul was made king, and having remained
during his reign of forty years, and during the seven
years of David’s reign in Hebron ; but, as we are
told that the ark remained only twenty years at
Kirjath-jearim, and that the people then ‘lamented
after the Lord; ’ it appears almost certain, that the
ark and Abinadab had been removed together, at the
end of the twenty years, from that place to Gibeah
of Saul, in order that they might be near the royal
residence; just as David, in his turn, now brought
up the ark, from Gibeah of Saul, (2 Sam. xxi. 6), to
the city of David ; and placed it in the new taber
nacle, which he had made for it there. It thus
clearly appears, that the ark had not dwelt in a
tabernacle for fifty years ; and the building in which
the ark was kept, before its capture by the Philistines,
was not called a tabernacle, but a house or a temple.
1 Sam. i. 24—“And when she (Hannah) had weaned
him (Samuel) she brought him unto the bouse of the Lord
in Shiloh.”
1 Sam. i. 9.—“ Eli the priest sat upon a seat by a post of
the temple of the Lord.”
1 Sam. iii. 3.—“ And ere the lamp of God went out in the
temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was, and Samuel
was laid down to sleep.”
It is not to be supposed that such a man as Samuel
would, in the days of his power, have permitted the
ark to remain in an improper building, either at Kirjath-Jearim or at Shiloh, if he had viewed the
matter as the writers of the Pentateuch and of the
Chronicles did, and it cannot surely be argued that a
man who enjoyed such direct divine guidance and in
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spiration could be ignorant of the laws regarding the
ark and the tabernacle, if these laws had previously
been given. (Num. xviii. 2, 3, &c.) We must, there
fore, conclude that neither the tabernacle nor the
laws relating to it were in existence in Samuel’s
time, and that the tabernacle which David made for
the ark was really the first of which we have any
authentic record. Having thus recalled all that can
be known regarding the previous history of the ark,
we can perhaps appreciate the significance of the fol
lowing quotation :—
1 Chron. ix. 22-24.—“All these, which were chosen to be
porters in the gates, were two hundred and twelve. These
were reckoned by their genealogy in their villages, whom
David, and Samuel the seer, did ordain in their set office.
So they and their children had the oversight of the gates of
the house of the Lord, namely, the house of the tabernacle, by
wards. In four quarters were the porters, toward the
east, west, north, and south, &c.”
A right understanding of this passage is the key to
the purpose and spirit of the whole of the Book of
Chronicles, and we trust that our readers can now
discern its true value.
According to the older narrative, the later portion
of David’s life was in all respects conformable to what
his earlier history had been—a continued series of
wars and vicissitudes, crimes and adventures, amidst
which we cannot find a single instance in which a
priest was at all employed by David, as the instru
ment or medium of his sacrifices or of his prayers.
David’s prayers and psalms were addressed by him
self direct to God, without the intervention of a
priest.
2 Sam. xxii. 1.—“ And David spake unto the Lord the
words of this song in the day the Lord had delivered him,
&c.”
In all respects David, according to this book, claimed
and exercised the right of being his own priest, as we
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When was the Book Lost ?
have seen that the old judges did, but which poor
Saul was condemned for doing; and in the old primi
tive fashion David offered his own sacrifices :—
2 Sam, xxiv. 18, 24, 25.—“ And Gad came that day to
David, and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the
Lord, in the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. . . .
So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty
shekels of silver (compare 1 Chron. xxi. 25). And David
built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered, burnt-offer
ings and peace-offerings.”
Priests, indeed, are only mentioned in two or three
passages, in all of which their position is clearly seen
to be subordinate, and their influence very small in
deed, as compared with that to which Samuel had laid
claim, and it would appear that the priests of those
days were very few, perhaps not more than two at a
time.
2 Sam. xx. 25.—“ And Sheva was scribe; and Zadok
and Abiathar were the priests.”
In a word, there is nothing at all L&vitical in the
older narrative, not a word in the whole of it about
Levites, nor about anything Levitical, but a natural
continuation of the old, simple, and personal worship
of Jehovah, as we have seen it under the judges; a
continuation also of the semi-barbarous and unsettled
state of the tribes, who were but slowly becoming
united as a nation. David’s reign was on the whole
victorious and prosperous; but as it was long dis
turbed by civil war at its commencement, so it was
afterwards rudely shaken by two other civil wars;
the first caused by the formidable and deep-laid rebel
lion of Absalom (2 Sam. xv. 10-14), and the second by
the revolt of the ten tribes under Sheba (2 Sam. xx.
1, 2, 22).
In this narrative we have also the account of a
famine, which seems to have immediately followed
these disturbances.
2 Sam. xxi. 1.—“ Then there was a famine in the days of
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David three years, year after year; and David enquired of
the Lord. And the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and for
his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.”
In order to atone for this old crime, which is no
where else recorded, seven grandsons of Saul were put
to death.
2 Sam. xxi. 9.—“ And he (David) delivered them into
the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them up in
the hill before, the Lord: and they fell all seven together,
and were put to death in the days of harvest.”
We must remark how nearly this resembles a human
sacrifice, the indication of the victims by divination,
the motive of the sacrifice as an “atonement” for
crime (ver. 3), to avert a great national evil, and the
“hanging up” (vulgate, “crucifying”) “before the
Lord,” in the hill or high place at G-ibeon, of which
we elsewhere read :—1 Kings iii. 4.—“And the king (Solomon) went to Gibeon
to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place.”
Strange that David’s recent crime, in the matter of
Uriah the Hittite (2 Sam. xi. 15, 27), is not regarded
as the cause of the calamity, nor David’s inhuman
cruelty to the conquered Ammonites (2 Sam. xii. 31).
Strange that the famine was not attributed to the sin
or folly of the people in the two civil wars which im
mediately preceded it, and which may have even been
its natural producing cause. Strange that the nation
should now be punished with famine for the sin com
mitted many years before by Saul; but strangest of
all, that the innocent grandsons should be sacrificed
thus as an atonement for the crime of their ancestor.
We would rather not more particularly notice how
dishonouring to God was such a sacrifice; but we
must observe that in this matter David’s standard of
morality was far below that which is afterwards attrib
uted to his descendant Amaziah.
2 Kings xiv. 6.—“ But the children of the murderers he
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When was the Book Lost ?
slew not: according unto that which is written in the book
of the law of Moses, wherein the Lord commanded saying,
The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor
the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man
shall be put to death for his own sin.” (Deut. xxiv. 16.)
It would appear that these seven were all the sur
viving descendants of Saul except one.
2 Sam. xxi. 7.—“ But the king spared Mephibosheth, the
son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the Lord’s oath
that was between them, between David and Jonathan the
son of Saul.”
2 Sam. ix. 13.—“ So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem,
for he did eat continually at the king’s table; and was lame
on both his feet."
There is ample ground for supposing, that Mephi
bosheth may have been as much indebted to his lame
ness, as to the oath of David, for the clemency extended
to him; seeing that David’s oath to Saul was insuf
ficient to protect those who might have become David’s
rivals.
1 Sam. xxiv. 21,22.—“Swear now therefore unto me
by the Lord, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me,
and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father’s
house. And David sware unto Saul.”
According to the earlier narrative, every incident
of David’s history only serves to fill up the picture of
him, as a rude, warlike, and cruel king ; whose grand
merit was that he was at length victorious over all his
enemies, and that he worshipped no other god but
Jehovah. His last dying words to Solomon, his suc
cessor, bear witness to the spirit that was in him
stronger than death.
1 Kings ii, 8-10.—“ And, behold thou hast with thee
Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which
cursed me with a grievous curse, in the day when I went to
Mahanaim : but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I
sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to
death with the sword (2 Sam. xix. 16-23). Now therefore
�The Judges to Solomon.
12 1
hold him not guiltless; for thou art a wise man, and kuowest what thou oughtest to do unto him ; but his hoar head
bring thou down to the grave with blood. So David slept
with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.”
As represented by this authority, David’s worship
was as unlevitical, and his character at least as im
moral, as those of any wicked king in the whole
history ; but it does not appear that his irregularities
were known to be defects by the historian :
1 Kings xv. 5.—“ Because David did that which was
right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from
anything that he commanded him all the days of his life,
save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.”
So that, with the exception of this one great sin,
David’s life and worship, as portrayed in the books
of Samuel and Kings, must be regarded as fairly ex
hibiting the standard of religion and of morality in
his time, and in the time of the writer, or writers,
of this history. But, if we now turn to the book of
Chronicles, we find that, both with regard to worship
and to manners, the standard has become very different,
and that David’s piety and prosperity are alike greatly
magnified. Here there is no record of the civil wars
and rebellions, nor of the murders of Ishbosheth and
of Abner, nor of the sacrifice of the grandsons of Saul,
nor of the legacy of treacherous revenge which was
bequeathed to Solomon ; but the last words recorded
of David are pious and devotional (1 Chron. xxix.
19, 20), and Bathsheba is only once mentioned, not
as the adulterous wife of Urijah, but as the mother
of Solomon and the daughter ofAmmiel (1 Chron. iii. 5).
David is here represented, as reigning over all Israel,
in uninterrupted triumph, without domestic strife, or
taint of immorality, all the time from the death of
Saul to the accession of Solomon. In this account
David no longer appears ignorant or indifferent about
Levitical matters. Besides the appointment of nearly
a thousand Levites for the service of the ark, when it
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When was the Book Lost ?
was first brought up to the City of David, we read of
extensive preparations for the building of the temple
(1 Chron. xxii., xxix.); and of a vast multitude of
Levitical arrangements for the future temple service.
1 Chron. xxiii. 1-5.—“ So, when David was old and full
of days, he made Solomon his son king over Israel, and he
gathered together all the princes of Israel, with the priests
and the Levites. Now the Levites were numbered from the
age of thirty years and upwards; and their number by their
polls, man by man, was thirty and eight thousand. Of
which, twenty and four thousand were to set forward the
work of the house of the Lord; and six thousand were
officers and judges. Moreover, four thousand were porters ;
and four thousand praised the Lord, with the instruments
which I made (said David) to praise therewith, &c., &c.”
Tbe contrast between the two pictures, when thus
compared, is so very glaring, that it is absolutely
impossible to give both writers credit for accurate
information and fidelity to truth; especially when
we find, that their statements not only differ, but
even contradict each other. If we remember that
David was emphatically an early king ; and, if we
consider the rude material out of which the nation
was growing, as that material is shown to us in the
books of Judges and of Samuel; we cannot fail to
conclude that the earlier narrative, being nearer in
point of time, as well as simpler and more primitive
in its description, has a much greater semblance and
probability of truth, than the later one—in which we
have constantly present, a manifest partiality; and,
constantly reflected, the full-blown Levitism or Sacer
dotalism of a much later age. There is internal
evidence, that the books of Chronicles were written
after the Babylonish Captivity.
1 Chron. ix. 1.—“ So all Israel were reckoned by gene
alogies ; and, behold, they were written in the book of the
kings of Israel and Judah, who were carried away to Babylon
for their transgression.”
�The Judges to Solomon.
123
And so far as we know, commentators are agreed
in regarding these books as written under the direction,
if not by the hand, of Ezra the scribe ; who ruled in
Jerusalem just six hundred years after David.
Ezra vii. 10, 12.—“For Ezra had prepared his heart
to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in
Israel statutes and judgments............... Ezra the priest, a
scribe of the law of the God of heaven............ ”
On the other hand, there is both internal and ex
ternal evidence that the earlier narrative has been
compiled, not without some editorial touches, from
the successive records of contemporary prophets,
Samuel, Nathan, Gad, (1 Chron. xxix. 29), Ahijah,
Iddo, (2 Chron. ix. 29), Shemaiah, (2 Chron. xii. 15),
Jehu, (2 Chron. xx. 34), and Isaiah, (2 Chron. xxvi. 22).
Seeing that it is impossible to believe two entirely
different, and often contradictory, histories, we are
compelled either to reject them both, or to make a
selection, and to prefer that which appears to be the
more genuine ; being written nearer, in point of time,
to the events recorded, and possessing the more in
herent probability. It seems to be indubitable that the
earlier narrative contains, throughout, a much more
truthful representation than the later. But can we not
also discern the motive and purpose of the difference 1
The early writers appear to have recorded their own
impressions of events which they witnessed, or which
happened in their own time; while the later historian
had a more complicated task. He had before him a
code of laws, purporting to have come down from
remote antiquity ; with which, therefore, the ancient
history of his nation, and especially of its pious kings,
must be made to harmonize, and this is just the task
which the Chronicler, according to his lights, and to
the best of his ability, has endeavoured to accomplish.
These very discrepancies, therefore, and the uniform
sacerdotal bias, which is manifest in them all, are in
themselves proofs, that the author of Chronicles was
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When was the Book Lost 1
acquainted with the Mosaic law, which to the authors
of the earlier books was unknown; and if so, the law
must have been produced, or greatly developed,
between the dates of the two writings.
Neither David nor his prophets knew that it was
unlawful for the king to have many wives; or the
prophet Nathan, speaking in God's name, would not
have ignored this law.
2 Sam. xii. 7, 8.—“ Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out
of the hand of Saul; and I gave thee thy master’s house,
Ind thy master’s wives into thy bosom.”
2 Sam. v. 13.—“ And David took him more concubines
and wives, out of Jerusalem, after he was come from
Hebron.”
Deut. xvii. 17.—“ Neither shall he multiply wives unto
himself, that his heart turn not away.”
David must have been ignorant also of the law
that, for any one but a priest of the family of Aaron,
to presume to offer sacrifice was a crime to be
punished with death.
Num. xviii. 7.—“ Therefore thou and thy sons with thee
shall keep your priest’s office for everything of the altar, and
within the veil, and ye shall serve ; I have given your
priest’s office unto you as a service of gift: and the stranger
that cometh nigh shall be put to death.”
We have direct proof that neither Samuel, David,
nor any of the kings ever observed the feast of taber
nacles, and we cannot attribute this neglect to ignor
ance of an existing law on the part of men who were
led and taught by direct communications from heaven;
nor to the wilful disobedience of those whose piety
is recorded with unqualified approbation.
Nehem. viii. 14, 17, 18.—“ And they found written in
the law which the Lord had commanded by Moses, that the
children of Israel should dwell in booths, in the feast of the
seventh month (Lev. xxiii. 34 and 42). And all the congre
gation, of them that were come again out of the captivity,
�The 'Judges to Solomon.
125
made booths, and sat under the booths: for, since the days
of Jeshua, the son of Nun, unto that day, had not the
children of Israel done so. And there was very great glad
ness. Also, day by day, from the first day unto the last,
he read in the book of the law of God.”
We have seen that David did not know the law,
that children should not be put to death for the sin
of their fathers; and, according to the history, he
must have been a worshipper, or at least must have
allowed the worship, of the brazen serpent, to which
incense was burned, until it was destroyed by king
Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 4). So far we have positive
proof that David was ignorant of the law ; but, as
might be expected from the nature of the case, the
negative evidence of his ignorance is more abundant,
and must be regarded as equally conclusive. We find
in David’s history not a single trace of the passover,
of the tithes, of the jubilee, of the Sabbatical year,
nor of the reading of the law to the people every
seventh year, as Ezra did in the feast of tabernacles,
(Deut. xxxi. 10, 11). Strangest of all, we find no
recognition of the Sabbath day, save only once, when
the word ‘ Sabbaths ’ occurs in the later book.
1 Chron. xxiii. 81.—“And to offer all burnt-sacrifices
unto the Lord, in the Sabbaths, in the new moons, and on
the set feasts, by number, according to the order commanded
unto them.”
From all this we think it clearly appears that
David, the ‘ man after God’s own heart/ so far as can
be judged from his history, was not guided by the
Mosaic Law.
There is a great difficulty in the way of adducing
evidence from the Psalms, because there is so much
uncertainty and difference of opinion, as to the various
authorship and dates of these poetical writings. It is
manifest that some of them were written after the
return from Babylon (Psalm cxxxvii. 1); so that the
times of their production must have extended over at
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When was the Book Lost ?
least six hundred years; and it is well known that
the titles prefixed to some of them, are in many cases
of doubtful authority; there being even internal
evidence that psalms inscribed with the name of
David were written at a much later time (Psalm xiv.
7). It is, on this account, all the more remarkable,
that in none, of the Psalms is there any allusion to
the Sabbath day; and that in none which can, on
any grounds, be ascribed to David or to his time,
is there anything at all Levitical; nor any allusion to
the manifold observances of the ceremonial law. In
a few of the psalms, to which an early date is
attributed, laws, precepts, and commandments are
referred to (Psalm xix. 8 and 9); but, when we con
sider how very indefinite these expressions are, and
how uncertain is the authorship or date of any
particular psalm, it must be felt that such instances
have no weight at all against the mass of historical
evidence which we have reviewed. We are informed
that Samuel wrote a book of laws, which David would
doubtless regard as divine. We may assume that
David also had the two tables of stone, which Solomon
afterwards found in the ark. We cannot doubt that
David himself felt or believed that he enjoyed direct
guidance and instruction from God; and these con
siderations may sufficiently explain his devotional
admiration for God’s law; but we think it is clear,
beyond the possibility of doubt, that David had not
that book of the law which Hilkiah discovered, which
Ezra obeyed, and which has been transmitted to us.
It is, however, abundantly evident, both from the
history and from the psalms, that David worshipped
and promoted the worship of Jehovah alone; and
that by his example and influence in this respect; by
his bringing the ark to a temporary building in his
new capital; and by leaving his son Solomon in wealth
and prosperity; he prepared the way for the building
of the temple, for the institution of the temple service,
�Summary and Conclusion.
127
and for the establishment of the hierarchy of priests
and. Levites; who, to magnify their office, to increase
their emoluments, to extend their power, and, in a
word, to imitate Samuel, began immediately to build
that edifice of sacerdotalism, which we now have
before us in the ‘ Mosaic Law.’
I trust that I have been able to lay before my readers
such a view of the history of Samuel and of David, as
is fitted to throw no small amount of light on the ques
tion as to the alleged early date and Mosaic authorship
of the book which Hilkiah discovered or produced.
CHAPTER VII.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.
Having now passed in review the history of Judah
anterior to the finding of the book, through all its
stages, extending back to the pre-historic and legend
ary beginnings of the national existence, we have
only briefly to retrace and summarize the argument,
in order that we may the more clearly discern the
conclusion to which it points. In the earliest period
which preceded the opening of the continuous history,
and which lay very near to the ostensible date of the
great lawgiver, we should naturally expect the book
of the law to have occupied a prominent place, and to
be recognised by the notice of its observance, or else
of its guilty neglect, in every incident recorded; in
stead of which, it is precisely in this period that no
trace whatever of the law can be found, not even in
its germ. There is in this long time not the slightest
suggestion of the exclusive right of the family of
Aaron to minister at the altar, nor any trace of such
a right having ever before been asserted. The wor-
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Summary and Conclusion.
ship which the religious men of that age offered to
God with manifest and conscious acceptance was the
very same as that which the law afterwards de
nounced as impious, and as meriting the punishment
of death.
So far as we can judge, this primitive worship seems
to have been purer and more spiritual than that by
which it was succeeded. The judges did not dance
before the ark, nor offer their sacrifices to it; images
or symbols were not always employed ; no special
worthiness was ascribed to any one particular image,
nor was it considered necessary to bring the sacrifice
before any image, nor to any particular place.
What the distinctive office of the priest was in
those early times, the history does not show, and
therefore it can only be surmised. Clearly it was not
strictly peculiar nor exclusive, but probably consisted
in offering combined sacrifices for people who were
too poor, or too ignorant, or who otherwise felt them
selves unworthy or unfit to approach God on their
own account; but certainly it did not at all exclude
nor supersede the right of every man to be his own
priest, and to worship God when, where, and how he
chose, without the intervention of any mediator.
In all probability, however, the exercise of this
natural right was generally confined to the chieftains
or leading men, or to a few of the bolder or more en
lightened minds, while the common people would, as
a rule, resort to the ministry of the priests. Both
priests and people in such a case would almost
inevitably regard the independent worship of the
few, with some degree of jealousy, as savouring of
presumption. Now, what changes might naturally be
expected to follow when the priest’s office became
combined with that of the supreme magistrate?
Exactly those which the history records. The ex
clusive rights and privileges of the priesthood were
then asserted and vindicated, and the superstitious
�Summary and Conclusion.
129
veneration for the particular symbols or images
employed by the priest in his worship was greatly
increased.
When the monarchy was instituted a conflict was
unavoidable. It was simply impossible for Saul to be
king, and to submit to the insolent arrogance of
Samuel; but the people were determined to be
governed by a king, and so the proud priest was
compelled to submit, but submitted under a solemn
and vigorous protest; and though the high aims and
claims which had been asserted for the priesthood
had long to remain in various degrees of abeyance,
they were never abandoned nor lost sight of by
Samuel’s successors in office. Neither David nor
Solomon yielded anything like the same degree of
submission to the priesthood, as that which had been
yielded by Saul and rejected as insufficient by Samuel;
but the building of the temple and the establishment
of its regular priesthood laid the foundation of a new
power, whose progress and growth through many
vicissitudes coincided exactly with the gradual de
velopment of the Levitical law, as may be clearly
traced through the several stages of the history.
We are far from supposing that the policy of the
priests was instigated only by their desire for the
aggrandizement of their own order. Doubtless they
had also a zeal towards God, and believed sincerely
that His honour and glory were bound up with their
own dignity and prosperity as a church, and that He
could be truly and acceptably worshipped only through
their ordained ministry, and only by the rites and
ceremonies of the temple service at Jerusalem.
Strange as seems the combination of human pride
with religious zeal, it has been far too common to be
surprising. So far, indeed, from being extraordinary,
it has been exemplified in every age, and in every
country, varying only in degree, according to the
ignorance or enlightenment of the people, and accordI
�i jo
Summary and Conclusion.
ing to the various predominance of independent
thought or of superstitious credulity.
We are thus restrained from utterly condemning,
and even from greatly wondering at the course taken
by the temple priesthood, in teaching first, that God
could be worshipped under no other name, and by no
other symbols than those which they employed;
second, that they, the priests, were the mediators
through whom alone God could be approached with
acceptance; and third, that their temple at Jerusalem
was the only place in all the world where acceptable
worship could be offered to God.
These doctrines were not of simultaneous growth.
The first was undoubtedly believed by David, while
the other two were unknown or disregarded. Al
though the second had been held and maintained by
Samuel, it was manifestly set aside by all the early
kings, and the first clear instance of its resuscitation
is not found till the reign of Uzziah, when the priest
again rebuked the king for presuming to offer sacri
fice. The third must have been entirely unknown
even to Samuel, by whom it was habitually trans
gressed. It seems to have been very long a matter of
zealous and jealous ambition to the priesthood, be
cause in each successive reign we are told that even
when the king was pious and orthodox in other
things, “ Nevertheless, the high places were not
taken away;” and as this occurs chiefly in the earlier
narrative, we may, perhaps, infer that the advocates
of this new doctrine had very long tried to obtain for
it the sanction and authority of the civil power before
they were able to succeed. It was not till the third
reformation under Hezekiah that this doctrine became
law. When local worship was prohibited the high
places were destroyed, and the people were compelled
to bring all their sacrifices and offerings to the temple
at Jerusalem. These three doctrines may be regarded
as the heads under which nearly all the minor provi-
�Summary and Conclusion.
131
sions of the Levitical law may be distributed. From
the first it followed, as a matter of course, that to
worship or acknowledge the God or gods of any other
nation in the world was rank heresy and idolatry.
From the second, it necessarily resulted that as the
numbers and needs of the priesthood increased, a per
manent and liberal provision must be made for their
support in dignity and independence. The third led,
in the first place, to the legal institution of the great
national festivals at Jerusalem, and afterwards to the
enactment of a multiplicity of sacrifices, ceremonies,
and observances, in order that each of the many
priests employed about the one temple might have
some appointed duty or position, that their sacred
office might in all respects be magnified, and that
they might have as frequently as possible occasion to
receive contributions from the people, no rule being
more frequently insisted on than that none should
appear before the Lord empty. Whatever the priests
taught, it was, of course, condemnable heresy to
doubt; but it does not at all follow that they formed
either for themselves or for others any such theories
of plenary inspiration as those which have been
applied to their writings by modern divines, nor can
we suppose that their infallibility was at any time
during the monarchy undoubted, though it may at
times have appeared irresistible. Absolute intolerance
seems to have produced submission and external con
formity, and must have also tended to weaken the
very faculty of private judgment in the people. But
the fact that so many were always eager to throw off
the yoke of orthodoxy, whenever the liberty to do so
was accorded them, proves undeniably that, though all
open heresy or dissent might be effectually smothered
or crushed by intolerance, yet private scepticism and
differences of opinion must always have been very
widespread and lively.
Historical accuracy and critical analysis are entirely
�I 32
Summary and Conclusion.
modern acquirements; and are still, with very rare
exceptions, only beginning to be understood. That
a historian is guilty of dishonesty, in colouring, or
concealing, or adding to the ascertained facts, is an
idea, such as would probably never be conceived, by
priests or by people, among the ancient Jews, nor
among the ancient Britons. We suppose that the
priestly historian would not only consider himself to
be at liberty, but would even regard it as his duty,
so to write, as to magnify the goodness and the glory
of the orthodox kings, priests, and heroes, to confirm
and illustrate the doctrines taught by himself and by
his order; and to exhibit all that might be unfavour
able to these worthy ends, in the smallest or most
adverse light.
It would be difficult to find, anywhere, a clearer
example, or a more conclusive proof of this want
of the notion of accuracy, than is to be seen in the
placing of the books of Chronicles, side by side
with those of Samuel and of Kings, in the sacred
canon; and in the fact that both narratives have
been read by millions, and read many times, without
any discernment of their incongruities and contra
dictions ; either by the Jewish Priests and Babbis
who included them both in their Bible; or by the
vast majority of readers, ancient and modem. These
considerations may help us, in some measure, to
understand how it was, that, when Hilkiah announced
his discovery of the book, containing, as it did, many
old and well known laws, legends, customs, and
religious rites, combined with many new additions
and enlargements, a critical examination was not the
test, which, even ostensibly, it was thought necessary
to apply to his production; and how the oracular
deliverance of Huldah the prophetess, being declared
sufficient, by the king and by the priests, was
by the people received as infallible and conclusive
proof, when backed by such authority, that the book
�Summary and Conclusion.
133
which had been found was indeed what it professed
to be, “ the book of the law of the Lord given by
Moses.”
I have a strong conviction that the arguments deduc
ible from the historic books, which I have endeavoured
to lay before my readers, are amply and alone
sufficient to prove that the so-called Mosaic law had
its growth under the monarchy; and that it was
not completed before the reign of Josiah.
*
If my
exhibition of these arguments has failed to produce
conviction; the fault, I believe, must lie in the weak
ness and inefficiency of my statement, of which I am
deeply conscious. It may, however, be necessary to
remind some of my readers, that, in the testimony of
the prophets, and in the contents of the Pentateuch, other
fields lie open, yielding, even without the aid of
Hebrew scholarship, evidence, at least as strong and
as abundant, as that which has been here considered,
and all pointing to the same inevitable conclusion,
that the belief, hitherto regarded as orthodox, in the
Mosaic authorship, and early date of the Levitical
law, has been, after all, a popular delusion.
The immediate effect, and much of the purpose
of Hilkiah’s discovery, was greatly to increase
and to confirm the power of the priests; and to
multiply their exactions from the people. Tithes,
first-fruits, trespass-offerings, thank-offerings, and
others, were now enforced by the law. The first
born son, and the first-born of all cattle, were either
* I have not at all entered upon the question, as to whether
not the finding of the book was the final and complete de
velopment of the Levitical law, as it has been transmitted
to us. The dogma of infallibility may not even then have
been so clearly conceived and defined, as to prevent the possi
bility of later alterations and additions. Some of the evidence
here adduced, (for instance the quotation from Nehemiah on
page 124), seems to suggest this; but at present I express no
opinion on the subject, further than that the Pentateuch as we
have it was not completed before the reign of Josiah ; and this
is what I hope that I have demonstrated.
or
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Summary and Conclusion.
to be given up, or else to be redeemed with money,
according to fixed rules and rates (Lev. xxvii. 3); and
innumerable ceremonial observances and purifications
were made legally binding, in most of which the
services of the priesthood were indispensable. Life
would thus be rendered intolerable to any man who
should forfeit the favour of the priests; and we can
understand how the apostle Peter appealed only to
the well-known and universal sentiment of his hearers,
when he described the whole system as an intolerable
yoke, which neither they nor their fathers had been
able to bear (Acts xv. 10); and how the apostle Paul
referred to the same as a “ yoke of bondage ” (Gal.
v. 1-3).
Doubtless there would be sceptics when this law
was promulgated; but we should scarcely expect
their scepticism to be recorded by the orthodox
historians, or motives of prudence may have sufficed
entirely to prevent them from uttering their doubts.
Those were not the times for asserting with im
punity the rights of private judgment, and of
religious equality. Small chance for dissenters when
the priests were in power, and when the covenant of
intolerance was to be renewed !
Yet we may hear the voice of at least one bold
Protestant sounding still, over the long intervening
ages, if we will but listen to distinguish what he says.
Jeremiah was a prophet in Judea, if not in Jeru
salem, at the very time of Hilkiah’s great discovery.
Jerem. i. 1-8.—“ The words of Jeremiah, ... to whom
the word of the Lord came, in the days of Josiah, the son
of Amon, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also
in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah.”
And, surely, lie was no enemy of the truth; but,
in Jeremiah’s prophecies, we find not the slightest
recognition, much less any triumphant proclamation,
of the sacred treasure, the book of the law, which
was in his days brought to light. On the contrary,
�Summary and Conclusion.
135
we may learn, from the scorn and indignation with
which he
speaks of the priests, his contem
poraries, that he was utterly opposed to the policy
of ambition and selfish aggrandizement, which seems
to have been a large ingredient in their religious zeal.
In other words, Jeremiah was a Protestant.
Jerem. i. 18.—“Behold, I have made thee this day a
defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, against
the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes
thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people
of the land.”
Jerem. iii. 15, 16.—“ I will give you pastors according
to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and
understanding. And it shall come to pass, when ye be
multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith
the Lord, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant
of the Lord; neither shall it come to mind, neither shall
they remember it, neither shall they visit it, neither shall
that be done any more. {Marginal reading, Neither shall
it be magnified any more.)”
Jerem. vi. 13.—“ From the least of them even unto the
greatest of them, every one is given to covetousness ; and
from the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth
falsely.”
Jerem. vii. 4,11, 21, 22.—“ Trust ye not in lying words,
saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The
temple of the Lord are these.
“ Is this house, which is called by my name, become a
den of robbers in your eyes? Behold even I have seen it,
saith the Lord.
“ Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Put
your burnt-offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For
I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the
day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concern
ing burnt-offerings or sacrifices.”
Jerem. viii. 8.—“How do ye say, We are wise, and the
law of the Lord is with us? Lo, certainly the false pen of
the scribes worketh for falsehood." {Marginal reading.')
Jerem. xviii. 18.—“Then said they, Come, and let us
devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish
from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from
the prophet; come, and let us smite him with the tongue,
and let us not give heed to any of his words.”
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Reflections and Inferences.
Jerem. xx. 1, 2.—“Now Pashur the son. of Immer the
priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord,
heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. Then Pashur
smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that
were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house
of the Lord.”
Jerem. xxiii. 11.—“For both prophet and priest are
profane ; yea, in my house, have I found their wickedness,
saith the Lord.”
Lam. iv. 13.—“ For the sins of her prophets, and the
iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just
in the midst of her.”
From this constant antagonism it is clear that Jere
miah would not expect himself to be regarded as be
longing to the party of the priesthood; and we can well
understand the reason why he was not so regarded by
them, and why they did not think of asking for his
opinion or suggestions on the subject of their great dis
covery. Or perhaps Jeremiah was not then at Jerusa
lem, and his absence would be most opportune; but
with Huldah the case was different, and her counsel
might be relied upon. With Huldah the prophetess
they communed, when sent by the king to inquire of
God. Jeremiah, however, gave his opinion unsought;
and happily it remains on record, to open our eyes,
even at the present day !—
Jerem. v. 30, 31.—“A wonderful and horrible thing is
committed in the land ; the prophets prophesy falsely, and
the priests bear rule
their means; and my people love
to have it so : and what will ye do in the end thereof ? ”
CHAPTER VIII.
REFLECTIONS AND INFERENCES.
The evidence from the historical books of the Bible,
which in the foregoing chapters has been collected
�Reflections and Inferences.
137
and compared, exhibits, unless I have greatly failed
in my presentation of it, how utterly false and
unworthy of an enlightened people is the superstition,
that the entire Bible is the Holy, Authoritative,
Infallible Word of God.
Training, tradition, custom, and prejudice are
powerful influences, and the sentiments which are
nourished and appealed to by these are proverbially
difficult to overcome; but no one can doubt or refuse
to admit that the love of truth is infinitely nobler and
purer than any of these, and that this ought to be
our supreme rule and guide, never outrivalled nor
controlled by any other sentiment, in moulding our
intellectual conclusions. The vast majority of men, how
ever, seem to have been so trained as to make the love
of truth entirely subordinate, in their minds, to various
other sentiments. Multitudes are thus so blinded
with the veil of emotional attachment or traditional
submission to a standard of supreme external
authority, as to put darkness for light and light for
darkness,—calling evil good, and good evil,—false
hood truth, and truth falsehood; being all the time
wise in their eyes and prudent in their own sight.
(Isaiah v. 20, 21.)
The possibility of honestly and sincerely yielding
this submission of the intellect is not easily realized
by those whose minds are free, but, having long
experienced it, I know that it is a reality ; and there
fore I am very far from thinking that all who still
acknowledge the veil are dishonest or insincere in
doing so.
Micah vi. 8—“ Godhath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good:
and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? ”
All real instruction, in the Bible and out of it,
proceeds on the assumption that we have the faculty
given us by God, but like all our other faculties
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Reflections and Inferences.
requiring cultivation, of judging for ourselves what
things are honest, just, pure, lovely, virtuous, and
of good report; else it would be useless and absurd
to bid us think on these things, (Phil. iv. 8). It
must, therefore, be either hypocrisy or delusion to
profess a belief that God is infinitely perfect in power,
wisdom, justice, goodness, holiness, and truth, while at
the same time, or even in the same breath, thoughts,
words, and actions are attributed to Him, which, if
we dare to weigh them in the balance of our reason,
God’s gift for our guidance, are necessarily judged to
be of an entirely opposite character.
To believe the written or spoken assertion of
prophet, priest, or layman, ancient or modern, that
God has willed or said or done anything which to
our reason appears false, evil, or capricious, is to
believe man rather than God,—it is to put darkness
for light, and light for darkness,—and it is directly
opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, even when it may
seem to be in accordance with its letter-, for it upholds
bondage, and darkness, and fear, instead of liberty,
light, and love; and renders impossible the worship
of Our Father in spirit and in truth.
God is not a man that He should lie. He abideth
faithful, and cannot deny Himself. It must be
instructive, it can do no harm, and cannot be wrong,
to search out, to consider, and to compare whatever
men, in any age, have seriously thought or said or
written concerning God and His dealings with our
race. But to believe that God has left us to grope for
all our knowledge of Him among the Biblical records,
various, incongruous, and often contradictory, of
ancient oriental opinions and superstitions, savours
quite as much of anti-christian infidelity as does the
creed of the Parsee, the Brahmin, or the Budhist;
because all these alike involve ignorance or disbelief
of the direct and immediate revelation, which God
is ever making to and in ourselves, of His constant
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139
presence, power, goodness, and truth, in and over all
His works.
The Roman Catholic is required, and professes to
make an entire surrender of his private judgment to
the authority of the church or of the Pope. For him,
the question, What is truth ? is only another form of
expression for, What does the Pope teach ?
The very orthodox, among those who call them
selves Protestants, yield the same submission to the
doctrines of the Bible; and, with them, the question,
What is truth 1 is reverently made subordinate to
the enquiry, What does the Bible teach ? If the
utterance of the Bible is regarded as clear and
indisputable; then, beyond controversy, and without
further search, that is the truth. But, when the
teaching is obscure, or variously interpreted; when
conflicting views of the same passage have to be
compared; or when apparently conflicting passages
have to be weighed against each other; to what
tribunal must we appeal ? Let us take for example
the teaching of the Bible on the subject of slavery.
Lev. xxv. 44, 46.—“ Both thy bondmen, and thy bond
maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that
are round about you ; of them shall ye buy bondmen and
bondmaids. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for
your children after you, to inherit them for a possession :
they shall be your bondmen for ever ; but over your breth
ren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule over one another
with rigour.”
So far from being repealed in the New Testament,
this law receives everywhere confirmation.
1 Tim. vi. 1—“ Let as many servants (slaves) as are
under the yoke, count their own masters worthy of all
honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not
blasphemed.”
Recognizing the right of Philemon as a slave-owner,
Paul sent the converted fugitive Onesimus back to
his master; and, in accordance with the law, thus
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Reflections and Inferences.
confirmed and illustrated, the whole Christian church
continued, for many centuries, not only to tolerate,
but to practise and to encourage slavery as a divine
institution. The church all along read, just as we
do, that other law :—
Mat. vii. 12.—“ All things, whatsoever ye would that
men should do to you, do ye even so to them : for this is
the law and the prophets.”
But no difficulty was experienced in so explaining
this precept that it should not interfere with the old
law. Until modern times, the church had no conscience
of the sin of enslaving the heathen. What, then,
enables us to say that the church was wrong ? Upon
what authority have we condemned and abolished
slavery, notwithstanding the express terms of the
old law, the apostolic sanction, and the example of
the early church 1 *
Again let us consider those passages, where it is said
that evil spirits, or lying spirits, were sent forth by
God, with the direct commission to lead men into sin
and misery, (see pp. 101, 102) as compared with the
New Testament doctrine :—
James i. 13, 14—“ Let no man say, when he is tempted,
* A venerable and learned friend, to whom the manuscript
of this essay has been submitted, says in his remarks on this
concluding chapter :—“ The only view which I do not quite
accept, is that of St. Paul’s dealing with slavery. Slavery is
primarily a political institution, as much as despotism. Both
are infringements on the rights of man, and contrary to pure
morality. But it was not St. Paul’s duty, and it would have
been very wrong of him, to have inculcated a doctrine which
would have led to a civil war, or one that would have excited
a rebellion against Casar. His office led him to implant and
foster those moral principles, which in time would undermine
both slavery and tyranny. The kidnapper av^pairo^urT^ is
classed by him amongst the vilest of the vile.” (1 Tim. i. 10.)
The truth and justice of these observations I most cordially
admit, assuming, as I suppose my friend does, that the
Apostle was merely a wise, good, earnest discerner and
teacher of the truth as applicable to his own generation;
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141
am tempted of God : for God cannot be tempted with
neither tempteth he any man ; but every man is
tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and
enticed.”
I
evil,
And let us ask ourselves what guide we follow in
determining that the older views are dishonouring to
God, and must therefore be rejected, explained away,
or ignored as much as possible.
How is it that Christians can contemplate with
credulity the frequent commands said to have been
given by God to his ancient people, to massacre and
destroy, without mercy, man and woman, young and
old, infant and suckling, while they would not only
regard it as heathenish and blasphemous to attribute
such doings, at the present day, to the command of
God, but would denounce the spirit of such deeds as
diabolical and inhuman 1 (1 Sam. xv. 2, 3; Josh. x.
28-40, &c.)
Is there any reason why the song of Deborah, or
the 109th Psalm, can be read with a kind of mistily
explanative approval, having been written three
thousand years ago; while the same sentiments,
uttered by a poet of to-day, would be condemned
with horror and disgust ? In such cases—and they
or as he describes himself,—“ an able minister of the New
Testament, not of the letter but of the. spirit, for the letter
killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” (2 Cor. iii. 6.) But if the
letter of his writings be regarded as, in every word and
sentence, infallibly expressing the mind and will of God,
then it appears to me that the apostolic sanction and example
may, till the end of the world, be logically quoted, as in fact
they have long and largely been, in support of the sinful and
accursed institution, and against those who labour for its
overthrow, or who encourage and aid the escape of run-away
slaves.
My controversy is not with Paul, but with those who
place him and other writers of the Bible in a false light, by
erroneously ascribing to the language of their writings
attributes of infallibility and enduring authority, which
they do not claim for themselves, and which belong to God
alone.
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Reflections and Inferences.
are very numerous—what is it that enables us to
decide that this is right, and that that is wrong?
When two opposite standards thus seem to be set
up; or when the doctrines of the Bible are explained
in two or more contradictory senses, by different
ages, by different churches, or by different men;
what is it that enables us to make our choice ?
Many there are, as has been said, who have never
made any such choice at all, who have never felt
themselves called upon to choose, for whom the
choice has been made by others, and who are content
to receive their faith at second or third hand from
those who happen to be their parents, pastors, or
teachers, without any question or doubt. In such
persons the faculty of private judgment has either
never been aroused, or else has been deliberately
surrendered at the feet of those believed to have
authority. That this submission is not yielded to
authority, but only to superior knowledge, is no real
distinction, but one which only serves to blind the
mind to the fact of submission. The submission of
the Roman Catholic, so far as it is genuine, and not
merely external, is also rendered to superior know
ledge—to that combination of divine and human
wisdom, which he is taught to recognize in the
Church, or in its Head. The infallibility of the
Pope may be a delusion; but then so may be the
superior enlightenment ascribed to other teachers or
churches by those Protestants who are content to
hold fast that which they are taught, without caring
to prove all things for themselves. Even supposing
that all Protestant Churches were united into one
church of uniform doctrine, such passive submission
to its teaching would not, on that account, be the
less foolish and injurious; but, when we consider how
many and various are the sects and denominations in
this country and elsewhere, all calling themselves
Protestant, and all professing to derive their doctrines
�Reflections and Inferences.
143
only from the Bible; when we reflect that there is
not one, even the most fundamental doctrine of the
Christian faith, about which earnest and learned
Protestant men have not greatly differed; it becomes
indeed amazing, to behold with what assured com
placency the adherents of each particular creed,
church, or party, cherish the conviction that the
teaching of their teachers alone is right; and that
all others are wrong; or only right in so far as
agreement or resemblance to their own can be traced.
When a man leaves the duty of proving all things
to his church, or to his teachers, and rests satisfied,
for his own part, with holding fast those things
which they tell him are good, then we have the very
spirit and essence of Popery; and, though far from
being confined to the Roman Catholic Church, those
who are thus described are, in no degree, entitled to
the noble name of Protestant. To such men this
argument is not addressed.
But to Protestants, to men who admit and assert
the right of private judgment, we repeat the question,
When the doctrines or statements of the Bible seem
doubtful, incongruous, or contradictory, or when its
sentiments appear to be unworthy, what is it that, in
such cases, enables you to decide that one idea is to
be cherished, and that another is to be rejected; that
when the most obvious interpretation is dishonouring
to God, it must be set aside for another more worthy,
and therefore more true; that the law of mercy ig a guide
which we should never cease to follow, while treachery
and cruelty are examples to be shunned; that there
must be some mode of explaining away the evil
spirits whom God is said to have sent forth to deceive;
and that nothing inconsistent with perfect goodness
and holiness can, with truth or propriety, be attributed
to God 1 Those who regard the Bible as entirely
infallible, must look in vain to it for a settlement of
these points. No part of it can reasonably be em-
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Reflections and Inferences.
ployed by such persons to cancel another part. No
higher authority can consistently be ascribed by them
to one passage than to another. Everything contained
in it must be alike true; and a true representation of
the mind or will of God, must remain for ever true of
Him who is unchangeable.
How, then, does the Bible-Protestant deliver him
self from the necessity of believing that God is likely
to send forth lying spirits, specially commissioned, to
lure us to destruction ; that Deborah’s inspired song
should be our standard of morality, being a picture
of such conduct as God looks on with approval; and
that slavery of the heathen is a divine institution ?
These doctrines are not rejected on the authority of
the Bible ; but are brought by the Protestant before
an independent tribunal, where, being weighed in
the balance, they are found wanting. What tribunal
is that ? Where is the court of appeal ? The ques
tions are settled: they do not remain open: the
replies are not given doubtfully, but are very decided,
and are felt to be true. Whence do they cornel
Where does this authority reside, whose teaching is
so clearly beyond all dispute ? Beyond all controversy,
this revelation of God’s eternal unchangeable law
can only be read in the moral sentiment of each
individual Protestant, in that consciousness of the
Divine to which his mind has attained, in his faculty
of discernment, sharpened and quickened by the love
of truth, or blunted and crippled by its neglect—enlightened by knowledge, or darkened by ignorance.
James i. 16, 17.—“Do not err, my beloved brethren.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and
cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
What dark superstitions, what innumerable deeds
of horrid cruelty, done by sincerely pious Christians,
have had for their voucher and warrant the law,
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” (Ex. xxii.
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145
18.) Why do we not still burn witches ? Why have
they become so rare among us? Why do we no
longer believe in the reality of their power ? The
answer is not to be found in the Bible; and the Bible
did not produce the change of opinion. The answer
is, Because superstition is the sister of ignorance; and
the change has been produced by the diffusion of
knowledge, elevating so far the faculty of discernment,
that men have seen, and do see, clear over the top of
the old law, “Put them to death.”
I have referred only to a few of those old errors,
from which the veil of authority, which sheltered and
maintained them, has already been removed, and to
the corresponding truths which, by this removal of
the veil, have been clearly revealed to us as a
nation, so that about them there is now among us
scarcely any doubt or difference of opinion; although
the agreement was formerly at least as unanimous on
the wrong side, the errors having been taught as
truth by the clergy and the Church, because appar
ently sanctioned by the Bible. I think, however,
that a little self-examination will convince every
Bible-Protestant that his own conscience or moral
sense must sit in judgment on every doctrine of the
Bible, before that doctrine can be truly and intelli
gently believed; and that, when the verdict is
adverse, as it sometimes is, the doctrine in question
must be rejected, reduced, or turned aside, by some
more or lfess convenient explanation. This is the
test which everything, to be believed, must pass,
before it can be accepted as true. The sharpness
and completeness of the test must, of course, depend
upon the degree of enlightened discernment which is
exercised by each individual. The faculty of dis
cerning what we may, and what we may not believe,
like all our other faculties, may be cultivated or
neglected; and we cannot think that it was ever
K
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Reflections and Inferences.
possessed by any man in such a perfect degree as to
be incapable of further cultivation.
This, then, is the final tribunal, to which the BibleProtestant must constantly, though perhaps uncon
sciously, appeal; and surely the integrity and accuracy
of its jurisdiction ought ever to be jealously guarded
and cultivated, with a view to its further improve
ment and extension. We believe it is fair and correct
to say that the Bible-Protestant considers it his duty
to believe any doctrine or statement so soon as he
believes that it is taught in the Bible, except those
which he may discern to be in themselves false or
unworthy, or to involve contradictions, and which
must therefore be set aside or explained away.
From this degree of submission, it would seem to
result that, while the doctrine or doctrines, the faith
of which constitutes the religion of the soul, are really
discerned to be true, the Spirit of God, bearing wit
ness with the human spirit, so that the truth is not
only believed but felt and realized, there are, at the
same time, many other doctrines, laws, and historical
statements, which lie remote from the centre of reli
gious life, and which, being more or less consciously
regarded as non-essential, receive at best a hazy and
passive assent, very different indeed from discerning
belief. While some have, doubtless, fully realized
this distinction for themselves, and while we may be
sure that in the faith of very many pious and simple
believers, who have been awakened to spiritual life,
this distinction is unconsciously drawn, it cannot be
doubted that, for multitudes far more numerous, no
such distinction exists. In their case the haze of
uncertainty, which encompasses the manifold outlying
stories, doctrines, mysteries, and explanations, com
pletely envelopes and obscures the brightness of the
central truths, which might be the sources of light
and life, but from which the soul is thus excluded
and cut off.
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147
This I take to be the commonest of all cases,
among nominal Christians of the age in which we
live ; persons who acknowledge the authority of the
Bible, and who assent to its doctrines, because they
are its doctrines, without ever having felt the truth in
their hearts; without knowing what it is to be led by
the Spirit to the discernment of spiritual truth. Such
are the persons who suppose they believe, who hope
they believe, who wish to believe, who struggle to
believe, who pray for grace to believe, and who some
times even believe that they believe, while all the time
there is no light, no shining of the truth in its bright
ness and power, to regenerate, while it subdues the
soul. The numerous and complicated mass of nonessentials, claiming to rest on the same authority as
the one or two essential truths, become woven to
gether with these into a tangled web, where the
threads of gold are inextricably lost, while, but for
the multitude of cloudy twisted threads, they would
shine with unmistakable clearness.
It is difficult to imagine that any sane man believes
absolutely nothing about God, or about our relations
to Him; and yet, unless I am greatly mistaken,
there are very many who will experience a strange
and surprising difficulty, if they will set themselves,
earnestly, to find an answer to the question, which
I beg every reader to put to himself, who has not
already done so: What do I truly believe, exclusive of
all that I merely wish or hope to believe ?
So many things, of equal authority, have all along
been assented to, that, in all probability, no such dis
tinction has ever been drawn; and, in the case of
thousands, the one general belief, which is really
something more than a passive assent, on the subject
of religion, is, that all its doctrines and histories are
entirely beyond human comprehension, and that, there
fore, their truth cannot, without Divine assistance, be
discerned, but that we are, nevertheless, bound to
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Reflections and Inferences.
believe them all because they are in the Bible, so that
we are guilty of sin if we fail or refuse to do so.
I am greatly mistaken if I have not fairly de
scribed the most common of all experiences, at the
present time, among those whom, as defined above,
I have designated Bible-Protestants. These are
Protestants with a limitation, semi-Protestants, Pro
testants subject to authority—the authority of the
Bible. They understand the precept, “Prove all
things,” to mean, “ Prove all things according to the
Bible,” or, “ Prove all things except the Bible; ” or
“ Prove all things for yourselves, except those things
which the Bible has proved.”
True Protestantism, however, being a wide and
noble sentiment, cannot long rest satisfied with the
mere exchange of one standard of authority for another.
Protesting, against all recognition of authority in
matters of faith, it must proceed to declare the impos
sibility of faith being rendered as an act of obedience,
and to condemn the apparent or attempted degrada
tion of it as such. Proclaiming the sacred right, and
the solemn duty, of every man to prove all things for
himself, it must vindicate this right, in matters of
religion, against all limitation, by any authority what
soever. Kelying on the Spirit of Truth alone for
guidance and enlightenment, while nourishing himself
with the best available instruction or spiritual food, the
true Protestant refuses to believe, because it is abso
lutely impossible for him to believe, any doctrine or
statement of religion, except those which he, for him
self, discerns to be true, and, for all the rest, he answers,
“I do not know,” or otherwise, according to his lights.
If any man, even a truly pious man, who has not
already tried it, will earnestly set himself to ascertain
how much of his religious belief will bear this test,
how much of it he really discerns and feels to be true,
he will probably find it, at first, to be a rather puzzl
ing question, and, if he does succeed in giving to him
�Reflections and Inferences.
149
self a clear and definite answer, he will most likely be
surprised at the simplicity and brevity of the result.
This result, whether it be anything or nothing, is all
that to him is religion. The man who does not know
what it is to discern the truth, and to feel its power
in his heart, has no religious faith, and is still blind
to spiritual light, although he may be all the time
assenting to the most orthodox creed in Christendom.
The man who has religious faith, who does discern
the truth, and who feels its power in his soul, to
whatever Church or creed he may belong, will find,
if he succeeds in drawing the distinction which I
have indicated, that the truths, which he has thus
made his own, for the support of his spiritual life, are
few, grand, simple, and quite apart from the mani
fold outlying narratives and opinions of his creed;
about which, at the same time, perhaps he has no
active doubts; or, perhaps, though he may have such
doubts, they do not disturb his faith.
The creed of the true Protestant is limited to that
which he, for himself, can discern to be true, inform
ing and improving himself by the use of guides and
instructors, but allowing no kind of authority to be
interposed between his spirit and the Spirit of God,
whose teaching he recognises in the very power with
which the truth, when discerned, is brought home
to his soul, and whose sympathy he realizes in that
strong love of truth which he thenceforth cherishes
and enjoys.
It is truly lamentable to reflect that such multi
tudes on all sides are shut out from the knowledge of
God and of truth, by those very formulas and stand
ards of religion, which profess to be the vehicles, or
even the only vehicles of truth; but which carry their
precious cargo, so mixed and concealed, amidst a mass
of confused incongruities, that only one here and
there can discover and experience its regenerating
power. To the dogmatism of theology, which has
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Reflections and Inferences.
always been excessive, I unhesitatingly attribute the
appalling and unnatural prevalence of indifference
and hatred to all religious truth. The discernment
of truth is to the, soul what sight is to the eye.
Neither faculty can be exercised without light, of
which God has provided everywhere abundance; but
the highest capabilities of either faculty cannot be
developed,—its finest perceptions, and most exact
discriminations cannot be realized, unless each faculty
be trained and strengthened by suitable culture and
information, and unless each faculty be kept in con
stant and vigorous exercise. Either faculty may be
perverted, discoloured, or obscured by clouds, veils, or
obstacles interposed to modify or to exclude the light.
The mode in which God reveals himself to the
human soul has been well described by a recent com
mentator as follows :—“ The great and eternal One reveals himself through
and by man, in conformity with the gradual develop
ment of the human mind. The growth of man’s ap
prehension of God marks the progress of revelation.
The divine in man,—that which allies him to the om
niscient—unfolds itself in harmony with the law of
its nature, giving expression to itself in sensuous
forms. God speaks to man, or man speaks of God,
agreeably to the era described or the idiosyncracy of
the writer. A knowledge of the Supreme more or
less imperfect characterises such communications. The
communications are human ; but they are also divine,
as being the utterances of the divine in man at the
time. They are, in short, a divine revelation. . . .
When it is taught and received for orthodox, that
God only revealed himself to men in former times, by
certain occasional and external miracles, and that our
knowledge of Him is limited to what has been written
down of such communications, we have reason to fear
that we have too little sense that God is always actively
�Reflections and Inferences.
151
present with us now, and to suspect that our belief is
mechanical, sceptical, and superstitious at once.”*
When rationally considered, it is nothing short of
an absurdity and a contradiction of terms, to say that
faith can be rendered as an act of obedience to any
authority whatever. Faith is the free exercise of the
mind, resting only on the discernment of the truth;
just as sight is the free exercise of the eye, resting
only on the discernment of light; and no man can
possibly believe, in submission to authority, that
which he does not discern to be true, any more than
he can behold the sun at midnight in obedience to
an external command. A man may, indeed, be taught
to keep his eyes shut, and by discipline and training
may be brought not only to say, but even to fancy
that he sees whatever he is told ought to be seen,
distrusting his own natural perceptions. A man may
also be trained to look only and always through lenses
of a prescribed colour and form; ancl so to disuse and
to supersede his unassisted vision. So also may men,
yea nations and generations of men, be kept in more
or less of ignorance, distrust, and neglect of their own
faculty of discerning what is true ; and thus be made
to surrender, or never to know the right of private
judgment; so that even those things which are most
thoroughly believed by such men, are believed not
because they are conscious of their truth, but because
they have the sanction of authority.
This way of regarding faith or belief as an act of
obedience, or of submission to authority, is utterly
and entirely opposed to the spirit of the Gospel and
of Protestantism. The authority of the Church or
of the Pope may be denied ; but another authority
has been set up instead. No living standard of in
fallibility is recognised; but infallibility is ascribed
to a book. The teaching of the Church is no longer
s “Introduction to the Old Testament,” by Samuel David
son, D.D., vol. i., pp. 234, 239.
�152
Reflections and Inferences.
received, as the end of all truth; but only as a useful
aid toward the knowledge and understanding of that
which the Bible teaches. The Bible has for three
hundred years been the Pope of those who have
called themselves Protestants.
All our knowledge is built upon the foundation of
all past ages, its elements having been transmitted to
us by history, tradition, and records of all kinds.
Without this instruction, derived from our fathers,
none of us could for ourselves have attained the
knowledge of any kind which we now possess; but,
though our knowledge comes to us, in great measure,
by transmission, it never rests alone, nor even chiefly,
on the authority by which it is transmitted to us.
We might never have discovered the laws of gravita
tion, or the principles of astronomy, if we had not
been taught them ; but so far as any one really knows
these things, he believes them, not because he has
been taught them, not in submission to the authority
of his teachers, but because, and in proportion as, he
discerns that they must be true.
So is it also with religion and morality. Our con
ceptions of God, and our notions of right and wrong,
are probably very different from what they would
have been, if we had been left to discover, and to
evolve them for ourselves, from a state of blank ignor
ance ; but, in so far as these can be called our own,
in so far as we feel that they must be true, they do
not rest upon the authority which has transmitted
them to us, but upon our own discernment of their
truth.
We have said that knowledge never rests alone, nor
even chiefly on the testimony of those from whom we
receive it; but there is here an apparent exception
or rather a class of apparent exceptions, in which our
knowledge seems at first sight to have no other founda
tion on which to rest but the testimony of our in
structors. This is the case, for example, with history,
�Reflections and Inferences.
153
and especially with ancient history, for our know
ledge of which we must often depend entirely upon
the writings of historians. Yet even here, the in
quirer after truth must use instruction with discern
ment ; must make allowances for party spirit, for po
pular delusions, for national or peculiar habits of
thought, or forms of expression. He must, moreover,
be acquainted with all the histories in any degree re
lating to the subject of enquiry; and must scrutinise,
test, and compare these authorities with each other,
in order that he may, from a comprehensive view of
the whole evidence, form an impartial judgment.
The judgments, so formed, vary from total uncer
tainty or mere probability, to a strong presumption
or absolute conviction, according to the nature, cha
racter, and amount of the evidence.
The result is at best a judicial decision, and must
in every case be consciously held subject to modifica
tion or reversal by the always possible discovery of
further evidence. So far as the decision becomes
knowledge to the inquirer, it rests upon his discern
ment of its truth. He believes not in obedient sub
mission to any nor to all of his authorities, but in
accordance with the independent judgment of his own
mind, and may very often have good reasons for re
maining doubtful and incredulous, even when there
is no conflict of authority. All history remains con
stantly open to revision and correction, so that it has
of late become a proverb, that history requires, from
time to time, to be re-written. Hence there are, and
always have been, great diversities of opinion regard
ing it; the same evidence being very variously esti
mated or interpreted by different minds.
It seems like a mere truism to say that history
cannot be religion; that even the history of religion
cannot be spiritual truth, and that spiritual truth
cannot be proved in the same way that historical
facts can, just as the reverse would be equally true.
�154
Reflections and Inferences.
No amount of historical evidence would now suffice
to prove that witches rode through the air on broom
sticks ; that they and all heretics ought to be burned;
that finger-bones or napkins from the body of a saint
had the power of working miracles (Acts xix. 12); or
that the earth is a flat extended fixture, over which
the sun daily moves;—for all of which, and for many
other such things, there was abundant evidence to
satisfy our forefathers.
All our sentiments and faculties may be crippled,
or largely developed, according as they are neglected
or cultivated. The sentiments of liberty, of beauty,
and of music, have varied much in strength and
character from age to age, and their growth or
decline may be traced, not only in persons at differ
ent times, but through the history of nations and of
centuries. The enlightened views of justice, and
the refinements of taste and skill, which one age
may attain to, are ever owing, in a large degree, to
the culture, knowledge, and many other circumstan
ces, inherited from the preceding ages. So is it with
the sentiment of truth. For its cultivation instruc
tion is required, and can only be derived, as in other
matters, from teachers of various kinds, or in other
words, from the transmitted wisdom and attainments
of the past.
Our knowledge of religious truth comes to us partly
by transmission, as does our knowledge of scientific
truth; but in the one case, as in the other, it does not
become knowledge by virtue of the authority which
transmits it, but only by our own discernment of its
inherent truth. The faculty of discernment in art,
science, and religion, alike, may be sharpened and
strengthened, perhaps without limit, certainly without
known limit, by diligent exercise, and by the cultiva
tion of the corresponding sentiments, which, again,
are nourished and increased by each new acquisition
of knowledge.
�Reflections and Inferences.
155
There is nothing so well fitted to stimulate and
elevate the artist’s ideas and conceptions of the beau
tiful and the excellent in his art, as an intelligent
acquaintance with its history, and a correct apprecia
tion of the various stages of progress or of decline
through which it has had to pass before reaching its
present condition. The comparative estimate which
this historical knowledge enables him to form of the
merits and influences of different ages and of different
schools, will, more than anything else, assist him to
discern the elements of perfection after which he
strives. He derives inspiration from history.
The statesmen, who has made politics the study of
his life, and who seeks to discover the wisest and best
measures of legislation, must be very ill prepared for his
work, unless he is able to scan, with intelligence and
discrimination, a wide horizon of the history of nations.
The sentiments of beauty in the artist, and of jus
tice in the statesman, must either be formed on older
models, or else be rude and primitive; but it does not
at all follow that any one model, nor that all of them
put together, should be regarded as a standard of
perfection. Their light and assistance, as guides and
instructors, may be invaluable, or even indispensable,
while they are never thought of at all as infallible
authorities, even though, perhaps, their excellence may
defy imitation.
Such lessons from the past are the groundwork and
the spring of all our present attainments, of all that
distinguishes an educated man from an untutored
savage; but every one must be conscious that all the
knowledge which he can truly call his own, rests not
upon the authority of any teacher or teachers, but
upon his own discernment of its truth, being always
arrived at by a comparison of different teachers, and
of his own observations and experience, whose lessons
must be sifted and weighed against each other before
the bar of his own private judgment.
�156
Reflections and Inferences.
It cannot be otherwise in the matter of religion.
Spiritual truth, much more than any other kind of
knowledge, must be discerned before it can be believed.
Our knowledge of spiritual truth is, in a great measure,
founded on. the Bible, because it has been the teacher
of our teachers for eighteen hundred years, and its
doctrines are those which have been transmitted to
us, variously modified by ancient and modern inter
pretations. To the Bible, in the first instance, and
chiefly, we owe the vantage ground on which we
stand. The Bible, and its history, are the history of
our religion, from which we can best learn the various
stages through which it has passed, in its progress
from the rudest idolatry among the ancient Jews
down to these days of enlightenment.
If our conceptions of God and of truth are nobler
or clearer than those of the heathen, we are indebted
for that to the Bible, because it is the vehicle by
which the light of other days has been transmitted
to us. Our lamps have had almost no other kindling.
When viewed as the vehicle and history of religion,
the Bible is invaluable, and never can cease to be
studied with interest and with advantage; but to set
up the history as an infallible standard, and as an
authority commanding absolute submission, is a mon
strous absurdity, which Protestants are now rather
generally beginning to perceive, and which cannot
much longer be continued.
Protestantism must at length be consistent, and
the necessity of this becomes daily more felt. A
house divided against itself cannot stand. Of two
antagonistic principles, one must be false. Freedom
of opinion and submission to authority cannot be re
conciled. One or the other must prevail.
Protestantism ! What does it mean ? A protest
against the shackles of authority in matters of religion.
It must become, and is rapidly becoming, a protest
against all such authority, a vindication of man’s
�Reflections and Inferences.
157
inalienable right, and of his most sacred duty, to dis
cern spiritual truth for himself, and to believe only
that which he has so discerned.
A new reformation is needed, and has already
begun; another reformation from Popery—the Popery
of the Bible. The Bible has been made to us what
Samuel was to Saul, has been set up to supply the
place of the old temple-veil, separating between man
and God, mystifying and obscuring the Divine light,
instead of preparing us for its direct reception; and if
it has in many cases also done the latter, there can,
on the other hand, be no manner of doubt that the
preposterous claims made on its behalf have repelled,
and are repelling, many thousands from the search
after truth, and driven them to indifference or in
fidelity. This we believe to be the principal, if not
the only cause of the wide-spread aversion and hos
tility to religion, which is the most melancholy
characteristic of the age in which we live. Hence
the universal complaint that the churches are para
lysed by the rarity of faith, or of spiritual life, even
among their members and adherents. Hence the
reason why the so-called revivals of religion, whether
among ritualists, methodists, or others, have become
so far an offence and a reproach in the opinion of
most men of judgment and understanding; and why
they are almost entirely confined to the weak, the
simple, and the superstitious, whose emotional senti
ments are not directed nor controlled by their intel
lectual discernments.
I look forward to a genuine spiritual awakening,
greater than any which the world has yet seen, of
which all past reformations and revivals have been
but the harbingers and pioneers. The barriers are
already crumbling, and must ere long be swept away.
The veil has long been rent, and must soon be entirely
and for ever torn down. The usurping claims of
authority shall not for ever, nor for long, continue to
�158
Reflections and Inferences.
darken the souls of men. Protestantism shall assuredly
accomplish the triumph of its work, which meantime
remains incomplete, and must so remain, until it is
universally proclaimed that all religious books and
teachers are of use to men only in so far as they serve
to develope and to cultivate the sentiment of truth,
and to awaken the desire for the knowledge of God,
and for communion with Him,—a sentiment and a
desire which the Spirit of God alone can satisfy, by
that quickening and enlightening influence and sym
pathy, for which the earnest inquiring soul never yet
has thirsted nor prayed in vain. No real benefit can
accrue to us from the inspiration of ancient priests,
prophets, and apostles, until we have each of us some
measure of inspiration for ourselves; and, having that,
all questions regarding the various measures in which
the gift has been bestowed on others must be of small
importance. For my part, I am firmly persuaded
that inspiration has never been withheld, and that,
like all other divine gifts, its nature is unchangeable,
while its degrees are infinitely various, depending,
under God’s providence, upon many circumstances,
foremost among which are the presence or absence of
intervening obstacles, and the true or false preparation
on our part for its reception.
1 Cor. ii. 14, 15.—“ The natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto
him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet
he himself is judged of no man.”
Verily God is not far from any one of us, and He
does guide with His counsel now, as truly and as
surely as in the days of Samuel and David, every soul
of man that seeks in earnestness and simplicity to
know what it is to know God. This is the one great
source and spring of all true religion or spiritual life
-—the sympathy of the pure and perfect God with the
soul of every faithful worshipper. The record of this
�Reflections and Inferences.
159
may be read in the Bible, or in the experience of any
man whose spiritual life has been awakened. This
doctrine is the grand good thing which beyond all
else it behoves us to hold fast. This, we believe, is to
be the living principle of the new reformation, which
shall extend and apply to every creed and to every
nation under heaven.
The Bible is indeed our teacher, when cross-examined,
sifted, and compared, as all our teachers ought and
need to be; but it has been foolishly set up as our
idol, has been made to usurp the place of God, and to
bar the way of approach to Him. As Samuel tried to
impress upon the Jews and upon Saul that the rejec
tion of the priest was the rejection of God, so have we
been assiduously taught and trained to believe that if
we refuse to receive the whole Bible as a revelation of
the mind and will of God, we cannot escape the guilt
of rejecting God, and of rebelling against His revealed
Word. It is not wonderful that many of us have, like
Saul, been troubled with an evil spirit, seeing that our
Samuels have assured us that in refusing absolute
submission to their idol we are departing from the
only living and true God.
All idols must be utterly abolished; and when we
have purged ourselves from idolatry, we shall under
stand much better how to deal with the idolatry of
the heathen. When we have taken the beam out of
our own eye, then shall we see clearly to pull the mote
out of our brother’s eye.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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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
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The finding of the book; an essay on the origin of the dogma of infallibility
Creator
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Robertson, John
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: xv, [2] 18-159 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. "John Robertson, Coupar Angus'. [Title page]. Dedicated to the Rt. Rev. John William Colenso, Lord Bishop of Natal. Includes bibliographical references and index. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
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1870
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G5495
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Bible
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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 finding of the book; an essay on the origin of the dogma of infallibility), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Authority
Bible
Conway Tracts
Infallibility (Philosophy)
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Text
isro.j
The Fourth of September
way from the palace-gate at Peking to
the chief -yvharf at T’hoong Chow—
eighteen miles; and it has been made
“ for the nonce,” that the young Empe
ror may accompany to the boat the rec
ords of his father’s reign, which have
been transcribed into Manchoorian, and
are to be sent in state to Tartary._
Well, that seems to cap the climax 1
Such a road can be made for such a
purpose; but the highways of the na
tion, the people's roads and canals, can
not be kept in moderate repair 1 Let
us escape! “ Hire, dear friend, true
Caledonian master of the dialects, hire
for us the first boat you can secure, and
let us float away down this stream,
muddy in itself, but charming in our
eyes because it carries us away from a
place where we have been more perma
nently provoked, and less instructed
and entertained, than at any other spot
on earth, Aden, perhaps, excepted.”
in
Paris.
553
Easief said than done. A vociferous
negotiation with two boat-owners; a
persistent struggle of two hours’ con
tinuance, to get clear of the crust and
crowd of a hundred junks or more
jammed up in the narrow stream; a
final success and a joyful liberation, so
that we could seat ourselves quietly un
der our pent-house cabins, and feel that
we were quietly and constantly nearing
the outlet to our discomforts. And so
we went on, float, float, floating down
the stream, with two men lazily scull
ing, or two others slowly tracking our
boat round the countless bends of this
uninteresting water-course. It takes
four days to ascend the stream, but two
days and nights brought us to Tien
tsin, and on board an American steam
er again. Never enjoyed any thing
more, in all my life-time, than to re
embark on this symbol of a new order
of things.
*
THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER IN PARIS.
FAMILIAR LETTER FROM A YOUNG AMERICAN.
Paris, Sept. 4th, 1870.
Nous l’avons la RSpublique.” Like a
man who awakes from a long night
I write the date to my letter with mare, and, relieved from the weight that
precision, for it is a great day.
pressed him down and stifled him, gives
I have heard the Republic proclaimed himself up to the joy of living, of breath
in Paris!
ing, though but a moment. “ Enfin,
Proclaimed in the face of the news of j’ai bien un jour pleinement.” I hav§
the overwhelming defeat of the French, heard men say, “ je suis pret a; mourir
the destruction of MacMahon’s army, demain s’il le faut.”
the capture of the Emperor, the threat
“ Ich habe genossen das erdliche Gluck,
ened march of the Prussians upon Paris.
Ich habe geliebt et gelebt!”
France, humiliated by invasion, out
raged by Prussian barbarities, beaten,
But I will relate in detail what has
driven back, betrayed, almost ruined, passed. The French authorities, carry
France, or at least Paris, gives itself ing out their system of treating the
up, not to panic, but to a perfect out people like a set of babies, have shroud
burst of joy, to the jubilation of a fete- ed all military operations in mystery;
day. It crowns the statue of Strasbourg for at least two weeks there has been
with flowers, it promenades on the no official news from the front, and all
Place de la Concorde, the Rue de Rivoli, newspaper or private intelligence strictly
before the Hotel de Ville, as if to salute forbidden. They do not even publish
the return of a triumphant army. It lists of the killed and wounded! So for
forgets Prussia, it forgets even the Em some time we have only known that
peror, it is wild with delight, crying, the army of Bazaine was shut up in
“ Vive la Republique, a toi -citoyen. Metz, completely surrounded by a great
My Dear Father :
�554
Putnam’s Magazine.
ellipse of the Prussian armies, while
MacMahon, with 100,000 men, was
directed to the Ardennes, intending to
sweep round by the Belgian frontier, and
effect a junction with Bazaine. Stras
bourg resists one bombardment, Toul
another. Alsatia and Lorraine are pil
laged without resistance by the Prussian
soldiers and the Badois peasants,
Chalons evacuated, the Garde Mobile
withdrawn towards Paris, the National
Guards armed, but everywhere hindered
by the jealousy of the Government, who
forbids guns, organization, every thing,
any thing. Better a thousand times lose
France to the Prussians, than save it to
the Republicans; on the other hand the
people replied with the soldiers, “Chassons les Prussians d’abord, mais nous
regions nos comptes aprbs.”
Great confidence was felt in MacMahon’s army. Last Sunday, the 29th,
it was understood that fighting had be
gun in the Ardennes, it was impossible
to know with what result. Towards the
middle of the week we began to receive
the Prussian telegrams, announcing a
victory—in the absence of the slightest
information on their own side. (When
the Corps LSgislatif called on Palikao,
the Minister of "War, to explain how
matters stood, he replied curtly that he
did not mean to be bothered any more
with answering questions.)
The Paris journals interpreted these
telegrams as they best could. On Thurs
day the Gaulois published an elaborate
article to prove that the Prussians had
only defeated a small detachment of
MacMahon’s army, left on purpose to
amuse them, and cover the retreat of the
main body across the Meuse.
On Friday, MacMahon was wounded,
half his army put hors de combat, the
other half, forty thousand men, surren
dered with the town of Sedan, and the
valiant Emperor, hastening to salute his
destiny, had given himself up prisoner to
the King of Prussia. Having plunged
the country into the war, betrayed its
cause and its resources, defeated, it is
said, by his obstinate incapacity this very
campaign of MacMahon, the savior of
France, true to the traditions of the
[Nov.
Bonapartes, had no thought paramount
to the desire of saving himself, and sur
rendered to the Prussians, from whom he
expected more consideration than from
the enraged Frenchmen. So perishes a
harlequin, and all his paraphernalia of
Empire collapses as suddenly as a wind
bag pricked by a pin. One thinks of
Carlyle’s description of the death of
Louis XV, and all Du Barrydom packing
its trunks in the antechamber, ready to
whisk off to the infinite nothing whence
it had emerged, leaving a strong smell
of sulphur behind it.
The news was only transmitted to
Paris Saturday afternoon. At the ses
sion of the Corps LSgislatif, Palikao
announced reverses, but not the whole
truth : perhaps he did not know it. An
extraordinary session was convoked for
the night, and the House assembled at
twelve o’clock. There Palikao declared
the situation, and it was noticeable that
the captivity of the Emperor was passed
over as an unimportant incident in the
general disaster. He concluded his re
port, significantly enough, by admitting
that the council of ministers had no
suggestion to offer in the extreme gravity
of the situation. Upon that Jules Favre,
quite simply, as if taking up the reins of
power that the agonizing empire had
let fall, pronounced the famous res lution for the dechSance of Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte and his dynasty. “ His words
were received by a profound silence,”
said the Figaro, who, already prepared
to greet the rising sun, had turned its
back on the Empire, and forgotten to
criticize the “ mauvais esprit” of this
resolution emanating from the Left Wing.
Of all the Right, only one voice was
raised to defend the old regime. Pinard,
deputy from the North, observed, “We
have not the right to proclaim the dtichSance.”
Nobody paid any attention to this ob
servation. Jules Favre, “ out of pity
for the nakedness of the situation of the
Right,” says La Cloclie, proposed to ad
journ consideration of his proposition
till the next morning, and the session
closed. “ This scrupule alone,” continues
La Cloche, “ saved the Empire from
�1870.]
The Fourth
of
September isr Paris.
being condemned, like the royalty, in
the night.”
All night the wildest rumors circu
lated through Paris, which was over
whelmed with consternation at the dis
aster, coming after such confident pre
dictions of victory. I went to the
hospital in the morning, and M. Bernutz, the chief, came to the ward in
such a state of prostration as was really
pitiful to see. He seemed literally over
whelmed, and quite incapable of making
the visit, or examining the new patients.
Only one thing roused him, and showed
the ruling passion strong in death, or
despair. A patient remarked that she
had been formerly treated by M. Nouat,
an old rival of Bernutz in his own
specialty; at that he brightened up to
retort vivaciously, “Oh, if M. Nouat
has cured you it is a proof that you
were not very ill I ”—a remark which
greatly disgusted the patient.
Returned to the R----- s. I found al
ready another current of ideas upper
most. For them, the defeat of Mac
Mahon was a fact primed by that of the
captivity of the Emperor, and of the
proposition for the dechgance. Every
one was rushing to the Place de la Con
corde in front of the Corps Lggislatif;
my little American friends and myself
took a carriage and rushed also.
AVe arrived at half-past one; the af
fair had already been decided.
At
noon the crowd had begun to gather,
and found the bridge leading from the
Place to the Corps Lggislatif guarded by
sergeants de ville, supported by a double
line of municipal guards—the regular
army. The crowd grew more and more
dense, and, emboldened by the conscious
ness of the National Guard behind them,
(which had only just been armed), called
upon the policemen to surrender. At
this moment the crowd was unarmed,
the National Guard nowhere in sight;
but, on -the other hand, the policemen
felt the dissolution of all the powers
above them ; they had no word of com
mand, they knuckled under completely,
gave way, melted into invisibility. As
a proof of fraternization, they lighted
[Cigars, and patting the blouses friendlily
555
on the back, declared themselves their
best friends, “ honnStes gens, bons Rgpublicains.” “ Allez-vous-en, changez vos
habits, nous n’avons pas de casse-tgtes,
nous autres,” was the reply. The ad
vice was followed; by one o’clock not a
policeman was to be seen in Paris.
The soldiers of the Municipal were
even more easily vanquished. The crowd
put out feelers and talked with them.
An officer rode up on horseback. “ Vous
savez,” dit-il, “vous n’avez rien b
craindre de nous,” and with that the
second barrier melted away like the
first, the foot-soldiers mingled with the
crowd, the cavalry moved from in front
of the bridge, and the people rushed over.
The building itself was surrounded by
the National Guard. But they reversed
their guns, “ mettaient la crosse en air,”
as a signal that they intended no firing,
and the crowd ran up the steps, precipi
tated itself into the antechambers, and
awaited the arrival of the Deputies that
were to decide the fate of the nation—
fate already decided.
The President, Schneider, came out
and made a speech. His voice was
drowned in the tumult. “ Allez-vousen, allez-vous-en, nous n’avons pas
besoin de vous.” Deputies of the Right
tried to make a stand. “Allez-vousen,” was the pitiless cry. “ Vous avez
perdu la France,” cried E---- - R----- .
“ Laissons-nous la sauver,” and they de
camped one after another. One old
fellow tried the heroic style; opening
his coat, he placed his hands on his ex
panse of waistcoat, “ J’ofire mon corps
it vos coups,” he declaimed, “ vieille
charogne,” (old carcass.) “ Vous n’avons
pas besoin de vous.” And he made
tracks also.
Finally some members of the Left
tried to persuade the people to leave.
“ The House is about to deliberate on
the gravest questions; we wish to pro
claim the dgchgance, but in order.”
“ Ge n’est pas assez la dgchgance, il faut
proclamer la Rgpublique. Vive la Rgpublique! Vive la Rgpublique! ” and then
with solid fists they began to batter
against the solid oaken doors that shut
in the Chamber of Deputies. It was
�556
Putnam’s Magazine.
like the booming of distant cannon;
it sounded the death-knell of the old
regime. The majority felt that the
cause was hopeless, and took refuge in
the library under the protection of the
National Guard. The Republicans spent
some minutes in haranguing the crowd,
that now had begun to force its way
into the Chamber, and then withdrew
to the Hotel de Ville, where they pro
claimed the Republic to the expectant
masses assembled on the Place. It was
the repetition of the Jeu de Paume.
The antechamber remained full. No
one credited the report that the Repub
lican deputies had withdrawn—every
one was afraid of trickery. Finally,
they burst open all the doors, rushed en
masse into the chamber—it was com
pletely empty. The powers that were
had abdicated; the people ruled.
In leaving the buildings, M. R----observed to a member of the National
Guard, “ I recommended the deputies oi
the Right to claim your protection if they
had need of it in getting away.” “Il
y en a un pourtant, qui fefait bien de ne
pas se fier A moi, car je le fusillerais contre cette mur,—c’est Granier de Cassagnac.” Three weeks ago this famous
blackguard had threatened to shoot down
every member of the opposition. “I
should have been sorry,” said R----- to
me, “ had one of the people shot Cassagnac; but should a member of the
National Guard, a bourgeois, undertake
the affair, I had nothing to say.”
During this time the manifestation
had been lively on the Place de la Con
corde. On the central pillar of the
Corps Legislatif some one had written
in* red letters, “Rfjpublique Franqaise,”
and cries of “Vive la Republique!”
deafened the ears. There was the most
perfect order, united to the most joyful
enthusiasm. There was no occasion for
fighting any one, for every one was ani
mated by the same sentiment; and in
the general outburst of fraternity, each
individual seemed really enchanted to
grasp the hand of his neighbor, and cry
“Vive la R^publique!” A man in a
blouse came up to our carriage and ad
dressed the coachman: “Bon jour, ci-
[Nov.
toyen ; eh bien, nous l’aurons ce soil-, la
R6publique! ” He lighted his cigar,
and went off, repeating, “ Merci, citoyen,
merci, citoyen,” as if he could not too
often find a pretext for pronouncing the
dear word.
People climbed on ■ the statue of the
City of Strasbourg, and covered it with
flowers, writing inscriptions on the
pedestal, “ Vive la Republique! ” The
statue of Lyons also was decorated in
honor of the army that this city is sup
posed to send to the relief of the Alsatian
capital. Men, mounted on carriages,
harangued the people, and especially
warned them against the excesses of ’48.
Squads of the National Guard patrolled
the Place, with reversed bayonets, and
blouses of all descriptions mingled with
the handsome bourgeois uniform. “ Vive
la Garde Nationale,” cried the citizens.
“ Vive la R^publique, Vive la France! ”
replied the citizen-soldiers.
We stayed two or three hours at the
Place de la Concorde, but during this
time many events had transpired else
where. A detachment of the National
Guard had accompanied a mass of un
armed citizens to the prison of St.
Pelagie. “ 11 nous faut Rochefort,” they
thundered at the door. “Il est a Vin
cennes,” was the first reply. “ Ce
n’est pas vrai, avouaient quelques uns
de la garde tout has. 11 est ici.” With
that the crowd forced its way into the
prison, the guard only making a feint of
resistance. They demanded Rochefort
of the governor. “ Mais, messieurs,”
said the official, “ je n’ai pas d’ordres
avous le rendre.”
“Vos ordres.?
Les voici,” said one burly fellow, show
ing his fist. “ Oh, tres bien, messieurs,
devant la force, je n’airienadire,”—and
he gave up the keys.
He was logical. He had supported an
empire of force, which must necessarily
crumble before a force superior.
Rochefort was borne in triumph on
the shoulders of the people out of the
prison, as he had been carried in on the
shoulders of policemen nine months be
fore. He was carried to the Hotel de
Ville,—Jules Favre embraced him in
public.
�1870.]
The Fourth ok September in Paris.
When we drove up a little later, and
found the people still swaying under the
influence of some recent excitement, we
asked the explanation. “ C’est Jules
Favre qui embrasse Rochefort,” was the
answer. Rochefort is a symbol, and
possesses, in consequence, all the supe
rior significance possessed by a symbol
over the reality. Carrying out the rad
ical protest against the Empire made last
year by his election, the Deputies assem
bled at the HStel de Ville immediately
placed him on the list of the Provisional
Government. I 'will notice, in paren
thesis, they have also had the good
sense not to include Thiers.
*
But Rochefort was not the only sym
bol upon which the popular instinct fas
tened itself. All the signs and insignia
of the Empire and the Emperor were
attacked, the imperial eagles torn off
the Hotel de Ville, the multitudinous
busts of the imperial family shivered in
fragments, the very signs of the tailors
and other “ Fournisseurs brevetes de
l’Empereur,” broken in pieces. At one
establishment on the boulevard, where
the individual charged with the icono
clasm had demolished the first half of
the name, and there only remained-ereur,
the people, perceiving the pun, cried
out to leave it as it was.
The garden of the Tuileries was early
invaded, but no attempt made to enter
the palace. People contented them
selves with scrawling over the walls,
“Respect a; la propriStS, mort aux voleurs.” “Vive la Republique.” And
all along the Rue de Rivoli was written
on the palace, “ Logement ft Louer.”
In the sentry-box at the gate some one
had carried the joke still farther, and
written, “ Parlez au concierge; chambre
lien meublee ft louer.” Of course, the
“gracious sovereign” had put for Bel
gium some time before. Her fanfaro
nades of proclamations as ImpSratrice
Begente still decorate the dead walls of
Paris, and the recollection of her dec
larations, “Si les Prussiens viennent, ils
m’y trouveront,” remain to lend a pi
quant contrast to the reality. The im
perial family has decidedly come to the
grief it so well deserved—Monsieur at
557
Mayence under Prussian escort; Madame
at Brussels, with, it is said, the crown
jewels; the little prince, after his “bapt5me de feu,” scouring over the country
with two physicians; Plon-plon at Na
ples, whither he fled as soon as war was
declared.
Oh, dethroned princess! Oh, captive
monarch! Oh, wretched prince! The
day has gone by when the world will
weep tears over your hapless fate; when
poets will choose your woeful history as
theme for their tragedies ; when painters
will represent you, even on the back
staircase of the Tuileries, where the
brush of Gros has fixed Louis Philippe
forever! For the strange, extraordinary,
and, at first sight, almost inexplicable
circumstance in the affair, is the com
pleteness with which every trace and
vestige of imperial existence is swept
away. Since the beginning of the war,
the Emperor has indeed faded out of
sight, but that is hardly since six weeks
ago. But as late as May, the Empire
seemed in the full bloom of prosperity;
the plebiscite trick had succeeded be
yond expectation, and given the Bona
parte dynasty an indefinite lease of life.
The war, even, in concentrating all
thoughts upon foreign danger, had
hushed up for a moment the incessant
warfare of the Opposition, and such as
persisted were forcibly suppressed by
the government. People submitted to
every thing—the mobilization of the
Garde Mobile ; its incorporation in the
army; the loan of 750,000,000, covered
in a single day ; the establishment of an
Imperial cabinet; the dictature of Pali
kao ; the atrocious silence in which all
military operations were shrouded. In
deed, if the French had had only a mod
erate success—although the war was un
popular, although the majority regarded
it as senseless and unjust—still, with
success, the Empire might have been
consolidated, and the proposed reckoning
indefinitely adjourned. But, as La
Cloche remarks this morning, “the cap
tivity of the Emperor is the liberty of
the country.” L’Empire s’est donnS
sa demission. Not a blow has been
struck, hardly a protestation made or
�558
Putnam’s Magazine.
required, not an act of courage, or, alas!
I fear that it would nut have been forth
coming. But the whole gigantic hum
bug dissolved, melted away—eaten out
and out by its own rottenness. “ Je
n’ai aucune commande a l’arm^e,” said
the Emperor. “Vous n’avons aucune
proposition a; faire,” avow the minis
ters.
I am forcibly reminded of the famous
story of Edgar Poe, concerning a man
who was mesmerized at the point of
death, in such a manner that his soul
could not escape from his dead body.
The corpse, on the other hand, could
not decay as long as any soul remained
entangled in its meshes, and stayed,
therefore, in an intermediate condition
between life and death, for three years.
At the end of this time the mesmerizer
reversed his passes. The spell was brok
en ; with an immense sigh of relief, the
soul shook itself free of its charnelhouse, and at the same moment the body
tumbled into a liquid mass of putrefac
tion.
In the same way one might say that a
spell had been broken which bound
France to the Empire. The living soul
escapes—free—the Empire melts away
of itself. It is extremely important to
understand this, so as not to be the dupe
of the amiable sneers which will pres
ently circulate: ‘Oh yes, the French
never are satisfied with their government.
Four months ago they voted for it with
acclamation, and now they want a re
public again. They are not fit for a re
public.” This is most superficial non
sense, as is shown by the very simple
consideration that it is not the same
people who change, but two parties, who
have constantly been at war with each
other, and who have alternately obtained
the power. The seven and one half
millions who voted for the plebiscite will
certainly do nothing for the revolution,
but the million and a half who voted
against it are quite capable of the task,
and also of cowing into subjection the
great mass of inertia that is flung like
ballast from hand to hand. Any state
of society whose stability reposes on an
army is in a condition of unstable equi
[Nov.
librium that can always be upset in the
twinkling of an eye. It is like an in
verted pyramid, whose superhcial ex
panse only serves to conceal the narrow
base upon which it reposes. Indeed,
the main thing which excites uneasiness
after the joy of the 4th of September, is
its resemblance, in suddenness of transi
tion, to the 18 Brumaire, the 24 Fevrier, and the 2 Decembre.
But in no other respect does it resem
ble these famous days. Never was so
great a revolution accomplished in so
absolutely pacific a manner. I repeat,
it was less a revolution than a declara
tion of what really existed ; and as the
French boast, such a change of front,
made under fire of the enemy, is almost
as sublime in its boldness as in the elec
tric shock that it has given to the panicstricken people.
Panic! It is not dreamed of. The
Prussians are at Soissons — more inso
lent than ever. Already they dicrate
terms of peace from Berlin. Already are
anticipated cries of rage, both from Ger
many and England, at the proclamation
of a republic that will call into life the
republics of Spain and Italy, to form a
sanitary cordon of Latin democracy that
shall hem in the boasted Teutonic civil
ization—stronghold of feudalism.
But whatever the danger, men feel
that they live—that they are men. “ Un
til now I cared little for our disasters,”
said the interne this morning. “What
did it signify—a province more or less
to the Empire? But now that the hon
or of the Republic is concerned, I am
aroused to the gravity of our military
situation.” “ Until now,” said another
medical student, “ I have done my best
to evade being called to the army; but
to-day I have enrolled myself—for I
shall be a soldier of the Republic.”
The same feeling animated the boule
vards all night, where the Marseillaise
and cries of Vive la RSpublique certain
ly did not cease till two o’clock in the
morning. (We were on the boulevard
till midnight.) One man said: “Je
n’aime pas la Marseillaise, depuis qu’il a
6t6 souilli dans le service de l’Empire,
mieux vaut le chant de Depart:
�1870.]
The Fourth
of
September
“ La r6publique nous appelle,
Sachons nous battre au p6rir—
Un Frangais doit vivre pour elie,
Pour elie un Frangais doit mourir.”
When we returned home last evening,
the concierge and his wife stood at the
door to greet us.
“Sommes nous aussi des Republicains ? ” they cried, holding out their
hands to us as Americans.
The door was opened by an old Re
publican friend of the family. “Nous
l’avons, nous l’avons! ” he exclaimed.
At the same moment E. R. arrived; the
two men rushed into each other’s arms.
“ Ah quelle belle journee! Nous l’avons
la RSpublique ! ”—“ Oui, maintenant il
s’agii de la garder.”
It is this feeling of tenderness, of affec
tion, with which the Republic is wel
comed, that is most touching. A lost
ideal refound; no, it is more personal—
it is the exultation of a lover who finds
his long-lost mistress; and, absorbed in
delighted contemplation of her beauty,
forgets to think even of the future that
she brings back with her. It is this that
rendered the manifestation yesterday so
singularly joyful. No one seemed to
care much whether or no the Republic
could really repulse the invasion that
the Empire had called down on their
heads. A lady passed in a carriage on
the Place de la Concorde, and cried,
“A has la Prusse!” but nobody paid
any attention to her.
This appreciation of Beauty—this
perfectly developed self-consciousness
which enables each individual in mass
to seize the character of the ensemble—
(I heard several people say to-day, “ ah,
n’avons nous pas ete beaux hier! ”)—
gives a French crowd and a French
revolution a physiognomy entirely dif
ferent from that possible in our colder
northern races. It indicates their role
in the Etats-Unis of Europe for which the
present war—started in the interest of
a parvenu dynasty, and carried on in
the interests of a military feudalism—
seems really destined to pave the way.
This unanimity of the crowd is ex
plained in part by the' enthusiasm com
municated by the republicans to the
in
Paris.
559
neutrals, of all shades, from the ser
geants de ville to the National Guard and
the bourgeois, and in part by the utter
suppression of such solid sterling bour
geois as had supported the Empire, and
hated the Republic, but in the moment
of consternation do not dare to say any
thing. One could see their faces here
and there on the boulevards yesterday
—cold and sneering rather than sour or
provoked. Scepticism is always a
Frenchman’s refuge. I was furious this
morning, at the hospital, under charge of
P----- , to see the frigidity with which
he received the enthusiasm of the
interne who had helped to force the
Tuileries yesterday, of the externe who
enrolls as a “ soldier of the Republic ”
to-day. 41 This is the second Republic I
have seen,” he remarked, and busied
himself with some miserable details, af
fecting to ignore the whole matter.
I do not wonder that such men as
R----- are furious against the savants,
and corps medical, who as a body as
sume just this r61e—sneering; accepting,
fighting for all the solid crumbs of mate
rial comfort that the powers that be can
place at their disposition, but whenever
it is question of the people, treating
them as “insensgs,” “hair-brained,”
“ animus d’un mauvais esprit.”
No; fraternity cannot be universal. It
is the church militant that has to defend
truth ; and the life of every person who
cares about truth must be one of in
cessant warfare. He must learn to ren
der hate for hate, contempt for con
tempt ; to keep his back and knees stiff
and his head upright—proud, inflexible,
uncompromising. Then, perhaps, in the
course of his life-time may come to him
one such day of perfect, unalloyed tri
umph as yesterday.
Such days, in which a people lives, in
which individual lives are absorbed into
a Social Being that for a moment has be
come conscious of itself—such moments
realize the old conceptions of ecstacy
among the Neo-Platonists. It is the life
of Humanity that is the Infinite; it is
the mysterious progress of Ideas that we
understand by the “ workings of Provi
dence ; ” it is the unerring exactitude of
�560
Putnam’s Magazine.
moral retribution for good or for evil,
for true or for false, for sham or for
reality,—which represent the recom
pense of heaven and hell. The tremen
dous importance of ideas ! the only reali
ty behind the shifting phenomena of ex
istence—how is it possible to live thirty
years in the world and not have learned
it ? And yet how few there are who
trouble themselves about such “abstract
questions,” who do. not consider the
whole duty of man to consist in raising
his family in material comfort and lining
[Nov.
his pockets as comfortably as possible by
every windfall that luck or Providence
may throw in his way! Such crea
tures deserve to be cast out to wither,
severed from the deep, fruitful life of
Humanity like a branch cut off from a
vine.
I have written this long letter “ d’un
seul coup,” because I thought you would
like to hear from an eye-witness how the
Republic was proclaimed in Paris on
the 4th of September, 1870.
Your affectionate-------- .
EDITORIAL NOTES.
THE LESSON OF THE DAY.
There is a great lesson to be learned
from the present war—a lesson of the
day, and yet the lesson of six thousand
years. It is, that he who sows the wind
shall reap the whirlwind. The man or
the nation that worships wrong, shall
be by that same wrong overthrown.
Napoleon III won his throne by treach
ery and bloodshed ; he has lost it by a
tenfold treachery and a tenfold blood
shed. The French people allowed
themselves to be duped by his frauds
and cajoleries, and now they are pay
ing the penalty of their want of manli
ness and self-respect. They did not
have the courage to meet and cast off
the seducer, when he came with his
specious promises of order, prosperity,
and glory; and now, when he has
brought them before an earnest foreign
enemy, they must have courage, or die.
Louis Napoleon, as President of the
French Republic, might have lifted his
country to a pinnacle of moral prosper
ity and grandeur that the nation had
never before reached. He might have
trained his countrymen, weary of revo
lutions and suffering under the woes of
long civil wars, to a respect for law and
a love of peaceful industry which would
have given their fertile and elegant ge
nius an easy mastery of modern civili
zation. He would have retired, then,
in due time, from the seats of power,
blessed by the gratitude and love of a
happy and advancing people. But his
imagination was smitten by the dazzle
of dynastic glory. He wanted to be an
emperor, and to transmit the imperial
dignity to his descendants; and, with
that unhallowed purpose, he violated
his oaths, destroyed the constitution of
his country, butchered his fellow-citi
zens in the streets or sent them into
exile, and for eighteen years main
tained his ill-gotten power by corrupt
favoritism and the force of bayonets.
His crime was seemingly triumphant.
The nations cried out, “ Io Napoleon,
the great warrior and statesman! ”
when, suddenly, the hour of trial came
—a trial provoked by his own precipi
tate and arrogant ambition—and the
entire fabric he had so carefully reared
fell to pieces as the rottenest of struc
tures. The favorites whom he had nour
ished by corruption, were as treacherous
towards him as he had been treacher
ous towards his country. Those swords
in which he had trusted were swords of
lath, and those armies, armies of paste
board and shoddy. All his subordi
nates had but too well learned the les
son he had taught, but too well copied
the example he had set. A single ear
nest campaign snuffs out his preten
sions ; he falls without a regret, cov
ered by disgrace and contempt, and the
unmeasured ridicule of the world.
And the French people acquiesced in
his crimes; they approved, by their
�
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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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The fourth of September in Paris : Familiar letter from a young American
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Putnam, M. C.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: 553-560 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Putnam's Magazine, Nov 1870.
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Conway Tracts
Siege of Paris
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VOL I., No. 3.—JULY, 1870.
CHRISTIANITY —LECTURE BY WENDELL PHILLIPS.
The Sunday afternoon course of
lectures at Horticultural Hall, in
Boston, was closed by a lecture by
Mr. Phillips, entitled, “ In Chris
tianity, no Substitutes, and no Mus
tering out.”
I choose this subject, said Mr.
Phillips, because there seem to me
to be very many grave issues, critical
and important questions, looming
over the horizon, which the purpose
and intelligence and virtue of the
community are to grapple with in the
next ten or twenty years ; and it be
comes every man interested in the
prosperity of our civil -government, or
in the purity of our social state, to ex
amine as accurately as he can, and to
bring forward as fully as he may, all
the reserve forces of social science and
religion which can by any possibility
help us to deal with these great ques
tions.
It seems to me that we have
reached a certain epoch in the deve
lopment of our social theory. In a
certain rude sense, we have come to
the end of what may be called the
mechanical philosophy of social sci
ence. We have put in train at last—
if we have not accomplished, we
Vol. 1.—9
have put in train—all the great prin
ciples which underlie the mere me
chanical civilization of to-day. We
may expect more in quantity, but we
have no right to expect any thing fur
ther in quality, unless we invoke some
new elements. Social science is a sort
of wise selfishness ; it is an enlighten
ed selfishness. It sets on foot the great
principles which mould human na
ture, which protect one man in his
rights, and unfold the capacities in
another; and to a great extent our
form of society and our form of go
vernment have perfected these. We
are tending—if we have not reached
wholly, we are tending—to the go
vernment where, as freely as possi
ble, every man is left to the exercise
of his own powers. We have flung
away the narrow and faithless curbs
which, in former times, a timid disbe
lief in human nature afflicted the
world with. If you trace the civiliza
tion of three hundred years ago—five
hundred—it is a civilization of timid
ity. It seems to have imagined that
man was a wild beast; that God cre
ated him utterly unmanageable, with
nothing inside his own nature that
had any tendency even to make hi1U
�130
Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
a useful tenant of the powers and
body God gave him. The conse
quence was, that education, and
wealth, and strength—otherwise go
vernment—busied itself entirely with
keeping this unmanageable, untrust
worthy wild beast in curb ; piled all
sorts of obstacles, burdened him
down with all sorts of restraints;
imagined that government was never
perfect while this man was out of
leading-strings — this wild beast.
Gradually, very slowly, after the
lapse of centuries, men woke up to
the idea that there was something in
human nature itself that could be
trusted. The border chief of the
Rhine, when he set up his castle and
plundered every passer-by, imagined
that that was the only way in which
he could make use of his fellows—
had no idea except absolute compul
sion, with no consultation of the
other party to the bargain. He gra
dually found that if he placed his
robber hand too outrageously on the
traveler, the selfishness of man would
devise another way, instead of pass
ing under his bridge ; and so gradu
ally he consented to levy a well-recog
nized toll as a sort of compensation
for the privilege of his road and the
safety of his neighborhood, over
which he took care. That remained
awhile, still compulsory—a tax. Fi
nally, one day, civilization woke to
the idea that, after all, a free road,
welcoming every body, and every bu
siness, and every kind of occupation,
¡through it, had within it finer and
richer sources of prosperity for the
¡rich and able who presided over that
section, than any compulsory tax.
That is, at last, taking off the iron
curb, the man trusted his interests to
the mutual advantage of himself and
his neighbors. That is modern civi
lization, grown up very gradually.
Social science affects to carry out
that principle to its extremest result—
not to force, but to win, not to put a
curb outside, but a motive in, to con
sult the laws which God originally
laid down for the government of
mind and of matter, putting yourself
in a line with which, you are certain
that they are safe, and gradually
learning that they are the most pro
fitable.
Here is the laboring mass of
men, two thirds of the race—three
quarters of the race—the men that
wake only to toil, lie down only to
rest. We had an idea that we could
preach them into morality, that we
could sermonize them into thrift, that
we could bring to bear upon them a
certain weight of example, moral in
fluence—all excellent—all with a
certain effect. But that method
lacks behind it the motive principle.
Lord Erskine said once that all
the machinery of the British govern
ment was only a cumbrous arrange
ment to put twelve honest men in a
box. If I were to define our state,
I should say that commerce and
sovereignty, and State governments
and nationality were only a cum
brous machine to put an indepen
dent, an intelligent, and a well-pur
posed man at the side of a ballotbox. That is the final result, the
sheet-anchor, the nucleus of the civil
government under which we live.
We have tried pulpits; we have
tried journals ; we have tried all
sorts of outside moral influence. So
cial science says to-day, “You must
now begin at another point; you
must give that man so much leisure
that his moral and intellectual na
�Christianity —Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
ture will wake up to a comprehen
sion of his relations. Again, you
must give him such a fair share by
some arrangement of mutual profits,
resulting from skill, and capital, and
labor—such a fair share that he shall
feel constantly that he has no wrong
done him. You must put him into
equitable relations, according to his
own consciousness with things about
him. You must make him feel natu
ral—not only give him what is just—
you must awaken his nature to such a
comprehension that he must see it
to be just. And in that conscious
ness of justice, and in that opportu
nity of development, you restore the
man—and in the man the mass—to
that relation to our own day which
makes him the stable corner-stone of
civil institutions like ours.”
Look at the city of New-York.
You can not govern it; it is an in
famy to our civil theory. The native
American gives it up. The foreign
Tory points to it as the cancer, as the
complete reply to the Declaration of
Independence. Europe says to us,
“ You have a very good theory; it
sounds excellently well; it appears
perfect on paper. We see that it
grapples with the problems of small
towns and sparse population; but
you have never yet governed half a
million men gathered into one mass.
You have never yet grappled with
the problem of bringing under selfgovernment half a million of men
with the natural amount of crime,
and property pandering to crime,
always to be found, inevitably to be
found, in such an aggregation.”
Well, we have tried all sorts of pal
liations, of alleviating influences, and
yet to-day there is not a great city in
the United States that is not govern-
131
X
ed by its criminal classes, whose civil
machinery is not each year set up
and in the popular phrase “ run ” by
its criminal classes.
In every community, since history
scrutinized it, you find two classes
of men, the conservative and the pro
gressive, the timid and the bold, the
satisfied and the unsatisfied, the
man that never looks with any com
fort on the new moon, out of regret
for that venerable institution the old
one, the man that is never satisfied
unless there is a change every week—
inevitable differences of mind. In
dispensable also, because they seem
to be the methods by which God lifts
forward the race. Between these
two honest, perfectly honest, ideas,
stand ever, in a great mass of a mil
lion men like New-York, or a quar
ter of a million men like Boston, five
or seven thousand men interested in
the vices of the community. Behind
them some portentous array of capi
tal pandering to their object. Two
hundred millions of dollars in the ci
ty of New-York interested in drink ;
seventy millions in the city of Bos
ton. This solid square has no
ideas that are not common—ideas
that have an object. With iron con
centration, under keen resolution,
like the solid square on which Well
ington leaned in the centre of Wa
terloo, they hold both the sides, and
the result is—it could not be other
wise in the present arrangement of
civilization ; it is nobody’s fault—
they dictate the civil arrangements
of the state. They must control it.
Neither the one side nor the other can
afford to disregard them. The best
man in either rank is not available,
if he has eyes so wide open that he
can see the crime purposed by this
�13 2
Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
central power. Now you may talk,
preach, sermonize, as long as you
please. Until you bring some new
element into line; until you lift the
masses of men from subjection to
this temptation, you can not make a
state; it is impossible. I affirm in
all sincerity that if there is no states
manship in this country that can
deal with the great question of in
temperance, except as it has been
dealt with, the statesmanship of this
country must surrender the govern
ment of great cities to a despotic
theory; it never can grapple with it.
The only remedy is some remedy,
for instance, that takes up the labor
ing masses of men, and lifts them
into an intelligence, and a purpose,
and a disinterestedness, and a devo
tion, that shall be superior to this
temptation. If you can find it in
the labor movement, well; if not, find
it elsewhere—find it you must, or give
up the theory. Take another kin
dred vice—take the social evil, as it
is called, of great cities—the immo
rality of the sexes. We have dealt
with it in every form for a thousand
years; we have marshaled against
it science and morality, shame and
civilization, and it lifts its head as de
fiantly, spreads its toils as deep and
as wide as ever, and, as Macaulay
says, “ The influences of these social
vices are, that on ordinary occasions,
in the common years, they demora
lize a large mass, which skulk and
hide themselves at those times from
the notice of society. But in critical
moments they emerge, and in the
hands of bad men are forged into
weapons to beat down order.” Now,
we have done every tiling in the
world but one. We have sacrificed
money, and effort, and influence.
At last, social science says, “ I will
establish a breakwater, I will get a
motive inside the lines. The fort
shall betray itself. I will open to
woman so wide, so profitable, so di
versified a field for her exertions that
all the rewards and luxuries of socie
ty shall be as fully and as promptly
within her reach as they are with
in the reach of her brother. I will
take this curbed energy which frets
against its barrier, and I will give it
free course. I will take these chill
ed and dwarfed powers ; I will awak
en them into full activity, and they
shall in their turn dwarf the animal
propensities.” Man lifts himself by
ambition, girdles the globe with his
commercial enterprise, takes the
finer and larger powers of his brain,
and with them grasps the possibili
ties of his powers, and in their pre
sence all mere bodily temptations
chill and dwarf into comparative in
significance. On the contrary, the
other sex, once fallen, have no such
resource. Ninety-nine Vermont boys
out of a hundred, if you will give
them the first opportunity to achieve
the great prizes of life, will disdain
to steal. Ninety-nine women out of
a hundred, if you will put within
their reach the honors and comforts
and luxuries, the travel, the oppor
tunities, the wealth, the world, as free
ly as for their brothers, will disdain
to gain them by vice. (Applause.)
Social science says, “ I will still con
tinue the efforts of Christian exhor
tation ; I will melt away opposition
by entreaty; but, at the same time,
I will take from under this vice the
large and lavish opportunity that it
has in the prejudices of society.”
Social science says to you, We don’t
want your dollar; we don’t want
�Christianity—L ecture hy Wendell Phillips.
your earnest effort; or rather, yes, we
want them, but we want something
else. We want all that, lay it libe
rally on the altar; but what you
must lay there liberally also, if you
would grapple with this great evil,
lay your prejudices there ; lay your
disbelief there ; lay your narrow, big
oted, contracted, bald, mechanical
attachment to old theories there.
You have given us your gold ; it has
done its utmost. Give us now your
ignorance. Give us now your anta
gonisms. Stand out of the way.
So we go to politics. The range
of our political life is all low, dis
honorable. If I were to use the pro
per phrase of olden time, I should
say that in the caucus of American
life there never yet was seen the fla
vor of a gentleman, with his delicate
sense of self-respect, the keen, vivid,
fastidious spirit of modern honor to
which we give the name—we used
to give the name—the “ spirit of a
gentleman.” The god of the caucus
is availability. No matter what the
means, if you compass the end. Sink
the method out of sight, no matter.
The god of our social life is honor,
an indescribable, an impalpable
something that exacts fastidiously
the utmost self-respect, and says to
the man that travels as far as he can
guarded by a statute, “You are a
foolwhich says to the stupid bigot
that does even what the church
allows him, “ You are a criminal.” It
arraigns both before its tribunal, and
says, if you hide yourself behind the
law, or if you shelter yourself even be
hind church organizations, we remind
you that the delicate sense of pride
and honor which lives in social life
cries out to you, “ We condemn you
for a thousand things that both al
133
low.” Where did you get this socie
ty ? We got it by taking man and
woman, and linking them together
according to the laws of God, and
that is the result. Now, there is no
other force left for society or for po
litics, except to bring in this reserve
power of womanhood. Put yourself
into line with that law of God which
has given us modern civilization •
lift the caucus to the level of the
parlor. It is one of the laws to
which social science tells you to lend
your attention and sacrifice your pre
judices in order to bring in this new
force. I don’t care what you think
of it, I tell you in front of us lie the
great questions of governing cities,
dealing with intemperance, grappling
with immigration, understanding the
putting on its feet the great question
of labor. I want every moral and pu
rifying force known to the nineteenth
century; I don’t care where I get it.
If there is any thing in womanhood,
I demand it, because the country is
sailing close to the wind. The seas
are high, and rocks are on each side.
The best statesmanship of the day is
confused and doubtful. The immi
gration of the surplus of four hun
dred millions of Chinese has frigh
tened yonder republican Senate—
one half of it—out of its faith in the
Declaration of Independence. I am
only asking you, to-day, as republi
cans, to consider the weapons you
have got to fight with.
Now, that is all social science.
It is all wise selfishness. It don’t
teach religion. It don’t begin even
to approach the hem of the garment
of moral and religious reform or pur
pose. It is nothing but a prudent,
wise, cautious, intense selfishness,
which undertakes to make these
�134
Christianity —Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
streets safer, free speech a possibili
ty, progress probable, and republi
canism perpetual with this forty mil
lions of people. What I want to add
to it is a second and a much higher
lesson.
Let us take Clarkson or John
Howard, as an illustration of this
higher lesson. A hundred years ago,
Clarkson represented the thought
that there ought to be in the civiliza
tion of ages no distinction of race ;
the black man should be as good as
the white. It has taken a hundred
years, and it is not yet accomplished.
All over the islands, far down into
other continents, it is not yet accom
plished. The Saxon race has mea
surably accomplished it. We boast
that we have a Christian civilization,
and yet it has taken a hundred years
to incorporate measurably into the
thought, and habit, and law of a
Christian race such a self-evident
proposition as that. Why was it? It
seems to me it was because it was
left for one man, and then a dozen
men, and then a hundred men, and
then a thousand men to represent the
effort. Nobody denied it, no intelli
gent person ; nobody denied that it
was a Christian tendency. Nobody
doubted that it had within it the in
spiration and the purpose of really
a Christian idea—nobody. But it
was left to a certain agency, was left
to a few men, was left to a compara
tively small minority to fight it out, to
represent it, to enforce it, to argue it
to the rest of the world. Now, my
idea is—and this is my text this af-.
ternoon—that in a really Christian
civil ization, when such a man as John
Howard, or such a man as Clark
son appears, we have a new thought
inspired of God. It would have been
natural, and it ought to have been,
that all that considered itself Chris
tian, instead of being engaged in a
hundred different ambitious and sel
fish channels, should have turned a
fair share of its attention, not by de
puty, but in person, not by substi
tutes, but actually, toward the imper
sonation and the defense, the ad
vancement and the realization of
that idea. Had there been any re
cognition of that duty, it would not
have taken twenty years to get it ac
complished ; that is, the only thing
to have dealt with would have been
the ignorance—nothing else—of the
surrounding community.
And it
would not have taken twenty years to
do what now it has taken a century
to accomplish. I claim, therefore,
that in a truly Christian civilization,
no man has the right to devote his
life to study, to art, to money-making,
to material development. There can
not be a Christian scholar. There
can not be a Christian millionaire—
it is a contradiction in terms—in the
circumstances of the day. If the re
sponsibilities of man and his duty are
fairly multiplied into each other, it is
not possible. I don’t mean to say—
understand me—that there can not be
luxury. The stately palaces of Fifth
Avenue are not what I am attacking.
There will be just as stately palaces,
and just as gorgeous—but there will
be a thousand instead of one. But
there never will be one of them—not
one will ever lift its marble walls from
its foundation, while there is the filth,
the demoralization of Five Points
within half a mile. It will come in
due time; it is all before us. The
race has never reached yet the
luxury, nor the refinement, nor the
splendor, nor pomp which its ultimate
�Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
development will accomplish. I don’t
war against that. I only say that
while there are such influences to
grapple with, a Christian man never
can turn his energy, his disciplined
and trained intellect and skill toward
the rolling up of forty or sixty mil
lions of dollars. I claim that from
the very moment of his adult life he
owed so much of his waking hours
personally to his fellow, and then
that iniquity would not have been
possible. I do not want his wealth;
I want him. I do not want his
contributions; I want his counte
nance.
Now, I will carry you up to the
legislature, perhaps to-morrow, and I
will show you a code of laws applica
ble to wine. It is infamous. I will
take you down into the byways of the
city, and I will show you here and
there perhaps a score of standing and
terrible instances of suffering. You
shall listen to the story until your
heart bleeds, and every word shall be
true, and every technical objection to
a remedy brought by lawyers and
business men shall be sound honest
opposition. It can’t be otherwise:
every one of them. I will walk
through the streets of this city, and I
will show you perhaps one hundred
instances, and we might count up
more than one hundred instances, of
extreme suffering, of terrible agony,
of absolute sacrifice of wife and child
to the law; but there it stands on the
statute-book with one hundred men
working against it. The legislature is
full and the community is full of
heedlessness ; one is making money,
another is studying Greek sixteen
hours a day; another is finishing a
picture that shall rival Raphael’s ;
another is writing poetry whose me
135
lody and pathos shall touch our
heart; another is planning a machine
that shall carry a million of men
twice as fast as the railroad and
twice as cheap; and you say to every
one of them, Here is a case of atro
cious suffering. “ Well,” they say,
“ undoubtedly, but the general rule is
good, the general law is all right;
this is an exceptional case; in the
average, society is wise.” I say,
Christianity knows no average of in
justice. I don’t want your general
laws; I don’t want your atheistic
Lord Coke telling me it is better a
law should be certain than that it
should be just. I say, in the pre
sence of the New Testament, every
human being is sacred and infinitely
precious. And the intelligence, the
sagacity, and the Christianity of this
community, instead of building more
railroads, painting more pictures, and
piling up more millions, is bound to
find out a way by which this general
law shall not result in individual
agony. (Applause.) I don’t believe
in general averages ; I don’t believe
in grinding up ten men in order that
nine hundred and ninety may be very
happy. I don’t believe in a general
rule that may be good, and may be
bad ; and in the mean time there are
one hundred terrible sufferings. What
I allege is, that Christianity has no
right to be making money, getting
wfise, and getting refined ; art and
the other achievements of the human
intellect are all good, I have nothing
to say against them ; but I had a
mortgage on you before ; you were
bound to me before you studied
Greek ; I have a mortgage on you in
the name of your Creator, and the
mortgage is that suffering brother
who does not know how to walk.
�136
Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
Let us take another illustration.
There are some children ; they are
wandering through the streets ; they
are not brought up, they are dragged
up ; they are ignorant and filthy;
they are half-clad and neglected.
You take them and put them into so
ciety; you shield them, hide them in
homes of good influence. I protest
against it. If it was a poor and nar
row or limited community just grap
pling with the means of support, I
would say, “ Ah! you did your best.”
But here are a quarter of a million
of men and women ; they are all
comfortable, all intelligent; they are
most of them in easy circumstances,
and a large portion don’t know what
to do. I will tell them what to do.
They should not break up that fami
ly ; they are bound to go to that un
worthy home; they are bound to put
those children right under the hands
of father and mother. God meant
to have them there as the best motive
to elevate that father and mother and
hold on to them. They should never
shield them by deputy; they should
shield them, and the father and
mother too. They have no right to
abstract that element of the family’s
growth, to save that portion and let
the rest float where it pleases among
the refuse timber of society.
Here is another illustration. There
is a lot of young men strolling up and
down the town, floating this way and
that, with no purpose, and very little
to do, with little helm and no sheet
anchor—a few public-spirited men
club together, raise $100,000, and
they build a gorgeous building and
call it a Young Men’s Christian Insti
tution. They fling open its doors,
and they say, Here is gas and fire, and
shelter, and books, and companion-
ship and prayer. This is the way in
which we are going to catch hold of
this floating mass and save it. That is
Christianity. It has funded $100,000
in the effort. It has set up a banner,
and said, “ Come here, come to this
point, and I will help you.” Selfish
ness sets up a grog-shop at the corner
of every street, lights its gas, and can
dles, and its fire, provides its room,
and arrays its liquor. It does not
set up any banner, and say, “ Come
here;” it goes to them. It gets as
near to them as possible ; it sets up
so many open doors that the blindest
man could not help stumbling into
some of them. Selfishness says, “ I
will make money; I have got seventy
millions of dollars behind me ; I will
open a pitfall that shall bring these
means of coining gold out of vice in
to my hand ; it shall be impossible
that a young man shall take a step
that shall not step into my toils.”
Christianity says, “ Don’t you see how
I have got him ; don’t you see what
a sufficient standard I have set up ?
I have built a costly hall in a single
spot, and I have put an advertise
ment into the newspaper, and any
man that wants to can find out that
there is a hall lighted and warmed.”
Pshaw! do you call that Christian
wisdom ? I call it a sham and a skulk.
I want seventy millions of Christian
dollars that shall put an open house,
full of light, comfort, and companion
ship opposite every grog-shop in the
city. I want seventy millions of
Christian dollars that shall open a.
dance-house opposite every dance
house in Ann street, and make it a
moral and Christian, a saving and
refining roof, so that a boy shall not
be able to step his foot without as
equal chance of entering a Christian
�Ch ristian ity—L ectnre by Wendell Phillips.
refuge, as he has of entering a refuge
of the devil. Seventy millions of
dollars contributed in Boston by the
devil to open a house on every cor
ner, and $100,000 contributed by
Christianity to open one !
What made the civilization of to
day ? All the forces of human nature.
We have energy, and thrift, and am
bition, desire of wealth, desire of
comfort, desire of display, the wish
to show our ability—all that make
human nature ; and they have run
in the direction of material develop
ment. One man says, “ I will coin
increase out of goodanother says,
“I will coin it out of vice.” You
can not help it; you need not preach
to it; you might as well go and talk
to Niagara. Two hundred millions
of dollars in the city of New-York
standing behind ten thousand open
drinking saloons, brothels, and gam
bling hells, and you say, “ We will
publish tracts, we will preach in pul
pits, we will put half a million of dol
lars into the hands of patient men
and women, and they shall go round ;
meanwhile I, with sixty millions, will
build a railroad to San Francisco, and
double it, and I will build another to
the South Pole, and double mine
again ; and I will give you $100 to
establish a prayer-meeting at Five
Points.” You can’t fight the devil
with prayer-meetings ; because all
human nature is not covered by
prayer-meetings. It is good. Don’t go
away and say I said any thing against
prayer : I don’t; it is a good thing.
All is, the parchment is not broad
enough to cover the necessity.
Men say, “ There is the theatre ;
some of its employees are immoral;
and its lobbies are filled with tempta
tion and vice ; intemperance stands
137
on one side, and degradation on the
other; shut up your doors, and preach
against theatres.” Never! Give me
a million of dollars, and I will build
you a theatre that shall be pure from
corner-stone to cap-stone; there shall
be nothing in it but honorable and
healthful and indispensable contri
bution to the love of human nature
for imitation, for acting, for tragedy,
and comedy. If the genius of Booth
makes $100,000 by acting on a pol
luted stage, I will give him $200,000
to come and act on mine. (Applause.)
There is a newspaper. It us the
New-York Herald; it panders to every
low vice. You will exclaim against
it, but you waste your words. The
merchant says, “ The best news on
stocks I can get is here ; the keen
est insight I can get into politics
is here ; the most instinctive saga
city and judgment of American life
is hereso he swallows the immo
rality, and buys the intelligence.
Give me ten millions of dollars,
and let me countercheck the Herald
by columns which no business man
will dare to enter Wall street without
reading. And give me the Christian
men of Wall street. One man knows
railroads; another man knows cop
per ; a third knows Nevada; a fourth
knows cotton ; and a fifth some other
specialty, each one indispensable in
his own department. Does he make
$100,000 by hoarding his sagacity?
I will pay him $200,000 for putting
it into my columns. I don’t wish
to abuse the Herald; I don’t wish
to abolish immoral papers by sta
tute ; I will provide you one so
infinitely better if you will give
me this $200,000,000 of reserved
Christendom. The devil pours out
$200,000,000, and gets it; you don’t
�138
Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
bid high enough; it’s a pity you
don’t.
If you understand me, I claim that
all the moral, intellectual, material,
pecuniary forces in the hands of
Christianity should be brought into
an equal fight. Give up New-York,
and send a message to the powers at
Moscow for despotism to come and
rule the great city ? No! I send
word to the $500,000,000 in the
hands of Christian men, hoarded
up for their children, and I say, Give
me these ; and then I say, Give me
your personal presence. Your mil
lions are not enough. I want you ac
tually at the legislative lobby ; I want
you to go down with me into that
suffering street. But you say that
can’t be. It can. In the war time
you did it; every woman of you
either went down into the hospitals
or staid behind and held up the
hands of those who did. What
made the soldier so uncomplaining
who was clutched from this very
class that you can do nothing with
in the city ? You can not hold him
back from the State prison ; you can
not hold him back from the grog
shop ; you can not keep him back
from vice ? The testimony is, from
the lip of no wounded man was there
ever heard a curse in the presence of
woman ; from no agonized heart was
there ever heard a complaint. What
lifted that common humanity into
such a level ? Because all Christen
dom bent in the presence of that
nursing person over his crib. (Ap
plause.) Because he felt it was no
substitute that came down, paid to
do an agent’s work, to give him cha
rity. Because he felt that laid on
the same altar whpre he laid his
ife, was all the wealth and all the
heart of the broad North that he
left behind him ; that every woman’s
nature was working, every heart was
feeling, and every foot was swift to
come to his bedside. You left a
virtue, a self-control, an enthusiasm,
a self-devotion and purity, such as
other years can not equal. Go to
him in his own hut here in the same
way, not as a paid agent, but as a
Christian feeling just as much for
him who is the victim of a fiercer
war than the South ever waged, who
is wounded under a battery more bit
ter and destructive than General Lee
ever marshaled ; who needs just as
much your sympathy and your Chris
tianity to help him.
What I propose is, that you should
supplement law with all these great
forces of Christianity which are now
dissipated in every direction. I claim
that if you use them you can grapple
with this great social disorder; and
you can not grapple with it in any
other way. Social science will never
solve the problem. If you scrutinize
the elements that make up our life,
it has no panacea to offer you; the
only panacea is, that you have got to
fight the devil with his own weapons.
Suppose General Grant had said,
when Lee marshaled his troops from
Charleston west to Vicksburg, “ That
is very bad fighting ground; I am
not going down there ; I shall sta
tion myself at Chambersburg in
Pennsylvania, or I shall encamp
on the level prairies of Illinois;
and if General Lee comes up here,
I shall whip him.” We should have
said, “ That is not strategywe
should have said, “If you want to
crush the rebellion, follow it; if it
encamps at Vicksburg, confront it
there; if it exists in the marshes of
�Christian ity—L ecture hy Wendell Phillips.
Carolina, meet it there ; if it sur
rounds the rivers of Tennessee, as
sail it there. Wherever it goes, go
there to meet and fight it. Now,
here is the devil who is encamped
everywhere; he has got genius and
painting; he has got the press and
the theatre; he has got the dance
house, and he has got amusements ;
he has got every thing in his own
hands, and Christendom says, “What
a portentous power 1” with hundreds
of millions of dollars in his hands.
Christendom says, Here is a sys
tem of railroads, which cobwebs the
continent, marries the ocean; we
can’t do without it. The civiliza
tion of the nineteenth century de
mands it; the empire can not go on
without its facility. At the same
time, there is not energy and brain
and discipline and business talent
enough to run it in the service of
the church. The church has not
bred virtue enough to run it; only
the devil has bred brains enough
to run a railroad system. The
consequence is—and every busi
ness man within these walls knows
it—that there is not integrity and
virtue enough in this -American
people, bred of its present phase of
Christianity, to run its railroads ho
nestly. That the men at the head
of the great movement, at the focus,
with hand firm enough, and brain
strong enough to guide the machine,
are not contented with salaries, they
must steal. It can not be hindered.
It is a demoralizing example, and its
influence radiates into all quarters.
Social science says enlightened self
ishness dictates honesty. New-York
replies, “ That may be true, when you
take in the breadth of a century; but,
to-day, enlightened selfishness, mea
139
sured by thirty years in this metro
polis, dictates rascality; we can make
more money by that, gain more es
teem, stand on a higher pedestal,
can mould our time more certainly;
hereafter, in the long run, measuring
humanity from Luther into the next
century, honesty may be the best po
licy, but to-day rascality is the best.”
What will you do ? You may wait a
century or a century and a half, and
the gradual unfolding of the moral
sense of forty millions of people may
elevate human ability up to the level
of honesty enough to grapple with
the concentrated capital of the day.
I have no lack of faith that it will
be so. But if you want it before that
time; if you want it to-day; if you
want these examples removed from
the contemplation of your children,
you have got to find somewhere
Christian men, religious men, men
with moral purpose, able men, her
culean in brain and hand, who will
be ready to say, “ I see that sink, I
see that portentous example, I see
that cancer spreading its rottenness
through the whole business body;
and I will undertake to manage this
great forty millions of railroads for
nothing; I give you my ability for
the sake of the example; I contri
bute that to the Christian influences
of to-day.”
You disbelieve in it; you are smil
ing at it. Why, George Washing
ton did that, and he was not a model
Christian. He managed thirteen
States in a great war, and he never
took a penny of pay. A mere French
patriot said of the moral sense of his
day, “I lay myself on the altar of
three millions of people in order to
teach you how the public may be
served.” Then I say to you there
�140
Christianity—Lectiire by Wendell Phillips.
ought to be a Christian millionaire
to-day, who, stepping out of the ranks
of private emolument, should say to
the forty million power, “Give me
those funds, and I will return you
every penny. If the way opens for
ten millions of development, it shall
be all yours. I serve you, not from
ambition; I stand there, not from
greed, but simply to show you that
there is a power in Christianity that
is ready to make a sacrifice, as there
is in the devil’s ranks.” You disbe
lieve it. That is the chill of the hour.
You don’t even believe in the possi
bility of virtue. You can not con
ceive of a man thirty years old going
down into State street, who, after
spending two days for himself, being
what is considered a childish old
woman philanthropist, spends the
other four in serving his kind. You
don’t believe it. The men who have
done it in our day, and I could name
half a dozen of them, you know were
called weak-minded and bettyish, and
contempt has covered their memory.
You not only want one, you want the
whole; you never will grapple with
your day until you do it. Under
neath you is surging this immense
power of human vice; all the hither
to uncalculated and uncalculable
energies of the human race in this
utterly unfettered stage of its de
velopment, are turned into the great
channel of each man doing the best
for himself materially; and then men
open their eyes wide and say, I am
astonished ; how rotten our civiliza
tion is. What did the Master mean
when he saw the tax-gatherer, and
said, “ Come, follow me;” when one
brother came and said, “ Let me go
and divide the possession,” “ Come,
follow me;” and when another said,
“ Let me go and bring my father.”
“ Come, follow me” ? It didn’t mat
ter, the necessity nor the exactness
of the demand, it was, “ Come, fol
low me.” Running through the stu
dio and study, through office and
mart, through legislative hall and
the streets, is still that cry, “ Come,
follow me.” I want not your “ Amen,”
I want not your substitute, I don’t
want your ten per cent—I want you.
Go up to yonder legislature in a man
ner that will sweep away injustice in
a moment; let the whole community
stand in front of the court and say,
You can not decree injustice. You
must fight the devil with his own
weapons. Don’t let him put a pick
et down there, unless you put one
right opposite to him. If he sets
up one establishment, set up another.
Don’t retire before him; don’t be
frightened; don’t say we have not
enough; you can outbid him, you
can overwhelm him. You can gather
round you such attractions that, in
ninety-nine cases out of one hundred,
you will carry the day; the one hun
dredth you must leave to God. But
in the vast majority of cases you will
carry the day. Don’t fight him by
force of arms; don’t make laws
against him; don’t abuse him; don’t
endeavor to curb him ; give him the
greatest freedom possible ; fight him
with ideas; fight him with attractions;
fight him with greater inducements ;
meet him, and stand toe to toe, hand
to hand; if he pours out a dollar,
pour out two; if he sets up a dance
house at Five Points, don’t set up a
prayer-meeting next to him, set up a
dance-house next to him. Meet him
with the same weapons; address your
selves to the same element of human
nature, grapple with the same power
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Christianity
Creator
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Phillips, Wendell
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: [129] -140 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Standard, vol. I, no. 3, July 1870. Article incomplete. Printed in double columns.
Publisher
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The Standard
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1870
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G5836
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Christianity
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Christianity), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Christianity
Conway Tracts
-
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Text
NOTTING HILL
PHILANTHROPIC
SOCIETY.
I
Jfiftoitlj Annual Jitjjjri.
NOTTING HILL:
PRINTED BY J. WAKEHAM, 4, BEDFORD TERRACE.
1870.
�,:
3TTAW .-iM
—i^dc'_■ ■ ■_ ■
■
'■
.3B4
'- .'i’i
�NOTTING HILL
This Society is established for the purpose of afford ■
ing temporary Relief to the deserving Poor residing in
the Ward of Notting Hill.
The Tickets given are (except in special cases) for
Meat, Bread, Coals, or Grocery, and are distributed by
the Visitors of the Society only.
LIST OF VISITORS*
—:------- --------------
District.
1 Campden Street .
,
2 Peel Street
3 Rabbit Row, and Edge
Terrace .
4 Kensington Place .
5 Dartmoor Street, West of
Johnson Street .
6 Dartmoor Street, East of
Johnson Street .
7 Ernest Street
8 William Street and John
son Street
9 Farm Street
10 St. James Street .
;
11 New Street
12 Uxbridge Street, West of
Johnson Street .
T
Visitors.
Mr. BOSANQUET, 8, Lansdowne Road.
Mr. WAKE HAM, Bedford Terrace.
Mr. BURDEN, West Mall.
Mr. BAWDON, 19, Silver Street.
Mr. RUSSELL, 103, High Street.
Mr. SWEET, 1 Dartmoor Street.
Mr. WATTS, 131, High Street.
Mr. LUCAS, 10, Johnson Street.
Mr. A. LANGMAN, 21, St. Ann’s Road.
Mr. T. B. LANGMAN, 7a, Farm Street.
Mr. GOODMAN, 28, High Street.
Mr. PARKHOUSE, 20, Devonshire Terrace,
�4
13 Uxbridge Street, East of
Johnson. Street .
14 Bulmer Place
,
15 Pelham Terrace and Mews
16 Portobello Road, South of
Archer Street, and adja
cent Mews
.
17 Portobello Road, west side
South of Cornwall Road,
North of Archer Street .
18 Portobello Road, east side
South of Cornwall Road
North of Archer Street .
19 Western Terrace .
20 Bolton Road
21 Lonsdale Road
22 Ledbury Road, and mews
• adjacent .
23 Portobello Road, North of
Cornwall Road, and ad
jacent Mews
24 District North of Lancas
ter Road, East of Porto
bello Road and West of
St. Luke’s Road .
25 Prince’s Road
26 Prince’s Place
27 St. James’ Place .
28 Queen’s Place, Charles
Street, Phoenix Place,
and Royal Mews
29 St. Catherine’s Rd., West
of Union Street .
30 Union Street
31 St. Catherine’s Road, East
of Union Street .
32 William Street, Norlands .
33 Portland Road (east side)
84 Portland Road (west side)
35 Heathfield Street .
36 Thomas Street, Bird’s Cot
tages, Warwick Place,
Mary’s Place, James St.
37 St. Ann’s Road North,
Green’s Row, and Cres
cent Street
Mr. BUTLER, 71, High Street.
Mr. HARVEY, 92, High Street.
Mr. INGLIS H, Albert Terrace.
Mr. JOHNSTON, Oxford Terrace.
Mr. RENDELL, Buckingham Terrace.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
MASCALL, 44, Archer Street.
H. TAYLOR, 39, Ledbury Road.
CANNON, 4, St. George’s Road.
SELWAY, 140, Lancaster Road.
Mr. BALDING, 32, Ledbury Road.
Mr. SCOLES, 6, Bassett Terrace.
Mr. ASHFOLD, 4, Carnarvon Terrace.
Mr. WARREN, Prince’s Road.
Mr. COLEMAN, 18, Prince’s Road.
Mr. CORKHILL, Prince’s Road.
Mr. BARLEY, Addison Road North.
Mr. B. ABRAMS, St. Ann’s Road.
Mr. L. ROWDEN, 89, Prince’s Road.
Mr. PEGDEN, Union Street.
Mr. J. H. WOOD, 16, Union Street.
Mr. TIMSON, 1, Clarendon Place.
Mr. ASHDOWN, 155, Portland Road.
Mr. LONG, 2, Clarendon Place.
Mr. HOOD, James Street, Potteries.
Mr. JONES, 1, St. Ann’s Road North.
�5
George Street
Kenilworth Street
Walmer Terrace .
Canterbury Road .
FoweU Street J
Talbot Road and Mews
adjacent
44 St. George’s Road, and
St. Mark’s Terrace
45 District bounded by Brainley, Silchester, and Lan
caster Roads
46 Testerton
Street, and
Hurstway Street.
47jWalmer Road and adja
cent Streets
48 Blechynden Street
49 Manchester Street
50 Martin Street and Station
Street
51 Kensal Green (such portion
as lies within the Parish
of Kensington) .
38
39
40
41
42
43
Mr. LEWIS, St. Ann’s Road North.
Mr. BAKER, Stoneleigh Street.
Mr. BOALER, 134, Clarendon Road.
Mr. VOAKE, 166, Clarendon Road.
Mr. SQUIRRELL, 171, Clarendon Road.
Mr. WYATT, Cambridge Villa, St. Mark’s Rd.
Mr. J. BENNETT, 154, Lancaster Road.
Mr. W. C. BARBER, 172, Lancaster Road.
Mr. WRIGHT, Hurstway Street.
Mr. H. CROSSE, 170, Clarendon Road.
Mr. BROWN, 268, Lancaster Road.
Mr. BURROUGH, 17, Silchester Terrace.
Mr. JENKINSON, Blechynden Street.
Mr. BROOME, 62, Southam Street, Kensal
Green.
Signed Hospital and Dispensary Letters may be sent to the
Treasurer, who will gratefully acknowledge them, and see that
they are given with discrimination to the sick poor.
The Subscribers may refer deserving cases of temporary distress
and sickness to the Visitor, in whose district the person resides
(a list of which is printed above.)
Funds are urgently needed, in consequence of the extension of
the operations of the Society into the poorest parts of Notting Hill.
Donations will be thankfully received by the Treasurer, Mr. R.
Harvey, 92, High Street, Notttng Hill; Mr. Timson, Secretary,
1, Clarendon Place; Mr. Parkhouse, Collector, 20, Devonshire
Terrace; or by any member of the Committee,
�6
COMMITTEE FOR THE ENSUING YEAR.
President, J. E. GRAY, Esq., 4, Linden Grove.
Treasurer, Mr. R. HARVEY, 92, High Street.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
B. ABRAMS.
ASHDOWN.
ASHFOLD.
BAKER.
BALDING.
BARLEY.
BAWDON.
J. BENNETT.
BOALER.
BOOTY.
BOSANQUET.
BROOME.
BROWN.
BURDEN.
BURROUGH.
BUTLER.
CANNON.
CHAPMAN.
CHURCH.
COLEMAN.
COLLEY.
CORKHILL.
H. CROSSE.
GOODMAN.
HOBBS.
HOOD.
INGLISH.
JENKINSON.
JOHNSTON.
JONES.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
MrMr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
T. B. LANGMAN.
A. LANGMAN.
LEWIS.
LIDWELL.
LONG.
LUCAS.
MaSCALL.
MINTER.
PARFITT.
PEGDEN.
F. RADFORD.
RENDELL.
L. ROWDEN.
RUSSELL.
SCOLES.
SHORT.
SELWAY.
SPALDING.
SQUIRELL.
SWEET.
G. TAYLOR.
H. TAYLOR.
VOAKE.
WAKEHAM.
WARREN.
WATTS.
WILLIAMS.
WRIGHT.
WOOD.
WYATT.
With power to add to their number.
Secretary, Mr. TIMSON, 1. Clarendon Place.
Collector, Mr. PARK HOUSE, 20, Devonshire Terrace.
�THE ANNUAL MEETING
OF
THE NOTTING HILL
PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETY
WAS HELD AT
ST.
PETER’S
SCHOOL
ROOM,
ON
TUESDAY EVENING-, DECEMBER 14^, 1869.
REV. J. ROBBINS, D.D.,
ITT
THIS
CHAIR.
THE FOLLOWING REPORT WAS ADOPTED AT AN ADJOURNED
MEETING.
The number of Cases relieved during the past year
is calculated at 2160.
The Society has now, after a gradual development
during 15 years, assumed the form of a well-organized
system for the relief of temporary distress.
Its operations, as shown by the Secretary’s books
from year to year, have been productive of some sub
stantial results.
Far more extensive good may be anticipated from
a generous support of its admitted claims.
The Committee would earnestly press upon the
great body of their fellow tradesmen throughout the
area of the Ward of Notting Hill, the vital importance
of securing a faithful band of Visitors, who, acting in
harmony with them, will by personal visitation of the
homes of the poor, and by using every available
�means of inquiry, exercise the most careful discrim
ination in their distribution of relief, so as to detect
imposture and encourage industry.
During the past year, the Meetings of the Society
were, with the consent of the Incumbents, held in the
School Room of St. John’s, on the 8th of January; at
St. Clement’s, February 12th; St. James’s, February
26th; St. George’s, March 9th; St. Peter’s, March
23rd; All Saints’, April 13th; St. Mark’s, May 14th.
This was done with a view to a closer co-operation
with the clergy, and the diffusion through the several
districts of the Ward of a wider knowledge of the
principles, objects, and organization of the Society.
The Committee trust that this plan has produced
the effect desired, and that full confidence is felt in
the Society, as a valuable agency for grappling with
some at least of those difficulties which pauperism
presents.
Its future success depends, under God, upon the
support it receives, the spirit in which it is worked,
and the intelligence and energy with which its opera
tions are carried on.
The Committee appeal to the public, not so much
upon the ground of work done, of which they acknow
ledge the defects, as from a desire to be able to meet
promptly the urgent call for renewed efforts which
the fluctuating condition of the poor is increasingly
making, from .want of employment and depression
of trade.
�9
From the displacement of the poor, the neighbour
hood of the Potteries is densely populated by a class
of persons who have to struggle hard for existence;
and severe are the trials to which many are reduced,
whose sufferings might at least be lightened by timely
relief judiciously given through Visitors who, by
close contact with them, will learn their true history
and sympathize with their wants.
It appears to the Committee that the ultimate
object of the Philanthropic Society should be to
lower the Rates by elevating the poor.
The accomplishing of this end is obviously retarded
by a system of relief indiscriminately administered to
the dependent pauper and the industrious labourer.
The first is a fit subject if hopelessly reduced for
parochial relief, or emigration. The second, suffering
from temporary or accidental causes, is encouraged,
by timely assistance, to recover his position of manly
independence and self support.
The Committee are well aware that, with the best
intentions on their part, and the greatest discrimina
tion on the part of the Visitors, the immediate results
of the Society’s work may disappoint the sanguine,
and perhaps shake the faith of its supporters in its
utility.
The best answer they can give to such waverers
is, redoubled exertions to stem the tide of pauperism
which is flowing in so rapidly, while they remind
their friends at the same time that, if their means are
�10
crippled, their action must be relatively feeble and
ineffectual.
Since the last Annual Meeting a new Society for
organising charitable relief, and repressing mendicity
has been formed, the Earl of Lichfield being chairman
of the Committee, a branch of which has been intro
duced into this parish.
The plan proposed is to establish a Charity Office
in a central position in the Parish, at which office a
Committee, consisting of the representatives of the
various parochial and charitable agencies, and Metro
politan local Relief Societies, ministers of all denomi
nations, Poor-Law Guardians, and others, is to meet
weekly.
The Committee of this Society think that every
information and countenance should be given to the
requirements of the above Society so far as refers to
the Ward of Notting Hill.
�LIST OF SUBSGBIBEBS,
1869—70.
£ s. d.
5 0 0
16, Mr. S. C. Kingston...
1
1
0
3, Mr. J. Chapman
1
1
0
20, Mrs. Johnson
0 10
0 10
AUBREY HOUSE.
Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P.
0
0
17, Dr. E. H. Vinen
CAMPDEN HIDE ROAD. £ 3. d.
THE LODGE.
0 5
0
0 5
0
CASTLE TERRACE.
Mr. R. T. Swain
ADDISON ROAD.
...
CHEPSTOW PLACE.
80, Mr. Stroud L. Cocks
ADDISON TERRACE.
2, Mrs. Chadwick
2, Miss Chadwick
0 10 0
...
CHEPSTOW VILLAS.
0 5 0
...
CLARENDON PLACE.
1, Mr. W. T. Timson
ARCHER STREET.
Mr. W. Hickman
0
5
0
0
1
00
0
1
2
10
1
10
5
10
0
6
0
0
6
0
0
0
CLARENDON
ARUNDEL GARDENS.
9, Mr. JI R. Christie
17, Mrs. Col. Harriott ...
18, Sir E. Hilditch
20, Rev. E.K. Kendall,M. A.
31, Lt.-Gen. G. Tomkyns
33, Mr. H. Methold
34, Mr. H. Brady
0 0
1
...
0
ROAD.
38, Mr. D. Aston
... 0 10 0
78, Mr. J. R. Faulkner 0 5 0
134, Mr. W. Boaler
...050
166, Mr. Voake ...
... 0 10 0
170, Mr. EE. Crosse
...0 5 0
170, Mrs. EE. Crosse
...0 5 0
197, Mr. J. Powter
... 0 5 0
CODRINGTON TERRACE.
BATH PLACE.
3, Mr. C. Greenway
0 10 0
4, Mr. J, Boyer
...110
COLVILLE TERRACE EAST.
BEDFORD GARDENS.
54, Mr. R. Phillips
66, Misses Codd
...
...
0 10 0
o 2 6
14, Mrs. Audain
0 5
0
0 10
...
0
DARTMOOR STREET.
1, Mr. T. Sweet..............
BERESFORD TERRACE.
10, Mrs. Wright
BRUNSWICK
...
0
5 0
31, Rev. G. Bennett, M.A.
DAWSON PLACE.
1
0
12, Mr. W. Eade
...110
14, Capt. H. Shuttleworth 110
18, Mrs. Tucker
... 0 10 0
1 *1
0
5,
GARDENS.
1
BRUNSWICK TERRACE.
4, Mr. C. B. P. Bosanquet
DENBIGH TERRACE.
BUCKINGHAM TERRACE.
5, Mrs. Adey
...
0
5 0
DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.
2 2 0
£17 17
Mr. J. Couzens
6
4, Mr. S. Elborn
...050
£27 5
6
�12
£
ELGIN CRESCENT.
36, Mr. S. Fowler
76, Miss Back ..............
s. d.
0 5 0
0 2 6
JOHNSON STREET. £
Mr. D. Lucas
*.
d.
0 10 6
...
KENSINGTON PALACE GARDENS.
ELGIN ROAD.
27, Mr. J. L. Bolding ...
0 10
6
5, Mr. B. E. Green
..110
26, Mr. J. Heywood, F.R.S. 110
EUSTON ROAD.
KENSINGTON PARK GARDENS.
63, Mr. C. Jennings
0 5 0
FARM STREET.
7a, Mr. T. B. Langman
0 5 0
GEORGE STREET.
8, Mr. E. Draisey
0 10
0
0 5
1 1
0
0
HANOVER TERRACE.
4, Miss Seward
18, Miss Raymond
3, Mr. R; Michell
6, Mr. H. F. Letchworth
7, Gen. Hon. Sir O. Gore,
G.C.B.
15, Dr. E. L. Bryan
16, Mr. P. Pittar
18, Mr. W. Clarke
23, Mr. H. W. Jewesbury
41, Mrs. Dunbar
42, Mr. J. Baillie
42, Miss Mowbray
46, Mr. J. S. Scott
1 1
0 5
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
6
5
1
1
1
10
10
1
5
2
HIGH STREET, KENSINGTON.
26 and 27, Mr. E. Ball...
0 10
0
HIGH STREET, NOTTING HILL.
15, Mr. J. Short
0
32, Mr. G. A. Norris
0
34, Mr. G. ¥. Sharpe ... 0
36, Mr. C. Klein
0
46, Mr. R. Spalding
0
48, Mr. H. Long
1
50, Mr. J. R. Bilton
0
60, Mr. W. Austin
0
71, Mr. G. Butler
0
77, Mr. F. W. Fricker ... 0
78, Mr. F. J. Hibbitt ... 0
92, Mr. R. Harvey
1
105 & 107, Mr. J. Minter 1
109, Mr. J. E. Horwell... 0
129 & 131, Mr. G. N. Watts 0
130, Mr. J. E. Lidwell... 0
133, Mr. J. E. Miller ... 0
136, Mr. C. B. Hammond 1
137 & 139, Mr. W. Booty 0
141 & 143, Messrs. R. H.
and J. Pearson
1
10
10
5
5
10
0
10
5
5
10
10
1
0
5
10
10
5
0
10
0
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
6
0
0
0
6
6
0
0
0
1
0
2
1
10
10
10
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
5
1
10
10
10
2
2
0
0
0
0
6
0
0
6
6
1 1 0
1 1 0
0 5 0
LADBROKE GARDENS.
3,
10,
11,
14,
Mr. H. T. Parker
Mrs. Punch
Mr. J. S. Torr
Mr. S. Magnus
- .. 0 10 6
..0 2 6
.. 0 10 0
..11 0
LADBROKE PLACE WEST.
..
1
1
0
... 0 10 6
...10 0
1, Mr. W. Bartlett
0 5
2, Mrs. Huggins
0 5
10, Mr. J. Kirkman
1 0
14, Mr. A. Maclure
0 5
1 0
20, Mrs. Rendall
26, Mr. J. D. Drakesford 0 5
1 0
29, Mr. B. Tomkins
0 5
32, Mrs. Child
33, Mr. J. Mylne
0 10
0
0
0
0
o
0
0
0
0
£48 7 0
£74 13
6
7, Miss Legrew
LADBROKE SQUARE.
HOLLAND PARK.
Messrs. W. and F. Radford 2
1a, Mr. J. H. Browne ... 1
28, Rev. W. H. Jervis ... 0
31, Mrs. Watson
0
31, Mr. T. C. Watson ... 0
HORBURY CRESCENT.
8, Dr. C. Steggall
16, Mrs. Sconce
KENSINGTON PARK ROAD.
10, Mr. J. Hobbs
12, Mr. W. Coats
36, Mr. G. E. Hicks
...
40, Mrs. Wilson
44, Mrs. Hall
52, Mr. G. N. Emmet ...
54, Miss Fox ...
66, Dr. H. Goodday
82, Miss Dyer
82, Miss Jerrard
St. Peter’s Vicarage, Rev.
J. Robbins, D.D. ...
152, Mr. G. Taylor
158, Mr. W. Church ...
�13
34, Mr. C. S. Fowler
39, Mr. R. R. Ottley
41, Maj.-General W.
White ...
’
£ s. d.
... 0 10 0
... 2 0 0
G.
... 0 10 0
LANSDOWNE TERRACE, UPPER.
1, Mr. J. A. Mello
5, Mr. J. T. Renton
...
...
110
0 10 0
LEDBURY ROAD.
LADBROKE TERRACE.
4, Mr. W. Patrick
...
6, Mrs. Farrance
Wilby House
„
Mrs. R. Cocks
„
Mr. R. Cocks
11 Mr. A. Bourne
0 10
0 10
0
6
1
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
32, Mr. J. Balding
... 0
39, Mr. H. Taylor
... 0
42, Mr. J. Burrough
... 0
49, Mr. S. Caplin
...0
Ditto
(2nd don.) 0
5
10
5
5
5
0
0
0
0
0
LINDEN GROVE.
4, Mr. J. E. Gray
...110
LANCASTER ROAD.
140, Mr. J. Selway
...0 5 0
NORLAND PLACE.
11, Mrs. Langford
0 10 0
...
LANSDOWNE CRESCENT.
St. John’s Lodge, Rev. J.
P. Gell, M.A.
2, Mrs. Piggott
3, Mrs. Banbury
4, Mr. E. Barnett
5, Mr. J. E. Armstrong
6, Miss Hodges
12, Mr. G. F. Cooke
...
22, Mrs. Colonel Hill ...
22, Mr. J. R. R. Godfrey
25, Mr. A. W. Langdon...
37, Mr. W. Ackland
40, Mr. R. 01 drey
43, Mr. W. H. Saltwell. .
NORLAND SQUARE.
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
10
10
5
5
10
2
10
10
10
2
10
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
6
6
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
5
5
10
10
1
5
2
5
10
5
2
10
5
5
5
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
22, Rev. T. P. Holdich,
M.A. ...
...0
5 0
NOTTING HILL SQUARE.
8, Mrs. Fletcher
... 0
15, Mrs. Jennings
... 0
18, Mr. J. L. Boothby ...3
5 0
2 6
0 0
NOTTING HILL TERRACE.
1, Mr. W. Hine
5, Mr. O. Stephens
15, Mrs. Bescoby
19, Mr. E. C. Cosway
27, Miss Walker
... 1 1 0
... 0 10 0
... 1 1 o
... 0 10 0
... 0 5 0
LANSDOWNE ROAD.
4, Mrs. Hall
4, Miss Hall
16, Mr. H. S. Tabor
...
18, Miss Markland
19, Mr. H. W. Ravenscroft
22, Mr. T. Daniel
25, Mrs. Allnutt
27, Mr. R. Green
30, Miss Shorland
36, Mr. E. C. Buckland...
41, Mrs. Robertson
42, Mr. A. J. Wright ...
49, Miss Wales
53, Mr. J. Noyes
65, Mr. H. W. Trinder ...
75, Rev. T. Wilkinson ...
LANSDOWNE TERRACE.
4,
7,
9,
LI,
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
J. P. Woodhouse
A. Wilson
J. Vigne
T. Jacomb
1
1
0
1
1 0
1 0
5 0
1 0
£48 7 0
PALACE' GARDENS VILLAS.
18, Mrs. Williamson
1
0
0 2
6
1
...
PELHAM TERRACE.
2, Mr. W. Rawson
...
PEMBRIDGE CRESCENT.
14, Miss Manfred
23, Mr. C. Johnson
...
...
0 10 0
1 . 1 0
PEMBRIDGE GARDENS.
4, Mrs. Brockell
0 10
11, Mr. H. Laver
0 10
13, Mr. H. Washbourne 0 10
14, Mr. W. Gilbert
1 0
15, Capt. W. W. Ross ... 1 0
16, Dr. W. Bruce Joy ... 0 10
19, Mr. J. Reynolds
1 0
23, Mrs. Gordon
0 5
26. Mr. G. J. Cavafy ... 1 0
1 1
30, Mrs. Macdonald
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
£74 13 6
�14
£ a. d.
...
£ a. d.
STANHOPE TERRACE.
0 10 0
1, Mr. J. Broadbridge...
PEMBRIDGE PLACE.
14, Mr. T. Ray
0
2 6
PEMBRIDGE SQT7ARE.
23,
25,
28,
29,
30,
Mr. J. W. Brown ...
Mr. Churchill
Mr. J. Nathan
Dr. J. H. Gladstone,
F.R.S.
Mr. J. M. Hill
Mr. M. Zarifi
Mrs. Wilder
Mr. A. Bonar
Mr. H. G. Wolrige ...
20,
32,
38,
45,
52,
Mrs. Monkhouse
Mr. A. Rowlands
Miss Wormaid
Mrs. Evans
Miss Gowring
6,
9,
11,
17,
1 0 0
1 1 0
0 10' 0
1
0
1
1
0
1
1 0
10 6
0 0
1 0
10 0
0 0
1
0
1
0
0
0 0
5 0
1 0
5 0
10 0
0 10
0 2
6
0
0
0
STANLEY TERRACE.
0
6
6
4, Mr. Blockley
0
0
0
0
10 0
5 0
10 6
2 6
TABERNACLE TERRACE.
PORTOBELLO TERRACE.
5, Mr. W. Wheatley ...
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0 2
0 5
0 5
5, Miss Coats
...
15, Mr. G. C. Bompas ...
26 & 27, Miss Jolly
...
4, Dr. Waggett
10, Mrs. Adams
11, Mr. J. S. Adams
14, Miss Erck
PORTLAND ROAD.
100, Mr. W. Colley
146, Mr. R. Wells
■ —
10
10
5
1
5
10
5
5
10
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
STANLEY GARDENS.
PEMBRIDGE VILLAS.
...
STANLEY CRESCENT.
1, Mr. W. Mort.
2, Mr. C. H. Blake
4, Mrs. Grant
6, Mr. T. H. W. Anderson
9, Mr. W. Milliken
10, Mr. G. W. Johnson
12, Miss Lindars
13, Mrs. Knight
16, Mr. P. J. King
2
...
0
5
0
0
5
0
THE TERRACE.
st. Ann’s road.
21, Mr. A. H. Langman 0 5 0
4, Mr. W. Banting
...
VERNON TERRACE.
27, Miss Rendell
st. ann’s road north.
1, Mr. J. Jones
...
0 2 0
...
0 5 0
WESTERN TERRACE.
0 5
John’s gardens.
2, Miss Slater
... 0 10 0
23, Mr. Tanner
John’s road.
Mr. R. Roy
... 1
0
Mr. Burden
1
Mr. B. Bosanquet
0
A Friend
_______ ? x
A Friend, per Miss Codd 0
A Friend, per Mrs. Gordon 1
Mr. W. Hansard
0
st.
0
WEST MALL.
st.
1 0
st. Katherine’s road.
Mr. G. Pegden
... 0 4 0
st. mark’s
29, Mr. W. West
crescent.
...
0 10 O
SILVER street.
19, Mr. W. Bawdon
...
0 10 0
£134 5 0
3
10 0
1 0
10 6
5 0
1 0
2 6
£144 16 0
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�16
RULES.
1. A Donation or Annual Subscription to constitute Mem
bership.
2. A Committee, President, Treasurer, Secretary, Collector,
and Auditors to be elected annually.
3. Visitors to be appointed by the Committee.
4. The whole Ward of Notting Hill to be the area of the
Society’s operations.
5. Relief to be given only after personal inquiry, and
visitation at the homes of the" applicants.
6. All Subscribers to be at liberty to recommend cases to'
Visitors.
7. The Committee to meet once a fortnight during January,
February, and March, and at other times once a month: three
to be a Quorum.
8. The proceedings of the Committee to be regularly entered
in a Minute Book.
9. Every case relieved, with particulars as to number of
family, cause of distress, and any other procurable information,
to be recorded in a Register Book.
10. The Visitors to make returns to the Committee at their
weekly meetings of cases relieved; and to furnish information at
the end of the year, as to the working of the Society from their
own experience; their duty being to co-operate cordially with the
Clergy, and other ministers of religion, with District Visitors,
and all other existing agencies for charitable purposes.
11. The Annual Meeting to be held in December, at which
the Report and Balance Sheet are to be presented, and Officers
elected.
12. The Committee to bhave power to make bye-laws, but
not to alter rules.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Fifteenth Annual Report
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Notting Hill Philanthropic Society
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
J. Wakeham
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1870
Identifier
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G5377
Subject
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Philanthropy
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 (Fifteenth Annual Report), 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
Annual General Meetings
Annual reports
Conway Tracts
Notting Hill Philanthropic Society