1
10
94
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/566dca82e7ed492d6d9fbebc4380af01.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=uaS4jQChOppia4btrhGmJRW2be4dwtF2ufBgRbX3N0HItjqZM2ATkgIm-7aPKAlWHjW17ZnDXeYmXw7ueJ4jr4y3J12Ta%7ElQzspiZ7oGjQPIL4XBpVAA%7EuPpFQT2mRjEBL1ygRUoaNt6YDZK9xoUIFCG49AoLwuumSNLPoSzFK3fLeLe8ku4oahsXCoyxpFDGdjjnM8Eg6sYG6M3x%7EChsrdV0zSBSkakyzkkbBcwaW2nh5XHASC3H-q0Q7fFtmbKK71MV0%7E9gItt1sCALMkqd%7E4Q952Oy23YPJLNExwFAKA%7EFIKmDCVt5DWSXmm7a3IEWprCQBR%7EVnpHhW7nRsNE0g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
9c5c6fb6afda92d2917dc75af31078ab
PDF Text
Text
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.
�o
Crazy Chicago.
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
�Crazy Chicago.
3
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,
�4
Crazy Chicago.
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.
�Crazy Chicago.
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
�6
Crazy Chicago.
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
�Crazy Chicago.
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”
�Crazy Chicago.
9
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
�10
Crazy Chicago.
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,”
�Crazy Chicago.
11
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
�12
Crazy Chicago.
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
�14
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
�16
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
�18
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
�60
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
�"53E5«eB#!Sr.
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
�62
History of the Devil.
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,
�History of the Devil.
63
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
�64
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
�History of the Devil.
65
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
�66
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
�History of the Devil.
67
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
�68
History of the Devil.
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
�History of the Devil.
69
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
�70
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
�History of the Devil.
71
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
�72
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
�History of the Devil.
73
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
�74
History of the. Devil.
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
�History of the Devil.
75
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
�76
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-
�History of the Devil.
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
�78
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.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, November,1870, no. 1
Description
An account of the resource
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1870
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5448
Subject
The topic of the resource
Periodicals
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, November,1870, no. 1), 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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Devil
Religion
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/0e7d73ea073d34327d67ef93413eb264.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=cDXEg6BnqcIhD5c3Ezj3PtrkySeBZK%7EzbzdD-uzF6nZHb7Kv8z7yu5yRnDd7QhYlGI0p0lVheDngI92iKaXhuVEV5P5S1QL14EdHxhXwAtYJj7aeo3ItBtBIKaEoL9i%7Eg%7EfHLG3g3mZ%7E-lJDqVfOtR4Kyv%7EAo-bdov7i7OEdWb2Yvg5upvn5OJxCbU58IVJ-TaOrN75Xn4zBfNX7zFFk%7EWp30Syi2TCO9a2kTDPF9r7iKeNkqC5T6XBs8SU2GPQwTDK3b0n6BFONcu3zmDSeUGH5twRewIcHmFmjCYpNhRYUhShnDBhiRukyDZlFp1rohUBEFrRSkAUEpHpGNIRPxQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5a3864222eea7fe5b77e52dcced48e4c
PDF Text
Text
B 333#
N7M
THE
EASTERN QUESTION;
FROM A
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW.
Q
lecture
DELIVERED
SUNDAY
BEFORE
THE
LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 25th MARCH, 1877,
By Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
lEonbon :
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1877.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�Origin of the Eastern Question.
Constantine the Great.
State of Society in the East.
Believers and Heretics.
The Hierarchy and the different Christian Sects.
Dissension amongst Christians.
The Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches.
Homousion and Ilomoiusion.
Idolatry in the West; Iconoclasm in the East.
The Arabs.
Mahomet.
The Koran and its Tenets.
Crusades and Scholasticism.
Influence of the East on the West.
Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks.
Social and Religious Organization of Turkey.
Home Rule and Foreign Affairs. Arts and Sciences.
Position of Women in Turkey.
Christians, Jews, Greeks, and Turks.
Russia. The Cross and the Crescent.
Possibility of a Solution of the Eastern Question.
Conclusion.
�THE EASTERN QUESTION;
FROM A
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW.
HE Eastern Question has come upon us like a political and
intellectual thunderstorm. Thunderstorms in the
world,
Tlike those in the real, are produced by accumulationsidealacting and
of
counteracting electric or religious and social streams or currents.
The negative and positive electric currents rise up and concentrate,
some motion of air brings them into collision, and the storm with
its fierce lightnings and roaring thunder bursts out, often devasta
ting whole districts, but always purifying the air, and leaving
traces of a beneficial influence behind it. Eor more than a year
the thunderstorm of the “ Eastern Question ” has been raging
amongst us with the lightning of well-set, sensational phrases,
real or unreal atrocities, flashes of horrifying contradictory tele
graphic messages, reports of special, unspecial, “ our own,” and
“nobody else’s correspondents,” and the thunders of angry
pamphlets and platform speeches, delivered at boisterous indigna
tion meetings. East and West are one again, not in mutual love,
but in mutual hatred and animosity. There are people who would
like to see Cross and Crescent arrayed against one another in
deadly combat, and who would like to see the Turks leave Europe
at a moment’s notice with “ bag and baggage.”
What is this Eastern Question ? Has it been asked only
recently, or is it a historical problem, that has long stood before
the eves of Europe awaiting a solution ? How and when did this
Eastern Question arise ? Where and when did it originate ?
The Eastern Question began with Constantine the Great, when
he saw a burning cross hovering above the sun with the inscrip
tion “in hoc signo vinces ! ” (in this sign thou wilt conquer). The
same night, according to Bishop Eusebius, Christ appeared to
Constantine, and ordered him to have a banner made, bearing the
sign he had seen during the day, and assuring him that under this
banner (the labarum) he would conquer. It so happened that
Constantine disposed his troops with consummate skill, while his
�4
The Eastern Question; from a
adversary, Maxentius, occupied a very spacious plain, having the
Tiber in the rear of his army, which rendered retreat impossible.
The cavalry of Maxentius was composed of unwieldy cuirassiers,
or light Moors and Numidians, whilst Constantine had at his
disposal the vigour of splendid gallic horse “ which possessed
more activity than the one and more firmness than the other.”
The defeat of the hostile army was—in consequence of his better
tactics, and not in consequence of his dream and vision—complete.
Maxentius was driven into the Tiber, his head was cut oft’ and
publicly exposed, and Constantine became master of the Roman
Empire, after having put the two sons of Maxentius to death, and
extirpated his whole race. Constantine undoubtedly abolished the
Praetorian guards by the sword, deprived the Senate and people of
their dignities, exposed Rome to the insults or neglect of the
Emperors, and transferred the seat of the Roman Emperors to
Byzantium, which as Constantinople became from that time a new
Rome, and the centre point of the Eastern Question. Constantine
was an ambitious and genial character, as cunning as he was
generous, and as bigoted as he was cruel. He recognised in Chris
tianity a means for effectually destroying the old heathen world
(for monotheism stands so much nearer to “monodespotism ” than
polytheism), and exalting himself as omnipotent ruler on earth
and in heaven through the newr state religion.
The means he employed were not very Christian. He had his
own son, Crispus, executed on an unsupported charge brought
against him by his stepmother, Fausta; at the same time he
murdered his nephew, the son of Licinius ; and finally, convinced
of the groundlessness of the charge brought against his son, he
had his wife, Fausta, killed. Murder, superstition, visions,
dreams, apparitions, and sacred symbolic signs, mixed with
heathen ceremonies and a theocratic organization of the Church,
were the elements of which Constantine formed a new Christianity
in the East.
The Church suddenly raised to power soon arrogated to herself
infallibility, and assumed the terrible right of taliation, waging
sanguinary war against those who were not of her opinion.
Having the mighty arm of the lay power at her disposal, the
Church became by degrees omnipotent, and Christ’s simple teach
ing “ of a kingdom that is not of this world ” wTas used, to
found the most sanguinary Empire.
At the beginning of Christianity there were only loving com
munities that chose their own elders ; the communities increased,
�Religious and Social Point of View.
5
and overseers of the elders were found necessary; the overseers
again required patriarchs, and the patriarchs needed one above
them, the Bishop of Rome. This hierarchical crystallisation went
on gradually and slowly, became sterner and more powerful
through the increasing number of false prophets, mock-philosophers,
necromancers, Taumathurgi, miracle-workers, Egyptian priests of
Isis, Persian Magi, Jewish controversialists, and Greek casuists,
who all united to seek first, a living, and then a position, in order to
prosper through the credulity, superstition, and ignorance of the
masses. There was at that period a vast crowd of adventurers in
the East, who all traded in mystic doctrines, symbolic little
charms, incredible miracles, visions, dreams, and prophetic calcula
tions.
The Spiritualists abounded; they filled the market-places,
where they exhibited the most incredible feats before the eyes
of the gazing, wondering, and believing masses. In reading
history backwards, we may imagine what the effect of those
tricksters in supernatural wares must have been, when we find
in the nineteenth century, in spite of our advanced state of
civilization and learning, numbers of weak-minded men and
women, even of the better classes, who believe in any nonsense,
so soon as it is labelled “ supernatural.”
So long as the Church had no material support from the State,
Christianity spread through love and persuasion in spite of
competing miracle-workers, in spite of treachery, deceit and in
numerable incredibilities that hindered its progress amongst the
so-called educated classes. When Constantine took it up, and
lent it the imperial sword; when the tiaras and Mitres felt
themselves supported by the consuls, pro-consuls, magistrates,
lictors, and especially the executioners of the Roman Empire—
then the miracles ceased, and the supernatural became quite
natural. “ Woe” to any one who would have doubted that the
supernatural was not quite natural, and yet the dissensions
amongst the Christians, the heresies amongst the believers, and
the views the unbelievers took, were of an astonishing variety. But
the mighty State Church was equal to the terrible task which faith
imposed upon it. The massacres and executions of the unbelievers,
infidels, and heretics increased in a corresponding ratio with the
wealth and power, the sweet humility and self-abnegation of those
who styled themselves the followers of Christ. The unification of
the Christian Church, the purification of the different doctrines all
more or less tainted with abominable heresy, became the supreme
�6
The Eastern Question; from a
duty of the Church. It is a well-known and indisputable fact, that
after the death of Christ, his disciples dispersed, and formed nearly
as many sects as there were disciples.
There were the Gnostics, who most elaborately worked out the
theory of good and evil, of original sin and emanation, but they
could not see “ how the word became flesh,” and though they
believed Christ to be the Demiurgos, that is, an emanation of the
supreme Deity, they were extirpated as heretics in the sixth
century, a.d.
There were the Kerinthians, who could not see how any human
being could be born of a virgin ; they did not doubt that Joseph was
the father of Christ, but they could not believe in the resurrection
of Christ, and were extirpated in the sixth century, a.d.
The Ebionites objected to the genealogy of S. Matthew. Through
one of their leaders, Symmac, they propounded that Jesus was
never incarnate, that the Jews crucified one Simon the Kyerenian,
that Christ witnessed his own execution, ascended into heaven to
join his father, and was neither known by angels nor by men.
These theorists were extirpated in the sixth century, a d.
The Karpokratians believed in Christ as a superior human being,
endowed with a divine genius, but they disbelieved the resurrection
of the body, and they were extirpated in the sixth century, a.d.
The Cainists looked upon Judaism as full of immorality, and did
not believe that Christ could have come into the world to fulfil the
old law. They were also extirpated about the sixth century, a.d.
Marcion dared to teach that the gospels contradicted one another:
fortunately he founded no school, and when the authenticity of the
four gospels was settled by Church and State, there was no more
room for such wicked doubts.
The Alogians rejected the gospel of St. John, but were sacrificed
to that terrible error, and extirpated in the sixth century, a.d.
The Manicheans founded by Manes, who believed himself the
promised “Paraklitos” (St. John, xiv. 26), wished to bring harmony
into the comfortless teachings of the Gnostics and Zoroastrians, and
maintained a general return to God of all purified emanations.
Manes did not believe in the annihilation of matter, assuming it to
have been uncreated. This in itself was, of course, a most wicked
and erroneous assumption. Though Manes believed that Christ
and the Holy Ghost were sent into this world by God in order to
save humanity from the triumphant spirit of egotism, embodied in
Judaism and heathenism; though he himself and his followers led
a life of virtuous simplicity and ascetic self-denial, he was put to
�Religious and Social Point of View.
1
death 274 a.d., and his followers extirpated by fire and sword with
all possible love and kindness in the sixth century, a.d.
The Montanists, founded by Montanus, a Phrygian, who without
the permission of the Church believed himself, like Manes, to be the
promised “ Paraklitos,” professed Buddhistic tenets with the most
irreproachable vigour. “To renounce this world, was according to
Montanus, the duty of every free Christian, to live in God and to
rejoice in death his only aim.” lie proclaimed all knowledge and
earthly enjoyments as sinful. Until the sixth century, a.d., the
Montanists formed a special sect, but their tenets concerning the
duty of profound ignorance, and the sinfulness of all earthly en
joyments, found favour with the State Church, and they were kindly
received in the motherly bosom of Catholicism.
Arians, Novitians and Donatists fared no better than the others,
they were extirpated by fire and sword during the sixth century, a.d.
But the fathers and apologists, primitive writers and propounders
of Christianity, were not less numerous in their divergent opinions
with reference to tenets and dogmas, gospels and writings than
these sects. Simeon and Cleobius published works in the name of
Christ and bis Apostles. Eusebius published a letter from Christ
to King Abgarus, but Pope Gelasius declared this document a
forgery. A letter from the Virgin Mary to the inhabitants of
Messina is preserved in that town, dated Jerusalem, 42 a.d.
Though this was a clear forgery, a Jesuit, Inchofer, proved its
genuineness with great lucidity, and one must be obdurate indeed
not to be convinced by his proofs.
St. Justinus the martyr refers to certain documents relating to
Christ which must have been lost or voluntarily destroyed.
Tertullian mentions that Pontius Pilate sent the minutes of the
trial of Jesus of Nazareth or Bethlehem to the Emperor Tiberius,
who was so struck with the innocence of Christ that he ordered
the Senate to pay divine honours to the memory of Christ, which
the Roman Senate refused, not having been directly asked by those
concerned in the matter. It is scarcely necessary to mention that
this statement of things induced many pious forgers to write
reports in the name of Pilate. Gregory of Tours sternly believed
that he possessed the authenticated accounts of the miracles at the
death and the resurrection of Christ, just as Pilate sent them to
Tiberius. Scarcely had Christ expired on the cross with a prayer
for his enemies on his lips, when a host of forgers inundated the
world with descriptions and details of his private and public life.
S. Luke informs us “that many have taken in hand to set forth
�8
The Eastern Question; from a
those things which are most surely believed among us” (c. i. v. 1),
and notwithstanding that S. Mark and S. Matthew had written
their accounts, S. Ambrosius, Theophylaktes and other learned
commentators, assure us that this Evangelist only undertook to
write his gospel in order to counteract the great number of false
gospels, which S. Jerome finds too long to enumerate (ennumerare
longissimum esl). Origen, S. Ambrosius, S. Jerome and others,
mention a gospel of the twelve apostles: there were gospels of
S. Barnabas, S. Andrew, S. Bartholomew, S. Mathias, S. Peter
and S. James the younger; there were gospels of the Egyptians,
Hebrews, Nazarenes and a gospel of Truth. According to some,
there were some seventy and according to others about 146 in all.
With Constantine the Great, at last, some kind of harmony was
brought into the discordant spiritual life of the believing, but
disagreeing, Christians. This union was not fostered by persua
sion leading to conviction; but by the inexorable formula of old
Imperial Rome, that was suddenly enunciated in matters of faith.
The “ sic volo, sic jubeo ” of the episcopal majority at the council
of Nicea brought about union, but at the same time the most
sanguinary dissension between the Western and Eastern Churches.
They both agreed in the persecution of so-called heretics, who
could not at once detach themselves from the ancient holy books,
holy dogmas, and holy symbols which they had received on trust
from those who had stood so much nearer to the founder of
Christianity, and who could not follow the new theological casuists
into all their intricate windings of Egypto-Hebrew and Indo
Greek mysticism.
West and East, however, separated.
The small letter i was the real cause of that deadly separation.
“ Equal but not like,” and “like and equal,” this “ equal likeness ”
and “ equality but not likeness ” worked marvels of animosity,
hatred, and persecution amongst those who received the eternal
divine command, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself! ” The disputes
all bore upon the nature of Christ, not upon his glorious enact
ments of love and forgiveness, tolerance and peace, but upon the
mystic words, “Homousion,” meaning equality, sameness, or
oneness of essence or substance or being, and the equally mystic
word, “ Homoiusion,” meaning likeness of essence or substance or
being—as if anything could be like and not equal, or equal and
not like. With the East, Christ’s nature was like God the Father,
but not equal—not one and the same : and in the West, Christ’s
nature was not only like and equal, but the same as that of the
�Religious and Social Point of View.
9
Father. The East began to abhor this blasphemous assumption,
and to prove their subtle distinction with fire and sword. The
West, on the other hand, began to introduce more and more Pagan
ceremonies and festivities, the worship of saints, whose images
were painted and sculptured, in order to bring the originals
nearer to the senses of the believers, and to exhort them through
visible concrete forms to a more exalted spiritual life. No lover of
art will find fault with this tendency. Those painted walls and
painted windows, the sculptured saints and prophets served
Christianity as our modern illustrated alphabets or spelling books.
The child remembers so much easier that A stands for archer, if
it has at the same time the picture of a big-faced, fierce-looking
archer before it, who stands with crooked legs, letting fly an
immense arrow at an enormous black eagle with big claws, or at a
clumsy-looking frog ; or that B stands for butcher, killing a
ferocious, well-chained bull. Whilst the West laid down the
foundations of architectural, sculptural, and pictorial art, the East
demolished statues and quarrelled over abstruse formula. Turn
ing from statues to human beings, the Eastern Church extirpated
sectarians root and branch, murdered and poisoned and changed the
Christian religion into a perfect mockery, a system of most incredible
superstition and hypocrisy, and nameless crimes defiled the
once flourishing, glorious provinces of Asia Minor and the Greek
Peninsula. Temples and statues were hurled into ruin and dust.
In the West the old heathen gods and goddesses became Christian
saints : A enus was revived as the Virgin Mary: Minerva was
turned into St. Sophia: in Hermes,the good shepherd, and Apollo,
the sungod, they worshipped Christ; Bacchus became St. Paul:
J anus was turned into St. Peter; Hercules into St. Christopher:
Poseidon into St. Nicholas ; the “ Lares ” of the Romans were
advanced to household saints; St. Florian had to watch over fire,
like Vulcanus or Hepheistos ; the Titans were declared to have
been the fallen angels, and Cupid or Eros was revived as Asmodaeus, a mischief-making demon in matters of love. The forces
of nature that had been personified as lovely nymphs, tritons,
naiads, and nereids were degraded to uglv witches, imps, devils, or
infernal spectres. Whilst this idolatrous transformation scene
took place in the West, the East, with iconoclastic rage, disputed
on how the hand should be held when blessing, whether the
three fingers should be stretched out, or whether the thumb
should be joined to the third finger, and the first twro
fingers alone held up erect with the fourth, whether to have
�10
The Eastern Question ; from a
carved or only painted saints on a gold ground, and similarly
important questions.
In the meantime, trade, industry, commerce, arts and sciences
languished, and the new faith that ought to have stimulated the
vitality of humanity into new activity of love and kindness,
excited it to an utter dissolution of the religious and social
condition of the Byzantine Empire. Add to all this the variety
of nationalities, the scattered remnants of house and homeless
Jews, Greek sophists, Egyptian mystics, Roman plunderers,
Persian necromencers, fantastic gipsy cabbalists, and you will have
some idea of the Eastern Question that is to be solved once more
after 1552 years of continuous confusion.
Free from all such dissensions at this period were the direct
descendants of Abraham or Joktan, the son of Heber, or of
Ishmael, the Semitic race of the Arabs, who lived under Sheiks or
Emirs. They were divided into three principal groups : (1) the
Arabs or Aribahs, the direct descendants of Iram or Aram, the
son of Shein; (2) the Mouta-Aribahs, or the settled descendants
of Joktan or Jokatan, according to Erevtag from “Katana,” to
take up a fixed abode, the son of Heber, son of Salah, son of
Arphaxad, son of Shein: and (3) the Mousta-Aribahs, the
descendants of Ishmael (he who was born in the desert). They
had their sanguinary feuds, not referring to theological niceties
but to their tribal genealogical tables—each of the Sheiks or
Emirs priding himself on a purer and more direct descent from
Abraham. They were valorous, loved their independence above
all, and combined the perfect freedom of a nomadic and pastoral
life with the courteous refinement of daring traders. They
possessed settlements, but they hated the corruption of large towns;
they were proud of their one god, one sanctuary, the Caaba, one
horse, one sword, one bow, and as many arrows as they could
carry. They were chivalrous, wild in their love as in their hatred
and sanguinary revenge, but they were like the northern Teutons
of Europe, honest and tolerant of those who had not the honour
of being direct descendants of Abraham, or Joktan or Ishmael.
There were all the elements of a great historical future in these
wandering tribes if they could but be inspired with one common
thought, for one common cause; if they could but be made
conscious of their irresistible power, if once united to destroy
quarrelling and dogmatising Christianity in the East, to spread
one creed all over the world, to instal one God as the Supreme
Lord of the Universe. The moving power to accomplish this
�Religious and Social Point of View.
11
appeared in Mahomet at the right moment. Every right-minded
man must blush when he refers to our so-called learned Encyclo
pedias and finds if he looks for the article Mahomet, the assertion
made with surprising unanimity that Mahomet was “ one of the
greatest impostors.” This false notion, this contemptible ignoring
of the grandeur and intellectual and moral power of individuals,
so soon as they are not of our opinion, produces those entangled
questions between East and West, nations and nations that have
cost humanity torrents of blood. Ideas, which we would resent
with indignation if taught of us, are taught in schools for thousands
of years to millions and millions of human beings, and then we
are astonished if after having sown contempt and wild hatred we
find we cannot reap forbearance and love. If Christians cannot
afford to be charitable, when is charity to come into the world ?
Mahomet when he appeared on the stage of the world found
human society in a state of dissolution analogous to that which had
existed at the advent of Christ. The Arabs were addicted to a
rude kind of idolatry; they had but one unseemly sanctuary, the
Caaba, a simple square building, by the side of the well in which
Hagar found water for her pining Ishmael. The building contained
a black stone, the grand national talisman, a meteor which the
Arabs believed had been dropped from heaven by their supreme
deity Allah or Allah-Taala (the male or active principle of creation),
in honour of Alilath (the female or passive principle of creation);
the Greek Bacchus and Venus. This black stone was placed in the
south-western corner of the Caaba, at Mecca, and was consecrated
to Sabba, or Abbah (the Abads of the Zend-people in the centre of
Asia, and the Asen of the Teutons in the farthest north of Europe),
and entrusted to the care of the Koreish tribe, more particularly
to the Hashem family of which Mahomet was a descendant.
Abul Kasem Muhammed (the glorious) was born 571 in the sixth
century, a.d.—and died 632 (61 years old). His father was
Abdallah (the beautiful) who married Amina, and on this occasion
two hundred ladies are said to have expired of jealousy and despair.
His grandfather was Abdul Motalleb, who saved Mecca from the
Abyssinians, and triumphantly carried away the talisman, the black
stone, and had it replaced in the sanctuary. His great-grand
father was Hashem, who succeeded in averting a famine by sacrific
ing all his worldly goods to the suffering. What wonder that a
boy, with such a pedigree, should have become a religious dreamer
and a fanatic, in times, when he heard nothing but theological
discussions. The Persian legends assert that at the birth of
�12
The Eastern Question; from a
Mahomet the eternal fires on the altars of the Magi were ex
tinguished. It was further said that on the night of his birth all
heathen and Christian idols sighed and shrieked, and that a wise
Jew proclaimed from a watch-tower that the star of Messiah had
just risen, and that the Saviour of the world had been born. It
was said, that the first spiritual ray proceeding from Allah was
Mahomet’s soul, of which God proclaimed: “In thee dwells my
light, for thy sake let the earth expand itself, and I create paradise
and hell. The divine first ray had burned in Adam and Seth, in
Abraham and Moses, the prophets and Christ, but became flesh in
Mahomet.” When such ideas with reference to any mortal teacher
are spread, taught, and continually repeated from father to son, he
must in time become a mighty spiritual agent, and sway the minds
of millions and millions of people.
Divested of all “supernatural” cant, Mahomet must have been a
great and powerfid mind. He was undoubtedly a wise man in his
generation. When twenty-five years old he married an elderly but
rich widow Cadijah, and at the age of forty-one he first confessed
that he had received a divine revelation, which commanded him to put
an end to the idolatrous state of humanity and to teach in the true
Semitic sense the absolute indivisible unity of the one indivisible
Deity. Mahomet was illiterate and uneducated in theological
casuistry, but he read and studied the book of human nature. He
travelled as a keenly observant merchant, came into contact with
men of all nations and denominations, drew comparisons and
analogies between the creeds of all nations, and discovered with a
clear perception of combinations the weakness of the fallen Persian
and Roman Empires. He saw with a terrified and troubled heart
the degeneracy, profligacy, licentiousness of his times, and the
division, animosity and hatred amongst the Christian, Jewish,
Greek, and Egyptian absolute and dissolute theologians; he con
versed with Jewish rabbis, Persian parsees, Syrian monks, and
Christian sectarians who found refuge and protection amongst the
wild sons of the desert; he made himself acquainted with the laws
of Moses, the abstruse doctrines of Zoroaster, and the pure vivifying
teachings of Christ. Each year during the month of Ramadan
he withdrew from the world in the cave of Hera, three miles
from Mecca, and there he dreamt dreams, had lively visions,
spiritualistic communications from God, and visits from the angel
Namaus (Gabriel), who thundered into his ears these grand words:
“Devote thyself to the service of Allah (the one God), the Lord of
the East and West, of Winter and Summer; for there is no other
�Religious and Social Point of View.
13
God but He!” During fully three years he succeeded in converting
no more than seven or fourteen persons. The majority of his
family and the leaders of the Koreish tribe were violently opposed
to the reformer, seventy of the latter swore to plunge their swords
into his irreligious heart. Mahomet’s house was surrounded by
these wild fanatics, but he escaped (622 a.d. 16tb of July)- Ten
years later, Syria, the territories on the Euphrates and the Greek
Empire were invaded and Mecca taken by the victorious followers
of Mahomet, and the surrounding country as far as the Arabian
Gulf was conquered and placed under the dominion of this mighty
Puritan monotheistic ruler and his sword. Up to the period of his
flight Mahomet had wished to teach by persuasion: he was kind and
tolerant, but through violent resistance and unexpected victory his
wild Asiatic nature and his Semitic egotistic character gained the
upper hand. He then declared war—sanguinary war against all
those who did not share his religious opinions, and sacrificed them
to the wrath of his Allah. The Koran was to be the only holv
book of the world, written by the pen of light on God’s tablet,
containing the eternal decrees of God himself.
Mahomet’s faith stood to the other religions of the East exactly
in the same relation as Puritanism to the Established Church in
England; his soldiers were the mighty valiant covenanters of the
East, who rushed with their Koran as these with their Bibles into
battle and conquered. “To believe in the one God, to fast, to drink
no wine (which neither our covenanters have observed, and least of all
their descendants do observe), to remove the sense of speciality and
consequent separation from the infinite, arising from bodily limita
tion, and to give alms, that is, to get rid of particular private
possession,” were Mahomet’s principal injunctions; but the highest
merit in a believer on earth was his dving for the orthodox faith of
the prophet. “He who perished for this faith in battle after having
killed at least one infidel, was sure of Paradise.” Eor twelve
centuries Mahomet’s ideas have ruled the daily life, the hopes in a
future world, the prayers, morals and destinies of nearly one-fifth
of the human race. Since he first proclaimed his revelation to the
world, 3765 generations have passed away, amounting to about
thirty-six thousand millions of human beings (at a low rate), who
all acknowledge him as a special messenger from God. His
followers kindled in the West an analogous fanatic religious ex
citement, first in Charlemagne, who was a Christian Mahomet,
wielding the cross instead of the crescent, obeying a pope, instead
of Allah and his prophet; next in the mighty crusaders. Through
�14
The Eastern Question; from a
the Mahometans poetry, arts and sciences, chivalry and philosophy
were revived in the West. Scholasticism with all its brilliant
negative successes, its division into realists and nominalists, its
fierce battles on inherited sin and grace, regeneration, predestina
tion, and the eucharist—and its final positive results, showing at
last the utter uselessness of the dry, barren, dialectical efforts
leading to mere verbiage —or to speak with Hamlet to “words—
words—words!” — had its root in Mahometanism. Whilst our
ecclesiastical wise men contended that it is sinful to use blood, or
to eat things strangled, to partake of lard, to wear rings on the
fingers, that the priests ought to have beards, and that at baptism
men ought not to be contented with one single immersion, the
Arabs in the East still retained a high degree of zeal for the culture
of the sciences. They studied astronomy, arithmetic, algebra,
geometry, anatomy, chemistry, botany, and above all geography
and philosophy, especially in the more practical sense of Aristotle
through the immortal Averroes. Architecture and decorative
art received new impulses—for as long as Persians and Arabs
were the apostles of Mahometanism it had vitality. Thirtysix thousand fortified camps and places in Persia, Asia Minor,
Africa, and Europe were stormed and taken. More than twenty
thousand four hundred mosques, pointing with their slim minarets
to heaven, were constructed from the borders of the Ebro in Spain
to the shores of the Granges, from the Oxus and Euphrates to the
Atlantic Ocean, proclaiming the glory of Allah. All this was
accomplished a few decades after Mahomet's flight to Medina.
Without the quarrelling Christians there could have been no
Mahometans. The appearance and success of Mahomet prove the
eternal law of action and reaction in the intellectual as well as in
the physical world. The disturbed balance between morals and
intellect, between professions and actions, between mind and matter,
was to be adjusted in the East, and Mahomet with his faith worked
at this task. Religion was freed from all metaphysical subtleties.
The simplicity of faith was concentrated in one single indisputable
sentence : “There is but one Grod”—or “one first incomprehensible
cause.” Allah was to be the Grod of all, whether poor or rich, wise
or ignorant, who believed in Him, and his worship was to be purely
intellectual. No ceremonies, no symbols, no mystic representations,
no images of animals or men were tolerated. When Omar came
from Medina on a camel, carrying only two bags, one with rice,
the other with dates, a wooden dish and a leathern water-bottle,
constituting the whole of his furniture, and took possession of
�Religious and Social Point of View.
15
Jerusalem, the sacred town of Judaism and Christianity, he proved
the power of the fanatic faith on which Mahometanism was based.
In opposition to the Christian Church, pomp and vanity were to
give way to stern and shapeless faith. Theological discussions had
to yield to a deeper study of nature and science. The ink of the
doctors, not discussing incomprehensible mysteries, but the powers
of nature or the abstractions of geometry and mathematics, was
considered “equally valuable with the blood of martyrs.” Under
the gentle sway of the Caliphs, paradise was as much for him who
had rightly used his pen, not in questions of faith, (for these were
all settled in the Koran), but in subjects of medicine or alchemy,
as for him who had fallen by the sword. The world was declared
to be sustained by/our things: the learning of the wise, the justice
of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valour of the brave.
Instead of erecting dim-looking churches and splendidly decorated
public-houses in close vicinity, they built the school near the
mosque, and often the mosques were merely schools. Every thing
changed, when by degrees the wild Mongol hordes came down
from the highlands of Northern Asia, took possession of the
kingdom of the Caliphs, superseded the gentler rule of the Persians
and Arabs, and developed all the hidden faults and incongruities of
the Koran. The Eastern question became from that moment not
a religious, but a racial or tribal and social question. About 1100
a.d. the Mahometans were divided into several states, namely, the
Persian, Syrian, Median, Khorasan and the territory beyond the
Oxus river. The Tartars rose to power in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, and these hordes, under their leader Osman, meaning the
“ bone-breaker,” strengthened by robbers, fugitive Christian slaves,
founded a mighty Ottoman Empire on the ruins of the Seldshooks,
Arabs and Persians, aided by the dissensions of the degenerated
subjects of the Byzantine Emperors. This Empire expanded under
his successors, especially Mahomet I., who advanced as far as
Salzburg and Bavaria, whilst the pious fathers of Western Europe
tried to give spiritual peace to the Church by burning Huss at
Constance and deposing three popes. His son Murad II. though
opposed by the heroic Skanderbeg, and the still more heroic
Johannes Hunnyady, augmented the Empire till Mahomet II. took
Constantinople on the 29th of May, 1453, with the help of Christian
soldiers, who felt themselves more comfortable under the sway of
the Turks and Tartars than under their more implacable theological
masters. We may sneer at the Turks, who struck terror into all
Europe by their conquests, but it is a fact, that for three centuries
�16
The Eastern Question; from a
and a half, under twelve heroic sultans, they were invincible: they
subdued Egypt, the Barbary States, and all the Arabian Coasts on
the Bed Sea. “ In Europe they conquered the Crimea, and the
countries along the Danube; they overran Hungary and Tran
sylvania, and repeatedly laid siege to A ienna. At sea, notwith
standing the gallant resistance of the Venetians, they subdued
Rhodes, Kyprus, and all the Greek islands,” says the immortal
Cobden in his pamphlet on Russia, written exactly a quarter of a
century ago, in which he gave us sound advice with reference to
Turkey. He was, however, a preacher in the desert. Cobden
referred to the social and religious organization of the Turks, which
dates from 1538, when Soliman united in the Sultan the dignities
of the A ice-regent of the Prophet and the lay-ruler. The Koran
became from that time the only guide in social and political
matters: all other fields of learning and art were cordially despised.
The Turks are religiously ignorant of all that forms the education
of an Italian, Englishman, Frenchman or German. A Turk, or
rather Ottoman, knows nothing of the countries beyond the bounds
of the Sultan's dominions. “Notwithstanding that this people
have been for nearly four centuries in absolute possession of all the
noblest remains of ancient art, they have evinced no taste for
architecture or sculpture, whilst painting and music are equally
unknown to them.” But why? Because they have to bow down
to the most bigoted and intolerant branch of the Mahometan faith.
They have become what we should have become if the intolerant
bigots had borne all before them. Our own bigots whitewashed
our sacred buildings, smashed in our painted windows, abominated
sculptured men and women, whether saints or heathen gods and
goddesses. They tried to stop all progress, cursed astronomy,
zoology and geology as contrary to the word of God, despised
learning as creating sceptics and infidels; and some of their leaders,
who pretend to learning, even now force chronology in the narrow
time-boundaries of Rabbi Hillel’s and Bishop Usher’s dates. They
composed garbled inscriptions in our own British Museum, which
they keep closed ou Sundays, fearing lest the masses should find
greater spiritual delight in draughts of knowledge than in alcoholic
spirits. They are afraid that comparative mythology might dawn
upon the people; that Egyptian monuments and relics might teach
them that their important symbols, about which they quarrel with
the same bitterness as the Turkish theologians on the knotty point,
“whether the feet should be washed at rising, or only rubbed with
the dry hand,” are only purloined from old heathens; that their
�Religious and Social Point of View.
17
eastern and western postures are as irrevalent to piety, as the
Turk’s turning towards Mecca (the birth-place of the prophet), in
saying his prayers.
■ From the moment when the Turks placed their home-rule and
foreign affairs under the stable, immovable dictates of the Koran
progress became impossible. For the. nomadic character of the
shepherd predominates in them. “ The Divine Glory,” is said, in
a speech of Mohamet’s, “ is among the shepherds; vanity and
impudence among the agriculturists.” The accredited collections
of traditions tell the following of Abu Umama al-Bahili : “ Once
on seeing a ploughshare and another agricultural implement, he
said, 1 heard the prophet sav : “ These implements do not
enter into the house of a nation, unless that Allah causes lowmindedness to enter in there at the same time.”—(Abuchan
Recueil). Of Chalif Omar the Turks believe, that when dying he
recommended in his political testament the Bedawi (nomads) to
his successors, “ ff»r they are the root of the Arabs and the germ of
Islam,” and “ how little this Arabian politician could appreciate
the importance of agriculture,” says Dr. Goldziher in his work,
“Mythology among the Hebrews” (London: Longmans, Green,
and Co., 1877), “ is evident from the edict in which he most
strictly forbade the Arabs to acquire landed possession and
practise agriculture in the conquered districts. The only mode of
life equally privileged with the roving nomad life, was held to be the
equally roving military profession, or life of nomads without herds
and with arms.” These few lines permit us a deep insight into
the state of Turkey. The Turks keep too faithfully to their
sacred book and the traditions of the military founders of their
faith.
We advance because we possess the great talent of bringing
our sacred laws into harmony with the exigencies of our times and
social condition. It is enacted that “ the hare because he cheweth
the cud (which the hare, however, does not do), but divideth not
the hoof (which the hare most extraordinarily does), he is unclean
unto von ; ” but we eat it. It is enacted that “ the swine, though
he divided the hoof and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the
cud, he is unclean to you ; ” yet we eat bacon for breakfast, and
pork in many ways. It is enacted “ that if anyone asks your
coat, we ought to give him our cloak: ” but if anyone writes to
us a mere begging letter, we give him in charge as au impostor,
and leave him to the tender mercies of the police, or of a Rev.
County magistrate, who sends a little girl of nine years of age to
�18
The Eastern Question ; from a
jail, because she picks up a few potatoes or a half-rotten cabbage
in some rich farmer's field. It is enacted “ that if anyone smites
your right cheek, you should turn to him your left; ” but if any
good believer were to smite anybody’s right cheek, he would soon
find out in a police-cell that we refuse to hold out our left cheek,
but have, in the interest of society, the man locked up who would
dare to live up to the literal sense of our holv book. Unhappily
with the Turks all this is not the case. They still believe with
blind faith in fatalism, or as we call it, in predestination. “ What
must happen will happen ! ” For Allah's will must be done.
1 have often had the pleasure of visiting mighty Pashas in the
East, they lived in castles and fortressess at Belgrad, Widdin,
Rustshuk, Varna, and Constantinople; half the windows were
broken, sometimes mended with paper, sometimes left broken—
“ Allah will mend them
but Allah does not do so. The Pasha,
however, who lived in a castle with broken windows, dilapidated
staircases, broken doors, without any furniture, smoked a “tshibuk”
that had an amber mouthpiece set with diamonds worth from two
to three thousand pounds ; the coffee was brought in on a tray of
pure gold, and served in “ filtchans ” of gold studded with precious
stones. Everything here still betrays the nomadic character—they
hoard moveable goods, but have no concern with agriculture or a
settled state of life. Their administration is as bad as was that in
France before the grand and sanguinary revolution. The judges
administer justice according to the dictates of the Koran. The
tax-gatherers are farmers of the public revenue. “ The situations
of Pasha, cadi, or judge are all given to the highest bidders,” and
all offices are publicly sold. Under such an administration pro
gress must be very slow or altogether impossible. A fierce
unmitigated military despotism, swayed bv a gloomy, religious
fanaticism, that teaches its followers to rely solely on Allah and
the sword crushes all vitality in the state-body, checks arts, and
makes science subservient to the requirements of the army or
navy, hinders the growth of cities, the increase of knowledge, and
the accumulation of wealth. The first step with the Ottomans in
the direction of reform must be to separate politics and religion,
and obtain an honest and conscientious administration for Greeks,
Turks, Jews, Christians, Roman Catholics, Nestorians, Unitarians,
Armenians, and Bashi-Bozouks. Above all they must emancipate
their women !
The Turks, like all oriental nations, especially those of the Semitic
branch of humanity, degrade the position of women. We ourselves
�Religious and Social Point of View.
19
are struggling against the religious remnants of Asiatic customs,
tempered to a certain degree by our Teutonic forefathers, and the
teachings of Christianity. We still look upon women as inferior
creatures, teach them less than men, and leave them more at the
mercy of the spiritual advisers, who often use the powerful female
element to create serious mischief in families and even States.
Neither Russian police officers, nor Kosacks, nor a mixed com
mittee of European statesmen, none of whom will agree with the
other, each of whom will strive to promote some secondary object
in the East, will be of any service in the regeneration of Turkey—
but the advantage to be gained by replacing woman into her legiti
mate social and family position would be incalculable.
Neither Cross nor Crescent can bring about freedom and a
salutary reform in the East till woman is reinstated in her rights
in Eastern society, freed from the stupifying and brutalising
influences of the Harem. Women are the teachers of our next
generations during the most sacred time of our lives, the dawn of
our consciousness, when all impressions are most vivid and leave
imperishable traces. And what are the women in the East ? They
must be elevated to be the companions of the Turk’s social life in
which woman ought to shine as the static, passive element of
humanity, softening man's passions, guiding his taste, and elevating
his more boisterous nature. Woman in the East has no share in
the administration of the Empire, except the brutal influence under
sensual impulses. The disturbed relations between men and
women in Turkey practically transform morality into immorality,
checking in men the use of their brain-power, and making them
peevish women. Men and women, thus deprived of freedom of
action, can neither establish the rule of intellect nor the sway of
genuine morals. There are, however, many good qualities in the
Turks. Air. W. R. S. Ralston has pointed them out in a masterly
article on “ Turkish Story-books ” in the first number of “ The
Nineteenth Century Review.” “ All who know the Turkish common
people intimately speak well of them. Sober, honest, and
industrious, the Turk, so long as he is poor and lowly, is a
respectable member of society.” We must not forget that the
Turks keep guard with guns and swords at the grave of Christ at
Jerusalem, and prevent the dissenting Greeks and Roman
Catholics, Armenians, and Nestorians from discussing their theo
logical differences with blows at that sacred place. There is
undoubtedly more cohesion amongst the Turks than amongst the
motley crowd of Greeks, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, who all
�20
The Eastern Question; from a
hate one another, persecute one another, and prefer to bend under
the government of their common foe, the Turk, than to allow any
of the other tribes or denominations to rule over them. The
Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and Roman Catholics are all free under
the Turks, but all of them persecute one another. The Jew must
not possess in Servia, the Greek is hunted down in Bosnia, the
united Armenian will have nothing to do with a Greek not
united believer, and to this religious animosity must be added
the national idiosinerasies. The Slavons hate the Greeks, the
Bosnians detest the Bulgarians, the Greeks return the feeling
with interest to the Slavons. The Turks have not hitherto been
able to bring union and cohesion into these antagonistic elements.
How then might this difficult question be solved ? So long as Sir
Stratford Canning (now Lord Stratford de Redcliffe) ruled
supreme in Constantinople, Turkey prospered and advanced steadily;
for to assert that nothing has improved in Turkey during the last fifty
years is a deliberate untruth, or the outburst of utter ignorance ; but
since Lord Stratford de Redclifle left, the Turks have relapsed into
their “koranic” apathy of fatalism. We ought to send out English
administrators to teach the Turks how to rule and become masters
of the eternal intrigues of Slavon agitators, conspirators, emissaries,
spies, diplomatic agents, missionaries, theologians, and special
correspondents, who go out from here, without any historical or
social knowledge of the country, and who on arrival become
“ atrocity-mongers ”—reporting one-sidedly, according to the cue
thev receive—endeavouring to excite a Russian crusade in the
name of down-trodden Christianity. Are we perhaps to revive
the old rule of the Greek Christian Emperors in the East—are we
to have a repetition of the misdeeds that disgraced humanity, and
produced the Mahometan reaction ? Do we aspire to see another
Basilios murder Michael and usurp his throne ; is a second Con
stantine to rule by the grace of his mother, and priests and
monks ? Is another Theophana to poison her husbands ; a second
Tzimiskes to become Emperor, after he had murdered Nikepheros
in his bed room, to be slowly poisoned in his turn to make room
for another murderer? Do we want to see another Basilios II.
(976—1015) blind 15,000 Bulgarians, sending them back to
their country, because they dared to attack him? The Turks had
in the Christian rulers, that swayed the destinies of the East
before them, not exactly the most forgiving teachers in the practice
of forbearance and tolerance. Are these times to be revived ?
Can we hope anything for Turkey from mere diplomatic agents,
�Religious and Social Point of View.
21
settling the destinies of 30,000,000 of human beings with pen and
ink ? If we are not prepared to support our protocols with
Armstrongs and Woolwich infants, with “blood and iron,” as
Bismarck would say, it would be better for us to pour oil on the
troubled waters, instead of fanning the flames of rebellion in the
East bv frightening the Turks, rousing their fanaticism, or by
encouraging the Slavons to disobedience, and then leaving them to
the tender mercies of their terrified task-masters, abusing them in
their turn, when they dared to imitate our ways to put down a
rebellion. The Austrian Government, after it restored peace in
Hungary with 80,000 Russians, had more than 1000 of the
noblest Hungarian patriots hanged and shot: Louis Napoleon III.,
after having dragonaded the Bourgeoisie of Paris, shooting down
some 4000 human beings, bombarding the Boulevards des Italiens,
had from 20—30,000 Trench citizens, who dared to adhere to the
legitimate Republican Government, transported to Cayenne. Men
and women were seized in the dead of the night and hurled away to
perish in misery and want. Are the riders of Turkey to govern
according to these noble examples? We must teach the Turks to
rely upon themselves. Exhausted, down-trodden, over-regulated,
the Hungarians gloriously attained their rights and privileges,
their freedom and happiness, not through foreign intervention or
protocols, newspaper articles, and one-sided speeches, to make
political capital out of the sufferings, agonies and despair of
Christians and Turks—but by relying on themselves.
Russia can, and will never solve the Eastern question. Of
her Government Herzen says in his work, “ Russia, and her
Social Condition : ” “ Terrible, nay fearful is the lot prepared for
him who dares in Russia to lift his head above the yoke imposed
upon us by the imperial Sceptre. The history of Russian litera
ture is a list of martyrs, or a register of criminals.” Rylejeff was
hanged. Pushkin was shot, when scarcely twenty-eight years old.
Gribojedoff was murdered at Taheran. Lermontoff was killed in
the Caucasus. Wenewitinoff perished, when thirtv-two years old,
through the influences of a dissolute society. Kolzoff was per
secuted to death by a bigoted relative, and died of grief at the age
of thirty-three. Belinsky, when thirty-five, starved to death in
misery. Polejaeff died in exile. Bestusheff died when quite young
in the Caucasus as a private soldier, after having served a period of
hard labour in Siberia. These are the Russian Byrons, Words
worths, Swinburnes, Buchanans, Macaulays. Maurices, and Carlyles,
who are treated in this merciless style. From Russia we have to
�22
The Eastern Question; from a
hope nothing for the regeneration of the East, neither from an
intellectual nor commercial point of view. Freedom and tolerance
are even less practised in Russia than in Turkey.
We may hope everything from an internal movement of the
united populations of Turkey. Let them become conscious of the
beauty, fertility and resources of their soil, which extends from 34
to 48 degrees north within the temperate zone, upon the same
parallels as France, Spain, and all the best portion of the United
States. Let them revive industry and agriculture, for “ Turkey in
many parts is more fruitful than the richest plains in Sicily.
When grazed by the rudest plough, it yields a more abundant
harvest than the finest fields between the Eure and the Loire, the
granary of France. Mines of silver and copper and iron still exist
(and could be worked to the benefit of the country), and salt
abounds. Tobacco, cotton and silk might be made the staple
exports of this region, and their culture admits of almost unlimited
extension throughout the Turkish territory: whilst some of the
native wines are equal to those of Burgundy. The heights of the
Danube are clad with apple, plum, cherry, and apricot trees—whole
forests cover the hills of Thrace, Macedonia and Epirus. The olive,
orange, mastic, fig and pomegranate, the laurel, myrtle, and nearly
all the beautiful and aromatic shrubs and plants are natural to the
soil. Nor are the animal productions less valuable than those of
vegetable life. The finest horses have been drawn from this
quarter to improve the breeds of Western Europe; and the rich
pastures of European Turkey are, probably, the best adapted in the
world for rearing the largest growth of cattle and sheep.”
Let the Turks above all discard all religious prejudices and
national animosities, and unite in one brotherhood to free their
country for the benefit of every citizen of whatever nationality or
religion. Freedom will be a stronger bond of union than Russian
battalions. But freedom never comes from heaven downwards, it
must take root in the lowest layers of a people here on earth and
grow upwards, and when grown it will apparently shower down its
blessings from above.
Neither Sultan nor Czar will free men, they must do it for
themselves. Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Armenians and
Turks must hope everything from themselves: they must not
refuse to go to their so-called mock-parliament, they must go and
make their brethren hear the public voice of wants and complaints,
of right and justice. They must take their constitution as we took
ours, cherish and fondle it, nurse it during its childhood, educate
�Religious and Social Point of View.
23
it into boyhood and rear it in time into manhood. They must
learn to do as we did, and not think that neglected nations can
grow over-night into patterns of freely constituted societies. They
must, however, do all their reforms amongst themselves, on their
own soil unaided, uninspired by foreign secret societies.
“Man’s fate lies in his own hand,” is an old apophthegm, and it
stands for nations as well; for nations are but multiplications of
individuals. The destinies of nations have generally been most
retarded or altogether ruined by foreign meddling.
Our duty in England is to watch over Turkey with a heart full of
love for freedom and justice. We have only the sacred interests of
humanity to guard, we have nothing in common with the clandestine
Bulgarian conspirators nor their mysterious instigators, or the
Servian rebels, nor with the wild and wrathful Bashi-Bozouks: we
must try to bring them all to their senses and relative duties.
Why does diplomacy not venture to interfere with our Home
rulers or our Fenians or our prosecutions of spiritualists or
refractory ritualistic priests? Simply because we have learned to
manage our own business. Why did no one attempt to interfere
with the North American presidential elections and ask for an
international committee for the protection of Republicans and
Democrats ? Because the American people know how to manage
their own business. We should teach the Turks that Bible and
Koran, missal and hymn book might go together; that Patriarchs
and Sheik-Ul-Islams, Imams and Papas, preachers and Khatibs,
rabbis and priests, Great-Logethets and Khakham-Bashis can be
made to agree, if they live under an enlightened lay-government
that knows how to enforce respect for the laws, and grants perfect
freedom to the individual to develop as an independent member of
a well regulated society. A new life would arise on the golden
horn—Constantinople would become the most splendid city in
Europe, the most attractive resort for civilized Europeans, a kind
of 1 ans of the East. F reedom and equality of religion would
bring the three monotheistic religions into fraternal union and
glorious harmony—the demoralizing position of women would be
changed—Greek, Slavon and Arab, poets and learned men would
vie with one another on the fields of glowing imagination and cool
reflecting reason. Instead of a burning Eastern question we
should then have a solution worthy of the spirit of our age, and
should give a new life to Turkey in the North of Asia, as we have
given to India in the South.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage
the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellectual,
and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing
upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S
LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 29tli April, 1877, will
be given.
Members’ .£1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket transfer
able (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reservedseat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each
lecture.
For tickets, also for printed lectures, apply (by letter) to the lion.
Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde
Park, W.
Payment at the doorOne Penny;—Sixpence;—and (Reserved Seats)
One Shilling.
The Society’s Lectures by the same Author, which have
been printed, are—on
“ Natural Phenomena and their Influence on different Religious Systems.”
“ The Vedas and the Zend-Avesta : the First Dawn of Religious Conscious
ness in Humanity.”
The above are out of print.
“ The Origin and the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil.”
“ Dreams and Ghosts.”
” Ethics and ^Esthetics.”
“ The Spontaneous Dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
“ Dogma and Science.”
All price 3d., or post-free, 3bd.
By the same Author are the following Works:—
“ Faust,” by Goethe, with Critical and Explanatory Notes. Second Edition.
London: David Nutt, 270, Strand. 18(52.
“ Spiritualism and Animal Magnetism.” Third Edition. London: Hardwicke & Bogue, 192, Piccadilly. 1870.
“ A Manual of the Historical Development of Art: Pre-historic, Ancient,
Classic, and Early Christian.” London: Hardwick & Bogue, 192,
Piccadilly. 1876.
Kenny & Co., Printbbs, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Eastern question from a religious and social point of view : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on 25th March, 1877
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's advertisements on back page. In diplomatic history, the "Eastern Question" refers to the strategic competition and political considerations of the European Great Powers in light of the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. [Source: Wikipedia, 3/2018].
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Sunday Lecture Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1877
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N701
Subject
The topic of the resource
Ottoman Empire
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 Eastern question from a religious and social point of view : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on 25th March, 1877), 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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Eastern Question
NSS
Ottoman Empire
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/871bce50a54e71754c2ea79416ed127a.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=v%7EPEwmXrVio8IXGVK4vwdN%7ETCSY2w2PUtjxCVgdMzrmt7%7EluJOmX6meqM99neNlwCPnfcLxssVxPjGZvoIR%7EtatuoJTywTsrfCAMo1Ynkey%7EFpQAg2Y-plWCma20RCRo8-Ef6hvrpyBHhRDUYoNqOD%7E%7ELRtsVw32NUL4zUJGsGci%7EIJidn9TtEeHmBuBmZ4SNWa9IOO-mY7P3spwN8DAjtiLKUn26UPTnVYB8hgtqDuun0MzWrIB8O9WTwqoKwuPPSeR1-GQKg9QT1A4rbCbWjvPMIA8ZHNvCTDdkLgiQIvGuElr0pBQtZ352X0qnbaWOAGc6G4p5xHpYlH0BhlZlQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
f351fd1ee62b16d775dd9c8b336df035
PDF Text
Text
s 33 37
MATIONAL secular society
DOGMA AND SCIENCE:
51 Inta
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY
LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 19th NOVEMBER, 1876.
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.,
One of the Lecturers of H. M. Department of Science and Art.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Impressions and Sensations.
Our Reflective and Reasoning Faculties.
Imagination, Intellect, and Reason.
Ignorance of the Causes of the Phenomena of Nature
the only source of Dogmatism.
Science and its aim.
Difference between Dogma and Science.
Dogmatism is as pernicious in Science as in Ethics.
Dogmatic mode of persuasion.—Hudibras.
“ Inherited Sin ” treated Dogmatically and Scienti
fically.
“Grace” in its religious working, and as a' stimulus
of our intellectual faculty.
Dogma in Astronomy, Geology, and Geography.
Dogma in dates.
Dogma, a proof of man’s greatest fallibility.
Dogma and Science in their historical development.
War and bloodshed ; progress and peace.
Science combined with Art, and their mission.
How far Dogma and Science may work together.
Conclusion.
�DOGMA AND SCIENCE.
---------♦---------
ABENT.suafata libelli,”—..not only books, essays,
and lectures, but,often. sudden flights of thought
have, all their own origin, ^qu must .kindly > attribute
thisifleeture, “ On Dogma* and Science,” io the -second
instalment of. the Archbishop of Canterbury’s charge, to
the, clergy of his diocese. The, conflict; between “Dqgma
and Science ” was .stated in- that charge with a fijariknessj.and.-courage which testify . to ;fhe Jpglr scientific
standing r of the wery highest authority in dogmatic
matters. I have ioften taken occasion,frorndh^ platform
to exult:in fhe. progressive movementf,thrQ.ughQutc,the
world. in general, .in, spite of some gloomy .phenomena
that* appeared here and. there, and seemed, to imply fhat
the wheel of time had been stopped, or was eyen to 'be
turned baokwards. We are.steadily advancing; if only
every idealistic or realistic pioneer of our times will put
his shoulder to the wheel, we are sure to rescue.humanity
from the; mire of inherited; pjrejudices aud musty incre
dibilities.
, Brom' time,immemorial man’s intellectual powers have
been continually .directed ,towards answering three grand
questionShtbat, must -have impressed the conscious mind
of; humanity with naysiticmnd. mysterious force. Where
from ? What for? -And where to ? To a more or less
direct .attempt toj answer these three questions all the
religious ;and scientific,.efforts of humanity, from the
times of Vaiwaqvata.down to,,John Stuart Mill, may be
traced. We find this in the ‘Tanjura’ in 225 folio
volumes,, in. the Greek philosophers, the writings of the
Bathers, .and ,the,mass of scholastic effusions of the
Middle Ages. It is,no .less evident in Bacon’s first
scientific revelations, .in the works of Jieibnitz, Hume,
Locke, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, and in innumerable
books, pamphlets, and essays, written -and printed. The
millions of sermons, whether dull or lively, that have
H
�4
Dogma and Science.
been preached, the numberless lectures that have been
delivered in universities, in colleges, and on platforms,
may all be reduced to an endeavour to find answers to
the three questions, which in reality form the basis of
man’s whole bodily and mental activity.
This universal sameness or oneness is of the utmost
importance to the student of history. We need not
fear that the unbiassed knowledge of the different
answers that have been given in time, according to the
available elements of our mental culture, will in any way
endanger the sanctity of ethics or the onward progres
sive striving of humanity. On the contrary, the more
we make ourselves acquainted with the slow and gradual
struggle of dogmatism and science, the more we sur
round ourselves with the bright halo of inquiry; the
more we stand on the basis of a well-tutored conscious
ness of the past, the more we are able to approach truth
by means of firm conviction; and the less we are enve
loped in symbolism, mysticism, or any other incom
prehensibility, the higher will be our real moral stand
point. The forms in which ethics are given may change,
just as the answers given to the three questions have
varied and will vary, but the primitive essences of ethics
and science have never changed, do not change, and
cannot change.
Man has grown out of this earth; “ he is but a de
tached radius of this globe,” as I have often said, and
his language and mode of thinking have developed into
shape and form with his increasing consciousness. Not
the “ fear of God,” but the love and consciousness of
God, is the beginning of all wisdom. The fear of God
led to a variety of idolatries and dogmatic monstrosities;
whilst the love and consciousness of God, as He mani
fests Himself from eternity to eternity in the phenomena
of nature, led to inquiry and science. This assertion in
itself may serve as a starting-point to enable us to include
the whole range of our possible impressions from the
phenomena of nature in a systematic circle, followed by
a corresponding circle of sensations, leading to a third
circle of consciousness, and a fourth symbolic of the
three others.
All our outward impressions may be reduced to the
following elements :—
�Dogma and Science.
5
Beauty is the positive pole, and ugliness the negative.
Beauty is flanked by the sublime and charming, whilst
the ugly, in strict opposition to beauty, is encompassed
by the vulgar and awful. On the line dividing the
I.
CIRCLE OF IMPRESSIONS.
The Sublime
The Terrible
The Awful
The Ugly.
circle stand the Ridiculous and the Terrible. All
other possible impressions are mere combinations of
these six elements striving towards the positive or
negative poles of the Beautiful or the Ugly. Impres
sions can only be conveyed through our senses to our
mind, the operations of which are three-fold: emo
tional, affecting our imagination ; reflective, exciting
our intellect; and sifting, combining, and systematising,
as the functions of our reason.
In placing the sensations engendered by the possible
impressions of outward phenomena on our mind in a
systematic circle, we find that beauty engenders love,
the positive pole of all our mental and bodily powers,
whilst ugliness produces its negative pole, hatred. Love
is flanked by sympathy and veneration, whilst hatred
oscillates between contempt and horror. On the line
dividing this circle we have Indifference and Fear.
Whatever our sensations may be, however complicated
they may appear, they are but combinations of these
six sensations, caused by the corresponding six impres-
�6
Dogma and Science.
sions, striving towards the positive or negative poles of
iJove or Hatred.
ii.
CIRCLE OF SENSATIONS.
Veneration
Fear
Horror
Hatred.
> These two circles' led iir time to a third, the circle
ofyConsciousness with its- positive pole Truth, flanked by
III.
CIRCLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
Truth.
Probability
Dogmatism
Hypothesis
Falsehood’.
Probability and Theory, and its negative pole Falsehood,
flanked by “ the fool’s paradise,” Chattoe and Hypothesis.
�Dogma and Science.
7
On the stern line dividing the two opposite elements are
Ignorance and Dogmatism, engendered by a mixture of
ridiculous and terrible impressions, producing the
corresponding sensations of indifference and fear. I
have endeavoured to trace clearly through the circles of
impressions, sensations, and consciousness the origin of
Dogmatism in fear.
Dor those who are inclined to look upon the spiritual
world from a more realistic point of view., I have a
fourth circle, that of Primary and complementary
colours, which may serve to symbolically confirm the
three previous circles.
White is the combination of all colours, and, like
Beauty, Love, and Truth, in the spheres of impressions,
sensations, and consciousness, the positive pole-; whilst
black, as the absence of all colour, is, like Ugliness,
Hatred, and Falsehood, the negative pole. Correspond
ing to the impression of the Sublime, Veneration, and
Probability is blue, filling us with the feeling of the in
finite. Green has an indisputably charming influence,
inviting us to repose. Who has not felt its.power on a
lovely plain covered with bright grass ? Orange, the
colour of destructive fire, corresponds to the terrible,
producing fear and dogmatism; and purple to the
awful. Tyrants and cardinals have generally clad them
selves in purple. Yellow is the representative of in
difference and the ridiculous, it is the jaundiced colour
of ignorance; whilst red is the very essence of vul
garity. Children and savages delight in its loud hues,
whilst bulls, with better sesthetical taste, are filled with
rage at the very sight of it.
It will rest with Dogmatism, whether it will try to
leave the lower regions of these circles, and give up its
twin-brother or sister^ Ignorance, and rise through a
correct appreciation of the impressions of the beautiful,
the charming, and the sublime, to build its future on
sympathy, veneration, and love. In fostering proba
bilities through theories it may reach the serene regions
of Truth, and, standing hand in hand with Science,
attain the most glorious aim of humanity, endowed with
activity of mind by the infinite Creator.
The more we study, and the more we inquire into the
formation of ancient creeds, the. more firmly we shall
�8
Dogma and Science.
become convinced that these circles exhaustively place
before us the origin and elements of our sensations and
consciousness through the outer-impressions of the
phenomena of nature.
The more ignorant we were of these impressions and
their causes, the less we were able to group them or
to reduce them to an intelligible system the more we
dogmatised. Starting with stupid fear in their minds,
produced by the terrible, men were led to a ridiculous
indifference with regard to everything charming, sub
lime, and beautiful. They discarded all higher feel
ings of sympathy, veneration, and love, derided proba
bilities and theories even when based on facts, and
clung to self-concocted hypotheses. They appealed to the
mighty powers of chance, predestination, or fatalism,
or fancied they could see inconsistency and variability
in the laws of nature; they worshipped incredible false
hoods as truths, and barred the way or progress and
inquiry as mischievous and sinful. No honest student
of Universal History can grow angry when he con
siders these childish efforts of humanity, lor he must
know to conviction,that as little as the creative elements
of inorganic and organic material nature could have
developed at once into the highest form>, our intellec
tual progress could have possibly attained either beauty,
love, or truth without a slow and gradually progressive
development.
To further this progressive development is the
province of science. Whether we look to the scientific
attempts of the Brahmans and Egyptian priests, to the
ethic efforts of the Hebrew prophets, to the different,
systems of the Greek philosophers, or to the teachers
of pure Christianity, we everywhere sec men of science
impressed by the beautiful, charming, ami sublime in
God’s creation. They contemplate the smallest pebble,
the tissue and colours of flowers, the solar systems-,
comets,? meteors, glaciers, and volcanoes with equal
reverence inspired by the sensations of love, sympathy,
and veneration. They seek to find out the law of pro
bability, and build up theories, striving after truth,
so far as our limited faculties may grasp it, but, if they
are true scientific men, never dogmatising. The great
est gain of learning and study is the glorious and humble
consciousness that we know so little.
�Dogma and Science.
‘9
I do not mean to assert by this, that all is vanity in
the old Hebrew sense, which must check all mental and
bodily activity,—this uncertainty of knowledge should
exite our mental activity, so that we may add day by
day an atom to our previous knowledge. The sum total
of human knowledge has resulted from the efforts of
single individuals to add their little mite to a grand
total, which is increased even by the very smallest con
tribution of ideas.
The task of science, through its very aim, is extremely
arduous. Men abhor nothing more than the trouble of
reasoning, especially if business goes on briskly without
reasoning. Why should men give up their prejudices,
their comfortable social intercourse, and the noisy din of
parties, for some ideal “ terra incognita ”—of which they
know as little as of the North Pole, after so many ex
peditions ? What is the use of sacrificing an inherited
notion of ignorance to some universal, unalterable prin
ciple, especially if such principles demand study, cool
hours of reflection, an honest application to never
ceasing inquiry, with the constant conviction that, after
all, absolute and real truth will not be attained. Besides
can that be false which has tilled thousands and thou
sands of nice little and big books with weighty words ?
Could anything capable of lightening the purses of some
2-5,000,000 human beings to the extent of not less
than 30,000,000 pounds sterling, during the last forty
years, be either wrong or false ? Is there any clearer
proof of the genuineness of the supply than the brisk
ness of the demand ? The scantily aided men of science
are obliged to listen to such arguments, and are expected
to crouch in devout annihilation—before what ? Before
the golden Nundi, or golden Apis, or golden calf that
is everlastingly raised before the ignorant masses to be
worshipped in humble submission. False principles that
pay, are undoubtedly better than truth that does not
pay. “Hine illae lacrymae! ” How titanic were and
are the efforts of science in the face of such a phenome
non. Bare and naked, only veiled in scepticism and
doubt, house and homeless—an outcast from the masses,
laughed at, mocked, derided, abused, cursed, trampled
under foot, baffled in its own efforts, contradicted, dis
torted, crucified, and burned often by its own votaries,
Science has gone onward to truth step by step.
�io
Dogma and Science.
Here a mighty bastion of dim hypotheses has been
stormed,—there a huge castle of ignorance has been
taken.
It has demolished miles and miles of
Chinese walls built up of huge stones of chance, of
bigoted surmises, cemented together with the chalk and
mortar of scarcely destructible mysticism, decorated
with symbolic niceties, the more confused and muddled
the better, and yet science is neither tired out, nor
vanquished. How many falsehoods, that were once
raised on the pedestal of truth, have been hurled into
the dust by Science, unaided by State support, by
voluntary contributions, collections, and extorted
monetary help in one shape or another? Facts
had to be detached from myths; myths had to be traced
to their dim origin. Different authors of different
periods, in different languages, had to be studied ; an
infinite variety of methods and forms of thinking,
seeing, and arguing at different times under different
influences, with totally different dialectics, had to be
gone through ; order had to be traced, laws had to be
found out, groups had to be created, analogies to be
drawn, and differences to be established, in order to
attain what science lias attained. And Science has had
to do all this without flourish ; it has always tried the
shortest, the clearest way—but this shortest and clearest
way is also the most difficult, the steepest, the least in
viting and comfortable.
Lactantius, one of the fathers, called the Christian
Cicero, who was not yet altogether blinded by dogma
tism, having lived so much nearer to the foundation of
Christianity, says : “ Pure and naked truth is so much
the clearer, because it has ornaments enough of its own;
and therefore, when it is daubed over with external
additional ornaments, it is corrupted by them ; so that a
lie is therefore pleasing, because it appears in the shape
that is not its own.” What would Lactantius have said
to all the dogmas as additional ornaments with which
Christ’s simple ethics have been daubed over ? In dis
cussing only one single phenomenon, its origin, cause,
or effect, science strives to make use of all our mental
powers to correct the phantoms of our imagination.
Our sensations are combined, divided, and traced by the
unbiassed power of our intellect, which turns them over
�Dogma and Science.
11
in our memory, enters and registers them, draws
balances, and collects axioms, theorems, experiments,
and observations. When our mind with its threefold
functions has imagined, reflected, and reasoned, collected
its materials from all quarters of the globe, from all
ages, then only it can come to some probable conclusion
based on some probable premisses.
Whilst probability is the starting point of the scien
tific inquirer, leading to theory and truth, the starting
point of dogmatism, whether in science or ethics, is
ignorance.
The dogmatist also uses the three func
tions of our mind, but in an inverted ratio. He uses
reason and intellect to prove the outgrowths of an
ignorant, terrified, overawed imagination to be facts.
The man of science has continually to fight against
wild hypotheses, based on chance and falsehood, that
have been sustained, fostered, and promoted by igno
rance, often for thousands of years. The man of
science has to use his intellect to combat mysticism, and
to exert his reason to show that the probable only is
possible, if based on a succession of causes producing
the same effects.
The dogmatists arose in the childhood of humanity,
and became, with their fairy tales,the nurses of mankind.
Humanity, in the meantime, has gone through its boy
hood, youth, and manhood, and is approaching more
and more the bright, passionless, serene, and moral
age of wisdom, yet the dogmatic nurses, with wrinkled
faces, still repeat the same nursery-tales. Here and
there they try to disguise them with affectedly
scientific interpolations made to fit their little myths
and legends. No one could venture to assert that our
scientific reasoning has not sprung from these nursery
tales, just as the human form has developed from a
scarcely microscopically visible embryo ; but the embryo
must not assume the judge’s ermine and wig, and at
tempt to teach the learned grown-up man that he is
still an embryo and nothing else. The embryos should
not continually make use of the outgrowths of the
awful, the vulgar, the false, and the ugly, which have
fostered horror, contempt, and hatred, to contradict
science, abuse science, abhor science as only an embryo
in intellect could do. Let them not—
�12
Dogma and Science.
‘ ‘ Decide all controversy by
Infallible artillery ;
And prove tlieir doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks ; ”
for they are still where the pious arguers of Hudibras
were. ‘‘They still talk of the talking serpent; they
know the seatof Paradise to an inch, how sin came into
the world, and what it is and that in fact we, the fairest
creatures of the Creator, endowed with intellect and
reason, are but wretches conceived in wrath and sin.
It would be considered most unfair to any well-bred
gentleman continually to tell him that all he said or
wrote was utter nonsense. Yet this is what some people
are really doing when they abuse the fairest creation of
God as the most abject of His performances. What
w'ould an artist think of a person who entered his
studio and there proclaimed all his works daubs, all his
statues terrible monsters ? Yet men have built up on such
ideas whole systems of ethics, amongst the Indians,
Egyptians, Persians, and Hebrews. First God is said
to create, then He is said to tempt and seduce, if not
directly, indirectly, and then He is supposed to allow
humanity to continue to be conceived in sin and wrath.
This is anything but an excellent basis for the evolu
tion of a glorious system of ethics. What do we really
mean by an inherited sin ? In one of my former lectures
I had the pleasure of tracing before yon “the Origin
and Nature of the Devil,” and the closer we looked at
hims.the more we lifted him out of the regions of hypo
thesis, chance, and falsehood, the more we gazed by the
dim lamp of probability, the torch of scientific theory,
and the bright rays of truth, into his stupid face, the
more he vanished into the past as a phantom of our
terrified, untutored childhood. Permit me, now, to
treat,, with every regard and reverence for inherited
prejudices, the inherited sin, first dogmatically, and then
scientifically..
A society based on the assumption that our animal
passions: are the consequence of an Indian, Assyrian,
Egyptian, and Hebrew myth,, must look on every one as
a creature of sin and wrath. That such an assumption
must create an immense a/mouiat of uncharitableness, it
is not difficult to imagine. TTie little innocent child to
�Dogma and Science.
whom such notions are taught, must become altogether
bewildered. Of course he is accustomed to look
upon this horrible inheritance with a kind of mystic
fear; he spills some milk, and sees in this fact the con
sequences of a frightful legacy; he breaks a tumbler or
smashes a wine-bottle, and is punished, to drive out of
him the original sin. The child thus grows by degrees
stubborn, and begins to fear and tremble; fear and
trembling produce hypocrisy and falsehood, and, under
these impressions and sensations, hatred instead of love
is fostered in his little heart. Into what, monsters even
tender women may be transformed by such pious assump
tions could be seen not long since in the pages of the
higbly'-religious Guardian, where a widow lady adver
tised for a person experienced in the art of whipping,
and able to administer a severe flogging with a new
birch-rod on the tender bodies of her fatherless children,
aged nine and ten respectively. Bulgarian atrocities
are exciting our horror and indignation, whilst in our
enlightened Christian country the birch-rod is looked
upon as the only means of educating ! With terrible
anxiety to get rid of an inheritance that has cost so
many bitter tears, and has tormented his childhood, the
growing human plant or creature enters school. Here
he meets again with nothing but inherited wickedness ;
he has a head-ache and does not know his Latin verb.
What else could this be but the inherited sin! He
grows angry at the ruffianism of the elder schoolboys,
gets involved in quarrels, and fights, and is thrashed and
beaten in order that he may be purged of the remnants
of his inherited sin. At last he becomes a young man;
life lies before him with all its temptations and seduc
tions ; the inherited sin does not forsake him, it clings
to him like an unseen but ever present demon ; he wastes
his time in bad company, saves himself at last by be
coming a dreamy hypocrite, renouncing the Devil and
his temptations, and in his turn has children, and thinks
nothing can be better than to frighten the inherited sin
out of them in the way suggested by our widow lady.
It is this terrible dogma that leads to morbid longings
and carnal criminalities; that peoples our workhouses,
creates drunkards and criminals, pauperism and over
population. At the very dawn of man s growing con-
�14
Dogma and Science.
sciousness, when still ignorant of his nature, he con
cocted this “ inherited-sin dogma,” and degraded his own
position as God’s fairest creature. This dogma gave
rise to mystic explanations, incantations, allegories, arbi
trary commentaries, Jewish, Mahometan, and Christian
formularies in theology ; in philosophy it led to fantastic
explanations and meaningless dialectics, and in natural
sciences to a systematising parallelism.
We see in all these efforts nothing but the tendency
to improve and enlighten man; the means are, how
ever, now obsolete, having led by degrees to a scientific
treatment of this grand mystery—the inherited sin. We
began to study the component parts of man, and built
up on experience physiology; we tried to assign a cause
to man’s false reasoning, and we embarked on the study
of psychology and the functions of the brain ; we endea
voured to discover the cause of man’s passion for mar
riage and the possession of children, and found ourselves
launched into political economy and ‘ Malthus on Popu
lation.’ We wanted to learn whethei' man was exempt
from the laws of creation, and found him to be the same
outgrowth of the cosmical forces as the smallest crystal
lisation or the most insignificant cellule. We have thus
gained a rational consciousness of our calling, and can
regulate our passions. Through education we attempt
to diminish poverty, to free our workhouses from super
fluous inmates, and to place society on a firm scientific
footing of comfort and happiness.
The same change has befallen the dogma of “ Grace.”
The amount of inordinate pride this little word in all
its humility has created, is almost incredible. The
Brahman by his very birth was endowed with a special
divine grace. Only he could understand how God’s
breath condensed and formed sounds, how these sounds
were turned into letters, the letters into syllables, the
syllables into words, the words into sentences, and the
sentences into periods. The same special grace was
claimed by the priests of Buddha, by the Magi, the
initiated Egyptian hierophants, the Hebrew prophets,
and the Romish clergy. They only knew through
special grace what suited humanity; how society could
exist; what ought to be believed and what not; they
often distorted all the principles of right and wrong,
�Dogma and Science.
15
and peopled heaven and earth with phantoms. They
could hear the grass grow, could transfer their inherited
grace to others, remit sins, and use humanity as one big
flock of sheep, of which they pretended to be the only
appointed shepherds, distributing the pastures, and ex
cluding any reasoning thinking sheep as a black sheep
from the universal fold. But “ grace,” in a scientific
sense, has worked perfect marvels. Without faith in
man’s real inborn grace, manifesting itself in intellect
and reason, Christianity would have sunk into a kind
of heathenish idolatry; the Reformation could never
have dispersed the dark and oppressive shadows of the
Middle Ages ; the gates of our modern times would not
have been torn open by the immortal thinkers of Eng
land, always a grand and mighty country in the realms
of free thought, in spite of the efforts of obscurantists
and bigots. The Germans could never have followed
up the English philosophers and established on their
principles that mighty fabric of progressive inquiry in
philology, biology, chemistry, and cosmology that now
places them intellectually in the van of all other nations.
Had the grace of our intellectual consciousness not
touched us, we should still be writing learned books
“ on the number of angels that might dance on the tip
of a needle,” or on the all-important question “ whether
a man in a regenerated state commits sin.” We should
still study the fifty-three folio volumes by Bolland, a
most learned Jesuit, whose work contains the lives of
more than 25,000 confessors, martyrs, ascetics, and self
tormentors. We should pore over Father Jocelyn’s
‘ Life of St. Patrick,’ in 146 chapters, and learn how
the Saint conferred beauty on an old man and increased
his stature ; how he miraculously fed 14,000 men (pro
bably on nothing) ; how he changed flesh-meat into
fishes ; how the tooth of St. Patrick shone in the river ;
how he converted certain cheeses into stone ; how St.
Patrick’s goat, stolen and eaten by a thief, bleated in
the thief’s stomach, and other similarly incontrovertible
facts and truths. Prior to the Reformation the litera
ture of enlightened Europe consisted of Psalters, can
ticles, miracles, tales, legends, numberless Hours of
devotion, chronicles full of incredible deeds, and
some sharply satirical works foreboding the coming
�16
Dogma and Science.
change. After the Reformation, philosophical and
political books were printed, and we had ‘ News from
Hell’ (1536), proving the impossibility of its geo
graphical position, as there was no above or below.
Works appeared against “ The power of the Clergy,” on
‘The Enormities of the Clergy,’ on ‘The Beginning
and Ending of Popery’ (1546), on ‘ The Practices of the
Inquisition,’ and on ‘ The Discovery of the Inquisition.’
Now we analyse the rays of the sun, and leave discus
sions on unintelligible matters to men who are mere
“ survivals ” of the Middle Ages amongst us.
Bernhard, of Clairvaux, who repudiated the dogma
of the “ Immaculate Conception,” and preached in favour
of the Crusade of 1146, though he tried to hinder the
merciless and sanguinary crusades against the Jews, in
which he did not succeed, says that: “ Faith is a pre
sentiment of some not yet discovered truth, and is based
on authority and revelation, whilst our inner vision
(contemplatio) is the certain, and, at the same time,
clear cognition of the invisible.” Buddhists and Brah
mans have given utterance to an abundance of equally
obscure and unintelligible sentences. This is the mighty
charm of the so-called “ supernatural
it enlists in
terest, and is the more cherished, the less it is under
stood. It was the presentiment of truth, wrapped in
authority and revelation, that proclaimed the earth to
have sprung ready made from a cosmical egg ; what
hen, however, laid the egg, neither authority nor revela
tion told us. It was the presentiment of truth, based on
authority and revelation, that made the earth a square,
resting on pillars, firmly fixed on a foundation, and the
sun revolve round this flat square, which was studded
with mountains to serve as footstools for the Deity. It
was again the presentiment of truth, based on authority
and revelation, that decreed how the world had been
created in. six days. Our inner vision, however, after
having studied geology, has come to a totally different
cognition of the now visible strata of the earth’s crust,
and has built up, in going backwards, the slow forma
tion of our earth, which is not square, but globular,
which does not rest on pillars, is not fixed, and therefore
a very uncomfortable footstool, unless the Deity re
volves with it at the rate of about 1,220 miles per
�Dogma and Science.
17
minute; an idea which is far from respectful to
the Creator of more than 20,374,000 visible stars;
amongst which our earth is one of the least significant
planets. The inner vision and cognition of the percep
tible and visible, having so gloriously failed us, in spite
of authority and revelation, we certainly need not
trouble ourselves much with the certain and clear cogni
tion of the invisible arrived at by Bernhard of Clairvaux, who is now a canonised saint of the Roman
Church.
The most objectionable confusion was created by dog
matists in dates. Now, a date is certainly nothing
particularly important, except to small-minded indi
viduals, who think that if they know the date of the
birth of some king, or the dates of battles, or other in
cidents, they know history, as though history were but
a chronological register of dry facts. Dates are im
portant to ascertain certain incidents, especially in legal
matters, but who is to fix dates for the creation of the
world, the growth of the Assyrian Empire, the produc
tion of the Vedas, or the age in which the laws of
Manu were compiled, and astronomy was brought into a
system ? Who can date the age, which must have
preceded the 331 Kings of Manetho, the age in which
Atalanta formed part of the Eastern Continents, and
mammoths and elks roamed through the earth, whilst
palm-trees, sigillaria, stigmaria, &c., grew to a height of
120 to 150 feet on our island ? All these phenomena
could not have happened during the short lapse of 5,376
years, as some dogmatists assume, teach, and piously
believe, if we read history backwards and consider how
slowly we advance in spite of telegraphic wires and
steam engines. For the merely natural development of
languages, works of art, stone constructions, sculpture,
tile-making, and the formation of languages much more
time is required than dogmatists are willing to allow.
This obstinacy in dealing with dates has its pernicious
influence. It helps people to falsify facts as to time,
by degrees also as to space, and finally, as to their
mode and possibility of having happened at all. Nothing
is so pitiful as to see men of learning twisting facts in
order not to sin against the chronology of Rabbi Hillel
or Bishop Usher. If dates are dogmas, they only serve,
�18
Dogma and Science.
like all other dogmas, to prove the utter fallibility of
man, Thus it was asserted that the sun moves and the
earth stands; that there are no antipodes. Every one
who dared to doubt these dogmatic assertions was
branded as a perverter of truth, an infidel, and a
“ godless wretch.” Dogmatists ought to be contented
with the innumerable disenchantments and disappoint
ments they have had to suffer.
To remedy this fallibility they have invented a new
dogma in opposition to all experience of sound reason
and common sense, the dogma of the Infallibility of a
hnman Being. That there should be people who cling
to the infallibility of some small sectarian preacher, and
oppose with inordinate vehemence the infallibility of the
Pope, is not surprising. Such persons see themselves
wronged in their own infallible understanding of what
they assume to be essential dogmas, and fear they
might see themselves outdone; they are angry that a
chosen high priest should do what the unchosen crowd
of talkers on holy matters do for themselves.
There can be no doubt that a narrow-minded dogma
tism has blighted for thousands of years all our better
progressive efforts. Like the Colorado beetle it has
eaten away the very best roots of our mental seeds. It
crept slowly and gradually into Christianity—that bright
doctrine of mutual love ; it has undermined those pre
cepts which were as little dogmatic for the welfare of
our souls as the prescriptions of a physician for the health
of our bodies. Christianity, according to Dr. Barlow,
had no other laws but such “as politicians would allow
to be needful for the peace of the State ; as Epicurean
philosophers recommend for the tranquillity of our
minds, and pleasures of our lives; such as reason dic
tates, and daily shows conducive to our welfare in all
respects ; which, consequently, were there no law enact
ing them, we should in wisdom choose to observe, and
voluntarily impose them on ourselves ; confessing them
to be fit matters of law, as most advantageous and
requisite to the good, general and particular, of man
kind.”
These are truly Christian words. For Christianity in
its beginning was as free from dogmas as the rays of the
sun, the formation of the earth, or the eternal laws of
�Dogma and Science.
19
nature. Christ taught us one grand law—love, founded
on beauty, leading to truth, that holds us as self-con
scious beings together in one brotherhood, just as the
law of attraction holds the universe eternally united.
Historically both dogma and science had their growth
and decay—with this difference—that dogmas grew to
might and activity in the dark ages, when no science
was possible. In 325, A.D., the Trinitarian dogma
was borrowed from Indians and Egyptians; 346, a.d.
some ritualistic innovations, such as the worship of
relics, were adopted from the Buddhists ; the worship
of images was taken from the Indians and Egyptians;
asceticism, self-abnegation and self-torture from Brah
mans and Buddhists ; Jubilees from Romans and Egyp
tians ; the Confession from Plato. Tran substantiation
came from the Egyptians in 1215 at the Council of
Lateran under Pope Innocent III. The worship of Mary
is to be traced to the Assyrians and Babylonians, for it
was a revival of the worship of Alilatt, Astarte, or
Astaroth. Processions were taken from Indians,
Romans, and Egyptians. The incarnation, resurrec
tion, descent to hell and ascension into heaven, are
dogmas of Brahmanic and Buddhistic origin.
St.
Jerome tells us that “ we ought to worship where the
feet of our Lord stood,” chiefly meaning his last foot
steps, when be mounted up to heaven ; the print of
which, say Sulpicius Severus and Paulinus remains to
this day. This was, however, exactly the case with
Buddha, the ninth incarnation of the second person of
the Indian Trinity, who ascended into heaven from
Peak Adam, on the Island of Ceylon, and who there
left his extremely large footprints, casts of which we
possess in our British Museum. It was dogmatism that
led the Romish Church to the establishment of the In
quisition under Popes Innocent III., and Gregory IX., in
the 13th century after Christ. The Inquisition and its
sanguinary crimes afford the historian clear proofs that
dogmatism and fanaticism will lead men to wild atroci
ties, whether committed by learned Christian priests
and judges in the sixteenth century against Protestants,
or by Protestants against Dissenters in the seven
teenth century, or by Radicals against Royalists in
the eighteenth century, or by Mahometans against
�20
Dogma and Science.
Bulgarians in the nineteenth century, or by Russians
against Poles in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen
turies. Bloodshed and murder follow in the track
of all those who base the welfare of humanity on dry,
unintelligible dogmas. The dogma can only begin where
knowledge ceases, and no mystic, symbolic, allegorical,
parabolical, metaphorical, metonymical, hypostatical,
and anagogical verbiage can turn nonsense into sense, the
unseen into the seen, the invisible into the visible, or the
unknown into the known. Bloodshed and war will
always be the outgrowths of dogmatic fanaticism. For
any wilful assertion, based on ignorance, must necessarily
lead to falsehood, and the mighty endeavour to impose
incredibilities by force and violence on those whom we
cannot persuade by means of arguments and sound
reasoning. The dogma can only exist in annihilating
our independent judgment; whilst science can only
prosper in trying to prove even those intuitions, which
hypothetically approach probabilities. But the scientific
men of all ages and times have willingly given up their
most cherished prejudices, as soon as better reasons
have been adduced for the assumption of different
theories. Spinoza’s “ Substance ” had to yield to
Fichte’s “Ego,” Shelling’s “ Subject-object,” to Hegel’s
“World’s soul” (Weltseele), this to Schoppenhauer’s
“ Will,” and this to Hartmann’s “ Unconsciousness,” or
Agnosticism. We in England must turn back, if we
seek to study the reasonable grounds on which the
Christianity of the future was established by those
glorious prelates of the English Church, Hooker, Chil
lings worth, Hale and Tillotson, who all tried to find for
Christianity a firm basis in sound reason. They were
seconded in their efforts by the immortal writers of
the 17th and 18th centuries. The third Earl of Shaftes
bury would have heard with amazement the asser
tion made by one of his descendants that we wanted
500 Spurgeons for London alone to oppose some of our
most enlightened preachers. Such names as Collins, Tyn
dall, Wolleston, Chubb, and Bolingbroke, and the princi
ples they represent are familiar even to the students in
German Ladies’ Schools, whilst with ns they are alto
gether passed over in silence, none of these titans of freethinking being so much as mentioned in a primer, which
�Dogma and Science.
21
is to serve our boys as a school-book. These writers
more that 150 years ago felt that dogmatism ought to
unite with science and art, with truth and beauty to
rouse in us all our higher faculties. The strains of
harmonies on the wings of sound, the chisels of sculptors,
the pencils and paint-brushes of the painters, the pro
ductions of the architects, were all at the disposal of the
holy cause—but when and under what circumstances ?—
When the divine light of freer thinking vivified the
brains of humanity. Ecclesiastics of whatever denomi
nation, w’ho inveigh against our progressive Free-think
ing, encourage falsehood and immorality ; for nothing
can be more immoral than the concealment or with
holding of truth. In order to preserve some obsolete
incredibilities, as little necessary to the genuine mo
rality of man as the wearing of a coloured chasuble,
with or without an embroidered gilt cross at the back,
dogmatists are prone to persecute the most moral men,
if they differ from them on unintelligible, speculative,
or symbolic points, and force the respectable to play the
hypocrite. Against whom do the preachers of the
gospel of love show more inveterate hatred and uncharit
ableness than against their very best men, if these wish
to use their rights as true Protestants? Need I quote facts ?
Are not the persecutions of the Essayists and Reviewers,
of Bishop Colenso, and others fresh in our memories ?
It is the very nature of Protestantism to be progres
sive, else it would have even less raison d etre than
Romanism. From the period of the establishment of the
Reformation the minds of men, now advancing and
then retrograding in certain countries, at certain times,
have become intellectually more and more enlightened.
Our increased love of natural and historical sciences, a
neglect of metaphysics, and a growing fervour for genuine
art are laudable Signs of our Times. What the Primate
of England has been pleased to call “ the seething
thoughts of this anxious age ” are but the visible efforts
of the progressive development of humanity, to leave
the wilderness of mysticism and dogmatism, and to seek
goodness, beauty and truth, no more in formulae and
assertions contradicting the very first principles of our
commonest common sense, but in science and art, leading
to the purest morality.
�22
Dogma and Science.
It remains to be seen whether the dogmatists will play
the part of the merchant’s honest old clerk,'who wrote a
remarkably fine hand, and who thought so highly of it
that, undei’ the idea that calligraphy must sooner or later
supersede the press, he wrote out an entire copy of (the
Bible for fear the sacred volume should ever get out of
print. Dogmatism is calligraphy, science is print. Bnint
will no more be superseded by calligraphy. Let the
priest give up i his eternal looking backwiards; let him
look courageously forward. Let . him viewihh:the lay
man in all the branches of our modern knowledge ; let
him study comparative philology, comparative).mytho
logy, the growth of dogmas at various times: amongst
various nations. Let him mot be ashamed to confess
that the'borrowed symbolic plumage has nothing to xlo
with the inner soul of Christian ethics, and he rifill
stand firm as a > rock. Let ■ him > strive < (to > act on aur
reflective'andreaso®ingfaculties, andieaaiting us ta deeds
of beauty and truthfulness, ■ be jagain whati he ought
to be—a conscientious "teacher of i;h.umanity,i<who does
not tremble before every glimmer of light, but can boldly
face thejsuniof 'scientific truth and the glorious beauties
of art.
In'-one shape or another teachers will .always be wanted,
and it should'be fer more comforti/ng.to our teachers fear
lessly to work on our higher intellectual faculties, through
love, than to mourn over our wicked? nature, and continu
ally try to impress theenaotional element in \us th roughfear,
or promises of ^‘Sweebmeats-ao cbaugafr-pLnms ”rin another
world. Truth ought not toibe represented as attainable
without any trouble by mere inspiration ; rnothing nseful
or practical being done, whilst the advent of such inspi
ration is waited'for, nor should any (unnatural thought,
that may have been thrown outinignorantiages, be.mis
taken for the result of such inspiration.
Let our instructors teach men rand women to treiy
upon their mental culture, and not on gnardian.angels,
incense, candles, or coloured chasubles bright: with; the
green of hope, or dipped in the white. d£ dearlyI beloved
innocence, the red of heavenly love, the.blue of holy
constancy, the orange of glorious iihehtitnde,. or) the
purple of supernatural dignify, all enveloped in ztthe
thick black cloak of superstition and ignorance. JLet
�Dogma and Science.
23
them work as men on men, and not as emotional women
on women ; let them take an example from oar strongminded women, who do study .and do know. That
which they would then lose as dogmatists, they would
gain as influential leaders of our ideal better nature; for
our age is a practical' age. We want men of higher sen
timent, for without them we might altogether sink into
wretched materialism, and become mere calculating,
buying and selling machines, without any higher aspi
rations, pursuing even science only so far as it pays.
We may, however, confidently look forward to a time
when humanity will be one great universal priesthood,
worshipping in- boundless love, truth and beauty, science
and art, leading us. to the purest ethics.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending April,) 1877,
will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual (ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s.' 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s. being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
’
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter, enclos
ing postage stamps, order, or cheque), to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm.
Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park,'W.
Payment at the door :—One Penny Sixpence ;—and
(Reserved Seats) One Shilling.
�The Society's Lectures now Printed are—
Miss MARY E. BEEDY. On “ Joint Education of Young
Men and Women in the American Schools and Colleges.”
Mr. GEORGE BROWNING. “ The Edda Songs and Sagas
of Ireland.”
Dr. W. B. CARPENTER. On “ The Doctrine of Human Au
tomatism.”
Professor CLIFFORD. On “ Body and Mind.”
On “ The first and the last Catastrophe : A criticism on some
recent speculations about the duration of the Universe.”
On “ Right and Wrong ; the scientific ground of their dis
tinction.”
Mr. EDWARD CLODD. On “The birth and growth of
Mvth, and its survival in Folk Lore, Legend and Dogma.”
Mr. WM. HENRY DOMVILLE. On “The Rights and
Duties of Parents in regard to their children’s religious
education and beliefs.” With notes.
Mr. A. ELLEY FINCH. On “Erasmus, his Life, Works, and
Influence upon the Spirit of the Reformation.”
On “Civilization; its modern safeguardsand future prospects.”
Mr. CHARLES J. PLUMPTRE. On “The Religion and
Morality of Shakespeare’s Works.”
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI. “ A Dissertation on the Origin and the
abstract and concrete Nature of the Devil.”
On “ Dreams and Ghosts.”
On “ The spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Ethics and Esthetics; or, Art in its influence on our
Social Progress.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
The price of each of the above Lectures is 3d., or post-free 3jd.
Professor CLIFFORD. On “ Atoms ; being an Explanation of
what is Definitely Known about them.” Price Id. Two,
post-free, 2|d.
Mr. A. ELLEY FINCH. On “The Pursuit of Truth; as
exemplified in the Principles of Evidence—Theological,
Scientific, and Judicial.” With copious Notes and Authori
ties. Price 5s., or post-free 5s. 3d., cloth 8vo., pp. 106.
On “ The Inductive Philosophy: with a parallel between
Lord Bacon and A Comte.” With Notes and Authorities.
Same price. Cloth 8vo., pp. 100.
Mr. EDWARD MAITLAND. On “ Jewish Literature and
Modern Education ; or, the use and misuse of the Bible in
the Schoolroom.” Price Is. 6d., or post-free Is. 8d.
Dr. PATRICK BLACK. On “ Respiration ; or, Why do we
breathe ? ” Price Is. 6d. or Is. 8d. post-free.
Can be obtained (on remittance of postage stamps) of the Hon.
Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Cres
cent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecture.
PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENET STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dogma and science : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 19th November, 1876
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's list of lectures on p. 23 and on back cover.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Sunday Lecture Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N700
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Science
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (Dogma and science : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 19th November, 1876), 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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Dogma
NSS
Science
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/2bbfdce533620b904bb31db562a4dd11.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=EEpGvtpO1HER-xV-%7EJT1UdKnQ2sYSSTIAruBLpk-cxBcJ4HseFdisDsvMd-1cZ7iAyZ9S7nc1RmOLS5W8dReX9kxJzy2UUTAY3yixj%7Edj34ORtg6b8uGF5XVvBryiePSQwsAZT5EP-KCEDNsHLAymXbLUTMC14OOvMK2OybCXcTPr6jrm-xA-JPe5W4cz%7EHzdSq%7E18F5LLgAnfn60sLEW0-Fda-3mCSWcD8EeYsvCJfyrMkxCw%7EwjiaoMWMEa5swf%7EYZ17rbjXPTjjaa2q9cAAQoLqc1Fr%7EoDGZlEbamCEH9zIzC3sPrswzCE4pNwUyB5%7Eo4GN2edp3daR8GOdVQWA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
44c224bccb42faace59512707dff297b
PDF Text
Text
ß ¿ ¿¿ 9
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
ANCIENT CREEDS.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SUNDAY
AFTERNOON, 23rd JANUARY, 1876.
BY
De. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.,
tßne ofthe Lecturers in H,M. Lepajtnient of Science and Art,
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
1876.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Definition of terms : ‘'Spontaneous” and “Creed.”-
Constituent elements in Humanity.
Mind and Matter. Imagination and Reason.
Superstition and Knowledge. Ignorance and Faith.
Intellect and Morals. Emotions and Convictions.
Analogy between Chemical and Intellectual Com
binations and Dissolutions.
Religious Reforms. Brahminism and Buddhism.
Magism and Zoroastrianism. Hesiod’s Theogony
and Greek Philosophy. Judaism and Christianity.
Religiousness and Irreligiousness.
St. Paul and St. John.
Christ’s Christianity.
Christian Unchristianity.
The Historical development of Religion based on
Reason and Science.
Polytheism, Anthropomorphism, Anthropopatism,
Acosmism, and Atheism.
Conclusion.
�THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
OF
ANCIENT CREEDS.
LL philosophers of ancient and modern times
agree that words are the principal instru
ments of thoughts. A correct knowledge and use
of these instruments alone can secure for us pro
fitable results of reasoning as the principal aim of
philosophy. I intend to discuss the Spontaneous
Dissolution of Ancient Creeds from an entirely ob
jective point of view. In this sentence there are
two words which I must beg you to accept in the
sense in which I intend to use them. I do not
mean to apply the word “ spontaneous ” colloquially
as something li sudden,” but scientifically as some
thing “ acting, by its own inherent energy, accord
ing to a natural law.” A spontaneous dissolution
will, therefore, be a dissolution to be traced to the
inherent constituent elements of the different creeds,
as the result of a natural law, according to which
antagonistic particles must dissolve in time so soon
as they lose the cause or force of cohesion. By the
word “ creed,” I do not signify “a summary of the
articles of the Christian faith,” but “ any system
of dogmas which is prescribed as necessary to be
believed, or, at least, to be professed.” In a former
Lecture I endeavoured to trace the influence of
natural phenomena on the formation of the different
A
�4
The Spontaneous Dissolution
religious systems or creeds. Nature in its infinity,
and man in his finiteness, are then the two princi
pal elements from which the different creeds of all
times have sprung; that is, from the very begin
ning of man’s consciousness, his notions con corning
the world, its Creator, and himself, spring from
two utterly antagonistic sources.
Man is formed of matter and endowed with mind,
This must be also the case with the whole universe.
Matter is acted upon by an inherent spirit, mani
festing itself as law—the law of causation, which
pervades space, wherever matter is existent, which
.assumes in time different shapes and forms. The
further constituent elements in humanity are man’s
utter helplessness as a single individual, and the
necessity that he should enter into a social bond
with his fellow-creatures, to render his existence as
an individual a possibility.
To make the existence of a collective social state
possible, man must submit to laws equally binding
on all. Exercising his in-born intellectual power,
man will frame such laws to facilitate the existence
both of the detached individual and of a collection of
individuals, brought together by geographical posi
tion, voluntary or forced influences, over which the
individual, as such, has little or no control. The
laws so framed are in all cases revealed; not re
vealed directly by the mouth of the Divinity, or by
some supernatural agent, but by that self-conscious
ness which, in its turn, is the result of man’s material
«organisation.
This brings us once more to the never-ending dis
cussion of mind and matter. History illustrates most
distinctly the fact that in humanity, as in electricity,
there are elements which will be negative, or positive,
or static, and dynamic. Neither the negative nor the
positive electricity, however, predominates by itself,
�of Ancient Creeds.
5
nor does a machine exist exclusively constructed on
the dynamic or static principle. A proper balance
between the two forces alone will produce action
and reaction, motion and resistance. What is static in
electricity or in a machine is moral in humanity—a
stationary element. Absolute morality, if there be
such a thing, can only be one and the same from
eternity to eternity. Relative morality may vary
with the intellectual “ plus ” or “ minus ” in man’s
social development; but “ wrong,” as wrong can only
be one in an absolute sense, and must be “ wrong ”
in all times under all circumstances. So it is with
virtue. To the philosopher “ murder ” is murder,
whether perpetrated by a single individual to satisfy
his passion, or by an army wholesale for the glory
of a nation; though relatively war, or wholesale
murder, pillaging, robbing and ravaging may be
excused under certain circumstances, and even de
serve a bright monument. To draw a sharp distinc
tion between the absolute and the relative in dialec
tics is of the very utmost importance. Absolute
morality can only be one immutable, unchangeable
element, which renders the existence of humanity
as such possible. This existence would be impossible
if theft, murder, and adultery were allowed. We
trace thus in humanity the existence of one con
stituent—a static element—morals.
The next element will be intellect—a pushing,
dynamic force, ever-changing, ever-growing, ever
varying ; to-day different from what it was yester
day, building up slowly the mighty temples of
science and art, to which every one may contribute,
consciously or even unconsciously, a small pebble or a
few grains of sand to form cement; whilst some place
the huge corner-stones, others raise a flag-staff on a
lofty spire from which a bright banner, floating in
the air, shows whence the cosmical wind blows.
�6
The Spontaneous Dissolution
These banner-bearers only become possible when
every-day working men have dug the foundations,
collected materials, mixed the mortar, heaped up
stones, constructed the edifice, and crowned it with
spires. All work according to the plan of the
grand, invisible, and still, through man’s intellectual
power, ever-present architect, who, in endowing
humanity with self-conscious intellect, ordained its
use to be continuous, leading to a correct application,
of morals by an understanding of the aim and pur
pose of humanity in its component individual
particles.
The process of constructing the progressive intel
lectual development of humanity underwent dif
ferent phases according as imagination or reason
predominated. Both are merely faculties of our
intellect; the one engendering superstition and
religious creeds, the other science and art. The
primary constituent elements begin to be subdivided,
and in their subdivision we find the first germs of
confusion, but also of activity, of action and reac
tion. Those who, by their superior intellectual
consciousness, assume the lead of humanity, begin
to be divided into two divergent groups, each
assuming that man has only to cultivate one of its
constituent elements.
The moralists presume that, with their superior
intellectual power, they have found out for eternity
the laws according to which man may be best
induced to be virtuous. They proclaim him to be
conceived in wrath, created full of wickedness and
sin, and propound that ignorance is his birthright
and faith in the system of the creeds, which they
have worked out in the name of the Divinity, his
only salvation. They pronounce the innate spirit of
inquiry to be of evil, wish us blindly to abide by
certain formulae, separate morals from intellect,
�of Ancient Creeds,
7
mind from matter, the static element from the
dynamic, and hinder the progress of our social
development, which they try to limit or altogether
to check by their dictates. . The despotic sway of
these dictates they deny, for they consider that
their wish to promote the welfare of humanity onesidedly palliates everything they say or do. They
create the first terrible rent in humanity by arbitra
rily separating the component parts of our spiritual
and material existence; they devote themselves to
the exclusive culture of morals and foster an inor
dinate contempt for intellect. The division is
brought about by their remaining stationary, and
ignoring the dynamic force as one of the compo
nent and indispensable elements in human nature.
Wherever this happens, superstition is fostered, and
knowledge is only so far promoted as it will serve
the general superstition. Faith will be exalted
as the best tool with which blind ignorance can be
made subservient to the system of an incredible
creed. Intellect will be looked down upon as of evil.
Morals in the garb of set dogmas thus often become
the greatest immorality, for they promote hypocrisy,
cowardice, and voluntary stupidity. Emotions are
excited, but convictions are silenced. Happily this
is a condition of humanity bearing the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its unnatural and one
sided attempts.
In analysing a drop of water we know it to be
a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Add to it
any other element, and the water loses its purity.
Take only hydrogen by itself, it may burn, but it is
not water without oxygen. Taking man as a mere
essence of morals, we have as unreal a being as a
mere essence of intellect would be. As purely moral
or intellectual he might be an angel, an imponderable
something, but not man, who is formed of dissoluble
�8
The Spontaneous "Dissolution
matter, endowed with mind. This mind is often
assumed to be an entity in itself, through itself, for
itself. This may, perhaps, be, but we cannot prove
it; we know only that it exists, thinks, reasons,
directs our motions, our will, in a certain limited
sense, but is nowhere to be found as a separate
entity. It has an analogous nature with electricity
in an electric battery. We have the machine before
us; the proper acids, the metallic elements are
there; we hear their working; we take one of the
conductors in our hand—no effect—we take the
other, and we feel the shocks, gradually and with
increasing force, passing through our body. All these
circumstances and combinations were indispensable
for the production of an effect of electricity on our
body. So it is with mind. It is there, under cer
tain circumstances and combinations of the material
elements of which we are formed; disturb these
particles, change their relative proportion or quan
tity and quality, and you have an explanation for
our different moral and intellectual faculties. Mind
is not a cause, but an effect—absolutely, it must
exist in the universe and pervade it as well as elec
tricity—relatively, it requires certain conditions,
under which it will alone come into entity and
activity. If mind be directed one-sidedly, it will
become superstition; if filled with mere emotions,
it will be driven to madness and engender ghost-seers,
spirit-rappers, ritualists, and lunatics; if left unin
structed, it will believe anything, and can be brought,
through a long training, to such a state that it will
look upon those who are anxious to enlighten or to
instruct it as its sworn enemies; hate, persecute,
murder, burn, and crucify them. Still, just as in the
external world, continuous combinations and dissolu
tions take place, forming the different phenomena, as
air, heat, water, minerals, metals, plants, animals,
�of Ancient Creeds,
9.
and human beings, so an intellectual process of the"
mind, forming and undoing religious systems andscientific theories, has been in operation since the ■
first dawn of human consciousness.
That this is the case no honest and unbiassedi
student of history can deny. The most spiritual
elements in humanity are the different religious
systems, by their very nature treating mostly of the
unknown and unknowable; and still, though every
one of them has been proclaimed as the direct or in
direct dictate of the Supreme Being, every one had
in the course of time to undergo changes, modifica
tions, to enter into different combinations, or to dis
solve into its component parts under the action of
the voltaic battery of intellect. All religions are
composed of certain elements, partly acting on our
moral, emotional, and partly on our intellectual
nature. All religions take their origin in the
natural tendency of the human mind to explain the
surrounding phenomena of nature, and to assign to
man his destiny, not only in this but often also in
another world. Religions originate in man’s imagi
nation, more or less enlightened by knowledge?
whether guided, as some teachers assert, by Divine;
inspiration or revelation, or whether as the mere
result of intellectual effort. The position of thosevwho assume a Divine revelation or inspiration is
very difficult one, and requires an immense amount
of credulity; for history furnishes us with unde
niable proofs that the Divine inspiration and re
velation of one period has often been not only
contradicted but altogether abolished by an equally
Divine inspiration and revelation at another periods
Brahma himself is asserted to have dictated the
Vedas, but he has couched his dictates in so unin
telligible a language that man, with his limited!
intellect, had continually to explain, to correct, and
B
�io
The Spontaneous Dissolution
to comment upon the utterances of the infinite
Spirit. Several times the second person of the
Indian Trinity had to assume the human form to
save humanity from utter destruction, and we may
congratulate ourselves that His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales went to India, because one of the
religious enthusiasts has proclaimed him the last
“ Avatar,” or incarnation of Brahma. We may here
learn, in reading history backwards, how such incar
nations occurred in olden times; how they were
proclaimed by one or several poetical or fanatical
enthusiasts, and how by degrees such proclamations
were believed, and served as the bases of several
Eastern religious creeds.
Manu had in time to step into the world with a
new Code of Laws, which, as well as the Vedas,
were the breath of the Divinity in every chapter,
verse, word, and letter; and Buddha came at a later
period and had to correct again the dictates of
Brahma, and to proclaim, quite in opposition to the
Divinity, that men were not born in different castes,
but that they were all equal. How it could have
happened that the divine Being, in proclaiming His
will through Manu, should have made such a mis
take is perfectly incomprehensible. But the Divi
nity went even further in its incomprehensible
proceedings. For a thousand years the Buddhists
had been worshipping Brahma according to the
dictates of Buddha, who was Brahma himself; they
had constructed temples in honour of that BrahmaBuddha, which, in their splendour and grandeur, are
unsurpassed, and yet in the seventh century after
Christ this very Brahma-Buddha, who taught his
followers a more humane religion, and endowed
them with so much virtue, that they are still,
though the most numerous, the only sect on the
surface of the globe that has not shed one single
�of Ancient Creeds.
11
■ drop of human blood in the propagation of th.eir
faith—this very “ Brahma-Buddha ” allowed these,
his faithful worshippers, to be massacred, and to be
driven from the very birth-place of his divine mis. si on. The same occurred with the Magi and Zoroaster.
The whole religious system of the Magi was pro
claimed by means of the prophet Hom (Homanes),
who was also the great tree of life, the source of all
bliss and prosperity, the first revealer of the word,
the logos; the first teacher of the Magi, of the
learned in the Scriptures and the prophets ; and not
withstanding this another divinely-inspired master
was required to purify and to revise the revelation
of God made through Hom, and to found the
Zoroastrian creed.
In Hesiod we may trace an altogether different
process. The Asiatic gods, who assumed for cer
tain purposes, at certain times, human shape or
form; who, in fact, represented in monstrous con
ceptions the different phenomena of nature, were at
last deprived by Hesiod of their revolting material
and spiritual attributes. They were, for the first
time, represented in human shape by the humane
vand poetical Greek mind. Their beautiful outer
forms led to an elevated conception of their spiritual
. nature, and the Greek gods became mere men and
women endowed with higher bodily and intellectual
. faculties. Through the Greeks, humanity was en
abled to leave the regions of the supernatural and to
embark on the ocean of inquiry, and provided with
the compass of intellect, to make glorious voyages
of discovery in the realms of speculative philosophy,
and to furnish us with the models of rational in
quiry. When the Greeks proclaimed their “ yv^Qe
ffeawo/’—“Know thyself,” man’s spirit became
. conscious of its own self as part of the eternal divine
spirit, but not altogether freed from the fetters of
�12
The Spontaneous Dissolution
outer-fonn. . Intellect with the Greeks was yet
generalised,, and had to take a beautiful form, as
manifested in their immortal works of art; man was
not yet unfettered as pure individual intellect. We
must look for this spiritual development of humanity
elsewhere.
The historical importance of the Jews begins with
their bondage. In misery and wretchedness they
learned their higher aspirations. Their legend about
the creation of man in the image of God and the
forfeiture of his innocence in eating from the tree of
knowledge is a mighty truth, bearing in it all the
elements of future dissolution. For if man was
created in the image of God, why should the gods
have been jealous of Adam becoming as one of them,
“ knowing good and evil ?” With this antithesis the
Jewish misfortune for humanity began. They taught
us to be images of God, to long in boundless eager
ness for that Godhead, and condemned as sinful th iff
very yearning. Mankind had to undergo endless
bodily and intellectual sufferings in consequence of
this decomposing composition of heterogeneous ele
ments, placing reality in eternal opposition to the
ideal. The Jews always hoped to find a Messiah to
reconcile their old oriental antithesis, which they
had in reality borrowed from the Persians and
Egyptians; they always hoped that somebody
would redeem humanity from the fetters of spiritual
darkness or sin. It was clearly felt by the Persians,
as well as by the Jews, that this redemption could
only come through man.
Real religiousness consists in man’s consciousness
of his double attributes and his attempt to bring
harmony into the apparent dissonance of his divine
(intellectual) and human (material or animal)
nature. This pure process must not be disturbed,
interrupted, or checked by any secondary and arbi
�of Ancient Creeds.
13
trary element. Man embodies the eternal divine
spirit only in a transitional phase, that is for a
limited time. During that limited phase he has to
exert all his intellectual and moral powers to pro
mote his own as well as his fellow-creatures’ happi
ness. All those elements that hinder him in this
task through obscure verbiage, revealed and re
revealed incongruities, mystic symbolism, or theolo
gical hair-splitting, are irreligious.
The contradictions in the conception of God, the
transcendent materialism, and the complicated in
comprehensible spiritualism with which Jehovah
was conceived by the Jews; the half-Assyrian and
half-Egyptian mask which he wore—now Osiris, the
redeemer, then again Ahriman, the slayer, the de
stroyer, made him now a mystic tyrant, then again
a partial father. He promised his chosen children
plenty on earth, and many goodly things, and left
them continually in the bondage of the surrounding
Gentiles, who were proclaimed to be his abomina
tion. Now he appears in the Psalms, as in the
strains of the Vedas, to be a God after whom the soul
may thirst to lead us to holiness and righteousness,
then again it is 11 the Lord thy God ” who gives
away the cities of other people, which they built,
the trees which they planted, the wells which they
dug and the vineyards which they cultivated, as an
inheritance to the Jews, and tells them without
cause and reason: “ Thou shalt save alive nothing
that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy them,
namely, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaan
ites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord commanded thee.” And if you
ask for an explanation of the morality of these
enactments, you receive the answer: “the ways of the
Lord are mysterious.” But this is no answer. The
mind of man cannot be satisfied with such replies,
�14
TAe? Spontaneous Dissolution
it finds them in their very mysteriousness irre
ligious.
The marble form of Zeus, in spite of its beauty,
had to give way to a more ideal conception of the
Divinity, and in a similar way the invisible God of
Moses had to assume another shape. Mosaism had
to undergo a reform after having long before divided
the Jews into different sects, who hated one another
with that intense fervour which is the natural out
growth of oppression and long slavery. The records
of the religious system of the Jews were more
favoured than those of the Indians or Egyptians;
for their tenets became sacred not only in the eyes of
the privileged priesthood, that kept all sacred and
profane knowledge to itself, but also in the eyes and
ears of the whole nation. Moses faithfully kept his
promise, and made the Jews “ a nation of priests; ”
in telling them, freed from all symbolism, what
made the Egyptian priesthood so powerful in their
sway over the ignorant masses for thousands of
years, he made every Jew a theologian. Notwith
standing all these advantages, the Hebrew records
had the element of dissolution as a mere formal
creed in them; for the mythic was treated as
historical; phenomenal facts were stated with an
utter ignorance of science, as was only natural in
times in which all sciences were in their infancy, or
as yet unborn. Though the spirit of inquiry was
fettered for centuries, the reform had to come as a
natural sequence of the historical progressive de
velopment of humanity. John the Baptist first
commenced it, Christ followed.
Christ again was followed by the two apostles, St.
Paul and St. John. It is an authenticated fact, that
the canonical writings of the New Testament con
tain different accounts of most important incidents,
and are the outgrowth of mighty minds who could
�of Ancient Creeds.
15
but impress with their powerful individuality what
they wrote. Next followed the Fathers, who did not
content themselves with commenting on Christ’s,
St. Paul’s, or St. John’s teachings, but added dogma
upon dogma, borrowing them from old forgotten
Egyptian mysteries, or from the writings of Greek
philosophers; so that in the course of a few cen
turies, when Christianity became the ruling faith of
the Roman empire, it comprised all the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its heterogenous bor
rowed forms, symbols, dogmas, and articles of
faith.
Christ’s Christianity, the doctrine of love and for
bearance, of humility and self-sacrifice, of common
brotherhood, and the harrowing tragedy of his life
and death, were all turned into symbolic mysteries.
What was simple and intelligible was surrounded by
incomprehensible contradictions. Christ was to be
the mighty, royal, hoped-for Messiah of the Jews,
though he tried as amere teacher to reform Judaism
and to bring vitality into what had decayed into a
mere dead formalism. Not to abolish the old law
was His mission, but to purify it from its narrow
national particularism, and to restore its mono
theistic and moral universality.
St. Paul saw in Christ a dying God, who had to
atone for the sins of Adam, in order to satisfy the
demand of the Jewish law. Grace was everything
with him. St. John made of Christ the incarnation
of Plato’s Logos, and added that nobody could come
to God except through Christ, which was an un
charitable anathema against all those who were
honest and virtuous, but who either knew nothing
of Christ, or could not understand the mystic dogmas
under which Christ had been buried.
Christ’s
incarnation as the Logos could not have been diffe
rent to that of Brahma, as Krishna or Rama, or
�16
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Buddha, of Amn, as Osiris and Horus. Each - of
these incarnations took place under very analogous
circumstances, and for analogous purposes.
The Divinity to the student of ancient creeds
appears continually to assume new shapes and forms
and to succeed always only in a very partial redemp
tion of humanity. Did Christ, however, ever assume
a Godhead in a Buddhistic or Egyptian sense ? is a
question which will, in time, be differently answered
than at present. Christ the rigorous Jew who con
scientiously kept the spirit of the law, though He
opposed its dead meaningless formality, who ap
peared with scrupulous regularity at the grand
festivals at Jerusalem, could He have ever violated
the sacred monotheistic basis of the Jews so far as
to proclaim Himself as anything else but the “ Son of
Man,” to which title He had every claim, when He
declared the whole of humanity to be the children
of one Father in heaven ? Did Christ ever intend to
make Himself anything but the spiritual redeemer
of mankind, by proclaiming on high-ways and in
market-places what was kept as a secret by the
Esoteric teachers, that there was only one God, and
that man had one real aim, to unite whether poor or
rich, if only “ pure of heart,” into one bond of divine
love, pervading the universe ?
Love was with Christ the connecting element
between the divine and human in man. As attrac
tion is scientifically the vital element of the material
cosmos, so love is the binding element which was,
is, and will be the fundamental basis of any religion ;
and where this element of universal brotherhood is
discarded or stifled, by whatever dogmas, our en
lightened reason will never be persuaded that the
mystery is for our benefit; for the very assumption,
that morals can be fostered and best understood
through unintelligible types and symbols in antagon-
�of Ancient Creeds.
17
ism to intellect, is the very element of a spon
taneous dissolution of any creed, and always only a
question of time.
The sanguinary persecutions that disgraced the
religion of Christ would have horrified no one more
than Him, in whose name they were perpetrated.
And who were those who were most cruelly treated,
robbed, pillaged, insulted, and murdered ? Those
for whom He prayed in dying with his last breath :
<( Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.” Christ was said to have established eternal
hell-fire. He who commanded us to forgive our
enemies “ seventy times seven,” could He have con
ceived a Divinity less forbearing in His infinite love,
wisdom and mercy, than a finite human being ? In
this cruel and contradictory assumption we have
another element of spontaneous dissolution, because
it is an unchristian dogma borrowed from the Egyp
tians, with whom Osiris was more an infernal judge,
than a loving, supreme Being. With the Egyptians
gloomy unconscious fear, and not self-conscious love,
Was the beginning of wisdom and the motive element
of their gloomy creed, which element transferred to
Christianity changed its very essence, made Romish
idolatry a possibility, and worked as an antagonistic
dissolving element in Christ’s glorious and simple
code of morals.
Day by day the historical ground was cut from
under the feet of Christ’s Christianity. Dogmas,
ceremonies, rituals, and symbolic performances were
borrowed by the Christian priesthood from Indians
(Brahmans and Buddhists), Egyptians, Greeks, Per
sians, Hebrews, and Romans. The clergy of the
Romish Church strove to become, like the Brahmans
and Hierophants, the augurs, magi and bonzes of
old, masters of the minds of the ignorant masses,
who were kept purposely and systematically in igno-
�18
The Spontaneous Dissolution
rance; for the greater the ignorance of the people
the greater the influence of allegories, symbols, and
mystic incomprehensibilities. So it came to pass
that the clearest laws of humanity and common
sense were trampled under foot with reckless fero
city. From the times of Gregory VII. Christianity
became hourly more unchristian.
Unchristian Christianity persecuted, killed and
burned for nearly a thousand years, from Charle
magne, the Christian Mahomet, down to the year of
grace 1780, when the last witch was publicly burnt
at Glarus, in the Roman Catholic part of Switzer
land. To whatever Christian country we turn we
find the militant Church of Rome desiring pre
rogatives and immunities. The Church claimed the
right to punish those who spoke disrespectfully of
the clergy • the right to the luxury of burning here
tics ; theie were continual disputes as to whether
emperor or pope, cardinal or king, should be first
in authority. Deans and bishops quarrelled in open
courts with one another about images, postures, or
the right to possess a crucifix. The clear enactment
of Christ, “ Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,”
was distorted and placed under mental reservation.
A dignitary of the already half-reformed English
Church (Archbishop Sandy) dared to proclaim that
we must obey princes “ usque ad aras,” as the
proverb is, “so far as we may without disobeying
God. .And who had to decide what was considered
disobeying God ? The priesthood—which cared
more for prerogatives, the right to fell timber, to seize
lands in mortmain, to receive such estates as were
forfeited for high treason, to have the right of inves
titure., and to possess authority in lay as well as in
ecclesiastical matters, than to educate the masses, to
teach them soberness and cleanliness, forbearance;
■peace, and goodwill.
�of Ancient Creeds.
19
The priests loudly proclaimed Christ s law : “ Do
unto others as you wish that they should do- unto
you; ” hut their deeds were in contradiction to the
ordinance, and they did unto others as they must
have wished that they should never be done unto.
They acted like the great mass of the Chinese, to
whom Confucius, more than four centuries before
Christ, gave the same law : “Do unto others as you
wish that they should do unto you” ; but as we are
cheated, we cheat ; as we are calumniated, we calum
niate ; as we are persecuted, we persecute ; as we are
robbed, we rob ; and as we are served with false
measures or sham goods, we do the same.
This
is certainly not Christianity, and though commen
tators, exegists, apologists, dogmatists, and inqui
sitors tried hard to smooth down and explain the
contradictions, the creed, that had served humanity
for 1,500 years, had to undergo a new reform.
Christian unchristianity was once more to become
pure, primitive Christianity.
In the eyes of the Romish Church Christianity
was no longer the doctrine of Christ, but the enact
ments of the Church. Christ’s personal commands
had for a thousand years to give way to the assumed
higher wisdom of councils or popes. These councils
and popes could, however,not avoid being influenced
by the spirit of their times, and were forced uncon
sciously continually to vary their doctrines, according
to the exigencies of the moment, always with one
clear aim—to keep the power and the means of being
the hieratic masters of the world. So long as the
priest could live with a wife, it was Christ’s com
mand to have one ; so soon as it was found that the
priest became too worldly, too humane with a wife
and family, it was Christ’s command to resign him
self to celibacy. So long as Platonism served them
the priests were Platonists. In the first three cen-
�20
The Spontaneous Dissolution
tunes they had no Trinity, they were (Ze facto
Arians, and then they became Athanasians or Trini
tarians, in imitation of the Indo-Egyptians, and
cursed all who were not of their incomprehensible
opinion. On one day Origen, on another St. Augus
tine, swayed their minds. They had deadly contro
versies on the Lord’s Supper, and about the use of
bread and wine, or the Real Presence, or the Transubstantiation, whilst often thousands were starving
around them for want of food. They forgave sins
but only to those who could pay for such remission"
lh?y 7 J?trodu<;ed self-abnegation, self-flagellation,
and selt-torture'for the masses, and lived in pomp and
vanity. They smiled and cursedin one breath: they
spoke immediately before the Reformation, but their
language was always ambiguous, for they tried to
please all parties; and still they attached more impor
tance to outward ceremonies, vestments, symbols,
types, and mere verbal professions without any
inward spiritual meaning, than tomoral reality and
real religiousness.
. Whilst the Romish Church was thus a house
divided against itself, many honest monks and more
enlightened laymen turned back to the old Greek
and Roman classics, and tried to take up the thread
ot the progressive historical development of
humanity, which appeared to have been rent
asunder and lost for ever. To re-unite it where
it had been broken, they revived sciences and arts ;
and dogmatists, mystics, and dry school-men were
more and more silenced. The Reformation was
nally victorious in the terrible struggle; but it
had to fight its way through torrents of blood.
When the peace of Westphalia left Europe in the
possession of religious freedom, Europe sealed her
right to scientific progress. The Romish Christian
creed was then dissolved, and no Vaticanism will
�of Ancient Creeds.
21
ever revive it. Christianity with the Reformation
ceased to be a special creed based on mere outer
signs ; it was once more made universal. Christ’s
God of Love and Reason who was enthroned
through the Reformation is the God of the Universe,
his existence, in one shape or another, is believed in
by Brahmans, Buddhists, Jews, Mahometans and
Christians.
Christ, if considered as the incarnate divine spirit
of self-sacrifice and love, has freed men of their finite
ness by teaching them to surrender their outerselves
to a pure moral and intellectual consciousness of
their innerselves, and thus only has redeemed
humanity, and dissolved all ancient and modern
creeds by establishing real religion based on reason
aided by science, promoting real morality, freed of
all dogmatic dross and from the unnatural bondage
of prejudices and the mystic fetters of ignorance.
Polytheism of old had to yield to a more refined
creed of one creative power; but Polytheism had
already borne the elements or constituent particles
of spontaneous dissolution in itself. However
poetical the deification of the different phenomena
of Nature may be, it was merely the outgrowth of
an ignorant and over-heated, an unconscious and
unbridled imagination. Bitterly, though poets and
artists bewailed this time, they had to surrender
their fanciful world of self-created gods. Man,
however, wishes at all times to have his emotions
taken into consideration. The culture of the emo
tional element seems to be the last retreat of those
who think that dry morals (as if morals did not
continually exercise our emotional elements), and
mere science (cold, calculating science, as they say
in turning up their eyes) cannot suffice to fill man’s
nature. They then turn to a vague and incompre
hensible anthropomorphism, man-worship, which in
�.2 2-
The Spontaneous Dissolution
■one form or another, has not yet ceased to be the
cherished creed amongst those who crave for the
merely emotional.
The Greeks were the first and most cultivated
anthropomorphists. Their creed has vanished, but
it contained much emotional element that, purified
of idolatry, might serve the masses of our modern
times as an element of unlimited artistic emotion;
for art will and must replace that fervid craving for
„emotion. Art will yet again shape beautiful forms
for their own sake, and ethics and aesthetics will
repair our loss of barren phrases referring to super
natural masters. The anthropomorphism of old will
revive again, though in another spirit; it will not
be sanctified as a creed, but hallowed, because it
will lead man, through love, to understand the ideal
beauty of everything created, from the tiny and
bashful daisy to the lofty-snow covered summits of
the Himalayan Mountains.
Ancient Creeds, after having gone through the
dissolution of Polytheism and Anthropomorphism,
enter upon a species of anthropopatism. The leaders
of this creed try to combine revelation and reason,
faith and science; they use all possible sophistical
contortions to prove that there are no contradictions
in the Sacred books of the Eastern nations ; that all
is clear. You have only to take the different pas
sages in their corresponding allegorical, parabolical,
tropological, anagogical or literal meanings. They
assert, with a mild gentleness, that there are no
difficulties except to the blind, to the heartless, and
to those who live to cold science and have no higher
aim than the “Fata Morgana” of a dreary materi
alism. These anthropopatists work out in their own
imagination a more or less lofty portrait of the
Divinity, and describe, praise, draw, model or paint
it according to their individual idiosyncrasies, their
�of Ancient Creeds.
23
sympathies or antipathies. They persecute, hate,
despise, or, if they are very kind-hearted, pity those
who fail to see a “personal” Father in their dim
half-theological, half-rationalistic colours. These
men are like some Protestants who deny to the
Romish Church the right to have miracles, but keep
certain miracles which must be believed in. They
do not see that in this very contradiction is a
thriving element of spontaneous dissolution. Before
a tribunal of logic these half-theologians and half
Rationalists could not pass a “ spelling-bee.” These
men feel that they have lost their historical basis,
and to find a new one would necessitate too much
study; they could only find it through a correct
appreciation of the gradual development of humanity,
to attain which they would have to make them
selves acquainted with the intellectual pressure of
mind brought to bear upon progress. Fortunately
the discharges from the electric theological clouds
that have gathered, or are gathering, have, since the
invention of the lightning conductor of tolerance,
become extremely harmless, though they may
occasionally be unpleasant. The anthropopatists
should base their ethics and metaphysics, if the
latter exist, on the ruling principles of the Cosmos,
but it is much easier to talk morals than to intro
duce a new creed in our times, after so many
spontaneous dissolutions of ancient creeds.
Who, indeed, wishes for a new creed ? We do
not want the ridiculous Acosmism which denies
the reality of the world, asserting that it had been
created out of nothing, and that matter is a non
entity. These modern apostles in tail-coats talk of
an “ Unseen Universe,” as though it could be.seen ;
if it can, then to call it “ unseen ” is nonsense, and
if it is invisible, to waste time in describing it with
copious verbiage, is still more absurd. Though we
�24
The Spontaneous Dissolution
may never know what the absolute essences of
matter or life are, we may still study matter in its
phenomenal results, and see the aberrations of mind
whenever it treats of the so-called supernatural, and
its glorious conquests in arts and sciences, when
man deals with given forms and quantities, either
transforming them into works of ideal beauty, or
discovering, after centuries of hard labour and keen
observation, more scientific explanations of the secret
workings of the hidden forces of nature, than the
theologians could find on the easy and lazy path of
an assumed revelation. The world belongs in future
to another body of priests, to the priests of science
and art'
The Indian philosophers already attained the con
sciousness of creation, preservation, and transforma
tion as the external actions of one force, in three
equally powerful emanations, and, notwithstanding
this philosophical starting point, free of every taint
of dogmatism and anthropomorphism, a connecting
link of different incarnate gods was worked out by
the priesthood to satisfy the emotional ignorance of
the masses.
The Jews set up a god of their own, a national,
jealous god, who was to be stronger than all the
others, which was a silent indirect admission that
there were other gods. Jewish monotheism reached
merely the notion of a mighty ruler, who was master
even over the false gods j and those gods who gave
comfort and hope for thousands of years to innumer
able generations, saw themselves hurled by Javeh
into the abyss of hell, where they had to rule as
mighty demons. But the i( immanence” or inherence
of a pervading spirit in the universe cannot be a
person in the sense of an anthropopatist or acosmist,
for omniscience and omnipresence is only pos
sible with an impersonal deity. The burning ques-
�of Ancient Creeds.
25
tion of modern thought is not, as Renan has it, a con
test between Polytheists,—namely, Roman Catho
lics, Protestants, Buddhists and Brahmans, and
Monotheists—namely, Jews and Mahometans, but
the struggle is between those who assume an all
pervading infinite spirit, and those who deny the
existence of any Deity, between Panmonotheists
and Atheists.
. ,
But who are those who deny the Divinity ? Such
men as either cannot or will not understand the
cosmos, who can see only matter, but do not grasp
the effects produced by matter in the universe as
well as in humanity, which is but its reflex. Those
who never will draw a line between cause and effect,
and most of all those who drag the Divinity down
to their own low level, transforming it into an idol
of their own, which they wish to force upon
humanity at large ; these proud, conceited theolo
gians promote atheism even more than some pro
fessed atheists. But who are atheists ?
Certainly not the scientific men as physicists,
who bow down their heads, and profess, with child
like lips : “ We are too humble, too finite to grasp
the infinite,; we shall be contented to trace here and
there some minute workings of the innumerable
elements forming phenomena that are, that must
have had an origin and must have an aim.’ Not
the philologists who, in languages freed from all the
trammels of a paradisiacal tongue, in which God
himself spoke, trace and systematize the phases
through which languages had to pass to attain
their different sounds; alphabets, words, _ concrete
and abstract expressions. Not the geologists, who,
unfettered by any Eastern cosmogony, follow
up the growth of our globe according to law and
order, and find in this very inherent law and order
the vestiges of an eternal first cause, which personi-
�26
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Ued becomes utterly unintelligible. Not the his
torian, who, in the complicated phenomena, of which
men are the units with all their passions, yearnings,
hopes, and fears,. traces the eternal laws of action
aaid reaction, which force humanity onward on the
path of continuous progress. To so great an extent
is this the case, that if we carefully consider the sub
ject, we are astonished at the relative progress of
humanity, and this improvement has been attained
since the reformation, since the revival of classic art
.and philosophy ; . since scientific inquiries have
silenced the grand inquisition, and stopped the burn
ing of witches and heretics; since logicians have
disproven the false and pernicious principles of the
reasoning of an infallible priesthood; since tolerance
&nd forboarancG Kavo clad themselves in ermine and
meted out justice with an even hand, regardless of
the creed to which those belonged who sought re
dress for wrongs inflicted upon them ; since even
bishops and deans dare to thunder at the gates of
narrow-mindedness, and to proclaim the right of
free investigation, not only for themselves, but also
for those who are under their sway; since the layauthority took upon itself to spread sciences and
arts amongst the ignorant and neglected masses,
■and to prevent through the strong arm of the law a
reactionary and anachronistic movement inaugu
rated by some of the priesthood, who, craving for
the. emotional, think to find in tapers, fancy em
broideries, monkish dresses, and the most childish
mimicry of a creed that went through the process of
its spontaneous dissolution more than 350 years
ago, a solution of the religious questions of our
days.
Mysticism has been for thousands of years the
bane of humanity. Ignorance is her cherished
foster-sister. Mysticism and ignorance presumed
�of Ancient Creeds.
27
not only to lead humanity on the path of emotion
to virtue, through different creeds, but also to regu
late man’s intellectual powers. Ignorance and
mysticism built up astronomical, zoological, and
geological hypotheses which had to be destroyed;
they prescribed to the Divinity how and when the
world must have been created ; science had to rectify
these errors of a natural ignorance. That such
errors should have been transformed into articles of
«reed, indispensable to the salvation of our better
intellectual nature, and that this deception should
and could have been practised for thousands of years,
is not a mysterious riddle, but the natural effect of
an equally natural cause. Whenever and wherever
ignorance assumes the mask of theological know
ledge, it leads men into error. The error once
having become, through continuous repetition, an
accepted truth (though it may be only negative
truth, viz., falsehood), it takes the positive shape
•of an indispensable entity for the happiness of man
kind, and it requires thousands of years to remove
such falsehoods, and historians testify to the fact
that the whole progressive development of humanity
•consists in the destruction of such falsehoods.
In England and Germany, as the two countries
most advanced in civilisation, the one politically,
the other intellectually, this process of undoing the
past is most apparent. In both countries set dogmas
appear to go down the stream of time with ever
diminishing buoyancy, form and bulk, till they must
sink altogether. Curates and pastors become rarer
and scarcer. In 1831 there were in the eight Prus
sian Universities 2,203 theological students, and in
1875 there were scarcely 560 (about 70 to a Uni
versity). In the Universities of Southern and
Western Germany the decline of theologians was in
the same ratio. In addition to this, one-third of the
�28
The Spontaneous Dissolution
matriculated th eological students abandoned theology
altogether, and entered other professions, tired of
asserting things they could not understand ; for they
had gone through a scientific training in Logie»
Mathematics, and Universal History. The ecclesi
astical authorities in Germany had to acknowledge
that, in one year or so, one-sixth of the vacant bene
fices would have no clergymen to fill them.
Yet, in the face of this growing dissolution, we
have our “ Burials Question,” as the result of Christ’s
command, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself.” After
1875 years of grace and Christian teaching, we find
men trying to. prevent some of their Christian
brothers from lying side by side in the same church
yard, in the same soil from which we have all
sprung, to which we all return, from which all our
pleasures stream, on which all our woes are concen
trated. And why ? Because these Christians
differ, on certain theological questions without real
distinction, from those in power. For this reason
Christians of another shade of thinking should be
carried in silence to their last resting-place. What
tyranny, what cruel tyranny, perpetrated in the
name, of Christianity! And these cruelties are
practised whilst words of piety, fraternal condescen
sion, and humble submission are used on one side,
and on the other the stern, indomitable “no sur
render ” is proclaimed with the blind obstinacy of
an Eastern despot. This intolerance is the more
remarkable, in the third quarter of the nineteenth
century, in our free and enlightened country, whilst
in Germany, Russia, and Austria tolerance is prac
tised, at least amongst the different members of the
Christian faith. In Germany, Roman Catholics and
Protestants often use the same sacred building, the
one for his mass, the other foi' his sermon, and both
for their prayers to their common God. In Russia
�of Ancient Creeds.
29
and Austria the Christian children of one ruling, per
vading spirit, may lie peaceably side by side when
fate has sealed their controversies, when they can no
more pronounce God’s anger and judgment against
one another, when they rest from their labours. But
we persecute one another even beyond the grave,
notwithstanding our great political and social move
ments. We are trying to bring education into the
hovels of our rural population, and to the gutter
children of our over-crowded towns. Our scientific
discoveries are teaching us day by day to distrust
our preconceived prejudices ; our historical inquiries
demonstrate how falsehoods were spread; how truth
was distorted; how dreams, fancies, myths, and
legends were taken for realities; how space and
time were filled with the tears and sufferings ot
men for the sake of false theories; how nations and
individuals lost themselves in dogmatic oyster
shells, and were unable to see beyond their narrow
ossified world—and yet we cannot let our fellow
men sleep their last long sleep in peace.
Philosophers and physicists may smile at this
with tears in their eyes, seeing how the self-contra
dicting elements in creeds not only lead to irreligi
ousness, but contain in themselves—through placing
the form above the spirit, matter above mind, emo
tion above reason—the elements of a spontaneous
dissolution. This inevitable dissolution can only be
directed into the right groove of a higher moral and
intellectual phase by a thorough understanding of
history, which teaches us that only a synthetical
combination of the Indian and Hebrew-Christian
creeds and their sublime ethics, divested of all
extraneous matter, may furnish us with real religion,
as a code of morals binding on the whole of humanity,
without fettering in any way our intellectual
nature.
�30
The Spontaneous Dissolution
, The bigoted and credulous, the fanatics and
ignorant in the Church and in our Universities, in
our colleges and educational establishments, do nottremble in vain at the very name of “ Universal
History” as the grand store-house of man’s immortal
deeds, follies, and crimes, committed for thousands
of years, partly in the name of the Divinity, and
partly to satisfy the religious emotions of a Torquemada, or a Calvin, or some false assumptions
based on some imaginary theory or divine revela
tion. Not in vain have our Universities shut their
doors on an honest, unbiassed study of the develop
ment of humanity on general principles. Were it
not for this,, we might lose our insulated position';
we might discover a continuous gradual growth and
decay of creeds as well as sciences, and see how
one system of ancient fallacies served another as
basis of development.
Not without grave reason does Cardinal Manning
clamour against an appeal to history, and brand it
as “heresy and treachery.” He does not stand
alone, he is supported by our own theologians and
the heads of our own Universities, who consider the
study of “Universal History” superfluous, per
nicious, leading to scepticism; for it might teach us
that man formed his own gods and dogmas, in
fluenced by the aspect of nature and his relative
amount of brain; that man has wasted his time and
energy in trying to answer questions “ d priori” (out
of his imagination) before he could gather informa
tion “ d posteriori” (by experience). We might learn
that every step in the progress of humanity had to
be fought for single-handed by independent men in
whom morals and intellect were well balanced. We
might become conscious that dogmatic superstitions
in India, China, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Egypt,
Judaea, and Borne, during the Middle Ages and in
�of Ancient Creeds.
31
modern times, had caused the dissolution or station
ary state of all these Empires and times. _
For man, composed of the two constituent ele
ments of matter and mind, of morals and intellect,,
must cultivate both ; the one according to immu
table laws, necessitated by his very organisation,,
and the other unfettered by any capricious, emo
tional, and unintelligible self-created and seliimposed creed.
Man’s destiny lies in the perfect balance oi ins
moral and intellectual nature.
t
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ABE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 23rd April,
1876, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,_
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s.; being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter) to the
Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One
(Reserved Seats) One Shieling.
Penny ;—Sixpence ;—and
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The spontaneous dissolution of ancient creeds: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 23rd January, 1876
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
The Sunday Lecture Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N702
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 spontaneous dissolution of ancient creeds: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 23rd January, 1876), 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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creeds
NSS
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/ade536944d8a98cbebfc2899e3a32f44.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=jGkV0tXrjPOZsveZ2wx2Fwc073JT22rnm-xFUCVIJLfYUJvsLBPEZ6xBP-c6KmPG9WQYlphADydBaXNcTjMtKc2%7EDQu-wpSGFz79lNAp5N3fz2cJOLdVOZrwEKC1AcWWa5icj7q7tFiYNejiUMU7p42BmBxtxlS0ZNFRHoPH9q6IXXD4gtRbGfJvwCcdnNizySYF8-egObPl3yNF2oO3LNdINu8m-gLHVWmh7qiGiQAqa6dgi4PlYQfjIvRes1P8GPNlrvp4Mm%7Ew9Mxi4sHxOA%7ELrd5BeVQ2BsCuDbuwPCqFCBMevl0i1tE7DdpNijhLjnHrQVb4UDo1RcojuVDoAg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
e047870a582a18b3dff365f51a1d12ab
PDF Text
Text
����������������������������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The history of nonconformity in Plymouth
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Worth, Richard Nicholls
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [Plymouth]
Collation: 40 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. 'Read November 2nd, 1876. [title page]. Reprinted from the Transactions of the Plymouth Institution, v. 6, p. 44-83. Lists of ministers, Extracts from Corporation accounts, The Hebrew Committee.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1876]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT66
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Plymouth
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 history of nonconformity in Plymouth), 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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Nonconformism
Plymouth (Devon)
Religion
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/55a04752fca75eaf53ee69f105f2eb0a.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=c2IgW-SQ9iDQb6EQkkx1YpKxTbICyxml9M5WtJ4J2cdP7T6PdlKoRmAvTbJorbWR0TWBzG0BZ67gE-cpDipZbM3QWZBdmlyKiLTf8TUJw13NpoDwpKwXrTlsxIucsmruVn-BBvABEJ%7EZi48mRmUoCCHKuh2OUG4ofFSw6Q9BuN2akoSjWvRFGEDKS-Sb-S%7Eqg56IxeNfqivjYRuWlUdUproby-mkUveJNwXySZonXzmh444O9sx1SDvD5duDUV1Kf4gi8qyFvTHzxcgdjqxo3jI-PR0Rqa5RcyyNZdcAvAIkMwUsM5sXjt1C-bxU4R%7EfBOvK9ohPHzY%7EZUxunGYN0w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5284bfdf5d05e56b4515b23bb1964d08
PDF Text
Text
CT 433
THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY
IN
MATTERS OF FAITH.
PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS
SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD.
LONDON S E,
1876.
Price Threepence.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET.
BAYMARKET.
�THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY
IN
MATTERS OF FAITH.
-------- ♦---------
HERE are few of us, who have ventured to think
on matters of faith, that have not had to de
plore the religious trammels and prejudices of our
early religious education; if, indeed, that can be
called education which most industriously stores the
mind with unintelligible dogma, and the imagination
with unnatural mystery; whilst it suppresses with
utmost care the soul’s longings for light, and forbids
inquiry upon topics that most seriously affect our
common humanity.
There ought to be no subject more enticing to
pleasant and instructive colloquial intercourse than
that which is most intimately interwoven with human
duty and human happiness. Religion is the very
core of life ; and, however closely related may be the
numberless subjects that awaken human interest, at
best they are but collateral to this. Yet, whilst all
other topics may be freely discussed without exciting
angry passions, or personal hate, it is just here where
discussion becomes painfully exciting, and difference
of opinion intolerable. Perhaps there can be no
severer condemnation of existing religious organisa
tions than this common intolerance of all inquiry
beyond a certain prescribed limit. Within a certain
charmed circle you may walk freely ; but any wander
ings without this circle meet with religious, and
social, and material penalties, designed to bring the
offender back, and often effectual to this issue.
One would think that they who can so readily
T
�4
^he Ultimate Authority in
unite to blacken an offending brother, would show
the most loving unity among themselves—that all
who call themselves after Christ would exhibit towards
each other the gentleness and the love of their
Divine Master! Yet “ no combatants are stiffer.” The
Unitarians say, “ So unanswerably evident is the
Unitarian scheme, that he who will not believe it does
not believe the scriptures, and is a real infidel.” (Bible
Christ.) “The Trinity (says Lindsey), is expressly
contrary to above 2,000 texts in the Old, and above
I, 000 in the New Testament.” Whilst Jortin says,
“ The Trinity is one of the clearest, as well as one of
the most decisively scripture doctrines in the world;
and that the famous Postel has shown that there are
II, 000 proofs of the Trinity in the Old Testament.”
Dr. South says, “ The Unitarians are impious blas
phemers, whose infamous pedigree runs back from
wretch to wretch, in a direct line to the devil him
self.” Lindsey says, “It is just as reasonable, and
not so mischievous, to believe in Transubstantiation as
to believe in the Trinity.”
Eusebius says, “ The idea of a God-man is mon
strous,”—and Belsham says, “ The miraculous con
ception is a fiction as absurd as that of Jupiter and
Danae.” Yet the Protestant sects accept the former
doctrine, and no one can be a Romanist unless he
believe the latter.
Horne says “ that the whole scheme of Redemp
tion by Christ is founded upon the doctrine of the
fall of man, and must stand or fall with it.” Fellowes
and Wright call this doctrine “an impious, absurd,
and unscriptural fiction ; which impugns the perfec
tion of the deity in the creation of man.”
Most sects declare the necessity of some sacraments;
all denounce those which they reject. The Quakers
accept none. To the Protestant, Romish worship is
idolatry; and the Roman consigns the Protestant to
hell. The excellent Gilbert Wakefield vindicated the
�Matters of Faith.
$
entire abandonment of public worship on scriptural
principles. Sir Thomas More says, “the time will
come when men will account no more of prayer than
they do of their old shoes.”
Archdeacon Jortin says of the Calvinists, “ It is a
system consisting of human creatures without liberty,
doctrine without sense, faith without reason, and a
God without mercy.” Dean Close responds, “that
Arminianism is delusive, dangerous, and ruinous to
immortal souls.” And a Unitarian discourse on
Priestley declares both Calvinism and Arminianism
“ to be mischievous compounds of impiety and
idolatry.” Whilst Archbishop Magee denounces the
Unitarian system as “ embracing the most daring
impieties that ever disgraced the name of Christi
anity,” and declares that “if Unitarianism be true,
Christianity is an imposture.”
A little book, ‘ Divine Truth,’ says the Methodists
“ are misled fanatics, alienated from all knowledge of
the true God.” A late Bishop of London (‘Letters
on Dissent ’) says, “ Dissenters are actuated by the
devil, and have the curse of God resting heavily on
them all.” Canons V. and VII. of the Church of
England denounce all Dissenters “ as accursed, de
voted to the devil, and separated from Christ.” And
the dissenting ‘ Christian Observer ’ declares the
Church of England to be “ an obstacle to the progress
of truth and holiness in the land; that it destroys
more souls than it saves ; and that its end is most de
voutly to be wished for by every lover of God and
man.”
Bishop Magee—not to be outdone by his ancestors
—says, “ I say there are men now serving their term
of penal servitude for fraud and conspiracy, who were
guilty of less deliberate fraud, and less odious con
spiracy, than the fraud and conspiracy of those men
who make a merchandise of the cure of souls. This,
I say, is a practice which makes the church stink in
�6
The Ultimate Authority in
the nostrils of many who might otherwise be her
supporters.’’
Our church friends have now a newspaper to sup
port each party in the church, and a weekly budget
of very delectable extracts may be made from these
papers, showing how, even in the same church,
Christians love one anotherThere is only one
point about which they can all agree, and that is to
denounce and blacken, with every damning epithet
they can devise, that advancing fraction, lying within
and without our church organizations, who have
thought themselves out of all dogmatic chains, and
who can see in a righteous life the fulfilment of all
claims, human and divine.
History has given us the successive appearance of
religious reformers; and he who looks carefully at
the teaching of these reformers will see a striking
likeness pervades them all. The assumption of a
special divine authority has necessarily given force
to these teachings, and a foundation to the religious
systems built upon them. And in the study of each
it is interesting to note how gradually and apparently
easily the various priesthoods, whose authority these
teachings were designed to upset, have appro
priated them to their own purposes, and overlaid
them with a mass of their own dogmas, superstitions,
and corruptions, until their original simplicity and
truth have been all but lost. The fundamental ten
dency of nearly all religious reforms has been to coun
teract sacerdotal power, and whatever good they have
done in the world has been by virtue of the simple
truths they have taught, and in spite of the priestly
influences that have beset them. And there are few
thoughts sadder than the reflection, how much of the
good, which these special revivals of divine light were
designed to effect, has been checked and counteracted
by priestly ambition, sacerdotal power, and dogmatic
corruption.
�Matters of Faith.
1
The Zend Avesta of the Persians; the Vedic Deva
of the Hindu; the Confucius of China; the Jesus of
the Jews; the Mohammed of the Turks; and, after
the suppression of light by Rome, our own Wycliffe,
Huss and Jerome of central Europe, and Savonarola
of Italy, the Reformers; and yet more recently,
Spinoza, Swedenborg, and Wesley; have all claimed
a divine commission or a divine sanction. And to
each and all of them we may make like concessions
—that all of Truth embodied in their teaching came
from God. The mistake, partly theirs and partly
ours, has been, to suppose that all they taught was
true, and to corrupt and crystallize their teaching into
a hard and fast code, to which, with more or less of
subsequent distortion, or overlying dogma, we ask all
mankind to bowdown in humble submission. Nowhere
else has the instinctive conservatism and ignorance
of our nature—the co-agent of priestly and baronial
ambition—been so mischievous as here.
The existing authorities for nearly all religious
organisations are Sacred Books, either as interpreted
by the church, or with more or less of private inter
pretation ; and the direct authority of the church
itself. But when we come to inquire as to what
sacred books are canonical, we find these have all
been fixed by the church; so that these become, after
all, only another form of church authority. It is
amusing to notice how different books of the Old and
New Testaments have been proscribed by one council
or decree, and restored by another; how obscure the
origin of many books, and how slight the evidence on
which their authority is based; how the council of
Laodicea (3,40-50) differs from the councils of Car
thage (397) and Florence (1439); how the canon of
the Donatists (329) declares sundry Gospels and the
Acts of the Apostles to be canonical, whilst Eusebius
(340) pronounces them spurious; how many of the
dogmas of the church have finally been declared true
�8
The Ultimate Authority in
and authoritative by the narrowest majorities. It is
painful to read of the differences of religious opinion
held by the different organisations of the Christian
Church from the earliest days; of the pride, rivalry,
hypocrisy, and schism, which largely incited the per
secution of Dioclesian (284); led Constantine (324),
after passing the Milan Edict, to strive by imperial
patronage for something like uniformity; and drove
the philosophic and excellent Julian (351) back into
idolatry. And it is yet more painful to reflect that
the religious writings of an obscure and barbarous
age—writings which, however valuable, and they are
so valuable that I would be the last to lose them:
however beautiful; and they are some of them so
beautiful that they claim our highest admiration, and
excite our best emotions: which yet are so crowded
with errors of fact and moral distortions, and so evi
dently belong almost wholly to legendary literature :—
I say it is excessively painful and humiliating to feel
that these have been vested with an authority which,
although wholly human, and constituted by an in
tensely corrupt church, are made to thrust aside all
future emanations of divine light; and are, by almost
every church organisation in this enlightened age (!)
declared canonical, and professedly made the chief basis
of church union. One who thinks at all upon the
foundations of his faith, is apt to think with contempt
of the spiritual slavery and moral thoughtlessness
which submits so willingly to these priestly assump
tions; and to scorn the trammels of oligarchic assump
tion and insolence on the one hand, and the puerile
servility of our churches and peoples on the other.
Grasping the fact that truth must be as invariable,
as immutable, as the source whence alone it comes,
and constituting themselves the judges of what is truth,
dogmatic churches must needs be persecuting ; and it
could be easily shown that they have been persecuting,
just as they have been dogmatic, and have obtained
�Matters of Faith.
9
civil power to enforce their dogmas. Without the
aid of governments this persecution must needs
have been limited to social and moral pressure; but
with this aid it has been extended to property,
liberty, and life, and the history of our Christian
Church even—the church of Him who never taught a
dogma, and whose fiercest denunciations were burled
against those who did—the church of Him whose
religion was most emphatically a religion of peace, of
love, of good works—the church which shamelessly
takes His name even, has its history written in blood.
It is absolutely shocking to feel that the most horrible
crimes which stain the history of the Christian era
have been perpetrated in the name of, and for the
honour of, Christ. Thank God I the day is coming—
perhaps quickly—when civil powers will no longer
lend their aid to this persecnting tendency. And
thank God also! the progress of science and the
spread of knowledge promise sooner or later to eman
cipate society from the oppressive influences of dog
matic religious authority.
Is it possible to get rid of the difficulties and dangers
that beset dogmatic religion ? I think it is. The
field of human knowledge is widening rapidly. We
cannot prosecute inquiry into any part of this field
without at once finding ourselves vis-a-vis with Law.
Turn where we may, law reigns supreme, and demands
from us unqualified obedience. Do we forget her
claims, or attempt to thwart her? She smiles be^
nignantly, and simply says—suffer. There is no
escape here. All created matter, organic or inor
ganic, has sprung into existence by her mandate, and
is ordered by her direction. Forces are in constant
action, producing, modifying, decomposing, recom
posing, in infinite variety ; and yet all in exact legal
order. So certain does the investigator in science
feel of this, that should he discover any deviation
�io
'The Ultimate Authority in
from expected results, he at once looks for the action
of some unobserved force to account for it. Whether
we lose ourselves in speculating on the infinitudes of
space and time—marvel at the revelations of the tele
scope in astronomy—or gaze with intensest curiosity
through the microscope at the perfection and beauty of
the foraminifera, or diatomacm, we everywhere note the
impress of Law, and the absolute subjection of matter"
to her rule. Throughout the lower organised forms
obedience is the sequence of an invariable instinct;
and it would not be easy to show that any creature
has been invested with the power to disobey, and
with its consequent responsibility till we get to man.
It matters little how man came into existence, whether
by evolution or by a “jump.” But it does matter
where he is, what he is, and why he is here. Placed in
a world crowded with phenomena, which he alone of
all organised beings has power to observe, to examine,
to understand, and to enjoy; possessed of a mind
capable of illimitable development, and of illimitable
knowledge; inspired with an emotional nature, sus
ceptible of the tenderest sympathy, unbounded bene
volence, the strictest justice, and profoundest rever
ence; it is the most rational of thoughts that his
mental and emotional being should find its highest
exercise, its most refined enjoyment, in asking Nature
to reveal her secrets ; and in seeking to know what
is his relation to them; and that he should look for
that perennial happiness for which he is so admirably
constituted, and for which he is so evidently designed,
in yielding a loving, reverential obedience to those
laws which affect his being.
Summarily, then, I lay down the following propo
sitions as the basis of a scientific religion, i.e.,—a
religion based on the knowable instead of the un
knowable—a religion, therefore, that can no more
admit of doubt than the science of astronomy, or of
physiology—a religion of fact, the details of which
�Matters of Faith.
11
may be discussed with no more animosity than are
those of geology, or philology—a religion that teaches
the one grand lesson which Solomon taught of old,
“that righteousness exalteth a nation.”
Before I state these propositions, it may help to d
better apprehension of what is meant by the term
Law, if I give the following definition from Mr. John •
Stuart Mill:—“All phenomena, without exception, are
governed by invariable laws, with which no volition,
either natural or supernatural, interferes.”
First Proposition.—There is no authority but Law.
Law may be classified as follows :—
(a.) Law is physical, affecting man in relation to
external nature.
(&.) Law is social, affecting man in relation to
his fellow.
(c.) Law is moral, affecting man in relation to
the motives which govern his actions.
Whether or no there should be a fourth head—
spiritual—I am unable to determine ; but it seems to
me that the third head (o'), may be made to embrace all
those phenomena of our being which are the noblest
stamp of our humanity, and the source of our highest
happiness ;—which affect our inmost consciousness of
a divine origin, and provoke the most ecstatic joy ;—
which arouse our warmest sympathies, and sanction
our holiest affections. If these may not be included
in the term moral, then I would range them under a
fourth head—spiritual.
Second Proposition.—There is no religion but obe
dience. Obedience may be ranged under the same
three heads, thus :—
(a.) Obedience to all the laws that affect our
physical life.
(&.) Obedience to all the laws that affect our
social life.
(c.) Obedience to all the laws that affect our
moral or spiritual life.
�12
The Ultimate Authority, &c.
Third Proposition.—There is no reward but the
natural sequence to obedience. Rewards may be classi
fied under the same three heads as above.
Fourth Proposition.—There is no punishment but
the natural sequence to disobedience. Punishments
may be classified under the same three heads as above.
The readers of this paper must pardon the crude
form in which these propositions are put before them.
For many years I have held to the design of placing
them more elaborately before the public, but the daily
and imperious tasks of a laborious life have kept this
purpose in abeyance. Nor would they now see the
light in this form, but that they were thus hastily
thrown together for discussion in a small social club,
one of the members of which suggested that the paper
should be placed in the hands of Mr. Scott. Should any
of Mr. Scott’s readers deem them worthy of criticism,
I shall be pleased to receive such criticism, even if
adverse ; as I hold that the rectification of erroneous
thought is best effected by knowing how our thoughts
look to other minds.
T. W., F.G.S.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNBLL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The ultimate authority in matters of faith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wiltshire, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 12 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Signed. T.W. and F.G.S. (likely to be Fellow of the Royal Geological Society). Attribution of Wiltshire from WorldCat.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT194
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The ultimate authority in matters of faith), 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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Faith
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Salvation
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wilson, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Glasgow
Collation: 16 p. (irregularly paged) ; 20 cm.
Series title: Tracts for the times
Series number: No. 7
Notes: Text apparently complete but with pages in wrong order, i.e. [1], 6, 7, 4, 5, 2, 3, 8, 9, 14, 15, 12, 13, 10, 11, 16. Date of publication (approximate) from WorldCat. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
John Robertson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[185-]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N698
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (Salvation), 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
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
NSS
Salvation
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d0d9a81e6931e6f10138a1779b5c79c1.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=qGlnedGeKAMRCfoViS8BeqNJPjWmK3bc0khO-0i71aybk9qrE2gPMA40JoQyaOlM1xzrrIzbp-ZUsXdmLQRYnpAXeejA6RZ1ry0P9WC6aQSiCTpi%7EtRsrhten9oDJc8DOIf48po-wkbwA3obxs54yULD0ng%7ENom8SLtQWJ81K0sfgsrcfHs8XSwZD5SBQr%7EddvrSptK7VoEh1yabq5acqFH-hyp3%7Ev57yfyByThPrz81cW1pQvqfIvOj4I32Y2zx3l%7EVjYQ25ZW3Aq2HPvMW84SkfhKUg9mQ085Jb7Pr1Zvw8y5t-5sE6hbt5iTW1O%7EpbQX5j%7Ev0%7EbtEFa8V6hq38Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
4bc9ca592c02daad95dc97178afdac43
PDF Text
Text
Published by Request.
THE INFLUENCE OF DOGMA
UPON RELIGION.
A REPLY
TO SOME REMARKS MADE IN CONVOCATION
DURING THE DEBATE ON THE ATHANASIAN
CREED, APRIL 24, 1872.
BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
LATE VICAR OF HEALAUGH.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
CAMDEN HOUSE. DULWICH, S.E.,
AND
TRUBNER AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
Price Fourpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY WERTHEIMER, LEA AND CO.
CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBURY CIRCUS.
HHEBHBSBBDEBnSKSB08K9flffl
�PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
APRIL 28th, 1872.
;
(J .
(( Now the axe is laid at the root of the trees.”
Matthew iii. 10.
•
During the debate on the Athanasian Creed last
week in Convocation, one of the speakers is reported
to have said, 11 Pogma and Religion must go togetherj and the Church cannot unlearn her dogmas.”
Statements, so plain and concise as this one, are
of great value, and bring out in sharp outlines the
chief points of contrast between conflicting opinions
or principles. We may be thankful to any bishop
or priest for coming forward in this way and throw
ing down the gauntlet for us to take up. The
sooner that both sides in this great dispute between
authority and individual freedom see the real issue
which is at stake, the less time will be wasted in
endless petty discussions about particular doctrines.
I therefore take up the challenge, and will this
morning endeavour to prove that religion and
dogma do not necessarily go together; that, if any
thing, dogma is a hindrance to religion; and that
�4
the cry of 11 Non possumus” is the death-knell of
any church.
(1.) Religion and Dogma do not necessarily go
together.
Not to mention the Unitarian body, a large por
tion of whose ministers and laity have no articles
and creeds, no written dogmas at all, we will only
speak for ourselves. Religion surely means a sense
of the being of God, a belief in His goodness
which inspires veneration, obedience and love on our
part, and a consciousness of our hearts’ desire to
conform our lives to His holy will. This is not in
tended to be a definition; but, I think, people of
every creed in Christendom will admit that so much
at least is included under the term 11 Religion.”
That this devout reverence towards God, this
entire confidence in His fidelity, lies absolutely
at the very foundation of our present movement
cannot be gainsaid. Many, it is true, have joined
us only because they see the falseness and corrup
tion of the prevailing beliefs; and some few have
joined us, not through sympathy with our religion
at all, but from sympathy with our principles in
the search after truth. But with these exceptions,
the rest of that large and influential body who are
with us, have undertaken this great work from
religious motives; because they love God, and would
fain deliver the Christian peoples around them from
their unwholesome dread of God, from their gloomy
superstitions, and from their degrading and de
moralising ideas of the Divine dealings with men.
•
�Does this religion depend on dogma, or does it not ?
I answer, this religion not only does not depend on
dogma, but owes its very existence to the subversion
of dogma. It is born out of the instinctive rebellion
of our own reasons, consciences, and hearts, against
dogmas which we saw to be false, immoral, and
cruel. So far from such a religion and dogma
going together, speaking for ourselves, they could
not exist side by side. Either the dogma would
kill the religion, or the religion crush the dogma.
We owe all the light and beauty and gladness of
our religion to our having been able to renounce
the dogmas of orthodoxy, and to our determination
never again to be bound by any of them.
And this leads me to say a necessary word or two
about the term “dogma.” Dogma must not be con
founded with doctrine. Doctrine is merely a tech
nical term for an opinion, say a formal opinion, and
in theology doctrine is therefore a theological formal
opinion, the expression of a thought or idea about
God, or about our relation to Him. Now it is easy
to see that there can be no religion without doctrine,
?.e., without some thought or opinion about God;
and that every one of us who is religious must have
doctrines in his own mind as the basis of his religion.
In our case, there is such a general consensus of
doctrine or opinion as to draw us together, and
enable us to worship together, with a very great
degree of unanimity, in the words of one book.
But nevertheless, each one’s doctrine is his own to
hold or to change as he pleases, and is held only to
�6
grow wider and deeper in meaning, or to be
abandoned for another which has been found to be
more true. There must be many shades of doctrine
amongst us which, if they ever came to be petrified
into dogmas, would explode our society into frag
ments; but we have a bond of union deeper still
than our doctrines, we are bound together mainly
and most securely by our principles, by the princi
ples on which we consider that all doctrines should
be held. The most important of these is the
principle of perfect liberty given and received all
round to each one to hold his own, without fear of
illegitimate pressure or interference, and above all,
without fear of God or hell-fire. Such a bond of
union, never before tried so thoroughly, so radically,
will, we believe, be found strong and lasting—
infinitely better than that delusive uniformity in
which all churches have placed their trust.
Doctrines held on such terms of perfect individual
liberty, and by each one in the hope of going on
learning more and more of religious truth, and of
changing the partial truth of to-day for the more
complete truth of the morrow; doctrines which are
thus being continually brought to the test of reason,
and into the clearer light of advancing science, can
never be identified with dogmas.
Dogmas are doctrines turned into stone, of which
Church walls are built, to shut out the rest of the
world, and to imprison those who take shelter behind
them. When a doctrine is taken up by a commu
nity or Church, signed, sealed, stamped, ratified, and
�7
passed into law, then it becomes a dogma. Dogmatism
is the death of deliberate thought, because it is the
enforcement of doctrine. It makes little difference
whether the doctrine be enforced by Act of Par
liament, and its infringement made punishable by
pains and penalties, or whether it be urged upon
the acceptance of men under threats of God’s dis
pleasure, or with bribes of heaven hereafter—if it
be enforced at all, it becomes dogma. And one of
the most hopeful signs of our times is that the very
name of dogma is execrated by the wise, and
dreaded by the loving. Dogmas are the stones by
which priests and people in all ages have killed
their prophets. While it is the very nature of doc
trines to be ever changing, dogmas have congealed
them in deadly frost. Doctrines are the living
thoughts of living men; dogmas are the lifeless
forms of thoughts which are dead, curious only as
the contents of a long-closed sepulchre. Doctrines
have the power of immortal life and ever increasing
beauty and variety; dogmas once written down
with the iron pen of Church authority on the stone of
stumbling and rock of offence, become first ghastly
and then grotesque by the ravages of time.
No wonder then that, as doctrine after doctrine
died and was buried in the sepulchre of dogma, the
collection of thoughts scattered over centuries, but
which the dogmas now present for our acceptance
en masse, should prove to be nothing but a jumble
of incoherent and contradictory propositions. The
miserable keepers of this museum of ugly relics in
�8
our own times are only still more to be pitied than
the unhappy men whose business it was, in the
sixteenth century, to build for them a new gallery,
and place them in their new niches. Whoever it
was who wrote the Thirty-nine Articles began at
least with a noble Te Deum, simple and grand, the
earnest utterance, no doubt, of a heart overflowing
with reverence and love. “ There is but One living
and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or
passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;
the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible
and invisible.” He had only written three lines
however, before the religious emotion which had
inspired them, fled suddenly away when he was
compelled to grope amongst the ashes of the past,
and divide the invisible One into three pieces, and
then put them together again like a dreadful puzzle.
But his grief and perplexity are not to be compared
with the despair of those who have to face all these
embalmed relics to-day, and to tell the people in
solemn time and place that they are all alive and
will live for ever. Can we think without pity of
one, who knowing, e.g., what the Athanasian creed
contains, is obliged to confess: r The Church
cannot unlearn her dogmas.” To be placed in such
dire and distressing antagonism to the tide of
thought in the nineteenth century and in England
is far worse than to endure the worst penalties of
modern martyrdom. But what will not 11 Dogma”
do ? It is backed up by authority. All these
mummies of creeds and articles stand and preach
�9
to us the dreary echoes of long-dead thought, they
tie our hands, direct our steps, and force words
upon our lips. Galvanized by Acts of Parliament,
and by the still more coercive authority of a spectral
Church, they can make slaves of us as we go, can
scare us into submission, if a daring thought should
venture to rebel, and can, even to-day, darken our
last hours by visions of a fathomless despair. No
words of mine can describe their fatal power in
such vivid imagery as that of the old Hebrew
Psalmist. “Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but
unto Thy name be the praise, for Thy loving mercy
and for Thy truth’s sake. Wherefore should the
heathen say of us, ‘ Where is now their God ?’ As
for our God, He is in heaven, He hath done
whatsoever pleased Him. But their idols are the
work of men’s hands. They have mouths and
speak not; eyes have they and see not. They
have ears and hear not, noses have they and smell
not. They have hands and handle not; feet have
they and walk not; neither speak they through
their throat. They that make them are like unto
them, and so are all they that put their trust in
them.”
(2.) And these words bring me to say, in the second
place, that dogma is a hindrance to true religion.
Think first what is its influence on the preacher.
The enforcement of doctrine, whether by acts of
uniformity, by thirty-nine articles, by subscription
of clergy, by solemn oath of clerical fraternities, by
trust deeds, by inarticulate signs of assent or dis
�sent on the part of pewholders in any Church—
directly or indirectly—the imposition of dogma and
its practical enforcement on the preacher’s utterance
is a mischief indescribably deep and subtle. No
arguments can ever justify the anomaly, the ab
surdity and the cruelty of telling a man who desires
to preach the truth, that he must think in a par
ticular groove, and speak in conformity with par
ticular written or unwritten propositions; to be met,
at the moment of the discovery of some beautiful
idea, by this kind of caution, “ It is all very good,
but it is not orthodox, you know,” or that ((it may be
ever so true, but it is not safe,” &c., is to sentence
a man to lasting hypocrisy, or to temporal ruin.
Besides this, every limit put upon the freedom of
his utterance diminishes the value of every state
ment of his own true conviction, and casts discredit
upon whatever he may honestly say. How can
you be sure that your preacher in his moments of
greatest fervour is not saying what his heart belies,
if it be in the power of any of his hearers to turn
round upon him and say, “ You dare not preach
otherwise if you would.” It is therefore for the
best interest of all opinions whatsoever, to leave the
preacher absolutely unfettered.
But if you have a tongue-tied clergy you must
have a hood-winked laity. If you have falsehood
in the priest, the people will learn to love falsehood,
to prefer the poison of a lie to the nourishment of
truth.
But quite apart from this corruption, dogma most
snsHorannHi
�11
surely hinders religion, both in its essence and ex
pression. Have not hundreds and thousands been
thrown into frightful confusion and perplexity by
the dogma of the Trinity, not because it was a
doctrine, but because it was a dogma, to be believed
under peril of damnation ? Have not their hearts
sunk within them in trying to master a problem
which one moment’s free thought would have made
them toss aside with ridicule and scorn, but which
the awful dread of hell fascinated them to study ?
Treated as fanciful speculations, or as modes of
expressing theologically some subtle metaphysical
abstractions, these old creeds could do but little
harm; but as dogmas required to be believed
for one’s soul’s salvation, they have done irre
parable mischief to religion, alienated many and
many from the very thought of God, driven them
for shelter from Him and His awful mysteries
to the arms of a comprehensible and kind-hearted
man, and have forced the nations of Christendom
into an idolatry scarcely less injurious to reli
gion than the paganism which it supplanted. If
mankind are really at a hopeless distance from
God, and alienated from Him by their ignorance
and sin, dogma only adds wofully to their miseries,
dogma builds a wall between God and man over
which every prodigal son must climb, who would
11 arise and go to his father.” Every step which we
take under its guidance is, by the confession of its
own priests, full of darkness and danger. Clouds of
heaven’s wrath are waiting to burst in fury upon
�12
our unfortunate heads, pit-falls beneath our feet lie
hidden to entrap us into some shocking Sabellian
heresy, or some Homoiousian shade of a deadly
Arianism.
For this and that and the other
dogma, however hopelessly contradictory, “is the
Catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully,
he cannot be saved.”
Now where is religion all this time, that we have
been picking our way over this morass and that
desert, and climbing over the walls of dogma to get
ourselves saved I To me it looks like the religion
of the lowest physical type, if it be religion at all.
It is fetichism and not religion. It is the worship
of ourselves, not of God; it is devotion to our own
safety, not to His blessed will; it is the apotheosis of
bribery and corruption. But it is dogma and
dogma only that thus debases men. Left to them
selves they would be ashamed to believe those very
creeds which “the Church cannot unlearn.” They
would hide them away as symptoms of mental and
moral disease, lest men should scorn them for their
folly or shun them for their madness.
Dogma has, alas! laid its fetters over the very
worship of mankind, and forbidden aspiration which
it could not sanction, has silenced praises which it
did not enjoin. If our thoughts of God rise and
expand, our forms of prayer and praise are still
petrified and all but lifeless. If we have outgrown
those conceptions of the Divine Being, and of the
early origin of our race, on which the liturgy was
based, we are still tied down by dogma to repeat
�13
the same old weary platitudes, and to utter the
same senseless lamentations, which once suited our
unhappy forefathers. If we have grown more bro
therly towards our fellow-men, under the blessed
sunshine of the Father’s love to us all, we are still
bound, on the Church’s highest festivals, to curse
all Arians and Unitarians, and all the millions of
the Greek Church, with a bitter curse, and to pollute
our very praises to the Almighty Father by
anathemas against our brethren.
(3.) It does not require much courage to predict
the near dissolution of any Church offering such ob
structions to true religion, and, moreover, declaring
that she “ cannot unlearn her own dogmas.” Bad as
the Church of England may be, we must not believe
she is so bad as that, or that any Anglican High
Churchman is her spokesman. The Houses of
Parliament, and not the Houses of Convocation,
have the laws of the Church in their own hands.
The Queen, and not Christ or Peter, is the real head
of the Church, and so there is some chance of her
unlearning her own dogmas. Not merely a chance
of unlearning these particular ones, which are now
embalmed in the Thirty-nine Articles and Creeds,
but a chance of her divorcing herself for ever from
all dogmas, and of allowing doctrines to resume
their proper place, as the living thoughts of living
men, whose goal is the truth, and whom neither
terror nor greed can hinder from its pursuit.
Has the past no lesson to teach the dogmatist ?
What are his own dogmas, and what is the origin of
�14
his own creeds? Were not each and all in turn
the heresies of the successive ages in which they
first appeared ? Did not the dogmas of the dying
systems struggle long and manfully against the
new opinions, and was not their fall certain only
because the new opinions were more true than
those which they displaced? Neither priests of
Jupiter nor silversmiths at Ephesus could keep
their petrified dogmas from sinking in the sands of
time, and going down into the darkness where all
that is dead must finally be laid.
Tell us, ye chief priests and rulers, you will not,
you cannot unlearn your dogmas, then we tell you
that your day has come and is gone.
The thing that will not grow and keep pace with
the march;of intellect, that cannot move with the
progress of scientific knowledge, nor expand with
the enlarging hearts of men who have found a
loving God for themselves, that thing, we say, must
die, it is dead as soon as it ceases to move onward.
Your best, your noblest dogma of all, if it be
dogma and no longer living thought, is dead already,
and you cannot for long pass off that lifeless corpse
for a living man, dress it how you will, and paint
its withering parchment with the glowing carmine,
prop it up in your busiest thoroughfares, and give
it attitudes like the attitudes of the living throng;
speak for it too, be the interpreter of its wakeless
silence to the ears of men and women who have
been scared by its cold fixed gaze; but you will not
long succeed in deluding your fellow-men. They
�15
will soon find out that you have been playing upon
their childish and groundless fears, that you have
been amusing yourself in the twilight at their ex
pense, and they will sweep you and your mummified
creeds quickly, and perhaps rudely, out of the path
way of mankind.
If religion itself were worthless, dogma would
never give it worth. But if religion still holds its
own amongst human hearts, men will find one for
themselves which shall best accord with the highest
and not with the lowest aspect of their nature, one
which can lead them on instead of drawing them back.
But one thing they will not do. They will not give
up their manly souls to the dictates of the dead, nor
suffer themselves to be enslaved by those whom they
have once discovered to be the dupes of their
own fears, who shamelessly confess that for all
time to come, no one among mankind will ever dis
cover any truth about God and man not already
known, and that no one will discover any error in
the little patch of dogmas round which the’ Church
has built its ugly stone wall. What? errors in
Paganism, errors in Judaism, errors in Mahometanism,
errors in Brahmanism, errors in Buddhism, but none
in Christianity ? No, not one I
il The Church cannot unlearn her own dogmas.”
Then the Church is dead. Cover her tenderly,
bury her reverently—but pile over her tomb the
stumbling blocks of creed and dogma, which she had
strewn in our way.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The influence of dogma upon religion. A reply to some remarks made in convocation during the debate on the Athanasian creed, April 24 1872
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. Printed by Wertheimer, Lea and Co., London. Title page states: Published by Request. The sermon was preached at St George's Hall, April 28th 1872.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
The Author; Trubner and Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1872]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G3391
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 influence of dogma upon religion. A reply to some remarks made in convocation during the debate on the Athanasian creed, April 24 1872), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Athanasian Creed
Dogma
Morris Tracts
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/42a66f63820bfa315fc688307ecc2f17.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=dkdlaQmeJ1wis8Xe8uVreHNgfHzBN224CyA0p2rFHKckcC-7rnnOhvaBxM7FS83K7h2guAMUxopWhW6Ghoadil4gGtgemlxPf%7EdB-xqQixXiE4dtai8tYj4bSutdrm-gtHnfyrcgWWWxrbiGSqORSv1q8LATecR8YLZG7Q4dlDtBzO8b-WIQWUail3FGF7L7IK8geBwM5ZEzs5X7yVxe-2AqoSygkcJv%7En9xtjsEETXbHbWK7HHMji0xMWrcpQFN8AofcqUfzWIR4GcecWlODuO4kAukES3iG4R3zqAa9XgrKaNY%7EkJp%7EiA59%7Elyej6ynlRA2MHmv25D4KtcustUMw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b9d2aa475a4ff5611c542ae7417b737d
PDF Text
Text
LONDON:
CARTER & WILLIAMS, Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue,
Camomile-street, E.C,
�The Causes of Irreligion.
A Sermon,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SEPTEMBER 5, 1875, BY THE
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
Jeremiah, IX., 1. 2., “Oh that my head were waters and
mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people.
Oh that I
had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men, that
I might leave my people and go from them....................... for
they lend their tongues like their bow for lies, they are not
valiant for the truth upon earth..................... and they
know not me saith the Lord
E
W are met together once more, my friends, to worship
God in such simplicity and truth as we are capable
of, and to pursue the great work which binds us in
one heart and soul—the redemption and preservation of true
Religion.
Religion has well-nigh become a by-word and a reproach
in this age of boasted enlightenment. The record of its past
has made good men weep, and wise men scoff. The. con-:
temptible triviality of the questions it has raised has often
found a fearful contrast in the storms of fierce passion which
have raged over them and the rivers of blood in which they
have issued.
While philosophers had no alternative but to cast aside
with derision the absurd assumptions of theologians ; while
moralists and philanthropists have mourned over the obstacles
to human welfare and progress everywhere set in their path
by Christian dogmas ; the various champions of conflicting
Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's
Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden
House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny postage a halfpenny.
�■
creeds have been doing their worst, unconsciously, to under
mine all reverence for religion, to alienate the hearts of men
from the very thought of God, and to foster the vices and
follies which Religion is supposed to condemn.
With many it is quite a question whether religion is not
the greatest blunder man has ever committed since the world
began. With others, it has ceased to be a question at all
and has become a settled conviction. Go into any mixed
society and you will find types of at least three prevailing
modes of thought about religion. One is partisanship,
another indifference, a third denunciation. You have the
dogmatic sectarian, believing himself and the rest of his sect
or party to be the prime favourites of Heaven ; another who
makes his boast of being utterly worldly and irreligious, and
can afford to do so seeing so many around him to keep him
countenance ; and a third who never loses an opportunity of
scoffing at religion and laying at its door every foul act which
comes to the surface. These three are common types. The
first is the strongest numerically ; the second socially; the
third intellectually.
Now there is an obvious cause tor each of these three modes
of thought upon religion; and it might be well to point it
out for the benefit of those who ought to be most interested
in the maintenance of religion. We will begin with the first
class, the dogmatic sectarian. What is it that makes him
what he is ? Simply an entirely false notion of religion
itself. Nearly all the teaching of Christendom has been to
the effect that man is saved or. damned according to his belief,
and not according to his life. And even where the ideas of
salvation and damnation have been kept in abeyance and
worthier motives have been substituted, there has been the
same false notion at the root, viz : that God is pleased or dis
pleased with us according as we think truly or think falsely
respecting Him. I am not one, as you well know, to hold
loosely in my regard the value of true opinions on any sub
ject, much less in matters pertaining to religion. We all of
us, by our readiness to encounter suffering in the mainten
ance of our opinions, testify to the importance of believing
and proclaiming what is, to our minds, true. But one and
all deny with our whole hearts the notion that to hold right
�3
beliefs is praiseworthy, or to hold wrong beliefs blameworthy;
that our opinions can make any possible difference to the
favour or disfavour of God ; still less that on such a slender
thread can hang our immortal destiny for bliss or woe. Men
can only believe as they may be persuaded; according to the
cogency of the arguments before them, or, what is much
more common, according to the tendency of their own minds
coupled with their early training or surrounding associations.
The Christian Missionary in vain confronts the Mussulman
and shaking the Bible at him says, “ You reject God’s word,”
for the Mussulman with equal right ’can shake the Koran at
the Christian and say, “ You are rejecting God’s word.”
To believe or accept any book or body of doctrine, or any
illustrious individual as a Divine teacher, is itself an involun
tary act of the mind and cannot deserve praise or blame.
God is no more disobeyed or dishonoured by a man refusing
to acknowledge the Divine authority of the Bible, of Jesus
or of the Church, than He is dishonoured by another man
accepting as Divine the authority of the Koran and of
Mahomet. But we need not pursue these common-places.
It is more to our purpose to observe what inevitable conse
quences of conduct, feeling, attitude must follow upon believ
ing that our creed or religious opinion secures our salvation
from perdition, or in any way merits the favour of God. The
first and most obvious effect of this is to set the holders of
different creeds at war with each other. They cannot help
it. Their very differences, small at first, perhaps, become
magnified and raised into essentials of salvation. Kindhearted men on either side try to convert each other, each
truly fearing that the other is going to hell. Hard-hearted
men will add hatred to this conviction and resort to violence
as in the days of the Inquisition, or to other milder means of
coercion as the state of civilization will permit.
Next, there comes an over-culture of the sentiment of
pride, which soon breeds arrogance and unlawful ambition.
Those who believe themselves to be the repositories of God’s
truth would fain conquer the world, and if they cannot force
all men to believe with them, the effort is made at least to
force them into outward conformity. And there, in the per
son of Pius the ninth, we see the embodiment of this principle
�4
and the action in which it finally issues. Nothing can be
more logical or more practically consistent. The Pope simply
acts, or tries to act, so far as his crippled liberties will allow
him, up to his convictions that he is God’s vicar on the earth
and the sole repository of Divine truth. But in looking at
the Roman Pontiff, every dogmatic sectarian ought to see
the reflection of wrhat he himself would be if he could. The
principle of Rome and that of all her rebel children is the
same. The difference is only such as exists between a hen
and her chickens. The nature is identical, and, if suffered to
develope, each sect would become an imperial ecclesiasticism
like that which is governed from the Vatican.
Another result of attaching undue value to opinion is the
development of dogma from what was originally perhaps
simple and reasonable to what is complex metaphysical or
absurd. The Jews,
who did not at first hold this foolish
idea of being saved for their creed, never wanted any other
God but Jehovah, nor sought to define Him in riddles of
speech or to depict Him in any similitude until they caught
the infection from those who thought more of creed and wor
ship than of duty and love. But this dire necessity of con
ceiving rightly about God on pain of His everlasting
displeasure set men groping in the thick darkness among
mysteries of their own contriving. Nothing but metaphysical
definition would satisfy them. The native trustfulness of
heart towards the Good Spirit was gone, and in its place came
fear and trembling, and speculation; and, like drowning men
catching at straws, they invented first one and then another
god to keep company with the Supreme, and around every
fresh name were clustered webs and mazes of ever-deepening
perplexity, every item and detail of which must be held
faithfully and kept whole and undefiled, or “ without doubt
they should perish everlastingly.”
It would be impossible to believe unless the facts were un
disputed, that our Christian forefathers fought and wrangled,
and finally ruptured Christendom over the question whether
or not the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Son as well as
from the Father. The celebrated filioque dispute has never
been settled to this day, and it is more incredible still that
any one in the whole of Christendom should be found
�5
sufficiently antiquated to care a straw for the clause in
question.
But the Church of Rome (and the Church of England too)
damns to everlasting fire all who reject this diminutive
dogma. According to us and Rome, the whole Eastern
Church is under sentence of endless perdition, because she
rejects the statement of the double procession, and for good
reasons known to herself will not have fiilioque in her Nicene
Creed. 'The recent conference at Rome with the best inten
tions has nevertheless brought back the smile of contempt
to the faces of impartial spectators ofthe Churches’ squabbles.
If the voice of God out of Heaven could reach the solemn
meditators over this infinitesimal problem, saying, “ What
doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to do justly and
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” those
men whose minds and hearts are worthy of better themes
would quietly let that double procession fall under their
table, would let go one by one all the silly inventions which
led up to it and gave to it its grand but fictitious notoriety,
and would disband and go home impressed with the really
vital and tremendous questions on which the welfare of so
many millions of mankind is now hanging. They would say
in their quickened souls “While we have been mooning
over the procession of the Holy Ghost and the filioque, God
Himself is being eclipsed—the lamp of faith is dying out for
want of the oil of gladness, and the world is hastening into
the night of despair. While we were seeking for new
Shibboleths, and torturing language to call white black and
to affirm and deny the same proposition with one breath, the
voice of j oy and peace in believing is fading, fading away ;
and when men and women in their sadness call on us for
comfort, for one word to strengthen their failing faith, we
shall be dumb with astonishment and there will be no voice
nor any to answer.”
But why all this wanton waste of time, and toil and brain ?
Because they and the whole aggregate of Churches have been
taught to believe that on their believing rightly down to the
minutest dogma depend all their hopes of salvation. Hence
and hence only has arisen this scrupulousness about questions
inherently contemptible. Hence has come the utter neglect
�6
of the really important questions, the first and most necessary
foundations of all true religion ; and hence has sprung the
contempt into which religion has been plunged, and the still
wider indifference to it which has fallen like the sleep of
death over the most influential people in our land.
And I think they will bear me out if I speak apologeti
cally for them on this theme. They would most likely
say :—“We do not hate religion because it is good ; for
though we are mirthfully disposed and detest puritanism
and asceticism, we are men at heart. and have an eye for
what is pure and lovely quite as clear as yours. We should
not despise religion if the professors and teachers of religion
were only to talk a little sense and not treat us as if we
were babies. We should not despise it if the preachers were
to make some attempt to draw the line between what may
reasonably be inferred and what is too incredible to be
swallowed. We should not despise religion if it was more
natural and appealed to our common sense and better feel
ings, instead of giving us patent absurdities like the
Athanasian Creed, immoral and revolting dogmas like those
of the atonement and everlasting fire ; if they did not go
on asserting that ‘ it .the resurrection of Jesus as recorded in
the gospels be not true, then all that Christianity teaches is
a falsehood,’ or thatf if the gospels are not all true then Jesus
must have been an impostor and other foolish talk of the
same kind. We should not despise religion if men and
women—especially the clergy—did not quarrel over it so
much and manifest such bitterness, jealousy, -animosity, and
slander towards each other. We should not despise it, if
the poor preachers had a chance of speaking their honest
minds ; but if we go to church the parson must say what
he is bidden to say by the 39 Articles ; and if we go into a
chapel the minister must say only what he is bidden to say
by the congregation. We see, therefore, the whole system
made systematically insincere, and hollow; and without
reckoning the wearisome monotony of second-hand doctrines
repeated from Sunday to Sunday all the year round, we are
fairly disheartened by the conviction that the preachers are
all gagged and muzzled, and whether they believe what
they teach or not, we have no means of discovering. Finally,
�4
we despise religion because we are for ever being told that
it is wicked not to believe this, that, or the other ; and no
matter what we do or how we live we shall be damned if we
do not believe in the blood of Christ or submit ourselves to
the dictates of the church. We know better than that.
We have the sense to discern the malignity and injustice of
such an arrangement, even if our consciences did not tell
us that we shall be sure to have to pay the full penalty—
no more and no less than our sins deserve. We despise
religion too because they tell us not to use our reason ; that
it is impious to doubt or question any of their assertions or
the still more incredible assertions in their Bibles and
Prayer-books. We know that must be wrong, for if there
be a God and He has given us reason, without which we
cannot move one step in the discovery of what is right and
true, He must wish us to use our reasons in searching after
Him and in the discovery of His will; and that religion
carries its own condemnation which says it is wrong or
dangerous to think for oneself. This is why we despise
religion and will no more of it till the preachers talk sense
and are permitted freely to say what they really believe.”
Such, I believe is the testimony of the indifferent. In
some, indifference has been pushed to the extreme of active
hostility ; but the alienating cause is the same in either
case. These reflections, loose and fragmentory as they are,
should lead us to hope that true religion consistent with
common sense, with duty and with cheerfulness, is yet
possible to those who have been alienated by what bears the
sacred name of religion in our day. Men and women clo
love that which is good, are ready to believe that which is
true, are thankful to embrace hopes for the future which do
not outrage the intellect or demoralize the heart.
If there be a God in Heaven—and when I say “ if,” I do
not falter one moment in my grateful trust in Him—then
surely He will continue to draw to Himself the hearts of the
gentle and aspiring, the hearts -of the weary and careworn,
the hearts of the tempted and the enchained, the hearts of
the weak and the hearts of the strong; the young, the
prime, and the aged, those who toil and those who rest, the
sick and the dying. If God loves, He needs us as much as
�we need Him, or we should never have been here at all. If
He is as good as He is wise, He will not alter the hard path of
our lives to suit our discontent, however justifiable, nor sur
render into our childish, short-sighted control, the guidance
of our lives and destiny.
True religion must live, in spite of false religion, indiffer
ence, or hostility,—or this world will be turned into hell;
might will overcome right; aud every soul which survives
the catastrophe will in weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth cry out like Lucifer in his fall “ Evil be thou my
good.”
D. WILLIAMS & CO,, Printers, 14. Bisliopsgate Avenue, Camomile Street, E.G,
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The causes of irreligion. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 5, 1875
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
D. Williams & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1875]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G3390
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The causes of irreligion. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 5, 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Atheism
Belief and Doubt
Religion
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/0939765c9caa2a47c2f959f89840f4f4.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=AXZnMi4EVFgIM3ktEeyzZmjTSQg%7EKdD3oghwRAELxUsEAwPHafKKSZha0gVA7I6qHGip36L5iVk9RThnNdM89%7EzIEKXnQrStXKAOvHkLcHdAnXfEjnWkWfvnLn%7EN3r93A4Q2sTtPn%7EWcIpOFPzDhZPmGrcA2iD%7EkwC0lM%7E4WjmG75HHq7XuFNFGYipBkvdSGYUb0Cdf7jrdyzfOPfUYWniZOw0us9PThbfuPT%7EQFV4BPqxf15Q8z17thtcOleXg9YWbWlx-Dz96j3WT1L6pZ1f1i%7EFBsU7vFLaLP1jsyn3yFSBjd11o7R6c3SlznjWXsLC7qzXfj76r5x-OY1sGqvQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
64554358d2538f524e6f285ac17fc5a2
PDF Text
Text
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
MAY 11th, 1873, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
[From the Eastern Post, May 17th, 1873.]
On Sunday (May 11), at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C.
Voysey took his text from John i., 9., “ That was the true light,
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
The religious differences which have made, and are yet making,
such fierce discord in the world lie far deeper down than the mere
surface of various doctrine. The real root of these differences is
to be found in the method of enquiry into religious truth, in the
means by which it is believed to be discoverable. So long as men
keep on trying to substitute one set of dogmas for another, and to
impose, as dogma, any new doctrine because it is less false or more
true than its predecessor, so long shall we have the strife oftongues
and the endless confusion of conflicting sects. Not until we have
perceived the only true basis of unity, shall we cease to fight with
one another for the ascendancy of our own particular beliefs.
The votaries of all religions in turn claim that in their own creeds
lies the only pathway to God, and it stands on the face of it, that
when these creeds are opposed to each other, they cannot all be
true, though they may be all false. If one be true, who can test
its truth ? What witness could we have that would be infallible
to make the choice for us out of so many claimants ? Moreover,
if only one be true, and only one lead to God, what a frightful
injustice is done to the millions on millions who have no access to
it, who by the accidents of birth and education, have been not
only shut out from hearing of it, but have had their minds pre
occupied from childhood by false beliefs, and have been prejudiced
�2
against all other beliefs, (and among them, of course, the true
belief) by the most solemn sanctions ! Then again, supposing that
the truest belief were discoverable to day, and enforced upon a
growing and advancing posterity in consequence, posterity would
be hampered by our decrees, fettered and enslaved by our creeds
and articles, kept tied and bound in swaddling clothes instead of
having the freedom of men. What to us had served all the pur
poses of truth, because it was the truest we could discover, would
inflict all the hardship and hindrance of falsehood upon our child
ren’s children. Look at it how w’e will, in dogma and creed we
find no sure resting place for our anxious souls, no safe road to lead
us heavenward, no sure light to bring us to God. But we have
not therefore been left in darkness because errors and falsehoods
have clouded our sky. God hath not left himself without witness,
because we have neither infallible Bible, nor infallible Pope, nor
infallible heresy. Still brightly shines over us, still leads us ever
onward and upward, the true light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world. For all purposes of a true redemption—or
to speak more correctly—of a true progress towards God, men have
now as ever the light of life, the steady burning gleam that draws
us ever onwards, and guards our wayward and storm-tost souls from
wreck and ruin.
But I should be sailing under false colours were I to use the
text which I have chosen without disowning the sense in which it
is generally understood. I quite agree with the writer in this,
that that only is the true light which is universal—•“ which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.” Any light which fails
thus to illumine all hearts is not the true light, and cannot safely
be trusted. A partial light may serve its purpose for a while, just as
we use a lantern in the darkness while the wanton earth turns her
face from the sun, but its weak and slender rays can only lighten
a narrow circle, and by its flickering may even add to our error
and perplexity.
As the rush-light to the sun, so are the various systems of belief
to that true light which God has sent to lighten every man that
cometh into the world. But some will tell us that the author of
this text meant that Christ was that true light; and I do not see
how we can deny this to have been his meaning. In the opening
�verses of this gospel the author unmistakeably refers to the Alexan
drine doctrine of the Logos which some one has aptly termed “Pla
tonism spoilt.” He speaks of the true light as “ he” and “ him;
as “ coming into the world,” as “being received,” and being rejected
as having the glory of the Great Father, and yet as being made
flesh and dwelling visibly among men. Now we unhesitatingly
refuse to accept Christ as the true light, on the simple ground that
he does not answer to the definition, he certainly does not lighten
every man that cometh into the world. He did not lighten a
single soul of the countless generations before him, nor many
millions of his fellow-creatures in his own generation. Whatever
liaht they wanted down in Judea that Christ could give (and we
do not hesitate in saying that that light was great and glorious)
they wanted also in the uttermost parts of the, earth and in the
Antipodes to Galilee, of the very existence of which Christ had no
conception. No one who is not a theologian would attempt the
folly of making-believe that Christ was the light that was
lighting every man all over the world at the very time that he was
wandering over the hills of Capernaum or disputing with Pharisees
in the streets of Jerusalem. That the soul of Jesus, and in like
manner, the souls of the rest of the world’s greatest men shed a
glorious light over humanity, wherever their names and histories
have travelled, is undeniably true; but it is not at all the same
thing as being a universal light, or even an infallible one. For
whether Christ could help it or not, there was more than one dark
band on his spectrum, and some have been led into darkness, and
even despair by sayings attributed to him by his friends. No one
human being, no one human life, has ever been bright enough to
lighten all mankind, nor sufficiently clear and unclouded never to
lead them astray. If there is one thing that God has stamped
upon all his works, and especially upon his noblest work—man, it
is the stamp of imperfection. Nothing is absolutely perfect—
though He may behold everything which He has made and say
“ It is very good. It is exactly what I intended it then and there
to be and so far very good,” He can never say “ It is perfect, “ It
is finished,” “ It is incapable of improvement.” This must ever be
the difference between the Creator and the created. While He
alone is absolutely perfect and incapable of change or progress—
�4
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—all we his creatures are
in the very infancy of our existence, and have an eternity oi
change and growth before us. So the “ brightest and best of the
sons of the morning ” are each in turn displaced by a brighter and
better successor. However vast the interval between their rising
over the world’s darkness, the glory that has set is eclipsed by the
glory that has arisen anew. However, long and glad may have
been the zenith of such a star, its turn for fading lustre will surely
come, and a more brilliant orb shall take its place.
With the deepest reverence for the excellency of Jesus of
Nazareth, and with sincere gratitude for what light he brought
into the world, we, nevertheless, deliberately say of him as the
Evangelist said of John the Baptist. “ He was not that light,
but was sent to bear witness of that light.” Christ was not the
true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,
but was only one among the great cloud of witnesses on whom the
true light shone, and by whom it was most splendidly reflected.
It that light was not Moses, nor Menu, nor Christ, nor Paul, nor
Confucius, nor Sakya Mouni, nor Odin, nor Zoroaster, nor Socrates,
nor Mahommed, nor any one, nor all of the great world teachers,
because none of them were universal, what is the true light ? It
is not far to seek if the definition be accepted. If the true light
really lightens every man that cometh into the world—
ever did, ever does, and ever will give him all the light he
can ever get—then it must be found in man, in men universally,
and neither outside of them, nor in only a few rare specimens
of the race. And this is easy to find j for as in water face
answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.
We
know humanity by knowing ourselves—know it very imper
fectly, but what we do know is truth' and fact. And in
human nature we find an universal principle, instinct or affection,
call it what you will, which is the love of truth and right. In spite
of all the texts and Confessions and Catechisms, I affirm that the
heart of man is not “ desperately wicked above all things,” but,
on the contrary, is almost the only thing about him that is
thoroughly sound and good. Man, at heart, is good, because he
loves goodness, and true because he loves truth. As soon as ever
he discovers that there is such a distinction as good and evil, or
�5
truth and falsehood, his inmost heart turns with desire towards
goodness and truth. Of the idiotic and insane I here say nothing
because I know nothing; they are not only beyond the reach of
adequate tests, but they are so exceptional, and abnormal, as to
form no solid objection to the universality of the statement that
all men love goodness and truth. Of the great bulk of humanity,
from the best to the worst, from the most cultured to the most
ignorant, from the holiest saint to the most depraved sinner, it is
only the honest truth to say that they all at heart love goodness
and truth. They may love them in varying degrees, for the more
goodness and truth are known by practice, the more they are
loved, the less men know of goodnesss and truth, the less they
care for them. But at heart every sane man has some love for
goodness and truth. No man ever yet believed a lie knowing or
even suspecting it to be a lie. It is a contradiction in terms.
However false may be a man’s conviction, it is his conviction only
because it seems to him to be true. All he cares to get hold of
is truth and fact j and though he should seem to us to hold the
most absurd fancies, or cherish, even unto dying for them, beliefs
which we cannot but scorn, yet to him they are sacred, because
they seem true and because he has not begun to question or sus
pect their accuracy. From the darkest days of Fetichism, through
all the corrupt fables of Polytheism, and down the turbid stream
of Christendom to this hour, men have been ever loyal to truth—
loyal to such truth as they could discover. They have toiled to
find it; and when found, as they think, they would fight for it
and die for it, giving up all this world below and risking all that
world above for the sake of it. They might have been happy
together as one family, but no ; they loved the truth better than
peace; and they welcomed the fire and sword which laid waste
their lands and made their streets run blood rather than sacrifice
the sacred treasure which they believed God had entrusted to their
keeping. Could they have done this, could they have suffered
what was far worse than the crusader’s steel, the cruel rupture of
their domestic love, for what they thought to be a lie 1 Impossible 2
a thousand times No ! They bore it all for truth, for what they
believed to be true. But what of the persecutors ? Greater still
was the sacrifice for truth which some of these men made. The
�6
persecutors forced themselves to trample on their holiest affections
and tenderest instincts before they could put their fellow-men to
torture and cruel death. They had to stiflle every relenting sigh,
to crush their pitying breasts against the stone walls of misguided
conscience, and to train themselves to the maddening sport of
witnessing horrors of torment without a flinching eye or a quiver
ing lip. They had to lay down their manhood for the time, and
clothe themselves in the fury—not of beasts, never was wild beast
so cruel as man—but in the fury of fiends, and all for truth !
What will not men do for truth ? In spite of all counterfeits
which claim our regard, in spite of all usurpers of her rightful
throne, men are loyally, though blindly, bent on serving truth ' on
finding it if they can, and on believing it, and living and dying,
and becoming devils for it, when found.
.And as of truth so of goodness, it is true that men at heart love
goodness. It is no answer to point to the enormous crimes that
have been done and are still being done; at the vices which infest
our fields and markets and towns, our highways and byways alike;
it is no answer to take me to the prisons and galleys, and to the
dark places of the earth, where evil reigns unchecked by such
means of restraint and discipline. I still tell you these men are
not lovers of evil for evil’s sake, as you suppose, but they are
mistaken utterly mistaken—lovers of goodness. Do you suppose
God has made man such a fool as to prefer evil to good if he knows
it ? Why, even the most fiendish of all human passions—revenge__
is a thirst for gratification, for something which seems to him
exquisitely desirable in itself, or the man would not seek it. It
is at the very root of it an excessive love of justice, an exaggerated
and therefore mistaken desire for what is right. I know that men
do wrong, knowing it to be wrong, and liking it for the passing
pleasure that it may afford; but I never knew one such who
loving it called it evil, or hating it called it good. Men hate the
evil in themselves, and think that they would be better if they
could. Men’s ideas of what is good or evil may be as numerous as
the stars. Some condemning what others approve ; but they are
all alike in condemning wrong as wrong, and upholding goodness
as goodness. If a man approves what I condemn, the difference is
not a moral one, but one of judgment. To him it seems right, and
�7
he can call it by no other name. To me it is evil and I cannot call
it good. Every man in one respect is a law unto himself, however
deficient he may be in what is called ethical science, however,
outwardly indifferent he may be to the well-being of otheis, he is
nevertheless, at heart, convinced that goodness is right and evil is
wrong, and up to the dim intelligence of his feeble mind would
bear his modicum of testimony on the side of goodness.
Now what have not these instincts for goodness and truth done
for man ? They are the very foundations of all civilization, the very
root of all religion. All the progress of the world, from the first
dawn of humanity, is due to the desire after goodness and truth.
Only try to realise the changes through which our race has passed
and you can come to only one conclusion, that 11 the true light
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” is this love
of right and truth by which we have ever been led onwards. Have
not we been mending since the world of man began ? Have not
we often and often learnt to change our moral code according as
experience or circumstance showed that it was good and right so
to do ? Do we not condemn what our forefathers deemed innocent,
and add to the number or cogency of pre-existing rules? We
could only do this, because our aim was goodness, and not mere
reverence for past law-givers. Is not the standard of virtue for
ever rising, not merely by improving on the models of the past, but
by leading us to think with greater reverence of their noblest
traits ? It is only because we love goodness, and carry with us the
true light which sheds light on that which has gone as well as on
that which is to come. Religious beliefs have come and gone in
like manner, perpetually but imperceptibly being modified by our
love of truth. The love of truth ever remains, no matter what the
creed with which it is associated. The false is hugged so long
as it is thought to be true j but [once exposed as falsehood, its
day is over. Down, down, it must go ; first into lower strata of
humanity who catch it and clutch at it as it falls, and then at last
to the very lowest ground on which human feet can tread and be
trampled into dust. A new or unfamiliar truth dawns on the
horizon, and straightway the foremost lovers of truth lift their
thirsting eyes to greet its advent, and welcome it with shouts of
joy. But some will shut their eyes, and hide themselves in their
�§
inner chambers, lest it should make them dissatisfied with the old
truths which they have loved so long; and so the world becomes
divided into foes and factions, each partizan forgetting the tie that
really binds them all—their common love of truth. Let them rail
at each other’s notions as much as they please. We are barbarians
still, and know no better mode of pressing on progress, or of
keeping it within a safe rate of movement; but while we do this,
let us not forget that we are both alike loyal 'to the truth which
neither of us has really found; that we, with our more con
spicuous sacrifices for the new truth, are not alone in our costly
virtue, but they, too, have much to bear and much to lose in the
perilous and somewhat ignoble task of fighting for a mummy, and
exposing their names to the ridicule of posterity for a mere shadow.
Let it be understood on both sides that both alike love truth and
goodness, and our contests of opinion will soon lose all their bitter
ness, and our controversies their sting.
But best of all is the assurance that however wicked and erring
men have been and are, God has made them to love goodness and
truth. The time will come when that deep seated love of goodness
will assert its mastery over the whole man, and present us fault
less before the Eternal Throne, just as that radical love of truth
will bring every one at last into that glorious region where
falsehood and error are unknown.
Then shall be fulfilled that grand old prophecy, “ After those
days, saith the Lord, I will put my law into their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be
my people. And they shall teach no more, every man his neigh
bour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they
shall all know me from the least of them even unto the greatest.”
EASTERN POST Steam Printing Works, 89, Worship Street Finsbury, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The true light: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, May 11th, 1873
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed by Eastern Post May 17th, 1873. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[Eastern Post]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1873]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G3417
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 true light: a sermon, preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, May 11th, 1873), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Morris Tracts
Religion
Sermons