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WHAT MUST WE DO
TO BE SAVED?
BY
Colonel Ingersoll.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
*
LONDON :
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,' '
2
Newcastle-street, Farringdon-street, E.Cj
1902.
�WHAT MUST WE DO TO BE SAVED?
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“ The Nuremberg Man was operated by a combination of
pifes and levers, and though he could breathe and digest
perfectly, and even reason as well as most theologians, was
made of nothing but wood and leather.”
The whole world has been filled with fear. Ignorance
has been the refuge of the soul. For thousands of years
the intellectual ocean was ravaged by the buccaneers of
reason. Pious souls clung to the shore and looked at
the lighthouse. The seas were filled with monsters, and
the islands with sirens. The people were driven in the
middle of a narrow road while priests went before,
beating the hedges on either side to frighten the robbers
from their lairs. The poor followers, seeing no robbers,
thanked their brave leaders with all their hearts.
Huddled in folds, they listened with wide eyes while the
shepherds told of ravening wolves. With great gladness
they exchanged their fleeces for security. Shorn and'
shivering, they had the happiness of seeing their pro
tectors comfortable and warm. Through all the years,
those who ploughed divided with those who prayed.’
Wicked industry supported pious idleness, the hut gave
to the cathedral, and frightened poverty gave even its
rags to buy a robe for hypocrisy. Fear is the dungagn
of the mind, and superstition is a dagger with which
hypocrisy assassinates the soul. Courage is liberty. I
am in favor of absolute freedom of thought. In the
realm of mind everyone is monarch; everyone is robed,
sceptred, and crowned, and everyone wears the purple of
authority. I belong to the republic of intellectual liberty,
and only those are good citizens of that republic who
depend, upon reason and upon persuasion, and only those
are traitors who resort to brute force.
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Now, I beg of you all to forget just for a few moments
that you are Methodists or Baptists or Catholics or
Presbyterians, and let us for an hour or two remember
only that we are men and women. And allow me to say
“ man ” and “ woman ” are the highest titles that can be
bestowed upon humanity. Let us, if possible, banish
all fear from the mind. Do not imagine that there is
some being in the infinite expanse who is not willing
that every man and woman should think for himself and
herself. Do not imagine that there is any being who
would give to his children the holy torch of reason, and
then damn them for following that sacred light. Let us
have courage. Priests have invented a crime called
“ blasphemy,” and behind that crime hypocrisy has
crouched for thousands of years. There is but one
blasphemy, and that is injustice. There is but one
worship, and that is justice. You need not fear the
anger of a God that you cannot injure. Rather fear to
injure your fellow-men. Do not be afraid of a crime
you cannot commit. The reason that you cannot injure
God is that the Infinite .is conditionless. You cannot
increase or diminish the happiness of any being without
changing that being’s condition. If God is condition
less, you can neither injure nor benefit him.
There was a Jewish gentlemen went into a restaurant
to get his dinner, and the devil of temptation whispered
in his ear: “ Eat some bacon.” He knew if there was
anything in the universe calculated to excite the wrath
of an Infinite Being, who made every shining star, it was
to see a gentleman eating bacon. He knew it, and he
knot?- the infinite being was looking—that he was the
eternal eavesdropper of the universe. But his appetite
got the better of his conscience, as it often has with us
all, and he ate that bacon. He knew it was wrong, and
his conscience felt the blood of shame in its cheek.
When he went into that restaurant the weather was
delightful, the sky was as blue as June, and when he
came out the sky was covered with angry clouds, the
lightning leaping from one to the other, and the earth
shaking beneath the voice of the thunder. He went
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back into that restaurant with a face as white as milk,
and he said to one of the keepers : “ My God, did you
ever hear such a fuss about a little piece of bacon ?” As
long as we harbor such opinions of infinity, as long as
we imagine the heavens to be filled with such tyranny,
just so long the sons of men will be cringing, intellectual
cowards. Let us think, and let us honestly express our
thought.
Do not imagine for a moment that I think people who
disagree with me are bad people. I admit, and I cheer
fully admit, that a very large proportion of mankind, and
a very large majority, a vast number, are reasonably
honest. I believe that most Christians believe what
they teach; that most ministers are endeavoring to
make this world better. I do not pretend to be better
than they are. It is an intellectual question. It is a
question, first, of intellectual liberty, and after that a
question to be settled at the bar of human reason. I do
not pretend to be better than they are. Probably I am
a good deal worse than many of them, but that is not
the question. The question is : “ Bad as I am, have I
the right to think ? ”
And I think I have for two
reasons : First, I cannot help it. And secondly, I like
it. The whole question is right at a point. If I have
not a right to express my thoughts, who has ? “ Oh,”
they say, “ we will allow you to think, we will not burn
you.” “ All right; why won’t you burn me ? ” “ Because
we think a decent man will allow another to think and to
express his thought.” “Then the reason you do not
persecute me for my thought is that you believe it would
be infamous in you ? ” “ Yes.” “ And yet you worship
a God who will, as you declare, punish me for ever ? ”
Surely an infinite God ought to be as just as man.
Surely no God can have the right to punish his children
for being honest. He should not reward hypocrisy with
heaven, and punish candor with eternal pain.
The next question then is: Can I commit a sin
against God by thinking ? If God did not intend I
should think, why did he give me a thinker ?
For one,
I am convinced, not only that I have the right to think,
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but that it is my duty to express my honest thoughts.
Whatever the Gods may say we must be true to. our
selves. We have got what they call the Christian
system of religion, and thousands of people wonder how
I can be wicked enough to attack that system. There
are many good things about it, and I shall never attack
anything that I believe to be good ! I shall never fear
to attack anything I honestly believe to be wrong ! We
have what they call the Christian religion, and I find,
just in proportion that nations have been religious, just
in the proportion they have clung to the religion of their
founders, they have gone back to barbarism. I find
that Spain, Portugal, Italy, are the three worst nations
in Europe. I find that the nation nearest infidel is the
most prosperous—France. And so I say there can be
no danger in the exercise of absolute intellectual freedom.
I find among ourselves the men who think are, at least,
as good as those who do not. We have, I say, a
Christian system, and that system is founded upon what
they are pleased to call the “ New Testament.” Who
wrote the New Testament ? I do not know. Who does
know? Nobody. We have found many manuscripts
containing portions of the New Testament, some of these
manuscripts leave out five or six books—many of them.
Others more ; others less. No two of these manuscripts
agree. Nobody knows who wrote these manuscripts.
They are all written in Greek. The disciples of Christ,
as far as we know, knew only Hebrew. Nobody ever
saw, so far as we know, one of the original Hebrew
manuscripts.
Nobody ever saw anybody who had
seen anybody who had heard of anybody that had
ever seen anybody that had ever seen one of the
original Hebrew manuscripts. No doubt the clergy
of your city have told you these facts thousands
of times, and they will be obliged to me for having
repeated them once more. These manuscripts are
written in what are called capital Greek letters. They
are called Uncial manuscripts, and the New Testament
was not divided into chapters and verses, even until the
year of grace 1551. In the original the manuscripts
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and gospels are signed by nobody.
The epistles are
addressed to nobody ; and they are signed by the same
person. All the addresses, all the pretended ear marks
showing to whom they were written, and by whom they
were written, are simply interpolations, and everybody
who has studied the subject- knows it. It is further
admitted that even these manuscripts have not been
properly translated; and they have a syndicate now
making a new translation ; and I suppose that I cannot
tell whether I really believe the New Testament or not
until I see that new translation. You must remember,
also, one other thing. Christ never wrote a solitary
word of the New Testament—not one word. There is
an account that he once stooped and wrote something in
the sand, but that has not been preserved. He never
told anybody to write a word. He never said : “ Matthew,
remember this. Mark, do not forget to put that down.
Luke, be sure that in your gospel you have this. John,
do not forget it.” Not one word. And it has always
seemed to me that a being coming from another world,
with a message of infinite importance to mankind, should
at least have verified that message by his own signa
ture. Is it not wonderful that not one word was
written by Christ ? Is it not strange that he gave no
orders to have his words preserved—words upon which
hung the salvation of a world ? Why was nothing
written ?
I will tell you.
In my judgment they
expected the end of the world in a few days.
That
generation was not to pass away until the heavens should
be rolled up as a scroll, and until the earth should melt
with fervent heat. That was their belief. They believed
that the world was to be destroyed, and that the saints
were then to govern the earth. And they even went so
far among the apostles, as we frequently do now before
election, as to divide out the offices in advance. This
Testament, as it now is, was not written for hundreds of
years after the apostles were dust. Many of the pre
tended facts lived in the open mouth of credulity. They
were in the waste-baskets of forgetfulness.
They
depended upon the inaccuracy of legend, and for cen-
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turies those doctrines and stories were blown about by
the inconstant winds. And when reduced}to writing,
some gentleman would write by the side of the passage
his idea of it, and the next copyist would put that in
as a part of the text. And, when it was mostly written,
and the Church got into trouble, and wanted a passage
to help it out, one was interpolated to order. So that
now it is among the easiest things in the world to pick
out at least one hundred interpolations in the Testament.
And I will pick some of them out before I get through.
And let me say here, once for all, that for th e man
Christ I have infinite respect. Let me say, once for all,
that the place where man has died for man is holy
ground. And let me say, once for all, that to that great
and serene man I gladly pay the tribute of my admira
tion and my tears. He was a reformer in his day. He
was an infidel in his time. He was regarded as a
blasphemer, and his life was destroyed by hypocrites,
who have, in all ages, done what they could to trample
freedom and manhood out of the human mind. Had I
lived at that time I would have been his friend; and,
should he come again he will not find a better friend
than I will be. That is for the man. For the theo
logical creation I have a different feeling. If he was, in
fact, God, he knew there was no such thing as death.
He knew that what we called death was but the eternal
opening of the golden gates of everlasting joy ; and it
took no heroism to face a death that was eternal life.
But when a man, when a poor boy sixteen years of age,
goes upon the field of battle to keep his flag in heaven,
not knowing but that death ends all; not knowing but
that when the shadows creep over him, the darkness
will be eternal, there is heroism. For the man who, in
the darkness, said : “ My God, why hast thou forsaken
me ?”—for that man I have nothing but respect, admira
tion, and love. Back of the theological shreds, rags,
and patches, hiding the real Christ, I see a genuine man.
A while ago I made up my mind to find out what was
necessary for me to do in order to be saved. If I have
got a soul, I want it saved. I do not wish to lose
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anything that is of value. For thousands of years the
world has been asking that question : “ What must we
do to be saved”? Saved from poverty ? No. Saved
from crime ? No. Tyranny? No. But “ What must
we do to be saved from the eternal wrath of the God
who made us all ?” If God made us, he will not destroy
us. Infinite wisdom never made a poor investment.
Upon all the works of an infinite God, a dividend must
finally be declared. Why should God make failures ?
Why should he waste material ?. Why should he not
correct his mistakes, instead of damning them ? The
pulpit has cast a shadow over even the cradle. The
doctrine of endless punishment has covered the cheeks
of this world with tears. I despise it, and I defy it. I
made up my mind, I say, to see what I had to do in
order to save my soul according to the Testament, and
thereupon I read it. I read the gospels, Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, and found that the Church had been
deceiving me. I found that the clergy did not under
stand their own book: that they had been building upon
passages that had been interpolated; upon passages
that were entirely untrue, and I will tell you why I
think so.
THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW.
According to the Church, the first gospel was written
by Matthew. As a matter of fact he never wrote a
word of it—never saw it, never heard of it, and probably
never will. But for the purposes of this lecture I admit
that he wrote it. I will admit that he was with Christ
for three years; that he was his constant companion ;
that he shared his sorrows and his triumphs; that he
heard his words by the lonely lakes, the barren hills, in
synagogue and street, and that he knew his heart and
became acquainted with his thoughts and aims.
Now let us see what Matthew says we must do in
order to be saved. And I talke it that, if this is true,
Matthew fe as good authority as any minister in the
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world. The first thing I find upon the subject of salva
tion is in the fifth chapter of Matthew, and is embraced
in what is commonly known as the Sermon on the
Mount. It is as follows: “ Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Good!
“ Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
Good ! Whether they belonged to any church or not;
whether they believed the Bible or not. “ Blessed are
the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Good!
“ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the
children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted
for righteousness sake, (that’s me, a little !) for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.” Good !
In the same sermon he says : “ Think not that I am
come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfil.” And then he makes use
of this remarkable language, almost as applicable to
day as it was then: “For I say unto you that except
your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the
kingdom of heaven.” Good ! In the sixth chapter I
find the following, and it comes directly after the prayer
known as the Lord’s Prayer: “ For if ye forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive
you; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither
will your Father forgive your trespasses.” I accept the
condition. There is an offer ; I accept it. If you will
forgive men that trespass against you, God will forgive
your trespasses against him. I accept the terms, and I
never will ask any god to treat me better than I treat
my fellow-men. There is a square promise. There is a
contract. If you will forgive others God will forgive
you. And it does not say you must believe in the Old
Testament, or be baptised, or join the Church, or keep
Sunday; that you must count beads, or pray, or
become a nun, or a priest; that you must preach
sermons or hear them, build churches or fill them. Not
one word is said about eating or fasting, denying or
believing.
It simply says, if you forgive others, God
B
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will forgive you; and it must of necessity be true. No
god could afford to damn a forgiving man. Suppose
God should damn to everlasting fire a man so great and
good, that he, looking from the abyss of hell, would
forgive God—how would a god feel then ?
Now let me make myself plain upon one subject, per
fectly plain. For instance, I hate Presbyterianism, but
I know hundreds of splendid Presbyterians. Under
stand me. I hate Methodism, and yet I know hundreds
of splendid Methodists. I hate Catholicism, and like
Catholics. I hate insanity, but not the insane.
I do not war against men. I do not war against
persons. I war against certain doctrines that I believe
to be wrong. But I give to every other human being
every right that I claim for myself.
The next thing that I find is in the seventh chapter
and the second verse : “For with what judgment ye
judge, ye shall be judged ; and with what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Good ! That
suits me. And in the twelfth chapter of Matthew.:
“ For whosoever shall do the will of my Father that is
in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and
mother. For the son of man shall come in the glory of
his father with his angels, and then he shall reward
every man according------ .” To the Church he belongs
to? No. To the manner in which he was baptised?
No. According to his creed? No. “Then he shall
reward every man according to his works.” Good ! I
subscribe to that doctrine.
And in the sixteenth chapter: “And Jesus called a
little child to him and stood him in the midst; and said,
‘Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven.’ ” I do not wonder that in his day,
surrounded by Scribes and Pharisees, he turned lovingly
to little children. And yet, see what children—the little
children—of God have been. What an interesting
dimpled darling John Calvin was. Think of that
prattling babe, Jonathan Edwards ! Think of the infants
that founded the Inquisition, that invented instruments
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of torture to tear human flesh. They were the ones
who had become as little children. They were the
children of faith.
So I find in the nineteenth chapter : “ And behold,
one came and said unto him : ‘ Good master, what good
thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ?’ And he
said unto him : ‘ Why call’st thou me good ? There is
none good but one, and that is God; but if thou will
enter into eternal life, keep the Commandments and he
said unto him, ‘ Which ?’ ” Now, there is a fair issue.
Here is a child of God asking God what is necessary for
him to do in order to inherit eternal life. And God said
to him : “ Keep the Commandments.” And the child
said to the Almighty: “Which?” Now, if there ever
has been an opportunity given to the Almighty to furnish
a man of an inquiring mind with the necessary informa
tion upon that subject, here was the opportunity. “ He
saith unto him, ‘ Which ?’ And Jesus said : ‘ Thou shalt
do no murder ; thou shalt not commit adultery ; thou
shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness ; honor
thy father and mother; and thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself.’ ” He did not say to him : “You must believe
in me—that I am the only begotten son of the living
God.” He did not say: “You must be born again.”
He did not say : “You must believe the Bible.” He
did not say: “You must remember the Sabbath day, to
keep it holy.” He simply said:. “Thou shalt do no
murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt
not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honor
thy father and thy mother; and thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself.” And thereupon the young man—
who, I think, was mistaken—said unto him : “ All these
things have I kept from my youth up.” What right has
the Church to add conditions of salvation ? Why should
we suppose that Christ failed to tell the young man all
that was necessary for him to do ? Is it possible that he
left out some important thing simply to mislead ? Will
some minister tell us why he thinks that Christ kept
back the “ scheme ” ?
Now comes an interpolation. In the old times, when
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the Church got a little scarce of money, they always put
in a passage praising poverty. So they had this young
man ask: “ What lack I yet ?” And Jesus said unto
him : “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast
and give t® the poor, and thou shalt have treasures in
heaven.” The Church has always been willing to swap
off treasures in heaven for cash down. And when the
next verse was written the Church must have been
nearly bankrupt. “And again I say unto you, it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Did
you ever know a wealthy disciple to unload on account
of that verse ? And then comes another verse, which I
believe is an interpolation : “ And everyone that has for
saken houses, or brethren or sisters, or father or mother,
or wife or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall
receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting
life.” Christ never said it. Never. “ Whosoever shall
forsake father and mother ?” Why, he said to this man
that asked him: “ What shall I do to inherit eternal
life?” among other things, he said : “ Honor thy father
and thy mother.” And we turn over the page and he
says again : “If you will desert your father and mother
you shall have everlasting life.” It will not do. If you
will desert your wife and your little children, or your
lands—the idea of putting a house and lot on equality
with wife and children. Think of that! I do not accept
the terms. I will never desert the one I love for the
promise of any god. It is far more important to love
your wife than to love God, and I will tell you why.
You cannot help him, but you can help her. You can
fill her life with the perfume of perpetual joy. It is far
more important that you love your children than that you
love Jesus Christ. And why ? If he is God you cannot
help him, but you can plant a little flower of happiness
in every footstep of the child, from the cradle until you
die in that child’s arms. Let me tell you to-day it is far
more important to build a home than to erect a church.
The holiest temple beneath the stars is a home that love
has built. And the holiest altar in all the wide world is
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the fireside around which gather father and mother and
the sweet babes. There was a time when people believed
the infamy commanded in this frightful passage. There
was a time when they did desert fathers and mothers and
wives and children. St. Augustine says to the devotee :
“ Fly to the desert; and, though your wife put her arms
around your neck, tear her hands away; she is a tempta
tion of the Devil. Though your father and mother
throw their bodies athwart your threshold, step over
them; and though your children pursue, and with
weeping eyes beseech you to return, listen not. It is
the temptation of the Evil One. Fly to the desert and
save your soul.” Think of such a soul being worth
saving. While I live I propose to stand by the ones I
love.
There is another condition of salvation. I find it in
the twenty-fifth chapter : “ Then shall the King say unto
them on his right hand : 1 Come, ye blessed of My Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. For I was hungered, and ye gave me
meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a
stranger, and ye took me in ; I was naked, and ye clothed
me; and I was sick, and ye visited me; and I was in
prison, and ye came unto me.’ ” Good ! I tell you to
night that God will not punish with eternal thirst the
man who has put the cup of cold water to the lips of his
neighbor. God will not leave in the eternal nakedness
of pain the man who has clothed his fellow-men. For
instance, here is a shipwreck, and here is some brave
sailor who stands aside and allows a woman whom he
never saw before to take his place in the boat, and he
stands there, grand and serene as the wide sea, and
he goes down. Do you tell me that there is any god
who will push the lifeboat from the shore of eternal life
when that man wishes to step in ? Do you tell me that
God can be unpitying to the pitiful, that he can be
unforgiving to the forgiving ? I deny it; and from the
aspersions of- the pulpit I seek to rescue the reputation
of the Deity. Now I have read you substantially every
thing in Matthew on the subject of salvation. That_is
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all there is. Not one word about believing anything.
It is the gospel of deed, the gospel of charity, the gospel
of self-denial; and, if only that gospel had been preached,
persecution never would have shed one drop of blood,
Not one. According to the testimony, Matthew was
well acquainted with Christ. According to the testimony
he had been with him, and his companion for years, and
if it was necessary to believe anything in order to get
to heaven, Matthew should have told us. But he forgot
it, or he did not believe it, or he never heard of it. You
can take your choice. In Matthew, we find that heaven
is promised, first, to the poor in spirit. Second, to the
merciful. Third, to the pure in heart. Fourth, to the
peacemakers. Fifth, to those who are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake. Sixth, to those who keep and teach
the Commandments. Seventh, to those who forgive men
that trespass against them. Eighth, that we will be
judged as we judge others.
Ninth, that they who
receive prophets and righteous men shall receive a
prophet’s reward. Tenth, to those who do the will of
God. Eleventh, that every man shall be rewarded
according to his works. Twelfth, to those who become
as little children. Thirteenth, to those who forgive the
trespasses of others. Fourteenth, to the perfect: they
who sell all that they have and give to the poor. Fif
teenth, to them who forsake houses, and brethren, and
sisters, and father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and lands for the sake of Christ’s name. Sixteenth, to
those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty,
shelter to the stranger, clothes to the naked, comfort to
the sick, and who visit the prisoner. Nothing else is
said with regard to salvation in the Gospel according to
St. Matthew. Not one word about believing the Old
Testament to have been inspired ; not one word about
being baptised or joining a church ; not one word about
believing in any miracle; not even a hint that it was
necessary to believe that Christ was the son of God, or
that he did any wonderful or miraculous things, or that
he was born of a virgin, or that his coming had been
foretold by the Jewish prophets. Not one word about
�i5
believing in the Trinity, or in fore-ordination or pre
destination. Matthew had not understood from Christ
that any such things were necessary to ensure the sal
vation of the soul.
According to the testimony, Matthew had been in the
company of Christ, some say three years and some say
one, but at least he had been with him long enough to
find out some of his ideas upon this great subject. And
yet Matthew never got the impression that it was
necessary to believe something in order to get to heaven.
He supposed that if a man forgave others God would
forgive him ; he believed that God would show mercy to
the merciful; that he would not allow those who fed the
hungry to starve ; that he would not put in the flames
of hell those who had given cold water to the thirsty ;
that he would not cast into the eternal dungeon of his
wrath those who had visited the imprisoned ; and that
he would not damn men who forgave others. Matthew
had it in his mind that God would treat us very much
as we treated other people; and that in the next world
he would treat with kindness those who had been loving
and gentle in their lives. It may be the apostle was
mistaken, but evidently that was his opinion.
THE GOSPEL OF MARK.
Let us now see what Mark thought it necessary for a
man to do to save his soul. In the fourth chapter, after
Jesus had given to the multitude by the sea the parable
of the sower, his disciples, when they were again alone,
asked him the meaning of the parable. Jesus replied:
“ Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the king
dom of God ; but unto them that are without, all these
things are done in parables : That seeing, they may see,
and not perceive ; and hearing they may hear, and not
understand, lest at any time they should be converted,
and their sins should be forgiven them.” It is a little
hard to understand why he should have preached to
people that he did not intend should know his meaning.
�i6
Neither is it quite clear why he objected to their being
converted. . This, I suppose, is one of the mysteries that
we should simply believe without endeavoring to com
prehend. With the above exception, and one other that
I will mention hereafter, Mark substantially agrees with
Matthew, and says that God will be merciful to the
merciful, and that he will be kind to the kind, that he
will pity the pitying, and love the loving. Mark upholds
the religion of Matthew until we come to the sixteenth
verse of the sixteenth chapter, and then I strike an inter
polation put in by hypocrisy, put in by priest who longed
to grasp with bloody hands the sceptre of universal
power. .Let me read it to you. It is the most infamous
passage in the Bible. Christ never said it. No sensible
man ever said it.
“ And He said unto them (that is, unto his disciples),
go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be
saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”
That passage was written so that fear would give alms
to hypocrisy. Now, I propose to show you that this is an
interpolation. How will I do it ? In the first place,
not one word is said about belief in Matthew. In the
next place, not one word about belief in Mark until I
come to that verse, and where is that said to have been
spoken ? . According to Mark, it is a part of that last
conversation of Jesus Christ—just before, according to
the account, he ascended bodily before their eyes. If
there ever was any important thing happened in this
world that was it. If there is any conversation that
people would be apt to recollect, it would be the last
conversation with a god before he rose visibly through
the air and seated himself upon the throne of the infinite.
We have in this Testament five accounts of the last
conversation happening between Jesus Christ and his
apostles. Matthew gives it, and yet Matthew does not
state that in that conversation Christ said : “ Whoso
believeth and is baptised shall be saved, and whoso
believeth not shall be damned.” And if he did say those
words they were the most important that ever fell from
�X7
lips. Matthew did not hear it, or did not believe it, or
forgot it. Then I turn to Luke, and he gives an account
of this last conversation, and not one word does he say
upon that subject. Luke does not pretend that Christ
said that whoso believeth not shall be damned. Luke
certainly did not hear it.
Maybe he forgot it. Per
haps he did not think it worth recording.
Now, it
is the most important thing, if Christ said it, that he
ever said.
Then I turn to John, and he gives an
account of the last conversation, but not one solitary
word on the subject of belief or unbelief. Not one
solitary word on the subject of damnation. Not one.
John might not have been listening.
Then I turn to the first chapter of the Acts, and there
I find an account of the last conversation ; and in that
conversation there is not one word upon this subject.
This is a demonstration that the passage in Mark is an
interpolation. What other reason have I got ? There
is not one particle of sense in it. Why ? No man can
control his belief. You hear evidence for and against,
and the integrity of the soul stands at the scales and tells
which side rises and which side falls. You cannot believe
as you wish. You must believe as you must. And he
might as well have said: “ Go into the world and preach
the Gospel, and whosoever has red hair shall be saved,
and whosoever hath not shall be damned.” I have
another reason. I am much obliged to the gentleman
who interpolated these passages. I am much obliged to
him that he put in some more—two more. Now hear :
“ And these signs shall follow them that believe.” Good !
“ In my name shall they cast out devils. They shall
speak with new tongues, and take up serpents, and if
they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. They
shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
Bring on your believer! Let him cast out a devil. I
do not ask for a large one. Just a little one for a cent.
Let him take up serpents. “ And if he drink any deadly
thing it shall not hurt him.” Let me mix up a dose for
the believer, and if it does not hurt him I will join a
church.
“ Oh! but,” they say, “ those things only
B
�i8
lasted through the Apostolic age.” Let us see. “ Go
into all the world and preach the Gospel, and whosoever
believeth and is baptised shall be saved; and these signs
shall follow them that believe.” How long ? I think at
least until they had gone into all the world. Certainly
those signs should follow until all the world has been
visited. And yet, if that declaration was in the mouth
of Christ, he then knew that one-half of the world was
unknown, and that he would be dead fourteen hundred
and fifty-nine years before his disciples would know that
there was another continent. And yet he said : “ Go
into the world and preach the Gospel,” and he knew then
that it would be fourteen hundred and fifty-nine years
before anybody could go. Well, if it was worth while to
have signs follow believers in the Old World, surely it
was worth while to have signs follow believers in the
New. And the very reason that signs should follow
would be to convince the unbeliever ; and there are as
many unbelievers now as ever, and the signs are as
necessary to-day as they ever were. I would like a few
myself. This frightful declaration : “ He that believeth
and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not
shall be damned,” has filled the world with agony and
crime. Every letter of this passage has been sword and
faggot; every word has been dungeon and chain. That
passage made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with
the faggot’s flames. That passage contradicts the Sermon
on the Mount, travesties the Lord’s Prayer, turns the
splendid religion of deed and duty into the superstition
of creed and cruelty. I deny it. It is infamous. Christ
never said it!
THE GOSPEL OF LUKE.
It is sufficient to say that Luke agrees substantially
with Matthew and Mark. “ Be ye therefore merciful, as
your Father is also merciful.” Good ! “ Judge not, and
ye shall not be judged. Condemn not, and ye shall not
be condemned. Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.”
Good! “ Give, and it shall be given unto you good
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measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.”
Good! I like it. “For the same measure that ye mete
withal it shall be measured to you again.”
He agrees substantially with Mark ; he agrees sub
stantially with Matthew; and I come at last to the nine
teenth chapter. “ And Zaccheus stood, and said unto
the Lord: ‘ Behold, Lord, the one-half of my goods I
give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any
man by false accusation I restore him fourfold.’ And
Jesus said unto him : ‘ This day is salvation come to this
house.’ ” That is good doctrine. He did not ask
Zaccheus what he believed. He did not ask him : “ Do
you believe in the Bible ? Do you believe in the five
points ? Have you ever been baptised—sprinkled, or
immersed ?” “ Half of my goods I give to the poor, and
if I have taken anything from any man by false accusa
tion I restore him fourfold. And Christ said : ‘ This day
is salvation come to this house.’ ” Good ! I read also
in Luke that Christ, when upon the cross, forgave his
murderers ; and that is considered the shining gem in
the crown of his mercy. He forgave his murderers.
He forgave the men who drove the nails in his hands, in
his feet—that plunged a spear in his side; the soldier
that, in the hour of death, offered him in mockery the
bitterness to drink. He forgave them all freely ; and
yet, although he would forgive them, he will, in the nine
teenth century—as we are told by the orthodox Church
-—damn to eternal fire a noble man for the expression of
his honest thoughts. That will not do. I find, too, in
Luke an account of two thieves that were crucified at
the same time. The other Gospels speak of them. One
says they both railed upon him. Another says nothing
about it. In Luke we are told that one railed upon him ;
but one of the thieves looked, and pitied Christ; and
Christ said to that thief : “ To-day shalt thou be with me
in Paradise.” Why did he say that ? Because the
thief pitied him. God cannot afford to trample beneath
the feet of his infinite wrath the smallest blossom of pity
that ever shed its perfume in the human heart!
Who was this thief ? To what Church did he belong ?
�20
I do’not know. The fact that he was a thief throws no
light on that question. Who was he ? What did he
believe ? I do not know. Did he believe in the Old
Testament ? In the miracles ? I do not know. Did
he believe that Christ was God ? I do not know.
Why, then, was the promise made to him that he
should meet Christ in Paradise ? Simply because he
pitied suffering innocence upon the cross. God cannot
afford to damn any man who is capable of pitying
anybody.
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN.
And now we come to John, and that is where the
trouble commences. The other Gospels teach that God
will be merciful to the merciful, forgiving to the for
giving, kind to the kind, loving to the loving, just to the
just, merciful to the good. Now we come to John, and
here is another doctrine. And allow me to say that John
was not written until long after the others. John was
mostly written by the Church. “ And Jesus answered,
and said unto him : ‘ Furthermore, I say unto thee, that
except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom
of God.’ ” Why did he not tell Matthew that ? Why
did he not tell Luke that ? Why did he not tell Mark
that ? They never heard of it, or forgot it, or they did
not believe it. “ Except a man be born of water and
of the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
Why ? “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh,
and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel
not that I said unto thee, ‘ Ye must be born again.’
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the spirit is spirit; and, he might
have added, “ That which is born of water is water.
“Marvel not that I say unto thee, ‘Ye must be born
again.’ ” And then the reason is given—and I admit
I did not understand it myself until I read the
reason, and when you hear the reason you will under
stand it as well as I do—and here it is: “ The wind
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bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound
thereof, and canst not tell whence it cometh and whither
it goeth.”
So, I find in the book of John the idea of the Real
Presence. 11 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
That whomsoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have eternal life. For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish but have ever
lasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the world
through him might be saved. He that believeth on him
is not condemned ; but he that believeth not is condemned
already, because he hath not believed in the name of the
only begotten Son of God. He that believeth on the
Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on
him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my
word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting
life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed
from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God ; and they that hear shall
live, and shall come forth ; they that have done good
unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done
evil unto the resurrection of damnation. And this is
the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth
the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life ;
and I will raise him up at the last day. No man can
come to me except my Father, which hath sent me, draw
him; and I will raise him up at the last day. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath
everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers
did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is
the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man
may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread
which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this
bread he shall live for ever ; and the bread that I will
give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the
�22
world. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Man,
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life;
and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is
meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me,
and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I
live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall
live by me. This is that bread which came down from
heaven ; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead ;
he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.” “ And he
said. Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come
unto me except it were given unto him of my Father.’ ”
“ Jesus said unto her : I am the resurrection and the life ;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live.. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die.” “ He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life
eternal.” So I find in the book of John that, in order
to be saved, we must not only believe in Jesus Christ,
but we must eat of the flesh and drink of the blood of
Jesus Christ. If that Gospel is true, the Catholic Church
is right. But it is not true. I cannot believe it; and
yet for all that it may be true. But I do not believe it.
Neither do I believe there is any God in the universe
who will damn a man simply for expressing his belief.
“ Why,” they say to me, “ suppose all this should turn
out to be true, and you should come to the Day of
Judgment, and find all these things to be true. What
would you do then ?” I would walk up like a man, and
say I was mistaken. “ And suppose God was about to
pass judgment upon you; what would you say?” I
would say to him : “Do unto others as you would that
others should do unto you.” Why not ? I am told that
I must render “good for evil.” I am told that, “if
smitten on one cheek,” I must “ turn the other.” I am
told that I must “ overcome evil with good.” I am told
that I must “ love my enemies and will it do for this
God who tells me to “love my enemies” to damn his ?
�23
No, it will not do—it will not do. In the book of John
all these doctrines of regeneration—that it is necessary
to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; that salvation
depends upon belief—in this book of John all these
doctrines find their warrant ; nowhere else. Read
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then read John, and you
will agree with me that the first three Gospels teach
that, if we are kind and forgiving to our fellows, God
will be kind and forgiving to us. In John we are told
that another man can be good for us, or bad for us, and
that the only way to get to heaven is to believe some
thing that we know is not so. All these passages about
believing in Christ, drinking his blood, and eating his
flesh are afterthoughts. They were written by the theo
logians, and in a few years they will be discovered as
unworthy of the lips of Christ.
THE CATHOLICS.
N ow upon these gospels that I have read the Churches
rest; and out of these things, mistakes and interpola
tions, they have made their creeds. And the first Church
to make a creed, so far as I know, was the Catholic.
It was the first Church that had any power. That is
the Church that has preserved all these miracles for us.
That is the Church that preserved the manuscripts for
us. That is the Church whose word we have to take.
That Church is the first witness that Protestantism
brought to the bar of history to prove miracles that
took place eighteen hundred years ago; and while the
witness is there Protestantism takes pains to say : “ You
cannot believe one word that witness says, now.” That
Church is the only one that keeps up a constant com
munication with heaven through the instrumentality of
a large number of decayed saints. That Church has an
agent of God on earth, has a person who stands in the
place of deity; and that Church is infallible. That
Church has persecuted to the exact extent of her power
—and always will. In Spain that Church stands
�24
erect, and is arrogant.
In the United States that
Church crawls, but the object in both countries is the
same—and that is the destruction of intellectual liberty.
That Church teaches us that we can make God happy
by being miserable ourselves ; that a nun is holier in the
sight of God than a loving mother with her child in her
thrilled and thrilling arms; that a priest is better than
a father ; that celibacy is better than that passion of love
that has made everything of beauty in this world.
That Church tells the girl of sixteen or eighteen years
of age, with eyes like dew and light—that girl with the
red of. health in the white of her beautiful cheeks—tells
that girl: “ Put on the veil, woven of death and night,
kneel upon stones, and you will please God.” I tell you
that, by law, no girl should be allowed to take the veil
and renounce the joys and beauties of this life. I am
opposed to allowing these spider-like priests to weave
webs to catch the loving maidens of the world. There
ought to be a law appointing commissioners to visit such
places twice a year, and release every person who
expresses a desire to be released. I do not believe in
keeping the penitentiaries of God. No doubt they are
honest about it.
That is not the question.
These
ignorant superstitions fill millions of lives with weariness
and pain, with agony and tears. This Church, after a
.few centuries of thought, made a creed, and that creed
is the foundation of the orthodox religion.
Let me
read it to you: “ Whosoever will be saved, before all
things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith;
which faith, except everyone do keep entire and inviolate,
without doubt, he shall everlastingly perish.” Now the
faith is this : “ That we worship one God in trinity and
trinity in unity.” Of course, you understand how that
is done, and there is no need of my explaining it.
“ Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the sub
stance.” You see what a predicament that would leave
the deity in if you divided the substance. “For one is
the person of the Father, another of the Son, and
another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all
�25
one”—you know what I mean by Godhead—“ in glory
equal, and in maj esty co-eternal. ' Such as the Father
is, such is the Son, such is the Holy Ghost. The Father
is uncreated, the Son uncreated, the Holy Ghost un
created. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incom
prehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.” And
that is the reason we know so much about the thing.
“ The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy
Ghost eternal, and yet there are not three eternals, only
one eternal, as also there are not three uncreated, nor
three incomprehensibles, only one uncreated,-one incom
prehensible.” “In like manner, the Father is almighty,
the Son almighty, the Holy Ghost almighty. Yet there
are not three almighties, only one almighty. So the
Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Ghost God, and
yet not three Gods ; and so, likewise, the Father is
Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Ghost is Lord, yet
there are not three Lords, for as we are compelled by
the Christian truth to acknowledge every person by him
self to be God and Lord, so we are all forbidden by the
Catholic religion to say there are three Gods, or three
Lords. The Father is made of no one ; not created or
begotten. The Son is from the Father alone, not made,
not created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is from the
Father and the Son, not made, nor begotten, but pro
ceeding.” You know what proceeding is. “ So there is
one Father, not three Fathers.” Why should there be
three Fathers, and only one Son ? “ One Son, and not
three Sons ; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts;
and in this trinity there is nothing before or afterward,
nothing greater or less, but the whole three persons are
co-eternal with one another and co-equal, so that in all
things the Unity is to be worshipped in Trinity, and the
Trinity is to be worshipped in Unity. Those who will
be saved must thus think of the Trinity. Furthermore,
it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe
rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now
the right of this thing is this : That we believe and con
fess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both
God and man. He is God of the substance of his Father
�26
begotten before the world was.” That was a good while
before his mother lived. “ And he is a man of the sub
stance of his mother, born in this world, perfect God and
perfect man, and the rational soul in human flesh sub
sisting, equal to the Father according to his Godhead,
but less than the Father according to his manhood, who
being both God and man is not two but one, one not by
conversion of God into flesh, but by the taking of the
manhood into God.” You see that is a great deal easier
than the other way would be. “ One altogether, not by
a confusion of substance but by unity of person, for as
the rational soul and the flesh is one man, so God and
man is one Christ, who suffered for our salvation,
descended into hell, rose again the third day from the
dead, ascended into heaven, and he sitteth at the right
hand of God, the Father Almighty, and he shall come to
judge the living and the dead.”
In order to be saved it is necessary to believe this.
What a blessing that we do not have to understand it.
And in order to compel the human intellect to get upon
its knees before that infinite absurdity, thousands and
millions have suffered agonies : thousands and thousands
have perished in dungeons and in fire; and if all the
bones of all the victims of the Catholic Church could be
gathered together, a monument higher than all the
pyramids would rise, in the presence of which the eyes
even of priests would be wet with tears. That Church
covered Europe with cathedrals and dungeons, and
robbed men of the jewel of the soul. That Church had
ignorance upon its knees. That Church went into
partnership with the tyrants of the throne, and between
those two vultures, the altar and the throne, the heart of
man was devoured. Of course I have met, and cheer
fully admit that there are thousands of, good Catholics ;
but Catholicism is contrary to human liberty. Catho
licism bases salvation upon belief. Catholicism teaches
man to trample his reason under foot. And for that
reason it is wrong. Thousands of volumes could not
contain the crimes of the Catholic Church. They could
not contain even the names of her victims. With sword
�27
and fire, with rack and chain, with dungeon and whip,
she endeavored to convert the world. In weakness a
beggar—in power a highwayman—alms-dish or dagger
—tramp or tyrant.
THE EPISCOPALIANS.
The next Church I wish to speak of is the Episcopalian. That was founded by Henry VIII., now in
heaven. He cast off Queen Catherine and Catholicism
together, and he accepted Episcopalianism and Anne
Boleyn at the same time. That Church, if it had a few
more ceremonies, would be Catholic. If it had a few
less, nothing. We have an Episcopalian Church in this
country, and it has all the imperfections of a poor rela
tion. It is always boasting of its rich relative.
In
England the creed is made by law, the same as we pass
statutes here. And when a gentleman dies in England,
in order to determine whether he shall be saved or not,
it is necessary for the power of heaven to read the Acts
of Parliament.
It becomes a question of law, and
sometimes a man is damned on a very nice point.
Lost on demurrer. A few years ago a gentleman by the
name of Seabury—Samuel Seabury—was sent over to
England to get some apostolic succession. We had not
a drop in the house. It was necessary for the bishops of
the English Church to put their hands upon his head.
They refused. There was no Act of Parliament justify
ing it. He had then to go to the Scotch bishops; and,
had the Scotch bishops refused, we never would have
had any apostolic succession in the New World, and
God would have been driven out of half the earth, and
the true Church never could have been founded upon
this continent. But the Scotch bishops put their hands
on his head, and now we have an unbroken succession of
heads and hands from St. Paul to the last bishop. In
this country the Episcopalians have done some good,
and I want to thank that Church. Having on an
average less religion than the others—on an average you
a
�28
haye done more good to mankind. You preserved some
o the humanities. .You did not hate music ; you did
not absolutely despise painting, and you did not alto
gether abhor architecture, and you finally admitted
that it was no worse to keep time with your feet than
with your hands. And some went so far as to say that
people could play cards, and that God would overlook it,
or would look the other way. For all these things
accept my thanks. When I was a boy, the other
Churches looked upon dancing as probably the mysterious
sm against the Holy Ghost; and they used to teach that
when four boys got in a hay-mow, playing at seven-up, that
the eternal .God stood whetting the sword of his eternal
wrath waiting to strike them down to the lowest hell.
That Church has done some good. The Episcopal creed
is substantially, like the Catholic, containing a few addi
tional absurdities.. The Episcopalians teach that it is
easier to get forgiveness for sin after you have been
baptised. They seem to think that the moment you are
baptised, you become a member of the firm, and as such
are entitled . to wickedness at cost. This Church is
utterly, unsuited to a free people. Its government is
tyrannical, supercilious, and absurd. Bishops talk as
though they were responsible for the souls in their
charge. . They wear vests that button on one side.
Nothing is so essential to the clergy of this denomina
tion as a good voice. The Episcopalians have persecuted
just to. the extent of their power. Their treatment of
the Irish has been a crime—a crime lasting for three
hundred years. That Church persecuted the Puritans
of England and the Presbyterians of Scotland. In
England the altar is the mistress of the throne, and this
mistress has always looked at honest wives with scorn.
THE METHODISTS.
About a hundred and fifty years ago two men, John
Wesley and George Whitfield, said: “ If everybody is
going to hell somebody ought to mention it.” The
�29
Episcopal clergy said: “ Keep still; do not tear your
gown.” Wesley and Whitfield said : “This frightful
truth ought to be proclaimed from the housetop of every
opportunity; from the highway of every occasion.”
They were good, honest men.
They believed their
doctrine. And they said : “ If there is a hell, and a
Niagara of souls pouring over an eternal precipice of
ignorance, somebody ought to say something.” They
were right; somebody ought, if such a thing is true.
Wesley was a believer in the Bible. He believed in the
actual presence of the Almighty.
God used to do
miracles for him ; used to put off a rain several days to
give his meeting a chance; used to cure his horse of
lameness; used to cure Mr. Wesley’s headaches. And
Mr. Wesley also believed in the actual existence of the
Devil. He believed that devils had possession of people.
He talked to the Devil when he was in folks, and the
Devil told him that he was going to leave, and that he
was going into another person—that he would be there
at a certain time ; and Wesley went to that other person,
and there the Devil was, prompt to the minute. He
regarded every conversion as warfare between God and
this Devil for the possession of that human soul, and that
in the warfare God had gained the victory. Honest, no
doubt. Mr. Wesley did not believe in human liberty.
Honest, no doubt. Was opposed to the liberty of the
Colonies. Honestly so. Mr. Wesley preached a sermon,
entitled “ The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes,” in which
he took the ground that earthquakes were caused by sin,
and the only way to stop them was to believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ. No doubt an honest man. Wesley
and Whitfield fell out on the question of predestination.
Wesley insisted that God invited everybody to the feast.
Whitfield said he did not invite those he knew would not
come. Wesley said he did. Whitfield said : “ Well, he
did not put plates for them, anyway.” Wesley said he
did ; so that, when they were in hell, he could show them
that there was a seat left for them. The Church that
they founded is still active ; and probably no Church has
done so much preaching for as little money as the
�3°
Methodists. Whitfield believed in slavery, and advocated
the slave trade ; and it was of Whitfield that Whittier
made the two lines :—
He bade the slave ships speed from coast to coast,
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost.
We have lately had a meeting of the Methodists, and
I find by their statistics that they believe that they have
converted 130,300 folks in a year; that, in order to do
this, they have 26,000 preachers, 226,000 Sunday-school
scholars, and about $100,000,000 invested in church
property. I find, in looking over the history of the
world,that there are 40,000,000 or 50,000,000 of people
born in a year, and if they are saved at the rate of
130,000 a.year, about how long will it take that doctrine
to save this world ? Good, honest people ; but they are
mistaken. In old times they were very simple. Churches
used to be like barns. They used to have them divided
—men on that side, women on this. A little barbarous.
We have advanced since then; and we now find, as a
fact demonstrated by experience, that a man sitting by
the woman he loves can thank God as heartily as though
sitting between two men that he has never been intro
duced to.
There is another thing the Methodists should remember,
and that is that the Episcopalians were the greatest
enemies they ever had. And they should remember
that the Freethinkers have always treated them kindly
and well. There is one thing about the Methodist
Church in the North that I like. But I find that it is
not Methodism that does that. I find that the Methodist
Church in the South is as much opposed to liberty as the
Methodist Church North is in favor of liberty. So it is
not Methodism that is in favor of liberty or slavery.
They differ a little in their creed from the rest. They do
not believe that God does everything. They believe
that he does his part, and that you must do the rest, and
that getting to heaven is a partnership business. The
Methodist Church is adapted e to new countries—its
ministers are generally uncultured, and with them zeal
�31
takes the place of knowledge. They convert people
with noise. In the silence that follows most of the
converts backslide. In a little while a struggle will
commence between the few who are growing and the
orthodox many. The few will be driven out, and the
Church will be governed by those who believe without
understanding.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
The next Church is the Presbyterian, and in my
judgment the worst of all, as far as creed is concerned.
This Church was founded by John Calvin, a murderer !
John Calvin, having power in Geneva, inaugurated
human torture. Voltaire abolished torture m France.
The man who abolished torture, if the Christian religion
be true, God is now torturing in hell; and the man who
inaugurated torture is now a glorified angel in heaven.
It will not do. John Knox started this doctrine in
Scotland, and there is this peculiarity. about Pres
byterianism—it grows best where the soil is. poorest. I
read the other day an account of a meeting between
John Knox and John Calvin.
Imagine a dialogue
between a pestilence and a famine!
Imagine a con
versation between a block and an axe ! As I read their
conversation it seemed to me as though John Knox and
John Calvin were made for each other; that they fitted
each other like the upper and lower jaws of a wild beast.
They believed happiness was a crime; they looked upon
laughter as blasphemy ; and they did all they could , to
destroy every human feeling, and to fill the mind with
the infinite gloom of predestination and eternal death.
They taught the doctrine that God had a right to damn
us, because he made us. That is just the reason that
he has not a right to damn us. There is some dust.
Unconscious dust! What right has God to change that
unconscious dust into a human being, when he knows
that human being will sin : when he knows that human
being will suffer eternal agony ? Why not leave him in
�32
the unconscious dust ? What right has an infinite God
to add to the sum of human agony ? Suppose I knew
that ! could change that piece of furniture into a living,
sentient human being, and I knew that that bein^
would suffer untold agony for ever. If I did it, I would
be a fiend. I would leave that being in the unconscious
dust.. And yet we are told that we must believe such a
doctrine or we are to be eternally damned ! It will not
do. In 1839 there was a division in this Church, and
they had a law suit to see which was the Church of God.
And they tried it by a judge and jury, and the jury
decided that the new school was the Church of God ;
and then they got a new trial, and the next jury decided
that the old school was the Church of God, and that
settled it. That Church teaches that infinite innocence
was sacrificed for me ! I do not want it. I do not wish
to go to heaven unless I can settle by the books, and go
there because I ought to go there. I have said, and I
say again, I do not wish to be a charity angel. I have
no ambition to become a winged pauper of the skies.
The other day a young gentleman, a Presbyterian who
had just been converted, came to me and he gave me a
tract, and he told me he was perfectly happy. Said I :
“ Do you think a great many people are going to hell ?”
“ Oh, yes.” “ And you are perfectly happy ?” “ Well,
he did not know as he was, quite.” “ Would you not
be happier if they were all going to heaven ?” “ Oh,
yes.
“ Well, then, you are not perfectly happy ?”
No, he did not think he was.” “ When you get to
heaven, then you will be perfectly happy ?” “ Oh, yes.”
“ Now, when we are only going to hell, you are not
quite happy; but when we are in hell, and you in
heaven, then you will be perfectly happy ? You will not
be as decent when you get to be an angel as you are
now, will, you?’’ “Well,” he said, “that was not
exactly it.” Said I : “ Suppose your mother were in
hell, would you be happy in heaven then ?” “ Well,”
he says, “ I suppose God would know the best place for
mother.” And I thought to myself, then, if I was a
woman, I would like to have five or six boys like that.
�33
It will not do. Heaven is where those are we love,
and those who love us. And I wish to go to no world
unless I can be accompanied by those who love me
here. Talk about the consolations of this infamous
doctrine ! The consolations of a doctrine that makes a
father say: “I can be happy, with my daughter.in
hellthat makes a mother say : “I can be happy, with
my generous, brave boy in hell that makes a boy say :
“ I can enjoy the glory of heaven, with the woman who
bore me, the woman who would have died for me, in eternal
agony ”! And they call that tidings of great joy! ’ No
Church has done more to fill the world with gloom than
the Presbyterian. Its creed is frightful, hideous, and
hellish. The Presbyterian God is the monster of
monsters. He is an eternal executioner, jailer, and
turnkey. He will enjoy for ever the shrieks of the lost
—the wails of the damned. Hell is the festival of the
Presbyterian God.
THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE.
I have not time to speak of the Baptists—that
Jeremy Taylor said were as much to be rooted out as
anything that is the greatest pest and nuisance on the
earth. He hated the Baptists because they represented,
in some little degree, the liberty of thought. Nor have
I time to speak of the Quakers, the best of all, and
abused by all. I cannot forget that John Fox, in the
year of grace 1640, was put in the pillory and whipped
from town to town, scarred, put in a dungeon, beaten,
trampled upon, and what for ? Simply because he
preached the doctrine : “ Thou shalt not resist evil with
evil.” “ Thou shalt love thy enemies.” Think of what
the Church must have been that day to scar the flesh
of that loving man! Just think of it! I say I have
not time to speak of all these sects—the varieties of
Presbyterians and Campbellites. There are hundreds
and hundreds of these sects, all founded upon this creed
that I read, differing simply in degree. Ah ! but they
say to me : “You are fighting something that is dead.
�34
Nobody believes this now.
The preachers do not
believe what they preach in the pulpit. The people in
the pews do not believe what they hear preached.”
And they say to me : “ You are fighting something that
is dead.” This is all a form, we do not believe a
solitary creed in the world. We sign them and swear
that we believe them, but we do not. And none of us
do. And all the ministers they say in private, admit
that they do not believe it, not quite. I do not know
whether this is so or not. I take it that they believe what
they, preach.
I take it that when they meet and
solemnly agree to a creed that they are honest, and
really believe in that creed. But let us see if I am.
waging a war against the ideas of the dead. Let us
see. if I am simply storming a cemetery. The Evan
gelical Alliance, made up of all orthodox denomina
tions of the world, met only a few years ago, and
here is their creed : They believe in the divine inspira
tion, authority, and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures,
the right and duty of private judgment in the inter
pretation of the Holy Scriptures, but if you interpret
wrong you are damned. They believe in the unity of
the godhead and the trinity of the persons therein.
They believe in the utter depravity of human nature.
There can be no more infamous doctrine than that.
They look upon a little child as a lump of depravity.
I. look upon it as a bud of humanity, that will, in the
air and light of love and joy, blossom into rich and
glorious life. Total depravity of human nature ! Here
is a woman whose husband has been lost at sea ; the
news comes that he has been drowned by the everhungry waves, and she waits. There is something in
her heart that tells her he is alive. And she waits.
And years afterwards as she looks down toward the
little gate she sees him ; he has been given back by
the sea, and she rushes to his arms, and covers his
face with kisses and with tears. And if that infamous
doctrine is true, every tear is a crime, and every kiss
a blasphemy. It will not do. According to that
doctrine, if a man steals and repents, and takes back
�35
the property, the repentance and the taking back”of
the property are two other crimes. It is an infamy.
What else do they believe ? “ The justification of a
sinner by faith alone,’ ’ without works—just faith. Believing
something that you do not understand. Of course
God cannot afford to reward a man for believing any
thing that is reasonable.
God rewards only for
believing something that is unreasonable.
If you
believe something that is improbable and unreasonable,
you are a Christian ; but if you believe something that
you know is not so, then—you are a saint.
They believe in the eternal blessedness of the righteous,
and in the eternal punishment of the wicked. Tidings
of great joy ! They are so good that they will not
associate with Universalists. They will not associate
with Unitarians ; they will not associate with scientists ;
they will only associate with those who believe that God
so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn
the most of us. The Evangelical Alliance reiterates the
absurdities of the Dark Ages—repeats the five points
of Calvin—replenishes the fires of hell—certifies to the
mistakes and miracles of the Bible—maligns the human
race, and kneels to a God who accepted the agony of the
innocent as an atonement for the guilty.
WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE ?
Then they say to me : “ What do you propose ? You
have torn this down; what do you propose to give us in
place of it ?” I have not torn the good down. I have
only endeavored to trample out the ignorant, cruel fires
of hell. I do not tear away the passage : “ God will be
merciful to the merciful.” I do not destroy the promise :
“ If you will forgive others, God will forgive you.” I
would not for anything blot out the faintest star that
shines in the horizon of human despair, nor in the sky of
human hope ; but I will do what I can to get that infinite
shadow out of the heart of man.
“ What do you propose in place of this ?”
Well, in the first place, I propose good fellowship—
�36
good friends all around. No matter what we believe,
shake hands and let it go. That is your opinion—this is
mine ; let us be friends. Science makes friends ; religion,
superstition, makes enemies. They say: Belief is im
portant. Isay: No; actions are important. Judge by
deed, not by creed. Good fellowship, good friends,
sincere men and women; mutual forbearance, born of
mutual respect. We have had too many of these solemn
people. Whenever I see an exceedingly solemn man I
know he is an exceedingly stupid man. No man of any
humor ever founded a religion—never. Humor sees
both sides. While reason is the holy light, Humor
carries the lantern ; and the man with a keen sense of
humor is preserved from the solemn stupidities of super
stition. I like a man who has got good feeling for every
body—good fellowship. One man said to another : “ Will
you take a glass of wine ?” “ I do not drink.” “ Will
you smoke a cigar ?” “ I do not smoke.” “ Maybe you
will chew something ?” “ I do not chew.” “ Let us
eat some hay.” “ I tell you I do not eat hay.” “ Well,
then, good-bye; for you are no company for man or
beast.” I believe in the Gospel of Cheerfulness, the
Gospel of Good Nature, the Gospel of Good Health,
Let us pay some attention to our bodies. Take care of
our bodies, and our souls will take care of themselves.
Good health! And I believe the time will come
when the public thought will be so great and grand
that it will be looked, upon as infamous to perpetuate
disease. I believe the time will come when man will
not fill the future with consumption and insanity. I
believe the time will come when we will study ourselves
and understand the laws of health, and then we will say :
We are under the obligation to put the flags of health in
the cheeks of our children. Even if I got to heaven,
and had a harp, I would hate to look back upon my
children and grandchildren, and see them diseased,
deformed, crazed—all suffering the penalties of crimes I
had committed. I believe in the Gospel of Good Living.
You cannot make any god happy by fasting. Let us
have good food, and let us have it well cooked—and it is
a thousand times better to know how to cook than it is
�37
to understand any theology in the world. I believe in
the Gospel of Good Clothes ; I believe in the Gospel of
Good Houses ; in the Gospel of Water and Soap. I
believe in the Gospel of Intelligence—in the Gospel of
Education. The school-house is my cathedral. The
universe is my Bible.
I believe in that Gospel of
Justice, that we must reap what we sow. I do not
believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the Church.
We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each
other and of ourselves. If I rob Mr. Smith, and God
forgive me, how does that help Smith ? If I, by slander,
cover some poor girl with the leprosy of some imputed
crime, and she withers away like a blighted flower, and
afterward I get the forgiveness of God, how does that
help her ? If there is another world, we have, got to
settle with the people we have wronged in this. No
Bankrupt Court there. Every cent must be paid. The
Christians say that, among the ancient Jews, if you com
mitted a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say :
“ Charge it
“ Put it on the slate.” It will not do.
For every crime you commit you must answer to your
self, and to the One you injure. And if you have ever
clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you
will never be quite as happy as though you had not done
that thing.
No forgiveness by the gods.
Eternal,
inexorable, everlasting justice, so far as nature is con
cerned. You must reap the result of your acts. Even
when forgiven by the one you have injured, it is not as
though the injury had not been done. This is what I
believe in. And if it goes hard with me I will stand it,
and I will cling to my logic, and I will bear it like a
man. And I believe, too, in the Gospel of Liberty—in
giving to others what we claim for ourselves. I believe
there is room everywhere for thought, and the more
liberty you give away the more you will have. In
liberty extravagance is economy. Let us be just. Let
us be generous to each other. I believe in the Gospel of
Intelligence. That is the only lever capable of raising
mankind. Intelligence must be the savior of this world.
Humanity is the grand religion; and no god can put a
man in hell in another world who has made a littel
�38
heaven in this. God cannot make a man miserable if
that man has made somebody else happy. God cannot
hate anybody who is capable of loving anybody.
Humanity—-that word embraces all there is. So I
believe in this great Gospel of Humanity. “ Ah 1 but,”
they say, “ it will not do. You must believe.” I say,
No. My Gospel of Health will bring life. My Gospel
of Intelligence, my Gospel of Good, Living, my Gospel
of Good-fellowship, will cover the world with happy
homes. My doctrine will put carpets upon your floors,
pictures upon your walls. . My doctrine will put books
upon your shelves, ideas in your minds. My doctrine
will rid the world of the abnormal monsters born of
ignorance and superstition. My doctrine will give us
health, wealth, and happiness. That is what I want.
That is what I believe in. Give us intelligence. In a
little, while a man will find that he cannot steal without
robbing himself. He will find that he cannot murder
without assassinating his own joy. He will find that
every crime is a mistake. He will find that only that
man carries the cross who does wrong, and that upon
the man who does right the cross turns to wings that
will bear him upward for ever. He will find that even
intelligent self-love embraces within its mighty arms all
the human race.
Oh> but they say to me “ you take away immor
tality.” I do not. If we are immortal it is a fact in
nature, and.we are not indebted to priests for it, nor to
Bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.
As long as we love we will hope to live, and when the
one. dies that we love we say : “ Oh, that we could meet
again,” and whether we do or not it will not be the work
of theology. It will be a fact in nature. I would not
for my life destroy one star of human hope, but I want
it so that when a poor woman rocks a cradle and sings a
lullaby to the dimpled darling, she will not be compelled
to. believe that ninety-nine chances in a hundred she is
raising kindling wood for hell. One world at a time is
my doctrine. It is said in this Testament: “ Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof; ” and I say: Sufficient
unto each world is the evil thereof. And suppose after
�39
all that death does end all. Next to eternal joy, next to
being for ever with those we love and those who have
loved us, next to that is to be wrapt in the dreamless
drapery of eternal peace. Next to eternal life is eternal
sleep. Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of
trouble casts no wave. Eyes that have been curtained
by the everlasting dark, will never know again the
burning touch of tears. Lips touched by eternal silence
will never speak again the broken words of grief.
Hearts of dust do not break. The dead do not weep.
Within the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits, and
in the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear. I
had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, as
having returned to earth, as having become a part of the
elemental wealth of the world—I would rather think of
them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them
as gurgling in the stream, floating in the clouds, burst
ing in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds, I
would rather think of them as the lost visions of a for
gotten night, than to have even the faintest fear that
their naked souls had been clutched by an orthodox God.
But for me I will leave the dead where nature leaves
them.
Whatever flower of hope springs up in my
heart, I will cherish, I will give it breath of sighs and
rain of tears. But I cannot believe that there is any
being in this universe who has created a human soul for
eternal pain. I would rather that every God would
destroy himself ! I would rather that we all should go to
eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just
one soul should suffer eternal agony.
I have made up my mind that if there is a God he
will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I
stand. That he will not torture the forgiving. Upon
that rock I stand. That every man should be true to
himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which
honesty is a crime. Upon that rock I stand. The
honest man, the good, kind, sweet woman, the happy
child, have nothing to fear, neither in this world nor the
world to come. Upon that rock I stand.
Printed and Published by the Freethought Publishing Company,
2 Newcastle-street, Farringdon street, London, E.C.
�WORKS BY
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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What must we do to be saved?
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. First published 1884 in two parts. Publisher's advertisements ("Works by the late R.G. Ingersoll") on back cover. No. 90c in Stein checklist.
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Salvation
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
SHAKESPEARE
A LECTURE
ROBERT G.
INGERSOLL
$
Shakespeare.—An intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores
of thought.
‘ i
London :
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
��SHAKESPEARE.
I.
William Shakespeare was the greatest genius of our
world. He left to us the richest legacy of all the dead__
the treasures of the rarest soul that ever lived and loved
and wrought of words the statues, pictures, robes, and gems
of thought. He was the greatest man that ever touched
this grain of sand and tear we call the world.
It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and
women of genius. Take from our world what they have
given, and all the niches would be empty, all the walls naked
—meaning and connection would fall from words of poetry
and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all
the forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose pro
portion, and become the unmeaning waste and shattered
spoil of thoughtless Chance.
Shakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though
endeavoring to grasp a globe so large that the hand obtains
no hold. He who would worthily speak of the great
dramatist should be inspired by “a muse of fire that should
ascend the brightest heaven of invention
he should have
“ a kingdom for a stage, and monarchs to behold the
swelling scene.”
More than three centuries ago the most intellectual of
the human race was born. He was not of supernatural
origin. At his birth there^ were no celestial pyrotechnics.
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SHAKESPEARE.
His father and mother were both English, and both had the
cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in which
he was rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle,
and in his veins there was no drop of royal blood.
This babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of
his parents could read or write. He grew up in a small
and ignorant village on the banks of the Avon, in the midst
of the common people of three hundred years ago. There
was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which he
looked, nothing in the low hills, the cultivated and un*
dulating fields, and nothing in the murmuring stream, to
excite the imagination—nothing, so far as we can see, cal
culated to sow the seeds of the subtlest and sublimest
thought.
So there is nothing connected with his education, or his
lack of education, that in any way accounts for what he did.
It is supposed that he attended school in his native town ;
but of this we are not certain. Many have tried to show
that he was, after all, of gentle blood; but the fact seems
to be the other way. Some of his biographers have sought
to do him honor by showing that he was patronized by
Queen Elizabeth ; but of this there is not the slightest
proof.
As a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne a king,
queen, or emperor who could have honored William Shake
speare.
Ignorant people are apt to over-rate the value of what is
called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered
the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of
joy. On the other hand, the children of the rich, finding
that gold does not produce happiness, are apt to under-rate
the value of wealth. So the children of the educated often
care but little for books, and hold all culture in contempt.
The children of great authors do not, as a rule, become
writers.
Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Ex-
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tremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness
creates obstructions for itself.
Possibly many generations of culture breed a desire for
the rude joys of savagery, and possibly generations of igno
rance breed such a longing for knowledge that of this desire,
of this hunger of the brain, Genius is born. It may be that
the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining idle for generations,
gathers strength.
Shakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man
of his time and class. About the only thing we know of
him is that he was officially reported for not coming monthly
to church. This is good as far as it goes. We can hardly
blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield was the
minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read
the Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins.
The church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shake
speare’s day it was Puritan, and in 15645 the year of
Shakespeare’s birth, they had the images defaced. It is
greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare that he refused to
listen to the “ tidings of great joy ” as delivered by the
Puritan Bifield.
Nothing is known of his mother except her beautiful
name—Mary Arden. In those days but little attention was
given to the biographies of women. They were born,
married, had children, and died. No matter how celebrated
their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old
times, when a man achieved distinction, great pains were
taken to find out about the father and grandfather—the
idea being that genius is inherited from the father’s side.
The truth is, that all great men have had great mothers.
Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.
The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of
the greatest of women. She dowered her son with passion
and imagination and the higher qualities of the soul, beyond
all other men. It has been said that a man of genius
should select his ancestors with great care; and yet there
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SHAKESPEARE.
does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think.
The children of the great are' often small. Pigmies are
born in palaces, while over the children of genius is the
roof of straw. Most of the great are like mountains, with
the valley of ancestors on one side and the depression of
posterity on the other.
In his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance.
It may be that his mother had some marvellous and pro
phetic dreams, but Stratford was unconscious of the immortal
child. He was never engaged in a reputable business.
Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law
described him as “ a sturdy vagabond.” He was neither a
noble, a soldier, nor a priest. Among the half-civilized
people of England, he who amused and instructed them
was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns, the
people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was
scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity
has always treated genius. Mozart was patronized by an
archbishop—lived in the palace—but was compelled to eat
with the scullions.
The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the
side of the theologian, who long ago would have been for
gotten but for the fame of the composer.
We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the
daily life, or of what may be called the outward Shakespeare ;
and it may be fortunate that so little is known. He might
have been belittled by friendly fools. What silly stories,
what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have been
remembered by those who scarcely saw him 1 We have his
best—his sublimest—and we have probably lost only the
trivial and the worthless. All that is known can be written
on a page.
We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his
marriage, and of his death. We think he went to London
in 1586, when he was twenty-two years old. We think that
three years afterwards he was part owner of Blackfriars’'
�SHAKESPEARE.
7,
Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are
supposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some
land; that he had two or three law-suits. We know the
names of his children. We also know that this incomparable
man—soapart from, and so familiar with, all the world—
lived during his literary life in London ; that he was an
actor, dramatist, and manager ; that he returned to Stratford,
the place of his birth; that he gave his writings to negli
gence, deserted the children of his brain ; that he died on
the anniversary of his birth at the age of fifty-two, and that
he was buried in the church where the images had been
defaced, and that on his tomb was chiselled a rude, absurd,
and ignorant epitaph.
No letter of his to any human being has been found, and
no line written by him can be shown.
And -here let me give my explanation of the epitaph.
Shakespeare was an actor—a disreputable business ; but he
made money—always reputable. He came back from
London a rich man. He bought land, and built houses.
Some of the supposed great probably treated him with
deference. When he died he was buried in the church.
Then came a reaction. The pious thought the church had
been profaned. They did not feel that the ashes of an actor
were fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the
body ought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that
Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare’s son-in-law, had this epitaph cut
on the tomb:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed heare :
Blese be ye man yt spares these stones,
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his
tomb would be violated. How could it have entered his
mind to have put a warning, a threat, and a blessing upon
his grave ? But the ignorant people of that day were no
doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead,
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and, so feeling, they feared to invade the tomb. In this way
the dust was left in peace.
This epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled
me to explain why he, who erected the intellectual pyramids
—great ranges of mountains—should put such a pebble at
his tomb. But when I stood beside the grave .and read the
ignorant words, the explanation I have given flashed
upon me.
II.
It has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned
by his contemporaries, and that he was substantially un
known. This is a mistake. In 1600 a book was published
called England's Parnassus, and it contained ninety extracts
from Shakespeare. In the same year was published The
Garden of the Muses, containing several pieces from Shake
speare, Chapman, Marston, and Ben Jonson. England's
Helicon was printed in the same year, and contained poems
from Spenser, Greene, Harvey, and Shakespeare.
In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shake
speare was alluded to as follows : “ Why, here’s our fellow
Shakespeare, who puts them all down.” John Weaver
published a book of poems in 1595 in which there was a
sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote
a poem to Shakespeare. Francis Meres, “ clergyman,
master of arts in both universities, compiler of school books,”
was the author of The Wits Treasury. In this he compares
the ancient and modern tragic poets, and mentions
Marlowe, Peel, Kyd, and Shakespeare. So he compares
the writers of comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge,
Greene, and Shakespeare. He speaks of elegaic poets,
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9
and names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh, and Shakespeare.
He compares the lyric poets, and names Spenser, Drayton,
Shakespeare, and others. This same writer, speaking of
Horace, says that England has Sidney, Shakespeare, and
others, and that “ as the soul of Euphorbus was thought to
live in Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul of Ovid lives in
the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare.” He also
says : “If the Muses could speak English, they would speak
in Shakespeare’s phrase.” This was in 1598. In 1607 John
Davies alludes in a poem to Shakespeare.
Of course we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson
wrote. Henry Chettle took Shakespeare to task because he
wrote nothing on the death of Queen Elizabeth.
It may be wonderful that he was not better known. But
is it not wonderful that he gained the reputation that he did
in so short a time, and that, twelve years after he began to
write, he stood at least with the first ?
III.
But there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings
of Shakespeare. In the plays there is no direct mention of
any of his contemporaries. We do not know of any poet,
author, soldier, sailor, statesman, priest, nobleman, king, or
queen that Shakespeare directly mentioned.
Is it not marvellous that he, living in an age of great deeds,
of adventures in far-off lands and unknown seas, in a time of
religious wars, in the days of the Armada, the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, the Edict of Nantes, the assassination of
Henry III., the victory of Lepanto, the execution of Marie
Stuart, did not mention the name of any man or woman
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SHAKESPEARE.
of his time? Some have insisted that the paragraph ending
with the line,
The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation fancy free,
referred to Queen Elizabeth; but it is impossible for me to
believe that the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black
eyes, the cruel nose, the thin lips, the bad teeth, and the
red wig of Queen Elizabeth could by any possibility have
inspired these marvellous lines.
It is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare’s writings that
he knew but little of the nobility, little of kings and queens.
He gives to these supposed great people great thoughts, and
puts great words in their mouths and makes them speak—
not as they really did—but as Shakespeare thought such
people should. This demonstrates that he did not know
them personally.
Some have insisted that Shakespeare mentions Queen
Elizabeth in the last scene of “ Henry VIII.” The answer
to this is that Shakespeare did not write the last scene
in that play. The probability is that Fletcher was the
author.
Shakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world,
when Europe emerged from the darkness of the Middle
Ages, when the discovery of America had made England,
that blossom of the Gulf Stream, the centre of commerce,
and during a period when some of the greatest writers,
thinkers, soldiers, and discoverers were produced.
Cervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day that
Shakespeare died. He was undoubtedly the greatest writer
that Spain has produced. Rubens was born in 1577,
Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the Lusiad, died in
1597. Giordano Bruno—greatest of martyrs—was born in
1548, visited London in Shakespeare’s time, delivered
lectures at Oxford, and called that institution “ the widow
of learning.” Drake circled the globe in 1580. Galileo
was born in 1564—the same year with Shakespeare. Michael
Angelo died in 1563. Kepler—he of the Three Laws—
�SHAKESPEARE.
II
born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in
1601. Corneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt,
greatest of painters, 1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564.
In that year John Calvin died. What a glorious exchange !
Seventy-two years after the discovery of America Shake
speare was born, and England was filled with the voyages
and discoveries written by Hakluyt, and the wonders that
had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by Frobisher, and
Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world,
and representatives from all known countries were in the
new metropolis. The world had been doubled. The
imagination had been touched and kindled by discovery.
In the far horizon were unknown lands, strange shores
beyond untraversed seas. Towards every part of the world
were turned the prows of adventure. All these things fanned
the imagination into flame, and this had its effect upon the
literary and dramatic world. And yet Shakespeare—the
master spirit of mankind—in the midst of these discoveries,
of these adventures, mentioned no navigator, no general, no
discoverer, no philosopher.
Galileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but
Shakespeare did not mention him. This, to me, is the most
marvellous thing connected with this most marvellous man.
At that time England was prosperous—was then laying
the foundation of her future greatness and power.
When men are prosperous they are in love with life.
Nature grows beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is
work for painter and sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is
erected, and this life with which men are in love is repre
sented in a thousand forms.
Nature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shake
speare, and Shakespeare prepared a stage for Nature.
Famine and faith go together. In disaster and want the
gaze of man is fixed upon another world. He that eats a
crust has a creed. Hunger falls upon its knees, and heaven,
looked for through tears, is the mirage of misery. But
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SHAKESPEARE.
prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure, and the beautiful
is born.
One of the effects of the world’s awakening was Shake
speare. We account for this man as we do for the highest
mountain, the greatest river, the most perfect gem. We can
only say : He was.
It hath been taught us from the primal state
That he which is was wished until he were.
IV.
In Shakespeare’s time the actor was a vagabond, the
dramatist a disreputable person—and yet the greatest
dramas were then written. In spite of law and social
ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored dome that
fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.
Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre,
asks for some great dramatist, is hungry for a play worthy
of the century, is anxious to give gold and fame to anyone
who can worthily put our age upon the stage ; and yet no
great play has been written since Shakespeare died.
Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did
not seek to put his characters in a position where it was
right to do wrong. He was sound and healthy to the centre.
It never occurred to him to write a play in which a wife’s
lover should be jealous of her husband.
There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He
was true to himself, and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the
highest art. He did not write according to rules, but
smaller men make rules from what he wrote.
How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at
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13
Oxford—that the winged god within him never knelt to the
professor, flow fortunate that this giant was not captured,
tied, and tethered by the literary Liliputians of his time.
He was an idealist. He did not, like most writers of
our time, take refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius
behind a pretended love of truth. All realities are not
poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing. The real
sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to
a statue, or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades
and impoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than
an imitator and copyist. According to the realist’s philo
sophy, the wax that receives and retains an image is an artist.
Shakespeare did not rely on the stage carpenter or the
scenic painter. He put his scenery in bis lines. There you
will find mountains and rivers and seas, valleys and cliffs,
violets and clouds, and over all “ the firmament fretted with
gold and fire.” He cared little for plot, little for surprise.
He did not rely on stage effects or red fire. The plays
grow before your eyes, and they come as the morning
comes. Plot surprises but once. There must be something
in a play beside surprise. Plot in an author is a kind of
strategy—that is to say, a sort of cunning; and cunning does
not belong to the highest natures.
There is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that
the plot becomes almost immaterial ; and such is this wealth
that you can hardly know the play—there is too much.
After you have heard it again and again, it seems as pathless
as an untrodden forest.
He belonged to all lands. “Timon of Athens” is as
Greek as any tragedy of Eschylus. “ Julius Caesar and
“Coriolanus” are perfect Roman, and as you read the
mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes
the mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than
“Antony and Cleopatra’’—the Nile runs through it, the
shadows of the pyramids fall upon it, and from its scenes
the Sphinx gazes forever on the outstretched sands.
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SHAKESPEARE.
In “ Lear ” is the true pagan spirit. “ Romeo and Juliet ”
is Italian everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate
flower, and in every scene is the climate of the land of
poetry and passion.
The reason of this is that Shakespeare dealt with elemental
things, with universal man. He knew that locality colors
without changing, and that in all surroundings the human
heart is substantially the same.
Not all the poetry written before his time would make
his sum not all that has been written since, added to all
that was written before, would equal his.
There was nothing within the range of human thought,
within the horizon of intellectual effort, that he did not
touch. He knew the brain and heart of man—the theories,
customs, superstitions, hopes, fears, hatreds, vices, and virtues
of the human race.
He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, the savage joys
of hatred and revenge. He heard the hiss of envy’s snakes,
and watched the eagles of ambition soar. There was no
hope that did not put its star above his head, no fear he
had not felt, no joy that had not shed its sunshine on his
face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was
the intellectual spendthrift of the world. He gave with the
generosity, the extravagance, of madness.
Read one play, and you are impressed with the idea that
the wealth of the brain of a god has been exhausted—that
there are no more comparisons, no more passions to be
expressed, no more definitions, no more philosophy, beauty,
or sublimity to be put in words—and yet the next play opens
as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.
The outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky.
He was the intellectual crown o’ the earth.
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15
V.
The plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought,
and learning that many people—those who imagine that
universities furnish capacity—contend that Bacon must
have been the author.
We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming
politician, a courtier, a time-server of church and king, and
a corrupt judge. We know that he never admitted the
truth of the Copernican system, that he was doubtful whether
instruments were of any advantage in scientific investigation,
that he was ignorant of the higher branches of mathe
matics, and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to
the knowledge of the world. When he was more than sixty
years of age he turned his attention to poetry, and dedicated
his verses to George Herbert.
If you will read these verses, you will say that the author
of “ Lear” and “ Hamlet ” did not write them.
Bacon dedicated his work on The Advancement of Learning,
Divine and Human, to James I., and in his dedication he
stated that there had not been, since the time of Christ, any
king or monarch so learned in all erudition, divine or
human. He placed James I. before Marcus Aurelius and
all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded
by saying that James I. had “the power and fortune of a
king, the illumination of a priest, the learning and univer
sality of a philosopher.” This was written of James I.,
described by Macaulay as a “ stammering, slobbering,
trembling coward, whose writings were deformed by the
grossest and vilest superstitions—-witches being the special
objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution.”
It seems to have been taken for granted that, if Shake
speare was not the author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon
must have been.
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SHAKESPEARE.
It has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philo
sopher of his time. And yet in reading his works we find
that there was in his mind a strange mingling of foolishness
and philosophy. He takes pains to tell us, and to write it
down for the benefit of posterity, that “ snow is colder than
water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that quick
silver is the coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of
spirit.”
He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract
air by putting opium on top of the weather-glass, and gave
the following reason :
“ I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly
rather by malignity than by cold.”
This great philosopher gave the following recipe for
staunching blood :
“ Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon,
new ripped and bleeding. This will staunch the blood.
The blood, as it seemeth, sucking and drawing up by
similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and so
itself going back.”
The philosopher also records this important fact:
“ Divers witches among heathen and Christians have fed
upon man’s flesh to aid, as it seemeth, their imagination
with high and foul vapors.”
Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a
biologist, as appears from the following :
“ As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits
are a substance compounded of an airy and flamy matter;
and although air and flame, being free, will not mingle, yet
bound in by a body that hath some fixing, will.”
Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by
analogy. He says :
“As snow and ice holpen, and their cold, activated by
nitre or salt, will turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn
wood or stiff clay into stone.”
Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation
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of metals, and solemnly gives a formula for changing silver
or copper into gold. He also believed in the transmutation
of plants, and had arrived at such a height in entomology
that he informed the world that “ insects have no blood.”
It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence
of this he recorded the wonderful fact that “ tobacco cut
and dried by the fire loses weight ”; that “ bears in the
winter wax fat in sleep, though they eat nothing”; that
“ tortoises have no bones that “ there is a kind of stone,
if ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will
give more milk”; that “it is hard to cure a hurt in a
Frenchman’s head, but easy in his leg; that it is hard to
cure a hurt in an Englishman’s leg, but easy in his head ”;
that “ wounds made with brass weapons are easier to cure
than those made with iron ”; that “ lead will multiply and
increase, as in statues buried in the ground”; and that “the
rainbow touching anything causeth a sweet smell.”
Bacon seems also to have turned his attention to orni
thology, and says that “ eggs laid in the full of the moon
breed better birds,” and that “ you can make swallows
white by putting ointment on the eggs before they are
hatched.”
He also informs us “ that witches cannot hurt kings as
easily as they can common people ”; that “ perfumes dry
and strengthen the brain ”; that “ anyone in the moment of
triumph can be injured by another who casts an envious
eye, and the injury is greatest when the injury comes from
the oblique eye.”
Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he
states that “ bracelets made of snakes are good for curing
cramps ”; that “ the skin of a wolf might cure the colic,
because a wolf has great digestion ”; that “ eating the
roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory
that “ if a woman about to become a mother eats a good
many quinces and considerable coriander seed, the child
will be ingenious,” and that “ the moss which groweth on
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the skull of an unburied dead man is good for staunching
blood.”
He expresses doubt, however, “ as to whether you can
cure a wound by putting ointment on the weapon that
caused the wound, instead of on the wound itself.”
It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory
that their hero stood at the top of science; and yet “ it is
absolutely certain that he was ignorant of the law of the
acceleration of falling bodies, although the law had been
made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before
Bacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man
understand the principle of the lever. He was not
acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, and, as a
matter of fact, was ill-read in those branches of learning in
which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made.”
After Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the
15th of May, 1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to
the Copernican system. This great man was far behind
his own time, not only in astronomy, but in mathematics.
In the preface to the Descriptio Globi Intellectuals it
is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correc
tion of the parallax, or was unable to understand it. He
complained on account of the want of some method for
shortening mathematical calculations; and yet “Napier’s
Logarithms ” had been printed nine years before the date
of his complaint.
He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a
rude process of his own—a process that no one has ever
followed; and he did this in spite of the fact that a far
better method existed.
We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with
what it is claimed Shakespeare produced. I call attention
to one thing—to Bacon’s opinion of human love. It is
this:
“The stage is more beholding to love than the life of
man. As to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and
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nowand then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief
—sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. Among
all the great and worthy persons there is not one that hath
been transported to the. mad degree: of love, which shows,
that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak
passion.”
. The author of Romeo and Juliet never wrote that.
•. It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays
was one of the noblest of men.
Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.
In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture,
Lord Bacon tells a courtier, who has committed some
offence, how to get back into the graces of his prince or
king. Among other things he tells him not to appear too
cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not
to bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious,
so that the prince will see that it is hard to getalong without
him; also to get his friends to tell the prince or king how
badly he, the courtier, feels; and then he says, all these
failing, “let him contrive to transfer the fault to others.”
It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and
consequently do not positively know that he did not have
the ability to write the Plays; but we do know Bacon, and
we know that he could not have written these Plays; con
sequently, they must have been written by a comparatively
unknown man—that is to say, by a man who was known by
no other writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare,
except through the Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for
us to believe that he was the author.
Some people have imagined that the Plays were written
by several; but this only increases the wonder, and adds a
useless burden to credulity.
Bacon published in his time all the writings that he
claimed. Naturally, he would have claimed his best. Is
it possible that Bacon left the wondrous children of his
brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept the
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deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered
the failures and deserted the perfect ?
Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found
touching Shakespeare; but is it not equally wonderful, if
Bacon was the author, that not a line has been found, in all
his papers, containing a suggestion, or a hint, that he was
the writer of these Plays? Is it not wonderful that no
fragment of any scene—no line—no word—has been found ?
Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret,
because it was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument
does not cover the Sonnets—and, besides, one who had
been stripped of the robes of office, for receiving bribes as
as a judge, could have borne the additional disgrace of
having written “Hamlet.” The fact that Bacon did not
claim to be the author demonstrates that he was not.
Shakespeare claimed to be the author, and no one in his
time or day denied the claim. This demonstrates that he
was.
Bacon published his works, and said to the world : This
is what I have done.
Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to
John Smith, inventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you
were told that Mr. Smith provided for the monument in his
will, and dictated the inscription—would it be possible to
convince you that Mr. Smith was also the inventor of the
locomotive and telegraph ?
, Bacon’s best can be compared with Shakespeare’s
common; but Shakespeare’s best rises above Bacon’s best,
like a domed temple above a beggar’s hut.
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VI.
Of course it is admitted that there were many dramatists
before and during the time of Shakespeare; but they were
only the foot hills of that mighty peak the top of which the
clouds and mists still hide. Chapman and Marlowe,
Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher,
wrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation
now and then is found a strain of genuine music; but all
of them together constituted only a herald of Shakespeare.
In all these plays there is but a hint, a prophecy, of the
great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic thought of
the world.
Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece
and Rome produced was great until his time. “ Lions
make leopards tame.”
The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and
sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been
painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others
All the galleries of the world are poor and cheap compared
with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare’s book.
Language is made of pictures represented by sounds.
The outer world is a dictionary of the mind, and the artist
called the soul uses this dictionary of things to express what
happens in the noiseless and invisible world of thought.
First a sound represents something in the outer world, and
afterwards something in the inner; and this sound at last is
represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture,
and every brain is a gallery, and the artists—that is to say,
the souls—exchange pictures and statues.
All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words—
makes pictures and statues of sounds. The sculptor
expresses harmony, proportion, passion, in marble; the
composer, in music; the painter, in form and color. The
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dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only
paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.
Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and
expressed the ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in
action. There are the wit, the humor, the pathos, the
tragedy of situation, of relation. The dramatist speaks and
acts through others—his personality is lost. The poet lives
in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the
dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters
that seem to act in accordance with their own natures and
independently of him. He compresses lives into hours,
tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us the springs of
action—how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the
will—how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how
grand it is to stand for right against the world.
It is not enough to say fine things; great things,
dramatic things, must be done.
Let me give you an illustration of dramatic incident
accompanying the highest form of poetic expression :
Macbeth, having returned from the murder of Duncan,
says to his wife :
Methought I heard a voice cry : Sleep no more,
Macbeth does murder sleep ; the innocent sleep ;
Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.......
Still it cried : Sleep no more, to all the house,
Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more.
She exclaims :
Who was it that thus cried ?—
Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength
To think so brain-sickly of things ; get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring the daggers from the place ?
L Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed
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that he not only mistook his thoughts for the words of
others, but was so carried away and beyond himself that he
brought with him the daggers—the evidence of his guilt—
the dagger that he should have left with the dead. This is
dramatic.
In the same play, the difference of feeling before and
after the commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection.
When Macbeth is on his way to assassinate the king, the
bell strikes, and he says, or whispers :
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell.
Afterwards, when the deed has been committed, and a
knocking is heard at the gate, he cries :
Wake Duncan with thy knocking.
I would thou couldst.
Let me give one more instance of dramatic action.
Antony speaks above the body of Caesar he says:
When
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on—
’Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii:
Look ! In this place ran Cassius’ dagger through :
See what a rent the envious Casca made !
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,
And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it.
VII.
There are men, and many of them, who are always trying
to show that somebody else chiselled the statue or painted
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the picture, that the poem is attributed to the wrong man;
and that the battle was really won by a subordinate.
Of course, Shakespeare made use of the work of others—
and, we might almost say, of all others. Every writer must
use the work of others. The only question is, how the
accomplishments of other minds are used, whether as a
foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end
that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without
adding to the great structure of literature.
Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum
to make huts for themselves. So thousands of writers have
taken the thoughts of others with which to adorn themselves.
These are plagiarists. But the man who takes the thought
of another adds to it, gives it intensity and poetic form,
throb and life, is in the highest sense original.
Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of
others, and was indebted to others for most of the stories of
his plays. The question is not who furnished the stone, or
who owned the quarry, but who chiseled the statue ?
We now know all' the books that Shakespeare could have
read, and consequently know many of the sources of his
information. We find in Pliny's Natural History, published
in 1601, the following: “The sea Pontis evermore floweth
and runneth out into the Propontis ; but the sea never
retireth back again with the Impontis.” This was the raw
material, and out of it Shakespeare made the following :
Like to the Pontic Sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont;
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne’er turn back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.
Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between
Shakespeare and other poets, by a passage from Lear.
When Cordelia places her hand upon her father’s head and
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speaks of the night and of the storm, an ordinary poet
might have said:
On such a night, a dog
Should have stood against my fire.
A very great poet might have gone a step further and
exclaimed :
On' such a night, mine enemy s dog
Should have stood against my fire.
But Shakespeare said :—
Mine enemy’s dog, though he had bit me,
Should have stood, that night, against my fire.
Of all the poets, of all the writers, Shakespeare is the
most original. He is as original as Nature.
It may truthfully be said that “ Nature wants stuff to vie
strange forms with fancy, to make another.”
VIII.
There is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that
touches the infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all
others.
You will remember the description given of the voyage
of Paris in search of Helen :
The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,
And did him service ; he touched the ports desired,
And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness
Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning.
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So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he
cries out:
O Helicanus 1 strike me, honored sir;
Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
O’erbear the shores of my mortality.
^The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the
woman he adores is in this line :
Eyes that do mislead the morn.
Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic.
In that marvellous play, the Midsummer Night's Dream,
is one of the most extravagant things in literature:
Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
This is so mavellously told that it almost seems probable.
So the description of Mark Antony:
For his bounty
There was no winter in’t—an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like—they showed his back above
The element they lived in.
Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this :
Her bed is India—there she lies a pearl.
Is there anything more intense than these words of
Cleopatra ?
Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked,
And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring.
Or this of Isabella ?
The impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death as to a bed
That longing I’ve been sick for, ere I yield
My body up to shame.
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Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not
agree with this ?
Let me not live
After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits.
Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting
with Cressida?
-
We two, that with so many thousand sighs .
Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves ■ .
With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
Injurious time now with a robber s haste
Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how ;
As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
He fumbles up into a loose adieu,
And scants us with a single famished kiss
Distasted with the salt of broken tears.
Take this example, where pathos almost touches the
grotesque:
‘
"
t - -
O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair ?
Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here
I’ the dark, to be his paramor ?
Often, when reading the marvellous lines of Shakespeare,
I feel that his thoughts are “too subtle potent, tuned.too
sharp in sweetness, for the capacity of my ruder powers.
Sonietimes I cry out, “ O churl! write all, and leave no
thoughts for those who follow after.”
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IX.
Shakespeare was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared
nothing for the authority of men or of schools. He violated
the “unities,” and cared nothing for the models of the
ancient world.
The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that
did not tend to the catastrophe. They did not believe in
the episode—in the sudden contrasts of light and shade—in
mingling the comic and the tragic. The sunlight never fell
upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake their
laughter. They believed that nature sympathized, or was in
harmony, with the events of the play. When crime was
about to be committed—some horror to be perpetrated—
the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees shivered, and
upon all was the shadow of the coming event.
Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the
tides and currents of universal life j that Nature cares
neither for smiles nor tears, for life nor death; and that the
sun shines as gladly on coffins as on cradles.
The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where
during the French Revolution stood the guillotine, and
where now stands an Egyptian obelisk—a bird, sitting on
the top, was singing with all its might.—Nature forgets.
One of the most notable instances of the violation by
Shakespeare of the classic model is found in the 6th Scene
of the ist Act of Macbeth.
When the King and Banquo approached the castle in
which the King is to be murdered that night, no shadow
falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful is the scene that
the King says :
This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
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And Banquo adds:
.
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionary that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here ; no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate.
Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately
following the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown
who brings the asp to Cleopatra just before the suicide,
illustrates my meaning.
I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of
Shakespeare. This is in “Medea.” When Medea kills
her children she curses Jason, using the ordinary Billingsgate
and papal curse, but at the conclusion says : “ I pray the
gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply
feel the pang that I inflict.”
Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense.
He put noons and midnights side by side. No other
dramatist would have dreamed of adding to the pathos—of
increasing our appreciation of Lear’s agony, by supplement
ing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a
loving clown.
X.
The ordinary dramatists—the men of talent (and there is
the same difference between talent and genius that there is
between a stone-mason and a sculptor), create characters
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that become types. Types are of necessity caricatures—
actual men and women are to some extent contradictory in
their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by the
one wind—characters have pilots.
In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one
way, or all the other—all good, or all bad, all wise or all
foolish.
Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite—and will
remain a type as long as language lives—a hypocrite that
even drunkenness could not change. Everybody under
stands Pecksniff, and compared with him Tartuffe was an
honest man.
Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being—and
for that reason there is a difference of opinion as to his
motives and as to his character. We differ about Hamlet
as we do about Ceesar, or about Shakespeare himself.
Hamlet saw the ghost of his father, and heard again his
father’s voice; and yet, afterwards, he speaks of “ the
undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller
returns.”
In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs
the senses. If we should see a dead man rise from his
grave., we would not, the next day, believe that we did.
No one can credit a miracle until it becomes so common
that it ceases to be miraculous.
Types are puppets, controlled from without; characters
act from within. There is the same difference between
characters and types that there is between springs and
water-works, between canals and rivers, between wooden
soldiers and heroes.
In most plays and in most novels the characters are so
shadowy that we have to piece them out with the imagi
nation.
One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of
his bed a strange figure—it may be of an ancient lady with
cap and ruffles, and with the expression of garrulous and
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fussy old age; but when the light gets stronger the figure
gradually changes, and he sees a few clothes on a chair.
The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to
delineate character must not only have imagination, but
sympathy with the character delineated. The great,
dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as an indi
vidual.
I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing
a subject with another man. It occurred to me that I was
dreaming, and I then said to myself: If this is a dream, I
am doing the talking for both sides ; consequently, I ought
to know in advance what the other man is going to say.. In
my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other
man a question, and, before he answered, made up my
tnmd what the answer was to be. To my surprise, the
man did not say what I expected he would, and so great
was my astonishment that I awoke.
It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret
of Shakespeare. He did, when awake, what I did when
• asleep—that is, he threw off a character so perfect that it
acted independently of him.
In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals.
He creates no monsters. His characters do not act without
reason, without motive.
Iago had his reasons. In Caliban nature was not des
troyed ; and Lady Macbeth certifies that the woman still
was in her heart, by saying :
Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.
Shakespeare’s characters act from within. They are,
centres of energy. They are not pushed by unseen hands,
or pulled by unseen strings. They have objects, desires.
They are persons—real, living beings.
Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose
from the canvas; their backs stick to the wall; they do not
have free and independent action ; they have no back
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ground, no unexpressed motives ; no untold desires. They
lack the complexity of the real.
Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher
Sly, surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station,
calls for a pot of the smallest ale.
Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember
that after the murder is discovered—after the alarm bell
is rung—she appears upon the scene, wanting to know what
has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying that the
slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment
Banquo comes upon the scene, and Macduff cries out to
him:
Our royal master’s murdered.
What does Lady Macbeth then say ? She, in fact, makes a
confession of guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy
is that Duncan was murdered in Macbeth’s castle. So,
when Lady Macbeth hears what they suppose is news to
her, she cries :
What! In our house !
Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would
have made her forget the place—the venue. Banquo sees
through this, and sees through her. Her expression was
a light by which he saw her guilt, and he answers :—
Too cruel anywhere.
No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or
king, warrior or maiden—no matter whether his characters
are taken from the gutter or the throne—each is a work of
consummate art, and when he is unnatural he is so splendid
that the defect is forgotten.
. When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and there
upon makes up his mind to die upon her grave, he gives a
description of the shop where poison could be purchased.
He goes into particulars, and tells of the alligators stuffed ;
of the skins of ill-shaped fishes ; of the beggarly account of
empty boxes ; of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes
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of roses ; and while it is hardly .possible to believe that,
under such circumstances, a man would take the trouble
to make an inventory of a strange kind of drug-store, yet
the inventory is so perfect, the picture is so marvellously
drawn, that we forget to think whether it is natural or not.
In making the frame of a great picture—of a great
scene—Shakespeare was often careless, but the picture is
perfect. In making the sides of the arch he was negligent,
but when he placed the keystone it burst into blossom.
Of course, there are many lines in Shakespeare that never
Should have been written. In other words, there are im
perfections in his plays. But we must remember that
Shakespeare furnished the torch that enables us to see these
imperfections.
Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must
not mistake what the characters say for the opinion of
Shakespeare.
No one can believe that Shakespeare
regarded life as “ a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.” That was the opinion of a
murderer, surrounded by avengers, and whose wife—partner
in bis crimes—troubled with thick-coming fancies—bad
gone down to her death.
Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines
called “ The Seven Ages ” contain Shakespeare’s view of
human life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The
lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn of
the human race.
Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and
uniform of some weakness, peculiarity, or passion. He did
not use names as tags or brands. He did not write under
the picture, “ This is a villain.” His characters need no
suggestive names to tell us what they are—-we see them,
and we know them for ourselves.
It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest
characters in the supreme moments we have the real
thoughts, opinions, and convictions of Shakespeare.
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SHAKESPEARE.
Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal. He
speaks through others, and the others seem to speak for
themselves. The didactic is lost in the dramatic. He does
not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce some maxim. He is
as reticent as Nature.
He idealizes the common, and transfigures all he
touches—but he does not preach. He was interested in
men and things as they were. He did not seek to change
them—but to portray. He was Nature’s mirror—and in that
Nature saw herself.
When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift
their spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like
Nature’s columns to support the sky, I thought of the
poetry of Shakespeare.
XI.
What a procession of men and women—statesmen and
warriors—kings and clowns—issued from Shakespeare’s
brain. What women !
Isabella—in whose spotless life love and reason blended
into perfect truth.
Juliet—within whose heart passion and purity met like
white and red within the bosom of a rose.
Cordelia—who chose to suffer loss rather than show
her wealth of love with those who gilded lies in hope of
gain.
Hermione—“ tender as infancy and grace ”—who bore
with perfect hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at
last forgave with all her heart.
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Desdemona—so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure,
that she was incapable of suspecting that another could
suspect, and who with dying words sought to hide her
lover’s crime—and with her last faint breath uttered a
loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid
lips.
Perdita—A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Juno’s
eyes—“ The sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the
green sward.” And
Helena—who said :
I know I love in vain, strive against hope—
Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still.
Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.
Miranda—who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its
bosom to the kisses of the sun.
And Cordelia, whose kisses cured, and whose tears
restored. And stainless Imogen, who cried : “ What is it to
be false ?”
And here is the description of the perfect woman :
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love ;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth —
Outliving beauty’s outward with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays.
Shakespeare has done more for woman than all the other
dramatists of the world.
For my part, I love the Clowns. I love Launce and his
dog Crabb; and Gobbo, whose conscience threw its arms
around the neck of his heart; and Touchstone, with his lie
seven times removed; and dear old Dogberry a pretty
piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And Tottom, the very
paramor for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear
a cat in ; and Autolycus, the snapper-up of unconsidered
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trifles, sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And
great Sir John, without conscience, and for that reason un
blamed and enjoyed—and who at the end babbles of green
fields, and is almost loved. And ancient Pistol, the world
his oyster. And Bardolph, with the flea on his blazing
nos^, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell.
And the poor Fool, who followed the mad king, and went
“ to bed at noon.” And the clown who carried the worm
of Nilus, whose “ biting was immortal.” And Corin, the
shepherd—who described the perfect man : “ I am a true
laborer : I earn that I eat—get that I wear—owe no man
aught—envy no man’s happiness—glad of other men’s
good—content.”
And mingling in this motley throng, Lear, within whose
brain a tempest raged until the depths were stirred, and the
intellectual wealth of a life was given back to memory—and
then by madness thrown to storm and night; and when I
read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon the sea
and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried
treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast
upon the shores.
And Othello—who, like the base Indian, threw a pearl
away richer than all his tribe.
And Hamlet—thought-entangled—hesitating between
two worlds.
And Macbeth—strange mingling of cruelty and con
science, reaping the sure harvest of successful crime—
“ Curses not loud, but deep—mouth-honor—breath.”
And Brutus, falling on his sword that Csesar might be still.
And Romeo, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet’s
hand. And Ferdinand, the patient log-man for Miranda’s
sake. And Florizel, who, “ for all the sun sees, or the close
earth wombs, or the profound seas hide,” would not be
faithless to the low-born lass. And Constance, weeping for
her son, while grief “ stuff’s out his vacant garments with his
form.”
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And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and
laughter and crime, we hear the voice of the good friar, who
declares that in every human heart, as in the smallest
flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts of good and
evil—and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old
nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a
stream that hurries by a ruined mill.
/
From every side the characters crowd upon us—the men
and women born of Shakespeare’s brain. They utter with
a thousand voices the thoughts of the “ myriad-minded ’
man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and vividly
as though they really lived with us.
Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible
phase—has ascended to the very top, and actually reached
heights that no other has imagined. I do not believe the
human mind will ever produce, or be in a position to appre
ciate, a greater love-play than Romeo and Juliet. It is a
symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart
bursts into blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning
intoxication of a divine perfume.
In the alembic of Shakespeare’s brain the baser metals
were turned to gold, passions became virtues, weeds became
exotics from some diviner land, and common mortals made
of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian Gods. In his
brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests the infinite
—that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and mathe
matical, dominated by prudence and the thought of use.
Genius is tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights
in extravagance and waste, and overwhelms the mental
beggars of the world with uncounted gold and unnumbered
gems.
Some things are immortal—the plays of Shakespeare, the
marbles of the Greeks, and the music of Wagner.
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XII.
Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers. He knew
the conditions of success—of happiness—the relations that
men sustain to each other, and the duties of all. He knew
the tides and currents of the heart—the cliffs and caverns
of the brain. He knew the weakness of the will, the
sophistry of desire—and
That pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the
voice of any true decision.
He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world—that
flesh is but a mask, and that
There is no art to find the mind’s construction
In the face.
He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment,
and that
When valor preys on reason it eats the sword
It fights with.
He knew that man is never master of the event, that he
is, to some extent, the sport or prey of the blind forces of
the world, and that
In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men.
Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that
which must happen is as much beyond control as though it
had happened, he says :
Let determined things to destiny
Hold unbewailed their way.
Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human
being prefers happiness to misery, and that crimes are but
mistakes. Looking in pity upon the human race, upon the
pain and poverty, the crimes and cruelties, the limping
�SHAKESPEARE.
39
travellers on the thorny paths, he was great and good
enough to say :
There is no darkness but ignorance.
In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This
great truth fills the heart with pity.
He knew that place and power do not give happiness—
that the crowned are subject as the lowest to fate and
chance.
Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps death his Court, and there the antic sits
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a brief and little scene
To monarchize by fear and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit—
As if this flesh that walls about our life
Were brass impregnable ; and humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall—and farewell king !
So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy—that
death and misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because :
If thou art rich, thou art poor ;
For like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee.
In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn—a
hidden meaning that could not in his day and time have
safely been expressed. You will remember that Laertes
was about to kill the king, and this king was the murderer
of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of
his crime—and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare
puts these words :
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king.
So, in Macbeth :
How he solicits Heaven himself best knows ; but
strangely visited people,
�40
SHAKESPEARE,
All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despairs of surgery, he cures ;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks.
Put on with holy prayers ; and ’tis spoken
To the succeeding royalty—he leaves
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
That speak him full of grace.
Shakespeare was the master of the human heart—knew
all the hopes, fears, ambitions, and passions that sway the
mind of man ; and, thus knowing, he declared that
Love is not love that alters
When it alteration finds.
This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the
world.
Shakespeare seems to give the generalization, the result,
without the process of thought. He seems always to be at
the conclusion—standing where all truths meet.
In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that
contains the highest possible truth :
Conscience is born of love.
If man were incapable of suffering, the words “right”
and “ wrong ” never could have been spoken. If man were
destitute of imagination, the flower of pity never could have
blossomed in his heart.
We suffer ; we cause others to suffer ; those that we love ;
and of this fact conscience is born.
Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of
the heart. It is the mingled spring and autumn—the
perfect climate of the soul.
�SHAKESPEARE.
41
XIII.
In the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have
exhausted the relations, parallels, and similitudes of things.
He only could have said :
Tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the ears of a drowsy man.
Duller than a great thaw.
Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.
In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the
most wonderful collection of pictures and comparisons ever
compressed within the same number of lines :
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion—
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes
Those scraps are good deeds passed ; which are devoure
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done ; perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honor travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast; keep, then, the path ;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue ; if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost:
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’errun and trampled on : then what they do in present,
Tho’ less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours ;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing.
�42
SHAKESPEARE.
So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks :
Peace, peace :
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
That sucks the nurse asleep ?
XIV.
Nothing is more difficult than a definition—a crystalliza
tion of thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare
says of suicide :—
It is great to do that thing
That ends all other deeds,
Which shackles accident, and bolts up change.
He defines drama to be :
Turning the accomplishments of many years
Into an hour glass.
Of death:
This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.
Of memory:
The warder of the brain.
Of the body:
This muddy vesture of decay.
And he declares that
Our little life is rounded with a sleep.
He speaks of Echo as :
The babbling gossip of the air—.
�SHAKESPEARE.
43
Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take,
says :
Come, bitter conduct; come, unsavory guide,
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark.
He describes the world as
This bank and shoal of time.
He says of rumor—
That it doubles, like the voice and echo.
It would take days to call attention to the perfect
definitions, comparisons, and generalizations of Shakespeare.
He gave us the deeper meanings of our words—taught us
the art of speech. He was the lord of language—master of
expression and compression.
He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words—
made the poor rich and the common royal.
Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him.
The moment his .attention was called to any subject—
comparisons, definitions, metaphors, and generalizations
filled his mind and begged for utterance. His thoughts
like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with
“ merry march ” brought the rich booty home “ to the tent
royal of their emperor.”
Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she
opened her “infinite book of secrecy,” and in his brain were
“ the hatch and brood of time.”
�44
SHAKESPEARE.
XV.
There is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and
tears, humor and pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the
thorn. Wit is a crystallization, humor an efflorescence.
Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart. Wit is
the lightning of the soul.
In Shakespeare’s nature was the climate of humor. He
saw and felt the sunny side even of the saddest things
“You have seen sunshine and rain at once.” So Shake
speare’s tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of peril
—on the very darkness of death—there comes a touch of
humor that falls like a fleck of sunshine.
Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the
boatswain, exclaims :
I have great comfort from this fellow ;
Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him ;
His complexion is perfect gallows.
Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief
and laughter. While poor Hero is supposed to be dead
—wrapped in the shroud of dishonor—Dogberry and
Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath upon
her pure brow.
The soliloquy of Launcelot—great as Hamlet’s—offsets
the bitter and burning words of Shylock.
There is only time to speak of Maria in Twelfth Night,
of Autolycus in the Winter’s Tale, of the parallel drawn by
Fluellen between Alexander of Macedon and Harry of
Monmouth, or of the marvellous humor of Falstaff, who
never had the faintest thought of right or wrong—or of
Mercutio, that embodiment of wit and humor—or of the
gravediggers who lamented that “ great folk should have
countenance in this world to drown and hang themselves
�45
SHAKESPEARE.
more than their even Christian,” and who reached the
generalization that “ the gallows does well because it does
well to those who do ill.”
There is also an example of grim humor an example
without a parallel in literature, so far as I know. Hamlet,
having killed Polonius, is asked :
Where’s Polonius ?
At supper.
At supper ! where ?
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.
Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of
situation.
Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in Lear. No
one has ever bent above his dead who did not feel the
words uttered by the mad king—words born of a despair
deeper than tears :
Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life,
And thou no breath !
So Iago, after he has been wounded, says :
I bleed, sir ; but not killed.
And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered
remnant of his life :
I would have thee live ;
For in my sense it is happiness to die.
When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries :
Let it not be believed for womanhood ;
Think 1 we had mothers.
Ophelia, in her madness, “ the sweet bells jangled out o’
tune,” says softly:
I would give you some violets ;
But they withered all when my father died.
When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of
which were sown by his murderous hand, he exclaims—
and what could be more pitiful ?
I ’gin to be aweary of the sun.
-
�46
SHAKESPEARE.
Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or
to have been, a king, or to receive honors before or after
power is lost j and so, of those who stood uncovered before
him, he asks this piteous question :
I live with bread, like you ; feel want,
Taste grief, need friends ; subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king ?
Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Csesar :
Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth.
When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered
by Posth umus to murder her, she bares her neck, and cries :
The lamb entreats the butcher :
Where is thy knife ? Thou art too slow
To do thy master’s bidding when I desire it.
Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted
wound, utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this :
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.
To me the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos :
I die, Horatio.
The potent poison quite o’er crows my spirit.......
The rest is silence.
XVI.
Some have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a
physician, for the reason that he shows such knowledge of
medicine—of the symptoms of disease and death—was so
familiar with the brain, and with insanity in all its forms.
I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much
�SHAKESPEARE.
47
—his generalizations were too splendid. He had none of
the prejudices of that profession in his time. We might as
well say that he was a musician, a composer, because wTe
find in The Two Gentlemen of Verona nearly every musical
term known in Shakespeare’s time.
Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted
with the forms, with the expressions familiar to that pro
fession ; yetethere is nothing to show that he was a lawyer,
or that he knew more about law than any intelligent man
should know.
He was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never
dulled by reading English law.
Some think that he was a botanist, because he named
nearly all known plants. Others, that he was an astronomer,
a naturalist, because he gave hints and suggestions of nearly
all discoveries.
Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for
the reason that the orders given in the opening of The
Tempest were the best that could, under the circumstances,
have been given to save the ship.
For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show
that he was a lawyer, doctor, botanist, or scientist. He had
the observant eyes that really see, the ears that really hear,
the brain that retains all pictures, all thoughts, logic as
unerring as light, the imagination that supplies defects and
builds the perfect from a fragment. And these faculties,
these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.
He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his.
imagination. To him the whole world- paid tribute, and
nature poured her treasures at his feet. In him all races
lived again', and even those to be were pictured in his brain.
He was a man of imagination—that is to say, of genius,
and having seen a leaf, and a drop of water, he could
construct the forests, the rivers, and the seas; and in his
presence all the cataracts would fall and foam, the mists
rise, the clouds form and float.
�48
SHAKESPEARE.
If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and
its neighbors.
Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly
imagined the society, the conditions, that produced it, and
what it, in turn, produced. He saw the castle, the moat,
the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly
lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and
the rude retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and
the grief of feudal life.
He lived the life of all.
He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He
listened to the eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat
upon the cliffs, and with the tragic poet heard 11 the multi
tudinous laughter of the sea.” He saw Socrates thrust the
spear of question through the shield and heart of falsehood.
He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and
met the night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning.
He listened to the peripatetic philosophers, and was un
puzzled by the sophists. He watched Phidias as he chiselled
shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.
He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and
monstrous. He knew the very thought that wrought the
form and features of the Sphinx. He heard great Memnon’s
morning song when marble lips were smitten by the sun.
He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead,
and felt within their dust the expectation of another life,
mingled with cold and suffocating doubts—the children
born of long delay.
He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great
Caesar with his legions in the field. He stood with vast
and motley throngs, and watched the triumphs given to
victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured
hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the
shout that shook the Coliseum’s roofless walls, when from
the reeling gladiator’s hand the short sword fell, while from
his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life.
He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests’
�SHAKESPEARE.
49
silent depths, and in the desperate game of life or death he
matched his thought against the instinct of the beast.
He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their
rich rewards. He was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued,
outcast and king. He heard the applause and curses of the
world, and on his heart had fallen all the nights and noons
of failure and success.
He knew the unspoken thought, the dumb desires, the
wants and ways of beasts. He felt the crouching tiger s
thrill, the terror of the ambushed prey, and with the eagles
he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise and swoop, and
he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks
uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.
He sat beneath the bo-tree’s contemplative shade,
wrapped in Buddha’s mighty thought, and dreamed all
dreams that light, the alchemist, has wrought from dust and
dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy’s subtle blood.
He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine—he offered
every sacrifice, and every prayer—felt the consolation and
the shuddering fear—mocked and worshipped all the gods
—enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell.
He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there
crept the shadow and the chill of every death; and his soul,
like Mazeppa, was lashed naked to the wild horse of every
fear and love and hate.
The Imagination had a stage in Shakespeare’s brain,
whereon were set all scenes that lie between the morn of
laughter and the night of tears, and where his players bodied
forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless
shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.
From Shakespeare’s brain there poured a Niagara of gems
spanned by Fancy’s seven-hued arch. He was as manysided as clouds are many-formed. To him giving was
hoarding—sowing was harvest—and waste itself the source
of wealth. Within his marvellous mind were the fruits of
all thought past, the seed of all to be. As a drop of dew
�5°
SHAKESPEARE.
contains the image of the earth and sky, so all there is of
life was mirrored forth in Shakespeare’s brain.
Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves
touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the
tides and waves of destiny and will■ over which swept all
the storms of fate, ambition, and revenge; upon which fell
the gloom and darkness of despair and death, and all the
sunlight of content and love, and within which was the
inverted sky lit with the eternal stars—an intellectual ocean
—towards which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles
and continents of thought receive their dew and rain.
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�
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Shakespeare : a lecture
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Religious Beliefs
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CATECHISM
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together, not with any view to commercial gain, but solely to promote sound
reasoning and the growth of reasoned truth, as essential to the welfare and
progress of humanity.
Should these aims commend themselves to your judgment
you should apply at once for full particulars to
,
The Secretary,
R. P. A., Ltd.,
5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street,
London, E.C.
�N46 6
1 NEW tAWCHISM
�1
We baptise the twentieth century in the name of Peace, Liberty, and Progress!
We christen her—the People’s Century. We ask of the new century a Religion
without superstition; Politics without war; Science and the arts without
materialism; and wealth without misery or wrong 1
j
]
�A NEW CATECHISM
M. M. MANGASARIAN,
Lecturer of Independent Religious Society of Chicago
“ Our growing thought makes growing revelation.”—Geobqe Eliot.
“ Believe it, my good friends, to love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part
of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”—Tighk-r-
[iSSUED FOB THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1904
��Ml' '
INTRODUCTION
BY GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE
The author of this book, M. M. Mangasarian—an Armenian
by descent—has the distinction of being the Lecturer of the
Independent Religious Society of Chicago. He is said to
enchant by his addresses a weekly concourse of some two
thousand persons—the largest congregation, having regard to
quality, known in any country. We have larger religious
congregations in England, but they are swelled by the children
of Dogma. Mr. Mangasarian’s audiences are composed of the
children of Reason, of spiritual and ethical inquirers—a much
rarer race. The Open Court Publishing Company, of the lively
and tumultuous city of Chicago, has issued several editions
of this book for the convenience of American readers. The
Rationalist Press Association has, I think, usefully resolved to
give to the readers of Great Britain an equal opportunity of
possessing this new and original Catechism.
The most difficult form of literary composition, which has the
quality of interesting the reader, is undoubtedly a Catechism.
The author must be an expert diver in the deep sea of polemical
thought to recover essential facts, hidden in those depths. A
Catechism is a short and easy method of obtaining definite know
ledge. There are only two persons on the stage—the Questioner
and the Answerer. A good Questioner is a distinct creation.
He must know what information to ask for. If he be irrelevant,
he is useless; if he be vague, he is impracticable. The Answerer
must be master of the subject investigated, and definite in ex
pression. “ The New Catechism ” has these qualities. It is the
boldest, the brightest, the most varied and informing of any
' M
�6
INTRODUCTION
work of the kind extant. The principal fields of human
knowledge, which the Churches have fenced round with super
natural terrors, the Catechism breaks into, cherishing what is
fair and showing what has been deformed. The notes, of
which there are many, referring both to ancient and contem
porary sources, are as striking as the text. The book is a
cyclopaedia of theology and reason in a nutshell.
The Questioning Spirit, whose curiosity has for its wholesome
object the verification of truth, is the most effectual instrument
of knowledge available to mankind. A well-directed question is
like a pickaxe—it liberates the gold from the superincumbent
quartz. Whole systems of error sometimes fall to the ground
from the force of unanswerable questions. All error has contra
diction in it, which is revealed by a relevant inquiry, when an
artillery of counter assertions might not disclose it. Arguments
may be evaded, but a fair and pertinent question creates no
animosity, and must be answered, since silence is a confession
of error or. of ignorance.
The author of this Catechism shows good judgment in devising
questions. Answers without parade or pretension come quickly
and decisively, often including unforeseen information, which has
the attraction of surprise. The answers do not drag along like
a heavily-laden team, but flash like a message of wireless
telegraphy, unhampered, unhindered, over the ocean of new
thought. As suits the celerity of the age, these answers are
expressed with brevity. Prodigality in words impoverishes the
giver and depraves the taste of the receiver. Mr. Mangasarian,
like Phocion, conquers with few men and convinces with few
words. There is no better definition, says Landor, of a great
captain or a great teacher.
Eastern Lodge, Brighton.
October 20th, 1902.
�AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The old Catechisms which were imposed upon us in our youth
—when our intelligence could not defend itself against them—
no longer command our respect.
They have become mildewed with neglect. The times in
which they were conceived and composed are dead—quite dead I
A New Catechism to express the thoughts of men and
women and children living in these new times is needed.
This is a modest effort in that direction.
�CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I. Reason
Revelation
and
».
<.
II. The Christian Revelation
III. The Canon
IV. God
of the
•
Bible
25
V. The Earth
31
VI. Man
35
.
40
VIII. The Teachings
IX. The Church
of
Jesus
44
.
50
X. The Liberal Church .
55
XI. The Creeds
59
XII. The Clergy
XIII. Prayer
15
19
.
VII. Jesus
9
and
1
>
«
1
«
1
Salvation
XIV. Death .
XV. Immortality
XVI. The Chief End of Man
64
67
•
71
73
77
�A NEW CATECHISM
CHAPTER I.
REASON AND REVELATION
What is religion ?
Faith in the truth.1
Define truth.
It is the most perfect knowledge attainable concerning
any given question.2
Q. What is meant by “ faith in the truth ”?
A. Confidence that such knowledge may be depended upon
for the highest ends of life.
Q. How can one demonstrate his faith in the truth ?
A. By lifting his conduct to the height of his clearest vision
or knowledge.
Q. How may truth, or the “ most perfect knowledge,” be
acquired ?
A. Through experience and study.
Q. Is there no other way ?
A. There is not.
Q. Have , you given me the generally accepted definition
of religion ?
A. No. According to popular opinion religion is what a
man believes concerning supernatural beings and what
he does to obtain their favour.
Q. What is the supernatural ?
A. Whatever is at present inexplicable by the known laws of
nature.
1. Q.
A.
2. Q.
A.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
1 Truth is defined by Thomas Aquinas as “adaequatio intellectus et rei."
Kirchhoff defines knowledge as a “ description of facts. ” (See Carus’s Primer of
Philosophy, pp. 37 and 46.)
2 Knowledge reveals things as they are; hence, truth, which is the highest
knowledge, is the reflection of reality. “ Wisdom,” says Schopenhauer, “ is not
merely theoretical, but also practical perfection; it is the ultimate true cognition
of all things in mass and in detail, which has so penetrated man’s being that it
appears as the guide of all his actions” (Zimmern’s Life of Schopenhauer).
9
�io
A NEW CATECHISM
9. Q. What is the proper attitude of mind towards all such
questions ?
A. We should not quarrel about them, but permit them to
be discussed freely.
10. Q. Does not “ revelation ” or the “ word of God ” teach us
many things which we could not otherwise know ?
A. As there are many “ revelations,” we should first decide
which one we have reference to.
11. Q. Name some of them.
A. The Zoroastrian; Brahman ; Buddhist; Jewish; Chris
tian ; Mohammedan ; Mormon-------12. Q. Do all these “ revelations ” or bibles claim a divine origin?
A. They do.
13. Q. Do they respect one another ?
A. On the contrary, each condemns the other as unreliable
or incomplete.
14. Q. How ?
A. Buddha is reported to have said : “ There is no one else
like unto me on earth or in heaven. I alone am the
perfect Buddha.”1
15. Q. Give another example.
A. Jesus has been quoted as saying : “I am the door of the
sheep—all that came before me are thieves and robbers.
.......... No one cometh unto the father but by me.”2
16. Q. What would be considered a stronger proof than these ?
A. The fact that the disciples of each are trying to convert
those of the others.3
17. Q. What does it mean to “ convert ”?
A. To make others think and believe precisely as we do.
18. Q. What is the motive ?
A. Among others, this, that unless people believe as we do
they shall be damned forever.
19. Q. Which of these different Revelations is the true one ?
A. Not one of them is either wholly true or wholly false.
1 Oldenberg, Buddha.
2 Gospel of John. It is possible that neither Jesus nor Buddha ever expressed
these narrow sentiments.
8 “This true Catholic faith out of which no one can be saved” (from the
creed of Pope Pius IV.). “ I detest every.......sect opposed to the holy Catholic and
Apostolic Roman Church ” (words used for the reception of Protestants into the
Catholic Church—Catholic Belief, p. 254). This same spirit prevails in the standard
Protestant creeds. (See chapter on Prayer and Salvation.)
�REASON AND REVELATION
11
20. Q. How are we to know what is true and what is false in
them ?
A. By using our best judgment.
21. Q. Would not that imply that reason was a higher
authority than Revelation ?
A. Unquestionably.
22. Q. If we possess the highest authority within ourselves, do
we still need a Revelation ?
A. We do not; for a Revelation must approve itself to our
reason before it can be accepted.
23. Q. If you believed a certain book to contain the “ word of
God,” would you not obey it implicitly whether your
reason approved of it or not ?
A. No.
24. Q. And why ?
A. If I obeyed it blindly, my obedience would have no
merit; if under compulsion, it would not be voluntary
obedience. But if I obey it intelligently and with the
approval of my reason, then it would be my reason and
not the book that I would be obeying.
25. Q. Give an illustration.
A. If any of the “ bibles ” of the world were to teach, for
instance, that the earth was flat, we could not believe
them, because our own experience and study teach us
the very opposite.
26. Q. If, however, “ revelation ” should command you to do
what your reason condemned as wrong, would you not
obey the “ word of God ” rather than your reason ?
A. If I do what my best judgment forbids, I cannot be a
moral being.
27. Q. Is it not possible to regard as true what reason recognises
to be wrong ?
A. It is impossible. Reason is absolute sovereign. No
power can compel her to assume as true what she has
declared to be untrue.
28. Q. But do any of these “ bibles ” really teach things con
trary to reason ?
A. They certainly do.
29. Q. What, for instance ?
A. The creation story.
30. Q. Give another example.
A. The deluge.
�12
\
A NEW CATECHISM
Give one more example.
The fall of man.
What do we know to-day as to these questions ?
We know for sure that there never was any “ fall of
man,” or “ universal deluge,” or “ creation,” such as
these ancient bibles announce.
Q. What other mistakes do these bibles make ?
A. They make many other mistakes in history and science ;
they contradict themselves in many places, and in more
than one instance they teach what we know to be
wicked.1
Q. How do you account for these mistakes in the bibles ?
A. It is human to err.
Q. Are they all the work of man ?
A. They are nothing more than the record of the wisdom
and folly, the virtues and vices, of man.
Q. What are we to do under these circumstances ?
A. Follow the best light we have.
Q. What is that ?
A. Our reason.
Q. But may not our reason lead us into error ?
A. Yes.
Q. Why follow it then ?
A. Because we have nothing better, and it is our duty to
follow the best light we possess.2
Q. Why do people attach so great an importance to Revela
tion ?
A. For fear that without a Revelation there would be no
morality.
Q. Is there any reason for such a fear ?
A. No. In the name of Revelation, or the “ Word of God,”
many of the worst crimes have been perpetrated,3 while
31. Q.
A.
32. Q.
A.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
1 “ They contradict each other’s chronology, genealogy, geography; and whole
substance of both natural and supernatural events; they stand at variance with
authentic secular history ” (James Martineau, Essays, Reviews, etc.).
2 “ Lost at nightfall in a forest, I have but a feeble light to guide me. A stranger
happens along: ‘ Blow out your candle,’ he says, ‘ and you will see your way the
better.’ That stranger is a theologian ” (Diderot). “All religions have demanded
the sacrifice of reason. The religion of the future will make that terrible sacrifice
unnecessary” (consult the author’s pamphlet on Religion of the Future, p. 6).
3 Theodore de Beza, the successor of John Calvin, as leader of the Reformed
Church, of Geneva, publicly praised Poltrote, the assassin of Francis, a Catholic
Prince, and promised him a luminous crown in heaven. John Calvin himself, in
the name of the “ Word of God,” condemned Servetug to the flames. The assassin
�REASON AND REVELATION
42.
43.
44
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
13
on the other hand not a few of the world’s noblest men
knew nothing of a Revelation.1
Q. Has there always been a Revelation in the world ?
A. No; it is believed that it was only given some five
thousand years ago.
Q. Was there no morality in the world before that date ?
A. There was, undoubtedly; for men, societies, and nations
existed long before then.
Q. Was a Revelation given to each and every nation on
earth ?
A. No; the general belief is that the Jews were the only
people who were favoured with a Revelation.
Q. Were the Jews then the only moral people of the world ?
A. By no means ; the Greeks, who had no Revelation, were
the most advanced people of antiquity.
Q. What does that signify ?
A. That morality is independent of a Revelation.
Q. Is it well to teach that morality is impossible without a
Revelation ?
A. It is not; because, in the first place, it would not be
true; . and because, in the second place, people, in losing
faith in Revelation, would also lose faith in the right.
Q. How may faith in the right become permanent ?
A. By loving and doing the right for its own sake.
Q. What are the other motives to right conduct ?
A. The strongest are those which arise from a craving for
self-esteem, the altruistic impulse,2 and the sense of
duty.
of Henry the Third, of France, received almost divine honours at the hands of the
Catholics. His name was introduced into the litanies of the Church, his portrait
exhibited on the holy altar, and his dastardly deed likened to the holy mysteries of
religion. The mother of Clement, the assassin, came to Paris to demand a reward
for the crime of her son, and the priests took up a collection for her and carried her
in a procession as the blessed woman who had given birth to the murderer of a king
who favoured the heretics (comp. Esprit de la Ligue, Estoile, vol. iii., p. 94; also
Jules Simon, La Liberte de Conscience, pp. 86, 87). Many similar examples could1
easily be given to show that a revelation has, instead of curbing the passions,
frequently made them more violent. All the bloodshed recorded in the Old Testa
ment was committed with a “ And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, etc.”
1 Socrates, Phocion, Epaminondas, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and many others
of pagan times. Of Chilon, one of the seven sages of Greece, it is recorded that at
his deathbed he summoned his friends, to whom he declared that in a long life he
could recall but a single act that saddened his dying hour. It was that, in an
unguarded hour, he had permitted friendship to obscure his sense of justice.
2 To respect ourselves we must respect humanity, of which we are a part, and
when we confer'feilue upon ourselves we confer value also upon our race.
�14
A NEW CATECHISM
50. Q. What is meant by “ the sense of duty ”?
A. The feeling that we ought to do those things which
increase life and make it beautiful, and to refrain from
those things which bring shame and misery and wrong
in their train.
51. Q. Is it always pleasant to do our duty?
A. The old religions teach that duty is “ a cross,” and that
to be good is to sacrifice ourselves.
52. Q. What is the consequence of such teaching ?
A. It makes people afraid of the good life, and associates it
in their mind with gloom and depression.
53. Q. What else?
A. It makes people suppose that only the wicked can be
happy in this world.
54. Q. What is the right conception of duty ?
A. That it is not “ a cross,” or a self-sacrifice, but harmony,
beauty, and joy. We sacrifice ourselves, and make life
“ a cross,” when we disobey the laws1 of the body and
the mind.
J
1 For a definition of law consult concluding chapter.
�CHAPTER II.
THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION
1. Q. Which of the “ Revelations ” you have mentioned has
exerted the greatest influence in the world?
A. Without doubt, the Christian.
2. Q. How?
A. It has helped to shape the history of the first-class
nations of the world.
3. Q. Has this influence been good or bad?
A. It has been both good and bad.
4. Q. Where is the Christian Revelation to be found?
A. In a book called the “ Holy Bible,” and consisting of
the Old and New Testaments.
5. Q. Give me the most accurate information concerning the
“ Holy Bible.”
A. It is a collection of sixty-six books, written by different
authors at different periods in different languages and in
different countries of the world.
6. Q. How is it, then, that we have them all in one volume?
A. They were collected gradually into one volume by
religious synods and councils.
7. Q. Which are the oldest books in the Bible?
A. Those contained in the Old Testament—about thirtynine in number.
8. Q. What do these books write about?
A. The rise and progress of the Jews, their laws and
manners, their wars and persecutions.
9. Q. Is it any different from the history of any other primitive
people ?
A. Not materially.
10. Q. Does it give us any intellectual or moral truths at first
hand ?
A. No. Truth or knowledge is a conquest, not a Revela
tion.
15
�18
A NEW CATECHISM
33. Q. If the original manuscripts are lost, how do you account
for the words, “ Translated out of the original Greek,”
on the title-page of the New Testament?
A. The revisers have finally dropped the word original from
the title-page, not thinking it honest to keep it there
any longer.
�CHAPTER III.
THE CANON OF THE BIBLE
1. Q. What is meant by the “ canon ” of the Bible?
A. “ Canon ” is a Greek word meaning “ rule,” and is used
to qualify the collection or catalogue of books which
ecclesiastical councils have declared to be of divine'
authority in matters of faith and practice.
2. Q. Has the “ canon ” of the Bible remained the same fromthe beginning ?
A. No. The early Christians, being mostly Jews, regarded
only the Old Testament as the authoritative word of
God.1
8. Q. What do the apostolic fathers2 say on this subject?
A. We infer from their writings that they did not regard'
the New Testament as of equal authority with the Old.
4. Q. When did the New Testament come to be placed on a
level with the Old Testament ?
A. The schism between the Jewish and Gentile Christians
gave rise to the idea of a Catholic Church3 possessing
authority to decide all matters pertaining to doctrine and
practice. To realise this idea it was necessary to have a
generally accepted “word of God.” The demand in
time created the supply, and a “ canon ” of the New
Testament was the result.
5. Q. How early is the first reference to such a “ canon ” ?
A. The latter half of the second century.4
1 After the Old Testament, tradition was the chief source of knowledge in the
early Church.
2 Hermas, Barnabas, Papias, Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin, and Clement have
scarcely any express citation from the New Testament. They apply the word
“Scriptures” only to the Old Testament (see Davidson, Introduction, etc.).
Hegesippus, writing in the year 180 a.d., appeals only to the “ Old Testament and
the Lord ” as the source of all authority.
8 “ The formation of a Catholic Church and of a canon was simultaneous ”
(Davidson).
4 Fisher, Christian Doctrine, p. 72.
19
�20
A NEW CATECHISM
6. Q. What were the books contained in the earliest “ canons ”?
A. The Christian fathers Justin, Tertullian, Irenseus,
Origen,1 and many others, give each a different list.
7. Q. What was the canon of Muratori ?
A. It appeared about the year 170 a.d., and did not contain
Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, nor those of Peter,
1 John, and James.
8. Q. What was the canon of the Emperor Constantine ?
A. It was produced in the year 352 a.d., and contained the
present number of books except the Book of Revelation.
9. Q. What was the Syrian “ canon ” ?
A. It lacked the Second Epistle of Peter, Third of John,
the Epistle of Jude, and the Book of Revelation.
10. Q. What other books in the Bible have been questioned ?
A. The Epistles of Paul, the Epistle of James, the Book
of the Acts of the Apostles ; and Job,2 Esther, and others,
in the Old Testament.
11. Q. What was Luther’s Bible ?
A. Luther did not regard the Book of Revelation and the
Epistle of James as a part of God’s word.
12. Q. What is the position of the modern creeds on the question
of the “ canon ” ?
A. Article VI. of the 39 Articles of the Church of England
reads : “In the name of Holy Scriptures we do under
stand those canonical books of the Old and New Testa
ments of whose authority was never any doubt in the
Church.”3 But this is both obscure and misleading, as
there is scarcely a book in the New Testament the
authenticity of which has not been questioned in the
Church.
13. Q. Does the Catholic Bible agree in all respects with the
Protestant ?
A. No, the Catholic Bible contains seventy-two “ inspired ”
books.
14. Q. How is that ?
A. The Catholics accept as inspired many of those which
the Protestants reject as apocryphal.
1 Origen speaks of three classes of Scriptures : the authentic, the unauthentic,
and middle class. In the middle class he included James, Jude, 2nd Peter, and
3rd John, which are in our Bible.
2 Luther rejected the Book of Job as being no more than “ a sheer argumentum
fab'tila.”
8 The position of the other Christian denominations is very much the same.
�THE CANON OF THE BIBLE
21
15. Q. How does the Catholic Church treat those who deny
inspiration to these apocryphal books ?
A. The Council of Trent1 decreed a curse against them.
16. Q. When was the Catholic Bible translated?
A. It is claimed to have been translated by St. Jerome in
the fourth century.
17. Q. What was this translation called ?
A. The Latin Vulgate.2
18. Q. Has the Catholic Bible been revised at all ?
A. Yes, by the Popes Sixtus V. and Clement VIII.
19. Q. When was the present Protestant translation of the Bible
made ?
A. In 1611, under King James of England.
20. Q. Has it been revised since ?
A. Yes, in 1884 a new translation was produced.
21. Q. Does it differ at all from the King James version ?
A. It certainly does.
22. Q. Are the variations important ?
A. Some are very important.
23. Q. What are they ?
A. The verse in 1 John v. 7 : “For there are three that
bear record in heaven—the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost; and these three are one.” This verse,
which has been quoted in defence of the doctrine of the
Trinity, does not appear in the new version.
24. Q. What else ?
A. The notes which have been inserted in the margin of the
new version throw doubt upon many passages hitherto
accepted as of unquestionable authority.
25. Q. Give an example.
A. In the last chapter of the Gospel according to Mark a
note in the margin reads: “The two oldest Greek
manuscripts and some other authorities omit from
verse 9 to the end.”3 Another note reads: “ Some
other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel.”
26. Q. Are these missing verses important ?
A. Yes. They relate to the resurrection and ascension of
Jesus, and, above all, to the doctrine of eternal damnation.
1 One of the infallible councils (see Introduction to Catholic Bible, Douay
vers ion).
3 An English version of this was made in 1609.
8 Missing eleven verses.
�22
A NEW CATECHISM
27. Q. What may also be inferred from the marginal words,
“ some other authorities have a different ending to the
Gospel ” ?
A. That the translators had many manuscripts from which
to select “ the word of God.”1
28. Q. Are these the only translations that have been made ?
A. No. Many scholars have made independent transla
tions, believing the authorised versions to be inaccurate.
29. Q. Do Catholics and Protestants regard the Bible in the
same light ?
A. They do not.
30. Q. Explain the difference.
A. The Catholics bold that it is the Church that gives to the
“ word of God ” its authority.2
31. Q. What is their argument ?
A. They quote St. Augustine, who confessed that “ there
were more things in the Bible he did not understand
than things he did understand.” If so great a doctor of
the Church could not understand the “ word of God ”
without an infallible interpreter, say the Catholics, much
less can ordinary mortals.3
■ 32. Q. Do Catholics permit private interpretation of the Bible?
A. They do not.
“33. Q. Do they permit the people to read the Bible ?
A. Only with approval of their Bishop.4
34. Q. What is the Protestant doctrine of the Bible?
A. That it is the infallible “ word of God,” which each must
read and interpret for himself.
35. Q. How can fallible man interpret the Bible infallibly ?
A. It is claimed that the Holy Spirit reveals the true meaning of the Scriptures to all.
1 The American committee, failing to have their recommendations accepted by
the English, had the same published as an Appendix to the Revision........Speaking
of the authorship of one of the books, Justin Martyr loosely remarks, “A man
among us named John wrote it.” And Luke prefaces his Gospel with the significant
words : “ Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth, etc., it seemed good
to me to write also ” (Luke i. 1-3). Is this the infallible language of inspiration ?
2 “ We Catholics... .not only would not, but simply could not, believe the Bible
to be the inspired word of God unless we had the authority of the Church for it ”
(Rev. John Scully).
3 Catholic Belief, by the Rev. Louis S. Lambert, chap. viii.
4 “ To guard against error, it was judged necessary to forbid the reading of
Scriptures in the vulgar languages without the permission of spiritual guides”
(Catholic Bible, Pref.).
�THE CANON OF THE BIBLE
23
36. Q. Does the Holy Spirit reveal the same meaning to all
readers?
A. Evidently not, for there are many contrary interpreta
tions.
37. Q. Are all the Protestants agreed on the question of
baptism ?x
A. They are not.
38. Q. Or on the question of Predestination ?
A. They are not.
39. Q. Or on eternal punishment ?
A. They are not.
40. Q. On the doctrine of Atonement ?
A. They are not.
41. Q. On the Divinity of Jesus ?
A. They are not; though they claim to have infallible Reve
lation on all these disputed matters.
42. Q. Had there been no infallible Revelation on these questions,
would the Churches have been more at variance concerning
them?
A. It is not likely.
43. Q. What would help to reconcile the disagreeing sects?
A. A new Revelation to make plain the meaning of the old.
44. Q. What is the principal objection against an inspired
book ?
A. It limits the possession of truth to one people or race, and
makes it a thing of the long past.
45. Q. What else?
A. It makes all further research and investigation unneces
sary ; it gives to a sect or a Church power to suppress
new truth, and to persecute all who help to broaden the
horizon of the mind.
46. Q. What is the testimony of history in this respect ?
A. (1) It is said that Omar ordered the Alexandrian Library
to be reduced to ashes, because the Koran contained all
that was worth knowing. (2) In the same spirit, the
Catholic Church, believing the Bible sufficient for all
human needs, made war upon Greek and Roman culture
until not a trace of it was left in Europe for nearly one
thousand years. (3) In modern times all scientists and
1 “In what way the washing of new-born babies” ensures their salvation is still
a subject of discussion in the Churches (see James Martineau’s works).
�24
47.
48.
49.
50.
A NEW CATECHISM
discoverers have been branded as infidels, if not perse
cuted to death, for announcing conclusions different from
those of the “ word of God.”
Q. What is the inference from these examples ?
A. That an infallible book stands in the way of the progress
of mankind.
Q. How is the Bible regarded to-day in Europe and
America ?
A. Largely as the literature of primitive and uninformed
peoples.
Q. Is it still worshipped anywhere as an infallible
authority ?
A. Only among the least educated people.1
2
Q. What is the right use of the Bible ?
A. To accept whatever is helpful in it, and to reject the rest.3
1 Martin Luther denounced the astronomers in these words: “ People gave ear to
an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens
or the firmament.... The fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy.
But sacred history tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the
earth.”
When printing was invented it was hated by the Church as the black art,
and a Governor of Virginia said: “ I thank God that in those days there was not a
printing press nor a school in all Virginia to breed heresy.”
2 “ It may be said in benevolent apology for the teaching of Spurgeon [Moody,
Dowie, and Talmage] that it has its taint of vulgarity; but vulgar people exist
and must have their religion ” (James Martineau). But let it not be forgotten that
men and women of culture, science, and refinement exist too, who have an equal
right to a religion of their own (see James Martineau’s Speeches, etc., p. 433).
3 When the Church was all-powerful no one was permitted to reject any portion
of the Bible. The eighteenth and nineteenth verses of the last chapter of ‘ ‘ Revela
tion,” threatening with awful plagues all who shall add or take away from the
written Word, were quoted as sanctioning the persecution against scientists and
philosophers. The writer of a heretical book had to sign the following document
to escape burning at the stake: “The author has laudably made his submission
and reprobated his book ” (Auctor laudabiliter se subjecit et opus reprovavit).
�CHAPTER IV.
GOD
1. Q. Tell me something of the popular ideas about God ?
A. The majority of people think of God as the Person who
has created the heavens and the earth and all that they
contain.
2. Q. What else ?
A. That he knows everything, sees everything, possesses
everything, and is everywhere.
3. Q. What do they believe about his character ?
A. That he is just and holy.
4. Q. What else ?
A. That he is a God of love.
5. Q. Have they always thought of him as a God of love?
A. No. God grows better as man improves in intelligence
and character.
6. Q. Explain your meaning.
A. The god of the savage was a savage and a bandit; the
god of Job, the Arab chief, was an Oriental despot; the
god of the Jews was a man of war and revenge; and
the god of many Christians is a being who punishes
the errors of this brief life with unending torments.1
7. Q. What other ideas are there of God ?
A. That he is deeply interested in what we think, say,
and do.
8. Q. And why?
A. To reward us for the things that give him pleasure,
and to punish us for the things which offend him.
9. Q. What name is God known by ?
A. By different names in different countries. The Greeks
1 Though belief in eternal torments is still professed by church-goers, it is difficult
to find any one in our day who acts as if he really believed in so horrible a doctrine.
Abraham Lincoln said that, if this doctrine were true, no one.should take the time
to attend to anything else in life, but remain praying on his knees from the cradle to
the tomb.
25
�26
A NEW CATECHISM
call him Zeus; the Romans, Jove; the Persians, Ormuzd;
the Hindoos, Brahm ; the Jews and Christians, Jehovah
or Elohim ; the Mohammedans, Allah.
10. Q. What other names have men given to God ?
A. “ The Supreme Being,” “ The Infinite,” “ The First
Cause,” “The Over Soul,” “TheEternal Energy,” “The
Universe,” “ Nature,” “ Mind,” “ Order,” etc.
11. Q. But when people say “ God ” do they not all mean the
same thing ?
A. Not exactly, for some mean a person ; others, an idea, a
law ; or the unknown or unknowable power which finds
expression in the phenomenal world; to others, again,
God is “ The Whole,” or the Point of Confluence of the
forces of matter and mind.1
12. Q. Have people always believed in a god ?
A. In some form or other the majority of people have always
believed in a god or gods.
13. Q. Have there been more than one god ?
A. According to popular belief, yes.
14. Q. What are people believing in more than one god called ?
A. Polytheists; while those believing in one god are called
Monotheists.
15. Q. Name a few of the polytheist people in the world.
A. The Egyptians, Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans.
16. Q. Who were the Monotheists ?
A. The Jews, Christians,2 and Mohammedans.
17. Q. Have these latter always believed in one god ?
A. No. Polytheism was the earliest belief of all nations.3
18. Q. What were the gods of the polytheists ?
A. The sun, moon, invisible spirits, shadows, giants, fairy
men and women, animals, trees, mountains, rocks, rivers
—almost everything.
19. Q. How do you know that these objects were regarded as
gods?
A. Because they prayed to them, built churches or temples
for them, made images and idols to represent them, and
sacrificed to them.
1 See chapter on Prayer for discussion on the personality of God.
2 Would the belief of the Christians in the Trinity exclude them from this list ?
8 The claim that to the Jews the Unity of God was divinely revealed is not
supported by the facts. It is clearly shown by the Old Testament accounts that the
Jews believed in other gods, and that their god was jealous of them.
�GOD
27
20. Q. Did they consider all these gods of equal importance ?
A. No, the intelligent few looked upon the many gods as
the servants or symbols of the one god who was above all.
21. Q. And the ignorant ?
A. They believed some to be stronger, more friendly, more
beautiful, and wiser than others.
22. Q. How did the belief in gods originate?
A. That question has given rise to many theories.
23. Q. Mention a few of them.
A. There is first the theory that ignorance led the earliest
people, who were much like children, to fear what they
did not understand, and to ascribe what they feared to
the agency of invisible beings, patterned after themselves
only on a very much larger scale. Second: The theory
that the feeling of human helplessness or dependence
is responsible for the belief in beings more powerful
than ourselves. Third : According to another theory,
man, who is a sociable being by nature, feels the
necessity of entering into fellowship with the invisible
forces about him, for which purpose he personifies them.
Fourth: The theory that death is the chief cause of
the belief in gods.
24. Q. In what way ?
A. It is said that, if we could live on this earth for ever, we
would get along without imagining the existence of
supernatural beings. It is the knowledge that we will
die which makes us think of another life, and of beings
who control life and death. The animals have no
gods, because they have no knowledge of their
mortality.
25. Q. Is the number of gods increasing ?
A. It is decreasing.
26. Q. Why?
A. As people advance in knowledge and power, they feel more
and more able to take care of themselves.
27. Q. Have the educated people fewer gods than the ignorant?
A. Yes. The belief in many gods prevails only in the least
civilised countries.
28. Q. How about the belief in one god ?
A. It is still very largely held.
29. Q. Are there any people who do not believe in a god?
A. There are.
�28
A NEW CATECHISM
30. Q. Why do they not ?
A. Because they say a being such as he is conceived to
be by the popular mind is beyond the sphere of our
knowledge.
31. Q. Cannot the existence of a god be demonstrated?
A. Some think it can, and others, again, that it cannot.1
32. Q. State a few of the principal arguments for the existence
of a god.
A. The first is the argument based on the law of causality.
33. Q. What is that ?
A. Every effect or existence must have a cause. The
universe is an existence, therefore the universe has a
cause, which is—God.
34. Q. Is not that a strong argument ?
A. It is very strong, but not conclusive.
35. Q. Why not ?
A. If every existence must have a cause, God, who is an
existence, must have a cause too.
36. Q. But could not God have his existence from all eternity ?
A. If he could exist at all without a cause, then the argu
ment that there is no existence without a cause falls to
the ground.
37. Q. What else ?
A. If God could exist from the beginning without a cause, so
could the universe.
38. Q. What would follow if we admitted that God, too, had a
cause ?
A. Then we would wish to know what was the cause of that
cause, and so on, building an eternal chain without
beginning or end.2
39. Q. What is the next argument ?
A. The argument from perfection.
40. Q. Explain that.
A. It is said that, though we ourselves are imperfect beings,
we still carry in our minds, as in a mirror, the idea or
reflection of a perfect being.
41. Q. What is the inference ?
A. That this reflection in the mirror of the mind of a perfect
1 Consult Kant’s Critique, Caro’s L'Idee de Dieu dans la Critique Contemporaine,
Guyau’s L’lrreligion de L’Avenir (translated).
2 Read chapter on Kant in History of Philosophy, by George Henry Lewes.
�GOD
42. Q.
A.
43. Q.
A.
44. Q.
A.
45. Q.
A.
46. Q.
A.
47. Q.
A.
48. Q.
A.
49. Q.
A.
50. Q.
A.
29
being proves the existence of such a being, which is—
God.1
Explain further.
If we have in our minds the image of a perfect being,
this being must also possess existence, for if he lacked
that he would not be perfect.
What would follow ?
It would follow that our idea of God proves that God
exists, for, if such a being did not exist, we could not
have thought of him as existing.
What is the value of this argument ?
It is not considered so strong as the first.
Why?
Perfection is a quality, existence is a condition, and the
argument confounds the one with the other. We may
have in our minds, for instance, the image or dream of
a perfect city hidden away in the bosom of the ocean or
floating on the clouds, without there being any such
city in existence to correspond to the picture in our
mind.
Give me another illustration.
For many centuries people entertained the idea that the
world was flat, yet that idea in their mind could not have
been the reflection of the earth, for such an earth never
existed.
Do these perfectly good or perfectly bad beings exist only
in our minds ?
Yes.
What is the next argument ?
It is called the argument from design.2
What is that ?
Just as a watch, the works of which are so constructed
as to strike the hour, proves beyond a doubt a watch
maker, the world, by its more wonderful mechanism,
proves a world-maker.
What is the value of this argument ?
There is no similarity between a watch and a world. It
is not so easy to agree on what the world was made for
as it is to tell what a watch was made for.
1 This was Descartes’s celebrated argument, which, with slight modification, was
presented also by Malebranche, Leibnitz, Reid, and many others.
2 Paley and Bishop Butler were the great advocates of this argument.
�A NEW CATECHISM
51. Q. Are not the marks of design in nature as unmistakable
as those in the watch ?
A. If they were, there would be no mysteries. We would
then know everything.
52. Q. Do you mean to say we do not understand the world as
fully as we do a watch ?
A. Yes, and that we cannot, therefore, explain it as satis
factorily as we can a watch.
53. Q. What else may be said against this argument?
A. A watch could prove only a watch-maker, not also one
who created the materials out of which the watch was
made.
54. Q. What then ?
A. Even admitting a world-maker, we would still have to
prove a world-creator.
55. Q. In view of these difficulties, what is the right attitude of
mind towards this question?
A. One of earnest investigation. We should neither be
dogmatic nor flippant, but continue to seek for light.
56. Q. In what sense may the word “ god ” be properly used ?
A. As representing the highest ideals of the race. What
ever we believe in with all our heart, and seek to possess
with all our might, is our God.
57. Q. Would it not follow from that that some people’s gods
are better and nobler than others ?
A. Undoubtedly ; each man is the measure of his own Ideal
or God.
58. Q. Explain further.
A. As we see only as much and as far as the structure of
our eyes will permit, so we can only think and desire
according to the compass of our mind.
59. Q. Who, then, made God ?
A. Each man makes his own God.1
1 It is proper also to speak of God as representing the constitution of the
universe ; yet even then he, or she, or it, would be to us no more, and no less, than
a picture in our mind. A subjective God is all we can have any relations with.
�CHAPTER V.
THE EARTH
1. Q. How old is the earth ?
A. The years of the earth run into the millions.
2. Q. Has it always been inhabited ?
A. For a long time the earth was too hot to permit of life.1
8. Q. What is the origin of the world ?
A. Scientists tell us the world was once a sailing cloud of
fire, the molecules or particles of which were prevented
from coming together by the excessive heat.
4. Q. What happened then ?
A. In the course of long ages the heat declined, giving the
atoms a chance to come together.
5. Q. What was the result of this concentration of atoms ?
A. The sun was formed—a vast ball of fire, which, as it
rotated and revolved, cast off pieces which became
worlds. The earth is one of them.
6. Q. How did life begin on the earth ?2
A. As the earth, which is like a bubble in a Niagara of
worlds, became cooler, it shrank and contracted and
divided into land and water.
7. Q. And then ?
A. With this process of cooling, the thick, smoky atmo
sphere which had enveloped it before disappeared,
letting the sun’s rays penetrate to the earth.
8. Q. What happened then ?
A. “ The earth became with young.”3
9. Q. In what form did life first appear ?
A. In the form of specks, which floated on the surface of
waters and repeated themselves.
1 Virchow on the Teachings of Science (Clifford); Martyrdom of Man (Win
wood Reade).
2 Tyndall's Belfast Lectures, 1874; Revue d'Anthropologie: Philosophie
Zoologique (Lamarck); The Origin of Species (Charles Darwin, 1859); The Physical
Basis of Life (Huxley).
8 Winwood Reade.
�32
A NEW CATECHISM
What are these specks called ?
In scientific language they are called embryonic plants.
What was the next form of life ?
Then appeared other specks which lived on the first.
These were more complex in organism, and are called
embryonic animals.
Q. Were these animated specks the ancestors of man ?
A. The history of our race begins with them.
Q. Are you sure you have given me the true story of the
earth ?
A. No. This is only an hypothesis or a guess.
Q. Has it any value whatever ?
A. It has great value, because it is not a random guess, but
the result of the patient labours of the greatest scientists
of the world.
Q. What is this hypothesis called ?
A. The theory of evolution.
Q. Are there any other theories on the subject ?
A. There is also the theory of creation.
Q. Which is the oldest ?
A. The creation story.
Q. What is that ?
A. According to this theory, the heavens and the earth and
all that they contain were created in the space of six
days by the “ word of God.”
Q. Was anybody present when God created the heavens and
the earth ?
A. There could not have been.
Q. On whose authority, then, is the statement based?
A. On the authority of men who were not eye-witnesses.
Q. Why is their word accepted ?
A. It is claimed that God told them how he made the
world.
Q. How do we know that ?
A. The men themselves say so.
Q. Are we expected to accept their word fipon their own
authority ?
A. It is the only proof they offer.
Q. The theory of creation, then, is a guess too ?
A. It is.
10. Q.
A.
11. Q.
A.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
�THE EABTH
83
25. Q. Of the two which should we prefer ?
A. The one which commends itself to the most enlightened
minds and best explains the known facts.
26. Q. In accepting either theory do we thereby bind ourselves
to it for ever ?
A. No ! We reserve to ourselves the liberty of exchanging
it for a better one whenever we can do so.
27. Q. Who is the author of the theory of Evolution ?
A. Charles Darwin is the man with whose name, more than
with that of any other, the doctrine of Evolution is
associated.
28. Q. Who is the author of the story of creation ?
A. Moses is perhaps the most frequently quoted authority
on the subject.
29. Q. Compare the two men.
A. Darwin was a student and a scientist who spent all his
life interrogating nature; Moses was not a scientist, he
made no independent investigations, but accepted the
views about the origin of the earth which were current
in that remote age.
80. Q. How do people distinguish between the ideas of Darwin
and those of Moses ?
A. The ideas of Darwin are called Science; those of Moses
Theology.1
81. Q. What is the standing of Moses with modern scientists?
A. As a scientist he has no standing at all.
32. Q. Is it proper to point out the mistakes of a man considered
infallible?
A. If he makes mistakes, yes.
33. Q. Has any violence ever been used to advance Darwin’s
views ?
A. No.
34. Q. To advance those of Moses?
A^gYes—men have been put to death by fire and the
sword.
35. Q. Whose views prevail to-day ?
A. Darwin’s^
1 Even Moses, in trying to explain the world, was obeying a scientific impulse—
the story of the creation was the best solution he could invent. But the science of
Moses has become the theology of the Churches.
D
�34
A NEW CATECHISM
86. Q. What does that signify ?
A. That error cannot be maintained by force, and that no
miracle in the calendars or bibles of the world can
compare with the triumph of truth.1
1 Mohammedanism is to-day the religion of nearly two hundred millions of people ;
but let us think of the bloodshed and of the long ages of persecution and the large
sums of money which were required to perpetuate Islam. The same may be said of
Christianity; it has cost two thousand years of war, persecution, inquisition, and
oceans of human lives and of money. But let us turn our eyes upon this other
picture: A short time ago some scientists, foremost among whom was Charles
Darwin, announced a new doctrine—the doctrine of Evolution, which was as new, as
radical, as revolutionary, as either Mohammedanism or Christianity, and yet it has
overcome the most determined and fanatical opposition, and is, at the present day,
accepted and taught in all the world. Yet to achieve this stupendous triumph it
has required only about a half-century of time, and absolutely without the remotest
suggestion of persecution—without so much as singeing the hair of a single human
being. Could anything be a greater compliment to the puissance of truth ? In the
course of a few years science has established a grander empire than the Bibles of the
world, in spite of the bloody seas they have sailed through for the past thousands of
years.
�CHAPTER VI.
MAN
What is man 21
A rational animal.
How old is man ?
Hundreds of thousands of years old.
Who are his ancestors ?
The mammalia.2
How do you know ?
In the composition, structure, and function of his organsman is exactly like an animal.
Q. Specify a few of the points of resemblance between man
and the animals.
A. Man has not a muscle or a bone or an organ which is
not paralleled in the animals.
Q. What else ?
A. They are both composed of the same materials, possess
the same physical parts, and are subject to the same
laws of life and death.
Q. Does man differ at all from the animals ?
A. Intellectually and morally, man is superior to all the
animal^F
Q. In what other way do they differ ?
A. The animal seeks only the gratification of his appetites;
man, the realisation of his ideals.
Q. What else ?
A* Man lives and labours for the future, for posterity—for
his fellows not yet born ; the animals exhibit no sense of
the beyond.
1. Q.
A.
2. Q.
A.
3. Q.
A.
4. Q.
A.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
1 Consult IVatwaZ History of Man (Pichard), Man’s Place in Nature (Professor
Huxley), Descent of Man (Charles Darwin), Unite de L’Espece Humaine (de
Quatrefages, Paris, 1861), Early History of Man (Tylor), Antiquity of Man
(Lubbock).
a The highest class of vertebrata—all the animals which nurse their own young
only.
35
�86
A NEW CATECHISM
10. Q. In what relation does man stand to the animal ?
A. He is descended or ascended from the animal.1
11. Q. What is the strongest proof that man has ascended from
the animal ?
A. The fact that the human embryo before birth passes
through stages of development, when he has gills like a
fish, a tail, great toes, a body covered with hair, and a
brain like that of a monkey.
12. Q. What is the meaning of this ?
A. That man in his long existence has climbed through all
these forms of life to his present state.
13. Q. Do you mean to say that there was a time when man was
an animal like some of those known to us to-day ?
A. For many, many years he was like the monkey, the
gorilla, the chimpanzee, or the orang-outang.
14. Q. How long ago was that ?
A. It is difficult to say, but probably hundreds of thousands
of years ago.
15. Q. Man was not specially created, then ?
A. No. He grew slowly upwards—from lower forms of life.
16. Q. Have there ever been any eye-witnesses of an animal
evolving into a man ?
A. No. Nature works in secret. The lower animals have
passed into man by soft, slow, imperceptible gradations
—as one view dissolves into another.
17. Q. Is this growth or development confined to his body ?
A. His mind or reason is just as much an evolution as his
body.
18. Q. Why do not all animals develop into men ?
A. For the same reason that all savages have not developed
into civilised peoples.
19. Q. What is that ?
Unfavourable conditions.
20. Q. Explain this.
A. Progress results from necessity. Both animals and
savages remain stationary as long as they can preserve
themselves in comfort. They invent and develop new
resources only when compelled or threatened by danger
and death.
1 “The abyss which, through the ignorance of man, was placed between him and
the brute world does not exist ” (Dr. G. L. Duprat, Professor in University, Lyons,
France).
�MAN
37
21. Q. Explain further.
A. Men and animals are the expression of the conditions
under which they live. When these change, men and
animals change with them.
22. Q. What one thing ha,s contributed to the development of
man more than anything else ?
A. The struggle for existence.
23. Q. Are there any other opinions on the genesis of man ?
A. Yes. A great many people still believe that he was
created by God, all at once and perfect, some six thousand
years ago/
24. Q. What is meant by “ created perfect ” ?
A. Made in the likeness of God.
25. Q. Is it claimed that man was once as perfect as God ?
A. I do not think so.
26. Q. Then he was imperfect, compared with God ?
A. Yes.
27. Q. Why do they say, then, that man was created perfect?
A. I believe they mean he was as perfect as a man could ever
hope to be.
28. Q. Why is he not perfect now ?
A. It is said that he fell from perfection by an act of dis
obedience against his creator.
29. Q. How could a perfect man commit a crime ?
A. It is said that the creator for his own glory permitted the
crime.
30. Q. Then he obeyed God instead of disobeying him ?
A. Yes, if he was helping to carry out the eternal purpose
of God.
31. Q. What were the consequences of man’s fall ?
A. Sin, suffering, and death, for all mankind.
32. Q. Was there no evil in the world before the fall of man ?
A. There was, according to science; and also according to
the Bible, for it says Satan tempted Adam.1
2
1 The American Association for the Advancement of Science, by almost unani
mous vote, “ declared Adam and Eve to be myths” (comp. Report of Asso., 1901,
Aug. 29th). Notwithstanding the unanimity of men of science on this point, the world
over, the clergy still continue the tra-la-la of empty phrases about the first man, etc.
But can the clergy afford to ignore the doings and sayings of the men of science ?
2 As both Satan and hell existed before Adam, man cannot be held responsible
for the introduction of evil into the universe.
�38
33. Q.
A.
34. Q.
A.
35. Q.
A.
36. Q.
A.
37. Q.
A.
38. Q.
A.
39. Q.
A.
40. Q.
A.
41. Q.
A.
42. Q.
A.
■43. Q.
A.
44. Q.
A.
45. Q.
A.
46. Q.
A.
47. Q.
A.
A NEW CATECHISM
What is the popular belief about Satan ?
That he is the great enemy of God and man.
What else ?
That he is as powerful for evil as God is for good.
How old is the devil ?
Almost as old as God—in the popular mind.
How may the belief in a devil be explained ?
Mankind, in its childhood, in attempting to account for
the existence of light and darkness, life and death, love
and hate, accepted the simplest solution—that of sup
posing two different beings, the one good and the other
bad—ruling the world.
Is he also as wise as God ?
No, but he is believed to be very cunning.
What is said to be the object of his existence?
To tempt and ruin men, and to spoil the work of God.
Who is responsible for his existence ?
The common belief is that he was, like the first man, a
perfect being—an archangel, who, desiring to be a god
himself, was put out of heaven.
Why does not god destroy the devil ?
For the same reason that is said to have influenced him
in permitting the fall of man.
What is that ?
His own glory.
Will there always be a devil and a hell ?
According to many people, yes.
Why do people believe in such stories about the
devil, etc. ?
Because their fathers and mothers believed in them.
What do you think of such beliefs ?
The opinions and beliefs of people concerning sub
jects they have not diligently studied are of little
value.
What are the effects of a belief in the devil ?
It makes men superstitious, melancholy, cowardly, and
cruel.
How may the belief in a devil be outgrown ?
Through enlightenment.
What is the most fearful thing in the world?
Fear.
�MAN
89
48. Q. Why?
A. Because, by paralysing both mind and body, fear deprives
us of the ability to defend ourselves; and when we cannot
defend ourselves we become the sport of political and
religious scarecrows.
�CHAPTER VII.
JESUS
1. Q.
A.
2. Q.
A.
3. Q.
A.
4. Q.
A.
5. Q.
A.
6. Q.
A.
7. Q.
A.
8. Q.
A.
9. Q.
A.
10. Q.
A.
11. Q.
A.
What is the prevailing belief about Jesus?
That he was a god and the son of a god.
What else ?
That he was also a man like ourselves.
Was he both god and man ?
•
That is the popular belief.
What are the evidences of his divinity ?
It is said that he was conceived of the Holy Ghost; that
he was without sin; that he worked miracles, and that he
proclaimed himself the equal of God.
What is the value of these cl aim r ?
They cannot be accepted as evidence.
Why not ?
In regard to the Immaculate Conception we may say that
of Jesus, as a “miracle,” we can have no opinion what
ever.
But could people be prevented from believing in bip
miraculous birth ?
No ; because people generally believe without any regard
to the evidence.
What is such belief called ?
Credulity.
How do the educated people differ from the vulgar in thia
respect ?
The educated proportion their beliefs to the evidence.
What about the miracles of Jesus ?
As we have not ourselves seen any of his miracles, they
cannot have the same weight with us as with those who
were supposedly eye-witnesses.
Continue the argument.
And as but few of those who saw the miracles considered
them conclusive—for many hesitated and asked for more
40
�JESUS
41
signs—we, who. have not seen them at all, would be
justified in treating the miraculous element in the life of
Jesus as we treat the same in those of Buddha, Moses,
and Mohammed.
12. Q. Explain further.
A. Without entering into the discussion of ini rn,el eg in
general, it could be said that, inasmuch as they are
an appeal to the senses of those who may have been
present, it has to be shown, in the first place, that their
senses did not deceive them, and, in the second place,
that their testimony is infallible, before we can accept
them as evidence.
13. Q. We have, then, only the word of man that Jesus worked
miracles ?
A. That is all.
14. Q. If a man, claiming to be a god, should raise the dead in
our presence, would not that prove his claim ?
A. It certainly would not.
15. Q. Why?
A. Because, even if he should create also a new world in our
presence, he would only be doing a few things which we
could not do ourselves. Because a man can raise the
dead, etc., it does not follow that he can do everything.1
16. Q. What would he have to do to prove he was a god ?
A. Everything !. But in the nature of things no man can
give proof that he can do everything.
17. Q. And therefore ?
A. No man can prove himself a god.
18. Q. What is the strongest argument against miracles as an
evidence of divinity?
A. The fact that miracles were also performed by the devil
and hi§ agents.2
19. Q. Did Jesus admit the power of others besides himself to
work miracles ?
A.Yes, when he said : “If I cast out devils by Beelzebub,
by whom do your sons cast them out ?”
1 See Chap. I., “Reason and Revelation.” A safe rule in these matters is always to
prefer the least wonderful to the most wonderful: it is more probable that the men
who reported the miracles of Jesus were mistaken, as those who reported the miracles
of Mohammed are supposed to be, than that the dead, for instance, rose from the
grave.
8 Supernatural powers are attributed to the devil and his angels in all the religious
scriptures of the world ; the magicians of Egypt competed with Moses, and Simon
Magus with the Apostles in performing miracles.
�42
A NEW CATECHISM
20. Q. Hag there ever been a religion that has not claimed
power to work miracles ?
A. We do not know of any.
21. Q. What about the claim that Jesus was without sin ?
A. “ And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit,” says
the evangelist. If Jesus grew better as he grew older,
he could not have been perfect from his birth.1
22. Q. Tell me now about the man Jesus—when was he born,
and where ?
A. He was born in Palestine about two thousand years ago.
23. Q. Do the writers of the time speak about Jesus and his
works ?
A. There is positively no important mention of Jesus in any
writing outside of the New Testament.2
24. Q. What is the meaning of that ?
A. That either he was not considered a sufficiently important
personage to write about, or that he was not known to
these writers at all.
25. Q. What is the story about him in the New Testament?
A. That he did many good and wonderful deeds; that he
was arrested and tried for calling himself “ King of the
Jews ” and “ Son of God
that he was condemned and
crucified, and that he rose again from the dead.
26. Q. What else ?
A. That he showed himself after his Resurrection to his
disciples, and ascended on the clouds to heaven.
27. Q. How long did Jesus live on earth ?
A. From thirty-three to fifty years, according to tradition
and the gospels.3
28. Q. Was his public career long ?
A. No. His public life covered probably a little over a
year, though the Apostle John seems to make it three
and a half.
29. Q. Did Jesus have a family?
A. He was not married.
30. Q. Did he have brothers and sisters ?
A. Yes, he was one of a large family of children.
1 See Chap. VIII., “Teachings of Jesus.”
2 Seneca, Ovid, Epictetus, Josephus, Philo, Pliny, Tacitus, Juvenal, and Quintilian
lived about the time of Jesus and his Apostles.
8 There was a tradition in the early Church that Jesus lived to be nearly fifty
years old.
�JESUS
43
31. Q. Did all the members of his family believe in him ?
A. Not all of them.
32. Q. Have there been others before or since Jesus who claimed
to be divine, and to have worked miracles ?
A. There have been many.1
33. Q. Have these, too, their followers ?
A. Yes, and their temples and altars, to this day.
34. Q. Were they all impostors ?
A. Not at all. Most of them believed they were divinely
chosen to teach or to rule the people.
35. Q. Does their sincerity make true all they taught ?
A. No. Sincerity cannot change the chaff into wheat.
36. Q. What is the proper attitude towards these ancient
teachers ?
A. One of gratitude for their services, and of honest
criticism of their errors.
Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, Gautama, the Rdteha. was
worshipped as the Sinless One. He was supposed to be born without a father,
and to have worked miracles. The same was said of Serafis, Appollonias, and
many others. The Chinese believe that Laotze, the founder of one of the religions
of that empire, was born at the age of eighty-four, with grey hair; his gestation was
prolonged that he might have wisdom from his birth.
�CHAPTER VIII.
THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS
What were the ideas of Jesus ?
Mostly those of the people of his time and country.
Of what nationality was Jesus ?
He was a Jew.
What was the political condition of the Jews at that
time ?
A. They were a subject race, having been conquered by the
Romans.
Q. Was that the first time the Jews had lost their freedom ?
A. No. It may be said that they had spent the greater part
of their existence in slavery and oppression, first - in
Egypt, then in Assyria, and finally under the Persians
and Romans.
Q. What was their intellectual standing ?
A. Owing to the long period of political oppression under
which the Jews lived, the arts, industries, sciences,
literature, and philosophy were necessarily neglected.
Q. What were the Jews distinguished for ?
A. For their religion.
Q. What was the great hope held out by this religion ?
A. The hope of a Messiah—a Christ1 who would deliver the
Jews from foreign bondage.
Q. What did Jesus teach in regard to this national hope ?
A$J He offered himself as the Messiah of the Jews.
Q. Did he deliver the Jews from their foreign yoke ?
A. No. The Jews are still without a state or kingdom of
their own, and continue to be oppressed in many lands.
Q. Do they still look forward to “ a Christ” ?
A. Most of them do, but the educated among them have
abandoned the hope of a Messiah, and have wisely
adopted the countries in which they live as their own.
1. Q.
A.
2. Q.
A.
3. Q.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
The word Christ is derived from “ Kristus,” a Greek word, meaning anointed.
44
�THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS
45
11. Q. What other political ideas did Jesus have ?
A. He believed that all the kingdoms of the earth belonged
to the devil, but that some day he would himself be
recognised as the king of kings.1
12. Q. What was his attitude towards Caesar ?
A. He recognised his authority, and commanded others to do
the same.
13. Q. Did Jesus denounce war ?
A. No; at least not directly.
14. Q. Or slavery ?
A. He kept silent on that question.
15. Q. Did slavery exist in his day?
A. Slavery of the worst kind existed almost everywhere at
the time.
16. Q. What did he say in regard to peace and goodwill ?
A. That he did not come “ to bring peace, but a sword.”
17. Q. What else ?
A. To his disciples he said: “ My peace I give unto you.”
. 18. Q. Have all who called themselves Christians lived in peace
with one another ?
A. No. They have repeatedly waged war against one
another, and have persecuted one another.
19. Q. Which have been the worst persecutors in the world ?
A. Without doubt, those who have called themselves
Christians.
20. Q. Could the teachings of Jesus be held responsible for it ?
A. Only a part of it.
21. Q. For example ?
A. When he said that they who did not believe on him were
the children of the devil and would be damned.2
22. Q. Did Jesus wish to compel people to believe on him ?
A. No; but if they did not, they would be punished severely.
1 See Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness.
2 The following are a few of the sayings of Jesus on this subject:—“But those,
mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay
them before me” (Luke xix. 27). “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear
your words.... it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in
the day of judgment than for them ” (Matt. x. 14). “And he that believeth not
shall be damned ” (Mark xvi. 10). “ Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire ”
(Matt. xxv. 41). “ He that will not hear the church, let him be to thee as a heathen ”
(Matt, xviii. 17). Read also what Jesus is reported to have said about throwing into
the fire the “ branch” that abideth not in him ; about those who refuse to confess
him before men; also, his words, “ Many are called, but few are chosen,” etc.
�46
A NEW CATECHISM
23. Q. What did his followers do ?
A. To save people from this awful punishment, they perse
cuted or compelled them to become Christians.
24. Q. Define persecution.
A. It is an attempt to maintain an opinion by violence.
25. Q. Explain further.
A. It is a conspiracy to conquer the reason without en
lightening it.1
26. Q. Has persecution ever helped the truth ?
A. Never. It has only caused much suffering, and tempted
people to commit perjury from fear.
27. Q. What is the lesson we should learn of this ?
A. That freedom and fraternity are better than hate and
persecution.2
28. Q. Did Jesus believe in liberty of conscience ?
A. No religious teacher claiming divine authority ever has.
29. Q. What other subjects did Jesus talk about ?
A. About love, faith, charity, brotherhood, goodness, justice,
and forgiveness.
80. Q. How are his teachings on these subjects regarded ?
A. Very highly.
31. Q. What were some of the most beautiful sayings of Jesus?
A. His parable of the Good Samaritan; the Prodigal Child ;
the shepherd’s care for the lost sheep; the wise and
foolish virgins ; the sower who went out to sow his seed;
the widow and her mite; and his gracious invitation to
the weary and heavy laden to come unto him for rest.
32. Qu What is the value of these sayings of Jesus?
A. They are as sweet as any human words can be.
33. Q. Did Jesus ever say or do anything which it would be
wrong for us to imitate ?
A. Yes. In moments of anger and impatience he “ cursed ”
and called his enemies evil names.3 He used physical
force4 against the money changers; disregarded the
« «The mouth from which such heresies proceed should be stopped with blows from
a Bludgeon, and not with arguments.”—From a letter to Pope Innocent II. by St.
Bernard (comp. Abelard, by de Reimusat and Jules Simon). See also chapter on
“ Creeds.”
2 See conclusion of chapter on “ The Earth.”
8 Luther defended his vehemence often by quoting the example of Jesus: “ What
think ye of Christ.... when he calls the Jews an adulterous and perverse generation,
a progeny of vipers, hypocrites, and the children of the devil ? What think ye of
Paul, who calls his enemies of the gospel dogs and seducers ?” (Luther’s Table Talk).
* See the story of his using a whip against the money changers.
�THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS
84. Q.
A.
35. Q.
A.
86. Q.
A.
87. Q.
A.
38. Q.
A.
39. Q.
A.
40. Q.
A.
47
laws of health and cleanliness; destroyed the property
of his neighbours—
Give me particulars.
In those days, in the Orient, people ate with their hands,
as no knives or forks were used, and when Jesus was
asked why his disciples did not wash their hands before
eating he defended the unclean habit by saying that
nothing which went in from the outside could hurt
anybody.1 This is also the doctrine of the Dervishes,
who never wash.
Is it true that nothing going in from the outside can
hurt us ?
No. Disease germs, foul gases, poisonous foods or drugs,
intoxicating liquors, etc., frequently hurt both mind and
body.
When did Jesus destroy property belonging to his
neighbours ?
When he caused to be drowned a herd of two thousand
swine, without first securing from their owner the right
to do so.23
Would anyone be permitted to do to-day what Jesus did
on that occasion ?
Our laws punish such acts.
But if Jesus was God, could he not do as he pleased ?
If that be the defence, then it were foolish for us to have
any opinion whatever of him. If Jesus could do as he
pleased without regard to right or wrong, as we under
stand them, then we would have no standard by which
to judge, even that he was good. We cannot respect or
love anybody who is merely an enigma.
Would it be fair to infer from the above instances that
Jesus was severe and unjust ?
No. There are many passages which describe him as
the gentlest, kindest, and friendliest of men—one who
“ went about doing good.”
Is not that a contradiction ?
Not unless we regard him as a God, for there is in all
men a better and a lower nature. The best of men are
not always at their best; neither was Jesus.
1 No doubt the monks and anchorites of the Middle Ages who cultivated “ dirt ”
as a virtue remembered this reputed saying of Jesus.
3 Matt. viii. 28-34.
�18
A NEW CATECHISM
41. Q. Is it well to disclose both sides of a man’s character ?
A. It is necessary to do so. We cannot understand human
nature unless we understand also the contradictions of
human nature.
42. Q. What did Jesus teach about marriage?
A. He preferred celibacy,1 and commended the example of
those who became eunuchs23 the kingdom of heaven’s
for
sake.3
43. Q. What did Jesus teach about the future, or the “kingdom
of heaven ”?
A. He taught that the other world was more important
than this, and, instead of endeavouring to right wrong
conditions here and now, he counselled non-resistance
to evil.4
44. Q. What did he say to those who wept and suffered, and
were persecuted and robbed of their liberties and
rights ?
A. To rejoice and be exceeding glad, for they would have
their reward in the other world.5
45. Q. What effect would such teaching have ?
A. While it might help some people to bear the ills of life,
it would unnerve the many for all efforts to right their
present wrongs.
46. Q. What other effect would it have ?
A. It would encourage the rich and the powerful to answer
the cry for justice of the oppressed by suggesting to
them that they ought to be satisfied with the reward
promised them in the next world.
1 How the Church has interpreted Jesus’s teaching on this subject may be seen
from the following: “ If any one shall say that the married state is to be preferred to
the state of virginity or celibacy, let him be accursed........” (Canon of the Council
of Trent).
2 In one of the Apocryphal Gospels a woman asks Jesus how long this sinful
world will last. To which Jesus answers : as long as you women marry and bear
children.
3 It is curious how the Catholics, who believe in celibacy of the priesthood,
make St. Peter—a married man—their favourite Apostle, while the Protestants,
who believe in marriage, show a decided preference for St. Paul, the celibate.
4 “Him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to
every man that asketh of thee, and from him that taketh away thy goods, ask them
not again ” (Luke vi. 29, 30). “ Resist not evil; unto him that smiteth thee on the
one cheek offer also the other ” (Luke vi. 29).
5 Matt. v. 12 ; also: “Blessed be ye poor, and ye that weep now, and mourn, for
great is your reward in heaven ” (Matt. v. 3, 4, and Luke vi. 20-23). “ But woe
unto you that are rich, for ye have received your reward ” (Luke vi. 24, 25).
�THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS
49
47. Q. Would the poor have any right to complain of their con
dition now if they are to be rewarded for it in the
future ?
A. No; for they could be assured that justice would be done
to them in the next world, and that, since their op
pressors would be punished there, they should be left
unmolested here.1
48. Q. Is it right to be contented with poverty and oppression ?
A. It would be treason against our fellows to encourage
these evils by submitting to them.
49. Q. Is it blessed to be poor, weak, and wretched ?
A. It is miserable.
50. Q. What should we do, then ?
A. Do everything to better our condition, now and here.
51. Q. Sum up the views of Jesus on the question of justice.
A. Those who have their reward now, like Dives, for
instance, will open their eyes in hell; while those who,
like Lazarus, suffer here, will go to Abraham’s bosom.2
52. Q. Did not Jesus denounce the evil doers ?
A. Yes, he spoke in tones of righteous indignation against
all who, knowing the good, preferred the evil.
53. Q. On the whole, then, has the influence of Jesus been good
or bad ?
A. His words of love and goodness have made the centuries
fragrant, but his theological doctrines have caused much
hatred and bloodshed.
1 Comp, parable of the wheat and the tares growing together until the day of the
harvest.
2 Luke xvi. 19.
E
�CHAPTER IX.
THE CHURCH
1. Q. Define the word “ Church.”
A. It is derived from the Greek “ kuriakon,” which means
[the house] of the Lord.
2. Q. Define the idea.
A. At first the Church was a republic of fellow-believers—
an organisation in the Spirit; then arose gradually a
distinction between clergymen and laymen. Teaching
in the Church was monopolised by the priest and the
bishop, who also claimed the power to save and to damn
the soul for ever. From a republic the Church became
a corporation.
8. Q. Which are the oldest Churches ?
A. The Catholic, Greek, Armenian, and Nestorian ; and the
modern Churches are the Lutheran, Episcopalian,
Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, etc.
4. Q. What other Churches are there ?
A. The Liberal—namely, Unitarian, Universalist, and Un
sectarian.
5. Q. Do they fellowship with one another ?
A. More now than formerly. The progress of the sciences
has stopped all sectarian persecutions which once dis
honoured humanity.
6. Q. Do they ever co-operate in the field of charity and
reform ?
A. More in this country than in any other, which is a very
hopeful sign, for it shows that the spirit of toleration is
spreading.
7. Q. What has contributed to this broadening process ?
A. Education and commerce ; also the labours and examples
of brave men and women.
8. Q. Which is the most formidable Christian Church to-day ?
A. The Catholic.
fiO
�THE CHURCH
61
9. Q. How did the Catholic Church arise?
A. It was organised about the time the Roman Empire
became converted to Christianity. The Emperor Con
stantine1 was the first imperial head and protector of the
Catholic Church.
10. Q. What kind of a man was he ?
A. He was both cruel and weak. Among many other crimes
he murdered his wife and son; notwithstanding, he pre
sided in his imperial robes at the important councils of
the Church.23
11. Q. What effect did his imperial patronage have upon the
early Church ?
A. It made the Church covetous of wealth and influence, and
the clergy ambitious, intriguing, partisan, and intolerant.
12. Q. What else ?
A. It makes the prelates, pontiffs, and popes claim authority
over all things, both temporal and spiritual.
13. Q. Did the Catholic Church prosper ?
A. It became in time more powerful than the Roman Empire.
14. Q. What use did the Church make of this vast power ?
A. It added to its pecuniary and political resources, domi
nated the consciences of people, put to death all the
heretics, and announced that no one could have God for
a father unless he accepted also the Church for a mother.9
15. Q. What is the verdict of history on the persecutions of the
Catholic Church ?
A. That it has caused more unnecessary suffering in the
world than any other institution.4*
16. Q. Is the Catholic Church sorry to-day for her past ?
A. The Catholic Church believes it can never do wrong,
therefore it has no regrets.^
1 Comp. Jules Simon’s La Liberte de Conscience, pp. 32-35.
2 Constantine, in his silken robe embroidered with threads of gold, presided at
the Council of Nice, called to take action against the Aryan heresy. At the Council
of Chalcedon the priests presented the following address to the emperor : “ You have
established the Faith, exterminated the heretics. That the king of heaven may
preserve the king of the earth is the prayer of the Church and the clergy,” etc.
3 Consult Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man.
4 See Lecky’s History of European Morals.
6 Consult Jules Simon on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Liberte de Conscience,
pp. 43-84. In his Histoire de France Henry Martin quotes those terrible
words of the Catholic priest in reply to the complaint of the soldiers that they could
not tell the Catholics from the heretics : “ Kill, kill all,” answered the priest, “ God
will know his own ” (Tuez, tuez, Dieu reconnaitra les siens). The joy of Catholic
�52
17. Q.
A.
18. Q.
A.
19. Q.
A.
20. Q.
A.
21. Qr
A.
22. Q.
A.
23. Q.
A.
A NEW CATECHISM
Why does she not persecute to-day?
The State will not permit it.
Has the influence of the Catholic Church been only bad?
No, she has also served humanity in many ways—by
protecting the poor, by encouraging art, and by bringing
about a European coalition against Asiatic invaders.
How did the Catholic Church lose its prestige ?
In the sixteenth century a German monk rebelled and
succeeded in splitting up the Church. This was Martin
Luther,1 the author of the religious movement known as
the Reformation.
Do all the Protestant Churches date from the Reforma
tion ?
Except the Church of England.
Who was the founder of that ?
Henry VIII., of England, who quarrelled with the Pope.
What was the occasion of the quarrel ?
The king wished to put away his wife for another woman,
but the Pope would not give his consent.2
What did the king do then ?
He founded a new Church, of which he became the abso
lute master, and which let him do as he pleased.3
Europe over the massacre of St. Bartholomew was so great that the French Parlia
ment ordered an annual procession in Paris to commemorate the event. Fortu
nately, the decree was never carried out. In Rome, however, Gregory XTTT.
organised a procession which went about the streets chanting and praising God for
the massacre of the heretics. This same Pope also ordered a fresco representing the
scenes of murder on the night of St. Bartholomew, which may be seen to this day in
the Sistine Ch? pel. In a sermon preached before this Pope only a few days after
the massacre, Muret, the priest, said: “ 0 memorable night! Most glorious of all
the festivals of the Church. In that night even the stars shone more brilliantly,”
etc. The address concludes by calling Charles IX., Catherine his queen, and
the Pope the most blessed in all the world, for being instrumental in bringing about
the massacre of the Huguenots (Les Predicateurs de la Ligue Labitte !).
1 On his death-bed Martin Luther was able to say that he had conquered three
Popes, one king, and one emperor.
2 There were other points of dispute, but the desire of the king to put away
Queen Katherine for a younger woman precipitated the breach between England and
Rome. For a long time after, the Church of England remained, except in name,
Roman Catholic in belief and practice. Consult Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History. It
is said that Charles V., being related to the English Queen, used his influence to
prevent the Pope from granting a divorce. Henry married six times, sent three of
his wives to the block, and also beheaded Sir Thomas Moore for refusing to acknow
ledge him as the supreme head of the Church. Leo X. had called Henry VIH. “The
Defender of the Faith,” for having written against Luther.
3 Henry VIII. altered the coronation oath to read: ‘ ‘ The King shall then swear
that he shall maintain and keep the lawful rights and liberties of old time granted
by the righteous Christian Kings of England to the Holy Church of England, not
�TEE CHURCH
24. Q.
A.
25. Q.
A.
26. Q.
A.
27. Q.
A.
28. Q.
A.
29. Q.
A.
30. Q.
A.
S3
What is the name of the Church of America ?
America has no State or National Church.
Are all Churches tolerated here ?
Yes, and all religions ; but while the State in America
makes no appropriation for the Church, in exempting
Church property from taxation it indirectly compels the
people to support the Churches.
Is the Church to-day on an equal footing with the State
in any country ?
No. The Church, which once ruled both kings and
peoples, is now the servant of the State everywhere.
What does that imply ?
That a Church which obeys the secular power, instead of
commanding it, cannot be a divine institution.1
Is there any recognition of Christianity in the American
Constitution ?
No. The word “ God ” or “ Christian ” is not men
tioned in the American Constitution.2
Have the Protestants ever persecuted in the name of
religion ?
Almost as much as the Catholics, but the Protestants are
ashamed of their past persecutions.3
Were the persecutors, whether Catholic or Protestant,
always bad men ?
No. It was frequently their sincerity which led them to
persecute. Believing sincerely that heresy would cause
damnation of souls, they used both fire and sword to
exterminate it.4
prejudicial to his jurisdiction and dignity royal." Here we have the first clear pronunciamento of the supremacy of the Secular over the Spiritual state. The West
minster divines, who formulated one of the most autocratic creeds, presented the
same to Parliament as “ their humble advice.”
1 Formerly the Church met this objection with the plea that the King was the
“anointed terrestrial Governor under Christ, and that obedience to him was
obedience to God.” But the force of this argument has passed away with the
“divine right ” of kings. The modern State exercises its authority as coming from
Man—not as coming from God.
2 George Washington, in his message to the Senate, in 1776, stated that the
American Government was “in no sense founded on the Christian religion.”
8 Schaff, Greeds of Christendom.
4 It has also been suggested that the heretic was burned at the stake because it
was easier to silence him by fire than by arguments. The Church in those days
claimed the right to kill all whom it could not convert. Consult Story of the
Crusades, the Inquisition, etc.
•
�54
A NEW CATECHISM
31. Q. Why is not heresy denounced to-day as vehemently as
before ?
A. Because we have learned that honest doubt is more
religious than blind belief.1
82. Q. Can a man who does not know how to doubt know how to
believe ?
A. Not intelligently.
33. Q. What do we call the faith that is unintelligent?
A. Superstition.
84. Q. Analyse and define superstition.
A. To attribute to an object virtues or powers which it does
not possess is a superstition.
35. Q. Give an example.
A. To carry on one’s person a chain, an image, or a crucifix,
believing it to possess beneficent powers or virtues,
would be a superstition.
.'.36. Q. What is an object called when invested with imaginary
virtues ?
A. A fetish.
1 “There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds ”
(Tennyson, In Memoriam, xcvi.).
�CHAPTER X.
THE LIBERAL CHURCH
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1. Q. How do the Liberal Churches differ from the orthodox ?
A. The Unitarian and other Liberal Churches submit, in a
measure, the doctrines of religion to the test of reason.
2. Q. Do not the orthodox do the same ?
A. Not to the same extent, for they believe that revelation is
a higher authority than reason.
3. Q. What are the beliefs of the Liberal Churches ?
A. It is very difficult to tell, for the Liberal Churches follow
neither revelation nor reason exclusively, but try to do a
little of both.
Cannot revelation be reconciled with reason ?
When revelation agrees with reason, there is only reason.
It is when it disagrees with reason that there is, or is
thought to be, also a revelation.
Illustrate your meaning.
When revelation teaches that man is mortal, it is only
repeating what we know ; but when it teaches that man
was created perfect, it teaches what is contrary to our
reason or experience, and so becomes or assumes the
character of a revelation.
What are some of the orthodox doctrines which Liberal
Churches reject?
The atonement; eternal punishment; plenary inspira
tion of the Bible ; a personal devil; total depravity, etc.
Mention a few of the orthodox doctrines which the
Liberal Churches accept ?
A personal God; the sinlessness of Jesus; immortality
of the soul; the duty of prayer; the superiority of the
Bible to any other literature, and the rites of baptism and
communion. Some Liberal Churches are more rational
istic than others.
How do the Liberal Churches prove their position ?
Generally from the Bible.
55
�56
A NEW CATECHISM
9. Q. How do the orthodox prove theirs ?
A. Exclusively from the Bible.
10. Q. What is the main emphasis of the Liberal Churches ?
A. They make little of theology, and a great deal of
character.
11. Q. Are the Liberal Churches growing ?
A. Not numerically, but their influence has been large in the
religious world. They have compelled the orthodox to
abandon many crude and foolish beliefs and practices,
and have helped to withdraw the attention of people
from theology to science, philosophy, and ethics. The
Liberal Churches have rendered Religion the inestimable
service of recalling her from barren dialectics to concrete
realities.
12. Q. What other religious movements are there in this
country ?
A. Spiritualism, Theosophy, Christian Science, etc.
13. Q. What do Spiritualists teach ?
A. That we can communicate with the spirits of the dead.
14. Q. How do they attempt to prove the claim ?
A. By quotations from the Bible, and the testimony of men
and women now living.
15. Q. Who are these ?
A. Generally mediums, who make their living by giving
seances or sittings.
16. Q. What is the reputation of these mediums ?
A. It is not of the very best.
17. Q. What is Theosophy ?
A. The doctrine that there are “wise men,” or “adepts,” or
“ masters,*’ who have become divinities, and who direct
human affairs and reveal the future to the living.
18. Q. What are the other doctrines of Theosophy ?
A. The doctrine of Karma or Justice, and of Reincarnation.1
19. Q. What is the value of Theosophy as a religion ?
A. It is a mere speculation.
20. Q. What is Christian Science?
A. The belief that a certain New England woman has recently
received a special revelation from God.
1 “We reap in this life as we have sown in some previous existence ” is the funda
mental idea in Buddhism, and in all the religious philosophies of the Orient.
�THE LIBERAL CHURCH
57
21. Q. State the nature of the revelation.
A. Nothing exists but God; God is health and purity;
therefore disease and sin are illusions.
22. Q. Is that logical ?
A. No ; because, if God is all, whose illusions then are sick
ness and sin ?
23. Q. Is disease an illusion of the “ mortal mind ”?1
A. Disease is the effect of a cause or causes, such as
drunkenness, debauchery, dirt, etc. If these causes are
illusions, then are their effects illusions too.
24. Q. Can the evil effect of drunkenness, or dirt, be treated
away without first removing their causes ?
A. It is not possible.
25. Q. What else do Christian Scientists claim ?
A. They claim to treat successfully, for a sum of money,
all manner of diseases except those pertaining to
surgery.2
26. Q. What do Christian Scientists do with money ?
A. They use it for the necessary wants of the body.
27. Q. Do the Christian Scientists believe in the body ?
A. No.
28. Q. What would be an impartial judgment of Christian
Science ?
A. Like all human systems, it contains both truth and error.
29. Q. Have we any religious movements in this country from
which the supernatural element is altogether absent ?
A. There are the Ethical, Positivist, and other rationalistic
organisations, which make science the highest authority
in matters of faith and conducts
80. Q. What is the nature of their teaching ?
A. It is purely practical. To make the highest use of this
life without any reference to a life before, or a life after;
without any reference, either, to gods, demons, heaven,
or hell.
31. Q. Do they deny God and the future ?
A. No; because they know that they do not know enough,
as yet, on these questions to speak definitely and
positively about them.
1 The Christian Scientists, by calling evil “mortal mind,” have only changed
the name without doing away with the thing.
2 See Mrs. Eddy’s defence for going to a dentist (“ Miscellaneous
�58
A NEW CATECHISM
82. Q. Is that a proper attitude of the mind ?
A. Yes, and it is also the most hopeful, for until we
know our ignorance we will not seek for knowledge.1
83. Q. Is knowledge of your ignorance the beginning of wisdom ?
A. Yes, and the promise of coming enlightenment.2
1 “ Nothing keeps a man from knowledge and wisdom like thinking he has both ”
(Sir Wm. Temple).
2 As this Catechis m is written from the standpoint of the non-supernatural, it
will be unnecessary to give in this place a fuller exposition of the philosophy of these
Independent Societies.
�CHAPTER XI.
THE CREEDS
1. Q. What is a creed ?
A. A rule of faith, or an authoritative expression of the
doctrines of a Church.1
2. Q. What is the origin of the word ?
A. It is taken from the first word in the Apostles’ Creed
(credo—I believe).
3. Q. What is the origin of the idea ?
A. The differences and disagreements among believers are
responsible for the creeds of Christendom.2
4. Q. How early did dissensions arise in the Church ?
A. The first dissension was between the Apostles Peter and
Paul; the former representing the Jewish, and the latter
the Gentile, party in the Church.
5. Q. Was the dissension serious ?
A. The Apostle Paul considered it so; for he charged
Peter with dissimulation, hypocrisy, and unrighteous
conduct.34
6. Q. What was the primary object of a creed ?
A. To enforce uniformity of belief, and to excommunicate
the heretics?
v. Q. What, then, did these creeds really try to do ?
A. To prevent anybody from thinking independently.
8. Q. Which is considered the oldest Christian creed ?
A. The Apostles’ Creed, which we know for certain was not
written by the Apostles.
1 Called also a “ symbol,” or “ confession ’’ of faith—Symbolicum Apostolicum.
2 It is claimed that Jesus called for a creed when he said : “ Every one who will
confess me before men, him will I also confess before my father who is in heaven ”
(Matt. x. 32, 33; Rom. x. 9, 10).
3 Read the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians; and also the first chapters of
Revelation and the Acts of the Apostles.
4 Heresy is from a Greek word, and means "toexamine,” ar " to select.”
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A NEW CATECHISM
9. Q. Why, then, is it so called?
A. For the same reason that the Gospels have been ascribed
to the Apostles—to give them a greater authority.
10. Q. Who, then, is the author of the Apostles’ Creed ?
A. The question of its authorship is involved in as great an
obscurity as that of the Gospels.’
11. Q. What are the fundamentals in this creed ?
A. Belief in the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception of
Jesus, and the resurrection of the flesh.
12. Q. What proofs are given to establish these claims ?
A. None whatever. They are assumed to be true.
18. Q. Do the Mohammedans and Buddhists offer proofs for the
doctrines of their creeds ?
A. No, they assume theirs too.
14. Q. How are we to know which assumption is the truth ?
A. The general custom has been to assume that the creed of
the country one is born in is the true one.
15. Q. Is this a good custom ?
A. It is a very bad custom, for it deprives us of the greatest
privilege of life—the pursuit of truth; it makes truth a
denominational or sectarian possession, the creature of
climate and geographical boundaries; and it makes us
believe that, while we ourselves are inspired and chosen
of God, all others are heathens.
16. Q. Tell me now of the Nicene Creed.
A. This was formulated by an assembly of 318 bishops in
the city of Nicsea, near Constantinople, in the year 325.
It excommunicated the Arians1 and fulminated a curse
against them for questioning the doctrine of the Trinity.
17. Q. What is the next important creed ?
A. The Athanasian, which is the most unpleasantly dogmatic
and intolerant of all ancient creeds, and which is unique
in its damnatory clauses. Yet it was held in high
esteem,2 and was sung as a hymn in all the Churches,
and is still in force in official Christendom.
18. Q. What is the creed of the Greek Church ?
A. The Greek or the Eastern Church holds that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father only, and not also from
1 The followers of Arius, who had heretical views about the divinity of Christ.
2 See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. i., p, 41.
�THE CREEDS
61
the Son. For this heresy it was excommunicated by the
(jatholic Church, but the Greek Church in return ex
communicated the Catholic Church.
19. Q. What is the creed of the Church of England ?
A. It consists of Thirty-nine Articles adopted at various
times, and finally authoritatively promulgated in 1628 by
Charles I. as “ His Majesty’s Declaration.”
20. Q. What was its object?
A. “ For the abolishing of diversity of opinions,” and to
drive out of the country popish and Calvinistic doctrines.
21. Q. Was subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles compulsory
in England ?
A. Yes. Even the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge
required of every graduate to subscribe to the Thirtynine Articles before he could receive his diploma; a Bill
of Parliament compelled all teachers and preachers to
subscribe to them.
22. Q. Did this Bill accomplish its object ?
A. No.
23. Q. Can compulsion prevent people from thinking ?
A. It can only prevent them from teaching as they think.
24. Q. What are people who think one thing and teach another
called ?
A. Hypocrites.
25. Q. What follows ?
A. That compulsion only makes hypocrites.
26. Q. Which is the most important of modern creeds ?
A. The Westminster Creed, formulated by an assembly con
sisting of one hundred and fifty members elected and
convened by an Act of Parliament in 1643 during the
brief reign of Presbyterianism in England.
27. Q. What are the leading ideas of this creed ?
A. Predestination, salvation of elect infants1 only, the
damnation of all peoples and nations not Christian, and
the use of physical force against all heretics.
28. Q. How does it define the Doctrine of Damnation ?
• A. As a ‘‘judicial decree of God ” by which, “on account of
Adam’s fall”...... “God was pleased to ordain” others
“ to dishonour and wrath ”—to “ everlasting death ”......
1 “ Modern Calvinists admit the probability of salvation of all infants ” (Schafi,
vol. i., p. 795).
�62
A NEW CATECHISM
29. Q.
A.
30. Q.
A.
31. Q.
A.
82. Q.
A.
33. Q.
A.
“ and their number is so certain and definite that it
cannot be either increased or diminished.”1
How does it recommend physical force against heresy ?
It says : “ The civil magistrate hath authority, and it is
his duty to take order that the unity and peace be pre
served in the Church, that all heresies be suppressed, all
abuses in worship prevented ”;2 and Article IV., in Chapter
XX., reads : “ They (the heretics) may lawfully be called
to account, and proceeded against by the power of the
Civil Magistrate.” And verse 109 of the Catechism
states that the “ Ten Commandments forbid tolerating a
false religion.”3
Is an absolutely creedless Church possible ?
No. An organisation, whatever its end, must have a
platform, a declaration of principles, to serve as a bond
of union, which, in the larger sense, is a creed.
Why, then, are creeds denounced?
Not because they contain a statement of belief, but
because the statement is narrow, intolerant, and unpro
gressive.
Which is the best creed ?
The creed which is most in accord with the facts of
science, and which keeps abreast of the increasing
knowledge of man.
State the difference between a creed founded on authority
and one founded on science.
The one is finished, the other is still growing; the one is
an echo of the past, the other is an accent and a voice
of the present; the one is a statement, the other is a
movement; the one can be accepted only on conditions
impossible to the reason, the other welcomes all the
strain which the progress of knowledge can bring to bear
upon it.4
1 Original sin was considered so wicked that one of the clergymen declared : “ If
a man had never been born, he would yet have been damned for it.”
2 The American Churches have modified this clause.
8 “ It is not only lawful to punish to the death such as labour to subvert the true
religion, but the magistrates and people are bound to do so unless they will provoke
the wrath of God against themselves ” (John Knox, History of Mary I., Queen of
England; E. P. Dutton & Co.).
4 “ There is a fire-fly in the southern clime,
Which shineth only when upon the wing.
So is it with the mind: when once we rest,
We darken.”
—Bailey, in Festus.
�THE CREEDS
63
84. Q. Should we ever subscribe to a creed which forbids freedom
of thought and speech ?
A. No. The dignity of man is in his reason, the dignity of
reason is in freedom; to destroy freedom is to destroy
reason, and without reason we would cease to be
human.1
35. Q. Why is freedom of speech indispensable ?
A. Because without freedom we can never know whether the
priest or the teacher says what he wishes to say, or only
what he must say.
1 “Yet one thing there is that ye shall not slay,
Even thought.”
—Swinbubne.
�CHAPTER Xn.
THE CLERGY
1. Q.
A.
2. Q.
A.
3. Q.
A.
4. Q.
A.
5. Q.
A.
6. Q.
A.
7. Q.
A.
What is a clergyman ?
A man who has received “ holy orders.”
From whom has he received them ?
From the Church, and by the laying-on of hands.1
Why is he called a clergyman ?
The word is derived from “clerus” or “clericus,” which
in Greek, signifies a “ lot,” or anything by which a vote
is cast.
What does this signify ?
That the clergymen were elected by the casting of lots.2
What other explanation is there ?
It has also been supposed that the Greek word clericus
means “rank,” which term was applied to the Apostles
and the early teachers to indicate their authority.3
By what other names is a clergyman known ?
Priest, prelate, pontiff, bishop, pope, etc.
What do the clergy claim ?
That Jesus, the King, has committed “the keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven to officers of the Church,” by virtue
whereof “ they have power respectively to retain and
remit sins ”...... “to shut that kingdom,” and “ to open
it.”4
1 “ Receive the Holy Ghost by the imposition of our hands ” is the formula oi
ordination.
2 This was the opinion of St. Augustine and also of Jerome. St. Mattias was
elected by the Apostles to take the place of Judas by casting lots. The usual custom
was to write the names of the different candidates and put them in a box ; then,
having offered prayers, the box was shaken, and the first name that fell out was
considered “ chosen of the Lord. ”
3 Bauer, the German scholar, is the advocate of this theory.
4 See Westminster Creed. The following words of Jesus are quoted both by
Catholics and Protestants to establish this claim : “And I will give unto thee the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be
be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven ” (Matt. xvi. 19). Compare this with what is said in chapter on “ Prayer ”
about controlling God.
64
�THE CLERGY
8. Q.
A.
9. Q.
A.
10. Q.
A.
11. Q.
A.
12. Q.
A.
13. Q.
A.
14. Q.
A.
15. Q.
A.
16. Q.
65
Have the priests exercised great power in the world ?
Yes, and have enjoyed also exceptional privileges.
What were these privileges ?
Exemption from civil duties, taxes or contributions to
public works. In many countries a clergyman, what
ever his crime, could not be made to appear before a civil
magistrate.1
What use have the clergy made of these privileges ?
On the whole, they have abused them, for which cause
they have been deprived of nearly all of their old
privileges.
How can a man become a clergyman to-day?
By submitting to an examination to prove his adherence
to the creed of the Church to which he applies for
admission.
Are these examinations as strict as formerly ?
No, the candidates for holy orders may now exercise what
is called “ mental reservation.”
What is that ?
It is the liberty, while subscribing to the creed just as it
is, to read one’s own meaning into it—to accept it as true
theologically only, and not also philosophically. The
candidate may answer the question, “ Bo you believe ?”
by “I do,” while in his own mind he may add:
“ Not as it is commonly interpreted, but as I interpret
it. ”
Illustrate this by an example.
He may say, “ I believe in the ‘ word of God,’ ” but
mean by it not only the Christian Scriptures to which the
creeds limit inspiration, but all that he considers true
and pure wherever found. In the same way he may
believe in the divinity of Christ, meaning by it that all
good and noble men are divine.
Do the people always understand his meaning ?
If he wished to be understood, he would not resort to
“ mental reservation.”
Should a clergyman not in full accord with his Church
continue to remain in its fellowship ?
1 Comp. Benefit of Clergy in England. In Catholic countries, if anyone struck a
priest he was excommunicated for life, absolution being withheld from him until
the hour of death.
F
�66
A NEW CATECHISM
A. To a conscientious and fine-fibred soul, such a relation
would be intolerable.1
17. Q. But should not a clergyman wait until his people are
ready for the new ideas ?
A. Yes, if he means to follow his people, but not if he wishes
to be a teacher and a guide.
1 James Martineau quotes the praise of a Frenchman lavished on this class of
clergymen : “ Our clergy, to be sure, are all perjured ; but, then, how charmingly
liberal ” (Essays and Reviews, vol. ii., p. 187).
�CHAPTER XIII.
PRAYER AND SALVATION
1. Q. What is prayer ?
A. It is a supplication addressed to God, or a desire for com
munion with him.
2. Q. Do people ever pray also to the laws of nature ?
A. No.
3. Q. Or to great ideals or visions ?
A. No; prayer is always addressed to a person, because a
person alone can hear and answer prayer.
4. Q. Do all who pray believe in a personal God ?
A. They should; for if God be not a person, he would not
be different from the laws of nature or the ideals of the
mind.
5. Q. What is a person ?
A. One who knows that he is himself and no other.
6. Q. Can God be a person?
A. He cannot be a God and a person at the same time.
7. Q. Why?
A. To be a god is to be infinite; to be a person is to be
finite. The infinite cannot be conscious of itself, for
such consciousness would imply that it distinguished
itself from something else, and was not, therefore, the
“ All!” To be able to say, “ This is I,” the infinite
must also be able to say, “ That is not I,” which would
mean that the infinite was not infinite.
8. Q. Can there not be an infinite person ?
A. No, as there cannot be an infinite finite.
9. Q. How did the habit of prayer originate ?
A. It originated in the desire of people to appease the anger
and secure the favour of invisible beings.
10. Q. Give an example.
A. At the close of a long drought the Pope, Archbishop, or
minister composes a prayer for rain, which is addressed
to God, believing that he permitted the drought and can
be entreated to discontinue it.
67
�68
A NEW CATECHISM
11. Q. Are such prayers ever answered ?
A. Yes, because a drought cannot last for ever.
12. Q. Does it not happen frequently that while some are pray
ing for one thing others are as earnestly praying for just
the opposite ?
A. Yes, people are asking God to do in one place what others
somewhere else are just as earnestly entreating or advis
ing him not to do.
13. Q. What do such prayers imply ?
A. That God is an individual ready to adapt himself to the
convenience of everybody.
14. Q. Has God any control over the weather ?
A. No more than over the law of gravity.
15. Q. Do people ever pray to have the law of gravity suspended
for their sake ?
A. Not any more.
16. Q. Why?
A. They have learned that the law of gravitation is invio
lable.
17. Q. When will they stop praying about the weather?
A. When they learn that the laws governing it are equally
inviolable.
18. Q. Is it as useless to pray for wisdom, knowledge, and
goodness ?
A. Yes; for these virtues cannot be given to us—they are
acquired through long effort.
19. Q. But does not prayer help some people to acquire these
gifts ?
A. They think it does, just as an Asiatic thinks he owes all
his good fortune to the amulet on his person or the tattoo
on his arm; or the zealot that he owes his to the
Virgin Mary, or to the candles he burns on some saints
altar.
20. Q. What is meant by prayer as praise ?
A. God, it is said, demands that his creatures should address
him continually in terms of glorification and endear
ment; and, therefore, one object of prayer is to satisfy
this desire of God.
21. Q. Does such an idea do honour to any person ?
A. No. A really great and good being would grow weary
of the genuflections and laudations of interested
votaries.
�PRAYER AND SALVATION
69
22. Q. Where did such an idea come from ?
A. Brom the Orient, where the sultans can only be approached
with prostrations, presents, and salaams.
23. Q. What is the moral argument against prayer ?
A. It makes men look for help from without and by miracle,
and thus cripples and maims their manhood.
24. Q. What else ?
A. It is an attempt to corrupt God by offering him bribes.
When we ask God to do better for us than we deserve,
we ask him to do us a favour for which we offer sweet
words of praise, build churches, give money, go on a
pilgrimage, etc.
25. Q. Is prayer, then, a petition for a favour ?
A. Yes, because it is said that we have no rights, and that
God can, if he so wishes, refuse us everything.
26. Q. Is salvation a favour too ?
A. Yes,, as shown by the malefactor on the cross, who
received the gift of salvation a few moments before he
expired.
27. Q. What are the views of Paul on this question?
A. He says: “ That a man is justified by faith without the
works of the law, for to him that worketh not, but
believeth, his faith is counted for righteousness
the
inference being that we cannot, by anything we do,
merit salvation. And the Westminster Creed says:
“Much less can men not professing the Christian religion
be saved, be they never so diligent to frame their lives
according to the light of nature; and to assert and
maintain that they can is very pernicious, and is to be
detested.”1
1 Luther said: “Every doer of the law and every moral worker is accursed,
for he walketh in the presumption of his own righteousness. He that says the
gospel requires works for salvation, I say, flat and plain, he is a liar ” (Table Talk).
And. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, was as positive in his
opinion that salvation is not something which we may conquer for ourselves, for he
says: “We are well pleased that our parishioners grow more diligent and honest,
that they practise both justice and mercy; in a word, that they are moral men ; but
the truth is, the Methodists know and teach that all this is nothing before God ”
(John Wesley's Works, vol. iii., p. 99). “ Salvation is an act of mercy, and may be
granted even to one who has no merit ” (Catholic Belief, p. 363 ; Father Lambert).
The doctrine of salvation by grace alone is unmistakably taught in the following
texts from the New Testament : John vi. 44 ; Ephs. ii. 8. This is also the position
of St. Augustine in his work on “ Grace.” It is this doctrine which has placed so
high a value on the sacraments and offices of the Church, as well as the mediation
of the priest as a means of salvation.
�70
A NEW CATECHISM
28. Q. What is the effect of such teachings ?
A. They make morality, character, and justice secondary to
Church rites, prayers, and dogmas,1 and they imply also
that we may impose our will upon God.
29. Q. Explain that point.
A. The Atheist says he is without God; the Deist says,
There is a God, but he has no relations whatever with
us; the Theist says, God exists and rules over men, but
by prayers, and praise, penance and sacrifices, we can
influence his will. Consequently, all these views amount
to a practical denial of God.
30. Q. How ?
A. There is little difference between a God who does not
exist and one who exists only outside of human affairs,
or one who can be influenced by us.
81. Ql What is the least desirable form of prayer ?
A. Public prayer, because it is not silent, but loud; not
spontaneous, but formal; not personal, but professional;
not short,, but long; not free, but compulsory; and
because it is oftener addressed to the congregation than
to God. Jesus said distinctly that we should not pray in
public.
32. Q. What is true prayer ?
A. To learn diligently the laws of life, and to obey them.
33. Q. What should we teach people to do instead of praying ?
A. To think.2
1 The Catholic religion is an order to obtain heaven by begging, because it would
be too troublesome to earn it. The priests are the brokers for this transaction ”
(Zimmern’s Life of Schopenhauer, p. 124). This criticism applies with equal force to
the Protestant denominations.
2 The late Master of Balliol said that the longer he lived the less he prayed, but
the more he thought. Read also Emerson’s essay on “ Self-Reliance.” The lost*
according to Dante, are those who can no longer think. Kant says that “ He who
has made great moral progress ceases to pray, for honesty is one of his principal
maxims..’ . He said also that to pray before the people is “to appeal to their sensu
ality ”—it is to “ stoop down to them.”
�CHAPTER XIV.
DEATH
How long has there been death in the world ?
As long as there has been life.1
What is the relation of life to death ?
They are different manifestations of the same powerJ
What is that ?
Movement.
What happens to the body at death ?
It begins to return to life again. The particles of which
the body is composed dissolve, separate, and pass into
their original elements—water, lime, iron, phosphorus,
etc. Thus disengaged, they mix with the sun and the
air, and, having renewed their youth, return to combine
again in new bodies.
5. Q. Do they always meet in the same body ?
A. No. If they did, the dead would rise again.
6. Q. Is death a punishment ?
A. Not any more than life.
7. Q. Why do people fear death ?
A. They have been taught to look upon it as the curse of
God for the sins of man, and that it marks the beginning
of an irrevocable doom; but people are rapidly out
growing these fears.
8? Q- Is death desirable ?
A. Not until we know more about it.
9. Q. But is it always a misfortune ?
A. When it ends a useful career, separates lovers, and makes
orphans of children, it seems a calamity. But when it
brings deliverance to the weary, the aged, and the suffer
ing, it is a blessing.2
1. Q.
A.
2. Q.
A.
3. Q.
A.
4. Q.
A.
1 This is true in a general sense, and as applied to recognised forms erf life.
To speak exactly, something must have lived before anything could die; while some
of the very simplest organisms do not die, but multiply by dividing into halves, each
of which becomes a whole organism.
2 “ Among the many half-pagan legends that were connected with Ireland during
71
�72
A NEW CATECHISM
10. Q. Could there be any progress in the world without death ?
A. As the old leaves must fall from the branches wto make
room for the new and greener ones, so must we die to
make place for the better men and women of the future.
11. Q. How may we learn to overcome the fear of death ?
A. 1. By trying to accommodate ourselves to those laws of
nature which will not accommodate themselves to us.
2. By cultivating in us the same mind that was also in
the bravest and noblest of our race. 3. By remember
ing that we are here to learn how to live, and not
how to die.
12. Q. What is the philosophical conception of death ?
A. That it either secures happiness or ends suffering.
13. Q. How did Socrates view death?
A. That if it ended life, it was not a misfortune; but that if
it freed the soul from the body, it certainly was “ the
greatest of boons.”1
14. Q. Is it wrong to mourn for the dead ?
A. It is natural; for, while we must face our fate like men,
we must also feel it like men.
15. Q. How may we triumph over death ?
A. By loving and serving some noble cause, in which we may
continue to live long after we have passed away.
16. Q. Who have been the greatest benefactors of man ?
*
A. Those who have relieved his mind of one more fear, and
helped him a step further on the road to mental
emancipation.
the Middle Ages, one of the most beautiful is that of the islands of life and death.
In a certain lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands; into the first death
could never enter, but age and sickness, and the weariness of life, were all known
there, and they did their work until the inhabitants, tired of their immortality,
learned to look upon the opposite island as upon a haven of repose ; they launched
their barks upon its gloomy waters ; they touched its shore, and they were at rest ”
(Lecky’s History of European Morals, vol. i., p. 214).
1 “ There is no subject on which the sage will think less than death ” (Spinoza,
Ethics, iv., 67). “Death does not concern us, for when we are, death is not, and
when death is, we are not” (Epicurus, Diog. Laert., x. 27). Noble minds are free
from “the superstitious fears that are the nightmare of the weak” (Lecky, History
of European Morals, vol. i., p. 213). To lose what we cannot miss is not an evil.
�CHAPTER XV.
IMMORTALITY
1. Q. What does immortality mean ?
A. Deathlessness, or life without end.
2. Q. Does it mean that men will never die ?
A. No ; but that they will live for ever after death.
8. Q. In the same form as now ?
A. That is a disputed question.
4. Q. Will the body, too, live again and for ever ?
A. It is generally claimed that the soul alone is immortal.
5. Q. What is the soul ?
A. According to popular views it is a spark, a flame, or an
essence temporarily lodged in the body, but which, at
death, returns to its author—God.
6. Q. Have all men a soul ?
A. It is so believed.
7. Q. Have the animals a soul too ?
A. Few people believe they have.
8. Q. Can the body live without the soul ?
A. No.
9. Q. Can the soul without the body ?
A. People think it can.
10. Q. Have they any knowledge of it ?
A. Not exactly.
11. Q- Has anything been ever seen without a body of some
kind ?
A. No; though some claim to have seen spirits.
12. Q. Can we see anything that has neither form, colour, nor
extension ?
A. It is not possible.
13. Q. Can we even think of a spirit without giving it form and
body in our mind ?
A. We cannot.
73
�74
A NEW CATECHISM
14. Q. What follows ?
A. That soul and body are, so far as we have a right to
speak or think, inseparable, and that, if one is immortal
the other must be so too.
15. Q. Is the desire for immortality general ?
A. Yes, but not universal. The ancient Jews evidently had
no . clear concept of another life; neither have the
Chinese of to-day.
16. Q. State the accepted doctrine of immortality.
A. The soul, at death, leaves the body and goes to another
world, to live there evermore.
17. Q. What is this other world also called?
A. Heaven, Paradise, the Isles of the Blest, and so on.
18. Q. What kind of a place is it ?
A. There are as many different views of heaven as there are
religions.
19. Q. What are some of them ?
A. To the Buddhist, heaven means the cessation of all
desire, or Nirvana ; to the Mohammedan, it is a place of
pleasure and dance; to the Christian, an eternal
Sabbath.
20. Q. Is everybody expected to go to heaven ?
A. No ; only those, it is claimed, who have the true faith ;
all others, according to the creeds, will go to hell.
21. Q. Where is that ?
A. That, too, is in the other world.
22. Q. Will good and great men and women who have not the
“ true faith ” be excluded from heaven ?
A. The creeds say they will.1 And hence the hope of
immortality for the majority of people is not a hope at all.
23. Q. Are heaven and hell both eternal ?
A. That is the ordinary belief.2
24. Q. What further view is there of the other world ?
A. That there is neither a heaven nor a hell, but that the
other world or life is the continuation of this.
25. Q. Will it be a better world than this ?
A. It will if we make it so.
1 “ Peoples earth with demons, hell with men.
And heaven with slaves.”
—Shelley.
® Henry Ward Beecher was the first among modern orthodox preachers to protest
against this doctrine (comp, the Author’s The Passing of Orthodox Religion).
�IMMORTALITY
75
26. Q. Does this view deny the possibility of a conscious here
after ?
A. No, but it leaves the question open.
27. Q. What are the arguments in favour of a conscious im
mortality ?
A. One of the strongest is that the belief in it is universal.1
28. Q. Does that prove it ?
A. No, many universal beliefs have turned out to be illusions
—e.g., the belief that man and the world were specially
created by divine fiat; that the sun, the moon, and the
stars were made to give light to our planet, and to revolve
about it; and the belief in witchcraft, magic, alchemy,
etc.2
29. Q. What is the next argument ?
A. It is said that man, as a soul or a thinking mind, is too
precious not to be preserved for ever.
80. Q. Does that prove his immortality ?
A. Not any more than Caesar’s opinion of himself proved his
divinity.
31. Q. What is the next argument ?
A. The moral argument, which is the strongest.
32. Q. State that.
A. As there is much undeserved suffering in this world, we
instinctively look forward to another where all accounts
shall be squared; where the tears shall be wiped from
the eyes of the sorrowing, and lovers shall meet again.
33. Q. Is this argument conclusive ?
A. It is very strong, but not conclusive. If God is as good
and as powerful now as he will ever be, and yet permits
crime and sorrow, there is no reason to expect a radical
change in his management of the universe at some future
time.
84 Q. What is the proper conception of an after life ?
A. That all we now think, say, and do will go to build the
world of the future, in which we shall all live again and
for ever as influences, tendencies, examples, and moral
1 Since all religions maintain immortality, then, if there is really no such thing,
the whole world is deluded. This is the argument which Pomponatius of Padua
answered by saying: “As there are three religions—those of Moses, Jesus, and
Mohammed—they are all three false, and then the whole world is deluded ; or two,
at least, are false, and then the majority are deluded.”
2 Even Lord Bacon, the founder of the Inductive Method, and Sir Thomas
Browne and Sir Matthew Hade shared the popular faith in witches.
�76
A NEW CATECHISM
and intellectual forces. We are the continuation of the
life that has preceded us, and the source of the life that
shall follow us. The soul of man is the sum of all his
faculties and powers, his thoughts and acts and affections.
These, no more than the particles which compose his
body, perish at death, but become incorporated into new
forms of life, and so on for ever.1
85. Q. What effect would such a belief have upon us ?
A. It would encourage us to cultivate and treasure up only
what is true and noble—to become the brain and soul of
the future.2
1 “ Death appears under this aspect no longer as an annihilation ; for our soul
is as little wiped out as the law of causation can be suspended” (Paul Caras, Whence
and Whither, p. 135).
2 When we have outgrown the illusion that existence is limited to our individual
person, when we expand our being into that of humanity, which is immortal, and
through which we continue to live for ever—death will, indeed, be no more than
“ the blinking of an eyelid, which does not interrupt sight.”
�CHAPTER XVI.
THE CHIEF END OF MAN
1. Q. What is the greatest thing in the world ?
A. Life with honour; for without life we cannot have any
thing else that is good.
2. Q. What, then, is the duty of man ?
A. To seek those things which increase and elevate life.
3. Q. What do we call those acts which make life larger and
better ?
A. Virtues; and those which diminish and degrade life,
vices.
4. Q. By what other names are they called ?
A. Right and wrong; moral and immoral; good and bad.
5. Q. How do we learn what is vice and what is virtue ?
A. Through experience; the accumulated experience of
humanity, as well as our own.
6. Q. Do we learn all we know about right and wrong from
experience ?
A. Positively all.
7. Q. Do we not need a revelation to tell us infallibly about
right and wrong ?
A. No. If we ourselves cannot discern the right from the
wrong, a revelation will be of no more help to us
than to the animals.
8. Q. What other proofs could you offer that a revelation is not
necessary for the purposes of the moral life ?
A. A revelation is only an accident,1 while the moral life is
a law of human nature.
9. Q. What is a law ?
A. An obligation imposed upon us by a higher authority.23
10. Q. What constitutes authority ?
A. Superior knowledge, goodness, and power.
1 An event which happens only once and under irregular or miraculous condi
tions may be termed an accident.
3 “ Law ” is used also in the sense of a formula, or an observed mode of action.
77
�78
A NEW CATECHISM
11. Q. Give me some examples.
A. The authority of the parent over the child; of the teacher
over the pupil; of the State over the individual; of
mankind over the State, and of Nature over all.
12. Q. What is Nature ?
A. The sum of all the forces which keep the world in move
ment.
13. Q. Why is the authority of Nature the highest ?
A. She is the first and oldest parent and teacher of man.
14. Q. Why obey Nature ?
A. Because we have learned through the experience of ages
that we must.1
15. Q. What if we do not ?
A. She will replace us quickly by those who will.
16. Q. There is no alternative, then ?
A. None whatever.
17. Q. What provision has Nature made to induce obedience to
her laws ?
A. She has joined together action and reaction, cause and
consequence.
18. Q. Explain this.
A. To each thought, word, and act Nature has given the
same power she has to the seed—to grow and bear fruit
after their kind.
19. Q. What other means does Nature employ to compel
obedience ?
A. She has lodged in us a representative of her authority,
which we may call “ conscience.”
20. Q. Analyse and define it.
A. Conscience is the mingled voices of the Past and the
Future in each individual. Man is the vibrating focus
of the collective experience and tendencies of the Past,
and the hopes, visions, and ideals of the Future—the
pressure of the one and the attraction of the other find a
voice in him ; this voice is conscience.2
1 “ But I follow cheerfully,
And did I not—
Weak and wretched, I must follow still” (Epictetus).
a Our habits ally us with the past, our freedom with the future; the conflict
between habit or instinct and freedom or will is the struggle between the Past and
the Future for supremacy. Man is the battleground of the struggle. Professor
Clifford defines conscience as “ the accumulated instincts of the race pouring into
each one of us, and overflowing as if the ocean were poured into a cup ” (p. 134).
�THE CHIEF END OF MAN
79
21'. Q. Is that the commonly accepted definition?
A. No. Many people believe conscience is “ the voice of
God in the soul but, as this voice is not infallible,
nothing is gained by calling it the “ voice of God.”
22. Q. What other theories are there ?
A. ^>me philosophers teach that conscience is a separate,
spiritual faculty or organ, whose function it is intuitively
to tell the right from the wrong. It is also held that
there is such a thing as the Moral Law, which is eternal
and absolute, and whose commandments are imperative.1
But these are metaphysical speculations.
23. Q. What is the teaching of Evolution on this subject ?
A. That just as light fashioned the eye, and sound the ear,
with all their wonderful mechanism, human relations
formed, through the education and experience of ages,
the moral sense; and that morality is acquired just as
language, music, love, or humanity.
24. Q. Why should we do the right according to thift theory ?
A. For its utility, beauty, and joy.
25. Q. Is it obligatory to do the right ?
A. Yes, if we wish the well-being of everybody as well as of
ourselves.
26. Q. What is the reward of goodness and justice ?
A. To be just and good.2
27. Q. But will we be just and good without future rewards and
punishments ?
A. If we will not, others will, and by the law of the Survival
of the Fittest theirs will be the kingdom and the power
and the future.
28. Q. Is the right increasing in the world ?
A. Through many oscillations backward and forward, man
kind is gaining steadily, though very slowly.
29. Q. Why are there still wrong and suffering in the world ?
A. Because we do not obey all the laws of Nature.
30. Q. Why do we not obey them ?
A. Largely from ignorance.
31. Q. Is it right that we should be punished for our ignorance?
A. Yee, if it is the only way we can be made to learn and
observe these laws.
1 The Categorical Imperative of Kant has been likened to a God made to order,
a “ deus ex machina.”
a “Do you seek any greater reward ?” (Epictetus).
�■
A NEW CATECHISM
Q. What is the thing we need most to make the world ana
ourselves better ?
A. KNOWLEDGE ; for we cannot do anything unless we
know how to do it; and, in order to act in the best way,
we must know what is for our highest good.1
Q. What else will knowledge do ?
A. It will employ the immense forces now stagnating in
ignorance, replace prejudice by sympathy, oppression
and greed by justice and humanity, war and bloodshed
by peace and brotherhood.
Q. What is the saviour of the world—the true Christ of
humanity ?
A. Truth! which is the most perfect knowledge we can
possess; and confidence that such knowledge may be
depended upon for the highest aims of life.
Q. What, then, is the chief end of man ?
A. To seek the supreme wisdom by the reason, and practise
the sovereign good by the will,2 and for the good of
humanity.
The aim of science is knowledge, the aim of art is action ; but we can neither
produce nor create without knowledge. It is equally irrelevant to insist that a
correct philosophy of life is unnecessary for the ends of Virtue. Thought or
Knowledge is the seed of which Conduct is the flower and fruit. It is true, how
ever, that our knowledge improves and increases as often as we “do” what we
“ know.” Charlemagne, in a letter to Sturm, the Abbot of Fulda, wrote : “ Although
action is better than knowledge, still it is impossible to act without1
’ ”
knowledge.”
a Giordano Bruno and De Tocqueville.
THE END.
■■ fe'VK
�
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A new catechism
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Mangasarian, Mangasar Mugwiditch
Holyoake, George Jacob
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 80 p. : ill. (port.) ; 23 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Extra Series
Series number: No. 6
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. First published in 1902. Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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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
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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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].
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Sunday Lecture Society
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1877
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N701
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Ottoman Empire
Religion
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Eastern Question
NSS
Ottoman Empire
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Text
imple Meligion
♦
♦
A SERMON
PREACHED BY
Baboo Pro tap Chunder Mozoomdar,
(Missionary of
Etal)tno Sontaj of Jntria)
IN THE-
FREE TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER,
On Sunday Afternoon, the iith October, 1874.
M TRANSCRIPT FROM NOTES.]
MANCHESTER :
JOHNSON AND RAWSON, MARKET STREET.
JOHN HEYWOOD, DEANSGATE.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
�LESSONS.
Nanak lay on the ground, absorbed in devotion, with his
feet towards Mecca. A Moslem priest seeing him cried:
“Base infidel! how darest thou turn thy feet towards the
house of Allah ?” Nanak answered, “And thou—turn
them if thou canst towards any spot where the awful house
of God is not ?”
The height and depth of all the world is centred in
thee, Lord. I know not what thou art; thou art what
thou alone canst be.
Once upon a time the fishes of a certain river took
counsel together, and said : “ They tell us that our life and
being is from the water, but we have never seen water, and
know not what it is.” Then some among them wiser than
the rest said, “ We have learned that there dwelleth in the
sea a very wise and learned fish, who knoweth all things;
let us journey to him and ask him to show us water, or
explain to us what it is.” So several of their number set
out upon their travels, and at last came to the sea wherein
this sage fish resided. On hearing their request he an
swered them thus :
“ O ye who seek to solve the knot,
Ye live in God, yet know him not.
Ye sit upon the river’s brink,
Yet crave in vain a drop to drink.
Ye dwell beside a countless store,
7
Yet perish hungry at the door.”
I
�SERMON.
HERE is a deep and lingering sadness in the mind of
the religious man when he contemplates how men
have made things easy and important most difficult.
our usual worldly life this is painful enough, but it becomes
much more painful when we find it repeated in our reli
gious life. Religion has been made the most difficult of all
things, though nothing in the world is simpler. My object
in addressing you will be to elucidate some of its simplest
principles. The first of these is Faith in God. Faith in
God ! The words call into our remembrance how many
conflicts—how much ignorance and superstition—how much
bitterness and disagreement! Faith in God ! They call into
our remembrance how much life and light and love ! What
power, what sweetness of joy!
Strange recollections and
feelings, the most opposite and inconsistent, are called up in
the mind by that simple phrase, Faith in God. The old
religious world would still hold by its Pharisaism, and what
is worse, would ascribe to God the Pharisaism which be
longs to itself. The God of that world would not accept
the worship of the uncircumcised, would not accept the
sacrifice of love and of trust which is not consecrated by
T
In
�4
authorized ceremonies, forms, and phrases. The God of
that world would exclude more than half the human
race—would consecrate ignorance, darkness, and the do
mination of the few over the many. Yes, He would stand
up against the spirit of the age, and hurl anathemas upon
the divine utterances of Nature and Knowledge. He is only
to be found in the sanctuary or nowhere. The universe
is not His abode, He is too small for it. He is only to be
found in the Sacred Book, or nowhere. The soul and the
universe cannot teach about Him. The Moslem sage went
and rebuked Nanak, saying, “ Base Infidel! what! wouldst
thou dishonour the House of God 1” The misfortune is that
many of us are not so strong in faith, or so powerful in
mind as Nanak was, and cannot return that glorious retort
that came readily to his lips—“ Then show me the place
which is not the House of God! ” We silently, meekly,
weakly accept the Pharisaism which is placed before us,
bend before it, or rebel against it, and in rebelling against
it, rebel against our God and our own soul. Nanak saw
God in His sanctuary. He saw God sitting on the throne of
the whole universe, with the sun and moon for His altar
lights, with the canopy of the stars over His head ; but we,
we would follow our priest into the narrow precincts of our
temple, and there or nowhere should we worship Him!
No one respects Pharisaism more than I do. There is a
strictness in it without which religion is often false liberalism.
There is a fidelity in it which I admire, and which I court, but
there is also in it much I cannot and dare not accept. I dare
not accept that unnatural bondage of the intellect and con
science which theology would often impose. The greatest
mischief which Pharisaism has produced has been to render
servile the minds of those that rebelled against it. If one was
a follower of the old religion, and if one conformed to all its
dictates, it would not matter; but the misfortune is that
�5
when one rebels against it, then is one most enslaved.
The exclusive theology of the world would not recognise
God in the world of His laws, and in the world of His
nature ; therefore a scientific man, whose mind is unpreju
diced and liberal, seems forced to reject the entire notion
of a God. Because there is the one extreme of superstition
and orthodoxy, therefore he must go to the other extreme of
scepticism and unbelief. Yes, this has been the greatest
misfortune of the world. This unbelief is to my mind the
direct effect of the slavery which a narrow theology imposes,
the effect of a necessary reaction, a servile sedition.
, The two evils I deplore most in connection with exclu
sive theology are, in the first place, the evil of exclusiveness
and superstition ; in the second place the evil of false libe
rality and scepticism. The true man of science, when he
contemplates the world, traces and understands its laws—
ascends from fact to fact, from the deep bottom of the sea
to the ethereal regions of the sky, and sees that outside
and beyond the domain of intellectual investigation there is
a mystery which Science cannot solve and Reason cannot
explain—the great problem of problems—the great mystery
of mysteries—which has hung over the creation since the
day of its birth. And then within the inner world, where
the laws of mind are acting, as the laws of matter are acting
outside, the man of science beholds certain wants, cravings,
and instincts which reason cannot satisfy, which philosophy
cannot remove. If I am not mistaken, this is the conclu
sion recognised by the most advanced scientific men
of your country. I call this a faithful admission. I call
this a great truth, which has to be owned by science and
placed before the religious world. The scientific man has
done what he can do. He has discovered all that he could;
at least, he has defined the region of his discoveries. He
has solved and explained all within his own sphere, and
�6
the problems which he cannot solve he places before you
honestly and faithfully. Now it is for the man of Religion to
come forward, and, in the name of God, to try, if he is able,
to solve the mystery which science recognises but cannot
explain. Here, to my mind, begins the world of true
religion. If theology is able, let it come forward and
establish its position here. If it is not able, let it retire
to its own place in the arena of human speculation. Let
the solitary soul, seeking God and Truth, winged with In
spiration, look up towards heaven and answer the great
question that the universe asks.
Yes, there is a mystery, in the darkness of which the
world has sat and worshipped for many centuries. There
are wants which have inspired the profoundest worship and
the grandest faith of which human nature is capable—that
noblest self-sacrifice which makes up the manhood of the
world. Religion deals with that mystery. Religion deals with
those wants. Yet does the mystery always remain a mystery ?
Is there no light in God’s heaven that dispels this darkness
of the soul ? There is. Let us look at the mystery in the
face. What is it 1 Why to my mind, and I proceed upon
the admission of the scientific man, this mystery is the great
grand mystery of Life. Over the face of all things, in
heaven and earth, and the soul of man, there is a lurking,
indwelling Life which I am awe-struck to behold, and which
I cannot explain. My profound spiritual forefathers, who
sat on the ice-crowned mountains of my fatherland and
worshipped there in solitude and silence—beheld this mys
tery of Life, and bent before it and adored it. They called
this mystery the Life of Life—the Life of the Creation—the
Spirit which enters into everything, but is different from all,
which gives brightness for darkness—life for death—design
for disorder, and harmony for discord. Go down bravely
into the depths of this mystery and you shall find a Life
�7
in it, a Spirit/ a Soul. It is nothing more than that all
pervading, that throbbing, glorious Life which makes the
universe what it is—a grand, growing, living thing. It is
the Spirit, the Soul, that makes us what we all are, and
within which we live and rest. It is the ocean, within
which the whole universe floats away. It is the Presence
of God.
This great mystery, then, is a great Life, a great Presence,
which the soul recognises, reverences, and calls the supreme
Soul, the supreme Spirit, nay God ! The prophet craves
to understand it more and more, because to him it is a Life
which illumines all the mysteries of the world. It is a Spirit,
a Personality, that can satisfy the deep insatiable wants of
one’s own profoundest spirit and personality. The soul
appeals to, and is appealed to by, its kindred relations, and
in matter beholds a Spirit, and in spirit a Life, Presence,
and Personality that answers its questionings, and bids it
rest, and doubt not. The great spiritual poet finds this
Life and Spirit symbolised and embodied in his heart,
in all that is beautiful, lovely, and sublime in the world.
It furnishes him with the grandest and the most profound
inspiration of poetry of which his soul is capable. The
power of this Life surrounds the mind with that awe and utter
sense of dependence, under which the fatalist crouches down
trembling with fear. This is the All-Dispensing and super
intending power. It is this Life, which is at the bottom
of all things—of all the beauty, and of all harmony with
which the world is full. This is the presence of God. To
the philosopher it is a great mysterious Mind ; to the poet
it is a great mysterious Beauty and Love; to the supersti
tious and the fatalist it is a great mysterious all-crushing
Power; to the humble man of faith it is the fulness and
presence of the Spirit of God. But it is perceived by all.
Yes, I should not conceal from myself or from you the fact
�that, had we but the right mind, we would perceive God—
we would have the perception of His spirit within our spirit.
What is faith in God, if it is not a direct perception ? I
honour the indirect and the second-hand belief in God
which is prevalent amongst most men, but to my mind
belief in God is never perfect unless it is realised as an act
of perception. Do you take objection to that word ? What
is it that produces within my mind an impression of a deeper,
higher, and more glorious wisdom than that which I myself
possess 1 How is it that the fact of a strange wisdom and
knowledge enters into my being, if it is nowhere? Can the
darkness of ignorance create wisdom out of itself? Can that
wisdom which the mind beholds exist, without a mind which
contains it? How is it, that strange beauty comes and makes
its impression within my soul, when I myself possess it not,
and, that goodness which I am awe-struck to behold,
lightens all around me? Where does it all come from? What
is beauty without the Beautiful, and goodness without the
Good ? What is perception ? The recognition of impres
sions which outward objects make upon our minds. It is
from the impressions that we conclude the existence of the
outward objects which produce them. And exactly the same
argument holds good in relation to faith in God. If I am
faithful enough to find that a mighty encircling wisdom
strikes up within me a divine fire of knowledge and insight
that was not in my soul before—and 4. beauty and a tran
quillity in which creation is steeped, and a love which
enlivens everything, and a power which commands the
universe—(if all this happens) I immediately conclude that
there is within me and around me a Spirit which has touched
me! Not to believe in that Spirit is as impossible as not
to believe that the world exists. Faith in God is a percep
tion, the strongest of all perceptions. To God then belongs
the wisdom, the life, the beauty, the harmony, the love,
�9
power, and purity that stand out before us within and with
out. Everyone—at one time or at another—doth behold
the Spirit of God. Yes, He doth pass the door of my
house, but I know Him not. He comes and goes within
and without the soul, but the soul says it hath not seen
Him, and cries and cries again : “ Lord reveal Thyself to
me.” He doth reveal Himself, He hath revealed Him
self, will always reveal Himself to those men and women
who really seek Him, and for them faith grows perfect into
surest and profoundest knowledge.
When the spirit of God is thus recognised in the soul as
the Life and the Truth, the soul cannot but assume a peculiar
attitude, standing face to face before Him. How can we
stand before wisdom, power, love, and purity like His?
How can we stand before His spirit, as we often do, listless
and unabashed, without reverence and without life ? Ah !
when the spirit of God is recognised, the soul stands trans
formed before Him; the breath of His presence and power
calls into bloom all its powers of love and faith, all its aspi
rations after purity and salvation, and the pious soul bends
before its Lord as the tree bends down under the load of its
own fruits. This is the attitude of true and spiritual worship.
It is too painful to notice how worship, with men, often
means only forms and empty words. We cannot dis
pense with forms and with words, I know, but what are they without the natural and earnest feelings which the Father’s
presence evokes in the soul ? Alas, these vain ceremonies
and forms have, on the one hand, driven men to utter
prayerlessness; and, on the other hand, degraded them into
offering selfish appeals for material benefit. There is only one
prayer which I know, which I preach and practise, the infinite
repetition of which fills the hearts of all good men, “ Lord,
pour into my heart Thy spirit!” That is the one prayer
which man can make, infinitely, endlessly, ever growing upon
�IO
the soul; still the same great unsatisfied craving, longing
the more the more it is answered, always seeking, asking,
hungering, thirsting, praying here and hereafter, and receiv
ing through all eternity. When the wisdom of God is seen,
and the ignorance of the soul is owned; when the mercy
and love and goodness of God are beheld, and the dryness
of the soul is felt; when the power and the purity of the
Lord are understood, and the true humility of man’s heart
presents itself in all its nakedness—no other prayer arises
except this prayer: “ Lord pour Thy spirit within me.” What
wealth can be greater than the possession of the spirit of
God? What happiness is more precious than the happi
ness—the unspeakable blissfulness—which proceeds from a
consciousness of God’s love. Aye, and what treasure can
we covet more than that treasure of righteousness, the purity
of will which exists in Him in fulness ? If you are afflicted in
the world, go and tell Him your afflictions. I have nothing
to say to it; but, remember, that what you call affliction
may be happiness disguised. In this world the arrange
ments of life are so strange, that good is often thought
to be evil, and evil good. That which ought to make
us anxious and sorrowful fills us with joy, and when
we ought to laugh and rejoice we sit weeping and brood
ing in melancholy. Do not therefore stand before the
Throne of God and ask deliverance from that which you do
not understand; lest in praying for fancied prosperity, you
pray for evil and misery, but ask from Him that of which
you are sure, that which your soul ought to prize above all
things, ask from the Lord the wealth of His spirit. Let
the physical world act according to physical laws. Let rain
and sunshine, riches and poverty, health and disease, life
and death, come and go according to the laws that regulate
them. Keep those laws and break them not. But, when
you pray to God, pray for nothing except for His love, and
�the sweetness of communion, of salvation. Prayer is the way
to get them. Ask the Lord for what He alone can give. Ask
when you are bent down by the weight of your faith and
love; ask in the light and mystery of His presence; ask
Him in this attitude, in the silent language of the soul, or
in the impassioned words that spontaneously come to the
tongue, in the tears and throbs of the spirit, which the
Lord can count, but no human being can, yea, that only is
the attitude of worship—that only is the language of prayer.
It is a sad thing to find out how often we are all satisfied
merely with the husk of worship, throwing out of sight
altogether the real bread and life for which the soul is dying.
Men and women, be not deceived by mere glaring, glittering
toys of words and forms wherein the wealth of the spirit is not
to be found. It is Love that is worth having. Behold the
Love of God, who stands face to face with the depths of the
faith of your spirit. It is Wisdom that is worth having. Be
hold the infinite ocean of the Wisdom of God, who sits
enthroned on the awful splendour of all the worlds. It is
purity, righteousness, tranquillity, that is worth having.
These exist in their fulness in His spirit. Therefore, in the
presence of Him, let us bend down in the attitude which
best befits the soul, and let us ask from Him, the overflow
ing fruitfulness of that piety, which is love and wisdom, and
righteousness and peace, passing understanding !
And when there is faith in Him, and when there is true
worship, there must be true life also. True life to me is
nothing more than self-sacrifice. The word sacrifice is
much more often misunderstood than any other word in
the dictionary. Sacrifice often merely means self-abnega
tion, suffering, and death. To my mind this meaning is
sad. Sacrifice means true life, consecrated to the service
of God. Sacrifice means, on the one hand, an all-powerful
passion of the spirit; and it means, on the other hand, that
�labour, that unceasing, disinterested work which the faithful
servant of God renders unto Him and unto the world.
True love is known by its devotedness and its intensity;
and what is our love to God, if it is not an intense, devoted
love—if it is not a passion—if it is not a flame of enthusiasm
which consumes all other passions in the depths of the soul 1
That half-hearted, sentimental, unreal devotion which men
commonly call piety is very distressing. How can I be
free from the carnal passions of my own nature unless
there is a more powerful passion to hold them down, and
to turn them from evil unto good ? It is a passion only
that can check another passion; and if the foul desires
and wrong feelings of our nature are to be checked, they
can only be checked by that powerful, intense enthusiasm
of love with which God’s servant ever looks to Him.
When there is this passion of piety, it cannot fail to manifest
itself in the real acts and conduct of life. What is that love
which would not serve ? What is that passion which would
not bear evidence to itself in life ? So, therefore, the true
lover of God devotes his existence to labour, and to ser
vice, and to those deeds which are acceptable before
Him. It is often found that in loving God, and in trying
to serve Him, we are avoided by men, and even persecuted.
Those whom we are trying to serve often rise up against
us, and cruelly stab us in the heart. This is suffering
which often marks the life of the most religious men.
Ah! it is very great suffering indeed. When my love is
frustrated and trampled upon, I feel an agony which finds its
parallel nowhere. The persecution of which I speak may
take the form of physical outrage, or moral cruelty. And
thus the idea of suffering enters into that of true sacrifice.
But then if there is agony in this service of love, is there
not also a reward beyond all comparison 1 What reward
do you want for your love which you give unto God,
�*3
"xcept that you love Him and He accepts your love? If
we offer ourselves—if we suffer—that suffering is trans
formed into joy, is turned into heavenliness, when God’s
love touches it, and it proceeds from our own love. There
is a glory in the suffering of the good man which the world
often deifies. There is an internal glory in the suffering of
the faithful servant of God which more than recompenses
the amount of its pain. The price of life is a very heavy
price to pay, to us who love our lives so much ; the price
of life finds its equivalent nowhere; but what is there
in the giving away of life, when there is a deeper, more
joyful, and beautiful life to be found ? Let those men and
women who do not know that life weep, if they will,
but let them weep for themselves, and not for him who
prepareth to go to his Father’s mansions of everlasting
blessedness. To the man of service and faith, death,
terrible as it is, is a gain, because it is an earnest of
that final triumph with which love must in the end be
crowned even on earth. True sacrifice, then, is God
loving, brother-serving, self-forgetting enthusiasm; true
piety, endless uncalculating self-surrender unto God, and
to His very Own work. How can we serve Him ? How
can we frail mortal beings serve the perfect One, the God
of infinite wisdom and power? That service which we
want to give unto Him is to be given to His world. He does
not on His own account want our service, but when we
can serve His children, when we will simply and absolutely
work with Him, He counts that as the best service to
Himself. True service, therefore, is devotion to the good
of the world. And thus the pious man gives his life as
sacrifice of service for the good of the world because of
the depth of the love which he fosters for God.
Thus, true sacrifice, true worship, and true faith, these
three form, to my mind, the essential principles of religion.
�14
These are the three principles taught by the church to which
I belong. No theology have we got, all our theology is our
earnest, intense faith in the presence of the spirit of God
within us. No ceremonial, no ritual have we got, except
the grand formless ritual of love and of worship, which the
soul spontaneously offers before the Throne of Infinite
Love and Wisdom ; no other sacrifice, no other atonement
do we recognise, except that sacrifice which proceeds from
the intense enthusiasm of piety in the soul, giving evidence
of its power and truth in unchangeable devotedness, in life,
and in death. What name is capacious enough for these
principles 1 If the name Brahmo Somaj appears to you
too narrow, I will not hesitate, for a moment, to advise you
to disown and discard it. Take the spirit, and let not the
name be any stumbling block to you. Has God any name ?
No, we call Him God, because we know no other word.
What word would measure the depth, the height, and the
breadth of that Spirit, who includes in Himself all that is good,
beautiful, and true, who is in everything we know, who is
more than anything we can conceive, or can express ? What
name shall fully express and embody that grand and glorious
worship of love, which humanity in all its forms and stages
has ever offered to its Father, always until now? What
name would measure that sacred offering of self-sacrifice,
that service and labour, that fidelity and trust, that sorrow
and agony through which God’s servants have tried to do
their duty to Him and by the world ? There is one great
nameless Brotherhood over-spreading the whole world, of
which I claim to be a member, of which I call upon
you to be members.
I know no other creed, than
that there is only one Father, and here, in your pre
sence, I recognise Him to be your Father as He
is mine; I recognise Him in every sanctuary, in every
temple, in every philosophy, in every science, in every
�i5
& faith, in every nation, and in every soul. I bow down
honouring every sacrifice that is offered to Him by men
who are in the midst of error, or by those who are partially
free from error.
All over the world there is ignorance
and darkness j all over the world there is true faith and
love. He that loves darkness is enslaved by it in the
midst of night, and would not see the sun that hides its face
behind a transient cloud; he that loves light and truth
beholds sunlight behind the darkness that for a moment
seems to sit upon the face of the earth. Light always
triumphs over darkness. He that has no love in him, de
spairs before the bitterness and evil that have raged, and
still rage, around us; but he that hath true life in his soul,
beholds humanity and truth united in one bond of love
with the Father, who is infinite love. Let ours be that name
less and formless Faith, that which is the perception of
the continued Presence of the One True God; ours be
that Worship without language and without ritual, which is
more real and more beautiful than any other sentiment of
which human nature is capable, and let ours be the Sacrifice
of daily labour, and never-ending service in the cause of
humanity, which is the cause of God. And God’s Spirit
which watches in silence, and in the solitude of every
■ heart, and God’s Truth which dispenses its light, like His
sun, upon the righteous and unrighteous, and God’s Love,
that encircles and embraces the entire universe, be with
us all. May He make the future more glorious than the
past, and, in the present, give the earnest of the future.
Let our religion be simple, our faith be simple, our worship
be simple, and our service be simple, and then our prayer
to God and our sacrifice for brotherhood shall be accepted
by God now and for ever 1
A. Ireland & Co., Printers, Pall Mall, Manchester.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Simple religion: a sermon
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Mozoomdar, Protap Chunder
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Place of publication: Manchester
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Sermon delivered in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester on Sunday afternoon, 11th October 1874. Printed by A. Ireland and Co., Manchester. "A transcript from notes".
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Johnson and Rawson; John Heywood
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Religion
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Conway Tracts
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THE RELIGIOUS FACULTY:
ITS RELATION TO THE OTHER FACULTIES,
AND ITS PERILS.
MATTHEW MACFIE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
��THE RELIGIOUS FACULTY:
ITS RELATION TO THE OTHER FACULTIES,
AND ITS PERILS.
HE religious instinct in man, and. the function it per
forms,
of human nature, has been
Tvariously as a constituentTheist would represent the reli
defined. The
gious sentiment within us as implanted expressly to excite
aspirations which can only be satisfied with high con
ceptions of the Infinite. Religion, according to him,
consists in adoring some one Almighty Cause—a being
clothed with the attributes of what we are accustomed
to term a Person^ very wise, just, and kind ; a sort of high
order of man indefinitely magnified, to whose control we
should at all times cheerfully submit. Religion, as con
ceived by the Positivist, on the other hand, and in many
instances by the Pantheist, ought not to be connected
with the worship of an alleged Infinite Intelligence, or
an alleged almighty Person at all; because, as the
holders of these opinions aver, the existence of a per
sonal God is not capable of proof. All so-called
evidences of the existence of such a God, they remind
us, are a petitio principii—the major and the minor
premises in the argument, ever and anon changing
places, the subject relating to something foreign to all
known analogies,—quite outside the possibilities of our
grasp and the bounds of our experience. Religion, as
understood by the disciples of these two latter schools,
is simply perverted when manifested in the conventional
�4
The Religious Faculty.
forms of praise and prayer, addressed to an Entity we
choose to call God ; and to adore as a great and good
Father, such a personage, it is insisted, is but the pro
jection in the mind of the most exalted ideal of human
Fatherhood. They tell us that the end of our constitu
tion and the interests of humanity can only be effectu
ally served by the real and the knowable in this busi
ness, engaging our attention to the exclusion of the in
definable and the unknowable. There is sense and
nobleness, say the Positivist and the Pantheist, in the
attitude of a mind inspired by the high intellectual and
moral qualities found in “ the illustrious living and the
mighty dead there is something beautiful and becom
ing in the passionate and self-sacrificing love of a brave
man, cherishing and adoring a chaste, lovely, unselfish,
and sweetly-cultured woman; it is a rational and
proper vent for the religious sentiment to pour itself
forth in tender and devout reverence for higher
humanity as the one comprehensible organ of great
achievements in the realms of thought and deed in the
universe ; true religion consists in opening up by word
and example, to our less enlightened fellow creatures,
the power and glory of obedience to law in every
department of being, as the cure for the world’s mani
fold evils; and in unfolding this revelation of law in
all its rich beneficence in a genuine sympathetic spirit,
and thus contributing to the general improvement of
the race; so our friends of Comtism and philosophic
Pantheism would inculcate. They are not so dogmatic
as positively to deny, a priori, the possibility of a per
sonal God. They confess themselves ever open to con
viction on the subject; they simply say that in the pre
sent state of our existence the subject is evidently
unsuited to our faculties, and that we are at present
incapable of solving the problem. But, howsoever the
religious sentiment arose, and whatever be the proper
and rational objects on which it ought to expend itself,
one thing is certain, that there is an element in
�The Religious Faculty.
5
humanity, known by the name of Religion, though
unanimity in the definition of it seems to be unattain
able. Now, what I wish more particularly to assert, is
that the religious faculty, tendency, principle, or what
ever one may please to call it, bears an analogy in its
origin, growth, and development, to the other powers of
the mind. Like any other mental force, the religious
principle is governed and trained by fixed laws and
knowable conditions. Its place in our constitution is
just as natural as that of the other powers, and it has
no more contact with the supernatural than any other
attribute of the mind. If the other powers are under
supernatural influence, so is this one ; if it is under such
an influence, so are they. In this respect, there is no
difference between them.
It is found—this tendency to worship—in different
degrees of strength and forms of manifestation in
different individual organizations. In some minds the
sense of music is naturally strong, and where this is the
case, contact with melodies and harmonies instinctively
thrills the soul, wakes up to consciousness the born
affinity for the beautiful in sound, where that affinity
exists, and lifts up the nature in joyous emotion. The
nice discrimination of chords rises in such persons to
the height of a divine passion; and where the musical
faculty towers above the other powers it usually
prompts to effort in mastering the science of music or
the use of some musical instrument. But while this is
true, the appreciation of music is not confined to men
of great musical tastes. There is no sane mind without
the capacity, more or less, of receiving pleasant impres
sions from musical compositions, performed or sung.
But there is always this marked difference between the
average man and the one who is a musician by nature,
that the possessor of the born gift has a specific genius
that places him in rapt sympathy with the object to
which that genius irresistibly tends, whereas the
ordinary mind has only so vague and unimpassioned a
B
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The Religious Faculty.
sense of the thing as to be unable clearly to distinguish
the strains of a Mendelsohn from the drawl of some
village Puritan meeting-house.
The very same difference comes before us every day
in reference to all the arts and sciences. In numbers,
physics, painting, philosophy, poetry, philanthropy,
commerce, and morals, it is clear that men are not con
stituted alike, with the same power to enjoy these kinds
of human culture, and excel in them. Everybody
knows something of arithmetic; it is only intellectual
giants that ever soar to the sublimer knowledge and
applications of Mathematics. We all understand some
thing of the rocks; few have the geological instinct of
a Murchison. We can all handle a pencil; few deserve
to be called artists. Most can appreciate the practical
results of logic; it is rare to meet men whose keen
penetration can see through the fallacies of reasoning,
and who can build up systems of immortal wisdom.
All can make rhyme; few can utter 11 thoughts that
breathe and words that burn.” Not many are entirely
destitute of pity for suffering, want, and ignorance ; yet
the world has known few Howards, whose devotion to
the cause of easing the burdens of suffering was a
supreme delight to them. Anybody can be an obscure
trader; but that peculiar grasp and enterprise are
seldom met with which place men in the rank of largeminded merchants. There is no man absolutely without
a conscience; it is only in a small minority that the
moral faculty is delicately sensitive, shrinking from
equivocal speech and unfair dealing, as the open eye
would shrink from the prick of a needle.
In human beings, then, the spiritual capacity or re
ligious organ is analogous to other powers of the mind,
and is naturally of very varied grades. I suppose there
is no nation or individual without some sense—latent
or developed, crude or cultured—of religious veneration.
Among the common order of Chinese this veneration
takes the form of the worship of ancestors ; among the
�‘The Religious Faculty.
7
lowest Africans, the worship of a fetish ; among the
followers of Comte, the worship of woman in the
domestic circle and the worship of Humanity in its
highest aspects, in public religious observances. Most
Christians worship an Almighty One, whom tradition
has taught them to regard and address as an Infinite
Person. But have we not known people-—-some of
them of high moral principles and refined tastes—who
seemed almost incapable of entering into popular re
ligious ideas, so constitutionally faint was their power
of realising the Infinite with awe, love, or devotion?
While others, differently constituted, have been stirred
to deep feeling by hymn, prayer, or theological dis
course, this class of minds have remained stoical
phenomena to themselves quite as much as they have
appeared to be to others. Of course I only refer here
to persons who act from principle, and not to the un
thinking, sensual multitude. If this stoical but en
lightened class join in the ritual of any Church, it is
simply in deference to some ancestral practice, or for
the sake of example; if they refrain from uniting with
assemblies of worshippers, it is because what interests
and invigorates the minds of others seems to persons
of their ideas unreal, if not unnecessary. They frankly
own that they do not feel the least dependence on
public or private devotional services for stimulus in the
expansion of their intellect or the discipline of their
character.
The most superficial observation shows it therefore
to be an unjust and an unsafe test of character to judge
men by, whether or not they take an intense and a con
tinuous interest in popular religious devotions and ser
mons. There can be no doubt that large numbers of
most thoughtful, high-minded, and earnest men and
women believe that they derive considerable moral
strength and direction from the habit of observing the
ritual of some Church or other; and what they feel to
be true to their religious wants and tastes they ought
�8
The Religious Faculty.
not to be discouraged from following. At the same
time it must be confessed that it is possible for a man
to be irresistibly drawn within this charmed and
hallowed atmosphere of conventional worship, and yet
be very imperfectly cultured and developed in reason
ing, aesthetic, social and moral qualities—elements of
the first importance in a complete human development.
The mind is a dwelling of many chambers. In some
instances, one or two rooms are spacious and wellfurnished, and signs of special life and activity are
visible in them; while the other rooms are very small
and mean, and a stillness reigns in them that would
almost lead one to think they were untenanted ; and
to make matters worse, there are in such minds no
doors or windows communicating between chamber and
chamber, but these are separated from each other by
blank walls. Such is a rough illustration of a mind
badly constructed, ill-balanced, misgoverned. But in
the dwelling rightly built, the rooms, though of various
size, are all well-kept and occupied by living and active
tenants, and there is a free, wdiolesome, and pleasant
communication between chamber and chamber—the
judgment, the imagination, the memory, the will, the
affections, the conscience, the religious organ, all active,
all living harmoniously under the same roof, all aiding
each other’s mutual concord, vigour, and elevation.
But to say that the man fondest of theological ways of
looking at things, and habituated to what are techni
cally known as “religious services”—to say that he
in whom the tendency to worship is strongest has
necessarily the noblest type of mind, is a fallacy which
a wider view of the science of mind, of life, and of re
ligion must sooner or later dispel. We are, as to the
master-bias of the mind, very much creatures of organi
sation, and we ought not to attach a superstitious and
an undue value to that part of us, right and useful as it
is in its place, which it has been the interest of priest
craft in all ages to rate above all the other powers. It
�The Religious Faculty.
9
has been the fashion to think that if a man be only
■what is termed “ a religious character,” he must be good
in the best and broadest sense all round. But this
statement is not to be implicitly accepted. I see no
reason to grieve if strong religious tendencies, such as
manifest themselves in pious but vague emotionalism,
have not been born in our constitution. We are only
■responsible for the talents we inherit; and different
preponderating faculties in different men are all equally
needful, like the variegated hues in nature, to give
beautiful and harmonious diversity to intellectual,
moral, and religious life. It is an absurd superstition
to think that because a man has not a natural capacity
for intense religious impulse, but only possesses a cool
reasoning mind, artistic skill, or fine moral intuitions, he
is therefore inferior to the person who is susceptible of
rhapsodical fervours. There is an impression, none the
less real though not often openly declared, that the re
ligious fanatic, even if he almost graze the line between
the saue and the insane, possesses a gift intrinsically
more precious than those gifts, in minds of the induc
tive order, which have been chiefly instrumental in
unlocking the wonders of science, and setting forth the
multiplying harmonies of the universe. The lips that
indulge most eloquently in improvable and often far
fetched conceptions of spirit life in that state from
which no traveller has ever returned to describe; the
lips that pour forth in most bold, burning allegorical
diction, penitent laments and earnest petitions to the
Almighty Person, are held to be touched with a more
god-like inspiration than are the lips that only utter
the varied wisdom pertaining to visible things and
every-day life. The notion, not so much preached as
acted in orthodox circles, is that the Almighty is
chiefly an ecclesiastical potentate, a punisher of theolo
gical heresy, a sort of Pope or “ Holy Father,” who is
rather disposed to look askance at the strivings of mere
philosophic, scientific, and literary minds after the
�io
The Religious Faculty.
ideals of perfection that lure them on respectively in
their different spheres of thought and struggle towards
perfection. He is mainly conceived of by Christendom
as seated in a high chair of state, surrounded with
angels and pensive saints, very much as Pio Nono is by
his cardinals, with his hand stretched out to bless hiselect, or to deal out damnation to the reprobate. The
position which the devoutly orthodox deem most be
coming and most divinely approved, is one of incessant
humiliation, self-crucifixion, and supplication. What
is the natural and, in general, the actual result of this
sentimentalism, which nine-tenths of the frequented
churches and chapels tend to foster? One-sided as
contrasted with many-sided culture, which latter is the
happy, rational, and healthful distinction of the man
proportionately developed—excess and unshapeliness
in one direction, and defect and contraction in another
direction. The strength that should have been har
moniously diffused over the whole man has been caught
up and monopolized by some morbid, over-grown part.
The consistent evangelical devotee is taught to wander
so habitually in the imagined scenes of a life at present
unrevealed, that the pith required to enable us to
grapple with the difficulties, and to give effect to the
enterprises of this world, is thereby greatly impaired.
Hence we look in vain, as a rule, to this lop-sided class
of minds, for the most part, to aid powerfully in the
wise conduct of public affairs in the nation or in the
borough, or in extending the domain of science. Their
celestial musings give to them a contorted and lack-adaisical air, which in a great measure unfits them for a
thoroughly human, unbiassed interest in the universal'
progress of society.
By a few artistic touches, Mr Matthew Arnold hits
off the portrait I would fain sketch, with more truth
than may to some be palatable. With special reference
to Evangelical non-conformists (though the description
quite as aptly applies to Evangelical churchmen), he
�The Religious Faculty.
11
asks, “What can be the reason of this undeniable pro
vincialism, which has two main types, a bitter type and
a smug type, but which in both its types is vulgarising,
and thwarts the full perfection of our humanity ? . . .
It is the tendency in us to Hebraise, as we call it;
that is to sacrifice all other sides of our being to the
religious side. This tendency has its cause in the
divine beauty and grandeur of religion; but we have
seen that it leads to a narrow and twisted growth of our
religious side itself, and to a failure in perfection. If
we tend to Hebraise even in an Establishment, with
the main current of national life flowing round us, and
reminding us in all ways of the variety and fulness of
human existence, . . . how much more must we tend
to Hebraise when we lack such preventives. . . . The
sectary’s Eigene grosse Erfindungen, as Goethe calls
them,—the precious discoveries of himself and his
friends for expressing the inexpressible, and defining
the indefinable in peculiar forms of their own, cannot
but fill his whole mind. He is zealous to do battle
for them and affirm them, for in affirming them he
affirms himself, and that is what we all like. Other
sides of his being are thus neglected, because the re
ligious side, always tending in every serious mind to
predominance over our other spiritual sides, is in him
made quite absorbing and tyrannous by the condition
of self-assertion and challenge which he has chosen for
himself. And just, what is not essential in religion, he
comes to mistake for essential, and a thousand times
the more readily because he has chosen it of himself,
and religious activity he fancies to consist in battling
for it. All this leaves him little leisure or inclination
for culture. . . . His first crude notions of the one thing
needful do not get purged, and they invade the whole
spiritual man in him, and then making a solitude, he
calls it heavenly peace. The more prominent the re
ligious side the greater the danger of this side swelling
and spreading till it swallows all other spiritual sides
�12
The Religious Faculty.
up, intercepts and absorbs all nutriment which should
have gone to them, and leaves Hebraism rampant in us,
and Hellenism stamped out. Culture and the har
monious perfection of our whole being, and what we
call totality, then become secondary matters ; and the
institutions which should develope these take the same
narrow and partial view of humanity and its wants as
the free religious communities take.’'
“ But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are
again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in
the necessary first stage to perfection, in the subduing
of the great faults of our animality, which it is the glory
of these religious institutions to have helped us to
subdue. True, they do often so fail; they have often
been without the virtues as well as the faults of the
Puritan ; it has been one of their dangers that they so
felt the Puritan’s faults that they too much neglected
the practice of his virtues. I will not, however, ex
culpate them at the Puritan’s expense; they have
often failed in morality, and morality is indispensable ;
they have been punished for their failure as the Puritan
has been rewarded for his performance. They have
been punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of
beauty and sweetness and light, and a human nature
complete on all sides remains the true ideal of perfection
still, just as the Puritan’s ideal of perfection remains
narrow and inadequate, although for what he did well,
he has been richly rewarded.”*
The chief peril, then, to which persons of the reli
gious temperament are prone consists in supposing as
much of the evangelical teaching of the country has
led many to do—that intense fondness for the forms,
ceremonies, and theological speculations of orthodoxy
is necessarily a mark of great superiority of character,
great breadth of view, strength of moral purpose, and
general elevation of mind. But we do not usually find
*“ Culture and Anarchy,” pp. xxii., xxiii., xxiv., xxxii.,
xxxiv., 27, 28.
�The Religious Faculty.
the two classes of qualities to be quite compatible.
The organisation, may be ill-adjusted. The religious
sentiment may predominate just as an inordinate ten
dency towards music, poetry, mathematics, or any other
engrossing pursuit may predominate, and make the
character one-sided. The love of acts of worship and
•of devout themes may be so fervent as to tempt the
-religious enthusiast to look upon the sober realities and
•duties of the work-a-day world as stale in comparison
with the former. He may be so blinded by his ruling
passion as not to see the close bearing which that ruling
passion should have upon the rough work of ordinary life.
Misguided constitutional religiousness may isolate him
from humanity, and may become content to find a
channel for itself in a mere round of little church
activities. I should be far from disputing the sunshine
shed upon scenes of ignorance and trouble by zeal and
benevolence of the ecclesiastical type, narrow though its
range may be. But this extreme susceptibility to im
pression from mystic symbols, and pious ceremonials,
and celestial contemplations, those high-toned emotions
of reverence, and imagined affection for the Infinite;
that resistless impulse to adore God—sometimes in lan
guage too familiar to befit our very dim and partial
knowledge of Him—may, after all, be but a refined form
of luxuriousness, which often, like a huge upas-tree,
uasts its deadly shade upon the virtues of moral courage,
self-restraint, transparent honesty, candour, charity,
and open-hearted kindness. It by no means follows
that because a man has strong affinities naturally for
worship—“ the dim religious light,” the prostration of
soul, the poetry of religious sentiment, and the associa
tions of a church, that he should therefore necessarily
have a vigorous moral faculty, or a fuller and clearer
sense of right and duty than other men have. Just as
there is no necessity in one being a poet because he is
an eminent mechanical inventor, or in another having
a penchant for languages because he revels in the art of
�14
The Religious Faculty.
painting. So a man is not necessarily distinguished
for unselfishness because he has acquired the habit of
devout exercises. Yet this last is the illusion that en
chains and lowers morally many of the religious sects of
the land. It is the working of this jaundiced idea of
religion as a thing fed by pious books, theological
dogmas, and acts of church devotion, that at the present
moment is stopping the way of such a sound secular
education as the nation urgently requires. While the
clergy of different churches are squabbling as to what
form of grace should be said before meat, the poor
children gathered to the meal are starving. The ortho
dox tell us that where something technically called
“ grace ” enters the heart it supernaturally leavens the
whole being, and inevitably moulds the mind into en
lightenment and obedience.* But do we see it to be
so in fact ? On the contrary, many who think they
have received the so-called principle of “ grace ” are
often the greatest sinners against the laws of reason,
the laws of physiology, and the laws of family and
social life; and no wonder, for the whole tendency ©f
popular religious teaching is to foster the notion that
the surest outward sign of godliness lies in a quickened
inclination to attend to the religious duties prescribed
by ministers and churches. If there be any remissness
in this matter, the worshippers are soon reminded that
their spiritual life is on the wane, that “the Holy
Ghost” is forsaking them, and that to recover their
enthusiasm they must come together, pray for “the
outpouring of the Holy Ghost,” and be revived.
General culture of intellect, disposition, and character
goes for little with them, or is only treated by the
* Henry Ward Beecher cannot help sometimes letting the
latent force of the strong common sense within him burst
through the stratum of dogmatic theology that overlays it. In
a frank mood of this kind, he is reported to have said, and said
justly : “ A man born right the, first timeis very superior to the
man who has been converted under the influence of religion.”
�The Religious Faculty
i5
preacher as a “self-righteous delusion ” as long as an
unctuous sort of interest in prayings and preach
ings is absent. While this constant forcing of thereligious organ is kept supreme in the evangelical mind,
it is not to be expected that the enforcement of moral
virtues from the pulpit would have much effect. How
rarely do we find the true end of life have its proper
place in sermons ; I mean the discipline and culture of
the whole nature as the highest matter. Every part
getting its due, so that the building shall grow up
“ fitly framed together.” In well arranged minds; all
the powers—animal, intellectual, moral, and religiousare duly proportioned. A suitable education is brought
to bear for the right and harmonious unfolding of these
powers ; and in that case, religion is like the summer
air, which plays over the whole bright landscape, and
diffuses health and fragrance around. But when, either
from a mis-shapen mind or a defective training, the
religious organ has come to be a monstrous growth,
when it overshadows the other powers, and draws up
into itself the strength needed for the support of the
other powers, and fritters its power away in whining or
hysterical excitement; then this very supremacy of the
religious element offers temptation to neglect of moral,
and intellectual self-training;—offers temptation to omit
proper care for the plain homely virtues that shed radi
ance in the family and in general society. According
to the doleful system of thought and life, accepted as
religion in orthodox christendom, the supreme aim is to
get to Heaven, and the supreme method of giving effect
to that aim, is to resemble on earth, as much as possible,
the ideal life of Heaven as conceived by evangelicism ;
and what does the orthodox world mean by Heaven 1
The. words of Andrew Jackson Davis come forcibly tomy mind : “ Almost every one’s educational memory will
answer that by ‘ Heaven ’ is meant a place far off, the
residence of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; a
solemn celestial abode where mirthfulness is not per-
�16
The Religious Faculty.
mitted ; where persons appear as monks and nuns,
beautifully arrayed in white, but always with a medita
tive, abstract poetic appearance, and on their faces, an
indescribable expression of unsmiling, cadaverous piety
. . . all engaged in the same rapt devotions to the
august family of gods ; a cold and dreary place ; a place
of unbroken circumspection and inferiority. It makes
us feel as though we were on the verge of an everlast
ing graveyard, to think of it.” * Where such religious
conceptions prevail, I do not hesitate to say that the
man of naturally strong devotional fervour cannot yield
to them without mental injury. Excessive, absorbing
acts of worship, offered in this spirit, tend to drain off
the strength that ought to sustain the other powers,
and that it should be so, is according to natural law.
What is strong in us grows stronger by use, and what
is weak grows weaker by disuse. Let there be an
inordinately active brain by nature, and correspondingly
feeble limbs. Of course the more the passion for study
is gratified, where there is such a constitution, the more
quickly does the vigour of the feeble member decline.
It is not otherwise with the faculties of mind, as experi
ence and history abundantly prove.
Individuals, societies, and even nations supply sad
and striking examples of the danger of falling into subtle
temptation, to lift the religion of sentiment above the
religion of high morals, to lose sight of the claims of
the one in the sensuous fascinations of the other. This
forgetting of a sense of practical goodness in holy
raptures and visions, this blending of contradictions in
the same character, appears at a very early period. The
life of the patriarch Jacob—if we may rely on the Old
Testament story—was poisoned by this error. “ Like
those tissues of the loom, which, seen from one point
of view, are all bright with colours and radiant with
gold, while, if you change your position, they appear
dark and sombre, the life of Jacob comes before us as a
strange paradox, shot with the most marvellous diversi* Morning Lectures, American Edition, p. 107.
�The Religious faculty.
J7
ties. lie is the hero of faith, and the quick, sharpwitted schemer. To him the heavens are opened, and
his wisdom passes into the cunning which is of the
earth, earthy. One may see in him, lying close
together, the beginning of all we reverence in St John,
and of all that we tremble at in Judas.” *
This marvellous compound of the precious and the
vile in the Psalmist King is familiar to all thoughtful
readers of the Bible. While wafted in his poetic soar
ings to super-mundane spheres, and delighting in the
Tabernacle as the divinest spot on earth, there was a
plot going forward in his spirit of one of the foulest
deeds that ever stained humanity. The characteristics
of the Pharisees point in the same direction. During
a considerable period in Jewish history public opinion
put so high a value on ceremonial strictness, that a man
who prayed and fasted plentifully more readily got
credit for being a saint than if he had applied the same
zeal in keeping the natural and moral law, and, as
might be expected, candidates for the honour of saint
ship were not wanting where the terms were so freely
open to the competition of fanaticism, cant, and hypo
crisy. Not that all the Pharisees were victims of these
failings, though the tendency of their religious system
was to make them so. Religious observance was viewed
by orthodoxy then as now, as higher than moral duty.
The unwholesome air of their affected sanctities re
pressed the healthy workings of the natural conscience
within them, and, as will always beneficently happen
in such circumstances, the violated laws of nature
had their revenge. In being untrue to the higher
instincts of their being, the Pharisees, as a sect, fell a
prey to self-deception and hollowness, the natural
penalty of all religious unreality. The punctilious
tithing of “ the mint, the anise, and the cummin,” came
to be regarded by them as a weightier concern than the
claims of “judgment, mercy, and faith,” and thus the
* “Theology and Life,” Plumptre, pp. 299.
�18
The Religious Faculty.
religious element actually proved a barrier to their
proper moral development. There grew up in their
minds side by side, a sort of dreamy reverence for the
minute details of the Temple and Synagogue service on
the one hand, and an insensibility to the moral import
of religion on the other.
I wish I could believe that the perils and temptations
to which the religious faculty is exposed in persons of a
pre-eminently religious temperament, were things only
of the past. I fear these perils and temptations are
none the less insidious in worshipping communities
now. The life of great towns and the habits of civiliza
tion, though they do not exclude the recklessness of
Esau, tend more directly to produce the ungenerous
craft and mean subtlety of Jacob. I am not indifferent
to the painful fact that the mass of human beings in
the present very primitive stage of their rational de
velopment, are found living mere animal lives, reck
lessly disregarding ennobling influences, which lack of
culture, or lack of the opportunity for culture, incapaci
tates them from appreciating. But we cannot forget
that there are faults of another kind,—prudential
vices, such as narrow bigotry, bitter spleen, gnawing
envy, brutal uncharitableness, pious superciliousness,
unworthy bland trickiness, and the like, unfortunately
compatible with orderly and reputable lives. And the
formidable aspect of the case is that these are largely the
besetting perils of men constitutionally inclined to reli
gion; and perhaps there is no class of men more prone to
these peculiar dangers and temptations than those whom
popular superstition still more or less invests with the
halo of sacred separation as professional religious
teachers. * On no class of men is outward success in
their calling more morally deteriorating, none are so
tempted to court the breath of popular applause, and
none are more prone to professional envy and jealousy.
Such dangers and temptations do not usually connect
themselves with a formal and deliberate hypocrisy, but
�The Religious Faculty.
*9
■with characters trained to some form of Theistic worship
and the sincerity of whose religion, as far as it goes,
there is no reason to doubt.
I despair of civilized nations ever reaching a very
high type of character as long as there are in the
institutions of popular religion such narrow tests of
piety and moral excellence as I have been describing,
for these tests cannot fail to divert the common mind
from those great moral principles and obligations to
which even religion itself was meant to be subservient.
What more calculated to distort the nature, nurse per
nicious conceit, and render a man indifferent alike to
the necessity and glory of moral advancement than the
theological fancies pandered to by Evangelical preaching
and writing ? The “ communicant ” is taught to believe
that he has been the subject of a miraculous change
from which the common herd of mankind is excluded,
that he has “ passed from death unto life,” that he has
been favoured with manifestations of some fond attach
ment on the part of Deity denied to ordinary mortals.
This “object of eternally electing love,” this “subject
of supernatural grace,” may be mean-spirited, may be
ignorant of the laws written upon his constitution, and
essential to be understood and obeyed as a condition of
rational happiness and intelligence ; he may have been
the victim of some habitual vice all through life, up to
the period at which he was “converted.” No matter;
let him only pass through the conventional process of
evangelical “regeneration,” and the very flower of in
tellectual and moral culture in the world, reverent
seekers after truth like Darwin, Herbert Spencer,
Huxley, Matthew Arnold, and Lecky, who are con
scientiously opposed to orthodoxy, are held to be
“ children of wrath,” and “ under the curse,” while this
ignorant, fanatical, conceited boor—as he may neverthe
less be,—is looked upon in his church as “born of God,”
“redeemed,” “a saint,” furnished with a passport to
heaven ! Am I rash, then, in asserting that the factitious
�20
The Religious hacuity.
importance attached to conversion and church-member
ship offers a strong temptation, especially to the weak
and crude natures, which are usually carried away by
such influences, to look down with a quiet, self-satis
fied arrogance upon those who have no .sympathy with
ecclesiastical ways of doing things as if they were,
religiously, plebeians. Albeit many of those frowned
upon by the churches have often a keener sense of
honour and kindness and unselfishness, and a more in
stinctive aversion to what is false and mean than many
who are reputed to live in the odour of sanctity.
There is one question that, with me, determines in a
moment the value of all creeds and churches. Do the
forms and dogmas of churches tend most effectually to
quicken and shape in us the development of the true,
the beautiful, and the good ? Are the characters which
are the logical outcome of creeds and rituals—conform
ing or nonconforming—really nobler and more enlight
ened than those planted in the virgin soil of natural
thought and natural morals ? Are the orthodox more
apt in the use of their understanding, more tender and
pure in their affections, more harmonious in the unfold
ing of their powers, more useful to mankind, more for
giving, more patient, more free from the enslavement
of passion or appetite, more faithful in the discharge of
social and relative duties ? I am not convinced by any
means that the legitimate product of evangelicism has
the advantage in this comparison.
I wish only to add that the business of religion
simply has to do with our being true to the higher
principles of humanity which are latent or developed
in the mind of every sane person, and with our obey
ing these principles after the fashion of our separate
individuality. Types of being vary even in the same
species through the realms of animal and vegetable life.
If the lily had the power to envy the rose, or the lichen
to covet the majesty of the oak, it would be a silly
waste of temper in that case to shew the envious or the
�The Religious Faculty.
21
■covetous disposition, for each, flower and tree has a
nature of its own so worthy of being cultivated that it
can afford to be above desiring to be not itself but
something else. So with man. Let any one but set
himself to make the most of himself, unsparing of his
imperfections, exercising a fostering care over his strong
and good qualities, and he will have no cause for regret
that he did not happen to have a different name and a
different nature. Churches and creeds cast all their
votaries into the same mould. Genuine religion makes
each one who understands and lives up to it, true to his
own higher individuality, while it causes his pulse to
beat in unison with the great common sentiments of
civilized humanity. I see no cause to mourn if my
religious faculty be not so vigorous as St Paul's, if my
piety be not formed on the pattern of John Bunyan’s,
or if I cannot take kindly to the leadership of Simeon,
Pusey, or Maurice. So far as I find these men striving
after those principles of eternal morality which underlie
all theologies and ecclesiasticisms; and respecting the
type of their separate individualities, I feel bound to
honour them as heartily as I may differ from them
conscientiously. So far as I find reason to believe
their motives pure and earnest, I am profited by their
example. But the principle which is to determine the
precise shape my mind and character shall take is the
natural cast of my being, the peculiar inborn struc
ture of my faculties and powers. The building up of
myself, according to the better idiosyncracies of my
constitution, is to me a sacred work. If I lose sight of
the claims my individuality imposes on me and set up
some model to copy and work by outside myself, I at
once pervert the divine plan in my individual life, ignore
the dictates of my nature, desecrate what in me is holiest,
and sink into a wretched plagiarist and mimic—my guilt
being none the less heinous because I am affecting to
be like some great saint or philosopher, attempting, in
short, to be something I was not intended to be.
�
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The religious faculty: its relation to the other faculties and its perils
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Macfie, Matthew
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 21 p. ; 18 cm.
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Thomas Scott
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[187-?]
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Conway Tracts
Religion
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NATIONALSECUL^got^
TRUE RELIGION
BY
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Price Twopence.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISH I’NG COMPANY
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1892.
<
\ ”
r* **
'
1
�INTRODUCTION.
On Thursday evening, January 14, 1892, the Unitarian Club
of New York, held its annual dinner at Sherry’s. Colonel
Ingersoll was one of the guests, and in response to the toast
of “ The Ideal,” he delivered a speech which was reported
verbatim in the next day’s Evening Telegram, and is here
reproduced without alteration or addition.
�TRUE RELIGION.
Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—
In the first place, I wish to tender my thanks to this
club for having generosity and sense enough to invite me to
speak this evening. (Laughter.) It is probably the best
thing the club has ever done. (Renewed laughter.) You
have shown that you are not afraid of a man simply because
he does not happen to agree entirely with you—(applause)—
although in a very general way it may be said that I come
within one of you. (Continued laughter.)
So I think not only that you have honored me—that I
most cheerfully and gratefully admit—but, upon my word, I
think that you have honored yourselves. (Laughter and
applause.) And imagine the distance the religious world has
travelled in the last few years to make a thing of this kind
possible! (Applause.) You know—I presume everyone of
you knows—that I have no religion, not enough to last a
minute—(laughter)—none whatever—that is, in the ordinary
sense of that word. And yet you have become so nearly
civilised—(a smile)—that you are willing to hear what I have
to say; and I have become so nearly civilised—(audible
smiles)—that I am willing to say what I like. (Laughter
and applause.)
RESPECT FOR UNITARIANS.
And, in the second place, let me say that I have great
respect for the Unitarian Church. (Applause.) I have
great respect for the memory of Theodore Parker. (Renewed
applause.) I have great respect for every man who has
assisted in reaving the heavens of an infinite monster.
(Repeated applause.) I have great respect for every man
who has helped to put out the fires of hell. (Loud applause.)
In other words, I have great respect for every man who has
tried to civilise my race. (Applause.)
The Unitarian Church has done more than any other
church—and maybe more than all other churches—to substi-
�4
True Religion.
tute character for creed—(applause)—and to say that a man
should be judged by his spirit, by the climate of his heart,
by the autumn of his generosity, by the spring of his hope;
that he should be judged by what he does, by the influence
that he exerts rather than by the mythology he may believe.
(Loud applause.) And, whether there be one God or a mil
lion, I am perfectly satisfied that every duty that devolves
upon me is within my reach. (Continued applause.) It is
something that I can do myself, without the help of anybody
else, either in this world or any other. (Great applause.)
BELIEVE IN A GOD WHO IS A GENTLEMAN.
Now, in order to make myself plain on this subject—I
think I was to speak about the Ideal—I want to thank the
Unitarian Church for what it has done, and I want to thank
the Universalist Church too. (Applause.) They at least
believe in a God who is a gentleman—(laughter and ap
plause)—that is much—more than was ever done by an
orthodox church. (Applause.) They believe at least in a
heavenly father who will leave the latchstring out until the
last child gets home—(applause and laughter)—and as that
lets me in—especially the reference to the “ last ”—I have
great respect for that church. (Applause.)
THE STANDARD IS HIS REASON.
But, now I am coming to the Ideal; and in what I may
say you may not all agree. I hope you won’t —(laughter),—
because that would be to me evidence that I am wrong.
You cannot expect everybody to agree in the right, and I
cannot expect to be really in the right myself. (Continued
laughter.) I have to judge with the standard called my
reason, and I do not know whether it is right or not; I will
admit that. (Prolonged laughter.) But, as opposed to any
other man’s, I will bet on mine. (Great laughter.) That
is to say, for home use. (Laughter and applause.) In
the first place, I think it is said in some book—and if I
am wrong there are plenty here to correct me—that “ The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I think a
knowledge of the limitations of the human mind is the
beginning of wisdom, and, I may almost say, the end of it—
to really understand yourself. (Applause.)
Now, let me lay down this proposition No. 1:—The
imagination of man has the horizon of experience; and
�True Religion.
5
beyond experience or nature man cannot go, even in
imagination. Man is not a creator. He combines; he adds
together; he divides; he subtracts; he does not create,
even in the world of imagination. Let me make myself a
little plainer :—Not one here—not one in the wide, wide
world—can think of a color that he never saw. No human
being can imagine a sound that he has not heard, and no
one can think of a taste that he has not experienced. He
can add to—that is, add together—combine ; but he cannot,
by any possibility, create.
EVERY MAN AN IDEALIST.
Man originally, we will say—go back to the age of
barbarism—and you need not go far —(laughter) :—our
own childhood, probably, is as far as 4s necessary; but go
back to what is called the age of savagery. Every man
was an idealist, as every man is to-day an idealist. Every
man in savage or civilised time, commencing with the
first that ever crawled out of a cave and pushed the hair
back from his forehead to look at the sun—commence with
him and end with Judge Wright—the last expression on
the god question—and from that cave to the soul that
lives in this temple everyone has been an idealist and has
endeavored to account in some way for what he saw and
for what he felt; in other words, for the phenomena of
nature.
The cheapest way to account for it by the rudest savage
is the very way it has been accounted for to-night. What
makes the river run ? There’s a god in it. What makes
the tree grow? There’s a god in it. There’s god in the
tree ? What makes the stars shine ? There’s a god in it.
What makes the sun rise? Why, he’s a god himself
•—(laughter);—and the moon.
And what makes the
nightingale sing until the air is faint with melody? There’s
a god in it.
GODS OE MANY KINDS.
They commenced making gods to account for everything
that happens—gods of dreams and gods of love and friend
ship, and wars and heroism and courage. Splendid ! They
kept making more and more. The more they found out in
Nature, up to a certain point, the more gods they needed;
and they kept on making gods until almost every wave of the
�a
True Religion.
sea bore a god. Gods on every mountain, and in every vale
and field, and by every stream! Gods in flowers, gods in
grass; gods everywhere! All accounting for this world, and
for what happened in this world.
Then, when they had got about to the top, when their
ingenuity had been exhausted, they had not produced any
thing, and they did not produce anything beyond their own
experience. We are told that they were idolators. That is a
mistake, except in the sense that we are all idolators. They
said, “ Here is a god; let us express our idea of him. He is
stronger than a man is; let us give him the body of a lion.
He is swifter than a man is; let us give him the wings of an
eagle. He is wiser than a man is ”—and when man was very
savage he said, “ Let us give him the head of a serpent. A
serpent is wonderfully wise; he travels without feet; he
climbs without claws; he lives without food, and he is of the
simplest conceivable form.”
REPRESENTED THEIR IDEAS.
And that was simply to represent their idea of power, of
swiftness, of wisdom. And yet this impossible monster was
simply made of what man had seen in Nature, and he put the
various attributes or parts together by his imagination. He
created nothing. He simply took these parts of certain
beasts, when beasts were supposed to be superior to man in
some particulars, and in that way expressed his thought.
You go into the Territory of Arizona to-day, and you will
find there pictures of God. He was clothed in stone, through
which no arrow could pierce, and so they called God the
Stone-Shirted, whom no Indian could kill. That was for the
simple and only reason that it was impossible to get an arrow
through his armor. They got the idea from the armadillo.
Now, I am simply saying this to show that they were
making gods for all these centuries, and making them out of
something they found in nature. Then, after they got through
with the beast business, they made gods after the image of
man. And they are the best gods, so far as I know, that
have been made.
The gods that were first made after the image of man
were not made after the pattern of very good men ; but they
were good men according to the standard of that time,
because, as I will show you in a moment, all these things are
�True Religion.
7
relative. The qualities or things that we call m ercy, justice,
charity and religion are all relative. There was a time when
the victor on the field of battle was exceedingly merciful if
he failed to eat his prisoner ; he was regarded as a very
charitable gentleman if he refused to eat the man he had
captured in battle. (Laughter.) Afterward he was regarded
as an exceedingly benevolent person if he would spare a
prisoner’s life and make him a slave.
GODS BEGAN TO DIE.
So that—but you all know it as well as I do, or you
wouldn’t be Unitarians—all this has been simply a growth
from year to year, from generation to gen eration, from age
to age. And let me tell you the first thing about these gods
that they made after the image of men. After a time there
were real men on the earth who were better than these gods
in heaven. (Applause.)
Then those gods began to die, one after another, and
dropped from their thrones. The time will probably come
in the history of this world when an insurance company can
calculate the average life of gods as well as they do now of
men. (Laughter and applause.) Exactly! because all these
gods have been made by folks. And, let me say right here,
the folks did the best they could. I do not blame them,
(Laughter.) Everybody in the business has always done his
best. (Laughter.) I admit it. (Renewed laughter.) I
admit that man has travelled from the first conception up to
Unitarianism by a necessary road. Undei’ the conditions he
could have come up in no other way. I admit all that. I
blame nobody. (Laughter.) But I am simply trying to tell,
in a very feeble manner, how it is.
Now, in a little while, I say, men got better than their
gods. Then the gods began to die. Then we began to find
out a few things in nature, and we found out that we were
supporting more gods than were necessary—that fewer gods
could do the business—(laughter)—and that, from an
economical point of view, expenses ought to be cut down.
(Renewed laughter and applause.) There were too many
temples, too many priests, and you always had to give tithes
of something to each one, and these gods were about to eat
up the substance of the world.
�8
True Religion.
And there came a time when it got to that point that either
the gods would eat up the people or the people must destroy
some gods, and of course they destroyed the gods—one by
one—and in their places they put Forces of Nature to do the
business—Forces of Nature that needed no church, that
needed no theologians. Forces of Nature that you are under
no obligation to; that you do not have to pay anything to
keep working. (Laughter.) We found that the attraction
of gravitation would attend to its business, night and day,
at its own expense. (Laughter and applause.) There was a
great saving. (L aughter.) I wish it was the same with all
kinds of law, so that we could all go into some useful business,
including myself. (Eenewed laughter.)
A HIT AT PKESBYTEKIANS.
I say they found this. So, day by day, they dispensed
with this expense of deities; and the world got along just
as well—a good deal better. (Laughter.) They used to
think—a community thought—that if a man was allowed to
say a word against a deity that the God would visit his ven
geance upon the entire nation. But they found out, after
awhile, that no harm came of it; so they went on destroying
the gods. Now all these things are relative; and they
made gods a little better all the time—I admit that—till we
struck the Pr esbyterian, which is probably the worst ever
made. The Presbyterians seem to have bred back. (Laughter
and applause.)
But no matter. As man became more just, or nearer just;
as he became more charitable, or nearer charitable—his god
grew to be a little better and a little better. He was very
bad in Geneva—the three that we then had. They were
very bad in Scotland—horrible 1 Very bad in New England
—infamous! (Laughter). Might as well tell the truth
about it—very bad ! And then men went to work, finally, to
civilise their gods, to civilise heaven, to give heaven the
benefit of fre edom of this brave world. That’s what we did.
(Laughter and applause.) We wanted to civilise religion
—civilise what is known as Christianity. And nothing on
earth needed civilisation more; and nothing needs it more
than that to-night. (Applause.) Civilisation! I am not so
much for the freedom of religion as I am for the religion of
freedom. (Applause.)
�True Religion.
9
Now there was a time when our ancestors—good people,
away back, all dead, no great regret expressed at this meeting
on that account—there was a time when our ancestors were
happy in their belief that nearly everybody was to be lost,
and that a few, including themselves, were to be saved.
(Laughter and applause.) That religion, I say, fitted that
time. It fitted their geology. It was a very good running
mate for theii’ astronomy. (Laughter.) It was a good match
for their chemistry. (Renewed laughter.) In other words
they were about equal in every department of human ignoanee. (Laughter.)
And they insisted that there lived up there somewhere—
generally up—exactly where nobody has, I believe, yet seen a
Being—an infinite person “ without body, parts or passions.”
And yet without passions he was angry at the wicked every
day. Without body he inhabited a certain place, and without
parts he was, after all, in some strange and miraculous
manner, organised, so that he thought.
A GOOD SERVANT.
And I don’t know that it is possible for any one here—I
don’t know that any one here is gifted with imagination
enough to conceive of such a Being. Our fathers had not
imagination enough to do so, at least, and so they said of this
God that he loves and he hates; he punishes and he rewards;
and that religion has been described perfectly to-night by
Judge Wright as really making God a monster and men poor
hopeless victims. And the highest possible conception of the
orthodox man was, finally, to be a good servant—just lucky
enough to get in—feathers somewhat singed, but enough left
to fly. That was the idea of our fathers. And then came
these divisions, simply because men began to think.
And why did they begin to think ? Because in every direc
tion, in all departments, they were getting more and more
information. And then the religion did not fit. When they
found out something of the history of this globe they found
out that the scriptures were not true. I will not say not
inspired, because I do not know whether they are inspired or
not. It is a question, to one, of no possible importance,
whether they are inspired or not. The question is, “ Are
they true P” If they are true, they do not need inspiration;
�10
True Religion.
and if they are not true inspiration will not help them. So
that is a matter that I care nothing about.
On every hand, I say, they studied and thought. They
began to gi’ow—to have new ideas of mercy, kindness, justice ;
new ideas of duty—new ideas of life. The old gods, after we
got past the civilisation of the Greeks—past their mythology,
and it is the best mythology that man has ever made—the
best (aftei’ we got past that), I say—the gods cared very little
about women. Woman occupied no place in the state—no
place by the hearth, except one of subordination, and almost
of slavery. So the early churches made God after that image
who held women in contempt. It was only natural (I am not
blaming anybody)—they had to do it, it was part of the
must! (Laughter.)
THE COLONEL’S TROUBLE.
Now, I say that we have advanced up to the point that we
demand, not only intelligence, but justice and mercy, in the
sky; we demand that—that idea of God. (Applause.) Then
comes my trouble—my trouble. I want to be honest about
it. Here is my trouble—and I want it also understood that
if I should see a man praying to a stone image or to a stuffed
serpent, with that man’s wife or daughter or son lying at the
point of death, and that poor savage on his knees imploring
that image or that stuffed serpent to save his child or his
wife, there is nothing in my heart that could suggest the
slightest scorn, or any other feeling than of sympathy—any
other feeling than that of grief that the stuffed serpent could
not answer the prayer and that the stone image did net feel.
I want that understood. (Applause.) And wherever man
prays for the right—no matter to whom or to what he prays;
where he prays for strength to conquer the wrong, I hope his
prayei’ may be heard ; and if I think there is no one to hear
it I will hear it, and I am willing to help answer it to the
extent of my power. (Loud applause.)
So I want it distinctly understood that that is my feeling.
But here is my trouble :—I find this world made on a very
cruel plan. I do not say it is wrong—I just say that it is
the way it seems to me. I maybe wrong myself, because this
is the only world I was evei- in; I am provincial. This grain
of sand and tear they call the Earth is the only world I have
ever lived in. And you have no idea how little I know about
�True Religion.
11
the rest of this universe; and you never will know how little
I know about it until you examine your own minds on the
same subject. (Laughter.)
HIS HOPE.
The plan is this :—Life feeds on life. Justice does not
always triumph. Innocence is not a perfect shield. There
is my trouble; there is my trouble. No matter, now,
whether you agree with me or not; I beg of you to be honest
and fair with me in your thought as I am towards you in
mine. That is my trouble.
I hope, as devoutly as you, that there is a power somewhere
in this universe that will finally bring everything as it should
be. I take a little consolation in the “ perhaps ”—in the
guess that this is only one scene of a great drama, and that
when the curtain rises on the fifth act, if I live that long, I
may see the coherence and the relation of things. But, up
to the present writing—or speaking—I do not. I do not
understand it—a God that has life feed on life ; every joy in
the world born of some agony ! I do not understand why in
this world, over the Niagara of cruelty, should run this flood
of blood. I do not understand it. (Applause.) And, then
—why does not justice always triumph ? Why is not
innocence a perfect shield ? These are my troubles.
Suppose a man had control of the atmosphere, knew
enough of the secrets of nature, had read enough in “ Nature’s
Infinite Book of Secrecy ” so that he could control the rain
and wind; suppose a man had that power, and suppose that
last year he kept the rain from Russia and did not allow the
crops to ripen, when hundreds of thousands are famishing
and when little babes are found with their lips on the breasts
of dead mothers! What would you think of such a man ?
Now, there is my trouble. If there be a God, he understood
this. He knew when he withheld his rain that the famine
would come. He saw the dead mothers, he saw the empty
breasts of death and he saw the helpless babes. There is my
trouble. I am perfectly frank with you, and honest. That is
my trouble.
Now, understand me. I do not say there is no God. I do
not know. As I told you before, I have travelled but very
little—only in this world.
There was a missionary went to the Indians and talked to
�12
True Religion.
them awhile, and one Indian, I thought, made quite a remark.
He took a stick and made a little circle in the sand, and he
said, “ That is what Indian knows.” Then he made a larger
circle around that and said, “ That is what whiteman knows.”
But out here—outside of the circles—Indian knows just as
much as white man. (Laughter and applause.)
he don't know.
I want it understood that I do not pretend to know. I say
I think. And to my mind the idea expressed by Judge
Wright so eloquently and so beautifully is not exactly true.
I cannot conceive of the God he endeavors to describe,
because he gives to that God will, purpose, achievement,
benevolence, love, and no form—no organisation—no wants.
There’s the trouble. No wants 1 And let me say why that
is a trouble—anybody can move to adjourn now at any
moment—(laughter)—I will tell you why that is a trouble.
Man acts only because he wants. You civilise man by in
creasing his wants, or as his wants increase he becomes
civilised. You find a lazy savage who would not hunt an
elephant tusk to save your life. But let him have a few tastes
of whiskey and tobacco, and he will run his legs off for tusks.
(Laughter.) You have given him another want and he is
willing to work. (Renewed laughter.) And they nearly all
started on the road toward Unitarianism—that is to say,
toward civilisation—in that way. You must increase their
wants. (Applause.)
The question arises, “ Gan an infinite being want any
thing ? ” If he does, and cannot get it, he is not happy. If
he does not want anything, I cannot help him. I am under
no obligation to do anything for anybody who does not need
anything and who does not want anything. Now, there is
my trouble. I may be wrong, and I may get paid for it some
time—(laughter)—but that is my trouble.
I do not see—admitting that all is true that has been said
about the existence of God—I do not see what I can do for
him; and I do not see either (I give my word of honor) what
he can do for me, judging by what he has doae for others. I
do not.
And then I come to the other point, that religion so called
explains our duties to this supposed being, and we do not
even know that he exists, and no human being has got ima,-
�True Heligion.
13
gination enough to describe him, or to use such words that
you understand what he is trying to say. I have listened
with great pleasure to Judge Wright this evening, and I
have heard a great many other beautiful things on the same
subject—none better than his. But I never understood them
—never. (Laughter.)
WHAT IS RELIGION?
Now then, what is religion ? I say religion is all here in
this world—right here—and that all our duties are right
here to our fellow men; that the man that builds a home,
marries the girl that he loves, takes good care of her; likes
the family; stays home nights as a general thing; pays
his debts; tries to find out what he can; gets all the ideas
and beautiful things that his mind will hold; turns a part of
his brain into a gallery of the fine arts : has a host of statues
there and paintings; then has another niche devoted to
music; a magnificent dome, filled with winged notes that
rise to glory. Now the man who does that gets all he can
from the great ones dead; swaps all the thoughts he can with
the ones that are alive; true to the ideal that he has got here
in his brain, he is what I call a religious man, because he
makes the world better, happier ; he puts the dimples of joy
in the cheeks of the one he loves, and he lets the gods run
heaven to suit themselves. (Great laughter and applause.)
And I am not saying that he is right; I do not know.
(Laughter.)
That is all the religion that I have. It is to make some
body else happier if I can. I do not mean to take any great
trouble about it, but if I can do it easily—(prolonged laughter)
—that, it seems to me, is all there is of real religion.
I divide this world into two Glasses—the cruel and the
kind ; and I think a thousand tim es more of a kind man than
I do simply of an intelligent man. I think more of kindness
than I do of genius. I think more of real good human nature
in that way—of one who is willing to lend a helping hand
and who goes through the world w ith a face that looks likes
its owner was willing to answei’ a decent question—I think a
thousand times more of that than I do of being theologically
right; because
do not care whether I am theologically
right or not. (Daughter.) It is something that is not worth
talking about, because it is something that I never, never,
�14
True Religion.
never will understand ; and every one of you will die and you
won’t understand it, either—until after you die, at any rateI do not know what will happen then.
THE DREAM OF IMMORTALITY.
I am not denying anything. There is another ideal, and it
is a beautiful ideal. It is the greatest dream that ever entered
the heart or brain of man—the Dream of Immortality. It was
born of human affection. It did not come to us from heaven.
It was born of the human heart. And when he who loved
kissed the lips of her who was dead there came into his
heart the dream “We may meet again.” (Applause.)
And let me tell you that Hope of Immortality never
came from any religion. That Hope of Immortality has
helped make religions. It has been the great oak around
which have climbed the poisonous vines of superstition—
that Hope of Immortality is the great oak. (Tong continued
applause.)
And yet the moment a man expresses a doubt about
the truth of Joshua or Jonah or the other three fellows in a
furnace, up hops some pOor little wretch and says, “ Why,
he doesn’t want to live any more; he wants to die and
go down like a dog, and that is the end of him and his
wife and children.” (Laughter and applause.) They really
seem to think that the moment a man is what they call
an Infidel he has no affections, no heart, no feeling, no
hope—nothing—nothing. Just anxious to be annihilated.
But if the orthodox creed be true, and I have to make my
choice between heaven and hell, I make my choice to-night.
I take hell. (Great laughter and applause.) And if it
is between hell and annihilation, I take annihilation.
WHY HE CHOSE HELL.
I will tell you why I take hell in making the first choice.
We have heard from both of those places—heaven and hell—
according to the New Testament. There was a rich man in
hell, and a poor man, Lazarus, in heaven. And there was
another gentleman by the name of Abraham. ' And the rich
man in hell was in flames, and he called for water, and they
told him they couldn’t give him any. No bridge I But they
did not express the slightest regret that they could not give
him any water. Mr. Abraham was not decent enough to say
he would if he could; no, sir; nothing. It did not make any
�True Religion.
15
difference to him. (Laughter.) But this rich man in hell—
in torment—his heart was all right, for he remembered his
brothers; and he said to this Abraham, “ If you cannot go,
why send a man to my five brethren, so that they will not
come to this place I” Good fellow, to think of his five
brothers when he was burning up. Good fellow 1 Best fellow
we ever heard from on the other side—in either world.
(Great laughter and applause.)
So, I say, there is my place. And, incidentally, Abraham
at that time gave his judgment as to the value of miracles.
He said, “ Though one should arise from the dead he wouldn’t
help your five brethren 1” “ There are Moses and the pro
phets.” No need of raising people from the dead. (Laughter.)
That is my idea, in a general way, about religion ; and I
want the imagination to go to work upon it, taking the per
fections of one church, of one school, of one system, and
putting them together, just as the sculptor makes a great
statue by taking the eyes from one, the nose from another,
the limbs from another, and so on ; just as they make a great
painting of a landscape by putting a river in this place
instead of over there, changing the location of a tree, and im
proving on what they call nature—that is to say, simply by
adding to, taking from, that is all we can do. But let us go
on doing that until there shall be a church in sympathy with
the best human heart and in harmony with the best human
brain. (Applause.)
HIS IDEA or RELIGION.
And, what’s more, let us have that religion for the world
we live in. Right here! (Applause.) Let us have that
religion until it cannot be said that they that do the most
work have the least to eat. Let us have that religion here
until hundreds and thousands of women are not compelled to
make a living with the needle that has been called “ the asp
f or the breast of the poor,” and to live in tenements, in filth
where modesty is impossible. (Applause.)
I say, let its preach that religion here until men will be
ashamed to have forty or fifty millions, or any more than they
need, while their brethren lack bread, while their sisters die
from want. (Great applause.) Let us preach that religion
here until man will have more ambition to become wise and
good than to become rich and powerful. (Applause.) Let
�16
True Religion.
us preach that religion here among ourselves until there are
no abused and beaten wives. (Applause.) Let us preach
that religion until children are no longer afraid of their own
parents, and until there is no back of a child bearing the
scars of a father’s lash. (Continued applause.) Let us preach
it, I say, until we understand and know that every man does
as he must, and that, if we want better men and women, we
must have better conditions. (Loud applause.)
TRY AND GET A LITTLE RELIGION.
Let us preach this grand religion until everywhere—the
world over—men are just and kind to each other. (Renewed
applause.) And then, if there be another world, we will be
prepared for it. (Applause.) And if I come iato the presence
of an Infinite, good and wise Being, he will say : “ Well you
did the best you could. You did very well indeed. There is
plenty of work for you to do here. Try and get a little higher
than you were before.” (Applause.) Let us preach that one
drop of restitution is worth an ocean of repentance.
And if there is a Life of Eternal Progress before us, I
shall be as glad as any other angel to find that out. (Laughter
and applause.)
But I will not sacrifice the world I have for one I know not
of. (Great applause.) I will not live here in fear, when I
do not know that that which I fear lives. (Applause.)
I am going to live a perfectly free man. I am going to
reap the harvest of my mind, no matter how poor it is
—(laughter)—whether it is wheat or corn or worthless weeds.
(Renewed laughter.) And I am going to scatter it. (Laughter
and applause.) Some may “ fall on stony ground.” (Laughter.)
But I think I have struck good soil to-night. (Prolonged
laughter and applause.)
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you a thousand
times for your attention. I beg that you will forgive the
time that I have taken, and allow me to say, once more, that
this event marks an epoch in Religious Liberty in the United
States. (Loud and prolonged applause.)
Printed by G. W. Foote, at 28 Stonecutter Street, London, E.C.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
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Title
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True religion
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Address delivered before the New York Unitarian Club, 14 Jan. 1892, and reprinted from next day's Evening Telegram. Printed by G.W. Foote. No. 4d in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Progressive Publishing Company
Date
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1892
Identifier
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N404
Subject
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Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (True religion), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
NSS
Religion
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b964c0e77b4489a324f44b2d6969b62a.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=nRl%7EjFx915GfEMQTT6d7zDDVnw7ANIG4ICOi9Ggp0MCVdZg2sNCaHEuZSkvp4S9SZmzZvOnEGktvBnM2zO0gzZ1XMMXkYQt9IKnp1MPSNNMGZ%7EW7LQr6iAkYiLzEICWF9FXtgSyW8saWl6GWwySz-6UbUWoFAmKzETn3KJ84YvP14Q3kIo2t0orSAHiZ0Cnx9DRp4ImukPSiTN5ZrqHZSTpvrL7Urhk9AIzQXGpDOfxLpaMYNqZ0-Ud-SCND7cI5CF34ev8SDHqBzmygT6NcXImVnQQKQbM1bVSKcMbzBwL1V48ArejjnjBqmxddgWy7wKaS43a9Zan5OrOOre2Fhw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
4ce1534d4af2d690b3b4c5d885ed9b86
PDF Text
Text
RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION
IN
SECONDARY FOUNDATION
SCHOOLS.
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT.
HE writer of the following brief remarks has been
impelled to commit them to print by the reflection
that whilst the propriety of allowing the Masters of
Primary Schools to give instruction in religion has for
the last two years formed a prominent subject of
national discussion, the objections which lie against
allowing or requiring the Head Masters of Secondary
Endowed Schools “to make provision, in conjunction
with the Governing Body,” for similar instruction, have
not, as far as he is aware, received adequate attention.
Under the system which at present obtains in the
Secondary Endowed Schools of England, a Head Master
of honesty and intelligence is evidently liable to find
himself in a dilemma of the following kind; either he
must teach the scholars (and whether he does so by
explicit inculcation or by the implication of reticence,
makes but little difference to the resiflt), at a peculiarly
impassionable age, that every detail of the Biblical nar
rative is truth unquestioned and unquestionable on pain
of offending God, and. the maxims of conduct therein
commended, of perfect morality; or he must acquaint
them with some at least of the conclusions to the con
trary established or advanced by modern criticism.
The first alternative, it will be admitted, is not only
very unfavourable to the teacher’s growth in accuracy
of thought on religious topics, and sensitiveness to the
responsibilities of his position, but involves the risk of
drawing the children of parents of broad and en
lightened religious opinions back into the terrifying
misapprehensions, to use no stronger word, which it cost
themselves possibly years of mental agony and painful
study to outgrow. The second alternative would most
assuredly involve him in contentions with the Governors
of the School and with parents of a narrow, unculti
vated, and, by consequence, intolerant type of ortho
doxy, whereby would be caused very probably the im
mediate decadence of the School, and, finally, the ruin
of the Head Master by dismissal where possible.
T
�2
Two courses are open by which the evils indicated
may be avoided. Either the curriculum of instruction
in these schools may be restricted to secular knowledge,
as is the case in the nascent Public Schools and Col
leges in New Zealand, among our colonies ; or the treat
ment of the text of the Bible may be conformed in
practice to that of the histories of Livy and Herodotus,
and the ethical treatises of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero,
the established conclusions and critical methods of
modern science and historical proof being no more
ignored, discredited, or suppressed in the case of the
one department of study than in that of the other.
It is to be feared that some time must yet elapse
before either of these two courses is introduced by legis
lative enactment into Secondary Endowed Schools. He
desires, therefore, to advocate the immediate establish
ment of a College of Secondary Education, on the Pro
prietary system, after the model of Cheltenham College,
in which the second of the courses defined above, which
is also the one which appears to him abstractedly the
best, may form the distinguishing feature.
He entertains the conviction that the number of
persons has enormously increased of late years, and is
daily increasing still more rapidly, who, so far from
desiring to see promoted in their children, by the in
struction given them in school, a retrogression in reli
gious conceptions from the standard of enlightenment
they have themselves attained, desire to see them aided
and encouraged in achieving and maintaining a like
moral enfranchisement. He is also of opinion that in
the foundation of a school of this kind is to be found
the remedy for the fact that whereas many of the most
able and the most ardent friends of religious enlighten
ment only achieve late in life the mental development
necessary to qualify them for a position in the ranks of
its adherents (perhaps but a few years before they are
removed from active service by death or the infirmities
of advancing years), the champions of obscurantism,
obstruction, and intolerance are recruited, owing to the
present system of Public School education, by the enlist
ment of each successive generation in its childhood.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, 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
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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
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Religious instruction in secondary foundation schools: how to deal with it
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London?]
Collation: 2 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
Publisher
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[Thomas Scott?]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[187-?]
Identifier
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G5536
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education
Religion
Creator
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[Unknown]
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Religious instruction in secondary foundation schools: how to deal with it), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Education
Religious Education
-
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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,
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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
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administered. It was, indeed, one of the hours when the religion of
our common sympathy, and our common awe before invisible realities,
held its service of communion, and swayed all hearts with its gracious
power. There were bad men standing by, to whom greed was more
than grace, and women looking on who had grown sadly faithless to
womanhood through pride, or passion, or harshness of virtue and
heathenism in religion,— whom in this moment the kingdom of heaven
baptized, so that ever after they were under one memory at least of
sweet human nature, touched once at least with love towards the fellow
creature and natural trust towards the Providence which is behind all
our mysteries and all our woes. The lookers on had, indeed, been
less than human, if the quick tenderness of sympathy had not flushed
every face, and they had not thus tried dumbly to ease Marion White’s
load of pain. But it was only as the hour wore on, and when most
of the passengers were gone to watch the last work of the fire and to
prepare to throw the wreck from the track, that the terrible distress
of the doubly bereaved young wife began to abate a little.
Could she but have thought, there was nothing really dreadful in
this funeral pyre. But she did not think, not even as much as she
had begun to do before the suddenness and strangeness of this
experience came upon her.
The religion which tradition had taught her required a gloomy
contemplation of death. It barely offered its “professors” a candle
of hope for a passage through this valley of terrors, and neither she
nor her lover had ever consented to become “ professors.” There fell
no light, therefore, on the path of her bereavement, from any knowl
edge she had had of Christian faith. On the contrary, all her
instruction, every thing she was accustomed to hear, and even the
prayer in the dreary funeral service, had carefully excluded every
ray of light, and forced her desolate heart upon either blank despair
or desperate trust. The despair was too terrible for endurance, yet
she could not have trusted, if it had been for herself alone. On either
side of her way, as she strove to follow the departed spirit to which
they said “God had joined” her, she saw the Jesus of Christian
superstition,* clothed in blood and breathing fire, and the Devil of the
same dreadful tale, only less horrible than the Judging Christ, while
* A recent evangelical poem, “ Yesterday, To-day and Forever,” which has already had a very
wide circulation, describes the Lord Jesus as rising from the “ Bridal Supper of the Lamb ” to
say, “Now is the day of vengeance in my heart,” and going forth G Apparell’d in a vesture
dipped in blood,” while his angels cry,
“ Ride on and prosper! Thy right hand alone
Shall teach thee deeds of vengeance, and Thy shafts
Shall drink the life-blood of Thy vaunting foes,”
�far before yawned bottomless perdition, and over all was that Infinite
Horror, the presence of “ an angry God.” That it was a heathen
mythology which had created this picture, she could not be expected to
know, but she soon did know, by some better revelation than she had
been taught, that the angry God, the lake of fire, the nearly infinite
devil, and the Jesus of the judgment-throne, were shapes of fear
known only to p ious fiction.
The unreality of customary religion had strongly impressed her
ever since she had first had its lessons pressed upon her attention.
Without distinctly reflecting, she had gathered a strong impression,
and in fact reached a profound conviction, that the usual administra
tion of Christian dogma was formal only, and was wholly false to the
real faith both of ministers and peoples. It was her nursery experi
ence over again, only the tales of catechism, and creed, and church
worship, while solemn and grim as grown men could make them, were
less real than Blue Beard and Jack and the Bean Stalk,— mere
mummery kept up by decent custom and vague fear,— or by the
difficulty ministers found in extricating their real faith from this
customary, consecrated, and said to be Divine Form. She had so
clearly felt this, without distinctly expressing it even to herself, that
the general idea that pious fiction is as much a rule in the religion of
sects and churches, as pleasant fiction is in the nursery, was perfectly
familiar to her.
When, therefore, early impressions and the influences about her,
conjured up the usual dreadful picture of the gods of Christian
heathenism,— Jesus, Satan, and Jehovah,— it was inevitable that her
brave love should recur to the thought that these shapes of terror had
no sanction in any human or any Christian truth.
This, her own individual thought, which had had but a timid
existence in her mind, would have hardly served her needs when the
shadow of utter darkness fell on her life, but for the fact that love
and desperation nerved her spirit, and together drove her upon the
experiment of trust. And once that she dared brave the triune
Horror of her early creed, the conviction grew into dauntless vigof,
that the real truth would unmask and dethrone this image of complex
dread. Of Devil and angry Jehovah, in fact, she at once found the
fear entirely gone. The dreadful figure of the Judge alone remained
to plague her timid trust in God. Unhesitatingly, however, using
this simple liturgy of Old and New Testaments, ‘The Lord is my
Shepherd’ — ‘Our Father which art in Heaven,’ — she defied, for
�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
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common than the publican and the Pharisee in the temple. That one
of the two whose presence might have been of real service, we will
call, without his title, John Paul, a modest, earnest gentleman of
nearly fifty, whose countenance told a plain story of very profound,
and possibly very sad, experience. Him, however, we must defer
introducing, because he was anticipated by the Rev. Athanasius
Channing Blowman, a clergyman of national reputation, who was
en route to Chicago to deliver his celebrated lecture on Napoleon
Bonaparte and Modern History.
The Rev. Athanasius Channing Blowman was still a young man,—
thirty-three perhaps,— but he did not lack assurance, and he felt it
incumbent upon him to employ his pastoral, not to say his episcopal,
authority, with the sighs and tears of Marion White. Not that he
was a priest of ‘ The Church,’ much less a bishop, for he belonged to
a small denomination of heretics, and had only the standing which
excessive self-assertion gives; but he made a large and loud claim as
a “minister of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” and he held in
great esteem that prophecy, wherein the master assured the disciples,
“ He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and
greater than these shall he do.” It was from the last clause of this
text that Athanasius Channing Blowman purposed to preach in the
Chicago Opera House, on the Sunday evening previous to his lecture,
which would be given on Monday night.
Nature had used inexplicable freedom in mixing characters in this
young apostle. There was a little of Pope Hildebrand, just enough
to warrant the sublime assurance with which he had demanded and
obtained ecclesiastical dignities, on the various boards engaged in
managing the machinery of the sect. Of Tom Paine, Voltaire, and
any nameless mountebank, there were about equal parts, giving a
considerable dash of irreverent common sense, of egotistic wit, and of
grand and lofty tumbling with figures of speech, epithets fit and unfit,
and the usual weapons of sensational oratory. It was, however, in
personal appearance, that Athanasius Channing Blowman believed
himself indubitably in the line of prophets and apostles, and of his
“ Lord and Master.” Probably he would never have been called a
handsome man; and he certainly was not interesting in appearance;
but he had quite unusual stature, an animated countenance, eyes that
habitually flashed, or were meant to flash, and locks, abundant and
dark, worthy of an Apollo. Two thoughts frequently came to him
through the smoke of his cigar, that the figures of “ the Lord Jesus,”
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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
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career much nobler than that of careless, reckless, sensational
administration of no-truths, half-truths, and lies, in the name of
religion.
It was a pet conceit of young Mr. Blowman, since he had taken
charge of the “ conservative liberal movement of the Christian mind,”
to constitute himself spokesman of the latest discovered true intent of
the only original gospel of “ Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,”
and invite the warring sects of Christendom to say after him this last
revised and finally genuine Christian confession of faith. It was not
that he really had any particular faith to confess himself, but he
imagined himself competent, as conductor of a metropolitan religious
theatre, drawing crowded houses every Sunday morning and evening,
to give a good guess at the average religious notions afloat in the
popular mind, and had no hesitation in assuming that a compend of
such notions would have prodigious popular success.
With his usual largeness and boldness of view, he purposed
obtaining what he called a “ Consensus,” or agreed-upon statement
of beliefs, endorsed by leading divines,— selected by himself from all
parts of Christendom, and addressed by a circular letter under his
own hand,— as an authoritative exposition of faith and practice. To
his mind it was plain that large numbers of the popular clergy of
various sects would welcome so good an opportunity to fall into line
under one banner, and behind a leader whose star was so undeniably
in the ascendant, wherever theatres and opera houses had opened
their doors. The “ liberal views” of his own sect rendered the bare
suggestion of a “ Creed ” dangerous, not because there was really any
indisposition to have a creed, in a small and sly way, by a sort of
ecclesiastical thimblerig, but from the average aversion of the sect to
call the distinctly proclaimed confession by the usual name, the
general impression seeming to be that clever sleight-of-hand infidelity
to the boasted principle of liberty, would escape detection, and
enable the body to save appearances.
In this peculiar exigency, our young apostle was very lucky to hit
on the Latin term, Consensus, which at once sounds neither definite
nor dangerous, and has an impressive suggestion of dignity and
divinity, as much as to say, reversing a scripture word, “ It seems
good to US and to the Holy Ghost.” This term he almost considered
a divine suggestion, only he was not sure that the assumptions of that
word “ divine,” such as the existence of God. inspiration, etc., were
not a little doubtful, useful but misty, while of his own cleverness he
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13
was certain beyond a doubt, and on the whole preferred to assume
that, in the absence or inattention of Divine Wisdom, and “the Lord
Jesus ” having left the excelsior opportunities to future disciples, he
had invented a kind of Nicholson pavement for religion, over which
ark and hearse, the hope and the terror of traditional faith, might
trundle, smoothly as never before, their glorious onward way.
He often said to himself, and to his numerous admiring confidants,
the quasi-religious clever fellows, of both sexes, who constituted the
voluntary vestry of his grand metropolitan conventicle, “ The Church
of Holy Enoch,” that he should never forget the hour and the
moment when the scheme of a “ Consensus ” occurred to him. It
was on his first visit to Chicago, when for the first time he was driven
down Wabash Avenue, by the Hon. Jupiter William. His calmness
of mind had been disturbed for a moment by the contrast between
his own elegant patent-leather “ Oxford ties ” and the “ heavy kip ”
of the Hon. Jupiter William’s unvarnished boots, resting conspicu
ously on the front seat of the carriage, when suddenly, as the vehicle
swept round into the Avenue, and rolled with soothing smoothness
along the block roadway, a kind of vision brought a recurrence of his
frequent thoughts on the momentous subject of a “ banner-statement
of belief,” and in a moment, as if a Latin Dictionary,— a sealed book
to his education,— had been let down between the scraggy and
smutty trees which line this “ superb drive,” he read this word of
words for his purpose, Consensus, and instantly imagined a grand
turn-out of ecclesiastical vehicles, rolling in noiseless majesty in the
wake of his suggestion, over the way his cleverness should lay down.
From that moment “Consensus” had been his banner in the sky.
Fie had had the word illuminated, and framed in velvet and gold, to
stand on his study table. And straightway he had proceeded to write
out fairly his compend of all known winds of doctrine, attaching thereto
his own bold, decisive, oecumenical signature, Athanasius Channing
Blowman, preparatory to receiving the concurrent attestation of elect
fathers and brethren to whom he would vouchsafe circular epistolary
application. This compend, which was meant to be to the original
materials of prophecy, gospels, and epistles, what an ordered and
elegantly served dinner would have been to the great sheet let down,
full of things clean and unclean, of Peter’s vision, had been printed
in gilt and colors, on a large, elegant broad-sheet, and also in a primer
executed in the richest style of the designer’s art.
It was the broad-sheet which had best pleased the eye and heart of
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the author, because the first words and the last, the title and the signa
ture, stood as he deemed they should, in one view, the Alpha and
the Omega of this last authoritative interpretation of revelation; and
then it suggested a new Luther, nailing theses of everlasting gospel on
the doors of “ Atheism, Free Religion, and Romanism,” with “ blows
heard in heaven.” “Consensus” and “ Blowman I ” Would not
numberless Simeons now say, “ Mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people ? ”
But the broad-sheet was less convenient than a primer to hand
about, and less durable in the frowsy pockets of unctious youths
who besieged the pulpit steps, at close of service on Sunday nights,
for more words of everlasting bunkum; and then report had it, on too
good ground, alas! that the Reverend Doctor Archangelicus Sanctus
Sanctorum, had made contemptuous reference to the “Consensus” as
“ Blowman’s Handbill,” and really threatened a split in the party of
“ us and the Holy Ghost,” unless “ us” used somewhat more reserve
in presence of the long time “ Liberal ” Vicar of the “ Lord Jesus.”
The primer, therefore, had finally engaged the ardent dogmatic and
aesthetic interest of the inventor of “Consensus.” and was already
privately published, while the large scheme of concurrent attestation
was delayed, until due attention could be afforded it. Some experi
ence which Mr. Blowman had had, with a richly printed and orna
mented insurance tract, which his popular pen had been engaged to
write, and which the enterprising managers, with plenty of other
people’s money to spend, had brought out regardless of expense, now
came in play. Suffice it to say that heavy tinted paper, border lines
which varied with each page through all the colors of the rainbow, a
text printed in old English black letter, with illuminated initial letters
in blue, scarlet, and gold, and an illuminated cover, done in chromo
lithograph, were the main features of the “ Consensus ” primer, the
striking effects of which had moved Blowman to soliloquize, “ Wonder
what J. C. would say to that,” these initials being his usual, strictly
private, familiar designation of the personage professionally spoken of
as “ our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
It was with two or three of these gay picture books in his hand
that Mr. Blowman improved an opportunity to take the seat directly
in front of Marion White, soon after the train had left the scene of
the fire. It was not difficult for him to introduce conversation, as it
certainly would have been for John Paul, or for any other person of
quick sympathies.
�Crazy Chicago.
f
15
“ Permit me, dear Madame, to hand you a short statement of
religious beliefs,— liberal beliefs, Madame, which may afford you some
suggestions.”
“Thank you; you are very kind. It is not a Tract Society —
thing — is it ? ”
Great emotions are apt to induce extreme frankness, which Marion
White had certainly used in intimating the disgust she felt for the
“ blood of Jesus ” leaflets of heathenism which Tract distributors had
so frequently thrust upon her. Her Quaker uncle, good Thomas
White, had long ago shown her that the Tract Society had no moral
character, and her own sense of religious truth had led her to consider
such of its publications as had come in her way as very stupid illustra
tions of the sentimentalism of Christian superstition. The bare
thought of one of these vulgar appeals to fear, and selfishness, and
gross credulity, excited in her an intense desire to cover her grief and
her faith from every eye save that of the One, who was to her the
Lord our Shepherd, and the Father in heaven. However, she did
not wish to be impolite, and then Mr. Blowman’s primer certainly did
not bear the aspect,— generally mean and smutty,— of Tract Society
origin; she added therefore, with some hesitation :
“ I shall be happy to look at it at some time,” and handed it to her
traveling companion, a brother, a youth of eighteen perhaps, who had
found himself not good for much during these last hours of his sister’s
trouble.
Mr. Blowman responded, “ You hold some form, I presume, Madame,
of Christian faith, and are able to —;” exactly what, Mr. Blowman
did not himself know, and the clear, frank eyes of Marion White so
evidently spoke of knowledge, that he dared not make a random
reference; so he stopped, quite at his ease, however, letting a manner
of high self-assurance serve as a resting-place for his broken question,
until he should see what particular hope it might be which kindled
so pure a light in those saddened eyes.
It was painful for Marion White to speak at all just then; it was
torture almost to uncover her heart; but all the more because of the
pain did she reply from her deepest feeling and her most distinct
thought,—
“ I suppose I do not hold any form of what is called Christian faith,
but I believe very strongly indeed.”
That was a distinction quite beyond the Blowman mind, which, to
use a colloquial phrase, ‘took s'ock’ in certain forms and in the
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‘ 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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
"
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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,
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the demoniacs, or possessed, spoken of so many times in evangelical history.
Yet Jewish mythology wculd not carry to the extreme thi^ resemblance to
Ahriman. Satan, for example, would never dare to attack God directlyOrdinarily even certain formulas, in which the name of the Most High
occurred in the first line, sufficed to exorcise him, that is to say, to drive
him away. His power is strictly confined to the circle which it pleased
divine wisdom to trace for his dominion. Dualism, therefore, remains very
incomplete. On the other hand, the Jewish Satan is never to be converted.
A prince of incurable evil, knowing himself condemned by the divine
deerees to a final and irremediable defeat, he will always persist in evil, and
will serve as executioner to Supreme justice, to torment eternally those
whom he has drawn into his terrible nets.
Such was the state of mind on this point in which the first preaching of
the gospel found the Jewish people. The messianic ideas, too, on their side,
in developing themselves, had contributed much to this enrichment of the
popular belief. If the devil, in this order of ideas, did not dare to oppose
God, or even his angels of high rank, he did not fear to resist openly his
servants on the earth. Now the Messiah was to be especially the servant of
God. He was to appear in order to establish the kingdom of God in that
humanity which was almost entirely subject to the power of demons.
Consequently the devil would defend his possessions against him to the last
extremity, and the work of the expected Messiah might be summed up in a
bodily and victorious struggle with the “prince of this world.” This is a
point of view that one should never forget in reading the gospels. Satan
and the Messiah personified, each on his side, the power of evil and good
engaging in a desperate combat at every point of collision. Never would
Jesus, for example, have been able to pass for the Messiah in the eyes of his
countrymen, had he not had the reputation of being stronger than the
demons every time those possessed with them were brought to him.
It is a question which has greatly interested modern theologians, to know
if Jesus himself shared the beliefs of his contemporaries in regard to Satan.
To treat this question as we should, we should have to stop longer on other
points foreign to this history. Let us simply say that nothing authorizes us
to think that Jesus would, from compliance with popular superstitions, have
feigned beliefs which he did not share; but let us add that the principles of
his religion were not in themselves favorable to beliefs of this kind. No
where does Jesus make faith in the devil a condition of entrance into the
kingdom of God, and were the devil only an idea, a symbol, these conditions
would remain literally the same. Purity of heart, strong desire for justice,
love of God and of men, these are all demands completely independent of
the question of knowing whether Satan exists or not. Hence when Jesus
speaks in an abstract, general manner, without any prepossession from
circumstances of place or time, he regularly eliminates the person of Satan
from his field of instruction. For example, he declares that our bad thoughts
come from our heart; according to the Satanic theory, he should have
attributed them to the devil. Sometimes it is plain that he makes use of
popular beliefs as a form, an image, to which he attaches himself no positive
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History of the Devil.
reality; he finds material for parables in them; he addresses as Satan one
of his disciples who is endeavoring to persuade him to withdraw from the
sufferings which await him, and who by his very affection becomes for him
a momentary Tempter One may remark the same thing in studying the
theology of St. Paul, at least in his authentic epistles. St. Paul evidently
believes in the devil, and yet with him moral evil is incident to the mortal
nature of men, and not to the exterior and personal action of a demon. In
a word, the teaching of Jesus and of Paul nowhere combats the belief in the
devil, but it can do without it, and its tendency is to dispense with it. We
see this tendency in our days, when so many excellent Christians have not
the least anxiety about the king of hell; but it was one of those germs of
which the gospel contains many, which needed a different intellectual atmos
phere in order to grow. What I have related will explain why much more
is said of the devil in the New Testament than in the Old. The belief in
the devil and the expectation of the Messiah had grown up side by side.
Yet let us remark that if the New Testament speaks very often of Satan, of
his angels, of the spirits “who are in the air,” and of the devil seeking
whom he may devour, it is more than sober in the descriptions that it gives
of them. A certain spiritual reserve hovers still over all that order of
conceptions; the devils are invisible; no one attributes to them palpable
body, and a crowd of superstitions which arise later, from the idea that we
can see and touch them, are still unknown. Yet, at the commencement of
our era, we may consider the period of the origin of our Satan as concluded.
He represents the union of polytheistic dualism and that relative dualism
which Jewish monotheism could rigorously support. We shall see it grow
still and assume new forms; but, such as it already is, we shall not fail to
recognize it. It is indeed he, the old Satan, the bugbear of our fathers, in
whom is concentrated all impurity, all ugliness, all falsehood, in a word the
ideal of evil.
II.
The first centuries of Christianity, very far from developing that side of
the gospel by which the new doctrine tended logically to banish the devil
to regions of symbol and personal uselessness, on the contrary only increased
his domain, by multiplying his interventions in human life. He served as a
scape-goat to the horror of the primitive Christians for the institutions of
paganism. Even in the early days, Christians did not very clearly distin
guish the Roman empire from the empire of Satan. This too Jewish point
of view did not last, but the favorite theme of most of the apologists was to
attribute to the craft and pride of the devil, everything which polytheism
presented, either fine or disagreeable, bad or good. The beautiful and the
good which might be found mingled there, were in their eyes nothing else
than small portions of truth artfully mingled by the enemy of the human
race with frightful errors, in order better to retain power over men whom
the absolutely false could not have captivated so long. The Alexandrian
teachers alone showed themselves more reasonable, but they took no great
hold on the mass of the faithful. Then especially the idea spread abroad
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History of the Devil.
61
that Satan was a rival really contemptible, but long powerful, of God, alone
adorable. Having an eager desire for honors and dominion, he had imitated
divine perfection as well as he could and had succeeded only in
making an odious caricature of it, but, such as it was, that caricature had
blinded the nations. Tertullian found, even on this subject, one of those
characteristic words in which his mocking spirit excelled. “Satan,” said
he, “is God’s ape,” and the saying was handed down to posterity. Conse
quently the Graeco-Roman gods were, to Christians as to Jews, demons
who had usurped the divine rank. The licentiousness of pagan morals,
too often consecrated by the ceremonies of traditional religion, procured for
this prejudiced point of view a sort of popular justification, enhanced
besides by the moral superiority which the rising church was generally
able to oppose to the corruptions which surrounded it. Satan was then
more than ever “the prince of this world.”
Yet let us not forget one very important circumstance, that other currents,
outside of the Christian church, contributed to extend everywhere a belief
in evil demons. Polytheism, in its decline, obeyed its internal logic, that
is to say, it became continually more dualistic, its last forms, those for
example which are distinguished by what they have borrowed from Platon
ism and Pythagorism, are entirely permeated with dualism, and consequently
they open a large career to the imagination to create every kind of evil
spirits. At that epoch, asceticism, which consists in slowly killing the body
under pretext of developing the mind, was not alone in the most exalted parts
of the Christian church; it was everywhere where people practiced religious
morals. The dreamB of which fasting is the physiological generator, gave
to the imaginary beings which they evoked all the appearance of reality.
Apollonius of Tyana does not drive off fewer demons than a Christian saint.
As Prof. Roskoff very justly remarks, the doctrine of angels and demons,
offered to polytheism, and to Jewish and Christian monotheism, a sort of
neutral territory, on which they might meet to a certain extent.
The
religious movements known under the name of Gnostic sects, which represent
a mingling of pagan, Jewish and Christian views in varied proportions, have,
as a common feature, a belief in fallen spirits, tyrants of men and rivals of
God. The great successes of Manicheism, that union of Persian dualism and
Christianity, were due to the satisfaction which the popular faith took in
everything which resembled a systematic struggle of the geniuB of evil with
the spirit of good. The Talmud and the Cabala underwent the same influ
ence. We need not then impute to Christianity alone the great place which
Satan at that time took in the affairs of this world; it was a universal
tendency of the epoch, and it would be more correct to say that Christianity
suffered the influence of it, with all contemporary forms of religion.
The Jewish Messiah had become to Christianity the Saviour of guilty
humanity; therefore the radical antagonism of Satan and the Messiah was
reflected in the first teaching of redemption. It was represented, from
the end of the Becond century, in a grand drama, in which Christ and the
devil were the principal actors. The multitude satisfied themselves with
thinking that Christ, having descended into hell, had, in virtue of the right
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of the strongest, taken from Satan the souls that he was holding captive;
but this coarse idea was refined upon. Irenaeus taught that men, since the
fall, were Satan’s by right; that it would have been unjust on the part of
God to take away from him violently what was his; that consequently
Christ, in the character of a man perfect and independent of the devil, had
offered himself to him to purchase the human race, and that the devil had
accepted the bargain. Soon, however, it was perceived that the devil had
made a very foolish calculation, since Christ had not remained finally in his
power. Origen, whose ecclesiastical teachings we need not always take for
literally exact representations of his real views, took that view which
admitted without repugnance that, in the work of redemption, Christ and
Satan had played their parts most artfully, the latter thinking he should
keep in his power a prey which he preferred to all the human race, Christ
knowing well that he would not remain in his hands. This point of view,
which ended in making Satan the deceived party and Jesus the deceiving,
scandalous as it appears to us, nevertheless made its way, and was long
predominant in the church. We readily perceive that such a manner of
looking at redemption was not likely to diminish the prestige of the devil.
Nothing could increase fear of the enemy like the exaggerated descriptions
given of his power and of the dangers run by those exposed to his attacks;
especially when, by a singular contradiction which the old theology could
never escape, the devil, declared vanquished, overthrown, reduced to power
lessness by the victorious Christ, none the less continued to exercise his
infernal power over the great majority of men. The saints alone could
consider themselves protected from his snares, and even they, according to
the legends, which began to be circulated, how much prudence and energy
had they not used to escape them! Everything felt the influence of this
continual prepossession. Baptism had become an exorcism. To become a
Christian, was to declare that one renounced Satan, his pomps and his
works. To be driven from the church for moral unworthiness or for heter
odoxy, was to be “delivered over to Satan.” It was also during this period
that was developed the doctrine of the fall of the lost angels. On the one
hand, it was thought that demons were meant in that mythical verse in Genesis
which relates that the “sons of God” married the daughters of men, whom
they found beautiful; and, in this supposition, lust was considered as their
own original sin and their constant prompting; on the other hand, and
since this did not explain the previous presence of a bad angel in the
terrestrial paradise, the fall of the rebellious spirit was carried back to the
moment of creation. Augustine thought that, as an effect of the fall, their
bodies previously subtile and invisible, became less etherial. This was the
beginning of the belief in visible appearances of the devil. Then came that
other idea that demons, in order to satisfy their lust, take advantage of the
night to beguile young men and women during their sleep. Hence the
succubi and incubi, which played so great a part in the middle ages. St.
Victorinus, according to the legend, was conquered by the artifice of a
demon which had taken the form of a seductive young girl lost in the woods
in the night. The ordinances of the councils, from the fourth century,
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enjoin on bishops to watch closely those of their diocese who are addicted to
the practice of magic arts, invented by the devil; there is even talk about
vicious women who run about the fields in the night in the train of heathen
goddesses, Diana among others. As yet, however, there was seen in these
imaginary meetings nothing but dreams suggested by Satan to those who gave
him a hold on them by their guilty inclinations.
But soon everything becomes real and material. There is no saint who
does not see the devil appear to him at least once under human form; Saint
Martin even met him so disguised as to resemble Christ. Generally, however,
in his character of angel of darkness, he appears as a man eutirely black,
and it is under this color that he escapes from heathen temples and idols
which the zeal of neophytes has overthrown. At length the idea that one
can make a compact with the devil, to obtain for himself what he most desires,
in exchange for his soul, takes its rise in the sixth century, with the legend
of St. Theophilus. The latter, in a moment of wounded pride, gives Satan a
signed abjuration; but, devoured by remorse, he persuaded the Virgin Mary
to get back the fatal writing from the bad angel. This legendary story,
written especially with the design of spreading the worship of Mary, was
destined to have serious consequences. The devil, in fact, saw his prestige
increase much more when the conversion of the invaders of the empire, and
the missions sent to countries which had never made a part of it, had intro
duced into the bosom of the church a mass of people absolutely ignorant and
still full of polytheism. The church and state, united in the time of Con
stantine and still more in that of Charlemagne, did what they could to refine
the gross spirits under their tutorship; yet, to tell the truth, the temporal
and spiritual princes ought themselves to have been less under the influence
of the superstitions they wished to oppose. If some able popes could allow
their policy to include a certain toleration for customs and errors which it
seemed impossible to uproot, the great majority of bishops and missionaries
firmly believed they were fighting the devil and his host in trying to exterpate polytheism; they instilled the same belief into their converts and in
that way prolonged very much the existence of pagan divinities. The good
old spirits of rural nature were especially tenacious of life. The sacred
legends collect many of them, and comparative mythology recognizes a great
number of ancient Celtic and German gods in the patrons venerated by our
ancestors. For quite a long time, and without its being regarded as a renun
ciation of the Catholic faith, in England, France and Germany, offerings
were presented, either from gratitude or fear, to spirits of the fields and
forests ; the women were especially tenacious of these old customs. As,
nevertheless, the church did not cease to designate as demons and devils all
superhuman beings who were not saints or angels, and as the character of
the ancient gods had after all nothing angelic, a division took place. The
kingdom of the saints was enriched from the good part under new names ;
the kingdom of the demons had the rest. The belief in the devil, which, in
the first centuries, was still somewhat elevated, became decidedly coarse and
stupid. It was in the beginning of the middle ages that people began to
regard certain animals, such as the cat, the toad, the rat, the mouse, the
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black dog, and the wolf, as serving, in preference to all others, as symbols,
auxiliaries, and even as a momentary form, for the devil and his servants.
It has been recently shown that ordinarily these animals were consecrated
or sacrificed to the divinities whose places the demons had taken. Recollec
tions of human sacrifices in honor of the ancient gods must be at the base of
the idea that Satan and his slaves are partial to human flesh. The wehrwolf, man-wolf, which devours children, has been succe; sively a god, a devil,
and a sorcerer going to the wizard’s meeting under the form of a wolf, so as
not to be recognized. We all know that there has never been a sorceress
without a cat. A pest too frequent among a population destitute of all
acquaintance with cleanliness, viz., vermin, was also at that time put to the
account of the devil and his servants. It was also about the same time that
the corporeal form of the devil became a fixed idea; it was that of the old
fauns and satyrs, a horned forehead, blobber-lipped mouth, hairy skin, tail,
and the cloven foot of the goat or the hoof of a horse.
We might accumulate here the half-burlesque, half-tragic details ; but we
prefer to note the salient points of the development of the belief. At the
point we have reached, we must look at it under a new light. Among the
Jews of the time directly preceding our era, Satan had become the so-called
adversary of the Messiah, — among the first Christians, the direct antago
nist of the Saviour of men; but in the middle ages Christ is in Heaven, very
high and far away; the living, immediate organism which is to realize his
kingdom on the earth, is the church. Consequently, it is henceforth the
devil and the church which have to do with one another. The faith of the
collier consists in believing what the church believes, and when one asks the
collier what the church believes, the collier responds boldly: “What I
believe.” So, if one asked during that period : “ What does the devil do ? ”
one would have to respond : “What the church does not do.” “ And what
is it that the church does not do?” “ That which the devil does.” This
would tell the whole story. The nocturnal meetings of evil spirits, which
the old councils, called to consider them, dismissed as imaginary, have become
something very real. The Germanic idea of fealty, that is to say, the idea
that fidelity to the sovereign is the first of virtues, as the treason of the
vassal is the greatest of crimes, was introduced into the church, and con
tributed not a little to give to everything which approached infidelity to
Christ the colors of blackest depravity. The sorcerer, however, is as faithful
to his master Satan as the good Christian to his celestial sovereign, and just
as every year vassals come to render homage to their lord, so the liege-men
of the devil hasten to pay him a like honor, sometimes on a fixed day, some
times by special convocation. The flights through the air of sorcerers and
witches, with hair flying wildly, hastening to the nocturnal rendezvous, are
a transformation of the Celtic and German myth of the wild hunt or the great
hunter ; but the master who appointed this rendezvous is a sort of god, and
in the great assemblies of the diabolical tribe they honor him especially by
celebrating the opposite of the mass. They adore the spirit of evil by
changing the ceremonies which were employed to glorify the God of good. The
name itself of sabbath (a term applied to their nocturnal assemblies,) came
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from the confusion which arose between the worship of the devil and the
celebration of a non-catholic worship. The church put in absolutely the
same rank the Jew, the excommunicated, the heretic, and the sorcerer. One
circumstance contributed greatly to that coufusion. Most of the sects which
had revolted from the church, that especially which holds a grand and
wonderful place in our national history, called the heresy of the Albigenses,
were penetrated to a high degree with the old Gnostic and Manichean leaven.
Dualism was the principle of their theology. Hence came the idea that their
religious assemblies, rivals of the mass, were nothing other than the mass
said in hell, and that such is the kind of worship that Satan prefers. If now
we recall with what docility the state allowed itself to be persuaded by the
church that its first duty was to exterminate heretics, we shall no longer find
anything surprising in the rigor of the penal laws declared against the
pretended sorcerers. It is important that the absorbing character of the
belief in the devil during the middle ages be well understood; those who
believe in Satan now-a-days would have difficulty in conceiving what a sway
this belief had. It was the fixed idea of everybody, especially from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, a period which may be signalized as
having marked the apogee of that superstition. A fixed idea tends, among
those who are possessed with it, to bring over everything to itself. When, for
example, we follow somewhat closely those of our contemporaries who are
devoted to spiritism, we are astonished at the fertility of their imagination
in interpreting in favor of their belief events most insignificant and them
selves indifferent. A door not well closed which half opens, a fly which
describes arabesques in its flight, the falling of an object badly poised, the
cracking of a piece of furniture during the night, is all that is needed to send
them out of sight into space. Let us generalize such a state of mind by
substituting for the innocent illusion of our spiritists the continual interven
tions of the devil, and we shall have quite a good representation of what was
passing in the middle ages. Among the numberless facts and writings which
we could cite, we will mention the Revelations, quite forgotten now-a-days,
but formerly widely known, of the abbé Richeaume or Richalmus, who flour
ished about the year 1270, in Franconia, and who belonged to the order of
Citeaux. The abbé Richeaume attributed to himself a particular gift of
discernment for perceiving and understanding the satellites of Satan, who,
moreover, according to his account, always torment in preference churchmen
and good Christians. What do not these imps of hell make the poor abbé
endure ! From the distractions he may have during mass to the nausea
which too often troubles his digestion, from the false notes of the officiating
precentor to the fits of coughing which interrupt his discourses, all the
annoyances which happen to him are demoniac works. “For example,”
says he to the novice who gives him his cue, “ when I sit down for spiritual
reading, the devils make a desire to sleep seize me. Then it is my custom
to put my hands out of my sleeves so that they may become cold ; but they
bite me under the clothes like a flea, and attract my hand to the place bitten,
so that it becomes warm, and my reading grows careless again.” They like
to disfigure men. To one they give a wrinkled nose, to another hare-lips.
VOL. i.—no. i.
5
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If they perceive that a man likes to close his lips properly, they make his
lower lip hanging. “Stop,” says he to his novice “look at this lip ; for
twenty years a little ilevil has kept himself there, just to make it hang.”
And he goes on in that strain. When the novice asks him if there are many
demons who thus make war on men, abbé Richeaume replies that every one
of us is suriounded by as many demons as a man plunged in the sea has
drops of water around him. Happily the sign of the cross is generally
sufficient to foil their malice, but not always, for they know well the human
heart and know how to reach it through its weaknesses. One day when the
abbé was making his monks pick up stones to build a wall, he heard a young
devil, hidden under the wall, cry out very distinctly: “What distressing
labor!” And he said that only to inspire in the monks a disposition to
complain of the base service imposed on them. To the sign of the cross, it
is often useful to add the effect of holy water and salt. Demons cannot bear
salt. “ When I am at the table and the devil has taken away my appetite,
as soon as I have tasted a little salt, my appetite returns; a little after, it
disappears again, I again take salt, and I am hungry anew.” In the hundred
and thirty chapters of which his Revelations consist, the abbé Richeaume does
nothing but subject thus to his fixed idea the most trivial circumstances of
domestic life, and especially of convent life ; but the popularity which this
book, which appeared after his death, enjoyed, proves that he simply agreed
in opinion with his contemporaries. One might find innumerable parallels
in the literature of the time. The Golden Legend of Jacques de Voraigne,
one of the books most read in the middle ages, will give a sufficient idea
of it.
This continual preoccupation with the devil, had two consequences equally
logical, though of a very opposite character. It had at the same time its comical
and its dark side. By seeing Satan everywhere, people at last became familiar
with him, and by a sort of unconscious protest of mind against imaginary
monsters created by traditional doctrine, they became emboldened to the
point of being quite at ease with his horned majesty. The legends always
showed him so miserably taken in by the sagacity of saints and good priests,
that his reputation for astuteness slowly gave place to a quite contrary fame.
They had even reached the point of believing that it was not impossible to
speculate on the foolishness of the devil. For example, had he not had the
simplicity to furnish to architects in trouble magnificent plans for the con
struction of the cathedrals of Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne ? It is true that
at Aix he had demanded in recompense the soul of the first person who
should enter t he church, and at Cologne that of the architect himself ; but
he had to do with those more cunning than he. At Aix, they drove with
pikes a she-wolf into the church then recently finished ; at Cologne, the
architect, already in possession of the promised plan, in the place of deliver
ing to Satan a conveyance of his soul in due form, draws suddenly from
beneath his gown a bone of the eleven thousand virgins and brandishes it in
the face of the devil, who decamps uttering a thousand imprecations. The
high part which is assigned to him in the religious theatricals of the middle
ages, is well known. Redemption, in the popular mind, still passed for a
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divine trick, piously played at the expense of the enemy of men. It was
then natural to imagine a host of other cases where Satan was taken in his
own snares. What laughs these discomfitures excited among the good people !
By a thousand indications, one would be tempted to believe that he had
become the character, in the mysteries, the most liked, if not the most
agreeable. The others had their part entirely marked out by tradition;
with him, one could anticipate something unexpected. We see him, too,
represent for a long time the comic element of the religious drama. In
France, where the people have always liked to subject the theatre to exact
rules, there was a class of popular pieces called deviltries, coarse and often
obscene masquerades in which at least four devils were to struggle together.
Hence comes, it appears, the expression, “faire le diable d quatre.” In
Germany, too, the devil becomes humorous on the stage. There is an old
Saxon mystery of the passion where Satan repeats, like a mocking echo, the
last words of Judas hanging himself; then, when, according to the sacred
tradition, the entrails of the traitor are burst out, he gathers them in a
basket, and, carrying them away, signs an article appropriate to the
circumstances.
This, however, did not prevent a general distressing fear of the devil. At
the theatre, during the middle ages, one was in a certain sense at church.
There, nothing hindered one from deriding at pleasure the detested being
whose artifices were powerless against the actors of the holy representations ;
but people could not pass their lives listening to mysteries, and the daily
realities were not slow in restoring to him all his prestige. Naturally, the
number of individuals suspected of some kind of intercourse with Satan must
have been enormous. This was the first idea that came into the mind of any
one who did not know how to explain the success of an adversary or the
prosperous issue of an audacious enterprise. Enguerrand de Marigny, the
templars, our poor Joan of Arc, and many other illustrious victims of polit
ical hatred, were convicted of sorcery. Popes themselves, such as John
XXII., Gregory VII., Clement V., incurred the same suspicion. At the same
time, we see appear the idea that the compacts concluded with the devil are
signed with the blood of the sorcerer, in order that it may be firmly cove
nanted that his person, his entire life, belongs henceforth to the infernal
master. At this time, also, an old Italian superstition was revived, the idea
of causing the death of those one hates by mutilating or piercing little
images of wax of the person designated, which had been bewitched. There
were councils purposely to proceed rigorously against sorcery, which was
thought to be spread in every direction. Pope John XXII., himself accused
of sorcery, declares, in a bull of 1317, the bitter grief caused him by the
compacts concluded with the devil by his physicians and courtiers, who draw
other men into the same impious relation. From the thirteenth century, they
proceeded against the crime of sorcery just as against the most henious
offences, and popular ignorance was only too well disposed to furnish food to
the zeal of the inquisitors. Toulouse saw the first sorceress burned. This
was Angela de Labarbte, a noble lady, fifty-six years of age, who took part in
that special character in the grand auto-da-fe in that city, in 1275. At
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Carcassone.from 1320 to 1350, more than four hundred executions for the crime
of sorcery are mentioned as having taken place. Nevertheless those bloody
horrors had even in the fourteenth century a local character; but in 1484
an act of Pope Innocent VIII. extended over all Christendom this terrible
procedure. Then began throughout all Catholic Europe that mournful
pursuit of sorcerers which marks the paroxysm of the belief in the devil,
which concentrates and condenses it for more than three cent uries, and which,
yielding at last under the reprobation of modern conscience, was to carry
away with it the faith of which it was the issue.
III.
In the fifteenth century, a momentary relaxing of orthodox fanaticism
rendered the task of inquisitors quite difficult in what concerned heresy
properly so called. It seems that on the banks of the Rhine, as in France,
people began to weary of the insatiable vampire which threatened everybody
and cured none of the evils of the church, which had employed it as an heroic
remedy. The faith in the church itself as a perfect and infallible institution,
was in peril, and the inquisitors complained to the Holy See of the increas
ing difficulties which the local powers and the local clergy opposed to them;
but those even who questioned the church and inclined to toleration of
religious opinion did not mean to give free course to the wiles of the devil
and his agents. Then appeared the famous bull Summis desiderantes, by
which Innocent VIII. added to the powers of the officers of the inquisition
that of prosecuting the authors of sorcery, and applying to them the rules
which until then had affected only depravatio heretica. Long is the list of
witchcrafts enumerated by the pontificial bull, from tempests and devasta
tion of crops to fates cast upon men and women to prevent them from
perpetuating the human species. Armed with this bull which fulminated
against the refractory the most severe penalties, which was strengthened by
other functions of the same origin and same tendency, the inquisitors Henry
Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, prepared that Hammer of sorceries, — Malleus
maleficarum, — which was a long time for all Europe the classical code of
procedure to be followed against individuals suspected of sorcery. This
book received the pontificial sanction, the approbation of the emperor
Maximilian, and that of the theological faculty of Cologne. The reading of
this dull and wearisome treatise cannot fail to cause a shudder. This pro
longed study of the false held for the true, these perpetual sophisms, the
pedantic simplicity with which the authors recall everything which can give
a shadow of appearance of truth to their bad dreams, the cold cruelty which
dictates their proceedings and their judgments, everything would fill the
modern reader with repulsion, if he had not the duty of indicting at the bar
of history one of the most lamentable aberrations which have falsified the
conscience of humanity. We find an answer to everything in this frightful
conjuring-book. We see there why the devil gives his servants the power to
change themselves reali transformatione et essentialiter to wolves and other
dreadful beasts, why it is a heresy to deny sorcery, how the incubi and
succubi manage to attain their ends, quomodo procreant, why one has never
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seen so many sorcerers as at the present time, why David drove the torment
ing demon from Saul by showing him his harp, which resembled a cross, etc.
If there are more sorceresses than sorcerers, it is because women believe
more in the promises of Satan than men do, it is because the fluidity of their
temperament renders them more fitted to receive revelations, it is in short
that women, being weaker, readily have recourse to supernatural means to
satisfy their vengeance or their sensuality. Recipes of every sort arc
recommended to wise persons to guard themselves from the spells that may
be thrown over them. The sign of the cross, the holy water, the judicious
use of salt, and of the name of the holy Trinity, constitute the principal
exorcisms. The sound of church bells is also regarded as a defence of great
power, and it is therefore well to have them rung during tempestuous storms,
for, by driving away the demons which cannot bear this sacred sound, they
prevent them from continuing their work of perturbation. This supersti
tious custom, which has been perpetuated to our times, clearly denotes a
confounding of the demons of the church and the ancient divinities of the
t hunder and of tempests.
What especially commands attention, is the criminal procedure developed
by the authors, and which beoome law everywhere. They are exactly imi
tated from those which the inquisition had instituted against heretics.
Sorcery, arising from a compact with the devil supposing the abjuration of
the baptismal vow, is a sort of apostacy, a heresy in the first degree.
Denunciations without proof are admitted. . . It is even sufficient that
public rumor call the attention of the judge to the matter. All who present
themselves, even the infamous, even the personal enemies of the sorceress,
are permitted to give evidence. The pleadings must be summary, and as
much as possible relieved from useless formalities. The accused must be
minutely questioned, until there are found in the details of her life some
thing to strengthen the suspicions which press upon her. The judge is not
obliged to name to her the informers against her. She can have one
defender, who must know no more of the matter than she, and who must
limit himself to the defence of the person incriminated, but not of her
criminal acts; otherwise the defender will be in his turn suspected. The
acknowledgment of the guilty person must be obtained by torture, as well
as the declaration of all the circumstances relating to her heinous crime.
Still one may promise her security of life, free not to keep that promise
(so the text says), on condition that confession is complete and prompt.
Torture is repeated every three days, and the judge is to take all suitable
precautions that the effect of it may not be neutralized by some charm
hidden in some secret part of the body of the accused. He must even avoid
looking her in the face, for sorceresses have been seen endowed, by the
devil, with a power such that the judge whose glance they were able to
catch no longer felt the strength to condemn them. When at length she is
well and duly convicted, she is given over to the secular arm, which is to
lead her off to death without farther parley.
It is easy to see from this cursory view that the unfortunate women who
fell into the clutches of this terrible tribunal, had only to abandon hope at
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the door of their prison. Nothing is more afflicting than a careful review
of the proceedings for sorcery. The women are always, as the inquisitors
learnedly explain, in the majority. Hatreds, jealousies, desires for revenge,
above all suspicions inspired by want and ignorance, could have free course
and did not allow the opportunity to escape them. Often, too, unfortunate
women were victims of their own imagination, over-excited by a hysterical
temperament, or by the terrors of eternal torment. Those in our times who
have been able to examine closely the cases of mania religiosa, know with
what readiness women especially believe themselves the objects of divine
reprobation, and fatally given over to the power of the devil. All those
unfortunates, who to-day are treated with extreme gentleness in special
institutions, then were obliged to pass for possessed or sorceresses, and
what is frightful is that many seriously supposed themselves to be so.
Many related that they had really been to the witches’ meeting, that they
had there given themselves up to the most degrading debauches. How many
like confessions aggravated afterwards the position of those who denied with
the firmness of innocence the disgraceful acts of which they were accused!
Torture was there to draw from them what they refused to tell, and thus the
conviction became rooted in the spirit of judges even relatively humane and
equitable, that besides crimes committed by natural means there was a
whole catalogue of heinous offences so much the more dreadful as their
origin was supernatural. How could one show too much rigor to such
criminals ?
In the single year 1485, and in the single district of Worms, eighty-five
witches were committed to the flames. At Geneva, at Basle, at Hamburg,
at Ratisbonne, at Vienna, and in a multitude of other cilies, there were
executions of the same kind. At Hamburg, among others, they burned
alive a physician who had saved a woman in confinement abandoned by the
midwife. In 1523, in Italy, and after a new bull against sorcery issued by
pope Adrian VI. the single diocese of Coma saw more than a hundred
witches burn. In Spain, it was still worse: in 1527, two little girls, from
nine to eleven years old, denounced a number of witches whom they pre
tended to recognize by a sign in the left eye. In England and Scotland,
government took part in the matter; Mary Stuart was particularly hostile
to witches. In France, the parliament of Paris in 1390, had the fortunate
idea of taking away that sort of business from the ecclesiastical tribunal,
and under Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII., there was scarcely any
condemnation under the head of sorcery; but from the time of Francis I.,
and especially of Henry II., the scourge re-appeared. A man of a real
merit in other respects, but literally a madman on the subject of sorcerers,
Jean Bodin, communicated his madness to all classes in the nation. His
contemporary and disciple, Boguet, communicates in a lengthy article the
fact that France is swarming with sorcerers and witches. “They multiply
in the land, said he, like caterpillars in our gardens. I wish they were all
put in one body to have them burned at once and by one single fire.”
Savoy, Flanders, the mountains of the Jura, Lorraine, Bfearn, Provence,
almost all our provinces witnessed frightful hecatombs. In the seventeenth
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century, the demoniac fever abated, but not without partial returns espe
cially among convents of hysterical nuns. Everybody is acquainted with
the frightful stories of the priests Ganfridy and Urbain Grandier. In
Germany, above all in the southern part, the punishment of sorcerers was
still more frequent. There is a certain insignificant principality in which
two hundred and forty-two persons at least were burned from the year 1640
to 1651. Tale to make one shudder! we find in the official accounts of these
tortures, that there were children from one to six years old among the
victims! In 1697, Nicolas Remy boasted having caused nine hundred persons
to be burned in fifteen years. It appears even that it was to the proceedings
against sorcerers that Germany owed the introduction of the torture as an
ordinary judicial means of discovering the truth.
Prof. Roskoff has
reproduced a catalogue of the executions of sorcerers and witches in the
episcopal city of Würzbourg, in Bavaria, until 1629, in all thirty-one execu
tions, without counting some others that the authors of the catalogue have
not regarded as sufficiently important to be mentioned. The number of
victims, at each of these executions, varies from two to seven. Many are
indicated only by a nick-name: ‘‘the big hunch-back,” “the Sweet-heart,”
“the Bridge-keeper,” “the old Pork-Butcheress,” etc. We find there all
professions and all ranks, actors, workmen, jugglers, city and country girls,
rich bourgeois, nobles, students, even magistrates, as well as quite a large
number of priests. Several are simply marked, “a foreigner,” “a foreign
woman.” Here and there the one who prepares the list adds to the name of
the person condemned his age and a short notice. Thus we notice among the
victims of the twentieth execution, “Babelin, the prettiest girl in Würz
bourg,” “a student who knew how to speak every language, who was an
excellent musician vocaliter et instrumentaliter,” and “the director of the alms
house, a very learned man.” We find also in this mournful catalogue the
heart-rending account of children burned as sorcerers ; here a little girl
from nine to ten years with her little sister still younger (their mother was
burned soon after), boys of from ten to twelve years, a young girl of fifteen,
two alms-house children, the little son of a judge. The pen refuses to
recount such monstrous excesses.
Will those who wish to admit
the correctness of the doctrine of the infallibility of the popes, before giving
in their vote, listen, in the presence of God and history to the cries of the
poor innocents cast into the fire by pontifical bulls?
The seventeenth century, nevertheless, saw the proceedings against sorcer
ers and especially their punishment gradually diminish. Louis XIV., in one of
his better moments, mitigated greatly, in 1675, the rigors of that special
legislation. Yet for that he was obliged to endure the unanimous remon
strance of the parliament of Rouen, which thought society would be ruined,
if the sorcerers were only condemned to perpetual solitary confinement.
The fact is that belief in sorcerers was still sufficiently general for single
executions to take place from time to time, even throughout the eighteenth
century. One of the last and most famous was that of the lady-superior of
the cloister of Unterzell, near Würzbourg, Renata Soenger, (1749.) At
Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756, a young girl of thirteen years was put to
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History of the Devil.
death, having been convicted of having had impure intercourse with the
devil. Seville, in 1781, Glaris, in 1783, saw the last two examples known of
this fatal madness.
IV.
People have sometimes used as a weapon against Christianity, these bloody
horrors, ulteriorly due, they say, to a belief which Christianity alone had
instilled into persons who, without it, would never have entertained such a
belief. This point of view is superficial and not supported by history. The
blame lies primarily with the dualistic point of view, which is much anterior
to Christianity and has outlived it. Pagan antiquity had its necromancers,
its magicians, its old stryges, lamias et verifier, which were not dreaded less
than our witches. We have shown that dualism is inherent in all the relig
ions of nature; that, having attained their complete development, these
religions end, as in Persia, in India, and even in the last evolutions of
Graeco-Roman paganism, by an eminently dualistic conception of the forces
or divinities which direct the course of things ; that the Jewish Satan owes,
not his personal origin but his growth and entire degradation td his contact
with the Persiah Ahriman; that the Christian Satan and his demons have in
turn inherited the worst characteristics and most frightful symbolical formp
of the conquered divinities. In reality, the devil of the middle ages is at
once pagan, Jewish and Christian. He is Christian, because his peculiar
domain is moral evil, the physical ills of which he is the author arising only
in consequence of his passionate desire to corrupt souls, and these
giving themselves up to him only with guilty intent. He is Jewish in
this sense that his power, however great it might be, could not pass the
limits it pleased divine omnipotence to mark out for it. Finally, it is Pagan
by everything which it preserves of ancient polytheistic beliefs. We have a
right to regard the faith in demons, as it came out in the middle ages, as
the retribution of paganism, or, if we please, as the unabsorbed residue of
the old polytheism perpetuating itself under other forms.
That which prolonged the reign of Satan and his demons, was not. alone
the authority of the church, it was above all the state of mind which the
labors pretending to be scientific, of all the period anterior to Bacon and
Descartes, reveal, even to a period approaching ours. There was no real
knowledge of nature: the idea of the inviolability of its laws was yet to
appear. Alchemy, astrology and medicine regularly ministered to magic;
they recognized, as much as did contemporary theology, hidden forces,
talismans, the power of magic words, and impossible transmutations. Even
after the renaissance what a confused mystical medley the physiological
doctrines of Cardan, of Paracelsus, of Van Helmont! The general state of
mind, determined in great part by the church I acknowledge, but by the
church itself under the influence of the ruling ideas, must have been the
true cause of that long series of follies and abominations which constitute
the history of the devil in the middle ages and in modern times. It is an
evidence of this that, in a time and in countries where the church was still
�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
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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
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History of the Devil.
considered as lost in scientific theology. The progress of the human mind
in acquaintance with nature and modern philosophy did the rest.
The scientific spirit, such as it has become since Bacon and Descartes, no
longer admits those hasty conclusions which so readily gained the assent of
the centuries when imagination ruled, when the readiness a man exhibited
in expressing an opinion upon the most obscure subjects was in direct pro
portion to his ignorance. The experimental method, which is the only true
one, obtains as much strength for the theses it verifies, as it inspires mistrust
of everything out of its field of examination. Doubtless there are necessary
truths which we cannot make enter the crucible of experience; however,
they atone for that inconvenience by their close connection wtih our nature,
our life, and our conscience. If, for example, one could say that belief in
the devil recommends itself by its high moral utility, that it makes those
better who share it, that it elevates characters by rendering them more
chaste, more courageous, more devoted, there would yet be respectable
motives for trying to save it from the formidable attacks of modern reason;
but quite the contrary is the case. A belief in the devil tends necessarily to
blunt the feeling of individual responsibility. If I do evil, not because I am
bad, but because another has forced me to it by a power superior to my own
will, my culpability is certainly lessened, if not annihilated. We have just
seen the deplorable superstitions, the dangerous follies, the horrible crimes
of which that belief was so long the inspirer. What is evidence against
sorcery, will perhaps be said, is not evidence against a personal genius of
evil from whom men have to defend themselves as from an enemy continually
around them to drive them to evil. Let us nevertheless reflect that sorcery
is not so detached in principle from that belief whose daughter it is. The
devil once admitted, the sorcerer follows quite naturally. If there really
exists a personal being, in possession of superhuman powers, seeking, as is
said, to ruin us morally for his private satisfaction, is it not evident that, in
order better to succeed, he will try to entice weak souls by furnishing them
the means of procuring for themselves what they most desire? Not without
reason did the belief in the devil reach its full development in a belief in
sorcerers; and the latter, having given way before experience, necessarily
drew down in its ruin the belief in the devil himself. If there is truly a
devil, there are sorcerers, and, since there are no sorcerers, it is clear that
there is no devil; this the combined good sense of the last three centuries
authorizes us to conclude, and this conclusion will forever await its
refutation.
The eighteenth century made the mistake of imagining that to destroy
traditional beliefs it was sufficient to throw ridicule on them. When a
belief which has been ridiculed for some time has deep roots in human
consciousness, it easily survives the sarcasms of which it has been the
object, and the time comes when these sarcasms no longer excite a laugh,
because they chill the dearest feelings of religious minds, and the good taste
of the refined; but, as to the devil, the laugh of the eighteenth century has
remained victorious. It is in fact because the devil is ridiculous. That
being whom they pretend is so cunning, so mischievous, so learnedly ego-
�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
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History of the Devil.
totally corrupt. Observation attests that we are selfish, but capable of
loving; naturally sensual, but not less naturally drawn by the splendor of
the true and the good; very imperfect, but capable of improvement. The
first condition of progress is to feel what we need. To live in harmony with
conscience, one must know how to triumph over the assaults which selfish
pleasures of sense, which flesh and blood, the world and its allurements, gives
us into the power of at every moment. That is the diabolical power from
which we should emancipate ourselves. In one sense, we might say that we
are all more or less possessed. Error comes in as soon as we desire to per
sonify this power of evil. When theists say that God is personal, they do
not fail to recognize what there is defective in the idea of personality bor
rowed from our human nature; but as it is impossible to conceive another
mode of existence than personality and impersonality, as God must possess
every perfection, they say, for want of something better, that he is personal
because he is perfect, and that an impersonal perfection is a contradiction.
Evil, on the contrary, which is the opposite of the perfect, is necessarily
impersonal. It is against its pernicious seductions, against its always fatal
enchantments that it is necessary to struggle in order that our true human
personality, our moral personality, may disengage itself, victorious, from
the vile surroundings where it must grow. It is on that condition that it
attains the pure regions of liberty and of impregnable morality, where
nothing which resembles Satan can longer trouble the ascent towards God.
That is all that remains of the doctrine of the devil, but also all that concerns
our moral health, and which we ought never to forget.
Albert Reville.
�Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledo.
79
REV. MR. ABBOT AT TOLEDO.
Early in the summer we heard that our friend Abbot, whom we deem not
less worthy of love and honor as a Christian apostle, albeit he calls himself
“outside of Christianity,” than any other man among living religious
leaders, was likely to have a break down with his society at Toledo, though
possibly he might be able to succeed with his weekly paper, The Index. It
was also told us that originally he had crept in privily and stolen a society
and a meeting-house which belonged to regular Unitarianism, and which
were in honor mortgaged to the American Unitarian Association on account
of money paid by it in aid of the society. Knowing that the part of this
information reflecting upon Mr. Abbot must have an explanation honorable
to him, we surmised that the other might also change face upon investiga
tion, and resolved to go and see for ourselves. We went at the end of June,
and spent two days in Toledo, with exceeding satisfaction.
The once Unitarian, and now Independent, society to which Mr.
Abbot preaches, was never aided by the American Unitarian Association.
It twice came near it, and would have put its neck under the yoke, but for
a single circumstance, which was the refusal of the society to accept aid on the
conditions proposed by the American Unitarian Association. Twice in its history
this people, before ever they had heard of Mr. Abbot, had declined to accept
aid as a Unitarian society, lest at some future day they might find tlieir inde
pendence hampered by the implicit pledge thus given. This special provi
dence prepared Mr. Abbot’s way in Toledo. It was but one out of many
which plainly enough show that the Lord is with him.
When Mr. Abbot was asked to go to Toledo to preach a few Sundays, he
wrote a letter stating conditions which he thought would not be accepted,
inasmuch as they included a frank avowal of his most offensive heresies.
This letter was read to a number of the society together, and was then
passed from hand to hand, to anybody who wished to see it. The statement
that it was suppressed, and people kept in ignorance of Mr. Abbot’s views,
is wholly baseless. Moreover, Rev. Mr. Camp, the former pastor, meddlesomely and maliciously towards Mr. Abbot, wrote to a member of the
society against him, and this immoral document circulated freely. Mr.
Abbot came July 3, 18G9, and preached several Sundays with more than his
usual frankness and boldness. What ground he took may be seen by turning
to the masterly discourses in the early numbers of The Index. July 11,
his topic was, “What is Christianity?” July 18, “What is Free Relig
ion?” July 25, “Christianity and Free Religion contrasted as to CornerStones”; August 1, “Christianity and Free Religion contrasted as to
Institutions, Terms of Fellowship, Social Ideal, Moral Ideal, and Essential
Spirit”; August 8, “The Practical Work of Free Religion”; and having
made this full and frank disclosure of his renunciation of Christianity, as
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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
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Our Religious Purpose.
element of Christianity, its religion, and only rejects the special element,
its Christism, and calls this rejecting Christianity, which it is not, if there
is any truth in the radical method of interpretation, the very point of which
is that it uncovers the living truth of any system, plants itself on that, and
from that rejects whatever in the special element is not consistent with the
universal. In our next issue we shall show that Mr. Abbott is purely and
rigorously Christian, in the true religious sense, and all the more so for his
rejection of Jesuism, and might as well announce himself outside the solar
system as outside true Christianity.
It concerns Christian interests mightily to be reconciled with such burn
ing and shining truth as every candid observer must see in Mr. Abbot. In
intellectual interest he stands with the leaders of our generation, and does
not suffer by comparison with such elder masters as Emerson, Spencer, and
Mill. He is now but thirty-two years of age, and six years ago he had
attracted the attention of the most distinguished philosophical inquirers and
teachers in this country and abroad, as a philosophical writer of great
originality and power. Men of nearly or quite twice his years, philosoph
ical thinkers of repute on the other side of the Atlantic, have sent to him, a
mere youth except in commanding intellectual power, for his judgment upon
their merits as candidates for distinguished philosophical positions. The
quality of Mr. Abbot’s intellect is even more remarkable than its singular
force. Such pure interest in truth, such veracity of intelligence, such
sincerity of mind, have belonged only to the masters of thought and the
greatest leaders of reform. And in serene, uncompromising loyalty to the
moral ideal, and rigorous application of principle to the conduct of life and
the practice of every virtue, Mr. Abbot belongs with the most revered and
endeared of this or any other time. Were he to call himself, from specula
tive doubts, an atheist, he would yet be one of the noblest and most useful
among masters of religion, from the fact that his moral ideal is the truest
possible image of Deity. His intense devotion to the most exact conception
he can form of right is the real explanation of his resolute rejection of the
Christian name; an error which is truly glorified by the spirit which
accompanies it.
OUR RELIGIOUS PURPOSE.
The editor of The Examiner begs his critics to state distinctly the full
extent of his religious purpose, which is,—
1. To teach a Christianity of which the creed is contained in the words
‘Our Father who art in Heaven,’ and is unfolded in the doctrines of
God’s
perfect fatherhood
over all souls, the real
brotherhood of all men
on earth and in the world to come, our supreme duty of
filial loyalty, of trust and love, to God, and
love to men
and
inspiration and providence
the source and guarantee, author and authority, to every one of us, of
knowledge, holiness and blessedness forever.
vol. i.—no. i.
6
�82
How We Start.
2. To explain and prove, with sound learning and sound reasoning, the
fact of error mingled with truth, from the very first, in historical Christian
ity, and how surely, in the exercise of Christian faith and reason, to distin
guish between Christian truth and Christian error.
3. To root up the theological heathenism,— total depravity, divine wrath,
damnation, and blood atonement, which choke Christian truth in orthodox
teaching.
4. To expel from true Christian religion every form of Jesuism, or regard
for Jesus as more than a mere man, and all Bibliolatry, or regard for the
Bible as more than a collection of mere human writings.
And this to the end of plainly opening to all human feet the path of direct,
obedient, and happy trust in God; and in the sincere belief that the Judaic
and half-heathen Christianity of the existing sects, is doomed of God to
speedy extinction.
HOW WE START.
In making our experiment with The Examiner, we gratefully and devoutly
acknowledge the repeated striking providences by which we have been helped
and guided thus far. Our earliest definite plans for such a publication date
back to a period previous to the establishment of The Radical. Our imme
diate arrangements to bring out The Examiner began with the first of May
last. A single difficulty has alone remained since the last week of June, the
need of $------ , the sum we thought we must add to our resources before
commencing. As the end of August approached, and we still lacked this, we
fixed a day on which we would make one last effort to perfect our arrange
ments, and on that day the needed help came. The first person we met on
taking the train from our residence to Chicago, a friend to whom we had
some time before spoken of our plans and our need, said to us instantly,
“You may draw on me after Sept. 10th, for------ dollars,” just the sum we
had waited for.
He had previously resolved on this, and was waiting
to meet us. It came just right. We had waited none too long, and we were
able to make our trial with the requisite means. Now we make our appeal
to other friends, who may believe our work a good one, to give us help, not
only in subscriptions, but in outright contributions, every dollar of which
shall be faithfully applied to printing and distributing The Examiner, not a
cent to any other use, either of the Editor or of any one else. Friends of true
Christian Religion! The time is fully ripe; the hour is exceedingly oppor
tune; our plans, long meditated and waited for, are working perfectly; and
with reasonable assistance we can secure the permanence of our enterprise
beyond a doubt. We are willing to fail, if so it pleases the good providence.
We should but fall back to the line of hope and faith and study from which
we make this forward movement, and wait for opportunity to try again.
�Is There No Open Vision?
83
But there need be no such temporary failure, nor will there be, if good men
and good women who want to be Christian in simple and pure love to all men
and perfect trust in God, will fairly do their part towards the great work for
which we establish The Examiner. If ever an enterprise was born in faith,
this is, and if it goes down, faith will see it fall, and patiently expect its
rise, or the rise in some better shape of the grand interest which it represents.
Every subscription to The Examiner will be deposited with our
banker as money belonging to our subscribers, and only one-twelfth taken
by us each month. If we should fail, every subscriber will receive back as
many twelfths of his $4, as he fails to get numbers of our Review.
IS THERE NO OPEN VISION?
All experience and study teach the wise believer to be very cautious about
assuming a special providence or special inspiration. Just as far as Jesus
and Paul attempted to rest in special knowledge of the secrets of heaven,
they went wrong. The grand failure of Jesus to discern truly God’s will,
was in respect of that anticipation which proceeded from his assumption
that Deity had vouchsafed special attention to him. Paul never blundered so
badly as when he most confidently claimed to be speaking by the word of the
Lord. This only is legitimate, to repose absolute faith in the providence and
inspiration of Infinite Mind; to work, always, at once with this faith, and
with as much diligence, vigilance and earnestness as if all depended on us;
to aim at success and to anticipate it, yet with a mind ready to accept fail
ure; and ever to give thanks, as events pass, however they may turn, or
whatever they may overturn, with full assurance that the Lord the Ruler
doeth all things well.
It is thus that we have striven to ‘wait on the Lord,’ and, never suffering
ourselves beforehand to say, of either deed to be done or word to be spoken,
‘in this the Lord is with us beyond peradventure or mistake,’ we have grown
more and more, taking successes and failures together, to feel that, for the
large aim and long course of our life, we can depend on the gracious presence
and heavenly providence of Infinite Mind, as implicitly as ever trusting
child depended on a faithful parent, or wise prophet on the perfect inspira
tion of the alone supreme and blessed God.
We say this with extreme hesitation, but we venture to say it, because we
want the whole class of Christian heathen and infidels, who do not believe
in God here and now, and who insist that all worship shall be with knees
bent and heads bowed before the idol which they have found in the person
of Jesus, to understand distinctly that we believe, as earnestly and implic
itly as if we knew that tongue and pen were moved by the unerring inspira
tion of God, and that we so believe in Gon, perfect providence and perfect
illumination, that we would no more turn from His presence, .even if a
pantheon of undoubted god-men invited us, than we would turn from perfect
light to utter darkness.
�84
The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
If Samuel, David, and Isaiah, John, Jesus, and Paul, might trust in the
Lord’s direction, so may we, in the full proportion of our diligence, fidelity,
discipline, and instruction. So at least we do trust, and there remains with
us none the least shadow of doubt, that with us, too, God is, and will be, for
the same purposes of manifestation which in all ages lovers of God and
prophets have served, and that we no more need pin our faith to what Jesus
and Paul said, than we need walk at high noon to-day by the memory or the
record of yesterday’s daylight.
We have lived now more than a quarter of a century by this conviction o^
the direct nearness of God to soul and heart and mind in us individually,
and the immediate direction of our life, study, work, and career, by the
most holy divine providence, and for fourteen of these years we have
eagerly, zealously, diligently, and fearlessly studied how to be a true prophet
of pure Christian truth, how most wisely to believe, and most judiciously to
correct belief by thought, and learning, and the blessed rules of holy living,
and we think it right now to say to those who deny living truth in the name
of tradition, that we challenge their idolatry and defy their idol, in the name
of the living God and the authority of divine direction, believing firmly that
‘•The Love of the Lord passeth all things for Illumination,” and that
“Wisdom, in all ages entering into holy souls, maketh them friends of God,
and prophets.”
THE CHICAGO ADVANCE AND THE EXAMINER.
We have always cherished with intense satisfaction the sentiment of
Christian fellowship. The illusion never forsakes us that church relations
mast be at bottom fraternal, even though fallible men administer them less as
brothers than as judges and executioners. The “Church of Christ in Yale
College,” which was our religious home during the years when our greatest
aims for life were maturing, and which at last excommunicated us for
believing in God,* always rises before our imagination and love as one of our
shrines of delightful communion, where we may expect, sometime if not
now, to be made welcome under the immortal covenants of faith, and holi
ness, and love. Memories of bitter injustice, of cruel contempt, of strange
coldness and harshness fade away more easily than not, and we are ready to
go back there as a lover goes home to the most blessed joys.
It was this intense feeling of Christian communion which led us to wish
to make a personal explanation, through the Chicago Advance, to the
denomination under whose influences we were reared, and whose dogmatic
sanctities we knew that we would be regarded as outraging by the publica
tion of The Examiner. To expect candid and kind treatment from the
editor of the Advance, was indeed a stretch of faith even to our disposition
to expect the best everywhere, but we resolved to make the experiment and
sent a communication, which we reproduce below. In this our point was to
give evidence that we had obeyed a Christian motive, and had followed
*As Father, with effective sanctifying and redeeming care of all his human children.
�The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
85
providential guidance and inspiration, in passing from orthodoxy to radical
Christianity, and it included of course a frank and definite indication of
what we meant by radical Christianity. Had the Advance extracted the
former as a matter of fraternal kindness to us, and excluded the latter as a
statement of dangerous or dreadful error unfit to lay before orthodox
readers, its motives would have been defensible. Instead of this it picked
out and published the most offensive part of the latter, and deliberately told
a befouling and wicked falsehood about the former in the following sentence.
“If a Congregationalist forsakes his faith, we cannot appreciate the ground
upon which he should occupy our crowded columns with a statement of his
progress in religious error; whether he become a Unitarian, a Mormon, a
Free-Religionist, or a Positive Philosopher.” Our readers can judge how
unscrupulous must be the anxiety about orthodoxy which led the Editor of
the Advance to write that sentence with our statement before him, as a
response to our request to be allowed to say to fathers and brethren with
whom we have the most sacred associations, that we had reached our present
faith by strictly obeying, as we believed, the purest motive and highest law
of our life-long Christian faith in God Our Father! As a notice of The
Examiner — 350 words at the head of “Editorial Miscellany”—probably
nothing could have been better, because those of the readers of the Advance
whom we care to reach understand its tricks, and are only excited to look
for a fact which they see has been concealed by a fib. But we want justice
and decency, as a preparation for fraternal communion, and we give notice
to irreligious and unchristian editors of theological newspapers that they
will find it to their interest to tell no lies about us.
The following is the communication referred to above, and refused publi
cation by the Advance:
Editor Advance:
Dear Sir: I send you herewith my proposal to publish The Examiner
as a Monthly Review of Religious and Humane Questions, and of Literature,
and an organ of what I would call Radical Christianity. And I beg leave
to make in your journal a brief explanation, in view of the fact that I was
reared in the Congregationalism which you represent. Some twenty years
ago I was admitted to the Congregational church in St. Charles, 111., by Rev.
G. S. F. Savage. Soon after I became a student in Beloit College for above
two years, and went thence to Yale College, where I was graduated in 1856.
I passed the next year in New York city, teaching and studying theology,
and an attendant upon the ministry of Dr. Win. Adams, of the Madison
Square Presbyterian church. The two following years I was again in New
Haven, studying theology. In all these places I never so much as thought
of going near heretical ministry. I never once saw an heretical book, tract,
or journal, nor did I ever converse with an unorthodox person, until after I
had become as fully settled in unorthodox conclusions as 1 am now. In New
York I did not know of the existence of Drs. Osgood and Bellows, and even
did not hear Henry Ward Beecher. I was wholly and absolutely under
orthodox influences, sincerely and earnestly continuing my confession of
hope in Christ which I had first made when I was but eight years old. In
commencing theological study I set to work in the most earnest manner to
put in working order the orthodox reasons for faith in the Bible as the sole
and absolute rule of truth and duty, and I purposed to prepare myself in
the most thorough manner possible for a strictly Biblical style of preaching,
�86
The Chicago Advance and The Examiner.
invariable support of every point by a text, and illustration drawn as much
as possible from the sacred pages. I even selected a large octavo copy of
the Bible for my life’s use and study, to be marked and made familiar in
every page, so that preaching from it I could readily put my hand upon any
passage, and be always able to drive home the sure nail with the very
hammer of’the Lord. Such, moreover, was the deliberate ardor of my
orthodoxy that I contemplated, first, taking a five years’ course of varied
preparation, in view of the special demands of an unsettled state of the
popular mind about Christian faith and duty, and, second, devoting myself
to preaching an armed and aggressive, a confident and conquering faith,
from place to place, and as nearly as possible without reward. I had
earlier, I may say, meant to go as a missionary to South-west Africa, and
had lost this dream under the overwhelming sense of the importance of
saving the faith in our own land.
My orthodoxy came to grief all at once, in the following way: I had
always had an intensely real faith in God Our Father, as he was addressed
in the prayer Jesus gave to his disc-iples. The desire to hallow that name
■was a passion stronger than my life, and as sober and sustained as it was
strong. Filial loyalty to God, as the Heavenly Providence and Holy Spirit
of our life and our eternal destiny, was the substance and soul of my inward
experience, the principle on which I built all my careful devotion to Christ,
the Bible, and the Christian church. This principle became the undoing of
my whole structure of orthodox dogma about depravity, wrath, atonement,
hell, and the divine authority and offices of Jesus and the Bible. For as
soon as my observation was once arrested by the condition of that great
seething and surging mass of souls which New York city presents, I believed
instantly, and without hesitation or qualification, that the Heavenly Father,
by the resources of Heavenly Providence and Holy Spirit, both could and
would redeem all, and that every thought, no matter if found on the lips of
a Jesus or a Paul, which implied doubt or disbelief of this, must be an error.
It was no more possible for me to challenge this expansion of my faith in
God than it would be for me to prefer the light of a candle to full sunrise,
even though I had to see Jesus and Paul as erring men, who had held and
taught Christian truth purely in many passages, and in some had set forth
error, and that God had meant us to depend on his own providence and
inspiration, and had not given us Jesus as more than a mere human teacher
and providential leader.
In January, 1859, after studying in New Haven Dr. Taylor’s systematic
and masterly exposition of the grounds of orthodoxy, and otherwise inves
tigating the foundations of religious belief, I found myself, as I believed, as
secure of my new’ position as possible, although I did not then know that
any Christian had come to any similar conclusion, and I wrote a little tract
to show where I stood, the concluding sentence of which was, “Christ was
a mere man, and the speculative theology which has been taught in his
name, and which he partially taught himself, must pass away before the
progress of that religion of good will to men and loyalty to God which he
practiced.”
I have found this conclusion confirmed by more than ten years of addi
tional study, and I now purpose to ask thoughtful attention, in the pages of
The Examiner, to the exposition of pure Christianity, as it is taught in the
prayer of Jesus, and in the most significant spiritual passages of the Bible
at large, without admixture of the errors which even Jesus did not wholly
exclude, and which his followers have expanded into a system which is a
veritable anti-Christ. Knowing full well that ardent faith, thorough study,
and earnest looking to providence and inspiration, do not in the least entitle
me to exalt myself, or claim any special authority, I do yet, declare, in the
very name of God Our Father, and of the truth as it was in Christ, that the
popular faith in “Lord Jesus,” “Holy Bible,” total depravity, wrath of God,
devil and hell, atonement, separate communion here, and separate heaven
�Free Religion not Anti-Christian.
87
i
hereafter, is of human and heathen conceit, and not of the true Christian
consciousness. This ground I shall take in The Examiner, and am ready
to defend against all dispute. If the faculty of instruction in the Chicago
Theological Seminary, or any one of them, will take up the discussion, I
will undertake to prove, that they are teaching heathenism in presenting for
Christian truth the doctrine of Jesus as God-Man, Divine Lord, Atoning
Saviour, and Final Judge, with the related doctrines of the special divine
character of the Bible, the total depravity of human nature, the consuming
eternal wrath of God, and the separate destiny of souls, part to heaven and
part to hell.
Hoping that I may be dealt with in a fair and candid spirit, I am
Yours very truly,
Edward C. Towne,
Winnetka, III.
August 28, 1870.
FREE RELIGION NOT ANTI-CHRISTIAN.
It has been assumed by a portion of the public of late that free religion
implies disavowal of Christianity. The Radical and the Index have been taken
to represent the entire breadth of this new interpretation of religion. The
course of the Executive Committee of “ The Free Religious Association,” in
adopting the Index as an organ of communication with the public, has given
color to this assumption. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. The
movement which the application of freedom to religion has produced is not
in general unchristian, or antichristian, or other than avowedly and reso
lutely Christian, both in fact and in name. We consider even Mr. Abbot, in
all but the name and certain non-essential notions, one of the lights of recent
Christianity, as new studies, new insight, and new providential indications
have disclosed to devout and thoughtful minds the pure truth suggested and
revealed in Christ’s word and life. And we strenuously insist that free
Religion is pure religion, as it has occupied the heart of formal Christianity,
and is now emancipated from errors of form, and disclosed in its real spirit
and power.
The history of the movement which is represented nominally by “ The
Free Religious Association,” we are entitled to write if any one is. We
suggested to Rev. Dr. Bartol, after Unitarianism had settled down upon a
narrow Jesuism, the propriety of a conference of radicals to consider the
practicability of an organization broader than the Unitarian. And when,
after two such conferences, Dr. Bartol and several others decided for action
without organization, we proposd to Rev. W. J. Potter and Rev. F. E. Abbot
that we three unite in a pledge to secure an organization, and that we work
together as a committee to form a plan. Under that pledge we together
carried the movement forward until the plan devised by our little caucus was
realized in “The Free Religious Association.” The other organization
which has been so much spoken of, and so widely reported, “ The Radical
Club,” of Boston, first met at our suggestion and upon our individual invita
tion of the persons who organized it. The term “ Free Religious ” wras
originally suggested by Mr. Potter; and the courses of lectures given in
�88
A Criticism of Our Aim.
Boston were also suggested by him after he had been appointed Secretary of
“ The Free Religious Association.” Mr. Abbot has recently taken ground
for free religion “ squarely outside of Christianity,” and Mr. Potter has
appeared to concur with him. We do not regret Mr. Potter’s action; he did
just right to use the Index, even at the cost of seeming to identify Free
Religion with the position of Mr. Abbot; but we want it understood that we
at least make Free Religion identical with true Christianity, and look for its
confessors in every communion, from Catholic, Calvanist, etc., to the latest
forms of heresy.
A CRITICISM OF OUR AIM.
One of our truest radicals, an admirably Christian scholar, thinker, and
man, writes to us of our position as follows : —
“ I do not assent to the fundamental proposition which you intend The
Examiner shall support, that Free Religion is Christianity stripped of
unessential opinion and tradition. I don’t care to keep the Christian name
— would rather have it dropped, and expect it some day to be dropped. Of
course I understand your meaning, that what has given to Christianity its
best vitality and power is its free and universal elements, the great spiritual
realities found under all forms of religion. And to this I assent. But I see
no logic in calling these universal elements by the specific name ‘ Christian.’
Why go to the progressive Jew, or the Hindu, or the Confucian, and say
• The essential, vital truth under your religious belief is to be called Chris
tianity ? ’ I am content to find that it is the same with the essential and
permanent in the Christian religion, and will not insist that he shall call it
4 Christianity,’ more than I would yield to his claim that I should call my
religion ‘Judaism’ or ‘Hinduism.’ Why not take at once the large term
that includes them all — universal Religion ? ”
Our friend very seriously misapprehends our position, which is, that we,
and all others, Jews, Mahometans, Hindus, and whoever has a religion
which at heart is religion, should, by radical reform, strip off what is not
true religion, and make, each for his own people, a true Judaism, or true
Christianity, or true Hinduism, or true Mahometanism. We could easily show
our friend that Jews, Arabs, Persians, Hindus, Siamese Buddhists, and other
representatives of world-religions, as well as Christians, are each freeing their
respective faiths of superstition, and are appealing to ther fellow believers
to use each their traditional religious name as properly meaning the pure
truth freed from the husk of error. We, on radical Christian ground, say
to each of these faiths, hold your ground and keep your name, and let us
have a world fellowship of the different religions of the earth. Our idea,
when we asked our friend to join us in a resolution to secure a new organi
zation for religious ends, and the idea we supposed the Free Religious
Association was to represent, was this unity of religions with liberty and
diversity both of names and of special tenets. We wanted to see all classes
of Christians come together, Catholic, Calvinist, etc., etc., on a platform of
generous human recognition of one another, and with them, if occasion should
�A Criticism of Our Aim.
89
be found, men and women of other names than the Christian. We desired
to see each accept the method of radical reform, each putting his truest
truth in the front, and agreeing to hold together by that, and to hold separately
other things as each felt necessary.
Our Free Religion leaves the Catholic a Catholic, and the Hindu a Hindu,
and the Moslem a Moslem, and the Jew a Jew, and the Christian a Chris
tian, each to wear his providential name, and to have his individual pecul
iarities of creed and worship, until we all come in the unity of the faith unto
a perfect jian. But our friend, if he is logically consistent, as he seems to
mean to be, must ask each of these to drop their providential name and take
that of Free Religionist, or universal Religionist. If, to use Mr. Abbot’s
language, he proposes to “stand squarely outside of Christianity,” he must
also stand squarely outside of the other great religions, or else go squarely
into some one of them. Assuming that he has not found any of these reli
gions “a good place to emigrate to,” and that he sees the logic of his
position, he really helps to set up, as far as his nominal relations are
concerned, a very small new sect, in fact making Free Religion a Boston
and Toledo notion, and doing this none the less although those engaged in it
feel as broad and liberal as all out of doors. Our friend in short squares off
against all the religions of the world, nominally, while we accept our Chris
tian name and place, with all the other world-religions. He and we alike
hold, and work for, the truth of pure free Religion, and sympathize with it
wherever found, but he declines, or would prefer to drop out of, nominal
relation to Christians, while we adhere to that relation, and do it on a prin
ciple which warrants the Jew, the Hindu, the Moslem, and other religionists
of the world in keeping each to his own name and fellowship, as God has
made them to dwell on all the face of the earth.
This principle is really radical and free, it makes the name a name only,
and gives freedom of names and peculiarities. Our friend’s principle is
neither radical nor free, for it does not allow perfect liberty as to names, and
it insists, not merely on the root of pure truth, but on a correct name, thus
creating a kind of Free Religious orthodoxy which is all about a name.
Especially if this is carried to the extreme point made by Mr. Abbot, that
none are truly and honestly Christian who do not take Jesus as Messiah, it
gives Free Religion an attitude not merely of strictness but of bigotry. We
have a perfect right to judge for ourselves how to be honest Christians, and
our friend misses the radical mark exceedingly when he makes the ado he
does about other people’s honesty. It is done with a nobly pure purpose,
but it ought to be left undone nevertheless. We consider it our duty to stay
under the Christian name, and make Christianity mean Free Religion.
We do in this matter as Theodore Parker did in the matter of American
politics. He took his part as an American citizen, and worked to make
“American” mean justice to all men. Mr. Phillips was working for the
same thing, but refused all citizen relations, on the ground that “American”
did not mean justice. He was for breaking up the national fellowship, while
Mr. Parker was for purging it. Our friend and Mr. Abbot take just the
ground about Christianity which Mr. Phillips took about the Constitution
�90
Matthew Arnold’s Idea of Christianity.
and the Union. It turned out that Mr. Parker was the true prophet. The
course of events purged the nation and left it united. Does anybody wish
Mr. Phillips could have had his way, to break the country in two, one part
to be free, and the other to be securely slave with no abolition fellow
citizens to molest or make them afraid ? We are for purging Christianity,
not seceding from it. Even excommunicated we claim and will hold our
place. And it is as sure as fate that Christianity will be purged, as our
nation was purged, and made to mean free Religion. The other religions
also will be purged in like manner. Whether some of the great names will
fall, we neither know nor care. Possibly they may. But if they do not, and
probably they will not, we can still have religion free and pure in all the
great divisions of the race.
MATTHEW ARNOLD’S IDEA OF CHRISTIANITY.
The acute English critic, Matthew Arnold, who certainly deserves to rank
with the most thoughtful men of the present generation, lays down the
following principle of Christian confession :
“ The Christian Church is
founded, not on a correct speculative knowledge of the ideas of Paul, but on
the much surer ground, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart
from iniquity ; and holding this to be so, we might change the current strains
of theology from one end to the other, without on that account setting up
any new church, or bringing in any new religion.”—St. Paul and Protest
antism, p. 10.
It is not meant of course by this that the text quoted originally averred
the sufficiency of a simply moral basis for Christian communion, but that
“ Christian ” now means, above all things, good, and that this emphatic
meaning we are to accept as from the inspiration and providence of God, as
the fundamental sense of the word. A venerable Puritan minister, in the
old town of Medford, near Boston,—Dr. David Osgood, — said fifty years
and more ago, to some persons who began to suspect their pastor of heresy,
“ If your minister is a good man let him alone.” In so saying he antici
pated what must become the view of all enlightened Christian minds.
Goodness is the root of the matter. There is no more significant Christian
word than the injunction to be perfect, and this injunction is no less signif
icant taken by itself, apart from the appeal to the divine character. The
threshold of Christian teaching is the rule of good will, the commandment
to love one another. Therefore it is necessary to begin with this, and to
build upon it. And, if need be, we may come back to this for determining
and regulating Christian communion, and may always insist that this is
sufficient for real fellowship, and that all good men are truly Christian.
This being said, however, we deem it important, because truth and fact so
require, to include in complete Christian confession the faith in God, and loyalty
to God, implied in the terms of the prayer “Our Father.” No more signif
�Mr. Abbot on Following Christ.
91
icant passage could be cited from the original memorials of historical Chris
tianity than this prayer. If Jesus had the smallest conception of his mission,
he must have touched the heart of the matter in teaching his disciples to
pray, and cannot have left out of that prayer the main point of religion.
Happily that prayer exactly represents the ordinary frame of mind in which
profoundly religious persons do actually bend in devotion. As Mr. Emerson
says, speaking of Reason, the Creator, the Spirit of the Universe, “Man in
all ages and countries embodies it as the Father.” And it is perhaps truest
to say that Christianity has no greater claim to recognition than its distinct
and emphatic utterance of the words God Our Father.
MR. ABBOT ON FOLLOWING CHRIST.
“There is one more way, however, to interpret the command, ‘Follow
Me,’ namely, ‘I)o as the spirit of Christ would prompt you to do.' If this
means simply, let the same spirit of obedience to principle, self-sacrifice,
courage, and love, which controlled Jesus, also control us, —well and good.
But then I must say that this is not, in any true sense, ‘following his
example;’ it is following the spirit which made his example, — obeying the
law which he also obeyed.”
This illustrates strikingly a way which Mr. Abbot has of using, and
insisting on, a method of interpretation which is to us neither free nor reli
gious, but strangely secular and strict. The only true sense in religion,
especially when we appreciate that religion must be free, of following either
Jesus or the example of Jesus, is that of adopting the ideal suggested by his
character and life, the spirit disclosed to us in his deeds and words. It is
not even necessary, nor so much as permissible, to exactly adopt his ideal,
and closely conform to his precise spirit, if we find that any part of either
appears incongruous with the general purport of the same, and no longer
possible to be obeyed by a soul truly obedient in general to the identical
heavenly vision which caught and fixed the eye of the young Nazarene.
While Mr. Abbot is insisting that the usual strict orthodox way of interpret
ing Jesus is the true way, great numbers of liberal orthodox believers, in
and out of pulpits, books, and religious papers, are finding freedom and
simple pure religion in looking to Jesus precisely as they look to teachers
and masters other than him ; for suggestion of how best to seek God directly
without either master or mediator other than the Truth manifested to their
own souls, as a true free thinker looks to Socrates, not to servilely copy him,
nor to copy him at all, but to get inspiration for doing likewise, with such
difference as a like effort will now be sure to find necessary. It is a great
pity that Mr. Abbot should look at Christianity through orthodox spectacles,
and insist that what he sees bears no aspect of Free Religion, when in fact
the clear upshot of Christianity is Free Religion, and numberless persons in
every quarter of Christendom see it to be so, and hail the discovery with
infinite delight.
�92
The Old Christian Test and the New.
THE OLD CHRISTIAN TEST AND THE NEW.
“We believe it is admitted by all sects, that in the first age of the church
pure living was the test, the distinguishing mark, of a Christian. It was
only later, after the philosophers had been at work at the faith, that doc
trines or points of belief assumed the importance they have since held. In
the first century, and second century, a man proclaimed his faith in Christ
by his morals, and the principal vices of paganism were of a nature to
make the line between the church and the world very broad and distinct.
Those vices were cruelty and licentiousness.”—The Nation, June 16, p. 379.
The distinguishing mark of a Christian of the first age was that he
believed Jesus to have been the Christ. Other points of belief which emi
nently distinguished him were, that Jesus had risen from the dead and would
speedily appear as Messianic King in all the terrors and glories of super
natural power, that he would bring a material, political, moral and spiritual
regeneration of the earth, that this sudden change of all things would be
destruction and horror to all enemies of the kingdom and deliverance and
glory to all who looked in faith for its appearing, and that in view of these
things it was but prudent and decent to live moral and pious lives, trusting
God in his Christ for the sake of salvation, and loving the brethren who
might be brought together by this trust.
No such thing as pure living for its own sake was anywhere characteristic
of the primitive Christians. A Paul, indeed, felt the power of the moral
ideal, and also adored God as God, in the spirit of simple, pure religion.
But even he did this only out of his occasional highest inspiration, rising far
above the average level of his teaching and his practice, while his disciples
were almost exclusively ruled to such decency of life as they attained, by
those points of belief which we have mentioned, the doctrines of early
Jesuism, which had engaged their ignorant and superstitious assent, and had
wrought in them a measure of piety and brotherly love.
In very many classes, and on a very wide scale, the faith of the first age
was even scandalously separate from pure religion in either heart or life.
It was a mere fanaticism, a detestable superstition, the faith of those who
forgot God and goodness equally in looking for a King of terrors, a Jesus
more Devil than either human or divine, whose mission it would be to
execute indiscriminate vengeance upon the mass of men and receive a few
devotees to everlasting enjoyment. Unhappily, it was possible to cite sup
posed words of Jesus and undoubted sentences of Paul, in support of even
this wretchedly heathen type of Christianity.
It might be said of certain pagan teachers, previous to or contemporary
with primitive Christianity, that they made pure living of chief importance.
But this cannot be said of Paul, nor even Jesu3; not because either of them
failed to see the intrinsic worth of goodness and power of godliness, but for
the reason that both the master and the apostle put the groundless Messi
anic expectation in the foreground.
Happily Paul stands on quite other ground, on great heights of Christian
inspiration and prophecy in fact, in several of the most significant passages
�Some Recent Views of Jesus.
93
of his letters; and Jesus still more, led astray though he was in the pres
ence of that Jewish world which at once promised and demanded a Messiah
rather than a simple teacher of truth, must have been chiefly attracted, in
his better moments of meditation and prayer, by the pure vision only of
God and of good, and he certainly came in the moment of his great trial, the
single purely Christian moment of his outward career, to give up the delu
sion of Messiahship, and rest all faith in the will of God.
The truth was in Jesus and Paul, and can be clearly seen in them, but the
characteristic thing with them was the Jesuism which received so hard a blow
in Gethsemane, and is now at last fairly dying, after a career of vast mis
chief through eighteen centuries. Side by side with the slow progress of
truth in her narrow path, has run the comprehensive error of the Nazarene
carpenter and the Cilician tent-maker, so that only now does it begin to be
true that “Christian” first and chiefly means pure in heart.
A new Christianity, latent in that of the first age, and never lost out of
the pure hearts which have kept undefiled truth under all the forms of
pseudo-Christianity, is so clearly manifested within a few years, that it is
now possible to speak of Christians whose sole distinguishing mark is pure
living. The professors of accredited Christianity do not generally admit
that this new Christianity is veritably Christian, but philosophical observers,
and nearly all emancipated or rational believers, justly claim, and joyfully
proclaim, this sifted and pure truth of Christ, the only Christianity worthy
the name.
Of course such Christianity does not take its name from the person, pre
tension, or characteristic teaching of Jesus, nor from its affinity with what
is called "The Christian Religion,” but from its fulfilment of the providen
tial ideal of the Christianity and the Christ of history, its expression of
what was suggested, and was meant of God, in Jesus, and was destined to
be unfolded out of the tradition propagated in his name. In this it stands
towards the teaching of Jesus as that stood toward Judaism; it is a new
birth, another regeneration, leaving the form of the old to more perfectly
fulfil its pure truth and vital power.
SOME RECENT VIEWS OF JESUS.
M. Edouard Reuss, the accomplished author of “Histoire de la Théologie
Chrétienne au Siècle Apostolique,” said of Renan’s “Vie de Jésus,” that it
had popularized a study hitherto confined to theologians, and made the
question of who and what Jesus was one of the common topics of free
discussion everywhere. He anticipated that all sorts of people would feel
called to give the public the benefit of their impressions and convictions,
and that thus a great movement of new inquiry would bring its powerful
aid to the solution of the evangelic problem. These expectations of a
thoughtful scholar, expressed in 1864, in the preface to the third edition of
�94
Some Recent Views of Jesus.
the “Histoire” mentioned above, have been more than realized. And, as
M. Reuss intimated, every sort of advocate has entered the field.
Last year Mr. Wendell Phillips undertook a kind of vindication of the
Christ of popular tradition, the Messiah of whatever progress eighteen
centuries can show. Rev. F. E. Abbot, who is now editing the Index at
Toledo, as the organ of religion emancipated from Christian associations,
has found himself impelled to disown Christian fellowship, and to rate Jesus
as unworthy the name of master in any sense whatever. Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe not long since lifted up her voice, to rebuke the hardy recusant of
Toledo, and to certify her esthetic and pious approval of the figure presented
to her imagination in connection with the name of Jesus. And about the
same time Mr. D. A. Wasson, a very acute thinker, who is also not a little
gifted as a poet, earnestly attempted to shelter the ideal Jesus from the rude
blows of free religious discussion.
The singular defect of all the pleas just mentioned is their lack of con
formity to the best results of recent sound scholarship. In Mr. Abbot’s
argument against respect of any sort for the authority of Jesus as a relig
ious master, there occur citations of reported words of Jesus which ought
never to be made again, and never will be made again by any both fair and
well-informed critic. Mr. Abbot does not lack fairness, nor is he, for a
writer who has devoted himself chiefly and with the highest success to
philosophical speculation, without a highly creditable acquaintance with the
results of New Testament criticism. But he does lack a portion of the
knowledge which should have preceded his renunciation of Christian connec
tion, a renunciation for which he will certainly find no enduring warrant in
either the method or the tenets of a sound free thinker. There can be no
question, we believe, that the candor and broad sympathy with noble
effort which are conspicuous in Mr. Abbot, will bring him at length
to give the young peasant rabbi of Nazareth a place among the prov
idential masters of the human race. He speaks still of “the wonderful
religious genius,” “the transcendant greatness,” of Jesus, terms which
he may find occasion to drop as he becomes more intimately acquainted
with the real man whom Pilate crucified, and whom inscrutable Provi
dence made the standard-bearer of a great movement of mankind, but a
closer knowledge of the facts of a simple and humble life, and of the
incidents and accidents to which peculiar circumstances gave momen
tous significance, can hardly fail to convince him that, without any
particular greatness of either intellect or character, the child of Joseph and
Mary fairly obtained, and must always hold among men on earth, one of the
greatest providential places of human history. Think what we may of the
powers or the qualities, of the ideas or the purposes of Jesus, it is absurd to
strike out his name everywhere, or to undertake to stand outside a definite
relation to him.
The warm, and somewhat arrogant pleas of Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Howe
can barely command respect with anyone accustomed to study, thoroughly
�Some Recent Views of Jesus.
95
and without passion, all the historical aspects of the question who and what
Jesus was. It was of course extremely easy for either the orator or the
lady to take a high tone, sustained as they were in so doing by all the popu
lar assumptions, and to rehearse the claims of Jesus, the one with fascinating
eloquence, the other with half-angry dignity. But even Mr. Phillips errs
egregiously if he supposes that any amount of confidence and of eloquence
can make an utterance respectable, as thinkers and scholars count respect,
which is made in nearly total ignorance of the facts elicited by the noble
and fruitful labors of recent scholarship. The field is not one for brilliant
generalization, but rather for a special knowledge to be had only upon
thorough study and long meditation. No one could make general observa
tions upon the appearances presented by Christianity now and formerly, to
better popular purpose than Mr. Phillips, but unfortunately the particular
demand of the discussion is for a true account of what took place before any
of these now visible appearances had yet been seen, and for historical truth
which must beyond a doubt offend the popular faith. Mr. Phillips, there
fore, made an ill-advised and no way useful attempt to deliver a judgment
where he had yet to possess himself of information. And like most persons
who think they know beyond a question, because current tradition is on
their side, he is probably prepared to resent the suggestion of his ignorance.
He doubtless has never even heard of the books to which we should refer
him as sources of knowledge. So runs the religious world, but the time of
the end of this is not, we trust, far distant.
The treatment which Mr. Wasson gave to the theme “Jesus and Chris
tianity,” was that of an idealist far too little conscious of the sober facts of
history. It is solely in the exercise of a generous imagination that he
assures us that the Hebrew hope of a Messiah had become refined and
spiritualized before Jesus came upon the scene, approaching the typical
idea of history, and that this hope, thus refined, furnished the ideal elements
by which the mind of Jesus was nourished, until he imagined a divine soci
ety here on earth, made so by the unqualified sway of ethical law, and was
so possessed by this holy imagination as to think himself more than an
individual being, and to feel in his own exalted soul, in his “ world-great
heart,” the tides of infinite and eternal life; while around him were
gathered “popular imaginations large enough” to recognize and accept “a
soul so amazingly magnanimous.” It would give us great pleasure to see
the evidence on which Mr. Wasson pronounces Jesus “an imperial soul,”
and the historical ground for his assumption that the young Nazarene enthu
siast expected “a reign of morals pure and simple,” not the reign of an
individual, nor of a nation. Still more curious are we to see in what light
other than of imagination the simple folk who gathered about Jesus appear
to Mr. Wasson as “large popular imaginations.” Doubtless there was
imagination enough in the circle of those who handed down the report of
Jesus’s life and teaching, but unhappily it wrought more in the way of
invention than of recognition, and obscured, a great deal more than it dis
closed, the truth of history.
�96
The Failure of the Pulpit.
THE FAILURE OF THE PULPIT.
The Independent, discussing “ the wide and ever widening breach between
modern preaching and modern culture,” attempts the following disposition
of the question:
“ A great deal of the dissatisfaction expressed by educated men with the
manner and matter of modern preaching is only one form in which the revolt
of the age against all theology, and indeed against all preaching whatsoever,
whether good or bad, finds vent for itself. It is not the sermon, it is Chris
tianity which is objected to. This is explicitly admitted by the writer in the
Spectator of whom we have spoken [as having “ stated the prevalent indict
ment of cultivated men against makers of sermons.”]
‘ About the sermon,’
he says, ‘ I am about to state honestly what I believe thousands of men feel
secretly. I dislike good sermons just as much as bad. I do not want to be
lectured, even by a great lecturer. I object to the usual basis of the very
best sermon ever delivered in a Christian church.’ It is only fair, then, to
a great and most laborious and devoted profession, to indicate where the
trouble really lies. A great many cultivated people at present do not like to
hear preaching, . . chiefly, we think, because much of the cultivated mind
of this age has become alienated from the old faith, and is throwing itself
forth, this way and that, in an agony of bewilderment, baffled energy and
discontent. . . If every preacher of this age could preach like Paul,
preaching would continue to be an impertinence and a bore to those whose
minds have swung away from that system of belief which constitutes the
basis of all Christian preaching, good or bad ”
The truly Christian mind cannot help objecting decidedly to the assump
tions of the pulpit. The perfect Christian attitude is that of filial conscious
ness of Our Father, and absolute, direct trust in him. The pulpit claims,
not merely a hearing, to speak of God, but authority, to speak for God. It
assumes to lecture the hearer, in the name of unquestionable dogma, when
religion, justly interpreted, knows nothing of such dogma, and deems the
assertion of dogmatic authority an outrage upon spiritual freedom. So
long, therefore, as pseudo-Christianity dictates the tone of the pulpit, and
the sermon assumes the right of the preacher to proclaim dogma, instead
of promote free inquiry and persuade to free faith, so long must the first
assumption of the pulpit be hateful to truly religious minds.
Further than this, the “system of belief” which constitutes the customary
basis of preaching, has justly lost its hold upon the cultivated Christian
mind of the age, to which total depravity, wrath of God, damnation, blood
atonement, godhead of a young Jew, and infallibility of Hebrew and Chris
tian books, with transmission of same by ignorant and prejudiced interpre
ters, are superstitions as arrant as any the world ever saw. Until, therefore,
preachers shall consent to be truly Christian, to believe in God and in man
with some spirit and truth, and to thoroughly discriminate the husk of
Christianity from its truth, and offer truth only to truth-loving souls, the
providence and inspiration of our time will more and more set aside the
pulpit.
�The Need of a Free Divinity School.
97
We suggest to The Independent, which we believe means to find and to
follow the truth, a study of Christian Conceit and Christian Superstition,
as causes of the failure of the pulpit. The public ministry of religion is
certain to be welcome to the cultivated classes, and to all other classes, when
it shall be made even tolerably worthy of respect. We also beg to assure
our contemporary that the cultivated mind of this age, which is indeed
‘alienated from the old faith,’ is not in the least unhappy in its new situaation. We have had the opportunities of a pronounced heretic, during ten
or twelve years, to observe the real truth of this matter; we have besides
gathered evidence out of recent literature in all directions ; and we know
that nothing could be more ridiculous than the statement that new belief is
in an agony of bewilderment. Orthodox writers should reflect that they
learn of the exceptions only, and are not in a position to know what new
believers usually may feel.
THE NEED OF A FREE DIVINITY SCHOOL.
One of the first and greatest needs of religious and human progress in
America is a well endowed and appointed Free Religious Divinity School.
We have canvassed the matter pretty thoroughly, during the past few years,
and fully believe that this Free School of Truth must be, and that it will be.
The great cause of spiritual emancipation has many liberal friends, who do
not lack means to carry into effect any wise purpose which they may form.
To secure.this, it only needs to make evident the nature of the opportunity
now open, to wealth and faith and learning and zeal, to organize thinking
and believing people everywhere into free societies, under free teachers and
pastors; and to show the necessity to this end, and the practicability, of a
well endowed ami appointed Free Religious Divinity School. We will not
at this time argue the matter. Our present purpose is only to propound it,
and we propound it in fervent hope and full faith. Right here perhaps on
this shore of Lake Michigan, from which we write, not remote from the great
city of the West, yet among scenes of pure nature eminently suitable, we
may yet see a great Free School of Divinity, such as the world has not yet
had. The sum of Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars ought to be
immediately devoted to this grand purpose, and this generation ought not to
pass away without increasing this endowment to One Million Dollars, to
adequately provide for complete, free instruction in religion, in all its
branches, and adequate aid of every sort to students seeking the sacred
ministry of divine truth. In the whole of Christendom there is hardly one
respectable theological school. The greatly dishonest purpose to conceal, to
evade, and everyway to maintain the creed in vogue by means which equally
lack veracity and courage, ought to render them in general morally disrepu
table. There are few in which inadvertent falsification is not the art of arts.
And to support it is the dark spirit whose foul words are “devil,” “hell,”
“damnation,” ever ready to kill off, by ban if not by burning, any teacher
VOL. I.—no. I.
7
�98
Dr. Me Cosh in Boston.
or student who is led, in the sincerest and strictest development of his deepest
Christian faith, to believe better of God than the current creeds allow. And
these creeds are still a refuge of lies about man and about God, theological
old wives’ fables begotten of the darkness of heathenism, and totally unfit to
convey the grace and truth of Christianity. True Christian Religion has
waited long enough; let there be one housetop from which to proclaim the
pure truth which Jesus whispered in the ear of Judea more than eighteen
hundred years ago.
In venturing to bring to public notice a bare proposition, we yield to a
sense of the extreme urgency of an interest which has no representative yet
among religious organizations, or none prepared to appreciate the situation,
and to take action promptly and with energy. We do not hesitate because
of the possibility, or even probability, that no immediate answer will come.
We more than half believe in the prophetic office, and think it in this matter
at least our solemn duty to say to our generation of scattered believers in
the future of free religion, A Million of Money wanted for a Free
Religious Divinity School.
DR. McCOSH IN BOSTON.
The N. K Tribune thinks Free Religion will probably find a defender,
against a late tremendous assault of Dr. McCosh, in “that deep thinker,
uncommon scholar, and courageous woman, Mrs. Howe.” It is difficult to
understand what the Tribune means by deep thought, uncommon scholarship,
and courage in religion, when it finds these in the estimable woman named,
three of whose striking characteristics are conservative timidity about
departure from tradition as it has come to her, the dogmatism of very
insufficient study, and opinion not obtained by profound meditation nor
expressed usually with the spirit of real thought. The Tribune seems not
aware that Mrs. Howe is more an exponent of traditional Christianity than
of Free Religion, and that at least fifty persons might be named in New
England more likely than she to undertake an effective defence of Free
Religion, even if she chanced to be drawn into the controversy on that side.
As for Dr. McCosh, a rude schoolman who knows no better than to assault
sunlight with paving-stones, and whose utmost achievement is to darken with
dust air which will clear itself as soon as his back is turned, we hold him, on
his own ground, greatly inferior to such ripe scholars and sound thinkers as
Rev. Samuel Johnson or Rev. W. J. Potter, though doubtless in tremendous
bluster he can do more in six lectures than they in six thousand. A certain
massive and portentous ignorance, a hopeless failure of perception, charac
terize Dr. McCosh. Had he lived in America even, still more had he passed
some years in Boston, and suffered himself to open his eyes occasionally, it
is possible that he would know a little something about the nature and ground
of Free Religion. As it is, his voice is the roar of a blind son of Anak,
noticeable only as so much noise. He has no more intelligence of the spirit
�Vicious Piety.—Secularism as Religion.
99
uality, pure fervor of soul, and richness of faith which are found in the Free
Religious leaders, than a cannon has of the glory of sunlight under which
nature renews her life. It is highly probable that whatsoever things are
pure, whatsover things are of good report, will continue to be thought on,
and to be most inspiringly discoursed of, among Free Religious believers in
Boston, in spite of the lectures of Dr. McCosh. Grace and truth do not
perish out of the hearts of men and women because of deafening noise in a
Methodist meeting-house, any more than violets and roses fade and die
because of a coluinbiad fired off at Charlestown navy yard.
VICIOUS PIETY.
“ The vices of our time — that is, of a commercial and scientific age — are
fraud, chicane, falsehood, and over-eagerness in pusuit of material enjoy
ment, and scepticism as to the existence of anything higher or better.
Great numbers of the knaves of our time are in the church, ami even active
in it, ami call themselves ‘Christians’ as a help in their business.”—The
Nation, June 16, p. 379.
It would be more exact to say of the pious knaves of our time,
that they profess strict orthodox faith in “the blood of Jesus,” and
confess a hope of redemption through “the atonement alone,” without
merit of good works. And more than this, knavery finds a chance in the
mind of many tempted confessors of this doctrine, to whom it seems quite
easy to be rascals in trade and redeemed sinners through Christ. It is but
one trick and lie at a time, and the fount of absolution is close by, always
open to faith, and the more open the greater the sinner’s demerit. Life
becomes a plunge into the smut of mammon by day, and a bath of absolution
at night. Many practical men bear witness that a man who puts forward an
“evangelical” profession, among men of the world, either as mere profes
sion or for persuasion, is commonly either too weak to be trusted amid
temptations, or is already tricky, or mean, or knavish.
SECULARISM AS RELIGION.
Secularism is vastly powerful [in England] among those of the working
classes who do make the attempt to think on the most serious questions of
life. It would appear that Secularist societies have spread a net-work of
complete organization over the land,.have an effective system of tract distri
bution, and command eloquent and persuasive lecturers, who know the
working classes well, and gain the more ready access to them on the ground
of this knowledge.”—The Sunday Magazine.
This is called “infidelity” and a “gigantic evil,” by the editor whose
statement, we quote. For our part we deem “those of the working classes
who make the attempt to think on the most serious questions of life ” more
faithful to their light than any of the Christian sects. Furthermore, they
are truer to the Christian foundation than these sects. They begin right,
�100
Dr. McLeod on Buddhism.
with the religion of duty. They come nearer doing the things taught in the
Sermon on the Mount than any man does who goes apart from mankind to
seek his own salvation. But even if they did not, they are honest men and
women, who think seriously, believe sincerely, and labor earnestly, and that,
too, with the heaviest troubles of life pressing particularly upon them, and we
deem it only decent to bid them good-speed, and think them well started on
the right way, especially as there is a God, who made these men and women,
and quite likely is looking after them at least as well as we could, and possi
bly has lent them his inspiration and providence even for getting up a
religion whose sole deity and heaven are the doing of duty in common daily
life. It seems to us more important that such practical religion should
flourish than that the Pharisaism of sects should survive. We do not deem
Secularism a perfect form of religion, but we do think it better than any
form of popular Christianity. It is to us among the cheering evidences that
God Almighty has a little the start of his Grace of Canterbury, and his
Holiness of Rome, and the various potentates of dogma and custom, that
Secularism lies like a rock under the troubled sea of English life, a “gigan
tic ” adherence of the common people to the doctrine that it pays to do
right even if death is, as the poor old Bible so often implies, a final rest.
DR. MACLEOD ON BUDDHISM.
Rev. Norman Macleod, D. D., a distinguished Scotch divine whose
Christianity has been for some time growing less and less dogmatic, and
more and more humane, speaks as follows of Buddhism, in connection with
his account of a visit to a Buddhist temple in Ceylon :
“ It was interesting to see, even once, a temple with its living worshippers
representing a religion which, though now extinct in India, yet still com
mands the faith and reverence of hundreds of millions in Ceylon, Thibet,
Burmah, and China. I cannot think, from the laws of the human mind, that
their Aeari-belief is that they are to be so absorbed into the divine essence,
or Nirvana, as practically to destroy all individual existence. . A religion
which denied the immortality of a living God, or of living men, could not
possibly live from age to age in the heart-convictions of a large portion of
the human race, so opposed is such a negation to the instincts and cravings
of human nature. Either human nature has no such moral instincts, or
Buddhists have no such religion.’’
When the “New Logic,” as we have been accustomed to name it, shall be
written, it will fully justify Dr. Macleod’s'assumption that Buddhism, what
ever it may say, does not, and cannot, mean anything either foolish or bad,
in its great doctrine of the final relation of all being to the divine essence.
We make the quotation here, however, to call attention to Dr. Macleod’s way
of looking at the matter. He speaks of these Buddhists as of human brothers,
and interprets by sympathy and faith, instead of doubt and hatred. Instead
of grasping the usual orthodox side-arm, the tomahawk, with an evident
savage desire to hew in pieces before the Lord his pagan fellows, he extends
�Sakya-Muni and Atheism.—Dr. Stebbins's Demand.
101
a Christian right hand of fellowship. There is, in'the kindness with which
he speaks, no Pharisaism as of one who wishes the Buddhists well yet
expects them to be damned nevertheless, but a generous charity, and com
prehension, which hopetli all things and believeth all things. This is
Christian; the other method is anti-Christian, and none the less so because
commonly employed by those who claim exclusive knowledge of Christian
truth.
SAKYA-MUNI AND ATHEISM.
“ The atheism of Sakya-Muni has been asserted by eminent scholars, whose
judgment I am not entitled to controvert, though quite unable to accept it.”—
D. A. Wasson. “The testimony of the most competents cholars certainly
seems to us decisive in this case, as we have no knowledge of the original
sources of information. But perhaps the fact does not harmonize with Mr.
Wasson’s theories, and this may be the reason for discarding it. . . If
Mr. Wasson has any better reasons (than “ I want to” and “ because ”) for
setting aside the verdict of scholars in a question of scholarship, we fail to
see them.”—F. E. Abbot in reply to Mr. Wasson.
Mr. Abbot’s failure herein we are sorry for. The overwhelming presump
tion, established by all thorough study of religions, is, that the human mind
has ever sought, and never unsuccessfully, to find God. Therefore it is
perfectly legitimate to suspect of insufficiency the study which reports SakyaMuni an atheist, and to decline to accept it, even while modestly confessing
not knowledge enough of the studies in question to otherwise prove SakyaMuni a theist. Mr. Abbot entirely forgets the dignity of the discussion, as
well as fails conspicuously to appreciate a significant point, when he accuses
Mr. Wasson of holding a profound conviction with no better reasons than “ I
want to” and “because,” which he (Mr. A.) quotes from a small boy of his
acquaintance.
DR. STEBBINS’S DEMAND.
Rev. R. P. Stebbins, D. D., is energetically arguing for a conservative
policy among Unitarians, on the ground that this is in harmony with the
antecedents of the Unitarian body. He lamentably forgets, as conservative
Christians of every school do, that regeneration, birth out of the old into the
new, is the supreme law of genuine Christianity. There never has been,
and never can be,—certainly was not in Jesus and Paul, and probably is not
in Stebbins and Hepworth,— any form for religion except a human form.
This human form is inevitably more or less imperfect, and also more or less
stamped with peculiarities of time, place, and people, which make it good
for that time, place and people, but not so good for another time and place,
and other people. Hence the necessity of constant change, with effort at
least for improvement. Dr. Stebbins has had occasion enough to know this.
He some years since became disgusted with the failure of Unitarian parishes
to appreciate the sullen roar of his heavy guns, and their decided preference
�102
The Athauasian Creed.
of light rifled cannon, which the old columbiad says take polish because
they are made of brass. As Secretary of the American Unitarian Associ
ation, after leaving his last parish, Dr. Stebbins succeeded in nothing so
well as in stirring up a general determination to get rid, at all costs, of his
portentious and dismal imitation of orthodoxy, and to put in his place a
man who, while no less conservative in doctrine perhaps, had the sense to
see that the young and agile intelligences of the new generation cannot be
expected to repeat the heavy gait and severe mien of elder Puritanism. A
new time must have new methods and new men. We advise grandpa
Stebbins to quit roaring and storming about it.
THE ATHANASIAN CREED.
The Contemporary Review (Strahan & Co., London and New York) is in
some respects the most interesting and valuable publication of the kind
accessible to English-speaking readers. It represents the liberal element in
the Church of England, than which no section of existing Christian com
munion is more worthy of respect, whether for Christian studies or Christian
graces. Dissenting of course from its continued recognition of Jesuism as
essential to Christianity, we yet would be glad to see so admirable an organ
of truly Christian inquiry in the hands of every clergyman in the land. We
know of nothing among religious reviews equally attractive and instructive
to general readers with this representative of the broader scholarship and
more genial piety of the English national church. The publishers would
render a great service to religion in America if they would put an American
edition into our market, at a moderate price.
The August issue of the Contemporary contains an article by Dean Stanley
on “ The Athanasian Creed,” some points of which we wish to lay before
our readers. We premise that this famous creed is peculiar for the dogmatic
harshness with which it sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity, and the rigor
with which it declares the sure damnation to eternal fire of all who hesitate
to fully accept that fiction of theological speculation. It, as a binding creed,
is substantially held still by all orthodox belief, as it must be so long as Jesus
is made a God-Man and Lord and Saviour, and so long as ‘ He that believeth
not shall be damned ’ (Mark xvi. 16), is read as a text of Christian truth.
Originally, to use the language of “ The English Cyclopaedia,” this creed “was
received by the free conviction of the churches that it contained a correct
exposition of Christian doctrine;” the very way in which the authority of
the Bible, and the divine truth of all orthodox dogmas, were originally set
up among Christians. By the same general authority of the Christian
church, this creed was ascribed to Athanasius, the great theologian of the
fourth century, precisely as the fourth gospel was ascribed to the apostle
John. Nobody ever pretended to really prove the ability of primitive
�The Aihanasinn Creed.
103
Christians to detect godhead in Jesus and divinity in gospels and epistles ;
that ability has been loosely assumed ; and how much the assumption is
worth we can judge from Dean Stanley’s remarks on “ The Creed of St.
Athanasius.” He says,—
“ Its first reception and actual use in Christendom is one of the most
remarkable instances of those literary mistakes (not in the first instance a
deliberate forgery, in the vulgar sense of the word) which have exercised so
great an influence over the history of the Church. It is to be classed in this
respect with the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which formed the basis
of the popular notions of the Celestial Hierarchy ; with the false Decretals of
the early Popes, or early Emperors, which formed the basis of the Pontifical
power. Under the shadow of a great name it crept, like those other docu
ments, into general acceptance ; and then, when that shadow was exorcised
by the spell of critical inquiry, still retained the place which it had won
under false pretences. Through the Middle Ages it was always quoted as
his work. At the time of the Reformation, the name of the champion of
Christian orthodoxy still dazzled the vision of the Reformers. In the Augs
burg Confession, and in the Thirty-nine Articles, in the Belgic and in the
Bohemian Confessions, in the ‘ Ecclesiastical Polity ’ of Hooker, it is unhes
itatingly received as the ‘Creed of St. Athanasius.’ No one at that time
entertained any doubt of its authorship. The very year of its composition
was fixed; the very hole in the Abbey of S. Maximin, near the Black Gate
at Treves, was pointed out as the spot where Athanasius had written it in
the concealment of his western exile. Yet it is now known with absolute
certainty not only that Athanasius never did write it, but never could have
written it. The language in which it was composed was probably unknown
to him. We shall see, as we proceed, that the terminology which it employs
was condemned by him. It contains at least one doctrine which he would
have repudiated. But . . the treatise of the unknown author who composed
this, in some respects, anti-Athanasian Creed, has been embalmed for poster
ity by its early ascription to the Father of orthodoxy. . . By the magic
of his name this confession, of unknown and ambiguous character, found its
way into the Western Church, and has been kept alive and retained a charmed
existence after its real character had been discovered. . . The history of
the reception of the Creed of St. Athanasius is like the parallel history of
the reception of the Pope's Infallibility — ‘ gangrened with imposture ; ’ not
willful imposture it may be, not conscious fraud, but still leaving it so desti
tute of historical foundation as to render doubly imperative the duty of
testing its claims to authority by its own intrinsic merits.”
These last strong words are fully justified by the facts. And not only are
they applicable where Dean Stanley applies them, but over the whole field of
ecclesiastical and theological support of accredited Christianity. That
support is gangrened with imposture, not willful it may be, not conscious and
deliberate fraud, but still leaving it so destitute of honest foundation in any
truth ever taught as to render absolutely imperative the duty of testing all
claims of Christianity to authority by the intrinsic merits of its teaching, as
reason and faith can take cognizance of these.
�104
Duty Without Heaven.
AN EVANGELICAL INSTANCE.
In the article from which we have quoted above, Dean Stanley says that
“it was expected, almost wished (by certain orthodox leaders in England),
that a frightful, sudden death, such as that which befel Arius in the streets
of Constantinople [who was believed by one party to have been killed by
God in answer to orthodox prayers], would be inflicted on an eminent scholar
who had come to take his part in making better understood the Holy Scrip
tures, and in kneeling with his brethren around the table of their common
Lord. . . Sentiments like these . . . are the natural fruits of the ancient
damnatory spirit of the age whence those clauses originated. The meaning
of the clauses is now reduced, by ‘considerable intellectual caution’ to
something much more like the spirit of the Gospel. But, to anyone who
accepts them in their full sense, or who is influenced by their intention, it is
only natural that the persons against whom they are believed to be directed
should be viewed with unspeakable horror. A man, of whom we are unhes
itatingly able to say that, ‘he shall, without doubt, perish everlastingly,’
must be the most miserable of human beings—to be avoided, not only in
sacred, but in common intercourse, as something too awful to be approached
or spoken of.”
DUTY WITHOUT HEAVEN.
“The doing of duty without any hope of a future is a daring but a dreary
faith,” says the editor of The Sunday Magazine, in commenting on the Secu
larist confession of faith. Let each speak for himself. We can testify that
there is an inexpressible, heavenly blessedness in giving up all hope of
reward, future as well as present, to do present duty, and that the gloomier
the outlook from the post of duty has seemed, the more would the irrepres
sible sense of heaven in the heart assert itself. We have frequently found
in men and women this perfectly serene, joyous satisfaction in mere doing
duty. It accords with all our study of the human mind, that the best
attainment of man leaves him where he can find perfect delight in duty,
wholly apart from a future, while our observation of human experience has
repeatedly shown us that doing of duty can be profoundly joyous even where
disbelief of a future exists. Those who have never tried a religion which
forbids eagerness about one’s own redemption, and commands the cultivation
of spiritual courage to share all hope with all souls, ought to remember that
their cowardice in the battle of life cannot be a measure of the courage of
soldiers of humanity, who are perfectly willing to do their duty here and
take the result.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, November,1870, no. 1
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Place of publication: [Winnetka, IL.]
Collation: 104 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contents: Crazy Chicago; or the back stairs to fortune -- Charles Dickens and his Christian Critics -- The Women and the trial --Dr. J.F. Clarke against theism --The Unitarian situation -- History of the devil, his rise, greatness and downfall / Albert Reville --Rev. Mr. Abbot at Toledos. 'The woman and the trial' concerns Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher-Tilton trial. Reville's article was possibly the reason why Conway kept this item - a review of Gustave Roskoff's 'History of the Devil' translated from 'Revus des deux mondes'; his own 'Demonology and devil lore' would be published in 1879.
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Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (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>
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Conway Tracts
Devil
Religion
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& 2-37 2-
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
PRICE TWOPENCE
THE
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
OF CHILDREN
BY THE LATE
Rev. JAMES CRANBROOK
(EDINBURGH)
[issued for the rationalist press association, ltd.]
London :
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1908
��THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF
CHILDREN
Religion is only a form of feeling. This needs to be dis
tinctly understood, or else we shall blunder at every step we
take. But I feel I have no occasion to go into any very
elaborate proof of it, as most rational thinkers have become
familiar with the arguments on which it rests. They know
that religion is not the observance of forms and ceremonies,
inasmuch as men may observe all these most punctiliously
and yet be mere hypocrites and pretenders to the religious
life. Nor is religion the belief of certain creeds, inasmuch
as men have held parts of every kind of orthodoxy, and yet
been most atrociously impious. But, as it is generally
expressed, it is a state of the heart, of the feelings, a state
of faith, reverence, awe, love, dependence, or fear, according
to the character of the divine object presented to the mind.
No distinction can be more important than that of this
modern one between theology and religion. It is necessary
to the interpretation of all the religious history of the past,
and to all intelligent religious action in the present. Religion
is the feeling which arises when a divine object is presented
to the mind ; theology is the explanation the intellect gives
of that object, its nature, character, and relations, the analysis
of the feeling itself, and the exposition of the forms of expres
sion or worship to which the feeling gives rise. So that it is
quite clear that religion must precede theology in the order of
time; the thing analysed and explained, ?>., must come
before the analysis and explanation. And it is further clear
that religion and theology may exist quite independently of
3
�4
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
each other—i.e., the intellectual process which explains is
quite a different thing from the emotional state which seeks
for the explanation. A man may feel deeply, and yet, through
defect of intellect, be entirely without the theological know
ledge ; or he may through his power of intellect understand
the whole question of the theology, and yet seldom or never
in the faintest degree be the subject of the religious feeling.
Bearing in mind, then, these distinctions, what is it we are
inquiring into when we propose to ourselves the subject of
a child’s religious education ?
By religious education do we mean the education of that
feeling which arises upon the perception of a divine object?
or do we mean the analysis and ascertaining of the truths or
facts respecting the divine object of the feeling—z.e., theo
logy? or do we mean both the education of the feeling and
of the intellectual process of its interpretation ? Now, if I
mistake not, the popular idea of religious education is wholly
limited to the second meaning—z.e., the learning of theology.
Hence, e.g\, you will see in the prospectuses of various
schools a long rigmarole about the great importance they
attach to religious education, and the pains they give to it ;
and then, when you come to look into the processes by which
they carry on this important work, you will find that it often
happens that the sole effort they make in this direction with
one class for a whole year is to instruct their pupils in the
question of the Christian evidences 1 Now, I admit to the
fullest extent the great importance of this question. It is
one of the great questions of the day. In matters of theo
logy, it is the great question. But it is not a question of
religion. It is a question of historical criticism. And
historical criticism is a science of recent times, and requires
more learning, hard and dry study, power of acute and
accurate reasoning, and maturity of judgment than any other
science of the same class. To set children, therefore, to the
study of the Christian evidences, and then to call this
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
5
proceeding their religious education, seems to me as egregious
a piece of blundering as ever was perpetrated, and at the
same time proves what I said—that in popular estimation
religious education means, for the most part, education in
theology.
I do not mean to say, however, that there is no religious
education. On the contrary, there is a great deal of it,
Sometimes too much, and out of all proportion. But it is
carried on, and especially by pious mothers, without any
idea that it is education, and, consequently, without any
thought or system. The only thing called and attended to
as education consists of theological doctrines. But, in the
sense in which I speak of religious education, it is the first
of those I named—z’.e., the education of that feeling or those
feelings which arise upon the presentation to the mind of a
divine object, or, in other words, on the contemplation of the
mystery of the universe—the education of the feelings of
wonder, awe, reverence, love, and dependence. It is not
forming our minds to the study of theological truth. That
may be used as a means of religious education indirectly ;
and we may see thereafter that it is a means. But the
religious education itself is the development, direction, and
promotion of the growth of the religious feeling, the
purifying it from gross superstitions and sensual elements,
and rendering it elevated and elevating, pure and purifying,
noble and ennobling. Now, by what process is this to be
effected ? I have already alluded to the means generally
employed. Pious parents feel it their duty at the very
earliest period to begin with teaching their children theology—
notions respecting God, the soul, eternity—and in instructing
them in the feelings they ought to cherish with regard to
these objects. As soon as they can lisp, they teach them to
say prayers ; as soon as they can repeat sentences like a
parrot, they teach them a catechism. Now, not only is this
most destructive to the intellect, by teaching the child to use
�6
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
words without a meaning, but it is creating in the child, so
far as it awakens religious feeling at all, a merely super
stitious religion founded on a false theology, which it will
afterwards have to correct. It is sad to reflect that in most
schools children receive to-day the same ideas in regard to
the universe and the destiny of man which their ancestors
entertained, and which are in direct contradiction to con
temporary knowledge.
Let us take as an illustration of what I mean the first two
questions of the simplest and the most generally used cate
chism for little children I know—Dr. Watts’s. I have known
it taught to children three years old, and, of course, before
they could read ; and have constantly heard it referred to as
the very model of a manual for the purpose. And most
certainly it represents the spirit—and very much of the letter
—of teaching children yet in their early years. It begins
with asking: “Can you tell me, child, who made you?”
The answer is: “The Great God who made heaven and
earth.” Now, here at the very outset are two notions
involving the most recondite and difficult ideas, which lie
utterly beyond a child’s comprehension. What idea can a
child have of God which is not utterly false ? Whatnotion
can the words convey but what is grossly superstitious? To
give the word “ God ” to a young child without explanation
is to teach him to use words without meaning—the greatest
curse of most people’s lives. To attempt to give him an
explanation is simply to call his creative fancy into play, by
means of which he will form for himself a most ridiculous
idol. If you awaken religion at all—i.e., feeling towards this
misconceived object, this idol—it will be a religion as super
stitious as ever was that of pagan nations. But then, in this
answer there is another notion besides that of God, and as
utterly incomprehensible to a child—that of a cosmogony—
the generation of a world, of the universe. What are you
going to say to a young child about God’s making the
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
7
heavens and the earth? Will you explain, supposing you
are able to do so? He could not comprehend. Would you
leave it unexplained, and let him form his own notions?
“ Oh,” you say ; “ who would think to teach a child your fine
scientific ideas ? I would leave him to the plain common
sense meaning of the words; every child knows what to make
means.” To be sure ! You are quite right. A child knows
what to make means, for he has seen your cook make pastry,
or he has made mud houses in the streets ; so he takes the
meaning of to make as thus learned—the only thing he can
do, according to the laws of thought—and applies the notion
to God’s making the heavens and the earth ! Is that, how
ever, the meaning you would have him take the words in ?
Do you think such a notion will produce in him any deep
religion—that is, reverence, wonder, love, dependence upon
him who has done for the heavens and the earth what the
child knows he has done for the mud house made in the
streets? It is all an absurdity together. If the child think
and feel about it at all, it will be false thought and feeling.
If he do not think and feel, he has learned to use words
without attending to the ideas they represent.
Let us now go on to the second question in the cate
chism, recollecting we quote it, not merely because it is very
generally used, but because it exactly expresses the spirit of
what is called “ religious ” education where it is not used.
That question is : “ What does this Great God do for you?”
“He keeps me from harm by night and by day, and is always
doing me good.” Now, the criticism upon this is very short
and very sharp. In the only sense in which a young child
could understand it, it is absolutely untrue. In the only
sense in which anybody could understand it, it is partially
untrue. God does not keep us from harm by night and by
day, and is not always doing us good. He sometimes lets
us get into a very great deal of harm, and sometimes does us
a great deal of evil. “Oh, but that is all for wise and
�8
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
gracious purposes.” But the catechism does not say so ;
and besides, whatever the purpose, harm is harm, evil is
evil ; and, in the sense of the catechism, God does not keep
us from the one and does inflict the other. What of truth
would there have been in the answer if those children who
lost their lives in the fire last week had repeated it before they
went to bed? “ He keeps me from harm by night and by day,
and is always doing me good ’’—and yet to wake up in the
agony of suffocation and a horrible death by fire ! “ Oh,
yes,” you say ; “ but those poor children may have been saved
from worse calamities by this premature death, agonising
and dreadful as it was.”
Ay ! but to die and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible, warm motion to become
A kneaded clod........... ’tis too horrible !
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
But, indeed, all the poets might be quoted in the same strain,
showing that our human nature shrinks from death as the
greatest of earthly evils ; nor could any sophistry persuade
one that it were better to die the agonising death of those
children than to live on in poverty. What I say, therefore,
is that that catechism does not teach truth when it teaches
“God keeps us,” etc. He may have higher and wiser pur
poses to serve than we could comprehend; but in our mortal
state harm is constantly happening to us, and we constantly
suffer evil. If, therefore, the child’s religion be founded upon
such teaching, it will be an erring, blind, superstitious reli
gion. It will trust God for what it will not get, depend upon
him for what he will not do ; and the consequence will be, if
the child ever become thoughtful, he will have to abandon,
and perhaps with agonising conflicts and doubts, all you
have ever taught.
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
9
Having thus prepared the way, the next step generally
taken in the child’s religious education is to introduce a
catechism of a more theologically recondite character. It
may be taught at school or at home. But, with any notion
of religion, the idea of training a child in it at school,
surrounded by a large and restless class, and all the want of
seriousness which belongs to children’s nature, is simply
preposterous. It is the work of home ; of solitude, if pos
sible ; of quiet, if not sombre ; but certainly serious
circumstances. However, that is of no consequence now.
Let the education be conducted at home or at school, it is
generally most pernicious. The catechism most commonly
used in this country (Scotland) is, as everyone knows, the
Assembly’s. Now, I do not speak yet of the truth or untruth
of what it teaches—I speak of the capacity of the child to
comprehend. And I know of no thoughtful person who
would pretend that a boy or girl between eight and sixteen
could comprehend the doctrines, philosophical, metaphysical,
and theological, it contains. Again, I will pass over the
intellectual injury done by teaching a child to handle words
which convey to him no distinct or clear idea ; and I simply
ask, What is the result? It is obvious throughout society.
Children so taught are not even grounded in theology—they
are simply furnished with theological words ; they, therefore,
MS they advance in life, easily become indoctrinated with that
weak, watery, and illogical form of evangelicalism which has
become popular in our pulpits during recent years, and which
is infinitely more detestable than the stern, consistent, daring
Calvinism of the catechism. The last is the system of men
of strong, trained, logical minds ; the first is pure fanaticism.
But, even supposing a child could understand, what would
you have gained in the way of religious education? What
could the knowledge of some 500 (as I have heard say there
are) difficult questions of metaphysics, physics, philosophy,
and theology do towards developing in his nature the feelings
�IO
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
of reverence, wonder, love, and dependence? Does feeling
spring forth from metaphysics ; emotion from philosophy ;
love from theology? Divine humanity, how thy history
shudders at the thought I No, it is other things than dry,
intellectual propositions which inspire feeling, and so long
as you are occupying the mind with the propositions of the
catechism you are necessarily keeping the attention from
those other things. And then, when you add to these
considerations the utter falsehood of the theology of the
catechism, the gross and wicked representations it contains
of the character and government of God, and the pernicious
effect this, so far as it is understood and heartily believed,
must have upon the whole character, one is forced to conclude
that the so-called “ religious ” education of the masses of
children in this country is altogether irreligious, and one
continued misnomer and mistake.
There is one other catechism used, upon which I need
here only make but a passing remark. I refer to the
catechism of the Church of England, used in this country
also, I believe, by the Episcopalians. As an epitome of
theology, it is altogether deficient. It has the advantage,
however, of being entirely practical in the body of it, and,
therefore, immeasurably superior to the Assembly’s as a
manual for a child. But then, on the other hand, it begins
and ends with the monstrous notions about the sacraments
which place the system bound up with them on a level with
the magic of the rain-makers of South Africa. I would
rather, however, that children were taught this than to think
of God under the awfully malignant aspects in which he is
represented in the Assembly’s catechism. I have already
referred to the additions which are made to the religious (!)
education of children in some schools by instruction in the
evidences of Christianity, and in the same connection may
be mentioned what is called Bible history. I have shown
you that teaching the evidences is not teaching religion, but
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
ii
the application of the science of historical criticism, and that,
if it be done thoroughly, it requires a knowledge and a
development of faculties no child can possess. And how
Bible history could be thought specially connected with
religion one would be at a loss to imagine, if it were not
for that doctrine of inspiration which is now becoming
rejected by all the more advanced of even the orthodox
school. It is true that Bible history refers all events to the
immediate and direct management of God ; but so do all the
histories of people in their ancient, barbarous state. In the
early histories of Greece and Rome, e.g., the gods were
always interfering as much as in the early history of the
Hebrews, and if this fact constitutes the Bible history
religious, all ancient histories are religious. And then,
while I grant that certain forms of religious feeling may be
excited by some of the facts and events of Bible history, I
must add, they are superstitious and erroneous forms, mostly
connected with that doctrine of a special providence against
which the whole experience of mankind protests. I do not say
anything now about the intellectual mischief done by teaching
Bible history as it stands ; because it is not greater than that
done by teaching the events of the siege of Troy, the
wanderings of Ulysses, and the stories of Romulus and
Remus as true history, excepting, indeed, that the sacred
element mingled with the Bible history renders it more
difficult to discern the purely mythical character of the
narrative.
Well, then, when I consider what religion is, and what is
the formal and systematic education given to a child to culti
vate the religion, I am forced to conclude there is little of a
directly systematic religious character in it; and that what
little there is is of an erroneous character, only leading to
mischief. Parents and teachers substitute theology for reli
gion, and indoctrinate with a theology which I deem utterly
false. But I do not mean that children therefore get no
�12
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
religious education. Nature has been to them too bountiful
for that, and begins their education in religion almost as soon
as it is begun in knowledge. She surrounds the child from
its earliest days with objects calling forth its reverence,
wonder, love, dependence, worship, and thus gradually
prepares it for the devout recognition of God. Spontane
ously, Nature furnishes the child with all that is necessary
for the culture of its religious life for many years. First of
all, just as in the Book of Exodus Jehovah is represented as
saying to Moses, “ Lo! I have made thee God unto Pharaoh ”
—z.e., by the miracles he enabled him to work—so Nature
makes the parent God to the child through the miracles of
power, wisdom, and goodness which the parent seems to the
child to display. The parent, if of ordinary attainments and
character, stands up before the child as a mysterious source
of knowledge, wisdom, supply, protection, and happiness—
incomprehensible to it, and calling forth all its wonder and
faith, all its devotion and love, all its reverence and depen
dence. The word of the parent is infallible ; the action of
the parent is necessarily right. He has a seeming omni
potence about him, an irresistible will. What is there a little
child thinks his father cannot do? What is there his mother
does not know? For what of love will he not trust her
wholly? Yes, a little child has nothing greater he could
imagine to make a God out of than the parent. Nothing he
could imagine (seeing it would be but an imagination) could
by any means call forth half the depth and intensity of reli
gious feeling the parent calls forth. Practically the parent is
the young child’s God ; he knows no other, can know no
other; and no other, simply by the knowing, could do him
any good. And when the mother, in her ignorance, takes
him upon her knee and strives to make him understand
about the God she imagines, and is ready, perhaps, to burst
into tears because her efforts are so much in vain, all the
while great Nature is developing the child’s deepest and
�1
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
13
truest religious life through the trust and love awakened in
his heart by the light and love which pour into his soul from
her eyes. By and by, however, as the child’s intellectual
nature is developed, the perception dawns upon him that the
parent is not quite so powerful and wise as he had thought.
There are things he cannot do, things he does not know ;
trust gets disappointed, dependence is shaken. Then a
higher object becomes necessary to call forth the perfect
reverence and trust the parent can no longer do ; and,
generally, that object is found in the teacher. I would not
speak with the same certainty with respect to the teachers of
large schools as with regard to those in smaller ones, where
the connection between master and pupil is more intimate.
But in a well-ordered school a boy looks up with profound
reverence and trust to his master, and regards him for long
years as the very embodiment of wisdom and knowledge.
Here again, then, is the provision made in nature for the
direct culture of the religious nature of the child—not by
means of a dogma, but by bringing the mind into contact
with real objects, which necessarily excite those feelings in
the exercise of which religion consists. After a while, how
ever, even the teacher’s wisdom is found sometimes to fail,
and his knowledge to have its soundings. Then the sceptical
period in the child’s mind is renewed. There are, however,
other provisions as useful as these, which, at this later
period, come into more active operation — I refer to the
grander object of Nature herself, ever appearing more grand
and glorious as our knowledge extends. From early years
such objects make some impression on the child, and they
would do more if he had judicious parents to guide his eye
sight. But it is in after years, when science has interpreted
the laws, the order, the forces of these objects to him, that
they make the deepest impression and excite the deepest
reverence, adoration, wonder, and dependence. It is then
that inquiry leads to the perception of the grand and awful
�i4
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN .
mystery which surrounds the whole universe ; and the mind
takes refuge from its exhausting, fruitless questionings in the
conception of an infinite, efficient, conscious force working in
all and by all. It is at this point religion and theology
mingle, and the latter becomes of any practical service to
the former. For when the active intellect has begun seriously
to inquire into the nature and origin of those deep feelings
which the great objects of the universe, its order, its mystery,
excite, its answers react upon these feelings according to the
attributes with which the answers clothe its conception of that
infinite, efficient Force into which it resolves the whole. If
that force be dealt with subjectively, and so have ascribed to it
human qualities and affections, there results an imagined
object which excites many other feelings besides those of
reverence, wonder, love, and dependence, and which may
degenerate into the lowest forms of superstition to which man
is liable. But if it be dealt with objectively, then it remains
the sublimely generalised conception of all the forces in the
universe, and is known, worshipped, and adored only as it
manifests itself in man and the outer world.
Now, this being the only form in which I can think of
God, the course of the child’s religious education seems to
me very simple. It merely consists in leading him face to
face with those objects which excite religious feeling. First,
as parents, by the development of his own nature to the
highest, preserving his reverence, wonder, love, and depen
dence until the last moment—which is natural ; then, as
teachers, securing his devotion by the real resources of
wisdom and knowledge we have treasured up in ourselves ;
and then, finally, when both these fail—and even concur
rently with them—ever lead him forth to gaze upon those
wondrous objects of which physical nature is full, and those
not less wondrous characters and events of which the history
of humanity is full. And as he gazes and marvels, the
deepest feelings of his being will be stirred, and he will
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
i5
begin to wonder and adore. But wonder and adore what?
At first blindly, and simply instinctively. But if this happen
before his knowledge is matured, he will soon construct for
himself a fetish. It is yours to stand by, and, by means of
clear, intellectual light, beat down the fetish. And so, in the
whole course of his progress, you must help him to destroy
all the false gods he will create for himself whilst attempting
to solve that mystery of Nature which makes him feel so
deeply, until, at last, he come to rest on the only thought
which remains for this and the coming age—a God who is
the all-in-all, ever immanent in all that is, the one absolute
force ; unknown in himself and unknowable, but recognised
and felt in the forces and order of universal Nature. To sum
up, then, I say : Never attempt to give a God to a child until
the child’s nature asks for one. And then your work will be
more destructive than positive—-the destruction of his idols as
he forms them. Leave theology as much as possible alone
until he learns it in history. If, in the meanwhile, you would
have his religious life be growing, reverence, adoration,
wonder, love, and dependence becoming deeper and more
habitual, you must not create for him imaginary beings by
the play of the metaphysical fancy, but you must lead him
to whatever is great, sublime, glorious, and divine in this
universe. To that direct his eye steadily, and by the act you
will place him under the influence of all that has power to
‘ inspire a pure, religious life.
WATTS AND CO., PRINTERS, 17, JOHNSON*S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
��
Dublin Core
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The religious education of children
Creator
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Cranbrook, James
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Published for the Rationalist Press Association. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
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1908
Identifier
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N181
Subject
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Education
Religion
Child rearing
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The religious education of children), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Children
Education
NSS
Religious Education