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national secular society
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS,
AND JUMPERS.
PART I.
BY
SALADIN.
[reprinted from “the
secular
review.”]
London:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
��3& &
I
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND
JUMPERS.
’
If “ God made man,” he must have made him for his
amusement; and surely much amusement he must have
got out of the featherless biped. No six-year old child
sailing his boat—a cocoa-not shell with a paper sail
can derive therefrom more real fun than Jehovah must
surely derive from the antics of the little two-pronged
nothings he has placed in this region of the universe.
To man alone Deity has given unlimited potentialities
in the way of being absurd, and an intense capacity for
being unhappy. Deity has a curious knack of making
joyous nobodies and melancholy sages. ’Arry the yokel’s
cup overflows with delight because he is graciously per
mitted to eat bread and cheese and swing on a gate;
while Thomas Carlyle, James Thomson, and William
Maccall have cups that overflow with bitterness and
misery because they have bad hepatic arrangements and
will not take Cockle’s pills. This sort of thing is a very
curious farce, and I often fancy the Father, Son, and
Ghost open their three mouths which are one, and hold
their six sides which are two, and laugh at the earth till
all heaven rings.
If God had made man sane, he would not have got
half the fun out of him he has got. True, the fun
which Deity must have had over man’s mad crusading
and inquisiting and covenanting and flagellating, and so
forth, has been no joke to man himself; but that is,
of course, a small matter, so that God be glorified. But
I do not suppose that Sarah has got a better laugh since
the day she laughed at the angel who brought her the
gestation message on the plains of Mamre than she has,
�4
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
from time to time, got at earth’s poor little two-footed
Jacks-in-the-box dancing for Godsake.
Ever since man dropped his tail, and how long before
that I know not, he has had a tendency to dance for the
love of God. On the plains of ancient Phoenicia and
Carthage there were mad dances to please the heaven
overhead; and the ancient Greeks and Romans, in their
religious rites, danced to the glory of Mars and Cybele;
and heaven looked down and hell looked up at earth
and her little pigmies indulging in saltatory gambols
and sexual riot. Poor amusement for a God! and yet
good enough for a God that could originate such a daft
and miserable ninny as man. And the best of the joke
is, this daft ninny has always been under the infatuated
impression that nothing in existence is so important as
he is, that Gods have ever been devising plans and
kicking worlds round for him—yea, that God himself
came down here and had nails hammered into him to
prove his great interest in mankind. If God would
come down, or the Devil come up, and make man sane,
it would be much more to the purpose. “ Redeem ”
him, indeed ! Surely the Gods have better work on
hand, and know their own business best. As a proof
that they do not think him worth redeeming, they, up
to the date of our going to press, never have redeemed
him. They get more amusement out of him as he is.
If he would only learn his own place, consequence, and
importance in the universe, it would take the conceit
out of him. He and his vaunted “immortal soul” are
only a link in the chain of cosmos, and all the links are
alike strong—the man driving in the carriage and pair
and the fly crawling upon the pane. Gods will come
down to get crucified for him of the carriage when they
think it worth while to come down and get crucified for
him of the pane. The flies that lit upon the gore of
Caesar, as he lay dying at the base of Pompey’s pillar,
are now where the dead are who fell in the battle of
Marathon. Their record is alike in the archives of the
universe, and they are both of alike importance in the
purposes of Cosmos and Fate. In the long day of
Eternity the last barrowful of litter wheeled out from the
cavalry stables, and the last batch of heroes, gashed and
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
5
gory, buried in the desert sands of the Soudan, will be
alike remembered.
But back to our dancing. As far as Christianity was
concerned it had much pleasure in tracing back its
Terpsichorean piety to King David, who danced a jig
naked before the Lord and the ladies,* and insulted his
wife because she ventured to reprove him for his holy
levity. The cripple that had lain at the Beautiful Gate
of the temple came next to David as a great exemplar of
pious hornpipes. It is on record that he performed the
triple function of “walking and leaping and praising
God.”t Indeed, some went so far as to assert that Christ
himself was rather partial to a good sanctified Highland
fling, and quoted triumphantly the words attributed to
him by the writer o? the third Gospel: “Rejoice ye in
that day and leap for joy.”|
Even the Book of Job§ was dragged in to favour the
light fantastic toe ; for therein is there not tall talk about
the morning stars chanting a rondel and all the sons of
God jumping out of their skins? And, again, assuming
that a person cannot shout, but he must jump also, the
dancers for Godsake had recourse to a passage in the
Book of Ezra.*11 Several other passages in Holy Writ
were relied upon to defend the propriety of a good holy
jump.
On through the centuries, more or less, went the
jumping for Godsake, till, in the thirteenth century,
it got somewhat serious. A number of children took to
it as a pious recreation, which they seemed to prefer to
the salutary but profane leap-the-frog and skipping-rope.
Religious manias were no respecters of persons ; they
seized old and young, the dotard with one foot in the
grave and the child with one foot in the cradle. An
army of child crusaders, as I have shown in another
paper|| set out for Palestine, and a child army of Reli
gious Dancers are said to have danced all the way to
Armstadt from Erfurdt in Prussian Saxony. Arrived at
Erfurdt, the dancers fell down exhausted, many of them
died, and many who survived retained till the end of
* 2 Samuel vi. 16, 20. + Acts iii. 8. J Luke vi. 23. § Job
xxxviii. 7.
5T Ezra iii. 11.
|| See Saladin’s pamphlet, “The
Crusaders.”
�6
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
their days traces of the fearful exertions they had put
forth when acting under the influence of a religious
mania which had filled them with wild zeal and bereft
them of reason. Less than half a century after a number
of the unco guid, under a direct out-pouring of the Holy
Spirit, took to footing divine jigs on a bridge at
Utrecht. The Holy Spirit, however, did not care to
sustain the bridge, under the weight of his prancing
devotees, so it broke down under their pressure, and
many of them were drowned—to them it was graciously
permitted to dance into glory through the waters of
the Rhine.
But it was not till the year 1374 that Europe fairly
looked up to her God, adored him and kilted her coaties
and danced like daft. It can hardly be said of the holy
fanatics, as of the witches in Alloway Kirk, that—
“ They cuist their duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in their sark
although, according to the Second Book of Kings, his
majesty Davie the First of Israel had “ linket ” before the
Lord without his “sark,” and, peradventure, even without
his garters. Following in his wake, Germany in particular
began to indulge in high jinks for Godsake, and we stop
not to inquire whether the Christian Teutons danced
minus their shirt and garters ; for we are creditably
informed that they danced till they lost their reason, and
shirt and garters count as nothing to a fanatic doing a
schottische for the Lord till he tumbles down in exhaus
tion and foams at the mouth in delirium. The principal
scene of the dancing for Godsake was Aix-la-Chapelle
and its vicinity ; and from far and near the saints came
there for their pious jig.
Round and round, hand in hand, in great circles, with
the hymns of pietists and the fury of devils, whirled the
Lord’s anointed. At least, the Lord never said they were
not his anointed, and he allowed them to whirl till not
infrequently they whirled their very life out and left their
corpses among the feet of their still desperately-dancing
companions in godliness. It was a case of turn your
partner, ladies’ chain, cross over, half-right and left,
gallop, and set to partners in the kingdom of heaven.
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
7
Of all the buffoons that ever existed subjectively or
objectively to the human imagination, humanity’s god is
the most grotesque. The religions of the past will be
the best pantomimes for the children of the future. The
pantomime at Drury Lane shall yet be dancers of 1374
at Aix-la-Chapelle. But Covent Garden will beat it
hollow with poor old Jehovah flying about like a gate on
a windy day, between the prayers of Gordon on the one
hand and those of the Mahdi on the other. The grand
transformation scene will be 10,000 devout Mussulmans
who had fallen by bayonet and Gatling disporting them
selves among the houris of Paradise, while 10,000
Christians who had fallen by spear and Remington rifle
will be ushered into heaven with wings and nightshirts,
and the gods in the gallery will cry : “ I say, Bill, let us
give three b----- , b----- cheers for them there bloomin’
coves who died for the ladies, and a b----- groan for
them blokes who died for the wings !”
God, or x, or vov/jlcvov, or whatever you like to call him,
her, or it, enjoyed the religious dancing immensely, if we
are to judge from the fact that he, she, or it, never tried
to stop it. The votary of saintly strathspeys and holy
hornpipes was wont to fall down rigid and yelling with
the cramp, with some particular muscle sticking up as
large as your fist and as hard as a brick. The approved
way of assisting your yelling neighbour was to give his
rigid muscle a heavy kick or stamp with your foot. It
must have been extremely interesting to take an aim at
the hard lump on your neighbour’s calf, and give it a
hearty kick, just as a means of grace ! We have it on
the authority of Milton that they praise deity “ who only
stand and waitbut how effectively they must have
served him who rattled their boot-toes off their brother’s
shins !
To waltz with Araminta Jones or some other interest
ing sylph for your partner, although frivolous, is well
enough in its way ; but to dance with Jehovah-Jireth for
a partner, as the dancers at Aix-la-Chapelle did in 1374,
was quite another matter. In the celestial redowa it
was absolutely essential that, by phrenzy, you should
shut yourself up from the world and feel that you were
dancing with God. Through all time, if ever you wanted
�8
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
to have much to do with God, it was necessary to be
more or less demented; but to actually have the honour
of dancing with God it was necessary to lose your reason.
You had to become unconscious of whether you were
dancing upon the street or upon the clouds. Many
imagined themselves floundering in a sea of blood, in
which the only way to escape drowning was by mad jigs
and tremendous hornpipes. Others, with their feet batter
ing the ground, and their eyes turned up in phrenzy, beheld
the heavens opened, and the whole fauna of the divine
menagerie capering round the Great White Throne, upon
which sat Jehovah, the Wombwell or George Sanger of
the exceptional wild beasts mentioned in the Apocalypse.
Others beheld Mary of Bethlehem seated upon a divine
sofa, with the child Jesus upon her knee, but without
seeing anything anachronistic in a child nearly 1400 years
old, or recognising that there was anything suspicious
about girls who bear babies to ghosts.
On, rapidly, from Aix-la-Chapelle as a centre, spread
the dancing madness through Holland, Belgium, Austria,
and Italy. The magistrates of Liege, in the interests of
the dancers, issued an edict to the effect that only broad
toed shoes were to be made, and that sharp-pointed shoes
were to be utterly abolished. Peradventure the sharp
toed shoes were voted a nuisance by the brother whose
shins were kicked in the manner to which we have
alluded ; and peradventure some direct revelation from
Omnipotence concerned itself with the affairs of snip.
The God who in Mosaic times concerned himself so
much with fringes, and skirts, and candle-sticks was
likely skilled enough in bootmaking to appreciate the
difference between broad toes and narrow ones. Several
towns found it necessary to interdict the manufacture of
red-coloured garments, the sight of which was considered
inflammatory of the phrenzy of the dancers, from which
we make the interesting inference that these pious
dancers were somehow allied to mad bulls, to whom, as
is well known, a red rag is particularly odious.
And yet the dancers for Godsake were not so mad
after all. At least one little touch of sanity remained—
they hated the Beetles, and tried to squash them, just as
the Secular Review does now. Wherever the Dancers
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
9
went the Beetles fled before them like chaff before the
wind. At the sound of the pious music and holy yells
every Beetle got upon his hind legs, and, without waiting
to say his ave or his credo, ran for his life. And this was
because the clergy had, seeing their craft in danger,
ventured to allege that the Dancers were possessed of the
Devil. The Dancers of the celestial strathspeys were,
naturally enough, incensed that these celestial strathspeys
should be mistaken for infernal hornpipes. The Beetles,
however, persisted, and got hold of some of the maddest
of the Dancers, that they in their case might exorcise the
evil spirit. The jumpers for the Lord were surrounded
by a ring drawn with chalk, and there were book and
candle, and salt and rowan, and the pater nosier repeated
backwards \ but the Devil, if he were there, cared for
none of these things, and the Dancers leapt over the
chalk line and knocked the Beetles heels overhead for
their attempts to upset the jigs of the Lord and his
anointed one. And so matters went on merrily ; and let
us hope that, from looking down upon the earth, heaven
was both amused and instructed.
But the full fury of the dancing mania was reserved
for Cologne and Metz. Never wilder zeal was manifested
in the days of the Crusaders or the Flagellants. The
young and the old of both sexes, and of all ranks, were
seized with the epidemic convulsions and danced pro
miscuously in the streets, putting forth preternatural
exertions till fagged and flagging nature could bear the
stress no longer, and the dancer sank down exhausted,
and sometimes never rose again. Pimps and panders,
and black-legs and black-guards, and murderers and
prostitutes, finding that the Dancers were popular, joined
them, feigned the convulsions, practised the leaps into
the air, and danced with the best, till at length the whole
concern developed into a huge orgie of lust and devilry,
which the civil government of the Rhenish cities had to
suppress with the sword.
The curious fact in regard to the Dancers is that,
although by their dancing they glorified God, yet they
considered the irresistible impulse to dance a serious
affliction. They looked round for the source from
which the affliction sprang, and, as was usual with
�IO
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
Christians, they determined that the Jews had a handin
the matter. Indeed, they went so far as to insinuate that
the Jews had instilled an insidious poison into the food
and into the wells of Europe, and had thereby succeeded
in driving hundreds of thousands of Christians mad. To
the honour of his Holiness the Pope, be it said that here
he interposed and proclaimed the innocence of the house
of Israel from the charge brought against them. But
the papal interposition could not stay the butchering
knife of religious and racial hate, and in many places the
Jews were massacred, but particularly in Mayence and
its vicinity. Incidentally I may mention that while the
dancing was going on in its greatest fury the fearful text,
“ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” was powerfully
insisted upon, and under its sanction vast numbers of
aged and helpless women were burnt to death.
The
religious fanatic murdered the Jews, and danced his
maniac break-down in the glare of the fire, whose hiss
and roar mingled with the shriek of agony of women
perishing at the stake.
So much for the benign influence of the heavenly
father’s Holy Word in securing the peace, happiness, and
welfare among his children upon earth. So much for the
amusement the host of heaven must have got out of the
farcical follies of the poor puppets that butchered and
burned and danced for the love of God. And heaven’s
amusement at earth’s follies is not by any means over.
From the human aspect, these celestial amusements must
ever be dashed and mingled with tragedy and pain. But
with the non- or super-human it may be different. Stab
bing Jews, burning women, and dancing maniacal break
downs may in the past have been a source of much
satisfaction to the God who “made all things for his own
glory.” But man has simply changed the manner, not
the matter, of his insanity. God is now “glorified” by
seeing hundreds die of destitution, and tens of thousands
taking to prostitution to escape destitution, while in the
world there is enough and to spare for all. We are told
in the Psalms that “he that in heaven sits shall laugh,”
and we predicate that he will burst into the thunderous
roar of a divine guffaw when he sees the Mahdi and
his flamens pitting themselves in a praying match against
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS. AND JUMPERS.
II
Canterbury and York and Little Bethel, while, in the
debateable ground between, the bayonets of the Staf
fordshire regiment rasp against the spears of the Baggara Arab. And Canterbury’s prayers to the value of
^15,000, and York’s prayers to the value of /io,ooo,
are impotent against a dusky savage clothed in a hand
kerchief round his loins. Gordon lies dead in the dust of
Khartoum, Earle is shot, Stewart expires in fever and
agony, and Burnaby gasps out his life in the rift of the
broken square.
O England of the nineteenth, laugh not at Germany
of the fourteenth century. You dance not, it is true ;
but you are quite as ludicrously interesting to any intel
ligence that is sane. Will mankind in the future never
evolve to a level in which they will turn back the pages
of history till this hour, and laugh at the record of your
Black Army at home and your Red Army abroad—at
the old State comedy of the Black-Beetle praying for the
Red Herring ?
Gradually the fury of the outbreak of 1374 died away.
But, about forty years later, the mania again burst out with
fever heat, its centre this time not being Aix-la-Chapelle,
but Strasbourg. There was one strongly-marked point
of difference between this and the preceding outbreak.
As we have seen, the Dancers of 1374 were fiercely
hostile to the clergy and the officers of the Church.
Not so the Strasbourg Dancers. Instead of the monks
having to run for their lives, they established themselves
in the local religious buildings, and said masses for the
Dancers. The saltationists themselves were grateful for
the masses, and were seized with what was a source of
profit to the Church—a faith in the efficacy of shrine
cures.
The patron-saints of the Dancers were St. John the
Baptist and St. Vitus. St. John was connected with
dancing through the dancing of the daughter of Herodias
costing him his head, which at her request was cut off
and laid upon a plate; but how St. Vitus came to be
connected with dancing has never been satisfactorily
accounted for. St. Vitus was a young Sicilian who
suffered martyrdom by decapitation, under Diocletian in
303. His church and that of the Baptist were the two
�12
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
churches in the greatest vogue among the Dancers, and
in each of them many miraculous cures were said to have
been effected. In consequence, a certain malady which
is unfortunately too well known goes under the name of
“ St. Vitus’ Dance.” How far an exceptional prevalence
of this affliction (chorea Sancti Viti) was at the root of the
Dancing Mania is a legitimate subject for historical and
pathological investigation. It is well known that fear or
terror is conducive to this disease, and ever-recurring
war, plague, and pestilence, and the preternatural awe
superinduced by religion, may have predisposed the then
■inhabitants of Europe to this frightful malady. Worms
in the alimentary canal have also been set down as a
source of St. Vitus’ Dance, and the unwholesome food
then partaken of would be sufficient to account for the
presence of intestinal worms. The disease is also
accelerated by the repulsion or drying up of cutaneous
eruptions, and the festering and unhealthy state of the
skin of mediaeval Europe is notorious. These few facts
enumerated, added to an intense religious fanaticism and
fear, may in themselves be sufficient to account for the
phenomenon of the Dancing Mania.
“ Dancing for Godsake is over long ago, and why do
you bother with it ?” queries the historical sciolist. I
reply : “ Dancing for Godsake is not over long ago ; we
have still among us on this terrene ball the Shakers and
the Jumpers, lineal descendants of the Dancers’ spas
modical fanaticism.” Devotion is not a matter of the
head; so let it go to the other somatic extremity, and be
a matter of the heels. It might be amusing to behold a
mutilated Jumper worship the Eord with two wooden
legs; but I have been in Spurgeon’s Tabernacle and
seen the Lord worshipped with more than a thousand
wooden heads, and that, to me, is quite as amusing. It
matters very little to the blockhead—and I should say
it matters still less to the blockhead’s god—whether the
blockhead worship with the upper end of him that is
covered with felt or the lower end of him which is
covered with ben leather. Moreover, worship from either
end or both is good enough for any god I have yet heard
of. Instead of drawling and praying with my felt end,
I should prefer dancing with my ben leather end, espe
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
13
cially if my partner in the waltzing worship were Miss
Araminta Jones.
Readers of ecclesiastical history are, of course, ac
quainted with the Camisars, or French prophets, a sect
that originated at Dauphine in r688. No previous dancers
were ever madder than they. They might have danced
their jig much longer, but that they heard the voice of
divine inspiration bid them take up arms against the
State. The voice of inspiration got them on the ice,
but did not trouble to get them off it: they came into
collision with the king's troops, and were overpowered
and mercilessly put to the sword. The mere handful that
escaped sought refuge in this country, which they reached
in 1706. They found England could produce fools not
inferior to those of France, and they made converts, the
principal of whom was a gentleman of the name of Lacy,
Sir Richard Bulkely, and Dr. Emms. This Dr. Emms
was an unfortunate proselyte. He died December 22nd,
1707, and, alas for the Camisars, they had staked their
reputation as a sect that the learned Doctor would come
to life and walk out of his grave on May 25th in the
same year. During the time between December and
May, with the faithful and with the sceptic alike, the ex
pectancy and excitement were intense. On May 25th
guards were placed at the grave to see that Dr. Emms
got through his resurrection properly. Loudly the faithful
invoked Dr. Emms to get up; but Dr. Emms would do
no such thing ; and, strange to say, he has not got up
even till the present hour. This refusal on the part of
Dr. Emms to leave his grave got the sect pretty well
jibed out of existence. ' And if, on a certain occasion,
a guard as wide-awake had been set to watch a certain
grave in Jerusalem, a certain party, who, of course, got
up, would have refused to rise, and this Christian super
stition, which has cost humanity rivers of tears and
oceans of human blood, would, at its very inception,
have been wiped off the face of the earth.
The Camisars had received their death-blow ; but, as
they ascended, their mantle fell upon a section of the
Quakers, and Shakerism was the result—a kind of thing
produced by tying Dr. Emms and William Penn together
by the coat-tails. The founders of the Shakers were
�14
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
James Wardley, a tailor, and Jane, his wife. It was at
Bolton, in 1747, that Wardley recognised that his awful
mission included not only the making of men’s pantaloons,
but the saving of their souls.
Flashing through between the goose and the scissors
were portent, miracle, vision, and revelation, and he left
alone the stitching of waistcoats and basted himself on
to the Lord and him crucified. But an ordinary orthodox
Lord, sitting at the right hand of a thing with no right
hand, or left one either, was too stale for this mighty
one, who threw down the needle of the snip and took up
the sword of the spirit. True, this Son was sitting at
the dexter fist of this Father of the same age as himself;
but, according to tailor Wardley and his wife Jane, Jesus
was sitting in heaven quite uneasily, just as a person
does who sits down accidentally upon an ant-hill. In
fact, according to Wardley, Jesus was busily preparing to
take a fly down to earth, even as a cock takes a fly down
from his perch in the morning. In other words, Wardley
proclaimed the immediate Second Coming of Christ and
the advent of the Millennium.
The sword of the spirit, in the puissant hand of this
tailor, clove asunder the joints and marrow of a good
many. They hailed him of the lap-board as a special
prophet of God, and stood with their hand shading their
eyes, looking up into the clouds for the advent of Jesus.
But Jesus had something better to do than to come
fluttering down heels over head from heaven to please
Wardley and his idiots. The carpenter of Nazareth
refused to oblige the tailor of Bolton.
But, if Jesus would not come, he must just leave it
alone. Wardley and his followers were not to be dismayed
by a trifle of that kind, and they went on with their
Shakerism. “ Sometimes,” we are told, “ after assembling
together and sitting a while in silent meditation, they
were taken with a mighty trembling, under which they
would express the indignation of God against all sin.
At other times they were affected, under the power of
God, with a mighty shaking; and they were occasionally
exercised in singing, shouting, or walking the floor under
the influence of spiritual signs, swiftly passing and re
passing each other, like clouds agitated by a mighty
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
15
wind.” Their enemies called them Shakers in derision ;
but they did not object to the epithet, and accepted of
it as an appropriate one.
The rather awkward delay of the Lord in his Second
Coming, and, in place of the Millennium, the fact that
men were cutting each other’s throats as usual, did not
tend to augment the influence of Shakerism. But, in
1770, although the Lord did not come, the Lady did, in
the shape of Anne Lee, of Manchester. This glorious
Anne, the morning-star of the Shakers, was the daughter
of John Lee, a blacksmith, and the wife of Abraham
Stanley, another blacksmith. She at once leapt into
the position of the recognised leader of the sect. To
her were applied the titles of the “Elect Lady” and the
“ Mother of the Electand, whether she was actually
the Mother of the Elect or not, it was gravely whispered
that she was the mother of one or two that she had no
business to be the mother to. But far be it from me to
dim the auriole on the resplendent brow of a she-saint.
To those who had the presumption to address her as
Anne Lee she drew herself up to her most holy height,
and remarked, by way of correction : “ I am Anne the
Word.” Some persons there were who hinted that “ I
am Anne the Harlot” would have been a good deal
nearer the mark; but, of course, it is very wrong for
carnally-minded people to take note of the peccadilloes
of saints.
“ Anne the Word,” she-blacksmith and Aoyos, was in
constant communication with the kingdom of heaven
and the other kingdom; and, like the apostles on the
day of Pentecost, she spake with tongues. She was
a good deal addicted to gin, and it was, possibly, when
under the influence of this spirit that her gift of tongues
was most miraculous. I myself vouch that I have seen
gin, and whiskey too, for that part of it, inspire a number
of old women with a remarkable gift of tongues—one
that would have put the Pentecostal babblement com
pletely in the shade.
But, tongues or not tongues, “ Anne the Word ” first
got into prison for blasphemy, and next into a madhouse
as a lunatic ; and thus to the holiness of saintship she
was enabled to add the glory of martyrdom. It has
�16
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
often occurred to me that a lunatic asylum, rather than
a cross, would have been the fitting haven for a certain
predecessor of “Anne the Word;” but I will allow
Pontius Pilate and the rest of them to know their own
business. She who was “ the first spiritual parent in the
line of the Covenant” died in 1784 and went to Jesus,
having waited in vain for Jesus to come to her flopping
down through the clouds, with the voice of the arch
angel and a holy tin whistle. So much for Shakerism
and the kind of persons that are capable of founding a
new religion.
Price Twopence.
Every Thursday.
THE
SECULAR
REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED BY SALADIN.
Order of your Newsagent, or send direct to the Publishers—W.
Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, London, E.C.
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS,
AND JUMPERS.
PART II,
BY
SALADIN.
[reprinted from “the
secular
review.”]
London :
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
�1
�S?2-
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND
JUMPERS.
PART II.
The best jumping for Godsake that modern times
has produced has been found among the mountains of
Wales. The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, about the
year 1760, became so elated anent their prospects of
being taken into Abraham’s bosom, or Sarah’s, that they
adopted the practice of “jumping, accompanied by loud
exclamations of praise, during the solemnisation of
public worship.” From their adoption of this practice,
the Welsh Methodists earned and bore the soubriquet
of Jumpers. He who jumped highest and screeched
most frantically was, of course, he upon whom the “ holy
spirit ” had been most liberally poured. What a saintly
Taffy he must have been who could utter a roof-rending
yell and leap over the head of his Beetle, cracking his
heels together in the air as he did so 1
Welsh Jumperism was jumping on its last legs when a
sudden and unexpected accession to the power and lon
gevity of Jumperism appeared in the person of Mary Ann
Girling. This saint and hierarch belongs to the same
class and has shared the same educational advantages
as did her predecessor, “Ann the Word.”
It is now about a quarter of a century since Mary
Ann ran away from her lawful husband, Girling, and
committed sanctified bigamy with the person who had
his feet wiped with Mary Magdalene’s hair. Mary Ann
does not now know where her lawful husband is ; she
does not even know whether he is dead or alive. One
of her sons by this husband, a devout yokel of about
�4
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
thirty, still hangs on by the holy petticoats of his
mamma ; and how many sons and daughter^ she has
borne to her second husband, the Lord, I know not;
for the Girlingite Jumpers are a queer community, who
have all things in common. Numbers of the younger
saints are sceptics as to who was their mamma, and are
absolute agnostics as to who was their daddy; but I
have my doubts as to whether Mary Ann Girling’s
second husband, J. Christ, formerly of Bethlehem, is
daddy to any of them.
Mary Ann Girling is believed by herself and her
followers to be the bride of Christ; and it is further
believed that she will never die, but that Christ will
come down from heaven for her with considerable fuss
and take her up to live with him on his seat at his
father’s right hand.
How the father will get along
with his astonishing daughter-in-law I will not presume
to conjecture.
If Christ really does mean to come and take Girling’s
runaway wife home to his celestial lodgings, I should
venture to suggest that he lose no time in doing so. It
is a shame to keep the affianced bride of a personage so
illustrious living under the wet and flapping canvas
of a tent in the New Forest, while in his father’s house
there are so many mansions. I have thirteen of the
letters of Lady Christ before me on the table as I write,
all written with her own heavenly hand and spelt with
her own heavenly spelling; and the burden of them all
is that she is “ The Lamb’s Wife,” and that she is
mortally hard up for a five-pound note. I do not think
it is right of the Lamb—he must be an obdurate old
tup—to keep his wife in such a state of illiteracy and
indigence. A specimen of the thirteen letters I will quote
before I have done with this subject, and I will not
presume to alter a single orthographical mannerism in
the epistles of a lady so distinguished as “ the Lamb’s
Wife,” but give them “just as they are without one
plea.”
One reason why I should urge upon “the
Lamb ” that he pull the briars out of his wool, polish
up his incipient horns, flourish his tail, and frisk down
to Tiptoe, Hordle, for his bride, is that brides, at her time
of life, do not improve in appearance. For all marital
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
5
purposes, the Lamb’s Mary Ann is already a tough
morsel, and a few years more at Tiptoe, Hordle, is likely
to make her tougher still. Even so, Lord Jesus ; come
quickly. The nearest railway station is Lymington. If
you have your angelic wings, you may use them ; if
not, being a Lamb, you can come by cattle-truck for
next to nothing.
The Girlingite Jumpers jumped with more or less
. success at Walworth and elsewhere before they finally
settled down at Hordle, in the New Forest. Their
welcome to Hordle by the inhabitants thereof was not
by any means cordial, and it is doubtful if they would
have been able to have settled down at all but for the
protection afforded to them by one or two liberal-minded
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, most conspicuous
among whom was the Hon. Auberon Herbert, brother
of the Earl of Carnarvon, and whose residence of
Arnwood is in the vicinity of Lymington and Hordle.
It must not be for a moment understood that Auberon
Herbert had a particle of sympathy with the doctrines
of Mrs. Girling and her following of ignorant enthu
siasts; but it seemed to him unjust that, in a land teeming
with unspeakable absurdities in the Black-Beetle line,
the youngest and least-befriended of these absurdities
should not have fair play.
The following, which I reproduce from a small printed
pamphlet, is the manifesto of the Girlingite Jumpers,
and from it the reader will be able to discern the outlines
of the creed which still holds together a number of
devotees and puts in its claim among the thousands of
religious sects which have each their band of adherents
in the world of to-day :—
The Close
of the
Dispensation.
The Last Message to the Church and the World.
Children, hear your Mother’s call—
There was a time in the history o the world when God, the
Great Spirit, took a woman’s body and formed out of her flesh and
blood a male child. He grew up to manhood, and God, the great
Father-and-Mother Spirit, dwelt in Him on earth. From His
childhood he was acknowledged to be the Son of God, and He was
also the son of woman ; so that he was both male and female, but
�6
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
only the male form was seen. Yet he was God-father and God
mother, or, in other words, Lord God.
When He grew up to man’s estate He declared Himself to be
the Father, plainly telling He was the Lord God dwelling among
them. But they only saw Him as a man, with a few exceptions,
and they were afraid to tell who he was for fear of the people ; for
when He told them who He was they sought to destroy Him,
because He said He was God ; which at last was accomplished, and
they crucified that body which was made of a woman ; they could
not crucify the Spirit, that not being a substance. After they had
crucified His body God the Spirit raised it up again and glorified it
by Himself, so it looked more beautiful than before.
Then He revealed Himself to some who had seen Him crucified,
and they recognised Him and knew that it was the same body which
had been crucified, now glorified, and in His glorification see him
both male and female, or, as declared, both Lord and God in one;
but yet, only the shape of man was seen.
After he had so clearly revealed himself unto many he took
that same body up to heaven with him, exactly as it had been
crucified and afterwards raised up by the Spirit.
From the time he took that body into heaven until now he has
only revealed himself to the people by his own spiritual presence
and his power, as he had done before he took upon himself a body
of flesh and blood ; or, at least, there have been but a few who
have ever seen him. His body remained in heaven from the time
he ascended until about twenty-three years ago, when the fulness
of his time had come for the same Jesus, the God-father and the
God-mother (which had remained both in one until then) to give
out of himself the mother part of that which was once a body of
flesh and blood and had been crucified. When he gave out of
himself the God-mother life it was celestial, and was then called
the Bride, the great city of light coming out of heaven from God ;
and it was God come out from the Lord God. It was the celestial
God-mother, Life, the female part, or the love life, that which once
was woman life.
This life was brilliantly adorned as a bride for her husband ; yet
it had no form or substance, being only the celestial life, the God
love, the female part.
The male part retained his celestial and terrestrial body complete,
even after he gave out of himself the life as a bride, but his celestial
and terrestrial body were one. The celestial had changed the
terrestrial into celestial before he gave out of himself the God
mother life.
Now, when the God love came as a bride she must have a terres
trial body of flesh and blood, in woman’s form, so that she might
be complete as God-mother in shape, as the male part was complete
as God-father.
It pleased the Lord God, called Jesus, the Father supreme, to
take the body of the woman called by name Mary Ann Girling to
be the terrestrial habitation for the celestial God-mother love life
to dwell in, the same life that Jesus gave out of himself, and to
make the terrestrial body of the woman the perfect form of his
�7
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
bride. Her body contains the celestial life which came out of God
from heaven.
*
*
*
*
*
Now, may I ask the whole human family, as my children, if they
have any pleasure in my suffering for them any longer ? This may
reach the whole world, and as each one lays it before God in prayer
He will bear witness to it by giving each the divine evidence of its
truth, even in their true and holy relationship with him, even he,
the God-father and God-mother, known by name as
Jesus First
and
Last
(Mary Ann Girling).
Tiptoe, Hordle,
Near Lymington, Hants, 1883.
Mary Ann Girling claims that she writes to the dictation
of the Holy Spirit. If that be true, the Holy Ghost
does not possess much of the literary faculty, and is not
likely to distinguish himself as an author. Albeit, in the
foregoing, somebody has helped the Ghost very con
siderably with his spelling, as will be observed on com
paring the manifesto with an autograph letter which will
follow. What deep cavern in Tophet will awrait him who
had the presumption to correct the spelling of Omni
science ?
And now I have to deal with the lady who signs herself
“Jesus First and Last, Mary Ann Girling.” The vision
ary phase of mental aberration which has originated all
formulated religions is not extinct; and I make bold to
say that no better type of the founder of a religious sect
could be found in the whole range of history than the
seer of visions and dreamer of dreams who writes her
puerile rhapsodies from Tiptoe, Hordle, which, if Mrs.
Girling had only lived a few centuries earlier, instead of
being a hamlet that nobody has ever heard of, would
have been one of history’s hierarchical centres, like
Jerusalem, Mecca, or Benares.
The handwriting of Mrs. Girling (we have thirteen of
her autograph letters before us) is exactly of the order of
that of the Cat-and-Ladleites who, when I first began to
lay my hand upon the helm of this journalistic Argosy,
were wont to write to me to give me gratuitous instruc
tions as to how to edit, and who used to emphasise their
advice by the minatory clause that they would cease to
subscribe if I did not follow their directions. In short,
the handwriting of Mrs. Girling, the female part of
�8
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
Jehovah Nissi, is the handwriting of Sarah the maid
servant ; and, as all the world knows, the handwriting of
Sarah the maid-servant is that of a drunken spider who
has tumbled into the ink and staggered across the
foolscap, leaving his awful cryptographs behind him. If
Mrs. Girling be really “ the female part of God,” as she
asserts—and with quite as much warranty as the carpenter
of Nazareth asserted that he was the son of God—-bad
handwriting may possibly run in the whole family of
Father, Son, Ghost, and Girling. For I have observed
that handwriting frequently does run in families, all the
members of the family of Muggeridge, for instance,
writing well, and all the family of Higgins writing
execrably.
The spelling of the female part of God is most
accursed. But, as I subjoin a specimen, I will allow her
orthography to speak for itself. Some may ask why I
give such raving rubbish at all. Let me assure such that
there is much wisdom in giving it. Tame and turgid
though it be, inane and insane though it appear, the
epistolary correspondence of Female-part-of-God-Girling
is of deep significance to the psychological student, and
to him who is prepared to follow up the stream of Devo
tion till he find its inevitable source between the moun
tain peaks of Ignorance and Insanity.
I am well aware that I may be branded as sacrilegious
and irreverent when I state, as a mere psychological fact
quite remote from prejudice or bias, that Jesus Christ
himself belonged to precisely the same mental and moral
type as does Mrs. Girling. He shared with her the same
generous hullucinations, the same kind of irascible amia
bility, and the same kind of crass ignorance which rushes
forward to dogmatise and assert where knowledge pauses
to speculate and wonder. It is a far cry chronologically,
but certainly not ethnologically, between the seamless
garment of Jesus and the homely drugget of Girling—
between the haddock-fishers of Galilee and the rustics of
Tiptoe, Hordle; yet they are linked together by an un
broken chain of moral sympathy, an inexorable destiny.
Distance lends enchantment to the view, and Judea
sounds more sacred than Hampshire ; but which of them
is the more sacred, if we could take away alike the halo
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
9
of legend and romance from the tangled vines of the
one and the turnip-fields of the other? I have never
seen anything to lead me to infer that Jesus was not as
ignorant as Girling; and, if I could get hold of his real
letters (not his forged letter to Abgarus), assuming that
he could write at all, I question whether he would be
found to spell one whit better than Girling does. He
lived in an age of Ignorance; she lives in an age of
comparative Intelligence.
The flash of his fanatical
enthusiasm set fire to the dry tinder of surrounding credu
lity ; the blaze of her religious phrenzy fails to ignite the
damp brushwood of environing scepticism. Each has to
suffer according to the form and fashion of the time in
which they live—Girling is neglected; Christwas crucified.
Say you : “ But Jesus was of a higher type of intelli
gence than Girling.” I ask you to produce your evidence
to support your allegation. Christ, as we know him, is
only what his biographers make] of him. In the first
three gospels he is simply a well-meaning but uneducated
preaching mechanic; in the Fourth Gospel he developes
into a mystical Logos, a metaphysical shadow flung upon
the curtain of Neo-Platonism. Let the tiara of royalty,
the sceptre of empire, and the wealth and erudition take
Girling by the hand as they ultimately took Jesus, and
her voice will yet shake the welkin and her petticoat over
shadow the world. The original Jesus of the first three
Gospels has long been lost sight of. Like the victim in
ancient story, out of compliment, his warriors have flung
their shields upon him till they have crushed him to
death.
Scholarship has heaped her mountain of dry
bones upon the poor Galilean, who was no scholar ; and
preachers and commentators in thousands have woven
their esoterics and their subtleties round the name and
over the few recorded sayings of the simple-minded son
of Mary. Make it the interest of some Constantine and
some St. Augustine to do for Girling what they did for
Jesus, and see what Girlingism would be under the
purple of empire and the cowl of monasticism. If it
were the interests of even a single scholar, of the type of
our own Julian, to write learned notes and commentaries
on these illiterate effusions of Girling, and some bene
volent admirer were found who would build a Beetle
�IO
'THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
house and salary a Beetle, heaven only knows how or
when Girlingism would end. For some other learned
pundit would write to controvert Julian, and another
would write to reconcile the doctrines held respectively
by Julian and his opponent, and others in dozens,
especially if it paid as Christianity did, would rush into
the polemical conflict with all the thousand side-lights and
cross-fires of controversy. Meanwhile a few martyrs for
the isms insisted upon by certain of the leading dispu
tants would perish at the stake, and a hundred Secular
Reviews toiling for a hundred years would not rid the
world of Girlingism. Poor Jesus would simply open
wide his dark lustrous eyes and let fall his jaw in dumbfoundered astonishment at the subtlety and learning of
Augustine and Tertullian alone, never to speak of the
thousands of philosophers and divines who have explained
that which needed no explanation till it required ten
thousand explanations to explain the explanation. This
is the way religious systems are built up. Jesus would do
for the centre of one, so would Girling; and, if properly
manipulated, a good broom-stick would do nearly as
well as either.
Here is a letter, verbatim et literatim, from the Holy
Ghost through his amanuensis, Mary Ann :—
tiptoe Hordle near Lymington Hants.
Son beloved of the Lord
As you so kindly ofered to send the Lord £$. o. o
the Lord direct me to ask you if you have forgot to send it tohim
as God your Holy farther always expect when any thing is
Promised to him that his beloved children meen what they say
Or have you changed your mind and think as many do that it zj
better to use {Gods) silver and Gold to build Temples of stone and
Bricks and morter that can never returne the gratitude to him. for
they cannot ether see or hear or feel and yet thousands are expended
upon them dayly while the true and liveing Temples of God are left
to suffer the want of the common nesessaries of human Life
I writ this in Obedence to the true and holy spirit of god the
great farther of you all trusting the love of Honesty of hart
towards him whom you look for so goyfully will lead you to answer
it. for I love him to dearly to see him dishonerd by any meens that
can be Prevented and thinking it forgitfulness on your part in the
Multitude of thoughts and Business
Yours most respectfully
Mary An Girling
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
II
The Lord formerly had Mary, and “ the other Mary,”
and ever so many other Maries, one of whom was orna
mented in the inside with seven devils, and now he has
got “Ann the Word” and Mary An Girling. This last
“ An,” who is too frugal to waste two ris on her name,
is wonderfully useful to the Lord in looking after his petty
cash, as will be seen from the above epistle. It is
apparently no joke to owe the Lord ^5 when he commits
the collecting of it into the hands of An of Tiptoe,
Hordle. There are thirteen fearfully-written and terriblyspelt letters before me, and they are all about gentle
Jesus and this irrepressible ^5.
The “ Holy farther ” must be in rather low water when
he is permitting his female part, An, to kick up such a
fuss about the sum of ^5. Perhaps he is hard up for
some new pen-feathers for his left wing, or a good kid
glove for his right hand at which his son sits in such
glory, with a halo or hoop round his head. I hope my
Secular friend, to whose courtesy I am indebted for the
sight of the letters, sent on the money. It grieves me
to think of a penniless and destitute God trudging about
“ the sweet fields of Eden ” with dilapidated boots, and
his stockings not neighbours, and advising his female
part, An, to say, in the deep pathos of indigent sim
plicity : “ The Lord direct me to ask you if you have
forgot to send it to him.” The Omniscient does not
know whether the debtor has forgotten to pay, and wants
to know. Application is made to An to illumine the
ignorance of Omniscience.
An does not say how she is going to remit the money
to her poor destitute deity. Is there any ready way of
sending a crossed cheque from Tiptoe, Hordle, to
Heaven ? Possibly An herself may spend it in “ this
poor perishing world,” and, somehow or other, account
for it to the “ Holy farther ” when she goes aloft and
joins the “souls of just men made perfect” and the
sanctified beasts of the Apocalypse. “ He who giveth
to the poor lendeth to the Lord,” so possibly what is gin
for An may be gelt for Jehovah ; and no man knoweth
what glory awaits you in heaven if here on earth you
have given the poor a shilling to get drunk with. I have
paid in poor rates many a pound I could ill spare, and
�12
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
have thereby lent to the Lord. He will have a tidy
account to settle with me some day; but I understand
from the parson that the Lord has also some entries
against me, which it may be a trifle difficult for me to
square up, and which may occasion some dispute as to
the climate of my everlasting lodgings.
Meantime the painfully-impressive words, “ The Lord
direct me to ask you if you have forgot to send it to
him,” thrills the tenderest chord of my sympathy. I
must sell some back numbers of the Secular Review,
and send the proceeds at once to An of Tiptoe, Hordle,
with an urgent request that it may be immediately
forwarded to the kingdom of heaven. Is impecunious
and destitute Deity wandering about in the New Jerusalem
with ragged pants, that hardly cover his hurdies, that
he advises so urgently the collection of ^5 by his
glorious Mary An of Tiptoe, Hordle ?
One of these days he may present himself at the door
of the Lambeth Workhouse, and, when asked who he
is, may reply: “ I was your God till yesterday ; but I
am insolvent and ruined. I had outstanding debts to
the amount of ^5, and I entrusted the collection of the
same to my friend, Mary An, and she cannot get a stiver.”
We shall never thoroughly realise the significance ot
allowing things to come to such a pass till, some morning,
the earth stands stock-still, God no longer being in heaven
to keep it birling round with unremitting kicks from his
great toe.
The following account of his visit to Mrs. Girling has
been communicated to me by my friend Virtus :—
“ As you are dealing with religious dancing manias in
your ‘ At Random ’ notes, I may as well give you a short
account of what I saw and heard at the Shaker’s camp
at Hordle, near Lymington, in the New Forest, some
seven or eight years ago.
“ I may first mention that, although of late not much
has been heard of Mother Girling and her followers, yet
some few years back they were occasionally brought
prominently into public notice by their reverses and other
circumstances. The wolves, profiting by. a State-paid
system of absurdities and superstitions, not really less
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
IJ
contemptible, being jealous of the attractions offered by
these poor Shakers, did all they could to remove the
rivals by taking petty legal proceedings against them.
“ It was while on an autumn visit with friends at
Brockenhurst that my host there kindly proposed that
his son should drive me over to the Shakers’ camp on a
Sunday morning—a distance of six miles. Nearing the
place, we passed little parties, chiefly women, who were
also on their way to the Hordle camp for morning
worship, with whom my young friend and jarvey wag
cracked some very queer jokes, which were evidently
appreciated, and no less readily than rudely parried. All
this was, of course, without my approval.
“ Our journey was completed in about half an hour,
and I found within an enclosure adjoining the high road a
few slight erections, conspicuous among which was the
chapel. This was a wooden structure, but well propor
tioned and well constructed, and capable perhaps of
seating about 150 persons. At the further end was a
gallery or platform, reached by two little flights of stairs.
This was already well filled by about forty men, women,
and children, members of the camp, all looking clean
and decently dressed. Sitting together, with a very small
harmonium in their midst, were some fresh-coloured
and rather good-looking young women and several mensingers, the latter being of ages from about thirty to
forty-five. I was particularly struck with the apparently
intelligent expression of some of these men’s faces. I
had been told that a gentleman of the Isle of Wight—a
person of means—had recently joined the community,
leaving his wife and children behind him. The gallery,
then, was devoted to the members of the camp, the body
of the room to outside members and other worshippers.
Moveable seats, with railed backs, were placed upon the
floor, with a middle passage-way, and with space enough
in front of the stage for dancing, etc. We had not long
taken our places with the congregation of simple country
people assembled when proceedings commenced. The
general form of the service was much the same as that
usually followed at other conventicles. The singing—
very rude and primitive—was still far superior to similar
performances that I have many times heard at Methodist
�14
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
and other country Bethels—less split-throat and excru
ciating. The first hymn over, one of the men came to
the front and addressed a prayer to the Deity, presumed
to be present, in a most familiar fashion and in execrable
English.
“ But now another hymn, and Mother Girling steps
forward and gives out a text. During a rigmarole, ex
tending over three quarters of an hour, not the slightest
reference is made to the text. The whole thing is a
miserable effort to string together doggerel rhymes. If
the nonsense could be said to mean anything at all, it
amounted to this : ‘ We only are God’s people; yield to
my warnings and be saved, doubt and go to hell.’ To
say that I never heard anything so stupidly absurd,
rambling, and nonsensical would perhaps be saying too
much, remembering what I have heard during my time
from country Methodist locals. But, after about ten
minutes of this, the prophetess descended into the space
below, being carefully assisted by the man who had
prayed. She now appeared to be in a mesmerised state,
with her eyes closed. She groped her way slowly up the
narrow passage, turned into the opening in which my
friends and I sat, and stood for a considerable time, with
her petticoats so close to my knees to be anything
but agreeable.
She had evidently ‘ spotted ’ us, and
hoped to make some impression, probably having a
thought of our pockets. But Mrs. Girling had found
her way back to the platform, rhyming all the while, when
one of the girls appeared to have fallen into a kind of
swoon, setting up a most unearthly and unmusical howl
as she attempted to sing. Now, Mrs. Girling interprets
the gutteral and inarticulate sounds of the girl. This is
interrupted by another of the girls descending the stairs
and commencing to dance. A little old woman—an
outsider—springs forward, and, hugging the girl, joins in
the dance. This produces a most ridiculous and laugh
able effect j but it is not long continued before one of the
men descends and enters upon an extravagantly vigorous
performance. In an open letter to Mr. S. Morley, M.P.,
which appeared in the Secular Review of December 20th
last, I have alluded to this dance as a hornpipe; but it
was really a simple hob-nail dance, consisting of one
�THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
15
figure only, a bang of the left foot followed by a double
stroke with the right-heel and flat-foot.
During this
rough and noisy feat a sympathetic rustic near me said:
‘I’ve a know’den peep et op ber dree quarters of a
hower.’ This performance and the orthodox singing
and prayer brought up the close. The dancing did not
surprise me so much, as I understood in my early days
the diversion was more or less commonly practised by
the Ranters in my native county of Somersetshire.
Having to drive over six miles of very rough road to our
dinner, I was unable to seek any conversation either
with Mother Girling or any of her followers, which I
much regretted. She is a tall, spare woman, well up in
years, but looking (she was at that time) much younger
at a distance, having plenty of black hair, and this worn
over the neck at the back, and confined by neither
bonnet nor cap. How the camp is maintained I am
unable to say; but I presume that they are principally
supported by soft people, and, possibly, to an extent that
we should think scarcely credible; for what craze does
not find adherents ? Of the private and domestic rela
tions of the persons forming the camp I, of course,
cannot speak, except that they are said to disavow any
distinction of sex. There is neither male nor female in
Jesus Christ.
I ought to mention that during the
summer months the village and camp are enlivened by
parties coming from far and near in waggonettes and
vehicles of almost every kind, and that during this
more cheering season the doings at the services are of a
more vigorous character.”
And so goes round the whirligig of the world. If
Virtus had lived some eighteen centuries ago, and had
visited Christ at Capernaum instead of Girling at Hordle,
and had furnished a descriptive account like the fore
going, his would have been the guerdon of immortal
renown; the auriole of the saint would have blazed
round his head; canonised, if not, indeed, apotheosised,
millions of tongues would have invoked his name for
his intercessory help in their appeals to God; cathedrals
would be dedicated to his glory, and myriads of candles
would light up the splendour upon the thousand altars
consecrated to St. Minson of Tooting.
�16
THE DANCERS, SHAKERS, AND JUMPERS.
But far otherwise is the fate of our single-hearted friend
and his descriptive record. He went out into the wilder
ness to see a reed shaken with the wind. He saw “Jesus
First and Last, Mary Ann Girling;” but the day of
Jesuses is over : the old ones are dying, and the new
ones meet with neglect and derision. And the record
of Virtus simply reads like an account of a visit to a
crazy woman, instead of sounding like the rattle of sacred
thunder which should herald the epiphany of God.
Saints forfend that religion proper should ever die; but
it will flourish all the more majestically and sublimely
when theology and sacerdotalism are no more; when, in all
civilised lands, the religious dogmas and religious cere
monials of the past can be learnt only from volumes of anti
quarian lore, and by peering under the glass cases in
historical museums. Some antiquary may yet, in daring
metaphor, describe the religious section of his museum
as the umbilical cord of the world in utero.
Price Twopence.
Every Thursday.
THE
SECULAR
REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED BY SALADIN.
Order of your Newsagent, or send direct to the Publishers—W.
Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, London, E.C.
RECENT PAMPHLETS.
A Reply to Cardinal Manning, by Saladin ...
...
01
The Crusades, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
The Covenanters, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
Christian Persecution^ by Saladin ...
...
...
01
The Flagellants, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
The Iconoclasts, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
The Inquisition, Part I., by Saladin
...
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o I
The Inquisition, Part II., by Saladin
...
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The Dancers, Shakers, and Jumpers, Part I., by Saladin
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The Dancers, Shakers, and Jumpers, Part II., by Saladin
o 1
The Persecution of the Jews, Part I., by Saladin
...
o
I
The Persecution of the Jews, Part IL, by Saladin
...
o I
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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The dancers, shakers, and jumpers, by Saladin
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 2 v. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the Secular Review. "By Saladin"[title page], the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Dance
Dance-Religious Aspects
NSS
Shakers
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Text
Cl 145
PRACTICAL REMARKS
ON
“THE LORD’S PRAYER.”
By A LAYMAN.
WITH
ANNOTATIONS BY A DIGNITARY OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
“ Be not rash with thy mouth, neither let thy heart be hasty toput forth a word before the Elohim; for the Elohim is in heaven and
thou on the earth, therefore let thy words be few.”—Ecclesiastes.
“ When ye multiply prayer I do not hear.”—Isaiah.
“ Make not much babbling when thou prayest-”—Ecclesiasticus.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT. RAMSGATE.
1869.
Price Sixpence.
SCOTT,
�1
)
I
�THE LORD'S PRAYER.”
Matthew vi., 5-8, Jesus warns his disciples
neither to imitate the hypocrites who pray at
the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men,
nor the heathen, who think that they shall be heard for
their much speaking. This was, in effect, to pass before
hand the most severe yet truthful criticism on two
modes of prayer greatly in use among orthodox Chris
tians of the present day.a In publicity and repetition,
have they not left far behind them, both hypocrites
a The Censure pronounced by Jesus on those who Prayed
in Public.—The censure must have been intended to apply, not to
public congregational prayer, but to the parading before the public
individual, personal, prayer; for the prayer he taught his disciples is a
joint prayer, and, therefore, a prayer to be used in public. I wish that
we had two words for congregational and individual prayer; for, to
address God in a form of words prescribed for us is a very different
thing from addressing to him our own thoughts and feelings in our
own language. This last only is, strictly speaking, praying; the former
may, no doubt, on special occasions, so harmonise with the frame of
mind in which a member of a congregation happens to be, as to become
his prayer; but its common and almost universal character is that of a
religious rite. Its justification is, the necessity of a religious body
assembling, from time to time, and its being appropriate for such
assemblings. It may be observed that numbers (may I not say nearly
all'?) except on occasions of strong emotion, although desirous of
praying,—i.e., of addressing God in words of their own, expressive of
what they think and feel,—are incapable of doing so. I was once
requested by a clergyman,—a sensible, well-informed, and pious man,—
to give him a form for his private devotions, which would have been
like a schoolboy’s letter written to his parents under his master’s dicta
tion. Length and repetition are, no. doubt, censurable, and were cen
sured by our Lord.
�6
Practical Remarks on
and heathen ? After this good caution and advice,
Jesus gives to his disciples the celebrated form called
“ The Lord’s Prayer.”
What an idiot we should take that man to be
who, having a favour to ask, repeated his request
over and over again, in the very same terms.
Would the case be less absurd if, instead of
addressing his request to man, he addressed it to
God ? On the contrary, it would be still more so,
for we might hope to obtain from a man, by sheer
importunity, some favour he would have refused to
a single request, while there could be no hope of
inducing God to concede to wearisome iteration what
he would refuse to the first simple petition. Were it
otherwise, the people of Thibet and Mongolia are far
wiser in their generation than are many orthodox
Christians, who yet look on the Asiatic plan for
unceasing prayer only as a subject for laughter.
These people, firmly impressed with the idea of
the immense importance of continual prayer, make
revolving wheels, which are covered with forms of
prayer, and keep these wheels in constant move
ment ; the rolling action gives volubility to the prayer
far beyond anything they could do unassisted by the
machinery.
Compared with many others, “ The Lord’s
Prayer ” has at least the merit of brevity, but
when closely examined is found to contain many fair
subjects for criticism. A twofold interpretation for
several clauses of this prayer is possible. We first
take that interpretation which actually prevails
amongst orthodox Christians, and which they, not
unjustly, maintain to be countenanced by other pre
cepts of Jesus, and representations in the Bible. We
shall after it deal with the other interpretation, and
make such remarks as it suggests.
“ Our Father ”—The idea, which represents God
�The Lord's Prayer.
1
as the universal Father, is no less beautiful than true,
and had the idea been always present to the mind of
orthodox Christians, their religion would not have
been disfigured by so many cruel dogmas, nor tar
nished by so many crimes.
The address entitles God, Our Father “ which art
in heaven
or rather, “ who art in the heavens.”1*
b Our Father which art in Heaven.—The & ev rois ovpavois,
must, I think, have been a gloss, explanatory of irdrep ipxGiv. There
is, however, something like it in Luke x. 21, where Jesus is represented,
in addressing- his Father, as using, not the vocative, but the nominative
6 iraTTip, as if it were customary so to use a recognised title of God.
However this may be, a prevalent idea conveyed by the “ which art in
Heaven ” has been, as you observe, that of a local habitation, and this
among both Jews and Christians. Yet some, even of the Jews, must
have derived a truer conception of the Deity and his mode of existence,
if from no other source, from Solomon’s words on the dedication of
their Temple,—" The Heaven and Heaven of Heavens cannot contain
thee, how much less this house which I have builded ” (1 Kings viii. 27).
What does the word Heaven mean when God is said to be in Heaven?
I should say that it is a, positive expression with a negative signification,
—not on earth, not local, not dependent for existence on matter, space,
time. God is known to us in his absolute nature only by negatives, in
his relative nature by the results of his agency, including specially our
own human fabric. Herein consists the difficulty of addressing him;
which it is hard to do without substituting some positive idea for the
negative; and not only of addressing him, but of loving him, fearing
him, reverencing him. Hence, too, the tendency to idolatry even in
those who are convinced that God is not a material object. Hence,
again, the question whether (setting aside revealed commands) it is
designed that we should pray to him, love him, reverence him. My
reply is,—The promptings of our nature, innate aspirations (apart from
all reasoning) to do these things, are his implanting, his agency -, and
compliance with them has, therefore, his sanction. To believe that
there is such a Being is inseparable from the desire to make some effort
to hold communion with him, and to hope for some response ; to culti
vate appropriate feelings towards him, and to hope for something corre
sponding to them from him. Our reasoning faculty, likewise the result
of his agency, and so carrying with it his sanction to exercise it on
these very tendencies, puts stringent limitations on them, checks and
directs them, and especially teaches us to hesitate in determining what
is accomplished by prayer to God, loving him, reverencing him, &c., all
of which is at once unreasonable and natural. In this our intellectual
nature bows to our moral nature ; yet not so as to relinquish its control
over it. Both are of God; and the perfect reconciliation of the two
�Practical Remarks on
These words, though capable of an unblamable and
instructive exposition, yet if accepted (as generally)
in connection with prevalent biblical views, mischie
vously localise the abode of God.
Heaven is here understood to be a local region,
like Earth ; a region where the Most High sits on a
sapphire throne, and holds a court or levee in State
of those ministers without whose agency, it seems,
he is as much mutilated and inefficient, as a king
without messengers and civil servants. Origen was
aware of the mean ideas which Heaven here carried
to the popular mind, and refused to accept the phrase
in its ordinary acceptation.
The modern Christian, enlightened by the astro
nomy of Kepler and Newton, and by the philosophy
of Anaxagoras and Cicero, looks up to “ Heaven ” in
his devotions, not as a special locality, but as the
actual Universe, embracing Earth on all sides, as a
petty point lost in its immensity, and elevates his
conception of God by the vast distance of the stars :
so that, to our philosophic mind, God in Heaven
means God omnipresent, God dwelling in the entire
Universe.
But is it reasonable to suppose that, if Jesus had
held such a view, he would have taken no pains to
enlighten his followers ? It is rather to be feared
that the meaning of God in Heaven, prevalent in the
bible and among the Christian vulgar, was the sense
intended by Jesus.
“ Hallowed be thy name.” c—It might seem that
expressions of his will in this matter would seem to be among those
reserved points of knowledge which are at present beyond our compre
hension, such as the positive of eternity, the positive of infinity, uncreated
existence, the co-existence of God and Evil, of Creation and Eternity.
c Hallowed be tliy name.—Was not “name” shem an established
expression for any special revelation made by God of himself ? So,
among numerous instances, it is used in Exodus iii. 13, vi. 3. It is in
this sense I understand it here, the hallowing being a hallowing of God
�The Lord's Prayer.
9
this speaks one sense, one only; and that, a sense to
which every reverential mind bows assent. But was
this really what Jesus intended ? Unbiassed inquiry
shows that the whole prayer is in closest conformity
with the notions and precepts of the contemporary
Rabbis. It is therefore more reasonable to believe
that here also Jesus intended what they intended,
when they inculcated reverence for the sacred name.
They would not utter the name Jehovah at all, but
superstitiously altered it into the words which mean
Lord, in Hebrew and in Greek. Modern Christians
have propagated the confusion thus introduced, so
that God, Jehovah, Master, and Sir are alike possible
interpretations of the Greek kurios; to the great
convenience of Trinitarian disputants, and great
darkening of the Scriptures. It is to be feared that
Jesus, since he nowhere points at this error of the
national teachers, did but recommend and intensify a
scruple which had in it more of sanctimoniousness
than of reverence. In Ecclus. xxiii. 9, we find,
“ Use not thyself to the naming of the Holy One.”
Do orthodox Christians ever reflect on the number
of times they use the Holy name in their ordinary
forms, whether of worship or of state ? Those to
whom this command was addressed would not even
write the name of the Holy One.
“ Thy kingdom come.” d—No one can imagine that
revealed to us as “Our Father;” embracing in the term the idea of
what may be designated a Patriarchal sovereignty, and connected,
therefore, with the clauses of the prayer immediately following.
d Thy Kingdom Come.—It must certainly mean something yet to
come so long as the prayer is used. Your suggestion that it might have
been taken from a Rabbinical form is probably right; but the Rabbinical
form itself must have had its origin in Daniel ii. 44. In the Lord’s
Prayer it implies that Jesus had only announced and prepared mankind
for the perfect establishment of the promised kingdom, which will take
place at his second coming. This event the early Christians looked for
as “ at hand.” What did he mean by telling his disciples, when shortly
before his death he was partaking of the wine at supper with them,
�IO
Practical Remarks on
there was originality in this prayer. Of course, the
thought was familiar to the prophets, that an over
throw of the heathen monarchies was shortly to
come, and a righteous rule on earth to be established
under the saints of the Most High. This rule was
called the kingdom of God. That the heart of man
should long for this, is of course right; and longing
leads to aspiration. But can it be denied, that under
this prayer is conveyed the false and mischievous
notion, that hitherto God has not governed on earth,—
that the heathen nations were ruled over by devils
or by Satan, God’s enemy,—that God is ever going
to rule, and ever disappointing and postponing our
hope ? A philosophic Christian of Germany sees
“ God in historybut can any one pretend that in
this prayer, or anywhere else, Jesus so taught his
disciples to look on the actual history of the world ?
We do not see very clearly what this petition means.
The kingdom of God, whether we wish for it or not,
always was, is, and will be, “ come” ; it is as neces
sarily past and present, as future. If by “ thy king
dom,” another life is understood, it is a wish in which
there is nothing to blame, though our wishes are
equally powerless to hasten or to retard it. Perhaps
that “ kingdom” which Jesus led his followers to
believe would be realised by him on earth, soon after
his death, is meant here ; that kingdom which ortho
dox Christians are still waiting for more than eighteen
that he would not again taste wine until he drank it new with them in
“ my Father’s kingdom? ” He may have been speaking figuratively of
a future state after death; but the more obvious and likely interpreta
tion of the words is that he would soon return to renew his intercourse
with them in the future kingdom on earth. The petition in the prayer
admits of another application, although I hardly think one which was
intended. The human race is clearly moving on to some changes, as
great, perhaps, and as gradual, as those physical changes which have
brought the earth to its present improved condition. The result may be
a coming of “ God’s kingdom,” not through any change of the Divine
Ruler’s rule, but in the perfect recognition of it by his human subjects.
�’The Lord's Prayer.
11
hundred years after his death. The Jews have a
prayer called “ Kaddish,” a word signifying sanctification,—-the prayer is in the Chaldee language, and
is supposed to be as old as the time of the captivity.
Did Jesus take this phrase from the old Jewish
prayer ? The ancient Jewish writings furnish paral
lels to every other phrase in it. Perhaps, then, we
may take these passages, “ hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,” as a reproduction of an old
Jewish thought, and an expression of hope of the
coming of the Messiah. Be this as it may, the
Jewish prayer is still in daily use, and is as follows:
11 May His great name be magnified and sanctified
throughout the world which He hath created accord
ing to his own good pleasure; may He establish
His kingdom while ye live, in your days especially,
even time quickly coming. Amen.”
“ Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. ”e—
The general sense of this is identical with “ Thy king
dom come.” It adds the somewhat gratuitous idea that
Sin is not incident to the heavenly world, although,
according to the traditionary belief, Sin did break out
in heaven itself with an intensity so awful, that (at
least according to the doctrine now universal) no
Redemption was attempted, and no Person of the Tri
nity devoted himself to recover the rebellious angels.
But pass this by, and let us dwell on another side of
the prayer. Has not a vicious, morbid Resignation
e Thy Will be done, in Earth, as in Heaven.—This is, appa
rently, an expansion of the preceding clause, and explains what is
meant by the coming of God’s kingdom, in a manner which accords
well with the meaning last suggested. What is told us of fallen angels
is not, I think, inconsistent with the desire that God’s will may, some
day, be as perfectly observed on earth as it now is in heaven; but rather
suggests an analogy between the two—heaven as it once was, and earth
as it is now. The prayer would thus be that, as in heaven, when its
rebellious sinners were exiled, God’s will became perfectly recognised,
so it may be on earth, when earth’s sinners shall be banished.
�12
Practical Remarks on
prevailed among Christians, as a result of intended
submission to the will of God ? Have they not been
taught to regard as God’s will, not only things natu
rally inevitable, but also that which is nothing but
the fruit of human folly ? To practise resignation
to this as to the will of God is decidedly immoral.
“ Give us this day our daily bread.” f This does
not differ much from Prov. m., 8, 9, but it contains
an epithet which, without any cause, is translated
daily. The Greek is epiousios, a word unknown to
the Greek classics. There is but one analysis of it,
which the analogy of the Greek language permits,
viz., that which Professor Renan points out. In the
New Testament the word epiousa habitually means
“the morrow;” in Attic Greek it is “the on-coming”
(day). From this the adjective epiousios is legiti
mately derivable, which gives to this clause the
sense, “ Give us this day to-morrow's bread.” (See
Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon, p. 491.) Renan
asserts that this very prayer is to be found among
Jewish formulas. If Jesus taught his disciples so to
pray, he taught a lesson widely different and wiser
than when he bade them to take no thought for the
morrow. Christians in general, on the contrary,
interpret this clause by his precept which follows
f Give us this Day our Daily Bread.—The right rendering of
eirtovcriov is “ sufficient.” I understand the clause, too, not as asking
God for the day’s sustenance, independently of those exertions through
which it has been provided, or is yet to be procured, but as acknow
ledging that he is still, and not the less, the giver of it, having created
that which becomes food for us, and endowed us with those faculties
through which we are enabled to procure it,—that he is the sustainer of
our life, through whatever fixed laws of our nature and of the world
he accomplishes his benevolent and fatherly purpose. Daily experience
would teach the disciples that he did not otherwise give them daily
bread. Note.—See ‘ Bishop Hinds’s Free Discussion of Sacred Topics,’
Part II., p. 93, where the meaning of the word is determined from its
relation t.o neptovcrios, and the analogy of other words similarly com
pounded of
and irepi.
�'The Lord's Prayer.
ij
presently in this same sermon on the Mount, and
understand that we are to be satisfied with to-day's
bread. The result of such doctrine is counteracted
by homely common sense ; nevertheless, the ten
dency of the religion has been to deprecate active
exertion for worldly good. If we can learn to dis
criminate between the wiser and the less wise, the
fanatical and the spiritual, of the books called
inspired, we may at length accept from Jesus the
prayer for to-morrow’s bread, if that be the real
sense of his words.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them
that trespass against us.”s There are more ways
than one of reading this petition. First, if we take
the version in Luke as our exposition, Jesus says:
“Forgive us our sins, for even we (kai gar hemeis)
forgive those who offend us ” That is to say, the
sinner (holding himself up as a pattern to his Maker),
remonstrates with his heavenly Lord, — “Surely,
s Forgive vs our Trespasses os we forgive them that
Trespass against us.—Agreeing- with you in interpreting this
clause as an acknowledgment that those who ask to be forgiven ought
to be forgiving, I do not look at its moral bearing in the same light.
What is expressed as true of our forgiving is, according to Gospel
teaching, equally true of repentance, faith, and other requirements.
The assertion of it in the prayer would seem to be owing, not only to
the opposition between this portion of our conduct and the forgiveness
we seek, but to the fact that neither Jews nor Gentiles regarded it as
any part of a good moral life. Its prominence in our Lord’s teaching,
and the strong language which he uses about it, is fairly attributable to
this peculiarity, without supposing that it has more to do with our for
giveness, in the Gospel scheme, than other portions of a good life. That
the expectation of obtaining forgiveness thus destroys the essence of
good moral conduct, which ought to be practised for its own sake,
involves us in a question which divided heathen as much as it has
Christian moralists. In our own literature we have Butler, &c., on one
side, and Paley, &c., on the other. The correct view, as it appears to
me, is that the hope of reward may, but does not necessarily, exclude
the love of virtue for its own sake, or debase the motive which directs
us to it. To give a homely illustration : A man marries a woman
because he loves and esteems her; but is well pleased to know that she
�Practical Remarks on
O Lord, thou canst not be less generous to me than
I am to my fellow-men,” which, though an excel
lent argument in a philosophic thesis (and over
whelming against the Christian hell), is not in a
tone at all suitable to prayer, even though it be
found in the Gospel of Luke. But in Matthew
vi. 14, 15, the clause is put in a different light.
There Jesus says that, according as we do or do not
forgive our enemies, God will or will not forgive us.
Hence he makes us pray, “ Forgive us (or not),
according as we forgive (or do not forgive).” It is
hard to admire or to imitate a prayer so couched.
Truly a heart utterly free from malice, and desiring
every enemy to be converted to God, to goodness,
and to true happiness, is such a heart as will find
pardon and peace with God. None the less is the
same likely to shrink from a prayer, that it may be
dealt with as it deals with others. Nor is it elevating
to any soul, rather it is debasing, to urge, “ Judge
not, that ye may not be judged; or, forgive, that ye
may be forgiven.” It rather teaches laxity and self
seeking under the guise of religion. It turns the
mind from doing (as Aristotle teaches) good because
it is good, and sets one on thinking, What we are to
by goodness.
“ Lead us not into temptation.” h If we take this
brings him a large fortune, or the advantage of influential relatives, who
may promote his worldly interest. He would have married her all the
same had she possessed none of these Worldly recommendations; but
he does not the less value them.
h Lead us not into Temptation ; but deliver us from Evil.
—It is true, as you observe, that temptation is our appointed lot as free
agents. Still temptation is a danger from which we naturally shrink,
and as naturally express our dread of it by praying to God so to order
our path of life that we may be spared trials which may prove too
strong for us ; and this notwithstanding that trial is inseparable from
our condition, and notwithstanding also that the Divine Providence is
exercised by general laws. So prayed Jesus, “ Father, save me from
this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour.” No prayer—
�The Lord's Prayer.
15
to the letter, it is a request that God would suppress
the very conditions of our freedom ; those moral
trials through which we may raise ourselves to the
dignity of beings who, having gained a painful vic
tory, merit reward. To have no temptations, to know
no evil and, consequently, no good, is the state of
moral innocence of the animal creation and the infant
at the breast. But such innocence is not virtue.
Virtue consists in overcoming temptation ; still we
must never expose ourselves needlessly or out of
pure bravado to opportunities for evil doing, although
virtue cannot exist without experience of resistance.
And note here the inconsistency of the New Testa
ment to itself. The Apostle James, i. 2, 12, 13,
assures us that God tempts no one; which may
seem to supersede a prayer that he will not lead us
into temptation. But what is far worse, the whole
book, the whole Christian scheme is pervaded by the
frightful notion that the just and compassionate
“ Father in Heaven” lets loose upon weak, inex
perienced men and children a subtle rebel angel, a
tempter well versed in all our weakness, and oc
cupied day and night in seducing us. Luke might
bid us to pray, “ Let not Satan tempt us, FOR even we
deal not thus with our children.”
“ Deliver us from evil.”—From what evil ? The
evil we ourselves do ? This is to ask God to act in
our place, to do our work for us when he has given
us all that is necessary for doing it well ourselves.
Is it from the evil which we believe he permits the
devil to urge us to do, that we pray to be delivered ?
But it would be simpler and far more reasonable to
believe that God permits nothing so detestable. Is
it from the physical evil attached to our nature ?
indeed, not the simplest ejaculation—is free from this objection of
inconsistency. As I have before remarked, praying is at once natural
and unreasonable.
�16
Practical Remarks on
But this is to ask God both to give us the victory
without the trouble of the fight, and to overturn the
general laws by which he governs the Universe.
“ For thine is the kingdom, the power and the
glory, for ever.”1—In Chron. xxix. 11, we find,
“ Thine, 0 Jehovah, is the greatness, and the power,
and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty;
for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine ;
thine is the kingdom Jehovah, and thou art exalted
as head above all.” We find this prayer also in Luke
xi. 2-4, but in a slightly shortened form. The curi
ously different language which Matthew and Luke
cause Jesus to hold at the time he gives this prayer
to his disciples is worth noticing.
But after thus commenting on “ The Lord’s
Prayer” in detail, we must address ourselves to the
question, Has it been beneficial, was it wise, to give
to the disciples a form of prayer at all ? For what
is spiritual prayer ? Paul tells us, “We know not
what to pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself
maketh intercession for us, with groanings that can
not be uttered.” This is to avow, that no two hearts
can pray entirely alike ; no full prayer can have lite
rary expression. Look at all the superstitions which
the Pater Noster has for ages caused. Did Jesus
foresee this ? It is hard to think so.
Prayer, as understood by Paul, is the upward
s pressure of spiritual aspiration or of painful need:
Prayer is the Soul’s sincere desire,
Unuttered or expressed,
The heaving of a hidden fire
That stirs within the breast.
Prayer is the utterance of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward lifting of an eye
When only God is near.—J. Montgomery.
> The Doxology.—There is little doubt that this made no part of the
prayer as dictated by our Lord.
�The Lord's Prayer.
Prayer, as inculcated in the Pater N osier, can be
only an external church document. Shall we adopt
the theory of a few, that Jesus intended merely to
give instruction in outline as to the proper topics of
prayer ? It may be. Certain it is, that Christians
systematically disobey his command in this very
matter. Jesus bade them not to use vain repetitions ;
yet not only does the Church of Rome cause the
Pater Noster to be gabbled over to the counting of
beads; the Protestant Church of England also
recites the Lord’s Prayer four times at a single meet
ing. Jesiis forbade his disciples to pray in public,
which he stigmatises as hypocrisy ; yet public prayer
is now practically identified with religion, and one
who refuses to attend it is treated as an infidel. Our
dissenters, who avoid the error of repeating the Lord’s
Prayer, are more and more forward in the other
more offensive error. At the corners of our streets,
and on the lawns and the sands of our wateringplaces, we are annoyed by men, standing aloft, pray
ing aloud or singing hymns, who fancy that hereby
they are fulfilling their Master’s precepts.
In this examination of “ The Lord’s Prayer ” we
have confined ourselves to pointing out what our
prayers should not be. What they should be may,
in part, be learned from the pamphlet, in this same
series, ‘ Basis of a New Reformation.’
�
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Practical remarks on "The Lord's Prayer"
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 17 p. ; 18 cm.
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Thomas Scott
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Religious Practice
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Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
Lord's Prayer
Prayer
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ANCIENT SACRIFICE.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD
LONDON, S.E.
1874.
Price Threepence.
�London:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, 16 LITTLE PDLTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W-
�ANCIENT SACRIFICE.
O our modern intellects all killing of brute or
man, for the pleasure of the most High, seems so
absurd, that perhaps we wonder how such a notion
arose. Nor is the topic very simple. To compose
the idea of Sacrifice, or Sacred Act, or Act'of Faith
(Auto da Fe), streams have flowed together from
many sources.
A first primitive notion is this : that if for human
food we take the life of some tame animal, which is
in our power and under our protection, it befits to
ask permission from the Author of life. He gave
that precious gift alike to sheep and oxen, as to man ;
therefore we must not slay lightly and causelessly,
but only when we can ask bis blessing on the deed.
In the case of wild animals, the hurry and tumult of
hunting did not permit formalities of slaughter. All
that could then be done beforehand, was to offer some
preliminary prayer, that should sanctify the hunting.
But from the primary recognition of God as Lord
and centre of life, other things followed. In some
nations, the blood, as seat of life, was accounted
sacred. It then might not be used for food, but was
poured out religiously. Mystery being thus added
to the blood, a wild and base fancy was liable to
arise, that God, or some God, had pleasure in the
blood. Again, the man who had skill in slaughtering
easily added the religious character to his art, and
nothing was more natural than to remunerate his
services of butchery and prayer by a portion of the
slain beast. Hereby the original Popa (or cook?')
became identified with the Sacerdos; and expected
T
�4
Ancient Sacrifice.
to feed his household by perquisites from the altar.
Thus slaughter became a sacred act, performed by a
priest when possible. It next became the interest of
priesthood to urge sacrifice as a religious duty, that
is, the sacrifice of such animals as were approved for
human food. Moreover, vulgar fantasy conspired to
give currency to the belief, that the god himself
partook in the sacrifice, especially by its smell. On
this the Greek poets are often explicit, and in Genesis
we read, “ Jehovah smelled a sweet savour,” as
denoting his acceptance of Noah’s sacrifice (viii. 21.)
Human sacrifice undoubtedly had one of its sources
in the fantastic picture of a future world, where the
departed soul would need various human aids. In
the grave of a chieftain were buried not only his
armour and his weapons of war, but perhaps his war
horse too, slain to accompany him in the other world.
This we know to have been a modern practice among
North American Indians. But a great Scythian or
Tartar emperor required nobler victims. In the world
of spirits he must have, not a single war-horse, but a
body-guard of mounted youths: these must be slain
for his service; nay, according to Herodotus, to
accompany a king of the Scythians (the Scolotai in
Southern Russia) they ordinarily strangled one of his
concubines, his cup-bearer, his cook, his groom, his
page, his errand-bearer (or adjutant?), and a stud of
horses. We cannot doubt that the same fundamental
ideas suggested the slaughters in Dahomey, on the
death of a king. Cruel as we must deem these acts,
they were not malignant, and did not imply peculiar
atrocity in the agents. No life was regarded as of
any value, if the convenience of the king required its
sacrifice. As, at his command, a dutiful subject
rushed into certain death against a formidable enemy,
bo to accompany a king in the other world was an
ordinary duty of loyalty: nor had any one a conscience
against killing innocent brethren for this purpose.
�Ancient Sacrifice.
S
Perhaps, if we could know it, the slain were consi
dered blessed, and even thought themselves so.
Those killed religiously in Thibet by the arrows of
the boy called Buth, were accounted holy and
peculiarly fortunate, according to the testimony of
the Jesuit missionaries of 1661. Not very unlike is
the moral complexion of a practice among the ancient
Get®, or Goths of the Danube. A belief in immor
tality did but make human life cheaper to them.
Every fifth year they sent a messenger to their deity,
Zalmolxis, to inform him of their needs, and the
mode of dispatch was as follows:—He was tossed
into the air, and received on the points of three
spears. If he died forthwith, the god was accounted
propitious; but if the victim or messenger continued
alive, he was reviled as wicked, and another was sent
in his place. These accounts show how easily,
among men accustomed to slaughter in battle,
poetical fantasy may lead straight to human sacrifice.
The phenomena known to us concerning the Greeks
are rather peculiar. In their historical era, they
utterly repudiated human sacrifice, yet they unani
mously supposed it to have been practised by their
ancestral heroes on various occasions; and their
poets abound in moralisings about Agamemnon
slaying his daughter—the most signal case, but not
at all solitary. Yet the earliest poets show total
unacquaintance with such tales, which (with abund
ance of other sensational horrors) are mere after
invention, suggested probably by the practices of
other nations. Some of their neighbours had wild
fantasies of their own, as in the drowning of horses
to a river god. One may conjecture that, as in the
passage of an army both horses and men were apt
to be drowned, it was imagined that by a voluntary
sacrifice of &few horses to the honour of the god, his
jealousy would be satisfied, and a favourable passage
secured.
�6
Ancient Sacrifice.
This opens a new topic. Greeks and Hebrews
alike attributed to Superior Powers a certain jealousy
of anything pre-eminent in man or in terrestrial
things. Thus Polycrates, according to Herodotus,
being too prosperous, attempted (but in vain) to pro
pitiate divine jealousy by voluntary sacrifices. But
among the Greeks, this never reached to the point of
human victims.
The solemn religious sacrifice of select prisoners
of war was apparently normal to the Mexican races,
and may have been practised by some nations of the
Old World. It is imputed to the Carthaginians ; but
many circumstances lessen the credit of the charge.
Nevertheless, it is easy to see, liow in the interests of
humanity any priest or general might devise the
scheme of a formal sacrifice, in order to stop indis
criminate massacre of prisoners. Perhaps not enough
is known of the facts, to justify any definite theory.
That human sacrifice occasionally arose out of vows,
is more certain. The vow of a sacred spring (yer
sacrum), as recorded in Livy (xxii. 10), was limited
to the births among pigs, sheep, goats, and oxen, all
of which were ceded to the god under certain con
ditions : but it is too evident in Leviticus xxvii. 28,
29, that the Hebrew vow might legitimately include
human children or slaves; in which case the law (as
we now read it) expressly forbids the redemption of
a human being, but commands that he be put to
death, if he have been devoted to Jehovah. The
only practical illustration of this which we find in
the history is the case of Jephthah’s daughter; which
suffices to show that this was really the currently
received law of early Israel, however rare in practice
so extreme and rash a vow. But (what is here to be
observed) not the remotest idea appears, in any of the
cases of sacrifices hitherto adduced, of its being an
expiation or atonement for sin. No doubt, whatever
happened, was readily interpreted as eutailing some
�Ancient Sacrifice.
7
“ gift to the altar,” which was generally a gift to the
priest’s table. Thus the birth of a child in a Hebrew
family required the offering of a lamb, or at least two
young pigeons; not as atoning for any moral sin, but
(according to the notion of the early Hebrews) as
removing ceremonial uncleanness. The offering is
in itself analogous to a baptismal fee paid by a
Christian parent to the clergyman. So among the
Greeks there was sacrifice preliminary to marriage—
TrpnreXeta.
The same remark applies to the other Hebrew
sacrifices, which are spoken of as expiatory. They
never are supposed to remove moral sin, crime, or its
punishment. A thief was ordered to restore the
double ; but his offence having nothing of ceremonial
pollution, no ceremonial expiation was imagined.
Nor was it dissimiliar among the Romans. If any
thing iZZ-omenecZ occurred, such as a monstrous birth,
or a shower of stones, or a cow walking upstairs,
or a Vestal virgin being unchaste, the consul might
be ordered to “ allay the omens ” by a propitiatory
sacrifice; but only external mischief or ceremonial
indecorum was contemplated as thus removable.
The great day of Atonement among the Hebrews
was expiatory of accidental ceremonial neglects alone
(dyrovjuara, Heb. ix. 7). I believe that there is no
standing ground at all for an argument which should
impute to Hebrews, Greeks, or Romans—the ancient
nations best known to us—that any slaying of victims
could atone for conscious wilful sin or crime. When
ever misfortune came, they were liable to be tor
mented by the fear that they had unawares neglected
some honour to a god or goddess, some ceremonial
duty; as Meleager after the Calydonian boarhunt did
homage to other gods, but forgot Artemis: and whereever there was a complex ceremonial law, such forget
fulness might always be suspected. Hence there was
no end of such propitiations ; but in Greece and
�8
Ancient Sacrifice.
Rome they died out with superstitious fears. Temples
received endowments, and priests became too respect
able to propagate any self-invented follies for the sake
of increasing the sacrifices. Besides, contributions
to the treasury of temples had also become an esta
blished form of piety.
One other ground of sacrifice has to be named—
that which accompanied the making of a covenant.
The sacrifice was supposed to add force and security
to the promise or oath. How this should be, is
perhaps most clearly explained by the ancient Roman
practice recorded by Polybius (iii. 35), of swearing
“per Jovenn Lapidem,” as the vulgar called it. He who
was to swear, took a stone in his hand, and said : “ If
I intend or practise anything against this engage
ment, I pray that while all other men remain safe in
their own countries, under their own laws, with their
own modes of life, their temples, and their sepulchres,
I alone may be tossed out, as this stone is now.”
With these words he flings the stone out of his hand.
In the third book of the Iliad, when a treaty is to be
made, a sacrifice and libation of wine is essential.
Agamemnon slays the lambs, and the chieftains pour
wine on the earth. The people around pray,—
“Whoever shall first transgress the treaty, as this
wine is spilt on the ground, so may his brains be
spilt! ” We can hardly doubt that the same was
the meaning of the sacrifice: “ As these murdered
lambs fall helpless, so may he who breaks the treaty
be murdered.” In the Hebrew Pentateuch, Moses is
represented (Exod. xxiv. 8) as sprinkling the people
with “ the blood of the covenant.” But it can hardly
be too often repeated, that neither here or in the
sprinkling of the door-posts with blood of the Paschal
Lamb, does the remotest idea show itself of atone
ment for sin.
The modern Jews, I believe, unanimously uphold
that interpretation of their law, which alone is sug
�Ancient Sacrifice.
9
gested by intelligent criticism : moreover, the learned
and eloquent writer of the Christian “ Epistle to the
Hebrews ” appears fully to admit all that is said
above. He is indeed guilty of one great confusion,
occasioned by the ambiguous sense of the Greek
word biadf)KTi, which, primarily meaning a disposi
tion of affairs, is used either for any special arrange
ment, i.e., covenant, or for a man’s Last Will and
Testament, which is to take effect after his death.
It is undeniable that in Heb. ix. 16, 17, 20, the
writer has argued illogically by confounding Covenant
and Testament—and has bequeathed to Christendom
the absurd phrases, Old and New Testament. But he
is consistent in his declaration that the legal cere
monies, whether gifts or sacrifices, did not touch
“ the conscience ” (ix. 9) of the worshipper, and
could only, “ purify the flesh ” (ix. 13) ; and that it
is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take
away sins (x. 4, 11) ; nor does it anywhere appear
that he mistook the slaughter of the Paschal Lamb
for a sin-atonement, as perhaps we must admit that
Paul does, on comparing 1 Cor. x. 16,18, with 1 Cor.
v. 7. It is therefore the more astonishing that the
writer to the Hebrews or any of his Christian con
temporaries learned in the Hebrew law could have
dreamed of finding there a weight of analogy for the
wild idea, that the violent death of a righteous being
by the hands of wicked men can be construed as a
sacrifice pleasing to God, which purifies the conscience
of believers. Had he argued as follows: “ If the
blood of bulls, offered by a priest in the performance
of his duty, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh,
how much more shall the blood of a hol/y prophet,
wickedly shed, purify your consciences from a sense of
sin,” his words would not have been plausible. The
argument is visibly monstrous. But by throwing
into the back ground the fact that the murder of
Jesus was an odious crime, and of course, in every
�IO
Ancient Sacrifice,
Christian estimate, horrible to God, and converting
it into a voluntary offering of himself, he seeks to
glorify the event. “ Christ (says he) through the
Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God ”
(ix. 14) : and again, 25, 26, “ Nor yet that he should
offer himself often, . . . but once, ... to put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself.” It is notable how
such a writer becomes a victim to other men’s
blunders, error attracting error. Thus he quotes
from the Greek Septuagint, “ a body hast thou pre
pared me,” as the translation of Psalm xl. 6 of our
Version, which, on the contrary, agrees with the
Hebrew, “ mine ears hast thou pierced.” Out of this
spurious word “ body ” (x. 5, 10) he actually makes
an argument which reverses the obvious sense of the
Psalm. The Psalmist insists, “ God does not want
sacrifice, but scorns it: he wants obedience” but this
writer makes out that the Psalmist means, “ God does
not want the sacrifice of bulls and goats, but the
sacrifice of a spotless prophet.” The Psalm says
nothing about bulls and goats, but about sacrifice
and sin-offering absolutely. Now let us concede that
we have a right to forget the part which wicked men
took in the death of Jesus, and to treat it as his own
voluntary act; imagine for a moment that it had been
strictly so—(which ought to make this argument better,
as well as clearer)—and what will be the position of
things ? Jesus will be made out to have slain him
self “for the sins of many,” in order to “sanctify”
his disciples, and “ purify them from an evil con
science” by his “ one sacrifice for sins ” (Heb. x. 12,
14, 22). Would not every Christian shudder at
having such a historical fact put before him, as a
mode of salvation ? One is apt to seem slanderous
and blasphemous, in naming the possibility as a
hypothesis ; yet I repeat, it ought to make the argu
ment of the writer to the Hebrews a fortiori valid,
if there is any validity in what he has written. It does
�Ancient Sacrifice,
ii
appear most marvellous, that in protesting against the
Hebrew ceremonies as carnal and weak, because they
dealt only with impurities of the flesh, the Christian
teachers should have (for the first time perhaps in
the world’s history) propounded so very carnal and
revolting an idea, that the blood of a holy prophet
(whether shed violently or voluntarily) can justly
remove from our consciences a sense of sin and
sanctify us to God. We need not press the extreme
weakness of mind which could dwell upon his “ suffer
ing without the gate ” (Heb. xiii. 12). Nothing but
artificial inculcation of this doctrine (“ the blood of
Jesus ”) can sustain it among us. Every intelligent
English child is shocked when he first hears of
“ hoping pardon through his blood,” and wonders
how “ blood ” is concerned in the matter. The doc
trine, in fact, is lower by far in carnality than any
thing in the Jewish ceremonial; lower, perhaps, than
anything that we have a right to impute to Greeks
or Romans. Animal sacrifice is discarded, to esta
blish a Human sacrifice as cardinal to divine religion !
It is a sufficiently mean idea, that the gods love
the steam and smell of animal slaughter; but it is
still more shocking to imagine that the bloodshed of
a holy person is in any sense “ a sacrifice for sin,”
“ a propitiation ” (or mercy seat ? Rom. iii. 25), “ an
offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling
savour ” (Eph. v. 1), and that by a belief in it, or
by a trust and reliance upon it, we become delivered
from an evil conscience, that is, from a sense of God’s
displeasure for our sins. Are we really to believe,
that the most High was pleased by the crucifixion of
Jesus ? If it be said, “ No, he reprobated the deed,
but he was pleased that Jesus so meekly submitted to
an inevitable fate,” this is mere evasion; for, all com
parison of it to a legitimate sacrifice then vanishes.
If not death, but mere torture had been inflicted,
the “ meek submission ” remains as praiseworthy as
�12
Ancient Sacrifice.
before ; but, except as an example of conduct, nothing
here (be it death, or be it torture,) has any relation
to our consciences, or has the least tendency to
deliver us from a sense of guilt, if the remembrance
of past sins trouble us.
Unitarian Christians are in general unwilling to
admit that the “ atoning blood of Christ ” is taught
in the New Testament. It is not taught exactly as
Archbishop Anselm is said first to have defined it, as
“ compensation ” paid to God for remitting the punish
ment of man ; but that Paul, John the apostle in the
Revelations, the writer to the Hebrews, and the First
Epistle of Peter, inculcate purification by the sacrifice
of Christ, it seems useless to deny. That the Epistle
of James is wholly silent on this and other matters,
is true : and I think, it instructively shows, how
rapidly. James was isolated in holding fast to the
original doctrine of the Jerusalem Church. When
that Church perished corporately with Jerusalem in
the war of Titus, no authoritative protest remained
among Jewish Christians against the notions which
prevailed with the Gentile churches.
It is a remarkable fact, that in the modern Evan
gelical Creed this most untenable and most unspiritual
doctrine of Human Sacrifice is made paramount.
The Divinity of Christ is chiefly valued, because
without it “ the Atonement ” cannot be sustained.
But nothing can sustain “ the Atonement.” It must
be thrown over, equally with Eternal Punishment
and Vicarious Sin, to make Christian doctrines even
plausible to deliberate and impartial thought.
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Ancient sacrifice
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
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Collation: 12, vi, [2] p. ; 19 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's list on numbered pages at the end.
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Morris Tracts
Sacrifices
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Text
THE CONTROVERSY
ABOUT
PRAYER.
BY PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
No. 11
The Tebeace, Fabquhar Road, Uppee Nobwood,
London,
S.E.
1873.
Price Threepence.
��THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT
PRAYER.
OME have said that religious knowledge is not
progressive: with about as
Ssay that medical knowledge much tr.uth we might On
is not progressive.
each topic mankind has made enormous errors, and
on each is still very far from a sound and satisfactory
state ; yet on each it has left many errors far behind.
Primitive theology is man’s interpretation of the
outer world which he perceives ; and his interpreta
tion is largely influenced by his consciousness and his
emotions. Enlarged and improved knowledge of the
universe almost necessarily modifies theology, as does
the improved moral culture of nations. Religion
therefore (in its popular sense of “ thought concerning
God”), unless artificially stereotyped by nationally
established creeds and by sacerdotal authority, must
everywhere tend to improve, as nations become
nobler in morals, or in breadth and accuracy of know
ledge. So strong indeed is this natural tendency,
that we do in fact trace this improvement, in spite of
hierarchies and domineering institutions, and some
times, in the higher minds, even in spite of public
demoralization. Theological opinion, and the inter
pretation of generally received doctrines, cannot but
undergo change, when the ascendant system of (what
is called) metaphysics changes; much more, when,
�4
^he Controversy about Prayer.
as in the last three centuries of Europe, acquaintance
with the outer world has been immensely enlarged
and at the same time become beyond comparison
more accurate.
But the mass of the population in Christendom is
very far from duly appreciating the truths of natural
science ; and the teachers of religion on the one
side are bound down by Church Articles and Liturgies,
or on the other cannot conveniently outrun the tra
ditionary creed of their congregations. Men of
business have not much time for original thought
concerning religion; and a great majority of the
female sex have too little scientific knowledge or too
little independence of judgment to deviate knowingly
from current .opinion. Necessarily therefore within
the same Church, whatever the submission to common
ordinances, there is a great mental gap between those
who are most and those who are least influenced by
the thought and knowledge of the age, especially in
Astronomy, in Geology, in Geography, in Physiology,
to say nothing of History and Literary Criticism.
Minds which have by no means gone so far as to
throw off belief of an established religion, or the
cardinal and prominent tenets of a creed, nevertheless
to a great extent interpret things differently, so as
practically to come to a different result from the
older beliefs.
Now in this matter of Prayer, it is obvious what
was the primitive doctrine of most nations, and in
particular both of the Hebrews and of the early
Christians. That God ruled the universe by law,
none had any idea. They supposed that His rule
might be compared to that of an earthly king, who
said to one servant Go, to another Gome, to a third
Do this, and was obeyed. Indeed the Hebrews,
like the Persians and Arabs, supposed ministering
spirits to guide the actions of the elements and of the
heavenly bodies ; also, to guard or watch humaji in
�The Controversy about Prayer.
5
dividuals. Instinct, under a sense of weakness or
desire, often impelled them, as it impels us, to pray
for this, or for that; and they could but very
vaguely define to themselves the limits within which
prayer was right, and beyond which it would be rather
impious than pious. We should all be much astonished
to hear of barbarians so stupid as to pray that the
new moon should give as much light as the full moon,'
or that a winter day should be luminous and long as
a day of summer. In the very infancy of man the
steadiness of sun and moon was so fully recognized,
that it would have seemed idiotic to pray for any irre
gularity. But there has always been an enormous
margin of events concerning which man saw no reve
lation of a fixed divine purpose, and therefore could
not chide prayer as a presumptuous desire to turn the
divine decrees aside. Indeed under polytheistic belief,
the gods are morally imperfect; and no greater im
propriety was felt in coaxing a god (a genius, a fairy)
than in coaxing a mortal man. A vow,—in which a
promise was made contingently upon the god hearing
a prayer,—was thought a pious procedure ; yet it is
nothing but an attempt to bargain with the god. Such
bargains in antiquity were solemnly sanctioned by
many states, as by the Romans, and public money
was often voted in fulfilment. In the Hebrew book
of “ Judges ” the atrocious vow of Jephthah is not
blamed. To vow to a god the tithe of an enemy’s
spoil on condition of victory, seemed wholly unblameable and decidedly pious to most ancient nations.
It may be doubted whether in any Christian sect
of England or the United States prayers of this
character could be endured. A vow, as understood
by Christians, has nothing conditional in it. If it be
an arbitrary, yet it is an absolute, promise to the Most
High ; it is not a bargain, as with the Romans. Of
necessity those among us who believe the tides, the
meteors, the clouds, the winds, to be guided by laws
�6
'The Controversy about Prayer.
as fixed as gravitation, are hereby disabled from
praying about them or against them, equally as about
an eclipse. Nevertheless, whatever weaknesses—the
fruit of ancient ignorance—are incorporated with the
Christian Scriptures, are accepted and even treasured
up by simple hearted and pious persons, whose intel
lect either is not duly informed or has not duly acted
on their creeds ; and the deplorable dogma of Infalli
bility has made it very difficult for the pious to go
directly against the sacred book, however grave and
obvious the error. But within the compass of that
book itself there is a variety of doctrine, a higher as
well as a baser view; and to the higher view the
nobler and more thoughtful minds tend. If at one
time encouragement is given to importunity in prayer,
on the assumption that God is comparable to a man
who grants a petition merely to get rid of a teazing
beggar ; yet elsewhere it is laid down that repetition
in prayer is vain, and that God is not moved by much
speaking. If in one place it is said, that when two
or three shall agree to pray for a thing, be it what it
may, it shall be granted to them ; in other places
there is limitation, and human ignorance of what it is
wise to ask is pointed at. In fact, in every prayer
for things outward, among persons not wholly fana
tical, the proviso, “ if it be according to Thy will,”
is now understood or expressed; and in matters of
vehement personal desire, the clause is probably
added: “ nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be
done.” Also, if any Christian teacher be asked, under
what circumstances it is reasonable to have confidence
that our prayer will be granted, he will hardly fail to
reply, under the guidance of a familiar text, that it is
only when we know that we ask a thing which is in
accordance with the will of God.
Under such a complication,—which is the ordinary
state of every Church,—it is (I must think) painful
rudeness in an opponent, if indeed he is as well
�The Controversy about Prayer.
7
informed of the facts as a critic ought to be, to assume
in the present generation of English Christians the
lowest and meanest views of prayer which prevailed
in less instructed and Pagan times. It exasperates
too much to enlighten. It was a simple insult, nothing
less, to propose that Christians should pray for the
sick in one special ward of an infirmary, and then (as
a test of the utility of prayer) should observe whether
the patients recovered better in that ward than in the
other wards. Did its proposer imagine that a Christian
is a&Ze to pray for any thing that others may dictate
to him ? One must be drawn keenly by desire from
within or by painful distress, and must feel either
assurance or strong hope that the petition conforms
with the divine mind, before he can pray fervently.
A philosopher (whatever his merits in his own line)
sadly lowers himself when he so intrudes into sacred
feelings and j udgments which he does not understand.
At the same time, there was and is abundant cause
for grave remonstrance with the religion of the day in
this very matter ; and with a moderate turn, the same
proposal might have given point unblameably to the
argument.
It might have been set before English Christians,
that they would certainly resent it as an insult, if any
one were to propose, as a test of the utility of prayer,
petition for a given topic (such as that concerning
the hospital-ward)—without caring to ascertain first
whether the thing asked could reasonably be esteemed
in accordance with the divine will, or whether they
themselves had any fervent desire for it. This being
the ease, how can the same enlightened Christians
passively endure that the Privy Council should dictate
to them what they are to ask of God for each member
of the Royal Family ? How can they approve of a
stereotype prayer against public enemies, as if it were
always a priori certain that in every war England is
right and has God on her side ? Knowing, as all the
�8
The Controversy about Prayer.
educated do, that rains and droughts and pestilences,
follow laws of matter as fixedly as do the planets,
how can they think it pious to supplicate the Most
High to interfere with them ? Such public prayers,
written in an age of lower knowledge, and sustained
by the routine of State, train all the educated to
hypocrisy, and lower the standard of truthfulness.
Evidently, to pray for the royal family is enforced as
a test of loyalty ; which is on a par with the command
to show loyalty by worshipping Caesar’s image. The
coarseness of (what is called) the National Anthem,—
“ God save the Queen,”—against the Queen’s (imagi
nary) foes, is quite disgusting. There is plenty of
matter here for just and profitable attack from those
who never pray, if they would make the attack from
the highest and noblest principles of Christians them
selves ; moreover, it is very reasonable to claim, that
those who hold high dignity in Church or State, and
at the same time are distinguished by intellect and
freedom of thought, will initiate public movement
against these evil stereotyped prayers. Will they for
ever preserve a dastardly silence, and leave reform to
avowed opponents or to enemies who are strangers to
the deep things of the Christian heart ?
Cicero and Horace alike held, that men ought to
pray to God for things external,—which man cannot
control and God does control;—not for things
internal, such as contentment, courage, or in a word,
virtue; which a man ought to provide by his own
effort. To despise any one for believing with Cicero,
I find myself unable; the contumely which I read in
many quarters is to me very unseemly and painful.
Nevertheless, I regard it as quite certain that the
progress of knowledge will ere long enforce the entire
abandonment of stereotype prayer,—prayer made
beforehand,—for outward blessings or conveniences
however inevitable it be, that under pain, want or
severe anxiety human nature will ejaculate to the All-
�The Controversy about Prayer.
9
ruler earnest desire, not unprofitably. “He who
searcheth hearts ” knows how to estimate such prayers
aright,—cannot blame them,—and has his own way
of answering them. But to plan beforehand how
others may or shall pray for a King or Queen’s “ health,
wealth, long life ” and “ victory,” is quite a different
matter from prayer that is extorted by inward instinct
or agony. So too is the “ agreeing together ” before
hand what to pray for, as if (in the coarse words of a
ranting preacher) “ by a long pull, a strong pull, and
a pull all-together ” men could rival Keliama, and drag
God along with them.
Undoubtedly the received belief of old was, that
God’s Providence ruled the world by agencies from
without. A pious saint in danger from enemies was
imagined to pray for (perhaps) “twelve legions of
angels ” as a military aid. A prophet’s eyes were
opened to see chariots and horses, invisible to other
mortals, fighting on the side of his people. To such
a mental condition the prayer of those days adjusted
itself. But now all thoughtful persons educated in
England are aware that the Divine rule is carried on
by the laws of the material universe, and by the
agencies of the human mind; and as it is no longer
admissible to entreat that the Most High will tamper
with his own laws, prayer tends to concentrate itself
upon the human mind,—that is, invokes influence
from the Divine Spirit on the mind either of him
who prays or of some others.
Against this form of prayer, which may be called
spiritual prayer, materialists rush with as rude and
coarse attack as against prayer for things external.
Their tone, and frequently their bold utterances, all
but make an axiom of Atheism. Now I have no
harsh feeling for Atheists, knowing as I do with what
difficulties noble intellects struggle, and how cruelly
the follies and crimes of theological devotees have led
astray and exasperated meaner intellects. But it
�io
The Controversy about Prayer.
suffices to accept and accost Atheists as our equals,
whom we invite to courteous debate on fit occasion,
and will always esteem and love, if they be morally
worthy. Many of them seem to manifest nothing but
scorn for Theism, and demand to lay down axioms of
their own, which no wise Theist can ever accept.
One of these axioms is, that “ of course we can know
nothing but phenomena.” Since God assuredly is
not a phenomenon, this assumes that “of course ” we
can know nothing of God. Another axiom is, that
when we speak of one thing as the cause of another,
all that we mean is, that the latter invariably follows
the former; so they attempt to resolve causation into
antecedence. I stoutly deny that that is all that I
mean when I say “ causeand if they reply that it
it is all that I ought to mean, I beg them to prove
that, and not assume it without proof, as they do.
The purport of their pretended axiom is to involve
the whole universe, material, moral, and mental, in a
rigid mechanical chain,—that is, in Fate : this granted,
prayer of course is vain. Again, the idea of a Per
sonal Deity they treat with contempt as “ anthropo
morphic,” and assert that Personality implies limita
tion. Nay, but Person is only another word for Mind
or Spirit. If we say Divine Spirit, they show equal
enmity to the phrase. What avails the objections of
such men to prayer ? Their attack is not against
prayer as such,—i.e., entreaty made to a Divine Spirit,
but against the existence or accessibility of any such
Spirit. Spiritual prayer of course assumes that God
is in the human mind,—that he is aware and (so to
say) conscious of all our minds,—moreover, that he
not only approves of, but is concerned to promote,
human virtue. In the attacks which I read against
spiritual prayer, it is visible that these axioms of
Theism are denied: hence the attack is really that of
Atheism against Theism,—which is all fair, if it be
conducted by quiet reasonable argument, not by
�Che Controversy about Prayer.
ti
scornful assumptions, nor under a pretence that they
are only attacking a practice of Theists.
As Cicero and Tacitus and Aristotle, and the wisest
modern moralists, insist, there is no morality if there
be no freedom of the will. . If a man’s action is in all
details predetermined like the path of a comet, he can
no more be virtuous or vicious, praiseworthy or blame
able, than the comet. Whatever may be said for
a doctrine of universal Necessity by eccentric and con
fident reasoners, who think themselves pre-eminently
philosophic, the great mass of mankind continue to
believe as firmly as their own existence, that they
have a choice between the better and the worse, and
that they deserve blame for many of their bad actions ;
in short, that God, “ while binding Nature fast in
Fate, left free the human will.” For myself, I must
profess that my belief in my Free Will is coeval with
and as firm as my belief in matter; and I think it
'clear that the belief in both is the first principle of all
knowledge, and of course is prior to a belief in God.
The assailant of spiritual prayer is apt to assume
that the actions of the human will are as much deter
mined beforehand as the movements of material par
ticles, and therefore such prayer is as vain as prayer
for things outward. But he does not pretend any
proof that the will is thus mechanically predeter
mined : indeed he knows that proof is impossible:
but he says that we probably shall hereafter find that
the case of mind is similar to that of meteorology,
and that in the progress of knowledge it will be dis
covered that the mind has no freedom. This amounts
to saying that the progress of knowledge will probably
annul the first axioms on which all knowledge is
built. I need only reply that it has not yet done so,
and I utterly disbelieve that it ever will.
We see in the marvellous instincts of brute minds,
and in human instinct too, the operation of a Higher
Mind in the animated universe. How this action
�12
The Controversy about Prayer.
takes place we are necessarily ignorant, just as we
are how we think at all. We can have no ultimate
standing ground but in simple fact. Thought, life,
existence, must remain for ever a mystery. So must
the action of the Divine Spirit on the animal mind,
which I see as a fact; and seeing it, I cannot doubt
the action of the same Spirit in the higher regions of
the human mind. Religion has long been described
by pious persons as a “walking with God that is,
as a permanent tendency of the mind, when relieved
of other necessary thought, to remember the over
sight, the insight, the joint consciousness of the Divine
Spirit, who essentially and primarily loves goodness,
justice,—in short, moral perfection. That virtue is
the final object for which man and the whole of human
life is ordained is a main principle of Theism. To
supplicate God inwardly for increase of virtue, or
pour out gratitude for his tender mercies to ourselves,
and admiration of his manifold infinitude, is therefore
its natural instinct; and such instinct cannot have
been given us for nothing. In fact, its moral influence
on the heart which cultivates it is the richest of all
rewards. Materialists and Atheists are generally very
severe against those who needlessly mortify lower
and animal instincts, and are often slow to discover
when it is not needless: they have then certainly no
right to claim that a pure and noble instinct shall be
repressed rather than cultivated. The best informed
among the opponents of all prayer will (with good
reason) deprecate the epithet Atheist; but if the God
whom alone they admit to be possible has none but a
mechanical existence, and praying to him is no wiser
than praying to the clouds, he is no more to us than
the gods of Epicurus ; we can have no personal rela
tions with him any more than with dead men.
Let the strong and scornful opposition to Prayer,
which has been so widely echoed, be directed . on
formal, public, cut-and-dried Prayer, lengthy musical
�The Controversy about Prayer.
13
Prayer, profane singing of sacred words for the sake
of fine music, Litanies with endless repetition, the
“Lord’s Prayer ” recited so often and so fast that it
becomes unintelligible ;—and much good may come
of this outburst. There is scarcely a public prayer
used in all Christendom which does not admit,
perhaps urgently need, keen criticism. The “ Lord’s
Prayer ” is nowise to be excepted from this remark.
Moreover, to pray without desire, is the more profane,
the more it is done in combination and in system.
What then of coaxing or scolding young people into
it ? What of paying choristers and public singers of
addresses to God ? There is abundant room for
intelligent and profitable correction, without shocking
any of the rightful sanctities of the heart.
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The controversy about prayer
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Newman, Francis William
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 13, [5] p. ; 19 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
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Thomas Scott
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1873
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Religious Practice
Prayer
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Morris Tracts
Prayer
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Notes on the Pilgrim's Way, in West Sussex
Creator
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James, E. Renouard
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London; Guildford
Collation: 23 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Inscription inside front cover: With Mr Evelyn's comps. The Pilgrims' Way is the historical route taken by pilgrims from Winchester in Hampshire, England, to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury in Kent. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Edward Stanford
Asher and Walbrook
Date
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1871
Identifier
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G5167
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Religious Practice
Pilgrimage
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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 (Notes on the Pilgrim's Way, in West Sussex), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Pilgrimage
Pilgrims' Way
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THE
FLAGELLANTS,
SALADIN.
[reprinted
from
“the secular review.”]
♦
London:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
�Price Twopence.
Every Thursday.
THE SECULAR REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED
BY SALADIN.
The Secular Review is the recognised organ of cultured
Freethought in England, and its contributors comprise some
of the leading scholars and foremost thinkers of the country.
Subscription
...
...
2s. Z^d. per Quarter.
Publishing Office : 41, Farringdon St., London, E.C.
Price 2s. Post Free.
In Limp Cloth.
POEM S:
GENERAL, SECULARISTIC, AND
SATIRICAL.
By LARA.
Dedicated to Saladin.
“ Contains specimens of the most biting satire penned since
the days of Pope.”
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Recently Published.
Price is. 6d. Post Free.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE
HYLO-IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY
demonstrating the true basis of
AGNOSTICISM,
By WILLIAM BELL McTAGGART.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�E ^072
[reprinted
THE
from
“the
secular review.”]
FLAGELLANTS.
From the era of its half-mythical Galilean downwards,
Christianity has laid incontestable claims to be con
sidered the Religion of Misery. A radical doctrine of
the faith is that this world is only a Babelmandeb, or
Gate of Tears to the “ glory that shall yet be revealed.”
The teachings recorded of Christ have all the jaundiced
acerbity of the Essenes. The son of Mary was an
ascetic, or nothing. According to him, the end of the
world was close at hand. Its concerns and aims were
despicable, and the best that could be done was to
regard its pleasures as pernicious seductions and lay up
“ treasures in heaven,” as it would avail a man nothing
should he “ gain the whole world and lose his own soul.”
Strictly compatible with the teachings of Christ were
the doctrines of Cardinal Damiani, when he wrote a pane
gyric upon the efficacy of self-inflicted suffering, and those
of the celebrated Dominic, when he introduced peni
tential hymns, to be chanted to a tune to which the selfinflicted lash kept time. Hair shirts, protracted periods
of fasting, and the like, had long been in vogue as means
to propitiate an angry heaven ; but Dominic affirmed
that twenty recitations of the Psalms, accompanied by
self-inflicted scourging, was equal to a hundred years of
ordinary penitence.
Dominic flourished towards the middle of the eleventh
century; but it was not till about two centuries later
(1260) that the seed of asceticism he had sown arose
to be a great and popular tree of self-torture. It was in
an age of gloom and suffering and wickedness that, at
Pergugia, in Italy, a monk named Regnier, with wild and
�2
THE FLAGELLANTS.
bitter eloquence, preached Flagellation as the antidote
that would restore an afflicted people to the favour of
an angry God. Like Peter the Hermit in the first
Crusade, like Luther at the Reformation, or Bernhardt
of the Millenarian insanity, this Regnier had rightly
interpreted the spirit of the times. He put in his sickle,
and the corn was already ripe for the harvest. The wars
of Guelph and Ghibelline, famine, pestilence, rapine,
murder and misery had, after a thousand years of Chris
tianity, made Italy and the most of Europe feel that life
was, indeed, not worth living, but only a horrid and
mysterious burden, which was taken up involuntarily, and
which left those who bore it such cravens that they had
not the courage to lay it down.
And so another violent epidemic of Lose your Reason
to Save your Soul fell upon Christendom like a rinder
pest. The memory and inspiration of the Man of
Sorrows was again to lay the load of a great sorrow upon
the shoulders of the world. Once more, as, under the
preaching of Bernhardt and Peter the Hermit, rowdy
and rascal, swashbuckler and sword-player, blackguard
and blackleg, worked themselves into a frenzy concern
ing one Jesus, whose name has always been a spell
word with miscreants from the time of the Christian
cut-throats mentioned by Tacitus down to Booth’s latest
prize, the “blood-washed soul” of ’Arry Juggins the
burglar.
Two by two the holy ones of the whip-lash marched
through the gaping multitudes on the crowded streets.
Their heads were covered with sackcloth ; their remain
ing article of attire was a bandage round the loins, which
rendered them a little decent for God’s sake. Their
backs and breasts were entirely nude. The back bore a
huge cross, daubed upon the skin with red paint; and
another cross was smeared upon the naked breast. On
through the town, and through the wilderness, in long
and narrow file, like the march of the ducks from the
dub to the midden, marched those nasty saints of God
The hand of each sacred fanatic bore a heavy and
horrible whip, the thongs tipped with iron ; and, with this
whip, every pious madman lashed his own bare back till
the thongs were clotted and gory, and long lines of blood
�THE FLAGELLANTS.
3
running down from the scapula to the pelvis defaced the
red cross which had been painted on the skin.
To what shall we liken the men of that generation ?
To a crazy dog, refusing its food and chewing off its own
hind legs to please its master. But the analogy is im
perfect, and the man flogging his own back to please
his Jesus is more irrational than the dog chewing off his
own hind legs to please his master; for the dog is positively
sure he has a master; but the ablest Christian that has
ever written has not been able to establish that his Jesus
ever existed. The only record of him is in four socalled “ Gospels/’ written by nobody knows who, nobody
knows where, and nobody knows when, and the state
ments of which are contradicted by each other and utterly
unsupported by history. A pretty source, indeed, from
which to derive a Jesus in whose honour you can flog
your back ! But backs always will be flogged, and noses
ever will be held close to the grindstone, till he with the
back and he with the nose takes the trouble to cultivate
his brain, and dares to confront, eagle-eyed, the authori
ties that would make him a chattel and a poor mad catspaw in the hands of priest and tyrant.
Jehovah has ever liked singing and dancing and
capers to his glory and honour. David, the “ man
according to God’s own heart,” danced naked before
God and certain young girls ; and another worthy sang
to God’s glory with acceptance because Jael had
hammered a nail into her guest’s head while he slept.
So the Flagellants, besides tickling their own backs with
whips, deemed it would be well to tickle Jehovah’s ears
with music. Accordingly they sang while they flogged. If
you think flogging your back is conducive to making you
rival the efforts of Sims Reeves, just try the experiment.
Flog your back while you sing, and you will find that
many a quaver flies off into a scream, and that many a
crotchet is dead-born. But Jehovah had just to content
himself with such music as was obtainable under the
circumstances. Certain fragments of the hymns which
the Flagellants sang have been preserved. Here are
brief specimens :—
“ Through love of man the Saviour came,
Through love of man he died ;
�4
THE FLAGELLANTS.
He suffered want, reproach, and shame,
Was scourged and crucified.
Oh, think, then, on thy Saviour’s pain,
And lash the sinner, lash again !”*
The following are a few lines from the metrical rendering
into English of “The Ancient Song of the Flagellants ” :—
“ Tears from our sorrowing eyes we weep,
Therefore so firm our faith we keep
With all our hearts, with all our senses :
Christ bore his cross for our offences.
Ply well the scourge, for Jesu’s sake,
And God, through Christ, your sin will take.
For love of God abandon sin—
To mend your vicious lives begin ;
So shall we his mercy win.”+
Thirty-three days and a half was the shortest term in
which a Flagellant must macerate and lacerate himself;
and these thirty-three and a half days were meant to be
mystically symbolical of the thirty-three years and a
half which the third part of God, and yet equal to the
whole of God, had lived on earth “ saving souls ” and
making wheelbarrows. The devotees fell down on their
dirty knees in the dirty streets, and, setting up their
naked, putrid, and horrible backs, prayed to Jah and
Jesus and Mary to have mercy on their souls, before
having taken the trouble to find out whether they had
souls or not. Jah and Jesus and Mary had, however,
something else to do than attend to kneeling lunatics
with voices like cross-cut saws and backs like beef
steaks. But the cities, then as now, had plenty of fools,
and certain of them rushed out at their doors or leapt
from their windows for God's sake to join the ranks of
those who lashed their hurdies with thongs and prayed
with their knees in the gutter. When all Christendom
had managed to lash its back to its own satisfaction, it
threw down the whip, got up from its knees, and took
to swearing and sinning in the usual way.
But, some fifty years afterwards, Christendom again
took it into its head that its back would be all the better
for a flogging. So, in 1296, the saints, particularly those
* Preserved by L’Evesque ; quoted by Lingard.
+ Dr. Hecker.
�THE FLAGELLANTS.
5
of Strasburg, Spires, and Frankfort, took unto themselves
whips, and began business in earnest. The Jews had
good broad backs, which they were impious enough
never to whip, and this mightily offended the Christian
Flagellants. The Jews did not see their way to whip
their own backs, so, in the most obliging manner the
Christians offered to whip them for them. The Jews
preferred to look after their commercial enterprises to
tearing away with a scourge at their own dorsal rafters ,
and, for this deadly sin, they were foully massacred.
The wretches who did not scourge their backs had
scourged the third of God and crucified him. Down
with them to Tophet! One Jew, goaded to despera
tion by Christian persecution and outrage, set fire to the
Town Hall and the Cathedral of Frankfort, and they
were reduced to ashes. Down with the seed of Iscariot
and Barabbas 1 The holy ones flung away their whips,
and, seizing sword, hatchet, and knife, devoted some
hours of horror to the slaughter of man, woman, and
child of the seed of Israel. The God of Jacob looked
on; but, apparently, did not see his way to interfere.
In Frankfort, of all the sons and daughters of Salem
whose ancestors had sung to the Lord by the streams
of Babel, none remained alive, except a small remnant
that, bursting through the carnage, had escaped into
Bohemia. Christ had “ redeemed ” these Christians
(they were well worth it) by a bloody sacrifice upon
Calvary, and, out of complement—like Catherine Medici
in her sanguinous bath—they set him in blood to the
chin. Every tree must be judged by its fruit. I hereby
defy the history of all the other faiths to produce a tree
like the Christian one, which, from the deepest root to
the topmost twig, is dyed with human gore.
After the Frankfort tragedy of 1296 Flagellantism did
not rear its head conspicuously till the year 1348.
To students of history the mention of this date recalls
the deepest and widest grave that was ever dug to receive
the slag and refuse of mortality. The “ Black Death ”
took into her hands the besom of destruction, and swept
into the sepulchre twenty-five millions of human beings !
Europe fell upon her knees, and from Dirt appealed to
Deity. But the appeal was in vain. In every Christian
�6
THE FLAGELLANTS.
City there was a plethora of disgusting sewage and unspeak
able stench. Cleanliness is, proverbially, next to godli
ness ; but the citizens of mediaeval Europe were so godly
that they forgot to be cleanly. Out of Mohammedan
Constantinople there was not a bath on the entire Euro
pean continent, from the Straits of Behring to the Straits
of Messina. Pious Ignorance and theological Intoler
ance sat to the eyes in filth, which it would give my
readers the jaundice to describe; and mankind perished
as do clouds of locusts when overtaken by a gale at sea,
or as perish at the end of autumn tens of thousands of
hives of bees, when imprisoned amid the fumes of burn
ing brimstone.
“ God in heaven, Mary and all the Saints, what is the
matter now ?” gasped Christendom, as, with pale lips and
phrenzied eye, she, in whole cityfuls, staggered into the
grave. Nothing practical, as connected with this wretched
vale of Tears,” suggested itself to the follower of
Jesus. He was beyond and above attending to the
carnal conditions of this despicable earth, and from the
midst of his priests and relics and shrines and miracles
his whole hope was in heaven, and his only court of
appeal his Maker and Redeemer. But neither Maker
nor Redeemer could be induced to interfere; and graves
were dug till there were none left to dig them, and corpses
were borne out of the streets and houses till there were
none left to bear them. There were only the voice of
prayer, the cry of pain, and the rattle of the Death-cart;
and in certain districts even these sounds died away. In
the houses the dead were left with the dead. There was
a disused cart and a skeleton horse. Grass and weeds
flourished in the streets where a busy traffic had rolled
its tides, and there the wind waved ghastly shreds of
human apparel, still adhering to more ghastly relics of
human beings. There was high carnival for maggot and
fly, and dogs and swine tugged and snarled among the
entrails of those who had trusted in Jesus and neglected
their dustbins.
The New Testament was looked to as the antidote to
the bane; and, whatever may be its merits, it is a poor
manual of hygiene. Scrubbing is never mentioned, and
there is no reference to washing, except to the washing of
�THE FLAGELLANTS.
7
“souls,” whatever they may be, in blood. There is,
moreover, allusion to the washing of a certain party’s feet
with tears, and then drying them with maiden’s hair; but
this is a sentimental and not an efficacious lavation. It
is not on record that Mary or Tabitha, or any one else,
ever washed the shirt or tunica which was worn under
the seamless garment of Christ, and I question if it was
ever washed or changed from the day on which he left
the carpenter’s bench till the day that, with his life, he
expiated his sedition and folly. Through all the horrors
of the Black Death we hear of no wholesome and honest
washing with water; but there certainly was a washing
of the streets with blood. It was surmised that this
visitation of the wrath of the Almighty was instigated by
the sinfulness of the Christians in allowing the Jews to
live ; for it was the Jews who had crucified the Lord;
and yet, according to the Christian theory, if “ the Lord ”
had not been crucified, the world would inevitably have
been lost. The Black Death was accompanied with
another merciless massacre of the Jews. It was also
accompanied by another pitiless flogging of backs. So
fanatically wild did this self-inflicted back-flogging become
that many held that the rite of Flagellation should, in
the Christian Church, supersede the rite of Baptism.
Many literally flogged away the flesh off their bones, and
yet the plague did not abate; and the sky and the earth
were pregnant with supernatural terrors. A pillar of fire
hung over the Pope’s palace at Avignon; a red ball of
fire in the heavens blazed over Paris, and Greece and
Italy were shaken with an earthquake. And the Chris
tians flogged and prayed, and prayed and flogged, and
sang and slew, and slew and sang, and still the plague
went on.
Flagellantism was not without its serio-comic aspect.
I cannot say whether it copied from the game of Leapthe-Frog, or whether Leap-the-Frog has copied from it.
In Leap-the-Frog each boy vaults over his neighbour’s
bended back, and then bends his own, and so on the
process goes till each has vaulted over the back of all.
The Flagellants lay in rows, and one ran along the row
scourging furiously as he went with a leathern scourge
tipped with iron, and then he lay down ; and so on and
�8
THE FLAGELLANTS.
so on, till each had flogged the naked backs of all. In
lying in the rows to be flogged, however, those who wished
to do penance for certain crimes had to observe certain
recognised postures indicative of these crimes. If the
crime was perjury, till it was his turn to get up and flog,
the penitent lay on his side, holding up three fingers ; if
it was adultery, he lay flat with his face on the ground :
and so on, different postures of the body were fixed upon
to indicate different crimes. The Flagellants, too, were
not without their grotesque impostures in the shape of
pious forgeries. At one of their assemblies they actually
read a letter which had been sent to them direct from
heaven, and in which Jesus Christ was good enough to
give them his favourable opinion of the efficacy of Flagel
lation. The “ Blessed Virgin ” had, with maternal affec
tion, given her Son some assistance in the composition
of this celestial missive.
Unlike the Millenarian mania, the Flagellant craze ex
tended even to England. In 1351 a deputation of 120
continental Flagellants visited London; but insular
stolidity did not see its way to carry its piety to the extent
of lacerating its own flesh with scourges. Even on the
continent the frenzy began to exhaust itself. The
leaders betook themselves to desperate resources to
buttress up a falling cause. They set themselves to the
task of restoring life to a dead child, and performed the
“miracle” so clumsily that the performance hastened
their dissolution instead of giving them a new lease of
influence. In the hey-day of their fanaticism neither
king nor pontiff saw it prudent to interfere with the
Flagellants ; but when the tide turned against them king
and pontiff turned against them too. A bitter persecu
tion set in, and Flagellantism, like most other isms, was
called upon to furnish its roll of martyrs, and it heroically
enough responded to the call. Its dying spasm—and it
was a vigorous and terrible one—-was in 1414, and some
time later it finally expired in the dungeons and amid
the fagots of the Holy Inquisition. Mankind, in the
mass, continue to be fools ; but, in the last four centuries,
there has been some small advance towards sanity, and
it is now somewhat difficult to get any one to flog his
own back for the love of God.
�Post Free Three-Halfpence.
Price One Penny.
FROM THE VALLEY
OF
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
By SALADIN.
IN
BRUNO
MEMORI AM
STEWART
ROSS,
Died igth November, 1882, aged two years and five weeks.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Recently Published.
Post free Twopence-halfpenny.
WITCHCRAFT
IN CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES.
By SALADIN.
Being an Address delivered at the Inauguration of the Secular
Society at Stockport, November 19th, 1882—the Marquis of
Queensberry in the Chair.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C
Price 2s. post free.
Elegantly printed in colours.
SONGS BY THE WAYSIDE
OF AN AGNOSTIC’S LIFE.
By Himself.
“It is not an irreverent Agnosticism that is uttered in these pages,
although, without doubt, it is terribly heterodox ; but the author evidently
feels and think, which is more than can be said of some of our versifiers.”
—Scotsman, July 21st, 1883.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Now ready, price id., post free l%d.,
THE DIVINE
INTERPRETATION OF
SCRIPTURE:
A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING.
By Saladin.
Being a Paper read at the Cassadaga Conference, New York,
by S. P. Putnam, Secretary, American Liberal League.
“ This trenchant and incisive impeachment of the pretensions
of our greatest enemy, the Romish Church, was well worth re
printing, and we hope it will have a large circulation.”—Free
thinker.
16 pp., with Illustration, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE
CRUSADES.
By Saladin.
i6 pp., price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION,
By Saladin.
In neat wrapper, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE FLAGELLANTSBy Saladin.
In neat wrapper, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE
COVENANTERS.
By Saladin.
The Publishers will be pleased to forward an assorted parcel of
ioo copies of the above Pamphlets (carriage paid) for distribution
on receipt of ys. 6d.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Flagellants
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the Secular Review. "By Saladin" [title page], the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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W. Stewart & Co.
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[n.d.]
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N586
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Religious practice
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English
Flagellants
Flagellation
NSS
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Cl -155
WHAT IS IT TO WORSHIP?
Read after a
meeting for
Silent Worship,
in the
Memorial Hall, Manchester, 3d Sept. 1871.
R. MARIA SIMPSON.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
�-'
■
-
�PREFACE.
“Speech is silvern, silence is golden.”
TT has generally been supposed that the Society of
Friends was unlike other sects, in that it had
no defined creed. This is either a mistake, or the
Society has changed its principles. A member was
lately cut off, because he did not believe some doctrines
which are considered essential by those who represent
the governing power of the body. Others have in
consequence withdrawn themselves from it, but meet
after the manner of “ Friends,” for silent worship,
during which any of the company is free to speak in
prayer or preaching. Afterwards, all have an op
portunity to discuss any matter, whether of practice,
or theory, that interests them. At one of these
after-meetings the following paper was read : several
of the company wished to have it printed, thinking
it expressed their views.
I have often thought, while reading T. Scott's
Tracts, and kindred works, that the general dissatis
faction with Liturgies and forms of prayer cannot be
allayed by changes in these alone, while the essential
■*-
�4
Preface.
faults of the system are retained. I may be still pre
judiced in favour of the sect in which I had a birth
right, and which I have only just left, but I cannot see
anything better than a basis of silence for the meet
ings of the church of the future. To engage attention
as to the practical working out of these ideas, this
paper may be useful.
�WHAT IS IT TO WORSHIP?
THINK we were speaking of some minor arrange
ment, with regard to the use of this room, when
I undertook to write this paper. It may seem at
first to wander far from the subject, but this is in
order that my reasons for what I would say, may be
understood.
It is frequently asserted that people who differ
greatly in their religious belief, cannot rightly
worship together. I think this assertion is a result
•of 'wrong ideas about worshipping ; and I have tried
here to set down my own views on this point—
■“ What is it to Worship ?■”
It is this—to be willingly subject to a power
-superior to self, superior to everything self can per
ceive. To have the whole of our existence in
harmony with whatever self can perceive of the way
in which the superior power acts, or causes action.
To observe, and carefully reason upon such acts, in
order to discover their principle ; and thenceforward
to let that be eur principle, wherever our will appears
free : assured that it must be the one principle in all
■other cases.
Some believe that the superior power is a Being
whom they call God, and who, as they believe,
privately instructed men a long time ago to write,
or tell to other men his laws, with such a descrip
tion of his nature that thereby he could be imitated,
I
�6
What is it to Worship f
or obeyed. Those who imitate or obey, believe that
they thereby worship the greatest power existing.
Others believe the power to be constantly mani
fested in the nature of all mankind, in all the arts
and sciences, in all the natural processes of mental
and material development. And, thinking that com
plete knowledge would show all the apparent
diversities of things to be harmonious, and there
fore right, these also being consciously and willingly
in harmony, worship the supreme power, though
often without knowing by what name to express it.
They are like those wise Athenians who erected
their altar “ to the unknown God.” They acknow
ledge that power beyond that of human beings,
beyond their action and comprehension, exists, and
the deepest wisdom of the present and past ages
unite to aver, that power is good. Good and God
appear to be almost identical words. So it seems
those, who endeavour to make their whole lives
good, are worshippers of good or of God ; we may
express the same fact in either way.
I think the men who joined George Fox in his
seeking for truth, were right in supposing that
worship was a feeling of the soul; a desire for, and
reaching out unto God, quite distinct from any use
of words or actions.
Also, I think, they had perceived a grand truth
when they announced that the Almighty, who had
created the spirits of men, had made it possible for
all those spirits, that is, for each individual spirit, to
communicate with the Creator. This truth does not
apply only to those who are acquainted with it; it
reaches also to those who have the most vague and
imperfect notions as to the power they desire to
worship, and as to the nature and benefit of a
worshipping effort.
In the earlier ages, the idea seems to have been
general, that gifts of a part of a man’s property,
�What is it to Worship ?
7
were to be occasionally offered to God by being
entrusted to those who, calling themselves priests,
undertook to interpret between mortals and im
mortals. A very gradual change had been developing
some minds out of this feeling, when the early Friends
found many to unite in their views.
Now, some think that, all we have, or do, or are,
is due and owing to God j and can no more be given
to him by us, than heat could be bestowed on the
sun by any fire we could kindle. Devotion, there
fore, does not consist in giving part of our goods to
a representative God; but in spending the whole of
our lives in accordance with his will. His will, that
is revealed by the course of natural events, and in
the best thoughts of every human being. The ex
perience of many shows that a man’s best thoughts
can be most readily perceived in complete solitude,
or in silence in a crowd, when usual occupations are
set aside for a time.
It is obvious that if worship be a feeling towards
God, an intention or desire in the soul to do his will,
it can be exercised in solitude. But it is also found
that when a number of people meet for a common
purpose many are strongly helped by the feeling of
fellowship in aim. Men like to act in communities,
and where more intense feeling is aroused, more in
tense effort is the result.
So the early “ Friends of Truth” met, to seek
silently after God, with the intent to obey him. The
more energetic, or more spiritual, who became the
leaders, felt themselves compelled to do or to avoid
certain things, and taught the rest that the spirit of
God must lead in that direction. Gradually this
loosened their grasp of truth, thinking that those
who differed, were not lead by the right spirit.
Thence arose the difficulty of worshipping together.
Not content with asking, Do we in a similar mode
seek help for our guidance? “Friends” have asked
�8
What is it to Worship ?
■—Do we believe the same tenets 1—Do we uphold
the same testimonies ?—Do we adopt the same forms ?
—and when no, is the answer to all these, they have
decided, in such case, we cannot worship together.
But, with the wider interpretation of what it is to
worship, I believe this difficulty would never be felt;
and that no form of government is wanted, no
limitation of tolerance needed, and no especial name
required, when people wish to meet in a room to
commune with, or worship their creator, and to feel
the influence of the sympathy of others. Having a
room cared for by respectable residents, paid for on
some simple system enabling all who wish to do so
to share in the cost, we should meet, knowing that
we were not responsible for the conduct of any one
of the company, except in that mutual regard for the
general comfort, influencing civilized people who
meet for any other temporary association; such as
travelling in one carriage, or doing business in one
exchange.
I think this social courtesy would suffice to prevent
any such disturbance of our comfort, as we have any
right to strive to exempt ourselves from ; and that if
we are to be free, we must beware of any other
restrictions, though we may have to suffer slight
inconvenience occasionally, during our meetings.
The meeting for public worship is but a small part
of a man’s religious life; and should not be raised
into undue importance.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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What is it to worship?
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Simpson, R. Maria
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Read after meeting for Silent Worship, in the Memorial Hall, Manchester 3d Sept. 1871. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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[n.d.]
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CT155
Subject
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Religious practice
Prayer
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is it to worship?), 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
Faith
Worship
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Text
THE
BY
Q-. W. FOOTE.
. Second Edition, with a New Introduction.^
PRICE ONE PENNY.
' -j.
..
~~
■
------------------------------------------~
LQNDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1884.
�INTR OR U C TI 0 N.
The following Essay was originally published, four years ago, under
the title of “ The Futility of Prayer.” I now republish it under the
more forcible title of “ The Folly of Prayer.” My object in this
change is not simply, as Hosea Biglow says, to “combine morrul truth
with phrases sich as strike,” although a great deal may be said for
that policy. The longer I live, the more deeply I feel the necessity of
attacking superstition in the plainest language. I am also convinced
that Heine was right when he said “ the superfluous is harmful.” Pro
gress is so huge a task, so arduous and painful, that any diversion of
human energy into unprofitable channels is a disaster. If Prayer is
futile, it is a folly.
This new edition gives me an opportunity of adding a little to my
Essay, of bringing it, so to speak, up to date. My space is limited,
and I must be succinct.
We are now in the midst of a political crisis. The Peers are showing
their historic qualities of selfishness, stupidity and arrogance. They
are trying to thwart the nation’s will with respect to the Franchise as
they have tried to thwart it with respect to every great reform in the
past. They seem bent on holding true to their evil traditions, and
proving themselves to the very end the obstinate foes of progress.
Fortunately, however, their day of doom is rapidly drawing near.
Never since the Long Parliament locked the door of the Upper House
and turned the Lords adrift has there been such a storm of indigna
tion against the Peerage. Mend them or end them, says Mr. Morley ;
and “ End them ” is the responsive shout from the people. Yes, the
Lords are happily wrecking their own craft. They will lose both ship
and cargo in the end. With their political power will go all hope of
retaining their bloated estates. Was there ever such fatuity since
the French nobles invited the Revolution ? If this is the way God
endues them with “ grace, wisdom and understanding,” it is a very
remarkable proof of the efficacy of prayer.
Candor compels me to admit, however, that her Majesty continues
to flourish in “ health and wealth,” according to the formula of our
Church Prayer Book. Yet we need not resort to prayer for an expla
nation of this fact. Her Majesty’s wealth is provided by the nation,
without any contribution by Providence ; and her health is protected
by the ease which our constitutional monarchy allows her to enjoy.
So far from trusting in the Lord, except at church, she never fails to
appeal to us for the support of her numerous offspring and their
extensive families. When our lavish generosity is considered, there
seems remarkably little scope for the bounty of Providence.
I omitted in my Essay to mention the recovery of the Prince of
Wales, many years ago, from gastric fever, and the national Thanks
giving Service held in St. Paul’s Cathedral. What wild orgies of
religious excitement were worked up by the London press, and notably
by that eminently pious journal the Daily Telegraph ! How we were
bidden to watch the great national wave of prayer surging against the
�THE FOLLY OF PRAYER.
“ These was,” says Luther in his Table Talk, “ a great
drought, as it had not rained for a long time, and the grain
in the field began to dry up, when Dr. M. L. prayed con
tinually and said finally with heavy sighs: 0 Lord, pray
regard our petition in behalf of thy promise. ... I know
that we cry to thee and sigh desirously ; why dost thou not
hear us ? And the very next night there came a very fine
fruitful rain.” From Luther to Sammy Hicks the Yorkshireman is a far cry, but an episode of his history somewhat
resembles this naive story of the great lieformer. Sammy
Hicks was a miller and a Methodist, and once while looking
forward to a Love Feast, at which cakes were consumed, he
was sorely troubled by a dead calm that lasted for days
together, and caused a complete stoppage of his windmill.
It so happened that all the flour was exhausted before the
calm was broken, and on the very eve of the Love Feast there
was none left for the cakes. In this extremity recourse was
had to prayer. Sammy himself, who excelled in that line,
petitioned Heaven for a breath of wind to fill his sails. In a
few moments the cheeks of the suppliants were fanned by a
gentle zephyr, which rapidly grew to a strong breeze.
Around went the sails of Sammy’s mill until enough flour
was ground to make the Love Feast cakes, when the wind
suddenly subsided and died away as miraculously as it came.
How amusing are both Luther and Sammy Hicks, in these
instances, to the educated minds of to-day! Yet amongst
the ignorant and those who are not imbued with the spirit
of Science, the old superstition of prayer still lingers, and ever
and anon betrays itself in speech and act. Whatever remnant
of superstition exists the priests are very careful to foster.
Accordingly, whenever an opportunity occurs, they stimulate
popular folly and make themselves the laughing-stock or
contempt of the wise and thoughtful. In Catholic countries
the miracles of the Middle Ages are even now, in this age
�Introduction.
iii.
throne of grace 1 Well, the Prince recovered, thanks to a good con
stitution and the highest medical skill. But the sky-pilots saw their
chance. They insisted that the Prince’s recovery was due to prayer.
They organised a huge farce at St. Paul’s, where in the nation’s name
they thanked God for his marvellous mercy. But curiously, amidst all
this delirium, the authorities retained a little sagacity. God was duly
thanked, but the doctors were not forgotten : one of them was knighted,
and all were handsomely rewarded. Deity had the empty praise, and
the physicians the solid pudding.
Since then we have seen the United States praying for the recovery
of their President. Week after week Science fought with Death over
his sick bed, and the awful struggle was watched by a trembling world.
Would he live, would he die ? “0 God, let him live,” prayed millions
in church and chapel. “ 0 God, spare him, my husband, my darling,”
cried the agonised wife. But his life ebbed slowly away amidst a
nation's prayers for his recovery. Why did not God save General
Garfield ? Is the Almighty a respecter of persons after all ? Or is he
so monarchical that he will not aid the President of a Republic? Can
Christians explain this without denying the efficacy of prayer or im
peaching the character of God ?
Now a word for the cholera. This frightful scourge has ravaged
France and Italy this summer and roused the latent superstition of the
people. In some cases the Catholics demanded religious processions
through the streets and public prayers to the Virgin. But the Secular
authorities firmly resisted this clamor, and they were sometimes backed
up by the higher priests, who knew that undue excitement and con
sequent exhaustion would only make the multitude easier victims to
the plague. The English press chronicled these cases of superstition
as they might record the eccentricities of the worshippers of Mumbo
Jumbo. Yet our Church Prayer Book has a definite form of “ prayer in
time of sickness.”
This leads me to enquire whether our sky-pilots are sincere. I fancy
not. Let us judge them by their practice instead of their profession.
What swarms of them invade our health resorts in summer! How
they all take a long holiday when they can ’ Go to fashionable water
ing-places like Bath, and observe the large floating population of sky
pilots in search of health and rich widows. When they fall ill they
act like other men. They consult Dr. Science instead of Dr. Provi
dence, and if possible scuttle off from the Lord’s vineyard to the seaside.
Faith is the same in both places, but the air is different. Prayer
works better with oxygen than with carbonic acid gas.
Trust in God and keep your powder dry, said Cromwell, Yes, but
will faith help you if you get your powder wet ? This is a very onesided doctrine. Well does James Thomson sing in “ Bill Jones on
Prayer”:—
Which seems to mean—You doth work.
God helpeth him who helps himself,
Have all the trouble and pains,
They preach to us as a fact,
Which seems to lay up G od on the shelf, While God, that ind o 1 en t grand 0 Id Turk,
Gets credit for the gains.
And leave the man to act.
I despair of improving on that.
can, once for all.
November 1, 1884.
It sums up the matter, as genius only
G. W. FOOTE.
�The Folly of Prayer.
5
of railways and electric telegraphs, repeated before the
shrines of new-fangled saints. Pilgrims journey to Lourdes
and other holy places, where the credulity of the multitude is
equalled by the imposture of their priests. The blood of St.
Januarius still liquifies annually at Naples, precious relics
heal all manner of diseases, and the Virgin appears to prayer
ful peasants and hysterical nuns. In England these things do
not happen, for there is not faith enough to make them
possible. Yet here also the Catholic priest gets souls out of
purgatory by the saying of masses which have to be duly
paid for; and our own Protestant priests, who have re
linquished almost every peculiar function of their office, still
retain one, that of standing between us and bad weather.
We may call them our Rain Doctors, a name applied to the
African medicine-men, who beat gongs and dance and shout,
to scare off the sun and bring down rain when the land is
parched with drought. The difference between a bishop of
the English Church praying for sunshine and an African
medicine-man howling for wet, is purely accidental and no
wise intrinsic. Intellectually they stand, on the same level,
the sole difference being that one goes through his perform
ance in a vulgar and the other in a high-bred fashion.
Perhaps there is another difference ; one may be honest and
the other dishonest, one sincere and the other hypocritical.
Cato wondered how two augurs could meet without laughter,
and probably it would be comical to witness the meeting of
two friendly parsons after a lusty bout of prayer for fine
weather.
In 1879 we were afflicted with a descent of rain scarcely
paralleled in the century. Through the spring and
through the summer the deluge persisted, and each month
seemed to bring more violent storms than its predecessor.
Yet our Rain Doctors kept quiet as mice. Perhaps they
reflected that it was scarcely politic to pray for sunshine
until the Americans had ceased to telegraph the approach of
fresh tempests. How different from the African Rain
Doctors, who will pray for rain while the sun glares torrid
and implacable, and no cloudlet mitigates the awful azure of
heaven! But, deceived by a brief spell of fine weather in
the middle of July, they suddenly plucked up courage and
proceeded to counsel Omniscience. The result was woeful.
On the very next Sunday after prayers for fine weather
�6
The Folly of Prayer.
began to be offered, a terrific storm burst over the land, and
for weeks after the rain was almost incessant. During one
week in August only seventeen hours of sunshine were
registered in London. The harvest was spoiled, about forty
million pounds’ worth of produce was lost to the country, and
farmers looked in the face of ruin. This was the answer to
prayer !
Yet the votaries of superstition and their priestly abettors
will not admit the futility of prayer. Their reasoning is like
the gambler’s “heads I win, tails you lose ” ! All the facts
that tell for their case are allowed to count, and all that
tell against it are excluded. If what they pray for happens,
that proves the efficacy of prayer ; if it does not happen, that
proves nothing at all. Such is the logic of superstition in
every age and clime.
Notwithstanding the occasional outbursts of our Rain
Doctors, it is evident that the doctrine of Prayer is being
gradually refined away, like many other doctrines of theology.
It originated in simpler times, when people thought that
something tangible could be got by it. Whenever danger or
difficulty confronted our barbarous ancestors, they naturally
looked to the. god or gods of their faith for assistance. If
any transcendental philosopher or mystical theologian had
told them that prayer was not a practical request but a
spiritual aspiration, they would have answered with a stare of
astonishment.
Even the New Testament embodies the
belief of the savage, although in a slightly refined form, and
the Lord’s Prayer contains a distinct request for daily bread.
Before the advent of science, when men ignorantly and
unskilfully wrestled with the manifold evils of life, their
prayers for aid were grimly earnest, and often the last cry of
despair. Fire, earthquake, flood, famine, and pestilence
afflicted them sorely; often they gazed blankly on sheer
ruin ; and in lifting their supplicating hands and eyes and
voice, they besought no spiritual anodyne, but a real outward
relief. The hand of supernatural power was expected to
visibly interpose on their behalf. Now, however, the idea of
prayer is greatly changed for all save a few fools or fanatics.
Educated Christians, for the most part, do not appear to think
that objective miracles are wrought in answer to prayer.
They think that now God only works subjective miracles, and
by operating upon men’s hearts, produces results that would
�The Folly of Prayer.
not happen in the natural course of things. According to
this subtler form of superstition, outward circumstances are
never interfered with, but our inward condition is changed to
suit them. Thus, if a ship were speeding onward to some
fatal danger of simoon or sunken reef, God would not alter
the circuit of the storm, or remove the rocks from the ship’s
path, but if he deigned to interpose would work upon the
captain’s mind and induce him to deviate from his appointed
course. If an innocent man were sentenced to be hung, God
would not break the rope or strike the executioner blind, but he
might influence the Home Secretary to grant a reprieve. Or
if in a thunder-storm we had sought the shelter of a tree,
God would not divert the lightning, although he might, just
before it struck the tree, whisper that we had better move on.
This last refinement of the doctrine of the efficacy of prayer
is very intelligible to the psychologist. Physical science has
thoroughly demonstrated the reign of law in the material
universe, and educated people are indisposed to look for
miracles in that direction, notwithstanding the occasional
attempts of our rain doctors to cure bad weather with spiritual
medicines. But mental science has produced much less effect.
Man’s mind is still supposed to be a chaos, haunted and
mysteriously influenced by a phantasmal free-will. Save by
a few philosophers and students, the reign of law is not sus
pected to obtain there. Accordingly, the miracles which
were thought to occur in the material world are now rele
gated to the spiritual world—a ghoul-haunted region wherein
there survives a home for them. Yet progress is being made
here also, and we may confidently predict that as miracles
have been banished from the domain of matter, so they will
be banished from the domain of mind. The reign of law, it
will be perceived, is universal within us as without us. It is
manifested alike in the growth of a blade of grass and in the
silent procession of the stars ; alike in tumult and in peace,
in the loud overwhelming storm or engulphing earthquake,
and in the soft-falling rain or golden sunshine, nurturing the
grass in a thousand valleys and ripening the harvest on a
thousand plains : and no less apparent in the noblest leaps of
passion and the highest flights of thought, but binding all
things in one harmonious whole, so that the brain of Shake
speare and the heart of Buddha acknowledge kinship with the
mountains, waves and skies.
�8
The Folly of Prayer.
Meanwhile the sceptic asks the believer in prayer to justify
it, and show that it is not a mere superstitious and foolish
waste of energy. The proper spirit in which to approach
this subject is the rational and not the credulous. The
efficacy of prayer is a question to be decided by the methods
of science. If efficacious, prayer is a cause, and its presence
may be detected by experiment or investigation. The ex
perimental method is the best, but there is difficulty in apply
ing it, as the believers perversely refuse to undertake their
share of the process. Professor Tyndall, on behalf (I think)
of Sir Henry Thompson, has proposed that a ward in some
hospital should be set apart, and the patients in it specially
prayed for, so that it might be ascertained whether more
cures were effected in it than in other wards containing
similar patients, and tended by the same medical and nursing
skill. This proposal the theologians fought shy of ; and one
of them (Dr. Litttedale) gravely rebuked Professor Tynda.ll
for presuming to think that God Almighty would submit to
be made the subject of a scientific experiment. Theologically
there is much force in this objection, although scientifically
and morally there is none. A universal Father would as
suredly welcome such a test of his goodness, but the proud
irascible God of theology would be sure to frown upon it, and
signalise his preference for the fine old plan of closing our
eyes while opening our mouths to receive his benefactions.
There is, however, a way to take him as it were by a side-wind.
There are certain things impossible even to omnipotence.
Sidney Smith (I think) said that God himself could not make
a clock strike less than one. Nor can any powei' revoke what
has already occurred.
“ Not heaven itself upon the past has power,”
as Dryden tells us. The past is irrevocable, and we may in
vestigate it for the purpose of ascertaining whether prayer
has been efficacious, without the least fear of being baffled by
any power in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the
waters under the earth. People have prayed enough in the
past—far more, indeed, than they are likely to pray in the
future—and if we find that their prayers have been futile,
the whole question at issue must be considered as practically
decided in the negative.
Let us dismiss all appeals to individual experience, and deal
only with broad classes of facts. It is quite impossible in any
�The Folly of Prayer.
9
particular case to determine whether prayer has been answered
or not, even when the object besought has been wholly ob
tained. A single result is so often produced by a combination
of causes, some obvious and direct, and others obscure and
indirect, that we cannot absolutely say whether the natural
agencies have operated alone or in conjunction with a super
natural power. If after long and fervent prayers a precious
life has been spared, it cannot be affirmed that prayer was a
cause of the recovery, since the sick person might have re
covered without it. Nor, on the other hand, can it be affirmed
that prayer was not a cause, since the sick person might have
died without it. Our ignorance in such cases precludes us from
deciding one way or the other. The only way to neutralise this
is to examine general categories, to take whole classes of persons,
and see whether those who pray get what they ask for any
more than those who do not pray, or if classes of persons who
are prayed for by others are more favored than those who
enjoy no such advantage.
Pursuing this line of inquiry, Mr. Francis dalton, the author
of a remarkable work on “Hereditary Genius,” was led many
years ago to collect and collate statistics relative to the subject
of prayer, which he subsequently published in the Fortnightly
Review of August, 1872. Mr. Galton’s article did not, so far
as I am aware, attract the attention it deserved. Its facts and
conclusions are of great importance, and the remainder of my
own essay will be largely indebted to it.
Let us take first the case of recovery from sickness. It has
been frequently remarked that sickness is more afflictive than
death itself, and it is common for persons who suffer from it,
if they are at all of a religious turn of mind, to pray for relief
and restoration to health. Their relatives also pray for
them.
However pious men may be, they always submit
to Omniscience their own view of the case when their lives
are in the least degree endangered ; and however fer
vently they believe in the eternal and ineffable felicities of
heaven, they are scarcely ever content to leave this vale of tears.
They desire as long a continuance of life on this earth as the
sceptic does. Often, indeed, they repine far more than the
sceptic at the ordinance of fate. Now, as a matter of fact, is
it found that pious persons of a prayerful disposition recover
from sickness more frequently than worldly persons who are
not in the habit of praying at all ? If so, the medical pro
�10
The Folly of Prayer.
fession would long ago have discovered it, and prayer would
have taken a recognised place among sanative agencies. On
this point Mr. Galton writes as follows :—
“ The medical works of modern Europe teem with records of in
dividual illnesses and of broad averages of disease, but I have been
able to discover hardly any instance in which a medical man of any
repute has attributed recovery to the influence of prayer. There is
not a single instance, to my knowledge, in which papers read before
statistical societies have recognised the agency of prayer either on
disease or on anything else. The universal habit of the scientific world
to ignore the agency of prayer is a very important fact. To fully
appreciate the ‘ eloquence of the silence ’ of medical men, we must bear
in mind the care with which they endeavor to assign a sanitary value
to every influence. Had prayers for the sick any notable effect, it is
incredible but that the doctors, who are always on the watch for such
things, should have observed it, and added their influence to that of
the priests towards obtaining them for every sick man. If they abstain
from doing so, it is not because their attention has never been awakened
to the possible efficacy of prayer, but, on the contrary, that although
they have heard it insisted on from childhood upwards, they are unable
to detect its influence.”
It thus appears that prayer is a medicine only in the
pharmacopoeia of the priests. Many doctors rather dislike
it. A medical friend of mine, who hated the sight of a
parson, used always to keep any member of the clerical
fraternity waiting outside the sick-room door in extreme
cases, until it was certain that death would supervene. He
would then allow the reverend gentleman to go through his
performance, knowing that he could do no harm. My friend
said that when his patients required absolute repose their
nerves were often agitated in his absence by obtrusive and
officious priests.
A class of persons who are specially and generally prayed
for are kings and queens and other members of royal
families. A high value is always set on things which cost
a great deal. Royal personages are very expensive, and we
naturally esteem and love them according to their cost.
Animated by an amiable desire that they may long live to
spend the money we delight to shower upon them, we pray
that God will prolong their existence beyond that of ordi
nary mortals, “ Grant her in health and wealth long to
live,” is the prayer offered up for the Queen in our State
churches, and the same petition is made in hundreds of
Nonconformist chapels. If, then, there be any efficacy in
�The Folly of Prayer.
11
prayer, kings should enjoy a greater longevity than their
subjects. We do not, however, find this to be the case.
The average age of ninety-seven members of royal houses
who lived from 1758 to 1843, and survived their thirtieth
year was 54-04 years, which is nearly two years less than
the average age of the shortest-lived of the well-to-do
classes, and more than six years less than that of the longest.
Sovereigns are literally the shortest lived of all who have the
advantage of affluence. In their case it is evident that
prayer has been absolutely of no avail.
Another class of men very much prayed for are the
clergy. They pray for themselves, and as they all profess to
be called to the ministry by the Holy Ghost their prayers
should be unusually efficacious. If there be any faith capable
of removing mountains, they should possess it. If the
fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, the fervent
prayer of a parson should avail exceedingly.
Now the
clergy pray not only for spiritual light and help, but also
for temporal blessings. They like to prosper here as well
as hereafter, and are adepts in the sublime art, reprobated
by Jesus but luminously expounded and forcibly commended
by Dr. Binney, of making the best of both worlds. They
believe in heaven, but are in no haste to get there, being
content to defer occupation of the heavenly mansions in
store for them until they can no longer inhabit the snug
residences provided for them here. With a laudable desire
to enjoy the bird-in-the-hand to the uttermost before resort
ing to the bird-in-the-bush, which is sure to await their
convenience, they naturally pray for health, and therefore
for long life, since health and longevity are inseparable
friends. Yet we do not find that they live longer than
their less pious brethren. The average age attained to by
the clergy from 1758 to 1843, according to Mr. Galton’s
statistics was 69-49 years, while that of lawyers was 68-14,
and of medical men 67-31. Here is a slight advantage on
the side of the clergy, but it is amply accounted for by the
greater ease and comfort so many of them enjoy, and the
general salubrity of their surroundings. The difference is,
however, reversed when a comparison is made between dis
tinguished members of the three classes—that is to say,
between persons of sufficient note to have had their lives
recorded in a biographical dictionary. Then we find the
�12
The Folly oj Prayer.
respective mean ages of the clergy, lawyers and doctors, are
66'42, 66
5
*1
and 67
0
*4,
the clergy being the shortest lived
of the three. Thus they succumb sooner than the members
of secular professions to a heavy demand on their energies.
Prayer does not protect them from sickness, does not recover
them when they are laid low. or in the least prolong their
precious lives. They are no more favored than the ungodly ;
one fate befalls them both. In their case also prayer has
been absolutely of no avail.
The same law obtains with regard *o missionaries. They
t
are not miraculously protected from sickness or danger,
from perils by night or the pestilence that walketh by day,
The duration of life among them is accurately proportioned
to the hazards of their profession. Yet theirs is a case
wherein prayer should be peculiarly effectual. Arriving in
a remote region of the earth, they are almost powerless until
they have acquired, a thorough knowledge of the language
and habits of the people. They are engaged in the Lord’s
work, ahd if any persons are watched over by him they
should be. Yet at dangerous stations one missionary after
another dies shortly after arrival, and their efforts are thus
literally wasted, while the work naturally suffers because
the Lord does not economise the missionary power -which
has been provided for it.
Ships also have sunk with
missionaries on board before they could even reach their
destination; and the Lord has so far refrained from work
ing subjective miracles on their behalf, that missionaries
have been in some cases digested in the stomachs of the
very savages whose souls they had journeyed thousands of
miles to convert.
Parents are naturally very anxious as to their offspring,
and it is to be presumed that the children of pious fathers
and mothers are earnestly and constantly prayed for. This
solicitude antedates birth, it being generally deemed a mis
fortune for a child to be still-born, and often a serious evil
for death to deprive it of baptism, without which salvation is
difficult if not impossible. In extreme cases the Catholic
Church provided for the baptism of the child in the womb.
Yet the prayers of pious parents are not found to exercise
any appreciable influence. Mr. Galton analysed the lists of
the Record and the Times of a particulai period, and the pro
*
portion of still-births to the total number of deaths was dis-
�The Folly of Prayer.
13
covered to be exactly the same in both. A more conclusive
test than this could scarcely be devised.
Our nobility are another class especially prayed for. The
prescription for their case may be found in the Church
Liturgy. In a worldly sense they are undoubtedly very
prosperous ; they live on the fat of the land, and enjoy all
kinds of privileges. But these are not the advantages we
ask God to bestow upon them; we pray “ that the nobility
may be endued with grace, wisdom and understanding.”
And what is the result? The history of our glorious
aristocracy shows them to have always been singularly
devoid of “grace,” in the religious sense of the word; and
they have manifested a similar plentiful lack of “ wisdom
and understanding.” Even in politics, despite their excep
tional training and opportunities, they have been beaten by
unprayed-for commoners. Cromwell, Chatham, Pitt, Fox,
Burke, Canning, all arose outside the sacred precincts of
nobility. Gladstone is the son of a Liverpool merchant,
and Earl Beaconsfield was the son of a literary Jew. In science,
philosophy, literature and art, how few aristocrats have dis
tinguished themselves 1 Further, as Mr. Galton points out,
“wisdom and understanding ” are incompatible with insanity.
Yet our nobility are not exempted from that frightful scourge.
On the contrary, owing to their intermarriages, and the lack
of those wholesome restraints felt in humbler walks of life,
they are peculiarly liable to it. Clearly the aristocracy have
not been benefited by our prayers.
Let us now turn to another aspect of the question. How
is it that insurance companies make no allowance for prayers ?
When a man wishes to insure his life, confidential questions
are asked about his antecedents and his present conditions,
but the question, “ Does he habitually pray ?” is never
ventured. Yet, if prayer conduces to health and longevity,
this question is of great importance; nay, of the very
greatest; for what are hereditary tendencies to disease, or
the physical effects of previous modes of living, to a man
under the especial protection of God ? Insurance offices, how
ever, eliminate prayer from their calculations.
They do
not recognise it as a sanitary influence, and this fact proves
that there is no efficacy in prayer or that its efficacy is so
slight as to be altogether inappreciable.
Suppose the owner of two ships, similarly built and rigged,
�14
The Folly of Prayer.
and bound for the same port, wanted to insure them for the
voyage ; and suppose the one ship had a pious captain and
crew taken red-hot from a Methodist prayer-meeting, while
the captain and crew of the other ship, although excellent
seamen, never entered a place of worship, never bent their
knees in prayer, and never spoke of God except to take his
name in vain. Would any difference be made in the rate of
insurance ? Assuredly not. And if the owner, being a
soft-headed sincere Christian, should say to the agent: “ But,
my dear sir, the ship with the pious captain and crew, who
will certainly pray for their safety every day, runs much
less risk than the other, for the Lord has promised that he
will answer prayer, that he will watch over those who trust
him, and that whatsoever they ask, believing, that they shall
receive,” what would the answer be ? Probably this : “My
dear sir, as a Christian I admit the truth of what you say,
but I can’t mix up religion with my business. That sort of
thing is all very well in church on Sunday, you know, but it
doesn’t do any other day of the week down in the City.”
The decline and final extinction of belief in ordeals and
duels is an episode in the history of prayer. Both these
superstitious processes were appeals to God to decide what
was indeterminable by human logic. In the ordeal of jealousy,
so revoltingly set forth in the fifth chapter of Numbers,
the same curious concoction was given to all suspected wives,
and the difference in the effect produced was attributable
solely to the interposition of God. The same idea prevailed
in other forms during the chaotic Middle Ages, notably in
connection with the witch mania. Some idea of the critical
ability which accompanied it may be gathered from the fact
that “ witches” were often tied at the hands and feet,
and thrown into the nearest pond or river: if they swam
they were guilty, and at once burnt or hung, and if they
sank they were innocent, but of course they were drowned!
The duel was explicitly sanctioned and sometimes com
manded by the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and it
■was devoutly believed that God would give the victory to
the just and overthrow the wrong. This belief has died out,
but a reflex of it exi-ts in the fond idea, not yet wholly
discarded, that the God of battles fights on the side of his
favorites. Only the simpletons think thus, and only the
charlatans of clericalism abet them. All the praying in the
�15
The Folly of Prayer.
world is powerless against superior tactics, more scientific
arms, greater numbers, and better discipline. Victory, as
Napoleon remarked, is on the side of the heaviest battalions ;
and prayer, as a counteractant to such advantages, is just as
efficacious as the celebrated pill to cure earthquakes.
Driven from all tangible strongholds by inevitable logic,
the believers in prayer take final refuge in their cloudcitadal of faith. They maintain that there is a spiritual if not
a material efficacy in prayer, that communion with God exalts
and purifies their inner nature, and thus indirectly influences
the course of events. “Certainty,” says a man of magnificent
genius, though not a Materialist, “it does alter him who
prays, and alters him often supremely, changing despair into
hope, confusion into steady light, timidity into confidence,
cowardice into courage, hatred into love, and the genius
of compromise into the spirit of martyrdom. * Far be it.
from me to deny this. It is attested by the life and death of
many a patient saint and martyred hero. But the God
communed with has been aftei’ all not a person, but a lofty
ideal, varying in each according to the greatness and
purity of his nature. A similar communion, in essence
the very same, is possible to the Humanitarian, who feels
himself descended from the endless past, bound to the
living and working present, and in a measure the paren'i
of an endless future. His ideal of an ever-striving and ever
conquering Humanity, emerging generation after generatiointo loftier levels, and leaving at its feet the lusts and follie
of its youth, serves him instead of a personal God; and i
moments snatched from the hot strife of the world he ca.
commune with it, either through its great poets and prophe"
or solely through the vision of his own higher self, which
essential humanity within him, and thus find serenity r
the ennoblement of resolve. This communion, into wh i
religions prayer may ultimately merge, will survive, beca X
while inspiring it does not outrage intellect and fact. Tlie
laws of nature will not be suspended to suit our needs for—
“ Nature with, equal mind
Sees all her sons at play;
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away!
Allows the proudly riding and the foundered bark.” f
(
* Dr. Garth Wilkinson: “ Human Science and Divine Revelation,” p. 380.
t Matthew Arnold: “ Empedocles on Etna.”
J
-
qq
�16
The Folly of Prayer.
But “the music born of love,” as another poet tells us, will
“ ease the world’s immortal pain.” Finding no help outside
ourselves, seeing no Providence to succor and comfort the
afflicted, no hand to lift up the down-trodden and establish
the weak, to wipe the tear from sorrowing eyes and convey
balm to wounded hearts; knowing that except we listen the
wail of human anguish is unheard, and that unless we give
it no aid can come ; we shall feel more imperative upon us
the duties and holy charities of life. If the world’s misery
cannot be assuaged by fatherly love from heaven, all the more
need is there for brotherly lo^e on earth.
A P .P E N I) I X.
The following table of longevities was prepared by Mr.
Galton from a Memoir by Dr. Guy in the Journal of the Sta
tistical Society (Vol. xxii., p. 355) :—
Mean Age attained by Males of various classes who had
survived their 30th year, from 1758 to 1843. Deaths
by Accident or Violence are excluded,
Average. Eminent
*
Men.
Members of Royal Houses
97 in number
Clergy...................................... 945
Lawyers
294
99
Medical Profession
244
English aristocracy
1,179
Gentry ...
1,632
"rude and Commerce ...
513
fficers in tho Royal Navy ... 366
higlish Literature and Scionco 395
99
\ fficers of the Army ...
569
99
A me Arts
239
99
64-04
69-49
6814
67-31
67-31
70-22
68-74
68-40
67 55
67-07
65-96
66-42
66-51
67-07
65-22
64-74
* The eminont mon are those whoso lives are recorded in Chambers’s
Biography, with some additions from the Annual Register.
Printed and Published by Rainsey and Foote at 2S Stonecutter Stree', E.C
�
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The folly of prayer
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Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: iii, [4]-16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. New introduction by the author, signed November 1 1884. First published 1880 under title 'The futility of prayer'. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Prayer
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Text
THE CONTROVERSY
ABOUT
PRAYER.
BY PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED
BY
THOMAS
SCOTT,
No. 11 The Teeeace, Faequhae Road, Upper Norwood,
London, SJ3.
1873.
Price Threepence,
��THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT
PRAYER.
O OME have said that religious knowledge is not
IO progressive: with about as much truth we might
say that medical knowledge is not progressive. On
each topic mankind has made enormous errors, and
on each is still very far from a sound and satisfactory
state ; yet on each it has left many errors far behind.
Primitive theology is man’s interpretation of the
outer world which he perceives ; and his interpreta
tion is largely influenced by his consciousness and his
emotions. Enlarged and improved knowledge of the
universe almost necessarily modifies theology, as does
the improved moral culture of nations. Religion
therefore (in its popular sense of “ thought concerning
God”), unless artificially stereotyped by nationally
established creeds and by sacerdotal authority, must
everywhere tend to improve, as nations become
nobler in morals, or in breadth and accuracy of know
ledge. So strong indeed is this natural tendency,
that we do in fact trace this improvement, in spite of
hierarchies and domineering institutions, and some
times, in the higher minds, even in spite of public
demoralization. Theological opinion, and the inter
pretation of generally received doctrines, cannot but
undergo change, when the ascendant system of (what
• is called) metaphysics changes; much more, when,
�4
The Controversy about Prayer.
as in the last three centuries of Europe, acquaintance
with the outer world has been immensely enlarged
and at the same time become beyond comparison
more accurate.
But the mass of the population in Christendom is
very far from duly appreciating the truths of natural
science ; and the teachers of religion on the one
side are bound down by Church Articles and Liturgies,
or on the other cannot conveniently outrun the tra
ditionary creed of their congregations. Men of
business have not much time for original thought
concerning religion; and a great majority of the
female sex have too little scientific knowledge or too
little independence of judgment to deviate knowingly
from current opinion. Necessarily therefore within
the same Church, whatever the submission to common
ordinances, there is a great mental gap between those
who are most and those who are least influenced by
the thought and knowledge of the age, especially in
Astronomy, in Geology, in Geography, in Physiology,
to say nothing of History and Literary Criticism.
Minds which have by no means gone so far as to
throw off belief of an established religion, or the
cardinal and prominent tenets of a creed, nevertheless
to a great extent interpret things differently, so as
practically to come to a different result from the
older beliefs.
Now in this matter of Prayer, it is obvious what
was the primitive doctrine of most nations, and in
particular both of the Hebrews and of the early
Christians. That God ruled the universe by law,
none had any idea. They supposed that His rule
might be compared to that of an earthly king, who
said to one servant Go, to another Gome, to a third
Do this, and was obeyed. Indeed the Hebrews,
like the Persians and Arabs, supposed ministering
spirits to guide the actions of the elements and of the
heavenly bodies ; also, to guard or watch human in
�The Controversy about Prayer.
$
dividuals. Instinct, under a sense of weakness or
desire, often impelled them, as it impels us, to pray
for this, or for that; and they could but very
vaguely define to themselves the limits within which
prayer was right, and beyond which it would be rather
impious than pious. We should all be much astonished
to hear of barbarians so stupid as to pray that the
new moon should give as much light as the full moon,
or that a winter day should be luminous and long as
a day of summer. In the very infancy of man the
steadiness of sun and moon was so fully recognized,
that it would have seemed idiotic to pray for any irre
gularity. But there has always been an enormous
margin of events concerning which man saw no reve
lation of a fixed divine purpose, and therefore could
not chide prayer as a presumptuous desire to turn the
divine decrees aside. Indeed under polytheistic belief,
the gods are morally imperfect; and no greater im
propriety was felt in coaxing a god (a genius, a fairy)
than in coaxing a mortal man. A vow,—in which a
promise was made contingently upon the god hearing
a prayer,—was thought a pious procedure; yet it is
nothing but an attempt to bargain with the god. Such
bargains in antiquity were solemnly sanctioned by
many states, as by the Romans, and public money
was often voted in fulfilment. In the Hebrew book
of “ Judges ” the atrocious vow of Jephthah is not
blamed. To vow to a god the tithe of an enemy’s
spoil on condition of victory, seemed wholly unblameable and decidedly pious to most ancient nations.
It may be doubted whether in any Christian sect
of England or the United States prayers of this
character could be endured. A vow, as understood
by Christians, has nothing conditional in it. If it be
an arbitrary, yet it is an absolute, promise to the Most
High ; it is not a bargain, as with the Romans. Of
necessity those among us who believe the tides, the
meteors, the clouds, the winds, to be guided by laws
�6
'The Controversy about Prayer.
as fixed as gravitation, are hereby disabled from
praying about them or against them, equally as about
an eclipse. Nevertheless, whatever weaknesses—the
fruit of ancient ignorance—are incorporated with the
Christian Scriptures, are accepted and even treasured
up by simple hearted and pious persons, whose intel
lect either is not duly informed or has not duly acted
on their creeds ; and the deplorable dogma of Infalli
bility has made it very difficult for the pious to go
directly against the sacred book, however grave and
obvious the error. But within the compass of that
book itself there is a variety of doctrine, a higher as
well as a baser view; and to the higher view the
nobler and more thoughtful minds tend. If at one
time encouragement is given to importunity in prayer,
on the assumption that God is comparable to a man
who grants a petition merely to get rid of a teazing
beggar ; yet elsewhere it is laid down that repetition
in prayer is vain, and that God is not moved by much
speaking. If in one place it is said, that when two
or three shall agree to pray for a thing, be it what it
may, it shall be granted to them ; in other places
there is limitation, and human ignorance of what it is
wise to ask is pointed at. In fact, in every prayer
tor things outward, among persons not wholly fana
tical, the proviso, “ if it be according to Thy will,”
is now understood or expressed ; and in matters of
vehement personal desire, the clause is probably
added: “ nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be
done.” Also, if any Christian teacher be asked, under
what circumstances it is reasonable to have confidence
that our prayer will be granted, he will hardly fail to
reply, under the guidance of a familiar text, that it is
only when we know that we ask a thing which is in
accordance with the will of God.
Under such a complication,—which is the ordinary
state of every Church,—it is (I must think) painful
rudeness in an opponent, if indeed he is as well
�The Controversy about Prayer.
7
informed of the facts as a critic ought to be, to assume
in the present generation of English Christians the
lowest and meanest views of prayer which prevailed
in less instructed and Pagan times. It exasperates
too much to enlighten. It was a simple insult, nothing
less, to propose that Christians should pray for the
sick in one special ward of an infirmary, and then (as
a test of the utility of prayer) should observe whether
the patients recovered better in that ward than in the
other wards. Did its proposer imagine that a Christian
is able to pray for any thing that others may dictate
to him ? One must be drawn keenly by desire from
within or by painful distress, and must feel either
assurance or strong hope that the petition conforms
with the divine mind, before he can pray fervently.
A philosopher (whatever his merits in his own line)
sadly lowers himself when he so intrudes into sacred
feelings and j udgments which he does not understand.
At the same time, there was and is abundant cause
for grave remonstrance with the religion of the day in
this very matter ; and with a moderate turn, the same
proposal might have given point unblameably to the
argument.
It might have been set before English Christians,
that they would certainly resent it as an insult, if any
one were to propose, as a test of the utility of prayer,
petition for a given topic (such as that concerning
the hospital-ward) — without caring to ascertain first
whether the thing asked could reasonably be esteemed
in accordance with the divine will, or whether they
themselves had any fervent desire for it. This being
the case, how can the same enlightened Christians
passively endure that the Privy Council should dictate
to them what they are to ask of God for each member
of the Royal Family ? How can they approve of a
stereotype prayer against public enemies, as if it were
always a priori certain that in every war England is
right and haa God on her side ? Knowing, as all the
�8
The Controversy about Prayer.
educated do, that rains and droughts and pestilences,
follow laws of matter as fixedly as do the planets,
how can they think it pious to supplicate the Most
High to interfere with them ? Such public prayers,
written in an age of lower knowledge, and sustained
by the routine of State, train all the educated to
hypocrisy, and lower the standard of truthfulness.
Evidently, to pray for the royal family is enforced as
a test of loyalty ; which is on a par with the command
to show loyalty by worshipping Czesar’s image. The
coarseness of (what is called) the National Anthem,—
“ God save the Queen,”—against the Queen’s (imagi
nary) foes, is quite disgusting. There is plenty of
matter here for just and profitable attack from those
who never pray, if they would make the attack from
the highest and noblest principles of Christians them
selves ; moreover, it is very reasonable to claim, that
those who hold high dignity in Church or State, and
at the same time are distinguished by intellect and
freedom of thought, will initiate public movement
against these evil stereotyped prayers. Will they for
ever preserve a dastardly silence, and leave reform to
avowed opponents or to enemies who are strangers to
the deep things of the Christian heart ?
Cicero and Horace alike held, that men ought to
pray to God for things external,—which man cannot
control and God does control;—not for things
internal, such as contentment, courage, or in a word,
virtue ; which a man ought to provide by his own
effort. To despise any one for believing with Cicero,
I find myself unable; the contumely which I read in
many quarters is to me very unseemly and painful.
Nevertheless, I regard it as quite certain that the
progress of knowledge will ere long enforce the entire
abandonment of stereotype prayer,—prayer made
beforehand,—for outward blessings or conveniences
however inevitable it be, that under pain, want or
severe anxiety human nature will ejaculate to the All-
�The Controversy about Prayer.
9
ruler earnest desire, not unprofitable-. “He who
searcheth hearts ” knows .how to estimate such prayers
aright,—cannot blame them,—and has his own way
of answering them. But to plan beforehand howothers may or shall pray for a King or Queen’s “ health,
wealth, long life ” and “ victory,” is quite a different
matter from prayer that is extorted by inward instinct
or agony. So too is the “ agreeing together ” before
hand what to pray for, as if (in the coarse words of a
ranting preacher) “by a long pull, a strong pull, and
a pull all-together ” men could rival Kehama, and drag
God along with them.
Undoubtedly the received belief of old was, that
God’s Providence ruled the world by agencies from
without. A pious saint in danger from enemies was
imagined to pray for (perhaps) “twelve legions of
angels ” as a military aid. A prophet’s eyes were
opened to see chariots and horses, invisible to other
mortals, fighting on the side of his people. To such
a mental condition the prayer of those days adjusted
itself. But now all thoughtful persons educated in
England are aware that the Divine rule is carried on
by the laws of the material universe, and by the
agencies of the human mind; and as it is no longer
admissible to entreat that the Most High will tamper
with his own laws, prayer tends to concentrate itself
upon the human mind,—that is, invokes influence
from the Divine Spirit on the mind either of him
who prays or of some others.
Against this form of prayer, which may be called
spiritual prayer, materialists rush with as rude and
coarse attack as against prayer for things external.
Their tone, and frequently their bold utterances, all
but make an axiom of Atheism. Now I have no
harsh feeling for Atheists, knowing as I do with what
difficulties noble intellects struggle, and how cruelly
the follies and crimes of theological devotees have led
astray and exasperated meaner intellects. But it
�io
The Controversy about Prayer.
suffices to accept and accost Atheists as our equals,
whom we invite to courteous debate on fit occasion,
and will always esteem and love, if they be morally
worthy. Many of them seem to manifest nothing but
scorn for Theism, and demand to lay down axioms of
their own, which no wise Theist can ever accept.
One of these axioms is, that “ of course we can know
nothing but phenomena.” Since God assuredly is
not a phenomenon, this assumes that “of course ” we
can know nothing of God. Another axiom is, that
when we speak of one thing as the cause of another,
all that we mean is, that the latter invariably follows
the former; so they'attempt to resolve causation into
antecedence. I stoutly deny that that is all that I
mean when I say “ cause and if they reply that it
it is all that I ought to mean, I beg them to prove
that, and not assume it without proof, as they do.
The purport of their pretended axiom is to involve
the whole universe, material, moral, and mental, in a
rigid mechanical chain,—that is, in Fate : this granted,
prayer of course is vain. Again, the idea of a Per
sonal Deity they treat with contempt as “ anthropo
morphic,” and assert that Personality implies limita
tion. Nay, but Person is only another word for Mind
or Spirit. If we say Divine Spirit, they show equal
enmity to the phrase. What avails the objections of
such men to prayer ? Their attack is not against
prayer as such,—i.e., entreaty made to a Divine Spirit,
but against the existence or accessibility of any such
Spirit. Spiritual prayer of course assumes that God
is in the human mind,—that he is aware and (so to
say) conscious of all our minds,—moreover, that he
not only approves of, but is concerned to promote,
human virtue. In the attacks which I read against
spiritual prayer, it is visible that these axioms of
Theism are denied: hence the attack is really that of
Atheism against Theism,—which is all fair, if it be
conducted by quiet reasonable argument, not by
�7 he Controversy about Prayer.
t i
scornful assumptions, nor under a pretence that they
are only attacking a practice of Theists.
As Cicero and Tacitus and Aristotle, and the wisest
modern moralists, insist, there is no morality if there
be no freedom of the will. If a man’s action is in all
details predetermined like the path of a comet, he can
no more be virtuous or vicious, praiseworthy or blame
able, than the comet. Whatever may be said for
a doctrine of universal Necessity by eccentric and con
fident reasoners, who think themselves pre-eminently
philosophic, the great mass of mankind continue to
believe as firmly as their own existence, that they
have a choice between the better’and the worse, and
that they deserve blame for many of their bad actions ;
in short, that God, “ while binding Nature fast in
Nate, left free the human will.” For myself, I must
profess that my belief in my Free Will is coeval with
and as firm as my belief in matter; and I think it
clear that the belief in both is the first principle of all
knowledge, and of course is prior to a belief in God.
The assailant of spiritual prayer is apt to assume
that the actions of the human will are as much deter
mined beforehand as the movements of material par
ticles, and therefore such prayer is as vain as prayer
for things outward. But he does not pretend any
proof that the will is thus mechanically predeter
mined : indeed he knows that proof is impossible :
but he says that we probably shall hereafter find that
the case of mind is similar to that of meteorology,
and that in the progress of knowledge it will be dis
covered that the mind has no freedom. This amounts
to saying that the progress of knowledge will probably
annul the first axioms on which all knowledge is
built. I need only reply that it has not yet done so,
and I utterly disbelieve that it ever will.
We see in the marvellous instincts of brute minds,
and in human instinct too, the operation of a Higher
Mind in the animated universe. How this action
�12
The Controversy about Prayer.
takes place we are necessarily ignorant, just as we
are how we think at all. We can have no ultimate
standing ground but in simple fact. Thought, life,
existence, must remain for ever a mystery. So must
the action of the Divine Spirit on the animal mind,
which I see as a fact; and seeing it, I cannot doubt
the action of the same Spirit in the higher regions of
the human mind. Religion has long been described
by pious persons as a “walking with God
that is,
as a permanent tendency of the mind, when relieved
of other necessary thought, to remember. the over
sight, the insight, the joint consciousness of the Divine
Spirit, who essentially and primarily loves goodness,
justice,—in short, moral perfection. That virtue is
the final object for which man and the whole of human
life is ordained is a main principle of Theism. To
supplicate God inwardly for increase of virtue, or
pour out gratitude for his tender mercies to ourselves,
and admiration of his manifold infinitude, is therefore
its natural instinct; and such instinct cannot have
been given us for nothing. In fact, its moral influence
on the heart which cultivates it is the richest of all
rewards. Materialists and Atheists are generally very
severe against those who needlessly mortify lower
and animal instincts, and are often slow to discover
when it is not needless : they have then certainly no
right to claim that a pure and noble instinct shall be
repressed rather than cultivated. The best informed
among the opponents of all prayer will (with good
reason) deprecate the epithet Atheist; but if the God
whom alone they admit to be possible has none but a
mechanical existence, and praying to him is no wiser
than praying to the clouds, he is no more to us than
the gods of Epicurus ; we can have no personal rela
tions with him any more than with dead men.
Let the strong and scornful opposition to Prayer,
which has been so widely echoed, be directed on
formal, public, cut-and-dried Prayer, lengthy musical
�The Controversy about Prayer.
13
Prayer, profane singing of sacred words for the sake
of fine music, Litanies with endless repetition, the
“Lord’s Prayer ” recited so often and so fast that it
becomes unintelligible ;—and much good may come
of this outburst. There is scarcely a public prayer
used in all Christendom which does not admit,
perhaps urgently need, keen criticism. The “ Lord’s
Prayer ” is nowise to be excepted from this remark.
Moreover, to pray without desire, is the more profane,
the more it is done in combination and in system.
What then of coaxing or scolding young people into
it ? What of paying choristers and public singers of
addresses to Grod ? There is abundant room for
intelligent and profitable correction, without shocking
any of the rightful sanctities of the heart.
�
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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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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The controversy about prayer
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 13, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Thomas Scott
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1873
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CT111
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Prayer
Religious practice
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Conway Tracts
Prayer
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Text
CT
U
A NEW ORDER
°F ,
PUBLIC WORSHIP.
ARRANGED FOR THE
CONGREGATION AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
BY THE
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.
(late vicar of
iiealaugh).
------- ♦--------
LONDON:
TO BE OBTAINED OF THE AUTHOR
AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
or at
CAMDEN HOUSE, DULWICH.
1872.
Price Two-pence.
��THE ORDER OF
PUBLIC WORSHIP.
IT The Minister shall read the following sentences, all standing.
T is a good thing to give mouth. We should first of all
thanks nnto the Lord, and remember that the only true
to sing praises nnto thy Name,worship of God is our adoration
0 thou Most Highest: to tell of of His holiness, and the highest
thy loving-kindness early in the expression thereof is the faith
morning, and of thy truth in the ful service of our fellow men.
If this be our earnest convic
night season.
For thou, Lord, hast made us tion, we are then, and then only,
glad through thy works, and we in a fit and proper state of mind
will rejoice in giving praise for to join in public worship and to
the operations of thy hands.
sing His praise. The meaning
0 sing praises, sing praises of our assembling together is
unto our God.
not the endeavour to add by our
0 sing praises unto our king; human words and songs to the
for God is the King of all the glory of God, which is already
earth ; let us sing praises unto infinite and perfect, nor yet the
him with understanding.
endeavour to commend ourselves
to His most gracious favour,
EARLY beloved, forasmuch which He has already poured out
as we have assembled to upon us all from His Fatherly
gether to offer the homage love ; but the meaning of our
of
our lips to Almighty God our worship is the natural expres
Heavenly Father, it is meet that sion of our gratitude, adoration
we should draw near to this holy and filial love for our own plea
celebration with a perfect un sure and profit, to gratify the
derstanding of its meaning and strongest and most exalted in
use, and with hearts in perfect stincts of our nature, and to
accord with the words of our cultivate within our souls a
I
D
�2
THE ORDER OF PUBLIC WORSHIP.
greater devotion to His most our fellow-men, believing with
full assurance of faith that He
holy will.
We desire, moreover, by this will be found of all those who
our humble service to keep in diligently seek Him.
remembrance that God is our
Father, and that we are His IT Then shall the people make this response,
children; that a relation does
really subsist between Him and
“ 0 thou that hearest prayer,
our souls, like unto that of unto thee shall all flesh come.”
father and child, only unspeak
Minister. Let us lift up our
ably more tender and dear, and hearts with our voice unto God
we draw near, as it were, to His on High.
outstretched arms to receive His
People. We lift them up unto
welcome and to utter forth our the Lord, for it is meet and right
gladness.
so to do.
It is our privilege, rather than
our duty, to pray to Him when
ever we feel that we need a IT Then shall all kneel, and the Minister
shall say,
strength greater than our own,
LMIGHTY and Most Mer
or help which no human hand
ciful Father, we beseech
can give. It is good for us to
thee to teach us to pray;
call to mind our weakness and
our sin when our spirits bend cleanse the thoughts of our
before His Throne, and so to hearts by the inspiration of
cleanse our hearts by contact thy Holy Spirit, that we may
with His holiness, and to draw worship thee in spirit and in
new life out of the fountain of truth; that the words of our
mouth and the meditation of our
His Everlasting Strength.
And to remember the wants soul may be now and always ac
and sorrows of our fellow-men ceptable in thy sight; that while
when we are most full of joy we praise thee for thy bounty,
and thanksgiving at the thought we may adore thee for thy
of His bounty to ourselves will Holiness ; that while we rejoice
surely help us to remember them in our own happiness, we may
seek more and more to help and
in the daily turmoil of life.
Let us then, dearly beloved, comfort our fellow-men. Teach
draw near to the throne of the us to know, to believe in, and to
Most High, with hearts over love the truth above all things,
flowing with thankfulness and and may we learn this day some
adoration, and desiring above new lesson out of thy law, some
all things, to show forth His fresh story of thy love. Show
praise by our lives here below, to each one of us the path of
and to worship Him in spirit and duty, and make our feet stead
in truth by the faithful service of fast therein. Let no false hopes
A
�THE ORDER OF PUBLIC WORSHIP.
3
We praise thee in thy power, 0
God!
We praise thee in thy sanctity.
We praise thee who reignest in
the furthest heavens,
We praise thee who dwellest in
our inmost souls,
Our Lord and hidden com
forter.
No voice can duly proclaim thy
greatness,
No heart can comprehend thy
goodness,
0 thou Father of all our spirits.
The longings of the spirit are
inexhaustible:
Only thou canst fill the heart.
When it is empty and aching for
thee,
UR Father, which art in Hungering and thirsting for thy
heaven, Hallowed be thy
righteousness,
Name. Thy kingdom come.
Thou visitest it with peace un
Thy will be done on earth, As
speakable.
it is in heaven. Give us this With thee there is no misery to
day our daily bread. And for
the distressed;
give us our trespasses, As we But sorrow is hallowed and pain
forgive them that trespass
is sweetened,
against us. And lead us not And hardship is assuaged, and
into temptation ; But deliver us
fear is calmed.
from evil: For thine is the king For, thine own nature is blessed
dom, The power and the glory,
ness,
For ever and ever. Amen.
And thou makest thy worship
pers blessed.
Minister. 0 Lord, open thou
Yea, blessed is thy presence,
our lips.
0 Lord most Holy I
People. And our mouth shall Blessed is it to dwell with thee
shew forth thy praise.
and to know thee,
Minister. Let us give thanks To rest on thee and to serve
unto our Lord God.
thee.
People. We will alway give Blessed shall the nations be
thanks unto the Lord. His
when thy glory is recog
praise shall ever be in our
nised,
mouth.
When all who love thee unite to
H Then shall be sung, all still kneeling,
succour and raise the weak
and fears tempt or drive us from
a true following of thee. May
we love the thing which thou
commandest, and desire that
which thou hast promised.
May we seek no reward for duty
but the bliss of keeping thy
commandments. Let the light
of thy presence cheer and
strengthen us; never let it be
clouded over by the mists of our
own distrust, or by the tamper
ing of our souls with sin. And
when we come to die, 0 thou
Most Merciful Father, may we
welcome thy loving call and find
in thee our Everlasting Rest.
A »?«??£.
O
�4
THE ORDER OE PUBLIC WORSHIP
Strengthen us in life and death,
in this, and in every life,
To he thine in heart, as we are
thine in right;
To obey cheerfully, to strive
loyally,
To suffer meekly, to enjoy thank
fully,
So shall we love thee while we
live, and partake of thy joy,
And triumph over sorrow, and
fulfil thy work.
And be numbered with thy saints,
and die on thy bosom.*
’ll Or Psalm 145,
WILL magnify thee, 0 God,
my King: and I will praise
thy Name for ever and ever.
2 Everyday will I give thanks
unto thee : and praise thy Name
for ever and ever.
3 Great is the Lord and mar
vellous, worthy to be praised:
there is no end of his greatness.
4 One generation shall praise
thy works unto another: and
declare thy power.
H Then shall follow the reading of the
5 As for me, I will be talking
First Lesson,
If -After which shall be sung a Hymn, of thy worship: thy glory, thy
II Then shall follow the reading of the praise, and wondrous works;
6 So men men shall speak of
Second Lesson,
If After which shall be sung the
the might of thy marvellous acts:
Jubilate,
and I will also tell of thy great
BE joyful in the Lord, all ye ness.
lands: serve the Lord with
7 The memorial of thine abun
gladness, and come before his kindness shall be shewed :
dant
presence with a song.
and men shall sing of thy right
2 Be ye sure that the Lord he eousness.
is God: it is he that hath made
8 The Lord is gracious, and
us, and not we ourselves; we merciful: long-suffering and of
are his people, and the sheep of great goodness.
his pasture.
9 The Lord is loving unto
3 0 go your way into his gates every man: and his mercy is over
with thanksgiving, and into his all his works.
courts with praise: be thankful
10 All thy works praise thee,
unto him, and speak good of his 0 Lord: and thy saints give
Name.
thanks unto thee.
4 For the Lord is gracious,
11 They shew the glory of thy
his mercy is everlasting: and his kingdom: and talk of thy pow er;
truth endureth from generation
12 That thy power, thy glory,
to generation.
and mightiness of thy kingdom:
Glory be to God, the Father might be known unto men.
Almighty;
13 Thy kingdom is an ever
As it was in the beginning, is lasting kingdom : and thy do
now and ever shall be, world minion endureth throughout all
without end. Amen.
' ages
I
O
* This is taken from the Fpilogus, “ Theism,” by F. W. Newman.
�THE ORDER OF PUBLIC WORSHIP.
14 The Lord upholdeth all
such as fall: and lifteth up all
those that are down.
15 The eyes of all wait upon
thee, 0 Lord : and thou givest
them their meat in due season.
16 Thou openest thine hand ;
and fillest all things living with
plenteousness.
17 The Lord is righteous in
all his ways : and holy in all his
works.
18 The Lord is nigh unto all
them that call upon him : yea,
all such as call upon him faith
fully.
19 He will fulfil the desire of
Jhem that fear him ; he also will
hear their cry, and will help
them.
21 My mouth shall speak the
praise of the Lord : and let all
flesh give thanks unto his holy
Name for ever and ever.
H Then shall follow the Service of
Benediction.
1T The Minister standing, the People
kneeling,
Minister. Blessed are all they
who love the Lord, and who walk
in His ways. Blessed are they
who keep His commandments,
and do those things which are
pleasing in His sight.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
Minister. Blessed are they who
search diligently for the truth,
loving it above all earthly re
ward, and sacrificing all else
5
that they may faithfully pro
claim it.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
Minister. Blessed are they
who love mankind, whose lives
are spent in doing good, who are
active in labour, tender in sym
pathy, and the well-springs of
help and consolation.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
Minister. Blessed are the up
right and trustworthy, whose
promise is never broken, and
whose word is sure.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
Minister. Blessed are the pure
whose hearts shrink from ini
quity, in whose lips there is no
guile, and to whom all things
are pure.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
Minister. Blessed are the mer
ciful who remember their own
need of mercy; the humble,
who judge not harshly their
brothers’ sin; and the meek,
who are slow to take offence.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
Minister. Blessed are the pa-
�6
THE ORDER OE PUBLIC WORSHIP.
tient, long-suffering, and for parents, and dwell together in
bearing ; and the peacemakers, unity, learning wisdom and vir
who by silence or timely speech tue, and growing more truthful,
heal the strifes of men.
honourable and pure from day
People. Lord, enrich us with thy to day.
blessing,
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
Fill our hearts with joy and
blessing,
peace.
Fill ozvr hearts with joy and
Minister. Blessed are the kind,
peace.
considerate and generous mas Minister. Blessed are all faith
ters, who take thought for the ful friends who comfort each
souls and bodies of those who other in sorrow, rejoice together
serve them.
in prosperity, and whose friend
People. Lord, enrich us with thy ship cannot be shaken by a
blessing,
timely reproof.
Fill our hearts with joy and People. Lord, enrich us with thy
peace.
blessing,
Minister. Blessed are the diliFill our hearts with joy and
ligent, faithful and honest ser
peace.
vants, who care more to ’serve
Minister. Blessed are they
well than to receive much.
who, living under the clouds of
People. Lord, enrich us with thy sorrow or disappointment them
blessing,
selves, are yet sources of com
Fill our hearts with joy and fort to others, and shed peace
peace.
and joy on all around them.
Minister. Blessed are the hus People. Lord, enrich us with thy
bands and wives ■who live toge
blessing,
ther in faithful love, tenderly
Fill our hearts with joy and
caring for each others’ good.
peace.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
Minister. Blessed are the hon
blessing,
est teachers, who are loyal to
Fill our hearts with joy and truth and duty, and who suffer
peace.
in mind, body, or estate through
Minister. Blessed are the fa their own integrity.
thers and the mothers who rule
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
their households well, and bring
blessing,
up their children in the paths of
Fill our hearts with joy and
holiness and peace.
peace.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
Minister. Blessed are the faith
blessing,
ful guardians of other men’s
Fill our hearts with joy and lives, rich or poor, who honour
peace.
all men, and speak unto others
Minister. Blessed are the chil as they would men should speak
dren who love and obey their lunto them.
�THE ORDER OF PUBLIC WORSHIP.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
Minister. Blessed are they who
care more for the good of others,
and for their own growth in
virtue, than for their own plea
sure and worldly good, and who
value the approval of conscience
more than their necessary food.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peaee.
Minister. Blessed are all they
who have learned by the inte
grity of their own lives that God
is j ust and holy; who have learned
by the generosity of their own
hearts that God is merciful and
loving; and who have learned
by their own trustworthiness to
commit the well-being of them
selves, and of all mankind, with
out one doubt or fear, into His
hands as unto a Faithful Creator.
People. Lord, enrich us with thy
blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and
peace.
IT Then the Minister shall say,
sin, and become more and more
what Thou dost wish us to bo.
So cleanse our inmost hearts
that we may forget every thought
of our own pleasure in desiring
and striving only to do Thy
blessed will and to give peace
and comfort to each other.
May we hunger and thirst after
righteousness, and leave every
issue of good and ill fortune, of
health and disease, of life and
death, now and evermore, in
Thy most loving hands. Amen.
1T Then shall follow the Hymn,
Oh, that the Lord would guide
my ways
To keep his statutes still;
Oh, that my God would grant
me grace
To know and do his will.
From vanity turn off mine eyes,
Let no corrupt design
Nor covetous desires arise
Within this soul of mine.
Order my footsteps by thy Word,
And keep my heart sincere ;
Let sin have no dominion, Lord,
But keep my conscience clear.
Make me to walk in thy com
mands,
Let us Pray.
’Tis a delightful road ;
LORD most High, Thou Nor let my feet, or heart, or
fount and source of every
hands
blessing, who hast ever been
Offend against my God.
unto us more than we could de
sire or deserve, fill our souls
U Or this,
with all holy desires, all good
counsels, and all pure purposes, Father ! whate’er of earthly
that we may outgrow our sel
bliss
fishness, our weakness and our
Thy Sovereign will denies,
�8
THE ORDER OF PUBLIC WORSHIP.
Accepted at Thy throne of
Grace
Let this petition rise.
Give me a calm and thankful
heart
From every murmur free ;
The blessings of Thy Grace im
part,
That I may live to Thee.
Let the sweet hope that I am
Thine
My life, my death attend ;
Thy presence through my jour
ney shine,
And crown my journey’s end.
Amen.
IT Then the Minister shall say,
The blessing of the Lord it
maketh rich, and he addeth no
sorrow therewith.
Thou, oh
Father, wilt keep him in perfect
peace whose mind is stayed on
Thee, because he trusteth in
Thee.
People. Trust ye in the Lord
for ever, for in the Lord alone
is everlasting strength. Amen.
�5'
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A new order of public worship. Arranged for the congregation at St. George's Hall
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles [Rev.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[the author?]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1872
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT21
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religious practice
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A new order of public worship. Arranged for the congregation at St. George's Hall), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Prayer
Public Worship
Unitarian Universalist Churches