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“CHURCH PROSPECTS.”
R. LLEWELYN DAVIES, writing in the January
Contemporary
refers
Mstumbling block—on this subject, Creed. thus to that
the Athanasian
“ When a Rubrics Bill is before either House of Parlia
ment there is nothing to prevent the moving of an amend
ment to omit this Rubric, and to remove the Athanasian
Creed from its-present place in the Prayer-Book to the
neighbourhood of the Articles.”
We confess ourselves unable to see how such a move
would clear the ground cumbered by this objectionable
“confession of faith,” the result, as all the world knows, or
( should know, of a theological quarrel between Bishop
Alexander, of Alexandria, and a Presbyter named Arius. It
may not be amiss to refresh a little the memory regarding
this famous (or infamous) creed ; the feud between these
two learned men waxed fast and furious as to whether “the
Son is totally and essentially distinct from the Father, the
first and noblest of those created Beings formed out of
nothing, or whether he is, and was originally, of the same
essence as the Father, viz., God himself in another form.”
To settle this unseemly dispute (during which the Bishop
excommunicates the Presbyter,) the Emperor Constantine,
in 325, assembled the famous Council of the then entire
Christian Church (at Bythynia.)
This Council continued in force for two months, exchang
ing blows as well as words in the warmth of argument.
The Council finally decided, as was perhaps to be expected,
in favour of the Bishop, and condemned .Arius the Pres
byter to exile, compelling his adherents to subscribe to that
confession now called the Nicene Creed.
So far we see there is no appearance of Athanasius in
the matter, who at this time was Archdeacon of Alexandria,
and, as secretary to the Nicene Council, drew up the formu
laries of that creed. He supported his Bishop’s view, and
�2
t
it was out of compliment to him for his strenuous opposi
tion to Arius and his extreme advocacy of the Nicene
Creed that the later one bore his name.
Athanasius succeeded Bishop Alexander, and so impul
sive was the zeal of this good saint, that in the cause of
the Nicene Creed we hear of his flogging Bishops, burn
ing sacred books, breaking the jewelled chalice, overthrow
ing Communion tables, nay, that he razed to the ground
(for the glory of God) the churches of his contumacious
fellow-workers.
Doubt, however, exists as to the origin of this Athananasian Creed, which is said to have been composed by a
drunken monk of the middle ages, who was surely sober
enough to see the monstrous absurdity of the rival claims
of “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost.”
The proposition of Mr. Davies, firstly, to remove this
creed from its present place in the Rubric to the region of
the Articles (of which it already forms a part); and,
secondly, that the laity should resolve, with the Arch
bishops, to strike it, “not out of the Prayer-Book, but out
of the mouths of ordinary men and women, of the poor and
of children,” strikes us as nothing less than a cowardly
form of compromise, showing to the full the entire rotten
ness of a system redolent of pitfalls and snares for honest
men.
Mr. Davies, as a minister of the Church of England, has
signed the Thirty-nine Articles, has sworn his entire belief
“that this Athanasian Creed, with the others, is to be
thoroughly believed and received as truth, which truth
can be proved from Holy Scripture.” Nevertheless, he
speaks of himself “as one of those clergy in whose churches
this creed is not used;” so, while swearing to its truth,
provable from Holy Scripture, he refuses to read it to his
congregation, acknowledging the while that the Rubric
directing its use is unambiguous, that is, obligatory. But
surely the Articles, barring as they do the threshold of the
church, are equally obligatory, and, before dealing with the
Rubric question, Parliament had better take in hand the
more serious matter, and erase from the law of the land
the statute of 1562, a statute enforcing subscription in the
name of God and for his service, to beliefs in a series of
enigmatical propositions, containing absurdities, contradic
�3
tions, and irrational conclusions, summed up in the confes
sion of faith, that forbids us to say, “There be three Gods
or three Lords; compels us by the Christian verity to
acknowledge every person by himself to be God or Lord,
yet declares that, if we confound the Persons, or divide the
substance, the flames of an eternal Hell shall be our
portion.”
Mr. Davies evidently feels that he and his brother clergy
are in a dilemma; they must either offend their congre
gations or forego the use of this enlightened Christian
dogma. “To abstain from a custom more honoured in
the breach than the observance ” is certainly to his credit
as a rational, sensible creature, though by so doing he
breaks his ordination vows—nor, until removed from the
Rubric, could the refusal to read this creed legally better
the condition of himself or of those clergy who follow his
example.
A learned inquirer as to the dogma of the Deity of
Christ, says, “The Sun itself is not more visible in
the bright blue sky of a summer’s day than is the fact
evidenced by the religious history of the past 2,000
years, that the dogma of the Deity of Christ is the pro
duct of the speculations of ancient heathen philosophy
carried to insane lengths ; and is not as our clergy repre
sent it to be, and as the English people are taught to
regard it, a “ special revelation from God.”
Between this Scylla and Charybdis, this God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost, what wonder if our barques
theological founder with all their freight dogmatic;
what wonder that not only human beliefs but human
intellects stagger blindly, and suffer shipwreck; what
wonder if noble minds “ all o’er wrought ” turn in disgust
and weariness from the contemplation of the impossible,
and seek within the source of those diviner impulses,
that stir the soul to love, pity, justice, and mercy.
Until the scales fall from eyes that should see clear ;
until, casting aside all fear in their search for truth, the
leaders and teachers of the people dare sift to its foundation,
this institution of 2,000 years, this Church, with its army
of apostles, martyrs, hierarchs, and alas ! humbugs, and.
prove its origin to have been a myth ; prove that the
teacher on whose traditional saying, “ Thou art Peter, and
on this rock I found my Church, against which the gates
�4
of Hell shall not prevail,” had no divine authority for
saying it; prove that the Church is equally ignorant of the
nature of its Christ as of the God in whose service it
claims to exist, then, and then only, may we consider our
selves in any way superior to the grand old heathen
“whose sublime speculations concerning the Great Un
known we have corrupted and dwarfed into a Church
dogma, and hardened into a frozen mass of stupidity
and blasphemy, embedded in such creeds as the Nicene,
Athanasian, and Apostolic.”
While reading articles like this on “Church Pros
pects,” from such men as Mr. Davies, seeing how per
sistently they ignore truths, they must know, though
may be dimly, we have scant hope that the scales will
fall in our generation ; less faith that the men who openly
advise that “ the Athanasian Creed shall not be struck out
from the Articles, but prohibited to ordinary men, women,
the poor, and children,” can ever be the pioneers out of
the dark, tangled wood of ignorance, superstition and
pagan barbarisms, pioneers to the presence of unsullied
truth, to that world of unfettered thought, where no
shams, no compromise, no worldly-expediency motives,
shall hide the face of knowledge, or bar to the soul her
search for, “ that power, in darkness whom we guess,” that
being we call God as he really is.
C. W. B.EYNELL, PEINTEB, LITTLE PULTENEY STBEET, HAYMAKKET.
�
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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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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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"Church prospects"
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London?]
Collation: 4 p., 18 cm.
Notes: Comments on an article by John Llewelyn Davies in 'Contemporary Review' 25, January 1875 about the Athanasian Creed. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[Thomas Scott?]
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[1875]
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G5532
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Christianity
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[Unknown]
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Athanasian Creed
Conway Tracts
John Llewelyn Davies
-
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ce27ec953701855640c55040a9e4efa4
PDF Text
Text
. SATIRES
PROFANITIES
AND
BY
•
JAMES
THOMSON (B.V.f
(Author of “The City o¥ Dreadful Night”)
With a Preface by G. W. Foote.
A New Edition.
The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm
Religion in the Rocky Mountains
The Devil in the Church of England
Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles
A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty
A Bible Lesson on Monarchy
The One Thing Needful
The Athanasian Creed
ONE SHILLING.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
-28 Stonecutter Street, E.C,
1890.
��63'2X>5
MC3?
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
SATIRES
AND
PROFANITIES
BY
JAMES
THOMSON (B.V.)
(Author of “ The City
of
Dreadful Night”)
With a Preface by G. W. Foote.
A New Edition.
LONDON
progressive PUBLISHING company,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1890.
�LONDON
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. BOOTH
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C,
�CONTENTS
PASS
Preface ...
...
...
5
The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm
...
...
7
Religion in the Rocky Mountains
...
...
21
The Devil in the Church of England...
..
..
36
Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles...
...
...
47
A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty
...
...
58
A Bible Lesson on Monarchy
..
...
...
66
The One Thing Needful
...
...
...
...
71
The Athanasian Creed
..
...
..
..
75
...
...
...
...
�..................
�EDITOR’S PREFACE.
Under the title of Satires and Profanities I collected and
published, in 1884, twenty-three prose pieces of James
Thomson’s, contributed by him at various times to Freethought
journals, namely, the National Reformer, edited by Mr. Brad
laugh, and the Secularist, edited by myself. After the sale of
about five hundred copies, the remaining sheets were destroyed
by a fire at the publisher’s premises. It was a pity that such
a book should be out of print, but complete republication was
impossible. The enterprise would have been a heavy financial
loss. There is, however, a possibility of realising one’s invest
ment in a smaller collection of the principal pieces, and I
venture to issue it in the present form.
Thomson was a born satirist as well as a born poet. I do
not think anyone can read these pieces without feeling that
Thomson enjoyed the writing of them. They reveal a side of
his genius which only found occasional expression in his verse.
He allowed me to publish two of them as pamphlets before any
collection of his poems was given to the world. Some of his
admirers, who scarcely share his convictions, are in the habit
of depreciating these satires on the current theology. But he
would have smiled at their soreness. “ Thomson’s satire,” as
I wrote in the preface to Satires and Profanities,“ was always
bitterest, or at any rate most trenchant, when it dealt with
Religion, which he considered a disease of the mind, engendered
by folly and fostered by ignorance and vanity. He saw that
spiritual superstition not only diverts men from Truth, but
induces a slavish stupidity of mind, and prepares the way for
every form of political and social injustice. He was an Atheist
first and a Republican afterwards. He derided the idea of
making a true Republic of a population besotted with religion,
paralysed with creeds, cringing to the agents of their servitude,
and clinging to the chains that enthral them.”
No doubt the cry of “Blasphemy!” will continue to be
raised against Thomson’s religious satires, as against every
pointed, and therefore “painful,” attack on Christianity.
�▼i.
Editor's Preface.
But Thomson has justified himself in this respect. Defending
a certain 11 outburst of Rabelasian laughter,” which was de
nounced by the Saturday Review in 1867, he wrote
The
Grecian mythology is dead, is no longer aggressive in its
absurdities ; the priestcraft and the foul rites have long since
perished, the beauty and the grace and the splendor remain.
But your composite theology is still alive, is insolently
aggressive, its lust for tyrannical dominion is unbounded;
therefore we must attack it if we would not be enslaved by it.
The cross is a sublime symbol; I would no more think of
treating it with disrespect while it held itself aloft in the
serene heaven of poetry than of insulting the bow of Phoebus
Apollo or the thunderbolts of Zeus; but if coarse hands will
insist on pulling it down upon my back as a ponderous wooden
reality, what can I do but fling it off as a confounded burden
not to be borne ?” Thomson also pointed out that “ For the
Atheist, God is a figment, nothing: in blaspheming God he
therefore blasphemes nothing. A man really blasphemes
when he mocks, insults, pollutes, vilifies that which he really
believes to be holy and awful.” He admitted that there
might be a hundred Christians in England who really believed
in the Christian God, and they could be guilty of blaspheming
him; but “ speaking philosophically, an honest Atheist can no
more blaspheme God than an honest Republican can be disloyal
to a King, than an unmarried man can be guilty of conjugal
infidelity.”
There is no need to say more. Thomson’s “blasphemy”
and its justification are here together. Every purchaser of
this brochure is warned in the preface what to expect, and
if his nerves are too weak for an Atheist’s satire he can give
it to a robuster friend.
May, 1890.
G. W. FOOTE.
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm
[Written in 1866.]
Many thousand years ago, when the Jews first started
in business, the chief of their merchants was a venerable
and irascible old gentleman named Jah. The Jews
have always been excellent traders, keen to scent
wealth, subtle to track it, unweary to pursue it, strong
to seize it, tenacious to hold it ; and the most keen,
subtle, untiring, strong, tenacious of them all, was this
Jah. The patriarchs of his people paid him full
measure of the homage which Jews have always eagerly
paid to wealth and power, and all their most important
transactions were carried out through him. In those
antique times people lived to a very great age, and Jah
is supposed to have lived so many thousands of years
that one may as well not try to count them. Perhaps
it was not one Jah that existed all this while, but the
house of Jah : the family, both for pride and profit,
preserving through successive generations the name of
its founder. Certain books have been treasured by
the Jews as containing exact records of the dealings of
this lordly merchant (or house) both with the Jews
themselves and with strangers. Many people in our
times, however, have ventured to doubt the accuracy of
these records, arguing that some of the transactions
therein recorded it would have been impossible to
transact, that others must have totally ruined the
richest of merchants, that the accounts often contradict
each other, and that the system of book-keeping
generally is quite unworthy of a dealer so truthful and
clear-headed as Jah is affirmed to have been. The
records are so ancient in themselves, and they treat of
matters so much more ancient still, that it is not easy
to find other records of any sort with which to check
�8
Satires and Profanities.
their accounts. Strangely enough the most recent
researches have impugned the accuracy of the most
ancient of these records ; certain leaves of a volume
called the “ Great Stone Book ” having been brought
forward to contradict the very first folio of the ledger
in which the dealings of Jah have been posted up
according to the Jews. It may be that the first few
folios, like the early pages of most annals, are somewhat
mythical ; and the present humble compiler (who is
not deep in the affairs of the primaeval world, and who,
like the late lamented Captain Cuttie with his large
volume, is utterly knocked up at any time by four or
five lines of the “ Great Stone Book ”) will prudently
not begin at the beginning, but skip it with great
comfort and pleasure, especially as many and learned
men are now earnest students of this beginning. We
will, therefore, if you please, take for granted the facts
that at some time, in some manner, Jah created his
wonderful business, and that early in his career he met
with a great misfortune, being compelled, by the
villainy of all those with whom he had dealings, to
resort to a wholesale liquidation, which left him so poor,
that for some time he had not a house in the world,
and his establishment was reduced to four male and as
many female servants.
He must have pretty well recovered from this severe
shock when he entered into the famous covenant or
contract with Abraham and his heirs, by which he
bound himself to deliver over to them at a certain,
then distant, period, the whole of the valuable landed
property called Canaan, on condition that they should
appoint him the sole agent for the management of
their affairs. In pursuance of this contract, he con
ducted that little business of the flocks and herds for
Jacob against one Laban ; and afterwards, when the
children of Abraham were grown very numerous, he
managed for them that other little affair, by which
they spoiled the Egyptians of jewels of silver and
jewels of gold ; and it is even asserted that he fed and
clothed the family for no less than forty years in a
country where the commissariat was a service of
extreme difficulty.
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
9
At length the time came when he was to make over
to them the Land of Canaan, for this purpose evicting
the several families then in possession thereof, ihe
whole of the covenanted estate he never did make over
to them, but the Jews freely admit that this was through
their own fault. They held this land as mortgaged to
him, he pledging himself not to foreclose while, they
dealt with him faithfully and fulfilled all the conditions
of the covenant. They were to pay him ten per cent,
per annum interest, with sundry other charges, to put
all their affairs into his hands, to have no dealings what
soever with any rival merchants, etc., etc. Under this
covenant the Jews continued in possession of the fine
little property of Canaan for several hundred years,
and they assert that this same Jah lived and conducted
his business throughout the whole period. But, as I
have ventured to suggest, the long existence of the
house of Jah may have been the sum total of the lives
of a series of individual Jahs. The Jews could not
have distinguished the one from the other ; for it is a
strange fact that Jah himself, they admit, was never
seen. Perhaps he did not affect close contact with
Jews. Perhaps he calculated that his power over them
would be increased by mystery ; this is certain, that he
kept himself wholly apart from them in his private
office, so that no one was admitted even on business.
It is indeed related that one Moses (the witness to the
execution of the covenant) caught a glimpse of him
from behind, but this glimpse could scarcely have
sufficed for identification ; and it is said, also, that at
certain periods the chief of the priesthood was admitted
to consultation with him ; but although his voice was
then heard, he did not appear in person—only the
shadow of him was seen, and everyone will allow that
a shadow is not the best means of identification. And
in further support of my humble suggestion it may be
noted that in many and important respects the later
proceedings attributed to Jah differ extremely in chal’acter from the earlier ; and this difference cannot be
explained as the common difference between the youth
and maturity and senility of one and the same. man,
for we are expressly assured that Jah was without
�10
Satires and Profanities.
change—by which we are not to understand that
either through thoughtlessness or parsimony he never
had small cash in his pocket for the minor occasions of
life ; but that he was stubborn in his will, unalterable
in his ideas, persistent in his projects and plans.
The records of his dealings at home with the Jews,
and abroad with the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the
Philistines, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Edomites,
and other nations, as kept by the Jews themselves, are
among the strangest accounts of a large general busi
ness which have ever been put down in black on
white. And in nothing are they more strange than in
the unsullied candor with which the Jews always admit
and proclaim that it was their fault, and by no means
the fault of Jah, whenever the joint business went
badly, and narrate against themselves the most astonish
ing series of frauds and falsehoods, showing how they
broke the covenant, and attempted to cheat the other
party in every imaginable way, and, in order to ruin
his credit, conspired with foreign adventurers of the
worst character—such as MM. Baal, Ashtaroth, and
Moloch. Jah, who gave many proofs of a violent and
jealous temper, and who was wont to sell up other
debtors in the most heartless way, appears to have been
very patient and lenient with these flagitious Jews.
Yet with all his kindness and long-suffering he was
again and again forced to put executions into their
houses, and throw themselves into prison ; and at
length, before our year One, having, as it would seem,
given up all hope of making them deal honestly with
him, he had put certain strict Romans in possession of
the property to enforce his mortgage and other rights.
And now comes a sudden and wonderful change in
the history of this mysterious Jah. Whether it was
the original Jah, who felt himself too old to conduct
the immense business alone, or whether it was some
successor of his, who had not the same self-reliance
and imperious will, one cannot venture to decide ; but
we all know that it was publicly announced, and soon
came to be extensively believed, that Jah had taken
unto himself two partners, and that the business was
thenceforth to be carried on by a firm, under the style
�Story of a Famous Old Jswish Firm.
11
of Father, Son, and Co. It is commonly thought that
history has more of certainty as it becomes more
recent ; but unfortunately in the life of Jah, uncertainty
grows ten more times uncertain when we attain the
period of this alleged partnership, for the Jews deny it
altogether ; and of those who believe in it not one is
able to define its character, or even to state its possi
bility in intelligible language. The Jews assert roundly
that the alleged partners are a couple of vile impostors,
that Jah still conducts his world-wide business alone,
that he has good reasons (known only to himself) for
delaying the exposure of these pretenders ; and that,
however sternly he has been dealing with the Jews for
a long time past, and however little they may seem to
have improved so as to deserve better treatment, he
will yet be reconciled to them, and restore them to
possession of their old land, and exalt them above all
their rivals and enemies, and of his own free will and
absolute pleasure burn and destroy every bond of
their indebtedness now in his hands. And in support
of these modest expectations they can produce a
bundle of documents which they assert to be his
promissory notes, undoubtedly for very large amounts ;
but which, being carefully examined, turn out to be all
framed on this model: “ I, the above-mentioned A. B.”
(an obscure or utterly unknown Jew, supposed to have
lived about three thousand years ago), “ hereby promise
in the name of Jah, that the said Jah shall in some
future year unknown, pay unto the house of Israel the
following amount, that is to say, etc.” If we ask,
Where is the power of attorney authorising this dubious
A. B. to promise this amount in the name of Jah ? the
Jews retort : “If you believe in the partnership, you
must believe in such power, for you have accepted all
the obligations of the old house, and have never refused
to discount its paper : if you believe neither in Jah
nor in the partnership, you are a wretch utterly with
out faith, a commercial outlaw.” In addition, however,
to these remarkable promissory notes, the Jews rely
upon the fact that Jah, in the midst of his terrible
anger, has still preserved some kindness for them. He
threatened many pains and penalties upon them for
�12
Satires and Profanities,
breach of the covenant, and many of these threats he
has carried out ; but the most cruel and horrific of all
he has not had the heart to fulfil : they have been
oppressed and crushed, strangers have come into their
landed property, they have been scattered among all
peoples, a proverb and a by-word of scorn among the
nations, their religion has been accursed, their holy
places are defiled, but the crowning woe has been spared
them (Deut. xxviii., 44) ; never yet has it come to pass
that the stranger should lend to them, and they should
not lend to the stranger. There is yet balm in Gilead,
a rose of beauty in Sharon, and a cedar of majesty on
Lebanon ; the Jew still lends to the stranger, and does
not borrow from him, except as he “borrowed ” from
the Egyptian—and the interest on money lent is still
capable, with judicious treatment, of surpassing the
noble standard of “ shent per shent.”
And even among the Gentiles there are some who
believe that Jah is still the sole head of the house, and
that the pair who are commonly accounted junior
partners are in fact only superior servants, the one a
sort of manager, the other general superintendent and
agent, though Jah may allow them a liberal commission
on the profits, as well as a fixed salary.
But the commercial world of Europe, in general,
professes to believe that there is a bond fide partnership,
and that the three partners have exactly equal authority
and interest in the concern ; that, in fact, there is such
thorough identity in every respect that the three may,
and ought to be, for all purposes of business, considered
as one. The second partner, they say, is really the son
of Jah ; though Jah, with that eccentricity which has
ever abundantly characterised his proceedings, had this
son brought up as a poor Jewish youth, apparently the
child of a carpenter called Joseph, and his wife Mary.
Joseph has little or no influence with the firm, and we
scarcely hear of a transaction done through him, but
Mary has made the most profitable use of her old liaison
with Jah, and the majority of those who do business
with the firm seek her good offices, and pay her very
liberal commissions. Those who do not think so
highly of her influence, deal with the house chiefly
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
13
through, the Son, and thus it has come to pass that poor
Jah is virtually ousted from his own business. He
and the third partner are little more than sleeping
partners, while his mistress and her son manage every
affair of importance.
This state of things seems somewhat unfair to Jah ;
yet one must own that there are good reasons for it.
Jah was a most haughty and humorous gentleman,
extremely difficult to deal with, liable to sudden fits of
rage, wherein he maltreated friends and foes alike,
implacable when once offended, a desperately sharp
shaver in a bargain, a terrible fellow for going to law.
The son was a much more kindly personage, very
affable and pleasant in conversation, willing and eager
to do a favor to any one, liberal in promises even
beyond his powers of performance, fond of strangers,
and good to the poor ; and his mother, with or without
reason, is credited with a similar character. Moreover,
Jah always kept himself invisible, while the son and
mother were possibly seen, during some years, by a
large number of persons ; and among those who have
never seen them their portraits are almost as popular
as photographs of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
With the real or pretended establishment of the
Firm, a great change took place in the business of Jah.
This business had been chiefly with the Jews, and even
when it extended to foreign transactions, these were all
subordinate to the Jewish trade. But the Firm lost
no time in proclaiming that it would deal with the
whole world on equal terms : no wonder the Jews
abhor the alleged partners I And the nature of the
contracts, the principal articles of trade, the mode of
keeping the accounts, the commission and interest
charged and allowed, the salaries of the agents and
clerks, the advantages offered to clients, were all
changed too. The head establishment was removed
from Jerusalem to Rome, and branch establishments
were gradually opened in nearly all the towns and
villages of Europe, besides many in Asia and Africa,
Bnd afterwards in America and Australia. It is worth
noting that in Asia and Africa (although the firm arose
in the former) the business has never been carried on
�14
Satires and Profanities.
very successfully; Messrs. Brahma, Vishnu, Seeva
and Co., the great houses of Buddha and Mumbo
Jumbo, various Parsee firms, and other opposition
houses, having among them almost monopolised the
trade.
The novel, distinctive, and most useful article -which
the Firm engaged to supply was a bread called par
excellence the Bread of Life. The Prospectus (which
was first drafted, apparently in perfect good faith, by
the Son ; but which has since been so altered and ex
panded by successive agents that we cannot learn what
the original, no longer extant, exactly stated) sets forth
that the House of Jah, Son and Co. has sole possession
of the districts yielding the corn whereof this bread is
made, the sole patents of the mills for grinding and
ovens for baking, and that it alone has the secret of the
proper process for kneading. The Firm admits that
many other houses have pretended to supply this in
valuable bread, but accuses them all of imposture or
poisonous adulteration. For itself, it commands the
genuine supply in such quantities that it can under
take to feed the whole world, and at so cheap a rate
that the poorest will be able to purchase as much as he
needs ; and, moreover, as the firm differs essentially
from all other firms in having no object in view save
the benefit of its customers, the partners being already
so rich that no profits could add to their wealth, it will
supply the bread for mere love to those who have not
money!
This fair and beautiful prospectus, you will easily
believe, brought vast multitudes eager to deal with the
firm, and especially large multitudes of the poor,
ravished with the announcement that love should be
henceforth current coin of the realm ; and the business
spread amazingly. But at the very outset a sad mis
chance occurred. The Son, by far the best of the
partners, was suddenly seized and murdered and buried
by certain agents of the old Jewish business (furious
at the prospect of losing all their rich trade), with the
connivance of the Roman installed as inspector. At
least, these wretches thought they had murdered the
poor man, and it is admitted on every side that they
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
15
buried him ; but the dependants of the Firm have a
strange story that he was not really killed, but arose
out of his tomb after lying there for three days, and
slipped away to keep company with his father, the
invisible Jah, in his exceedingly private office ; and
they assert that he is still alive along with Jah, molli
fying the old man when he gets into one of his furious
passions, pleading for insolvent debtors, and in all
things by act and counsel doing good for all the clients
of the house. They, moreover, assert that the third
partner, who as the consoling substitute for the absent
Son is commonly called the Comforter, and who is
very energetic, though mysteriously invisible in his
operations, superintends all the details of the business
in every one of the establishments. But this third
partner is so difficult to catch, that, as stated before,
the majority of the customers deal with the venerable
mother, as the most accessible and humane personage
belonging to the house.
Despite the death or disappearance of the Son, the
firm prospered for a considerable time. After severe
competition, in which neither side showed itself very
‘scrupulous, the great firm of Jupiter and Co., the old
Greek house, which had been strengthened by the
amalgamation of the wealthiest Roman firms, was
utterly beaten from the field, sold up and extinguished.
In the sale of the effects many of the properties in
most demand were bought in by the new firm, which
also took many of the clerks and agents into its em
ployment, and it is even said adopted in several impor
tant respects the mode of carrying on business and the
system of book-keeping. But while the firm was thus
conquering its most formidable competitor, innumerable
dissensions were arising between its own branch esta
blishments ; every one accusing every other of dealing
on principles quite hostile to the regulations instituted
by the head of the house, of falsifying the accounts,
and of selling an article which was anything but the
genuine unadulterated bread. There were also inter
minable quarrels among them as to relative rank and
importance.
And whether the wheat, as delivered to the various
�16
Satires and Profanities.
establishments, was or was not the genuine article
which the firm had contracted to supply, it was soon
discovered that it issued from the licensed shops adul
terated in the most audacious manner. And, although
the prospectus had stated most positively that the
bread should be delivered to the poor customers of the
firm without money and without price (and such seems
really to have been the good Son s intention), it was
found, in fact, that the loaves, when they reached the
consumer, were at least as costly as ever loaves of any
kind of bread had been. It mattered little that the
wheat was not reckoned in the price, when agents r
commissioners’, messengers fees, bakers charges, and
a hundred items, made the price total so enormous.
When, at length, the business was flourishing all over
Europe, it was the most bewildering confusion of con
tradictions that, perhaps, was ever known in the com
mercial world. Eor in all the establishments the
agents professed and very solemnly swore that they
dealt on principles opposed and infinitely superior to
the old principles of trade ; yet their proceedings (save
that they christened old things with new names) were w
identical with those which had brought to shameful
ruin the most villainous old firms. The sub-managers,
who were specially ordered to remain poor while in the
business, and for obedience were promised the most
splendid pensions when superannuated, all became rich
as princes by their exactions from the clients of the
house ; the agents, who were especially commanded to
keep the peace, were ever stirring up quarrels and
fighting ferociously, not only with opposition agents
but with one another. The accounts, which were tn
be regulated by the most honest and simple rules, were
complicated in a lawless system, which no man could
understand, and falsified to incredible amounts, to the
loss of the customers, without being to the gain of the
firm. In brief, each establishment was like one ot
those Chinese shops where the most beautiful and noble
maxims of justice and generosity are painted in gilt
letters outside, while the most unblushing fraud and
extortion are practised inside. When poor customers
complained of these things, they were told that the
�17
Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
system was perfect, that the evils were all from the
evil men who conducted the business ! but the good
people did not further explain how the perfection of
the system could ever be realised, since it must always
be worked by imperfect men. Complainants thus
mildly and vaguely answered were very fortunate ;
others, in places where the firm was very powerful,
were answered by imprisonment or false accusations, or
by being pelted and even murdered by mobs. Many
who thought the bread badly baked were themselves
thrust into the fire.
Yet so intense is the need of poor men for some
bread of life, so willing are simple men to believe fair
promises, that, in spite of the monstrous injustice and
falsehood and cruelty and licentiousness of the
managers and sub-managers and agents of the firm,
the business continued to flourish, and all the wealth
of Europe flowed into its coffers. And generations
passed ere some persons bethought them to think
seriously of the original Deed of Partnership and th©
fundamental principles of the Firm. These documents,
which had been carefully confined in certain old dead
languages which few of the customers could read, were
translated into vulgar tongues, which all could read or
understand when read, and everyone began studying
them for himself. This thinking of essentials, which,
is so rare a thought among mankind, has already pro
duced remarkable effects, and promises to produce
effects yet more remarkable in a short time.
Behold a few of the-questions which this study of the
first documents has raised.—The Father, whom no one
has seen, is there indeed such a personage ? The Son,
whom certainly no one has seen for eighteen hundred
years, did he really come to life again after being
brutally murdered ? The junior partner, whom no one
has ever seen, the Comforter, is he a comforter made of
the wool of a sheep that never was fleeced ? Th©
business, as we see it, merely uses the names, and
would be precisely the same business if these names
covered no personages. Do the managers and sub
managers really carry it on for their own profit, using
these high names to give dignity to their rascality, and
B
�18
Satires and Profanities.
to make poor people believe that they have unbounded
capital at their back ? One is punished for defamation
of character if he denies the existence of the partners,
yet not the very chief of all the managers pretends to
have seen any of the three !
And the vaunted Bread of Life, wherein does it
differ from the old corn-of-Ceres bread, from the baking
of the wheat of Mother Hertha ? Chiefly in this, that
it creates much more wind on the stomach. It is not
more wholesome, nor more nourishing, and certainly
not more cheap ; and it does us little good to be told
that it would be if the accredited agents were honest
and supplied it pure, when we are told, at the same
time, that we must get it through these agents. It is
indeed affirmed that, in an utterly unknown region
beyond the Black Sea, the genuine wheat may be seen
growing by anyone who discovers the place ; but, as
no one who ever crossed the sea on a voyage of
discovery ever returned, the assertion rests on the bare
word of people who have never seen the corn-land any
more than they have seen the partners of the firm ;
and their word is bare indeed, for it has been stripped
to shame in a thousand affairs wherein it could be
brought to the test. They tell us also that we shall all
in time cross the Black Sea, and if we have been good
customers shall dwell evermore in that delightful land,
with unlimited supplies of the bread gratis. This may
be true, but how do they know ? It may be true that
in the sea we shall all get drowned for ever.
These and similar doubts which, in many minds, have
hardened into positive disbelief, are beginning to affect
seriously the trade of the firm. But its interests are
now so inextricably bound up with the interests of
thousands and millions of well-to-do and respectable
people, and on its solvency or apparent solvency depends
that of so large a number of esteemed merchants, that
we may expect the most desperate struggles to postpone
its final bankruptcy. In the great Roman establish
ment the manager has been supported for many years
by charitable contributions from every one whom he
could persuade to give or lend, and now he wants to
borrow much more. The superintendent of the shops
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
19
in London is in these days begging for ten hundred
thousand pounds to assist the poor firm in its difficulties.
It seems a good sum of money ; but, bless you, it is but
a drop in the sea compared with what the business has
already absorbed, and is still absorbing. Scattered
shops in the most distant countries have only been sus
tained for many years by alms from customers here.
The barbarians won’t eat the bread, but the bakers sent
out must have their salaries. A million of pounds are
being begged here ; and people (who would prosecute a
mendicant of halfpence) will give it no doubt! Yet, 0
worthy manager of the London Shops, one proved loaf
of the real Bread would be infinitely more valuable,
and would infinitely more benefit your firm ! The
villainy of the agents was monstrous, generation after
generation, the cost of that which was promised without
money and without price was ruinous for centuries ; but
not all the villainy and extortion multiplied a hundred
fold could drive away the poor hungry customers while
they had faith in the genuineness of the bread. It was
the emptiness and the wind on the stomach after much
eating, which raised the fatal doubts as to the bona fides
of the whole concern. The great English managers
had better ponder this ; for at present they grope in
the dark delusion that more and better bakers salaried
with alms, and new shops opened with eleemosynary
funds, will bring customers to buy their bran cakes as
wheaten loaves. A very dark delusion, indeed ! If
the pure promised bread cannot be supplied, no amount
of money will keep the business going very long. Con
sider what millions on millions of pounds have been
subscribed already, what royal revenues are pouring in
still; all meant for investment in wholesome and
nourishing food, but nearly all realised in hunger and
emptiness, heartburn and flatulence. The old Roman
shrewdly calculated that the House of Olympus would
prove miserably insolvent if its affairs were wound up,
if it tried honestly to pay back all the deposits of its
customers. As for this more modern firm, one suspects
that, in like case, it would prove so insolvent that it
could not pay a farthing in the pound. For Olympus
was a house that dealt largely in common worldly
�20
Satires and Profanities.
goods, and of these things really did give a considerable
quantity to its clients for their money ; but the new
firm professed to sell things infinitely more valuable,
and of these it cannot prove the delivery of a single
parcel during the eighteen hundred years it has been
receiving purchase-money unlimited.
The humble compiler of this rapid and imperfect
summary ought, perhaps, to give his own opinion of the
firm and the partners, although he suffers under the
disadvantage of caring very little for the business, and
thinks that far too much time is wasted by both the
friends and the enemies of the house in investigation
of every line and figure in its books. He believes that
Jah, the grand Jewish dealer, was a succession of
several distinct personages ; and will probably continue
to believe thus until he learns that there was but one
Pharaoh, King of Egypt, but one Bourbon, King of
France, and that the House of Rothschild has always
been one and the same man. He believes that the Son
was by no means the child of the Father, that he was
a much better character than the Father, that he was
really and truly murdered, that his prospectus and
business plans were very much more wise and honest
and good than the prospectus as we have it now, and
the system as it has actually been worked. He believes
that the Comforter has really had a share in this as in
every other business not wholly bad in the world, that
he has never identified his interests with those of any
firm, that specially he never committed himself to a
partnership of unlimited liability with the Hebrew Jah,
that he undoubtedly had extensive dealings with the
Son, and placed implicit confidence in him while a
living man, and that he will continue to deal profitably
and bountifully with men long after the firm has
become bankrupt and extinct. He believes that the
corn of the true bread of life is sown and grown,
reaped, ground, kneaded, baked and eaten on this side
of the Black Sea. He believes that no firm or company
whatever, with limited or unlimited liability, has the
monopoly for the purveyance of this bread, that no
charters can confer such monopoly, that the bread is
only to be got pure by each individual for himself, and
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
21
that no two individuals of judgment really like it pre
pared in exactly the same fashion, but that unfor
tunately (as his experience compels him to believe)
the bulk of mankind will always in the future, no less
than in the past, persist in endeavoring to procure it
through great chartered companies.
Finally, he
believes that the worthy chief baker in London with
his million of money is extremely like the worthy
Mrs. Partington with her mop against the Atlantic.
Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
Top of Pike’s Peak, March Mh, 1873.
Honored with your special commission, I at once
hurried across to Denver, and thence still westward
until I found myself among the big vertebrae of this
longish backbone of America. I have wandered to and
fro among the new cities, the advanced camps of civili
sation, always carefully reticent as to my mission,
always carefully inquiring into the state of religion
both in doctrine and practice. You were so hopeful
that high Freethought would be found revelling trium
phant in these high free regions, that I fear you will be
acutely pained by this my true report. Churches and
chapels of all kinds abound—Episcopalian, Methodist
Episcopal (for the Methodists here have bishops), Pres
byterian, Baptist, Congregational, Roman Catholic, etc.
Zeal inflaming my courage, three and even four times
have I ventured into a Church, each time enduring the
whole service ; and if I have not ventured oftener, cer
tainly I had more than sufficient cause to abstain. For
�22
Satires and Profanities.
as I suffered in my few visits to churches in your Eng
land, so I suffered here ; and such sufferings are too
dreadful to be frequently encountered, even by the
bravest of the brave. Whether my sensations in church
are similar to those of others, or are peculiar to myself,
I cannot be sure; but I am quite sure that they are
excruciating. On first entering I may feel calm,
wakeful, sane, and not uncomfortable, except that here
I rather regret being shut in from the pure air and
splendid sky, and in England rather regret having come
out through the raw, damp murk, and in both regret
that civilisation has not yet established smoking-pews ;
but the Church is always behind the age. It is pleasant
for awhile to note the well-dressed people seated or
entering ; the men with unctuous hair and somewhat
wooden decorum ; the women floating more at ease,
suavely conscious of their fine inward and outward
adornments. It is pleasant to keep a hopeful look-out
for some one of more than common beauty or grace,
and to watch such a one if discovered. As the service
begins, and the old, old words and phrases come floating
around me, I am lulled into quaint dream-memories of
childhood ; the long unthought-of school-mates, the
surreptitious sweetstuff, the manifold tricks and
smothered laughter, by whose aid (together with total
inattention to the service, except to mark and learn the
text) one managed to survive the ordeal. The singing
also is pleasant, and lulls me into vaguer dreams.
Gradually, as the service proceeds, I become more
drowsy ; my small faculties are drugged into quiet
slumber, they feel themselves off duty, there is nothing
for which they need keep awake. But, with the com
mencement of the sermon, new and alarming symptoms
arise within me, growing ever worse and worse until
the close. Pleasure departs with tranquillity, the irrita
tion of revolt and passive helplessness is acute. I cannot
find relief in toffy, or in fun with my neighbors, as
when I was a happy child. The old stereotyped phrases,
the immemorial platitudes, the often-killed sophistries
that never die, come buzzing and droning about me
like a sluggish swarm of wasps, whose slow deliberate
stinging is more hard to bear than the quick keen
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
23
stinging of anger. Then the wasps, penetrating through
my ears, swarm inside me ; there is a horrid buzzing in
my brain, a portentous humming in my breast ; my
small faculties are speedily routed, and disperse in blind
anguish, the implacable wasps droning out and away
after them, and I am left void, void ; with hollow skull,
empty heart, and a mortal sinking of stomach ; my
whole being is but a thin shell charged with vacuity
and desperate craving ; I expect every instant to col
lapse or explode. It is but too certain that if anyone
should then come to lead me off to an asylum for idiots,
or a Young Men’s Christian Association, or any similar
institution, I could not utter a single rational word to
save myself. And though all my faculties have left
me, I cannot attempt to leave the church ; decorum,
rigid and frigid, freezes me to my seat ; I stare stonily
in unimaginable torture, feebly wondering whether the
sermon will outlast my sanity, or my sanity outlast the
sermon. When at length released, I am so utterly
demoralised that I can but smoke furiously, pour much
beer and cram much dinner into my hollowness, and
so with swinish dozing hope to feel better by tea-time.
Now, though in order to fulfil the great duties you
entrust to me, I have cheerfully dared the Atlantic,
and spent long days and perilous nights in railroad cars,
and would of course (were it indeed necessary) face
unappalled mere physical death and destruction, I
really could not go on risking, with the certainty of
ere long losing, my whole small stock of brains ; espe
cially as the loss of these would probably rather hinder
than further the performance of the said duties. For
suppose me reduced to permanent idiocy by church
going, become a mere brazen hollowness with a riotous
tongue like Cowper’s church-going bell ; is it not most
likely that I would then turn true believer, renouncing
and denouncing your noble commission, even as you
would renounce and denounce your imbecile commis
sioner ?
Finding that I could not pursue my inquiries in the
churches and chapels, I was much grieved and per
plexed, until one of those thoughts occurred to me
which are always welcome and persuasive, because ill
�24
Satires and Profanities.
exact agreement with our own desires or necessities.
I thought of what I had remarked when visiting your
England : how the churches and chapels and lecture
halls, each sect thundering more or less terribly against
all the others, made one guess that the people were
more disputatious than pious ; how one became con
vinced, in spite of his infidel reluctance, that the people
were indeed, as a rule, thoroughly and genuinely
religious, by mingling freely with them in their com
mon daily and nightly life. I asked myself, What really
proved to me the pervading Christianity of England ?
the sermons, the tracts, the clerical lectures, the mis
sionary meetings ? the cathedrals and other theatres
and music-halls crowded with worshippers on Sunday,
while the museums and other public-houses were empty
and shut? No, scarcely these things ; but the grand
princeliness of the princes, the true nobleness of the
nobles, the lowliness of the bishops, the sanctity of the
clergy, the honesty of the merchants, the veracity of
the shopkeepers, the sobriety and thrift of the artisans,
the independence and intelligence of the rustics ; the
general faith and hope and love which brightened the
sunless days, the general temperance and chastity which
made beautiful the sombre nights ; the almost universal
abhorrence of the world, the flesh, and the Devil ; the
almost universal devotion to heaven, the spirit, and God.
I thereupon determined to study the religion out
here, even as I had studied it in England, in the ordinary
public and private life of the people ; and you will
doubtless be sorely afflicted to learn that I have found
everywhere much the same signs of genuine, practical
Christianity as are so common and patent in the old
country. The ranchmen have sown the good seed, and
shall reap the harvest of heavenly felicity ; the stockmen will surely be corraled with the sheep, and not
among the goats, at the last day ; not to gain the whole
world would the storekeepers lose their own souls ; the
pioneers have found the narrow way which leadeth unto
life ; the fishermen are true disciples, the trappers catch
Satan in his own snares, the hunters are mighty before
the Lord; bright are the celestial prospects of the
prospectors, and the miners are all stoping-out that
�Religion in the Boclcy Mountains.
25
hidden treasure which is richer than silver and much
dine gold. As compared with the English, these
Western men are perchance inferior in two important
points of Christian sentiment; they probably do not
fear God, being little given to fear anyone ; they cer
tainly do not honor the king, perhaps because they
unfortunately have none to honor. On the other
hand, as I have been assured by many persons from
the States, and the old country, they are even superior
to the English in one important point of Christian
conduct. Christ has promised that in discharging the
damned to hell at the Day of Judgment, he will fling
.at them this among other reproaches, “ I was a stranger,
and ye took me not in ” ; and this particular rebuke
seems to have wrought a peculiarly deep impression in
these men perhaps because they have much more to
do with strangers than have people ih the old settled
countries, so much, indeed, that the wrord “ stranger
is continually in their mouths. The result is (as the
said persons from England and the States have often
solemnly assured me) that any and every stranger
arriving in these regions is most thoroughly, most
beautifully, most religiously taken in. So that should
any of these fine fellows by evil hap be among the
accursed multitude whom Christ thus addresses, they
will undoubtedly retort in their frank fashion of
•speech : “ Wall, boss, it may be right to give us hell
on other counts, but you say you was a stranger and
we' didn’t take you in. What we want to know is,
Did you ever come to our parts to trade in mines or
stock or sich ? If you didn't, how the Devil could we
take you in ? if you did, it’s a darned lie, and an insult
to our understanding to say we didn't."
But though the practical life out here is so veritably
'Christian, you still hope that at any rate the creeds and
doctrines are considerably heterodox. I am sincerely
sorry to be obliged to destroy this hope. In the ordinary
-talk of the men continually recur the same or almost
the same expressions and implications of orthodox
belief, as are so common in your England, and
throughout Christendom. Why such formulas are
.generally used by men onlj, I have often been puzzled
�26
Satires and Profanities.
to explain ; it may be that the women, who in all lands
attend divine service much more than do the men, find
ample expression of their faith in the set times and
places of public worship and private prayer ; while
the men, less methodical, and demanding liberal scope,
give it robust utterance whenever and wherever they
choose. These formulas, as you must have often
remarked, are most weighty and energetic ; they avouch
and avow the supreme personages and mysteries and
dogmas of their religion ; they are usually but brief
ejaculations, in strong contrast to those long prayers of
the Pharisees which Jesus laughed to scorn ; and they
are often so superfluous as regards the mere worldly
meaning of the sentences in which they appear, that it
is evident they have been interjected simply to satisfy
the pious ardor of the speaker, burning to proclaim in
season and out of season the cardinal principles of his
faith. I say speaker, and not writer, because writing,
being comparatively cold and deliberate, seldom flames
out in these sharp swift flashes, that leap from living
lips touched with coals of fire from the altar.
I am aware that these fervid ejaculations are apt tobe regarded by the light-minded as trivial, by the coldhearted as indecorous, by the sanctimonious as even
profane ; but to the true philosopher, whether he be
religious or not, they are pregnant with grave signi
ficance. For do not these irrepressible utterances burst
forth from the very depths of the profound heart of
the people ? Are they not just as spontaneous and
universal as is the belief in God itself ? Are they not
among the most genuine and impassioned words of man
kind ? Have they not a primordial vigor and vitality ?
Are they not supremely of that voice of the people which
has been well called the voice of God ? Thus when your
Englishman instead of “ Strange !” says “ The Devil !”
instead of “Wonderful!” cries “Good Heavens!” instead
of “ How startling !” exclaims “ 0 Christ 1” he does
more than merely express his emotions, his surprise, his
wonder, his amaze ; he hallows it to the assertion of
his belief in Satan, in the good kingdom of God, in
Jesus; and, moreover, by the emotional gradation
ranks with perfect accuracy the Devil lowest in the
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains,
27
scale, the heavens higher, Christ the loftiest. When
another shouts “ God damn you ! he not only con
demns the evil of the person addressed ; he also takes
occasion to avow his own strong faith in God and
God’s judgment of sinners. Similarly
God bless
you
implies that there is a God, and that from him
all blessings flow. How vividly does the vulgar
hyperbole “ Infernally hot,” prove the general belief
in hell-fire? And the phrase “God knows! not
merely declares that the subject is beyond human
knowledge, but also that an all-wise God exists. Here
in the West, as before stated, such brief expressions
of faith, which are so much more sincere than. long
formularies repeated by rote in church, are quite as
common as in your England. When one has sharply
rebuked or punished another, he says, “ 1 gave him
hell.” And that this belief in future punishment per
vades all classes is proved by the fact that even a
profane editor speaks of it as a matter of course. lor
the thermometer having been stolen from his sanctum,
the said worthy editor announced that the .mean cuss
who took it might as well bring or send it back (no
questions asked) for it could not be of any use to him
in the place he was going to, as it only registered up
to 212 degrees. The old notion that hell or Hades is
located in the middle of the earth (which may have a
scientific solution in the Plutonic theory that we dwell
on the crust of a baked dumpling full of fusion and
confusion) is obviously tallied by the miner s assertion
that his vein was true-fissure, reaching from the grass
roots down to hell. The frequent phrase A Go damned liar,” “A God-damned thief,” recognises God
as the punisher of the wicked. I have heard a man
complain of an ungodly headache, implying first, theexistence of God, and secondly, the fact that the God1 Is it not time that we wrote such words as this damn at lull
length, as did Emily Bronte, the Titaness, whom Charlotte just y
vindicates in this as in other respects; instead of putting oni y
initial and final letters, with a hypocritical fig-leaf dash m the
middle, drawing particular attention to what it affects to conceal ? These words are in all men’s mouths, and many ot
em
are emphatically the leading words of the Bible.
�58
Satires and Profanities.
head does not ache, or in other words is perfect.
Countless other phrases of this kind might be alleged,
a few of them astonishingly vigorous and racy, for new
countries breed lusty new forms of speech ; but the
few already given suffice for my present purpose. One
remarkable comparison, however, k cannot pass over
without a word : it is common to say of a man who has
too much self-esteem, He thinks himself a little tin
Jesus on wheels. It is clear that some profound sug
gestion, some sacrosanct mystery, must underlie this
bold locution ; but what I have been hitherto unable
to find out. The connection between Jesus and tin
may seem obvious to such as know anything of bishops
and pluralists, pious bankers and traders. But what
about the wheels ? Have they any relation to the
opening chapter of Ezekiel ? It is much to be wished
that Max Muller, and all other such great scholars, who
(as I am informed, for it’s not I that would presume to
study them myself) manage to extract whatever noble
mythological meanings they want, from unintelligible
Oriental metaphors and broken phrases many thousand
years old, would give a few years of their superfluous
time to the interpretation of this holy riddle. Do not,
gentlemen, do not by all that is mysterious, leave it to
the scholars of millenniums to come ; proceed to probe
and analyse and turn it inside out at once, while it is
still young and flourishing, while the genius who
invented it is still probably alive, if he deceased not in
his boots, as decease so many gallant pioneers.
And here, before afflicting you further, 0 muchenduring editor, let me soothe you a little by stating
that some particles of heresy, some few heretics, are to
be found even here. I have learned that into a very
good and respectable bookstore in a city of these
regions, certain copies of Taylor’s Diegesis have pene
trated, who can say how ? and that some of these have
been sold. A living judge has been heard to declare
that he couldn’t believe at all in the Holy Ghost outfit.
It has also been told me of a man who must have held
strange opinions as to the offspring of God the Father,
though certainly this man was not a representative
pioneer, being but a German miner, fresh from the
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
29“
States. This Dutchman (all Germans here are Dutch,
doubtless from Deutsche, the special claims of the
Hollanders being ignored) was asked solemnly by a
clergyman, “ WIio died to save sinners ?” and answered
“Gott.” “What,” said the pained and pious pastor,
“Don’t you know that it was Jesus the Son of God ?”
“ Ah,” returned placidly the Dutchman, “ it vass one
of te boys, vass it ? I always dought it vass te olt man
himselben.” This good German may have been misled
by the mention of the sons of God early in Genesis,
yet it is strange that he knew not that Jesus is the only
son of God, and our Savior. A story is moreover told
of two persons, of whom the one boasted rather too
often that he was a self-made man, and the other at
length quietly remarked that he was quite glad to hear
it, as it cleared God from the responsibility of a darned
mean bit of work. Whence some have inferred the
heresy that God is the creator of only a part of the
universe, but I frankly confess that in my own opinion
the reply was merely a playful sarcasm.
The most decided heresy which has come under my
own observation was developed in the course of a chat
between two miners in a lager-beer saloon and billiardhall ; into the which, it need scarcely be remarked, I
was myself solely driven by the fierce determination
to carry out my inquiries thoroughly. Bill was
smoking, Dick was chewing ; and they stood up
together, at rather rapidly decreasing intervals, for
drinks of such “fine old Bourbon” rye whiskey as
bears the honorable popular title of rot-gut. The fre
quency with which the drinking of alcoholic liquors
leads to impassioned and elevated discussion of great
problems in politics, history, dog-breeding, horse
racing, moral philosophy, religion and kindred
important subjects, seems to furnish a strong and
hitherto neglected argument against teetotalism. There
are countless men who can only be stimulated to a
lively and outspoken interest in intellectual questions
by a series of convivial glasses and meditative whiffs.
If such men really take any interest in such questions
at other times, it remains deplorably latent, not exer
cising its legitimate influence on the public opinion of
�.'30
Satires and Profanities.
the world. Our two boys were discussing theology ;
and having had many drinks, grappled with the doctrine
of the triune God. “ Wall,” said Bill, “ I can’t make
out that trinity consarn, that three’s one and one’s three
outfit.” Whereto Dick : “ Is that so ? Then you
warn’t rigged out for a philosopher, Bill. Look here,”
pulling forth his revolver, an action which caused a
•slight stir in the saloon, till the other boys saw that he
didn’t mean business ; “ look here, I’ll soon fix it up
for you. Here’s six chambers, but it’s only one pistol,
with one heft and one barrel; the heft for us to catch
hold of, the barrel to kill our enemy. Wall, God
a’mighty’s jest made hisself a three-shooter, while he
remains one God; but the Devil, he’s only a single-shot
derringer : so God can have three fires at the Devil for
one the Devil can have at him. Now can’t you figure
it out ?” “ Wall,” said Bill, evidently staggered by
the revolver, and feeling, if possible, increased respect
for that instrument on finding it could be brought to
bear toward settlement of even such a difficulty as the
present; “Wall, that pans out better than I thought
it could : but to come down to the bed-rock, either
God's a poor mean shot or his piece carries darned
light ; for I reckon the Devil makes better play
with his one chamber than God with his three.”
“ Maybe,” replied Dick, with calm candor, strangely
indifferent to the appalling prospects this theory held
out for our universe ; “ some of them pesky little
things jest shoot peas that rile the other fellow without
much hurting him, and then, by thunder, he lets day
light through you with one good ball. Besides, it’s
likely enough the Devil’s the best shot, for he’s been
consarned in a devilish heap of shooting more than
God has ; at any rate”—perchance vaguely remember
ing to have heard of such things as “ religious wars ”—
“ of late years, between here and ’Frisco. Wall, I
guess I don’t run the creation. Let’s liquor
mani
festly deriving much comfort from the consciousness
that he had no hand in conducting this world. Bill
acquiesced with a brief “ Ja,” and they stood up for
another drink. I am bound to attest that, in spite or
because of the drinks, they had argued throughout
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
31
-with the utmost deliberation and gravity, with a
dignified demeanor which Bishops and D.Ds. might
■envy, and ought to emulate.
Having thus comforted you with what little of heresy
and infidelity I have been able to gather, it is now my
painful duty to advance another class of proofs of the
general religiousness here ; a class of which you have
very few current specimens in England, unless it be
among the Roman Catholic. All comparative mythologists—indeed, all students of history—are said to
agree that the popular legends and myths of any race
at any time are of the utmost value, as showing what
the race then believed, and thus determining its moral
and intellectual condition at that period ; this value
being quite irrespective of the truth or untruth to fact
■of the said legends. Hence in modern times collections
of old traditions and fairy tales have been excellently
well received, whether from the infantile literature of
ancient peoples, as the Oriental and Norse, or from the
■senile and anile lips of secluded members of tribes
whose nationality is fast dying out, as the Gaelic and
Welsh. And truly such collections commend them
selves alike to the grave and the frivolous, for the
scientific scholar finds in them rich materials for
•serious study, and the mere novel-reader can flatter
himself that he is studying while simply enjoying
strange stories become new from extreme old age. All
primitive peoples, who read and write little, have their
most popular beliefs fluidly embodied in oral legends
and myths ; and in this respect the settlers of a new
region, though they may come from the oldest countries,
resemble the primitive peoples. They are too busy
with the tough work of subduing the earth to give
much time to writing or reading anything beyond their
local newspapers ; they love to chat together when not
working, and chat, much more than writing, runs into
stories. Thus religious legends in great numbers circu
late out here, all charged and surcharged with faith in
the mythology of the Bible. Of these it has been my
sad privilege to listen to not a few. As this letter is
already too long for your paper, though very brief for
the importance of its theme, I will subjoin but a couple
�32
Satires and Profanities.
of them, which I doubt not will be quite enough to
indicate what measureless superstition prevails in
these youngest territories of the free and enlightened
Republic.
It is told—on what authority no one asks, the legend
being universally accepted on its intrinsic merits, as.
Protestants would have us accept the Bible, and Papists
their copious hagiology—that St. Joseph, the putative
father of oui’ Lord, fell into bad habits, slipping almost
daily out of Heaven into evil society, coming home
very late at night and always more or less intoxicated.
It is suggested that he may have been driven into these
courses by unhappiness in his connubial and parental
relations, his wife and her child being ranked so much
above himself by the Christian world, and the latter
being quite openly attributed to another father. Peter,
though very irascible, put up with his misconduct for
a long time, not liking to be harsh to one of the Royal
Family ; and it is believed that God the Father sym
pathised with this poor old Joseph, and protected him,
being himself jealous of the vastly superior popularity
of Mary and Jesus. But at length, after catching a
violent cold through getting out’ of bed at a prepos
terous hour to let the staggering Joseph in, Peter told
him roundly that if he didn’t come home sober and in
good time, he must just stay out all night. Joseph,
feeling sick and having lost his pile, promised amend
ment, and for a time kept his word. Then he relapsed
the heavenly life proved too slow for him, the continual
howling of “all the menagerie of the Apocalypse”
shattered his nerves, he was disgusted at his own
insignificance, the memory of the liaison between his
betrothed and the Holy Ghost filled him with gall and
wormwood, and perhaps he suspected that it was still
kept up. So, late one night or early one morning,.
Peter was roused from sleep by an irregular knocking
and fumbling at the gate, as if some stupid dumb
animal w.ere seeking admittance. “Who’s there?”
growled Peter. “ It’s me—Joseph,” hiccoughed the
unfortunate. “You’re drunk,” said Peter, savagely.
“ You’re on the tear again ; you’re having another
bender.” “Yes,” answered Joseph, meekly. “Wall,”
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
33
said Peter, “you jest go back to where you come from
and spend the night there; get.” “I can’t,” said
Joseph. “They’re all shut up; they’ve turned me
out.” “ Then sleep outside in the open air ; it’s whole
some, and will bring you round,” said Peter. After
much vain coaxing and supplicating, old Joe got quite
mad, and roared out, “ If you don’t get up and let me
in at once, by God I’ll take my son out of the outfit
and bust up the whole consarn!” Peter, terrified by
this threat, which, if carried out, would ruin his pro
spects in eternal life by abolishing his office of celestial
porter, caved in, getting up and admitting Joseph, who
ever since, has had a latch-key that he may go and
come when he pleases. It is to be hoped that he will
never when tight let this latch-key be stolen by one of
the little devils who are always lurking about the
haunts of dissipation he frequents ; for in that case the
consequences might be awful as can be readily imagined.
Again it is told that a certain miner, a tough cuss,
who could whip his weight in wild cats and give points
to a grizzle, seemed uncommonly moody and lowspirited one morning, and on being questioned by his
chum, at length confessed that he was bothered by a
very queer dream. “ I dreamt that I was dead,” he
explained ; “ and a smart spry pretty little angel took
me up to heaven.” “Dreams go by contraries,” sug
gested the chum, by way of comfort. “ Let that slide,”
answered the dreamer ; “ the point isn’t there. Wall,
St.. Peter wasn’t at the gate, and the angel critter led
me on to pay my respects to the boss, and after travelling
considerable we found him as thus. God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Ghost and Peter, all as large
as life, were playing a high-toned game of poker, and
there was four heavy piles on the table—gold, not shin
plasters, you bet. I was kinder glad to see that they
played poker up in heaven, so as to make life there not
onbearable ; for *it would be but poor fun singing
psalms all day ; I was never much of a hand at singing,
more particularly when the songs is psalms. Wall, we
waited, not liking to disturb their game, and I watched
the play. I soon found that Jesus Christ was going
through the rest, cheating worse than the heathen
C
�34
Satires and Profanities.
Chinee at euchre ; but of course I didn’t say nothing,
not being in the game. After a while Peter showed
that he began to guess it to, if he wasn’t quite sure ; or
p’raps he was skeared at up and telling Christ to his
face. At last, however, what does Christ do, after a
bully bluff which ran Pete almost to his bottom, dollar,
but up and show five aces to Pete’s call; and ‘ What’s
that for high ?’ says he, quite cool. ‘ Now look you,
Christ,’ shouts Pete, jumping up as mad as thunder, and
not caring a cent or a continental what he said to any
body ; ‘ look you, Christ, that’s too thin ; we don’t want
any of your darned miracles here !’ and with that he
grabbed up his pile and all his stakes, and went off in a
mighty huff. Christ looked pretty mean, I tell you, and
the game was up. Now you see,” said the dreamer, sadly
and thoughtfully, “ it’s a hard rock to drill and darned poor
pay at that, if when you have a quiet hand at poker up
there, the bosses are allowed to cheat and a man can’t
use his deringer or put a head on ’em ; I don’t know
but I’d rather go to the other place on those terms.”
Not yet to be read in books, as I have intimated, but
circulating orally, and in versions that vary with the
various rhapsodists, such are the legends you may hear
when a ring is formed round the hotel-office stove at
night, in shanties and shebangs of ranchmen and
miners, in the shingled offices of judge and doctor, in
railroad cars and steamboats, or when bumming around
the stores ; whenever and wherever, in short, men are
gathered with nothing particular to do. The very
naivete of such stories surely testifies to the child-like
sincerity of the faith they express and nourish. It is
the simple unbounded faith of the Middle Ages, such
as we find in the old European legends and poems and
mysteries, such as your poetess Mrs. Browning well
marks in Chaucer—
“ the infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine.”
Many of the so-called Liberal clergy complain of the
gulf which yawns in this age of materialistic science
between religion and every-day life, this world and the
next, heaven and earth, God and man. The higher
things are treated as mere thin abstractions, they say ;
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
35
and only the lower things are recognised as real. These
pious pioneers, in the freshness and wonderfulness of
their new life, overleap this gulf without an effort,
realising heaven as thoroughly as earth. How could
the communion and the human nature of saints be
better exhibited than in St. Joseph falling into dissipa
tion and St. Peter playing poker ? How could the
manhood as well as the Godhead of Jesus Christ be
more familiarly brought home to us than by his taking
a hand at this game and then miraculously cheating.
When generations have passed away, if not earlier, such
legends as these will assuredly be gathered by earnest
and reverent students as quite invaluable historical
relics. They must fill the Christian soul with delight;
they must harrow the heart of him who hath said in
his heart, There is no God.
In conclusion, I must again express my deep regret
at being forced by the spirit of truth to give you so
favorable an account of the state of religion out here,
both in creed and practice. I trust that you will lose
no time and spare no exertion in attacking, and if pos
sible, routing out the Christianity now entrenched in
these great natural fortresses. Be your war-cry that
of the first pioneers, “ Pike’s Peak or bust ” ; and be
not like unto him found teamless half-way across the
plains, with the confession on his waggon-tilt, “ Busted,
by thunder.” For you can come right out here by
railroad now. As for myself, I climbed wearily and
with mortal pantings unto the top of this great moun
tain, thinking it one of the best coigns of vantage
whence to command a comprehensive view of the
sphere of my inquiries, and also a spot where one
might write without being interrupted or overlooked
by loafers. Unfortunately I have not been able to dis
cover any special religious or irreligious phaenomena ;
for, though the prospect is indeed ample where not
intercepted by clouds or mist, very few of the people
and still fewer of their characteristics can be made out
distinctly even with a good glass. How I am to get
down and post this letter puzzles me. The descent
will be difficult, dangerous, perhaps deadly. Would
that I had not come up. After all there is some truth
�36
Satires and Profanities.
in the Gospel narrative of the Temptation : for by
studying the general course of ecclesiastical promotion
and the characters of the most eminent churchmen, I
was long since led to recognise that it is indeed Satan
who sets people on pinnacles of the temple ; and I am
now, moreover, thoroughly convinced that it is the
Devil and the Devil only that takes any one to the top
of an exceeding high mountain.
The Devil in the Church of England.
[Whitten
in
1876.]
The Judical Committee of the Privy Council has
delivered judgment in the case of Jenkins v. Cook.
Many of the highest personages in the realm, including
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the great law-lords,
were present to give weight and solemnity to the
decision, which was read by the Lord Chancellor. It
was reported at full length in the Times of the follow
ing day, Feb. 17, 1876, the length being two columns
of small print.
I must try to indicate briefly the main facts of the
case, before hazarding any comments on it. Mr. Jen
kins, of Christ Church, Clifton, brought an action
against his vicar, the Rev. Flavel S. Cook, for refusing
him the Sacrament of the Holy Communion. Mr.
Cook justified the refusal on the ground that Mr. Jen
kins did not believe in the Devil, all passages relating
to the Devil and evil spirits having been excluded from
a bulky volume published by Mr. Jenkins, entitled
Selections from the Old and New Testaments. By
�The Devil in the Church of England.
37
the evidence of Mrs. Jenkins, who attempted an amic
able arrangement, it appears that Mr. Cook said to her :
“Let Mr. Jenkins write me a calm letter, and say he
believes in the Devil, and I will give him the Sacra
ment.” Whereupon Mr. Jenkins wrote on July 20,
1874: “With regard to my book, Selections from the
Old and New Testaments, the parts I have omitted,
and which has enabled me [[meaning, doubtless, and
the omission of which has enabled mej to use the book
morning and evening in my family are, in their present
generally received sense, quite incompatible with
religion or decency (in my opinion). How such ideas
have become connected with a book containing every
thing that is necessary for a man to know, I really
cannot say ; I can only sincerely regret it.” Mr. Cook
replied in effect: “ Then you cannot be received at
the Lord’s table in my church.” Mr. Jenkins, a
regular communicant, and admittedly a man of exem
plary and devout life, answered: “ Thinking as you do,
I do not see what other course you could consistently
have taken. I shall, nevertheless, come to the Lord’s
table as usual at ‘your’ church, which is also mine.”
Accordingly he presented himself, and was repelled,
whereupon he brought an action against Mr. Cook.
The case was first tried in the Court of Arches, and
the dean dismissed the suit and condemned Mr. Jen
kins in costs, saying, “ I am of opinion that the avowed
and persistent denial of the existence and personality
of the Devil did, according to the law of the Church,
as expressed in her canons and rubrics, constitute the
promoter [Mr. JenkinsJ ‘ an evil liver, and ‘ a depraver
of the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of
the Sacraments,’ in such sense as to warrant the defen
dant in refusing to administer the Holy Communion to
him until he disavowed or withdrew his avowal of the
heretical opinion, and that the same consideration
applies to the absolute denial by the promoter of the
doctrine of the eternity of punishment, and, of course,
still more to the denial of all punishment for sin in a
future state, which is the legitimate consequence of
his deliberate exclusion of the passages of scripture
referring to such punishment.”
�38
Satires and Profanities.
So far, so well; the Church of England was assured
of the Devil and the eternal punishment it has always
held so dear. But Mr. Jenkins appealed to the highest
court, and this has reversed the decision of the lower,
admonished Mr. Cook for his conduct in the past,
monished him to refrain from the like offence in
future, and condemned him in the costs of both suits.
Do you think, then, that the Church of England is
authoritatively deprived of her dear Devil and her
beloved eternal punishment? Not at all ; the really
important problem is evaded with consummate lawyer
like wariness ; the points in dispute are most shiftily
shifted like slides of a magic lantern ; we have a new
decision essentially unrelated to that which it cancels ;
we have a judgment which concerns not the Devil—
except that he would chuckle over the too clever
unwisdom which fancies it can extinguish “ burning
questions ” with legal wigs.
Their most learned lordships in the first place
observe that the learned judge of the Court of Arches
appears to have considered that the canon and the
rubric severally warrant the repulsion from the Lord’s
table of “ an evil liver,” and “ a depraver of the Book
of Common Prayer,” whereas the terms are “ an open
and notorious evil liver,” and “ common and notorious
depravers.”
This is a most pregnant distinction,
teaching us that an evil liver and a depraver of the
said book, as long as he is not notoriously such, is fully
entitled to the Holy Communion, fully entitled to the
privilege of “ eating and drinking damnation to him
self
a privilege from which the notorious evil liver
and depraver is righteously debarred.
Now, their most learned lordships find that there is
absolutely no evidence that the appellant was an evil
liver, much less an open and notorious evil liver. The
question follows, Was he a common and notorious
depraver of the Book of Common Prayer ? It was
contended that the Selections, coupled with the letter
of July 20, proved him to be this. But the letter was
not written spontaneously. He was invited by the
respondent, Mr. Cook, to write it. It was a friendly
and private, as well as a solicited, communication.
�lhe Devil in the Church of England.
39
Therefore, whatever be the construction of the letter,
and even if there be in it a depravation of the Book of
Common Prayer, still it would be impossible to hold
that the writing of such a letter in such circumstances
could make the appellant “ a common and notorious
depraver.” Whence it is clear that a man may deprave
the Book of Common Prayer as much as he pleases m
private conversation and letters, yet retain the precious
privilege of “ eating and drinking damnation to him
self ” in the Holy Communion ; he can only forfeit
this by common and notorious depravation of that
blessed book—for instance, by a depravation repeatedly
published in a newspaper, or persistently proclaimed
by the town-crier.
So far the law seems most clear, and the judgment
quite incontestible. But leaving the strait limits of
the law, and looking at the facts in evidence, there is
one part of the judgment which to the common lay
mind is simply astonishing. Their most learned lord
ships “ desire to state in the most emphatic manner that
there is not before them any evidence that the appellant^
entertains the doctrines attributed to him by the Dean of
Archeswherefore their most learned and subtle
lordships “ do not mean to decide that those doctrines
are otherwise than inconsistent with the formularies of
the Church of England.” Nor, of course, do they mean
to decide that those doctrines are inconsistent with
those formularies. No, “ This is not the subject for
their lordships’ present consideration.” Indeed, “If
they were [Nad been ] called upon to decide that
[whether] those opinions, or any of them, could be
entertained or expressed by a member of the Church,
whether layman or clergyman, consistently with the
law and with his remaining in communion with the
Church, they would have looked upon this case with
much greater anxiety than they now feel in its
decision •
Mr. Jenkins compiles and publishes a book of
Selections from the Bible, carefully . excluding all
passages relating to the Devil and evil spirits. The
book is bulky ; and, in fact, though this is not expressly
stated, seems to contain pretty well all the Bible except
�40
Satires and Profanities.
such passages. He farther exhibits in the case a book
of selections from the liturgy of the Church of England,
apparently compiled on the same principle of exclusion.
Mr. Cook sends through Mrs. J. a message : “ Let
Mr. J. write me a calm letter, and say he believes in
the Devil and I will give him the Sacrament.” Mr. J.
replies, as we have seen, that the parts he has omitted
are, in his opinion, quite incompatible with religion
or decency, in their generally received sense; such
generally received sense being evidently (to all of us
save their most learned and subtle lordships) that in
which the Church of England receives them. Mr. C.
replies, “ Then I must refuse to you the Communion.”
Mr. J. answers, “ Thinking as you do, I do not see
what other course you could consistently have taken
and resolves to test the question of legality. With
these facts staring them in the face, their most learned
and most subtle lordships can, with the utmost
solemnity, and in the most emphatic manner, declare
that there is not any evidence before them that
Mr. Jenkins does not believe in the Devil in the com
mon Church of England sense ! What the eyes of
laymen, however purblind, cannot help seeing clearly,
their far-sighted lordships, putting on legal spectacles,
dim with the dust of many ages, manage not to discern
at all.
The question cannot be left thus undecided. As
matters stand, the poor Church does not know whether,
legally, it has a Devil or not. Its Devil, its dear and
precious old Devil, is in a state of suspended animation,
neither dead nor alive ; a most inefficient and burden
some Devil. He must either be restored to full health
and vigor, or buried away decently for ever ; decently
and solemnly, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the
presence of all their lordships of the Judicial Com
mittee of the Privy Council, reading the appropriate
Church service over his grave. That would be touch
ing and impressive !—“ Forasmuch as it hath pleased
Almighty God (with the sanction and authority of the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council) of his great
mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother
here departed, we therefore commit his body to the
�The Devil in the Church of England.
41
ground ; earth, to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal
life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” At present it
appears that every clergyman and layman in the
Church has the legal right to sing as a solo in private,
especially if solicited, Beranger’s refrain, “ lhe Deml
is dead! The Devil is dead!" while it is doubtful
whether he is at liberty to chant it publicly and in
chorus—a state of things anomalous beyond even the
normal anomalism of all things in this our happy
England. It is urgent that some one, lay or cleric,
should compel the decision which the suit of Mr. Jen
kins has failed to obtain.
.
In considering the question whether disbelief m the
Devil would “deprave” the Prayer Book, we must
refer to this book itself. It contains three creeds—the
Apostles’, the Nicene, and that called of Athanasius.
Of these the Nicene (the creed in the Communion
Service, by the way) mentions neither the Devil nor
Hell; the Apostles’ and the so-called Athanasian men
tion Hell but not the Devil. In No. Ill of the Thirtynine Articles hell is solidly established, but again there
is no mention of the Devil. It may be argued that
hell implies the Devil, as a fox-hole implies a fox ; but
his existence is not authoritatively averred. . Strangely
enough, the only personage who, according to the
creeds and articles, has certainly been in hell, is Jesus
Christ himself : “ He descended into hell ; the third
day he rose again from the dead ; he ascended into
heaven.” What took him to hell ? The Prayer Book
does not inform us. But we learn from the Epistle
called 1 Peter, chap, iii., 19, 20, and chap, iv., 6_: f By
which also he went and preached unto the spirits in
prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once
the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah,
while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is
eight souls, were saved by water. ... For this cause
was the gospel preached also to them that are dead,
that they might be judged according to men in the
flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” Whence
it appears that the spirits in prison were not the Devil
and his angels, but the spirits of those who were
�42
Satires and Profanities.
drowned in the Flood for disobedience ; and it further
more appears that these spirits were saved by the
preaching of Christ ; so that in this famous harrying
of hell, he seems to have left it as empty as the moss
troopers in their forays left farmsteads. It is true
that No. VI. of the Articles settles the canon of the
Old and New Testaments, and that anyone daring to
exclude from belief anything in this canon might be
convicted of depraving the Prayer Book. But in that
case all the best scholars and divines of the Church are
guilty of this dreadful sin ; and not only guilty, but
openly, commonly and notoriously guilty ; and there
fore all merit repulsion from the Lord’s table. Let
the truly faithful clergy, those who believe all wuthout
question or distinction, do their duty to the Articles of
religion of their Church (the Creeds, as I have pointed
out, are neutral), and they will shut out from their
Communion nearly all the intelligent piety and learn
ing which lend it whatever dignity it still retains „
Granted the canon in its integrity, and the existence of
a personal Devil, and the doctrine of eternal punish
ment cannot be fairly disputed. Without multiplying
texts, I may refer to Revelation, chap, xx., as decisive
on these points.
From these considerations it follows that if the
Church of England is bound by her own articles she
will hold fast to the Devil and hell, and deny the
privilege of her Communion to any one who depraves
the Prayer Book by common and notorious disbelief
in them. And for my own part, I do not see how the
Church could get on at all without a Devil and hell,
especially in competition with the other Christian sects,
which make unlimited use of both. The Devil is in
fact as essential to the Christian scheme as a leader
of the opposition to that great political blessing,
government by party. If he were to die, or be deposed,
it would be necessary to elect another to the vacant
dignity. You cannot put the leadership in commission
as the unfortunate Liberals were taunted with doing
in their demoralisation after their disasters of the
General Election, and Mr. Gladstone’s sudden retire
ment. Just as Mr. Disraeli lamented the withdrawal
�The Devil in the Church of England.
43
of Mr. Gladstone, complaining of the embarrassment
caused to the Government by having no responsible
leader opposed to it, so we can imagine dear God
lamenting the absence of a Devil, and declaring that
the Christian scheme could not work well without one.
His utter loss would make the government of the
world retrograde from an admirably balanced consti
tutional monarchy to a mere Oriental absolute
despotism. You must choose some one to lead, if only
in name and for the time, as the Whigs chose Lord
Hartington. But though Lord Hartington is still
tolerated by us English, a Lord Hartington of a Devil,
be it said with all respect to both his lordship and his
Devilship, would scarcely be tolerated by either the
celestial or the infernal benches.
In Beranger’s authentic record, already alluded to, of
“ The Death of the Devil ’’—which, however, relates
only to the Church of Rome—we read how, on
learning the catastrophe :—
“ The conclave shook with mortal fear;
Power and cash-box, adieu! they said;
We have lost our father dear,
The Devil is dead ! the Devil is dead ! ”
But while they were in this passion of grief and
despair, St. Ignatius offered to take the place of the
dead Devil ; and none could doubt that he with his
Jesuits for imps would prove a most efficient substitute.
Wherefore the Church threw off its sorrow and
welcomed his offer with holy rapture :—
“ Noble fellow! cried all the court,
We bless thee for thy malice and hate.
And at once his Order, Rome’s support,
Saw its robes flutter Heaven’s gate.
Prom the Angels tears of pity fell:
Poor man will have cause to rue, they said;
St. Ignatius inherits Hell.
The Devil is dead! the Devil is dead.”
Thus matters continued well for the Church of Rome,
and, in fact, became even better than before. But if
the Devil should die in the Church of England, whom
has she that could efficiently take his place ? She has
no saints except the disciples and apostles of the New
�44
Satires and Profanities.
Testament, and these have long since gone to glory.
Would Mr. Gladstone undertake the office? or Mr'
Beresford Hope, with the Saturday Review for his
infernal gazette ? or the editor of the Rock ? or he of
the Church Times ? or the man who does religion for
the Daily Telegraph? Each of these distinguished
gentlemen might well eagerly accept the candidature
for a post so lofty : but I fear that none of them
could be considered equal to its functions. Perhaps
Mr. Disraeli has the requisite genius, and probably he
would be very glad to exchange the Premiership of
little England for that of large hell: but unfortunately
he has already committed himself to the side of the
angels, meaning by angels the humdrum Tory angels
of heaven—for, as Dr. Johnson said, the Devil was the
first Whig. On the whole, the Church of England had
better keep loyal to its ancient and venerable Devil,
being too impoverished in intellect and character to
supply a worthy successor.
■ I have ventured to compare the government of the
world in the Christian scheme, by a God and a Devil,
with our own felicitous government by party. There
is, however, or rather there appears to be, a striking
difference between the two. In our government, when
the Prime Minister finds himself decidedly in a minority,
he goes out of office, and the Leader of the Opposition
goes in; in the Government of the World the
Leader of the Opposition seems to have always had
an immense majority (and his majority in these days
is probably larger than ever before, seeing that
sceptics and infidels have multiplied exceedingly),
yet the other side is supposed to retain permanent
possession of office. I say “ supposed,” because the
Bible itself suggests that this popular opinion is a
mistake, the Devil (if there be a Devil) being entitled
by it the prince of this world, which surely implies his
accession to power.
Although the Godhead or governing power of the
world, according to the Christian scheme, is usually
spoken and written of as a trinity, it is in fact, qua
ternary oi’ fourfold fcr Protestants, and quinary or
fivefold for Roman Catholics. The former have God
�The Devil in the Church of England.
45
the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, and
God the Devil; the latter supplement these with
Goddess the Virgin Mary. Both formally acknow
ledge the first three as collectively and severally
almighty, but Protestants implicitly acknowledge the
fourth, and Roman Catholics the fifth, as more almighty
still (these solecisms of dogma cannot be expressed
without solecisms of language.) With the Roman
Catholics I am not concerned here. With regard to
the Protestants, and those especially professing the
Protestantism of the Church of England, I may safely
affirm that the Devil is not less essential to their
theology than is any person of the Trinity, or, in fact,
than are the three persons together. Indeed, the
Father and the Holy Ghost have been practically dis
pensed with, leaving Christ and Satan to fight the
battle out between themselves.
As this is a gloriously scientific age, nobly enamored
of the exact sciences, I will endeavor to expound this
sublime subject of the divinity of the Church of Eng
land mathematically, even after the manner of the
divine Plato in Book VIII. of “ The Republic,” treat
ing of divine and human generation; and in the
“ Timseus,” treating of the creation of the universal
soul. His demonstrations, indeed, are so divinely
obscure as to confound all the scholiasts ; my demon
stration, however, shall be so translucent that even the
most learned and subtle lords of the Judicial Committee
of the Privy Council, with their legal spectacles on,
shall not be able to help seeing through it. And
whereas the figures, which are shapes, are more intel
ligible to most people than the figures which are
numbers, let the exposition be geometrical. We will
say, then, that the Church of old conceived the divinity
in the form of an equilateral triangle, whereof the base
was Christ as the whole system was founded on belief
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Father and the Holy
Ghost were the two sides, leaning each on the other ;
and the Devil was the apex, as opposed to, and farthest
from, our blessed Savior. But in course of time the
theologians (perhaps merely wanting some occupation
for their vigorous talents, perhaps deeming it undig-
�46
Satires and Profanities.
nified to have two persons of the Godhead supporting
each other obliquely like a couple of tipsy men, perhaps
simply in order to make matters square) set to work,
and pushed up the two sides, so that each might stand
firm and perpendicular by itself. This process had two
unforeseen results ; it expanded the apex, which was a
very elastic point, so that it became the crowning side
of the square, and it so unhinged the sides that after a
brief upright existence they lost their balance, and
were carried to Limbo by the first wind of strange
doctrine which blew that way ; and the Devil and
Christ, or Christ and the Devil (arrange the precedence
as you please), were left alone confronting each other.
These two are of course equal and parallel, the main
distinction between them being that Christ is below,
and the Devil above, or, in other words, that the Devil
is superior and Christ is inferior(theDevil seems entitled
to the precedence). Thus matters have continued even
to the present time, the divinity showing itself, as we
may say, without form and void ; and we are free to
speculate on the momentous questions : Will the crown
(which is the Devil) fall into the base (which is Christ)?
Will the base float up into the crown ? Will the two
coalese half way ? Will they both, unknit from their
sides, be carried away to Limbo by some blast of strange
doctrine ? One thing is certain, they cannot long remain
as they are. Rare Ben Johnson chanted the Trinity, or
Equilateral Triangle ; rare Walt Whitman has chanted
the Square Deific (with Satan for the fourth side); no
poet can care to chant the two straight lines which, in
the language of Euclid, and in the region of intelli
gence, cannot enclose a space, but are as a magnified
symbol of equal—to nothing.
PS.—It may be appropriately added that the books
of Euclid are really symbolic and prophetic expositions
of most sublime and sacrosanct mysteries, though in
these days few persons seem aware of the fact. Thus
the very first definition, “ A point is position without
magnitude,” exactly defines every point of difference
between the theologians. So a line, which is as the
prolongation of a point, or length without breadth,
represents in one sense (for each symbol has manifold
�The Devil in the Church of England.
47
meanings) the history of any theological system. An
acute angle is, say, Professor Clifford ; an obtuse
angle, Mr. Whalley ; a right angle, the present writer :
non angeli sed Angli. The first proposition, “ To erect
an equilateral triangle upon a given finite straight line,”
indicates the problem solved by Christianity, when it
erected the Trinity on the basis of the man we call
Jesus. This pregnant subject should be worked out in
detail through the whole eight books.
Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
[Written
in
1866.]
Poor dear God sat alone in his private chamber,
moody, melancholy, miserable, sulky, sullen, weary,
dejected, supernally hipped. It was the evening of
Sunday, the 24th of December, 1865. Waters con
tinually dripping wear away the hardest stone ; year
falling after year will.at length overcome the strongest
god : an oak-tree outlasts many generations of men ;
a mountain or a river outlasts many celestial dynasties.
A cold like a thick fog in his head, rheum in his eyes,
and rheumatism in his limbs and shoulders, his back
bent, his chin peaked, his poll bald, his teeth decayed,
his body all shivering, his brain all muddle, his heart
all black care ; no wonder the old gentleman looked
poorly as he cowered there, dolefully sipping his
Lachryma Christi. “I wish the other party would
lend me some of his fire,” he muttered, “ for it is
horribly frigid up here.” The table was crowded and
the floor littered with books and documents, all most
�48
Satires and Profanities.
unreadable reading : missionary reports, controversial
divinity, bishops’ charges, religious periodicals, papal
allocutions and encyclical letters, minutes of Exeter
Hall meetings, ponderous blue books from the angelic
bureaux—dreary as the humor of Punch, silly as the
critiques of the Times, idiotic as the poetry of AU the
Year Round. When now and then he eyed them
askance he shuddered more shockingly, and looked at
his desk with loathing despair. For he had gone
through a hard day’s work, with extra services appro
priate to the sacred season ; and for the ten-thousandth
time he had been utterly knocked up and bewildered
by the Athanasian Creed.
While he sat thus, came a formal tap at the door,
and his son entered, looking sublimely good and re
spectable, pensive with a pensiveness on which one
grows comfortably fat. “ Ah, my boy,” said the old
gentleman, '• you seem to get on well enough in these
sad times : come to ask my blessing for your birthday
fete ?” “ I fear that you are not well, my dear father ;
do not give way to dejection, there was once a man—”
“ 0, dash your parables I keep them for your disciples ;
they are not too amusing. Alack for the good old times!”
“ The wicked old times you mean, my father ; the times
when we were poor, and scorned, and oppressed ; the
times when heathenism and vain philosophy ruled
everywhere in the world. Now, all civilised realms
are subject to us. and worship us.” “ And disobey us.
You are very wise, much wiser than your old worn-out
father ; yet perchance a truth or two comes to me in
solitude, when it can’t reach you through the press of
your saints, and the noise of your everlasting preaching
and singing and glorification. You knowhow I began
life, the petty chief of a villainous tribe. But I was
passionate and ambitious, subtle and strong-willed, and,
in spite of itself, I made my tribe a nation ; and I
fought desperately against all the surrounding chiefs,
and with pith of arm and wile of brain I managed to
keep my head above water. But I lived all alone, a
stern and solitary existence. None other of the gods
■was so friendless as I ; and it is hard to live alone when
memory is a sea of blood. I hated and despised the
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
r
4J
Greek Zeus and his shameless court; yet I could not
but envy him, for a joyous life the rogue led. So I,
like an old fool, must have my amour ; and a pretty
intrigue I got into with the prim damsel Mary ! Then
a great thought arose in me : men cannot be loyal to
utter aliens ; their gods must be human on one side,
divine on the other ; my own people were always
deserting me to pay homage to bastard deities. I
would adopt you as my own son (between ourselves, I
have never been sure of the paternity), and admit you
to a share in the government. Those infernal Jews
killed you, but the son of a God could not die ; you
came up hither to dwell with me ; I the old absolute
king, you the modern tribune of the people. Here you
have been ever since ; and I don’t mind telling you
that you were a much more lovable character below
there as the man Jesus than you have proved above
here as the Lord Christ. As some one was needed on
earth to superintend the executive, we created the
Comforter, prince royal and plenipotentiary ; and
behold us a divine triumvirate ! The new blood was
I must own, beneficial. We lost Jerusalem, but we
won Rome ; Jove, Neptune, Apollo, Bacchus, and the
rest, were conquered and slain ; our leader of the
opposition ejected Plato and Pan. Only I did not
bargain that my mistress should more than succeed to
Juno, who was, at any rate, a lawful wife. You
announced that our empire was peace ; you announced
likewise that it was war; both have served us. Our
power extended, our glory rose ; the chief of a miser
able tribe has become emperor of Europe. But our
empire was to be the whole world ; yet instead of signs
of more dominion, I see signs that what we have is
falling to pieces. From my youth up I have been a
man of war; and now that I am old and weary and
wealthy, and want peace, peace flies from me. Have
we not shed enough blood ? Have we not caused
enough tears ? Have we not kindled enough fires ?
And in my empire what am I ? Yourself and my
mistress share all the power between you ; I am but a
name at the head of our proclamations. I have been a
man of war, I am getting old and worn out, evil days
•
D
�50
Satires and Profanities.
are at hand, and I have never enjoyed life ; therefore
is my soul vexed within me. And my own subjects
are as strangers. Your darling saints I cannot bear.
The whimpering, simpering, canting, chanting block
heads ! You were always happy in a pious miserable
ness, and you do not foresee the end. Do you know
that in spite of our vast possessions we are as near
bankruptcy as Spain or Austria ? Do you know that
our innumerable armies are a Chinese rabble of cowards
and traitors ? Do you know that our legitimacy (even
if yours were certain) will soon avail us as little as that
of the Bourbons has availed them ? Of these things
you are ignorant : you are so deafened with shouts and
songs in your own praise that you never catch a whisper
of doom. I would not quail if I had youth to cope
with circumstance ; none can say honestly that I ever
feared a foe ; but I am so weak that often I could not
walk without leaning on you. Why did I draw out my
life to this ignominious end ? Why did I not fall
fighting like the enemies I overcame ? Why the Devil
did you get born at all, and then murdered by those
rascally Jews, that I who was a warrior should turn
into a snivelling saint ? The heroes of Asgard have
sunk into a deeper twilight than they foresaw; but
their sunset, fervent and crimson with blood and with
wine, made splendid that dawnless gloaming. The
joyous Olympians have perished, but they all had lived
and loved. For me, I have subsisted and hated. What
of time is left to me I will spend in another fashion.
Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” And he
swallowed hastily a bumper of the wine, which threw
him into convulsions of coughing.
Serene and superior, the son had let the old man run
on. “ Do not, I entreat you, take to drink in your old
age, dear father. You say that our enemies lived and
loved ; but think how unworthy of divine rulers was
their mode of life, how immoral, how imprudent, how
disreputable, how savage, how lustful, how un-Christian! What a bad example for poor human souls
“ Human souls be blessed ! Are they so much improved
now ? . . . Would that at least I had conserved Jove’s
barmaid ; the prettiest, pleasantest girl they say (we
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
51
know you are a Joseph, though you always had
three or four women dangling about you) ; fair-ankled
was the wench, bright-limbed ; she might be unto me
evfen as was Abishag, the Shunammite, unto my old
friend David.” “ Let us speak seriously, my father, of
the great celebration to-morrow.” “ And suppose I am
speaking very seriously, you solemn prig ; not a drop
of my blood is there in you.”
Here came a hurried knocking at the door, and the
angelic ministers of state crawled in, with super
elaborate oriental cringings, to deliver their daily
reports. “ Messages from Brahma. Ormuzd, etc., to
congratulate on the son’s birthday.” “ The infidels!
the mockers I” muttered the son. “Good words,” said
the father ; “ they belong to older families than ours,
my lad, and were once much more powerful. You are
always trying to win over the parvenus.” “ A riot in
the holy city. The black angels organised to look after
the souls of converted negroes having a free fight with
some of the white ones.” “ My poor lambs !” sighed the
son. “ Black sheep,” growled the father; “ what is
the row ?” “ They have plumed themselves brighter
than peacocks, and scream louder than parrots ; claim
precedence over the angels of the mean whites ; insist
on having some of their own hymns and tunes in the
programme of to-morrow’s concert.” “Lock ’em all
up, white and black, especially the black, till Tuesday
morning ; they can fight it out then—it’s Boxing Day.
We’ll have quite enough noise to-morrow without ’em.
Never understood the nigger question, for my part :
was a slave-holder myself, and cursed Ham as much as
pork.” “ New saints grumbling about lack of civilised
accommodation : want underground railways, steamers
for the crystal sea, telegraph wires to every mansion,
morning and evening newspapers, etc., etc. ; have had
a public meeting with a Yankee saint in the chair, and
resolved that heaven is altogether behind the age.”
“ Confound it, my son, have I not charged you again
and again to get some saints of ability up here ? Bor
years past every batch has been full of good-for-nothing
noodles. Have we no engineers, no editors at all?”
“ One or two engineers, we believe, sire, but we can’t
�52
Natives and Profanities.
find a single editor.” “ Give one of the Record fellows
the measles, and an old I' Univers hand the cholera, and
bring them up into glory at once, and we’ll have two
daily papers. And while you are about it, see whether
you can discover three or four pious engineers—not
muffs, mind—and blow them up hither with their own
boilers, or in any other handy way. Haste, haste, post
haste !” “ Deplorable catastrophe in the temple of the
New Jerusalem : a large part of the foundation given
way, main wall fallen, several hundred workmen
bruised.” “ Stop that fellow who just left; counter
mand the measles, the cholera will be enough ; we will
only have one journal, and that must be strictly official.
If we have two, one will be opposition. Hush up the
accident. It is strange that Pandemonium was built
so much better and more quickly than our New Jeru
salem !” “ All our best architects and other artists have
deserted into Elysium, my lord ; so fond of the
company of the old Greeks.”
"When these and many other sad reports had been
heard, and the various ministers and secretaries savagely
dismissed, the father turned to the son, and said : “ Did
I not tell you of the evil state we are in ?” “ By hope
and faith and charity, and the sublime doctrine of selfrenunciation, all will yet come right, my father.”
“ Humph ! let hope fill my treasury, and faith finish the
New Jerusalem, and charity give us peace and quiet
ness, and self-renunciation lead three-quarters of your
new-fangled saints out of heaven ; and then I shall
look to have a little comfort.” “ Will you settle to-mor
row’s programme, sire ? or shall I do my best to spare
you the trouble ?” “ You do your best to spare me the
trouble of reigning altogether, I think. What pro
gramme can there be but the old rehearsal for the
eternal life (I wish you may get it) ? 0, that horrible
slippery sea of glass, that bedevilled throne vomiting
thunders and lightning, those stupid senile elders in
white nightgowns, those four hideous beasts full of
eyes, that impossible lamb with seven horns and one
eye to each horn ! 0, the terrific shoutings and harpings and stifling incense! A pretty set-out for my
time of life! And to think that you hope some time
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
53
or other to begin this sort of thing as a daily amuse
ment, and to carry it on for ever and ever! Not much
appearance of its beginning soon, thank goodness—•
that is to say, thank badness. Why can’t you have a
play of Aristophanes, or Shakespeare, or Molidre ? Why
should I meddle with the programme ? I had nothing
to do with first framing it. Besides, it is all in your
honor, not in mine. You like playing the part of the
Lamb ; I’m much more like an old wolf. You are
ravished when those beasts give glory and honor and
thanks ; as for me, I am utterly sick of them. Behold
what I will do; I must countenance the affair, but I
can do so without disturbing myself. I’ll not go
thundering and roaring in my state-carriage of the
whirlwind ; I’ll slip there in a quiet cloud. You cant
do without my glory, but it really is too heavy for my
aged shoulders ; you may lay it upon the throne ; it
will look just as well. As for my speech, here it is all
ready written out ; let Mercury, I mean Raphael or
Uriel, read it; I can’t speak plainly since I lost so
many teeth. And now I consider the matter, what
need is there for my actual presence at all ? Have me
there in effigy ; a noble and handsome dummy can
wear the glory with grace. Mind you have a hand
some one ; I wish all the artists had not deserted us.
Your pious fellows make sad work of us, my son.
But then their usual models are so ugly ; your saints
have good reason to speak of their vile bodies. How
is it that all the pretty girls slip away to the other
place, poor darlings ? By the bye, who are going on
this occasion to represent the twelve times twelve
thousand of the tribes of Israel ? Is the boy Mortara
dead yet ? He will make one real Jew.” “We are
converting them, sire.” “Not the whole gross of thou
sands yet, I trust ? Faugh ! what a greasy stench there
would be—what a blazing of Jew jewelry ! Hand me
the latest bluebook, with the reports. . . . Ah, I see ;
great success ! Power of the Lord Christ! (always you,
of course). Society flourishing. Eighty-two thousand
pounds four shillings and twopence three-farthings last
year from Christians aroused to the claims of the lost
sheep of the House of Israel. (Very good.) Five con-
�54
Satires and Profanities.
versions !! Three others have already been persuaded
to eat pork sausages. (Better and better.) One, who
drank most fervently of the communion wine suffered
himself to be treated to an oyster supper. Another,
being greatly moved, was heard to ejaculate ‘ 0 Christ!’
. . . Hum, who are the five ? Moses Isaacs : wasn’t he
a Christian ten years ago in Italy, and afterwards a
Mahommedan in Salonica, and afterwards a Jew in
Marseilles ? This Mussulman is your oyster-man, I
presume ? You will soon get the one hundred and fortyfour thousand at this rate, my son ! and cheap too 1”
He chuckled, and poured out another glass of
Lachryma Christi ; drank it, made a wry face, and then
began coughing furiously. “ Poor drink this for a god
in his old age. Odin and Jupiter fared better. Though
decent for a human tipple, for a divinity it is but
am&rosze stygiale, as my dear old favorite chaplain
would call it. I have his devotional works under lock
and key there in my desk. Apropos, where is he ?
Left us again for a scurry through the more jovial
regions ? I have not seen him for a long time.” “ My
father! really, the words he used, the life he led ; so
corrupting for the young saints ! We were forced to
invite him to travel a little for the benefit of his health.
The court must be kept pure, you know.” “ Send for
him instantly, sir. He is out of favor because he likes
the old man and laughs at your saints, because he can’t
cant and loves to humbug the humbugs. Many a fit
of the blues has he cured for me, while you only make
them bluer. Have him fetched at once. 0, I know
you never liked him ; you always thought him laughing
at your sweet pale face and woebegone airs, laughing
‘ en horrible sarcasm et sanglante derision ’ (what a
style the rogue has I what makes that of your favorite
parsons and holy ones so flaccid and flabby and hectic ?)
‘ Physician, heal thyself 1’ So, in plain words, you
have banished him ; the only jolly soul left amongst
us, my pearl and diamond and red ruby of Chaplains,
abstracter of the quintessence of pantagruelism ! The
words he used ! I musn’t speak freely myself now,
and the old books I wrote are a great deal too coarse
for you ! Michael and Gabriel told me the other day
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
55
that they hacl just been severely lectured on the
earnestness of life by one of your new proteges; they
had to kick him howling into limbo. A fine set of
solemn prigs we are getting !” “ My father, the holi
ness of sorrow, the infiniteness of suffering!” “ Yes,
yes, I know all about it. That long-winded poet of
yours (he does an ode for you to-morrow ?) began to
sermonise me thereon. By Jupiter, he wanted to
arouse me to a sense of my inner being and responsi
bilities and so forth. I very soon packed him off to
the infant school, where he teaches the alphabet and
catechism to the babies and sucklings. Have you sent
for my jovial, joyous, jolly Cure of Meudon ?” “I
have ; but I deeply regret that your Majesty thinks it
fitting to be intimate with such a free-liver, such a
glutton and wine-bibber and mocker and buffoon.”
“Bah ! you patronised the publicans and sinners your
self in your younger and better days. The strict ones
blamed you for going about eating and drinking so
much. I hear that some of your newest favorites
object to the wine in your last supper, and are going to
insist on vinegar-and-water in future.”
Whereupon entered a man of noble and courtly
presence, lively-eyed and golden bearded, ruddy complexioned, clear-browed, thoughtful, yet joyous, serene,
and unabashed. “Welcome, thrice welcome, my beloved
Alcofribas,” cried the old monarch; “ very long is it
since last I saw you.” “ I have been exiled since then,
your Majesty.” “ And I knew nothing of it!” “And
thought nothing of it or of me until you wanted me.
No one expects the King to have knowledge of what
is passing under his eyes.” “ And how did you manage
to exist in exile, my poor chaplain?” “Much better
than here at court, sire. If your Majesty wants a little
pleasure, I advise you to get banished yourself. Your
parasites and sycophants and courtiers are a most
morose, miserable, ugly, detestable, intolerable swarm
of blind beetles and wasps ; the devils are beyond
comparison better company.” “ What ! you have
been mixing with traitors ?” “ Oh, I spent a few
years in Elysium, but didn’t this time go into the
lower circles. But while I sojourned as a country
�56
Satires and Profanities.
gentleman on the heavenly borders,’ I met a few
contrabandists.
I need not tell you that large, yea,
enormous quantities of beatitude are smuggled out of
your dominions.” “ But what is smuggled in ?” “ Sire,
I am not an informer ; I never received anything out
of the secret-service money. The poor angels are glad
to run a venture at odd times, to relieve the tedium of
everlasting Te Deum. By the bye, I saw the Devil
himself.” “ The Devil in my kingdom ? What is
Uriel about ? he’ll have to be superannuated.” “ Bah !
your Majesty knows very well that Satan comes in and
returns as and when he likes. The passport system
never stops the really dangerous fellows. When he
honored me with a call he looked the demurest young
saint, and I laughed till I got the lockjaw at his earnest
and spiritual discourse. He would have taken yourself
in, much more Uriel. You really ought to get him on
the list of court chaplains. He and I were always good
friends, so if anything happens. . . . It may be well for
you if you can disguise yourself as cleverly as he.
A revolution is not quite impossible, you know.”
The Son threw up his hands in pious horror ; the
old King, in one of his spasms of rage, hurled
the blue-book at the speaker’s head, which it
missed, but knocked down and broke his favorite
crucifix. “Jewcy fiction versus crucifixion, sire;
magna est veritas et prevalebit! Thank Heaven,
all that folly is owfeide my brains ; it is not the first
book full of cant and lies and stupidity that has been
flung at me. Why did you not let me finish ? The
Devil is no fonder than your sacred self of the new
opinions ; in spite of the proverb, he loves and dotes
upon holy water. If you cease to be head of the
ministry, he ceases to be head of the opposition ; he
wouldn’t mind a change, an innings for him and an
outings for you ; but these latest radicals want to crush
both Whigs and Tories. He was on his way to confer
with some of your Privy Council, to organise joint
action for the suppression of new ideas. You had
better be frank and friendly with him. Public oppo
sition and private amity are perfectly consistent and
praiseworthy. He has done you good service before
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
57
now ; and you and your Son have always been of the
greatest assistance to him.” “ By the temptation of
Job ! I must see to it. And now no more business.
I am hipped, my Rabelais ; we must have a spree. The
cestus of Venus, the lute of Apollo, we never could
find; but there was sweeter loot in the sack of
-Olympus, and our cellars are not yet quite empty. We
will have a petit souper of ambrosia and nectar.” “ My
father! my father! did you not sign the pledge
to abstain from these heathen stimulants ?” “ My
beloved Son, with whom I am not at all well pleased,
go and swill water till you get the dropsy, and permit
me to do as I like. No wonder people think that I am
failing when my child and my mistress rule for me 1”
The Son went out, shaking his head, beating his
breast, scrubbing his eyes, wringing his hands, sobbing
and murmuring piteously. “ The poor old God ! my
dear old father 1 Ah, how he is breaking! Alack, he
will not last long 1 Verily his wits are leaving him 1
Many misfortunes and disasters would be spared us
were he to abdicate prudently at once. Or a regency
might do. But the evil speakers and slanderers would
say that I am ambitious. I must get the matter judi-ciouslv insinuated to the Privy Council. Alack I
alack !”
“ Let him go and try on his suit of lamb’s wool for
to-morrow,” said the old monarch. “ I have got out of
the rehearsal, my friend ; I shall be conspicuous by my
.absence ; there will be a dummy in my stead.” “ Rather
perilous innovation, my Lord ; the people may think
that the dummy does just as well, that there is no need
to support the original.” “ Shut up, shut up, 0, my
'Cure ; no more politics, confound our politics ! It is
Bunday, so we must have none but chaplains here.
You may fetch Friar John and sweet Dean Swift and
the amiable parson Sterne, and any other godly and
-devout and spiritual ministers you can lay hold of ;
but don’t bring more than a pleiad.” “ With Swift for
the lost one ; he is cooling his ‘ sseva indignatio ’ in
the Devil’s kitchen-furnace just now, comforting poor
Addison, who hasn’t got quit for his death-bed brandy
jet.” “ A night of devotion will we have, and of in-
�58
Satires and Profanities.
extinguishable laughter ; and with the old liquor we
will pour out the old libations. Yea, Gargantuan shall
be the feast ; and this night, and to-morrow, and all
next week, and twelve days into the new year the
hours shall reel and roar with Pantagreulism. Quick,
for the guests, and I will order the banquet1” “ With
all my heart, sire, will I do this very thing. Parsons
and pastors, pious and devout, will I lead back, choice
and most elect souls worthy of the old drink delectable.
And I will lock and double bolt the door, and first
warm the chamber by burning all these devilish books ;
and will leave word with the angel on guard that we
are not to be called for three times seven days, when
all these Christmas fooleries and mummeries are long
over. Amen. Selah. Aurevoir. Tarry till I come.”’
A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
[Written
in
1866.]
The subjects for our solemn consideration are the
seclusion of her Most Gracious Majesty, and the com
plaints thereanent published in several respectable
journals. In order to investigate the matter thoroughly,
we constituted ourselves (the unknown number rr) into
a special Commission of Inquiry. We are happy to
state that the said Commission has concluded its
arduous labors, and now presents its report within
a week of its appointment; surely the most prompt and
rapid of commissions. The cause of this celerity we
take to be the fact that the Commissioners were un-
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
salaried ; we being unanimously of opinion that had .we
received good pay for the inquiry throughout the period
of our session, we could have prolonged it with certain
benefit, if not to the public yet to ourselves, for a.gr.eat
number of years. If, therefore, you want a commission
to do its work rapidly vote no money for it. And do
not fear that the most headlong haste in gathering
evidence and composing the report will diminish the
value of such report; for when a Commission has lasted
for years or months it generally rises in a quite different
state of the subject matter from that in which it first
sat, and the report must be partly obsolete, partly a
jumble of anachronisms. In brief, it may be fairly
affirmed as a general rule that no Commission of
Inquiry is of any value at all; the appointment, of one
being merely a dodge by which people who don’t want
to act on what they and everybody else see quite well
with their naked eyes, set a number of elderly gentle
men to pore upon it with spectacles and magnifying
glasses until dazed and stupid with poring, in the hope
that this process will last so long that ere it is finished
the public will have forgotten the matter altogether.
And now for the result of our inquiries on this subject,
which is not only immensely important, but is even
sacred to our loyal hearts.
A West-end tradesman complains bitterly that
through the absence of the Court from Buckingham
Palace, and the diminished number and splendor of
royal pomps and entertainments, the “ Season ” is for
him a very poor season indeed. The Commissioners
find that the said tradesman (whose knowledge seems
limited to a knowledge of his business, supposing he
knows that) is remarkably well off ; and consider that
West-end tradesmen have no valid vested interest in
Royalty and the Civil List, that at the worst they do a
capital trade with the aristocracy and wealthy classes
(taking good care that the punctual and honest shall
amply overpay their losses by the unpunctual and dis
honest) ; and if they are not satisfied with the West
end, they had better try the East-end and see how
that will suit them ; and, in short, that this tradesman
is not worth listening to.
�60
Satires and Profanities.
Numerous fashionable and noble people (principally
ladies) complain that they have no Court to shine
in. The Commissioners think that they shine a great
■deal too much already, and in the most wasteful
manner, gathered together by hundreds, light glittering
■on light; and that if they really want to shine
beneficially in a court there are very many dark courts
in London where the light of their presence would be
most welcome.
It is complained on behalf of their Royal Highnesses
the Prince and Princess of Wales that they have to
perform many of the duties of royalty without getting
a share of the royal allowance. The Commissioners
think that if the necessary expenses of the heir to the
throne are really too heavy for his modest income, and
are increased by the performance of royal duties, he
had better send in yearly a bill to his Mamma for
expenses incurred on her account, and a duplicate of
the same to the Chancellor to the Exchequer ; so that
in every Budget the amount of the Civil List
shall be equitably divided between her Majesty
and her Majesty’s eldest son, doubtless to their com
mon satisfaction.
It is complained on behalf of various foreign royal or
ruling personages that while they in their homes treat
generously the visiting members of our royal family,
they are treated very shabbily when visiting here. The
Commissioners think that Buckinghan Palace, being
seldom or never wanted by the Queen, and very seldom
wanted for the reception of the English Court, should
be at all times open for such royal or ruling visitors ;
that a Lord Chamberlain, or other such noble domestic
servant should be detailed to attend on them, and see
to their hospitable treatment in all respects ; and that
to cover the expenditure on their account a fair
deduction should be made from her Majesty’s share
of the Civil List, which deduction, being equitable,
her Majesty would no doubt view with extreme
pleasure.
It is complained on the part of her Majesty’s
Ministers, that when they want the royal assent and
signature to important Acts of Parliament, they have
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
61
to lose a day or two and undergo great fatigue (which
is peculiarly hard on men who are mostly aged, and
all overworked) in travelling to and from Osborne or
Balmoral. The Commissioners think the remedy plain
and easy, as in the two preceding cases. Let a law be
passed assuming that absence, like silence, gives
consent; so that whenever her Majesty is not in town,
the Speaker of the Commons or the Lord Chancellor,
or other great officer of State, be empowered to seal
and sign in her name, and generally to perform any of
her real and royal duties, on the formal demand of the
Ministry, who always (and not the Queen) are respon
sible to Parliament and the country for all public acts.
A Taxpayer complains that for fourteen years her
Majesty has been punctually drawing all moneys
allotted to support the royal dignity, while studiously
abstaining from all, or nearly all, the hospitalities and
other expensive functions incident to the support of the
said dignity. The Commissioners consider that her
Majesty is perchance benefiting the country more (and
may be well aware of the fact) by taking her money
for doing nothing than if she did something for it ;
that if she didn’t take the said money, somebody else
would (as for instance, were she to abdicate, the Prince
of Wales, become King, would want and get at least as
much); so that while our Government remains as it is,
the complaint of the said taxpayer is foolish.
Another Taxpayer, who must be a most mean-minded
fellow, a stranger to all sacred sympathies and hallowed
emotions, says : “ If a washerwoman, being stupified by
the death of her husband, neglected her business for
more than a week or two, she would certainly lose her
custom or employment, and not all the sanctity of con
jugal grief (about which reverential journalists gush)
would make people go on paying her for doing nothing ;
and if this washerwoman had money enough of her own
to live on comfortably, people would call her shameless
and miserly if she asked for or accepted payment while
doing nothing ; and if this washerwoman had a large
family of boys and girls around her, and shut herself
up to brood upon her husband’s death for even three or
four months, people would reckon her mad with selfish
�62
Satires and Profanities.
misery.” The Commissioners (as soon as they recover
from the stupefaction of horror into which this blas
phemy has thrown them) consider and reply that there
can be no proper comparison of a Queen and a washer
woman, and that nobody would think of instituting one,
except a brute, a Republican, an Atheist, a Communist’
a fiend in human form ; that anyhow if, as this wretch
says, a washerwoman would be paid for a week or two
without working, in consideration of her conjugal
affliction, it is plain that a Queen, who (it will be uni
versally allowed) is at least a hundred thousand times
as good as a washerwoman, is therefore entitled to at
least a hundred thousand times the “ week or two ” of
salary without performance of duty—that is, to at least
1,923 or 3,846 years, whereas this heartless and ribald
reprobate himself only complains that our beloved
Sovereign has done nothing for her wage throughout
“ fourteen years.” The Commissioners therefore eject
this complainant with ineffable scorn ; and only wish
they knew his name and address, that they might
denounce him for prosecution to the Attorney-General.
A Malthusian (whatever kind of creature that may
be) complains that her Majesty has set an example of
uncontrolled fecundity to the nation and the royal
family, which, besides being generally immoral, is
likely, at the modest estimate of £6,000 per annum per
royal baby, to lead to the utter ruin of the realm in a
few generations. The Commissioners, after profound
and prolonged consideration, can only remark that
they do not understand the complaint any better than
the name (which they do not understand at all) of the
“ Malthusian ” ; that they have always been led to
believe that a large family is a great honor to a legiti
mately united man and woman ; and that, finally, they
beg to refer the Malthusian to the late Prince Consort.
A devotedly loyal Royalist (who unfortunately does
not give the name and address of his curator) complains
that her Majesty, by doing nothing except receive her
Civil List, is teaching the country that it can get on
quite as well without a monarch as with one, and might
therefore just as well, and indeed very much better,
put the amount of the Civil List into its own pocket
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
63
and call itself a Republic. The Commissioners remark
that this person seems the most rational of the whole
lot of complainants (most rational, not for his loyalty,
but most rational as to the grounds of his complaint,
from his own point of view) ; in accordance with the
dictum, “ A madman reasons rightly from wrong pre
mises ; a fool wrongly from right ones
and that his
surmise is very probably correct—namely, that her
Majesty is really a Republican in principle, but not
liking (as is perfectly natural in her position) to publicly
profess and advocate opinions so opposed to the worldly
interests of all her friends and relatives, has been con
tent to further these opinions practically for fourteen
years past by her conduct, without saying a word on
the subject. The Commissioners, however, find one
serious objection to this surmise in the fact that if her
Majesty is really a Republican at heart, she must wish
to exclude the Prince of Wales from the throne ; while
it seems to them that the intimate knowledge she must
have of his wisdom and virtues (not to speak of her
motherly affection) cannot but make her 1661 that no
greater blessing could come to the nation after her
death than his reigning over it. As this is the only
complaint which the Commissioners find at once wellfounded and not easy to remedy, they are happy to
know that it is confined to the very insignificant class
of persons who are “ devotedly loyal Royalists.”
The Commissioners thus feel themselves bound to
report that all the complaints they have heard against
our beloved and gracious sovereign (except the one
last cited, which is of no importance) are without
foundation, or frivolous, or easily remedied, and that
our beloved and gracious Sovereign (whom may
Heaven long preserve!) could not do better than she is
now doing, in doing nothing.
But in order to obviate such complaints, which do
much harm, whether ill or well founded, and which
especially pain the delicate susceptibilities of all respec
table men and women, the Commissioners have thought
it their duty to draw up the following project of a Con
stitution, not to come into force until the death of our
present beloved and gracious Sovereign (which may
�64
Satires and Profanities.
God, if it so please him, long avert!), and to be
modified in its details according to the best wisdom of
our national House of Palaver.
DRAFT.
Whereas it is treasonable to talk of dethroning a
monarch, but there can be no disloyalty in preventing
a person not yet a monarch from becoming one :
And whereas it is considered by very many, and
seems proved by the experience of the last...................
years that the country can do quite well without a
monarch, and may therefore save the extra expense of
monarchy :
And whereas it is calculated that from the accession
of George I. of blessed memory until the decease of the
most beloved of Queens, Victoria, a period of upwards
of a century and a half, the Royal Family of the House
of Guelph have received full and fair payment in every
respect for their generous and heroic conduct in
coming to occupy the throne and other high places of
this kingdom, and in saving us from the unconstitu
tional Stuarts :
And whereas the said Stuarts may now be considered
extinct, and thus no longer dangerous to this realm :
And whereas the said Royal Family of the House of
Guelph is so prolific that the nation cannot hope to
support all the members thereof for a long period tn
come in a royal manner :
And whereas the Dukes of this realm are accounted
liberal and courteous gentlemen :
And whereas the constitution of our country is so
far Venetian that it cannot but be improved in har
mony and consistency by being made more Venetian
still :
Be it enacted, etc., That the Throne now vacant
through the ever-to-be-deplored death of her late most
gracious Majesty shall remain vacant. That the mem
bers of what has been hitherto the Royal Family keep
all the property they have accumulated, the nation re
suming from them all grants of sinecures and other
salaried appointments. That no member of the said
Family be eligible for any public appointment whatever
for at least one hundred years. That the Dukes in the
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
65
order of their seniority shall act as Doges (with what
ever title be considered the best) year and year about,
under penalty of large fines in case of refusal, save
when such refusal is supported by clear proof of poverty
(being revenue under a settled minimum), imbecility,
brutality, or other serious disqualification. That no
members of a ducal family within a certain degree of
relationship to the head of the house be eligible for any
public appointment whatever ; the head of the house
being eligible for the Dogeship only. That the duties
of the Doge be simply to seal and sign Acts of Parlia
ment, proclamations, etc., when requested to do so by
the Ministry ; and to exercise hospitality to royal or
ruling and other representatives of foreign countries,
as well as to distinguished natives. That a fair and
even excessive allowance be made to the Doge for the
expenses of his year of office. That the royal palaces
be official residences of the Doge. That the Doge be
free from all political responsibility as from all political
power ; but be responsible for performing liberally and
courteously the duties of hospitality, so that Bucking
ham Palace shall not contrast painfully with the Man
sion House. Etc., etc.
God preserve the Doge !
The Commission of Inquiry having thus trium
phantly vindicated our beloved and gracious Sovereign
against the cruel aspersions of people in general, and
having moreover drafted a plan for obviating such
aspersions against any British King or Queen in future,
ends its Report, and dissolves itself, with humble
thankfulness to God Almighty whose grace alone has
empowered it to conclude its arduous labors so speedily,
and with results so incalculably beneficial.
�66
Satires and Profanities.
A Bible Lesson on Monarchy.
[Whitten in 1876.]
The old theory of “ The right divine of kings to
govern wrong,” and the much-quoted text, “Fear God
and honor the king,” seem to have impressed many
good people with the notion that the Bible is in favor
of monarchy. But “ king ” in the text plainly has the
general meaning of “ruler,” and would be equally
applicable to the President of a Republic. In
Romans xiii., 1—3, we read : “ Let every soul be
subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power
but of God : the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the
ordinance of God : and they that resist shall receive
to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror
to good works, but to the evil.” Without stopping to
discuss the bold assertion in the last sentence, we may
remark that the real teaching of this passage is that
Christians ought to be indifferent to politics, quietly
accepting whatever government they find in power ; for
if the powers that be are ordained of God, or in other
words, if might is right, all forms of government are
equally entitled to obedience so long as they actually
exist. Of course Christians are not now, and for the
most part have not been for centuries, really indifferent
to politics, because for the most part they now are and
long have been Christians only in name ; but it is easy
to understand from the New Testament itself why the
first Christians , naturally were thus indifferent, and
why Christianity, has never afforded any political
inspiration. Nothing can be clearer to one who reads
the New Testament honestly and without prejudice
than the fact that Christ and his apostles believed that
the end of the world was at hand. Thus in Matt, xxiv.,
Jesus after foretelling the coming to judgment of the’
son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and
great glory,"when the angels shall gather the elect from
�A Bible Lesson on Monarchy.
67
the four winds, adds, v. 34, “Verily I say unto you,
This generation shall not pass, till all these things be
fulfilled.” This is repeated in almost the same words
in Mark xiii., and Luke xxi., and a careful reading
of the Epistles shows that their writers were profoundly
influenced by this prophecy. But with the world
coming to an end so soon, it would be as absurd to take
any interest in its politics as for a traveller stopping
two or three days in an inn to concern himself
with schemes for rebuilding it. when about to leave
for a far country where he intends settling for life. If
therefore, we want any political guidance from the
Holy Scriptures, we must go to the Old Testament, not
to the New.
Now the first lesson on Monarchy, which we re
member made us think even in childhood, is the fable
of the trees electing a king, told by Jotham, the son of
Gideon, in Judges ix. The trees in the process of this
election showed a judgment much superior to that
which' men usually show in such a business. It is
true that they did not select first the most strong and
stalwart of trees, the cedar or the oak, but they had
the good sense to choose the most sweet-natured and
bountiful, the olive, then the fig, then the vine. But
the bountiful trees thus chosen had good sense too, and
would not forsake the fatness and the sweetness and the
wine which cheereth God and man, to rule over their
fellow trees. Then the poor trees, like a jilted girl who
marries in spleen the first scamp she comes across,
asked the bramble to be their king ; and that barren
good-for-nothing of course accepted eagerly the crown
which the noble and generous had refused, and called
upon the trees to put their trust in its scraggy shadow,
“ and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and
devour the cedars of Lebanon.” Young as we were
when this fable first caught our attention, we mused a
good deal over it, and even then began to learn that
those most eager for supremacy, the most forward
candidates in elections, are nearly always brambles, not
olives or fig-trees or vines ; and that the first thought
of a bramble, when made ruler over its betters, is
naturally to destroy with fire the cedars of Lebanon.
�68
Satires and Profanities.
But God himself in the case of the Israelites has
vouchsafed to us a very clear judgment on the question
of Monarchy. In the remarkable constitution for that
people -which he gave to Moses, he did not include a
king, and Israel remained without a king for more
years than it is worth while endeavoring to count here.
We read, 1 Samuel viii., how ‘‘All the elders of Israel
gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel
unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold thou art old,
and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a
king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing
displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to
judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And
the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice
of the people in all that they say unto thee : for
they have not rejected thee, but they have
rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
... Now therefore hearken unto their voice : how
beit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show
them the manner of the king that shall reign over
them.” Some students of the Bible may have thought
that God’s severe condemnation of the Israelites for
wanting a king arose chiefly from wounded pride, from
the fact that they had rejected him, and we cannot
affirm that this feeling did not inflame his anger, for
he himself has said that he is a jealous God ; but the
protest which he orders Samuel to make, and the
exposition of the common evils of kingship, prove
clearly that God did not (and therefore, of course, does
not) approve this form of government. And, indeed,
it is plain that if he had approved it, he would have
given it to his chosen people at first. For although
divines have termed the form of government under
which the Jews lived before the kings a theocracy,
God did not then rule immediately, but always through
the medium of a high-priest or judge, and could have
governed through the medium of a king had he thought
it well so to do. And he who reads the history of the
Jews under the Judges, as contained in the Book of
Judges, and especially the narratives in chapters xvii.
to xxi. which illustrate the condition of Jewish society
in those days when “there was no king in Israel:
�J Bible Lesson on Monarchy.
69
every man did that which was right in his own eyes,”
will see that God must have thought a Monarchy very
vile and odious indeed when he was angry at the
request for it, and implied that it was actually worse
than that government by Judges alternated with bond
age under neighboring tribes which the theologians call
a theocracy. Samuel warned the people of what a
king would do, and doubtless thought he was warning
them of the worst, but kings have far outstripped all
that the prophet could foresee. The king, he said, will
take your sons to be his warriors and servants ; and
will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and
cooks, and bakers. This was the truth, and nothing
but the truth, but it was not the whole truth ; for the
sons have been taken to be far worse than mere
warriors and servants, and the daughters for much viler
purposes than cooking and baking. Samuel goes on :
“ And he will take your fields, and your vineyards,
and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give
them to his servants ”—when he does not keep them
for himself might have been added. “ And he will
take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards,
and give to his officers, and to his servants.” Surely
much more than a tenth, 0 Samuel! We will not
quote the remainder of this wise warning. Like most
wise warnings it was ineffectual ; the foolish people
insisted on having a king, and in the following chapters
we read how Saul the Son of Kish, going forth to seek
his father’s asses, found his own subjects.
The condemnation of Monarchy by God, as we read
it in this instance, is so thorough and general that we
feel bound to add a few words on an exceptional case
in which a king is highly extolled in the Scriptures,
without any actions being recorded of him, as in the
instances of David and Solomon, to nullify the praise.
The king in question was Melchizedek, King of Salem,
and priest of the most high God, who met Abram
returning from the defeat of the four kings and blessed
him, and to whom Abram gave tithes of all, as we read
in Genesis xiv. But this short notice of Melchizedek
in. Genesis does not by any means suggest to us the
fall wonderfulness of his character, though we natu-
�70
Satires and Profanities.
rally conclude from it that he was indeed an important
personage to whom Abram gave tithes of all. The
New Testament, however, comes to our aid, and for
once gives us a most valuable political lesson, though
the inspired writer was far from thinking of political
instruction when he wrote the passage. In Hebrews
vi., 20, and vii., 1 to 3, we read : “ Jesus, made an High
Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec. For
this Melchisedec, King of Salem, priest of the most
high God, who met Abraham returning from the
slaughter of the kings, and blessed him ; to whom also
Abraham gave a tenth part of all ; first being by inter
pretation King of righteousness, and after that also
King of Salem, which is King of peace ; without father,
without mother, without descent, having neither be
ginning of days nor end of life ; but made like unto
the Son of God ; abideth a priest continually.” Now
he to whom Jesus is compared, and who is like the Son
of God, is clearly the noblest of characters ; and there
fore, as the history in the first book of Samuel teaches
us that Monarchy is generally to be avoided, these fine
verses from the Epistle to the Hebrews delineate for
us the exceptional king whose reign is to be desired.
The delineation is quite masterly, for a few lines give
us characteristics which cannot be overlooked or mis
taken. This model monarch must be a priest of the
most high God—a king of righteousness and king of
peace; without father, without mother, without descent,
having neither beginning of days nor end of life ; but
made like unto the Son of God. Whenever and
wherever such a gentlemen is met with, we would
advise even the most zealous Republicans to put him
forthwith upon the throne. But in the absence of
such a gentleman we can hardly do wrong if we follow
the good advice of Samuel dictated by God Almighty,
and manage without any monarch.
�The One Thing Needful.
71
The One Thing Needful.
[Whitten
in
1866.]
When I survey with pious joy the present world of
Christendom, finding everywhere that the true believers
love their neighbors as themselves and are specially
enamored of their enemies ; that no one of them takes
thought for the morrow, what he shall eat or what he
shalfdrink, or wherewithal he or she shall be clothed ;
that all the pastors and flocks endeavor to outstrip each
other in laying not up for themselves treasures upon,
earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal ; and all are so intensely eager
to quit this earthly tabernacle and become freeholders
of mansions in the skies ; when I find faith as universal
as the air, and charity as common as cold water ; I
sometimes wonder, how it is that any misbelievers and
unbelievers are left, and feel astonished that the New
Jerusalem has not yet descended, and hope that the
next morning’s Times (rechristened The Eternities) will
announce the inauguration of the Millennium.
What delayeth the end ? Can there indeed be any
general hindering sin or imperfection among the pure
saints, the holy, unselfish, aspiring, devout, peaceful,
loving men and women who make up the population of
every Christian land ? Can any error infect the
teachings of the innumerable divines and theologians,
who all agree together in every particular, drawing all
the same doctrines from the same texts of the one un
varied Word of God ? I would fain believe that no
such sin or error exists, not a single inky spot in the
universal dazzling whiteness ; but then why have we to
deplore the continued existence of heathens and
infidels ? why is the New Jerusalem so long a-building ?
why is the Millennium so long a-coming ? why have
we a mere Sardowa instead of Armageddon ?
After long and painful thought, after the most
serious and reverent study, I think I have found the
�72
Satires and Profanities.
rock on which the ship of the Church has been wrecked ;
and I hasten to communicate its extreme latitude and
interminable longitude, that all Christian voyagers may
evade and circumvent it from this time forward.
The error which I point out, and the correction
which I propose, have been to a certain extent, in a
vague manner, pointed out and proposed before. A
clergyman named Malthus, not in his clerical capacity,
but condescending to the menial study of mundane
science, is usually considered the first discoverer. But
mundane science is conditioned, limited, vague, its
precepts are full of hesitation ; while celestial science
is absolute, unlimited, clear as the noonday sun, and its
precepts are imperiously forthright.
It seems to me that the one fatal error which has
lurked in our otherwise consummate Christianity, and
which demands immediate correction is this, that the
propagation of children is reconcileable with the pro
pagation of the faith—an error which while it lasts
adjourns sine die the day of judgment, and begins the
Millennium with the Greek Kalends.
One need not quote the numerous texts throughout
the New Testament (let Matthew xix., 12, suffice)
proving that Jesus and the epistolary apostles ac
counted celibacy essential to the highest Christian life.
One only of the disciples, so far as we know, was
married ; and he it was who denied his master ; and
most of the more profound divines consider that Peter
was justly punished for marrying, when Christ cured
his mother-in-law of that fever which might else have
carried her off.
But many modest people may be content with a
respectable Christian life which is not of the very
highest kind. They may think that as husbands and
wives they will make very decent middle-class saints in
heaven, after a comfortable existence on earth, leaving
the nobler crowns of holiness for more daring spirits.
Humility is one of the fairest graces, and we revere it;
but there is a consideration, most momentous for the
kind Christian heart, which such good people must
have overlooked—very naturally, since it is very
obvious.
�The One. Thing Needful.
73
Jesus tells us that many are called but few are
chosen; that few enter the strait gate and travel
€^narrow way, while many take the broadwaythat
leadeth to destruction. In other words, the 1 g
majority of mankind, the large majority of even those
who have the gospel preached to them, must be damn .
When a human soul is born into the world the odds
«re at least ten to one that the Devil will get it. Can
any pious member of the Church who has thought o
this take the responsibility of becoming a Parent. 1
thoroughly believe not. I am convinced that we have
so many Christian parents only because this very con“nous aspect of the case ^s not caught their vie
■ If the parents could have any assurance that the piety
of their offspring would be in proportion to their own
they would be justified in wedding m holiness But
alas7; we all know that some of the most religious
parents have had some of the most wicked children.
Dearly beloved brethren and sisters, pause and calcu
late that for every little saint you give to heaven, you
beget and bear at least nine sinners who will eventually
g The remedy proposed is plain and simple as a gospel
precept : let no Christian have any child at ail—a
rule which, in the grandeur of its absoluteness makes
the poor timid and tentative Malthusianism very
ridiculous indeed. For this rule is drawn immediately
from the New Testament and cannot but be perfect as
its source.
, . ,
7,
Let us think of a few of the advantages which would
flow from its practice. The profane have sometimes
sneered that Jesus and his disciples manifestly thought
that the world would come to an end, the millennium
be inaugurated, within a very few years from the public
ministry of Jesus. Luckily the profane are always
ignorant or shallow, or both. For, as the New Jeru
salem is to come down while Christians, are alive, and
as Christians in the highest sense or Christians without
offspring must have come to an end with the first gene
ration, it is plain that the belief which has been sneered
at was thoroughly well founded ; and that it has been
disappointed only because the vast majority of Cnris-
.
�74
Satires and Profanities.
,n°tbeen Christians in the highest senseat
all, but in their ignorance have continued to propagate
like so many heathen proletarians.
Now, supposing the very likely case that all Chris
tians now living reflect upon the truth herein expounded, and see that it is true, and, therefore, always
act upon it, it follows that, with the end of our now
young generation, the whole of Christendom will be
translated into the kingdom of heaven. Either the
mere scum of non-Christians left upon the earth will
be wholly or m great part converted by an example so
splendid and attractive, and thus translate all Christen
dom in the second edition in a couple of generations
more; or else the world, being without any Christianitv
a matter of course, be so utterly vile and evil
that the promised fire must destroy it at once, and so
bring m the New Heavens and New Earth.
Roman Catholic Christians may indeed answer that,
although the above argument is irresistible to the
Protestants, who have no mean in the next life between
Heaven and Hell, yet that it is not so formidable tn
them, seeing that they believe in the ultimate salvation
of nearly every one born and reared in their com
munion, and only give a temporary purgatory to the
worst of their own sinners. And I admit that such
reply is very cogent. Yet, strangely enough, the
Catholics even more than the Protestants, recognise and
cultivate the supreme beatitude of celibacy ; their
legions of unwedded priests, and monks, and nuns and
saints are so many legions of concessions to the truth
of my main argument.
I am aware that one of the most illustrious dignitariesof our own National Church, the very reverend and
reverent Dr. Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s, has advo
cated on various grounds, and with impressive force of
reasoning, the general eating of babies : and I antici
pate that some prudent Christians may, therefore, argue .
that it is better to get babies and eat them than to have *
none &t a^’ s^nce th© souls of the sweet innocents
would surely go to heaven, while their bodies would be
very nourishing on earth. Unfortunately, however
the doctrine of Original Sin, as expounded and illus-
�The One Thing Needful.
75
trated by many very thoughtfui theologians and specially theologians of the most determined Protestant
Ze makes it very doubtful whether the souls of
iX “are not damned. It will surely be better, then,
for good Protestants to have no infants at all:
The Athanasian Creed.
[Written
in 1865.]
ON Christmas Day, as on all other chief holidays of theyear, the ministers and congregations of our National
Church have had the noble privilege and pleasure o
standing up and reciting the creed commonly called of
St. Athanasius. The question of the authorship does
not concern us here, but a note of Gibbon (chapter 37)
is so brief and comprehensive that we may as well cite
it •_ “ But the three following truths, however strange
thev may seem, are now universally acknowledged.
1 St Athanasius is not the author of the creed which
is so frequently read in our churches. 2. It does not
appear to have existed within a century after his death.
3 It was originally composed in the Latin tongue,
and consequently in the western provinces. Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople, was so much amazed
by this extraordinary composition, that he frankly pro
nounced it to be the work of a drunken man.
(Ihis
Gennadius, by the bye, is the same whom Gibbon
mentions two or three times afterwards in the account
of the siege and conquest of Constantinople by the
Whoever elaborated the Creed, and whether he did
it drunk or sober, the Church of England has made it
thoroughly her own by adoption.
�76
Satires and Profanities.
Yet it must be admitted that many good churchmen
and perhaps even a few churchwomen, have not loved
th? adopted child of their Holy Mother as warmly as
their duty commanded. The intelligently pion?
Tillotson wishes Mother Church well rid of the bant
ing ; and poor George the Third himself, with all his
immense genius for orthodoxy, could not take kindly
to it. He was willing enough to repeat all its expres
sions of theological faith—in fact, their perfect non
sense, their obstinate irrationality, must have been
exquisitely delightful to a brain such as his?but he
was not without a sort of vulgar manhood, even when
worshipping m the Chapel Royal, and so rather choked
its denunciations—“ for it do curse dreadful.” He
am d mu'
faith Whole and ^defiled by reason, yet
did not like to assert that all who had been and were
and should in future be in this particular less happy
than himself, must without doubt perish everlastingly.
^OnS6 ^her.hand °ne of our most liberal Church
men, Mr. Maurice, has argued that this creed is essen
tially merciful, and that its retention in the Book of
Common Prayer is a real benefit. Mr. Maurice, how
ever, as we all know, interprets “perish everlastingly”
into a meaning very different from that which most
members of the Church accept. And his opinions lose
considerably in weight from the fact that no man save
himself can infer any one of them from any other.
? -°U T C^eered UP a bit by bis notions
?tern.al, a?d “ Everlasting,” you are soon
depressed again by his pervading woefulness. Of all
the rulers we hear of—the ex-king of Naples, the king
of Prussia the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, Abraham
Lincoln, and the Pope included—the poor God of Mr.
Maurice is the most to be pitied : a God whose world
is m so deplorable a state that the good man who owns
him lives in a perpetual fever of anxiety and misery
m endeavoring to improve it for him.
What part of this creed shocks the pious who are
shocked at. all by it ? Simply the comprehensive
damnation it deals out to unbelievers, half-believers,
and all except whole believers. For we do not hear
that the pious are shocked by the confession of theo-
�The Athanasian Creed.
77
logical or theo-illogical faith, itself. Their reverence
bowsand kisses the rod, which we cool outsiders mibht
fairly have expected to be broken up and. flung out
doors in a fury of indignation. Their sinful human
nature is shocked on account of their fellow-men ; their
divine religious nature is not shocked on account o
their God : yet does not the creed use God as badly as
m A chemist secures some air, and analyses it into its
ultimate constituents, and states with precise numerals
the proportions of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid
therein Just so the author of this creed secures the
Divinity and analyses it into Father, Son, and Ho y
Ghost, and just as precisely he reports the relations
these A mathematician makes you a problem of a
certain number divided into three parts in certain ratios
to each other and to the sum, from which ratios you
are to deduce the sum and the parts Just so the
author of this creed makes a riddle of his God dividing
him into three persons, from whose inter-relations you
are to deduce the Deity. An anatomist gets hold of
a dead body and dissects it, exposing the structure and
functions of the brain, the lungs, the hearts, etc. Just
so the author of this creed gets possession of the corpse
of God (he died of starvation doing slop-work toi
Abstraction and Company ; and the dead body .was
nurveved by the well-known resurrectionist Priest
craft), and cuts it open and expounds the generation
and functions of its three principal organs. But the
chemist does not tell- us that oxygen, nitrogen, and
carbonic acid are three gases and yet one gas, that each
of them is and is not common air, that they have each
peculiar and yet wholly identical properties; the
mathematician does not tell us that each of the three
parts of his whole number is equal to the whole, and
equal to each of the others, and yet less than the whole
and unequal to either of the others ; the anatomist does
not tell us that brain and lungs and heart are each dis
tinct and yet all the same in substance, structure, and
function, and that each is in itself the whole body and
at the same time is not : while the author of this creed
goes tell us analogous contradictions of the tnree
�78
Satires and Profanities.
aMe and tolerant as human nature can hope to be •
while the author of this creed aims at and manages to’
reach an almost super-human unreason and intnlpran™
™ W®re a sample of air, a certain number,
a dead body This humble-minded devotee, who knows
+£ Tn? c
1S finite and that God is infinite, and
that the finite cannot conceive, much less comprehend
SS exPress ibe infinite, yet expounds this Infinite
with the most complete and complacent knowledge
turns it inside out and upside down, tells us all about
it, cuts it up into three parts, and then glues it together
again with a glue that has the tenacity of atrocious
wrongheadedness instead of the coherence of logic puts
his mark upon it, and says, “ This is the only genuine
thing in the God line. If you are taken in by any
other why, go and be damned
and having done all
this finishes by chanting “ Glory be to the Father, and
to the Son, and to the Holy Ghcst !” And the pious
are not shocked by what they should abhor as horrible
sacrilege and blasphemy ; they are shocked only by
the Go, and be damned,” which is the prologue and
epilogue of the blasphemy. Were the damnatory
clauses omitted, it appears that even the most devout
worshippers could comfortably chant the Glory be to
the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost ”
immediately after they had been thus degrading Father
Son, and Holy Ghost to the level and beneath the level
ot their low human understanding. And these very
people are horrified by the lack of veneration in
�The Athanasian Creed.
79
Atheists and infidels! What infidel ever dealt with
God more contemptuously and blasphemously than this
creed has dealt with him ? Can it be expected that
Xe and sensible men, who have out-grown the pre
judices sucked in with their mothers milk, will be
reconverted to reverence a Deity whom his votaries
■dare to treat in this fashion ?
..
Ere we conclude, it may be as well to anticipate a
probable objection. It may likely enough be urged
that the author and reciters of the creed do not pretend
to know the Deity so thoroughly as we have ass^med’
since they avouch very early in the creed that the
three persons of the Godhead are one and all incom
prehensible. If the word incomprehensible, thus used
means (what it apparently meant in the author s mind)
unlimited as to extension, just as the word eternal
means unlimited as to time, the objection is altogether
wide of the mark. But even if the word incompre
hensible be taken to mean (what it apparently means
in the minds of most people who use the creed) beyond
the comprehension or capacity of the human intellect,
still the objection is without force. lor in the same
sense a tuft of grass, a stone, anything and everything
in the world is beyond the capacity of the human
intellect : the roots of a tuft of grass stride as deeply
into the incomprehensible as the mysteries of the Deity
Relatively this creed tells us quite as much about God
as ever the profoundest botanist can tell us about the
grass ; in fact, it tells relatively more, for it implies
a knowledge of the Final Cause of the subsistence of
God, which no future botanist can tell or imply of the
grass.
���
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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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Satires and profanities : with a preface by G. W. Foote
Description
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Edition: New ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 79 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed and published by G.W. Foote. First published 1884: see Preface. Satires previously published in the National Reformer and the Secularist.
Contents: The story of a famous old Jewish firm -- Religion in the Rocky mountains -- The Devil in the Church of England -- Christmas eve in the upper circles -- A commission of inquiry on royalty -- A Bible lesson on monarchy -- The one thing needful --The Athanasian creed.
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Thomson, James [1834-1882]
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Progressive Publishing Company
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1890
Identifier
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N639
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Rationalism
Free thought
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English
Athanasian Creed
Church of England
Monarchy
NSS
Rationalism
Satire
-
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Text
Published by Request.
THE INFLUENCE OF DOGMA
UPON RELIGION.
A REPLY
TO SOME REMARKS MADE IN CONVOCATION
DURING THE DEBATE ON THE ATHANASIAN
CREED, APRIL 24, 1872.
BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
LATE VICAR OF HEALAUGH.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
CAMDEN HOUSE. DULWICH, S.E.,
AND
TRUBNER AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
Price Fourpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY WERTHEIMER, LEA AND CO.
CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBURY CIRCUS.
HHEBHBSBBDEBnSKSB08K9flffl
�PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
APRIL 28th, 1872.
;
(J .
(( Now the axe is laid at the root of the trees.”
Matthew iii. 10.
•
During the debate on the Athanasian Creed last
week in Convocation, one of the speakers is reported
to have said, 11 Pogma and Religion must go togetherj and the Church cannot unlearn her dogmas.”
Statements, so plain and concise as this one, are
of great value, and bring out in sharp outlines the
chief points of contrast between conflicting opinions
or principles. We may be thankful to any bishop
or priest for coming forward in this way and throw
ing down the gauntlet for us to take up. The
sooner that both sides in this great dispute between
authority and individual freedom see the real issue
which is at stake, the less time will be wasted in
endless petty discussions about particular doctrines.
I therefore take up the challenge, and will this
morning endeavour to prove that religion and
dogma do not necessarily go together; that, if any
thing, dogma is a hindrance to religion; and that
�4
the cry of 11 Non possumus” is the death-knell of
any church.
(1.) Religion and Dogma do not necessarily go
together.
Not to mention the Unitarian body, a large por
tion of whose ministers and laity have no articles
and creeds, no written dogmas at all, we will only
speak for ourselves. Religion surely means a sense
of the being of God, a belief in His goodness
which inspires veneration, obedience and love on our
part, and a consciousness of our hearts’ desire to
conform our lives to His holy will. This is not in
tended to be a definition; but, I think, people of
every creed in Christendom will admit that so much
at least is included under the term 11 Religion.”
That this devout reverence towards God, this
entire confidence in His fidelity, lies absolutely
at the very foundation of our present movement
cannot be gainsaid. Many, it is true, have joined
us only because they see the falseness and corrup
tion of the prevailing beliefs; and some few have
joined us, not through sympathy with our religion
at all, but from sympathy with our principles in
the search after truth. But with these exceptions,
the rest of that large and influential body who are
with us, have undertaken this great work from
religious motives; because they love God, and would
fain deliver the Christian peoples around them from
their unwholesome dread of God, from their gloomy
superstitions, and from their degrading and de
moralising ideas of the Divine dealings with men.
•
�Does this religion depend on dogma, or does it not ?
I answer, this religion not only does not depend on
dogma, but owes its very existence to the subversion
of dogma. It is born out of the instinctive rebellion
of our own reasons, consciences, and hearts, against
dogmas which we saw to be false, immoral, and
cruel. So far from such a religion and dogma
going together, speaking for ourselves, they could
not exist side by side. Either the dogma would
kill the religion, or the religion crush the dogma.
We owe all the light and beauty and gladness of
our religion to our having been able to renounce
the dogmas of orthodoxy, and to our determination
never again to be bound by any of them.
And this leads me to say a necessary word or two
about the term “dogma.” Dogma must not be con
founded with doctrine. Doctrine is merely a tech
nical term for an opinion, say a formal opinion, and
in theology doctrine is therefore a theological formal
opinion, the expression of a thought or idea about
God, or about our relation to Him. Now it is easy
to see that there can be no religion without doctrine,
?.e., without some thought or opinion about God;
and that every one of us who is religious must have
doctrines in his own mind as the basis of his religion.
In our case, there is such a general consensus of
doctrine or opinion as to draw us together, and
enable us to worship together, with a very great
degree of unanimity, in the words of one book.
But nevertheless, each one’s doctrine is his own to
hold or to change as he pleases, and is held only to
�6
grow wider and deeper in meaning, or to be
abandoned for another which has been found to be
more true. There must be many shades of doctrine
amongst us which, if they ever came to be petrified
into dogmas, would explode our society into frag
ments; but we have a bond of union deeper still
than our doctrines, we are bound together mainly
and most securely by our principles, by the princi
ples on which we consider that all doctrines should
be held. The most important of these is the
principle of perfect liberty given and received all
round to each one to hold his own, without fear of
illegitimate pressure or interference, and above all,
without fear of God or hell-fire. Such a bond of
union, never before tried so thoroughly, so radically,
will, we believe, be found strong and lasting—
infinitely better than that delusive uniformity in
which all churches have placed their trust.
Doctrines held on such terms of perfect individual
liberty, and by each one in the hope of going on
learning more and more of religious truth, and of
changing the partial truth of to-day for the more
complete truth of the morrow; doctrines which are
thus being continually brought to the test of reason,
and into the clearer light of advancing science, can
never be identified with dogmas.
Dogmas are doctrines turned into stone, of which
Church walls are built, to shut out the rest of the
world, and to imprison those who take shelter behind
them. When a doctrine is taken up by a commu
nity or Church, signed, sealed, stamped, ratified, and
�7
passed into law, then it becomes a dogma. Dogmatism
is the death of deliberate thought, because it is the
enforcement of doctrine. It makes little difference
whether the doctrine be enforced by Act of Par
liament, and its infringement made punishable by
pains and penalties, or whether it be urged upon
the acceptance of men under threats of God’s dis
pleasure, or with bribes of heaven hereafter—if it
be enforced at all, it becomes dogma. And one of
the most hopeful signs of our times is that the very
name of dogma is execrated by the wise, and
dreaded by the loving. Dogmas are the stones by
which priests and people in all ages have killed
their prophets. While it is the very nature of doc
trines to be ever changing, dogmas have congealed
them in deadly frost. Doctrines are the living
thoughts of living men; dogmas are the lifeless
forms of thoughts which are dead, curious only as
the contents of a long-closed sepulchre. Doctrines
have the power of immortal life and ever increasing
beauty and variety; dogmas once written down
with the iron pen of Church authority on the stone of
stumbling and rock of offence, become first ghastly
and then grotesque by the ravages of time.
No wonder then that, as doctrine after doctrine
died and was buried in the sepulchre of dogma, the
collection of thoughts scattered over centuries, but
which the dogmas now present for our acceptance
en masse, should prove to be nothing but a jumble
of incoherent and contradictory propositions. The
miserable keepers of this museum of ugly relics in
�8
our own times are only still more to be pitied than
the unhappy men whose business it was, in the
sixteenth century, to build for them a new gallery,
and place them in their new niches. Whoever it
was who wrote the Thirty-nine Articles began at
least with a noble Te Deum, simple and grand, the
earnest utterance, no doubt, of a heart overflowing
with reverence and love. “ There is but One living
and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or
passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;
the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible
and invisible.” He had only written three lines
however, before the religious emotion which had
inspired them, fled suddenly away when he was
compelled to grope amongst the ashes of the past,
and divide the invisible One into three pieces, and
then put them together again like a dreadful puzzle.
But his grief and perplexity are not to be compared
with the despair of those who have to face all these
embalmed relics to-day, and to tell the people in
solemn time and place that they are all alive and
will live for ever. Can we think without pity of
one, who knowing, e.g., what the Athanasian creed
contains, is obliged to confess: r The Church
cannot unlearn her dogmas.” To be placed in such
dire and distressing antagonism to the tide of
thought in the nineteenth century and in England
is far worse than to endure the worst penalties of
modern martyrdom. But what will not 11 Dogma”
do ? It is backed up by authority. All these
mummies of creeds and articles stand and preach
�9
to us the dreary echoes of long-dead thought, they
tie our hands, direct our steps, and force words
upon our lips. Galvanized by Acts of Parliament,
and by the still more coercive authority of a spectral
Church, they can make slaves of us as we go, can
scare us into submission, if a daring thought should
venture to rebel, and can, even to-day, darken our
last hours by visions of a fathomless despair. No
words of mine can describe their fatal power in
such vivid imagery as that of the old Hebrew
Psalmist. “Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but
unto Thy name be the praise, for Thy loving mercy
and for Thy truth’s sake. Wherefore should the
heathen say of us, ‘ Where is now their God ?’ As
for our God, He is in heaven, He hath done
whatsoever pleased Him. But their idols are the
work of men’s hands. They have mouths and
speak not; eyes have they and see not. They
have ears and hear not, noses have they and smell
not. They have hands and handle not; feet have
they and walk not; neither speak they through
their throat. They that make them are like unto
them, and so are all they that put their trust in
them.”
(2.) And these words bring me to say, in the second
place, that dogma is a hindrance to true religion.
Think first what is its influence on the preacher.
The enforcement of doctrine, whether by acts of
uniformity, by thirty-nine articles, by subscription
of clergy, by solemn oath of clerical fraternities, by
trust deeds, by inarticulate signs of assent or dis
�sent on the part of pewholders in any Church—
directly or indirectly—the imposition of dogma and
its practical enforcement on the preacher’s utterance
is a mischief indescribably deep and subtle. No
arguments can ever justify the anomaly, the ab
surdity and the cruelty of telling a man who desires
to preach the truth, that he must think in a par
ticular groove, and speak in conformity with par
ticular written or unwritten propositions; to be met,
at the moment of the discovery of some beautiful
idea, by this kind of caution, “ It is all very good,
but it is not orthodox, you know,” or that ((it may be
ever so true, but it is not safe,” &c., is to sentence
a man to lasting hypocrisy, or to temporal ruin.
Besides this, every limit put upon the freedom of
his utterance diminishes the value of every state
ment of his own true conviction, and casts discredit
upon whatever he may honestly say. How can
you be sure that your preacher in his moments of
greatest fervour is not saying what his heart belies,
if it be in the power of any of his hearers to turn
round upon him and say, “ You dare not preach
otherwise if you would.” It is therefore for the
best interest of all opinions whatsoever, to leave the
preacher absolutely unfettered.
But if you have a tongue-tied clergy you must
have a hood-winked laity. If you have falsehood
in the priest, the people will learn to love falsehood,
to prefer the poison of a lie to the nourishment of
truth.
But quite apart from this corruption, dogma most
snsHorannHi
�11
surely hinders religion, both in its essence and ex
pression. Have not hundreds and thousands been
thrown into frightful confusion and perplexity by
the dogma of the Trinity, not because it was a
doctrine, but because it was a dogma, to be believed
under peril of damnation ? Have not their hearts
sunk within them in trying to master a problem
which one moment’s free thought would have made
them toss aside with ridicule and scorn, but which
the awful dread of hell fascinated them to study ?
Treated as fanciful speculations, or as modes of
expressing theologically some subtle metaphysical
abstractions, these old creeds could do but little
harm; but as dogmas required to be believed
for one’s soul’s salvation, they have done irre
parable mischief to religion, alienated many and
many from the very thought of God, driven them
for shelter from Him and His awful mysteries
to the arms of a comprehensible and kind-hearted
man, and have forced the nations of Christendom
into an idolatry scarcely less injurious to reli
gion than the paganism which it supplanted. If
mankind are really at a hopeless distance from
God, and alienated from Him by their ignorance
and sin, dogma only adds wofully to their miseries,
dogma builds a wall between God and man over
which every prodigal son must climb, who would
11 arise and go to his father.” Every step which we
take under its guidance is, by the confession of its
own priests, full of darkness and danger. Clouds of
heaven’s wrath are waiting to burst in fury upon
�12
our unfortunate heads, pit-falls beneath our feet lie
hidden to entrap us into some shocking Sabellian
heresy, or some Homoiousian shade of a deadly
Arianism.
For this and that and the other
dogma, however hopelessly contradictory, “is the
Catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully,
he cannot be saved.”
Now where is religion all this time, that we have
been picking our way over this morass and that
desert, and climbing over the walls of dogma to get
ourselves saved I To me it looks like the religion
of the lowest physical type, if it be religion at all.
It is fetichism and not religion. It is the worship
of ourselves, not of God; it is devotion to our own
safety, not to His blessed will; it is the apotheosis of
bribery and corruption. But it is dogma and
dogma only that thus debases men. Left to them
selves they would be ashamed to believe those very
creeds which “the Church cannot unlearn.” They
would hide them away as symptoms of mental and
moral disease, lest men should scorn them for their
folly or shun them for their madness.
Dogma has, alas! laid its fetters over the very
worship of mankind, and forbidden aspiration which
it could not sanction, has silenced praises which it
did not enjoin. If our thoughts of God rise and
expand, our forms of prayer and praise are still
petrified and all but lifeless. If we have outgrown
those conceptions of the Divine Being, and of the
early origin of our race, on which the liturgy was
based, we are still tied down by dogma to repeat
�13
the same old weary platitudes, and to utter the
same senseless lamentations, which once suited our
unhappy forefathers. If we have grown more bro
therly towards our fellow-men, under the blessed
sunshine of the Father’s love to us all, we are still
bound, on the Church’s highest festivals, to curse
all Arians and Unitarians, and all the millions of
the Greek Church, with a bitter curse, and to pollute
our very praises to the Almighty Father by
anathemas against our brethren.
(3.) It does not require much courage to predict
the near dissolution of any Church offering such ob
structions to true religion, and, moreover, declaring
that she “ cannot unlearn her own dogmas.” Bad as
the Church of England may be, we must not believe
she is so bad as that, or that any Anglican High
Churchman is her spokesman. The Houses of
Parliament, and not the Houses of Convocation,
have the laws of the Church in their own hands.
The Queen, and not Christ or Peter, is the real head
of the Church, and so there is some chance of her
unlearning her own dogmas. Not merely a chance
of unlearning these particular ones, which are now
embalmed in the Thirty-nine Articles and Creeds,
but a chance of her divorcing herself for ever from
all dogmas, and of allowing doctrines to resume
their proper place, as the living thoughts of living
men, whose goal is the truth, and whom neither
terror nor greed can hinder from its pursuit.
Has the past no lesson to teach the dogmatist ?
What are his own dogmas, and what is the origin of
�14
his own creeds? Were not each and all in turn
the heresies of the successive ages in which they
first appeared ? Did not the dogmas of the dying
systems struggle long and manfully against the
new opinions, and was not their fall certain only
because the new opinions were more true than
those which they displaced? Neither priests of
Jupiter nor silversmiths at Ephesus could keep
their petrified dogmas from sinking in the sands of
time, and going down into the darkness where all
that is dead must finally be laid.
Tell us, ye chief priests and rulers, you will not,
you cannot unlearn your dogmas, then we tell you
that your day has come and is gone.
The thing that will not grow and keep pace with
the march;of intellect, that cannot move with the
progress of scientific knowledge, nor expand with
the enlarging hearts of men who have found a
loving God for themselves, that thing, we say, must
die, it is dead as soon as it ceases to move onward.
Your best, your noblest dogma of all, if it be
dogma and no longer living thought, is dead already,
and you cannot for long pass off that lifeless corpse
for a living man, dress it how you will, and paint
its withering parchment with the glowing carmine,
prop it up in your busiest thoroughfares, and give
it attitudes like the attitudes of the living throng;
speak for it too, be the interpreter of its wakeless
silence to the ears of men and women who have
been scared by its cold fixed gaze; but you will not
long succeed in deluding your fellow-men. They
�15
will soon find out that you have been playing upon
their childish and groundless fears, that you have
been amusing yourself in the twilight at their ex
pense, and they will sweep you and your mummified
creeds quickly, and perhaps rudely, out of the path
way of mankind.
If religion itself were worthless, dogma would
never give it worth. But if religion still holds its
own amongst human hearts, men will find one for
themselves which shall best accord with the highest
and not with the lowest aspect of their nature, one
which can lead them on instead of drawing them back.
But one thing they will not do. They will not give
up their manly souls to the dictates of the dead, nor
suffer themselves to be enslaved by those whom they
have once discovered to be the dupes of their
own fears, who shamelessly confess that for all
time to come, no one among mankind will ever dis
cover any truth about God and man not already
known, and that no one will discover any error in
the little patch of dogmas round which the’ Church
has built its ugly stone wall. What? errors in
Paganism, errors in Judaism, errors in Mahometanism,
errors in Brahmanism, errors in Buddhism, but none
in Christianity ? No, not one I
il The Church cannot unlearn her own dogmas.”
Then the Church is dead. Cover her tenderly,
bury her reverently—but pile over her tomb the
stumbling blocks of creed and dogma, which she had
strewn in our way.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The influence of dogma upon religion. A reply to some remarks made in convocation during the debate on the Athanasian creed, April 24 1872
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. Printed by Wertheimer, Lea and Co., London. Title page states: Published by Request. The sermon was preached at St George's Hall, April 28th 1872.
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[1872]
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G3391
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Religion
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Athanasian Creed
Dogma
Morris Tracts
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Text
TRINITY SUNDAY.
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
MAY 3.1st, 1374, by tiie
REV.
CHARLES VOYSEY
[From the Eastern Post, June 'oth, 1874/1
On Sunday (May 31st) at St. George’s Rail, Langham-place, 'he
Rev. C. Voysey took his text from Psalm cxlv., 10., “All 1 hy
works praise Thee O Lord, and Thy saints give thanks unto
Thee.”
He said—As the world grows older and wiser, men begin to be
weary of Theology, and to care more for Religion. <>n this Trinity
Sunday I might, perhaps, be expected to go over the old and
tedious ground of a barren controversy, and to shew, for the
thousandth time, that Three can never be One, nor One ever be
Three, in the same arithmetical sense of the terms. But I am in
no mood for so wearisome and thankless a task. In an orthodox
pulpit such a renewal of a worn-out discussion might be very
useful and appropriate; but surely, in a place like this, it would
be a waste of time, if not an affront to your understandings, to go
over ground every inch of which must be already painfully
familiar.
Moreover, the doctrine of the Trinity, as laid down in the
Athanasian Creed, however distinctly set forth in language, how
ever frequently and solemnly repeated, has never yet been believed
bv a human being. It is as impossible for one to believe two
contradictory and intelligible propositions, as it is for one to walk
on the water, or to fly without wings. Every professed Trinitarian
is mentally conscious of believing in Three Gods, or in only one
of them at a time. No one ever achieved the miracle of believing
that the Three are not Three but One. Christendom is divided
between those who worship Jesus as Supreme God, those who
worship his mother as Supreme, and a very small minority who
worship the Father. They are all practically Monotheists,
�2
because human nature is incapable of bestowing the adoration
affection, and trust of the soul upon more than one God at a time
Polytheism, which includes Tritheism, is itself a standing proof
of my assertion. For, have as many Gods as you will, one of them
must be nearest and dearest as an object of worship. The rest fall
back into lower ranks.
As involving moral mischief, the doctrine of the Trinity is,
perhaps, the most innocuous of all the dogmas of Christianity. It
is so purely metaphysical (or would be so if it had in it a grain of
sense) that the heart is neither blessed nor injured by pretending
to hold it. It is not, therefore, worthy of our attack; it is
practically as dead and dry as an Egyptian mummy and as fruit
less for good or evil, only interesting as an antiquity, and a
curiosity of mental history.
But the passing thought we have given it suggests another of
great interest; and that is, the necessary decline ot dogmatic
Theology before the march of Human Progress; and by Human
Progress, I mean our advance in scientific knowledge, and our
advance in philanthropy.
All Theology is the result of man’s thought and observation of
the world without, and of the soul within. Whatever was true in
his reflections upon the world, whatever was correct in his obser
vation of phenomena, and whatever was exact in his self-scrutiny
entered into and became an integral part of his Theology. And
on the other hand, all his mistakes about the world and himself
were developed into Theological errors. His Theology has always
been more or less the counterpart of his own mingled knowledge
and ignorance of the things within reach of his examination.
The very subject of which Theology treats viz :—God and God’s
relation to man, has varied from age to age with the varying
growth of knowledge in other matters. At one time the conception
of a Divine Being must have been very different to what it is now.
From the beginning “God” has been made in man’s image, and I
do not see bow it could be otherwise, or how else to account for
the varieties in -Religious beliefs, or for the growths and changes of
any one of them. It cannot however be gainsaid that every
addition to man’s knowledge of any importance has been followed
by a marked corresponding change in his Theological ideas. There
�3
can be little doubt that when astrology passed into astronomy, and
alchemy into chemistry, religious ideas were vastly enlaiged, con
ceptions of God must have expanded with the - pening magnificence
of the scale of His operations in Nature. But it is in our own
times that we observe this ( subtle connexion more clearly.
Within the last twenty or thirty years the knowledge of civilized
man has grown out of all proportion to its previous rate of piogiessand with this more rapid advance have come a most remarkable
shaking of old beliefs, and a somewhat ruthless cross-examination
of the grounds on which they had been accepted. The moie we
know of the enormous extent of the universe, of the majestic forces
which are at work within it, and of the unbroken and eternal order
by which those forces are guided and controlled; the less
anthropomorphic are our conceptions of God, the less egotistical
are our notions of His relation to man. One by one the dogmas
are doubted, re-examined, thrown away. We no longer tolerate
definitions of God, still less the absurdity of descriptions of His
mode of existence. As we abandon the fables of Biblical cosmogony,
we dethrone the triple oligarchy which heretofore had ruled, and
so misruled, the world and mankind. A manipulating Creator, a
Divine artizan who is fatigued and needs rest, a disappointed
artificer whose noblest work is marred by a rival, an impatient and
petulant tyrant who drowns a whole world which he is incompetent
to govern—all these and such like notions disappear the instant
they are confronted by even our slender discoveries in true
cosmogony. The certainty and constancy of natural laws banish
in a moment the probability, if not the possibility, of miracles,
dethroning God the second, and discovering the utter baselessness
of his pretensions to power.
Scientific knowledge and scientific methods bring freedom of
mind and a sense of manly independence. We no longer accede
to any one the right to dictate our thoughts and be iefs. We
claim the right to think for ourselves and be our own guides in
matters of religion. So the time-spirit expels God the third, the
God-spirit whose authority had been claimed for Churches and
Books and PH sts; and the old three thrones are taken down
while the kingdom of darkness is retreating and retreating befire
the dawn of truth.
�4
In spite of all protests ta the contrary, the old Theology rested
entirely upon miraculous assumptions, and these it is to which
modern science has given a death-bl >w. The theology even of
professedly orthodox teachers can never again be what it once was.
But while science is thus pulling down and clearing away the
rubbish of centuries, another hand no less Divine and loyal to
truth is building up—we will not arrogantly. say a true, but a
truer theology—a more reasonable Faith. Despite all the mourn
ful and even shameless instances of se fish m ss and cruelty, this age
is undoubtedly blessed with an out-pouring of brotherly love and
sympathy, such as the world has never before seen. This love
colours everything it touches with a golden light. It manifests
itself through every virtue ennobling, justice, truthfulness,honesty,
industry, breaking down the barriers of caste and class, not by level
ing the higher to the lower, but by endeavouring to lift every lower
to the standard of the higher. Love is at work among the rich
and amcng the poor as it never was be'ore No interest is without
ir>s passionate adherents; no oppressed soul without a champion
and would-be deliverer. Men of high degree think it now their
first poiut of honour to defend the weak against the strong, and
offer as a justification for their championship, Noblesse oblige. The
rich consider themselves most blessed when they give of their
abundance to the helpless and poor. The bounty of the world is
beautiful to behold; and it comes not so much from ostentation or the
love of fame, as from tender love and sympathy with distress; for
what we see and read is not a thousandth part of what is being
done in secret through the length and br adth of our land and
nearly all over the world.
No soorner is any grand discovery made than a hundred kindly
hands are stretched out to render it practically beneficial to the
rest of mankind. The wise and learned no longer write their
books in dead languages, but in the common tongue of the people
among whom they scatter the words of wisdom and truth—very
often without money and without price. Illustrations are endless.
Never surely was benevolence so active, so enthusiastic as now.
And this, I say, is beginning to build up a new faith—new, not so
much in words as in deeds - a faith whiih is no metaphysic, but
a soul’s trust in the Soul of Goodness. Little by little it is teaching
�5
us the alphabet of scientific Theology. The old astrological or
alchemical stage of Theology is passing away—driven out by
scientific knowledge. The new stage of Theology as a science is
now coming, led by the gentle instincts of that spirit of love which
is the genius of our times. Men’s eyes are beginning to see that
if they care so much for each other, God Himself can care no less,
that if they find their supreme happiness in doing good and
rendering helpful service to each other, the bliss of the most
Blessed God must be the same — only so much the more as it is the
bliss of one who knows that His kind purpose cannot fail. All our
conceptions of the Divine are confined to spiritual and moral
qualities. We have abandoned every theory as to His nature and
mode of existence as hopelessly inscrutable to us as we are. But
we attribute to Him only such moral beauty as we ourselves in
our highest moments adore; and strange to say that the very act
of so doing seems to add to our grounds for believing in a God
at all. Our highest religious emotions are their own justification.
What may lie beyond forourselves in the future, or for our posterity,
we do not know, nor pretend to foretell; only that the past of man
kind leads us to expect with confidence that, as the present is
better tlnn the past, so the future will be better than the present.
If ever the day comes when God will not be deemed loving and
trustworthy, and an “ ever present help in time of trouble,” it
will be when human experience and human growth shall have
dwarfed these present virtues which we deem so grand; it will not
be because our notions of good and evil can ever be reversed.
There can be no possible retrogression in morals any more than in
science.
Our own integrity, sympathy, and trustworthiness towards each
other are, and I believe were intended to be, the only revelation to
us of the Divine qualities. As we grow in these, we grow in our
conception of Him, and, of course, the more these are practised,
the surer is the ground of our hope. Bor if God will not do what
we now deem to be the greatest possible kindness in those who
love one another, it must be not because He is wanting in kindness,
but b' cause He has an excess of it, and will only deny us that,
in erder to confer some better gift, some larger blessing
still.
�6
These are not only different views of God and His relation to
man, but they differ in kind from the unscientific theology of the
past, as the ground on which they stand differs from the old
foundations.
The old Theology said “ It is written,” or <f It is decreed by the
Church,” always having an assumption which either could not be
verified or could be easily disproved.
The new Theology asks “ What has God done ?” “ What is He
doing ?” and answers by pointing both to the phenomenal world
outside of us, and to the mental, moral, and emotional nature
within us. These, if there be a God, are the works of God; and
though they can only tell us a very very little of Him, inasmuch
as this whole globe is only a drop in the stream of existence, and
all the history of it we know, but one drop in the ocean of past
eternity, still that little must be true so far as it goes, and enough,
if we use it aright, to lighten our darkness, and to cheer us in
the gloom.
Science, at all events testifies there is method in the arrangement
and action of the forces. The soul of man denies it not, but says
there must be mind and will, or some infinitely higher some.hings
to correspond. Science says there is a great deal of rough play
and even cruel sport in these forces of nature. The som of man
denies it not, but says there must be love behind these sorrows and
tortures, for even to our eyes they are not all unmixed evils, but
some are disguised mercies as we have proved , and we know that
as we would not inflict wanton injury upon any sensitive cieatuie,
so neither would we bring any creature into existence purely to
torment it. Science says—I can see no good in it. The soul of
man replies—You have not seen it all yet. Wait till the end
comes, or for more light. Those who have suffered most have least
repined.
The really tortured souls whose pains never leave them till they
end in death are for the most part silent and patient, often praise
and bless God’s Holy Name for all His mercies
11 And publish with their latest breath,
His love and guardian care.”
Certain it is that the soul of man must be the interpreter of
nature’s awful mysteries. Just as his head can weigh its forces
�and tell to a nicety the machinery by which her massacres are
perpetrated, so his heart must learn the moral significance of the
deeper problem, and interpret the end and purpose for which her
catastrophes were permitted.
My friends, we claim it as our special function to pursue
religious enquiry on these principles forswearing alike all violence
to scientific conclusions, and all neglect of the testimony borne by
the human soul to the existence of the Divine. Hitherto, all
sects in Christendom have professed to base their belief on a book
or person, or some authority external to themselves. The New
School of Theology which is represented by Theodore Parker,
Professor Newman, Frances Power Cobbe and the Brahmo Somaj
of India, and lastly by ourselves, openly disclaim all ^external
authority, and as we do not rest upon it, so neither do we attempt
to claim for ourselves any right to impose our faith upon others.
We desire only to be nourished out of the wealth of the human
soul, and guarded against error by science. We are but a small
number by comparison with the Christian world. But our views
have already conquered a third, if not more, of the Unitarian
Church, are held at this moment by hundreds of the clergy and
thousands of the laity of the Church of England and spreading
rapidly through every church and sect in Christendom. We make
no new sect. It is our honour to be only leaven.
When we give God thanks for “all the truth which may have
been spoken ” let us gratefully remember that it is from the faith,
fill and earnest students of nature that we first heard those words
of truth to which this day we owe not only our freedom and
safety, but our emancipation of soul from the grovelling super
stitions which darkened the lives of our remote ancestry.
Religion will one day repay science for her somewhat stern but
faithful correction, by returning to her bosom, pure and unblem.
ished, lovely in form, and having a sound mind.
Eastern Post Steam Printing Works. 89, Worship-street, Finsbury, E.C.
��
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Trinity Sunday: a sermon, preached at St George's Hall, Langham Place, May 31st, 1874
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 7 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed by Eastern Post June 6th, 1874. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
Publisher
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[Eastern Post]
Date
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[1874]
Identifier
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G3416
Subject
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Trinity
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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 (Trinity Sunday: a sermon, preached at St George's Hall, Langham Place, May 31st, 1874), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Athanasian Creed
Morris Tracts
Trinity