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bJ6 6 O
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
CHRISTIANITY:
H’S NATURE & INFLUENCE ON CIVILISATION.
A LECTURE
By
Charles
Watts, Secretary of
Secular Society.
the
National
It requires no profound knowledge of the human mind, to
enable us to recognise the fact that some persons indulge
in certain delusions, until such delusions become to the
persons who indulge them, apparent realities. A striking
illustration of the truth of this statement is furnished in the
two great assumptions, which are entertained extensively
throughout Christendom at the present time. First, it is
supposed that what is termed Christianity, is sufficiently effi
cacious to remove all the evils of life ; and in the second place,
it is stated that England enjoys a high state of civilisation
in consequence of the adoption of Christian principles.
Hitherto, it has been the habit of Christian advocates, not
only to ignore all in society that is evil and defective
as belonging to their system, but Also to credit Chris
tianity with all improvements which have taken place in
modern times. It matters not whether it be a steam
engine, an electric telegraph, a printing press, the repeal of
the stamp and paper duties, the establishment of working
men’s clubs, an industrial exhibition, or the co-operative
companies ; all are attributed by Christians to the influence
of their faith. All such steps of progress are regarded by
them as the gift of God to his creature man. While inquiring
into these pretensions, and ascertaining how far such allega
tions are correct, the investigation shall be two-fold. We
will endeavour to discover, if possible, to what extent the
blots and blemishes which remain upon our civilisation are
to be attributed to Christianity, and also, whether the pro
gress that has been made, is the result of Christian influ
ence; or whether, on the contrary, it is not the natural con
�sequence of the adoption of principles antagonistic to New
Testament principles.
As a rule, man is supposed to know himself better than
anyone else knows him. But there are many important in
stances, where other people can estimate a person more cor
rectly than he can estimate himself. They will take a more
dispassionate view of his character. They will be in a better
position to compare him with others, and thus judge more
accurately of his relations and comparative place in the scale
of humanity. As with individuals, so it is with systems, and
with generations. An age is incapable in many respects
of properly knowing itself. It has only one test by which
to estimate its merits and demerits. It cannot compare
itself with future ages, which lie in the womb of the un
known. It can only judge of itself by times gone by. And
as every age, even the darkest and most lethargic, is, in
some instances, more advanced than its predecessor, a survey
of itself is extremely apt to assume the form of self-gratulation.
Various designations have been given to the different
phases of Christianity. We have had descriptions of “ He
retical Christianity,” “ Muscular Christianity,” “ Objection
able Christianity,” “ Secular Christianity,” and “ Super
natural Christianity.” Now it may be necessary here to in
timate that Ido not coincide with those who consider that
what is termed “ Secular Christianity” is identical with
Freethought principles. Christianity appears to me to be
objectionable under whatever name it may be presented to
us. Of course there are many things taught in the New
Testament which are admirable and worthy of acceptation, but
then such beauties do not belong exclusively to Christianity.
The practical portion of the Sermon on the Mount was in
existence long before the time when Christ is supposed to have
taught in Galilee. The phrase “ Christianity” cannot be
consistently used without conveying in some degree the idea
of supernaturalism. The inspiration that induced Christ to
say and do what is ascribed to him in the Four Gospels,
was considered to have emanated from above. The power
that moves and regulates the whole system of Christianity
is designated by its believers as supernatural. The term
“ Secular Christianity” is therefore a misnomer. Christ
never uttered one word, or performed one action purely from
Secular motives, but thinking he was doing the will of his
�3
“ Father in Heaven,” he did it all for the 11 Glory of God.’’
It is important that this fact should be remembered, because
we live in an age perhaps unsurpassed in the history of the
world for the promulgation of systems, having for their professedobject the advancement of mankind. It becomes thereforea duty that we should be judicious as to the terms we use,
as well as the mode we adopt to secure the triumph of prin
ciples which we believe are essential to the permanent wel
fare of society. Many valuable systems are frequently de
prived of much of their vitality, and some of the best efforts of
men rendered comparatively useless through the lack of the ob
servance of this very necessary precaution. The temporary
success of bad and erroneous principles is often to be attri
buted to the fact that the manner in which they are pre
sented to the world is the result of careful study, and wellmatured thought.
In studying the nature of Christianity, we recognise one
or two features which are identical in all its different phases.
Reliance on a supernatural power, faith in Christ, belief in
the efficacy of prayer, and the immortality of the soul, are
tenets professed, more or less, by most Christian sects. In
addition to this, the New Testament distinctly teaches that
poverty is a virtue, that submission is a duty, and that love to
man should be subordinate to love to God. Now these prin
ciples, however consoling they may be to some, from their
nature have checked and must check the progress of civilisa
tion. The extent of their retarding influence depends upon the
degree of veneration in which they are held by their profes
sors. With Tbeists and Unitarians these theological notions
are less dangerous, because such Christians are less dogmatic
and less orthodox. But with a Wesleyan or a Baptist the
profession of such notions frequently leads to conduct anta
gonistic to general improvement. With these latter Chris
tians, Christ is “ all in all.” In vain do we look to their
teachings forthose principles that are necessary to a progres
sive civilisation. On the contrary, experience has proved that
as a rule, they have been injurious, and in proportion to their
adoption has the Secular welfare of mankind been retarded.
And we cannot expect aught else. The object of Christ was to
teach his followers how to die, rather than to instruct them
how to live. If therefore we press the question, “ What is
Christianity?” the answers given by the Christian world will
be as varied as they will be numerous. The reply lrom a mem-
�ber of the Church of England, would differ widely from the
answer given by a Latter-day Saint. The fact is, according to
the education of the individual, and the intelligence of the
nation, so are the notions entertained as to what constitutes
Christianity. For instance, religion with Mazzini is very
different to the religion of Archbishop Manning. The faith
cherished by Garibaldi, is not precisely the same article of
belief as that indulged in by the present ruler of France.
The Christianity of Professor Huxley is as different to the
doctrines taught by Richard Weaver, as is the religion of a
Maurice to that of C. H. Spurgeon. The same diversity
exists in reference to nations. In Spain religion, is cruel
oppression, in Scotland it is a gloomy nightmare, in Rome
it is priestly dominion, while in England it is simply.emo
tional pastime. All these different phases of Christianity
indicate that theological opinions depend on surrounding
circumstances, and cannot therefore be the cause of the civi
lisation of the world.
.
To test the power of Christianity in organising a civilised
state of society, it is only necessary to suppose a company
of men and women going to some uninhabited island, and
there attempting to form a constitution to meet the require
ments of modern society based upon the teachings of the
New Testament. First they must seek, the kingdom of
Heaver, and love not the world or the things of the world.
This would at once put an end to all human effort, because
if a person is not to love the world, his interest will be at
once gone from things below, and directed to things above.
It is impossible to get persons long to work.for anything
which they hate. Under a system of despotism, a certain
amount of labour may be ground out of serfs or slaves, but
once give a nation its freedom, and the inhabitants will only
strive in a cause which they love. Secondly, they must take
no thought for their bodies nor even their lives. This would
prevent them studying the laws of health. Sanitary reform
or physiological science would be deemed unnecessary. Hos
pitals would be superseded by a rapid increase of “ God’s
Peculiar People.” The recent unfortunate case of the two
persons who were committed for manslaughter because they
practically carried out New Testament teaching, is a. potent
answer to the alleged efficacy of Christianity for civilising
purposes. The “ Peculiar People ” relied upon faith and
prayer, instead of science and medicine, and, as a reward for
�5
their Christian devotion, death and imprisonment were the
results. Then Christians in this island must take no
thought for the morrow. Economy and a desire for the
future of this world would thus be entirely ignored. It would
be a crime to establish post office savings’ banks, inasmuch
as laying up treasures on earth is strictly forbidden. The
thought of a divorce must not be entertained for a moment,
because “ whosoever God has joined together, let no man put
asunder.” Those who are fortunate to be rich, must get rid
of their riches, as they are pronounced in the New Testament
to be a curse. If an enemy is cruel enough to invade this *
Christian island, the inhabitants dare not interfere, because
Christ told them to “ resist not evil.” Should the invading
powers succeed and establish themselves as governors of the
island, then the inhabitants must quietly submit, as “ the
powers that be are ordained of God.” If they are smitten on
the one cheek, they must offer the other to be operated upon
in a similar manner. Now, I submit, that a people living
under a constitution framed by these Christian rulers would
not be very progressive ; neither would they be very happy.
Apart from the menial dependent subjection in which they
would be placed, they would have to listen to the comforting
assurance that at the last day they will have to give an ac
count for every idle word spoken through life. Need we
wonder any longer that Christians are such “miserable sin
ners,” believing as they do that their final doom may depend
upon words spoken in the jubilant and joyous moments of
life?
But modern professors of Christianity will ask, if their
system is so unprogressive in its nature, how is it that men
of intellect, of determination, and of scientific culture have
accepted it as their faith ? And they further inquire how it
is that under the influence of Christianity, civilisation in
England has progressed so rapidly ? As these questions are
considered by the religious world as very important, it may be
necessary hero hriefly to examine them. Now the whole fal
lacy in coni/<fc&ton with the first question lies in the interpre
tation given the words “ their faith.” Any one acquainted
with the early history of Christianity will know that the faith
of Jesus as he preached it, and the faith of the Christiana
in 1868, are two entirely different things. Even if we
accept the alleged dates of Christian chronology to be
historically correct, Christianity began to alter and modify
�itself immediately after the death of Christ. Paul preached
a system of a philosophical character compared with that of
Jesus. The Christianity of Paul was widely different from
that of his “ divine Master.” The character of Christ
was submissive and servile; Paul’s was defiant and pugna
cious. We could no more conceive Christ fighting with
wild beasts at Ephesus, than we could suppose Paul sub
mitting without protest or resistance to those insults and
indignities which are alleged to have been heaped upon
Christ. . Neither could we for one moment imagine Paul ad
vising his disciples when anyone smote them on one cheek,
to offer them the other. Christ was an illiterate peasant;
Paul, when compared with his master, was a polished
philosopher. Paul introduced by his personal character
a certain amount of boldness and energy into the Chris
tian propaganda, and by the character of his mind he
largely. modified the Christian system. In fact, each
successive age has left its mark and impress upon Chris
tianity. No system was ever less rigid and more plastic.
It has certainly come up to the injunction of St. Paul,
“ to be all things to all men.” Persons of the most con
trary dispositions and the most opposite natures have been
its great illustrators, expounders, and living representatives.
It has found room for all temperaments : the ascetic and the
luxurious enjoyer of life; the man of action and the man of
contemplation; the monk and the king; the philanthropist
and the destroyer of his race : the iconoclastic hater of all
ceremonies, and the superstitious devotee; Cromwell and
Cowper; Lyell and Wesley; St. Augustine and Dr. Pusey;
John Milton and C. H. Spurgeon. All these and many
other similar opposites have found refuge within the pale
of Christianity. But let it be distinctly understood that
this heterogeneous family is by no means the result of any
all-embracing comprehensiveness in the system of Christ,
but rather the effects of a Theology characterised alike by
its indefinite, incomplete, and undecisive principles. No
man of action can possibly be a true and consistent believer
in Christianity, for many of its teachings are the very incar
nation and inculcation of forbearance and suffering. They
clearly and emphatically teach submission to physical evil,
tyranny, and oppression. They inculcate an unprogres
sive and retarding spirit; they draw the energies and desires
of men from the duties of this life, fixing them on an un—
�7
certain and unknown future. Until, therefore, Christians
can prove to us that their principles are capable of pro
ducing uniformity of character ; until it is satisfactorily ex
plained that the precepts, as propounded by Christ, contain
the elements of that greatness which has invariably charac
terised the lives of eminent statesmen, philosophers, and
poets of all ages ; until it can be shown by an appeal to
authority and experience that the principles as taught in
the New Testament are compatible with progress and
human advancement; until the course pursued by Christ
when on earth is adopted by his professed followers of to-day
and made to harmonise with reason and humanity—I say,
until these things are accomplished, Christianity will be
incapable of furnishing a code of morals by which all suc
ceeding generations shall be governed, and to which the
great intellects of the world shall finally succumb.
The notion entertained by many that the present civilised
condition of England is the result of Christian influence is
decidedly fallacious. The progress of a nation cannot be
attributed to any one thing or any one age, but rather to a
combination of circumstances which have been in operation
during many ages. For instance, had it not been for the
scientific discoveries of a Watt, Dalton, and Black of the
last century, the application of these sciences with which
their names are associated, would not have been so easily
applied to the ends of' human utility in this present age; had
it not been for the great French Revolution the name of
liberty, for it is but little more, would not exist to-day in
France; and had it not been for many attempts at revolu
tion in this country, many concessions to liberty which we
now enjoy, would never have been extorted. The Reform.
Bill of last year, incomplete as it is, would never have passed
the House of Commons but for the meetings in Trafalgar
Square, and the demonstrations in Hyde Park, Birmingham,
Leeds, and other places. Disraeli boasted that he had edu
cated his party; far be it from me to attempt to rob the
Premier of the laurels he won in going through that painful
operation, but it seems to me that the best lesson the Tories
received in the reform educational course was from the Re
form League and their co-workers. It is equally true that
for the partial freedom from religious intolerance which we
now enjoy we are as much indebted to the Franklins and
Paines of the past, as to any of their representatives of the
�present. But waiving this point, I ask, is it true that we
have a high state of civilisation? Notwithstanding an “Open
Bible,” and “ general dissemination of Gospel truths,” which
we have had in this country for the last 300 years, can it be
denied that the major portion of our rural population are
sunk in the deepest ignorance and the most depraved
wretchedness ? Is it not a reproach upon Christian influ
ence that, after three centuries of the rule, discipline, teach
ing, and. example of 20,000 clergymen and a host of Dissent
ing ministers, that the very classes of society which have
been most under their direction and control, should be the
greatest stigma upon our social condition ? Can it be alleged
that anything like an approach even to a proper adjustment
ef the relations between capital and labour has been arrived
at? Those who pride themselves on the present state of
Christian civilisation should ask themselves the question,
does labour receive anything like a fair quota of the results
of the wealth towards the production of which it contributes
more than the “ lion’s share ?” Can an age or a country
be considered civilised in which so large an amount of abject,
and, to all appearance, hopeless poverty prevails ? Have
we not ignorance, sickness, and sorrow existing on every
hand ? Are there not thousands who wake every morning
tortured with anxiety as to how they are to obtain food for
the day, and when the hour for sleep again returns, they
know not where to lay their heads ? Parade the glories of
Christian civilisation to those unfortunate creatures who are
driven to misery, shame, and madness by the want of the
necessaries of life. In noticing the deplorable condition of
“ Christian ’’ England, the Morning Star recently asked—
“When shall starvation die out of the land? When shall
we cease to hear that in one part of the country a man lies
dead of a debauch on roast goose, while in another a woman
perishes of sheer hunger, with her teeth locked in the flesh
of her own arm ? Must we wait till East London sits down
to this sickening meal ? Can Government, Whig or Tory,
do nothing ? Within two years, more than a million of human
beings under its care have died of starvation alone.” Witness
the fate of many of England’s daughters who, amidst Chris
tian civilisation, have either to drag out a wretched existence
by continual slavery, as pictured in the “ Song of the Shirt,”
or else to sink into utter ruin and hopeless degradation. It
is an insult and mockery to tell such victims of a misruleu
�9
world that their position is the result of their own conduct.
One of the principal causes of such calamities is to be found
in promulgating doctrines which destroy man’s energy in
worldly pursuits, rendering him a dependent, povertycheiished suppliant.
The history of Christianity is a glocmy illustration of its
influence and tendency to maintain those conditions which are
unfavourable to individual progress and national greatness.
Among other requisites to a civilised condition of society it is
necessary to have national wealth, the cultivation of the
sciences, the acquirement of knowledge, and freedom of
inquiry. Without these agencies, civilisation as we under
stand the term cannot exist. How far then has Christianity
encouraged these agencies ? Now it is certain that the Reli
gion of the New Testament is opposed to material wealth.
While poverty is there magnified as a virtue, riches are de
nounced as a vice. If those who had wealth were to sell
that which they had, and give it to the poor, as Christ com
manded them, and at the same time omit to accumulate any
more, individual and national bankruptcy would be the
result. The influence of religion on scientific pursuits is
well known to students of history. The great impediment
to the progress of scientific truth in the past, has been reli
gious bigotry. First, such sciences as geology were alleged
to be untrue; every fact demonstrated by early writers
was regarded as an instance of the insanity of the writer,
and every fossil wonder disclosed, was referred to the
limited explanation of the Noachian deluge. Finding that
threats and intimidation failed to check the advance of truth,
persecution and imprisonment were the weapons used by
Christian hands towards those whose crime consisted in in
vestigating the laws of nature, and making those laws
known to their fellow-creatures. Dr. Ferguson in his
“ Penalties of Greatness,” acknowledges that theology, as
embodied in the Christian church, was the first to extinguish
the light of reason. But truth existed in spite of the deadly
agencies which surrounded it. Not only did the church
employ means to prevent the least difference of opinion on
religious subjects, by the invention of the most finished in
struments of torture, but science itself became the object
of burning jealousy and persecution, and men were made to
deny the very laws of nature. The same spirit pervades to
& certain extent a portion of the Christian world at the pre
�10
sent day. Every scientific discovery, opposed as it is to
popular theology, is suspected with pious horror by orthodox
Christians. The Morning Advertiser and other orthodox
papers have denounced such men as Huxley, Darwin, and
Sir Charles Lyell as enemies to the welfare of mankind.
“ Real knowledge,” says Buckle, “ the knowledge on which
all civilisation is based, solely consists in an acquaintance
with the relations which things and ideas bear to each other
and to themselves ; in other words, in an acquaintance with
physical and mental laws.” The history of the Christian
religion proves that the object and aim of its advocates have
been too frequently to discourage and prevent the acquisi
tion and dissemination of this scientific knowledge.
Not only has Christian influence affected the acquirement
of scientific knowledge, but it has also interfered with the
progress of general education. Fortunately at the present
time, many professed Christians are advocating a national
system of education, but this advanced policy is not the re
sult of their faith, but a proof that the Secular aspirations in
man are less fettered by theological restriction, than they
were in the palmy days of Christianity. It has taken the
Christian world nearly eighteen hundred years to arrive at
the conclusion that the people ought to have adequate means
of education at their command. As recently as fifty years
ago, pamphlets were written by clergymen warning the nation
against the horrid democratic consequences of giving to the
labouring classes education. In our time it is Freethought
which has extorted, not the Church which has granted, Natio
nal Education. Dr. Johnson, the great lay pillar of the Church
in the last century, had the honesty to state that he objected
to education for the poor, because it would teach them politics.
He might have added with equal truth, that it would teach
them to think for themselves, instead of allowing the Church
to do it for them. At last, the hour of victory, partial though
it was, arrived. The educational Reformers had their triumph.
The legislature decreed that to some extent education should
be national. £20,000 were voted for that purpose. Then
it was that the Church again exerted her influence. Find
ing she could not resist the progressive stream, she sought
io pollute it and destroy its refreshing power. Failing
to prevent, she endeavoured to contaminate. And what
is the result ? National education is but half accomplished.
Thousands are growing up as monuments of imperfect edu
�11
cation. Believing that the “ wisdom of this world is foolish
ness with God,” the Christian governments, in the words of
Buckle, “ Where they have not openly forbidden the free
dissemination of knowledge, they have done all they could
to check it. On all the implements of knowledge and on all
the means by which it is diffused, such as papers, books, poli
tical journals, and the like, they have imposed duties so
heavy that they could hardly have done worse if they had
been the sworn advocates of popular ignorance. Indeed,
looking at what they have actually accomplished, it may be
emphatically said that they have taxed the human mind.”
Fortunately many of these impediments have been removed,
not, however, with the free consent of the Christian world.
This victory was achieved by the dauntless efforts and heroic
sufferings of Freeihought martyrs in the face of Christian
opposition and Christian persecution. Domestic loss, pecu
niary ruin, and the horrors of imprisonment, were the prices
paid for the removal of those hindrances to the people’s
educational advancement.
Doubtless the power of Christianity has been great upon
the civilisation of the world. Nothing influences the human
mind either for good or for evil more than the Christian’s
notion of supernaturalism. If a person is induced to have
absolute faith in the fatherhood and sovereignty of God, he
deems it his first duty to carry out that which he considers
the will of that God. Hence it is, that during intellectual
periods men’s notions of Deity have been refined and culti
vated ; and, as a consequence, oppression and persecution
for scepticism have been more rare. While on the other
hand, when the multitude held rude ideas of divinity, the
pure and chaste were sickened at the scenes of cruelty
and bloodshed which were enacted in accordance with
what was supposed to be the “ will of God.” If any
doubt existed upon this point, it would only be necessary
to study carefully Buckle’s “History of Civilisation.” In
that work ample proof is given of the contracting influence
of religion. Nothing tends more to limit progress than the
attempt to prevent freedom of opinion, and the enforcement
of penalties for the exercise of this right. “During,” says
Buckle, ‘‘ almost 150 years Europe was afflicted by religious
wars, religious massacres, and religious persecutions; not
one of which would have arisen, if the great truth had been
recognised that the state had no concern with the opinions
�1*4
of men, and no right to interfere, even in the slightest
degree, with the form of worship which they may choose t<.
adopt.” The same writer goes on to show that the increase oi
perjury and hypocrisy has been the result of the policy oi
the Christian governments, arriving at the conclusion that
it is folly to ascribe the civilisation of a nation to any
creed.
Unfortunately Christianity appeared at a very inoppor
tune period of history, just when there was no indication
that the world would throw off supernaturalism. The old
Pagan creed which Christianity supplanted, was by far the
better of the two, because it contained most promise for the
world. The Roman religion sat but lightly upon the Romans.
It was just a body of mythological tales, which perhaps was
useful in the world’s infancy, but which was certainly not re
quired in.its more matured age. The grand feature of the old
Pagan faith was its true tolerant spirit. Death for religious
belief was unknown to the Romans. They allowed every one
to worship according to his or her own conscience. Per.
secution for non-belief was reserved for Christianity. As
soon as the disciples of Christ possessed the power, the^
commenced by persecuting those who did not accept then
faith, and endeavoured to crush all systems that were anta
gonistic to their own. Instead of Christians talking sc
foolishly of the depravity of the ancients, it would be far
better if they endeavoured to emulate Pagan Rome in their
love of toleration. Even from the New Testament we learn
the extreme reluctance with which the Roman Gfovernor of
Judea signed the death-warrant of Christ. The Romans
were so tolerant—in other words, they were so little religious,
and therefore, so ripe for becoming converts to Secularistie
truth—that whenever they conquered a new territory, they
at once added to their own number of Gods those whom they
found to be worshipped by the inhabitants of their new con
quest. Now, if Queen Victoria, by royal mandate, were to
order to be added to the objects of English worship, all the
gods worshipped by her coloured subjects, all over the world;
if, whenever we achieved a new conquest, it became the
duty of the Archbishops and Bishops, the Spurgeons and
Cummings, to add a new batch of deities to the objects of
worship, what would be the result? Why religion would
fall rapidly into contempt, and mankind would see at once
its utter folly and absurdity. This is precisely what was
■
�id
fast happening amongst the Romans and all through their
empire, when Christianity came upon the scene, stopped the
progressive spirit, and deferred the reign of human happiness.
If we take a historical glance at countries where Chris
tianity was professed, and at one time, to a large extent,
acted upon, we shall at once recognise the influence it pos
sessed on national progress. First, we may take Scotland,
[n the most comprehensive sense of the word, Scotland at
no very remote period was strictly a religious nation, and
what were the fruits cf that religion ? The most miserable
and unprogressive state it is possible for a civilised people to
live in. And let it be distinctly understood that Mr. Buckle
in his “History of Civilisation,” attributes this non-progressive spirit, this lack of happiness, entirely to the fatal in
fluence of religion. And can we expect aught else? Here is a
country acting, as far as a people can possibly act, upon the
principles of Christianity. And what do we find ? “An entire
absence of all true toleration ; an aversion even to innocent
gaiety; a desire to limit the enjoyment of others, and a spirit
of bigotry and persecution ; yet in the midst of all this,” as
Buckle properly observes, “ there existed a gloomy and
austere creed. The churches were as crowded as they
were in the middle ages, and were filled with ignorant wor
shippers, who flocked to listen to opinions of which the
middle ages alone were worthy.” What effect has such
reaching had upon the Scotch mind ? Has it imparted to
the people any progressive aspirations ? If we read th6
history of Scotland during the seventeenth and part
of the eighteenth century, we shall find that Buckle
stated the truth, when he said that “ Some of the noblest
feelings of which our nature is capable, the feelings of love
and of gratitude, were set aside, and were replaced by the
dictates of a servile and ignominious fear.” But the sad
effects of Christianity were not confined to Scotland. If we
take England during wnat is Known as the “ dark ages,”
the brightest era of Christianity, then she had no rival:
assisted by kingcraft she ruled the civilised world through a
thousand years, without one ray of light, without any addi
tion whatever to the arts and sciences, and then bequeathed
to mankind a heritage of cruelty, bloodshed, and persecution.
In the middle ages there was a. great impetus given towards
science and philosophy. Some of the most splendid intellects
that ever appeared in the world, and that might, under more
�favourable conditions, have adorned humanity, enlightened
society, and held on progress, appeared in those days. But
their intellects were stifled and rendered comparatively useless
by the influence of Christianity. Those were the times when
Christianity was paramount, unrestrained, and untrammelled,
when the blood, the genius, and the chivalry of Europe were
all wasted in the mad and useless crusades, when in one
expedition alone, instigated by fanatical priests, no less than
560,000 persons were sacrificed to the superstition of the
cross. Do we require a proof of the legitimate effects
of Christianity ? Behold the history of the seven cru
sades, which will for ever remain a lasting monument of a
Wood-stained faith. For nearly 200 years did the followers
of Christ lay desolate one of the finest and most romantic
portions of the known world, and laid prostrate thousands of
human beings. Do we wish to know the sad influence of
religion ? Bead the history of the Christian Emperor Con
stantine, who with the sword in one hand and the cross in
the other, pursued his slaughtering and relentless career.
Go to the streets of Paris, when in the fifteenth century they
flowed with the blood of defenceless Protestants, and when
10,000 innocent persons were massacred by the believers in
a meek and lowly Jesus. Visit the valleys of Piedmont,
which were the scene of a most inhuman butchery, when
women were suffocated by hundreds in cofined caves by
the bearers of the cross. Study the history of the Inquisi
tion, to whose power three millions of lives were sacrificed
in one century. Peruse the records of the actions of a King
Henry the E'ghth, a Queen Mary, and a Queen Elizabeth,
in whose Christian reigns hundreds were either condemned
to die at the stake, or to endure revolting cruelties in loath
some dungeons, because they differed from the prevailing
faith of those times. These were the effects of religion when
it had absolute power. When Christianity exercised her
legitimate influence, the maxim was ‘‘ Philosophy is the
handmaid of Theology,” every philosopher, therefore, who
did not so philosophise as to bring up new arguments to
support some one of the absurd tenets of Christianity, had
either to submit to a life of seclusion and persecution, or to
an immediate death. But Christianity not only interfered
with the high intellects of the earth, she also influenced
every relation of life. The sum of almost all history for,
centuries after Christ may be compressed in a few sentences.
�Avery rascality that tings and nobles wished to perpetrate
they got the bishops and priests to consecrate and make
holy. Had it not been for the strong Christian notions of
those sovereigns, James I. and Charles I., in all probability we
should not have found such an abominably unpatriotic period
succeeding the splendid era of Queen Elizabeth, And how
lamentable it is to think that the noble-hearted English
puritans, with men like Falkland, Cromwell, and John
Milton at their head, lost all their chance of reforming the
nation and establishing those ameliorations which certainly
were so very necessary, through their unfortunate slavery
to Christianity. Never did men exist whose minds by
nature were more magnificently tolerant and truly secularisiic than those of Milton and Cromwell, if the religious
element had been kept apart. But unfortunately it mastered
Cromwell, or perhaps to do him justice, it mastered bis
contemporaries, and they mastered him, and. then he sick
ened the very country he had saved, by forcing upon them
a religion they were weary of. The fate of Christianity was
sealed in England the day that Cromwell died. Some writers
have made it the great reproach of the reign of Charles II.
that it was “ Godless,” yes, but its godlessness was the one
redeeming trait of that “ Merry Monarch’s” reign. Reckless
as he was, during his reign reforms were accomplished, the
results of which cannot be too highly appreciated,. It was
during his reign that a law was passed which deprived the
Dishops of the power to burn those who differed from them in
theological opinion. It was during his re gn that the clergy
were deprived of the privilege of taxing themselves, and were
compelled to submit to the ordinary mode of assessment.
It was during his reign that a law was passed, forbidding
bishops to administer the oath by which the church had
hitherto compelled suspected persons to criminate them
selves. It was during his reign that it was settled, that the
taxation of the people should be decided by their own repre
sentatives, and it was during-his reign that certain restrictions
on the press were removed, whereby knowledge had a better
opportunity of being disseminated among the masses of the
people. Notwithstanding the calamities occasioned by the
great Plague, and the great Fire of London, greater improve
ments, says Buckle, were effected, and more progress made
during this reign than had been accomplished during the
twelve previous centuries of English history. The o-ha-
�19
racier of Charles II. as a whole was one not to be
emulated; but living amidst a profligate court, venal
ministers, and constant conspiracies, he was enabled to
recognise two great obstacles to the nation’s welfare ;
these obstacles . were the spiritual tyranny of the priests’
and the territorial oppression of the nobles. Having
but little regard for theological dogmas, he was determined
that such Christian evils should be swept away.
If Christianity contained any real remedy for existing evils,
it would have displayed itself ere now. It has had every ad
vantage in its favour; the influence of the priests, the patron
age of kings, the alliance of the great and powerful, the use of
untold wealth, the command of the armies, first place among
the councillors of nations, the willing subjection of the
populace, the command of their affections, and the dominancy of their fears. Science, art, education have humbled
and enlisted themselves in its train. The brightest intellects
of humanity have laid their treasures at its feet. The ties
of domestic affection, the bonds of the social compact, the
political relations of ruler and ruled, all have surrendered
themselves to its influence. It has been absolute.monarch
of the world. Yet with all these advantages it has proved
unable to keep pace with a progressive civilisation.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Christianity : its nature & influence on civilisation; a lecture
Creator
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Watts, Charles [1836-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 16 p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: Publication date from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1868]
Identifier
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N660
Subject
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Christianity
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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 (Christianity : its nature & influence on civilisation; a lecture), 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
Christianity
Civilisation
NSS
-
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7dcc723cbb6ace27db34a4cda7599935
PDF Text
Text
The sketch, of the character and temperament of St. Paul in his
relation to the doctrine of the resurrection is as important as it is
interesting. The spirit of the volumes is 'summed up in the follow
ing words, with the quotation of which we for the present earnestly
commend the book to the attention of our readers—
“Although we lose a faith which has long been our guide in the past,
we need not now fear to walk boldly with Truth in the future, and turning
away from fancied benefits to be derived from the virtue of His death, we
may find real help and guidance from more earnest contemplation of the
life and teaching of Jesus.”
N
We presume that the chapters in Mr. Conway’s work10 have been de
livered as lectures in South Place. No one could listen to them, few could
read them, without stimulus to thought, without being obliged to say, Do
I or do I not believe in the things which are- here so fiercely assailed as
merely old wives’ fables ? It is well to break idols—it is well often
to be full of scornful irony in the breaking—it is well to show, as Mr.
Conway is never tired of doing, the comparative mythology of religions ;
but the idol-breaker and the comparative mythologist perhaps lose
necessarily a something of reverential spirit that we should like to
find in all teachers, and a power of sympathy with what is true among
the felicities of the past.
One of the most striking lectures in the book is concerned with the
Ammergau miracle-play, in which he draws a very skilful contrast)
between the ideal Christ of the Church and the Christ as represented
in the Gospels ; but we cannot help thinking that his picture is ex
tremely overcharged from a desire of being original, and of differing,
not only from most Christians, but from most free-thinkers.
We are sure that few will agree with Mr. Conway’s estimate of the
manner in which Christ shrank from death, as put out by him in the
following passage—
“ Again and again had Christ tried to escape this danger (death), even
with dexterity, and on his trial he fenced with every art of speech and
silence. When he saw the coils of priestly hatred closing around him,
his soul was exceeding sorrowful. Death haunted him. When a woman
anointed him tenderly, the odour reminded him of death. i She embalms
me for burial,’ he cries, and his very words shudder. He meets his
disciples at supper ; but when he sees and tastes the red wine, that too
suggests death ; he recoils and cries, ‘ It’s my blood ! Drink it yourselves
—I’ll never taste it again ! ’ ”
In a hasty survey of the good and evils of Christianity, the same or
greater want of real sympathy and interest is shown. “ Idols and
Ideals” is a striking but extremely irritating book, attracting by its
brilliancy, repelling by its cold, metallic hardness.
The Hon. Albert Canning has written an essay 11 which, as its seems
to us, would be far more in place in the pages of a magazine than pub10 “ Idols and Ideals.” By Moncure D. Conway, M.A. London: Trubner&
Co. 1877.
11 “ The Political Progress of Christianity.” By the Honourable Albert S. G.
Canning. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1877.
�220
®
Bish pH as a substantial book. For it is too hasty, and is too m"ch
occupied with temporary judgments and modern newspaper litera
ture, to have any real and permanent value. It is an examination into
the comparative civilisation attained by Christian nations and those
under the sway of Islam ; and he considers it evident that, in modern
times, at least, no country except under Christian political rule has
attained to real civilisation. Mr. Canning has drawn carefully on all
authorities which tend to prove his point, but it is a one-sided and
argumentative rather than an exhaustive examination into the ques
tion. It is, however, worth reading as a statement of one side of the
v question.
“No task,” says Miss Whately,12 “ can well be undertaken by a
Christian writer more painful than that of controversy with fellowt Christians.” If such be the case, we can only say that almost every
V theological work ever written must have brought to its author many
terrible pangs ; for, with the rarest possible exceptions, every statement
of faith and doctrine in every language consists in large measure in
running down the faith and doctrines of somebody else. Miss Whately
gives herself the terrible pain of assailing, on evangelical grounds, the
doctrine and practices of the sect known as the Plymouth Brethren.
The whole controversy seems to us so very puerile, that we need only
draw attention to it as another indication of the intestine convulsions
that are shaking religious Protestantism to its foundations.
“ Scepticism and Social Justice ” 13 is an enlarged reprint of a little
work formerly published in Mr. Scott’s well-known series of tracts. It
contains a sketch of the aspect in which the controversy about the authen
ticity and the credibility of the Bible presents itself to an intelligent
layman who has no time to study the subject profoundly at first hand.
He challenges the clergy either to refute the attacks which have been
brought on the received theology and Scripture history, or else to allow
the sceptic to hold his own without placing him under a social stigma.
It is not enough, Mr. Bastard thinks, to say that in the large centres
of civilisation no social stigma attaches to the upholders of sceptical
opinions. He is writing in behalf of those who live in country neigh
bourhoods, where thinkers are few, and where orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism are still rampant. It is a temperate, well-written, though not
profound pamphlet, kindly and considerate to those from whom it asks,
but perhaps asks in vain, equal kindness and consideration.
Mr. Bacon 14 is an American living in Switzerland, who has contri
buted papers to various American periodicals for some time past. His
collected volume, dealing on questions connected with the Church on
the Continent, the Catholic reformation in Switzerland, the Old Catholic
Congress, on the temperance reformation, &c., are better worth reading
than are most volumes of connected essays.
12 “ Plymouth Brethrenism.” By E. J. Whately. London : Hatchards. 1877,.s
13 “ Scepticism and Social Justice.” By Thomas Horlock Bastard. , London :
Williams & Norgate. 1877.
„ n
14 “ Church Papers.” By Leonard Woolsey Bacon. London : Trubner & Lo.
1877.
\
‘‘ ’
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
[Idols and Ideals]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 219 ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Idols and Ideals' from 'Theology'. Date and issue number unknown.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[n.d.]
Identifier
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G5611
Subject
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Book reviews
Creator
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[Unknown]
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ([Idols and Ideals]), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Christianity
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Religion
Superstition
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d2a2a9e9210ba1a3d11883699bc2a0c2
PDF Text
Text
By One who Endured It.
BASED UPON A MS. IN THE POSSESSION OF
LONDON:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
�I
1
89WAR1998 J
—i rm 0ffH.WlT1
IMr-v^»r'i**wninr*u)i/y^jCW<-yt >4^. r
RM
�i 3^ ;
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
A week or two ago, commenting on an exceedingly
polite and urbane letter addressed to me by Julia Hey
wood, nee Fraser, I hinted that I had more MSS. in the
strong and distinctive handwriting of her late father, and
that her provoking courtesy and politeness might tempt
me to publish them. I had hoped to be able to silently
recede from my minatory hint, and leave the soft-spoken
wife of the Rev. Mr. Heywood undisturbed by further
posthumous publication of her father’s MSS. I felt
somewhat regretful at having published “The Agonies
of Hanging” memoir of Major F------, and, in the
interests of peace and amicability, I said to myself:
“Poor Julia! in memory of young and happy days of
auld lang syne, I cannot vex her. When I was a
chubby-cheeked and callow boy, trudging to school with
my leathern satchel on my back, she was to me an elder
sister. When from boyhood I developed into a senti
mental, romantic, dreamy, and erratic lad, and left my
old haunts for roaring Glasgow and its then dingy uni
versity in High Street, it was unmistakeable that she
regarded me in a light more chivalrously tender than
that in which sisters regard their brothers. And—shall
I admit it ?—when in Glasgow I wrote her letters which
I should not be ashamed of even now, should she elect
to disentomb and publish them. Well I know that,
should she give them publicity, my readers would have
many a joke, numerous sneers, and not a few laughs at
�4
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
my expense; but I have got accustomed to being:
sneered at and innured to being laughed at, and the
reading at this mature date of the letters which, in my
burning adolescence, I addressed to Julia Fraser would
irradiate with the glow of boyhood my now murky sky,
awake the dormant throb of passion in my callous heart,
scatter my now barren path with the roses and honey
suckles I was wont to twine in her hair, and fling over
the thought-worn brow of middle life the romantic halo
of love’s young dream. But most likely Julia consigned
my letters to the fire many years ago. Letters signed
‘Heavenly Julia, Yours eternally, W. Stewart Ross,’
are not letters which a clergyman’s wife would be likely
to retain and cherish. I have taken some pains that •
fK Stewart Ross should be a name that clergymen
should have little reason to love. No doubt the wife of
the Rev. Mr. Heywood has destroyed my letters. Poor
Julia ! Many a time, over the midnight and post-mid
night gas, her dear idea and her poetic vision visited me
in my student’s lonely room. Her face peered out from
between the rolling lines of Homer ■ and even sines and
cosines, the processes of surds and the mysteries of the
calculus, were not strangers to the flutter of her skirts
and the perfume and flashing radiance of her hair.
Then, throwing my books aside, I would lift one of the
slippers she worked for me (I never wore these slippers ;
they were too sacred to be soiled by my study floor) and
kiss it, and—shall I own it?—bedew it with the tears of
a poetic, ardent, and impetuous boy. Julia, I am sorry
I published that scrap from your father’s writings. I
will publish no more !”
The above was my soliloquy on Monday evening last
as I sat with my elbows on my desk, burying my face in
my hands. My brain was full of old and tender
memories, my heart replete with unwonted emotions,
when my reverie was rudely broken by the sharp metallic
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
5
■clack-clack ! which announces that the postman is at
the door, and that letters are falling into the letter-box
—letters of praise and letters of blame—to the earnest
if erring man who writes over the name of Saladin.
The servant brought up the letters on a tray. There
was one that at once arrested my eye. It was in the, to
me, never-to-be-forgotten handwriting of Julia. I tore it
open and read it. It will be found reproduced in
another page. Rightly or wrongly, I cried “ Damn!”
*
struck my fist violently on the desk, and resolved to
place before the public more of her father’s MSS. I am
•to be led, but I am not to be driven; I will brook to be
advised, but I will not submit to be defied by either
man or woman. I reproduce “ The Thrashing Machine ”
in defiance of the parson’s horsewhip, the menace in
regard to the criminal court, and the fate of them who
joined in the gainsaying of Kor.
The MS., a printed copy of which I am about to
subjoin, was, along with a large bundle of others, for
warded to me by Julia herself. The messengerf who
carried the package is still alive'. I asked him to my
hotel last time I was in the North, and had a talk with
him about old times. I, moreover, still possess the note
Julia sent along with the packet. Since she went so far
as to suggest that I stole the MS. I formerly published, I
shall take ample care that she shall .not be able to allege
that I stole this one. In self-defence, I feel compelled
to publish the letter which accompanied the package :—Dunder Hall, Tuesday evening.
Beloved Ross,I—Herewith receive, by the hands of Andrew, a
bundle of Dad’s scribbles. He was a daft man, and you are a daft
lad (but a dear, dear ducky all the same !), and let us hope that the
* See Appendix.
+ Andrew Edgar.
t She always called me Ross. I objected to being called Willie.
It had been the name borne by a previous lover of hers.
�6
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
daft darling will understand the daft Dad. Do whatever you like
with the scribbles. Dad used nasty blue paper, and browned it all
over with whiskey and snuff, or I should have used the whole clam*
jawphery to put my hair in curls. You can light the school fire
with them or light the world with them, whichever way you please.
The Irvings have got a gig. I have finished Grant’s “ Harry
Ogilvie.” Glorious 1 The hair-comb ran a long way into my
head : it was too bad of you. The ode is splendour (sic)—better
than that you wrote to pale-faced Agg ; but the fifth line won’t fit
the piano—nearly breaks it. Put that line right, like a dear.
Caught cold sitting on that damp stone, although you put your
handkerchief on it. Friday—old place—old time. It wil be
eternity till then. Don’t bring again that devil of a dirty dog.
Kisses when we meet. Don’t forget your .great coat and your
strong boots. With sincerest love, from everlasting to everlasting,
I am, beloved Ross,
Yours,
Julia.
MAJOR F----- ’j MS.
Ever since my boyhood I have busied myself in
humanitarian pursuits. Even when I was a little fellow
in the sixth form I went out one evening and saw two
broad-haunched, broad-shouldered, rosy-faced, yellow
haired, spanking huzzies driving home the cows of a
neighbouring farmer. They were the very sort of lassies
who had borne sons for Bannockburn. Either of them
could have taken the ordinary Cockney clerk and bent
him over her knee as easily as a Cockney clerk would
bend a hazel wand. On went the cows before and the
girls behind. The former lowed as they had done in
Bashan or Arcadia three thousand years before, and the
latter sang—sang as the angels sang when the world was
newly born, and before singing-masters, or even crotchets
and quavers, had yet been invented. The Ettrick Shep
herd’s songs had just begun to take root in his native
* A wrongly-spelt word of Northern etymology, ancl with little
or no meaning.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
7
land, and it was one of his songs that his two country
women sang as, with loose hair and swinging step, and
their petticoats kilted to their knees, they strode up the
loaning behind the cows :—
“ ’Tis not beneath the burgonet,
Nor yet beneath the crown ;
’Tis not on couch of velvet,
Nor yet on bed of down ;
It is beneath the spreading birk,
In the glen without a name,
Wi’ a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
When the kye come hame.
What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name ?
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame. ”
I am not sure but it was on that occasion I first fell in
love. The odorous breath of the cows, the fragrance
which the zephyr wafted from the valley below where the
bean was in bloom, the solemn hush of the twilight
hour, and that idyllic song of the milk-maids warmed me
and charmed me till I wandered far away from the school
to the byre into which the cows and the lassies dis
appeared. I, too, went into the byre, the lassies taking
little notice of me, doubtless thinking me too young to
engage their serious attention in any way.
“Jenny,” at last faltered T timidly to the lassie that
had charmed me most; “Jenny, I love you;” and, in
the words of the refrain of a song that ran in my head,
and will you “ meet me by moonlight alone ?”
Jenny set down her milk-pail from her lap, and, fling
ing back her wealth of unkempt hair, looked up at me
with her beaming, healthy, happy, and innocent face,
and said, with a bewitching smile, “Yes, little boy, I
will meet you; but who is to milk the cows ? If you
can invent something to milk the cows, I will meet you.”
“ Thank you, dear Jenny,” said I; and I timidly
�8
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
kissed the upturned face of the milk-maid. “ I will not,
Jenny,” quoth I, waving my hand in adieu; “ I will not
return till I have invented something to milk the cows
while we are gone.”
With the vague uneasiness of premature love, I
wandered back through the dewy grass and through the
bean fields, and arrived at the school too late for evening
prayers, but not too late to receive a sound thrashing
for being absent without leave. I was packed off to bed
sobbing and supperless, and lay nearly all night awake
thinking about Jenny, and planning the invention for
milking the cows while she should “ meet me by moon
light alone.” All next day I had a practice sum on the
one side of my slate and plans for a milking-machine on
the other. Whenever an usher came near I pretended
to be working at the practice sum; but I was really
engaged upon the milking-machine. At the end of
three days I had struck upon a plan which I felt sure
would work. All that was now wanted was to get the
proper materials together, and the little box of tools
which my father had put into my school trunk, guided by
my mechanical ingenuity, would do the rest. My father
had always believed me to be possessed of mechanical
talent. I was now developing that talent in a direction
he little dreamt of, and for a purpose of which I could
hardly venture to hope he would approve. All I needed
by way of material was some pieces of wood, an indiarubber tube, a piece of rope, a penny-worth of tin-tacks,
and seven stripes of leather. During the play-hours,
extending over a week, I hid myself in a deserted barn
and constructed my machine, ever dreaming of yellow
haired Jenny, and humming to myself:—
“ What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name ?
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame,
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
9
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame.”
At length, duly equipped with my milking-machine, I
-strode off to the byre, regardless of discipline and flogging
and extra task and everything sublunary save Jenny. I
felt proud I had suffered for her sake, and I was prepared
to suffer again. I reached the byre, got behind Jenny
who was milking, and triumphantly set down my milkingmachine, which, to tell the truth, looked a queer cross
between a three-legged stool and a sou’-wester, and a
baby-jumper and a sausage-machine. Jenny turned
round and looked at me, and glanced at the machine,
and then held her sides and laughed till the tears ran
down her cheeks. The other milk-maid caught up the
tune and laughed almost as immoderately.
Drawing myself up to my full height, “ Jenny,” said I
sternly, “ I am here in redemption of my promise, and
to demand of you the fulfilment of yours. I guarantee
that this machine will milk the cows, and I claim of you
that you ‘ meet me by moonlight alone.’ ”
“ Great God,” said the other milk-maid, “ the boy is
clean cracked 1”
“ Madam,” rejoined I fiercely, “ I am a gentleman,
and I did not come here to be insulted. This lady
made a vow to me, and by heaven she shall redeem it,
or I shall know why.”
The two milk-maids opened their mouths at me as
well as their eyes, and stared at me in incredulous bewil
derment.
“ Of course, of course,” at length spake Jenny, with an
arch smile; “I will ‘meet you by moonlight alone,’
according to my promise, if you will make that thing
[pointing to the machine] milk the cows while we are
•gone.”
�IO
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
“That/7zz>?£-,” said I with pride and firmness, “will
do the work while we are gone.”
“ Set it to its work, then,” answered Jenny, still with
wild bewilderment on her sun-burnt but honest and
happy countenance.
'‘iThe lady is won” murmured I in triumph; and I
lifted my machine and proceeded to attach it to the
udder of the cow. The animal resisted my attentions,
and seemed to have somewhat set her face against
vaccine innovations. I succeeded, nevertheless, in
attaching the machine to her udder.
“Now!” exclaimed I; and I gave the leather a tug
and the rope a pull, and set in motion the fly-wheel
which I had taken off a disused grindstone. The tug
and the pull and the wheel were more than the cow
could stand—perhaps more than any cow before or
since has been expected to stand. She ventured one
mad stare at myself and the apparatus, and then lashed
out devilishly with her feet. I was lifted clean off the
ground and dashed up against the opposite wall, and the
milk-pail and my most ingenious machine were kicked
to shivers and scattered over and around me. I stag
gered up with a fractured skull and a broken arm, and,
observing the thick milk lying white all around me, I
took it to be the whole of my brains, or mayhap my
immortal soul, scattered over the pavement; and, with a
despairing cry, I fell back insensible.
When I recovered my senses I found myself in my own
bed at school, with my father standing over me. He
had been sent for, and had come more than three hun
dred miles. The doctor was also there, and an old
chrone of a nurse, besides a great number of basins and
bowls and medicine bottles and poultices and jugs with
flowers, and wet towels. When I was sufficiently re
covered to receive it, and when my father was gone,
quite in the interests of the school, I got my ever-
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
II
memorable thrashing, that the discipline of the establish
ment might be vindicated. That thrashing fructified into
incalculable good : it set me to planning and devising
my thrashing machine, the greatest invention since Napier
invented logarithms. It is of this thrashing machine,
God willing, I propose to speak. But I may just mention
that, as regards my first and incipient venture, the milkingmachine, the splinters and fragments of it were picked,
up carefully ; but a piece of leather belonging to it, and
as large as a shoe-sole, was never found—neither were
two of my front teeth. My firm impression is that both
that piece of leather and my two front teeth were knocked
down my throat, and that they remain somewhere inside
my person till the present day. A German surgeon I
once met at Baden-Baden (a Herr Pulvermacher) inclines
to the same opinion. He placed some curious acoustic
contrivance of his own upon my naked back, and, apply
ing his ear to it, assured me that he heard distinctly the
two teeth biting away at the piece of leather. I have a
strange pain in the part, and, on a very quiet night,
when I have had enough whisky, but not too much, I
myself have heard a sound appallingly like the two teeth
biting the leather. But let that pass, and let this serve
as prolegomena to the conception, process, and com
pletion of the triumph of my life, The Thrashing
Machine.
I found I was in for a terrific hammering. It seems
that, in my unconscious state, I had two or three timesevery day risen up in bed and whispered, “Jenny, my
love,” kissed a viewless form, and then sang :—
“ See yonder pawky shepherd
That lingers on the hill ;
His yowes are in the fauld,
And his lambs are lyin’ still ;
But he downa venture hame,
�12
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
For his heart is in a flame
To meet his bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
When the kye come hame,
’Tween the gloamin’ and the mirk,
When the kye come hame.”
These recurring outbursts of love and song had, the
surgeon alleged, made me much worse. On one occasion,
as I got enthusiastic in the refrain of my bucolic melody,
it seems I had torn the bandage from my head and flung
it right in the face of Mrs. Fergusson, the principal’s
wife. My wounded scalp bled afresh, and I fell back in
a state of syncope; but Mrs. Fergusson did not stay to
attend to me. One or two drops of blood from the
bandage had lighted upon her face. She rushed out of
the room screaming, and vehemently advised her hus
band, Dr. Fergusson, that I was “ a horrid little pig,” that
I had assaulted her, and that she would not live in the
same establishment with me.
“Thrash,” screamed she; “thrash the insubordinate
and cracked little blockhead, and send him home. He
is not fit to be in the school.”
The Doctor, if he had not had a wife, would not have
been a bad sort of fellow: he was a scholar, a pedant,
but on the whole a gentleman; albeit an act of juvenile
indiscretion on his part had made it necessary for him
to marry a village dressmaker. Dr. Fergusson governed
the school, and this quondam dressmaker governed Dr.
Fergusson.
“ My dear, it shall be done,” said Dr. Fergusson sub
missively, as he wiped away the blood-drops off his wife’s
face with his snuffy handkerchief. “ I agree with you;
he is monstrum nulla virtute redemptum a vitiis. I will
thrash him.”
If the Doctor had not promised “ I will thrash him,”
I strongly suspect he would have got thrashed himself.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
IS
All the boys remembered the day he came into the
school minus one of his side whiskers. It was no joke
to disobey the impetuous caprices of the quondam
dressmaker who was now Mrs. Fergusson.
In a day or two I was considered well enough to get
thrashed. I was, with shabby solemnity, arraigned
before the entire teaching staff and all the boys in the
school. Mrs. Fergusson sat by her husband’s side, busy
hemming an apron : she surmised that her presence was.
necessary to give him the essential constancy, courage,
and cruelty.
“ Donald Fraser,” began the Doctor sternly, “ you are
unworthy, sir, of the attention of my staff and myself
unworthy of the kindness of your more than mother,
Mrs. Fergusson [here the lady referred to laid down her
seam, took off her spectacles, and wiped her eyes]
unworthy of the young gentlemen who have been pol
luted by being doomed to associate with you ; unworthy,,
sir, of these benches ; unworthy of this ancient academy,
which has been the alma mater of many who have sub
sequently been ornaments to the Army, the Church, and
the Law. [Here Mrs. Fergusson beat the floor with her
heel by way of applause; and all the boys, with the
single exception of myself, battered the boards with
their feet, and hurrahed, and kicked up such a cloud of
dust that, in my weak state, I felt choking and faint.]
It is not for your sake, Fraser, that I put myself to the
trouble of administering a flagellation. Before me lies
a task, not a pleasure. Virtute non armis fido. Your
offence has been inexpressibly flagrant. Twice you have
been absent without leave—absent for a purpose which
I would describe as diabolical if it were not that I have
an impression that you are of unsound mind. You
were found in a cow-house four miles away, lying in a
cataplasm of cow’s milk and fool’s blood, the staves of a
broken milk-pail, and the shivered fragments of an idiotic.
�14
A FEVRm. FLOGGING.
contrivance of yours. In the name of omnipotent God,
sir, what were you doing there ? How, sir, did you dare
to drag the reputation of this ancient seat of learning
over the filthy floor of a cow-house ? How, sir, did you
come to exchange expressions of precocious amativeness
with an unlettered woman of the people? No boy who
has the privilege to attend a seat of learning like this,
august with the classic memories of nearly half a cen
tury, but should sing from the bottom of his heart the
noble ode which opens, Odi prefanum ntlgvs, ef arceo.
Even with the oldest of you it is time enough to think
of ladies: but, when the time comes, look only and
alone to a lady bred and a lady bom [here Mrs. Fcrgusson primmed her mouth, straightened her hards,
perked back her head, and posed as " a lady bred and
a lady bom
and speak to no other woman wha-ever,
unless it be to command her to wash vour shirr or
blacken your boots.”
“ Hear, hear F cried Mrs. Ferguson.
“But,” continued the Doctor, “you have actually
gone and compromised me and the school and vour
family and yomselt, by precocious advances to a miser
able plebeian of the feminine gender. In your delitiirm
you spoke of Jenny. Jenny is not such a mnv as
should be in die mouth of any youth who has walked
through the classic groves of this establishment. sir.
Phyllis, or Chloris. or Calpumia, or Clytemnesma. are
such names as alone should escape your Kps. yborr
is vulgarity and desecration. [ His own wife's name was
Mary Ann.] Then, sir, you kept humming a ditcv
wrirten by a shepherd, and fit only for plcueh-bovs.
‘ To wee a txxutie ssssae
When the kye cosrse tiirae'—
provincial crtveh sir. with which you have polluted vour
mouth and contaminated the atmosnhere of this classic
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
15
• establishment. Your stripes, sir, which shall be many,
would have been few if, in your delirium, you had
sung:—‘ Supprime jam I'aerymas, non est revocabilis istis,
Quern semel umbrifera navita lintre tulit. ’
Sir, you shall be beaten with many stripes in vindication
of the outraged reputation of this seat of learning, and
then you will be forever and ignominiously expelled, a
mensa et thoro. Divest yourself of the garment that
■envelopes the part of your somatic entity upon which,
from time immemorial, flagellation has been conven
tionally laid.”
At this point Mrs. Fergusson pretended to turn her
eyes away, and many of the smaller boys began to sob
audibly, for an expulsion flogging at Angel Turret in
the good old days was something you would carry the
memory, and perhaps the marks, of to your grave. I
let the curtain fait over the sickening details of how I
was stripped, strapped, and flogged till I fainted ; and
how, next morning, I was stuffed inside the school
master’s lumbering carriage, my boxes being on the top,
and driven to the mail coach, that I might be despatched
en route for home.
My father was neither to hold nor to bind. He took
me into the library, and examined my stripes carefully
with a candle, muttering strange oaths as each blue weal,
red line, or yellow star revealed itself to his indignant
scrutiny. He rushed out to the stables and instructed
the coachman to get ready the carriage at once. My
mother met him in the hall, and asked anxiously, “Where
are you going, dear ? Whatever is the matter ?”
“ Going 1” rejoined he, angrily ; “ do you know that
that snuffy old rascal at Angel Turret—the Devil’s Turret
they should call it—has all but murdered your boy ? I
start to-night to punch his infernal old head. I’ll teach
the pedantic old compound of snuff and Latin and
�i6
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
barbarity what it is to print the American flag with a
stick upon the foundation of any boy of mine. I’ll twist
the truculent old savage’s neck for him.”
“No, you won’t,” said my mother; “you won’t do
anything of the kind and she placed her arm in his
and endeavoured to lead him back to the dining room,
for she was well aware that, if he were permitted to visit
I)r. Fergusson, he would be likely, by his choleric temper
and heavy hand, to get himself into serious if not in
superable difficulties.
“ Come with me,” she murmured persuasively, gently
drawing him in the direction of the dining room. But
he was in an ungovernable rage, all the more deep-seated
and determined and dangerous because it was not paiticularly demonstrative; and he shook my mother off
as if she had been a viper, and simply said, with an
inflexible firmness : “ Woman, I have made up my mind,
and go I shall.”
My mother waxed pale with dread, and, with the
utmost exertion of her persuasive force, induced him to
go into the parlour and have a cup of tea, previous to
his setting out on his journey, which she was apprehen
sive might end in murder. Grimly he sipped a cup of
tea. “ Now I am in for anything from pitch and toss to
manslaughter,” muttered he through his teeth; but
beyond this he uttered not a word. A servant announced
that the carriage was ready. He set down the tea-cup
with a clank and sprang to his feet. But, on the instant,
somehow, and from somewhere, a brass kettleful of
boiling water was upset upon his feet, almost filling his
Hessian boots. He uttered a roar of pain, and, without
opening the glass door, crashed through it, and in an
instant was upon the lawn. Here he swore like a fiend
and jumped mountain high with agony. For an instant
. he stood on the margin of the fish-pond. It struck me
like an inspiration that, if he could get some cold water
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
17
introduced into the boiling water in his boots, all would
be well with him. There was not a moment to lose. I
made a short and mad race, and came up against him
like a battering ram; and he was, in what I conceived
to be mercy, knocked heels over head into the fish
pond.
She never confessed it, but I have a strong suspicion
that my mother upset that kettle by preconcerted accident,
in order to circumvent a journey that she apprehended
would end in manslaughter, if not indeed in murder.
Be that as it may, my father was in bed for a fortnight
in a raging fever. I had indeed taken him out of hot
water and cooled him down a bit; but, as it turned out,
the cooling had been all too suddenly effected. By the
time he had fairly recovered he had apparently given up
all idea of visiting Dr. Fergusson and Angel Turret; he
never again mentioned them, nor referred to them in
any way.
During the time my father was confined to bed with
burnt feet and fever I had leisure to attend to and medi
tate upon the many stripes on my person, the outward
and visible signs of an inward grace which I fear I did
not possess. I was seized with an overpowering desire
to behold with my own eyes the stripes by which the
honour of Dr. Fergusson and his academy had been
vindicated. My father had examined these stripes, and
had compared the part on which they were inflicted to a
representation of the American flag, the glorious gon
falon of the stripes and stars. I must behold these
stripes by which the honour of Angel Turret had been
vindicated and my own moral redemption secured. I
twisted myself round like an acrobat; and, if I could
only have twisted myself round two inches further, I
believed I could have had a full view; but, as it was, I
had no view at all. It occurred to me that, if I kept
trying on frpm day to day, I would gradually overcome
�i8
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
that difficulty about the two inches. I, however, tried
and tried three days in succession, but without success,
and on the third day I took cramp while I was in the
very acme of my distorted attitude; and, unable to
screw myself back to my normal position, for over five
minutes I yelled with pain. My cries brought my mother
and the scullery-maid to my bed-room door; but I had
taken the precaution to lock it before I commenced my
experiments, or these two persons would have found me
in an exceedingly awkward predicament. As soon as
the cramp relaxed its grasp I straightened myself up,
hurriedly redressed myself, and opened the door with a
bland smile.
“ Donald, Donald, in the name of heaven,” exclaimed
my mother, “ what is the matter with you ? Your cries
were heartrending.”
“ Oh, nothing the matter with me, mother—all right
—I was experimenting,” stammered I, with some confu
sion of manner.
“ Experimenting 1” cried my mother, “ your screams
were as terrible as if you had, all of a sudden, tumbled
into hell. What kind of experiment requires yelling of
that kind ?”
“ Well, you see I was experimenting on the acting of
Hamlet.’ That scene where the Dane leaps into the
grave of Ophelia, in my opinion, requires fearful yelling.”
“ Boy, you are clean cracked. First you did some
abominable thing at school—Lord knows exactly what it
was; next you attempt to drown your own father ; and
then, in your attempt at acting ‘ Hamlet,’ you bid fair to
burst your own wind-pipe and shout the whole of us
deafand my mother slammed the door and hurried
downstairs.
I was still determined to behold the stripes for which
I was indebted to the strong right arms of Dr. Fergusson
■and his principal assistant. I tried ingenious combina
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
19
rtions of double mirrors and triple mirrors, and I, by this
means, succeeded in seeing all parts of my body except
the very part I desired to examine. Discomfiture I
But I was still determined, ingenious, and resourceful.
.Sitting on the top of the garden wall was a tom-cat
•engaged in his toilet. Now, when a cat sponges himself
•with his tongue he sponges himself all over, from the
■very hat-crown to the boot-heel, as it were. One toilet
.attitude the tom-cat struck gave me a wrinkle. Like
.the ancient Greek geometer, I exclaimed “ Eureka!”
I apprehended that my task could be accomplished if I
■could only place my heel on the back of my neck.
Then an astonishing field of view wrould open before my
prying and intelligent vision. Sir Isaac Newton had
struck upon the law of gravitation from seeing an apple
fall; I, the product of a later and more go-ahead age,
had, from observing a cat at his toilet, struck upon the
law by which I could survey the stripes which the
learned Dr. Fergusson had inflicted that the prestige of
Angel Turret might be vindicated and my own moral
regeneration secured.
Preparatory to my new experiment I stripped myself
and sparred and attitudinised before a mirror, and,
without egotism, it really did appear to me that I was an
•exceptionally handsome lad, and peculiarly suggestive
•of a Greek athlete or agonistes. I arrayed myself in a
■pair of bathing drawers and sat down upon the hearth
rug in order to experiment in the way of placing my
heel behind my neck, that, with mortal vision, I might
behold the stripes with which my moral iniquities had
been healed. At the first trial I managed to put my
great toe in my mouth. At the end of half-an-hour I
.succeeded in making the said great toe touch my ear
Eldorado was all but reached ! I became inordinately
excited and I resolutely determined to succeed. One
desperate duck till my neck cracked, and one reckless
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
20
wrench upward of the leg till knee and pelvis cracked in.
chorus—and the deed was done ! My heel was placed
firmly and solidly on the back of my neck! But no
undiscovered worlds and unexplored hemispheres or
American or other flags met my adventurous vision:
the drawers were there—frightful oversight, irreparable
blunder ! I felt in a state of distress and blindness, and
hastened to remove the heel which I had placed upon
my neck. I was utterly powerless to do so. In a short
time I had not even the power to try to remove my
heel. I tumbled sidewise upon the hearth-rug, and lay
moaning in absolute misery. I felt I was dying—dying
a martyr to research after a certain fundamental truth ;
dying, unlamented, deserted, unappreciated, and no one
would ever divine the cause in which I had perished.
No marble tomb for me, and a brilliant name among
the world’s great discoverers, and those who passed
through the furnaces of tribulation to the throne of the
immortals. In my deadly distress I remembered the
words of young Norval:—“ Cut off from Nature’s and from Glory’s course,
Which never mortal was so fond to run.
*
*
*
*
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves,
May yet conjecture what I might have been.”
In the collapse of my previous experiment I was able
to scream ; but now that last solace of the sufferer was
denied me. My chin was pressed firmly down upon
my throat, and I could make only a low, croaking noise,
resembling the jeremiad of a frog, rather than the wail
of a human being. My plight was terrible. Nobody
would miss me now till supper time, if even then ; and
by that time I should be beyond the reach of mortal
assistance. By the merest accident, the maid had
neglected to “ make ” my bed at the proper time; and,
before I had lain five minutes—which, however, seemed
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
21
.-an eternity—in my helpless and desperate condition, she
entered the chamber to “make” the bed. She stared
at me, uttered a scream, and hurried out of the
room.
“ O ma’am,” she said to my mother, in breathless ex
citement, “the young master is in his room, and has
made himself into a Isle of Man halfpenny, with feet
.all round ; and he is groaning horrible. O ma’am, I
have got quite a scunner. I never see’d the like. Come,
ma’am; he is a-dyin’ by inches.”
My mother rushed up the stairs three steps at a time,
and, beholding my extraordinary plight, she held up her
hands in bewildered horror, and exclaimed :
“ What next ? What part of the play of ‘ Hamlet ’ can
Z7zzk be meant to represent ? What have I done that
divine providence should give me a son like this ? He
is knees and elbows all over, like an octopus. He will
drive me cracked !” and she rushed out of the room and
sent for the parson and the doctor. The former prayed
for me, while the latter, by main force, extracted my
heel from the back of my neck. Then they two retired
to my father’s bedroom, where he was still lying, bad
with burnt feet and fever; and all three got drunk
together. You may think all this unimportant; but it is
not. It all had its bearing upon the magnum opus of my
life, The Thrashing Machine, and that you shall see
before many more lines have proceeded from my gifted
pen.
I was not even yet defeated. Every fresh repulse I
sustained served only to render me the more determined
to behold and study the stripes with which my moral
delinquencies had been healed. These stripes, still
sharply painful, should I inadvertently forget they were
there and sit down all of a sudden, were all that resnained to me to hallow the memory of far-off Jenny
�22
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
and the literal shattering of my idol which the cow had
so irreverently kicked to splinters. But Jenny and the
milking-machine alike became half-obliterated in my wild
and all-absorbing desire to read the primitive hieroglyphy
which Dr. Fergusson and his principal assistant, a B.A.
of Oxford, had written upon me with rods. They were
two learned men. I must see what, in their wisdom,,
they had written with sticks, using my skin for parch
ment. The results of their labour, I determined, should
not be lost to the world,
I, with the unconventional and rare ingenuity which
has ever been my distinguishing trait, sat down upon a
large plate of salt, that I might learn and note from the
spasms and yanks of pain the particular directions and
crossings and re-crossings and notches and stars and
scars of the stripes with which my morals had been so
learnedly, if not humanely, healed. I went down to the
pantry when the butler happened to be out; and I filled
my pockets with finely powdered salt, and concealed as.
best I could under my coat a large silver tray. With
the salt and the tray I retired to my bedroom. I filled
the tray full to the brim with the salt, and levelled it off
beautifully with a comb. Then down I sat with a jerk
but, by the King of Heaven, up I rose with another jerk !
I uttered a savage yell, and ran tearing across the floor
as if all the fiends had been behind me. I had had my
arm broken, my skull fractured, and my two teeth kicked
down my throat; but, in insufferable pain, this salt ex
periment beat all my previous experiences hollow. I
beg humbly to recommend its adoption by the Great
Spiritual Enemy of Mankind as something worthy of the
liveliest corner in the Infernal Pit. Into the room rushed
my mother and her maid.,
“ Donald, Donald dear, in the name of all that is
sane, what is the matter now ?”
“ ‘Hamlet ’ again, mother!” exclaimed I bitterly, hardly
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
2S
knowing what I said; for the pain, although subsiding,
was still intense.
“ But you gag ‘Hamlet ’ horribly,” rejoined she, half in
literal earnest and half in pitying irony; “ I distinctly
heard you cry out, ‘ O Almighty thunder ! I cannot
read the writing with the stick 1 I have sat down on
hell, and here am I!’ What part of ‘ Hamlet ’ is that ?
It is not to be found in Shakespeare’s version.”
I explained that Hamlet was mad, and that, in my
contemplated representation of the character, I should
give a rendering which would astonish the world.
“Astonish the world! I should think so,” rejoined
my mother curtly, and left the room.
I had managed to place a pillow over the tray with the
salt, or I might not have been able to give my explana
tions so readily, or to have got rid of her so easily.
Labor omnia vincit. The gate of hell itself cannot
prevail against the unconquerable might of the human
will. Even the fiery fury of the trayful of salt had not
burnt out of me the indomitable resolution to read the
cryptograms which the learned Dr. Fergusson and his
assistant, Morris, had written with sticks. The gardener
was an exceedingly intelligent young man. Pencil and
compasses were hardly ever out of his hands. His busi
ness was to design flower-beds, rockeries, and fountains ;
but he could draw nearly anything that is in heaven
above, on earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
I would take him into the summer-house and engage
him to produce, on a sheet of drawing-paper, a facsimile
of the stripes with which my moral delinquencies had
been healed. I hastened out to the garden, gave my
instructions, and, within three hours from the inception
of the idea, it was a consummated fact. The annexed
cut is, accurately, but on a reduced scale, and without
colours, a copy of the document, plan, map, or what you
will, with which the gardener furnished me :—-
�24
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
Never did panting lover read a missive from his mistress,
never did young poet read his first verses in type, with
more ecstatic rapture than warmed and thrilled me now
that I had the stick-writing of a great seat of learning
unrolled before me in all its mysterious splendour. I
admit it was utterly incomprehensible. Would to heaven
I could interpret its esoteric lines, its occult angles, and
its mysterious stars ! But I knew that Dr. Fergusson
was a learned and earnest man, who would not write
flippantly or in vain; and that, therefore, in that mystic
scribble, which had been subsequently retraced by the
flame-pen of the salt, lurked the key to unlock that
problem in ontology, the Origin of Evil, and the sword
with which to cut the Gordian Knot of Evil’s Final
Eradication. I gazed on the map-document with that
absorbing dream-worship with which we regard that
which at once awes our senses and baffles our reason.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
25
Although I could not read the inscription now that I had
it before me, the consciousness of possessing it was to
me a profound, if inexplicable, pleasure. What could
be the portentous significance of that blue fading away
into that green ; of that umbre black losing itself in that
flaming yellow; of that ominous ttJ, and that fearful □ ?
I would be at the bottom of all this, or perish in the
.attempt. I worked at the problem till I felt the wheels
of my brain cracking and the belts giving way. But, at
last, an inspiration as magnificent as that which had
impelled me to employ the gardener to make the copy
of the cryptogram now struck me with the divine impulse
to employ a certain servant of the Most High to trans
late it. About six miles distant from my father’s house,
Dunder Hall, lived a man of God and Learning such as
the world has all too seldom seen. He had preached
himself out of his kirk, and all but preached himself into
a lunatic asylum, for it is with a lunatic asylum the
world rewards all possessors of mental energy and moral
force which cannot be weighed or measured in the bushel
of vulgar common sense or yoked into the mill of com
monplace to grind out half-crowns.
I begged two guineas from my ever-indulgent father
and enclosed them, along with the inscription, to the
learned and pious, albeit impecunious, servant of the
Most High. I explained to him that I was anxious to
have a translation. I made him aware that the cryptogramic hierogram was the work of two elegant scholars,
James Fergusson, M.A. of Edinburgh and LL.D, of
Yale, and Arthur Morris, B.A., of Brazenose College,
Oxford, and editor of an approved edition of Thucydides.
I permitted the learned and reverend servant of the Most
*
High to infer that the copy I sent him, and which the
* The Rev. Dr. Hamilton, author of “ Key to the Apocalypse ”
and “ The Contents of the Seven Phials.”
�26
A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
gardener had made, was the original. I, somehow, had
not the face to take him the original and lay it before
him. Thank heaven I had just taken the copy in time,
for, under the influence of a salve made of bees-wax,.
fern roots, and alum, the original was rapidly becoming
illegible and passing away, leaving only a tabula rasa
behind.
Within a week from the day I sent off the inscription,
a messenger from the scholar handed it back to me with
the translation thereof! I rushed upstairs to my room,
locked the door from the inside, and eagerly tore open,
the scholar’s packet. A guinea tumbled out upon the
floor. I set my foot upon it till I had time to lift it. I
had now before me a prize grander than a Dijon pyramid
of guineas. A private note ran thus :—
The Cottage, Thursday morning.
Donald Fraser, Esq.
*
Dear Sir,—The writing with a sight of which you honoured,
me, although exceedingly important at this crisis of the Church,
is not at all difficult to decipher. I devoted to it only oneday of prayerful reading and one day of philological synthesis and
analysis. I got at the key to the cryptogram all the readier as the
whole inscription bore a striking resemblance to that upon an
Assyrian tile which Dr. Ravenstein brought from the Land of Moab
seven months ago. Having had to devote only two days tothe translation, it would be avaricious on my part to retain the twoguineas you were generous enough to enclose; but, as I am not
abundantly blessed with the world’s wealth, I have taken the liberty
to retain one of the guineas, and I sincerely trust that you will not
consider the fee for the trifling service it has been my privilege torender you exorbitant.
With prayers that the translation may be blessed to the saving of'
your soul and the souls of those who are of your household,
I am, Dear Sir,
Your most respectful, humble servant,
•
James Hamilton.
The Rev. Dr. Hamilton had evidently thought that the inscrip
tion had been sent him by my father.
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
27
PROLEGOMENAL CLARIS.
(T) The lines have all a tendency from east to west.
They are simply the rays of the sun-god, ^(lrrrjp, Mises
Saotes, He., He. I give due weight in detail to their
respective ray-weight and deflection from the horizontal.
(2) The distinctive marks are all grammalogoi, Phallic
symbols (crux ansata), signs of the Zodiac, oriental,
ancient Egyptian, and Ptolemaic, Hebrew characters, in
which W and H are conspicuous, and tt, which, with its
indication of the relation of the diameter of a circle to
its circumference, affords, in the hands of esoteric erudi
tion, a key to the whole position.
(3) The great character to the left is of course Hl/N,
which, taken with 1TJJ (the virgin) and Zo (the crab) and
TT (the twins), all of which are readily discernible in
the inscription, render the solution easy to the occultist'
scholar.
TRANSLATION.
BY THY LEFT HAND, O AMMON, GREETING.
GREAT
VINDEMIATRIX, ARISE IN THE EAST.
THERE
WAS SILENCE IN HELL ABOUT THE SPACE OF HALF AN
STAR,
HOUR. WO, WO, SON OF POMPONIUS MELA, WITH THE
IRON IN THE GROIN AND THE FOUNDATIONS BEATEN
LIKE AN ANVIL OF MULCIBER. THE RAYS THEREOF
FLEW. Zeus hflijv STRUCK THE NETHER HEEL J THE
MOUTH WAS THAT OF A LION, THE FEET WERE THOSE
OF A SHE-BEAR, AND THE TAIL THAT OF A FROG. FOR
*
n SHALL JUDGE AMONG THE NATIONS, AND AT THE
END OF A TIME AND THREE TIMES AND ONE-EIGHTH
OF A TIME THE EARTH SHALL HOWL AS THE MOON
DROPS DOWN UPON IT IN BLOOD. HOWL FOR THE
CIVET, CRY ALOUD FOR THE MUSTARD PLANT. FOR
THE CRAB AND THE VIRGIN AND THE TWINS MOURN
WITH TAMMUZ IN BAAL-PEOR. THE HERON AND THE
WEAZEL LAMENT IN BACTRIA FOR ANUBIS AND RA AND
SET-TYPHON
AND
SEKRU
AND
TUM
AND
PHTHAH.-
�A FEARFUL FLOGGING.
MOURN, FOR THE LEGS AND THE TEETH ARE BROKEN.
MISES HARMACHIS AND OANNES COME ; THE GRAVES
OPEN J THE WORLD ENDS.
GLORY TO pH ! BEAT
THE WIND WITH RODS, 12 I
AND YEARS 9,999-
CUBITS, AND
FOR DAYS
My countenance fell. The original, even as I sat
upon the salt, was nearly as intelligible as the translation
that now lay before me. What could possibly be the
use of James Fergusson, M.A., and Arthur Morris, B.A.,
troubling in my interest to write with sticks, didactics,
and apothegms utterly beyond the range of my scholar
ship and the scope of my intelligence ? Of the “ founda
tions beaten like an anvil ” I had a vivid comprehension ;
while “ beat the wind ” was intelligible, but rather vague ;
and “ rods ” of “ 121 cubits ” were certainly a great deal
too long for actual, practical flogging. And could they
not, at Angel Turret, have flogged a boy like me without
referring me to, as far as I was concerned, such unknown
monsters as Ra and Set-Typhon and Turn and Phthah ?
No wonder the thrashing did me no good ! No wonder
that I felt quite as wicked as ever ! I resolved to devote
some years to deep meditation on the philosophy of
flogging. And any one who is privileged to follow the
coruscations of my gifted pen may have the glory to
find out for himself the magnificent result at which I
^ultimately arrived.
(To be continued, if Julia—Mrs. Heywood—
shoiild see fit to again provoke Saladin.)
�APPENDIX.
ANOTHER LETTER FROM MRS. HEYWOOD.
Sir,—I have read your vile paper. I took the tongs, and with
them carried it out at arm’s length to the dust-bin. I feel defiled.
I shall ask my husband, a feeble but earnest servant of God, to
appoint a clay of humiliation and prayer throughout his parish.
Then I shall ask him, if he loves me, the wife of his bosom, to horse
whip you to within one inch of your life. He is strong in the arm of
the flesh, and will thrash you as if you were a rat; and the God of
Jacob, the mighty one of Israel, has, in answer to my prayer, pro
misecl to assist him. You shall perish in the gainsaying of Kor.
My father never hanged himself with the----- of any creature.
You forged the whole infamous thing, and you have provoked the
holy one of Israel to anger. I shall be at you at the criminal court.
I never saw you save once, and I wish I had never seen you. The
devil tempted me, and I tattooed on my left arm—
I Love Ross Alone and Forever.
My husband has seen the inscription two or three times, and has
each time kicked up a dust and preached in a way that has emptied
the church and drawn upon him the displeasure of the bishop. I
have tried to take out the tattooing with poultices of vaccine excre
ment, black soap, and steel filings ; but it will not come out. I
shall have my arm amputated rather than bear about with me your
accursed name. Last time the Rev. Mr. Heywood saw it he hurled
a heavy clasped Bibleat my head. The holy book, glory be to
God, missed my head ; but it knocked down Jesus Christ and
three of the saints, and it took £4 5s. 3d. to repair them. I
enclose you the account, and, if you have a soul in your body, you
will pay it.
My father, whose memory you foul with burlesque and whose
grave you desecrate, would not have trusted you with a brass six
pence, far less with his Julia’s honour. Beware of the curse of
Hiel the Bethelite ! There shall be a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a
great slaughter in the land of Idumea, for you stole my father’s-
�3°
APPENDIX.
MS. and then forged it. I will yet number you and your readers
in Telain, when the mighty one cometh from Teman and Ur of the
Chaldeans. I am my father’s daughter, you viper. You say he was
hanged with a murderer’s intestines, which is a falsehood ; and I
pray God that you may .yet see the day when you will be hanged
with his daughter’s garters, which she weareth under the knees
thereof (sic). My husband shall chastise thee with whips, and the
Lord shall rain down upon thee hail-stones and coals of fire. Blow
ye the cornet in Gibeah and the trumpet in Ramah : cry aloud at
Beth-aven !—Yours, with loathing and contempt,
Julia Heywood (nee Fraser).
The Vicarage, Sunday evening.
P.S.—You may insert this or not, as you like ; but, if you do not,
the husband of my bosom has made arrangements to have the whole
•matter of your vile slander published in the Church Times and the
Christian World, and also brought into the police-court.—J. H.,
nee F.
���
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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A fearful flogging : by one who endured it; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin
Creator
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Stamp on front cover: Bishopsgate Institute. Reference Library. Appendix: Another letter from Mrs Julia Heywood (nee Fraser). Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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W. Stewart & Co.
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[1894]
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N585
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Religious practice
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Text
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Christianity
Flagellation
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Text
IN REPLY TO ONE OF
SPALDING.
BY LUKE GRIFFIN.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
1859.
�AN ADDRESS IN REPLY TO ONE OF MR. THOMAS
COOPER’S LECTURES.
[Seeing from advertisements that Thomas Cooper was to deliver a course
of lectures in Spalding, dn the 20th, 21st, and 22nd of January, I wrote to
that gentleman to allow me, for twenty minutes, on the first evening, before
10 20, to explain the position we stood in as opponents to orthodox
Christianity. Mr. Cooper replied, stating that he could not promise me
twenty minutes, especially on the first evening, when his lecture would be
very lengthy, because he would have to say as much in one evening as he
usually said in two. In fact, I gathered from Mr. Cooper’s reply, that if I
journeyed twenty miles to defend my principles, it would be more than
probable that I should not have an opportunity of being heard. The
remarks which I had prepared for the occasion were as follow;—]
Ladies and C-ENtLEMENy—I believe that no On© present this evening
froiild wish to occupy my place—to stand up in defence Of that which
Christians term ‘ Infidelity.’ Be that as it may, I consider it my duty
to be here, although, in many ways, my being here may injure me.
The principle upon which I act is not that of expediency. I don’t
always stay to inquire whether there will be any pecuniary gain from
what I do, but I first ask whether the act will be right; if so, I do it,
not caring so very much about the consequences. Now, my friends,
this evening I shall address you as the jury who will a true verdict
give according to the evidence brought before you. Many of you
have been in our law courts. There you have heard the plaintiff’s
counsel ably state a case, and call his witnesses to substantiate it;
everything has appeared so clear and straightforward on behalf of the
plaintiff that you have really thought that the verdict must be given
in his favour. But when you have heard the defendant’s counsel
state his case, and examine his witnesses, your views have been
entirely changed. Mr. Cooper for the plaintiff, is much better
qualified to speak than I am for the defendant, because he has had
years of experience, whilst I am quite a novice. Then many may
think it presumptuous in me to oppose a man like Cooper; be that as
it may, I deem it my duty to oppose him, and I feel confident that if
I do not succeed in gaining your verdict, it will be because of my
inefficiency, and not because I have undertaken the defence of a weak
or bad cause. I take it for granted that Mr. Cooper is honest and
sincere, and that however strange his conduct may appear to his old
friends, still his acts are those of an earnest evangelical Christian,
whose chief aim is to do his duty. Whatever I may say, I wish to
say courteously and kindly, so as to give no offence to any rightminded person.
Methodists, Baptists, and Independent's, I believe that your views
are injurious to the majority of mankind, inasmuch as they bring to
them fears which destroy that peace of mind necessary to the enjoy
ment of life. To the favoured few, to those who believe that they are
born again, the Bible doubtless brings glad tidings of great joy, for it
says that theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. But to the great mass
of men—to those having no spirit bearing witness with their spirit
that they are the children of God, to these the Bible, instead of
bringing glad tidings of gteat ji>y, brings tidings of the greatest
misery, for it says that they shall be cast into hell, there to remain
for ever with the devil and his angels. You may reply that the road
�3
to Heaven is open to ail, and if men will not enter in ajt the straight
gate, they must expect to perish, beeause they have only to repent
and to believe in order to be saved. Now, my friends, the great fact
is patent to us all that the masses don’t believe, and what is more,
there is every probability that notwithstanding all your preaching,
praying, and lecturing, they won’t believe; consequently, according to
your teaching, they must all likewise perish. I repeat, that these are to
them tidings of the greatest misery, and what is more, they are not only
lead to believe that they themselves shall perish, but from what they
knew of their forefathers, their souls are now where the worm dieth
not, and where the fire is not quenced. These thoughts to a sensitive
mind are very painful, and as I firmly believe that your views are
erroneous, as I totally disbelieve that a good God would punish His
creatures eternally, as I thoroughly disbelieve the Bible to be inspired
by God more than any other book, and as I am entirely opposed to
the doctrine that man is born totally depraved, I consider it to be my
duty to oppose you, and to make known to my fellow-creatures the
reasons I have for being what is termed a Disbeliever. In doing this
I believe that I am acting rightly, that I may be the means of rescuing
thousands from the hell of apprehension, and that I shall bring glad
tidings of great joy to the majority, because, if they believe and dis
believe with me, they will no longer be enslaved and intimidated by
the Bible. They will agree with the Secularist, that to do well is
sufficient, believe what you may. They will place reliance where
reliance ought to be placed—in good works, believing that if they
work honestly, faithfully, and usefully, that that will save them. In
all matters where positive truth cannot be arrived at, each party has
reasons for believing, disbelieving, or remaining neutral. One
argument or assertion made use of by some of you is, that supposing
Christianity be not true, still it matters little, and will produce no
evil in the end, and that, consequently, be it true or be it false, it is
foolish and useless to oppose it* We will look at this for a few
minutes. What does Christianity teaeh ? It teaches that there
exists a Being creator of all things, that this Being governs the
Universe, and, as the Governor of-the Universe, he will require an
account of the lives of men Whilst upon earth, and according to his
decision, one -part of the human family will enjoy endless happiness,
whilst the other part will have to endure eternal misery. What is
expected of men with regard to faith, it is allowed that not one-tenth
of the human race has ever possessed, and, therefore, according to this
teaching, nine-tenths of the human race will be doomed to everlasting
woe. Now, some persons think with you, that there are sufficient
reasons to believe this to be true, other persons believe with me, that
it is false. Very well. We will now suppose a somewhat parallel
case. A party in England have reasons to believe that the Emperor
of France will shortly rule in this country, and that all who obey
him he will reward with a life of ease and prosperity; but all who
disobey him he will doom to slavery. Then supposing that ninetenths of the population of England would disobey him and thus
become slaves, would it not be the duty of an opposite party, who
had reasons for believing that it was all false respecting the conquest
of this country by France, to disseminate their views as widely as
�4
possible, thus removing the fears of the disobedient and giving them
peace of mind ? The most orthodox Christian would say, certainly
those who believe these notions about the Emperor to be false ought
to oppose them—it is their duty to oppose them, and they will not
be doing their duty as men if they do not oppose them. Well, just
so it is with respect to Christianity. I believe that the Christian’s
views respecting God, eternity, and everlasting punishment, are
erroneous, and tend unnecessarily to intimidate mankind, consequently,
I think it my duty to oppose you as Christians, and I should be liable
to just censure if I did not oppose you. So much, then, fpr the course
which I have taken, and I think that you will allow that if I have
reason and the balance of evidence in my favour, that I am really
justified in what I am doing.
In this locality, had I seen religion subservient to good common
sense, I should not have been so public in my opposition. But when
upon every hand I hear preached doctrines threatening poor creatures
with the most excruciating punishments, I think it my duty to inquire
upon what basis these doctrines rest. I have no particular wish to
interfere with the superstitious notions of men, so long as these
notions simply console them; but when they produce benumbing
terror, and incommodious fear amongst my friends and neighbours, I
think that I should be highly culpable longer to hold my peace. I
have no relish myself for passing my life in perpetual dread, and I
consider myself justified in furnishing others with the means of
escaping from the agony of mind under which they groan. Again,
from the observations which I have so often heard from ministers and
from Christians generally, I know that in their sermons they assume
the absolute truth of their doctrines, and they urge that all, even those
who are logically opposed to them, are so opposed because their deeds
are evil, and because they wish to live in sin and wickedness. Believing
that these assumptions are false, believing that there are many honest,
industrious, truthful Freethinkers who are as good husbands, fathers,
friends, and citizens, as the most devout Christians, and believing that
these men have reasons for their rejection of orthodox Christianity
sufficient to satisfy any earnest mind, I boldly stand forward in their
behalf, and assert that they are conscientious in their disbelief, and
that, consequently, they are as deserving of the respect, esteem, and
goodwill oi their fellow-creatures, as those who call themselves
Christians. In whatever I have said, or may say, I appeal to your
moral sense, to those inward powers by which all good men claim to
be judged, and if you decide in accordance with the same, I shall be
quite satisfied with your decision.
The character of God as represented in the Bible, instead of creating
in me love, respect, or reverence, creates quite the opposite feeling.
Commencing with the first and second chapters of Genesis, we find
that an omnipotent and omniscient Being makes creatures, and places
them in a position with such a temptation which he knew would
cause their fall, and which he knew would bring misery to millions
then unborn. Moreover, the temptation was of that character that
until they had partaken of the forbidden fruit they did not know
good from evil, so the book says, and not knowing good from evil, it
would take a wiser person than myself to ascertain upon what grounds
�|
they could be held responsible for their actions. As Mr. Newman
argues, if a youth who had been carefully brought up were to fall by
the first temptation, the saying is, ‘ Behold the proof of the essential
depravity of human nature.’ But Adam fell by the first temptation,
what greater proof then of a fallen nature do you require than Adam’s,
as it came from the hands of the Creator ? If God has so acted with
man, and if angels also have fallen, why should not angels fall again ?
Hence, in heaven we have no guarantee that we may not become disobedient, and be cast away. If angels now are so constituted that they
cannot sin, why could not man have been so constituted, and thus have
saved much wretchedness ? As we read od in the Bible we find this
all-powerful God repenting that he had made man—yes, this all-wise
Being repents, and is grieved at the heart, and he shows his repentance
and grief by destroying all the human race with the exception of
Noah and his family. But in the choice of Noah and his family God
appears to have been truly unfortunate, for Noah was overtaken by
drunkenness, and his descendants to this time have been far from correct
in their conduct. Who can justify the partiality shown by God to
Abraham and his seed ? In what way were they deserving of that
partiality, especially the deceitful Jacob, who so cruelly robbed his
brother Esau ? Yet we are told that God loved Jacob and hated
Esau. The Bible also represents God as so inveterate in his hatred,
that he instructs Saul to smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant
and suckling, camel and ass. To justify all this, Christians say that
God is the Governor of the Universe, that he must preserve the
harmony of his attributes, and that his perfect justice must be
satisfied before he can shew mercy to the transgressor. To this our
esteemed friend Thomas Cooper, some years ago, if not wisely,
effectually replies:—‘ I hear thee, priest! We know thy solemn and
mysterious croak well, old bo-peep behind the altar, where thou hast
stood for ages affrighting grown up children with horrible pictures
of a Divinity who, to preserve the harmony of his attributes, can
plunge millions into the flames of endless torture, and be happy him
self to all eternity; and who cannot admit any to share his happiness
that have offended him, unless blood be shed as an atonement! He
knows of the torture of hell’s helpless tenantry. He hears their
weeping and wailing, He sees their gnashing of teeth, and He knows,
of their remorse for guilt; but He is happy amidst it all. He cannot
forgive them, they must burn and suffer for ever, for He must pre
serve the harmony of his attributes.’ ‘ Strange harmony,’ continues
Mr. Cooper. ‘ Does the most reprobate man that ever existed possess
so horrible a nature ? What! be happy whilst helpless worms
writhe in endless agony ? Worms that he brought into- existence
without their will, who never asked to exist, and whom he knew
would tenant hell-fire for ever, whilst he was creating them.’ After
this forcible language from a man like Thomas Cooper, words from
me would be powerless. This is a true picture of the evangelical
Christian’s Deity, and, as I before stated, in him I see nothing to love,
respect, or reverence; but plenty to loathe, hate, and abhor. How
men who have correct ideas of the heavenly bodies—men who can
tell you the size of the planets, and can calculate the immense
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6
distances of many of the fixed stars from the earth, men who have for
years enjoyed a scientific education—how these men can believe the
God of the Bible to be infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness, is a
puzzle to me. They cannot have thoroughly investigated the subject,
or if they have, there must be some powerful motives keeping them
from speaking their convictions.
Frankly I say that I don’t believe the Bible to be an infallible
guide, because my opinion is, that by following many parts of it, men
would be guided to do what their moral sense tells them is very
wrong. For instance, we believe it to be very wrong to make slaves
of our fellow creatures, still we find slavery sanctioned in the Bible,
and not only sanctioned, but strict regulations are made by God him
self relative to slavery. In the 25th chapter of Leviticus, from the
44th to the 46th verse, we read, ‘ Both thy bondmen, and thy bond
maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round
about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover,
of the children of the strangers that do sojourn amongst you, of them
shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they
begat in your land; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall
take them for an inheritance after you to inherit them for a possession;
they shall be your bondmen for ever.’ What think ye to this, after
the Christian world has been declaring over and over again that the
Bible is a friend to liberty—liberty of the highest caste ? Why this
one passage will do more to convince slaveowners that slavery is a
divine institution, than volumes of anti- slavery writings will do to
convince them to the contrary. Again, were we in a foreign country,
and had borrowed of the natives various articles, we should think
that we were morally bound to return them. How would it be if we
were to consult the Bible first ? There we should find that the Lord
commands the Jews, upon leaving Egypt, to borrow of their neigh
bours, and to keep their neighbours’ gold, silver, and raiment. If we
acted according to this example, we should do what our moral sense
distinctly tells us to be wrong. Again, if I were going to send a
message by any one, I should think it right to choose some one who
would speak the truth; but, if I were to take the Bible as an
authority, I might send a liar with intent to tell lies, seeing that God
sent a lying spirit unto the prophets to deceive Ahab. What God
did surely I might do. If our soldiers wished to know how they
were to treat the Sepoys in India, by consulting the Bible, and
following the examples there given, they would slay both man and
woman, infant and suckling, because, as I have before told you, that
Saul was instructed by God so to act. If a man wished to put away
his wife, he must refer to Deut., c. 21, vv. x to xiv,andc. 24, vv. 1 and
2—and he will there find by the standard the easiest way of getting
rid of her. If any one be anxious for information respecting the
number of wives he may have, I would advise him to read the life
of Solomon. By following the example set by Solomon he may place
Brigham or any of the Mormon elders completely in the shade, saying
nothing of Solomon’s concubines. Do you want to know how to
treat your enemies upon your death-bed ? Turn then to the 1st of
Kings, c 2, vv. viii and ix, and you will there find how the man after
God’s own heart treated his enemies. He requested his son with
�7
nearly his last breath to bring down to the grave with blood the
hoary hair of one who had offended him.
If we examine the New Testament, we find many reasons why we
cannot accept its teachings as perfect. The story of the conception
by the Holy Ghost is far too dreamy an affair for us. No one in his
senses would credit the story if told now, respecting any young
married couple; but this has not much to do with the perfection of
the moral teachings. When we come to the sermon on the mount, we
find many things said there which we are told are the perfection of
wisdom, but which even pious Christians do not for a moment regard.
We are told to resist not evil, and if any smite us on the one cheek
we are to turn the other also. Who is there in this neighbourhood
who does not resist evil ? Does not every good man think it his
duty to resist evil ? And who turns the left cheek to the smiter,
when smitten on the right ? No one with whom I am acquainted.
Certain signs follow those who believe. Do they follow? Can
believers snow the signs ? Will they handle serpents or drink poison,
or can they by laying on of hands heal the sick? I am afraid not.
Remember these signs were to follow them that believe, and if he
that believeth not shall be damned is to follow as the punishment in
our day, why should not the signs of belief follow likewise ? If the
signs of belief had been the payment of tithes and church rates, and a
blind deference to the opinions of the priests, every man who professed
to believe would soon be tried by the standard of Christ. If a teacher
of morality were to say these signs shall follow them that are moral—
they shall not injure their fellow creatures, they shall pursue that
course which is useful, etc., it would be just and logical to say if
these signs did not follow, the man was not moral, and if it be just and
logical in the one case, it is so in the other; therefore, I say, if the
signs do not follow, according to the Bible, the man is not a believer.
The fact is, the more I study the Old and the New Testament, the
more I am convinced that the Bible is, like other books, fallible, full
of errors, translators’ errors, printers’ errors, and hundreds of errors
about which learned men have been and are still quarrelling—errors
which have divided men into sects and parties, and which have made
those who ought to have been friends the bitterest of enemies; but
the time I , hope will shortly arrive when all intelligent men will be
of the one opinion that conscientious .belief or disbelief ought always
to be respected.
Several persons, I know, will inquire what is my aim? They ask
me whether I expect my views to become popular, and whether I
think that all men will renounce their present belief in the Bible.
My answer is, that I do not expect that my views will very soon, if
ever, become popular, neither do I think that all men will very soon
renounce their belief in the infallibility of the Bible ; but my aim is
to give my neighbours some of the reasons I have for my disbelief,
agreeing with Mirabaud, that so far as my views have the sanction of
truth, they will gradually insinuate themselves into the human mind,
become familiar to its exercise, extend their happy influence on every
side, and finally produce the most substantive advantages to society.
And, in fact, these views have already, to a large extent, insinuated
themselves into the minds of thousands in this country, hence their
�8
indifference to the speculative theories of our evangelical Christians,
hence the apathy which we see amongst the congregations of our
churches and chapels. The moral nature of men and women rebels
against the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment, hence the
number of moral people in our towns and villages who lay no claim to
be religious—people who our preachers say are farther from godliness
than many of the worthless wretches who lay no claim to virtue, but
who weekly tremble at the denunciations of the pulpit. In point of
numbers openly professing to be disbelievers, we may always be
inferior to the Christian sects. We may probably never have a great
many declaring themselves chiefly devoted to Secular matters, for not
one in a hundred can see the benefit to be derived from openly
asserting an opposition to the Christian doctrines, at the same time
most can see a great loss in business and in social intercourse by so
doing; because, whilst the disbeliever is generally shunned, a man
who is known to be one of the greatest hypocrites and humbugs in
existence, if he regularly attend a place of worship, and nominally
profess to be a Christian, is taken by the hand and treated as a highly
respectable member of society. Besides, we cannot expect to influence
men the same as the parsons. We have no threats of hell or hopes
of heaven. We cannot, neither do we wish, to frighten people into
thinking as we think. We wish them honestly to inquire, and when
they are satisfied of the truth of their principles, we like to see them
faithful to them. Although our influence may not be so great in
society as yours, still, my friends, we have an influence; although our
hopes may not be so brilliant respecting a future state as yours, still
our principles have given us great relief; for believing none of the
stories about a future state, we have but few sources of anxiety on
that account. To use the words of Joseph Barker, I say, ‘It is
certainly no slight relief to the benevolent mind to be rid of the idea
of an angry and revengeful God, of a great savage devil, of an eternal
hell of fire and brimstone, and of countless hosts of fallen angels and
damned spirits weltering together in the burning pool, weeping and
wailing in infinite and hopeless agony. It is also no slight relief to be
at liberty to study nature, and to receive her revelations, without
being forced to reconcile them with the childish fancies of an indignant
and superstitious people. It is a great relief to feel ourselves at
liberty to despise old foolish and savage laws, to reject old monster
fables, and to judge for ourselves what is true, and just, and good, on
every subject.’ To those amongst you who wish to become thoroughly
acquainted with the weighty reasons brought by disbelievers,against
what is known as orthodox Christianity; I would recommend ‘ Parker
on Religion,’ Newman’s ‘ Phases of Faith,’ ‘ The Bible and its
Evidences,’ by R. Cooper, and the discussions between the Rev.
Brewin Grant and Mr. G. J. Holyoake. I think that the perusal of
these works will convince you that conscientious disbelief is possible
and justifiable.
--------These remarks are nearly word for word as I intended delivering
them at Spalding. If only twenty minutes had been allowed me, I
should have had somewhat to have condensed them. Upon the
whole I think the foregoing would have been a fair, honest, and
straightforward statement of the position we stand in as opponents to
Christian doctrines.
�
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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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An address in reply to one of Mr. Thomas Cooper's lectures, at Spalding.
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Thomas Cooper was a poet, Baptist and leading Chartist.
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Griffin, Luke
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1859
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Holyoake & Co.
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Christianity
Bible
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Christianity
Free Thought
Thomas Cooper
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
AND
A PLEA FOR INDIVIDUALITY.
BY
COLONEL ROBT. G. INGERSOLL.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
�ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
AND A PLEA FOR INDIVIDUALITY.
“His soul was like a star and dwelt aparti'
On every hand are the enemies of individuality and mental
freedom. Custom meets us at the cradle, and leaves us only
at the tomb. Our first questions are answered by ignorance,
and our last by superstition. We are pushed and dragged
by countless hands along the beaten track, and our entire
training can be summed up in the word “ suppression.”
Our desire to have a thing or to do a thing is considered
as conclusive evidence that we ought not to have it, and
ought not to do it. At every turn we run against a cherubim
and a flaming sword guarding some entrance to the Eden of
our desire. We are allowed to investigate all subjects in
which we feel no particular interest, and to express the
opinions of the majority with the utmost freedom. We are
taught that liberty of speech should never be carried to the
extent of contradicting the dead witnesses of a popular
superstition. Society offers continual rewards for self-be
trayal, and they are nearly all earned and claimed, and some
are paid.
We have all read accounts of Christian gentlemen remark
ing, when about to be hanged, how much better it would
have been for them if they had only followed a mother’s
.advice ! But, after all, how fortunate it is for the world that
the maternal advice has not been followed ! How lucky it
is for us all that it is somewhat unnatural for a human being
to obey ! Universal obedience is universal stagnation ;
disobedience is one of the conditions of progress. Select
any age of the world and tell me what would have been the
effect of implicit obedience. Suppose the Church had had
absolute control of the human mind, at any time, would not
the words “liberty” and “progress” have been blotted from
�N331
•-
ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
3
human speech ? In defiance of advice the world has
■advanced.
Suppose the astronomers had controlled the science of
■astronomy ■ suppose the doctors had controlled the science
of medicine ; suppose kings had been left to fix the forms
•of government; suppose our fathers had taken the advice
•of Paul, who paid, be subject to the powers that be, because
they are ordained of God ; suppose the Church could control
the world to-day, we would go back to chaos and old night.
Philosophy would be branded as infamous ; science would
■again press its pale and thoughtful face against the prison
bars; and round the limbs of liberty would climb the
bigot’s flame.
It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had
individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his
•own convictions, some one who had the grit to say his say.
I believe it was Magellan who said: Ci The Church says the
earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and
I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the
Church.
On the prow of his ship were disobedience,
■defiance, scorn, and success.
The trouble with most people is that they bow to what is
■called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old
because it is old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long time, and that
the forefatheis of their nation were the greatest and best of
all mankind. All these things they implicitly believe because
it is popular and patriotic, and because they were told
so when very small, and remember distinctly hearing
mother read it out of a book, and they are all willing to
swear that mother was a good woman. It is hard to over
estimate the influence of early training in the direction of
superstition. You first teach children that a certain book is
true—that it was written by God himself—that to question
its truth is a sin, that to deny it is a crime, and that should
they die without believing that book they will be forever
damned without benefit of clergy; the consequence is that
ong before they read that book they believe it to be true.
When they do read their minds are wholly unfitted to in
vestigate its claim. They accept it as a matter of course.
In this way the reason is- overcome, the sweet instincts of
humanity are blotted.from the heart, and while reading its
infamous pages even justice throws aside her scales, shrieking
foi revenge, and charity, with bloody hands, applauds a
�4
ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
deed of murder. In this way we are taught that the'
revenge of man is the justice of God, that mercy is not the
same everywhere. In this way the ideas of our race .have
been subverted. In this way we have made tyrants, bigots,
and inquisitors. In this way the brain of man has. become
a kind of palimpsest upon which, and over the writings of
Nature, superstition has scribbled her countless lies. Our
o-reat trouble is that most teachers are dishonest. They
teach as certainties those things concerning which they
entertain doubts. They do not say, “ We think this is so,
but “ We know this is so.” They do not appeal to the
reason of the pupil, but they command his faith.. They
keep all doubts to themselves ; they do not explain, they
assert. All this is infamous. In this way you may make
Christians, but you cannot make men ; you cannot make
women. You can make followers but no leaders ; disciples,
but no Christs. You may promise power, honour, and
happiness to all those who will blindly follow, but you cannot
keep your promise.
.
..
,
An eastern monarch said to a hermit, ‘ Come with me and
I will give you power.” “ I have all the power that I know
how to use,” replied the hermit. “ Come, said the king,
« I will give you wealth.” “I have no wants that money can
supply.” “ I will give you honour.” “ Ah! honour cannot.be
given it must be earned.” “Come,” said the king, making
a last appeal, “ and I will give you happiness.” “ No,” said
the man of solitude, “ there is no happiness without liberty,
and he who follows cannot be free.” “You shall have liberty
too.” “ Then I will stay.” And all the king’s courtiers
thought the hermit a fool.
.
.
Now and then somebody examines, and, m spite ot all,
keeps his manhood and has courage to follow where his
reason leads. Then the pious get together and repeat wise
saws and exchange knowing nods and most prophetic winks.
The stupidly wise sit owl-like on the dead limbs of the tree
of knowledge, and solemnly hoot. Wealth sneers, and
fashion laughs, and respectability passes on the other side,
and scorn points with all her skinny fingers, and the
snakes of superstition writhe and hiss, and slander lends
her tongue, and infamy her brand, and perjury her oath,
and the law its power, and bigotry tortures and the Church
kills.
The Church hates a thinker precisely for the same, reason
that a robber dislikes a sheriff-, or that a thief despises the
�ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH,
5
■prosecuting witness. Tyranny likes courtiers, flatterers, fol
lowers, fawners, and superstition wants believers, disciples,
zealots, hypocrites, and subscribers.—The Church demands
worship, the very thing that man should give to no being,
human or divine. To worship another is to degrade your
self. Worship is awe and dread and vague fear and blind
hope. It is the spirit of worship that elevates the one
and degrades the many; that builds palaces for robbers,
■erects monuments to crime, and forges manacles even for
its own hands. The spirit of worship is the spirit of tyranny.
The worshipper always regrets that he is not the worshipped.
We should all remember that the intellect has no knees,
■and that whatever the attitude of the body may be, the
brave soul is always found erect. Whoever worships,
abdicates. Whoever believes at the command of power
tramples his own individuality beneath his feet, and volun
tarily robs himself of all that renders man superior to a
brute.
The despotism of faith is justified upon the ground that
Christian countries are the grandest and most prosperous of
the world. At one time the same thing could have been
truly said in India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Rome, and in
-every other country that has in the history of the world,
swept to empire. This argument not only proves too
much, but the assumption upon which it is based is utterly
false. Numberless circumstances and countless conditions
have produced the prosperity of the Christian world. The
truth is that we have advanced in spite of religious zeal,
ignorance, and opposition. The Church has won no vic
tories for the rights of man. Over every fortress of tyranny
has waved, and still waves, the banner of the Church.
Wherever brave blood has been shed the sword of the
Church has been wet. On every chain has been the sign
of the cross. The altar and the throne have leaned against
-and supported each other. Who can appreciate the infinite
impudence of one man assuming to think for others ? Who
can imagine the impudence of a Church that threatens to
inflict eternal punishment upon those who honestly reject
its claims and scorn its pretensions? In the presence of
the unknown we all have an equal right to guess.
Over the vast plain called life we are all travellers, and
not one traveller is perfectly certain that he is going in the
right direction. True it is, that no other plain is so well
•supplied with guide-boards. At every turn and crossing
�6
ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
you find them, and upon each one is written the exactdirection and distance. One great trouble is, however, that
these boards are all different, and the result is that most
travellers are confused in proportion to the number they
read. Thousands of people are around each of these signs,
and each one is doing his best to convince the traveller that
his particular board is the only one upon which the least
reliance can be placed, and that if his road is taken the
reward for so doing will be infinite and eternal, while all the
other roads are said to lead to hell, and all the makers of
the other guide-boards are declared to be heretics, hypo
crites, and liars. “ Well,” says a traveller, “ you may be
right in what you say, but allow me at least to read someof the other directions and examine a little into their
claims. I wish to rely a little upon my own judgment in a
matter of so great importance.” “No, sir!” shouts the
zealot, “ that is the very thing you are not allowed to do.
You must go my way without investigation or you are as
good as damned already.” “Well,” says the traveller, “if
that is so, I believe I had better go your way.” And so
most of them go along, taking the word of those who know
as little as themselves. Now and then comes one who, in
spite of all threats, calmly examines the claims of all, and as
calmly rejects them all.—These travellers take roads of
their own, and are denounced by all the others as Infidels,
and Atheists.
In my judgment every human being should take a road,
of his own. Every mind should be true to itself ; should
think, investigate, and conclude for itself. This is a duty
alike incumbent upon pauper and prince. Every soul
should repel dictation and tyranny, no matter from what
source they come—from earth or heaven, from men or
gods. Besides, every traveller upon this vast plain should
give to every other traveller his best idea as to the road that
should be taken. Each is entitled to the honest opinion of
all. And there is but one way to get an honest opinion
upon any subject whatever. The person giving the opinion
must be free from fear. The merchant must not fear tolose his custom, the doctor his practice, nor the preacher
his pulpit. There can be no advance without liberty.
Suppression of honest inquiry is retrogression, and must
end in intellectual night. The tendency of Orthodox reli
gion to-day is toward mental slavery and barbarism. Not
one of the Orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks.
�arraignment of the church.
7
if he knows that a majority of his congregation think other
wise. He knows that every member of his Church stands
guard over his brain with a creed like a club in his hand.
He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth,
but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit
is a pillory in which stands a hired culprit, defending the
justice of his own imprisonment.
Is it desirable that all should be exactly alike in their
religious convictions? Is any such thing possible? Do
we not know that there are no two persons alike in the
whole world? No two trees, no two leaves, no two anythings that are alike ? Infinite diversity is the law. Religion
tries to force all minds into one mould. Knowing that all
cannot believe, the Church endeavours to make all say that
they believe. She longs for the unity of hypocrisy, and
detests the splendid diversity of individuality and freedom.
Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation,
and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate your
self. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who
has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of
his dead soul. In this sense every Church is a cemetery,
and every creed an epitaph.
We should all remember that to be like other folks is to
be unlike ourselves, and that nothing can be more detest
able in character than servile imitation. The great trouble
with imitation is that we are apt to ape those who are in
reality far below us. After all, the poorest bargain that a
human being can make is to trade off his individuality for
what is called respectability.
There is no saying more degrading than this: “It is
better to be the tail of a lion than the. head of a dog.” It
is a responsibility to think and act for yourself. Most
people hate responsibility; therefore they join something
and become the tail of some lion. They say, “My party
can act for me—my Church can do my thinking. It is
enough for me to pay taxes and obey the lion to which I
belong, without troubling myself about the right, the
wrong, or the why or the wherefore of anything whatever.”
These people are respectable. They hate reformers, and
dislike exceedingly to have their mind disturbed. They
regard convictions as very disagreeable things to have.
They love forms, and enjoy, beyond everything else, telling
what a splendid tail their lion has, and what a troublesome
dog their neighbour is. Besides this natural inclination to
�ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
avoid personal responsibility is and always has been the
fact, that every religionist has warned men against the
presumption and wickedness of thinking for themselves.
The reason has been denounced by all Christendom as the
only unsafe guide. The Church has left nothing undone to
prevent man following the logic of his brain. The plainest
facts have been covered with the mantle of mystery. The
grossest absurdities have been declared to be self-evident
facts. The order of nature has been, as it were, reversed,
in order that the hypocritical few might govern the honest
many. The man who stood by the conclusion of his reason
was denounced as a scorner and hater of God and his holy
Church. From the organization of the first church until
this moment, to think your own thoughts has been inconsis
tent with the duties of membership. Every member has
borne the marks of collar, and chain, and whip. No man
ever seriously attempted to reform a Church without being
cast out and hunted down by the hounds of hypocrisy.
The highest crime against a creed is to change it. Reforma
tion is treason.
Thousands of young men are being educated at this
moment by the various Churches. What for ? In order
that they may be prepared to investigate the phenomena by
which we are surrounded? No! The object, and the
only object, is that they may be prepared to defend a creed.
That they may learn the arguments of their respective
Churches and repeat them in the dull ears of a thoughtless
congregation. If one after being thus trained at the expense
of the Methodists turns Presbyterian or Baptist, he is de
nounced as an ungrateful wretch. Honest investigation is
utterly impossible within the pale of any Church, for the
reason that if you think the Church is right you will not
investigate, and if you think it wrong the Church will in
vestigate you. The consequence of this is, that most of the
theological literature is the result of suppression, of fear, of
tyranny, and hypocrisy.
Every Orthodox writer necessarily said to himself, “ If I
write that, my wife and children may want for bread. I
will be covered with shame and branded with infamy; but if
I write this, I will gain position, power, and honour. My
Church rewards defenders, and burns reformers.”
Under these conditions, all your Scotts, Henrys, and
McKnights have written; and weighed in these scales what
are their commentaries worth ? They are not the ideas and
�ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
9
decisions of honest judges, but the sophisms of the paid
attorneys of superstition. Who can tell what the world has
lost by this infamous system of suppression ? How many,
grand thinkers have died with the mailed hand of supersti
tion on their lips ? How many splendid ideas have perished
in the cradle of the brain, strangled in the poison coils of
that Python, the Church !
For thousands of years a thinker was hunted down like
an escaped convict. To him who had braved the Church
every door was shut, every knife was open. To shelter him
from the wild storm, to give him a crust of bread when
dying, to put a cup of water to his cracked and bleeding
lips—these were all crimes, not one of which the Church
ever did forgive ; and with the justice taught of God his
helpless children were exterminated as scorpions and vipers.
Who at the present day can imagine the courage, the
devotion to principle, the intellectual and moral grandeur
it once required to be an Infidel, to brave the Church, her
racks, her fagots, her dungeons, her tongues of fire—to defy
and scorn her heaven and her devil and her God ? They
were the noblest sons of earth. They were the real saviours
of our race, the destroyers of superstition and the creators
of science. They were the real Titans who bared their
grand foreheads to all the thunderbolts of all the gods.
The Church has been, and still is, the great robber. She
has rifled not only the pockets but the brains of the world.
•She is the stone at the sepulchre of liberty ; the upas tree
in whose shade the intellect of man has withered; the
Gorgon beneath whose gaze the human heart has turned to
stone.
Under her influence even the Protestant mother expects
to be in heaven, while her brave boy who fell fighting for
the rights of man shall writhe in hell.
It is said that some of the Indian tribes place the heads
■of their children between pieces of bark until the form of
the skull is permanently changed. To us this seems a most
shocking custom, and yet, after all, is it as bad as to put
the souls of our children in the straight jacket of a creed;
to so utterly deform their minds that they regard the God
•of the Bible as a Being of infinite mercy, and really consider
it a virtue to believe a thing just because it seems unreason
able ? Every child in the Christian world has uttered its
wondering protest against this outrage. All the machinery
of the Church is constantly employed in thus corrupting
�1°
ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
the reason of children. In every possible way they arerobbed of their own thoughts and forced to accept the
statements of others. Every Sunday School has for its
object the crushing out of every germ of individuality.
The poor children are taught that nothing can be more
acceptable to God than unreasoning obedience and eyeless
faith, and that to believe that God did an impossible act is
far better than to do a good one yourself. They are. told
that all the religions have been simply the John the Baptist
of ours ; that all the gods of antiquity have withered and
shrunken into the Jehovah of the Jews; that all the
longings and aspirations of the race are realized in the
motto of the Evangelical alliance, “ Liberty in non-essen
tials;” that all there is or ever was of religion can be found
in the Apostle’s creed; that there is nothing left to be dis
covered; that all the thinkers are dead, and all the living
should simply be believers; that we have only to repeat,
the epitaph found on the grave of wisdom; that grave-yards
are the best possible universities, and that the children must
be forever beaten with the bones of the fathers.
It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a God
would choose for his companions during all eternity the
dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey. He
certainly would now and then be tempted to make the
same remark made by an English gentleman to his poor
guest. This gentleman had invited a man in humble cir
cumstances to dine with him. The man was so overcome
with honour that to everything the gentleman said he
replied, “ Yes.” Tired at last with the monotony of acqui
escence, the gentleman cried out, “ For God’s sake, my good
man, say ‘No ’ just for once, so there will be two of us.”
Is it possible that an infinite God created this world
simply to be the dwelling-place of slaves and serfs ? Simply
for the purpose of raising Orthodox Christians, that he did
a few miracles to astonish them; that all the evils of life
are simply his punishments, and that he is finally going to
turn heaven into a kind of religious museum filled with
Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians, and Methodist
mummies ? I want no heaven for which I must give my
reason; no happiness in exchange for my liberty, and no
immortality that demands the surrender of my individuality.
Better rot in the windowless tomb, to which there is no
door but the red mouth of the pallid worm, than wear the
jewelled collar even of a God.
�ARRAIGNMENT of the church.
IX
Religion does not and cannot contemplate man as free.
She accepts only the homage of the prostrate, and scornsthe offerings of those who stand erect. She cannot tolerate
the liberty of thought. The wide and sunny fields belong
not to her domain. The star-lit heights of genius and.
individuality are above and beyond her appreciation and
power. Her subjects cringe at her feet covered with the
dust of obedience. They are not athletes standing posed
by rich life ’and brave endeavour like the antique statues,,
but shrivelled deformities studying with furtive glance the
cruel face of power.
*
No religionist seems capable of comprehending this plain
truth. There is this difference between thought and action :
.—For our actions we are responsible to ourselves and to
'those injuriously affected; for thoughts there can, in the
nature of things, be no responsibility to gods or men, here
or hereafter. And yet the Protestant has vied with the
Catholic in denouncing freedom of thought, and while I
was taught to hate Catholicism with every drop of my
blood, it is only justice to say that in all essential particularsit is precisely the same as every other religion. Luther
denounced mental liberty with all the coarse and brutal
vigour of his nature, Calvin despised from the very bottom
of his petrified heart anything that even looked like religious
toleration, and solemnly declared that to advocate it was to
crucify Christ afresh. All the founders of all the orthodox
churches have advocated the same infamous tenet. The
truth is that what is called religion is necessarily inconsistent
with Free Thought.
A believer is a songless bird in a cage, a Freethinker is
an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wings.
At present, owing to the inroads that have been made by
Liberals and Infidels, most of the Churches pretend to be in
favour of religious liberty. Of these Churches, we will ask
this question : “ How can a man who conscientiously believes
in religious liberty worship a God who does not ?” They
say to us: “We will not imprison you on account of your
belief, but our God will. We will not burn you because
you throw away the sacred Scriptures; but their Author
will.” “ We think it an infamous crime to persecute our
brethren for opinion’s sake; but the God whom we igno
rantly worship will on that account damn his own children
for ever.” Why is it that these Christians do not only
detest the Infidels, but so cordially despise each other ?
�12
ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
Why do they refuse to worship in the temples of each other ?
Why do they care so little for the damnation of men, and so
much for the baptism of children ? Why will they adorn
their churches with the money of thieves, and flatter vice
for the sake of subscription? Why will they attempt to
bribe science to certify to the writings of God? Why do they
torture the words of the great into an acknowledgment of
the truth of Christianity ? Why do they stand with hat in
hand before Presidents, Kings, Emperors, and Scientists,
begging like Lazarus for a few crumbs of religious comfort ?
Why are they so delighted to find an allusion to Providence
in the message of Lincoln ? Why are they so afraid that
some one will find out that Paley wrote an essay in favour
of the Epicurean Philosophy, and that Sir Isaac Newton
was once an Infidel? Why are they so anxious to show
that Voltaire recanted ? that Paine died palsied with fear ;
that the Emperor Julian cried out, “ Galilean thou hast
conquered; ” that Gibbon died a Catholic; that Agassiz
had a little confidence in Moses; that the old Napoleon
was once complimentary enough to say that he thought
Christ greater than himself or Ciesar; that Washington was
caught on his knees at Valley Forge ; that blunt old Ethan
Allen told his child to believe the religion of her mother ;
that Franklin said, “ Don’t unchain the tiger; ” that Volney
.got frightened in a storm at sea, and that Oakes Ames was
a wholesale liar ?
Is it because the foundation of their temple is crumbling,
because the walls are cracked, the pillars leaning, the great
dome swaying to its fall, and because science has written
over the high altar its mene, mene, tekel upharsin, the old
words destined to be the epitaph of all religions ?
Every assertion of individual independence has been a
step towards Infidelity. Luther started toward Humboldt,
Wesley toward Bradlaugh. To really reform the Church is
to destroy it. Every new religion has a little less supersti
tion than the old, so that the religion of science is but a
question of time. I will not. say the Church has been an
unmitigated evil in all respects. Its history is infamous and
glorious. It has delighted in the production of extremes.
It has furnished murderers for its own martyrs. It has
sometimes fed the body, but has always starved the soul.
It has been a charitable highwayman, a generous pirate. It
has produced some angels and a multitude of devils. It
has built more prisons than asylums. It made a hundred
t
�arraignment of the church.
13
orphans while it cared for one. In one hand it carried the
alms-dish, and in the other a sword. It has founded
schools and endowed universities for the purpose of de
stroying; true learning. It filled the world with hypocrites,
and zealots, and upon the cross of its own Christ it crucified
the individuality of man. It has sought to destroy the
independence of the soul, and put the world upon its knees.
This is its crime. The commission of this crime, was.
necessary to its existence. In order to compel obedience
it declared that it had the truth and all the truth, that God
had made it the keeper of all His secrets ; His agent and
his viceregent. It declared that all other religions were
false and infamous. It rendered all compromises im
possible, and all thought. superfluous. . Thought was its
enemy, obedience was its friend. Investigation was fraught
with danger j therefore investigation was suppressed. The
holy of holies was behind the curtain. All this was upon
the principle that forgers hate to have the signature examined
by an expert, and that imposture detests curiosity.
“ He that hath ears to hear let him hear,” has always been
one of the favourite texts of the Church.
In short, Christianity has always opposed every forward
movement of the human race. Across the. highway of pro
gress it has always been building breastworks of bibles,
tracts, commentaries, prayer-books, creeds, dogmas, and
platforms, and at every advance the Christians have gathered
behind these heaps of rubbish and shot the poisoned arrows
of malice at the soldiers of freedom.
And even the liberal Christian of to-day has his holy of
holies, and in the niche of the temple of his heart has his
idol. ’ He still clings to a part of the old superstition, and
all the pleasant memories of the old belief linger in the
horizon of his thoughts like a sunset. We associate the
memory of those we love with the religion .of our childhood.
It seems almost a sacrilege to rudely destroy the idols that
our fathers worshipped, and turn their sacred and beautiful
truths into the silly fables of barbarism. Some throw away
the Old Testament and cling to the New,, while others give
up everything except the idea that there is a personal God,
and that in some wonderful way we are the objects of His
care.
.
.
.
Even this, in my opinion, as science, the great iconoclast,
marches onward, will have to be abandoned with, the rest.
The great ghost will surely share the fate of the little ones.
�14
arraignment of the church.
They fled at the first appearance of the dawn, and the other
A. ill vanish with the perfect day. Until then, the indepen
dence of man is little more than a dream. Overshadowed
by an immense personality—in the presence of the irrespon
sible and the infinite, the individuality of man is lost, and,
he falls prostrate in the very dust of fear. Beneath the
frown of the Absolute, man stands a wretched, trembling
slave—beneath his smile he is at best only a fortunate serf.
Governed by a being whose arbitrary will is law, chained to
the chariot of power, his destiny rests in the pleasure of the
Unknown. Under these circumstances what wretched
object can he have in lengthening out his aimless life ?
And yet, in most minds, there is a vague fear of what
the gods may do, and the safe side is considered the best
side.
A gentleman walking among the ruins of Athens came
upon a fallen statue of Jupiter. Making an exceedingly low
bow, he said: “Oh, Jupiter, I salute thee.” He then
added : “ Should you ever get up in the world again, do not
forget, I pray you, that I treated you politely while you were
prostrate.”
We have all been taught by the Church that nothing is so
well calculated to excite the ire of the Deity as to express a
■doubt as to his existence, and to deny it is an unpardonable
sin. . Numerous well-attested instances were referred to, of
Atheists being struck dead for denying the existence of God.
According to these religious people, God is infinitely above us
in every respect, infinitely merciful, and yet He cannot bear
to hear a poor finite man honestly question His existence.
Knowing as He does that His children are groping in dark
ness and struggling with doubt and fear ; knowing that He
could enlighten them if He would, He still holds the ex
pression of a sincere doubt as to His existence the most
infamous of crimes.
According to the orthodox logic, God having furnished
us with imperfect minds, has a right to demand a perfect
result. Suppose Mr. Smith should overhear a couple of
■small bugs holding a discussion as to the existence of Mr.
■Smith, and suppose one should have the temerity to declare
upon the honour of a bug that he had examined the whole
■question to the best of his ability, including the argument
based upon design, and had come to the conclusion that no
man by the name of Smith had ever lived. Think, then, of
Mr. Smith flying into an ecstacy of rage, crushing the
�arraignment of the church.
15
atheist bug beneath his iron heel, while he exclaimed, “ I
will teach you, blasphemous wretch, that Smith is a diabo
lical fact ! ” What, then, call we think of a God who would
■open the artillery of heaven upon one of His own children
for simply expressing his honest thought ? And what man
■who really thinks can help repeating the words of .¿Eneas,
“ If there are gods, they certainly pay no attention to the
affairs of men.”
In religious ideas and conceptions there has been for ages
a slow and steady development. At the bottom of the
ladder (speaking of modern times) is Catholicism, and at
the top are Atheism and Science. The intermediate rounds
•of this ladder are occupied by the various sects, whose name
is legion.
But whatever may be the truth on any subject has nothing
to do with our right to investigate that subject, and express
any opinion we may form. All that I ask is the right I freely
accord to all others.
A few years ago a Methodist clergyman took it upon him
self to give me a piece of friendly advice. “Although you
may disbelieve the Bible,” said he, “ you ought not to say
.so. That you should keep to yourself.” “ Do you believe
the Bible?” said I. He replied, “Most assuredly.” To
which I retorted, “ Your answer conveys no information to
me. You may be following your own advice. You told me
to suppress my opinions. Of course, a man who will advise
others to dissimulate will not always be particular about
telling the truth himself.”
It is the duty of each and every one to maintain his indi
viduality. “ This above all, to thine own self be true, and
it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be
false to-any man.” It is a magnificent thing to be the sole
proprietor of yourself. It is a terrible thing to wake up at
night and say: “ There is nobody in this bed ! ” It is
humiliating to know that your ideas are all borrowed, and
that you are indebted to your memory for your principles,
that your religion is simply one of your habits, and that you
would have convictions if they were only contagious. It is
mortifying to feel that you belong to a mental mob and cry,
“ Crucify him,” because the others do. That you reap
what the great and brave have sown, and that you can
benefit the world only by leaving it.
Surely every human being ought to attain to the dignity
of the zzzzA. Surely it is worth something to be (me, and to
�I
ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
feel that the census of the universe would not be complete
without counting you.
Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of
thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have
the right to explore all heights and all depths; and that
there are no walls, nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor
sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought; that your
intellect owes no allegiance to any being human or divine ;
that you hold all in fee and upon no condition and by no
tenure whatever; that in the world of mind you are relieved
from all. personal dictation, and from the ignorant tyranny
of majorities.
Surely it is worth something to feel that there are no,
priests, no popes, no parties, no governments, no kings, no
gods to whom your intellect can be compelled to pay a
reluctant homage.
Surely it is a joy to know that all the cruel ingenuity of
bigotry can devise no prison, no lock, no cell, in which for
one instant to confine a thought; that ideas cannot be dis
located by racks, nor crushed in iron boots, nor burned
with fire.
Surely it is sublime to think that the brain is a castle, and
that within its curious bastions and winding halls the soul
in spite of all worlds and all beings is the supreme sovereign
of itself.
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 28 ^necutter Street, London, E.C.
�
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Arraignment of the Church and a plea for individuality
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. No. 40c in Stein checklist. Date of publication from Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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[1877]
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Christianity
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Christianity
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Text
VOL I., No. 3.—JULY, 1870.
CHRISTIANITY —LECTURE BY WENDELL PHILLIPS.
The Sunday afternoon course of
lectures at Horticultural Hall, in
Boston, was closed by a lecture by
Mr. Phillips, entitled, “ In Chris
tianity, no Substitutes, and no Mus
tering out.”
I choose this subject, said Mr.
Phillips, because there seem to me
to be very many grave issues, critical
and important questions, looming
over the horizon, which the purpose
and intelligence and virtue of the
community are to grapple with in the
next ten or twenty years ; and it be
comes every man interested in the
prosperity of our civil -government, or
in the purity of our social state, to ex
amine as accurately as he can, and to
bring forward as fully as he may, all
the reserve forces of social science and
religion which can by any possibility
help us to deal with these great ques
tions.
It seems to me that we have
reached a certain epoch in the deve
lopment of our social theory. In a
certain rude sense, we have come to
the end of what may be called the
mechanical philosophy of social sci
ence. We have put in train at last—
if we have not accomplished, we
Vol. 1.—9
have put in train—all the great prin
ciples which underlie the mere me
chanical civilization of to-day. We
may expect more in quantity, but we
have no right to expect any thing fur
ther in quality, unless we invoke some
new elements. Social science is a sort
of wise selfishness ; it is an enlighten
ed selfishness. It sets on foot the great
principles which mould human na
ture, which protect one man in his
rights, and unfold the capacities in
another; and to a great extent our
form of society and our form of go
vernment have perfected these. We
are tending—if we have not reached
wholly, we are tending—to the go
vernment where, as freely as possi
ble, every man is left to the exercise
of his own powers. We have flung
away the narrow and faithless curbs
which, in former times, a timid disbe
lief in human nature afflicted the
world with. If you trace the civiliza
tion of three hundred years ago—five
hundred—it is a civilization of timid
ity. It seems to have imagined that
man was a wild beast; that God cre
ated him utterly unmanageable, with
nothing inside his own nature that
had any tendency even to make hi1U
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Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
a useful tenant of the powers and
body God gave him. The conse
quence was, that education, and
wealth, and strength—otherwise go
vernment—busied itself entirely with
keeping this unmanageable, untrust
worthy wild beast in curb ; piled all
sorts of obstacles, burdened him
down with all sorts of restraints;
imagined that government was never
perfect while this man was out of
leading-strings — this wild beast.
Gradually, very slowly, after the
lapse of centuries, men woke up to
the idea that there was something in
human nature itself that could be
trusted. The border chief of the
Rhine, when he set up his castle and
plundered every passer-by, imagined
that that was the only way in which
he could make use of his fellows—
had no idea except absolute compul
sion, with no consultation of the
other party to the bargain. He gra
dually found that if he placed his
robber hand too outrageously on the
traveler, the selfishness of man would
devise another way, instead of pass
ing under his bridge ; and so gradu
ally he consented to levy a well-recog
nized toll as a sort of compensation
for the privilege of his road and the
safety of his neighborhood, over
which he took care. That remained
awhile, still compulsory—a tax. Fi
nally, one day, civilization woke to
the idea that, after all, a free road,
welcoming every body, and every bu
siness, and every kind of occupation,
¡through it, had within it finer and
richer sources of prosperity for the
¡rich and able who presided over that
section, than any compulsory tax.
That is, at last, taking off the iron
curb, the man trusted his interests to
the mutual advantage of himself and
his neighbors. That is modern civi
lization, grown up very gradually.
Social science affects to carry out
that principle to its extremest result—
not to force, but to win, not to put a
curb outside, but a motive in, to con
sult the laws which God originally
laid down for the government of
mind and of matter, putting yourself
in a line with which, you are certain
that they are safe, and gradually
learning that they are the most pro
fitable.
Here is the laboring mass of
men, two thirds of the race—three
quarters of the race—the men that
wake only to toil, lie down only to
rest. We had an idea that we could
preach them into morality, that we
could sermonize them into thrift, that
we could bring to bear upon them a
certain weight of example, moral in
fluence—all excellent—all with a
certain effect. But that method
lacks behind it the motive principle.
Lord Erskine said once that all
the machinery of the British govern
ment was only a cumbrous arrange
ment to put twelve honest men in a
box. If I were to define our state,
I should say that commerce and
sovereignty, and State governments
and nationality were only a cum
brous machine to put an indepen
dent, an intelligent, and a well-pur
posed man at the side of a ballotbox. That is the final result, the
sheet-anchor, the nucleus of the civil
government under which we live.
We have tried pulpits; we have
tried journals ; we have tried all
sorts of outside moral influence. So
cial science says to-day, “You must
now begin at another point; you
must give that man so much leisure
that his moral and intellectual na
�Christianity —Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
ture will wake up to a comprehen
sion of his relations. Again, you
must give him such a fair share by
some arrangement of mutual profits,
resulting from skill, and capital, and
labor—such a fair share that he shall
feel constantly that he has no wrong
done him. You must put him into
equitable relations, according to his
own consciousness with things about
him. You must make him feel natu
ral—not only give him what is just—
you must awaken his nature to such a
comprehension that he must see it
to be just. And in that conscious
ness of justice, and in that opportu
nity of development, you restore the
man—and in the man the mass—to
that relation to our own day which
makes him the stable corner-stone of
civil institutions like ours.”
Look at the city of New-York.
You can not govern it; it is an in
famy to our civil theory. The native
American gives it up. The foreign
Tory points to it as the cancer, as the
complete reply to the Declaration of
Independence. Europe says to us,
“ You have a very good theory; it
sounds excellently well; it appears
perfect on paper. We see that it
grapples with the problems of small
towns and sparse population; but
you have never yet governed half a
million men gathered into one mass.
You have never yet grappled with
the problem of bringing under selfgovernment half a million of men
with the natural amount of crime,
and property pandering to crime,
always to be found, inevitably to be
found, in such an aggregation.”
Well, we have tried all sorts of pal
liations, of alleviating influences, and
yet to-day there is not a great city in
the United States that is not govern-
131
X
ed by its criminal classes, whose civil
machinery is not each year set up
and in the popular phrase “ run ” by
its criminal classes.
In every community, since history
scrutinized it, you find two classes
of men, the conservative and the pro
gressive, the timid and the bold, the
satisfied and the unsatisfied, the
man that never looks with any com
fort on the new moon, out of regret
for that venerable institution the old
one, the man that is never satisfied
unless there is a change every week—
inevitable differences of mind. In
dispensable also, because they seem
to be the methods by which God lifts
forward the race. Between these
two honest, perfectly honest, ideas,
stand ever, in a great mass of a mil
lion men like New-York, or a quar
ter of a million men like Boston, five
or seven thousand men interested in
the vices of the community. Behind
them some portentous array of capi
tal pandering to their object. Two
hundred millions of dollars in the ci
ty of New-York interested in drink ;
seventy millions in the city of Bos
ton. This solid square has no
ideas that are not common—ideas
that have an object. With iron con
centration, under keen resolution,
like the solid square on which Well
ington leaned in the centre of Wa
terloo, they hold both the sides, and
the result is—it could not be other
wise in the present arrangement of
civilization ; it is nobody’s fault—
they dictate the civil arrangements
of the state. They must control it.
Neither the one side nor the other can
afford to disregard them. The best
man in either rank is not available,
if he has eyes so wide open that he
can see the crime purposed by this
�13 2
Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
central power. Now you may talk,
preach, sermonize, as long as you
please. Until you bring some new
element into line; until you lift the
masses of men from subjection to
this temptation, you can not make a
state; it is impossible. I affirm in
all sincerity that if there is no states
manship in this country that can
deal with the great question of in
temperance, except as it has been
dealt with, the statesmanship of this
country must surrender the govern
ment of great cities to a despotic
theory; it never can grapple with it.
The only remedy is some remedy,
for instance, that takes up the labor
ing masses of men, and lifts them
into an intelligence, and a purpose,
and a disinterestedness, and a devo
tion, that shall be superior to this
temptation. If you can find it in
the labor movement, well; if not, find
it elsewhere—find it you must, or give
up the theory. Take another kin
dred vice—take the social evil, as it
is called, of great cities—the immo
rality of the sexes. We have dealt
with it in every form for a thousand
years; we have marshaled against
it science and morality, shame and
civilization, and it lifts its head as de
fiantly, spreads its toils as deep and
as wide as ever, and, as Macaulay
says, “ The influences of these social
vices are, that on ordinary occasions,
in the common years, they demora
lize a large mass, which skulk and
hide themselves at those times from
the notice of society. But in critical
moments they emerge, and in the
hands of bad men are forged into
weapons to beat down order.” Now,
we have done every tiling in the
world but one. We have sacrificed
money, and effort, and influence.
At last, social science says, “ I will
establish a breakwater, I will get a
motive inside the lines. The fort
shall betray itself. I will open to
woman so wide, so profitable, so di
versified a field for her exertions that
all the rewards and luxuries of socie
ty shall be as fully and as promptly
within her reach as they are with
in the reach of her brother. I will
take this curbed energy which frets
against its barrier, and I will give it
free course. I will take these chill
ed and dwarfed powers ; I will awak
en them into full activity, and they
shall in their turn dwarf the animal
propensities.” Man lifts himself by
ambition, girdles the globe with his
commercial enterprise, takes the
finer and larger powers of his brain,
and with them grasps the possibili
ties of his powers, and in their pre
sence all mere bodily temptations
chill and dwarf into comparative in
significance. On the contrary, the
other sex, once fallen, have no such
resource. Ninety-nine Vermont boys
out of a hundred, if you will give
them the first opportunity to achieve
the great prizes of life, will disdain
to steal. Ninety-nine women out of
a hundred, if you will put within
their reach the honors and comforts
and luxuries, the travel, the oppor
tunities, the wealth, the world, as free
ly as for their brothers, will disdain
to gain them by vice. (Applause.)
Social science says, “ I will still con
tinue the efforts of Christian exhor
tation ; I will melt away opposition
by entreaty; but, at the same time,
I will take from under this vice the
large and lavish opportunity that it
has in the prejudices of society.”
Social science says to you, We don’t
want your dollar; we don’t want
�Christianity—L ecture hy Wendell Phillips.
your earnest effort; or rather, yes, we
want them, but we want something
else. We want all that, lay it libe
rally on the altar; but what you
must lay there liberally also, if you
would grapple with this great evil,
lay your prejudices there ; lay your
disbelief there ; lay your narrow, big
oted, contracted, bald, mechanical
attachment to old theories there.
You have given us your gold ; it has
done its utmost. Give us now your
ignorance. Give us now your anta
gonisms. Stand out of the way.
So we go to politics. The range
of our political life is all low, dis
honorable. If I were to use the pro
per phrase of olden time, I should
say that in the caucus of American
life there never yet was seen the fla
vor of a gentleman, with his delicate
sense of self-respect, the keen, vivid,
fastidious spirit of modern honor to
which we give the name—we used
to give the name—the “ spirit of a
gentleman.” The god of the caucus
is availability. No matter what the
means, if you compass the end. Sink
the method out of sight, no matter.
The god of our social life is honor,
an indescribable, an impalpable
something that exacts fastidiously
the utmost self-respect, and says to
the man that travels as far as he can
guarded by a statute, “You are a
foolwhich says to the stupid bigot
that does even what the church
allows him, “ You are a criminal.” It
arraigns both before its tribunal, and
says, if you hide yourself behind the
law, or if you shelter yourself even be
hind church organizations, we remind
you that the delicate sense of pride
and honor which lives in social life
cries out to you, “ We condemn you
for a thousand things that both al
133
low.” Where did you get this socie
ty ? We got it by taking man and
woman, and linking them together
according to the laws of God, and
that is the result. Now, there is no
other force left for society or for po
litics, except to bring in this reserve
power of womanhood. Put yourself
into line with that law of God which
has given us modern civilization •
lift the caucus to the level of the
parlor. It is one of the laws to
which social science tells you to lend
your attention and sacrifice your pre
judices in order to bring in this new
force. I don’t care what you think
of it, I tell you in front of us lie the
great questions of governing cities,
dealing with intemperance, grappling
with immigration, understanding the
putting on its feet the great question
of labor. I want every moral and pu
rifying force known to the nineteenth
century; I don’t care where I get it.
If there is any thing in womanhood,
I demand it, because the country is
sailing close to the wind. The seas
are high, and rocks are on each side.
The best statesmanship of the day is
confused and doubtful. The immi
gration of the surplus of four hun
dred millions of Chinese has frigh
tened yonder republican Senate—
one half of it—out of its faith in the
Declaration of Independence. I am
only asking you, to-day, as republi
cans, to consider the weapons you
have got to fight with.
Now, that is all social science.
It is all wise selfishness. It don’t
teach religion. It don’t begin even
to approach the hem of the garment
of moral and religious reform or pur
pose. It is nothing but a prudent,
wise, cautious, intense selfishness,
which undertakes to make these
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Christianity —Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
streets safer, free speech a possibili
ty, progress probable, and republi
canism perpetual with this forty mil
lions of people. What I want to add
to it is a second and a much higher
lesson.
Let us take Clarkson or John
Howard, as an illustration of this
higher lesson. A hundred years ago,
Clarkson represented the thought
that there ought to be in the civiliza
tion of ages no distinction of race ;
the black man should be as good as
the white. It has taken a hundred
years, and it is not yet accomplished.
All over the islands, far down into
other continents, it is not yet accom
plished. The Saxon race has mea
surably accomplished it. We boast
that we have a Christian civilization,
and yet it has taken a hundred years
to incorporate measurably into the
thought, and habit, and law of a
Christian race such a self-evident
proposition as that. Why was it? It
seems to me it was because it was
left for one man, and then a dozen
men, and then a hundred men, and
then a thousand men to represent the
effort. Nobody denied it, no intelli
gent person ; nobody denied that it
was a Christian tendency. Nobody
doubted that it had within it the in
spiration and the purpose of really
a Christian idea—nobody. But it
was left to a certain agency, was left
to a few men, was left to a compara
tively small minority to fight it out, to
represent it, to enforce it, to argue it
to the rest of the world. Now, my
idea is—and this is my text this af-.
ternoon—that in a really Christian
civil ization, when such a man as John
Howard, or such a man as Clark
son appears, we have a new thought
inspired of God. It would have been
natural, and it ought to have been,
that all that considered itself Chris
tian, instead of being engaged in a
hundred different ambitious and sel
fish channels, should have turned a
fair share of its attention, not by de
puty, but in person, not by substi
tutes, but actually, toward the imper
sonation and the defense, the ad
vancement and the realization of
that idea. Had there been any re
cognition of that duty, it would not
have taken twenty years to get it ac
complished ; that is, the only thing
to have dealt with would have been
the ignorance—nothing else—of the
surrounding community.
And it
would not have taken twenty years to
do what now it has taken a century
to accomplish. I claim, therefore,
that in a truly Christian civilization,
no man has the right to devote his
life to study, to art, to money-making,
to material development. There can
not be a Christian scholar. There
can not be a Christian millionaire—
it is a contradiction in terms—in the
circumstances of the day. If the re
sponsibilities of man and his duty are
fairly multiplied into each other, it is
not possible. I don’t mean to say—
understand me—that there can not be
luxury. The stately palaces of Fifth
Avenue are not what I am attacking.
There will be just as stately palaces,
and just as gorgeous—but there will
be a thousand instead of one. But
there never will be one of them—not
one will ever lift its marble walls from
its foundation, while there is the filth,
the demoralization of Five Points
within half a mile. It will come in
due time; it is all before us. The
race has never reached yet the
luxury, nor the refinement, nor the
splendor, nor pomp which its ultimate
�Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
development will accomplish. I don’t
war against that. I only say that
while there are such influences to
grapple with, a Christian man never
can turn his energy, his disciplined
and trained intellect and skill toward
the rolling up of forty or sixty mil
lions of dollars. I claim that from
the very moment of his adult life he
owed so much of his waking hours
personally to his fellow, and then
that iniquity would not have been
possible. I do not want his wealth;
I want him. I do not want his
contributions; I want his counte
nance.
Now, I will carry you up to the
legislature, perhaps to-morrow, and I
will show you a code of laws applica
ble to wine. It is infamous. I will
take you down into the byways of the
city, and I will show you here and
there perhaps a score of standing and
terrible instances of suffering. You
shall listen to the story until your
heart bleeds, and every word shall be
true, and every technical objection to
a remedy brought by lawyers and
business men shall be sound honest
opposition. It can’t be otherwise:
every one of them. I will walk
through the streets of this city, and I
will show you perhaps one hundred
instances, and we might count up
more than one hundred instances, of
extreme suffering, of terrible agony,
of absolute sacrifice of wife and child
to the law; but there it stands on the
statute-book with one hundred men
working against it. The legislature is
full and the community is full of
heedlessness ; one is making money,
another is studying Greek sixteen
hours a day; another is finishing a
picture that shall rival Raphael’s ;
another is writing poetry whose me
135
lody and pathos shall touch our
heart; another is planning a machine
that shall carry a million of men
twice as fast as the railroad and
twice as cheap; and you say to every
one of them, Here is a case of atro
cious suffering. “ Well,” they say,
“ undoubtedly, but the general rule is
good, the general law is all right;
this is an exceptional case; in the
average, society is wise.” I say,
Christianity knows no average of in
justice. I don’t want your general
laws; I don’t want your atheistic
Lord Coke telling me it is better a
law should be certain than that it
should be just. I say, in the pre
sence of the New Testament, every
human being is sacred and infinitely
precious. And the intelligence, the
sagacity, and the Christianity of this
community, instead of building more
railroads, painting more pictures, and
piling up more millions, is bound to
find out a way by which this general
law shall not result in individual
agony. (Applause.) I don’t believe
in general averages ; I don’t believe
in grinding up ten men in order that
nine hundred and ninety may be very
happy. I don’t believe in a general
rule that may be good, and may be
bad ; and in the mean time there are
one hundred terrible sufferings. What
I allege is, that Christianity has no
right to be making money, getting
wfise, and getting refined ; art and
the other achievements of the human
intellect are all good, I have nothing
to say against them ; but I had a
mortgage on you before ; you were
bound to me before you studied
Greek ; I have a mortgage on you in
the name of your Creator, and the
mortgage is that suffering brother
who does not know how to walk.
�136
Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
Let us take another illustration.
There are some children ; they are
wandering through the streets ; they
are not brought up, they are dragged
up ; they are ignorant and filthy;
they are half-clad and neglected.
You take them and put them into so
ciety; you shield them, hide them in
homes of good influence. I protest
against it. If it was a poor and nar
row or limited community just grap
pling with the means of support, I
would say, “ Ah! you did your best.”
But here are a quarter of a million
of men and women ; they are all
comfortable, all intelligent; they are
most of them in easy circumstances,
and a large portion don’t know what
to do. I will tell them what to do.
They should not break up that fami
ly ; they are bound to go to that un
worthy home; they are bound to put
those children right under the hands
of father and mother. God meant
to have them there as the best motive
to elevate that father and mother and
hold on to them. They should never
shield them by deputy; they should
shield them, and the father and
mother too. They have no right to
abstract that element of the family’s
growth, to save that portion and let
the rest float where it pleases among
the refuse timber of society.
Here is another illustration. There
is a lot of young men strolling up and
down the town, floating this way and
that, with no purpose, and very little
to do, with little helm and no sheet
anchor—a few public-spirited men
club together, raise $100,000, and
they build a gorgeous building and
call it a Young Men’s Christian Insti
tution. They fling open its doors,
and they say, Here is gas and fire, and
shelter, and books, and companion-
ship and prayer. This is the way in
which we are going to catch hold of
this floating mass and save it. That is
Christianity. It has funded $100,000
in the effort. It has set up a banner,
and said, “ Come here, come to this
point, and I will help you.” Selfish
ness sets up a grog-shop at the corner
of every street, lights its gas, and can
dles, and its fire, provides its room,
and arrays its liquor. It does not
set up any banner, and say, “ Come
here;” it goes to them. It gets as
near to them as possible ; it sets up
so many open doors that the blindest
man could not help stumbling into
some of them. Selfishness says, “ I
will make money; I have got seventy
millions of dollars behind me ; I will
open a pitfall that shall bring these
means of coining gold out of vice in
to my hand ; it shall be impossible
that a young man shall take a step
that shall not step into my toils.”
Christianity says, “ Don’t you see how
I have got him ; don’t you see what
a sufficient standard I have set up ?
I have built a costly hall in a single
spot, and I have put an advertise
ment into the newspaper, and any
man that wants to can find out that
there is a hall lighted and warmed.”
Pshaw! do you call that Christian
wisdom ? I call it a sham and a skulk.
I want seventy millions of Christian
dollars that shall put an open house,
full of light, comfort, and companion
ship opposite every grog-shop in the
city. I want seventy millions of
Christian dollars that shall open a.
dance-house opposite every dance
house in Ann street, and make it a
moral and Christian, a saving and
refining roof, so that a boy shall not
be able to step his foot without as
equal chance of entering a Christian
�Ch ristian ity—L ectnre by Wendell Phillips.
refuge, as he has of entering a refuge
of the devil. Seventy millions of
dollars contributed in Boston by the
devil to open a house on every cor
ner, and $100,000 contributed by
Christianity to open one !
What made the civilization of to
day ? All the forces of human nature.
We have energy, and thrift, and am
bition, desire of wealth, desire of
comfort, desire of display, the wish
to show our ability—all that make
human nature ; and they have run
in the direction of material develop
ment. One man says, “ I will coin
increase out of goodanother says,
“I will coin it out of vice.” You
can not help it; you need not preach
to it; you might as well go and talk
to Niagara. Two hundred millions
of dollars in the city of New-York
standing behind ten thousand open
drinking saloons, brothels, and gam
bling hells, and you say, “ We will
publish tracts, we will preach in pul
pits, we will put half a million of dol
lars into the hands of patient men
and women, and they shall go round ;
meanwhile I, with sixty millions, will
build a railroad to San Francisco, and
double it, and I will build another to
the South Pole, and double mine
again ; and I will give you $100 to
establish a prayer-meeting at Five
Points.” You can’t fight the devil
with prayer-meetings ; because all
human nature is not covered by
prayer-meetings. It is good. Don’t go
away and say I said any thing against
prayer : I don’t; it is a good thing.
All is, the parchment is not broad
enough to cover the necessity.
Men say, “ There is the theatre ;
some of its employees are immoral;
and its lobbies are filled with tempta
tion and vice ; intemperance stands
137
on one side, and degradation on the
other; shut up your doors, and preach
against theatres.” Never! Give me
a million of dollars, and I will build
you a theatre that shall be pure from
corner-stone to cap-stone; there shall
be nothing in it but honorable and
healthful and indispensable contri
bution to the love of human nature
for imitation, for acting, for tragedy,
and comedy. If the genius of Booth
makes $100,000 by acting on a pol
luted stage, I will give him $200,000
to come and act on mine. (Applause.)
There is a newspaper. It us the
New-York Herald; it panders to every
low vice. You will exclaim against
it, but you waste your words. The
merchant says, “ The best news on
stocks I can get is here ; the keen
est insight I can get into politics
is here ; the most instinctive saga
city and judgment of American life
is hereso he swallows the immo
rality, and buys the intelligence.
Give me ten millions of dollars,
and let me countercheck the Herald
by columns which no business man
will dare to enter Wall street without
reading. And give me the Christian
men of Wall street. One man knows
railroads; another man knows cop
per ; a third knows Nevada; a fourth
knows cotton ; and a fifth some other
specialty, each one indispensable in
his own department. Does he make
$100,000 by hoarding his sagacity?
I will pay him $200,000 for putting
it into my columns. I don’t wish
to abuse the Herald; I don’t wish
to abolish immoral papers by sta
tute ; I will provide you one so
infinitely better if you will give
me this $200,000,000 of reserved
Christendom. The devil pours out
$200,000,000, and gets it; you don’t
�138
Christianity—Lecture by Wendell Phillips.
bid high enough; it’s a pity you
don’t.
If you understand me, I claim that
all the moral, intellectual, material,
pecuniary forces in the hands of
Christianity should be brought into
an equal fight. Give up New-York,
and send a message to the powers at
Moscow for despotism to come and
rule the great city ? No! I send
word to the $500,000,000 in the
hands of Christian men, hoarded
up for their children, and I say, Give
me these ; and then I say, Give me
your personal presence. Your mil
lions are not enough. I want you ac
tually at the legislative lobby ; I want
you to go down with me into that
suffering street. But you say that
can’t be. It can. In the war time
you did it; every woman of you
either went down into the hospitals
or staid behind and held up the
hands of those who did. What
made the soldier so uncomplaining
who was clutched from this very
class that you can do nothing with
in the city ? You can not hold him
back from the State prison ; you can
not hold him back from the grog
shop ; you can not keep him back
from vice ? The testimony is, from
the lip of no wounded man was there
ever heard a curse in the presence of
woman ; from no agonized heart was
there ever heard a complaint. What
lifted that common humanity into
such a level ? Because all Christen
dom bent in the presence of that
nursing person over his crib. (Ap
plause.) Because he felt it was no
substitute that came down, paid to
do an agent’s work, to give him cha
rity. Because he felt that laid on
the same altar whpre he laid his
ife, was all the wealth and all the
heart of the broad North that he
left behind him ; that every woman’s
nature was working, every heart was
feeling, and every foot was swift to
come to his bedside. You left a
virtue, a self-control, an enthusiasm,
a self-devotion and purity, such as
other years can not equal. Go to
him in his own hut here in the same
way, not as a paid agent, but as a
Christian feeling just as much for
him who is the victim of a fiercer
war than the South ever waged, who
is wounded under a battery more bit
ter and destructive than General Lee
ever marshaled ; who needs just as
much your sympathy and your Chris
tianity to help him.
What I propose is, that you should
supplement law with all these great
forces of Christianity which are now
dissipated in every direction. I claim
that if you use them you can grapple
with this great social disorder; and
you can not grapple with it in any
other way. Social science will never
solve the problem. If you scrutinize
the elements that make up our life,
it has no panacea to offer you; the
only panacea is, that you have got to
fight the devil with his own weapons.
Suppose General Grant had said,
when Lee marshaled his troops from
Charleston west to Vicksburg, “ That
is very bad fighting ground; I am
not going down there ; I shall sta
tion myself at Chambersburg in
Pennsylvania, or I shall encamp
on the level prairies of Illinois;
and if General Lee comes up here,
I shall whip him.” We should have
said, “ That is not strategywe
should have said, “If you want to
crush the rebellion, follow it; if it
encamps at Vicksburg, confront it
there; if it exists in the marshes of
�Christian ity—L ecture hy Wendell Phillips.
Carolina, meet it there ; if it sur
rounds the rivers of Tennessee, as
sail it there. Wherever it goes, go
there to meet and fight it. Now,
here is the devil who is encamped
everywhere; he has got genius and
painting; he has got the press and
the theatre; he has got the dance
house, and he has got amusements ;
he has got every thing in his own
hands, and Christendom says, “What
a portentous power 1” with hundreds
of millions of dollars in his hands.
Christendom says, Here is a sys
tem of railroads, which cobwebs the
continent, marries the ocean; we
can’t do without it. The civiliza
tion of the nineteenth century de
mands it; the empire can not go on
without its facility. At the same
time, there is not energy and brain
and discipline and business talent
enough to run it in the service of
the church. The church has not
bred virtue enough to run it; only
the devil has bred brains enough
to run a railroad system. The
consequence is—and every busi
ness man within these walls knows
it—that there is not integrity and
virtue enough in this -American
people, bred of its present phase of
Christianity, to run its railroads ho
nestly. That the men at the head
of the great movement, at the focus,
with hand firm enough, and brain
strong enough to guide the machine,
are not contented with salaries, they
must steal. It can not be hindered.
It is a demoralizing example, and its
influence radiates into all quarters.
Social science says enlightened self
ishness dictates honesty. New-York
replies, “ That may be true, when you
take in the breadth of a century; but,
to-day, enlightened selfishness, mea
139
sured by thirty years in this metro
polis, dictates rascality; we can make
more money by that, gain more es
teem, stand on a higher pedestal,
can mould our time more certainly;
hereafter, in the long run, measuring
humanity from Luther into the next
century, honesty may be the best po
licy, but to-day rascality is the best.”
What will you do ? You may wait a
century or a century and a half, and
the gradual unfolding of the moral
sense of forty millions of people may
elevate human ability up to the level
of honesty enough to grapple with
the concentrated capital of the day.
I have no lack of faith that it will
be so. But if you want it before that
time; if you want it to-day; if you
want these examples removed from
the contemplation of your children,
you have got to find somewhere
Christian men, religious men, men
with moral purpose, able men, her
culean in brain and hand, who will
be ready to say, “ I see that sink, I
see that portentous example, I see
that cancer spreading its rottenness
through the whole business body;
and I will undertake to manage this
great forty millions of railroads for
nothing; I give you my ability for
the sake of the example; I contri
bute that to the Christian influences
of to-day.”
You disbelieve in it; you are smil
ing at it. Why, George Washing
ton did that, and he was not a model
Christian. He managed thirteen
States in a great war, and he never
took a penny of pay. A mere French
patriot said of the moral sense of his
day, “I lay myself on the altar of
three millions of people in order to
teach you how the public may be
served.” Then I say to you there
�140
Christianity—Lectiire by Wendell Phillips.
ought to be a Christian millionaire
to-day, who, stepping out of the ranks
of private emolument, should say to
the forty million power, “Give me
those funds, and I will return you
every penny. If the way opens for
ten millions of development, it shall
be all yours. I serve you, not from
ambition; I stand there, not from
greed, but simply to show you that
there is a power in Christianity that
is ready to make a sacrifice, as there
is in the devil’s ranks.” You disbe
lieve it. That is the chill of the hour.
You don’t even believe in the possi
bility of virtue. You can not con
ceive of a man thirty years old going
down into State street, who, after
spending two days for himself, being
what is considered a childish old
woman philanthropist, spends the
other four in serving his kind. You
don’t believe it. The men who have
done it in our day, and I could name
half a dozen of them, you know were
called weak-minded and bettyish, and
contempt has covered their memory.
You not only want one, you want the
whole; you never will grapple with
your day until you do it. Under
neath you is surging this immense
power of human vice; all the hither
to uncalculated and uncalculable
energies of the human race in this
utterly unfettered stage of its de
velopment, are turned into the great
channel of each man doing the best
for himself materially; and then men
open their eyes wide and say, I am
astonished ; how rotten our civiliza
tion is. What did the Master mean
when he saw the tax-gatherer, and
said, “ Come, follow me;” when one
brother came and said, “ Let me go
and divide the possession,” “ Come,
follow me;” and when another said,
“ Let me go and bring my father.”
“ Come, follow me” ? It didn’t mat
ter, the necessity nor the exactness
of the demand, it was, “ Come, fol
low me.” Running through the stu
dio and study, through office and
mart, through legislative hall and
the streets, is still that cry, “ Come,
follow me.” I want not your “ Amen,”
I want not your substitute, I don’t
want your ten per cent—I want you.
Go up to yonder legislature in a man
ner that will sweep away injustice in
a moment; let the whole community
stand in front of the court and say,
You can not decree injustice. You
must fight the devil with his own
weapons. Don’t let him put a pick
et down there, unless you put one
right opposite to him. If he sets
up one establishment, set up another.
Don’t retire before him; don’t be
frightened; don’t say we have not
enough; you can outbid him, you
can overwhelm him. You can gather
round you such attractions that, in
ninety-nine cases out of one hundred,
you will carry the day; the one hun
dredth you must leave to God. But
in the vast majority of cases you will
carry the day. Don’t fight him by
force of arms; don’t make laws
against him; don’t abuse him; don’t
endeavor to curb him ; give him the
greatest freedom possible ; fight him
with ideas; fight him with attractions;
fight him with greater inducements ;
meet him, and stand toe to toe, hand
to hand; if he pours out a dollar,
pour out two; if he sets up a dance
house at Five Points, don’t set up a
prayer-meeting next to him, set up a
dance-house next to him. Meet him
with the same weapons; address your
selves to the same element of human
nature, grapple with the same power
�
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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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Christianity
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Phillips, Wendell
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: [129] -140 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Standard, vol. I, no. 3, July 1870. Article incomplete. Printed in double columns.
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Christianity
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Christianity
Conway Tracts
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Text
Its Origin, Nature, and Influence.
By CHARLES WATTS
CONTENTS:
Christianity of Human Origin—Not Original—Indefinite. Impracti.
cable and Contradictory in its Nature—Its Influence Tested by
History and the Admissions of Christian Writers.
Price Fifteen Cents.
SECULAR THOUGHT OFFICE,
Toronto, Ont.
��CHRISTIANITY:
ITS ORIGIN, NATURE, AND INFLUENCE.
“ To believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and
folly.”—Fohiet/.
INTRODUCTION.
The object of this pamphlet is to ascertain as far as possible what
evidence and demonstration, if any, can be reasonably adduced in
favour of the general orthodox claims relative to the Origin, Nature,
and Influence of the Christian religion. In these days of avowed
mental freedom and intellectual research, no apology should be needed
for entering upon such an investigation. Systems or principles
unable to withstand the test of fair examination are destitute of what
should be one of their highest recommendations. Belief without
critical examination has too often perpetuated error and fostered
credulity. If Christianity be fallacious, why should not its fallacy
be made known ? If, however, it be true, its truth will be the more
apparent as its claims are investigated and examined. Dr. Collyer
observes, in his lectures on miracles, that “ he who forbids you to reason
on religious subjects, or to apply your understanding to the investiga
tion of revealed truth, is insulting the character of God, as though his
acts shrunk from scrutiny—is degrading his own powers, which are
best employed when they are in pursuit of such sublime and interesting
subjects.
There are three principal modes of criticising the modern Orthodox
pretensions set forth on behalf of popular Christianity. First, it
is alleged that such pretensions are entirely destitute of truth, and
that they have been of no service whatever to mankind. This view
I cannot thoroughly endorse. Many of the superstitions of the world
have been allied with some fact, and have in their exercise upon the
minds of a portion of their devotees served, for a time no doubt, a useful
purpose. In the second place, certain opponents of Christianity regard
it as being deserving of immediate extinction. This, in my opinion, is.
�CHRISTIANITY----ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
unjust to its adherents, who have as much right to possess what they
hold to be true as we have to entertain views which we believe to be
correct. Theological faiths should be supplanted by intellectual growth,
not crushed by dogmatic force. The third and, to my mind, the most
sensible and fair mode of dealing with Christianity is to regard it as not
being the only system of truth ; as not being of any special origin; as
being not suited to all minds ; as having fulfilled its original purpose,
and as having no claim of absolute domination. This appears to me to
be the true position of Secularism towards popular orthodoxy. Such
a position is based upon the voice of history, the law of mental science,
and the philosophy of true liberty of thought. We should in all our
endeavours seek to gain as far as possible that which is useful unaccom
panied with that which has become useless.
To the impartial student of history and to the keen observer of the
development of the human mind, it is apparent that systems are
frequently deprived of much of their real value through the injudicious
conduct of their expounders and defenders. Such persons are not con
tented to allow their theories to stand upon their own legitimate merits,
but they deem it necessary to add thereto claims which are most extrav
agant, and which have no necessary connection with the systems advo
cated. The result of such a policy is that fictitious surroundings frequently
•obscure the real nature and scope of the principles advocated. This is
particularly the case with subjects of a theological character. The
religious enthusiast, whose emotion too frequently gets the better of his
reason, is apt to indulge in certain delusions until, in time, they appear
to him realities. The Rev. James Cranbrook no doubt recognised this
when, referring to Jesus in the preface of his work, “ The Founders of
Christianity,” (page v.) he observed : “ Our idealizations have invested
him [Christ] with a halo of spiritual glory that, by the intensity of its
brightness, conceals from us the real figure presented in the Gospels.
We see him, not as he is described, but as the ideally perfect man our
.fancies have conceived.”
As with Christ so with Orthodox Christianity. The most wild,
absurd and fallacious pretensions are put forth on its behalf. Instead
af regarding the Christian faith as an outgrowth of the human mind, a
combination of truth and error, born amidst limited knowledge and
unlimited superstition, the majority of Orthodox Christians allege
that their system emanated direct from what is termed a divine
source; that it is unique in its nature, unequalled in its influence for
�CHRISTIANITY—ITS ORIGIN, NATURE. AND INFLUENCE.
3
good and that it really ushered into the world the greatest civi
lization ever known to the human race. These theological extremists
not only ignore all in society that is evil and defective as belonging to
their system, but they credit Christianity with all improvements which
have taken place in modern times. It matters not whether it be a
steam engine, an electric telegraph, a printing press, the telephone, the
extension of political rights, the existence of benevolent and health
restoring institutions, the marked improvement of the physical con
dition of the people, the increased facilities for the education of the
young, the elevating and improved status of women, the promotion of
sobriety and even the lessening of persecution for the rejection of
creeds and dogmas; all these indications of modern progress are
credited to the Christian faith. Moreover, it is said with a grave
absence of modesty and an utter disregard of accuracy, that high-toned
morality, a correct sense of duty, a clear perception of truth and the
cultivation of the loftiest aspirations, are all the result of the advent
of Jesus of Nazareth.
In vain do we remind these reckless claimants that the principal
factors that operated in the establishment of the reforms that now
surround us, were science, education, an extended freedom of the
press, international and commercial intercourse, and the exerciseof mecha
nical genius, allied with mental liberty. These agencies of individual
and national progress did not exist in the palmy days of Church
supremacy, and they have been secured in spite of the unprincipled
and persistent opposition of the ecclesiastical party. Why is it, if
orthodoxy is so potent for good in these directions, that during cen
turies of its absolute reign it failed to give the world those measures
of reform, which have since been won through secular effort? Is it
not a fact that, after a long and fair trial, with everything in its
favour, the Church has proved incapable of securing the correct remedy
for such evils as drunkenness, social injustice and the withholding
from woman her proper position in the body politic ? Organizations
of a secular character have now to be formed to accomplish that which
theology, with all its power, proved itself impotent to achieve. The
Christian is also reminded that truth, benevolence, justice, a noble
sense of right and all the higher virtues that adorn mankind, have
been found, at least, as highly developed among those who are termed,
the men of the world as among those who profess the Christian faith.
�4
CHRISTIANITY—ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
That this is so is plainly admitted even by high dignitaries of the
■Church.
Archbishop Whateley, in his “ Lectures on Political
Economy,” remarks : “ I have said that the object of the Scriptures
is to reveal to us religious and moral truths; but even this, as far as
regards the latter, must be admitted with considerable modification.
God has not revealed to us a system of morality such as would have
been needed for beings who had no other means of distinguishing right
and wrong. On the contrary, the inculcation of virtue, and reproba
tion of vice in Scripture, are in such a tone as seems to pre-suppose a
■natural power or a capacity for acquiring the power to distinguish
them.” And Dr. Chalmers, in concluding his sermon on Morality,
states : “We are put upon a cool exercise of the understanding, and
we cannot close it against the fact that all these feelings [those of
charity and virtue] may exist apart from the love of God, and apart
from the religious principle—that the idea of a God may be expunged
from the heart of man, and yet that heart be still the seat of the
same constitutional impulse as ever—that in reference to the realities
of the unseen, the mind may be a blank, and at the same time there
may be room for the play of kindly emotions.”
It is conceded frankly by the present writer, that what is sup
posed to be understood by the very latitudiriarian term Christianity is not
entirely destitute of truth, and that many of its professors are honest
and sincere workers for the common good. All systems being the
outcome of human aspirations, contain features good and commen
dable, for human nature is not totally depraved. The good and useful
work, however, performed by professing Christians is not the result of
their faith, but rather the necessary consequence of their well-trained
and well-developed organizations. Some natures are too pure to be
influenced in their general conduct by any theology. As it was with
the Romans so it is with the Christians of to-day, their Christianity
rests but slightly upon them.
z
In all our investigations, the desire to arrive at truth should be
paramount. No apprehension should be entertained that the result of
our enquiries may be unfavourable to the claims of any particular
faith, but the one desire and determination should be to accept the
verdict of facts. Feeling ought to yield to argument, and traditional
belief to the force of historical and general accuracy. Suppose, in the
examination of the origin, nature, and influence of Christianity, it
�CHRISTIANITY—ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
5
should be demonstrated that it is not divine, unique and pre-eminently
useful to man, would that deprive it of its intrinsic worth 1 Certainly
not. Truth is valuable regardless of its source. That which is based
upon verities and adapted to meet the requirements of human nature
should be recognized, whether it emanate from Pagan or Christian,
Jew or Gentile, the devout Believer or the honest Sceptic.
ITS ORIGIN.
Professing Christians not only allege that their faith is of divine
'Origin, but they contend that those who question the correctness of
such an allegation are logically compelled to show how it could have
been produced by human means. It will not be difficult to demon
strate that the allegation is utterly groundless, and that the contention
:is evidently unreasonable.
From experience we learn that systems emanate from the human
mind, but the same monitordoes not teach us that systems arise from what
is termed a “divine ” source. Besides, what does this word “divine” really
mean ? Has it ever been adequately defined ? Is it not simply an
■ expression used to represent a notion acquired through orthodox train
ing ? What knowledge do we possess to enable us to distinguish the
“ divine,” supposing it to exist, from the human ? Being ignorant of
anything beyond the natural, is it not presumptuous to ascribe a sys
tem or a principle to that of which we know nothing ? Christians
agree in regarding other religions than their own as being of human
origin ; why. then, should their faith be an exception ? Has Christi
anity anything to recommend it that the many other religious theories
• do not claim ? Miraculous power, sublime teachings, supernatural doc
trines, progressive aspirations, are claimed on behalf of systems dis
tant from Christianity.
Supposing, however, that the human origin of the Christian faith
-could not be satisfactorily established, would it necessarily follow that
its origin was supernatural ? Certainly not. If we question its
“ divine ” claims, we are not, therefore, bound to account for its exis■ tence. To doubt the validity of one theory does not make it a logical
necessity that we should assume the responsibility of inventing
mother. This is particularly so in reference to Christianity. So un
certain is the period when it first appeared in the world, so doubtful
are the records said to obtain in its early history, so corrupted have been
the channels through which that history has been traced, and so
^imperfect and contradictory are its credentials that we now have, that
�6
CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFUENCE.
it is impossible to judge with sufficient accuracy the precise mode of its
introduction. Hence the presumption of those who profess to have
that knowledge. When Christians ascribe their faith to one cause, and
that cause supernatural, upon them devolves the duty of proving their position. Secularists regard Christianity as being the outgrowth of
the human mind, and consider there is nothing more marvellous in its
origin and progress than pertains to other reliigions. The divine origin
of Buddhism and Mohammedanism is denied by Christians : are they
prepared to give a satisfactory account of the introduction and growth,
of those religions ? Why should Christians demand in regard to their
faith what they are unable to perform in connection with theological
systems to which they are opposed ? The claim of the followers of
Christ on behalf of the origin of their religion is opposed to analogy,
reason and experience. “ It is surely therefore,” observes the Rev.
James Cranbrook, “ an absurdity to say that until we can account for
the origin of Christianity by some other means, seeing it is estab
lished, we are bound to accept it as true, and its advocates are not
bound to adduce any positive evidence in its support. I venture to
lay it down as a canon of both logic and rhetoric, in opposition to the
authority of Archbishop Whately, that every one who makes a posi
tive affirmation is bound to furnish the reasons for such an affirmation
before he demands the belief of others.”
It is a fallacy to suppose that Christianity was an entirely new
system, introduced into the world at one particular date. Great
changes—either of a theological, social, or political character—are not
the sudden product of any one period, but rather the gradual growth
of time. The religious phases that came to the front during the time
Christ is supposed to have lived, were but a further development of a
law that had been manifesting itself in previous ages, and that has
continued to still further unfold itself down to the present time. Prior
to the advent of the Jewish Reformer, a mighty struggle had been going
on between philosophy and superstition, and between polytheism and
monotheism. The polytheistic form of supernaturalism was losing its
hold upon the human mind. Its decay, however, was not in conse
quence of the adoption of Christianity, inasmuch as its decline had
commenced before the new faith had dawned. Lewes, in his “ His
tory of Philosophy,” says that “ the progress of Polytheism to Mono
theism was a continuous development ” This is true. And that-
�CHRISTIANITY---- ITS OSIGIN. NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
7
■development was exceedingly rapid during the struggles of the Greek
philosophy. It was, intimates the above writer, “ Greek philosophy
that opened men’s eyes to human duty.” We have no right, therefore,
to infer that, if Christ had not appeared, Paganism would have
remained the prevailing theology. Instead of Christianity causing its
downfall, as frequently asserted, the Galilean religion really retained
many of the Pagan follies, some of which are to this day practised in
the Christian Church. “ It may with reason be doubted, if the fact is
as often remembered as it should be, that Christianity arose amid the
corruption and decay of the greatest civilization which the human race
had seen amid the death-throes of the ancient world..................... It is
often assumed that this proud heathenism and pagan glory were over
thrown by the meek and unlearned disciples of the Galilean prophet
of God. Nothing can be less true than this assumption . . . The
fall of the Empire, including the loss and ruin of the old phi
losophy and knowledge, was an indispensable condition of the spread
of Christianity. . . . The birth of Christianity being on this
wise, viz.: having taken place in an era of decay and death of art
and philosophy, of knowledge, of wealth, of population, of progress, in
every form ; and the absence of these things having been one of the
•chief negative conditions of its growth and prosperity, we must look
for the sources of its nourishment in another direction than these j not
in knowledge or the eager questioning spirit which leads to knowledge,
■but in the humble spirit which believes and accepts on trust the word .
•of authority; not in regulated industry, which aims at constant increase
and accumulation of wealth; but in the resigned poverty, which,
scorning this world, lays up riches in heaven ; not in political freedom
and popular government which aims at the progressive well-being of
all, but in the stern rigour of arbitrary power, which coerces the
vicious and refractory into a little order during their brief sojourn on
earth. In the decline and fall of Rome, or as it would be better to
say, in the final ruin of ancient civilization, the conditions favourable
to this order of beliefs or doctrines, spontaneously emerged.” (Morris
son’s “Service of Man,” pp. 174-5, 178-9). The fact is “Christianity
was only a slight modification of systems already existing—a modifi
cation determined by the combined action and concentration of all the
divergent lines of thought and feeling. Only ignorance can look upon
it as a something so original, so unique, so different from all that was,
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CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
or ever had been, that nothing but the supposition of supernatural
interference could explain it. Christianity is accounted for by the ten?
dencies of thought in the age in which it was born.”
No one who has carefully and impartially read the histories of the
ancient religions and ethical systems, will contend that the principal
doctrines and moral teachings of the New Testament were known for
the first time in their connection with Christianity. The able Ameri
can writer, Charles B. Waite, M.A., in his “History of the Christian
Religion Religion,” says, “ Many of the more prominent doctrines of
the Christian Religion prevailed among nations of antiquity, hundreds
and in some instances, thousands of years before Christ.” Judge
Strange, in his great work, “ The Sources and Development of Chris
tianity,” shows that nearly all the Christian doctrines—the Atonement,
Trinity, Incarnation, Judgment of the Dead, Immortality, Sacrifice—
were of Egyptian origin, and, therefore, existed long before the time
of Christ. The same able writer, on page 100 of the work mentioned, says : •
“ Christianity, it is thus apparent, was not the result of a special
revelation from above, but the growth of circumstances, and developed
out of the materials, working in a natural manner in the human mind,,
in the place and at the time that the movement occurred.”
In reference to the moral teachings of the New Testament, those
of them capable of being practically carried out were borrowed from
men who lived long anterior to the Christian Era, and who wrote with. out the aid of Christian inspiration. “ To the truths already uttered
in the Athenian prison,” says Mackay, “ Christianity added little or
nothing, except a few symbols which, though well calculated for popu
lar acceptance, are more likely to perplex than to instruct, and oiler
the best opportunity for priestly mystification.” Sir William Jones, in
his tenth discourse before the Asiatic. Society, says “ Christianity has
no need of such aids as many are willing to give it, by asserting that
the wisest men of the world were ignorant of the great maxim, that
we should act in respect to others as we would wish them to act in
respect of ourselves, as the rule is implied in a speech of Lysias,
expressed in distinct phrases by Thales and Pittacus, and I have seen
it word for word in the original of Confucius.” And the Rev. Dr.
George Matheson, in his lecbure on “The Religions of China,” page 84,
observes : “ The glory of Christian morality is that it is not original.”
Thus it is that Christianity is composed of materials born of the human
�CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
9
mind at different periods, and in various countries in the ancient and
modern world.
While it may be difficult to name the exact when and how
Christianity was ushered into the world, it is not difficult to indicate
• circumstances of a human character that in all probability favoured
its introduction.
Orthodox Christianity essentially appeals to the “ poor in spirit; ’’for
the self-reliant it has but little charm. At the time when Christ is
supposed to have lived, the people were longing for the appearance of
some one, either to console them in their misfortunes, or to deliver
them from their state of submission; at a time when one of the most
splendid, though imperfect civilizations the world had ever beheld had
reached its climax. The majority of the subject races under the
Roman Empire were slaves. Many of them who had been brave in
their freedom had become, as the result of their captivity, enervated
and degenerate. The Jews, to whom Christ is said first to have
appeared, had their national spirit nearly crushed out. They had been
for a century under the Roman yoke, and previous to that subjection,
the unfortunate subjects of equally as cruel conquerors. In Christ’s
time the descendants of Abraham had lost all prospect of earthly
success. Embittered by disappointment and wearied by persecution,
they were prepared to accept any change which they thought would
remove them from their unfortunate condition. The Jews were a people
who had been robbed of their independence; whose manhood was
gone, reduced to a state of physical dependency and mental poverty,
they were taught by Christ that this world is not the place of God’s
final government.
While on earth God’s people are persecuted
by way of trial and purification. But consolation is given in the hope
that the “ light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us
a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” This was virtually
the language of Christ to a ruined nation and a forlorn people. The
alleged founder of Christianity also urged upon his credulous hearers
that the end of the world was at hand ; that their existence on earth
was nearly over, and, if they accepted his faith, they should not only
have houses and lands during their brief stay here, but happiness and
immortality hereafter. So impressed were the early Christians with
the idea of the speedy destruction of the world, that they disregarded
the duties of this life. “They were dead,” says Gibbon, “to the busi
mess and pleasures of the world.” It must be remembered, moreover,
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CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE’
that the primitive Christians were composed of the ignorant, super
stitious and servile classes of society; persons whom the above teach
ings were just calculated to captivate. Mosheim writes that “ among
the first professors of Christianity there were but few men of learning,
few who had capacity enough to insinuate into the minds of a grossmd ignorant multitude the knowledge of divine things.” It appears
that the early teachers of Christianity were as uneducated as the
“ignorant multitude” to whom they preached.
“We may here
remark,” says the historian just mentioned, “ in general that these
Apostolic Fathers and the other writers, who in the infancy of the
Church employed their pens in the cause of Christianity, were neither
remarkable for their learning nor for their eloquence. On the contrary,
they express the most pious and admirable sentiments in the plainest
and most illiterate style.” The .author of “ The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire ” records that “ the new sect of Christians was
almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and
mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves.” Again, notic
ing the reproach that “the Christians allured into their party the
most atrocious criminals,” Gibbon quaintly observes, “ the friends of
Christianity may acknowledge without a blush, that many of the
most eminent saints had been before their baptism the most abandoned
sinners.”
Thus it will be seen that the natural conditions of society two1
thousand years ago were such as . to render possible the reception of
Christianity without the intervention of any alleged supernatural
power. This will appear the more apparent when it is remembered
that at that period Rome was remarkably tolerant to all new religions.
Chambers, in his “History of Rome,” states, “ One good quality they
(the Romans) pre-eminently exhibited; namely, the toleration of other
forms and rituals than their .own, no matter whether exhibited at
home or in the countries they, conquered.” “ Each nation,” says
Mosheim, “ suffered its neighbours to follow their own method of wor^ship, to adore their own Gods, to enjoy their own rites and ceremonies,
■ 'and discovered no sort of displeasure at their diversity of sentiments,
in religious matters. . . . The Romans exercised this toleration in
the amplest manner.” Gibbon also states, “The various modes of wor
ship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by thepeople as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the
magistrate as equally useful.” That the Christians were persecuted by
�CHRISTIANITY—ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
11
the Romans cannot be denied, but the cause of that persecution was
not the mere profession of their faith so much as the fact of their
meeting in secret, and, as it was thought, conspiring against the State.
Renan, in his “ Hilbert Lectures.” says, “ Before Constantine, we
search in vain in Roman law for any enactment against Freethought.”
Remembering these general existing conditions, the means employed
-to introduce Christianity must not be overlooked in considering its
origin, Among such means were those of the promises of earthly
rewards, heavenly joys, and the practising of fraud and deceit. To a
poor and dependent people Jesus said : “There is no man that hath
left house, or bretheTn, or sisters, or father^ or mother, or wife, or
-children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel’s, but he shall receive
an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and
mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world
to come eternal life.” (Mark x. 29, 30.) In fact, “Peter said unto
him [Christ], Behold we have forsaken all, and followed thee ; what
shall we have therefore ? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto
you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the
Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon
twelve thrones, fudging the twelve tribes of Israel”. (Matt. xix. 27,
28.) The first Christian emperor, according to Gibbon, offered bribes
of garments and gold to those who would embrace the Christian faith.
(“ Decline and Fall,” vol. 11, pp. 472, 473.) With such inducements
as these, it would not be difficult, even in “this enlightened age,” to
secure converts to the most absurd faith. To these allurements must
be added the powerful factors, in a period of credulity and unsurpassed
ignorance and fear, of fraud and deceit. Mosheim says it was “ held
as a maxim that it was not only lawful, but praiseworthy to deceive
and even to use the expedient of a lie, in order to advance the cause of
truth and piety ... it cannot be affirmed that even true Chris
tians were entirely innocent and irreproachable in this matter .
they who were desirous of surpassing all others in piety, looked upon
it as lawful, and even laudable, to advance the cause of piety by arti
fice and fraud.” (“Ecclesiastical History,” vol. 1, pp. 55-77). In the
fourth century, Lactantius exclaimed, “ Among those who seek power
and gain there will never be wanting an inclination to forge a lie for
it.” (Middleton’s “Letters from Rome.”) Gregory says, “A little
Jargon is all that is necessary to impose upon the people. The less they
-comprehend, the more they admire.”
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CHRISTIANITY—ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
Another circumstance attending the introduction of Christianity is
that its early adherents retained many of the principal features of the
Buddhists and the Essenes.
Max Muller remarks, “Between the
language of Buddha and his disciples, and the language of Christ and
his apostles there are strange coincidences. Even some of the Buddhist
legends and parables sound as if taken from the New Testament,
though we know that many of them existed before the beginning of
the Christian era.” (“Science of Religion,” p. 113.) Professor Beal
observes, “ The points of agreement between the two are remarkable.
All the evidence we have goes to prove that the teachings of Buddha
were known in the East centuries before Christ.” (“ History of
Buddhism.”) It is worthy of note that the claims now set up on behalf of
Christ are very similar to those which were urged in the interest of
Buddha. Self-assertion, “ I am the light of the world ; ” self-assump
tion, “unequalled in perfection,” being “without sin the possession of
purity and great personal influence are features ascribed to Buddha as
well as to Christ. Thus, as an eminent writer observes, “the history of
Jesus of Nazareth as related in the books of the New Testament, is
simply a copy of that of Buddha, with a mixture of mythology borrowed
from other nations.”
If possible, a more striking resemblance exists between the teachings,
of the Essenes and those of the four gospels. In fact, Dr. Ginsburg
considers there is no doubt that Christ belonged to the sect of theEssenes. The reader is referred to Bunsen’s “Angel Messiah,” and
to Judge Strange’s “ Sources and Development of Christianity ” for
detailed proof in favour of Dr. Ginsburg’s position. We give the
following from Mrs. Besant, as showing how the teachings of Christi
anity correspond with those of the Essenes : “It is to Josephus thatwe must turn for an account of the Essenes; a brief sketch of them
is given in ‘Antiquities of the Jews,’ bk. xviii., chap. 1. He says:
‘ The doctrine of the Essenes is this : That all things are bestascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that
the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for; and when
they send what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not
offer sacrifices, because they have more pure lustrations of their own
on which account they are excluded from the common court of the
temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves; yet is their course of life
better than that of other men; and they entirely addict themselves to
�CHRISTIANITY----ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
13
husbandry.’ They had all things in common, did not marry and kept
no servants, thus none called any master (Matt, xxiii. 8, 10). In the
‘Wars of the Jews,’ bk. ii., chap, viii., Josephus gives us a fuller
account. ‘ There are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The
followers of the first of whom are the Pharisees; of the second the
Sadduces; and the third sect, who pretend to a severer discipline, are
called Essenes. These last are Jews by birth, and seem to have a
greater affection for one another than the other sects [John xiii. 35].
The Essenes reject pleasure as an evil [Matt. xvi. 24], but esteem con
tinence and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect
wedlock. . . . They do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage
[Matt. xix. 12, last clause of verse. 1 Cor. vii. 27, 28, 32-35, 37, 38,
40], . . . These men are despisers of riches [Matt. xix. 21,- 53,
24] . . . it is a law among them, that those who come to them
must let what they have be common to the whole order [Acts iv. 3237, v. 1-11]. . . . They also have stewards appointed to take care
of their common affairs [Acts vi. 1-6], ... If any of their sect
come from other places, what they have lies open for them, just as if it
were their own [Matt. x. 11]. . . . For which reason they carry
nothing with them when they travel into remote parts [Matt. x. 9,
10], . .
As for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary;
for before sunrising they speak not a word about profane matters, but
put up certain prayers which they have received from their forefathers,
as if they made a supplication for its rising [the Essenes were then sun
worshippers]. ... A priest says grace before meat; and it is
unlawful for anyone to taste of the food before grace be said. The
same priest, when he hath dined, says grace again after meat; and
when they begin, and when they end, they praise God, as he that
bestows their food upon them [Eph. v. 18-20, 1 Cor. x. 3*0, 31, 1 Tim.
iv. 4, 5].
They dispense their anger after a just manner, and
restrain their passion [Eph. iv. 26]. . . . Whatsoever they say
also is firmer than an oath ; but swearing is avoided by them, and
the^ esteem it worse than perjury; for they say, that he who cannot be
believed without swearing by God. is already condemned [Matt. v. 3437].’ ” (“ Freethinker’s Text Book,” part 2, pp. 387-8).
It is a common error existing among orthodox professors, that what
is termed Christianity originated with Christ, eighteen hundred years
ago, in Palestine. The fact is, no date or country can be definitely
�14
CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
fixed as being the time and place of the birth of what is now called
the Christian faith. The elements of which the doctrines and general
teachings of the orthodox Church are composed can be found in works
written long anterior to the Christian era. Even Eusebius, the
“father of ecclesiastical history,” admits that the Christian religion
was not new. He says : “Its principles have not been recently
invented, but were established, we may say, by the Deity, from the
very origin of our race. ... It is evident that the religion
delivered to us is not a new or strange doctrine; but, if the truth
must be spoken, it is the first and only true religion.” Themost, therefore,
that can be said with any degree of accuracy is, that a man, named Jesus,
and his followers perpetuated portions of pre-existing systems under
another name. But even this allegation is, according to some writers,
open to grave doubts. Still, as there is nothing remarkable in the
event, if true, it may be taken, in the present writer’s opinion, as
granted, because it in no way makes the assumption of the “ divine ”
origin of Christianity a necessity.
If the above circumstances fail to satisfy the orthodox believer as to
the human origin of his faith, let him ask himself the question, what
are the difficulties attending his assumption of its “ divine ” origin ?
If this divinity involves all-wisdom, all-power and all-goodness, then
the objections to the assumption that Christianity came from such a
source are strong indeed. (1) Why was its advent so long delayed ?
If it were superior to anything previously existing, and God knowing
this, and yet withholding it from the world until about two thousand
years ago, while having the power to give it at any moment, must
not this delay militate against his all-goodness ?
AVhen Christi
anity did appear, how did its slow progress at first harmonise with
the theory of the infinite power of its reputed author ? And further,
why, when it did advance, was it dependent upon acknowledged human
conditions for its success or otherwise? (3) Why, if its author
were so good, pure, and spotless, was its advent -associated with
fraud, deception, and falsehood? (4) Why, if the Christian system
were supremely true, were heretical writings of the early centuries
destroyed by the special mandate of the Church? (5) Why, when
Christ introduced his system, was it silent upon the three great
evils of his time, namely, poverty, slavery, and mental submission ?
Moreover, how is it that, instead of correcting the errors of his day
�CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
15
—such as belief in the possession of devils, and in the then immediate
end of the world—Christ made the mistake of sharing that belief
himself 1 (6) Finally, is it not remarkable, upon the supposition that
Christianity had for its origin an Infinite Being, that after nearly two
thousand years, it has only been heard of by one third of the human
race ? If God is all-wise, he must know of this limited knowledge;
if he be all-powerful, he could make the knowledge universal • if he
were all-good, it is only reasonable to suppose that he would have done
so. But he has not; we, therefore, arrive at the conclusion that
Christianity, like other religions, was simply the outcome of the human
mind, at a period when ignorance was the rule and knowledge the
exception. Our duty, therefore, should be to value it for whatever
intrinsic value it has, and not to accept it merely on account of an
imaginary supernatural origin.
ITS NATURE.
Orthodox Christianity is thoroughly indefinite, impracticable and
contradictory in its nature. No system was ever less rigid and more
plastic. It has certainly come up to the intimation of St. Paul, “ to
be all things to all men.” Persons of the most contrary dispositions
and the most opposite natures have been its great illustrators, expoun
ders, and living representatives. It has found room for all tempera
ments and for the most diversified classes of believers : the ascetic and
the luxurious enjoyer of life; the man of action and the man of con
templation ; the monk and the king; the philanthropist and the de
stroyer of his race; the iconoclastic hater of all ceremonies, and the
superstitious devotee ; Cromwell and Cowper ; Lyell and Wesley; Luther
and Dr. Pusey; John Miltonand C. H. Spurgeon; Talmageand Beecher ;
Catholics and Protestants ; Quakers and Salvationists; Trinitarians
and Unitarians ; believers in Free Grace and devotees of Predestina
tion. All these and many other similar opposites have found refuge
within the pale of Christianity. But it should be distinctly under
stood that this heterogeneous family is by no means the result of any
all-embracing comprehensiveness in the system of Christ, but rather
the effects of a Theology characterised alike by its indefinite, imprac
ticable, incomplete, and undecisive principles.
It is these peculiar features in Christianity that have deprived it of
a consistent and uniform history, and that have made its influence on
�16
CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
the human mind so conflicting and so destitute of the power of produc
ing uniformity of action or belief. Hence, the varied and contra
dictory phases through which Christianity has passed since its incep
tion. Those who are acquainted with its early history will know that
the faith of Jesus as he preached it, and the faith of the Christians
to-day, are two entirely different things. Even if we accept the alleged
dates of Christian chronology to be historically correct, Christianity
was altered and modified immediately after the death of Christ. The
Christianity of Paul-was widely different from that of his Master. The
character of Christ was submissive and servile ; Paul’s was defiant and
pugnacious. We could no more conceive Christ fighting with wild
beasts at Ephesus, than we could suppose Paul submitting, without
protest or resistance, to those insults and indignities which are alleged
to have been heaped upon Christ. Neither could we for one moment
imagine Paul advising his disciples when anyone smote them on one
cheek, to offer them the other. Paul introduced, by his personal
character, a certain amount of boldness and energy into the Christian
propaganda, and, by the character of his mind, he largely modified the
Christian system. In fact, each successive age has left its mark and
impress upon Christianity. We have had the age of asceticism and
the ceremonial age, when the nightmare of theology cursed the world
with its indifference, its neglect, its mental darkness, and its immoral
corruptions. This unfortunate period was followed by Protestantism
and subsequently by Rationalism, which ushered in the age of reason
and mental activity. This new birth, or rather resuscitation of a
force that had been rendered for a time dormant by the Church, de
prived the faith of its original character, leaving but a little more than
the name to represent the Cross. “ Real Christianity has not ruled
the nations. It is disregarded in law, in equity, in the social adjust
ments, in commercial systems, in regulations concerning land, in the
rules of peace and brotherhood, and, alas, in much of the life of the
churches. . . . English hypocrisy is a tremendous reality; but
English Christianity is very largely a myth, if judged by the standard
of the New Testament.” (“Christian Commonwealth,” May 1, 1884.)
A similar diversity of character and influence is apparent in what
are termed Christian nations. There is no country existing that can
truly be called Christian, that is, where the teachings of the New
Testament are practically and consistently carried out. In all alleged
�CHRISTIANITY—ITS ORIGIN, NATURE ANU INFLUENCE.
17
Christian nations ” the faith differs in its manifestations, presenting
not the emblems of the religion ascribed to Christ, but the impress of
the national customs and characteristics of the people who profess it.
Thus, in Rome, Christianity assumes the form of priestly dominion, in
Spain a blind and stationary faith, in Russia a political engine of
heartless oppression and revolting despotism, in Scotland a gloomy
nightmare, in England an emotional pastime, in America a commercial
commodity, and in Canada a hypocritical, puritanical pretension. In
most of these countries the Christian religion is only a profession of a
shallow garb of respectability, which is composed of custom and a de
sire to gain popular favour. The shadow is there, but the substance
is nowhere to be found. True, these professors attend church on Sun
days, and, to outward appearances, assume an air of solemnity, seek
ing to convey the impression that they are devout worshippers of the
“ Heavenly Father,” and that they have absolute confidence in his
“ Son, as the Saviour of the world.” But what is f^ie conduct of such
■devotees in their daily lives, and in their commercial pursuits' Do
they even attempt to embody in their conduct during the week the
requirements which they endorse as belonging to their faith ? Certainly
not. In their business transactions, practically, money is their God,
and the Almighty dollar is their Redeemer.
The utter impracticability of orthodox Christianity is not only proved
by the indefinite nature of its teachings and the inconsistent conduct
of its professors, but it is clearly demonstrated by the character of its
leading injunctions. Among the more prominent principles taught in
the New Testament are : Asceticism, Disregard of the world, Nonresistance, Reliance on alleged Supernaturalism, Belief in the efficacy
of prayer, and Glorification of poverty. Moreover, many of the more
emphatically expressed injunctions of this book are the very incarna
tion and inculcation of humiliating forbearance and abject suffering.
They teach submission to physical evil, tyranny and oppression. They
inculcate an unprogressive and a retarding spirit; they draw the ener
gies and desires of men from the duties of this life, fixing them on an
uncertain, and, to us, an unknown future. The primary object of
Christ evidently was to teach his followers how to die, rather than to
instruct them how to live. He regarded man as an alien in this world.
Anything like a triumph of moral good over evil by human means ;
■anything like an escape from the pangs of poverty; anything like a
�1<5
CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE,
successful insurrection of right which should produce the dethronement
of might, as being possible on earth, appears not to have crossed the
horizon of the mental vision of Christ. He contemplated suffering,
oppression, and submission in this life, as pre-ordained and inevitable;
and taught those who were persecuted and reviled, that great would be
their reward in heaven. The philosophy of Jesus was contentment
with whatsoever state of life you may be in j for “ "What shall it profit
a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul 1 ” (Mark
viii. 36.) “ My kingdom,” said Christ, “ is not of this world.” (John,
xviii. 36.) In vain, therefore, do we look to his teachings for any prac
tical guidance and support in the stern battle of life. His advice to
those struggling for mere human existence, was “ Seek ye first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things [food,,
clothes, etc.] shall be added unto you.” (Matt. vi. 33.) What things
soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye
shall have them.” (Mark xi. 24.) “If two'of you shall agree on
earth as touching^ anything that they shall ask, it shall be done.”
Matt, xviii. 19.) This faith in another life was with him the “one
thing needful, and to it every plan of secular reform, however neces
sary> judicious, and effectual, had to give way. It is clear from the
very nature of these New Testament precepts that all the improve
ments, social and political, scientific and artistic, commercial and.
mechanical, which have been made in the world since the birth of.
Christianity, must have been obtained in spite of it, not because of it;;
they have been wrought by the spirit of Secularism ever struggling,
and in recent times with ever-growing success, against the spirit of
dogmatic religion.
M ith Christ, this life and this world were comparatively of little
importance ; their enjoyments and treasures were, to him, baits and
snares of the Devil. Therefore we read, “ He that loveth his life shall
lose it; and he that hateth his life in this .world shall keep it unto life
.ternal.” (John xii. 25.) And again, “I pray not for the world j but
for them which thou hast given me; for they are mine. . . . They
are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” (John xvii. 9,
16). Therefore he said, “ Take no thought for your life, what ye shall
eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put
on. . . . Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow; for the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” (Matt. 6 : 25, 34.)
�CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
19 ‘
In vain do we look among any of the professed Christians for any
serious attempt to reduce these teachings into practice. They regulate
neither their public nor their private lives by the injunctions here
set forth. The sayings ascribed to Christ are modified and divested of
their legitimate meaning, in order that they may be made to harmonise
with human feelings. Who could obey that unnatural command given
by Jesus in reply to one who solicited permission to bury his father?—
“ Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” . Were a person to
adopt this advice to day, he would justly be condemned as being desti
tute of all true natural feeling, and as lacking a due regard for the
tenderest and most sublime affection of human nature. Supposing we
were to adopt the counsel given by Christ, and take no thought for the
morrow, what would become of the advantages of all modern scientific
discoveries ? Clearly it was not by Christian principles that the re
formers of the world were prompted to introduce those useful move
ments, which to-day are so extensively appreciated. Had they loved
not the world, and had they been careful of nothing pertaining there
to, as advised in Scripture, civilization would have received but little
assistance from them. “ Take no thought for your life ! ” If we obeyed
this command, medical science and physiological discoveries would be
utterly useless. In counselling this indifference, Christ showed that
he had much to learn as to the real nature, wants, and duties of man.
Can a consistent Christian rebel against even the most atrocious
tyranny, or fight in even the most righteous cause ? If he be true to
his principles, he must obey the commands, “ Resist not evil,” and
“ 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. Whoso
ever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God •
and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” Were it
possible to induce men to carry out what is here advised, a weapon
would thereby be placed in the hands of the tyrant, which doubtless
he would use to a terrible extent upon his victims. It is only neces
sary to send forth the priests to teach the commands of Christ to the
unfortunate dupes and slaves of any despot, and if the teachings are
accepted as true and acted upon, they will prove a potent agency
in prolonging despotism, serfdom, and physical coercion. None are
more ready than tyrants to perceive that faith is a stronger prison
than a fortress, and that the Bible is a more effectual assistance than an
�20
CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
army, in subjugating and enslaving the minds and bodies of their people.
But even if it were practicable to obey these precepts of non-resistance,,
the obedience would, in many cases, be most unmanly and immoral.
Resistance is not revenge; to allow, therefore, all evil to exist with
impunity, is to offer a premium for the greatest wrongs that ever
afflicted mankind. Had George Washington, Hampden, Mazzini, Kos
suth, Garibaldi and other brave reformers been content as the Bibleteaches, to obey the powers that be, and to “ resist not evil,” they would,
never have rebelled against oppression, and fought, as they did, for
social rights and political emancipation. Had they been consistent
orthodox Christians, they would not have produced those glorious revo
lutions, which have dethroned corrupt kings, and secured individual
and national liberty.
Progressive nations have always, in fact if not in theory, based their
political and social policy on principles the very antitheses to those of
the New Testament. Post office savings’ banks, divorce courts, armies,
of defence, are opposed to “ Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
earth.” “ What therefore God has joined together let no man put.
asunder,” and, “ Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn,
to him the other also.” “ Give to him that asketh thee, and from him
that would borrow of thee turn not thou away,” does not harmonisewith our present law, which authorises the policeman to take underhis special care those who are affording an opportunity for this precept
to be put into practice. Besides, such conduct is only fostering that
reckless and mendicant spirit so often recommended by the churches,
but which should be judiciously discountenanced by all noble-minded,
men and women.
Among the general teachings of Christianity which cannot be relied’
upon, are those which encourage and crown with special sanctity
suffering and sorrow. Not only are those who mourn blessed, but we
are told that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain,”
that “those light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work for
us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Christians pro
fess to believe that “ the sufferings of the present time are not worthy
to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in the future.”
Hence the exclamation, “ For we know that if our earthly house of
this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan ear
�CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
21
nestly, desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from
heaven.” Who can rely upon this gloomy estimate of the world and
human life ? To do so would be to blaspheme humanity, and to rejectthe happiness and joy which nature bestows upon her honest and duti
ful children. “ Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven ” is a sad sentiment. If there be a heaven, it should be the
appropriate possession of the rich in spirit. Abundance, enthusiasm,
and heroism of spirit are the highest conditions of man. Poverty of
spirit is not by any means celestial or to be admired. A man in such
a state is either contemptible or pitiable, and in either case, relief from
it is a consummation devoutly to be wished. To assure people that atthe last day they will have to give an account of every idle word
spoken through life, is not to enhance their pleasure. Need we won
der that some Christians confess to be “ miserable sinners,” if they
honestly believe that their final doom may depend upon words spoken
in the jubilant moments of life.
Until orthodox Christians can prove to us that their principles arecapable of producing uniformity of character; until it is satisfactorily
explained that the precepts, as propounded by Christ, contain the ele
ments of that greatness which has invariably characterised the lives
of eminent statesmen, philosophers, and poets of all ages ; until it can
be shown that the principles as taught in the New Testament are com
patible with progress and human advancement; until the course pur
sued by Christ, when he was on earth, is adopted by his professed
followers of to-day ; until poverty is preferred to riches by the mem
bers of the various churches; until humility has taken the place of
pride ; and self-sacrifice to that of personal gain ; until sincerity and
consistency supplant that hypocrisy and cant, which are now soprominent in the domain of theology ; until peace, love, and harmony
shall reign in “ Christian nations ” instead of war, hatred, and discord;,
until prayer, as a means of help, is in reality preferred to reliance on
secular effort; until the poor are treated as being genuine brothers of
the “ one fold; ” until, in commercial activity and domestic arrange
ments, the affairs of this world are considered as being of sec
ondary importance to the preparation for some other state of existence;
until all these tilings are realities and not mere pretences, orthodox
Christianity must be deemed thoroughly impracticable in its nature,
and incapable of furnishing a code of morals by which all succeeding
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CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
generations should be governed, and to which the great intellects of
the world should succumb.
The contradictory nature of orthodox teaching is another of its strik
ing features. The New Testament does not present one definite system,
but fragmentary records of conflicting theological views, which were
numerous during the early Christian era. Not to notice the self-con
tradictory teachings of the first three Evangelists, the gospel ascribed
to St. John is quite antagonistic in its doctrines and precepts to the
synoptic gospels. Hence it is that among different people in different
ages various Christian sects opposed to each other have arisen with
systems of their own, for which they each claim Christian authority.
The belief that Christ was a real existence, was born of a virgin, was
crucified, that he rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven,
is at the present day considered by the orthodox church as being neces
sary to the Christian profession ; but during the first and second cen
turies each of these teachings was rejected by sections of the church.
Many of the fundamental doctrines of the Christianity of the present
age, such as the Trinity, fall of man, original sin, atonement, media
tion and intercession of Christ, are alleged by some theological writers
not to be Christian doctrines at all, having no sanction in the New
Testament; while the orthodox party allege that to believe them is
essential to secure happiness hereafter. So conflicting are the leading
principles of the Christian faith, that they are rendered almost valueless
as rules to regulate general conduct. For instance, it is of no avail to
urge that Christianity is a religion of love, while Christ affirms that
no man can become a disciple unless he hates his own flesh and blood.
Even admitting, as it is sometimes contended, that the word “ hate ”
here means “ love less,” the statement is still objectionable. Can we
really love one of whom we know nothing (whatever we may believe)
more than we love our nearest relatives and dearest friends ? Man’s
highest and purest love should be for his wife and children; he is not
justified in neglecting them for the gratification of any religious en
thusiasm, be it what it may. A religion that exacts the best of our
affections, wars with the noblest aspirations of our nature. In fact, so
difficult is it to comply with Christ’s request upon this point, that good
Christian husbands frequently forego the commands of their master to
gratify the wishes of their wives. Paul judged that this would be the
case; hence he advised Christians to remain single, because “ he that
�CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
23
is married careth for the things of this world, how he may please his
wife.” And it is quite right that he should do so. Christ’s love, like
that of most of his followers, was confined to those who agreed with
his theology. His injunction to his disciples was to despise those who
would not receive them. “Those,” he said,“mineenemies,which would
not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before
me.” Even the woman of Canaan, who asked him for help, was at first
denied, and told, “ it was not meet to take the children’s bread and cast
it to dogs.” And it was not till the woman indirectly acknowledged
her faith that Christ granted her request. Belief, not humanity, called
forth his love. His forgiveness, too, was only for the faithful. “ He
that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of
God.’, Luke 12:9. “ If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as
a branch, and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into
the fire and they are burned.” Are these the sentiments of true love
and forgiveness ? Paul emulated his master in this particular ; and
accordingly we read : “ Of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander, whom
I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.”
“ If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have re
ceived, let him be accursed.” “ Be ye not unequally yoked together
with unbelievers. . . . What part hath he that believeth with an
infidel ? ” Here we have an incentive to that intolerance which has so
frequently prevented men holding different opinions on theological sub-„
jects from associating together.
The doctrines of “pardon for sin,” of the Trinity, and of “ falling
from grace,” are couched in language obscure and contradictory. No
man can believe all, and few men can understand, any portion of what is
taught upon these subjects in the New Testament. A professed holder
of one of the above tenets usually receives a particular impression as to its
meaning, according to the school in which he is trained. Such impres
sions made on the youthful mind are so deep and enduring, that it is
extremely difficult, and in many instances impossible, to erase them in
maturity. Hence, it is nearly useless to point out to one who has been
taught that all sin shall be forgiven, that Christ says that blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven. Luke 12 :10. The Trinita
rian is unable to see the objection to his views in such passages as, “ My
Father is greater than I,” and that there is “ One God and Father of all,,
who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” The Calvinist who.,
�24
CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
relying on St. John 10 : 28 and Romans 8 : 38, 39, believes that when
man is onoe “converted,” he can never relapse, fails to see that his
opinion is proved to be fallacious by the following : “For if, after they
have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and
overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For
it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteous
ness, than, after they had known it, to turn from the holy command
ment delivered unto them.” 2 Peter 2 : 20, 21.
If it were necessary that any one part of Christian teachings should
be clear, it is that, we presume, which professes to refer to the salva
tion of the human race, but here we find the greatest perplexity. We
read : “There is no other name but that of Christ’s whereby men can
be saved,” Acts 4:12; “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
shaltbe saved,” Acts 16:31; “He that believethnot shall be damned,”
Mark 16:16. Here the necessity of belief in Christ is positively en
joined, and in 1 Tim. 2 : 4 it is stated as Christ’s wish that “all men”
should be saved. In the same book, however, we also read : “ For
there are certain men crept in unawares who were before of old or
dained to this condemnation,” Jude 4 ; “And for this cause God
shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that
they all might be damned who believed not the truth,” 2 Thess. 2 : 11,12.
But the new Testament admits that belief does not depend upon our
selves, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of
his good pleasure,” Phil. 2 : 13 ; “For by grace are ye saved through
faith ; and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God,” Ephes. 2:8;
“ Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing, as of our
selves ; but our sufficiency is of God,” 2 Cor. 3:5. In John 14 : 6 it
is said : “No man cometh unto the Father but by me,” and in chapter
6, verse 44 of the same book Christ exclaims : “ No man can come to
me except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him.” It is manifest,
moreover, if the Scriptures be correct, that while God predestinated
some persons to be saved, he adopted means whereby others should be
lost. In replying to certain inquirers, Christ is reported to have said :
“ Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God;
but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables :
That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may
hear, and not understand ; lest at any time they should be converted,
and their sins should be forgiven them.” Mark 4 : 11, 12.
�CHRISTIANITY----ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
25
Equally uncertain are the means prescribed by this faith whereby
salvation is to be obtained. In one place, the New Testament says that
works are necessary (James 2 : 20-25), while it is also recorded : “For
by grace are ye saved, through faith : . . . . not of works, lest any man
should boast,” Ephes. 2 : 8, 9 ; “A man is not justified by the works
of the law, but by the faith,” Gal, 2 : 16 ; “ Therefore by the deeds of the (
law there shall no flesh be justified,” Rom. 3:20 ; “ Where is boasting,
then ? It is excluded. By what law ? Of works ? Nay; but by the
law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith
without the deeds of the law,” Romans 3 : 27, 28 ; “ Not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved
us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost,”
Titus 3:5.
Even what is to be understood by the term “ believe in Christ ” is
not by any means clear. Are we to acknowledge Christ as a man or as
a God? Are we to suppose that the object of his mission was accom
plished in his life, or through his death ? Must we regard his teachings
or his blood as the medium of salvation ? To these questions neither
the New Testament nor Christians have given a definite and uniform
answer. For, while Unitarians allege that the command in the above
passages is sufficiently obeyed by believing in the manhood, life, and
teachings of Christ, the orthodox Christians state that, to avoid damn
ation, mankind must have faith in the divinity, the vicarious death,
and the atoning efficacy of the blood of Christ. The character of
Christ, as given in the New Testament, is thoroughly contradictory.
He could teach men to be merciful, and he could command that those
who would not accept him as the Christ, should be slain before him. He
could advise husbands to love and cleave to their wives, and he could
offer an inducement to break up the ties of domestic affection, lie
could advise children to honour their father and mother,while to others
he could say that, unless they hate their parents, they could not become
his disciples. At one time his advice is to “ resist not evil,” while at
another he authorizes shaking off the dust from the feet as a testimony
against unbelievers. He announces that “ they that take the sword
shall perish with the sword,” and he as emphatically says, “He that
hath no sword, let him sell his garments and buy one.” No sooner
does he state that “blessed are the peacemakers,” than he as earnestly
asserts that he came not to send peace, that his mission was to set a
�26
CHRISTIANITY----ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
man against his father, and a daughter against her mother. Here are
characters thoroughly antagonistic—which are we to regard as a reliable
representation of the “person of Christ?” Was not the Rev. Dr.
Giles correct in saying, “ The history of Christ is contained in records
which exhibit contradictions that cannot be reconciled, imperfections
that would greatly detract from even admitted human compositions,
and erroneous principles of morality that would hardly have found a
place in the most incomplete systems of the philosophers of Greece and
Rome?”—(“ Christian Records,” preface 7.)
ITS INFLUENCE.
The influence of Christianity upon the world should be estimated
from its special effects upon individual character, as well as from its
general results upon national conduct. Of course, it is not always
right to condemn principles in consequence of the shortcomings of
those who profess to endorse them. The justice of such condemnation
will very much depend upon the nature of the principles themselves
and the claims set up on their behalf. The peculiar feature in connec
tion with Christianity is, that its professed believers have persistently
urged that its influence for good is so unmistakeable, that wherever its
power has been felt beneficial results have necessarily followed. Now;
this claim is not borne out either by the New Testament or by the facts
of history and of personal experience. Of course, it may be frankly
admitted that in the ranks of Christianity there are good men and
women ; it does not, however, follow that their goodness is the result of
their faith. Some persons are so well organized, and their moral training
is so complete, that it is next to impossible to induce them to depart
from the paths of rectitude; while, on the other hand, there are indi
viduals whose organizations are so imperfect, and whose ethical disci
pline has been so neglected, that no amount of theology will make
them good and useful members of society. Doubtless instances can be
cited where characters have been improved through acting in obedience
to the secular portions of the New Testament But the same can be
said, with truth, of the adherents to other religions besides that of
Christianity, and also of those who have been consistent believers in
the great ethical systems of the world. This, however, does not justify
the orthodox claim—that where the Christian faith has obtained, a
panacea has always been found for the weaknesses, the vices, the crimes
and the wrongs that have robbed the world of much of its virtue, its
�CHRISTIANITY----ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
27
purity and its honour. Instead of controlling the actions and regulat
ing the conduct of its professors, Christianity itself has been moulded
and modified by the individual temperaments, the habits, and the
national aspirations of those who were supposed to endorse it. Hence
as it has already been shown, in various countries, all termed Christian’
we find the profession of various and conflicting phases of the same
faith. The fact is, the reforming agencies that have operated in the
elevation of personal character and general actions belong exclusively
to no religious system ; they are the result of human conditions when
under the control of human reason and intellectual culture.
That Christian teachings have not always had the effect ascribed to
them by orthodox professors is evident, both from the New Testament
and the admissions of Christian historians. From the Gospels and
Epistles we learn that among the earliest recipients of the Faith were
those upon whom its influence was impotent either to enable them to
subjugate their evil passions or to inspire within them the love and
practice of truth. “ Contentions,” “ strife,” “ indignation,” and “ fraud,”
we are informed by the “ inspired word,” characterised their actions
towards each other. [See Acts 15 : 39; Luke 22 : 24; Matt. 20 : 24;
1 Cor. 6 : 8 ; 1 Cor. 5:1.] St. Peter, the “ beloved disciple,” was so
little impressed with the teachings of Christ that, it is said, he denied
his own master (Matt. 26 : 70 & 72), and thereby manifested an utterdisregard for truth and fidelity. St. Paul also, despite his Christian
proclivities, could boast, “Being crafty, I caught you with guile,” (2
Cor. 12 : 16). “I robbed other churches, taking wages of them to do
you service,” (2 Cor. 11 : 8). Were the Secularists to emulate such
conduct as this to-day, their principles would not be credited with
having a highly beneficial influence upon human conduct.
The records of history agree with the testimony of the New Testa
ment in reference to the non-effect of Christianity in the inspiration
of correct conduct. jMosheim frankly admits that for many centuries
the Christians were guilty of “lying, deceit, artifice, fraud,” and many
other vices. The same Christian writer remarks : “ The interests of
virtue and true religion suffered yet more grievously by two monstrous
errors which were almost universally adopted in this century [cent. 4],
and became a source of innumerable calamities and mischiefs in the
succeeding ages. The first of these maxims was, that it was an act of
virtue to deceive and lie, when by that means the interest of the
Church might be promoted..................... The Church was contaminated
�28
CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE,
with shoals of profligate Christians........................ It cannot be affirmed
that even true Christians were entirely innocent and irreproachable in
this matter.” (See Mosheim’s “ Ecclesiastical History,” vol. I., pp. 55,
77, 102, 193.) Salvian, an eminent pious clergyman of the fifth cen~tury, writes : “ With the exception of a very few who flee from vice,
what is almost every Christian congregation but a sink of vices ? For
you will find in the Church scarcely one who is not either a drunkard,
a glutton, or an adulterer ... or a robber, or a man-slayer, and what
is worse than all, almost all these without limit.” (Miall’s “ Memorials
of early Christianity,” p. 366.) Dr. Cave, in his “ Primitive Christi
anity,” (p. 2), observes : “ If a modest and honest heathen were to
•estimate Christianity by the lives of its professors, he would certainly
proscribe it as the vilest religion in the world.” Dr. Dicks, in his
Philosophy of Religion,” (pp. 366-7), also states : “There is nothing
which so strikingly marks the character of the Christian world in
general as the want of candour, [and the existence of] the spirit of
jealousy. . . . Slander, dishonesty, falsehood and cheating are far
from being uncommon among those who profess to be united in the
bonds of a common Christianity.” Wesley once gave a picture of
^Christian society, which indicates the “ high morality” produced where
“gospel truths ” are disseminated. After stating that “ Bible reading
England ” was guilty of every species of vice, even those that nature
itself abhors, this Christian author thus concludes : “ Such a complica
tion of villainies of every kind considered with all their aggravations,
such a scorn of whatever bears the face of virtue ; such injustice, fraud
and falsehood; above all, such perjury and such a method of law, we
may defy the whole world to produce.” (Sermons, Vol. 12, p. 223.)
Surely, such Christian testimony as this should be damaging evidence
against the theory of the Church, that the “ light of the Gospel ” has
invariably been effectual in securing personal purity and individual
honour.
Neither did the Galilean faith remove the blots that dimmed the
glory of the ancient world. Slavery, infanticide, and brutal, inhuman
sports remained for centuries after the erection of the symbol of the
Cross. It is true, Rome, like every other country, had its vices, but
Christianity failed to remove them. As Lecky observes, “ the golden age
-of Roman law was not Christian, but Pagan.” [“History of European
Morals,” Vol. II., 44.] The gladiatorial shows of Rome had a religious
•origin ; and while some of the grandest pagan writers condemned them,
�CHRISTIANITY---- ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
29
they were not abolished till four hundred years after the commence
ment of the Christian era. And, be it observed, that the immediate
cause of their ultimately being stopped was, that at one of the exhibi
tions, in A.D. 404, a monk was killed. “ His death,” says Becky,
“ led to the final abolition of the games.” (Ibid. 40.) It is a noteworthy
fact that, while the passion for these games existed in Rome, its love
for religious liberty was equally as strong ; and it was this very liberty
that was first destroyed in the Christian Empire. (Ibid. 38.)
Every nation has had its national drawbacks, and Christian coun
tries are no exception to the general rule. Under the very shadow of
the Cross cruelties of the deepest dye have been practised. Bull-fights,
bear and badger hunting, cock fighting, and pigeon-shooting have all
been favourite amusements in Christian lands. Granted that immo
rality stained the history of ancient Rome and classic Greece, so it did
Christian England at the very time when the Church had absolute
authority. What was the state of morals in England during the age
of Henry VIII., Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and George IV. ? Was
there ever a period of greater moral depravity and intellectual poverty
than when the Christian Church was paramount and supreme, when
the saints, the bishops, and the priests were guilty of the worst of
crimes, including incest, adultery and concubinage, when 11 sacred in
stitutions,” filled with pious nuns, were converted into brothels and
hotbeds of infanticide? (Ibid. 351.) Greece and Rome, with all their
immorality, will bear comparison with the early ages of Christianity.
If history may be relied upon, Christian England is indebted to Pagan
Rome and classic Greece for the .incentive to much of that morality,
culture, and heroism which give- the prestige to modern society. Upon
this point, Dr. Temple, in his “ Essay on the Education of the World,”
is very clear. “To Rome,” says the Doctor, “we owe the forms of
local government which in England have saved liberty and elsewhere
have mitigated despotism.” ... “ It is in the history of Rome rather
than in the Bible that we find our models of precepts of political duty,
and especially of the duty of patriotism.” ... “To the Greeks we owe
the corrective which conscience needs to borrow from nature.” Take
Rome to»day. That country was once the recognized mistress of the
world, renowned alike for its valour, its learning, and its taste; from
whose forums emanated that eloquence which still shines forth as the
production of a noble and heroic people—Rome, once the depository of
poetry and the cultivator of art, whose grandeur and dignity could
�30
CHRISTIANITY—ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
command the admiration of the world—such was Rome, but, alas ! how
has she fallen ! “ Christianity floated into the Roman Empire on the
wave of credulity that brought with it this long train of oriental super
stitions and legends.
(Lecky, Vol. I. 397.) The result was, she be
came a miserable, down-trodden, priest-ridden country. Her former
glory, dignity and valour departed, and were replaced by a mean and
cowardly terrorism, born of a degrading priestcraft and a cruel theo
logyFor one thousand years Christianity had its trial, with everything in
its favour. The Middle Ages were the brightest era of Christianity.
Then she had no rival. Assisted by kingcraft, she ruled the civilized
world through a thousand years, without one ray of light, without any
great addition to the arts and sciences, and then bequeathed to man
kind a heritage of cruelty, bloodshed and persecution. At this period
of her history there was a great impetus given towards science and
philosophy. Some of the most splendid intellects that ever appeared in
the world, and that might, under more favourable conditions, haveadorned humanity, enlightened society, and helped on progress, ap
peared in those days. But their intellects were stifled and rendered
comparatively useless by the influence of Christianity. Those were
the times when theology was paramount, unrestrained, and un
trammelled j when the blood, the genius, and the chivalry of Europe
were all wasted in the mad and useless crusades, when in one expedi
tion alone, instigated by fanatical priests, no less than 560,000 persons
were sacrificed to the superstition of the Cross. Do we require a proof
of the legitimate effects of orthodox Christianity ? Behold the history
of the seven crusades, which will for ever remain as a lasting monument
of a mind-destroying faith. For nearly two hundred years did the fol
lowers of Christ lay desolate one of the finest and most romantic por
tions of the known world, and laid prostrate thousands of human
beings. Do we wish to know the influence of the orthodox religion ?
Read the history of the Emperor Constantine, who with the sword in.
one hand and the Cross in the other, pursued his slaughtering and re
lentless career. Go to the streets of Paris, when in the fifteenth cen
tury they flowed with the blood of defenceless Protestants, and when.
10,000 innocent persons were massacred by the professed believers in
a meek and lowly Jesus. Visit the valleys of Piedmont, which were
the scene of a most inhuman butchery, when women were suffocated,
by hundreds in confined caves by the bearers of the Cross. Study the
�CHRISTIANITY----ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND INFLUENCE.
31
history of the Inquisition, to whose power three millions of lives were
sacrificed in one century. Peruse the records of the actions of King
Henry VIII., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, in whose Christian
reigns hundreds were condemned either to die at the stake or to endure
revolting cruelties in loathsome dungeons, because they differed from
the prevailing faith of those times. These were the effects of Chris
tianity when it had absolute power. Fortunately, in this age of pro
gressive thought, a change has come over the dream of man, and
practical work has taken the place of theoretical faith. In business, in
science, in politics, in philosophy, and partially in education, belief in
theology is not allowed to stand in the way of help for humanity. The
Church has lost the power it once had, and priests no longer command
undisputed sway over the intellect of the human race. Many of the
greatest minds of the nineteenth century have thrown overboard the
orthodox Christian faith, and the enlightened sons of earth will, ere
long, follow the example. The sun has arisen on the tops of the
mountains, heralding the advent of that glorious day when it may be
triumphantly said with Shelley :—
“ Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,
Or the priests of the evil faith ;
They stand on the brink of that raging river
Whose waves they have tainted with death ;
It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells ;
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells ;
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks, on the surge of eternity.”
•
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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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Christianity : its origin, nature, and influence
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Place of publication: Toronto
Collation: 31 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from KVK.
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Watts, Charles, 1836-1906
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[18--]
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Secular Thought Office
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Christianity
Free thought
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Christianity : its origin, nature, and influence), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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RA1852
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Christianity
Free Thought
Secularism
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SECOND PART.
THE
:E OF THE “FATHERS” ON THE FURTHER
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
BEING
Iferture
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY, 27th MARCH, 1881,
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS.
Some of the most influential Fathers of the First Century.
Objections of the Jews and Heathens to Christianity.
Celsus, Lucian, Porphyrius, and Julian.
The Apologists: Athenagoras, Tatian and his Disciples.
Clemens of Alexandria.
Falsification of History.
Origen, his character and great talent.
Eusebius and Basil, Cyril and Hypatia.
Tertullian and Ambrose.
Augustine. He studies Aristotle and Plato. His influence on the Theology
of our own times. His Confessions. Pride in prayer. “ In the be
ginning.”
The Trinity. “ The City of God.”
The “ Original Sin.” A Chinese Mandarin.
Augustine and Rousseau compared.
Heathen customs and principles mixed with Christianity.
Effects of the Controversialists and Casuists on the simplicity of Christ’s
teachings.
The Third Lecture to treat on Monasticism and Scholaticism.
Conclusion.
�CHRISTIANITY.
II.
The Influence of the “ Fathers ” on the Further Development oj
C hristianity.
IHE ancient world, with its plurality of godsT ceremonies,
oracles, festivities, political and social organisation', its' moral
laws and philosophy did not die very quickly. During the first
Century of our era, the Christians were merely a small sect of re
formed Jews, called “Nazarenes,” who met secretly, often in the
dead of night, in burial places and catacombs. The few existing
records were written only in Hebrew or Syriac.
The first change brought about in the new faith, was the more
exclusive use of the Greek language, not in its classical purity,
but in a colloquial form, in order to make the teachings of the
converted Hebrews more popular. The next step was the aboli
tion of some of the most striking social arrangements of the new
sect with regard to possessing “ all things in common.”
The Indian and Egyptian priests, the Pythagoreans, Essenes,
and Buddhistic monks, had long before possessed a similar organi
sation. They were compelled to give up their private property
and to divide it amongst the members of the community which
they joined. Notwithstanding all attempts to deny, distort, or
falsify them, the records of the Evangelists, and the acts clearly
prove that the germs of “ Communism ” and “ Socialism ” may be
traced to the primitive constitution of the oldest Christian Sects.
Barnabas, one of the earliest Fathers, whose real name was Joses,
a rich Levite, sold all he possessed, and gave everything to the
Apostles. He wrote a Gospel, but this was declared apocryphal.
Hermas, another of the Fathers of the first Century, also a rich
Jow, who lived at Borne, gave up his property, followed St. Paul,
and represented Christ as an angelic shepherd preaching doctrines
of love and equality. The sudden and miraculous deaths of Ana
nias and his wife Sapphira for concealing, and not giving up their
own goods to the. community, prove conclusively that “ Communism ”
was the basis of the first Hebrew-Christian Sect. Another funda
mental creed of primitive Christianity, that concerning the return
1
�4
Christianity.
of the Son in the glory of his Father, with his angels, to bring
peace on earth, which was to happen during the lifetime of those
to whom the promise had been made, was reluctantly given up as
hopeless. The belief in this promise goes far to prove that the
first Christians must have looked upon Christ as a powerful hero
who would vanquish his enemies, and bestow worldly grandeur on
his followers.
Doubt and controversy very early pervaded the assertions of the
fathers.
Ignatius was assumed to have been the “little child” held up by
Christ to the people at Capernaum, but Chrysostom, another
Father, says that Ignatius never beheld Christ. The writings of
Ignatius were looked upon as forgeries, as they are saturated with
dogmas of a later period, and could not have been written before
the 5th or 6th Century.
The same must be said of the writings of Dionysius, of Athens,
who was a well educated man, a member of the highest tribunal,
the Areopagus, and therefore called the “ Areopagite ”; he was
made an overseer by St. Paul, and works “ On the Order of the
Heavenly Spirits,” “ On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy” (which was
not then in existence), “ On God’s Name,” “ On Mystic Theology,”
&c., were attributed to him. The very title of the last work, how
ever, proves that it could not possibly have been written in the
first Century, as mystic theology was certainly wholly unknown
at that period. The works are full of theological and dialectical
controversies not then thought of; they refer to dogmas and cere
monies, the introduction of which was of a far later date; the very
word “ Monakos,” which occurs in them, and which only came into
use about the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth
century, convincingly proves that these writings, like so many
others, were pious forgeries.
During the first centuries terrible accusations were hurled
against Christianity by both Jews and Heathens. The Jews were
more violent than the Gentiles. They saw in Christ a faithless
deserter from their own ranks. They accused him of having
taught Atheism; of having destroyed the unity of the Godhead;
of having without any right proclaimed himself the Messiah.
They complained that he bad propounded utterly impracticable
laws, commanding men “ to give to him that asketh; ” “ not to
hate, but to pray for our enemies,”—that he had asserted that the
Father in Heaven ‘f maketh the Sun to rise on the evil and on the
�Christianity.
5
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust;” and that
it would be “ easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven! ” If Christ’s
teachings were true, they would do away with the rich, and make
the poor masters of the world I What would become of trade and
commerce, of barter and exchange, of all the glorious promises of
plenty on earth, if the poor had any right to such exaltation ?
Humanity would sink into barbarism, and the whole covenant
with the chosen people be cancelled. The Mosaic law would be
abolished if men were no longer to be allowed “ to take an eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; ” or forced to hold out their left
cheek when smitten on the right. Christ had forbidden man to go
to law, for he had enacted, “ if any take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also 1 ” All this the Jews thought shocking, horrible,
and impossible! What was to become of the law and lawyers, of
the learned in the Scripture, and of the expounders, and teachers
of true morals? Were men no longer to be allowed to hate fer
vently, to despise cordially, to persecute, to flog, to stone, and to
crucify ? They recoiled from such a prospect, and asserted that
this Jeshua had been a dreamer, a blasphemer, nay, they even
doubted the fact of his very existence, and looked upon everything
that had been reported of his life, miracles, and resurrection, as
mere inventions. They attempted to show that he had never
taught anything new, and that everything practical and moral, he
said, was contained in the Old Testament, which he had despised
by breaking the Sabbath, and blaspheming God, whilst pretending
to be God himself.
It is a historical fact that the Jews could never comprehend a
faith based on love and mutual forbearance, and unfortunately
more than eighteen hundred years have been required to teach
Christians to understand Christ’s most valuable enactments, which
were to be taken in the spirit, and not to the letter.
The Heathens objected to Christianity because it was a social
and political revolution. It declared all men equal, and denied the
ancient gods that had ruled for thousands of years. The Christ
ians were accused of despising emperors, consuls, pro-consuls,
high priests, and philosophers, whilst they worshipped and paid
divine honours to a crucified rebel. They were called deceiving
“ Sibylists ”; dealers in mysteries, pretending to perform miracles
which they had learned from Indian and Egyptian mountebanks,
and impostors. They were taunted with objecting to the gods in
�6
Christianity.
human form, whilst they themselves were “ anthropolatrae ” (idola
trous worshippers of a man). It was said that whilst they were
opposed to the eating of certain parts of the flesh of the sacrifices,
they were themselves “ Theophagi” (god-eaters)—eating the flesh
and drinking the blood of their own God. The Old and New
Testaments were said to be full of incredible stories, contradic
tions, and fables, teeming with ignorance, and contrary to com
mon sense and reason. The Christians were accused of asserting
that all the laws of Nature had been suspended and acted against
by the eternal gods for the glorification of One who had not been
able to save himself from the most ignominious death. The Christ
ians were accused to hate humanity, to blaspheme God, and to
court death. They were charged with the grossest immorality, with
eating their own children, and with committing incest; they were
called conspirators, assassins, perjurers, infidels, communists, and
atheists ! They were also contemptuously designated Nazarenes,
Galileans, Men of the Magical Superstition, Plautinians, Corne
lians, Synedrians, Cyrillians, Apostatics, Nestorians, Arians, Eustathians, Cataphrygians, and Homousians. These different appel
lations prove that from the earliest times Christianity must have
been divided into many antagonistic sects.
The attacks on both sides became fiercer, the more plainly the
Jews and Pagans perceived that their dominion was at an end, and
that humanity was adopting entirely new principles upon which
to build up an altogether different political and social organisation.
One of the most determined opponents of Christianity (about
150 a.d.) was Celsus, who could not see the necessity of mys
ticism and secrecy in a work of general redemption. Lucian
wrote “ Three Dialogues ” against Christianity, characterising it as
a dreamy superstition, based on falsehoods. Pobphybius (Malchus
of Tyre) was said to have been a Christian, but returned to Pagan
ism. He wrote fifteen books “ On Christianity,” which have been
entirely destroyed, with the exception of a few fragments selected
by Eusebius for the purpose of refutation.
Hiebokles of Nikomedia, a philosopher under Diocletian, was
one of the principal instigators of the persecution of the Chris
tians by this emperor, as he described them as dangerous fanatics
and reckless conspirators. He endeavoured to prove that Christ
had in fact been Apollonius Tyannseus, who could see distant
occurrences, and who gave an account of the murder of Domitian
in the open market place at Ephesus, at the very moment when
�Christianity.
'
7
the terrible deed was done at Rome. Apollonius was said to have
had interviews with spirits, to have revived a dead young woman,
and to have died at the age of one hundred years. The Pagans
often confounded this contemporary of Jesus with Christ himself,
and the deeds of the one were attributed to the other.
The last but not least formidable antagonist of Christianity was
Julian the Apostate, so called because he returned to Paganism
after his conversion. He wrote seven books “On Christianity,”
which are entirely lost, with the exception of a few quotations in
the ten controversial books against him by Cyril of Alexandria.
The works of Julian may be divided into four principal groups :—
(a.) Treatises which he himself calls, Discourses of a more or
less sophistical character.
(A) Satires, written in the style of Lucian, concerning his con
temporaries, and his relations to science.
(c.) Letters, partly official, which he had written when regent,
and partly unofficial, addressed to friends and mere ac
quaintances.
(cZ.) His diatribes against Christianity.
Julian was one of the most important and cultivated men of his
time; he possessed a determined character, was an industrious
and clever administrator, promoted education, and reveals to us
more clearly than any other writer the entirely changed condition
of the world. He endeavoured to transform the religion of the
ancients into a mystic-symbolic system, to satisfy the wants of
the people, and to oppose the subversive tendencies of Christianity,
which already began to revel in gloomy superstitions, and to
discard the simplicity and lofty grandeur of Christ’s teachings.
The violent attacks on Christianity produced an entirely new
science, cultivated to the detriment of real truth up to our own
times, that of “ Apologetics.”
There are two modes of becoming an Apologist. The one is to
ignore your opponent altogether; this is the passive method.
Never mention his works; destroy every vestige of his writings,
and silence him to death. This passive mode of controversy is
exceedingly efficacious, and the least troublesome; it requires no
great effort, and after all is capable of upholding errors, preju
dices, and superstitions. The other method is active; you must
try to refute ytjur opponents. You must state first what they say
and be careful to quote only what you are able to refute; or quote
so as to turn your opponent’s statements into the grossest absurd-
�8
Christianity.
ities. To illustrate this method with an example from our own
times I need only refer to a mighty genius who has devoted him
self to the minute study of the mineral, vegetable, and animal
kingdoms, who saw everywhere connecting links and analogous
laws, and has built on these the striking theory of evolution. Do
not read Darwin’s book, but simply say:—“ Bah ! He proves
that we are all monkeys; that we are descended from monkeys,
and that there is nothing higher than a monkey !” By this means
you at once horrify the immense majority of monkeys, who dread
nothing so much as self-knowledge, and you may hope to cause
your antagonist’s theories to remain for ages a dead letter. By
this calumniating method you may most efficaciously obstruct pro
gress on whatever field of inquiry.
The primitive Christian Apologists made it a point, by fair or any
other means, to defend Christianity, and to silence their antagonists.
They were, above all, firmly convinced of the superiority of their
religion, which required no study, no particular training, no philo
sophy, but simply faith—nothing but faith; faith was to move moun
tains ; faith was to serve as the panacea for every evil to which our
flesh and spirit was heir. As long as this faith was only demanded
for the levelling enactments of Christ proclaiming the universal bro
therhood of men, it worked miracles. When, at a later period, the
Fathers called in the aid of Pagan philosophy and dialectics, when
they endeavoured to prove, in order to gain as many votaries as
possible, that Christianity contained all the dogmas of the most
influential ruling religious systems, their task became gigantic, and
we must honestly confess that many of the Apologists showed an
undoubted superiority over their enervated adversaries. The
Apologists inaugurated through their writings a struggle between
faith or religion, and reason or science, which was the principal
and vital cause of the uninterrupted progressive development of
Christianity. The mystic dogmas and incredible assertions made
with the smooth plausibility of a G-reek sophist, or the trenchant
dialectics of a Boman casuist pleading before some court of just
ice, provoked contradiction, self-thought, inquiry, and argumenta
tion. This fact explains the fierce intellectual thunderstorm of
controversy which swept over the world, silencing all contradiction
in time.
When Athenagobas (177 a.d.) proclaimed Plato and Christ to
be in perfect harmony, he united Pagan philosophy with the
Christian faith. He endeavoured to bring about a balance between
�Christianity.
9
the intellectual and moral faculties of men. But he was emotional,
and explained with assumptions and assertions what he did not
know. That his writings were altered in passing through the
hands of ignorant copyists or interested church dignitaries, may
be fairly assumed; for we find side by side with passages written
under the distinct influence of the Neo-Platonic school, others
that are altogether opposed to their mode of thinking. Some
other passages, again, are full of Hebraism in contradiction to his
Hellenism. He earnestly protested against the re-marriage of
widows, and propounded wild and fantastic speculations on the
“ fallen angels,” dividing them into two Categories, such as were
lost to all sense of justice, and such as had still something good
left in them ; that is, bad and good evil-spirits.
Tatian, who was born in Syria, devoted himself to the gloomy
Study of Gnosticism. He looked upon matter as the fountain of all
evil, recommended the mortification of the body, and introduced
Indian, Persian, and, above all, Buddhistic ideas into Christianity.
His disciples abjured all the comforts and enjoyments of life, and
abstained from wine with such rigorous obstinacy, that at the
Lord’s Supper they used nothing but water, holding that God’s will
would transform water into blood, as it had formerly transformed
it into wine. Tatian constantly referred to a Universal Soul or
Spirit pervading the universe in contradistinction to the Creator
of all things. He borrowed this idea from Plato, who took it
from the Egyptians, who had inherited it from the Indian Pan
theists.
There can be no doubt that the ancient classics with their dry
formalism no longer sufficed to satisfy man’s restless emotional
nature, craving for a deeper knowledge of the supernatural. The
theological spirit of mysticism borrowed from the East was drawn
into the mighty vortex of man’s speculative activity, and opened new
fields to the moral and intellectual forces working in Humanity.
The union between God and man, formally accomplished by the
classical world, was now to be spiritually completed. The divine
Power which had assumed form in the unsurpassed artistic, poetitical, and philosophical works of antiquity, was with Clemens of
Alexandria to become flesh, vivified by the Spirit of the East,
and newly moulded as one mystic, incomprehensible, and super
natural whole, by Christianity. The mythological conceptions of
the Greeks, the theosophies of the Hebrews, and the mysteries of
the Egyptians, were to be blended with the simple, yet sublime,
�10
Christianity.
teachings of Christ. As the prophets, Moses, Aaron, and Elijah,
had devoted themselves to the Lord; as kings had sacrificed their
heirs on the walls of their besieged towns to force the enemy to
abandon their assaults ; as Jephthah had been ready to sacrifice his
daughter—so Christ had been a sacrifice to the Most High for
humanity. The Apologists, however, ignored the fact that the
same had been said of Kama and Krishna by the Indians, of Osiris
by the Egyptians, of the Kentaur, Cheiron, of Apollo, as Adonai
or Adonis by the Hellens, and of Curtius by the Bomans. The
descendants of those who had believed in these self-sacrifices were
easily persuaded that the founder of their religion bad offered
himself as the most precious sacrifice to appease the wrath of an
angry father.
Clemens introduced Hebraism most prominently into Christ
ianity. He held that there was no truth except in the Books of
Moses and the Prophets, and that the writings known as the Old
Testament were the only reliable, the only true books, and older
than any of the writings of any other nation, and that whatever
had been asserted by whomsoever had been taken, copied, or
transcribed from these writings. This monstrous historical falsifi
cation obstructed the progress of humanity for more than 1,400
years. His misstatements were turned into articles of faith, re
peated year by year, hour by hour, in the principal Christian
schools, and thus were transformed into brain-crystallizations and
petrifactions in the believing, but not reasoning and inquiring
minds of the people. A systematic falsification of history was thus
established, fostered, and kept up by a well organised hierarchy,
supported at a later period by the wealth and power of states,
which left the whole machinery of national, collegiate, and uni
versity education in clerical hands, and imposed upon the masses
by means of penal laws, fire and sword, the gallows and the stake,
certain historical statements, chronological assertions, astronomi
cal errors, and geological impossibilities, as so many indisputable
facts.
If we have reason to complain of the primitive apologists of
Christianity, who showed at least a certain candour and probity,
we have still stronger grounds to be dissatisfied with those who
used sophistry and pious frauds. The Fathers, generally, appear
to have been destitute of penetration, learning, system, application,
and talent. They used arguments to dazzle the fancy, and not to
enlighten or convince the mind. They assumed the antiquity of a
�Clbristianit^-.
Il
doctrine to be evidence of its truth. But all these facts must not
blind us to acknowledge the great ability, and even genius of some
of them, who, notwithstanding certain brain-petrifactions really
endeavoured to promote truth, although truth had unfortunately
been already settled for them as such, by the terrible power of
credulity and undisputed authority.
These petrifactions became in time whole ranges of granite
blocks of superstition. Many a tiny barque of inquiry on the
vast ocean of free-thought, sailing with a fair wind of common
sense, guided by the compass of reason, has been dashed to pieces
and sunk by these terrible, apparently immoveable rocks! But
after all the stable rock with its resistence excited the activity of
the dashing sea-farers.
To the honour of the human intellect it must be confessed that
the credulous, who wished to persuade themselves and others that
they were right in their belief of the incredible, contributed much
to the possibility of the dissolution of their own superstitions.
Foremost in the rank of the free-thinking fathers stood Origen.
The historical development of Christianity must remain for ever
an unintelligible riddle without a thorough acquaintance with the
writings of Origen. This father endeavoured to look on the
Scriptures from a rational point of view, and shook “ Bibliolatry ”
to its very foundation. He cast aside the literal interpretation,
finding the mere letter often unintelligible and contradictory,
sought for hidden meanings, and asserted that the Scriptures
ought to be read by the light of reason. He had a higher con
ception of the Deity, believed in the pre-existence of pure
angelic souls and their fall into mortal bodies, and in a “final
restoration of all intelligent beings to order and happiness.”
This was equivalent to denying eternal hell-fire, and was too much
for the loving hearts of his contemporary Christians, so that he
was, therefore, condemned as a heretic. It is most satisfactory to
find that in our own times several Divines, and among them
Canon Farrar, have dared, in the spirit of Origen, to shake the
deluding and maddening hell-fire petrifaction in the brains of
some believers, and to free the Deity from the reproach of being an
irreconcilable and wrathful Avenger without mercy or pity.
Origen was followed by Eusebius, the Father of Christian
Historiography. He worked out a chronology which, in spite
of geology, Egyptian monuments, Assyrian inscriptions, Indian
philology, and Chinese records, serves some of our bigoted
�12
Christianity.
historians as a basis for their historical distortions. Eusebius
collected most of the raw historical material of ancient times,
and of his own age. He wrote with one aim, to prove the
superiority of Christian morals, and in doing so would not admit
that there could have been anything good in other far more
ancient religious systems. He had to sift facts and to record only
such as served his one-sided and special assumption, and this mode
of writing history is still the most cherished method of historical
sectarians of whatever denomination or tribal division.
To strike the principal death-blow at pure Christianity was
reserved to Athanasius, who borrowed Ins mystic, “ Three in
one,” from the Egyptians. To this incomprehensible “ idol,” once
petrified, thousands and thousands of human beings were sacrificed.
The Council of Nice, which, in 325 A.D., determined the Duality
of God as “ Father and Son,” (the Trinitarian dogma having
passed only in 381 A.D.), selected also the four gospels as the
only canonical books from a quantity of other gospels then
existing. The proceedings on that memorable occasion were the
following according to Pappus in his Synodicon to the council.
“ The fathers, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, placed pro
miscuously under a communion table, in front of which the
Council was assembled, all the Gospels which were known at that
time. They then prayed devoutly to God beseeching him ‘ that
the inspired writings might get upon the table, whilst the spurious
ones remained underneath.’ After the prayer a miracle took
place. The gospels which Gelasius ought to burn remained under
the table, and the four inspired ones got upon it, and were declared
to be canonical.”
A still greater miracle happened. “ It was agreed that in order
to make the Council valid, all the fathers should sign the records.
Two bishops, however, Musonius and Chrisantes, died during the
Council without having signed them. The difficulty was great, for
the Council was invalid without their signatures, but the fathers
caused guards to be placed round the tombs of the bishops, and
placed in them the Acts of the Council, which, as is well known,
were divided into sections. The fathers passed the night in
prayer, and the next day they found that the deceased bishops had
fortunately signed the records of the Council.” (See “ On Man
kind their Origin and Destiny.” By an M.A. of Baliol College,
Oxford. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1872., pp. 166 and
167.)
�Christianity.
13
Basil and Gregory of Nazianzen were the founders of the
Eastern, whilst Tertullian and Augustine must he considered
as the bulwarks of the Western Church. They all became so many
crystallized authorities in Theology. They established obstinacy
and blind faith as the most Christian virtues, and supported their
theory with the most involved intricacies of dialectics. The pheno
menon that astonishes us is, that the learned world, until very
recently, should have applied their two-edged dialectical weapons
for one purpose—to prove what they assumed to be necessary for
the salvation of Humanity. All doubt in that which they asserted
to be an incontestable fact, they punished with stoning, crucifixion,
hanging, or burning. The intellectual, reasoning, thinking, and
inquiring faculty—in a word, the dynamic force, with which
Humanity is endowed, was to be exclusively directed to supernatural
matters and authoritative enactments settled beforehand. At this
period, the greatest calumny against God, the Creator, and Man,
His creature was brought into a systematic form. All was tempta
tion, sinfulness, and horrible wickedness. Nature was to be ex
pelled from nature. Man was to see in every other man an offspring
of hell, sent into this world to do wrong. Hatred and contempt,
trembling and fear, were thus made the chemical elements of which
man’s moral and social condition was to be composed, and a strange
mixture they produced I We need not be astonished that the
false Christians, once come to power, should have fostered an
unrelenting hatred against anything stepping into their obstructive
path. Cyril had nothing but death for the beautiful Hypatia,
who dared to think, to reason, and to inquire, when thinking was
already considered a deadly sin, reasoning a crime, and inquiry a
blasphemy! Tertullian went so far as to state in his “De Idolatria”
that all astronomers, sculptors, mythologists, and merchants were
idolaters and servants of the “Evil One.” Man was so afflicted
by the general reaction which took place in consequence of the
over-strained action of . the ancient classic times, that he lost all
self-reliance, self-thought, self-respect, and entered upon a life
which in reality was no life, or at all events no intellectual life.
That the dynamic force in Humanity cannot be stifled may be
best studied in the writings of Tertullian who exhibits in his
works a mingling of virtues and defects, of learning and ignorance,
of piety and worldliness, which makes him appear on one page as
the most profound scholar, whilst on another, he evinces the most
hopeless superstition and credulity. Through this his double nature
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he exercised great influence on the Scholastics of the Mediaeval
period.
Par greater in character and genius than the works of Tertullian
are the six books “ On the Creation,” by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.
In his obstinacy, and in his firm convictions, he was the very
model of an ecclesiastical prince. He was no Sophist or orator in
the pulpit, but a kind-hearted administrator, stern and active, who
said what he meant, and was firmly convinced that whatever he
said or wrote, was intended for the good of Humanity. In his
works we may study the transition of primitive Christianity into
a complicated system of hierarchical feudalism. Passive submission,
faith and self-abnegation were established in contradiction to the
ancient philosophers who enjoined active energy, self-conscious
conviction, and honest virtue. Ambrose insisted, above all, on
“ Faith.” He, however, attempted to distinguish between the
strictly doctrinal, and the less reliable historical parts of the Old
and New Testaments. Origen and Ambrose were the principal
founders of a broader treatment of the Bible, which led on the
uninterrupted path of progressive continuity to our most modern
theological criticism. Ambrose looked upon the emotional in
Humanity as the only force to be developed and cultivated, to be
restrained and regulated. Poetry, painting, sculpture, and music,
were to strengthen this force, and we owe to him the introduction
of a higher culture of the Arts in the Western Christian Churches.
More important than any of the other Fathers was Augustine
(Aurelius Augustinus), who in the 4th and 5th centuries a.d.,
gave Christianity an entirely new dialectical and theological shape,
widely differing from that simplicity and universal humanism
which we find in Christ’s teachings. He was born 354 a.d., at
Tageste, in Numidia. His father, Patricius, was a Pagan, and his
mother, Monica, a Christian—Paganism and Christianity being
thus blended into one in him through his parents. In his youth
at Carthage he led a wild, reckless, and immoral life; but he was
suddenly reformed through the study of “Hortensius” by Cicero,
a book unfortunately lost, and a diligent reading of the works of
Aristotle. He joined the sect of the Manichseans, went to Rome
to teach rhetorics—(philosophy and elocution)—and thence pro
ceeded to Milan, where he taught with great success. He there
made the acquaintance of Ambrose, who instructed him in the
tenets of the then already to a great degree crystallized orthodox
Christianity. Augustine renounced Manichaeism, and at once
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denounced it, with the fervour usual in converts, as the most per
nicious heresy. He now devoted himself to the exclusive study of
Plato, with the aid of whose ideal philosophical assumptions he
succeeded in constructing an abstruse metaphysical system of
Christian theology.
The influence of his works on the culture and further dog
matic development of Christianity was unbounded. His ideas
inspired the dissertations and controversies between Abelard and
Bernhard. His subtle and dialectical theories may be traced in
the dissensions between Calvinists and Lutherans, Churchmen and
Ritualists, Baptists and Methodists. The struggle between the
Jansenists and Jesuits was principally called forth by his ideas on
abstruse subjects. The influence of Augustine may be traced in
the following utterly meaningless utterances of one of our noble
Lords, who said a week or two ago, “that no law was needed to
sanction or proclaim that the Sabbath was of divine origin. The
profound wisdom inducing it, and the absolute necessity of such a
day, must be apparent to all, whilst no human mind could have
evolved such a scheme of Sunday observance; ” and immediately
after he complains that the observance which needed no law was
being jeopardised by the lawgivers of England, who intended to
abolish the law with reference to the keeping of the Sabbath ; and
thus an institution, which no human mind could have evolved,
would vanish for ever. The ignorance of the noble Lord is
stupendous; he apparently does not know that he is really de
fending an institution which took its origin in the worship of the
heathenish God, “ Sab,” which the nomadic Jews carried about in
an ark, and which they deposited every seventh day in a “ bath ”
(tent) called Sabbath, the “ tent of Sab,” and not “ tabernacle; ”
and he seems to be equally unaware of the fact that the Phoenicians,
Assyrians, and Chaldseans possessed similar movable “ sun-oracles.”
Such senseless utterances have occupied, and still occupy, more
than seven-eights of Christianity. The first great dialectical wars
which Augustine waged were directed against the Manichaeans,
Donatists, and, above all, the Pelagians, the followers of Pelagius,
a British Monk, who dared to teach that death had not been
introduced into the world by Adam, but that, on the contrary,
man was necessarily, and by nature mortal, so that even had Adam
not sinned, he would nevertheless have died; and that further, the
consequences of Adam’s sin were confined to himself, and did not
affect his posterity. Erom these premises, Pelagius drew certain
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important conclusions—which necessarily went against the inherited
sin theory, the necessity of an atonement, and the numberless calum
nies against our miserable, wretched, wicked, sinful, abominable,
and horrible nature. Pelagius shook the very foundation of the
theological structure, which in its details and dogmas began to be
far more Pagan than Christian. Augustine was in arms against
these blasphemies; and historians can trace in this quarrel between
the wild and passionate Monk, and the cool and rational British
Priest, a more developed germ of the Reformation, the seed of
which had been sown long before by the not very edifying quarrels
between St. Paul and St. Peter, as representatives of Hellenism
and Hebraism.
A Synod held at Diopolis acquitted Pelagius of heresy. Pope
Innocent I. condemned him. The next Pope, Zosimus, declared
the opinions of Pelagius perfectly orthodox, but in spite of this,
Augustine craftily obtained a decree from the Emperor, declaring
Pelagius a heretic, condemning him and his adherents to exile and
confiscating all their worldly goods.
To obtain an insight into the arguing practised and taught by
Augustine, it will be well to consider a few passages from the
11th, 12th, and 13th books of his “ Confessions.”
He of course begins by praying “that God will give him to
understand the Scriptures, and will open their meaning to him,”
and declares at once “that in them there is nothing superfluous,
but that the words have a manifold meaning.” The apparent
humility of this prayer really conceals the most inordinate pride.
First he prayed, then comes the terrible assumption that God must
have heard his prayer—and then all his utterances and writings
become embodiments of God’s spirit, and the most unscientific,
confused and incoherent loquacity is taken as spoken or written
under God’s holy inspiration.
Having invoked the help of God, Augustine begins to argue and
apparently to contradict Scripture; but as he contradicts with the
purpose of refuting his own contradictions, the doubts which he
raises are so childish, that it does not require much ingenuity to
dispose of them. This is the method generally followed bv theo
logically trained minds, a method calculated to deceive ignorant
men and emotional women.
With pomp and vanity Augustine says :—
“ The face of creation testifies that there has been a Creator;
but at once arises the question, How and when did He make
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heaven and earth ? They could not have been’made in heaven and
earth; the world could not have been made in the world, nor
could they have been made when there was nothing to make
them of.”
The solution Augustine finds is extremely simple :—
“ Thou spakest, and they were made! ” he exclaims, but does not
tell us where the Deity spoke; in or beyond the world.
The speaking of the Deity involves him in new perplexities, for
he says:—
“ The syllables thus uttered by God came forth in succession,
and there must have been some created thing to express the words.
This created thing must therefore have existed before heaven and
earth, and yet there could have been no corporeal thing before heaven
and earth. It must have been a creature because the words passed
away and came to an end; but we know that the word of the
Lord endureth for ever! Moreover, it is plain that the words
thus spoken could not have been spoken successively, but simulta
neously, else there would have been time and change; succession
in its nature implying time, whereas there was then nothing but
eternity and immortality. God knows and says eternally what
takes place in time.”
There is time and yet there is no time, there is eternity but that
is not time. There is an eternally speaking Deity, but the words
this Deity speaks could not have been spoken successively, but
must.have been spoken simultaneously and eternally. A superficial
analysis of these and similar phrases amply suffices to show their
utter hollowness and senselessness.
The next difficulty Augustine finds in the mystic words : “ In
the beginning.”
What was there before the Beginning began? He suddenly
saves himself from the terrible aspect of a beginning Beginning,
and exclaims:—
“ How wonderful are Thy works, 0 Lord! in wisdom hast Thou
made them all. This wisdom is the beginning, and in that Begin
ning the Lord created heaven and earth. But,” he adds, “ some
one may ask: ‘ What was God doing before He made the heaven
and earth ?’ for, if at any particular moment He began to employ
Himself, that means time, not eternity. In eternity nothing
transpires ; the whole is present.”
He at once answers the indirect question with one of those
direct assertions, insinuating that, though he did not intend to say
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anything, yet that he was well acquainted with the doings of the
Deity:—
“ I will not answer this question by saying that He was pre
paring Hell for pryers into his mysteries. I say that before God
made heaven and earth He did not make anything; for no crea
ture could be made before any creature was made. Time itself is
a creature, and hence it could not possibly exist before creation.
What then is time ? The past is not, the future is not, the pre
sent—who can tell what it is, unless it be that which has no dura
tion between two nonentities ? There is no such thing as 4 a long
time,’ or ‘ a short time,’ for there are no such things as the past
and the future. They have no existence, except in the soul.”
Such incoherent, rhapsodical assertions as these have been looked
upon as learned disquisitions on sacred and scientific subjects for
more than fourteen hundred years. We might quote the whole of
Augustine’s works, line by line, to prove that they are nothing but
inflated and arrogant conversations between the writer and his
assumed God. These utterances may be looked upon as those of
an individual suffering from religious hallucination, which have
become to a high degree methodical; and we may well exclaim
with Polonius : 44 Though this be madness, yet there is method
in it.”
And such mystic madness stimulated men’s thinking faculties
into action, and in time produced a Bacon, a Newton, a Leibnitz,
a Des Cartes, and a Kant.
Another passage from the twelfth book is still more charac
teristic in its originality, but less methodical:—
44 This, then, is what I conceive, O, my God,” when I hear the
Scripture saying, 4 In the beginning God made heaven and earth;
and the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was
upon the deep,’ and not mentioning what day thou createdst them;
this is what I conceive, that because of the heaven of heavens—that
intellectual heaven whose intelligence knows all at once, not in
part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifesta
tion, face to face; not this thing now, and that thing anon; but
(as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times ; and
because of the earth, invisible and without form, without any
succession of times, which succession presents this thing now, that
thing anon, because where there is no form there is no distinction
of things; it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed,
and a primitive formless; the one heaven, but the heaven of
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heavens; the other, earth, but the earth moveable and without
form; because of these two, do I conceive did the Scripture
say, without mention of days, ‘ In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.’ For, forthwith it subjoined what
earth it spake of, and also in that firmament is recorded to be
created the second day, and called heaven, it conveys to us of
which heaven He before spake without mention of days. Wondrous
depth of Thy words I Whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting
to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O, my God—a
wondrous depth I It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of
honour, and a trembling of love. The enemies, therefore, I hate
vehemently; O that Thou wouldst slay them with Thy two-edged
sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it; for so do I love
to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto Thee!”
Greek philosophy was turned by this passionate African fanatic
into rambling sophistry, and the teachings of Christ, full of love
and forgiveness, into a system of bloodthirsty persecution. Science
was scorned, and continually abused, but barefaced stupidity,
heartless pride, and insolent arrogance were used to destroy and
degrade pure Christianity, to transform it into a code of implacable
hatred, and to foster persecution and wholesale murder.
In the thirteenth Book of his “ Confessions,” Augustine touches
the grand Mystery of Mysteries, the “ Trinity,” and proves it to
be contained in the teachings of the immortal Jewish lawgiver,
Moses.
In great excitement, he says :—
“ Lo, now the Trinity appears unto me in a glass darkly, which
is Thou, my God, because Thou, O Father, in Him who is the
beginning of our wisdom, which is Thy wisdom, born of Thyself,
equal unto Thee, and co-eternal, that is, in Thy Son, createdst
heaven and earth. Much now have we said of the heaven of the
heavens, and of the earth, invisible and without form, and of the
darksome deep, in reference to the wandering instability of its
spiritual deformity, unless it had been converted unto Him, from
whom it. had its then degree of life, and by His enlightening became
a beauteous life, and the heaven of that heaven, which was after
wards set between water and water. And under the name of God
I now beheld the Father, who made these things ; and under the
name of the beginning, the Son in whom He made these things ;
and believing as I did, my God as the Trinity; I searched further
in His holy words, and lo! Thy Spirit moved upon the waters.
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Behold the Trinity, my God! Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost,
Creator of all Creation ! ”
As a contrast to this let us turn to a passage from the Indian
Bamayana, a poem written by Valmikis, in 24,000 double verses
(about 1200 b.c., according to the great bibliographer, Dr. Graesse).
In the Ram ay ana, no conceited monk discusses the Deity; in
directly threatening all who may dare to pry into His mysteries
with hell-fire, whilst he thinks himself authorised to commit pre
cisely the same indiscretion; but the gods are assembled in
heaven, and one of them addresses the incomprehensible first
Cause in the following lofty and sublime strain :—
“ O Thou, whom threefold might and splendour veil,
'
Maker, Preserver, and Transformer, hail!
Thy gaze surveys this world from clime to clime,
Thyself immeasurable in space and time:
To no corrupt desires, no passions prone:
Unconquered conqueror, infinite, unknown ;
«
Though in one form Thou veil’st Thy might divine,
Still, at Thy pleasure, every form is Thine.
Pure crystals thus prismatic hues assume
As varying light and varying tints illume;
Men think Thee absent; Thou art ever near,
Pitying those sorrows, which Thou ne’er canst fear.
Unsordid penance Thou alone canst pay;
Unchanged, unchanging—old without decay:
Thou knowest all things—who Thy praise can state ?
Createdst all things—Thyself uncreate! ”
What a difference in language, purity and grandeur of concep
tion I The three in one is the Universe pervaded by a Divine
Force, manifesting itself in the tri-une phenomena of Creation,
Preservation, and Transformation in space and time throughout
eternity.
In imitation of Plato’s “ State ” and Pliny’s “ History of Na
ture,” Augustine wrote a work entitled “De civitate Dei, Libri
XXII.” (The City of God, in twentv-two books). He here divides
humanity into two groups :
1. Such as have mere carnal ideas, and are damned. And—
2. Such as live in the spirit, and must be saved.
Augustine thus assumed two States, of which one would perish
in the general conflagration on the day o£ judgment. Of this
perishable State the Devil was supreme ruler; it was based on
Egotism and a contempt of God. The other he asserted to be a
heavenly State, in which God is King: the State itself being based
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on Love to God, and contempt of ourselves. The phenomenal or
visible world was with Augustine a realm of sin, wickedness,
misery, crime and wretchedness, in opposition to an ideal world of
faith and blissfulness, of purity and eternal salvation.
Reality was with him corrupt, and he left reality to the lay
power, which by degrees began to feel its strength: and the
struggle between Pope and Emperor, the Kingdom of God and the
Kingdom of the Devil commenced. This struggle was foreshadowed
in Augustine’s writings ; it lasted for more than a thousand years,
and ended in our century with the abolition of the temporal power,
of the Pope.
Augustine, in his “ City of God,” condemns all worldly endeavour
or activity as sinful; he assumes a spiritual government over all
earthly matters, and settles all moral, dogmatic and scientific sub
jects from a theological point of view.
Augustine worked out the hypotheses of “ Predestination,”
“ Special Grace,” and “ Eree Willconfusing assumptions with
an utterly false moral foundation. . If “ Predestination ” were
made the ruling force of humanity, what would become of our
self-conscious moral responsibility ? If we were to admit a higher,
more powerful, independent force not within, but without or above
us, which directly or even indirectly regulated the destinies of
individuals, nations, and humanity—individuals, nations, and
humanity would be released from all moral responsibility, and
could not become masters of their fate; their actions having been
predisposed, pre-arranged, and providentially predestined, by
“ Special Grace,” or any other arbitrary grant over which the
individual had no control, could not come under the influence of
order and law.
The hypotheses of “ Predestination ” and “ Special Grace ”
transformed man into a mere puppet, with a mighty divine wire
puller behind him ; and history enacted by such puppets could be
nothing but an incoherent pantomime, in which the scientific men
were the clowns, and the theologians the managers, directing both,
their self-constituted wire-pulling Deity and the besotted puppets,
and continually preparing “.the last transformation scene,”
illumined with the lurid glare of hell-fire.
Augustine and his theological disciples looked upon the phe-.
nomena of nature, and of man’s higher moral and intellectual
activity, as mere chance effects of the working of some supernatural
power.
. .
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Christianity.
Contrary to Confucius, mediaeval Christianity on the principles
laid down by Augustine did not follow out the axiom—“ The wise
man seeks the cause of his defects in himself ; but the fool, avoid
ing himself, seeks it in all others beside himself.” The bigoted
and uneducated under theological training look for redress in proud
humbleness and blind faith, from any force or power without, and
not within themselves, and by this means fall an easy prey to their
ecclesiastical or political task-masters. It is either “ despotism,”
pure and simple, assuming the incompetence of the masses to
govern themselves, that plays at “ Providence,” “ Predestination,”
“ Special Grace by the Will of Godor it is “ Clericalism ” in a
thousand different forms, which, in accordance with Augustine,
builds up, arranges, furnishes, decorates, and adorns “ a higher
state ” of spiritual blissfulness in unapproachable regions, where
archangels, angels, saints, confessors, martyrs, deacons, sextons,
ringers, and beadles, rule supreme in opposition to this world, in
which the masses are misled by devils, demons, infidels, unbelievers,
agnostics, pantheists, and, worst of all, scientific inquirers, who
dare to pry into the “ wonderful ” and “ awful ” mysteries of God.
Rousseau, like Augustine, wrote “Confessions”—the one from a
political, and the other from a purely theological point of view.
Both were fanatics, and both strove to improve the fate of
humanity.
Augustine, like Rousseau, gives us a precise history of his own
inner life, which he finishes by adopting the Christian religion;
the other, who began as a pious Christian child, abjured Christi
anity, became an atheist, and tells us the causes which induced him
to change his opinions on matters divine and human.
Augustine looks upon history as something utterly indifferent,
and far beneath the dignity of his consideration. He is convinced
that in all historical matters God and Predestination are doing
what is right, and that no amount of study and knowledge can
change what has been ordained by God to happen, whether in
politics or in every man’s private life. This ruling conviction still
excludes the study of General History on a scientific basis from
nearly all our educational establishments, and may serve to explain
the unanimity with which the University of Oxford hailed the
introduction of the study of Scandinavian languages and antiqui
ties, and the delight which one of our most liberal papers expressed
on this occasion, finding it perfectly clear that there could be no
taint of heresy, or of radicalism, in Scandinavian studies. The
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study of General History by reason of its drawing of analogies and
comparisons, rectifying of dates, and analysing of different religious
systems, is thought to be tainted with the horrible poison of heresy,
and the bigoted fear, lest we might learn from history that man
at all times, and in all places, had very analogous notions with
reference to the means by which his higher moral progress was to
be effected.
Bousseau on the other hand, like Vico, Guicciardini, Bolingbroke,
Herder and Lessing before him, clearly saw the necessity of the
study of history, and assigned to it the greatest importance. But
whilst Bousseau often misunderstood history, we are compelled
to admit that Augustine thoroughly grasped the wants of super
stitious and ignorant humanity. Scepticism and mere negation
are even more bleak and despairing than the most childish
“ emotionalism,” leading through fear of punishment, and hope for
reward to a certain kind of practical morals. Bousseau saw only
chance, misery, and wretchedness in the progressive development
of civilisation, and wanted to lead us back to the bosom of mother
nature. Augustine traced all the miseries besetting humanity,
not to a misunderstanding of the laws of nature, but to a Father
who mercifully punished his children for a sin committed by Adam
in Paradise—which was called “ the original sin,” and he advised
humanity to rely on this Father with childlike submission, to eat,
to drink, to sleep, but above all to pray, to sing, to believe, and
not to inquire, as we had only one destiny on earth, to atone for
the terrible inheritance left us by Adam, “ the original sin.”
Augustine heard in the first cry of a new-born child a heart
rending lament over the sinfulness of this world, which had been
created by a benevolent first Cause.
The degrading theory of an original sin cannot possibly exercise
any elevating influence on our moral development. In connection
with this it may be instructive to consider the impression this pre
posterous and impious assumption made on the mind of a cul
tivated Chinese Mandarin, who had been brought up in the
moral principles of Confucius. He met a missionary and hearing
of the superiority of the Christian religion, was ready patiently to
listen, and to allow himself to be instructed. The creation of the
world by a God was admitted; then came the special creation of
man, and the “ inherited Sin ”—and the assertion that “ by one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” The Mandarin
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rose in wrath, clutched a bamboo, and asked the following ques
tions : Who created the world “? “ God,” was the answer. And
who created man ? “ God,” was the next answer. And who made
man sin, and created him mortal ? The missionary hesitated, and
the Mandarin thereupon gave him a sound thrashing, and ex
claimed, “ I will teach you to have a higher notion of the Deity,
and to have a loftier conception of his most perfect and wonderful
creature—man, with all his exalted virtues of family love, know
ledge, industry, arts and sciences. Go, and annoy me no longer
with your blasphemous assumptions for which you have not a
word in the teachings of Christ.”
The fundamental theory upon which a degrading system of
morals had been constructed was, in Augustine’s time,- already
opposed by great divines and was altogether discarded by Rousseau
who, in his sceptic atheism, was more pious in assuming that
nature could not have done any wrong. Whilst Augustine insisted
upon faith, prayer and contemplation, as the only means of con
quering our sunken, sinful nature, and thus poisoned the pure
moral atmosphere of man,—Rousseau demanded practical sciences,
technical skill—anything that would strengthen the inventive and
reasoning faculty.
Both agree that the young ought to be made acquainted with
truth; but, unhappily, this word has many relative significations,
and cannot be grasped by finite beings in its absolute sense. They
both wished intellect to be cultivated; the one that it might see
the glories of the heavens, and the other, to improve man’s earthly
happiness. Both were equally blind to the fact that only in a
perfectly harmonious culture of imagination and reason, of heart
and head, of morals and intellect, could an approximate solution
of our destiny be found.
Augustine should be read side by side with Rousseau; but we
must be careful not to take the opinions of either for dogmatic
truths or mathematical rules of life. Many of their guesses at
the causes of the evils rampant among us are correct; but they are
mere suggestions thrown out, according to the spirit of the time
in which both lived. Augustine is the alpha of a theologicophilosophical system that swayed humanity to its detriment for
more than fourteen hundred years, and Rousseau is the politico
social omega produced by the same wild and fantastic theological
system. Both—in preaching faith and common sense, hope and
practical reason, charity, freedom, and equality—produced blood
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shed, hatred, despair, despotism, and political and religious perse
cution.
The forces working in Humanity were disturbed by both, be
cause they started with preconceived ideas; the one with “ a con
crete original sin,” the other with “ an abstract purity of nature
both powerfully impressed those whom they addressed, and both
failed to readjust the balance between morals and intellect in a
truly Christian sense.
There was, however, something wonderfully beneficial in the
blending of heathen notions and principles with Christianity; the
thread of continuity was kept up, isolation avoided, and humanity
appears to the assiduous student of true history as one great whole,
swayed by immutable laws.
By placing religion and science in a conflicting and antagonistic
relation the Fathers aroused a spirit of inquiry, and controversial
ists and theological casuists who sought to lead us away from the
first simple teachings of Christ were in reality instrumental in
bringing us back to them.
In Church and State an apparently retrograde movement to the
benefit of humanity at large is fortunately perceptible. The State
gives up more and more an assumed fantastic prestige of national
honour, diplomatic niceties and double dealings—the stronger a
State is, the more it can afford to be equitable and just. In reli
gion we endeavour to turn back to the primitive sources of Chris
tianity which, like all streams, was far purer, more lucid and
refreshing at its source than in its continually broadening course,
when it became mixed with the quicksands of sophistry, the shoals
of dogmatic rubbish, and coloured red by the torrents of blood
shed by the fanatics of all sects.
The Fathers benefited humanity, for they tried—
(a.) To be scientific, though they opposed science.
(6.) They used the Greek philosophical and historical writers,
though they declared them profane and heretical.
(c.) They wrote in Latin, and thus kept up the knowledge of
the language of Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, Pliny, and Seneca.
(d.) They cursed and abused nature, prohibited its study as a
prying into the awful mysteries of God, and by degrees,
on the principle “ nitimur in vetitum ” (we crave for the
forbidden), promoted a systematic study of nature.
(e.) They used the Hebrew Scriptures, and blended the Oriental
and Hellenic mode of thinking into one.
�26
Christianity.
(/.) They fostered mysticism, and called forth the study of man
and nature, of astronomy, chemistry, physiology and psycho
logy; abounding in far greater and more intelligible mysteries
than any of the Fathers ever dreamt of.
(</.) They preached love, humility, and forbearance, and yet
openly practised hatred, pride, and persecution, by which
means they kept man’s moral and intellectual powers in a
continuous motion of action and reaction.
(A.) They introduced a controversial spirit into theology, which
stimulated and disciplined man’s mental activity, and led
Humanity through the dark cloisters of monasteries into
the broad daylight of inventions and discoveries, that put an
end to all the distorted theological conceptions of the Deity.
Thus Man began to be studied in his slow and gradual historical
development, not on false and imaginary principles, but on the
foundation of his own human nature. The calumnious assertion
that man, from the moment he entered into this world, had been
destined for evil is dying out; and the assumption that the whole
of his earthly pilgrimage is to be simply a dim attempt to answer
the inane question: “ Is life worth living ? ” is contemptuously
looked upon as the utterance of attitudinizing Pessimists, who
think that we have only one task to fulfil—to sigh and to crouch
in everlasting terror of a curse which Humanity is said to have
been blessed with by the merciful Creator of all things visible
and invisible.
�
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Christianity : second part. The influence of the "Fathers" on the further development of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday, 27th March, 1881
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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In this lecture Dr. G. G. Zerffi explores the most notable and influential "Fathers" and their effect on the development of Christianity.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 26, [2] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
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1881
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Christianity
Christianity
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CHRISTIANITY.
THIRD PART.
MONASTICISM AND SCHOLASTICISM: INVENTIONS AND
DISCOVERIES; FAITHAND SCIENCE; HEBRAISM
AND HELLENISM.
BEING
lecture
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S IIALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY, 20th NOVEMBER, 1881,
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
Honljon:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS.
Influence of Heathenism on Christianity.
Monks and Monasteries; Cloisters and Nuns.
The Crusades. East and West.
Gregory VII. Church and State.
The Popes and the German Emperors. Conflict between the Static and
Dynamic Forces working in Humanity.
Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas.
Demonology and Angelology.
Occam—Inventions and Discoveries.
The Reformation, an apparently retrograde movement.
The Conflict between Hebraism and Hellenism an undoubtedly progres
sive movement.
Conspiracies against the rights of Humanity. The Inquisition.
The Dawn of Modern Thought.
Francis Lord Bacon, Newton, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, and the Hierarchy.
Spiritual Despotism and Intellectual Democracy.
�CHRISTIANITY.
------------ 4------------
III.
Monasticism and Scholasticism.
and Science.
Inventions and Discoveries.
Faith
Hebraism and Hellenism.
N tracing step by step, and date by date, the historical evolu
tion of Christianity, we are
by the gradual, everIincreasing influence of Heathenismstrucka religion which in its pure
on
origin made the most determined opposition to all outward ritual
and idolatrous ceremonial. Christianity was to have redeemed
man’s higher spiritual nature from all fetters of dogmatism and
theological obscurantism.
The “ word” as the most important living manifestation of the
divine Spirit in love, wisdom, and truth, engendering pure thoughts,
pure words, and pure actions, had been already with the ancient
Persians the primitive force, spreading spiritual enlightenment all
over the world. Its symbol was the Sun.
The “ word,” as. the condensation of God’s breath, was with the
Indians the very foundation of their religious development. The
“word”—or God—the universal “neuter,” the “Thad,” the im
personal, became Creator, Preserver and Transformer, as the three
cosmical forces working in one.—Ideas which may be expressed in
words, preserved in traditions or writings, and transformed, con
tinually producing new ideas and words, were with the Indians
the elements of progressive culture. With the Egyptians Toth, or
Hermes, the “ Logos,” the “ word ” in its spiritual sense, was the
life-giver, the founder of all wisdom and truth. With the Greeks
the myth, that Pallas-Athene, provided with helmet, spear and
shield, had sprung from the head of Zeus, meant symbolically that
the “ word,” clad in wisdom, justice, and truth, was the most inlportant embodiment of the divine Spirit. Pythagoras (569 b.c.),
initiated at Thebes into the mysteries of the Egyptian priests (after
this distinction had been refused to him at Heliopolis and Mem
�4
Christianity.
phis), brought thence the knowledge of the “ Logos ” (the word),
as the first vivification of the divine Spirit, without which the very
notion of the Deity would be impossible. Plato (380 B.o.) learnt in
Egypt that the voSs (Spirit) can only become reality through the
X&yos (the word), and he proclaimed that God was the word—the
beginning of all things —that He was goodness. Plato, therefore,
opposed the ancient notion that God could be passionate, envious,
or jealous, or that evil could have originated with Him. Intellect
was with Plato productive (creative), indivisible, and all-pervading.
No thoughts could come to reality without “ words.”—The word,
with Plato, was God, in the sense of the Egyptians, and “ God
was in the beginning the word, and the word was with God, and
the word was God,” and was adopted in the spirit of Plato by the
later Christians.
*
According to Philo (a contemporary of Christ), the Jews be
lieved God to be enthroned in eternal perfection and wisdom
in Heaven, rewarding the good and the virtuous. All other divine
deeds were done by different spirits (messengers)—especially the
judging and punishing of the wicked. God did not judge, but a
Being standing next to Him—the divine “ Logos ”—the “ word ”
(reason, intellect, understanding,) performed that function. The
Logos was with Philo the invisible, bodiless spiritual essence of all
things visible; it was no person, nothing tangible or expanded,
but the purest manifestation of mind, the principal element of all
ideas, the life of life, the eye of eyes, the primitive conception of
the universe. The “ Logos ” was omniscient, it was past, present,
and future; it was the Alpha and the Omega of all things ; it was
imperishable, eternal, passionless, and infallible. God was its father,
Sophia (wisdom) its mother. It was the splendour, reflection, and
essence of God. It was God’s angel and messenger. God’s ser
vant and mediator. The “ word ” had created the world, and
given laws and order. The “word” was the supreme judge be
tween God and man, mortality and immortality, the spiritual and
the material; it was the light of God and of the world ; the ruler
and guide of all things created, and all creatures. The “ Logos ”
was the first-born “ Son of God.” All these notions were applied
tQ Christ, though they are distinctly found in the mysteries, and
* See—Plato: Phsedrus, Theaetetus, Sophist, &c. C. S. Henry, D.D.
*“ An Epitome of the History of Philosophy,” London: Longman and Co.,
1849.—Dr. Kostlin, “ Theologische Jahrbiicher,” 1851.—Dr. Zeller, “Theol.
Jahrb.,” 1841.—Ackermann, “ Das Christliche in Plato,” 1835.
�Christianity.
5
philosophical systems of the Heathens and Jews. So far as the
spiritual essence of all this metaphysical symbolism is concerned,
it was unquestionably correct to have ascribed it to Christ, for we
< may trace to him and his pure, unalloyed teachings, the principle
of the Logos as universal love and brotherhood.
But historical Christianity, as it evolved itself in time and space,
did not maintain this spiritual broadness, this homogeneous foun
dation, which could have turned humanity into one great brother
hood. It is a fact, an incontestable historical fact, that nearly all
the more highly developed religious systems of humanity had at
first monotheism for their basis. This, however, did not long satisfy
the craving of the masses for emotional excitement. The Fathers
“ majorum gentium” were followed by Fathers “ minorum gen
tium.” The unity of the Deity was divided into three persons.
A disguised Polytheism was slowly, but surely, introduced through
the worship of various angels and saints—opposed by correspond
ing demons and wicked spirits. The Heathens, with their poetical
impersonations of the forces and phenomena of nature, were
abhorred and cursed, and yet their polytheistic mode of thinking
and worshipping was adopted. Up to the year 60 a.d. the Chris
tians had to observe the diet of the Jews, and to practise circum
cision.
The use of holy water was ordered by the Christians 120 a.d.,
in conformity with the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, and
Romans, who looked upon water as the mysterious life-giving ele
ment. According to the Indian sacred writings, “ When the world
was still buried in the night of chaos, water existed, veiling as the
breath of the Divinity the unshapen earth.” According to the
G-enesis of Manti, “ Water separated heaven and earth.” “ Water
was the essence of life, when the earth was still barren and uninha
bited.” The efficacy of water was recognised thousands of years ago
by the lawgivers of India and their Brahmans; the Persians intro
duced baptism, the Egyptians hallowed it; the Jews had it; the
Essenes considered it an essential act, symbolic of the purification
from all worldliness, and the Greeks practised it in their Orphic
mysteries. We trace the rites of baptism over the Atlantic Ocean,
and find that they were observed by the Aztecs in America. Water
was considered all over the world the “ fountain of regeneration,”
“ the symbol of life.” “ Man must be born anew of water.”
Through water the Heathens of old, and the Christians of a later’
period, were to enter into rpligious communities. “ Water mysti
�6
Christianity.
cally washed away the sins of the world, water made ns twice-born,
and admitted us into the state of chosen Brahmans.”
In order to detach Christianity from Judaism, the celebration
of the Sunday, instead of the Sabbath, was decreed in the second
century, after Christ himself had opposed the rigid observance of
that day with all his power. At the same period (150 a.d.) the
worship of Christ as God was instituted. Not in the sense of the
“Logos,”but in the sense of the worship of the visible ancient
Heathen Gods. His form, as the good shepherd, was carved and
painted, he was represented on the Cross, with a drooping head, a
picture of suffering and misery. The bright, the glorious Redeemer
of humanity, the incarnation of love, was not shown with a beam
ing countenance, rejoicing that he had fulfilled his destiny—but '
heart-broken, and writhing in the agony of death, though death
could not exist for a God !
By degrees the Apostles and Saints received body and form,
and the worship of images was introduced 350 A.n. The old
Boman household gods were exchanged for images of the saints.
The “ Lararium,” a recess for the tutelary god in every Pagan
house, became an “ Oratorio.” Cybele, the mother of the heathen
gods, had her substitute in Mary, the mother of Christ. The
Christian images began to weep, to perspire, and to wink, just as
the miraculous images of the Heathens had done, like Apollo at
Cumae, and Juno at Lanuvium. The images of Christ,—the
Virgin and some saints were dressed, decorated with jewels, and
carried about in processions, in the same way as the heathen images
had been treated in India, Egypt, Greece, and Borne. This led to
a schism in the church. Some Christians, strengthened in their
abhorrence of these idolatrous practices by the purer monotheistic
Jews and Arabs, by Greek and Boman philosophers, considered
that the teachings of Christ were being defiled, and the first
“ iconoclasts ” began to rage against customs and ceremonies which
they held were opposed to the fundamental principles of Christ
ianity. We trace the same iconoclastic spirit in the Netherlandish
image-breakers and the Puritans of England, as the survival of a
tendency which manifested itself during the earliest times of
Christianity.
The establishment of monks and monasteries, of cloisters and
nuns, followed next, in imitation of Indian Vanaprasthas (inhabi
tants of woods, deserts and caves), Sunnyasis, Yogis, or Bisbis,
who for the greater glory of God were. capable of standing on one
�Christianity.
7
leg for twelve years, or holding up their clasped hands until their
nails grew through their flesh. Like Egyptian and Buddhistic
fanatics who thought idle contemplation far more meritorious
than useful activity, monks and nuns began to take possession of
Christianity. They indulged in peculiar hoods, beards, caps, and
dresses; affected sombre colours in combination with white and
brown, or red and blue; some wore shoes, others had none; some
neglected personal cleanliness, others did not comb or trim their
beards, or cut their hair ; others made themselves a crown of
thorns of their hair by shaving the top of the head; some wore
iron girdles studded with nails round their waists on the bare
skin. Some lived on locusts, others on dry bread; others again, as
the “ Boskoi ” (grazing monks), on grass. Some lived alone in caves
and huts. Claudius Rutilius Numantianus (in the 5th cent, a.d.),
gives a description of the island of “ Capreria,” in his “ Itinerarium,” which runs thus: “ The whole island is filled, or rather
defiled by men who fly from the light. They call themselves
Monks or Solitaries, because they choose to live without any
witnesses of their actions. They fear the gifts of fortune, from
the apprehension of losing them, and, lest they should be miserable,
they embrace a life of voluntary wretchedness.” The sensible
Roman writer then exclaims: “ How absurd is this choice! how
perverse their understanding! to dread evils without being able to
support the blessings of the human condition. Either this melan
choly madness is the effect of disease, or else the consciousness of
guilt urges these unhappy men to exercise on their own bodies
the tortures which are inflicted on fugitive slaves by the hand of
justice.”
The glorious teachings of Christ were turned more and more
into a gloomy ritual, deadening common sense and destroying the
reasoning faculty in those who did not shrink from allowing
superstitious frenzy to become master of their better understanding.
There is no delusion which these men and women did not turn
into an act of pious worship. “ Stylytes ” and “ Sancti Columnares ” began to abound. In imitation of their founder, Simeon,
a Syrian, these saints used to stand on pillars 40 feet high, and
there pray, in opposition to Christ’s distinct condemnation of
those hypocrites “ who pray standing in the synagogues, and
standing in the corners of streets that they may be seen.” “ When
thou pravest,” said Christ, “Enter into thy closet, and when thou
hast shut thy door pray to thy Father which is in secret.” Osten
�8
Christianity.
tation, pride, and boastfulness were fostered, instead of a correct
understanding of true Christianity, and this form of Fanaticism
produced, as all action does, a strong reaction. The Shemitic
spirit of the East revolted against this terrible mixture of a pure
monotheism with the most complicated and mystic polytheism,
and as I had the pleasure of showing in my lecture “ On the
Eastern Question,” delivered on the 25th of March, 1877, Mahomet
rose, and East and West were rent asunder, until “Blood and
Iron,” nearly 200 years later, gave another form to Christianity.
Whilst the establishment of monks and nuns was a silent, con
templative delusion, the crusades were a noisy and raving madness,
and as all raving, howling, screaming madness is to some extent
contagious, the whole of Europe was drawn into its vortex, and
millions of otherwise peaceful and sober-minded men were driven
to certain death on the distant battlefields of Asia and Africa.
This astonishing commotion had, however, a most salutary effect
on the culture and further development of Humanity. Europe
got rid of the noisy, fighting, drinking knights, and the temporal
possessions of the killed fell into the hands of the Church, or were
acquired by toiling, working, trading towns-men. What had been
till then, without real discipline and cohesion, received a firm and
undisputed organization. It is true that before this happened
Christianity had to undergo considerable changes. In 325 the
Duality of the Godhead in the Father and the Son was established,
and in 348 the monastic life was decreed to be sacred. Nothing
was then easier than to become a saint, it was only necessary to
retire from the world and do nothing; but at a later period
canonization became a rather expensive distinction. In 381 the
doctrine of the Trinity of the Godhead was decreed, and ten years
later, in 391, the Latin mass was introduced, in order to separate
the praying priests from the people who spoke different languages.
Up to 433 the worship of the Virgin Mary, in imitation of the
Egyptian Virgin and Goddess Isis with her son Horus, had been
optional; it now became essential, and the double nature of Christ,
as God and Man, was made an indisputable article of faith. In
533 the belief in the double nature of Christ was advanced to an
indispensable dogma, necessary for our salvation. In imitation of
Indian, Persian, and Egyptian customs, extreme unction was intro
duced as a means of entering heaven.
Festive days in imitation of Indians, Persians, Egyptians, Phoe
nicians, Phrygians, Jews, Greeks, and Bomans were established.
�Christianity.
9
The Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, &c. of the Virgin
Mary became holy days. In imitation of the heathen ceremonies
in honour of Vesta, the Church ordained a corresponding festival.
Asses were walked in procession, decorated with flowers and leaves.
Prophets, Sybils, and Balaam himself were represented on such
occasions. A Virgin and a child were seated on a donkey, and
led by the motley crowd into one of the Churches. High Mass
was said, and priest and people brayed, instead of chanting “ Amen.”
Sometimes the revellers had the churches to themselves, like the
Babylonians when worshiping Mylitta (the Goddess of Love), once
a year, or like the Greeks and Bomans, when worshipping the God
of Wine, Dyonisius or Bacchus. The Christians on such occasions
dressed themselves as Satyrs or wild beasts, they celebrated a
burlesque mass of their own composition, consumed fat bacon, and
played at dice on the altar. A pope or abbot of fools was chosen.
This custom still survives in Mayence and Cologne, where the
feasts of Pools, “ the feriae stultorum ” of the Pagans are celebrated.
The Carnival, followed by fasting, was instituted in imitation of the
Saturnalia and Lupercalia of the Bomans. Prom the Indian
Brahmans, Buddhists, and Egyptians the doctrine of purgatory was
borrowed, and became from 593 one of the most profitable sources
for enriching the Papal exchequer. It was, however, also instru
mental, after more than 900 years, in breaking up a system built
on the distorted teachings of Christ. In 653 East and West
separated doctrinally, the Clergy in the East not acknowledging the
likeness and equality of the Eather and Son, but asserting that the
Son though like, was not equal to the Pather. The West, on the
other hand, insisted on the likeness and equality of the Pather and
the Son. In the year 750, as another means to enrich the Church
and priesthood, Masses for departed Souls were ordered to be said.
How vast the spread of idolatry and superstition amongst Christ
ians must have been, may best be judged from the decision of the
Synod, held at Prankfort in 794, which forbade the offering of
prayers to Saints. Like the Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and
Bomans, the Christians had their patron Saints. God, the Logos
and his incarnation Christ were forgotten and ignored, but the
worship of Saints and relics was introduced, altogether changing
the sublime character of Christianity, whose founder had discarded
all outward formal observances, and taught us the most exalted
principles of morals and mutual love. Belies were suddenly not
only introduced, but prayed to. A kind of Eetish-worship was
�10
Christianity.
established. The priests pretended to possess a feather from the
wing of the Archangel Gabriel; the sword and shield of the
Archangel Michael; some of the breath of Christ preserved in a
sacred pyx; a bottle filled with Egyptian darkness I sounds
from the bells which were rung at the entrance of Christ in
Jerusalem ; a ray of the star which guided the Wise Men from the
East. Later they pretended to possess a piece of the skin of St.
Dorotheus, who was flayed alive; some of the pitchers used at the
wedding at Cana; the comb of the Virgin Mary; the pole on which
the Cock perched when he crew after Peter had thrice denied his
master; some feathers from the wings of the same bird ; hay from
the manger in which Christ had lain ; the staff with which Moses
divided the Red Sea; thorns from the fiery bush before which
Moses stood. The chains of Peter, Paul, and John the Baptist; a
tooth of St. John, the Evangelist, and a piece of his shirt; a piece
of the arm of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary ; the sword
of St. Maurice which an Angel brought from heaven (at Nurem
berg, 1464) ; the head of John the Baptist; the bones of Balaam’s
ass ; the slippers of St. Clara, and nails from the cross (at Amiens).
All this may seem barely credible, but it must not be forgotten that
in our own century, this nineteenth century of progress and en
lightenment, the seamless Coat which Christ was said to have worn,
was exhibited at Treves, and attested to have worked miracles.
Of the cross to which Christ was nailed, more chips were sold than of
the 7 bones of Buddha, each of which was said to have been divided
into 12,000 pieces, making 84,000 fragments; if collected these splin
ters of the one cross would probably have furnished enough material
for some 12,000 crosses. Not less important were the real skulls of
the three Wise Men of the East, “ Caspar,” “ Melchior,” and “ Bal
thazar,” which were preserved in three different places, making nine
heads for the three, or three heads for each Saint. More miraculous
still was “ the house of the Virgin Mary,” which is not to be found
in Palestine, but at Loreto in Italy. The Legend tells us that,
when the Saracens conquered Judaea, Angels bore away the house
in which Mary had dwelt, and first deposited it at Tersate, near
Eiume, but later took it to Loreto, where it bears the following
Inscription: — “ The house of the Mother of God in which the
word became Flesh.” There is, however, some doubt as to whether
this is the house in which Christ was conceived at Nazareth, or the
one in which Christ was born at Bethlehem. If this legend may
be believed in, why not that which makes the Wizard, Merlin,
�Christianity,
11
carry Stonehenge through the air from Giant’s Causeway to the
plains of Salisbury; or why should it not be true that Zarathustra
lived for 40 years on one piece of cheese, which never grew old or
diminished in size.
The terrible, sunken state of Christianity at this period may be
further studied in the dry enactments of the Church in 800 a.d.
An English Monk, Winfred, known under the name of Bonifacius,
attempted at this time to reform the morals of the Clergy, and
exhibited great zeal in propagating Christianity in Germany. He
assisted Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) in his endeavour to bring
some kind of order into the dissolute state of the Church. Win
fred succeeded in persuading the first German-Roman Emperor to
submit to the sole authority of the Pope. The Bishops were in
future to be confirmed by the Pope, their provincial Synods were
to be abolished, and their resolutions declared null and void.
Legates, as representatives of the Pope, were sent all over the
Christian world, and it was their duty to carry out the dictates of
the one and indivisible central Papal power. The Pope was then to
be raised to the dignity of a temporal Prince, and united in his per
son Church and State, or rather the power over Heaven, Earth, and
Hell. In 805 the decree forbidding direct prayers to Saints was
enforced by Charlemagne. In 850 the Episcopal power, as an
independent element, was abolished by means of the falsified
Decrees of Isidorus, which began to form the basis of the Pope’s
supremacy in lay as well as in spiritual matters. In 993 Pope
John XV. ordered the worship of the Mother of Christ, as the
Mother of God : many Saints were canonized, and the right of'
canonization by Bishops was approved. In 1000 Church Bells
came into general use for the first time. In the year 1015 the
monks had to conform to a strict rule of celibacy, and in 1074,
Gregory VII. extended celibacy to all priests.
The Church became day by day wealthier. Masses for the dead
and the living were to be paid for; relics were sold wholesale;
sins were forgiven according to fixed tariffs ; souls were freed from
purgatory for so much money paid into the Pope’s exchequer; dis
pensations from fasting, and eating fish on Fridays, or from contract
ing forbidden marriages, were bargained for ; pilgrimages were en
couraged to obtain money from the deluded wanderers; the dying
were assiduously attended to, and their last wills carefully drawn
up, generally ensuring the augmentation of the worldly goods of the
church in exchange for the spiritual welfare guaranteed to the tes-
�12
Christianity.
tator in another world. Tithes were imposed, alms were demanded,
subscriptions were solicited, collections were made; kings, princes,
counts, nobles, citizens, traders, and even beggars, had to pay for
licences, in order to practise their vocations. Heretics were
ferreted out, their bodies burned in reality, or in effigy; and
their goods and chattels, their lands and property invariably con
fiscated for the benefit of the Church. On all occasions, in all
churches, throughout the whole of Christendom, the phrase re
sounded “blessed are the poor” not so much “in Spirit” as in
worldly goods, “ for their’s is the kingdom of Heaven.” By
means of a distorted phrase of Christ’s teachings the Church grew
richer and richer, so that more than two-thirds of the landed
property of Europe fell into the hands of the clergy.
These were the component elements which enabled one of the
most accomplished rulers of the Christian Church, Gregory VII.,
to establish its supremacy and universal dominion. Studies were
commended; arts were cultivated; schools, seminaries, and univer
sities were established with one exclusive aim: to increase the
temporal and spiritual power of the Pope.
This provoked the antagonism of the Teuton Emperors who
with their indomitable subjects, more than any other nation, stood
in need of the Christian discipline of passive obedience, and con
trolled activity. But the acting forces of morals and intellect, if
one-sidedly cultivated in humanity, may, through this dangerous
disturbance, easily come into conflict; and this now happened.
The lay-power saw itself reduced to a nonentity; altogether effaced
in temporal as well as in spiritual matters by the Popes, and their
obedient tools. The emperors began to revolt—not for intellectual,
but for pecuniary reasons. The bishops and other church-digni
taries had hitherto been called upon to pay to the imperial ex
chequer a certain sum for their investiture. This privilege was
now taken from the emperors, and the popes were endowed with
the sole right to appoint bishops and other church-dignitaries, and
to receive the fees for such investitures. This led to one of the
grandest struggles, recorded in the annals of history, between
Henry IV. and Gregory VII. At a diet, called together at Worms
(1076), the Pope was deposed, and in answer to this insult he ex
communicated the German Emperor, and all those who supported
him, and absolved his subjects of their allegiance to their lawful
lord and king. The dukes and nobles in the north of Germany were
for the Emperor, but most of the princes of southern Germany took
�Christianity.
13
the part of the Pope. The majority of the bishops who felt the
autocratic power of the Pope, sided with the Emperor; but the
monks, controlling the consciences of the ignorant masses, fought
the battle of the Pope, and were successful.
The Emperor saw himself day by day more deserted and isolated,
and resolved at last to ask the forgiveness of his spiritual superior,
who had fled to Canossa. Three days and three nights the mighty
Emperor of Germany had to stand, barefooted, bareheaded, in a
penitent’s white dress, exposed to hunger and thirst, to cold and
ignominy, to receive at last the Pope’s forgiveness. This did not
prevent the long and sanguinary strife which the revengeful, insa
tiable, and indomitable High-priest of the Romish Church kindled
in the German Empire. Bishops and counter-bishops, kings and
counter-kings, fought against one another. The battle-cries,
“ Pope ” or “ Emperor,” resounded everywhere. Devastation ruled
supreme. Fanaticism and superstition, plague and hunger, held
their awful revels, and death mowed down the people by thousands.
This terrible storm, produced by a conflict between the conservative
static power of morals, one-sidedly used by the Church, and the pro
gressive dynamic force of intellect as embodied in the lay-power of
the German emperors, was however most salutary in its effects on
humanity. The storm subsided. Towns and monasteries learned
to know their own powers. The former in opposing, the latter in
supporting the papal authority. Towns and monasteries became
the next safe refuges of wealth, free-thought, and learning.
The oppressed and neglected, or only one-sidedly cultivated
dynamic force broke forth into glorious activity in those very caves,
holes and dungeons which had been erected to destroy man’s
reasoning, inquiring, inventing and discovering faculty,—to
turn him into a groaning, praying, sighing, chanting, and
altogether useless machine. Prior to the ninth century there had
been no system either in History, or Philosophy. All was legendary
poetry. Dead bodies carried their own heads under their arms.
Saints were seen at the same time in different places. The sacred
tooth of Apollonia (still preserved in a jewelled casket at Cologne)
cured tooth-ache, when merely looked at. Records abounded of
fires which had been extinguished by the mere mention of the
name of Florian; and pigs and fishes were said to have listened
with rapt attention to eloquent sermons on the “conditional
immortality of the soul.” It was here, in England, that from the
dark recesses of the lonely cloisters and monastic schools, Scotus
�14
Christianity.
Erigena, the founder of the Nominalists, proclaimed his meta
physical hypotheses “ On nature,” based on the following four forces:
а. One that creates, and is not created.
б. One that is created, and creates.
c. One that is created, but does not create.
d. One that is neither created, nor creates.
The “ Nominalists” who relied on Aristotle, were opposed by
the “ Realists” who took Plato for their foundation, and had their
leader in St. Anselm (Archbishop of Canterbury), who devoted the
whole of his life to find out the real “ origin of evil.” Sanguinary
battles did not cease; but men began to take an interest in those
word-tournaments that took place in the different theatres of the
universities at Salerno, Bologna, Florence, Cordova, Paris, Oxford,
Montcassin, &c. “ The disputants both fought with dialectical
Grecian swords, Roman clubs, and theological word-spears, they
quoted and re-quoted, explained, finessed with phrases, thrust in >
the name of Aristotle, and parried with a sentence from Plato.” *
In the midst of the dark night of Mediaeval superstition and
artificially kept up ignorance we hear Bonaventura discoursing on
the external, and the inferior ; the internal, and the superior fight;
till we come to Friar Boger Bacon, who attempted experimental
philosophy, whilst the angelic Doctor Thomas Aquinas discoursed
on the substance of “ absolute” or “ relative” angels; whether there
are different species of angels, and whether they are corruptible or
incorruptible; in what direct or indirect relation do angels stand to
time or space, and how many angels might concentrate on one mathe
matical point. This led to another learned dissertation on the ques
tion how many angels could assemble on the tip of a needle; whether
angels are of matter, and what kind of matter; whether angels
have the power to understand, to comprehend, to communicate
what they think; whether their cognition is sharper in the morning
than in the evening; whether angels are capable of love and
hatred; whether they delight in bodily, or only spiritual enjoyments;
whether they can multiply, and how they originated; whether they
were created in grace, and whether they partake of the eternal
beatitude and glory, or whether they can be wicked and sinful.
Finding that some of the angels had been proud and overbearing,
the transition from Angelology to Demonology was easy, and the
angelic Doctor shows himself as well acquainted with all the subtle
niceties of devilry, the pride and insolence of devils, their mis* “ The Historical Development of Idealism and Realism,” by Dr. G. G.
Zerffi. Trans: R. Hist. Soc. Vol. VII., p. 136.
�Christianity.
15
chievous propensities and unlimited wickedness, as though he had
lived a hundred years amongst the demons, and explored the
physical geography, topography, climate, fauna and flora of the
different infernal regions.
Let us not assume for one moment that the intellectual powers
of Thomas Aquinas were uselessly wasted. It was he who proved
to demonstration and conviction that one may talk any amount of
nonsense in the mystic garb of dialectical sense; that one may use
first, second, and thirdly with great apparent learning, to prove
nothing, and fill the air by means of lung-power with empty words
—words—words. We ought diligently to study the 10 volumes
of Thomas Aquinas’s “ Summa Totius Theologiae.” Many learned
men have done so, and left the barren fields of metaphysics in
consequence, turning, like Occam, the invincible Doctor, to common
sense, and demanding a total reform of philosophy, just as we in
modern times insist on a total reform of education.
The vagaries and dreams, the delusions and hallucinations of the
“ Patres minorum gentium,” led to a better study of the hidden
forces of nature. Abstractions and reflections were made subor
dinate to impressions, exciting perceptions, engendering sensations,
which had to be mastered, grouped, and classified on the basis of
causation by a clear self-conscious mind, able to distinguish
between the probable and possible, and the improbable and im
possible.
In spite of St. Benedict’s assertion that there was such a thing
as “ ignorant knowledge ” and ” wise ignorance,” one of a number of
senseless sayings which have served to check Humanity in the
proper exercise of its reasoning powers, a better appreciation and
application of arithmetic, mathematics and geometry worked great
changes in the intellectual world. Agriculture was treated scien
tifically by the monks; classics were copied; bridges were built;
abbeys, cathedrals and churches constructed; works of art pro
duced ; colours used, leading to the study of chemistry, and gra
dually the inherent dynamic force of humanity burst asunder the
chains of gross ignorance, and became, through “ gunpowder,” the
torch-bearer of equality and brotherly love in the dark night of
superstition. America was discovered, and the dogmatically con
tradicted rotundity of the earth established. Mother Church con
demned the new-fangled ideas, and burnt heretics who ventured to
assert that the earth was moving round the sun, and not the sun
round the earth. More powerfully even than gunpowder and the
�16
Christianity.
discovery of America, the invention of the “ art of printing ” con
tributed to the possibility of the grand and mighty Reformation,
which was instituted by Wyckliff, Huss, Beuchlin, Erasmus of
Rotterdam, Luther, and Melanchthon. The Reformation en
deavoured to lead Christianity back to its primitive purity,—and
assumed, therefore apparently, a retrograde movement. This Re
formation is still going on—in spite of the stationary efforts of
some sects, however powerful, who think that man ought to pro
gress materially, financially, commercially, hygienically, and tech
nically, that he ought to be a free-trader, but on no account a free
thinker who dares to inquire into the past historical develop
ment of Humanity from a higher scientific point of view, with the
same freedom that is conceded to researches into the statistical
tables of export and import, of diseases, of births, deaths, and
marriages, the mileage of railways and electric wires, the state of
the army and navy, and the land-question.
It is still the spirit of authority, borrowed from the Hebrews,
that opposes the spirit of inquiry, taught us by the Hellens. Faith
and Science—or Hebraism and Hellenism are at war. In speaking
of Hebraism I must not be understood to attack those who now
profess the Jewish religion ; all who have followed my lectures will
know that I have at all times advocated, and shall always advocate,
complete tolerance of all creeds, and equal civil right® for all races,
whether white, yellow, or black. It is, however, my duty to point
out the influences of Hebraism and Hellenism from a historical
point of view, and in doing this, I do not mean to abuse the one
or inordinately to exalt the other. Both Faith and Science are
based on ignorance, with this distinction, that the votaries of
Faith submit to a doubtful authority, arbitrarily set up by most
distinguished, wise, and moral men who, however, could not
possibly have known more than the spirit of the times in which
they lived allowed, or the means of acquiring knowledge at their dis
posal enabled them to learn, but who are to be looked upon as in
fallible authorities for all times to come. This assumption neces
sarily led to a stationary state of believing, and checked the im
portant faculty of inquiry. Hebraism was bent one-sidedly on
proving that the past alone was true, that it was to be invariably
so in the present and the future; though this is contrary to the
very thinking, reasoning, inquiring spirit of intellect, with which
God has endowed us, and which was developed in us by Christ.
Science, on the other hand, endeavours to vanquish the curse
�Christianity.
17
of ignorance by free-inquiry, and not by Faith. The supernatural
may be there, the miraculous may have occurred, but neither of
them can be an object of Science. For if supernatural, it must be
incomprehensible, and to treat the incomprehensible scientifically
is in itself an idle attempt.
We must not assume that the static force can alone push on
humanity, nor discard the dynamic power, which fosters in us the
good sense to acknowledge the necessity of a counteracting power,
and is ready to do justice to the past, in endeavouring to change it
slowly, by degrees, and with all reverence for its antiquity. But
the spirit of reaction, of stability, of retrogression, is always directed
to the past, complaining bitterly that the present and future will
not abide by its notions, and to this phantom millions and millions
of human beings have been sacrificed. What are all the conspi
racies against single despots, popes or autocrats, in comparison
with the conspiracies of priests and blinded sectarians against the
innocent masses of the people whom they trampled under foot, left
in ignorance, and who were generally murdered, if in their misery
they endeavoured to improve their wretched lot. According to the
Old Testament, millions were slaughtered because they worshipped
a golden calf, set up by one of their rulers; or because they could
not pronounce the word “ Shibboleth,” looked at the broken ark,
or had a king after “ God’s own heart,” who committed every pos
sible crime, but generally did penance, and managed to have his
people punished for the wrong he had done. Wholesale murders
of the people attributed to the allwise, just, and merciful God, with
which the records of the past abound, were initiated by the Jews,
who began their proscriptions of the Gentiles under Trajan, and
were at last proscribed themselves. Theodosius persecuted the
Thessalonians in this spirit, and had 8000 of them massacred in the
amphitheatre. The Empress Theodora, a professed pious Chris
tian lady, blinded and maddened by misunderstood piety, had
100,000 inoffensive Manichseans slaughtered.
For a thousand years the world had to witness the persecution,
torture, and murder of innocent, hard-working Jews; but on what
principles did the deluded Christians base their wholesale massa
cres ? On the terrible law of retaliation, abolished by Christ: “ Ye
have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for
a tooth : But I say unto you That ye resist not evil.” We can have
no right to persecute any human being on account of his religious
opinions. We should endeavour, without any distinction of race
�18
Christianity.
or creed, to inspire humanity with loftier ideas of forgiveness,
patience, kindness, humility, and, above all, mutual love. We
should cease to perpetuate the inherited sin of exclusiveness, ignor
ing all that was glorious and divine in other nations, and not so
loudly proclaim our own holiness, because we adhere to certain
dogmas, or keep certain ritual and ceremonial formalities. The
seeds of stubborn righteousness; of cavilling on words ; on the
observance of outward postures without inward sense or meaning;
of hatred, persecution, and murder, were sown by those heartless
and narrow-minded Christians who endeavoured to oppose Hellen
ism, and fostered the dark spirit of Hebraism. These were the
men who checked the study of astronomy; discarded the knowledge
of geography; ignored zoology and ethnology; declared chemistry
a sinful prying into Grod’s mysteries; denied that geology was a
science; repudiated the theory of evolution; falsified chronology and
history, and treated cosmology with utter contempt. They placed
the spirit of stationary Hebraism above the progressive tendency
of Hellenism, inspired by the more cheerful and tolerant spirit of
Christianity.
“ If any prophet comes who dreams a dream, you shall put him
to death.” This terrible saying became a religious brain incrusta
tion, a pious unrelenting brain-petrification, and was the cause of
the Crusades, the persecution of the Albigenses, *
the Sicilian
Vespers, the 30 Years’ War, the misdeeds of the Inquisition, the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the Dragonades in Alsace. A
wild chaos of superstition and ignorance spread its poisoning
influence all over the regions where Christians ruled under the
false pretence of “ Loving their neighbours as themselves.” Witch
hunters with retrievers went out to discover the hidden haunts of
the Devil, in a squinting woman, a mole on the body of a child, or
the unholy speeches of old crones. The slightest doubt in a dogma
was sufficient cause to have a man or a woman put to the rack, and
finally under ceremonies which might almost be called comical, if
they had not been so revoltingly cruel, burnt to death. Even
Popes did not escape suspicion. One of them, who studied at the
University of Cordova, and was well versed in the rule of three,
was suspected of having been aided in acquiring this astounding
accomplishment by his Infernal Majesty “in propria persona.”
An Archbishop of Mayence was accused of downright heresy, be
cause he dared to make some chemical experiments. The mother
of the celebrated Astronomer Kepler, who was accused by hei’
�Christianity.
19
son-in-law of witchcraft, escaped being burned alive only through
the presence of mind of her son, who proved by mathematical
calculations that the dates of her birth, her age, and the constel
lations at the time of her marriage, were all in contradiction of her
being a witch. Terrible madness, under the garb of a distorted
Christianity, deluded even the most learned of those times. Fury,
envy, covetousness, ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance sought
everywhere for sanguinary sacrifices, because the blinded Theolo
gians in their zealous excitement, were more bent on the perpetua
tion of a spirit of hatred and wholesale murder, than the practice
of Christ’s command : “ Ye have heard that it had been said, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy: but I say unto
you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.”
Had human beings understood Christ’s teachings and philosophy,
supported by however superficial a knowledge of the historical
progress of humanity, they could never have committed such
crimes. Christians sacrificed, at the lowest possible computation,
16,083,019 human beings in 1600 years to their theological
differences, endeavouring to oppose Philosophy and History with
the same cruelty as the Bomans opposed Christianity at its bright
dawn.
Science now occupies the same position in regard to antiquated
superstitions, as did Christianity in opposition to the sunken
morals of the Heathens, and the petrified formalism of the He
brews. All the military force of the world cannot stop the pro
gress of Modern Thought. And what is that progress ? Is it
destructive or constructive? Are its tendencies bent upon the
annihilation of true Christianity, or are the followers of Francis
Lord Bacon in endeavouring to study nature and her phenomena
not promoting true Christianity ? Are we not to leave the Idols of
the tribe, the cave, the market-place, and the pulpit, in order to
practise benevolence and kindness, not only towards dumb crea
tures, but also towards human beings ? In our social organization,
we have neither attained the solution of the, mathematically correct,
moral laws of Spinoza, nor the sublime laws ruling the universe
as discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, being attraction (love), and
gravitation (order). The “ monas monadum ” of Pythagoras revived
by Leibnitz, is not yet Christ’s loving Father “ who maketh his
sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just
and the unjust.” Had we earnestly acted upon this principle, the
terrible scene enacted at the gates of one of our workhouses,
�20
Christianity.
where a poor woman died on a cold November morning—refused
admittance by the heartless master—could never have occurred.
This man escaped unpunished, whilst another individual who sent
six canaries through the post, had to suffer two months hard labour,
because two of the birds were found dead. Is this fact not a clear
proof that the life of a canary bird is of far greater value to us,
than that of a human creature ? But why ? Because we trouble
ourselves far more about the mystery of Transubstantiation or
grace, decreed as an article of faith, necessary to our salvation by
Innocent III. in 1215; or the necessity of auricular confession in
imitation of Egyptians and Greeks, ordered by the same Innocent
III., and revived by some clergymen, though they are members of
the reformed Church of England. We are still uncertain, whether
the Church had a right in 1440 to prohibit the Sacrament of the
Communion to be given to laymen in the two elements. It was only
in 1563 that all ecclesiastical power was to be concentrated in the
Pope, and that the Bishops were deprived of their rights to hold
regular convocations. The Christian faith, as late as 1563, at the
Council of Trent, was for ever established as the only true faith,
proclaiming the eternal damnation of all those who did not profess
the Christian, or rather, Papal faith. This astounding belief, so
degrading to the Creator, may be best illustrated by calculating
only the followers of Buddha, who must have numbered since 500
B.C., that is for 2,300 years, no less than 17,250,000,000,000 of
human beings, all created by an Almighty and merciful God, sent
into this world, in order to toil, to do no special harm, to die, and
then to be cast for ever into Hell fire. I know that this is not
the view of all Divines, for some of them have kindly invented
a neutral place in the universe for shady, colourless souls, who are
not exactly good enough for heaven, nor bad enough for the infernal
regions; for souls of good and kind-hearted men who do no harm,
but think for themselves, and who do not wish humanity to be
governed by the hierarchical dictates of spiritual despots, but by
the laws of an Intellectual Democracy that knows the limits of its
own power. The conclusive philosophy of Immanuel Kant shows
us the real tendency of our modern times, “ to spread the greatest
amount of happiness among the people of all languages and creeds,”
bringing them into one common brotherhood. But Kant’s philo
sophy has done more than this; the mode of reasoning propounded
in it has unconsciously become the logical and mental heredity in
our generation. We think differently; the glorious awe of mys-
�Christianity.
21
tery, and the wonderful uncertainty of knowledge—the marvellous
domains of the supernatural—fade more and more away. It is in
vain that the grand-mother of Christ, the Holy Anne, should have
been distinguished according to a decree of the Church in 1854, by
an immaculate conception; that Pope Pius IX. should have issued a
syllabus in 1864, declaring war against all the scientific efforts of
our age, leading to scepticism, infidelity, and a prospective de
crease of the Peter’s pence; it is in vain that Pius IX. should
have established in 1870, to his own satisfaction, the infallibility
of the Pope—the electric light of common sense is opposed to all
supernatural agencies. We have only to try to be moral, and
to be intellectually cultivated, and all other unintelligible subjects
can be left to themselves. History teaches us the great fact that
there have been good and bad men, in all ages, at all places
under all religious creeds; and that with the growth of learn
ing and the spread of education, at all events we have become
more tolerant, and are now convinced that, no matter what
a man may profess, if his actions are in contradiction, with
our common laws, based on justice, he is a bad man. The
limits of our pure reasoning faculty have been narrowed, but
our powers to promote and develope our intellectual force have
marvellously increased with each succeeding generation. This
power will go onwards, unchecked by any artificial means. This
process of our progressive development I may illustrate by a scene
from life. A father sat one morning in his library pondering
over his books, when his eldest son, a boy just in his teens, rushed
in with a joyful face and exclaimed “ Papa, Colenso is right! ”
The father turned round astonished at his boy’s theological learn
ing, and asked him quietly, “ Have you read Colenso ? ’’ “ No,”
replied the boy, “ I have read a refutation of him, called ‘ Moses,
or the Zulu,’ which has convinced me that Colenso must be right.”
The father was silent, but was deeply impressed with the use
lessness of the exertions of the reverend opposer to Bishop Colenso
vainly applied in this age, when our whole brain-formation is
revolting against mere dialectical efforts; when an intellectual
democracy sways the minds of our very children, to check which
would be a crime—a crime which to commit, is becoming day by
day a greater impossibility. A bright and glorious future is
before humanity, when Christianity will revive, and turn our Arm
strongs and Woolwich infants into locomotives and motors of
electric light, when the last remnants of our monasteries and
�22
Christianity.
nunneries will be changed into schools and lecture halls; when
sects shall cease. Then a new heaven, and a new earth will be
visible, and the Alpha and the Omega of humanity will be love
in truth and truth in love. This future state of Christianity, based
on science and justice, on intellect and morals, I will endeavour to
describe in my next, the fourth and last lecture on “ Christianity.”
The Society’s Lectures by Dr. Zerffi. which have been printed, are—
On “Natural Phenomena and their Influence on different Religious
Systems.”
On “The Vedas and the Zend-Avesta: the First Dawn of Religious
Consciousness in Humanity.”
On “ The Origin and the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil.”
On “ Dreams and Ghosts.”
On “ Ethics and ^Esthetics.”
The above are out ofprint.
On “ The Spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
On “ The Eastern Question; from a Religious and Social point of view.”
On “ Jesuitism; and the Priest in Absolution.”
On “ Pre-Adamites; or, Prejudice and Science.”
On “ Long and short Chronologists.”
On “ Christianity—I. The Origin of Christianity from a strictly historical
point of view.”
II. “The Influence of the ‘Fathers’ on the further deve
lopment of Christianity.”
III. “Monasticism and Scholasticism; Inventions an
Discoveries; Faith and Science; Hebraism and
Hellenism.”
All price 3d., or post-free 3£d.
By the same Author are the following Works:—
“Faust,” by Goethe, with Critical and Explanatory Notes. Second
Edition. London: David Nutt, 270, Strand. 1862.
“ Spiritualism and Animal Magnetism.” Third Edition. London: Hardwicke and Bogue, 192, Piccadilly. 1876.
“ A manual of the Historical Development of Art: Pre-historic, Ancient,
Classic, and Early Christian.” London: Hardwicke and Bogue, 192,
Piccadilly. 1876.
�
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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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Christianity : third part. Monasticism and scholasticism; inventions and discoveries; faith and science; hebraism and hellenism, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's, Langham Place, on Sunday 20th November 1881
Creator
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Sunday Lecture Society
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. G. G. Zerffi discusses a variety of topics in the third part of his series of lectures on the history of Christianity, including the influence of Heathenism, the Crusades and the Reformation.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 22, [2] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: A list of the Society's lectures listed p. 22 and the following unnumbered page.
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Sunday Lecture Society
Date
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1881
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“For no more can he who understands hut one religion under
stand even that religion,than the man who knows only one language
can understand that language.”—Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor.
“ Woe to the Philosopher who will not condescend to flatter in
his picture of man 1 ... he sets the reading public against him ;
he is refuted beforehand or -worse than refuted, for he is laid
aside unread.”—Minor JKorZs, Geo. Grote.
�CHRISTIANITY:
Viewed in the Light of our Present Knowledge
and Moral Sense.
L—RELIGION : PRIMITIVE, AND AMONG
THE LOWEST RACES.
Part II.—THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Part
By CHARLES BRAY,
AUTHOR OF THE “PHILOSOPHY OF NECESSITY: ” “ A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY,
OR SCIENCE OF MAN,” ETC.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS. SCOTT,
NO. Il, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price One. Shilling.
�T
�CHRISTIANITY.
PART I.
RELIGION ! PRIMITIVE AND AMONG THE LOWEST RACES.
“Everything that exists depends upon the Past, prepares the
Future, and is related to the whole.”—Oersted.
“ I view all beings, not as special creations, but as the lineal de
scendants of some few beings which lived before the first bed of the
Silurian system was deposited.”—Origin of Species, C. Darwin,
first Edition, pp. 488-9.
“ Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the
necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gra
dation.”—Ibid., p. 488.
“ The variation of human thought proceeds in a continuous man
ner, new ideas springing out of old ones, either as corrections or
developments, but never spontaneously originating. With them
as with organic forms, each requires a germ or seed. The intel
lectual phase of humanity, observed at any moment, is therefore
an embodiment of many different things. It is connected with the
past, is in unison with the present, and contains the embryo of the
future.”—The Intellectual Development of Europe. J. W. Draper,
vol. ii. p. 109.
HESE views embody the philosophy of the present
day, and it is a no less interesting than profitable
study to follow the evidence in the works of Lubbock,
Tylor, Draper, Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, and others,
upon which these truths are founded. By slow and
gradual, and probably unbroken links, the whole physi
cal world has been evolved, and this is no less true of
the world of mind. There has been nothing spon
taneous, nothing supernatural, but everything that
exists in the growth of mind, as in the physical world,
T
CA.
�4
Primitive Religion.
depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is
related to the whole. We must go hack to pre-historic
times to explain the thoughts and feelings, the aptitudes
and prejudices, the customs and languages of the present.
Many things otherwise utterly incomprehensible are
“ survivals” of primaeval barbaric life and thought.
Customs differ widely according to climate and the
world’s age. There is no telling in what form they
may come down to us, but they are evidence that one
human nature is common to all the races and tribes
scattered over the habitable globe. The world, at the
present time, furnishes illustrations of all the forces
that have been at work in its original formation both
physical and mental. Heat and water, certainly, are a
little moderated in their action, but as rude savages as the
world has ever known still continue to exist, and the ex
tremes of civilization are as great now as at any previous
era. In the north, where the cold imposes considerable
limitation to the pleasures of life, the Esquimau
enters his house by the chimney, the occupants passing
in and out “ by means of a strong pole notched deep
enough to afford a little holding for a toe” (“Pre-his
toric Man,” p. 393, by Sir John Lubbock). A more
civilized person would no doubt prefer a ladder, and
perhaps a different place of entrance, but this mode of
ingress and egress may have conveniences that are not
at once obvious to a European. In the midst of all
the ice and snow in these regions, the great want is
water. The houses being built of ice and snow, a tem
perature above 32 degrees would make them what
would be considered unpleasantly damp to a European.
But fortunately for this phase of domestic comfort they
have no wood, but use blubber and oil to keep up a
tolerable temperature. They use lamps outside and
consume an immense quantity of blubber inside. The
temperature of their bodies is about the same as our
own ! they are heated from within by the slow e.ombustion—the union of carbon and oxygen—of what
�Primitive Religion.
5
thus constitutes both food and fuel. The heat is sus
tained by thick skins. The inhabitant of Central
Africa, on the contrary, enters his house, very much of
the same shape, by a hole at the bottom, through which
he crawls on his hands and knees. The Fuegians of
the Antarctic region are a much lower race than their
Esquimaux brethren of the Arctic, and the Australians,
Papuans, and Fijians are lower still. The Fuegians,
when hard pressed for food in severe winters, kill an
old woman, and when asked why they did not kill
their dogs, they said ££ Dog catch ioppo” (■£.<?.) otters.
We should justly consider this a rather narrow view
of utilitarianism, and the conscience does not appear to
speak very loud in this stage of civilization: all doubtless
have their ideas of right and wrong, slightly varying,
however, in their significance : thus a savage explained
that if anybody took away his wife that was bad, but if he
took another man’s that would be good (Tylor, vol. ii.,
p. 289). The marriage ceremony among the Bushmen
of Australia is very simple and inexpensive. The man
selects his lady-love, knocks her down with a club, and
drags her to his camp. In South Africa, in the British
settlement of Natal, the natives are beginning to show
marked evidence of civilization. Mr Froude tells us
that a young Zulu, by hiring himself out at six shil
lings a day, soon finds himself in a position to buy a
couple of wives; he makes them work for him as well
as for their own living, and he thus sets up as a
gentleman for life, and a very troublesome one we are
told.
An interesting question has, however, arisen in Dutch
Borneo as to the extent of the duty a wife owes to her
husband. The circumstances, as detailed in a letter
written from Bandj ermassin, and published in a Java
paper, are as follows:—“ It seems that a fugitive rebel
chief, who is now well stricken in years, has lately
with commendable prudence been making arrangements
as to the disposition of his property after his departure
�6
Primitive Religion.
from this life. Among other directions he has given
orders that immediately on his decease his two youngest
wives shall he killed in order that they may accompany
him to the next world. The two ladies for whom this
honour is designed strangely enough fail to appreciate it,
and have fled to the Dutch fort on the Tewch, where they
have put themselves under the protection of the com
mandant. The venerable chief is naturally incensed at
their having taken this ill-advised step, and has expressed
his intention of compelling the fugitives to return to their
domestic duties without further nonsense. His indigna
tion is shared by his family, friends, and followers, who
have rallied round him in his trouble, and by the latest
accounts he was preparing to attack the fort where his
wives had taken refuge. In the meantime, the govern
ment steamer ‘Baritoy’ had been despatched to the
assistance of the commandant, with a reinforcement of
twenty-five soldiers; and a howitzer, with artillerymen,
had also arrived at the fort. This painful family dif
ference has naturally created a profound sensation in
the colony, and it is to be hoped that it will be satis-,
factprily arranged without a recourse to arms.”—Pall
Mall Gazette.
The conventional practices and views of etiquette of
what we call savages differ considerably from our own ;
thus, with us, to pull a man’s nose is not considered
polite, whereas the Esquimaux pull noses as a mark of
respect (“Pre-historic Man,” p. 456). Among them
also the temporary loan of a wife is considered a mark
of peculiar friendship (“Primitive Culture,” vol. ii.,
p. 136). Civilization borrows the wife without the
consent of the husband.
The inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago are of
increasing interest as our intercourse with them
extends. Little, however, comparatively, is yet known
of the natives of Hew Guinea and the neighbour
ing islands, and that little certainly does not reveal
them to us as a very interesting people. The principal
�Primitive Religion.
7
supply of meat is from human flesh, and that not
always from the bodies of their enemies, for Mr Kiehl
tells us, in an article read before the London Anthropo
logical Society, that the people “ of the Solomon Archi
pelago are obliged to build their houses in the most
inaccessible spots on the rocks, even to the very sum
mit of the peak on Eddystone Island, to prevent being
treacherously killed at night and eaten by the very
friends with whom they feasted the day before on a
roasted enemy’s body, or perhaps on a raw one j those of
Vaati, who, as late as 1849, were yet all cannibals, pre
ferring children to adults, and girls to boys.” Mr
Kiehl thinks it by no means a sufficient excuse for
this that other animal food is scarce, for although there
are neither cattle nor sheep, still there are plenty of
dogs, fowls, pigeons, and fish. When we consider, he
says, how many Hindoos live altogether without animal
food, “ the Papuans must be a desperately wicked people.”
Their social customs are certainly unpleasant. “ What
good,” he says, “ can be said of such people as the
natives of Vaati, whose custom it is, when they wish
to make peace, to kill one or more of their own people,
and send the bodies to those with whom they have
been fighting, to eat ? On the death of chiefs it is the
frequent custom among them to kill two, three, or
more men, to make a feast for the mourners. When
parents are unwilling to bear the fatigue of rearing their
children, or when they find them a hindrance to their
work, they often bury them alive.” As these interest
ing creatures are near relations to the Fijians, who are
about to become British subjects, it is as well to know
something about their habits, and it is pleasing to think
also, that they are “ beginning to find out that trading
with the white men is more advantageous than killing
and eating them.” Commerce is everywhere the great
civiliser. Mr Kiehl says, “ I regret not to know any
thing about the religion of the Papuans. The practice
of circumcision seems to point to at least some form of
�8
Primitive Religion.
religious observances.” Unless eating their fellows is
another form, we certainly cannot say much for their
devotional aspirations.
I mention those things to show that the savages now
in the world are as primitive and varied in their indi
vidual habits and customs as in pre-historic times, and
that we may probably learn as much, by the study of their
interesting ways, of the origin of many of our own
modes of thought and action as by going far back into
the past.
It is a question whether all our altered customs are
improvements. Thus at Tahiti and some other islands,
tattooing was almost universal, and a person not
properly tattooed would be as much reproached and
shunned, as if with us he should go about the streets
naked (“Primitive Culture,”p. 377), and the Pijian fully
believed that a woman who was not tattooed in an
orthodox manner during life, could not possibly hope
for happiness after death (Idem, p. 459). This mode of
painting our clothes upon our bodies would certainly
save much thought and time that might be devoted to
more useful purposes, and it would probably save many
of those colds that are caught by going about only
half-naked, when people are in what they call fulldress.
But it is the religions of the world that furnish the
largest amount and best illustration of “survivals.”
The ideas upon which they are mainly founded have
been thousands of years forming, and the question
immediately presents itself how far opinion and con
duct based on such ideas are in conformity with modern
knowledge, or only with such knowledge as was available
in the earlier and ruder stages of culture ? Upon in
vestigation, it is evident that the religious opinions of
the present day are results adopted from previous
systems which have come down from the earliest age,
and that they could not otherwise have found accept
ance now. We should shrink with horror from our
�Primitive Religion.
9
present theological creeds, if they had not come down
to us from a thousand generations of the past.
The deities of savages are evil, not good; they may
be forced into compliance with the wishes of man;
they require bloody, and rejoice in human, sacrifices;
they are mortal, not immortal; a part, not the author
of, nature ; they are to be approached by dances rather
than by prayers ; and often approve what we call vice,
rather than what we esteem a virtue (“ The Origin
of Civilisation,” by Sir John Lubbock, p. 195). For
like ourselves, “ they think the blessings come of them
selves, and attribute all evil to the interference of
malignant beings” (Idem, p. 196).
“ They have much clearer notions of an evil than of a
good Deity, whom they fear, believing him to be* the
occasion of sickness, death, thunder, and every calamity
that befalls them” (Idem, p. 212).
The Tartars of Katschiutze (like our Pessimists) con
sider the evil spirit to be more powerful than the good.
(Idem, p. 213).
All religion is originally based on fear—love does
not enter till long after—fear of the invisible and
unknown, and all cause at first is invisible and un
known. Darwin in “ Expressions and Emotions in
Men and Animals,” p. 144, speaking of the effect of
fear among some of the larger baboons, says of one of
d;hem (Cynopetheius Niger) that “ when a turtle was
placed in its compartment, this monkey moved its lips
in an odd, rapid, jabbering manner, which the keeper
declared was meant to conciliate and please the turtle.”
Here we have probably the origin of what is now called
Divine Service. “ Id awe,”Tylor tells us, “the Philippine
Islanders, when they saw an alligator, prayed him with
great tenderness to do them no harm, and to this end
offered him whatever they had in their boats, casting it
into the water” (“Primitive Culture,” p. 209). “Primos
in orbe deos fecit timor.” “As an object of worship,
the serpent is pre-eminent among animals. Not only
�io
Primitive Religion.
is it malevolent and mysterious, but its bite—so trifling
in appearance, and yet so deadly, producing fatal
effects rapidly, and apparently by no adequate means—
suggests to the savage almost irresistibly the notion of
something divine, according to his notions of divinity ”
(Sir John Lubbock). “All things that are able to do
them hurt beyond their prevention/’ says Tylor, “the
primitive man adores” (“Primitive Culture,” p. 340).
The first idea of God is almost always as an evil spirit,
and among the savages of the present day, religion is
anything but an ennobling sentiment.
Thus the
Caffres believe in the existence of a heaven for those
only who had killed and eaten many of their enemies,
while those who were effeminate would be compelled
to dwell with Aygnan, their devil (“ Pre-historic Man,”
p. 469).
The Maories were perpetually at war during life, and
hoped to continue so after death. They believed in a
spirit named Atona. When any one was ill, Atona
was supposed to be devouring his inside, and their
religious service was curses and threats, on some
occasions attended with human and other sacrifices in
the hope of appeasing his wrath. The New Zealanders
believed that the greater number of human bodies they
eat, the higher would be their position in the world to
come. Under such a creed, we are told there is a
certain diabolical nobility about the habit, which is,
at any rate, far removed from the grovelling sensuality
of a Fijian. Certainly to qualify yourself to go to
heaven by eating your fellow-creatures, is much more
spiritual than to eat them from mere gluttony.
The Dayaks considered that the owner of every
human head they could procure would serve them in
the next world, where indeed a man’s rank would be
according to the number of heads in this a young man
might not marry till he had procured a head. Waylaying and_ murdering men for their heads was the
Layak s religion. To be an acknowledged murderer is
�Primitive Religion.
11
the object of the Fijian’s restless ambition. Even
among the women there were few, who, in some way,
had not been murderers. To this they were trained
from their infancy. One of the first lessons taught an
infant, is to strike its mother. Mr Ellis tells us that
no portion of the human race was ever perhaps sunk
lower in brutal licentiousness, than this isolated people.
Certainly their customs and conscience differed a little
from our own, but notwithstanding, we are told that
Captain Cook and his officers lived with the natives
“in the most cordial friendship,” and took leave of
them with great regret, and Mr Ellis says, they showed
great anxiety to possess copies of the Bible, when it
was translated into their language. “ They were,” he
says, “ deemed by them more precious than gold—yea,
than much fine gold;” no doubt being very discriminat
ing as to the quality of gold, and able also to appreciate
the dealings of God’s chosen people with the Canaan
ites, in which the inhabitants of whole cities were
murdered in cold-blood—men, women, and children,
ruthlessly slaughtered—more highly than we should.
Among most savages it was considered the right
thing, and there was no resisting public opinion, that
wives, friends and slaves, should accompany their chiefs
into the next world. By some they were strangled, by
others buried alive. “The Gauls in Caesar’s time,” Tylor
tells us, “burned at the dead man’s sumptuous funeral,
whatever was dear to him, animals also, and much-loved
slaves and clients (“Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 419).
The ancient Gauls had also a convenient custom of
transferring to the world below the repayment of loans.
Even in comparatively modern times, the Japanese
would borrow money in this life, to be repaid with
heavy interest in the next {Idem, p. 443). When a
New Zealand chief died, the mourning family gave his
chief widow a rope to hang herself with in the woods,
and so rejoin her husband. In Cochin China, the
common people object to celebrating their feast of the
�12
Primitive Religion.
dead on the same day with the upper classes, for this
excellent reason, that the aristocratic souls might make
the servants’ souls carry their presents for them—
which presents were given with the most lavish ex
travagance (Idem, p. 441). As to what became of
the objects sacrificed for the dead—strangled wives,
servants, golden vessels, gay clothes or jewels—although
they rot in the ground, or are consumed on the pile,
they nevertheless come into the possession of the dis
embodied souls they are intended for, not the material
things themselves, but phantasmal shapes corresponding
to them (Idem, p. 439).
The native Australian goes gladly to be hanged, in the
belief that he would “jump up whitefellow, and have
plenty of sixpences;” and the West African negroes
commit suicide when in distant slavery, that they may
revive in their own land (Idem, vol. ii. p. 5).
Souls are supposed to appear in the other world in
the same age and condition as they leave this, conse
quently true religion, and the liveliest filial piety
require that parents should be dispatched before they
get too old. They are generally, where this belief
obtains, buried alive, with their own joyous consent.
The Fijians consider the gods as beings of like
passions with themselves. They love and hate; they
are proud and revengeful, and make war, and kill and
eat each other; yet they look upon the Samoans with
horror, because they have no religion, and no belief in
any such deities. “It has been asserted,” says Sir John
Lubbock over and over again, “ that there is no race of
men so degraded as to be entirely without a religion—
without some idea of a Deity. So far,” he says, “ from
beuUr true’ the verJ reverse is the case ” (Idem, p.
467). Let us hope so!
Primitive men, as mankind do now, worshipped Un
known Cause—the powers of nature ; every tree, spring,
river, mountain, grotto, had its divinity: the sun, the
moon, the stars, had each their spirit. The names of
�Primitive Religion.
13
the Semitic deities, Max Muller tells us (Fraser,.
June 1870), are mostly words expressive of moral
qualities, they mean the strong, the exalted, the Lord,
the King j and they grow hut seldom into divine
personalities. The Aryan race are recognised every
where, in the valleys of India, in the forests of Germany,
by the common names of their deity, all originally ex
pressive of natural powers, thousands of years before
Homer or the Veda, worshipping an unseen being
under the self-same name, the best, the most exalted
name they could find in their vocabulary. The popular
worship of ancient China was, Max Muller says, a
worship of single spirits, of powers, we might almost
say of names ; the names of the most prominent powers
of nature which are supposed to exercise an influence
for good or evil on the life of man. If the presence of
the divine was perceived in the strong wind, the strong
wind became its name; if its presence was perceived
in the earthquake and the fire, they became its name;
“wherever in other religions we should expect the
name of the Supreme Deity, whether Jupiter or Allah,
we find in Chinese the name of Tien or Sky.” “Do
we still wonder/ he says, “at polytheism or mythology 1”
No doubt the first religious worship was of the
powers of Nature or Spirits—a sort of deprecation of
their evil influence, and of their power to hurt. But
whence came man’s knowledge of spirits ? Brom his
own supposed double nature. When a man died, he
felt that with the life something had left the dead upon
which life and consciousness, i.e., all the difference
between life and death, depended. This he called his
soul or spirit. In sleep, he often dreamed of distant
places, and he thought his spirit went there ; in dreams
also his dead comrades often appeared to him, and he
thought therefore they continued to exist somewhere.
Out of this dream has grown the popular religion in
all times and in all countries; Man has an instinctive
love of life and dread of death, and he thinks he must
�14
Primitive Religion.
live again, somewhere, because he wishes to do so,
accordingly the somewhere was soon found—a place
above for the good, and below for the bad, where
people would be rewarded or punished as they might
behave themselves here. No one liked to part for ever
with his parents, children, and friends, and if there
was not a place where the bereaved could meet them
again, why, there ought to be, and that soon settled it.
A place was wanted also for the naughty people, and
the people we did not like, to go to. The primitive
notions of this Future State differed considerably from
our own, only the worst part of it has come down to
us—an eternity of torture for the great majority?
Of the locality of this Future State, Herbert Spencer
says, “ The general conclusion to which we are led is,
that the ideas of another world pass through stages of
development. The habitat of the dead, originally con
ceived as coinciding with that of the living, generally
diverges—here to the adjacent forest, and elsewhere to
distant hills and mountains. The belief that the dead
rejoin their ancestors, leads to further divergences which
vary according to the traditions. Stationary descend
ants of troglodytes think they return to a subterranean
other world, whence they emerged; while immigrant
races have for their other-worlds, the abodes of their
fathers, to which they journey after death, over land,
down a river, or across the sea, as the case may be.
Societies consisting of conquerors and conquered,
having separate traditions of origin, have separate other
worlds, which differentiate into superior and inferior
places, in correspondence with the respective positions
of the two races. Conquests of these mixed people
by more powerful immigrants, bring further complica
tions- additional other worlds, more or less unlike in
their characters, finally, where the places for the
departed, or for superior classes of beings, are mountain
tops, there is a transition to an abode in the heavens ;
which, at first near and definite, passes into the remote
�Primitive Religion.
15
and indefinite, so that the supposed residence of the
dead, coinciding at first with the residence of the
living, is little by little removed in thought: distance
and direction grow increasingly vague, and finally the
localization disappears in spaced’ (“ The Principles of
Sociology,” p. 232.)
This dream of a double self—of a living soul and
spirit, the cause of life and all mental action, if it has
done good, has also done infinite mischief in the world.
On the one side it is true that children in many cases
would scarcely have been induced to take care of their
parents in old age, if it had not been from fear of their
ghosts when they were dead, and on the other, in
China, ancestor worship is the dominant religion of
the land, and it has had more to do with checking
civilization there, than anything else. The Chinese
look backwards, not forwards, and “ for thousands of
years this great people have been seeking the living
among the dead.” It is the ghosts of their fathers
and mothers that they are always thinking of, and of
the harm that they may do them, every unknown
cause with them being a spirit. This is why mines
cannot be worked, or railways made, lest these inter
esting relics should be disturbed, and this insult to the
remains of the dead visited upon the living : and after
the birth of a Chinese baby, it is customary to hang
up its father’s trousers in the room, wrong way up,
that all such evil influences may enter into them,
instead of into the child. All diseases are supposed to
come from such source, or from some tormenting,
offended deity, the latter being most easily appeased
by the offer of a hog ; in the same way as the Negroes
of Sierra Leone sacrifice an ox when they want “ to
make God glad very much, and do Kroomen good.”
At the present day when an affectionate wife says
to a sneezing husband, “Bless you, my dear,” the ex
pression comes from the time when sneezing was
thought to indicate “possession” by an ancestral
�i6
Primitive Religion.
spirit; and the Hindu when he gapes still snaps his
thumb and finger, and repeats the name of some god—
Rama, to prevent an evil spirit going down his throat.
It has been in this kind of chaotic superstitious
atmosphere, in which everything was supposed to be
brought about by spirits, that what are called our
religious instincts, were originally formed. This is
the soil in which even our present ideas of God, the
Soul, and Immortality first took root.
Mr Tylor says (vol. ii. p. 286) “ Conceptions originat
ing under rude and primitive conditions of human
thought, suffer in the course of ages the most various
fates. Yet the philosophy of modern ages still, to a
remarkable degree, follows the primitive courses of
savage thought.” This is true as regards our philo
sophy, but it is still more true with respect to our
religion, for ancestor-worship in the saints, and inter
cession to them and to the “ mother of God, the Queen of
heaven,” and anxiety for the future condition of this
dream-created soul, still rule the mind of Christendom.
Propitiation and sacrifice form the substance of all
religions in their earliest stages. Man first of all, and
above all, fears the spirits and gods that his imagination
has created, and he offers up to them what he most
values, and which he thinks, therefore, they will most
value—his finest fruit, the firstling of the flock, even
his own children. An only son was thought to be the
greatest and most acceptable sacrifice. When the Carthagenians got into trouble, three hundred children of the
first people of the city were offered up in the fire to their
God; so willing has man always been to cast upon
another the burden of his own misdeeds. The religion
of the present day is little more than a “survival” of the
past, and “ throughout the rituals of Christendom stands
an endless array of supplications unaltered in principle
from savage times—that the weather may be adjusted
to our local needs, that we may have the victory over
all our enemies, and that life, and health, and wealth, and
�Primitive Religion.
17
happiness, may beours.” (“Primitive Culture,” vol. ii. p.
336).
We are told that man. is especially distinguished by
the possession of a conscience which, like a heavenly
messenger, guides him in his choice in the immutable
and eternal distinctions between right and wrong. If
this be so, it is in a very incipient state in primitive
man, and this guide itself seems to require educating and
guiding quite as much as any other of his faculties.
Thus Dr Seeman tells us of the Fijians, that “in any
transaction where the national honour had to be
avenged, it was incumbent on the king and principal
chiefs—in fact a duty they owed their exalted station,
to avenge the insult offered to the country, by eating
the perpetrators of it.” He adds, “ I am convinced,
however, that there was a religious, as well as a political
aspect of this custom.” No doubt conscience gave them
a high sense of their social, political, and religious
duties, only they differed slightly from us, as to the
mode in which they should be carried out. So also
of the practice, where from a religious sense of duty,
children eat their parents, when they got old and in
firm, waiting however, till the season when salt and
limes were at the cheapest.
The savage theory of the universe refers its pheno
mena to the action of pervading personal spirits, similar
to what in dreams they have made out their own spirits
to be; the powers of nature are everywhere spiritual
ized and personified. With increasing knowledge unity
is given to these powers, and we have a God One and
Indivisible : at least this becomes the creed of the
highest minds, the multitude still continue to find a
separate God in everything, and for everything. (An
excellent account of how these so-called religious ideas
of the existence of the “ double ” or soul, of a future
state, and another world, arise in the minds of savages,
from which they have come down to us, changed from
a very definite and material conception to a very indefi
�18
Primitive Religion.
nite and immaterial one, is to be found in Mr Herbert
Spencer’s “Principles of Sociology,” now publishing.)
From this point, says Dr J. W. Draper, that is, from
the very earliest ages when the comparative theology
of India was inaccessible, “ there are two well-marked
steps of advance. The first reaches the consideration
of material nature : the second, which is very grandly
and severely philosophical, contemplates the universe
under the conceptions of space and force alone. The
former is exemplified in the Vedas and Institutes of
Menu, the latter in Buddhism. In neither of these
stages do the ideas lie idle as mere abstractions ; they
introduce a moral plan, and display a constructive
power not equalled even by the Italian Papal system.
They take charge not only of the individual, but regu
late society, and show their influence in accomplishing
political organizations, commanding our attention from
their prodigious extent, and venerable for their anti
quity.
“ I shall, therefore, briefly refer, first, to the elder,
Vedaism, and then to its successor Buddhism. The
Vedas, which are the Hindu Scriptures, are asserted to
have been revealed by Brahma. They are based upon
an acknowledgment of a universal spirit pervading all
things: ‘ There is in truth but one Deity, the
Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the Universe, whose work
is the Universe.’ ‘ The God above all Gods, who
created the earth, the heavens, and the waters.’ The
world, thus considered as an emanation of God, is
therefore a part of him ; it is kept in a manifest state
by his energy, and would instantly disappear if that
energy were for a moment withdrawn. Even as it is, it
is undergoing unceasing transformations, everything be
ing in a transitory condition. The moment a given phase
is reached, it is departed from or ceases. In these per
petual movements, the present can scarcely be said to
have any existence, for as the past is ending, the future
has begun.
�Primitive Religion.
ig
“ In such a never-ceasing career all material things are
urged, their forms continually changing, and returning,
as it were, through revolving cycles to similar states. . .
“ In this doctrine of universal transformation there is
something more than appears at first. The theology
of India is underlaid with Pantheism. “ God is One
because he is All.’ The Vedas in speaking of the rela
tion of nature to God, make use of the expression that
he is the Material as well as the Cause of the Universe,
‘ the Clay as well as the Potter.’ They convey the
idea that while there is a pervading spirit existing
everywhere of the same nature as the soul of man,
though differing from it infinitely in degree, visible
nature is essentially and inseparably connected there
with : that as in man the body is perpetually undergo
ing change, perpetually decaying and being renewed,
or, as in the case of the whole human species, nations
come into existence and pass away, yet still there con
tinues to exist what may be termed the universal human
mind, so for ever associated and for ever connected are
the material and the spiritual. And under this aspect
we must contemplate the Supreme Being, not merely as
a presiding intellect, but as illustrated by the parallel
case of man, whose mental principle shows no tokens ex
cept through its connections with the body j so matter,
or nature, or the visible universe, is to be looked upon
as the corporeal manifestation of God.
“We must continually bear in mind that matter ‘ has
no essence, independent of mental perception ; that ex
istence and perceptibility are convertible terms; that
external appearances and sensations are illusory, and
would vanish into nothing if the divine energy which
alone sustains them were suspended but for a moment.”
— (“ The Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. i.
pp. 54, 55, 56.) Truly, there is nothing new under the
sun. Here we have the most advanced Pantheistic
Theology of the present day, and being given some two
thousand years before the Christian era it would seem
B
�20
Primitive Religion.
almost as if the Vedas were inspired. Here also, we
have the Idealism that constitutes the creed of so many
of our most cultivated philosophers. However pure a
doctrine may be at its source, as it comes from the
highest minds, it is soon perverted to suit the lowest, and
high and simple and true as it seems to me this doctrine
is, it was soon twisted into every possible form of error
and superstition that was best calculated to give the
Brotherhood command over the ignorant multitude.
It soon needed Reforming, and Buddhism came before
the world as that Reformation.
Buddhism most probably dates from about 1000 years
before Christ, and Draper says it is now professed by a
greater number of the human race than any other religion.
“ The fundamental principle of Buddhism is that there
is a supreme power, but no Supreme Being. . . It is a
rejection of the idea of Being, an acknowledgment of that
of Force. If it admits the existence of God, it declines
him as a Creator. It asserts an impelling power in the
.universe, a self-existent and plastic principle, but not a
self-existent, an eternal, a personal God. It rejects
inquiry into first causes as being unphilosophical, and
considers that phenomena alone can be dealt with by
our finite minds. . . . Gotama contemplates the existence of pure force without any association of Substance.
He necessarily denies the immediate interposition of any
such agency as Providence, maintaining that the system
of nature, once arising, must proceed irresistibly accord
ing to the laws which brought it into being, and that
from this point of view the universe is merely a gigantic
engine. Equally does Gotama deny the existence of
chance, saying that that which we call chance is nothing
but the effect of an unknown, unavoidable cause.” (“ In
tellectual Development of Europe,” vol. i. p. 65.) I
scarcely need point out the similarity existing between
this creed and that of the leading physicists of the present
day.
“ As to the external world, we cannot tell how far it
�Primitive Religion.
21
is a phantasm, how far a reality, for our senses possess
no reliable criterion of truth. They convey to the mind
representations of what we consider to be external things
by which it is furnished with materials for its various
operations; but unless it acts in conjunction with the
senses, the operation is lost, as in that absence which
takes place in deep contemplation. It is owing to our
inability to determine what share these internal and ex
ternal conditions take in producing a result, that the
absolute or actual state of nature is incomprehensible to
us. Nevertheless, conceding to our mental infirmity the
idea of a real existence of visible nature, we may con
sider it as offering a succession of impermanent forms,
and as exhibiting an orderly series of transmutations, in
numerable universes in periods of inconceivable time
emerging one after another, and creations and extinc
tions of systems of worlds taking place according to a
primordial law.
“ Of the nature of man, Gotama tells us that there is
no such thing as individuality or personality—that the
Ego is altogether a nonentity. In these profound con
siderations he brings to bear his conception of force, in
the light thereof asserting that all sentient beings are
homogeneous. . . . Each one must however work out
his own salvation, when, after many transmigrations, life
may come to an end. That end he calls Nirwana—
Nirwana, the end of successive existences. It is the
supreme end, Nonentity. The attaining of this is the
object to which we ought to aspire. . . . The panthe
istic Brahman expects absorption in God; the Buddhist,
having no God, expects extinction.
“ India has thus given to the world two distinct
philosophical systems —Vedaism, which makes its
resting-point the existence of matter, and Buddhism, of
which the resting-point is force. The philosophical
ability displayed in the latter is very great; indeed, it
may be doubted whether Europe has produced its meta
physical equivalent.” (Idem, 66, 67, 68.)
�22
Primitive Religion.
It need scarcely excite our surprise then if our
Christian missionaries make but little progress in India.
It is worthy of note with reference to those who assert
that the “ Immortality of the Soul ” is among the unextinguishable instincts of our nature, that in the two
religions of the world—if we must call them two—which contain the greatest number of adherents, not
Immortality is sought, but absorption in God, or Nir
wana, both of which include the extinction of the
individual. The Lazarist Hue testifies that they die
with incomparable tranquillity, and adds, they are what
many in Europe are wanting to be. It is worthy of
note also how much there is in each system in accord
ance with the most advanced modern thought: the one
as Idealism, the other as represented by the recent dis
covery of the Persistence and Correlation of Force. For
if Vedaism connects itself with Matter, it is Matter as
regarded only as “ the corporeal manifestation of God,”
and I have endeavoured to show elsewhere how and
where, as so regarded, Materialism and Absolute Idealism
meet. (“ Illusion and Delusion,” published by T. Scott.)
In my work also “ On Force, and its Mental Correlates”
(Longmans & Co.), I have endeavoured to illustrate
and enforce the following propositions :—
There is but one Beality in the universe, which
Physical Philosophers call “Force;” and Metaphy
sicians “Noumenon.” It is the “Substance” of
Spinoza, and the “ Being ” of Hegel.
Everything. around us results from the mode of
action or motion, or correlation of this one force, the
different Forms of which we call Phenomena.
The difference in the mode of action depends upon
the difference in the structure it passes through; such
Structure consisting of concentrated Force, or centres
of Force, and has been called Matter. “ Every form is
force visible; a form of rest is a balance of forces • a
form undergoing change is the predominance of one
over others.”—Huxley.
�Primitive Religion.
23
Heat, Light, Magnetism, Electricity, Attraction, Re
pulsion, Chemical Affinity, Life, Mind, or Sentience,
are modes of action or manifestations of Force, and die
or cease to exist, when, the Force passes on into other
forms.
Cause and Effect is this sequence or correlation; and
each cause and effect is a new Life and a new Death :
each new form being a new creation, which dies and
passes away, never to return, for “ nothing repeats
itself, because nothing can be placed again in the same
condition : the past being irrevocable.”—-W. R. drove.
11 There is no death in the concrete, what passes away
passes away into its own self—only the passing away
passes away.”-—Hegel.
Force passing through a portion of the structure of
the brain creates the “ World” of our intellectual con
sciousness, with the “Ego ” or sense of personal identity;
passing through other portions the world of our likes
and antipathies—called the moral world: Good and
Evil being purely subjective.
The character and direction of Volition depend upon
the Persistent Force and the structure through which
it passes. Every existing state, both bodily and
mental, has grown out of the preceding, and all its
Forces have been used up in present phenomena. Thus,
“ everything that exists depends upon the past, pre
pares the future, and is related to the whole.”—
Oersted.
As no force acts singly, but is always combined with
other forces or modes of action to produce some given
purpose or particular result, we infer that Force is not
blind but intelligent. As Force is intelligent and One,
it would be more properly called Being—possessing
personality ; and that being we have called God. “ He
is the universal Being of which all things are the mani
festations.”-—-Spinoza.
All power is Will power,—the will of God. “ Caus
ation is the will, Creation the act of God.”—W. R.
�24
The Christian Religion.
Grove. The will which originally required a distinct
conscious volition for each act has passed, in the ages,
generally into the unconscious or automatic state, con
stituting the fixed laws and order of nature.
PART II.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
“ The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is
to fill the world with fools.”—Herbert Spencer.
We in this Christian country are brought up in the
belief that the Jews were chosen by God to perpetuate
a worthy representation of Himself in a Pagan world
given up wholly to Idolatry : that the character and
attributes of the Creator, as given to man in the books
of the Old Testament, are a Revelation from God Himself. On examination this turns out to be by no means
the case. The Hebrew god is made entirely after the
likeness of man ; wiser and more powerful, but with all
his vices as well as his virtues greatly exaggerated—a
conception fitted only for a barbarous age and a bar
barous people; and notwithstanding some sublime
poetical passages of the later prophets, altogether in
ferior to that formed by the wise men of other Eastern
nations. To Jewish conception, even to the last, the
Creator of the Universe was the family God of the
Patriarchs—the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of
Jacob, the titular or national God of the Hebrews, and
it was not till after the Babyionic captivity that the
<£ chosen people” abandoned altogether other supposed
protecting deities, and became confirmed monotheists.
Thus the religious history of the Jewish people in the
historical books of the Old Testament, presents a series
of vacillations between the worship of Jehovah and that
�The Christian Religion.
25
of the gods of the surrounding nations ; the people
serving that god who they think will afford them the
most powerful protection. Hence the jealousy of
Jehovah, and the term the living God, and the First
Commandment, “ Thou shalt have no other gods l?ut
me.” It will be necessary to show this, as Christianity
is based on Judaism, and the orthodox theology of the
present day is derived more from the Old Testament
than the New. I shall let the Bible speak for itself.
“ And God said, let us make man in our own image,
after our likeness.”-—Gen. i. 26.
“ And on the seventh day God ended His work
which He had made, and he rested on the seventh day
from all His work which He had made.”—Gen. ii. 2.
“ And they (Adam and Eve) heard the voice of the
Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”
—Gen. iii. 8.
Cain and Abel from the very first make offering unto
the Lord of fruit and flesh, and “of the fat thereof,”
and they are accepted by him.”—Gen. iv. 3, 4, 5.
And the Lord appeared unto him (Abraham) in the
plains of Mamre accompanied by two angels, and they
eat of a calf that was “ tender and good,” and the Lord
said unto Abraham Wherefore does Sarah laugh, &c.,
and the Lord went his way as soon as he had left com
muning with Abraham.”—Gen. xviii. 1, 7, 8, 13.
The Lord also afterwards appeared unto Moses, on
his desiring to see the glory of God. And he (Moses)
said, I beseech thee show me thy glory. And he (the
Lord) said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee,
and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee ;
and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and
will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And He
said Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man
see me and live. And the Lord said, Behold there is a
place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock. And
it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that
I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover
�26
I
X
The Christian Religion.
thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take
away my hand, and thon shalt see my back parts : but
my face shall not be seen.”—Gen. xxxiii. 18-23.
And the Lord said unto Noah, come thou and all
thy house into the ark, and the Lord shut him in.”—Gen. vii. 1, 16.
“And when Noah came out of the ark he builded an
altar unto the Lord ; and took of every clean beast, and
of every elean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the
altar.
“And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the
Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground
any more for man's sake.”—Gen. viii. 20, 21.
“ And the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower which the children of men builded,” and the
Lord said, “ Go to, let us go down and there confound
their language, that tKey may not understand one
another’s speech.”-—Gen. xiv. 5, 7.
“ It repenteth the Lord that he had made man upon
the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.”—Gen. vi. 6.
“And God heard the voice of the lad : and the angel
of God called to Hagar out of heaven?’—Gen. xxi. 17.
“ And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should
obey his voice, and let Israel go 1 I know not the
Lord (Jehovah) neither will I let Israel go. And they
said, The God of the Hebrews hath met us, let us go
three days’ journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto
the Lord our God : lest He fall upon us with pestilence
or with the sword.”—Exod. v. 2, 3.
“ And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply
my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But
Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you.”—Exod. vii. 3, 5.
And I (Jehovah) will give the people favour in the
sight of the Egyptians : and it shall come to pass, that,
when ye go, ye shall not go empty. But every woman
shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth
m her house, jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and
raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and
�The Christian Religion.
IS]
upon your daughters ; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.
—Exod. iii. 21, 22.
“ And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight
of the Egyptians, so that they lent them such things as
they required, and they spoiled the Egyptians.’ Exod.
xii. 36.
When “wrath is gone out from the Lord, and the
plague is begun, Aaron put on incense, and made an
atonement, and the plague was stayed” (Num. xvi.
46-48.)
God’s promise to Abram. “Thou art the Lord
God, who didst choose Abram, and brought him
forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the
name of Abraham, and foundest his heart faithful
before Thee, and mad’st a covenant with him to give
the lands of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites,
and the Perizzites, and the Jebusites, and the Girgashites to give it, I say to his seed, and hast per
formed Thy words: for Thou art righteous” (Neh. ix. 7-8).
Of how this promise was kept we need give only one
illustration.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, avenge
the children of Israel of the Midianites. And they
warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded
Moses ; and slew all the males. And Moses was wroth,
and ordered every male among the little ones to be killed
in cold-blood, and every woman that had known man :
“ but all the women children that have not known a
man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
“And there were 32,000 persons in all, of women that
bad not known man by lying with him ” (Num. xxxi.
1,2,7,14,17,18,35.)
“Righteous” is not perhaps exactly the word which
we should now apply to such dealings ! And the child
ren of Israel said to Samuel, “ Cease not to cry unto the
Lord our God for us, that He will save us out of the
hands of the Philistines.” And Samuel took a sucking
lamb, and offered it for a burnt-offering wholly unto the
�28
The Christian Religion.
Lord : and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and
the Lord heard him. And as Samuel was offering up
the burnt-offering, the Philistines drew near to battle
against Israel: but the Lord thundered zoith a great
thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discom
fited them ; and they were smitten before Israel (Sam
uel, 1 Book, vii. 8, 9, 10.)
The Lord fights for Israel, and casts down hailstones
from heaven ; “ they were more which died -with hail
stones than they which the children of Israel slew with
the sword; ” and he makes the sun and moon to stand
still until the people are avenged. “ Then spake Joshua
to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the
Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in
the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ;
and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun
stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had
avenged themselves upon their enemies. So the sun
stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go
down about a whole day. And there was no day like
that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto
the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.
(Num. x. 8, 14.)
Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and
the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt
treacherously with Abimelech (Judges ix. 23.) Who
shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-Gilead ? and one said in this manner, and
another said in that manner. And there came forth a
spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will per
suade him. And the Lord said unto him, wherewith ?
And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying
spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And He said,
thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also; go forth,
and do so. Now therefore, behold the Lord hath put
a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets
(1 Kings xxii. 20, 23.)
God’s throne is in heaven. “ The Lord hath pre-
�The Christian Religion.
29
pared His throne in the heavens; and His kingdom
ruleth over all (Ps. ciii. 19.)
I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it
stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with
twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered
his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried
unto another, and said, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of
hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory (Isaiah vi.
1, 3.)
Por I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord
is above all gods (Ps. cxxxv.)
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh (Ps. ii. 4.)
Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to
another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a
book of remembrance was written before him for them
that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name.
(Mai. iii. 16.)
In every place incense shall be offered unto my
name, and a pure offering : for my name shall be great
among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts (Mai. i. 11.)
I saw the Lord sitting upon His throne, and all the
host of heaven standing by Him on His right hand,
and on His left (Micaiah.)
Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon
a thousand hills (Ps. i. 7, 15.)
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the
world and they that dwell therein. Eor He hath founded
it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.
(Ps. xxiv. 1-2.)
The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even
thousands of angels (Ps. lxxiii. 17j
After the Chaldean captivity, when it was thought
to be beneath the dignity of God to appear personally,
these angels are very active and much more plentiful.
Then the Lord employs his destroying angel to slay
185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. David also sees
an angel.
�jo
c
The Christian Religion.
So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel: and there
fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an
angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was
destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of
the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, it is
enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the
Lord stood by the threshingfloor of Oman the Jebusite.
And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the
Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having
a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem
(1 Chron. xxi. 14, 16.)
Here is Daniel’s description of the angel Gabriel:—
“ A man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with
fine gold of Uphaz: his body also was like the beryl,
and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his
eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in
colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words
like the voice of a multitude. (Dan. x. 5-6.)
This God of the Hebrews is certainly not a very sub
lime conception, and it is difficult to say in what it differs
from that of other primitive savages. He shows him
self in bodily presence as a man to Adam and to Abram,
walks in the cool of the evening, shows his parts behind
to Moses, comes down to prevent a tower being built up
into heaven, spoils the Egyptians, utterly exterminating
the Canaanites, man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass, that he may give their
land to his chosen people, sending lying spirits into his
prophets, and in fact possessing all man’s greatest vices
greatly exaggerated.
He is angry, furious, cruel,
vindictive, jealous, treacherous, partial, and by the
smell of a sweet savour of poor innocent slaughtered
beasts and birds, and by incense and sackcloth and
ashes is turned from his purpose and repents. The
Hebrew God is everywhere represented as delighting in
blood, requiring the first-born of both man and beast
to be offered up to him, and a lamb to be supplied to
him both night and morning throughout the year. Is
�The Christian Religion.
31
it not strange that this barbarons conception of a blood
thirsty people should have been chosen by the modern
world as the foundation of its religion, and can we
wonder that the picture of such a Being, painted as we
are told by himself, should have had a most deleterious
effect on the moral sense of all who have been intro
duced to it, or that those who prefer to believe in no
God at all, rather than in such a God, should increase
daily 1
The Jews have continued to “ spoil the Egyptians,”
that is, all the nations among whom they are thrown,
until this day, and this spoiling the Egyptians is quoted
as a precedent for every kind of cheating and dis
honesty among all who are disposed to prey by false
pretence upon their fellow creatures. The religion of
the Hebrews was like that of every savage nation. It
consisted of Prayer and Supplication and Sacrifice. All
unusual and extraordinary phenomena, all good gifts
and evil fortune came direct from God, and they sought
by gifts to him of what they thought he would like
best, and by praise and adulation which they knew they
most liked, to propitiate him, and win his favour.
This was accomplished by a Priesthood who made it
difficult to approach him except through themselves,
and who claimed a reversionary interest in all gifts
offered to him.
It is true that more refined notions of deity prevailed
among “ God’s chosen people,” as civilization advanced,
and after they had spent seventy years in captivity in
Babylon, and had become acquainted with the much
higher “ revelation ” of Zoroaster. Still their most
sublime and poetical conception never rose above that
of a mighty magician, speaking the word of power ; the
heaven his throne, and the earth his footstool; to
whom belonged,—not the countless worlds of which they
had no idea, but the cattle upon a thousand hills ; rid
ing upon the wings of the wind ; governing the world
by his angels, and in whose name every possible atrocity
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is committed : to whom such men as Jacob, David, and
that wisest of all men, Solomon, with his three hundred
wives, and nine hundred concubines, are represented as
especially acceptable and favoured, but who show an
utter indifference to any moral law whatever. Notwith
standing this, we have that good man, the late Dr Norman
Macleod, telling us almost with his last words, that “ The
Bible practically says to all seekers after God, ‘Whom
ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.’ It
professes to give a true history, in harmony with reason,
conscience and experience, of God’s revelation of Him
self during past ages, culminating in Jesus Christ, and
continued in the Church by His Holy Spirit.’—Good
Words, June 1875, p. 420.
Hear also His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the highest authority of all. He says, “ Good Words,”
May 1875, “As to morality, upholding as we do the
immutable and eternal distinction between right and
wrong, and thankful that in all but degraded specimens
of the human race there is a conscience capable of
learning these distinctions. ... We believe that the
Great Being who controls the universe is in Himself
the very good, and very right.” Now as His Grace
identifies the Great Being who controls the universe with
the Hebrew God of the Bible, and as we cannot certainly
classify His Grace among “ the degraded specimens of
the human race,” we are obliged to conclude that his
conscience has yet something to learn. An aged and'
much respected dissenting Minister tells me that “ The
Bible will treat you as you treat it,” that is, you may
find whatever you are looking for, and only nineteenth
century ideas are looked for ; we look for a reformed
God, and a reformed religion, and this is the only way I
can account for the judgments of the good men I have -,
quoted above, and also for the fact that such chapters
as Gen. xix., xxxvii., Jud. xix., 2 Sam. ix., xiii., &c., i
are allowed to be retained, although they would not '
obtain admission into any book in the present day in
any refined and civilized community.
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But even among those who reject Revelation as a
revelation, the deistic conception of God as a governing
power outside the universe is probably as childish as
the original one conceived in the childhood of the
world, when all the earth was supposed to be filled
with his glory.
The cosmogony of the Hebrews, as might be expected,
is exactly upon a par with their Theology. The earth,
according to their revelation, was the centre of all
things j it was flat, founded upon the seas, and could
not be moved. The sun, and moon, and stars, are so
many lamps placed in the firmament to give light to
the earth. The firmament or sky is a solid structure,
and supports a great ocean like that upon which the
earth rests, in which are little windows through which
pour the waters of this upper ocean—under the earth
is the land of graves, called sheol, and is the hell, to
which it is said, Christ descended.* Above the waters
of the firmament is heaven, where Jehovah reigns,
surrounded by hosts of angels. It is to this heaven
that Christians say Christ ascended, his disciples and
a vast multitude having seen him go up, where he sitteth
on the right hand of God. There is some little
discrepancy as to whether Christ is sitting or standing,
as St Stephen saw him standing, and we might well
believe it was “sometimes one and sometimes the
other,” if the Athanasian creed, supported by the
church, did not say that we shall be damned if we do
not believe he is sitting. Between the firmament and
the earth is the air, which is the habitation of evil
spirits, and properly belongs to Satan, the “ prince of
* Mr George Smith informs the Daily Telegraph that some
of the Assyrian tablets discovered by Mr Smith and presented
by the proprietors of the Telegraph to the British Museum,
contain a much longer and fuller account of the creation and
fall of man than the Book of Genesis. In particular, the fall
of Satan, which in the Bible is only assumed, is in these
records reported at length, and the description of this being is
characterized by Mr Smith as “ really magnificent.
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the powers of the air.” As to the order of creation, the
sun is made on the fourth day, the changes of day and
night preceding it. The sun and moon are subordinate
to the earth. It took no less than five days to create
the earth, while for the sun, the whole starry host, and
the planets it took only one day, but then they were
made just to light up the earth. It was for professing
some little doubt as to the accuracy of this plan of the
universe that poor Galileo was persecuted and imprisoned,
and the special charge against Giordano Bruno was that
he had taught the plurality of worlds, a doctrine, it was
said, repugnant to the whole tenor of Scriptures, and
inimical to revealed religion, especially as regards the
plan of salvation. For this he was to be punished as
mercifully as possible, and “ without the shedding of
blood,” the horrible formula for burning people alive.
It was this adoption of the Jewish sacred writings as
the standard of all knowledge, this conflict between
religion and science, this attempt to put the Cosmos
into a quart pot, that has put a logger on science, even
up to the present day. The so-called revelation now
stands in the way of mental science as it formally did
in the way of physics ; but as our astronomy has come
from science and not from revelation, so also, must our
mental and moral philosophy.
Mohammedanism
released the people of Asia, Africa, and the Continent of
Europe, from those narrow and erroneous scriptural
dogmas, and the thick darkness of papal Borne, and left
science free; and the lamp of discovery was kept burning
through Arabian learning, and the highest civilization
we have yet reached, that of the Moors in Spain. We
are evidently approaching another Reformation in which
Science not in one department only, but in all, shall be
left entirely free. The intellectual development of
Europe has reached that stage where Arabism left us in
the 1 Oth and 11 th centuries. Through the influence of
Rome the world then took the wrong way ; had it
adopted Averhoism, which was rejected only by a
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small majority, we should have been then where we
are now.
But if the Jewish conception of God was a most
unworthy one, what must we say of that of the orthodox
Christian 1 Why, that it is infinitely worse. With
both he is the Creator of all things, therefore, of
evil and good, but with the former evil is confined to
time and this world, while with the latter it is absolute
and endless. Thus, according to the orthodox creed
the Almighty and All-wise, with a perfect knowledge
therefore of what he was doing, and full power to do
otherwise, made our first parents, Adam and Eve, and
put them into Paradise, with the full knowledge that
they would get themselves immediately turned out for
a single act of disobedience. They were not to eat of
a certain magic tree, for if they did so on that day they
should surely die. But our poor inexperienced mother
Eve, not knowing even what death was, was beguiled
by a talking serpent, into eating, and Adam, like a
gentleman, determined to share the consequences with
his wife : and if they had merely died on that day they
would only have been where they were before they
were made. But did God keep His word? No, they
did not die that day, but after cursing the earth for
their sake, they were kept alive to fill it with their
children, all of whom, with themselves, were condemned
to everlasting torture for this single act of disobedience.
But God had already arranged a scheme by which the
world might be saved; He would give His only be
gotten Son; Christ was to die for our salvation, an
innocent person for the guilty; but the conditions
were such that God in His infinite fore-knowledge knew
perfectly well they would not be accepted, and that the
great majority would be damned, notwithstanding this
infinite loving kindness, and awful sacrifice. From the
“Westminster Confession of Faith,” we learn that by the
decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some
c
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men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life,
and others fore-ordained to everlasting death.
“ Those angels and men, thus predestinated and fore
ordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed ;
and their number is so certain and definite, that it
cannot be either increased or diminished.”
“ The rest of mankind, God was pleased, for the
glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to
pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for
their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.” Glorious
justice indeed 1 an infinite punishment for a finite sin,
or rather for no sin at all, for if the causes that pro
duced the act had not been adequate to the result, God
could not have foreseen it.
“ Our first parents, we are told, on the same authority,
being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan,
sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin
God was pleased, according to His wise and holy
council, to permit, having purposed to order it to His
own glory.” Thus He permitted a subtle and powerful
being to tempt our first parents, knowing full well the
result, and having already prepared a place of eternal
torment, that he might “ order it to His own glory.”
J. S. Mill says (“Autobiography,” p. 41.) “I have
a hundred times heard him (his father) say, that all
ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked,
in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind
have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached
the most perfect conception of wickedness which the
human mind can devise, and have called this God, and
prostrated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of
wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is
commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Chris
tianity.”
The Rev. Dr Norman Macleod, however, says, 11 God
has manifested in humanity the same kind of joy He
Himself had in beholding the works which He had made
very good, and in which He rested and reposed ’’
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(“Good Words,” June 1875, p. 421.) Fancy such a
work being “ very good f ’ but we trust the Doctor did not
believe it, any more than we do ourselves. He may, how
ever, possibly have held with Luther, that it is by faith
we are saved and Luther says, “ it is the highest degree
of faith to believe Him merciful, who saves so few and
damns so many: to believe him just who of his own
will makes us necessarily damnable.” However laud
able such a degree of faith may be, we must confess
ourselves unequal to it, for it points to a devil, not a
god, and one wonders how such a horrid conception
could ever get into people’s heads, and ever form the
faith of a civilised people. It has taken ages of “ sur
vivals ” of hideous barbarism from the earliest ages to
put the idea together, and ages of transmission to
propagate the faith. No one coming fresh to it could
entertain it for a moment. It is absurd to say that
God’s original intentions were frustrated with respect
to man ; it is a contradiction to suppose that anything
can take place contrary to the will and wish of Almighty
power and wisdom. The “Spectator,” (Nov. 7, 1874),
however, regards it “ as a higher act of power to create
free beings, and therefore beings liable to sin on their
own responsibility, than to create only those whose
natures are for ever fixed in the grooves of good; ” that
is, it may be a much higher act of power to create
beings capable of damning themselves to all eternity,
than to create them so good that they could not do it;
granted, but then what shall we say of the wisdom ?
We very much doubt, however, whether omnipotence
itself could create a free, that is self-originating, uncaused act of any kind ; it is very certain it never has.
It is wonderful that it never seems to occur to the ortho
dox school, that if God had kept His word, and Adam
had really died, and another pair had been created, less
“ free ” to damn themselves and all their posterity, how
much trouble might have been spared. There would
have been no necessity then to “ keep a devil,” or a
(
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place of eternal torment, and the Son of God need not
have died, and this, as it appears to poor human reason,
might have been turned equally to God’s glory. “ If
Christ, as St John writes, appeared on earth to destroy
the works of the devil, He might have been dispensed
with if no devil had existed” (Strauss.)
This doctrine of the atonement, of sacrificing an
innocent person for a guilty one, and that in Christ’s
case only for an elect few: for although “many are called
few are chosen”—must have come down from the very
earliest times. “ Without shedding of blood there is
no remission of sins” (Heb. ix. 22) must be a “sur
vival ” from pre-historic men and the most barbarous
races. The law of vengeance, life for life, blood for
blood, was the savage law; and what was thus acceptable
to man was thought to be the most acceptable to his
Deity that he wanted to propitiate. Hence human
sacrifices. An only son being the dearest to man was
t thought to be most acceptable to God. At length
animals were substituted for human beings, as in Abra
ham’s case, the ram for his only son Isaac, and the
first-born among the Hebrews ceased in time to be
sacrificed according to primitive barbaric custom, and
was redeemed by a ram or a lamb. In Exodus and
Leviticus we have a whole ceremonial worship based
upon sacrifices, as we are told, by divine command.
“ Thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin-offering
for atonement ” (Ex. xxix. 36, &c.) The Jewish ritual
is full of bloody sacrifices, and Paul, not Christ, has
made it the key-stone of the Christian system, in the
blood of God’s only begotten and beloved Son. This
doctrine of propitiation by blood—of being washed
clean in blood, could never have entered a civilised
man’s head or heart; we have gradually been ac
customed to it from the earliest times, until like the
sun’s rising, it excites no wonder.
That all should fall for the sin of one*—of Adam, and
all be saved by the sacrifice of an innocent person, is so
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great a breach of all moral law that we rather wonder
how the Archbishop of Canterbury reconciles it with
“ the immutable and eternal distinctions between right
and wrong.” There can be little doubt that the con
founding of all moral distinctions in the “ spoiling of
the Egyptians,” and the sacrifice of the innocent for the
guilty as a plan of salvation, must have had a most
deleterious influence upon the conscience of all who
have believed in them, as part of the direct ordinances
of God. “ The covenant of grace in which the guilty
are pardoned through the agony of the just—and a God
kept holy in His own eyes by the double violation of
His own standard of rectitude,” can in no way be re
conciled with the intellect or our moral sense.
But these dire chimeras, these awful and blasphem
ous slanders upon the character of God, are silently
dying out before the gradually increasing intelligence of
the age, as witchcraft has done before. We no longer
burn thousands of old women for having personal inter
course and dealing with the “ prince of the powers of the
air,” and theological dogma is giving place, even in the
church itself, to practical religion. There are still,
however, many good people who think it desirable to
retain these horrible lies and libels upon our Creator, in
order to frighten men into being good, and the hope of
an immortality attended with such results is thought to
be a high and ennobling sentiment. At the present
time (June 1875) a case is going through the Court of
Arches, Jenkins v. Cook, in which the Rev. F. Cook
refuses to allow Mr Jenkins to partake of “ the body
and blood of Christ,” which, as the Church Catechism
tells us, “ is verily and indeed taken and received by
the faithful at the Lord’s Supper,” with his fellow
communicants, because he had expressed doubts about
the verbal inspiration of the Bible and the personality
of Satan; he had even gone the length of supposing
that there were parts of “ God’s Holy Word” that
were better left out, and he had prepared a selec
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tion for his young family. On the other hand, we
have an article in the “Contemporary,” for May, by Prof.
J. B. Mayor, in which he says, 11 reason and conscience
inevitably revolt against such a gospel as this (that
hopeless misery is the destiny of the larger propor
tion of created souls), yet how are those who believe
in the inspiration of the Bible to avoid accepting it 1
Accept this or give up Christianity is the alternative
presented to many minds at the present day—an alter
native enforced with equal vehemence by the extremists
on either side. It is this which is the great stum
bling-block not, how can I believe in this miracle or
that miracle ? but how can I accept a revelation which
appears to me to contradict the first and deepest of all
revelations, God is just, and God is good? He who
would solve this problem and justify to man the
ways of God, as revealed in Scripture, would, indeed,
do a great and excellent work. Maurice did some
thing by calling attention to the distinction between
endless and eternal.’'
A great many equally good and learned men, in the
interests, as they believe it to be, of religion, are making
similar useless distinctions, straining at a gnat and
swallowing a camel, and by taking things in a non
natural sense, the spiritual instead of the literal meanby turning affirmed facts into allegory, &c., are
earnestly striving to make black appear white and save
their livings; the church, as they believe, being much
better reformed from within than from without. The
question which is really interesting and pressing,
according to Principal Tulloch, is not how to get out
side the church, but how to enlarge and make room in
side it for varieties of Christian intelligence and culture.
But we may read the signs of the times when the
“ Edinburgh Review,” not now the organ of advanced
but of conservative liberalism, is disposed to go much
further „ than “ the distinction between endless and
eternal,” and to throw over the Old Testament alto
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gether and much even of the New (Oct. 1873, on Dr
Strauss). “ We are not Jews/’ it says, “ and there is
no reason in the world why we should be weighted
with the burden of understanding and defending at all
risks the Jewish Scriptures.” It also says, “Is it
right, is it truthful, is it any longer possible, in the
face of all that is now known upon the subject, to pretend
that legendary matter has not intruded itself into the
•hew Testament as well as into the Old?” Still the
writer contends for the precious truths which notwith
standing this lie enshrined in “ Oriental metaphor”
and “ Mediaeval dogma,” and accuses Strauss of “ igno
rant blasphemy or hypocritical sarcasm,” for professing
to understand these things literally, and to believe that
they form any part of Christianity. This is the attitude
that is now assumed by those who do not wish to give
up the Bible altogether. They fall back upon what
they call Christianity, by which they mean the example
and moral teaching of Christ, as far as that can be
ascertained. It is very difficult to ascertain what
Christ did, and still more to say what he taught. We
have the fourth Gospel, and the Epistles of Paul, and
of Peter, James, and Jude, all of which have added to
and differ from what Christ himself taught. The
theologic system that has come down to us is in reality
not Christianity, but much has been added to it
which Christ himself, as a religious reformer, strongly
protested against. The bloody doctrine of sacrifice and
atonement, which had been derived from a primitive
savage state, was re-introduced and made the corner
stone of the new faith j in fact, orthodox Christianity
is more indebted to Paul and the Alexandrine School,
as represented in St John’s Gospel, than to its putative
founder.
In the midst of the myths and legends that have
surrounded Christ, it is very difficult to say who and
what he was. Without believing at all in the super
natural, I yet believe that he wrought most of the
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miracles that are ascribed to him, and that this appa
rently miraculous power deceived him and his disciples
and ourselves. This power was not peculiar to Christ,
for a power of curing many kind of diseases has attended,
and still attends, 'many individuals. One of the best
known cases on record is that of Valentine Greatrakes,
an Irish gentleman, but no saint, born in 1628. He
was invited by the King to London, whither he went,
curing very many by the way. There the Royal
Society, then young, investigated the matter, publish
ing some of his cures in their Transactions, and account
ing for them as produced by “ a sanative contagion in
Mr Greatrakes’ body, which had an antipathy to some
particular diseases and not to others.” We are told
by a contemporary writer, Henry More, what particular
diseases this sanative contagion had an antipathy to,
viz., “ cancers, scrofula, deafness, king’s evil, headache,
epilepsy, fevers (though quartian ones), leprosy, palsy,
tympany, lameness, numbness of limbs, stone, convul
sions, ptysick, sciatica, ulcers, pains of the body, nay,
blind and dumb in some measure, and I know not but
he cured the gout.” Now if we leave out the cures
that were said to be wrought by Christ that the pro
phecies might be fulfilled, we have here most of the
diseases that he was able to cure, for we must not forget
that people’s want of faith prevented his being success
ful in all times and all places. He knew also when
“ virtue,” this sanitary power, went out of him, as when
touched by the woman with the issue. We may doubt
as to the source of this power, but that it exists there
can be no doubt. I have seen six cases, including
toothache, lameness, and rheumatism cured or relieved
in less than a quarter of an hour by the simple contact
or laying on of hands, and I have carefully watched
many permanent cures by the same person, by what
appeared to me an excess of vital power or of the “ vis
medecatrix.” Now if Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s
son, found himself possessed of such a power, he would
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of course ascribe it to Divine origin and believe that he
■was intended by the Almighty for some special mission,
most probably the Messiah, which all the Jews were
expecting, to deliver them from the Roman yoke and
to place them in the exalted position which had been
promised to the seed of Abraham, and to which there
had been already several pretenders. He himself
does not appear to be quite certain as to the character
of his mission, for when sent to by John, asking, “ Art
thou he that should come, or do we look for another 1 ”
he replied, “ Go and show John again those things
which ye do hear and see, the blind receive their sight
and the lame ■walk, the leapers are cleansed and the
deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have
the gospel preached to them,” intimating that this was
all he knew. There is little doubt, I think, that on
his entry into Jerusalem he expected a rising of the
people in his favour, and probably divine assistance in
that direction, as he daily received it, as he thought,
in others. When that did not take place, and he saw
that a revolt against the Roman power was vain and
hopeless, he did not the less doubt his own Divine
mission, of which he received daily proofs in the
miracles which he wrought; but he began to see that
the promised kingdom was not to be of this world,
but upon a second coming, which was to take place
even in that generation, and when he should be accom
panied by such divine power as would establish this
Heavenly Kingdom for ever. In the meantime he
began to prepare for that martyrdom that had always
attended all the great prophets and all previous
claims to the Messiahship. He prayed that this might
pass from him; but was nobly prepared to meet it if
such was God’s will, and never once does he seem to
have doubted that he was under God’s special care for
a special purpose, except in his own most pathetic and
despairing cry upon the cross, “ Mv God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me !” Christ died as a rebel to the
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Roman. Empire, and in the full persuasion that on his
second coming, then near at hand, all things would be
made subservient to himself and to his followers, and
that the Jewish nation especially should have the pre
eminence that had been promised to them. In this
belief, his disciples, who had daily witnessed his appa
rently miraculous power, joined him, and expected to
sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel.
It is impossible not to feel love for Christ, especially
when we think of the horrid suffering to which he w’as
subjected by his fellow-creatures, and to feel respect
for him as the most amiable and greatest of our moral
and social reformers, but I cannot look upon him as a
perfect character, or his example as one that could be
followed in the entirely altered conditions we have now.
There is much in the spirit of Christ’s character that is
most loveable and estimable, but to attempt to follow
his example would as certainly bring us wuthin the
power of the police, as it did him in his day. In all
the phases of social life, as a son, as a celebate, as a
producer or worker, his example is certainly one that
cannot be followed. As Strauss says, we must have
a definite conception of him whom we are to imitate as
an exemplar of moral excellence, and there are not such
essential facts in the life of Jesus firmly established j
neither are we clearly cognizant of his aims, nor the
mode and degree in which he hoped for their reali
zation. It is in the spirit of his doctrine only, that he
can be held up as an exemplar, and that certainly,
excellent as it is in many points, would not tend to the
full development of all our faculties.
But whence did Christ get his knowledge, which seems
greatly to have exceeded that of his time, and most cer
tainly that of his condition as a carpenter’s son ? What
sources were open to him 1 Was he one of those seers
or clairvoyants which the world has occasionally known,
and in that sense inspired ? The power of healing and of
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this kind of intuitional knowledge, are seldom found
together. It is very difficult to ascertain what Christ
really did teach. There were no short-hand writers in
those days, and the traditional reports we have, would
come to us strained through, and coloured by, the much
lower minds of his followers. We must therefore take
the spirit of his teaching, and not take it literally; and
we must recollect that much of what he taught was
under the firm conviction that the world was coming
to an end, probably in that generation. The morality
of the New Testament, to which the Broad Church is
now driven, giving up the conventional theological
creed, furnishes no system of morals, or one upon which
a science of mental and moral philosophy can be based.
The sun still goes round the earth in the mental science
of the New Testament, as much as it did in the physics
of the Old, for of course there can be no science of
mind, if the mind obeys no law, and it has power to
resist the strongest motives, as the advocates of Free
Will affirm. If, on the contrary, the mind necessarily
obeys its own laws, then we require a re-modelling of
the whole of Christ’s morality, as it must be based upon
a different idea of responsibility to that which he taught;
for the whole tendency of Christianity is to separate
conduct from its immediate and natural consequences,
and to place such consequences far away, or even in
some distant world; whereas the only divine judgment
or responsibility which science can admit, is that only
“ which fulfils itself hour by hour, and day by day.”
Thus Christ taught, as his especial doctrine, the
Fatherhood of God; now in the sense that God ever
interferes with natural law in our favour, this is not
true, and if not true, however comforting such a doctrine
of a Heaven-Father, or Father in Heaven, may be to
weak people, it had better be given up, as the truth
must always serve us best. God has put everything we
require within our reach, and has appointed a way by
which it may be attained, and has lent us his power to
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act for ourselves, and after that we have no right to
expect he will interfere personally in our behalf, and if
he did, it could only be to our injury, by weakening
that self-reliance upon which certainly all progress, if
not our very existence, depends. If we do not take
this natural course towards the object of our desires,
we are punished in the consequences, and as such
punishment is for our good, God never injures us by
forgiving our sins.
' And this is what I have principally to say against
Christianity. It has attempted to come between man
and the natural consequences of his actions; it has
filled the world with eleemosynary charity, and has thus
weakened his most important springs of action.
. Here we have the orthodox creed on this subject,
“ If man is compelled to distinguish between right and
wrong, he is a responsible agent, subject to penalties
for the misuse, &c., of his moral powers. He must be
responsible to some one. That some one must be
omniscient and omnipotent (or little less) in order to
act as Judge of humanity, and to mete out adequate
rewards and punishments. As these adequate rewards
and punishments do not follow in this life, there must
be a future state. If not, there would exist in man a
whole class of moral faculties which seem to find in the
present state of things an appropriate field for their
exercise, but which man is under no necessity of using.”
(The Dean of Canterbury on “ Science and Revelation ”).
Now it is the consequences of man’s actions that enable
him to distinguish between right and wrong, and at
the same time mete out an adequate reward and punish
ment. He is judged at once, and by an infallible judge,
and where the rewards and punishments, the pains
and pleasures attending his actions, may be of some use
to him and not carried on to some future state or other
world, where the conditions being different, they can be
of no use whatever. Man is responsible to himself, and
to the society of which he forms a member. This idea
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of vengeance, this notion that has come down from
savage life of apportioning a certain amount of useless
suffering to a certain amount of sin, pervades the whole
of the Bible. We are told also that man is endowed
with certain faculties for the exercise of which no
proper field has been furnished him by natural means,
and that therefore it requires a supernatural interposi
tion to provide him with one. We know of no faculties
that man possesses, that are not brought into daily use,
that he could live without, or which are not active in.
providing an improved state of things here in this
world, for himself and fellows.
The two great commandments of Christianity are
that we should “ Love God with all our hearts, and our
neighbour as ourselves.” Now is this possible ? If not,
is it not time that we should give up pretending that
it is ? Can we love the God of the Hebrews who puts
whole towns to the sword, men, women, and little
children, and every living thing, and who throws great
stones out of heaven upon the retreating hosts, and who
kills more in that way, than are killed by the sword 1
Can we love the God of the Christians who has ordained
an eternity of torture for the majority of his weak and
erring creatures, having full power to save them or not
to have created them 1 It is true we can make an idol
of all the ' highest attributes with which we are
acquainted and give it a personality after our own image,
and love that, but that is not God. Can we love the
Great Unknown ? We may love goodness and beauty,
but they must take some form to enable us to do so,
we cannot love a mere abstraction. The Universal
Bather works for the good of all, and does not recognise
individuals. Love is a human feeling applicable to our
fellow creatures, and is not applicable, as it appears to
me, to the All Supreme, which supports the Universe,
or rather which is the Universe. We cannot know
enough of this power to make it an object of love,
however much it may create a feeling of reverence and
�48
The Christian Religion.
awe, and this idea and feeling increase the higher our
conception rises of the Great Supreme. We may love
Christ as the highest manifestation of God we may
know, but this is a very different and inferior feeling to
that which we have for the Great All. As to “ loving
our neighbour as ourselves ” that is neither possible
nor desirable. Suppose my neighbour is a nasty sneak,
a mere animal, full of low and vicious propensities, why
should I love him ? I am not called upon to love vice
in any form, although it is my neighbour, and to do so,
as man’s conduct is governed by the consequences,
would be holding out a premium for vice. Let my
neighbour make himself loveable, and I cannot help
loving him. On principle I may do him all the good I
can—getting him hanged perhaps being the greatest
good I can do him—but as to loving him, I must
decline. We can only love what is loveable, and believe
what is credible. It is true that orthodoxy professes
to love the Being who may send themselves or their
best and dearest friend to spend an eternity in “ ever
lasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” and
as to belief, it thinks that any fool can believe what
is credible, but that that only is a saving and justifying
faith which believes what is incredible. If all that it
is meant to inculcate is a settled principle of good-will
to all men, that certainly is a most desirable feeling to
encourage, even towards the unworthy. The same may
be said about loving our enemies. Why should we love
our enemies? The interests of the community, and
therefore of morality, do not require it. We cannot do
more for our friends. It is true we may bless them that
curse, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them
that despitefully use us and persecute us, and we can do
what pious people are very fond of doing, pray for
our enemies; but as to loving them! when by doing
them all the good we can, if they deserve it, we have
made them our friends, then we may love them.
Does God love his enemies when he exacts an infinite
�The Christian Religion.
49
penalty for a finite fault, or is it not true that he pre
pares an eternity of torment for them ? “ They shall
drink,” John says, “the wine of the wrath of God
which is poured out without mixture into the cup of
his indignation, and they shall be tormented with fire
and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and
in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their
torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.” How the
holy angels must enjoy the sight ! we are told also on
the same ‘ loving ’ authority, ‘ they have no rest day
nor night, they shall desire to die, and death shall flee
from them, they blaspheme God, they gnaw their tongues
for pain.’ ” Moses says, “ Slay every man his brother,”
rather than allow the existence of heretics, but Moses
did not believe in a future state, and therefore he could
not damn them as well. Christ says, “ He that believeth not in me the wrath of God abideth on him ”—■
“He that believeth not shall be damned,” and Paul says of
the unbelievers in his day, “ God shall send them strong
delusion (as he had previously done to Pharaoh and to
Ahab), that they should believe a lie, that they may all
be damned.”
All that can come of setting up a false standard, and
professing to love our enemies, is a pharisaical hypocrisy.
What we have to do is to love the true, the good, and
the beautiful; to stand up for the right regardless of
consequences, and to maintain an unending battle
against evil in all its forms. This may be done in all
kindness, and in the full conviction that “ Society
prepares crime, and the guilty are only the instruments
by which it is executed.”—Quetelet. It is justice that
ought to rule the world. We are governed by the con
sequences of our actions, and if we can get love without
being loveable, and good for evil, the chief motives to
be good and loveable are taken away. The same reason
ing applies to the whole doctrine of the non-resistance of
evil. Not to resist evil is to encourage it. If a man
smite us unjustly on one cheek, and turning the other
Jo be smitten would prevent its recurrence, let us do it.
�50
The Christian Religion.
With a good man it might do so, but with the great
majority it would only encourage them to further
aggression. To give a man my cloak who had taken
my coat would be a premium for robbery; and to give
to him that asketh, and from him that would borrow
of me not to turn away, as a rule, would be equally a
premium for improvidence. So also to take no thought
for the morrow, to trust to God to clothe us as he does
the lilies of the field, would sap self-reliance and self
dependence, the foundation of all morality. No society
that ever existed in Christ’s time or since could hold
together on such principles, translate them into what
ever transcendental or sesthetic language we may.
As to the golden rule, which is not peculiar to
Christianity, viz., “ that we should do as we would be
done by,” it can only be received in spirit, in a very broad
and general application, for people differ so in bodily
and mental constitution that what suits one person by
no means suits another. It is not at all safe to judge
of other people by ourselves. Not to do to others what
we would not like to have done to ourselves is a much
safer way of putting it.
We must notice also, it is that W’e may be rewarded,
not that we may do right, is the inducement every
where held out.
With reference to prayer, Christ says, “when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut
thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and
thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee
openly.” We are expressly told that we are not to
pray standing in the synagogues, that we may be seen
of men; that we are not to use vain repetitions and
much speaking, for that our Father knoweth what
things we have need of, before we ask Him. The
whole of Christendom has systematically set these
injunctions at defiance, for there would be little use
for the priests were they carried out, and with one sex
at least, church-going would be less popular if they were
�The Christian Religion.
51
not to be “ seen of men.” The last new bonnet is a
great stimulant to devotion. The great majority of
Christians, who believe their saints to be ubiquitous, or
omniscient, and who pray to those who are always
listening, to intercede with the Mother of God, to
petition her Son, to ask his Father, can have little
faith that the “Father knows what things we have need
■of, before we ask Him,” or that if he does, he is
very hard to persuade to let us have them. His Holi
ness, the Pope, in his Encyclical, recently issued, enjoins
incessant prayer, employing a Mediatrix with Him, the
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who sits, he says, as a
queen upon the right hand of her only begotten Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, in a golden vestment, clothed
around with various adornments. There is nothing she
cannot obtain from him.
Now is it likely that God will be constantly altering the
•course he has appointed for our well-being at our ignor
ant intercession ? Surely he knows what is right, and
will do it, without our asking him or constantly re
minding him! No amount of toadying, which we call
worship, or serving him, will induce him to do other
wise than what is right, or prevent him from doing it,
whether “ we praise him,” or “ acknowledge him to
be the Lord,” or not. The savage with the noise of
pots and pans tries to prevent an eclipse, that is, to
prevent the sun eating up the moon, or vice versa, and
the noises we make in the churches to bring or prevent
rain, or in any way to alter the course of natural law,
may be expected to be equally efficacious. The whole
tendency of modern research goes to show that if law
is anywhere, it is everywhere.
The Kyoungtha of Chittagong are Buddhists. Their
village temples contain a small stand of bells and an
image of Buddha, which the villagers generally worship,
morning and evening, first ringing the bells to let him
know that they are there (Sir John Lubbock’s “Origin
of Civilisation,” p. 220). This is no more than polite or
D
< » •
�52
The Christian Religion.
politic; we ring our bells merely to call the people
together, thinking God is always ready to listen to
petitions, to do for us what he has given us full power
to do for ourselves, or simply perhaps, to reverse the
order of nature, upon the invariability of which the
good of all depends. Surely it is better that all people
should know that miracles will not be constantly worked
on their behalf. It is true that by the laws of the
mind, prayer often answers itself, and we get what we
ask for, but should we mock God that we may be so
benefited? No man prays for the success of his
chemical experiments, neither will he for moral results
when he knows as much of the likes and antipathies of
human beings, as he does of the attractions and repul
sions of atoms. Our present practice is a “ survival ”
of primitive barbarous times, when all evil was supposed
to come directly from spirits, or from the gods, and
prayer was the only means supposed capable of averting
such evils. We certainly have no right to reflect on
less civilised times and nations for their superstition, so
long as we expect the ordinary course of nature to be
altered in our behalf whenever we choose to ask it.
It never seems to occur to those who pray without
ceasing, to ask the question that if in answer to their
repeated importunity, God delivers them from evil,
why an infinitely powerful, good, and benevolent being
does not deliver all from evil, without asking. If it
were right in their case it would be right in all; but it
would be not right. Any interference with the estab
lished order of nature would render both reason and
instinct useless, and would weaken those springs of
action on which all progress depends.
The late Bev. Charles Kingsley, says, speaking of
Atheism •—££ Has every suffering, searching soul, which
ever gazed up into the darkness of the unknown, in
hopes of catching even a glimpse of a divine eye,
beholding. all, and ordering all, and pitying all, gazed
up in vain ?.............Oh! my friends, those who
�The Christian Religion.
53
believe or fancy that they believe such things, must be
able to do so only through some peculiar conformation,
either of brain or heart. Only want of imagination to
conceive the consequences of such doctrines can enable
them, if they have any love and pity for their fellow
men, to preach those doctrines without pity and horror.
They know not, they know not, of what they rob a
mankind already but too miserable by its own folly and
its own sin, a mankind which, if it have not hope in
God and in Christ, is truly—as Homer said of old—
more miserable than the beasts of the field. If their
unconscious conceit did not make them unintentionally
cruel, they would surely be more silent for pity’s sake ;
they would let men go on in the pleasant delusion that
there is a living God, and a Word of God who has
revealed him to men, and would hide from their fellow
creatures the dreadful secret which they think they
have discovered—that there is none that heareth prayer,
and therefore to him need no flesh come.”
No doubt this is very eloquent, but if such eloquence
were compatible with reason, I should ask, who is it
that professes to have discovered “the dreadful secret,”
that the majority after a moment spent here, are con
signed to endless torments, where there “ is none that
heareth prayer, and therefore to Him need no flesh
come.” Surely Atheism is better than this orthodox
belief, and if any have discovered that it is a blasphem
ous libel upon our Creator, the sooner they proclaim
it the better. The good, most loving, and gentle
Cowper, the Poet, not having felt, as he and his Par
son thought, sufficient evidence of conversion, lived
year after year in the full belief that God had utterly
rejected him, and on his death-bed exclaimed, “ I feel
unutterable despair.” The self-righteous people who
feel so certain of their own salvation, forget, or more
probably selfishly disregard, the numberless cases of
this kind, of sensitive people being driven, as poor
Cowper was, to despair; they think it so hard that
�any should be deprived of the comforting notion. It
is a great mystery, they say, but it is one of their own
making: they first make it dark, and then complain
that they cannot see.
I need not say any more, I think, to show that the
Christianity of Christ, however much of excellence there
is in it, is not up to the thought and moral sense of our
time. Great efforts are being made to adapt it to the
altered conditions by new and forced meanings, and by
dropping, what no forcing can adapt, as not abidingprinciples intended for our times. So far as attempts
have been made to put Christianity systematically into
practice, they have been failures.
The early Christians were communists—they had all
things in common ; and no doubt it is better adapted tosuch a social system than to any other. When all are
dependent upon each and each upon all; when all have
a direct and immediate interest in the well-being,
physical, moral, and intellectual of every member of
the community, when conscience or the sense of duty
is as strong a feeling as hunger and pride and vanity are
now, when the unselfish feelings shall decidedly pre
dominate, then some form of Christianity will be practi
cable. But society in no country has ever yet approached
such a state. Communism is still, and may continue
so for ages, the great Socialist Utopia.
Where Christianity has been attempted to be carried
out as a system of theological belief; where he “ who
believeth shall be saved and he who believeth not shall
be damned,” the burnings of millions of people have not
brought us any nearer to it in practice. People will con
tinue to believe that what appears to them to be black and
not white, is black, whether they are to be burned here
and hereafter for it or not; and as to “ renouncing the
devil and all his works,” and burning some nine millions
of poor old women and others for supposed personal deal
ings with him, the devil, or at least the principle of evil,
is nearly as rampant as ever. It -would have been much
�The Christian Religion.
55
more convincing if those who burned others for want
of faith, had exhibited a proper evidence of their own,
which they never did. “ And these signs shall follow
them that believe says Mark xvi. 17, 18, 19, “ In my
name shall they cast out devils j they shall speak with new
tongues ; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink
any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall
lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” But
such is the perversity of human nature, that had such
powers attended their faith, they would probably have
been burned for witchcraft. “ So then,” Mark goes on
to say, xvi. 20, “ after the Lord had spoken unto them
he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right
hand of God.”
The asceticism, which is a part of Christianity, has
done the world infinite mischief, if it were only in
depriving it of the offspring of so many of its highest
minds, who were either imprisoned, burnt, or voluntarily
retired from it. What wise man had time to marry
when he had an eternity to prepare for ? what good man
would run the risk of introducing beings to a life of
everlasting torment ? The stake was so great, that no
wonder that among those who were not good utter sel
fishness prevailed, and men thought only of their own
salvation. The soul was the only thing to be thought
of, the body was despised, mortified, degraded, and
neglected.
Monks, nuns, and hermits were the
only sensible people. Prayer was the only occupation
in which a man could profitably engage, and conse
quently no more attention was given to the body than
its natural wants absolutely required. This absurd de
preciation of the body, the sole instrument of thought,
has continued to the present time.
It is absurd to say that we owe modern civilization
to Christianity. Islamism \yas a real reform on the
state of society induced by the Christianity of that day,
and carried willingly all the East and the great cities of
its birth along with it; and when it had reduced Europe
�56
The Christian Religion.
to the dark ages, we were saved again by the Moors
and Saracens, and a return to Greece and Rome. The
Greek and Roman philosophers aim at the perfect de
velopment of the individual man—mind and body—
and of the individual state. “ Magnanimity, self-reli
ance, dignity, independence, and, in a word, elevation
of character, constituted the Roman idea of perfection ;
while humility, obedience, gentleness, patience, resigna
tion are Christian virtues” (Lecky, vol. ii., pp. 72, 155),
and it is not, I think, saying too much to affirm, that
had the principles of Christianity been really practised,
modern civilization could never have existed. His
Excellency Iwakura Tomomi, chief of the supreme
Japanese Embassy, which visited England a few years
ago, has presented to the Library of the India Office a
set of the Chinese version of the Buddhist Scriptures.
The work weighs 3| tons. A selection is probably, in
their case, allowed to be made for the use of families.
If, as is reported, the Chinese and Hindus are about to
send missionaries to Europe, they certainly cannot come
Bible in hand.
The time was when people were really in earnest
about their religion, but now all living faith in the
dogmas of the past seems to have died out. Where
the idea of duty first makes its appearance is in the
sacrifices to the dead. The most costly gifts of men,
and women, and horses, and dogs, and arms, and money,
were presented to the dead, and buried or burned with
them. The Chinese, however, are a practical people,
and Tylor tells us that in China “ the fanciful art of
replacing these costly offerings by worthless imitations
is at this day worked out into the quaintest devices—
the men and horses dispatched by fire for the service
of the dead are but paper figures and the manufacture
of mock-money, both in gold and silver, is the trade of
thousands of women and children in a Chinese city”
(“ Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 445). Such a change
has come over our religion,—which has now become a
�The Christian Religion.
57
mere conventional custom of what is called good society
—a great sham which thousands of men, women and
clergymen are engaged in manufacturing. There is no
doubt we are bordering on change.
Not that we expect this change to be rapid; all per
manent change is very slow. Besides the two extremes of
the positivists and scientific men at one end, and work
ing men at the other—who regard religion as allied
always with monarchy and aristocracy, and as offering
post-obit bills on heaven for what they think they are
unjustly deprived of here—the great body of society
looks upon Christianity as containing their highest
ideal of excellence. Its dogmas are a dead letter to all
but a very few, people have got used to them, or they
are interpreted so as not to shock their moral sense, or
they are regarded as awful mysteries to be cleared up in
another world, and without which their religion would
be mere morality and Dot half so acceptable. Add to
this that custom, conventional usage, fashion, and re
spectability, with the toll-gates of birth, marriage and
death, are all on the side of the national religion, and
we certainly need expect no sudden change. The
Christianity of the present day is not taken from the
Bible, but is Bible doctrine strained through the mind
of the nineteenth century, and many good people still pre
fer to call themselves Christians because there is nothing
really at present equally good and of equal authority
to take its place. There cannot be a doubt that church
membership, whether of churchmen or dissenters, helps
to keep people within the broader and most obvious
moral laws ; and it will be some time before the mass
of the people will set themselves to learn what is true
in order that they may do what is right, or that they
will do what is right because it is right, and not from
the hope of reward or from the fear of punishment. We
must wait; in the meantime let no one fear or hesitate
to proclaim what he believes to be the truth and of
highest excellence.
�
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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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Christianity : viewed in the light of our present knowledge and moral sense
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Bray, Charles [1811-1884]
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Place of publication: Upper Norwood, London, S.E.
Collation: 57 p, ; 18 cm.
Notes: Annotations in pencil and ink. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Thomas Scott
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[n.d.]
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RA1829
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Christianity
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Christianity
Primitive
Religion