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CT(^
A REPLY
TO THE QUESTION,
“SHALL I SEEK ORDINATION IN THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND ?•’
BY
SAMUEL HINDS,
D.D.
(Late Lord Bishop of Norwich.)
“ Never take a first step without considering well what may
be the next you will have to take.”
Maxim attributed to the late Dulce of Wellington.
PUBLISHED
BY
THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
1871.
Price Sixpence.
SCOTT,
��A REPLY
TO THE QUESTION,
“SHALL I SEEK ORDINATION IN THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND?”
WILL do what I can to help you in deliberating
on the question whether you shall seek ordi
nation in the Church of England; but I must remind
you that it is a question which you alone ought to
decide. You cannot properly substitute the judgment
of another for yours in determining on a momentous
step for taking which you, not another, will be
responsible.
On one and the most essential view of the question
it is unnecessary for me to offer you any counsel.
You are fully impressed with the high and holy
interests which may be affected by your becoming a
Christian minister, and are resolved to do your duty
honestly and zealously. But although this is the
most essential view of the subject, it is not the only
one, nor the only important one, The clerical pro
fession is a sacred, but it is also a worldly calling.
Whatever other motive may induce you to select it,
one motive, it may be presumed, is, that it will be a
worldly provision for you.
Directing your attention, 'then, more especially to
this phase of the subject, my advice to you is—do not
decide on becoming a candidate for ordination until
you have well weighed a contingency which I will
state plainly and unreservedly. If, after becoming a
I
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Shall I Seek Ordination
clergyman of the Church of England, any such change
should take place in your religious convictions as to
oblige you to abandon the office, your worldly pro
spects will be for ever blighted. It is most difficult
for a clergyman to shift from the peculiar habits of
clerical life to those of any other pursuit. In addition
to his inaptitude for any other occupation, he is stig
matised, by friends and strangers, for a change of
views which he could not help, as acrimoniously as if
he had been guilty of some heinous sin, instead of
being compassionated, as he ought to be, for the sad
condition into which his honest conviction, whether
erroneous or not, has brought him. He has to con
tend, moreover, against a feeling—call it superstitious
or what—that he has broken a holy pledge, and is
amenable to the reproach of having put his hand to
the plough and looked back.* In common prudence,
therefore, you ought thoroughly to acquaint yourself
with the requirements of the clerical profession in the
Church of England, and with the conditions under
which you will have to fulfil them, that you may not
discover something in them, when it will be too late,
to which you cannot honestly conform.
If the contingency has never occurred to you, you
will probably, on the first suggestion of it, be dis
posed to think it most unlikely, if not impossible, that
any so serious a change should take place in you.
Can I believe, you may say, that I shall ever forsake
the faith in which I have been brought up, and the
desire to contend for which is the cause of my pro
posing to myself the clerical profession ? that I shall
ever learn to regard as false, or doubtful, sacred truths
now so clearly revealed to my faith, and attested by
their effects on my heart and life ? Withoat pre
suming on my own strength, I trust that, in the
strength of the Lord whom I shall be serving, I shall
be innocent of this great offence.
* Luke ix. 62.
�5
In the Church of England.
All this is natural; and I am not saying that any
such change will come over you ; but I would, never
theless, strongly urge on you the consideration that it
may. There are some—it may not be too much to
say many—in orders in the Church of England, at
this moment, who are* receding further and further
from agreement with its dogmas, with its Articles
and its Prayer-book, and whose conscience is harassed
with the doubt, whether their dissent is, or is not,
beyond the line which may be drawn as permitting
those within it still to officiate as the Church’s
ministers, and who, when they undertook the clerical
office, had no reason to suspect that they would ever
fall into this slough of perplexity. It may be morally
impossible with some; with those, I should say, whose
minds are so constituted as to renounce investigation
of, and reasoning on, the topics which are embraced
in the Church’s formularies; but not with those—
and such I believe to be the case with you—who can
not but investigate and reason on them. These can
never beforehand be sure of the conclusions to which
their inquiry and reasoning may lead them.
Do I mean to suggest, then, that there is a possi
bility of your bringing Christianity itself to the test
of investigation and reasoning, and of finding that,
tried by that test, it must be rejected ? If this be the
rejoinder you make to me, I must call your attention
to an important fact. Christianity and a Christian
Church are not identical. Christianity is the sacred
deposit; a Church, an institution for preserving, dis
seminating, and giving a social form and character to
it. Your immediate concern, in your present delibe
ration, is not with Christianity, but with those provi
sions of the Church of England for enabling its
members to understand and conform to it, which are
embodied in its' formularies. You must not allow
yourself, in your just veneration for the Church of
England, to claim" for those to whom we are indebted
A
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Shall I Seek Ordination
for its Articles and Common Prayer-book infallible
■wisdom, and to take for granted that whatever they
have decided on must be a true and perfect exposition
of Christianity. And yet, unless you do this, you can
not be exempt from the contingency -which I am point
ing out. Do not delude yourself with the notion that
it will be in your power to go on, as clergymen did
formerly, in untroubled security in this respect. The
spirit of the age will not permit you. There is abroad
everywhere a fearless searching into the foundation of
the most time-honoured beliefs, and an unscrupulous
scepticism concerning those of which no satisfactory
account can be given. You cannot escape the impulse
of the movement. However well satisfied you may
now be with the Church of England’s doctrines and
rule, there is no saying that you will be of the
same mind as years roll on, and you read and think
more and more on the many subjects on which the
Church has decided, and on the grounds on which
some of those decisions are now canvassed. No pre
caution can altogether secure you against the risk, but
thus much you may do towards diminishing it—you
■may make yourself acquainted with the scruples which
have driven clergymen from the Church of England,
either by their own act, or by the sentence of lawcourts, and determine whether, with the light you now
have, you would or would not entertain any of those
scruples.
You will expect that I should particularise, and I
will do so. But there is one preliminary about which
it is indispensable that you should inform yourself,
before directing your thoughts to this or that doctrine
of the Church of England which has proved a fatal
stumbling-block in the way of certain of its ministers.
What is the test which the Church provides for
enabling a clergyman to judge, on any occasion of
doubt, how he ought to interpret the wording of the
Articles and Common Prayer-book ? At first sight,
�In the Church of England.
7
this would seem to be clearly defined. A solemn
promise is exacted of a minister, at his ordination as
priest, that he will teach nothing as required of
necessity to eternal salvation, but that which he shall
be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the
Scripture ; and this coincides with that which is laid
down, in the sixth of our Thirty-nine Articles, as the rule
of faith. “ Holy Scripture containeth all things neces
sary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein,
nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any
man, that it should be believed as an article of the
faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salva
tion.” Whenever, therefore, anything in the Church’s
formularies strikes the minister as false or question
able, it would seem that he has only to try it by the
test of Scripture ; and, if it does not abide that test,
to conclude either that it is an instance of the
fallibility of the authors and compilers, or else that
their language was meant to be understood in a sense
not the most obvious and natural; this provision of a
Scriptural test being a pious and humble acknow
ledgment, on the part of those from whom we derive
the authoritative documents, that they were but
human interpreters of the Divine mind, and, as such,
desired that their interpretation throughout should be
subjected to appeal from their authority to an
authority higher than theirs. If they were so minded,
as we are bound to presume, their view of the matter
has been long since ignored, and their test reduced
to a nullity as a test. To all intents and purposes,
ecclesiastical courts, and, as supreme, the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council, have superseded the
Scriptural authority, in these cases, and their own
authority is substituted for it. This is no exaggeration,
but a matter of fact that must be patent to all whom
it concerns. In the last trial for heterodoxy, that of
Mr Voysey. how was his heterodoxy determined ? He
had satisfied himself that he was justified in holding
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Shall I Seek Ordination
certain views of Christ’s Divine nature, of his atone
ment, &c., although they were notin accordance with
the ordinary interpretation of the Church’s formu
laries, because, testing the formularies by Scripture,
that alone was the meaning which he could assign to
their language. Was any attempt made, in either of
the courts before which he appeared, to show that
this alleged discrepancy between Scripture and the
ordinary interpretation of the formularies did not
exist ? any reference to the Church’s rule of faith ?
None. All that was done, even by the court before
which his final appeal was heard, was to examine
carefully the wording of the formularies, and to
determine, on its own authority, what that wording
did, and what it did not mean ; and, as this meaning
differed essentially from Mr Voysey’s doctrine, to
condemn him. Whether he was right or wrong makes
no difference as to the principle on which the decision
was arrived at. As a minister of the Church of Eng
land, he had pledged himself to take the Scriptures as
his guide and test for doctrine; as a subscriber to the
Thirty-nine Articles, he had further pledged himself
to recognise the Scriptures only as his rule of faith,
and when he is prosecuted for having promulgated,
false doctrines, he finds, to his cost, that the Church of
England’s rule of faith is not the Scriptures, but the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It is a
grave stretch of authority for even the highest
tribunal of the land toAliscard the sacred authority,
and to act on its own independently of it. No
doubt it is; but let us not think that in deciding
what is and what is not Church of England
doctrine, the members of that august tribunal act
either sacrilegiously, or arbitrarily, and without any
fixed principle to guide them. They are, and have
been, I believe, without exception, laymen as well as
clerics, men who have exercised the authority with
which circumstances have invested them, not only
�In the Church of England.
9
honestly and uprightly, but with more or less of a
solemn consciousness that they were dealing with the
things that are of God. The principle on which they
appear to decide may not be defensible, but it is in
telligible and plausible. Whether from their personal
habits of religious thought, or from that acquiescence
in the tyranny of popular and prevailing notions
from which few of us are quite exempt, they come to
the inquiry into an alleged heterodoxy, under the
dominion of what is currently established as ortho
doxy, and with a religious abhorrence of what is cur
rently held to be heterodoxy. The law to which they
bow is no statute or documentary authority, but a
sort of common law in matters of faith—this is ruled
to be the orthodox interpretation of the Church’s
standard, that the heterodox. What if, on all
the subjects which have furnished occasion for
these. prosecutions, some in high and the highest
ecclesiastical stations have differed from orthodoxy in
their interpretation of the Church’s formularies?
That is no plea for the accused. The tribunal asserts
the right of discriminating between the amount of
heterodoxy that is permissible, and that which is not.
It is allowable, for example, to question the authen
ticity of a certain portion of Scripture; but it must
not be a very large portion. Would those of the
judges who preside over secular courts of justice
venture to. maintain that theft is to be determined,
not by the stealing, but by the quantity stolen; or
that coiners of false money ought not to be prosecuted
if they limit their coinage to a moderate amount, but
only those who issue the base coin by the bushel ? It
would be easy to furnish a catena of eminent churchmen
who have thought it no unwarranted interpretation of
the Church’s formularies to take what are called hete
rodox views of the Athanasian Creed, of the Trinity,
of the person of Christ, of his atonement, of the
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, and of
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Shall 1 Seek Ordination
other essentials, and who, on the one hand, have
never been prosecuted for those views, and, on
the other hand, are not available when a clergyman
who is prosecuted for doing the like, appeals to their
writings as having been tacitly sanctioned. The
Scriptures, having been deposed from their throne as
the arbiter for the interpretation of the Church’s
formularies, are themselves classed with the Articles
and the Book of CommonPrayer, as all alike documents
concerning which the clergyman must hold orthodox
opinions. He may not appeal to the Scriptures, even to
determine what he ought to believe concerning them ;
whether he may draw a distinction between the autho
rity of this and that portion, or in what sense they may
reasonably be called “ The Word of God.” Hot Scrip
ture itself, but orthodoxy, must instruct him.
I have stated the case plainly and unreservedly.
My purpose in doing so is not that you should see in
the Church of England’s rule of faith, as I have
represented it, an insurmountable obstacle to your
becoming one of its ministers ; but to impress on you
the advisableness of recognising the fact, in all its
bearings, before you do so. Numbers who cannot but
be aware of the fact are not disturbed with the prospect
of its ever causing trouble and difficulty to them.
This may or may not be your case ; but, whilst you
are free to choose, you ought to be forewarned of the
existence of a state of things which causes distress, if
not ruin, to some of the most devoted of the Church’s
ministers, not the less devoted that they have laboured
to ascertain what is true or otherwise in its teaching,
undeterred by the consequences.
I may now proceed briefly to particularise the more
prominent topics on which the decision, or presumed
decision, of the Church has been questioned by them1
and by others. These are, the doctrine that the Deity
is, in theological phraseology, a trinity in unity, the
word unity meaning, not union, but oneness numeri
�In the Church of England.
11
cally, and the word Zrmifc/’the being three; the connec
tion of the second of the three, the Son, with “ the
man Christ Jesus
the personality of the one Christ
with two distinct and perfect natures, that of God and
that of man; original or birth sin; the atonement
for sin, both actual and original; the future punish
ment of wicked men and of unbelievers ; the meaning
and purpose of those of the Thirty-nine Articles
which relate to these subjects, more particularly of the
first five; and of the adoption and sanction of the
three Creeds, more particularly the Athanasian; the
authority and the authorship of the Scriptures, speci
ally as now most controverted, of the Pentateuch and
Book of Joshua in the Old Testament, and of the
fourth Gospel in the New ; the question whether cer
tain statements in the Gospel histories which appear
to be irreconcilable admit of being reconciled, and the
veracity of the writers vindicated.
Now, if you really wish to understand the grounds
on which certain clergymen have been prosecuted
and condemned for their views on any of these sub
jects, you should seek your information, not from the
representation of their opponents, but by candidly
examining what they themselves, and those who have
gone along with them, have said. It is very possible
that, owing to your religious studies and thoughts
having always proceeded in a totally different direc
tion, you will find, in these writings, some things to
startle and even shock you. Not that they are
blasphemous or irreverent, far from it, but because
they may run counter to, and jar with, your custo
mary modes of thinking. Supposing this to be the
case, it ought not to deter you from a candid exami
nation of them. Should the result be that you are
convinced by the arguments on the side of orthodoxy,
you will be less likely to be disturbed by doubts when
doubting cannot extricate you from a false position;
* 1 Tim. ii. 5.
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Shall 1 Seek Ordination
if, on the other hand, the heterodoxy shall approve
itself to you, as the truth, you will have had a timely
warning against taking a position which would oblige
you to maintain the contrary.
Many, I know, would advise one in your circum
stances to have nothing to do with the publications
that call in question established views of religious
doctrine, and to fortify yourself against them by
reading what safe guides say on the orthodox side.
Advice more unwise, disingenuous, and dangerous
cannot be given. Thus to treat publications which
discuss the truth or falsehood of religious views as
you would indecent and immoral tracts, savours of a
confusion of thought which can only be accounted
for by the habit we so often observe, of dealing with
religious beliefs as if the ordinary laws of thought
were not applicable to them. We keep the immoral
tracts out of the hands of the pure, because they
appeal to the passions of the reader, and, therefore,
tend to corrupt him morally in the very act of perus
ing them; whereas the heterodox tracts to which I
refer, are addressed to the reasoning faculty of the
reader, which they stimulate him to exercise lawfully
and rightly, and in the exercise of which there is no
corrupting process ; the process being one of clearing
away misty conceptions, and of forming a healthy
judgment, whether for or against the views submitted
to it. To aid the investigator by setting before him
what we may think to be specious and false in the
reasoning of an opponent, that is reasonable and
right; but not to blindfold him and persuade him
that he sees.
And what is the natural impression made by adopt
ing this policy ? Is it not that, make what assertions
you may, of sacred truths not requiring investigation
because they are already irrefragably established,
there must be a lurking suspicion that they will not
bear investigation ?
�In the Church of England.
13
The crisis is a trying one for the Church of England,
and, indeed, for all churches and sects. There is a
strong religious movement in a direction the opposite
to church orthodoxy on some of its leading doctrines,
and, indeed, to Christianity itself as commonly em
braced. The aggressive views are making their way,
with more or less acceptance, among all classes. The
movement is not confined to England. It is agitating
Scotland, and, in a less degree, Ireland. Indications
of it may be found in every country of Europe, in the
United States of America, and in the entire range of
our colonial dependencies. Eor counteracting its in
fluence in England, some efforts have recently been
made. A Christian Evidence Society has been or
ganised, and some of the most eminent of our church
men have been charged with the refutation of this or
that heterodox position. In Norwich a series of
cathedral sermons have been preached and circulated,
with the same object. Now, the misfortune is, that
you will altogether fail of your purpose, if you sup
pose that, by studying these publications, you will be
a scholar armed against the assaults of the heterodox.
What appears to be taking place is, that one section
of our Christian world read the Christian evidence
publications, being beforehand convinced that they
are on the right side; whilst another section read the
heterodox publications, and derive all their light on the
subjects from them. There is thus really no common
ground for the controversy. Indeed it may be ques
tioned, whether the authors of the Christian evidence
publications have made themselves sufficiently acquain
ted with the views and arguments which they have
undertaken to refute; for, whatever merit may be ac
corded to the tracts, as compositions, they do not as
yet meet the views and arguments against which they
are directed. Read what proceeds from the Christian
Evidence Society, by all means; but read the hetero
dox tracts too, if you really wish to master the quesA 2
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Shall I Seek Ordination
tions which are mooted, and to enable yonrself to
form a correct judgment on them. I will subjoin a
list of some of the publications on both sides which
may be of use to you. Do not be appalled at the
amount of reading and of serious thought which it
supposes. It is something very different, no doubt,
from getting up the books commonly prescribed for
an examination for orders; but the circumstances
under which your ministry will have to be exercised
differ essentially from those even of a few years ago,
and call for a corresponding difference of preparation
on your part. Those who shrink from it, may find
themselves in the condition of an army which, with
the weapons and tactics of other days, has to encounter
an opposing force provided with all the inventions of
modern warfare, and marshalled according to the
strategical science of a more advanced age. What I
am recommending is incumbent on you, not for your
own satisfaction only, but because, in your ministerial
course, you may have, again and again, to deal with
the scruples of those to whom you will be ministering,
whether derived from such publications, or from the
independent working of their own minds.
I may be thought, perhaps, to have said enough in
setting before you the requirements of the Church of
England, and the conditions under which you will
place yourself in becoming one of its ministers. I
cannot, however, forbear from adding some remarks
on a principle on which all existing ecclesiastical
systems are based, and to which it is owing that, not
in the Church of England only, but in all Christian
communities, there is more or less of the risk which
I have described, to one who undertakes the minis
terial office in any of them. Christianity and a
Christian Church are not identical. I have already
called your attention to the fact; and I will now
more fully explain my purpose in doing so, and urge
on you the importance of bearing it in mind. That
�In the Church of England.
15
there is this distinction would be apparent to all of us
were we not so familiarised to the palpable pheno
mena which evidence it, as to overlook this applica
tion of them. Contemplate, for a moment, the
condition of Christendom. Where is the Spiritual
Temple which, according to the Scriptures, was to
supersede its type, the material Temple of God’s old
people, “ built upon the foundation of the apostles
and prophets,”* its “living stones” cemented to
gether by a holy union, “ Christ himself being the
chief corner stone ?”f That beautiful conception is
nowhere realised. What we have are the scattered
materials of the mystic edifice, living stones in frag
mentary combinations everywhere, but no world-wide
structure ; foundation and chief corner-stone, but not
the Temple. Is this Christianity—the Christianity
of Christ ? The several communities which consti
tute the Christian world are in determined and irre
concilable opposition to one another, exchanging
anathemas; or, if not so, keeping aloof from one
another, as if religious intercommunion would be
pollution. Is this Christianity — the religion of
brotherly love and harmony ? What of any single
church ? What of the Church of England, with its
boasted safeguards for unity and uniformity ? Is it
not notorious that it contains within its pale sections
as bitterly hostile, the one to the other, as any
separate and antagonistic communities ? Is this
Christianity ? With what difficulties and hindrances
our Government and legislature, and not ours alone,
have often to contend, in devising measures of State
policy and civil administration, through the civil
and political aspects of ecclesiasticism. Is that
ecclesiasticism Christianity ? Is it derived from him
whose kingdom was not to be of this world
We
may know it by its fruits. Nor is all this a matter
* Ephesians ii. 20.
t 1 Peter ii. 5.
t John xviii. 36.
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Shall I Seek Ordination
of to-day and yesterday. Ecclesiastical history tells
us that, in the worst of these features, such has been
the condition of the Christian world from almost its
earliest date. Indeed the contrast is vastly in favor
of modern and present times. It would almost seem
as if the Christianity of the Church, instead of being
the corrector of the errors and evils of secular life,
has been itself indebted for correction and ameliora
tion to the secular progress of mankind in thinking
and acting. The annals of the past are darkened,
not merely with the existing exhibition of discordant
and hostile religious feeling, but with its develop
ment in bloodshed and atrocious cruelty, in torture,
imprisonment, and the stake, in wars and wholesale
massacres. Is this Christianity ? However callous
we may have become to the spectacle, we cannot
seriously maintain that it is. We cannot but acknow
ledge that there must be something rotten in the
institution to which the name of Christ is affixed,
that unfits it to be the instrument of his all-em
bracing philanthropy, and “ the habitation of God
through the Spirit.”*
Nor is it difficult to perceive in what this fatal
perversion consists. Study the records that have
come down to us of his life and character, of the
kind of influence which they exercised, of the lessons
he taught, of the principles which he inculcated as
the foundation of Christian society. We can hardly
avoid the impression from it all, that the main work
in which he was engaged was, not that of a revealer
of heavenly mysteries, but that of a moral reformer;
that to implant in men purer motives of conduct,
and to provide as a bond of social union for them a
mutual pledge for practising a higher morality than
had been hitherto possible for the world—that this
was his first and dearest aim. Important, no doubt,
were the doctrines which he taught; but, however
* Ephesians ii. 22.
�In the Church of England.
17
important, they were incidental and subordinate to
his moral teaching. The good life stands out first,
the articles of belief second; the moral conduct was
to be the characterising feature ; to doctrinal tenets
was assigned another position.
My reference, I should state, is principally to the
three first Gospels, which alone are strictly biogra
phical. The fourth is not so properly a biography as
an exposition of certain views of our Lord’s nature,
by means of language which he is stated to have used,
and things which he is stated to have done, on
certain occasions; all of which, whether John was
the author or another, appears to have been acknow
ledged as Scripture by the Christians of a very early
period. It is difficult, however, to suppose that the
sanction given to it was given to it as a history of
Jesus, inasmuch as it is historically at variance with
the three genuine biographies. These last do, no
doubt, differ from one another in some of the details
of the history, and this to an extent that has taxed
the ingenuity of commentators to reconcile them;
but the discrepancies of which I speak as between
them and the fourth Gospel affect the main features
of the history, in which they are in perfect agree
ment. To name one or two of these discrepancies.
According to the fourth Gospel Jesus, during the
whole of his ministerial career, was, again and again,
in Judasa and Jerusalem, preaching and performing
miracles; according to the other three his ministry
was confined to Galilee, until quite the close of it,
when the display of it in Judaea and Jerusalem pro
voked the interference of the Jewish authorities, and
was the cause of his death. According to the fourth
Gospel he openly avowed his Messiahship from the
beginning of his ministry; according to the other
three, until nearly the end of it he suppressed the
claim, and strictly forbade its being made • known.
According to the fourth Gospel he partook of his last
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Shall 1 Seek Ordination
supper with his disciples on the day before the
Passover, and was crucified on the day of the
Passover, and before its celebration ; according to
the other three this last supper was the Passover,
which he kept with his disciples on the regular day
for its celebration, and his crucifixion took place on
the day following ; and whilst all mention of the
institution of the Sacrament, at this last supper, is
omitted in the fourth Gospel, a record is substituted
of his washing the feet of his disciples. All this, and
more like this, of historical inaccuracy is explicable
only if we regard the purpose of this Scripture to have
been, as I have said, not that of recording the life of
Jesus, but of establishing certain theological views of
his nature, by recording certain things which he said
or did, without caring to be scrupulously correct as
to the time and place of the occurrences, or as to
the connecting chain of events, that being the pro
vince of the historian or biographer.
Conformity to the view which we derive from the
biographical Gospels of our Lord’s character and
mission does not appear to have been long preserved.
Even in the earliest stage of the Church’s growth,
we perceive the tendency to that which became more
and more prominent in its further progress—the
establishment of a doctrinal, not a moral test, as the
terms of communion for a Christian society. Instead
of moral rules, such, for example, as Pliny represents
the symbolism of the Christian Church in Bithynia
to have been,* creeds became the symbola. The
inevitable result has been, that everywhere there has
been disagreement and disruption—inevitable, I say,
because, as man is constituted, it is impossible that
the members of any community should agree
permanently and throughout successive generations
in their views on religious subjects. They may
acquiesce in the permanent establishment of any
* Plinii Epist., Lib. ix, Epist. 97.
�In the Church of England.
19
amount of doctrine, as, to a certain extent, is the
case with the members of the Romish Church ; but
that is agreement in the acquiescence, not in the
doctrinal decisions, inasmuch as they are not theirs,
but those of an authority to which they have
delegated the right and duty of thinking and
deciding for them. To say that it is, is as gross a
misnomer as if partners in a property about the
management of which they cannot agree, were, by
agreement, to get rid of it, and still call themselves
a partnership in reference to it. Permanent agree
ment amongst those whose religious views are their
own, is, I repeat, impossible. Man’s nature as God
has formed it, makes it impossible. And thus it
happens that that which has been devised throughout
the Christian world, as the means of making the
members of one church of one mind, has been the
prime cause of dissent, and that which was to have
been a bond of brotherly love has been the incentive
to discord, malice, and hatred—hatred so charac
teristic of its origin that an especial term is used to
describe it (o&to theologwuml). We cannot deny
that such has been the effect of our symbola being
doctrinal, not moral. That good moral life is recog
nised as indispensable to the Christian character, in
all churches; that it so far enters into the symbola
of all as to cause the expulsion, in some of a minis
ter, in others of any member, whether minister or
layman, who is scandalously immoral, does not alter
the case. The mischief is done as soon as articles of
belief make any part of the test of communion.
There, is agreement enough among men as to
what is and what is not good conduct, and especially
as to what is a flagrant departure from it, to
secure permanent unanimity so long as the test
is simply and solely the moral one; but as
surely as men agree about this, so surely will they
disagree about what they are to think and believe;
�20
Shall 1 Seek Ordination
and as the disagreement progresses, one effect of the
passions which it excites is to magnify unduly the im
portance of the bone of contention, and to give
greater and greater prominence and weight to the
doctrinal test, so as finally to overlay the moral
element if it co-exists with it. All this would seem
to be undeniable. And yet, so obstinate is the preju
dice in favor of a doctrinal test, gathering strength,
as it has, in its transmission to us through successive
ages, and associated, as it is, with zeal for Christianity
itself, that you will not find many who can conceive
the existence of a church, the terms of union in which
should consist in conformity to moral rules, doctrines
and dogmas being open questions; in which social
worship should not bind those who join' in it to this
or that article of belief; in which inquiry into theo
logical truths should not be impeded by its involving
a question of church membership, and religious dis
cussion should be divested of the arrogance of Church
authority, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
of the fierce antagonism engendered by that arro
gance ; in which religion should be no longer the one
subject of controversy characterised, beyond all others,
by uncharitable feelings and language. And yet
such would seem to be the Church of Christ, as he
projected it, and such the impress of his life and
lessons which ought to be on it. It is remarkable,
too, that notwithstanding the pre-eminence assigned
to doctrine, doctrine itself is, from time to time, sub
jected to the moral test ; so that, whatever may be the
authority of any dogma, there is a revolt against it, if
it offends our moral sense. We cannot altogether
shake off its supremacy, or abandon its application.
It is not, you will observe, that I seek to detract
from the intrinsic value of true Christian doctrine,
or to assign it an inferior place in the Christian
scheme; but to point out that it has been misapplied
in being made the symbolum of Church union, for
�In the Church of England.
21
which it is unsuited, and has therefore produced
results the reverse of Christian fellowship.
Is there any prospect of the Christian world re
forming the ecclesiastical system in this respect ?
The prospect, if any, is distant. Incapable of con
cord in aught besides, on this perversion of the bond of
ecclesiastical union all Christian churches are at one,
Eastern and Western, Greek, Romish, and Protestant,
Episcopal and Congregational. All I would venture
to assert is, that no church reformation will ever be
of much avail until there is one in this direction ;
and although no church or sect is at present ripe for
it, there are growing symptoms of revolt against the
bondage of creeds and articles, as part and parcel of a
tyrannical rule whose day is gone by, and an aspiration
after a free admission of light and truth, which may
bring about the needful change more rapidly than we
think. The steps taken, in some quarters, to tighten
the bondage are more likely to hasten emancipation
from it, than to prevent or retard it. Whether you
shall or shall not be called on to take an active part
in the struggle, you will, I hope, bestow a serious
attention on the signs of its approach, and be pre
pared for it.
I have counselled you, throughout my letter, to the
best of my ability, but I cannot conclude without
impressing on you that which I myself feel deeply,
that mine are the words of a fallible counsellor, and
directing you to seek surer guidance from Him who
alone is infallible. Do I mean to imply that, if you
do this, by some process, manifest or secret, you may
rely on deciding aright ? Not that,—I am fully alive
to much that may be urged, not only against the
reasonableness of such an expectation, but against all
efficacy in prayer. The Divine Ruler of the universe
exercises His rule, it is said, by general laws. Let us
not imagine that He will, at our request, cause those
laws to be violated. Experience is appealed to in
�22
Shall I Seek Ordination, &c.
proof that He does not. Instances apparently to the
contrary are ascribed to accidental coincidence, or to
the delusions of enthusiasm. Still, I say, pray. He
who has made us has implanted in us an instinctive
desire to do so ; why, if we are not to obey it ? And
as for the argument that the Creator cannot be sup
posed to change the established course of His creation
at the bidding of one of His creatures, the reply
that I would make is this :—How do we know that
praying, for which man is formed, may not, according
to one of the general laws of the universe, act on
other general laws to modify them ? The system of
the universe is maintained by the action of one
general law on another. Man, by the exercise of his
intellect and bodily powers, gives this and that
direction and application to the general laws of the
material world. What is there irrational in suppos
ing that praying may be, analogously, the agency of
spirit on established spiritual laws, bending them to
our purpose ? That this is not the invariable result
is true ; but neither is it the invariable result in the
application of intellectual and bodily agency to the
laws of matter. Besides, how much of praying is
really that energy of spirit which alone can be sup
posed to have efficiency ? Pray, then, for guidance
now, and pray whenever you feel the need of more
than human power and human wisdom. Pray in a
rational faith, but still in faith; and let that faith
animate you to use all the other provisions of your
nature, material, intellectual, and moral, which
God has mercifully bestowed on you, for doing that
which shall be most in accordance with His will for
you.
�Publications advocating certain doctrines of the Church
of - England as commonly held.
It is not necessary that I should name any of the
well-known standard works, as you must be already
acquainted with them, if not otherwise, in your
attendance on your University Divinity Lectures.
In every Diocese, too, there is a selection from these
printed for the use of Ordination Candidates. Among
more recent publications, I may specify—
(Hodges, Smith
BYRNE’S DONNELLAN LECTURES.
and Co., Dublin.)
THE SPEAKER’S
London.)
COMMENTARY
(John
Murray,
REPLY TO BISHOP COLENSO. By the Rev. W.
Kay, D.D., Broomfield, Chelmsford.
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE LECTURES
Stoughton, Paternoster row).
(Hodder and
BISHOP MAGEE’S SERMONS IN NORWICH
CATHEDRAL (Hamilton and Co., Paternoster row).
LETTER TO THE REV. SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D.,
LL.D., in answer to his Essay on the Johannine Author
ship of the Fourth Gospel. By Kentish Bach
(F. Bowyer Kitto, 5 Bishopsgate street Without).
�Publications questioning certain doctrines of the Church
of England as generally held.
THEODORE PARKER’S
(Triibner and Co.)
THEOLOGICAL
WORKS
CREDIBILIA. By the Rev. James Cranbrook (Tiiibner
and Co.)
THE FOUNDERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
By the Rev. James Cranbrook (Triibner and Co.)
THE SLING AND THE STONE.
Voysey (Triibner and Co.)
By the Rev. C.
DEFENCE BEFORE THE CHANCERY COURT OF
YORK. By the Rev. C. Voysey (Triibner and Co.)
APPEAL TO THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE OF THE
PRIVY COUNCIL.
and Co.)
By the Rev. C. Voysey (Tiiibner
BISHOP COLENSO ON THE PENTATEUCH AND
BOOK OF JOSHUA (Longmans and Co.)
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. By J. James Tayler (Williams
and Norgate).
CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO FREE THOUGHT,
SCEPTICISM, AND FAITH (Austin and Co.)
MR SCOTT OF RAMSGATE’S LIST OF PUBLICA
TIONS contains many more, from which you may make
a selection. I would particularise his Challenge to
the Christian Evidence Society.
�
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A reply to the question, "Shall I seek ordination in the Church of England?"
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Text
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE DOCTRINES
HELD BY THE CLERGY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
ON THE
SUBJECT OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT.
WITH
SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE TEACHING OF BISHOPS PEARSON AND
BUTLER, ARCHBISHOP WHATELY, THE BISHOP OF OXFORD, THE
BISHOP OF NATAL, THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN,
DR NEWMAN, AND THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.
BY
PRESBYTER ANGLICANUS.
[Reprinted, with Additions, from the "National ReviewNo. XXXI, for January, 1863.]
WITH
AN APPENDIX,
CONTAINING
A
REPLY
TO THE
ARTICLE
ON
UNIVERSALISAT
AND
ETERNAL-
rUNISHMENT IN THE “ CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER,” NO. CNN, FOR
APRIL, 1863, AND SOME REMARKS ON A SERMON ON
EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT, BY THE REV.
E. B. PUSSY, D.D.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY CHARLES W. REYNELL,
LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�ê
�CONTENTS.
--------------SECTION I.
State
or
Beliee with Regard to the Doctrine
Punishment.
oe
Eternal
PAGE
Belief of the Clergy of the Church of England
.
.
Tendency of Modern Thought .
.
.
.
Practical Difficulties of Missionaries
.
.
.
Their Bearing on the History of the Old Testament
.
Tacit Rejection of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment
»
Necessary Inferences from this Doctrine .
.
.
Differences in the Expression of this Doctrine
.
.
Its Repulsive Character, as admitted hy the Dean of St Paul’s
The Appeal to Authority .
.
.
.
.
The Denial of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment not necessarily
Result of Lax Practice and General Unbelief .
.
Foundation ofWIie Doctrine of Endless Punishment
.
..
Extent of Belief in this Doctrine
.
.
‘ .
. 1
.3
. 4
.5
. 6
.6
.
7
7
. 8
a
.9
. 9
.12
SECTION II.
Teaching
of the
Clergy of the Church of England
of Eternal Punishment.
on the
Subject
Two-fold Division involved in this Doctrine as drawn out by Mr
Newman
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 13
Practical Effects of this Division
.
.
.
.15
Statements of the Bishop of Oxford
.
.
.
. 15
Inferences from these Statements
.
.
.
.18
Their Bearing on the Proportion of Punishment
.
.
. 20
The Idea that Sin may be Compensated by a Fixed Penalty
.
. 21
The Victory of Righteousness over Sin .
.
.
.22
Pictures of Pandemonium
.
.
.
.
. 23
Relation of the Saved to those who are Lost
.
.
.24
Necessity of Maintaining that the Lost become wholly Evil
.
. 25
Theory of Archbishop Whately that the Good can shake off all thoughts
of the Lost .
.
.
.
... 26
�IV
Bishop Copleston’s Inference from the Wide Prevalence of Evil
. 27
Season of Probation .
.
.
.
... 28
The Archbishop of Dublin on the Parable of the Pich Man and the
Beggar .
.
.
.
.
.
.29
Dr Trench’s Reference to the Opinion of Bishop Sanderson on the Rich
Man’s Good Things .
.
.
.
.
. 31
Dr Trench’s Judgment on those who do not admit his Theory of
Punishment
.
.
.
.
.
.31
Bishop Pearson on Endless Punishment
.
.
.
. 33
Mr Maurice on the Meaning of the Word Eternal
.
. 34
The Theory that Moral’ Obligation rests on the Conviction of Endless
Punishment .
.
.
.
.
.
. 35
Experience of Human Legislators
.
.
.
.37
Archbishop Whately on the Idea of Civil Penalties
.
. 37
SECTION III.
Philosophical Arguments Alleged in Depence
Endless Punishment.
of the
Dogma
of
The Argument from Analogy as Treated by Bishop Butler .
. 38
Butler’s Theory of Human Nature .
.
.
.
. 39
Contradictions between the Ethics of Butler’s Sermons and his Argu
ments from Analogy
.
.
.
.
.40
Butler’s Formal Notion of Government
.
’ ♦
.
. 41
His Argument from the Besults of Sin in this Life
.
. 42
Butler’s Beference to the Doctrines of Heathen Writers
.
. 43
Argument from Human Law .
.
.
.
.45
SECTION IV.
Present State of the Controversy as Bearing
Duties of the Clergy of the Church
Position and
England.
on the
of
Beal Reason for the Popular Theories of Inspiration .
.
Contrast between Belief and Practice in the Present Day .
Recent History of Beligious Belief in England
.
.
Its Effects on the Clergy of the Church of England
.
Duty of the Clergy
.
.
.
.
.
Judgment of the Court of Arches in the Case of Fendall r. Wilson
Charges of Evasion
.
.
.
.
.
Present State of the Controversy
.
.
. 46
. 47
. 48
. 49
. 49
. 50
. 51
.52
�ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.
--------- ♦---------
SECTION L
State of Belief with regard to the Doctrine of
Eternal Punishment.
HE Church of England has not declared expressly that
the probation,
defi
Tnitively with thetrial, orofeducation of man is endedmembers,
close
the present life. Her
therefore, are free to entertain the hope or affirm their
■assurance that hereafter, as well as here, the good and the
bad alike are in the hands of a righteous Father, who will
so deal with them that, when the last enemy has been
destroyed, God shall be all in all. Such is the decision
which has roused the wrath and indignation of certain
parties in the English Church, who wish to make the
acceptance of their own dogmas the exclusive test of
Church membership. Legally, their opponents have made
good their standing ground, and may afford to pass over in
silence the imputations of dishonesty or want of orthodoxy,
which are thrown out against them. But they have pro
voked a contest on the most vital of all questions : they
have undertaken to do battle with popular conceptions of
the Divine Nature ; and it would ill become them to take
shelter under legal bulwarks, as though these alone consti
tuted the strength of their cause. They may be safe from
legal prosecutions, but they have to convince the people
that, on the momentous subjects of Eternal Life and Eternal
Death, a number of propositions are still commonly main
tained, which are not sanctioned by the English Church,
�1
Eternal Punishment.
which are utterly opposed to the whole spirit of Chris
tianity, and which obscure or obliterate all distinctions
between right and wrong. Theological writers, who profess
to define the limits of historical criticism, find it convenient
to represent their position as the only foundation for
Christianity itself: and it becomes indispensably necessary
to declare that the real question at issue is one which will,
not be set at rest, even though the history of the Exodus,
were proved to be in every particular true. Behind all
discussions on the authority of the Bible lies the oneabsorbing subject of human destiny. It is better and more
honest to declare at qnce that on this question only one
answer will ultimately satisfy the English people ; and it
is no light thing that we are enabled now to assert thatthe Church of England has returned this answer. In herinterest, next only to that of truth and justice, we desireto speak. She is facing a great danger; but that danger
arises from the spread, not of historical criticism, but of a
feeling of doubt whether her voice is raised to proclaim
unreservedly the absolute righteousness of God. Her
authority is falsely claimed for a vast scheme of popular
theology. Amongst her ministers, some few openly de
nounce parts of this scheme, many practically ignore it,
while.others uphold it by arguments which would make it
indifferent whether we worship God or whether we worship
Moloch. It bodes no good to a Church when the great
body of its lay members suspect that the Clergy are up
holding a system of dogmas, in some part of which at
least they do not believe. It is a still darker sign if they
come to think that these dogmas impute what, amongst
men, would be called the worst injustice to a Being who is
represented as infinitely merciful and loving. It becomes,
therefore, a question of paramount importance to ascertain
what is, in fact, the practical teaching of the Clergy on the
subject of Eternal Punishment, and whether that teachingis consistent with itself and with the religion on which it
professes to rest.
It is impossible to put aside a subject which forces
itself upon all at every turn. The course of thought and
criticism at home, the practical and more urgent needs of
missionaries abroad, will again and again demand answers
�Eternal Punishment.
3
to questions which, all feel to be of greater moment than
any other. The age which has fearlessly scrutinized the
histories of Greece and Rome, which has laid down the
laws by which these are to be judged, and has applied these
laws with rigid impartiality to all researches or speculations
whether they tell for or against the orthodox belief, will
*
hot be hindered from examining the grounds of the
doctrines which fix the destinies of all mankind. If these
doctrines seem to be opposed to ordinary human morality,
little stress may for the present be laid on the inconsistency ;
but when they claim to be part of a Divine Revelation
which is contained in an infallible Book, it becomes a mere
question of fact whether they really belong to that Revela
tion, and whether the records, on which they rest, are
absolutely true. It may be long before these questions are
answered: but in the meanwhile the signs become daily
more and more apparent, that the thoughts of men are
running in this direction. The clergy, generally, are well
aware of this. The old language on the subject of hell
torments is not often heard at the present day; and the
passing reference to them is commonly followed by the
tranquil announcement of a just retribution for all sin.
While the clergy in this country feel that anything more
would be practically thrown away, they find it at once an
easier and a more worthy task to insist on those truths
which neither they nor their people in their secret hearts
deny. From time to time men of greater honesty and
greater courage give utterance to what is working in the
minds of others, and plainly show that not merely the
course of modern criticism, but- our first religious instincts
make the subject of Eternal Punishment the great, question
of the age.
Twice, at least, within the last twelve years, something
like a plain answer has been given to this question. The
* The criticisms of Sir Cornewall Lewis are directed with equal severity
against the reconstructed Assyrian History of Mr Rawlinson and the Egyp
tology of Baron Bunsen. The former is supposed to corroborate the His
tory of the Old Testament, the latter to upset it. To the historical critic
either issue is wholly beside the question; but, of course, his weapons may
strike that which he had no conscious intention of assailing. Minucius
Felix never thought of the labours of Samson when he thrust aside those of
Hercules by the famous criterion : “ Qute si facta essent, fierent; quia fieri
non possunt, ideo nec facta sunt.”
�4
Eternal Punishment.
Theological Essays of Mr Maurice roused an opposition
scarcely less vehement than ‘ Essays and Reviews ; ’ but
it was comparatively an easy thing to say that the former
lost half then- force by the writer’s seeming love of paradox;
while the latter have been commonly regarded as the
ambiguous utterances of men who felt more than they
dared to put down in words. The practical needs of the
missionary are not so easily set aside. It is one thing to
speak in this country of heathens as being destined to
torments which shall have no end, and another to insist
before the heathen themselves that all sin not repented of
at the hour of death will plunge the sinner into endless
misery. The inconceivable fearfulness of the penalty
deprives it, with many, of its force and meaning; and the
greatest vehemence in depicting its terrors is followed by a
deeper unbelief. It is a moral difficulty under which the
missionary may console himself with reflections on the
hardness of the human heart. There are other difficulties
of an intellectual kind, with which, if he is an honest man,
• he will find it more difficult to deal. But whether of the
one kind or the other, it is far better that they should be
forced on our attention from the actual wants of the heathen,
than by writers whose words may be attributed to a love
of restless speculation. In his commentary on St Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans, the Bishop of Natal admits that the
task of teaching Christian doctrine “ to intelligent adult
natives, who have the simplicity of children, but withal the
earnestness and thoughtfulness of men .... is a sifting
process for the opinions of any teacher who feels the deep
moral obligation of answering truly and faithfully and
unreservedly his fellow-man looking up to him for light
and guidance, and asking, 1 Are you sure of this ? ’ ‘Do
you know this to be true ? ’ ‘ Do you really believe that ? ’ ”
The Zulus of Southern Africa are not slow in drawing the
logical inferences from the dogma of Eternal Punishment,
as ordinarily understood and set before them: but they are
more ready to question its justice than to adopt the belief
which drove Antony and Macarius into the Nitrian desert.
Many a wife in England has asked her husband in anguish
of heart, how it could be right to bring children into a life
which may be followed by a doom so unimaginably dreadful;
�Eternal Punishment.
5
the Zulu knows well how to appreciate the sophistry which
seems to satisfy the mothers of Englishmen.
*
Thus far his questions concerned chiefly his own per
ceptions of the justness and fitness of things ; but it was
impossible that they could stop short here. Bishop Colenso
has had to answer others, not less searching, on the origin
and earliest condition of man ; and he has answered them
with equal truth and candour. He may have spoken to
them, in past years, of the Fall of Man as a time when
“ the vessel which God had fashioned for Himself” became
polluted with sin, and when His purpose seemed “ blighted
by the cunning of the Tempter;” but the questions of his
people have not failed to lead him in due time to a closer
scrutiny of the book from which these notions have been de
rived. He had come to the plain conclusion that the Ever
lasting Fire does not necessarily mean a punishment which
is endless ; the same earnest examination of the popular
belief respecting the Fall has led him to an equally clear
conviction that no such lapse from a state of perfect
goodness and purity ever took place. It is not merely that
modern science has set aside statements in the Book
of Genesis, and shown that physical death was not the re
sult of Adam’s sin, that the serpent from its creation moved
as it moves now, and that thorns and thistles sprang up
from the ground ever .since vegetable substances came into
being.f The fabric falls more .from its own want of cohe
sion than from any assaults of modern science. If the
second chapter of Genesis in almost every respect contra
dicts the first, if the whole chronology of the book simply
brings up a mass of insuperable difficulties, an inquiry is
opened which must be followed to its results, and of which
one result atTeast must be to dispel the idea that any texts
* At the least, the latter can be silenced by being told that the married
state has been pronounced holy, and that their children will be brought into
a world where they will have full opportunity of attaining to life unless
they deliberately choose death. The Zulu would probably think no answer
satisfactory which did not reverse the conclusion of Sophocles :
fii] (pvva.i
top airavTa vitca Xtyov.
t See Professor Owen’s-Lecture “On Certain Instances of the Power
of God,” delivered before the Young Men’s Christian Association at Exeter
Hall. Longman and Co.
�6
Eternal Punishment.
of the Bible can be suffered to override the plainest dictates
of the human heart.
These are things on which the nation at large will
soon have to make up its mind. But while the doctrine
of an Endless Punishment for all men dying with un
repented sin is still asserted by many to be the doctrine
of the Church of England, and while from time to time we
have explanations of its nature which leave us in doubt
of the speaker’s meaning, how are we to explain the fact
that it should be less and less frequently brought before
the people ? A real conviction of its truth would lead men
to dwell on it to the exclusion of almost every other, to
enforce it by night and by day with a vehement and
untiring energy. Instead of this, the Bishop of Natal
asserts, and asserts truly, that the dogma is “ very seldom
stated in plain words in the presence of any intelligent
congregation.” If prominently brought forward, it is
generally before the ignorant and before children.
Put in the simplest way, this doctrine asserts that the
condition of every man is irrevocably fixed at the moment
of his death, that owing to the Fall of Adam the natural
doom of all his children without exception is an unending
eternity of torments, that the death of Christ has, indeed,
redeemed mankind, but procured salvation only for those
who believe the Gospel and are baptized into His Church,—
that, further, every Christian must die in a state of peni
tence, and that any sin not repented of at the moment
of death consigns him to endless flames. Thus a sharp
line is drawn which divides all mankind into two classes,
while from the number of those who are saved not
only all openly evil-livers are cast out, but all heathen who,
having not the Law, have not been a law to themselves,
and among Christians all who have not died in the faith
of Christ. Thus, again, the gates of hell close on all who
may be set down as careless and indifferent, or as mere
moralists, or sceptics, or philosophers,-—all, in short, who
do not at the hour of death with true penitence place their
conscious trust in the Great Sacrifice of Christ. This
doctrine knows nothing of shades of character or degrees
of guilt; it may admit the salvation of really good heathen
men to whom the Gospel has never been preached, and
�Eternal Punishment.
7
possibly of all children dying before the commission
of natural sin. Ignorant Christians it regards as heathen,
and there can be no reason to exempt them from a doom
which awaits the vast mass, nay, almost the whole of the
latter.
This dogma may, of course, be enforced in ways indefi
nitely various. It may be so put as to make God’s hatred
of all sin the prominent idea, or it may be clothed with
the coarseness of the most vindictive passion. It may be
urged with the earnestness of the saint who is ready to
die for others, or with the horrible selfishness of the blas
phemer who professes to “ see the mercy of God in the
damnation of infants.” But, in whatever form it may be
put, the doctrine is in itself repulsive. Human nature
shrinks from a penalty which it cannot comprehend, and
of which it certainly cannot see the justice or purpose. In
the words of Dean Milman, “ To the Eternity of Hell
torments there is, and ever must be—notwithstanding the
peremptory decrees of Dogmatic Theology, and the reve
rential dread of so many religious minds of tampering
with what seems the language of the New Testament,—a
tacit repugnance.” * Doubtless there are many truths of
Christianity which may at first shock or startle those who
have grown up in a different philosophy. The cross of
Christ may be to the Jews a stumbling block and to the
Greeks an offence, but it is possible to mistake the nature
of this antagonism, or to exaggerate it until it becomes a
fiction. But there is no other doctrine which leaves on
the mind and heart an aching sense as of irremediable
pain—no other of which the real belief must throw a dark
shade over all human life, and tempt the believer to gird
himself with the cord of Dominic and Francis, and go forth
to snatch if but a few brands from the burning. There is
no other which sets the purest and most natural of human
affections in direct conflict with what is held to be the
Revelation of the Divine Will. If on the night of the
Passover there was not a house in Egypt in which there
was not one dead, there must be many dead in almost
■every Christian home, unless the terms of this dogma are
iP.
* Milman’s History of Latin Christianity. Book xiv., ch. 2, Vol. 6.
"Rd. TT
�8
Eternal Punishment.
set at nought. There is no man living who has not loved
those of whose conscious faith he can say nothing; there is
not one who does not still love some, perhaps many such,
on whose bodies the grave has closed. There is not one
who will not continue to love them till he himself comes
to die; and, in the meanwhile, he will vainly seek to under
stand how, after that time, he will become indifferent to
the doom of those whom he has loved and feels that ho
must love on earth.
It is clear that only the most stringent authority will
bring men to believe such a doctrine as this. Their own
conception of Divine Qualities and Attributes will neverguide them to it; they can only receive it on the express
revelation of God Himself that it is really true. Christians
have come to believe that God has actually revealed it,
and that the statement of this doctrine is found in the
Bible. They are conscious that it rests on nothing else,
and they feel that its hold on the human mind will be lost
if the authority of the -Book is assailed. They have to
believe that all morality falls to the ground if the endless
ness of hell torments is called in question; and hence to
all such doubts, however faint and however calmly urged,
the great barrier prescribed is the bulwark of Plenary
Inspiration. The very vehemence with which all doubts
are denounced as impious, seems itself to show that there
must be something which can only be maintained by the
exclusion or suppression of all doubts. The Roman Church
is under no necessity to assert the absolute truth even of
all doctrinal statements in the Old Testament or the New ;
she has not shown her wisdom when she has done so. The
dogmatic Protestant, who does not admit the existence of
any living infallible expositor of Truth, is compelled to rest
everything on the authority of a book ; and on this he must
take his stand the more obstinately, if he feels that there
is any one doctrine which only on such authority he would
himself maintain. The tendencies of modern thought are
sufficiently clear. Wild notions receive utterance and are
abandoned in rapid succession. The Positivist may look
forward to something not quite so attractive as the Nirvana
of the Buddhist. New schools of Psychology may main
tain that conscience and morality are the mere result of
�Eternal Punishment.
9
education and experience ; but it is manifestly against the
truth of facts to suppose that the tendency to a general unbe
lief is greater now than it was fifty years ago, or so great.
But although it may be true that the wants and
yearnings of the human heart are leading or will lead
men to a belief in the Incarnation, the Trinity in Unity, or
any other Truth flowing out of these, there are other
dogmas from which the very same wants and yearnings,
the same perceptions of the essential agreement between
Divine and human goodness, will altogether repel them.
The strong arm of Ecclesiastical authority, or the dictates
of temporal interest, or a dread of public opinion may lead
men to profess belief in them ; but if the doctrine of End
less Punishment were suffered to rest on the grounds which
have led some, who denied it before, to believe that Jesus
Christ is God and Man, no one can doubt that the great mass
of Englishmen would thankfully and indignantly reject it.
Nor would this rejection arise simply or at all from
merely selfish fears. Undoubtedly a doctrine which makes
the eternal doom of man dependent on the accident of his
condition at the time of death, and by which the sin of a
day, not repented of, nullifies the earnest obedience of a
whole life, may well make every man tremble for himself.
Still the main thought in the minds of the most sincere
believers will be not for themselves but foi’ others; nay,
the feeling of thankfulness at being rid of the dogma will
be the more intense, because now they can really and
without any sophistry or equivocation “ vindicate the ways
of God to man.” The charge that they who will not allow
the Everlasting Fire and Endless Punishment to mean and
to be the same thing, do so because they wish to introduce
a wild licence and crush all sense of law and duty, is an
idle slander or a childish dream. The Roman Catholic
consigns to the remedial fires of purgatory all who, though
dying penitent, have made little advance towards Chris
tian perfection; the Protestant, who in theory condemns
to endless perdition all but the few of whose faith and
goodness there can be no question, can hardly in practice
bring himself to speak of any as undergoing the pains of
hell. At the least he cannot so think of those whom hehas himself known and loved. He may have misgivings
�IO
Eternal Punishment.
as to the depth or sincerity of his friend’s faith and the
earnestness of his religious life ; but very large proofs of
actual vice will be needed to repress the confident assertion
that he has “ gone to Heaven.” Each Protestant, at least
in England, is loud in maintaining that all sinners are con
signed to Endless Punishment; each is equally anxious to
express his belief that his own friends are not to suffer
such a doom. Clearly then he, and not they who reject
his doctrine are making the laws of God of none effect,
and tampering with His absolute and unswerving justice.
By his system, they who are utterly unfit for so immediate
a change are transferred from the feeblest and most im
perfect Christian life here to the full blessings of the Saints
who have surrendered their will wholly to the will of God.
It is the orthodox Protestant and not his opponent who is
undermining the convictions of men that God is of a truth
the righteous judge. There is not the faintest evidence
that they who insist on gradations of punishment are
lessening “ the terrors of the Lord,” far less that they
are upholding any theories of what is called Univer
salism.
They have learnt, and their hearts tell them
that God hates all sin, and that all sinners must sooner
or later be brought face to face with his Everlasting
Wrath. They know that a man may shut his ears
to the voice of conscience here, but that the Undying
Worm, “ which writhed at times within him,” even in this
life, will then “ be commissioned to do thoroughly the work
which is needed.”* With the question of amount or
duration they resolutely decline to deal. The Wrath
of God must burn so long as there is any resistance to
be overcome; and to say that the soul will be delivered
after undergoing simply a certain fixed amount of painf is
to defeat the Justice of God and to impugn his Righteous
ness almost as much as it is impugned by consigning all
sinners to one and the same lot. They cannot in terms
deny that the resistance of the sinner may be infinite, or
presume in such case to determine the issue ; but they
maintain most strenuously that the Wrath of God will be
felt by all who need it without exception. “ The most
saintly character, when viewed in the light of God’s
* Colenso on the Epistle to the Romans.
P. 216.
f lb., p. 262.
�Eternal Punishment.
ii
Holiness, will have manifold imperfections, spots, and
stains, which he himself will rejoice to have purged away,
though it may be ‘by stripes,’-—by stripes not given in
anger or displeasure, but in tenderest love and wisdom, by
Him who dealeth with us as with sons.”* Nay, it would
seem impossible that the condition even of the sincere
penitent should have no reference to the condition of
others. “ When we consider how many of those who have
died in penitence may have been guilty themselves of cor
rupting and ruining others who have run a short course
of sin and been cut off in impenitence, have we no reason
to believe that, in some way or other, those who were once
the cause of this defacement of God’s image in the
persons of their fellow men or women, may likewise have
a share assigned to them in the work of restoration,—may
never attain (and, indeed, it is inconceivable that they
should attain, if the things of this world are at all remem
bered in the next, as we suppose they will be) their own
full joy, until the evil they have done shall have been, by
God’s Mercy, undone, and the powers of Hell vanquished
and swallowed up in life ?”f
Thus, in the present aspect of theological controversy,
we have a strange sight. Almost every science wins
ultimately into collision with some one or more state
ments of the Bible, and so calls into question indirectly its
general authority. The science of geology seems utterly
to contradict the cosmogony of the Book of Genesis;
astronomy knows nothing of any pause in the course of the
earth round the sun. The science of language appears not
altogether to favour the idea of an original unity of mankind, while the analysis of the speech and still more of the
mythology of the great Aryan race furnishes no proof
whatever that man started with high blessings which he
forfeited by sin.
Meanwhile, they, who uphold the
■orthodox belief, know well that these sciences, carried to
their utmost limits, are not likely to set aside, to use
Dean Milman’s words, “ the primal and indefeasible
truths of Christianity.” J They know that the keenest
* Colenso on the Epistle to the Romans. P. 202.
t lb., p. 218.
j Latin Christianity. Book xiv, ch. 10.
�12
Eternal Punishment.
scientific criticism cannot endanger the doctrine of that
Eternal Life, which belongs to all who do the will of God.
If these were the only truths to be defended, perhaps the
questions of Justification and Authority might be discussed
more calmly.
But there remains the one dogma of
endless punishment, which, if any flaw is found in the
popular theory of inspiration, must straightway fall; and
its defenders fight therefore with a vehement intolerance
only to be excused by their strange conviction that a denial
of it removes the ground-work of all morality.
In a few years the contrast will be more startling than it
is now. There yet live many who do not shrink from
putting forth this doctrine in its extremest and most un
compromising form. Men of great power, the spell of
whose eloquence has not yet been broken, draw out the
picture in its minutest outlines, well knowing that its
strength lies in concrete images and not in unsubstantial
generalities. There yet remain some, who seem (it can
scarcely be that they really are) eager to maintain that
“ utter unspeakable misery shall be the portion for endless
ages, for ever and ever ; alike for all, who are not admitted
at first into the realms of infinite joy,—that there shall be
no hope in the horrible outer darkness, for the ignorant
young child of some wretched outcast, who has been noted
by the teachers of the Ragged or the Sunday school as
having contracted some evil habit, it may be, of lying,
stealing, swearing, or indecency, any more than for the
sensual libertine, who has spent a long life in gratifying hislusts and has been the means of that child and others like'
it being born in guilt and shame, and nursed in profligacy.”*
Such, of course, are the logical results of the dichotomy
which severs all men at the hour of death into two
classes, and fixes accordingly their irrevocable doom. But
when Bishop Colenso asks, “ In point of fact, how many
thoughtful Clergy of the Church of England have ever
deliberately taught, in plain outspoken terms, this doctrine,
-—how many of the more intelligent laity or Clergy do
really, in their heart of hearts, believe it ?” the answer mustbe given that some whose names stand among the highest
in the land have set it forth in more glaring colours and
* Colenso on the Epistle to the Romans.
P. 207.
�Eternal Punishment.
*3
with more terrific minuteness than he has himself ventured
to imagine. It becomes nothing less than the duty of any
who know this from their own experience to show simply
under what forms this doctrine is presented to English men
and women, and still more to children, and what are the
conclusions boldly drawn and vehemently denounced from
axioms which utterly contradict them. The examples
shall be either from published works or else from oral
teaching, which doubtless the preacher would not care to
disavow.
SECTION II.
Teaching of the Clergy of the Church of England on
the Subject of Eternal Punishment.
Nowhere, perhaps, is the severance of all men into two
fixed classes at the hour of death more clearly and forciblv
stated than in a Sermon of Dr Newman on the Individuality
of the Soul.
*
Even over a dogma, to which, in Dean
Milman’s words, all have “ a tacit repugnance,” his singlehearted earnestness sheds some light and comfort, if not
for the dead, yet for the living. Knowing well that for the
good and the wicked Eternal Life and Eternal Death are
already here begun, he insists that the sinner is at present
under God’s Eternal Wrath, and not merely that he will be
so at some future time. Yet he shrinks not from complying
with the inexorable demands of his system. The invisible
line divides all mankind into these two classes ; and at the
moment of their death all who die unsanctified and unre
conciled to God pass at once into a state of endless misery.f
But he did not fail to see how little men generally believed
“that every one who lives or has lived is destined for
endless bliss or torment,” J and how the popular convictions
of Protestants opened the door of hope far more widely
than the purgatory of the Church of Rome. “Let a
person who is taken away have been ever so notorious a
sinner, ever so confirmed a drunkard, ever so neglectful
* Parochial Sermons. Vol iv., Serm. 6.
f Ib.} p. 103.
J lb., p. 100.
�14
Eternal Punishment.
of Christian ordinances, and though they have no reason
for supposing anything hopeful was going on in his mind,
yet they will generally be found to believe that he has gone
to heaven; they will confidently talk of his being at peace,
of his pains being at an end, and the like.”* If a theology
so lax rises in part from their inability to “conceive it
possible that he or that they should be lost,” he does not
forget that it is partly accounted for by natural affection.
“Even the worst men have qualities which endear them
to those who come near them;”f and therefore they
cling to the memory of the past and derive from it a
vague hope, which they do not care to sift too strictly.
But death not merely fixes the doom of the sinner; it
changes his nature, not in degree only, but in kind.
“ Human feelings cannot exist in hell.” J Others have not
shrunk from drawing out the many inferences involved in
their axiom; Mr Newman drew from it simply a warning
to fight the Christian’s battle more earnestly, and to hate
the sin against which the wrath of God is eternally burning.
In that Church, where he professes to have found both
refuge and solace, he has to propound a more merciful
doctrine. The two classes § remain, but the way of peni
tence and of hope is opened to vast numbers who, in the
strict belief of Anglicans, would be shut up' with the
sinners. Thus far in his new home he has been removed
some steps at least from “ the house of bondage.”
* Parochial Sermons. Vol. iv., Serm. 6. P. 103. f lb. 103. J lb., 104.
§ The tests laid down by Mr Newman, the Bishop of Oxford, and others,
are clear enough. The only question is as to their application. This
exhaustive classification has reference to the tares and wheat, the sheep and
the goats, in the parables of Our Lord. Mr Jowett (on the Epistle to the
Romans, &c., vol. i., p. 416, Essay on Natural Religion) will not say in which
of these two divisions we should find a place for the majority of mankind,
“ who have a belief in God and immortality,” but “ have nevertheless hardlv
any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel,” who “have never in
their whole lives experienced the love of God or the sense of sin, or the need of
forgiveness,” but who are often “ remarkable for the purity of their morals,”
for their “strong and disinterested attachments,” and their “quick human
sympathies,” and of whom “ it would be a mistake to say that they are
without religion.” The orthodox theologians would not share his hesitation.
These men confessedly, although members of the Church outwardly, do not
die consciously in the faith of Christ; and they must therefore be shut out
for ever from the presence of God. But they are just the men of whom
Protestants speak as having gone to Heaven, although their theory
consigns them to a very different doom.
�Eternal Punishment.
*5
The full meaning of Dr Newman’s axiom cannot be
comprehended until we bring before ourselves the various
shades of character which are included under the class of
impenitent sinners. One effect of such theology is to
paralyse the will for action where action is most of all
needed. If such a line of severance exists, there must be
those in heaven who were very nigh to hell, and some in hell
who were very near to heaven. To tell the young that
there are thousands in endless torment who have failed in
sight of the goal, thousands who have only not won the
prize, thousands who have been all
saved, is not likely
to supply the readiest motive to be up and doing. The
hardness of the conflict is yet further increased by theories
on post-baptismal sin, which tend practically to put it
almost beyond the reach of pardon; and faults which, if
committed before receiving the Sacrament of Regenera
tion, would be of but little moment, avail to crush down
the soul of the baptized for ever. But as long as the
exaggeration consists in making still more narrow the
strait road which leads to Life, no other difficulty arises
than the thought that God, who is All-merciful and Loving,
lays on his weak creatures a burden which they are scarcely
able to bear. When, however, we compare the teaching
of one man with that of others on the subject of Eternal
Punishment, we begin to see that tlieir doctrines not merely
represent the Divine Being as implacably revengeful and
utterly unjust, but rest on axioms which entirely contradict
each other, as well as certain articles of faith in which
all alike profess their belief. Dr Newman grounded his
description of the doom of sinners on the maxim that hell
is not the habitation of any human affections ; the teaching
of the Bishop of Oxford on this subject rests or rested on
a very different idea. Both would, of course, admit that
God awards to every man according to his work.
In a Sermon preached in the Parish Church of Ban
bury, on the 24th of February, 1850, the Bishop of Oxford
dramatised the Day of Judgment. He was preaching
especially to the young, to the boys and girls who had on
that day been confirmed by him; and he judged rightly
that nothing could enable them to realise the state of the
lost more vividly than a series of portraits representing
�i6
Eternal Punishment.
the several classes of impenitent sinners in judgment.
*
But, inasmuch as the example of the worst sort of mankind
would be of little practical use, he sought his warnings
•chiefly from those on whom the world would be disposed
to look favourably. The poet, the statesman, the orator,
the scholar and philosopher, the moralist, the disobedient
child, the careless youth, were in their turn described as
standing before the judgment seat. No touch was wanting
in each case to complete the picture ; and if the object was
to arouse the passion of fear, the preacher’s effort could
fail of success only with those who saw that that picture
was inconsistent with the constantly recurring statement,
that Hell contains nothing but what is simply and utterly
bad. As addressed to the young, it was, of course, neces
sary that his words should not do violence to a sense of
right and wrong, probably in most of them sufficiently weak,
or tend to lower or confuse ideas respecting the Divine
Nature, which were already sufficiently inadequate. How
far the Sermon was likely to produce such a result, may
perhaps be determined by taking a few of the examples
brought forward. After describing the death of the im
penitent, sometimes in torment, sometimes in indifference,
more often in self-deceit, the Bishop depicted them before the
judgment seat still possibly deceiving themselves until the
delusion is dispelled for ever by the words which bid them
depart into the lake of fire. “What,” he asked, “will it
be for the scholar to hear this, the man of refined and
* A discourse, addressed specially to children on their confirmation,
may be more fitly alleged as a specimen of ordinary parochial teaching than
a Sermon preached before a University audience. Yet the two Sermons oil
“ The Revelation of God the Probation of Man,” preached by the Bishop of
Oxford before the University in 1861, are entitled to all the credit due to
the Sermon at Banbury for plainness of speech. We cannot even enter on
an examination of the equivocal sophistry which runs through these
Sermons. We content ourselves with remarking that, on evidence which
has been much called in question, he makes a young man of great promise,
and much simplicity of character, die “ in darkness and despair''' before he
had reached the fulness of earliest manhood. The alleged cause is indul
gence in doubts,—of what kind, we are not told. Yet there is some difference
between the promulgation of an impure Manicheism and doubts on the accu
racy of the Mosaic cosmogony. Unquestionably, the Bishop is referring to
doubts of the latter kind ; and we need only say, that to condemn to endless
torments a young man of good life because he doubted whether the sun and
moon really stood still at Joshua’s bidding, is far worse than to consign to
the same fate the school-girl of the Banbury Sermon.
�Eternal Punishment.
17
elegant mind, who nauseates everything coarse, mean, and
vulgar, who has kept aloof from everything that may annoy
<or vex him, and hated everything that was distasteful.
Now his lot is cast with all that is utterly execrable. The
most degraded wretch on earth has still something human
left about him; but now he must dwell for ever with
beings on whose horrible passions no check or restraint
shall ever be placed.” 11 How, again is it with many, of
whom the world thinks highly, who are rich and well
to do, sober and respectable, benevolent and kind ?
Such an one has been esteemed as an excellent neighbour ;
he has had a select circle of friends whom he has bounti
fully entertained: he has prided himself on discharging
well the duties of a parent, host, and neighbour; and when
he dies there is a grand funeral and it is put upon his
tombstone that he was universally lamented, and that
society had suffered in him a real loss. What is the
ScriptufA comment on all this ? ‘ In hell he lifted up his
eyes being i\~? torments.’ ” He placed his hearers by the
death bed of the rfpk nian. “ See in the house of Dives
there are hurrying step,? and anxious faces; Dives is sick
and his neighbours are son’/ because he has been a good
neighbour to them, polite and nCsPdable and ever ready to
interchange the amenities of life. J’ives is sick, and his
brothers are sorry, because he has been & kind brother to
them, and now they must lose his care and ^assistance and
see him no more. Soon all is over. The b^ 'd^ bes in
state. His friends come together and attend it
tomb, and then place the recording tablet stating him to
be a very paragon of human virtues. Tor some months
they speak of their poor neighbour, how he would have
enjoyed their present. gaiety, how they miss him at his
accustomed seat; until at length he is forgotten. And
while all this is going on upon the earth, where is Dives
himself ? Suffering in torments because in his life time
he had received his good things.” But more terrible still,
and chiefly as being addressed to children, was the picture
of a school-girl cut off at the age of thirteen or fourteen.
In her short life on earth she had not seldom played truant
from school, had told some lies, had been obstinate and
disobedient. Now she had to bid farewell to heaven and
c
�18
Eternal Punishment.
to hope, to her parents, her brothers, and sisters ; and thenfollowed her parting words to each. What was her agony
of grief, that she should never again look on their kind and
gentle faces, never hear their well known voices ? All
their acts of love return to her again,—all the old familiar
scenes, remembered with a regret which no words can
describe, with a gnawing sorrow which no imagination can
realise. She must leave for ever that which she now knew
so well how to value, and be for ever without the love for
which she had now so unutterable a yearning. She must
dwell for ever among beings on whom there is no check or
restraint, and her senses must be assailed with all that is
utterly abominable. The worst of men are there, with
every spark of human feeling extinguished, without any
law to moderate the fury of their desperate rage. To com
plete the picture, the lost angels were mingled with thisb
awful multitude, in torment themselves and the instyd.
ments of torturing others. They stood round their auman
victims, exulting in their misery and increasing perpetually
the sting of their ceaseless anguish. T^e bodies of men
as well as them souls were subjected 'w their fearful sway,
and had to suffer all that fiend; ^ hatred.could suggest.
, .e /y11 ar iey seized
tortured by the instrument
? • ?S
?eran?eK
lustful man by the instrument of
hrs lust, the tyrant > the instrument of his tyranny.”
ver consi to' xP^ons involve some curious, and not
o-es't th^18
conclusions ; but chiefly, perhaps, they sugteent1 J ^ie (H®}rences between the ninth and the ninea centuries are not very great after all. The dsemono,gy of the Bishop of Oxford is almost more minute and
elaborate than that of Bede or William of Malmesbury.
'
*
But, leaving this, we have to mark that in this scheme, asin that of Mr Newman—
1. All mankind are divided into two classes at the hour
of death.
2. That hell is the abode of nothing that is not utterly
abominable.
* Bede, iii. 19; Malmesbury, ii. 2. It must be remarked that the details
of personal bodily torment imply physical contact of daemons, and run into
images which have their ludicrous as well as their fearful side.—See Mil
man’s Latin Christianity, Book xiv., ch. 2.
�Eternal Punishment.
x9
Bui it goes beyond the teaching of Mr Newman in
asserting—
3. That hell is a chaos of unrestrained passion, from
which all check of law and order has been permanently
withdrawn.
4. That all the inhabitants of hell are mingled together,
so that any one may attack another whenever he pleases,
and
5. That all, of whom we should be disposed to judge
most leniently, retain their better characteristics, remain
ing, in short, precisely what they had been on earth. This
last axiom seems scarcely to harmonize with those which
precede it.
On a subject of such fearful moment every statement
should be sifted with all sobriety and earnestness. It
might be not difficult to present illustrations, such as have
now been noticed, even under a ludicrous aspect; but it is
more seemly to ask calmly how, if these things are so, each
man is to be rewarded according to his works. The brutal
murderer and the blood-thirsty despot remain what they
were ; their cruelty is not lessened, their physical force
seemingly not abated. The philosopher and moralist, the
man of learning and elegant tastes, the child who has died
almost in infancy, remain also what they were ; and all,
murderers, philosophers, and children, are hurled together
into an everlasting chaos. The strong can choose out vic
tims who cannot resist them : the weak can find none to
torment in their turn, and, according to the supposition,
they have no wish to torment any one. Hell is not the
habitation of any human affection: yet the child carries
thither her love for her parents, her brothers, her teachers,
(the remembrance of good and holy lessons, which now she
has learnt to value, and for valuing which she must be the
better) nay, she yearns for their blessedness not only be
cause it is a condition free from torment, but because
they are with their Loving and Most Merciful Father.
The sceptical philosopher whose life was a pattern of
moral strictness, the man of refined habits, of ready bene
volence, and good feelings remain likewise what they were,
and they are to be punished by being thrown with those
who never had a thought or care whether for elegance,
�20
Eternal Punishment.
philosophy, or morality. The school-girl may be tormented
by Ahab or Caesar Borgia, Shelley may find himself as
sailed by Jonathan Wild or Commodus. It may well seem
*
profane thus to put names together ; but if such a theory
be true, the conclusion is perfectly justifiable, and we are
justified further in maintaining (1) that on this supposi
tion the punishment is wholly unequal, unless all have
committed the same amount of sin, and are equally steeped
in guilt (which yet they are admitted not to be) or unless
all become equally fiendish (which it is asserted that they
do not).
(2.) In either case the less guilty are the greater suf
ferers. If all are made equally diabolical by the mere
passing from this world into the next, still, in undergoing
this change, some will have lost much more good than
others, many losing very little, others losing a great deal.
And if they do not all become equally bad, then the sensi
tive and refined, the benevolent and honourable man will
be trampled on by furious beings, who will lead an endless
carnival of violence, and whom he can by no possibility
resist.
(3.) The latter class would scarcely be punished at all.
The remorse of conscience they may with whatever success
put aside, and on their passions there is to be, by the
hypothesis, no check whatever. Even while on earth,
they had shown only the faintest signs of good, and hacl
approached as nearly as possible to a delighting in evil for
its own sake. To take a number of the most hardened
criminals, and leave them shut up by themselves to their
own devices, would scarcely be called punishment in any
human code. To coop up with these other criminals of
quite a different stamp, weak, sensitive, and specially open
to softer and finer feelings, would indeed be punishment,
but it would be confined wholly to the latter, while it would
give a zest to the horrible passions of the former. But
further,—(4.) Evil, on this hypothesis, is to increase and mul
• To raise an objection on the score of mentioning names is to betray a
doubt as to the individual existence of all human souls after death ; nor did
Mr Newman fail to discern and to denounce all such hidden unbelief. See
more especially the Sermon already cited. (Vol. IV, Sermon 6.)
�Eternal Punishment.
21
tiply for ever. Bishop Butler’s Sermon on Resentment
will show clearly enough the course of that passion when
uncontrolled, even on earth. But here all check, divine
and human, is to be removed for ever. In some way or
other we are to suppose that all will feel the sting of
remorse ; but, according to this idea, they will at the same
time have the will and the power to repeat the sins for
which, they suffer, nay, to add to them sins incomparably
more tremendous.
(5.) But this notion puts almost wholly out of sight
the Undying Worm, and the Everlasting Fire of Divine
wrath. It represents the lost as preying on each other,
but it pictures none of them as brought face to face with
the Anger of God against all Sin. It reduces the punish
ment inflicted on sinners to mere vindictiveness, from
which even the idea of a stern though just retribution is
shut out. In other words, the sentence of an infinitely
Perfect Judge has nothing whatever moral about it. It is
a mere physical banishment, where sinners may or may not
feel the sense of an irreparable loss. The degree to which
they feel it has no reference to any action of God on their
hearts, but is determined wholly by the tenor of their life
on earth. In comparison with the sensitive moralist, the
ruffian will feel none ; and, in short, the Divine Hatred for
Sin will never be really brought home to him.
Yet further, the popular theology of the day leads the
mind to fasten on an utterly mistaken idea of the nature of
Eternal Punishment ■ it has led those who have indulged
themselves in framing theories of Universalism, to hold
that sin may be compensated by a fixed amount of punish
ment, like the definite penalties of human law. They who
maintain that all sinners suffer endless torment do so on
the ground that endless torment alone can be an adequate
recompense for any sin; it is no matter of surprise that
their opponents should believe in a deliverance from the
Eternal Fire after it has been endured for “ a sufficient
time.
Fixed penalties have no necessary tendency to
produce a change of character. “ It is true that human
laws, which aim more at prevention of crime than amend
ment of the offender, do mete out in this way, beforehand,
a certain measure of punishment for a certain offence.
�11
Eternal Punishment.
The man who covets his neighbour’s property may, if he
like, obtain it dishonestly, at a certain definite expense.
He knows that he may possibly escape altogether; or, at
the worst, he can only suffer this or that prearranged
penalty, after suffering which he may remain (so far as the
effect of the punishment itself is concerned, and unless
other influences act upon him) as bad and as base a
villain as before. But God’s punishments are those of a
Bather. . . . We have no ground to suppose that a
wicked man will at length be released from the pit of woe,
when he has suffered pain enough for his sins, when he has
suffered time enough, a 4 certain time appointed by God’s
Justice.’ But we have ground to trust and believe that a
man in whose heart there is still Divine Life, in whom
there lingers still one single spark of better feeling, the gift
of God’s Spirit, the token of a Father’s still continuing
Love, will at length be saved, not from suffering, but from
sin.”*
But the orthodox theology, which severs all men into
two classes, to be fixed at the moment of their death, still
maintains that the final cause of the Divine Government of
the world is the Victory of Righteousness over sin. It still
asserts that when the last enemy has been destroyed God
shall be all in all. Yet, according to the hypothesis of the
Bishop of Oxford, the vast majority of the whole human
race of all times and countries, all wicked heathen, all
wicked Christians, all children who die with faults not
repented of, all mere moralists, all men of indifferent or
negative characters, depart into a realm where Lawlessness
reigns supreme, and from which all external check has been
deliberately withdrawn. In this anarchy is involved the
permission and the power to sin afresh perpetually in
infinitely increasing ratio. Here undoubtedly the calcula
tion of numbers may, or rather it must, come in. The
children of Adam may be beyond any earthly census, but
they are not innumerable. As Mr Newman cautiously and
reverently expressed it, that which gives especial solemnity
to the thought of death “ is that we have reason to suppose
that souls on the wrong side of the line are far more
numerous than those on the right.”f It is dishonest and
* Colenso on Romans, p. 263.
f Sermons, Vol. IV (Serm. 6), p. 101.
�Eternal Punishment.
23
■cowardly to palter and dally with such a subject as this.
If the words of the Bishop of Oxford are true, then Satan,
who is the lord of this lawless realm, has for ever severed nine
tenths, possibly nineteen twentieths, possibly more, of the
whole human race from the Love and the Law of God.
Brom this vast Kingdom he has banished God; and in it
he may exult in the endless aggrandizement of sin. Some
very indisputable proof is needed for the belief that the
Victory of God means nothing more than this; and, ungu^stionably, no man
COLCOfi would ever speak thus
of any earthly King who had lost nineteen-twentieths of
his Kingdom, over which he had been obliged to abandon
all control. We might give him all the credit which a
qualified success deserves; we might say that he had put
bounds to rebellion, and prevented the rebels from harming
those who had not joined them; but it would be an absurd
mockery to say that he had overthrown and destroyed his
enemies and recovered all his ancient power. If popular
theologians speak truly, the Victory of God would be even
more partial, and Ahriman will indeed have triumphed
over Ormuzd.
We may dismiss from our thoughts such Pandemoniums
of unbounded ferocity. The most intense conviction of the
■endlessness of hell torments does not call for them., The
penalty of an undying remorse rather implies that they
who are lost shall not be suffered to torment each other.
The supposition that they are so permitted involves a per
petual miracle to keep such torture within due bounds, if
any pretence of justice in the measure of punishment is to
be maintained. It involves further the very strange idea
that they have the Divine Licence to commit a certain
amount of sin, and add perpetually each to his own amount
of guilt. The best form of the popular theology sweeps
.away all such monstrous absurdities, and interprets the
Undying Worm as an unavailing agony of remorse, an
indescribable and fruitless yearning after a Righteousness
.and Love which they have learnt too late to value. But if
it gets rid of some folly, it fails to meet or to remove the
.serious moral difficulties involved in the doctrine. It
asserts the strict apportionment of penalty according to
each man’s deserts; it leaves no room for any such just
�24
Eternal Punishment.
proportion. The very essence of proportion is the idea of
gradation; but “ can there be any possible gradation of
endless, infinite, irremediable woe ? . . . The very essence
of such perdition is utterly, and for ever and ever, to lose
sight of the Blessed Eace of God. . . . What would alL
bodily or mental pain whatever be, compared with theanguish of being shut out for ever and ever from all hopeof beholding one ray of that Light ? And even bodily or
mental pain, however diminished, yet if continued without
cessation or relief for ever and ever, how can this be spoken
bi aS ‘ fe'W stripes ’ ”* for any to whom few stripes are to
be apportioned ? It supposes the sinner to undergo .an
agony to which it will be impossible for him to realise any
increase ; to such an one the announcement that his neigh
bour’s sufferings are greater must appear only an idle and
malicious mockery. At the utmost he will only be able to
take in the difference by an intellectual effort. Is the
Divine Justice not concerned with convincing the sinner of
its own reality ?
But the orthodox theology has also to deal with the
relation of those who are saved to those who are lost.
Once, at least, they all meet for recognition before the
Throne of Judgment. There parents are to look on children
once loved and cherished, now appointed for the burning ;
there the husband is to see the wife whom he loved to the
last borne away into the lake of fire; there brothers, whose
love was one but whose lot is now different, are to take
their farewell, and to see each other again no more. That
the sinners shall mourn for the blessings which they have
lost, and. that their anguish should be increased by the very
consciousness that they who loved them once are blessed,
still, need perhaps in such a scheme present no great diffi
culty ; but the happiness of the righteous must not be
disturbed, and some solution must be found for the huge
perplexities so produced. No theologian ventures to assert
that we are to hate all sinners in this life ; rather, our love
should be deepened by the consciousness of their sin and need.
The miserable wretches who haunt the filthy courts of crowded
cities are to be sought out with the more tenderness and.
Colenso 'on Romans, pp. 199, 200.
�Eternal Punishment.
2$'
zeal, because they are exasperated against an order which,
to them, appears thoroughly iniquitous. Their blasphemies
are not to deter us from seeking to do them good; after a few
years are past, they will prevent God from so doing. In
some way or other, the Righteous in Heaven are to acquiesce
in a necessity which is laid on the Divine Being Himself.
We do not hate them now, but we shall hate them hereafter
nay, those who are lost shall retain their love for us long after
the last lingering feeling has been extinguished in ourselves..
We may struggle to escape from the labyrinth of unintel
ligible contradictions, but the conclusion remains that the
assurance of our own salvation will enable us to look with
serene indifference on the departure of lost friends into hell.
At the least, that conscientiousness will not be allowed to
interfere with our bliss. This can only be done by one of two
suppositions,—either we shall come to hate all sinners
because we detest sin, or we shall be able to forget sin and
sinners altogether.
But if it be impossible (as for men in this life at least
it would seem to be impossible) to feel an unmixed hatredfor any being not wholly evil, then the mere comfort of
those who are saved demands that all who are lost shall
cease to retain the least affinity with good. Hence it
became a logical necessity to maintain that hell is the
habitation of no human affections, or in other words that
the accident of death rendered wholly wicked those who
had been only partially wicked before. But if some
writers have discerned in the parable or history of the rich
man and the beggar, the evidence of this sweeping change,
the idea of hell torments enforced by the Bishop of Oxford
implies that over some at least no change has passed unless
it be one for the better. The philosopher and the moralist
retain their refined and kindly feelings ; the very essence
of their torture is that they do retain them and must retain
them for ever. The school-girl, who died with a lie on her
lips, still loves her kinsfolk and her friends, or, rather, she
has learnt to set on their love a value of which she had not
dreamed on earth. She has been taught to mourn over her
banishment from those who are good, over the thought
that she cannot with them share the love of God. The’
case may be put even more forcibly. According to
�26
Eternal Punishment.
Archbishop Whately, the terrors of the Day of Judgment will
be felt only by those “ who will then, for the first time, have
a faithful and tender conscience.”* That men should
have such consciences, is the special desire of the Divine
Spirit; and in this theory the Day of Judgment at once
accomplishes the victory of righteousness over sin by
■changing the hearts of all sinners. It is to this, then, that
the good have to look forward; and, if memory survives in
Heaven, it must tell them that the gates of hell have closed
-on faithful and tender consciences. The prospect may be
bewildering ; the retrospect would be intolerable. In two
ways only can men, during this life, deal with the thoughts
so forced upon them. All other feelings may here be
swallowed up in a fierce vehemence to save the souls of
■others and our own. The idea of endless vengeance may
send us forth to drive men into Heaven with the ecstatic
fervour of Knox or Loyola; or else our efforts may be
■centred on ourselves. The one aim of life may be to force
our way through gates which can be opened but to few.
We may learn to crush all natural feeling, and the selfish
ness so acquired we may carry into Heaven. The very
intensity of our joy may lie in the thought that we have
escaped the fires which are tormenting those whom we had
known on earth. Archbishop Whately shrinks from this
idea of a triumph worthy of Mahomet or Montanus. In
his belief, we shall be able in Heaven to do effectually what
we can only in part accomplish here. On earth a good
man, “ in cases where it is clear that no good can be
done by him, strives, as far as possible, though often
without much success, to withdraw his thoughts from evil
which he cannot lessen, but which still, in spite of his
effort, will often cloud his mind. We cannot, at pleasure,
■draw off our thoughts entirely from painful subjects which
it is in vain to meditate about,—the power to do this com
pletely would be a great increase of happiness.” The
blessed “ will be able, by an effort of the will, completely
to banish and exclude every idea that might alloy their
happiness.”f It might have been an easier, perhaps a
more merciful, solution to extinguish at once and for ever the
* Scripture Revelations of a Future State, p. 158.
t Scripture Revelations of a Future State, pp. 282, 283.
�Eternal Punishment.
27
memory of their life on earth. The theory of Archbishop
Whately is one which not a few good men would reject for
themselves in this life, and which the great founders of the
Mendicant Orders would have indignantly thrust aside. It
was the first characteristic of these merciful teachers, that
they could not and would pot dismiss from their minds the
thought of evil which they could not remedy. They
needed not the modern casuistry which takes “ the wide
prevalence of evil in the world as a proof that God cannot
-expect us to harass ourselves incessantly in resisting it.”
To Bishop Copleston it was the most difficult of questions
to determine “ with what degree of evil existing under
our eyes we might fairly indulge a feeling of complacency
and a desire for repose and enjoyment.”* They knew
nothing of repose and enjoyment, for beings who all their
life long must walk on the very verge of hell. They
believed what they professed: and they lived, therefore,
unlike those who are able to dismiss a mere dogma from
their mind. It may be more difficult for the comfort
loving theologians of the present day to explain how it is
that good men on earth rise above the selfishness of heaven.
Teachers of a sterner, if not a better school, find in
the dogma of eternal reprobation the paramount need of
crushing these instinctive or acquired longings for ease and
comfort: and as long as the penalty is regarded solely with
reference to ourselves, it serves most effectually to point
the warning and enforce the lesson. If the whole proba
tion of the sons of men is bounded to their life on earth,
then it is indeed fitting that our days here should know
nothing’ of feasts and merriment. If things go smoothly
with us, it is our business to make them go roughly. The
philosophy of Amasis and Poly crates is fully justified by
the conditions of the Christian’s life ;t and they who accept
these conditions, must feel it in truth a very small part of
their duty not to let the whole year go round “ without a
break and interruption in its circle of pleasures.The
case is altered when, from ourselves, we look on others;
* Bishop Copleston’s philosophy was probably right. It assumes the
aspect of a frightful apathy only when taken along with the dogma of end
less punishment, which there is no evidence that he did not hold.
f Newman’s Parochial Sermons. Vol. VI, Serra. 2, p. 27.
J Ibid.
�28
Eternal Punishment.
and it presents difficulties yet more grave when we come
to dwell on the method of Divine Government itself. In
some way or other the Justice of God who appoints an end
less torment for all who die with any sin not repented of,
must be consistent with an order of things in which
the time of trial may be cut short by an accident. If
natural feeling struggles against the' idea of an infinite
penalty for the sin of a mortal life, it demands still more
imperatively that, in such case, all should have the same
amount of trial. But the child is cut off at school; the old
man lives to heed or disregard warnings repeated through
the life time, perhaps, of three generations. Kay, the sloth
or thoughtlessness of mortal man may be the whole cause
which determines the endless torture of the unbaptised
*
infant.
Some live until they appear to love evil for
its own sake; others are cast into the lake of fire,
when, as theologians admit, they were all but fit for
heaven. The moment of death changes all alike into
beings of unqualified evil.
The loss of some is as
nothing compared with that of others ; and the doom may
come after a thousand warnings, or without any. Yet the
theology which maintains all this insists also that God is
infinitely merciful and loving. It must, at the least, be
admitted that, if in spite of all authority, they who
profess to believe these dogmas have to overcome a
natural repugnance, some among them at least have in this
task achieved no mean success. But they have to persuade
others to accept their own convictions. The decrees of
Councils, or the language of Canons and Articles, may suffice
for themselves ; but some attempt must be made to show
that their belief is enforced by passages of the Old
Testament or the New which seem to make against it.
Men do not at the first glance see how an endless punish
ment for all can be consistent with the few and the many
stripes, how others can suffer torments less tolerable than
those appointed for the men of Sodom and Gomorrha, if
* The theology of Augustine was almost more uncompromising. An
unbaptised infant lay sick: a convert, sincerely penitent, desired baptism on
his deathbed. The priest, when summoned, was asleep or at dinner, or he
would not go. It was the result of a Divine Decree that the child and the
convert should be damned.
f Colenso on Romans, p. 211.
�Eternal Punishment.
29
it be impossible to conceive of any increase to the latter.
If hell is the habitation of no human affections, it is hard to
understand why the rich man in Hades should appear to
be changed for the better rather than the worse. The
necessities of a theological position have provided the
solution; but the firmest believer would probably admit
that it will not generally suggest itself to the natural mind.
To men who have not received a higher illumination, the
rich man appears to be represented not as blaspheming or
even murmuring, not as hating God or exulting in the
ruin of others, but as anxious ’ that his brothers may
not fail to win the blessings which he has lost. To
such it would seem that our Lord assumed “ that even
in the place of torment there will be loving, tender
thoughts in a brother’s heartand they may be tempted
to reason further, that “ if there can be such, as they can
not come from the Spirit of Evil, they must be believed to
come from the Spirit of all Goodness. While there is life,
there is hope. In fact, the rich man is represented as less
selfish in the flames of hell than he was in this life. The
Eternal Fire has already wrought some good result in
him.”* But they who maintain the dogma of endless ven
geance can afford to look down on notions so crude as
these ; rather they feel it their duty to insinuate that none
but men of unclean lives can ever entertain them. To
them the prayer of the rich man to Abraham is simply the
blasphemous expression of a desperate irony, while his life
on earth was the result and token of a conscious and
definite unbelief in the existence of an unseen world.
During his mortal life he may have been sinful; now he is
*
utterly fiendish and diabolical. The teaching of the Bishop
of Oxford seems to involve conclusions not quite consistent
with these positions of the Archbishop of Dublin,f yet both
assert strenuously the endlessness of future punishment.
The former may countenance the notion that the greater
sin has the lesser penalty ; the latter appears to set aside
the ordinary meaning of words.
According to Dr Trench, the narrative was aimed
* Colenso on Romans, p. 214.
f Notes on the Parables, p. 454, &c. &c.
�30
Eternal Punishment.
against the Pharisees, and especially at their unbelief.
The rich man, or, if we must so call him, Dives, had fairly
brought himself to believe that the unseen world had really
no existence, and he calmly adopted and.clung to a course
of life consistently springing out of this cool intellectual
*
conviction.
The discovery of its reality, he made only
when it was too late. It may be. so; but the statement
seems to involve the conclusion that men cannot act as the.
rich man acted, with a clear knowledge of the consequences.
Yet the drunkard deliberately persists in his habit, knowing
not only that sobriety is a duty, but that his vice is ruinous
alike to his body and his soul. The settled purpose to
commit sin may coexist with a keen perception of the
misery of sin. Men may be, as Bishop Butler has insisted,
most unselfish in their viciousness, most disinterested in
deliberately putting aside what they know to be their
highest good.f The rich man in the parable may have acted
like Balaam ; but to assert that his unbelief arose from his
mental process of examination and rejection is as much an
assumption as the ascription to him of some human feeling
can possibly be. We are not told that his actions were
prompted by his belief; it is not implied that he knew any
thing about the beggar who lay sick at his gate ; and many
have fastened on his ignorance as conveying the most
fearful of all warnings to the thoughtless.^ The narrative
seems to represent him simply as putting aside the thought
of all responsibility, not as going through a mental process
in order that he may deny its existence, or as persevering
in the process until he has worked himself into full convic
tion. If it is not easy to see how a parable addressed
chiefly to Pharisees should dwell on extravagance rather
than covetousness, it is still more strange that an intel
lectual unbelief in an unseen world should be attributed to
men who believed a resurrection both angel and spirit.
But a closer scrutiny of the narrative will be rewarded
with further discoveries. It may teach us that the rich
man’s good things were “ good actions or good qualities
• Trench on the Parables, p. 456.
+ Sermon on the Character of Balaam.
j See especially Cope and Stretton, Visitatio Infirmorum, Office for a
careless sick person.
�Eternal Punishment,
3®
which, in some small measure, Dives possessed, and for
which he received in this life his reward.”* Dr Trench is
not prepared to reject the belief of Bishop Sanderson, that
“ God rewardeth those few good things which are in evil
men with these temporal benefits, for whom, yet in his
justice, he reserveth eternal damnation.” Bor nine days
Eblis feasted in his hall the beings who had bidden adieu
to hope ;f it was reserved for a Christian theologian to assert
that God bestows the means of a little sensual enjoyment
for the good qualities or deeds of the unconverted. If Dr
Newman urges sinners during Lent “ to act at least like the
prosperous heathen, who threw his choicest trinket into the
water that he might propitiate fortune,the Archbishop
of Dublin has been taught that “ the course of an unbroken
prosperity is ever a sign and augury of ultimate reproba
tion.” Doubtless the heart knows its own bitterness, and
there may be many breaks in a life of outwardly uninter
rupted success; but Dr Trench’s axiom might afford a
grim satisfaction to those who, in the midst of want and
wretchedness, regard the rich and the powerful as
unquestionably in the enjoyment of “ unbroken prosperity.”
There are probably not wanting those who may think that
this dangerous condition is fulfilled in Archbishop Trench
himself.
When a writer lays down such a criterion on his own
authority, it is hard to abstain from retorts and insinuations:
but the mere sense of truth and fairness must sometimes
call on us to speak, when we might have chosen rather to
keep silence. If Dr Trench is at a pinch to explain how
the sight of the lost, whom they are not suffered to help,
can fail to cast a shade on the happiness of the blessed, it
is simply because he has not availed himself of the ready
solution of his predecessor, Dr Whately. When he asserts
that the rich man’s request to Abraham is “ a bitter reproach
against God and against the old economy,” it might be
enough to reply that the narrative does not say so. But
the case is altered when Dr Trench proceeds to judge of
* Trench on the Parables, p. 474.
f Beckford’s Vathek.
$ Sermons, Vol. VI, p. 27. Dr Newman should rather have said
“ appease the jealousy of God <j>0ovep'ov to baip.oviov was the keynote of the
philosophy of Herodotus.
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Eternal Punishment.
the inward life of those who differ from himself. He has
a keen perception that, if suffering was already doing- its
work in the rich man, sufferings must be not “ vindicative,”
but “ corrective.” Such a doctrine, he believes, “ will
always find favour with all those who have no deep insight
into the evil of sin, no earnest view of the task and
responsibilities of life, especially when, as too often,
they are bribed to hold it by a personal interest, by
a lurking consciousness that they themselves are not
earnestly striving to enter in at the strait gate, that their
own standing in Christ is insecure or none.”* Dr Trench
is,' of course, not obliged to believe or to assert that such a
fear lies at the root of the convictions expressed by Mr
Maurice, or Mr Wilson, or the Bishop of Natal; but he
does most distinctly and unequivocally deny to them “ any
deep insight into the evil of sin, any earnest view of the
task and responsibilities of life.” The verdict of Dr Trench
might fairly justify us in rejecting the criterion that a tree
is known bv its fruits, or in questioning the truth that
charity thinks no evil. He seems to agree with Aquinas
that while the rich man asked that his brethren might not
come into his place of torment he was really longing for
their damnation. If his request was nothing but a blas
phemous scoff, Dr Trench can hardly think otherwise.
Yet surely he could not have alleged this opinion of Aquinas;
except from the mere necessity of maintaining a foregone
conclusion. It is impossible to conceive of a condition of
heart more thoroughly diabolical. In short, the being who
can indulge in such a wish must be wholly and intensely
bad. But absolute iniquity shuts out the idea of remorse,
and leaves no room for any suffering except that which is
physical, or any mental feelings except those of violent and
furious rage ; and these leave no place for that aching void,
that unavailing agony of sorrow for a good irrecoverably
lost, which is generally asserted to be the special sting in
the misery of the wicked. Nay, more; this idea that all
men become devils in hell, wild in their own unbounded
wickedness, alone constitutes the logical necessity for the
physical tortures of fire and brimstone, as well as for the
* Notes on the Parables, p. 478.
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agency of demons to inflict those outward stripes for which
only, on this hypothesis, any feeling will be left.
This logical necessity was clearly present to the mind
of Bishop Pearson. If it was certain that the pains of hell
were simply vindictive, and the same measure of endless
duration was the portion of all the lost, then the punish
ment of sinners must be regarded as something different
from the righteous wrath of God against all sin. If the
punishment was endless, the wicked must live through
endless time to suffer it. “ Otherwise there would be a
punishment inflicted and none endured, which is a contra
diction.”* Bishop Pearson had a quick eye for the incon
sistencies of his opponents ; on his own side he can see
none. He is careful to assert that punishment shall be
strictly apportioned to sin, “ so that no man shall suffer
more than he hath deserved.”f He insists also that they
shall be “ tormented with a pain of loss, the loss from God,
from whose presence they are cast out, the pain from them
selves in a despair of enjoying Him, and regret for losing
Him.” Modern theology has substituted a savage delight
in tormenting each other in place of this endless remorse.
Bishop Pearson was scarcely concerned with examining an
idea which probably never entered his mind. But the diffi
culty involved in the enormous differences between one man
and another at the time of death, belongs to all ages and
countries alike. Bishop Pearson knew, as the Bishop of
Oxford knows now, that young children have died in sin.
It is cowardly to evade the irresistible conclusion. The
little children are doomed, not less than the Devil himself,
to a punishment which “ shall not be taken off them by any
compassion.” These, the sinners of a day, whose sins lay
in playing truant and telling a lie to hide it, shall no more
than the great Tempter of Mankind .live to pay the utter
most farthing. They, not less than Herod or Alexander
VI., or Agathocles or Danton (it matters not whom we
take), shall suffer the endless “ horror of despair,” because
“ it were not perfect hell if any hope could lodge in it.” It
needs some special illumination to enable ordinary men to
see how these children suffer no more than they deserve.
* Pearson on the Creed, Art. xii., p. 463.
f lb., p. 467.
D
�34
Eternal Punishment.
The time has come when the whole subject must be
met calmly and fearlessly. There may be sophistry and
evasion on both sides. Orthodox theologians have not
withheld both these imputations from Mr Maurice, whose
worst fault is an indistinctness of expression which some
times assumes an air of paradox. Something’ of this
ambiguity lies at the root of his reluctance to extend the
idea of time into that of eternity. It may be true that
“ the continual experiments to heap hundreds of thousands
of years on hundreds of thousands of years,” do not
put us even on the way to the idea; but it seems
not less certain that we cannot conceive of existence
except as an extension of duration.
*
It is better to
say plainly and honestly that the idea of any end to the
life of the righteous involves also the idea of the most dis
interested injustice,—an injustice the more horrible in pro
portion to the greater advance of the good in conformity
to the Divine will. It is well to say not less honestly that
the idea of an end to the misery of the wicked involves no
such imputation, if at the same time it is maintained that
so long as there remains any resistance, so long must the
sinner abide under the burning wrath of God. Án infinite
resistance implies an infinite chastisement; nor can we
allege anything to prove that the wicked cannot prolong
their resistance for ever, except the difficulty of believing
that the Divine Will cannot finally subdue the disobedience
of every enemy.f Nor is it of much use to dwell on verbal
arguments drawn from the words which in our English
Bibles are represented by everlasting punishment and the
unquenchable fire. J But it is more than ever necessary to
* Christian Berrem' rancer, January 1854, p. 225. Art., Maurice’s Theo
logical Essays. This article presents the arguments for the doctrine of
endless punishments with perhaps as much force as they can be expressed ;
but the reviewer was apparently mistaken in thinking that Mr Maurice’s
main objections were merely verbal.
f It was this difficulty which led Scotns Erigena to affirm the final
restoration of the Devil himself, and to cite Origen and others in support of
this belief.—See Milman’s Latin Christianity, Book xiv., ch. 2.
J Probably not much will be gained by efforts to determine whether
the writers of the New Testament attached a distinct idea of duration to
the word anários, which, as coming from the root i, to go, originally ex
pressed the simple idea of motion. It is of the utmost importance to bear in
mind th:s first restricted and sensuous meaning of the word. (See Max
Müller, Lectures on the .Science of Language, Second Series, pp. 67, 249,
�Eternal Punishment.
35
meet assumptions by plain denials. Bishop Pearson may
rest his own belief on the fact that the same adjective is
applied in the Greek Testament to the state of the wicked
and the good; but it becomes a mere question of fact, to be
determined manifestly by each man’s judgment, when it is
asserted that the texts of Scripture declaring the endless
punishment of the wicked “ are so decisive and plain, that
they must be taken to mean what they appear to do, unless
some positive ground of reason or morals can be shown against
it.”* Such ground can be shown, and a man must indeed
have thrown dust into his own eyes, if he can think that a
sweeping assertion can put aside the distinction of the few
and the many stripes, of the more tolerable punishment of
Gomorrha than of Capernaum, of the fire which is to save
the men whose work of hay or stubble it shall nevertheless
consume. It is a profound casuistry which sees nothingbut diabolical blasphemy and rage in what is admitted to
be the only full picture given in the Gospels of the state of
the impenitent after death. One or two phrases of the
New Testament at the most may be wrested into the asser
tion that all those who die impenitent are tormented for
ever ; a far greater number appear altogether to contradict
it, and these must be taken to mean what they appear to
rnean, “ unless some positive ground of morals or reason can
be shown against it.” Morals and reason would appear to be
decisive against a dogma which issues in a labyrinth of in
explicable and almost ludicrous contradictions, and which
seems to impute to the Merciful God an intensity of vindic
tiveness which the human mind is utterly unable to realise.
But it is asserted that reason and morals call for the
maintenance of this dogma from another point of view.
It is urged that “ the release from the notion of Eternal
Punishment would be felt by the great mass as a relief
336, 527.) But it may be more tempting to lay a stress on the word
KÓAatris, which, according to Aristotle, is essentially temporary, end to
maintain that the English translators were not warranted in rendeiing
7rdp &(ri3e<rTov by fire that never shall be quenched. The verbal adjective
can at best express mere quality or capacity. But it seems idle to apply
such subtleties to the Greek of the New Testament. If it were not so, .
something might be made of the term fiicravos., as applied to sickness and
plagues; but it seems to be used precisely as we use the word trial without
reference to any intended effect on the sufferer.
* Christian Remembrancer, January 1854, p. 225.
�36
Eternal Punishment.
from the sense of moral obligation, and, relying on the
certainty that all would be sure to be right at last, men
would run the risk of the intermediate punishment, what
ever it might be, and plunge into self-indulgence without
hesitation.”* The reviewer of Mr Maurice knew of course
that men do so now in spite of this doctrine, and further
“ that there is no limit to the powers of imagination by
which men can suppress the reasonable certainty of the
future, and make the present everything.” But he thinks
that “ the belief in endless punishment is the true and
rational concomitant of the sense of moral obligation ”
and that “ a general relaxation of moral ties, a proclama
tion of liberty and security, the audacity of sins which had
before been abashed, carelessness where there had been
hesitation, obstinacy where there had been faltering, and
defiance where there had been fear, would show a world in
which the sanctions of morality and religion had been
loosened, and in which vice had lost a controlling power,
and got rid of an antagonist and a memento.”f It is im
possible to regard with indifference the least possible risk of
weakening the sense of moral obligation; but it is a mere
question of fact, and human experience may carry us some
little way towards deciding it. Men are, undoubtedly, able
to suppress the reasonable certainty of the future ; but they
are also able to heap sin on sin in spite of a penalty of
which they have almost an ever present dread. Hell is
emphatically the Italian’s bugbear. The Englishman can
talk about it, and dismiss it from his mind; but it haunts
the Italian by day and by night. His flesh creeps and
his blood runs cold in the silence of his secret chamber,
and the first temptation which crosses his path is followed
by his submission. But there are more sweeping methods
of evading this belief. The Church of Rome modifies the
dogma by the purgatorial fire: the popular belief of Pro
testants dispenses with purgatory altogether, and sends all
men practically to heaven. At the least, it answers the
question, whether there are few saved, by the implied
assertion that very few, indeed, are lost. Hence the belief
in endless punishment may be the rational concomitant of
* Christian Remembrancer, January 1854, p. 233.
f Christian Remembrancer, lb. p. 234.
�Eternal Punishment.
37
a sense of moral obligation; but its effects are practically
nullified, and its removal would only widen a little more
the road which is now held to lead to heaven those who
live the common life of all men.
*
Dean Milman admits
that there is a natural revolt against the doctrine: men
wish to evade it, and they consolidate their sophistry into
a system. None, or at the most but few, really maintain
now that all who do not die in the active Love of God
remain for ever face to face with His Anger. There would
be no such scruple in believing- that in all, without respect
of persons, the Eternal Eire will continue to purge away
the dross from the pure ore as long as any dross remains.
The check on sin would be increased in power, and the
sense of moral obligation quickened, because it would be
set free from a belief which to natural human instinct
appears self-contradictory and immoral.
But what is the experience of legislators in all ages and
countries ? If men will not be deterred by any penalty
short of endless damnation, that is to say, a penalty than,
which they can conceive none higher, then clearly all
apportionment of civil punishment must merge in the
one penalty of death. The idea is a very old one ; but,
whether in England or at Athens, it has simply defeated its
own ends, if that end be the diminution of crimes. Diodotos warned the Athenians that they might punish all
their enemies with death, but they would only induce them
still more to run the chances of escape.f The same
gambling spirit runs into things spiritual. The same
doctrine which tells the good man that if he dies with any
sin not repented of he will sink into hell still leaves it
possible that the wicked man may live to repent. Thou
sands believe with Balaam that the mere wish to die thedeath of the righteous man will somehow or other issue in
its fulfilment.
There remains yet the fact, which it is impossible to
ignore, that the mitigation of a penalty is not necessarily
followed by the multiplication of the offences for which it
is inflicted. When Cleon proposed to punish the revolted
Mitylenteans by an indiscriminate massacre of all the men,
* Jowett on the Epistle to the Romans, Vol. I, n. 417, &c.
t Thucydides, iii. 45.
�38
Eternal Punishment.
he was carrying out a theory of punishment which seems
to have been heartily accepted by Archbishop Whately. In
his belief, as in that of the Athenian demagogue, “the
object proposed by human punishment is the prevention of
future crimes by holding out a terror to transgressors.”*
Both alike put a part for the whole ; and, if the theory
were true, it would relieve judges from all duty of appor
tioning punishments for offences. English judges of the
present day feel this task of apportionment more and more
to be a very strict duty; and it would seem that people do
not steal more sheep and handkerchiefs because they
no longer run the risk of being hanged for the crime.
Undoubtedly, if there is but the one penalty of death for
almost all offences, the task of legislation is wonderfully
simplified. It implies no exalted idea of Divine justice if
we believe that its penalties are fixed by the same kind of
vindictive indolence. The legislation of England is more
and more making the reformation of the offender a co
ordinate object with the prevention of crime. According
to the popular theology, it has already risen to a higher idea
than is exhibited in the Justice of an all-merciful God.
SECTION III.
Philosophical Arguments alleged in Defence
Dogma of Endless Punishment.
of the
But from the contradictory theories and notions of popular
preachers and commentators, or even from the positive state
ments of Creeds, Articles, and Canons, we may pass into the
calmer regions of philosophical argument. The conditions
of our life here may teach us something about that which
shall be hereafter: and, if we believe that one and the same
God rules over all worlds, it is impossible to ignore and
foolish to depreciate the force of this argument from analogy.
But the name even of Bishop Butler must not tempt us to
* Scripture Revelations of a Future State, p. 219.
�Eternal Punishment.
39
draw a single inference which it does not fully warrant.
Every question connected with or arising out of it is, as
Butler liimself admits, a mere question of fact. We may or
may not be able to determine it; but on those which we fail
to answer we must be content to suspend all judgment. It
matters little whether Butler took a high or a low view of
religion ; but it can never be useless to show, if it can be
shown, that he lias in any instance overstepped the bounds
which must be set to all reasoning from analogy. The
most stringent scrutiny is needed to ensure that the alleged
dogmas of revealed religion shall not draw from the con
ceptions of natural religion an aid which the latter cannot
logically afford. If the argument is to carry any weight as
addressed to unbelievers, this rigid indifference becomes
an indispensable duty.
The Analogy of Butler may be as wearisome as a long
journey through deep sand; and we may miss in it “not
only distinct philosophical conceptions but a scientific use
of terms.”* It is of more moment to remark that the
science of the Analogy does not altogether harmonize with
the science of the great Sermons which have done more to
preserve his fame. The account given in the latter of
human nature may appear to allow but little scope for a
fervent or an ecstatic piety; but it asserts unequivocally
that the happiness or the misery of man is the direct and
inseparable result of his actions and his habits. Man stands
in an immediate relation to his Maker, not merely as being
the work of His hands, but as possessing affections and
desires which can have their complete satisfaction in
nothing less than God Himself. His work is to see that
the several parts of his nature are kept in due proportion
to each other, as well as in subordination to that higher
principle of reflexion which ought to be absolute in power
as it is supreme in authority. And throughout it follows,
that by the very necessity of His Nature, God, who cannot
■change, must regard with love every creature which seeks
so to conform its will to the Divine will, must acknowledge
them and draw them towards Himself, in proportion as they
thus strive to do their proper work. Hence the final cause
* Essays and Reviews. Ninth Edition, p. 293.
�4o
Eternal Punishment.
of man is conformity with absolute Righteousness and
unfailing Love. This conformity may also involve his hap
piness, but in the order of ideas it precedes it.
The Analogy introduces us to views of a very different
kind. In the Sermons the constitution of man involves
the need of conformity with the Divine Nature: in the
Analogy God annexes certain results to certain acts. In the
former Virtue is the natural condition of man,—implying
a necessary communion with the Source of all Truth and
Goodness : in the latter it is something which God has
promised to reward and which may yield to its pos
sessor a “ secret satisfaction and sense of security.” In
the Sermons the Love of God is represented as the
direct and necessary complement of human nature; in
the Analogy the idea of God as a master and governor is
the first to occupy the mind of man. In the formcr by
the very necessity of His Nature, God loves the creatures
whom he has made capable of being kindled by his Love ; in
the latter “ the true notion, or conception of the Author of
nature is that of a master or governor prior to the consi
deration of his moral attribute.”* The whole method of
Divine government becomes a complex machinery, admi
rably adapted, it may be, for its special purpose, but imply
ing the exercise of an arbitrary will which has prede
termined certain results without reference to an Eternal
and Unchangeable Law.f The Sermons speak of the con
stitution of a man as flowing directly from the nature of
God; the Analogy seems rather to separate the goodness of
virtuous men from the goodness of God, and to make
them independent centres of righteousness. Erom the
Sermons it follows, of necessity, that the end of human
life is not happiness but a conformity to the Divine
Nature; in the Analogy we are taught that God has
* Butler’s Analogy. Part I, ch. ii., p. 3S.
t It is as well to remember how rapidly this recognition of power as the
basis of the Divine nature may pass into a mere Baal worship. Congrega
tions have not unfrequentlv been edified and comforted by the assurance that
they .are in the hands of an all-powerful Being who happens also to be verv
merciful, and by the contrast of their fortunate position with the conceiv
able wretchedness of creatures made bjr a Deity whose delight lay simply
in tormenting them. Such talk might be dismissed at once, except as illus
trating the sort of argument which is sometimes used to reconcile the idea
of mercy with that ot an endless punishment of all sinners.
�Eternal Punishment.
4i
annexed pleasure to some actions and pain to others, and
that men “ act altogether on an apprehension of avoid
ing’ evil or obtaining good.” To use Butler’s favourite
phrase, God governs the world by a system of rewards
and punishments ; and apart from any dogmas of revealed
*
religion this conclusion is forced upon us by the analogy
of civil government.
Many probably, when they read that “ the annexing
pleasure to some actions and pain to others in our power
to do or forbear, and giving notice of this appointment
beforehand to those whom it concerns, is the proper formal
notion of government,” t will wonder whence Butler derived
his knowledge. That English legislation in his day was
not slow in inflicting pain for a vast number of actions, few
would care to deny ; it would not be so easy to give a list
of actions to which it annexed a feeling of pleasure. But
to what code of any age or people could this axiom ever bo
applied ? A paternal despotism in its palmiest days might
possibly exhibit some faint approach to such a system; but
otherwise human law contents itself mainly with pro
tecting persons and property and inflicting pains or penal
ties on those who injure either the one or the other. It is
careful to punish whatever it holds to be an offence; it
admits no obligation to reward all that men may regard as
generous or honourable. The very idea of equal govern
ment is, that it leaves good citizenship to be its own
reward, while it showers its rewards on a few, not because
they are better or more righteous than their neighbours,
but because they have had it in their power by whatever
means to do the state more service. It expects all citizens
to do their duty, without even telling them that they ought
* The Reviewer of Mr Maurice’s “Theological Essays” in the
‘ Christian Remembrancer,’ Jan. 1854, p. 209, earnestly denies that “analogy
is Butler’s primary argument for the truth of religion.” This is, of course,
quite true, if the Sermons and. the Analogy are taken together. Then,
undoubtedly his full system is grounded “ on an appeal to our consciousness
of a certain moral nature within us in the first place,” and “an immediate
inference from that moral nature in the next.” But the Analogy is pro
fessedly addressed to those who do not admit this consciousness of a certain
moral nature ; and for the time the argument from Analogy becomes his
primary argument. The result is a contradiction between the system
propounded in the Analogy and the Sermons.
t Analogy. Part I, ch. ii., p. 37.
�42
Eternal Punishment.
to feel pleasure in doing it, and certainly without caring
whether they feel the pleasure, or whether they do not.
The Athenian rose to a higher idea when he obeyed the
laws of his country, not because they might reward him
or give him pleasure, but from a simple sense of duty,
which rested neither on punishment nor reward. To lay a
special stress on these was at once the evidence of a mind
more or less degraded. Men of slavish natures might be
guided by pleasure and pain, and if they broke the law
might be chastised by those pains which are directly con
trary to the pleasures which they lose. The formal notion
*
of government was with Pericles something very different
from this.
It may, of course, be said that good citizenship must
bring pleasure ; but it does so by no appointment of human
law, and thus far the analogy is not conclusive. Still there
remains the general course of earthly things ; and to Butler
the popular belief of endless reprobation, perhaps, appeared
to be warranted by the physical effects of wickedness in
this life. A careful survey of them taught him that there
was no apparent proportion between the sin and its conse
quences, that the latter are frequently delayed till long
after the actions which occasioned them are forgotten, and
that after such delay they come “ not by degrees but
suddenly, with violence and at once.” It taught him that,
though after a certain amount of folly, it was often in the
power of men to retrieve their affairs, or recover their
health and character, yet real reformation was in many
cases of no avail towards preventing the miseries, sickness,
and infamy, annexed to folly and extravagance beyond that
degree. It further showed him (and on this he laid a still
greater stress) that “ neglects from inconsiderateness,
want of attention, not looking about us to see what we
have to do, are often attended with consequences altogether
as dreadful as any active misbehaviour from the most
extravagant passion.” There is something specious in the
supposed analogy ; but neglect and want of attention may
arise, and very often do arise, as much from weak mental
power as from an ill-regulated life; and their ill effects are
* Aristotle, Etbic. Nicom. X, 9,10. This great thinker expressly affirms
human punishment to be a process of healing, lb. II, 2, 4.
�Eternal Punishment.
43
quite as disastrous in the fomer case as in the latter. But
while the latter is morally worse as well as unfortunate,
we cannot assert this of the other. The results in this case
are external or physical, and will cease to affect the man
as soon as he is removed into a different condition of things.
Even with the other, some distinction must be drawn
between the will of the sinner and the physical conse
quences of his sin. The struggle of the will may begin
when the body has lost the power of obeying it. The
effects of intemperance last much longer than the seasons
of drunkenness ; and may be first felt in all their horrors
when the body has lost the power of resistance. The widest
inference from this cannot warrant the belief that these exter
nal results will be carried into a life which will not be physi
cal. We may feel absolutely certain that the opium-eater can
never regain a healthy condition of body ; but we cannot
deny that his will might at once begin to act effectually, if
the physical derangement in the lining- of his stomach were
*
removed.
The reason of the thing- can never prove that
the bodily misery so produced must accompany a man into
his future life. The physical results of sin may have been
on earth irremediable ; but Butler has allowed that many
who yet suffer them are reaKy penitent. At the utmost w
e
*
cannot, on the grounds of such analogy, deny that the
incapable will of the drunkard may recover its power when
the physical impediment has been removed ; and we cannot
possibly prove that it may not be removed by death.
From the analogy of the present order of things, Butler
passes to the sentiments of heathen writers on the subject
of future punishment. This subject, he rightly insists,
belongs most evidently to natural religion ; but he adds at
the same time that, “ Gentile writers, both moralists and
poets, speak of the future punishment of the wicked, both
as to the duration and degree of it, in a like manner of
expression and description as the Scripture does.”f It is
hard to deal with a sentence which, with a hundred others,
proves how little Butler aimed at “ a scientific use of terms.”
* Archdeacon Hare, in his “Mission of the Comforter,” refers to this
belief of Coleridge, that the loss of power in the will may be the punish
ment of such vices.
f Analogy. Part I, ch. ii., p. 42. Note.
�44
Eternal Punishment.
He has left us well-nigh to guess the meaning which he
attached to Scripture, Revelation, and Religion. The first
may mean a part of the Old and New Testament, or the
whole ; the second appears sometimes to mean the Bible,
sometimes a supposed communication made to Adam before
the fall or after it; the third is used to express sometimes the
law of God written on a man’s heart, and at others to mean
nothing more than the declarations of a particular book in
the Bible. But on the subject of future punishment it
seems useless to allege any argument in the statements of
heathen writers (supposing that all these had spoken alike)
with the statements of Scripture, when these are held by
antagonistic theological schools to prove directly opposite
conclusions. If, however, it be meant that Gentile writers
as a body maintain the endless punishment of all sinners
without reference to the measure of their sin, the statement
is not true.
*
The belief of almost all was at the best
shadowy and vague enough. Not a few refused to extend
their thought to any life beyond the present, or, if at times
they suffered their minds to rest upon it, it was to doubt
whether any but the noblest souls would be allowed to live
at all.f A still smaller number spoke out more clearly, but
it is impossible to wrest their words in support of the doc
trine of Bishop Pearson. Socrates does, indeed, draw a
distinction between pardonable and unpardonable sins, or
rather between sins which can and those which cannot be
healed; J but they who have committed the former are
purified without reference to their repentance before death.
It is the magnitude of the sin, not the disposition of the
sinner, which shuts him out from all hope of recovery.
But the class of sinners who are not benefited by their
sufferings is manifestly a very small one. It does not take
in the lying or dishonest little child, it pointedly excludes
* Due stress must be laid on the vast numbers among the heathen who
accepted the doctrines of Epicurus; and the full extent to which these
doctrines were carried is well shown in the fragments of Philodemus,
recently recovered amongst the Herculanean Papyri.—See the ‘ Edinburgh
Review,’ October 1862, page 346.
f “ Si non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animre.’’ The doubting
hope of Tacitus was far too general not to weaken greatly the force of
Butler’s argument.
t icGma agapr^gara. Plato. Gorg. lxxxi.
�Eternal Punishment.
45
those who lead the common life of all men, it rejects those
■whom Dante would only not have thrust down into the
lowest dungeons of hell. Tyrants and kings and princes
are amongst them,—Tantalos, Sisyphos, and Tityos; but
the lot of Thersites is the happiest. It seems to be hard,
if not impossible, for a private citizen to enrol himself in
*
the company of transgressors who had sinned beyond all
hope of cure.
The course of human life on earth will show that sins
of the flesh produce physical consequences which may last
indefinitely longer than the time spent in committing them.
Ordinary experience teaches us that actions tend to create
habits, and that habits retain over us a strong and per
manent hold. Human legislation claims to visit certain
acts with pains and penalties, and demands obedience to
Law without promise of recompense or reward. In some
countries it rises to a higher level, and, while more carefully
apportioning punishment, seeks in a greater degree to
reform the offender, and, so far as may be practicable, to
lessen rather than to raise the penalty. There is no analogy
between such a state of things and an endless torment of
all sinners without regard to their spiritual condition.
Such an idea can challenge belief on grounds of authority
alone ; and out of the whole cycle of Christian doctrines it
is the only one which rests wholly on this foundation.-]"
* Socrates is represented as inclining to the latter opinion, ou yap, olpat,
¿iftv aura>. Mr Wilson, in “Essays and Reviews,” p. 206 (9th Ed.), says
that the Greek “ could not expect the reappearance in another world, for
any purpose, of a Thersites or an Hyperbolus.” The words attributed to
Socrates seem to imply not so much that such men are not among the
inhabitants of the other world, as that they are not aviaroi. Hence they
come under the class of men who are benefited by their sufferings ; Tantalos
and Sisyphos represent the few who have sinned too deeply to leave their
torments any purgatorial power.
f If any exception must be made, it would seem to be that of the Fall.
But a denial of the fact that Adam fell leaves the question of a “ taint or
corruption naturally engendered in his offspring,” with all its consequences
just where it was before. The question of the Fall itself leads us into a
mythological inquiry, on which we cannot enter here. Some remarks
bearing on the subject will be found in M. Michel Breaks admirable analysis
of the myth of Hercules and Cacus. Paris: Durand. 1863.
�46
Eternal Punishment.
SECTION IV.
Present State of the Controversy as bearing on the
Position and Duties of the Clergy of the Church
of England.
Hence it is that, in spite of the antagonism of modern
science, in spite of the tacit abandonment of some parts in
the narrative of the Old Testament, in spite of the acknow
ledged hopelessness of defining their limits and the condi
tions of inspiration, the theologians who uphold the
popular belief cling to some theory of inspiration with
greater tenacity, it would seem, than ever. Hence it is
that the Christian world is fast splitting up into two sec
tions,—the one half-tempted to believe itself in antagonism
with Christianity, the other regarding the progress of
modern thought with an alarm alike unreasoning and
useless,—useless, because it is impossible to check the rising
tide,—useless, because the flood which assails a mere tra
ditional teaching does not even threaten the Body of Truth
which is the real inheritance of Christendom,—useless,
because this Truth will shine out with unclouded lustre
when the artificial safeguards of an inconsistent theology
shall have been swept away.
It is, of course, possible for a man to reject and deny
any truth or dogma whatsoever; but it must surely be a
distorted vision which can see a growing tendency in the
present day to set aside the great body of Christian doctrine.
If there is more and more a revolting against theories
which regard Power as the basis of the Divine nature,
there is less reluctance to believe that God is dealing with
men for their good. But if there be any one dogma which
can produce no other sanction than that of authority, it
must undergo the stringent scrutiny of an age, which,
with all its shortcomings and all its sins, is bent on getting
at the truth of facts. Men will not be deterred from
closely sifting every argument which upholds a doctrine at
variance with all natural instincts and affections. They
see that the Clergy, who maintain it, do not really
�Eternal Punishment.
47
believe it, that no one really believes it. They know well
how to distinguish a genuine from a spurious belief. They
know that the time was when men might be said to have
this faith, when the thought of the broad gulf yawning to
receive all sinners heightened their convictions of the
essential impurity of all material things. They know how
that belief displayed itself. Bernard believed it when he
deliberately broke up the home which he loved ; Jerome
believed it when he did battle with the fiends of hell in his
cave at Bethlehem ; Francis of Assisi believed it when he
took poverty for his bride and gathered round him the
hosts which forswore every earthly joy to avoid the flames
of hell. The forms of the Sacrifice might vary ; its essence
was the same. Macarius might plunge himself naked into
a morass and brave the sting of insects which might pierce
the hide of a boar. Simeon on his Pillar might afflict soul
and body with the heat by day and the frost by night; but
in one and all, in proportion to the sincerity of their faith,
there was the same vehement rejection not only of every
earthly pleasure but of everything which could only be termed
not a torment or a plague. The teachers of our day go
about to reconcile their belief in the final ruin of almost
all mankind with a natural love of ease and a feeling of
self-complacency. There is much speaking, and in a few,
at least, some self-sacrifice ; but the curse which they believe
to rest upon the world, rests on it, it would seem, in name
only. It does not lessen their liking for the world’s good
things: it does not break their sleep by night, or
greatly afflict their souls by day. They look on man
kind as on beings of whom few can escape the day
of the great vengeance; but they can mingle still in
the world of science, or trade, or politics, and shape
their words by the dictates of time- serving expediency. In
the eyes of Benedict or Columba or Dominic no further
proofs would be needed of a complete and deliberate unbe
lief. But while some still insist loudly that God cannot
have mercy on men after their pilgrimage here is ended,
while they place in the same fire the lying child and the
pitiless murderer, the greater number are content to speak
in more measured words, and to tell their people that jus
tice is with God the consummation, and not the contra
�48
Eternal Punishment.
diction, of that which is justice with men. It is impossible
to deny that such is becoming more and more the teaching
of the Clergy of the Church of England. The fierce denun
ciations which paralyzed many hearts with terror thirty
years ago are, by comparison, rarely heard now. Preachers
resort less and less to the elaborate dsemonology of Dante
or of Milton ; they instinctively abstain more and more
from any attempts to define the method of future punish
ment. Is it possible to bring together more convincingevidence that the doctrine is not really believed ? Is it
possible to produce a stronger reason why they who know
that these things are so should come forward boldly and
honestly to declare it ?
This age is one of much serious thought, and the
efforts to arrive at truth for the truth’s sake are neither
feeble nor insincere ; but it is not pre-eminently an age of
martyrs or confessors. They who have thought most
deeply and anxiously are conscious that they have passed
through more than one stage of belief and faith ; and they
feel that the change which is coming cannot, on the whole,
be accomplished with the same weapons which fought the
battle of Teutonic against Latin Christianity. No great
experience is needed to show them that others have under
gone, or are undergoing, the like changes. Not a few who
now, if pressed to declare their belief, would assuredly
refuse to accept the Bishop of Oxford’s pictures of hell
torments, received their Orders with an unquestioningacceptance of all Anglican theology. Not a few passed
from this state of temporary repose into a hard struggle
which only did not issue in their submission to the Church
of Rome. The teaching which had impressed on them the
Unity of the Church and the unimaginable fearfulness of
schism, justified and enforced the inquiry which was to
determine whether they were in the right position them
selves. It was of no avail that they led the holiest lives, if
they questioned but one single point in all the faith of
Catholic Christendom; it was of no avail that their faith
and their lives were what they should be, if their belief
was professed and their works done where they ought not
to be done and professed. The rising of a doubt was the
signal for flight, for to doubt and linger and to die in that
�Eternal Punishment.
49
doubt, was to be lost for ever. The Church of Rome was
Catholic, even by the admission of her enemies; her orders
were allowed to be valid; her dogmas retained the faith of
the Church in all ages, although they may have overlaid it.
She could offer them security, and security was everything
under a state of things in which the accident of a moment
might remove the Christian beyond the reach of hope and
mercy. It was hard to escape from these doubts and fears
without casting aside the burden of sacerdotalism. It was
hardly possible to remain withodt the pale of Rome, while
the paramount necessity of Catholic Communion seemed to
thrust aside every other; but it was easy to emerge from
these mortal fears into the belief in a Divine kingdom
embracing all ages and all lands, into a belief which did
not dare to limit the mercy of God, which cared little to
speak of virtue and vice, of punishments and rewards, but
which placed the salvation of man in the conformity of his
will to the Divine will, in a constant dependence on his
Love and Grace.
Such as this has been the history of many an English
Clergyman during the last ten or twenty years. They may
pass now by many names; they may be regarded by the
world as belonging to the High Church or the Broad
Church, but they who search such matters closely may see
that the foundation of their faith is laid on the conscious
conviction of a moral government of Righteousness, Truth,
and Justice, as men with all their wickedness construe and
accept those terms. It is impossible not to see whither
these things are tending; it is mere hypocrisy to pretend
that we do not perceive it. The sentences of Ecclesiastical
Courts may possibly arrest, but they cannot turn back the
course of modern thought. They do not profess to concern
themselves with the Truth as such ; and the truth as such
is the one end and aim to which every channel of science
and research is converging.
And, finally, the charge to such of the Clergy as hold a
faith like this to quit their posts and set up some new sect
will fall on unheeding ears. Why should they abandon a
Church in the body of whose teaching their faith is deeper
than ever, why yield up the posts entrusted to their charge
because some choose to determine what the Church has left
�5°
Eternal Punishment.
undefined ? Why should they leave the centime of all happy
memories and all bright hopes when nowhere else can they
look to find the same peace and consolation ? Why should
the Bishop of Natal desert the Christian and the heathen
Zulus, for whom and among whom he has so long laboured
heartily and earnestly, because he will not and cannot
propound to them a dogma which makes the assertion of
Perfect Righteousness an unintelligible riddle ? Why
should he cease from the holy work of relieving from their
sadness the souls whom God had not made sad ? Why
should he not assure the trembling convert that his parents
are not thrust down into the lowest pit of hell simply
because they happened to die before the missionary came ? *
Why should he not go on to do his duty by entering his
most solemn protest against falsehoods which are “ utterly
contrary to the whole spirit of the Gospel,” and which
operate “ with most injurious and deadening effect both
on those who teach and on those who are taught” ? Plainly
he would be acting wrong were he not to do so. The
Church of England has accepted the task of preaching a
Gospel, nor can any say that she has wholly failed in
preaching it.
The judgment of the Court of Arches in the case of
Mr Wilson would, even if final, have availed little or
nothing on the other side. Dr Lushington insisted, in the
clearest language, that he was concerned not with the truth
of doctrines, but simply with the fact whether they are or
are not maintained by the Church of England. He accepted
the rule laid down in the Gorham case that “ if the Articles
of Religion are silent upon a point of doctrine, then, unless
the Rubrics and Formularies clearly and distinctly deter
mine it, it is open for each member of the Church to decide
for himself according to his own conscientious opinion.”
No one can assert that he wilfully narrowed the terms of
communion ; some may think that he has suggested evasions
even greater than any which had been acted on before. As
*
long as it is not in plain terms denied that the Holy Scrip
tures contain all things necessary to salvation, any one
* The Bishop of Natal cites a forcible instance of such teaching. Com
mentary on Epistle to the Romans, p. 211.
�Eternal Punishment.
5i
might affirm that not a single book was written by the man
whose name it bears, or even at the time and place to
which it has been assigned. He might interpret figurative
language as historical; he might resolve statements of
facts into a transcendental mysticism. The judge was not
concerned with questions of interpretation. He demanded
no more than the admission that the books, or at least
some part or parts of each book, were written “under
Divine guidance.” He was ready to concede all liberty, if
only the plain, literal, and grammatical sense of authoritative
formularies was not contravened. So far as regards the
doctrine of Eternal Punishment, they who deny that it is
of necessity endless for those who undergo it might most
honestly have accepted the issue.
It may, of course, be said that nothing more than an
accident enables the Bishop of Natal, or Mr Wilson, or Mr
Maurice to accept these words of the Athanasian Creed in
their plain, literal, and grammatical meaning. It may be
urged that the author of that creed meant something very
different, and that it is mere evasion, if they maintain their
ground in the Church of England on a mere superficial
agreement like this. It may be so. Yet it is an evasion
not so great as those which Dr Lushington has deliberately
allowed on the subject of Inspiration. But they who believe
that the Divine Spirit still lives and works in the Church
of England will scarcely regard as an accident that which
will enable all her members and all the world to, respond
heartily and unreservedly to the whole will of God.
We must speak still more plainly. It may have been
the belief of those who drew up the Athanasian Creed that
all sinners must undergo the same endless punishment. It
was a notion which might well prevail in a hard and violent
age. But whether by accident or by the over-ruling Provi
dence of God, Who is using the Church of England as a
special instrument for preaching the whole Gospel of
Christ to every creature, the notion cannot be found dis
tinctly enunciated in any of her Canons, her Articles, or
her Formularies. No one really and practically believes in
this notion ; thousands virtually ignore it, and the highest
Ecclesiastical tribunal has affirmed that such a belief is not
imposed on the Clergy of the Church of England. But it
�&
Eternal Punishment.
is time to speak out the whole truth. It is time to say that
this dogma does not form part of the Gospel of Christ.
It is time to reject it utterly from our teaching, and to bid
all others look the question fully in the face.
The Church of England has not fettered her Clergy to
any definite statement on the endlessness of future punish
ment ; but if such were her dogma, if she asserted clearly
that all who do not die in the faith and fear of God are
tormented necessarily for evei’ and ever, then it is better to
say at once that that dogma must be rejected with a deeper
and more vehement indignation than that with which
Teutonic Christendom rose up against the worst abuses
and superstitions of Latin Christianity. The coarsest
development of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the
wildest absurdities of Manichean fanatics, were not more
thoroughly opposed to the first principles of Justice, Law,
and Truth than a dogma which makes no distinction
between a perjured tyrant and a lying child. Most happily
such a Reformation is not needed in the Church of England
now; but if ever it be made necessary, the men who shall
carry it out will not be wanting. That Reformation is
sorely needed elsewhere; is it too much to hope that the
Church of England may be the appointed instrument
for hastening that mighty change which shall sweep away
the deadly bondage of an ancient and groundless super
stition ?
�APPENDIX.
No. I.
The “ Christian Remembrancer,” in an article which has been
reprinted by its author, Mr Cazenove, from the number for
April, 1864, has entered elaborately on the defence of the dogma
of never-ending punishment. Enough has been already said to
render a detailed reply to that article altogether unnecessary ;
but a few words may suffice to show how utterly futile its main
arguments are to those who will not grant the assumptions with
which the writer starts. We have reasoned chiefly on the basis
of the authoritative statements of the Church of England as
found in the xxxix articles, nor are we called on to admit any
thing more than may be legally required of her Clergy. But
it may at once be said that the Reviewer’s definition does not
satisfy the teaching of the Bishop of Oxford, or Dr Trench, or
Dr Newman, and that, if his definition be correct, the actual
teaching of such men falls to the ground. “ The dogma,” says
the Reviewer, “ which we have to consider is this,—that there
is a degree of hardness and impenitence of heart which is fraught
with everlasting evil to those who persist in it, and that sucli
obdurate sinners will ultimately be banished from the presence
of Gon and condemned to a state of misery that knows no end.
Upon the details of this fearful condition, neither the Church of
England nor the Church Universal has presumed to utter any
formal or authoritative decision. The reality and the eternity of
the misery is affirmed authoritatively ; the precise nature and
qualities of the sufferings and the nature and locality of the place
where they are to be endured, are open questions, matters of
opinion, not of faith.” But, if this be so, what right has any
Clergyman to draw pictures of demons torturing men by the
members which were the special instruments of their sins, and
point to men like Gibbon and Shelley, nay, even to lying school
children, as suffering the torments of an endless hell ? What right
have any to say that all who do not die in the true faith and
�54
Appendix.
fear of God have entered into that horrible state ? What right
have they to involve themselves and others in a dilemma which
would be absurd if it were not frightful ? for, repudiating (as
they must) the doctrine of Purgatory, they are bound to maintain
that all who are not at their death fitted for heaven must, by the
very necessity of the case, enter hell, and that this must, therefore,
be the lot of nineteen-twentieths of mankind. All these teachers,
it must be noted, uphold a dogma which is not the same as that of
the Reviewer; and what must be the worth of a doctrine which is
stated philosophically by theologians in one way, and alwrays
enforced by preachers in another I To speak briefly, the Re
viewer in the “ Christian Remembrancer ” has made a string of
assumptions, each one of w’hich calls for a distinct denial.
(1.) He assumes that Clergymen (or Laymen) of the Church
of England are bound to believe in the existence of many things
on which its articles are wholly silent—e. g., in that of angels and
of “ those fallen and apostate ones who have Satan as their head
and Captain,” and to admit that the latter sinned in the very
courts of heaven, that man sinned and straightway was ashamed
and penitent, but the demons showed no signs of faith or con
trition. This may be all very well in a treatise on Christian
mythology, but that it should be gravely brought forward in a
paper addressed to educated Englishmen is simply astounding.
(2.) He assumes that the Bible upholds the truth of his
dogma ; and very possibly it may, if we grant his principle “ of
explaining obscure and doubtful passages by the light of those
which are distinct and clear.” No Clergyman of the Church of
England is bound to admit any such principle, and every critic
would at once repudiate it, if it be meant, as here it is meant,
that we may explain ambiguous passages in one author by a com
parison with clear passages in another. The rule would be
scouted as ridiculous if applied to Herodotus and Thucydides,
Aristotle and Plato ; and St Paul and St Peter are quite as
much distinct authors as any of these can be, although we may
happen to have bound up their writings as part of a single volume
which we call the Bible, but of which Jerome and Augustine spoke
only as “ The Books.” It is, indeed, as manifest and as open
to any one to say that St Paul taught unqualified Universalism
as to another to affirm that the notion of an endless punishment
may be found in the words of some other of the Biblical writers. It
has been decided judicially that the Church of England does not
sanction this notion, and the assertion that it is not to be found
in the Bible at once upsets a mere assertion on the other side.
(3.) The Reviewer thinks that he has found an impregnable
stronghold in the alleged universality of certain beliefs. All
mankind, speaking generally, believe he asserts in an endless
�Appendix.
5$
punishment ; and he cites the text of Aristotle o navi ¿>okei tovt'
eivai (¡>apev with the assenting comment of Cicero. To this we
need only say that we are in no way bound to accept without the
strictest scrutiny any statement of Aristotle, or Solomon, or Lord
Bacon himself. The axiom is one of those stupendous fallacies
which have led mankind in all ages to forge their own fetters.
The argument from the universality of a belief proves nothing,
or rather it would establish the truth of many beliefs which
have been given up as horrible, disgusting, and degrading. The
very belief in evil angels, which the Reviewer looks on with so
much favour, exists simply as a mutilated and barren stock ;
in other words, those who profess it do not really believe it. Jt
did produce its legitimate fruit once, when it drove all Christen
dom to believe in witchcraft, and consigned to unspeakable
tortures and a frightful death, hundreds of thousands of miserable
wretches who had the ill luck to be accused of an impossible
crime. There has been, it would seem, a time in the history of
man when every nation, tribe, and family was given over to the
practice of human sacrifices ; the distrust of the mercy and love
of God, the utter forgetfulness of the moral character of God,
•on which that loathsome worship was founded, exists still, and
is the greatest barrier in the way of true Christianity. When
the ignorant peasant doubts whether God can be merciful to or
love a being so worthless as himself, he is giving utterance to the
same feeling which led the Carthaginian matron to drop her new
born babe into the blazing mouth of the favourite god of the
Hebrews. It is the reiterated warning of Jewish prophets and
of Christian teachers, that this distrust is a delusion only the
more horrible and fatal because it is universal. There is not an
atom of foundation for it; what a mockery, therefore, of philo
sophical method is it to say that it upholds one dogma while it is
admitted to overthrow another ?
(4.) The Reviewer argues throughout as against persons who
deny the sinfulness and the misery of sin and the certainty of a
righteous chastisement and discipline, who make nothing of
iniquity, and set lightly by the most sacred responsibilities. He
is arguing against some phantom of his own raising. The school
which he anathematizes does not exist. The very essence of the
teaching of those Clergymen against whom he thus insinuates or
implies an utter unbelief, is that no one sin goes unpunished,
and that all men in the measure in which they need it shall
feel the chastening hand of God. They may be wrong : but it is
simply false to say that they leave men to riot in sin, unchecked
and unwarned.
(5.) He endeavours to divert men from an impartial examina
tion of the subject, by throwing doubts on the orthodoxy of those
�$6
Appendix.
who venture to question the dogma for which he is contending.
Any one who does this is sure to be found wanting with respect
to some cardinal doctrine of the faith (of course as these are
received by the Reviewer himself). Sir James Stephen assailed it,
but “ Mr Hopkins has shown his laxity and want of correct views
on the Incarnation ”; Mr Maurice impugns it, but “ is Mr Maurice
thoroughly trustworthy on the doctrine (z.e. the Reviewer’s doctrine)
of the Atonement ” ? Such insinuations are as irrelevant as they
are weak. Each of these doctrines is true or it is not true ; and it
argues mere unbelief to seek to ward off from any one of them
the most rigid scrutiny. What sort of reasoning is it to scare a
man from looking into one dark corner of his house, by telling
him that they who do so are sure to create disorder in some other
quarter’ ? But it is more to the purpose to say that the Clergy of
the Church of England are bound neither to the Reviewer’s dog
mas nor to his tests ; and they need concern themselves very
little to know wdiether he thinks them orthodox or not. To do
so would argue utter childishness. The theological world of
England is divided into sections, each of which impugns the other’s
orthodoxy. The High Churchman brands the Low Churchman ;
one school anathematises or more gently disapproves another ;
and then, forsooth, they who doubt whether God will commit to
hopeless pains the vast majority of his creatures, are bidden to
see that they be orthodox on all other points before they pry
into this one.
Finally the Reviewer, in utter contradiction to the Bishop of
Oxford and his followers, confines himself mostly to guarded
statements, which might lead the reader to suppose that this
fearful lot is reserved merely for an infinitesimally small fraction
of mankind ; but his hell is, nevertheless, one which contains
unbaptized infants (p. 477), and for Englishmen this is enough.
Dogmas which involve such admissions are not merely untrue,
but they are degrading and demoralizing to the last degree. At
the recent Bristol Congress Mr Keble was pleased to repeat to
the assembled Churchmen the remarks made to him by a poor
old widow, who, on hearing that the Church of England no longer
required her people to believe in the endless punishment of all
sinners, begged him not to tell her son, as she trembled for the effect
which these tidings would have upon him. Mr Keble’s inference
was that the decision in the case of Messrs Williams and Wilson
abolished all morality,—the plain fact being, nevertheless, that
the old woman’s wicked son had somehow or other convinced
himself that he would escape scot free. With such men the threat
of an inconceivable and utterly disproportionate punishment is
not likely to have much weight: to tell them that sin brings its
own punishment and that sinners if not here yet hereafter will be
�Appendix.
made to feel the wrath of God, may check them iu their .course,
but can never cause them to plunge deeper into sin.
This is the warning which they would most certainly hear
from such teachers as Mr Wilson and Mr Maurice, Dr Stanley
and Mr Jowett, the Bishop of Natal and Dean Milman. Like
the righteous prophets of old time, they maintain the absolute
and unswerving righteousness of God, while the upholders of the
popular dogma confuse the moral perceptions of mankind, and
give a fatal strength to the miserable sophistry by which men
cheat themselves into the idea that, be their lives what they may,
they will somehow or other come to die the death of the righteous
man.
No. II.
Remarks on a Sermon on “ Everlasting Punishment,” preached
before the University of Oxford on the Twenty-first Sunday
after Trinity, by E. B. Pusey, D.D.
While these sheets were passing through the press, Dr Pusey
has published a Sermon on which, as it misconstrues some state
ments made in the foregoing pages, a few remarks must be added.
It is certainly an unfortunate thing that the self-styled upholders
of the Catholic Faith should in the eyes of those who differ from
them appear always guilty of misconstructions or assumptions.
Dr Pusey’s Sermon so abounds on both as to make any attempt
at an argumentative reply mere labour lost. It is useless to
reason with those who are resolved to make use of ambiguous
terms, and who even themselves put on these terms more than
one meaning. But although the thought of convincing Dr Pusey
may be absurd, it may be of more use to arm others against his
assumptions, and perhaps against the general character of his
theology. If you answer the question, who is God ? what am
I ? honestly, you have, says Dr Pusey, subdued every difficulty
which men raise against the Faith. It may be so, if we admit
that the honest answer must be Dr Pusey’s answer. A second
assumption is based on a passage in the preceding paper,
p. 9, from which Dr Pusey draws the conclusion that “ human
reason is prepared to capitulate as to all the old difficulties which
it used to be so busy in parading, the Doctrine of the All Holy
Trinity or the Incarnation. ... It will even admit the mystery
of the Incarnation, and allow of that ineffable mystery of God
become Man, that God was born, was nourished at the breast,
E 2
�Appendix.
. . was nailed to the Cross, died." Dr Pusey heaps
assumption on assumption. A belief in the Trinity or Incar
nation is not necessarily his belief, and to the latter the Church
of England has certainly not committed either her Laity or her
Clergy. To the assumptions are added a few contradic
tions. “ What criminal,” he asks, “ ever by nature owned
the justice of the human law which condemned him ? If he admit
that he was in the wrong, yet what punishment does not seem to
him too severe ? ” We may perhaps be perplexed to know where
Dr Pusey has amassed these astounding experiences ; but it is
utterly impossible to reconcile them with the statement in the
very next page (7), that man’s conscience speaks out clearly that
punishment is the due reward of oui’ deeds. When he asserts
that .Reformation is not the object of Divine Punishment (6), he
assumes the very point in dispute, and allows his assumption to
lead him into a statement which should be well noted by English
men. He condemns what he calls the systematized benevolence
of modern legislation. “ Reformation of the individual offender
is proposed as the exclusive end of human punishment.” Dr
Pusey does not like this. We must suppose, therefore, that he
would like a little of the wholesome severity which Laud exer
cised on the ears of Prynne and Bast wick, and perhaps, in course
of time, we need not despair of restoring such pleasant exhibitions
as those which graced the execution of Robert François Damiens.
The next argument involves us in a discussion as to the meaning
of the word Eternity, which directly involves another question,—
what is Revelation ?-—a question equally assumed by Dr Pusey.
“ Who revealed to us,” he asks, “ that sin ceases in the evil, when
life ceases 1 ” (p. 9) ; and who revealed to us, we may ask, that it
goes on ? Dr Pusey’s conviction is founded on the existence and
the character of Satan ; and he must at once be told that the
Church of England does not commit her Clergy to any opinion
about either the one or the other, and they who reject the whole
of Dr Pusey’s dæmonology are, in her eyes, quite as orthodox as
he. They are not in the least bound to believe that Satan
belonged to the second order of beatified Intelligences, or that he
fell, or that he exists at all. Dr Pusey thinks he knows all
about him, and he also knows that the whole history of man
is confined to the last 6,000 years (p. 11). This is a matter
in which we may leave him to be dealt with by Sir C. Lyell,
or Professor Owen. But it is of little use to multiply words.
Dr Pusey builds on verbal expressions in the Gospels, thus
assuming again that evei-y word in those narratives forms part
of an indisputable history. Dr Pusey knows that the people of
England are beginning to doubt this, and he knows that the
reasons brought forward in a popular shape in “ Fraser’s Maga-
�Appendix.
$9
zine ” for January, 1863 (on Criticism and the Gospel History)
have not been answered. He cannot fail to know, further, that
the rich man in Hades is represented as better and less selfish
than he was on earth ; and yet he deals in pictures which would
do credit to the sensuous imagination of a Mahometan. “ Gather
in your mind all which is most loathsome, most revolting, the most
treacherous, malicious, coarse, brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty,
unsoftened by any remains of human feeling : conceive the fierce,
fiery eyes of hate, spite, phrenzied rage ever fixed on thee,
glaring on thee, looking thee through and through with hate,
sleepless in their horrible gaze : hear those yells of blaspheming
concentrated hate, as they echo along the lurid vault of hell,
every one hating every one,” &c., &c. “ A deathlessness of hate
were in itself everlasting misery. Yet a fixedness in that state,
in which the hardened, malignant sinner dies, involves, with
out any further retribution of God, this endless misery.” (16.)
Shall we ever know what the upholders of this dogma mean ? Who
or what are Dr Pusey’s hardened and malignant sinners ? The
Bishop of Oxford shuts up in hell the lying school-girl and the
young man of excellent life who doubted whether the sun
and moon stood still at Joshua’s bidding : the Reviewer in
the “Christian Remembrancer” seems to think that unbap
tized children are there also. Do they suppose that people
will listen to them until they make their meaning plain,
or rather until they exhibit some better evidence that they
believe their own doctrine ? Before the Bishop and Clergy
of the Diocese of Oxford Mr Disraeli has made a mock of that
doctrine to point a contemptible jest against Mr Maurice
and Mr Jowett ; the ribald profanity of his taunt called forth
not the rebuke but the enthusiastic cheers of that reverend
*
assembly. We may therefore dismiss Dr Pusey’s pictures, with
the bare remark that they are drawn not from the teaching of
Christ oi- of St Paul, but from that Iranian dualism which made
the world a battlefield between Ormuzd and Ahriman. The
attitude which Dr Pusey has assumed makes it still more neces
sary to assert that his teaching is not the teaching of the Church
of England, which knows nothing of the Birth or Death of God.
Dr Pusey is not 'wise in parading phrases which, if they have
any effect, can only exasperate controversy and convert a gradual
process into a violent convulsion.
* Meeting of the Oxford Diocesan Society for the Augmentation of
Small Livings; as reported in the ‘Times,’ November 26, 1864.
Printed by C. W. Reyn ELL, Little Pulteney street, Haymarket, W.
�IH
i
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Eternal punishment: an examination of the doctrine held by the clergy of the Church of England on the subject of future punishment
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: iv, 59 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Donated by Mr. Garley. Includes bibliographical references. Reprinted with additions from the 'National Review' no. XXXI, for January 1863. "With an Appendix containing a reply to the author on universalism and eternal punishment in the "Christian Remembrance" no no CXX, for April 1863, and some remarks on a sermon on everlasting punishment, by the Rev. E.B. Pusey". Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat).
Creator
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Presbyter Anglicanus
Date
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1864
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Charles W. Reynell
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Church of England
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (<span class="highlight">Eternal</span> <span class="highlight">punishment</span>: an examination of the doctrine held by the clergy of the Church of England on the subject of future <span class="highlight">punishment</span>), 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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G5126
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Church of England
Eternal Punishment
-
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6a238836117898fda7d124ab5bb33e1f
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Text
CLERICAL INTEGRITY.
BY
THOMAS LUMISDEN STRANGE,
AUTHOR OF “THE BIBLE; IS IT THE WORD OF GOD?” ETC.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
��CLERICAL INTEGRITY.
----------- ♦------------
HE Record of the 27th May, 1872, notices, with
animadversion, the
Mr
TVoysey has received encouragementof which clerical
from some
his
brethren, whose names are published among his avowed
supporters, and who retain their position in the ranks
of the Church of England, while thus manifesting their
sympathy with the free utterances of one who holds
and inculcates a line of doctrine so conflicting with that
to which they themselves stand officially committed.
No doubt the position of these gentlemen, if they are
in accord, broadly, with Mr Voysey in his views, and
that of all similarly situated, is one which every friend
to consistency must deeply lament. They profess to
fight under banners the devices on which they no
longer respect. They have to lead their followers by a
way other than along the “ old paths ” hitherto
venerated. Their trumpets give forth uncertain sounds,
or what assuredly cannot be recognized as the regimental
calls. If the freethinking laymen are out of place, who,
for the sake of appearances, swell congregations to
which in heart they do not belong, much more so are
those clergy who have habitually to enact beliefs at
violence with their real sentiments. The Record does
well to call for integrity of profession on the part of
the recognized ministers of the Church of England. It
sees no advantage in having possession of the persons
of the clergy without their operative souls: while, on
�6
Clerical Integrity.
the other side, those who feel that the inner men are
with themselves, naturally desire to see the outer men
openly associated with their convictions. No one,
therefore, is satisfied with the anomalies of a position
so false as that pointed to, while the subjects of the
disorder themselves, can scarcely find satisfaction in
the self-examination which at times must press itself
upon them.
The only cure that can be offered, where self-cure is
not effected, is to unmask the real character of therprofessions made and abused. A recent pamphlet by a
beneficed clergyman, entitled “Clerical Dishonesty,”
wherein the writer assumes that the ordination vows
pledge the utterer to nothing seriously binding on him,
is one among many evidences that such an exposition,
though dealing with much that must to most minds be
self-evident, is not a task altogether supererogatory.
The distinction between the two parties who are in
question—the orthodox anglican and the free-thinker,
is one concerning practice rather than principle. The
free-thinker avows that his belief is one not formulated
for him, but arrived at under his proper convictions.
He is under no compulsion but that of his own ex
ercised mind and conscience. The other party profess
to enjoy a like liberty, but are far from really possessing
it. There was a time when the whole Christian world
found themselves under the dominion of a priestly body,
from whom they had to accept their creed in all its
material characteristics. The mould was made for
them out of which they were to be cast, all in the same
shape. Some freer and more enlightened spirits, after
a course of centuries, objected to the thraldom and its
results. The mould they saw to be a piece of human
machinery, designed to effect conformity to other
human minds, but not securing, what was professedly
aimed at, conformity to the divine mind. That they
conceived to be exhibited in a certain book, and by
that book, and that alone, they claimed to guide their
�Clerical Integrity.
1
ways. These, accordingly, made their protest, which
in effect was, that the Bible was the sole, sufficient, and
perfect rule of faith, by which each, according to his
apprehension, was to govern himself. Nor was it com
ceded that even the Bible stood on a platform beyond
the reach of judgment. The Protestants chose to
exercise their discernment thereupon, and excepted
from its pages, as apocryphal, a considerable portion
of its hitherto received contents. Now if the move
ment represented a real freedom, the very book itself,
evidently, stood in the utmost jeopardy. The process
of excision might advance until nothing was left of
the work but its binding. There are many in fact,
at this moment, who would gladly expunge from it
much that it asserts, and who would question the
genuineness of whole sections of its writings. It
is clear that the principle avowed was one that could
not be maintained. To abide by a revealed faith, by’
something outside of human thought or experience, a
recognized vehicle for the faith was obviously necessary;
and beyond proclaiming the vehicle, and stamping it
with the signet of authority, practically it was found
necessary, also, to educe from it the creed to be followed.
All this the Church of England has done for herself in
her Articles and other formularies. The liberty to each
to shape his faith according to his convictions is gone.
The Romish mould, it is true, has been removed; but
the Anglican mould has been substituted for it.
A variety of subordinate protests and dissents have
ensued, as an inevitable consequence. Whenever the
restraint upon the convinced and dissatisfied mind be
came unbearable, and sufficient numbers joined to form
a new section, there was a departure from the parent
stock, or a split among the already divided members, as
when Protestantism came originally out of Rome. The
elements for these divisions have continually multiplied,
and several very decided offsets are now visibly ripen
ing for independence in the bosom of the original in
�8
Clerical Integrity.
stitution. The difficulty is an inherent one, never to
be surmounted. The revealed creed cannot be ascer
tained, or maintained, without descriptive bounds.
The Anglican mould has therefore been repeatedly cast
' away for the adoption of some one of the hundred
minor Protestant moulds that have appeared to approach
nearer to the ideal truth aimed at.
Some years ago a notable effort was made by some
fervent spirits to establish a basis of Christianity with
out a formal creed. I refer to those currently known
as the Plymouth Brethren, though the designation is
not one of their own adoption. They said, let com
munity of faith be our sole requisition for fellow
ship. The proposition was, however, far from realizing
an entire liberty of conscience, seeing that the faith it
self had to be defined, and the possession of it ascer
tained. Still it was the best attempt that circumstances
allowed of towards freedom of thought in the avowal of
a revealed religion. For some years this party stood
together in happy communion without a formulated
creed, but liberty of thought over the accepted vehicle
of the faith led to its unavoidable l’esult. On one im
portant subject in particular, the ascription, construc
tively, of a sinner’s position to Christ, and the con
sequent character of his alleged sufferings, independent
views in a certain quarter prevailed. From another
quarter these were denounced as heretical. And then
a fresh term of communion was introduced. One
“ Article of Religion,” if not thirty-nine, was prescribed,
and all who held the reprehended views, and even all
who tolerated those who held them, were ejected, and
.the broken fragments of the party exist to this day in
a state of irremediable disunion.
It may then be accepted for a certainty that what is
to be upheld as a revealed faith can only subsist by
means of an organized system. The book conveying
the faith has to be acknowledged, and its recognition
made sure. After which the characteristics and bounds .
�Clerical Integrity.
g
of the faith, as ascertainable out of the revelations of
the book, have to be precisely described. The work,
accounted a divine one, has, inevitably, to poise and
support itself on humanly devised props and founda
tions. Can such an unseemly partnership be’’based
upon any true reality ? Man’s portion therein is most
apparent. That attributed to the Almighty is what
has to be severely questioned. Whatever their views
on this momentous point, the clergy of the Church of
England stand bound to assert the divine origination
of the incongruous and ever-failing system.
Then there is the status of the clergyman himself.
He professes to be an ambassador for God. Is he sure
of his credentials ? Has the Divinity, who is accessible
equally to all, chosen out a select few on whom to
confer special power and obligations ? Such is in truth
the theory; but how are these elected ones separated
to their work and held together ?
Again, it is apparent, if the thing designed is
ascribable to God, the whole apparatus for its realiz
ation is palpably of man. The calling of the clergy
is ordinarily taken up at the outset of life as is
any other calling. It has its pecuniary and social
advantages, with prospective temptations, conferring
wealth, dignity, and power. Certain formulae are pre
scribed, passing which the ambassador for God comes
forth fully equipped with his human testimonials.
Whether the Divinity has complacently endorsed these
is of course a question. But, whatever his own con
sciousness may be, the individual himself has, hence
forth, and for ever, to assert his divine appointment and
heavenly mission. What a standard has he adopted
by which to test, in all sincerity, himself and his
appointed work!
And thus we really get back to Rome. The freedom
of the Protestant movement becomes swamped in the
method taken to give it realization. The articles, the
creeds, the formulated services, the organized ministry,
�io
Clerical Integrity.
are all required to ensure to the machine its appointed
action. Seeking for God in his asserted word and
work, we everywhere fall in with the human agency.
Nor is the operation attended with anything like
success. The object is to ascertain the truth as coming
from Divine revelation, and then to secure conformity
to this truth. For this purpose, all the stated defini
tions are given, and the appointed teachers tested and
banded together. And the result of all is failure.
The Church of England, in its ministers and congrega
tions, represents every shade of opinion, from the type
of Rome to the utmost bounds of liberalized Deism.
Are the tests so loosely drawn as to justify such
latitude? Judicial decisions would certainly warrant a
reply extensively in the affirmative, but will the appeal
to the conscience endorse such a conclusion, especially
in the instance of the free-thinkers ?
The author of the pamphlet on “ Clerical Honesty ”
appears to flatter himself that the bonds are of this
imperfect nature, or have been made so by the prevail
ing laxity with which they are put to use. He con
fines himself to the actual questions and answers which
occur when the candidate offers himself for ordination,
without attempting to define the tenets then supposed
to be avowed. The candidate, he thinks, may be per
mitted to express the hope that “ the Holy Ghost ” has
moved him to take up his office ; that he has been
truly called thereto “ according to the will of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the due order of the realm; ” that
he “ unfeignedly believes all the canonical Scriptures
of the Old and New Testament,” as much, at least, as
do some of the questioners ; that he will read the same
to the assembled church, however painful it may be to
him to do so; that, “ by the help of God,” he will
“ gladly and willingly ” perform all his appointed duties,
with whatever repugnance to his mind and conscience :
that he will “fashion” his life to “the doctrine of
Christ,” “the Lord being his helper;” and that he
�Clerical Integrity.
11
will “ reverently,” and 11 with a glad mind',” obey his
clerical superiors, and conform himself to their “ godly
admonitions.”
After this follows the ordination of the priesthood,
or, as the writer prefers to read the term, the presbytery,
in which very much the same ground is gone over,
except that here the doctrine of 11 eternal salvation
through faith in Jesus Christ ” is expressly required of
him in his ministrations, and that he receives a com
mission to forgive, or refuse, forgiveness of sins, which
the writer hopes may be considered to mean no more
than transgressions against ritualistic order, “ involving
no question of morals.”
On one of these points the writer confesses
that his conscience stands wounded by the pledge to
which he has been subjected; and that is the expression
of his “unfeigned belief” in the whole of the canon
ical Scriptures. The details given of the process of
creation, for example, he has the evidence of his en
lightened senses are untrue, and there is much more,
no doubt, of that stamp, in these pages, which the
knowledge of the day must make it impossible for him
to receive. He laments, then, for himself, and his
clerical brethren, the being “ compelled to read as God’s
word what we know well God never said.” The admis
sion is an important one, and in fact concedes the whole
question. If a clergyman can surmount such a difficulty
as this, to what stretch of elasticity may he not bring
his ministrations? When can we be sure that his
belief and his tongue are in real unison ? That many
are guilty of such a compromise, in no way affects the
character of the evil, save to enhance it.
The ordination service is the Church’s safeguard for
the maintenance and promulgation of her doctrines, and
the pledges then exacted are by no means of a loose
and insufficient sort. It binds the candidate to the
whole contents of the Scriptures, not as he may choose
to understand them, but as interpreted for him by the
�i2
Clerical Integrity.
Church herself, and commits him to matters of faith at
least as difficult of acceptance as the account of the
creation, or any other of the representations made in
the record at variance with physical facts.
The service opens with the Litany, containing these
well known protestations.
“ 0 God the Son, Redeemer of the world: have
mercy upon us miserable sinners.
“ 0 God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the
Father and the Son : have mercy upon us miserable
sinners.
“ 0 holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons
and one God: have mercy upon us miserable sinners.
“ Spare thy people whom thou hast redeemed with
thy most precious blood.
“ From the crafts and assaults of the devil; from
thy wrath, and from everlasting damnation, good Lord
deliver us.
“ By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation ; by thy
holy Nativity and Circumcision ; by thy Baptism, Fast
ing, and Temptation, good Lord deliver us.
11 By thine agony and bloody sweat; by thy cross
and passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by
thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the
coming of Holy Ghost, good Lord deliver us.
“ Son of God : we beseech thee to hear us.
“ 0 Lamb of God : that taketh away the sins of the
world ; have mercy upon us.
“ 0 Christ, hear us.
“ Christ have mercy upon us.
“ 0 Son of David, have mercy upon us.”
The doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation of the
second person of this triune Godhead in the form
of Jesus of Nazareth, all the circumstances associated
with his alleged birth, vicarious sacrifice, and resur
rection, are here openly paraded as the faith of the
recipient of the ordination, and of all concerned with
him in this appointed service. When he himself speaks
�Clerical Integrity.
13
of being moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon him his
office, he acknowledges the existence and functions of
the divine emanation, so designated, which is alleged to
have proceeded from the other two persons of the
Trinity, the Father and the Son. When he describes
himself to be acting “ according to the will of the Lord
Jesus Christ,” he is referring to the teacher of Nazareth,
now translated to heaven and ruling there as a divinity ;
and when he declares he will fashion his life to “ the
doctrine of Christ,” in glad submission to the admoni
tions of his seniors, he avows all that the Church
maintains to be involved in this doctrine—the con
dition in himself of a lost sinner, heir of the wrath of
God, and saved from that wrath by the outpouring of
the blood of the Nazarene teacher. He also proclaims,
through the means of the Litany, his belief in the
being, power, and attributed operations of the devil.
We have the expression here of all that characterizes
what is known as orthodoxy, and no essentially un
orthodox person can minister to such a system without
violation to his estimate of truth. The Record, justly,
and warrantably, calls upon all such to abandon their
false positions, and not to weaken the community to
the support of which they stand pledged by a fictitious
adherence. A party to an engagement is not warranted
in straining the document to free himself of his obliga
tions. He is bound to understand what is expected of
him, and to do it faithfully. Mental reservations,
undisclosed to the other side, form no part of a
genuine transaction. The Church of England has
carefully and fully announced her doctrines through an
extensive range of formularies, and they are not to be
misunderstood, in their broad features, by any intelligent
mind seeking to apprehend them. The clergyman is
engaged to propagate these doctrines, and it is im
possible that he can deflect therefrom, materially, without
being conscious of the divergence. He professes to
have been called of God to his ministrations, and has
�Clerical Integrity.
14
engaged to discharge them with unfeigned mind, gladly
and willingly. Under no other conditions would the
Church have accepted his services; and when he finds
that he cannot, with a free conscience, meet the condi
tions, the path of duty should be clear to him. He
should not flatter himself that he is doing good in the
measure that he is advancing his true sentiments. A
sermon can have little power which is contradicted,
out of the same mouth, in the liturgy. He is but
confusing truth with untruth, schooling his hearers in
subtleties, and bringing them down to his own level
of conscious inconsistency.
Great Malvern,
June 1872.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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
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Clerical integrity
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Strange, Thomas Lumisden
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm.
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Thomas Scott
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1872
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CT110
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Church of England
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Conway Tracts
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Text
. SATIRES
PROFANITIES
AND
BY
•
JAMES
THOMSON (B.V.f
(Author of “The City o¥ Dreadful Night”)
With a Preface by G. W. Foote.
A New Edition.
The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm
Religion in the Rocky Mountains
The Devil in the Church of England
Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles
A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty
A Bible Lesson on Monarchy
The One Thing Needful
The Athanasian Creed
ONE SHILLING.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
-28 Stonecutter Street, E.C,
1890.
��63'2X>5
MC3?
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
SATIRES
AND
PROFANITIES
BY
JAMES
THOMSON (B.V.)
(Author of “ The City
of
Dreadful Night”)
With a Preface by G. W. Foote.
A New Edition.
LONDON
progressive PUBLISHING company,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1890.
�LONDON
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. BOOTH
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C,
�CONTENTS
PASS
Preface ...
...
...
5
The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm
...
...
7
Religion in the Rocky Mountains
...
...
21
The Devil in the Church of England...
..
..
36
Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles...
...
...
47
A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty
...
...
58
A Bible Lesson on Monarchy
..
...
...
66
The One Thing Needful
...
...
...
...
71
The Athanasian Creed
..
...
..
..
75
...
...
...
...
�..................
�EDITOR’S PREFACE.
Under the title of Satires and Profanities I collected and
published, in 1884, twenty-three prose pieces of James
Thomson’s, contributed by him at various times to Freethought
journals, namely, the National Reformer, edited by Mr. Brad
laugh, and the Secularist, edited by myself. After the sale of
about five hundred copies, the remaining sheets were destroyed
by a fire at the publisher’s premises. It was a pity that such
a book should be out of print, but complete republication was
impossible. The enterprise would have been a heavy financial
loss. There is, however, a possibility of realising one’s invest
ment in a smaller collection of the principal pieces, and I
venture to issue it in the present form.
Thomson was a born satirist as well as a born poet. I do
not think anyone can read these pieces without feeling that
Thomson enjoyed the writing of them. They reveal a side of
his genius which only found occasional expression in his verse.
He allowed me to publish two of them as pamphlets before any
collection of his poems was given to the world. Some of his
admirers, who scarcely share his convictions, are in the habit
of depreciating these satires on the current theology. But he
would have smiled at their soreness. “ Thomson’s satire,” as
I wrote in the preface to Satires and Profanities,“ was always
bitterest, or at any rate most trenchant, when it dealt with
Religion, which he considered a disease of the mind, engendered
by folly and fostered by ignorance and vanity. He saw that
spiritual superstition not only diverts men from Truth, but
induces a slavish stupidity of mind, and prepares the way for
every form of political and social injustice. He was an Atheist
first and a Republican afterwards. He derided the idea of
making a true Republic of a population besotted with religion,
paralysed with creeds, cringing to the agents of their servitude,
and clinging to the chains that enthral them.”
No doubt the cry of “Blasphemy!” will continue to be
raised against Thomson’s religious satires, as against every
pointed, and therefore “painful,” attack on Christianity.
�▼i.
Editor's Preface.
But Thomson has justified himself in this respect. Defending
a certain 11 outburst of Rabelasian laughter,” which was de
nounced by the Saturday Review in 1867, he wrote
The
Grecian mythology is dead, is no longer aggressive in its
absurdities ; the priestcraft and the foul rites have long since
perished, the beauty and the grace and the splendor remain.
But your composite theology is still alive, is insolently
aggressive, its lust for tyrannical dominion is unbounded;
therefore we must attack it if we would not be enslaved by it.
The cross is a sublime symbol; I would no more think of
treating it with disrespect while it held itself aloft in the
serene heaven of poetry than of insulting the bow of Phoebus
Apollo or the thunderbolts of Zeus; but if coarse hands will
insist on pulling it down upon my back as a ponderous wooden
reality, what can I do but fling it off as a confounded burden
not to be borne ?” Thomson also pointed out that “ For the
Atheist, God is a figment, nothing: in blaspheming God he
therefore blasphemes nothing. A man really blasphemes
when he mocks, insults, pollutes, vilifies that which he really
believes to be holy and awful.” He admitted that there
might be a hundred Christians in England who really believed
in the Christian God, and they could be guilty of blaspheming
him; but “ speaking philosophically, an honest Atheist can no
more blaspheme God than an honest Republican can be disloyal
to a King, than an unmarried man can be guilty of conjugal
infidelity.”
There is no need to say more. Thomson’s “blasphemy”
and its justification are here together. Every purchaser of
this brochure is warned in the preface what to expect, and
if his nerves are too weak for an Atheist’s satire he can give
it to a robuster friend.
May, 1890.
G. W. FOOTE.
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm
[Written in 1866.]
Many thousand years ago, when the Jews first started
in business, the chief of their merchants was a venerable
and irascible old gentleman named Jah. The Jews
have always been excellent traders, keen to scent
wealth, subtle to track it, unweary to pursue it, strong
to seize it, tenacious to hold it ; and the most keen,
subtle, untiring, strong, tenacious of them all, was this
Jah. The patriarchs of his people paid him full
measure of the homage which Jews have always eagerly
paid to wealth and power, and all their most important
transactions were carried out through him. In those
antique times people lived to a very great age, and Jah
is supposed to have lived so many thousands of years
that one may as well not try to count them. Perhaps
it was not one Jah that existed all this while, but the
house of Jah : the family, both for pride and profit,
preserving through successive generations the name of
its founder. Certain books have been treasured by
the Jews as containing exact records of the dealings of
this lordly merchant (or house) both with the Jews
themselves and with strangers. Many people in our
times, however, have ventured to doubt the accuracy of
these records, arguing that some of the transactions
therein recorded it would have been impossible to
transact, that others must have totally ruined the
richest of merchants, that the accounts often contradict
each other, and that the system of book-keeping
generally is quite unworthy of a dealer so truthful and
clear-headed as Jah is affirmed to have been. The
records are so ancient in themselves, and they treat of
matters so much more ancient still, that it is not easy
to find other records of any sort with which to check
�8
Satires and Profanities.
their accounts. Strangely enough the most recent
researches have impugned the accuracy of the most
ancient of these records ; certain leaves of a volume
called the “ Great Stone Book ” having been brought
forward to contradict the very first folio of the ledger
in which the dealings of Jah have been posted up
according to the Jews. It may be that the first few
folios, like the early pages of most annals, are somewhat
mythical ; and the present humble compiler (who is
not deep in the affairs of the primaeval world, and who,
like the late lamented Captain Cuttie with his large
volume, is utterly knocked up at any time by four or
five lines of the “ Great Stone Book ”) will prudently
not begin at the beginning, but skip it with great
comfort and pleasure, especially as many and learned
men are now earnest students of this beginning. We
will, therefore, if you please, take for granted the facts
that at some time, in some manner, Jah created his
wonderful business, and that early in his career he met
with a great misfortune, being compelled, by the
villainy of all those with whom he had dealings, to
resort to a wholesale liquidation, which left him so poor,
that for some time he had not a house in the world,
and his establishment was reduced to four male and as
many female servants.
He must have pretty well recovered from this severe
shock when he entered into the famous covenant or
contract with Abraham and his heirs, by which he
bound himself to deliver over to them at a certain,
then distant, period, the whole of the valuable landed
property called Canaan, on condition that they should
appoint him the sole agent for the management of
their affairs. In pursuance of this contract, he con
ducted that little business of the flocks and herds for
Jacob against one Laban ; and afterwards, when the
children of Abraham were grown very numerous, he
managed for them that other little affair, by which
they spoiled the Egyptians of jewels of silver and
jewels of gold ; and it is even asserted that he fed and
clothed the family for no less than forty years in a
country where the commissariat was a service of
extreme difficulty.
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
9
At length the time came when he was to make over
to them the Land of Canaan, for this purpose evicting
the several families then in possession thereof, ihe
whole of the covenanted estate he never did make over
to them, but the Jews freely admit that this was through
their own fault. They held this land as mortgaged to
him, he pledging himself not to foreclose while, they
dealt with him faithfully and fulfilled all the conditions
of the covenant. They were to pay him ten per cent,
per annum interest, with sundry other charges, to put
all their affairs into his hands, to have no dealings what
soever with any rival merchants, etc., etc. Under this
covenant the Jews continued in possession of the fine
little property of Canaan for several hundred years,
and they assert that this same Jah lived and conducted
his business throughout the whole period. But, as I
have ventured to suggest, the long existence of the
house of Jah may have been the sum total of the lives
of a series of individual Jahs. The Jews could not
have distinguished the one from the other ; for it is a
strange fact that Jah himself, they admit, was never
seen. Perhaps he did not affect close contact with
Jews. Perhaps he calculated that his power over them
would be increased by mystery ; this is certain, that he
kept himself wholly apart from them in his private
office, so that no one was admitted even on business.
It is indeed related that one Moses (the witness to the
execution of the covenant) caught a glimpse of him
from behind, but this glimpse could scarcely have
sufficed for identification ; and it is said, also, that at
certain periods the chief of the priesthood was admitted
to consultation with him ; but although his voice was
then heard, he did not appear in person—only the
shadow of him was seen, and everyone will allow that
a shadow is not the best means of identification. And
in further support of my humble suggestion it may be
noted that in many and important respects the later
proceedings attributed to Jah differ extremely in chal’acter from the earlier ; and this difference cannot be
explained as the common difference between the youth
and maturity and senility of one and the same. man,
for we are expressly assured that Jah was without
�10
Satires and Profanities.
change—by which we are not to understand that
either through thoughtlessness or parsimony he never
had small cash in his pocket for the minor occasions of
life ; but that he was stubborn in his will, unalterable
in his ideas, persistent in his projects and plans.
The records of his dealings at home with the Jews,
and abroad with the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the
Philistines, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Edomites,
and other nations, as kept by the Jews themselves, are
among the strangest accounts of a large general busi
ness which have ever been put down in black on
white. And in nothing are they more strange than in
the unsullied candor with which the Jews always admit
and proclaim that it was their fault, and by no means
the fault of Jah, whenever the joint business went
badly, and narrate against themselves the most astonish
ing series of frauds and falsehoods, showing how they
broke the covenant, and attempted to cheat the other
party in every imaginable way, and, in order to ruin
his credit, conspired with foreign adventurers of the
worst character—such as MM. Baal, Ashtaroth, and
Moloch. Jah, who gave many proofs of a violent and
jealous temper, and who was wont to sell up other
debtors in the most heartless way, appears to have been
very patient and lenient with these flagitious Jews.
Yet with all his kindness and long-suffering he was
again and again forced to put executions into their
houses, and throw themselves into prison ; and at
length, before our year One, having, as it would seem,
given up all hope of making them deal honestly with
him, he had put certain strict Romans in possession of
the property to enforce his mortgage and other rights.
And now comes a sudden and wonderful change in
the history of this mysterious Jah. Whether it was
the original Jah, who felt himself too old to conduct
the immense business alone, or whether it was some
successor of his, who had not the same self-reliance
and imperious will, one cannot venture to decide ; but
we all know that it was publicly announced, and soon
came to be extensively believed, that Jah had taken
unto himself two partners, and that the business was
thenceforth to be carried on by a firm, under the style
�Story of a Famous Old Jswish Firm.
11
of Father, Son, and Co. It is commonly thought that
history has more of certainty as it becomes more
recent ; but unfortunately in the life of Jah, uncertainty
grows ten more times uncertain when we attain the
period of this alleged partnership, for the Jews deny it
altogether ; and of those who believe in it not one is
able to define its character, or even to state its possi
bility in intelligible language. The Jews assert roundly
that the alleged partners are a couple of vile impostors,
that Jah still conducts his world-wide business alone,
that he has good reasons (known only to himself) for
delaying the exposure of these pretenders ; and that,
however sternly he has been dealing with the Jews for
a long time past, and however little they may seem to
have improved so as to deserve better treatment, he
will yet be reconciled to them, and restore them to
possession of their old land, and exalt them above all
their rivals and enemies, and of his own free will and
absolute pleasure burn and destroy every bond of
their indebtedness now in his hands. And in support
of these modest expectations they can produce a
bundle of documents which they assert to be his
promissory notes, undoubtedly for very large amounts ;
but which, being carefully examined, turn out to be all
framed on this model: “ I, the above-mentioned A. B.”
(an obscure or utterly unknown Jew, supposed to have
lived about three thousand years ago), “ hereby promise
in the name of Jah, that the said Jah shall in some
future year unknown, pay unto the house of Israel the
following amount, that is to say, etc.” If we ask,
Where is the power of attorney authorising this dubious
A. B. to promise this amount in the name of Jah ? the
Jews retort : “If you believe in the partnership, you
must believe in such power, for you have accepted all
the obligations of the old house, and have never refused
to discount its paper : if you believe neither in Jah
nor in the partnership, you are a wretch utterly with
out faith, a commercial outlaw.” In addition, however,
to these remarkable promissory notes, the Jews rely
upon the fact that Jah, in the midst of his terrible
anger, has still preserved some kindness for them. He
threatened many pains and penalties upon them for
�12
Satires and Profanities,
breach of the covenant, and many of these threats he
has carried out ; but the most cruel and horrific of all
he has not had the heart to fulfil : they have been
oppressed and crushed, strangers have come into their
landed property, they have been scattered among all
peoples, a proverb and a by-word of scorn among the
nations, their religion has been accursed, their holy
places are defiled, but the crowning woe has been spared
them (Deut. xxviii., 44) ; never yet has it come to pass
that the stranger should lend to them, and they should
not lend to the stranger. There is yet balm in Gilead,
a rose of beauty in Sharon, and a cedar of majesty on
Lebanon ; the Jew still lends to the stranger, and does
not borrow from him, except as he “borrowed ” from
the Egyptian—and the interest on money lent is still
capable, with judicious treatment, of surpassing the
noble standard of “ shent per shent.”
And even among the Gentiles there are some who
believe that Jah is still the sole head of the house, and
that the pair who are commonly accounted junior
partners are in fact only superior servants, the one a
sort of manager, the other general superintendent and
agent, though Jah may allow them a liberal commission
on the profits, as well as a fixed salary.
But the commercial world of Europe, in general,
professes to believe that there is a bond fide partnership,
and that the three partners have exactly equal authority
and interest in the concern ; that, in fact, there is such
thorough identity in every respect that the three may,
and ought to be, for all purposes of business, considered
as one. The second partner, they say, is really the son
of Jah ; though Jah, with that eccentricity which has
ever abundantly characterised his proceedings, had this
son brought up as a poor Jewish youth, apparently the
child of a carpenter called Joseph, and his wife Mary.
Joseph has little or no influence with the firm, and we
scarcely hear of a transaction done through him, but
Mary has made the most profitable use of her old liaison
with Jah, and the majority of those who do business
with the firm seek her good offices, and pay her very
liberal commissions. Those who do not think so
highly of her influence, deal with the house chiefly
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
13
through, the Son, and thus it has come to pass that poor
Jah is virtually ousted from his own business. He
and the third partner are little more than sleeping
partners, while his mistress and her son manage every
affair of importance.
This state of things seems somewhat unfair to Jah ;
yet one must own that there are good reasons for it.
Jah was a most haughty and humorous gentleman,
extremely difficult to deal with, liable to sudden fits of
rage, wherein he maltreated friends and foes alike,
implacable when once offended, a desperately sharp
shaver in a bargain, a terrible fellow for going to law.
The son was a much more kindly personage, very
affable and pleasant in conversation, willing and eager
to do a favor to any one, liberal in promises even
beyond his powers of performance, fond of strangers,
and good to the poor ; and his mother, with or without
reason, is credited with a similar character. Moreover,
Jah always kept himself invisible, while the son and
mother were possibly seen, during some years, by a
large number of persons ; and among those who have
never seen them their portraits are almost as popular
as photographs of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
With the real or pretended establishment of the
Firm, a great change took place in the business of Jah.
This business had been chiefly with the Jews, and even
when it extended to foreign transactions, these were all
subordinate to the Jewish trade. But the Firm lost
no time in proclaiming that it would deal with the
whole world on equal terms : no wonder the Jews
abhor the alleged partners I And the nature of the
contracts, the principal articles of trade, the mode of
keeping the accounts, the commission and interest
charged and allowed, the salaries of the agents and
clerks, the advantages offered to clients, were all
changed too. The head establishment was removed
from Jerusalem to Rome, and branch establishments
were gradually opened in nearly all the towns and
villages of Europe, besides many in Asia and Africa,
Bnd afterwards in America and Australia. It is worth
noting that in Asia and Africa (although the firm arose
in the former) the business has never been carried on
�14
Satires and Profanities.
very successfully; Messrs. Brahma, Vishnu, Seeva
and Co., the great houses of Buddha and Mumbo
Jumbo, various Parsee firms, and other opposition
houses, having among them almost monopolised the
trade.
The novel, distinctive, and most useful article -which
the Firm engaged to supply was a bread called par
excellence the Bread of Life. The Prospectus (which
was first drafted, apparently in perfect good faith, by
the Son ; but which has since been so altered and ex
panded by successive agents that we cannot learn what
the original, no longer extant, exactly stated) sets forth
that the House of Jah, Son and Co. has sole possession
of the districts yielding the corn whereof this bread is
made, the sole patents of the mills for grinding and
ovens for baking, and that it alone has the secret of the
proper process for kneading. The Firm admits that
many other houses have pretended to supply this in
valuable bread, but accuses them all of imposture or
poisonous adulteration. For itself, it commands the
genuine supply in such quantities that it can under
take to feed the whole world, and at so cheap a rate
that the poorest will be able to purchase as much as he
needs ; and, moreover, as the firm differs essentially
from all other firms in having no object in view save
the benefit of its customers, the partners being already
so rich that no profits could add to their wealth, it will
supply the bread for mere love to those who have not
money!
This fair and beautiful prospectus, you will easily
believe, brought vast multitudes eager to deal with the
firm, and especially large multitudes of the poor,
ravished with the announcement that love should be
henceforth current coin of the realm ; and the business
spread amazingly. But at the very outset a sad mis
chance occurred. The Son, by far the best of the
partners, was suddenly seized and murdered and buried
by certain agents of the old Jewish business (furious
at the prospect of losing all their rich trade), with the
connivance of the Roman installed as inspector. At
least, these wretches thought they had murdered the
poor man, and it is admitted on every side that they
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
15
buried him ; but the dependants of the Firm have a
strange story that he was not really killed, but arose
out of his tomb after lying there for three days, and
slipped away to keep company with his father, the
invisible Jah, in his exceedingly private office ; and
they assert that he is still alive along with Jah, molli
fying the old man when he gets into one of his furious
passions, pleading for insolvent debtors, and in all
things by act and counsel doing good for all the clients
of the house. They, moreover, assert that the third
partner, who as the consoling substitute for the absent
Son is commonly called the Comforter, and who is
very energetic, though mysteriously invisible in his
operations, superintends all the details of the business
in every one of the establishments. But this third
partner is so difficult to catch, that, as stated before,
the majority of the customers deal with the venerable
mother, as the most accessible and humane personage
belonging to the house.
Despite the death or disappearance of the Son, the
firm prospered for a considerable time. After severe
competition, in which neither side showed itself very
‘scrupulous, the great firm of Jupiter and Co., the old
Greek house, which had been strengthened by the
amalgamation of the wealthiest Roman firms, was
utterly beaten from the field, sold up and extinguished.
In the sale of the effects many of the properties in
most demand were bought in by the new firm, which
also took many of the clerks and agents into its em
ployment, and it is even said adopted in several impor
tant respects the mode of carrying on business and the
system of book-keeping. But while the firm was thus
conquering its most formidable competitor, innumerable
dissensions were arising between its own branch esta
blishments ; every one accusing every other of dealing
on principles quite hostile to the regulations instituted
by the head of the house, of falsifying the accounts,
and of selling an article which was anything but the
genuine unadulterated bread. There were also inter
minable quarrels among them as to relative rank and
importance.
And whether the wheat, as delivered to the various
�16
Satires and Profanities.
establishments, was or was not the genuine article
which the firm had contracted to supply, it was soon
discovered that it issued from the licensed shops adul
terated in the most audacious manner. And, although
the prospectus had stated most positively that the
bread should be delivered to the poor customers of the
firm without money and without price (and such seems
really to have been the good Son s intention), it was
found, in fact, that the loaves, when they reached the
consumer, were at least as costly as ever loaves of any
kind of bread had been. It mattered little that the
wheat was not reckoned in the price, when agents r
commissioners’, messengers fees, bakers charges, and
a hundred items, made the price total so enormous.
When, at length, the business was flourishing all over
Europe, it was the most bewildering confusion of con
tradictions that, perhaps, was ever known in the com
mercial world. Eor in all the establishments the
agents professed and very solemnly swore that they
dealt on principles opposed and infinitely superior to
the old principles of trade ; yet their proceedings (save
that they christened old things with new names) were w
identical with those which had brought to shameful
ruin the most villainous old firms. The sub-managers,
who were specially ordered to remain poor while in the
business, and for obedience were promised the most
splendid pensions when superannuated, all became rich
as princes by their exactions from the clients of the
house ; the agents, who were especially commanded to
keep the peace, were ever stirring up quarrels and
fighting ferociously, not only with opposition agents
but with one another. The accounts, which were tn
be regulated by the most honest and simple rules, were
complicated in a lawless system, which no man could
understand, and falsified to incredible amounts, to the
loss of the customers, without being to the gain of the
firm. In brief, each establishment was like one ot
those Chinese shops where the most beautiful and noble
maxims of justice and generosity are painted in gilt
letters outside, while the most unblushing fraud and
extortion are practised inside. When poor customers
complained of these things, they were told that the
�17
Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
system was perfect, that the evils were all from the
evil men who conducted the business ! but the good
people did not further explain how the perfection of
the system could ever be realised, since it must always
be worked by imperfect men. Complainants thus
mildly and vaguely answered were very fortunate ;
others, in places where the firm was very powerful,
were answered by imprisonment or false accusations, or
by being pelted and even murdered by mobs. Many
who thought the bread badly baked were themselves
thrust into the fire.
Yet so intense is the need of poor men for some
bread of life, so willing are simple men to believe fair
promises, that, in spite of the monstrous injustice and
falsehood and cruelty and licentiousness of the
managers and sub-managers and agents of the firm,
the business continued to flourish, and all the wealth
of Europe flowed into its coffers. And generations
passed ere some persons bethought them to think
seriously of the original Deed of Partnership and th©
fundamental principles of the Firm. These documents,
which had been carefully confined in certain old dead
languages which few of the customers could read, were
translated into vulgar tongues, which all could read or
understand when read, and everyone began studying
them for himself. This thinking of essentials, which,
is so rare a thought among mankind, has already pro
duced remarkable effects, and promises to produce
effects yet more remarkable in a short time.
Behold a few of the-questions which this study of the
first documents has raised.—The Father, whom no one
has seen, is there indeed such a personage ? The Son,
whom certainly no one has seen for eighteen hundred
years, did he really come to life again after being
brutally murdered ? The junior partner, whom no one
has ever seen, the Comforter, is he a comforter made of
the wool of a sheep that never was fleeced ? Th©
business, as we see it, merely uses the names, and
would be precisely the same business if these names
covered no personages. Do the managers and sub
managers really carry it on for their own profit, using
these high names to give dignity to their rascality, and
B
�18
Satires and Profanities.
to make poor people believe that they have unbounded
capital at their back ? One is punished for defamation
of character if he denies the existence of the partners,
yet not the very chief of all the managers pretends to
have seen any of the three !
And the vaunted Bread of Life, wherein does it
differ from the old corn-of-Ceres bread, from the baking
of the wheat of Mother Hertha ? Chiefly in this, that
it creates much more wind on the stomach. It is not
more wholesome, nor more nourishing, and certainly
not more cheap ; and it does us little good to be told
that it would be if the accredited agents were honest
and supplied it pure, when we are told, at the same
time, that we must get it through these agents. It is
indeed affirmed that, in an utterly unknown region
beyond the Black Sea, the genuine wheat may be seen
growing by anyone who discovers the place ; but, as
no one who ever crossed the sea on a voyage of
discovery ever returned, the assertion rests on the bare
word of people who have never seen the corn-land any
more than they have seen the partners of the firm ;
and their word is bare indeed, for it has been stripped
to shame in a thousand affairs wherein it could be
brought to the test. They tell us also that we shall all
in time cross the Black Sea, and if we have been good
customers shall dwell evermore in that delightful land,
with unlimited supplies of the bread gratis. This may
be true, but how do they know ? It may be true that
in the sea we shall all get drowned for ever.
These and similar doubts which, in many minds, have
hardened into positive disbelief, are beginning to affect
seriously the trade of the firm. But its interests are
now so inextricably bound up with the interests of
thousands and millions of well-to-do and respectable
people, and on its solvency or apparent solvency depends
that of so large a number of esteemed merchants, that
we may expect the most desperate struggles to postpone
its final bankruptcy. In the great Roman establish
ment the manager has been supported for many years
by charitable contributions from every one whom he
could persuade to give or lend, and now he wants to
borrow much more. The superintendent of the shops
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
19
in London is in these days begging for ten hundred
thousand pounds to assist the poor firm in its difficulties.
It seems a good sum of money ; but, bless you, it is but
a drop in the sea compared with what the business has
already absorbed, and is still absorbing. Scattered
shops in the most distant countries have only been sus
tained for many years by alms from customers here.
The barbarians won’t eat the bread, but the bakers sent
out must have their salaries. A million of pounds are
being begged here ; and people (who would prosecute a
mendicant of halfpence) will give it no doubt! Yet, 0
worthy manager of the London Shops, one proved loaf
of the real Bread would be infinitely more valuable,
and would infinitely more benefit your firm ! The
villainy of the agents was monstrous, generation after
generation, the cost of that which was promised without
money and without price was ruinous for centuries ; but
not all the villainy and extortion multiplied a hundred
fold could drive away the poor hungry customers while
they had faith in the genuineness of the bread. It was
the emptiness and the wind on the stomach after much
eating, which raised the fatal doubts as to the bona fides
of the whole concern. The great English managers
had better ponder this ; for at present they grope in
the dark delusion that more and better bakers salaried
with alms, and new shops opened with eleemosynary
funds, will bring customers to buy their bran cakes as
wheaten loaves. A very dark delusion, indeed ! If
the pure promised bread cannot be supplied, no amount
of money will keep the business going very long. Con
sider what millions on millions of pounds have been
subscribed already, what royal revenues are pouring in
still; all meant for investment in wholesome and
nourishing food, but nearly all realised in hunger and
emptiness, heartburn and flatulence. The old Roman
shrewdly calculated that the House of Olympus would
prove miserably insolvent if its affairs were wound up,
if it tried honestly to pay back all the deposits of its
customers. As for this more modern firm, one suspects
that, in like case, it would prove so insolvent that it
could not pay a farthing in the pound. For Olympus
was a house that dealt largely in common worldly
�20
Satires and Profanities.
goods, and of these things really did give a considerable
quantity to its clients for their money ; but the new
firm professed to sell things infinitely more valuable,
and of these it cannot prove the delivery of a single
parcel during the eighteen hundred years it has been
receiving purchase-money unlimited.
The humble compiler of this rapid and imperfect
summary ought, perhaps, to give his own opinion of the
firm and the partners, although he suffers under the
disadvantage of caring very little for the business, and
thinks that far too much time is wasted by both the
friends and the enemies of the house in investigation
of every line and figure in its books. He believes that
Jah, the grand Jewish dealer, was a succession of
several distinct personages ; and will probably continue
to believe thus until he learns that there was but one
Pharaoh, King of Egypt, but one Bourbon, King of
France, and that the House of Rothschild has always
been one and the same man. He believes that the Son
was by no means the child of the Father, that he was
a much better character than the Father, that he was
really and truly murdered, that his prospectus and
business plans were very much more wise and honest
and good than the prospectus as we have it now, and
the system as it has actually been worked. He believes
that the Comforter has really had a share in this as in
every other business not wholly bad in the world, that
he has never identified his interests with those of any
firm, that specially he never committed himself to a
partnership of unlimited liability with the Hebrew Jah,
that he undoubtedly had extensive dealings with the
Son, and placed implicit confidence in him while a
living man, and that he will continue to deal profitably
and bountifully with men long after the firm has
become bankrupt and extinct. He believes that the
corn of the true bread of life is sown and grown,
reaped, ground, kneaded, baked and eaten on this side
of the Black Sea. He believes that no firm or company
whatever, with limited or unlimited liability, has the
monopoly for the purveyance of this bread, that no
charters can confer such monopoly, that the bread is
only to be got pure by each individual for himself, and
�Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm.
21
that no two individuals of judgment really like it pre
pared in exactly the same fashion, but that unfor
tunately (as his experience compels him to believe)
the bulk of mankind will always in the future, no less
than in the past, persist in endeavoring to procure it
through great chartered companies.
Finally, he
believes that the worthy chief baker in London with
his million of money is extremely like the worthy
Mrs. Partington with her mop against the Atlantic.
Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
Top of Pike’s Peak, March Mh, 1873.
Honored with your special commission, I at once
hurried across to Denver, and thence still westward
until I found myself among the big vertebrae of this
longish backbone of America. I have wandered to and
fro among the new cities, the advanced camps of civili
sation, always carefully reticent as to my mission,
always carefully inquiring into the state of religion
both in doctrine and practice. You were so hopeful
that high Freethought would be found revelling trium
phant in these high free regions, that I fear you will be
acutely pained by this my true report. Churches and
chapels of all kinds abound—Episcopalian, Methodist
Episcopal (for the Methodists here have bishops), Pres
byterian, Baptist, Congregational, Roman Catholic, etc.
Zeal inflaming my courage, three and even four times
have I ventured into a Church, each time enduring the
whole service ; and if I have not ventured oftener, cer
tainly I had more than sufficient cause to abstain. For
�22
Satires and Profanities.
as I suffered in my few visits to churches in your Eng
land, so I suffered here ; and such sufferings are too
dreadful to be frequently encountered, even by the
bravest of the brave. Whether my sensations in church
are similar to those of others, or are peculiar to myself,
I cannot be sure; but I am quite sure that they are
excruciating. On first entering I may feel calm,
wakeful, sane, and not uncomfortable, except that here
I rather regret being shut in from the pure air and
splendid sky, and in England rather regret having come
out through the raw, damp murk, and in both regret
that civilisation has not yet established smoking-pews ;
but the Church is always behind the age. It is pleasant
for awhile to note the well-dressed people seated or
entering ; the men with unctuous hair and somewhat
wooden decorum ; the women floating more at ease,
suavely conscious of their fine inward and outward
adornments. It is pleasant to keep a hopeful look-out
for some one of more than common beauty or grace,
and to watch such a one if discovered. As the service
begins, and the old, old words and phrases come floating
around me, I am lulled into quaint dream-memories of
childhood ; the long unthought-of school-mates, the
surreptitious sweetstuff, the manifold tricks and
smothered laughter, by whose aid (together with total
inattention to the service, except to mark and learn the
text) one managed to survive the ordeal. The singing
also is pleasant, and lulls me into vaguer dreams.
Gradually, as the service proceeds, I become more
drowsy ; my small faculties are drugged into quiet
slumber, they feel themselves off duty, there is nothing
for which they need keep awake. But, with the com
mencement of the sermon, new and alarming symptoms
arise within me, growing ever worse and worse until
the close. Pleasure departs with tranquillity, the irrita
tion of revolt and passive helplessness is acute. I cannot
find relief in toffy, or in fun with my neighbors, as
when I was a happy child. The old stereotyped phrases,
the immemorial platitudes, the often-killed sophistries
that never die, come buzzing and droning about me
like a sluggish swarm of wasps, whose slow deliberate
stinging is more hard to bear than the quick keen
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
23
stinging of anger. Then the wasps, penetrating through
my ears, swarm inside me ; there is a horrid buzzing in
my brain, a portentous humming in my breast ; my
small faculties are speedily routed, and disperse in blind
anguish, the implacable wasps droning out and away
after them, and I am left void, void ; with hollow skull,
empty heart, and a mortal sinking of stomach ; my
whole being is but a thin shell charged with vacuity
and desperate craving ; I expect every instant to col
lapse or explode. It is but too certain that if anyone
should then come to lead me off to an asylum for idiots,
or a Young Men’s Christian Association, or any similar
institution, I could not utter a single rational word to
save myself. And though all my faculties have left
me, I cannot attempt to leave the church ; decorum,
rigid and frigid, freezes me to my seat ; I stare stonily
in unimaginable torture, feebly wondering whether the
sermon will outlast my sanity, or my sanity outlast the
sermon. When at length released, I am so utterly
demoralised that I can but smoke furiously, pour much
beer and cram much dinner into my hollowness, and
so with swinish dozing hope to feel better by tea-time.
Now, though in order to fulfil the great duties you
entrust to me, I have cheerfully dared the Atlantic,
and spent long days and perilous nights in railroad cars,
and would of course (were it indeed necessary) face
unappalled mere physical death and destruction, I
really could not go on risking, with the certainty of
ere long losing, my whole small stock of brains ; espe
cially as the loss of these would probably rather hinder
than further the performance of the said duties. For
suppose me reduced to permanent idiocy by church
going, become a mere brazen hollowness with a riotous
tongue like Cowper’s church-going bell ; is it not most
likely that I would then turn true believer, renouncing
and denouncing your noble commission, even as you
would renounce and denounce your imbecile commis
sioner ?
Finding that I could not pursue my inquiries in the
churches and chapels, I was much grieved and per
plexed, until one of those thoughts occurred to me
which are always welcome and persuasive, because ill
�24
Satires and Profanities.
exact agreement with our own desires or necessities.
I thought of what I had remarked when visiting your
England : how the churches and chapels and lecture
halls, each sect thundering more or less terribly against
all the others, made one guess that the people were
more disputatious than pious ; how one became con
vinced, in spite of his infidel reluctance, that the people
were indeed, as a rule, thoroughly and genuinely
religious, by mingling freely with them in their com
mon daily and nightly life. I asked myself, What really
proved to me the pervading Christianity of England ?
the sermons, the tracts, the clerical lectures, the mis
sionary meetings ? the cathedrals and other theatres
and music-halls crowded with worshippers on Sunday,
while the museums and other public-houses were empty
and shut? No, scarcely these things ; but the grand
princeliness of the princes, the true nobleness of the
nobles, the lowliness of the bishops, the sanctity of the
clergy, the honesty of the merchants, the veracity of
the shopkeepers, the sobriety and thrift of the artisans,
the independence and intelligence of the rustics ; the
general faith and hope and love which brightened the
sunless days, the general temperance and chastity which
made beautiful the sombre nights ; the almost universal
abhorrence of the world, the flesh, and the Devil ; the
almost universal devotion to heaven, the spirit, and God.
I thereupon determined to study the religion out
here, even as I had studied it in England, in the ordinary
public and private life of the people ; and you will
doubtless be sorely afflicted to learn that I have found
everywhere much the same signs of genuine, practical
Christianity as are so common and patent in the old
country. The ranchmen have sown the good seed, and
shall reap the harvest of heavenly felicity ; the stockmen will surely be corraled with the sheep, and not
among the goats, at the last day ; not to gain the whole
world would the storekeepers lose their own souls ; the
pioneers have found the narrow way which leadeth unto
life ; the fishermen are true disciples, the trappers catch
Satan in his own snares, the hunters are mighty before
the Lord; bright are the celestial prospects of the
prospectors, and the miners are all stoping-out that
�Religion in the Boclcy Mountains.
25
hidden treasure which is richer than silver and much
dine gold. As compared with the English, these
Western men are perchance inferior in two important
points of Christian sentiment; they probably do not
fear God, being little given to fear anyone ; they cer
tainly do not honor the king, perhaps because they
unfortunately have none to honor. On the other
hand, as I have been assured by many persons from
the States, and the old country, they are even superior
to the English in one important point of Christian
conduct. Christ has promised that in discharging the
damned to hell at the Day of Judgment, he will fling
.at them this among other reproaches, “ I was a stranger,
and ye took me not in ” ; and this particular rebuke
seems to have wrought a peculiarly deep impression in
these men perhaps because they have much more to
do with strangers than have people ih the old settled
countries, so much, indeed, that the wrord “ stranger
is continually in their mouths. The result is (as the
said persons from England and the States have often
solemnly assured me) that any and every stranger
arriving in these regions is most thoroughly, most
beautifully, most religiously taken in. So that should
any of these fine fellows by evil hap be among the
accursed multitude whom Christ thus addresses, they
will undoubtedly retort in their frank fashion of
•speech : “ Wall, boss, it may be right to give us hell
on other counts, but you say you was a stranger and
we' didn’t take you in. What we want to know is,
Did you ever come to our parts to trade in mines or
stock or sich ? If you didn't, how the Devil could we
take you in ? if you did, it’s a darned lie, and an insult
to our understanding to say we didn't."
But though the practical life out here is so veritably
'Christian, you still hope that at any rate the creeds and
doctrines are considerably heterodox. I am sincerely
sorry to be obliged to destroy this hope. In the ordinary
-talk of the men continually recur the same or almost
the same expressions and implications of orthodox
belief, as are so common in your England, and
throughout Christendom. Why such formulas are
.generally used by men onlj, I have often been puzzled
�26
Satires and Profanities.
to explain ; it may be that the women, who in all lands
attend divine service much more than do the men, find
ample expression of their faith in the set times and
places of public worship and private prayer ; while
the men, less methodical, and demanding liberal scope,
give it robust utterance whenever and wherever they
choose. These formulas, as you must have often
remarked, are most weighty and energetic ; they avouch
and avow the supreme personages and mysteries and
dogmas of their religion ; they are usually but brief
ejaculations, in strong contrast to those long prayers of
the Pharisees which Jesus laughed to scorn ; and they
are often so superfluous as regards the mere worldly
meaning of the sentences in which they appear, that it
is evident they have been interjected simply to satisfy
the pious ardor of the speaker, burning to proclaim in
season and out of season the cardinal principles of his
faith. I say speaker, and not writer, because writing,
being comparatively cold and deliberate, seldom flames
out in these sharp swift flashes, that leap from living
lips touched with coals of fire from the altar.
I am aware that these fervid ejaculations are apt tobe regarded by the light-minded as trivial, by the coldhearted as indecorous, by the sanctimonious as even
profane ; but to the true philosopher, whether he be
religious or not, they are pregnant with grave signi
ficance. For do not these irrepressible utterances burst
forth from the very depths of the profound heart of
the people ? Are they not just as spontaneous and
universal as is the belief in God itself ? Are they not
among the most genuine and impassioned words of man
kind ? Have they not a primordial vigor and vitality ?
Are they not supremely of that voice of the people which
has been well called the voice of God ? Thus when your
Englishman instead of “ Strange !” says “ The Devil !”
instead of “Wonderful!” cries “Good Heavens!” instead
of “ How startling !” exclaims “ 0 Christ 1” he does
more than merely express his emotions, his surprise, his
wonder, his amaze ; he hallows it to the assertion of
his belief in Satan, in the good kingdom of God, in
Jesus; and, moreover, by the emotional gradation
ranks with perfect accuracy the Devil lowest in the
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains,
27
scale, the heavens higher, Christ the loftiest. When
another shouts “ God damn you ! he not only con
demns the evil of the person addressed ; he also takes
occasion to avow his own strong faith in God and
God’s judgment of sinners. Similarly
God bless
you
implies that there is a God, and that from him
all blessings flow. How vividly does the vulgar
hyperbole “ Infernally hot,” prove the general belief
in hell-fire? And the phrase “God knows! not
merely declares that the subject is beyond human
knowledge, but also that an all-wise God exists. Here
in the West, as before stated, such brief expressions
of faith, which are so much more sincere than. long
formularies repeated by rote in church, are quite as
common as in your England. When one has sharply
rebuked or punished another, he says, “ 1 gave him
hell.” And that this belief in future punishment per
vades all classes is proved by the fact that even a
profane editor speaks of it as a matter of course. lor
the thermometer having been stolen from his sanctum,
the said worthy editor announced that the .mean cuss
who took it might as well bring or send it back (no
questions asked) for it could not be of any use to him
in the place he was going to, as it only registered up
to 212 degrees. The old notion that hell or Hades is
located in the middle of the earth (which may have a
scientific solution in the Plutonic theory that we dwell
on the crust of a baked dumpling full of fusion and
confusion) is obviously tallied by the miner s assertion
that his vein was true-fissure, reaching from the grass
roots down to hell. The frequent phrase A Go damned liar,” “A God-damned thief,” recognises God
as the punisher of the wicked. I have heard a man
complain of an ungodly headache, implying first, theexistence of God, and secondly, the fact that the God1 Is it not time that we wrote such words as this damn at lull
length, as did Emily Bronte, the Titaness, whom Charlotte just y
vindicates in this as in other respects; instead of putting oni y
initial and final letters, with a hypocritical fig-leaf dash m the
middle, drawing particular attention to what it affects to conceal ? These words are in all men’s mouths, and many ot
em
are emphatically the leading words of the Bible.
�58
Satires and Profanities.
head does not ache, or in other words is perfect.
Countless other phrases of this kind might be alleged,
a few of them astonishingly vigorous and racy, for new
countries breed lusty new forms of speech ; but the
few already given suffice for my present purpose. One
remarkable comparison, however, k cannot pass over
without a word : it is common to say of a man who has
too much self-esteem, He thinks himself a little tin
Jesus on wheels. It is clear that some profound sug
gestion, some sacrosanct mystery, must underlie this
bold locution ; but what I have been hitherto unable
to find out. The connection between Jesus and tin
may seem obvious to such as know anything of bishops
and pluralists, pious bankers and traders. But what
about the wheels ? Have they any relation to the
opening chapter of Ezekiel ? It is much to be wished
that Max Muller, and all other such great scholars, who
(as I am informed, for it’s not I that would presume to
study them myself) manage to extract whatever noble
mythological meanings they want, from unintelligible
Oriental metaphors and broken phrases many thousand
years old, would give a few years of their superfluous
time to the interpretation of this holy riddle. Do not,
gentlemen, do not by all that is mysterious, leave it to
the scholars of millenniums to come ; proceed to probe
and analyse and turn it inside out at once, while it is
still young and flourishing, while the genius who
invented it is still probably alive, if he deceased not in
his boots, as decease so many gallant pioneers.
And here, before afflicting you further, 0 muchenduring editor, let me soothe you a little by stating
that some particles of heresy, some few heretics, are to
be found even here. I have learned that into a very
good and respectable bookstore in a city of these
regions, certain copies of Taylor’s Diegesis have pene
trated, who can say how ? and that some of these have
been sold. A living judge has been heard to declare
that he couldn’t believe at all in the Holy Ghost outfit.
It has also been told me of a man who must have held
strange opinions as to the offspring of God the Father,
though certainly this man was not a representative
pioneer, being but a German miner, fresh from the
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
29“
States. This Dutchman (all Germans here are Dutch,
doubtless from Deutsche, the special claims of the
Hollanders being ignored) was asked solemnly by a
clergyman, “ WIio died to save sinners ?” and answered
“Gott.” “What,” said the pained and pious pastor,
“Don’t you know that it was Jesus the Son of God ?”
“ Ah,” returned placidly the Dutchman, “ it vass one
of te boys, vass it ? I always dought it vass te olt man
himselben.” This good German may have been misled
by the mention of the sons of God early in Genesis,
yet it is strange that he knew not that Jesus is the only
son of God, and our Savior. A story is moreover told
of two persons, of whom the one boasted rather too
often that he was a self-made man, and the other at
length quietly remarked that he was quite glad to hear
it, as it cleared God from the responsibility of a darned
mean bit of work. Whence some have inferred the
heresy that God is the creator of only a part of the
universe, but I frankly confess that in my own opinion
the reply was merely a playful sarcasm.
The most decided heresy which has come under my
own observation was developed in the course of a chat
between two miners in a lager-beer saloon and billiardhall ; into the which, it need scarcely be remarked, I
was myself solely driven by the fierce determination
to carry out my inquiries thoroughly. Bill was
smoking, Dick was chewing ; and they stood up
together, at rather rapidly decreasing intervals, for
drinks of such “fine old Bourbon” rye whiskey as
bears the honorable popular title of rot-gut. The fre
quency with which the drinking of alcoholic liquors
leads to impassioned and elevated discussion of great
problems in politics, history, dog-breeding, horse
racing, moral philosophy, religion and kindred
important subjects, seems to furnish a strong and
hitherto neglected argument against teetotalism. There
are countless men who can only be stimulated to a
lively and outspoken interest in intellectual questions
by a series of convivial glasses and meditative whiffs.
If such men really take any interest in such questions
at other times, it remains deplorably latent, not exer
cising its legitimate influence on the public opinion of
�.'30
Satires and Profanities.
the world. Our two boys were discussing theology ;
and having had many drinks, grappled with the doctrine
of the triune God. “ Wall,” said Bill, “ I can’t make
out that trinity consarn, that three’s one and one’s three
outfit.” Whereto Dick : “ Is that so ? Then you
warn’t rigged out for a philosopher, Bill. Look here,”
pulling forth his revolver, an action which caused a
•slight stir in the saloon, till the other boys saw that he
didn’t mean business ; “ look here, I’ll soon fix it up
for you. Here’s six chambers, but it’s only one pistol,
with one heft and one barrel; the heft for us to catch
hold of, the barrel to kill our enemy. Wall, God
a’mighty’s jest made hisself a three-shooter, while he
remains one God; but the Devil, he’s only a single-shot
derringer : so God can have three fires at the Devil for
one the Devil can have at him. Now can’t you figure
it out ?” “ Wall,” said Bill, evidently staggered by
the revolver, and feeling, if possible, increased respect
for that instrument on finding it could be brought to
bear toward settlement of even such a difficulty as the
present; “Wall, that pans out better than I thought
it could : but to come down to the bed-rock, either
God's a poor mean shot or his piece carries darned
light ; for I reckon the Devil makes better play
with his one chamber than God with his three.”
“ Maybe,” replied Dick, with calm candor, strangely
indifferent to the appalling prospects this theory held
out for our universe ; “ some of them pesky little
things jest shoot peas that rile the other fellow without
much hurting him, and then, by thunder, he lets day
light through you with one good ball. Besides, it’s
likely enough the Devil’s the best shot, for he’s been
consarned in a devilish heap of shooting more than
God has ; at any rate”—perchance vaguely remember
ing to have heard of such things as “ religious wars ”—
“ of late years, between here and ’Frisco. Wall, I
guess I don’t run the creation. Let’s liquor
mani
festly deriving much comfort from the consciousness
that he had no hand in conducting this world. Bill
acquiesced with a brief “ Ja,” and they stood up for
another drink. I am bound to attest that, in spite or
because of the drinks, they had argued throughout
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
31
-with the utmost deliberation and gravity, with a
dignified demeanor which Bishops and D.Ds. might
■envy, and ought to emulate.
Having thus comforted you with what little of heresy
and infidelity I have been able to gather, it is now my
painful duty to advance another class of proofs of the
general religiousness here ; a class of which you have
very few current specimens in England, unless it be
among the Roman Catholic. All comparative mythologists—indeed, all students of history—are said to
agree that the popular legends and myths of any race
at any time are of the utmost value, as showing what
the race then believed, and thus determining its moral
and intellectual condition at that period ; this value
being quite irrespective of the truth or untruth to fact
■of the said legends. Hence in modern times collections
of old traditions and fairy tales have been excellently
well received, whether from the infantile literature of
ancient peoples, as the Oriental and Norse, or from the
■senile and anile lips of secluded members of tribes
whose nationality is fast dying out, as the Gaelic and
Welsh. And truly such collections commend them
selves alike to the grave and the frivolous, for the
scientific scholar finds in them rich materials for
•serious study, and the mere novel-reader can flatter
himself that he is studying while simply enjoying
strange stories become new from extreme old age. All
primitive peoples, who read and write little, have their
most popular beliefs fluidly embodied in oral legends
and myths ; and in this respect the settlers of a new
region, though they may come from the oldest countries,
resemble the primitive peoples. They are too busy
with the tough work of subduing the earth to give
much time to writing or reading anything beyond their
local newspapers ; they love to chat together when not
working, and chat, much more than writing, runs into
stories. Thus religious legends in great numbers circu
late out here, all charged and surcharged with faith in
the mythology of the Bible. Of these it has been my
sad privilege to listen to not a few. As this letter is
already too long for your paper, though very brief for
the importance of its theme, I will subjoin but a couple
�32
Satires and Profanities.
of them, which I doubt not will be quite enough to
indicate what measureless superstition prevails in
these youngest territories of the free and enlightened
Republic.
It is told—on what authority no one asks, the legend
being universally accepted on its intrinsic merits, as.
Protestants would have us accept the Bible, and Papists
their copious hagiology—that St. Joseph, the putative
father of oui’ Lord, fell into bad habits, slipping almost
daily out of Heaven into evil society, coming home
very late at night and always more or less intoxicated.
It is suggested that he may have been driven into these
courses by unhappiness in his connubial and parental
relations, his wife and her child being ranked so much
above himself by the Christian world, and the latter
being quite openly attributed to another father. Peter,
though very irascible, put up with his misconduct for
a long time, not liking to be harsh to one of the Royal
Family ; and it is believed that God the Father sym
pathised with this poor old Joseph, and protected him,
being himself jealous of the vastly superior popularity
of Mary and Jesus. But at length, after catching a
violent cold through getting out’ of bed at a prepos
terous hour to let the staggering Joseph in, Peter told
him roundly that if he didn’t come home sober and in
good time, he must just stay out all night. Joseph,
feeling sick and having lost his pile, promised amend
ment, and for a time kept his word. Then he relapsed
the heavenly life proved too slow for him, the continual
howling of “all the menagerie of the Apocalypse”
shattered his nerves, he was disgusted at his own
insignificance, the memory of the liaison between his
betrothed and the Holy Ghost filled him with gall and
wormwood, and perhaps he suspected that it was still
kept up. So, late one night or early one morning,.
Peter was roused from sleep by an irregular knocking
and fumbling at the gate, as if some stupid dumb
animal w.ere seeking admittance. “Who’s there?”
growled Peter. “ It’s me—Joseph,” hiccoughed the
unfortunate. “You’re drunk,” said Peter, savagely.
“ You’re on the tear again ; you’re having another
bender.” “Yes,” answered Joseph, meekly. “Wall,”
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
33
said Peter, “you jest go back to where you come from
and spend the night there; get.” “I can’t,” said
Joseph. “They’re all shut up; they’ve turned me
out.” “ Then sleep outside in the open air ; it’s whole
some, and will bring you round,” said Peter. After
much vain coaxing and supplicating, old Joe got quite
mad, and roared out, “ If you don’t get up and let me
in at once, by God I’ll take my son out of the outfit
and bust up the whole consarn!” Peter, terrified by
this threat, which, if carried out, would ruin his pro
spects in eternal life by abolishing his office of celestial
porter, caved in, getting up and admitting Joseph, who
ever since, has had a latch-key that he may go and
come when he pleases. It is to be hoped that he will
never when tight let this latch-key be stolen by one of
the little devils who are always lurking about the
haunts of dissipation he frequents ; for in that case the
consequences might be awful as can be readily imagined.
Again it is told that a certain miner, a tough cuss,
who could whip his weight in wild cats and give points
to a grizzle, seemed uncommonly moody and lowspirited one morning, and on being questioned by his
chum, at length confessed that he was bothered by a
very queer dream. “ I dreamt that I was dead,” he
explained ; “ and a smart spry pretty little angel took
me up to heaven.” “Dreams go by contraries,” sug
gested the chum, by way of comfort. “ Let that slide,”
answered the dreamer ; “ the point isn’t there. Wall,
St.. Peter wasn’t at the gate, and the angel critter led
me on to pay my respects to the boss, and after travelling
considerable we found him as thus. God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Ghost and Peter, all as large
as life, were playing a high-toned game of poker, and
there was four heavy piles on the table—gold, not shin
plasters, you bet. I was kinder glad to see that they
played poker up in heaven, so as to make life there not
onbearable ; for *it would be but poor fun singing
psalms all day ; I was never much of a hand at singing,
more particularly when the songs is psalms. Wall, we
waited, not liking to disturb their game, and I watched
the play. I soon found that Jesus Christ was going
through the rest, cheating worse than the heathen
C
�34
Satires and Profanities.
Chinee at euchre ; but of course I didn’t say nothing,
not being in the game. After a while Peter showed
that he began to guess it to, if he wasn’t quite sure ; or
p’raps he was skeared at up and telling Christ to his
face. At last, however, what does Christ do, after a
bully bluff which ran Pete almost to his bottom, dollar,
but up and show five aces to Pete’s call; and ‘ What’s
that for high ?’ says he, quite cool. ‘ Now look you,
Christ,’ shouts Pete, jumping up as mad as thunder, and
not caring a cent or a continental what he said to any
body ; ‘ look you, Christ, that’s too thin ; we don’t want
any of your darned miracles here !’ and with that he
grabbed up his pile and all his stakes, and went off in a
mighty huff. Christ looked pretty mean, I tell you, and
the game was up. Now you see,” said the dreamer, sadly
and thoughtfully, “ it’s a hard rock to drill and darned poor
pay at that, if when you have a quiet hand at poker up
there, the bosses are allowed to cheat and a man can’t
use his deringer or put a head on ’em ; I don’t know
but I’d rather go to the other place on those terms.”
Not yet to be read in books, as I have intimated, but
circulating orally, and in versions that vary with the
various rhapsodists, such are the legends you may hear
when a ring is formed round the hotel-office stove at
night, in shanties and shebangs of ranchmen and
miners, in the shingled offices of judge and doctor, in
railroad cars and steamboats, or when bumming around
the stores ; whenever and wherever, in short, men are
gathered with nothing particular to do. The very
naivete of such stories surely testifies to the child-like
sincerity of the faith they express and nourish. It is
the simple unbounded faith of the Middle Ages, such
as we find in the old European legends and poems and
mysteries, such as your poetess Mrs. Browning well
marks in Chaucer—
“ the infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine.”
Many of the so-called Liberal clergy complain of the
gulf which yawns in this age of materialistic science
between religion and every-day life, this world and the
next, heaven and earth, God and man. The higher
things are treated as mere thin abstractions, they say ;
�Religion in the Rocky Mountains.
35
and only the lower things are recognised as real. These
pious pioneers, in the freshness and wonderfulness of
their new life, overleap this gulf without an effort,
realising heaven as thoroughly as earth. How could
the communion and the human nature of saints be
better exhibited than in St. Joseph falling into dissipa
tion and St. Peter playing poker ? How could the
manhood as well as the Godhead of Jesus Christ be
more familiarly brought home to us than by his taking
a hand at this game and then miraculously cheating.
When generations have passed away, if not earlier, such
legends as these will assuredly be gathered by earnest
and reverent students as quite invaluable historical
relics. They must fill the Christian soul with delight;
they must harrow the heart of him who hath said in
his heart, There is no God.
In conclusion, I must again express my deep regret
at being forced by the spirit of truth to give you so
favorable an account of the state of religion out here,
both in creed and practice. I trust that you will lose
no time and spare no exertion in attacking, and if pos
sible, routing out the Christianity now entrenched in
these great natural fortresses. Be your war-cry that
of the first pioneers, “ Pike’s Peak or bust ” ; and be
not like unto him found teamless half-way across the
plains, with the confession on his waggon-tilt, “ Busted,
by thunder.” For you can come right out here by
railroad now. As for myself, I climbed wearily and
with mortal pantings unto the top of this great moun
tain, thinking it one of the best coigns of vantage
whence to command a comprehensive view of the
sphere of my inquiries, and also a spot where one
might write without being interrupted or overlooked
by loafers. Unfortunately I have not been able to dis
cover any special religious or irreligious phaenomena ;
for, though the prospect is indeed ample where not
intercepted by clouds or mist, very few of the people
and still fewer of their characteristics can be made out
distinctly even with a good glass. How I am to get
down and post this letter puzzles me. The descent
will be difficult, dangerous, perhaps deadly. Would
that I had not come up. After all there is some truth
�36
Satires and Profanities.
in the Gospel narrative of the Temptation : for by
studying the general course of ecclesiastical promotion
and the characters of the most eminent churchmen, I
was long since led to recognise that it is indeed Satan
who sets people on pinnacles of the temple ; and I am
now, moreover, thoroughly convinced that it is the
Devil and the Devil only that takes any one to the top
of an exceeding high mountain.
The Devil in the Church of England.
[Whitten
in
1876.]
The Judical Committee of the Privy Council has
delivered judgment in the case of Jenkins v. Cook.
Many of the highest personages in the realm, including
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the great law-lords,
were present to give weight and solemnity to the
decision, which was read by the Lord Chancellor. It
was reported at full length in the Times of the follow
ing day, Feb. 17, 1876, the length being two columns
of small print.
I must try to indicate briefly the main facts of the
case, before hazarding any comments on it. Mr. Jen
kins, of Christ Church, Clifton, brought an action
against his vicar, the Rev. Flavel S. Cook, for refusing
him the Sacrament of the Holy Communion. Mr.
Cook justified the refusal on the ground that Mr. Jen
kins did not believe in the Devil, all passages relating
to the Devil and evil spirits having been excluded from
a bulky volume published by Mr. Jenkins, entitled
Selections from the Old and New Testaments. By
�The Devil in the Church of England.
37
the evidence of Mrs. Jenkins, who attempted an amic
able arrangement, it appears that Mr. Cook said to her :
“Let Mr. Jenkins write me a calm letter, and say he
believes in the Devil, and I will give him the Sacra
ment.” Whereupon Mr. Jenkins wrote on July 20,
1874: “With regard to my book, Selections from the
Old and New Testaments, the parts I have omitted,
and which has enabled me [[meaning, doubtless, and
the omission of which has enabled mej to use the book
morning and evening in my family are, in their present
generally received sense, quite incompatible with
religion or decency (in my opinion). How such ideas
have become connected with a book containing every
thing that is necessary for a man to know, I really
cannot say ; I can only sincerely regret it.” Mr. Cook
replied in effect: “ Then you cannot be received at
the Lord’s table in my church.” Mr. Jenkins, a
regular communicant, and admittedly a man of exem
plary and devout life, answered: “ Thinking as you do,
I do not see what other course you could consistently
have taken. I shall, nevertheless, come to the Lord’s
table as usual at ‘your’ church, which is also mine.”
Accordingly he presented himself, and was repelled,
whereupon he brought an action against Mr. Cook.
The case was first tried in the Court of Arches, and
the dean dismissed the suit and condemned Mr. Jen
kins in costs, saying, “ I am of opinion that the avowed
and persistent denial of the existence and personality
of the Devil did, according to the law of the Church,
as expressed in her canons and rubrics, constitute the
promoter [Mr. JenkinsJ ‘ an evil liver, and ‘ a depraver
of the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of
the Sacraments,’ in such sense as to warrant the defen
dant in refusing to administer the Holy Communion to
him until he disavowed or withdrew his avowal of the
heretical opinion, and that the same consideration
applies to the absolute denial by the promoter of the
doctrine of the eternity of punishment, and, of course,
still more to the denial of all punishment for sin in a
future state, which is the legitimate consequence of
his deliberate exclusion of the passages of scripture
referring to such punishment.”
�38
Satires and Profanities.
So far, so well; the Church of England was assured
of the Devil and the eternal punishment it has always
held so dear. But Mr. Jenkins appealed to the highest
court, and this has reversed the decision of the lower,
admonished Mr. Cook for his conduct in the past,
monished him to refrain from the like offence in
future, and condemned him in the costs of both suits.
Do you think, then, that the Church of England is
authoritatively deprived of her dear Devil and her
beloved eternal punishment? Not at all ; the really
important problem is evaded with consummate lawyer
like wariness ; the points in dispute are most shiftily
shifted like slides of a magic lantern ; we have a new
decision essentially unrelated to that which it cancels ;
we have a judgment which concerns not the Devil—
except that he would chuckle over the too clever
unwisdom which fancies it can extinguish “ burning
questions ” with legal wigs.
Their most learned lordships in the first place
observe that the learned judge of the Court of Arches
appears to have considered that the canon and the
rubric severally warrant the repulsion from the Lord’s
table of “ an evil liver,” and “ a depraver of the Book
of Common Prayer,” whereas the terms are “ an open
and notorious evil liver,” and “ common and notorious
depravers.”
This is a most pregnant distinction,
teaching us that an evil liver and a depraver of the
said book, as long as he is not notoriously such, is fully
entitled to the Holy Communion, fully entitled to the
privilege of “ eating and drinking damnation to him
self
a privilege from which the notorious evil liver
and depraver is righteously debarred.
Now, their most learned lordships find that there is
absolutely no evidence that the appellant was an evil
liver, much less an open and notorious evil liver. The
question follows, Was he a common and notorious
depraver of the Book of Common Prayer ? It was
contended that the Selections, coupled with the letter
of July 20, proved him to be this. But the letter was
not written spontaneously. He was invited by the
respondent, Mr. Cook, to write it. It was a friendly
and private, as well as a solicited, communication.
�lhe Devil in the Church of England.
39
Therefore, whatever be the construction of the letter,
and even if there be in it a depravation of the Book of
Common Prayer, still it would be impossible to hold
that the writing of such a letter in such circumstances
could make the appellant “ a common and notorious
depraver.” Whence it is clear that a man may deprave
the Book of Common Prayer as much as he pleases m
private conversation and letters, yet retain the precious
privilege of “ eating and drinking damnation to him
self ” in the Holy Communion ; he can only forfeit
this by common and notorious depravation of that
blessed book—for instance, by a depravation repeatedly
published in a newspaper, or persistently proclaimed
by the town-crier.
So far the law seems most clear, and the judgment
quite incontestible. But leaving the strait limits of
the law, and looking at the facts in evidence, there is
one part of the judgment which to the common lay
mind is simply astonishing. Their most learned lord
ships “ desire to state in the most emphatic manner that
there is not before them any evidence that the appellant^
entertains the doctrines attributed to him by the Dean of
Archeswherefore their most learned and subtle
lordships “ do not mean to decide that those doctrines
are otherwise than inconsistent with the formularies of
the Church of England.” Nor, of course, do they mean
to decide that those doctrines are inconsistent with
those formularies. No, “ This is not the subject for
their lordships’ present consideration.” Indeed, “If
they were [Nad been ] called upon to decide that
[whether] those opinions, or any of them, could be
entertained or expressed by a member of the Church,
whether layman or clergyman, consistently with the
law and with his remaining in communion with the
Church, they would have looked upon this case with
much greater anxiety than they now feel in its
decision •
Mr. Jenkins compiles and publishes a book of
Selections from the Bible, carefully . excluding all
passages relating to the Devil and evil spirits. The
book is bulky ; and, in fact, though this is not expressly
stated, seems to contain pretty well all the Bible except
�40
Satires and Profanities.
such passages. He farther exhibits in the case a book
of selections from the liturgy of the Church of England,
apparently compiled on the same principle of exclusion.
Mr. Cook sends through Mrs. J. a message : “ Let
Mr. J. write me a calm letter, and say he believes in
the Devil and I will give him the Sacrament.” Mr. J.
replies, as we have seen, that the parts he has omitted
are, in his opinion, quite incompatible with religion
or decency, in their generally received sense; such
generally received sense being evidently (to all of us
save their most learned and subtle lordships) that in
which the Church of England receives them. Mr. C.
replies, “ Then I must refuse to you the Communion.”
Mr. J. answers, “ Thinking as you do, I do not see
what other course you could consistently have taken
and resolves to test the question of legality. With
these facts staring them in the face, their most learned
and most subtle lordships can, with the utmost
solemnity, and in the most emphatic manner, declare
that there is not any evidence before them that
Mr. Jenkins does not believe in the Devil in the com
mon Church of England sense ! What the eyes of
laymen, however purblind, cannot help seeing clearly,
their far-sighted lordships, putting on legal spectacles,
dim with the dust of many ages, manage not to discern
at all.
The question cannot be left thus undecided. As
matters stand, the poor Church does not know whether,
legally, it has a Devil or not. Its Devil, its dear and
precious old Devil, is in a state of suspended animation,
neither dead nor alive ; a most inefficient and burden
some Devil. He must either be restored to full health
and vigor, or buried away decently for ever ; decently
and solemnly, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the
presence of all their lordships of the Judicial Com
mittee of the Privy Council, reading the appropriate
Church service over his grave. That would be touch
ing and impressive !—“ Forasmuch as it hath pleased
Almighty God (with the sanction and authority of the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council) of his great
mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother
here departed, we therefore commit his body to the
�The Devil in the Church of England.
41
ground ; earth, to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal
life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” At present it
appears that every clergyman and layman in the
Church has the legal right to sing as a solo in private,
especially if solicited, Beranger’s refrain, “ lhe Deml
is dead! The Devil is dead!" while it is doubtful
whether he is at liberty to chant it publicly and in
chorus—a state of things anomalous beyond even the
normal anomalism of all things in this our happy
England. It is urgent that some one, lay or cleric,
should compel the decision which the suit of Mr. Jen
kins has failed to obtain.
.
In considering the question whether disbelief m the
Devil would “deprave” the Prayer Book, we must
refer to this book itself. It contains three creeds—the
Apostles’, the Nicene, and that called of Athanasius.
Of these the Nicene (the creed in the Communion
Service, by the way) mentions neither the Devil nor
Hell; the Apostles’ and the so-called Athanasian men
tion Hell but not the Devil. In No. Ill of the Thirtynine Articles hell is solidly established, but again there
is no mention of the Devil. It may be argued that
hell implies the Devil, as a fox-hole implies a fox ; but
his existence is not authoritatively averred. . Strangely
enough, the only personage who, according to the
creeds and articles, has certainly been in hell, is Jesus
Christ himself : “ He descended into hell ; the third
day he rose again from the dead ; he ascended into
heaven.” What took him to hell ? The Prayer Book
does not inform us. But we learn from the Epistle
called 1 Peter, chap, iii., 19, 20, and chap, iv., 6_: f By
which also he went and preached unto the spirits in
prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once
the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah,
while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is
eight souls, were saved by water. ... For this cause
was the gospel preached also to them that are dead,
that they might be judged according to men in the
flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” Whence
it appears that the spirits in prison were not the Devil
and his angels, but the spirits of those who were
�42
Satires and Profanities.
drowned in the Flood for disobedience ; and it further
more appears that these spirits were saved by the
preaching of Christ ; so that in this famous harrying
of hell, he seems to have left it as empty as the moss
troopers in their forays left farmsteads. It is true
that No. VI. of the Articles settles the canon of the
Old and New Testaments, and that anyone daring to
exclude from belief anything in this canon might be
convicted of depraving the Prayer Book. But in that
case all the best scholars and divines of the Church are
guilty of this dreadful sin ; and not only guilty, but
openly, commonly and notoriously guilty ; and there
fore all merit repulsion from the Lord’s table. Let
the truly faithful clergy, those who believe all wuthout
question or distinction, do their duty to the Articles of
religion of their Church (the Creeds, as I have pointed
out, are neutral), and they will shut out from their
Communion nearly all the intelligent piety and learn
ing which lend it whatever dignity it still retains „
Granted the canon in its integrity, and the existence of
a personal Devil, and the doctrine of eternal punish
ment cannot be fairly disputed. Without multiplying
texts, I may refer to Revelation, chap, xx., as decisive
on these points.
From these considerations it follows that if the
Church of England is bound by her own articles she
will hold fast to the Devil and hell, and deny the
privilege of her Communion to any one who depraves
the Prayer Book by common and notorious disbelief
in them. And for my own part, I do not see how the
Church could get on at all without a Devil and hell,
especially in competition with the other Christian sects,
which make unlimited use of both. The Devil is in
fact as essential to the Christian scheme as a leader
of the opposition to that great political blessing,
government by party. If he were to die, or be deposed,
it would be necessary to elect another to the vacant
dignity. You cannot put the leadership in commission
as the unfortunate Liberals were taunted with doing
in their demoralisation after their disasters of the
General Election, and Mr. Gladstone’s sudden retire
ment. Just as Mr. Disraeli lamented the withdrawal
�The Devil in the Church of England.
43
of Mr. Gladstone, complaining of the embarrassment
caused to the Government by having no responsible
leader opposed to it, so we can imagine dear God
lamenting the absence of a Devil, and declaring that
the Christian scheme could not work well without one.
His utter loss would make the government of the
world retrograde from an admirably balanced consti
tutional monarchy to a mere Oriental absolute
despotism. You must choose some one to lead, if only
in name and for the time, as the Whigs chose Lord
Hartington. But though Lord Hartington is still
tolerated by us English, a Lord Hartington of a Devil,
be it said with all respect to both his lordship and his
Devilship, would scarcely be tolerated by either the
celestial or the infernal benches.
In Beranger’s authentic record, already alluded to, of
“ The Death of the Devil ’’—which, however, relates
only to the Church of Rome—we read how, on
learning the catastrophe :—
“ The conclave shook with mortal fear;
Power and cash-box, adieu! they said;
We have lost our father dear,
The Devil is dead ! the Devil is dead ! ”
But while they were in this passion of grief and
despair, St. Ignatius offered to take the place of the
dead Devil ; and none could doubt that he with his
Jesuits for imps would prove a most efficient substitute.
Wherefore the Church threw off its sorrow and
welcomed his offer with holy rapture :—
“ Noble fellow! cried all the court,
We bless thee for thy malice and hate.
And at once his Order, Rome’s support,
Saw its robes flutter Heaven’s gate.
Prom the Angels tears of pity fell:
Poor man will have cause to rue, they said;
St. Ignatius inherits Hell.
The Devil is dead! the Devil is dead.”
Thus matters continued well for the Church of Rome,
and, in fact, became even better than before. But if
the Devil should die in the Church of England, whom
has she that could efficiently take his place ? She has
no saints except the disciples and apostles of the New
�44
Satires and Profanities.
Testament, and these have long since gone to glory.
Would Mr. Gladstone undertake the office? or Mr'
Beresford Hope, with the Saturday Review for his
infernal gazette ? or the editor of the Rock ? or he of
the Church Times ? or the man who does religion for
the Daily Telegraph? Each of these distinguished
gentlemen might well eagerly accept the candidature
for a post so lofty : but I fear that none of them
could be considered equal to its functions. Perhaps
Mr. Disraeli has the requisite genius, and probably he
would be very glad to exchange the Premiership of
little England for that of large hell: but unfortunately
he has already committed himself to the side of the
angels, meaning by angels the humdrum Tory angels
of heaven—for, as Dr. Johnson said, the Devil was the
first Whig. On the whole, the Church of England had
better keep loyal to its ancient and venerable Devil,
being too impoverished in intellect and character to
supply a worthy successor.
■ I have ventured to compare the government of the
world in the Christian scheme, by a God and a Devil,
with our own felicitous government by party. There
is, however, or rather there appears to be, a striking
difference between the two. In our government, when
the Prime Minister finds himself decidedly in a minority,
he goes out of office, and the Leader of the Opposition
goes in; in the Government of the World the
Leader of the Opposition seems to have always had
an immense majority (and his majority in these days
is probably larger than ever before, seeing that
sceptics and infidels have multiplied exceedingly),
yet the other side is supposed to retain permanent
possession of office. I say “ supposed,” because the
Bible itself suggests that this popular opinion is a
mistake, the Devil (if there be a Devil) being entitled
by it the prince of this world, which surely implies his
accession to power.
Although the Godhead or governing power of the
world, according to the Christian scheme, is usually
spoken and written of as a trinity, it is in fact, qua
ternary oi’ fourfold fcr Protestants, and quinary or
fivefold for Roman Catholics. The former have God
�The Devil in the Church of England.
45
the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, and
God the Devil; the latter supplement these with
Goddess the Virgin Mary. Both formally acknow
ledge the first three as collectively and severally
almighty, but Protestants implicitly acknowledge the
fourth, and Roman Catholics the fifth, as more almighty
still (these solecisms of dogma cannot be expressed
without solecisms of language.) With the Roman
Catholics I am not concerned here. With regard to
the Protestants, and those especially professing the
Protestantism of the Church of England, I may safely
affirm that the Devil is not less essential to their
theology than is any person of the Trinity, or, in fact,
than are the three persons together. Indeed, the
Father and the Holy Ghost have been practically dis
pensed with, leaving Christ and Satan to fight the
battle out between themselves.
As this is a gloriously scientific age, nobly enamored
of the exact sciences, I will endeavor to expound this
sublime subject of the divinity of the Church of Eng
land mathematically, even after the manner of the
divine Plato in Book VIII. of “ The Republic,” treat
ing of divine and human generation; and in the
“ Timseus,” treating of the creation of the universal
soul. His demonstrations, indeed, are so divinely
obscure as to confound all the scholiasts ; my demon
stration, however, shall be so translucent that even the
most learned and subtle lords of the Judicial Committee
of the Privy Council, with their legal spectacles on,
shall not be able to help seeing through it. And
whereas the figures, which are shapes, are more intel
ligible to most people than the figures which are
numbers, let the exposition be geometrical. We will
say, then, that the Church of old conceived the divinity
in the form of an equilateral triangle, whereof the base
was Christ as the whole system was founded on belief
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Father and the Holy
Ghost were the two sides, leaning each on the other ;
and the Devil was the apex, as opposed to, and farthest
from, our blessed Savior. But in course of time the
theologians (perhaps merely wanting some occupation
for their vigorous talents, perhaps deeming it undig-
�46
Satires and Profanities.
nified to have two persons of the Godhead supporting
each other obliquely like a couple of tipsy men, perhaps
simply in order to make matters square) set to work,
and pushed up the two sides, so that each might stand
firm and perpendicular by itself. This process had two
unforeseen results ; it expanded the apex, which was a
very elastic point, so that it became the crowning side
of the square, and it so unhinged the sides that after a
brief upright existence they lost their balance, and
were carried to Limbo by the first wind of strange
doctrine which blew that way ; and the Devil and
Christ, or Christ and the Devil (arrange the precedence
as you please), were left alone confronting each other.
These two are of course equal and parallel, the main
distinction between them being that Christ is below,
and the Devil above, or, in other words, that the Devil
is superior and Christ is inferior(theDevil seems entitled
to the precedence). Thus matters have continued even
to the present time, the divinity showing itself, as we
may say, without form and void ; and we are free to
speculate on the momentous questions : Will the crown
(which is the Devil) fall into the base (which is Christ)?
Will the base float up into the crown ? Will the two
coalese half way ? Will they both, unknit from their
sides, be carried away to Limbo by some blast of strange
doctrine ? One thing is certain, they cannot long remain
as they are. Rare Ben Johnson chanted the Trinity, or
Equilateral Triangle ; rare Walt Whitman has chanted
the Square Deific (with Satan for the fourth side); no
poet can care to chant the two straight lines which, in
the language of Euclid, and in the region of intelli
gence, cannot enclose a space, but are as a magnified
symbol of equal—to nothing.
PS.—It may be appropriately added that the books
of Euclid are really symbolic and prophetic expositions
of most sublime and sacrosanct mysteries, though in
these days few persons seem aware of the fact. Thus
the very first definition, “ A point is position without
magnitude,” exactly defines every point of difference
between the theologians. So a line, which is as the
prolongation of a point, or length without breadth,
represents in one sense (for each symbol has manifold
�The Devil in the Church of England.
47
meanings) the history of any theological system. An
acute angle is, say, Professor Clifford ; an obtuse
angle, Mr. Whalley ; a right angle, the present writer :
non angeli sed Angli. The first proposition, “ To erect
an equilateral triangle upon a given finite straight line,”
indicates the problem solved by Christianity, when it
erected the Trinity on the basis of the man we call
Jesus. This pregnant subject should be worked out in
detail through the whole eight books.
Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
[Written
in
1866.]
Poor dear God sat alone in his private chamber,
moody, melancholy, miserable, sulky, sullen, weary,
dejected, supernally hipped. It was the evening of
Sunday, the 24th of December, 1865. Waters con
tinually dripping wear away the hardest stone ; year
falling after year will.at length overcome the strongest
god : an oak-tree outlasts many generations of men ;
a mountain or a river outlasts many celestial dynasties.
A cold like a thick fog in his head, rheum in his eyes,
and rheumatism in his limbs and shoulders, his back
bent, his chin peaked, his poll bald, his teeth decayed,
his body all shivering, his brain all muddle, his heart
all black care ; no wonder the old gentleman looked
poorly as he cowered there, dolefully sipping his
Lachryma Christi. “I wish the other party would
lend me some of his fire,” he muttered, “ for it is
horribly frigid up here.” The table was crowded and
the floor littered with books and documents, all most
�48
Satires and Profanities.
unreadable reading : missionary reports, controversial
divinity, bishops’ charges, religious periodicals, papal
allocutions and encyclical letters, minutes of Exeter
Hall meetings, ponderous blue books from the angelic
bureaux—dreary as the humor of Punch, silly as the
critiques of the Times, idiotic as the poetry of AU the
Year Round. When now and then he eyed them
askance he shuddered more shockingly, and looked at
his desk with loathing despair. For he had gone
through a hard day’s work, with extra services appro
priate to the sacred season ; and for the ten-thousandth
time he had been utterly knocked up and bewildered
by the Athanasian Creed.
While he sat thus, came a formal tap at the door,
and his son entered, looking sublimely good and re
spectable, pensive with a pensiveness on which one
grows comfortably fat. “ Ah, my boy,” said the old
gentleman, '• you seem to get on well enough in these
sad times : come to ask my blessing for your birthday
fete ?” “ I fear that you are not well, my dear father ;
do not give way to dejection, there was once a man—”
“ 0, dash your parables I keep them for your disciples ;
they are not too amusing. Alack for the good old times!”
“ The wicked old times you mean, my father ; the times
when we were poor, and scorned, and oppressed ; the
times when heathenism and vain philosophy ruled
everywhere in the world. Now, all civilised realms
are subject to us. and worship us.” “ And disobey us.
You are very wise, much wiser than your old worn-out
father ; yet perchance a truth or two comes to me in
solitude, when it can’t reach you through the press of
your saints, and the noise of your everlasting preaching
and singing and glorification. You knowhow I began
life, the petty chief of a villainous tribe. But I was
passionate and ambitious, subtle and strong-willed, and,
in spite of itself, I made my tribe a nation ; and I
fought desperately against all the surrounding chiefs,
and with pith of arm and wile of brain I managed to
keep my head above water. But I lived all alone, a
stern and solitary existence. None other of the gods
■was so friendless as I ; and it is hard to live alone when
memory is a sea of blood. I hated and despised the
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
r
4J
Greek Zeus and his shameless court; yet I could not
but envy him, for a joyous life the rogue led. So I,
like an old fool, must have my amour ; and a pretty
intrigue I got into with the prim damsel Mary ! Then
a great thought arose in me : men cannot be loyal to
utter aliens ; their gods must be human on one side,
divine on the other ; my own people were always
deserting me to pay homage to bastard deities. I
would adopt you as my own son (between ourselves, I
have never been sure of the paternity), and admit you
to a share in the government. Those infernal Jews
killed you, but the son of a God could not die ; you
came up hither to dwell with me ; I the old absolute
king, you the modern tribune of the people. Here you
have been ever since ; and I don’t mind telling you
that you were a much more lovable character below
there as the man Jesus than you have proved above
here as the Lord Christ. As some one was needed on
earth to superintend the executive, we created the
Comforter, prince royal and plenipotentiary ; and
behold us a divine triumvirate ! The new blood was
I must own, beneficial. We lost Jerusalem, but we
won Rome ; Jove, Neptune, Apollo, Bacchus, and the
rest, were conquered and slain ; our leader of the
opposition ejected Plato and Pan. Only I did not
bargain that my mistress should more than succeed to
Juno, who was, at any rate, a lawful wife. You
announced that our empire was peace ; you announced
likewise that it was war; both have served us. Our
power extended, our glory rose ; the chief of a miser
able tribe has become emperor of Europe. But our
empire was to be the whole world ; yet instead of signs
of more dominion, I see signs that what we have is
falling to pieces. From my youth up I have been a
man of war; and now that I am old and weary and
wealthy, and want peace, peace flies from me. Have
we not shed enough blood ? Have we not caused
enough tears ? Have we not kindled enough fires ?
And in my empire what am I ? Yourself and my
mistress share all the power between you ; I am but a
name at the head of our proclamations. I have been a
man of war, I am getting old and worn out, evil days
•
D
�50
Satires and Profanities.
are at hand, and I have never enjoyed life ; therefore
is my soul vexed within me. And my own subjects
are as strangers. Your darling saints I cannot bear.
The whimpering, simpering, canting, chanting block
heads ! You were always happy in a pious miserable
ness, and you do not foresee the end. Do you know
that in spite of our vast possessions we are as near
bankruptcy as Spain or Austria ? Do you know that
our innumerable armies are a Chinese rabble of cowards
and traitors ? Do you know that our legitimacy (even
if yours were certain) will soon avail us as little as that
of the Bourbons has availed them ? Of these things
you are ignorant : you are so deafened with shouts and
songs in your own praise that you never catch a whisper
of doom. I would not quail if I had youth to cope
with circumstance ; none can say honestly that I ever
feared a foe ; but I am so weak that often I could not
walk without leaning on you. Why did I draw out my
life to this ignominious end ? Why did I not fall
fighting like the enemies I overcame ? Why the Devil
did you get born at all, and then murdered by those
rascally Jews, that I who was a warrior should turn
into a snivelling saint ? The heroes of Asgard have
sunk into a deeper twilight than they foresaw; but
their sunset, fervent and crimson with blood and with
wine, made splendid that dawnless gloaming. The
joyous Olympians have perished, but they all had lived
and loved. For me, I have subsisted and hated. What
of time is left to me I will spend in another fashion.
Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” And he
swallowed hastily a bumper of the wine, which threw
him into convulsions of coughing.
Serene and superior, the son had let the old man run
on. “ Do not, I entreat you, take to drink in your old
age, dear father. You say that our enemies lived and
loved ; but think how unworthy of divine rulers was
their mode of life, how immoral, how imprudent, how
disreputable, how savage, how lustful, how un-Christian! What a bad example for poor human souls
“ Human souls be blessed ! Are they so much improved
now ? . . . Would that at least I had conserved Jove’s
barmaid ; the prettiest, pleasantest girl they say (we
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
51
know you are a Joseph, though you always had
three or four women dangling about you) ; fair-ankled
was the wench, bright-limbed ; she might be unto me
evfen as was Abishag, the Shunammite, unto my old
friend David.” “ Let us speak seriously, my father, of
the great celebration to-morrow.” “ And suppose I am
speaking very seriously, you solemn prig ; not a drop
of my blood is there in you.”
Here came a hurried knocking at the door, and the
angelic ministers of state crawled in, with super
elaborate oriental cringings, to deliver their daily
reports. “ Messages from Brahma. Ormuzd, etc., to
congratulate on the son’s birthday.” “ The infidels!
the mockers I” muttered the son. “Good words,” said
the father ; “ they belong to older families than ours,
my lad, and were once much more powerful. You are
always trying to win over the parvenus.” “ A riot in
the holy city. The black angels organised to look after
the souls of converted negroes having a free fight with
some of the white ones.” “ My poor lambs !” sighed the
son. “ Black sheep,” growled the father; “ what is
the row ?” “ They have plumed themselves brighter
than peacocks, and scream louder than parrots ; claim
precedence over the angels of the mean whites ; insist
on having some of their own hymns and tunes in the
programme of to-morrow’s concert.” “Lock ’em all
up, white and black, especially the black, till Tuesday
morning ; they can fight it out then—it’s Boxing Day.
We’ll have quite enough noise to-morrow without ’em.
Never understood the nigger question, for my part :
was a slave-holder myself, and cursed Ham as much as
pork.” “ New saints grumbling about lack of civilised
accommodation : want underground railways, steamers
for the crystal sea, telegraph wires to every mansion,
morning and evening newspapers, etc., etc. ; have had
a public meeting with a Yankee saint in the chair, and
resolved that heaven is altogether behind the age.”
“ Confound it, my son, have I not charged you again
and again to get some saints of ability up here ? Bor
years past every batch has been full of good-for-nothing
noodles. Have we no engineers, no editors at all?”
“ One or two engineers, we believe, sire, but we can’t
�52
Natives and Profanities.
find a single editor.” “ Give one of the Record fellows
the measles, and an old I' Univers hand the cholera, and
bring them up into glory at once, and we’ll have two
daily papers. And while you are about it, see whether
you can discover three or four pious engineers—not
muffs, mind—and blow them up hither with their own
boilers, or in any other handy way. Haste, haste, post
haste !” “ Deplorable catastrophe in the temple of the
New Jerusalem : a large part of the foundation given
way, main wall fallen, several hundred workmen
bruised.” “ Stop that fellow who just left; counter
mand the measles, the cholera will be enough ; we will
only have one journal, and that must be strictly official.
If we have two, one will be opposition. Hush up the
accident. It is strange that Pandemonium was built
so much better and more quickly than our New Jeru
salem !” “ All our best architects and other artists have
deserted into Elysium, my lord ; so fond of the
company of the old Greeks.”
"When these and many other sad reports had been
heard, and the various ministers and secretaries savagely
dismissed, the father turned to the son, and said : “ Did
I not tell you of the evil state we are in ?” “ By hope
and faith and charity, and the sublime doctrine of selfrenunciation, all will yet come right, my father.”
“ Humph ! let hope fill my treasury, and faith finish the
New Jerusalem, and charity give us peace and quiet
ness, and self-renunciation lead three-quarters of your
new-fangled saints out of heaven ; and then I shall
look to have a little comfort.” “ Will you settle to-mor
row’s programme, sire ? or shall I do my best to spare
you the trouble ?” “ You do your best to spare me the
trouble of reigning altogether, I think. What pro
gramme can there be but the old rehearsal for the
eternal life (I wish you may get it) ? 0, that horrible
slippery sea of glass, that bedevilled throne vomiting
thunders and lightning, those stupid senile elders in
white nightgowns, those four hideous beasts full of
eyes, that impossible lamb with seven horns and one
eye to each horn ! 0, the terrific shoutings and harpings and stifling incense! A pretty set-out for my
time of life! And to think that you hope some time
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
53
or other to begin this sort of thing as a daily amuse
ment, and to carry it on for ever and ever! Not much
appearance of its beginning soon, thank goodness—•
that is to say, thank badness. Why can’t you have a
play of Aristophanes, or Shakespeare, or Molidre ? Why
should I meddle with the programme ? I had nothing
to do with first framing it. Besides, it is all in your
honor, not in mine. You like playing the part of the
Lamb ; I’m much more like an old wolf. You are
ravished when those beasts give glory and honor and
thanks ; as for me, I am utterly sick of them. Behold
what I will do; I must countenance the affair, but I
can do so without disturbing myself. I’ll not go
thundering and roaring in my state-carriage of the
whirlwind ; I’ll slip there in a quiet cloud. You cant
do without my glory, but it really is too heavy for my
aged shoulders ; you may lay it upon the throne ; it
will look just as well. As for my speech, here it is all
ready written out ; let Mercury, I mean Raphael or
Uriel, read it; I can’t speak plainly since I lost so
many teeth. And now I consider the matter, what
need is there for my actual presence at all ? Have me
there in effigy ; a noble and handsome dummy can
wear the glory with grace. Mind you have a hand
some one ; I wish all the artists had not deserted us.
Your pious fellows make sad work of us, my son.
But then their usual models are so ugly ; your saints
have good reason to speak of their vile bodies. How
is it that all the pretty girls slip away to the other
place, poor darlings ? By the bye, who are going on
this occasion to represent the twelve times twelve
thousand of the tribes of Israel ? Is the boy Mortara
dead yet ? He will make one real Jew.” “We are
converting them, sire.” “Not the whole gross of thou
sands yet, I trust ? Faugh ! what a greasy stench there
would be—what a blazing of Jew jewelry ! Hand me
the latest bluebook, with the reports. . . . Ah, I see ;
great success ! Power of the Lord Christ! (always you,
of course). Society flourishing. Eighty-two thousand
pounds four shillings and twopence three-farthings last
year from Christians aroused to the claims of the lost
sheep of the House of Israel. (Very good.) Five con-
�54
Satires and Profanities.
versions !! Three others have already been persuaded
to eat pork sausages. (Better and better.) One, who
drank most fervently of the communion wine suffered
himself to be treated to an oyster supper. Another,
being greatly moved, was heard to ejaculate ‘ 0 Christ!’
. . . Hum, who are the five ? Moses Isaacs : wasn’t he
a Christian ten years ago in Italy, and afterwards a
Mahommedan in Salonica, and afterwards a Jew in
Marseilles ? This Mussulman is your oyster-man, I
presume ? You will soon get the one hundred and fortyfour thousand at this rate, my son ! and cheap too 1”
He chuckled, and poured out another glass of
Lachryma Christi ; drank it, made a wry face, and then
began coughing furiously. “ Poor drink this for a god
in his old age. Odin and Jupiter fared better. Though
decent for a human tipple, for a divinity it is but
am&rosze stygiale, as my dear old favorite chaplain
would call it. I have his devotional works under lock
and key there in my desk. Apropos, where is he ?
Left us again for a scurry through the more jovial
regions ? I have not seen him for a long time.” “ My
father! really, the words he used, the life he led ; so
corrupting for the young saints ! We were forced to
invite him to travel a little for the benefit of his health.
The court must be kept pure, you know.” “ Send for
him instantly, sir. He is out of favor because he likes
the old man and laughs at your saints, because he can’t
cant and loves to humbug the humbugs. Many a fit
of the blues has he cured for me, while you only make
them bluer. Have him fetched at once. 0, I know
you never liked him ; you always thought him laughing
at your sweet pale face and woebegone airs, laughing
‘ en horrible sarcasm et sanglante derision ’ (what a
style the rogue has I what makes that of your favorite
parsons and holy ones so flaccid and flabby and hectic ?)
‘ Physician, heal thyself 1’ So, in plain words, you
have banished him ; the only jolly soul left amongst
us, my pearl and diamond and red ruby of Chaplains,
abstracter of the quintessence of pantagruelism ! The
words he used ! I musn’t speak freely myself now,
and the old books I wrote are a great deal too coarse
for you ! Michael and Gabriel told me the other day
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
55
that they hacl just been severely lectured on the
earnestness of life by one of your new proteges; they
had to kick him howling into limbo. A fine set of
solemn prigs we are getting !” “ My father, the holi
ness of sorrow, the infiniteness of suffering!” “ Yes,
yes, I know all about it. That long-winded poet of
yours (he does an ode for you to-morrow ?) began to
sermonise me thereon. By Jupiter, he wanted to
arouse me to a sense of my inner being and responsi
bilities and so forth. I very soon packed him off to
the infant school, where he teaches the alphabet and
catechism to the babies and sucklings. Have you sent
for my jovial, joyous, jolly Cure of Meudon ?” “I
have ; but I deeply regret that your Majesty thinks it
fitting to be intimate with such a free-liver, such a
glutton and wine-bibber and mocker and buffoon.”
“Bah ! you patronised the publicans and sinners your
self in your younger and better days. The strict ones
blamed you for going about eating and drinking so
much. I hear that some of your newest favorites
object to the wine in your last supper, and are going to
insist on vinegar-and-water in future.”
Whereupon entered a man of noble and courtly
presence, lively-eyed and golden bearded, ruddy complexioned, clear-browed, thoughtful, yet joyous, serene,
and unabashed. “Welcome, thrice welcome, my beloved
Alcofribas,” cried the old monarch; “ very long is it
since last I saw you.” “ I have been exiled since then,
your Majesty.” “ And I knew nothing of it!” “And
thought nothing of it or of me until you wanted me.
No one expects the King to have knowledge of what
is passing under his eyes.” “ And how did you manage
to exist in exile, my poor chaplain?” “Much better
than here at court, sire. If your Majesty wants a little
pleasure, I advise you to get banished yourself. Your
parasites and sycophants and courtiers are a most
morose, miserable, ugly, detestable, intolerable swarm
of blind beetles and wasps ; the devils are beyond
comparison better company.” “ What ! you have
been mixing with traitors ?” “ Oh, I spent a few
years in Elysium, but didn’t this time go into the
lower circles. But while I sojourned as a country
�56
Satires and Profanities.
gentleman on the heavenly borders,’ I met a few
contrabandists.
I need not tell you that large, yea,
enormous quantities of beatitude are smuggled out of
your dominions.” “ But what is smuggled in ?” “ Sire,
I am not an informer ; I never received anything out
of the secret-service money. The poor angels are glad
to run a venture at odd times, to relieve the tedium of
everlasting Te Deum. By the bye, I saw the Devil
himself.” “ The Devil in my kingdom ? What is
Uriel about ? he’ll have to be superannuated.” “ Bah !
your Majesty knows very well that Satan comes in and
returns as and when he likes. The passport system
never stops the really dangerous fellows. When he
honored me with a call he looked the demurest young
saint, and I laughed till I got the lockjaw at his earnest
and spiritual discourse. He would have taken yourself
in, much more Uriel. You really ought to get him on
the list of court chaplains. He and I were always good
friends, so if anything happens. . . . It may be well for
you if you can disguise yourself as cleverly as he.
A revolution is not quite impossible, you know.”
The Son threw up his hands in pious horror ; the
old King, in one of his spasms of rage, hurled
the blue-book at the speaker’s head, which it
missed, but knocked down and broke his favorite
crucifix. “Jewcy fiction versus crucifixion, sire;
magna est veritas et prevalebit! Thank Heaven,
all that folly is owfeide my brains ; it is not the first
book full of cant and lies and stupidity that has been
flung at me. Why did you not let me finish ? The
Devil is no fonder than your sacred self of the new
opinions ; in spite of the proverb, he loves and dotes
upon holy water. If you cease to be head of the
ministry, he ceases to be head of the opposition ; he
wouldn’t mind a change, an innings for him and an
outings for you ; but these latest radicals want to crush
both Whigs and Tories. He was on his way to confer
with some of your Privy Council, to organise joint
action for the suppression of new ideas. You had
better be frank and friendly with him. Public oppo
sition and private amity are perfectly consistent and
praiseworthy. He has done you good service before
�Christmas Eve in the Upper Circles.
57
now ; and you and your Son have always been of the
greatest assistance to him.” “ By the temptation of
Job ! I must see to it. And now no more business.
I am hipped, my Rabelais ; we must have a spree. The
cestus of Venus, the lute of Apollo, we never could
find; but there was sweeter loot in the sack of
-Olympus, and our cellars are not yet quite empty. We
will have a petit souper of ambrosia and nectar.” “ My
father! my father! did you not sign the pledge
to abstain from these heathen stimulants ?” “ My
beloved Son, with whom I am not at all well pleased,
go and swill water till you get the dropsy, and permit
me to do as I like. No wonder people think that I am
failing when my child and my mistress rule for me 1”
The Son went out, shaking his head, beating his
breast, scrubbing his eyes, wringing his hands, sobbing
and murmuring piteously. “ The poor old God ! my
dear old father 1 Ah, how he is breaking! Alack, he
will not last long 1 Verily his wits are leaving him 1
Many misfortunes and disasters would be spared us
were he to abdicate prudently at once. Or a regency
might do. But the evil speakers and slanderers would
say that I am ambitious. I must get the matter judi-ciouslv insinuated to the Privy Council. Alack I
alack !”
“ Let him go and try on his suit of lamb’s wool for
to-morrow,” said the old monarch. “ I have got out of
the rehearsal, my friend ; I shall be conspicuous by my
.absence ; there will be a dummy in my stead.” “ Rather
perilous innovation, my Lord ; the people may think
that the dummy does just as well, that there is no need
to support the original.” “ Shut up, shut up, 0, my
'Cure ; no more politics, confound our politics ! It is
Bunday, so we must have none but chaplains here.
You may fetch Friar John and sweet Dean Swift and
the amiable parson Sterne, and any other godly and
-devout and spiritual ministers you can lay hold of ;
but don’t bring more than a pleiad.” “ With Swift for
the lost one ; he is cooling his ‘ sseva indignatio ’ in
the Devil’s kitchen-furnace just now, comforting poor
Addison, who hasn’t got quit for his death-bed brandy
jet.” “ A night of devotion will we have, and of in-
�58
Satires and Profanities.
extinguishable laughter ; and with the old liquor we
will pour out the old libations. Yea, Gargantuan shall
be the feast ; and this night, and to-morrow, and all
next week, and twelve days into the new year the
hours shall reel and roar with Pantagreulism. Quick,
for the guests, and I will order the banquet1” “ With
all my heart, sire, will I do this very thing. Parsons
and pastors, pious and devout, will I lead back, choice
and most elect souls worthy of the old drink delectable.
And I will lock and double bolt the door, and first
warm the chamber by burning all these devilish books ;
and will leave word with the angel on guard that we
are not to be called for three times seven days, when
all these Christmas fooleries and mummeries are long
over. Amen. Selah. Aurevoir. Tarry till I come.”’
A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
[Written
in
1866.]
The subjects for our solemn consideration are the
seclusion of her Most Gracious Majesty, and the com
plaints thereanent published in several respectable
journals. In order to investigate the matter thoroughly,
we constituted ourselves (the unknown number rr) into
a special Commission of Inquiry. We are happy to
state that the said Commission has concluded its
arduous labors, and now presents its report within
a week of its appointment; surely the most prompt and
rapid of commissions. The cause of this celerity we
take to be the fact that the Commissioners were un-
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
salaried ; we being unanimously of opinion that had .we
received good pay for the inquiry throughout the period
of our session, we could have prolonged it with certain
benefit, if not to the public yet to ourselves, for a.gr.eat
number of years. If, therefore, you want a commission
to do its work rapidly vote no money for it. And do
not fear that the most headlong haste in gathering
evidence and composing the report will diminish the
value of such report; for when a Commission has lasted
for years or months it generally rises in a quite different
state of the subject matter from that in which it first
sat, and the report must be partly obsolete, partly a
jumble of anachronisms. In brief, it may be fairly
affirmed as a general rule that no Commission of
Inquiry is of any value at all; the appointment, of one
being merely a dodge by which people who don’t want
to act on what they and everybody else see quite well
with their naked eyes, set a number of elderly gentle
men to pore upon it with spectacles and magnifying
glasses until dazed and stupid with poring, in the hope
that this process will last so long that ere it is finished
the public will have forgotten the matter altogether.
And now for the result of our inquiries on this subject,
which is not only immensely important, but is even
sacred to our loyal hearts.
A West-end tradesman complains bitterly that
through the absence of the Court from Buckingham
Palace, and the diminished number and splendor of
royal pomps and entertainments, the “ Season ” is for
him a very poor season indeed. The Commissioners
find that the said tradesman (whose knowledge seems
limited to a knowledge of his business, supposing he
knows that) is remarkably well off ; and consider that
West-end tradesmen have no valid vested interest in
Royalty and the Civil List, that at the worst they do a
capital trade with the aristocracy and wealthy classes
(taking good care that the punctual and honest shall
amply overpay their losses by the unpunctual and dis
honest) ; and if they are not satisfied with the West
end, they had better try the East-end and see how
that will suit them ; and, in short, that this tradesman
is not worth listening to.
�60
Satires and Profanities.
Numerous fashionable and noble people (principally
ladies) complain that they have no Court to shine
in. The Commissioners think that they shine a great
■deal too much already, and in the most wasteful
manner, gathered together by hundreds, light glittering
■on light; and that if they really want to shine
beneficially in a court there are very many dark courts
in London where the light of their presence would be
most welcome.
It is complained on behalf of their Royal Highnesses
the Prince and Princess of Wales that they have to
perform many of the duties of royalty without getting
a share of the royal allowance. The Commissioners
think that if the necessary expenses of the heir to the
throne are really too heavy for his modest income, and
are increased by the performance of royal duties, he
had better send in yearly a bill to his Mamma for
expenses incurred on her account, and a duplicate of
the same to the Chancellor to the Exchequer ; so that
in every Budget the amount of the Civil List
shall be equitably divided between her Majesty
and her Majesty’s eldest son, doubtless to their com
mon satisfaction.
It is complained on behalf of various foreign royal or
ruling personages that while they in their homes treat
generously the visiting members of our royal family,
they are treated very shabbily when visiting here. The
Commissioners think that Buckinghan Palace, being
seldom or never wanted by the Queen, and very seldom
wanted for the reception of the English Court, should
be at all times open for such royal or ruling visitors ;
that a Lord Chamberlain, or other such noble domestic
servant should be detailed to attend on them, and see
to their hospitable treatment in all respects ; and that
to cover the expenditure on their account a fair
deduction should be made from her Majesty’s share
of the Civil List, which deduction, being equitable,
her Majesty would no doubt view with extreme
pleasure.
It is complained on the part of her Majesty’s
Ministers, that when they want the royal assent and
signature to important Acts of Parliament, they have
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
61
to lose a day or two and undergo great fatigue (which
is peculiarly hard on men who are mostly aged, and
all overworked) in travelling to and from Osborne or
Balmoral. The Commissioners think the remedy plain
and easy, as in the two preceding cases. Let a law be
passed assuming that absence, like silence, gives
consent; so that whenever her Majesty is not in town,
the Speaker of the Commons or the Lord Chancellor,
or other great officer of State, be empowered to seal
and sign in her name, and generally to perform any of
her real and royal duties, on the formal demand of the
Ministry, who always (and not the Queen) are respon
sible to Parliament and the country for all public acts.
A Taxpayer complains that for fourteen years her
Majesty has been punctually drawing all moneys
allotted to support the royal dignity, while studiously
abstaining from all, or nearly all, the hospitalities and
other expensive functions incident to the support of the
said dignity. The Commissioners consider that her
Majesty is perchance benefiting the country more (and
may be well aware of the fact) by taking her money
for doing nothing than if she did something for it ;
that if she didn’t take the said money, somebody else
would (as for instance, were she to abdicate, the Prince
of Wales, become King, would want and get at least as
much); so that while our Government remains as it is,
the complaint of the said taxpayer is foolish.
Another Taxpayer, who must be a most mean-minded
fellow, a stranger to all sacred sympathies and hallowed
emotions, says : “ If a washerwoman, being stupified by
the death of her husband, neglected her business for
more than a week or two, she would certainly lose her
custom or employment, and not all the sanctity of con
jugal grief (about which reverential journalists gush)
would make people go on paying her for doing nothing ;
and if this washerwoman had money enough of her own
to live on comfortably, people would call her shameless
and miserly if she asked for or accepted payment while
doing nothing ; and if this washerwoman had a large
family of boys and girls around her, and shut herself
up to brood upon her husband’s death for even three or
four months, people would reckon her mad with selfish
�62
Satires and Profanities.
misery.” The Commissioners (as soon as they recover
from the stupefaction of horror into which this blas
phemy has thrown them) consider and reply that there
can be no proper comparison of a Queen and a washer
woman, and that nobody would think of instituting one,
except a brute, a Republican, an Atheist, a Communist’
a fiend in human form ; that anyhow if, as this wretch
says, a washerwoman would be paid for a week or two
without working, in consideration of her conjugal
affliction, it is plain that a Queen, who (it will be uni
versally allowed) is at least a hundred thousand times
as good as a washerwoman, is therefore entitled to at
least a hundred thousand times the “ week or two ” of
salary without performance of duty—that is, to at least
1,923 or 3,846 years, whereas this heartless and ribald
reprobate himself only complains that our beloved
Sovereign has done nothing for her wage throughout
“ fourteen years.” The Commissioners therefore eject
this complainant with ineffable scorn ; and only wish
they knew his name and address, that they might
denounce him for prosecution to the Attorney-General.
A Malthusian (whatever kind of creature that may
be) complains that her Majesty has set an example of
uncontrolled fecundity to the nation and the royal
family, which, besides being generally immoral, is
likely, at the modest estimate of £6,000 per annum per
royal baby, to lead to the utter ruin of the realm in a
few generations. The Commissioners, after profound
and prolonged consideration, can only remark that
they do not understand the complaint any better than
the name (which they do not understand at all) of the
“ Malthusian ” ; that they have always been led to
believe that a large family is a great honor to a legiti
mately united man and woman ; and that, finally, they
beg to refer the Malthusian to the late Prince Consort.
A devotedly loyal Royalist (who unfortunately does
not give the name and address of his curator) complains
that her Majesty, by doing nothing except receive her
Civil List, is teaching the country that it can get on
quite as well without a monarch as with one, and might
therefore just as well, and indeed very much better,
put the amount of the Civil List into its own pocket
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
63
and call itself a Republic. The Commissioners remark
that this person seems the most rational of the whole
lot of complainants (most rational, not for his loyalty,
but most rational as to the grounds of his complaint,
from his own point of view) ; in accordance with the
dictum, “ A madman reasons rightly from wrong pre
mises ; a fool wrongly from right ones
and that his
surmise is very probably correct—namely, that her
Majesty is really a Republican in principle, but not
liking (as is perfectly natural in her position) to publicly
profess and advocate opinions so opposed to the worldly
interests of all her friends and relatives, has been con
tent to further these opinions practically for fourteen
years past by her conduct, without saying a word on
the subject. The Commissioners, however, find one
serious objection to this surmise in the fact that if her
Majesty is really a Republican at heart, she must wish
to exclude the Prince of Wales from the throne ; while
it seems to them that the intimate knowledge she must
have of his wisdom and virtues (not to speak of her
motherly affection) cannot but make her 1661 that no
greater blessing could come to the nation after her
death than his reigning over it. As this is the only
complaint which the Commissioners find at once wellfounded and not easy to remedy, they are happy to
know that it is confined to the very insignificant class
of persons who are “ devotedly loyal Royalists.”
The Commissioners thus feel themselves bound to
report that all the complaints they have heard against
our beloved and gracious sovereign (except the one
last cited, which is of no importance) are without
foundation, or frivolous, or easily remedied, and that
our beloved and gracious Sovereign (whom may
Heaven long preserve!) could not do better than she is
now doing, in doing nothing.
But in order to obviate such complaints, which do
much harm, whether ill or well founded, and which
especially pain the delicate susceptibilities of all respec
table men and women, the Commissioners have thought
it their duty to draw up the following project of a Con
stitution, not to come into force until the death of our
present beloved and gracious Sovereign (which may
�64
Satires and Profanities.
God, if it so please him, long avert!), and to be
modified in its details according to the best wisdom of
our national House of Palaver.
DRAFT.
Whereas it is treasonable to talk of dethroning a
monarch, but there can be no disloyalty in preventing
a person not yet a monarch from becoming one :
And whereas it is considered by very many, and
seems proved by the experience of the last...................
years that the country can do quite well without a
monarch, and may therefore save the extra expense of
monarchy :
And whereas it is calculated that from the accession
of George I. of blessed memory until the decease of the
most beloved of Queens, Victoria, a period of upwards
of a century and a half, the Royal Family of the House
of Guelph have received full and fair payment in every
respect for their generous and heroic conduct in
coming to occupy the throne and other high places of
this kingdom, and in saving us from the unconstitu
tional Stuarts :
And whereas the said Stuarts may now be considered
extinct, and thus no longer dangerous to this realm :
And whereas the said Royal Family of the House of
Guelph is so prolific that the nation cannot hope to
support all the members thereof for a long period tn
come in a royal manner :
And whereas the Dukes of this realm are accounted
liberal and courteous gentlemen :
And whereas the constitution of our country is so
far Venetian that it cannot but be improved in har
mony and consistency by being made more Venetian
still :
Be it enacted, etc., That the Throne now vacant
through the ever-to-be-deplored death of her late most
gracious Majesty shall remain vacant. That the mem
bers of what has been hitherto the Royal Family keep
all the property they have accumulated, the nation re
suming from them all grants of sinecures and other
salaried appointments. That no member of the said
Family be eligible for any public appointment whatever
for at least one hundred years. That the Dukes in the
�A Commission of Inquiry on Royalty.
65
order of their seniority shall act as Doges (with what
ever title be considered the best) year and year about,
under penalty of large fines in case of refusal, save
when such refusal is supported by clear proof of poverty
(being revenue under a settled minimum), imbecility,
brutality, or other serious disqualification. That no
members of a ducal family within a certain degree of
relationship to the head of the house be eligible for any
public appointment whatever ; the head of the house
being eligible for the Dogeship only. That the duties
of the Doge be simply to seal and sign Acts of Parlia
ment, proclamations, etc., when requested to do so by
the Ministry ; and to exercise hospitality to royal or
ruling and other representatives of foreign countries,
as well as to distinguished natives. That a fair and
even excessive allowance be made to the Doge for the
expenses of his year of office. That the royal palaces
be official residences of the Doge. That the Doge be
free from all political responsibility as from all political
power ; but be responsible for performing liberally and
courteously the duties of hospitality, so that Bucking
ham Palace shall not contrast painfully with the Man
sion House. Etc., etc.
God preserve the Doge !
The Commission of Inquiry having thus trium
phantly vindicated our beloved and gracious Sovereign
against the cruel aspersions of people in general, and
having moreover drafted a plan for obviating such
aspersions against any British King or Queen in future,
ends its Report, and dissolves itself, with humble
thankfulness to God Almighty whose grace alone has
empowered it to conclude its arduous labors so speedily,
and with results so incalculably beneficial.
�66
Satires and Profanities.
A Bible Lesson on Monarchy.
[Whitten in 1876.]
The old theory of “ The right divine of kings to
govern wrong,” and the much-quoted text, “Fear God
and honor the king,” seem to have impressed many
good people with the notion that the Bible is in favor
of monarchy. But “ king ” in the text plainly has the
general meaning of “ruler,” and would be equally
applicable to the President of a Republic. In
Romans xiii., 1—3, we read : “ Let every soul be
subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power
but of God : the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the
ordinance of God : and they that resist shall receive
to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror
to good works, but to the evil.” Without stopping to
discuss the bold assertion in the last sentence, we may
remark that the real teaching of this passage is that
Christians ought to be indifferent to politics, quietly
accepting whatever government they find in power ; for
if the powers that be are ordained of God, or in other
words, if might is right, all forms of government are
equally entitled to obedience so long as they actually
exist. Of course Christians are not now, and for the
most part have not been for centuries, really indifferent
to politics, because for the most part they now are and
long have been Christians only in name ; but it is easy
to understand from the New Testament itself why the
first Christians , naturally were thus indifferent, and
why Christianity, has never afforded any political
inspiration. Nothing can be clearer to one who reads
the New Testament honestly and without prejudice
than the fact that Christ and his apostles believed that
the end of the world was at hand. Thus in Matt, xxiv.,
Jesus after foretelling the coming to judgment of the’
son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and
great glory,"when the angels shall gather the elect from
�A Bible Lesson on Monarchy.
67
the four winds, adds, v. 34, “Verily I say unto you,
This generation shall not pass, till all these things be
fulfilled.” This is repeated in almost the same words
in Mark xiii., and Luke xxi., and a careful reading
of the Epistles shows that their writers were profoundly
influenced by this prophecy. But with the world
coming to an end so soon, it would be as absurd to take
any interest in its politics as for a traveller stopping
two or three days in an inn to concern himself
with schemes for rebuilding it. when about to leave
for a far country where he intends settling for life. If
therefore, we want any political guidance from the
Holy Scriptures, we must go to the Old Testament, not
to the New.
Now the first lesson on Monarchy, which we re
member made us think even in childhood, is the fable
of the trees electing a king, told by Jotham, the son of
Gideon, in Judges ix. The trees in the process of this
election showed a judgment much superior to that
which' men usually show in such a business. It is
true that they did not select first the most strong and
stalwart of trees, the cedar or the oak, but they had
the good sense to choose the most sweet-natured and
bountiful, the olive, then the fig, then the vine. But
the bountiful trees thus chosen had good sense too, and
would not forsake the fatness and the sweetness and the
wine which cheereth God and man, to rule over their
fellow trees. Then the poor trees, like a jilted girl who
marries in spleen the first scamp she comes across,
asked the bramble to be their king ; and that barren
good-for-nothing of course accepted eagerly the crown
which the noble and generous had refused, and called
upon the trees to put their trust in its scraggy shadow,
“ and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and
devour the cedars of Lebanon.” Young as we were
when this fable first caught our attention, we mused a
good deal over it, and even then began to learn that
those most eager for supremacy, the most forward
candidates in elections, are nearly always brambles, not
olives or fig-trees or vines ; and that the first thought
of a bramble, when made ruler over its betters, is
naturally to destroy with fire the cedars of Lebanon.
�68
Satires and Profanities.
But God himself in the case of the Israelites has
vouchsafed to us a very clear judgment on the question
of Monarchy. In the remarkable constitution for that
people -which he gave to Moses, he did not include a
king, and Israel remained without a king for more
years than it is worth while endeavoring to count here.
We read, 1 Samuel viii., how ‘‘All the elders of Israel
gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel
unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold thou art old,
and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a
king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing
displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to
judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And
the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice
of the people in all that they say unto thee : for
they have not rejected thee, but they have
rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
... Now therefore hearken unto their voice : how
beit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show
them the manner of the king that shall reign over
them.” Some students of the Bible may have thought
that God’s severe condemnation of the Israelites for
wanting a king arose chiefly from wounded pride, from
the fact that they had rejected him, and we cannot
affirm that this feeling did not inflame his anger, for
he himself has said that he is a jealous God ; but the
protest which he orders Samuel to make, and the
exposition of the common evils of kingship, prove
clearly that God did not (and therefore, of course, does
not) approve this form of government. And, indeed,
it is plain that if he had approved it, he would have
given it to his chosen people at first. For although
divines have termed the form of government under
which the Jews lived before the kings a theocracy,
God did not then rule immediately, but always through
the medium of a high-priest or judge, and could have
governed through the medium of a king had he thought
it well so to do. And he who reads the history of the
Jews under the Judges, as contained in the Book of
Judges, and especially the narratives in chapters xvii.
to xxi. which illustrate the condition of Jewish society
in those days when “there was no king in Israel:
�J Bible Lesson on Monarchy.
69
every man did that which was right in his own eyes,”
will see that God must have thought a Monarchy very
vile and odious indeed when he was angry at the
request for it, and implied that it was actually worse
than that government by Judges alternated with bond
age under neighboring tribes which the theologians call
a theocracy. Samuel warned the people of what a
king would do, and doubtless thought he was warning
them of the worst, but kings have far outstripped all
that the prophet could foresee. The king, he said, will
take your sons to be his warriors and servants ; and
will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and
cooks, and bakers. This was the truth, and nothing
but the truth, but it was not the whole truth ; for the
sons have been taken to be far worse than mere
warriors and servants, and the daughters for much viler
purposes than cooking and baking. Samuel goes on :
“ And he will take your fields, and your vineyards,
and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give
them to his servants ”—when he does not keep them
for himself might have been added. “ And he will
take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards,
and give to his officers, and to his servants.” Surely
much more than a tenth, 0 Samuel! We will not
quote the remainder of this wise warning. Like most
wise warnings it was ineffectual ; the foolish people
insisted on having a king, and in the following chapters
we read how Saul the Son of Kish, going forth to seek
his father’s asses, found his own subjects.
The condemnation of Monarchy by God, as we read
it in this instance, is so thorough and general that we
feel bound to add a few words on an exceptional case
in which a king is highly extolled in the Scriptures,
without any actions being recorded of him, as in the
instances of David and Solomon, to nullify the praise.
The king in question was Melchizedek, King of Salem,
and priest of the most high God, who met Abram
returning from the defeat of the four kings and blessed
him, and to whom Abram gave tithes of all, as we read
in Genesis xiv. But this short notice of Melchizedek
in. Genesis does not by any means suggest to us the
fall wonderfulness of his character, though we natu-
�70
Satires and Profanities.
rally conclude from it that he was indeed an important
personage to whom Abram gave tithes of all. The
New Testament, however, comes to our aid, and for
once gives us a most valuable political lesson, though
the inspired writer was far from thinking of political
instruction when he wrote the passage. In Hebrews
vi., 20, and vii., 1 to 3, we read : “ Jesus, made an High
Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec. For
this Melchisedec, King of Salem, priest of the most
high God, who met Abraham returning from the
slaughter of the kings, and blessed him ; to whom also
Abraham gave a tenth part of all ; first being by inter
pretation King of righteousness, and after that also
King of Salem, which is King of peace ; without father,
without mother, without descent, having neither be
ginning of days nor end of life ; but made like unto
the Son of God ; abideth a priest continually.” Now
he to whom Jesus is compared, and who is like the Son
of God, is clearly the noblest of characters ; and there
fore, as the history in the first book of Samuel teaches
us that Monarchy is generally to be avoided, these fine
verses from the Epistle to the Hebrews delineate for
us the exceptional king whose reign is to be desired.
The delineation is quite masterly, for a few lines give
us characteristics which cannot be overlooked or mis
taken. This model monarch must be a priest of the
most high God—a king of righteousness and king of
peace; without father, without mother, without descent,
having neither beginning of days nor end of life ; but
made like unto the Son of God. Whenever and
wherever such a gentlemen is met with, we would
advise even the most zealous Republicans to put him
forthwith upon the throne. But in the absence of
such a gentleman we can hardly do wrong if we follow
the good advice of Samuel dictated by God Almighty,
and manage without any monarch.
�The One Thing Needful.
71
The One Thing Needful.
[Whitten
in
1866.]
When I survey with pious joy the present world of
Christendom, finding everywhere that the true believers
love their neighbors as themselves and are specially
enamored of their enemies ; that no one of them takes
thought for the morrow, what he shall eat or what he
shalfdrink, or wherewithal he or she shall be clothed ;
that all the pastors and flocks endeavor to outstrip each
other in laying not up for themselves treasures upon,
earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal ; and all are so intensely eager
to quit this earthly tabernacle and become freeholders
of mansions in the skies ; when I find faith as universal
as the air, and charity as common as cold water ; I
sometimes wonder, how it is that any misbelievers and
unbelievers are left, and feel astonished that the New
Jerusalem has not yet descended, and hope that the
next morning’s Times (rechristened The Eternities) will
announce the inauguration of the Millennium.
What delayeth the end ? Can there indeed be any
general hindering sin or imperfection among the pure
saints, the holy, unselfish, aspiring, devout, peaceful,
loving men and women who make up the population of
every Christian land ? Can any error infect the
teachings of the innumerable divines and theologians,
who all agree together in every particular, drawing all
the same doctrines from the same texts of the one un
varied Word of God ? I would fain believe that no
such sin or error exists, not a single inky spot in the
universal dazzling whiteness ; but then why have we to
deplore the continued existence of heathens and
infidels ? why is the New Jerusalem so long a-building ?
why is the Millennium so long a-coming ? why have
we a mere Sardowa instead of Armageddon ?
After long and painful thought, after the most
serious and reverent study, I think I have found the
�72
Satires and Profanities.
rock on which the ship of the Church has been wrecked ;
and I hasten to communicate its extreme latitude and
interminable longitude, that all Christian voyagers may
evade and circumvent it from this time forward.
The error which I point out, and the correction
which I propose, have been to a certain extent, in a
vague manner, pointed out and proposed before. A
clergyman named Malthus, not in his clerical capacity,
but condescending to the menial study of mundane
science, is usually considered the first discoverer. But
mundane science is conditioned, limited, vague, its
precepts are full of hesitation ; while celestial science
is absolute, unlimited, clear as the noonday sun, and its
precepts are imperiously forthright.
It seems to me that the one fatal error which has
lurked in our otherwise consummate Christianity, and
which demands immediate correction is this, that the
propagation of children is reconcileable with the pro
pagation of the faith—an error which while it lasts
adjourns sine die the day of judgment, and begins the
Millennium with the Greek Kalends.
One need not quote the numerous texts throughout
the New Testament (let Matthew xix., 12, suffice)
proving that Jesus and the epistolary apostles ac
counted celibacy essential to the highest Christian life.
One only of the disciples, so far as we know, was
married ; and he it was who denied his master ; and
most of the more profound divines consider that Peter
was justly punished for marrying, when Christ cured
his mother-in-law of that fever which might else have
carried her off.
But many modest people may be content with a
respectable Christian life which is not of the very
highest kind. They may think that as husbands and
wives they will make very decent middle-class saints in
heaven, after a comfortable existence on earth, leaving
the nobler crowns of holiness for more daring spirits.
Humility is one of the fairest graces, and we revere it;
but there is a consideration, most momentous for the
kind Christian heart, which such good people must
have overlooked—very naturally, since it is very
obvious.
�The One. Thing Needful.
73
Jesus tells us that many are called but few are
chosen; that few enter the strait gate and travel
€^narrow way, while many take the broadwaythat
leadeth to destruction. In other words, the 1 g
majority of mankind, the large majority of even those
who have the gospel preached to them, must be damn .
When a human soul is born into the world the odds
«re at least ten to one that the Devil will get it. Can
any pious member of the Church who has thought o
this take the responsibility of becoming a Parent. 1
thoroughly believe not. I am convinced that we have
so many Christian parents only because this very con“nous aspect of the case ^s not caught their vie
■ If the parents could have any assurance that the piety
of their offspring would be in proportion to their own
they would be justified in wedding m holiness But
alas7; we all know that some of the most religious
parents have had some of the most wicked children.
Dearly beloved brethren and sisters, pause and calcu
late that for every little saint you give to heaven, you
beget and bear at least nine sinners who will eventually
g The remedy proposed is plain and simple as a gospel
precept : let no Christian have any child at ail—a
rule which, in the grandeur of its absoluteness makes
the poor timid and tentative Malthusianism very
ridiculous indeed. For this rule is drawn immediately
from the New Testament and cannot but be perfect as
its source.
, . ,
7,
Let us think of a few of the advantages which would
flow from its practice. The profane have sometimes
sneered that Jesus and his disciples manifestly thought
that the world would come to an end, the millennium
be inaugurated, within a very few years from the public
ministry of Jesus. Luckily the profane are always
ignorant or shallow, or both. For, as the New Jeru
salem is to come down while Christians, are alive, and
as Christians in the highest sense or Christians without
offspring must have come to an end with the first gene
ration, it is plain that the belief which has been sneered
at was thoroughly well founded ; and that it has been
disappointed only because the vast majority of Cnris-
.
�74
Satires and Profanities.
,n°tbeen Christians in the highest senseat
all, but in their ignorance have continued to propagate
like so many heathen proletarians.
Now, supposing the very likely case that all Chris
tians now living reflect upon the truth herein expounded, and see that it is true, and, therefore, always
act upon it, it follows that, with the end of our now
young generation, the whole of Christendom will be
translated into the kingdom of heaven. Either the
mere scum of non-Christians left upon the earth will
be wholly or m great part converted by an example so
splendid and attractive, and thus translate all Christen
dom in the second edition in a couple of generations
more; or else the world, being without any Christianitv
a matter of course, be so utterly vile and evil
that the promised fire must destroy it at once, and so
bring m the New Heavens and New Earth.
Roman Catholic Christians may indeed answer that,
although the above argument is irresistible to the
Protestants, who have no mean in the next life between
Heaven and Hell, yet that it is not so formidable tn
them, seeing that they believe in the ultimate salvation
of nearly every one born and reared in their com
munion, and only give a temporary purgatory to the
worst of their own sinners. And I admit that such
reply is very cogent. Yet, strangely enough, the
Catholics even more than the Protestants, recognise and
cultivate the supreme beatitude of celibacy ; their
legions of unwedded priests, and monks, and nuns and
saints are so many legions of concessions to the truth
of my main argument.
I am aware that one of the most illustrious dignitariesof our own National Church, the very reverend and
reverent Dr. Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s, has advo
cated on various grounds, and with impressive force of
reasoning, the general eating of babies : and I antici
pate that some prudent Christians may, therefore, argue .
that it is better to get babies and eat them than to have *
none &t a^’ s^nce th© souls of the sweet innocents
would surely go to heaven, while their bodies would be
very nourishing on earth. Unfortunately, however
the doctrine of Original Sin, as expounded and illus-
�The One Thing Needful.
75
trated by many very thoughtfui theologians and specially theologians of the most determined Protestant
Ze makes it very doubtful whether the souls of
iX “are not damned. It will surely be better, then,
for good Protestants to have no infants at all:
The Athanasian Creed.
[Written
in 1865.]
ON Christmas Day, as on all other chief holidays of theyear, the ministers and congregations of our National
Church have had the noble privilege and pleasure o
standing up and reciting the creed commonly called of
St. Athanasius. The question of the authorship does
not concern us here, but a note of Gibbon (chapter 37)
is so brief and comprehensive that we may as well cite
it •_ “ But the three following truths, however strange
thev may seem, are now universally acknowledged.
1 St Athanasius is not the author of the creed which
is so frequently read in our churches. 2. It does not
appear to have existed within a century after his death.
3 It was originally composed in the Latin tongue,
and consequently in the western provinces. Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople, was so much amazed
by this extraordinary composition, that he frankly pro
nounced it to be the work of a drunken man.
(Ihis
Gennadius, by the bye, is the same whom Gibbon
mentions two or three times afterwards in the account
of the siege and conquest of Constantinople by the
Whoever elaborated the Creed, and whether he did
it drunk or sober, the Church of England has made it
thoroughly her own by adoption.
�76
Satires and Profanities.
Yet it must be admitted that many good churchmen
and perhaps even a few churchwomen, have not loved
th? adopted child of their Holy Mother as warmly as
their duty commanded. The intelligently pion?
Tillotson wishes Mother Church well rid of the bant
ing ; and poor George the Third himself, with all his
immense genius for orthodoxy, could not take kindly
to it. He was willing enough to repeat all its expres
sions of theological faith—in fact, their perfect non
sense, their obstinate irrationality, must have been
exquisitely delightful to a brain such as his?but he
was not without a sort of vulgar manhood, even when
worshipping m the Chapel Royal, and so rather choked
its denunciations—“ for it do curse dreadful.” He
am d mu'
faith Whole and ^defiled by reason, yet
did not like to assert that all who had been and were
and should in future be in this particular less happy
than himself, must without doubt perish everlastingly.
^OnS6 ^her.hand °ne of our most liberal Church
men, Mr. Maurice, has argued that this creed is essen
tially merciful, and that its retention in the Book of
Common Prayer is a real benefit. Mr. Maurice, how
ever, as we all know, interprets “perish everlastingly”
into a meaning very different from that which most
members of the Church accept. And his opinions lose
considerably in weight from the fact that no man save
himself can infer any one of them from any other.
? -°U T C^eered UP a bit by bis notions
?tern.al, a?d “ Everlasting,” you are soon
depressed again by his pervading woefulness. Of all
the rulers we hear of—the ex-king of Naples, the king
of Prussia the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, Abraham
Lincoln, and the Pope included—the poor God of Mr.
Maurice is the most to be pitied : a God whose world
is m so deplorable a state that the good man who owns
him lives in a perpetual fever of anxiety and misery
m endeavoring to improve it for him.
What part of this creed shocks the pious who are
shocked at. all by it ? Simply the comprehensive
damnation it deals out to unbelievers, half-believers,
and all except whole believers. For we do not hear
that the pious are shocked by the confession of theo-
�The Athanasian Creed.
77
logical or theo-illogical faith, itself. Their reverence
bowsand kisses the rod, which we cool outsiders mibht
fairly have expected to be broken up and. flung out
doors in a fury of indignation. Their sinful human
nature is shocked on account of their fellow-men ; their
divine religious nature is not shocked on account o
their God : yet does not the creed use God as badly as
m A chemist secures some air, and analyses it into its
ultimate constituents, and states with precise numerals
the proportions of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid
therein Just so the author of this creed secures the
Divinity and analyses it into Father, Son, and Ho y
Ghost, and just as precisely he reports the relations
these A mathematician makes you a problem of a
certain number divided into three parts in certain ratios
to each other and to the sum, from which ratios you
are to deduce the sum and the parts Just so the
author of this creed makes a riddle of his God dividing
him into three persons, from whose inter-relations you
are to deduce the Deity. An anatomist gets hold of
a dead body and dissects it, exposing the structure and
functions of the brain, the lungs, the hearts, etc. Just
so the author of this creed gets possession of the corpse
of God (he died of starvation doing slop-work toi
Abstraction and Company ; and the dead body .was
nurveved by the well-known resurrectionist Priest
craft), and cuts it open and expounds the generation
and functions of its three principal organs. But the
chemist does not tell- us that oxygen, nitrogen, and
carbonic acid are three gases and yet one gas, that each
of them is and is not common air, that they have each
peculiar and yet wholly identical properties; the
mathematician does not tell us that each of the three
parts of his whole number is equal to the whole, and
equal to each of the others, and yet less than the whole
and unequal to either of the others ; the anatomist does
not tell us that brain and lungs and heart are each dis
tinct and yet all the same in substance, structure, and
function, and that each is in itself the whole body and
at the same time is not : while the author of this creed
goes tell us analogous contradictions of the tnree
�78
Satires and Profanities.
aMe and tolerant as human nature can hope to be •
while the author of this creed aims at and manages to’
reach an almost super-human unreason and intnlpran™
™ W®re a sample of air, a certain number,
a dead body This humble-minded devotee, who knows
+£ Tn? c
1S finite and that God is infinite, and
that the finite cannot conceive, much less comprehend
SS exPress ibe infinite, yet expounds this Infinite
with the most complete and complacent knowledge
turns it inside out and upside down, tells us all about
it, cuts it up into three parts, and then glues it together
again with a glue that has the tenacity of atrocious
wrongheadedness instead of the coherence of logic puts
his mark upon it, and says, “ This is the only genuine
thing in the God line. If you are taken in by any
other why, go and be damned
and having done all
this finishes by chanting “ Glory be to the Father, and
to the Son, and to the Holy Ghcst !” And the pious
are not shocked by what they should abhor as horrible
sacrilege and blasphemy ; they are shocked only by
the Go, and be damned,” which is the prologue and
epilogue of the blasphemy. Were the damnatory
clauses omitted, it appears that even the most devout
worshippers could comfortably chant the Glory be to
the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost ”
immediately after they had been thus degrading Father
Son, and Holy Ghost to the level and beneath the level
ot their low human understanding. And these very
people are horrified by the lack of veneration in
�The Athanasian Creed.
79
Atheists and infidels! What infidel ever dealt with
God more contemptuously and blasphemously than this
creed has dealt with him ? Can it be expected that
Xe and sensible men, who have out-grown the pre
judices sucked in with their mothers milk, will be
reconverted to reverence a Deity whom his votaries
■dare to treat in this fashion ?
..
Ere we conclude, it may be as well to anticipate a
probable objection. It may likely enough be urged
that the author and reciters of the creed do not pretend
to know the Deity so thoroughly as we have ass^med’
since they avouch very early in the creed that the
three persons of the Godhead are one and all incom
prehensible. If the word incomprehensible, thus used
means (what it apparently meant in the author s mind)
unlimited as to extension, just as the word eternal
means unlimited as to time, the objection is altogether
wide of the mark. But even if the word incompre
hensible be taken to mean (what it apparently means
in the minds of most people who use the creed) beyond
the comprehension or capacity of the human intellect,
still the objection is without force. lor in the same
sense a tuft of grass, a stone, anything and everything
in the world is beyond the capacity of the human
intellect : the roots of a tuft of grass stride as deeply
into the incomprehensible as the mysteries of the Deity
Relatively this creed tells us quite as much about God
as ever the profoundest botanist can tell us about the
grass ; in fact, it tells relatively more, for it implies
a knowledge of the Final Cause of the subsistence of
God, which no future botanist can tell or imply of the
grass.
���
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Satires and profanities : with a preface by G. W. Foote
Description
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Edition: New ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 79 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed and published by G.W. Foote. First published 1884: see Preface. Satires previously published in the National Reformer and the Secularist.
Contents: The story of a famous old Jewish firm -- Religion in the Rocky mountains -- The Devil in the Church of England -- Christmas eve in the upper circles -- A commission of inquiry on royalty -- A Bible lesson on monarchy -- The one thing needful --The Athanasian creed.
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Thomson, James [1834-1882]
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Progressive Publishing Company
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1890
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N639
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Rationalism
Free thought
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English
Athanasian Creed
Church of England
Monarchy
NSS
Rationalism
Satire
-
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694099ca75120bd6897bd8c20ee25575
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Text
THE ENGLISH CHURCH
A FAILURE
AS A REFORMING AGENCY.
BY CHARLES WATTS,
The Anglican Church is regarded as the representative
of England’s national religion and the exponent of the
country’s State-protected theology. It will, therefore, be
interesting to consider the two following questions :—
i. What is the attitude of this institution towards the
thought of the present time ? 2. What value has it been
as a reforming agency ?
An impartial examination of the position of this ecclesiasticism will show that it is unchanged, and, in all prob
ability, so it will remain so long as it is an Erastiart or
an Established Church. Under a Protestant name—
which, however, many of its clergy do not acknowledge,
professing to consider themselves a true branch of the
Catholic Church, a claim which Rome contemptuously
repudiates—the Establishment has retained the essential
spirit of'Popery. The consequence of this has been, of
course, distraction and annoyance to the State, division
to the Church, formality and “ worldly-mindedness ” to
the clergy. Common sense stigmatises it as an absurdity
when political leaders and secular judges are asked and
compelled to administer the chief judicial and govern
mental functions and appointments of an ecclesiasticism
with any other intention than that of promoting their
own secular temporal interests. Of course, it is not
denied that the Established Church has produced many
■eminent and learned men, and that she has occasionally
attempted to deal with the great social questions of the
day. Her failure, however, is an acknowledged fact.
Possessing unexampled facilities for improving the social
�2
THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
condition of the people, with great wealth at her freecommand, with no powerful competitor in the field, shehas wilfully neglected all these advantages.
So far as religion and thought are concerned, this
Church is most incongruously and anomalously placed.
She is like a man between two stools, clinging to a bend
ing plank overhead. Such a very unreliable support for
the Church, the only guarantee for its position, is
the State. Let this plank give way—and it must be
sawn asunder ere long—and the Church of England will
lapse into chaotic confusion. Her inconsistency in this
particular is manifest. Here we have a Church pro
fessedly based on a Divine faith ; yet it has to rely for
support upon the protection of the State. Were its
assumed divinity a reality, Secular aid for its existence
should be unnecessary. Besides, the functions of the
two—the Church and the State—are very different: the
one claims the right of spiritual direction; the business
of the other is to concern itself with the secular affairs of
society.
The Anglican Church is, moreover, equivocally placed
with respect to her doctrines. She half receives the
Reformation dogma of private interpretation of the
Scriptures, and half rejects it by affirming that the true
sense of Scripture is its interpretation by the Church.
She thus professes to bow to reason, while, in fact, she
denies its right. How painfully inconsistent is this with
what should be the distinguishing feature in a body which
calls itself Catholic, and which should, consequently^
know its own mind ! It has been said : “ Ye cannot
serve two masters : ye cannot serve God and Mammon.>r
Alas for this dictum, however, the Church of England
has ever been more remarkable for her solicitude to
possess riches than for her “ spiritual ” devotion or regard
for consistency 1 In this respect she is much inferior to
the Church of Rome. The Romish Church, at least,,
does not play fast and loose with beliefs and dogmas.
She finds herself opposed by the progressive march of
intellect. Does she, therefore, “ hark back ” ? Does
she retract or explain away any of her previous utter
ances ? No; but, on the contrary, she nails her colours
to the mast, and refuses to move in obedience to what
she terms misguided, erring reason. Her prelates,.
�THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
3
.assembled in Rome, proclaimed that “not only can
faith and reason never be opposed, but they lend to each
other a mutual support, since right reason demonstrates
the foundations of faith, and, illuminated by its light,
-cultivates the science of Divine things ; whereas faith
liberates and defends reason from error, and enriches it
with increased knowledge.”
In the same resolute spirit of utter opposition to what
.•science may reveal or a wider exegesis require, Rome
says: “ That interpretation of the sacred dogmas is
perpetually to be retained which Holy Mother Church
has once declared; neither ever at any time may that
interpretation be departed from under the form or name
of a higher understanding thereof.” And at the end of
the Decrees, given on the 18th of July, 1870, the prelates
of this Church affirm that, “ if any one presume to con
tradict this our definition—which may God avert—let
him be accursed 1”
All this is easily enough understood, however much
we may and do condemn it. The Church of England,
however, has neither the boldness of affirmation nor of
■denial. Should a heresy arise in its midst—as in the
case of Bishop Colenso—the odium theologicum is bitterly
.aroused, the land is troubled with the dissensions of
angry polemics, the ecclesiastical dignitaries and mis
sionary societies appoint a new Bishop, but the .Church
has not power to remove the heretic from his office.
Again, certain State laws, such as Earl Beaconsfield’s
Public Worship Regulation Act, are directed against
specified modes of conducting the public services of the
Church. Certain zealous priests, or ministers, treat
these with contempt, and the Church has to request the
State to put a cumbrous machinery of justice into opera
tion against the offenders. The peculiar spectacle is
then presented of the civil power deciding' as to
what are religious necessities. Need we marvel that
.nobody really knows, or cares, what this strange body
thinks, or what attitude it assumes with regard
to modern thought ? This, then, is the true state
-of affairs on this matter : the Church, as a Church, does
not enter into the question, which is merely one of the
individual opinions of ministers with respect to the higher
thought of the age. Briefly stated, the clergy of the
�THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
4
Church of England may be ranked under three
heads:—
1. The High Churchmen, who look upon science and
Freethought with ill-concealed aversion. Clergymen of
this class pander to credulity, and thrive upon the weak
ness of women and the uncontrolled emotions of men.
Theatrical display enchants where reason fails to com
mand.
2. The Evangelicals, who are at heart more intolerant
than the Papacy. They seldom encourage modern scien
tific revelation, clinging to the old notion that the twostandard revelations contain all that is necessary for
man’s salvation.
3. The Broad Churchmen, who are comparatively
tolerant, liberal, and disposed to welcome all that the
scientific method of investigation may reveal. These
men are useful, because their principal deeds are secular.
Their Church religion sits but loosely upon them. Their
concern is to teach people how to live well as the best
preparation to die happily. The Bishop of Manchester^
Dean Stanley, and Dr. Colenso are noble types of this
school.
As Freethinkers, we need not be apprehensive either of
Conformity or Nonconformity. The latter, as Dr. Maclagan, the Bishop of Lichfield, observed in his charge to
the clergy (early in 1880), is now more political than re
ligious : the former is more religious than political in
spirit, but its connection with the State—which is now
tolerant perforce—deprives it of much of its original
power to wound.
It will be a bright future wherein man the free and
unfettered shall have cast off the swathing-bands of
fetichism and ecclesiasticism, and shall have learned to
rely solely upon human effort, and his own knowledge of
his necessities and potentialities.
The assumption that the English Church is the national
exponent of the religious thought of the age is entirely
unsupported by facts. The union of the Church with
the State is the main ground upon which the assertion
is made. But only a slight reflection is necessary to
demonstrate that such a connection cannot make the
Church national, using that term in its proper sense.
Before it can consistently deserve that designation it
�THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
•
5
must be shown that the Establishment represents the
religious ideas and aspirations of the majority of the
people of the United Kingdom. Such, however, is not
the case, inasmuch as the bulk of the Protestants of
Great Britain do not subscribe to the Thirty-Nine
Articles, and will not be bound by the priestly dogmas
of the Established Church. The religious faith of
Christendom outside the domain of Roman Catholicism
day by day grows broader and less inclined to be fettered
by the creeds and ecclesiastical teachings of priests and
councils. Even numerically the Church is behind its
rival, Dissent. The Statistical Society, a few years ago,
published figures showing that Dissenters were far more
numerous than Churchmen; and a recent Parliamentary
return states that in 7,369 English and Welsh parishes,
having an aggregate population of 20,500,000, there
were 11,267 churches and 14,000 chapels.
A great absurdity in connection with the claim set up
for the English Church is that its devotees regard it as
the depository of the only true religion. By them it is
supposed to be the genuine article, bearing the Govern
ment stamp; while the various Dissenting faiths are
condemned as spurious, being without the necessary
authority. This is the view taken by the Rev. F. A.
Grace, M.A., who has published a work entitled “ Some
Questions of the Church Catechism and Doctrines In
volved, briefly Explained.” from which the following
extract is taken :—
“We have among us various sects and denominations
who go by the general name of Dissenters : in what light
are we to consider them?—A. As heretics; and in our
Litany we expressly pray to be delivered from the sins of
‘ false doctrine, heresy, and schism.’
“Is, then, their worship a laudable service?—A. No;
because they worship God according to their own evil and
corrupt imaginations, and not according to his revealed will,
and therefore their worship is idolatrous.
“ Is Dissent a great sin ?—A. Yes ; it is in direct opposi
tion to our duty towards God.
“Is it wicked, then, to enter a meeting-house at all?—
A. Most assuredly, because, as was said above, it is a house
where God is worshipped otherwise than he has commanded,
and therefore it is not dedicated to his honour and glory.”
After reading this exhibition of that charity which
�THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
thinketh no evil, can there be any doubt as to the har
mony and loving kindness existing among the different
religious denominations ?
Associated with the English Church is a system of
patronage, which acts injuriously alike upon the moral
and the intellectual character of its exponents. From
the eighteenth century to the present time the “ spiritual
pastors” have been too frequently selected for their
office through favouritism rather than on account of
their moral and intellectual ability. In addressing his
clergymen, many of whom were said to be fox-hunters
and excessive drinkers, Bishop Kenn thus described
them :—
“ Alas ! alas ! for your debauched courses ! An holy
calling and an unholy life ! Spiritual persons, and yet
live after the flesh ! A clean garment, and an unclean
heart ! Servants of God, and yet slaves of sin ! Reverend
in your function, and yet shameful in your practice 1 A
minister, and yet given to wine ! A priest, and yet las
civious 1
Tnq reader will find these words in “ Kenn’s Expostulatoria; or, the Complaints of the Church of England.”
Although this description was penned during the last
century, in many cases it is equally as applicable to-day.
To an impartial observer, what appear to be the chief
moving considerations on the part of those who desire
to purchase Church livings ? Are they not, apparently
—does a particular living possess such attractions as a
good fishing stream, a pleasant riding course, and a con
gregation composed of persons who are free from Scep
ticism, being contented to open their mouths and shut
their eyes, and accept with implicit faith what their
pastors tell them. Of course, it would be unfair to
place all the clergy of the Church of England under this
category. In this order, as among all bodies of men,
are to be found those whose lives are strictly pure,
earnest, and useful. Nevertheless, ft cannot be denied
that throughout the rural districts the clergy ate not
remarkable for displaying that mental activity so desir
able in those who essay to guide the conduct of others.
Moreover, even as Church patronage is now bestowed,
personal influence is much more potent than intellectual
ability in the selection of occupants of pulpits. The
�THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
7
late Lord John Russell, in his “Essay on the English
Constitution,” puts this fact very clearly. He says :—
“ In the Church the immense and valuable patronage of
Government is uniformly bestowed on their political adhe
rents. No talent, no learning, no piety, can advance the
fortunes of a clergyman whose political opinions are adverse
to those of the governing powers.”
As a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither
can the impure patronage system foster ethical purity
and general usefulness.
The Church of England is not only surrounded by
impure conditions, but it is equally as significant that it
has failed as a reforming agency. During the Church
Congress held at Plymouth some years since, the Times,
in a leading article, preferred the following severe indict
ment against thenational religion. It says :—
“ As a fact, expressed in popular language, and understood
by the people of this country, the c Church,’ or the ‘ Church
of England,’ was in favour of the alliance of Continental
Absolutists against constitutional government; it was against
the amelioration of the criminal code, and in favour of the
principles of vengeance and prevention as against that of
reformation ; it was in favour of hanging for almost any
offence a man is now fined for at the assizes; it was in favour
of the slave trade, and afterwards of slavery; it was against
the repeal of the Test and Corporations Act; it was against
Catholic emancipation ; it was against Parliamentary reform
and municipal reform ; it was against the commutation of
tithes, though it has since had to acknowledge the Act a
great benefit; it was against the repeal of the corn laws and
the navigation laws ; it was against free trade generally ; it
was against all education beyond the simplest elements.”
Unfortunately, there are too many facts in history to
justify this tremendous indictment. At one period the
Church had every opportunity of proving its power and
intention in the field of education. With vast wealth and
influence it had for a long period the direction of the
youthful mind. How did this religious institution use
its advantages ? Simply by thrusting its theological doc
trines upon the people, rather than teaching them the
practical duties of life. So palpable was the failure of
the Church as an educational medium that the State was
at length compelled to intervene, and do what the
Church had failed to accomplish. Unable to achieve
�THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
the work themselves, the members of this wealthiest of
all religious establishments became the most determined
opponents of those who were able and willing to pro
mote the secular education of the people. From the *>
time when Lord Brougham pleaded for a national scheme
of education, to the present, when bigotry manifests itself .
on the Board Schools, it can be truly said that the policy
of the Church has been to thwart all instruction not in
accordance with its own narrow creeds and dogmas.
Similar antagonism has been offered by the Church
to political reform. The bishops, with few exceptions,
in the. House of Lords are as adverse to real Liberal
legislation in 1880 as they were in 1832. Macaulay, in
the first volume of his Essays, says :—
“ The Church of England continued to be for more than
a hundred and fifty years the servile handmaid of Monarchy,
the steady enemy of public liberty.”
Lecky, too, in his “ History of Rationalism in Europe,”
vol. ii., writes :—
“No other Church so uniformly betrayed and trampled
on the liberties of her country...... she invariably cast her
influence into the scale of tyranny.”
From these historical facts it is too evident that
the English Church has failed in its duty as a progres
sive agent, and made itself a stumbling block to Liberal
advancement. Indeed, the condition of our rural popu
lation affords ample proof of this. This portion of the
people was for years directly indoctrinated with the
Church’s teachings; but with what results?—the lack
of practical education and personal independence. It is
only since secular instruction has supplanted theological
teaching in our agricultural districts, that self-reliance
and united action among the labourers have commenced.
The .Anglican Ctjurch has really been tried and found
wanting as a progressive institution ; it must, therefore,
no longer be relied upon, nor must we trust to its power,
but rather seek that material unsacerdotal aid which is .
alone capable of adding dignity to man, and of con
ferring benefits upon mankind.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
Printed and Published by Watts & Co , 84, Fleet Street, London.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The English Church : a failure as a reforming agency
Creator
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Watts, Charles [1836-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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[Watts & Co.]
Date
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[n.d.]
Identifier
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N666
Subject
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Church of England
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 (The English Church : a failure as a reforming agency), 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
Church of England
NSS