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THE ATHANASIAN CEEED
A PLEA
FOR ITS DISUSE IN THE PUBLIC WORSHIP
OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.
By
the
Rev. J. W. LAKE.
“ Perplexed in faith, yet pure in deeds,
At length he heat his music out,
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.”—Tennyson.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
1 8 7 5.
Price Sixpence.
��THE ATHANASIAN CREED.
HE language of a healthy theology is like that of
T Lord Bacon, ‘ if a man begins with certainties he
shall end in doubts, but if he begins with doubts he shall
end in certainties.’ ” So writes Dean Stanley in his
letter addressed some years back to the then Bishop of
London (now Archbishop Tait) on the folly and evil of
the system of exacting a rigid subscription to a code of
dogmas from the young men who were entering the
ministry, and certainly the reverent hesitations of the wise
and thoughtful pay a truer homage to Religious Truth
than do the fancied certainties of inexperienced and
thoughtless minds. Doubt is often the readiest portal
by which the Temple of Truth is entered, certainly it is
the surest if not the only road by which its innermost
shrine is reached. The doubter is one who holds God’s
Truth in such high esteem that he refuses to accept as
such, whatsoever does not bring with it satisfactory
credentials.
The Athanasian Creed breathes throughout its entire
extent a malediction on this doubting spirit, and exalts
a blind and thoughtless and unquestioning belief to the
rank of highest virtue. It formulates ideas concerning
the divine nature which were the outcome of at least
one thousand years of intense and abstruse metaphysical
speculation, which, though always earnest and passionate,
was yet very often ill-regulated, blind and fanciful.
During the progress of this speculation, the strained
intellect soared often so far beyond its proper powers
�4
The Athanasian Creed.
that the language of theology became largely destitute
of definite meaning, and yet the tabulated results of
this intricate speculation are in the creeds of the Church
of England forced on the profession and acceptance of
every worshipper, and men who have not cared to give
the subject an hour’s serious thought are summoned on
pain of everlasting perdition to express themselves con
cerning the constitution of the Godhead and the mode
of the divine existence in language of assured certainty,
and to dogmatise without the slightest hesitation concern
ing matters whose comprehension is far beyond the
utmost powers of human thought.
A revised Bible, if it should adopt the approved and ac
cepted results of biblical scholarship, (and rumour asserts
that in many particulars it will do this,) will take from
the Athanasian Creed the main and almost the sole
biblical authority it asserts for the triune delineation of
the divine nature which it sets forth, by expunging
from the revised version the celebrated text of the ‘three
witnesses,’ viz., 1 John v. 7, “there are three that bare
record in heaven,—the Father, the Word, and the Holy
Ghost, and these three are one;” this being now
universally surrendered as a fraudulent interpolation.—
True, the Athanasian Creed is essentially an ecclesiastical
formulary, but its retention by a Protestant Church
implies that it does but epitomise biblical teaching, and
with its loss of biblical sanction it must cease to exist
as an authoritative formula, even if it be retained for
the convenience of those who still choose to adopt it as
an exposition of their faith. But even under these
circumstances this creed must lose what some have con
sidered to be its most essential, and others its most
offensive, feature, viz., that damnatory clause by which
all who do not accept its statements are consigned to
everlasting perdition. The utmost that any member of
a Protestant Church can claim as a privilege of worship
is the right of stating his own formularies of religious
belief, even if these should include clauses that con
�The Athanasian Creed.
5
demned himself to perdition for non-belief, but here
his rights terminate, here his liberty ends. He must
not be allowed to claim the right of publicly condemning
others because they do not accept the essentials of his
own belief. The creed might therefore be retained for
private use, or, (without the offensive damnatory clauses)
it might even be permitted to form a portion of the
public worship of such congregations as desired to use
it.
Origin of the
use of
Creeds in Public Wopshtp.
A question here arises as to the desirability of retain
ing the recitation of formularies of dogmatic theology
as a necessary part, of public worship. Of Protestant
Churches this is the peculiarity of the Church of
England alone, and as in this church the articles and
creeds are only to be accepted as they are seen to be
in harmony and agreement with the teachings of Scrip
tures, it follows that the Bible is the container of the
essentials of all creeds, seeing that from its pages they
are presumed to have been first of all compiled. Dean
Milman, in his “History of Christianity’’ Book 3rd,
chap. 5, gives the following explanation of the intro
duction into the Christian Church of such documents
as the Athanasian formulary :—
11 Though nothing can contrast more strongly with
the expansive and liberal spirit of primitive Christianity
than the repulsive tone of this exclusive theology, yet
this remarkable phasis of Christianity seems to have
been necessary, and not without advantage to the
permanence of the religion. With the civilisation of
mankind Christianity was about to pass through the
ordeal of those dark ages which followed the irruption
of the barbarians. During this period Christianity was
to subsist as the conservative principle of social order
and the sacred charities of life . . . But in order to
preserve its own existence, it assumed of necessity
another form. It must have a splendid and imposing
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The Athanasian Creed.
ritual to command the barbarous minds of its new
proselytes ... It must likewise have brief and definite
formularies of doctrine. As the original languages,
and even the Latin, fell into disuse, and before the
modern languages of Europe were sufficiently formed to
admit of translations, the sacred writings receded from
general use ; they became the depositaries of Christian
doctrine totally inaccessible to the laity, and almost as
much so the lower clergy. Creeds therefore became of
essential importance to compress the leading points of
Christian doctrine into a small compass. And as the
barbarous and ignorant mind cannot endure the vague
and the indefinite, so it was essential that the main
points of doctrine should be fixed and cast into plain
and emphatic propositions. The theological language
was finally established before the violent breaking up
of society ; and no more was required of the barbarian
convert than to accept with unenquiring submission
the established formulary of the faith, and gaze in awe
struck veneration at the solemn ceremonial.”
From this it would appear that the reasons which
necessitated the first use of creeds being no longer in
existence, and a totally opposite condition of matters
prevailing, the creeds of the Church of England Prayer
Book should long since have been withdrawn from
use, and have been preserved simply as curious memen
toes of the past. At all events it is fitting that their
compulsory recitation should at once cease.
We now have the Scriptures translated into every
known tongue, both barbaric and civilised, we have
societies for their dissemination, so that Bibles are now
found in the home of every poor man and in the hands
of every child, while the machinery of tracts and Sunday
schools has of late been in ceaseless and ubiquitous
operation. Moreover, the great fundamental ideas and
doctrines of religion find adequate expression in the
legitimate acts of public worship, in the hymns and
prayers alike of petition and of praise, so that, as a
�The Athanasian Creed.
7
rule, these utterances suffice in the nonconformist
churches to keep the foundation principles of religion
well in sight without the repetition of creeds at all.
True, these principles find an expression tinged with
vagueness and variety. But with the growth of
intelligence this vagueness and variety are necessary in
order to comprehend the varied forms of thought to
which intelligence ever gives rise. Hence the creeds
that have done such signal service for rude and ignorant
ages are anachronisms in an age in which people have
intelligence and schools abound.
Of the three creeds of the Church of England Prayer
Book that attributed to Athanasius, and generally
known by his name, has long lost all power of useful
service, and exists only as a source of bigotry, dis
sension and strife. Many of the best and purest minds
leave the Church of England, and turn their backs
upon her services, because it does violence to their con
sciences to participate in worship which the insoluble
enigmas and the cruel denunciations of this creed deface.
It is the proud but hardly correct boast of the best
minds among the English clergy, that of all churches,
the Church of England is most tolerant and compre
hensive. But this is said by men who have so long
accustomed themselves to regard this creed as an
antiquated and obsolete formulary that they have
grown oblivious of its existence, and of the fact of the
weighty sanction that still invests the lightest of its
utterances as they periodically fall on the ears, or are
spoken by the voices of the English people. As the
strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link, so
the tolerance and comprehensiveness of a church is
tested by the narrowest and most exclusive of its
dogmas. And so tested, the Church of England
becomes a narrow and an intolerant church, and must
of necessity continue so to be while this creed is made
to represent its most solemn confession of faith. The
occasional use of this creed, (it being recited only at
�The Athanasian Creed.
about half a dozen Sunday services throughout the
year), points a strong argument, either for its optional
use on these occasions, or rather for its total disuse.
If, say for nine services out of ten, this creed can be
omitted and not missed, the element of worship which
its use supplies can scarcely be of sufficient importance
to warrant its continuance as a stone of stumbling and
a rock of offence to the thousands to whom it represents
a faith alien to the spirit and teachings of Jesus and
wholly unwarranted by the authority of Scripture.
It should suffice for a church that its members were
in general agreement as to certain great principles or
aims, and that consequently, in their several ways,
they were disposed to work heartily in sympathy with,
or in support of, these. The attempt to define the
forms of religious thought with too great exactitude,
turns that which should be a bond of harmony and
union into a source of discord and division. This is
the fatal error of the Athanasian Formulary. It may
command a blind allegiance, but in a thoughtful and
enlightened age it never can win an intelligent and
unanimous belief.
An objection of some considerate force lies against
the authoritative use in public worship even of the
Apostles’ and the Nicene creeds, seeing that the truths
which these contain would Eve and be reverenced
apart from the expression which they here find. And
surely, if held and reverenced for their own intrinsic
worth, these truths would rest on the firmest basis.
*
* “ It was observed of the oracle of Delphi that, during all the ages
when the oracle commanded the real reverence of Greece, the place
in which it was enshrined needed no walls for its defence. The
awful grandeur of its natural situation, the majesty of its Temple,
were sufficient. Its fortifications, as useless as they were un
seemly, were built only in that disastrous time when the ancient
feeling of faith had decayed, and the oracle was forced to rely on
its arm of flesh, on its bulwarks of brick and stone, not on its own
intrinsic sanctity. May God avert this omen from us ! ”—Letter
of Dean Stanley, when Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
to the Bishop of London on the state of Subscription in the
Church of England.
�The Athanasian Creed.
9
An especial objection, however, lies for several reasons
against the Athanasian Creed. Its assertions are not
only open to grave doubt, but are so worded as to be
suggestive of this doubt, while, as though its compilers
were conscious of its untenable assumptions, they have
thought fit to seek to enforce them by the most awful
threats that the human mind could conceive, or human
lips could utter.
That in which the Athanasian differs from the
Apostles’ and the Nicene creeds consists in the
elaborate definitions which it puts forth as to the con
stitution of the Divine Nature, and the anathema it
hurls against those who either will not or cannot
accept its statements. Now it has been said in praise
of Christianity that, as a religion, it won the willing
allegiance of its votaries and made its conquests by love
while Mahomedanism adopted the opposite principle
of compulsion and violence, and made many of its
conversions at the sword’s point. But surely a church
which adopts the Athanasian Creed as its central sym
bol of Faith cannot be said to work by love. For the
awful threat of everlasting perdition which this Creed
denounces against all who decline to accept its dogmas
is, by the mass of mankind who are weak enough to be
impressed by it, far more to be dreaded than even
temporal death. The latter portions of the Athanasian
Creed deal with doctrinal questions that find expression
also in the Nicene and Apostles’ symbols.
These
matters are understood in different senses by the varied
schools of ‘ High,’ ‘ Low,’ and ‘ Broad ’ Church. The
earlier portions of the Creed, however, deal with spec
ulations concerning the Divine Nature which are not
only most difficult of comprehension, but which, to the
few minds that should attempt this task, would open a
field for abstruse and interminable discussion. To
demand a belief in this creed is thus virtually to
demand from the members of the Church of England
an assertion of knowledge of that which is unknow
�IO
The Athanasian Creed.
able ! Men may thoughtlessly make this confession,
but they cannot afterwards comply with the Apostolic
injunction of ‘ giving to him that asketh a reason of
the hope that is in them,’ and on the same ground
that they have accepted the statements of this creed,
they may, in all logical consistency, accept the Romish
Sacrament of the Mass. Of late years this further step
has been repeatedly taken.
The Extra Scriptural Character of the Athanasian
Creed.
In the Church of England the Holy Scriptures are
made the ultimate test of Eaith. 1 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 Eaith.’—6th Article of Church of England
Prayer Booh. In the 8th article, which ordains the
use and belief of the three creeds, it is asserted ‘ that
they may be proved by most certain warrants of
scripture.’ The proof, however, is not given, and men
are thrown back upon their own efforts to find it.
Apologists have not been wanting who have endeavoured
to set forth such scripture proof as they could find, but
this has ever been miserably insufficient, and passage
after passage of the sacred writings has been wrested
from its proper meaning in order to furnish it. The
doctrine of the Trinity, which this creed aims to
establish, was only formulated as an article of religious
faith some centuries after the New Testament was
penned. It was for the express purpose of supplying
this want of Biblical authority, and providing at least
one scripture sanction for the doctrine of the Trinity,
that the celebrated verse of the three witnesses was
interpolated in the 1st Epistle of John. But the fraud
has been detected, and valuable as its evidence could
have been made to appear on behalf of the threefold
being of God, even the committee of Revisionists have,
�The Athanasian Creed.
11
it is currently reported, made full surrender of it, and
with its absence, the doctrine of the Trinity rests
entirely upon the foundation of church authority, and
loses all clear, and definite, and undoubted scripture
proof. This is freely admitted by some of the leaders
of thought among the church clergy, especially those
of the High or Sacramental school. Dr Irons in his
little book, 1 The Bible and its Interpreters,’ has the
following observations :—
11 Let any one look at the Scripture proofs alleged
for the trinity. The expression, ‘ three persons in
one God,’ appears not in Scripture. The text con
cerning ‘ three that bear record in heaven,’ has been
much doubted; and no one could rest proof of the
trinity on a suspected verse not found in ancient
manuscripts. It becomes then a necessary work of
labour to bring together the texts which appear, on the
whole, to suggest the threefold nature of the Godhead.
During this examination, there arise texts of a contrary
kind, at least in appearance; e.g., ‘No man knoweth
of that Day,’—(words of Christ himself speaking of
the day of Judgment,) ‘ no, not the Son, but only the
father.’ Upon this, the Arian has asked, Is the son
equal to the father ? ’ Again, if, strictly, he and the
father ‘ are one’ where is the sonship ? if in some
sense ‘the father is greater than the son,’ where is
the Unity and Equality ? Of course there are orthodox
explanations of such texts. The Oneness is in the
Divinity or ‘Substance,’ the distinction lies in the
‘Persons;’ and so on. But these are not Bible ex
planations. ... We have no doubt whatever that the
church’s doctrine of the trinity is the Doctrine of
Holy Scripture, but we say that the church alone
proves it to be there. Look solemnly at the New
Testament, and see whether you might not, if you
went purely by your own judgment, arrive at a
different doctrine of the trinity from ours ? ”
This is a candid admission of the large room there
�12
The Athanasian Creed.
is for a different view to be taken of this abstruse
subject than that set forth in the Athanasian creed.
If the creed be so obscurely expressed in the Scriptures,
which alone are recognised as the fount and sanction
of religious truth, that the uninstructed Z/zy-mind
cannot find it there, surely the-church goes a long way
too far when it finds not only the items of the creed
to be therein stated, but also the threat of everlasting
perdition against all who will not accept them. The
truth is that the Athanasian creed is, to a large extent,
extra scriptural; is the product of thought-currents
which arose outside the pale of Biblical literature, and
which, in their course and progress, have only imparted
to it a slight and adventitious tinge.
Origin
of the
Creed.
This it is easy to trace to the efforts of the KeoPlatonic schools of Alexandria to find some precise
and satisfactory definition of the nature and being of
God. The Religious Systems of the Eastern world were
in Plato’s era dominated by conceptions of the purely
spiritual nature of God that were altogether foreign
and unacceptable to the tone of Western thought.
Here God was personified, conceived of and worshipped
as though he bore a human form, while in the East,
the more imaginative order of mind that there pre
vailed, regarding all forms of matter as being inherently
and essentially vile, fashioned speculations as to the
immaterial nature of God. This pure Being, they
held, could not come into contact with matter, even
for the purpose of creating and forming the world, so
this, they thought, had to be done by a secondary and
inferior God. Out of the essence of the Pure Spirit,
therefore, they conceived of emanations being evolved
termed ‘ JEons/ and from these sprung other and still
inferior beings, till at length evil spirits were produced.
One of the chief of these 2Eons, proceeding immediately
�The Athanasian Creed.
13
from the Divine essence, viz., the ‘first-born’ or ‘only
begotten’ of God, was the embodiment, or, in the
earlier stages of the conception, the personification of
Divine Wisdom, the ‘Logos,’ ‘ Word,’ or Deason of the
divine mind. This Being, it was held, made the
world, and was the actual Creator, and thus stood
midway, as it were, between its vileness and the divine
purity. Such was the position occupied by Mithras
in the Persian religion; by the ‘Logos’ in Plato’s
philosophy; by ‘Memra’ or ‘Wisdom’ among the
Jews, and the impress of this thought is plainly to be
discerned in the commencing verses of the Fourth
Gospel, and in the formularies of the Athanasian creed.
The difficulty was how to conceive of God without
degrading Him by our imperfect conceptions. In the
Eastern religions, the idea of a pure and pervading
spirit practically sublimated the idea of God into airy
nothingness. Such a Deity was practically inconceiv
able by the human mind, and unapproachable by the
thought of human worship. An unknowable God came
very near to an actual negation of God, and Pantheism
was scarcely to be distinguished from Atheism. On
the other hand, the anthropomorphic ideas of the
early Jews, were scarcely less degrading and idolatrous
than the idol worship of Egypt, and Greece and Pome,
and the problem to be considered, was how to find
some intermediate conception of Deity, which should
avoid extreme vagueness on the one hand, and gross
crudeness on the other.
Aboutfour hundred years before the Christian Era Plato
grappled with this difficulty, and attempted to frame an
intelligent conception of Deity. “ It is difficult,” he says,
in his dialogue the Timaeus, “to discover God, and when
found it is impossible to make him known to the
vulgar,” so he set forth his conception that the Godhead
was of threefold character, or presented three aspects to
our thought, viz., the Father or the Good One(nATHP
or ArA0O2): the Wisdom or Word or Worldmaking
�14
The Athanasian Creed.
God, (the Aoros, or AHMIOYPros); and the spirit
or soul of the world (YYXH rou KO2MOY), concep
tions which, developing through centuries of speculative
thought, became eventually embodied in the scholastic
theology of the third and fourth centuries of our era as the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost of the Christian Trinity.
It would be far too foreign to our present under
taking to trace these conceptions through the neo
platonic schools of Alexandria, thence into the Hebrew
Apocrypha and even into the Hebrew Canon, and so
*
into the realm of Jewish thought. Suffice it to say that,
under the influence of this philosophy, the Jews, in
the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era,
gave up their old ideas of Jehovah as a being in human
form, who walked in the garden with Adam, and
visited Noah, and dined with Abraham, and conversed
with Moses, and they said now, that it was ‘the
Memra or Angel, or Messenger or personified wisdom
of God that did this ; and just before the Christian era,
a learned Jew, Philo of Alexandria, wrote copious
commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures, explaining all
the divine manifestations there recorded by the aid of
Plato’s ‘Logos,’ or intermediate, or secondary God.
This bent of Philo’s thought is well shewn in the
following extracts from one of his treatises, ‘ De Confusione Linguarum,’ or the Confusion of Languages,
* See as an illustration of this the 8th chapter of the Book of
Proverbs (written about the era B.C. 250) where wisdom is thus
spoken of as a Divine personality having only a confused identity
with God.
‘ I Wisdom dwell with prudence and find out knowledge of witty
inventions. Counsel is mine and sound wisdom. I love them
that love me, and they that seek me early shall find me. Jehovah
possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth
was. When He prepared the Heavens I was there, when he set a
compass upon the face of the deep, there was I by Him as one
brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always
before Him.
‘ Whoso findeth me findeth life and shall obtain the favour o
Jehovah.’
�The Athanasian Creed.
15
stated to have occurred among the builders of the
Tower of Babel.
“ The statement,” he says, “ The Lord went down to
see that city and that tower, must be listened to
altogether as if spoken in a figurative sense, for to think
that the Divinity can go towards, or go from, or go
down, or go to meet, is an impiety, ... all places
are filled at once by God, to whom alone it is
possible to be everywhere and also nowhere. Nowhere,
because He himself created place and space . . . The
‘ Divine,’ being both invisible and incomprehensible, is
indeed everywhere, but still in truth is nowhere visible
or comprehensible.” {Bohn's Edition, Vol. II., p. 29).
According to Plato the ‘Logos,’ or secondary God,
shared the moral nature as well as partook of the
physical attributes of Deity. In a passage of his
‘ Epinomis ’ he says “ The Logos or Word, divine above
all other Beings, fashioned and rendered the heavenly
bodies conspicuous in their various revolutions. This
being, a happy man will principally reverence, while
he may be stimulated by the desire of learning what
ever is within the compass of human understanding;
being convinced that he will thus enjoy the greatest
felicity in this life, and that after death he will
be translated into regions that are congenial to
virtue.”
Philo is evidently imbued with the same idea, and as
in his age a high estimate was cherished of the moral
nature of God, so this character is also imparted by him
to his conception of the ‘ Logos,’ or personified wisdom
of God. In the treatise above alluded to Philo says,
that “they who have real knowledge of God are
properly called ‘ sons of God,’ and that elsewhere
Moses so entitles them; ” and then he adds;—
“ Accordingly it is natural for those who have this
(virtuous) disposition of soul to look upon nothing as
beautiful except what is good.................. And even if
there be not as yet any one who is worthy to be called
�16
The Athanasian Creed.
a son of God, nevertheless let him labour earnestly to
be adorned according to His first-born Word (Logos),
the eldest of His angels, as the great archangel of many
names ; for He is called ‘ the authority ’ and ‘ the
name . of God, and ‘the Word/ (Logos) and ‘man
according to God’s image’ and ‘He who sees Israel.’
For even if we are not yet suitable to be called the
‘ sons of God/ still we may deserve to be called the
children of His eternal image, of His most sacred Word
(Logos,) for the image of God is His most sacred Word.”
(Bohris Edition of Philo, Vol. II., p. 31).
Such were the prevailing thought-currents of Jewish
teaching just antecedent to the Christian era. Paul,
we know, was early instructed in the wisdom of the
Jewish schools, learning it at the feet of Eabbi
Gamaliel, the grandson of the celebrated Hillel, who
was the friend and relation of Philo. Dr Heim in his
‘Jesus of Hazara/ tells us, “ that the teachings of both
Hillel and Gamaliel were tinged with Philonism ; and
that from this time forward, every material image of
God in the Old Testament, such as the mention of
His countenance, His mouth, His eye, His hand, &c.,
were carefully converted into conceptions of the divine
glory, of the indwelling presence of the Logos or Word
of God.”
As the Jewish conception of the Messiah became
more. spiritualised in its character, so it became
associated with this conception of the Logos or Divine
Word. The mind of Jesus was devotional rather than
metaphysical, practical, not speculative. These recon
dite controversies and theories exercised but small
influence upon his teaching, and possibly he knew but
little of their existence. It was very different with
Paul, whose education was steeped in Jewish tradition.
He never knew Jesus in the flesh, but he accepted
him as the spiritual Messiah, as being one with the
Logos or Divine Word. Hence the phraseology which
Philo so largely applied to the Logos, Paul applies to
�TJoe Nthanasian Creed.
Christ calls him ‘ the image of the invisible God,’
4 the first-born of every creature/ says that 4 all things
exist by him.’ 4 The Apostle Paul/ says Dr Keim, 4 a
disciple of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, was essentially
imbued with Alexandrine ideas, which he has evidently
transferred to the heart of Christianity in his teaching
concerning Christ.’ {Jesus of Nazara, Col. I. pp. 292,
293—translation').
In the commencement of the Fourth Gospel, we
have these ideas carried a step further. There we read
that 44 the Word (4 Logos’) was in the beginning, was
with God, and was God,” 44 that the world was made by
him,” and finally, that 44 the 4 Logos’ or Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory as
of the only begotten of the Father.” From this period
there commenced a controversy in the Christian Church
respecting the relation in which Jesus stood to God, or
in other words, the position which the Son held with
regard to the Father, whether he was the equal, or
in any sense the inferior. In the fourth century this
controversy blazed with fierce bitterness, and interested
all classes of society. Arius championed the subordin
ate character of the Son, and Athanasius, a rival Bishop,
asserted his full equality with the Father, as a proper
part of the Godhead. The result was that a council
of bishops was convened at Nicsea in Bithynia, at
which the Emperor Constantine presided, and Athan
asius assisted as secretary, when, after a fierce, and
stormy, and protracted disputation, the Athanasian
party triumphed, and the Nicene creed, asserting the
co-equality of the Son with the Father, was compiled.
Here, too, the Holy Ghost was invested with a distinct
personality, and the doctrine of the Trinity fully
*
formulated.
Not till three centuries after this period
was the creed, that in the Book of Common Prayer is
* For the fuller elucidation of this subject,_ see a Pamphlet
by the present writer published in Mr Scott’s series, “Plato, Philo,
and Paul.”
B
�The Athanasian Creed.
ascribed to Athanasius, known to the church, and it
was then introduced in a Latin form: Athanasius
having been a Greek bishop speaking and writing in
that tongue! In the Athanasian creed, however, the
doctrines of the Deity of Christ, and of the triune
character of the Godhead, are asserted with such
emphatic and minute delineation, that few thoughtful
men, who know the fierce, and violent, and abstruse
controversies out of which these formularies sprung,
can now accept them as full, and complete, and un
doubted statements of eternal fact, much less are they
prepared to breathe the terrible malediction which this
creed calls upon them to pronounce against all who
refuse to accept its statements.
Gibbon, in reviewing the history of the times, just
prior to the Nicene council, when these controversies
with regard to the constituents of the Godhead were so
prevalent, states that “ the most sagacious of Christian
theologians, the great Athanasius himself, has candidly
confessed that, whenever he forced his understanding
to meditate on the divinity of the Logos, his toilsome
and unavailing efforts recoiled on themselves ; that the
more he thought, the less he apprehended; and the
more he wrote, the less capable was he of expressing
his thoughts.” This uncertainty, however, did not hinder
Athanasius and his party from dogmatically assert
ing their views and assuming for themselves a virtual
infallibility by persecuting all opponents in this world,
and condemning them to eternal perdition in the next!
Perplexed as were many of the advocates of the
Athanasian dogmas as to the correctness of their own
formularies, there were many who could not in any
sense receive them, and those who did receive them,
understood them in such various senses, that little or
no uniformity of opinion prevailed. Hilary, Bishop of
Poitiers, who lived at this period and wrote twelve
books in defence of the Trinity, writes as follows :—
11 It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous, that
�The Athanasian Creed.
19
there are as many creeds as opinions among men, as
many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of
blasphemy, as there are faults among us, because we make
creeds arbitrarily, and explain them as arbitrarily.
The partial or total resemblance of the Father and of
the Son, is a subject of dispute for these unhappy times,
Every year, nay every moon, we make new creeds to
describe invisible mysteries. We repent of what we
have done, we defend those who repent, we anathe
matize those whom we defended. We condemn either
the doctrines of others in ourselves, or our own in that,
of others : and reciprocally tearing one another to
pieces we have been the cause of each other’s ruin.”
(Jlilariusad Constantinum, quoted by Gibbon, ch. 21.)
*
It is impossible in the limited space of a pamphlet,
to give more than the faintest indications of the abstruse
speculations, the confused thought, and the fierce
dogmatic strife out of which the formularies of the
Athanasian creed were evolved. As the creed of the
dark ages, it served possibly the useful purpose of
quieting a strife of thought that was trampling real
piety underfoot, and ended a controversy for which the
intelligence of the age was wholly unfitted, and which
had already gone very far into the realm of wild and
heated imagination. Through the long centuries in
which the asserted infahibility of the Church of Eome
kept the thoughts of men dormant, these fossilized
results of the early speculative controversies were com
paratively innocuous. But these were times of ignor
ance and spiritual serfdom, and to-day we live in an
age of intelligence, and of asserted spiritual freedom.
Christ’s religion has to-day reached to a richer fulness
of growth, and worship, to be acceptable to God or
* A namesake of Hilary’s who lived in the succeeding century,
has been credited by Dr. Waterland, with the authorship of the
Athanasian creed. This, however, is more generally ascribed to
Vigilius of Tapsus, who lived half-a-century later. Its first
appearance, however, is in the Services of the Gallican church, at
the close of the seventh century.
�20
The Athanasian Creed.
useful to man, must be offered 1 in spirit and in truth ! ’
The creed we repeat to-day should represent the highest
attainable truth, and the worshipper’s deepest and most
assured convictions. If it does not do this, it is an
empty mockery, and if it neither represents the con
victions of the worshipper, nor the truth of God, its
utterance becomes a blasphemy. Fallible men may
fall into sincere errors, but it is needless wilfulness on
their part to assert the tremendous judgments of heaven
against all who refuse to endorse them. To those who
know the origin and history of the speculative proposi
tions of the Athanasian creed, its acceptance as a
summary of revealed truth becomes increasingly difficult,
while those who have no knowledge here, and who are
simply bewildered by the ponderous perplexities of its
statements, and wonder how, if God did not reveal
them, man could have ever come to imagine them;
even these who might be willing to constrain them
selves to a formal acceptance of the creed as a state
ment of Divine incomprehensibilities on which they
were unable to fashion any opinion of their own,
would yet, if they exercised any thought at all, shrink
from endorsing those damnatory clauses that consigned
unbelievers in these incomprehensibilities, to an eternal
and hopeless doom.
The tendency, however, of the compulsory and
habitual use in public worship of complex and abstruse
formularies on questions concerning which it is im
possible for the human mind to frame any intelligent
convictions; for which implicit belief is demanded,
and from which thoughtful criticism is warned, is to
render such worship formal and insincere. The mind
which, by habit and custom, is deadened to the deform
ities that mark its utterances, is also deadened and
unimpressed by the beauties and the truths which this
worship also speaks. The ear which is attuned to
enjoy the grand harmonies of music, cannot endure to
listen to notes of jarring discord, is inexpressibly
pained by these ; so the eye trained to appreciate forms
�The Athanasian Creed.
2I
of beauty, cannot look with complacency upon the dis
tortions of ugliness, is inexpressibly pained by false
principles of art; and the taste is only healthy when
it is thus sensitive. So worship that can tolerate the
recitation of the Athanasian creed has lost all the
healthy and living spirit which true worship should
possess. It is a poor apology to say that the worship
pers in our churches are often better than the creeds
which they repeat, for it is true only in a very limited
sense. The damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed
are cruel and ferocious, while the people who repeat
them, are kind and gentle; would not willingly harm
a brute beast, much less utter sentence of eternal
damnation against an immortal soul! But in another
and a more important sense, these people are much
worse than the creed which they repeat. This creed
at least has the virtue of being open and honest, of
meaning what it says ; but the people who glibly pro
fess a belief in it which they do not at heart feel, and
which they never think of realising to their thought,
are not open and honest, but are mean, and pitiful, and
insincere. These men are not better but worse, much
worse than their creed, and they receive to themselves
greater damnation than that which they denounce
upon others. Worship of which antiquated and tradi
tional creeds are made to form an essential part, soon
becomes mere formal worship, and those who habitu
ally take part in services of this kind, increasingly lose
the faculty of real and true worship, and words of
hope, and assurance, and penitence, and trust, fall as
thoughtlessly from their lips, as do the denunciations
which they heedlessly utter. They say, “The Lord
is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” but in their hearts
they do not feel the beautiful trust this language ex
presses, for they do not mean this either; they are
unmindful of what it is they do say, their heart is not
in their words, so their worship brings no strength, and
imparts no blessing. Such are the dangers consequent
upon giving a thoughtless credence to the Athanasian
�22
The Athanasian Creed.
Creed, and of uttering, as meaningless sounds, the
terrible denunciations which it breathes. Well would
it be if, ere they consented to do this, men would ponder
on the truly Christian spirit which breathes in Pope’s
1 Universal Prayer/
“ Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume Thy bolts to throw,
Or deal damnation round the land
On each, I judge Thy foe.”
Again this theological condemnation which marks
the public worship of the church of England sets un
consciously a very evil example. The profane language
of the streets, the swearing and cursing that there so
often offend our ears, and that constitute the customary
language of the drunken and dissipated, are indirectly
learned and imitated from the public cursing of our
churches, and while the evil habit is fostered by the
church, it will be almost impossible to eradicate it from
the masses of the people. Church cursing was the
origin of street swearing, and the terrible and offensive
adjectives with which some classes of society disfigure
their common talk, are merely theological phrases translated into the vulgar tongue. Disguise it as you may in
the conventional language of the church, if there be any
meaning to be attached to the threat of everlasting perdi
tion the common mind will come to see that it breathes
the reverse of a loving spirit, and that it is rather the
embodiment of the most cruel and malignant hatred.
Scarcely less edifying is the attempt which some
clergymen make to explain this creed in a non-natural
sense, and to make it imply the reverse of what it
plainly says. Such explanations carry dishonesty and
insincerity on their very face. And the public see
and feel this, so that the moral sanctions of society are
weakened, and truthfulness and sincerity are seen tobe least regarded in the place where, of all others, they
should be most highly reverenced.
“Some of our ablest men,” says Sir John Duke
Coleridge, late Solicitor-General, “ are relinquishing
�The Athanasian Creed.
23
their orders, finding the burden which our documents
impose on the conscience, too great to be borne: manymore, as our bishops tell us, will not undertake them.
Many sign these documents, and, at least outwardly
in some sense or other, profess to hold them, whose
real agreement with them must be of the vaguest kind,
and whose whole position is inconsistent with a
delicate sensibility to the claims of simple truth, and a
considerable scandal to those who have such sensibility,
I do not much wonder that a distinguished man told a
public meeting the other day, that he believed our
public morality and our national sense of truth and
honour, had suffered seriously from our system of im
posing religious tests to an extent which rendered
evasion of them practically necessary.” (From a Paper
on “ The Freedom of Opinion necessary in an Established
Church in a Free Country.” Macmillan's Magazine,
March 1870.)
The Church of a country should be beyond the barest
suspicion of insincerity or falsehood. The Church of
England however by the maintenance of the Athan
asian Creed in her public services, or as the pillar and
ground of her faith, is placed on the horns of a most
awkward dilemma. Either her ministers believe this
creed, and, so doing, profess and teach a religion
which does rude violence to any conception of
Christianity which would entitle it to be regarded as
the Gospel of a God of love;—or they do not believe
it in its plain natural sense, in which case they set a
sad example of insincerity to the nation.
Well might Archbishop Tillotson say of this creed
that “ he wished the Church were well rid of it.” And
since his day many of the highest minds among the
clergy have either tacitly or openly endorsed his desire.
The first use which the newly emancipated Irish Church
has made of the partial freedom with which she has
found herself invested has been to successfully protest
against the continued use of the damnatory clauses,
�24
The Athanasian Creed.
and the welfare and stability of the Church of England
is largely dependent on her speedily following so
excellent an example.
It would be very easy to quote a large number of
clerical protests against the assumption of infallibility
which this creed asserts, as well as against the specu
lative propositions it contains. In a speech in the
House of Lords on subscription, a late Bishop of
Norwich, Dr Stanley, spoke as follows, “Let me ask,
deliberately and solemnly, whether there is a single
clergyman living who believes that every individual
not keeping whole and undefiled the Catholic faith as
it is minutely defined and analysed in the Athanasian
Creed, ‘without doubt shall perish everlastingly’”?
and after pointing out the hundreds of millions of
human beings whom the anathema of this creed includes
and condemns, he adds “ I repeat solemnly that I
never met with a single clergyman who believed this
in the literal sense of the words, and for the honour of
human nature and Christianity, I trust that not one lives
in our enlightened age who would deliberately avow
that such was his belief!!
We have seen that this creed, so far as its intricate
speculations on the Divine Personality are concerned,
is extra-scriptural, that its origin lies in the thought
currents of so-called heathen faiths. We have shewn
its gradual growth and have glanced at the fierce con
troversies amid which it was finally, though far from
unanimously, formulated. And by so doing we have
set forth the large and reasonable ground that exists
for questioning and disputing its dogmatic positions.
Never has its represented the universal faith of Christ
endom, never has it won the general assent of the
clergy or laity of the English Church. Erom the days
of Tillotson downwards it has been an increasing rock
of offence, till at length it threatens to make complete
shipwreck of the church. The time has therefore fully
come, if not for its total abandonment at least for the
�The Athanasian Creed.
25
removal of its most obnoxious clauses. It may live as
a curious specimen of antique theology, but no authority
should enforce its recitation, and the removal of its
damnatory assertions would then go far to render it a
harmless as well as an antique formulary. At present
however it keeps the best and truest minds of
the country out of the ministry of the Church
of England, and it drives not a few of the laity into
open revolt against the church’s public services:
while those who do take orders, and bind themselves
to the acceptance of this extravagant formulary, do, by
so doing, taint themselves with insincerity and dis
parage their office in the public sight.
The Houses of Parliament however share largely in
the responsibility, for the creed is used by virtue of
their sanction and authority. It is therefore time for
them to act with promptness and with firmness ; it is
their duty to call upon the Church authorities to
remove this stumbling-block from the path of a true
religious freedom; to memorialise the Queen as the
legal Head of the Church to effect at least this small
measure of Church Reform, by directing the Houses of
Convocation to take this creed into their consideration,
and to make such modifications in the rubric which
relates to its public recitation, as shall effectually
remove the scandal it now constitutes.
The Athanasian Creed is no true or proper repre
sentative of Christianity, the fundamental essence of
which lies not in abstruse speculations regarding the
being and constitution of God, but in living a pure
and godly life; in catching the spirit and obeying the
teachings of Christ. Christianity is not a creed but a
life, not belief but duty. Those who are led by the
Spirit of God are the true sons of God.
“ The Divine life of the Gospels, which is the centre
of almost all modern religious speculations, must be that
by which, in the last resort, Christianity will stand or fall.
Dr Wette, the most honest, critical and keen-sighted
�2'6
The Athanasian Creed.
of commentators, has said, ‘The Historical Person of
Christ is the one unchangeable element in Christianity.’
Dean Milman has said at the close of his masterly
survey of the first fifteen centuries of the church, 1 as itis my confident belief that the words of Christ and His
alone, the primal indefeasible truths of Christianity,
shall not pass away, so I cannot presume to say that
men may not attain to a clearer and at the same time
more full and comprehensive and balanced sense of
those words than has yet been generally received in the
Christian world.” (‘ The Theology of the 19/A Century ’
by Dean Stanley. See Fraser’s Magazine, February
1865.)
“ The words that I speak unto you they are spirit
and they are life.” These, and not the formulated
creeds of churches, which expressing often the heated
fancies of one age do violence to the calmer and clearer
thought of subsequent times,—these are the true founda
tions of the Christian Church, for men of most varied
thought can reach without difficulty to a general agree
ment here. The great moral principles that should
govern and regulate the conduct of human life come as
matters of instinctive perception to all, so that when
these are made the fundamentals of a Christian faith it
becomes an easy matter for ‘ all sorts and conditions of
men,’ ‘ to profess and call themselves Christians,’ and
the doors of the Christian Church are then as widely
open as are the gates of God’s Heaven.
TURNBULL AND SPEAKS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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The Athanasian Creed: a plea for its disuse in the public worship of the national church
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Text
ß ¿ ¿¿ 9
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
ANCIENT CREEDS.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SUNDAY
AFTERNOON, 23rd JANUARY, 1876.
BY
De. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.,
tßne ofthe Lecturers in H,M. Lepajtnient of Science and Art,
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
1876.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Definition of terms : ‘'Spontaneous” and “Creed.”-
Constituent elements in Humanity.
Mind and Matter. Imagination and Reason.
Superstition and Knowledge. Ignorance and Faith.
Intellect and Morals. Emotions and Convictions.
Analogy between Chemical and Intellectual Com
binations and Dissolutions.
Religious Reforms. Brahminism and Buddhism.
Magism and Zoroastrianism. Hesiod’s Theogony
and Greek Philosophy. Judaism and Christianity.
Religiousness and Irreligiousness.
St. Paul and St. John.
Christ’s Christianity.
Christian Unchristianity.
The Historical development of Religion based on
Reason and Science.
Polytheism, Anthropomorphism, Anthropopatism,
Acosmism, and Atheism.
Conclusion.
�THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
OF
ANCIENT CREEDS.
LL philosophers of ancient and modern times
agree that words are the principal instru
ments of thoughts. A correct knowledge and use
of these instruments alone can secure for us pro
fitable results of reasoning as the principal aim of
philosophy. I intend to discuss the Spontaneous
Dissolution of Ancient Creeds from an entirely ob
jective point of view. In this sentence there are
two words which I must beg you to accept in the
sense in which I intend to use them. I do not
mean to apply the word “ spontaneous ” colloquially
as something li sudden,” but scientifically as some
thing “ acting, by its own inherent energy, accord
ing to a natural law.” A spontaneous dissolution
will, therefore, be a dissolution to be traced to the
inherent constituent elements of the different creeds,
as the result of a natural law, according to which
antagonistic particles must dissolve in time so soon
as they lose the cause or force of cohesion. By the
word “ creed,” I do not signify “a summary of the
articles of the Christian faith,” but “ any system
of dogmas which is prescribed as necessary to be
believed, or, at least, to be professed.” In a former
Lecture I endeavoured to trace the influence of
natural phenomena on the formation of the different
A
�4
The Spontaneous Dissolution
religious systems or creeds. Nature in its infinity,
and man in his finiteness, are then the two princi
pal elements from which the different creeds of all
times have sprung; that is, from the very begin
ning of man’s consciousness, his notions con corning
the world, its Creator, and himself, spring from
two utterly antagonistic sources.
Man is formed of matter and endowed with mind,
This must be also the case with the whole universe.
Matter is acted upon by an inherent spirit, mani
festing itself as law—the law of causation, which
pervades space, wherever matter is existent, which
.assumes in time different shapes and forms. The
further constituent elements in humanity are man’s
utter helplessness as a single individual, and the
necessity that he should enter into a social bond
with his fellow-creatures, to render his existence as
an individual a possibility.
To make the existence of a collective social state
possible, man must submit to laws equally binding
on all. Exercising his in-born intellectual power,
man will frame such laws to facilitate the existence
both of the detached individual and of a collection of
individuals, brought together by geographical posi
tion, voluntary or forced influences, over which the
individual, as such, has little or no control. The
laws so framed are in all cases revealed; not re
vealed directly by the mouth of the Divinity, or by
some supernatural agent, but by that self-conscious
ness which, in its turn, is the result of man’s material
«organisation.
This brings us once more to the never-ending dis
cussion of mind and matter. History illustrates most
distinctly the fact that in humanity, as in electricity,
there are elements which will be negative, or positive,
or static, and dynamic. Neither the negative nor the
positive electricity, however, predominates by itself,
�of Ancient Creeds.
5
nor does a machine exist exclusively constructed on
the dynamic or static principle. A proper balance
between the two forces alone will produce action
and reaction, motion and resistance. What is static in
electricity or in a machine is moral in humanity—a
stationary element. Absolute morality, if there be
such a thing, can only be one and the same from
eternity to eternity. Relative morality may vary
with the intellectual “ plus ” or “ minus ” in man’s
social development; but “ wrong,” as wrong can only
be one in an absolute sense, and must be “ wrong ”
in all times under all circumstances. So it is with
virtue. To the philosopher “ murder ” is murder,
whether perpetrated by a single individual to satisfy
his passion, or by an army wholesale for the glory
of a nation; though relatively war, or wholesale
murder, pillaging, robbing and ravaging may be
excused under certain circumstances, and even de
serve a bright monument. To draw a sharp distinc
tion between the absolute and the relative in dialec
tics is of the very utmost importance. Absolute
morality can only be one immutable, unchangeable
element, which renders the existence of humanity
as such possible. This existence would be impossible
if theft, murder, and adultery were allowed. We
trace thus in humanity the existence of one con
stituent—a static element—morals.
The next element will be intellect—a pushing,
dynamic force, ever-changing, ever-growing, ever
varying ; to-day different from what it was yester
day, building up slowly the mighty temples of
science and art, to which every one may contribute,
consciously or even unconsciously, a small pebble or a
few grains of sand to form cement; whilst some place
the huge corner-stones, others raise a flag-staff on a
lofty spire from which a bright banner, floating in
the air, shows whence the cosmical wind blows.
�6
The Spontaneous Dissolution
These banner-bearers only become possible when
every-day working men have dug the foundations,
collected materials, mixed the mortar, heaped up
stones, constructed the edifice, and crowned it with
spires. All work according to the plan of the
grand, invisible, and still, through man’s intellectual
power, ever-present architect, who, in endowing
humanity with self-conscious intellect, ordained its
use to be continuous, leading to a correct application,
of morals by an understanding of the aim and pur
pose of humanity in its component individual
particles.
The process of constructing the progressive intel
lectual development of humanity underwent dif
ferent phases according as imagination or reason
predominated. Both are merely faculties of our
intellect; the one engendering superstition and
religious creeds, the other science and art. The
primary constituent elements begin to be subdivided,
and in their subdivision we find the first germs of
confusion, but also of activity, of action and reac
tion. Those who, by their superior intellectual
consciousness, assume the lead of humanity, begin
to be divided into two divergent groups, each
assuming that man has only to cultivate one of its
constituent elements.
The moralists presume that, with their superior
intellectual power, they have found out for eternity
the laws according to which man may be best
induced to be virtuous. They proclaim him to be
conceived in wrath, created full of wickedness and
sin, and propound that ignorance is his birthright
and faith in the system of the creeds, which they
have worked out in the name of the Divinity, his
only salvation. They pronounce the innate spirit of
inquiry to be of evil, wish us blindly to abide by
certain formulae, separate morals from intellect,
�of Ancient Creeds,
7
mind from matter, the static element from the
dynamic, and hinder the progress of our social
development, which they try to limit or altogether
to check by their dictates. . The despotic sway of
these dictates they deny, for they consider that
their wish to promote the welfare of humanity onesidedly palliates everything they say or do. They
create the first terrible rent in humanity by arbitra
rily separating the component parts of our spiritual
and material existence; they devote themselves to
the exclusive culture of morals and foster an inor
dinate contempt for intellect. The division is
brought about by their remaining stationary, and
ignoring the dynamic force as one of the compo
nent and indispensable elements in human nature.
Wherever this happens, superstition is fostered, and
knowledge is only so far promoted as it will serve
the general superstition. Faith will be exalted
as the best tool with which blind ignorance can be
made subservient to the system of an incredible
creed. Intellect will be looked down upon as of evil.
Morals in the garb of set dogmas thus often become
the greatest immorality, for they promote hypocrisy,
cowardice, and voluntary stupidity. Emotions are
excited, but convictions are silenced. Happily this
is a condition of humanity bearing the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its unnatural and one
sided attempts.
In analysing a drop of water we know it to be
a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Add to it
any other element, and the water loses its purity.
Take only hydrogen by itself, it may burn, but it is
not water without oxygen. Taking man as a mere
essence of morals, we have as unreal a being as a
mere essence of intellect would be. As purely moral
or intellectual he might be an angel, an imponderable
something, but not man, who is formed of dissoluble
�8
The Spontaneous "Dissolution
matter, endowed with mind. This mind is often
assumed to be an entity in itself, through itself, for
itself. This may, perhaps, be, but we cannot prove
it; we know only that it exists, thinks, reasons,
directs our motions, our will, in a certain limited
sense, but is nowhere to be found as a separate
entity. It has an analogous nature with electricity
in an electric battery. We have the machine before
us; the proper acids, the metallic elements are
there; we hear their working; we take one of the
conductors in our hand—no effect—we take the
other, and we feel the shocks, gradually and with
increasing force, passing through our body. All these
circumstances and combinations were indispensable
for the production of an effect of electricity on our
body. So it is with mind. It is there, under cer
tain circumstances and combinations of the material
elements of which we are formed; disturb these
particles, change their relative proportion or quan
tity and quality, and you have an explanation for
our different moral and intellectual faculties. Mind
is not a cause, but an effect—absolutely, it must
exist in the universe and pervade it as well as elec
tricity—relatively, it requires certain conditions,
under which it will alone come into entity and
activity. If mind be directed one-sidedly, it will
become superstition; if filled with mere emotions,
it will be driven to madness and engender ghost-seers,
spirit-rappers, ritualists, and lunatics; if left unin
structed, it will believe anything, and can be brought,
through a long training, to such a state that it will
look upon those who are anxious to enlighten or to
instruct it as its sworn enemies; hate, persecute,
murder, burn, and crucify them. Still, just as in the
external world, continuous combinations and dissolu
tions take place, forming the different phenomena, as
air, heat, water, minerals, metals, plants, animals,
�of Ancient Creeds,
9.
and human beings, so an intellectual process of the"
mind, forming and undoing religious systems andscientific theories, has been in operation since the ■
first dawn of human consciousness.
That this is the case no honest and unbiassedi
student of history can deny. The most spiritual
elements in humanity are the different religious
systems, by their very nature treating mostly of the
unknown and unknowable; and still, though every
one of them has been proclaimed as the direct or in
direct dictate of the Supreme Being, every one had
in the course of time to undergo changes, modifica
tions, to enter into different combinations, or to dis
solve into its component parts under the action of
the voltaic battery of intellect. All religions are
composed of certain elements, partly acting on our
moral, emotional, and partly on our intellectual
nature. All religions take their origin in the
natural tendency of the human mind to explain the
surrounding phenomena of nature, and to assign to
man his destiny, not only in this but often also in
another world. Religions originate in man’s imagi
nation, more or less enlightened by knowledge?
whether guided, as some teachers assert, by Divine;
inspiration or revelation, or whether as the mere
result of intellectual effort. The position of thosevwho assume a Divine revelation or inspiration is
very difficult one, and requires an immense amount
of credulity; for history furnishes us with unde
niable proofs that the Divine inspiration and re
velation of one period has often been not only
contradicted but altogether abolished by an equally
Divine inspiration and revelation at another periods
Brahma himself is asserted to have dictated the
Vedas, but he has couched his dictates in so unin
telligible a language that man, with his limited!
intellect, had continually to explain, to correct, and
B
�io
The Spontaneous Dissolution
to comment upon the utterances of the infinite
Spirit. Several times the second person of the
Indian Trinity had to assume the human form to
save humanity from utter destruction, and we may
congratulate ourselves that His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales went to India, because one of the
religious enthusiasts has proclaimed him the last
“ Avatar,” or incarnation of Brahma. We may here
learn, in reading history backwards, how such incar
nations occurred in olden times; how they were
proclaimed by one or several poetical or fanatical
enthusiasts, and how by degrees such proclamations
were believed, and served as the bases of several
Eastern religious creeds.
Manu had in time to step into the world with a
new Code of Laws, which, as well as the Vedas,
were the breath of the Divinity in every chapter,
verse, word, and letter; and Buddha came at a later
period and had to correct again the dictates of
Brahma, and to proclaim, quite in opposition to the
Divinity, that men were not born in different castes,
but that they were all equal. How it could have
happened that the divine Being, in proclaiming His
will through Manu, should have made such a mis
take is perfectly incomprehensible. But the Divi
nity went even further in its incomprehensible
proceedings. For a thousand years the Buddhists
had been worshipping Brahma according to the
dictates of Buddha, who was Brahma himself; they
had constructed temples in honour of that BrahmaBuddha, which, in their splendour and grandeur, are
unsurpassed, and yet in the seventh century after
Christ this very Brahma-Buddha, who taught his
followers a more humane religion, and endowed
them with so much virtue, that they are still,
though the most numerous, the only sect on the
surface of the globe that has not shed one single
�of Ancient Creeds.
11
■ drop of human blood in the propagation of th.eir
faith—this very “ Brahma-Buddha ” allowed these,
his faithful worshippers, to be massacred, and to be
driven from the very birth-place of his divine mis. si on. The same occurred with the Magi and Zoroaster.
The whole religious system of the Magi was pro
claimed by means of the prophet Hom (Homanes),
who was also the great tree of life, the source of all
bliss and prosperity, the first revealer of the word,
the logos; the first teacher of the Magi, of the
learned in the Scriptures and the prophets ; and not
withstanding this another divinely-inspired master
was required to purify and to revise the revelation
of God made through Hom, and to found the
Zoroastrian creed.
In Hesiod we may trace an altogether different
process. The Asiatic gods, who assumed for cer
tain purposes, at certain times, human shape or
form; who, in fact, represented in monstrous con
ceptions the different phenomena of nature, were at
last deprived by Hesiod of their revolting material
and spiritual attributes. They were, for the first
time, represented in human shape by the humane
vand poetical Greek mind. Their beautiful outer
forms led to an elevated conception of their spiritual
. nature, and the Greek gods became mere men and
women endowed with higher bodily and intellectual
. faculties. Through the Greeks, humanity was en
abled to leave the regions of the supernatural and to
embark on the ocean of inquiry, and provided with
the compass of intellect, to make glorious voyages
of discovery in the realms of speculative philosophy,
and to furnish us with the models of rational in
quiry. When the Greeks proclaimed their “ yv^Qe
ffeawo/’—“Know thyself,” man’s spirit became
. conscious of its own self as part of the eternal divine
spirit, but not altogether freed from the fetters of
�12
The Spontaneous Dissolution
outer-fonn. . Intellect with the Greeks was yet
generalised,, and had to take a beautiful form, as
manifested in their immortal works of art; man was
not yet unfettered as pure individual intellect. We
must look for this spiritual development of humanity
elsewhere.
The historical importance of the Jews begins with
their bondage. In misery and wretchedness they
learned their higher aspirations. Their legend about
the creation of man in the image of God and the
forfeiture of his innocence in eating from the tree of
knowledge is a mighty truth, bearing in it all the
elements of future dissolution. For if man was
created in the image of God, why should the gods
have been jealous of Adam becoming as one of them,
“ knowing good and evil ?” With this antithesis the
Jewish misfortune for humanity began. They taught
us to be images of God, to long in boundless eager
ness for that Godhead, and condemned as sinful th iff
very yearning. Mankind had to undergo endless
bodily and intellectual sufferings in consequence of
this decomposing composition of heterogeneous ele
ments, placing reality in eternal opposition to the
ideal. The Jews always hoped to find a Messiah to
reconcile their old oriental antithesis, which they
had in reality borrowed from the Persians and
Egyptians; they always hoped that somebody
would redeem humanity from the fetters of spiritual
darkness or sin. It was clearly felt by the Persians,
as well as by the Jews, that this redemption could
only come through man.
Real religiousness consists in man’s consciousness
of his double attributes and his attempt to bring
harmony into the apparent dissonance of his divine
(intellectual) and human (material or animal)
nature. This pure process must not be disturbed,
interrupted, or checked by any secondary and arbi
�of Ancient Creeds.
13
trary element. Man embodies the eternal divine
spirit only in a transitional phase, that is for a
limited time. During that limited phase he has to
exert all his intellectual and moral powers to pro
mote his own as well as his fellow-creatures’ happi
ness. All those elements that hinder him in this
task through obscure verbiage, revealed and re
revealed incongruities, mystic symbolism, or theolo
gical hair-splitting, are irreligious.
The contradictions in the conception of God, the
transcendent materialism, and the complicated in
comprehensible spiritualism with which Jehovah
was conceived by the Jews; the half-Assyrian and
half-Egyptian mask which he wore—now Osiris, the
redeemer, then again Ahriman, the slayer, the de
stroyer, made him now a mystic tyrant, then again
a partial father. He promised his chosen children
plenty on earth, and many goodly things, and left
them continually in the bondage of the surrounding
Gentiles, who were proclaimed to be his abomina
tion. Now he appears in the Psalms, as in the
strains of the Vedas, to be a God after whom the soul
may thirst to lead us to holiness and righteousness,
then again it is 11 the Lord thy God ” who gives
away the cities of other people, which they built,
the trees which they planted, the wells which they
dug and the vineyards which they cultivated, as an
inheritance to the Jews, and tells them without
cause and reason: “ Thou shalt save alive nothing
that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy them,
namely, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaan
ites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord commanded thee.” And if you
ask for an explanation of the morality of these
enactments, you receive the answer: “the ways of the
Lord are mysterious.” But this is no answer. The
mind of man cannot be satisfied with such replies,
�14
TAe? Spontaneous Dissolution
it finds them in their very mysteriousness irre
ligious.
The marble form of Zeus, in spite of its beauty,
had to give way to a more ideal conception of the
Divinity, and in a similar way the invisible God of
Moses had to assume another shape. Mosaism had
to undergo a reform after having long before divided
the Jews into different sects, who hated one another
with that intense fervour which is the natural out
growth of oppression and long slavery. The records
of the religious system of the Jews were more
favoured than those of the Indians or Egyptians;
for their tenets became sacred not only in the eyes of
the privileged priesthood, that kept all sacred and
profane knowledge to itself, but also in the eyes and
ears of the whole nation. Moses faithfully kept his
promise, and made the Jews “ a nation of priests; ”
in telling them, freed from all symbolism, what
made the Egyptian priesthood so powerful in their
sway over the ignorant masses for thousands of
years, he made every Jew a theologian. Notwith
standing all these advantages, the Hebrew records
had the element of dissolution as a mere formal
creed in them; for the mythic was treated as
historical; phenomenal facts were stated with an
utter ignorance of science, as was only natural in
times in which all sciences were in their infancy, or
as yet unborn. Though the spirit of inquiry was
fettered for centuries, the reform had to come as a
natural sequence of the historical progressive de
velopment of humanity. John the Baptist first
commenced it, Christ followed.
Christ again was followed by the two apostles, St.
Paul and St. John. It is an authenticated fact, that
the canonical writings of the New Testament con
tain different accounts of most important incidents,
and are the outgrowth of mighty minds who could
�of Ancient Creeds.
15
but impress with their powerful individuality what
they wrote. Next followed the Fathers, who did not
content themselves with commenting on Christ’s,
St. Paul’s, or St. John’s teachings, but added dogma
upon dogma, borrowing them from old forgotten
Egyptian mysteries, or from the writings of Greek
philosophers; so that in the course of a few cen
turies, when Christianity became the ruling faith of
the Roman empire, it comprised all the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its heterogenous bor
rowed forms, symbols, dogmas, and articles of
faith.
Christ’s Christianity, the doctrine of love and for
bearance, of humility and self-sacrifice, of common
brotherhood, and the harrowing tragedy of his life
and death, were all turned into symbolic mysteries.
What was simple and intelligible was surrounded by
incomprehensible contradictions. Christ was to be
the mighty, royal, hoped-for Messiah of the Jews,
though he tried as amere teacher to reform Judaism
and to bring vitality into what had decayed into a
mere dead formalism. Not to abolish the old law
was His mission, but to purify it from its narrow
national particularism, and to restore its mono
theistic and moral universality.
St. Paul saw in Christ a dying God, who had to
atone for the sins of Adam, in order to satisfy the
demand of the Jewish law. Grace was everything
with him. St. John made of Christ the incarnation
of Plato’s Logos, and added that nobody could come
to God except through Christ, which was an un
charitable anathema against all those who were
honest and virtuous, but who either knew nothing
of Christ, or could not understand the mystic dogmas
under which Christ had been buried.
Christ’s
incarnation as the Logos could not have been diffe
rent to that of Brahma, as Krishna or Rama, or
�16
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Buddha, of Amn, as Osiris and Horus. Each - of
these incarnations took place under very analogous
circumstances, and for analogous purposes.
The Divinity to the student of ancient creeds
appears continually to assume new shapes and forms
and to succeed always only in a very partial redemp
tion of humanity. Did Christ, however, ever assume
a Godhead in a Buddhistic or Egyptian sense ? is a
question which will, in time, be differently answered
than at present. Christ the rigorous Jew who con
scientiously kept the spirit of the law, though He
opposed its dead meaningless formality, who ap
peared with scrupulous regularity at the grand
festivals at Jerusalem, could He have ever violated
the sacred monotheistic basis of the Jews so far as
to proclaim Himself as anything else but the “ Son of
Man,” to which title He had every claim, when He
declared the whole of humanity to be the children
of one Father in heaven ? Did Christ ever intend to
make Himself anything but the spiritual redeemer
of mankind, by proclaiming on high-ways and in
market-places what was kept as a secret by the
Esoteric teachers, that there was only one God, and
that man had one real aim, to unite whether poor or
rich, if only “ pure of heart,” into one bond of divine
love, pervading the universe ?
Love was with Christ the connecting element
between the divine and human in man. As attrac
tion is scientifically the vital element of the material
cosmos, so love is the binding element which was,
is, and will be the fundamental basis of any religion ;
and where this element of universal brotherhood is
discarded or stifled, by whatever dogmas, our en
lightened reason will never be persuaded that the
mystery is for our benefit; for the very assumption,
that morals can be fostered and best understood
through unintelligible types and symbols in antagon-
�of Ancient Creeds.
17
ism to intellect, is the very element of a spon
taneous dissolution of any creed, and always only a
question of time.
The sanguinary persecutions that disgraced the
religion of Christ would have horrified no one more
than Him, in whose name they were perpetrated.
And who were those who were most cruelly treated,
robbed, pillaged, insulted, and murdered ? Those
for whom He prayed in dying with his last breath :
<( Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.” Christ was said to have established eternal
hell-fire. He who commanded us to forgive our
enemies “ seventy times seven,” could He have con
ceived a Divinity less forbearing in His infinite love,
wisdom and mercy, than a finite human being ? In
this cruel and contradictory assumption we have
another element of spontaneous dissolution, because
it is an unchristian dogma borrowed from the Egyp
tians, with whom Osiris was more an infernal judge,
than a loving, supreme Being. With the Egyptians
gloomy unconscious fear, and not self-conscious love,
Was the beginning of wisdom and the motive element
of their gloomy creed, which element transferred to
Christianity changed its very essence, made Romish
idolatry a possibility, and worked as an antagonistic
dissolving element in Christ’s glorious and simple
code of morals.
Day by day the historical ground was cut from
under the feet of Christ’s Christianity. Dogmas,
ceremonies, rituals, and symbolic performances were
borrowed by the Christian priesthood from Indians
(Brahmans and Buddhists), Egyptians, Greeks, Per
sians, Hebrews, and Romans. The clergy of the
Romish Church strove to become, like the Brahmans
and Hierophants, the augurs, magi and bonzes of
old, masters of the minds of the ignorant masses,
who were kept purposely and systematically in igno-
�18
The Spontaneous Dissolution
rance; for the greater the ignorance of the people
the greater the influence of allegories, symbols, and
mystic incomprehensibilities. So it came to pass
that the clearest laws of humanity and common
sense were trampled under foot with reckless fero
city. From the times of Gregory VII. Christianity
became hourly more unchristian.
Unchristian Christianity persecuted, killed and
burned for nearly a thousand years, from Charle
magne, the Christian Mahomet, down to the year of
grace 1780, when the last witch was publicly burnt
at Glarus, in the Roman Catholic part of Switzer
land. To whatever Christian country we turn we
find the militant Church of Rome desiring pre
rogatives and immunities. The Church claimed the
right to punish those who spoke disrespectfully of
the clergy • the right to the luxury of burning here
tics ; theie were continual disputes as to whether
emperor or pope, cardinal or king, should be first
in authority. Deans and bishops quarrelled in open
courts with one another about images, postures, or
the right to possess a crucifix. The clear enactment
of Christ, “ Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,”
was distorted and placed under mental reservation.
A dignitary of the already half-reformed English
Church (Archbishop Sandy) dared to proclaim that
we must obey princes “ usque ad aras,” as the
proverb is, “so far as we may without disobeying
God. .And who had to decide what was considered
disobeying God ? The priesthood—which cared
more for prerogatives, the right to fell timber, to seize
lands in mortmain, to receive such estates as were
forfeited for high treason, to have the right of inves
titure., and to possess authority in lay as well as in
ecclesiastical matters, than to educate the masses, to
teach them soberness and cleanliness, forbearance;
■peace, and goodwill.
�of Ancient Creeds.
19
The priests loudly proclaimed Christ s law : “ Do
unto others as you wish that they should do- unto
you; ” hut their deeds were in contradiction to the
ordinance, and they did unto others as they must
have wished that they should never be done unto.
They acted like the great mass of the Chinese, to
whom Confucius, more than four centuries before
Christ, gave the same law : “Do unto others as you
wish that they should do unto you” ; but as we are
cheated, we cheat ; as we are calumniated, we calum
niate ; as we are persecuted, we persecute ; as we are
robbed, we rob ; and as we are served with false
measures or sham goods, we do the same.
This
is certainly not Christianity, and though commen
tators, exegists, apologists, dogmatists, and inqui
sitors tried hard to smooth down and explain the
contradictions, the creed, that had served humanity
for 1,500 years, had to undergo a new reform.
Christian unchristianity was once more to become
pure, primitive Christianity.
In the eyes of the Romish Church Christianity
was no longer the doctrine of Christ, but the enact
ments of the Church. Christ’s personal commands
had for a thousand years to give way to the assumed
higher wisdom of councils or popes. These councils
and popes could, however,not avoid being influenced
by the spirit of their times, and were forced uncon
sciously continually to vary their doctrines, according
to the exigencies of the moment, always with one
clear aim—to keep the power and the means of being
the hieratic masters of the world. So long as the
priest could live with a wife, it was Christ’s com
mand to have one ; so soon as it was found that the
priest became too worldly, too humane with a wife
and family, it was Christ’s command to resign him
self to celibacy. So long as Platonism served them
the priests were Platonists. In the first three cen-
�20
The Spontaneous Dissolution
tunes they had no Trinity, they were (Ze facto
Arians, and then they became Athanasians or Trini
tarians, in imitation of the Indo-Egyptians, and
cursed all who were not of their incomprehensible
opinion. On one day Origen, on another St. Augus
tine, swayed their minds. They had deadly contro
versies on the Lord’s Supper, and about the use of
bread and wine, or the Real Presence, or the Transubstantiation, whilst often thousands were starving
around them for want of food. They forgave sins
but only to those who could pay for such remission"
lh?y 7 J?trodu<;ed self-abnegation, self-flagellation,
and selt-torture'for the masses, and lived in pomp and
vanity. They smiled and cursedin one breath: they
spoke immediately before the Reformation, but their
language was always ambiguous, for they tried to
please all parties; and still they attached more impor
tance to outward ceremonies, vestments, symbols,
types, and mere verbal professions without any
inward spiritual meaning, than tomoral reality and
real religiousness.
. Whilst the Romish Church was thus a house
divided against itself, many honest monks and more
enlightened laymen turned back to the old Greek
and Roman classics, and tried to take up the thread
ot the progressive historical development of
humanity, which appeared to have been rent
asunder and lost for ever. To re-unite it where
it had been broken, they revived sciences and arts ;
and dogmatists, mystics, and dry school-men were
more and more silenced. The Reformation was
nally victorious in the terrible struggle; but it
had to fight its way through torrents of blood.
When the peace of Westphalia left Europe in the
possession of religious freedom, Europe sealed her
right to scientific progress. The Romish Christian
creed was then dissolved, and no Vaticanism will
�of Ancient Creeds.
21
ever revive it. Christianity with the Reformation
ceased to be a special creed based on mere outer
signs ; it was once more made universal. Christ’s
God of Love and Reason who was enthroned
through the Reformation is the God of the Universe,
his existence, in one shape or another, is believed in
by Brahmans, Buddhists, Jews, Mahometans and
Christians.
Christ, if considered as the incarnate divine spirit
of self-sacrifice and love, has freed men of their finite
ness by teaching them to surrender their outerselves
to a pure moral and intellectual consciousness of
their innerselves, and thus only has redeemed
humanity, and dissolved all ancient and modern
creeds by establishing real religion based on reason
aided by science, promoting real morality, freed of
all dogmatic dross and from the unnatural bondage
of prejudices and the mystic fetters of ignorance.
Polytheism of old had to yield to a more refined
creed of one creative power; but Polytheism had
already borne the elements or constituent particles
of spontaneous dissolution in itself. However
poetical the deification of the different phenomena
of Nature may be, it was merely the outgrowth of
an ignorant and over-heated, an unconscious and
unbridled imagination. Bitterly, though poets and
artists bewailed this time, they had to surrender
their fanciful world of self-created gods. Man,
however, wishes at all times to have his emotions
taken into consideration. The culture of the emo
tional element seems to be the last retreat of those
who think that dry morals (as if morals did not
continually exercise our emotional elements), and
mere science (cold, calculating science, as they say
in turning up their eyes) cannot suffice to fill man’s
nature. They then turn to a vague and incompre
hensible anthropomorphism, man-worship, which in
�.2 2-
The Spontaneous Dissolution
■one form or another, has not yet ceased to be the
cherished creed amongst those who crave for the
merely emotional.
The Greeks were the first and most cultivated
anthropomorphists. Their creed has vanished, but
it contained much emotional element that, purified
of idolatry, might serve the masses of our modern
times as an element of unlimited artistic emotion;
for art will and must replace that fervid craving for
„emotion. Art will yet again shape beautiful forms
for their own sake, and ethics and aesthetics will
repair our loss of barren phrases referring to super
natural masters. The anthropomorphism of old will
revive again, though in another spirit; it will not
be sanctified as a creed, but hallowed, because it
will lead man, through love, to understand the ideal
beauty of everything created, from the tiny and
bashful daisy to the lofty-snow covered summits of
the Himalayan Mountains.
Ancient Creeds, after having gone through the
dissolution of Polytheism and Anthropomorphism,
enter upon a species of anthropopatism. The leaders
of this creed try to combine revelation and reason,
faith and science; they use all possible sophistical
contortions to prove that there are no contradictions
in the Sacred books of the Eastern nations ; that all
is clear. You have only to take the different pas
sages in their corresponding allegorical, parabolical,
tropological, anagogical or literal meanings. They
assert, with a mild gentleness, that there are no
difficulties except to the blind, to the heartless, and
to those who live to cold science and have no higher
aim than the “Fata Morgana” of a dreary materi
alism. These anthropopatists work out in their own
imagination a more or less lofty portrait of the
Divinity, and describe, praise, draw, model or paint
it according to their individual idiosyncrasies, their
�of Ancient Creeds.
23
sympathies or antipathies. They persecute, hate,
despise, or, if they are very kind-hearted, pity those
who fail to see a “personal” Father in their dim
half-theological, half-rationalistic colours. These
men are like some Protestants who deny to the
Romish Church the right to have miracles, but keep
certain miracles which must be believed in. They
do not see that in this very contradiction is a
thriving element of spontaneous dissolution. Before
a tribunal of logic these half-theologians and half
Rationalists could not pass a “ spelling-bee.” These
men feel that they have lost their historical basis,
and to find a new one would necessitate too much
study; they could only find it through a correct
appreciation of the gradual development of humanity,
to attain which they would have to make them
selves acquainted with the intellectual pressure of
mind brought to bear upon progress. Fortunately
the discharges from the electric theological clouds
that have gathered, or are gathering, have, since the
invention of the lightning conductor of tolerance,
become extremely harmless, though they may
occasionally be unpleasant. The anthropopatists
should base their ethics and metaphysics, if the
latter exist, on the ruling principles of the Cosmos,
but it is much easier to talk morals than to intro
duce a new creed in our times, after so many
spontaneous dissolutions of ancient creeds.
Who, indeed, wishes for a new creed ? We do
not want the ridiculous Acosmism which denies
the reality of the world, asserting that it had been
created out of nothing, and that matter is a non
entity. These modern apostles in tail-coats talk of
an “ Unseen Universe,” as though it could be.seen ;
if it can, then to call it “ unseen ” is nonsense, and
if it is invisible, to waste time in describing it with
copious verbiage, is still more absurd. Though we
�24
The Spontaneous Dissolution
may never know what the absolute essences of
matter or life are, we may still study matter in its
phenomenal results, and see the aberrations of mind
whenever it treats of the so-called supernatural, and
its glorious conquests in arts and sciences, when
man deals with given forms and quantities, either
transforming them into works of ideal beauty, or
discovering, after centuries of hard labour and keen
observation, more scientific explanations of the secret
workings of the hidden forces of nature, than the
theologians could find on the easy and lazy path of
an assumed revelation. The world belongs in future
to another body of priests, to the priests of science
and art'
The Indian philosophers already attained the con
sciousness of creation, preservation, and transforma
tion as the external actions of one force, in three
equally powerful emanations, and, notwithstanding
this philosophical starting point, free of every taint
of dogmatism and anthropomorphism, a connecting
link of different incarnate gods was worked out by
the priesthood to satisfy the emotional ignorance of
the masses.
The Jews set up a god of their own, a national,
jealous god, who was to be stronger than all the
others, which was a silent indirect admission that
there were other gods. Jewish monotheism reached
merely the notion of a mighty ruler, who was master
even over the false gods j and those gods who gave
comfort and hope for thousands of years to innumer
able generations, saw themselves hurled by Javeh
into the abyss of hell, where they had to rule as
mighty demons. But the i( immanence” or inherence
of a pervading spirit in the universe cannot be a
person in the sense of an anthropopatist or acosmist,
for omniscience and omnipresence is only pos
sible with an impersonal deity. The burning ques-
�of Ancient Creeds.
25
tion of modern thought is not, as Renan has it, a con
test between Polytheists,—namely, Roman Catho
lics, Protestants, Buddhists and Brahmans, and
Monotheists—namely, Jews and Mahometans, but
the struggle is between those who assume an all
pervading infinite spirit, and those who deny the
existence of any Deity, between Panmonotheists
and Atheists.
. ,
But who are those who deny the Divinity ? Such
men as either cannot or will not understand the
cosmos, who can see only matter, but do not grasp
the effects produced by matter in the universe as
well as in humanity, which is but its reflex. Those
who never will draw a line between cause and effect,
and most of all those who drag the Divinity down
to their own low level, transforming it into an idol
of their own, which they wish to force upon
humanity at large ; these proud, conceited theolo
gians promote atheism even more than some pro
fessed atheists. But who are atheists ?
Certainly not the scientific men as physicists,
who bow down their heads, and profess, with child
like lips : “ We are too humble, too finite to grasp
the infinite,; we shall be contented to trace here and
there some minute workings of the innumerable
elements forming phenomena that are, that must
have had an origin and must have an aim.’ Not
the philologists who, in languages freed from all the
trammels of a paradisiacal tongue, in which God
himself spoke, trace and systematize the phases
through which languages had to pass to attain
their different sounds; alphabets, words, _ concrete
and abstract expressions. Not the geologists, who,
unfettered by any Eastern cosmogony, follow
up the growth of our globe according to law and
order, and find in this very inherent law and order
the vestiges of an eternal first cause, which personi-
�26
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Ued becomes utterly unintelligible. Not the his
torian, who, in the complicated phenomena, of which
men are the units with all their passions, yearnings,
hopes, and fears,. traces the eternal laws of action
aaid reaction, which force humanity onward on the
path of continuous progress. To so great an extent
is this the case, that if we carefully consider the sub
ject, we are astonished at the relative progress of
humanity, and this improvement has been attained
since the reformation, since the revival of classic art
.and philosophy ; . since scientific inquiries have
silenced the grand inquisition, and stopped the burn
ing of witches and heretics; since logicians have
disproven the false and pernicious principles of the
reasoning of an infallible priesthood; since tolerance
&nd forboarancG Kavo clad themselves in ermine and
meted out justice with an even hand, regardless of
the creed to which those belonged who sought re
dress for wrongs inflicted upon them ; since even
bishops and deans dare to thunder at the gates of
narrow-mindedness, and to proclaim the right of
free investigation, not only for themselves, but also
for those who are under their sway; since the layauthority took upon itself to spread sciences and
arts amongst the ignorant and neglected masses,
■and to prevent through the strong arm of the law a
reactionary and anachronistic movement inaugu
rated by some of the priesthood, who, craving for
the. emotional, think to find in tapers, fancy em
broideries, monkish dresses, and the most childish
mimicry of a creed that went through the process of
its spontaneous dissolution more than 350 years
ago, a solution of the religious questions of our
days.
Mysticism has been for thousands of years the
bane of humanity. Ignorance is her cherished
foster-sister. Mysticism and ignorance presumed
�of Ancient Creeds.
27
not only to lead humanity on the path of emotion
to virtue, through different creeds, but also to regu
late man’s intellectual powers. Ignorance and
mysticism built up astronomical, zoological, and
geological hypotheses which had to be destroyed;
they prescribed to the Divinity how and when the
world must have been created ; science had to rectify
these errors of a natural ignorance. That such
errors should have been transformed into articles of
«reed, indispensable to the salvation of our better
intellectual nature, and that this deception should
and could have been practised for thousands of years,
is not a mysterious riddle, but the natural effect of
an equally natural cause. Whenever and wherever
ignorance assumes the mask of theological know
ledge, it leads men into error. The error once
having become, through continuous repetition, an
accepted truth (though it may be only negative
truth, viz., falsehood), it takes the positive shape
•of an indispensable entity for the happiness of man
kind, and it requires thousands of years to remove
such falsehoods, and historians testify to the fact
that the whole progressive development of humanity
•consists in the destruction of such falsehoods.
In England and Germany, as the two countries
most advanced in civilisation, the one politically,
the other intellectually, this process of undoing the
past is most apparent. In both countries set dogmas
appear to go down the stream of time with ever
diminishing buoyancy, form and bulk, till they must
sink altogether. Curates and pastors become rarer
and scarcer. In 1831 there were in the eight Prus
sian Universities 2,203 theological students, and in
1875 there were scarcely 560 (about 70 to a Uni
versity). In the Universities of Southern and
Western Germany the decline of theologians was in
the same ratio. In addition to this, one-third of the
�28
The Spontaneous Dissolution
matriculated th eological students abandoned theology
altogether, and entered other professions, tired of
asserting things they could not understand ; for they
had gone through a scientific training in Logie»
Mathematics, and Universal History. The ecclesi
astical authorities in Germany had to acknowledge
that, in one year or so, one-sixth of the vacant bene
fices would have no clergymen to fill them.
Yet, in the face of this growing dissolution, we
have our “ Burials Question,” as the result of Christ’s
command, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself.” After
1875 years of grace and Christian teaching, we find
men trying to. prevent some of their Christian
brothers from lying side by side in the same church
yard, in the same soil from which we have all
sprung, to which we all return, from which all our
pleasures stream, on which all our woes are concen
trated. And why ? Because these Christians
differ, on certain theological questions without real
distinction, from those in power. For this reason
Christians of another shade of thinking should be
carried in silence to their last resting-place. What
tyranny, what cruel tyranny, perpetrated in the
name, of Christianity! And these cruelties are
practised whilst words of piety, fraternal condescen
sion, and humble submission are used on one side,
and on the other the stern, indomitable “no sur
render ” is proclaimed with the blind obstinacy of
an Eastern despot. This intolerance is the more
remarkable, in the third quarter of the nineteenth
century, in our free and enlightened country, whilst
in Germany, Russia, and Austria tolerance is prac
tised, at least amongst the different members of the
Christian faith. In Germany, Roman Catholics and
Protestants often use the same sacred building, the
one for his mass, the other foi' his sermon, and both
for their prayers to their common God. In Russia
�of Ancient Creeds.
29
and Austria the Christian children of one ruling, per
vading spirit, may lie peaceably side by side when
fate has sealed their controversies, when they can no
more pronounce God’s anger and judgment against
one another, when they rest from their labours. But
we persecute one another even beyond the grave,
notwithstanding our great political and social move
ments. We are trying to bring education into the
hovels of our rural population, and to the gutter
children of our over-crowded towns. Our scientific
discoveries are teaching us day by day to distrust
our preconceived prejudices ; our historical inquiries
demonstrate how falsehoods were spread; how truth
was distorted; how dreams, fancies, myths, and
legends were taken for realities; how space and
time were filled with the tears and sufferings ot
men for the sake of false theories; how nations and
individuals lost themselves in dogmatic oyster
shells, and were unable to see beyond their narrow
ossified world—and yet we cannot let our fellow
men sleep their last long sleep in peace.
Philosophers and physicists may smile at this
with tears in their eyes, seeing how the self-contra
dicting elements in creeds not only lead to irreligi
ousness, but contain in themselves—through placing
the form above the spirit, matter above mind, emo
tion above reason—the elements of a spontaneous
dissolution. This inevitable dissolution can only be
directed into the right groove of a higher moral and
intellectual phase by a thorough understanding of
history, which teaches us that only a synthetical
combination of the Indian and Hebrew-Christian
creeds and their sublime ethics, divested of all
extraneous matter, may furnish us with real religion,
as a code of morals binding on the whole of humanity,
without fettering in any way our intellectual
nature.
�30
The Spontaneous Dissolution
, The bigoted and credulous, the fanatics and
ignorant in the Church and in our Universities, in
our colleges and educational establishments, do nottremble in vain at the very name of “ Universal
History” as the grand store-house of man’s immortal
deeds, follies, and crimes, committed for thousands
of years, partly in the name of the Divinity, and
partly to satisfy the religious emotions of a Torquemada, or a Calvin, or some false assumptions
based on some imaginary theory or divine revela
tion. Not in vain have our Universities shut their
doors on an honest, unbiassed study of the develop
ment of humanity on general principles. Were it
not for this,, we might lose our insulated position';
we might discover a continuous gradual growth and
decay of creeds as well as sciences, and see how
one system of ancient fallacies served another as
basis of development.
Not without grave reason does Cardinal Manning
clamour against an appeal to history, and brand it
as “heresy and treachery.” He does not stand
alone, he is supported by our own theologians and
the heads of our own Universities, who consider the
study of “Universal History” superfluous, per
nicious, leading to scepticism; for it might teach us
that man formed his own gods and dogmas, in
fluenced by the aspect of nature and his relative
amount of brain; that man has wasted his time and
energy in trying to answer questions “ d priori” (out
of his imagination) before he could gather informa
tion “ d posteriori” (by experience). We might learn
that every step in the progress of humanity had to
be fought for single-handed by independent men in
whom morals and intellect were well balanced. We
might become conscious that dogmatic superstitions
in India, China, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Egypt,
Judaea, and Borne, during the Middle Ages and in
�of Ancient Creeds.
31
modern times, had caused the dissolution or station
ary state of all these Empires and times. _
For man, composed of the two constituent ele
ments of matter and mind, of morals and intellect,,
must cultivate both ; the one according to immu
table laws, necessitated by his very organisation,,
and the other unfettered by any capricious, emo
tional, and unintelligible self-created and seliimposed creed.
Man’s destiny lies in the perfect balance oi ins
moral and intellectual nature.
t
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ABE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 23rd April,
1876, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,_
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s.; being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter) to the
Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One
(Reserved Seats) One Shieling.
Penny ;—Sixpence ;—and
�
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The spontaneous dissolution of ancient creeds: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 23rd January, 1876
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 18 cm.
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Religion
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Creeds
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Text
A,
j^TIONALSECULARSOCSETÏ
'
V ^y*
CREEDS
AND
SPIRITUALITY
ROBERT C. INGERSOLL.
---------------- 4----------------
Price One Penny.
/
LONDON :
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28’ Stonecutter Street, E.O.
1891.
*.
»>
�CREEDS.
(From the “ New York Morning Advertiser.”)
[Whateveb may be said of his belief in revealed religion,
Robert G. Ingersoll is respected by all intellectual antagonists
for thorough sincerity, absolute fairness in debate, and un
questionable ability in ti.e presentation of his argument.
His views, therefore, on the recent attitude of the general
assembly at Detroit in the case of Dr. Briggs, the alleged
heretical utterances of the Rev. Heber Newton, and the
desertion of one creed for another by the Rev. Dr. Bridgman,
are of peculiar interest just at this time. Colonel Ingersoll
has just returned from a trip through the west, and in speaking
of these incidents, he said :—]
There is a natural desire on the part of every intelli
gent human being to harmonise his information—to
make his theories agree—in other words, to make what
he knows, or thinks he knows, in one department
agree with, and harmonise with, what he knows, or
thinks he knows, in every other department of human
knowledge.
The human race has not advanced in line, neither
has it advanced in all departments with the same
rapidity. It is with the race as it is with an individual.
A man may turn his entire attention to some one
subject—as, for instance, to geology—and neglect other
sciences. He may be a good geologist, but an exceed
ingly poor astronomer ; or he may know nothing of
politics or of political economy. So he may be a
successful statesman and know nothing of theology.
But if a man, successful in one direction, takes up
some other question, he is bound to use the knowledge
he has on one subject as a kind of standard to measure
what he is told on some other subject. If he is a
chemist, it will be natural for him, when studying
some other question, to use what he knows in chemistry ;
that is to say, he will expect to find cause, and every
where succession and resemblance. He will say : It
�( 3 )
must be in all other sciences as in chemistry—there
must be no chance. The elements have no caprice.
Iron is always the same. Gold does not change.
Prussic acid is always poison—it has no freaks. So he
will reason as to all facts in nature. He will be a
believer in the atomic integrity of all matter, in the
persistence of gravitation. Being so trained, and so
convinced, his tendency will be to weigh what is
called new information in the same scales that he has
been using.
Now for the application of this. Progress in reli
gion is the slowest, because man is kept back by
sentimentality, by the efforts of parents, by old asso
ciations. A thousand unseen tendrils are twining
about him that he must necessarily break if he
advances. In other departments of knowledge induce
ments are held out and rewards are promised to the
one who does succeed—to the one who really does
advance—to the man who discovers new facts. But in
religion, instead of rewards being promised, threats are
made. The man is told that he must not advance ;
that if he takes a step forward it is at the peril of his
soul; that if he thinks and investigates, he is in danger
of exciting the wrath of God. Consequently religion
has been of the slowest growth. Now, in most depart
ments of knowledge man has advanced ; and coming
back to the original statement—a desire to harmonise
all that we know—there is a growing desire on the
part of intelligent men to have a religion fit to keep
company with the other sciences.
THE MAKING OF CREEDS.
Our creeds were made in times of ignorance. They
suited very well a flat world, and a God who lived in
the sky just above us, and who used the lightning to
destroy his enemies. This God was regarded much as
a savage regarded the head of his tribe—as one having
the right to reward and punish. And this God, being
much greater than a chief of the tribe, could give
greater rewards and inflict greater punishments. They
knew that the ordinary chief, or the ordinary king,
punished the slightest offences with death. They also
knew that these chiefs and kings tortured their victims
�( 4 )
as long as the victims could bear the torture. So when
they described their God, they gave to this God power
to keep the tortured victim alive for ever, because they
knew that the earthly chief, or the earthly king, would
prolong the life of the tortured for the sake of increas
ing the agonies of the victim. In those savage days
they regarded punishment as the only means of pro
tecting society. In consequence of this they built
heaven and hell on an earthly plan, and they put God
—that is to say, the chief, that is to say, the king—on
a throne-like an earthly king.
Of course, these views were all ignorant and
barbaric ; but in that blessed day their geology and
astronomy were on a par with their theology. There
was a harmony in all departments of knowledge, or
rather of ignorance. Since that time there has been a
great advance made in the idea of government—the
old idea being that the right to do came from God to
the king, and from the king to the people. Now
intelligent people believe that the source of authority
has been changed, and that all just powers of govern
ment are derived from the consent of the governed.
So there has been a great advance in the philosophy
of punishment—in the treatment of criminals. So,
too, in all the sciences. The earth is no longer flat;
heaven is not immediately above us ; the universe has
been infinitely enlarged, and we have at last found
that our earth is but a grain of sand, a speck on the
great shores of the infinite. Consequently there is
a discrepancy, a discord, a contradiction between our
theology and the other sciences. Men of intelligence
feel this. Dr. Briggs concluded that a perfectly good
and intelligent God could not have created billions of
sentient beings knowing that they were to be eternally
miserable. No man could do such a thing, had he the
power, without being infinitely malicious. Dr. Briggs
began to have a little hope for the huinan race—began
to think that maybe God is better than the creed
describes him.
And right here it may be well enough to remark
that no man has ever been declared a heretic for think
ing God bad. Heresy has consisted in thinking God
�( 5 )
better than the church said he was. The man who
said God will damn nearly everybody was orthodox.
The man who said God will save everybody was
denounced as a blaspheming wretch, as one who
assailed and maligned the character of God. I can
remember when the Universalists were denounced as
vehemently and maliciously as the Atheists are to-day.
THE CASE OF DR. BRIGGS.
Now, continued Colonel Ingersoll, Dr. Briggs is
undoubtedly an intelligent man. He knows that
nobody on the earth knows who wrote the five books
of Moses. He knows that they were not written until
hundred of years after Moses was dead. He knows
that tw’O or more persons were the authors of Isaiah.
He knows that David did not write to exceed three or
four of the Psalms. He knows that the book of Job is
not a Jewish book. He knows that the songs of
Solomon were not written by Solomon. He knows
that the book of Ecclesiastes was written by a Free
thinker. He also knows that there is not in existence
to-day—so far as anybody knows—any of the manu
scripts of the Old or New Testament.
So about the New Testament, Dr. Briggs knows
that nobody lives who has ever seen an original manu
script, or who ever saw anybody that did see one, or
that claims to have seen one. He knows that nobody
knows who wrote Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John.
He knows that John did not write John, and that
gospel was not written until long after John was dead.
He knows that no one knows who wrote the Hebrews.
He also knows that the book of Revelation is an insane
production, Dr. Briggs also knows the way in which
these books came to be canonical, and he knows that
the way was no more binding than a resolution passed
by a political convention.
He also knows that many books were left out that
had for centuries equal authority with those that were
put in. He also knows that many passages—and the
very passages upon which many churches are founded
—are interpolations. He knows that the last chapter
of Mark, beginning with the sixteenth verse to the
end, is an interpolation ; and he also knows that neither
�( 6 )
Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, ever said one word
about the necessity of believing on the Lord Jesus
Christ, or of believing anything—not one word about
believing in the Bible or joining the church, or doing
any particular thing in the way of ceremony to ensure
salvation. He knows that, according to Matthew, God
agreed to forgive us when we would forgive others,!
Consequently he knows that there is not one particle
of what is called modern theology in Matthew, Mark,
or Luke. He knows that the trouble commenced in
John, and that John was not written until probably one
hundred and fifty years—possibly two hundred years—
after Christ was dead. So he also knows that the sin
against the Holy Ghost is an interpolation; that “ I
came not to bring peace but a sword,” if not an inter
polation, is an absolute contradiction.
Knowing those things, and knowing, in addition
to what I have stated, that there are 30,000 or 40,000
mistakes in the Old Testament, that there are a great
many contradictions and absurdities, that many of the
laws are cruel and infamous, and could have been
made only by a barbarous people, Dr. Briggs has con-«
eluded that, after all, the torch that sheds the serenest
and divinest light is the human reason, and that we
must investigate the Bible as we do other books. At
least, I suppose he has reached such conclusion. He
may imagine that the pure gold of inspiration still runs
through the quartz and porphyry of ignorance and
mistake, and that all we have to do is to extract the
shining metal by some process that may be called
theological smelting; and if so I have no fault to find.
Dr. Briggs has taken a step in advance—that is to say,
the tree is growing, and when the tree goes the bark
splits ; when the new leaves come the old leaves are
rotting on the ground.
AS TO PRESBYTERIANISM.
The Presbyterian Creed is a very bad creed. It
has been the stumbling block, not only of the head,
but of the heart for many generations. I do not know
that it is, in fact, worse than any other orthodox creed ;
but the bad features are stated with an explicitness
and emphasised with a candor that render the creed
�( 7 )
absolutely appalling. It is amazing to me that any
man ever wrote it, or that any set of men ever produced
it. It is more amazing to me that any human being
thought it wicked not to believe it. It is more amazing
still than all the others combined that any human
being ever wanted it to be true.
#
This creed is a relic of the middle ages. It has m
the malice, the malicious logic, the total depravity, the
utter heartlessness of John Calvin, and it gives me a
great pleasure to say that no Presbyterian was ever as
bad as his creed. And here let me say, as I have said
many times, that I do not hate Presbyterians—because
among them I count some of my best friends but i
hate Presbyterianism. And I cannot illustrate this
any better than by saying, I do not hate a man because
he has the rheumatism, but I hate the rheumatism
because it has a man.
The Presbyterian Church is growing, and is growing
because, as I said at first, there is a universal tendency
in the mind of a man to harmonise all that he knows
or thinks he knows. This growth may be delayed.
The buds of heresy may be kept back by the north
wind of Princeton and by the early frost called Patton.
In spite of these souvenirs of the dark ages the church
must continue to grow. The theologians who regard
theology as something higher than a trade tend toward
Liberalism. Those who regard preaching as a business,
and the inculcation of sentiment as a trade, will stand
by the lowest possible views. They will cling to the
letter and throw away the spirit. They prefer the
dead limb to a new bud or to a new leaf. They, want
no more sap. They delight in the dead tree, in its
unbending nature, and they mistake, the stiffness of
death for the vigor and resistance of life.
.
Now,“ as with Dr. Briggs, so with Dr. Bridgman,
although it seems to me that he has simply jumped
from the frying-pan into the fire ; and why he should,
prefer the Episcopal creed to the Baptist is more than I
can imagine. The Episcopal creed is, in. fact, just as
bad as the Presbyterian. It calmly and .with unruffled
brow utters the sentence of eternal punishment on the
majority of the human race, and the Episcopalian
�(8)
expects to be happy in heaven, with his son or his
daughter or his mother or his wife in hell.
Dr. Bridgman will find himself exactly in the
position of the Rev. Mr. Newton, provided he expresses
his thought. But I account for the Bridgmans and the
Newtons by the fact there is still sympathy in the
human heart, and that there is still intelligence in the
human brain. For my part I am glad to see this
growth in the orthodox churches, and the quicker
they revise their creeds the better. I oppose nothing
that is good in any creed—I attack only that which
is only ignorant, cruel and absurd, and I make the
attack in the interest of human liberty and for the
sake of human happiness.
ORTHODOXY THE MASTER.
What do you think of the action of the Presbyterian
General Assembly at Detroit, and what effect do you
think it will have on the religious growth ?” was
asked.
That. General Assembly was controlled by the ortho
dox within the Church, replied Colonel Inge rsoll,
by the strict constructionists and by the Calvii ists;
by the gentlemen who not only believe the creed, not
only believe that a vast majority of people are going to
hell, but are really glad of it; by gentlemen who, when
they feel a little blue, read about total depravity to
cheer up, and when they think of the mercy of God
as exhibited in their salvation, and the justice of God
as illustrated by the damnation of others, their hearts
burst into a kind of effloresence of joy.
These gentlemen are opposed to all kinds of amuse
ments except reading the Bible, the Confession of
Faith and the Creed and listening to Presbyterian
sermons and prayers. All these things they regard as
the food of cheerfulness. They warn the elect against
theatres and operas, dancing and games of chance.
Well, if their doctrine is true, there ought to be no
theatres, except exhibitions of hell; there ought to be
no operas, except where the music is a succession of
wails for the misfortunes of man. If their doctrine is
true, I do not see how any human being could ever
�( 9 )
smile again—I do not see how a mother conld welcome
her babe ; everything in nature would become hateful
—flowers and sunshine would simply tell us of our
fate.
My doctrine is exactly the opposite of this. Let us
enjoy ourselves every moment that we can. The love
of the dramatic is universal. The stage has not simply
amused, but it has elevated mankind. The greatest
genius of our world poured the treasures of his soul
into the drama. I do not believe that any girl can be
corrupted, or that any man can be injured, by becoming
acquainted with Isabella, or Miranda, or Juliet, or
Imogene, or any of the great heroines of Shake
speare.
So I regard the opera as one of the great civilisers.
No one can listen to the symphonies of Beethoven or
the music of Schubert, without receiving a benefit.
And no one can hear the operas of Wagner without
feeling that he has been ennobled and refined.
Why is it the Presbyterians are so opposed to music
in this world, and yet expect to have so much in
heaven ? Is not music just as demoralising in the sky
as on the earth, and does anybody believe that Abra
ham, or Isaac, or Jacob, ever played any music com
parable to Wagner ?
Why should we postpone our joy to another world ?
Thousands of people take great pleasure in dancing,
and I let them dance. Dancing is better than weeping
and wailing over a theology born of ignorance and
superstition.
And so with games of chance. There is a certain
pleasure in playing games, and the pleasure is of the
most innocent character. Let all these games be played
at home and children will not prefer the saloon to the
society of their parents. I believe in cards and billiards,
and would believe in progressive euchre were it more
of a game—the great objection to it is its lack of com
plexity. My idea is to get what little happiness you
can out of this life, and to enjoy all sunshine that
breaks through the clouds of misfortune. Life is poor
enough at best. No one should fail to pick up every
jewel of joy that can be found in his path. Every one
�( W )
should be as happy as he can, provided he is not happy
at the expense of another.
So let us get all we can of good between the cradle
and the grave—all that we can of the truly dramatic,
all that we can of enjoyment; and if, when death
comes, that is the end, we have at least made the best
of this life, and if there be another life, let us make the
best of that.
I am doing what little I can to hasten the coming
of the day when the human race will enjoy liberty—
not simply of body, but liberty of mind. And by
liberty of mind I mean freedom from superstition, and,
added to that, the intelligence to find out the conditions
of happiness ; and, added to that, the wisdom to live
in accordance with those conditions.
�(11)
SPIRITUALITY.
If there is an abused word in our language, it is
“ spirituality.”
It has been repeated over and over for several
years by pious pretenders and snivellers as though it
belonged exclusively to them.
In the early days of Christianity the “spiritual”
renounced the world, with all its duties and obliga
tions. They deserted their wives and children. They
became hermits and dwelt in caves. They spent
their useless years praying for their shrivelled and
worthless souls.
They were too “ spiritual ” to love women, to build
homes and to labor for children.
They were too “ spiritual ” to earn their bread, so
they became beggars, and stood by the highway of
life and held out their hands and asked alms of
industry and courage.
They were too “ spiritual ” to be merciful. They
preached the dogmas of eternal pain and gloried in
“ the wrath to come.”
They were too “ spiritual ” to be civilised, so they
persecuted their fellow-men for expressing their
honest thoughts.
They were so “spiritual” that they invented in
struments of torture, founded the Inquisition, ap
pealed to the whip, the rack, the sword and the fagot.
They tore the flesh of their fellow-man with hooks
of iron, buried their neighbors alive, cut off their
eyelids, dashed out the brains of babes and cut off
the breasts of mothers.
�( 12 )
These “ spiritual ” wretches spent day and night
on their knees praying for their own salvation and
asking God to curse the best and noblest in the
world.
John Calvin was intensely “spiritual” when he
warmed his fleshless hands at the flames that consumed
Servetus.
John Knox was constrained by his “spirituality”
to utter low and loathsome calumnies against all
women. All the witch-burners and quaker-maimers
and mutilators were so “ spiritual ” that they constantly
looked heavenward and longed for the skies.
These lovers of God—these haters of men—looked
upon the Greek marbles us unclean, and denounced
the glories of art as the snares and pitfalls of perdition.
These “ spiritual ” mendicants hated laughter and
smiles and dimples, and exhausted their diseased and
polluted imagination in the effort to make love loath
some.
_ From almost every pulpit was heard the denuncia
tion of all that adds to the wealth, the joy, and glory
of life. It became the fashion for the “ spiritual ” to
malign every hope and passion that tends to humanise
and refine the heart. Man was denounced as totally
depraved. Woman was declared to be a perpetual
temptation—her beauty a snare, and her touch pollu
tion.
Even in our own time and country some of the
ministers, no matter how radical they claim to be,
retain the aroma, the odor, or the smell of the
“ spiritual.”
They denounce some of the best and greatest—some
of the benefactors of the race—for having lived on a
low plane of usefulness, and for having had the pitiful
ambition to make their fellows happy in this world.
Thomas Paine was a grovelling wretch because he
devoted his life to the preservation of the rights of
man, and Voltaire lacked the “spiritual” because he
abolished torture in France, and attacked with the
enthusiasm of a divine madness the monster that was
endeavoring to drive the hope of liberty from the heart
of man.
�( 13 )
Humboldt was not “ spiritual ” enough to repeat
with closed eyes the absurdities of superstition, but
was so lost to all the “ skyey influences ” that he was
satisfied to add to the intellectual wealth of the world.
■Darwin lacked “ spirituality,” and in its place had
nothing but sincerity, patience, intelligence, the spirit
of investigation, and the courage to give his honest
conclusions to the world. He contented himself with
giving to his fellow men the greatest and the sublimest
truths that man has spoken since lips have uttered
speech.
But we are now told that these soldiers of science,
these heroes of liberty, these sculptors and painters,,
these singers of songs, these composers of music,
lacked “ spirituality ”’and after all were only common
clay.
This word “ spirituality ” is the fortress, the breast
work, the riflepit of the Pharisee. It sustains the same
relation to sincerity that Dutch metal does to pure gold.
There seems to be something about a pulpit that
poisons the occupant—that changes his nature—that
causes him to denounce what he really loves and to
laud with the fervor of insanity a joy that he never
felt—a rapture that never thrilled his soul. Hypnotised
by his surroundings, he unconsciously brings to market
that which he supposes the purchasers desire.
In every church, whether orthodox or radical, there
are two parties—one conservative, looking backward ;
one radical, looking forward—and generally a minister
“ spiritual ” enough to look both ways.
A. minister who seems to be a philosopher on the
street, or in the home of a sensible man, cannot with
stand the atmosphere of the pulpit. The moment he
stands behind a Bible cushion, like Bottom, he is
“ translated ” and the Titania of superstition “ kisses
his large, fair ears.”
Nothing is more amusing than to hear a clergyman
denounce worldliness—ask his hearers what it will
profit them to build railways and palaces and lose their
own souls—inquire of the common folks before him
why they waste their precious years in following
trades and professions, in gathering treasures that
�( 14 )
moths corrupt and rust devours, giving their days to
the vulgar business of making money—and then see
him take up a collection, knowing perfectly well that
only the worldly, the very people he has denounced,
can by any possibility give a dollar.
“ Spirituality,” for the most part, is a mask worn by
idleness, arrogance, and greed.
Some people imagine they are “ spiritual ” when
they are sickly.
It may be well enough to ask—What is it to be
really spiritual ?
The spiritual man lives up to his ideal. He
endeavors to make others happy. He does not despise
the passions that have filled the world with art and
glory. He loves his wife and* children—home and
fireside. He cultivates the amenities and refinements
of life. He is a friend and champion of the oppressed.
His sympathies are with the poor and the suffering.
He attacks what he believes to be wrong, though
defended by the many, and he is willing to stand for
the right against the world.
He enjoys the beautiful.
In the presence of the highest creations of Art his
eyes are suffused with tears. When he listens to the
great melodies, the divine harmonies, he feels the
sorrows and the raptures of death and love. He is
intensely human. He carries in his heart the burdens
of the world. He searches for the deeper meanings.
He appreciates the harmonies of conduct, the melody
of a perfect life.
He loves his wife and children better than any
God.
He cares more for the world he lives in than for any
other. He tries to discharge the duties of this life, to
help those that he can reach. He believes in being
useful—in making money to feed and clothe and
educate the ones he loves—to assist the deserving and
to support himself. He does not want to be a burden
on others. He is just, generous, and sincere.
Spirituality is all of this world. It is a child of this
earth, born and cradled here. It comes from no
heaven, but it makes a heaven where it is. There is
�( 15 )
no possible connection between superstition and the
spiritual, or between theology and the spiritual.
The spiritually-minded man is a poet. If he does
not write poetry, he lives it. He is an artist. If he
does not paint pictures or chisel statues, he feels them
and their beauty softens his heart. He fills the temple
of his soul with all that is beautiful and he worships at
the shrine of the ideal.
In all the relations of life he is faithful and true.
He asks for nothing that he does not earn. He does
not wish to be happy in heaven if he must receive
happiness as alms. He does not rely on the goodness
of another. He is not ambitious to become a winged
pauper.
.
Spirituality is the perfect health of the soul. It is
noble, manly, generous, brave, free-spoken, natural,
•SupGrl)»
Nothing is more sickening than the “spiritual”
whine—the pretence that crawls at first and talks about
humility, and then suddenly becomes arrogant and
says : “ I am ‘ spiritual ’—I hold in contempt the
vulgar jovs of this life. You work and toil and build
homes and sing songs and weave your delicate robes.
You love women and children and adorn yourselves.
You subdue the earth and dig for gold. You have
your theatres, your operas, and all the luxuries of life ;
but I, beggar that I am, Pharisee that I am, am your
superior because I am ‘ spiritual.’ ”
Above all things, let us be sincere.
Printed by G. W. Foote, at 28 Stonecutter Street, London, E.C.
�WORKS BY COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
s. d.
r
MISTAKES OF MOSES
Superior edition, in cloth ...
Only Complete Edition published in England.
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
Five Hours’ Speech, at the Trial of C. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy.
REPLY TO GLADSTONE. With a Biography by
J. M. Wheeler
ROME OR REASON ? Reply to Cardinal Man ning
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS
...
AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN ...
FAITH AND FACT. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
GOD AND MAN. Second Reply to Dr. Field
...
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
LOVE THE REDEEMER. Reply to Count To lstoi
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
•••
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Coudert and
Gov. S. L. Woodford
...
THE DYING CREED
DO I BLASPHEME ?
THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE
...
SOCIAL SALVATION
...
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ...
...
GOD AND THE STATE
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ?
...
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ? Part II.
...
ART AND MORALITY
...
CHRIST AND MIRACLES
...
...
THE GREAT MISTAKE
...
LIVE TOPICS
MYTH AND MIRACLE
...
REAL BLASPHEMY
...
REPAIRING THE IDOLS
R. Forder, 28 Stonecutter-street, London, E.C.
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Creeds and spirituality
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1896]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the New York Morning Advertiser. "Works by Colonel R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 12a in Stein checklist. Printed by G.W. Foote. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Progressive Publishing Company
Date
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1891
Identifier
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N328
Subject
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Spiritualism
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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 (Creeds and spirituality), 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
Creeds
NSS
Religion
Spirituality