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170
GOU
THE
NEW CONVERSION.
A
LECTURE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
NORTH LONDON, SOUTH LONDON, AND EAST LONDON
ETHICAL SOCIETIES.
BY
F. J. GOULD.
LONDON:
WATTS & CO., i7, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET ST.
Price Twopence.
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�LIBRARY
South Place Ethical Society
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170 g
THE NEW CONVERSION.
From the Christian pulpit we often hear a strange story of
a dead world. The theologians tell us that this throbbing,
active, eager world is dead. Men and women crowd the
highways, and cross the seas, and build and sow and reap ;
» but they are all dead—dead in trespasses and sins. They
wait for a divine touch to raise them to a new spiritual life.
All human souls, so theology assures us, lie in graves till
■God’s cry issues : “ Come forth.”
Sometimes, perhaps, we that do not salute the Christian
crucifix may be tempted to accept this doctrine of a dead
world. We look out upon mankind at large, and see so
much ignorance, so much meanness, so much injustice, so
much brutishness, that we are ready to say with the old
Psalmist: “ There is none that doeth good, no, not one.”
Which of us has not met the man or woman who, with a
mocking smile, declares Religion to be hypocrisy, Virtue a
■convention, Sympathy the poetry of the amateur, Justice
fear of the law-court, and Kindness a calculation of profit?
There are moments when we incline to agree. We sigh
that “ This people’s heart is waxed gross, and their eyes are
blind, and their ears deaf.” The world needs wisdom ; and
where is the wise man, and where the saving insight, and
where the gospel ? The world needs compassion ; and where
are the armies of pitiful hearts, and the hosts of redeemers ?
The world needs strength; and where is the outstretched
arm, and where is the statesman to uplift, and where is the
moral skill that shall work the miracle of healing, and sweep
away our vice, and banish our workhouses, and clear out
■the filth of our competitive trade, and beat the swords of
�4
THE NEW CONVERSION.
Europe into ploughshares, and make a new church for our
weary souls ? Is not the world a dead world ? And Christ
will not come.
t But no; it is not a dead world. The mean man, and the
vile, and narrow-minded, and the fool are not dead. These
poor souls are asleep. They sleep like that fair princess in
the fairy-tale who lay dormant until the hour came, and the
lover came, and the wonder-working kiss—and then her
eyes saw the light, and the palace was gay with the sound
of greetings, and laughter, and dancing, and music. And
of the soul of the world we may say : “ She is not dead, but
sleepeth.”
How comes it that this awakening is needed? What is
the meaning of this remarkable fact—that always, in every
age, the preachers, the prophets, the Messiahs, the reformers,
the Protestants, the sceptics, have called upon the people to
rouse themselves, and shake off prejudices, and think new
thoughts, and dream new dreams, and live new lives, and
build new temples ? And why must each generation have
a new Marseillaise which commands it to “ March on,
march on 1” And why must even we, who meet in the
Church Ethical, summon men and women to the judgment
seat of conscience, and -bid them walk in newness of life ?
We worship not, we baptize not, we break no mystical
bread, and yet we must needs lift up the prophet’s cry, and
tell the people that, except they be converted, they shall in
no wise be found worthy, and their lives shall fall short.
Twenty-six years ago (1871) the Christian world was
shocked by Charles Darwin’s book on “ The Descent of
Man.” The clergy taught that man had fallen from the
bright garden of Eden as low as the battle-field, the slum,
the gin-palace, the prison. They were wroth with Darwin
because he taught that man had risen from darkness to
light, and climbed the hill from brutality to society, and,
with pain and toil and sorrow, wrestled his way from
savagery to civilization. And while they took a skull and
said, “ This is the emblem of mankind, for it was created
fair and has come to corruption,” Darwin took a little child
and set it in the midst of them, and said : “ This is the
emblem of mankind ; for from the dark womb of time we
issued feeble and uncomely, and we have grown in wisdom
and stature, and our story is a story of progress and educa-
�THE NEW CONVERSION.
5
lion, and of the unfolding of holy faculties and glorious
powers.” And if we are to speak of Sacred Books, then
this book of Darwin’s on the Descent—better say Ascent—
of Man shall be classed among the sacred. Every book is
sacred that kindles our faith and hope, and points back
wards to victories achieved, and onwards to victories that
are possible. When Darwin tells the history of the animal
world and of man ; when he tells how, among the brutes
and birds, the females took on dull skins and quiet plumage,
and so lay more securely hidden from foes while they
nurtured their young; and how the unusually bright feathers
of some male bird attracted a mate, and a more beautiful
species was founded ; and how a lengthening of the neck
enabled a new family to subsist by reaching food unattain
able by other quadrupeds ; and how horn, and claw, and
shell evolved as means of offence and defence, and the
protection of life ; and how some tree-climbing ape gained
power by the spreading-out of the thumb, and the straighten
ing of the backbone, and the articulation of the voice, and
the use of tools and weapons, until our first forefathers
could stand aloof from the beasts and proudly call them
selves men—what is all this but a gospel that bids us take
heart, and go forward; for we have travelled far and
conquered much, and we shall pass on from strength to
strength ?
But evolution tells of a moral progress also. When a
tribe made treaty with its neighbours, instead of war ; when
barbarians who had been wont to slay infants began to
cherish all their plaintive babes ; when a nation gave up
slavery; and a people broke down the walls of caste, and
idols were shattered, and false watchwords uttered no more,
and dead faiths cut down, and oppressive laws resisted, and
unrighteous social customs overturned, and political and
religious Bastilles razed to the ground—all this was but the
continuation of a process that began when our first shaggy
fathers learned to say, in a language we shall never recover,
I am, I think, I love, I hate, I can, I ought, I will. But
all this growth meant painful effort, and agony, and sweating,
as it were, great drops of blood. Each step towards the
light meant heartache and grief. Our morality has been
bought with the price of many tears. Just as the birth of
every one of us was effected in the pangs of a mother, so
�6
THE NEW CONVERSION.
all our holy things, our virtues, our moral safeguards, our
freedom of soul, were brought into being by the pangs of
forefathers and foremothers, whom we too often ungratefully
forget.
Every time a man lifted up his eyes to conceive a nobler
kind of life, a diviner doctrine, a more gracious form of
society, three forces were arrayed against him. He felt the
burden of the Past upon his back. Like Christian in the
Pilgrim’s Progress, he carried a load. The old ideas clung
to his brain. Old passions burned in his veins. Old words
came lightly to his lips. Old paths were easy to tread.
And, next, the Present was against him. Public opinion
was against him. Institutions were against him. Perhaps
kings, perhaps priests, were against him. Opposite Socrates
stood the cup of poison. Opposite Jesus stood the cross.
Opposite Latimer stood the stake. Opposite Mazzini stood
the land of exile. And then the Future might seem to
discourage him. Flad he a right to alter the course of the
world? Could he be sure he was wiser than his fellows?
Was he certain mankind would be happier if they adopted
his new way of thought? Yet he felt the new way was the
way of righteousness. And the pressure of the past he
called Sin; or peradventure he called it the temptation of
the Devil. And when the New and the Old fought for the
mastery, he wept and cried, as Paul cried: “ O wretched
man that I am 1 Who shall deliver me from the body of
this death ?” And then came the stern word : “ You must
be born again. You must break with the past. You must
crush the old passion, the old thought, the old habit. You
must pass to a higher development. You must be the
origin of a new species. You must be a new self.”
“ I held it truth with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.’
And when a man has shown the beauty of a new way of
life—when he has created a new moral variety, other men
follow, and imitate, and catch up the new spirit, until we
see a new type, a new faith, a new people—Christians, or
Buddhists, or Parsees, or Wiclifites, or Wesleyans, or Uni
tarians, or Deists, or Socialists, or Tolstoyans; and so the
�THE NEW CONVERSION.
7
world marches from conversion to conversion, and humanity
sings its Marseillaise.
But after each advance ensues a pause. After each
activity comes a rest. After action, reaction. In Bunyan’s
44 Holy War ” he pictures human nature as a city, “ a fair
and delicate town, a corporation called Mansoul.” He tells
how Diabolus the Devil took possession of it, and how
Prince Emmanuel came with his mighty captains, Boanerges
and Conviction and Judgment and Execution, and broke
down the gates and set up a new throne and a new govern
ment. After a while the enthusiasm of Mansoul burned
low, and the City grew sleepy, and Mr. Carnal Security
obtained more and more influence, and the Prince with
drew, and left Mansoul without a leader, without a motive
power, without an ideal. And so it happens with the world.
We have our struggles for liberty, our revolutions, our
religious and moral uprisings, and then the words which
once were so warm become cold ; the creeds that once
reflected all the soul turn dull and rusty; churches and
institutions degenerate into poor-law houses in which men
and women hunger and pine, and children cannot play ;
and the world sleeps. Then the clock of time points to the
hour for a prophet to arise ; and perhaps he comes as a
monk, and perhaps he comes as an atheist, and perhaps he
comes as a philosopher, and perhaps he comes as a Socialist
in the market-place, and perhaps he speaks this language,
and perhaps he speaks that. But, in effect, his message
always is : “ Except you are converted, and become as little
children, and see life and conduct in a new view, and
with a new interest, you shall not enter the kingdom
of peace, and wisdom, and strength. You must be born
again.”
To the Ethical Church, then, conversion remains a very
real thing ; a thing ever happening ; an indispensable thing ;
a thing which both Jesus and Darwin call for. It is only
“ new ” in the sense that we no longer regard it as a yieldingup of the heart to the theology of Christ, but as a part
of that immense process which we term the Evolution of
Man.
But are we to have no visions ? Are we to see no apoca
lyptic figure shining out upon us from the wayside of life?
If Paul, as the legend says, saw Christ on the road to-
�8
THE NEW CONVERSION.
Damascus, what are we to see ? If Catholics have beheld
visions of the Bleeding Heart, and of the Virgin-mother,
and of the compassionate Saints, what are we to see? If
Mohammed saw the angel Gabriel and the mysteries of the
Seven Heavens, what are we to see ? If Buddha’s followers
beheld their master transfigured in glory, what are we to see ?
I have heard of many visions, and read the lives of many
saints. But among all the visions which saint or confessor
ever saw there is none so august, so impressive, as one
which is equally ready to be revealed to the pious nun of the
cloister, the Secularist debater, the lord of continents and
battalions, or the poor drudge that sweeps a London street.
On the heart of every man a scripture is written. It
admonishes him that, whatever he may be, wherever he
may be, whenever he may act, there is for him, as for all
men, a law of Duty. If he saw another man in like con
ditions to his own, he would say, Such and such is that
man’s duty. In judging his neighbour he passes judgment
on himself. He may not do his duty. He may speak
scorn of it, sneer at it, revile it; but in his heart he respects
the Moral Law. He admits that, whatever he may do him
self, it is well that other men, that the world, should render
obedience to the law of righteousness. The very criminal
will ask that his wife, his child, his neighbour, shall respect
the Moral Law which he has himself broken. He knows,
and we know, that we ought, in all circumstances, so to act
that our rules of conduct would be good rules for all men in
like circumstances. That law holds good yesterday, to-day,
and for ever. And when we observe how men acknowledge
this law; when we perceive their respect for the law as
binding on all, rich or poor, learned or unlettered, capitalist
or wage-earner; binding on us whether we love it or not;
binding on us whether we feel joy in it or not; binding on
us whether men applaud us or not; then indeed we see in
the Moral Law a majestic vision that looks down upon us
with a glance which we dare not defy, and issues a command,
“ Thou shalt,” which we may disobey, but must all the while
revere. “ Two things,” says Immanuel Kant, “ fill the mind
with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener
and the more steadily we reflect on them—the starry heavens
and the Moral Law.” To this noblest of all visions Ethical
Religion tends, and bids us speak with Wordsworth—
�THE NEW CONVERSION.
9
“ Stern daughter of the voice of God,
*
O Duty ! if that name thou love,
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring and reprove ;
Thou who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe ;
From vain temptations dost set free ;
And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity.......
I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour ;
Oh, let my weakness have an end !
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice ;
The confidence of reason give ;
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live.”
In quoting Kant just now I left out one word. Two
things fill him with awe, “ the starry heavens and the Moral
Law within.” Yes, the vision of the Moral Law that we
have seen by the wayside is but a picture of the Ideal that
lives in the heart. It is the reflection of our better self, as
the “ spectre of the Brocken ” reflects in the mist the form
of the traveller. Or—to take an illustration from Plato—
we sit like people in a cave, with our back to the entrance
and to the light, and we see the shadows of the real things
that pass by. And all the outer forms and doctrines which
the Churches prize are but shadows of the realities of your
heart and mine. The blood of Jesus, the grace of the Holy
Spirit, the Tables of Stone, the Sacred Scriptures—what
are all these but symbols of the power of the Moral Law
within? We are greater than we know. We are of nobler
blood than we think. There is royalty in our pedigree.
And, if we only recognized our greatness, our souls, like the
Czar of all the Russias, would crown themselves.
flhe error of Outerness runs through all the Christian
scheme of salvation. We are to be saved by preternatural
grace, by heavenly hands, by divine machinery, by things
yonder. Bunyan tells, in his “ Grace Abounding,” how he
wandered in search of redemption, pondering whether he
could miraculously dry the puddles in the Bedford road;
imagining that the sun grudged him its light, and that the
very tiles on the roofs despised him. One day, he says, as
* This theological term does not lessen the value of the ode. The
devotion of the soul goes out, not to God, but to the ideal of Duty.
�IO
THE NEW CONVERSION.
he sat by the fire, “ I suddenly felt this word to sound in
my heart : I must go to Jesus. At this my former darkness
and atheism fled away, and the blessed things of heaven
were set in my view.” He looked outwards. He did not
care to look within, because he saw there nothing (as he
thought) but “ original and inward pollution.” He was
mistaken. From his own heart came the moral impulse«
His own self-reverence prompted his conversion to pious
purpose and self-denying devotion. Theology obscured
from his view the true moral process,
This search for salvation in things outward finds pictur
esque illustration in Tennyson’s poem on the Holy Grail—that blood-red cup from which Christ drank at the Last
Supper, but which, when the times grew evil, “ was caught
away to heaven and disappeared.” The Knights of King
Arthur’s Round Table made a vow to go in quest of it.
And what good came of it all ? Sir Percivale rode out,
and found himself in a land of sand and thorns, and saw
goodly apples by the side of a pleasant brook, and the
apples turned to dust; and met a woman who welcomed
him to her threshold, and she fell to dust and nothing, and
her house crumbled, and a dead babe lay in the ashes ;
and beheld a splendid knight, gleaming like the sun in
golden armour, and the knight fell to dust, and all around
was only a land of sand and thorns ; and he came upon a
crowd at the gateway of a city, and they too vanished, and
the old man whom Sir Percivale encountered in the ruins
collapsed to dust, and was no more. Another knight, Sir
Bors, was made fast in a prison, until a great stone of the
dungeon slipped, and he saw the stars outside, and, for a
moment, caught a glimpse in the sky of the rose-red Holy
Cup.
A third knight, Sir Lancelot, passed through tempests,
and climbed great stairs, and burst a mystic door, and
beheld for one moment the crimson Grail, and then swooned.
And the purest knight of all, Sir Galahad, crossed a
mountain, and came to a black swamp, and traversed it by
a magic bridge, and sailed away in a wondrous boat; and
over his head—as Sir Percivale saw—floated the blood-red
Cup ; and Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail faded from
sight, and entered the Spiritual City. Only a few knights
returned. All the time King Arthur had stayed in his
�THE NEW CONVERSION.
11
kingdom, and ruled the land, and done the daily task. He,
too, had seen visions as he worked, and had no need to go
in quest of the cup of Christ. And so neither need we.
Our ideal is not far off. Our Holy Grail lies close to our
heart. The Moral Law is within. To waken up to a recog
nition of its reality is conversion ; it is the New Birth ; it is
becoming a new creature. The longer we wander over crag
and fell; the longer we linger about church and shrine
and Eucharistic table and cross—so much the longer we
defer the vision of the true way, and acquaintance with the
fairest ideal.
People sometimes ask, Is life worth living ? I would ask,
How have you hitherto been living ? You have acted rightly.
Why have you done your duty ? Because you were inspired
by example ? The living example may be withdrawn ; the
past example may not fit your conditions. Because you
followed a customary road ? You may some day be placed
where custom conflicts with righteousness. Because good
nature prompted you ? Mere good-nature depends upon
health and income ; and health and income are not constant
quantities. Because you won smiles ? The world will not
always smile. Because you received approving testimonies ?
Society will not always grant testimonials to uprightness.
Because you took a joy in doing it? It will oft-times yield
bitterness. Because it brought you friends ? It may bring
you enemies. Because it rendered profit ? It will occa
sionally lead to loss. Because it seemed graceful and
becoming ? Duty will not always be picturesque. Because
the law required it ? Your duty and the law of the land
may some day come into antagonism. Because it was
easier than neglect ? It will not infrequently be harder.
What then ? If duty does not depend upon example,
custom, good nature, the world’s smiles, social testimonies,
joy, friends, profit, picturesqueness, legality, ease—upon
what foundation does it rest ?
“ Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing
admiration and awe—the starry heavens and the Moral Law
within.” To act from the law of duty because you recognize
that as the law of reason ; as the necessary pillar of an
harmonious world—this is to give purpose to life, to give it
value and dignity. This helps us to originate a newer and
more splendid species. This is the gospel that quickens.
�12
THE NEW CONVERSION.
It speaks no scorn of the meanest soul. It rakes up no
records of sin. It knows the evil of the world, the vice,
the bestiality, the cruelty, the knavery, the folly. The very
fact that these are recognized as bad proves the authority
of the Moral Law which condemns them. Does crime
call itself crime ? No ; it is the Moral Law which calls it
crime. And the poorest, shabbiest, timidest, most meagre
soul that has strength enough to say, “ That thing is bad,”
has strength enough to stagger to the threshold of the Moral
Ideal, and offer its salute.
This gospel is a gospel for all. Just as, beside the grave,
we all shed tears, so, before the Moral Law, we all stifle the
light word, and check the unseemly gesture, and stand in
hushed respect. If you are a Christian, and love sanctuaries
and scriptures, this law appeals to you. If you are an
Agnostic, and delight in Voltaire and Buckle and Spencer,
this law appeals to you. If you are old, it appeals to you.
If you are young
*
*
*
In one of Rossetti’s pictures he shows us a woman
standing sadly at a door. A vile rat grubs into the wall—
emblem of the sin and care that have eaten away her peace.
In the background play the children at their ring-a-ring-aroses—emblems of hope and opportunity. The picture
points to the new creation which each generation brings to
the world through the freshening force of youth. It is in
youth that the new varieties of thought and beauty and skill
are chiefly planned. The enthusiasms of youth give the
momentum to the activity of later years. Young conversion
means old salvation. The Duke of Wellington used to say
the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton.
The battles of light and progress are won in the hearts of
the young man and the maid. Epictetus, the lame old
Stoic, tells of a dare-devil youth named Polemon, who, with
a crowd of loose companions, burst one day into the lecture
room of the philosopher Xenocrates. Polemon was sobered
by the tone and aspect of the sage. He listened to the
wise words. His heart was touched. He changed his
manner of life, and gave himself to learning, and, in time,
succeeded to the chair of Xenocrates. Now, says Epictetus,
Polemon was a lover of beauty, but he looked for it in the
wrong place. He found it at last in the wisdom of the
academy. Young men and women are sincere lovers of
�THE NEW CONVERSION.
13
beauty, and often they look for it in the wrong place. May
we not hope that they will see, in dedication to the Moral
Ideal, a force that will give beauty to life, and majesty of
step, and faculty of heart, and hand, and brain ? Blessed,
doubly-blessed, trebly-blessed will this Ethical Movement
be if it gathers in the battalions of youth ! It is not a
Movement only for the pinched intellect, and the lame, and
the blemished. It offers scope for full-blooded manhood
and vigorous womanhood. While it accepts with tenderness
the scant tokens of the simplest spirit, yet it can use the
grace, the energy, and the gift of the bravest and the fairest.
Sometimes, from the Ethical platform, the teaching will
deal with the movements of masses, nations, societies,
organizations ; and that is well. For the Moral Law has
its message for the masses, and the classes, and the bodies
that march with million feet and shape out the large policies
of the world. But to-day I speak to the individual, to the
one, to you, to myself.
Carlyle has told us how, in 1789, six hundred members of
the States-General met in the Tennis-court of Versailles, and
lifted the right hand, and swore not to separate till they had
made a Constitution ; and their oath “ made the four
corners of France tremble.” The serious dedication of a
Self to the service of the Moral Ideal is better done less
openly, less loudly, and less after the manner of the drilled
regiment. But none the less the dedication is demanded.
We must remember that the building of the New Order can
only advance through the consecration of a heart here,
another there, and another there. And we must know that
we consecrate ourselves. We must make the declaration
and sign our name to it. We are not simply to submit to
an influence, to admire, to seat ourselves passively on the
footstool of the Ideal. We must not look out of a window
and say : “ Ah 1 there is an Ethical Movement on foot, and
I bless the banners.” That counts for nothing. It may be
liberality of thought, but it is meanness of conduct. We
must step in with the procession. “ My son, give me thine
heart,” said the old Jewish teachers. The Ethical Move
ment will not ask for less.
And how may we know our recruits ? And what are the
marks of the soul that has written its name among the
followers of the Great Law ?
�i4
THE NEW CONVERSION.
In each man or woman we shall note a cheerful sobriety
of speech and demeanour; a readiness to rejoice with
those that rejoice, to console the mourner and the dejected ;
an openness and moral dignity of manner ; a quick appre
ciation of things true and beautiful in persons, books, art,
and nature ; a catholic sentiment that will find kinship with
the Good among all schools of thought and religion; a
willingness to give personal service in civic, social, and
humanitarian causes.
And each individual case will show its special fruit. A
father will give closer heed to the moral interests of his
family. A mother will put more wisdom into her discipline.
The youth and maid will more diligently seek a definite
purpose in life. The student will hallow his book-learning
by using it for the advancement of his neighbour’s culture.
The commercial man will discard the trick he once stooped
to. The employer will take kindly thought for those
dependent upon him, and will do more than the letter of
the law requires. The affluent will lead just such a simple
life as he might conscientiously desire the poor to be able
.to lead. The politician will be as anxious for justice
between class and class as for justice between his sons and
daughters. The citizen will care for the honour of his
parish, his city, his country, as for his own personal good
name. Old duties will assume a finer import, and the clear
eye will discover new duties towards one’s self and towards
•one’s fellows.
This our church should be a fount of inspiration whence
all might come to draw. We are not Socialists ; we are not
Individualists; we are not politicians; we are not anarchists;
we are not Christians; we are not enemies of Christianity;
but, with humble resolution, we seek to keep clear the
stream of the moral perception. And they that come to
■drink may go away to shatter an idol, or annihilate a sham,
or defy an evil custom, or lay bare a fallacy, or reform an
.-abuse, or build a house of mercy, or set up an institution
for the spread of knowledge, or plead the cause of the
ignorant and weak, or speak peace among the turbulent, or
raise the tone of a household, or labour for that betterment
-of material conditions without which the Moral Law stumbles
.and halts in shameful numbness and inability. And they
�THE NEW CONVERSION.
15
come together again to commune one with the other in the
Church Ethical; and they comfort one another, and get
refreshment for the tired heart. For the process of regene
rating the race is toilful, and the way is hard to the flesh, and
the building is but tardy.
“We are builders of that city ;
All our joys and all our groans
Help to rear its shining ramparts,
All our lives are building-stones.
But the work that we have builded,
Oft with bleeding hands and tears,
And in error and in anguish,
Will not perish with the years.”*
Have I asked too little of those who enrol themselves under
the Ethical standard ? Then let each man raise the demand
for himself, and respond to it.
Have I asked too much ? Then tell me if you wish the
world to say that all we Ethicals have done ft to add to the
catalogue of churches one with a strange Greek name ?
If you have ever been to Strassburg, you may have wit
nessed a striking scene in the old cathedral. As the famous
clock nears the hour of noon every day, a closely-packed
crowd of people, of many languages and modes, assemble
and watch. When the very minute is at hand, their murmurs
are hushed, and a solemn stillness holds them all. And the
clock sounds twelve, and the figures of the twelve apostles
pass before their master, each making a reverence ; and,
quaint and shrill, the cock crows thrice. Then, with a sigh,
the throng breaks up, and passes out into the sunlight and
the busy city.
So profoundly does the heart beat when the attention of
many minds is fixed simultaneously on the passage of time.
And to-day, as we gather together in this stillness here,
we note the indications on life’s dial. We see flit by the
significant figures of Duty, Righteousness, and Responsi
bility ; and the voice of the Moral Law delivers its
summons—
And what shall we do?
* From Dr. Adler’s “ Song of the Golden City.”
Printed and Published for the Rationalist Press Committee by
Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The new conversion: a lecture delivered before the North London, South London, and East London Ethical Societies
Creator
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Gould, F.J. (Frederick James) [1855-1938]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1897
Identifier
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G2809
Subject
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Ethical culture movement
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The new conversion: a lecture delivered before the North London, South London, and East London Ethical Societies), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Ethical culture movement
Ethical Culture Movement-Great Britain