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THE PRACTICAL IDEALIST.
I.—Worship—(converse
with the supreme.)
1. The Idealist gives his worship and contemplation to the Eternal-Essence,
—to the beautiful Power and Law that underlies all phenomena, of which these
are but the sensuous appearances, or garment.
2. On strictly scientific grounds he has the full assurance that neither Evil
nor Chance, but Good is the mainspring of Nature. He is intensely conscious
of the omnipotent omnipresence of the Universal Spirit, and of his own parti
cipation in the vast Unity of Spiritual Life, but he does not dogmatise con
cerning the personality of the Deity.—“ We distinguish the announcements of
the soul, its manifestations of its own nature by the term Revelation. These
are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication
is an influx of the Divine Mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual
rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehen
sion of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A
thrill passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the perform
ance of a great action which comes out of the heart of nature.— Ths Over
Soul.
Trust your emotion. Tn your metaphysics you have denied personality
to the Deity; yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart
and life, though they should clothe God with shape and colour.—Self-reliance.
3. For the Idealist there can be nothing Supernatural in Creed and History
He is as a mountain climber who has the clouds beneath him, and is face to
face with God’s blue of Heaven. Nature and the natural to him are more
miraculous than the most monstrous prodigy, and infinitely more beautiful.
�$3
The Idealist's Code of Tatilt.
•4. The Idealist worships in the Divine Being the Ideal of Truth, Beauty,
arid' Good, and the recognition of His attributes is the central force, and fount
fof power in moral dynamics. Prayer for worldly and material good or success,
;appears to him an arrogant assumption that God will not order things for the
'best, and a selfish intrusion of our own interests that must most frequently be
■at the expense of those of our fellow creatures. But Spiritual prayer, com
prehended in contemplation, and passionate aspiration yearning for communion
■with the Highest, is the natural function of the soul.
II.—Duties.—(Intercourse
with our neighbour.)
The idea of Justice proclaiming that every individual in his pursuit of
enjoyments, and in the development of his life, shall not interfere with the free
exercise of all their faculties by his fellows, inculcates as the duties of all
men,—
1. That they regard all forms of religious and other opinions, that do not
themselves violate the law, in the purest spirit of toleration, and strenuously
resist the monopoly of state protection and other privileges by any one body of
sectarians.
2. That the fullest liberty be acceded to women to exercise their faculties
in any occupation to which those faculties may impel them.
3. That they ever recognise the indefeasible right of all men to the use of
the earth’s surface, and to the opportunity of labouring, and earnestly promote
the achieving of such social organization as shall secure to all men the oppor
tunity of attaining to the most perfect development possible to them.
That
•they pilot their charitable enterprises with discriminating wisdom, and realise
the fact that unthinking well-mindedness is immoral.
4. That they promote the spread of knowledge, and the establishment of a
new system of education that shall render it possible to form the characters of
■children, to more radically influence their lives, and give effect to the special
¿aptitudes with which nature may have endowed them.
The Law of Charity, or Universal Love commands:—
1. That every man have a lively anxiety for the happiness and well-being
•of his fellow men, and abstain from any self-gratification that is injurious to
the general community, or that inflicts pain on another normally constituted
mind.
2. That he vehemently persuade them of the folly of appealing to the
arbitration of the sword; and advocate the establishment of a wise inter
national organisation and code for the settlement of differences.
3. To advocate the principle of friendly association as opposed to selfinterested, aud dis-united isolation, for purposes of social economy, social re
finement, and social happiness.
�jpRNiNA
Pardon.
A PATCHED SOCIETY.
{DigestContinued!)
IO.—Competition.—It would be erroneous to infer that it is proposed to
dispense with the wholesome stimulus of normal and legitimate competition as
•an element of Society. In all that concerns the commerce, or wholesale dealing
■of the country, in contra-distinction to retail distribution, the laws of supply
and demand would continue their unimpeded action. If any are disposed to
attribute inconsistency to such a distinction, they are reminded that whilst
commerce is directly creative of wealth, the unproductive competings of the
retailers are little better than a lawless wrangling for wealth already created,
attended with the consequent waste and destruction to be anticipated from such
chaotic and non-industria] busyness.
The system of allied industries, then, is not Socialism, that would eliminate
competition from human affairs,—that contemplating an ideal conception of
man overlooks his proneness to sloth and to physical and mental inaction; it
would, on the contrary, attempt, for the first time, to free competitive human
works and endeavours, from the clogs and drawbacks that choke its action. It
is precisely because competition is so useful an agency for production that we
would not waste its energies on barren objects.
11-—Associated Industry.—To facilitate the guarantee of employment which
Society is morally bound to provide for all its members, by means of the wisest
regulations tending to this end, the Committees of Public Welfare in order,
afford further security from the variations of the demand in the labour market,
will encourage the establishment of firms of co-operative industry. There
should be at least one estate divided into allotments, and farmed on the best
principles by small tenants, the necessary machinery being supplied by a union
of their capitals ; and the cultivation of a second by labourers who will share
�Ernina Landon.
in the produce in proportion to their contributions of labour and capital, will
be superintended by the Committee, h manufactory, also, of the description
best calculated to succeed under the economical conditions of the locality, will
be established on the same principles.
12. —Administration of Justice, and Arbitration of differences.—The com
munity will obtain, when possible, the nomination of the members of the
Committee as Justices of the Peace, and they, from their knowledge of the
antecedents and character of all the members, be enabled to'treat some of the
‘criminals that may be brought before them in a way that will be calculated to
remove the defects in character, instead of hardening them in offences by de- grading punishments.
Every member of the community will agree to refer any disputes in which
he may become involved, and that at present, are the subjects of actions-atlaw, to the friendly arbitration of one of the members of the Committee ; and
failing a settlement by this means, to submit them to the decision of the Com
mittee as a final court of arbitration.
13. —Education.—How futile are the existing educational systems in influ
encing and forming the characters of the young, the results best show, and it
seems incredibly ludicrous that the mere imparting of the rudiments of know
ledge should be denominated education. In the new organisation, all the
children of the district will pass -the whole of their time in the school-house
and its adjacent gardens and grounds ; which it will be the first effort of the
reformed community to provide on as magnificent a scale as possible. The
masters will be in the proportion of one, to from ten to fifteen children, and
will be fitted by special training on a new system, as well as by natural superi
ority, carefully tested, for the important work of training the young in all
senses. They will, each one attach to himself a manageable number of the
children of poorer parents, to whom they will act stand as parents and educational
guardians, making their characters their constant study and care. The children
instead of wandering wildly in a semi-savage state, as at present, when school
hours are over, will be pleasantly employed in alternately studying and working
in the gardens, or in other light labours with occasional organised recreation,
so that each one, according to the future before him, be instructed to play his
.part in life with intelligence. The industrial-school principle will also be com
bined with the instruction of the girls, who will be similarly provided with
teachers, and the market-garden, laundry, &c., properly superintended, will
render the school partially self-supporting.
14. —The Social Mansion.—The leisure hours of the inhabitants will be
spent in this, the central building, and heart of the town. It will contain besides
reading, conversation, and lecture-rooms—club-rooms, provided with the
different means of amusement, and a concert-room furnished with musical
instruments, and will be situated in an ornamental garden, with pleasure
grounds as extensive as possible. Attached to the Mansion and resident in it,
will be the Lecturer and Public Teacher ; the duty of whose important office
will be to provide for the delight and instruction of the community, by lectures,
�The Practical Idealist.
83
But more especially by directing the tastes and talents of the different members,
and turning them to the advantage and profit of all, and by promoting spon
taneous social assemblies, in which refinement may spread its garlands over all
classes.
We have seen that the town of three thousand inhabitants will effect an
economy of many thousand pounds by adopting the associative principle; this
sum representing the profit obtained by the joint-stock transactions of the
community will be thus- acquired, and school-masters and gardeners will be a
profitable exchange for superfluous and useless shopkeepers.
15. —The Selection of Capacities—The learned professions still be paid by
fixed stipends in the new communities, instead of by a system of fees that
tend to encourage deception, and that make the interest of lawyers and medical
men to consist in the increase of dishonesty and bad faith, and diseases in the
community. It will be at once objected by some, as it has been, that such' a
plan would but universalise the notorious inefficiency of parish doctors. But
it surely must be apparent enough that the young surgeon who accepts the
meagre official pay of the parish doctor, does so only whilst striving to gain
practice of a more remunerative kind, and sharing in the universal game of
money-making, and following, the laws of its code, metes out attention to the
paupers proportionate to the pay, eager to throw up the ungrateful office as soon
as he can afford to. It may be presumed, also, that professional zeal of this
mercenary sort is scarcely of the kind likeliest to advance the interests of
science. On the other hand, when the election of medical men is guided by
the best judgment of the Members of the Committee of Public Welfare, —
subject to the rate of the majority of the community,—who will have also the
power of dismissing those guilty of neglect, a more wholesome stimulus to
conscientious diligence and zeal is provided. It will follow, as a consequence
of this arrangement, that of all social abuses the most prolific in chaotic and
deathful consequences will be extinguished—the placing brainless incapacity
in a profession which is chosen because of a patron’s living, or. a father’s practice.
In the community no mere dictum of parental partiality shall suffice to afflict
society with a misplaced incapable, but the verdict of greatest aptitude from
Teachers and from the Committee of Public Welfare, shall decide on the proper
sphere for a young man.
16. —The New Order af Nobility.—In the commencement of a new society
which involves a higher moral condition of mankind, and turns man’s aspira?tions to the higher still, the noblest will set the example of preferring the
public good and the happiness of all, to selfish considerations, and of substi
tuting for private splendour public magnificence that will help to. lead man
kind along the road of progress.
These noblest,, therefore, will take
upon them a vow of renunciation, binding themselves to satisfy their pri
vate wants with a limited and fixed income, and to devote the surplus of their
incomes and earnings to the promotion of public welfare,-—this with the object
of assuaging the insane rage for wealth and appearances that is driving society
into a whirlwind of well merited disaster; a volcanic upheaval of the downcrushed, under miseries that will no longer be borne.
�87
Emina Landon.
This new and noble Aristocracy will be of three ranks, accord
ing to the surplus of wealth devoted to the service of the community,.
They will receive all the honours that are at present undeservedly paid
to rank, and in order that they may not suffer the loss of the greatest boon
that wealth confers, the community will defray the cost of educating their
children in the best universities. Were this purchasing of honour to become a
fashion even, it would not impair the wholesome desire for wealth that has so
strong an influence in creating it; for the riches that were renounced as far as
private employment of them goes, would be at their disposal for public
purposes, and so be still desirable as conferring power. If it is pretended that
in this nineteenth century the honours and rank of this new nobility would be
had in derision and contempt by an irreverent age, it is replied that if this is so,—
to be contemptible to a people that reverence lying shams, and the ignoble only
is the only true honour, and there is tenfold more need for a fresh fashion of
nobility.
17.—Lastly—because it appears a ludicrous, but melancholy and altogether
intolerable violation of the divine law, that men who chance to be possessed
of wealth should be freed from all compulsory social duties and responsibilities,
producing as we see, a state of things in which such wealth becomes unwhole
some heaps of decomposition, prolific of turf parasites, black-legs, Anonymas,
men in women’s clothes, and similar maggot-births, the Committee of Public
Welfare will assign duties to all such unemployed persons suitable to their
respective capacities.
General Objections Answered.—The sceptic will pertinently enough observe
of this Scheme of a New Society,—‘ it is all very admirable, and would doubtless
work charmingly, if in our community the rather large proportion of Socrates
and infallible wise men were forthcoming for our Committee of Public Welfare,
not to say our regiment of school-masters. As it is the world is suffering pre
cisely from the want of more of these wise men.’ We reply, that the world can
well furnish the brain-power that is requisite for a few experimental communi
ties, and when the fundamental principles have been once laid down and tested, it
will require no supreme amount of initiatory and creative wisdom. The growth
in morality and unselfishness is the grand desideratum, and chief of all the
difference between the two Societies, is the difference between one in which
starving labourers and competing speculators and tradesmen are compelled into
crime, knavery, and bestial low-mindedness by the resistless influence of circum
stances, and one which sets man free for the first time to assert himself human
and heaven’s noblest work.
The first objection that is offered by practical persons, is of this sort,—‘But
you who pretend to be effecting so much good for all men are proposing to
wantonly deprive of their means of livelihood the immense body of tradesmen
who form the great majority of the middle classes,—whilst you yourself admitted
but now, that in wealthy countries the essential point of economical policy is
to distribute the wealth so as to produce comfortable and well-to-do classes,
and it seems that retail trading, if it does nothing more, provides a large body
of persons with the comforts of life, and moreover fills up, as with social
�The Practical Idealist.
99
Buffers, the gap between the otherwise too distinct classes of brain-workers and»
gentry, and the manual labourers.
It is an unfortunate fact, that arguments as exasperatingly irrational as this,
—the desirability of providing for tradesmen even employment that is utterly
useless to the community—are only too abundantly employed by persons who
pride themselves on their common sense. Although it may be that the supply
of mere material wealth that has been accumulated in some old countries, is
almost adequate for the wants of all, can it be necessary to remind anyone that
the essential wealth of all countries is the capacity for work and the labour of
all their inhabitants,—'that the gross sum of this cannot by any ever so multi
plied powers of production be too great,—that this wealth expends itself in com
passing comfortable, happy, intellectual and noble lives for all human beings,
and that to squander any of this work-power is to wantonly cast into the mire
God’s purest gold, to mar His design, and to thwart His purposes.. As for the
services of the tradesman class by way of padding to fill out the gaunt form of
society into a false show of comeliness, and to cover up the hollows of degra
dation and ignorance—the sooner we can tear away this stuffing and reveal the
naked truth, we quicker may hope that the condition of the labouring classes
will have serious consideration. To return to the practical point of the question,
however, it is true that were the new system adopted suddenly in all parts of
the country simultaneously, some confusion and distress would result. But it
is only too certain that the process of transition will be a long and gradual one,
and in the first of the new communities the displaced tradesmen will be pro
vided with such other employment as they will willingly accept, or be compen
sated for any loss sustained. It is equally apparent that in the course of a
gradual transition the condemned class would spontaneously disappoar, and
who will question the fact that a community organised on the proposed system
Could provide useful and productive employment for as many persons in the'Same rank of life as it had discarded, if not the same individuals.
Our opponent would probably continue;—£ supposing your plan of appoint
ing medical men by the Committee already adopted in such a town as you have
been speaking of, do you pretend to hope that we should not see the sons and
relatives of the members of the said Committee filling the posts you are so
anxious to she wisely filled, just as the patronage system in the church gives
us younger sons for our divinely anointed rectors. In any imperfect condition,
of mankind let not a few fallible persons be so heavily laden with responsi
bilities, and depend on it, it is best for everyman to choose his surgeon, and-hisschoolmaster, &c., and be taught wisdom by the consequences, if his choicehappens to be an unwise one.’ It must be replied that this last seems at first
sight very wholesome in theory, but experience shows that a number of persons
are not capable of judging of the merits of a professional adviser, as is abun
dantly proved by the number of successful charlatans; yet, on the other hand,
their faculty of judging will be fostered by their power of expressing discontent
with any such public person, and by nominating the person who shall make the
selection for them. Respecting what might have been the result had the system
been already adopted, we reply that the novel plan is only proposed as a portion of
�1
89
Emina Landon.
an integral system, which by its provisions, requires the improved moral corr*
dition of the whole community, or itself effects it.
Ever foremost in the remembrance of all earnest reformers, should be the
consideration that no perfectest machinery for the distributing and feeding of
men can be of permanent value, if it permit them to remain for the most part
what we see them, a race of ignoble beings. It has been no part of the present
endeavour to create a complicated pattern of theoretical modes of life by
which all the details of human existence and effort are to be regulated. The
genius of any community and of every race will shape their surroundings accord
ing to the degree of nobleness that animates their collective aspirations. The
fundamental principles of Association, therefore, upon which the new institutions
are to be based have been alone indicated. But on the other hand, if the
individualities of the members of the community are all in all, how imperative
is it for this very reason to modify the force of circumstances that irresistably
re-act upon human nature, and give the ineffaceable impress of their good or
evil influence. The characters and lives of men are the produet of the twofactors, natural constitution and circumstance, of which the latter is the greater
and more important. Nine out of ten men if influenced by the best circum
stances-—education, and opportunities for the exercise of their faculties, will
become more or less noble members of society, and the bad propensities of the
other small portion can be pretty well neutralised by such influences, but it
should be needless to repeat that the education alluded to here is no confection
or compound of the three B’s by a National or any other existing school
master.
O many and earnest-hearted brothers, see ye not that these some thousand years
past the wonderful magic of the eternal mind that flows through a hundred
ages, has woven mysterious harmonies into thoughts and sounds of surpassing
delight,—Shakespeares, Angelos, and Mozarts,—helping to make man well
nigh divine; and now, too, that our eyes are opening to the mysteries of the
spheres, and we are glad in the strength of growing science, shall we con
tinue beasts in feeling only, and watch complacently how the sorely afflic ed
labourers who are bound for us, go vilely still on their bellies by reason of
their burdens ? Surely we may open their ears with some scanty visitations of
sweet sounds, and unfold their brains in some sort of life not wholly brutish.
Certainly we may fling off the hot blush that proclaims us conscious oppressors
and monopolisers of the sunshine. Truly we can live honest, and they shall
live men.
Such meaning as this Ernina hastily, greedily tore from the closely printed
volume, and when the early morning light peered into the room, it found its
white robed tenant still pacing up and down with happy unquenchable resolve
in deep, eloquent eyes. “Thank heaven, I am rich, thank heaven for that;”
were the words with which she turned at length to rest.
To be continued.
�Jarge Uhrhe,
m
if c
VERSUS
Cease we then, Loved Ones ;
Cease this hard strainful stress,—
Seeking that mirage—Truth,
Yearning for good unknown,
Seeking to ripen
With our hot painful sighs
Fruitage of world-schemes,
Ere the time destined,—
Seeking to force men’s souls—
Still all beneath the clod—
Swift into golden bloom,
Into large-mindedness,
Open-eyed lovingness,
Into the better life,—
Quenching the acridness
Of their green juices,
Quenching their hatreds,
Their selfish injustice
In love universal
From the unequal war
Cease we and rest we;
And of a larger love
Larglier quaff we.
Then lap me, ye Loved Ones
Enwrapped by your beauties,
Drunk with your beaming eyes,
Awed by your loveliness,
Soothed by your tenderness
My Ideal Maidens.
*
�The Practical Idealist
’Tis not one soul alone
Pouring responses
Back to my thirsting heart,
Prinks from mine perfect love
Knows all love’s fulness.
Maude, my grave Empress love,
Great browed and large eyed,
Thou giv’st me thought for thought
Erom thy imperial soul
Seeking all knowledge.
Swells thy round swelling breast
Echoing lovely
Impulses noble.
Perfect thy perfect form
As large Minerva’s.
Clara, small shrinking fawn
Tenderly clinging
With thy deep hazel eyes
To my down bending face
Feeding upon thee,
Knowledge thou car’st not for,.
Nor Science lov’st greatly
Save for the beautiful
Chance twineth around them.
Thy purest, flawless soul,
Delicate poised
Taste’s pure embodiment
Serves me for magnet,
Testing all things by thee
Testing all thought by thee
For fleck in their beauties.
Helen, sweet Crown of Love
Thou are just beautiful,
Womanly wholly r—
’Tis the soft perfectness
Of thy pure womanhood
Bows my heart down to thee
In willingness unwilled
With the light melody
Of thy bright girlishness
Each resting pause of thought
Fillest thou gracefully
Piecing our four lives
Into a vision bright
Into bright oneness.
�Large Love.
92
So of full largest love
Largliest quaff we,
Four souls inpouring
Brightness convergent
All their quadruple love
All their quadruple life
All their quadruple thought
Into-one Eden..
Turn me mayhap thenBack to the fight again
Teaching with- open eyes
Preaching such largest love
Unto all mortals;—
Quelling the beast in man,
Quelling base self in man
Teaching to quail before
Love’s fearful glances
Unto the higher life
Leading man onwards.
ON PRAYER.
Men take their texts from Bibles, but wheresoever truth is spoken we have a
Bible to hand. Inspiration is in Truth. God himself cannot speak more
than that. To think otherwise is not religion but superstition ; to think that
inspiration is locked up within the covers of one book, and is not the eternal
characteristic of veracity; that it was exhausted some eighteen hundred odd
years ago, and not reserved in an inexhaustible fund to be spent upon the
world, carrying its own sanctity, and founting always
Within the arteries of a man,
that truth can be anything else but inspired, or inspiration anything but truth
is a fetishism only different in quality, not in substance, to that of the idolator
and the savage.
Let us take a text from Emerson; if he does not speak the truth, he speaks
honesty, which is the next thing to it, but that he does speak the truth (and
consequently is equally inspired for us with any Scriptures whatsoever,) I need
not say is the writer’s religion.
�93
The Practical Idealist.
The preamble to the passage runs thus :—
_ “ It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance,—a new respect for thedivinity in man,—must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of
men ; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits ; their modes of
living; their associations ; in their property; in their speculative views.
In what prayers do men allow themselves ? That which they call a holy»
office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad, and asks for
some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in
endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous.
Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is
vicious.
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest*
point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is
the Spirit of God pronouncing His works good. But prayer as a means to
effect a private end, is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not
unity iD nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he
will not be. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer*
kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke
of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout all nature, though for cheap
ends.”
This extract is from the noble essay on “Self-Reliance,” against passages
of which I was impelled to write,—Read me these pages on my death bed.
By a melancholy mistake, truly, is common prayer called holy. Instead of
cultivating manliness, self-help, and fortitude, it feebly whines for subsidy and
indulgence. It forgets the proverb, men in their wiser (if secular) momenta
have invented,—“ God helps those who help themselves.” It is lazy and
luxurious, and essentially immoral. I have for years shrunk from praying for
temporal blessings; I have instinctively and intimately felt that it is so selfish,
or as Emerson says, “mean;” and further that it is, in truth, a piece of
profanity, for it indirectly imputes to God that He will not order things for the
best; it impugns His dispensation.
I have felt that I hardly dared to petition
in this selfish way; that it was a piece of presumption and temerity; that I
was not justified; that I had no standing-point. I, a microscopic creature on
a speck of the Rolling Universe, to lift up my voice to the King without a
a Name to ask him to interfere in my puny affairs for my personal,—nay, my
pecuniary benefit ! Not that anything is too small to be out of God’s Provi
dence; the atom is the focus of stupendous laws; the object of the solar
system ; abstractly, great and little are alike with God; but relatively,—that
God should arrest or modify the progress of the whole to gratify the ephemeral
appetite of an atom is a melancholy superstition, as illogical as it is selfish.
The welfare of the atom, we must learn, is bound up with that of the whole;
we must abandon ourselves to the laws, not pitiably beg that the laws may be
altered.
The theory of materialistic prayer must be either that God will interfere speci
ally to accommodate our lilliputian petitions,—the selfish fancies of a shallow
moment,—morally certain to clash with the true demands of things,—or that
he is pleased with a little lip-service.
�On Prayer.
94
The latter need only be mentioned not to be noticed; the former is almost
■a§ unworthy.
; Is it not seen that prayer is a superfluity as well as an impertinence ; that
God will order all things for the best. It is our duty to accept, and not to
ask; our attitude should be receptivity; it pleases God best that we help ourselves,
—and not ask Him to help us ; He leaves us to answer our own prayers ; forti
tude aud work are what He admires—not petitions; to do and bear, that is
■our duty; not to presume to-ask, which is, indirectly to dictate. God Almighty,
indeed, must look upon such unmanly practices as utterly contemptible, and
one would have thought men would have learnt their futility, if not their
ignobleness, from the systematic way in which they have been disregarded.
The world goes singing the same tune,
And whirls her living and her dead.
God does not put us here to ask Him to help us, but to learn His laws; to
be healthy and clever; and the veteran Premier’s remark to the scandalized
Scotch corporation,—that sanitary measures, and not prayers, were the remedy,
exhausted the truth.
’
To help ourselves appears to be our raison d’etre,—what have we to do with
grayer ?
In the expression—“ Prayer -is the contemplation of the facts of life from
the highest point of view ”—I imagine Emerson meant praise rather than
prayer,—laudatory prayer, not solicitous. Prayer, he says, (in his splendid
eloquence) “is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant” soul; the spirit of
God pronouncing his works good.”
Silent .Praise is this; and it is the spirit of God because in its living appre
hension. it becomes one in identity; as Emerson elsewhere asks—“ Jesus’
virtue, is not that mine ? If it cannot be made mine it is not virtue.”
In the same way as this spirit pronouncing God’s works to be good is a
tacit Te Deum; so laborare est orare,—as Carlyle translates it,—work is
woiship.. The way to praise God is to work; every furrow turned over is an
ode; it is testimony to His genius and obedience to His laws.
Appreciation, too, is the deepest form of praise. When I walk into the
fields and feel helpless with delight, that is the sincerest psalm, and more in
tense than the most throbbing hymn. My son, says the Lord, ever,—give me
thine. Heart; not thy Voice, but thy tumultuous, unfathomable Feeling; the
glowing spirit within you.
To conclude; the beauty, the ineffableness, even, of spiritual prayer is not to
be concealed, though it is singular how the idea of even spiritual prayer seems
to shiink before that of work. After all, it seems somewhat of an indulgence,
or a supeifluity. The man who rises at six o’clock with a hard day’s work
before him, seems to have little to do with prayer; he seems to be independent
of .it, and even of that exquisite relation of docility before God, which the
spiritual pray-er knows in all its sweetness.
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The Practical Idealist
The beauty of spiritual prayer consists in the attitude of humility and con«
versation it establishes before God; and if we will only observe the rule—
Pray,—pouring thanks and asking grace.
I own T can conceive little more lovely. Surely it is a sweet preparation for
the day ; from such prayer we seem to come out as from a sanctuary ; invested
as with a radiant atmosphere ; explaining the parable of Moses of old.
The depth and sweetness of true prayer I have not failed to experience;
and yet, alas, such is the meanness of human nature, I must confess their
greatest intensity was in a moment of disappointment and trouble. And yet
it is an intense delight, and an inexprsssible balm to find after the chills and
vanities of the world that we have in our heart-of-hearts the invisible Almighty
God to fall back upon, ever at the bottom and the centre, the Illimitable
Father, the incorporation of all that is Ideal, the Ideal of ail that is loving and
kind, majestic and pure.
A prayer of the spiritual sort, might not, perhaps, improperly, run as
follows :—
O Lord Father, who hast poured upon me so many blessings, and granted
me so many privileges, 1 thank Thee with inexpressible thanks for Thy mercies,
impossible to enumerate. My words can make Thee no return, let my feelings
praise Thee. Make me great, which is making me good; fortify me against
my last day, and reconcile me beyond,—for Thy Fatherhood’s sake, Amen!
Alex. Teetgen.
�By H. L. M.
I must again trespass on the Editor’s courtesy,—already conspicuously dis
played, by disputing the interpretation put upon the argument of my former
■article, as follows :—
“ When the writer speaks of what Christ might have done had He not been
despised and rejected, it is equivalent to saying that He was mistaken and
disappointed in calculations which it seems the insight of modern thinkers
would have been equal to ; and in this case, where the omniscience of God
head ?”—Idealist, p. 66, 67.
I reply, that this omniscience of God-head was “ equal to ” foresee the
result of Israel’s probation, is shown—1st, by the prophecies which speak of
Messiah’s rejection, and 2ndly, by many words of Christ on Earth, proving
that he was by no means “ dissapointed,” however grieved thereat.
I. I alluded in the previous paper to the pathetic 53rd of Isaiah, as sup
plying a strong additional support to the claims of Jesus to the Messiahship.
Eor this is a wondrously fulfilled inspired prophecy ; and one of such a nature
as neither a vain glorious deluding pretender, nor a fondly dreaming, self
deluded enthusiast, would have been particularly desirous to attempt to get
fulfilled in his own person. Let all readers, however well they know the pas
sage, read it once more, from the 13th verse of the 52nd chapter, to the end
of the 53rd, and note its remarkable correspondence with the facts and doctrine
of Christ’s Passion. Then observe how, after the closing notes of this mournful
strain, inwhich the prophet seems to lament his people’s rejection and ill-treatment
of their Messiah—he changes his key, and in the opening of the 54th chapter
salutes with a joyful welcome the new Gentile Church, called in to supply the
place of the unfaithful nation, and promised more numerous children, and a
wider habitation. Similar in spirit are prophecies in chaps, xlviii and xlix.
�The Practical Idealist.
■97
4
i
i
'
Here the Messiah, the “ Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel,” v. 17, seeifts
himself to speak, and thus break forth, (though uic passage had a more
immediate application,) i'nto a lament over his rejection, not for his own
sake, but the nation’s;—“ 0 that thou had’st hearkened to my command-"
ments 1 then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as
the waves of the sea: thy seed also had been as the sand,” &c.—-surely the
very voice which long afterwards exclaimed in the same accents, “ If thou
had’st known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong
unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes 1 ” &c.—Luke xix, 42.
In the 49th chapter, as if turning away in sorrow from Israel, he thus addresses
the Gentiles :—“ Listen 0 isles, unto me, and hearken ye people, from far ; ’*
then after announcing his birth and mission, he sCems to relate a colloquy be
tween himself and his father. “ he said I have laboured in vain, I have spent
my strength for nought, and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord,
and my work with my God: ” and' the reply is, “ Though Israel be not
gathered,” &c. “ It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to
raise up the tribes of Jacob;—I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles,
that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”—Lev. i. 12.
Daniel announces that “ Messiah should be cut off, but not for himself; ”
ix. 25 ; and Zechariah has some remarkable prophecies;—of the thirty pieces
of silver, assigned to the potter in the house of the Lord •; “ a goodly price
that I was priced at of them.” He said—xi, 12-13, “Awake O sword,
against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow saith the Lord of
hosts.”—xiii, 7 ; and “They shall look upon me whom they have pierced.”—
xii, 10.
These predictions were for several centuries “ unfulfilled inspired prophecies; ”
but now for above 18 have stood forth as fulfilled ones; (the last indeed, as far
as regards the piercing, if not yet the looking,) the more remarkably because
they predict the nation’s own shame and blindness, and the preference of others
in its place; a situation which no nation would be likely to “ aspire ” or
“ sigh after,” or seek to fulfill for itself. It is remarkable that that part of
Handel’s Messiah which depicts the rejection and sufferings of Christ, is taken
exclusively from the Old Testament: indeed the whole work affords a curious
illustration, (by no means an exhaustive one,) of the fulness with which his
storv can be related out of that Testament, and those who recognise the fulfil
ment of some of its testimonies concerning him, find no difficulty in believing
that all will be fulfilled in the end. In the Messianic prophecies, the predic
tions relating to the first and to the second advents, appear contiguously
mingled together, as different chains of mountains sometimes do in a distant
view; but as in journeying nearer and through them, these open and separate,
showing how far they lie one beyond another, and what long stretches of plain
land intervene,—so from our present position between the two advents, we now
behold the long centuries which divide them. That this interval was not clearly
visible in prospect is not surprising when we reflect that before Christ’s coming
it was open to Israel to accept him at his first advent, and then all might have
been fulfilled without a break. Doubtless, he could have found means to accom-
�“Despised and Rejected.”
98
plisli his great sacrifice for the redemption of the world without their wicked
hands; and then having thrown off the guise of humiliation which befitted it,
might for anything we know, have stepped on at once to David’s throne. In
like manner, when the Israelites were in Egypt, God’s promise to bring them
out thence, and to bring them into Canaan was given all in one, and but for
their own fault might have been fulfilled all in one; but through their unbelief
when on the border of the promised land, a long interval was interposed of 40
years.
It may be asked why, if the conduct of the Jews in refusing Christ was so
plainly foreseen by God, as to find place in the prophecies, did He nevertheless
put them to the test? But the same question might be asked concerning every
probation to which God has ever subjected man with a like result; for when
was there any of which He did not see the result ? But it is nevertheless,
morally necessary that such probations should take place. And though those
who fail rightly to endure them suffer loss themselves, they will not in the end
defeat the purposes of God.
II. Nor was Christ’s treatment by the Jews any matter of surprise or dis
appointment to Himself? No, surely no. Not only were the circumstances of
His death and resurrection before Him at the beginning of His public career,
the pulling down and raising up again of the temple of His body, and His
lifting up on the cross, like the serpent in the wilderness, John ii, 19-22, iii, 14,
but His rejection by the leaders of the people with its issue, and many atten
dant circumstances, were the subject of frequent prophecy during the last year
of His life on earth, (Mark, viii, 31-33, ix, 33-34), with reference to the
prophets and the scriptures (Luke, xviii, 31, Matt, xxvi, 54). While confi
dently prophesying His second coming into glory, He interposed the prelimi
nary, that “ first must He suffer many things, and be rejected of this genera
tion,” Luke, xvii, 25. When the whole company of the disciples greeted Him
with acclamations on His entry into Jerusalem, thinking that now’ the Son of
David was surely about to take possession of his kingdom, his own thoughts
rested rather on the more proximate events which would postpone that dav,
Jerusalem’s crime and punishment ; over which he wept, not for his own sake,
but for the city’s; seeing in anticipation the Roman armies compassing it
around, and laying it even with the ground, because it knew not the time of
its visitation. When James and John asked to be foremost in sharing the
honours of the kingdom, he told them of a bitter cup to be drunk first, a cold
baptism to be undergone. And it was not without a Divine eagerness that he
looked forward to this, for the sake of the great issues beyond it. “ I have a
baptism to be baptised with,”—a cold plunge into, and rising again from death,
—and how am I straitened till it be accomplished ? ” As the time drew near
the simple-request of certain Greeks to see Ilim, seems to have brought before
His mind the thought of all nations presently drawing near to worship and
afresh stimulated Him to the endurance of the approaching sacrifice which vas
to redeem them. “ Except a corn of wheat” He said ‘ fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alor.e ; but if it die, it bringvlh forth much fruit. And 1,
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Should He then
�99
The Practical Idealist.
pray to be saved from this coming hour of pain and death ? No ; it was for
this cause He had come to this hour; “ to give His life,” as He said at another
time, “a ransom for many.” John xii, 20-33, Matt, xxi, 28. Jesus stood
alone at this time in these thoughts ; without any sympathy or comprehension
from His disciples. Peter rebuked Him when first He began to speak to them
of His future sufferings and death, and afterwards we are told “they under
stood none of these things.”—Matt, xvi, 22, Luke xviii, 34), having so fixed
their eyes on the more numerous prophecies of the Messiah’s kingdom and
glory as to overlook the occasional ones which spoke of his sufferings and
hnmiliation. Not till after His resurrection did they learn to connect them,
when to the disappointed sigh of Cleopas. “ We trusted that it had been He
who should have redeemed Israel,” Jesus himself replied “ 0 fools, and slow of
heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken ! Ought not Christ to have
suffered these things,” (according to these prophets) “ and to enter into His
glory ?” Then first to these two pedestrians, and afterwards to the assembled
apostles, Me expounded in all the scriptures, the law of Moses, and the Psalms,
as well as the Prophets, the things concerning Himself—Luke, xxiv, 25-27,
44-47. A wondrous exposition that must have been ! would that it had been
preserved for us! But the Christian student is at no great loss, in the face of
the great facts and doctrines of the Gospel, to trace the many anticipations in
earlier scripture which foreshadowed and led up to them—far more numerous,
taking the whole body of it into account, than could be touched on here. AU
the scriptures looking forward to Christ, catch on their faces the coming dawn,
as those written after His appearance throw back the full light.
As to the effects of the invention of printing, the greatest work which that
did was to liberate the Bible, which had been hidden in convents, shut up in
dead languages and costly illuminated manuscripts, and send it abroad to pro
duce by its influence the reformation of religion, and the regeneration of society.
During the dark centuries of its seclusion, the name of Christ may have been
indeed over rated, but his spirit and doctrine were behind a cloud, overlaid and
encrusted with mediaeval superstition. But how pregnant is true Christianity
with right law-making principles, if not definite laws, for social government, is
manifest in the improvement of legislation, as well as spiritual life, wherever it
has free scope to operate. And how living are those waters which, the seal
being removed from the fountain, could gush forth again so fresh, revivifying
the face of aU lands through which they flow !
H. L. M.
Any mind not irrevocably given up to foregone conclusions in studying the Book of
Isaiah must surely peroeive that only a vague and brief passage here and there, in the midst
of ten chapters of wholly inapplicable matter, oan be strained into any sort of reference
to Jesus. Compared with the general vagueness of the Hebrew prophecies, the Delphian,
oracles might rationally be styled miraculous, and given such a mass of poetic utter
ance, or so-called prophecies, it may be assumed that the circumstances of the life of any
illustrious Jew, in the course of the latter half of the nation’s history, would have tallied
more closely with them. Taking the much vaunted 53rd chap. Isaiah, whilst the whole
�“Despised and Rejected'
100
that is so rashly deemed conclusive, is only the natural portrait of a future ideal person
age that would naturally occur to the prophetic Poet of a country that’was wont to place
its faith in its prophets, and jet amongst a people who usually rejected and ill-used, like
the
their great men, it contains no single direct and unmistakeable allusion, and
the passages in the 10th and 12th verses are distinctly contradictory of such allusion to
Jesus, unless contorted in a manner by which anything might be made to mean any
thing.
It would be idle to answer arguments founded upon the prophecies recorded along with
miracles in the very narrative whose authenticity is the question at issue. But any dis
passionate mind should have its doubts at once set at rest by the consideration that it is
altogether incredible that the Deity in making a revelation that should save man the
trouble of solving “ the painful riddle of the earth,” would involve it in such mysteries as
to render it the only incredible and inscrutable thing in His Universe to the greater part
Of thoso acknowledged to be the most earnest, reverent and enlightened minds on the
earth.
The following words of Emerson irradiate the subject.—
“ Jesus saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take
possession of his world- He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine.
Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me ; or, see thee,
when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ The understanding caught this high chant from
the poet’s lips, and said, in the next age, ' This was Jehovah come down out of heaven.
I will kill you if you say he was a man.’ The idioms of his language, and the figures of
his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principtes, but on his tropes. Christianity became a mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece
and of Egypt, before.”—
The Author of “The Christian Hypothesis.”
ONE YEAR IN HIS LIFE (CONCLUDED.)
Had she forgotten how 1 prayed her love ?
1 could not tell; she was so frank and sweet,
Had no embarrassment in talking just
In the old strain. I watched her every hour,
As doth a prisoner watch his jailer’s face
To catch the faintest forecast of his doom;
But 1 could learn nought from her bonnie eyes,
Save kindness, and a somewhat frightened glance,
Were we by chance left separate from the rest,
A pretty plaintive look, that seemed to ask
For yet a little longer, e’er I spoke.
Oh that I could have taken from iny life
Some of these weary hours, and added them
To that short week ; it was so short, oh God !
And life now is so long ! so long, so void.
But now I must not rave 1 my deepest grief
Forbids a questioning, I can only wait
For an hereafter that may teach them all,
Or leave me quiet in a silent grave
Beside my darling ; let it come, oh Lord 1
We talked one night, the night before the end,
�The Practical Idealist.
Just as we used at Holme; the August eve
Lay purple round us, and the great white moon
Shone glorious o’er the hills that slept in shade
All flecked by silver arrows from her bow,
The silence kept us silent, neither spake
Till Mary sang most quietly and sweet
Half to herself, the following little song:—
“ The birds have done their pairing and are wed,
The lovers whisper where the blooms are shed,
Upon their clasped hands, his love-bowed head.
The birds have done their pairing; yet I stay
And weary of the loneliness each day,
That I go quite alone upon my way.
The birds have done their pairing; say oh heart,
Is lonely grief for aye thy bitter part ? ’
Death is a friend 1 Oh may he heal the smart!
“ How sad your song is,” said I, “ but ’tis fit
For August surely, when the hopes of spring
Find their fulfilment or their emptiness.
The autumn’s turning, and the winter wind
Will try us all, unless we’re safely housed,
Most blessed in the warmth and love of home.”
“ Which of us three,” said Lady Mildred then,
Will have the warmest winter ? Mary, you,
And you, Sir Wilfrid will have empty nests,
And I my husband, and a home, yet void
As yours are; could three lonelier souls have met
Than we are ? Oh for comfort, oh for love!
“ Oh Lady Mildred,” said I, “you have love,
All love, love of your husband, of your friends,
And sure Miss Stanton could have love enough
If she had but needed it; I am all alone.”
“ Shall we dispute,” said Mary—“ half in sport.”
Which of us has the largest share of woe?—
Ah no ! life is too short, 1’11 change my note
And sing instead of light and love and flowers,
And quite forget the echo of the song
That caused your talk to take that bitter tone,
To-morrow we go home, to-morrow morn;
I have a fancy to explore your coast
With you, Sir Wilfred, you can teach me much,
And we’ll go early e’er the morn is high,
Aye, even watch the sun rise o’er the sea.”
“Agreed,” I answered, “only just that word,
�One Year in his Life concluded.
My heart leaped high and beat against my breast,
And questions crowded quiekly thro’ my brain,
Can she have learned at last to love my soul,
Or will she in her mercy gently crush
The hopes and longings that the summer nursed?
Or has she quite forgotten how I loved ?
Here do I pause, here shrink in actual pain,
At putting the last touches to the tale
Of this my living, yet oh, heart, be strong,
Tell all thy story and then close the book,
And let the past lay it within its breast,
And glide away into its shadowy home,—
The morning came, not clear and calmly bright,
But wild and glowring: still she kept the tryst,
And we walked towards the coast. I did not speak
Until we reached the shore; th’ uneasy waves
Moaned greyly ’mid the shadows, and the rocks
Loomed blackly o’er our heads, straight, sharp, and steep :
We wandered on, until a tiny cove,
Lit with the coming day, enticed our steps
To stay themselves, and so we rested there,
And watched the fitful wavelets come and go,—
“ Gloriously wild,” I said, half to myself,
“ Yet miserable, for it tells of winter’s hand,
That summer’s passing, all the sweets will go,
And I shall weary of the wiuter time,
And wonder in the gloom why things are so,
And cavil at the God who made them thus.
Miss Stanton ; all this week I’ve watched your face,
Yearning for sign or word to shew to me
That you are still remembring what I said
Before I left the river in the spring.—
Mary, I pause again ; my very soul
Sickens with aprehensión; nay, my dear,
l)o not be crying; I should hold my peace,
But hope is hard in dying—will not die
Till hell’s own touch makes us abandon it.
Child, I am happy but to see you, feel
Your presence round me, if I try once more
To keep you here regardless of the pain,—
You have in hearing me, forgive me then ?”
She answered not, but gazed away, and I
Cared not to break the silence, so we sat,
An hour or more, until the gathering light
Showed us the day—was here, and showed us more,—
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The Practical I dealist.
Here is the climax ; but I cannot paint
E’en for your eyes our agony, my pain:
A natural pain at losing sight of life
And facing fully all the facts of death,
For as we sat there, round had crept the waves
And hemmed us in, and we had scarce an hour
That we could call our own; God only knows
Why this was done; we climbed the steep black rocks
Until we could not climb another step,
A.nd then she spoke quiet quietly and slow,
“ Sir Wilfred, we are dead ! so I may speak
May tell you now, what never in this life
I fear me I’d have told you, face to face,
I love you 1—do not start and press me close,
Remember death knows neither bliss nor pain,
Nought but oblivion or a higher sphere
Where kisses do not come, or clasping arms,
But, chance, a fuller knowledge; now they creep
About us here, those cruel curling waves,
So soon to crush us in their deadly grasp.”—
“I can’t beliwe we’re dead! is there no hope?
“ Oh God,” I cried, “ is their no hope indeed,
Can we not live now I have won her soul
To love mine own, despite the cursed form
That hangs a burden on my feeble life ?
Oh God be merciful, nor dash the cup
I yearned so long for, from my thirsting lip,
Oh! Mary, if we die, and die we must—
Watch how those cruel waves grow at our feet,—
Meet death within mine arms; perchance, perchance
You’ll feel them round you; I may feel your form
Within them in the silence of the grave.—
These arms! oh God, misshapen as they are
It is impossible to know that swift
They’ll be all nerveless, that our tongues that speak
And call each other by our names to-day
Will never whisper more;—oh Mary, love,
Tell me you love me, once before we die.”
“ I love you,” said she, and she took my hands
And placed them round her, leaning down her head,
And blushing tenderly ; ay, even then ;
God has His purpose, “ let us hope, in this,”
She added slowly, “better thus to die
Than to live on a useless, loveless life,
I would have been loveless, for my soul I fear
Has not the nobleness to love yours quite
As ’twill when unencumbered by the mark
�One Year in his Life concluded.
You bear about you, of mishapenness,
Dear Wilfred, I shall love you when we’re dead,
It will be nought, if death is only sleep,
To sleep within your arms, but death is more,
’Tis painful, oh! 1 shudder, see the waves
Curl now about our feet, oh hold me fast 1
’Tis the unraveller sure of all our doubts,
The soother of our puzzled weary brain,”
She murmured, as she watched the rising tide,
“ How near death is, yet seems it Wondrous far,
Wondrous unreal, that we are standing here,
Quivering with life, yet trembling into death,
And Mildred waits and wonders why we stay.”
I held her to my breast, and clasped her close
And murmured little sentences of love
And death crept nearer, o’er our trembling feet,
Up to our knees it came, I had small strength,
—Due to my cursed shape,—to hold her there,
Yet we clung on, and hoped until the last,
A boat might come and take us from death’s jaws :
“ I’m trying hard,” said Mary, “ to be good,
To say the prayers our lips have ever prayed
But they are not for dying, parting 8ouls,
Our Father hangs in utterance, and my soul
Can but resign itself because it must,
With just a hope that God is over us,
To take us gently now our work is done,
To somewhere, where our living is not just
A groping after shadows, but a guest
For answers to the questions that have pressed
Since childhood wearily upon our hearts.”
“ Let it come quickly,” groaned I. “ Oh, my love,
My little love, kiss me upon the lips
And let your kiss baptise my soul anew;
In mercy kiss me.”—“ Oh good bye my dear,
Good bye but for a moment, whispered she,
Thank God we go together, here is death.”
E’en as she spoke, our lips met in one kiss,
And I remember nothing, save a shock,
A parting of my hold upon the cliff,
Until I came to life here,—save the mark !
To life, nay unto death—the bitterness
Had passed, the wrenching of the mental part
From the more sense of life that is such pain;
The real Death,—felt when I saw Mildred’s face
Looking upon me, turning into pain,
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The Practical Idealist.
When with a gasp, I asked for Mary’s hands
To smoothe my pillow, cool my throbbing brow.
“ Dead ! dead ! ” I whispered as my mera’ry came
Back from that dim mysterious shore, where none
Can trace the footsteps that oblivion made,
Or follow where sleep led at evening’s tide
When one returns one does return for aye
Without one fact traced on the dreaming brain,
Will it be thus I wonder when we’re dead?
Shall we awake as from a troubled dream,
With no remembrance, nothing save a thought,
That somewhere in the darkness we have met
With such a one, or somewhere else, one knew
What ’twas to love?’—God keep my memory clear,
And save me here from madness in the pause
That lies before me me till I meet my love.
I saw her dead, laid in her coffined peace
Smiling with upturned face; I realized
That she was gone, and yet I lived, and live.
(Some boat had come into the little cove
And rescued me, the first wave kdled my love;
She had no pain,—that all is left for me,
I had forgot to tell you how I lived.)
Here is my story, Arthur! read it o’er
Then mark it with a query, nought is solved,
Not one thing answered; here i3 this and that,
Facts upon facts, each laid in due array,
Such suffring, so much death, so little cause,
Yet people who are pious, simply sigh,
When they are asked the reason of this thing,
And think I take the comfort when they say,
With untried faith, “ Sure, God is very good.”
S. Panton.
Correction, In our May No.—Muriel's Story,
Author's copy runs—Up steep Parnassus, &c.
line 11,
page 62, the
NOTICE!
Competition for tiie Lavreatesiiip of tiie Association. 1870-1871.—The Author of
the best poem on the subject—Social Progress, shall be the Laureate for the ensuing year.
The Judges will be the Members of the Council, who will not be debarred from compet
ing, (present Laureates excepted). No limits are imposed as regards the length of the
Poems. They should be sent before the 1st of September, to the Hon. Assist. Secretary,
Augustus Villa, 90, Richmond Road, Hackney, N.
Erratum. Page 92. line 9. For—Turn me—read—turn we.
�
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Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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 Practical Idealist
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: [82] -105 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Possibly from the journal of the Social Progress Association. {from KVK]. Contents: The idealist's code of faith -- A patched society (Digest:-continued) / Ernina Landon -- Large lobe, or Eros versus Aphrodite -- On prayer /Alex Teegen -- "Despised and dejected" / H.L.M. -- One year in his life (concluded) S. Panton.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[187-?]
Identifier
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G5293
Creator
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[Unknown]
Subject
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Philosophy
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 Practical Idealist), 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
Conway Tracts
Idealism