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THE LIFE AND DEATH OF GARFIELD
A DISCOURSE
BEFORE THE SOUTH PLACE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY,
SEPTEMBER 25, 1881,
' BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY.
LONDON :
II, SOUTH
PLACE,
FINSBURY.
PRICE TWOPENCE
�FREDERIC
G. HICKSON & Co.
257, High Ho lb o ku,
Lohdoh, W.C.
�THE LIFE AND DEATH OF GARFIELD.
~jp|~ OW good-hearted is this much abused old world
fr>
of ours-—this great world of men, women and
children! Theologians have pronounced it depraved.
VZ
wrote—
Even poets have called it hard and unfeeling ; as one
“ Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.”
Yet, even in his indictment, the poet suggests the
fundamental goodness of human nature, since he calls
its reverse ‘ inhumanity.’ Were human nature bad,
to be humane would be also bad ; the more humanity,
the more depravity. The race records in its language
the simple verdict on itself, that to be human is to be
good-hearted; the evil heart is inhuman.
Really it is
man’s ignorance of man that makes countless thousands
mourn.
The great world moves on its daily round of
toils and joys, self-centred as its planet, and heeds
little, because it sees little, the agonies of those crushed
ec beneath its wheels. But when it does see such, when
st its unheeding rush and roar is arrested by some salient
tragedy; when its innumerable eyes are fixed upon a
deed in which all the evil powers of nature are seen
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venting their triumphant cruelty upon innocence and
excellence; then the human race has but one heart,
purely good: under it the depraved is shown to be not
man, but monster; the excellent is immortalised.
The great crime against humanity, consummated in
the death of the President, has moved the heart of
humanity.
The Court in mourning reflects a sorrow
felt in every cottage and hall.
The money-changers
turn from their speculations to bow their heads before
a poor man carried to his grave four thousand miles
away. ’Tis a tragedy all can comprehend. There
have been cases where crowned assassins of men and
women have felt in their own hearts the weapon they
had used against others.
Though it be deplorable
that any man of the people should degrade himself
to the foul -weapon of tyrants, we must sometimes say
that, if despots dislike assassination, they should avoid
setting the example.
But in this case there is nothing
to confuse the judgment of mankind.
The eye of the
world is brought face to face with an infrahuman
spirit acting through forces of the human form, and
sees beside the fallen man the real Satan with which
all real saviours have to measure their strength.
The universal cry of horror, sympathy, indignation,
is really a protest of the human heart against the
cruelties of brute nature, and, however unconsciously,
brands the creeds that deify the destructive powers of
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nature.
“ Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord of the
creeds; “Vengeance is mine,” says the assassin of the
President. How does the reciter of the creeds like
deified vengeance when mirrored in the crime of a
vindictive man ?
poet—•
Their real faith is rather that of the
“ A loving worm within its sod
Were cliviner than a loveless God
Amid His worlds.”
Man cannot worship the ancient images of elemental
force. Those old dogmas have left phrases upon our
EiJ lips about the inscrutable dispensations of Providence;
rd but they have no root in the millions of hearts that
now rise in grief and wrath against a great wrong and
oh
calamity.
The ancient sacerdotal theology regarded calamities
of this kind, falling upon eminent men or families, as
the carrying out of fatal decrees of the gods. The
victims might be quite innocent, but they had to suffer
vicariously for the offence of some remote ancestor.
Nor was this notion merely ‘pagan.’
In Christian
theology, all pain and death are the doom of ancestral
sin, and there are instances in the Bible where Jehovah
rh strikes the innocent for the sin of the guilty (Exod. xi.,
2 Sam. xii.), just as the house of Atreus is divinely
hunted down for a remote ancestral offence.
That pitiful providence (if we may so speak of a-
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phantasy of the primitive brain) measuring its strength
against the innocence unsuspecting its malice,—too
weak to punish justly, strong only in cruelty, power
less to protect,—is a providence no longer believed in.
We only know that it was once believed in, by a
bequest of cant phrases, which, if they meant any
thing to-day, would mean that the murderer Guiteau
belongs to the divine administration. Of course, these
dogmatic anachronisms -will survive for a long time
yet, on paper, and in conventional rites and forms.
A great many interests will see to that.
They are
not amenable to reason, because not products of
reason. In a sense, therefore, they are unanswerable.
The Prince of Wales was very ill.
The churches and
chapels all prayed for him, and he recovered.
It was
claimed as an answer to prayer. The President lay long
in agony and peril, which even his assassin pitied. The
churches and chapels of
a hundred millions of
Christians, the very synagogues of Palestine, prayed for
his recovery. He died. (The whole human world, with
one voice, supplicated its God for this one life j and he
who could raise his personal friends out of their graves
in Palestine would not answer the prayer of all man-
kind in behalf of his devout worshipper in A m erica!)
This, of course, is said to be a mysterious dispensation
of God.
assailable.
Whatever the event, Theology is thus un
Common-sense may ask whethei' God cares
�more for Prince than for President ; whether typhoid
fevers and assassins are heavenly ministers, and, if so,
whether physicians should resist the one or judges
sentence the other.
But common-sense will ask in
vain. Theology will go on with its days of thanks
giving or of humiliation, because its appeal now is
to those who do not think, nor inquire (whether from
incompetence or fear) ; and who so cannot realise that
their creeds are the stultification of their true hearts
and sincerest lives.
But let us be of
good cheer!
Amid these
hereditary euphemisms about evil, now and then the
real heart of mankind speaks, and we recognise that
it does not regard wrong and cruelty as divine in any
sense.
It has an unsophisticated answer to the
widow’s cry, “ Oh, why am I made to suffer this cruel
blow ! ” It resents the blow, providential or not. It
hates the villainy and the baseness with loathing.
It loves mercy and justice.
This is the feeling that
lies deep down in all—even in those who pay lip-
service to a God of Wrath and Vengeance. This is the
-divinely human sentiment which has been brought out
legibly, as if on every man’s forehead, by the tragedy
at Washington; and it is a prophecy of the coming
•of the true son of man.
In this passionate sympathy
with goodness and horror of evil, lies the hope of
man’s salvation from all evil.
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The heart of humanity is man’s time providence.
It is that which ever brings good out of evil.
It has
been my lot to witness, and study, the effect of the
dastardly assassination of two of the noblest American
Presidents. Many of you will remember the dismay
spread by the tidings that Abraham Lincoln, liberator
of his country from slavery, had fallen.
The bullet
that pierced his heart evoked all that was best in the
heart of his country and of England.
There had been
up to that time a large number of persons in this
country utterly deceived as to the spirit of slavery,
who still sympathised with the lost cause of the south,
because they did not recognise that those valiant
defenders of slavery were its chief victims.
The
murderous bullet that slew Lincoln slew that party
here.
There was also a spirit of mistaken clemency in
America, which, respecting a brave foe fallen, was
about to make concessions which, it is now seen, might
have repaired the evil system that had engendered
civil strife.
President Lincoln shared that spirit.
But his death revealed to the people the irrecoverable
nature of slavery, and they extirpated it.
So did the
providential human heart educe good out of evih
And it will do so again in this case.
done so.
Already it has
This terrible tragedy has not only revealed
to the peoples on both sides the Atlantic in how
profound a sense they are of one blood—that their
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•common blood is thicker than the ocean of water that
divides them—but it has united the North and the
South in America in a feeling that has not before
■existed between them for two generations.
They are
gathered to-day in the unity of sorrow around their
dead President. The spirit of faction, too, which had
raised
its head
in the North,
some
of
whose
venom the murderer had caught, has received its
check. And all these benefits following a great crime
lay not in that crime at all, but in the good sense and
just heart of the people. They represent in a swift
and startling way the process which, in slow ways, is
always going on.
It is that which has thus far
civilised the earth. The steady pressure of the good
against the evil in the world; the gradual turning of
experience into wisdom, the lessons of suffering
teaching the laws of well-being, shadows of error
pointing to the light of truth—these make the law of
human progress and the evolution of a true man upon
the earth.
The subject that had been named for to-day’s dis
course was, “ Our life estate.”
By that I meant that
to each man his life is an estate which he inherits ; in
which he has a life interest; which even for the poorest
holds many treasures; an estate necessarily transmitted
by each, improved or unimproved, to be the inheritance
of others. The tremendous event which has super
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seded that topic, has, beyond its startling voice, a still
small voice that may well impress upon us this lesson
concerning a man’s life estate, and the way it goes on
after he has died out of it.
Behold the dead President lying in the Rotunda of
the Capitol, where the sympathy of a world surges
around him and breaks into tears!
Prom poor and
honest parents he received his life estate.
It was in
a small corner of the world—a lowly estate—but
all sound and honest, and large enough to give
play to the greatest principles
and activities of
man’s nature. The father came of one of those old
English families that crossed the ocean to build a new
England where conscience might be free. He was a
pioneer of civilisation in the forests of Ohio, and died
of a disease caught while defending his fields from a
forest fire.
The harvest was saved, though the farmer
died. The brave mother and her children struggled on,
and their courage and energy prevailed. The boy had
a strong constitution, a love of work, and a thirst for
knowledge. He earned money by driving the mules that
drew canal boats. There was nothing noble about that;
he was neither proud of it or ashamed of it. It was his
lot in life, and he fulfilled its duties.
to a larger lot.
He studied
But he aspired
hard.
He and his
mother laid up money enough for him to go to
college.
He climbed to
his degree; he climbed
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f
beyond it,
)
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difficulties.
There was no sleight-of-hand in his
culture. He became a scholar, afterwards a College
I,
President. As with every healthy young man, his
religious sentiment began to develop. The region
around him was now populous, even fashionable, and
all the great sects were there. This youth selected to
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step by step, without any leaps over
take his place among a very humble circle, who called
themselves “ Disciples of Christ.” They have no
creed. They are generally believers in the super
natural character of Christ, but refuse to use the word
“Trinity,” or in any way to bind themselves with any
to . of the hereditary formulas called creeds.
This gave
ft them freedom to grow with the mind of their country.
T They are the youngest of the denominations, founded
ii| in 1827, but they have grown fairly well in culture
J
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and influence. A telegram in the London Times says
the funeral to-morrow will be conducted by the late
President’s chaplain. But the President never had
any chaplain. Such an office does not exist; and, if
fj ‘ it did, the late President would have abhorred it.
H He used to gather the students of his college in the
rfe
chapel, and lecture to them on many different sub
©j jects,—sometimes on writings of Tennyson, Carlyle,
Emerson, Darwin, and other contemporary authors.
B His spirit was thoroughly liberal. He had not in him
a drop of sectarian blood ; his Christianity consisted
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in a sincere desire to make the love and heroism and
gentleness of Christ an influence upon the life of
himself and others.
As he had not taken the side of the conventional
and powerful in religion, but associated himself with
humble, creedless, “Disciples of Christ,” so, in politics,
he joined himself to the small band of constitutional
opponents of slavery who knew nothing but defeat.
The republican (then “free-soil”) party which now
rules the United States was laughed at as a feeble
fanaticism when Garfield began speaking and working
for it. It had nothing to offer or to promise him.
Few could have then dreamed that this century would
witness its success.
But slavery had the keen instinct
to foresee its doom in that small concert of free hearts,
and met its slow though steady growth with a mad
blow at the Union.
Then the College President sprang forward to his
country’s rescue. With a hundred students from the
college over which he had presided, to begin with, he
formed, his regiment.
They marched to the front and
won the first Union victory in that war.
When he
had faithfully served his country through the war. his
neighbours sent him to Congress, where he did much
to save the harvest of the battle-field—namely
emancipation, and the constitutional equality of races
which alone could secure it.
For slavery, foiled in
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battle, was aiming to gain political control of the
slaves it had lost.
So did this man bravely and faithfully improve the
life estate he had received from the past—from his
English ancestor who helped to found the freedom of
New England, from his father who cleared forests in
Ohio. ’Tis said there will be sung over Garfield’s grave
his favourite hymn, <£ Ho, reapers of Life’s harvest! ”
Possibly when he used to sing it he remembered how
his father died from trying to save his harvest—the
bread of his family—from a forest-fire.
They who
now sing it will remember that it was while protecting
the great national field from an encroaching evil that
the President received his death-wound.
The reapers
of the harvest of his life will bitterly feel the grief
that he cannot share their harvest-home.
of his own harvest-home?
But what
What becomes of the
faithful servant’s life estate? < Does that die too? Is
that shrunken form of the powerful man, which his
friends shudder to look upon,— is that the end of
James Abram Garfield?
The symbols that surrounded him as he lay in state
in the Capitol, reveal the compassionate longing of
the human heart that the great wrong shall be
righted, and to him personally.
It seems too bad,
too cruel, that one who from the tow-path had
climbed by patient, honest steps up to the White
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House, should have all his honours and joys snatched
away, ere tasted—his highest success turned to dust,
his happiness to agony, his great opportunity made
his death ! So beside him a shaft built of roses has
on its broken top, nestling amid immortelles, the dove
that mourns, with downbent head; while on his
pillow is the dove with uplifted eye and wing, about
to fly away
emblem of his soul.
Over him is sus
pended the crown of righteousness gleaming against
the black draped canopy of the dome.
All these are
symbols of the faith that the late President’s personal
possession of his life-estate has not ended. In earlier
ages such enthusiasms have given rise to beliefs
among men that their heroes were not dead—could
not die—but lived like Arthur in happy valleys, or
invisibly walked the earth like St. John, or led armies
like St. James.
Such beliefs still mould for many
their conception of immortality; but they who confess
their eyes too weak to pierce the veil beyond the
grave, do not the less believe in the actual im
mortality of the life which a good man bequeaths to
the world. A right and true man may be defrauded
of his share in his own estate of life, but mankind
cannot be robbed of it.
For them he will go on
living, and his life will expand in influence as much
as if he were personally alive.
Nay, more !
The
dead will elevate the policy of the living President.
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He binds together nations that were estranged, and
sections which were at strife.
He is not dead, nor
does he sleep.
But there is a life that casts its shadow athwart theworld. Crouched in his ceil is the wretched criminal
who has caused all this agony. Perhaps in all history
■no two lives were ever brought into contact more-
representative severally of the best and the worst
forces that can control human life. The whole life of
that miserable murderer has been tracked, and it has
been found that he has for years been going through
the country like a sort of mad dog, leaving in many
regions traces of his disastrous march. Licentiousness,
fraud, falsehood, faithlessness to woman and to man,,
appear to have been the footprints of his career. And
during all this horrible career he has been possessed
[with the belief that he is a specially religious man.
i. Bor years, and up to the very hour of the murder,
Charles Guiteau was a lecturer against infidelity. HeI was celebrated for his prayers in the meetings of'
Mr. Moodey.
He went about the country defrauding
hotels at the very time that he was denouncing the
wickedness of the Hon. Bobert Ingersoll for dis
believing in Christianity.
Even since the murder,
and in his prison, Guiteau has continually read his
j Bible, is eager to talk theology with the officials,
I fiercely denounces infidelity, and argues for orthodoxy.
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These things I gather from reports that seem unbiassed
and uncontradicted.
I have no disposition to base
upon them any theory against Christians. Orthodox
people generally have as much horror of crime as any
•others. Nay, so long as Protestant orthodoxy was
able to unite morality and religion, and convince men
that crime was punished by a burning hell, it was able
to do something towards restraining the hell of human
passions. But gradually it has developed a theology
which necessarily and logically maintained that the
blood of Jesus could cleanse from all sin.
“ While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return.”
‘The majority of criminals have accepted the blood of
Jesus, after the law had clutched them, and believed
that they were ascending from the gallows to
Abraham’s bosom.
It is not often that a man of
Guiteau’s education is found so utterly demoralised
by a self-righteous theology.
And, although it is
logical for him to stand on his dogmas, and say “ I
the chief of sinners am, yet Jesus died for me,”—it
amounts to moral lunacy.
His combination of piety
and criminality make him a monster.
Goethe said,
“ Nature reveals her secrets in monsters.” And one
may hope that Christians will study this theological
assassin as a specimen showing what certain natures
may deduce from the dogma of salvation by faith
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without works.
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Happily that is not the tendency of
Christians, which is less and less characterised by
dogmatism, more and more by imitation of the
benevolence and charity of Christ.
But there is a
tendency of the old dogmas as they are deserted by
the best minds to gravitate downward among the least
educated and least restrained regions of society, and
to make their vulgar visionaries depend more on
abjectness before God than on rectitude before man
for security after death.
It may be that Guiteau will find no defender on his
trial.
No lawyer may be willing to take on himself
the stigma of having been the counsel of such a
creature.
Yet, I can imagine, a day may come of
calmer judgment when a plea in palliation might be
[ made even for him.
It would show that there was
j bequeathed him as his life estate a morbid temperament which exaggerated all the worst teachings of
morbid dogmas impressed on his mind in early life.
I He was taught that the supreme object of existence
was to save his own soul—that first lesson in selfish
ness taught to millions of children (which only the
j restraining grace of human nature prevents from
I making them soul-less!) He was taught that with
God human goodness availed nothing—neither justice,
| nor pity, nor gentleness, nor sympathy, nor unselfish| ness, nor purity of life.
All these amounted to just
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nothing in the work of bringing man to his highest
joy.
was taught that morality could save nobody,
and good works but filthy rags in the sight of God.
He was taught that death was a small affair, and to a
Christian great gain ‘ passage from an accursed world
to a blissful paradise.
The only fatally wicked thing
was to him unbelief.
These dogmas were given him
ns the guides of his life; they were not merely put on
his lips, as in most cases, but seem to have taken deep
root in him, insomuch that even in prison they were
his meditation day and night, if one may judge by
some reports of his interest in theology.
This is a perilous kind of teaching.
This is the
second time in the last few years that America has
been brought face to face with some of the possible
results of preserving the forms and phrases of
barbarian religion.
One was the case of the Massa
chusetts preacher Freeman, who believed himself
called, like Abraham, to sacrifice his beloved child.
He plunged a dagger in her breast.
The little victim
is in her grave; the father is in a lunatic asylum.
Probably, if the murderer of Garfield could be
thoroughly tried, he also would go to the asylum;
but, as it is, he will probably rest in a nameless and
execrated grave.
But what will theology have to say of this victim
of an enthusiasm for faith without the deeds of the
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Will the potent blood of Jesus in which he
fervently trusts carry him among the angels with the
blood of Garfield on his hands ?
Or are there limits
to the efficacy of Christ’s blood? That is a problem
we may leave to the theology which has raised it.
For us a more serious question is, What shall be the
result of that evil-doer’s career on earth ? What is
the life estate which he will part from and transmit ?
Has it a vitality, a permanence equal to that of the
President he has slam ? Will his evil career go on
widening into further and larger evil, as the good life
survives in expanding influences of good ? I believe
not.
I find nothing in history or experience to justify
that half-pessimistic view of nature which holds that,
evil in this world has a force co-extensive with that of
goodness. It must be admitted that evil now with
stands good in a passive, obstructive way; but it
must also be admitted that, since the reign of man
began, the good is selected and developed, the evil
steadily diminished and exterminated.
As from the
woods and fields of these islands the wolves and vipers
have nearly disappeared before human culture, so in
the world at large the wolfish and venomous passions
are steadily driven towards their strata of extinction.
The cumulative worth and excellence of the whole
: world form the life estate of the good, and at their
; death is consigned and preserved as a sacred trust to
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right and true men, who will not willingly let die one
benefit transmitted, or one example of excellence.
President Garfield was never so great and strong-
an influence in his life as he now is when borne to his
grave on the shore of Lake Erie.
When he was a
candidate for the highest office in America, partisan
charges were urged against him.
they clung to him.
After his election
Death has dissipated them all.
While he was on his death-bed every secret thing
concerning him was brought to light, and few records
in history have ever come forth from such a search
with such enhanced clearness and brilliancy.
Eact
after fact has been remembered and elicited; and it
has been shown that his life from childhood to death
is one whose heroism had never been recognised. It
never would have been recognised but for this fearful
tragedy, and but for the essential justice of mankind.
He fell a Republican President; he rises as an
exemplar
for the world.
However beneficial his
administration might have been had he lived, he could
nevei' have hoped to unite the sections of his country
as much as his death has united them ; and whatever
his foreign policy, he could never have hoped to bring
together England and America in such close alliance
of affection as they have been brought by sorrow and
sympathy at his grave. This last benefit, indeed, he
partly saw before death, and he was sustained by it
�through, the long agony.
And we may hope that
the wonderful serenity amid pain—the patient, un
complaining sufferance of the terrible eleven weeks—
were those of a mind visited by happy visions of his
country united, North and South—and of an AngloAmerican unity—secured and cemented by his blood
that at first seemed so idly shed.
Let all good men and women try to make that
vision a reality !
Let us remember that the life estate
of all who die falls as a bequest to those who are
living,—to be terminated if it be evil, to be enlarged
and improved if it be good.
The dead President has
TO bequeathed to each and all of us a benefit and a hope
which we little suspected was so near us.
tjI and tragical
His life
death have stirred the hearts of the
two greatest nations of the world,—representing nearly
a hundred millions of people standing in the vanguard
of civilisation,—nations which seventy years ago were
at war, and sixteen years ago
were quarrelling.
It has been the belief of great thinkers that it
would be a token of higher civilisation if these
two great nations could recover their ancient unity on
the broad basis of liberty,—if instead of an extinct
Anglo-Saxon race there could be formed an Anglo-
American race.
The pulses of sympathy and sorrow
every hour beating towards America are far grander
as an expression of civilisation than the mastered
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magnetism that is their messenger.
Old fables tell
of a magical music that built the walls of cities ;
but the ocean cable that vibrates with the love
of nation for nation is a harp-string of earth’s
heart whose music builds ideal civilisation.
This
day the fifty millions of that stricken land behold
on the darkness a star of brightness ; it is a wreath of
flowers laid by the Queen upon the President’s bier,
fragrant with the sympathy and bedewed with the
tears of her people.
Those flowers must live.
It is
for all good men and women to cherish them that they
may never fade.
Their fragrance is more potent than
armies and navies. They are blossoms of a springtide
of civilisation such as our poor blood-stained earth has
vainly sighed foi' through the centuries.
Ah! I know that they will never fade; they will
be cherished in the hearts of children’s children, and
they will still expand in the happy sunshine when all
the battle-flags that ever floated between America and
England are furled and forgotten.
That is General Garfield’s bequest to you and me,—
to help keep fresh those flowers that mean the hopes
of nations. He bequeathes us also the story of his
life.
To every Anglo-American child shall be told the
brave story of how a poor western lad toiled and
studied, and nourished his mind and heart with pure
and patriotic aims, until he rose to greatness and
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hands that had smitten, the hearts that had been
estranged, and bequeathed to humanity the grandest
estate it could have, a heart-union of the two nations
which mainly hold the destinies of the world and
must mould the future of mankind.
So much could one poor lad achieve.
young Englishmen.
Think of it,
Do not suppose that such ascent
and success is peculiarly American. It was English
long centuries before it was American. The German,
Goethe, said to a youth who proposed going to seek
his fortune in America, “Your America is here or
nowhere.”
The science of England and its welfare
are largely forwarded by men who were once poor
lads.
Before enterprise and endeavour, barriers will
yield here as elsewhere.
Your aim is not title or
ostentation; it is to become fully possessed of your
life estate, to make the most and best of all your
powers for the good of mankind, so that no mischance,
no blow of fate, can destroy your work, but it shall
rise on grandly over your grave as by the labours of
your life.
�SOUTH _PLACE_ CHAPEL.
WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY.
BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A.
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Report of the Conference of Liberal Thinkers 1878,1
�LAUREATE DESPAIR
A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL
DECEMBER nth 1S81.
BY
Moncure D. Conway, M.A.
LONDON
II,
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�LAUREATE DESPAIR.
1T ET me say at once that I am glad the Poet Laureate
J—4 has written the poem called “ Despair/’ which I
((propose to criticise. It is a cry out of the heart of an
1 earnest man; it utters the sorrow with which many
^people in our time see their old dreams fading, and no
Anew ones rising in their place; and it reminds free■fthinkers that theirs is a heavy responsibility and duty.
IThey have to meet and respond to that need and pain
•|which thousands feel wrhere one can give it expression.
AMen of science and philosophers do not always under
stand this. The most eminent of them are pursuing
©deals far more beautiful to them than those that have set.
iThey have special knowledge, or special aims, which
Ikindle into pillars of fire before their enthusiasm, and can
Jnot see how to those of other studies and pursuits their
rfguiding splendour is a pillar of smoke rising from a fair
■world slowly consumed. The 'man of science, hourly
^occupied with discoveries which blaze upon him, star by
Mar, till his reason is as a vault sown with eternal lights,
<eels that he is in the presence of conceptions beside
Which the visions of Dante and Milton are frescoes of a
iime-darkened dome. The enthusiast of Humanity holds
�( 4 )
in his eye a latter-day glory of which history is the pro
phecy and developed man the fulfilment. Such enthu
siasms imply continual studies, occupations, duties, which,
leave little room for attention to the shadows these lights;
cast upon the old world of dreams—each shadow a dogma
or its phantom. Nevertheless, that world of dreams,
shades, phantoms, is still real to many. It is real not
only to the ignorant, whom it terrifies, and to the selfish,
whose power rests on it, but to spiritual invalids, whoneed sympathy. And, beyond this reality, the phantasmson which religion and society wereflfounded possess a
quasi-reality even for robust minds. You mav recall the
saying of Madame de Stael, that “ she did not believe in.
ghosts, but was afraid of them.” After dogmas are dead
their ghosts walk the earth ; and even some who nolonger believe in the ghosts are still afraid of them.
When their intellects are no longer haunted their nerves;
are.
There are others, again, for whose vision or nerves the
pleasant dogmas alone survive in this attenuated, ghostly
form. They no longer believe in the ghosts, but still love
them. Of this class is the literary artist. To the pictorial
artist a ruin is more picturesque than the most comfort
able dwelling. ’Tis said of an eminent art-critic that,
being invited to visit America, he replied that he could
not think of visiting a country where’there were no ruins..
Alfred Tennyson is the consummate artist in poetry. We
all know with what tender sentiment Tennyson has.
�a
(
5
)
painted the scenery of Arthur’s time, with what felicity
described many other reliques of human antiquity.
“ His eye will not look upon a bad colour.” He sees
the mouldering ruins in their picturesque aspects, leaving
out of sight the noxious weeds and vermin that infest
them. Where these loathsome things appear no man
more recoils from them. If the White Ladies of Super
stition haunt them, these he admires ; but he impales the
gnomes and vampyres.
In this, his latest poem, “ Despair,” he shows a childlike
simplicity of desire to retain all the pleasant and reject all
the unpleasant consequences of the same principles. His
�( 6
)
Till you flung us back on ourselves, and the human heart, and.
the Age.
But pity—that Pagan held it a vice—was in her and in me,
Helpless, taking the place of the pitying God that should be I
Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power,
And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a
flower.
Again he says :
Were there a God, as you say,
His Love would have power over hell till it utterly vanish’d
away.
Ah, yet—I have had some glimmer at times, in my gloomiest
woe,
Of a God behind all—after all—the Great God, for aught that
I know :
But the God of Love and of Hell together — they cannot ibe
Tr ?h(,U?ht ■
cwM
It there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and
bring him to nought!
This is what the Poet Laureate thinks of the God of every
creed in Christendom, for every creed maintains an
eternal hell.
But the agnostic, the know-nothing sceptic, is summoned
to bear his share in this tragedy of hopelessness and
suicide, fl he poet does not suggest that disbelief in a
future life or in a Deity would alone lead to suicide. In
his imaginary case unbelief is only a factor. The man
and wife were in terrible trouble. One of their two sons
had died ; the eldest had fled after committing forgery on
his own father, bringing him to ruin. It is under such
fearful circumstances that, without faith or hope, they sink
into despair. The man says :
Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of
pain,
If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain,
�And the homeless planet at length will be wheeled thro’ thesilence of space,
Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race ?
*
*
*
*
*
*
For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press,
When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are
whooping at noon,
And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill, and crows to the sun
and moon,
Till the Sun and Moon of our science are both of them turned
to blood,
And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow
of good.
It is a striking fact, in our sceptical age, that such
lamentations as these are not heard from among the poor
and the drudges of society. They who are asking whether
life be worth living without the old faith in immortality,
and they who say it is not, are persons of position and
wealth. Any one who has taken the pains to observe the
crowds of working people who attend the lectures of
secularists, or to read their journals, will know they are
cheery enough. We never hear any of them bemoaning
the vanished faith. In truth the more important fact is
not that the belief in immortality is gone, or the belief in
Deity, but that belief in a desirable immortality and a
desirable Deity has gone out of the hearts of many. In
one of his humourous pieces Lucian, describing his ima
ginary journey through Hades, says he could recognise
those who had been kings or rich people on earth by theii
loud lamentations. They had parted with so much.
Those who on earth had been poor and wretched were
quiet enough. "We may observe similai phenomena in
�( 8
)
this psychological Hades, or realm of the Unseen and
Unknown, into which modern thought has entered. Those
to whom God has allotted palaces, plenty, culture, beauty,
can eas ly believe Him a God of Love ,• and it were to
them heaven enough to wake from the grave to a continu
ance of the same. But they who have known hunger,
cold, drudgery, ignorance, have no such reason to say
God is Love. Such may naturally say, “ If we have
waked up in this world in dens of misery, why, under the
same providence, may we not wake up to a future of
misery ?” The old creeds met that difficulty. They
showed a miraculous revelation on the subject, by which
God had established an insurance against future misery,
an assurance of future luxury. It was all to be super
natural. By miraculous might poverty was to be changed
to wealth, the hovel to a palace, rags to fine raiment,
ignorance to knowledge, folly to wisdom, and scarlet sin
to snow-pure virtue. Without such tremendous trans
formations the masses of the miserable could have no
interest in immortality. But gradually the comfortable
scholarship and theology of our time, in trying to prove a
God of nature, have done away with the God of super
nature. Their deity of design is loaded with all the bad
designs under which men suffer. Fifty years ago Carlyle
groaned because he could not believe in a Devil any more.
Philosophy had reasoned a Devil out of existence. The
result was to make the remaining power responsible for
all the evils in the world, and ultimately bling him into
�1
w
( 9 X
a ioubt and disgrace too. Dismssing the Devil out of faith
iiias not dismissed evil, the mad work of earthquake, hurri
cane and fire. As we think of the shores with their wrecks,
^is we think of those people in Vienna gathered around the
iiharre .1 remains of their families and friends, must we not
Sisk if this is providential work what would be diabolical
jivork ? Reason says to Theology, “ At least you can be
iKilent, and not malign the spirit of good within us by
Asking us to call that without good which we know to be
lad ! ”
. I Similarly theologians .in trying to rationalise the idea of
Immortality have naturalised it. They have tacked it on
to evolution. But what the miserable suffer by is evolu4ion : unless they can be assured of a supernatural change,
jjf a heaven, they do not want to be evolved any more.
Only a miraculous revelation could promise them that
;.jniraculous heaven ; and the. only alleged revelation is
Rejected by the culture and the charity of our age. It is
[fcenied by Culture, because it reveals some impossibilities ;
my Charity, because it reveals a God capable of torturing
leople more than they are tortured here. What are eight
hundred people burned swiftly in a theatre compared to
millions burning in hell for ages, if not for ever, as Revela
tion declares ? Our Poet Laureate is a man of both
Culture and charity ; he cannot sing of a revelation which
Includes Hell, however he may cling to hopes that came
Ly the sanae revelation, or mourn at thought of pai ting
from a world so fair.
�(
10
)
Candour compels us to admit that there is as yet no
certainty of a future life for the individual consciousness.
The surviving seed of the human organism if it exist has
not been discovered. There is nothing unnatural in the
theory. It would not be more miraculous to find our
selves in another world than to find ourselves in this. If
two atoms of the primeval nebula, thrown together, had
been for one instant capable of speculation, how little
could they have imagined a company of men and women
gathered to meditate on life and eternity 1 All this is
very marvellous if we conceive it contemplated from a
point of non-existence. For all we know there are more
marvels beyond.
But suppose there are none ; suppose death be the end
of us; is there any reason for despair ? Even for the
man and woman on whom life had brought dire
calamities, was there any reason for suicide ? Just the
reverse, I should say. Belief that this life was all were
reason for making the most of it. Belief that their ruin
would not be repaired hereafter were reason for trying to
repair it here, as well as they could. Has Tennyson
evolved his man and woman out of his inner con
sciousness ? It is doubtful if in the annals of freethought
such a case can be pointed out; though many instances
may be shown where believers in a future world slew
themselves to get there. Suicide was a mania in some
old convents until the church fixed its ‘ canon ’gainst self
slaughter.’
�?! ' • However, it may be that instances of the kind Tennyson
& -describes may occur. We are but on the threshold of the
is age when men are to live and work without certainty
S of future rewards and payments. The doubts now in the
t .head must presently reach the heart, then influence the
II hand ; if people have built their houses on the sand of
K mythology, and they fall, it may be that some will not
t have the heart to begin new buildings on the rock.
F-: What then ? It will be only the continuation of the old
1 law—survival of the fittest. Suicides at least do not live
t to increase their race. Only those tend to prevail in
nature who can 'adapt themselves to the conditions ofnature. If nature has arrived at a period of culture when
•supernaturalism passes out of the human faith, then they
"who sink into despair or death, on that account, show
themselves no longer adapted to nature. There will be a
survival of those more adapted to the new ideas ; who
prefer them ; who do not aspire to live for ever, but have
.a heart for any fate, and a religion whose forces and joys
are concentrated in the life that now is. If natuie and
humanity need such a race for their furtherance, such a
race will be produced ; and they will read poems like
this “ Despair,” with a curiosity mixed with compassion,
wondering how their ancestors could have been troubled,
about such a matter.
. Something like this has occurred in the past in several
id instances.
While Christians find fullest expression of
[j their joyful emotions in the psalmody and prophecy of the
�(
I2
)
Hebrews they often forget that those glowing hymns say
no word about a future life. There is no clear affirmation
of immortality in the Old Testament, but much to the
contrary.
Buddhism also, which has awakened the
enthusiasm of a third of a human race, arose as a protest
against theism and immortality. In such instances there
would appear to have been reactions against previous,
theologies, which had so absorbed mankind in metaphysics
and' speculations about the future as to belittle this life and
cause neglect of this world. Despised and degraded nature
avenged this wrong by making asceticism its own
destruction, and worldliness a source of strength and
*
survival.
Some such Nemesis seems to be following
the extreme other-worldliness which, for so many Christian
centuries, has bestowed the fruits of human toil upon
supposed supernatural interests. This earthward swing of
the slow pendulum of faith is not likely to be arrested
until religion has been thoroughly humanised. As a
brave clergyman (Rev. Harry Jones) warned the Church
Congress at York, the Church will never conquer
Secularism, except by doing more for mankind than
Secularism does.
■ '
We must almost remember that no oscillations of the
pendulum between theology and humanity, no reactions,
determine the question. As Old Testament Secularism
* As it is said in Ecclesiasticus: “ He has also set worldli
ness in their heart, which man cannot understand the works
that God does, from beginning to end.”—Dr. Kalisch’s
Translation.
�(
13
)
followed Egyptian Mysticism, Talmudic visions of heaven
} succeeded. Every ebb alternates with a flow in the tides
I of human feeling; and these tides are the generations which
I nature successively creates to fufil successive conditions,
and to find their joy in such fufilment, whatever be the
despair of the ebbing at faith of the flowing tide.
: But, no doubt, these rising and falling ages of speculation
| and religion will show calmer and happiei' phenomena in
the future than in the past. There are traces in the earth
i of tremendous operations in the past, which geology
I was unable to account for by any forces now acting,
until Astronomy discovered that the Moon had been
[ steadily receding from the earth, its mother. The moon
i is now 240,000 miles away, but is proved to have bien
t once only 40,000 miles distant. At that period the tides
were to the tides of our time as 216 to 1. This country
1 and many others must then have been flooded with every
tide, and the enormous geologic results are now under
stood. There would appear to be some correspindence in
I all this with mental and moral phenomena. In religious
! geology also there are traces of convulsions and huge
formations which it has been difficult to account for,—
mighty religious wars, massacres, whole races committing
I slow suicide for the sake of their Gods. Comparative
I studies now show that the lunar theology was much nearer
J to mankind then than now, and the tides more furious.
« The extraneous influence is withdrawing more and more.
] Where theologians used to burn each other they now fight
j combats with pens. Where heretics were massacred they
1
�(
14 )
are now only visited with dislike. Instead of crusades,,
with Richard and Saladin, we have young poets singingon the crest of a sparkling tide, and their elder, from
refluent waves, murmuring rhythmic Despair. There isa vast difference between the emotions awakened
by belief in a deity near at hand, pressing down upon the
life, and those awakened by a hypothetical deity of
philosophy or ethics. When men attributed their every
hourly hap, good or bad, to the personal favour or to the
anger of their deity, their feeling at any supposed affront
to their deity, mingled with selfishness and terror, rose to
a pitch very different from any now known when few
men refer any event to supernatural intervention. Yet
do the great movements of the universe go on, the cycles
and the periods fufil themselves, the planets roll on new
orbits with changed revolutions; and, whatever be the
corresponding changes in human opinion, they cannot alter
the eternal fact.
If immortality be the law of the universe, it will be
reached by believers and disbelievers alike. But, could
the world be made absolutely certain of it beforehand, by
the only means of certainty—scientific proof—what were
the advantage ? It would no longer be a miraculous thing
promising all a leap from earthly sorrow to heavenly
bliss, but merely a law of nature—mere continuance—the
millions rising from their graves to go on with existence,
just as they will rise from their beds to-morrow. There
would be no further note of despair from the Laureates ;
but how would it be with the general world ? One of the
�most powerful poems of our time has been written by a
French lady, Louise Ackermann. It is entitled “Les
Malheueux”—the Unhappy. The last day has come ; the
trumpet has sounded. A great angel descends ; uncovers
all the graves of the dead, and bids them come forth for
everlasting life. Some eagerly come forth, but a large
number refuse. To the divine command that they shall
emerge, their voice is heard in one utterance. They tell
him they have had enough of life in His creation ; they
have passed through thorns, and over flinty paths—from
agony to agony. To such an existence He called them—
they suffered it; and now they will forgive Him only if
He will let them rest, and forget that they have lived.
Such is the despair with which one half of the world,
might answer the joy of the other should a mere natural
immortality be proved.
A great deal of the poetry of the world has invested
with glory man’s visions of heaven and heavenly beings.
The very greatest poets have invested nature and theearth with glory, and set the pulses of the human heart
to music. This has been the greatness of Homer, Shake
speare, Goethe. But the majority have given the world
visions of heaven, divine dramas, and hymns of immor
tality ; and it is these that have been taught to earth’s
millions in their infancy. These happy hymns have for
ages soothed sorrowing hearts, and helped the masses of
mankind to bear the burthens of life—this not only in
Christendom, but in so-called Pagan lands and ages.These have been as the songs of Israfel in Eastern faith.
�(
16 )
They said a sweet singer among the angels left heaven to
go forth over the suffering world and soothe mortals with
his heavenly lyre and his hymns, until all were able to
Tear the griefs of life because of the joys beyond,
rehearsed by Israfel. But once—while this angel was
.singing with his celestial seven-stringed lyre—one string
of it snapped. No one could be found to mend the string
-or supply its place; and, every time Israfel tried to make
music, it was all jangling discords, through that broken
string. So Israfel took his flight, and never returned to
the world. The tale sounds like a foreboding of what has
in these last days befallen the sacred poetry which so long
made the world forget its griefs. The lyre of Israfel is
the human heart, and the snapped string is its faith in a
supernatural heaven. It has been snapped by the
development of nature ; it therefore cannot be restored
unless by a further development: and so Sacred Poetry
has taken its flight from the world—its last great song
being of a Paradise Lost. In other words, the hope of
immortality has ceased to have power to soothe and
uplift those who most needed it, because the recognized
reign of law forbids belief that such life—should it come
—would be very different from the life that uow is.
*
But there is another story of a broken string, with a
■different ending. It comes from Greece (Browning
has finely told it in The Two Poets of Croisic), the land
of Art and of the Beauty that adorns the earth. It is of
a bard who came with his lyre to sing for a prize. He
-came with other competitors before the solemn judges.
�The others had all sung their poems ; now came our youth,
with his. His theme rose high and higher, till at length
he came to the great theme of his song—Love. Just then
he felt beneath his finger that one string of his lyre had
snapt, a string that presently must do its part, or else his
song be put to shame. On, on, his strain went, as if to
its death ; but just as he drew near his note’ of Despair,
lo, a cricket chirped loud, chimed in with just that needed
note ! Saved, he went on, and ever as he returned to this
broken string the cricket duly made good the snapt string,
and thus the judges missed no note of the music, which
won the crown. On the poet’s statue was carved the
cricket which contributed from the lowly hearth the
needed note in that hymn of Love, when the old string
had broken. That tale too, I doubt not, came out of that
truest of all poets, the human heart. For the heart of our
race is aged in such experiences as those which elicit
rhymes of Despair. It has seen beautiful symbols fade in
myriads ; symbols of heavens innumerable, every one
clung to by suffering Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, as
much as any Christian clings to their successors. It has
seen troops of bright gods and goddesses perish, nymphs
and fairies leaving wood and vale desolate ; and yet, just
as its gladdest heart-string has snapt, its faith in heaven
given way, some cheery note from the earth has come to
remind it of the love near at hand, of the divine joy van
ished from its ancient heavens only to be revealed at the
hearth.
A cricket-chirp ! That is all. While our great Laureate
�(
i8
)
is employing his art to sing of despair, and other poets
aspire to ambitious themes, the notes are as yet but few
and humble, which cheer man with a trust in the love that
is near him. But there are such notes making up for the
•creed’s snapt string. Nor are they near only the happy.
The cricket sings from many an overshadowed hearth. It
tells the heart to be brave, and never count life lost so
long as courage remain. It bids man cease thinking so
much about himself—whether he be likely to die next year,
or die for ever—and go fall in love with something, an
out-self; to dispel morbid meditations. It warns us not to
worry over what may never happen, or, if it happen, may
be for the best, but turn to make what paradise we can on
•earth ; nor admit into it the destroyer of every paradise,
■care about the morrow, or about the far future. All these
spiritual despairs are diseases of the imagination. In a
sense, it is hereditary disease. For many generations our
ancestors employed their imaginations for little else than
to realise the charnal-house and picture happiness or
horrors beyond it. So their children have inherited a
morbid tendency of imagination, whereby they may turn
from the happiness they have and make themselves
miserable with dreams about its vanishing. Such work of
the imagination is illegitimate. Imagination is the
brightest angel of the head, as Love is of the heart; they
are twin angels and their office is to make life rich and
beautiful. And they can so enrich and adorn life, though
passed in a hovel, though amid pain, though destined to
end for ever, provided they be not dismissed from their
�(
W )
d post of present duty and sent wandering through clouds
c# to find love’s objects, or digging into graves to find life’s
ul fountain. I love and admire our Laureate for his great
heart and his beautiful art, but will not follow his muse,
nJ singing of Despaii, except with a hope that it is his way
i of writing its epitaph. I will follow the happy minstrel.
That poet who shows life to be environed with beauty,
makes deserts blossom in his song, whose poem is a
fountain of joy for all the living, bringing forgetfulness
to pain, and a sweet lullaby for the dying—that shall be
J my poet. And if, among the minstrels of our time, such
sihappy ones connot be found, because some string of faith
.for heart is snapped, then let us listen to the cheery
if cricket, to the voices of children, to the gentle words of
..S affection, to the unbroken song of the merry hearts in
..1 nature that remember only its loveliness. We will listen
eg to these until the new Poetry shall arise—as arise it will
I-with fresh songs, to bid all spirits rejoice in that which
) the old brought despair. That is the task of Poetry
ad Art. Every new thing destroying the old brings
espair; none brought more than Christianity—shatterlg the fair gods, and Protestantism—over whose havoc of
rayers and pieties Luther’s poor wife wept; but Poetry
id Art did their work, and none now long for restoration
f Aphrodite or Madonna. So also shall our age of
:ience find its poets and artists, and our children shall no
ore long for a buried faith than we for the holy dolls of
•umbled altars, whose power to charm has fled.
�SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL
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Demonology and Devil-lore............................
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Thomas Carlyle
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The Sacred Anthology : A Book of Ethnical Scriptures
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Republican Superstitions
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Human Sacrifices in England
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Intellectual Suicide.........................................
The First Love Again
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Entering Society
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0 2
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0 2
...
0 2
0 2
..
0 2
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0 2
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0 2
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0 2
... .02
BY Mr. FREDERIC
“ Pantheism and Cosmic Emotion ”...
...
0 2
..
0 2
HARRISON
BY Dr. ANDREW WILSON.
The Religious Aspects of Health ................
BY A J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c.,
Salvation
......................................................
Truth...................................................................
Speculation......................................................
Duty...................................................................
The Dyer’s Hand
.........................................
Comte’s Religion of Humanity
................
...
...
...
...
...
...
BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A.
...
The Conduct of Life ...
Hymns and Anthems
............................
&C.
...
...
2
2
2
2
2
4
...
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0
0
0
0
0
0
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0 2
Is., 2s., 3s-
REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE OF LIBERAL THINKERS,
1878
...............................................................................
1 0
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The life and death of Garfield: a discourse before the South Place Religious Society, September 25 1881
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907 [1832-1907]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 15 cm.
Series title: South Place Discourses
Notes: Printed by Frederic G. Hickson & Co., London. List of works to be obtained in the Lending Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[South Place Religious Society]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1881]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
T341
G4887
G3351
Subject
The topic of the resource
James A. Garfield
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The life and death of Garfield: a discourse before the South Place Religious Society, September 25 1881), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Assassination
Conway Hall Ethical Society
James Abram Garfield
Morris Tracts
Sermons
South Place Chapel