1
10
3
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/1df376057b33e5bafd9279f1ce3b0f66.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Drdz8%7EG2p3akhql6EekzQI9ghkXT2RRnvU9-pKErNDUIKY2EG0KCllgbyffs90XGSQDMqqG4oOo7BWI6Y1%7EQchBW%7E8syOvrN4DQdv0ehbhyuFdC7Lml1kMQ9bAR1EoNaAIDT-Vit8CoKjJ7xhHevhsquc%7EwrvbnIonQ2nsC5zZwa8X3oesMGef9dSZ10dvc2CTTIdCevlIutnYnaejR5VaZK6gREXJeqOcECWSm2kZe6Y21E93jdNwp7nMUAIURI1GWhBOwbvA2PtJ79RsAFkZ%7EDSXciSDoUoWMxjqDWfzDWWmXP9wHO2kWgB0PsLzfwbIMs59HE427JPffntYdHpQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
c8ce00e38cfd26b446c8891cac9431a7
PDF Text
Text
In Memoriam
A MEMORIAL DISCOURSE
IN HONOUR OF
JOHN
STUART
MILL,
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY.
WITH
HYMNS
.AJSTZD
HEADINGS,
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, FINSBURY,
Sunday, May 2 sth, 1873.
PRICE SIXPENCE.
��HYMN.
Britain’s first poet,
Famous old Chaucer,
Swanlike, in dying
Sung his last song,
When at his heart-strings
Death’s hand was strong.
“ From false crowds flying
Dwell with soothfastness ;
Prize more than treasure
Hearts true and brave ;
Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.
“ Trust not to fortune ;
Be not o’ermeddling ;
Thankful receive thou
Good which God gave ;
Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.
“ Earth is a desert,
Thou art a pilgrim :
Led by thy spirit,
Grace from God crave ;
Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.”
�4
Dead through long ages
Britain’s first poet—
Still the monition
Sounds from his grave,
“ Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.”
Music by E. Taylor.
w. J. Fox.
READINGS.
How beautiful, upon the mountains,
Are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings,
That publisheth Peace I
Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, have I set watchmen
Who shall never hold their peace, day and night.
Go through, go through the gates ;
Prepare ye the way of the people !
Lift up a standard to the peoples !
Behold my servant whom I uphold,
My chosen one in whom my soul delighteth :
I have put my spirit upon him ;
He shall publish right among the nations.
A bruised reed shall he not break,
And the smoking flax shall he not quench.
He shall publish right in truth.
He shall not grow feeble nor be discouraged,
Till he have established right in the earth ;
And the isles shall wait for his law.
I have called thee for deliverance,
A light of the nations,
To open blind eyes,
To set at liberty those that are bound,
Even them that sit in the prison of Darkness.
Isaiah.
�5
I have heard these words—“ Living in solitude to master
their aims, practising rectitude in carrying out their prin
ciples”—but where have I seen such men ?
To sit in silence and recall past ideas, to study and feel
no anxiety, to instruct men without weariness ; have I this
ability in me ?
The man of character does not go out of his place. He
is modest in speech, but exceeds in action.
He will hold rectitude essential—bringing his work
forth in humility, performing it with prudence, completing
it with sincerity. What he seeks is in himself.
There is a divine nobility and a human nobility. Tobe
a prince, a prime minister, or a great officer, constitute
human nobility. Benevolence, justice, fidelity, and truth,
and to delight in virtue without weariness, constitute
divine nobility. The ancients adorned divine nobility, and
human nobility followed it.
It has never been the case that he who was not sincere
could influence others ; nor that he who possessed genuine
virtue could not influence others.
Whenever the superior man passes renovation takes
place.
The principles of great men illuminate the universe.
The principles they cherish begin with the common duties
of men and women, but in their extent they light up the
'universe.
Confucius.
Buddha was residing at Jetavana. In the night a
heavenly being, illuminating Jetavana with his radiance,
approached him, saying—“ Many gods and men desire to
know the things that are excellent.” Buddha said :
�6
“ To serve the wise and not the foolish, and to honour
what is worthy of honour : these are excellencies.
“To dwell in the neighbourhood of the good, to bear the
remembrance of good deeds, and to have a soul filled with
right desires : these are excellencies.
“To have knowledge of truth, to be instructed in science,
to have a disciplined mind, and pleasant speech : these are
excellencies.
“To honour father and mother, to provide for wife and
child, and to follow a blameless vocation : these are
excellencies.
“ To be charitable, act virtuously, be faithful to friends,
and lead an innocent life : these are excellencies.
“ To be pure, temperate, and persevering on a right path:
these are excellencies.
“ Humility, reverence, contentment, gratitude, attentive
ness to wise instruction : these are excellencies.
“ To be gentle, to be patient, to converse with the reli
gious : these are excellencies.
“ Self-restraint and Charity, the knowledge of the great
principles, and the hope of the eternal repose : these are
excellencies.
“To have a mind unshaken by prosperity or adversity,
inaccessible to sorrow, secure and tranquil : these are
excellencies.
“ They that do these things are the invincible ; they
attain the perfect good.”
Buddha.
Seeing the multitudes Jesus went up into a mountain ;
and when he had sat down, his disciples came unto him.
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying :—
“Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the king
dom of heaven.
�7
Blessed are the lowly ; for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they who mourn ; for they shall be com
forted.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after jus
tice ; for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart ; they shall see God.
Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they shall be called
the children of God.
Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness
sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and perse
cute you, and say all manner of evil against you, falsely
.......... for so did they persecute the prophets that were
before you.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a
hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and
put it under a bushel, but in a candlestick ; and it giveth
light to all that are in the house. In like manner let
your light shine before men, that others seeing your
good works may judge of your Father in Heaven.”
Jesus.
Calmly, calmly lay him down !
He hath fought the noble fight;
He hath battled for the right;
He hath won the unfading crown.
‘
Memories, all too bright for tears,
Crowd around us from the past,
Faithful toiled he to the last,—Faithful through unflagging years.
�8
All that makes for human good,
Freedom, righteousness, and truth,
Objects of aspiring youth,
Firm to age he still pursued.
Kind and gentle was his soul,
But it glowed with glorious might;
Filling clouded minds with light,
Making wounded spirits whole.
Dying, he can never die !
To the dust his dust we give ;
In our hearts his heart shall live ;
Moving, guiding, working aye.
Music from Beethoven.
Adapted from Gaskell.
MEDITATION.
Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright,
Bridal of earth and sky ;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die !
Sweet rose ! in air whose odours wave,
And colour charms the eye ;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die !
Sweet spring ! of days and roses made,
Whose charms for beauty vie ;
Thy days depart, thy roses fade,
For thou must die I
�9
Only a sweet and holy soul
Hath tints that never fly ;
While flowers decay, and seasons roll,
It cannot die.
George Herbert.
JOHN STUART MILL.
Of old it was said “ The righteous dieth and no man
layeth it to heart.” That at least cannot be said of
England standing beside the grave of her noblest son.
Friend and foe have laid to heart the departure from
the world of one who has left so deep an impress upon
it. The Church journal which honestly exults in his
death, saying it is glad he is gone and does not care
how soon his friends follow him, has laid it to heart.
Those who are busily circulating in private a printed
catalogue of slanders against his fair fame, have laid
it to heart.
Let them rave,
He is quiet in his grave.
They cannot rave his truth out of existence. Their
hatred only reveals how deep his arrow has gone into
the heart of their wrong. Great men may be mea
sured, like towers, by the shadows they cast. Their
elevation is attested by the wrath of the base against
them. But they alone know the height who have
�IO
climbed to it, and caught the grander view it com
mands. And whilst a few, with vulture instinct, are
tearing the sod above the great heart, we may well
turn with a sad satisfaction to the general and real
grief of this people at the sorrowful tidings that the
powerful brain so busy with schemes for human wel
fare is still, that the heart which beat only for man
beats no more. The high-toned and impressive utter
ances of the press have done honour to the national
feeling. Westminster Abbey has asked permission
to enshrine his dust. Prime Minister* and Peer have
joined with philosopher and poet to do homage to his
worth. Whatever posterity may have to say of the
shortcomings of this generation, so much we may be
sure will be recorded in its honour. There is a dreary
catalogue in the past of the great unrecognised, of
mighty spirits sitting in the world at mighty tasks,
and departing, to leave a consecration only to the
vacant rooms where they have laboured, and bring
men as‘pilgrims to pay to their dust the homage
denied to their lives. That day is past. The people
listened to this great man ; bore him to their Parlia
ment ; shaped their law to his thought ; and they now
feel on them the shadow of the dark valley into which
he has entered.
Certain eminent men, in giving their names to the
Committee formed to express in some suitable form
* Since this was spoken, Mr. Gladstone has withdrawn from
the Committee formed to prepare some fit memorial of Mr.
Mill.
�this national feeling, have taken care to say that it
implies no unity of sentiment with Mr. Mill on great
■Questions. However needless such a precaution may
rf be, it is another tribute to his distinctive grandeur. It
rf reminds us again that his fame was won without com
cr pliance. It was not by concession to the opinions of
O others ; it was not by bending before the position or
q principles of the powerful, or reflecting established
q prejudice, that he gained the reverence now accorded
rf him. But it is despite a life-long opposition to such
ot i opinions and prejudices that his genius and character
rt make themselves felt, and prevail like some law of
rt nature. And, indeed, this man’s strength lay in his
rt near relationship to the laws of nature. We may say
a ■ of him as Confucius said of his dead friend, ‘ Heaven
38 alone is great and he was like unto it.” No artificial
£2 systems could allure him from his allegiance to the
X) i order of nature and the order of thought. He had
33 j raised his heart and brain into accord with the truth
to of things, to its vision he was ever obedient, and what
'fl he spoke to men was what he had learned while
KJ sitting as a devotee in his solitude, communing with
»9 eternal reason.
There is a date in my own memory, marked round
with vermilion, when I had the high privilege of pass
ffj ing a day with him amid wood and field, and beneath
fii the blue sky. And while he spoke, leaf and flower
If and sunbeam seemed to weave themselves around him
. J as a frame. His words were their kindred, so real
I 'fl were they, so gentle and so true. To listen was to be
J
if
�12
raised into a purer atmosphere. He spoke of a modern
French philosopher, with whom he had been too much
identified, who had treated certain sciences with a
certain contempt as not being of utility to man. “ As
if,” he said, “ any one could tell what is of utility to
mankind ! How many a truth, seemingly insignificant,
has turned out to be of momentous importance ! How
many inventions, after remaining a long time little
more than toys, have become engines of civilisation !
This little plant I have just plucked, and mean to
examine, who can say it may not be just the one link
needed in a great chain of knowledge ? It is never
safe to regard any fact as small. All that we esteem
great truths have been built up by these apparently
small bits of discovery, and to despise any truth
because we cannot see its use would bring our advance
to a full stop.”
At another time, and when listening to his conver
sation on a totally different subject, I had reason to
observe how each conviction he held ran through
and through him. He was this time speaking of
the downfall of slavery in America, and the prin
ciple he had maintained of reverently treasuring every
truth, however small or seemingly useless, re-appeared
in his faith that right ideas should be pursued, how
ever hopeless or visionary they might appear. From an
intimate acquaintance with the chief anti-slavery men
of America, I had said that they had not at all hoped to
see the success of their labours. They had grown up
from nothing; they had been derided as a handful of
�i3
visionaries; they had agreed that they were vision
aries, and the most sanguine among them had never
dreamed of that near consummation of their hope
which they have lived to witness. 11 It was that very
k fact,” said Mr. Mill, “ that made their power so great,
iS and their victory so complete. Not seeing a near
success, not hoping to reap what they were sowing,
they gave themselves all the more absolutely to the
principle. They were not tempted to compromise it
by any prospect of securing success by doing so. It
is no true Utilitarian principle for men to maintain
only that whose practical outcome and effect they can
see and measure; but it is to trust that the truth is
and must be useful, if not to us, to those who come
after us. To serve the truth thus unreservedly is
itself, too, success, even though it may appear unsuc
cessful. The anti-slavery men of America refused to
sanction a great wrong by participating in the politics
of the country : they would not even vote ; but each
man who abstained from voting thereby really voted
very heavily; and the abolition of slavery which has
followed is the sublimest manifestation of purely
moral power which our time has witnessed. It is
a lesson of the might that may lie in the most
seemingly ineffective and unpractical principle that
we hold.”
This, you will observe, is a restatement in applica
tion to morals and politics, of that principle he had
maintained with reference to Nature, that the smallest
and most useless fact was to be studied and rever-
iv
al
ffi
wi
�14
enced as much as the greatest, and that it was con
stantly turning out that the least was the greatest.
It is hard to preserve patience with those who
have attributed to Mr. Mill the belief in that kind
of Utilitarianism which is coarsely conceived by
themselves as a mere consecration of that which
is convenient or immediately serviceable. The whole
life of this man was devoted to ideals. Above
the heads of time-servers and self-seekers, he passed
on with his eye fixed on the star-like truth from
which he never swerved. I will not dwell on that
which his personal friends know : that he might
have been a man of large wealth had he not
held his income more for solitary students, and poor
scholars, and public purposes than for himself ; but I
may ask with what Idealist can you associate more
ideals than with him ? The right of the labourer in
the land, the secular education of the people, the
emancipation of mankind from superstition, the en
franchisement of women—all visions ! As visions he
espoused them ; as fair ideals he lived for them ; as
dreams unrealised he has gone down amid them to
his long sleep. Yet these were the bright hopes of a
Utilitarian philosopher, of one whose Utilitarianism
consisted in his perfect faith that whatever was true
was also useful, and who had proved to us in the world
that though we do not avail ourselves of that truth,
its utility is already manifested in its power to build
up a noble life and adorn it with spiritual beauty.
It is one of the saddest signs of the degree to which
�i5
the most civilised countries are as yet sunk in super
stition that the majority among us, perhaps, can only
think of such a man as a Sceptic, or an unbeliever in
religion. There was infinitely more religion in his un
belief than can be found in all the Churches of Eng
land. In an epigram of Schiller’s it is said : “ To what
religion dost thou belong?” “To none you could
name.” “ And wherefore to none ?” “ For the sake of
religion.” (Aus Religion.) In an age which bows down
to graven images—none the less graven images be
cause set on inward altars—here was one who would
not bow down to such nor serve them, and straight
way the cry is heard “ Infidel,” “ Atheist !” It really
makes religion a mockery. If Infidelity means such
lives, Heaven send us more Infidels ! The truth was
that he could belong to none of the religions around
him simply because he was too religious. There is
a certain characteristic which is inherent in all fine
natures, that what they they think they also feel. It
was the character of Mr. Mill, beyond all the men I
have ever known, that his feelings went along with
his thoughts. It was not enough for him to know
virtue, he must possess it; and it was not enough for
him to possess it, but he must love it. Truth was his
Lord, and his delight was in the law of that Lord ; and
on that law did he meditate day and night. Con
sequently it was impossible for him to follow the
common plan of saying one thing while he felt an
other ; to repeat creeds not in his heart; or to enter
temples where he must leave truth at the threshold.
�i6
But the habitual reverence of his mind, his essen
tial religiousness, made him in every moment a
worshipper, and every spot whereon he stood a
temple.
In matters of transcendent import with which small
theologians have complete though suspicious fami
liarity, he was reticent. On one occasion within my
knowledge he spoke in conversation concerning the
great subjects of human belief and hope—spiritual
existence and immortality. “ On these things,” he
said, “ there is no positive evidence at all. It is true
that in experience we know of mind only in connec
tion with physical organisation; but this is no evidence
that it may not exist otherwise. There is really no
evidence bearing on the subject one way or the other.
All that can be said is, that the common aspiration of
mankind furnishes a presumption in favour of the
reality of that towards which it aspires; but the actual
proof or confirmation of that presumption must wait
for the further increase of human knowledge. Noth
ing is proved—all is possibility.”
This, may seem a very slight faith beside the inti
mate knowledge copiously poured forth from every
little chapel pulpit, where everything is known about
Heaven and Hell and God, even to the number of
his family; but I believe that Humility will rather
go and sit beside the thinker in his ignorance, and
acknowledge its inability to comprehend the incom
prehensible or utter the unutterable. Socrates once
received a prize in Athens for possessing greater
�i7
knowledge than any other; and that knowledge in
which he excelled was knowledge of his own ignor
ance.
It may be noted of Mr. Mill that he is one of the
very few great authors who have never uttered or
written one word of discouragement. As a political
economist he was the first to encourage the labourer
to believe that his lot might and would be improved;
as a social reformer he was the first to encourage
woman to have faith in her larger destiny; and now
here in the region of religious inquiry, in the moment
when he was warning a friend of the lack of real
knowledge of those high matters, he ended with the
cheering words, “ All is possibility!” He knew full
well how many planets had rolled on overhead, un
discovered through long ages, to be revealed at length
to watchers by night when the instruments for seeing
them had been perfected, to say to us, Because you
know nothing now you will never know anything.
Rather amid the darkness he has sounded the watch
word clear and strong—“ All is possibility.’^ For this
really is the tenor of all he has written. And we may
say that his whole philosophic work was an endeavour
to perfect the lenses and the telescopes of the mind,,
to teach men how to use the instruments of thought,
through which that highest knowledge is to be reached,
if it is ever to be reached. And so great was his
service in teaching men what knowledge is and what
it is not, in teaching them the meaning of words and
the values of their ideas, that I doubt not when all the
�i8
fictions and superstitions have cleared away, if then
any insight into supersensual mysteries is attained,
the age attaining it will canonise as a saint this man
who taught men how to look and whither to look.
The ancient world—to use an illustration suggested
by himself—did not much regard the mathematicians
of Alexandria, who passed what seemed idle days and
nights investigating the properties of the ellipse, but
two thousand years after their speculations explained
the solar system, and through their labours ships now
circumnavigate the globe.
There is a passage which Mr. Mill once wrote about
Plato in which, as I think, he unconsciously described
the task of his own life. He says
“ The enemy
against which Plato really fought was Commonplace.
It was the acceptance of traditional opinions and cur
rent sentiments as an ultimate fact j and bandying of
the abstract terms which express approbation and dis
approbation, desire and aversion, admiration and dis
gust, as if they had a meaning thoroughly understood
and universally assented to. The men of his day (like
those of ours) thought that they knew what good and
evil, just and unjust, honourable and shameful, were,
because they could use the words glibly, and affirm
them of this and of that, in agreement with existing
custom. But what the property was, which these
several instances possessed in common, justifying the
application of the term, nobody had considered ;
neither the sophists, nor the rhetoricians, nor the
statesmen, nor any of those who set themselves
�T9
up or were set up by others as wise. Yet, who
ever could not answer this question was wan
dering in darkness; had no standard by which his
judgments were regulated, and which kept them con
sistent with one another ; no rule which he knew, and
could stand by, for the guidance of his life. Not
knowing what justice and virtue are, it was impossible
to be just and virtuous; not knowing what good is,
we not only fail to reach it, but are certain to embrace
evil instead. Such a condition, to any one capable of
thought, made life not worth having. The grand busi
ness of human intellect ought to consist in subjecting
these general terms to the most rigorous scrutiny, and
bringing to light the ideas that lie at the bottom of
them. Even if this cannot be done, and real know
ledge be attained, it is already no small benefit to
expel the false opinion of knowledge; to make men
conscious of their ignorance of the things most needful
to be known, fill them with shame and uneasiness at
their own state, and rouse a pungent internal stimulus,
summoning up all their mental energies to attack these
greatest of all problems, and never rest until, as far as
possible, the true solutions are reached.
Such was the aim of Plato who lived in an age of
transition, inquiry, doubt, like our own ; and such was
the aim of Mill. Where he saw the houses built on
sand swept away, there at least he would dig deep and
lay foundations which could never be shaken, based
on the truth of things, the eternal rock. We may
build on it in darkness, but there will come those who
�20
shall build on it in light. However much we may
misunderstand those sent to guide and raise us, we
may be sure posterity will make no mistakes. When
they cast their eyes back they will surely detect those
who amid groaning humanity sought only their own
good,—cringed to the strong,—repeated the servile
creed,—their double tongue uttering all that is sordid
and base. And they will pick out those who came to
the rescue of humanity in its time of trial, who stood for
justice and simple truth, faithful unto death.* They
will say that in the grave of John Stuart Mill closed
one of the few sacred lives of history.
There was blended with his intellectual work other
that required a yet higher nature, work that needed
preponderating moral sensibilities, a deep human
sympathy, a rich emotional nature. I have said that
Mr. Mill always felt what he thought,—and whenever
he spoke the blood in his cheek spoke too. But there
were two themes only upon which I have known his
habitual calmness give way to agitation,—two only
where, as he spoke, his mind caught flame and rose
into passionate emotion. One of these was when
before emancipation had taken place in America he
saw humanity enslaved, and a Republic fettered by
the same chain it had bound around the negro. The
other was when he saw women struggling to break
the galling political and social chains inherited from
ancient, from a barbaric past. Into their cause he
* I have remembered here words spoken by Emerson on the
death of Theodore Parker.
�21
entered with an enthusiasm which brought again the
age of chivalry, and the brave efforts he made to
secure woman from hereditary wrong made him to
our prosaic time the figure of St. George rescuing the
maiden from a dragon. The world has felt a silent
sympathy as in the French town he sat, studied, wrote,
at a window overlooking the grave that held that trea
sure of his soul beside whom he now reposes ; but it
has admired as it saw this personal devotion to one
noble woman consecrating him to the cause of all her
sisters. Ah, ye women, who amid many buffets and
sneers are striving to attain a truer position and larger
life, to help man to raise the suffering world to a
higher plane,—ye women, what a friend have you lost!
Daughters of England! weep not for him, but weep
for yourselves and for your children !
The Hindoo standing beside his dead is accustomed
to render him back solemnly to the elements. “ O
Earth,” he cries, “ of thee he was formed, to thee we
commend our brother. Thou Fire, emblem of purity,
dids’t quicken him, to thee we return him. Air that
gave him breath, to thee we yield him. Water that
sustained, receive thy share of him who has taken an
everlasting flight!” Even so must we .consign to
Nature which gave him to us the man for whom we
mourn. Great-hearted brother of all the sons and
daughters of men, brave warrior of truth, you have
fallen at your task suddenly, when your hope and ours
were highest for your future work ; but we consign
you to the elements that worked in and through you,
�22
not without consolation; for we know that the prin
ciples you maintained are deep in the heart of that
nature to which you return. The flowers blooming
over your grave shall write them in the dust, and the
rustling leaves repeat them; the sighing winds will
whisper, the storm will publish them ; they shall move
with the stars in their courses.
Part in peace ! Is day before us ?
Praise His name for life and light;
Are the shadows lengthening o’er us ?
Bless His care who guards the night.
Part in peace ! with deep thanksgiving
Rendering, as we homeward tread,
Gracious service to the living,
Tranquil memory to the dead.
Part in peace ! such are the praises,
God our Father loveth best;
Such the worship that upraises
Human hearts to heavenly rest
Music by Miss Flower..
AUSTIN AND CO.,
PRINTERS,
Sarah F Adams.
17, JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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
In memorium: a memorial discourse in honour of John Stuart Mill ... with hymns and readings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 22 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Printed by Austin & Co, 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, London.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
South Place Chapel
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1873]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G3329
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (In memorium: a memorial discourse in honour of John Stuart Mill ... with hymns and readings), 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
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
John Stuart Mill
Memorial Addresses
Morris Tracts
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/3520f2e24f026fa93e23993cbf2cedbf.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=t5b7k3KSoXRAHw7ULi7QGUoF2%7EjBoII-8U2C8WW9cNBDVLgUR-tPXDFCTU8XvMskxLjDceVw4SuomcWDV2bbmQPyD5vAmFfZyErTaL%7ENn1wo0JGqFW0AyCanxEb%7EWRYeXn7knBkPsyMfryohaq0OBZnTuPIB-aiK92dVSAwbUlrVykG1VNtxkPNxPH5sKaiZTgtEA4X7cflKhk6HON6DBmvqBdOt7yUjzpRDMPet6WXrTnF8cWsanQfxqq1QOe8CkY2KOhC1DPSTGLE4iwEi0xl07pRaPYWpuejNnKxsmu5BPDy-p%7E4BsbCirUWgyf3lB0-zHM%7Ezmc4VnbH2FAxdRA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
69ecd7171316326bb9591050ef50c40c
PDF Text
Text
"O «2
c* ' J-
TTW
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS.
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES
AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, FINSBURY,
February 22, 1874.
WITH
JA
DISCOUHSE
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY.
11, SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY.
1874.
PRICE THREEPENCE«
�I
�I.
I CANNOT plainly see the way,
So dark the grave is; but I know
If I do truly work my day
Some good will brighten out of woe.
For the same hand that doth unbind
The winter winds, sends sweetest showers,
And the poor rustic laughs to find
His April meadows full of flowers.
I said I could not see the way,
And yet what need is there to see,
More than to do what good I may,
And trust the great strength over me ?
Why should I vainly seek to solve
Free-will, necessity, the pall ?
I feel, I know that God is love,
And knowing this I know it all.
Alice Carey.
II.
READINGS.
Whoso seeketh wisdom shall have no great travail; for he
shall find her sitting at his door. She goeth about seeking such
as are worthy of her, showeth herself favourably to them in the
highways, and meeteth them in every thought. Love is the
keeping of her laws. The multitude of the wise is the welfare
of the world.
�4
Wisdom is the worker of all things: for in her is an under
standing spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtile, lively, clear,
undefiled, simple, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is
good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good ; kind to
man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing
all things; and going through all understanding, pure and most
subtle spirits. Wisdom is more moving than any motion: she
passeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is
the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing
from the glory of the Almighty? therefore can no defiled thing
fall into her.
For she is the brightness of the everlasting
light, the unspotted mirror of the power ©f God, and the image
of his goodness. And being but one, she can do all things;
and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all
ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God
and prophets. She is more beautiful than the sun, and above all
the order of the stars: being compared with the light, she is
found before it; for after day cometh night, but vice shall not
prevail against wisdom.
Wisdom of Solomon.
The Duke Gae asked about the altars of the gods of the land.
Tsae-Wo replied, “The Hea sovereign used the pine-tree, the
man of the Yin used the cypress, and the man of the Chow used
the chestnut,—to cause the people to be in awe.”
Confucius, hearing this, said, “ Things that are done, it is
needless to speak about; things that have had their course, it is
needless to remonstrate with; things that are past, it is needless
to blame. ”
Kee-Loo asked about serving the gods. The Master said,
“While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve the
gods ?”
�5
Kee-Loo said, “ I venture to ask about death. ”
The Master said, “While you do not comprehend life, how
can you comprehend death ?
“ If a man in the morning hear of the right way, he may in
the evening die without regret
“Yew, shall I teach you what knowledge is ? When you know
a thing, consider that you know it; and when you do not know
a thing, understand that you do not know it This is knowledge.
“ For a man to worship a deity not his own is mere flattery.
“To give one’s-self earnestly to the duties due to men, and
while respecting the gods, to respect also their distance, may be
called Wisdom.”
Confucius.
Mahomet said, Instruct in knowledge ! He who instructs,
fears God ; he who speaks of knowledge, praises the Lord; who
disputes about it, engages in holy warfare ; who seeks it, adores
the Most High; who spreads it, dispenses alms to the ignorant;
and who possesses it, attains the veneration and goodwill of all.
Knowledge enables its possessor to distinguish what is forbidden
from what is not; it lights the way to heaven; it is our friend in
the desert, our society in solitude ; our companion when far away
from our homes ; it guides us to happiness ; it sustains us in
misery ; it raises us in the estimation of friends ; it serves as an
armour against our enemies. With knowledge, the servant of
God rises to the heights of excellence. The ink of the scholar is
more sacred than the blood of the martyr. God created Reason,
and it was the most beautiful being in his creation: and God
said to it, “I have not created anything better or more perfect or
more beautiful than thou: blessings will come down on mankind
on thy account, and they will be judged according to the use they
make of thee. ”
Mohammed.
�6
If Morality is the relation of man to the idea of his kind, which
in part he endeavours to realise in himself, in part recognises
and seeks to promote in others, Religion, on the other hand, is
his relation to the idea of the universe, the ultimate source of all
life and being. So far, it may be said that Religion is above
Morality; as it springs from a still profounder source, reaches
back into a still more primitive ground.
Ever remember that thou art human, not merely a natural
production ; ever remember that all others are human also, and,
with all individual differences, the same as thou, having the same
needs and claims as thyself: this is the sum and substance of
Morality.
Ever remember that thou, and everything thou beholdest
within and around thee, all that befals thee and others, is no dis
jointed fragment, no wild chaos of atoms or casualties, but that it
all springs, according to eternal laws, from the one primal source
of all life, all reason, all good : this is the essence of Religion.
Strauss : “ The Old Faith and the New."
III.
Fall, fall ye mighty temples to the ground !
Not in your sculptured rise
Is the real exercise
Of human nature’s brightest power found.
’Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil,
’Tis in the gifted line,
In each far thought divine
That brings down heaven to light our common soil.
�7
’Tis in the great, the lovely, and the true,
’Tis in the generous thought
Of all that man has wrought,
Of all that yet remains for man, to do.
Fall, fall, ye ancient litanies and creeds :
Not prayers or curses deep'
The power can longer keep,
That once ye held by filling human needs.
The quickening worship of our God survives
In every noble grief,
In every high belief,
In each resolve and act that light our lives.
IV.
MEDITATION.
V.
The future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow ;
We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us, —Onward.
And solemn before us,
Veiled the dark Portal ;
Goal of all mortal:—
Stars silent rest o’er us,
Graves under us silent.
�While earnest thou gazest,
Comes boding of terror,
Comes phantasm and error;
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.
But heard are the Voices,
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds, and the Ages :
“ Choose well; your choice is
Brief, and yet endless.
“ Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity’s stillness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you.
Work, and despair not! ”
(Gckthk, ir. Carlyl.
�DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS.
Towards the close of the last century a young
German student was climbing amid the Swiss
Alps—alpenstock in hand—gazing with wonder
on glaciers, scaling the dizziest peaks. His Alpine
wanderings were preliminary to the climbing of
nobler summits, commanding vaster prospects.
For this was Friedrich Hegel, destined to create
an epoch in the history of the human mind.
Amid those barren heights and weird chasms of
Switzerland there was born in his mind a doubt
which has influenced the world. Before those wild
desolations he asked himself whether it could
be possible that this chaos of rock and glacier
had been specially created for man’s enjoyment ?
It was a problem which required for its solution
not only his own long, laborious life, but many
lives ; yet, to the philosophical statement of that
one man we owe a new order of religious thought.
If I may borrow an expression from geology, it
may be said that we are all living in the Hegelian
formation; and this whether we understand that
philosophy or not, and even if we reject its terms.
�IO
For Hegel was as a great vitalising breath wafted
from afar, beneath which, as under a tropical
glow,’ latent seeds of thought were developed to
most various results. From afar; for really
Hegel’s philosophy was an Avatar for cultivated
.Europe of the most ancient faith of our race. Its
essence is the conception of an absolute Idea
which has represented itself in Nature, in order
that by a progressive development through Nature
it may gain consciousness in man, and return as
mind to a deeper union with itself. It is really
the ancient Hindu conception of a universal soul
of Nature, a vast spiritual sea in which each
animal instinct, each human intellect, is a wave.
Or, in another similitude, every organic form,
however great or small, represents some scattered
spark of a central fire of intelligence, on the way
back to its source, bearing thither. the accumu
lated knowledge gathered on its pilgrimage
through many forms in external Nature.
Briefly, the Hegelian philosophy means a soul
in Nature corresponding to the soul of Man. Of
■ course—I have already stated it—it did not
originate with Hegel. It maybe traced from the
Vedic Hymn to the cry of Kepler, when, looking
up to the stars, he said, “ Great God, I think thy
thought aftei' thee !” But with Hegel it gained
�II
an adaptation to the thought of Europe, and
passed into the various forms of belief and feeling.
It inspired all the poetry of Wordsworth. It is
reflected in the materialism no less than in the
idealism of our age, and may be felt in the
philosophy of Huxley no less than in that of its
best exponent, Emerson.
Among the many German thinkers who sat at
the feet of Hegel there was but one who compre
hended its tremendous bearings upon the theology
of Europe ; but one through whom it was able to
grow to logical fruitage ; and that one was the
great man whose life has just closed—David
Friedrich Strauss. Strauss proved himself the
truest pupil of Hegel by throwing off the mere
form of his forerunner’s doctrine, just as that
philosopher had thrown off the formulas of his
forerunners. The literal Hegelians, of course,
regarded Strauss as a renegade ; on the surface
it would so appear: Hegel called himself a
Christian, Strauss renounced Christianity; Hegel
was designated an idealist, Strauss a materialist.
But we must not be victims of the letter. Fruit
is different from blossom ; but it is, for all that,
blossom in another form.
I need, not dwell on the outward biography of
Friedrich Strauss. The greatest men live in
�12
their intellectual works. The sixty-five years of
this man were not marked by many salient or
picturesque incidents. As a student of theology
at Tübingen, and as a professor, he travelled an
old and beaten path,—poverty, hard study, hard
work. At the age of twenty-seven he publishes
his great work, the Leben Jesu ; is driven from
his professorship ; offered another at Zurich Uni
versity, he is prevented by persecution from
holding it; and finally settles himself down to a
life of plain living and high thinking. He is
elected by his native town Ludwigsburg to the
Wurtemburg Legislature, but surprises them by
his “ conservatism,” as it was called, and answers
their dissatisfaction by resigning. He marries, and,
alas ! unhappily. Agnes Schebert was an actress,
and she was also a clever authoress; but when she
was married to Strauss there was shown to be
an incompatibility of disposition which led to a
quiet separation without recriminations on either
side. The lady once wrote a parody on the
writing of Hegel, which is amusing, but suggests
that she could hardly have been fortunately
united with a philosopher who had sat at the
feet of Hegel. She left with him a daughter and
a son, who were devoted to their father through
life, and for whom he wrote a tender and touch-
�ing account of their mother that they might think
of her with affection.
He lived a busy life, and wrote a large number
of admirable works, the absence of most of
which from English libraries is a reproach to our
literature.
His biographies are among the
most felicitous that have been written, and have
brought before Germans noble figures which are
for most English readers mere names,—Ulrich
von Hutten, the brilliant radical of the Refor
mation ; the discoverer of lost books of Livy,
Quintilian, and other classic authors ; the fellow
fugitive of Erasmus before the wrath of the
Pope ; the lonely scholar who has made classic
the islet of Lake Zurich where he died :—the
Biography of Hermann Reimarus, who one hun
dred years ago was the leading prophet of
Natural Religion : —the Life of Friedrich Daniel
*
Schubart, poet and publicist, who, beginning as
an organist in Ludwigsburg, lost his place for
writing a parody on the Litany; who in later life
was invited by the Duke of Wurtemburg to
dinner, on his arrival seized and imprisoned in
Asberg Castle for ten years, because of an epi
* His chief works are “ The Wolfenbuttel Fragments,” edited
by Lessing; “The Principles of Natural Religion,” and “The
Instincts of Animals. ”
�14
gram written by the poet,—who, for the rest, has
left songs which the Germans still love to sing.
*
The work of Strauss on Voltaire consists of a
series of lectures prepared by request of the
Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt (daughter of Queen
Victoria), who listened to them ; and the work
is written in a spirit of high admiration of the
great French heretic. If, as I doubt not, the two
biographies which he has left—“ Lessing ” and
“ Beethoven ”—are of equal value to those I have
mentioned, Strauss will have left six works at
least, apart from his contributions to theology,
of a character which must write his name very
high among the literary workers of this century.
When the life of Strauss is written, no doubt
the details of it will be found of great interest ;
but nothing relating to his private and personal
history will ever be so impressive as the unfold
ing of his intellectual and religious nature. Fully
told, even as traceable in his works, this repre
sents the pilgrimage of a Soul from the crumbling
shrines of Superstition across long deserts of
doubt, and the rugged passes of adversity, even
* The principal is one entitled “Caplied” (Cape Song), sup
posed to be sung by soldiers, sold to the Dutch, on their way to
the Cape of Good Hope. Another celebrated poem of his is,
“Die Fiirstengruft ” (The Tomb of Princes).
�to the beautiful temple of Truth, where his last
hymn of joy ended in the gentle sigh of death.
Of this, his mental biography, I can give here
but a slight outline. I have already taken up
the thread of his life at the point where he was
learning the secret of Hegel. That implied a
foreground with which many of us are familiar;
for he was born to orthodoxy, and. had to'flee
that City of Destruction. So much he had accom
plished in his youth, and was ready to set him
self to the real task of his life. The philosophy
of Hegel left room for mysticism, but none for
miracle. Paulus, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and
others, each endeavoured in their several ways tobridge over the gulf between supernaturalism
and reason ; they wanted reason, they must
have Christianity, and so held on to the miracles
without believing them miraculous. But Strauss
had already placed before his mind Truth as the
one attainable thing worthy of worship ; and he
set himself to the task of studying the life of
Christ, with all its investiture of fable, as a
historical phenomenon. The fables he knew were
not true, but he would know how they arose, and
he would know what form they would leave were
they detached from the New Testament narra
tives. In reaching his sure result he was aided
�i6
by the veracity of his mind no less than by his
learning. He had but to apply to a miracle
found in the Bible the same test which everyone
applied to a miracle when found in Livy or Ovid.
He had but to take the method which Christians
used when dealing with the wonders of Buddhism,
and apply it honestly to the marvels of
Christianity. The result was that he tracked all
the New Testament marvels back to their pagan
or Judaic origin; he found that they were the
same stories that had been told about Moses,
Elijah, David, about Isis and Osiris, Apollo, and
Bacchus. In a word he proved that they were
myths, such as in unscientific ages—when the laws
of Nature and the nature of laws were unknown—
had arisen and gathered about every teacher who
had become an object of popular reverence.
In denying the value of miracles as historical
events in the life of a particular man, Strauss
was impressed by the perception that these
myths which had come from every human race to
invest Christ represented something more im
portant than the career of any individual; they
represented humanity. They were born out of
the human heart in every part of the world, and
were types of its aspirations, hopes, and spiritual
experiences. That which could not be respected
�¡7
as history could be reverenced as a reflection of
the religious sentiment. He would place an
idea where the church set an individual.
“ Humanity,” he wrote, “ is the union of the
two natures—God become man, the infinite
manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite
spirit remembering its infinitude; it is the child
of the visible Mother and the invisible Father,
Nature and Spirit; it is the worker of miracles,
in so far as in the course of human history, the
spirit more and more completely subjugates nature,
both within and around man, until it lies before
him as the inert matter on which he exercises his
active power; it is the sinless existence, for the
course of its development is a blameless one,
pollution cleaves to the individual only, and does
not touch the race and its history. It is
Humanity that dies, rises, and ascends to heaven,
for from the negation of its phenomenal life
there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life.”
When this lofty faith in Humanity as the true
Christ, which had unconsciously symbolized itself
as the life of one man, shone out upon the mind
of Strauss, all interest in the individual Jesus
paled under it. Since his great work was pub
lished—near forty years ago—we have, by stand
ing on the shoulders of such men as he, been
�iS
able, no doubt/ to see somewhat further. The
rational study of the New Testament has disclosed
certain fragments of real history, and by piecing
these together we can shape out the figure of a
great man,—great enough to show why it was
that the human heart brought all its finest dreams
and marvels to entwine them around that single
brow. But the grand generalization of this
scientific thinker, who pierced the veil of fable
and recognised beyond it the face of humanity
transfigured with divine light, is one which can
hardly be parallelled by any utterance since the
brave words of Paul: “ We henceforth know no
one according to the flesh ; and if we have ever
known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we
no longer know him.” “ The Lord is a Spirit 1”
Having disposed of the old Christology,
Strauss proceeded to apply his method—the
method of Science—to all the theories of Nature
and of human life which were intertwined with
it What the results of his inquiries were are
summed up in his last work, “ The Old Faith
and the New.” And at the outset I must say
that the whole purport of that book has been
falsely interpreted for English readers by the
blundering exposition of it given by Mr. Glad
stone in a speech delivered in Liverpool. The
�late Prime Minister, it will be remembered, held
up Dr. Strauss before the school-children as an
awful example of what they would come to if
they once began exercising their own faculties.
He admitted his own incompetence to answer the
arguments of Strauss ; it would have been well
if he had also acknowledged his inability to trans
late his words correctly. In describing that
“Universum” wdiich Strauss had declared to be
the highest and divinest conception of human in
telligence, the Cosmos which man should adore in
place of the old deity of dogma, Mr. Gladstone
said that the author represented it—the adorable
Universe—as without reason. The word which
Strauss really uses is “ Vernunftvoll ”—full of
reason ! This inexcusable error makes all the
difference between Theism and Atheism. “ Our
highest idea,” says Strauss, “ is the law-governed
Cosmos, full of life and reason and he censures
Schopenhauer, who declares Nature to be hope
lessly evil. “We consider it,” he says, “ arrogant
and profane on the part of a single individual to
oppose himself with such audacious levity to the
Cosmos whence he springs, from which, also, he
derives that spark of reason which he misuses.
We recognise in this a repudiation of the senti
ment of dependence which we expect from every
�20
man. We demand the same piety for our Cosmos
that the devout of old demanded for his God.”
In this his last work, “ The Old Faith and the
New ”—the translation of which we owe to a
woman as we do that of his first work—Strauss
embraces with enthusiasm the theory of Evo
lution. Thereby his old Hegelian idealism is
transmuted to Darwinian Materialism. Of course,
many people fancy that Materialism is something
which is inconsistent with belief in a deity or
even in religion.
But really, with regard to
divine existence and religion there is no differ
ence between Idealism and Materialism. Strauss
justly pronounces the religious issue between the
two a quarrel about words. They both and alike
“ endeavour to derive the totality of phenomena
from a single principle—to construct the universe
and life from the same blockin this equally
opposing the Christian dualism which divides
man into body and soul, and severs God from
Nature. In their common endeavour after unity
Idealism starts from above, Materialism starts
from below ; “ the latter constructs the universe
from atoms and atomic forces, the former from
ideas and idealistic forces. But if they would
fulfil their tasks, the one must lead from its
heights down to the very lowest circles of
�21
1 Nature, and to this end place itself under the
I control of careful observation ; while the other
i must take into account the higher intellectual
I and ethical problems.” In short, all that the
j Idealist says of soul the Materialist says of
I brain; all that any worshipper can say of his
| God, Strauss says of Nature.
I What the creed of this thinker was may be
I found in this last work, wherein it is expressed with
an exaltation which becomes more impressive
f now that we know that even while he was so
! uttering his perfect faith in the fair universe, the
i terrible cancer was destroying him. These are
his words: “We perceive in Nature tremendous
I contrasts, awful struggles; but we discover that
i these do not disturb the stability and harmony
of the whole,—that they, on the contrary, pre
serve it. We further perceive a gradation, a
development of the higher from the lower, of the
refined from the coarse, of the gentle from the
rude. And in ourselves we make the experience
that we are advanced in our personal as well as
our social life ; the more we succeed in regula
ting the element of capricious change within and
around us, and in developing the higher from the
lower, the delicate from the rugged. This, when
we meet with it within the circle of human life,
�22
we call good and reasonable. What is analogous
to it in the world around us, we cannot avoid
calling so likewise. The Cosmos is simulta
neously both cause and effect, the outward and
the inward together. We stand here at the
limits of our knowledge ; we gaze into an abyss
we can fathom no' farther. But this much at
least is certain,—that the personal image which
meets our gaze there is but the reflection of the
wondering spectator himself. At any rate, that
on which we feel ourselves entirely dependent, is
by no means merely a rude power to which we
bow in mute resignation, but is at the same time
both order and law, reason and goodness, to
which we surrender ourselves in loving trust.”
In one very important matter many of the
admirers of Strauss have felt distress at his
position and influence. Politically, he has the
reputation of being a reactionist and conserva
tive. This reputation—obtained when he resigned
his seat in the legislature because of disagree
ment with his radical constituency—has been
confirmed by his treatment of political subjects
in his latest work. My own belief is that the
views of Strauss on these matters are very
seriously misunderstood by reason of the fact
that they are altogether conceived from the
�ft
o%
Hegelian standpoint. Those who study Hegeln know that his apparent conservatism was the
IE crust outside a fiery radicalism.
The political
philosophy of Hegel is contained in the followfi| ing extract from his writings :—“ Moral liberation and political freedom must advance
together. The process must demand some vast
J space of time for its full realisation; but it is the
d law of the world’s progress, and the Teutonic
9 nations are destined to carry it into effect. The
■i Reformation was an indispensable preparation
J
¡4 for this great work. The history of the world
* is a record of the endeavours made to realise the
idea of freedom and of a progress surely made,
but not without many intervals of apparent
failure and retrogression. Among all modern
failures the French revolution of the eighteenth
century is the most remarkable. It was an
! endeavour to realise a boundless external liberaj tion without the indispensable condition of moral
] freedom. Abstract notions based merely on the
understanding, and having no power to control
wills of men, assumed the functions of morality
and religion, and so led to the dissolution of
society, and to the social and political difficulties
under which we are now labouring. The proI gress of freedom can never be aided by a
�24
revolution which has not been preceded by a
religious reformation.”*
That a similar conviction was rooted in the
mind of Strauss I became aware by personal,
intercourse with him. Some years ago, as I
walked with him on the banks of the Neckar, he
declared to me that the motives he had in pub
lishing his “ Life of Christ ” were hardly less
political than religious. “ I felt oppressed,” he
said, “ at seeing nearly every nation in Europe
chained down by allied despotism of prince and
priest. I studied long the nature of this oppres
sion, and came to the conclusion that the chain
which fettered mankind was rather inward than
outward, and that without the inward thraldom
the outward would soon rust away. The inward
chain I perceived to be superstition, and the
form in which it binds the people of Europe is
Christian Supernaturalism. So long as men
accept religious control not based on reason they
will accept political control not based on reason.
The man who gives up the whole of his moral
nature to an unquestioned authority has suffered
a paralysis of his mind, and all the changes of
*SeeGostwick and Harrison’s “Outlines of German Litera
ture,” p. 481.
�25
f® outward circumstances in the world cannot make
iiihim a free man. For this reason our European
revolutions have been, even when successful,
merely transfers from one tyranny to another.
I believed when I wrote that book that, in striking
•J at supernaturalism, I was striking at the root of
tj the whole evil tree of political and social degrada
ci tion.”
1 At another time, when speaking of Renan,
whose portrait was the most prominent in his
a study, he said : “ Renan has done for France
d what I had hoped to do for Germany. He has
vj written a book which the common people read ;
r > the influence of my ‘ Life of Christ ’ has been
21 confined to scholars more than I like, and I mean
to put it into a more popular shape. Germany
i| must be made to realise that the decay of
it Christianity means the growth of national life,
J and the progress of humanity.”
J
After this it was very plain to me what
1 Strauss’s conversatism amounted to. It means
» only that he had no faith in the abolition of an
; abuse here and there when the conditions which
i produce every abuse remain unaltered,—no faith
in sweeping away a few snow-drifts when winter
is still in the air, the whole sky charged with
snow. We may wish that he had felt more
—
�26
sympathy with some of the popular movements
around him ; but we must remember that as a
philosophical radical he regarded the ever
recurring enthusiasms of the people,—believing
that they would reach the millennium by abolish
ing capital punishment, or abolishing a throne,—
as so much waste energy. He saw hopes born in
revolutions only to perish in disaster and reac
tion. He came to rest his hope for Humanity,
which he loved, on his faith in the omnipotence of
that Truth which he sought to enthrone above it.
Such was the faith, such the work, of the great
man, to whose memory we pay this day our
heartfelt homage. In his writings- I have met
with but one allusion to himself. It is in the
last pages that he ever wrote, and is as follows :
—“ It is now close upon forty years that as a
man of letters I have laboured, that I have
fought on and on for that which appeared to me
as truth, and still more perhaps against that
1 which has appeared to me as untruth ; and in th‘e
pursuit of this object I have attained, nay, over
stepped the threshold of old age.” Then it is
that every earnest-minded man hears the whisper
' of an inner voice: “ Give an account of thy
stewardship, for thou may’st be no longer
steward.” Now, I am not conscious of having
�27
been an uujust steward. An unskilful one at
times, too probably also a negligent one, I may,
heaven knows, have been; but on the whole I
have done what the strength and impulse within
prompted me to do, and have done it without
looking to the right or the left, without seeking
the favour or shunning the displeasure of any.”
These few words represent the benediction of
Conscience upon a faithful man, felt by him as
life was ebbing away, and the dark portal grow
ing more distinct before him. His bitterest
enemy need not impugn that approving smile of
his own heart. It was all the wage of his work.
Others have toiled in full view of heavenly
reward. He laboured on with hope of no recom
pense for devotion and self-sacrifice beyond the
consciousness of having made his life an unfalter
ing testimony to truth. Even those who believe
that they see gleams of light irradiating the dark
valley may count his honour not less but more
that he gave his service uncheered by such
visions.
In Heilbronn, where he was residing, he onct
pointed out to me, near an ancient church, the
trace of the old and sacred fountain which gave
the town its name, which signifies “ healing foun
tain.” He said, with his gentle smile : “ The
�28
theory of the priests is that the fountain ceased
to flow when I came here to reside.” When I
looked up to his magnificent eyes, and the grand
dome of his forehead, I could but marvel at the
depth of that superstition which could permit this
man to live as a hermit in communities which will
one day cherish each place of his dwelling as a
shrine. Holy wells may dry up, and the churches
beside them crumble, but men will repair to the
spots where the lonely scholar sat at his task,
and tell their children—here it was that in the
wildernesses of superstition living waters broke
out, and streams in the desert.
�29
V.
Everlasting ! changing never!
Of one strength, no more, no less ;
Thine almightiness for ever,
Ever one thy holiness :
Thee eternal,
Thee all glorious we possess.
Shall things withered, fashions olden,
Keep us from life’s flowing spring ?
Waits for us the promise golden,
Waits each new diviner thing.
Onward ! onward !
Why this hopeless tarrying ?
Nearer to thee would we venture,
Of thy truth more largely take,
Upon life diviner enter,
Into day more glorious break ;
To the ages
Fair bequests and costly make.
By the old aspirants glorious ;
By each soul heroical;
By the strivers, half victorious ;
By thy Jesus and thy Paul,
Truth’s own martyrs,—
We are summoned, one and alL
By each saving word unspoken ;
By thy truth as yet half won ;
By each idol still unbroken ;
By thy will yet poorly done ;
O Almighty !
We are borne resistless on.
Adaptedfrom Gill,
�M
�
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
David Friedrich Strauss: commemorative services at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, February 22,1874, with a discourse by Moncure D. Conway
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 29, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Includes bibliographical references. A list of the author's works available from South Place Chapel on unnumbered back page.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[South Place Chapel]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G3330
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sermons
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (David Friedrich Strauss: commemorative services at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, February 22,1874, with a discourse by Moncure D. Conway), 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
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
David Friedrich Strauss
Memorial Addresses
Morris Tracts
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/db24c60c3cab575c232622438bf67356.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=uPE4uQKtNNrSMCylsDoV6X1M0S%7E3UUA7LjxnaFmsoNNcD6SyLdwnPhiNjMqRV2%7Ep6xC1mNfuZRYYJghCZQaXr0Ap86qeTu7JyT2%7EEryTFwy-ia1eC5ncRpJzmMR-wwPW3oV7dCORTtdiHKTjyUk724KzbhqSkZlDec3GKCO4FAH410X0b5wlSRP57qbN2AeuoHcV%7Ejyt9YPLHRSz7Ioo4SqZ4C4GoyJxq3OKpt9RdlrhBOqSpqOAzx%7ED3iIS5DIuyzFL1GxiGKqA0BRptr%7EaKEUPNibxqBuU5pEg4X9ZDKNx1I6WEJsshKilupjEGNylQSctsRfXEgfctYe20f9v2w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
1b60d76defd1e3f7805804184579a4d9
PDF Text
Text
SECOND EDITION. SIXTH THOUSAND.________
------ =—7—-
=
MR. CHAS. BRADLAUGH, referring to this Orat.icrth. ¿fy
says in the National Reformer of J uly 2nd, 1882 ¡-MJ». "L
“As a sample of eloquence it should be read by evRf^.. <4 •.
admirer of fine clear oratory.
*
<$
<0 ¿X. •
NATIONALSECtJLARSOCIETY
nJ
COL. INGERSOLL’S
LONDON:
Printed at the Paine Press, 8, Finsbury-street, e.c.
1882
Price One Penny.
i
�( 2 )
-Ht IJ'i’FRODUC’FISjV.
ECORATION DAY, the occasion upon which the following
Oration was delivered in June, 1882, is a national commemora
tion of the dead heroes of America, of the men who fought and died
for the great republic. It is observed throughout the country, and
the tombs of the departed great ones are decked with flowers and
other symbols of remembrance and respect. Col. Ingersoll, whose
fame as an orator is world-wide, was requested to deliver the com
memorative discourse. The Colonel accepted the honorable post, and
the oration given below was the result. The Academy of Music was
thronged on the evening of Decoration Day. The gay dresses of the
ladies and the bright uniforms of military men gave the audience a
brilliant appearance. The Academy was profusely decorated with
flags. Amidst thunders of applause, Colonel Ingersoll advanced to
the reading desk, and delivered the
ORATION.
'T'IIIS day is sacred to our heroes dead. Upon their tombs we hav
A lovingly laid the wealth of spring.
This is a day for memory and tears. A mighty nation bends above
its honored grave and pays to noble dust the tribute of its love.
Gratitude is the fairest flower that sheds its perfume in the heart.
To-day we tell the history of oui' country’s life—-recount the lofty
deeds, of vanished years—the toil and suffering, the defeats and
victories of heroic men—of men who made our nation great and free.
We see the first ships whose prows were gilded by the Western
sun. We feel the thrill of discovery when the new world was found.
We see the oppressed, the serf, the peasant, and the slavemen whose
flesh had known the chill of chains—the adventurous, the proud, the
brave, sailing an unknown sea, seeking homes in unknown lands.
We see the settlements, the little clearings, the block-house, and
the fort, the rude and lonely huts. Brave men, true women, builders
of homes, fellers of forests, founders of states !
Separated from the Old World—away from the heartless distinctions
of caste—away from sceptres, and titles, and crowns, they governed
themselves. They defended their homes, they earned them bread.
Each citizen had a voice, and the little villages became almost
republics.
Slowly the savage was driven, foot by foot, back in the dim forest.
The days and nights were filled with fear, and the slow years with
massacre and war, and cabins' earthen floors were wet with blood of
mothers and their babes.
But the savages of the New World were kinder than the kings and
nobles of the Old ; and so the human tide kept coming, and the
places of the dead were filled.
�( 3 )
Amid common dangers and common hopes, the prejudices and
feuds of Europe faded slowly from their hearts. From every land,
of every speech, driven by want and lured by hope, exiles and
emigrants sought the mysterious continent of the West.
Year after year the colonists fought and toiled, and suffered and
increased.
They began to talk about liberty—to reason of the rights of man.
They asked no help from distant kings, and they began to doubt the
use of paying tribute to the useless. They lost respects for dukes
and lords, and held in high esteem all honest men.
There was the dawn of a new day. They began to dream of in
dependence. They found that they could make and execute the laws.
They had tried the experiment of self-government. They had
succeeded. The Old World wished to dominate the New. In the
care and keeping of the colonists was the destiny of this continent—
of half the world.
On this day the story of the great struggle between colonists and
kings should be told. We should tell our children of the contest—
first for justice, then for freedom. We should tell them the history
of the Declaration of Independence—the chart and compass of all
human rights—that all men are equal, and have the right of life,
liberty, and joy.
This Declaration uncrowned kings, and wrested from the hands of
titled tyranny the sceptre of usurped and arbitrary power. It super
seded royal grants, and repealed the cruel statutes of a thousand
years. It gave the peasant a career; it knighted all the sons of toil;
it opened all the paths to fame, and put the star of hope above the
cradle of the poor man’s babe.
England was then the mightiest of nations—mistress of every sea—
and yet our fathers, poor and few, defied her power.
To-day we remember the defeats, the victories, the disasters, the
weary marches, the poverty, the hunger, the sufferings, the agonies,
and, above all, the glories of the Revolution. We remember all—
from Lexington to Valley Forge, and from that midnight of despair
to Yorktown's cloudless day.
We remember the soldiers and thinkers—the heroes of the sword
and pen. They had the brain and heart, the wisdom and the courage
to utter and defend these words, “Governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed.”
In defence of this sublime and self-evident truth the war was waged
and won.
To-day we remember all the heroes, all the generous and chivalric
men who came from other lands to make ours free.
Of the many thousands who shared the gloom and glory of the
seven sacred years, not one remains. The last has mingled with the
earth, and nearly all are sleeping now in unmarked graves, and some
beneath the leaning, crumbling stones, from which their names have
been effaced by Time’s irreverent and relentless hands.
But the nation they founded remains. The United States are still
free and independent. The “government derives its just powers
�( 4 )
from the consent of the governed,” and fifty millions of free people
remember with gratitude the heroes of the Revolution.
Let us be truthful; let us be kind. When peace came, when the
independence of a new nation was acknowledged, the great truth for
which our fathers fought was half denied, and the Constitution was
inconsistent with the Declaration. The war was waged for liberty,
and yet the victors forged new fetters for their fellow-men. The
chains our fathers broke were put by them upon the limbs of others.
Freedom for all was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night,
through seven years of want and war. In peace the cloud was for
gotten and the pillar blazed unseen.
Let us be truthful; all of our fathers were not true to themselves.
In war, they had been generous, noble, and self-sacrificing ; with
peace came selfishness and greed. They were not great enough to
appreciate the grandeur of the principles for which they fought.
They ceased to regard the great truths as having universal applica
tion. “ Liberty for all ” included only themselves. They qualified
the Declaration. They interpolated the word “ white; ” they obliter
ated the world “all.”
Let us be kind. We will remember the ag-e in which they lived.
We will compare them with the citizens of other nations.
They made merchandise of men. They legalized a crime. They
sowed the seeds of war. But they founded this nation.
Let us gratefully remember.
Let us gratefully forget.
To-day we remember the heroes of the second war with England—
in which our fathers fought for the freedom of the seas, for the rights
of the American sailor.
We remember with pride the splendid victories of Erie and Champ
lain, and the wondrous achievements upon the sea—achievements
that covered our navy with glory that neither the victories nor defeats
of the future can dim.
We remember the heroic services and sufferings of those who
fought the merciless savage of the frontier. We see the midnight
massacre, and hear the war-cries of the allies of England. We see
the flames climb round the happy homes, and in the charred and
blackened ruins we see the mutilated bodies of wives and children.
Peace came at last, crowned with the victory of New Orleans—a
victory that “ did redeem all sorrows ” and all defeats.
The Revolution gave our fathers a free land—the war of 1812 a
free sea.
To-day we remember the gallant men who bore our flag in tri
umph from the Rio Grande to the heights of Chatultepec.
Leaving out of question the justice of our cause—the necessity for
war—we are yet compelled to applaud the marvellous courage of our
troops. A handful of men—brave, impetuous determined, irresist
ible—conquered a nation. Our history has no record of more daring
deeds.
Again peace came, and the nation hoped and thought that strife
was at an end.
oi
�( 5 )
We had grown too powerful to be attacked. Our resources were
boundless, ^and the future seemed secured. The hardy pioneers
moved to the great West. Beneath their ringing strokes the forests
disappeared, and on the prairies waved the billowed.seas of wheat
and corn. The great plains were crossed, the mountains were con
quered, and the foot of victorious adventure pressed the shore of the
Pacific.
In the great north, all the streams went singing to the sea, turning
wheels and spindles, and casting shuttles back and forth. Inventions
were springing like magic from a thousand brains. From laboi s
holy altars rose and leaped the smoke and flame, and from the count
less forges rang the chant of the rhythmic stroke.
But in the South the negro toiled unpaid, and mothers wept while
babes were sold, and at the auction black husbands and wives speech
lessly looked the last good-bye. Fugitives, lighted by the Northern
star, sought liberty on English soil, and were by northern men thrust
back to whip and chain.
The great statesmen, the successful politicians, announced that law
had compromised with crime, that justice had been bribed, and that
time had barred appeal. A race was left without a right, without a
hope. The future had no dawn, no star—nothing but ignorance and
fear, nothing but work and want. This was the conclusion of the
statesman, the philosophy of the politicians—of constitutional ex
pounders. This was decided by courts and ratified by the nation.
We had been successful in three wars. We had wrested thirteen
colonies from Great Britain. We had conquered our place upon the
high seas. We had added more than two millions of square miles to
the national domain. We had increased in population from three to
thirty-one millions. We were in the midst of plenty. We were rich
and free. Ours appeared to be the most prosperous of nations. •
But it was only appearance. The statesmen and the politicians
were deceived. Real victories can be won only for the right. .The
triumph of justice is the only peace. Such is the nature of things.
He who enslaves another cannot be free. He who attacks the right
assaults himself.
The mistake our fathers made had not been corrected. The found
ations of the republic were insecure. The great dome of the temple
was bathed in the light of prosperity, but the corner-stones were
crumbling. Four millions of human beings were enslaved. . Party
cries had been mistaken for principles—partisanship for patriotism,
success for justice.
But pity pointed to the scarred and bleeding backs of slaves;
mercy heard the sobs of mothers reft of babes, and justice held aloft
the scales, in which one drop of blood, shed by a master’s lash out
weighed a nation’s gold.
There were a few men, a few women, who had the courage to. at
tack this monstrous crime. They found it entrenched in constitu
tions, statutes, and decisions, barricaded and bastioned by every
department and by every party. Politicians were its servants, states
men its attorneys, judges its menials, presidents its puppets, and upon
�( 6 )
its cruel altar had been sacrificed our country’s honor.
It was the crime of the nation—of the whole country—North and
South responsible alike.
To-day we reverently thank the abolitionists. Earth has produced
no grander men, no nobler women. They were the real philanthrop
ists, the true patriots.
When the will defies fear, when the heart- applauds the brain, when
duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to com
promise with death—this is heroism.
The abolitionists were heroes. He loves his country best who
strives to make it best. The bravest men are those who have the
greatest fear of doing wrong.
Mere politicians wish the country to do something for them, true
patriots desire to do something for their country.
Courage without conscience is a wild beast; patriotism without
principle is the prejudice of birth—the animal attachment to place.
These men, these women, had courage and conscience, patriotism
and principle, heart and brain.
The South relied upon the bond—upon a barbarous clause that
stained, disfigured, and defiled the Federal pact—and made the mon
strous claim that- slavery was the nation’s ward. The spot of shame
grew red in Northern cheeks, and Northern men declared that slavery
had poisoned, cursed, and blighted soul and soil enough, and that the
territories must be free.
The radicals of the South cried, “No Union without slavery!”
The radicals of the North replied, “No Union without- liberty!”
The Northern radicals were right. Upon the great issue of free
homes for free men a president was elected by the free states. The
South appealed to the sword, and raised the standard of revolt. For
the first time in history the oppressors rebelled.
But let us to-day be great enough to forget individuals—great
enough to know that slavery was treason, that slavery was rebellion,
that slavery fired upon our flag, and sought to wreck and strand the
mighty ship that bears the hope and fortune of this world.
The first shot liberated the North. Constitutions, statutes, and
decisions, compromises, platforms, and resolutions, made, passed, and
ratified in the interest of slavery, became mere legal lies, mean and
meaningless, base and baseless.
Parchment and paper could no longer stop or stay the onward
march of man. Tire North was free. Millions instantly resolved
that the nation should not die—that freedom should not perish, and
that slavery should not live. Millions of our brothers, our sons, our
fathers, our husbands, answered to the nation’s call.
The great armies have desolated the earth; the greatest soldiers
have been ambition’s dupes. They waged war for the sake of place
and pillage, pomp and power, for the ignorant applause of vulgar
millions, for the flattery of parasites, and t-he adulation of sycophants
and slaves.
Let us proudly remember that in our time the greatest, the
grandest, the noblest army of the world fought—not to enslave, but
�( 7 )
to free ; not to destroy, but to save ; not simply for themselves, but
for others; not for conquest, but for conscience ; not only for us, but
for every land and every race.
With courage, with enthusiasm, with devotion never excelled, with
an exaltation and purity of purpose never equalled, this grand army
fought the battles of the republic. For the preservation of this
nation, for the destruction of slavery, these soldiers, these sailors—on
land and sea-—disheartened by no defeat, discouraged by no obstacle,
appalled by no danger, neither paused nor swerved until a stainless
flag, without a rival, floated over all our wide domain, and until every
human being beneath its folds was absolutely free.
The great victory for human rights-—the greatest of all the years—
had been won ; won by the Union men of the North, by the Union
men of the South, and by those who had been slaves. Liberty was
national—slavery was dead.
The flag for which the heroes fought, for which they died, is the
symbol of all we are, of all we hope to be.
It is the emblem of equal rights.
It means free hands, free lips, self-government, and the sovereign
ty of the individual.
It means that this continent has been dedicated to freedom.
It means universal education—light for every mind, knowledge for
every child.
It means that the school-house is the fortress of liberty.
It means that “ governments derive their just powers from the con
sent of the governed ”—that each man is accountable to and for the
government—-that- responsibility goes hand in hand with liberty.
It means that it is the duty of every citizen to bear his share of the
public burden—to take part in the affairs of his town, his county, his
state, and his country.
It means that the ballot-box is the ark of the covenant—that the
source of authority must not be poisoned.
It means the perpetual right of peaceful revolution.
It means that every citizen of the republic—native or naturalised
—must be protected; at home, in every state ; abroad, in every land,
on every sea.
It means that all distinctions based on birth or blood have perished
from our laws—that our government shall stand between labor and
capital, between the weak and the strong, between the individual and
the corporation, between want and wealth—and give and guarantee
simple justice to each and all.
It means that there shall be a legal remedy for every wrong.
It means national hospitality—that we must welcome to our shores
the exiles of the world, and that we may not drive them back. Some
may be deformed by labor, dwarfed by hunger, broken in spirit, vic
tims of tyranny and caste, in whose sad faces may be read the touch
ing record of a weary life ; and yet their children, born of liberty and
love, will be symmetrical and fair, intelligent and free.
That flag is the emblem of a supreme will-—of a nation’s power.
Beneath its folds the weakest must be protected, and the strongest
must obey.
�It shields and canopies alike the loftiest mansion and the rudest
hut.
That flag was given to the air in the Revolution’s darkest days.
It represents the sufferings of the past, the glories yet to be ; and like
the bow of heaven, it is the child of storm and sun.
This day is sacred to the great heroic host who kept this flag above
our heads—sacred to the living and the dead—sacred to the scarred
and the maimed—sacred to the wives who gave their husbands, to the
mothers who gave their sons.
Here in this peaceful land of ours—here where the sun shmes,
where flowers grow, where children play, millions of armed men
battled for the right, and breasted on a thousand fields the iron storms
of war.
These brave, these incomparable men founded the first republic.
They fulfilled the prophecies; they brought to pass the dreams;
they realized the hopes that all the great and good and wise and just
have made and had since man was man.
But what of those who fell?
There is no language to express the debt we owe, the love we bear,
to all the dead who died for us. Words are but barren sounds. We
can but stand beside their graves, and, in the hush and silence, feel
what speech has never told.
They fought, they died, and for the first time since man has kept
a record of events the heavens bent above and domed a land without
a serf, a servant, or a slave.
NOTICE.
*
*
Read THE REPUBLICAN, Id. monthly, each number containing
Portrait and biography of some well-known reformer.
By G.
a^URT FLUNKEYS: Their “Work” and Wages.
W Standring. An exposure of aristocratic sinecures. Id. 4-. .. „
BiFE of C. BRADLAUGH, M.P., 12 pages, with Portrait &
* autograph. By G. Standring. Id.
LIFE of^tL. INGERSOLL, with Portrait, Autograph, and Extracts
froworks. In neat wrapper, Id.
By orderlhroug^uy nmAvnt; or by post from 8, Finsbury-st., London.
�
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
Col. Ingersoll's Decoration Day oration, June 1882
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "Printed at the Paine Press, 8 Finsbury-street, E.C." Stamp on front cover: Freethought Publishing Co., Printing Office, 68 Fleet Street, E.C., A. Bonner, Manager. Publisher's advertisements on back cover include The Republican [periodical] and other republican works. Not in Stein checklist, but cf his No. 155. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Paine Press
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1882
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N336
Subject
The topic of the resource
USA
Memorial Day
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 (Col. Ingersoll's Decoration Day oration, June 1882), 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
Memorial Addresses
NSS
United States-History