2
10
43
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8o
Notes.
Mr. Conway’s “ Earthward Pilgrimage ” seems to have produced a
strong impression on both friends and foes in England. In a recent
debate in the House of Commons, Mr. Bouverie, a conservative, spoke
of it as a work of remarkable ability, and quoted passages from it to
show that a revolutionary school of thought on social subjects is grow
ing to strength in Great Britain. “ The Theological Review ” says,
“The book is full of suggestive thoughts, poetically and pointedly
expressed: and though, to a thoughtful and judicious reader, he may
seem extravagant, one-sided and unfair in his statements and represen
tations, the general impression left by the whole is that it is the earnest
and healthy skepticism of a man of real genius.” “ The Academy ”
: peaks of Mr. Conway’s style as possessing “ high intellectual vitality,
the subtle, pointed, exquisite manner, the fertility in sparkling conceits,
striking analogies and similes, happy historical allusions and anec
dotes,” and his charges against the traditional religion, though violent,
as “ so refined and cultivated, so cool, disengaged, full of well-bred
restraint, as almost to persuade us of their moderation.”
“The New York Tribune” says of Mr. Weiss’s new book: “From
the specimens we have given of Mr. Weiss’s trains of thought, our readers
may obtain an idea, correct, although inadequate, of the main drift of this
remarkable volume, which we do not hesitate to pronounce one of the most
original and suggestive which have ever appeared in our native literature.”
“The Modern Epoch in Politics” is a new work by D. A. Wasson,
which will, when published, if we do not mistake, create a “ sensation ” of a
wholesome character.
“The Spiritual Annalist and Scientific Record” is the name of
a new magazine, edited by J. H. W. Toohey, and published in Boston by W.
F. Brown & Co. It is ably conducted.
We shall publish in our next number a carefully prepared paper on “ The
French Commune,” by W. J. Linton, who has had favorable opportunities
for an impartial review of the whole subject.
A friend sends us “ a few new subscribers to help the ‘ boiling pot.’ ”
We wish many others may be as thoughtful, and not forget us during this
“hot weather,” persuaded that the pot will boil itself.
�Notes.
79
and hear the voice of reason everywhere. Do you see Jesus walking
among men as himself only a man, and so lose your heaven-born
Lord? You are restored to your own birthright, and have the priv
ilege of being a son of God yourself. God becomes your present
source of supply, and is no longer “ a Hebrew tradition.” To this in
visible Well you may go and drink and thirst no more.
What then is the burden of all this protest and passion ? It is that
all those hindrances of Church and State which, under pretense of
mediating, are separating mankind from God, shall be removed. Men
claim the present and shining light of God to show them what they
may do for themselves and each other.
The questions of the moral or spiritual life are not affected by the
intellectual or moral stature of Jesus, and no Radical can take other
interest in the discussion than is prompted by the desire to rightly
estimate the characters of all who have lived on the earth and left
their fame to posterity. There seems to be no excuse, however, for
any to set him up, lawyer-like, and try him as a prosecuting attorney
would a criminal. His name has suffered enough from the treatment
of Orthodoxy. Radicals can afford, in all justice, to show him a little
personal sympathy, and especially since they do not propose to ride
into heaven on his back.
Father Taylor’s little prayer, as prayers go, is quite refreshing:
“Blessed Jesus, give us common sense, and let no man put blinkers on
us, that we can only see in a certain direction, for we want to look
around the horizon; yea, to the highest heavens and to the lowest
depths of the ocean.”
Robert Collyer finds a hearty welcome among the Unitarians of
England, in spite of the “ loose way ” of saying things to which he
is adicted. At their Festival he told them, “ I like to meet a company
of Unitarians that will speak out their convictions, and show, as we say
in the West, that they ‘ain’t nothing else, nohow.’” “We are no bet
ter for being Unitarians and at the same time tasting very strongly of
Orthodoxy. “You have a right to feed your hearts on the story of
the past. But I tell you it began to be a (Question whether Egypt was
going to live much longer, when she paid more attention to embalming
her grandfathers than she did to inspiring her children.” He rejoiced
that the Unitarians were not “going to tumble the cream back into
the blue milk.”
Are the signs as hopeful this side the water ?
�
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
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
[The Earthward Pilgrimage]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[c.1871]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5714
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 80 ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's work 'The Earthward Pilgrimage'.
Creator
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[Unknown]
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[s.n.]
Subject
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Book reviews
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ([The Earthward Pilgrimage]), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
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Text
History and Biography.
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269
Thucydides, against the modern “ temptation to read into an inscrip
tion more, than is really to be found in it.”
Mr. Moncure Conway, following up his invaluable elucidations of
Folk-lore, discusses in his new book the significance and the teaching of
the legend of the Wandering Jew.9 It is scarcely necessary to remark
that the book is full of interest. The main feature in the argument
is that this legend of the Wandering Jew is a notable example of that
“ sacerdotal sorcery which, for the lover of enemies, substituted a
curser of enemies in the earliest Christian theology.” We are told,
first of all, how the legend is recorded in Roger de Wendover’s “ Ilistoria Major,” and how the Wandering Jew himself appeared in Ger
many in 1547, and in various other European countries, with a clever
and wonderful knowledge of previous history, and so forth. From
this we are led on to a most instructive account of the more general
legend of “ the Undying Ones” and. of Curses. The ramifications and
amplifications of the Wandering Jew legend are portrayed with most
entertaining and instructive detail. And the story is carried through
the ages of popular ignorance and vivid beliefs to the more recent
renovation of the Ahasueres as a poetic ideal. The Eternal Jew
becomes the favourite “ subject” of great German poets from Schubert
to Goethe.
Edgar Quinet, Eugene Sue, and Grenier follow the
same lead in France. And we have an admirable account of the in
fluence of the legend on the English drama and on English poetry. But
underlying the whole, and gradually working its way in the end to
prominence, comes a powerful vindication of the Jewish race, and a
powerful exposition of the hoped-for approach of better times for
humanity at large.
The growing prosperity of India and its consequently increasing
importance to Englishmen of all classes ensure a welcome for Mr.
Talboy Wheeler’s “Tales from Indian History.”10 The author himself
had some misgivings concerning this title, and it is matter for regret
he did not allow these misgivings more influence; for the title fails
to convey to the ordinary mind an adequate idea of the character and
value of the book. It is, in short, an epitomized account of most things
Indian ; and he who has read it will have no bad idea of nearly every
point that Indian affairs present to English notice. The author in
this volume manages to communicate to the reader his own firm hope
in a great future for India—closer bound to the British empire by
representative and business connections; and his belief that the
English, having instituted law and order in India, are now offering
most favourable opportunities for the great native races to work out
their own advancement by assimilating the educational and science
achievements of Western civilization.
Yet another national history11 is put before the public, and it may
9 “The Wandering Jew.” By Moncure Conway. London: Chatto & Windus
1881.
10 “Tales from Indian History.” By J. Talboy Wheeler. London: W.
Thacker & Co. 1881.
11 “A History of the British Empire.” By Edgar Sanderson. London:
Blackie & Son. 1881.
�270
Contemporary Literature.
well be asked how it comes about that such a uever-ending issue can
“pay.” It will be observed that the title, “History of the British
Empire,” might lead us to expect more account than is usually given
of the oversea realms the nation has ruled from time to time. But
beyond a short chapter devoted to the history of the Indian Empire,
and three pages devoted to the growth of our Colonial Empire, the
book is merely a new version of the oft-told tale of the successions of
sovereigns and the wars of the English nation, rigidly confined to the
British Islands. Of its kind the work is good, and it has a very
complete accompaniment of tables, maps, plans, illustrations, and
index.
It would be well if the numerous class of reformers would carefully
study an admirable outline of the history of the English Constitution
now published by Messrs. Longman.* They would thus understand
12
the true story of the development in English history of self-govern
ment, and learn that kings and nobles, as well as the commons, have
each in turn assisted’ in the good work. The politician of to-day is
too apt to forget that the future will be worked out of the past. Our
land reformers will do well to bear in mind the result worked out in
the book, “All ownership in theory is tenancy; in practice all tenancy
is ownership.” And in regard to Ireland it is interesting to trace the
obstruction Celtic influence has always opposed to the spread of repre
sentative self-government. In Scotland the same influence delayed
this for some three hundred years after its introduction into England;
and in Ireland local Parliamentary government, inaugurated in 1300,
could only take root “within the pale” when English descent and
custom came to prevail. As a whole this little work is admirably
written. We would, however, point out that in its opening chapters
the Norse element in our population is altogether ignored, though
it is now proved to have largely modified our institutions and our
national character. Again, on the last page there is a very partial
account of the main principle of free-trade. It is described as
merely prescribing that ho import duty should be levied on necessary
food, and so securing the people “ from being overcharged for the
necessaries of life.” The utter inadequacy of such a description of
free-trade should be remedied in the future editions to which the
work is sure to run.
It has been termed a natural function of Women to provide for the
education of children ; and the compiling of schoolbooks for the special
use of children is a task by no means neglected by women. “A French
History for English Children” is a full, clearly-written account of historica^France suited to schoolroom capacities.13 It has no pretensions to
advanced erudition, and is a plain matter-of-fact account of persons and
events that young people are expected to be familiar with. The book
13 “ Historical Outline of the English Constitution, for Beginners.” By D. W.
Itannie. London : Longmans. 1881.
13 “French History for English Children.” By Sarah Brook. London: Mac
millan. 1881.
�
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 Wandering Jew]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 270 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's 'The Wandering Jew' by an unknown reviewer in an unidentified journal. Includes bibliographical references.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
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[188-]
Identifier
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G5604
Subject
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Book reviews
Creator
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[Unknown]
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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 Wandering Jew]), 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
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Folklore
Judaism
Moncure Conway
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PDF Text
Text
����
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
[Travels in South Kensington]
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
G5601
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: 4 p. ; 18 cm.
Collation: [4] p.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Travels in South Kensington'. The review, from 'The Times'. December 9,1882, has been copied in handwriting on 4 pages of blue notepaper headed The Club, Bedford Park, Chiswick.
Creator
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[Unknown]
Publisher
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[s.n.]
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Book reviews
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work ([Travels in South Kensington]), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Decoration and Ornament
Kensington (West London)
Moncure Conway
South Kensington Museum
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A LAST WORD
Spoken at the Athenaeum, on
the
closing of
our Services there, June 27th, 1880,
BY
ONWAY,
ONCURE
^nnbrrn :
PRINTED
BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED, LONDON WALL.
l88o.
�E™—
—.
�A LAST WORD.
It was on the seventh day of this month, 1868, that
I gave at the little chapel where this society was
cradled its first anniversary discourse.
Thirteen years
have brought us to its closing hour. As I have already
stated, my ministry here ends by my own action based
upon personal considerations, but having reference to
the cause we have at heart.
I repeat this because it
would be unjust to those who have so long and
earnestly worked with me, unjust to the large and
sympathetic audiences which have steadily gathered
here, to have it understood that it has been or is
through any suggestion from others, or from any dis
couragement about the condition of this society, that
I have resolved on this step.
On the contrary, this
�4
society appears to me more vigorous to-day than at any
time of its life, and it is a distress to me that I must
adhere to my resolution to close it. That resolution
was formed under a sense of failing health which has
passed away; but there remains a conviction that my
future work will be better done if concentrated upon
one society.
If it were not that I have hope of retain
ing the friendships formed here, and that a good
many of you will be able to unite with us at South
Place, it would be a greater grief than it is to speak
this last word.
I trust it is not a parting word.
I
feel sure that my friends at South Place will welcome
with warm hearts those who have so valiantly, amid
evil as well as good report, sustained this evening
society, to the work of enlarging the strength and
influence of that stronghold of religious liberty.
In that anniversary discourse of 1868, to which I
have alluded, I sounded for our then small society a
key-note caught from him who wrote the Epistle to
the Hebrews. “ Seeing that we also are compassed
about by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside
every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before
us.”
I claimed that as that Hebrew, setting out upon
a novel path against the faith of his fellows, still felt
the good and great of his race to be witnesses around
him, so we were surrounded by the witnesses of
�5
liberty and truth in all time ; and never more than in
abandoning their opinions in the same spirit in which
they also abandoned the outgrown creeds and con
ventionalised errors of their time. I protested against
the limitation of the great religious leaders within the
mere letter of their faith, maintaining that we could
be related to them and derive strength from them only
as we shared their spirit, their independence, their
courage, love of truth and justice ; laying aside, as
they did, every weight, even their own authority, and
running with patience the race set before us, not that
which was before them.
On reading over that discourse I feel a strong
desire to quote this evening some passages from it.
“ Each great teacher, amid many limitations, added
a fresh tint to -the holy ideal which our life exists to
attain, and a new impulse towards it; and each from
being a wing becomes a fetter if we accept his thought
or work for our own, instead of receiving his spirit as
the inspiration of our own.”
“ He who gives men great names as authorities does
much, as if he should ask us to put out our eyes
because near by are excellent guides for the blind.”
‘‘There is no arrogance in refusing the absolute
guidance of the greatest authority.
Aristotle taught
�that an amethyst worn on the breast would prevent
drunkenness.
Does one claim to be greater than
Aristotle because he refuses to accept that supersti
tion 1 Lord Bacon believed in witchcraft. Can one
not accept the wisdom of Bacon without his errors ?
Nay, to follow out faithfully the ethics of Aristotle
and the philosophy of Bacon, I must reject their
errors.”
“Jesus said, ‘ If ye believed in Moses, ye would
believe in me J by which he would say, Moses was not
like you, a preserver of rotten systems and antiquated
errors : he was a reformer, an emancipator of the
people, and though now long ages after he is dead, you
worship the letter and form of Moses, I, in being a
reformer and emancipator, am nearer him than you ;
he is my witness.”
“ It is sometimes said of those who leave narrower
church relations for larger ones that they have changed
their faith. But no—they have deepened, widened,
realised it. As you can trace the blossom in the
apple that grew from it, so shall you find in such the
essence of
that which has apparently fallen from
them.”
“ As a liberal society of believers and thinkers, not
fettered to the world’s infant speculations, nor con
�7
fined in any denominational grooves however wide, it
is important we should recognise our relations to the
past. We have no thought of ‘ sundering the sacred
links which bind together the generations of men,’ or
*of rudely cutting off the solemn perpetuity of the
religious commonwealth.’ We know that from along
and noble past come the burning visions of the future
brotherhood; but we also know that the perpetuation
of the commonwealth of faithful souls up to the realisa
tion of these visions depends on the courage with
which the hearts of the present can lay aside every
weight, and that dogmatism which so easily besets
sects, and run with patience the race set before us in
our own time.”
“We should surely have learned from the ages of
cruel dogma, of paralysing creeds, from which we are
emerging, enough to prevent our forging new chains
for our children.
I would fain trust that we who
have gathered into this company of worshippers recog
nise as the course set before us a maintenance of the
spirit in its absolute purity, apart from any opinions
whatever, vaulting like a pure sky above all temples,
domes, spires, yet a gentle air and soft light enfolding
and illumining all who worship in sincerity, even amid
their errors.”
“ The race we are running is not always to the swift.
�There was an Olympic race in which each competitor
bore a lighted torch ; he won the race who came in
first with his torch still burning.
They who cared
more for swiftness than to guard their torches, had
them speedily extinguished by the opposing currents
their motion excited.
Let us remember, friends, that
promoting a great movement here were no success at
all if our torch were not kept bright—if for such
success we should have sacrificed one ray of the
freedom in worship and inquiry for which we exist.
The rushlight that sends its light to the night-wan
derer is of far greater worth than a candlestick of
gold that bears no flame. No doubt, by compromising
our truth—by accommodating popular superstitions,
we might grow big. The appeal to pure reason is
slower work.
Let us press on unfaltering, unwearied,
taking care above all that our torch shall not be ex
tinguished, but shall send into the darkness and
superstition of the land a steadfast light, leading all
who follow it to that supreme and universal Light at
which our torch was kindled.
Let us press on, and
though every star should set, and suns wax dim, be
sure every spark of truth shall burn and glow in the
firmament of God for ever and ever.”
Such were my closing words at the outset of our
society. Well, it has now, in one sense, reached its
goal, and, I will venture to claim, with torch still
�9
lighted. A good many winds have blown upon it,
but it has not been extinguished. Some of us may
remember that it flickered considerably at one time
under an internal disturbance. In the course of my
inquiries some changes in my own point of view have
occurred, and one of these grieved some excellent men
and women who started with us. I came to the con
clusion that the custom of public and formal prayer
was not in harmony with our fundamental principles
and convictions.
It appeared to me inconsistent with
the belief in Supreme Wisdom and Love that we should
suggest anything to the one or petition the other.
I
explained this as well as I could, and with tenderness
for the traditional feelings of our reverent circle.
They were asked to consider whether they would like
to have their own children petition them daily for
their love and care ; whether they would not feel this
to be rather a reproach than a truly filial feeling.
Some that we loved and could little spare were never
theless offended and left us, though we were happy to
find that our personal relations with them were not im
paired. But by this our movement did not seriously
suffer.
The larger number showed that they had
counted the cost of a life of intellectual and religious
progress, and were resolved to stand by every position
to which they should be led by honest and logical in
quiry.
It is my belief that our reverence grew as the
�■S^B
io
old forms, which confined rather than expressed it,
fell away from us.
It became necessary to continue this kind of selfcriticism. In the course of it our use of the Christian
name came under re-consideration.
The name of the
little iron building in St. Paul’s Road, which some of
us remember with much affection, was the “ Free
Christian Church.”
But it appeared to myself and
others that there was justice in the orthodox assertion
that it was a misuse of language to call ourselves
Christians. If a man call himself a Mohammedan, it
implies a belief in the position assigned to Moham
med by the Moslem world, and in the authority of the
Koran. If a man call himself Christian, it conveys a
similar impression of his belief in Christ and the New
Testament. It is not a question of what the word ought
to mean, or of its etymology, but of the sense it actually
does convey to those around us. The word ‘ Catholic ’
means ‘ universal ’; the word ‘ orthodox ’ means ‘ right
opinion ’
but because we might in an etymological
sense call ourselves 1 catholic ’ and ‘ orthodox,’ it would
none the less convey a false impression to so call our
selves by names whose popular meaning is different.
To call ourselves ‘ Christians,’ when to ninety-nine in
every hundred persons that term must convey the
impression that we held the opinion of Jesus above
the science and discovery of our own time, was felt by
�II
us to be the suggestion of policy rather than of simple
truth.
We felt, too, that our old name,
‘Free
Christian,’ was a contradiction ; we could not fairly
claim to be free, and in the same phrase limit our free
dom by the name of a particular system of belief. So
we abandoned that name. In so doing I believe that
we took a step nearer to Christ himself, who, in his
time similarly abandoned all the pious titles and labels
which might have gained him favour; and we shared
the freedom of the
apostles,
among whom
the
Christian name was known only as an epithet of con
tempt, under which they suffered as much as is now
suffered by its rejection.
Therefore we surrendered this title to popularity;
and it is my firm conviction that thereby our society
gained much in religious life and force.
We left be
hind us the realm of disputation about words and
entered a region where it became necessary for us
to concentrate 'ourselves upon realities. We could no
longer build our spiritual abodes out of the debris of
crumbled creeds and the relics of tradition.
We were
compelled to repair to the laws of nature, to the facts
of our own mind and consciousness, to build our
new shelter as best we could ; and in the energies which
this demanded, in the freedom of spirit and earnest
ness which the new necessities evoked, we found a
deeper, larger meaning in religion itself.
We had
�ft fr
i
SK
12
undergone inward experiences of our own; we had
made some sacrifices of our own; and had discovered
that the religious life consisted not in any doctrines
whatever, but in the spirit in which truth was
pursued and the fidelity with which that which we be
lieved right and true was maintained.
Our trust in this principle was not without test. We
were severely arraigned and criticised in high quarters.
The chief clergyman of the neighbourhood denounced
us as blasphemers and infidels ; the champions of the
Christian Evidence Society were summoned to preach
against us; the pulpit fulminated, and the press
teemed for a year with hostilities ; they who admitted
us to this hall, and even the servants belonging to it,
were persecuted for not persecuting us.
that ordeal we grew strong.
But under
There was not one
single instance, within my knowledge, where any
member or friend of this Athenseum Society failed in
heart or interest because of these denunciations.
the contrary, we were greatly benefited.
On
It led to a
complete revision of the ground on which we stood.
Point by point, text by text, fact by fact, we went
over the whole history of the evolution of liberalism
with our opponents; and many of our number, who
had not done that before, were reassured by discover
ing the incredible fictions, the antiquated delusions,
the defiances of common sense and common senti-
�*3
ment, upon which Christian theology is
founded.
Many of our young people, who had not participated
in the controversies through which the intellect of
Europe and America had emancipated itself, were re
inforced by that memorable discussion which showed
us accomplished and scholarly men driven by the
remorseless necessities of their position to defend the
wild speculations of primitive man about religion
while rejecting the notions of corresponding times on
every other subject.
On that controversy which so long agitated this
community I look back with unalloyed satisfaction.
It appears to me to have been a genuine and thorough
one.
I have always respected the clergyman who
began it.
When he saw what he believed a wolf near
his fold he did not flee like a hireling shepherd ; he
grappled the supposed wolf and did his best to slay it.
He did not conceal his opinions; he did not jesuitically smooth over his dogmas ; he stood by them
honourably, even when the community was shudder
ing at them.
By originating and maintaining that
controversy he did us so much good; he added so
many to our years as a society, that I cannot grudge
him and his church any satisfaction they may feel at
our departure from their neighbourhood. They are
welcome to their relief, for they have aided us to sow
our seed as widely in thirteen years as without them we
�14
might have done in many more; and we know that
the seeds of thought and freedom are of the kind that
do not die, but must bear their fruit manifold.
This society was not begun in any formal way, and
it has not been continued out of any dry sense of
duty.
A few families, dissatisfied with the ministra
tions of the chapel to which they had belonged, with
drew from it.
It was not because of a doctrinal dis
agreement, but for other reasons. That which was so
begun has been continued after the occasion for it
had ceased, simply because we had come to love it.
Nobody has had any pecuniary interest in keeping up
this society; indeed, it has required a good deal of
self-denying energy to support an evening service in a
community where most people were already supporting
other societies. Had I been free to give my Sunday
mornings to this place there is no doubt that this
society would have grown too large for our hall.
We
have no reason to be ashamed either of its dimensions,
its character, or its zeal. It has not catered to popu
lar prejudices, it has had no dissensions, it finishes its
course after having fought a good fight for that freedom
to think and speak honest convictions, which an un
just and oppressive vote in Parliament last week
shows us to be a cause not yet won. Our work has
not been repaid in money, but it has not been without
its reward.
At least, so I feel it, and I trust it is so
�i5
felt by you. We have seen the steady expansion oi
our principles in social influence; we have grown in
love and sympathy for each other ; we have seen in
tellectual and moral activities awakened such
as
cannot slumber again : and as we go to our homes
to return here no more, we shall be carrying our
sheaves with us in the religious emotions and aspira
tions, the personal relations and friendships which
will always be associated with our unity and co-opera
tion in this society.
Thirteen years represent a long time in the brief life
of man.
The years which we have passed together as
a society represent for some of us the best years of our
lives.
So far as they have been well lived their fruits
are with us still, will remain with us, can never be
taken from us. This society as a visible body ends;
but the thoughts and feelings we have had here, the
resolutions that have here been formed, shall never
end; they have become parts of our being, they shall
for ever radiate in our influence, and when we are no
more they will still work on in the life and influence of
our children and of those affected by us, however un
consciously.
And, whatever may have been my shortcomings as
your minister, this at least I have never forgotten for
a moment since I first stood before you,—that every
principle we were here incorporating into our lives
�i6
would be one of endless influence.
The community
would be better or worse for it; many families would
be happier or unhappier for it; children unborn, and
children’s children, would be made more glad or
sad, weaker or stronger, wiser or unwiser, by our
every thought and word.
This responsibility has not
been upon me alone but upon you also ; for I have
spoken to men and women able to think for them
selves, to those who had nothing to attract them here
except their sympathy with our principles, and who
are amply competent to sift truth from error in what
they hear. Nevertheless, we have had the young here
also, and I have felt profoundly the responsibility
under which I uttered my thoughts in their presence,
for errors do not die so easily or pass so harmless as
many suppose. And now, as I prepare this my last
word, it would be to me a happy relief could I recall
and reverse every mistake I have made, and remove
every error committed. But who can understand his
errors? Perhaps time will reveal them. Perhaps
when I am no longer able to stand here and point them
out I shall discover that on one point and another I
did not see so far as I thought while here. But I shall
have this reflection also, that you and I travelled our
thirteen years’ pilgrimage together;
my heart and
thought were shared with you; we have grown so far
together: therefore if I shall gain a new experience,
�i7
or attain a riper thought, it will be my consolation to
believe that you also have attained the same, and will
be able to modify and correct the errors of years less
mature, both for yourselves and your children. For
at least I may claim never to have tried to lord it over
your conscience or your judgment. I am conscious that
truths, however valued, have not been here made into
absolute formulas, but every mind has been taught that
its chief end is to grow. No question has been closed ;
all questions are open. I have heard, from time to time,
not without satisfaction, that outsiders complained that
we did not label ourselves with a name, and they
could not tell just what we did believe.
When on one
occasion the magistrates who license this hall ques
tioned the applicants about our meetings here, and
showed some signs of interference, it appeared difficult
to give any clear account of us.
The magistrates in
quired our belief, and what we were, but no clear
answer could be returned by the applicant, who was
not one of us. I believe he said we were “ seekers
after truth and a long time finding it.”
not far wrong.
If so, he was
It has certainly been less my aim to
urge and defend any doctrine that appeared to me
true than to cultivate the spirit that seeks truth, the
fidelity that follows its lead, and the hope that every
idea reached as truth may presently pass like a blossom
before the fruit of a larger conception of truth.
And
�i8
this evening, in parting with this society, it is with a
trust that the spirit of growth, of progress, of inquiry,
of thought unfettered by authority however kindly
exerted, will be antidotes against any particular mis
takes or partial views which I have uttered.
It is my
real belief, it was stated in that first anniversary dis
course which I gave at our foundation, and it shall be
repeated in this last, that religion means to me no
doctrine at all but a spirit and a life.
An atheist,
earnestly seeking truth, and speaking what he believes
truth, bearing the cross of his denial in the face of the
world, is a religious man,while they who persecute a man
for his fidelity and scourge him for his veracity are
irreligious men, though they may seem to themselves
the protectors of omnipotence.
It is my belief that
until this principle animates society, there will be no
general religion at all.
The dogmas which are estab
lished in hngland are not more self-confident than
the established dogmas which poisoned Socrates, or
those which crucified Jesus ; as those proud systems
turned out to be no religion at all, but the reverse of
religion, so will the dogmas of our time which poison
intellect with hypocrisy and crucify humanity, turn
out to be the real irreligion. The coming man will
preserve such dogmas as fossils belonging to a Saurian
epoch of psychology, when men fancied that to crawl
before a god, and venomously bite all who did not
crawl with them, was religion.
�But beyond these dogmas, even the finer specula
tions of philosophy, even many attractive generalisa
tions, must pass away ; the best statements of truth
cannot share the immortality of truth. Therefore, let
US subordinate all opinions to the spirit of truth; let
US cultivate in our hearts such a love of it, that when
we meet one who disagrees with our opinions, but
shows veracity of mind and the earnest desire for
truth, we shall recognise in him a worshipper of the
holiest, a brother of the best and wisest. Nor let us
confuse this love of truth with a defence of any
particular doctrine or proposition.
Truth is one
thing; a truth another.
A man may defend his
opinions; the opinions may be true; yet he may not
be a lover of truth ; he may not reverence the spirit
of truth when it denies his own opinion; he may not
love truthfulness in his neighbour when it goes against
his interests; or, if he holds an unfashionable truth,
he may not bravely acknowledge it, seek to diffuse it,
and be willing to suffer with it.
But why repeat this now? I should regard our
thirteen years as worse than wasted if this were not
now felt by every one of us as the true religion. Yet
I desire that my last word here should impress it
upon old and young that it is in this spirit our
inquiries must move if they are to elevate our mind,
life, and character.
It is this alone which makes any
�20
opinion we may reach more than a mere opinion,
makes it also an experience, an inspiration, something
that quickens the moral life within us, interprets for
us the wisdom of the past, and enables us to minister
to the higher life'of the present and future. As it is
not so much to give our children wealth as to foster
in them habits of prudence, industry, and enterprise ;
so is it of far less importance to give others our
opinions than to stimulate in them the powers, and
evoke the resources by which they can form wise
opinions of their own. And I will add, that it is of
less importance to give them set maxims and rules of
morality than it is to awaken in them the love of
rectitude, the passion for justice, the sentiment of
virtue, which will lead them securely through paths
we cannot foresee, and instruct them in emergencies
where our best maxims may be inadequate.
Finally, my friends, be of good courage ! Do not
be cast down because this particular society ceases, or
because its enemies rejoice. That search for truth,
for which this society has stood, will not end nor fail;
that standard of a purer religion, which it has up
lifted, will not trail in the dust. The constituents of
this body will not lose their vitality; they will com
bine in other ways, let us trust in higher, larger ways,
and for more effective work.
It will be a pain to us
that we shall no longer gather here to sing our
�21
hymns, to meditate on things dear to us, to clasp
each other’s hands, and smile in each other’s faces ;
but we shall still be near each other, we will still feel
that wherever separated we are still one in loving
and serving the good cause ; and when, after this
society is dissolved, we too shall fall out of the ranks,
and our hands be folded on our breast, it rests with
ourselves to leave behind us the memory and influence
of lives faithfully lived, of tasks honestly performed,
of having done our best.
And so I bid you farewell.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A last word: spoken at the Athenaeum, on the closing of our services there, June 27th 1880
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 21 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2.
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[Waterlow and Sons]
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[1880]
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G3345
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Free thought
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (A last word: spoken at the Athenaeum, on the closing of our services there, June 27th 1880), 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>
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English
Christian Doctrine
Free Thought
Moncure Conway
Morris Tracts
Rationalism
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Text
A SKETCH AND AN APPRECIATION OF
MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
FREETHINKER AND HUMANITARIAN
An Address at the Paine-Conway Memorial
Meeting of The Manhattan Liberal
Club, January 31, 1908
BY EDWIN C. WALKER
/ .
It is my conviction, that there is not one wrong, not one evil, moral
or physical, in this great nation [England] which may not be
traced to the root of a guarded superstition. That means that every
belief, defended by law, involves human sacrifices. Did not man
suffer by it, it would need no protecting law.—Conway, “Lessons
for To-day.”
PRICE, 15 CENTS
Published by Edwin C. Walker, 244 West 143rd Street,
Manhattan, New York City, May, 1908
��NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
A SKETCH AND AN APPRECIATION OF
MONCURE
CONWAY
FREETHINKER AND HUMANITARIAN
An Address at the Paine-Conway Memorial
Meeting of The Manhattan Liberal
Club, January 31, 1908
BY
EDWIN C. WALKER
We must define intellect as that which emerges out of this conven
tional mass; not indeed unrelated to it, but carrying its slumbering
powers to conscious realization and effective action through indi
vidual thought and will. Intellect must become individual that it
may be universal. Conway, ‘‘ Intellectual Suicide.”
PRICE, 15 CENTS
Published by Edwin C. Walker, 244 West 143rd Street,
Manhattan, New York City, May, 1908
�The scholar is not the retained advocate of the
party that pays best. He is not the attorney for
commerce, nor the professional casuist of those
who would combine the advantages of conven
tionality with those of simple truth. Better he
should again be a hermit than dwell in society
at the cost of honor. As yet, alas, though subtle
as the serpent, our scholarship has also its double
tongue, uttering now that which is true, next
that which is sordid. From the day when Shel
ley was banished from Oxford, no scholar has
remained under the flag of the common Chris
tianity save through a visible servility. But it
is spiritual perjury! If we demand that the
banker shall be honest in money matters, that
the soldier shall be brave, that the judge shall
be just, shall we be satisfied that he who is con
secrated to Reason shall weakly or meanly part
its sacred raiment among those who would fain
trick out their lucrative creeds or customs with
its divine sanctions?
There is needed a Scholar’s caste, removed
from the world of self-seekers; a brotherhood
of those whose verdict is the dictate of absolute
reason and rectitude; the fraternity of those who,
amid a world that weighs eternal verities in
their relation to gold and fashion, steadily say,
“Unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou
united.”—“An English Sinai,” in “The Earthward
Pilgrimage.”
�In Apology
This fragmentary and otherwise very imper
fect sketch of the life and labors of Dr. Moncure
D. Conway is offered only because there is no
money to pay for the preparation and printing
of anything more adequate. Nearly all of it ap
peared first in The Truth Seeker, and the lino
types have been held for several months in the
hope that it might be possible to bring the ad
dress out in a form more worthy of its subject
than is this in which I am at last compelled to
present it to you.
Unless one commands almost unlimited re
sources, it is practically impossible to bear the
burden of the repeated corrections and resettings
that are necessary in order to completely elimin
ate the archaic English spellings upon which the
printers insist, and work out the defective and
wrong-font matrixes which careless workmen use
over and over regardless of protests. So this
must go out with many cumbersome spellings
and numberless wrong-font letters and broken
faces. Machine composition has its economic
advantages, but its seemingly almost conscious
antipathy to the use of necessary compounds, its
often horrible division of words at the end of
lines, and the faults in casting render it very
trying to the nerves of the careful writer and the
intelligent reader.
�—4—
There is no Conway bibliography extant, so far
as I can discover. Of his works, a few are ac
cessible in the New York Public Library. The
Library of Congress has the largest collection,
supplied by Dr. Conway himself. I shall be very
glad to receive from any one who may read this,
the title, date and place of publication, name of
publisher, number of pages, style of binding, and
other items of information concerning any book
or pamphlet by Moncure D. Conway. Also, data
refering to any magazine or newspaper article
written by him.
EDWIN C. WALKER,
244 West 143d Street,
Manhattan, New York.
�Moncure Daniel Conway
Know’st thou not at the fall' of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief,
Laid on it for covering;
And how sleep seems a goodly thing,
In Autumn at the fall1 of the leaf?
And how the swift heat of the hrain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf,
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems not to suffer pain?
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf,
Bound up at last for harvesting;
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
These perfect lines, written by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, set to music by his friend Dannreuther,
and given to Dr. Conway in 1874 for incorporation
in his “The Angel of Death/’ voice the some
times mood in the closing years of‘ the life of this
tireless worker for man.
A Record of Struggles
In the preface to his “Autobiography” (1904)
Moncure Conway says:
“The wisdom or unwisdom of a new genera
tion must largely depend on its knowledge and
�interpretation of the facts and forces that operat
ed in the generations preceding, from which are
bequeathed influences that become increasingly
potent when shaped in accepted history. ... I
have been brought into personal relations with
leading minds and characters which already are
becoming quasi-classic figures to the youth
around me, and already show the usual tendency
to invest themselves with mythology. ... A
pilgrimage from pro-slavery to anti-slavery enthu
siasm, from Methodism to Freethought, implies
a career of contradictions. One who starts out
at twenty to think for himself and pursue truth
is likely to discover at seventy that one-third of
his life was given to error, another third to ex
changing it for other error, and the last third to
efforts to unsay the errors and undo the mistakes
of the other two-thirds.”
We see that Conway realized, what many radi
cals forget, that the past, present and future are
links in a chain that cannot be broken, and that
forgetfulness of this brings in its train individual
and social peril and catastrophe. The value of
memorial meetings and papers consists far less
in eulogies of dead leaders of thought and ac
tion than in summaries of their principles and pic
tures of their environment, with the record of their
struggles to inculcate those principles and modify
that environment. In a word, history before
worship.
At the outset, I must indicate what I think
is the relation of my part of this commemorative
meeting to the parts taken by the other speakers..
It was not merely the great work done by Mon-
�-7cure Conway in the rehabilitation of the fame of
Thomas Paine, important as that work was, that
made him so commanding a figure in the world
of letters and in the Freethought party. Farther
along, it will be shown that the love of justice and
the service of it were the vital elements in the
life of this friend and leader so recently dead. He
could not bear to witness the neglect of worthy
character and intellectual power; still less could
he endure the misrepresentation of that charac
ter and that mental energy. It was his love of
justice—and with Moncure Conway justice was
not simply a fair name with which men are prone
to flatter, and disguise, if they may, their ven
geance—it was this genuine love of justice that
made him the biographer and vindicator of Paine,
just as it had earlier led him to write his “Omit
ted Chapters of History,” in order to take from
the name of Edmund Randolph the stain of un
deserved obloquy; it was this loathing for un
truth and injustice that made him protest against
the slander with which, through the centuries,
the Christian world had clouded the reputation of
Mary of Magdala. With Conway, “truth” was
not an abstraction; it did not rnean'W truth,”
something mystical and divinely given; it meant
what science means by the word, the correspon
dence of statement to fact. That which Conway
did for Paine’s memory merges into and is a com
ponent of the vastly greater whole of the labor
of the nearly sixty years that followed the first
steps he took as a youth, when he entered upon
what he so aptly calls his “Earthward Pilgrim
age.” Earthward, mind you; not “earth/v” in
�—8—
the theological sense of contumely. It was an
Earthward Pilgrimage from the skies and the
gods to the earth-home and to man, closer and
closer, more and more powerfully drawn with
every year of the too-quickly speeding existence.
So my task is to say something of the immediate
antecedents of this splendid man, to follow in un
satisfactory haste that long trek from the fabled
land's of angels and demons to this home of men
and women and the children that renew them.
There are two Pilgrimages here, that of the man
whose activities objectively were concerned with
the sufferings and joys of his kind; that of the
mind that journeyed from error to partial truth,
from one partial truth to another partial truth,
until the moment when the golden bowl was
shattered on the rocks of mortality.
The “Scholar in, Politics ”
Moncure Daniel Conway was one of our few
splendid examples of the “scholar in politics,” and
by “politics” I mean the affairs of men considered
in their larger aspects, involving the rights and ac
tivities of communities, states, nations, races, and
world-embracing religious and secular federations.
In the culminating years of the slavery struggle
in America, he was intimately associated with
nearly all the leading workers for emancipation;
and with the progressive ministers and the great
writers, men and women, of the country. During
his thirty years ministry in London, he was at the
centre of the intellectual and esthetic life of the
generation, and touching hands with a multitude
of the teachers of the preceding generation who
passed off the stage in those three decades. Of
�the great men of science of that period in Eng
land, the leading statesmen, the eminent indepen
dent clergymen, the poets, essayists, Orientalists,
dramatists, tragedians, musicians, and wielders of
brush and chisel, it is possible to name but few
that he did not know well. With many, very
many, of the most famous men and women of
the age he was on terms of the closest confidence
and cooperation. He knew the surviving exiles
of ’48, the men of Germany and Italy, the French
victims of Napoleon the Little, fugitive Commun
ards, Russians who had come to London fortheir
lives, East Indians who had made a like journey
in search of the knowledge of the West, even as
later he visited Asia on his “Earthward Pilgrim
age” in search of the lore of the East.
Of William Johnstone Fox, who for forty years
had occupied the pulpit of South Place Chapel,
where Conway spoke for thirty succeeding years,
we read in Conway’s “Autobiography” (ii, 54):
“He was for nearly twenty years the most
famous orator in England; neither Bright nor
Cobden could be compared with him; but in 1864,
ten years after his public career had closed, the
people generally who had idolized him hardly
knew that he was living, and the new generation
had no knowledge of him.”
This should not be and I think will not be
Conway’s fate, for while he was keenly alive to
and untiringly active in movements for the settle
ment of the “issues of his own time,” he was by
no means limited to these in his thought and
sympathies; a large part of what he wrote is rich
in the elements of race-energy and potential
�—IO----
growth that is not circumscribed by geography
and time.
Dominating Ideals
Conway (Pilgrimage, 355) mentions the story
that when Ralph Waldo Emerson first stood be
fore the Sphinx she said to him, “You’re another.”
Emerson was not a Sphinx in the sense that his
lips were sealed, but in that they opened often
for the utterance of contrarious transcendental
isms. In the latter sense, Conway also was a
Sphinx, for his positions could not always be
harmonized, not even those of his later life. His
emotional inheritances sometimes were at war
with the conclusions of his studious and logical
brain. But our retrospect of his whole mental
existence must convince us that he never lost
sight of the great and dominating ideals of his
earlier years—peace, freedom, love, beauty, truth.
The strongest fiber in his being was the love
of peace; on its negative side, the hatred of war.
Freedom was a goal to be kept ever in view, but
it was not to be reached through bloodshed. He
grasped firmly the Freethought standard, and it
never touched the ground” in all his pilgrimage.
Reason must settle all disputes; the wrongdoer
is not to be killed', but directed from his evil
ways through the enlightening of his mind and
the quickening of his conscience. His consistent
record as an opponent of war was the most prec
ious possession of his old age, and the fear of
smirching its whiteness, even in seeming, explains
his repeated refusals to appear on a platform or
at a banquet where there was the slightest danger
that his presence might associate him in the pub-
�—II—
lie mind with any who advocate or condone the
use of force in modern reform, or are erroneously
supposed to assume that attitude. This he often
told me, but it was not until I had carefully read
his “Autobiography” and his “Pilgrimage to the
Wise Men of the East” that I fully realized how
imperative was the mandate he obeyed.
Slavery he hated because it represented vio
lence and pain; if war represented more of these,
then war was the greater evil and liberty was not
to be sought by sword and cannon. So he stood
for peaceable secession as against blood-cemented
union.
An unshrinking and uncompromising apostle of
his ideas, he was not an undiscriminating parti
san as concerned persons. Whoever it might be
from whom he must differ, whom he must criti
cise, at the same time he never failed to indicate
that person’s acceptable though^ never failed to
concede his good qualities, to explain his taking
a given attitude rather than to denounce him
for that attitude. He would not deny to any one
comradeship and opportunity because of race,
because of nationality or lesser organization. With
him, human, rights did not depend upon “belong
ing” ; as a Freethinker who knew why he was
a Freethinker, he held all badges and labels of
exclusiveness and exclusion as symbols of servi
tude and shame, as the stigmata of disgrace and
degradation.
He was tender, loving, emotional. Art in all
its forms appealed to him far more strongly than
did nature outside of man. He knew the com
posers, singers, instrumentalists, painters, play-
�---- 12----
house folk, wherever he went. The old Metho
dist hymns never lost their charm, while the bare
walls of the Protestant house of worship repelled.
We catch many glimpses of the esthetic passion
of the man. Here is one: It is a Sunday in Eng
land with some distinguished Liberal friends in
their home, and the only religious service has
been the rendering of the whole of Handel’s “Mes
siah” on the piano, without words. I quote (Auto,
ii, 156):
“It was a beautiful day; the low windows open
ed on the flower garden and the landscape dressed
in living green and blossoming trees. There we
sat, souls who had passed through an era of
storm and stress and left all prophetic and Mes
sianic beliefs, but found in the oratorio hymns of
an earth in travail.”
Growing Radicalism
So he was one from whom religious garments
dropped slowly, yet ceaselessly, bit by bit, in ap
prehension and pain. But if his advance was
gradual, still it was more swift than that of his
congregations, for ever and anon a conservative
wing would go off and start anew in the hope of
preserving some dogma threatened by his grow
ing radicalism. Wherever he was, he was a stormcentre of thought.
He could learn, even against his hot zeal and
prejudices, and continued to learn to the last hour
of his life. Emerson gave the first impetus to his
“Earthward Pilgrimage,” while the rugged Car
lyle and the lucid Francis William Newman and
Kingdon Clifford probably were next in order
of influence, Carlyle in particular cutting through
�—13
the transcendental cobwebs that impeded the freeest movement of his mind. Spencer, one of his
first friends in England; Huxley, Tyndall, Dar
win, and others of the great evolutionists of that
epoch, contributed largely to his training and
equipment.
The part that a long heredity may play in the
development of the temperament and mentality
of a man no less than in his physique is not to
be ignored. Moncure Daniel Conway was born
in Stafford County, in Northern Virginia, fifteen
miles from Falmouth, March 3, 1832. He was a
blend of the Conways, Daniels, Peytons, Mon
cures, Washingtons, Browns, Stones, and other
early Virginia and Maryland families. The first
Conways in Virginia came in 1640; the first Mon
cures, French Huguenots, by way of Scotland, in
1733. The Peytons, well known in England, in
termarried with the Washingtons. The Browns,
from Scotland, were in Maryland in 1708; the
Stones, in 1649. The Catholic proprietor of
Maryland, Lord Baltimore, made William Stone
governor, because he wanted a Protestant who
would be just as between Catholics and Protest
ants. Thomas Stone was a signer of the Declara
tion. The mother of Dr. Conway was a Daniel;
the first of the American branch were in Vir
ginia in 1634. The members of all these families
were educated men and women, severally promi
nent in the social, professional, religious, political,
judicial, and material life of the two colonies, later
states. Conway says (Auto, i, 6):
‘‘Sir Francis Galton’s works 'on ‘Heredity nut
before me in a new form the catechetical question,
�-14-
‘Who made you?’ Only when I was beginning
to turn grey was any curiosity awakened in me
to know how it was that I should carry the names
of three large families into association with re
ligious and political heresies unknown to my
contemporary Virginians except as distant hor
rors. Who, then, made me?”
Sources of Conway’s Skepticism
Then he tells how, when he was a boy of
twelve, he overheard his grandfather, John Mon
cure Conway, say to his brother-in-law, “I can
not believe that the father of mankind would send
any human being into this world knowing that
he would be damned.” Of this grandfather again:
“One Sunday when leaving his office for dinner
he saw a gentleman angrily bundled out of the
only inn in the place because he had devoted the
morning to a walk instead of going to church; he
took the ‘Sabbath-breaker’ to his house’and en
tertained him several days. The guest was A.
Bronson Alcott, the Emersonian philosopher, who
told me the story.”
And there was capacity for untraditional
thought on the other side of the house. His
mother’s uncle, Walter Daniel, left a Bible with
a marginal note in his writing beside Judges i,
19, “The Lord was with Judah; and he drave out
the inhabitants of the mountain [hill country,
Conway renders it] ; but could not drive out the
inhabitants of the valley, because they had char
iots of iron.” The comment was: “Not omnipo
tent after all!” His great-great-grandfather, John
Moncure, for twenty-six years rector of the parish
of Overwharton, one evening had his game of
�—15whist interrupted by a deputation of farmers re
questing- that he would next day pray for rain.
He said at once, “Yes, I’ll read the prayer, but it
isn’t going to rain till the moon changes” (Auto,
i, 7)Upon all of which Conway comments: “Can
I not pick my skeptical soul out of these old peo
ple?” As concerned the slavery question, he had
good precedents in his family, for his great-grand
father, Travers Daniel, presiding justice of Staf
ford county, was a strong emancipationist, and
would have freed his slaves had not the laws of
Virginia stood in the way. He imported from
England in his own ship window curtains “rep
resenting Granville Sharp striking chains from
negroes, and displayed them about his house,” to
the disturbance of mind of his neighbors.
The independent strain in the blood showed
in another way. His father, “a gay and hand
some youth of high social position,” joined the
then lowly Methodists, to the horror oihis father.
A brief estrangement ensued, and this “touch of
martyrdom” brought to the young convert’s side
three of his sisters and two of his brothers. “Thus
it was that our family became Methodist—the
first of good social position in our region belong
ing to that sect.”
Methodism of Earlier Years
In the close atmosphere of the strictest Method
ism the boy Moncure passed his early years—
two sermons on Sunday, Sunday school, only
religious reading permitted on that day, even the
fourth page of the Christian Advocate being
barred, as it was literary and scientific; two prayer
�—16—
meetings a week in the basement of his father’s
house, where his cultivated parents knelt together
with the illiterate and unkempt who made
up the membership of the new sect. “Every
Sunday an hour was found for us—white and
black children together—to be taught by my
mother the catechism and listen to careful selec
tions from the Bible. In some way this equal
treatment of slaves got out, and some officious
men came with a report that my mother was
teaching negroes to read, which was illegal. It
was not true, but it was prudent to avoid even
the suspicion of such an offense in the house of
a magistrate; so the mixed teaching ceased”
(Auto, i, 21).
His parents’ home was a headquarters for
preachers. “Two of the most pious,” he says,
“were discovered to be impostors, but the major
ity were honest, hell-fearing men.”
He attended Dickerson College, Carlisle, Pa.,
from which he was graduated when three months
past seventeen.
Once while there he and his
brother and the other Southern students had their
belongings packed to go home, their pro-slavery
sensibilities having been roughly touched, as they
thought; but the storm blew over. He started
and edited a collegiate paper, and also was “con
verted” while there. He characterizes an address
of his given at that time as a specimen of “the
eloquence of inexperience,” and adds that he felt
“the burden of youth.”
Going home, he found his father and uncle the
respective lay leaders in Virginia of the divided
Methodist church, split on the rock of slavery.
�—i7—
He joined a Southern Rights Association, wrote
for the Southern Literary Messenger, and other
Virginia papers, gave his first lecture, outside
of college, when eighteen (the subject was “Pan
theism”) and studied law. “My scrap-book of
crudities,” he calls his collection of his effusions
of this period. Just now some of Emerson’s writ
ings came in his way and added to the ferment
in his mind, as did a work of Hawthorne’s, a
series of essays by Greeley, and a volume of
Patent Office Reports. They helped to open to
him a new industrial, intellectual, and ethical
world, as did debates in Congress to which he
listened. He wrote a pamphlet on the negro
separate-origin theory, but it was not published.
To the Constitutional Convention of Virginia
(1850) he addressed a pamphlet urging free
schools and compulsory education. His uncle
printed 500 copies for him at the reduced price
of $50, a heavy strain on his literary earnings, and
he gave them away to newspapers, ministers, pro
fessors, and public men. Troubled by Greeley’s
letters from Virginia to the Tribune, he wrote
to that paper and Greeley replied editorially:
“Never will Virginia’s white children be general
ly schooled until her black ones shall cease to
be sold. Our friend may be sure of this.” This
was in Conway’s nineteenth year, and Greeley’s
prediction was stamped indelibly on his brain.
His Plunge Into the Ministry
Abandoning the law when prepared for admis
sion to the bar, and giving up excellent pros
pects of a good position in Richmond journalism,
he plunged into the Methodist ministry, preach-
�—18—
ing his first sermon when just past nineteen. Rid
ing the circuit, with Emerson, Coleridge, and
Newman beside the Bible in his saddle-bags, he
read and thought in the silence of the woods, and
the result was that while he preached with fervor,
he already was on his Earthward Pilgrimage.
After a sermon in his home town of Falmouth,
his Methodist father said with a laugh: “One
thing is certain, Monc—should the devil ever aim
at a Methodist preacher, you’ll be safe.” On
this circuit, he encountered the Quakers, and -was
deeply impressed by their high character and
the happiness of their lives. He corresponded
with Emerson, read more widely, thought more
deeply, grew more and more heretical in religion
and politics, and entered Boston, February 26,
1853, as a student at Harvard Divinity School.
He notes that at the hotel where he stopped “they
have prayers morning and night, at which a
piano with eolian addition is used.”
His father could not conscientiously support
his son at a Unitarian school, but he managed to
make his way, the pay he received for playing the
organ in the college chapel helping him a little.
“ ’Twas one of the charmed days
When the genius of God doth flow,”
he writes of May 3, 1853, when he first met
Emerson. Then commenced the intimate friend
ship which lasted to the end. Next he met Tho
reau, and after that all the Unitarian and Abo
litionist leaders, Agassiz, and the poets and prose
masters of the Golden Age of New England cul
ture. From the Rev. Jared Sparks, the historian,
he first learned that Thomas Paine was a man
�—IQ—
to be respected. In his Senior year he preached
in Boston and other cities. In September, 1854,
he went to Washington on the invitation of the
Unitarian church there, one of the most import
ant in the country, and became its pastor in his
twenty-third year, which indicates his standing
in Boston. Chief Justice Cranch of the District
of Columbia, who had held his official position
for fifty-four years, was a member of the Wash
ington church. Conway delivered the funeral
discourse and it was published by the society,
making it one of the earliest items of the Con
way bibliography.
Enthusiasm for “Leaves of Grass”
In 1855 Emerson called Conway’s attention to
“Leaves of Grass/’ then first published, and in
September Conway visited Whitman in what was
then “farther Brooklyn.” Whitman told Conway
that he was the first one who had visited him
on account of his book. 1 can not forbear to
quote a little here:
“Here too was a revelation of human realms of
which my knowledge had been mainly academic.
Even while among the humble Methodists, the
pious people I knew were apart from the world,
and since then I had moved among scholars or
persons of marked individuality.
Except the
negroes, I had known nothing of the working
masses. But Whitman—as I have known these
many years—knew as little of the working class
practically as I did. He had gone about among
them in the disguise of their own dress, and was
perfectly honest in his supposition that he had
entered into their inmost nature. The Quaker
�—20—
training tends to such illusion; it was so in the
case of Thomas Paine, who wrote transcendental
politics and labeled it ‘Common Sense.’ . . . My
enthusiasm for ‘Leaves of Grass’ . . . was a sign
and symptom that the weight of the world had
begun to roll on me. In Methodism my burden
had been metaphysical—a bundle of dogmas. The
world at large was not then mine; for its woes
and wrongs I was not at all responsible; they
were far from me, and no one ever taught me
that the world was to be healed, except at the
millennium. The only evils were particular ones:
A was a drunkard, B a thief, C a murderer, D
had a cancer, and so on. When I escaped from
the dogmatic burden, and took the pleasant ra
tionalistic Christ on my shoulders, he was light
as the babe St. Christopher undertook to carry
across the river. But the new Christ became
Jesus, was human, and all humanity came with
him—the world-woe, the temporal evil and wrong.
I was committed to deal with actual, visible, pres
ent hells instead of an invisible one in a possible
future. Such was now my contract, and to bear
the increasing load there was no divine vicar”
(Auto, i, 218).
This marks a most important step in the Earth
ward Pilgrimage.
In Behalf of Negro Education
In conjunction with Samuel M. Janney, the lead
ing Quaker of Virginia, he framed a petition to
the Virginia legislature asking for the repeal of
the law which forbade the teaching of slaves to
read: “a private reply came from a leading4 mem
ber of the legislature, declaring that no such
�—21—
petition could be read in that body.” A similar
answer came from North Carolina to Daniel
Goodloe.
During the first presidential campaign of the
Republican party, when Fremont was the stand
ard-bearer, Conway’s Washington church went
to pieces over the slavery issue and he was dis
missed by a bare majority, because he would not
be silent on that vital question.
He now accepted an invitation to the pulpit
of the First Congregational Church of Cincinnati
(1856). Buchanan had defeated Fremont; two
days after the inauguration, the Supreme Court
gave the famous Dred Scott decision. It was a
fruitful city and a momentous period for Conway.
Earnest friends of his, either within or outside
his church, were such men as Judge (later Gov
ernor) Hoadley, Judge Stallo—both historically
placed as Freethinkers—Alphonso Taft, Stanley
Matthews, and many others prominent in learn
ing and position. He threw himself with ardor
into every form of literary and artistic life, writ
ing criticisms of “the classical concerts, the pic
ture exhibitions, the operas, and plays.’’ “At Cin
cinnati, I seemed for the first time to know some
thing of all America.” Here he found remnants
of the colonies and other reminders of the work
of George Rapp, Robert Owen, and Frances
Wright. He read1 Frances Wright’s “A Few Days
in Athens” and her lectures, and “many a time,”
he says, “joined in the pilgrimages to her tomb.”
At Yellow Spring, Horace Mann had founded
Antioch College, the first to educate men and
women together. Mann was a Unitarian and
�■22—
the greatest educator ofi his time, but he was fran
tic because of Dr. T. L. Nichols’s radical com
munity called “Memnona.” He feared it would
corrupt and bring disaster to his co-educational
school. In i860, Conway reviewed in his “Dial”
Dr. Nichols’s “Esperanza—the Land of Hope: A
Work Written on the Gospel of Free Love,” and
with his ever-keen instinct for justice, took all
pains to discover the facts concerning “Memnona,”
long a thing of history only, and he wrote toler
antly of principles which were new and largely
antipathetic to him. Dr. Mann had character
ized “Memnona” as “the superfetation of diab
olism upon polygamy.” Conway pointed out
that, contrary to this prejudiced view, the asceti
cism and celibacy inaugurated there had carried
Dr. Nichols and seven other leading members
into the Roman church, one being at that time
a nun in Cuba.
Among his correspondence, Conway found a
letter from Modern Times, New York. “It seemed
to come from some place in Bunyan’s dreamland,”
he comments. Answering his inquiry, a friend in
New York city wrote that it was “a village on
Long Island founded on the principle that each
person shall mind his or her own business”; upon
which he satirically observes that “the place
seemed even more mythical than before.”
At
the first opportunity he went to Modern Times,
made the acquaintance of Josiah Warren and his
associates, and in his “Autobiography” he gives
us several pages of chatty and) kindly description
of his visit and a summary of the principles of
Warren. This was in keeping—wherever he went
�•23—
throughout his life he sought out the Divergent
no less than the Convergent, and gathered at first
hand his materials for analysis and conclusion.
In 1857 or 8, his first book, “Facts for Today,”
was published.
At Cincinnati, his opening sermon was a plea
for liberty for the slave, for reason, and for hap
piness as against Protestant asceticism. He de
manded for woman freedom and occupation; for
the unfortunate, a hospital for inebriates, and
foundling hospitals, and homes for other social
victims. “So did I confroiit the wealth and conser
vatism of my church, and they stood by me from
first to last.” In preparing for work along some
of these lines, he was in consultation with Arch
bishop Purcell of the Romani Catholic church,
who, remarks Conway, confirmed “my assertion
that it was not sensuality that led women into
vice, but that the want of lucrative occupation left
them no alternatives but physical or moral sui
cide.” He lectured for the Catholic St. Nicholas
Institution, for the Turners, the Jewish societies,
the actors, and filled evening appointments in a
vacant Methodist pulpit.
In the Western Unitarian Conference of 1858
(he was now 26), he was intrusted with the prep
aration of the manifesto on slavery, and his dec
laration was adopted, reversing the “timid reso
lution of three years before.” It caused the with
drawal of the strong St. Louis delegation. The
incident created much comment, and he was de
scribed as an “ambitious agitator.” In reply, he
said to his people that “inhumanity in man or
nation must always prove a demon of unrest.” “A
�—24—
legend on which twenty-three years later I pub
lished a volume then first arose before me as a
prophecy: ‘That fable of the Wandering Jew
shall be dread reality to the heart which know
ingly drives from its threshold the Christ who
falls there in the form of those who now bear the
cross of wrong and oppression, and toil up the
weary hills of life to their continual crucifixion’ ”
(Auto, i, 275).
“A little recrudescence of prejudice against the
Jews” carried Conway into the papers in their de
fense, and this made the Jews his friends, “and
important friends they were,” he avers; and he
speaks of Rabbis Wise and Lilienthal as able and
progressive leaders.
Emerson, Darwin, and Evolution
His literary studies were extending and his en
thusiasm therein was increasing as that decade
neared its end, while the publication of Darwin’s
“Origin of Species” freshened an interest in evo
lution that had been created by Emerson in 1853,
when the latter had spoken of “the electric word
pronounced by John Hunter a hundred years ago
—‘arrested and progressive development’—indi
cating the way upward from the invisible proto
plasm to the highest organism—gave the poetic
key to natural science—of which the theories
of Geofrey St. Hilaire, of Oken, of Goethe, of
Agassiz, and Owen and Darwin [Erasmus] in
zoology and botany, are the fruits showing unity
and perfect order in physics.”1 The suggestion of
John Flunter, which Emerson had condensed into
the phrase, “arrested and progressive develop
ment,’’ was in these words:
�—25—
“If we were capable of following the progress
of increase of number of the parts of the most
perfect animal, as they formed in succession, from
the very first to its state of full perfection, we
should probably be able to compare it to some
of the incomplete animals themselves of every
order of animals in creation, being at no stage
different from some of those inferior orders; or
in other words, if we were to take a series of
animals, from the more imperfect to the perfect,
we should probably find an imperfect animal cor
responding with some stage of the most perfect.”
When, in 1883, Conway showed this to 'Huxley
and Tyndall, they were startled that Emerson
should have discovered this very early anticipa
tion of the theory of Natural Selection. In his
Dial for October, i860, Conway points out that
“our popular Christianity has not fulfilled the law
of the higher formation. It must everywhere sum
up all the preceding formations, and lose none
of their contributions, as the animal generations
are summed up in the forehead of man.” He adds
in his “Autobiography”:
“It was to be twenty-five years before I dis
covered that the function of Human Selection
was to take the place of Natural Selection, and
develop the Calibans into beauty, but also that
it was possible for man to develop himself and
his world downward.”
It is not to be presumed that Dr. Conway
meant to be understood as saying that human
selection is not natural selection; he intended only
to distinguish human from pre-human selection.
In 1859. Conway delivered lectures against
�—26--
supernaturalism, and the orthodox idea of God that
shocked a part of his congregation and led to
the secession later of a considerable number of
the conservatives, who organized a new society.
They could endure his political and other secular
heresies, but when he laid profaning hands on
the Ark of the Covenant of their primal super
stitions, they were panic-stricken. This was an
other demonstration of the fact that, no matter
what “reforms” may interest a man, you never
can be sure of him until his brain has been cleared
of the sediment of the religious flood', for until
that hour comes he may at any moment pass back
under the dominion of the fears that, together
with wonder, lie at the foundations of all cults
of supernaturalism.
Speaking of “superstition,” I know of no better
definition than that given by Conway himself in
his book, “Republican Superstitions”—“A super
stition is any belief not based upon evidence.”
His Vindication of Paine
During the years immediately preceding the
civil war, Conway sometimes attended the Sun
day afternoon meetings of the small society of
“Infidels.” Listening from a quiet corner to the
speeches and discussions of these earnest parti
sans, Conway learned much concerning Paine,
which led to his discovery of very much more in
his further unprejudiced investigations. The
clerical fictions about Paine which had been
poured into his ears in his youth now reminded
him “that towers may be measured by the
shadow they cast.” The immediate fruit of his
researches was a sermon on Paine, January 29,
�—27—
i860. The announcement crowded the church.
He had feared that some of his congregation
might be disturbed, but instead he received a
request to publish the address. The request
was “signed by many eminent and wealthy citi
zens, some of whom did not belong to my con
gregation.” Thereafter the Freethinkers fre
quented his church, and Moreau dedicated one
of his works to Conway “as the first who had
ever uttered from a pulpit a word favorable to
Paine.” Conway’s address was printed under
the title, “Thomas Paine. A Celebration.”
From this period on there rested in Conway’s
mind the purpose sometime to place Paine in the
right light in the eyes of the world. This pur
pose he put into splendid effect when he wrote
the Life of Paine (2 vols., 1892), compiled and
edited Paine’s Works (4 vols., 1893-1896), and
prosecuted further researches in the succeeding
years, some of the results of which were made
known through the Liberal press and other pub
lications from time to time. It is quite prob
able that if there shall be posthumous publica
tion of the papers embodying the results of the
labors of the last years of Conway’s life there
will be revealed more of these treasures.
But the little group in Cincinnati did some
thing more for Conway and through him for the
world. I quote from page 305, vol. 1, of the
“Autobiography”:
“My vindication of Paine and its unexpected
success was felt by the Freethinkers in Cincin
nati as a vindication of themselves also, and 1
felt it my opportunity for grappling with what
�■28—
I considered their errors. My Theism was not
indeed of the Paine type—I had passed from all
dynamic Theism to the Theism evolved from
Pantheism by the poets—but I found that in
criticising the opinions of these Atheists I had
undertaken a difficult task. Several of them—
I remember the names of Colville, Miller, and
Pickles—were shrewd disputants and steadily
drove me to reconsider the basis of my beliefs.
I entered upon a severely logical statement of
the corollaries of Theism. In a course of dis
courses, I had rejected supernaturalism, to the
distress of a third of my congregation, this being
the first time that simple Theism had invaded
any Western pulpit.
“That, however, was less disturbing than the
sermon on ‘God,’ in which I maintained that the
creation and government of the universe by an
omnipotent and omniscient deity was inconsist
ent with any free will. I affirmed that the socalled free agency of man was a much over
rated notion. I contended that what theologians
called the Will of God was a misconception;
an all-wise and morally perfect deity could have
no freedom. There can be but one very best,
and to that he must adhere; the least deviation
from it would undeify him.”
And so another stage was traveled on the
Earthward Pilgrimage!
On the Eve of Civil War
The clouds of civil war were throwing out
their advance columns in 1859, and the land al
ready was darkening with the shadows of com
ing death. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry
�and his capture and execution well-nigh closed
all ears to the counsels of reason. In his ser
mon of October 23, Conway said that Brown
had been driven into madness by the murder of
his sons in Kansas, perverting devotion to the
principle of liberty into a morbid monomania.
He thanked God that one man could go crazy
for an idea, arraigned the nation for its crime
against the negro, and declared that the Aboli
tionists, being non-resistants, would “denounce
the methods” of Brown. He himself described
the action of Brown as “worse than a crime—a
blunder.” But he had not fully taken into ac
count the contagiousness of violence. After the
sermon, Judge Stallo took him to his home and
“argued earnestly” against his view and his “ex
treme peace principles.” And anti-slavery men
in the East—Garrison, Emerson, for examples—
also were carried off their feet. On the other
side, in Virginia, Governor Wise “raised a mole
hill into a volcano.” The pro-slavery govern
ment at Washington used the raid as an indict
ment of the abolitionists, and “the canonization
by them of Brown as a hero and martyr became
inevitable.” .Neither side realized the situation
of the other, nor could, for passion and panic
blurred all eyes. Conway confesses with shame
that “the enthusiasm and tears of [his] anti
slavery comrades” swept him from his solid an
chorage, confused the calm judgment that dic
tated the discourse of October 23; the execution
of Brown, on December 2, hurling against him
the last wild wave of reason-dethroning emo
tion. “I did not indeed retract my testimony
�•30—
against the method of bloodshed, except by im
plication.’’
Three months later came James Redpath’s
“The Public Life of Captain John Brown.” Redpath was a friend and follower of Brown, but
there was. enough in the book to set Conway
to inquiring. Part of the result of this inquiry
was given form in the novel, “Pine and Palm”
(1887), where “Captain Brown (alias Gideon)
figures in a light that could not please his ad
mirers, but it is better than I could find for him
now when, reading his career by the light of
subsequent history, I am convinced that few men
ever wrought so much evil.
John Brown’s Victims
“On either side of the grave of a largely im
aginary Brown wrathful Northerners and panicstricken Southerners were speedily drawn up
into hostile camps, and the only force was dis
armed that might have prevented the catastrophe
that followed. Up to that time the anti-slaverjr
agitation had marched on the path of peace, and
every year had brought further assurance of a
high human victory in which South and North
would equally triumph. But now we were all
Brown’s victims—even we anti-slavery men,
pledged to the methods of peace. In my sermon
already quoted on Brown’s death, I did entreat
that we should all ‘do a manly Christian part
in the development of his deed, and in control
ling it lest it pass out of the lawful realm of
the Prince of Peace,’ but the plea was lost under
my homage to the insanity of a man who had
set the example of lynching slaveholders. Too
�—3i
late I repented. For other anti-slavery men
there might be some excuse; at least it appears
to me now that there had remained in nearly
every Northern breast, however liberal, some
unconscious chord which Brown had touched,
inherited from the old Puritan spirit and faith
in the God of War. I had been brought up in
no such faith, but in the belief that evil could
be conquered only by the regeneration of the
evil-doer.”
I quote so much here because it throws a flood
of light on the psychology and exalted ethics of
Conway, and explains his attitude as the lead
ing advocate of policies antithetical to those of
the administration of Lincoln. And do I need to
suggest that there is in all this a solemn lesson
for the radicals of today who have to deal with
almost infinitely more nicely balanced and ter
rible forces, potent for peace or slaughter as a
careless breath or hand-touch shall determine?
How rapidly this clergyman was leaving be
hind him the orthodoxy of his church is indicat
ed in this paragraph of his “Autobiography,”
which immediately follows the one just quoted:
“I had, however, been influenced by my
youthful optimism to adopt the doctrine of a
deity that ‘shapes our ends, rough-hew them
how we will.’ When civil war began to threaten
the country, I did, indeed, modify my divinity.
With some satisfaction I find in the Cincinnati
Inquirer a letter signed ‘A Soldier of the Con
stitution,’ written after hearing one of my ser
mons, which says: ‘Any man professing to be
a Christian minister, who classes Jehovah, the
�Christian’s God, in the same category with Mars
and Jupiter, and Odin, the barbarous and licen
tious creations of a heathen imagination, and
says, as did Mr. Conway, that our God of Battles
is no better than these pagan deities, should be
indicted under the statute against blasphemy, if
there be one in your state laws.’ ”
The Dial and Its Contributors
The wide discussion provoked by his theo
logical and philosophical heresies had its in
evitable outcome in the establishment of a month
ly of his own, The Dial, which appeared in Jan
uary, i860, and which expired at the end of the
year, killed by the civil war. The prefatory
word was remarkably fine, I think, especially in
its symbolry of the floral dial. This is the clos
ing paragraph:
“The Dial stands before you, reader, a legiti
mation of the Spirit of the Age, which aspires
to be free—free in thought, doubt, utterance,
love, and knowledge. It is, in our minds, sym
bolized not so much by the sun-clock in the
yard, as by the floral dial of Linnaeus, which
recorded the advancing day by the opening of
some flowers and the closing of others—it would
report the Day of God as recorded in the un
folding of higher life and thought, and the clos
ing up of old superstitions and evils; it would
be a Dial measuring time by growth.”
The magazine “was well received”; “it had a
large subscription list—the Jews especially in
teresting themselves—and received good notices
from the press.” The one of these that moved
him most was in the Ohio State Journal, and he
�—33—
soon learned that it was written by a very young
man, William Dean Howells. In a few days
they met, and became lifelong friends. Emer
son, Howells, Orson Murray, Frothingham, were
among the contributors, as was our old radical
of North Carolina, Dr. M. E. Lazarus, who
usually used his second name, Edgeworth, in
writing for the press.
Almost my last communication from Dr. Con
way was the request to find for him a volume of
The Dial; which I succeeded in doing, after an
extended search. But, alas! he stopped, in his be
loved Paris, before it could reach his hand.
Idolatry of the Union
Conway heard Lincoln say in a speech in
Cincinnati in 1859 that “slavery is wrong,” and
that “the government is expressly charged with
the duty of providing ‘for the general welfare?
We believe that the spreading out and perpe
tuity of the institution of slavery impairs the
general welfare.” The words “and perpetuity”
had new and startling meaning for Conway, and
he printed them in capitals in The Dial and
voted for Lincoln. “It was the only vote I ever
did cast for a president, having in Washington
had no vote and in the later years no faith in
any of the candidates or in the office” (Auto,
i, 318).
But when Lincoln in his inaugural said he had
no objection to a proposed amendment to the
Constitution which had just passed the Con
gress, that amendment forbidding any amend
ment which would authorize the Congress to
abolish any state institution, including slavery,
�—34—
Conway and others were shocked. To him the
"idolatry of the Union” "was inconceivable ex
cept as a commercial interest.” He had no par
ticular sentiment for the South as a section. "My
enthusiasm had been for slavery, and it had
turned into an enthusiasm for humanity which
naturally sympathized with Garrison; the Union
appeared to me an altar on which human sacri
fices were offered—not merely in the millions
of negroes, but even more in the peace! and har
mony of the white nation. I hated violence more
than slavery, and, much as I disliked President
Buchanan, thought him right in declining to
coerce the seceding states.”
The idea of a Union preserved by arms with
slavery untouched was abhorrent to him and to
such jurists as Stallo, Hoadley, and Alphonso
Taft, and the anti-slavery leaders in the East,
and he says that such utterances as this, from
his first sermon after the fall of Sumter, ex
pressed their convictions no less than his: "The
American arms can win no victory nor conquer
any peace which shall not be the victory of hu
manity from the wrongs that degrade and af
flict humanity. In the Promethean games of
Greece those who ran in the races all bore light
ed torches, and he won the race who reached
the goal first with his torch still lighted. If he
reached the goal with his torch extinguished he
lost the day. It was not, therefore, the swiftest
racers who won the prize. Indeed, the swiftest
were more apt to have their torches put out
by the wind. It is thus with the contest on the
American arena. Our true prize cannot be vron
�—35—
by getting the better of the South in an appeal
to arms. What if, when we reach the goal, the
torch of Liberty intrusted to America to bear
in the van of nations be extinguished! What
if, by some dishonorable treaty with this or that
[border] state, which would be a good ally in
war, we have pledged ourselves toi continue en
slavers of men, and come to claim the prize with
the light of that sacred torch lost!” (Auto, i,
326.)
His Plan to Abolish Slavery
Conway went to Washington and found his
old church used as a depository of arms. “So
had repelled light returned as lightning.” He
talked with his old friends, Rev. Dr. Furness and
Senator Sumner, who “both trusted a good deal
in God,” he says. “I said that I had heard all
my life that God would end slavery ‘in his own
good time,’ but I had learned from history that
when reformation was left to God he brought it
about with hell-fire. That, I urged, was just our
peril, and it could be averted only by using the
natural weapon of liberty—namely, liberty itself.
I knew slavery and slaveholders well; if the
President and Congress should at once declare
every slave in America free, every Southerner
would have to stay at home and guard his slaves.
There could be no war. We could then pay all
the owners with the cost of the army for one
month. Furness and Sumner earnestly accepted
my doctrine, and Sumner begged me to devote
myself to spreading it through the North and
West” (Auto, i, 330).
This he did, and his maintenance of this
�tion in Ohio led the irreconcilable Clement L.
Vallandigham to say of him:
“It seems to us that about three months in
Fort McHenry, in a strait uniform, with fre
quent introductions to the accommodating insti
tution called the town pump, and without the
benefit of the writ of habeas corpus, would have
a tendency to improve the gentleman mentally
and, for a while, at least, rid the community of
a nuisance” (Auto, i, 338).
In a few months this “honest fanatic”—Con
way’s kindly description—was himself in prison
as a traitor.
The Republic of Hayti asked for diplomatic re
lations; Washington, by Seward, answered that
a black minister could not be received.
Con
way says:
“Then there arose before me asf if in letters of
flame—‘The stone which the builders rejected
has become the head of the corner.
“ ‘And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall
be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall it
will grind him to powder.’
His “Rejected Stone ”
“Then I set myself to write the little book en
titled, ‘The Rejected Stone; or, Insurrection vs.
Resurrection in America. By a Native of Vir
ginia.’ ”
The rejected stone was Justice.
The book had a tremendous circulation, and
was reviewed by the whole press. A large edi
tion was printed for distribution among the sol
diers, Conway gladly relinquishing his royalty
on these tens of thousands.
�General Fremont, in Missouri, had proclaimed
confiscate the property of those found in arms
against the United States, “and their slaves, if
any they have, are declared freemen.” The proc
lamation sent a thrill of joy through the North,
but the President canceled the proclamation and
soon relieved Fremont of Southern command.
A vast indignation meeting was held in Cin
cinnati, Judge Stallo presiding. Conway’s speech
at this meeting so excited the New York Herald
that it demanded his suppression by the govern
ment as a “reverend traitor.’’ The gist of the
passage in which The Herald found treason is
in these lines:
“A decree that this government ignores the
relation of slavery ends the war. There is from
that moment no army in the South, but a home
guard.”
Conway lectured in Washington early in 1862
and Sumner suggested that he call on the Presi
dent, which he did in company with W. H.
Channing, who had succeeded him; in the Wash
ington pulpit. The interview with Lincoln was
prolonged and earnest, but neither could con
vince the other.
Proceeding from Washington to Boston, the
literary men, including Emerson, Holmes, Lowell,
Whipple, Fields, gave him a grand dinner at
the Parker House. The next day, Emerson went
over with him his forthcoming lecture before
the Emancipation League. Its title was “The
Golden Hour” and it was soon brought out in
book form. Emerson adopted Conway’s idea, al
ready set forth, that slavery was the commis-
�-38sariat of the Southern army, embodied it in his
own cpming lecture, "American Civilization,”
giving due credit, and it appeared in the Atlantic
Monthly, April, 1862.
The President, so Senator Sumner miormed
him, would give him a consulate if he desired
it—“which I did not,” he says.
At the Western Unitarian Conference at De
troit, May, 1862, Conway offered this resolu
tion :
“That in this conflict the watchword of our
nation and our church and our government
should be, Mercy to the South; death to slavery.’’
It was unanimously adopted.
An Incident at the Conway Home.
It is interesting to know thaH the portrait of
the heretical and seditious son saved from des
truction the old home in Virginia. His father
was in Fredericksburg, his two brothers away in
the Confederate ranks, and the house in charge
of the slaves. As a detachment of Union soldiers
was marching by a shot was fired from a win
dow of Conway House or a corner of the yard
and a man was wounded. It was never known
who fired the shot. The soldiers were furious
and began breaking up the furniture preparatory
to destroying the house. But a youth who had
known Conway in Washington caught sight of
his portrait hanging in the mother’s bedroom
and cried to the others to stop. “The servants
were called in and were much relieved when
they found that it was to speak of my portrait.
Old Eliza cried, ‘It’s Mars’ Monc, the preacher,
as good abolitionist as any of you!’ ”
�—39—
This Conway House at Falmouth became a
hospital and here, for a time, Walt Whitman
nursed the soldiers, the second time that his
path and Conway’s had converged.
His Father’s Slaves Taken North
After much difficulty, Conway got a pass to
go down into Virginia and bring up his father’s
slaves, all within the Union lines, but before
starting he found that they had got away and
were quartered in a small house in Georgetown.
How to get them into Ohio, where he purposed
colonizing them, was a very serious problem.
But finally he triumphed over all difficulties, the
most grave being the Confederate mob in Balti
more by which they were surrounded and
menaced for three hours while waiting for a
train to the West, after being transported across
the hostile city by the help of local free negroes.
“At length, much to my relief, the ticket
agent appeared at the window. I saw that, like
the other officials, he was angry, but he was a
fine-looking Marylander. He turned into flint
as I approached; and when I asked the price
of tickets, he said sharply, ‘I can’t let those
negroes go on this road at any price.’ I knew
that he would have to let them gio, but knew
also that he could make things very uncomfort
able for us. I silently presented my military or
der to the disagreeable and handsome agent,
and he began to read it. He had read but two
or three words of it when he looked up with
astonishment, and said, ‘The paper says that
these are your father’s slaves.’ ‘ 1 hey are, I re
plied. ‘Why, Sir, they would bring a good deal
�—40—
of money in Baltimore!’ ‘Possibly,’ I replied.
Whereupon (moved, probably, by supposing that
I was making a great sacrifice) he said, ‘By God,
you shall have every car on this road if you
want it.’ ”
So the seventy negroes were taken to* Ohio
and settled at Yellow Spring, where they did
well.
In September, 1863, appeared the Boston Com
monwealth. It was financed by wealthy anti
slavery Republicans and edited by Moncure D.
Conway and Frank B. Sanborn. It was on the
best terms with Garrison’s Liberator, paid at
tention to literature, and in its columns several
young writers made their bows to the public,
among these being Louisa Alcott.
Conway rejoiced in the President's emanci
pation proclamation, limited as was its field.
“But,” he mournfully writes, “when our ecstasy
had passed, some of us perceived that while free
dom had got a paper proclamation, the cannon
ball proclamation had gone to slavery. The
anti-slavery generals were in the North; the
military posts where slaves might become free
were under military generals or governors no
toriously hostile to emancipation. The three
generals who had proclaimed freedom to the
slaves in their departments—Fremont, Phelps,
and Hunter—had all been removed, and to the
slaves these removals were pro-slavery proclama
tions which they understood, while this of the
New Year they could not read even if it were
allowed to reach them.”
Among the most effective obstructionists was
�—4i—
Stanley, an old politician of North Carolina, ap
pointed military governor of the reconquered
portion of that state. Boston sent a delegation
to talk with the President, Wendell Phillips,
Moncure Conway, and Elizur Wright being
prominent members. The interview was amica
ble but resultless. On this visit, Conway preach
ed to the Senate, having an audience of nearly
2,000 and pressing home his arguments for free
dom for all.
“Complications with England were arising;
our golden hour for ending at once both the
war and slavery had passed.” In February,
Phillips suggested that Conway go to England
to lecture for a few months and “persuade the
English that the North is right.” The proprietor
of The Commonwealth agreed to give him
$1,000 for two letters a week; Phillips, Wright,
Longfellow, and others raised $700. He started
in April, 1863, armed with a letter of introduc
tion from Emerson to Carlyle, another from Geo.
W. Curtis to Browning, several from Garrison to
the anti-slavery leaders, while from Mr. and
Mrs. George Stearns he carried a life-size bust
of John Brown for Victor Hugo. In his diary,
written on the steamship City of Washington, he
says:
“I have brought along John Stuart Mill’s new
book on ‘Liberty,’ published in Boston the day
I left. It is a book of wonderful truisms, of
startling commonplaces. In reading it one feels
that such a book should be in the course of
college study everywhere, so axiomatic are the
laws it states; and yet there is scarcely1 a state!
�—42—
on earth that would not be revolutionized by a
practical adoption of its principles. Mr. Mill’s
views of social and individual liberty are in the
direction of those stated by William von Hum
boldt in his ‘Sphere and Duties of Government.’
‘The grand, leading principle,’ says Humboldt,
‘towards which every argument unfolded in
these pages directly converges, is the absolute
and essential importance of human development
in its richest diversity.’ ”
There is not time to follow Conway to Eng
land ; to trace the footsteps of his thirty-years’
pilgrimage there. Nor can I go with him now
on his visit to the Wise Men of the East? nor
let you get a glimpse of the rich treasures stored
in such books of his as “Republican Supersti
tions,” “The Wandering Jew,” “Lessons for ToDay,” “The Earthward Pilgrimage,” “Idols and
Ideals,” “Travels in South Kensington,” and the
“Lives” of Hawthorne, Emerson, and Carlyle.
Neither can I take you with me now into a score
of other fields where I have spent so many de
lighted and instructed hours. All this must
await the pleasure of Father Time and the great
god Plutus; it is my hope to put into other
papers a small part of what I have been com
pelled to leave out of this.
An Ideal Biographer of Paine
I think that you will agree with me that Mon
cure Daniel Conway was just the man that could
have been expected to lift Thomas Paine again
into the honoring gaze of his countrymen of the
world; I think you will agree that he was a
much more important figure in the ethical and
�—47—
remorseless enough in the South—one who was
asked if he had ever been in a certain Virginia
town answered, ‘Yes, I was there three weeks
one Sunday’—but nowhere else in the world was
I ever so waylaid and plundered by! thei Sabbath
as in Honolulu.”
Again: The missionaries—“Their theology
alone might have been innocuous, for the Hawaiians could not have understood it; the moral
system, the superstition that nudity is wicked,
that gaiety and pleasure are offensive to God,
and consequent changes in their ways of life—as
Charles Darwin pointed out—these are the
things fatal to tropical tribes. Dr. Titus M.
Coan, quoted by Darwin in his ‘Descent of Man,’
says, ‘The [Hawaiian] natives have undergone
a greater change in their habits of life in fifty
years than Englishmen in a thousand years.’ ”
Speaking of the distinguished English men
and women who raised a fund to buy clothes
for the native women of Australia, Conway says:
“It was these pious prudes who killed off the
Tasmanians. It was the belief of every scientific
man I met that they all were attacked by tuber
culosis soon after they put on clothing.” Of a
group of Australian natives: “Were it not for
the filthy skins and blankets on which the Brit
ish prudes insist, they would by no means be
repulsive.”
Of Australasian federation: “Where either in
dividuals or states are fettered together, their
movements must be that of the slowest; and the
slowest is apt to be the colleague that refuses to
move at all, unless backward. The more free
�-48individuals, whether men or communities, the
more chances for those variations from which
higher forms are developed. The old shout of
‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable,’ has a
fine sound, but so has the prophecy of the lion
and the lamb lying down together. The lamb
will be inside the lion, and Liberty be devoured
by over-centralization.’’
Justice, Peace—and Farewell
I have said that the dominant note in Con
way’s message was the plea for peace, and so
I cannot do better in closing than to give to
you his latest suggestion and prayer, offered to
us all in these simple and earnest words com
posing the last paragraphs of his Autobiography:
“And now at the end of my work, I offer yet
a new plan for ending war—namely, that the
friends of peace and justice shall insist on a
demand that every declaration of war shall be
regarded as a sentence of death by one people
on another, and shall be made only after a full
and formal judicial inquiry and trial, at which
the accused people shall be fairly represented.
This was suggested to me by my old friend,
Professor Newman, who remarked that no war
in history had been preceded by a judicial trial
of the issue. The meanest prisoner can not be
executed without a trial. A declaration of war
is the most terrible of sentences—it sentences
a people to be slain and mutilated, their women
to be widowed, their children orphaned, their
cities burned, their commerce destroyed. The
real motives of every declaration of war are un
avowed and unavowable. Let them be dragged
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Title
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A sketch and an appreciation of Moncure Daniel Conway, freethinker and humanitarian : an address at the Paine-Conway memorial meeting of the Manhattan Liberal Club, January 31, 1908
Creator
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Walker, Edwin C. [d.1931]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: New York
Collation: 49 p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: Inscription inside front cover: From Mrs Mildred Conway Sawyer. H.N. Bradlaugh Bonner. Sep. 22, 08. 'The writings of M.D. Conway in print at this date' available from Edwin C. Walker listed on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Edwin C. Walker
Date
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1908
Identifier
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N656
Subject
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Free thought
Conway Hall Ethical Society
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A sketch and an appreciation of Moncure Daniel Conway, freethinker and humanitarian : an address at the Paine-Conway memorial meeting of the Manhattan Liberal Club, January 31, 1908), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Moncure Conway
NSS
-
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65dbc559a8ec07df8063f47f15e84ba5
PDF Text
Text
ATHENTUM, CAMDEN ROAD.
MR. CONWAY’S SERVICES.
The Ladies’ Committee of Mr. Conway’s Evening
Congregation are arranging a second Bazaar, to be held
at the Athemeum at the close of the year 1878, in aid of
the Funds necessary for the continuance of the present
Services.
Whilst most gratefully thanking those who so kindly
and generously assisted them on a previous occasion,
and asking their co-operation, the ladies trust that others
may be induced to assist also, by Contributions of fancy
articles, flowers, works of art, photographs, books, &c.,
for the same purpose.
It is proposed, as on the last occasion, that all articles
shall be sold at a fairly moderate price, in order to ensure
a speedy sale.
The following Ladies will be most happy to receive
the Contributions :
Mrs. BARTLETT, Duke’s Road, Euston Road.
Miss CROCKFORD (Hon. Sec.), igo, Camden Road.
Mrs. EDWARDS, Heywood House, Camden Road.
Mrs. MOIR, 7, Merton Road.
Mrs. -PRESTON, 26, Fellows Road, South Hampstead.
Mrs. SQUIRE (President), 14, Camden Square.
Mrs. TAYLER, 5, Stanley Gardens.
��
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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Athenaeum, Camden Road : Mr. Conway's services
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 1 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Date
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[1878]
Identifier
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G5698
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[Unknown]
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Moncure Conway
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Athenaeum, Camden Road : Mr. Conway's services), 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>
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application/pdf
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English
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
-
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596d6778bbb920735856259273e8c31d
PDF Text
Text
i66
CHRISTIANITY AGAIN CONSIDERED.
no earthly law smites him, he still is sinning against God, inflicts
injury on himself. For he that breaks a law of God, whether it be
a material one—in the physical globe or his own body ; or a spiritual
one, in his own soul, or in society, inflicts damage on his own
being; while he who works righteousness by living in obedience to
the law of God, is the better man for it, in himself, alike in time and
eternity. If there be any reader who rejects these statements, I
can only answer in the words of another, “We believe that con
science exists, just as fully as that we believe all men have bones,
and as it seems to us for the same reasons. Why is that to be
struck out of the list of evidence, any more than any physical testi
mony whatsoever ? Surely a more powerful item of evidence, not
only as to the personality of the First Cause, but as to the character
of that personality, could hardly be conceived.”(/)
(a) History of Latin Christianity, vol. ii., p. 253. Second edition.
(b) Church of England Prayer Book, Article 9: Confession of Faith, chap. vi. 6.
(c) Works, vol. iii., p. igg.
(d) R. H. Hutton.
(e) Duration of Future Punishment, by the Rev. George Rogers, p. 4,
(/) The Spectator.
&gain (EonstWlc
HRISTIANITY” is the title of a new book, by M. D. Conway,
M.A., and it is issued by Trubner & Co., of London. It is a
small but striking book. Indeed whatever comes from the pen of
Mr. Conway is always worth perusal. He has a knack of hitting
his opponents straight from the shoulder, of calling a spade a spade,
of denouncing superstition in unmeasured terms. As a preacher
Mr. Conway prefers an “ unfettered pulpit,” from which he can
fearlessly expose the errors and hypocrisy of the popular creed.
We wish there were more unfettered pulpits in the world, occupied
by men of culture and zeal, and “ no longer bribed by the social or
pecuniary endowments of an established creed.”
The book before us should be in the hands of every one who
wishes to be acquainted with the numerous phases through which
Christianity has passed, and we can confidently say that its perusal
will afford both pleasure and profit.
Mr. Conway considers
Christianity under six aspects : its morning state, its dawn, its day, its
decline, its afterglow, and its mosrow, and each of these divisions
receives masterly treatment.
There are several allusions to English Unitarianism, and the
Unitarian Association comes in for a share of the Author's
criticism. We think, however, that Mr. Conway’s strictures
on what he terms the “ professed liberality ” of the Association
are somewhat strong. No Association can exist without obe
dience to certain laws, and the “ fundamental law” which appears
to be so obnoxious to Mr. Conway is not, in our opinion, such an
obnoxious one as he would make it appear.
Personally, we
should like to see an independent Association formed, which should
e
�ANDREW AYLMER: A SKETCH.
167
include all Theists, whether Jews, Unitarians, Brahmins, or
Rationalists, in fact all who worship a supreme Governor of the
Universe, and wish to assist the extension of a Universal Brotherhood
of Man. But reforms whether social or religious are not carried in
a day, so we must be content to plod patiently alsng that road
which leads to the goal we are all aiming at, and we doubt not it
will be reached e’er many years more have been added to the
world’s age.
There are many-paragraphs having especial reference to the
Unitarian faith which we should like to quote, but our space forbids.
We cannot however conclude this brief notice without giving one
or two extracts. On page 89, Mr. Conway writes : “ Where is the
author of our time who defends the wild notion of an eternal
punishment—a punishment without end, and consequently without
purpose—inflicted on millions for a sin they did not commit, and
who have not even determined their own existence!” On page
124 he says:—“ The English Unitarians have an honorable history,
and no page of it is brighter than the last; but they can retain what
they have wn only by following up their advance.” Mr. Conway
brings his book to a conclusion as follows :—“ The highest religion
of to-day is to look and labour for a nobler day. Nor can I think
that new day so distant. For this matter the world of men means
mainly all those who think. The thinkers of the world are but
thinly divided by veils of language and tricks of expression ; speedily
wii^, they pierce these and discover that round the world hearts
beat with one moral blood, and eyes see by one and the same
sunlight. And as thought moves so will the most motionless
masses gravitate; and every sect in the world be subtly consumed
through and through by that popular disgust of bigotry and
hyprocrisy, which will emanate from the fairly awakened con
science and intellect of humanity.”
winter: &
CHAPTER IV.--- A WORD CONCERNING WILL, AND AYLMER’S INFLUENCE.
ACHEL AYLMER, soon after Andrew left home to attend
Mr. Cuthberton’s class at the Institute, dressed herself for
going out to pay a visit to her brother, Benjamin Harton, who lived
in the village of Ronesburn. As he worked the same “ place ” with
Andrew in the Scottingley mine, she was anxious lest the persecu
tion towards her son had been extended to her brother as well.
And then she wanted a talk with him about the whole matter.
Long had she and Joshua chatted over it, but the thing had not
come out any clearer to their minds. As she stood by her hearth
bound husband, to bid him good-bye for her two-hour visit, she saw
the newspaper was by his side, unused, and she had to touch his
shoulder ere he lifted his eyes from the fire. Responsive to her
touch, he said,—
“ Dinna be lang, wife, for I’m nae owre canny the night. Dis
B
�thoo think the laddie troubles aboot his loss o’ wark ? ”
“ Hinny, An’rew winna let his troubles clood his brow. Let’s
hope he dis’na feel them mair than he shows.”
“ Aye, as Ben said once, ‘ he tabs things philosophically.’ ”
“ Aboot that, I dinna kna,” replied Rachel, thoughtfully, “but
sure, as the boy says in one o’ his ain varses,
*
1 The dew o’ heaven is in his heart,’
an’ he’ll mak’ the best o’t, safe enough.”
The old man was comforted, the cloud passed from his face, the
newspaper was resumed, and Rachel wended her way in the direction
of Ronesburn. Approaching Scottingley, which stands between the
cottage and her destination, she saw a larger crowd of men than
usual at the corner of the road leading towards the colliery. This
would not have taken her attention, but, as she came opposite to
them, one, whom she did not recognise in the twilight, left the
crowd, and, as he neared her, said,
“ Mrs. Aylmer, I want a word wi’ ye.”
“ Is’t Will Bardoyle ? Hoo is’t there’s sae mony oot ? Hae
they shut up the public-hoose ? It’s nae a dog-race being made up
or thoo wouldna’ be in’t.”
“Nay, Mrs. Aylmer, we’ve been having a long talk about
Andrew, and I want to see him for the men ; but I suppose he’ll
not be at home for some time, as it is class night.”
“ He’ll no be hame till late, as he’s cornin’ roond for me frae
brother’s after class, but when thoo’s dune here thoo canst find the
way to Ben’s.”
In spite of her concern on Andrew’s account, she could not
help smiling as she said this, for there were a pair of bright eyes at
Ben’s which drew him there, and not against his will.
“ I don’t know if I dare call in to-night,” said Will, in reply,
“ for I have been offered the situation of overman, and I want to see
Andrew first. Ben has’na been out with us, or he would have known
and agreed with what I propose to do, so I’ll just meet Andrew,
and maybe call in with him.”
With a quiet “ good-night ” she passed on toward Ronesburn,
and Will joined the men, who were still talking in clusters.
The men had talked with each other that evening of many
things__ of the franchise, of improvements connected with their work
and their houses, and especially of the treatment Aylmer had been
subjected to; and of these things Will Bardoyle’s mind was full, as
some time after he took the road to Cuthberton, with a view to meet
Andrew. Not meeting him, however, and learning that he had
taken the river-path leading to the Hall, he continued his walk along
the highway, passed Mr.' Pembroke’s villa, and chatted with the old
lodge-keeper until Andrew came out.
Will was some years older than Andrew, but Will could not
have reverenced him more nad he been as aged as he counted him
worthy. Indeed, Andrew had been tne making of Will, for when he
was Aylmer’s present age he was a rough character truly, taking
�
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
Christianity again considered
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 166-167 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Christianity' from 'Free World' February,1877.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1877]
Identifier
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G5612
Creator
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[Unknown]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Christianity again considered), 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
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Book Reviews
Christianity
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
-
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PDF Text
Text
COLONEL ‘ FORNEY’S
LETTER.
-r
V- £
REPRINTED FROM “ THE PRESS,” PHILADELPHIA, DEC. 2ND.
.1.
��n.
COLONEL FORNEY’S LETTER.
London, November 17, 1874.
Cosmopolitan London is in nothing more interesting
than in the variety of its numerous religious organizations. While the Church of England dominates
everything, so large is the population and so varied
the institutions of learning and benevolence, that
there is room for an infinite variety of thought and
organization. The Catholics of London are an im
mense body, and their edifices are numerous and
imposing.
I have often been impressed by the
earnestness with which, in passing through the ancient
churches and cathedrals, now in possession of the
Church of England, the followers of Rome denounce
the meanness which wrested from them these splendid
triumphs of architecture and placed them in charge of
the present reigning religion. In fact, the choicest
treasures of the widespread and absorbing Church of
England were originally the property of the Catholics,
•
�4
and it is difficult to deny to the latter their claim to
the credit of having founded these gorgeous structures!
Mr. Gladstone’s last pamphlet seems to have aroused]
the animosities of both sides, and it is curious to
notice that while he touches the sensitive nerve alike
of Catholics and Protestants, he has not yet received
that measure of Episcopal support which, in view of the
growing hostility in England to the Catholic religion,'
might have reasonably been expected.
He arraigns
the Church of Rome, upon authority sufficient to
himself, as claiming superiority over the civil system of
every government; and while this estimate or argument!
call it what you please, is differently answered by the
Catholics, the Church of England leaders accept it as
a substantial reinforcement of their own position,
while challenging the sincerity of Mr. Gladstone, whom
they accuse of intending ultimately to overthrow their
own establishment. The Catholics, including such
eminent prelates as Archbishop Manning and Mon-1
signor Capel, attack him with an acrimony which
shows the strength of his position.
Archbishop
Manning, in his letter to the New York Herald (by the
way, published in all the London papers the next day,
by the consent of Mr. Bennett), dated November io,
carries his reply to the late Liberal Premier to the
extent of declaring that the differences between them
have overcast a friendship of forty-five years. The
stoutest champion of Mr. Gladstone in this mel'ee will
be the German Protestant Empire, led by the
•
�A
5
dogmatic Bismarck, and there can be little question
that as the war of words increases it will crystallize into
a formidable conflict, both sides armed cap-a-pie.
However the present difficulty may end, it is easy to
■predict that all the Protestant elements will gradually
take sides against the Catholics, so that, although
Mr. Gladstone may be set aside, he will at least have
given coherence to elements long discordant. In
stating this case, I desire, without taking part in what
is evidently the beginning of a long and terrible
Struggle, and what may end in another great European
war, to be regarded as making a plain statement of
current history.
Another character seems to stand in a curious
relation to this bitter controversy between the
theologians. That is the strangely-gifted and wholly
original Moncure D. Conway, the head of the Material
istic congregation at South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
the temple in which for many years preached the
^celebrated W. J. Fox, some time member of Parliament
for a large manufacturing town, Oldham, and known
as the champion of the principles of Radical
Democracy. Mr. Conway is a Virginian, who came
here first as an advanced advocate of the Union cause
seven years ago. Having been previously well known
in our country for the great ability with which he
resisted the productions of slavery and took issue with
■he peculiar doctrines of the politicians in his native
State, the prominence with which he identified himself
�6
with the North in London soon gave him a large hold
among certain advanced thinkers who have always
sympathized with America. In this way he was called
to the pulpit at South Place, where he still continues
to preside, attracting large numbers every Sunday
morning by the peculiarities of his opinions and his
style. His ability is conceded to be of the highest
order, and when I sat under him last Sunday I could
not restrain my admiration of his genius. A tall,
spare man of about forty, with a most intellectual yet
ascetic face, closely resembling J ohn A. Kasson of
Iowa, member of the present Congress, his oratory is
quite unpretending, rarely rising to declamation, and
only when presenting his strongest point expressing
intensity. He is of the materialistic school, in fact a
bow-shot beyond John Stuart Mill in his Theism,
rejecting a personal Deity and insisting that what we
call God is within us—our inner conception, manifested
by our aspirations after truth. It was a novel sensation
to follow this brilliant student and scholar through his
intricate reasonings in support of this position, and to
mark the effect of his rhetoric upon his large and
thoughtful audience, most of whom belonged to the
better classes.
They accept his platform with
enthusiasm, and as most of them are people of rare
culture, their number is rapidly increasing. The
singing was exquisite, and the hymns, of which I here
transcribe two, were given with unusual sweetness and
power :
�7'
ANTHEM.
"We never, never will bow down
To the rude stock or sculptured stone.
We worship God, and God alone.
.
HYMN.
Everlasting ! changing never I
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 ?
i
r
'<
•
-
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.
'
'
‘‘‘
- -.. ’
.
»" "*
�8
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 resistlesson.
Mr. Conway receives ^250, or $1,250, a year for
preaching once on Sunday morning at South Place
Church, and probably almost as much for his
discourses on Sunday evening at Camden Town. He
is also the correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial,
and his letters are as peculiar as his spoken essays.
He is also a contributor on theological subjects to
several of the London scientific reviews, and a great]
favorite in society. Very naturally, he will be found
foremost in the attack upon the Catholics, yet he could
not be more trenchant than in his various criticisms
upon the Church of England. He admires Bismarck
immensely, and prefers the German to the French
example, having sympathized with the former in the
late war. He is a welcome visitor in many houses, is
a charming companion, and outside his philosophical
ideas is one of the most agreeable talkers. South
Place Chapel is 11 Liberty Hall ” in the freedom with
which all creeds and opinions are discussed within its
walls. Robert Collier, of Chicago, filled his pulpit
several times a few years ago, and the Indian reformer,
“ Chunder Sen,” there set forth his views. Next
Thursday Miss Downing, a Catholic, is to discuss in
�9
the debating society of the chapel, from her point of
view, “ Conventual Institutions, their use, &c.” I
could not help smiling on Sunday, after Conway had
denied the existence of a devil, and proclaimed his
doubt as to a personal Deity, insisting that every man
had his own God in his better actions, when among
the announcements of the proceedings of the coming
week he read a notice of a lecture to be delivered at
St. George’s Hall, by Dr. Zerffi, of the South
Kensington Museum, on the “ Concrete and Abstract
Nature of the Devil.” An American gentleman at
my side, who had been repeatedly startled by the
extraordinary positions of Mr. Conway, quietly re
marked, “ What is the use of lecturing about the devil,
when he has just been trying to convince us that he
has no existence ? ” My friend left the chapel a
great deal terrified at what he had heard, and doubtless
went into quarantine, to get rid of the contagion, in
the nearest Calvinistic church he could find.
J. W. F.
[Note.—Colonel Forney’s letter has been reproduced without
corrections; although some of his statements, especially as regards
money matters, are not correct.]
����
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Colonel Forney's letter
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Forney, John W. [1861-1868]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 9 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Reprinted from 'The Press', Philadelphia, December 2nd. Letter dated November 17,1874
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South Place Chapel
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1874
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G5602
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Religion
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Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
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Conway’s Sacred Anthology.
191
attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable ; let him rather rest
at a point where faith supplements instead of conflicting
with reason; and with the reverence, more especially his own,
which forbids him to close his soul against the spiritual
influences he dimly but intensely feels around him, let him
combine that other form of reverence, born of the loyal
search for scientific truth, which equally forbids all prema
ture claim to have pushed back the boundaries of the
*
unknown.
Ernest Myers.
TIL—CONWAY’S SACRED ANTHOLOGY.
Col
lected and edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. London :
Triibner and Co. 1874.
The Sacred Anthology, a Book of Ethnical Scriptures.
When Demetrius Phalereus was forming the royal library
at Alexandria, he recommended Ptolemy Philometor to pro
cure from Jerusalem a copy of the laws of the Jews. Whe
ther or not we trust the plea of their divine origin with
which Josephus has credited him,-|- it seems clear that the
great confluence of religions in the third century B.C. at the
meeting-point between the East and West, was beginning to
attract considerable attention. How far Demetrius carried
his intention of “making a collection of all the books
throughout the world,” it is no longer within the power of
the historian to trace. Had the communities of Hindus and
Persians been sufficiently numerous, it is possible, as Ewald
* Since writing the above, 1 have been interested to find the following pas
sage in Mr. J. S. Mill’s Autobiography (p. 39). Speaking of his father, James
Mill, he says: “He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil
was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and
righteousness. His intellect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt
to blind themselves to this open contradiction. The Sabaean or Manichaean
theory of a Good and an Evil Principle, struggling against each other for the
government of the universe, he would not have equally condemned ; and I have
heard him express surprise that no one revived it in our time. He would have
regarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he would have ascribed to it no deprav
ing influence.”
+ Jos. Ant. xii. 4.
�192
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
has suggested * that the sacred writings of these races also
might have been gathered and translated at the same time.
The opportunity, however, slipped away, and no further
efforts seem to have been made in the study of comparative
religion. But the influence of the wide culture of the Alex
andrian schools was not wholly lost, and re-appears in the
first Apologists for Christianity. The doctrine of the “ Sper
matic Word” enabled them to look with genial eyes upon
every attempt to arrive at the knowledge of divine things :
they did not desire to claim for one race alone the exclusive
possession of the oracles of God; they eagerly welcomed
the testimonies to their own truths which had fallen from
the lips of the wise and good in other ages and in other lands ;
“whatever things,” affirmed Justin Martyr, “have been
rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians ;-fand Clement attributed inspiration to' Plato or Cleanthes
as readily as to Moses or Isaiah. £ The fall of Rome, the
Mohammedan conquests, the decay of Western learning, all
contributed to disperse completely what little interest had
ever been felt in the Oriental faiths ; and Protestantism in
its turn, founded on the finality of the Bible, reversed the
scepticism of the Pharisees of old, and was unwilling to
believe that any good thing could come from anywhere but
Nazareth. Only here and there some mind of rarer insight
and elevation, like Cudworth’s, detected the broken har
monies of a “symphony of religions” which it was reserved
for a later day to rescue from the confusion of tongues in
which it at first appeared wholly lost.
In India, indeed, the experiment had been already tried.
In the sixteenth century, the Emperor Akbar gathered round
him at his court at Delhi, Jews and Christians, Brahmans
and Zoroastrians. Week by week the learned of all deno
minations assembled at the palace to discuss the most intri
cate questions of theology. Nights and days alike were
spent in investigation, and the august student displayed a
spirit of inquiry which was in truth fundamentally opposed
to every Islamitic principle, and excited the gravest disap
proval of one of the contemporary historians of his feign.
The result of the imperial researches was in the highest
* History of Israel, Vol. V. p. 251.
+ Cohort, vi.
+ Second Apology, xiii.
�Conway’s Sacred Anthology.
193
degree disastrous in the eyes of this worthy Mohammedan.
“ There gradually grew, as the outline on a stone, the con
viction in his heart that there were sensible men in all reli
gions” ! Well indeed might the believer ask, “ If some true
knowledge were thus everywhere to be found, why should
truth be confined to one religion, or to a creed like the
Islam, which was comparatively new, and scarcely a thou
sand years old ? why should one sect assert what another
denies? and why should one claim a preference without
having superiority conferred on itself?”*
These questions have not yet wholly ceased to perplex
some minds nearer home. Vague and indefinite ideas about
revelation still obscure “ the true light which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world;” and it is probable that
no better contribution to liberal theology could be made at
the present day than a collection of the best utterances of
morality and faith produced by other races and creeds such
as Mr. Conway has aimed at compiling. In the East alone,
the labours inaugurated by Anquetil du Perron and Sir Wil
liam Jones a century ago, have already proved marvellously
fruitful; and the study of comparative philology has paved
the way for the no less important study of comparative
religion. The soundness of the scholarship of Sir William
Jones remains, we believe, unimpeached, and those who
have followed in his steps have simply extended, without
having to correct, his discoveries. Du Perron’s work, how
ever, has not stood equally well the test of subsequent ex
plorations in the same field. His unwearying energy and
splendid devotion brought the Zend Avesta to light; but
the progress which has since been made in the knowledge
of Zend has to some extent thrown doubt upon the trust
worthiness of his translation; and as Mr. Conway gives his
readers no precise marginal references, it is to be regretted
that he has nowhere stated how far he has availed himself
of it. But the Brahmanic and Zoroastrian religions are not
the only Oriental faiths which have established themselves
on sacred books. Within fifty years Buddhism has gene
rated a literature which threatens to rival its own canon in
voluminousness ; and the writings of Lao-tsze and Confucius
* Badaoni, quoted by Max Muller, Introduction to the Science of Religion,
p. 89.
�194
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
are yielding up their meaning to the indefatigable deter
mination of recent investigators. From Mr. Conway’s cata
logue of authorities, however, we miss some familiar names,
such as those of Eugene Burnouf and Stanislas Julien ; nor
can it be said that this miscellaneous list at the end of the
volume compensates for the want of exact indications of
the sources from which the separate passages have been
derived.
The materials which modern inquiry has placed at the
disposal of the compiler of a sacred anthology, are indeed
embarrassing from their extent and variety. But if they
are to throw any light on the inner relations of different
religions to one another, they ought to be carefully sifted and
methodically grouped. These requirements we cannot think
that Mr. Conway’s collection satisfactorily fulfils. It appears
deficient in principles both of choice and of arrangement.
A glance at the subjoined table will shew the range of
*
nationalities which have contributed to it. Mr. Conway has
wisely passed the limits which he seemed at first sight to
impose on himself by the use of the term “ Scriptures,” and
has for the most part drawn his “testimonies” from a much
wider area. But it is to be regretted that he has adhered
to the canonical restrictions in some cases and not in others.
The numerous Persian poets who supply so many charming
fancies and wise apothegms would no doubt be the first to
disclaim the faintest supposition of rivalry with the Pro
phet, yet here they meet on equal terms. Three millenniums
divide the Dabistan from the Zend Avesta, but in Mr. Con
way’s pages they stand side by side; the fables of Hito* The following table is a rough classification of the passages ascribed to each
religion or nationality :
3
Sabzean..................... ..............
Persian (Mohammedan) .. . 185
Tartar ..................... ..............
2
Hindu (Brahmanic).......... . 140
1
African..................... ..............
Hebrew, Old Test, in- ) 1 AK
1
Chaldzean................. ..............
eluding the Apocrypha )
English..................... ..............
1
Christian ........................... . 102
1
Japanese................... ..............
Buddhist ........................ . 49
Russian..................... ..............
1
Arabian (Mohammedan) .. . 44
Syrian ..................... ..............
1
. 40
Chinese...............................
Theurgists ............. ..............
Parsi .................................. . 30
1
Unknown ................. ..............
Talmud........... ................... . 12
1
—
Scandinavian .................. . 12
4
Total................. .............. 740
Egyptian ........................... .
Turkish ........................... .
4
�Conway's Sacred Anthology.
-
195
pades& take their place along with the hymns of the Rig
Veda and the laws of Manu ; and the chronicles of Ceylon
are on a par with the sermons of Buddha. The cordon, which
is relaxed for the Mohammedans and the Parsis, the Brah
mans and the Buddhists, is tightly drawn for the Christians,
whose literature is apparently regarded as complete with
the last book of the New Testament. Yet it may be doubted
whether, among ordinary readers, Augustine, Tauler, and
Pascal are so much better known than Sadi or V^mana, as
to justify their entire exclusion and if the Imitatio Christi
was too familiar, some of the old Latin hymns might have
represented a spirit of devotion unknown in the East. It
is probably the same fear of intruding upon his readers what
they were already acquainted with, which has led Mr. Con
way to ignore the poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome
altogether. Happily this dread did not compel the psalm
ists and apostles to be silent also ; but no other cause could
have kept out Homer and let in the Eddas
.
*
Yet Sophocles
is at least as well worth reading, and almost as little read,
as Hafiz; it is difficult to see why Marcus Aurelius should
be unheard while Vladimir II. is permitted to speak; the
extracts from the Gospels, under the head of the “ Ethics
of the Intellect,” might well have been supplemented with
passages from the Apology of Socrates ; Plutarch or Seneca
could have furnished maxims quite as good as those of
Turkey, Japan, or England; and in the section entitled
“ Sanctions,” we look in vain for one of Plato’s wonderful
myths, such as that of Er the son of Armenius. Nor can
we think that Mr. Conway does justice to the oldest civilis
ation in the world, in omitting all reference to the Egyptian
“ Book of the Dead.” It may be that the doctrine of im
mortality appears there in a form <too pronounced for his
taste ; but the remarkable conceptions of personal and social
duty implied in the confessions of the soul before the fortytwo assessors in the “Hall of the Two Truths” deserve
recognition in any work which is designed like this to secure
a wider appreciation for “the converging testimonies of ages
and races to great principles.” The mystic sayings of Hermes
Trismegistus”* are pallid and obscure by the side of the
vows and aspirations of the funeral ritual so touchingly
called the “ Book of the Manifestation to Light.”
CLVII.
VOL. XI.
P
�196
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
Of hardly less importance, however, than the selection of
the ethnical Scriptures is their classification. If the object
is to enable the reader to compare together different types
of religion, the quotations ought snrely to be arranged ac
cording to the faiths from which they spring; and extracts
taken from works separated by a long range of time should
be set as far as possible in chronological order, so as to
exhibit the phases of development through which any par
ticular religion has passed. Mr. Conway, however, has pre
ferred a division by subjects rather than by creeds; and has
gathered his materials under the somewhat Emersonian
titles of “ Laws,” “ Nature,” “ Character,” “ Conduct of Life,”
and the like. An arrangement of this kind might have been
advantageously combined with a classification according to
religions, if a few well-defined orders of thought had been
adopted. The opening section of “ Laws,” however, contains
precepts upon every variety of virtue, and deals largely
with “ Charity,” “ Love,” and “ Humility between “ Wis
dom” and “ Knowledge,” “ Religion,” “ Theism,” and “ Wor
ship,” it is somewhat difficult to draw any clear line ; and
these headings do not facilitate the inquirer in ascertaining
whether any given passage is included. This task is, indeed,
rendered harder by the absence of any table of sources. To
each extract a title is prefixed, and of these, it is true, a list
is supplied; but (to take instances only from the Christian
Scriptures) not every one would seek for the parable of the
owner of the vineyard and his two sons under the desig
*
nation, “ The Established Church,” nor would many divine
that “ Demand for a Cause” signified the story of the young
ruler who went away sorrowful, having made what Dante
called “ the great refusal.” To any one, therefore, who takes
up the volume for the first time, the index of titles is almost
useless; and the book is simply a mass of citations, many
of them of high moral and religious value, but unavailable
for critical comparison, and beyond the reach of verification.
Mr. Conway has apparently, however, desired to provide
his readers with some little apparatus which should help
their judgment, and has accordingly appended a series of
Chronological Notes on the various works which have sup
plied him with quotations. But the information imparted
* With the connected discourses, Matt. xxi. 23—32.
�Conway's Sacred Anthology.
197
must be said to be exceedingly meagre: to those who are
already acquainted with Oriental literature it is superfluous,
while to the uninitiated it is tantalisingly inadequate. The
Chinese books are dealt with first; but though Lao-tsze and
*
Confucius- were the founders of religions entirely distinct,
no hint is afforded us of their divergence. The list of Parsi
writings extends over a period of three thousand years, but
we look in vain for any estimate of the relations between
the Zend Avesta and the Dabistan at its two extremes. It
would be perhaps needless to discriminate the Sama Veda
and the Yagur Veda from the Pig Veda (the Atharva Veda
does not appear at all); but some indication of the epic
character of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata would
have been acceptable. But the obliteration of all distinc
tions between the authoritative books of an established
religion and works of poetry or history, ought not to have
caused any confusion between the literatures of rival faiths.
Among the Hindu writings, however, between the Vedas and
the laws of Manu, three works are enumerated which are not
Hindu at all, but Singhalese—not Brahmanic, but Buddhist.
The Mahavamsa, placed by Mr. Conway about B.C. 477—
459, is a kind of royal chronicle, different parts of which
bear different dates. The language in which it is written is
not the Sanskrit of the Vedas, but the Pali of the Buddhist
Scriptures. The author or compiler of the first thirty-seven
chapters was Mah&nama, the uncle of Dhatusena, king of
Ceylon from 459 to 477 A.D.; the next section, written by
a priest named Dharmakirti, carried down the history to
1267; and a third hand has concluded it at 1758. The
Raja-Waliya, which Mr. Conway ascribes to the fourth cen
tury B.C., is of uncertain age; but the oldest portion of it
is probably not so old as the corresponding part of the Mah&vamsa. The same date is affixed to the Raja-Ratnakara,
though the Singhalese in which it is written is of a more
modern form than that of the Raja-Waliya already named.
The author was a certain Abhaya-Raja, who lived about the
middle of the sixteenth century of our era I Even Upham’s
translation, included by Mr. Conway among his “ principal
authorities,” if not altogether trustworthy, would at least
* Mr. Conway separates them by an interval of a century and a quarter.
Max Muller, however, and other writers speak of them as at any rate during a
part of their lives contemporary.
P 2
�198
Conway’s Sacred Anthology.
have enabled him to assign these works to their proper
place among the Buddhist writings, subsequent to the col
lection of the “ Three Baskets.”*
The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures hardly meet with
more satisfactory treatment. Of the Pentateuch we are told
that “ the tendency of modern criticism is to the conclusion
that a large number of very ancient fragments, historical,
legendary and poetic, were sifted, fused, or to use Ewald’s
expression, compounded, into the books which we now have ;
and that they assumed their present shape in the eleventh
century B.C.” The primitive document which lies at the
foundation of the books of Genesis and Exodus may possibly
be ascribed to the period of Samuel, or placed a little later
than that of Solomon. But if Mr. Conway had taken the least
pains to acquaint himself with the views of Ewald, he could
hardly have overlooked the fact that that great historian, in
common with the vast majority of recent critics, postpones the
completion of the Pentateuch till after the composition of
the book of Deuteronomy, which he assigns to the seventh
century.-f- Nor have subsequent investigators contented
themselves with leaving the question there. Prof. Russell
Martineau, in accordance with the views of some of the
Dutch scholars, has shewn in the pages of this Review J that
there is good ground for believing that a large portion of the
Levitical legislation did not come into existence before the
return from the captivity. If the Pentateuch is thus brought
to the front too early, the book of Job seems not admitted
till too late. Its date is, it is true, somewhat difficult to
determine: Mr. Conway, however, adopts a view of its origin
* See “Le Bouddha et sa Religion,” by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, pp.
327, 328. We do not know exactly what use has been made by Mr. Conway
of Upham’s translation ; but its grave deficiencies might have been corrected by
the work of Tumour, which, though incomplete, is of far higher value. The
further dates assigned to such books asDhammapada (246 B.C.) and Kuddhaka
P&tha (250 B.C.) must likewise be received with some caution. The White
Lotus of the Good Law is also referred to the year 246 B.C.; it is not, like
Dhammapada and Kuddhaka P&tha, included in the “Three Baskets” acknow
ledged in Ceylon, which do not appear to have been reduced to writing till about
88 B.C ; it is in Sanskrit, not Pali; but it does not seem possible to fix the
year of its production with precision.—As I have been unable to resort to stan-'
dard works on this subject, I must express my obligations for the greater part
of my information to T. Rhys Davids, Esq., late of Ceylon.
+ History of Israel, I. p. 127, IV. p. 220, sqq.
J Theol. Rev. for Oct. 1872, p. 474, sqq.
�Conway's Sacred Anthology.
199
which prevents him from finding a place for it till after the
Jews had been brought in contact with some of the nations
of the East in the sixth century. In the margin of the
section “ Sorrow and Death,” where an abridgement of it
*
appears, he characterises it as “ Hebrew or Persian.” This
designation is explained in the Chronological Notes by the
statement that it is a version probably of a Persian form of
a Brahmanic story of similar character. As well might we
say that Hamlet was a “version” of a French form-f- of a
Danish tale. If there be any book in the Old Testament
which bears the stamp of strong individual genius, surely it
is the book of Job. It stands entirely outside of the limits
of pure Mosaism, but it is Semitic and not Aryan. Its
author was not shut up in the domestic politics or faith of
Israel; but it was from the wisdom of Teman and the civi
lisation of Egypt that he drew much of his argument and
his imagery. The Satan who presents himself among the
sons of God bears no resemblance to the Zoroastrian Ahri
man ; and the story of his ineffectual endeavours to prove
that Job did not “serve God for nought” may have been
the common property of the wide East as that of Othello
was of Europe, but it needed a Hebrew Shakspeare to weld
it into the earliest, and in some respects the greatest, tragic
drama of the world. With the same want of critical per
ception (as we must consider it), Mr. Conway cites the open
ing and the closing chapters of the book of Isaiah as if they
all alike came from the same pen ; and upon this principle
compiles into one passage verses from oracles against Philistia, against Moab, and against Babylon, separated by
nearly two centuries. The result is described as “The
Tyrant’s Fall/’J For this, perhaps, the wretched divisions
of our English Bible are in part responsible; but this plea
does not excuse a similar treatment of soma, of the Psalms.
Who would think it fair if some continental collector were
to put together stanzas from Milton, Wesley, and Faber, and
present the compound as a specimen of an English hymn ?
We may pass over Mr. Conway’s notices of the Septua* P. 393, sqq.
+ That of the novelist Belleforest.
J dcx. , made up apparently from Is. xiii. 2, 3, 11, 12, xiv. 7, 12, 16, 26,
30, and xvi. 5.
>
’
’
�200
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
gint and the Apocrypha, as they are of slight importance ;
*
but graver issues are raised by his views of the growth of
the New Testament. The Apocalypse, the book of Acts,
and the Epistles of Paul, are the only books which he saves
for the first century. The judgment which treats the book
of Revelation and the letters of Paul as the earliest Christian
documents which we possess, is no doubt a sound one ; but
its correctness seems almost fortuitous, for the next sentence
sweeps away the Epistles to the Ephesians, the Galatians,
the Colossians, and Timothy (together with that to the
Hebrews and those bearing the names of Peter, James, John
and Jude), as of uncertain date and apocryphal authorship.
Why the Epistle to the Galatians should be thus boldly
struck out, we are at a loss to conceive ; the hardiest critics
(with the exception of Bruno Bauer *-) have never ventured
f
to impugn its authenticity; and it is difficult to know on
what grounds it should be thrown overboard while the Epistle
to the Philippians is retained. A still stronger reversal of
accepted decisions is to be found in the priority assigned to
the book of Acts. If there is any point on which all schools
are agreed, it surely is that this book supplemented, instead
of preceding, the Gospel of Luke. Mr. Conway, however,
thinks otherwise. In virtue, perhaps, of the narrative of
the voyage of Paul to which the use of the first person lends
so fresh an air, he reserves a place for this work among the
earliest productions of the primitive church. The four Gos
pels are all relegated into the second century, that of Mat
thew being referred to its first quarter, that of Mark being
set down near its last, while intermediate positions are pro
vided for those of Luke and John. This theory, however,
brings down the composition of the Gospel of Mark hazard* Mr. Conway places the version of the Septuagint in the year 250 B.C. It
is, however, clear that the translation was not made all at once ; but the point
is of minor interest except as it helps us to fix the date of the book of Wisdom,
the author of which seems to have been acquainted with the Greek rendering
of the Pentateuch and Isaiah. The period assigned by Mr. Conway (B.C. 250
—300) would thus appear to be too early.—The “four books of Esdras, ranging
from B.C. 150—31,” are in reality only two. The Vatican MS. contains two
books of Esdras, the first being the book known by that name in our Apocrypha,
and the second being the canonical Ezra. In the Vulgate, however, the canon
ical Ezra stands first; Nehemiah is designated the second book of Esdras; what
we know as the first book of Esdras follows in the third place; and the so-called
second book, of which no Greek text exists, comes fourth and last.
f Davidson’s Introduction to the New Testament, I. p. 101.
J
-Sj'
'.f
3
�SECOND EDITION, NOW READY.
SACRED ANTHOLOGY
THE
j
i. 'ilif r.f ■!
a
BOOK OF ETHNICAL SCRIPTURE^
BY MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY.
Triibner & Co., Ludgate Hill.
The second edition of this work contains an Index of Authors,
in addition to the Index of Subjects, List of Authorities, &c.,
and the Chronological Notes
carefully revised.
The book contains 740 Readings from the Asiatic and Scan
dinavian Sacred Books and Cla^jfes, arranged according to
subjects in 480 pages royal 8vo, with marginal notes.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
It is certainly instructive to see the essential agreement of so many
venerated religious writings, though for depth of meaning and classicality
of form none of them approaches the HebrewSfcmd Christian Scriptures.
The idea of the work is arj^cellentone, and Mr. Conway deserves great
credit for being the first to realise it.— We^^B^i^keview.
It remains for us to point out so^ of the remarkable coincidences
in the principles of morals and reli||on which Mr. Conway’s diligence
and tact have brought together. HillaMand Confucius enunciated the
safhe warning in almost the same words—“ WhaWou do not wish done
to yourself do not to others.” Beneath a tropic sky, the flamingoes and
green parrots suggest the same lessons as the ravens and lilies of the
■field upon the hills of Galilee. A few words sum up with unsurpassed
pathos the parable of the virgins—“ A poor man watched a thousand
years before the gate of Paradise ; then, while he snatched one little nap
it opened and shut.”— Theological Review.
�2
Few more valuable contributions have been made to the popular study
of comparative theology than Mr. Conway’s “ Sacred Anthology,” well
fitted to serve as a volume of devout reading to those who choose without
theological forethought or afterthought to apply it to that use. To the
more speculative student, it curiously illustrates at once the different
genius of the various nations of the world, and the identity of human
nature in its apprehension of the loftiest topics of faith and morals. Few
can read it without feeling their mental horizon enlarged, and without a
deeper sense of the common humanity that lies at the basis of the dif
ferences by which history, climate, and civilisation disguise men and
nations from each other.—Daily News.
The book may fairly be described as a bible of humanity, and as an
ethical text book it might well be adopted in all schools and families
where an attempt is made to instil the highest principles of morality
apart from religious dogma. He has produced a work which a great
number of people have long been desiring to possess, and which is likely
to mark a distinct epoch in the progress of ethical culture.—Examiner.
The result is most interesting. For the first time, an English reader
may judge for himself of the moral and religious merits of writings which
heretofore have been to him only venerable and shadowy abstractions.
We shall be much surprised if every reader does not lay it down in a
better mental frame than was his when he took it up. It teaches charity
and toleration, and makes men less spiritually arrogant. It is not with
out even greater lessons to those who have ears to hear.—The Echo.
The “ Sacred Anthology ” should find a place on every library shelf.
It is a bible free from bigotry, and were an Universal Church ever estab
lished, might fairly be a lesson book for that church. The labour ex
pended by Mr. Conway in editing, abridging, and selecting, can hardly
be fairly estimated. We can heartily recommend it to Freethought
Societies as a volume in which they may find readings otherwise inaccess
ible to them.—National Reformer.
The principal authorities for the beautiful thoughts and precepts so
skilfully collected by the editor, are given at the close of the volume, to
make his work as complete as possible. Mr. Conway also publishes
chronological notes, and it is scarcely necessary to say that his views
with regard to the dates of our sacred books differ considerably from those
adopted by orthodox divines.— The Pall Mall Gazette.
A very slight examination of the volume will show that it is indeed a
valuable anthology of the scriptures of all races. As complete and
entertaining a volume as one would wish to read.—The Bookseller.
It will be seen that all the sacred books of mankind have their prin
cipal features in common ; that the differences between them are not of
essential nature, but of degrees of manner and style, and that an inspired
spirit variously modified and expressed breathes through all. Mr. M. D.
�Conway has contributed a real service to an enlightened view of this
subject by his “ Sacred Anthology,” a book which we commend to the
attention of all who are accustomed to speak of the bible as the only
word of God.— The Inquirer.
Such of our readers as may have studied a remarkable book, India in
Greece, which appeared some twenty years ago, are well aware of the
extent to which Indian rites and customs after having been transported
to Greece, and thence re-exported to Italy, have become permanently
imbedded in the Romish system. Indeed, we believe there is scarce a
Popish notion, emblem, or ceremony that may not be distinctly traced
to 9. Pagan source. However, if the original have come from thence,
thence also may be derived an anecdote that may somewhat tend to
diminish its ill effects. For among the guse Hindoo aphorisms (as ren
dered in Mr. Moncure Conway’s recent book), we find the following,
which some amongst us might ponder with advantage at the present
time:—“Sdnyasis (?Hindu Rits) acquaint themselves with particular
words and vests; they wear a brick-red garb and shaven crowns; in
these they pride themselves ■ their heads look very pure, hut are their
hearts so ?” “ Religion which consists in postures of the limbs (mark
this ye clergy of St. Alban’s, Holborn) is just a little inferior to the
exercises of the wrestler.” “ In the absence of inward vision boast not
of oral divinity.” We are not sure that Vishnu’s philosophy would not
compare favourably with that of Pio Nono.—The Rock.
Many years ago, Philip Bailey, of “Festus,” announced as forthcoming
a book entitled “ Poetical Divinity,” th^object of which was to show by
quotations from the bards of all time, that they all held substantially the
same creed which we presume was held by Festus himself—Pantheism
plus Universal Restoration. This book never has appeared, but Mr
Conway’s is arranged on a somewhat similar plan, and is altogether a
volume of such a unique yet delightfully varied character that it must
commend itself to readers of every sort. We have seen already the eyes
of a rather strictly orthodox person glistening with eager delight over
many of the maxims and beautiful little moral fables with which it abounds.
—The Dundee Advertiser.
It would be impossible that such a book, even if it were compara
tively carelessly done, could be without interest ; but Mr. Conway’s task
has been most conscientiously performed, and it will be found of the
greatest possible value, for it casts a strong light upon many matters
which are frequently in discussion.—The Scotsman.
Mr. Conway has conferred a signal service on the literature of Theism by
publishing for the first time a comprehensive collection of some of the best
passages from the ancient scriptures of different nations. A few years ago
we, in the Brahmo-Somaj, made an humble effort in that direction, which
resulted in the issue of a small book of theistic texts now in use during
service in most of our churches. Mr. Conway’s excellent publication
is on a far grander scale, embraces a wider variety of subjects, and ex
tends its selection through a much larger range of scriptural^ writings
than we could command.—The Indian Mirror.
�4
There is, I suppose, no book inexistence quite like it, perhaps none on
the same plan and of equal scope. He who found no higher use for the
book would rejoice in it as a handbook for scriptural quotations not
otherwise readily accessible, as the number of volumes from which they
have been brought together sufficiently proves. There is nothing we
more need mentally than a tinge of Orientalism, something to give a new
bent and scope to minds fed perpetually on the somewhat narrow and
practical literature of the Western races. Mr. Conway, with his eager
poetic instincts, his warm feeling and wide sympathies, is a good guide
to those in search of what is most impressive to the imagination or
stimulating to the sensibilities.—“ G. W, S.,” in the New York Tribune.
A Significant Book.—Significant of what? Of interest in the
religious life of men who are outside the pale of Christianity, of that
“ sympathy of religions ” which has lately found in the missionary lecture
of Max Muller in Westminster Abbey an exhibition which might
well strike terror into High Church dignitaries, of a growing faith that
the attitude of Christianity towards the other great religions of the world
is not wholly that of a teacher, but may be that of a pupil; of this, at
least—we trust of much beside.—Rev. John W. Chadwick, in the
“ Liberal Christian” New York.
He then read a few sentences from a book called “ Sacred Anthology,”
which work, he said, was a compilation from the religious works of all
nations, some older than our bible : the book he should leave on the desk
as his bequest to the society.—Report of an Address by A. Bronson
Alcott, Esq.,at the opening of a new hall in Massachusetts.
“The Anthology ” may be obtained through any Bookseller, or
from the Librarian, the Chapel, 1I, South Place, Finsbury.
Price, ios. Postage, 9d.
■f
f J
�201
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
-ously late; nor are we aware of any strong grounds for
postponing it till after the appearance of the fourth Gospel.
Altogether it must be said that the value of the book
before us is needlessly impaired by these rash remarks.
For the general purposes of comparative religion, it is unne
cessary to enter into the “ results of modern criticism ” of
the Christian Scriptures. Their position in the history of
thought is sufficiently well known to enable their contents
to be correctly estimated by the side of the Vedas or the
Koran without any previous determination of the authorship
of Epistles or the order of the Gospel narratives. The in
version of a couple of books of the New Testament is of
light consequence compared with the transposition of writ
ings belonging to one language or religion into another a
millennium or so too soon ; but such critical lapses throw
an air of inexactness over the whole work, and somewhat
detract from our appreciation of the genial sympathy which
has evidently directed its preparation. It may be hoped
that in a future edition Mr. Conway will substitute for his
Chronological Notes an introduction such as he well knows
how to write, which may pass in rapid review the genius
of each great faith, assign to the various phases of its de
velopment the books respectively belonging to them, and
thus assist his readers in taking a general survey over the
wide field through which he is so admirably qualified, by
the range of his own reading and the delicacy of his per
ceptions, to be their guide.
It remains to point out as briefly as possible some of the
remarkable coincidences in the principles of morals and
religion which Mr. Conway’s diligence and tact have brought
together. Hillel and Confuciusd" enunciated the same
*
warning in almost the same words,
“ What you do not wish done to yourself^ do not to others
and the Arab sages supply a similar repetition^ of the more
pointed Hindu proverb,
“Do not force on thy neighbour a hat that hurts thine own
head.Ӥ
To return good for evil ceases to be a virtue peculiarly
enjoined on (would that we could also say practised by)
* XXVII.
+ X.
J XII.
§ XLI.
�202
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
Christians ; for the followers of Lao-tsze are hidden to “ re
compense injury with kindness;”* the Buddhist finds in
Dhammapada the command,
“ Let a man overcome anger by love; let him overcome evil
by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, and the liar
by truth+
and Mohammed assigns the deeper reason already revealed
by Jesus,
“For God loveth that you should cast into the depths of your
souls the roots of his perfections.’’^;
All class distinctions are abolished, and the foundations
of universal brotherhood are laid by the simple question of
Vemana,
“ Of what caste is He who speaks in the pariah
In this vast circle, however, particular duties are not to
be lost in general obligations, and Indian wisdom provides
in a breath for the aged and the young:
“ Educate thy children; then thou wilt know how much thou
owest thy father and mother
for servants—
“ What sort of master is that who does not honour his servants
while they discharge their duty 1 .... By taking up the whole
time of a servant, by increasing expectation, by denying reward,
the ill-disposed master is recognised. Favourable discourse to a
servant, presents that denote affection, even in blaming faults
taking notice of virtues, these are the manners of a kind master.
He who knows how to consider his servants, abounds in good
ones ;”5T
and for animals.
**
Beneath a tropic sky, the flamingoes
and green parrots++ suggest the same lessons as the ravens
and the lilies of the field upon the hills of Galilee ; and the
Persian poet discloses the same source of hidden wealth as
Christ:
“ Place your affections on the Creator of the universe : that
will suffice.” U
From this quarter, also, comes a tale of a treasure hid in
* DXCIX.
f
II COXXXIX.
HI C00LXI.
H DOLIV.
CCCOLXXXI.
I OCCXLI.
** CCCXXVIII.
§ OOCCXLIV.
++ CCCCLXVH.
�Conway*ts Sacred Anthology.
,203
•a field, which relates that the finder, unlike the buyer in
*
the gospel story, insisted on sharing his discovery with the
original owner, who in his turn refused to receive it; and
a few words sum up with unsurpassed pathos the parable
of the virgins:
“ A poor man watched a thousand years before the gate of
Paradise. Then, while he snatched one little nap—it opened,
and shut.”+
From the far North rings out a note of blended caution
and trust in human nature:
“No one is so good that no failing attends him, nor so bad as
to be good’for nothing
while a Chinese proverb compresses into one brief maxim
the art of living with others :
“ When alone, think of your own faults; when in company,
forget those of others.” §
In spite of this advice, however, divisions may be inevit
able here; but in the future, if Mohammed’s insight is
correct, they shall disappear:
“ All have a quarter of the heaven to which they turn them;
but wherever ye be, hasten emulously after good; God will one
day bring you all together.” ||
Should any hapless soul be left to struggle with an adverse
destiny, one spirit, at any rate, was ready to bear it com
pany even in its conflicts and its pains, for, in one of the
finest extracts of the book, Kwan-yin, a Fo (Chinese Budd
hist) prophetess, answers by implication the “ comfortable”
doctrine of the sovereign mercy of God in the torments of
the damned, and declares :
“ Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation,
never enter into final peace alone ; but for ever and everywhere
will I strive for the universal redemption of every creature
throughout all worlds. Until all are delivered, never will I leave
the world of sin, sorrow, and struggle, but will remain where
I am.”T
But her self-imposed privations shall at length have an
* DLX.
+ CCCCLXXVIII.
X Saemund’s Edda, cccclxx.
§ CCCCLXXXIV.
|| LXXXIV.
U COOLIII.
�204
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
end, if the Arabian saying (relating, it is true, to a wholly
different order of conceptions) may be trusted:
“In the last day, when all things save paradise shall have
passed away, God will look upon hell, and in that instant its
flames shall be extinguished for ever.” *
It must be confessed, however, that we have here morality,
sometimes “ touched with emotion/’ and sometimes destitute
of it, rather than religion. And so far as Mr. Conway’s
extracts enable us to judge, it appears that religion, in the
sense of personal communion with God, finds more fervent
expression in the Semitic than in the Aryan mind. This
is observable even in the treatment of nature, which is but
the vesture of the unseen Will. The metaphysical phrases
of the hymns to Brahma "f and Vishnu J do not thrill us
*
like the joyousness of the hundred and fourth psalm ; and
it is to the Koran that we must go to strike another note in
the same chord of sympathy with universal life.
“ Hast thou not heard how all in the heavens and in the earth
uttereth the praise of God ? The very birds as they spread their
wings ? Every creature knoweth its prayer and its praise. Ӥ
The relations between Deity and his creatures are those
of reason rather than affection ; their quality is that of light,
not warmth. It is the Mohammedan traditions ||—even in
their Persian dress, for the genius of religion triumphs over
nationality—which exhibit with most beauty the deep sense
of the abiding presence of God, to which the habit of prayer,
in the bazaar, on the river-bank, or by the road-side, as
well as in the mosque, bears such touching witness. Spiri
tual religion is not, indeed, ignored. Hindu pilgrimages
gave birth to the pungent protest,
“Going to holy Benares will make no pig an elephant ;”1T
and the land of the fakirs further humiliates ritualism with
the quiet saying,
“ Religion which consists in postures of the limbs is just a
little inferior to the exercises of the wrestler.”**
But only here and there do we seem clearly to touch the
“ higher pantheism” which blends in one the spiritual forces
+ C.
* D00XV.
|| CLXVI., CLXVII.
’
H CLXIV.
I Oil.
** COXXVID.
§ Oil.
�Comvay's Sacred Anthology.
205
of the universe, without however destroying the individual
ity of the soul. Of this, the following passage of the Zend
Avesta may serve as an example:
. “ God appears in the best thought, the truth of speech and the
sincerity of action, giving through his pure spirit health, pros
perity, devotion and eternity to this universe. He is the Father
of all truth.”*
It is natural, therefore, that of the language of penitence,
of consciousness and confession of sin, there should be Httle
trace among the Aryan hymns. The Vedic prayer, “to be
united by devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest
and intelligent,” f contains no provision for the wounded
and struggling conscience ; the passionate utterances of the
fifty-first psalm would be unintelligible to the mystics of
the far Fast; even in the midst of the sorrow and misery
by which he is surrounded, it is by his own strength that
man is to rise to higher things—it is by the path of intel
lectual enlightenment rather than by that of moral conflict
that his progress is to be made; and so the whole range of
Aryan literature does not appear capable of producing any
thing like the parable of the Prodigal Son.
The last section of Mr. Conway’s book is entitled “ Sanc
tions.” Its general purport is to illustrate the well-known
couplet,
“ Our acts our angels are, or good, or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”|
But how far this unseen attendance will follow us, is left
obscure. “ Let the motive be in the deed,” it is well said in
the Bhagavat Ghita ;§ and Rama truly declares that
“ Virtue is a service man owes himself: though there were no
heaven nor any God to rule the world, it were not the less the
binding law of life.” ||
The belief in immortality need not, however, be confounded
with “otherworldliness;” and we are surprised that the
intense moral conviction which formerly shaped itself into
* CXVII.
CLXX.
I See in particular the four vivid pictures from the book of Ardai Viraf the
Persian Dante (one of which, however, has strayed a long way from its compa
nions), DCXXXVII., DOCXXVII., DCOXXX., DOXXXII.
§ DCLXVI.
|| dlvi. ; the whole passage is of remarkable force and elevation.
F
�206
Report of the Committee of Council on Education.
the doctrines of heaven and hell, and now re-appears as the
striving after perfection, receives no fuller recognition as the
prophecy of an endless destiny. It is not at least for want
of testimonies. The oldest monuments of human thought
*
the ripest genius of human wisdom, the deepest insight of
human love, have all contributed their choicest fruits to
nurture the faith of an undying life. The noblest races, and
minds which seem to stand above race and belong to man
kind, have found in this hope the spring and the spur of all
aspiration, and the prospect of the solution of problems in
determinable here. The new philosophy may perhaps be
summed up in the words of Omar Kheyam (eleventh
century, A.D.), with which Mr. Conway closes his selection:
11 Resign thyself, then, to make what little paradise thou canst
here below; for as for that beyond, thou shalt arrive there, or
thou shalt not.”
But it must at any rate be remembered that on this great
theme the “ symphony of religions ” does not in reality thus
fade away in a doubt.
J. Estlin Carpenter.
TV.—THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL
ON EDUCATION FOR 1872-73.
There are not many subjects on which the press has been
more busy during the last few years than on all the various
topics which have arisen in connection with plans for Na
tional Education. Government returns of the most compre
hensive nature extending over many volumes, reports as
to educational methods adopted at home and abroad, the pub
lications of associations founded for the promotion of anta
gonistic principles, volumes published by earnest workers
in defence of their own plans and criticising the opinions
and proposals of others, pamphlets and leading articles
without number—all shew how deep an interest is felt in
* We have not space to multiply quotations from the Egyptian Book of the
Dead, the Hindu Vedas, or the Iranian Zend Avesta, to say nothing of Plato.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Conway's Sacred Anthology
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Carpenter, J. Estlin (Joseph Estlin)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 191-206 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review by Joseph Estlin Carpenter of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from 'Theological Review' 11, April 1874. Includes bibliographical references.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1874]
Identifier
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G5609
Subject
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Book reviews
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Conway's Sacred Anthology), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Sacred Books
-
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a9264985b5030a6b5dbbf72f244431f0
PDF Text
Text
The Bookseller, Feb. 1, 1879. ____________________________________
Handbook of Drawing. By William Walker,
Ictur^ and Teacher of Free-hand Drawing in
Owens College, &c. With upwards of 200 Woodcuts and Diagrams. (Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.)—Everthing that a tyro in the art of drawing can reasonably ask for, in the way of oral
instruction, is provided in a useful little manual.
The drawing-master treats him as a creature
endowed with brains, as well as ambitious of
deftly handling the pencil and chalk. From one
thing to another, he leads him on ; from purely
technical rules and instructions, to the more
refined elements of the art, which everyone must
master who would pass from a mere dauber or
copyist to the higher sphere of an artist. When
the pupil has learnt to draw straight and curved
lines, and shade his surfaces so as to look as
like nature as he can make them, he is instructed
in the subtler secrets of proportion, symmetry,
and character in art work; in taste, style, and
“ motive ; ” a word which we gladly welcome as
naturalised at last in our art-language. Per
spective also is sufficiently illustrated for the
purposes of free-hand drawing. The diagrams
are generally good. A little more graphic force,
and a little less conventionality, particularly in
examples of leafage and tree-drawing, would
make the illustrations really excellent.
Demonology and Devil Lore. By Moncure
D. Conway, M.A. Two Vols., with numerous
Illustrations. (Chatto and Windus.)—In a work
full of curious and recondite learning, the history
of demon worship is traced back to its rightful
origin, as the complement of the solar myth ; and
the offspring of the prevalent notion affirming
the existence of the dual and antagonistic
principles of Good and Evil in nature. Starting
from this point, the author,in great detail, discusses
the many forms assumed by the Devil of human
imagination in his sinister and deadly influences
inimical to mankind, as animals, serpents,
dragons, and what not. The mortal strife main
tained between the Deity and the Demon under
various aspects is traced from one myth to
another, concluding with more modem manifes
tations of a similar character, as in witchcraft,
sorcery, and the Faust and Mephisto legend.
We shall return to the subject when we can
command space more adequate to its vast im
portance and engrossing interest.
The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing. Trans
feted from the German.
Edited by Ernest
Bell, M.A. With a Short Memoir by Helen
Zimmern. Two Vols. (George Bell and Sons.)
—Lessing, the parent of modern German
thought, the master to whom Goethe, Schiller,
and many others looked up with imitative
Ireverence, is gradually making his way in
England, through recent translations of his
works and Mr. Sime’s Memoir. The more he
is known the better will he be appreciated.
Miss Zimmern has condensed into a few pages
the particulars of his life. Art and literature
were its predominant occupations. His treatise
on the Laocoon group established his reputation
as an art critic. The limits he drew between
painting and poetry have taken their place
among the canons of art which may be
regarded as axiomatic. A project for the
1 or .noiii
proves. The order of their composition, in
point of date, has been inverted, for no very
J Y397 on
it bus zsib
sufficient reason we think ; three tragedies and
B -haoaiq
a dramatic poem, “ Nathan the Wise,” preced
|■ •ratal js :
ing the comedies, although composed at a later
1iiiolsO
period. “ Sara Sampson " and “ Emilia Galotti ”
Ikmsa n
among the tragedies, and “ Minna Von Barn
helm ” as a comedy, will always hold their own
1 nwo trarl
I aqjsdiaq
as works of genuine art, although not perhaps
I sit ritiv
of the very first order; for, except with the
■ bus stcti
work of the Immortals, the lapse of time and
I tairrqoq
change of manners seriously affect the popular
I elttii sro
estimate of such things. But with some little
| e'gniazsJ
allowance made on this account, Lessing's
| nrarii lo
dramas are very readable. Several of them
now appear for the first time in English.
I sWjS.
The Englishman's Critical and Expository Bible
: .veil 9flj
Cyclopedia. Compiled and Written by the Rev.
A. R. Fausset, M.A., Rector of St. Cuthbert’s, , I.e'iisddJi
! labboH)
York, &c. Illustrated by 600 Woodcuts. (Hodder
R lo iroiaivi
and Stoughton.)—In these days of the division of
I dona lo
literary, as of all other labour, a work of such
' ,naq algn
magnitude as this, emanating from a single pen,
E gni'isvsar
entitles its author to the praise of persevering
modal 9£
industry. It has cost him, he tells us, the labour
of seven years. His predominant idea in under- 1 I -labrm ni
I bairuml fl
taking it was to put Bible students, both learned
and unlearned, in possession of the fruits of 1 lo giirnl
aril efriJS’
modern criticism and research, as regards the
historical and other external features of Scrip l-qrio2 lo
J bus Isnh:
ture, while also conveying “ those doctrinal and
experimental truths which the written word it |->r biovz 1
self contains.” The results of the Palestine f enitaeisT
laristam
Exploration supplied him with fresh material
bus yriqsfor elucidating obscure points of topography and
.gedomea:
history. Egyptian and Assyrian researches,
-noo emo;
also, are not overlooked, nor the welcome con
srit lo ya
firmation they afford to the accuracy of the
rfaflgnS ,1
sacred writers. Other commentators, English
and German, have been made available in clear ! -rselo ni 9
banistnoo
ing away difficulties. The information contained
ni .yllsoit!
in the Cyclopaedia is arranged alphabetically, in
sfllii ano'
pages of three columns, the numerous little
.ixst orii.
wood-engravings taking their place in the text.
aloihts dor
Scripture references are worked into each article
iHSitoqnii
as they are required; notices of more important
personages running into short biographies inter i-i91ni g9id
oiiosbib b
woven with reflections of a moral and didactic
bns Insia
character. Readers of Ultra-Protestant and
noitansfq:
Calvinistic views will appreciate the explanation
ynsm lo li
of doctrinal matters. In his treatment of many
controverted passages of Scripture, the author 1 Toriins ad
decidedly adopts the literal interpretation. The adT .noil
"'mirmnaili
reader may be interested to find the “Millennium
discussed as a future event; “ Antichrist and bus " tarn
“ Babylon ” are explained, in a somewhat obso ■-ogdo tariv
,dismal al
lete sense, as the Church of Rome. We remark,
with some surprise, the absence of “ Grace . as l as "aosiO
the title of a separate article. And in the article I aloiiis aril
.
on the “Holy Ghost,” His “procession” in ani "noiaas
eternity, from the Father and the „Son, is !Jai ,no2 a
strangely confused with His “ Mission to the J adl ol "n<
Apostles after Christ’s Ascension.
Elizabeth Eden. A Novel in Three Volumes. By [ y8[ .sonuri
M. C. Bishop. (Low and Co.)—“ Love is too boot si 9V0,
strong to die. Elizabeth bowed her head on his S aid no hsoi
breast. She could not say anything definite in Fni ofinrteb
her sense of overpowering devotion to her I had ot no
ro,.
'>
. -'S
r-.l 4-1-ia -• '_1e story _ of j to
-T-^-7
_
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Demonology and Devil-lore
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: Unnumbered page ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A short review of Moncure Conway's work 'Demonology and Devil-lore' from 'The Bookseller, February 1st, 1879. Reviewer not named. Printed in double columns. Bottom of page torn off but does not affect the text of the Conway review.
Publisher
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The Bookseller
Date
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1879
Identifier
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G5594
Creator
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[Unknown]
Subject
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Book reviews
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Demonology and Devil-lore), 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
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Moncure Conway